Softpanorama

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Home Switchboard Unix Administration Red Hat TCP/IP Networks Neoliberalism Toxic Managers
(slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and  bastardization of classic Unix

NeoMcCartyism bulletin, 2019

Home 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013

For the list of top articles see Recommended Links section

Top Visited
 Switchboard
Latest
Past week
Past month

NEWS CONTENTS

Old News ;-)

[Jun 03, 2020] Dems ratpack of reparations freaks, weird sexual curiosities, and race hustlers is actually a fifth column for Trump re-election by Fred Reed

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The Democrats are fielding as candidates a roster of middle-school clowns and unflavored tapioca. Are they secretly in Trump's pay? Like Clinton with her "Deplorables" suicide line? ..."
"... Probably the Russians are behind it. ..."
Jul 25, 2019 | www.unz.com

They're going to do it, I tell you: The whole touchy-feely do-gooding ratpack of Microaggression worriers, reparations freaks, weird sexual curiosities, race hustlers, bat.-Antifa psychos, and egalitarian enstupidators of universities. They are going to elect Trump. Again.

Washington, where I shortly will be for a bit, is crazy. It has not the slightest, wan, etiolated idea of what is going on in America. The Democrats are fielding as candidates a roster of middle-school clowns and unflavored tapioca. Are they secretly in Trump's pay? Like Clinton with her "Deplorables" suicide line?

Probably the Russians are behind it.

[Jun 03, 2020] Not The Onion: NY Times Urges Trump To Establish Closer Ties With Moscow

Highly recommended!
Jul 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

2016 a Russia-Trump campaign collusion conspiracy was afoot and unfolding right before our eyes, we were told, as during his roll-out foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., then candidate Trump said [ gasp! ]:

" Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon. Good for both countries. Some say the Russians won't be reasonable. I intend to find out."

NPR and others had breathlessly reported at the time, "Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the U.S., was sitting in the front row" [ more gasps! ].

This 'suspicious' "coincidence or something more?" event and of course the infamous Steele 'Dodgy Dossier' were followed by over two more years of the following connect-the-dots mere tiny sampling of unrestrained theorizing and avalanche of accusations...

Here's a very brief trip down memory lane:

2017, Politico: The Hidden History of Trump's First Trip to Moscow

2017, NYT: Trump's Russia Motives (where we were told: "President Trump certainly seems to have a strange case of Russophilia.")

2017, Business Insider: James Clapper: Putin is handling Trump like a Russian 'asset'

2017, USA Today: Donald Trump's ties to Russia go back 30 years

2018, NYT: Trump, Treasonous Traitor

2018, AP: Russia had 'Trump over a barrel'

2018, BBC: Russia: The 'cloud' over the Trump White House

2018, NYT: From the Start, Trump Has Muddied a Clear Message: Putin Interfered

2018, USA Today: " From Putin with love"

2019, WaPo: Here are 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset

2019, Vanity Fair: "The President Has Been Acting On Russia's Behalf": U.S. Officials Are Shocked By Trump's Asset-Like Behavior

2019, Wired: Trump Must Be A Russian Agent... (where we were told...ahem: " It would be rather embarrassing ... if Robert Mueller were to declare that the president isn't an agent of Russian intelligence." )

Embarrassing indeed.

"The walls are closing in!" - we were assured just about every 24 hours .

It's especially worth noting that a July 2018 New York Times op-ed argued that President Trump -- dubbed a "treasonous traitor" for meeting with Putin in Helsinki -- should "be directing all resources at his disposal to punish Russia."

Fast-forward to a July 2019 NY Times Editorial Board piece entitled "What's America's Winning Hand if Russia Plays the China Card?" How dizzying fast all of the above has been wiped from America's collective memory! Or at least the Times is engaged in hastily pushing it all down the memory hole Orwell-style in order to cover its own dastardly tracks which contributed in no small measure to non-stop national Russiagate hype and hysteria, with this astounding line:

President Trump is correct to try to establish a sounder relationship with Russia... -- Editorial Board, New York Times, 7-22-19

That's right, The Times' pundits have already pivoted to the new bogeyman while stating they agree with Trump on Russian relations :

"Given its economic, military and technological trajectory, together with its authoritarian model, China, not Russia , represents by far the greater challenge to American objectives over the long term . That means President Trump is correct to try to establish a sounder relationship with Russia and peel it away from China ."

[... Mueller who? ]

Remember how recently we were told PUTIN IS WEAPONIZING EVERYTHING! from space to deep-sea exploration to extreme climate temperatures to humor to racial tensions to even 'weaponized whales' ?

It's 2019, and we've now come full circle . This is The New York Times editorial board continuing their call for Trump to establish "sounder" ties and "cooperation" with Russia :

"Even during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union often made progress in one facet of their relationship while they remained in conflict over other aspects. The United States and Russia could expand their cooperation in space . They could also continue to work closely in the Arctic And they could revive cooperation on arms control."

Could we imagine if a mere six months ago Trump himself had uttered these same words? Now the mainstream media apparently agrees that peace is better than war with Russia.

With 'Russiagate' now effectively dead, the NY Times' new criticism appears to be that Trump-Kremlin relations are not close enough , as Trump's "approach has been ham-handed " - the 'paper of record' now tells us.

Or imagine if Trump had called for peaceful existence with Russia almost four years ago? Oh wait...

" Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon. Good for both countries." -- Then candidate Trump on April 27, 2016

Cue ultra scary red Trump-Kremlin montage.

[Jun 03, 2020] The difference between old and new schools of jounalism: old-school journalism was like being assigned the task of finding out what "1+1 =?" and the task was to report the answer was "1." Now the task would be to report that "Some say it is 1, some say it is 2, some say it is 3."

Highly recommended!
Jun 20, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

A way to capture this change was thinking in terms of the traditional task of journalists to interview or consult a variety of sources to determine was is truth or true. The shift gradually became one of now interviewing or consulting various sources and reporting those opinions.

Old-school journalism was like being assigned the task of finding out what "1+1 =?" and the task was to report the answer was "1."

Now the task would be to report that "Some say it is 1, some say it is 2, some say it is 3."

[Jun 03, 2020] Rule of law in Murrika is kaput

Highly recommended!
Jun 16, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

freedommusic , 23 minutes ago link

DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Agent Smith, you testified that the Russians hacked the DNC computers, is that correct?

FBI AGENT JOHN SMITH: That is correct.

DEF ATT: Upon what information did you base your testimony?

AGENT: Information found in reports analyzing the breach of the computers.

DEF ATT: So, the FBI prepared these reports?

AGENT: (cough) . (shift in seat) No, a cyber security contractor with the FBI.

DEF ATT: Pardon me, why would a contractor be preparing these reports? Do these contractors run the FBI laboratories where the server was examined?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: No? No what? These contractors don't run the FBI Laboratories?

AGENT: No. The laboratories are staffed by FBI personnel.

DEF ATT: Well I don't understand. Why would contractors be writing reports about computers that are forensically examined in FBI laboratories?

AGENT: Well, the servers were not examined in the FBI laboratory.

(silence)

DEF ATT: Oh, so the FBI examined the servers on site to determine who had hacked them and what was taken?

AGENT: Uh .. no.

DEF ATT: They didn't examine them on site?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: Well, where did they examine them?

AGENT: Well, uh .. the FBI did not examine them.

DEF ATT: What?

AGENT: The FBI did not directly examine the servers.

DEF ATT: Agent Smith, the FBI has presented to the Grand Jury and to this court and SWORN AS FACT that the Russians hacked the DNC computers. You are basing your SWORN testimony on a report given to you by a contractor, while the FBI has NEVER actually examined the computer hardware?

AGENT: That is correct.

DEF ATT: Agent Smith, who prepared the analysis reports that the FBI relied on to give this sworn testimony?

AGENT: Crowdstrike, Inc.

DEF ATT: So, which Crowdstrike employee gave you the report?

AGENT: We didn't receive the report directly from Crowdstrike.

DEF ATT: What?

AGENT: We did not receive the report directly from Crowdstrike.

DEF ATT: Well, where did you find this report?

AGENT: It was given to us by the people who hired Crowdstrike to examine and secure their computer network and hardware.

DEF ATT: Oh, so the report was given to you by the technical employees for the company that hired Crowdstrike to examine their servers?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: Well, who gave you the report?

AGENT: Legal counsel for the company that hired Crowdstrike.

DEF ATT: Why would legal counsel be the ones giving you the report?

AGENT: I don't know.

DEF ATT: Well, what company hired Crowdstrike?

AGENT: The Democratic National Committee.

DEF ATT: Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You are giving SWORN testimony to this court that Russia hacked the servers of the Democratic National Committee. And you are basing that testimony on a report given to you by the LAWYERS for the Democratic National Committee. And you, the FBI, never actually saw or examined the computer servers?

AGENT: That is correct.

DEF ATT: Well, can you provide a copy of the technical report produced by Crowdstrike for the Democratic National Committee?

AGENT: No, I cannot.

DEF ATT: Well, can you go back to your office and get a copy of the report?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: Why? Are you locked out of your office?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: I don't understand. Why can you not provide a copy of this report?

AGENT: Because I do not have a copy of the report.

DEF ATT: Did you lose it?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: Why do you not have a copy of the report?

AGENT: Because we were never given a final copy of the report.

DEF ATT: Agent Smith, if you didn't get a copy of the report, upon what information are you basing your testimony?

AGENT: On a draft copy of the report.

DEF ATT: A draft copy?

AGENT: Yes.

DEF ATT: Was a final report ever delivered to the FBI?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: Agent Smith, did you get to read the entire report?

AGENT: No.

DEF ATT: Why not?

AGENT: Because large portions were redacted.

DEF ATT: Agent Smith, let me get this straight. The FBI is claiming that the Russians hacked the DNC servers. But the FBI never actually saw the computer hardware, nor examined it? Is that correct?

AGENT: That is correct.

DEF ATT: And the FBI never actually examined the log files or computer email or any aspect of the data from the servers? Is that correct?

AGENT: That is correct.

DEF ATT: And you are basing your testimony on the word of Counsel for the Democratic National Committee, the people who provided you with a REDACTED copy of a DRAFT report, not on the actual technical personnel who supposedly examined the servers?

AGENT: That is correct.

DEF ATT: Your honor, I have a few motions I would like to make at this time.

PRESIDING JUDGE: I'm sure you do, Counselor. (as he turns toward the prosecutors) And I feel like I am in a mood to grant them.

( source )

hooligan2009 , 14 minutes ago link

Brilliant! that sums it up nicely. of course, if the servers were not hacked and were instead "thumbnailed" that leads to a whole pile of other questions (including asking wiileaks for their source and about the murder of seth rich).

[Dec 31, 2019] Skripals false flag and Russiagate are birds of the feather

Notable quotes:
"... If the CIA/MI6/FBI did attempt to create a sting it need not be as dramatic as the Skripal fakery. What would you dream up if you were tasked by the CIA to propose something? KISS. ..."
Dec 31, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

librul , Dec 29 2019 22:21 utc | 28

@Posted by: sleepy | Dec 29 2019 17:38 utc | 8

Thanks sleeply,

But underlying your comment is an assumption of *logic* in this world. If it ever existed it certainly does not apply any longer. Look how much mileage the MSM and the anti-Democracy Party got out of the nothingburger Russiagate.

The MSM doesn't even need to smell real blood, they will run with anything to continue the coup.

Anything negative that involves Edward Gallagher between now and election day could be magnified 1 million-fold and
repeated 1000 million times by the MSM and dropped in Trump's lap.

If the CIA/MI6/FBI did attempt to create a sting it need not be as dramatic as the Skripal fakery. What would you dream up if you were tasked by the CIA to propose something? KISS.

[Dec 31, 2019] The US is now openly dismissive as a matter of law any ally or partner who engages in economic activity it disapproves by Tom Luongo

Dec 26, 2019 | astutenews.com

Europe is willing to defy the U.S. on Nordstream to the point of forcing the U.S. to openly and nakedly destroy its reputation with European contractors and governments to stop one pipeline in a place where multiple gas pipelines will be needed for future growth.

This is the diplomatic equivalent of the nuclear option. And the neocons in the Senate just pushed the button. Europe understands what this is really about, the U.S. retaining its imperial position as the policy setter for all the world. If it can set energy policy for Europe then it can set everything else.

And it's clear that the leadership in Europe is done with that status quo. The Trump administration from the beginning has used NATO as an excuse to mask its real intentions towards Europe, which is continued domination of its policies. Trump complains that the U.S. pays into NATO to protect Europe from Russia but then Europe buys its energy from Russia. That's unfair, Donald complains, like a little bitch, frankly, even though he right on the surface. But if the recent NATO summit is any indication, Europe is no longer interested in NATO performing that function. French President Emmanuel Macron wants NATO re-purposed to fight global terror, a terrible idea. NATO should just be ended.

But you'll notice how Trump doesn't talk about that anymore. He wants more billions pumped into NATO while the U.S. still sets its policies. This is not a boondoggle for the MIC as much as it's a Sword of Damocles to hold over Europe's head. The U.S.'s involvement in should be ended immediately, the troops brought home and the billions of dollars spent here as opposed to occupying most of Europe to point missiles at a Russia wholly uninterested in imperial ambitions no less harboring any of them.

And Trump also knows this but thinks stopping Nordstream 2 is the price Europe has to pay him for this privilege. It's insane. The time has come for Europe to act independently from the U.S. As much as I despise the EU, to untangle it from the U.S. on energy policy is the means by which for it to then deal with its problems internally. It can't do that while the U.S. is threatening it. Circling the wagons against the immediate threat, as it were.

And that means protecting its companies and citizens from the economic depredations of power-mad neoconservatives in the U.S. Senate like Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham.

Allseas, the Swiss company laying the pipe for Nordstream 2, has halted construction for now , awaiting instructions from the U.S. Gazprom will likely step in to finish the job and Germany will green light any of the necessary permits to get the pipeline done. Those people will be put out of work just in time for Christmas, turning thousands of people against the U.S. Commerce drives people together, politics drives them apart.

But, at the same time, the urgency to finish Nordstream 2 on time is wholly irrelevant now because Ukraine and Russia came to terms on a new five-year gas transit contract. This ensures Gazprom can meet its contractual deliveries to Europe that no one thought could be done on time. But when the Nazi threat to Zelensky meeting with Merkel, Macron and Putin in Paris failed to materialize, a gas deal was on the horizon.

And, guess what? U.S. LNG will still not have the marginal lever over Europe's energy policy because of that. Putin and Zelensky outmaneuvered Cruz, Graham and Trump on this. Because that's what this boils down to. By keeping Russian gas out of Europe, it was supposed to constrain not only Russia's growth but also Europe's. Because then the U.S. government can control who and how much energy can make it into European markets at critical junctures politically.

That was the Bolton Doctrine to National Security. And that doctrine brought nothing but misery to millions.

And if you look back over the past five years of U.S./EU relations you will see this gambit clearly for what it was, a way to continue European vassalage at the hands of the U.S. by forcing market share of U.S. providers into European markets.

Again, it gets back to Trump's ideas about Emergy Dominance and becoming the supplier of the marginal erg of energy to important economies around the world.

The smart play for the EU now that the gas transit deal is in place is to threaten counter-sanctions against the U.S. and bar all LNG shipments into Europe. Gas prices are at historic lows, gas supplies are overflowing thanks to fears of a deal not being in place.

So, a three to six month embargo of U.S. LNG into Europe to bleed off excess supply while Nordstream 2 is completed would be the right play politically.

But, in reality, they won't need to, because the U.S. won't be able to import much into Europe under current prices and market conditions. And once Nordstream 2 is complete, LNG sales to Europe should crater.

In the end, I guess it's too bad for Ted Cruz that economics and basic human ingenuity are more powerful than legislatures. Because Nordstream 2 will be completed. Turkstream's other trains into Europe will be built. Venezuela will continue rebuilding its energy sector with Russian and Chinese help.

There is no place for U.S. LNG in Europe outside of the Poles literally burning money virtue signaling their Russophobia. Nordstream 2 was a response to the revolt in Ukraine, to replace any potential losses in market share to Europe. Now Russia will have what it had before passing through Ukraine along with Nordstream 2. By 2024 there will be at least two trains from Turkstream coming into Europe.

Iran will keep expanding exports, settling its oil and gas trade through Russian banks. And the U.S. will continue to fulminate and make itself even more irrelevant over time. What men like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump refuse to understand is that when you go nuclear you can't ever go back. If you threaten the nuclear option, there's no fall back position.

And when those that you threaten with annihilation survive they are made all the stronger for passing through the eye of the needle. Looking at Gazprom's balance sheet right now, that's my take.

By Tom Luongo. Source: Gold Goats 'n Guns

[Dec 31, 2019] Another despicable attack on Tulsi

It is reasonably cheap to buy a journalist and turn him into the attack dog on particular, inconvenient or dangerious for the financial oligarchy candidate.
Dec 31, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Kali , Dec 29 2019 19:01 utc | 13

New article about Tulsi Gabbard being viciously attacked over religion during Christmas.

Angry Bernie Sanders supporters whom I guess forgot to take their meds over the holidaze are viciously attacking Tulsi because of Jesus? LOL. This new article is specifically about Mike Figueroa from The Humanist Report, a semi-popular vlogger, and also a fanatic atheist type.

He used to be a Tulsi supporter, but since he is connected to the TYT network which is funded by Hollywood Billionaire and major DNC Clinton funder Katzenberg, he must have recently been told to toe the party line on smearing Tulsi if he wanted to reap the funding benefits of TYT who are hardcore Tulsi haters, following the DNC line.

I guess Tulsi showing the Christmas spirit gave him a reason to look hardcore to his fellow fanatics and appease TYT money folks. Anyways, here is the new article Like, In The Year 2024

[Dec 31, 2019] Skripals false flag and Russiagate are birds of the feather

Dec 31, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

librul , Dec 29 2019 22:21 utc | 28

@Posted by: sleepy | Dec 29 2019 17:38 utc | 8

Thanks sleeply,
But underlying your comment is an assumption of *logic* in this world. If it ever existed it certainly does not
apply any longer. Look how much mileage the MSM and the anti-Democracy Party got out of the nothingburger Russiagate.
The MSM doesn't even need to smell real blood, they will run with anything to continue the coup.

Anything negative that involves Edward Gallagher between now and election day could be magnified 1 million-fold and
repeated 1000 million times by the MSM and dropped in Trump's lap.

If the CIA/MI6/FBI did attempt to create a sting it need not be as dramatic as the Skripal fakery. What would you dream up if you were tasked by the CIA to propose something? KISS.

[Dec 30, 2019] Looking at Rachel Maddow I miss the days when a man could just accuse a woman of being a witch and trust the fine upstanding townspeople to take care of the rest

Dec 30, 2019 | www.washingtonpost.com

1 day ago Maddow is really a propagandist. She really isn't a journalist. Because her credibility and ratings have gone south because so many of the big stories she has been obliged to push have been fake from the get-go. People start to notice that after a while. You can't fool all of the people all of the time as Abe observed. 1 day ago It has been determined to have been a fabrication. It is not just controversial. Maddow may be spot on in fooling her drooling sycophants, but facts seldom ever interfere with her fairy tales and TDS motivated delusions. 10 hours ago Rational Agent:
The CIA told the FBI that the material in the Steele dossier is merely Internet gossip and bar room talk. This is in the inspector general's report (issued Dec 9) and public testimony under oath before Congress (Dec 11).

There were several agents in the FBI who were disturbed about the unverified nature of this material, and they were overruled by other agents and their supervisors and this material was then presented to the FISA court four times in the knowledge that it was unverified but the court was told it was verified. That is also in the inspector general's Report and public testimony.

The result of this misconduct was that the head judge of the FISA court Rosemary Collyer, issued on Dec 16 an unprecedented and angry public rebuke of the FBI for repeatedly deceiving the court about the veracity of the Steele dossier.

Enough for you? 1 day ago With apologies to Bob Dylan:

"A man (or woman) sees what he (she) wants to see and disregards the rest."

If you're tuned into cable 'news' at 9 p.m. eastern time looking for objective journalism, well, good luck with that. Cuomo is probably the best bet; he offers a little bit. 1 day ago I think the apology should be to Paul Simon?

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=a+man+sees+what+he+wants+to+see+and+disregards+the+rest+lyrics

Not withstanding that, your point is well made. Not much in the way of great thought on the telly at that time on any station. 1 day ago Independents view Rachael Maddow, Chris Cuomo and Sean Hannity as hate peddlers who spin, lie and twist every single issue to fit their fantasy of how the world exists. I cannot imagine how anyone with a brain or any semblance of logic could be a regular viewer of these hate mongers. If one does a cursory analysis of the predictions these people have made over the past couple of years, you will quickly see how ridiculous and wrong they have been. The bigger problem is that they represent their news organizations and only add to the distrust and declining reliance that rational folks have of the Media. 2 days ago [she is] Just another CIA mouthpiece. 2 days ago Maddow is being sued by the One America News Network for stating the latter were 'really, literally' Russian assets.

Maddows is furiously back pedalling, not standing by what she said. This speaks volumes.

Maddows is evil. 2 days ago The Steele dossier is trash. A joke. Comprehensively discredited. Only the wilfully blind or deluded would believe otherwise. Proof that [neo]liberalism is a form of mental illness. 1 day ago If it is all propaganda, then we are truly living in a post-truth world. In this world there are no facts, only competing narratives. This allows us to sink into fact-free thinking and rely only on our prejudices (or our "gut") to determine our preferences. 2 days ago " The case against Maddow is far stronger. When small bits of news arose in favor of the dossier, the franchise MSNBC host pumped air into them. At least some of her many fans surely came away from her broadcasts thinking the dossier was a serious piece of investigative research, not the flimflam, quick-twitch game of telephone outlined in the Horowitz report. She seemed to be rooting for the document."

[Dec 30, 2019] Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true. Then it fell apart. - The Washington Post

Looks like WaPo is pushing Madcow under the bus...
Dec 30, 2019 | www.washingtonpost.com

The Horowitz team didn't attempt an independent fact-check of the dossier, opting instead to report what the FBI had concluded about the document. Unflattering revelations pop up at every turn in the 400-page-plus report. It reveals that the CIA considered it a hodgepodge of "internet rumor"; that the FBI considered one of its central allegations -- that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague for a collusive meeting with Russians -- "not true"; that Steele's sources weren't quite a crack international spy team. After the 2016 election, for instance, Steele directed his primary source to seek corroboration of the claims. "According to [an FBI official], during an interview in May 2017, the Primary Sub-source said the corroboration was 'zero,'" reads the report.

The ubiquity of Horowitz's debunking passages suggests that he wanted the public to come away with the impression that the dossier was a flabby, hasty, precipitous, conclusory charade of a document.

... ... ...

The case for Maddow is that her dossier coverage stemmed from public documents, congressional proceedings and published reports from outlets with solid investigative histories. She included warnings about the unverified assertions and didn't use the dossier as a source for wild claims. There is something fishy, furthermore, about that Mueller footnote regarding the "tapes." In their recent book on the dossier, " Crime in Progress ," the Fusion GPS co-founders wrote that Steele believes the document is 70-percent accurate.

The case against Maddow is far stronger. When small bits of news arose in favor of the dossier, the franchise MSNBC host pumped air into them. At least some of her many fans surely came away from her broadcasts thinking the dossier was a serious piece of investigative research, not the flimflam, quick-twitch game of telephone outlined in the Horowitz report. She seemed to be rooting for the document. Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true. Then it fell apart. - The Washington Post

And when large bits of news arose against the dossier, Maddow found other topics more compelling.

She was there for the bunkings, absent for the debunkings -- a pattern of misleading and dishonest asymmetry.

In an October edition of the podcast "Skullduggery," Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News pressed Maddow on her show's approach to Russia. Here's a key exchange:

Isikoff: Do you accept that there are times that you overstated what the evidence was and you made claims and suggestions that Trump was totally in Vladimir Putin's pocket and they had something on him and that he was perhaps a Russian asset and we can't really conclude that?

Maddow: What have I claimed that's been disproven?

Isikoff: Well, you've given a lot of credence to the Steele dossier.

Maddow: I have?

Isikoff: Well, you've talked about it quite a bit, I mean, you've suggested it.

Maddow: I feel like you're arguing about impressions of me, rather than actually basing this on something you've seen or heard me do.

After some back and forth about particulars of the Mueller report and the dossier with Isikoff, Maddow ripped: "You're trying to litigate the Steele dossier through me as if I am the embodiment of the Steele dossier, which I think is creepy, and I think it's unwarranted. And it's not like I've been making the case for the accuracy of the Steele dossier and that's been the basis of my Russia reporting. That's just not true."

Asked to comment on how she approached the dossier, Maddow declined to provide an on-the-record response to the Erik Wemple Blog. Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true. Then it fell apart. - The Washington Post

Read more from Erik Wemple:

Part 1 of this series: 'The story stands': McClatchy won't back off its Michael Cohen-Prague reporting

Part 2: Horowitz report confirms John Solomon's scoop on FBI 'spreadsheet' regarding Steele dossier

Part 3: 'Disinformation' claim 'galls' dossier author Christopher Steele

Part 4: CNN lands an interview with its own contributor

Part 6: A much-cited defense of the Steele dossier has a problem

An untouchable Rachel Maddow busts her bosses at NBC News

Rachel Maddow: 'I don't necessarily want to hear from the White House on almost anything' 2 hours ago She's the left's version of Hannity or Tucker. This is not a good thing to be. 10 hours ago So many have been brainwashed by this woman. She is a total disgrace. In fact MSNBC in its entirety is a disgrace. Scandal after scandal. Lie after lie. Propaganda. Hit pieces on progressives. AWOL on what is actually happening to the middle and working class. But Maddow is not alone. She lies and makes things up and freely slanders and smears and so does the weekend linebacker, Reid, who not only lies and then makes up further lies to cover up the original lies. 11 hours ago We all know the liberal mainstream media lies a lot. We've come to expect it. That's why CNN's ratings are perpetually in the toilet. But this Rachel Maddow doesn't seem to be able to do anything but lie. Well, that's the left. Any lying, cheating behavior is acceptable if it's directed against Trump. 12 hours ago (Edited) The plain truth is that Russia did indeed attempt interference with the 2016 election, but its phishing expeditions and social media placements did not come remotely close to "flipping" the election to Trump -- indeed, it cannot be documented that a single vote was altered or voter registration list tampered with. The totality of Russian interference pales in comparison to what the United States has done and continues to do to foreign elections on a regular basis -- indeed, to what it did to Russia's in the 1990's to ensure Boris Yeltsin's election.

Another plain truth: the Mueller Report was a stunning blow to the Democratic Party establishment and the media and a victory for Trump, the extent of which is still to be determined, no matter how you try to spin it. Democrats and their media allies were willing to take at face value and without further evidence the pronouncements of people like John Brennan and other national security figures who had lengthy, documented histories of lying to the American people and the press. Skepticism went out the window because the spooks were telling the Democrats and the media what they wanted to hear. Rachel Maddow and MSNBC are the Judy Millers of this story, and the rest of the media just ran with it.

The ramifications of that miscalculation are still playing out. Senate conviction of Trump on ANY basis is now dead letter for the remainder of this election cycle because the Democrats' credibility and motives have been blown sky-high -- no small feat given Trump's historic levels of mendacity! It is why the public isn't getting behind the current effort even though Trump has literally been caught red-handed. But the Democratic establishment was just SO eager to blame it all on Russia, so they could exonerate themselves for their horrible strategies and worse policies that led to the 2016 debacle and fend off challenges from the progressives! What have they accomplished instead? Handing Trump a second term.

7 hours ago Rachel Maddow has "Hillary Clinton 2016" branded on her ace. She is totally owned by the corporate liberal establishment.


[Dec 30, 2019] WaPo pushed Madcow under the bus: Rachel Maddow version of events connected with Steele dossier is true, then it was one of the most successful Russian intelligence operations since 1917

Anti-Russian hysteria always takes the simpletons back to their happy place. She should quit "journalism" in favor of dog walking.
Dec 30, 2019 | www.washingtonpost.com
14 hours ago If this version of events is true then the Steele dossier was one of the most successful Russian intelligence operations since 1917 or anyway 1991. It up-ended the American government for three full years, and is still having a deleterious impact even after being proven false. And deliciously, it was all paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC!

[Dec 29, 2019] Maddow Meltdown In Defense To OAN Lawsuit, Host Argues Her Words Are Not Facts

Are We About To Return To The Principle That "Actions Have Consequences"?
Notable quotes:
"... And she has also apparently hired Lionel Hutz as her legal adviser. ..."
"... Oh, it's capable of being proved false, alright. ..."
Dec 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
reported that TV network OAN had filed a lawsuit against Rachel Maddow for the time the host said that OAN "really, literally is paid Russian propaganda."

Now, Maddow finds herself having to come up with a defense for her statement in court. And she has also apparently hired Lionel Hutz as her legal adviser.

According to Culttture , her lawyers argued in a recent motion that " the liberal host was clearly offering up her 'own unique expression' of her views to capture what she saw as the 'ridiculous' nature of the undisputed facts. Her comment, therefore, is a quintessential statement 'of rhetorical hyperbole, incapable of being proved true or false."

Oh, it's capable of being proved false, alright. Maddow had previously claimed, on air, about one of OAN's reporters:

"In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America is really literally is paid Russian propaganda," and added, "Their on-air politics reporter ( Kristian Rouz) is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government."

The testimony of UC Santa Barbara linguistics professor Stefan Thomas Gries, however, stands at odds with Maddow's defense. Gries said: "It is very unlikely that an average or reasonable/ordinary viewer would consider the sentence in question to be a statement of opinion."

[Dec 29, 2019] We received a wonderful Christmas gift from the Department of Schadenfreude in the form of this story from the Washington Post about MadCow

Dec 29, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

" Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true. Then it fell apart ":

She was there for the bunkings, absent for the debunkings -- a pattern of misleading and dishonest asymmetry.

[Dec 29, 2019] A Hawkish Impeachment by James Antle

Notable quotes:
"... Despite fond youthful memories of Bill Clinton/Kenneth Starr/Monica Lewinsky jokes on late-night television, my interest in the current impeachment saga can pretty much be summed up as follows: "Get back to me when they launch an impeachment inquiry over Yemen ." Watching the House vote along party lines to impeach President Donald Trump while barely stifling a yawn over the Afghanistan Papers does little to alter my skepticism about this constitutional crisis built for cable news. ..."
"... Progressive commentator Michael Tracey offered this apt summary of Washington's bizarre priorities: "This last week teaches us that temporarily freezing and then unfreezing future military aid to one of our many far-flung client states is [a] huge national emergency but the government systematically lying about every aspect of the longest war in U.S. history is a forgettable non-issue." ..."
Dec 29, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Despite fond youthful memories of Bill Clinton/Kenneth Starr/Monica Lewinsky jokes on late-night television, my interest in the current impeachment saga can pretty much be summed up as follows: "Get back to me when they launch an impeachment inquiry over Yemen ." Watching the House vote along party lines to impeach President Donald Trump while barely stifling a yawn over the Afghanistan Papers does little to alter my skepticism about this constitutional crisis built for cable news.

Progressive commentator Michael Tracey offered this apt summary of Washington's bizarre priorities: "This last week teaches us that temporarily freezing and then unfreezing future military aid to one of our many far-flung client states is [a] huge national emergency but the government systematically lying about every aspect of the longest war in U.S. history is a forgettable non-issue."

Nobody will be impeached for lying about Afghanistan. There will be no intelligence community whistleblower setting in motion an impeachment inquiry over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In fact, the same Nancy Pelosi who ultimately caved to the Resistance shut down antiwar Democrats who wanted such hearings into George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But here John Bolton, an advocate of preventive presidential war during this very administration, may finally get his wish of being greeted as a liberator .

Even as Representative Adam Schiff led the drive to impeach Trump, the California Democrat voted for a defense bill that lavishes the executive branch with money without restraining presidential war powers. But this seeming inconsistency is practically the point -- the entire impeachment inquiry was wrapped in hawkish assumptions and rhetoric as liberal Democrats unthinkingly stumbled into a Cold War 2.0 mindset that few of them this side of Hillary Clinton would have willingly embraced absent frequently overhyped Trump-Russia headlines dating back to the 2016 campaign.

No, Trump isn't Jesus Christ being handed over by Pontius Pilate. His phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wasn't " perfect " and neither side of this partisan morality tale has exactly covered itself in glory. Rudy Giuliani's escapades seem particularly likely to end badly. One need not even necessarily defend Trump's conduct to oppose an impeachment inquiry largely predicated on threat inflation. Arm Ukraine, Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan testified, so they can "fight the Russians there and we don't have to fight them here." She could have been starring in a Democratic reboot of Red Dawn decades after the Soviet Union disintegrated.

There's no question Trump to some extent dangled a White House visit and congressionally authorized aid to Ukraine before Kyiv in pursuit of the talking point that Joe Biden was under investigation. The only matters in dispute are how determined the effort was, whether Trump's motives were at least partially publicly spirited, the degree of the Bidens' shadiness, and why the aid was ultimately disbursed (Byron York makes the case that it wasn't necessarily because of the whistleblower).

House Democrats began with a presumption of corrupt intent on all counts and a definition of foreign election interference elastic enough to include Trump utterances about WikiLeaks and Hillary's deleted emails but not Ukraine's (smaller, less systematic and arguably less effective than Russia's) 2016 influence campaign . And while not all investigations are created equal -- if Hunter Biden's business dealings are to be probed, it should not be as a favor to any president -- the impeachment inquiry itself is an investigation of a political rival, who was also investigated during his previous campaign .

If shortcuts were taken in the beginning of the Trump-Russia investigation, the origins of Trump-Ukraine resemble a template for undermining any seriously antiwar or civil libertarian president. Trump is not that president himself, of course -- his acquiescence to the Beltway blob on lethal military aid is precisely what increased his leverage over Ukraine -- but some plausible and even the occasional Republican could be. Trump's mild rhetorical dissents on foreign policy are clearly a factor in why he has reason to be suspicious of his own subordinates (it's also why it is disingenuous to suggest that replacing Trump with Mike Pence is no different than replacing Bill Clinton with ideologically identical Al Gore or that people who have worked for Bush, Cheney or John McCain would have no reason to oppose Trump).

Many Democrats sincerely believed they were impeaching Trump for the least of his crimes, like Al Capone and tax evasion, and that Robert Mueller let him escape last time. They are also making a case against Trump's ability to separate personal and national interests in a way that speaks to his fitness for the office, with Ukraine merely being their specific example. But in doing so, they are also ratifying a bipartisan foreign policy consensus that has failed the American people, and that's bigger than any one president.

W. James Antle III is the editor of The American Conservative.

[Dec 29, 2019] Maddow Meltdown In Defense To OAN Lawsuit, Host Argues Her Words Are Not Facts

Dec 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

subgen , 57 minutes ago link

This Russian stuff has a longer half life than herpes

Nth Degree , 1 hour ago link

Whiners. They're all whiners. I don't understand why Maddow is worried. Hell, if she goes to the slammer she'll have her pick of all those incarcerated Honeys with which she will reside.

Decimus Lunius Luvenalis , 1 hour ago link

When you realize that Rachel Maddow is actually Joe Scarborough with different makeup....

dlweld , 2 hours ago link

You have to assume that Rachel is a Russian mole - how else can you explain her so effectively working to destroy the credibility of the Western media. She talks to her audience like she thinks she's on Sesame Street - Rachel: folks can pick up when they're being patronized - it's getting tired.

[Dec 28, 2019] Senior OPCW Official Busted Leaked Email Exposes Orders To Delete All Traces Of Dissent On Douma

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Imagine millions of government employees paid for by America's tax payer class, involved in covert operations undermining nation states for the benefit of war mongering shadow overlords counting on more never ending chaos feeding their hunger for power. ..."
"... This isn't Orwell's 1984, this Team America on opioids. ..."
"... Senior OPCW official had orders from US/ the Donald. Remember that the Donald bombed Syria based on this fake report , after a false flag done by Al Qaeda's artistic branch, the White Helmets. ..."
"... Pray, do tell where are the consequences for these literal demons that engaged in war crimes? It is quite clear: as long as you are a member of the establishment, you can do whatever the f*ck you want. ..."
"... Third rate script, third rate actors and crooked investigators. TPTB seem to have a plan worked out. Their problem now is that we, the hoi-polloi, have seen it all before, many times, and we can now recognise ******** when it's used to try to influence us. ..."
"... If this is not lamentable enough, the OPCW – whose final report came to more than a hundred pages and which even issued an easy-to-read precis version for journalists – now slams shut its steel doors in the hope of preventing even more information reaching the press. ..."
"... Instead of these pieces concentrating on the whistleblower how about putting a little heat on the 50 lying bastards who initiated the coverup? ..."
"... The destruction of the countries of the Middle East for the sake of a dwarf with giant ambitions is the most stupid thing the United States has done over the past 30 years in its foreign policy. And yes, all the wars in the Middle East were grounded in lies. And the Americans paid for it all from start to finish. When Americans realize that they need to defend their national interests, and not other people's national interests, maybe something in the Middle East will change for the better. True, I am afraid that with the hight level of stupidity and shortsightedness that is common among Americans, the United States is more likely to be destroyed faster. No offense. ..."
"... And I propose to remember the Syrian Christians who were destroyed by the Saudi Wahhabis, hired by the CIA with the money of American taxpayers and at the request of Israel. Until the Americans begin to investigate the activities of the CIA (and this activity causes the United States only harm), the responsibility for this genocide (you heard right) will be on the American nation. It turns out that in the Middle East you are primarily destroying Christians. How interesting, why such zeal. ..."
"... According to whistleblower testimony and leaked documents, OPCW officials raised alarm about the suppression of critical findings that undermine the allegation that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. Haddad's editors at Newsweek rejected his attempts to cover the story. "If I don't find another position in journalism because of this, I'm perfectly happy to accept that consequence," Haddad says. "It's not desirable. But there is no way I could have continued in that job knowing that I couldn't report something like this." ..."
"... New leaks continue to expose a cover-up by the OPCW – the world's top chemical weapons watchdog – over a critical event in Syria. Documents, emails, and testimony from OPCW officials have raised major doubts about the allegation that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. The leaked OPCW information has been released in pieces by Wikileaks. The latest documents contain a number of significant revelations – including that that about 20 OPCW officials voiced concerns that their scientific findings and on-the-ground evidence was suppressed and excluded. ..."
Dec 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Senior OPCW Official Busted: Leaked Email Exposes Orders To "Delete All Traces" Of Dissent On Douma by Tyler Durden Sat, 12/28/2019 - 10:30 0 SHARES

Via AlMasdarNews.com,

Wikileaks has released their fourth set of leaks from the OPCW's Douma investigation, revealing new details about the alleged deletion of important information regarding the fact-finding mission.

RELEASE: OPCW-Douma Docs 4. Four leaked documents from the OPCW reveal that toxicologists ruled out deaths from chlorine exposure and a senior official ordered the deletion of the dissenting engineering report from OPCW's internal repository of documents. https://t.co/ndK4sRikNk

-- WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) December 27, 2019

"One of the documents is an e-mail exchange dated 27 and 28 February between members of the fact finding mission (FFM) deployed to Douma and the senior officials of the OPCW. It includes an e-mail from Sebastien Braha, Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW , where he instructs that an engineering report from Ian Henderson should be removed from the secure registry of the organisation," WikiLeaks writes. Included in the email is the following directive:

" Please get this document out of DRA [Documents Registry Archive] And please remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA.'"

According to Wikileaks, the main finding of Henderson, who inspected the sites in Douma, was that two of the cylinders were most likely manually placed at the site, rather than dropped.

"The main finding of Henderson, who inspected the sites in Douma and two cylinders that were found on the site of the alleged attack, was that they were more likely manually placed there than dropped from a plane or helicopter from considerable heights. His findings were omitted from the official final OPCW report on the Douma incident," the Wikileaks report said.

It must be remembered that the U.S. launched an attack on Damascus, Syria on April 14, 2018 over alleged chemical weapons usage by pro-Assad forces at Douma.

AP file image.

Another document released Friday is minutes from a meeting on 6 June 2018 where four staff members of the OPCW had discussions with "three Toxicologists/Clinical pharmacologists, one bioanalytical and toxicological chemist" (all specialists in chemical weapons, according to the minutes).

Minutes from an OPCW meeting with toxicologists specialized in chemical weapons: "the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was
no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure". https://t.co/j5Jgjiz8UY pic.twitter.com/vgPaTtsdQN

-- WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) December 27, 2019

The purpose of this meeting was two-fold. The first objective was "to solicit expert advice on the value of exhuming suspected victims of the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April 2018". According to the minutes, the OPCW team was advised by the experts that there would be little use in conducting exhumations. The second point was "To elicit expert opinions from the forensic toxicologists regarding the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged victims."

More specifically, " whether the symptoms observed in victims were consistent with exposure to chlorine or other reactive chlorine gas."

According to the minutes leaked Friday: "With respect to the consistency of the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged victims with possible exposure to chlorine gas or similar, the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure ."

The OPCW team members wrote that the key "take-away message" from the meeting was "that the symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine and no other obvious candidate chemical causing the symptoms could be identified".

* * *

See full details at Wikileaks.org

JohnFrodo , 28 minutes ago link

pity the human pawns at the center of this mess.

africoman , 38 minutes ago link

There has been a Newsweek reporter who quite over editorial block of this OPCW case here also another interview by Grayzone

https://youtu.be/qqK8KgxuCPI

The isisrahell have such long hand to pull the plug any stories implicating their crime in progress otherwise they can put out some bs spins as bombshell reporting about US lies in Afghanistan war on their wapo for public for those who read it was nothing important revealed except being a misdirected na

ponyboy99 , 40 minutes ago link

If you want to pay off that student loan you're going to print what they tell you to print. You're going to inject kids with what they tell you to inject them with. You're going to think what they tell you to think or you're going to spend your days in a Prole bar drinking Blatz.

ponyboy99 , 47 minutes ago link

If you go thru life assuming every single thing is a farce and a lie (Roddy Piper) these events can not only be explained, they can be predicted.

Ace006 , 57 minutes ago link

SOMEbody's got to ensure the intergrity of the Documents Registry Archive

Weihan , 58 minutes ago link

The globalist deep-state's reach is legendary.

Nothing , 1 hour ago link

yes, an attack was launched, 50 missiles I believe, after loud warnings that it was coming, and none of them actually hit anything significant ... this is the way the game is played .... the good news is that the missiles cost $50 million, and now they will have to be replaced, by the Pentagon, first borrowing the money through the US Treasury offerings, and then paying for them from new money printed by the Federal Reserve. capische?

Greed is King , 36 minutes ago link

That`s the way it`s always been, it`s the eternal war of good against evil.

And when one evil enemy is defeated, it`s necessary to create a new evil enemy, how else can the Establishment Elite make money from war, death and destruction.

africoman , 16 minutes ago link

It's really very awkward & telling how ***** these bunch of western nations are looking tough on taking out poor defenceless country like Syria on ******** & at the satried to ease real kickass Russian as you described when they launch the attacks

I kind wish the US & their Zionist clown launch such huge attacks on Iran based on false flag

I really wanted these evil aggressive powers to taste what it is like to get bombed back even one they used to throw on multiple weaker nations freely with nothing to fear as retribution etc

Thordoom , 1 hour ago link

This organisations are all set up in Europe and US run by the filthiest filth on earth who still think they have God given right to imperial rule over the world.

British elite is the worst of all.

DCFusor , 1 hour ago link

Your military-industrial-intelligence complex at work, creating justification for more funding, like always - and who cares if people die as a result? Like Soros said, if they didn't do it, someone else would. (do I need /sarc?).

They don't like to be shown to be in charge, just to be in charge. And if you think this is a function of the current admin, you've been slow in the head and deaf and blind for quite some time.

I've watched since Eisenhower, and "it's always something". Doesn't matter what color the clown in chief's tie is.

St. TwinkleToes , 1 hour ago link

Imagine millions of government employees paid for by America's tax payer class, involved in covert operations undermining nation states for the benefit of war mongering shadow overlords counting on more never ending chaos feeding their hunger for power.

This isn't Orwell's 1984, this Team America on opioids.

veritas semper vinces , 2 hours ago link

Senior OPCW official had orders from US/ the Donald. Remember that the Donald bombed Syria based on this fake report , after a false flag done by Al Qaeda's artistic branch, the White Helmets.

holgerdanske , 1 hour ago link

It was May that insisted on this attack. Remember the "poison" attack and the evil Russians?

lwilland1012 , 3 hours ago link

Pray, do tell where are the consequences for these literal demons that engaged in war crimes? It is quite clear: as long as you are a member of the establishment, you can do whatever the f*ck you want. Why do we even follow the law, then? Given the precedent that is being set, we might as well not have any.

ken , 1 hour ago link

Well, they are looking forward to using all those Israeli weapons, er, uh, products, that local law enforcement has purchased...so watch out for Co-Intel Pro elicitation going forward....?

WorkingClassMan , 3 hours ago link

Everybody knows the Golem (USA) does Isn'treal's bidding in Syria and elsewhere in the Near East. Hopefully they keep hammering in the fact that this "gas attack" was an obvious set-up to use as a pretext (flimsy itself on the face of it) to brutalize Assad and Syria on behalf of Isn'treal.

The whole thing is built on ******* lies. Worst part about it is, nothing will happen.

turkey george palmer , 3 hours ago link

Only official news is to believed. You see it and it is a lie. they tell you to believe it. A lot of people casually believe whatever is spoken on TV. They become teachers and are taught in college what is right and wrong. We only have a few years before all the brain dead are in charge and robotically following the message like zombies with no brain

adonisdemilo , 3 hours ago link

Third rate script, third rate actors and crooked investigators. TPTB seem to have a plan worked out. Their problem now is that we, the hoi-polloi, have seen it all before, many times, and we can now recognise ******** when it's used to try to influence us.

johnnycanuck , 3 hours ago link

It is difficult to underestimate the seriousness of this manipulative act by the OPCW. In a response to the conservative author Peter Hitchens, who also writes for the Mail on Sunday – he is of course the brother of the late Christopher Hitchens – the OPCW admits that its so-called technical secretariat "is conducting an internal investigation about the unauthorised [sic] release of the document".

Then it adds: "At this time, there is no further public information on this matter and the OPCW is unable to accommodate [sic] requests for interviews". It's a tactic that until now seems to have worked: not a single news media which reported the OPCW's official conclusions has followed up the story of the report which the OPCW suppressed.

And you bet the OPCW is not going to "accommodate" interviews. For here is an institution investigating a war crime in a conflict which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives – yet its only response to an enquiry about the engineers' "secret" assessment is to concentrate on its own witch-hunt for the source of the document it wished to keep secret from the world.

If this is not lamentable enough, the OPCW – whose final report came to more than a hundred pages and which even issued an easy-to-read precis version for journalists – now slams shut its steel doors in the hope of preventing even more information reaching the press.

https://johnmenadue.com/robert-fisk-the-evidence-we-were-never-meant-to-see-about-the-douma-gas-attack-counterpunch-27-may-2019/

5fingerdiscount , 3 hours ago link

Instead of these pieces concentrating on the whistleblower how about putting a little heat on the 50 lying bastards who initiated the coverup?

Helg Saracen , 3 hours ago link

The destruction of the countries of the Middle East for the sake of a dwarf with giant ambitions is the most stupid thing the United States has done over the past 30 years in its foreign policy. And yes, all the wars in the Middle East were grounded in lies. And the Americans paid for it all from start to finish. When Americans realize that they need to defend their national interests, and not other people's national interests, maybe something in the Middle East will change for the better. True, I am afraid that with the hight level of stupidity and shortsightedness that is common among Americans, the United States is more likely to be destroyed faster. No offense.

And I propose to remember the Syrian Christians who were destroyed by the Saudi Wahhabis, hired by the CIA with the money of American taxpayers and at the request of Israel. Until the Americans begin to investigate the activities of the CIA (and this activity causes the United States only harm), the responsibility for this genocide (you heard right) will be on the American nation. It turns out that in the Middle East you are primarily destroying Christians. How interesting, why such zeal.

carbonmutant , 4 hours ago link

You gotta wonder how much the deep state has deleted about their interference in Trump's administration...

dogbert8 , 4 hours ago link

Pretty much everyone with a brain realizes this all was a lie; only the M5M and the DC swamp continue to pretend it wasn't.

Joiningupthedots , 4 hours ago link

Who really made the order though?

ClickNLook , 3 hours ago link

Sebastien Braha, Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW needs to be interrogated to find out.

Condor_0000 , 4 hours ago link

Newsweek Reporter Quits After Editors Block Coverage of OPCW Syria Scandal

December 19, 2019

Aaron Mate

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/19/newsweek-reporter-quits-after-editors-block-coverage-of-opcw-syria-scandal/

According to whistleblower testimony and leaked documents, OPCW officials raised alarm about the suppression of critical findings that undermine the allegation that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. Haddad's editors at Newsweek rejected his attempts to cover the story. "If I don't find another position in journalism because of this, I'm perfectly happy to accept that consequence," Haddad says. "It's not desirable. But there is no way I could have continued in that job knowing that I couldn't report something like this."

New leaks continue to expose a cover-up by the OPCW – the world's top chemical weapons watchdog – over a critical event in Syria. Documents, emails, and testimony from OPCW officials have raised major doubts about the allegation that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. The leaked OPCW information has been released in pieces by Wikileaks. The latest documents contain a number of significant revelations – including that that about 20 OPCW officials voiced concerns that their scientific findings and on-the-ground evidence was suppressed and excluded.

This is, without a doubt, a major global scandal: the OPCW, under reported US pressure, suppressing vital evidence about allegations of chemical weapons. But that very fact exposes another global scandal: with the exception of small outlets like The Grayzone, the mass media has widely ignored or whitewashed this story. And this widespread censorship of the OPCW scandal has just led one journalist to resign. Up until recently, Tareq Haddad was a reporter at Newsweek. But in early December, Tareq announced that he had quit his position after Newsweek refused to publish his story about the OPCW cover up over Syria.

[Dec 28, 2019] How Impeachment Is Escalating the New US-Russian Cold War by Stephen F. Cohen

Dec 28, 2019 | www.unz.com

Summary of Broadcast Produced by Yvonne Lorenzo:

As the New Cold War gathers up speed and escalates, we are entering a "fact free world" as allegations are made that are proved not to be true are promoted; for example, the allegation that the DNC was hacked by Russia has been officially debunked -- no one could name the seventeen intelligence agencies, the Coast Guard was one. The notion of the hacking was cooked up by two agencies: by the DNI's head James Clapper and Brennan at the CIA. Nevertheless, recently News Anchor Chuck Todd of NBC (the most pro-Russiagate network, the ones who shamelessly accused presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard of being a Russian asset) took it one step further: ignoring the facts, Todd again stated that seventeen intelligence agencies agreed that the Russians not only interfered in the election but that they swung the election to Trump. While interference is one thing, no one has previously made that allegation. Consequently, we are now in a fact free discourse in America: no evidence is necessary to prove anything, falsehoods are taken up by the legacy media, what Professor Cohen would call a world of tabloid gossip media, except in their favor the tabloids, fearing lawsuits, will do some fact checking, which is conspicuous in its absence in the legacy media. And Professor Cohen noted that it's hard to get traction and you can't have a conversation with someone when you don't agree upon the facts.

In conversation on a cruise with fellow liberals, Professor Cohen noted most take the view that where there is smoke there is fire and there is something to these allegations of Russiagate and Putin's control over Trump; they state the media wouldn't continue to promote these conspiracy theories, these allegations about Trump's nefarious relations with the Kremlin, without reason and so there must be something to them. Yet while facts have become absolutely critical Cohen notes you can't get people to focus on the facts; for that reason, he feels despair and observes that for the first time in his life in his public discussions of Russia there are no basic premises that people accept any more, for if you say "If there's smoke, there's fire," that is just not a logical way of thinking: you either have the facts or you don't.

Batchelor also points out in the impeachment charges there is a great deal of presumption; there are no facts regarding the president as well, and he cites Trump's letter to Nancy Pelosi and poses this question: what does the Kremlin think about the impeachment?

Cohen answers that the Russian high policy class in the 1990s -- the America worship period -- they and not just the youth, strongly believed that Russia's future was with the West and America in particular, and now what strikes Russians most is the role of Russian intelligence services in the Western allegations. Pro-America Russians thought that American intelligence services didn't play the role that the Soviet ones did. In Russian history classes and as a staple of popular culture, the sinister role of the "secret police" goes back to the Czarist era but what distinguished America was that it didn't have anything comparable in abuses by its intelligence services -- or so it was believed. Consequently, for those who looked up to America, it's a source of disillusion and shock to learn that the American special services "went off the reservation" for quite a long time, not unlike Russia's, and so they have become disillusioned while for those who tried to get Russians to be more nationalistic, their perspective is to say with gratification, "We told you so. Now will you please grow up!"

Russians call the American agencies "the organs" perhaps not being clear on the difference between the CIA and the FBI and conflating them. For Russians, the role of such agencies is baked into the culture and this has resulted in rethinking not only about America but about their own special services. An Op-Ed piece in a Russian liberal newspaper the Russian liberal author wrote, after watching what's unfolding in America, we used to beat up on our intelligence services for decades but now maybe we need them. Contrary to a "cult of the intelligence services," Cohen thinks what must be determined is the role of the American intelligence services in creating Russiagate from the very beginning.

Yet what is critical is to know how Russiagate began in America, with the Barr-Durham probe into the origins of Russia and Russiagate will continue to be a major issue in the 2020 election. What struck Cohen about the letter from Trump to Pelosi -- which was so eloquent he doubts Trump wrote it -- was that he understands it will be an issue in the 2020 elections, and it was a campaign document. That aside, Trump is aware that Democrats are campaigning still on Russiagate; nothing has turned up that it factual. Therefore, despite the absence of facts, this will be a major issue. Ukraine has turned into a stand-in for Russia.

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, once a quintessential conservative, published an article titled "Time to Call out and Remove Putin's Propagandist in America." While the article is slightly cagier than that headline, essentially she wants to shutdown and deprive access to media who aren't espousing and promoting the Russiagate/Russophobic narratives. Cohen condemns that kind of behavior is that. On opposite side of Rubin, Cohen stated he himself has never advocated the silencing and removal of those who promote among other falsehoods the provably false Russiagate narrative. He asks where are things drifting and he answers discourse and relations are becoming ugly and awful.

Returning to the past, he notes there was an assumption that Russia under Yeltsin would emerge as a replica and junior partner of America; Cohen believes those who promote the Russiagate narrative and demonize Trump because their "impossible dream" failed -- Russia is too old, too vast to ever be a replica of America. What took Professor Cohen aback in the testimony from Fiona Hill and others was how deep and wide the Russophobia runs in the Washington think tanks. Until she spoke and testified he had no idea how much she -- and the other Russia experts -- hate Russia.

Batchelor noted this is the language of civil war in Trump's letter; Trump uses the term "Star Chamber of partisan persecution" and "coup" which are the language of a country torn in half and he asked the question whether the weakening of the civil contract to be an advantage to Putin and Russia. Cohen notes every newspaper and media source in America say Putin is delighted since it is his goal is to foment disarray in America.

The fact is, however, this chaos and dysfunction and enmity is one of the last things Putin wants. Putin's purpose is to rebuild Russia from the economic and political catastrophes of the 1990s; Putin's role is to reverse the demographic trend -- men died in their fifties in the 1990s -- and spend funds on modernization; that would be his legacy. Four hundred billion dollars has been saved to implement the modernization program. That attempt would be taken with modernizing partnerships with the West. Therefore, the last thing he wants is a new Cold War; the last thing he wants is political turmoil in America or in any Western nation. Cohen points out President Macron of France appears to understand that; he called for a rethinking of relations and said there could be no European security without Russia. Macron has broken with Washington and there will be a hell of fight because Washington is against it. But the notion that Putin wants to disrupt American society is wrong; Putin wants stability and partners.

Cohen still thinks that leadership -- the new President of Ukraine, Trump and Putin --

RJJCDA , says: December 27, 2019 at 9:13 pm GMT

I always listen to the Prof's podcast shows at Batchelor. What bothers me is that so many Trump supporters and public commentators BELIEVE, or at least parrot the idea that Russia INVADED both western Ukraine and Crimea.

As the Prof has pointed out and seconded by many others, Crimea has been a part of Russia since late 18th century. Because Khrushchev "gave' it to Ukraine in 50s when it was all one country does not obviate the fact that Crimeans consider themselves Russians as proved by all polling and a plebiscite. They had permanent bases there and the alleged invasion was nothing more than politely escorting the Ukrainian military off from the peninsula without any injuries to either side. Some invasion.

Surely some Russians (whether incognito military/intelligence forces or private citizens) were part of the Donbass forces that rebelled against Kiev. And they had good reasons to rebel witness the horrors of Odessa when 40 something citizens of Russian ancestry were burned alive trapped in a building by Ultra-Ukrainian nazi-like forces.

Now Senate Foreign Relations committee, chaired by Senator from my state, has called for designating Russia as a "terror supporting state." I emailed him and asked if he was insane. He returned a long letter that is full of obfuscations and lies, and I will compose a detailed response soon. But the question presents: is the Deep State and their globalists' master deliberately trying to force Russia into a military alliance with China? Could we prevail against that combination? Haunting resemblance to conditions that created Ribbentrop/Molotov pact in late 30s. And what that foretell?

Dan Hayes , says: December 27, 2019 at 9:16 pm GMT
Note that this article is the thorough paraphrase of the podcast appearing at the base of the article.
Isabella , says: December 28, 2019 at 1:04 am GMT
Well, I guess when you have such luminaries as members of the Council on Foreign Relations spieling the same level of ignorance, blindness, prejudice, propaganda and plain perverseness, you have to expect it from all levels of "Governance"
For anyone who knows even a small amount about Russia and her leader, go listen to a recent YouTube convention headed Russia's Resurgence: Prospects for stability in Russia-US relationship.
One thing is for sure – as long as these supposed "think tank leaders" can deliberately blind themselves to reality as this trio did, and spout the utterly brain dead stupidity they used to instigate a Q & A, there is no hope whatsoever of any stability in Russia – US relationship.
anonymous [356] Disclaimer , says: December 28, 2019 at 2:32 am GMT
The people of the media lie because they are for sale and are paid to lie. Rather uninspiring but understandable: they do it for the money and to stay in front of the cameras. But what's everyone else's excuse? Putin is a Svengali who mind-controls Trump? I thought people like that wore turbans and robes. How stupid are Americans, anyway? Who'd have thought something like this would have any traction whatsoever? It's simply incredible.
WorkingClass , says: December 28, 2019 at 4:28 am GMT
I was born into the Cold War in 1944. I got my draft notice in 1965. I had been expecting it all my young life. The Berlin wall did not fall until 1989.

This new Cold War will be over soon. It will turn hot and we will all die or the "West" will collapse and will repatriate it's legions. The Anglo/Zio Empire is in steep decline while Russia and her allies are ascendant.

I agree that the truth is no defense against the "left". Their long march is completed and they occupy the high ground whether it's politics or culture. They have taken over the country just in time to preside over its demise.

Russians who thought their future was with the West were not completely wrong. If the U.S. has a future it is probably with Russia.

Vaterland , says: December 28, 2019 at 6:27 am GMT
There is a couple of points I would like to add on a changing European perspective on the dynamics between the USA and Russia, with Europe caught in-between.

1.) After the Second World War the choice between Bolshevism and US liberal democracy seemed blatantly obvious; for Germany especially it was a question of national survival, since Stalin was viewed as a serious threat by the Adenauer government. Germany had actually enjoyed more internal independence from leading US doctrines in this period. US rule of law, the character of its elites and the general morality of the society had not completely degraded yet either. Today institutional erosion of American democracy, the rule of law and a cynical Neocon approach towards "promoting democracy abroad" turned the USA into a non-appealing leader of 'the West'. The increasing "Sovietization" of its state apparatus emphasizes this point: the expansion of the surveillance state, selective access to real political and economic access to a select few of the privileged; often hereditary dynasties of oligarchs, a political-media complex of agitation and propaganda. Thus, the accusations against Russia (or China for that matter) about a lack of transparency, pluralism and the rule of law sound entirely hollow.

2.) Thus secondly NATO has turned from a credible alliance of defense against the Soviet Union into a tool of US imperialism; especially after the USA has declared victory in the Cold War. Wars surrounding Europe and even inside of it – The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and in Ukraine – were the result. Nations were destroyed, heads of state publicly executed or tortured to death like Muammar Gaddafi and millions of people were killed; many more were made homeless and a refugee crisis was created. And concealing wars of aggression as "human rights promotion" opened a can of worms for cynical nihilism as the new norm of US foreign policy – WMD lies, Abu-Ghuraib and NSA scandals included. Just as the established political-media apparatus is guilty of everything populism is accused of: post factual parallel realities, fake news and fake realities, systematic disinformation, social engineering and conditioning into hysteria and the frenzy of the mob. The pathology of the new US ruling class personified by Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright

3.) There is indeed no lasting European stability imaginable without a permanent peaceful agreement between Western- and Eastern-Europe and Russia. Russia's role as the Eurasian land bridge to China is also essential this century. Mutual agreement has to be found to settle old grievances and fears regarding Napoleon and Hitler on the Russian side and Stalinism and the Soviet Union on the European side. A situation which the USA also currently exploits for political destabilization – especially in Poland.

4.) Germany, currently the central country in the EU, owes its unification largely to Russia. Unfortunately it was a mistake on the Russian side when they had unilaterally withdrawn all their troops from German territory, that they did not demand the same from US/NATO forces. In that moment the transformation of NATO was sealed and the New Cold War had begun. Yet while the attitudes of the older generations are shaped by the US-Soviet Union Cold War, for new generations it's a different story. Increasingly the USA is seen as a more credible threat and/or bully with its war policy, real political meddling and especially in my country the fact that Germany was both forced to sanction Russia, which went against its own vital interests, and then be sanctioned as well.

5.) I am leaving out the value and identity politics debate. Fundamentally the general public on both sides of the Atlantic agrees on the theory on foundations of functioning democracy. Although I do think that since the end of the last Cold War the influence of the USA has been more harmful and corrosive than helpful and stabilizing.

Conclusion: In this new Cold War which was, I think, initiated by the US establishment, we could see a future in which Germany and Russia begin to view themselves more in the light of the Prussian-Russian coalition against the new "Napoleon", the United States. Although this arising conflict could rightly be dubbed: The Unnecessary Cold War.

EdNels , says: December 28, 2019 at 6:59 am GMT
@WorkingClass It's funny to hear "

that the truth is no defense against the "left". Their long march is completed and they occupy the high ground whether it's politics or culture.'

'

Left ? Do you believe that the establishment crowd of Democrats (Liberals,) and the managed news (Liberals,) and others Liberals, neoliberals, neocons, or anything else comprising the Russiagate hoax can be describes as Leftist?

It's been determined that the Democrats intentionally jettisoned the Working Class decades ago. It shouldn't be news to working people that they don't have a party!

It was a rational decision to unload the workers, and substitute special interest and identity politics, because of trends of the decline of union membership in age of technology, automation, and YUPPIES! The Democrats are now slick pretenders of social justice, but not left.

animalogic , says: December 28, 2019 at 7:09 am GMT
@RJJCDA " is the Deep State and their globalists' master deliberately trying to force Russia into a military alliance with China? "
Hard to say what their intentions are. (The old ploy of unity at home by means of an external enemy ?) Whatever they are -- US foreign policy (FO) re Russia should go down with Iraq (II) as among the US's greatest FO blunders.
As the Saker has pointed out– Russia & China are in symbiosis, which runs deeper than an alliance.
Russiagate is a kind of "two birds with one stone" deal: you get to bash Trump & Russia using each as a club to beat the other. That this whole base concoction of lies seems to still have legs speaks volumes as to the deep of Trump derangement syndrome & the universality of msm propaganda.
jack daniels , says: December 28, 2019 at 8:11 am GMT
@Dan Hayes Yes but the paraphraser should not go anonymous. Bad form.
GMC , says: December 28, 2019 at 8:28 am GMT
Mr Cohen is so far ahead of Washington , when it comes to Russia and other foreign matters, it just boggles the mind of us normies. The Ukraine Gate is all about the Kyivian Jew Oligarchs, trying to oust the thief Democrats from all the IMF looting , that those Kyivians , had their eyes/hands on. It's like – thanks for doing the Coup but all the money we get is – Ours for the looting. And there are hundreds of millions – missing. Russia Gate will go on, until the American public – " Grows Up " as Mr. Cohen says.
jack daniels , says: December 28, 2019 at 8:28 am GMT
What damns the US media, both anti-Trump and Fox News, is that America has been massively meddling in elections all over the globe since Day One, including Russia, and this is known or should be known to anyone with a basic knowledge of international relations, yet it is almost NEVER mentioned when the subject of Russian meddling comes up.

There is a feeling that it would be unpatriotic (treasonous?) to admit it. This is something new for America. In the old days American foreign policy was sharply debated and America's sins were much discussed by the left. But now, the left is on the CIA's side. This probably has to do with the Jewishness of the left. Jews tend to hate Russia as much as they tended to like the Soviet Union. They see post-Communist Russia as politically incorrect (e.g. anti-gay) and Christian, a potentially nationalistic society that could turn anti-Semitic.

Because of Russia's nuclear capability it is not possible for the US to invade it, so we are relying on internal subversion and economic tactics to bring down Putin, leading to the installation of a US lackey with neocon approval. Even as we speak of Russian meddling the CIA is busy organizing and funding anti-Putin elements in Russia.

"We're just trying to spread democracy. What's wrong with that!?"

SeekerofthePresence , says: December 28, 2019 at 8:58 am GMT
Yes, the nation has gone mad.
Result is measured in rads.
sally , says: December 28, 2019 at 9:13 am GMT
@Back1 Stupidity does not produce the invention and promotion of lie after lie,
Nor is stupidity consistent with the selection of the best lies from those total of lies generated.
Only lies that work on the minds targeted are repeated.

Repeat the lie but hide it, camouflage the lie with some truth, and embedded the lie into the propaganda that establishes the narrative, and then mass produce the lie embedded propaganda that establishes the false or misleading narrative is a complicated process. Repeat and repeat the false narrative is a hat trick that often deceives innocent minds into adopting, embedding and acting on beliefs established in innocent minds by mind control technology. These process are not consistent with stupidity, but instead suggest diabolical genius at work.

When only the lies that work; that is, that control, deceive or influence innocent minds are repeated you are looking process which took intelligence to make work. Inventing lies takes imagination, producing them into propaganda takes skill, and promoting the produced invented lie takes money, power and access.

Selection (of the best or most suitable lie) is an process that requires identification and sufficient intelligence to sort; while repetition requires the selected object be either committed to memory, or to be continuously and precisely regenerated for each promotion(campaign). Promotion is a delicate process; its success so dependant on so many things, that many people have obtained Phds from the subject matter that surround the technology of deceit.

The point is that promoting false narratives is an invented developing technology that takes professionally trained persons to make work. Someone is paying the mind control professionals (MCPs) that are working to embed false narrative into the memory of the minds of the governed masses. MCPs are not stupid people. Not only are they highly trained professionals but also they don't work for free. So who is paying them.

for example look at the rul below. You might need first to visit the url https://duckduckgo.com and when at duckduckgo,com to paste it into the search space and hit go. It seems many browsers and search engines deny or make difficult user access to this website https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/12/28/614755/Russia-Poland-politics-World-war-NATO <in the url you will see the argument between fact and fiction.

Truth3 , says: December 28, 2019 at 10:15 am GMT
Larry King (excuse me I mean Lawrence Harvey Zeiger) on RT is a real oxymoron with RT being the oxy and Zeiger being the moron.

This clown gave NeoCons a free pass for decades. No surprise there, for a Tribal "Kagan" of the Jews.

Robert Magill , says: December 28, 2019 at 10:28 am GMT
Why is Steven Cohen credited with this article when obviously it is written by another? What gives, Unz? It is an example of the same facts twisting it rails against.
gotmituns , says: December 28, 2019 at 10:48 am GMT
I don't give a rat's butt about trump's impeachment or russia.
Tom Welsh , says: December 28, 2019 at 10:59 am GMT
@Antiwar7 "If there's smoke, there's fire" is not so much stupid as devious. You have to understand that many political leaders nowadays have realised that they don't need hard facts and figures or logic to sway opinion.

Increasingly, political divisions are tribal; and the worst condemnation is "you are not one of us". Disagreeing with the party line shows that a person is "not one of us".

That is especially the case when the party line is obviously untrue. Then sticking to it is an absolute proof of devoted, unthinking loyalty. It's more like a pledge of allegiance than a rational statement of fact.

Monotonous Languor , says: December 28, 2019 at 11:19 am GMT
Foreigners have never understood that there are two Americas, nor how to differentiate which one they're dealing with at any point in time.
Realist , says: December 28, 2019 at 11:34 am GMT
@RJJCDA

I always listen to the Prof's podcast shows at Batchelor.

I do as well enjoy them very much.

I agree with your comments.

He returned a long letter that is full of obfuscations and lies, and I will compose a detailed response soon.

You are wasting your time he is paid extremely well to promulgate the dumbass dictates of the Deep State.

Realist , says: December 28, 2019 at 11:43 am GMT
@Dan Hayes The author of this article is listed as Stephen F Cohen, but if that's the case it's written in the third person.

WTF

Realist , says: December 28, 2019 at 11:48 am GMT
@WorkingClass

I agree that the truth is no defense against the "left". Their long march is completed and they occupy the high ground whether it's politics or culture. They have taken over the country just in time to preside over its demise.

It is the right as well on important issue to the Deep State there is no right and left.

Johnny Walker Read , says: December 28, 2019 at 12:29 pm GMT
Does it really matter? America is already a Jewish/Bolshevik occupied nation?

To achieve absolute power, Lenin focused on fomenting a class war, while Hitler set his sights on a race war. Either way, the divide-and-conquer modus operandi of fascist and communist demagogues is pretty much the same, no matter what each side might claim about the other. Their propaganda content may differ, but not so much their divide-and-conquer methods. Attitudes of supremacy come in a virtual rainbow of flavors and colors.

https://thefederalist.com/2017/11/06/bolshevik-revolution-reveals-six-phases-freedom-communist-misery/
Wake up fools, and quit putting your faith in political hacks, red or blue!!

9/11 Inside job , says: December 28, 2019 at 12:39 pm GMT
theamericanconservative.com : "Forget Trump : The Military-Industrial-Complex is still running the show " By Bruce Fein , July 18, 2018
theintercept.com " Defense contractors say Russian threat is great for business "
Sean , says: December 28, 2019 at 1:11 pm GMT
Did Russian believe that any assurances could prevent Nato being drawn right up to the borders of Russia? Did Ukrainians believe the UK and US's security assurances 'against the threat or use of force against Ukraine's territory or political independence' could replace Ukraine's possession of nuclear weapons? Zbigniew Brzezinski did speak of Russia "increasingly passing into de facto western receivership" .

They say the Russians only heard what that wanted to hear, but the record suggests the Americans misrepresented their intentions, and gave assurances that the Russians took at face value. Russia permitted an American campaign to spent vast sums and organise Yeltsin's reelection, which would not have happened without them. The Russian foreign minister at that time, Andrei Kozyrev, now lives in Miami.

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2018-03-16/nato-expansion-what-yeltsin-heardD.C ., March 16, 2018 – Declassified documents from U.S. and Russian archives show that U.S. officials led Russian President Boris Yeltsin to believe in 1993 that the Partnership for Peace was the alternative to NATO expansion, rather than a precursor to it, while simultaneously planning for expansion after Yeltsin's re-election bid in 1996 and telling the Russians repeatedly that the future European security system would include, not exclude, Russia.

The declassified U.S. account of one key conversation on October 22, 1993, (Document 8) shows Secretary of State Warren Christopher assuring Yeltsin in Moscow that the Partnership for Peace was about including Russia together with all European countries, not creating a new membership list of just some European countries for NATO; and Yeltsin responding, "this is genius!"

Christopher later claimed in his memoir that Yeltsin misunderstood – perhaps from being drunk – the real message that the Partnership for Peace would in fact "lead to gradual expansion of NATO";[1] but the actual American-written cable reporting the conversation supports subsequent Russian complaints about being misled.[2]

After obtaining a succession of huge US-backed IMF loans, being found on Pennsylvania Avenue, drunk, in his underwear and trying to hail a taxi cab in order to find pizza in 1995, Yeltsin chose Putin the teetotal former counterintelligence specialist to succeed him. What a sense of humour Yeltsin must have had.

Dan Hayes , says: December 28, 2019 at 1:28 pm GMT
@jack daniels I agree that the paraphraser should not go anonymous. But more important is to bring to the reader's attention that a broadcast podcast is available at the article's end.
Wizard of Oz , says: December 28, 2019 at 1:30 pm GMT
@Vaterland The American elutes might be forgiven theirvicious follies by Americans if they had not impoverished so many Americans and,at best leaving them struggling.
Patrikios Stetsonis , says: December 28, 2019 at 1:33 pm GMT
@9/11 Inside job We do not call it "the Military-Industrial-Complex".
We do not call it "the Banks".
We do not call it "the FED"
We do not call it "the Wall Street"
We do not call it "the Media"

Once for all, we call it: "the Jews".

WorkingClass , says: December 28, 2019 at 1:39 pm GMT
@Realist Agreed. Truth is no defense against the Deep State which is neither left nor right.. Still, it is the ideological left that denies the existence of objective reality. For them there are no facts. Only subjective experience. Useful idiots and propagandists for the Deep State, they "know" Trump is a Russian agent because they can feel it. They don't need no steenking evidence.

The (left) media promote hatred. Orange Man Bad. The ideological left understands and enjoys hatred. They can feel it. When you hate somebody you are ready and eager to believe the worst about them.

Onebornfree , says: Website December 28, 2019 at 1:57 pm GMT
@WorkingClass "I agree that the truth is no defense against the "left"."

In other words, 2 + 2 = 5 [ to roughly quote Orwell]

Polylogism rules! : https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Polylogism

Regards, onebornfree

journey80 , says: December 28, 2019 at 2:22 pm GMT
@EdNels Thank you. Well said, and not nearly enough.

It's my opinion that the relentless use of "left" to describe the neoliberal half of the Republicrat/Wall Street/war industry party is no accident.

Describing the "Democrats" of the Clinton DNC as "left" is useful to discredit and marginalize any political stance that, fairly and realistically, could be considered "left." It produces chaos and confusion, which is the objective of the neocon/neoliberal grifters who control both halves of the war party.

Dan Hayes , says: December 28, 2019 at 2:25 pm GMT
@Realist I suspect that the paraphraser is our own Ron Unz since he strikes me as a hands-on operator. Secondary suspect is Phil Giraldi, UR's National Security Editor.

In any event it's important to dissimulate Cohen's views since he's literally A Geopolitical Voice Crying Out in the Wilderness! For this both Batchelor and Unz are to be commended!!

Anonymous [645] Disclaimer , says: December 28, 2019 at 2:45 pm GMT
@Realist There's a left alright; there's just no right. Since the 1960's the conservative movement and Republican Party have conserved exactly nothing while the left has completely transformed America, successfully implementing much of the 1930's communist agenda and turning the government into the enemy of the society at large.

In his Myth of Religious Violence William T Cavanaugh points out that before the arrival of Frankfurter on the Supreme Court, religion, meaning chiefly Christianity, was held by the court to be the fundamental source of social cohesion and peace in America, while since the late 1940s and post-Frankfurter, religion, now meaning only Christianity, has been consistently held to be not only divisive, but the fundamental source of violence. The point is, this upending of society was accomplished by legislating from the bench, while the Republicans and Conservatism Inc, as we now learn, were funded to neutralize opposition, blowing smoke in Americans' eyes about legalisms at a time when at least 90% of this country was conservative.

Sites like The American Conservative and American Thinker, for example, are apparently funded to publish fawning material about the Jews and Israel that the latter would be too ashamed to write themselves, which also pretty much sums up the Republican's m.o. in Congress.

It's about time the American electorate saw candidates for national and state office as figureheads for their largest donors, who're presently portrayed as almost incidental by the msm. Instead of saying that Mitch McConnell or Lindsey Graham said this or that, accuracy requires we say Paul Singer and Sheldon Adelson's spokesman in the Senate, some so-and-so stooge, said this or that. It's the same on both sides of the aisle, obviously, and it turns out that the owners of both parties are kin when it comes to destroying the social fabric of this country for their own hateful reasons.

Christo , says: December 28, 2019 at 2:51 pm GMT
@Patrikios Stetsonis You forgot , an aspect. "We do not call it Z.O.G."
Which commands and guides the US government in both domestic and foreign policy.

On similar note to your closing statement ,
To quote Treitschke 1879 "The Jews are our misfortune"

Bill Jones , says: December 28, 2019 at 3:06 pm GMT
Meanwhile, the barking mad cow Maddow now claims:

""really, literally is paid Russian propaganda.""

Is not meant to be a statement of facts.

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/maddow-meltdown-defense-oan-lawsuit-host-argues-her-words-are-not-facts

Bill Jones , says: December 28, 2019 at 3:09 pm GMT
@jack daniels I see this line, at the beginning

"Summary of Broadcast Produced by Yvonne Lorenzo:"

Not good enough?

Or is it a later (unacknowledged) addition?

Do we now need a correction to the correction?

Antiwar7 , says: December 28, 2019 at 3:20 pm GMT
@Tom Welsh I totally agree with you. I'm just trying to heap public scorn on that approach. Because if you look at it clearly, it's ridiculous.
Desert Fox , says: December 28, 2019 at 3:36 pm GMT
The zionists hate Christians and since Russia is becoming more Christian the zionists hate towards Russia has reached a hysteria that is only matched by their demonic hate of Christians and one of the ways to strike at Russia is through lies and false flags blamed on Russia.

The ZUS is winning the war against Christians here in America with abortions and pedophilia in high places and the worship of satan in Hellywood and elsewhere and the penetration of the Christian churches by zionist elements.

The zionists will not stop until America is destroyed, zionism is the most dangerous element in America.

Read the Protocols of Zion, it is all right there.

Justvisiting , says: December 28, 2019 at 3:59 pm GMT
@Back1

*All* mainstream media is propaganda from clown world. This defines our era in US. Mass psychosis is the new reality.

The Russia nonsense tells me that US establishment people are stupid and self deluded, truly sad sack dummies.

Several commenters around here have claimed the Apollo moon landing hoax "does not matter".

[MORE]
It is old news, not relevant to today, too controversial, etc.

The problem is that once the elites get away with lying, it encourages them to do more of it. This hoax _is_ going to be exposed, and fairly soon–and it may unravel the whole ball of string of intelligence agency and mass media lies.

It is _not_ a left/right issue, so folks of any and all political persuasions will be able to accept it without crushing their ideological dreams.

Check out this article from NASA itself: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/rbsp/news/third-belt.html

This and related new discoveries (on why the Apollo manned moon missions were technically impossible) are discussed in this recent book:

https://read.amazon.com/kp/card?preview=inline&linkCode=kpd&ref_=k4w_oembed_cIFBq8Qs4dgS8X&asin=B07RCCKH1L&tag=kpembed-20

Every space program (national, private) _must_ solve this problem. Lying won't work. They have to deal with it–and the truth is going to get out–soon.

Anonymous [645] Disclaimer , says: December 28, 2019 at 4:06 pm GMT
@Desert Fox Judaic identity is essentially about hating Christians, as the Talmud makes clear, and as most anyone who's worked with Jews on Wall Street will attest. Michael Hoffman proves this in his books on Judaism, pointing out that modern Talmudic Judaism came into being nearly two centuries after the rise of Christianity and in opposition to it.
Ahoy , says: December 28, 2019 at 4:16 pm GMT
Ezra Pound. Is there around a literature professor, that can hold the weight of the title, to talk about him to American youth? Hell noooo!!

Fasten your seat belts then, because the historic American nation is crushing.

Miro23 , says: December 28, 2019 at 5:04 pm GMT
@animalogic

" is the Deep State and their globalists' master deliberately trying to force Russia into a military alliance with China? "

Hard to say what their intentions are. (The old ploy of unity at home by means of an external enemy ?) Whatever they are -- US foreign policy (FO) re Russia should go down with Iraq (II) as among the US's greatest FO blunders.

Agreed that it's a mistake, but when they've successfully pulled off the WMD lies, the 9/11 fakery, the destruction of Iraq, Libya etc., control the US media, and can dictate to Congress, then it's understandable that they get rather arrogant.

They simply want to kick Russia and Putin because he was the one that spoiled their Yeltsin looting party – and worst of all arrested and imprisoned their top guy Khodorkovsky. That it drives Germany and the EU towards Russia and strengthens Russian ties with China is secondary. After all, Hitler (after great military success), likened invading Russia to kicking down a rotten barn door, and he didn't work out the implications of declaring war on the US.

Realist , says: December 28, 2019 at 5:19 pm GMT
@Anonymous I agreed with you, except there is a Deep State and it is not made up of just Jews. But I do concede that Jews are disproportionately represented, as both sponsors and minions, for their demographics.

I believe the Deep State consists of the very wealthy who are greedy for more wealth and power. There are 607 billionaires in the US. There is no reason for the Deep State members to formally collude they all know what needs to be done and how to do it. They use a relatively small amount of their money to place their minions in positions of power heads of the movie industry, the media, the federal government, academia. From then on if the lessers in these groups want to keep their jobs/lives they will toe the line. It becomes self sustaining from tax money and the Deep State glories in more wealth and power. Here is an excellent example of the Deep State in action: The SCOTUS has passed down egregious decisions that abridge the First Amendment and show contempt for the concept of a representative democracy. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1976 and exacerbated by continuing stupid SCOTUS decisions First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.
These decisions have codified that money is free speech thereby giving entities of wealth and power almost total influence in elections. By gaining control of the SCOTUS the Deep State is able to further their goals.

Another take on the Deep State:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/11/14/understanding-the-deep-states-propaganda/

Realist , says: December 28, 2019 at 5:30 pm GMT
@Dan Hayes Agreed.
vinteuil , says: December 28, 2019 at 5:33 pm GMT
@Vaterland

NATO has turned from a credible alliance of defense against the Soviet Union into a tool of US imperialism

That's the bottom line, here.

NATO may once have had a reason for being. But now it's just a monstrous golem, lurching uncontrollably towards global catastrophe.

Back1 , says: December 28, 2019 at 5:33 pm GMT
@sally Ok. I'll pass on clarification of my too brief comment. Your elaboration is food for thought.

Note that MCP in Tron was Master Control Program.

Andrei Martyanov , says: Website December 28, 2019 at 5:40 pm GMT
@EdNels

The Democrats are now slick pretenders of social justice, but not left.

Excellent summary. What goes under "left" moniker (Cultural Marxist, "communists", socialists etc.) in the West nowadays is not left. Agree. it is just another iteration of Neo-liberal politics serving as a substitution for dealing with actual problems of Labor.

9/11 Inside job , says: December 28, 2019 at 5:45 pm GMT
@Patrikios Stetsonis politico.com : "The happy-go-lucky Jewish group [Chabad-Lubavitch] that connects Trump and Putin":

"Their respective ambitions led the two men[Trump and Putin] – along with Trump's future son-in-law, Jared Kushner -to build a set of close, over-lapping relationships in a small world that overlaps on Chabad , an international Hasidic movement most people have never heard of ."

sally , says: December 28, 2019 at 6:00 pm GMT
@gotmituns @ gotmituns <=Why then did you read the article?

At the heart of the impeachment process (Article II, Section 2, paragraph 3 and 4) are two questions that should interest most folks: @ paragraph 3 lays out a big part of Trump's defense in my view "Section 3 requires ..that the President shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, <=execution requires action so which law did the President not execute faithfully? <= I do not see such a question in the Articles of Impeachment.. @ Sec II, Art. II, paragraph 4 "The President shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.. " < the house found evidence it says, strong enough to indite the president on charges that .. he violated which of these 4 things?

Some think Trump should have been impeached for failure to deliver his tax Return.. but I do not see failure to deliver a tax return as failure to execute a law, or as a high crime, or as treason, or as an act of Bribery, or as a misdemeanor.. so the current impeachment indictment by the House against Trump reveals that the constitution is inadequate. The constitution does not express a government that can protect the Americans such a government governs; from the possibility, or the reality, that a deceitful president will be empowered to that job?

The best governed Americans can hope for from the USA is that the Congress of the USA rather than impeaching will decide to amend the constitution, so that the constitution denies any one that can be shown to be deceitful, to be the President. This one amendment could eliminate making campaign promises and do just the opposite once in office.

Of course such an amendment would mean few in politics today could be the President.
Most likely no matter the outcome of the impeachment, Trump will probably be reappointed President by the electoral college.. (recall that persons who animate the functions allowed to the USA to governed Americans are not elected by those who the USA governs. (Americans c/n vote for their president or their vice president because President and VP are article II persons; and article II persons are appointed to office by processes conducted at the state level, that appoint persons to the electoral college, and it is the electoral college that elects the President and the Vice President). Who has written a book on the electoral college? I have requested information from the government on the electoral college activities since the beginning and to date have received nothing but referrals to others.

WorkingClass , says: December 28, 2019 at 6:13 pm GMT
@EdNels Left ? Do you believe that the establishment crowd of Democrats (Liberals,) and the managed news (Liberals,) and others Liberals, neoliberals, neocons, or anything else comprising the Russiagate hoax can be describes as Leftist?

No. I do not believe that. I agree with you entirely. But common usage has the people you are talking about as LEFT and I am tired of bitching about it.

Exile , says: December 28, 2019 at 7:00 pm GMT
@RJJCDA Russia no more "invaded" Ukraine than the United States "invaded" Texas, Ohio or Florida. Ukraine has been a Russian fiefdom for centuries longer than it has ever been "independent," and its fate is no more the business of the United States or Western Europe than the fate of Hong Kong or Syria should be.
Exile , says: December 28, 2019 at 7:02 pm GMT
@Realist Exactly. Convergent interests are sufficient – no grand cabal or conspiracy is necessary to explain what we observe with our lying eyes.

To the extent one is ever necessary, that's where guys like Epstein come in.

Skeptikal , says: December 28, 2019 at 7:13 pm GMT
@Antiwar7 I agree that someone is making the fake smoke.
A.K.A. lies.
gotmituns , says: December 28, 2019 at 7:25 pm GMT
@sally I never read the articles.
Anon [424] Disclaimer , says: December 28, 2019 at 7:30 pm GMT
Please just let me ask americans some opinions about

if pastor John Hagee and his followers are jews or christians ? , if the thousands of pastors in the USA like Hagee and their millions of followers are jews or christians ? if the US puritan founding fathers were jews of christians ? , if the british angloisraelites are jews or christians ? , if the yankees are jews or christians ? if the wasps are jews or christians ? if the US " deep state " is jew or chistian ? , if the US masses are jew or christian ?

. because blaming the jews all the time of every problem and pretending that that the anglo-yankees are so pure and naive does not seem to be very realistic

Maybe " Jews Я US " ? what do you think ?

anon [232] Disclaimer , says: December 28, 2019 at 8:15 pm GMT
@Antiwar7 Americans should have believed into the existence
of thousands Mayan gods when they first saw the smoke billowing out of the sacrificial pit in front of the menacing idols.
Michael888 , says: December 28, 2019 at 8:16 pm GMT
Some things never change. Russiagate is no aberration. Establishment Authority, police state apparatuses and religious catechisms, are NOT based on reasoning and evidence, but rather fact-free Narratives handed down from above and grounded by Fear of the Other, the bogeymen (be it Russians, White Supremacists, Black men, Assad, Trump, the Devil, etc), without which authority will collapse. As the historian Will Durant noted, Strabo said it best 2000 years ago:

"For in dealing with a crowd of women a philosopher cannot influence them by reason or exhort them to reverence, piety or faith; nay, there is need of religious fear also, and this cannot be aroused without myths and marvels the founders of states gave their sanctions to these things as bugbears wherewith to scare the simple-minded."

Kolya Krassotkin , says: December 28, 2019 at 9:54 pm GMT
@Anon John Hagee, his followers and other Christian Zionists are morons. Happily, they are not nearly as common as you imply. Being a Christian Zionist takes a special kind of stupid

I cannot see Haggee without immediately recalling Christ's warning to beware of obese wolves in sheep's clothing, who take jiggly church secretaries and XXXL Italian silk suits as proof of God's blessing.

steinbergfeldwitzcohen , says: December 28, 2019 at 10:05 pm GMT
Cohen is another Jewish voice in the Jewish Mafia War between factions. I don't consider him that insightful or honest, as he never mentions the glaringly obvious: the attempt to oust Trump is a Jew Coup.
Start telling the truth about the Hostile Elite destroying America Cohen. Until then you are just another lying Jew destroying the country that welcomed your ancestors.
When will the Traitors be routed out and hung?
No country can withstand Treason from Within going unpunished for any length of time. We either destroy these scum or they will destroy America.
Ilyana_Rozumova , says: December 28, 2019 at 10:08 pm GMT
@Anon Do you work for free? It is the payroll stupid,
Z-man , says: December 28, 2019 at 10:16 pm GMT
I gotta hand it to Larry King, even with one foot in the grave he's still doing these interviews and with Professor Cohen no less. Kudos to the old coot. (Grin)
Steven Cohen should be a special advisor to the POTUS. It would be a demotion for Cohen but good for Trump and for America.

[Dec 25, 2019] America's obsessive bashing of Russia (and now China) is suggestive of a deep psychological disorder.

Dec 25, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

ak74 , Dec 24 2019 4:19 utc | 78

The imperial lie machine sure is disgruntled that the 1990s attempt to economically and biologically crush Russia once and for all was a failure and Russia has since been reasserting itself. It wasn't "the end of history" after all.

That was the source of the underlying current of Russia Derangement among the US elite classes (political, economic, media, academia, professional etc.), the many provocations, and then the total meltdown beginning in late 2016.

Since it really seems to be a collective mental illness (I mean that literally) afflicting a power group which is already psychotic and violent, and since it coincides with the accelerating erosion of the US imperial position, it's looking more and more likely that this must eventually lead to all-out war. I just can't imagine the US stepping back, any more than I could imagine Hitler doing so.

America's obsessive bashing of Russia (and now China) is suggestive of a deep psychological disorder.

Though the Americans and their allied apologists will insist that it is sincerely motivated by a humanitarian concern for Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights(TM), that is quite laughable given America's concentration camps for undocumented immigrants; its incarceration of immigrant children in cages; or the US Prison Industrial Complex in general, which has been called America's new Jim Crow in that it imprisons millions of African Americans and other minorities and relegates them to a new racist caste system.

No, cut through the barrage of American Moral Supremacism and other delusions, the United States is enraged that, despite its attempt to economically rape Russia in the 1990s through American-promoted Free Market reforms and Neoliberal "shock therapy," Russia is still standing and indeed resurgent.

THAT is what enrages the Americans and triggers them in rug-chewing fits of frenzy.

[Dec 24, 2019] Today in Russophrenia

Rachel Maddow is now so crazy that even other crazy people are starting to notice.
Dec 24, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

cartman December 22, 2019 at 9:55 am

Today in Russophrenia:

In other news, @RANDCorporation report firmly establishes that Van Gogh was a Russian Agent. May be, the dastardly Kremlin plot drove him to cut his ear off?.. At any rate, NATO is now on alert. pic.twitter.com/9k9j5K9rx1

-- Constantin Gurdgiev (@GTCost) December 22, 2019

[Dec 24, 2019] Looks like it's Europe's turn in smearing Russia

Notable quotes:
"... "I just want to note that this kind of people, people like the ones who were negotiating with Hitler back then, they now deface monuments to the liberator soldiers, Red Army soldiers who liberated the countries of Europe and the European peoples from Nazism. These are their followers. In this sense, unfortunately, little has changed. And we must keep this in mind, also with regard to the development of our Armed Forces . [My Emphasis] ..."
Dec 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

vk , Dec 24 2019 14:40 utc | 101

Looks like it's Europe's turn in smearing Russia:

Putin slams European Parliament resolution on WWII outbreak as 'complete nonsense'

vk , Dec 24 2019 14:53 utc | 102

More on Putin's response to the EP resolution:

Poland wanted to 'erect magnificent monument' to honor Hitler's plan to send Jews to Africa – Putin cites WWII archives

We don't need to guess which member is behind the resolution.

Headache , Dec 24 2019 15:30 utc | 103
Voltairenet has a very interesting article about this subject (also discussed in the last open thread) by prof. Michael Jabara Carley of the University of Montreal: "Justin Trudeau Needs A History Lesson", in which he describes the unsuccessful efforts of Soviet diplomats to create an alliance of European countries against the nazis.

I am afraid to mess up the thread, so no link.

karlof1 , Dec 24 2019 20:16 utc | 111
People may have read that Putin has said a few more things about the documents he reviewed with his CIS peers; and in doing so, Putin revealed an aspect about himself few have seen previously. Putin made his statement at the annual year-end Defense Ministry Board Meeting . IMO, Putin has had more than enough of the extreme Russophobia now in circulation and he sees it as being very similar to that of prior historical periods where Russia was then subjected to attack from the West. I won't post Putin's diatribe here; you'll need to read it for yourself--I've never seen him so angry or speak undiplomatically. What I will post is what he said after, which IMO is even more important, although removed from the overall context:

"I just want to note that this kind of people, people like the ones who were negotiating with Hitler back then, they now deface monuments to the liberator soldiers, Red Army soldiers who liberated the countries of Europe and the European peoples from Nazism. These are their followers. In this sense, unfortunately, little has changed. And we must keep this in mind, also with regard to the development of our Armed Forces . [My Emphasis]

"Here is what I would like to say in this regard, which I think is critically important. Please note: neither the Soviet Union, nor Russia have ever tried to create a threat to other countries. We were always catching up in this regard. The United States created the atomic bomb, and the Soviet Union caught up with it. We did not have nuclear weapon delivery vehicles or carriers. There was no such thing as strategic aviation, and the Soviet Union was catching up in this area, as well. The first intercontinental missiles actually were not built here, and the Soviet Union was trying to catch up.

"Today, we have a unique situation in our new and recent history. They try to catch up with us."

Also note the word Putin chose to describe the Outlaw US Empire's withdraw from the INF Treaty. Clearly, Putin desires to impress upon those charged with Russia's defense that the times are indeed perilous, that the old lies are being spread without any resistance. As with the other three transcripts I linked, this one also demands to be read in full and also in close association with the other three. The Poles will scream along with their sycophants, but Putin is correct about both the past and the present and the danger present within the future.

[Dec 24, 2019] Easier to demonize Putin than to have long boring articles about how different countries have different national interests, and how he works for Russia not us.

Dec 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Carey , December 23, 2019 at 5:15 pm

According to MoA this NYT RussiaRussia piece was originally headlined 'It's Putin's World. We Just Live in It':

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/23/world/europe/russia-putin.html

they're getting frantic

Summer , December 23, 2019 at 5:41 pm

"That the diminutive new president had grown in her memory " They really are throwing everything in the psyops kitchen sink.

polecat , December 23, 2019 at 5:51 pm

It's all just corny starch & flint water. It looks solid until it doesn't

LifelongLib , December 23, 2019 at 6:27 pm

Easier to demonize Putin than to have long boring articles about how different countries have different national interests, and how he works for Russia not us. To say nothing about discussing who exactly is it that decides what national interests are anyway

CoryP , December 24, 2019 at 1:26 am

I very much enjoy watching or reading Putin's speeches. No doubt he's lying in the same way all politicians do. Yet, when he castigates the West he is right on target and I like him for it.

[Dec 23, 2019] NYT neocon propaganda sing in unison with GE's harpy, Rachel Maddow

Dec 23, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

FSD , Dec 23 2019 14:48 utc | 1

The USA desperately need another resource-rich country to loot and can't find suitable candidate other then Russia. So MIC prostitute Madcow is just a dog of war. The USA deperately need another resource-rich country to loot and can't find sutable candiadate othe then Russia

There is no credible analyst not shackled to the MIC trough who ventures such an analysis beyond of course GE's W-2 harpie, Rachel Maddow.

The Western elites have long decided. WW3 is coming. In recent years, the Russians have repeatedly tried to get this message through the western Mediadrome, but to little effect.

The job of the GE spokespeople (Maddow et al) is diversionary/ preparatory spadework i.e. to drill with numbing repetition into the American consciousness who the enemy is. And you can bet the enemy is not who signs their paychecks. Their employers though happen to be OUR enemy.

Thus we find ourselves in the odd position of having Russia's top general attempting to shout through the Maddow racket that our two nations are on a collision course for war. Strange messenger. Or maybe not. They want to live too.

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/ /russias-top-general-warns-wor

Russia is in demographic collapse. It lacks the human capital to exploit even its own vast resource trove. The western banking system is over-leveraged. The imaginary numbers have gotten too big. Its 'denominator of the real' badly needs shoring up.

Russian resource wealth, Iran's massive South Pars LNG field are viewed with watering eyes as prolongations of the doomed Ponzi. Europe is energy-poor, geriatric and overrun with Islamic jihadists. With all due respect, who would want it at this late stage? At best, it is a funding source --and a battleground-- for WW3.

Meanwhile the Ponzi is ravenous and never sleeps. No growth - negative interest rates is a bell-ringer for WW3. The alternative is deflationary collapse. Maddow's been mysteriously cranked up again: Rushah Rushah!

So we find ourselves in another Goebellian shift: accuse the opposition of your own ulterior motives. They have no designs on us. Our overlords have designs on them.

Americans are just the People in the middle, hostages in a sense yet seemingly feared enough that our minds are still worth battling over. Trump's affinities are too populist. He's a dodgy helmsman for the massive undertaking of a world war where the people are only to be galvanized, not consulted.

Far from a duteous seat-warmer, he's a leader who squeaked through. The Oval Office is no place for leaders. It was thought to have been neutered of all that leadership malarkey post-JFK. Trump's not enough to hold back the MIC. No POTUS is. He either must depart the job or be compromised into executing the plan. But he's a bad Lieutenant. They'll never be comfortable with him.

Then some evil, diseased mind had an epiphany. Don't just Get Trump! Get a twofer! Get Trump and Russah! Weld them together for one kill-shot. Collusion means no daylight and one bullet. Yes, there's a genius to it, a very sick genius.

Annie , Dec 23 2019 15:29 utc | 4

B, great article as usual but disappointed that you didn't write about the latest sanctions on N2.

Another act of WAR by the US. These sanctions now cover the comoany, Allseas, laying the pipeline to Germany. They ceased operations and will not complete the project and Gazprom does not have the expertise. Would love to see your

analysis on that.
The NYT propaganda, true to form and loyal to Dem Russophobes just one more attempt to manufacture consent

This is maddening. These crazies are looking for war on Russia. Are the American people stupid enough to give that consent?

Piotr Berman , Dec 23 2019 15:30 utc | 5
My NYT site has the title "Russia Is a Mess. Why Is Putin Such a Formidable Enemy?"

Some quotes:
---- 1 ----
Under Mr. Putin, Vladislav Surkov, a longtime Kremlin adviser, wrote in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a Moscow newspaper, earlier this year, Russia "is playing with the West's minds."

Also its own.
---- 2 ----
All the same, said Gleb Pavlovsky, a political scientist who worked for more than a decade as a Kremlin adviser, Russia under Mr. Putin still reminds him of a sci-fi movie exoskeleton: "Inside is sitting a small, weak and perhaps frightened person, but from the outside it looks terrifying."
---- 3 ----
Whatever its problems, Mr. Surkov, the Kremlin adviser, said, Russia has created "the ideology of the future" by dispensing with the "illusion of choice" offered by the West and rooting itself in the will of a single leader capable of swiftly making the choices without constraint.

China, too, has advocated autocracy as the way to get results fast, but even Xi Jinping, the head of the Chinese Communist Party, can't match the lightening speed with which Mr. Putin ordered and executed the seizure of Crimea. The decision to grab the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine was made at a single all-night Kremlin meeting in February 2014 and then carried out just four days later with the dispatch of a few score Russian special forces officers to seize a handful of government buildings in Simferopol, the Crimean capital.
==========
If true, the resources committed to "Crimea takeover" were comparable with what Israel committed to assassinate one person, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, dispatching a team of 33 to Dubai in January 2010. Wasn't the superior productivity the strength of the West?

And this is not a joke. Putin is a maniac for balanced budgets, and compared to the expansive American style, the resources committed by Syria were minuscule. And by all accounts, spend well.

REUTERS. Oct 2, 2015 - U.S. President Barack Obama warned Russia on Friday that its bombing campaign against Syrian rebels will suck Moscow into a "quagmire," after a third straight day of air raids in support of President Bashar al-Assad. <<-- Obama was well aware that Russia committed a very small number of troops, and smallish air force that his military expert were describing as obsolete. Russia could not be many times more effective than USA, could it?

No sign of Obama's predicted 'quagmire' as Russia's ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com › world › 2016/09/30
Sep 30, 2016 - BEIRUT -- In the year since Russia began conducting airstrikes in support of the Syrian government, the intervention has worked to secure two ...

That explains the next quote from today NYT
---- 4 ----
"Maybe he's holding small cards, but he seems unafraid to play them," said Michael McFaul, a former United States ambassador to Moscow and now a scholar at Stanford. "That's what makes Putin so scary."
=========
Seems that Establishment scours most elite universities, Harvard, Yale, Stanford , Princeton etc. for the dumbest possible graduates. I know from private sources that not all graduates are dumb, many are actually brilliant. Does it occur to McFaul that boldness in playing small cards is even worse than playing large card? Russia (and Assad's partisans in Syria) had to do something well that USA (in government supporters in Afghanistan) did not do at all or did badly.

[Dec 23, 2019] Durham Is Scrutinizing Ex-C.I.A. Director's Role in Russian Interference Findings - The New York Times

Please note that NYT was a part of coupe d'état against Trump...
Will Brannan and Comey be arrested for stage coup d'état ?
Dec 23, 2019 | www.nytimes.com

John H. Durham, the United States attorney leading the investigation, has requested Mr. Brennan's emails, call logs and other documents from the C.I.A., according to a person briefed on his inquiry. He wants to learn what Mr. Brennan told other officials, including the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, about his and the C.I.A.'s views of a notorious dossier of assertions about Russia and Trump associates.

... ... ...

Mr. Durham is also examining whether Mr. Brennan privately contradicted his public comments, including May 2017 testimony to Congress , about both the dossier and about any debate among the intelligence agencies over their conclusions on Russia's interference, the people said.

... ... ..

"The president bore the burden of probably one of the greatest conspiracy theories -- baseless conspiracy theories -- in American political history," Mr. Barr told Fox News. He has long expressed skepticism that the F.B.I. had enough information to begin its inquiry in 2016, publicly criticizing an inspector general report released last week that affirmed that the bureau did.

Mr. Barr has long been interested in the conclusion about Mr. Putin ordering intervention on Mr. Trump's behalf, perhaps the intelligence report's most explosive assertion. The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. reported high confidence in the conclusion, while the N.S.A., which conducts electronic surveillance, had a moderate degree of confidence.

... ... ...

Critics of the intelligence assessment, like Representative Chris Stewart, Republican of Utah, said the C.I.A.'s sourcing failed to justify the high level of confidence about Moscow's intervention on behalf of Mr. Trump.

"I don't agree with the conclusion, particularly that it's such a high level of confidence," Mr. Stewart said, citing raw intelligence that he said he reviewed.

"I just think there should've been allowances made for some of the ambiguity in that and especially for those who didn't also share in the conclusion that it was a high degree of confidence," he added.

Mr. Durham's investigators also want to know more about the discussions that prompted intelligence community leaders to include Mr. Steele's allegations in the appendix of their assessment.

Mr. Brennan has repeatedly said, including in his 2017 congressional testimony, that the C.I.A. did not rely on the dossier when it helped develop the assessment, and the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has also testified before lawmakers that the same was true for the intelligence agencies more broadly. But Mr. Trump's allies have long asked pointed questions about the dossier, including how it was used in the intelligence agency's assessment.

Some C.I.A. analysts and officials insisted that the dossier be left out of the assessment, while some F.B.I. leaders wanted to include it and bristled at its relegation to the appendix. Their disagreements were captured in the highly anticipated report released last week by Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, examining aspects of the F.B.I.'s Russia investigation.

Mr. Steele's information "was a topic of significant discussion within the F.B.I. and with the other agencies participating in drafting" the declassified intelligence assessment about Russia interference, Mr. Horowitz wrote. The F.B.I. shared Mr. Steele's information with the team of officials from multiple agencies drafting the assessment.

Mr. Comey also briefed Mr. Brennan and other top Obama administration intelligence officials including the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, and Mr. Clapper about the bureau's efforts to assess the information in the dossier, Mr. Comey told the inspector general. He said that analysts had found it to be "credible on its face."

... ... ...

Andrew G. McCabe, then the deputy director of the F.B.I., pushed back, according to the inspector general report, accusing the intelligence chiefs of trying to minimize Mr. Steele's information.

Ultimately the two sides compromised by placing Mr. Steele's material in the appendix. After BuzzFeed News published the dossier in January 2017, days after the intelligence assessment about Russia's election sabotage was released, Mr. Comey complained to Mr. Clapper about his decision to publicly state that the intelligence community "has not made any judgment" about the document's reliability.

Mr. Comey said that the F.B.I. had concluded that Mr. Steele was reliable, according to the inspector general report. Mr. Clapper ignored Mr. Comey, the report said.

[Dec 23, 2019] If Putin was smart and freedom loving he'd get some western economic experts, from Harvard Business School say, to help get the Russian economy booming but he's paranoid and doesn't trust the west for some reason.

Dec 23, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Danny , Dec 23 2019 17:09 utc | 16

In Canada the cost of living outpaces wages by a considerable margin, consumer debt is the highest in the G7, permanent homeless camps are a fixture in major cities and popping up in smaller ones, people, including families, living in their vehicles is becoming normalized, an ongoing opioid epidemic is still killing hundreds of people a month, etc. etc.

But the media keeps telling me unemployment is at record lows and the economy is "red hot" and "booming" so it's all good, nothing to worry about thank God because the free and democratic media here in the west never lies or traffics in distorted facts and disinformation. It only prints and broadcasts The Truth and I'm really happy about that, very relieved that everything is just fine and wonderful and all the bad things and the bad people and the bad economies are in China, Russia and scary places like that. It's great living in a place that's so free and awesome and knows only joy and prosperity!

If Putin was smart and freedom loving he'd get some western economic experts, from Harvard Business School say, to help get the Russian economy booming but he's paranoid and doesn't trust the west for some reason.

The uneasiness I feel as I stumble over the sleeping homeless people on my way to the bus stop in the morning is irrational and foolish and was planted in my mind by Russian troll bots on Facebook. I understand this now. Everything is wonderful here, now and always. With Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland at the helm and a first class media dedicated to Truth why would anyone worry or be mistrustful of our great Leaders and our Democratic Institutions? We are the envy of the world and that makes Putin's Russia jealous and meddlesome. I understand this now and channel all my news through an Atlantic Council Fake News Filter plugin so all the Putinist mind warping stuff on Facebook can't affect me anymore.

Sorry that was a long post, lol. Anyways my friend I hope you are well even though I am sad that you still have a false paranoia about Our Western Media spreading Fake News. It's Putin bro, not "us"! I understand this now broke lurker cover to share my insight with you so that you too can learn to speak only Teh Truth. The Russian economy is spluttering badly and here in Canada everything is wonderful! In Germany too! They hate our freedom and therefore it's always bad there. The Democratic West will save the Putinist economy when Putin learns to love and trust the West like I do (and hopefully you)! Peace out bro and much love, eh, haha.

[Dec 23, 2019] The Latest Globalist Accusations Against Russia are Preposterous, They Now Include 'Racism'

Notable quotes:
"... As summed up by Jodi Jacobson of Rewire.News (" Putin, Trump, and Kavanaugh: A Triad of White Supremacy and Oligarchy "): ..."
"... 'Putin is a dictator. His interests are in amassing wealth and power at any cost, both in Russia and globally. He is an ethnic nationalist , a white supremacist , and an Islamophobe . He aligns himself with radical right-wing religious and political groups to marginalize and attack the rights of women, LGBTQ communities, and religious and ethnic groups outside his power base.' ..."
Aug 18, 2018 | russia-insider.com

It is debatable how much of the US government Trump actually controls. The baseless CW finding by the State Department (with heavy pressure from Congress) is the work of Trump's globalist enemies in the bureaucracy and in Congress ( all of the Democrats, and almost all of the Republicans ), with the complicity of his own appointees, to undermine his overtures to Moscow and further erode his Executive authority. Besides blocking every possible path to détente with Russia, this is another step to setting Trump up for removal from office.

Regarding the timing of a second set of sanctions set to kick in November, it's hard to see how that will be avoided. Russia will not submit to inspections, which the US is arrogantly demanding of Russia, as if she were some pipsqueak country like Libya. Given that the OPCW certified in 2017 that the Russians had completed destruction of 100% of their CW stockpile (cf., the US still has almost 10% of our stocks, which are not expected to be completely gone until 2023), the demand is the equivalent of proving that you have stopped beating your wife (to the satisfaction of someone who admittedly continues to beat his own wife).

In the absence of capitulating to the US demand, which Russia will not do, legally Trump can waive the sanctions. But that option is no doubt part of the political trap being laid for him, presenting him a Hobson's choice.

On the one hand, he can waive the sanctions, further hyping the charges of treason against him (and, if the waiver is before the elections, giving the Democrats another red flag to wave), as well as inviting new legislation passed by a margin "Putin's puppet" cannot veto;

or he can let them go into effect.

If, as seems likely, the harsher measures are applied it is hard to overstate the danger created. These are the kind of things that countries do just one step from totally breaking relations in advance of war: cutting off access to American banks, barring Aeroflot from the US (in context, the least of our concerns, though symbolic), effectively blocking all exports and imports, and downgrading or suspending diplomatic ties. With respect to the last – a direct assault on Trump's presidential authority to send and receive ambassadors under Article II of the Constitution (oddly, no one in Congress seems to care that presidents routinely usurp their authority to make war) – this likely would mean withdrawing the US ambassador from Moscow and expelling the Russian ambassador in Washington, while maintaining relations if at all at the chargé d'affaires level.

In word, this is insanity. What's perhaps worse is that this political warfare is being conducted with total disregard for the truth, much less an honest attempt to find it. It's worse than a presumption of guilt; it's a positive, unambiguous verdict of culpability under circumstances where the accusers in Washington and London (I would guess but cannot prove) know perfectly well that the CW finger pointing is false.

It has been clear from the beginning of Trump's meteoric rise on the American political scene that he and his American First agenda were perceived by the beneficiaries of the globalist, neoliberal order as a mortal danger to the system which has enriched them. Maintaining and intensifying hostility toward Russia, even at the risk of a catastrophic, uncontainable conflict, lies at the center of their efforts . This political war to save globalism at all hazards is intensifying.

It would be a mistake, however, to understand hostility to Russia as just a cold calculation of pecuniary and social advantage by a corrupt mandarin class. It is all that of course, but it is also deeply ideological, reflecting the agenda of the entrenched pseudo-elites to dismantle the traditional national identities and Christian moral values of the West – and impose their godless agenda on the East as well .

But there is something else too, something that touches the emotional heart of both Russophobia in a global context and anti-Trumpism domestically. That is the accusation of racism .

Unsurprisingly one of the first to give voice to this concept was Hillary Clinton, who in her August 2016 "tinfoil hat speech" sought to portray Trump as a creature of the "Alt-Right " because, among other things, he once complimented Infowars ' Alex Jones: "Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down." But in Hillary's estimation, who is "the grand godfather" of the worldwide Alt-Right? You guessed it: "Russian President Vladimir Putin." A month later she doubled down in her infamous " basket of deplorables " speech, branding Trump's tens of millions of supporters "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it." (In an evident oversight, she omitted mention of Putin.)

Give the warmongering old girl credit for her doggedness. Hillary has stuck to this theme even as she sinks into irrelevance (while still reportedly harboring ambitions of a 2020 presidential run !), in June 2018 calling Putin the leader of the worldwide "authoritarian, white-supremacist, and xenophobic movement" who is "emboldening right-wing nationalists, separatists, racists, and even neo-Nazis."

Hillary is not alone. As summed up by Jodi Jacobson of Rewire.News (" Putin, Trump, and Kavanaugh: A Triad of White Supremacy and Oligarchy "):

'Putin is a dictator. His interests are in amassing wealth and power at any cost, both in Russia and globally. He is an ethnic nationalist , a white supremacist , and an Islamophobe . He aligns himself with radical right-wing religious and political groups to marginalize and attack the rights of women, LGBTQ communities, and religious and ethnic groups outside his power base.'

But perhaps the most revealing description comes from putative comedian Bill Maher on a recent episode of his HBO program, explaining that "Race Explains Shift From Party Of Reagan To Party Of Putin" and excoriating not just Putin but Russians as such for their genetic characteristics:

[Dec 22, 2019] The Long, Dark History of Russia's Murder, Inc. Up next: The bright, sunny history of the CIA

Notable quotes:
"... The Long, Dark History of Russia's Murder, Inc. New York Review of Books ..."
Dec 22, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Stormcrow , December 21, 2019 at 11:54 am

The Long, Dark History of Russia's Murder, Inc. New York Review of Books

Up next: The bright, sunny history of the CIA

Carolinian , December 21, 2019 at 1:27 pm

Speaking of that.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/20/gladio-the-story-of-a-conspiracy/

Acacia , December 22, 2019 at 12:15 am

No surprise. NYRB has had a b*ner for Muh Russia since the early days of the hysteria.

[Dec 22, 2019] So US intelligence tipped off the DNC that their emails were about to be leaked to Wikileaks. That's when the stratagem of attributing the impending Wikileaks release to a Russian hack was born -- distracting from the incriminating content of the emails, while vilifying the Deep State's favorite enemies, Assange and Russia, all in one neat scam

Highly recommended!
Looks like Brennan ears are all over this false flag operation...
Dec 22, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Mark McCarty , 21 December 2019 at 02:34 PM

Here's a key point - on June 12, Assange announces that Wikileaks will soon be releasing info pertinent to Hillary. HE DOES NOT SAY THAT HE WILL BE RELEASING DNC EMAILS.

And yet, on June 14, Crowdstrike reports a Russian hack of the DNC servers - and a day later, Guccifer 2.0 emerges and proclaims himself to be the hacker, takes credit for the upcoming Wikileaks DNC releases, publishes the Trump oppo research which Crowdstrike claimed he had taken, and intentionally adds "Russian footprints" to his metadata.

So how did Crowdstrike and G2.0 know that DNC EMAILS would be released?

Because, as Larry postulates, the US intelligence community had intercepted communications between Seth Rich and Wikileaks in which Seth had offered the DNC emails (consistent with the report of Sy Hersh's source within the FBI).

So US intelligence tipped off the DNC that their emails were about to be leaked to Wikileaks.

That's when the stratagem of attributing the impending Wikileaks release to a Russian hack was born - distracting from the incriminating content of the emails, while vilifying the Deep State's favorite enemies, Assange and Russia, all in one neat scam.

[Dec 22, 2019] Bellingcat's transparency is non existent, which means it is the outfit financed by intelligence services

Dec 22, 2019 | twitter.com

Bellingcat's transparency model is similar to the Tor Project's. It lists a bunch of innocuous, little-known non-profits and human rights-type organizations. To understand who they and why they'd fund an outfit like Bellingcat takes a lot more digging.

-- Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) December 20, 2019

[Dec 22, 2019] Maybe they were worried someone had bear spray in their purse of backpack, when Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear showed and put their paw prints on the DNC computers.

Dec 22, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

akaPatience , 20 December 2019 at 05:57 PM

SO, to assist Crowdstrike's efforts, "On the afternoon of Friday, June 10, all DNC employees were instructed to leave their laptops in the office."

Was this typical protocol when it comes to investigating possible hacking or were they looking for a leaker?

Factotum said in reply to akaPatience ... , 20 December 2019 at 07:11 PM
Maybe they were worried someone had bear spray in their purse of backpack, when Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear showed and put their paw prints on the DNC computers.
The Twisted Genius -> akaPatience ... , 20 December 2019 at 09:23 PM
AkaPatience, that is exactly how it is done. Once the decision is made to totally clean the network, it has to be done to EVERY computer and device on the network. Hackers leave dormant code throughout the network that allows them to reenter the network after they are booted out.
akaPatience -> The Twisted Genius ... , 20 December 2019 at 10:37 PM
Thank you. I suspected you would answer my question!
JamesT -> The Twisted Genius ... , 21 December 2019 at 10:39 PM
TTG,

I don't know if you care to comment on this, but I met a marine 10 years ago who talked about how he was administrating Windows Server when he was in the corps. I was flabbergasted. I don't understand why more effort has not been put into running a secure OS - something with a microkernel architecture and an application stack and GUI fully locked down with Mandatory Access Control . I presume that the assumption is that any advances we make will be quickly matched by Iran, Russia, and China, and that leadership is more interested in offence than defence.

[Dec 22, 2019] Gussifer 2.0 released nothing remotely damaging to the DNC and is arguably US based (timestamps), and is either CIA or Crowdstrike.

Dec 22, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Ed Snack , 21 December 2019 at 01:41 PM

Other points to note:

1.

Ed Snack , 20 December 2019 at 10:56 PM
Other points to note:

1. G2 released nothing remotely damaging to the DNC, the first document was even the DNC's oppo file on DJT
2. G2 did some copying and compress/decompress on files. Imbedded timestamps strongly suggest a US Timezone location
3. G2 released some files claiming to be from the DNC, but which demonstrably came from John Podesta's account
4. G2 did not claim to be involved with the Podesta account, which was phished and not hacked as such
5. As an aside, both the Fancy and Cosy Bear packages had been available for third parties to obtain since 2013-4 or so. So their use is not proof of Russian involvement. One or other has been used in bank exploits before 2016.

I believe that G2 is arguably US based (the timestamps are reasonably conclusive), and is either CIA or Crowdstrike. The existence of G2 is a diversionary one to strengthen the case for blaming the Russians. It may be connected to wanting to divert attention from Seth Rich and his subsequent murder, but may not be - that is Seth Rich's death may be just an unfortunate coincidence, we have inadequate information to conclude either way.

[Dec 21, 2019] Is Putin losing his grip? Why did Russian disinformation operations fail so dramatically in the UK election?

Dec 21, 2019 | off-guardian.org

s Putin losing his grip? Why did Russian disinformation operations fail so dramatically in the UK election? Not only did the "rabid socialist" Corbyn fail to seize power from the Russophobic cold-war warriors of Whitehall but Russia's man in the White House is already planning to move in with them!

[Dec 21, 2019] The ruthless neo-colonialists of 21st century

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The destruction of Syria and Libya created massive refugee flows which have proved that the European Union was totally unprepared to deal with such a major issue. On top of that, the latest years, we have witnessed a rapid rise of various terrorist attacks in Western soil, also as a result of the devastating wars in Syria and Libya. ..."
"... Whenever they wanted to blame someone for some serious terrorist attacks, they had a scapegoat ready for them, even if they had evidence that Libya was not behind these attacks. When Gaddafi falsely admitted that he had weapons of mass destruction in order to gain some relief from the Western sanctions, they presented him as a responsible leader who, was ready to cooperate. Of course, his last role was to play again the 'bad guy' who had to be removed. ..."
"... Despite the rise of Donald Trump in power, the neoliberal forces will push further for the expansion of the neoliberal doctrine in the rival field of the Sino-Russian alliance. ..."
"... We see, however, that the Western alliances are entering a period of severe crisis. The US has failed to control the situation in Middle East and Libya. The ruthless neo-colonialists will not hesitate to confront Russia and China directly, if they see that they continue to lose control in the global geopolitical arena. The accumulation of military presence of NATO next to the Russian borders, as well as, the accumulation of military presence of the US in Asia-Pacific, show that this is an undeniable fact. ..."
Apr 09, 2019 | failedevolution.blogspot.com

The start of current decade revealed the most ruthless face of a global neo-colonialism. From Syria and Libya to Europe and Latin America, the old colonial powers of the West tried to rebound against an oncoming rival bloc led by Russia and China, which starts to threaten their global domination.

Inside a multi-polar, complex terrain of geopolitical games, the big players start to abandon the old-fashioned, inefficient direct wars. They use today other, various methods like brutal proxy wars , economic wars, financial and constitutional coups, provocative operations, 'color revolutions', etc. In this highly complex and unstable situation, when even traditional allies turn against each other as the global balances change rapidly, the forces unleashed are absolutely destructive. Inevitably, the results are more than evident.

Proxy Wars - Syria/Libya

After the US invasion in Iraq, the gates of hell had opened in the Middle East. Obama continued the Bush legacy of US endless interventions, but he had to change tactics because a direct war would be inefficient, costly and extremely unpopular to the American people and the rest of the world.
The result, however, appeared to be equally (if not more) devastating with the failed US invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US had lost total control of the armed groups directly linked with the ISIS terrorists, failed to topple Assad, and, moreover, instead of eliminating the Russian and Iranian influence in the region, actually managed to increase it. As a result, the US and its allies failed to secure their geopolitical interests around the various pipeline games.

In addition, the US sees Turkey, one of its most important ally, changing direction dangerously, away from the Western bloc. Probably the strongest indication for this, is that Turkey, Iran and Russia decided very recently to proceed in an agreement on Syria without the presence of the US.

Yet, the list of US failures does not end here. The destruction of Syria and Libya created massive refugee flows which have proved that the European Union was totally unprepared to deal with such a major issue. On top of that, the latest years, we have witnessed a rapid rise of various terrorist attacks in Western soil, also as a result of the devastating wars in Syria and Libya.

Evidence from WikiLeaks has shown that the old colonial powers have started a new round of ruthless competition on Libya's resources. The usual story propagated by the Western media, about another tyrant who had to be removed, has now completely collapsed. They don't care neither to topple an 'authoritarian' regime, nor to spread Democracy. All they care about is to secure each country's resources for their big companies.
The Gaddafi case is quite interesting because it shows that the Western hypocrites were using him according to their interests .

Whenever they wanted to blame someone for some serious terrorist attacks, they had a scapegoat ready for them, even if they had evidence that Libya was not behind these attacks. When Gaddafi falsely admitted that he had weapons of mass destruction in order to gain some relief from the Western sanctions, they presented him as a responsible leader who, was ready to cooperate. Of course, his last role was to play again the 'bad guy' who had to be removed.

Economic Wars, Financial Coups – Greece/Eurozone

It would be unthinkable for the neo-colonialists to conduct proxy wars inside European soil, especially against countries which belong to Western institutions like NATO, EU, eurozone, etc. The wave of the US-made major economic crisis hit Greece and Europe at the start of the decade, almost simultaneously with the eruption of the Arab Spring revolutionary wave and the subsequent disaster in Middle East and Libya.

Greece was the easy victim for the global neoliberal dictatorship to impose catastrophic measures in favor of the plutocracy. The Greek experiment enters its seventh year and the plan is to be used as a model for the whole eurozone. Greece has become also the model for the looting of public property, as happened in the past with the East Germany and the Treuhand Operation after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

While Greece was the major victim of an economic war, Germany used its economic power and control of the European Central Bank to impose unprecedented austerity, sado-monetarism and neoliberal destruction through silent financial coups in Ireland , Italy and Cyprus . The Greek political establishment collapsed with the rise of SYRIZA in power, and the ECB was forced to proceed in an open financial coup against Greece when the current PM, Alexis Tsipras, decided to conduct a referendum on the catastrophic measures imposed by the ECB, IMF and the European Commission, through which the Greek people clearly rejected these measures, despite the propaganda of terror inside and outside Greece. Due to the direct threat from Mario Draghi and the ECB, who actually threatened to cut liquidity sinking Greece into a financial chaos, Tsipras finally forced to retreat, signing another catastrophic memorandum.

Through similar financial and political pressure, the Brussels bureaufascists and the German sado-monetarists along with the IMF economic hitmen, imposed neoliberal disaster to other eurozone countries like Portugal, Spain etc. It is remarkable that even the second eurozone economy, France, rushed to impose anti-labor measures midst terrorist attacks, succumbing to a - pre-designed by the elites - neo-Feudalism, under the 'Socialist' François Hollande, despite the intense protests in many French cities.

Germany would never let the United States to lead the neo-colonization in Europe, as it tries (again) to become a major power with its own sphere of influence, expanding throughout eurozone and beyond. As the situation in Europe becomes more and more critical with the ongoing economic and refugee crisis and the rise of the Far-Right and the nationalists, the economic war mostly between the US and the German big capital, creates an even more complicated situation.

The decline of the US-German relations has been exposed initially with the NSA interceptions scandal , yet, progressively, the big picture came on surface, revealing a transatlantic economic war between banking and corporate giants. In times of huge multilevel crises, the big capital always intensifies its efforts to eliminate competitors too. As a consequence, the US has seen another key ally, Germany, trying to gain a certain degree of independence in order to form its own agenda, separate from the US interests.

Note that, both Germany and Turkey are medium powers that, historically, always trying to expand and create their own spheres of influence, seeking independence from the traditional big powers.

Economic Wars, Constitutional Coups, Provocative Operations – Argentina/Brazil/Venezuela

A wave of neoliberal onslaught shakes currently Latin America. While in Argentina, Mauricio Macri allegedly took the power normally, the constitutional coup against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, as well as, the usual actions of the Right opposition in Venezuela against Nicolás Maduro with the help of the US finger, are far more obvious.
The special weight of these three countries in Latin America is extremely important for the US imperialism to regain ground in the global geopolitical arena. Especially the last ten to fifteen years, each of them developed increasingly autonomous policies away from the US close custody, under Leftist governments, and this was something that alarmed the US imperialism components.

Brazil appears to be the most important among the three, not only due to its size, but also as a member of the BRICS, the team of fast growing economies who threaten the US and generally the Western global dominance. The constitutional coup against Rousseff was rather a sloppy action and reveals the anxiety of the US establishment to regain control through puppet regimes. This is a well-known situation from the past through which the establishment attempts to secure absolute dominance in the US backyard.

The importance of Venezuela due to its oil reserves is also significant. When Maduro tried to approach Russia in order to strengthen the economic cooperation between the two countries, he must had set the alarm for the neocons in the US. Venezuela could find an alternative in Russia and BRICS, in order to breathe from the multiple economic war that was set off by the US. It is characteristic that the economic war against Russia by the US and the Saudis, by keeping the oil prices in historically low levels, had significant impact on the Venezuelan economy too. It is also known that the US organizations are funding the opposition since Chávez era, in order to proceed in provocative operations that could overthrow the Leftist governments.

The case of Venezuela is really interesting. The US imperialists were fiercely trying to overthrow the Leftist governments since Chávez administration. They found now a weaker president, Nicolás Maduro - who certainly does not have the strength and personality of Hugo Chávez - to achieve their goal.

The Western media mouthpieces are doing their job, which is propaganda as usual. The recipe is known. You present the half truth, with a big overdose of exaggeration. The establishment parrots are demonizing Socialism , but they won't ever tell you about the money that the US is spending, feeding the Right-Wing groups and opposition to proceed in provocative operations, in order to create instability. They won't tell you about the financial war conducted through the oil prices, manipulated by the Saudis, the close US ally.

Regarding Argentina, former president, Cristina Kirchner, had also made some important moves towards the stronger cooperation with Russia, which was something unacceptable for Washington's hawks. Not only for geopolitical reasons, but also because Argentina could escape from the vulture funds that sucking its blood since its default. This would give the country an alternative to the neoliberal monopoly of destruction. The US big banks and corporations would never accept such a perspective because the debt-enslaved Argentina is a golden opportunity for a new round of huge profits. It's happening right now in eurozone's debt colony, Greece.

'Color Revolutions' - Ukraine

The events in Ukraine have shown that, the big capital has no hesitation to ally even with the neo-nazis, in order to impose the new world order. This is not something new of course. The connection of Hitler with the German economic oligarchs, but also with other major Western companies, before and during the WWII, is well known.

The most terrifying of all however, is not that the West has silenced in front of the decrees of the new Ukrainian leadership, through which is targeting the minorities, but the fact that the West allied with the neo-nazis, while according to some information has also funded their actions as well as other extreme nationalist groups during the riots in Kiev.

Plenty of indications show that US organizations have 'put their finger' on Ukraine. A video , for example, concerning the situation in Ukraine has been directed by Ben Moses (creator of the movie "Good Morning, Vietnam"), who is connected with American government executives and organizations like National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the US Congress. This video shows a beautiful young female Ukrainian who characterizes the government of the country as "dictatorship" and praise some protesters with the neo-nazi symbols of the fascist Ukranian party Svoboda on them.

The same organizations are behind 'color revolutions' elsewhere, as well as, provocative operations against Leftist governments in Venezuela and other countries.

Ukraine is the perfect place to provoke Putin and tight the noose around Russia. Of course the huge hypocrisy of the West can also be identified in the case of Crimea. While in other cases, the Western officials were 'screaming' for the right of self-determination (like Kosovo, for example), after they destroyed Yugoslavia in a bloodbath, they can't recognize the will of the majority of Crimeans to join Russia.

The war will become wilder

The Western neo-colonial powers are trying to counterattack against the geopolitical upgrade of Russia and the Chinese economic expansionism.

Despite the rise of Donald Trump in power, the neoliberal forces will push further for the expansion of the neoliberal doctrine in the rival field of the Sino-Russian alliance. Besides, Trump has already shown his hostile feelings against China, despite his friendly approach to Russia and Putin.

We see, however, that the Western alliances are entering a period of severe crisis. The US has failed to control the situation in Middle East and Libya. The ruthless neo-colonialists will not hesitate to confront Russia and China directly, if they see that they continue to lose control in the global geopolitical arena. The accumulation of military presence of NATO next to the Russian borders, as well as, the accumulation of military presence of the US in Asia-Pacific, show that this is an undeniable fact.

[Dec 21, 2019] There have been numerous smears of Tulsi Gabbard that have been repeated over and over the last few years after she went to Syria. She started to give the foreign policy blob a lot of grief for their support of the overthrow of Syria to install a theocratic jihadi government controlled by the usual suspects.

Dec 21, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Kali , Dec 21 2019 22:03 utc | 22

There have been numerous smears of Tulsi Gabbard that have been repeated over and over the last few years after she went to Syria. She started to give the foreign policy blob a lot of grief for their support of the overthrow of Syria to install a theocratic jihadi government controlled by the usual suspects.

One smear they like to use is to call Tulsi an Islamophobe. That began years ago when she criticized Our Savior Obama (pbaj) for claiming ISIS was not a religious extremist organization, that it was a criminal group and the US needed to give Iraqi men more to do and then they wouldn't join those criminal gangs like...ISIS.

Anyways, this article goes into a deeper state (yup, deeper than usual) conspiracy by various actors to smear Tulsi for a variety of reasons subservient to foreign interests, with a surprise intro to another often unspoken of interest with a lot of hidden power in Washington.

Anatomy of A Smear: How Liberals Have Become Willing Dupes of Foreign Political Psy-Ops

[Dec 21, 2019] Washington's Proposed New Sanctions Against Turkey also Aimed Against Russia by Paul Antonopoulos

Notable quotes:
"... Although the bill has not said which specific Russians, the nature of the bill means that there will be inevitable sanctions against Russia as it is a top weapon exporter to Syria, which will unlikely change despite of the new sanctions. Those in the eventual sanction list will face an American blacklist, which means a ban on entry, freezing of assets in the United States, a ban on doing business with this person for American citizens or companies. At the same time, the bill allows that the US President can consider each case separately and refuse to impose sanctions. ..."
"... Washington is frustrated that European energy policy is decided in Europe, not in the U.S., which calls into question the cooperation between the U.S. and Europe. It is a very risky measure and Europe would need to have a blunt attitude of rejection of these measures imposed by the U.S., because its own economy is at risk. ..."
"... Effectively, the "Promoting American National Security and Preventing the Resurgence of ISIS Act," which strangely targets Russia who had a greater role than the U.S. in defeating ISIS terrorists, is just another way for Washington to warn other countries not to buy the S-400 or Russian military equipment or engage in energy diplomacy with Moscow. It is unlikely that this will deter states from conducting arms and energy deals with Russia as Moscow has been pioneering anti-sanction measures to protect financial transactions without punishment, and rather it demonstrates a Washington that is becoming increasingly desperate in the Era of Multipolarity. ..."
Dec 21, 2019 | astutenews.com

Washington's Proposed New Sanctions Against Turkey also Aimed Against Russia December 18, 2019 A Opinion Leave a comment With the world fixated on Turkish actions against Syria, Greece and Libya at the moment, the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Senate of the United States Congress approved a bill, "Promoting American National Security and Preventing the Resurgence of ISIS Act," spearheaded and thoroughly promoted by staunch anti-Syria/Venezuela/Iran/Russia Democratic Senator Robert Menendez who celebrated the bills passing on his Twitter . The Republican-led Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 18-4 to send the bill for a vote in the full Senate.

The approval of the bill was widely reported in the mainstream media as an "anti-Turkey bill." Senator Jim Risch, the panel's Republican chairman, a fellow endorser of the bill with Menendez, said that the approval of this bill is because of the "drift by this country, Turkey, to go in an entirely different direction than what they have in the past. They've thumbed their nose at us, and they've thumbed their nose at their other NATO allies."

According to the draft bill , the Turkish acquisition of the powerful S-400 missile defense system gives grounds to impose sanctions against this country, under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). In particular, the document restricts the sale of U.S. weapons to Turkey and imposes sanctions on Turkish officials responsible for supplying weapons towards their illegal military operation in Syria.

Turkey signed in December 2017 the first contract with Russia for the purchase of the S-400 for a value of $2.5 billion, which caused tension in relations between Ankara and Washington. The U.S. demanded that Ankara renounce that transaction and buy U.S. Patriot systems, and threatened to delay or cancel the sale of the F-35 fighters to Turkey. Ankara refused to make concessions and assured that its purpose of acquiring Russian systems remains firm.

What was missed, perhaps intentionally by the majority of the mainstream media is that this bill has a heavy anti-Russian/Syrian component to it. Although not as detailed and expansive as the Turkish section of the bill, it claims that "the Russian Federation and Iran continue to exploit a security vacuum in Syria and continue to pose a threat to vital United States national security interests," without explaining what these security interests are, exactly as we have become accustomed to.

According to the bill, there will be a

"list of each Russian person that, on or after such date of enactment, knowingly exports, transfers, or otherwise provides to Syria significant financial, material, or technological support that contributes materially to the ability of the Government of Syria to acquire defense articles, defense services, and related information."

Although the bill has not said which specific Russians, the nature of the bill means that there will be inevitable sanctions against Russia as it is a top weapon exporter to Syria, which will unlikely change despite of the new sanctions. Those in the eventual sanction list will face an American blacklist, which means a ban on entry, freezing of assets in the United States, a ban on doing business with this person for American citizens or companies. At the same time, the bill allows that the US President can consider each case separately and refuse to impose sanctions.

These proposed new sanctions that will have to pass the House of Representatives, which passed its own anti-Turkish sanctions bill by an overwhelming 403-16 vote in October, is part of a wider effort for the U.S. to keep pressurizing Russia's economy. On December 9, the committees of both chambers of the U.S. Congress previously agreed on the military budget for 2020, which includes restrictions against the Nord Stream 2 and Turk Stream pipelines to bring Russian energy to Europe, infrastructures designed to raise Europe's energy security. The U.S. bill that provides sanctions against companies participating in the laying of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline aims to obtain unilateral advantages in the gas area to the detriment of the interests of the countries of Europe. This prompted the chairman of the Board of Directors of the Russian-German Foreign Chamber of Commerce, Matthias Schepp, to explain that the new measures against Nord Stream 2 affect not only Russia, but, above all, European companies and Germany's energy interests.

Washington is frustrated that European energy policy is decided in Europe, not in the U.S., which calls into question the cooperation between the U.S. and Europe. It is a very risky measure and Europe would need to have a blunt attitude of rejection of these measures imposed by the U.S., because its own economy is at risk.

Effectively, the "Promoting American National Security and Preventing the Resurgence of ISIS Act," which strangely targets Russia who had a greater role than the U.S. in defeating ISIS terrorists, is just another way for Washington to warn other countries not to buy the S-400 or Russian military equipment or engage in energy diplomacy with Moscow. It is unlikely that this will deter states from conducting arms and energy deals with Russia as Moscow has been pioneering anti-sanction measures to protect financial transactions without punishment, and rather it demonstrates a Washington that is becoming increasingly desperate in the Era of Multipolarity.

By Paul Antonopoulos
Source: Infobrics

[Dec 20, 2019] Did John Brennan's CIA Create Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks by Larry C Johnson

Highly recommended!
Gossufer2.0 and CrowdStrike are the weakest links in this sordid story. CrowdStrike was nothing but FBI/CIA contractor.
So the hypothesis that CrowdStrike employees implanted malware to implicate Russians and created fake Gussifer 2.0 personality is pretty logical.
Notable quotes:
"... Not one piece of corroborating intelligence. It is all based on opinion and strong belief. There was no human source report or electronic intercept pointing to a relationship between the GRU and the two alleged creations of the GRU--Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com. Now consider the spin that Robert Mueller put on this opinion in his report on possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Mueller bluffs the unsuspecting reader into believing that it is a proven fact that Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks were Russian assets. But he is relying on a mere opinion from a handpicked group of intel analysts working under the direction of then CIA Director John Brennan ..."
"... In October 2015 John Brennan reorganized the CIA . As part of that reorganization he created a new directorate--DIRECTORATE OF DIGITAL INNOVATION. Its mission was to "manipulate digital footprints." In other words, this was the Directorate that did the work of creating Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks. One of their specialties, creating Digital Dust. ..."
"... We also know, thanks to Wikileaks, that the CIA was using software specifically designed to mask CIA activity and make it appear like it was done by a foreign entity. Wikipedia describes the Vault 7 documents : ..."
"... Exhibit A in the case is this document created and later edited in the ubiquitous Microsoft Word format. Metadata left inside the file shows it was last edited by someone using the computer name "Феликс Эдмундович." That means the computer was configured to use the Russian language and that it was connected to a Russian-language keyboard. More intriguing still, "Феликс Эдмундович" is the colloquial name that translates to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the 20th Century Russian statesman who is best known for founding the Soviet secret police. (The metadata also shows that the purported DNC strategy memo was originally created by someone named Warren Flood, which happens to be the name of a LinkedIn user claiming to provide strategy and data analytics services to Democratic candidates.) ..."
"... Why would the CIA do this? The CIA knew that Podesta's emails had been hacked and were circulating on the internet. But they had no evidence about the identity of the culprit. If they had such evidence, they would have cited it in the 2017 ICA. ..."
"... The U.S. intelligence community became aware around May 26, 2016 that someone with access to the DNC network was offering those emails to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Julian Assange and people who spoke to him indicate that the person was Seth Rich. Whether or not it was Seth, the Trump Task Force at CIA was aware that the emails, which would be embarrassing to the Clinton campaign, would be released at some time in the future. Hence the motive to create Guccifer 2.0 and pin the blame on Russia. ..."
"... The only source for the claim that Russia hacked the DNC is a private cyber security firm, CrowdStrike. ..."
"... Time for the common sense standard again. Crowdstrike detected the Russians on the 6th of May, according to CEO Dimitri Alperovitch, but took no steps to shutdown the network, eliminate the malware and clean the computers until 34 days later, i.e., the 10th of June. That is 34 days of inexcusable inaction. ..."
"... The actions attributed to DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 should be priority investigative targets for U.S. Attorney John Durham's team of investigators. This potential use of a known CIA tool, developed under Brennan with the sole purpose to obfuscate the source of intrusions, pointing to another nation, as a false flag operation, is one of the actions and issues that U.S. Attorney John Durham should be looking into as a potential act of "Seditious conspiracy. It needs to be done. To quote the CIA, I strongly assess that the only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential election was the CIA, not the GRU. ..."
"... LJ bottom line: "The only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential election was the CIA, not the GRU." ..."
"... ICA which seemed to have been framed to allow journalists or the unwary to link the ICA with more rigorous standards used by more authentic assessments? ..."
"... With the Russians not having the advantages that the NSA does (back doors in all US-designed network hardware/software and taps all over the internet), would Russia reveal anything unless it involved an immediate major national security threat. I doubt that would cover Trump. ..."
Dec 20, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report insists that Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks were created by Russia's military intelligence organization, the GRU, as part of a Russian plot to meddle in the U.S. 2016 Presidential Election. But this is a lie. Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks were created by Brennan's CIA and this action by the CIA should be a target of U.S. Attorney John Durham's investigation. Let me explain why.

Let us start with the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment aka ICA. Only three agencies of the 17 in the U.S. intelligence community contributed to and coordinated on the ICA--the FBI, the CIA and NSA. In the preamble to the ICA, you can read the following explanation about methodology:

When Intelligence Community analysts use words such as "we assess" or "we judge," they are conveying an analytic assessment or judgment

To be clear, the phrase,"We assess", is intel community jargon for "opinion". If there was actual evidence or source material for a judgment the writer of the assessment would state, "According to a reliable source" or "knowledgeable source" or "documentary evidence."

Pay close attention to what the analysts writing the ICA stated about the GRU and Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks:

We assess with high confidence that the GRU used the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and WikiLeaks to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets.

We assess with high confidence that the GRU relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks. Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries.

Not one piece of corroborating intelligence. It is all based on opinion and strong belief. There was no human source report or electronic intercept pointing to a relationship between the GRU and the two alleged creations of the GRU--Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com. Now consider the spin that Robert Mueller put on this opinion in his report on possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Mueller bluffs the unsuspecting reader into believing that it is a proven fact that Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks were Russian assets. But he is relying on a mere opinion from a handpicked group of intel analysts working under the direction of then CIA Director John Brennan.

Here's Mueller's take (I apologize for the lengthy quote but it is important that you read how the Mueller team presents this):

DCLeaks

"The GRU began planning the releases at least as early as April 19, 2016, when Unit 26165 registered the domain dcleaks.com through a service that anonymized the registrant.137 Unit 26165 paid for the registration using a pool of bitcoin that it had mined.138 The dcleaks.com landing page pointed to different tranches of stolen documents, arranged by victim or subject matter. Other dcleaks.com pages contained indexes of the stolen emails that were being released (bearing the sender, recipient, and date of the email). To control access and the timing of releases, pages were sometimes password-protected for a period of time and later made unrestricted to the public.


Starting in June 2016, the GRU posted stolen documents onto the website dcleaks.com, including documents stolen from a number of individuals associated with the Clinton Campaign. These documents appeared to have originated from personal email accounts (in particular, Google and Microsoft accounts), rather than the DNC and DCCC computer networks. DCLeaks victims included an advisor to the Clinton Campaign, a former DNC employee and Clinton Campaign employee, and four other campaign volunteers.139 The GRU released through dcleaks.com thousands of documents, including personal identifying and financial information, internal correspondence related to the"Clinton Campaign and prior political jobs, and fundraising files and information.140


GRU officers operated a Facebook page under the DCLeaks moniker, which they primarily used to promote releases of materials.141 The Facebook page was administered through a small number of preexisting GRU-controlled Facebook accounts.142


GRU officers also used the DCLeaks Facebook account, the Twitter account @dcleaks__, and the email account [email protected] to communicate privately with reporters and other U.S. persons. GRU officers using the DCLeaks persona gave certain reporters early access to archives of leaked files by sending them links and passwords to pages on the dcleaks.com website that had not yet become public. For example, on July 14, 2016, GRU officers operating under the DCLeaks persona sent a link and password for a non-public DCLeaks webpage to a U.S. reporter via the Facebook account.143 Similarly, on September 14, 2016, GRU officers sent reporters Twitter direct messages from @dcleaks_, with a password to another non-public part of the dcleaks.com website.144


The dcleaks.com website remained operational and public until March 2017."

Guccifer 2.0

On June 14, 2016, the DNC and its cyber-response team announced the breach of the DNC network and suspected theft of DNC documents. In the statements, the cyber-response team alleged that Russian state-sponsored actors (which they referred to as "Fancy Bear") were responsible for the breach.145 Apparently in response to that announcement, on June 15, 2016, GRU officers using the persona Guccifer 2.0 created a WordPress blog. In the hours leading up to the launch of that WordPress blog, GRU officers logged into a Moscow-based server used and managed by Unit 74455 and searched for a number of specific words and phrases in English, including "some hundred sheets," "illuminati," and "worldwide known." Approximately two hours after the last of those searches, Guccifer 2.0 published its first post, attributing the DNC server hack to a lone Romanian hacker and using several of the unique English words and phrases that the GRU officers had searched for that day.146

That same day, June 15, 2016, the GRU also used the Guccifer 2.0 WordPress blog to begin releasing to the public documents stolen from the DNC and DCCC computer networks.

The Guccifer 2.0 persona ultimately released thousands of documents stolen from the DNC and DCCC in a series of blog posts between June 15, 2016 and October 18, 2016.147 Released documents included opposition research performed by the DNC (including a memorandum analyzing potential criticisms of candidate Trump), internal policy documents (such as recommendations on how to address politically sensitive issues), analyses of specific congressional races, and fundraising documents. Releases were organized around thematic issues, such as specific states (e.g., Florida and Pennsylvania) that were perceived as competitive in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Beginning in late June 2016, the GRU also used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release documents directly to reporters and other interested individuals. Specifically, on June 27, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 sent an email to the news outlet The Smoking Gun offering to provide "exclusive access to some leaked emails linked [to] Hillary Clinton's staff."148 The GRU later sent the reporter a password and link to a locked portion of the dcleaks.com website that contained an archive of emails stolen by Unit 26165 from a Clinton Campaign volunteer in March 2016.149 "That the Guccifer 2.0 persona provided reporters access to a restricted portion of the DCLeaks website tends to indicate that both personas were operated by the same or a closely-related group of people.150

The GRU continued its release efforts through Guccifer 2.0 into August 2016. For example, on August 15, 2016, the Guccifer 2.0 persona sent a candidate for the U.S. Congress documents related to the candidate's opponent.151 On August 22, 2016, the Guccifer 2.0 persona transferred approximately 2.5 gigabytes of Florida-related data stolen from the DCCC to a U.S. blogger covering Florida politics.152 On August 22, 2016, the Guccifer 2.0 persona sent a U.S. reporter documents stolen from the DCCC pertaining to the Black Lives Matter movement.153"

Wow. Sounds pretty convincing. The documents referencing communications by DCLeaks or Guccifer 2.0 with Wikileaks are real. What is not true is that these entities were GRU assets.

In October 2015 John Brennan reorganized the CIA . As part of that reorganization he created a new directorate--DIRECTORATE OF DIGITAL INNOVATION. Its mission was to "manipulate digital footprints." In other words, this was the Directorate that did the work of creating Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks. One of their specialties, creating Digital Dust.

We also know, thanks to Wikileaks, that the CIA was using software specifically designed to mask CIA activity and make it appear like it was done by a foreign entity. Wikipedia describes the Vault 7 documents :

Vault 7 is a series of documents that WikiLeaks began to publish on 7 March 2017, that detail activities and capabilities of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare. The files, dated from 2013–2016, include details on the agency's software capabilities, such as the ability to compromise cars, smart TVs,[1] web browsers (including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera Software ASA),[2][3][4] and the operating systems of most smartphones (including Apple's iOS and Google's Android), as well as other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux[5][6

One of the tools in Vault 7 carries the innocuous name, MARBLE. Hackernews explains the purpose and function of MARBLE:

Dubbed "Marble," the part 3 of CIA files contains 676 source code files of a secret anti-forensic Marble Framework, which is basically an obfuscator or a packer used to hide the true source of CIA malware.
The CIA's Marble Framework tool includes a variety of different algorithm with foreign language text intentionally inserted into the malware source code to fool security analysts and falsely attribute attacks to the wrong nation.

Marble is used to hamper[ing] forensic investigators and anti-virus companies from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to the CIA," says the whistleblowing site.

"...for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese, but then showing attempts to conceal the use of Chinese, drawing forensic investigators even more strongly to the wrong conclusion," WikiLeaks explains.

So guess what gullible techies "discovered" in mid-June 2016? The meta data in the Guccifer 2.0 communications had "Russian fingerprints."

We still don't know who he is or whether he works for the Russian government, but one thing is for sure: Guccifer 2.0 -- the nom de guerre of the person claiming he hacked the Democratic National Committee and published hundreds of pages that appeared to prove it -- left behind fingerprints implicating a Russian-speaking person with a nostalgia for the country's lost Soviet era.

Exhibit A in the case is this document created and later edited in the ubiquitous Microsoft Word format. Metadata left inside the file shows it was last edited by someone using the computer name "Феликс Эдмундович." That means the computer was configured to use the Russian language and that it was connected to a Russian-language keyboard. More intriguing still, "Феликс Эдмундович" is the colloquial name that translates to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the 20th Century Russian statesman who is best known for founding the Soviet secret police. (The metadata also shows that the purported DNC strategy memo was originally created by someone named Warren Flood, which happens to be the name of a LinkedIn user claiming to provide strategy and data analytics services to Democratic candidates.)

Just use your common sense. If the Russians were really trying to carry out a covert cyberattack, do you really think they are so sloppy and incompetent to insert the name of the creator of the Soviet secret police in the metadata? No. The Russians are not clowns. This was a clumsy attempt to frame the Russians.

Why would the CIA do this? The CIA knew that Podesta's emails had been hacked and were circulating on the internet. But they had no evidence about the identity of the culprit. If they had such evidence, they would have cited it in the 2017 ICA.

The U.S. intelligence community became aware around May 26, 2016 that someone with access to the DNC network was offering those emails to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Julian Assange and people who spoke to him indicate that the person was Seth Rich. Whether or not it was Seth, the Trump Task Force at CIA was aware that the emails, which would be embarrassing to the Clinton campaign, would be released at some time in the future. Hence the motive to create Guccifer 2.0 and pin the blame on Russia.

It is essential to recall the timeline of the alleged Russian intrusion into the DNC network. The only source for the claim that Russia hacked the DNC is a private cyber security firm, CrowdStrike. Here is the timeline for the DNC "hack."

Here are the facts on the public record. They are at odds with the claims of the Intelligence Community:

  1. It was 29 April 2016 , when the DNC claims it became aware its servers had been penetrated. No claim yet about who was responsible. And no claim that there had been a prior warning by the FBI of a penetration of the DNC by Russian military intelligence.
  2. According to CrowdStrike founder , Dimitri Alperovitch, his company first supposedly detected the Russians mucking around inside the DNC server on 6 May 2016. A CrowdStrike intelligence analyst reportedly told Alperovitch that:
    • Falcon had identified not one but two Russian intruders: Cozy Bear, a group CrowdStrike's experts believed was affiliated with the FSB, Russia's answer to the CIA; and Fancy Bear, which they had linked to the GRU, Russian military intelligence.
  3. The Wikileaks data shows that the last message copied from the DNC network is dated Wed, 25 May 2016 08:48:35.
  4. 10 June 2016 --CrowdStrike waited until 10 June 2016 to take concrete steps to clean up the DNC network. Alperovitch told Esquire's Vicky Ward that: 'Ultimately, the teams decided it was necessary to replace the software on every computer at the DNC. Until the network was clean, secrecy was vital. On the afternoon of Friday, June 10, all DNC employees were instructed to leave their laptops in the office."
  5. On June 14, 2016 , Ellen Nakamura, a Washington Post reporter who had been briefed by computer security company hired by the DNC -- Crowdstrike--, wrote:
    • Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach.
    • The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC's system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts.
    • The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some Republican political action committees, U.S. officials said. But details on those cases were not available.
  6. 15 June, 2016 , an internet "personality" self-described as Guccifer 2.0 surfaces and claims to be responsible for the hacks but denies being Russian. The people/entity behind Guccifer 2.0:

The only thing that the Guccifer 2.0 character did not do to declare its Russian heritage was to take out full page ads in the New York Times and Washington Post. But the "forensic" fingerprints that Guccifer 2.0 was leaving behind is not the only inexplicable event.

Time for the common sense standard again. Crowdstrike detected the Russians on the 6th of May, according to CEO Dimitri Alperovitch, but took no steps to shutdown the network, eliminate the malware and clean the computers until 34 days later, i.e., the 10th of June. That is 34 days of inexcusable inaction.

It is only AFTER Julian Assange announces on 12 June 2016 that WikiLeaks has emails relating to Hillary Clinton that DCLeaks or Guccifer 2.0 try to contact Assange.

The actions attributed to DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 should be priority investigative targets for U.S. Attorney John Durham's team of investigators. This potential use of a known CIA tool, developed under Brennan with the sole purpose to obfuscate the source of intrusions, pointing to another nation, as a false flag operation, is one of the actions and issues that U.S. Attorney John Durham should be looking into as a potential act of "Seditious conspiracy. It needs to be done. To quote the CIA, I strongly assess that the only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential election was the CIA, not the GRU.

Posted at 02:13 PM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink

Factotum , 20 December 2019 at 02:45 PM

LJ bottom line: "The only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential election was the CIA, not the GRU."
Paul Damascene , 20 December 2019 at 02:54 PM
Larry, thanks -- vital clarifications and reminders. In your earlier presentation of this material did you not also distinguish between the way actually interagency assessments are titled, and ICA which seemed to have been framed to allow journalists or the unwary to link the ICA with more rigorous standards used by more authentic assessments?
walrus , 20 December 2019 at 03:51 PM
Thank you Larry. You have discovered one more vital key to the conspiracy. We now need the evidence of Julian Assange. He is kept incommunicado and He is being tortured by the British in jail and will be murdered by the American judicial system if he lasts long enough to be extradited.

You can be sure he will be "Epsteined" before he appears in open court because he knows the source of what Wikileaks published. Once he is gone, mother Clinton is in the clear.

Ghost Ship , 20 December 2019 at 04:04 PM
I can understand the GRU or SVR hacking the DNC and other e-mail servers because as intelligence services that is their job, but can anyone think of any examples of Russia (or the Soviet Union) using such information to take overt action?

With the Russians not having the advantages that the NSA does (back doors in all US-designed network hardware/software and taps all over the internet), would Russia reveal anything unless it involved an immediate major national security threat. I doubt that would cover Trump.

[Dec 20, 2019] NSA Whistleblower: "Mueller Report based on fabricated evidence" Former NSA technical chief, Bill Binney, says it looked like the CIA did this, and made it look like the Russians were doing the hack to implicate Russians by Eric Zuesse

Highly recommended!
Looks like CrowdStrike was was to plant the evidence of the Russian hack
Notable quotes:
"... All the evidence we're accumulating clearly says and implies, the US government -- namely the FBI, CIA, the DOJ, and of course State Department -- all these people involved in this hack, bought a dossier and all of the information going forward to the FISA court. ..."
"... All of them knew that this was a fake from the very beginning, because this Guccifer 2.0 character was fabricating it. They were using him plus the Internet Research Agency [IRA] as "supposed trolls of the Russian government". ..."
"... Well, when they sent their lawyers over to challenge that in a court of law, the government failed to prove they had any connection with the Russian government. ..."
"... Then the entire Rosenstein indictment is also a fabrication and a fake and a fraud for the same reasons. The judges seem to be involved in trying to keep this information out of the public domain. ..."
Dec 18, 2019 | off-guardian.org

Larry Johnson & Bill Binney Helping the President Dismantle the Empire - YouTube

Streamed live on Dec 12, 2019

On December 12th, the retired NSA whistleblower and former Technical Director of the NS A, Bill Binney asserted (at 39:00-44:00 in the above video):

BILL BINNEY: I basically have always been saying that all of this Russian hack never happened, but we have some more evidence coming out recently.

We haven't published it yet, but what we have seen is that there are at least five items that we've found that were produced by Guccifer 2.0 back on June 15th, where they had the Russian fingerprints in them, suggesting the Russians made the hack. Well, we found the same five items published by Wikileaks in the Podesta emails.

Those items do not have the Russian fingerprints, which directly implies that Guccifer 2.0 was inserting these into the files to make it look like the Russians did this hack. Taking that into account with all the other evidence we have; like the download speeds from Guccifer 2.0 were too fast, and they couldn't be managed by the web.

And that the files he was putting together and saying that he actually hacked, the two files he said he had were really one file, and he was playing with the data; moving it to two different files to claim two hacks.

Taking that into account with the fabrication of the Russian fingerprints, it leads us back to inferring that in fact the marble framework out of the Vault 7 compromise of CIA hacking routines was a possible user in this case.

In other words, it looked like the CIA did this, and that it was a matter of the CIA making it look like the Russians were doing the hack. So, when you look at that and also look at the DNC emails that were published by Wikileaks that have this phat file format in them, all 35,813 of these emails have rounded off times to the nearest even second.

That's a phat file format property; that argues that those files were, in fact, downloaded to a thumb drive or CD-rom and physically transported before Wikileaks posted them. Which again argues that it wasn't a hack.

So, all of the evidence we're finding is clearly evidence that the Russians were not in fact hacking; it was probably our own people. It's very hard for us to get this kind of information out. The mainstream media won't cover it; none of them will. It's very hard. We get some bloggers to do that and some radio shows.

Also, I put all of this into a sworn affidavit in the Roger Stone case. I did that because all of the attack on him was predicated on him being connected with this Russian hack which was false to being with.

All the evidence we're accumulating clearly says and implies, the US government -- namely the FBI, CIA, the DOJ, and of course State Department -- all these people involved in this hack, bought a dossier and all of the information going forward to the FISA court.

All of them knew that this was a fake from the very beginning, because this Guccifer 2.0 character was fabricating it. They were using him plus the Internet Research Agency [IRA] as "supposed trolls of the Russian government".

Well, when they sent their lawyers over to challenge that in a court of law, the government failed to prove they had any connection with the Russian government.

They basically were chastised by the judge for fabricating a charge against this company. So, if you take the IRA and the trolls away from that argument, and Guccifer 2.0, then the entire Mueller report is a provable fabrication; because it's based on Guccifer 2.0 and the IRA.

Then the entire Rosenstein indictment is also a fabrication and a fake and a fraud for the same reasons. The judges seem to be involved in trying to keep this information out of the public domain.

So, we have a really extensive shadow government here at work, trying to keep the understanding and knowledge of what's really happening away from the public of the United States. That's the really bad part. And the mainstream media is a participant in this; they're culpable.

The CIA-edited and written Wikipedia, in its article about Binney , accuses him by saying:

His dissent from the consensus view that Russia interfered with the 2016 US election appears to be based on Russian disinformation."

They provide no footnote or linked-to source for their allegation

Ever since Binney went public criticizing U.S. intelligence agencies, they have been trying to discredit him.

Thus far, however, their efforts have been nothing more than insinuations against his person, without any specific allegation of counter-evidence that discredits any of his actual assertions.

Martin Usher ,

The "Russia" thing was never able to differentiate between "Russians" and "the Russian state". Its a product of a Cold War mindset that can't conceive of that country without it being 150 million puppets all controlled by string from an office in the Kremlin. In reality its just another country, one that offers goods and services to the world just like anywhere else. So while we just assume that a company like SCL (Cambridge Analytica's parent) would have personnel from and offices in many countries and have contracts with various political parties in many countries we just can't seem to get our heads around the idea that a company operating inside -- or even headquartered -- in Russia isn't automatically some kind of Kremlin front. (Well, yes, it could be but the same way that a company in the UK could be a front for the UK government, e.g. the Gateside Mill story in Scotland's Daily Record).

Another factor that might come into play is the idea that 'analytics', the key to business on the Internet, is actually nothing more than a sophisticated form of traffic analysis, a well known espionage tool. Any government worth its salt that's likely to be on the receiving end of a propaganda campaign would be very interested in understanding the reach of such a tool and learning how to manage that reach. So its possible that if we find the Russian government taking out advertisements on Facebook through a front company to 'influence' people its likely that they're more interested in evaluating that reach than the simplistic view that they're 'trying to influence an election' (its not as if foreign interests or even governments ever try to influence elections)(color revolution, anyone?). Allowing unfettered access by these tools to one's nation is a bit like taking down one's defenses -- fine if you're happy with vassal state ("ally") status but not if you're potentially an adversary -- so its important to know how to control it, no less important than having a decent air defense system.

RobG ,

And in a further retort to all this nonsense, Harold Wilson, the last socialist leader of the Labour Party back in the 1970s, won four general elections, a feat that's never been repeated by any party leader.

Here's the Wiki nonsense/propaganda

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wilson

And here's a more historical record

https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/harold-wilson

This does directly relate to this thread, because the Americans overthrew Wilson. Just as they have done now with Corbyn. You really need to take your country back, whether you're a Brit or American.

paul ,

We are fortunate that there are still persons of integrity even in the spook organisations – Binney, Kyriakou, Manning, Snowden. Without them and Assange a lot of this criminality would never have seen the light of day.

Jack_Garbo ,

Diagnosing the disease does not imply the cure has been found. You simply know how much sicker you are. Not helpful. Nothing has changed despite all the revelations of intelligence shenanigans. Apologies do not cure the patient when they're still spreading the disease. In fact, the opposite.

paul ,

Wikipedia holds out the begging bowl to anybody who uses it now. I don't know why – they get plenty of CIA and Soros money.

RobG ,

All they've got to do now is wheel out the psychopath and war criminal, Tony Blair, to say: "it's the Russians wot dunnit".

Oh my God

Jen ,

They don't need to, they have Tony Blair's fellow Brit psycho Boris Johnson to go on autopilot and blame the Russians the moment something happens and just before London Met start their investigations.

ZigZagWanderer ,

@ 1.15.58 "Intelligence community has become a self licking ice cream cone"

Larry Johnson and Bill Binney always worth listening to. Try to find the time.

Antonym ,

True except for Trump. Just look how hard deep state tries to unseat him.
Damaging your own puppet is not normal for a puppeteer.

J_Garbo ,

I suspected that Deep State has at least two opposing factions. The Realistists want him to break up the empire, turn back into a republic; the Delusionals want to extend the empire, continue to exploit and destroy the world. If so, the contradictions, reversals, incoherence make sense. IMO as I said.

Gary Weglarz ,

I predict that all Western MSM will begin to accurately and vocally cover Mr. Binney's findings about this odious and treasonous U.S. government psyop at just about the exact time that – "hell freezes over" – as they say.

Thanks for posting this latest info.

[Dec 20, 2019] The purpose of manufactured hysteria in the US is to obfuscate the issues important to the Deep State like destroying the first amendment, renewing the 'Patriot' act, extremely increasing the war/hegemony budget, etc

Highly recommended!
Dec 20, 2019 | www.unz.com

Realist , says: December 19, 2019 at 5:17 pm GMT

The Year of Manufactured Hysteria

The purpose of manufactured hysteria in the US is to obfuscate the issues important to the Deep State like destroying the first amendment, renewing the 'Patriot' act, extremely increasing the war/hegemony budget, etc.

The unimportant internecine squabbles of the 'two parties' strengthens the false perception that there is a choice when voting.

[Dec 19, 2019] Fiona Hill reveals herself as primitive and greedy neocon hawks who want to reactivate a new Cold War very badly to sustain her own well being as a rabid warmonger for MIC

Notable quotes:
"... Putin has indeed been repeatedly "rebuffed" by the West for proposing anything that makes Russia a leading equal in its sphere. This shows not limited contacts with the West, but rather ongoing and painful ones. ..."
"... In truth, Vladimir Putin is the Russian Ronald Reagan, bidding his citizens to "stand tall" against enemies from without and within working against the homeland. His stance on Ukraine, arming its "contras" in a border war against an enemy "satellite regime", may make him look the intolerant war jingo; but thus did Ronald Reagan appear outside the US. Ironically it's Reagan partisans who don't grasp the working parallels. In general, I can recommend this book as a good introduction on Vladimir Putin, but it's hardly the last word and certainly not the definitive narrative. ..."
Dec 19, 2019 | www.amazon.com

karenann , August 8, 2015

A deeply biased book

Hill and Gaddy are pretty good scholars. They do a good job of providing a psychological profile of Vladimir Putin and the way he operates in the Kremlin. But they have their limitations. One of the more annoying aspects of the book is that the authors return again and again both to Putin's graduate thesis on an American management book and his 1999 manifesto on his millenial goals for Russia. A better set of writers would have covered both subjects in one section and then moved on. But Hill and Gaddy sprinkle references to these documents about five times each throughout the book, which leads me to suspect that they are padding what would otherwise be a much shorter book.

As I was reading, I felt that there was a strong bias against Putin and Russia by the authors, but I couldn't quite pinpoint their slant until the last sentence, which is a doozy:

"The onus will now be on the West to shore up its own home defenses, reduce the economic and political vulnerabilities, and create its own contingency plans if it wants to counter Vladimir Putin's new twenty-first century warfare."

For anyone who is a Russian scholar, this is proof that the authors get Russia very wrong. They reveal themselves to be in the neocon camp of hawks who want to reactivate a new Cold War very badly. And in their analysis, they ignore the fact that Russia as a country is in fact deeply defensive country far more concerned with its internal boundaries and control than some aggressive Soviet power after World War II. To be sure, Mr. Putin is no choir boy. Interestingly enough, the authors do not fully investigate the potentially criminal behavior that Putin performed with Russia's war on Chechnya. Hill and Gaddy could have strengthened their case if they had included some deeper analysis of Putin's behavior on this troublesome part of the Russian Empire. But instead they were intent on plowing their own rut, which while somewhat interesting -- ultimately becomes a little bit too pedantic.

I am reminded of some books in the 1950s that were secretly backed by the CIA, and this book certainly feels like it has the same flavor. Hill and Gaddy totally ignore Russian scholars like Stephen Cohen in his analysis of the Russian situation, which is totally the opposite of mainstream thinking unfortunately these days. But in ignoring what Cohen has to say, the predominant attitude of the American and European foreign policy establishment is in lock step with Hill and Gaddy, which is why the book has been so heavily publicized.

The neocon vision of what's wrong with Russia is so biased that it also ignores the writings of such foreign policy figures as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Briezinski, former US Secretarys of State, both of whom are much more closer in their visions of Russia to Cohen than they are to Hill and Gaddy.

Yes, this book is all about sticking to the Rooskies, unfortunately. And the hidden motivator are all of the defense contracts that NATO can suck up, as well as all the bankers' books in reaming the Ukrainian economy as badly as they've reamed Greece. But the authors never tell you that this is their motivation, until the last paragraph.

Ultimately, this is an unsatisfying work.

karenann, 2 years ago (Edited)

Kissinger has had the good sense to state that the best hope for peace in the region is to have Ukraine as a totally neutral country, similar to Finland before the USSR collapsed. The Budapest Memorandum of NATO calls for the full military integration of Ukraine and Georgia.

As a thought experiment, what if the Soviets undermined the provincial governments of Alberta and British Columbia, and then wanted to include these governments in the Warsaw Pact? What do you think the reaction of the US would be?

R. L. Huff , April 23, 2015
OK but blinkered

- look at Vladimir Putin and Mr. Putin's Russia. The book is based on intensive research and interviews with Putin, but I find it skewed by the Western biases it brings to the table. Yet it's not a demonization, as is so much of the Western Putin literature. It gives him credit for standing by the multi-racial and cultural realities of post-Soviet Russia. Compared to the real hardcore nationalists, Putin in fact has come across as a domestic liberal. The rising tide of Russian arch-nationalism, however, has taken its toll. Authors Hill and Gaddy correctly assess Putin's playing the nationalist card as a political manouver to keep one step ahead of his opponents - most of whom are not pro-Western liberal dissidents by any means. Courting the Russian Orthodox Church in recent years was one such strategy.

Yet the authors see only politics in Mr. Putin's tactics, and play down the West's own role in making him an antagonist. They take him to task for painting the Ukrainian insurrection of 2014 as a "fascist coup," and for denouncing Ukrainian nationalist partisan Stepan Bandera as a Nazi collaborator. Bandera and Hitler may have never met, but this was not necessary for the arming and use of Bandera's OUN to commit atrocities and war crimes on then-Soviet territory. Contrary to the authors' whitewash, Bandera's later persecution by Nazis consisted of special treatment in German camps, held on ice for postwar use. Of relevance is that the "regime change" of 2014 was largely the work of west Ukrainians - the backbone of the OUN movement and the very folks who today make Bandera a national hero. When he paints west Ukraine as again collaborating with Russia's enemy, Putin stands on solid historical ground. The West continues destabilizing actions all the while it blames Putin for the same.

The authors also lecture us on Putin's inability to grasp "Western values" as the root of his refusal to take the West on its own terms; on "how little Putin understands about us - our motives, our mentality, and, also, our values" (p.385) I rather think Putin grasps these "motives, mentality, and values" very well, as they seem inseparable from European economic hegemony and NATO expansion. His managed democracy comes off looking rather clean cut compared to US politics following the Citizens United ruling, where American oligarch David Koch engineered a fundamental change for the worse via the Supreme Court. In foreign policy, Putin has indeed been repeatedly "rebuffed" by the West for proposing anything that makes Russia a leading equal in its sphere. This shows not limited contacts with the West, but rather ongoing and painful ones.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking but tragically familiar. It's rather the West's (and the authors') failure to grasp regional history, and Putin's actions based on it, that fuel the "misunderstanding." Ukraine, for instance, had strong nationalist animosity toward the "Moskali" long before the 1930s holodomor/famine. Crimea was not transferred to Ukraine out of any degree of recognition of said suffering, as the authors allege on p. 367; but as part of a geo-political manouver to Russify east Ukraine with more "loyal" ethnic Russians, exactly as in the Baltic states.

His aggressive handling of terrorists within Chechnya is "decried" by the West, the authors note. Yet within a decade the US and its NATO partners would be pursuing an aggressive course in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen that make Russia look the provincial amateur. Putin in fact is *not* trying to recreate the USSR, as so often charged by Western pundits with an axe to grind, nor even the old Russian empire. His strategic thinking is dominated by security rationales. A wider invasive course would only threaten Russian security. At all times he sees his actions as defensive responses. If this is self-serving, it only puts him in good company: recall the American angst over the "dissident" Dixie Chicks; the livid anger over Edward Snowden.

In truth, Vladimir Putin is the Russian Ronald Reagan, bidding his citizens to "stand tall" against enemies from without and within working against the homeland. His stance on Ukraine, arming its "contras" in a border war against an enemy "satellite regime", may make him look the intolerant war jingo; but thus did Ronald Reagan appear outside the US. Ironically it's Reagan partisans who don't grasp the working parallels. In general, I can recommend this book as a good introduction on Vladimir Putin, but it's hardly the last word and certainly not the definitive narrative.

Anon II, 4 years ago (Edited)

It is refreshing to read something on Russia written by a reviewer who knows what he is talking about. This book is full of data, but the authors lack any intellectual basis on which to organize it. They are trying to publish a book in which there will be reader interest, but they really have nothing to say. If you are eager to make an enemy of Russia, this book will be useful to you. If you are simply trying to understand what is happening, it won't be.

D.B.4 years ago

Thank you for an excellent countervailing perspective!

[Dec 19, 2019] MIC lobbyism (which often is presented as patriotism) is the last refuge of scoundrels

Highly recommended!
Dec 19, 2019 | angrybearblog.com

likbez, December 19, 2019 6:58 pm

Afghan war demonstrated that the USA got into the trap, the Catch 22 situation: it can't stop following an expensive and self-destructive positive feedback loop of threat inflation and larger and large expenditures on MIC, because there is no countervailing force for the MIC since WWII ended. Financial oligarchy is aligned with MIC.

This is the same suicidal grip of MIC on the country that was one of the key factors in the collapse of the USSR means that in this key area the USA does not have two party system, It is a Uniparty: a singe War party with two superficially different factions.

Feeding and care MIC is No.1 task for both. Ordinary Americans wellbeing does matter much for either party. New generation of Americans is punished with crushing debt and low paying jobs. They do not care that people over 50 who lost their jobs are essentially thrown out like a garbage.

"41 Million people in the US suffer from hunger and lack of food security"–US Dept. of Agriculture. FDR addressed the needs of this faction of the population when he delivered his One-Third of a Nation speech for his 2nd Inaugural. About four years later, FDR expanded on that issue in his Four Freedoms speech: 1.Freedom of speech; 2.Freedom of worship; 3.Freedom from want; 4.Freedom from fear.

Items 3 and 4 are probably unachievable under neoliberalism. And fear is artificially instilled to unite the nation against the external scapegoat much like in Orwell 1984. Currently this is Russia, later probably will be China. With regular minutes of hate replaced by Rachel Maddow show ;-)

Derailing Tulsi had shown that in the USA any politician, who try to challenge MIC, will be instantly attacked by MIC lapdogs in MSM and neutered in no time.

One interesting tidbit from Fiona Hill testimony is that neocons who dominate the USA foreign policy establishment make their living off threat inflation. They literally are bought by MIC, which indirectly finance Brookings institution, Atlantic Council and similar think tanks. And this isn't cheap cynicism. It is simply a fact. Rephrasing Samuel Johnson's famous quote, we can say, "MIC lobbyism (which often is presented as patriotism) is the last refuge of scoundrels."

[Dec 19, 2019] Historically the ability of unelected, unaccountable, secretive bureaucracies (aka the "Deep State") to exercise their own policy without regard for the public or elected officials, often in defiance of these, has always been the hallmark of the destruction of democracy and incipient tyranny.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Today's Deep State most resembles the colonial administrations during the heyday of European imperialism. These too worked to run their own secret foreign policy, and to bring their power to bear on domestic policy as well. ..."
"... Impeachment, and the pro-bureaucracy anti-democracy campaign related to it, besides its more petty purposes (distraction from real social problems; forestalling Sanders), is the culmination of technocracy's attempted coup against a president who, even though he agrees with this cabal on all policy matters, is considered too unreliable, too undisciplined, too damn honest about the evil of the US empire. If they can take him down, they think they can restore the full business-as-usual status quo including the compliance of the rest of the world. ..."
Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Russ , Dec 18 2019 22:00 utc | 19

Historically the ability of unelected, unaccountable, secretive bureaucracies (aka the "Deep State") to exercise their own policy without regard for the public or elected officials, often in defiance of these, has always been the hallmark of the destruction of democracy and incipient tyranny.

Today's Deep State most resembles the colonial administrations during the heyday of European imperialism. These too worked to run their own secret foreign policy, and to bring their power to bear on domestic policy as well.

Although both halves of the One-Party really want the effective tyranny of state and corporate bureaucracies, it's not surprising that it's the Democrats (along with the MSM) taking the lead in openly defending the tyrannical proposition that the CIA should be running its own foreign (and implicitly domestic) policy, and that the president should be just a figurehead which follows orders. That goes with the Democrats' more avowedly technocratic style, and it goes with the ratchet effect whereby it's usually Democrats which push the policy envelope toward ever greater inequality, ecocide and tyranny.

Now is a time of rising irredentism and the decline of all the ideas of globalization and technocracy, though the reality is likely to hang on for awhile. The whole Deep State-Zionist-Russia-Deranged-Trump-Deranged-MSM-social media censorship campaign is globalization trying to maintain its monopoly of ideas by force, since it knows it can never win in a free clash of ideas.

Impeachment, and the pro-bureaucracy anti-democracy campaign related to it, besides its more petty purposes (distraction from real social problems; forestalling Sanders), is the culmination of technocracy's attempted coup against a president who, even though he agrees with this cabal on all policy matters, is considered too unreliable, too undisciplined, too damn honest about the evil of the US empire. If they can take him down, they think they can restore the full business-as-usual status quo including the compliance of the rest of the world.

Since impeachment's going to fail, we can expect the system to try other ways.

james , Dec 19 2019 1:51 utc | 57

hey b... i like your title - "How The Deep State Sunk The Democratic Party" ... could change it to" How the Deep State Sunk the USA" could work just as well...

Seven of the 11 security state representatives who had joined the Democrats in 2018 gave the impulse for impeachment.

is this intentional?? it sort of looks like it...

good quote from @ 26 lk - "The contradictions of US empire and global capitalism cannot be mitigated by either more liberal strategies or realist ones."

ptb , Dec 19 2019 2:07 utc | 62
@babyl-on 35
yes that is about right. The top power networks are all a tight mix of names from govt, MIC, and private equity (incl. top 2-3 investment banks). With the latter group naturally paying the salaries of the whole policy making ecosystem, and holding the positions that select future generations who will eventually take their place.

They want the security of knowing noone in the world will mess with them. This necessitates that noone in the world *can* mess with them. Pretty straightforward from there.

[Dec 19, 2019] Putin, Putin, Putin under each bed

Dec 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

The EveryThing Bubble , 57 minutes ago link

GOP: Government Of Putin.
RNC: Russian National Committee

Zero Schmeero , 54 minutes ago link

Like anyone believes the words of a lying *** that upvotes itself. Rev. 2:9 and 3:9, words from a real ***. That must just eat you alive khazar.

sticky_pickles , 54 minutes ago link

DNC. Democratic Nation of China

attah-boy-Luther , 2 minutes ago link

Led by Feinstein and her driver....

silverer , 1 hour ago link

Aha! PROOF! Putin runs the US Senate now! Hear all about it on the Rachel Maddow show.

[Dec 19, 2019] Horowitz put the telescope to his blind eye, its an old deep state trick that Lord Nelson used in an illegal war that the British mythologize about

Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

uncle tungsten , Dec 19 2019 6:17 utc | 81

evilempire #40

Horowitz put the telescope to his blind eye, its an old deep state trick that Lord Nelson used in an illegal war that the British mythologize about. IMO Horowitz is a whitewash man and there most likely will be questions that Durham will be asking Priestap IF that is the Giuliani plan. Wont hold my breath though. Trump seems to be acting MAD as hell but then so do wrestlers in their fake as fake can be.

[Dec 19, 2019] Priestap has testified that he inherited operation crossfire hurricane. But Horowitz's finding that there was no bias in opening the investigation was almost exclusively based on finding no bias in Priestap

Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

evilempire , Dec 18 2019 23:48 utc | 40

There is one glaring contradiction that I did not see addressed in the Horowitz hearing. Priestap has testified that he inherited (page 14 of the pdf) operation crossfire hurricane. If he inherited the investigation then how could he have played any role in opening crossfire hurricane? Yet in the FISA report, Horowitz's finding that there was no bias in opening the investigation was almost exclusively based on finding no bias in Priestap. I have not seen this contradiction addressed anywhere.

[Dec 19, 2019] Senate hearings give impression that the whole sordid, nasty conspiracy seems on the verge of being exposed, maybe as high as Obama himself, although he is just a puppet himself

Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

evilempire , Dec 18 2019 22:32 utc | 28

If anyone was watching The Horowitz hearing in the senate today it would be hard to conclude that RussiaGate and Ukrainegate will not have serious consequences going forward.

The whole sordid, nasty conspiracy seems on the verge of being exposed, maybe as high as Obama himself, although he is just a puppet himself, and indictments are sure to follow. I don't see how anyone could think that this will not be catastrophic for the democratic party.

[Dec 19, 2019] "I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." Robert J. McCloskey, U.S. State Department spokesman. From a press briefing during the Vietnam war.

Dec 19, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

It still amazes me... that people actually think impeachment accomplishes anything other than diverting attention from the Dems giving Trump everything he wants.

Kayfabe.

Impeachment without conviction means next to nothing.

The Senate will not convict. Trumps chances of being re-elected are continuing to improve as Democratic Party insiders work overtime to see to it that Bernie Sanders has to fight the Republican Party, a MSM that either dismisses or ignores his candidacy, AND the Democratic Party which has, once again, stacked the deck against him.

[Dec 19, 2019] The truth is never as interesting as wild speculation

Dec 19, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

WoodsDweller on Wed, 12/18/2019 - 9:30pm

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/trump-has-joined-the-losers-of-presiden...

... Never-Trump conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin released a scorching assessment ... "Even Trump knows he will be lumped in with the 'losers' in the presidential history rankings such as Richard Nixon and Andrew Johnson," wrote Rubin. "Impeachment will define his presidency, dwarfing any other foreign or domestic action. No wonder he rages against a speaker he is powerless to stop. His worst nightmare is to be humiliated, and if not now, history certainly will regard him as a pitiful, damaged man utterly unfit for the role he won through a series of improbable events ... Just as Watergate figures ... were lionized as defenders of the Constitution, so too will Pelosi and House Democrats ... be among those admired for their lucidity, intellect and character. ... For every clownish, contemptible, screeching and dishonest House Republican, there is a sober, admirable, restrained and honest Democrat.
"No letter, no tweet, no Fox News spin can repair the reputations of Trump enablers," Rubin wrote. The right-wing media that cheered them on will, like outlets that rooted for Jim Crow and demonized Freedom Riders, be shunned by decent, freedom-loving people who reaffirm objective reality. The Republican Party will be known not as the Party of Lincoln but the Party of Trump, a quisling party that lost its bearings and its soul to defend an unhinged narcissist.

[Dec 19, 2019] Thiessen to Comey: You weren't sloppy, you intentionally falsified evidence

When tectonic plates of US politics shift, they can crash such a miserable puppets of CIA as Comey.
Notable quotes:
"... No no. These are not mistakes but rather deliberate criminal activity ..."
Dec 19, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Ballsdeep Singh , 2 days ago

This guy is neck deep in the attempted coup to overthrow a duly elected president

Nathan Pickrell , 2 days ago

Why continue this interview? He is still lying, he is so full of himself its nuts!

ensign j , 2 days ago

No no. These are not mistakes but rather deliberate criminal activity

Leigh Ann Everett , 1 day ago

Comey knew that everything was wrong and illegal. Once again, he is lying.

Red Oz , 1 day ago

Why is Roger Stone in prison and Comey is a free man?

[Dec 19, 2019] Impeachment should be viewed is the context of a larger effort to initiate the new McCarthyism.

Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jackrabbit , Dec 18 2019 21:58 utc | 16

b:
Trump's letter notes that talk about impeachment started as soon as he stepped into office:

IMO the Deep State wanted to initiate a new McCarthyism.

Russiagate was the means to do so and that means that Impeachment was always a possibility (though likely a red-herring, as I explain below).

IMO After the Mueller investigation progressives pressed for Impeachment but establishment Democratics (led by Pelosi and Hillary) wouldn't allow it. People were (rightfully) asking why establishment Democrats were protecting Trump.

With this in mind, Ukrainegate is a convenient diversion from Russiagate while providing the Impeachment satisfaction that progressives had clamored for.

It's difficult NOT to notice that ...

... America First Trump actually furthered Russiagate when he hired Manafort (who was known to have worked for pro-Russian Parties in Ukraine and had NO recent experience in US elections) and called upon Russia to publish Hillary's emails (which were KNOWN to contain top-secret information - making any publication a crime under US law);

... and America First Trump furthered Ukrainegate by the mentioning the name of an announced political opponent when talking about investigating corruption on a call with Zelensky.

One might excuse this in many ways: Trump's ego; his unfamiliarity with politics and statecraft; or just bad luck. But one can also see these actions, in a larger context, as disturbing part of the effort to initiate the new McCarthyism.

[Dec 19, 2019] The New York Times reported tonight that federal prosecutor John Durham is investigating former CIA Director John Brennan's role in the 2016 election. Durham has called for Brennan's emails, call logs and other documents.

Dec 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Teamtc321 , 12 minutes ago link

BREAKING BIG: John Durham Is Investigating Former CIA Director John Brennan's Role in 2016 Election Interference and His LIES TO CONGRESS! (Video)

The New York Times reported tonight that federal prosecutor John Durham is investigating former CIA Director John Brennan's role in the 2016 election. Durham has called for Brennan's emails, call logs and other documents.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/12/breaking-big-john-durham-is-investigating-former-cia-directors-role-in-russia-collusion-hoax-and-his-lies-to-congress-video/

[Dec 19, 2019] Durham investigation vs impeachment

Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

uncle tungsten , Dec 19 2019 4:38 utc | 76

psychohistorian #73
I read in a couple of places today that the strategy of the Dems is to not forward the impeachment to the Senate for an indeterminate amount of time......let the stew, the Senate and Trump simmer a bit.....more kabuki for the masses while the public continues to be screwed economically.

Thank you for that observation and I have seen that idea about the traps too.

I don't see the impeachment as being held up for too long as Durham will likely press on hard with his prosecutions and may even go after Biden for wire fraud or some such very soon. The minute Durham moves the demoncrazies will try to obstruct, They dont have much dry powder right now but then they are good at imagining things so they might try and manifest more powder. If speculation confirms that it is a kabuki hoax to kill their own leftish insurgency then that too will emerge mighty soon.

I am unfamiliar with the USA system but if the Congress has made a clear resolution and its next destination is normally the Senate then what is to stop the Senate Leader Mitch McConnel from tabling the decision of the Congress for immediate vote. Does the impeachment referral to the Senate actually have to be moved by the Minority Leader representing the Democrats or is that just a polite convention?

Good to see Tulsi keep her distance from this turd just dropped the Congress.

[Dec 19, 2019] Never Trust a Failing Empire by Federico Pieraccini

Dec 17, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org

The Washington Post , through documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, has published a long investigation into Afghanistan. Journalists have collected over 400 testimonies from American diplomats, NATO generals and other NATO personnel, that show that reports about Afghanistan were falsified to deceive the public about the real situation on the ground.

After the tampering with and falsification of the report of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), we are witnessing another event that will certainly discomfit those who have hitherto relied on the official reports of the Pentagon, the US State Department and international organizations like the OPCW for the last word.

There are very deliberate reasons for such disinformation campaigns. In the case of the OPCW, as I wrote some time back, the aim was to paint the Syrian government as the fiend and the al-Qaeda- and Daesh-linked "moderate rebels" as the innocent souls, thereby likely justifying a responsibility-to-protect armed intervention by the likes of the US, the UK and France. In such circumstances, the standing and status of the reporting organization (like the OPCW) is commandeered to validate Western propaganda that is duly disseminated through the corporate-controlled mainstream media.

In this particular case, various Western capitals colluded with the OPCW to lay the groundwork for the removal of Assad and his replacement with the al-Nusra Front as well as the very same al-Qaeda- and Daesh-linked armed opposition officially responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

As if the massaging of the OPCW reports were not enough in themselves to provoke international outrage, this dossier serves to give aid and comfort to jihadi groups supported by the Pentagon who are known to be responsible for the worst human-rights abuses, as seen in Syria and Iraq in the last 6 years.

False or carefully manipulated reports paint a picture vastly different from the reality on the ground. The United States has never really declared war on Islamic terrorism, its proclamations of a "War on Terror" notwithstanding. In reality, it has simply used this justification to occupy or destabilize strategically important areas of the world in the interests of maintaining US hegemony, intending in so doing to hobble the energy policies and national security of rival countries like China, Iran and the Russian Federation.

The Post investigation lays bare how the US strategy had failed since its inception, the data doctored to represent a reality very different from that on the ground. The inability of the United States to clean up Afghanistan is blamed by the Post on incorrect military planning and incorrect political choices. While this could certainly be the case, the Post's real purpose in its investigation is to harm Trump, even as it reveals the Pentagon's efforts to continue its regional presence for grand geopolitical goals by hiding inconvenient truths.

The real issue lies in the built-in mendacity of the bureaucratic and military apparatus of the United States. No general has ever gone on TV to say that the US presence in Iraq is needed to support any war against Iran; or that Afghanistan is a great point of entry for the destabilization of Eurasia, because this very heart of the Heartland is crucial to the Sino-Russian transcontinental integration projects like the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Belt and Road Initiative. In the same vein, the overthrow of the Syrian government would have ensured Israel a greater capacity to expand its interests in the Middle East, as well as to weaken Iran's main regional ally.

The Post investigation lays bare the hypocrisy of the military-industrial complex as well as the prevailing political establishments of Europe and the United States. These parties are not interested in human rights, the wellbeing of civilians or justice in general. Their only goal is to try and maintain their global hegemony indefinitely by preventing any other powers from being able to realize their potential and thereby pose a threat to Atlanticist preeminence.

The war in Iraq was launched to destabilize the Middle East, China's energy-supply basin crucial to fueling her future growth. The war in Syria served the purpose of further dismantling the Middle East to favor Saudi Arabia and Israel, the West's main strategic allies in the Persian Gulf. The war in Afghanistan was to slow down the Eurasian integration of China and Russia. And the war in Ukraine was for the purposes of generating chaos and destruction on Russia's border, with the initial hope of wresting the very strategically area of Crimea from Russia.

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and this has been on full display in recent times. Almost all of Washington's recent strategic objectives have ended up producing results worse than the status quo ante. In Iraq there is the type of strong cooperation between Baghdad and Tehran reminiscent of the time prior to 1979. Through Hezbollah, Iran has strengthened its position in Syria in defense of Damascus. Moscow has found itself playing the role of crucial decider in the Middle East (and soon in North Africa), until only a few years ago the sole prerogative of Washington. Turkey's problems with NATO, coupled with Tel Aviv's open relation with Moscow are both a prime example of Washington's diminishing influence in the region and Moscow's corresponding increase in influence.

The situation in Afghanistan is not very different, with a general recognition that peace is the only option for the region being reflected in the talks between the Afghans, the Taliban, the Russians, Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis. Beijing and Moscow have well known for over a decade the real intent behind Washington's presence in the country, endeavoring to blunt its impact.

The Post investigation only further increases the public's war weariness, the war in Afghanistan now having lasted 18 years, the longest war in US history. Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Post , is a bitter opponent of Trump and wants the president to come clean on the Afghanistan debacle by admitting that the troops cannot be withdrawn. Needless to say, admitting such would not help Trump's strategy for the 2020 election. Trump cannot afford to humiliate the US military, given that it, along with the US dollar, is his main weapon of "diplomacy". Were it to be revealed that some illiterate peasants holed up in caves and armed with AK-47s some 40 years ago are responsible for successfully keeping the most powerful army in history at bay, all of Washington's propaganda, disseminated by a compliant media, will cease to be of any effect. Such a revelation would also humiliate military personnel, an otherwise dependable demographic Trump cannot afford to alienate.

The Washington Post performed a service to the country by shedding light on the disinformation used to sustain endless war. But the Post's intentions are also political, seeking to undermine Trump's electoral chances by damaging Trump's military credentials as well as his standing amongst military personnel. What Washington's elite and the Post do not know, or perhaps prefer to ignore, is that such media investigations directed against political opponents actually end up doing irreparable damage to the political and military prestige of the United States.

In other words, when journalist do their job, the military industrial complex finds it difficult to lie its way through wars and failures, but when a country relies on Hollywood to sustain its make-believe world, as well as on journalists on the CIA payroll, on compliant publishers and on censored news, then any such revelations of forbidden truths threaten to bring the whole facade crashing down.

[Dec 18, 2019] Russophobia vs Anti-Semitism: How would it fly if Trump's EO instead forbade criticism of Russia in schools and colleges in USA?

I think if Russians adopt a similar to IHRA definition of thier own and then pursue trangressors through the courts, the Guardian would be shut down within a month or so.
Dec 18, 2019 | www.unz.com

thotmonger , says: December 17, 2019 at 7:02 am GMT

How would it fly if Trump's EO instead forbade criticism of Russia in schools and colleges in USA?

Very strange that something like this could ever be written and signed. A fast budding and explicit "Judeo lese majetse" is unfolding before our eyes. And if it is meant to protect Jews as a race and nation, then that will naturally induce people to see them as exactly that: a separate nation. Will this quell concern about loyalty or raise more doubt?

p.s. In 2018, Israeli army expert snipers made a turkey shoot of Palestinians marching on the 70th anniversary of their people being ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homeland. A "shoot to cripple" policy only murdered several score but, with high speed dum dum bullets, they blasted bloody wreckage through the flesh and bones of many thousands of unarmed people. You may not see them on your porno channels and game shows, but a large number will be crippled for the rest of their lives.

This is a good example of a very recent state sponsored atrocity on a large scale. Students in our schools and colleges might want to examine this in a variety of ways. The history, legality, ethics, demographic dilemmas etc. Sure, it might roll over into some criticism and activism, e.g. DBS Israel, but is that to be prohibited by our government? What sort of citizens are our schools and colleges supposed to be cultivating if students are not permitted to exercise their freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of conscience?

https://ahtribune.com/world/north-africa-south-west-asia/palestine/2297-israel-shoot-to-cripple-policy-in-gaza.html

[Dec 17, 2019] Neocons like car salespeople have a stereotypical reputation for lacking credibility because ther profession is to lie in order to sell weapons to the publin, much like used car saleme lie to sell cars

Highly recommended!
Dec 17, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Dec 16 2019 20:51 utc | 22

Neocons lie should properly be called "threat inflation"

The underlying critical point-at-issue is credibility as I noted in my comment on b's 2017 article. I've since linked to tweets and other items by that trio; the one major change seems to have been the epiphany by them that they needed to go to where the action is and report it from there to regain their credibility.

The fact remains that used car salespeople have a stereotypical reputation for lacking credibility sans a confession as to why they feel the need to lie to sell cars.

Their actions belie the guilt they feel for their choices, but a confession works much better at assuaging the soul while helping convince the audience that the change in heart's genuine. And that's the point as b notes--genuineness, whose first predicate is credibility.

[Dec 17, 2019] History Doesn t Repeat, But It Often Rhymes: Wilson in UK was subjected to the similar attack by rogue elements in MI5 as Trump in the USA

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... an inquiry by cabinet secretary Lord Hunt in 1996 concluded that "a few, a very few, malcontents in MI5" had "spread damaging malicious stories". ..."
"... Well, if a cabinet secretary says that it must be true. MI5, not MI6 - I think MI5's the heavy mob - but I just wondered if our spooks had passed these tricks on to the lads who put the Steele dossier about. ..."
Dec 14, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

English Outsider

Massive win, Colonel, that as far as I know nobody predicted. Not the polls, not the political blogs. But I didn't follow it that closely so that's just a general impression.

My man, Nigel Farage, got squeezed mercilessly. I was looking around the BBC site to find out how mercilessly when I came across a picture of the bete noir of my father's time, Harold Wilson. Wilson was convinced that MI something was out to get him - bugged his office, spread smear stories about him around the press, even a possible coup.

The odd rumour of all this had spread to my corner of the English provinces and I'd always wondered if there was anything in it. So I clicked on the BBC article -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-49939123

- and came across this -

" .. A 1987 inquiry concluded the allegations of a security service plot against Wilson were untrue. However, an inquiry by cabinet secretary Lord Hunt in 1996 concluded that "a few, a very few, malcontents in MI5" had "spread damaging malicious stories".

Well, if a cabinet secretary says that it must be true. MI5, not MI6 - I think MI5's the heavy mob - but I just wondered if our spooks had passed these tricks on to the lads who put the Steele dossier about.

On another security matter I note with concern above - "Those are Jacobite tribesmen at the top. Some of my ancestors were such as they." I thought so. '15 and '45 caused us a lot of trouble and just in case the tradition remained in your family I'm opening a file. We're very happy with our present Queen, thank you, and we don't want you replacing her with some Stuart relic you might happen to have dug up.

Though I suppose it would only be poetic justice. We've just had a go at toppling your President so why shouldn't you return the compliment and topple Her Majesty.

14 December 2019 at 07:07 AM

[Dec 17, 2019] Building trust between U.S. and Russia by Edward Lozansky

Notable quotes:
"... After a Western-backed coup overthrew the legitimate Ukrainian president in February 2014, it brought to power a government largely picked by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. People in the Donbass region did not accept the new government and made two conditions for remaining a part of Ukraine: special autonomy status and two state languages. This is exactly what Canada provides for its large French-speaking minority. ..."
"... Those with even rudimentary knowledge of Ukrainian history and its huge ethnic Russian population would agree that these demands are not unreasonable, but the post-coup government called the separatist forces terrorists, sent aviation and tanks, and started a civil war that has been raging for five years. Washington, which was in total control of the Ukrainian political class, could have resolved this crisis easily by telling the new government to accept these modest conditions. Instead, the U.S. supported Kyiv with money, weapons, military training and political support. ..."
Dec 17, 2019 | www.washingtontimes.com

At a time of one of the greatest political upheavals in American history that could spill over into foreign affairs, especially U.S.-Russian relations with unpredictable and devastating results, I thought Christmas might offer a chance for all of us to take a pause and search for an exit from the megacrisis.

Many people believe miracles do happen at Christmastime. However, it looks like we need President Trump , Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to perform at least three of them.

Those who wonder why Mr. Zelensky is on this list should recall that the Trump impeachment process started because of his phone call with this guy whose country the Democrats and their pathetic witnesses deem no less than vital to America's national security.

Let us start with Mr. Putin because someone has to take the first difficult step and he is the only one in a clear position to do it.

Dear Mr. Putin, please make a public statement that Russia pledges not to interfere in the next and future American elections. It would be good if the two chambers of the Russian parliament, the Duma and Federation Council, ratify this pledge as well. Please do it unilaterally without asking Mr. Trump and the U.S. Congress to respond in kind.

Dear Mr. Trump , please return to your earlier thinking about NATO as an obsolete organization that lost its purpose in 1991 after the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw military bloc. Since then, it has been searching desperately for new missions and enemies to justify its existence.

Recall that NATO's continuous expansion drive is the major factor that squandered the exceptional opportunity for U.S.-Russian rapprochement that all Russian leaders, starting with Mikhail Gorbachev, kept proposing. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New York Democrat, and 18 other senators voted against President Clinton's first round of NATO expansion. "We'll be back on a hair-trigger. We're talking about nuclear war," they said.

At the same time, NATO has failed to counter international terrorism -- the real threat to European and American security. It is NATO that boosted the jihadi peril by overthrowing Libya's government, allowing that prosperous country to morph into a terrorist playground and staging point for millions of unvetted migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.

Is NATO making America and our allies more secure? During the Cold War, when NATO allowed the West to stand firm against Soviet communist designs on Europe, the answer was an easy yes, but today, with NATO's reckless poking of the Russian bear, the answer is a resounding no.

A rebuilt NATO or a new organization, IATO -- International Anti-Terrorist Organization -- specifically targeting global jihad, would have a future with new partners including Russia, for which terrorism represents a major security threat. Georgia and Ukraine could join IATO as well, thus taking the first step toward reconciliation with Russia that NATO's insatiable expansion drive helped destroy.
French President Emmanuel Macron is the first Western leader who agrees with this point of view and is not afraid to say that "NATO's brain is dead." However, the U.S. president must take the lead to move past legacy NATO.

Dear Mr. Zelensky , I believe that you sincerely want to end the war in your country. It is not an easy job since you face a strong and vocal radical nationalistic opposition with strong neo-Nazi overtones that declares that any compromise on your side will be met with the violent resistance and another "Maidan revolution" that may lead to your overthrow. The leader of this opposition is former President Petro Poroshenko, whom Washington supported all these years and who was given a rare privilege to speak at a joint session of Congress, where members greeted him with numerous standing ovations. At the same time, Ukrainian people hated him so much that they decided to replace him with a Jewish comic actor with no political experience.

Mr. Zelensky , I wonder if you have read the book "Shooting Stars" by Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, which describes some important episodes in which fate gave an individual a chance at a historical turning point. Zweig says fate usually chooses for this purpose a strong personality, but sometimes it falls to mediocrities who fail miserably.

You are in a position to decide which you will be, and the pass to historical Olympus is obvious.

After a Western-backed coup overthrew the legitimate Ukrainian president in February 2014, it brought to power a government largely picked by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. People in the Donbass region did not accept the new government and made two conditions for remaining a part of Ukraine: special autonomy status and two state languages. This is exactly what Canada provides for its large French-speaking minority.

Those with even rudimentary knowledge of Ukrainian history and its huge ethnic Russian population would agree that these demands are not unreasonable, but the post-coup government called the separatist forces terrorists, sent aviation and tanks, and started a civil war that has been raging for five years. Washington, which was in total control of the Ukrainian political class, could have resolved this crisis easily by telling the new government to accept these modest conditions. Instead, the U.S. supported Kyiv with money, weapons, military training and political support.

Mr. Zelensky , nowadays you and your country are used as pawns in the attempts to impeach Mr. Trump , but your prime responsibility is before Ukrainian people who dismissed the party of war and placed the fate of your country and its people in your hands. They expect you to make the right decision by choosing the road to peace.

While waiting for these miracles to materialize, I wish all a merry Christmas , happy Hanukkah and peace on earth in 2020.

Edward Lozansky is president of American University in Moscow.

[Dec 17, 2019] Schiff show is to designed as a counterattack against Barr investigation. He and his puppermasters want to shield intelligence agencies from any responsibility

Schiff is a vivid example of CIA capture of the House intelligence committee.
Dec 17, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

novictim , 1 hour ago link

this committee is responsible for overseeing the Intelligence Community and exposing abuses. Yet when the IG identified gross abuses in our jurisdiction, you expressed full faith in the agencies we're supposed to be vigilantly monitoring. and you rejected any oversight whatsoever of their supposed clean-up efforts.

Nailed it.

SoDamnMad , 15 minutes ago link

I so much wanted the Senate to subpoena Eric Ciamarella and ask him under oath about is contact with Schiff and the Schiff team.

[Dec 17, 2019] Nunes's frank letter might have a surprising effect. He has declared open season on Schiff. It's like the child in the Emperor's New Clothes. Once the cat is out of the bag like this and "what must not be spoken" gets spoken, it could send shock waves.

Dec 17, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Kelley , 2 hours ago link

Nunes's frank letter might have a surprising effect. He has declared open season on Schiff. It's like the child in the Emperor's New Clothes. Once the cat is out of the bag like this and "what must not be spoken" gets spoken, it could send shock waves.

There are Democrats on the edge of flipping. When they see the letter, it could have the effect of crystallizing their decision to leave the Democrat party. They certainly don't want to be associated with Schiff, the pariah to their own reelection chances.

ComeAndTakeIt , 2 hours ago link

A scathing letter does nothing to a man that has no conscience.

Who the **** thinks this will make Schitt-*** even think twice at all? He probably wont even bother to read it.

Witchy-witch , 2 hours ago link

this was inspired by a writer here

here is our letter to our congressman

copy and paste it if you feel the same angry way and send it to your congress person

https://www.house.gov/representatives

Dear Congressman,

We are writing today to let you know that we are fed up with all the insanity and stupidity coming from the democrat party. We have been loyal democrats all our lives, and we are appalled at the lunacy of the impeachment trial. It's all an out right waste of time that the democrat Adam Schiff is showing the nation. We did not even watch it because he is an in your face liar.

What you better understand and know is, many like ourselves are sick and tired of the unacceptable behavior of the democrat party. We are sick and tired of paying our tax dollars to pay you and the democrat party that has not done a darn thing for us, the American People.

We are here to tell you that if you vote for impeachment, you are saying to all us voters that you are just as stupid and insane to back up with your vote, the highly unfair partisan impeachment process based on nothing or any real evidence. We do not want anyone that is that ignorant as our representative.

Do you understand that the leadership in the democrat party has made us all look like stupid insane idiots and we have seen enough? You must know that if you vote for this fake impeachment process, WE WILL VOTE YOU OUT! We will vote for any other democrat, or if we have too, the republican candidate that is running against you.

Please do the right thing not for the democrat party, but for the American people who voted for you. Get back to the business of America and the American People! This is the bottom line, if you vote for impeachment, you are out of there. Do not discount our stead fast position on this issue.

Thank you in advance for your consideration of our request.

Signed, Concerned citizen in your District.

[Dec 15, 2019] Nunes to Schiff: 'You Need Rehabilitation'

Dec 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

"As part of your rehabilitation, it's crucial that you admit you have a problem - you are hijacking the Intelligence Committee for political purposes while excusing and covering up intelligence agency abuses ." -Devin Nunes to Adam Schiff

[Dec 15, 2019] The Washington Post Opinion page: If you don't agree with us, you must be a Russian asset

Dec 15, 2019 | twitter.com

Nathan Brand ‏ 3:00 PM - 8 Dec 2019

The Washington Post Opinion page: If you don't agree with us, you must be a Russian asset

[Dec 15, 2019] Ahh, this sweet smell of neocon propaganda in the US MSM...

Dec 15, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jayne , Dec 15 2019 14:26 utc | 4

Hey *Politifact*:

"...Obama did sign H.R. 4310 into law, also passing the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012. But the bill did not make it legal for independent, private-sector media outlets to present outright false information to the public. Instead, it allowed government-sponsored news like Voice of American to be broadcast in the United States. It removed restrictions on U.S.-generated news from being presented to American audiences.'''"

Oki doki so what about those < cough > "independent, private-sector media outlets" that are blatant 'governement funded fronts' that only 'claim' to be our independent, private-sector media...

[Dec 15, 2019] For some people Russophobia is a pretty good meal ticket:

Notable quotes:
"... I'm not sure what neo-progressivism is, but I know a farce when I see it. The Mueller investigation failed to interview two central persons of interest in it's investigation: Craig Murray and Julian Assange. The fact that they did not interview them underscores that this was not a good faith investigation but one working backwards from it's conclusion. Hail Putin (JK, I couldn't care less about the Kleptocrat-in-chief). ..."
"... Funny, I would apply your description of "useful idiots" to centrist Democrats for advancing an agenda that severely hamstring the Democrats' political effectiveness and marries them to historically reactionary forces like neoconservatives and the intelligence community. ..."
"... Considering that our political establishment, including both parties, our media system including both ostensibly informational and entertainment content, and our civil society are deeply committed to US military and intelligence endeavors, I would "first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye," as the saying goes. ..."
"... The propaganda system that shapes public opinion around matters of geopolitics is extensive and pervasive. There is a relatively small community of academics, activists, and concerned citizens who are students of history, and more importantly, the history of propaganda and have watched what it can do. I've no doubt you're well-intentioned but I can't help but disagree with your perception. The pro-RTP humanitarian interventionist canard is a great way to get people who consider themselves on the left to back the same military/intelligence apparatus that has been waging war on the third world in pursuit of American political and economic hegemony since the end of WWII. ..."
"... It has occurred to me that their contentions are false, but that's precisely the point- if you're doing a competent, exhaustive investigation, you interview people that claim to have information of central importance, if only to exclude those possibilities from consideration. Not doing so is the hallmark of incompetence or something worse. ..."
Dec 15, 2019 | www.truthdig.com
gustave courbet KurtV • 12 hours ago ,

"There is little point trying to convince someone like Johnstone of what every sane person in the world knows to be almost certainly true, that Russia hacked the DNC and attempted to swing the election in favor of" ~ Donald Trump."

Count me among the insane, but such fact-free assertions are pretty standard examples of what passes for facts in the post-post-modern era of Trump. While this is certainly a minority position, competent journalists like Aaron Mate, Matt Taibbi, Michael Tracey and others have been doing good work in pointing out the deep flaws in the Russiagate narrative.

gustave courbet KurtV • 11 hours ago ,

I'm not sure what neo-progressivism is, but I know a farce when I see it. The Mueller investigation failed to interview two central persons of interest in it's investigation: Craig Murray and Julian Assange. The fact that they did not interview them underscores that this was not a good faith investigation but one working backwards from it's conclusion. Hail Putin (JK, I couldn't care less about the Kleptocrat-in-chief).

corruptclintons gustave courbet • 6 hours ago ,

I call it fake progressivism or the alt-left but neo-progressivism works too. They are easy to identify because they all listen to (and frequently cite) the same social media pundits and their logic is so painfully flawed.

They are useful idiots for the right because they advance the same talking points as the right, with a few variations that are designed to appeal to the left. In short, they are lefties who have been neutralized by clever propaganda and "alt-media" pied pipers.

gustave courbet corruptclintons • 5 hours ago ,

Funny, I would apply your description of "useful idiots" to centrist Democrats for advancing an agenda that severely hamstring the Democrats' political effectiveness and marries them to historically reactionary forces like neoconservatives and the intelligence community.

In the same way that your "neo-progressives" are labeled "Putin puppets" or "Assad apologists" for opposing destructive and bellicose foreign policy positions, this neo-red-scare language was used to tar principled anti-war voices during the Cold War (MLK Jr comes to mind).

Instead of debating policy positions, we must now try to cut through the Orwellian neologism game just to get to a discussion of substance.

corruptclintons gustave courbet • 5 hours ago ,

The anti-war narrative is a great hook with which to reel in some people on the left.

Yes, the level of propaganda being utilized is Orwellian, and until progressives realize they are being propagandized rather than informed, they will be used like pawns on a chess board.

gustave courbet corruptclintons • 3 hours ago ,

Considering that our political establishment, including both parties, our media system including both ostensibly informational and entertainment content, and our civil society are deeply committed to US military and intelligence endeavors, I would "first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye," as the saying goes.

The propaganda system that shapes public opinion around matters of geopolitics is extensive and pervasive. There is a relatively small community of academics, activists, and concerned citizens who are students of history, and more importantly, the history of propaganda and have watched what it can do. I've no doubt you're well-intentioned but I can't help but disagree with your perception. The pro-RTP humanitarian interventionist canard is a great way to get people who consider themselves on the left to back the same military/intelligence apparatus that has been waging war on the third world in pursuit of American political and economic hegemony since the end of WWII.

I'm reminded of the legacy media's reaction after MLK Jr's Beyond Vietnam speech: "Time magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." The Washington Post wrote that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."" The pro-war establishment has had 52 years to come up with new false equivalencies and flawed analyses to disparage the moral and practical clarity of its critics, and they have not.

gustave courbet KurtV • 7 hours ago ,

It has occurred to me that their contentions are false, but that's precisely the point- if you're doing a competent, exhaustive investigation, you interview people that claim to have information of central importance, if only to exclude those possibilities from consideration. Not doing so is the hallmark of incompetence or something worse.

Of course, these aren't the only issues with Russiagate, only the most glaring. I'll mention briefly that perhaps the great sin of Russiagate (even if it turned out to be true) is that is has neatly distracted from election fraud in the US by US actors, both the DNC's rigging of primaries and the GOP's perennial voter suppression that likely gave Trump the election by securing him electoral college votes in key states.

Instead of looking at the damning evidence of GOP crimes (a hallowed tradition among Democrats), they did the thing convenient to DC insiders and national security apparatchiks: blame Russia. Even if Russia had hacked the DNC, their interference pales in comparison to demonstrable GOP manipulation, yet gets 98% of the coverage (and this will likely be repeated in 2020, thanks to this circus). Presuming Russiagate is entirely legit (which I don't), it's the hangnail distracting the body politic from stage 4 cancer.

Lastly, why on earth would one trust BCCI Bob and the intelligence community, on Russiagate or anything else considering their long history of lying to the American people? Maybe they're not in this case but the burden of proof is extremely high when dealing with serial liars.

gustave courbet corruptclintons • 5 hours ago ,

"the conspiracy to fabricate the Mueller report would have involved tens of thousands and all would have had to keep quite."

No it wouldn't. It's clear from this statement alone that you haven't studied many conspiracies involving high-profile reports and political narratives that mislead the public. A small number of people can set the agenda, pick witnesses that will back them up either due to credulity, confirmation bias, or ambition, and use a compliant media as a megaphone to broadcast their perspective, then cite that same media (as Dick Cheney was fond of doing). Beyond that, there is a deep dearth of critical thinking in DC, and incentives not to rock the boat. Why put your career at risk to voice an unpopular opinion? A massive conspiracy isn't required, nor is it plausible. People that work in large bureaucracies can infer what the consensus is and go with it. From the JFK assassination to Vietnam, to Iran Contra, to Iraq, to the MANY minor scandals in between that have faded from the public's memory, this is a sadly common phenomenon.

I'm not dismissing the idea that Russians didn't interfere per se, but rather that this interference had an impact on the election (bombshell after bombshell failed to detonate). The media circus around Russiagate, an incident that, insofar as it happened, didn't impact the election, when compared to voter purges that literally handed Trump the White house, has been nearly entirely absent. Why the overwhelming focus, day after day after day of the former to the scant mention of the latter? I would argue that it's because one fits neatly into a jingoistic narrative held by the MIC while the other reveals bipartisan corruption and dereliction.

[Dec 15, 2019] It is a violation of basic human rights to produce false, deceptive or misleading propaganda

Dec 15, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

snake , Dec 15 2019 14:03 utc | 2

NATO's fake humanitarian pretext catching up to them very interesting piece that fits into the to jo6pac post @ 1 of the smell of propaganda..
It does not matter who publishes smelly propaganda?

At the moment there is no way for concerned, affected or just plain good humans to either eradicate the stench or to jail and make liable the producers, inventors, distributors, publisher or the liars that deny the wrongful facts often found in smelly propaganda..

It is a violation of basic human rights to produce false, deceptive or misleading propaganda.. Maybe there will someday be a war on wrongful propaganda and those involved will find themselves labeled Terrorist.

[Dec 14, 2019] Full Interview: Barr Criticizes Inspector General Report On The Russia Investigation

Highly recommended!
Clapper and Brennan will be shaking in their boots after watching Barr's interview: done in "bad faith" = SEDITION !!!! Deep State operatives...ie, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Stork, Lisa, McCabe, should be held accountable. Obama should probably be impeached.
The hard fact is, that the top of the FBI knew, in advance, that the "dossier" was just bs invented by Russian liars, for money, to be used as political lies for kilary's campaign. It Wasn't evidence and Comey knew far in advance of crossfire hurricane. I can't see less than 20 years in comey's future. That same includes barak, brennan and clapper, who were all informed, willing accomplices in this crime.
10:30 Whoever in FBI that intentionally misled the court using the Steele dossier knowing that the dossier was "total rubbish" as Barr states, needs to be inditing immediately. Why we are continuing to investigate instead of inditimg while continuing to investigate. Until these people are held accountable I don't think our country will begin to heal and media and others apologize to the country for the damage they have done.
7:49 - "Comey refused to sign back up for his security clearance, and therefore couldn't be questioned about classified matters." Well now, isn't that interesting. Haven't heard that one before.
Dec 14, 2019 | www.youtube.com

In an exclusive interview, Attorney General William Barr spoke to NBC News' Pete Williams about the findings on the Justice Department Inspector General's report on the Russia investigation and his criticisms of the FBI.

grabir01 , 3 days ago

It appears that none of AG Barr's answers were what Pete Williams wanted to hear.

Gary Ellis , 2 days ago

I sincerely hope that the Durham investigation brings people to justice for what they have done to our country.

greg j , 2 days ago

The man just admitted "this may be the biggest conspiracy in U.S Political History." Ouch!

Jeremy Elice , 3 days ago

Shame we didn't get to see Pete William's face during Barr's answer accusing "an irresponsible press of fanning the flames."

JOHN DRUMHELLER , 2 days ago

Here's the adult in the room. Look out children.

Hart , 1 day ago

This is like if Watergate was on steroids and then some. Everyone involved should be prosecuted including the person who bought the dossier

Russell McAfee , 1 day ago (edited)

The FBI never got the actual DNC server. Crowdstrike has it. The FBI got a 'forensic copy'

Richard McLeod , 1 day ago

The FBI has now been proven to be corrupt at its' highest levels.

King Eris , 1 day ago

I could listen to AG Barr talk for hours. He's so calm and professional.

Noble Victory , 1 day ago

Barr is so intelligent and just. He's smoothe like the way he plays the Bagpipes. Pretty amazing! 🇺🇸👍

Nolan Gleason , 3 days ago

Death to the swamp

ctafrance , 1 day ago

The press is hopelessly corrupt. If we didn't know it already, this interview proves it.

Roman King , 1 day ago (edited)

I'm So glade we have a competent attorney General pushing back on the massive disinformation narrative that comes from Giant News outlets of which are used to being unchallenged, unchecked by today's "journalistic standards"

Clarion Call , 2 days ago

I so respect and admire this man's brain and logical thinking. His vocabulary is great as well.

wkcw1 , 2 days ago

NBC realizing they need to take a bath on this whole thing. Probably a bit too late now.

barbandrob1 , 1 day ago

Barr just basically clarified and justified Fox news reporting over the last 2 years.. Thanks NBC

Faris Hamarneh , 3 days ago

I love Barr's nonchalant style. But this is real big and heads are going to roll

Craig Bigelow , 2 days ago

Obama spied on Trump. Obama should have known about the FISA warrant!

Luis Santiago , 1 day ago

so this guy really asked Bahr"why not open an investigation even with little evidence?" because is a violation of civil liberties to invade the privacy of law abiding citizens. You need compelling evidence for something so huge

macfan128 , 1 day ago

17:44 "Why should the Attorney General care that the FBI was spying on a presidential candidate?" LOLOLOLOL Our media is a jooooooooke.

David , 3 days ago

NBC did a straight up interview??? This is shocking. Who told them that they could start doing journalism again?

Bill the Cat , 2 days ago

Clapper and Brennan will be shaking in their boots after watching Barr's interview.

Alan Sullivan , 1 day ago

Horowitz should be instructed to edit or update his Report to discuss The Question of Bias and Evidence of Bias. He has clearly misguided Americans with his choice of words and has omitted important facts underpinning bias.

MegaTrucker65 , 1 day ago

I haven't looked into Ukraine YET.

Gamer John3:18 , 1 day ago

AG Barr is an outstanding role model, a man of integrity and wisdom, calm in a raging political storm. I have full confidence he will make those who fabricated evidence and hid exculpatory evidence finally face justice. AG Barr for President 2024!

Yo Mama , 2 days ago

Barr is a straight shooter and I love it. It sounds like we will get to the real truth eventually through Durhams investigation I just hope it doesnt take another year to get to the prosecutions.

Direbear Coat , 1 day ago

So, I watched the interview... The video is called, "Full Interview: Barr Criticizes Inspector General Report On The Russia Investigation." Not once did I hear him criticize the I.G.'s report. In fact, A.G. Barr clarified that the I.G.'s report was limited in scope because of the limitations put on the I.G. He said that the report was appropriate.

Wolverines Fight , 1 day ago

It's scary to see how powerful the corruption of the Democratic Party has grown. It represents a serious threat to all our personal freedom. The Democratic Party has to be stopped.

Benny .Burmeister Jørgensen , 3 days ago

Ok after watching this interview its quite clear that Barr and Durham is going after these criminals and people are going to jail. Maybe there is hope for US yet becuase this dane consider US atm a banana republic. Spying on political candidates? Forging documents? You FBI behaving like Stalins secret police. Lets see what happen.

Mike Dorsey , 1 day ago

God Bless Bill Barr. I'm glad there's still some adults in government that will speak their mind intelligently, rationally and unabashedly.

protochris , 1 day ago

This guy is brilliant; he's clearly exposing the FBI and the barking dogs on the alphabet networks.

Dan Kuo , 1 day ago

Amazing for the AG to go in deep into enemy territory at the heart of the opposition media to lay out a case for the criminal activities that undermined our country prior to and after the 2016 election. The deep state is trembling at the prospect of being held accountable after all the facts are laid out to the american people that these activities cannot be brushed aside or swept under the carpet if we are to continue as a country.

Jbyrd Texas , 2 days ago

The corrupt media is trying to act like they have not been involved in this treasonous scam since the beginning working directly with the treasonous cabal. The media has been lying and pushing fake news for 3 years calling Trump a Russia agent and called him treasonous. I knew the whole time that they were lying there was evidence from day one that this was all lies and if I can see that from the public then they can definitely see that from the inside they are purposefully lying.

Stephan Coutts , 1 day ago

I dare anyone on here to research Barr's History back to his involvement in the assignation of JFK, the cover up, defending Nixon, Epstein, and many other illegal and immoral activities. After reviewing the evidence, I walked away believing that Barr is trying to cover up his tracks so he does do jail time. No need to reply. Either take my dare or not. God Bless America and ALL her people, Stephan

Worlds Best Metal Detectorist , 2 days ago

The public are sick of waiting . I find myself skipping through a half hour news show in 5 minutes flat looking for arrests ,whereas before I was rivited to every minute of the half hour show but it goes on and on and at the there is Nothiing .The Democrats are the masters , it's obvious . If they break the law they get off scott free . If you are republican wave bye bye , you will be in jail for years . America is not the free and fair country it is all cracked up to be . It is corrupted by the democrats who have peoiple in high places that thwart real justice.

Right Thinking , 3 days ago

Mifsud approached George! Who was Mifsud working for (western asset) and why did he approach George? He’s the one who offered George dirt on Hill. Then invited him to meet the fake “niece”, of Putin, in England! What about this information? Someone set George up to make this happen outside the US, because of EO 12333. It had to happen outside the US so they could go to the fisa court!

dethtrk Jones , 3 days ago

I dont trust Christopher Wrey. He keeps slow-walking all the FBI documents and declassifications. He also fights judicial watch and judges that rule in their favor and continue not giving over what is ordered! This last judge was ready to hold him in contempt for refusing to cooperate with court ordered documents.

Brad Brown , 2 days ago

Why did the FBI continue to investigate Trump after January when the case collapsed? To try and find a way to impeach Trump. Remember the Washington Post headlined article right after the inauguration "The effort to impeach President Donald John Trump is already underway." The FBI "insurance" policy was essential!

[Dec 14, 2019] A Determined Effort to Undermine Russia

Highly recommended!
The USA "Full Spectrum Dominance" doctrine requires weakening and, if possible, partitioning Russia.
Retired Australian diplomat Tony Kevin tells the audience that Skripals poisoning was a false flag operation. 7:00
He also point several weak points in Western politicians narrative about MH17
Notable quotes:
"... Cold War patterns of thinking about Russia show no sign of weakening in America ..."
"... Putin made it clear when he said the next war would not be fought inside Russia. The troglodytes in the West are unable to grasp not only what that means, but why he said it. ..."
"... The latest efforts at attacking Russia via smear, allegation and Doublespeak have been, are via that US supported supposed oversight committee, WADA which has done what the US-UK wanted: banned Russia for four years from international sporting events including the upcoming Tokyo Olympics and World Cup (Football – soccer to Americans). ..."
"... I am really sick of the smearing of Russia done by the US and UK. The Skripal as well as the MH17 case are plain ridiculus. Anybody can see through these silly plants. US and UK obviously don't feel obliged to respect any international rules any more. (The one person who is suffering most at the moment from the decline in respect is Julian Assange, an Australian citizen!) ..."
"... There is "cause." Russia was our latest vassal under Yeltsin. Putin stopped the looting, and worked to benefit average Russian citizens. Just watch "The Magnitsky Act, behind the scenes" to know the "cause". ..."
"... Much of the West (i.e. Germany) has been dragged by force into damage control mode. The Magnitsky Act monster, the election interference hysteria, are just 2 crying examples met with shock and disbelief across the pond. The Fiona Hill testimony was a very telling moment for the inner workings of a self perpetuating logic. ..."
"... "Russia is no lightweight by any means, and not always friendly. But it has regularly done the right thing in international conflicts which the Kremlin seems to understand better than all of "the Western" intelligence combined." ..."
Dec 08, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Retired Australian diplomat Tony Kevin, in conversation with former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr, says the West is unnecessarily determined to undermine Russia.

A t an event last week in Sydney, Kevin and Carr discussed how the West, led by the United States, has been on an aggressive campaign to destabilize Russia, without cause.

When Kevin said he returned to Russia after more than 40 years in 2016 he realized he "had to take sides" in the U.S.-Russia standoff when all Nato countries boycotted the Moscow celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

"I had to take a moral position that it is not right for the West to be ganging up on Russia," Kevin says in his conversation with the former Australian foreign minister.

The New Cold War can traced back to a broken promise made to Moscow on Nato expansion eastward. "London and Washington are orchestrating a disinformation" campaign today against Russia, as the New Cold War has heated up over Syria, Ukraine, NATO troops on Russia's borders and Russiagate.

Watch the hour-long in depth discussion which was filmed and produced by Consortium News' CN Live! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/dJiS3nFzsWg?feature=oembed

Tags: Bob Carr Russia Russiagate Russophobia Tony Kevin Vladimir Putin

Tom Culpeper , December 11, 2019 at 16:03

Putin & the Russian citizenry play chess on this 3-dimensional world.! The Americas and their inane elites attempt checkers on their flat Earth . Pity, some such as Noam Chomsky are admirable world citizens..! Pity again.! WE will miss men of this honest calibre and down- to-earth intelligence. Bob Carr is of this cohort.

Eugenie Basile , December 10, 2019 at 03:36

The 'Russia did it' mantra is a gift for the powers in the Kremlin. It rallies most Russians behind their leaders because they are proud of their country and don't accept the West's moral hypocrite grandstanding.

Just recently the WADA proclaimed sporting ban against Russia is a perfect example. It excludes all Russian athletes because they happen to represent their country while U.S. athletes who have been caught cheating in the past are allowed to participate .

Jerry Alatalo , December 10, 2019 at 00:30

It is very encouraging to know there are good people like Mr. Tony Kevin and Mr. Bob Carr alive and sharing their powerful wisdom at this dangerous historical point on planet Earth. Mr. Kevin and Mr. Carr's immensely important and courageously honest discussion should become – immediately, and for many years to come – required study in university classrooms and government halls around this world.

Peace.

ElderD , December 9, 2019 at 15:03

Tony's (especially!) and Bob's sane and sensible view of this dangerous and destructive state of affairs deserve the widest possible distribution and attention.

George McGlynn , December 9, 2019 at 13:27

A quarter century has passed since the fall of the Soviet Union, and little has changed. Cold War patterns of thinking about Russia show no sign of weakening in America. The further we distance ourselves from the end of the Cold War, the closer we come to its revival. Hostility to Russia is the oldest continuous foreign policy tradition in the United States. It is now so much of a part of America's identity that it is unlikely to be ever cured.

peter mcloughlin , December 9, 2019 at 10:45

It is a dangerous miscalculation to think the "New Cold War" will end like the first. Russia (the USSR) had a buffer zone then, it doesn't today. For Moscow the coming war (world war) will be about survival. All that is left is the fall-back position of nuclear deterrence doctrine – annihilation. I don't think western capitals see how perilous the situation is.

Lois Gagnon , December 9, 2019 at 17:30

I agree. Putin made it clear when he said the next war would not be fought inside Russia. The troglodytes in the West are unable to grasp not only what that means, but why he said it.

AnneR , December 9, 2019 at 07:48

The latest efforts at attacking Russia via smear, allegation and Doublespeak have been, are via that US supported supposed oversight committee, WADA which has done what the US-UK wanted: banned Russia for four years from international sporting events including the upcoming Tokyo Olympics and World Cup (Football – soccer to Americans).

Then there were allegations – of those "highly likely" (therefore one knows to be untrue and unadulterated propaganda to increase Russophobia) sort – about Russian hackers (always giving the impression that the "Kremlin" is behind itl) being the Labour Party's source of the Tory party's US-UK trade deal which would/will deliberately and finally destroy the NHS and replace it with (of course) US "health" insurance company profiteering.

(Always the Tory intention from the NHS's initiation in May of 1948; only its popularity among many Tory party supporters among the working and lower middle classes prevented them from a full-frontal killing off the NHS; the Snatcher's government began the undermining, via installing a top-heavy bureaucratization, siphoning off a sizable proportion of the funds that would otherwise have gone to medical care, demanding that hospitals not "lose" money – a concept completely beyond the remit of the NHS as originally conceived and constructed and like exactions.)

Then there are snide remarks about the meeting today concerning the Ukrainian Azov (Neo-Nazi) attacks on the Donbass (NOT how either the BBC or NPR speaks of this of course) in France. This struggle, between the Russian-speaking Donbass peoples and the neo-Nazis of western Ukraine, has killed many thousands of people (most likely mostly those of the Donbass). The Donbass fighters are spoken of as "Russian-supported" in an attempt to deny them and the reasons for their struggle *any* legitimacy (meanwhile the support for the neo-Nazis goes unmentioned, leaving the listener with the impression that they are the Ukrainian military, thus legitimately fighting a foreign funded and manned insurgency).

Someone even suggested that President Putin needed to be diplomatic. Really? From what I've read the man is the most diplomatic and intelligent politician (not just political leader) along with Xi Jinping and the Iranian government that exist on the world stage. None of them are hubristic, solipsistic, eager beaver killers of peoples in other countries. Unlike their western "world" political counterparts.

Jeff Harrison , December 8, 2019 at 18:30

Mad Dog Mattis spoke the truth when he said that an opponent wasn't defeated until they agreed they were defeated. The US merely assumed that Russia agreed that they were defeated and are doubling down when they now suddenly realize that Russia never said any such thing.

St. Ronnie's whole thing back in the 80's was to outspend Russia militarily and it worked well. We're trying to do it again but Russia isn't playing the same game this time and now it is the US that has a mountain of debt and Russia that doesn't.

SIPIRI tags US military spending at $650B and Russian military spending at $62B. But we know that the $650B number is bogus because it doesn't include our in-violation-of-the-NNPT nuclear program which is in the energy department or our veteran's expenses which are in HHS. I don't know what's missing from Russia's $62B but I'll bet they can sustain that a whole lot better than we can sustain our $650B and rising bill.

Antonio Costa , December 9, 2019 at 13:17

Good point regarding Russia's downsizing the Soviet Union. From Gorbachev to Putin there was NEVER a surrender, intended in any way. The intent has been multilateral partnerships. For Russia the US/West won nothing at all except the opportunity to live and work in peace. (By the way this policy has a long Russian history.)

They gave up the Warsaw Pact and America with our worthless "word" expanded NATO.

The US foreign policy has lost even the semblance of sanity. Our naked aggression is clear as never before, a mad man throwing a global fit armed with megaton nuclear projectiles on trigger first strike alert. What could go wrong?

nondimenticare , December 8, 2019 at 15:56

If, magically, Consortium News/CN Live! were a mass-distribution network/magazine (hence universally consulted), allowing the light in for the mass of the viewing and listening public, it could change the world – both an exalting and despairing thought.

Lily , December 8, 2019 at 09:52

It is a great joy to listen to this conversation!

I am really sick of the smearing of Russia done by the US and UK. The Skripal as well as the MH17 case are plain ridiculus. Anybody can see through these silly plants. US and UK obviously don't feel obliged to respect any international rules any more. (The one person who is suffering most at the moment from the decline in respect is Julian Assange, an Australian citizen!)

I wish people would have the courage to break away from the group pressure originated by a nation which has been started by killing more than 90% of the indigenous people in their country and since then has turned the worl into a very insecure place.

Chapeau, Tony Kevin! Thanks to Bob Carr and Consortiums News.

Lily , December 9, 2019 at 01:18

It seems that some facts are beginning to be realized in the military department.

www(dot)zerohedge(dot)com/geopolitical/pentagon-alarmed-russia-gaining-sympathy-among-us-troops

JOHN CHUCKMAN , December 8, 2019 at 07:30

"At an event last week in Sydney, Kevin and Carr discussed how the West, led by the United States, has been on an aggressive campaign to destabilize Russia, without cause."

The American establishment's problem with Russia is simply that Russia is the only country on earth capable of obliterating the United States. Not even China has yet reached that capacity.

"Carthago delenda est"

Skip Scott , December 9, 2019 at 06:13

There is "cause." Russia was our latest vassal under Yeltsin. Putin stopped the looting, and worked to benefit average Russian citizens. Just watch "The Magnitsky Act, behind the scenes" to know the "cause".

Bruno DP , December 8, 2019 at 02:34

The West is ganging up on Russia? Replace "West" by "United States of America", and I will agree.

Much of the West (i.e. Germany) has been dragged by force into damage control mode. The Magnitsky Act monster, the election interference hysteria, are just 2 crying examples met with shock and disbelief across the pond. The Fiona Hill testimony was a very telling moment for the inner workings of a self perpetuating logic.

Russia is no lightweight by any means, and not always friendly.

But it has regularly done the right thing in international conflicts which the Kremlin seems to understand better than all of "the Western" intelligence combined.

Martin Schuchert , December 8, 2019 at 17:33

I'm German, living in the US, and I agree with your comment. I especially love the last two sentences:

"Russia is no lightweight by any means, and not always friendly. But it has regularly done the right thing in international conflicts which the Kremlin seems to understand better than all of "the Western" intelligence combined."

[Dec 14, 2019] Warmongeing is the national sport for the neoliberal elite in the USA

As Tony Kevin reported (watch-v=dJiS3nFzsWg) at one small fundraiser Bill Clinton made an interesting remark. He said that the USA should always have enemies. That's absolutely true, this this is a way to unite such a society as we have in the USA. probably the only way. And Russia simply fits the bill. Very convenient bogeyman.
Notable quotes:
"... The experience of the USSR in that country should have sent up all kinds of red flags to the invading US military but it apparently did not. Both USSR and America lost thousands of military lives -- but nothing has changed in the country. Life in Afghanistan is actually worse now than before the multiple invasions. The only think which has improved is the cultivation of poppies and the export of opium. ..."
Dec 14, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

Twolfe , 10 Dec 2019 16:30

One aspect of this report in the NYT is very troubling but not a great surprise to those who pay attention to Asian affairs.

The reports that US military leaders had no idea of what to do in Afghanistan and constantly lied to the public should rouse citizens in America to take a different view of military leaders. That view must be to trust nothing coming from the Pentagon or from spokespersons for the military. Included must be any and all secretaries of defence, and all branches of the military.

It is totally unacceptable that 1-2 trillion dollars and several thousand lives were spent by America for some nebulous cause. This does not include many thousands of civilians.

During the Vietnam disaster, it became obvious that American military was lying to the public and taking many causalities in an unwinnable war. Nothing was learned about Asia or Asian culture because America entered Afghanistan without a real plan and no understanding of the country or it's history.

The experience of the USSR in that country should have sent up all kinds of red flags to the invading US military but it apparently did not. Both USSR and America lost thousands of military lives -- but nothing has changed in the country. Life in Afghanistan is actually worse now than before the multiple invasions. The only think which has improved is the cultivation of poppies and the export of opium.

[Dec 14, 2019] Meadows reacts to IG report: 'Doesn't get any more damning than this'

Dec 14, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Sean Nolan , 4 days ago

The dems slandered Barr and Durham but not Horowitz, now we know why .

Tim Burton , 4 days ago

Graham running cover for the Deep-State and directing us to low-level offenders NOT obama/hillary/DNC and their FAILED CoupD'etat's

SwapPart, LLC , 4 days ago

Horowitz is just afraid of being added to the Clinton's body count.

William Bailey , 4 days ago

Well folks there you have it. The deep state investigated themselves and found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Rice Family , 4 days ago (edited)

It's insane to say there were "17 material omissions, miss-representations (lies) and errors" - but no evidence of bias. This is like accidentally shooting someone 17 times.

[Dec 14, 2019] You Backing The Russians, Boy - Illinois Man Charged With Threatening To Murder GOP Congressman

Looks like Professor Karlan operated on the level very close to this man.
Notable quotes:
"... Rodney Lee Davis ..."
"... "I just saw you ... on the TV. You backing the Russians, boy?" ..."
Dec 14, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

It would appear all the escalating rhetoric from a month of impeachment hearings - including one Democratic congressman asking fellow lawmakers to imagine the teenage daughter of Ukraine's president tied up in Trump's basement - have sparked more than just verbal assaults on Republicans ( just as Maxine Waters would had suggested previously ).

The Hill reports that a man in Illinois has been charged after allegedly threatening to shoot Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) and accusing the congressman of "backing the Russians."

Rodney Lee Davis

64-year-old Randall Tar of Rochester, Ill. was charged with communicating threats to injure a person and threatening to assault, kidnap or murder a federal official, according to court documents released this week (full release below).

Contacted at his home Thursday, Tarr said he saw a television ad in which Davis, a Republican from Taylorville, claimed that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections , and it angered him enough to call.

Prosecutors say Tarr called Davis's district office last month and left a profanity-filled voicemail, saying:

"I just saw you ... on the TV. You backing the Russians, boy?"

"Stupid son of a bitch, you're gonna go against our military and back the Russians?" he allegedly added.

"I'm a sharpshooter. ... I'd like to shoot your f---ing head off you stupid motherf---er."

Tarrlater reportedly told The Associated Press :

"I screwed up," Tarr said.

"I don't even have a weapon to do it, is the silliest thing."

"I wish I could just take it all back and just say he's a lousy (expletive) for backing the Russian theory."

Of course, the only problem with all this is that the Democrats' constant spewing of the narrative that Ukraine did not 'meddle' in the 2016 election is entirely false .

Dr Anon , 45 minutes ago link

The bigger story is the number of mentally unstable Americans. When you go driving next, remember that about 20% of them are gorked on prescribed medications. The behavior you will observe makes complete sense in that context.

greek mafia , 46 minutes ago link

Damn...64 and still stupid as hell

Pendolino , 47 minutes ago link

" I'm a sharpshooter "

Well he certainly knows how to shoot his mouth off.

[Dec 14, 2019] In politics there are no accidents by Harry Truman

Notable quotes:
"... While the typical BubisAmericanus will have forgotten all the details by then, me thinks the hard core democrats, I mean nomal'ish people that usually vote blue, simply stay home. ..."
"... Was this whole impeachment thing completely designed for the dems to fall on their sword and put the Donald back in for another 4? Dunno. ..."
Dec 14, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

squid, 7 hours ago link

They want to do it by Christmas in the vain hope that this circus will all blow over by November. I think not.

While the typical BubisAmericanus will have forgotten all the details by then, me thinks the hard core democrats, I mean nomal'ish people that usually vote blue, simply stay home.

Part of me, however, thinks back to something that Harry Truman said, "in politics there are no accidents" .

Was this whole impeachment thing completely designed for the dems to fall on their sword and put the Donald back in for another 4? Dunno.

The Republicans will have both houses when in 2024 the the tax take will barley cover interest.

Meme Iamfurst , 6 hours ago link

designed for the dems to fall on their sword and put the Donald back in for another 4? Dunno.

Been thinking along the same lines. May be the last thing they want is to be "on line" in 2021. I even wonder if CNN and BSNBC, etc, are there to DRIVE the decent Democrat to the Republicians.

I do think that things are not adding up.

[Dec 14, 2019] To date, not a single shred of actual evidence has ever been produced to prove Russian involvement or interference in the 2016 presidential election

Dec 14, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Md4 , 8 hours ago link

No reputable legal authority would fear ensuring due process for an accused, unless it had no evidence of an actual crime to justify prosecution...but DID have ulterior motives and nefarious purposes for doing so.

Let's be clear.

To date, not a single shred of actual evidence has ever been produced to prove Russian involvement or interference in the 2016 presidential election.

***.

Nada.

We have the opinion of domestic intelligence agencies, but we have no physical or direct evidence.

On the contrary, we have as much reason to believe some or all of them interfered in the Trump campaign, to orchestrate and execute a foreign interference hoax against Trump, before and after his election.

Daily, and throughout this sick prog left congressional abuse of power, we have repeatedly heard claims of an "ongoing war with Russia" in Ukraine.

Which war is this? Is this a continuation of the non-invasion of the Donbas in 2014? The specious and false claims of Russian troop concentrations, and tanks rolling, that even spy satellites didn't see? Are we still lying about this? If so, where are the media reports of Russian airstrikes, burning Ukrainian villages, or body bags?

In any "on-going" war with Russia, we would've been treated to near-constant news video of Russian armor all over eastern Ukraine. Have we? Perhaps this war they keep telling us about is like the Russian "invasion" of Crimea that didn't happen either.

We clearly remember the two Crimean-initiated referenda which put them back in their ancestral Russian homelands, but none of that had anything to do with invading Russians, who already had a substantial military presence in Crimea for decades.

No sir, Professor Turley. ​​​​​​

There is no basis whatsoever for Trump's impeachment.

There is mounting evidence of a continued coup against this president, and the substantial number of Americans who actually elected him.

We too are closely monitoring the actual situation...

[Dec 13, 2019] Women have proven over the centuries that they can be just as bloodthirsty when in power

Dec 13, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

Marygoal , 10 Dec 2019 14:03

... Women have proven over the centuries that they can be just as bloodthirsty when in power. Indeed one of them is busy in The Hague as we speak.

[Dec 13, 2019] The Inspector General's Report on 2016 FBI Spying Reveals a Scandal of Historic Magnitude: Not Only for the FBI but Also the U.S. Media by Glenn Greenwald

Notable quotes:
"... a single American ..."
Dec 12, 2019 | theintercept.com
Just as was true when the Mueller investigation closed without a single American being charged with criminally conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, Wednesday's issuance of the long-waited report from the Department of Justice's Inspector General reveals that years of major claims and narratives from the U.S. media were utter frauds .

Before evaluating the media component of this scandal, the FBI's gross abuse of its power – its serial deceit – is so grave and manifest that it requires little effort to demonstrate it. In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims.

If you don't consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal, what is? But none of this is aberrational: the FBI still has its headquarters in a building named after J. Edgar Hoover – who constantly blackmailed elected officials with dossiers and tried to blackmail Martin Luther King into killing himself – because that's what these security state agencies are. They are out-of-control, virtually unlimited police state factions that lie, abuse their spying and law enforcement powers, and subvert democracy and civic and political freedoms as a matter of course.

In this case, no rational person should allow standard partisan bickering to distort or hide this severe FBI corruption. The IG Report leaves no doubt about it. It's brimming with proof of FBI subterfuge and deceit, all in service of persuading a FISA court of something that was not true: that U.S. citizen and former Trump campaign official Carter Page was an agent of the Russian government and therefore needed to have his communications surveilled.

[Dec 13, 2019] Note of Elliot Higgins and his MI6 funded dirty propaganda underwear selling shop

Dec 13, 2019 | www.unz.com

Kratoklastes , says: December 12, 2019 at 3:42 am GMT

started by an unemployed Englishman named Eliot Higgins

Good on him – being able to create a thing that rises to such prominence in such a short space of time speaks volumes about this Higgins guy's entrepreneurial ability. And if he wasn't mobbed-up to begin with, he sure as fuck is now – which is a double- mitzvah (for him).

If he did so starting from being unemployed, then anybody who turned down a job application from the guy must be kicking themselves. (' Unemployed ' is obviously used pejoratively in the blockquote; 'Englishman' is purely-descriptive).

.

Also, the entire article accepts Bernays' conclusion, but disagrees as to which objectives should be pursued.

Bernays' conclusions are hardly controversial: most people are gullible imbeciles . It's not clear to me how much more empirical evidence we need before that becomes just a thing that everyone with an IQ above 115 accepts.

So the question then becomes " OK, now what? ".

As usual, the right answer is " Depends " – and not just for those with bladder control problems.

If you want to do things that are just , exploiting gullible imbeciles would appear to violate the playing conditions. It would be hors jeu ; not done; just not cricket .

As the Laconian famously said . " IF ."

For those for whom the 'if' condition returns 'false', it does very little to bleat about how awful they are. You're not going to cause a little switch in their brain to flick on (or off?), whereupon they realise the error of their ways and make a conscious decision to leave the gullible imbeciles unexploited.

It's even unlikely to affect their victims (remember, they're imbeciles) – because otherwise some infra-marginal imbeciles would have to process their way through quite a bit of cognitive dissonance, and they're not wired for introspection (or processing).

So the sole real purpose (apart from κάθαρσις catharsis ) is prophylaxis (προ + φύλαξις – guarding ). Both good enough aims obviously the writer is the one who gets the cathartic benefit, but who is going to be on heightened alert as a result of this Cassandra -ish jeremiad -ing?

Non-imbeciles don't need it; imbeciles won't benefit.

Here's the thing: the gullible imbeciles are going to be exploited by someone .

.

This is something that people of my persuasion struggle with. It boils down to the following:

Let's assume that a reprehensible thing exists already, and is unlikely to be overthrown by my opposition to it. Should I just participate and line my pockets?

The resources used are going to be used whether I participate or not, so it may as well be me who gets them. After all, I will put them to moral uses – and while inside, I can do things that are contrary to the interests of the reprehensible thing.

There is no satisfactory counter-argument to that line of reasoning, and yet I reject it.

Then again: I was dropped on my head as an infant, so YMMV.

[Dec 13, 2019] Unprecedented brazenness

Dec 13, 2019 | irrussianality.wordpress.com

Unprecedented brazenness December 11, 2019 PaulR 6 Comments 'Something is rotten with the state of Denmark', or if not Denmark then certainly the United States of America. It's the only conclusion one can draw from the way the absolutely normal is nowadays treated as the most extraordinary drama.

On Monday, US President Donald Trump met Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. It's about as normal a diplomatic event as one could possibly imagine, but it caused much of the American commentariat to go into a collective meltdown.

Lavrov-Trump-Dec-10

'Trump welcoming Russia's top diplomat to the Oval Office is one of his most brazen moves yet,' declared the Washington Post , which makes you think that Trump really needs to step up his game on the brazenness front. The Post isn't alone in thinking this way, however. What one might call the 'liberal' TV channels leapt on the story too, dragging in some representatives of the American security apparatus to ram home the point (there was a time when liberals regarded the FBI and CIA with suspicion, but such days are apparently long gone).

And so it was that CNN brought on as a guest former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe to 'explain why the photograph tweeted by President Trump of his meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov is so extraordinary.' As McCabe told CNN :

There's no doubt there's something deeply odd about the way this president interacts with Russia. We've never seen anything like this before. Russia is our most significant enemy on the world stage. I don't think that we've ever seen a photograph out of the Oval Office on the lines of the one we saw today.

Meanwhile, MSNBC had its own star witness, former Under Secretary of State Richard Stengel. 'Why is a head of state meeting with the Russian foreign minister?' Stengel asked , 'Vladimir Putin doesn't meet with Mike Pompeo when he comes to Moscow. So it's very curious and it's very strange.'

Actually Rick, dear boy, Putin does meet with Pompeo, as you can see from this photo here. But when did one ever let little details like factual accuracy get in the way of a good line?

putin pompeo

Stengel wasn't MSNBC's only witness to Trump's suspicious behaviour. Former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul also put in an appearance. 'He's obsessed with the East, like a certain world leader in the 1940s was obsessed with the East. Why is this guy obsessed with meeting with Russians all over the place', the host asked McFaul. The latter let pass the gratuitous Hitler comparison, and gave his learned response: 'It's truly bizarre. I confess I do not have a rational explanation for it,' said McFaul .

Just in case you think it was only the media, FBI, and the State Department, others were on the ball too. The Trump-Lavrov meeting had Twitter abuzz. Anne Applebaum, for instance, had the following to say.

applebaum

It's all simply nuts. Trump is Hitler. A former ambassador can't think of any reason why representatives of two major powers might wish to meet. A former deputy head of the US foreign service thinks that heads of state never meet foreign ministers. And all of them believe that a photograph of the US President and the Russian foreign minister is totally unprecedented and suggestive of something deeply suspicious, though exactly what they can't quite tell us. Which makes you wonder what they'd all make of this picture.

800px-Lavrov_and_Obama

I don't know about you, but that looks a lot like Sergei Lavrov and President Obama to me. So, was Obama a Russian agent? Was he secretly selling out US interests to a foreign power? Should we be investigating him as well? It's all rather suspicious, don't you think?

I'll leave the last word to the excellent Fred Weir of the Christian Science Monitor:

It's pretty clear by now that no normal dialog is going to be possible between Russia and the US. Perhaps ever again. It's not my job to advise the Russians what to do, but if it were I would suggest they just give it up. Spend your time going to Beijing, Delhi, Ankara, even Berlin and Paris, but give Washington a miss.
It's the most peculiar damned thing I have ever seen. Even at the lowest depths of the Cold War, the Washington Post would never have run a headline that described a US president meeting a Soviet leader in the Oval Office as "one of his most brazen moves yet."
Analyzing the official photo of Trump and Lavrov in the Oval Office, the main -- disapproving -- takeaway the WaPo has to offer here is: "Judging by the expressions on their faces, the conversation does not seem to have been particularly acrimonious." Geez.

[Dec 12, 2019] Threat Inflation Poisons Our Foreign Policy by Daniel Larison

Highly recommended!
Dec 11, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
John Glaser and Christopher Preble have written a valuable study of the history and causes of threat inflation. Here is their conclusion:

If war is the health of the state, so is its close cousin, fear. America's foreign policy in the 21st century serves as compelling evidence of that. Arguably the most important task, for those who oppose America's apparently constant state of war, is to correct the threat inflation that pervades national security discourse. When Americans and their policymakers understand that the United States is fundamentally secure, U.S. military activism can be reined in, and U.S. foreign policy can be reset accordingly.

Threat inflation is how American politicians and policymakers manipulate public opinion and stifle foreign policy dissent. When hawks engage in threat inflation, they never pay a political price for sounding false alarms, no matter how ridiculous or over-the-top their warnings may be. They have created their own ecosystem of think tanks and magazines over the decades to ensure that there are ready-made platforms and audiences for promoting their fictions. This necessarily warps every policy debate as one side is permitted to indulge in the most baseless speculation and fear-mongering, and in order to be taken "seriously" the skeptics often feel compelled to pay lip service to the "threat" that has been wildly blown out of proportion. In many cases, the threat is not just inflated but invented out of nothing. For example, Iran does not pose a threat to the United States, but it is routinely cited as one of the most significant threats that the U.S. faces. That has nothing to do with an objective assessment of Iranian capabilities or intentions, and it is driven pretty much entirely by a propaganda script that most politicians and policymakers recite on a regular basis. Take Iran's missile program, for example. As John Allen Gay explains in a recent article , Iran's missile program is primarily defensive in nature:

The reality is they're not very useful for going on offense. Quite the opposite: they're a primarily defensive tool -- and an important one that Iran fears giving up. As the new Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report entitled "Iran Military Power" points out, "Iran's ballistic missiles constitute a primary component of its strategic deterrent. Lacking a modern air force, Iran has embraced ballistic missiles as a long-range strike capability to dissuade its adversaries in the region -- particularly the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia -- from attacking Iran."

Iran's missile force is in fact a product of Iranian weakness, not Iranian strength.

Iran hawks need to portray Iran's missile program inaccurately as part of their larger campaign to exaggerate Iranian power and justify their own aggressive policies. If Iran hawks acknowledged that Iran's missiles are their deterrent against attacks from other states, including our government, it would undercut the rest of their fear-mongering.

Glaser and Preble identify five main sources of threat inflation in the U.S.: 1) expansive overseas U.S. commitments require an exaggerated justification to make those commitments seem necessary for our security; 2) decades of pursuing expansive foreign policy goals have created a class dedicated to providing those justifications and creating the myths that sustain support for the current strategy; 3) there are vested interests that benefit from expansive foreign policy and seek to perpetuate it; 4) a bias in our political system in favor of hawks gives another advantage to fear-mongers; 5) media sensationalism exaggerates dangers from foreign threats and stokes public fear. To those I would add at least one more: threat inflation thrives on the public's ignorance of other countries. When Americans know little or nothing about another country beyond what they hear from the fear-mongers, it is much easier to convince them that a foreign government is irrational and undeterrable or that weak authoritarian regimes on the far side of the world are an intolerable danger.

Threat inflation advances with the inflation of U.S. interests. The two feed off of each other. When far-flung crises and conflicts are treated as if they are of vital importance to U.S. security, every minor threat to some other country is transformed into an intolerable menace to America. The U.S. is extremely secure from foreign threats, but we are told that the U.S. faces myriad threats because our leaders try to make other countries' internal problems seem essential to our national security. Ukraine is at most a peripheral interest of the U.S., but to justify the policy of arming Ukraine we are told by the more unhinged supporters that this is necessary to make sure that we don't have to fight Russia "over here." Because the U.S. has so few real interests in most of the world's conflicts, interventionists have to exaggerate what the U.S. has at stake in order to sell otherwise very questionable and reckless policies. That is usually when we get appeals to showing "leadership" and preserving "credibility," because even the interventionists struggle to identify why the U.S. needs to be involved in some of these conflicts. The continued pursuit of global "leadership" is itself an invitation to endless threat inflation, because almost anything anywhere in the world can be construed as a threat to that "leadership" if one is so inclined. To understand just how secure the U.S. really is, we need to give up on the costly ambition of "leading" the world.

Threat inflation is one of the biggest and most enduring threats to U.S. security, because it repeatedly drives the U.S. to take costly and dangerous actions and to spend exorbitant amounts on unnecessary wars and weapons. We imagine bogeymen that we need to fight, and we waste decades and trillions of dollars in futile and avoidable conflicts, and in the end we are left poorer, weaker, and less secure than we were before.

Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in the New York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World Politics Review , Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter .

[Dec 12, 2019] The FBI - Pushed By John Brennan - Lied To The Court Seven Times To Spy On The Trump Campaign

Highly recommended!
And behind Brennan we can can see the Nobel Peace Price winner.
Notable quotes:
"... A major role in directing the plot has fallen to Obama's consigliere John Brennan, the current director of the CIA. ..."
"... One part of the still ongoing deligitimization campaign was the FBI investigation of alleged Russian connections of four members of the Trump election campaign. ..."
"... The FBI agents and lawyers intentionally lied to the court. Their violations were not mistakes. All 51 of them were in favor of further spying on members of the Trump campaign and on everyone they communicated with. ..."
"... The FBI has used the Steele dossier to gain further FISA application even after it had talked with Steele's 'primary source' (who probably was the later 'buzzed' Sergei Skripal ) and after it had learned that the allegations in the dossier were no more than unconfirmed rumors. ..."
"... That the dossier was mere dreck was quite obvious to any sober person who read it when it was first published ..."
"... That summer, GCHQ's then head, Robert Hannigan, flew to the US to personally brief CIA chief John Brennan. The matter was deemed so important that it was handled at "director level", face-to-face between the two agency chiefs. ..."
"... (This is a Moon of Alabama fundraiser week. Please consider to support our work .) ..."
"... Occam's razor: CIA-MI6, with approval of US Deep State (Clintons, Bush, McCain, Brennan, Mueller, etc.), meddled to elect Trump and pointed fingers at Russia to initiate a new McCarthyism. ..."
"... "Sergey Lavrov: In my opinion, Congress sounds rather obsessed with destroying our relations. It continues pursuing the policy started by the Obama administration. As I mentioned, we are used to this kind of attack. We know how to respond to them. I assure you that neither Nord Stream-2 nor Turkish Stream will be halted." ..."
"... ... the current anti-Russian idiocy was started by Obama's team and was designed for Clinton to escalate ... ..."
"... It's Kissinger's WSJ Op-Ed of August 2014 that provides the answer. In this Op-Ed, Kissinger calls for a restored US Empire that is essentially Trump's MAGA. Kissinger is writing immediately after the Donbas rebels have won. The Russians refused to heed Kissinger's advice (to back down) and it has become apparent that Russia's joining the West is no longer an inevitability as the US elite had assumed. ..."
"... Good chance Steele had little to do with writing the Dossier. "Simpson-Ohr Dossier", anyone? Steele was needed as a credible looking intelligence officer with Russia ties and a past working relationship with US Intel, as cover to sell to FBI, FISA Court, and the public (meeting with Isikoff, Yahoo News story). ..."
"... Glenn Simpson and wife Mary Jacoby had written articles for the WSJ in 2007 and 2008 with a script and language similar to the Dossier. Devin Nunes seems to believe this scenario, and it is discussed in detail in books by Dan Bongino and Lee Smith, among others. ..."
"... physchoh @ 60; The difference, at least in my mind, is that, the "Russia did it" meme, is the weakest of all cases against DJT. Corbyn, on the other hand, may actually be hurt by the bogus charges. IMO, what this shows is coordination between the elites to bring down a progressive in the UK, who fancies public control over major finances instead of private concerns. ..."
"... So Horowitz was technically correct when he did not find bias. What he might have been reluctant to spell out is that he did find malice. ..."
Dec 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

On January 6 2017 this author concluded :

When Hillary Clinton was defeated in the U.S. presidential election the relevant powers launched a campaign to delegitimize the President elect Donald Trump.

The ultimate aim of the cabal is to kick him out of office and have a reliable replacement, like the Vice-President elect Pence, take over. Should that not be possible it is hoped that the delegitimization will make it impossible for Trump to change major policy trajectories especially in foreign policy. A main issue here is the reorientation of the U.S. military complex and its NATO proxies from the war of terror towards a direct confrontation with main powers like Russia and China.

...

A major role in directing the plot has fallen to Obama's consigliere John Brennan, the current director of the CIA.

One part of the still ongoing deligitimization campaign was the FBI investigation of alleged Russian connections of four members of the Trump election campaign.

The Inspector General of the U.S. Justice Department Michael Horowitz has investigated the FBI operation against the election campaign of Donald Trump. Yesterday he published his report, Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation (pdf). It is 480 pages long and quite thorough but unfortunately very limited in its scope.

Horowitz finds that the FBI was within the law when it opened the investigation but that the FBI's applications to the FISA court, which decides if the FBI can spy on someone's communications, were based on lies and utterly flawed.

Your host unfortunately lacked the time so far to read more than the executive summary. But others have pointed out some essential findings.

Matt Taibbi remarks :

The Guardian headline reads: " DOJ Internal watchdog report clears FBI of illegal surveillance of Trump adviser ."

If the report released Monday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz constitutes a "clearing" of the FBI, never clear me of anything. ...

Much of the press is concentrating on Horowitz's conclusion that there was no evidence of "political bias or improper motivation" in the FBI's probe of Donald Trump's Russia contacts, an investigation Horowitz says the bureau had "authorized purpose" to conduct.

...

However, Horowitz describes at great length an FBI whose "serious" procedural problems and omissions of "significant information" in pursuit of surveillance authority all fell in the direction of expanding the unprecedented investigation of a presidential candidate (later, a president).

...

There are too many to list in one column, but the Horowitz report show years of breathless headlines were wrong. Some key points:

The so-called "Steele dossier" was, actually, crucial to the FBI's decision to seek secret surveillance of Page. ...

...

The "Steele dossier" was "Internet rumor," and corroboration for the pee tape story was "zero." ...

John Solomon finds :

Appendix 1 identifies the total violations by the FBI of the so-called Woods Procedures, the process by which the bureau verifies information and assures the FISA court its evidence is true.

The Appendix identifies a total of 51 Woods procedure violations from the FISA application the FBI submitted to the court authorizing surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page starting in October 2016.

A whopping nine of those violations fell into the category called: "Supporting document shows that the factual assertion is inaccurate."

For those who don't speak IG parlance, it means the FBI made nine false assertions to the FISA court. In short, what the bureau said was contradicted by the evidence in its official file.

The FBI agents and lawyers intentionally lied to the court. Their violations were not mistakes. All 51 of them were in favor of further spying on members of the Trump campaign and on everyone they communicated with.

The FBI has used the Steele dossier to gain further FISA application even after it had talked with Steele's 'primary source' (who probably was the later 'buzzed' Sergei Skripal ) and after it had learned that the allegations in the dossier were no more than unconfirmed rumors.

That the dossier was mere dreck was quite obvious to any sober person who read it when it was first published . Here is what we wrote about it at that time:

The anonymous former British operator hears from an anonymous compatriot that two anonymous sources, asserted to have access to inner Russian circles, claimed to have heard somewhere that something happened in the Kremlin.

They assert that Trump was supported and directed by Putin himself five years ago while even a year ago no one would have bet a penny on Trump gaining any political significant position or even the presidency.

There is a lot more of such nonsense in these new Hitler diaries. It is bonkers from a to z.

Those who thought otherwise should question their judgment.

It is now claimed that the FBI is exculpated because the Horowitz report did not find "political bias or improper motivation". But that omits the fact that at least four high ranking people in the FBI and Justice Department who were involved in the case were found to be politically biased and were removed from their positions.

It also omits that the scope of Horowitz's investigation was limited to the Justice Department. He was not able to investigate the CIA and its former director John Brennan who was alleging Russia-Trump connections months before the FBI investigation started:

Contrary to a general impression that the FBI launched the Trump-Russia conspiracy probe, Brennan pushed it to the bureau – breaking with CIA tradition by intruding into domestic politics: the 2016 presidential election. He also supplied suggestive but ultimately false information to counterintelligence investigators and other U.S. officials.

The current CIA director Gina Haspel was CIA station chief in London during that time and while several of the entrapment attempts of Trump campaign staff by the FBI investigation happened. Horowitz spoke with neither of them.

Peter Van Buren concludes :

The current Horowitz Report, read alongside his previous report on how the FBI played inside the 2016 election vis-a-vis Clinton, should leave no doubt that the Bureau tried to influence the election of a president and then delegitimize him when he won. It wasn't the Russians; it was us.

That is correct, but the whole conspiracy was even deeper. It was not the FBI which initiated the case.

My hunch is still that the FBI investigation was a case of parallel construction which is often used to build a legitimate case after a suspicion was found by illegitimate means. In this case it was John Brennan who in early 2016 contacted the head of the British GCHQ electronic interception service and asked him to spy on the Trump campaign. GHCQ then claimed that something was found that was deemed suspicious :

That summer, GCHQ's then head, Robert Hannigan, flew to the US to personally brief CIA chief John Brennan. The matter was deemed so important that it was handled at "director level", face-to-face between the two agency chiefs.

The FBI was tipped off on the issue and on July 31 2016 started an investigation to construct a parallel legal case. It send out British and U.S. agents to entrap Trump campaign members. It used the obviously fake Steele dossier to gain FISA court judgments that allowed it to spy on the campaign. Downing Street was informed throughout the whole affair. A day after Trump's inauguration the UK's then Prime Minister Theresa May fired GHCQ chief Robert Hannigan.

One still open question is to what extend then President Barack Obama was involved in the affair.

There is another ongoing investigation by U.S. Prosecutor John Durham. That investigation is not limited to the Justice Department but will involve all agencies and domestic as well as foreign sources. Durham has the legal rights to declassify whatever is needed and he can indict persons should he find that they committed a crime. His report will hopefully go much deeper than the already horrendous stuff Horowitz delivered.

(This is a Moon of Alabama fundraiser week. Please consider to support our work .)

Posted by b on December 11, 2019 at 16:16 UTC | Permalink

Antoinetta III , Dec 11 2019 16:27 utc | 1

Do we have any idea when the Durham report will be coming out?

Antoinetta III

casey , Dec 11 2019 16:30 utc | 2
Anyone taking bets on Durham/Barr making indictments in this mess? My guess is a whole lot of horse trading is going on behind the scenes now, as in, "I'll trade you a censure for all potential indictments going down the memory hole."
Kabobyak , Dec 11 2019 16:54 utc | 3
Typical dog and pony show which will change nothing relating to interventionist foreign policy and the new cold war with Russia. Too many saw benefits from the corruption in Ukraine to dig deep there; the Bidens were just the most blatant, Lindsey Graham and others from both parties were involved so don't expect much from the Senate hearings. The bipartisan major goals are a fait accompli; universal acceptance that Russia worked to undermine our elections (and to destroy our "Democracy") and are thus an enemy we must fight, and it's universally accepted by all that we MUST provide Ukraine with Javelin missiles and other lethal aid to fight "Russian Aggression" (with little mention that even Obama balked at that reckless option). All of these proceedings are great distractions, but the weapons of war will not be diminished.
c1ue , Dec 11 2019 17:08 utc | 4
@Kabobyak #3

Very possibly, but the Afghanistan papers have made an impact on some people: American Conservative editor is outraged, including militating against his children serving in the military and taxpayers funding it

jayc , Dec 11 2019 17:10 utc | 5
Another candidate for Steele's "primary source" is Stefan Halper. Svetlana Lhokova suggested that this past Sunday.
Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 17:12 utc | 6
Unfortuneately, few will question the findings of these investigations or consider the possibility that the investigations themselves are misdirection/cover-up.

Repeating my comment from yesterday on the Open Thread :

IMO the Lavrov-Pompeo presser is notable mostly for Lavrov's discussion of Russiagate (about 6 minutes in).

Lavrov tells us that the Russian's repeatedly sought to clarify their noninterference by publishing correspondence - which the Trump Administration didn't respond to. And he actual mentions McCarthyism!

Wait, wot?

Yeah, during the worst of the Russiagate accusations, Trump wouldn't do things that would've helped to prove that Russiagate was a farce!!

So, during the election, Trump called on Putin to publish Hillary's emails (the very act of making such a request is likely illegal because at the time it was known that her emails contained highly classified info) but he wouldn't accept Russia's publication of exculpatory info about Russiagate?!?!

This would cause cognitive dissonance galore in an Americans that hear it - so one can be sure that it will not be reported.

Occam's razor: CIA-MI6, with approval of US Deep State (Clintons, Bush, McCain, Brennan, Mueller, etc.), meddled to elect Trump and pointed fingers at Russia to initiate a new McCarthyism.

Meanwhile in bizarroland (aka USA), Barr says Russiagate is a fantasy based on FBI "bad faith" - yet Pompeo still presses on with the "Russia meddled" bullshit.

!!

james , Dec 11 2019 17:24 utc | 7
thanks b... i like your example in the comment - ''those who thought otherwise should question their judgment''.. good example!

i am a bit concerned like @ 2 casey, that most of this is going to go down the memory hole and there will be that made in america stamp on it - ''no accountability''... i wish i was wrong, but getting worked up at the idea anyone is going to be held accountable for any actions of the usa, or the insiders playing the usa, is clearly a fools game at this point.. all i mostly see is the needed collapse and waiting for that to happen..

Kabobyak , Dec 11 2019 17:27 utc | 8
@c1ue #4

Thanks for that, there are definitely cracks in the armor and we should promote that narrative as you do in your link. Tulsi Gabbard has also expanded the awareness, hopefully she will make the upcoming debates despite strong efforts to silence her. I'll try more to focus on the positive!

james , Dec 11 2019 17:27 utc | 9
@ 6 jr.. there is a press release on all what was said here for anyone interested..

lavrov quote and etc. etc.. "We suggested to our colleagues that in order to dispel all suspicions that are baseless, let us publish this closed-channel correspondence starting from October 2016 till November 2017 so it would all become very clear to many people. However, regrettably, this administration refused to do so. But I'd like to repeat once again we are prepared to do that, and to publish the correspondence that took place through that channel would clear many matters up, I believe. Nevertheless, we hope that the turbulence that appeared out of thin air will die down, just like in 1950s McCarthyism came to naught, and there'll be an opportunity to go back to a more constructive cooperation."

evilempire , Dec 11 2019 17:44 utc | 10
I continue to believe that the FBI and Horowitz perjured themselves in the FISA report. To correct a mistake in a previous post I made, I believe they lied when the claimed the Steele Dossier was not a predicate for opening crossfire hurricane. How can the Steele dossier not be instrumental in the opening of the investigation when bruce ohr's wife nellie ohr was working at fusion gps when bruce ohr met with steele to discuss the dirty dossier.

In other words, the FBI was concocting Operation Crossfire Hurricane prior to the time they had any knowledge of the phony Papadopoulus predicate that the russians were proferring the clinton emails to the trump campaign.

The FISA report claim that Operation Crossfire Hurricane was predicated solely on the Papadopolous allegations is therefore a lie. There was, in fact, no real predicate for Operation Crossfire Hurricane. The predications cited were all fictions and inventions fabricated in a conspiracy between MI6(the FFC or

friendly foreign country cited in the Horowitz report), the DOJ and the FBI. Operation Crossfire Hurricane was a massive Psyop from its inception.

Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 18:19 utc | 12
james @9

What major publications have picked up this info from the State Dept PR? Which of them are questioning why Trump didn't agree to let the Russians publish the exonerating information? And how many of those are linking this strange fact to other strange facts and thus raising troubling questions about the 2016 election?

<> <> <> <> <> <>

It's not just that Trump refused to publish exculpatory material. Anyone that's been reading my comments (and/or my blog) knows that Trump also:

- hired Manafort - whose work for pro-Russian candidates in Ukraine had drawn the ire of CIA - despite Manafort's having no recent experience with US elections;

- helped Pelosi to be elected Speaker of the House by inviting her to attend a White House meeting about his border wall (along with Chuck Schumer) prior to the House vote to elect a Speaker.

- initiated Ukrainegate by talking with Ukraine's President about investigating an announced candidate - he didn't have to do this(!) he could've let subordinates work behind the scenes .

And then there's a set of suspicious activity that is difficult to explain, such as: ...

- Kissinger's having called for MAGA in August 2014 (Trump announced his campaign 10 months later and he was the ONLY MAGA candidate and the ONLY populist in the Republican primary) ;

- London as a nexus for the US 2016 campaign (Cambridge Analytica; GPS Fusion; Halper, etc.) ;

- Hillary's making mistakes in the 2016 campaign that no seasoned politician would make;

- the settling of scores via entrapments of Flynn, Manafort, and Wikileaks/Assange (painted as a hostile intelligence agency and Russian agent).

All of these and more support the conclusion that CIA-MI6 elected MAGA Trump and initiated Russiagate.

!!

Piotr Berman , Dec 11 2019 18:28 utc | 13
The anonymous former British operator hears from an anonymous asserted compatriot what two anonymous sources, asserted to have access to inner Russian circles, claim to have heard somewhere that something happened in the Kremlin. <-- Perhaps it is too much to add that the entire conversation happen in a pub, like an eyewitness account of a trout caught by an angler that was larger than a tiger shark [the trout was so large, not the angler].

Really?? , Dec 11 2019 18:31 utc | 14
James #11

I am a great fan of Dmitri Orlov and have just read a large portion of his linked post.

What I do not see Orlov doing is taking into account--in his takedown of "scientific" models---evidence of global warming/change such as *actual* observations of *actual, current* phenomena that are being measured today, such as the condition of the world's coral reefs; the rate of melting of permafrost and release of methane gas; the melting of Greenland (and other) glaciers and release of fresh water into the oceans; acidification of oceans; and quite a lot of evidence for sea level rise, such as saltwater intrusion into freshwater swamps, aquifers, etc.

karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 18:38 utc | 15
More can be gleaned by the manner in which BigLie Media spin the investigation's results. At The Hill , Jonathon Turley makes that clear in the first paragraph:

"The analysis of the report by Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz greatly depends, as is often the case, on which cable news channel you watch. Indeed, many people might be excused for concluding that Horowitz spent 476 pages to primarily conclude one thing, which is that the Justice Department acted within its guidelines in starting its investigation into the 2016 campaign of President Trump."

The further he goes the worse it gets for the Ds. And he's 100% correct about the biases present in reporting about the Report. Remarks made by Lavrov at the presser were likely done prior to anyone from Russia's delegation having digested any of the Report. What I found important was the following revelation by Lavrov:

"Let me remind you that at the time of the first statements on this topic, which was on the eve of the 2016 US presidential election, we used the communications channel that linked back then Moscow and the Obama administration in Washington to ask our US partners on numerous occasions whether these allegations that emerged in October 2016 and persisted until Donald Trump's inauguration could be addressed. The reply never came. There was no response whatsoever to all our proposals when we said: look, if you suspect us, let's sit down and talk, just put your facts on the table. All this continued after President Trump's inauguration and the appointment of a new administration. We proposed releasing the correspondence through this closed communications channel for the period from October 2016 until January 2017 in order to dispel all this groundless suspicion. This would have clarified the situation for many. Unfortunately, this time it was the current administration that refused to do so. Let me reiterate that we are ready to disclose to the public the exchanges we had through this channel . I think that this would set many things straight. Nevertheless we expect the turbulence that appeared out of thin air to calm down little by little, just as McCarthyism waned in the 1950s, so that we can place our cooperation on a more constructive footing." [My Emphasis]

Lavrov on Mueller Report: "It contains no confirmation of any collusion." End of story. But we do have all this compiled evidence within our communications we're ready to publish is the USA

agrees.

The Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) organization has yet to publish anything about the report. However, Matt Taibbi often writes for that outlet, so his reporting at Rolling Stone ought to be seen as a proxy FAIR report.

Michael Droy , Dec 11 2019 18:42 utc | 16
Great stuff as ever. How useful is it that Skripal is Unavailable but not Dead? For example does it affect redaction of material linked to him?
Jon Carter , Dec 11 2019 18:59 utc | 17
Now that we know Carter Page was working for the CIA as an informant in 2016, is it reasonable to speculate that Page was planted in the Trump campaign by the CIA?
GeorgeV , Dec 11 2019 19:11 utc | 18
The Inspector General of the Department of Justice, Micheal Horowitz's report on the move to delegitimize the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is clear proof of the massive rot that lies at the heart of the US' political system. If this matter is whitewashed over by the MSM, then one more step will have been taken to a violent and bloody revolution in the US of A.
JR , Dec 11 2019 19:41 utc | 20
By now Steele's credibility is zero. Time to revisit Steele's involvement with the debunked "Russia bought the soccer World Champion games", the Litvinenko polonium poisening and the Skripal novichok poisening. The timing of the Skripal matter deserves some scrutiny in relation to Skripal possibly being Steele's source for the infamous Trump dossier. There might be a motive hidden there.
Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 19:44 utc | 21
Jon Carter @17:
... is it reasonable to speculate that Page was planted in the Trump campaign by the CIA?

And then there's Simon Bracey Lane in the Sanders campaign as described here: British Spies Infiltrated Bernie Sanders' Campaign?

Plus we have the strange goings-on of Halper and Mifsud as well as Gina Haspel in London also.

!!

uncle tungsten , Dec 11 2019 20:04 utc | 22
karlof1 #15

Thank you for posting Lavrov's words. Between those words and the IG report the kabuki farce is revealed. Why was Trump ignoring the Russian offer you might ask. Because it suited him to have this nonsense dominate the news cycle, you might conclude. Trump and Comey and Brennan deserve each other.

Lavrov's words condemn the three of them.

S , Dec 11 2019 20:25 utc | 24
Twitter account @Techno_Fog lists MSM shills who assured the public the FISA warrant on Page was not based on Steele dossier (h/t Zero Hedge).
james , Dec 11 2019 20:26 utc | 25
just like 9-11... this is an inside job... does anyone really think the truth is going to come to light in any of it?? i'm still with @ 2 caseys view...
karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 20:48 utc | 27
uncle tungsten @22--

Thanks for your reply! Yes, agreed, and I'd add Obama and Clinton. Lavrov also held another presser at the conclusion of his visit that provides additional info not covered in the first. The following is one I thought important:

"Question: The day before, US Congress agreed on a draft military budget, which includes possible sanctions against Nord Stream-2 and Turkish Stream. Have you covered this topic? The Congress sounds very determined. How seriously will the new restrictions affect the completion of our projects?

"Sergey Lavrov: In my opinion, Congress sounds rather obsessed with destroying our relations. It continues pursuing the policy started by the Obama administration. As I mentioned, we are used to this kind of attack. We know how to respond to them. I assure you that neither Nord Stream-2 nor Turkish Stream will be halted."

I must emphatically agree with Lavrov's opinion and was very pleased he answered forthrightly. What seems quite clear is the current anti-Russian idiocy was started by Obama's team and was designed for Clinton to escalate, with bipartisan Congressional backing. That she lost didn't stop the anti-Russian wheel from being turned. So, logic tells us to discover the reason for Obama to alter policy. Over the years I've written here why I think that was done--to continue the #1 policy goal of attaining Full Spectrum Dominance over the planet and its people regardless of its impossibility given the Sino-Russo Alliance made reality by that policy goal. That a supermajority in Congress remain deluded is clearly a huge problem, and those continuing to vote for the War Budget need to be removed.

ben , Dec 11 2019 21:03 utc | 28
b posted, in part;"When Hillary Clinton was defeated in the U.S. presidential election the relevant powers launched a campaign to delegitimize the President elect Donald Trump."

It doesn't take HRC and her resident scum-bag sycophants to deligitimize DJT, his sorry life-style, and his past record do that quite nicely, IMO.

karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 21:07 utc | 29
This tweet sums up things nicely in ways BigLie Media won't:

With only 9% approval, it ought to be easy to toss out most Congresscritters, excepting that part of the Senate not up for reelection.

ben , Dec 11 2019 21:18 utc | 30
Jrabbit @ 12 said; "All of these and more support the conclusion that CIA-MI6 elected MAGA Trump and initiated Russiagate."

YEP!!!!!

Paul Damascene , Dec 11 2019 21:24 utc | 32

Karlof1 @ 29--

Are you aware of any means by which a member of congress or of a congressional committee can be impeached or otherwise censured for the misconduct of official duties? That would at least be Schiff...

Posted by: Paul Damascene | Dec 11 2019 21:24 utc | 32

james , Dec 11 2019 21:25 utc | 33
@ 31 john.. i didn't know i had to read the orlov article to say what i did to you!! your post @11 never make any internet link to orlov... what am i missing? does this mean i can only speak with you after i have read another orlov article? lol...
james , Dec 11 2019 21:27 utc | 34
i see it now.. my comment still stands though... people seem especially pugnacious today..
William Gruff , Dec 11 2019 21:27 utc | 35
"It doesn't take HRC and her resident scum-bag sycophants to deligitimize DJT, his sorry life-style, and his past record do that quite nicely, IMO." --ben @28

Ah, but that would be legitimate deligitimization, like attacking his actual policies. Those are rocks that would break the Democrats' own windows as well as Trump's.

karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 21:30 utc | 36
29 Cont'd--

And Congress continues to alienate allies :

"So far on Dec 11:

1. Senate Foreign Relations Comm passed Turkey sanctions bill

2. Pentagon Chief warned Turkey moving away NATO

3. U.S. lawmakers introduce legislation to curb Turkey's nuclear weapon obtainment"

Finally, the pretense of being nice to Turkey has come to an end. It will now intensify its looking East, and pursue its national interests. IMO, the Eastern Med's energy issues will now become a major headache.

ben , Dec 11 2019 21:40 utc | 37
karlof @ 29: The head Dems know their pushing the " Russia did it"meme is weak, but the PTB

insist on it, to keep the MIC funds flowing.

The "no-brainer" charges should be; "Obstruction" and "Emoluments" violations. Charges the public can grasp.

What happens if you, or any average person, ignores a summons to appear? They are arrested.

Funneling govt. funds for personal gain is a violation of law, if you are POTUS.

These are violations average Americans can grasp, not the current circus of he said, she said, going on in D.C. lately.

Guess my point is, this hearings are built to fail, because most of our so-called leaders like things the way they are. The rape of the workings classes will continue.

karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 21:41 utc | 38
Paul Damascene @32--

Yes. The impeachment process is the same as for Trump. Censuring is much easier but doubt it will occur as too many are deserving. We're seeing the reason Congressional elections are held every two years--vote 'em out if they're no good!

Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 22:01 utc | 40
karlof1 @27:

... the current anti-Russian idiocy was started by Obama's team and was designed for Clinton to escalate ...

I don't agree that the baton would be passed to Clinton. The Deep State uses the two-party system as a device. It's not tied to partisan concerns. If the Deep State and the establishment really wanted Clinton elected, they would've made that happen. Few expected Trump to win and few would've been outraged if he had lost. Yet he won. Against all odds. Furthermore, Clinton wasn't the MAGA candidate as called for by Kissinger - Trump was. And he was from the beginning of his candidacy.

Russiagate was based on suspicions of a populist that was compromised by Russia. Hillary has too much baggage to play populist or nationalist - including Bill's involvement with Epstein.

Also, you're forgetting the set ups of Manafort, Flynn, and Wikileaks/Assange - which were important parts of Russiagate and also a convenient way of settling scores. These set-ups required the Russiagate-tainted candidate (Trump) to win.

And Trump's beating Hillary makes him the classic come-from-behind hero - giving Trump a certain legitimacy that an establishment candidate wouldn't have. That's important when contemplating taking the country to war in the near future.

It's strange to me that people can think that Hillary was the 'chosen candidate', and be OK with that but find a possible selection of a different candidate (Trump, as it turns out) to be outrageous and inconceivable.

=

... with bipartisan Congressional backing . That she lost didn't stop the anti-Russian wheel from being turned.

Since the Deep State and the Establishment desired an effort to restore the Empire, they would turn to whomever could most effectively accomplish that task.

Once again: It didn't have to be Hillary that was selected. In fact, for many reasons (that I've previously expressed) Hillary would have been a poor choice.

=

So, logic tells us to discover the reason for Obama to alter policy. Over the years I've written here why I think that was done--to continue the #1 policy goal of attaining Full Spectrum Dominance over the planet and its people ...

FSD is US Mil policy, not a political goal. It states that US Mil will strive to have superiority in weapons and capability in every sphere of combat.

Politically, FSD is just one of several means to an end. IMO that end is the maintenance and expansion of the Anglo-Zionist Empire (aka New World Order).

Also, your dominance theory doesn't answer the question of WHY NOW? (more on that below)

... regardless of its impossibility given the Sino-Russo Alliance ...

Firstly, US Deep State believes that it is possible. And I personally don't buy the notion that Russia and China are fated to prevail. If that were obvious, then the moa bar would have no patrons.

Secondly (and again), WHY NOW? The Sino-Russo Alliance was long in the making. Why did USA suddenly take note?

It's Kissinger's WSJ Op-Ed of August 2014 that provides the answer. In this Op-Ed, Kissinger calls for a restored US Empire that is essentially Trump's MAGA. Kissinger is writing immediately after the Donbas rebels have won. The Russians refused to heed Kissinger's advice (to back down) and it has become apparent that Russia's joining the West is no longer an inevitability as the US elite had assumed.

<> <> <> <> <> <>

I've written many times of Kissinger's Op-Ed and of indications that the Deep State selected MAGA Trump to be President while also initiating a new McCarthyism. Why is it STILL so difficult to believe a theory that makes so much sense?

!!

karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 22:08 utc | 41
ben @37--

Yes, the status quo is very generous to the Current Oligarchy and its tools, but not so for the vast public majority which is clamoring for change. IMO, much can be learned from the UK election tomorrow, of which there's been very little discussion here despite its importance. I suggest following the very important developments from the past few days at Criag Murray's Twitter and at his website , the linked article being a scoop of sorts.

Also harder to follow but important as well are ballot initiatives within the states. This site has current listing . I just looked over those for California where there are a few good ones, but the threshold for signatures is getting higher, close to one million are now needed in CA.

Cortes , Dec 11 2019 22:34 utc | 43
Lavrov's comments about the offers to open up normally closed communications really only highlight two obvious issues:
AshenLight , Dec 11 2019 22:38 utc | 44
@ Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 11 2019 21:07 utc | 29
With only 9% approval, it ought to be easy to toss out most Congresscritters, excepting that part of the Senate not up for reelection.

You'd think so, but somehow the numbers pretty much reverse when these same people consider their own rep, and the incumbency reelection rate is shockingly high (haven't looked recently but IIRC it has hovered around 90% for decades). Apparently it is amazingly easy to convince the masses that their guy is the one good apple in the bunch.

karlof1 , Dec 11 2019 22:39 utc | 45
Jon Schwartz reminds me why I don't stop and peruse magazine stands anymore. Seeing the words and this picture would've sparked lots of unpleasant language:

"The best part of Michelle Obama explaining she shares the same values as George W. Bush is she was being interviewed on network TV by Bush's daughter. There's nothing more American than our ruling class making us watch them discuss how great they all are."

And the escalation wasn't rigged for Clinton to initiate--yeah, sure, whatever the rabbit says.

steven t johnson , Dec 11 2019 22:42 utc | 46
Until there is some comparison of how the FISA court usually works, none of this chatter means a thing. Violations of Woods procedures and assertions not supported by documents are SOP. The FISA court is always a joke.

Delgeitimizing Trump, reversing the election, all simple-minded drviel, as only nitwits see Trump as anything but the loser.

Jackrabbit , Dec 11 2019 23:08 utc | 48
Jen, that's a really interesting post. Thanks.

Skripal knows something that US-UK either 1) don't want the Russians to know OR 2) don't want ANYONE to know.

What could that be? 1) That Steele dossier is bullshit? We know that. 2) That Steele dossier was meant to be bullshit ? Well, that raises a whole host of questions, doesn't it?

!!

Kabobyak , Dec 12 2019 0:45 utc | 51
Good chance Steele had little to do with writing the Dossier. "Simpson-Ohr Dossier", anyone? Steele was needed as a credible looking intelligence officer with Russia ties and a past working relationship with US Intel, as cover to sell to FBI, FISA Court, and the public (meeting with Isikoff, Yahoo News story).

Glenn Simpson and wife Mary Jacoby had written articles for the WSJ in 2007 and 2008 with a script and language similar to the Dossier. Devin Nunes seems to believe this scenario, and it is discussed in detail in books by Dan Bongino and Lee Smith, among others.

daffyDuct , Dec 12 2019 2:26 utc | 56
c1ue @4

The Afghanistan report outlines a *massive fraud*. $14 billion/month, 90% of the world's opium, no "progress", oh, and lying to Congress for two decades.

ben , Dec 12 2019 3:24 utc | 59
OT, but this seems to be going around..Eh?

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/11/jeremy-corbyn-faces-russiagate-smear-campaign-before-uk-vote/#more-17822

ben , Dec 12 2019 4:47 utc | 62
physchoh @ 60; The difference, at least in my mind, is that, the "Russia did it" meme, is the weakest of all cases against DJT. Corbyn, on the other hand, may actually be hurt by the bogus charges. IMO, what this shows is coordination between the elites to bring down a progressive in the UK, who fancies public control over major finances instead of private concerns.
Piotr Berman , Dec 12 2019 5:03 utc | 63
Fox News, now: Biden blames staff, says nobody 'warned' him son's Ukraine job could raise conflict. In a TV comedy Seinfeld, one of the main characters, George, is a compulsive liar with a knack of getting in trouble. Sometimes he has a job. Final scene of one of those jobs:
evilempire , Dec 12 2019 5:34 utc | 64
I have theory about why Horowitz did not bias in the FBI. The definition of bias is to harbor a deeply negative feeling that clouds one's judgement about a person or subject. However, the conspirators' judgement was not clouded in this case. Their negative feelings focused their intent to destroy the object of

their feeling. The precise term for this is malice.

So Horowitz was technically correct when he did not find bias. What he might have been reluctant to spell out is that he did find malice.

Perimetr , Dec 12 2019 6:03 utc | 65
Re Really?? | Dec 11 2019 18:31 utc | 14 and AshenLight | Dec 11 2019 19:36 utc | 19

I agree with you. Orlov is a brilliant, insightful analyst, who is also very funny. But he is off the mark with his dismissal of global warming and also with his endorsement of nuclear power. The immense amounts of waste from uranium mining all the way to hundreds of thousands of tons of high-level waste in spent fuel pools pose a huge threat to current and future generations . . . like the next 3000 generations of humans (and all other forms of life) that will have to deal with this. Mankind has never built anything that has lasted a fraction of the 100,000 years required for the isolation of high-level wastes from the biosphere. Take a look at Into Eternity which is a great documentary on the disposal of nuclear waste in Finland.

Orlov's analysis is superficial, unfortunately, in these areas.

[Dec 12, 2019] 'Always better to talk than not': Lavrov Pompeo take on Russia-US problems in Washington, DC (VIDEO)

Dec 12, 2019 | www.rt.com

Russian FM Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have briefed the media after talks in Washington, DC, the first such meeting since 2017. Speaking at the press conference on Tuesday, Pompeo said the US was seeking a "better relationship" with Russia and that the two countries have been working on improving relations since his visit to Sochi in May. He said lines of communication between Moscow and Washington were open and relations were candid.

Lavrov echoed that, saying the two met regularly and also spoke frequently by phone. "It is useful to talk to each other," he said. "Always better than not talking to each other."

//www.youtube.com/embed/bp-uZHwMSWA

In a nod to the ongoing anti-Russia hysteria in the US, Lavrov said their joint work was, however, " hindered by the wave of suspicions that have overcome Washington." Calling allegations of Russian interference in US internal affairs "baseless," Lavrov said Moscow had "many times" asked the Trump administration to publish all correspondence between Trump and Putin from October 2016 and 2017, but that it had received "no response."

Allegations of Russian interference in US internal affairs are 'baseless': 'We have not seen any evidence, because it does not exist' – Lavrov pic.twitter.com/M1Ezgs22kd

-- RT (@RT_com) December 10, 2019

Russia is hoping the current anti-Russia feeling dissipates like the McCarthyism of the 1950s, Lavrov added.

Pompeo said that cooperation on anti-terrorism is one of the main focuses of the relationship, particularly in relation to Syria.

"We want to make sure Syria never again becomes a safe haven for ISIS or other terrorist groups," he said.

On Ukraine, Pompeo said the resolution of conflict in the eastern regions of the country begins "with adherence to the Minsk agreements."

[Dec 12, 2019] The Skripals residing on US territory would definitely indicate that the US has been the senior partner in the "Skripal operation"

Notable quotes:
"... The FBI agents and lawyers intentionally lied to the court. Their violations were not mistakes. All 51 of them were in favor of further spying on members of the Trump campaign and on everyone they communicated with. ..."
"... The FBI has used the Steele dossier to gain further FISA application even after it had talked with Steele's 'primary source' (who probably was the later 'buzzed' Sergei Skripal ) and after it had learned that the allegations in the dossier were no more than unconfirmed rumors. ..."
Dec 12, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

The FBI agents and lawyers intentionally lied to the court. Their violations were not mistakes. All 51 of them were in favor of further spying on members of the Trump campaign and on everyone they communicated with.

The FBI has used the Steele dossier to gain further FISA application even after it had talked with Steele's 'primary source' (who probably was the later 'buzzed' Sergei Skripal ) and after it had learned that the allegations in the dossier were no more than unconfirmed rumors.

Michael Droy , Dec 11 2019 18:42 utc | 16
Great stuff as ever. How useful is it that Skripal is Unavailable but not Dead? For example does it affect redaction of material linked to him?
JR , Dec 11 2019 19:41 utc | 20
By now Steele's credibility is zero. Time to revisit Steele's involvement with the debunked "Russia bought the soccer World Champion games", the Litvinenko polonium poisening and the Skripal novichok poisening. The timing of the Skripal matter deserves some scrutiny in relation to Skripal possibly being Steele's source for the infamous Trump dossier. There might be a motive hidden there.
Jen , Dec 11 2019 22:27 utc | 42
I know on a recemt MoA Open Thread comments forum that there was a link to this recent John Helmer / Dances With Bears article mentioning that Sergei and Julia Skripal were being held at an airbase in Gloucestershire being used by the United States Air Force (USAF) at the time that Julia Skripal was interviewed by a Reuters representative in May last year. I consider that link and the news worth mentioning again in this comments thread as some commenters have already mentioned Sergei Skripal in connection with Christopher Steele's dossier.

As early as August 2018 , there had been speculation that the Skripals were being held at USAF Fairford airbase, based on audiovisual evidence in the background garden scene where the interview took place. Helmer's sources (they requested anonymity) spotted a chicken coop in the background which they say is a crow ladder trap. This is one indication that the garden scene was located near a runway. Background noises included the roar of jet engines.

If Helmer's information is correct, then we can now understand why the British government never gave Russian embassy staff access to the Skripals: London was in no position to do so, the Skripals were on US territory.

One implication of this new information is that the Skripals may no longer be in Britain and may now be living in North America somewhere with new identities. Should something happen to them (or have happened to them already), they will not be missed by their new neighbours. The Skripals will never be allowed to return to Russia and Sergei Skripal will never see or be allowed to communicate with his elderly mother again.

It really does look as if Sergei Skripal may have had something to do with that Orbis dossier after all, even if as a minor source or as a reference rather than the primary source of disinformation about Donald Trump's past activities in Moscow. What other work has Skripal done for his American masters?

Jen , Dec 11 2019 22:44 utc | 47
JR @ 20:

It looks as if Sergei Skripal may not be the primary source of the disinformation in Christopher Steele's dossier. Perhaps the person who is the primary source is not a Russian at all.

RJPJR , Dec 11 2019 23:56 utc | 50
JR | Dec 11 2019 19:41 utc | 20 brings up a revisiting of the Litvinenko polonium poisoning.

It is worth mentioning that a tiny but crucial and virtually never mentioned detail of the official inquiry (considered the last word on the matter) is that those conducting the official inquiry were never allowed access to the autopsy report -- which should have been (which would have been, in any honest effort at inquiry) the bedrock starting point. The report has right along been sequestered by Scotland Yard in the interests of... you guessed it: national security. Go figure...

bevin , Dec 12 2019 1:46 utc | 53
It strikes me that the best explanation of the attack on the Skripals is not that he was responsible for the Steele Dossier in any way, but that he could easily prove that it was a fantasy. And was planning to do so.

He knew better, though, than to say so in the UK which suggests that he was on his way home with his daughter when MI6 caught up with him and poisoned them both.

Steele, Pablo Miller and Skripal were old partners in crime.

I'm wondering whether the mistake Sergei made was not to leave the house -- probably worth lotsa rubles -- behind and just go. On the other hand he was almost certainly under constant surveillance.

@50 The Official Report to which you refer was also very careful to enter extensive caveats regarding its conclusions for which there was almost no real evidence.

Cynica , Dec 12 2019 1:48 utc | 54

@Jackrabbit #12, @karlof1 #15

It seems important to note that Mr. Lavrov refers to administrations in his comments, not presidents per se. As there are many staff in presidential administrations, it seems entirely possible that 1) the requests from the Russians never reached Obama or Trump personally, and 2) either or both presidents were therefore not even aware of the requests. In the case of Trump, that would be consistent with the fact that many members of his administration have been revealed to have operated contrary to his wishes.

@Jen #42

The Skripals residing on US territory would definitely indicate that the US has been the senior partner in the "Skripal operation". This seems to be part of a general pattern.

@Jackrabbit #48

For the Steele dossier to be intentional bullshit (meaning its creator(s) knew it was false when they created it) doesn't seem all that surprising. Intelligence agencies promote disinformation all the time. That in no way means that Trump is in on the game.

pretzelattack , Dec 12 2019 2:04 utc | 55
by this point i don't know if either Skripal is still alive. Why keep them alive if they could debunk the oh so precious propaganda?
karlof1 , Dec 12 2019 3:20 utc | 58
Cynica @54--

Both Putin and Lavrov have stated that they talked directly with Obama and Trump about the issues involved with their relations, so there's no excuses or obfuscation possible is this case.

[Dec 11, 2019] Why Brennan and his team have all lawyered up

Dec 11, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

LEEPERMAX , 2 minutes ago link

BOTH the AG and federal prosecutor Durham REJECT the findings. Durham has the ability to conduct a criminal investigation that Horowitz did not. Given this, the IG found evidence to criminally refer FBI officials and campaign spies.

-- GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS (@GEORGEPAPA19) DECEMBER 9, 2019

Remember: the Durham probe became a CRIMINAL investigation as soon as he left Rome with information on Mifsud. IG said he wasn't working for the FBI. Leaves only one other option: CIA, and why Brennan and his team have all lawyered up. Bye bye, Brennan.

-- GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS (@GEORGEPAPA19) DECEMBER 9, 2019

[Dec 11, 2019] Not Steele dossier, but FBI/CIA/MI6 operation of George Papadopoulos entrapment was the real star of Russiagate

This is selective quotes from anti-Trump of neocon author. The general tone of the article is completely different from presented quotes.
Notable quotes:
"... ..."This was an overthrow of government, this was an attempted overthrow -- and a lot of people were in on it," Trump declared , while Barr insisted , in a more lawyerly fashion, "The Inspector General's report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken." ..."
Dec 11, 2019 | www.theatlantic.com

The report confirmed that the Russia investigation originated, as has been previously reported, with the Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos bragging to an Australian diplomat about Russia possessing "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, which the IG determined "was sufficient to predicate the investigation." The widespread conservative belief that the investigation began because of the dubious claims in the Steele dossier was false. "Steele's reports played no role" in the opening of the Russia investigation, the report found, because FBI officials were not "aware of Steele's election reporting until weeks later."

...The IG also "did not find any records" that Joseph Mifsud, the professor who told Papadopoulos the Russians had obtained "dirt" on Clinton, was an FBI informant sent to entrap him.

...Page "did not play a role in the decision to open" the Russia investigation, and that Strzok was "was not the sole, or even the highest-level, decision maker as to any of those matters."

...the IG did determine that the Page FISA application was "inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation," which misled the court as to the credibility of the FBI's evidence when seeking authority to surveil Page.

..."This was an overthrow of government, this was an attempted overthrow -- and a lot of people were in on it," Trump declared , while Barr insisted , in a more lawyerly fashion, "The Inspector General's report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken."

Adam Serwer is a staff writer at The Atlantic , where he covers politics.

[Dec 11, 2019] Russiagate is a gift. If any argument was still needed to tell the peoples of the world that the USA imperail sevants are terminaly deranged

Dec 11, 2019 | www.unz.com

refl , says: December 9, 2019 at 2:11 pm GMT

@AnonFromTN It is heartening that there are people who are expecting salvation from Germany. Let me tell you guys, it is GONE. And it is certainly not heroic to say this, but I can live with having past my service at an old peoples home, instead, and I can live with not sending my son off to a trench. And I absolutely subscribe to what Jim Christian said (thanks for his comments, as for quite some others! ), if you touch my wife or son, I will get wild, but the rest is not worth defending.

But here is my thought: Agreed, that western and american military is today disfunctional and deluded about themselves. But they are absolutely superior when it comes to psyop. 9/11 was marvellously executed and to root up the whole middle east and pump the destitute people from there into Europe to blow it up, that is quite something.

From that perspective,

refl , says: December 9, 2019 at 2:11 pm GMT
@AnonFromTN It is heartening that there are people who are expecting salvation from Germany. Let me tell you guys, it is GONE. And it is certainly not heroic to say this, but I can live with having past my service at an old peoples home, instead, and I can live with not sending my son off to a trench. And I absolutely subscribe to what Jim Christian said (thanks for his comments, as for quite some others! ), if you touch my wife or son, I will get wild, but the rest is not worth defending.

But here is my thought: Agreed, that western and american military is today disfunctional and deluded about themselves. But they are absolutely superior when it comes to psyop. 9/11 was marvellously executed and to root up the whole middle east and pump the destitute people from there into Europe to blow it up, that is quite something.

From that perspective, Russiagate is a gift. If any argument was still needed to tell the peoples of the world that the western empire is terminaly deranged, that is it.

Peace to all of you.

[Dec 10, 2019] The level of Neo-McCarthyism and the number of lunitics this NYT forums is just astonishing: When it comes to Donald Trump and Russia, everything is connected.

Highly recommended!
The tread is reproduced as is. And out 100 posts available in NYT "all view mode 90% can be classified as plain vanilla Neo-McCarthyism
If they are representative sample of the country, the country is crazy.
This editorial can also be classified as lunatic. But in reality it is much worse: the paper became completely subservant to intelligence agencies. Should probably be renamed the Voice of the CIA. .
Dec 10, 2019 | www.nytimes.com
Opinion With Trump, All Roads Lead to Moscow

Monday's congressional hearing and the inspector general's report tell a similar story.

By Jesse Wegman Mr. Wegman is a member of the editorial board.

When it comes to Donald Trump and Russia, everything is connected.

That's the most important lesson from the two big events that played out Monday on Capitol Hill -- the House Judiciary Committee's hearings on President Trump's impeachment and the release of the report on the origins of the F.B.I.'s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

One of these involved the 2016 election. The other involves the 2020 election. Both tell versions of the same story: Mr. Trump depends on, and welcomes, Russian interference to help him win the presidency. That was bad enough when he did it in 2016, openly calling for Russia to hack into his opponent's emails -- which Russians tried to do that same day . But he was only a candidate then. Now that Mr. Trump is president, he is wielding the immense powers of his office to achieve the same end.

That is precisely the type of abuse of power that the founders were most concerned about when they created the impeachment power, and it's why Democratic leaders in the House are pressing ahead with such urgency on their inquiry. They are trying to ensure that the 2020 election, now less than a year away, is not corrupted by the president of the United States, acting in league with a foreign power. "The integrity of our next election is at stake," said Representative Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "Nothing could be more urgent."

On Monday morning, lawyers for the Democrats on the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees presented the clearest and most comprehensive narrative yet of President Trump's monthslong shakedown of the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for Mr. Trump's personal political benefit. They explained in methodical detail how the president withheld a White House meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in crucial, congressionally authorized military aid to Ukraine, all in an effort to get Mr. Zelensky to announce two investigations -- one into Mr. Trump's political rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, and another into Ukraine's supposed interference in the 2016 election.

David Leonhardt helps you make sense of the news -- and offers reading suggestions from around the web -- with commentary every weekday morning.

Who would benefit from these announcements? Mr. Trump, who believes his re-election prospects are threatened most by Mr. Biden, and Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, who has been working for years to make Ukraine the fall guy for his own interference in the 2016 election. Mr. Putin has not fooled serious people, like those in the American intelligence community who determined that his government alone was responsible for meddling on Mr. Trump's behalf . But he has fooled Republicans in Congress, who have degraded themselves and their offices by faithfully parroting Mr. Putin's propaganda in the mainstream press.

... ... ...

sdavidc9 Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut 12m ago

Republicans are in lawyer mode, advocating for Trump as if he were their client. Lawyers make the best case they can for their clients. It helps if they believe in the case, but it also helps to know the case's weaknesses so they can avoid them. The best lawyers can do both at the same time. Republicans are called on by the Constitution to exit lawyer mode and enter juror mode (which is, or should be, similar to why-did-this-aircraft-crash mode). So far, they are not heeding this call. From all appearances, they are mouthing the words of the Constitution while avoiding or refusing to hear or understand them. They took an oath to support the Constitution, but they are deaf to its call, or have moved to a place beyond understanding it.
Mark Larsen Cambria, CA 26m ago
The issue of whether to impeach was made by the President when he engaged in an abuse of his office for personal gain and then obstructed Congress' oversight function. We all understand the political downside arising from an acquittal in the Senate but that interest needs to be secondary to doing the right thing. On these facts, the decision representatives must make of whether to impeach really is no decision at all. Just do the right thing.
Twg NV 26m ago
When Senator John McCain died, he scripted his own funeral as a full bore defense against Trumpian Nationalism, and as an admonishment against a GOP too willing to sell the soul of our nation out to a cultist repudiation of objective fact, truth, and Constitutional order. McCain was a controversial maverick –a person I both admired and disliked in equal proportion. But there is one thing I will always admire him for: his final letter to the nation. It was a warning! He blew a golden bugle to sound the alarm against those entities both within and without our nation who wish to do our democratic republic harm. McCain, whether you agreed with the premise of the Vietnam war or not, was an American hero who served his country and his fellow soldiers with incontrovertible valor and love. President Donald Trump has no concept of what that dedication and sacrifice entails – and sadly, neither do many of the GOP members who continue to lie and make excuses for a president who is clearly abusing his office for personal gain. McCain characterized Trump's actions in Helsinki as an unfathomable 'abasement of the U.S. presidency.' All I can say is the GOP sure ain't the party of my father who fought in WWII against fascism and autocracy. It aggrieves me to no end to witness what too many members of Congress have become: tyrants toward the very meaning of American democracy. God save us from our own duplicity.
Jagmont Rousel Fresburg, Ca. 12m ago
@Twg Well said, and though I sometimes did not agree with McCain on matters of policy, I wish he were still with us, hopefully to show his fellow republicans what integrity looks like, and what America is supposed to be about. The Republican party I have known and respected is alas, like Senator McCain, no longer with us.
Consiglieri NYC 34m ago
Americans have to realize that the whole world is mocking us, and that doesn't necesarily inspire respect. That cold be dangerous. Many medical professionals have noticed a decay in the mental abilities of the president, and certain abnormalities. It would be wise to suggest to the family that maybe the best way forward, with minimal losses would be to motivate a retirement. That would be face saving for them, and save the country from a bitter impeachment spectacle that would not be positive for the USA.
Jennifer Francois Holland, Michigan 1h ago
I'm waiting for Trump's financial info to be released. There's something in there he doesn't even want his base to know . I think the logical conclusion is that whatever financials DJT has hidden do indeed lead to Moscow. Actually, all of this is very, very alarming. Does Putin have a political asset planted here? Y or N I wish the answer was no and that we had a different President. Can we as a nation hold things together when our leader wants to tear us apart?
AL NY 1h ago
All roads lead to the highest bidder(s). 21st century America in the era of Citizens United. Market pricing and the government is open for transactional business domestic and international. Alternate realities per GRU/FOX/GOP misinformation. Combine foreign money carefully grooming an in-need Trump, and a party worshipping money and you have a perfect storm removing any sense of civic duty. Hundreds of years to build and unwound in a few decades, the breathtaking and tragic fall of greatness and hope in our lifetime. It's not fiction, and every day I have to check if it's really happening, and shockingly it is.
DO5 Minneapolis 1h ago
There was no Russian meddling, only Ukraine who meddled in 2016 and they are still at it. Listening to the Judiciary Committee hearings, it seems that the Russians have hacked into the Republican Party servers and are sending talking points to Republicans who are defending the indefensible president.
We'll always have Paris Sydney, Australia 1h ago
At some point, Republicans have to ask themselves which is better for their party and the country. Slavish devotion to Trump, or losing an election and leaving Democrats a mess to clean up, as in 1932 and 2008?
Mike S. Eugene, OR 2h ago
Block witnesses from testifying, then say that the hearing is incomplete. Romney told America at the Republican Convention in 2012 that Russia was our biggest enemy, DJT wanted them to help Republicans win in 2016, said he believed Putin in 2018, and wants to convince us that it was really the Ukraine in 2019. The House has to impeach, even if politically it may be a bad move, because it is the right thing to do; indeed, the very actions I've seen in the past several weeks has given me glimmers of hope for the country.
Federalist California 2h ago
Trump will be reelected for the reason that the Russian intelligence agencies are still able to hack our election results, because Trump has blocked fixing the weaknesses. That is what happens when a Manchurian candidate is elected and then allowed to obstruct justice. It is not clear the US will survive Trump. One key thing he did was arrange to have the teams at DHS that watch for smuggled nuclear bombs were stood down and disbanded. See the report in the LA Times last July "Trump administration has gutted programs aimed at detecting weapons of mass destruction".
David Rochester 2h ago
I don't suppose a constructed transcript of Trump's meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov tomorrow will be offered up as a token of our leader's transparency.
Markymark San Francisco 2h ago
It's clear now that AG William Barr isn't interested in enforcing the rule of law with fellow republicans, and especially the president. How can there be no recourse when an attorney general completely sells out to a criminal president? Can the employees of the Justice Dept hold a vote of no confidence in the AG? Can 10,000 attorneys nationwide express the same? The prospect of Trump and Barr running roughshod over the rule of law for another year is truly frightening.
Aluetian Contemplation 2h ago
65,845,063 voters knew clearly who this man was from the beginning and voted for what would have been a better now and future. It was never any secret. 62,980,160 voters also knew clearly who this man was and voted for him anyway. If the Democrats can ensure that we have a fair election in 2020. I'm confident they will win the majority in the house and senate and retake the White House and the end game for Trump will be jail. The problem is, he might not be the only one who's crimes come to light and I suspect a good lot of the GOP are threatening and blackmailing each other to hold the line. If there's any good men or women left in the GOP, your country and history are calling you.
Edwin a physician, scientist and realist 2h ago
It has easy to predict Trump's next move for the last 3 years. Just ask, "What would both benefit Trump, and benefit Putin?" Trump supporters = Putin supporters.
Kevin CO 2h ago
Do you know the American people are fed up with the discourse of all politicians. The republicans are fed up with any decency for the republic. The democrats are fed up with the republicans not facing the common sense of a exec not capable of being the President of the United states. I as a person am fed up with a political system that is not working for all people, just a select few. It's time too have term limits for all positions in gov't. That means all people that serve the people whether it be judges, senators or congressmen/women. It's time to find common sense again in our society as a whole society. We on this earth are all HUMAN.
Eben Spinoza 2h ago
Unfortunately their are serious problems with term limits. Just consider yourself in the role of a Congressional Representative limited to 4 terms. You know that in 8 years, you'll be be back on the job market. You can selflessly work for the public and damage your ability to get a job or tend to people who can hire you after you leave office. You're rational. Which future would you pick?
REBCO FORT LAUDERDALE FL 2h ago
Trump needs to keep Putin happy lest he unleash with all the damaging info he has collected on Trump and his financial crooked deals with Russians over decades. THe Russian mob reports to Putin as a former KGB agent he knows how to collect compromat on a politician and how to use it to get Trump to break into a giddy smile when he sees Putin his master it's obvious to most keen observers.
M. Barsoum Philadelphia 2h ago
Folks it is simple. Can we hear what Trump and Putin said to each other a few months ago. It is recored and on a server it should not be on. I am not sure why nobody is talking about these transcripts.
Nelly Half Moon Bay 2h ago
Finally! We get someone stating the obvious fact of Trump/Putin. Why are the Dems not talking about this all the time? Why are Congressmen and women not asking the witnesses about this? This is the ONE thing the Republicans are afraid of, so it is the one thing Democrats should do. I have been disappointed that the Russian asset thing hasn't been brought up....It's as if it is purposely bold. Trump is a Russian asset, either witting or unwitting. I doubt if there is one upper Intelligence Official that wouldn't say this. So find the right one and have them sit as a witness for this inquiry. And now the Russian big wig Diplomat and KGb spy, Lavarov, is visiting tomorrow. Good grief! Everyone is thinking this, so get out and say it Dems! Dr. Fiona Hill tried to lead into this direction but still the Dem Committee would take it up and aske her what she thought. Say it: All of Trump's Roads Lead to Russia.
Ro Laren Santa Monica 2h ago
Any American adult who has made an effort to educate himself or herself about Mr. Mueller's investigation or these impeachment proceedings understands that yes, with Trump all roads lead to Russia. Now if the poll numbers mean anything, Trump's crimes and Russia's involvement only matter to about 60% of us. As Trump's poll numbers remain steady, some 40% of Americans don't care what lawbreaking he is involved with or whether other nations now control our elections. Stop and think about this for a minute. Trump supporters know but literally do not care that Russia is tampering with our elections (2016 and 2020). Their cult-like support for Trump is why the Republican Senate will not remove him. There is no other reason Trump will remain in office. Trump has mesmerized his supporters like a modern day Rasputin. They will do literally anything for him, and Senate Republicans know this. Trump voters do not mind that Putin controls our nation at the highest levels of decision making. Again - think about this - they know he does, and they do not care. So I ask the rest of us. Is this the America we want to live in? To raise our families in? Where a large, rabid minority is in thrall to a lunatic puppet whose strings are firmly in Putin's hands? Because this is very much the America we live in now. The time will come, though, when we, the majority, will no longer tolerate the Trump/Putin regime. But the longer we wait, the harder it will be oust these tyrants.
Tracy Washington DC 2h ago
In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said Russia was an important source of funding for the Trump businesses. American banks wouldn't lend him money. Saudi Arabia likely bailed out Jared's disastrous real estate investment in NYC. Follow. The. Money.
Huge Grizzly Seattle 2h ago
You say that Mr. Putin "has fooled Republicans in Congress, who have degraded themselves and their offices by faithfully parroting Mr. Putin's propaganda in the mainstream press." You are correct on all counts, except that the Republicans have not been fooled by Putin. They have gone along, headlong and absolutely willingly, in a complete sellout of personal and national principle and integrity. They should not be forgiven for this conduct, any more than Mr. Trump should be forgiven for his sellout of America.
Look Ahead WA 2h ago
For Republicans who believe so fervently in their counterfactual narrative, there is an immediate remedy. Bring facts and evidence to the Committees and testify under oath. Without witnesses and evidence presented under oath, all of the GOP antics simply look foolish and very much like they are defending the guilty. It is unfortunate that there is no penalty for elected officials who share unfounded conspiracy theories, engage in innuendo and obstruct process in official Committee hearings. It is also regretable that this President is not held accountable for trying to intimidate witnesses in real time during testimony. And it is a sad reality that one of the most corrupt rulers in the world, who rules a hostile power, has managed to entirely win over one of our major parties.
Gerard PA 2h ago
The strangest defense advanced today was the idea that the alleged state of the economy was reason not to impeach the President: the Republicans assert that America, the Constitution, the principle of our government are for sale to be bought by the rising stock market and a plethora of low-wage jobs. We are Faust, and the smell of sulphur is nauseating.
richard wiesner oregon 2h ago
If the IG's report on the 2016 Russia investigation had found the only problem was that two of the agents involved had horrible hangnails, Barr and Trump would have condemned it.
Asian Philosopher Germany 2h ago
Whatever Trump is doing, he always care about his main benefactors, Putin and MBS. This is the first time I have witnessed in history that an American president became a Russian puppet with all his Republican followers at the Congress and Senate. American constitutional crisis happening right in front of the world. I heard the cries of James Madison, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin from their graves.
trudds sierra madre, CA 2h ago Times Pick
Sir, do you honestly think that House Republicans have been "fooled" by Mr. Putin? On the contrary, it's pretty obvious they understand and believe the conclusions from our Intel community. These are instead willful lies for political gain. And while some Americans may actually be misled by the theater presented as rebuttal to the impeachment, it's hard to imagine for most it's once again, not conviction but convenience that places such "patriots" solidly in Russia's back pocket.
Michele Seattle 2h ago Times Pick
The pattern of behavior is clear and compelling: Trump is selling out this country, its national security, its integrity and sovereignty, in order to keep power and avoid his own prosecution, and protect his financial interests. We must get the truth about his relationships and indebtedness to Putin, the Saudis, and Erdogan. Our country has been hijacked and Trump will continue to corrupt the US and turn it into an autocracy if he is not stopped and held accountable under the law.
Linus Internet 2h ago
The country voted for this President knowing he is a flawed man in many ways. I don't think anything changes here - the Senate will speedily acquit him and the voters in the swing states will have to decide if they want to give Mr. Trump a second chance while the rest of the country impotently watches.
David CT 2h ago
If one looks at all of his actions as "How could this benefit Russia?" most of it makes sense. Why start a trade war with China and Western allies? Why withdraw from Syria? Why try to polarize the American public? Effectively showing this to the public is critical.
Mark New York 2h ago
Excellent piece. We all know Trump, Inc. turned to Russian oligarchs after '08 for condo sales. It just so happened that those same oligarchs (read as kleptocrats) were laundering money through Deutsche Bank, who was the only bank willing to lend to Trump. Trump's loan officer amazingly was SC Justice Anthony Kennedy's son. Trump was and is a desperate man in need of cash/ Putin is a desperate man who knows that the geyser of oil money that funds his national budget, and has done so since the 1920's, is coming to an end. Russia has no large material economic exports other than oil and gas, but it does still have a large military, hence the military incursions into Moldova, Ossetia, Georgia, Ukraine and Syria. Desperate men do desperate things, and desperately try to project power with weak hands.
turbot philadelphia 2h ago
The Republicans in Congress were not fooled by the Russians. They believe in Trump no matter what the Russians do. The bottom line is - What does Putin have on Trump
stan continople brooklyn 2h ago
I don't understand why there hasn't been more of a pushback by the military. They went heavily for Trump in 20116, with many bases in the South and many recruits from economically devastated areas, but in the interim, they have seen his reckless, lurching foreign policy, worship of Putin, and clear evidence that somehow everything he does benefits Russia. A commander's first obligation is to their troops, so knowing the man in charge considers their lives subject to both Trump's whims, and Putin's whispers should provoke some reaction. No?
Steven Auckland 3h ago
Unfortunately - to put it mildly - impeachment will have no effect on the conduct of the 2020 election. The wheels are already turning, everyone knows their part, and only a massive commitment by an honest intelligence apparatus (if there is one) can stop it. One can only hope that, in 2020, the American people make a statement so overwhelming that there can be no doubt as to their intent, despite whatever meddling there may have been. It is entirely possible that there will never be a truly credible election again as long as there are bad actors who are power hungry or bent on destabilizing democratic governments. And make no mistake, these threats are coming from right wing autocracies, and they are in the ascendancy all over the world. American centrists and liberals are the only force that can change that. Are those stakes big enough for you?
Michael Kittle Vaison la Romaine, France 3h ago
We may finally have the answer as to why Trump is so accommodating to Putin. Trump has so many investments in Russia dependent on Putin's support. Trump financial reports will reveal this collusion between Trump and Putin. This should not come as a surprise to attentive Americans. Think of the worst an American president can do and that will bring you close to understanding Trump.
Ray Haining Hot Springs, AR 3h ago
Nobody's saying how Trump withholding military aid to Ukraine would benefit Putin and Russia in their WAR against Ukraine. It was, indeed, MILITARY aid he was withholding, was it not? I understand that this is not the impeachable offense of attempting to enlist a foreign government to win an election, but I believe this aspect of the situation should be brought out.
Socrates Downtown Verona. NJ 3h ago
The Republican Party has been officially reduced to a giant miasma of fraud, fiction, fantasy, conspiracy theory, deflection, misdirection and prevarication. After tax cuts for rich people and rich corporations...the GOP has no other public policy ideas (except for bankrupting the government). A civilized country needs little things like infrastructure, education, technology, voting rights, law and order, regulations, fair taxation and facts to move forward. But none of those things are ever mentioned by the Republican Party; conspiracy-mongering and tax cuts are now the official governing planks of the Grand Old Propaganda/Grand One Percent party. This is no way to manage a nation anywhere except into the ground. Americans need to hit the Trump-GOP eject button before these Lord of the Fly Republicans take us over a very steep right-wing cliff of insanity.
Bob Hudson Valley 3h ago
The Republican Party is now Trump's party and the Republicans know it and are acting accordingly. You could call them opportunists following the way the political winds are blowing. The Constitution is based on members of Congress caring about the Constitution and searching for the truth. Since this is now not the case when if comes to the Republicans the Constitution has no remedy for this situation. The only remedy is an election and if Trump can manipulate elections to his advantage using foreign powers then there is no remedy and the system of government set up by the founders will be no more. The new system replacing it will be controlled by Trump. Putin figured out how to control Russian elections so he always wins and it is likely that Trump has a goal of imitating Putin. Ultimately this would mean taking over the press as Putin did. Trump cannot declare total victory as long as the there is a free press which he has labeled the enemy of the people.
DAWGPOUND HAR NYC 3h ago
From an acute perspective ..indeed shocking to say the least of the nature of this peculiar relationship. But looking at the big picture as evidence by all that has occurred in his or during this eye opening period for all the world to see....not so much so...For me, this dynamic is much expected.
James Ricciardi Panama, Panama 3h ago
"The witness has used language which impugns the motives of the president and suggests he's disloyal to his country, and those words should be stricken from the record and taken down," Mr. Johnson said. The Johnson rule effectively reads the impeachment power out of the constitution. How can you impeach a president if no one can say anything bad about him/her?
Bruce Rozenblit Kansas City, MO 3h ago
We have yet to plow the most fertile road yet. What does Trump care about over all else? Trump. How does Trump gauge his progress? His money. Where does his money come from? Good question. We all know he has filed for bankruptcy 6 times. We all know that because of those bankruptcies, American banks will not loan him any money. We all know he has significant financial dealings with Deutsche Bank. Now, who put the money in Deutsche Bank that ended up financing Trump's business.? That is the two billion dollar question. We also know that Russian oligarchs deal in billions of dollars. We also know that Trump has close relations with Russian business interests. We also know that Trump kowtows to Putin like Pence kowtows to him. We also know that Trump is doing everything possible to conceal his financial dealings from everyone and everything. So, we know that one billion plus one billion equals two billion. But does it also equal Trump? This money road is one we should take a ride on. Will it also take us to Putin?
Mark New York 2h ago
@Bruce Rozenblit No, but it will take us to those who are surrogates for him. Those whose wealth only continues because of Vova's "good will."
Gluscabi Dartmouth, MA 3h ago
The first Democratic candidate who labels Trump a "Russian agent" will own the simplest and most effective tag line going into the general election, provided of course that that candidate does his best to channel his inner Trump by never backing down but instead doubling down every chance he or she gets. Is Trump a Russian agent, paid for and accounted for? Not easy to say without some doubt, but that doesn't really matter because he sure as shoottin' acts like one. And when have the facts ever stopped Trump from going on the attack? The more Trump denies the label, the more he'll be digging his own grave. The real crime here is not so much the strong arming of Zelenskyy for a Biden investigation. That's small potatoes compared to Trump's withholding congressionally designated US military aid from a country engaged in a hot war with Russia, the same cast of characters who starved anywhere from one to eleven million Ukrainians during the 1930's. The Russian agent must go.
Alan Columbus OH 3h ago
I would not say Trump's lying "is effective", I would say it "has been effective". At some point, the public and his party may have had it with the thuggery and we do not know when that breaking point is.
abigail49 georgia 3h ago
For the sake of protecting our 2020 elections from Russian hackers and disinformation, the House is justified in moving forward fast, over the process howls of Republicans, with the compelling evidence they have surrounding Ukraine. But they need to continue investigating his business and financial ties to Russia and any other autocratic governments and their oligarchs, e.g. Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Especially if he is not convicted and removed by the Senate and stands for re-election, Americans need to know what conflicts of interest he has in making foreign policy and military decisions because American soldiers' lives are at stake. The Mueller investigation did not go down that road. Any businessman with global interests is automatically compromised, even more than a vice president whose son sits on a foreign corporation's board of director. Trump's own children continue to do business in foreign countries and we have no idea what Ivanka and Jared, sitting in the White House with top security clearances, are doing. In short, Ukraine should not be the only concern of congressional oversight committees. There's a lot more.
Peter Portland OR 3h ago
Trump must believe that Russian help in 2016 did help him to win. He must feel that fake evidence presented by an "independent" investigator such as a foreign government appears to carry more weight that the same fake evidence from a partisan investigator. Otherwise why would he be taking such chances to duplicate via Ukraine what he got from the Russians in 2016. But now that the Russian connection is outed, he can't go back to that well.
NA Wilson Massachusetts 3h ago
I worry it's all for naught. Dems in the House vote to impeach, GOP in the Senate vote to acquit. Trump remains highly competitive in 2020 election, Russia and other adversaries interfere, Trump stays put. Then what?
Rafael SC 3h ago
@NA Wilson Think of this situation differently. To have all possible scope to defeat him, we must support everything we can to undermine him. Lack of impeachment would have been business as usual. At some point his finances will get out and then all bets are off.
Tracy Washington DC 2h ago
@NA Wilson: It's all Hands on deck to save the country. Don't just vote, donate what money you can, work for candidates, knock doors, make calls. It's the only way out of this nightmare.
N. Smith New York City 3h ago
The Impeachment hearings weren't really necessary to prove what most everyone who's been paying attention knows. With Trump, all roads lead to Moscow. In fact, he's already acting very Putin-esque in his own way by forbidding anyone in the White House to respond to subpoena, by installing the fear of God in those who do, by punishing anyone who dares to think or act on their own, and then there's the act of holding a foreign country ransom until they agree to do his bidding -- not to mention inviting outside interference in our presidential elections. All the signs are not only there but they are ominous. By holding himself above the U.S. Constitution, Trump has declared war on this country and all the laws that govern it. And while entertainment-starved Americans laugh and cheer at his rallies, he and the Republicans drain our right to vote, and with it our Democracy. Today wasn't an epiphany. It was a warning.
bl rochester 3h ago
There seems to be no discussion of the financial backing trump received after '08-09 from sources inside Russia and how these actors would have expressed their support (or conditions for their silence) to the trump campaign during '15-16. Did the FBI not identify and investigate the funders behind trump and their interactions with the campaign during 2016? Would this not have been reasonable for an investigation to look into when its entire raison d'etre was to detect sources of Russian influence?
Jim TX 3h ago
I wonder if Mr. Wegman believes that this editorial will change anyone's mind or influence how anyone votes in the upcoming presidential election. Basically, this is classic preaching to the choir and sadly mostly a wasted effort. I would like to read articles with proven ideas that worked to change the minds of Republicans and other like them. Such articles might give me some better ideas to convince my pro-Trump friends and neighbors to Vote for America next November.
Kingfish52 Rocky Mountains 3h ago
"When it comes to Donald Trump and Russia, everything is connected." This! This is the central fact of all the things Trump has done (so far), and yet, the Democrats have failed to make this the central focus of the case against him. Instead, they've focused on one incident, and not even the most egregious one, to justify impeachment and removal from office. This was a terrible miscalculation. No, there is no doubt that Trump attempted to coerce Ukraine into helping with his re-election by announcing a bogus investigation of the Bidens. Nor any doubt that this constituted "high crimes and misdemeanors". But this was not the highest of crimes he's committed, nor have the Dems been able to convince any Republicans, or many independents, that this deserves Trump's removal. Moreover, they failed to produce the "smoking gun" of one witness or document in Trump's own words directing the quid pro quo. They gave plenty of room for the Republican attack machine to cast enough doubt and confusion that all but ensures Trump's acquittal in the Senate. Instead of focusing only on this one incident, the Democrats should have built their case around the theme that "with Trump, all roads lead to Russia". That is a crime that even the most skeptical doubter can grasp, and when linked together, all of his crimes can be shown to be of a pattern of serving Putin, and not the people of the United States. All roads lead to Putin, but the Democrats chose to follow a dead end.
DW Philly 2h ago
@Kingfish52 I completely agree with you and truly don't understand why the Democrats have not been shouting this from the rooftops. For mercy's sake! The problem is not just that the president solicited help from a foreign power for his own personal gain! That's bad enough, but isn't the point that he did this because he is beholden to Russia? Russia. is. not. our. friend. Why aren't the Democrats explaining this clearly to the American people? Trump is Putin's puppet and it could not be more obvious! Don't people understand that it doesn't just happen to be Ukraine that Trump took a notion to squeeze for his "personal gain"? He doesn't just want to win because it is so nice to win elections. He has to do what Putin tells him. Obviously, every last Republican in Congress understands this clearly. Why can't the Democrats explain it to the American people clearly?
Mike Republic Of Texas 4h ago
Obama did not provide lethal aid to Ukraine, after the Russians invaded Crimea. Obama did not Russia prevent the Iranian nuclear deal. Trump cancelled the Iranian nuclear deal, then provided lethal aid to Ukraine. Now I get it. Trump is working for Putin.
Mick Montclair 3h ago
By March 2015, the US had committed more than $120 million in security assistance for Ukraine and had pledged an additional $75 million worth of equipment including UAVs, counter-mortar radars, night vision devices and medical supplies, according to the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency. That assistance also included some 230 armored Humvee vehicles. Trump appears to be echoing a critique leveled at the Obama administration by the late Republican Sen. John McCain. "The Ukrainians are being slaughtered and we're sending blankets and meals," McCain said in 2015. "Blankets don't do well against Russian tanks." While it never provided lethal aid, many of the items that the Obama administration did provide were seen as critical to Ukraine's military. Part of the $250 million assistance package that the Trump administration announced (then froze and later unfroze) included many of the same items that were provided under Obama, including medical equipment, night vision gear and counter-artillery radar. The Trump administration did approve the provision of arms to Ukraine, including sniper rifles, rocket launchers and Javelin anti-tank missiles, something long sought by Kiev.
Ivan Memphis, TN 2h ago
@Mike Trump was not the one providing lethal aid to Ukraine. It was the house and senate that proposed and forced this aid into an appropriation bill - against the wishes of the Trump administration. After Trump realized he could not block this funding he did the second best thing - he used it to blackmail the Ukraine government to provide him with dirt on Biden and support for Putin's favorite narrative (that it was Ukraine not Russia that interfered in the 2016 election).
Mark New York 2h ago
@Mike It also took two acts of Congress to get the aid to Ukraine. Trump had nothing to do with it. Only the Impound Inclusion Act for foreign aid allows the President to time the release of the funds, which Trump did not follow. The Act was created because Nixon, like Trump, was playing fast and loose with our tax dollars. Who was the last President who asked for help from a foreign intelligence agency? Which President favored foregn intelligence agencies over his own? Answer no one other than Trump. If that doesn't show he's in someone's pocket, nothing does.

[Dec 10, 2019] Horowitz Report Is Triumph For FISA Abuse 'Whistleblower' Devin Nunes WSJ's Kim Strassel

Dec 10, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

12/10/2019

In her usual succinct and clarifying manner, The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel took to Twitter overnight to summarize the farcical findings within the Horowitz Report (and Barr and Durham's responses).

In sixteen short tweets , Strassel destroyed the spin while elucidating the key findings of the Horowitz report (emphasis ours):

Yup, IG said FBI hit threshold for opening an investigation. But also goes out of its way to note what a "low threshold" this is.

Durham's statement made clear he will provide more info for Americans to make a judgment on reasonableness.

The report is triumph for former House Intel Chair Devin Nunes, who first blew the whistle on FISA abuse. The report confirms all the elements of the February 2018 Nunes memo, which said dossier was as an "essential" part of applications, and FBI withheld info from FISA court

Conversely, the report is an excoriation of Adam Schiff and his "memo" of Feb 2018.

That doc stated that "FBI and DOJ officials did NOT abuse the [FISA] process" or "omit material information."

Also claimed FBI didn't much rely on dossier.

In fact, IG report says dossier played "central and essential role" in getting FISA warrants.

Schiff had access to same documents as Nunes, yet chose to misinform the public. This is the guy who just ran impeachment proceedings.

The Report is a devastating indictment of Steele, Fusion GPS and the "dossier."

Report finds that about the only thing FBI ever corroborated in that doc were publicly available times, places, title names. Ouch.

IG finds 17 separate problems with FISA court submissions, including FBI's overstatement of Steele's credentials. Also the failure to provide court with exculpatory evidence and issues with Steele's sources and additional info it got about Steele's credibility.

Every one of these "issues" is a story all on its own.

Example: The FBI had tapes of Page and Papadopoulos making statements that were inconsistent with FBI's own collusion theories. They did not provide these to the FISA court.

Another example: FBI later got info from professional contacts with Steele who said he suffered from "lack of self awareness, poor judgement" and "pursued people" with "no intelligence value." FBI also did not tell the court about these credibility concerns.

And this: FBI failed to tell Court that Page was approved as an "operational contact" for another U.S. agency, and "candidly" reported his interactions with a Russian intel officer. FBI instead used that Russian interaction against Page, with no exculpatory detail.

Overall, IG was so concerned by these "extensive compliance failures" that is has now initiated additional "oversight" to assess how FBI in general complies with "policies that seek to protect the civil liberties of U.S. persons."

The Report also expressed concerns about FBI's failure to present any of these issues to DOJ higher ups; its ongoing contacts with Steele after he was fired for talking to media; and its use of spies against the campaign without any DOJ input.

Remember Comey telling us it was no big deal who paid for dossier?

Turns out it was a big deal in FBI/DOJ, where one lawyer (Stuart Evans) expressed "concerns" it had been funded by Clinton/DNC. Because of his "consistent inquiries" we go that convoluted footnote.

IG also slaps FBI for using what was supposed to be a baseline briefing for the Trump campaign of foreign intelligence threats as a surreptitious opportunity to investigate Flynn .

Strassel's last point is perhaps the most important for those on the left claiming "vindication"...

NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST

ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX

Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.

Please enter a valid email Thank you for subscribing! Something went wrong. Please refresh and try again.

When IG says he found no "documentary" evidence of bias, he means just that: He didn't find smoking gun email that says "let's take out Trump."

And it isn't his job to guess at the motivations of FBI employees.

Instead... He straightforwardly lays out facts.

Those facts produce a pattern of FBI playing the FISA Court--overstating some info, omitting other info, cherrypicking details.

Americans can look at totality and make their own judgment as to "why" FBI behaved in such a manner.

Finally, intriguing just how many people at the FBI don't remember anything about anything. Highly convenient.

[Dec 10, 2019] It is common knowledge that Congress, too, is corrupt and sells out the national interest in favor of their own political and personal interests on a daily basis. They have no moral credibility here by saying:

Dec 10, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Wherefore President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. President Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

Clyde Schechter • 6 hours ago

I agree with everything you say in the article, Mr. Larison. And yet, I have serious qualms about whether Congress should impeach and remove Trump.

From a purely legal perspective, they should. But impeachment is a blend of legalism and politics. And the politics here are murky at best. The problem is that Congress does not come to these issues with clean hands. It is common knowledge that Congress, too, is corrupt and sells out the national interest in favor of their own political and personal interests on a daily basis. They have no moral credibility here; who are they to judge the President? Neither the impeachment itself, nor the subsequent, apparently inevitable, acquittal by the Senate will be seen as legitimate, except by partisans of the respective acts. It is all the more problematic because an election is less than a year away.

Yes, I want Trump out of office, too. But unfortunately our Congress lacks the moral legitimacy to do this; the impeachment and trial will serve only to reinforce each party's views of the other as treasonous. The impeachment will be seen as an attempted coup, and the acquittal will be seen as a whitewash and cover-up. (If by some odd circumstance he is removed rather than acquitted, it will be seen as a successful coup, an undoing of the 2016 election.)

There are no really good outcomes from this scenario. It would, I think, be better for the the country were the Democrats to reverse course and leave the removal of Trump to the people next November. We have survived nearly three years of him, we can survive one more. I fear the fallout from impeachment and trial will create more problems than are solved.

likbez Clyde Schechter
I agree. I also respectfully disagree with Larrison's judgment and consider this development as very dangerous for the Republic. We need to weight our personal animosity toward Trump with the risks of his forceful removal on dubious charges.

Please remember that nobody was impeached for the Iraq war. That creates a really high plank for the impeachment. And makes any Dems arguments for Trump impeachment not only moot but a joke.

The fundamental question is: How is lying the country into the Iraq war not impeachable, and this entrapment impeachable?

The furor over Russian interference in the election, which was extremely minor, if existed at all, compared to what Churchill did in 1940, was primarily about excusing the corrupt and incompetent Clinton wing of Democratic Party leadership (Neoliberal Democrats.) Political "shelf life" for whom is over in any case as neoliberalism is dead as an ideology and entered zombie ( bloodthirsty ) stage. Hillary political fiasco taught them nothing. Russiagate was and still is a modern witch hunt, the attempt to patch with Russophobia the cracks in the neoliberal facade. Neo-McCarthyism, if you wish.

In view of the Iraq war, the impeachment of Trump means the absolute contempt for the plebs. Again, Trump's election happened because neoliberalism as ideology died in 2008, and plebs in 2016 refused to follow corrupt neoliberal democrats and decided to show them the middle finger. They will not follow the neoliberal elite in 2020, impeachment, or no impeachment. So the whole "Pelosi gambit" (and from the point of view of Nuremberg principles she is a war criminal like Bush II and Co ) will fail.

The House Democrats did not act as ethical prosecutors. They have failed to develop the evidentiary record, and provide the equality of procecutor and the defense in the process which is the fundamental part of the Due Process prior to filing charges. A large part of their witnesses (Karlan, Hill, Vindman) were just "true believers" (Karlan) or corrupt Deep Staters (Hill, Vindman) taking a stand to defend their personal well-being, which is based on warmongering. And protect their illegal role in formulating the USA foreign policy (actually based on the quality of Fiona Hill book alone, she should be kept at mile length from this area; she is a propagandist not a researcher/analyst)

Among State Department witnesses there could well be those who were probably explicitly or implicitly involved in the money laundering of the US aid money via Ukraine (Biden-lights so to speak)

The article of impeachment saying:

Wherefore President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. President Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

opens a huge can of worms (this is essentially the Moscow show trials method of removing politicians.) This is equivalent to a change in the Constitution, introducing the vote of no confidence as the method removal of the top members of the executive branch.

Impeachment is always a political decision. And here I am not sure the "Pelosi gambit" will work. I think many independents, who would stay home or would vote for Dems in 2020 now will vote for Trump as a protest against the abuse of impeachment by the Neoliberal/Corporate Dems.

[Dec 10, 2019] FISA Report Reveals Clinton Meddled In 2016 Election

Notable quotes:
"... If Russia spending $100,000 on Facebook ads constitutes election interference, and Donald Trump asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens is too - then Hillary Clinton takes the cake when it comes to influence campaigns designed to harm a political opponent. ..."
"... The article suggests that former Trump campaign aide Carter Page "has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials - including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president." ..."
"... Steele told us that in September [of 2016] her and Simpson gave an "off-the-record" briefing to a small number of journalists about his reporting, " reads page 165 of the FISA report, which says that Steele "acknowledged that Yahoo News was identified in one of the court filings in the foreign litigation as being present. " ..."
"... Put another way, Hillary Clinton paid Christopher Steele to feed information to the MSM in order to harm Donald Trump right before the 2016 election . Granted, there were intermediaries; the Clinton campaign paid law firm Perkins Coie, which paid Fusion GPS, which paid Steele. And if asked, we're guessing Clinton would claim she had no idea this happened - which simply isn't plausible given the stakes. Whatever the case - the act of Simpson paying Steele to peddle fiction to the media for the purpose of harming Trump, by itself , constitutes blatant election meddling by every standard set by the left over the past three years. ..."
Dec 10, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

If Russia spending $100,000 on Facebook ads constitutes election interference, and Donald Trump asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens is too - then Hillary Clinton takes the cake when it comes to influence campaigns designed to harm a political opponent.

Contained within Monday's FISA report by the DOJ Inspector General is the revelation that Fusion GPS, the firm paid by the Clinton campaign to produce the Steele dossier, " was paying Steele to discuss his reporting with the media. " ( P. 369 and elsewhere)

(h/t @wakeywakey16 )

And when did Steele talk with the media - which got him fired as an FBI source ? Perhaps most notably was Yahoo News journalist Michael Isikoff , who says he was invited by Fusion GPS to meet a "secret source" at a Washington restaurant . That secret source was none other than Christopher Steele , who fed Isikoff information from his now-discredited dossier - and which appeared in a September 23, 2016 article roughly six weeks before the election - which likely had orders of magnitude greater visibility and impact coming from a widely-read, MSM source vs. $100,000 in Russian Facebook ads.

The article suggests that former Trump campaign aide Carter Page "has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials - including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president."

This claim was found by special counsel Robert Mueller report to be false . Moreover, the FBI knew about it in December, 2016, when DOJ #4 Bruce Ohr told the agency as much.

Steele told us that in September [of 2016] her and Simpson gave an "off-the-record" briefing to a small number of journalists about his reporting, " reads page 165 of the FISA report, which says that Steele "acknowledged that Yahoo News was identified in one of the court filings in the foreign litigation as being present. "

Put another way, Hillary Clinton paid Christopher Steele to feed information to the MSM in order to harm Donald Trump right before the 2016 election . Granted, there were intermediaries; the Clinton campaign paid law firm Perkins Coie, which paid Fusion GPS, which paid Steele. And if asked, we're guessing Clinton would claim she had no idea this happened - which simply isn't plausible given the stakes. Whatever the case - the act of Simpson paying Steele to peddle fiction to the media for the purpose of harming Trump, by itself , constitutes blatant election meddling by every standard set by the left over the past three years.

We're sure Hillary can explain that if and when she jumps into the 2020 race.

[Dec 10, 2019] John Solomon Slams Adam Schiff's Surveillance State Abuse Chilling Effect On Press Freedom

Looks like Schiff went overboard and it is he who should be impeached...
Notable quotes:
"... Likewise, Mr. Schiff published call records between Mr. Giuliani and me and suggested they involved my Ukraine stories. Many contacts I had with Mr. Giuliani involved interviews on the Mueller report and its aftermath or efforts to invite the president's lawyer on the Hill's TV show, which I supervised. ..."
"... Mr. Schiff's team has tried to minimize the conduct because he never subpoenaed my phone records directly but extracted them from others' call records. That defense is laughable. ..."
"... Similarly, in the days since Mr. Schiff's phone-record release, I have had people who openly talked to me on the phone this year suddenly ask to communicate only by encrypted apps. They don't want their names splashed in the next congressional report. And they fear a bipartisan open season on phone records of political opponents in the future. ..."
"... Mr. Schiff appears to assume that Congress enjoys unlimited investigative powers under the Constitution's Speech or Debate clause. He does not. I recommend the chairman examine the record in McSurely v. McClellan , a two-decade legal battle that began in 1967 and pitted a powerful committee chairman against a liberal activist couple in Kentucky. It is widely regarded -- along with the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s -- as one of most egregious episodes of misconduct in the modern history of congressional oversight. ..."
"... "can only stand as a small reaffirmation of the proposition that there are bounds to the interference that citizens must tolerate from the agents of their government -- even when such agents invoke the mighty shield of the Constitution and claim official purpose to their conduct." ..."
Dec 10, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by John Solomon,

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide , the bible for agents, has long recognized that journalists, the clergy and lawyers deserve special protections because of the constitutional implications of investigating their work . Penitents who confess to a priest, sources who provide confidential information to a reporter, and clients who seek advice from counsel are assumed to be protected by a high bar of privacy, which must be weighed against the state's interests in investigating matters or subpoenaing records. Judges and members of Congress also fall into a special FBI category because of the Constitution's separation of powers.

The FBI and Justice Department have therefore created specific rules governing agents' actions involving special-circumstances professionals, which include high-level approval and review. There are also special rules for subpoenaing journalists.

If the executive branch, and by extension the courts that enforce these privacy protections, observe the need for such sensitivity, it seems reasonable that Congress should have similar guardrails ensuring that the powers of the state are equally and fairly applied.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff apparently doesn't see things that way .

His committee secretly authorized subpoenas to AT&T earlier this year for the phone records of President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and an associate. He then arbitrarily extracted information about certain private calls and made them public.

Many of the calls Mr. Schiff chose to publicize fell into the special-circumstances categories: a fellow member of Congress ( Rep. Devin Nunes, the Intelligence Committee's ranking Republican), two lawyers (Mr. Giuliani and fellow Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow ) and a journalist (me).

More alarming, the released call records involve figures who have sometimes criticized or clashed with Mr. Schiff. I wrote a story raising questions about his contacts with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, a key figure in the Russia probe, that brought the California Democrat unwelcome scrutiny. Mr. Nunes has been one of Mr. Schiff's main Republican antagonists, helping to prove that the exaggerated claims of Trump-Russia election collusion were unsubstantiated. Messrs. Sekulow and Giuliani represent Mr. Trump, who is Mr. Schiff's impeachment target.

Mr. Schiff's actions in obtaining and publicizing private phone records trampled the attorney-client privilege of Mr. Trump and his lawyers. It intruded on my First Amendment rights to interview and contact figures like Mr. Giuliani and the Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas without fear of having the dates, times and length of private conversation disclosed to the public.

Contrary to Mr. Schiff's defense that he was simply serving the investigative interest of Congress, the release of the phone records served much more to punish people whose work Mr. Schiff found antagonistic than to fulfill an oversight purpose . And it served Congress poorly because it spread false insinuations. Mr. Schiff's report suggested, for instance, that Mr. Giuliani called the White House to talk to the Office of Management and Budget, implying he might have been trying to help Mr. Trump withhold aid to Ukraine as Democrats allege. The White House says that claim is wrong; the number was a generic phone entry point and no one in OMB talked to Mr. Giuliani.

Likewise, Mr. Schiff published call records between Mr. Giuliani and me and suggested they involved my Ukraine stories. Many contacts I had with Mr. Giuliani involved interviews on the Mueller report and its aftermath or efforts to invite the president's lawyer on the Hill's TV show, which I supervised.

Mr. Schiff's team has tried to minimize the conduct because he never subpoenaed my phone records directly but extracted them from others' call records. That defense is laughable.

Once a journalist and his calls are made public through the powers of the surveillance state, there is an instant chilling effect on press freedom.

I know this firsthand. In 2001 and 2002, when I was a reporter for the Associated Press, the Justice Department obtained my home phone records and the FBI illegally seized my mail without a warrant in an effort to unmask my sources on federal corruption and stop publication of a story about the government's counterterrorism failures before 9/11. In the end the FBI returned my reporting records, apologized to me privately, and announced new rules to avoid a repeat for other journalists.

Yet by that time many of my longtime sources had told me they had chosen not to contact me for fear of being detected. Others would only meet in person, concerned that my phones were wiretapped.

Similarly, in the days since Mr. Schiff's phone-record release, I have had people who openly talked to me on the phone this year suddenly ask to communicate only by encrypted apps. They don't want their names splashed in the next congressional report. And they fear a bipartisan open season on phone records of political opponents in the future.

Rep. Mike Turner (R., Ohio), a member of the Intelligence Committee, tells me he's drafting legislation to put guardrails on future congressional subpoenas for phone records. That's a good start, but more needs to be done sooner.

Mr. Schiff appears to assume that Congress enjoys unlimited investigative powers under the Constitution's Speech or Debate clause. He does not. I recommend the chairman examine the record in McSurely v. McClellan , a two-decade legal battle that began in 1967 and pitted a powerful committee chairman against a liberal activist couple in Kentucky. It is widely regarded -- along with the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s -- as one of most egregious episodes of misconduct in the modern history of congressional oversight.

In one of the final appellate decisions in that topsy-turvy case, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that Congressional oversight isn't boundless and that the Speech or Debate Clause has limits. The final paragraph of that ruling derided a "sorry chapter of investigative excess."

The judges wrote that their decision:

"can only stand as a small reaffirmation of the proposition that there are bounds to the interference that citizens must tolerate from the agents of their government -- even when such agents invoke the mighty shield of the Constitution and claim official purpose to their conduct."

That principle is due for another affirmation.

True Historian , 1 minute ago link

Will Schiff get the shift ? If Schiff was a Republican, he might have a baseball accident.

Fish Gone Bad , 3 minutes ago link

congressional oversight

The comedy writes itself.

Dumpster Elite , 3 minutes ago link

Imagine if it were Devin Nunes subpoenaing the phone records of Adam Schiff, and Schiff's private conversations with, say, a reporter at CNN...and then making them public.

The MSM would go BALLISTIC!!!!! Heads would have to roll in Congress, and elsewhere. It would be top-of-the-page headline news 24/7.

But, because this is ALL ABOUT getting rid of the Bad Orange Man, what do we hear from the MSM??? *crickets*

And the MSM wonders why Congress has a better approval rating among the American public that they do.

frankthecrank , 4 minutes ago link

How was Schiff able to exercise a subpoena without notifying the parties involved? Why did AT&T honor it without notifying those affected?

This is soo f'n out of control. Schiff is a mad man. Truly deranged.

Smerf , 11 minutes ago link

Adam Schiff is the tip of the iceberg. Wanton disregard for the rule of law, all the while espousing strict adherence to it, is rampant. While living among us, these Neo-liberals have declared war on us. To them, any means are legitimate in 'defeating' us. They know they would never win a direct confrontation with facts, so subversion, deception, and sabotage are their methods of choice. They have co-opted media, education, and government into their ideology of control. The vast majority of the populace will be subdued and programmed into believing and doing anything. For all intents and purposes, we're already there.

SRV , 14 minutes ago link

Schitt has serious legal liabilities (think Standard Hotel for one)... terrified Trump driven investigations will take him down

jamesmmu , 20 minutes ago link

DOJ Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, Does It Again with another Whitewash

[Dec 10, 2019] Barr Skips Over IG Report To Durham, Says FBI May Have Acted In 'Bad Faith'

Dec 10, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

" [T]hese irregularities, these misstatements, these omissions were not satisfactorily explained, " said Barr in a lengthy interview with NBC , just one day after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released the so-called FISA report.

"And I think that leaves open the possibility to infer bad faith . I think it's premature now to reach a judgment on that, but I think that further work has to be done and that's what Durham is doing," he added, referring to US Attorney John Durham - who Barr hand picked to lead a concurrent investigation into the 2016 US election.

Barr described Durham's role as "Looking at the issue of how it got started. He's looking at whether or not the narrative of Trump being involved in the Russian interference actually preceded July, and was it in fact what precipitated the trigger for the investigation."

"He's also looking at the conduct of the investigation," added Barr - who then said that he instructed Durham to look just as carefully into the "post-election period."

"I did that because of some of the stuff that Horowitz has uncovered, which to me is inexplicable. Their case collapsed after the election, and they never told the court, and they kept on getting renewals on these applications. There was documents falsified in order to get these renewals . There was all kinds of withholding of information from the court. And the question really is 'what was the agenda after the election that kept them pressing ahead, after their case collapsed?' This is the president of the Untied States!"

https://www.youtube.com/embed/sNhEYGLLS4U

Barr, who has characterized the FBI's actions during Trump-Russia investigation as spying , slammed the Obama DOJ and the press for the Russiagate narrative that President Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia to win the election.

Surftown , 5 minutes ago link

Are the judges on the FISA court with Chief Justice Roberts' oversight immune from scrutiny?

Congress just quietly reauthorized the FISA Act last March( 85 pct of them Obama appointees)

Do these judges have a hand in the impeachment conspiracy with a blind rubber stamp?

I think they were part of the manufactured 'coup.

THORAX , 9 minutes ago link

The potential timing of the Durham Report release and announcements of indictments for Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Lynch and the rest of the traitors must horrify the demoncrats!

Hungarian Pengos , 10 minutes ago link

Horowitz? Schiff? Nadler?

What do they have in common? So here's the deal - I am a dumb goyim that works in banking and finance, which is about 50%+ dominated by the Chosenites.

They also rule politics and the Media, despite being 2% of the country.

What do you need to know? They lie. Repeatedly and boldly. Don't freak out, just understand that culture does not believe in an afterlife where they are judged, so they lie and steal everything in sight. That's this whole impeachment - crazy lies by sociopaths that aren't afraid to lie.

If you know that going in, you can always protect yourself and even be decent business allies (but not too close). That's where Trump has gone all wrong. His daughter even married one of these goofballs who frankly is probably leaking all of the embarrassing stuff. Plan accordingly.

Lord JT , 15 minutes ago link

Perception management is the name of the game...until some of those responsible are in cuffs, I don't believe anything.

gilhgvc , 19 minutes ago link

IT WAS A ******* COUP. If repubs had done 1/10th of what dems have we would ALREADY be in a hot civil war

mojo_jojo , 21 minutes ago link

Best part of the Barr interview..."The greatest charge is having an incumbent government use the apparatus of the state to spy on political opponents and influence the outcome of the election. This is the first time I am aware that the incumbent administration spied on a presidential candidate."

Yes he said that.

chubbar , 24 minutes ago link

I want to hear Durham and Barr start using the word TREASON. The sooner we can get down to brass tacks the better.

tmosley , 25 minutes ago link

Why does everybody keep confusing Barr's citation of the IG report with damnation of the IG report?

This is all going to be part of his case.

Teamtc321 , 17 minutes ago link

You are exactly correct. The Horowitz review was initiated to look into how the DOJ and FBI secured a Title-1 FISA surveillance warrant against U.S. person Carter Page. IG Horowitz was never investigating the predicate claims that initiated the CIA/FBI operation known as "Crossfire Hurricane". So how exactly would AG Barr and IG Horowitz be diverging on an aspect to a predicate that Horowitz was never reviewing?

Additionally, IG Horowitz was never tasked or empowered to interview CIA officers who are known to have been at the heart of the pre-July 2016 operation. Horowitz was/is focused on the DOJ and FBI compliance with legal requirements for the FISA application that was assembled for use in October 2016, and renewed throughout 2017. - The Conservative Treehouse

[Dec 10, 2019] Tucker: Media proclaims FBI is innocent

So CIA agent Carter Page joins Trump campaign and then do several "improper" moves like travel to Moscow and contracts with Russian officials things in order to create a pretext for FBI investigation. Which of course was promptly started. This is called false flag operation.
From comments: "He wasn’t a victim, he was an asset. When actors portray a victim, they are ACTING!!!"
Notable quotes:
"... "The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses". - the esteemed Malcolm X. ..."
"... Seth Rich downloaded the emails on a potable drive. Was he Russian? ..."
"... DNC/ FBI/ CIA/ CNN/ NBC have merged into the 5 headed serpent. ..."
"... Roger Stone got some minor facts wrong and is facing jail time, Brennan and Comey outright lied to Congress, when are they going to jail? ..."
"... "June 2017, CIA told FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith that Carter Page was working for them (the CIA)." Clinesmith then changed that notification so he could submit the last (FISA) renewal. ..."
"... "Lets hope Carter Page spends the rest of his life sueing everyone..." lol Thats the meanest thing ive ever heard you say! O:) ..."
Dec 10, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Greg Wootton , 4 hours ago

John Brennan lied to Congress, why is he not behind bars?

der Jakob 🇺🇸 , 5 hours ago

Falsifying documents is a crime

Robin John , 5 hours ago

I will believe the swamp is draining when the arrests begin.

Electric Eclectic , 5 hours ago

There are so many crooked actors and actresses hired by the MSM it is just pathetic. They are not reporters, they are there only to put on a show for the masses.

Christopher , 5 hours ago

"The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses". - the esteemed Malcolm X.

Patton Was Right , 5 hours ago

"WE DEFEATED THE WRONG ENEMY!" Now we are paying the price

2legit B , 5 hours ago

Seth Rich downloaded the emails on a potable drive. Was he Russian?

LB Helms , 4 hours ago

DNC/ FBI/ CIA/ CNN/ NBC have merged into the 5 headed serpent.

Mr.762 , 4 hours ago

The FBI and CIA need to be dismantled!

Silly Goose , 5 hours ago

Roger Stone got some minor facts wrong and is facing jail time, Brennan and Comey outright lied to Congress, when are they going to jail?

reminaya , 4 hours ago

"June 2017, CIA told FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith that Carter Page was working for them (the CIA)." Clinesmith then changed that notification so he could submit the last (FISA) renewal.

Theta Kongpancake , 4 hours ago

5:55 - "Lets hope Carter Page spends the rest of his life sueing everyone..." lol Thats the meanest thing ive ever heard you say! O:)

Christopher Wojciechowski , 2 hours ago

The FBI was never innocent. They're guilty as hell and heads need to roll over.

Blue -eyed , 2 hours ago

Allowing ONE person to decide if crimes where done by the most powerful people in america for decades. Horowitz was bought one way or another.

Joe Montano , 4 hours ago

1:52 - This is what a paid shill looks like. If the money is good, they'll read whatever is on the prompter. Years from now when they're demonized by the corrupt media they'll scratch their head and ask... What happened to integrity in our country???

lrm21 , 46 minutes ago

High crimes and misdemeanors. Where is John Brennan?

P MA , 2 hours ago

If you asked me 20 years ago wether I would be watching Fox News to get the most rational point of view in politics, I would have said you were crazy. Another great job Tucker! In my opinion, you’re one of the best news men of our current time; questioning needless wars, and calling out politicians, gvmnt officials and your counterparts at other news desks with rational arguments. Well done sir!

ita-glo jgv , 41 minutes ago

Personally seen these types of things/cases in lower levels, police chiefs and officials, judges, prosecutors, mayor, FBI, and so on. Not surprisingly it happens elsewhere. ...But very disappointed of it all.

cat nerp , 4 hours ago

Politics is like religion. Facts mean very little before the over powering light of belief

TaggsR85 , 1 hour ago

How does Horowitz believe this wasn’t politically motivated? What was the motivation to lie to surveillance to be put on carter page?

VAMPYRE ANGELUS , 4 hours ago

fbi is the mafia with badges..

Bruce Lee , 4 hours ago

The FBI has too much power. It’s not about a few bad apples, it’s what can happen with a few bad apples.

Duncan McCockiner , 33 minutes ago

If I were an American citizen, I'd be very concerned about the utter incompetence of the FBI that the IG report exposed. The dems don't seem to be bothered by this at all. Go figure.

Patrick Ryan , 1 hour ago

The Establishment has played this game many times before .. remember PM Harold Wilson was put up as a Russian Agent .. sure they won that game but NOT this time .. they fear President Trump because the have nothing over him .

Richard Ralph Roehl , 5 hours ago

NOTHING will happen. There will be no indictments of any major deep-$tate players.

tamimerkaz , 2 hours ago

The Democ-rats and the media (I repeat myself) are shamelessly LYING through their teeth to the American People. There was NO Russian collision—it's a HOAX made by LOSERS who can't accept their loss in 2016 so they were up to smear the winner, President Trump, by all means, possible including Illegal surveillance, fraud and manipulation—ABUSE of government power for political prosecution.

Cherrie Dee , 5 hours ago

Steele dossier......fake evidence bought and payed for by the democrats and presented to the FISA court by James Comey...........FELONY FELONY FELONY!......this one can’t be talked away!

Scott Thompson , 4 hours ago

Tucker, thank you for being a constant drumbeat for the criminal activity undertaken by the FBI and CIA to ultimately unseat a duly elected President. No rest until they are held accountable.

Aisha Mohammed , 52 minutes ago

How could the FBI be innocent? We saw the emails. We saw them cover up for Bill Gates, Clinton, Epstein, Brunel, and all the others. We saw how they protected these abusers of children. We saw how they worked to overthrow a sitting president. We saw how they protected the Awan’s and Huma.

BC Stud , 4 hours ago

THE FIX WAS IN - People are saying that Nellie Orr the Russian Expert is best friends with the IG's Horowitz wife - So nice - Bruce your husband is a lap dog and works for the FBI . People should be outraged as the cover up continues . Just like OJ - they have 10 times the evidence that would convict anyone else - have them charged , arrested , tried and jailed . Different rules for corrupt politicians and their friends in law enforcement .

2 Cent , 5 hours ago

Michael Cohen In prison, Papadopulos went to prison, Flynn is going to prison, Roger Stone is going to prison, Manafort is in prison and Devin Nunes and Rudy Giuliani are under investigation.....Lock them up, lock them up!!!!

Jessica Greene , 4 hours ago

CIA tells FBI who in turn uses their corrupt media to spread the lies as truth. The less intelligent among us believe them as gospel and thus we get "Russian Collusion, or Quid Pro Quo, or Iraq has weapons of mass destruction " and on and on.....

Susan Byers , 2 hours ago

Carter Page is scarcely a victim, he was a CIA informant. He was a plant. He was an excuse to do surveillance EVERYONE.

Jennifer Griffin , 2 hours ago

Ukraine and Barisma may be corrupt, but after reading the summary of this report, this country better not be calling any country corrupt. The USA is following Rome. Soon it will die.

kenh2o , 4 hours ago

FBI is totally corrupted by it's unchecked power, these deep states have the guts to repeatedly use FALSE Information again & again to spy on the opposition political party presidential candidate campaign. The Fake News medias continue to cover for them, it is sickening!

Rick Atkins , 5 hours ago

The FBI based on the IG report are either criminally liable for deceiving FISA courts, or the most inept, bumbling criminal investigation agency ever. Looks like both to me. Any FBI agent or employee who knew the FBI was breaking the law, and remained silent needs to be fired immediately and prosecuted along with the principals, for aiding and abetting criminal activity. This sounds like RICO violations.

Daryl Leckt , 34 minutes ago (edited)

if Carter Page didn't run the 2016 "Trump Election Campaign Committee of Moscow" from the ROSNEFT bureau offices inside the Kremlin, where did Carter Page run the "Trump Election Campaign Committee of Moscow" ?

BrianC6234 , 2 hours ago

Horowitz needs to stop being a wuss and tell the whole truth. His report is a big lie. The whole thing was a political attack. It started with John McCain and he handed it off to Obama and Crooked Hillary. There was no reason at all to investigate Trump. Is the IG part of the deep state? Democrats are acting like this report is good news for them.

Pal VB , 1 hour ago (edited)

Steele was not the author of the fake dossier, DNC FusionGPS Glen Simpson was, and Steele used as cover. Coming in the Durham findings. 17 FBI "mistakes" in a row all against Trump? No bias? B S.

Me King , 4 hours ago

How Trump has "conned" the American tax payer: This is just a few of his fraud actions!He set up a foundation to benefit the military, then him and his family pocketed our money.He started a Fake University, then stole the money from the American people.He cheated on his wives, then paid them to keep quiet so it wouldn't damage his chances in the election.He stiffed 100's of worker's he hired and then made up an excuse y they didn't get paid

Maclain Hunter , 2 hours ago

If Donald Trump was a Russian spy it would’ve been the deepest cover of any secret agent ever....he came here after his lgb training as a young man and became a celebrity for 30 years before finally putting his dastardly plan to go from pageant owner to president into action! If that were anywhere close to true the Russians did so much work I think they earned the 4-8 years in the White House! I know that at this point I’d rather have Vladimir Putin as President than any of the top democrats!

The World Through My Mind , 1 hour ago

Folks..All this soap opera is just a smoke screen to hide what is really important and is happening right now at this very minute. The Federal Reserve Banking cartel is pumping 100s of billions of dollars into insolvent banks again like they did in 2008. This time it is more and we taxpayers will again foot the bill. The banks are getting this money called REPO loans. Watch your cash everyone as the Federal Reserve has only 1 product and that is printing money( debt) that they will use to steal your assets and future.

lenchienlon , 3 hours ago

There are many opinions about the Horowitz report. As with a prior report Horowitz lays out damning evidence and then draws exactly the wrong conclusion. Why does he have to draw ANY CONCLUSIONS? His job is to present the facts and the evidence and to let "We the People' draw conclusions. Reminds me of Comey declaring that Hillary's actions were irresponsible but not criminal. Why? She didn't act with intent. She was just incompetent! Tucker is absolutely right! What does it matter what their motive was? Like Clinton, they behaved in a criminal fashion.

[Dec 10, 2019] The brats are spoilt beyond belief and 100% believe they're entitled to having Full Spectrum Dominance because of their exceptionalist ideology

Dec 10, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Dec 8 2019 22:32 utc | 45

To the Bar--

What I see is copious amounts of wailing from the usual sources about the demise of what was supposed to be an era of Unipolar dominance by the Evil Outlaw US Empire and blame being thrown in all directions hoping some sticks instead of directing it at themselves for they are he true authors of the Empire's decline--they being the Current Oligarchy and their Congressional, Administrative, and BigLie Media accomplices. The Empire's current "defense" doctrine calls for war to be waged against the nation(s) impeding the Empire's unilateralism. The brats are spoilt beyond belief and 100% believe they're entitled to having Full Spectrum Dominance because of their exceptionalist ideology--they've destroyed their own basic law to attain that goal; the impeachment derangement is just the most overt symptom being shown at the moment. Just look at the unanimity on the two recent anti-China votes--Congress is in almost 100% lockstep with Marco Rubio's insanity.

IMO, there were saner heads in 1962 than now, particularly in Congress. What's worse than an Evil Outlaw US Empire is it's becoming deranged.

[Dec 09, 2019] Everything was nice and proper: No political bias by the FBI. No "mole" in the White House. No abuse of FBI powers. This was an attempted overthrow of the President

Dec 09, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

slightlyskeptical , 3 minutes ago link

"The report concludes that despite nearly everybody investigating President Trump hating him - and that evidence was fabricated by at least one FBI attorney, and that they misrepresented Christopher Steele's credentials, none of their bias 'tainted' the investigation , and the underlying process was sound."

Who investigating major criminal acts actually likes the perp? It was such a juvenile argument from day 1.

I bet the truth is stretched a bit in just about every subpoena issued, not just FISA ones. It is the nature of things, since you are trying to obtain evidence of crimes that are currently unproven but suspected. As such all subpoena's are issued based on the perception of guilt and not any actual proof of that guilt. This was a non-starter from the beginning.

Cassandra.Hermes , 4 minutes ago link

Steele said he had visited Ivanka Trump at Trump Tower and had been "friendly" with her for "some years". He described their relationship as "personal". The former British government spy had even given her a "family tartan from Scotland" as a present, the report quoted him as saying.

spiderman5968 , 5 minutes ago link

Horowitz's report is mostly meaningless.

It all comes down to the Barr/Durham investigation and indictments that follow.

Will they indict the top dogs (Comey, Clapper, Clinton, Brennan, Rosenstein, Obama, Strokz, Page, Ohr, McCabe, Yates, Priestap, etc.) and make the long-needed changes to Fed Gov't or indict just a bunch of low-level "Fall Guys" in the alphabet agencies to try to make the public release some steam and then drop it all like a hot potato and keep the Deep State intact.???

If REAL justice isn't served up at that point gov't as we know it will collapse as America descends into anarchy and lawlessness.

The political class and mainstream media needs to be purged and the U.S. Constitution fully restored.

morethan1 , 1 minute ago link

Unfortunately, NOTHING will happen. I've seen this movie before.

teolawki , 7 minutes ago link

Not 'tainted' by political bias. Bullfuckingshit!

As I stated not that long ago. You cannot have a corrupt FBI without a corrupt DOJ. And you cannot have a corrupt agency without a corrupt IG. Period. Remember the IRS IG clearing Lois Lerner? Hmmm?

JoeTurner , 11 minutes ago link

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1204144525578518528

General Flynn had to be targeted by Deep State because he was the ultimate whistleblower

PopeRatzo , 12 minutes ago link

The only crimes committed were by the Trump campaign and administration. Try to pay attention. Do you need a list of Trump associates who are either in jail or have been convicted and are on their way to jail?

Meanwhile, Hillary's laughing it up with Howard Stern.

It must suck to be you.

JoeTurner , 12 minutes ago link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipI-uHKizbg&feature=youtu.be

Wow, even fake news NBC is pooping themselves over FISA mishandling. I predict whiplash with how fast the fake news, drive-by media throws Comey, Clapper and Brennan under the bus to protect Hillary and Obongo.

Ophiuchus , 9 minutes ago link

Don't bet on anyone taking a fall. All animals are equal, but some animals, especially pigs, are more equal than others.

[Dec 09, 2019] If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.

Dec 09, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

TJ , Dec 8 2019 21:03 utc | 38

@29 john brewster

A long time ago I watched "Manufacturing Consent" and have since assumed that what passes for mainstream "news" is nothing more than propaganda, and that Mark Twain was entirely correct in his observation that if you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. Though it is sad when I see the likes of the once great Nature engage in such, all things must pass and I am sure they will too, most of what I read these days comes straight off arxiv.org so they have already been disintermediated in my life.

@32 c1ue

That will be £1,000,000 for linking to my post, please pay within 24 hours or legal action will be taken!

Do you see the point now?

[Dec 09, 2019] There is something to the idea that American political culture is becoming increasingly Sovietized

Notable quotes:
"... there is something to the idea that American political culture is becoming increasingly Sovietized ..."
"... This article below inadvertently illustrates the obsession with malign foreign influences, like that which pervaded Soviet discourse and remains a bad smell in Russia to this day. ..."
"... Another rapidly creeping Soviet trait is the weaponization of politics, turning any disagreement into an existential struggle, opponents into enemies, the way words like "treason" or "Russian asset" have become common coin ..."
"... increasingly they have that "enemy of the people" ring to them. The growing prominence of the intelligence services in political life, and their alumni on cable TV news shows, is another worrisome trend to watch. ..."
Dec 09, 2019 | eastwestaccord.com

There is something to the idea that American political culture is becoming increasingly Sovietized, writes Weir .

This is becoming quite the meme. Upon reflection, I do think there is something in it. Not this idiotic suggestion that Repubicans have somehow morphed into borscht-swilling, shapka-wearing, Putin-loving Russkies. Indeed, there are hardly any actual Russians like that.

But there is something to the idea that American political culture is becoming increasingly Sovietized. Of course it's two separate camps, not a monolith, and the Democrats are at least as guilty as Republicans.

This article below inadvertently illustrates the obsession with malign foreign influences, like that which pervaded Soviet discourse and remains a bad smell in Russia to this day. Russians scoff at the idea that Putin is able to get his own man elected president of the US when he can't even fix the governor in Irkutsk. But the author of this piece implies that Putin is somehow pulling the strings, not only of Trump but all Republicans?

Another rapidly creeping Soviet trait is the weaponization of politics, turning any disagreement into an existential struggle, opponents into enemies, the way words like "treason" or "Russian asset" have become common coin. And they are not just deployed as simple insults: increasingly they have that "enemy of the people" ring to them. The growing prominence of the intelligence services in political life, and their alumni on cable TV news shows, is another worrisome trend to watch.

Also, it looks like big part of the media have become almost Pravda-like, making ideological mission their main priority. I spend some of my down-time perusing shows from Fox News and MSNBC, which an alien from outer space would think were the propaganda organs of two different, mutually-hostile states -- but both very Soviet-like.

... ... ...

THEATLANTIC.COM
The Russification of the Republican Party
GOP lawmakers used to oppose the president's embrace of Putin and the Kremlin. Not anymore.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/12/impeachment-republican-party-russia/603088/?fbclid=IwAR1EC0-CDBEx-3SMS1lJTMT2m0xVjfaguZehK4BIeZ5Bov41Ds1XFi_Cbkg

[Dec 09, 2019] A Determined Effort to Undermine Russia

Notable quotes:
"... The New Cold War can traced back to a broken promise made to Moscow on Nato expansion eastward. "London and Washington are orchestrating a disinformation" campaign today against Russia, as the New Cold War has heated up over Syria, Ukraine, NATO troops on Russia's borders and Russiagate. ..."
"... Hostility to Russia is the oldest continuous foreign policy tradition in the United States. It is now so much of a part of America's identity that it is unlikely to be ever cured. ..."
"... It is a dangerous miscalculation to think the "New Cold War" will end like the first. Russia (the USSR) had a buffer zone then, it doesn't today. For Moscow the coming war (world war) will be about survival. All that is left is the fall-back position of nuclear deterrence doctrine – annihilation. I don't think western capitals see how perilous the situation is. ..."
"... Then there are snide remarks about the meeting today concerning the Ukrainian Azov (Neo-Nazi) attacks on the Donbass (NOT how either the BBC or NPR speaks of this of course) in France. This struggle, between the Russian-speaking Donbass peoples and the neo-Nazis of western Ukraine, has killed many thousands of people (most likely mostly those of the Donbass). The Donbass fighters are spoken of as "Russian-supported" in an attempt to deny them and the reasons for their struggle *any* legitimacy (meanwhile the support for the neo-Nazis goes unmentioned, leaving the listener with the impression that they are the Ukrainian military, thus legitimately fighting a foreign funded and manned insurgency). ..."
"... Mad Dog Mattis spoke the truth when he said that an opponent wasn't defeated until they agreed they were defeated. The US merely assumed that Russia agreed that they were defeated and are doubling down when they now suddenly realize that Russia never said any such thing. ..."
"... I am really sick of the smearing of Russia done by the US and UK. The Skripal as well as the MH17 case are plain ridiculus. Anybody can see through these silly plants. US and UK obviously don't feel obliged to respect any international rules any more. (The one person who is suffering most at the moment from the decline in respect is Julian Assange, an Australian citizen!) ..."
"... "From 1922 onwards the strategic purpose of the Soviet Union was to defend the Soviet Union not global domination, whereas the purpose of the "West" has always been global domination. " ..."
"... "At an event last week in Sydney, Kevin and Carr discussed how the West, led by the United States, has been on an aggressive campaign to destabilize Russia, without cause." ..."
Dec 08, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Retired Australian diplomat Tony Kevin, in conversation with former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr, says the West is unnecessarily determined to undermine Russia. A t an event last week in Sydney, Kevin and Carr discussed how the West, led by the United States, has been on an aggressive campaign to destabilize Russia, without cause.

When Kevin said he returned to Russia after more than 40 years in 2016 he realized he "had to take sides" in the U.S.-Russia standoff when all Nato countries boycotted the Moscow celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

"I had to take a moral position that it is not right for the West to be ganging up on Russia," Kevin says in his conversation with the former Australian foreign minister.

The New Cold War can traced back to a broken promise made to Moscow on Nato expansion eastward. "London and Washington are orchestrating a disinformation" campaign today against Russia, as the New Cold War has heated up over Syria, Ukraine, NATO troops on Russia's borders and Russiagate.

Watch the hour-long in depth discussion which was filmed and produced by Consortium News' CN Live! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/dJiS3nFzsWg?feature=oembed

ElderD , December 9, 2019 at 15:03

Tony's (especially!) and Bob's sane and sensible view of this dangerous and destructive state of affairs deserve the widest possible distribution and attention.

George McGlynn , December 9, 2019 at 13:27

A quarter century has passed since the fall of the Soviet Union, and little has changed. Cold War patterns of thinking about Russia show no sign of weakening in America. The further we distance ourselves from the end of the Cold War, the closer we come to its revival. Hostility to Russia is the oldest continuous foreign policy tradition in the United States. It is now so much of a part of America's identity that it is unlikely to be ever cured.

peter mcloughlin , December 9, 2019 at 10:45

It is a dangerous miscalculation to think the "New Cold War" will end like the first. Russia (the USSR) had a buffer zone then, it doesn't today. For Moscow the coming war (world war) will be about survival. All that is left is the fall-back position of nuclear deterrence doctrine – annihilation. I don't think western capitals see how perilous the situation is.

AnneR , December 9, 2019 at 07:48

The latest efforts at attacking Russia via smear, allegation and Doublespeak have been, are via that US supported supposed oversight committee, WADA which has done what the US-UK wanted: banned Russia for four years from international sporting events including the upcoming Tokyo Olympics and World Cup (Football – soccer to Americans).

Then there were allegations – of those "highly likely" (therefore one knows to be untrue and unadulterated propaganda to increase Russophobia) sort – about Russian hackers (always giving the impression that the "Kremlin" is behind itl) being the Labour Party's source of the Tory party's US-UK trade deal which would/will deliberately and finally destroy the NHS and replace it with (of course) US "health" insurance company profiteering.

(Always the Tory intention from the NHS's initiation in May of 1948; only its popularity among many Tory party supporters among the working and lower middle classes prevented them from a full-frontal killing off the NHS; the Snatcher's government began the undermining, via installing a top-heavy bureaucratization, siphoning off a sizable proportion of the funds that would otherwise have gone to medical care, demanding that hospitals not "lose" money – a concept completely beyond the remit of the NHS as originally conceived and constructed and like exactions.)

Then there are snide remarks about the meeting today concerning the Ukrainian Azov (Neo-Nazi) attacks on the Donbass (NOT how either the BBC or NPR speaks of this of course) in France. This struggle, between the Russian-speaking Donbass peoples and the neo-Nazis of western Ukraine, has killed many thousands of people (most likely mostly those of the Donbass). The Donbass fighters are spoken of as "Russian-supported" in an attempt to deny them and the reasons for their struggle *any* legitimacy (meanwhile the support for the neo-Nazis goes unmentioned, leaving the listener with the impression that they are the Ukrainian military, thus legitimately fighting a foreign funded and manned insurgency).

Someone even suggested that President Putin needed to be diplomatic. Really? From what I've read the man is the most diplomatic and intelligent politician (not just political leader) along with Xi Jinping and the Iranian government that exist on the world stage. None of them are hubristic, solipsistic, eager beaver killers of peoples in other countries. Unlike their western "world" political counterparts.

Jeff Harrison , December 8, 2019 at 18:30

Mad Dog Mattis spoke the truth when he said that an opponent wasn't defeated until they agreed they were defeated. The US merely assumed that Russia agreed that they were defeated and are doubling down when they now suddenly realize that Russia never said any such thing.

St. Ronnie's whole thing back in the 80's was to outspend Russia militarily and it worked well. We're trying to do it again but Russia isn't playing the same game this time and now it is the US that has a mountain of debt and Russia that doesn't. SIPIRI tags US military spending at $650B and Russian military spending at $62B. But we know that the $650B number is bogus because it doesn't include our in-violation-of-the-NNPT nuclear program which is in the energy department or our veteran's expenses which are in HHS. I don't know what's missing from Russia's $62B but I'll bet they can sustain that a whole lot better than we can sustain our $650B and rising bill.

Antonio Costa , December 9, 2019 at 13:17

Good point regarding Russia's downsizing the Soviet Union. From Gorbachev to Putin there was NEVER a surrender, intended in any way. The intent has been multilateral partnerships. For Russia the US/West won nothing at all except the opportunity to live and work in peace. (By the way this policy has a long Russian history.)

They gave up the Warsaw Pact and America with our worthless "word" expanded NATO.

The US foreign policy has lost even the semblance of sanity. Our naked aggression is clear as never before, a mad man throwing a global fit armed with megaton nuclear projectiles on trigger first strike alert. What could go wrong?

nondimenticare , December 8, 2019 at 15:56

If, magically, Consortium News/CN Live! were a mass-distribution network/magazine (hence universally consulted), allowing the light in for the mass of the viewing and listening public, it could change the world – both an exalting and despairing thought.

Lily , December 8, 2019 at 09:52

It is a great joy to listen to this conversation!

I am really sick of the smearing of Russia done by the US and UK. The Skripal as well as the MH17 case are plain ridiculus. Anybody can see through these silly plants. US and UK obviously don't feel obliged to respect any international rules any more. (The one person who is suffering most at the moment from the decline in respect is Julian Assange, an Australian citizen!)

I wish people would have the courage to break away from the group pressure originated by a nation which has been started by killing more than 90% of the indigenous people in their country and since then has turned the worl into a very insecure place.

Chapeau, Tony Kevin! Thanks to Bob Carr and Consortiums News.

Lily , December 9, 2019 at 01:18

It seems that some facts are beginning to be realized in the military department.

www(dot)zerohedge(dot)com/geopolitical/pentagon-alarmed-russia-gaining-sympathy-among-us-troops

Bob Van Noy , December 8, 2019 at 09:22

Simply, wonderful

OlyaPola , December 8, 2019 at 07:43

Words are catalysts of connotations and connotations are functions of expectations/framing..

Some conflate cause with purpose thereby limiting perception of cause and purpose.

Some understand that causation is interactive and in any lateral system the genesis of causation is difficult to determine.

Some understand that evaluation is a function of purpose and that purpose can be evaluated through such portals into wonderlands such as "What is the "United States of America" and how is it facilitated?"

As thumb-nailed in the comments section of the article Capitalism's suicidal trajectory – OlyaPola
December 6, 2019 at 07:46

"From 1922 onwards the strategic purpose of the Soviet Union was to defend the Soviet Union not global domination, whereas the purpose of the "West" has always been global domination. "

From 1922 onwards various tactics have been attempted by the "West" to facilitate their purpose, including attempts at "Orange revolution" in many areas which catalysed many lateral trajectories including the process of transcendence of the "Soviet Union" by the Russian Federation in the period from 1991 to 2005.

Consequently Mr. Suslov's observation re war of "The United States of America" can be extended into present times and hence no "New cold war" exists.

""What is the "United States of America"

An initial step through the portal is that "The United States of America" is – a regime of social relations to facilitate its purpose – the social relations not being restricted to the "nation state" presently self designated "The United States of America" but including classes in other "nation states".

Consequently alternative purposes and social relations pose an existential threat to "The United States of America"; this being perceived of lesser significance in regard to "The Soviet Union" and greater in regard to the Russian Federation.

JOHN CHUCKMAN , December 8, 2019 at 07:30

"At an event last week in Sydney, Kevin and Carr discussed how the West, led by the United States, has been on an aggressive campaign to destabilize Russia, without cause."

The American establishment's problem with Russia is simply that Russia is the only country on earth capable of obliterating the United States. Not even China has yet reached that capacity.

"Carthago delenda est"

Skip Scott , December 9, 2019 at 06:13

There is "cause." Russia was our latest vassal under Yeltsin. Putin stopped the looting, and worked to benefit average Russian citizens. Just watch "The Magnitsky Act, behind the scenes" to know the "cause".

Bruno DP , December 8, 2019 at 02:34

The West is ganging up on Russia? Replace "West" by "United States of America", and I will agree.

Much of the West (i.e. Germany) has been dragged by force into damage control mode. The Magnitsky Act monster, the election interference hysteria, are just 2 crying examples met with shock and disbelief across the pond. The Fiona Hill testimony was a very telling moment for the inner workings of a self perpetuating logic.

Russia is no lightweight by any means, and not always friendly.

But it has regularly done the right thing in international conflicts which the Kremlin seems to understand better than all of "the Western" intelligence combined.

Martin Schuchert , December 8, 2019 at 17:33

I'm German, living in the US, and I agree with your comment. I especially love the last two sentences:

"Russia is no lightweight by any means, and not always friendly.
But it has regularly done the right thing in international conflicts which the Kremlin seems to understand better than all of "the Western" intelligence combined."

[Dec 09, 2019] More on the Skripal-Douma alleged false flag connection

Notable quotes:
"... In regard to our suggestion, the latest move against Damascus was predominantly a UK project, a link was sent to us today to an article by Thierry Meyssan on Voltairenet that's certainly interesting. ..."
"... It's not "the US", it's an international grouping of ideologues and other cranks, focused as much, maybe even more, in the UK as in America. If Meyssan is right these people are highly placed, but operating subversively within their own governments. Of course we have always known these thing are true to some extent, but this latest event seems to be taking this subversion to a new level. ..."
"... Seventeen years ago a small group of highly placed individuals in the US government may have engineered or at very least allowed 9/11 to happen for their own geopolitical ends. We'd be naive to consider a second such event to be impossible. ..."
"... The real danger isn't that a group of ubermenschen or Bond-villains want to incinerate humanity for vague and unspecified reasons, it's that the deep heart of the Russophobic cabal is too dogma-driven and infested with idiots to understand the real world results of their plans. ..."
"... „Wasser verstärkt die oxidative und ätzende Wirkung von Chlor" (WATER exacerbates the corrosive effect of chlorine (because hydrochlorid acid is formed through the moisture) So why would medical experts then hose down these alleged „chlorine" victims? Of course they would not. So this too, seem to confirm that the whole scene was staged. ..."
"... Another article by Mr Meyssan http://www.voltairenet.org/article200375.html refers to the British regime " is elaborated by an elite gathered around the monarch, outside of any form of popular control " The idea of a deep state seems too convenient. In every sphere the regime exploits the population for it's own requirements, if indeed the regime adheres to a nationality. Cold war, hot war are regime terms, all that matters is knowing who not to trust. ..."
"... There is a very powerful deep state in the UK. I think its leadership is hidden deep in the Privy Council and enforced by MI5/MI6. It runs a hidden economy financed through crime – fraud against UK taxpayers, foreign countries etc, It controls the judiciary when need be. This speech by Gerald James although old gives some idea; ..."
"... Catte, we do know for absolute certain that WTC-7 came down by controlled demolition, not by fire – it's a matter of science – and that fact means inside job, however much it was also an outside job. It's fine to be rigorous but if the facts are staring you right in the face that's rigour enough. I simply do not understand reluctance to call things out when they're in your face. It's not as if a court hearing is necessarily going to give you a better answer, is it, but hopefully there's going to be one soon where the truth will be revealed, at least as much as necessary. ..."
"... According to the 52-page petition, which is accompanied by 57 exhibits, federal statute requires the U.S. Department of Justice to relay citizen reports of federal crimes to a special grand jury. The unprosecuted crime alleged to have taken place on 9/11 is THE BOMBING OF A PLACE OF PUBLIC USE OR A GOVERNMENT FACILITY -- as prohibited under the federal bombing statute or 18 U.S.C. § 2332f -- as well as a conspiracy to commit, or the aiding and abetting of, said offense. ..."
Apr 15, 2018 | off-guardian.org

In regard to our suggestion, the latest move against Damascus was predominantly a UK project, a link was sent to us today to an article by Thierry Meyssan on Voltairenet that's certainly interesting.

Published March 20 it puts forward the idea the Skripal affair was a false flag intended to be the launch pad for a wholesale diplomatic attack on Russia that Meyssan suggests would initiate a "new cold war."

While it's possible to question this terminology (many would suggest we already have a "new cold war" and are on the verge of it becoming hot), his narrative offers a valid interpretation of recent events, and indeed looks more persuasive today that when it was written.

What Meyssan suggests is as follows:

Back in March a projected coup was planned between the UK government and the neocons in Washington to create an irresistible drive to a) launch a full blown assault on Damascus and b) get Russia removed from the UN Security Council.

The means was to be first the Skripal incident and immediately thereafter a large scale false flag chemical weapon attack on Ghouta.

Rex Tillerson, then US Secretary of State, was involved in this plan.

However by some means (Meyssan doesn't say how) the Syrian and Russian intelligence services became aware of the plan, and realised it was not the Pentagon behind it, but "some other agency."

The Russians immediately alerted the media to a possible false flag.

At the same time, bypassing diplomatic channels (because he was concerned to avoid others who were siding with the "plotters"), Russian Chief of Staff, General Valeri Gerasimov contacted his American counterpart General Joseph Dunford to inform him of his fears of a game-changing intel-sponsored event in Syria. Dunford in turn informed Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who told Trump.

Since this apparent plot was going on without the knowledge of the White House & Pentagon, Trump then told Mike Pompeo, the head of the CIA, to investigate.

As a result Trump became convinced Tillerson was involved and soon after, fired him.

This, in essence, is Meyssan's story. He cites no source for the claims about back-channel communications, and we can't verify them even slightly. But we all know Russia did indeed warn of a pending false flag in Syria several times throughout March, and developments since the time of Meyssan's writing lend credence to the broad thrust of interpretation.

The orchestrated & hysterical response of the UK state machine to the Skripal event doesn't just hint at agenda rollout, it shouts it. The idea this was indeed the first act of a make or break plan is certainly more than believable. Indeed we all heard the suggestion about removing Russia from the UNSC repeated in the media at the height of the hysteria.

Whether Meyssan is right or wrong, we absolutely did just see an orchestrated, high level operation unfold, apparently designed to discredit Russia finally and forever.

It suggests new levels of idiot-insanity going on. Not only is such a plan amateurish in conception (kicking Russia off the UNSC, even if achievable, is not going to suddenly neutralise their political and military power), it would seem to have been doubly so in execution.

The Skripal story is a farce. But the apparent attempts to go forward with the "chemical attack" when all rationale for it was gone and when Douma itself was about to fall, shows stupidity beyond comprehension. If this was the UK, as the Russians claim, rather than rescuing themselves they simply added another embarrassing failure to the list, and dug themselves even deeper into easily-exposed crime.

The entire situation must be a warning, and not just the usual cliché about the US being a danger to world peace.

It's not "the US", it's an international grouping of ideologues and other cranks, focused as much, maybe even more, in the UK as in America. If Meyssan is right these people are highly placed, but operating subversively within their own governments. Of course we have always known these thing are true to some extent, but this latest event seems to be taking this subversion to a new level.

Seventeen years ago a small group of highly placed individuals in the US government may have engineered or at very least allowed 9/11 to happen for their own geopolitical ends. We'd be naive to consider a second such event to be impossible.

It also seems clear those enacting this plan initially had little idea how dangerous it really was, and were to some extent astounded by the Russian reaction, and the horror expressed by the more sane elements in international government. This is also significant.

It's a cliché in some alt media now to say the elites want WW3 and to talk about "population reduction" or some other meme. But, while it's certainly true there is a strong eugenicist de-population cult in the upper echelons, it's highly improbable any of them would choose a thermonuclear war as a viable method.

The real danger isn't that a group of ubermenschen or Bond-villains want to incinerate humanity for vague and unspecified reasons, it's that the deep heart of the Russophobic cabal is too dogma-driven and infested with idiots to understand the real world results of their plans.

We can be sure they won't have learned from this and won't be deterred from more of the same or worse in future. And if their next remedial scheme doesn't get stymied by circumstance or nifty footwork, no one will be more surprised than they are when it kicks of WW3.

But they do have some opposition within the state machine, and always have. There were people in the US and UK intelligence agencies who didn't want to lie about WMDs, and there are people today in the UK FCO who off-record told Craig Murray about the lies being forced on them regarding the Skripal case. These are people with enough smarts to want to avoid real confrontation with Russia, however prepared they are to play the public word games.

I think it's important we address this more nuanced reality rather than opting for the security of familiar memes.

vierotchka ,

Press Conference of Alexander Shulgin, Russian Representative to the OPCW
Streamed live on 16 Apr 2018
It comes with interpretation in English.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/QEb74ip_6RM?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Cassandra ,

Pt. 2: WHY WOULD ASSAD DO IT?
The French govt also argues that the use of CW in East-Ghouta was both in a tactical and a strategical sense a (sort of) military stroke of genius but I'll spare you the BS except for one argument:

The „strategic" aspect was that Assad wanted to punish the civilians in „rebel-held" areas and by creating „terreur et panic" they achieved their aim of surrender.

„Because the war is not over for Assad, he wants to demonstrate thru these ruthless attacks that resistance is futile "

This is bollocks of course because the Russians and the SAA are winning and have painstakingly negotiated with the „rebels" and arranged for them to be evacuated in buses to Idlib. (Can anyone imagine the US-military doing such a thing after 7yrs of war?)

AND President Assad knows very well that the civilians in rebel-held areas were captives, treated like slaves, starved for food (sold by the synthetic "rebels" at exorbitant prices) and brutally executed if they refused to live under Sharia-law or supported Assad. So there was absolutely no need to „punish" them for anything.

Coincidentally, high-ranking former British military officers totally disagree with the French "assessment"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5616533/Former-head-Britains-special-forces-says-Assad-doesnt-need-use-gas.html

but the French stick to their surreal script .

„Given the operational situation in Eastern-Ghouta on April 7, we estimate with high-confidence that the responsibility [for the non-existent CW-attack] can be attributed to the Syrian Regime". (Sound familiar?)

And finally they put in this kind of „disclaimer" when they say „Les services francaises are not in the possession of any information which would support the thesis, that these armed groups in East-Ghouta have endeavored to acquire CW for themselves or that they were already available to them."

(Now that is a BIG Lie even the MSM has reported that the "rebels" DID use CW ( i.e. see Carla del Ponte, Seymour Hersh and Scott Ritter on this)
„Furthermore we regard a manipulation of the released pictures as implausible, because the groups present in Ghouta had no access to the means necessary to exercise a communication-manoeuvre of this magnitude" (!)

(this ridiculous claim does not even deserve a comment their "PR" has been highly effective since it was directed and organized by MI6 see voltairenet for more)

The biggest lie comes at the end when they claim that Assad has not declared all his CW to the OPCW, has kept a CLANDESTINE CW-programm all the time (since 2013), has intensified the use of CW continually and that the Russians are in on this.

And then follow the (by now familiar) highly-manipulative phrases which are supposed to be imprinted on our brains now:

  • "Undoubtedly a chemical attack was launched against civilians on April 7 in Douma"
  • "THERE IS NO OTHER PLAUSIBLE SCENARIO then the action of the SAA (CW-attack) as part of a major offensive to retake East-Ghouta"
  • "Russia has undeniably actively supported these operations and the clandestine policy of the SARG for the use of CW"

As Sergei Lavrov recently said to the BBC "the proof is (apparently) in the punishment" .. it is crystal clear that neither the Briitsh nor the French gov't is interested in a thorough, forensic investigation (whether in Salisburgy or in Douma) and the fact they have acted as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner BEFORE any impartial investigation took place is proof enough of their duplicity

What I find extremely puzzling is this: The Russians now say they have "irrefutable evidence" that Britain has instigated a false flag Douma (and obviously in Salisbury as well) . SO WHY don't they show it to us???? Why not publish the findings of the Swiss lab? Is this some weird diplomatic code of conduct they adhere to?

Cassandra ,

President MACRON recently stated that he has „proof" that CW were used in Douma and that it was the Syrian Army. Now the French govt has released the „evaluation nationale" but it seems no-one is paying attention to it.

https://www.defense.gouv.fr/content/download/528742/9123389/file/180414%20-%20Syrie%20-%20Synthe%CC%80se%20-%20Les%20faits.pdf

After reading the document carefully one can only reach one conclusion:

There is NO PROOF whatsover in this evaulation and it is obviously addressed to an audience considered to be incapable of critical thought. The format of the document is rather revealing because it contains no offical ID from a French „service" or ministry (just „Republique Francaise") and the authors are unknown (so no official takes personal responsibility for its content, like the phony „assessment" on CW released by the WH in 2017)

//assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3553049/Syria-Chemical-Weapons-Report-White-House.pdf

In order to find out who committed a crime, forensic evidence is extremely important, as we all know from detective thrillers and court-room dramas. But in this case, there is NO FORENSIC EVIDENCE (no criminal investigation by a CSI-unit). There are only unverified pics and videos posted on YouTube by the White Helmets (WH).

It is impossible to verify WHERE these pics/vids were taken and also WHEN because the metadata have been tempered with. The WH of course have NO CREDIBILITY whatsoever, being a cover for the massive „strategic information" (incessantly demonizing Assad) created by MI6, who also ran the massive PR for the artificial „rebels" in Syria. (See voltairenet.org for more on this).

And yet this is the basis for the „assessment" of the French govt. They write that „French experts have analyzed the symptoms (visible in the pics and vids) which can be described as follows (respiratory distress, asphyxiation, cyanosis, skin-burns, excessive salivation, etc.) Taken together, these symptoms are characteristic für a CW-attack, especially for suffocating-agents. The use of asthma-sprays supports the thesis that such agents were used."

So instead of a forensic examination and autopsy, all we get is an interpretation of symptoms to fit the frame of the Assad-gasses-his-own-people horror-narrative. To this, they add statements from anonymous people working (in Douma) for medical NGOs like UOSSM (created in France in 2011, PR-front group) and SAMS (US directed front group) who claim that about a hundred people „stormed" their health facilities in Douma and at least 40 died as a result of the CW-attack.

They use medical staff of course as „CREDIBILITY-ENHANCERS" because in general people tend to trust doctors, nurses and paramedics, hence the „White Helmets" (and the faux „nurse" telling the heart-wrenchning, invented tale of the incubator-babies in Iraq in 1990)

I asked a friend who works for one of the biggest chemical companies in Germany (BASF) about the symptoms and he said they are consistent with a chlorine-exposure but that does NOT mean that it could ONLY have been chlorine. Very similar symptoms occur when people have been exposed to SMOKE-INHALATION (German: Rauchgasvergiftung)

And now it gets really interesting because a video has been released by Russian and Syrian TV stations in which two medical students who work for the emergency department of the Douma hospital, say that the people shown in the WH-video had indeed been exposed to SMOKE-INHALATION.

A house in Douma had been hit by an airstrike which caused a fire in the lower floors and the partial collapse of the upper floors. So these people had breathing difficulties and were taken to the emergency dept of the hospital where they were given first aid. Suddenly some men appeared and shouted „this was a gas-attack!". They then began to douse the patients with cold water (from a hose), which caused panic (children screamed of course). These „dramatic" scenes were filmed then the strangers disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.

I cannot verify if these medical students told the truth, but given the political context, I have much more reason to believe them than the White Helmets or the French DGSE.

Just one more thing, the brochure from BASF about the dangers of chlorine contains one sentence that caught my eye:

https://www.basf.com/documents/corp/de/sustainability/employees/occupational-medicine/medical-guidelines/Chlor_D_BASF_medLeitlinien_D003.pdf ( German)

„Wasser verstärkt die oxidative und ätzende Wirkung von Chlor" (WATER exacerbates the corrosive effect of chlorine (because hydrochlorid acid is formed through the moisture) So why would medical experts then hose down these alleged „chlorine" victims? Of course they would not. So this too, seem to confirm that the whole scene was staged.

Mulga Mumblebrain ,

This is NOT a 'French' report. It is an Israeli Zionist pile of black propaganda, no doubt dictated by the CRIF, the de facto government of the slave state formerly known as 'France'.

rogerglewis ,

Doing a little more tunnelling into the Rabbit hole. A Bill Clinton reference to Karl Rove led to some interesting events surrounding the recently pardoned Scooter Libby.

@KarlRove https://bit.ly/2HFtLlh opposing Military Industrial Complex isn't equal2 Putin Apologism. War(s) Crimes of aggression started for false reasons With no proper Investigative & War reporting from corporate media how 2 hold http://bfy.tw/AKAh #warmongerstoaccount
5:26 PM – 17 Apr 2018

rogerglewis ,

https://theduran.com/british-intelligence-services-are-the-masters-of-propaganda-and-false-flags/
Great Article on the Duran.

Old Pepper,

The criminal group led by the red clown and the old Mare with the skewed muzzle continues the provocations. On Monday, the British representative in the OPCW accused the Russians of non-admission of OPCW experts in Duma. At the same time, the OPCW experts while in Damascus were expecting a solution of the Security Department of the UN, because controlled by the Britons the bandits were instructed to fire at the place where the white helmets organized the performance with a "chemical attack". At the same time, the United States began to yell that Russian do not allow the OPCW experts to the Duma, seeking to eliminate traces of the "chemical attack". This gang HIGHLY LIKELY thinks we're all idiots.

The world is already clear that no poisoning of the Tablets was not, as there was no chemical attack by Assad. Clown and Mare managed to negotiate with the Russians and they did not respond to the shelling of Syria. Seeing that the Russian did not respond, the bandits completely insolen. And now they can arrange another chemical provocation and hit in Syria already on the Russians. And is not the fact that the Russian will not answer. This is war. I do not want because of a bunch of idiots, teasing the Russian bear, to a slaughter in which no one will survive.

rogerglewis ,

Watching the Commons Statement Yesterday from Theresa May and reflecting overnight I revisited some interactive Dada.

We are watching Karl Rove's actors in history. What is in the grey space and what do we have between our Ears?

Kaiama,

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-chemical-attack-gas-douma-robert-fisk-ghouta-damascus-a8307726.html
A little ray of sunshine ATL.

Goldmember,

The funniest part of Meyssan's story is that Trump asked DCI Pompeo to investigate the false flag. What a nube.

Think it through. They didn't say cabal, they said agency. DoS is not an agency, it's a department. 'Ideologues and cranks?' 'Highly placed, but operating subversively within their own governments?' You are describing CIA.

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/

That small group of highly placed individuals who did 911? That was CIA and their moles in key departments: Brennan, Blee, Cofer Black, Wilshire, Bikowsky, Bowman. The deep heart of the Russophobic cabal is not some secret society, it's a longstanding CIA program. These programs look international because CIA uses eyes-only intelligence liaisons to conceal the dirty work they delegate to other countries' agents.

The opposition within CIA is also institutionally chartered. CIA has a routine: dewy-eyed boy scout analysts secretly decry the insanity of the operations people. Then when the shit hits the fan, CIA publishes the analysis and uses it to blame somebody else. That's how they blamed Vietnam on the Pentagon, with their tongue-in-cheek Pentagon Papers. And that's how they blamed Tillerson for their very own CIA plan and conspiracy for war.

milosevic,

This is a very promising thesis. I hope you can expand on it. Another angle might be Nixon/Watergate/WaPo. Or Reagan/IranContra/North. Of course, JFK/Vietnam/Oswald goes without saying.

physicsandmathsrevision ,

Here's a lecture given to FSB (KGB) students by a Russian professor. He says the world is governed by a "Conceptual Power" that exists above elected governments and that this template has been in place since 1350 B.C.. Very interesting at the very least:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/uAQXfC3S9lM?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Alan,

Another article by Mr Meyssan http://www.voltairenet.org/article200375.html refers to the British regime " is elaborated by an elite gathered around the monarch, outside of any form of popular control " The idea of a deep state seems too convenient. In every sphere the regime exploits the population for it's own requirements, if indeed the regime adheres to a nationality. Cold war, hot war are regime terms, all that matters is knowing who not to trust.

vexarb,

Re BZ (British Zyklon?) the following lengthy clip from Saker's "Curious Incident" discussion reflects OffG's raison d'etre: that Facts Really ought to be Sacred. The MSM have abandoned this principle, as have the Leaders of F, UK and US regimes among others in the Western world. This is a huge reversal of human progress, and extremely dangerous for the world because the West now has runaway Technology without Ethics. BTL Saker:

vot tak on April 16, 2018 · at 1:09 am UTC 14.04.2018

Embassy Press Officer comments on the findings of the Swiss experts regarding the Salisbury incident

https://www.rusemb.org.uk/fnapr/6486

"Q. Is there any new information regarding the findings of experts from Switzerland in connection with the Salisbury poisoning?

A. According to information from the Swiss Federal Institute for NBC-protection in Spiez, its experts received samples collected in Salisbury by the OPCW specialists and finished testing them on 27 March.

The experts of the Institute discovered traces of toxic chemical called "BZ" and its precursors. It is a Schedule 2 substance under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

"BZ" is a chemical agent, which is used to temporary incapacitate people. The desired psychotoxic effect is reached in 30-60 minutes after application of the agent and lasts up to four days. According to the information the Russian Federation possesses, this agent was used in the armed forces of the USA, United Kingdom and several others NATO member states. No stocks of such substance ever existed either in the Soviet Union or in the Russian Federation.
In addition, the Swiss specialists discovered strong concentration of traces of the nerve agent of A-234 type in its initial states as well as its decomposition products.

In view of the experts, such concentration of the A-234 agent would result in inevitable fatal outcome of its administration. Moreover, considering its high volatility, the detection of this substance in its initial state (pure form and high concentration) is extremely suspicious as the samples have been taken several weeks since the poisoning.

It looks highly likely that the "BZ" nerve agent was used in Salisbury. The fact that Yulia Skripal and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey have already been discharged from hospital, and Sergei Skripal is on his way to recovery, only supports such conclusion.

All this information was not mentioned in the final OPCW report at all. Considering the above, we have numerous serious questions to all interested parties, including the OPCW." 

Sushi       on April 16, 2018  ·  at 3:04 am UTC

That statement on the part of RF embassy is good to see as it confirms my own supposition as recorded in Part X.

It is always nice to go out on a limb and then discover the rest of the world supports the finding rather than sawing off the limb 🙂

But I believe the big take-away from this event is the fact that the state is no longer held in check by the MSM. This means that the ordinary citizen is paying for an entity which is actively acting to subvert the interests of the citizenry. This is very dangerous.

These [truther] articles each get about 10,000 page views. This is a drop in the bucket in comparison to the total voting population of the UK, or France, or FRG or US or CA. If you believe this information is valuable then you should share it. You do not have to agree with all that I have written. It is quite possible I have made errors, drawn incorrect conclusions from the evidence etc, etc.

The key issue is that the MSM is not engaged in a review of an incident which, on any degree of review fails on the merits and is quickly exposed as false, deceptive and grounds for vilification of another state which I believe to be innocent of the allegations made against it. If I could find evidence of RF involvement I would gladly write that. But I cannot locate any such evidence. This event is likely to be used to further justify illegal use of force in Syria. If the public comes to the belief that "Bad Vlad" is pulling all the strings then they will accept the march toward global war. The problem is that the person really pulling all the strings is located at Number 10. If bad things happen they have a taxpayer financed bunker to retreat to. The ordinary citizen is not even assured of a working NHS. _So if you find this series of value then address it with your family and other contacts._ Cheers!

WJ,

https://mobile.twitter.com/caitoz/status/985683664032874496
Link to story cited in prior comment

WJ,

US now explicitly commits itself to stay in Syria for purpose of ..Iran. https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/nikki-haley-seems-to-be-saying-us-will-remain-in-syria-as-long-as-iran-exists

thorella,

There is a very powerful deep state in the UK. I think its leadership is hidden deep in the Privy Council and enforced by MI5/MI6. It runs a hidden economy financed through crime – fraud against UK taxpayers, foreign countries etc, It controls the judiciary when need be. This speech by Gerald James although old gives some idea;

http://zersetzen.wikispaces.com/file/view/Gerald+Reaveley+James.pdf

The next link shows the involvement in crime:

https://goggzilla.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/not-only-was-the-mets-investigation-into-the-costello-affidavit-a-sham-but-so-was-the-authorities-entire-conduct-of-barry-beardalls-appeal/

intergenerationaltrauma ,

Excellent post Catte. Thanks. There is certainly serious dissension within the ranks of the U.S. establishment or we would not be seeing the various fits and stops and starts that have characterized both Trump's appointments, and his subsequent removal of various appointed advisors, as well as his erratic foreign policy actions since he entered office. Trump himself was never "the problem" for the collective U.S. deep state, it was Trump's stated goal of "getting along with Russia" that has prompted close to open warfare between factions of the U.S. ruling class and institutional structures. What is amazing to behold is watching almost the entirety of the leadership of the most powerful Western nations on earth morph before our eyes into a group of slapstick carnival clowns selling snake oil and war as if they were some sort of magic elixir sure to prolong their much cherished Western hegemony. Recent events have pulled the mask off of the facade of "Western democracy" to reveal the grinning death mask of a dying elite power structure, delusional, paranoid and grandiose to the bitter end.

flaxgirl ,

Fascinating article but

Seventeen years ago a small group of highly placed individuals in the US government may have engineered or at very least allowed 9/11 to happen for their own geopolitical ends

???
May have? Allowed?
How many articles has OffG published on 9/11 that show unequivocally that it was an inside job? Seventeen years later with the vision of hindsight for those of us who did swallow the lies we can see how utterly silly we were. We can see so clearly how steel frame skyscrapers do not collapse symmetrically due to fires, how a band of men armed with boxcutters cannot negotiate the most restricted airspace in the world without an effective stand down – provided so very conveniently by 21 drills occurring on the morning of 9/11, some of which exactly matched the alleged real life events.
No further investigation needs to be conducted to know that 9/11 was an inside job – only to sort out the guilty and exactly what happened. In fact, all you need to know that 9/11 was an inside job is the undisputed 2.25 seconds of free fall acceleration in the collapse of WTC-7. That tiny piece of information is all you need. For free fall, the 82 steel support columns must have given way at virtually the same time and for that to have happened only controlled demolition could have been the cause and controlled demolition can only mean inside job.

Catte,

We've successfully proved the official story is a lie, but we haven't uncovered what actually happened beyond there being foreknowledge and pre-planning of some kind. Who did the planning, how many people knew how much how long before it happened, we do NOT know.
Do we?
Let's be as rigorous about the sceptical argument as we are about the official story.

flaxgirl ,

Catte, we do know for absolute certain that WTC-7 came down by controlled demolition, not by fire – it's a matter of science – and that fact means inside job, however much it was also an outside job. It's fine to be rigorous but if the facts are staring you right in the face that's rigour enough. I simply do not understand reluctance to call things out when they're in your face. It's not as if a court hearing is necessarily going to give you a better answer, is it, but hopefully there's going to be one soon where the truth will be revealed, at least as much as necessary.

10 April – Lawyers and Victims' Families File Petition for Federal Grand Jury Investigation

According to the 52-page petition, which is accompanied by 57 exhibits, federal statute requires the U.S. Department of Justice to relay citizen reports of federal crimes to a special grand jury. The unprosecuted crime alleged to have taken place on 9/11 is THE BOMBING OF A PLACE OF PUBLIC USE OR A GOVERNMENT FACILITY -- as prohibited under the federal bombing statute or 18 U.S.C. § 2332f -- as well as a conspiracy to commit, or the aiding and abetting of, said offense.

https://www.ae911truth.org/news/447-lawyers-and-victims-families-file-petition-for-federal-grand-jury-investigation

Ross Hendry ,

I think Catte was saying we don't know the people who were involved, etc. but she accepts that the official story is a lie.

flaxgirl ,

We don't know who exactly but we know for absolute certain that rogue elements within government were involved. We definitely know it was an inside job, whatever outside involvement there was.

Mulga Mumblebrain ,

How do you explain the 'five dancing Israelis' filming the attack as it happened, from Liberty Park in New Jersey?

Google Talpiot Program ,

3 of the 5 appeared on an Israeli TV show afterwards where they said they were there to "document the event".
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123885&page=1

Google Talpiot Program ,

"Not excluding it, jut saying it's not an inevitable conclusion they were involved at all, and certainly no indication there were at the center of anything."
No one is saying they are at the centre of anything. That they were in a position to film, were reportedly celebrating, their story changed multiple times in interviews with law and enforcement and that they were possibly Israeli intelligence all adds up to making it an interesting detail.
Especially when all the other evidence of 9/11 is investigated and puts the dancing Israelis in context.

Mulga Mumblebrain ,

LUDICROUS! They knew of the attack, before it happened. Others filming the atrocity were NOT wildly celebrating the deaths of thousands. They were attempting to pose as 'Arabs' to defame them. One told one of the arresting police that 'Your enemy are the Palestinians'. The police found traces of explosives in their van. One or more failed lie-detector tests before they were simply released and allowed to go home to Israel, where they appeared on TV, one admitting to being MOSSAD.

Admin ,

Steady on. The source quoted above doesn't say anything about wild celebration, it just says the five men were looking happy and smiling. That's a bit weird of itself but don't exaggerate it into something else. Thats just replacing memes with other memes. Maybe they were involved, but there are many other possibilities, including them simply watching the event with no direct connection at all.

What significance do you see in the traces of explosives? Are you suggesting these guys are the ones who wired the WTCs for demolition, and that they had brought the RDX/thermite there in that van, which they didn't ditch but continued to drive around in?

Five guys with no known specialist knowledge, wiring three massive towers for demolition from one small van? You don't think it was likely a bigger more professional outfit that would do that? One – say – with permits to enter and renovate the towers/enter the lift shafts?

Mulga Mumblebrain ,

Your diversionary tactics are interesting. They were described as 'dancing, jumping and giving each other 'high-fives'. Obviously they were overcome with grief. The presence of explosive traces plainly has nothing to do so with the controlled demolition. It just seems odd, and suspicious. No-one at any time suggested that these five did the placing of the controlled demolition charges. Of course it was others, probably Israeli Death Force sappers. And they were NOT 'just watching'-they were filming it, and from the first aircraft strike. Pretty prescient of them.

Mulga Mumblebrain ,

9/11 irrefutably, I would say, was a MOSSAD operation, with US sayanim, and Sabbat Goy involvement, the US side centered on that Zionist Israel First cabal, the 'neo-conservatives'. Christopher Bollyn does an excellent job of outlining the Zionist ' Clash of Civilizations' and 'War on (Islam) Terror' projects, the latter, in particular, an endeavour of Netanyahu's for decades. Everything that flowed from that event, the genocides in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and the destruction inflicted on those unlucky lands, the crucifixion of Syria, the regular, ritual, massacres in Gaza, are all creations of the Zionist elite, and follow closely the strategy outlined in the Oded Yinon Plan of 1982, which was reiterated by Netanyahu in the 'A Clean Break' manifesto.

Zionist control easily explains May's involvement, as she is a groveling toady of the Netanyahu regime and the Holy State that sits above mere 'International Law'. Apparently, when Netanyahu visited Putin in Sochi a year or so ago, and made certain demands on Russia in regard to Syria, and Putin rebuffed him, so great was Netanyahu's distress at this insubordination by a mere goy that he lost self-control and went a little hysterical. Hence the renewed determination to keep the vivisection of Syria going, and prepare for Holy War on Lebanon and Iran. Of course Bibi's path is that of the Masada Complex, he being a wannabe zealot 'hero', and he seems oblivious to the reality that unending Israeli aggression will only bring about Israel's destruction, in the manner that it has inflicted ruination on its neighbours for 70 years.

bevin,

"..Let's be as rigorous about the sceptical argument as we are about the official story."

Absolutely agree.

It is quite reasonable for someone to be convinced that, to use a popular argument on this thread, Corbyn is an MI 6 agent but if there is no evidence of this cited not only is it impossible to insist on the 'irrefutable' nature of the assertion but to do so is to discredit oneself, the discussion in question and, fairly quickly, the blog in its entirety.

It is one of life's little ironies that off guardian, which insists that we weigh evidence rigorously where claims by the state are concerned, is becoming something of a refuge for assertions based on evidence just as sketchy and circumstantial as those put forward by the likes of Freedland and the BBC.

So 9/11 might have been a Mossad operation, just as Putin might have ordered the attack in Salisbury and the White helmets could be well meaning humanitarians discovering gas attacks.

Let us see the evidence before we agree that something is irrefutable, even when it is something as clear cut as the fact that Corbyn (already revealed to be a Czech spy, having once had tea with one) has had tea with an MI 6 agent and is therefore, connecting the dots, completely unreliable and no more to be supported than, say, Boris Johnson. The proof being that he did not oppose, we are told the Magnitsky Act, sponsored by his fellow agent (and PLP member) Ian Austin.

At any rate the Israeli Embassy can now call off their campaign against Corbyn who is revealed to be almost as big a friend of Israel as Blair- who even Roman Polanski knew was a CI Agent.

Admin,

It is one of life's little ironies that off guardian, which insists that we weigh evidence rigorously where claims by the state are concerned, is becoming something of a refuge for assertions based on evidence just as sketchy and circumstantial as those put forward by the likes of Freedland and the BBC.

Excuse me? Since when have we been guilty of that?

In Hasbara College-but he flunked out.

flaxgirl ,

There is nothing elaborate whatsoever in claiming WTC-7 came down by classic, controlled demolition, aka, an implosion. It's irrelevant how substandard its material, how much fire was in it, or how much damage it suffered. The manner of its collapse tells all. Pre- and during- explosions, kink in middle at start, beautiful symmetry, near and partial free fall, complete dismemberment of steel frame and molten metal are all unique characteristics of controlled demolition while there is not even a lick of flame to be seen in videos of the collapse. WTC-7's collapse by "fire" is the greatest case of the Emperor's New Clothes the world has ever seen.

I've done an Occam's Razor exercise on the collapse of WTC-7 and offered $5,000 to those who support the official story to produce an equivalent exercise favouring the "fire" hypothesis. No one has been able to respond.
http://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/911.html

BigB ,

Bevin: if this comment is aimed in part at me, you are deliberately misrepresenting my assertions. No one on this thread, makes the accusation that Jeremy is an MI6 agent except you. As you say, there is no evidence for this and personally, I do not believe he is. What I have empirically and objectively shown (previously with links) is that he can be co-opted by the Cabinet Office and JIC to conduit faulty intelligence fed to him. That does NOT make him part of the intelligence apparatus, only ancillary to it. To this end, it was interesting to note his actions this weekend: commenting on Syria. For this he sought, but did not get an intelligence briefing as a Privy Councillor. This was quite clear on the Marr show: he talked about "other parties" that may have perpetrated the Douma provocation but he said "I don't know, I don't know" quite a few times. Corbyn "unbriefed" wants an OPCW investigation and a UN mandate to act: which is perfectly reasonable and legal. And probably clears up any false assertion that he is in the full-time employ of MI6?

Re: the Magnitsky ammendment. Not only did Corbyn "not oppose" this: he actively promoted it at every opportunity. As I have tried to make clear we already have "Unexplained Wealth Orders" which are analoguous to Magnitsky sanctions. We do not need another Magnitsky ammendment. This was the government position before 6th March. I do not claim that Jeremy is pushing this Act because he IS an MI6 agent: but I can quite clearly show he is pushing it FOR an MI6 agent. Thank if you do not conflate and impute meaning for me.

And no, I have not produced "evidence" that Browder is an agent for SIS: but if he is not, he might as well be? Or perhaps you think him an innocent human rights activist as he styles himself. What is irrefutable, empirical, and objective is that this one man is the source of much of the character assassination of Putin (from his "Enemy No1") and Jeremy is pushing his agenda. Why: I do not know – naivety? Beyond that, I leave the speculation to you.

If Ian Austin is an agent, he would be a Mossad agent but I make no such claim.

As for the Israeli Embassy: I have covered that elsewhere in depth. No, they will not call off their campaign. Yes, they already have a hold, and they are not far off gaining a veto control of the Labour disciplinary process: whereby anyone can be suspended on false accusations of anti-semitism: a position Jeremy has backed himself into by his strategy of appeasement.

All in all: I would say my assertions are grounded in empiricism, and I have not claimed anything I cannot back up. So facts are sacred: even if that means you do not like them?

Mulga Mumblebrain ,

I suggest immersing yourself in Christopher Bollyn's excellent videos regarding Israeli planning for just such an operation, to be undertaken to provide the 'New Pearl Harbor' that the fanatic Zionist 'neo-conservatives' declared presciently would be needed to get the USA to do Israel's dirty work in destroying the Moslem countries of the MENA. The evidence of Israeli and US sayanim involvement is huge, most circumstantial, but other parts, like the 'five dancing Israelis' seen filming the atrocity in real time, are rather more convincing.

BigB ,

I read one of Bollyn's books, can't remember the title. I take on a lot of his points: but I personally frame such events as transnational, or better still: supra-national. To say it was this or that country alone is not how I view it: the perpetraitors were ultimately working for a "higher cause"! Caitlin Johnstone just did a piece about this: the ultimate beneficiaries form a globalised superclass that is totally amoral and has no allegiance to any particular cause or country. Zinoviev termed this the Westernised "supra-society". Certainly not every individual: but at the corrupted core – all Western Intelligence agencies serve a cause that transcends the national interest. National security is a line they feed us: the UK as a whole benefits little from our involvement in Syria, and less still, from being embroiled in a Cold War with Russia on the grounds of national defence. It's all a con!

Mulga Mumblebrain ,

The Zionist elite support other states and their elites only in so far as they serve Israel's interests, or rather the interests of the Israeli and Diaspora elites. These interests are not those of much of Jewry, or, of course, of any goyim but the collaborative type like May, Micron, Cheney et al. The Zionist elite most certainly do possess global ambitions rooted in Talmudic doctrine.

Mulga Mumblebrain ,

Please don't misrepresent me. I have stated over and over again that the culprits are the Zionist elites in Israel and the Diaspora, NOT Jews as a whole. Many Jews oppose the nefarious activities of the Zionist elites, and many others are passive, just like all other communities. But in the matter of 9/11 proposing that the Zionists not be mentioned is quite bizarre. In my comments immediately above (the last seven or eight) there are eight 'Zionists' and one 'Jewry' and that was in the context of asserting that not all Jews support Zionist crimes or benefit from them.

Ross Hendry ,

Bollyn is very reliable on 9/11, in my view.

mog ,

@bevin

I am sad to see you write that. I have not seen anyone here claiming Corbyn to be an MI6 agent, and it reads as inflationary misrepresentation to say that people have.

The Labour bureaucracy is simply overpowered/ outmaneuvered by a very well organised, well connected and well resourced psywar operation, – one that has at least some links to Israel and zionist sympathies.

Too many on the Corbyn Left cannot engage with this for fear of being branded racist.

Do you refute the accusation of Corbyn's appeasement?

Evidence for Mossad involvement in 9/11 ?

There is a heap of evidence, arguably no conclusive evidence, but not far off:

'First, Bergen, NJ residents saw five people on a white van filming the attacks and visibly celebrating. They had set up their cameras before the first plane hit. Police arrested them. All were Israelis (now referred to as the "dancing Israelis"). Bomb-sniffing dogs reacted as if they had detected explosives, although officers were unable to find anything. The FBI seized the van for further testing. All five were later released at the instigation of Israeli & American Jewish leaders, some in the US Government. Details are still classified. This incident quickly disappeared from the mainstream media, following a brief mention in the New York Times three days after the attacks, that was not followed up.

A second van was stopped on the approaches to the George Washington Bridge. As CBS's Dan Rather said in his live report: "Two suspects are in FBI custody after a truckload of explosives were discovered around the George Washington Bridge. That bridge links New York to New Jersey over the Hudson River. Whether the discovery of those explosives had anything to do with other events today is unclear, but the FBI, has two suspects in hand, said the truckload of explosives, enough explosives were in the truck to do great damage to the George Washington Bridge " Those suspects –also Israelis -- and the incident then seem to have disappeared from the public record and mainstream media "examinations" <sic.> of 9/11, just like discussions of the first van, the secondary explosions at ground level within WTC-1 and WTC-2, and the precipitous collapse into its own footprint of WTC-7.'

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28438.htm

I think that Kevin Ryan has done some of the best work in trying to identify legitimate suspects for 9/11, and proposes a 'private intelligence network' which spans several countries (e.g. Saudi Arabia, UAE ).

I think there is a strong case made by Sabrosky and others that 'The Big Wedding' ' wedded Neocon philosophy with 500 years of Atlanticism'.

I keep banging the drum that seeks to sound out the need for the Left to come to terms with this history. I contend that they will not 'get anywhere' in the 21st century unless or until they do.

mog ,

@Admin

Does this network include the US/UK or any NATO countries? Yes.

rogermorris ,

absolutely agreed. the more nuanced reality is where Karl ROVE delivered us..("We are empire now we create new realities..") which is why the adults in Moscow have so far deflected these egregious false flags generated by the MI6 Britprop WhiteHelmets®.con atrocity troupe.

Because they KNOW whats going on.

Thierry Meysson wrote one of the very first books on false flag 911, the event beginning WW3 (911. The big LIE) He is a voice highly regarded. The ugly intentions of the anglozionist hegamon, loudly expressed as they slapped the Patriot Act into homeland 'Law' – to smash the middle East by all and any means (Strategy of Tension [NATO:GLADIO] YINON and 'Full Spectrum Dominance' methods/R2P, P2OG, IIO) ushered in on the LIE of 911 casus belli; was not lost on Russian and Chinese intelligence ; nor on anyone listening.

[Dec 09, 2019] WADA are threatening to exclude Russia from all sorts of events. I get the impression that Russia may be trailing its coat here, at a time when the OPCW news comes out in drips and drabs

Dec 09, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Montreal , Dec 8 2019 18:32 utc | 17

There has been quite a lot recently in RT about the sports doping scandal and how WADA are threatening to exclude Russia from all sorts of events. I get the impression that Russia may be trailing its coat here, at a time when the OPCW news comes out in drips and drabs. So maybe some bargaining is going on behind the scenes.

On quite another tack I came across this lovely conversation - translated from a contemporary record on papyrus - between the Roman Emperor Commodus and the head of the Alexandria Gymnasium (main school.) I think this is 2nd century AD.

Emperor: Do you know who you are talking to?
Head: Yes I know, I am speaking to a tyrant.
Emperor: No, to a monarch
Head: Do not say that. Your divine father Marcus Aurelius had the proper qualities of an emperor. Listen! - First, he was a philosopher; second, he did not love money; third, he loved the good. In you there are the reverse of these qualities: tyranny, hatred of the good, common ignorance.

(He was then led off to be executed). (From City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish, by Peter Parsons)

Makes you think about our current rulers. In the UK, Clement Attlee seems to comes closest to the ideal.

David K , Dec 8 2019 21:21 utc | 39

@ Montreal | Dec 8 2019 18:32 | 17
"sports doping scandal and how WADA are threatening to exclude Russia"

There is some suggestion that the LIMS database had been hacked, with
the hacks / changes being ascribed to Russia, but in fact originating
from parties intent on discrediting Russia..

STUXNET was a sophisticated Government (Israeli / US ) effort to
attack Iran's centrifuge program. Stuxnet's design and architecture
are not domain-specific and can be adapted to other industrial targets.

Such as a LIMS system - often a unprotected visual interface to an SQL database

It is unlikely that the very capable team that gave us Stuxnet has been sitting around
bored and idle, with such a juicy target available

[Dec 09, 2019] The UK ministry of Defence has searched its files and records of the blood sampling and testing for Novichok in the blood of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, but "failed to locate any information that provides the exact time that the samples were collected."

So those devious Brits injected Novichok directly into blood samples. nice...
Dec 09, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Juan Moment , Dec 8 2019 15:11 utc | 4
John Helmer @ Dances with Bears:
A British Ministry of Defence document, issued on March 12 but unnoticed since then, reports the ministry has searched its files and records of the blood sampling and testing for Novichok in the blood of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, but "failed to locate any information that provides the exact time that the samples were collected."

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) is the parent organization for the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), the UK's chemical warfare centre at Porton Down. Porton Down, as the laboratory is usually known, is the source of British evidence that Novichok was detected in the bloodstreams of the two Skripals. [...]

If Gardiner's report of March 12 is true, then this is MOD's official admission there is no chain of custody for the blood samples on which the Novichok allegation has been based. If Gardiner is lying, then the ministry's reason is obvious: the samples which were taken from the Skripals in Salisbury Hospital did not reveal that their blood was contaminated by what Porton Down and Prime Minister May later claimed was Novichok. [...]

http://johnhelmer.org/british-defence-ministry-document-reveals-skripal-blood-evidence-is-missing-fake-chain-of-custody-makes-novichok-evidence-worthless/

[Dec 09, 2019] Newsweek Reporter Resigns After Accusing Outlet Of Suppressing OPCW Leak Story by Caitlin Johnstone

Notable quotes:
"... Haddad added that he is now seeking legal advice and looking into the possibility of whistleblower protections for himself, and said at the very least he will publish the information he has while omitting anything that could subject him to legal retaliation from his former employer. ..."
"... Newsweek has long been a reliable guard dog and attack dog for the US-centralized empire, with examples of stories that its editors did permit to go to print including an article by an actual, current military intelligence officer explaining why US prosecution of Julian Assange is a good thing, fawning puff pieces on the White Helmets , and despicable smear jobs on Tulsi Gabbard . ..."
"... Newsweek also recently published an article attacking Tucker Carlson for publicizing the OPCW scandal, basing its criticisms on a bogus Bellingcat article I debunked shortly after its publication . ..."
Dec 08, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

A Newsweek journalist has resigned after the publication reportedly suppressed his story about the ever-growing OPCW scandal, the revelation of immensely significant plot holes in the establishment Syria narrative that you can update yourself on by watching this short seven-minute video or this more detailed video here .

"Yesterday I resigned from Newsweek after my attempts to publish newsworthy revelations about the leaked OPCW letter were refused for no valid reason," journalist Tareq Haddad reported today via Twitter .

"I have collected evidence of how they suppressed the story in addition to evidence from another case where info inconvenient to US government was removed, though it was factually correct," Haddad said.

"I plan on publishing these details in full shortly. However, after asking my editors for comment, as is journalistic practice, I received an email reminding me of confidentiality clauses in my contract. I.e. I was threatened with legal action."

Haddad added that he is now seeking legal advice and looking into the possibility of whistleblower protections for himself, and said at the very least he will publish the information he has while omitting anything that could subject him to legal retaliation from his former employer.

"I could have kept silent and kept my job, but I would not have been able to continue with a clean conscience," Haddad said .

"I will have some instability now but the truth is more important."

This is the first direct insider report we're getting on the mass media's conspiracy of silence on the OPCW scandal that I wrote about just the other day . In how many other newsrooms is this exact same sort of suppression happening, including threats of legal action, to journalists who don't have the courage or ability to leave and speak out? There is no logical reason to assume that Haddad is the only one encountering such roadblocks from mass media editors; he's just the only one going public about it.

Newsweek has long been a reliable guard dog and attack dog for the US-centralized empire, with examples of stories that its editors did permit to go to print including an article by an actual, current military intelligence officer explaining why US prosecution of Julian Assange is a good thing, fawning puff pieces on the White Helmets , and despicable smear jobs on Tulsi Gabbard .

The outlet will occasionally print oppositional-looking articles like this one by Ian Wilkie questioning the establishment Syria narrative , but not without immediately turning around and publishing an attack on Wilkie's piece by Eliot Higgins, a former Atlantic Council Senior Fellow who is the cofounder of the NED-funded imperial narrative management firm Bellingcat.

Newsweek also recently published an article attacking Tucker Carlson for publicizing the OPCW scandal, basing its criticisms on a bogus Bellingcat article I debunked shortly after its publication .

The ubiquitous propagandistic tactic of fake news by omission distorts the public's worldview just as much as it would if mass media outlets were publishing bogus stories whole cloth every day, only if they were doing that it would be much easier to pin them down on their lies, hold them accountable, and discredit them.

A recent FAIR article by Alan MacLeod documents how the Hong Kong demonstrations are pushed front and center in mainstream consciousness despite the fact that to this day not one protester has been killed by security forces, while far more deadly violence is being directed at huge protests in empire-aligned nations like Haiti, Chile and Ecuador which have been almost completely ignored by these same outlets.

This deliberate omission causes a distorted worldview in casual and mainstream news media consumers in which protests are only happening in nations that are outside the US-centralized power alliance . We see the same kind of deliberate distortion-by-omission with the way mass media continually pushes the narrative that Donald Trump is "soft on Russia", while remaining completely silent on the overwhelming mountain of evidence to the contrary .

The time is now for everyone with a platform to start banging the drum about the OPCW scandal, because we're seeing more and more signs that the deluge of leaks hemorrhaging from that organisation is only going to increase. Mainstream propagandists aren't going to cover it, so if larger alternative media outlets want to avoid being lumped in with them and discredited in the same sweep it would be wise to start talking about this thing today. It's only going to get more and more awkward for everyone who chose to remain silent, and more and more validating for those who spoke out.

* * *

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported , so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , checking out my podcast on either Youtube , soundcloud , Apple podcasts or Spotify , following me on Steemit , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , purchasing some of my sweet merchandise , buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone , or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I'm trying to do with this platform, click here . Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I've written) in any way they like free of charge.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

[Dec 08, 2019] WSJ Article Runs Through The Greatest Hits of a Dysfunctional Foreign Policy Debate

Notable quotes:
"... Primacists use the security threats that are responding to the unnecessary use of U.S. military force to justify why the U.S. shouldn't stop, or in fact increase, the use of force. ..."
"... These stale arguments claim there will be consequences of leaving while conveniently ignoring the consequences of staying, which of course are far from trivial. For example, veteran suicide is an epidemics and military spending to perpetuate U.S. primacy continues at unnecessarily high rates. The presence of U.S. soldiers in these complex conflicts can even draw us into more unnecessary wars. The United States can engage the world in ways that don't induce the security dilemma to undermine our own security; reduce our military presence in the Middle East, engage Iran and other states in the region diplomatically and economically, and don't walk away from already agreed upon diplomatic arraignments that are favorable to all parties involved. ..."
"... September 11th was planned in Germany and the United States, the ability to exist in Afghanistan under the Taliban without persecution didn't enable 9/11, and denying this space wouldn't have prevented it. ..."
"... For those arguing to maintain the ongoing forever wars, American credibility will always be ruined in the aftermath of withdrawal. Here's the WSJ piece on that point: "When America withdraws from the Middle East unilaterally, the Russians internalize this and move into Crimea and Ukraine; the Chinese internalize it and move into the South China Sea and beyond in the Pacific." ..."
"... The exorbitant costs of the U.S.'s numerous military engagements around the world need to be justified by arguing that they secure vital U.S. interests. Without it, Primacists couldn't justify the cost in American lives. Whether the military even has the ability to solve all problems in international relations aside, not all interests are equal in severity and importance. ..."
"... This article originally appeared on LobeLog.com . ..."
Dec 08, 2019 | responsiblestatecraft.org

The unrivaled and unchallenged exertion of American military power around the world, or what's known as "primacy," has been the basis for U.S. Grand Strategy over the past 70 years and has faced few intellectual and political challenges. The result has been stagnant ideas, poor logic, and an ineffective foreign policy. As global security challenges have evolved, our foreign policy debate has remained in favor of primacy, repeatedly relying on a select few, poorly conceived ideas and arguments. Primacy's greatest hits arguments are played on repeat throughout the policy and journalism worlds and its latest presentation is in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, written by its chief foreign policy correspondent, titled, "America Can't Escape the Middle East." The piece provides a case study in how stagnant these ideas have become, and how different actors throughout the system present them without serious thought or contemplation.

Hyping the threat of withdrawal

The WSJ piece trotted out one of the most well-worn cases for unending American military deployments in the region. "The 2003 invasion of Iraq proved to be a debacle," it rightly notes. However, there's always a "but":[B]ut subsequent attempts to pivot away from the region or ignore it altogether have contributed to humanitarian catastrophes, terrorist outrages and geopolitical setbacks, further eroding America's standing in the world."

Primacists often warn of the dire security threats that will result from leaving Middle East conflict zones. The reality is that the threats they cite are actually caused by the unnecessary use of force by the United States in the first place. For example, the U.S. sends military assets to deter Iran, only to have Iran increase attacks or provocations in response. The U.S. then beefs up its military presence to protect the forces that are already there. Primacists use the security threats that are responding to the unnecessary use of U.S. military force to justify why the U.S. shouldn't stop, or in fact increase, the use of force.

These stale arguments claim there will be consequences of leaving while conveniently ignoring the consequences of staying, which of course are far from trivial. For example, veteran suicide is an epidemics and military spending to perpetuate U.S. primacy continues at unnecessarily high rates. The presence of U.S. soldiers in these complex conflicts can even draw us into more unnecessary wars. The United States can engage the world in ways that don't induce the security dilemma to undermine our own security; reduce our military presence in the Middle East, engage Iran and other states in the region diplomatically and economically, and don't walk away from already agreed upon diplomatic arraignments that are favorable to all parties involved.

Terrorism safe havens

And how many times have we heard that we must defend some undefined geographical space to prevent extremists from plotting attacks? "In the past, jihadists used havens in Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Iraq to plot more ambitious and deadly attacks, including 9/11," the WSJ piece says. "Though Islamic State's self-styled 'caliphate' has been dismantled, the extremist movement still hasn't been eliminated -- and can bounce back."

The myth of the terrorism safe havens enabling transnational attacks on the United States has persisted despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and significant scholarly research that contradicts it. The myth persists because it provides a simple and comforting narrative that's easy to understand. September 11th was planned in Germany and the United States, the ability to exist in Afghanistan under the Taliban without persecution didn't enable 9/11, and denying this space wouldn't have prevented it.

Terrorists don't need safe havens to operate, and only gain marginal increases in capabilities by having access to them. Organizations engage in terrorism because they have such weak capabilities in the first place. These movements are designed to operate underground with the constant threat of arrest and execution. The Weatherman Underground in the United States successfully carried out bombings while operating within the United States itself. The Earth Liberation Front did the same by organizing into cells where no cell knew anything about the other cells to prevent the identification of other members if members of one cell were arrested. Organizations that engage in terrorism can operate with or without safe havens.

Although safe havens don't add significantly to a terrorist groups' capabilities, governing your own territory is something completely different. ISIS is a commonly used, and misused, example for why wars should be fought to deny safe havens. A safe haven is a country or region in which a terrorist group is free from harassment or persecution. This is different from what ISIS created in 2014. What ISIS had when it swept across Syria and Iraq in 2014 was a proto-state. This gave them access to a tax base, oil revenues, and governing resources. Safe havens don't provide any of this, at least not at substantial levels. The Islamic State's construction of a proto-state in Syria and Iraq did give them operational capabilities they wouldn't have had otherwise, but this isn't the same as the possible safe havens that would be gained from a military withdrawal from Middle Eastern conflicts. The conditions of ISIS's rise in 2014 don't exist today and the fears of an ISIS resurgence like their initial rise are unfounded .

Credibility doesn't work how you think it works

For those arguing to maintain the ongoing forever wars, American credibility will always be ruined in the aftermath of withdrawal. Here's the WSJ piece on that point: "When America withdraws from the Middle East unilaterally, the Russians internalize this and move into Crimea and Ukraine; the Chinese internalize it and move into the South China Sea and beyond in the Pacific."

Most commentators have made this claim without recognition of their own contradictions that abandoning the Kurds in Syria would damage American credibility. They then list all the other times we've abandoned the Kurds. Each of these betrayals didn't stop them from working with the United States again, and this latest iteration will be the same. People don't work with the United States because they trust or respect us, they do it because we have a common interest and the United States has the capability to get things done. As we were abandoning the Kurds this time to be attacked by the Turks, Kurdish officials were continuing to share intelligence with U.S. officials to facilitate the raid on ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi because both the United States and the Kurds wanted Baghdadi eliminated and only the United States had the capability to get it done.

Similarly, the idea that pulling out militarily in one region results in a direct chain of events where our adversaries move into countries or areas in a completely different region is quite a stretch of the imagination. Russia moved into Crimea because it's a strategic asset and it was taking advantage of what it saw as an opportunity: instability and chaos in Kiev. Even if we left troops in every conflict country we've ever been in, Russia would have correctly assessed that Ukraine just wasn't important enough to spark a U.S. invasion. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, did the United States invade Cuba? What alliance did the Soviets or Chinese abandon before the United States entered the Korean War? Assessments of credibility , especially in times of crisis (like that in Ukraine), are made based on what leaders think the other country's interests are and the capabilities they have to pursue those interests. There is no evidence to support -- in fact there is a lot of evidence that contradicts -- the idea that withdrawing militarily from one region or ending an alliance has any impact on assessments of a country's reliability or credibility.

Not all interests are created equal

Threat inflation isn't just common from those who promote a primacy-based foreign policy, it's necessary. Indeed, as the WSJ piece claimed, "There is no avoiding the fact that the Middle East still matters a great deal to U.S. interests."

The exorbitant costs of the U.S.'s numerous military engagements around the world need to be justified by arguing that they secure vital U.S. interests. Without it, Primacists couldn't justify the cost in American lives. Whether the military even has the ability to solve all problems in international relations aside, not all interests are equal in severity and importance. Vital interests are those that directly impact the survival of the United States. The only thing that can threaten the survival of the United States is another powerful state consolidating complete control of either Europe or East Asia. This would give them the capabilities and freedom to strike directly at the territorial United States. This is why the United States stayed in Europe after WWII, to prevent the consolidation of Europe by the Soviets. Addressing the rise of China -- which will require some combination of cooperation and competition -- is America's vital interest today and keeping troops in Afghanistan to prevent a terrorism safe haven barely registers as a peripheral interest. There are U.S. interests in the Middle East, but these interests are not important enough to sacrifice American soldiers for and can't easily be secured through military force anyway.

Consequences

Most of these myths and arguments can be summarized by the claim that any disengagement of any kind by the United States from the Middle East comes with consequences. This isn't entirely wrong, but it isn't really relevant either unless compared with the consequences of continuing engagement at current levels. We currently have 67,000 troops in the Middle East and Afghanistan and those troops are targets of adversaries, contribute to instability, empower hardliners in Iran, and provide continuing legitimacy to insurgent and terrorist organizations fighting against a foreign occupation. One article in The Atlantic argued that the problem with a progressive foreign policy is that restraint comes with costs, almost ironically ignoring the fact that the U.S.'s current foreign policy also comes with, arguably greater, costs. A military withdrawal, or even drawdown, from the Middle East does come with consequences, but it's only believable that these costs are higher than staying through the perpetuation of myths and misconceptions that inflate such risks and costs. No wonder then that these myths have become the greatest hits of a foreign policy that's stuck in the past.

This article originally appeared on LobeLog.com .

[Dec 08, 2019] The Delusions Of The Impeachment Witnesses Point To A Larger Problem

Notable quotes:
"... For one the Ukraine is not fighting "the Russians". The Kiev government is fighting against east-Ukrainians who disagree with the Nazi controlled regime which the U.S. installed after it instigated the unconstitutional Maidan coup. Russia supplies the east-Ukrainians and there were a few Russian volunteers fighting on their side but no Russian military units entered the Ukraine. ..."
"... But aside from that how can anyone truly believe that the Ukraine "fights the Russians so we don't have to fight them here"? Is Russia on the verge of invading the United States? Where? How? And most importantly: What for? How would that be in Russia's interest? ..."
"... And how is it in U.S. interest to give the Ukraine U.S. taxpayer money to buy U.S. weapons? The sole motive behind that idea was greed and corruption , not national interest: ..."
"... To claim that it hurt U.S. national interests is nonsense. ..."
"... It is really no wonder that U.S. foreign policy continuously produces chaos when its practitioners get taught by people like Karlan. In the Middle East as well as elsewhere Russian foreign policy runs circles around U.S. attempts to control the outcome. One reason it can do that is the serious lack of knowledge and realism in U.S. foreign policy thinking. It is itself the outcome of an educational crisis. U.S. 'political science' studies implement a mindset that is unable to objectively recognize the facts and fails to respond to them with realistic concepts. ..."
"... In the meantime Trump is eliminating food stamps for some 700,000 recipients and the Democrats are doing nothing about it. Their majority in the House could have used the time it spent on the impeachment circus to prevent that and other obscenities. ..."
"... The same bs argument about "not fighting the Russians here" was used a couple of weeks ago by another witness, Tim Morrison. This shows you that the hysteria is bipartisan... ..."
"... I don't believe that the so called "Professor's View" is normative for the educated class of Americans. It is the normative view of the Ivy League pseudoeducated individuals that have been placed in leadership positions in the US Goverment and Politics but they are not EDUCATED in any way. Karlan is almost certainly a Jew. She is without a doubt a whore who will do anything for her John as directed by her pimp. ..."
"... Being a brain dead feminist helps her with that role in life. I had an ex wife who fought me post divorce for 10 years trying to destroy me in any way she could. She finally stopped with the Breast Cancer she had for 7 of those years finally killed her. I see the same psychotic, sociopathic and off scall narcissitic behavior in every one of these women in politics and academics today. So don't think that something will get better without a terminal solution. ..."
"... Americans are entranced by the kayfabe (mock combat). Just as in wrestling it is designed to look 'real' but just keeps people engrossed in the action, unable to think of what they are NOT being told. ..."
"... Her delusions are a prerequisite for teaching at an academic level. ..."
"... The military industrial complex is in the people of usa's interest.. they think they benefit from the rayatheons, lockheed martins, boeings and etc - as they have relatives working at these places... the usa is one sick puppy, and Pamela Karlan, a Stanford law professor is just further proof of this... sorry if someone else said what i did, as i didn't read the comments yet.. ..."
"... The fact that the "papers of record" have become mouthpieces for the CIA/deep state has played a huge role in the brainwashing of academia and the rise of neoliberalism. The false narratives these "trusted sources" of information have been serving up create a very real Matrix, a false reality that is ingrained into those who rely upon them for their daily "news". Karlan is merely repeating what she accepts as truth, garnered from the NY Times and Wash Post, CNN, NPR, etc. ..."
"... The US is dysfunctional on purpose to keep the masses under control and dumbed down/brainwashed ..."
"... BTW, it is totally lost on the entirety of Western establishment that you cannot make Ukraine strong (wouldn't we all love to see strong Ukraine?) while wrecking its economy by encouraging policies like spending 5% of GDP on the military, switching to more expensive energy sources, cutting itself from traditional markets and supplies, replacing with rather worthless "cooperation" agreement with a trading block that is neither particularly interested in trading with Ukraine (Ukraine strongest exports are in surplus within EU) nor inclined to subsidize it (budgets are tights and plenty of recent EU members are in dire needs already) ..."
"... Unfortunately this is endemic in the western world. 'Democracy' seems to consist of dumbing down the population as much as possible, and telling them what they have to think so the self-anointed leaders of society can have their way (both those in front, and behind the scenes). I'm far from certain this is a recipe for success. ..."
"... Russians and Chinese in particular, and BRICS/SCO in general, are showing the way. The countries involved have very different political systems, but they understand that co-operation is much more beneficial than constant conflict. ..."
"... This is a typical example of the stupidity and often dementia of most of the highly educated. Especially those in academia, who exist in a funhouse hall of propagandist and ideological mirrors. But it's true of the educated in the general. I personally know plenty of highly educated people who make themselves more stupid and mentally ill by the day by uncritically reading the NYT and watching CNN. ..."
"... So it's no wonder that an elite Stanford law professor is in practice the exact same stupid, ignorant, deranged yahoo as you could easily find in a trailer park, just with better manners and diction. ..."
"... After all, Karlan's Russia comment would receive enthusiastic thumbs up from at least Biden, Obama, W. Clinton, H. Clinton, Rubio, Klobuchar, Pelosi, Warren, Graham, Buttigieg, Romney, the late McCain, Pompeo, Bolton, Mattis...the list goes on and on. ..."
"... It's even worse than that. The economy will never recover while oligarchs have a stranglehold on economic activity and government. And USA's capitalist dementia ensures that will never change. (The West as a whole is headed in the direction of unabashed oligarchic rule.) ..."
"... Many of the dumbest people I met were university students or graduates. They are thought to absorb information as given, reproduce once, forget. They are not trained to question anything, they follow a narrative. Some even denounced everything they ever learned and became a follower of some religion, which is just another narrative. ..."
"... I've seen Jonathan Turley on TV a number of times. He always seemed to be a person of integrity. One needs to add courage to the list after testifying against impeachment on the presented "evidence". I will be very surprised to see him on PBS or CBS ever again. Their news readers are nearly giddy with excitement about impeachment. They never consider what could happen if Trump is convicted but refuses to leave the White House. Then what? ..."
"... Karlan type of academics is scattered all over the US universities. They are the Academia´s gatekeepers, watching over & "spotting" of our future leaders. the majority of them are claptraps selling jingoism to our youth in order to fulfill the Judeo-Zionist agenda. ..."
"... You hit the nail on the head. Karlan's loyalty is to her tribe, not this nation. That's the crux of almost every major problem and injustice we're suffering from in this country, from private prisons to Wall Street looting to endless foreign wars to censorship. There is one group of people behind it with a very bad track record in terms of how they treat their host nations. I wonder when we will finally get our act together and become the 110th country to expel them. ..."
"... IF Trump is removed from office then the war on Lebanon and Iran would be accelerated. Israel will likely go for all the marbles and annex the last remaining Palestinian holdings. Some here believe this couldn't happen but we all live in bizarro world now. ..."
"... it was obvious (on the video) that Karlan really thought she was (wait for it! It's on the way) landing a very clever bon mot! ..."
"... It is a small thing, yet it speaks volumes about the spirit of this clearly clueless human being (and others of her ilk), and her handlers, who must have cleared this little gotcha for prime time. Been up on the podium too long, bleating to students who can't/don't bleat back! No common sense. ..."
"... As the great wise man, Frank Zappa proclaimed about the USA: "Politics/government is the entertainment division of the Military-Industrial Government." American politics makes much greater sense (and is a hell of a lot more entertaining) if you understand this truism. ..."
Dec 05, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

During yesterday's impeachment hearing at the House House Judiciary Committee one of the Democrats' witnesses made some rather crazy statements. Pamela Karlan, a Stanford law professor, first proved to have bought into neo-conservative delusions about the U.S. role in the world:

America is not just 'the last best hope,' as Mr. Jefferies said, but it's also the shining city on a hill. We can't be the shining city on a hill and promote democracy around the world if we're not promoting it here at home.

As people in Bolivia and elsewhere can attest the United States does not promote democracy. It promotes rightwing regimes and rogue capitalism. The U.S. is itself not a democracy but a functional oligarchy as a major Harvard study found:

Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

But worse than Karlan's pseudo-patriotic propaganda claptrap were her remarks on the Ukraine and Russia:

This is not just about our national interests to protect elections or make sure Ukraine stays strong and fights the Russians so we don't have to fight them here , but it's in our national interest to promote democracy worldwide.

That was not an joke. From the video it certainly seems that the woman believes that nonsense.

For one the Ukraine is not fighting "the Russians". The Kiev government is fighting against east-Ukrainians who disagree with the Nazi controlled regime which the U.S. installed after it instigated the unconstitutional Maidan coup. Russia supplies the east-Ukrainians and there were a few Russian volunteers fighting on their side but no Russian military units entered the Ukraine.

But aside from that how can anyone truly believe that the Ukraine "fights the Russians so we don't have to fight them here"? Is Russia on the verge of invading the United States? Where? How? And most importantly: What for? How would that be in Russia's interest?

One must be seriously disturbed to believe such nonsense. How can it be that Karlan is teaching at an academic level when she has such delusions?

And how is it in U.S. interest to give the Ukraine U.S. taxpayer money to buy U.S. weapons? The sole motive behind that idea was greed and corruption , not national interest:

[U.S. special envoy to Ukraine] Volker started his job at the State Department in 2017 in an unusual part-time arrangement that allowed him to continue consulting at BGR, a powerful lobbying firm that represents Ukraine and the U.S.-based defense firm Raytheon. During his tenure, Volker advocated for the United States to send Raytheon-manufactured antitank Javelin missiles to Ukraine -- a decision that made Raytheon millions of dollars.

The missiles are useless in the conflict . They are kept near the western border of Ukraine under U.S. control. The U.S. fears that Russia would hit back elsewhere should the Javelin reach the frontline in the east and get used against the east-Ukrainians. That Trump shortly held back on some of the money that would have allowed the Ukrainians to buy more of those missiles thus surely made no difference.

To claim that it hurt U.S. national interests is nonsense.

It is really no wonder that U.S. foreign policy continuously produces chaos when its practitioners get taught by people like Karlan. In the Middle East as well as elsewhere Russian foreign policy runs circles around U.S. attempts to control the outcome. One reason it can do that is the serious lack of knowledge and realism in U.S. foreign policy thinking. It is itself the outcome of an educational crisis. U.S. 'political science' studies implement a mindset that is unable to objectively recognize the facts and fails to respond to them with realistic concepts.

The Democrats are doing themselves no favor by producing delusional and partisan witnesses who repeat Reaganesque claptrap. They only prove that the whole affair is just an unserious show trial.

In the meantime Trump is eliminating food stamps for some 700,000 recipients and the Democrats are doing nothing about it. Their majority in the House could have used the time it spent on the impeachment circus to prevent that and other obscenities.

Do the Democrats really believe that their voters will not notice this?

Posted by b on December 5, 2019 at 15:40 UTC | Permalink

Mischi , Dec 5 2019 15:45 utc | 1

next page " never underestimate the stupidity of people. Even professors.
bevin , Dec 5 2019 15:56 utc | 2
This is the woman that Common Dreams describes as a leading legal scholar. And maybe she is, it would certainly help explain the current state of the US Judiciary and the legal system, which reflects internally the utter contempt for law and custom which characterises US behaviour in international affairs.
DG , Dec 5 2019 15:56 utc | 3
The same bs argument about "not fighting the Russians here" was used a couple of weeks ago by another witness, Tim Morrison. This shows you that the hysteria is bipartisan...
Duncan Idaho , Dec 5 2019 16:00 utc | 4
History is not a strong point for the Dims., as it conflicts with ideology. The Repugs just loot and plunder, with little regard for history.
oldhippie , Dec 5 2019 16:00 utc | 5
There is a large cohort of Americans who believe every word the professor spoke. Whatever you and I may think about it the professor's view of the world is normative for the educated class in America.
rednest , Dec 5 2019 16:02 utc | 6
Regarding those food stamps, it is actually just a small rule change lowering the unemployment rate to 6% (from 10%) above which a state can waive the existing work requirement for single, non-disabled recipients aged 18-49. States can still also waive it if they deem that job availability is low.
Likklemore , Dec 5 2019 16:13 utc | 7
Attributed to Mark Twain. Perhaps the learned professor karlan may affirm: "Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."

AND Ukraine wishing to join NATO: well, not so fast for Hungary. Hungary says it will block Ukraine from joining NATO over controversial language law

Budapest has signaled that it will not support Ukraine's bid to join NATO until Kiev reverses a law that places language restrictions on ethnic Hungarians and other minorities living in the country.

Legislation that limits the use of Hungarian, Russian, Romanian, and other minority languages in Ukraine must be repealed before Hungary backs Ukraine's NATO membership, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Wednesday.

"We ask for no extra rights to Hungarians in Transcarpathia, only those rights they had before," Szijjarto told Hungarian state media at a NATO summit in London. He alleged that 150,000 ethnic Hungarians living in the region have been "seriously violated" by Ukraine.[.]

In February, Ukraine's parliament ratified amendments to the constitution which made NATO membership a key foreign policy objective. However, a number of hurdles still remain before its membership is likely to be seriously considered. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker predicted in 2016 that it would be 20-25 years before Ukraine would be able to join NATO and the EU.

Tick Tock , Dec 5 2019 16:18 utc | 8
I don't believe that the so called "Professor's View" is normative for the educated class of Americans. It is the normative view of the Ivy League pseudoeducated individuals that have been placed in leadership positions in the US Goverment and Politics but they are not EDUCATED in any way. Karlan is almost certainly a Jew. She is without a doubt a whore who will do anything for her John as directed by her pimp.

Being a brain dead feminist helps her with that role in life. I had an ex wife who fought me post divorce for 10 years trying to destroy me in any way she could. She finally stopped with the Breast Cancer she had for 7 of those years finally killed her. I see the same psychotic, sociopathic and off scall narcissitic behavior in every one of these women in politics and academics today. So don't think that something will get better without a terminal solution.

Jackrabbit , Dec 5 2019 16:18 utc | 9
Americans are entranced by the kayfabe (mock combat). Just as in wrestling it is designed to look 'real' but just keeps people engrossed in the action, unable to think of what they are NOT being told.

People must free themselves of partisan affiliations that are just levers used to manipulate them.

The establishment uses Democracy Works! propaganda to give you a false sense of power and security. But the people are an afterthought in US/Western politics. The politicians and their Parties work for the money. Much of that money comes from AIPAC, MIC, and other EMPIRE FIRST organizations that are leading us to WAR.

Lazy Americans must get off the couch and form protest Movements. Movements that the establishment works hard to prevent. This is what it takes: France Paralyzed By Largest General Strike In Decades .

It's messy and inconvenient but power only responds to power.

The stoopid cult-thinking must stop. This is where it leads: Buffalo Bishop Resigns Over Sex Abuse Cover-Up . Why do people cling to a corrupt Catholic Church? It's NOT just a few bad apples!! The pedophilia and cover-ups have been worldwide and reach into the highest levels of the Church.

This Buffalo Bishop, like dozens of other Bishops in the last decades, lied to cover for pedophiles and then used the power of his position to remain in his position. His wasn't for the children or any higher morality but for himself. He will get a nice, peaceful retirement - paid for by the deluded Catholic flock.

!!

vk , Dec 5 2019 16:19 utc | 10
In the meantime Trump is eliminating food stamps for some 700,000 recipients and the Democrats are doing nothing about it.

The reason for that if very simple: the Democrats agree with Trump on this.It's the same question many ask when studying Roman History for the first time: where were the legions when the Goths invaded? The answer is that the Goths were the legions, there was no invasion.

The same logic applies to the Right-Left political spectrum in modern Western Democracies. "Where are the lefties?" is the modern question the first worlders ask themselves since 2008.

--//--

As for the Pamela Karlan thing, it's an issue I've been commenting on here for some time now, so I won't repeat everything.

I'll just say again that imbecilization is a completely normal historical phenomenon in declining empires: the earlier example we have is the Christianization of the Roman Empire after Marcus Aurelius' death. The rise of Christianity was the messenger of the Crisis of the Third Century, the historic episode which ended the Roman Empire by giving birth to its demented form after the Diocletian Reforms.

Empires tend to have a very plastic conception of truth, that is, they believe they can fabricate reality for the simple reason they are geopolitically dominant.

It's easy to visualize this. The greatest philosopher of the end of the 18th Century and beginning of the 19th Century was a German, not a British. While Hegel wrote his proto-revolutionary works which would pave the way to Karl Marx, in UK we had the likes of Mackinder and Mahan dominating British philosophical thinking. And even then they weren't the dominant intellectual figures: the UK was the land of accountants and economists, not philosophers. The reason for this is that neither Hegel nor Marx had any ships to do gunboat diplomacy in Asia, as the British did.

Empires tend to think and rationalize the world in a much more plastic/practical way than the periphery. As the old saying goes: the stronger side doesn't need to think before it acts.

Bart Hansen , Dec 5 2019 16:21 utc | 11
"...make sure Ukraine stays strong and fights the Russians so we don't have to fight them here"

Is this 2019 or 2003?

Bill H , Dec 5 2019 16:32 utc | 12
"In the meantime Trump is eliminating food stamps for some 700,000 recipients and the Democrats are doing nothing about it."

Bill Clinton took millions off of welfare support and was applauded for it.

Likklemore , Dec 5 2019 16:37 utc | 13
Scroll down the page @ Steven Cheung {VID} on Twitter to watch this exchange where the RATS are told they are the ones who have abused power. Professor Jonathan Turley, a lawyer's go-to-Constitutional Expert:

"The Record does not establish corruption in this case - no bribery, no extortion, no obstruction of justice, no abuse of power."

Trump should include Prof. Turley on his legal team. The RATS have not thought this through to what will unfold in the Senate. A real court trial; No hearsay and no! no! no! "I was made aware" And the Bidens, Schiff, and Pelosi under cross-examination. And the Whistleblower!!!

Year 2025 it is.

Mischi , Dec 5 2019 16:39 utc | 14
I used to think that stupid was a characteristic of the American right. It took Donald Trump getting elected to see that stupid knows no political borders. Seriously. I thought that education and progressive thinking also led to a clarity of thought. Boy, was I wrong. The most pro-war people in the USA seem to be Democrats. Bizarro world.
Vonu , Dec 5 2019 16:40 utc | 15
Her delusions are a prerequisite for teaching at an academic level.
Chevrus , Dec 5 2019 16:47 utc | 16
To "...make sure Ukraine stays strong and fights the Russians so we don't have to fight them here"

This predates 2003 and stems from the red menace days when it was the communist legions would behave like a set of dominoes and eventually we (USA) would be fighting them in the streets of New York etc. Thus it was imperative that they defeat the commies in French Indo-China despite the fact that they could easily have simply bought the nation by supporting Uncle Ho who had been working for the OSS during WW2. But no, they had to win brownie points with the French by bankrolling their effort to retake the nation and when that didn't work a little "false flag" event employed to keep the ball rolling. I use quotations because while being false, the Tonkin Gulf event wasn't much of a flag.....

At any rate the fact that both Demublicans AND Republocrats are falling back on such antiquated rhetoric is bitterly laughable! It can also be seen as an indicator of just how dumbed down the USAn populace has become. As noted above article, how could anyone think that the RF would plan much less attempt an attack on the continental US?! A closer look at recent history has the US and it's poodles surrounding the RF with missile bases, sanctioning and embargoing the fhaak out it, and generally trying to destroy the nation as a whole with whatever clandestine methods are available. But hey, take a page from the book of Cheney: deny everything and make counter accusations.....

james , Dec 5 2019 16:52 utc | 17
thanks b... propaganda is the usa's education... see your breakdown of the nyt articles... most people don't get this...

The military industrial complex is in the people of usa's interest.. they think they benefit from the rayatheons, lockheed martins, boeings and etc - as they have relatives working at these places... the usa is one sick puppy, and Pamela Karlan, a Stanford law professor is just further proof of this... sorry if someone else said what i did, as i didn't read the comments yet..

james , Dec 5 2019 16:55 utc | 18
wikipedia on pamela karlan.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_S._Karlan

"Throughout her career, Karlan has been an advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court.[10] She was mentioned as a potential candidate to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter when he retired in 2009.[11]

Personal life

Karlan told Politico in 2009, "It's no secret at all that I'm counted among the LGBT crowd".[12] She has described herself as an example of a "snarky, bisexual, Jewish women".[13] Her partner is writer Viola Canales.[14]

she is not an American women apparently.. she is a Jewish women.. oh well, lol...

Perimetr , Dec 5 2019 16:56 utc | 19
The fact that the "papers of record" have become mouthpieces for the CIA/deep state has played a huge role in the brainwashing of academia and the rise of neoliberalism. The false narratives these "trusted sources" of information have been serving up create a very real Matrix, a false reality that is ingrained into those who rely upon them for their daily "news". Karlan is merely repeating what she accepts as truth, garnered from the NY Times and Wash Post, CNN, NPR, etc.

Believe me, even here in the red states, you won't find a hell of a lot of faculty members at large universities who are Trump supporters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ

Lorenz , Dec 5 2019 16:56 utc | 20

What I find absent in most discussions about impeachment of Trump is the 800 pound gorilla - what will happen to the US if against all odds, Trump gets impeached. Could the US survive that cataclysmic event or would it rip the empire apart? What contingency plans does everybody make for that unlikely, but not impossible singularity?
Dave , Dec 5 2019 17:00 utc | 21
"In the meantime Trump is eliminating food stamps for some 700,000 recipients and the Democrats are doing nothing about it. Their majority in the House could have used the time it spent on the impeachment circus to prevent that and other obscenities."

That's why it's called bread and circus. The loot and pillage party's two separate funding arms get their funding and privilege from the same sociopath/psychopaths who operate the mass murder for profit economy we now live in.

They will continue the slaughter until the enforcers within society finally understand they work for criminally insane cultists who will never have enough money, power, and prestige.

Piotr Berman , Dec 5 2019 17:02 utc | 22
I see that distrust to everything that is good and decent is extended to law professors. Stanford is a short (if sometimes slow) ride from Berkeley that has a more famous professor in its own law school (Wiki):[you know

John Choon Yoo (born July 10, 1967)[4] is a Korean-American attorney, law professor, former government official, and author. Yoo is currently the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.[1] Previously, he served as the Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) of the Department of Justice, during the George W. Bush administration.

He is best known for his opinions concerning the Geneva Conventions that attempted to legitimize the Bush administration's War on Terror. He also authored the so-called Torture Memos, which provided a legal rationale for so-called [you know what] =====

First, they torture logic... The ignorants who could not tell tollens from a toilet brush would not even know what to twist, hence the need for professors.

psychohistorian , Dec 5 2019 17:15 utc | 23
@ b who wrote

"The U.S. is itself not a democracy but a functional oligarchy as a major Harvard study found:"

My only quibble with another great post is the assertion that the US is functional. Functional would mean it had supportive infrastructure but instead we have homeless shitting in the street because they are driven out of the parks to do so and they must be bad people that don't deserve public toilets.

Functional would mean, as Jackrabbit linked to above, and a I i did a few hours ago in the Weekly Open Thread, that there wouldn't be 117 sexually abusive Catholic priests in the Buffalo NY area doing the same thing as Epstein was doing to his clients.

Functional would mean we would not have the blatant hypocrisy Chervus quoted from the posting above

"To "...make sure Ukraine stays strong and fights the Russians so we don't have to fight them here"

I agree with Chervus that this is same BS that got us the Iron Curtain with Russia after WWII because they wanted Godless communism instead of global private finance. And also, as I ranted recently in the Open Thread, this gave us the 1950's change to the US Motto to In God We Trust which gets back to the control of the obfuscatory/hypocrisy narrative telling us that the private finance cult are doing God's work and that "competition is good/sharing is bad"

The US is dysfunctional on purpose to keep the masses under control and dumbed down/brainwashed

Piotr Berman , Dec 5 2019 17:15 utc | 24
Ha! More connections to Stanford: "Ancient Logic: Forerunners of Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

BTW, it is totally lost on the entirety of Western establishment that you cannot make Ukraine strong (wouldn't we all love to see strong Ukraine?) while wrecking its economy by encouraging policies like spending 5% of GDP on the military, switching to more expensive energy sources, cutting itself from traditional markets and supplies, replacing with rather worthless "cooperation" agreement with a trading block that is neither particularly interested in trading with Ukraine (Ukraine strongest exports are in surplus within EU) nor inclined to subsidize it (budgets are tights and plenty of recent EU members are in dire needs already)

Ant. , Dec 5 2019 17:17 utc | 25
I think it's tragic that that creatures like Karlan are not simply seen as the blatant bigots and Nazi's that they are. You have to be wearing a large set of blinkers not to be able to see that.

Unfortunately this is endemic in the western world. 'Democracy' seems to consist of dumbing down the population as much as possible, and telling them what they have to think so the self-anointed leaders of society can have their way (both those in front, and behind the scenes). I'm far from certain this is a recipe for success.

The biggest tragedy is that Americans seem to think that the only way to succeed is to tear down any other country that isn't essentially a puppet government, necessarily defining them as 'enemies', and therefore someone/thing that must be hated and destroyed, by any means, fair or foul.

Russians and Chinese in particular, and BRICS/SCO in general, are showing the way. The countries involved have very different political systems, but they understand that co-operation is much more beneficial than constant conflict. Unless, of course, a quarter of your government tax income is dedicated to supporting an amazingly corrupt Military-Industrial-Intelligence Complex.

steven t johnson , Dec 5 2019 17:27 utc | 26
Trump supporters approve of cutting food stamps. The majority of Democratic Party politicians approve of cutting food stamps. Both parties agree times are good and the future is rosy. The only thing they disagree on is foreign policy. The guy who couldn't even win the election (and merely fluked in on a technicality that undermines all progress since 1788,) refuses to play by the rules on foreign policy. And he is not justified by success, not in any terms, not in making peace, not in winning, not in anything. The only people who are upset about impeaching Trump are Trump lovers and cranks who think being president is like being elected God and no one but sinners can defy Him.

The Trump supporters were going to turn out for him anyway, barring an economic crisis even they couldn't ignore. Impeachment has no downside so long as it is from the right, and doesn't rile up the rich people. Except the rich donors are leaving the Democratic Party anyway. The strategy for a nicey-nice campaign that leaves enough Trump voters soothed enough to sit it out has one enormous defect: Trump was not elected by the people anyhow.

But the Democratic Party politicians are anti-Communist, which means pro-Fascist, so yes, they do see this as (im)moral principles to die for, though they hope to politically kill for it. Their problem is, Trump is also anti-Communist and pro-Fascist, which everyone knows, which means Trump was merely his office for campaigning. That may be hypocritical and a violation of campaign laws. But in the eyes even of the anti-Communist/pro-Fascist population missiles for Ukrainian fascists with strings or without strings is merely a tactical disagreement. Even worse, the president breaking laws is perceived as strong leadership, smashing the machine, getting rid of those awful politicians and their oppressive government.

Russ , Dec 5 2019 17:37 utc | 27
This is a typical example of the stupidity and often dementia of most of the highly educated. Especially those in academia, who exist in a funhouse hall of propagandist and ideological mirrors. But it's true of the educated in the general. I personally know plenty of highly educated people who make themselves more stupid and mentally ill by the day by uncritically reading the NYT and watching CNN.

I don't know why anyone would expect anything different. All system schooling at whatever level boils down to the same two goals:

  1. Instill the basic literacy necessary for a given cog position within the hierarchy.
  2. Instill obedience to authority, including indoctrination into its ideology.

From kindergarten to grad school these are the same; whether one's being trained to pump gas or to assume a high position in the corporate world/government/academia these are the same.

So it's no wonder that an elite Stanford law professor is in practice the exact same stupid, ignorant, deranged yahoo as you could easily find in a trailer park, just with better manners and diction.

That's the American system.

mrr52 , Dec 5 2019 17:42 utc | 28
"One must be seriously disturbed to believe such nonsense. How can it be that Karlan is teaching at an academic level when she has such delusions?"

I assume this question was meant rhetorically. After all, Karlan's Russia comment would receive enthusiastic thumbs up from at least Biden, Obama, W. Clinton, H. Clinton, Rubio, Klobuchar, Pelosi, Warren, Graham, Buttigieg, Romney, the late McCain, Pompeo, Bolton, Mattis...the list goes on and on.

For a related, institutionalized, revolting example packaging multiple instances of such delusional thought, see "russias-dead-end-diplomacy-syria" . Have a pail nearby to catch the spew.

Russ , Dec 5 2019 17:46 utc | 29
steven t johnson 26

"The guy who couldn't even win the election (and merely fluked in on a technicality that undermines all progress since 1788,)"

I don't think you ever answered when I asked you last time: Are you saying you think Hillary was so stupid she didn't know about the electoral college, and that it was electoral votes she had to fight for, not popular ones? Because if you're not saying that, then nothing is changed: Trump beat Hillary in the electoral fight they were both trying to win. It's pure nonsense to babble about "technicalities".

And if any significant Democrat faction was saying throughout 2016, and not just after the election, that the election should NOT be about electoral votes, please direct me to where and when they were saying that, because I don't recall ever hearing it. And I think the reason I never heard it was because the Dems were so smugly sure of electoral college victory. And if Hillary had won, we never would've heard a word from you or anyone else about the electoral college.

Jackrabbit , Dec 5 2019 17:47 utc | 30
Piotr Berman @24:
it is totally lost on the entirety of Western establishment that you cannot make Ukraine strong while wrecking its economy
It's even worse than that. The economy will never recover while oligarchs have a stranglehold on economic activity and government. And USA's capitalist dementia ensures that will never change. (The West as a whole is headed in the direction of unabashed oligarchic rule.)

Why would anyone invest in Ukraine? Sometimes I think Putin was happy for the Western coup to succeed and simply planned to keep the best parts.

!!

casey , Dec 5 2019 17:48 utc | 31
But do they really believe what they (the mid-level elites) say or is it all some kind of theater of the increasingly absurd? I am never clear on who among the narrative managers is sincere and who is simply acting sincere. Are people like this woman or the Bellingcat narrative managers or any of their numerous colleagues in their mid-level narrative management positions occupying their positions simply due to their acting abilities? They seem to be both delusional and ill-informed. When these people get together at their conferences and dinner parties, does the mask come off?
juannie , Dec 5 2019 17:49 utc | 32
Mischi #1
never underestimate the stupidity of people. Even professors.

Or as I think it was Einstein that reportedly said: (I paraphrase from memory)

To truly understand the infinite, just contemplate human stupidity.
vk , Dec 5 2019 18:02 utc | 33
Related news (on the subject of "American delusion"):

NATO Is Full of Freeloaders. But It's How We Defend the Free World. -- Europe without American protection is a continental disaster waiting to happen.

Well, mr. Stephens kind of tells the truth on the headline. But at least he could be more polite.

Jackrabbit , Dec 5 2019 18:03 utc | 34
casey @31: When these people get together ... does the mask come off?

I doubt it. They have convinced themselves that they are right and/or are following the wishes of people who are right-thinking. In USA, most people are brainwashed to assume that people with lots of money are right-thinking (as in: they must be doing something right!).

Upton Sinclair:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

!!

Really?? , Dec 5 2019 18:25 utc | 36
Wasn't the "so we won't be fighting them here" meme used also to justify the Iraq invasion and the War on Terror?
karlof1 , Dec 5 2019 18:31 utc | 38
Upton Sinclair self-published a book in 1922 about education in America entitled Goose Step . Predating the infamous era of the Nazi/Fascist Goose Stepping thugs then armies, I read a preview and found an inexpensive copy. The subject as might be assumed was about the use of school systems to indoctrinate young Americans at all educational levels and nationwide to conform to the views of the rather few wealthy people who sat on interlocking boards that controlled curriculum--sort of like the oligarchic control over media today.

And as we've seen with the study of political-economy, the ability to erase rather recent developments and personages and inserting false doctrines and their priests was done rather easily and with little noted protest. And so it's gone on down through the decades until today--just look at the War Criminals hired by Stanford and other universities for proof of its being an ongoing problem.

That ideological blinders are omnipresent is easily proven by the various defense planning documents referenced here over the last several years, all of which relate to the unilateral, might makes right mindset that's one of the Evil Outlaw US Empire's longstanding traits that predates the 20th Century. Too many will never learn humility and the reality accompanying it until it's enforced. But there's a wiser group residing within the Empire, some of us present at this bar ready to deal with the mess once humpty-dumpty falls from its perch upon which it's currently tottering.

Beibdnn , Dec 5 2019 18:40 utc | 42
I just looked up Pamala Karlan. Apparently there is a story that when she was a baby she was so ugly her parents had to put shutters on her pram. She claims to have a partner? There's no accounting for taste I suppose but even for a U.S. citizen there must be a red line. Somewhere? someone! As to her intellectual prowess, in my limited understanding, intellect depends on the platform it rests upon. Put a Jaguar engine into a Mobility scooter and see how well that performs. Plenty of power but no means of utilising it. Logical mechanisms such as law require as little emotion as possible. People like her just bring the demise of a great nation into action sooner rather than later. I suppose we should be grateful such fools consider Russia an adversary, it's makes predicting what comes next much more clear and succinct action can be instigated. Professor Pamela Karlan. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
james , Dec 5 2019 18:58 utc | 44
@29 russ...steven is making himself look like a fool regularly with that crap.. oh well..

@36 really? yes, indeed.. same faulty logic one would expect from a stanford law prof.. as @22 piotr rightly notes - john yoo, the freak who could make torture in abu graib okay is another one cut from the very same cloth..

i see one of Pamela Karlans comments got the ire of melania trump.. article here..

"The Constitution states that there can be no titles of nobility. So while the president can name his son Barron, he can't MAKE him a baron." Pamela S. Karlan

"A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it." -- Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) December 4, 2019

Karlan apologized for her remark as the hearing continued late Wednesday. "It was wrong of me to do that,'' she said, according to the Associated Press. "I do regret it."

nwwoods , Dec 5 2019 19:19 utc | 45
Universally accepted fact among the devoted is that "America is fighting Russia in the Ukraine", though there are exactly zero confirmed reports of Russian troops in the region in the past five years.
Joost , Dec 5 2019 19:22 utc | 46
Many of the dumbest people I met were university students or graduates. They are thought to absorb information as given, reproduce once, forget. They are not trained to question anything, they follow a narrative. Some even denounced everything they ever learned and became a follower of some religion, which is just another narrative.

I remember one student dorm in particular. Someone came in and decided it was too warm. Put the central heating thermostat on "arctic winter", opened all doors and windows while it was freezing outside. Then someone else came in and decided it was cold, closed all doors and windows, put the thermostat on "incinerate". Repeat 24/7. The few times I tried to explain how a thermostat works, I felt like being rubbed out of existence. Only one guy understood that you set a room thermostat at a comfortable level and it would regulate to desired temperature. He was an alcoholic, always stoned up to his eyeballs, not a student except for the 3 or 4 studies he briefly tried and failed, and had given up on life in general. He was also the only one there who questioned things.

!!

Yevgeny , Dec 5 2019 19:36 utc | 51
Why assume that democracy was not always a trick? Pax Romana anyone?

Also there are some pretty nasty comments on here about the confused professor that say a whole lot more about the hangups of the poster.

Trailer Trash , Dec 5 2019 19:39 utc | 52
I've seen Jonathan Turley on TV a number of times. He always seemed to be a person of integrity. One needs to add courage to the list after testifying against impeachment on the presented "evidence". I will be very surprised to see him on PBS or CBS ever again. Their news readers are nearly giddy with excitement about impeachment. They never consider what could happen if Trump is convicted but refuses to leave the White House. Then what?

--------- The food stamp program changes will kill people. As intended. One of the most affected groups will be people who are too sick or otherwise too impaired to work, and maybe unable to even leave their home, but still can't get social support. The system says there is no problem because desperate people can get a free meal on Thanksgiving and Christmas. For the other 363 days a year, go find a dumpster to dive in.

Almost all Social Security Disability applicants are denied on the initial application. There are no interim payments or support of any kind. Many give up, as intended. The rest file appeals and wait years for a hearing before an "administrative law judge", who is not a "real" judge, but just some lawyer with fancy title.

ALJ decisions tend to be rather arbitrary, so a favorable decision depends on which ALJ hears a case. Sure there are more levels to appeal, and many more years of no social support, if an applicant can find a way to survive for years on zero income, all the while being sick with probably no medical care.

Social Security and disability lawyers have colluded to keep lawyers in business. Social Security requires the use of a standard contract that gives the lawyer a fixed percentage of the retroactive benefits. "Retroactive benefits" are the regular monthly benefits that accrue from the officially determined "date of disability". So if it takes three years to get benefits, the lawyer gets a nice chunk of change for a few hours work writing a brief and showing up for the hearing.

The lawyer who signed my contract did nothing to help my case, and he even hired someone else to write the brief and attend the hearing. One wonders if ALJs get some benefit from lawyers to encourage long wait times, since long wait times increase lawyer profits at zero cost.

The US system really is that cruel and barbaric. It would be kinder to take us out back and shoot us, but that's too obvious. Much better to let people die slowly in the shadows so the rest of society doesn't have to see us.

And I'm one of the fortunates who managed to hang on, despite bankruptcy, a civil suit, the disability benefits process (only took six years), and state attempts to revoke Medicaid, all at the same time. I know it sounds melodramatic, made up, or at least exaggerated. That's understandable, because it seems that way to me, too!

About 1000 people a week kill themselves in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. Does anyone wonder why, or even notice? The reason for many of these deaths is the lack of social supports. In Uncle Sam Land, social apoptosis is a feature, not a bug.

chet380 , Dec 5 2019 20:07 utc | 54
Did anyone really expect the Dems to appoint unbiased legal scholars to advise them on the finer legal points of the Articles of Impeachment?
Kooshy , Dec 5 2019 20:10 utc | 55
This fucking shining city on the hill, is so f*ing shiny that it's flames is burning the world.
steven t johnson , Dec 5 2019 20:11 utc | 56
Russ@29 forgot the comments where I've reviewed exactly how everybody rejected the Electoral College, holding legitimacy came from winning the real election. Until Gore, every time the EC violated the expectation that it was a technical way of recording the popular vote, there was justified outrage. Bush's camp in 2000 had plans to contest an EC loss, until that shoe turned out to be on the other foot. If Trump had won the popular vote and lost the Electoral College, he would no more accept the results. Only liars take refuge in the simplistic legalisms. And only Trump ass-lickers are so contemptible as to pretend Trump was the stable genius who outplayed Clinton in the real game. Trump had no more idea how to win the EC without winning the popular vote than anyone else. Further, by the witless pretended principles of Russ' ilk, a presidential candidate who managed to win faithless electors who ignored even their own states' pluralities* would still be the legitimate president! Every single defender of Trump the one legitimate president is witless and worthless.

But very likely the real objection to the response is the insistence that Trump isn't magically guaranteed re-election because...well, the real reason is slavish devotion to a God named Trump. Even with the advantage of incumbency this time around, with even more support from the wealthy (the people who have really turned away from the Democratic Party to favor political gangsterism,) Trump is likely to lose the election again. If I were in Congress I would offer a compromise, where the Republicans were assured Trump would not be investigated any more, much less impeached, for abolition of the Electoral College. But I think Trump would say no, because he knows deep down he's a loser.

steven t johnson , Dec 5 2019 20:13 utc | 57
*US politicians rarely win majorities of the electorate. Politicians of all stripes have agreed that non-voting is always to be deemed as "Satisfied" with either choice instead of "Alienated, with no choice." Decent people suspect otherwise.
goldhoarder , Dec 5 2019 20:23 utc | 58
@38 Karloff1 You can still Read the late John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education online. He did a great job highlighting the history and purpose of copying the Prussian style of education to replace the one room school houses and instill the "martial spirit" in the American public. I have to hand it to the Oligarchs of old too. They were very effective in their implementation.

[malformed/wrong link deleted - b.]

nietzsche1510 , Dec 5 2019 20:31 utc | 60
Karlan type of academics is scattered all over the US universities. They are the Academia´s gatekeepers, watching over & "spotting" of our future leaders. the majority of them are claptraps selling jingoism to our youth in order to fulfill the Judeo-Zionist agenda.
Trailer Trash , Dec 5 2019 20:39 utc | 61
I knew that name sounded familiar...
John Taylor Gatto, former New York City and New York State teacher of the year, stated:

The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders; and John Holt concluded, School is a place where children learn to be stupid . . . Children come to school curious; within a few years most of that curiosity is dead, or at least silent.

http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/john_gatto.html

Jen , Dec 5 2019 21:15 utc | 66
I recall when I was a student at the University of Technology, Sydney, way back in the Mesozoic era (1980s), the economics dept there had a lecturer there with a Harvard University background so the staff made him head of the department. Just because he had a Harvard University PhD. He was hardly a great administrator and the subjects he taught (compared with other lecturers' subjects) were much less structured. Of course this meant the courses he taught were easier on students' time and energy, though if you made use of the opportunity a less structured course gave, you could turn in an end-of-term essay with impressive research equivalent to the level required of a post-grad.

The university also had an exchange program with the University of Oregon, and most of the Oregon students who came to UTS (usually in their second or third year) found the UTS coursework very heavy-going and difficult.

In those days, UTS was only supposed to be a second-tier university in Australia.

ac , Dec 5 2019 21:34 utc | 68
This hearing is a theatre performance (kabuki -- hey, I learned a new word, thanks) and PK's lines are an invocation of the official US myth (the shinning city on the hill, the exceptional, indispensible nation). No one in the room took that seriously or literally (especially PK herself) and IMHO these national myths are not really anything to freak out about - every nation has got its myth, and this is an arrogant one, but compared to a few others it's almost likeable.

Of course it is at odds with historical records and the reality, but all of them are, because, frankly, the truth, being descendants of genocidal, religious nutters and slavers, is apparently very motivational -- in the KSA...

The RU/UK lines are slightly more worrisome, but that's just a matching background for her story - the fluff. She doesn't have to belive it - it's just a performance, an elegant one but meaningless in the end.

A lot of the visitors comment about the deep state, most of the time mentioning three letter agencies. Here comes a piece about a four letters one, acting more or less in the plain sight: OIRA, E.O. 12866

A group of virtually anonymous, unaccountable people wields quite considerable power over both legislative and executive. A very interesting construction...

information_agent , Dec 5 2019 22:08 utc | 70
Posted by: nietzsche1510 | Dec 5 2019 21:03 utc | 65

You hit the nail on the head. Karlan's loyalty is to her tribe, not this nation. That's the crux of almost every major problem and injustice we're suffering from in this country, from private prisons to Wall Street looting to endless foreign wars to censorship. There is one group of people behind it with a very bad track record in terms of how they treat their host nations. I wonder when we will finally get our act together and become the 110th country to expel them.

And Goldhoarder, while you may not mind how your posts look, you've managed to damage this comment thread and until b deletes your poorly structured post, we all suffer for it.

psychohistorian , Dec 5 2019 22:31 utc | 71
@ Posted by: Lochearn | Dec 5 2019 21:51 utc | 72 who seems to disagree with my concept "dysfunctional on purpose" and wants to use decadence instead and wrote: " Surely there must be some functionality to be able to keep the masses dumbed down/brainwashed; it implies some sort of thought out strategy. How do we get the same narrative trotted out in media in exactly the same format from LA to Warsaw, from Lima to Bangalore if it's all so dysfunctional? "

I posit that strategy of "dysfunctional on purpose" is control of the narrative and language and it is purposefully used.

Consider the current seeming understanding of the terms, socialism and capitalism by many of your fellow barflies. Many of our fellow barflies would have one believe that China is socialist and the West is capitalist...exclusively. I and a few others keep trying to point out that both China and the West are, to varying degrees mixed economies, including aspects of both socialism and capitalism

Consider the implicit definition of government if you will. Is government, as compared to dictatorships, not explicitly socialistic? Are not the provision of water, sewage treatment and in many case electricity explicitly socialistic by definition? Is it not dumbing down and brainwashing that many don't understand reality but spout the words and concepts they are fed by those in control of the narrative and media pushing it?

And, not to make too fine a point of it, does all of the West not live under the dictatorship of global private finance at this time? So how much more would I get ignored if I beat that drum as part of my comments here?

Ian2 , Dec 5 2019 23:07 utc | 75
Lorenz | Dec 5 2019 16:56 utc | 20:

IF Trump is removed from office then the war on Lebanon and Iran would be accelerated. Israel will likely go for all the marbles and annex the last remaining Palestinian holdings. Some here believe this couldn't happen but we all live in bizarro world now.

Also, don't expect the Electoral College to oust Pence after the general election since he's more pro-war; even the electors from Democrat controlled states would support him. IMHO, the US would continue on; business as usual.

However, if the Democrats are crazy enough to follow through, the Republican dominated Senate would reject it. Basically a repeat of what happened to Clinton. In the end, nothing changed.

Really?? , Dec 5 2019 23:07 utc | 76
James #44

""It was wrong of me to do that,'' she said, according to the Associated Press. "I do regret it.""

Ya but . . .as Tucker Carlson spot-on reacted, that comment sure looked as though it had been rehearsed in front of the bathroom mirror. It was sooooo lame!!! I mean, it was obvious (on the video) that Karlan really thought she was (wait for it! It's on the way) landing a very clever bon mot!

It is a small thing, yet it speaks volumes about the spirit of this clearly clueless human being (and others of her ilk), and her handlers, who must have cleared this little gotcha for prime time. Been up on the podium too long, bleating to students who can't/don't bleat back! No common sense.

Never a connection with a child, I'll bet, or she could never have said such a thing. Painful to look at the pinched little face, decent hairdo missing in action, with the rant coming out of the tight little mouth. A pathetic individual.

Ditto Noah Feldman from the Felix Frankfurter Dept of the Harvard Law School: Pure bloviation with skin like a baby's bottom. Better coiffed, actually, than Karlan. Quels types!!!

Jen , Dec 5 2019 23:21 utc | 80
Jackrabbit @ 68:

My comment @ 67 was actually just to highlight the (most undeserved) reputations that places like Harvard and Stanford have among certain faculties in Australian universities. In those days Stanford, Harvard and MIT were the holiest of holy shrines to do business studies / economics degrees. Years later I read a book by someone who actually did do a Stanford MBA and the scales fell from my eyes then. The work was similar to what I'd done as an undergraduate (albeit collapsed in the space of 18 months; I had the luxury of doing part-time and then going full-time as a student).

I should have added that the Harvard PhD guy who taught me comparative economics was a lousy teacher as well as a lousy administrator. I visited his office once and it looked as if a tornado had just hit it. To be fair though, he really wasn't cut out to be a lecturer, he was much better at research and analysis.

Before he became a lecturer, he worked at the CIA as a researcher. He knew next to no German (he was of Polish background) so he was assigned to the section to read East German newspapers. A fellow he knew who could speak and read German but no Bulgarian was assigned to the ... Bulgarian section. That experience must account for my lecturer's sloppy personal style.

But now that you draw my attention to the link, yes you are right that the study was done at Princeton University.

oldhippie , Dec 6 2019 0:18 utc | 87
@81

Why do you assume a technical illiterate could read those instructions? I can't even begin to do anything with that. It is never simple enough for those who have not been initiated.

HTML works by magic. Your instructions do not convince me otherwise.

Better solution is to forgo links altogether if not competent. Or spell out the link and force the really interested to transcribe. Of course no one is going to go to effort of spelling out a link as long as that one above. Which would be a good thing.

Jen , Dec 6 2019 0:27 utc | 88
She's been gone some time now (she died in April 2018) but Karen Dawisha , a so-called expert on Russian and post-Soviet politics who obtained a higher degree at the London School of Economics, was another deluded academic twat who wrote the book "Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?"

The 1-star, 2-star and 3-star reviews on Amazon.com of the book refer to the tabloid quality of many of the claims in the book, poor sourcing, cherry-picking of facts and the author's inability to write at a level that would attract a readership outside the academic community.

The least we can say for her is that she is no longer in a position to, erm, "advise" the US and UK governments on issues and help formulate policy that would backfire on Washington and London anyway.

ak74 , Dec 6 2019 2:14 utc | 98
As the great wise man, Frank Zappa proclaimed about the USA: "Politics/government is the entertainment division of the Military-Industrial Government." American politics makes much greater sense (and is a hell of a lot more entertaining) if you understand this truism.

US Presidential Debates and impeachment hearings are a swell occasion for drinking games. Every time a political hack, media shill, or academic invokes some variant of American Exceptionalism, take a shot of your favorite alcoholic beverage. You will be drunk within half an hour--guaranteed!

Gal , Dec 6 2019 2:19 utc | 99
I'd say unbelievable but I know that is only wishful thinking on my part. What's scary is that these people populate the "educational" system which explains why we're as screwed as we are.

[Dec 08, 2019] Karlan, US neocons and "The Russians Are Coming!" scare

Notable quotes:
"... When Bush and his allies used this rhetoric, they were trying to spin a war of aggression as an act of self-defense. Now it is part of an even more ludicrous effort to make supplying weapons and other military assistance to Ukraine seem as if it is vitally important to the U.S. Simply put, this is propaganda, and it isn't even very good propaganda at that. ..."
"... Obviously, we aren't going to be fighting the Russians "here" no matter what happens in this conflict. These are the sorts of irrational claims that we get after decades of irresponsible threat inflation and mistakenly assuming that every conflict in the world is somehow our business. ..."
Dec 08, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Here is a congealing conventional wisdom around sending military assistance to Ukraine that is as absurd as can be, and it cropped up again this morning:

"Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" was extremely stupid when applied to terrorism. It is much more stupid when applied to Russia, and shows how impoverished the FP thinking of even bright, engaged Americans is. My goodness.

-- Justin Logan (@JustinTLogan) December 4, 2019

It is discouraging to see that one of the dumbest talking points from the Bush era has returned. "Fight them there" was always a silly justification for waging unnecessary wars in other countries, and now it is being repurposed to justify the questionable policy of throwing weapons at a conflict in Europe. When it was used in the context of Bush-era wars, it was an attempt to make what were clearly wars of choice seem as though they were unavoidable. When a government needs to defend a bad policy, it will usually claim that they have no choice but to do what they are doing.

When Bush and his allies used this rhetoric, they were trying to spin a war of aggression as an act of self-defense. Now it is part of an even more ludicrous effort to make supplying weapons and other military assistance to Ukraine seem as if it is vitally important to the U.S. Simply put, this is propaganda, and it isn't even very good propaganda at that.

I have written many times why I think it is a mistake to arm Ukraine. It just encourages escalation at worst and the prolongation of the conflict at best. Until recently, the arguments in favor of doing this have not been very compelling, but at least they weren't quite so mindless. Needless to say, Russia's conflict with Ukraine is a local one, and the U.S. doesn't have much at stake in that conflict. Ukrainians aren't fighting Russia and its proxies on our behalf or to prevent them from attacking someone else, but for the sake of their own country.

If Russia hawks insist on providing Ukraine with weapons and other assistance, they should at least be able to acknowledge that this is a peripheral interest of the United States. Exaggerating the importance of this policy to U.S. security just calls attention to how little it matters to U.S. security.

Obviously, we aren't going to be fighting the Russians "here" no matter what happens in this conflict. These are the sorts of irrational claims that we get after decades of irresponsible threat inflation and mistakenly assuming that every conflict in the world is somehow our business.

[Dec 08, 2019] Putin did it again: Pentagon Alarmed Russia Is Gaining 'Sympathy' Among US Troops

Dec 08, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Pentagon Alarmed Russia Is Gaining 'Sympathy' Among US Troops by Tyler Durden Sun, 12/08/2019 - 17:40 0 SHARES

An alarmist headline out of US state-funded media arm Voice of America : "Pentagon Concerned Russia Cultivating Sympathy Among US Troops". The story begins as follows:

Russian efforts to weaken the West through a relentless campaign of information warfare may be starting to pay off, cracking a key bastion of the U.S. line of defense: the military. While most Americans still see Moscow as a key U.S. adversary, new polling suggests that view is changing, most notably among the households of military members .

Remember when Russia bombed Belgrade back to the middle ages, invaded and occupied Iraq, started an eighteen-year long quagmire in Afghanistan, created anarchy in Libya, funded and armed al-Qaeda in Syria, and expanded its bases right up to US borders? Neither do we.

File image via EPA/NBC

Perhaps American soldiers are simply sick and tired of the US military and intelligence machine's legacy of ashes across the globe and recognize the inconvenient fact that Russia most often has been on the complete opposite side of Washington's disastrous regime change wars .

Nothing to see here...

The second annual Reagan National Defense Survey, completed in late October, found nearly half of armed services households questioned, 46%, said they viewed Russia as ally .

Overall, the survey found 28% of Americans identified Russia as an ally, up from 19% the previous year .

...While a majority, 71% of all Americans and 53% of military households, still views Russia as an enemy, the spike in pro-Russian sentiment has defense officials concerned . -- VOA

Perhaps US military households are also smart enough to know the Cold War is long over, and only bad things can come from a direct confrontation with Russia, not to mention that involvement in proxy war in Ukraine has nothing to do with America's national defense or to "protect and defend the Constitution" .

To be expected, the VOA's presentation of the new poll which finds more service members are 'sympathetic' to Russia is heavy on the supposed 'Trump-Russia nexus' narrative and emphasizes an uptick in Kremlin propaganda, while failing to acknowledge a failed legacy of 'endless wars' and destabilizing US influence across the globe.

It's 2019, and US solders are still in Iraq. Image via Getty/NYT

The poll itself claimed the changing numbers were "predominantly driven by Republicans who have responded to positive cues from [U.S.] President [Donald] Trump about Russia."

"There is an effort, on the part of Russia, to flood the media with disinformation to sow doubt and confusion ," DoD spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Carla Gleason was cited in the VOA report as saying. Ah yes, a few Kremlin-sponsored Facebook posts and Trump's expressed desire for better relations with Putin, and suddenly the military too is 'pro-Putin'! apparently.

Perhaps the "doubt and confusion" comes via trillion dollar endless wars of regime change and pointless occupations which cost American lives? In other words, this is not a 'Russia problem' at all, but lies too close to home for Washington pundits and pollsters to admit.

* * *

Finally, we should ask, would US military members see in today's foreign policy adventurism anything remotely resembling John Quincy Adams' famous 1821 admonition?

" But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit..."

[Dec 08, 2019] About making stratinc decition by chichenhawks like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, none of whom had spent a day serving in cadre officer uniform

Dec 08, 2019 | www.unz.com

JoaoAlfaiate , says: December 6, 2019 at 11:44 am GMT

From page 12 of Martyanov's RRMA, " people such as Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, none of whom had spent a day serving in cadre officer uniform "

Rumsfeld was in fact a Naval Aviator who flew ASW aircraft for a number of years and retired from the Navy Reserve as a full Captain.

Andrei Martyanov , says: Website December 6, 2019 at 1:50 pm GMT
@JoaoAlfaiate

Rumsfeld was in fact a Naval Aviator who flew ASW aircraft for a number of years

A Tracker, in 1950s for a couple of years, while having a degree in Political Science. That sure qualifies him for making strategic decisions, right? Especially in the 21st century. Well, we all saw results, didn't we?

Andrei Martyanov , says: Website December 6, 2019 at 2:19 pm GMT
@Jim Christian Jim, a lot of truth in what you say. But especially this:

As for the military? A reflection of our society. When I went into the Navy in 1975, it was Stars and Stripes and we served in large part for Mom, Apple Pie and Chevrolet.

Here is a quote from one of Russian undercover intelligence assets which was outed when Anna Chapman was outed. Unlike her, however, this guy was a real deal. Here is what he had to say recently about US:

What is THEIR weakness? As enemies these guys are mediocrities, second rate. They overate. Their previous generation was stronger. They respected us, we respected them. We don't respect these ones,they didn't deserve it. They can bully, as for the real fight–we'll see about that They are enraged that soon they will have to live within their means.They forgot how to do so long time ago. That is why they want to solve a problem with us now, while others are still afraid of them.

here is an original in Russian, just in case.

https://vz.ru/opinions/2018/5/4/920955.html?utm_campaign=transit&utm_source=mirtesen&utm_medium=news&from=mirtesen

I remember 70s and 80s clearly, being myself a Cold Warrior, these were different times. many different people. Today, as you say, I see decay everywhere in everything, the country (the US) was literally robbed, people blinded and all for a reasons of bottom line in "business" and for Israel's, Saudi and corporate interests. The America I encountered in 1990s is gone.

Jim Christian , says: December 6, 2019 at 3:46 pm GMT
@Andrei Martyanov

A Tracker, in 1950s for a couple of years, while having a degree in Political Science.

Rummy flew a Stoof? Git the farg outta here? I thought he only had balls with OTHER people's lives..

[Dec 08, 2019] What is our strength? by Andrey Bezrukov

Redacted Google translation...
This is the net result of Clinton policies and neocon dominance in the USA foreign policy. And it is not a pretty picture. It might difficult to win Russia back as an ally after those Russiagate nonsense. They feel really offended by it and might overreact as is evident from the test below.
I'll just say again that imbecilization is a completely normal historical phenomenon in declining empires, Empires also tend to have a very flexible conception of truth, that is, they believe they can fabricate reality for the simple reason they are geopolitically dominant.
The fact that the MSM have become mouthpieces for the CIA/deep state has played a huge role in the brainwashing of academia and the rise of neoliberalism. The false narratives these "trusted sources" of information have been serving up create a very real Matrix, a false reality that is ingrained into those who rely upon them for their daily "news".
May 04, 2018 | vz.ru

It feels like the world has gone crazy. They push someone's wallet in our pocket, and then shout "catch the thief!". We try to debunt this false flag, show surveillance footage, which clearly shows the setup. But the continue shout in chorus - " thief, thief, thief!". Acquaintances turn away, hide their eyes. Those "Western partners" iare numerous and they silence our weak attempts to protest. We were driven into a corner... They try to strangulate us with sanctions.

Unfortunately, this is our new reality. For the next decade. The question is "Why?" Because we are a force in international arena again. We're ruining their racketeering business. We are a vivid example that it is possible to escape the system of the global racket of which they feed, That there is an alternative.

So now there is a player who does not wan to pay the racketeers, And he is still alive. This means that others may not pay either. They hate such a situation, because other players may refuse to pay, and that also means that sooner or later they might be force to live within this own meanss. It has been a long time since they live within their means, and they completely lost the habit of doing so. So they want to "solve" the problem with us now ones and forever, while others are still afraid of them.

Plus they have a new gang leader. Like all newbies, he wants to be the toughest. And raises the stakes.

Let's face the truth. They won't let us go easily. It's pointless to explain. We will be hunted, subjected to the array of false flags, persecuted and sanctioned to death. And if they feel the slack – they will beta us to the death, much more thoroughly then they did in 1990th. The question of whether this can be avoided is no longer worth asking. Today we have one question – how to survive the next two decades?

We need finally exhale and turn on the brain... The key to victory, as Sun Tzu wrote – is in knowing the enemy and knowing yourself.

What is their strength?

First, there are many. And they have money. They can buy everything, including witnesses and judges. We'll be blamed for for anything; they will attack and we will be framed as the attacker.

Second, they scream loudly. In chorus. That control world mass communications. And their propaganda works. It is useless to argue otherwise. All our arguments are useless. They will fall of death ear and will be ignored. Nobody will question their validity -- they will be simply swipe under the carpet. No matter how ridiculous is their "version of events" is (Skripals, Russiagate, Ukrainegate) the label "the guilty party" is already put on us like a yellow patch on the Jews in Nazi Germany. Before any investigation or God forbid judicial process. And most people on the planet still take their word for it.

What is their weakness?

As opponents these guys, I mean their neoliberal elites are the second grade; they belong to the "grey zone", the zone of mediocrity. Too greedy, too arrogant, and too lazy. Sometime semi-senile. Their previous generation was much stronger. They respected us. And we them.

We do not respect this new neoliberal elite and they feel that. And we don't respect them because such mediocrities do not deserve our respect, and are not trustworthily partner. They generally can be classified as "Unable to adhere to any legal treaties" (Nedogovorosposobnie") . And that scares us, almost to death, because you need to deal with completely unpredictable, bizarre partner for whom treaties and agreements are not worth the paper they were printed on. But they will avoid open fight, unless the success guaranteed. We need to ensure that such situation never occur.

Their nervousness, their fidgeting, their second-rateness now is staring to be felt by other countries who would prefer to hedge their bet and join only a sure winner. They see that the outcome of the USA quest for Full Spectrum Dominance is not yet decided.

In addition, our opponents are now engaged in brutal showdown with each other. Western Europe recovered and became competitor of the USA. They also are openly laughing over their new chief. Half of the major Europium countries leadership probably hates him. For how long he can stay in power is completely unclear. But this is a new and unexpected development. .

And those in the second row, the stooges, are generally ready to escape from this virtual battlefield. It became too expensive to catch hot potatoes for Uncle Sam as the amount of loot for partners shrunk dramatically. And problems with neoliberalism at home mounted. Neoliberal chickens start coming to roost. They were promised money and a share of loot, not a beating in a real fight with a strong determined opponent.

What is our strength?

First of all we no longer have any illusions about the the USA or West in general, illusions that cost us so dearly in 1990th. They are predators who want to colonize, fleece and dismember our nation. An having no illusions means that they can't repeat economic rape they committed in 1990th. Now we know what awaits us if we give up. They'll devour us completely. Those gangsters will kick the lying opponent with feet until he is dead. They won't let us survive a second time.

We also have a grenade as the last resort. They know it, and they're terrified we'll pull the pin.

They don't understand how we can be defeated, so they try new ways to make us surrender without a fight. Looking for a weak spot.

What is our weakness?

Our first problem is that we are alone. We are a big and clumsy country with a lot of internal problems and convoluted history. Which refuse to became the USA vassal. We were a difficult neighbor in the past. Some people are afraid of us because or our past.

Our second and main problem is the lack of money for economic reconstruction. We don't have enough money for the restoration of the economy and the standard of living of our people after 1990th rape to the level we deserve as the major European country. Say the level the Germany managed to achieve, despite being defeated in WWII. And nobody is going to help us, at least on acceptable conditions. They will try to slow down our economic development by all mean possible. that's why they already imposed sanctions under bogus pretext. They will impose more to slow down the process. They will manipulate oil prices and engage us in "gas wars." If we can solve this problem and restore the economy and the standard of living of people after 1990 collapse other problems will be easier to take on.

Also a nice thing about having money is that you instantly have a lot of fiends ;-) At once.

Now some panoramic view on the situation like in oil painting.

First of all out willingness to fight back is a guarantee that they will not get into a real fight. We need to hold out for the next ten-twenty years or so. I think this is what we can expect for neoliberalism to last before the collapse.

But that doesn't solve all our problems. We need that they stop punching us with new sanctions. Better forever but, at least for the next twenty years. Until their racket finally falls apart.

So the second goal is to earn to earn money need to reconstruction of the economy and creating first class infrastructure. Which will allow us to grow. and we need to do this while there is time. That probably means that invest our money in growth and stop saving "for a rainy day" in US treasures and Western banks. Otherwise, this rainy day may come in a very unexpected fashion and way too soon: money will simply be confiscated as long as they can do it with impunity.

Andrey Bezrukov is the associate Professor of the chair of applied analysis of international problems, MGIMO

[Dec 08, 2019] Neocon wing of US political elite is simply mentally inadequate.

Notable quotes:
"... Today USA even is no more an entity. You can not negotiate a thing with "America" because there is no such institution any more, but a hellish swarm of infighting spiders, each delightfully breaking anything negotiated by a rival spider. ..."
Dec 08, 2019 | www.unz.com

Mulegino1 , says: December 5, 2019 at 5:58 pm GMT

US political "elites" are generally appallingly incompetent in matters of war and are "educated" mostly through Hollywood and Clansiesque "literature". I am not even sure that they comprehend what Congressional Research Service prepares for them as compressed briefings. Neocon wing of US political elite is simply mentally inadequate.

Very true, especially the part about "Hollywood and Clansiesque 'literature.'" I used to read Clancy's books and, while entertaining, in retrospect they appear ridiculous, even childish. But they probably capture the popular notion of American military invincibility better than any other.

Most of Hollywood's output is garbage anyway, and its grasp of real war and military matters appears to be that of a not so precocious third grader.

Arioch , says: December 5, 2019 at 8:58 pm GMT
@joe tentpeg

> USSR Katyn forrest massacre (Poland), Afghanistan.

Katyn, whoever did it, was much before Cold War and before even first relatively small nuclear blast.

And if you want to go that far – why not remember crisis over West Berlin, where tank armees were watching one another, but no one pulled trigger?

Afghanistan was attacking one's own ally. Same as Prague 1968 and Hungary 1956. If you want to compare – that is like USA invading Panama to remove their no longer reliable puppet Norriega. Did American attack on their own Panama risk USSR going ballistic? Hardly so. There was no Soviet invasion into Pakistan nor there was Chinese/American invasion into India.

And looking away from purely military events, there was no attempt to arrest the whole embassy stuff them, neither in Moscow nor in DC. No killing Soviet ambassadors in NATO states during official events.

Those dirty games had red lines, both sides maintained. Today? Today USA even is no more an entity. You can not negotiate a thing with "America" because there is no such institution any more, but a hellish swarm of infighting spiders, each delightfully breaking anything negotiated by a rival spider.

> deploying conventional anti-ballistic missile defenses around their most important cities.

No, by then effective treaty both USSR and USA had only ONE region they were allowed to protect. Those were some nuclear launchpads in USA i guess, and one single city (Moscow) in USSR. No more.

> deterrence [did not] worked
> See the last phrase in bullet 2.

You suppose USSR killed itself trying to keep deterrence working. That does not show it did not work, already. That shows it worked so well (at least from Soviet perspective) that they gambled all they had on the futile effort of keeping that deterrence working into the future.

[Dec 07, 2019] Why the foreign policy establishment consensus is neocon by default.

Highly recommended!
Dec 07, 2019 | www.unz.com

Never in the history of America, probably never in the history of any country, had there been such open and direct control of governmental activities by the very rich. So long as a handful of men in Wall Street control the credit and industrial processes of the country, they will continue to control the press, the government, and, by deception, the people. They will not only compel the public to work for them in peace, but to fight for them in war. -- John Turner, 1922

[Dec 07, 2019] Impeachment does not require a crime.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... This is just low level Soviet-style propaganda: "Beacon of democracy" and "Hope of all progressive mankind" cliché. My impression is that the train left the station long ago, especially as for democracy. Probably in 1963. The reality is a nasty struggle of corrupt political clans. Which involves intelligence agencies dirty tricks. BTW, how do you like that fact that Corporate Democrats converted themselves in intelligence agencies' cheerleading squad? ..."
"... And both Corporate Dems and opposing them Republican are afraid to discuss the real issues facing the country, such as loss of manufacturing, loss of good middle class jobs (fake labor statistics covers the fact the most new jobs are temps/contractors and McJobs), rampant militarism with Afghan war lasting decades, neocon dominance in foreign policy which led to increase of country debt to level that might soon be unsustainable. ..."
"... Both enjoy impeachment Kabuki theater. With Trump probably enjoying this theatre the most: if they just censure him, he wins, if charges go to Senate, he wins big. ..."
Dec 07, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

Fred C. Dobbs , December 06, 2019 at 06:22 AM

Impeach the president
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2019/12/06/opinion/time-impeachment/?event=event25

Boston Globe - editorial - December 5

From the founding of this country, the power of the president was understood to have limits. Indeed, the Founders would never have written an impeachment clause into the Constitution if they did not foresee scenarios where their descendants might need to remove an elected president before the end of his term in order to protect the American people and the nation.

The question before the country now is whether President Trump's misconduct is severe enough that Congress should exercise that impeachment power, less than a year before the 2020 election. The results of the House Intelligence Committee inquiry, released to the public on Tuesday, make clear that the answer is an urgent yes. Not only has the president abused his power by trying to extort a foreign country to meddle in US politics, but he also has endangered the integrity of the election itself. He has also obstructed the congressional investigation into his conduct, a precedent that will lead to a permanent diminution of congressional power if allowed to stand.

The evidence that Trump is a threat to the constitutional system is more than sufficient, and a slate of legal scholars who testified on Wednesday made clear that Trump's actions are just the sort of presidential behavior the Founders had in mind when they devised the recourse of impeachment. The decision by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to proceed with drafting articles of impeachment is warranted.

Much of the information in the Intelligence Committee report, which was based on witness interviews, documents, telephone records, and public statements by administration officials, was already known to the public. The cohesive narrative that emerges, though, is worse than the sum of its parts. This year, the president and subordinates acting at his behest repeatedly tried to pressure a foreign country, Ukraine, into taking steps to help the president's reelection. That was, by itself, an outrageous betrayal: In his dealings with foreign states, the president has an obligation to represent America's interests, not his own.

But the president also betrayed the US taxpayer to advance that corrupt agenda. In order to pressure Ukraine into acceding to his request, Trump's administration held up $391 million in aid allocated by Congress. In other words, he demanded a bribe in the form of political favors in exchange for an official act -- the textbook definition of corruption. The fact that the money was ultimately paid, after a whistle-blower complained, is immaterial: The act of withholding taxpayer money to support a personal political goal was an impermissible abuse of the president's power.

Withholding the money also sabotaged American foreign policy. The United States provides military aid to Ukraine to protect the country from Russian aggression. Ensuring that fragile young democracy does not fall under Moscow's sway is a key US policy goal, and one that the president put at risk for his personal benefit. He has shown the world that he is willing to corrupt the American policy agenda for purposes of political gain, which will cast suspicion on the motivations of the United States abroad if Congress does not act.

To top off his misconduct, after Congress got wind of the scheme and started the impeachment inquiry, the Trump administration refused to comply with subpoenas, instructed witnesses not to testify, and intimidated witnesses who did. That ought to form the basis of an article of impeachment. When the president obstructs justice and fails to respect the power of Congress, it strikes at the heart of the separation of powers and will hobble future oversight of presidents of all parties.

Impeachment does not require a crime. The Constitution entrusts Congress with the impeachment power in order to protect Americans from a president who is betraying their interests. And it is very much in Americans' interests to maintain checks and balances in the federal government; to have a foreign policy that the world can trust is based on our national interest instead of the president's personal needs; to control federal spending through their elected representatives; to vote in fair elections untainted by foreign interference. For generations, Americans have enjoyed those privileges. What's at stake now is whether we will keep them. The facts show that the president has threatened this country's core values and the integrity of our democracy. Congress now has a duty to future generations to impeach him.

JohnH -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 06, 2019 at 08:34 AM
How can Trump have sabotaged American foreign policy, when he has full responsibility and authority to set it?

IMO this impeachment is partly about Trump personally asking a foreign country for help against a domestic political opponent. But it is mostly about geopolitics and the national security bureaucracy's need for US world domination.

Just listen to the impeachment testimony--most of it is whining about Trump's failure to follow the 'interagency' policies of the deep state.

likbez -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 07, 2019 at 01:27 AM
"Impeachment does not require a crime."

Stalin would approve that. And if so, what is the difference between impeachment and a show trial, Moscow trials style? The majority can eliminate political rivals, if it wishes so, right? This was how Bolsheviks were thinking in 30th. Of course, those backward Soviets used "British spy" charge instead modern, sophisticated "Putin's stooge" charge, but still ;-)

The facts show that the president has threatened this country's core values and the integrity of our democracy.

This is just low level Soviet-style propaganda: "Beacon of democracy" and "Hope of all progressive mankind" cliché. My impression is that the train left the station long ago, especially as for democracy. Probably in 1963. The reality is a nasty struggle of corrupt political clans. Which involves intelligence agencies dirty tricks. BTW, how do you like that fact that Corporate Democrats converted themselves in intelligence agencies' cheerleading squad?

In short Boston Globe editors do not want that their audience understand the situation, in which the county have found itself. They just want to brainwash this audience (with impunity)

And both Corporate Dems and opposing them Republican are afraid to discuss the real issues facing the country, such as loss of manufacturing, loss of good middle class jobs (fake labor statistics covers the fact the most new jobs are temps/contractors and McJobs), rampant militarism with Afghan war lasting decades, neocon dominance in foreign policy which led to increase of country debt to level that might soon be unsustainable.

Both enjoy impeachment Kabuki theater. With Trump probably enjoying this theatre the most: if they just censure him, he wins, if charges go to Senate, he wins big.

Can you imagine result for Corporate Dems of Schiff (with his contacts with Ciaramella ) , or Hunter Biden (who was just a mule to get money to Biden's family for his father illegal lobbing) testifying in Senate under oath.

The truth is that they are all criminals (with many being war criminals.) So Beria statement "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime" is fully applicable. That really is something that has survived the Soviet Union and has arrived in the good old USA.

[Dec 07, 2019] Calling Trump 'Putin's boy' brings up coup tactics used by Birchers when Truman fired MacArthur!

Dec 07, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

ilsm -> RC (Ron) Weakley... , December 01, 2019 at 02:19 PM

Calling Trump 'Putin's boy' brings up coup tactics used by Birchers when Truman fired MacArthur!

Brookings tools (Mr. Vindman (I have silver leaves Vindman does not fit) , Fiona Hill, Holmes eavesdropping....) pleading to Schiff that Trump ain't their kind of 'Murekan empire builder.

Making up "charges", hearsay evidence, hiding DNC US #resistance corruption, despise the constitution, hide behind it and patriotism...... define democracy and who is 'patriotic'. All the trappings of Mao and Hitler before they took over.

RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to ilsm... , December 01, 2019 at 02:54 PM
"...Making up 'charges', hearsay evidence, hiding DNC US #resistance corruption, despise the constitution, hide behind it and patriotism...... define democracy and who is 'patriotic'. All the trappings of Mao and Hitler before they took over."


[Funny (NOT) that they say the same thing about Trump. Your adversaries and yourself would all make better lampshades or bars of soap than you do citizens.

Democracy has never been more than an illusion, sometimes just an allusion, particularly though in modern republican times. Leaders have all too rarely been patriotic aside from maybe George Washington, who largely despised the representative government that he had made. TJ did not exactly fall in love with the US Congress either. In these times the political class and their pet sycophants are more idiotic than patriotic.]

ilsm -> RC (Ron) Weakley... , December 01, 2019 at 04:47 PM
One bone: the coup #resistance despises the "office of the president" more than they (swamp trolls like Schiff's tool Vindman) disdain deplorables and the US constitution.

It is a constitutional thingie in my view going back to the Henry Luce media and Birchers/McCarthy (the ragings over "who lost Chiang's fiefdom in China?") going after anyone who they described wrongfully in most cases as "subversives".

I believe that Washington was like Ike as to taking up the executive office.

Paine -> Paine ... , December 01, 2019 at 06:37 AM
Eric Finer in an effort to unearth this buried history

Calls congressional reconstruction
A second founding of the republic

Reconstruction like the new deal

Ended by producing its opposite

BUT we progressive spirits
still rightly honor the era

Similarly
Jacksonianism by some of us not poisoned
By identity pol anachronisms

And Jeffersonianism
Despite far greater identity transgressions

Why not radical republicanism ?

anne -> Paine ... , December 01, 2019 at 07:24 AM
"Eric Foner" in an effort to unearth this buried history

Calls Congressional Reconstruction
A second founding of the Republic

Reconstruction like the New Deal

Ended by producing its opposite

[ Please be careful in spelling names, and set down where the specific reference is. This will be important, if a reference is set down. Also, further explanation when possible would be helpful. ]

[Dec 07, 2019] It is obvious that Russia is calling the shots

Dec 07, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

JohnH -> kurt... , December 04, 2019 at 07:49 AM

What an idiot! "it is obvious that Russia is calling the shots." This lunacy is beyond what even Joe McCarthy could have imagined.
RC (Ron) Weakley -> JohnH... , December 04, 2019 at 09:59 AM
I doubt that it was imagination that characterized Joe McCarthy's behavior, but with friend kurt then imagination appears to be in full blossom. Joe McCarthy was just an opportunistic scoundrel crassly impersonating a concerned patriot as a pure political convenience for attacking the left in general with specific intentions on casting a specter of fear over all New Deal loyalists. He weaponized socialist sympathizers against FDR's legacy. Remember that it was socialist sentiments that gave rise to FDR and his New Deal. It seemed only fair to Joe that those same sentiments be used to cover FDR in his grave.
JohnH -> RC (Ron) Weakley... , December 04, 2019 at 01:37 PM
A good definition of a politician: "an opportunistic scoundrel crassly impersonating a concerned patriot as a pure political convenience.

"Patriotism is usually the refuge of the scoundrel." Mark Twain

JohnH -> kurt... , December 04, 2019 at 02:57 PM
The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!

Incredible paranoia, reminiscent of the 1980s, when the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse!

[Dec 07, 2019] This is clearly one of the most dirty tricks played by UK Israel lobby, if we talk about Corbin. Baseless charge of anti-Semitism became a political smear, the way to destroy political opponent.

Zionist McCarthyism?
Notable quotes:
"... Charges of anti-Semitism against Corbyn are highly suspect. From what I can see, they all stem from Corbyn's remarks supporting Palestinian rights in the face of the Israeli government's institutionalized racism and oppression of Palestinians. ..."
"... Yes. This is clearly one of the most dirty tricks played by UK Israel lobby, if we talk about Corbin. Baseless charge of anti-Semitism became a political smear, the way to destroy political opponent. ..."
Dec 07, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

JohnH -> anne... , December 06, 2019 at 03:53 PM

Charges of anti-Semitism against Corbyn are highly suspect. From what I can see, they all stem from Corbyn's remarks supporting Palestinian rights in the face of the Israeli government's institutionalized racism and oppression of Palestinians.

If Bernie were not Jewish, there would have been an enormous smear campaign against him for exactly the same reasons.

likbez -> JohnH... , December 07, 2019 at 01:53 AM


Charges of anti-Semitism against Corbyn are highly suspect. From what I can see, they all stem from Corbyn's remarks supporting Palestinian rights in the face of the Israeli government's institutionalized racism and oppression of Palestinians.

Yes. This is clearly one of the most dirty tricks played by UK Israel lobby, if we talk about Corbin. Baseless charge of anti-Semitism became a political smear, the way to destroy political opponent.

Much like charge of "Putin stooge" in the USA. And Russophobia is very similar to Anti-Semitism, if you think about it. It serves as a kind of politically correct anti-Semitism.

[Dec 07, 2019] Russia is an Oligarchy. Putin is the richest man in the world

Dec 07, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

likbez -> kurt... , December 07, 2019 at 12:45 AM

"Russia is an Oligarchy. Putin is the richest man in the world."

Russia is an oligarchy. Like the USA and all Western countries. Oligarchy is the "rule of the few", the rule of elite. We know that this is where any state (or mass party) lands due to the "Iron law of oligarchy". So what's new ?

FYI the USA is a neoliberal plutocracy, which is pretty bad, degraded form of oligarchy. And it is currently experiences its deep crisis as neoliberal ideology is dead, and economics entered the phase of a secular stagnation.

This created the situation in which neoliberal elite can't rule "as usual" and "deplorable" do not want to live "as usual".

Such a situation is called a Classic Marxism a "revolutionary situation" and there is something in this definition. That's why we got Trump. So he is just a sign of the deep crisis of the USA neoliberal plutocracy.

In any case this is adeep political crisis. In this sense "impeachment Kabuki theatre" is just a tip of the iceberg and manifests the same problem

Presence on the political stage of people with noticeable senility problem like Biden and increased age of politicians in general is yet another sign of the same (can probably be called "Soviet Politburo syndrome").


But only completely brainwashed by neoliberal propaganda person can claim the Putin is "the richest man in the world"

Putin is way too clever to get into such a trap, when a person became Western powers marionette (like corrupt Yanukovich became ) because they can pull the strings and confiscate the ill gotten wealth anytime. BTW it was Biden, who threatened Yanukovich that if he uses force against protesters, his Western banks stored wealth is gone. We know what happened next with the help of Victoria Nuland.

Like Kissinger aptly said, neoliberal oligarchs are always pro-Western oligarch, because they have nowhere to go to store their wealth.

That means that Putin is "the richest man in the world" level of thinking can be viewed as typical for a person with severe senility problem due to his/her age.

This statement actually does not even deserve a comment, because person with such level of mental degradation can't understand argument of the other side.

[Dec 07, 2019] The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic attitudes

Dec 07, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

JohnH -> anne... , November 28, 2019 at 03:46 PM

Stephen Cohen (one of the few pundits who actually knows something about Russia:)

"Almost daily for three years, Democrats and their media have told us very bad things about Donald Trump's life, character, and presidency. Some of them are true. But in the process, we have also learned some lamentable, even alarming, things about the Democratic Party establishment, including self-professed liberals. Consider the following:

The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic attitudes. Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an "attack" so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor. But there was no "attack" in 2016, only, as I have previously explained, ritualistic "meddling" of the kind that both Russia and America have undertaken in the other's elections for decades. Little can be more phobic than the allegation or belief that one has been "attacked by a hostile" entity. And yet this myth and its false narrative persist in the Democratic Party's discourse, campaigning, and fund-raising.

We have also learned that the heads of America's intelligence agencies under President Obama, especially John Brennan of the CIA and James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, felt themselves entitled to try to undermine an American presidential candidacy and subsequent presidency, that of Donald Trump. Early on, I termed this operation "Intelgate," and it has since been well documented by other writers, including Lee Smith in his new book. Intel officials did so in tacit alliance with certain leading, and equally Russophobic, members of the Democratic Party, which had once opposed such transgressions. This may be the most alarming revelation of the Trump years: Trump will leave power, but these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will remain.
We also learned that, contrary to Democratic dogma, the mainstream "free press" cannot be fully trusted to readily expose such abuses of power. Indeed, what the mainstream media -- leading national newspapers and two cable news networks, in particular -- chose to cover and report, and chose not to cover and report, made the abuses and consequences of Russiagate allegations possible. Even now, exceedingly influential publications such as The New York Times seem eager to delegitimize the investigation by Attorney General William Barr and his appointed special investigator John Durham into the origins of Russiagate. Barr's critics accuse him of fabricating a "conspiracy theory" on behalf of Trump. But the real, or grandest, conspiracy theory was the Russiagate allegation of "collusion" between Trump and the Kremlin, an accusation that was -- or should have been -- discredited by the Robert Mueller report.

And we have learned, or should have learned, that for all the talk by Democrats about Trump as a danger to US national security, it is their Russiagate allegations that truly endanger it. Consider two examples. Russia's new "hyper-sonic" missiles, which can elude US missile-defense systems, make new nuclear arms negotiations with Moscow imperative and urgent. If only for the sake of his legacy, Trump is likely to want to do so.But even if he is able to, will Trump be entrusted enough to conduct negotiations as successfully as did his predecessors in the White House, given the "Putin puppet" and "Kremlin stooge" accusations still being directed at him?"
https://www.thenation.com/article/inconvenient-truths-2/

ilsm -> JohnH... , November 29, 2019 at 09:19 AM
The Russia thingie/falsehoods are part of corrupt demrats assault on the US constitution. They are even now predicting their loss in 2020 due to "interference" and people wanting to know how corrupt the DNC [front running] select has been!

Demrat allies in the shadow revolving door government of neocon humbug factories are denouncing Trump for his ignoring their war mongering imperial objects.

RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to ilsm... , November 30, 2019 at 08:31 AM
"...assault on the US constitution..."

[Adding assault to injury? The US Constitution was damning enough on its own. What are they thinking inside the deep state apparatus? Don't they know that power and privilege is reserved for holders of wealth by the US Constitution? Who do they think that they are really working for?]

RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to JohnH... , November 30, 2019 at 08:26 AM
Friend ilsm may be less nuts than it appears, but friend ilsm is not less incomprehensible than it appears. Would it be out of place to thank you for ilsm's sake?

Our two-party system was largely useless after FDR, but our two-party system has been largely destructive since 1968. Let me know if anything really changes.

kurt -> RC (Ron) Weakley... , December 02, 2019 at 04:52 PM
It isn't our two party system - it is one of the two parties contained within. The "both sides" are bad is both demonstrably not accurate (with some exceptions that prove the rule) and requires ignoring the shattered norms of the last 10 years that came from only one side. Mitch McConnell is the most dangerous person in America. Trump and Pence are just useful idiots. But Trump is also corrupt and dangerous because he doesn't believe he is constrained by anything. And Mitch keeps proving him right.
RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to kurt... , December 03, 2019 at 07:00 AM
The cause goes back as far as Truman with roots all the way back to our nation's founding on the shoulders of slaves and a trail of tears, but "the shattered norms of the last 10 years that came from only one side" were the inevitable effect of a failed political system. When the US government has no obvious external enemies and imminent threats then it must manufacture them from within to maintain a meaningful commanding presence. Otherwise the government would be tasked with solving our nation's social and economic problems, which would be both costly and far too complicated for simple self-absorbed minds.
kurt -> RC (Ron) Weakley... , December 04, 2019 at 10:00 AM
I disagree. What the problem is now is that non-whites and women have taken some power - and in fact may be able to displace the white christian patriarchy (actually, I think as long as we can hang onto a free and fair democracy this is inevitable) and the white christian patriarchy is trying to rule from the minority via fascism and authoritarianism.
RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to kurt... , December 04, 2019 at 10:31 AM
I could almost understand this obsession had you never left Indiana, presumably Indianapolis or somewhere similar, but unlikely Gary. There is greater diversity in the US than just what you have seen. Every picture tells a story, and it is a different story for each.
RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to RC (Ron) Weakley... , December 04, 2019 at 10:34 AM
Overall the common ground that moves everyone everywhere is money, which in some cases is just a proxy for power and in other cases is a means to material satisfaction. If one already has power, then purchase can be had in reverse, money for power instead of power for money.
kurt -> RC (Ron) Weakley... , December 04, 2019 at 05:01 PM
This is a great explaination of why we need 1. independent regulatory agencies with power, 2. white collar crime enforcement 3. rule of law and most of all 4. an independent judiciary that is not overrun by ideologues and theocrats who ignore the first amendment wholesale.
JohnH -> kurt... , December 06, 2019 at 03:44 PM
It would have been nice if Obama has demonstrated his concern for the rule of law by frog marching banksters to Rikers, closing Guantanamo, and prosecuting CIA torturers.

But kurt is only concerned with the rule of law when his party is not in power typical partisan hack.

kurt -> RC (Ron) Weakley... , December 04, 2019 at 01:50 PM
I have been to every state except Alaska and have lived in the North East, Southwest, Midwest, South and California. My comment was about power structures - and the patriarchy of white supremacy and christianity. I am well aware of the diversity. Heck - I even lived next to the Great Checkerboard for 3 summers.

[Dec 06, 2019] For whom Fiona Hill really work?

Col. Lang wrote an excellent post on 'Who "debunked" the Biden conspiracy theories?' . I would like to suggest a companion post on 'Who defines "the national interests of the United States" '.
Dec 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

J , 26 November 2019 at 08:08 PM

Colonel,

Fiona Hill appears to be part of the Borg, not really sure which part she's affiliated. Some have called her a 'sleeper agent', but a sleeper for whom? British Intelligence agent of influence? Or an Israeli agent of influence, or maybe a Daniel Pipes trained NEOCON agent of influence? Any way one spins it, Fiona Hill has been undermining POTUS Trump while she was part of his NSC and his advisory team. Why her intense hatred of Putin? Does he happen to know through his nation's intelligence exactly who she is and whom she may be working on behalf of? The Skripal incident showed just how much that the British Government and Crown hate Russia. But why the intense British hatred of Russia, why?

Questions, so many questions regarding Ms. Hill and who she really works for.

[Dec 06, 2019] Putin derangement syndrome in full display: As a Catholic, I resent you using the word 'hate' said full of hate Nanci. "All roads lead to Putin," she told reporters.

Hating Putin became fashionable in Washington, DC. The fact that Obama wrecked Ukraine is, of course, is swiped under the rug.
Dec 06, 2019 | www.msn.com

Exiting the news conference as she was addressed, Pelosi turned around, walked up to the journalist -- James Rosen of Sinclair Broadcast Group -- and proceeded to wag her finger with scorn.

"As a Catholic, I resent you using the word 'hate' in a sentence that addresses me," she said. "Don't mess with me when it comes to words like that."

To Republicans eager to paint Democrats as out-of-control partisans, the forceful rebuttal was a sign of the speaker losing her grip.

"It's caused them to lose sight of why they got the majority," House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said of impeachment and Pelosi's outburst. "I think things are starting to unravel."

... ... ...

Indeed, Pelosi also has cast the constitutional clash in terms of defending an ally against Russia, calling the concerns raised by the whistleblower complaint the "aha moment" and repeating a phrase that she used in challenging Trump face-to-face at the White House in October.

"All roads lead to Putin," she told reporters.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a former CIA officer who was among the "national security freshmen" who pushed Pelosi toward supporting an impeachment inquiry, praised her handling of the process. From the beginning, she said, she asked Pelosi to ensure that the investigation was done in a strategic, efficient and serious manner, and she said Pelosi has followed through.

[Dec 06, 2019] So now when a President doesn't allow The Blob to dictate Ukraine policy it's an impeachable offense? Really?

Notable quotes:
"... Thanks again for making explicit what I have long known: To America, Ukraine is nothing but a weapon against Russia. The whole point of support for Ukraine is to make Russia bleed—doesn’t matter how many people die or suffer in the process or how much of Ukraine is destroyed. https://twitter.com/BBuchman_CNS/status/1202267180219478024 … ..."
"... So fomenting on a war on Russia's border is, it appears, self-evidently aids our national security. What's next? A war scare? Ramping up MH17? ..."
Dec 06, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

"'Our Democracy Is at Stake.' Pelosi Orders Democrats to Draft Articles of Impeachment Against Trump" [ Time ]. With autoplay video. ""The President abused his power for his own personal political benefit at the expense of our national security by withholding military aid and a crucial Oval Office meeting in exchange for an announcement of an investigation into his political rival." • So now when a President doesn't allow The Blob to dictate Ukraine policy it's an impeachable offense? Really? Yasha Levine quotes Democrat impeachment witness Karlan (see below) but the point is the same:

Yasha Levine ✔ @yashalevine

Thanks again for making explicit what I have long known: To America, Ukraine is nothing but a weapon against Russia. The whole point of support for Ukraine is to make Russia bleed—doesn’t matter how many people die or suffer in the process or how much of Ukraine is destroyed. https://twitter.com/BBuchman_CNS/status/1202267180219478024 …

So fomenting on a war on Russia's border is, it appears, self-evidently aids our national security. What's next? A war scare? Ramping up MH17?

"Read opening statements from witnesses at the House Judiciary hearing" [ Politico ]. "Democrats' impeachment witnesses at Wednesday's judiciary committee hearing plan to say in their prepared remarks that President Donald Trump's actions toward Ukraine were the worst examples of misconduct in presidential history." • So again, it's all about Ukraine. I feel like I've entered an alternate dimension. Aaron Maté comments:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/GkQDrYr4EZs

My very subjective impression: I've skimmed three, and read Turley. Karlan, in particular, is simply not a serious effort. Turley may be wrong -- a ton of tribal dunking on Twitter -- but at least he's making a serious effort. I'm gonna have to wait to see if somebody, say at Lawfare, does a serious effort on Turley. Everything I've read hitherto is and posturing and preaching to the choir. (Sad that Larry Tribe has so completely discredited himself, but that's where we are.)

While on Turley, see this from his testimony:

Hat tip to alert reader David in Santa Cruz for his early call on "inchoate":

Lambert, while Trump was unable to complete his attempt to extort the President of Ukraine, as someone who practiced the criminal law for 34 years, let me be the first to clue you in to the concept in the criminal law of the inchoate offense . This is criminal law, not contract law.

An inchoate offense includes an attempt, a conspiracy, and the solicitation of a crime. All focus on the state of mind of the perpetrator, and none require that the offense be completed -- only that a person or persons having the required criminal intent took material steps toward completing the crime. Such a person becomes a principal in the contemplated crime, and in the eyes of the law is just as guilty as if he or she had completed the attempted offense.

(The details of Trump's offense differ from what David in Santa Cruz said they would be.) "Inchoate" appears only in Turley's piece, indicating, to me, that his was the only serious effort.

[Dec 06, 2019] OPCW. Corrupted over Douma, how about Skripal?

Dec 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Helmer tweets: " British Ministry of Defence document reveals it is missing chain of custody over Skripal blood samples which the ministry's DSTL laboratory at Porton Down claims to prove a Russian Novichok attack. Publishing shortly ." Somebody could have added " type A-234 nerve agent in its virgin state" or BZ to the sample? Nah, who'd do that?

[Dec 04, 2019] The central question of Ukrainegate is whether CrowdStrike actions on DNC leak were a false flag operation designed to open Russiagate and what was the level of participation of Poroshenko government and Ukrainian Security services in this false flag operation by Factotum

Highly recommended!
Highly recommended !
Republicans are afraid to raise this key question. Democrats are afraid of even mentioning CrowdStrike in Ukrainegate hearings. The Deep State wants to suppress this matter entirely.
Alperovisch connections to Ukraine and his Russophobia are well known. Did Alperovich people played the role of "Fancy Bear"? Or Ukrainian SBU was engaged? George Eliason clams that "I have already clearly shown the Fancy Bear hackers are Ukrainian Intelligence Operators." ... "Since there is so much crap surrounding the supposed hack such as law enforcement teams never examining the DNC server or maintaining control of it as evidence, could the hacks have been a cover-up?"
Notable quotes:
"... So far at least I cannot rule out the possibility that that this could have involved an actual 'false flag' hack. A possible calculation would have been that this could have made it easier for Alperovitch and 'CrowdStrike', if more people had asked serious questions about the evidence they claimed supported the 'narrative' of GRU responsibility. ..."
"... What she suggested was that the FBI had found evidence, after his death, of a hack of Rich's laptop, designed as part of a 'false flag' operation. ..."
"... On this, see his 8 October, 'Motion for Discovery and Motion to Accept Supplemental Evidence' in Clevenger's own case against the DOJ, document 44 on the relevant 'Courtlistener' pages, and his 'Unopposed Motion for Stay', document 48. Both are short, and available without a 'PACER' subscription, and should be compulsory reading for anyone seriously interested in ascertaining the truth about 'Russiagate.' (See https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6775665/clevenger-v-us-department-of-justice/ .) ..."
"... And here, is is also material that he may have had more than one laptop, that 'hard drives' can be changed, and that the level of computer skills that can be found throughout the former Soviet Union is very high. Another matter of some importance is that Ed Butowsky's 'Debunking Rod Wheeler's Claims' site is back up online. (See http://debunkingrodwheelersclaims.net ) ..."
"... The question of whether the 'timeline' produced by Hersh's FBI informant was accurate, or a deliberate attempt to disguise the fact that all kinds of people were well aware of Rich's involvement before his murder, and well aware of the fact of a leak before he was identified as its source, is absolutely central to how one interprets 'Russiagate.' ..."
"... Why did Crowdstrike conclude it was a "Russian breach", when other evidence does show it was an internal download. What was Crowdstrike's method and motivation to reach the "Russian" conclusion instead. Why has that methodology been sealed? ..."
"... Why did Mueller wholly accept the Crowdstrike Russian conclusion, with no further or independent investigation and prominently put this Crowdstrike generated conclusion in his Russiagate report? Which also included the conclusion the "Russians" wanted to help Trump and harm Clinton. Heavy stuff, based upon a DNC proprietary investigation of their own and unavailable computers. ..."
"... What were the relationships between Crowdstrike, DNC, FBI and the Mueller team that conspired to reach this Russian conclusion. ..."
"... Why did the Roger Stone judge, who just sent Stone away for life, refuse Stone's evidentiary demand to ascertain how exactly Crowdstrike reached its Russsian hacking conclusion, that the court then linked to Stone allegedly lying about this Russian link ..."
"... Indeed, let's set out with full transparency the Ukraine -- Crowsdtrike player links and loyalties to see if there are any smoking guns yet undisclosed. Trump was asking for more information about Crowdstrike like a good lawyer - never ask a question when you don't already know the right answer. Crowdstrike is owned by a Ukrainian by birth ..."
"... Among the 12 engineers assigned to writing a PGP backdoor was the son of a KGB officer named Dmitri Alperovich who would go on to be the CTO at a company involved in the DNC Hacking scandal - Crowdstrike. ..."
"... In addition to writing a back door for PGP, Alperovich also ported PGP to the blackberry platform to provide encrypted communications for covert action operatives. ..."
"... His role in what we may define as "converting DNC leak into DNC hack" (I would agree with you that this probably was a false flag operation), which was supposedly designed to implicated Russians, and possibly involved Ukrainian security services, is very suspicious indeed. ..."
"... Mueller treatment of Crowdstrike with "kid gloves" may suggest that Alperovich actions were part of a larger scheme. After all Crowdstike was a FBI contactor at the time. ..."
Dec 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Originally from: The Intelligence Whistleblower protection Act did not apply to the phone call ... Reposted - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Factotum , 20 November 2019 at 01:02 PM

The favor was for Ukraine to investigate Crowdstrike and the 2016 DNC computer breach.

Reliance on Crowdstrike to investigate the DNC computer, and not an independent FBI investigation, was tied very closely to the years long anti-Trump Russiagate hoax and waste of US taxpayer time and money.

Why is this issue ignored by both the media and the Democrats. The ladies doth protest far too much.

vig -> Factotum... , 21 November 2019 at 11:00 AM
what exactly, to the extend I recall, could the Ukraine contribute the the DNC's server/"fake malware" troubles? Beyond, that I seem to vaguely recall, the supposed malware was distributed via an Ukrainan address.

On the other hand, there seems to be the (consensus here?) argument there was no malware breach at all, simply an insider copying files on a USB stick.

It seems to either or. No?

What basics am I missing?

David Habakkuk -> vig... , 21 November 2019 at 12:53 PM
vig,

There is no reason why it should be 'either/or'.

If people discovered there had been a leak, it would perfectly natural that in order to give 'resilience' to their cover-up strategies, they could have organised a planting of evidence on the servers, in conjunction with elements in Ukraine.

So far at least I cannot rule out the possibility that that this could have involved an actual 'false flag' hack. A possible calculation would have been that this could have made it easier for Alperovitch and 'CrowdStrike', if more people had asked serious questions about the evidence they claimed supported the 'narrative' of GRU responsibility.

The issues involved become all the more important, in the light of the progress of Ty Clevenger's attempts to exploit the clear contradiction between the claims by the FBI, in response to FOIA requests, to have no evidence relating to Seth Rich, and the remarks by Ms. Deborah Sines quoted by Michael Isikoff.

What she suggested was that the FBI had found evidence, after his death, of a hack of Rich's laptop, designed as part of a 'false flag' operation.

On this, see his 8 October, 'Motion for Discovery and Motion to Accept Supplemental Evidence' in Clevenger's own case against the DOJ, document 44 on the relevant 'Courtlistener' pages, and his 'Unopposed Motion for Stay', document 48. Both are short, and available without a 'PACER' subscription, and should be compulsory reading for anyone seriously interested in ascertaining the truth about 'Russiagate.' (See https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6775665/clevenger-v-us-department-of-justice/ .)

It is eminently possible that Ms. Hines has simply made an 'unforced error.'

However, I do not – yet – feel able totally to discount the possibility that what is actually at issue is a 'ruse', produced as a contingency plan to ensure that if it becomes impossible to maintain the cover-up over Rich's involvement in its original form, his laptop shows 'evidence' compatible with the 'Russiagate' narrative.

And here, is is also material that he may have had more than one laptop, that 'hard drives' can be changed, and that the level of computer skills that can be found throughout the former Soviet Union is very high. Another matter of some importance is that Ed Butowsky's 'Debunking Rod Wheeler's Claims' site is back up online. (See http://debunkingrodwheelersclaims.net )

Looking at it from the perspective of an old television current affairs hack, I do think that, while it is very helpful to have some key material available in a single place, it would useful if more attention was paid to presentation.

In particular, it would be a most helpful 'teaching aid', if a full and accurate transcript was made of the conversation with Seymour Hersh which Ed Butowsky covertly recorded. What seems clear is that both these figures ended up in very difficult positions, and that the latter clearly engaged in 'sleight of hand' in relation to his dealings with the former. That said, the fact that Butowsky's claims about his grounds for believing that Hersh's FBI informant was Andrew McCabe are clearly disingenuous does not justify the conclusion that he is wrong.

It is absolutely clear to me – despite what 'TTG', following that 'Grub Street' hack Folkenflik, claimed – that when Hersh talked to Butowsky, he believed he had been given accurate information. Indeed, I have difficulty seeing how anyone whose eyes were not hopelessly blinded by prejudice, a\nd possibly fear of where a quest for the truth might lead, could not see that, in this conversation, both men were telling the truth, as they saw it.

However, all of us, including the finest and most honourable of journalists can, from time to time, fall for disinformation. (If anyone says they can always spot when they are being played, all I can say is, if you're right, you're clearly Superman, but it is more likely that you are a fool or knave, if not both.)

The question of whether the 'timeline' produced by Hersh's FBI informant was accurate, or a deliberate attempt to disguise the fact that all kinds of people were well aware of Rich's involvement before his murder, and well aware of the fact of a leak before he was identified as its source, is absolutely central to how one interprets 'Russiagate.'

Factotum -> vig... , 21 November 2019 at 01:45 PM
Several loose end issues about Crowdstrike:

1. Why did Crowdstrike conclude it was a "Russian breach", when other evidence does show it was an internal download. What was Crowdstrike's method and motivation to reach the "Russian" conclusion instead. Why has that methodology been sealed?

2. Why did Mueller wholly accept the Crowdstrike Russian conclusion, with no further or independent investigation and prominently put this Crowdstrike generated conclusion in his Russiagate report? Which also included the conclusion the "Russians" wanted to help Trump and harm Clinton. Heavy stuff, based upon a DNC proprietary investigation of their own and unavailable computers.

3. What were the relationships between Crowdstrike, DNC, FBI and the Mueller team that conspired to reach this Russian conclusion.

4. Why did the Roger Stone judge, who just sent Stone away for life, refuse Stone's evidentiary demand to ascertain how exactly Crowdstrike reached its Russsian hacking conclusion, that the court then linked to Stone allegedly lying about this Russian link .

5. Indeed, let's set out with full transparency the Ukraine -- Crowsdtrike player links and loyalties to see if there are any smoking guns yet undisclosed. Trump was asking for more information about Crowdstrike like a good lawyer - never ask a question when you don't already know the right answer. Crowdstrike is owned by a Ukrainian by birth .

likbez said in reply to Factotum... , 04 December 2019 at 01:29 AM

Hi Factotum,
Why did Mueller wholly accept the Crowdstrike Russian conclusion, with no further or independent investigation and prominently put this Crowdstrike generated conclusion in his Russiagate report? Which also included the conclusion the "Russians" wanted to help Trump and harm Clinton. Heavy stuff, based upon a DNC proprietary investigation of their own and unavailable computers.

Alperovich is really a very suspicious figure. Rumors are that he was involved in compromising PGP while in MacAfee( June 2nd, 2018 Alperovich's DNC Cover Stories Soon To Match With His Hacking Teams - YouTube ):

Investigative Journalist George Webb worked at MacAfee and Network Solutions in 2000 when the CEO Bill Larsen bought a small, Moscow based, hacking and virus writing company to move to Silicon Valley.

MacAfee also purchased PGP, an open source encryption software developed by privacy advocate to reduce NSA spying on the public.
The two simultaneous purchase of PGP and the Moscow hacking team by Metwork Solutions was sponsored by the CIA and FBI in order to crack encrypted communications to write a back door for law enforcement.

Among the 12 engineers assigned to writing a PGP backdoor was the son of a KGB officer named Dmitri Alperovich who would go on to be the CTO at a company involved in the DNC Hacking scandal - Crowdstrike.

In addition to writing a back door for PGP, Alperovich also ported PGP to the blackberry platform to provide encrypted communications for covert action operatives.

His role in what we may define as "converting DNC leak into DNC hack" (I would agree with you that this probably was a false flag operation), which was supposedly designed to implicated Russians, and possibly involved Ukrainian security services, is very suspicious indeed.

Mueller treatment of Crowdstrike with "kid gloves" may suggest that Alperovich actions were part of a larger scheme. After all Crowdstike was a FBI contactor at the time.

While all this DNC hack saga is completely unclear due to lack of facts and the access to the evidence, there are some stories on Internet that indirectly somewhat strengthen your hypothesis:

Enjoy and Happy Cyber Week shopping :-)

[Dec 04, 2019] Responding to Lt. Col. Vindman about my Ukraine columns with the facts John Solomon Reports

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Fact 10 : Shokin stated in interviews with me and ABC News that he was told he was fired because Joe Biden was unhappy the Burisma investigation wasn't shut down. He made that claim anew in this sworn deposition prepared for a court in Europe. You can read that here . ..."
"... Fact 11 : The day Shokin's firing was announced in March 2016, Burisma's legal representatives sought an immediate meeting with his temporary replacement to address the ongoing investigation. You can read the text of their emails here . ..."
"... Fact 13 : Burisma officials eventually settled the Ukraine investigations in late 2016 and early 2017, paying a multimillion dollar fine for tax issues. You can read their lawyer's February 2017 announcement of the end of the investigations here . ..."
"... Fact 15 : The Ukraine embassy in Washington issued a statement in April 2019 admitting that a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa solicited Ukrainian officials in spring 2016 for dirt on Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in hopes of staging a congressional hearing close to the 2016 election that would damage Trump's election chances. You can read the embassy's statement here and here . Your colleague, Dr. Fiona Hill, confirmed this episode, testifying "Ukraine bet on the wrong horse. They bet on Hillary Clinton winning." You can read her testimony here . ..."
"... Fact 18 : A Ukrainian district court ruled in December 2018 that the summer 2016 release of information by Ukrainian Parliamentary member Sergey Leschenko and NABU director Artem Sytnyk about an ongoing investigation of Manafort amounted to an improper interference by Ukraine's government in the 2016 U.S. election. You can read the court ruling here . Leschenko and Sytnyk deny the allegations, and have won an appeal to suspend that ruling on a jurisdictional technicality. ..."
"... Fact 21 : In April 2016, US embassy charge d'affaires George Kent sent a letter to the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office demanding that Ukrainian prosecutors stand down a series of investigations into how Ukrainian nonprofits spent U.S. aid dollars, including the Anti-Corruption Actions Centre. You can read that letter here . Kent testified he signed the letter here . ..."
"... Fact 22 : Then-Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said in a televised interview with me that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch during a 2016 meeting provided the lists of names of Ukrainian nationals and groups she did want to see prosecuted. You can see I accurately quoted him by watching the video here . ..."
"... Fact 27 : In May 2016, one of George Soros' top aides secured a meeting with the top Eurasia policy official in the State Department to discuss Russian bond issues. You can read the State memos on that meeting here . ..."
"... Fact 28 : In June 2016, Soros himself secured a telephonic meeting with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to discuss Ukraine policy. You can read the State memos on that meeting here . ..."
Dec 04, 2019 | johnsolomonreports.com

honor and applaud Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman's service to his country. He's a hero. I also respect his decision to testify at the impeachment proceedings. I suspect neither his service nor his testimony was easy.

But I also know the liberties that Lt. Col. Vindman fought on the battlefield to preserve permit for a free and honest debate in America, one that can't be muted by the color of uniform or the crushing power of the state.

So I want to exercise my right to debate Lt. Col. Vindman about the testimony he gave about me. You see, under oath to Congress, he asserted all the factual elements in my columns at The Hill about Ukraine were false, except maybe my grammar

Here are his exact words:

"I think all the key elements were false," Vindman testified.

Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y, pressed him about what he meant. "Just so I understand what you mean when you say key elements, are you referring to everything John Solomon stated or just some of it?"

"All the elements that I just laid out for you. The criticisms of corruption were false . Were there more items in there, frankly, congressman? I don't recall. I haven't looked at the article in quite some time, but you know, his grammar might have been right."

Such testimony has been injurious to my reputation, one earned during 30 years of impactful reporting for news organizations that included The Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Daily Beast/Newsweek.

And so Lt. Col. Vindman, here are the 28 primary factual elements in my Ukraine columns, complete with attribution and links to sourcing. Please tell me which, if any, was factually wrong.

  • Fact 1 : Hunter Biden was hired in May 2014 by Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company, at a time when his father Joe Biden was Vice President and overseeing US-Ukraine Policy. Here is the announcement. Hunter Biden's hiring came just a few short weeks after Joe Biden urged Ukraine to expand natural gas production and use Americans to help. You can read his comments to the Ukrainian prime minister here . Hunter Biden's firm then began receiving monthly payments totaling $166,666. You can see those payments here .
  • Fact 2 : Burisma was under investigation by British authorities for corruption and soon came under investigation by Ukrainian authorities led by Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
  • Fact 3 : Vice President Joe Biden and his office were alerted by a December 2015 New York Times article that Shokin's office was investigating Burisma and that Hunter Biden's role at the company was undercutting his father's anticorruption efforts in Ukraine.
  • Fact 4 : The Biden-Burisma issue created the appearance of a conflict of interest, especially for State Department officials. I especially refer you to State official George Kent's testimony here . He testified he viewed Burisma as corrupt and the Bidens as creating the perception of a conflict of interest. His concerns both caused him to contact the vice president's office and to block a project that State's USAID agency was planning with Burisma in 2016. In addition, Ambassador Yovanovitch testified she, too, saw the Bidens-Burisma connection as creating the appearance of a conflict of interest. You can read her testimony here .
  • Fact 5 : The Obama White House invited Shokin's prosecutorial team to Washington for meetings in January 2016 to discuss their anticorruption investigations. You can read about that here . Also, here is the official agenda for that meeting in Ukraine and English . I call your attention to the NSC organizer of the meeting.
  • Fact 6 : The Ukraine investigation of Hunter Biden's employer, Burisma Holdings, escalated in February 2016 when Shokin's office raided the home of company owner Mykola Zlochevsky and seized his property. Here is the announcement of that court-approved raid.
  • Fact 7 : Shokin was making plans in February 2016 to interview Hunter Biden as part of his investigation. You can read his interview with me here, his sworn deposition to a court here and his interview with ABC News here .
  • Fact 8 : Burisma's American representatives lobbied the State Department in late February 2016 to help end the corruption allegations against the company, and specifically invoked Hunter Biden's name as a reason to intervene. You can read State officials' account of that effort here
  • Fact 9 : Joe Biden boasted in a 2018 videotape that he forced Ukraine's president to fire Shokin in March 2016 by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid. You can view his videotape here .
  • Fact 10 : Shokin stated in interviews with me and ABC News that he was told he was fired because Joe Biden was unhappy the Burisma investigation wasn't shut down. He made that claim anew in this sworn deposition prepared for a court in Europe. You can read that here .
  • Fact 11 : The day Shokin's firing was announced in March 2016, Burisma's legal representatives sought an immediate meeting with his temporary replacement to address the ongoing investigation. You can read the text of their emails here .
  • Fact 12 : Burisma's legal representatives secured that meeting April 6, 2016 and told Ukrainian prosecutors that "false information" had been spread to justify Shokin's firing, according to a Ukrainian government memo about the meeting. The representatives also offered to arrange for the remaining Ukrainian prosecutors to meet with U.S State and Justice officials. You can read the Ukrainian prosecutors' summary memo of the meeting here and here and the Burisma lawyers' invite to Washington here .
  • Fact 13 : Burisma officials eventually settled the Ukraine investigations in late 2016 and early 2017, paying a multimillion dollar fine for tax issues. You can read their lawyer's February 2017 announcement of the end of the investigations here .
  • Fact 14 : In March 2019, Ukraine authorities reopened an investigation against Burisma and Zlochevsky based on new evidence of money laundering. You can read NABU's February 2019 recommendation to re-open the case here , the March 2019 notice of suspicion by Ukraine prosecutors here and a May 2019 interview here with a Ukrainian senior law enforcement official stating the investigation was ongoing. And here is an announcement this week that the Zlochevsky/Burisma probe has been expanded to include allegations of theft of Ukrainian state funds.
  • Fact 15 : The Ukraine embassy in Washington issued a statement in April 2019 admitting that a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa solicited Ukrainian officials in spring 2016 for dirt on Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in hopes of staging a congressional hearing close to the 2016 election that would damage Trump's election chances. You can read the embassy's statement here and here . Your colleague, Dr. Fiona Hill, confirmed this episode, testifying "Ukraine bet on the wrong horse. They bet on Hillary Clinton winning." You can read her testimony here .
  • Fact 16 : Chalupa sent an email to top DNC officials in May 2016 acknowledging she was working on the Manafort issue. You can read the email here .
  • Fact 17 : Ukraine's ambassador to Washington, Valeriy Chaly, wrote an OpEd in The Hill in August 2016 slamming GOP nominee Donald Trump for his policies on Russia despite a Geneva Convention requirement that ambassadors not become embroiled in the internal affairs or elections of their host countries. You can read Ambassador Chaly's OpEd here and the Geneva Convention rules of conduct for foreign diplomats here . And your colleagues Ambassador Yovanovitch and Dr. Hill both confirmed this, with Dr. Hill testifying this week that Chaly's OpEd was "probably not the most advisable thing to do."
  • Fact 18 : A Ukrainian district court ruled in December 2018 that the summer 2016 release of information by Ukrainian Parliamentary member Sergey Leschenko and NABU director Artem Sytnyk about an ongoing investigation of Manafort amounted to an improper interference by Ukraine's government in the 2016 U.S. election. You can read the court ruling here . Leschenko and Sytnyk deny the allegations, and have won an appeal to suspend that ruling on a jurisdictional technicality.
  • Fact 19 : George Soros' Open Society Foundation issued a memo in February 2016 on its strategy for Ukraine, identifying the nonprofit Anti-Corruption Action Centre as the lead for its efforts. You can read the memo here .
  • Fact 20 : The State Department and Soros' foundation jointly funded the Anti-Corruption Action Centre. You can read about that funding here from the Centre's own funding records and George Kent's testimony about it here .
  • Fact 21 : In April 2016, US embassy charge d'affaires George Kent sent a letter to the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office demanding that Ukrainian prosecutors stand down a series of investigations into how Ukrainian nonprofits spent U.S. aid dollars, including the Anti-Corruption Actions Centre. You can read that letter here . Kent testified he signed the letter here .
  • Fact 22 : Then-Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said in a televised interview with me that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch during a 2016 meeting provided the lists of names of Ukrainian nationals and groups she did want to see prosecuted. You can see I accurately quoted him by watching the video here .
  • Fact 23 : Ambassador Yovanovitch and her embassy denied Lutsenko's claim, calling it a "fabrication." I reported their reaction here .
  • Fact 24 : Despite the differing accounts of what happened at the Lutsenko-Yovanovitch meeting, a senior U.S. official in an interview arranged by the State Department stated to me in spring 2019 that US officials did pressure Lutsenko's office on several occasions not to "prosecute, investigate or harass" certain Ukrainian activists, including Parliamentary member Leschenko, journalist Vitali Shabunin, the Anti-Corruption Action Centre and NABU director Sytnyk. You can read that official's comments here . In addition, George Kent confirmed this same information in his deposition here .
  • Fact 25 : In May 2018, then-House Rules Committee chairman Pete Sessions sent an official congressional letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking that Yovanovitch be recalled as ambassador to Ukraine. Sessions and State confirmed the official letter, which you can read here .
  • Fact 26 : In fall 2018, Ukrainian prosecutors, using a third party, hired an American lawyer (a former U.S. attorney) to proffer information to the U.S. government about certain activities at the U.S. embassy, involving Burisma and involving the 2016 election, that they believed might have violated U.S. law. You can read their account here . You can also confirm it independently by talking to the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan or the American lawyer representing the Ukrainian prosecutors' interests.
  • Fact 27 : In May 2016, one of George Soros' top aides secured a meeting with the top Eurasia policy official in the State Department to discuss Russian bond issues. You can read the State memos on that meeting here .
  • Fact 28 : In June 2016, Soros himself secured a telephonic meeting with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to discuss Ukraine policy. You can read the State memos on that meeting here .

Lt. Col. Vindman, if you have information that contradicts any of these 28 factual elements in my columns I ask that you make it publicly available. Your testimony did not.

If you don't have evidence these 28 facts are wrong, I ask that you correct your testimony because any effort to call factually accurate reporting false only misleads America and chills the free debate our Constitutional framers so cherished to protect.

[Dec 04, 2019] Ukrainegaters claim that Trump Reduced the USA empire 'Global Commitments' was fraudulent from the very beginning. Trump is yet another imperial president who favours the "Full spectrum Dominance; The problem is that the time when the USA can have it are in the past. Europe finally recovered from WWII losses and that alone dooms the idea

Highly recommended!
Pelosi interference in elections might cost democrats a victory. She enraged Trump base and strengthened Trump, who before was floundering. Now election changed into "us vs them" question, which is very unfavorable to neoliberal Dems. as neolibelism as ideology is dead. She also brought back Trump some independents who othersie would stay home or vote for Dem candidate. No action of House of Representatives can changes this. Bringing Vindman and Fiona Hill to testify were huge blunders as they enhance the narrative that the Deep State, unaccountable Security Establishment, controls the government, to which Trump represents very weak, but still a challenge. As such they strengthened Trump
Essentially Dems had driven themselves into a trap. Moreover actions of the Senate can drag democrats in dirt till the elections, diminishing their chances further and firther. Can you image the effect if Schiff would be called testify under oath about his contacts with Ciaramella? Or Biden questioning about his dirty dealing with both Yanukovich administration and Provisional Government after the 2014 coup d'état (aka EuroMaydan, aka "the Revolution of dignity" ?
Notable quotes:
"... It is true that both Obama and Trump have been falsely accused of presiding over "withdrawal" and "retreat." In Obama's case, Republican hawks made this false claim so that they could attack a fantasy version of Obama's record instead of arguing against the real one. Members of the foreign policy establishment have been warning about Trump's supposed "isolationism" for four years and it still hasn't shown up. Both presidents have been criticized in such similar ways despite conducting significantly different foreign policies because these are the automatic, knee-jerk criticisms that pundits and analysts use to criticize a president. ..."
"... Because there is a strong bias in favor of "action" and "leadership," the only way most of these people know how to attack a president is to say that he is "failing" to "lead" and is guilty of "inaction." It doesn't matter if it makes sense or matches the facts. It is the safe, Blobby way to complain about a president's foreign policy without suggesting that you think there is something wrong with the underlying assumptions about the U.S. role in the world. Instead of challenging the presidents on their real records, it is easier to condemn non-existent "isolationism" and pretend that presidents that maintain or increase U.S. involvement overseas are reducing it. ..."
"... We should debate whether U.S. commitments overseas need to be reduced, but we really have to stop pretending that the U.S. has been reducing those commitments when it has actually been adding to them. ..."
Dec 04, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Originally from: The U.S. Has Not Reduced Its 'Global Commitments' The American Conservative by Daniel Larison

Gideon Rachman tries to find similarities between the foreign policies of Trump and Obama:

Both men would detest the thought. But, in crucial respects, the foreign policies of Donald Trump and Barack Obama are looking strikingly similar.

The wildly different styles of the two presidents have disguised the underlying continuities between their approaches to the world. But look at substance, rather than style, and the similarities are impressive.

There is usually considerable continuity in U.S. foreign policy from one president to another, but Rachman is making a stronger and somewhat different claim than that. He is arguing that their foreign policy agendas are very much alike in ways that put both presidents at odds with the foreign policy establishment, and he cites "disengagement from the Middle East" and a "pivot to Asia" as two examples of these similarities. This seems superficially plausible, but it is misleading. Despite talking a lot about disengagement, Obama and Trump chose to keep the U.S. involved in several conflicts, and Trump actually escalated the wars he inherited from Obama. To the extent that there is continuity between Obama and Trump, it has been that both of them have acceded to the conventional wisdom of "the Blob" and refused to disentangle the U.S. from Middle Eastern conflicts. Ongoing support for the war on Yemen is the ugliest and most destructive example of this continuity.

In reality, neither Obama nor Trump "focused" on Asia, and Trump's foray into pseudo-engagement with North Korea has little in common with Obama's would-be "pivot" or "rebalance." U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a major part of Obama's policy in Asia. Trump pulled out of that agreement and waged destructive trade wars instead. Once we get past generalizations and look at details, the two presidents are often diametrically opposed to one another in practice. That is what one would expect when we remember that Trump has made dismantling Obama's foreign policy achievements one of his main priorities.

The significant differences between the two become much more apparent when we look at other issues. On arms control and nonproliferation, the two could not be more different. Obama negotiated a new arms reduction treaty with New START at the start of his presidency, and he wrapped up a major nonproliferation agreement with Iran and the other members of the P5+1 in 2015. Trump reneged on the latter and seems determined to kill the former. Obama touted the benefits of genuine diplomatic engagement, while Trump has made a point of reversing and undoing most of the results of Obama's engagement with Cuba and Iran. Trump's overall hostility to genuine diplomacy makes another one of Rachman claims quite baffling:

The result is that, after his warlike "fire and fury" phase, Mr Trump is now pursuing a diplomacy-first strategy that is strongly reminiscent of Mr Obama.

Calling Trump's clumsy pattern of making threats and ultimatums a "diplomacy-first strategy" is a mistake. This is akin to saying that he is adhering to foreign policy restraint because the U.S. hasn't invaded any new countries on Trump's watch. It takes something true (Trump hasn't started a new war yet) and misrepresents it as proof that the president is serious about diplomacy and that he wants to reduce U.S. military engagement overseas. Trump enjoys the spectacle of meeting with foreign leaders, but he isn't interested in doing the work or taking the risks that successful diplomacy requires. He has shown repeatedly through his own behavior, his policy preferences, and his proposed budgets that he has no use for diplomacy or diplomats, and instead he expects to be able to bully or flatter adversaries into submission.

So Rachman is simply wrong he reaches this conclusion:

Mr Trump's reluctance to attack Iran was significant. It underlines the fact that his tough-guy rhetoric disguises a strong preference for diplomacy over force.

Let's recall that the near-miss of starting a war with Iran came as a result of the downing of an unmanned drone. The fact that the U.S. was seriously considering an attack on another country over the loss of a drone is a worrisome sign that this administration is prepared to go to war at the drop of a hat. Calling off such an insane attack was the right thing to do, but there should never have been an attack to call off. That episode does not show a "strong preference for diplomacy over force." If Trump had a strong preference for diplomacy over force, his policy would not be one of relentless hostility towards Iran. Trump does not believe in diplomatic compromise, but expects the other side to capitulate under pressure. That actually makes conflict more likely and reduces the chances of meaningful negotiations.

It is true that both Obama and Trump have been falsely accused of presiding over "withdrawal" and "retreat." In Obama's case, Republican hawks made this false claim so that they could attack a fantasy version of Obama's record instead of arguing against the real one. Members of the foreign policy establishment have been warning about Trump's supposed "isolationism" for four years and it still hasn't shown up. Both presidents have been criticized in such similar ways despite conducting significantly different foreign policies because these are the automatic, knee-jerk criticisms that pundits and analysts use to criticize a president.

Because there is a strong bias in favor of "action" and "leadership," the only way most of these people know how to attack a president is to say that he is "failing" to "lead" and is guilty of "inaction." It doesn't matter if it makes sense or matches the facts. It is the safe, Blobby way to complain about a president's foreign policy without suggesting that you think there is something wrong with the underlying assumptions about the U.S. role in the world. Instead of challenging the presidents on their real records, it is easier to condemn non-existent "isolationism" and pretend that presidents that maintain or increase U.S. involvement overseas are reducing it.

Rachman ends his column with this assertion:

In their very different ways, both Mr Obama and Mr Trump have reduced America's global commitments -- and adjusted the US to a more modest international role.

The problem here is that there has been no meaningful reduction in America's "global commitments." Which commitments have been reduced or eliminated? It would be helpful if someone could be specific about this. The U.S. has more security dependents today than it did when Trump took office. NATO has been expanded to include two new countries in just the last three years. U.S. troops are engaged in hostilities in just as many countries as they were when Trump was elected. There are more troops deployed to the Middle East at the end of this year than there were at the beginning, and that is a direct consequence of Trump's bankrupt Iran policy.

We should debate whether U.S. commitments overseas need to be reduced, but we really have to stop pretending that the U.S. has been reducing those commitments when it has actually been adding to them.

[Dec 04, 2019] Common Funding Themes Link 'Whistleblower' Complaint and CrowdStrike Firm Certifying DNC Russia 'Hack' by Aaron Klein

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, which takes a hawkish approach toward Russia. The Council in turn is financed by Google Inc. ..."
"... In a perhaps unexpected development, another Atlantic Council funder is Burisma, the natural gas company at the center of allegations regarding Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Those allegations were the subject of Trump's inquiry with Zelemsky related to Biden. The Biden allegations concern significant questions about Biden's role in Ukraine policy under the Obama administration. This took place during a period when Hunter Biden received $50,000 a month from Burisma. ..."
"... Google, Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Fund and an agency of the State Department each also finance a self-described investigative journalism organization repeatedly referenced as a source of information in the so-called whistleblower's complaint alleging Trump was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 presidential race. ..."
"... Another listed OCCRP funder is the Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. ..."
"... Together with Soros's Open Society, Omidyar also funds the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which hosts the International Fact-Checking Network that partnered with Facebook to help determine whether news stories are "disputed." ..."
Sep 28, 2019 | www.breitbart.com

There are common threads that run through an organization repeatedly relied upon in the so-called whistleblower's complaint about President Donald Trump and CrowdStrike, the outside firm utilized to conclude that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee's servers since the DNC would not allow the U.S. government to inspect the servers.

One of several themes is financing tied to Google, whose Google Capital led a $100 million funding drive that financed Crowdstrike. Google Capital, which now goes by the name of CapitalG, is an arm of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Alphabet, has been a staunch and active supporter of Hillary Clinton and is a longtime donor to the Democratic Party.

CrowdStrike was mentioned by Trump in his call with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign, reportedly helped draft CrowdStrike to aid with the DNC's allegedly hacked server.

On behalf of the DNC and Clinton's campaign, Perkins Coie also paid the controversial Fusion GPS firm to produce the infamous, largely-discredited anti-Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.

CrowdStrike is a California-based cybersecurity technology company co-founded by Dmitri Alperovitch.

Alperovitch is a nonresident senior fellow of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, which takes a hawkish approach toward Russia. The Council in turn is financed by Google Inc.

In a perhaps unexpected development, another Atlantic Council funder is Burisma, the natural gas company at the center of allegations regarding Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Those allegations were the subject of Trump's inquiry with Zelemsky related to Biden. The Biden allegations concern significant questions about Biden's role in Ukraine policy under the Obama administration. This took place during a period when Hunter Biden received $50,000 a month from Burisma.

Besides Google and Burisma funding, the Council is also financed by billionaire activist George Soros's Open Society Foundations as well as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc. and the U.S. State Department.

Google, Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Fund and an agency of the State Department each also finance a self-described investigative journalism organization repeatedly referenced as a source of information in the so-called whistleblower's complaint alleging Trump was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" in the 2020 presidential race.

The charges in the July 22 report referenced in the whistleblower's document and released by the Google and Soros-funded organization, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), seem to be the public precursors for a lot of the so-called whistleblower's own claims, as Breitbart News documented .

One key section of the so-called whistleblower's document claims that "multiple U.S. officials told me that Mr. Giuliani had reportedly privately reached out to a variety of other Zelensky advisers, including Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and Acting Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov."

This was allegedly to follow up on Trump's call with Zelensky in order to discuss the "cases" mentioned in that call, according to the so-called whistleblower's narrative. The complainer was clearly referencing Trump's request for Ukraine to investigate the Biden corruption allegations.

Even though the statement was written in first person – "multiple U.S. officials told me" – it contains a footnote referencing a report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

That footnote reads:

In a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on 22 July, two associates of Mr. Giuliani reportedly traveled to Kyiv in May 2019 and met with Mr. Bakanov and another close Zelensky adviser, Mr. Serhiy Shefir.

The so-called whistleblower's account goes on to rely upon that same OCCRP report on three more occasions. It does so to:

Write that Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko "also stated that he wished to communicate directly with Attorney General Barr on these matters." Document that Trump adviser Rudi Giuliani "had spoken in late 2018 to former Prosecutor General Shokin, in a Skype call arranged by two associates of Mr. Giuliani." Bolster the charge that, "I also learned from a U.S. official that 'associates' of Mr. Giuliani were trying to make contact with the incoming Zelenskyy team." The so-called whistleblower then relates in another footnote, "I do not know whether these associates of Mr. Giuliani were the same individuals named in the 22 July report by OCCRP, referenced above."

The OCCRP report repeatedly referenced is actually a "joint investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and BuzzFeed News, based on interviews and court and business records in the United States and Ukraine."

BuzzFeed infamously also first published the full anti-Trump dossier alleging unsubstantiated collusion between Trump's presidential campaign and Russia. The dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee and was produced by the Fusion GPS opposition dirt outfit.

The OCCRP and BuzzFeed "joint investigation" resulted in both OCCRP and BuzzFeed publishing similar lengthy pieces on July 22 claiming that Giuliani was attempting to use connections to have Ukraine investigate Trump's political rivals.

The so-called whistleblower's document, however, only mentions the largely unknown OCCRP and does not reference BuzzFeed, which has faced scrutiny over its reporting on the Russia collusion claims.

Another listed OCCRP funder is the Omidyar Network, which is the nonprofit for liberal billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

Together with Soros's Open Society, Omidyar also funds the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which hosts the International Fact-Checking Network that partnered with Facebook to help determine whether news stories are "disputed."

Like OCCRP, the Poynter Institute's so-called news fact-checking project is openly funded by not only Soros' Open Society Foundations but also Google and the National Endowment for Democracy.

CrowdStrike and DNC servers

CrowdStrike, meanwhile, was brought up by Trump in his phone call with Zelensky. According to the transcript, Trump told Zelensky, "I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike I guess you have one of your wealthy people The server, they say Ukraine has it."

In his extensive report , Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller notes that his investigative team did not "obtain or examine" the servers of the DNC in determining whether those servers were hacked by Russia.

The DNC famously refused to allow the FBI to access its servers to verify the allegation that Russia carried out a hack during the 2016 presidential campaign. Instead, the DNC reached an arrangement with the FBI in which CrowdStrike conducted forensics on the server and shared details with the FBI.

In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey confirmed that the FBI registered "multiple requests at different levels," to review the DNC's hacked servers. Ultimately, the DNC and FBI came to an agreement in which a "highly respected private company" -- a reference to CrowdStrike -- would carry out forensics on the servers and share any information that it discovered with the FBI, Comey testified.

A senior law enforcement official stressed the importance of the FBI gaining direct access to the servers, a request that was denied by the DNC.

"The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated," the official was quoted by the news media as saying.

"This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier," the official continued.

... ... ...

Aaron Klein is Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, " Aaron Klein Investigative Radio ." Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

Joshua Klein contributed research to this article.

[Dec 04, 2019] DNC Russian Hackers Found! You Won't Believe Who They Really Work For by the Anonymous Patriots

Highly recommended!
Jan 01, 2017 | themillenniumreport.com

"If someone steals your keys to encrypt the data, it doesn't matter how secure the algorithms are."

Dmitri Alperovitch, founder of CrowdStrike.

By the Anonymous Patriots
SOTN Exclusive

Russians did not hack the DNC system, a Russian named Dmitri Alperovitch is the hacker and he works for President Obama. In the last five years the Obama administration has turned exclusively to one Russian to solve every major cyber-attack in America, whether the attack was on the U.S. government or a corporation. Only one "super-hero cyber-warrior" seems to "have the codes" to figure out "if" a system was hacked and by "whom."

Dmitri's company, CrowdStrike has been called in by Obama to solve mysterious attacks on many high level government agencies and American corporations, including: German Bundestag, Democratic National Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the White House, the State Department, SONY, and many others.

CrowdStrike's philosophy is: "You don't have a malware problem; you have an adversary problem."

CrowdStrike has played a critical role in the development of America's cyber-defense policy. Dmitri Alperovitch and George Kurtz, a former head of the FBI cyberwarfare unit founded CrowdStrike. Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director at the FBI is now CrowdStrike's president of services. The company is crawling with former U.S. intelligence agents.

Before Alperovitch founded CrowdStrike in 2011, he was working in Atlanta as the chief threat officer at the antivirus software firm McAfee, owned by Intel (a DARPA company). During that time, he "discovered" the Chinese had compromised at least seventy-one companies and organizations, including thirteen defense contractors, three electronics firms, and the International Olympic Committee. He was the only person to notice the biggest cyberattack in history! Nothing suspicious about that.

Alperovitch and the DNC

After CrowdStrike was hired as an independent "vendor" by the DNC to investigate a possible cyberattack on their system, Alperovitch sent the DNC a proprietary software package called Falcon that monitors the networks of its clients in real time. According to Alperovitch, Falcon "lit up," within ten seconds of being installed at the DNC. Alperovitch had his "proof" in TEN SECONDS that Russia was in the network. This "alleged" evidence of Russian hacking has yet to be shared with anyone.

As Donald Trump has pointed out, the FBI, the agency that should have been immediately involved in hacking that effects "National Security," has yet to even examine the DNC system to begin an investigation. Instead, the FBI and 16 other U.S. "intelligence" agencies simply "agree" with Obama's most trusted "cyberwarfare" expert Dmitri Alperovitch's "TEN SECOND" assessment that produced no evidence to support the claim.

Also remember that it is only Alperovitch and CrowdStrike that claim to have evidence that it was Russian hackers . In fact, only two hackers were found to have been in the system and were both identified by Alperovitch as Russian FSB (CIA) and the Russian GRU (DoD). It is only Alperovitch who claims that he knows that it is Putin behind these two hackers.

Alperovitch failed to mention in his conclusive "TEN SECOND" assessment that Guccifer 2.0 had already hacked the DNC and made available to the public the documents he hacked – before Alperovitch did his ten second assessment. Alperovitch reported that no other hackers were found, ignoring the fact that Guccifer 2.0 had already hacked and released DNC documents to the public. Alperovitch's assessment also goes directly against Julian Assange's repeated statements that the DNC leaks did not come from the Russians.

The ridiculously fake cyber-attack assessment done by Alperovitch and CrowdStrike naïvely flies in the face of the fact that a DNC insider admitted that he had released the DNC documents. Julian Assange implied in an interview that the murdered Democratic National Committee staffer, Seth Rich, was the source of a trove of damaging emails the website posted just days before the party's convention. Seth was on his way to testify about the DNC leaks to the FBI when he was shot dead in the street.

It is also absurd to hear Alperovitch state that the Russian FSB (equivalent to the CIA) had been monitoring the DNC site for over a year and had done nothing. No attack, no theft, and no harm was done to the system by this "false-flag cyber-attack" on the DNC – or at least, Alperovitch "reported" there was an attack. The second hacker, the supposed Russian military (GRU – like the U.S. DoD) hacker, had just entered the system two weeks before and also had done "nothing" but observe.

It is only Alperovitch's word that reports that the Russian FSB was "looking for files on Donald Trump."

It is only this false claim that spuriously ties Trump to the "alleged" attack. It is also only Alperovitch who believes that this hack that was supposedly "looking for Trump files" was an attempt to "influence" the election. No files were found about Trump by the second hacker, as we know from Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0's leaks. To confabulate that "Russian's hacked the DNC to influence the elections" is the claim of one well-known Russian spy. Then, 17 U.S. intelligence agencies unanimously confirm that Alperovitch is correct – even though there is no evidence and no investigation was ever conducted .

How does Dmitri Alperovitch have such power? Why did Obama again and again use Alperovitch's company, CrowdStrike, when they have miserably failed to stop further cyber-attacks on the systems they were hired to protect? Why should anyone believe CrowdStrikes false-flag report?

After documents from the DNC continued to leak, and Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks made CrowdStrike's report look foolish, Alperovitch decided the situation was far worse than he had reported. He single-handedly concluded that the Russians were conducting an "influence operation" to help win the election for Trump . This false assertion had absolutely no evidence to back it up.

On July 22, three days before the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, WikiLeaks dumped a massive cache of emails that had been "stolen" (not hacked) from the DNC. Reporters soon found emails suggesting that the DNC leadership had favored Hillary Clinton in her primary race against Bernie Sanders, which led Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair, along with three other officials, to resign.

Just days later, it was discovered that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) had been hacked. CrowdStrike was called in again and once again, Alperovitch immediately "believed" that Russia was responsible. A lawyer for the DCCC gave Alperovitch permission to confirm the leak and to name Russia as the suspected author. Two weeks later, files from the DCCC began to appear on Guccifer 2.0's website. This time Guccifer released information about Democratic congressional candidates who were running close races in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. On August 12, Guccifer went further, publishing a spreadsheet that included the personal email addresses and phone numbers of nearly two hundred Democratic members of Congress.

Once again, Guccifer 2.0 proved Alperovitch and CrowdStrike's claims to be grossly incorrect about the hack originating from Russia, with Putin masterminding it all. Nancy Pelosi offered members of Congress Alperovitch's suggestion of installing Falcon , the system that failed to stop cyberattacks at the DNC, on all congressional laptops.

Key Point: Once Falcon was installed on the computers of members of the U.S. Congress, CrowdStrike had even further full access into U.S. government accounts.

Alperovitch's "Unbelievable" History

Dmitri was born in 1980 in Moscow where his father, Michael, was a nuclear physicist, (so Dmitri claims). Dmitri's father was supposedly involved at the highest levels of Russian nuclear science. He also claims that his father taught him to write code as a child.

In 1990, his father was sent to Maryland as part of a nuclear-safety training program for scientists. In 1994, Michael Alperovitch was granted a visa to Canada, and a year later the family moved to Chattanooga, where Michael took a job with the Tennessee Valley Authority.

While Dmitri Alperovitch was still in high school, he and his father started an encryption-technology business. Dmitri studied computer science at Georgia Tech and went on to work at an antispam software firm. It was at this time that he realized that cyber-defense was more about psychology than it was about technology. A very odd thing to conclude.

Dmitri Alperovitch posed as a "Russian gangster" on spam discussion forums which brought his illegal activity to the attention of the FBI – as a criminal. In 2005, Dmitri flew to Pittsburgh to meet an FBI agent named Keith Mularski, who had been asked to lead an undercover operation against a vast Russian credit-card-theft syndicate. Alperovitch worked closely with Mularski's sting operation which took two years, but it ultimately brought about fifty-six arrests. Dmitri Alperovitch then became a pawn of the FBI and CIA.

In 2010, while he was at McAfee, the head of cybersecurity at Google told Dmitri that Gmail accounts belonging to human-rights activists in China had been breached. Google suspected the Chinese government. Alperovitch found that the breach was unprecedented in scale; it affected more than a dozen of McAfee's clients and involved the Chinese government. Three days after his supposed discovery, Alperovitch was on a plane to Washington where he had been asked to vet a paragraph in a speech by the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

2014, Sony called in CrowdStrike to investigate a breach of its network. Alperovitch needed just "two hours" to identify North Korea as the adversary. Executives at Sony asked Alperovitch to go public with the information immediately, but it took the FBI another three weeks before it confirmed the attribution.

Alperovitch then developed a list of "usual suspects" who were well-known hackers who had identifiable malware that they commonly used. Many people use the same malware and Alperovitch's obsession with believing he has the only accurate list of hackers in the world is plain idiocy exacerbated by the U.S. government's belief in his nonsense. Alperovitch even speaks like a "nut-case" in his personal Twitters, which generally have absolutely no references to the technology he is supposedly the best at in the entire world.

Dmitri – Front Man for His Father's Russian Espionage Mission

After taking a close look at the disinformation around Dmitri and his father, it is clear to see that Michael Alperovitch became a CIA operative during his first visit to America. Upon his return to Russia, he stole the best Russian encryption codes that were used to protect the top-secret work of nuclear physics in which his father is alleged to have been a major player. Upon surrendering the codes to the CIA when he returned to Canada, the CIA made it possible for a Russian nuclear scientist to become an American citizen overnight and gain a top-secret security clearance to work at the Oakridge plant, one of the most secure and protected nuclear facilities in America . Only the CIA can transform a Russian into an American with a top-secret clearance overnight.

We can see on Michael Alperovitch's Linked In page that he went from one fantastically top-secret job to the next without a break from the time he entered America. He seemed to be on a career path to work in every major U.S. agency in America. In every job he was hired as the top expert in the field and the leader of the company. All of these jobs after the first one were in cryptology, not nuclear physics. As a matter of fact, Michael became the top expert in America overnight and has stayed the top expert to this day.

Most of the work of cyber-security is creating secure interactions on a non-secure system like the Internet. The cryptologist who assigns the encryption codes controls the system from that point on .

Key Point: Cryptologists are well known for leaving a "back-door" in the base-code so that they can always have over-riding control.

Michael Alperovitch essentially has the "codes" for all Department of Defense sites, the Treasury, the State Department, cell-phones, satellites, and public media . There is hardly any powerful agency or company that he has not written the "codes" for. One might ask, why do American companies and the U.S. government use his particular codes? What are so special about Michael's codes?

Stolen Russian Codes

In December, Obama ordered the U.S. military to conduct cyberattacks against Russia in retaliation for the alleged DNC hacks. All of the attempts to attack Russia's military and intelligence agencies failed miserably. Russia laughed at Obama's attempts to hack their systems. Even the Russian companies targeted by the attacks were not harmed by Obama's cyber-attacks. Hardly any news of these massive and embarrassing failed cyber-attacks were reported by the Main Stream Media. The internet has been scrubbed clean of the reports that said Russia's cyber-defenses were impenetrable due to the sophistication of their encryption codes.

Michael Alperovitch was in possession of those impenetrable codes when he was a top scientist in Russia. It was these very codes that he shared with the CIA on his first trip to America . These codes got him spirited into America and "turned into" the best cryptologist in the world. Michael is simply using the effective codes of Russia to design his codes for the many systems he has created in America for the CIA .

KEY POINT: It is crucial to understand at this junction that the CIA is not solely working for America . The CIA works for itself and there are three branches to the CIA – two of which are hostile to American national interests and support globalism.

Michael and Dmitri Alperovitch work for the CIA (and international intelligence corporations) who support globalism . They, and the globalists for whom they work, are not friends of America or Russia. It is highly likely that the criminal activities of Dmitri, which were supported and sponsored by the FBI, created the very hackers who he often claims are responsible for cyberattacks. None of these supposed "attackers" have ever been found or arrested; they simply exist in the files of CrowdStrike and are used as the "usual culprits" when the FBI or CIA calls in Dmitri to give the one and only opinion that counts. Only Dmitri's "suspicions" are offered as evidence and yet 17 U.S. intelligence agencies stand behind the CrowdStrike report and Dmitri's suspicions.

Michael Alperovitch – Russian Spy with the Crypto-Keys

Essentially, Michael Alperovitch flies under the false-flag of being a cryptologist who works with PKI. A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a system for the creation, storage, and distribution of digital certificates which are used to verify that a particular public key belongs to a certain entity. The PKI creates digital certificates which map public keys to entities, securely stores these certificates in a central repository and revokes them if needed. Public key cryptography is a cryptographic technique that enables entities to securely communicate on an insecure public network (the Internet), and reliably verify the identity of an entity via digital signatures . Digital signatures use Certificate Authorities to digitally sign and publish the public key bound to a given user. This is done using the CIA's own private key, so that trust in the user key relies on one's trust in the validity of the CIA's key. Michael Alperovitch is considered to be the number one expert in America on PKI and essentially controls the market .

Michael's past is clouded in confusion and lies. Dmitri states that his father was a nuclear physicist and that he came to America the first time in a nuclear based shared program between America and Russia. But if we look at his current personal Linked In page, Michael claims he has a Master Degree in Applied Mathematics from Gorky State University. From 1932 to 1956, its name was State University of Gorky. Now it is known as Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod – National Research University (UNN), also known as Lobachevsky University. Does Michael not even know the name of the University he graduated from? And when does a person with a Master's Degree become a leading nuclear physicist who comes to "visit" America. In Michael's Linked In page there is a long list of his skills and there is no mention of nuclear physics.

Also on Michael Alperovitch's Linked In page we find some of his illustrious history that paints a picture of either the most brilliant mind in computer security, encryption, and cyberwarfare, or a CIA/FBI backed Russian spy. Imagine that out of all the people in the world to put in charge of the encryption keys for the Department of Defense, the U.S. Treasury, U.S. military satellites, the flow of network news, cell phone encryption, the Pathfire (media control) Program, the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Global Information Grid, and TriCipher Armored Credential System among many others, the government hires a Russian spy . Go figure.

Michael Alperovitch's Linked In Page

Education:

Gorky State University, Russia, MS in Applied Mathematics

Work History:

Sr. Security Architect

VT IDirect -2014 – Designing security architecture for satellite communications including cryptographic protocols, authentication.

Principal SME (Contractor)

DISA -Defense Information Systems Agency (Manager of the Global Information Grid) – 2012-2014 – Worked on PKI and identity management projects for DISA utilizing Elliptic Curve Cryptography. Performed application security and penetration testing.

Technical Lead (Contractor)

U.S. Department of the Treasury – 2011 – Designed enterprise validation service architecture for PKI certificate credentials with Single Sign On authentication.

Principal Software Engineer

Comtech Mobile Datacom – 2007-2010 – Subject matter expert on latest information security practices, including authentication, encryption and key management.

Sr. Software Engineer

TriCipher – 2006-2007 – Designed and developed security architecture for TriCipher Armored Credential Authentication System.

Lead Software Engineer

BellSouth – 2003-2006 – Designed and built server-side Jabber-based messaging platform with Single Sign On authentication.

Principal Software Research Engineer

Pathfire – 2001-2002 – Designed and developed Digital Rights Management Server for Video on Demand and content distribution applications. Pathfire provides digital media distribution and management solutions to the television, media, and entertainment industries. The company offers Digital Media Gateway, a digital IP store-and-forward platform, delivering news stories, syndicated programming, advertising spots, and video news releases to broadcasters. It provides solutions for content providers and broadcasters, as well as station solutions.

Obama – No Friend of America

Obama is no friend of America in the war against cyber-attacks. The very agencies and departments being defended by Michael Alperovitch's "singular and most brilliant" ability to write encryption codes have all been successfully attacked and compromised since Michael set up the codes. But we shouldn't worry, because if there is a cyberattack in the Obama administration, Michael's son Dmitri is called in to "prove" that it isn't the fault of his father's codes. It was the "damn Russians", or even "Putin himself" who attacked American networks.

Not one of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies is capable of figuring out a successful cyberattack against America without Michael and Dmitri's help. Those same 17 U.S. intelligence agencies were not able to effectively launch a successful cyberattack against Russia. It seems like the Russian's have strong codes and America has weak codes. We can thank Michael and Dmitri Alperovitch for that.

It is clear that there was no DNC hack beyond Guccifer 2.0. Dmitri Alperovitch is a "frontman" for his father's encryption espionage mission.

Is it any wonder that Trump says that he has "his own people" to deliver his intelligence to him that is outside of the infiltrated U.S. government intelligence agencies and the Obama administration ? Isn't any wonder that citizens have to go anywhere BUT the MSM to find real news or that the new administration has to go to independent news to get good intel?

It is hard to say anything more damnable than to again quote Dmitri on these very issues:
"If someone steals your keys to encrypt the data, it doesn't matter how secure the algorithms are." Dmitri Alperovitch, founder of CrowdStrike

Originally posted at: http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=62536

[Dec 04, 2019] June 4th, 2017 Crowdstrike Was at the DNC Six Weeks by George Webb

Highly recommended!
A short YouTube with the handwritten timeline
Nov 27, 2019 | www.youtube.com
AwanContra - George Webb, Investigative Journalist

[Dec 04, 2019] Cyberanalyst George Eliason Claims that the "Fancy Bear" Who Hacked the DNC Server is Ukrainian Intelligence – In League with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... And RUH8 is allied with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike. ..."
"... Russia was probably not one of the hacking groups. The willful destruction of evidence by the DNC themselves probably points to Russia not being one of the those groups. The DNC wouldn't destroy evidence that supported their position. Also, government spy agencies keep info like that closely held. They might leak out tidbits, but they don't do wholesale dumps, like, ever. ..."
"... That's what the DNC is lying about. Not that hacks happened (they undoubtedly did), but about who did them (probably not Russian gov), and if hacks mattered (they didn't since everything was getting leaked anyway). ..."
"... The DNC/Mueller/etc are lying, but like most practiced liars they're mixing the lies with half-truths and unrelated facts to muddy the waters: ..."
"... An interesting question is, since it's basically guaranteed the DNC got hacked, but probably not by the Russians, is, what groups did hack the DNC, and why did the DNC scramble madly to hide their identities? ..."
"... And while you think about that question, consider the close parallel with the Awan case, where Dems were ostensibly the victims, but they again scrambled to cover up for the people who supposedly harmed them. level 2 ..."
"... DNC wasn't even hacked. Emails were leaked. They didn't even examine the server. Any "evidence" produced is spoofable from CIA cybertools that we know about from wikileaks. It's important to know how each new lie is a lie. But man I am just so done with all this Russia shit. level 2 ..."
"... Crowdstrike claims that malware was found on DNC server. I agree that this has nothing to do with the Wikileaks releases. What I am wondering is whether Crowdstrike may have arranged for the DNC to be hacked so that Russia could be blamed. Continue this thread level 1 ..."
"... George Eliason promises additional essays: *The next articles, starting with one about Fancy Bear's hot/cold ongoing relationship with Bellingcat which destroys the JIT investigation, will showcase the following: Fancy Bear worked with Bellingcat and the Ukrainian government providing Information War material as evidence for MH17: ..."
"... Fancy Bear is an inside unit of the Atlantic Council and their Digital Forensics Lab ..."
Dec 04, 2018 | www.reddit.com

Cyberanalyst George Eliason has written some intriguing blogs recently claiming that the "Fancy Bear" which hacked the DNC server in mid-2016 was in fact a branch of Ukrainian intelligence linked to the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike. I invite you to have a go at one of his recent essays:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/06/25/who-is-fancy-bear-and-who-are-they-working-for/

Since I am not very computer savvy and don't know much about the world of hackers - added to the fact that Eliason's writing is too cute and convoluted - I have difficulty navigating Eliason's thought. Nonetheless, here is what I can make of Eliasons' claims, as supported by independent literature:

Russian hacker Konstantin Kozlovsky, in Moscow court filings, has claimed that he did the DNC hack – and can prove it, because he left some specific code on the DNC server.

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/366696-russian-hacker-claims-he-can-prove-he-hacked-dnc

Kozlovsky states that he did so by order of Dimitry Dokuchaev (formerly of the FSB, and currently in prison in Russia on treason charges) who works with the Russian traitor hacker group Shaltai Boltai.

https://www.newsweek.com/russian-hacker-stealing-clintons-emailshacking-dnc-putinsfsb-745555 (Note that Newsweek's title is an overt lie.)

According to Eliason, Shaltai Boltai works in collaboration with the Ukrainian hacker group RUH8, a group of neo-Nazis (Privat Sektor) who are affiliated with Ukrainian intelligence. And RUH8 is allied with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike.

https://off-guardian.org/2018/06/25/who-is-fancy-bear-and-who-are-they-working-for/

Cyberexpert Jeffrey Carr has stated that RUH8 has the X-Agent malware which our intelligence community has erroneously claimed is possessed only by Russian intelligence, and used by "Fancy Bear".

https://medium.com/@jeffreyscarr/the-gru-ukraine-artillery-hack-that-may-never-have-happened-820960bbb02d

Eliason has concluded that RUH8 is Fancy Bear.

This might help explain why Adam Carter has determined that some of the malware found on the DNC server was compiled AFTER Crowdstrike was working on the DNC server – Crowdstrike was in collusion with Fancy Bear (RUH8).

In other words, Crowdstrike likely arranged for a hack by Ukrainian intelligence that they could then attribute to Russia.

As far as I can tell, none of this is pertinent to how Wikileaks obtained their DNC emails, which most likely were leaked.

How curious that our Deep State and the recent Mueller indictment have had nothing to say about Kozlovsky's confession - whom I tend to take seriously because he offers a simple way to confirm his claim. Also interesting that the FBI has shown no interest in looking at the DNC server to check whether Kozlovsky's code is there.

I will ask Adam Carter for his opinion on this. 19 comments 84% Upvoted This thread is archived New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast Sort by View discussions in 1 other community level 1


zer0mas 1 point · 1 year ago

Its worth noting that Dimitri Alperovich's (Crowdstrike) hatred of Putin is second only to Hillary's hatred for taking responsibility for her actions. level 1

veganmark 2 points · 1 year ago

Thanks - I'll continue to follow Eliason's work. The thesis that Ukrainian intelligence is hacking a number of targets so that Russia gets blamed for it has intuitive appeal. level 1

alskdmv-nosleep4u -1 points · 1 year ago

I see things like this:

DNC wasn't even hacked.

and have to cringe. Any hacks weren't related to Wikileaks, who got their info from leakers, but that is not the same thing as no hack. Leaks and hacks aren't mutually exclusive. They actually occur together pretty commonly.

DNC's security was utter shit. Systems with shit security and obviously valuable info usually get hacked by multiple groups. In the case of the DNC, Hillary's email servers, etc., it's basically impossible they weren't hacked by dozens of intruders. A plastic bag of 100s will not sit untouched on a NYC street corner for 4 weeks. Not. fucking. happening.

Interestingly, Russia was probably not one of the hacking groups. The willful destruction of evidence by the DNC themselves probably points to Russia not being one of the those groups. The DNC wouldn't destroy evidence that supported their position. Also, government spy agencies keep info like that closely held. They might leak out tidbits, but they don't do wholesale dumps, like, ever.

That's what the DNC is lying about. Not that hacks happened (they undoubtedly did), but about who did them (probably not Russian gov), and if hacks mattered (they didn't since everything was getting leaked anyway).

The DNC/Mueller/etc are lying, but like most practiced liars they're mixing the lies with half-truths and unrelated facts to muddy the waters:

Any "evidence" produced is spoofable from CIA cybertools

Yes, but that spoofed 'evidence' is not the direct opposite of the truth, like I see people assuming. Bad assumption, and the establishment plays on that to make critic look bad. The spoofed evidence is just mud.

An interesting question is, since it's basically guaranteed the DNC got hacked, but probably not by the Russians, is, what groups did hack the DNC, and why did the DNC scramble madly to hide their identities?

And while you think about that question, consider the close parallel with the Awan case, where Dems were ostensibly the victims, but they again scrambled to cover up for the people who supposedly harmed them. level 2

alskdmv-nosleep4u 2 points · 1 year ago

What's hilarious about the 2 down-votes is I can't tell if their from pro-Russiagate trolls, or from people who who can't get past binary thinking. level 1

Honztastic 2 points · 1 year ago

DNC wasn't even hacked. Emails were leaked. They didn't even examine the server. Any "evidence" produced is spoofable from CIA cybertools that we know about from wikileaks. It's important to know how each new lie is a lie. But man I am just so done with all this Russia shit. level 2

veganmark 2 points · 1 year ago

Crowdstrike claims that malware was found on DNC server. I agree that this has nothing to do with the Wikileaks releases. What I am wondering is whether Crowdstrike may have arranged for the DNC to be hacked so that Russia could be blamed. Continue this thread level 1

Inuma I take the headspace of idiots 9 points · 1 year ago

So you mean to tell me that WWIII is being prepared by Mueller and it was manufactured consent?

I'd be shocked, but this only proves that the "Deep State" only cares about their power, consequences be damned. level 1

veganmark 8 points · 1 year ago

George Eliason promises additional essays: *The next articles, starting with one about Fancy Bear's hot/cold ongoing relationship with Bellingcat which destroys the JIT investigation, will showcase the following: Fancy Bear worked with Bellingcat and the Ukrainian government providing Information War material as evidence for MH17:

  • Fancy Bear is an inside unit of the Atlantic Council and their Digital Forensics Lab
  • Fancy Bear worked with Crowdstrike and Dimitri Alperovich Fancy Bear is Ukrainian Intelligence
  • How Fancy Bear tried to sway the US election for Team Hillary
  • Fancy Bear worked against US Intel gathering by providing consistently fraudulent data
  • Fancy Bear contributed to James Clapper's January 2017 ODNI Report on Fancy Bear and Russian Influence. [You really can't make this shit up.]
  • Fancy Bear had access to US government secure servers while working as foreign spies.* level 1
HillaryBrokeTheLaw Long live dead poets 10 points · 1 year ago

Nice.

I'm glad you're still following this. Crowdstrike is shady af. level 1

[Dec 04, 2019] Fancy Bear - Conservapedia

Highly recommended!
Dec 04, 2019 | www.conservapedia.com

Fancy Bear (also know as Strontium Group, or APT28) is a Ukrainian cyber espionage group. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike incorrectly has said with a medium level of confidence that it is associated with the Russian military intelligence agency GRU . CrowdStrike founder, Dmitri Alperovitch , has colluded with Fancy Bear. American journalist George Eliason has written extensively on the subject.

There are a couple of caveats that need to be made when identifying the Fancy Bear hackers. The first is the identifier used by Mueller as Russian FSB and GRU may have been true- 10 years ago. This group was on the run trying to stay a step ahead of Russian law enforcement until October 2016. So we have part of the Fancy bear hacking group identified as Ruskie traitors and possibly former Russian state security. The majority of the group are Ukrainians making up Ukraine's Cyber Warfare groups.

Eliason lives and works in Donbass. He has been interviewed by and provided analysis for RT, the BBC , and Press-TV. His articles have been published in the Security Assistance Monitor, Washingtons Blog, OpedNews, the Saker, RT, Global Research, and RINF, and the Greanville Post among others. He has been cited and republished by various academic blogs including Defending History, Michael Hudson, SWEDHR, Counterpunch, the Justice Integrity Project, among others.

Contents [ hide ] Fancy Bear is Ukrainian Intelligence Shaltai Boltai

The "Fancy Bear hackers" may have been given the passwords to get into the servers at the DNC because they were part of the Team Clinton opposition research team. It was part of their job.

According to Politico ,

"In an interview this month, at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities -- including Ukrainian-Americans -- she said that, when Trump's unlikely presidential campaign. Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump's ties to Russia, as well." [1]

The only investigative journalists, government officials, and private intelligence operatives that work together in 2014-2015-2016 Ukraine are Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukraine Cyber Alliance, and the Ministry of Information.

All of these hacking and information operation groups work for Andrea Chalupa with EuroMaidanPR and Irena Chalupa at the Atlantic Council. Both Chalupa sisters work directly with the Ukrainian government's intelligence and propaganda arms.

Since 2014 in Ukraine, these are the only OSINT, hacking, Intel, espionage , terrorist , counter-terrorism, cyber, propaganda , and info war channels officially recognized and directed by Ukraine's Information Ministry. Along with their American colleagues, they populate the hit-for-hire website Myrotvorets with people who stand against Ukraine's criminal activities.

The hackers, OSINT, Cyber, spies, terrorists, etc. call themselves volunteers to keep safe from State level retaliation, even though a child can follow the money. As volunteers motivated by politics and patriotism they are protected to a degree from retribution.

They don't claim State sponsorship or governance and the level of attack falls below the threshold of military action. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had a lot of latitude for making the attribution Russian, even though the attacks came from Ukrainian Intelligence. Based on how the rules of the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber are written, because the few members of the coalition from Shaltai Boltai are Russian in nationality, Fancy Bear can be attributed as a Russian entity for the purposes of retribution. The caveat is if the attribution is proven wrong, the US will be liable for damages caused to the State which in this case is Russia.

How large is the Fancy Bear unit? According to their propaganda section InformNapalm, they have the ability to research and work in over 30 different languages.

This can be considered an Information Operation against the people of the United States and of course Russia. After 2013, Shaltay Boltay was no longer physically available to work for Russia. The Russian hackers were in Ukraine working for the Ukrainian government's Information Ministry which is in charge of the cyber war. They were in Ukraine until October 2016 when they were tricked to return to Moscow and promptly arrested for treason.

From all this information we know the Russian component of Team Fancy Bear is Shaltai Boltai. We know the Ukrainian Intel component is called CyberHunta and Ukraine Cyber Alliance which includes the hacker group RUH8. We know both groups work/ worked for Ukrainian Intelligence. We know they are grouped with InformNapalm which is Ukraine's OSINT unit. We know their manager is a Ukrainian named Kristina Dobrovolska. And lastly, all of the above work directly with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike's Dimitry Alperovich.

In short, the Russian-Ukrainian partnership that became Fancy Bear started in late 2013 to very early 2014 and ended in October 2016 in what appears to be a squabble over the alleged data from the Surkov leak.

But during 2014, 2015, and 2016 Shaltai Boltai, the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, and CyberHunta went to work for the DNC as opposition researchers .

The First Time Shaltai Boltai was Handed the Keys to US Gov Servers

The setup to this happened long before the partnership with Ukrainian Intel hackers and Russia's Shaltai Boltai was forged. The hack that gained access to US top-secret servers happened just after the partnership was cemented after Euro-Maidan.

In August 2009 Hillary Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff at the State Department Huma Abedin sent the passwords to her Government laptop to her Yahoo mail account. On August 16, 2010, Abedin received an email titled "Re: Your yahoo account. We can see where this is going, can't we?

"After Abedin sent an unspecified number of sensitive emails to her Yahoo account, half a billion Yahoo accounts were hacked by Russian cybersecurity expert and Russian intelligence agent, Igor Sushchin, in 2014. The hack, one of the largest in history, allowed Sushchin's associates to access email accounts into 2015 and 2016."

Igor Sushchin was part of the Shaltai Boltai hacking group that is charged with the Yahoo hack.

The time frame has to be noted. The hack happened in 2014. Access to the email accounts continued through 2016. The Ukrainian Intel partnership was already blossoming and Shaltai Boltai was working from Kiev, Ukraine.

So when we look at the INFRASTRUCTURE HACKS, WHITE HOUSE HACKS, CONGRESS, start with looking at the time frame. Ukraine had the keys already in hand in 2014.

Chalupa collusion with Ukrainian Intelligence
See also: Ukrainian collusion and Ukrainian collusion timeline

Alexandra Chalupa hired this particular hacking terrorist group, which Dimitry Alperovich and Crowdstrike dubbed "Fancy Bear", in 2015 at the latest. While the Ukrainian hackers worked for the DNC, Fancy Bear had to send in progress reports, turn in research, and communicate on the state of the projects they were working on. Let's face it, once you're in, setting up your Fancy Bear toolkit doesn't get any easier. This is why I said the DNC hack isn't the big crime. It's a big con and all the parties were in on it.

Hillary Clinton exposed secrets to hacking threats by using private email instead of secured servers. Given the information provided she was probably being monitored by our intrepid Ruskie-Ukie union made in hell hackers. Anthony Weiner exposed himself and his wife Huma Abedin using Weiner's computer for top-secret State Department emails. And of course Huma Abedin exposed herself along with her top-secret passwords at Yahoo and it looks like the hackers the DNC hired to do opposition research hacked her.

Here's a question. Did Huma Abedin have Hillary Clinton's passwords for her private email server? It would seem logical given her position with Clinton at the State Department and afterward. This means that Hillary Clinton and the US government top secret servers were most likely compromised by Fancy Bear before the DNC and Team Clinton hired them by using legitimate passwords.

Dobrovolska

Hillary Clinton retained State Dept. top secret clearance passwords for 6 of her former staff from 2013 through prepping for the 2016 election. [2] [3] Alexandra Chalupa was running a research department that is rich in (foreign) Ukrainian Intelligence operatives, hackers, terrorists, and a couple Ruskie traitors.

Kristina Dobrovolska was acting as a handler and translator for the US State Department in 2016. She is the Fancy Bear *opposition researcher handler manager. Kristina goes to Washington to meet with Chalupa.

Alexandra types in her password to show Dobrovolska something she found and her eager to please Ukrainian apprentice finds the keystrokes are seared into her memory. She tells the Fancy Bear crew about it and they immediately get to work looking for Trump material on the US secret servers with legitimate access. I mean, what else could they do with this? Turn over sensitive information to the ever corrupt Ukrainian government?

According to the Politico article, Alexandra Chalupa was meeting with the Ukrainian embassy in June of 2016 to discuss getting more help sticking it to candidate Trump. At the same time she was meeting, the embassy had a reception that highlighted female Ukrainian leaders.

Four Verkhovna Rada [parlaiment] deputies there for the event included: Viktoriia Y. Ptashnyk, Anna A. Romanova, Alyona I. Shkrum, and Taras T. Pastukh. [4]

According to CNN , [5] DNC sources said Chalupa told DNC operatives the Ukrainian government would be willing to deliver damaging information against Trump's campaign. Later, Chalupa would lead the charge to try to unseat president-elect Trump starting on Nov 10, 2016.

Accompanying them Kristina Dobrovolska who was a U.S. Embassy-assigned government liaison and translator who escorted the delegates from Kyiv during their visits to Albany and Washington.

Kristina Dobrovolska is the handler manager working with Ukraine's DNC Fancy Bear Hackers. [6] She took the Rada [parliament] members to dinner to meet Joel Harding who designed Ukraine's infamous Information Policy which opened up their kill-for-hire-website Myrotvorets. Then she took them to meet the Ukrainian Diaspora leader doing the hiring. Nestor Paslawsky is the surviving nephew to the infamous torturer The WWII OUNb leader, Mykola Lebed.

Fancy Bear's Second Chance at Top Secret Passwords From Team Clinton

One very successful method of hacking is called social engineering . You gain access to the office space and any related properties and physically locate the passwords or clues to get you into the hardware you want to hack. This includes something as simple as looking over the shoulder of the person typing in passwords.

The Fancy Bear hackers were hired by Alexandra Chalupa to work for DNC opposition research. On different occasions, Fancy Bear handler Kristina Dobrovolska traveled to the US to meet the Diaspora leaders, her boss Alexandra Chalupa, Irena Chalupa, Andrea Chalupa, US Dept of State personnel, and most likely Crowdstrike's Dimitry Alperovich. Alperovich was working with the hackers in 2015-16. In 2016, the only groups known to have Fancy Bear's signature tools called X-tunnel and X-Agent were Alperovich, Crowdstrike, and Fancy Bear (Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukraine Cyber Alliance, and RUH8/RUX8. Yes, that does explain a few things.

Alleged DNC hack

There were multiple DNC hacks. There is also clear proof supporting the download to a USB stick and subsequent information exchange (leak) to Wikileaks . All are separate events.

  • The group I previously identified as Fancy Bear was given access to request password privileges at the DNC. And it looks like the DNC provided them with it.
  • the Podesta email hack looks like a revenge hack.
  • The reason Republican opposition research files were stolen can be put into context now because we know who the hackers are and what motivates them.

At the same time this story developed, it overshadowed the Hillary Clinton email scandal. It is a matter of public record that Team Clinton provided the DNC hackers with passwords to State Department servers on at least 2 occasions, one wittingly and one not. Fancy Bear hackers are Ukrainian Intelligence Operators.

If the leak came through Seth Rich , it may have been because he saw foreign Intel operatives given this access from the presumed winners of the 2016 US presidential election . The leaker may have been trying to do something about it. I'm curious what information Wikileaks might have.

Alperovitch and Fancy Bear

George Eliason, Washingtonsblog: Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart- Say Hello to Fancy Bear. investigated. [7]

  • In the wake of the JAR-16-20296 dated December 29, 2016 about hacking and influencing the 2016 election, the need for real evidence is clear. The joint report adds nothing substantial to the October 7th report. It relies on proofs provided by the cyber security firm Crowdstrike that is clearly not on par with intelligence findings or evidence. At the top of the report is an "as is" statement showing this.
  • The difference bet enough evidence is provided to warrant an investigation of specific parties for the DNC hacks. The real story involves specific anti-American actors that need to be investigated for real crimes. For instance, the malware used was an out-dated version just waiting to be found. The one other interesting point is that the Russian malware called Grizzly Steppe is from Ukraine. How did Crowdstrike miss this when it is their business to know?
  • The bar for identification set by Crowdstrike has never been able to get beyond words like probably, maybe, could be, or should be, in their attribution. The bar Dimitri Alperovitch set for identifying the hackers involved is that low. Other than asking America to trust them, how many solid facts has Alperovitch provided to back his claim of Russian involvement?
  • information from outside intelligence agencies has the value of rumor or unsubstantiated information at best according to policy. Usable intelligence needs to be free from partisan politics and verifiable. Intel agencies noted back in the early 90's that every private actor in the information game was radically political.
  • Alperovitch first gained notice when he was the VP in charge of threat research with McAfee. Asked to comment on Alperovitch's discovery of Russian hacks on Larry King, John McAfee had this to say. "Based on all of his experience, McAfee does not believe that Russians were behind the hacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), John Podesta's emails, and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. As he told RT, "if it looks like the Russians did it, then I can guarantee you it was not the Russians."
  • How does Crowdstrike's story part with reality? First is the admission that it is probably, maybe, could be Russia hacking the DNC. "Intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin 'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to Wiki Leaks." The public evidence never goes beyond the word possibility. While never going beyond that or using facts, Crowdstrike insists that it's Russia behind both Clinton's and the Ukrainian losses.
  • NBC carried the story because one of the partners in Crowdstrike is also a consultant for NBC. According to NBC the story reads like this."The company, Crowdstrike, was hired by the DNC to investigate the hack and issued a report publicly attributing it to Russian intelligence. One of Crowdstrike's senior executives is Shawn Henry , a former senior FBI official who consults for NBC News.
  • In June, Crowdstrike went public with its findings that two separate Russian intelligence agencies had hacked the DNC. One, which Crowdstrike and other researchers call Cozy Bear, is believed to be linked to Russia's CIA, known as the FSB. The other, known as Fancy Bear, is believed to be tied to the military intelligence agency, called the GRU." The information is so certain the level of proof never rises above "believed to be." According to the December 12th Intercept article "Most importantly, the Post adds that "intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin 'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks."
  • The SBU, Olexander Turchinov, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense all agree that Crowdstrike is dead wrong in this assessment. Although subtitles aren't on it, the former Commandant of Ukrainian Army Headquarters thanks God Russia never invaded or Ukraine would have been in deep trouble. How could Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike be this wrong on easily checked detail and still get this much media attention?
  • Crowdstrike CEO Dmitri Alperovitch story about Russian hacks that cost Hillary Clinton the election was broadsided by the SBU (Ukrainian Intelligence and Security) in Ukraine. If Dimitri Alperovitch is working for Ukrainian Intelligence and is providing intelligence to 17 US Intelligence Agencies is it a conflict of interest?
  • Is giving misleading or false information to 17 US Intelligence Agencies a crime? If it's done by a cyber security industry leader like Crowdstrike should that be investigated? If unwinding the story from the "targeting of Ukrainian volunteers" side isn't enough, we should look at this from the American perspective. How did the Russia influencing the election and DNC hack story evolve? Who's involved? Does this pose conflicts of interest for Dmitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? And let's face it, a hacking story isn't complete until real hackers with the skills, motivation, and reason are exposed.
  • According to journalist and DNC activist Andrea Chalupa on her Facebook page "After Chalupa sent the email to Miranda (which mentions that she had invited this reporter to a meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Washington), it triggered high-level concerns within the DNC, given the sensitive nature of her work. "That's when we knew it was the Russians," said a Democratic Party source who has been directly involved in the internal probe into the hacked emails. In order to stem the damage, the source said, "we told her to stop her research."" July 25, 2016
  • If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the work done by Alexandra Chalupa ? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection.
  • How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election in a new direction. According to Esquire.com, Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said the measures taken were directly because of his work.
  • Alperovitch's relationships with the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state supported hackers [show a conflict of interest]. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016.
  • The Chalupas are not Democrat or Republican. They are OUNb. The OUNb worked hard to start a war between the USA and Russia for the last 50 years. According to the Ukrainian Weekly in a rare open statement of their existence in 2011, "Other statements were issued in the Ukrainian language by the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (B) and the International Conference in Support of Ukraine. The OUN (Bandera wing) called for" What is OUNb Bandera? They follow the same political policy and platform that was developed in the 1930's by Stepan Bandera . When these people go to a Holocaust memorial they are celebrating both the dead and the OUNb SS that killed. [8] There is no getting around this fact. The OUNb have no concept of democratic values and want an authoritarian fascism .
  • Alexandra Chalupa- According to the Ukrainian Weekly , [9]
"The effort, known as Digital Miadan, gained momentum following the initial Twitter storms. Leading the effort were: Lara Chelak, Andrea Chalupa, Alexandra Chalupa, Constatin Kostenko and others." The Digital Maidan was also how they raised money for the coup. This was how the Ukrainian emigres bought the bullets that were used on Euromaidan. Ukraine's chubby nazi, Dima Yarosh stated openly he was taking money from the Ukrainian emigres during Euromaidan and Pravy Sektor still fundraises openly in North America. The "Sniper Massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine by Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, University of Ottowa shows clearly detailed evidence how the massacre happened. It has Pravy Sektor confessions that show who created the "heavenly hundred. Their admitted involvement as leaders of Digital Maidan by both Chalupas is a clear violation of the Neutrality Act and has up to a 25 year prison sentence attached to it because it ended in a coup.
  • Andrea Chalupa-2014, in a Huff Post article Sept. 1 2016, Andrea Chalupa described Sviatoslav Yurash as one of Ukraine's important "dreamers." He is a young activist that founded Euromaidan Press. Beyond the gushing glow what she doesn't say is who he actually is. Sviatoslav Yurash was Dmitri Yarosh's spokesman just after Maidan. He is a hardcore Ukrainian nationalist and was rewarded with the Deputy Director position for the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) in Kiev.
  • In January, 2014 when he showed up at the Maidan protests he was 17 years old. He became the foreign language media representative for Vitali Klitschko, Arseni Yatsenyuk, and Oleh Tyahnybok. All press enquiries went through Yurash. To meet Dimitri Yurash you had to go through Sviatoslav Yurash as a Macleans reporter found out.
  • At 18 years old, Sviatoslav Yurash became the spokesman for Ministry of Defense of Ukraine under Andrei Paruby. He was Dimitri Yarosh's spokesman and can be seen either behind Yarosh on videos at press conferences or speaking ahead of him to reporters. From January 2014 onward, to speak to Dimitri Yarosh, you set up an appointment with Yurash.
  • Andrea Chalupa has worked with Yurash's Euromaidan Press which is associated with Informnapalm.org and supplies the state level hackers for Ukraine.
  • Irene Chalupa- Another involved Chalupa we need to cover to do the story justice is Irene Chalupa. From her bio– Irena Chalupa is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center. She is also a senior correspondent at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where she has worked for more than twenty years. Ms. Chalupa previously served as an editor for the Atlantic Council, where she covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel org She is also a Ukrainian emigre leader.
  • According to Robert Parry's article [10] At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council . Their main goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
  • The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support throughout the campaign.
  • What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland Security?
  • When you put someone that has so much to gain in charge of an investigation that could change an election, that is a conflict of interest. If the think tank is linked heavily to groups that want war with Russia like the Atlantic Council and the CEEC, it opens up criminal conspiracy.
  • If the person in charge of the investigation is a fellow at the think tank that wants a major conflict with Russia it is a definite conflict of interest. Both the Atlantic Council and clients stood to gain Cabinet and Policy positions based on how the result of his work affects the election. It clouds the results of the investigation. In Dmitri Alperovitch's case, he found the perpetrator before he was positive there was a crime.
  • Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers.
  • When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm and its hackers individually. There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government. Crowdstrike is also following their hack of a Russian government official after the DNC hack. It closely resembles the same method used with the DNC because it was an email hack.
  • Crowdstrike's product line includes Falcon Host, Falcon Intelligence, Falcon Overwatch and Falcon DNS. Is it possible the hackers in Falcons Flame are another service Crowdstrike offers?
  • In an interview with Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA. [11] They consider the CIA amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance is a quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity, Falcon Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the Myrotvorets site, Informnapalm analytical agency."
Although this profile says Virginia, tweets are from the Sofia, Bulgaria time zone and he writes in Russian. Another curiosity considering the Fancy Bear source code is in Russian. This image shows Crowdstrike in their network. Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network. In the image it shows a network diagram of Crowdstrike following the Surkov leaks. The network communication goes through a secondary source. Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence. The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could be on the list.
  • Should someone tell Dimitri Alperovitch that Gerashchenko, who is now in charge of Peacekeeper recently threatened president-elect Donald Trump that he would put him on his "Peacemaker" site as a target? The same has been done with Silvio Berscaloni in the past.
  • Trying not to be obvious, the Head of Ukraine's Information Ministry (UA Intelligence) tweeted something interesting that ties Alperovitch and Crowdstrike to the Ukrainian Intelligence hackers and the Information Ministry even tighter. This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared. If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves and not draw unwanted attention.
  • These same hackers are associated with Alexandra, Andrea, and Irene Chalupa through the portals and organizations they work with through their OUNb. The hackers are funded and directed by or through the same OUNb channels that Alperovitch is working for and with to promote the story of Russian hacking.
  • When you look at the image for the hacking group in the euromaidanpress article, one of the hackers identifies themselves as one of Dimitri Yarosh's Pravy Sektor members by the Pravy Sektor sweatshirt they have on. Noted above, Pravy Sektor admitted to killing the people at the Maidan protest and sparked the coup.
  • Going further with the linked Euromaidanpress article the hackers say "Let's understand that Ukrainian hackers and Russian hackers once constituted a single very powerful group. Ukrainian hackers have a rather high level of work. So the help of the USA I don't know, why would we need it? We have all the talent and special means for this. And I don't think that the USA or any NATO country would make such sharp movements in international politics."
  • What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US intel efforts.
  • The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst. Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he and these hackers need to be investigated.
  • According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have, the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I have."
  • While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests. He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine.
  • The evidence presented deserves investigation because it looks like the case for conflict of interest is the least Dimitri Alperovitch should look forward to. If these hackers are the real Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, they really did make sharp movements in international politics. By pawning it off on Russia, they made a worldwide embarrassment of an outgoing President of the United States and made the President Elect the suspect of rumor.
Obama, Brazile, Comey, and CrowdStrike

According to Obama the hacks continued until September 2016. According to ABC, Donna Brazile says the hacks didn't stop until after the elections in 2016. According to Crowdstrike the hacks continued into November.

Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile said Russian hackers persisted in trying to break into the organization's computers "daily, hourly" until after the election -- contradicting President Obama's assertion that the hacking stopped in September after he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin to "cut it out."-ABC

This time frame gives a lot of latitude to both hacks and leaks happening on that server and still agrees with the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPs). According to Bill Binney , the former Technical Director for the NSA, the only way that data could move off the server that fast was through a download to a USB stick. The transfer rate of the file does not agree with a Guciffer 2.0 hack and the information surrounding Guciffer 2.0 is looking ridiculous and impossible at best.

The DNC fiasco isn't that important of a crime. The reason I say this is the FBI would have taken control over material evidence right away. No law enforcement agency or Intel agency ever did. This means none of them considered it a crime Comey should have any part of investigating. That by itself presents the one question mark which destroys any hope Mueller has proving law enforcement maintained a chain of custody for any evidence he introduces.

It also says the US government under Barrack Obama and the victimized DNC saw this as a purely political event. They didn't want this prosecuted or they didn't think it was prosecutable.

Once proven it shows a degree of criminality that makes treason almost too light a charge in federal court. Rest assured this isn't a partisan accusation. Team Clinton and the DNC gets the spotlight but there are Republicans involved.

Further reading

[Dec 04, 2019] June 2nd, 2018 Alperovich's DNC Cover Stories Soon To Match With His Hacking Teams by George Webb

Highly recommended!
Nov 27, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Investigative Jouralist George Webb worked at MacAfee and Network Solutions in 2000 when the CEO Bill Larsen bought a small, Moscow based, hacking and virus writing company to move to Silicon Valley.

MacAfee also purchased PGP, an open source encryption software developed by privacy advocate to reduce NSA spying on the public.

The two simultaneous purchase of PGP and the Moscow hacking team by Metwork Solutions was sponsored by the CIA and FBI in order to crack encrypted communications to write a back door for law enforcement.

Among the 12 engineers assigned to writing a PGP backdoor was the son of a KGB officer named Dmitri Alperovich who would go on to be the CTO at a company involved in the DNC Hacking scandal - Crowdstrike.

In addition to writing a back door for PGP, Alperovich also ported PGP to the blackberry platform to provide encrypted communications for covert action operatives.

[Dec 04, 2019] America's War Exceptionalism Is Killing the Planet by William Astore

Highly recommended!
Our leaders like to say we value human rights around the world, but what they really manifest is greed. It all makes sense in a Gekko- or Machiavellian kind of way.
Highly recommended !
Notable quotes:
"... Think of this as the new American exceptionalism. In Washington, war is now the predictable (and even desirable) way of life, while peace is the unpredictable (and unwise) path to follow. In this context, the U.S. must continue to be the most powerful nation in the world by a country mile in all death-dealing realms and its wars must be fought, generation after generation, even when victory is never in sight. And if that isn't an "exceptional" belief system, what is? ..."
"... A partial list of war's many uses might go something like this: war is profitable , most notably for America's vast military-industrial complex ; war is sold as being necessary for America's safety, especially to prevent terrorist attacks; and for many Americans, war is seen as a measure of national fitness and worthiness, a reminder that "freedom isn't free." In our politics today, it's far better to be seen as strong and wrong than meek and right. ..."
"... If America's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen prove anything, it's that every war scars our planet -- and hardens our hearts. Every war makes us less human as well as less humane. Every war wastes resources when these are increasingly at a premium. Every war is a distraction from higher needs and a better life. ..."
"... I think that the main reason of the current level of militarism in the USA foreign policy is that after dissolution of the USSR neo-conservatives were allowed to capture the State Department and foreign policy establishment. This process actually started under Reagan. During Bush II administration those “crazies from the basement” fully controlled the US foreign policy and paradoxically they continued to dominate in Obama administration too. ..."
"... Which also means that the USA foreign policy is not controlled by the elected officials but by the “Deep State” (look at Vindman and Fiona Hill testimonies for the proof). So this is kind of Catch 22 in which the USA have found itself. We will be bankrupted by our neoconservative foreign establishment (which self-reproduce in each and every administration). And we can do nothing to avoid it. ..."
"... they are not only lobbyists for MIC, but they also serve as "ideological support", trying to manipulate public opinion in favor of militarism. ..."
"... Yes. Ideology is vital. During the Cold War it was all about containing/resisting/defeating the godless Communists. Once they were defeated, what then? We heard brief talk about a "peace dividend," but then the neocons came along, selling full-spectrum dominance and America as the sole superpower. ..."
"... The neocons were truly unleashed by the 9/11 attacks, which they exploited to put their vision in motion. The Complex was only too happy to oblige, fed as it was by massive resources. ..."
"... Leaving that specific incident aside, the bigger picture is that the brains behind the Deep State understand that global capitalism is running out of new resources (which includes human labor) to exploit. Why is the US so concerned with Africa right now, with spies and Special Forces operatives all over that continent? Africa is the final frontier for development/exploitation. (The US is also deeply concerned about China's setting down business roots there, and wants to counterbalance their activities.) ..."
"... The brains in the US Ruling Class know full well that natural resources will become ever more valuable moving forward, as weather disasters make it harder to access them. Thus, the Neo-Cons (you thought I'd never get around to them, right?) came to the fore because they advocate the unbridled use of brute military force to obtain what they want from the world. Or, to use their own terminology, the US "must have the capability to project force anywhere on the planet" at a moment's notice. President Obama was fully in agreement with that concept. Beware the wolf masquerading as a peaceable sheep! ..."
Dec 02, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

By William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and history professor. His personal blog is Bracing Views . Originally published at TomDispatch

Ever since 2007, when I first started writing for TomDispatch , I've been arguing against America's forever wars, whether in Afghanistan , Iraq , or elsewhere . Unfortunately, it's no surprise that, despite my more than 60 articles, American blood is still being spilled in war after war across the Greater Middle East and Africa, even as foreign peoples pay a far higher price in lives lost and cities ruined . And I keep asking myself: Why, in this century, is the distinctive feature of America's wars that they never end? Why do our leaders persist in such repetitive folly and the seemingly eternal disasters that go with it?

Sadly, there isn't just one obvious reason for this generational debacle. If there were, we could focus on it, tackle it, and perhaps even fix it. But no such luck.

So why do America's disastrous wars persist ? I can think of many reasons , some obvious and easy to understand, like the endless pursuit of profit through weapons sales for those very wars, and some more subtle but no less significant, like a deep-seated conviction in Washington that a willingness to wage war is a sign of national toughness and seriousness. Before I go on, though, here's another distinctive aspect of our forever-war moment: Have you noticed that peace is no longer even a topic in America today? The very word, once at least part of the rhetoric of Washington politicians, has essentially dropped out of use entirely. Consider the current crop of Democratic candidates for president. One, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, wants to end regime-change wars, but is otherwise a self-professed hawk on the subject of the war on terror. Another, Senator Bernie Sanders, vows to end " endless wars " but is careful to express strong support for Israel and the ultra-expensive F-35 fighter jet.

The other dozen or so tend to make vague sounds about cutting defense spending or gradually withdrawing U.S. troops from various wars, but none of them even consider openly speaking of peace . And the Republicans? While President Trump may talk of ending wars, since his inauguration he's sent more troops to Afghanistan and into the Middle East, while greatly expanding drone and other air strikes , something about which he openly boasts .

War, in other words, is our new normal, America's default position on global affairs, and peace, some ancient, long-faded dream. And when your default position is war, whether against the Taliban, ISIS, "terror" more generally, or possibly even Iran or Russia or China , is it any surprise that war is what you get? When you garrison the world with an unprecedented 800 or so military bases , when you configure your armed forces for what's called power projection, when you divide the globe -- the total planet -- into areas of dominance (with acronyms like CENTCOM, AFRICOM, and SOUTHCOM) commanded by four-star generals and admirals, when you spend more on your military than the next seven countries combined, when you insist on modernizing a nuclear arsenal (to the tune of perhaps $1.7 trillion ) already quite capable of ending all life on this and several other planets, what can you expect but a reality of endless war?

Think of this as the new American exceptionalism. In Washington, war is now the predictable (and even desirable) way of life, while peace is the unpredictable (and unwise) path to follow. In this context, the U.S. must continue to be the most powerful nation in the world by a country mile in all death-dealing realms and its wars must be fought, generation after generation, even when victory is never in sight. And if that isn't an "exceptional" belief system, what is?

If we're ever to put an end to our country's endless twenty-first-century wars, that mindset will have to be changed. But to do that, we would first have to recognize and confront war's many uses in American life and culture.

War, Its Uses (and Abuses)

A partial list of war's many uses might go something like this: war is profitable , most notably for America's vast military-industrial complex ; war is sold as being necessary for America's safety, especially to prevent terrorist attacks; and for many Americans, war is seen as a measure of national fitness and worthiness, a reminder that "freedom isn't free." In our politics today, it's far better to be seen as strong and wrong than meek and right.

As the title of a book by former war reporter Chris Hedges so aptly put it , war is a force that gives us meaning. And let's face it, a significant part of America's meaning in this century has involved pride in having the toughest military on the planet, even as trillions of tax dollars went into a misguided attempt to maintain bragging rights to being the world's sole superpower.

And keep in mind as well that, among other things, never-ending war weakens democracy while strengthening authoritarian tendencies in politics and society. In an age of gaping inequality , using up the country's resources in such profligate and destructive ways offers a striking exercise in consumption that profits the few at the expense of the many.

In other words, for a select few, war pays dividends in ways that peace doesn't. In a nutshell, or perhaps an artillery shell, war is anti-democratic, anti-progressive, anti-intellectual, and anti-human. Yet, as we know, history makes heroes out of its participants and celebrates mass murderers like Napoleon as "great captains."

What the United States needs today is a new strategy of containment -- not against communist expansion, as in the Cold War, but against war itself. What's stopping us from containing war? You might say that, in some sense, we've grown addicted to it , which is true enough, but here are five additional reasons for war's enduring presence in American life:

The delusional idea that Americans are, by nature, winners and that our wars are therefore winnable: No American leader wants to be labeled a "loser." Meanwhile, such dubious conflicts -- see: the Afghan War, now in its 18th year, with several more years, or even generations , to go -- continue to be treated by the military as if they were indeed winnable, even though they visibly aren't. No president, Republican or Democrat, not even Donald J. Trump, despite his promises that American soldiers will be coming home from such fiascos, has successfully resisted the Pentagon's siren call for patience (and for yet more trillions of dollars) in the cause of ultimate victory, however poorly defined, farfetched, or far-off. American society's almost complete isolation from war's deadly effects: We're not being droned (yet). Our cities are not yet lying in ruins (though they're certainly suffering from a lack of funding, as is our most essential infrastructure , thanks in part to the cost of those overseas wars). It's nonetheless remarkable how little attention, either in the media or elsewhere, this country's never-ending war-making gets here. Unnecessary and sweeping secrecy: How can you resist what you essentially don't know about? Learning its lesson from the Vietnam War, the Pentagon now classifies (in plain speak: covers up) the worst aspects of its disastrous wars. This isn't because the enemy could exploit such details -- the enemy already knows! -- but because the American people might be roused to something like anger and action by it. Principled whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning have been imprisoned or otherwise dismissed or, in the case of Edward Snowden, pursued and indicted for sharing honest details about the calamitous Iraq War and America's invasive and intrusive surveillance state. In the process, a clear message of intimidation has been sent to other would-be truth-tellers. An unrepresentative government: Long ago, of course, Congress ceded to the presidency most of its constitutional powers when it comes to making war. Still, despite recent attempts to end America's arms-dealing role in the genocidal Saudi war in Yemen (overridden by Donald Trump's veto power), America's duly elected representatives generally don't represent the people when it comes to this country's disastrous wars. They are, to put it bluntly, largely captives of (and sometimes on leaving politics quite literally go to work for) the military-industrial complex. As long as money is speech ( thank you , Supreme Court!), the weapons makers are always likely to be able to shout louder in Congress than you and I ever will. \ America's persistent empathy gap. Despite our size, we are a remarkably insular nation and suffer from a serious empathy gap when it comes to understanding foreign cultures and peoples or what we're actually doing to them. Even our globetrotting troops, when not fighting and killing foreigners in battle, often stay on vast bases, referred to in the military as "Little Americas," complete with familiar stores, fast food, you name it. Wherever we go, there we are, eating our big burgers, driving our big trucks, wielding our big guns, and dropping our very big bombs. But what those bombs do, whom they hurt or kill, whom they displace from their homes and lives, these are things that Americans turn out to care remarkably little about.

All this puts me sadly in mind of a song popular in my youth, a time when Cat Stevens sang of a " peace train " that was "soundin' louder" in America. Today, that peace train's been derailed and replaced by an armed and armored one eternally prepared for perpetual war -- and that train is indeed soundin' louder to the great peril of us all.

War on Spaceship Earth

Here's the rub, though: even the Pentagon knows that our most serious enemy is climate change , not China or Russia or terror, though in the age of Donald Trump and his administration of arsonists its officials can't express themselves on the subject as openly as they otherwise might. Assuming we don't annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons first, that means our real enemy is the endless war we're waging against Planet Earth.

The U.S. military is also a major consumer of fossil fuels and therefore a significant driver of climate change. Meanwhile, the Pentagon, like any enormously powerful system, only wants to grow more so, but what's welfare for the military brass isn't wellness for the planet.

There is, unfortunately, only one Planet Earth, or Spaceship Earth, if you prefer, since we're all traveling through our galaxy on it. Thought about a certain way, we're its crewmembers, yet instead of cooperating effectively as its stewards, we seem determined to fight one another. If a house divided against itself cannot stand, as Abraham Lincoln pointed out so long ago, surely a spaceship with a disputatious and self-destructive crew is not likely to survive, no less thrive.

In other words, in waging endless war, Americans are also, in effect, mutinying against the planet. In the process, we are spoiling the last, best hope of earth: a concerted and pacific effort to meet the shared challenges of a rapidly warming and changing planet.

Spaceship Earth should not be allowed to remain Warship Earth as well, not when the existence of significant parts of humanity is already becoming ever more precarious. Think of us as suffering from a coolant leak, causing cabin temperatures to rise even as food and other resources dwindle . Under the circumstances, what's the best strategy for survival: killing each other while ignoring the leak or banding together to fix an increasingly compromised ship?

Unfortunately, for America's leaders, the real "fixes" remain global military and resource domination, even as those resources continue to shrink on an ever-more fragile globe. And as we've seen recently, the resource part of that fix breeds its own madness, as in President Trump's recently stated desire to keep U.S. troops in Syria to steal that country's oil resources, though its wells are largely wrecked (thanks in significant part to American bombing) and even when repaired would produce only a miniscule percentage of the world's petroleum.

If America's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen prove anything, it's that every war scars our planet -- and hardens our hearts. Every war makes us less human as well as less humane. Every war wastes resources when these are increasingly at a premium. Every war is a distraction from higher needs and a better life.

Despite all of war's uses and abuses, its allures and temptations, it's time that we Americans showed some self-mastery (as well as decency) by putting a stop to the mayhem. Few enough of us experience "our" wars firsthand and that's precisely why some idealize their purpose and idolize their practitioners. But war is a bloody, murderous mess and those practitioners, when not killed or wounded, are marred for life because war functionally makes everyone involved into a murderer.

We need to stop idealizing war and idolizing its so-called warriors. At stake is nothing less than the future of humanity and the viability of life, as we know it, on Spaceship Earth.

likbez December 2, 2019 at 3:17 AM

I think that the main reason of the current level of militarism in the USA foreign policy is that after dissolution of the USSR neo-conservatives were allowed to capture the State Department and foreign policy establishment. This process actually started under Reagan. During Bush II administration those “crazies from the basement” fully controlled the US foreign policy and paradoxically they continued to dominate in Obama administration too.

They preach “Full Spectrum Dominance” (Wolfowitz doctrine) and are not shy to unleash the wars to enhance the USA strategic position in particular region (color revolution can be used instead of war, like they in 2014 did in Ukraine). Of course, being chichenhawks, neither they nor members of their families fight in those wars.

For some reason despite his election platform Trump also populated his administration with neoconservatives. So it might be that maintaining the USA centered global neoliberal empire is the real reason and the leitmotiv of the USA foreign policy. that’s why it does not change with the change of Administration: any government that does not play well with the neoliberal empire gets in the hairlines.

Which also means that the USA foreign policy is not controlled by the elected officials but by the “Deep State” (look at Vindman and Fiona Hill testimonies for the proof). So this is kind of Catch 22 in which the USA have found itself. We will be bankrupted by our neoconservative foreign establishment (which self-reproduce in each and every administration). And we can do nothing to avoid it.

wjastore says: December 2, 2019 at 8:09 AM
Good point. But why the rise of the neocons? Why did they prosper? I'd say because of the military-industrial complex. Or you might say they feed each other, but the Complex came first. And of course the Complex is a dominant part of the Deep State. How could it not be? Add in 17 intelligence agencies, Homeland Security, the Energy Dept's nukes, and you have a dominant DoD that swallows up more than half of federal discretionary spending each year.
likbez December 2, 2019 at 12:09 PM
I agree, but it is a little bit more complex. You need an ideology to promote the interests of MIC. You can't just say -- let's spend more than a half of federal discretionary spending each year..

That's where neo-conservatism comes into play. So they are not only lobbyists for MIC, but they also serve as "ideological support", trying to manipulate public opinion in favor of militarism.

wjastore December 2, 2019 at 12:25 PM

Yes. Ideology is vital. During the Cold War it was all about containing/resisting/defeating the godless Communists. Once they were defeated, what then? We heard brief talk about a "peace dividend," but then the neocons came along, selling full-spectrum dominance and America as the sole superpower.

The neocons were truly unleashed by the 9/11 attacks, which they exploited to put their vision in motion. The Complex was only too happy to oblige, fed as it was by massive resources.

Think about how no one was punished for the colossal intelligence failure of 9/11. Instead, all the intel agencies were rewarded with more money and authority via the PATRIOT Act.

The Afghan war is an ongoing disaster, the Iraq war a huge misstep, Libya a total failure, yet the Complex has even more Teflon than Ronald Reagan. All failures slide off of it.

greglaxer , December 2, 2019 at 4:12 PM

There is a still bigger picture to consider in all this. I don't want to open the door to conspiracy theory–personally, I find the claim that explosives were placed inside the World Trade Center prior to the strikes by aircraft on 9/11 risible–but it certainly was convenient for the Regime Change Gang that the Saudi operatives were able to get away with what they did on that day, and in preparations leading up to it.

Leaving that specific incident aside, the bigger picture is that the brains behind the Deep State understand that global capitalism is running out of new resources (which includes human labor) to exploit. Why is the US so concerned with Africa right now, with spies and Special Forces operatives all over that continent? Africa is the final frontier for development/exploitation. (The US is also deeply concerned about China's setting down business roots there, and wants to counterbalance their activities.)

Once the great majority of folks in Africa have cellphones and subscriptions to Netflix whither capitalism? Trump denies the severity of the climate crisis because that is part of the ideology/theology of the GOP.

The brains in the US Ruling Class know full well that natural resources will become ever more valuable moving forward, as weather disasters make it harder to access them. Thus, the Neo-Cons (you thought I'd never get around to them, right?) came to the fore because they advocate the unbridled use of brute military force to obtain what they want from the world. Or, to use their own terminology, the US "must have the capability to project force anywhere on the planet" at a moment's notice. President Obama was fully in agreement with that concept. Beware the wolf masquerading as a peaceable sheep!

[Dec 04, 2019] Barr rejects key finding in report on Russia probe: that the FBI had enough intelligence to initiate an investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016.

Dec 04, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

"Barr rejects key finding in report on Russia probe: report" [ The Hill ].

"People familiar with the matter told The Post that Barr said he does not agree with the report's finding that the FBI had enough intelligence to initiate an investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016.

The long-awaited report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is expected to be made public in a week. But a draft is being discussed behind the scenes, and the attorney general reportedly is not persuaded that the FBI investigation was justified.

The draft report is now being finalized and shown to the witnesses and offices investigated by Horowitz.

People familiar with the matter told the newspaper that Barr believes information from other agencies such as the CIA could change Horowitz's finding that the investigation was warranted."

[Dec 04, 2019] Butina blowback: foreign agents law against Russian fifth column

Better late then never ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... That person then will land on a special list of "agents" and will be obliged to register as a company so that his or her funding is transparent to the state. A Russian journalist working for Voice of America also becomes a foreign agent under the law. ..."
"... Butina was charged under a different though similar statute , which also requires foreign agents to register with the U.S. government. Even U.S. officials sometimes confuse the regulations, and it's not easy for a layman to understand what actions make one a foreign agent under them. ..."
"... Butina, for example, was sentenced to 18 months for trying to establish contacts with Republican operatives and National Rifle Association members ..."
"... Putin was annoyed by the Butina case. "They grabbed the girl, put her behind bars, and they had nothing to show for it," he commented after her sentencing. ..."
"... Now comes the retaliation -- and as usual under Putin, mainly against Russians he sees as a Western fifth column ..."
Dec 04, 2019 | www.bloomberg.com

Putin's Russia Sees Foreign Agents Everywhere by Leonid Bershidsky

... ... ...

The new law makes it possible to apply the foreign agent label to individuals, specifically to those who spread content from media or other organizations determined to be foreign agents and who receive any kind of funding from a foreign or foreign-financed source...

That person then will land on a special list of "agents" and will be obliged to register as a company so that his or her funding is transparent to the state. A Russian journalist working for Voice of America also becomes a foreign agent under the law.

... ... ...

Failure to register, open a company or mark one's stories or posts as coming from a foreign agent will be punishable by a yet-undetermined fine.

Andrei Klimov, one of the drafters of the law, recently told the government-owned daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta:

Unlike our foreign counterparts, we envisage no criminal liability. We don't grab people, we don't toss them into torture chambers, like some other countries that do it for five or fifteen years. We are capable of getting results with administrative measures.

It's clear from his comment that the Russian law is a response to the sudden prominence of foreign-agent registration, a previously obscure requirement best known to professional lobbyists, in the Donald Trump-Russia investigations of special counsel Robert Mueller. He had political operatives Paul Manafort and Rick Gates indicted for violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act of 1938, previously a laxly enforced law.

Butina was charged under a different though similar statute , which also requires foreign agents to register with the U.S. government. Even U.S. officials sometimes confuse the regulations, and it's not easy for a layman to understand what actions make one a foreign agent under them.

Butina, for example, was sentenced to 18 months for trying to establish contacts with Republican operatives and National Rifle Association members on behalf of a Russian Central Bank official who may have wanted to set up a back channel between the Kremlin and the Republican elite in the U.S.

Putin was annoyed by the Butina case. "They grabbed the girl, put her behind bars, and they had nothing to show for it," he commented after her sentencing.

Now comes the retaliation -- and as usual under Putin, mainly against Russians he sees as a Western fifth column rather than against the U.S. as such. Also as usual under Putin, the response is asymmetrical.

... ... ...

[Dec 04, 2019] Looks like the Blob and Ds are concerned that their narrative on Ukraine is being undermined by Solomon's reporting.

Dec 04, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

integer , December 3, 2019 at 11:26 pm

Looks like the Blob and Ds are concerned that their narrative on Ukraine is being undermined by Solomon's reporting.

Responding to Lt. Col. Vindman about my Ukraine columns with the facts John Solomon

Perhaps you could point out any inaccuracies in the comprehensively-sourced article above oh, wait you won't read it lol.

Lambert Strether Post author , December 4, 2019 at 7:13 am

The fraction of RussiaGate/UkraineGate that can be taken seriously is quite small. An enormous amount of it is "it's ok when we do it"-level material. Difficult to sort without presenting a range encompassing all factions.

It's possible I'm too jaded, but "reporters presents material derived from his political faction" isn't all that exciting, since I don't belong to either of the factions engaged in this battle. I remember the Lewinsky Matter, WMDs, and (see today's Links), being smeared by Prop0rNot, and UkraineGate just a little too well.

[Dec 04, 2019] Looks like Congressional Dems Democrats might paint themselves into a corner

One of the problems with show trials is that they usually backfire...
Notable quotes:
"... What will be the FBI investigation of Ciaramella - there are penalties for filing false complaints and it appears he was acting well out side the confines of the whistle-blower law. ..."
"... Ergo, the FBI is duty bound to hold Ciaramella accountable for filing a false complaint. Only if charges get filed can his action under this law be deemed irrelevant. ..."
"... The reliability of the Steele document seems to have been massively oversold to the FISA court. Had someone in the know acted as Whistle-blower and saved us all that has followed they should not get crucified for it, it is part of their job isn't it? ..."
"... turcopolier , 20 November 2019 at 09:46 PM ..."
"... I will try again. The law has nothing to do with non-intelligence matters and there were no intelligence matters in the phone call. ..."
"... The complaint was a vehicle to carry out the Democrats politics of personal destruction. While all on the DNC debate stage tonight, each candidate asked (without a hint of irony) to be the one candidate who can "bring the country together again" after Trump alone has torn it asunder. ..."
"... If I were Trump, I would have fired this guy for accepting a whistleblower complaint that was not allowed under the statute because it did not concern an intelligence activity or anything else supervised by the DNI as the statute requires. ..."
"... Conceptually, it is the same as the Intelligence IG accepting and investigating complaints about slow mail service, mine safety, or TSA agents stealing when they inspect luggage at the airport. His jurisdiction is limited and he grossly exceeded it. ..."
"... The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) is Michael K Atkinson. ICIG Atkinson is the official who accepted the ridiculous premise of a hearsay 'whistle-blower' complaint; an intelligence whistleblower who was "blowing-the-whistle" based on second hand information of a phone call without any direct personal knowledge, ie 'hearsay'. ..."
"... Michael K Atkinson was previously the Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ-NSD) in 2016. That makes Atkinson senior legal counsel to John Carlin and Mary McCord who were the former heads of the DOJ-NSD in 2016 when the stop Trump operation was underway. ..."
"... Michael Atkinson was the lawyer for the same DOJ-NSD players who: (1) lied to the FISA court (Judge Rosemary Collyer) about the 80% non compliant NSA database abuse using FBI contractors; (2) filed the FISA application against Carter Page; and (3) used FARA violations as tools for political surveillance and political targeting. ..."
"... Michael Atkinson was Senior Counsel for the DOJ-NSD, at the very epicenter of the political weaponization and FISA abuse. ..."
Dec 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Factotum , 20 November 2019 at 07:39 PM

Democrats painted themselves into a corner.

Only way out is to call for the impeachment, have a vote and either lick their wounds if they lose (mainly Schiff and Nadler get sacrificed - Fancy Nancy has been dancing on a tight rope so she gets a pass); or vote to pass articles of impeachment and finally send this turkey on to the senate.

Wild card, how many Democrats not engaged in this blatant publicity stunt also want no part in it. What will be the FBI investigation of Ciaramella - there are penalties for filing false complaints and it appears he was acting well out side the confines of the whistle-blower law.

turcopolier , 20 November 2019 at 09:36 PM
factotum
That is irrelevant. The complaint would have been invalid as outside the law even if it had been based on first hand knowledge.
Factotum said in reply to turcopolier ... , 21 November 2019 at 12:18 AM
Ergo, the FBI is duty bound to hold Ciaramella accountable for filing a false complaint. Only if charges get filed can his action under this law be deemed irrelevant.

Otherwise, all you have are the opening opinion statements in tonights DNC debate, sneered out by Rachael Maddow, picked up with even more sneers by Kamala Harris and echoed by every single DNC candidate as already a fait accompli.

The unocntested party line tonight is this "whistle blower" busted Trump wide open as a crook and a self-confessed crook at that.

That political message flowing from this "irrelevant complaint "is hard to overcome as the DNC debate crowd cheered, unless the perpetrator is brought to justice under the relevance of this law. We shall wait patiently for that moment. As the Democrats all stated tonight - 2020 election is all about JUSTICE AND NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.

NOW can I be excused while I go throw up?

turcopolier , 20 November 2019 at 09:40 PM
JJackson

The complaint was without the law, do you understand that?

JJackson said in reply to turcopolier ... , 21 November 2019 at 03:33 AM
I do, which is what I meant by
"In this case his/her gripe does not fall within the scope of the act."

The point I was making is that, as drafted, there is in adequate redress/protection for those who witness acts which are clearly covered. This is not conducive to keeping government on the straight and narrow. The reliability of the Steele document seems to have been massively oversold to the FISA court. Had someone in the know acted as Whistle-blower and saved us all that has followed they should not get crucified for it, it is part of their job isn't it?

turcopolier , 20 November 2019 at 09:46 PM
LA Sox Fan

I will try again. The law has nothing to do with non-intelligence matters and there were no intelligence matters in the phone call.

Factotum said in reply to turcopolier ... , 21 November 2019 at 12:20 AM
The complaint was a vehicle to carry out the Democrats politics of personal destruction. While all on the DNC debate stage tonight, each candidate asked (without a hint of irony) to be the one candidate who can "bring the country together again" after Trump alone has torn it asunder.
Rick Merlotti said in reply to Factotum... , 21 November 2019 at 10:05 AM
Yeah, well fortunately nobody watches those debates.
LA Sox Fan -> turcopolier ... , 21 November 2019 at 10:37 AM
Exactly right. If I were Trump, I would have fired this guy for accepting a whistleblower complaint that was not allowed under the statute because it did not concern an intelligence activity or anything else supervised by the DNI as the statute requires.

Conceptually, it is the same as the Intelligence IG accepting and investigating complaints about slow mail service, mine safety, or TSA agents stealing when they inspect luggage at the airport. His jurisdiction is limited and he grossly exceeded it.

Will Smith , 21 November 2019 at 12:32 AM
The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) is Michael K Atkinson. ICIG Atkinson is the official who accepted the ridiculous premise of a hearsay 'whistle-blower' complaint; an intelligence whistleblower who was "blowing-the-whistle" based on second hand information of a phone call without any direct personal knowledge, ie 'hearsay'.

The center of the Lawfare Alliance influence was/is the Department of Justice National Security Division, DOJ-NSD. It was the DOJ-NSD running the Main Justice side of the 2016 operations to support Operation Crossfire Hurricane and FBI agent Peter Strzok. It was also the DOJ-NSD where the sketchy legal theories around FARA violations (Sec. 901) originated.

Michael K Atkinson was previously the Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ-NSD) in 2016. That makes Atkinson senior legal counsel to John Carlin and Mary McCord who were the former heads of the DOJ-NSD in 2016 when the stop Trump operation was underway.

Michael Atkinson was the lawyer for the same DOJ-NSD players who: (1) lied to the FISA court (Judge Rosemary Collyer) about the 80% non compliant NSA database abuse using FBI contractors; (2) filed the FISA application against Carter Page; and (3) used FARA violations as tools for political surveillance and political targeting.

Yes, that means Michael Atkinson was Senior Counsel for the DOJ-NSD, at the very epicenter of the political weaponization and FISA abuse.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/04/sketchy-inspector-general-michael-atkinson-admits-whistle-blower-never-informed-him-of-contact-with-schiff-committee/

[Dec 04, 2019] The Anti-Trust Election

This is from 2016 election cycle but still relevant. Money quote: "Trump_vs_deep_state will outlive Trump and the people's faith in economists will only be restored after the next financial collapse if all of the financial sector is liquidated, all the universities and think tanks go bankrupt and the know-nothing free traders disappear from our public discourse. "
Despicable neoliberal MSM do not like to discuss real issue that facing people in 220 elections. They like to discuss personalities. Propagandists of Vichy left like Madcow spend hours discussing Ukrainegate instead of real issues facing the nation.
Notable quotes:
"... Donald Trump has promised to make deregulation one of the focal points of his presidency. If Trump is elected, the trend toward rising market concentration and all of the problems that come with it are likely to continue. ..."
"... If Clinton is elected, it's unlikely that her administration would be active enough in antitrust enforcement for my taste. But at least she acknowledges that something needs to be done about this growing problem, and any movement toward more aggressive enforcement of antitrust regulation would be more than welcome. ..."
"... Once again we have a stark 'choice' in this election...one party who won't enforce existing laws and another who will just get rid of them. Like flipping a coin: heads, the predator class wins; tails, we lose. ..."
"... "Vote third party to register your disgust..." and waste the opportunity, at least in a few states, to affect the national outcome (in many states the outcome is not in doubt, so, thanks to our stupid electoral college system, millions of voters could equally well stay home, vote third party, or write in their dog). ..."
"... But then it dawned on me: antitrust enforcement is largely up to the president and his picked advisers. If Democrats really think it is so damned important, why has Clinton's old boss Barack Obama done so very, very little with it? ..."
"... Josh Mason thinks a Clinton administration may push on corporate short-termism if not on anti-trust. We'll see, but seeing as the Obama administration didn't do much I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary doesn't either. ..."
"... They ignored the housing bubble, don't seem to understand the connection between manufacturing and wealth (close your eyes and imagine your life with no manufactured goods, because they are all imported and your economy only produces a few low value-added raw materials such as timber or exotic animals) then you will see that allowing the US to deindustrialize was a really, world-historic mistake. ..."
"... Trump_vs_deep_state will outlive Trump and the people's faith in economists will only be restored after the next financial collapse if all of the financial sector is liquidated, all the universities and think tanks go bankrupt and the know-nothing free traders disappear from our public discourse. ..."
Oct 08, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
Economist's View
I have a new column:

The Anti-Trust Election of 2016 :

... ... ...

Donald Trump has promised to make deregulation one of the focal points of his presidency. If Trump is elected, the trend toward rising market concentration and all of the problems that come with it are likely to continue.

We'll hear the usual arguments about ineffective government and the magic of markets to justify ignoring the problem.

If Clinton is elected, it's unlikely that her administration would be active enough in antitrust enforcement for my taste. But at least she acknowledges that something needs to be done about this growing problem, and any movement toward more aggressive enforcement of antitrust regulation would be more than welcome.

JohnH : October 07, 2016 at 09:10 AM , October 07, 2016 at 09:10 AM
"We'll hear the usual arguments about ineffective government" which has been amply demonstrated during the last 7 years by negligible enforcement of anti-trust laws.

Once again we have a stark 'choice' in this election...one party who won't enforce existing laws and another who will just get rid of them. Like flipping a coin: heads, the predator class wins; tails, we lose.

Vote third party to register your disgust and to open the process to people who don't just represent the predator class.

supersaurus -> JohnH... October 07, 2016 at 10:05 AM , October 07, 2016 at 10:05 AM
"Vote third party to register your disgust..." and waste the opportunity, at least in a few states, to affect the national outcome (in many states the outcome is not in doubt, so, thanks to our stupid electoral college system, millions of voters could equally well stay home, vote third party, or write in their dog).
JohnH -> JohnH... , Friday, October 07, 2016 at 04:32 PM
Thomas Frank: "I was pleased to learn, for example, that this year's Democratic platform includes strong language on antitrust enforcement, and that Hillary Clinton has hinted she intends to take the matter up as president. Hooray! Taking on too-powerful corporations would be healthy, I thought when I first learned that, and also enormously popular. But then it dawned on me: antitrust enforcement is largely up to the president and his picked advisers. If Democrats really think it is so damned important, why has Clinton's old boss Barack Obama done so very, very little with it?"
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/10/07/some-clintons-pledges-sound-great-until-you-remember-whos-president

One party who won't enforce existing laws and another who will just get rid of them...a distinction without a difference.

Who do you prefer to have guarding the chicken house...a fox or a coyote? Sane people would say, 'neither.'

Peter K. -> DrDick... , Friday, October 07, 2016 at 01:13 PM
Yes and Clinton supporters attacked Sanders over this during the primaries.

Josh Mason thinks a Clinton administration may push on corporate short-termism if not on anti-trust. We'll see, but seeing as the Obama administration didn't do much I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary doesn't either.

http://jwmason.org/slackwire/links-for-october-6/

"At Vox,* Rachelle Sampson has a piece on corporate short-termism. Supports my sense that this is an area where there may be space to move left in a Clinton administration."

* http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/10/3/13141852/short-term-capitalism-clinton-economics

Henry Carey's ghost : , Friday, October 07, 2016 at 09:35 PM
Economists have said for thirty years that free trade will benefit the US. Increasingly the country looks like a poor non-industrialized third world country. Why should anyone trust US economists?

They ignored the housing bubble, don't seem to understand the connection between manufacturing and wealth (close your eyes and imagine your life with no manufactured goods, because they are all imported and your economy only produces a few low value-added raw materials such as timber or exotic animals) then you will see that allowing the US to deindustrialize was a really, world-historic mistake.

Trust in experts is what has transformed the US from a world leader in 1969 with the moon landing to a country with no high speed rail, no modern infrastructure, incapable of producing a computer or ipad or ship.

Trump_vs_deep_state will outlive Trump and the people's faith in economists will only be restored after the next financial collapse if all of the financial sector is liquidated, all the universities and think tanks go bankrupt and the know-nothing free traders disappear from our public discourse.

>

[Dec 03, 2019] Something about Bellingcat credibility

Dec 03, 2019 | www.nytimes.com

The blogger Eliot Higgins made waves early in the decade by covering the war in Syria from a laptop in his apartment in Leicester, England, while caring for his infant daughter. In 2014, he founded Bellingcat, an open-source news outlet that has grown to include roughly a dozen staff members, with an office in The Hague. Mr. Higgins attributed his skill not to any special knowledge of international conflicts or digital data, but to the hours he had spent playing video games , which, he said, gave him the idea that any mystery can be cracked.
...
Bellingcat journalists have spread the word about their techniques in seminars attended by journalists and law-enforcement officials. Along with grants from groups like the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, the seminars are a significant source of revenue for Bellingcat, a nonprofit organization.

[Dec 03, 2019] Former Counter-Intel Officer Durham Needs To Bring Indictments by Chris Farrel

Looks like Ukrainegate further polarized the US electorate and increased not decreased, like Pelosi hoped, Trump support.
Dec 03, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Chris Farrell via The Gatestone Institute,

There is new evidence that U.S. Attorney John Durham is getting to the root of criminal abuses by senior U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials in their conspiracy to undermine the Trump campaign, transition and presidency. Mr. Durham's mandate from Attorney General William Barr -- to uncover the seditious plot behind the Trump-Russia hoax, if pursued vigorously, will uncover the single greatest threat to the Constitution since the nation's founding.

Mr. Durham's apparent interest in FBI source Stefan Halper and the contract vehicles available to the Pentagon think tank, the Office of Net Assessments, for whom Halper worked, is an important clue.

Likewise, Mr. Durham's travel to Italy for talks with the Italian government and their intelligence service points to another possible clue concerning the mysterious Maltese academic, Joseph Mifsud.

For the purposes of the manufactured Trump-Russia hoax, one need only remember the associations of Halper with Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page -- and Joseph Mifsud with George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy junior advisor -- to the Trump campaign.

The intelligence agencies of the federal government are prohibited from targeting American organizations in the United States. Executive Order 12333, Section 2.9 states:

Undisclosed Participation in Organizations Within the United States . No one acting on behalf of agencies within the Intelligence Community may join or otherwise participate in any organization in the United States on behalf of any agency within the Intelligence Community without disclosing his intelligence affiliation to appropriate officials of the organization, except in accordance with procedures established by the head of the agency concerned and approved by the Attorney General. Such participation shall be authorized only if it is essential to achieving lawful purposes as determined by the agency head or designee. No such participation may be undertaken for the purpose of influencing the activity of the organization or its members except in cases where:

(a) The participation is undertaken on behalf of the FBI in the course of a lawful investigation; or

(b) The organization concerned is composed primarily of individuals who are not United States persons and is reasonably believed to be acting on behalf of a foreign power.

This prohibition on running penetration operations against domestic political organizations is a legal and political "hangover" from the 1960s civil disturbances that saw (among a host of other covert action programs) US Army Counterintelligence agents working undercover against the militant Leftists organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society. The U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, better known as the "Church Committee," was empaneled in 1975 under the leadership of Sen. Frank Church (D-ID) to review and make recommendations on intelligence operations. The Church Committee was controversial. Critics claimed the committee exposed the "crown jewels" of U.S. intelligence and hobbled our ability to conduct legitimate collection activities. Today's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Court were inspired by the final reports of the Church Committee.

The seditious coup plotters working against Trump knew the legal prohibitions on what they planned to do. How to target Trump & Co. in a "legal" manner? Was it possible, or more importantly, desirable, to have a legal finding from Attorney General Loretta Lynch justifying their plan to frame-up Trump & Co.? That would authorize their operation -- but would Lynch support it? Could Lynch be counted on? Did they want a piece of paper like that floating around Washington D.C.? No, there had to be a better way to pull off the coup.

The alternative to a purely domestic intelligence operation targeting a major political party's candidate for the presidency (and later, president) was to manufacture a foreign counterintelligence (FCI) "threat" that could then be "imported" back into the United States. Plausible deniability, the Holy Grail of covert activities, was in reach for the plotters if they could develop an FCI operation outside the continental United States (OCONUS) involving FBI confidential human sources (Halper, Mifsud, others?) that would act as "lures" (intelligence jargon associated with double agent operations) to ensnare Trump associates.

We have evidence of these machinations from December 2015 when FBI lawyer Lisa Page texts to her boyfriend, the now infamous FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, "You get all our oconus lures approved? ;)."

To inoculate themselves from further charges of misconduct and criminality, the FBI's mutually agreed upon lie is that their investigation of Trump/Russia began on July 31, 2016 with the improbable name "Crossfire Hurricane." That coincides nicely with their manufactured FCI "event," allowing the full-bore sabotage of all things and persons "Trump." The coup plotters used a July 2016 event at the University of Cambridge as the opportunity for Carter Page to meet and develop a friendship with Stefan Halper. This is roughly the same time period that Australian diplomat Alexander Downer reported the supposedly drunken ramblings of George Papadopoulos concerning the Russians having Hillary's emails to the FBI. Papadopoulos had already serendipitously met the mysterious Joseph Mifsud in Rome during the second week of March 2016. Learning that Papadopoulos would be joining the Trump campaign, Mifsud let Papadopoulos know that he had many important connections with Russian government officials.

In July 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was questioned closely by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) concerning the persons and sequence of events detailed above.

The summation of Mueller's testimony was, "Well, I can't get into it."

The coup plot failed, but the chief coup conspirators are free, crisscrossing the country on book tours and appearing as paid contributors to CNN and MSNBC. A bright note in the so far grim saga is that one of the collateral casualties has filed a civil lawsuit in the Eastern District of Virginia against Stefan Halper and MSNBC for defamation, conspiracy and tortious interference. It's the closest thing we've seen to justice to date. The complaint makes remarkable and insightful reading.

It is now time for Mr. Durham to "get into it," in a manner Mr. Mueller was either unwilling or unable to do. Time is of the utmost importance. The American public needs to see action. Indictments and trials are the only antidote for the poison of treasonous sedition.

* * *

Chris Farrell is a former counterintelligence case officer.

devnickle , 6 minutes ago link

For the fuckers here.

I have researched this "Six ways to Sunday"

To quote Schmucker.

Since Junior, we've had 911, and TARP. Obama put the globalist **** storm on overdrive. Libya is slave trading. 16th. Century ****. He put Nazis in charge of Ukraine. So much other ****. I'm not wasting my breath. See what is in front of you. Democrats are ******* liars. Republicans are Democrats in name only. There a few who aren't that. 80 to 90% of Washington is not your friend.

Learn to discern.

nsurf9 , 1 hour ago link

With a half-dozen immunities given out like candy, smashed hard-drives, deleted emails, and a gaggle of hostile dem-attorneys and countless dem-FBI agents to finishing off destroying, sweeping under the rug, and otherwise covering-up the remainder stray evidence - during the dems unsuccessful tax-payer-financed "fishing expedition" - Good Luck!

Joe's already been kind enough to have video-taped his criminal extortion admission. Just get the rest of the evidence and indict Quid-Pro-Joe and Billion-Dollar-Hunter and this $hiff-show ends - immediately - then its not digging dirt - its Trumps sworn oath and responsibility.

PS: Tax paying republican American citizens want their grafted money back.

Schooey , 1 hour ago link

Horowitz is deep state, from what has leaked about "report", from (((NYC))) and appointed by WJC I believe. If Barr is the same, e.g. Epstein died from over exposure to coincidences, no justice is coming.

Teamtc321 , 1 hour ago link

The Horowitz review was initiated to look into how the DOJ and FBI secured a Title-1 FISA surveillance warrant against U.S. person Carter Page. IG Horowitz was never investigating the predicate claims that initiated the CIA/FBI operation known as "Crossfire Hurricane". So how exactly would AG Barr and IG Horowitz be diverging on an aspect to a predicate that Horowitz was never reviewing?

Additionally, IG Horowitz was never tasked or empowered to interview CIA officers who are known to have been at the heart of the pre-July 2016 operation. Horowitz was/is focused on the DOJ and FBI compliance with legal requirements for the FISA application that was assembled for use in October 2016, and renewed throughout 2017. - The Conservative Treehouse

Cash Is King , 1 hour ago link

"The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Patriots & Tyrants!" Thomas Jefferson

We need to expose and bleed these treasonous bastards dry!

TheFQ , 1 hour ago link

@Chris Farrell: Agreed.

If there are no indictments against the following, then we have to decide as WE THE PEOPLE what course of action we need to take to correct this situation.

Why?

If the perpetrators of treason do not face consequences, then we have no rule of law at all.

That is a situation which IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.

Here is my list of those I believe CLEARLY COMMITTED TREASON:

  • Obama
  • Brennan
  • Clapper
  • Clintons
  • Biden
  • Lynch
  • Comey
  • Sztrok
  • Page
  • McCabe
  • Ohr
  • Mifsud
  • Halper

This is only a short list - and is not complete.

Pritchards Ghost , 54 minutes ago link

The Constitution is a peace treaty. The best bulwark we have against our baser selves.

Jim in MN , 53 minutes ago link

"If all men were angels, no government would be necessary" --Federalist Papers

Kayhla the Prettiest , 47 minutes ago link

So why is it that we accept demons as our governors?

TeethVillage88s , 12 minutes ago link

Political Science 101, first day: There' are only two types of authority. Legitimate (consent of the governed) or illegitimate (barrel of a gun).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legitimacy/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_(political) https://www.questia.com/library/law/international-law/legitimacy-of-governments (list)

CheapBastard , 1 hour ago link

I would indict Mewller and Comey for starters. Offer them a plea deal to rat on the other traitors --- 20 years in prison instead of life.

[Dec 03, 2019] Exciting new product intro from Max Blumenthal: Maddow's Tears™, a new formula that produces soothing, cooling moisture in politically convenient circumstances

Jul 09, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Daniel , Jul 8, 2018 3:35:44 PM | 57

Exciting new product intro from Max Blumenthal: Maddow's Tears™, a new formula that produces soothing, cooling moisture in politically convenient circumstances.
Daniel , Jul 8, 2018 4:25:49 PM | 58
Interesting case of honesty from The Guardian:

"I am at a loss to see what motive the Kremlin might have to commit murders on foreign soil during the buildup, let alone the enactment, of a sporting event that is of mammoth chauvinist significance to Russia."

"The most obvious motive for these attacks would surely be from someone out to embarrass the Russian president, Vladimir Putin – someone from his enemies, rather than from his friends or employees. But once again we have no clue."

[Dec 02, 2019] The cost of militarism cannot be measured only in lost opportunities, lives and money. There will be a long hangover of shame

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "The cost cannot be measured only in lost opportunities, lives and money. There will be a long hangover of shame. Its essence was summed up by Col. Ted Westhusing, an Army scholar of military ethics who was an innocent witness to corruption, not a participant, when he died at age 44 of a gunshot wound to the head while working for Gen. David Petraeus training Iraqi security forces in Baghdad in 2005. He was at the time the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq." ..."
"... " 'I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars,' Colonel Westhusing wrote, abbreviating the word mission. 'I am sullied.' " ..."
www.theamericanconservative.com

Michael N. Moore , says: at 12:13 pm

In my opinion the most under-reported event of the Iraq war was the suicide of military Ethicist Colonel Ted Westhusing. It was reported at the end of a Frank Rich column that appeared in the NY Times of 10-21-2007:

"The cost cannot be measured only in lost opportunities, lives and money. There will be a long hangover of shame. Its essence was summed up by Col. Ted Westhusing, an Army scholar of military ethics who was an innocent witness to corruption, not a participant, when he died at age 44 of a gunshot wound to the head while working for Gen. David Petraeus training Iraqi security forces in Baghdad in 2005. He was at the time the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq."

"Colonel Westhusing's death was ruled a suicide, though some believe he was murdered by contractors fearing a whistle-blower, according to T. Christian Miller, the Los Angeles Times reporter who documents the case in his book "Blood Money."

Either way, the angry four-page letter the officer left behind for General Petraeus and his other commander, Gen. Joseph Fil, is as much an epitaph for America's engagement in Iraq as a suicide note."

" 'I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars,' Colonel Westhusing wrote, abbreviating the word mission. 'I am sullied.' "

Michael N. Moore , says: February 13, 2013 at 2:46 pm
As per the request of James Canning for more information on Col. Ted Westhusing, please see:

http://www.correntewire.com/a_disturbing_suicide_note_from_iraq

Or the book "Blood Money" by T. Christian Miller

thefatefullightning , says: June 4, 2013 at 1:09 pm
"The tiny pink candies at the bottom of the urinals are reserved for Field Grade and Above." --sign over the urinals in the "O" Club at Tan Son Nhut Airbase, 1965.

Now that sentiment, is Officer-on-Officer. The same dynamic tension exists throughout all Branches and ranks.

My background includes a Combat Infantry Badge and a record of having made Spec Four , two times. If you don't know what that means, stop reading here.

I feel that no one should be promoted E-5 or O-4, if they are to command men in battle, unless they have had that life experience themselves. It becomes virgins instructing on sexual etiquette.

Within the ranks, there exists a disdain for officers, in general. Some officers overcome this by their actions, but the vast majority cement that assessment the same way.
What makes the thing run is the few officers who are superior human beings, and the NCOs who are of that same tribe. And there is a love there, from top to bottom and bottom to top, a brotherhood of warriors which the civilian population will forever try to discern, parse and examine to their lasting frustration and ignorance.

It is the spirit of this nation [Liberty, e pluribus unum and In God We Trust ] that is the binding filament of it all. The civilians responsible for the welfare of the armed services need to be more fully aware of that spirit and they need to bring it into the air-conditioned offices they inhabit when they make decisions about men who know sacrifice.

Terrence Zehrer , says: July 15, 2013 at 12:48 pm
But the Pentagon is excellent at what it does – extort money from the US taxpayer. I call it treason.

"Massive military budgets erode the economic foundation on which true national security is dependent."

– Dwight Eisenhower

[Dec 02, 2019] The new meaning of intelligence: Adam Schiff, the man who every time he talks, shows his incompetence and lack of integrity is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

May 01, 2019 | anamericancomment.blogspot.com
Adam Schiff, the man who every time he talks, shows his incompetence and lack of integrity, but he is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Think about that for a while.

[Dec 02, 2019] A bunch of neocons in key positions in Trump administration really represents a huge threat to world peace

Notable quotes:
"... No. My point was it's very misleading. Misleading to set the parameters of discussion on U.S. posture toward Russia in such a way as to assume that Putin's actions against a purported Russian "democracy" have anything at all to do with USian antagonism of Russia. I'm sure you'll note current U.S. military cooperation with that boisterous hotbed of democratic activity, Saudi Arabia, in Yemen. Our allies in the house of Saud require help in defending their democratic way of life against the totalitarianism of Yemeni tribes, you see. The U.S. opposes anti-democratic forces whenever and where ever it can, especially in the Middle East. I guess that explains USian antipathy to Russia. ..."
Oct 28, 2016 | crookedtimber.org
Howard Frank in this blog provides a good example of Vichy left thinking...

Howard Frant 10.26.16 at 6:19 am 73

Stephen @58

Howard Frant 10.26.16 at 6:19 am ( )

Stephen @58

Yes, it was late and I was tired, or I wouldn't have said something so foolish. Still, the point is that after centuries of constant war, Europe went 70 years without territorial conquest. That strikes me as a significant achievement, and one whose breach should not be taken lightly.

phenomenal cat @64

So democratic structures have to be robust and transparent before we care about them? I'd give a pretty high value to an independent press and contested elections. Those have been slowly crushed in Russia. The results for transparency have not been great. Personally, I don't believe that Ukraine is governed by fascists, or that Ukraine shot down that jetliner, but I'm sure a lot of Russians do.

Russian leaders have always complained about "encirclement," but we don't have to believe them. Do you really believe Russia's afraid of an attack from Estonia? Clearly what Putin wants is to restore as much of the old Soviet empire as possible. Do you think the independence of the Baltic states would be more secure or less secure if they weren't members of NATO? (Hint: compare to Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova.)

phenomenal cat 10.26.16 at 6:55 pm 84

"So democratic structures have to be robust and transparent before we care about them?"

No. My point was it's very misleading. Misleading to set the parameters of discussion on U.S. posture toward Russia in such a way as to assume that Putin's actions against a purported Russian "democracy" have anything at all to do with USian antagonism of Russia. I'm sure you'll note current U.S. military cooperation with that boisterous hotbed of democratic activity, Saudi Arabia, in Yemen. Our allies in the house of Saud require help in defending their democratic way of life against the totalitarianism of Yemeni tribes, you see. The U.S. opposes anti-democratic forces whenever and where ever it can, especially in the Middle East. I guess that explains USian antipathy to Russia.

"I'd give a pretty high value to an independent press and contested elections."

Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what the U.S. looked like with those dynamics in place.

"Those have been slowly crushed in Russia. The results for transparency have not been great."

If you say so. For now I'll leave any decisions or actions taken on these outcomes to Russian citizens. I would, however, kindly tell Victoria Nuland and her ilk to fuck off with their senile Cold War fantasies, morally bankrupt, third-rate Great Game machinations, and total spectrum dominance sociopathy.

"Personally, I don't believe that Ukraine is governed by fascists, or that Ukraine shot down that jetliner, but I'm sure a lot of Russians do."

There's definitely some of 'em hanging about, but yeah it mostly seems to be a motley assortment of oligarchs, gangsters, and grifters tied into international neoliberal capital and money flows. No doubt Russian believe a lot things. I find Americans tend to believe a lot things as well.

[Dec 02, 2019] The Vichy left – essentially people who are ready to sacrifice all principles to ensure their own prosperity

Notable quotes:
"... Pretty consistent, I agree. IMHO Sanjait might belong to the category that some people call the "Vichy left" – essentially people who are ready to sacrifice all principles to ensure their 'own' prosperity and support the candidate who intends to protect it, everybody else be damned. ..."
"... Very neoliberal approach if you ask me. Ann Rand would probably be proud for this representative of "creative class". ..."
"... Essentially the behavior that we've had for the last 8 years with the king of "bait and switch". ..."
Oct 24, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

Sanjait -> Sandwichman ... October 24, 2016 at 10:35 AM

Some paranoid claptrap to go along with your usual anti intellectualism.

Interestingly, with your completely unrelated non sequitur, you've actually illustrated something that does relate to Krugmans post. Namely that there are wingnuts among us. They've taken over the Republican Party, but the left has some too. Fortunately though the Democratic Party hasn't been taken over by them yet, and is still mostly run by grown ups.

Sandwichman -> Sanjait... , October 24, 2016 at 10:42 AM

I am confident that what you say here is consistent with your methods and motivations.
likbez -> Sandwichman ...
"I am confident that what you say here is consistent with your methods and motivations."

Pretty consistent, I agree. IMHO Sanjait might belong to the category that some people call the "Vichy left" – essentially people who are ready to sacrifice all principles to ensure their 'own' prosperity and support the candidate who intends to protect it, everybody else be damned.

Very neoliberal approach if you ask me. Ann Rand would probably be proud for this representative of "creative class".

Essentially the behavior that we've had for the last 8 years with the king of "bait and switch".

[Dec 02, 2019] Looks like Brown Noser Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcrap organisation may have finally met their match in a real investigative journalist, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva

Dec 02, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Jen December 1, 2019 at 3:38 am

Looks like Brown Noser Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcrap organisation may have finally met their match in a real investigative journalist, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, who (some of us may recall) has done sterling work in tracing movements of weapons from the Balkan countries to Turkey and Azerbaijan with their ultimate destination being Syria to be used by ISIS jihadis, and for which she was sacked by her newspaper employer in Bulgaria.

"Exposed: Bellingcat fabricate evidence, deliberately hide documents in new 'Russian spy plot'"
https://armswatch.com/exposed-bellingcat-fabricate-evidence-deliberately-hide-documents-in-new-russian-spy-plot/

Does anyone imagine that the Brown Noser will have the courage and fortitude to respond to legal action brought against him and Bellingcrap? Will his Atlantic Council employers support him or has he passed his use-by date and become a liability?

[Dec 02, 2019] British aerial attacks using poisoning gas against Red Army in Russia in August 1919

Notable quotes:
"... "The 'chemical incident' has likely been faked. It suspiciously happened just a few days after U.S. President Trump had announced the he wanted the U.S. military to leave Syria. A year earlier a similar incident was claimed to have happened after a similar announcement by Trump. The U.S. had responded to the 2017 incident by bombing an empty Syrian airfield." ..."
"... Once the dust, smoke, and the fog of war had cleared, it became apparent that this, was yet again a choreographed move, same as the missiles on Shayrat airfield. ..."
"... I may well be wrong, as I do not go along with group think here, but this strike seems a preemptive move by Trump to prevent a push for for US military action in Syria that will take us to WWIII. ..."
Apr 19, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Ghost Ship | Apr 19, 2018 3:07:17 AM | 15

OT but very relevant to the Skripal/Douma incidents.

The Guardian has an article today headlined " The taboo on chemical weapons has lasted a century – it must be preserved " which is a bare-faced lie as the Guardian should know because the British used chemical weapons against the Russian in August, 1919, less than a century ago, and the Japanese, among America's closest allies used them against the Chinese in World War 2.

The strongest case for Churchill as a chemical warfare enthusiast involves Russia, and was made by Giles Milton in The Guardian on 1 September 2013, which prompted this article. Milton wrote that in 1919, scientists at the governmental laboratories at Porton in Wiltshire developed a far more devastating weapon: the top secret "M Device," an exploding shell containing a highly toxic gas called diphenylaminechloroarsine [DM].

The man in charge of developing it, Major General Charles Foulkes, called it "the most effective chemical weapon ever devised." Trials at Porton suggested that it was indeed a terrible new weapon. Uncontrollable vomiting, coughing up blood and instant, crippling fatigue were the most common reactions. The overall head of chemical warfare production, Sir Keith Price, was convinced its use would lead to the rapid collapse of the Bolshevik regime. "If you got home only once with the gas you would find no more Bolshies this side of Vologda."

A staggering 50,000 M Devices were shipped to Russia: British aerial attacks using them began on 27 August 1919 .Bolshevik soldiers were seen fleeing in panic as the green chemical gas drifted towards them. Those caught in the cloud vomited blood, then collapsed unconscious. The attacks continued throughout September on many Bolshevik-held villages .But the weapons proved less effective than Churchill had hoped, partly because of the damp autumn weather. By September, the attacks were halted then stopped.

The rest of the article defends Churchill against claims that he wanted to use "poison gas" in India and Iraq against tribesmen by suggesting that he meant tear gas but equally he could have been referring to mustard gas which "only" killed about 2.5% of the 165,000 WW1 soldiers it was used against but that was with a level of medical care I doubt Indian or Iraqi tribesmen could even begin to dream off.

Peter AU 1 , Apr 19, 2018 4:20:05 AM | 23

"The 'chemical incident' has likely been faked. It suspiciously happened just a few days after U.S. President Trump had announced the he wanted the U.S. military to leave Syria. A year earlier a similar incident was claimed to have happened after a similar announcement by Trump. The U.S. had responded to the 2017 incident by bombing an empty Syrian airfield."

Watching reports coming out of Syria in real time, I thought it was a genuine strike. Same as I thought the JK build up was the real thing and also the 59 missiles a year ago.

Once the dust, smoke, and the fog of war had cleared, it became apparent that this, was yet again a choreographed move, same as the missiles on Shayrat airfield.

I may well be wrong, as I do not go along with group think here, but this strike seems a preemptive move by Trump to prevent a push for for US military action in Syria that will take us to WWIII.

[Dec 02, 2019] US No doubt That Villain-Of-The-Day Has Banned Weapons

Notable quotes:
"... "There can be no doubt in the international community's mind that Syria has retained chemical weapons in violation of its agreement and its statement that it had removed them all. There is no longer any doubt ," Mattis told reporters. ..."
"... there's absolutely No Doubt that the Outlaw US Empire's mouthpieces are lying yet again. ..."
"... Perhaps the more disturbing alternative is Mattis is fully aware of everything surrounding the run up to the 2003 Iraq war and is thinking to himself: "Declaring there is no doubt worked last time..." ..."
"... The particular genius of our oppressors has been to erode the public's collective memory. With a dumbed-down educational system, a 24-hour propaganda, and an utterly vacuous popular culture, we are deprived of precisely that faculty on which following Burke's admonition depends. With our "post-literate" reliance on the Internet, it's a wonder any of us can remember what happened last week. ..."
"... If the Syrians used them, then clearly they have them. Did the Syrians use them? The US does not recognize that as a valid question. That is where Mattis goes astray. It is a valid question. We were fooled by false flag use before. There are signs it may have happened again. It is not clear enough to be sure, but it is not clear enough to be sure the other way either. ..."
"... That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history. ~Aldous Huxley ..."
Apr 30, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

U.S.: 'No doubt' That Villain-Of-The-Day Has Banned Weapons

Mattis: ' No doubt ' Syrian regime has chemical weapons , April 21, 2017

"There can be no doubt in the international community's mind that Syria has retained chemical weapons in violation of its agreement and its statement that it had removed them all. There is no longer any doubt ," Mattis told reporters.

Full text of Dick Cheney's speech , August 27, 2002

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors ...

"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."

― Edmund Burke

karlof1 | Apr 21, 2017 1:46:09 PM | 1

And there's absolutely No Doubt that the Outlaw US Empire's mouthpieces are lying yet again. Makes me even more curious as to what Putin said to Tillerson, as both Putin's and Lavrov's remarks about the global situation are blunter and more accusatory than ever before. Given the info provided by Lavrov at the press conference following the meeting of their Foreign Ministers Astana, I must assume the SCO nations are on the same page regarding the entire International Situation. In June in Astana, the SCO Summit will admit India and Pakistan as full members and begin the process to enroll Iran. Here, again, is the link to that press release, http://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/2734712
WG | Apr 21, 2017 1:47:24 PM | 2
Perhaps the more disturbing alternative is Mattis is fully aware of everything surrounding the run up to the 2003 Iraq war and is thinking to himself: "Declaring there is no doubt worked last time..."
Harry | Apr 21, 2017 1:56:09 PM | 3
The particular genius of our oppressors has been to erode the public's collective memory. With a dumbed-down educational system, a 24-hour propaganda, and an utterly vacuous popular culture, we are deprived of precisely that faculty on which following Burke's admonition depends. With our "post-literate" reliance on the Internet, it's a wonder any of us can remember what happened last week.
Mark Thomason | Apr 21, 2017 1:58:45 PM | 4
If the Syrians used them, then clearly they have them. Did the Syrians use them? The US does not recognize that as a valid question. That is where Mattis goes astray. It is a valid question. We were fooled by false flag use before. There are signs it may have happened again. It is not clear enough to be sure, but it is not clear enough to be sure the other way either.

Therefore, Mattis is wrong to conclude anything either way. However, given the official position of the US, he can hardly say anything different in public.

We ought to be looking at this very closely, but we vetoed such a close look by the international body that would do it. That would put into question the missile strikes we launched based on assumptions.

karlof1 | Apr 21, 2017 2:09:35 PM | 5
Pepe Escobar evokes T.S. Eliot's Hollow Men in his latest enumeration of Russia & China's strategic relationship. Oh, and I forgot to mention in #1 that BRICS also stands with Russia regarding all events Syria and Ukraine; and despite many efforts to destabilize it, BRICS still stands in solidarity and continues its work to economically counter the Outlaw US Empire, which Pepe also reminds us about, https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201704211052866086-washington-terrified-of-russia-china/

SmoothieX12 | Apr 21, 2017 2:10:55 PM | 6
@2, WG

Perhaps the more disturbing alternative is Mattis is fully aware of everything surrounding the run up to the 2003 Iraq war and is thinking to himself:

"Declaring there is no doubt worked last time..."

Mattis' motivation is completely different.

Mina | Apr 21, 2017 2:11:30 PM | 7
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/265369/World/Region/Syria-evacuees-on-move-again-after-hour-delay.aspx
De Mistura admits that someone lured the children with some sweets
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/265361/World/Region/Iraqi-officials--hostages,-including-Qatari-royals.aspx
Does he admit it may have something to do with Qataris in iraq?

laserlurk | Apr 21, 2017 2:16:33 PM | 8
Why would insignificant village be intentionally "gassed by Assad" while he has an absolute upper hand on the field? - is the question nobody in the Western media asks, nor has an answer to it.

Bio-chem weapons would be last resort to use on the battlefield in a desperate situation - was an original thought of making and having them.

Me and probably all of us here have no doubt that it is just a false flag perpetrated, oversaturated and pathetically served to us to validate continuation to oust Assad for Saudi's concessions, oil and money. Pure con and a rather amateurish one.
As expected, no doubt. :)

chet380 | Apr 21, 2017 2:20:39 PM | 9
Which state is Iran's greatest enemy? - Israel .. Where was the statement made? .. Who are the greatest financial political contributors in America? Res Ipsa Loquitur.

ruralito | Apr 21, 2017 2:21:37 PM | 10
Their lies are pitched to induce psychosis.

Mike Maloney | Apr 21, 2017 2:21:38 PM | 11
The importance of Mattis's pronouncement, as well as some " tilling of the soil " in the prestige press, is that another false flag attack is coming. The Hillary-McCain directive to take out Syrian airfields is going to be implemented.

MadMax2 | Apr 21, 2017 2:27:09 PM | 12
@1 karlof1
Talking Lavrov, talking history... The comprehensive history lesson Lavrov delivers to Tillerson is worth watching a number of times. It is an absolute shut down, in Tillersons face...rolling straight off the tongue.
Tillerson: 'trust us, we are sure, beyond doubt, Assad has chemical weapons'
Lavrov: 'here have this 5 minute history lesson you cabbage. '

The Mattis/Cheney comparison reminds me of the statements of the Canadian & Australian Prime Ministers prior to the Iraq 2003.

Eugene | Apr 21, 2017 2:30:06 PM | 13
And then when Mattis is dumped, he'll do the same as Colin Powell did. Welcome to the show. Bring your own popcorn.

Marko | Apr 21, 2017 2:36:44 PM | 14
@10

"Their lies are pitched to induce psychosis."

Speaking for myself , I think it's working.

harrylaw | Apr 21, 2017 2:38:55 PM | 15
SmoothieX12 Difference this time is Syria has Russian backing and the BRICS [almost half the population of the World].Russia knows Syria is the key to the Middle East, if Syria fell, Hezbollah could not resist the head choppers from the North and East and attacks from the aparthied state from the South. Iran would then be exposed and attacked financially and militarily. Of course its a huge gamble, will those nutcases in Washington take it? These are existential stakes for many states in the region.

Perimetr | Apr 21, 2017 2:46:14 PM | 16
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201704211052869570-israel-warplanes-syria-army/
Israeli aviation launched a missile attack on Syrian army's positions in the province of Quneitra bordering Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, a Syrian military source told Sputnik.

wwinsti | Apr 21, 2017 3:05:38 PM | 17
@harrylaw #15

Assad's recent announcement about wanting to buy more Russian air defense systems comes close to addmiting that the Russians will not be defending Syrian airspace.

To paraphrase tRump:

...the submarines, even more powerful than the carriers...

So, all the assets are in place. We're starting to see the accusation swarm against Assad occur at a rate that's too fast to refute individual charges against the Syrian president.

Don't be surprised if the decapitation strikes against Syria and N.Korea happen simultaneously.


Mina | Apr 21, 2017 3:30:35 PM | 18
Macron gave a martial speech explaining that he would defend France from more terror and that would imply out of the borders...

dh | Apr 21, 2017 4:05:30 PM | 19
@18 This probably won't appear in the MSM so I'll post it here...

"Emmanuel Macron fears this as well. The 39-year-old presidential candidate – an unknown quantity here just two years ago– is campaigning for the Jewish vote, keenly aware of the threat. But when France goes to the polls on Sunday, its Jews will face a unique choice: To vote in the spirit of Jewish Americans, prioritizing principles of welfare and liberal democratic values, or in the Israeli posture, with security first in mind.

Macron is betting on the former, appealing to Jewish community values shared with the French Republic of liberty, equality and fraternity.

"He knows there is a real danger from a double extremism – from the far-Right with Marine Le Pen, and from the far-Left," said Gilles Taieb, a prominent member of the French Jewish community who joined Macron's En Marche! campaign in August. "He understands the specific needs of the Jewish community.""


http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Macron-fights-for-Frances-Jewish-vote-488269

Yul | Apr 21, 2017 4:11:51 PM | 20
@ dh #19

He does not have to worry - he used to work for the Edmond de Rothschild Bank (Jewish family -closed ties to Israel)

SmoothieX12 | Apr 21, 2017 4:15:37 PM | 21
@17

Assad's recent announcement about wanting to buy more Russian air defense systems comes close to addmiting that the Russians will not be defending Syrian airspace.

This is rather a confusing (in BBC's or NYT vein) statement, since Russia, through a number of her high ranking representatives openly stated that she will upgrade Syria's AD. Syria IS NOT going to buy them, since has very little precious money, but what Syria is doing already is letting a truck load of Russia's extracting and construction companies on her market. Google Translate will do the job (link is in Russian)

https://vz.ru/news/2017/4/21/867336.html

SmoothieX12 | Apr 21, 2017 4:22:12 PM | 22
@15, Harrylaw

Iran would then be exposed and attacked financially and militarily.

I have a different opinion about this dynamics and I will not be surprised if Iran "suddenly" will become a full member of ODKB. At least for a little while.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Organization

wwinsti | Apr 21, 2017 4:28:15 PM | 23
@SmoothieX12

Fog of war warning and all, but Assad definitely mentioned price as a factor in getting New AD systems in a sputniknews interview.

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201704211052845528-russia-syria-assad-air-defense/

SmoothieX12 | Apr 21, 2017 4:49:15 PM | 24
@23

Fog of war warning and all, but Assad definitely mentioned price as a factor in getting New AD systems in a sputniknews interview.

Of course, mechanism of what in Russian is called vzaimoraschety (mutual "payments" or "coverage") is always established. The price of military technology may be compensated through other means, such as contractual preferences or any other privileges. I think Russia's oil companies will be quite happy and so will be weapons' manufacturers. Come to think about it--they already are.

harrylaw | Apr 21, 2017 5:17:08 PM | 25
The question of Russian air defence missiles to Syria should not even be asked, Israel has nuclear weapons, the US don't care, the US supplies Israel with the latest OFFENSIVE weaponry and aircraft [f35, f16 ect]plus Iron Dome. It would be the height of folly for Russia not to give Syria the means to defend themselves.

harrylaw | Apr 21, 2017 5:31:08 PM | 26
I forgot nuclear capable submarines from Germany [with a discount thrown in].

Alaric | Apr 21, 2017 5:37:17 PM | 27
The Russians and Iranians need to end this already. The US clearly wants to try regime change again.

Information_Agent | Apr 21, 2017 5:38:24 PM | 28
Just as an FYI, I'm unable to access this site when I use a VPN server based in Canada, however VPN servers located elsewhere connect without issue. Anyone else experience this?

jfl | Apr 21, 2017 5:55:59 PM | 29
what's the sound of one mad dog jarhead barking? if it sounds off in the media echo-chamber, does it make a noise? it only echoes in the tnc msm. every american knows he's howling at the moon. it may well be that there's plenty of energy among those clipping coupons on american war bonds for more war, and no energy among those who fruitlessly opposed empire in the face of those same coupon-clippers.

its all-war, all-the-time with tee-rump just as it was with obama, bush, and clinton before him. people who are surprised at this are no more acute than those who might salute the flag the mad dogs have again run up the flag pole.

speaking of russia 'extracting' and 'constructing' in syria, the us of a is doing same in iraq : US approves nearly $300 million weapons deal to Kurdish Peshmerga . hi ho, you owe.

it would be exceptionally keen if all those cruise missiles unleashed on syria and/or north korea not only turned around, but struck their origin. wouldn't that be the end?

ben | Apr 21, 2017 5:56:34 PM | 30
The American public has to be the most ignorant and gullible group of ass-hats on the planet, if they fall for this BS being shoveled at them again. God-almighty this crap gets old!!!

All for the sake of global hegemony, and more wealth for the Trumps of the world.

peter | Apr 21, 2017 6:16:39 PM | 31
@12 madmax

First of all, I don't know how you can tell those speeches are the same though I heard them both mention WMDs. But here's the kicker, that's not the Canadian PM, not on that date, he was the Leader of the Opposition at that time. Harper became PM later.

Jean Chretien was the PM and he kept Canada out of Iraq. End of story.

likklemore | Apr 21, 2017 6:19:02 PM | 32
b cites Edmund Burke "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."

There is also this little ditty:

"If at first you don't succeed try and try and try again. Never stop trying."

It works very well for TPTB who hold the sheeples are too dumbed down and will never recall moving lips.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

@ Perimetr 16

Israel needs to take the other side of the Golan - that's where the oil bubbles bigly. Ask Genie HQ NJ and while at it check out their Board of Directors, Strategic Advisory Board.
Hint, it's the gang and No One dares to spank
[Alert: page may load slowly but a worthy wait].

So forget about it. The op word is Strategic

Israel can strike Syria with 10 MOABs per second 24hr/7 and lips will be festiviously sealed tighter than a crabs rear-end.

A long essay by Robert Kennedy Jr Feb 2016:


"[W]e may want to look beyond the convenient explanations of religion and ideology and focus on the more complex rationales of history and oil, which mostly point the finger of blame for terrorism back at the champions of militarism, imperialism and petroleum here on our own shores," Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., intoned in an April editorial for Ecowatch

Peter AU | Apr 21, 2017 6:26:21 PM | 33
US Embassey Syria twitter acount is worth a read through. Reality has ceased to exist for the US admin.
https://twitter.com/USEmbassySyria

woogs | Apr 21, 2017 7:24:19 PM | 34
Also from Edmund Burke:

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Not from Edmund Burke, but a favorite if mine:

The mightiest oak is just a little nut that wouldn't give up.

james | Apr 21, 2017 7:37:56 PM | 35
thanks b... waiting for the exceptional empire to collapse.. not holding my breathe here.. the same game is being played and the same folks are hoping for the same results.. they are already getting them when it comes to money thrown into war and prep for war.. they are winning regardless if they can convince everyone to go deeper..

@17 wwinsti.. could be a head fake... no one knows for sure other then assad and russia.. welcome to the world of endless speculation..


@28 ia... this canuck is not having any issues accessing moa.. who nose.. maybe trudeau and freeland have set up a firewall to protect us from a different perspective then the 'rah, rah, rah - war 24/7 we support twitter mans agenda'..

@34 woogs.. good quote on the bottom. thanks.

MadMax2 | Apr 21, 2017 8:06:30 PM | 36
@31 peter
Indeed you're correct re: Chretien - and fair play to him. Though, the transcripts are fairly damning, as is the resignation of the plagiarist:
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/harper-staffer-quits-over-plagiarized-2003-speech-on-iraq-1.756590

ALberto | Apr 21, 2017 8:19:17 PM | 37
When WWIII commences I wonder which side Switzerland will throw their lot in with?

iegee | Apr 21, 2017 9:23:52 PM | 38
The verdict on the chemical attack was swift and certain. When it comes to the recent bus bombing, somehow it is so different:
We are investigating, but I don't have any specific ... But we think it's exaggerated .
Inqury on Syria. Security Council Stakeout, 21 April, 2017

Those people have no shame. They are not going to investigate the Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack. All the want is the flight plans from the Syrian government to finish their "work".

x | Apr 21, 2017 10:10:23 PM | 39
"No doubt" is not a statement about an objective reality out there (in country x); it is a statement about the subjective reality in the mind of the speaker (observer). A cunning ploy to speak a non-falsehood (about the mental conditioning of speaker and audience) that is merely opinion implying it is fact about a situation lacking empirical evidence.

Hoarsewhisperer | Apr 21, 2017 10:42:45 PM | 40
This hype is getting so tedious.
The WMD crap from The International (Christian Colonial) Community isn't about 'manufacturing consent'. It's about manufacturing CONSENSUS within the Christian Colonial Community itself. The Jew-controlled MSM takes care of the brainwashing. We already know that bribed politicians are paid to disregard the Will Of The People.

stumpy | Apr 21, 2017 11:24:26 PM | 41
@40, HW, the power of their glory...

Marko | Apr 22, 2017 12:14:53 AM | 42
@38

"Those people have no shame. They are not going to investigate the Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack."

They're just plugging stuff into the dossier so that historians will be able to look back and see how reasonable and restrained the U.S. was before deciding to bomb the crap out of Assad and his country.

Here's how they can do that : They say " Look , we admit that proving guilt absolutely is next to impossible in these events , and that we may have been a bit hasty in bombing Syria's airfield before the investigation was done. We'll even concede the odds in Assad's favor , say 3:1 , or only a 25% chance he was guilty for any given sarin attack , even though we're pretty sure he's been the culprit. Just know this , when we're sure - let's set a higher standard here and say 90% certainty - when we're sure about his culpability for just one use of sarin , big or small , that's our red line, after that he gets the full Gaddafi , no questions asked. OK ? Understand ? "

Everyone nods , probably including some here. When there's any uncertainty , which there always is , he gives Assad the benefit of the doubt , and then requires a higher threshold to hold him accountable. You can't get more reasonable than that.

Well , maybe somewhat predictably , false-flag activity picks up - two sarin attacks per month over the following two months , always with the typical doubts about who dunnit. The U.S. keeps their word , with no significant escalation. With the next event , as soon as sarin is confirmed but well before we think we know who was guilty , the U.S. announces breach of the red line and launches a full-scale attack on Assad and his partners , demanding that he step down immediately or watch as his country is turned to rubble. Why ?

Counting the three sarin attacks to date , and the five more that follow , the probability that the rebels committed all eight attacks is .75^8 , or 10%. That means there's a 90% chance that Assad was responsible for at least one attack - i.e. , he crossed the red line.

That's why the false-flags will continue , and why a regime-change war with Syria is inevitable , and why the buy-in by the public when it happens will be nearly unanimous.

lysander | Apr 22, 2017 12:49:39 AM | 43
@ 17, wwinsti,

That could just as easily be interpreted as Russia planning to intervene while claiming that "Syrian" air defenses have shot down US aircraft/tomohawaks. I certainly don't know for sure that Russia has actually decided to take it to that level. Perhaps the Russians will never do that, or perhaps they themselves have not yet decided but want to keep that option open to them if later they do. At any rate, there is no advantage at all to reassuring the Americans that they will NOT intervene. It is best to keep Mattis and McMaster guessing just like we are.

I do not know to what degree US planners are confident of easily overcoming serious air defenses. They probably feel that if they defeat the S400s then US military dominance will remain unchallenged for a very long time. I'm not sure if they've gamed the opposite outcome. If "Syria" shoots down a few F22s or 35s the US is in deep trouble and any victory (to the extent bringing jihadists to power can be called a victory) would be a Pyrhic one.

V. Arnold | Apr 22, 2017 1:30:21 AM | 44
Well, fuck! Here we go again; U.S. is blitzing the international airways with propaganda and lies.
Zieg heil, zeig heil, herr Trump...
You bloody, rotten, bastard!

guy | Apr 22, 2017 1:54:30 AM | 45
Karlof1 and Harrylaw: talking about BRICS'support to Russia, never trust Brazil. After Lula and Rousseff,the right-wing president Michel Temer has transformed the country in just another latin american lackey of Trump...

james | Apr 22, 2017 3:12:32 AM | 46
@42 hey marko.. your writing style reminds me of paveways..

wwinsti | Apr 22, 2017 3:24:45 AM | 47
@ lydander #42:

Of course, there's no way to predict the outcomes of certain actions or read minds of any of the various actors involved with this sarin drama, but the events in Syria since Sept. 2015 or even Sept. 2001 do allow us to lean our interpretations a certain way, don't you think?

At the end of the day, an increasingly desperate USA has available 4 Ohio class submarines that carry just short of 200 cruise missiles each. They are, with some quibbling, decapitation weapon systems designed to overwhelm nearly any defense. I can't see the US not making use of such a capacity if they are as hell bent on regime change as they claim.

wwinsti | Apr 22, 2017 3:27:00 AM | 48
I meant lysander@ 43. Apologies.

Marko | Apr 22, 2017 3:37:48 AM | 49
@46

"your writing style reminds me of paveways"

James,

My writing style reminds you of a laser-guided bomb ? Really ? Cool.

I've always thought of it more like a barrel bomb full of cluster munitions , with a dash of incendiary and a few cow pies.

michaelj72 | Apr 22, 2017 3:39:37 AM | 50
"no doubt" and "no longer any doubt" always means to me that there's plenty of good reasons to doubt everything they say.

in fact, I consider it to be an indicator that they are lying about whatever they are saying. and they "no doubt" know it....


harrylaw | Apr 22, 2017 4:07:12 AM | 51
Because the strike on Syrian territory was against International law http://www.dw.com/en/us-missile-strike-on-syria-a-violation-of-international-law/a-38389950 Putin has to make up his mind, if the US strike Syria again or repeatedly without harming Russial personnel or assets and without a military response, Russia should sue for peace and get the hell out of Syria, thereby acknowledging that the US are the only Nation that can decide the fate of Nations with regard to International affairs. In other words the unanimous agreement of the 5 veto wielding members of the UNSC will no longer be applicable and article 2 of the UN Charter is null and void.

Article 2. [3] UN Charter All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.

[4] All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Peter AU | Apr 22, 2017 4:25:43 AM | 52
51 "Russia should sue for peace and get the hell out of Syria"
??

col from oz | Apr 22, 2017 4:56:26 AM | 53
number 4

Are you the NEW York Times commentator. I really enjoy your comments their. I hardly drop by NYT however this week you were the only sane poster on North Korea. Your a jem keep it up. In fact I think cut and pasted you comment onto a Australian paper. Bravo.

lysander | Apr 22, 2017 5:19:47 AM | 54
@ 47 wwinsti,

Yes, the US has an enormous amount of cruise missiles. But judging by the damage done by the last 60 tomohawaks, it does not have enough to destroy Syrian air power with tomohawaks alone. In past invasions, they were used to destroy radars so that the subsequent air campaign can be conducted without contending with air defenses. They are not an end in and of themselves. In this case, that isn't possible unless the US plans on attacking Russian forces on both land and sea directly. The US is so far extremely reluctant to kill any Russian personnel and that is not likely to change. And this reluctance is not because of good sportsmanship.

Add to that, the Russians have shut down the deconfliction line. It means the US can't warn the Russians to get out of the way during the next attack. In other words, the Russians are prepared to be human shields to protect Syria. That does not scream "we are backing down" to me. There are also indications that US and allied sortie rates over Syria have dropped in number quite substantially since communication has been shut down.

While I agree the US is absolutely determined to destroy Syria, it is not at all clear that Russia plans to step aside while the US does it.

Pft | Apr 22, 2017 6:20:11 AM | 55
OT but LA, SF, NYC all experience power outages at the same and only RT makes the connection while MSM oblivious. Meanwhile exercises for an EMZ attack over a major US city ongoing. Strange

harrylaw | Apr 22, 2017 6:34:57 AM | 56
Peter AU @52. Sorry Peter I was being a little sarcastic. I think it has already been established that any US attack on Syria must be countered in the first instance by Syrian forces, since Russia was invited into Syria to help put down terrorism, it might not be in Russia's interest or anybody's [unless their forces are hit] to start WW3. Hence my point about arming Syria up the same way the US does with Israel and Saudi Arabia.All 5 veto wielding powers are of course above International law for all time, so that if the other members of the Security Council propose a Resolution condemning US aggression, the US simply uses its veto and that Resolution goes down the memory hole. Here is an excellent article on the veto.. http://www.david-morrison.org.uk/iraq/ags-legal-advice.pdf

Felicity | Apr 22, 2017 6:36:24 AM | 57

As you, remembering the last lies. Thank you for your peerless, ever spot on, shining pieces.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/legal-bombshell-former-iraqi-army-chief-of-staff-to-prosecute-tony-blair/5586196

ashley albanese | Apr 22, 2017 7:15:01 AM | 58
Lysander 54
The U S should keep in mind that the Russians did burn Moscow in 1812 .

Eric Zuesse | Apr 22, 2017 7:15:46 AM | 59
"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it" does not appear in the complete 12-volume set of Works of Edmund Burke, and Bartlett's books of quotations have never included it, but the allegation nowadays is common that Burke said this, because many writers say things that are false. Anyone who trusts a mere allegation, like gossip, is not reliable and cannot be trusted in what that person alleges, because falsehoods mix in with truths for any such person. The person isn't necessarily fabricating, not necessarily intentionally falsifying; the person just doesn't care whether what he or she alleges to be true IS true. Any such person is untrustworthy to cite on anything.

Furthermore, that alleged Burke-quotation doesn't even sound like Burke's writing-style, which was a very distinctive style. So, anyone who has actually read Burke would suspect that this apocryphal statement from him was probably never said by him. Only pretentious people would allege that Burke said it -- people who pretend to have read Burke.

jfl | Apr 22, 2017 7:29:32 AM | 60
@54 lysander, 'In other words, the Russians are prepared to be human shields to protect Syria.'

i don't think that's the message sent or that it's indicative of the action to be taken in the event of another us attack on syria. as it stood pre-tee-rump-attack the us could call the russians and 'warn' them that the cruise missiles were theirs ... now they can no longer do that, and the russians have made a point of stating that an attacking aircraft/missile - and the originating vessel/station - are going to be shot down/taken down ... that the russians will not waste time in trying to figure out just whose attacking missiles/aircraft they are destroying.

i think it will be a cold day in hell before the russians 'sacrifice' themselves to make a point.

V. Arnold | Apr 22, 2017 7:38:51 AM | 61
Eric Zuesse | Apr 22, 2017 7:15:46 AM | 59
"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it"

This from, of all places, Yahoo answers (blech); however it is referenced;
CITES: George Santayana, The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Common Sense 284 (2nd ed., Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, New York 1924 (originally published 1905 Charles Scribner's Sons)(appears in chapter XII, "Flux and Constancy in Human Nature")). George Santayana, The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress 82 (one-volume edition, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, New York 1954)(appears in Book I, Reason in Common Sense, chapter 10, "Flux and Constancy in Human Nature").

This information was found at: http://members.aol.com/Santayana/gsguestbook.htm
``Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it,'' said Penton, echoing philosopher George Santayana's famous admonition.

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1995/vp951119/11170741.htm

In any event, I agree with your admonition...

Addendum; cannot access references, so maybe more garbage.

Posted by: V. Arnold | Apr 22, 2017 7:41:25 AM | 62

Addendum; cannot access references, so maybe more garbage.

Posted by: V. Arnold | Apr 22, 2017 7:41:25 AM | 62

Anon1 | Apr 22, 2017 7:42:55 AM | 63
All this lies, fake news, psyop by US, NATO and MSM is possibly just because they rule the world. They refuse any other views, parties, nations questioning their wars and propaganda. Its quite scary when you think about it.
Like, is there ANYONE condemning this in the MSM nowadays? No one.
Every journalist (MSM) from Germany, to US, to Spain, to Portugal, to Columbia, to Sweden, to South Korea etc, all western MSM peddle this same propaganda for the american empire and their endless wars.

1984?

@ 60, I don't think sacrifice is the word I would use. The US understands that killing openly Russian soldiers soldiers (vs indirectly by arming terrorist proxies) would mean Russian retaliation. And therefore will not do it.

Posted by: lysander | Apr 22, 2017 7:46:14 AM | 64

@ 60, I don't think sacrifice is the word I would use. The US understands that killing openly Russian soldiers soldiers (vs indirectly by arming terrorist proxies) would mean Russian retaliation. And therefore will not do it.

Posted by: lysander | Apr 22, 2017 7:46:14 AM | 64

V. Arnold | Apr 22, 2017 7:48:07 AM | 65
...and then there is this;
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (George Santayana)

I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive."
― Kurt Vonnegut

john | Apr 22, 2017 7:50:16 AM | 66
Eric Zuesse

well, we're real impressed that you've memorized all 12 volumes of Edmund Burke, but for those of us who haven't, Google does credit him with this remark. a simple oversight, perhaps? so thanks for the lesson(even if you haven't cleared anything up), and the mini diatribe, teach, even though your scholarly footnotes have fuck all to do with b's intent.

Curtis | Apr 22, 2017 7:56:57 AM | 67
"no doubt"
Did they get this from Bush's speech to congress in March, 2003?
"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Real intelligence left all kinds of doubt especially from the family members of Iraqi scientists who went into Iraq to ask. They risked their lives for this and were ignored.

"we assess" - recent prepeated mantra from USG declarations. I'm waiting for The Donald or his CIA minion to declare Syrian WMDs to be a "slam dunk." I think Cheney used to say "we have it on good authority." The rule for most politicians and media is if their lips move they're lying.

Curtis | Apr 22, 2017 7:59:29 AM | 68
Perhaps after another coalition of the willing has destroyed Syria will the US president joke about searching for WMDs like Bush did. An insult to us all.

Formerly T-Bear | Apr 22, 2017 8:41:31 AM | 69
@ 59 and ff commentary

The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Quotations has the quote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" made by George Santayana (1863 - 1952) in The Life of Reason (1905) vol. 1, ch. 12

Oxford is fairly reliable sourcing for such questions, FWIW. As far as the western world and history another quote comes to mind from Dante Alighiere (1265-1321) that translates: Abandon all hope, you who enter! [with regard to history].

Curtis | Apr 22, 2017 10:34:43 AM | 70
We need a Jon Stewart style montage of all these people saying "no doubt" followed by the group No Doubt saying it. (like he did with the GOP/FNC meme of "It's A Trap")

Curtis | Apr 22, 2017 10:36:27 AM | 71
"The mightiest oak is just a little nut that wouldn't give up."
woogs 34

I am Groot.

james | Apr 22, 2017 12:22:11 PM | 72
@49 marko.. - good stuff either way, lol..

Piotr Berman | Apr 22, 2017 12:22:18 PM | 73
"Counting the three sarin attacks to date , and the five more that follow , the probability that the rebels committed all eight attacks is .75^8 , or 10%. That means there's a 90% chance that Assad was responsible for at least one attack - i.e. , he crossed the red line."

I understand that this was presented as an incorrect reasoning, but perhaps not all readers here see the mistakes. First, probability is used to describe random events and not historical events. The post that you see here could be written by Piotr Berman, an identifiable individual, or by an impostor. In itself the claim that it was written by Piotr Berman is true or false, it does not have probability. However, from the point of view of a reader, it is but one of a large number of comments posted on internet so one can apply some guessed estimates, like "10% of comments signed with uniquely identifiable names are written by impostors". This of course begs the question how we arrive at such estimates etc. In short, the probability assigned to a single sarin attack is an exhalation from someones terminal end of the digestive system and quite hazardous if used.

However, even if we form an abstract model in which a chemical attack is randomly perpetrated by X with probability p and not by X with probability 1-p, and we have 8 attacks, the probability that X perpetrated at least one attack is anywhere between 0 and 1. The formula (1-p)^8 applies only if the events are independent. For example, if X possesses the means to perpetrate an attack with probability q, then the probability that it perpetrated any of many attacks is never larger than q.

That said, probabilities have their place in war strategy. If a false flag attack has a random effect on a key decision maker, that repeating it many times may increase the probability that a desired decision will be made. And Trump's and Obama's behavior has (and had) a degree of randomness.

james | Apr 22, 2017 12:33:58 PM | 74
@73 piotr.. that logic is insane of course..

Marko | Apr 22, 2017 1:54:22 PM | 75
@73

piotr,

You're correct about the technical probability considerations , of course , but I think the real-life effect of each new false-flag may fall closer to the line drawn by the bad model than by the good. I think all parties involved know that each new false-flag has an incremental impact driving us closer to war ,in addition to the random one you mention , at least as long as there remains considerable doubt about the true culprit with each new event.

From Khan al-Assal to Ghouta to Khan Sheikhoun we've moved closer and closer to the real "red line". For the anti-Assad camp , the false-flag strategy is still working and they'll keep it up , though I'm sure they're getting impatient. For the Assad side , gaining territory has the opposite effect , moving us away from the red line. Had Assad and Putin doubled-down on battlefield intensity after Aleppo and made further gains , rather than pausing as they did , I think they'd be in much better shape today.

Dean | Apr 22, 2017 2:10:38 PM | 76
How close is the USA and Israel? Look at Mattis's lapel pin during his presser.

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/us-led-coalition-methodically-remove-defense-secretary/

Isn't that normally the country he represents?

IMO this shows that Israel foreign policy = USA foreign policy.

MusicofE | Apr 22, 2017 5:30:48 PM | 77
I I follow the link to the U.S. embassy Twitter page @33, unbelievable!. The Trump administration partying like it is 1984.

Piotr Berman | Apr 22, 2017 7:37:20 PM | 78
The usage of "there can be no doubt" is a bit different from what we could learn in English classes. First, "doubt" is a kind of thought-weed that is at times harmless, and at times seriously detrimental and thus subjected to eradication efforts. "There is no doubt" declares the success of the eradication campaign while "There can be no doubt" is more like "There should not be any doubt", i.e. an exhortation to continue and expand eradication campaign. Usually the large fields of major agribusiness companies are well tended with copious amounts of herbicides, while on the edges, meadows, smaller organically tended fields etc. the weeds can survive and in isolated places they can even thrive.

From that point of view excessive consumption of, say, NYT or TV news can make people positive for "symptoms of sarin or sarin-like chemicals" like Roundup when we take swabs from their mucosal surfaces and analyze with sensitive instruments. Smaller but proudly "mainstream" publications like New Yorker have no doubt either (in this case it is easy, because New Yorker is very compartmentalized, few individuals are allowed to write on the topic, this way they can keep doubt from showing without mass use of chemicals). The Nation has some articles written by doubt-free persons (like Katha Pollit) but doubt levels are significant -- kept down mostly by small number of articles on Syria. And Counterpunch is a weed in itself.

AKSA | Apr 22, 2017 7:56:06 PM | 79
@ Dean | Apr 22, 2017 2:10:38 PM | 76

No kidding!? How old are you?

How about this: The US is prime Nazi country/regime, and the Zionist state is modeled after the US, or the European racism. The settler states are known for its unprecedented violence. Unfortunately, still the phenomenon of extermination is connected with Germany and not the US.

http://warisacrime.org/content/how-us-race-laws-inspired-nazis

One of many U.S. state laws that Nazis examined was this from Maryland:

"All marriages between a white person and a Negro, or between a white person and a person of Negro descent, to the third generation, inclusive, or between a white person and a member of the Malay race or between a Negro and a member of the Malay race, or between a person of Negro descent to the third generation, inclusive, and a member of the Malay race . . . [skipping over many variations] . . . are forever prohibited . . . punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary for not less than eighteen months nor more than ten years."

jfl | Apr 22, 2017 8:31:15 PM | 80
@78 bp. 'From that point of view excessive consumption of, say, NYT or TV news can make people positive for "symptoms of sarin or sarin-like chemicals" like Roundup when we take swabs from their mucosal surfaces and analyze with sensitive instruments.'

very nice piotr berman. the metaphor is so well drawn, and in the following cases as well. One has a malady, here, a malady. One feels a malady.

the dysfunctions all swell from a common source, into a slum of bloom. the wigs despoiling the Satan ear.

karlof1 | Apr 22, 2017 10:24:15 PM | 81
guy @45--

Yes, I was apprehensive at first, but the new regime toed BRICS's lines, participated in its functions as usual, and has tried to use it in its national interest. Brazil's internal contradictions don't allow it to abandon its one big success story. And as I stated, BRICS policy declarations are all in line with Russia and China's in every area.

psychohistorian | Apr 23, 2017 2:32:49 AM | 82
@ karlof1 who writes about geopolitics

While many of the big brains go to Wall St. to front guess Mr. Market, there are others, "no doubt", that build geopolitical dashboards, models and simulations for the elite to monitor all the countries/governments/militaries/public.

In spite of their visibility of their universe, they are losing control and know it. The absurdity of the ongoing global debt situation is a tell.

All countries have evolving relationships with both the US and China as well as within the various groups of nations. China is talking growth and the US/private finance is talking austerity. It is not if but a matter of when growth wins out and global finance is put under public control.

Temporarily Sane | Apr 23, 2017 8:43:48 AM | 83
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history. ~Aldous Huxley

Afghan officials have said nearly 100 militants and no civilians were killed, but the remoteness of the area, the presence of Islamic State fighters, and, more recently, American security forces, has left those claims unverified.

[Dec 02, 2019] The Smearing of Tulsi Gabbard by W.J. Astore

Notable quotes:
"... Aha! There you have it. Back in February 2016, Gabbard resigned her position as vice-chair of the DNC to endorse Sanders, and the DNC, controlled by establishment centrists like the Clintons as well as Barack Obama, have never forgiven her. Recently, Hillary Clinton smeared her (as well as Jill Stein, Green Party candidate from 2016) as a Russian asset, and various mainstream networks and news shows, such as "The View" and NBC, have suggested (with no evidence) she's the favored candidate of Russia and Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... Just what we don't need: two bought-and-paid-for political parties in the service of the wealthiest and the corporations. But at least the Republicans are (mostly) honest about their priorities ..."
Dec 02, 2019 | bracingviews.com

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is a compelling choice for president in 2020. She's principled, she's against America's disastrous regimen of regime-change wars, and she's got the guts to criticize her own party for being too closely aligned with rich and powerful interests. She's also a military veteran who enlisted in the Army National Guard in Hawaii after the 9/11 attacks (she currently serves as a major and deployed overseas to Iraq during that war).

What's not to like about a female veteran who oozes intelligence and independence, a woman who represents diversity (she's a practicing Hindu and a Samoan-American), an early supporter of Bernie Sanders who called out the DNC for its favoritism toward Hillary Clinton

Aha! There you have it. Back in February 2016, Gabbard resigned her position as vice-chair of the DNC to endorse Sanders, and the DNC, controlled by establishment centrists like the Clintons as well as Barack Obama, have never forgiven her. Recently, Hillary Clinton smeared her (as well as Jill Stein, Green Party candidate from 2016) as a Russian asset, and various mainstream networks and news shows, such as "The View" and NBC, have suggested (with no evidence) she's the favored candidate of Russia and Vladimir Putin.

Think about that. Hillary Clinton and much of the mainstream media are accusing a serving major in the U.S. military of being an asset to a foreign power. It's an accusation bordering on a charge of treason -- a charge that is libelous and recklessly irresponsible.

A reminder: Tulsi Gabbard enlisted in the military to serve her country in the aftermath of 9/11. What did Hillary Clinton do? Can you imagine Hillary going through basic training as a private, or serving in the military in a war zone? (Hillary did falsely claim that she came under sniper fire in Bosnia , but that's a story for another day.)

Tulsi Gabbard is her own person. She's willing to buck the system and has shown compassion and commitment on the campaign trail. She may be a long shot, but she deserves a long look for the presidency, especially when you consider the (low) quality of the enemies she's made. Reply

wjastore November 26, 2019 at 1:10 PM

Whenever I post anything remotely positive about Tulsi Gabbard on Facebook, the same few people come out to denounce her. My response is below, though I know you can't reason with haters:

That Tulsi has been on Fox News is an argument in her favor, i.e. her crossover appeal and her willingness to engage with the "other side." That Tulsi met with Assad is, in my view, reasonable; true leaders are always willing to meet with "bad" people, even ruthless dictators, in the cause of averting war. My main point is how she's being smeared as some kind of traitor, or at least a useful idiot. She's neither. Also, I've read the piece on Tulsi in Jacobin, and I've heard about alleged cults. Is this really the best the media can do? Guilt by association?

Some of our readers may have concerns about Tulsi, e.g. alleged Islamophobia, alleged cults, etc. The main point is this: Does she deserve to be smeared as a Putin puppet? What does this say about our media? And why are they doing this? I can tell you why. Trillions of dollars are spent on wars and weapons, and Tulsi is calling for an end to regime-change wars and a return to diplomacy. She also, like Bernie, is willing to call out the DNC as being against the interests of ordinary Americans -- and she's right about this. She has a lot in her favor. I'm a Bernie fan myself, but I'll take Tulsi over all those phony "centrists" like Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Harris, and Biden.

rs November 26, 2019 at 1:52 PM
This was published when she was accused of being a Russian asset! https://www.thenation.com/article/tulsi-russia-clinton/

On the other hand, her connection to extreme right RSS and BJP ( of India ) though diaspora are troubling .. https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/russia-accusations-a-distraction-from-tulsi-gabbards-actual-troubling-ties/

wjastore November 26, 2019 at 2:09 PM
I can't speak to the RSS/BJP connection; I've read about it, but I admit to ignorance on the matter. Of course, every candidate has multiple connections, positions, donors, etc. All politicians carry baggage. So far, from what I've read, Tulsi is more principled and more courageous than most of her peers.

I'm still a Bernie fan -- his long record of helping the poor and vulnerable speaks for itself. Of course, he once went to Moscow oh no! Run away! 🙂

Joseph Mirzoeff November 26, 2019 at 3:24 PM
Tulsi has now done four courageous, unusual, and very positive things while merely a candidate:
1) Tulsi effectively took down a leading contender and DNC favorite, by demonstrating that Senator Harris had been a corrupt prosecutor.
2) Tulsi defended democracy as she sued Google for at least $50 million, for playing favorites in search-routing of candidates.
3) Tulsi called out Hillary Clinton for the monster she is.
4) Tulsi supported a process toward 911 truth by supporting 911-victims' families' right to see FBI documents that have been denied to them.

Tulsi is the anti-war candidate. Tulsi Gabbard should be Commander-in-Chief. Yang should be VP and in charge of the economy. Read his book. UBI is the way to go. Tulsi needs someone she can trust as VP.

Michael Murry November 26, 2019 at 4:46 PM
To your list of courageous Tulsi Gabbard positions, I would add the following, Joseph:

Tulsi Gabbard Says She Would Drop Julian Assange Charges and Pardon Edward Snowden , by Jason Murdock, Newsweek (5/15/19 at 5:22 AM EDT).

I consider the vicious persecution of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning -- both languishing in prison for having committed no crime whatsoever -- along with the exile of Edward Snowden, among the greatest travesties of justice ever committed by the U.S. and U.K. (dishonorable mention goes to Sweden and the latest Ecuadorian government, as well). I had hoped for this subject to come up in the "debates," giving Tulsi yet another opportunity to shine relative to her competitors, most of whom would soil their undergarments in panic at the thought of "crossing" the absurdly named "intelligence community" and its entirely co-opted corporate media outlets.

If Tulsi Gabbard had done no other principled thing than this, I would have considered her heads and shoulders above anyone else campaigning for a position in the U.S. government today.

Michael Murry November 26, 2019 at 4:59 PM
I ought to dedicate this one to Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard for her principled defense of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden (and no-doubt Chelsea Manning, as well):

Star Chamber, Incorporated

Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning
Jailed as twin examples for the proles:
"Look what happens if you publish secrets:
More totalitarian controls."

In Chinese: "Kill the Chicken scare the Monkey."
Rat-out your colleagues. Do not Power tempt.
Or otherwise the judges and grand juries
Will hold you in what lawyers call "contempt."

A strange word-choice, indeed, by Power's minions
Who spend careers perfecting rank abuse.
For them I'd have to feel respect much greater
Before that is the word that I would use.

I've nothing good to say for prosecutors.
Some say I wish to "damn them with faint praise."
But I reply: "You praise with faint damnation.
So which of us has coined the the better phrase?"

Despicable, the treatment of these heroes.
The US and UK have sunk so low.
Still, Julian and Chelsea have together
More balls than these two governments can grow.

No matter, they have passed into the ages.
Already they have earned a fair renown.
Each day they live defiant, undefeated,
They rise as jailers try to put them down.

As JFK once said of his elite class:
"The ship of state leaks mainly from the top."
But if some lowly, powerless, poor person
Tries that, they'll feel the lash. No truth. Now stop!

To scare a monkey, kill another monkey.
If not, the monkeys learn impunity.
While eating KFC they ask, obtusely:
"What has a chicken got to do with me?"

And so the Corporation-State must silence
Reports of its incompetence and crime.
If citizens knew what it did they'd order
Its dissolution. Now. And just in time.

Historically, they called it the Star Chamber
A secret court designed to thwart the king.
But power then perverted it to serve him.
Grand juries in the US, same damn thing.

They now indict ham sandwiches routinely
With no protection for the innocents.
Presumed as guilty, evidence not needed.
Conviction guaranteed. No court repents.

A judge may do whatever he determines
He can. So levy fines. Coerce. Demand
On penalty of prison, testimony
Against oneself, alone upon the stand.

"Democracy" is just a euphemism
If citizens allow this to proceed.
Orwellian: first Hate then Fear of Goldstein.
Two Minutes, daily. Really, all you need.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2019

Joseph Mirzoeff November 26, 2019 at 4:20 PM
Please don't fall for Bernie. He is neither Presidential nor trustworthy. Consider this: https://www.sentinelsource.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/what-did-bernie-know-about-these-conspiracies-by-joseph-mirzoeff/article_f7b43e69-6639-526a-823d-c4ca3778b5a1.html
Felix_47 November 27, 2019 at 12:21 PM
This is a good commentary. military experience is a good thing especially when we are dealing with the fact that over half of the national budget is devoted to the military.
wjastore November 27, 2019 at 5:19 PM
A good short clip on Tulsi Gabbard and smears against herL https://www.youtube.com/embed/OcCOtOCZ_qY?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
rs November 29, 2019 at 9:34 AM
Tulsi Gabbard KNOWS it i. e. Cost of Wars!
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-is-tulsi-the-only-democrat-who-cares-about-our-wars/
Monotonous Languor November 29, 2019 at 10:03 AM
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has a thoughtful article on playing it safe, running out the clock, prevent defense, etc., on your opponent as it would apply to politics.

Jabbar writes: Almost every poll showed her with a respectable lead over Trump just days before the election. So, the Clinton campaign tried to run out the clock by not campaigning much in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota, all of which turned much redder than in the previous presidential election.

The tactic of trying to pick a "safe" candidate who can beat Trump by appealing to their ideas about Middle America sends the wrong message to all of America. No team devise a game strategy based on fear: they emphasize their strengths and exploit their opponents' weaknesses. The Democratic candidate shouldn't be the least objectionable, but the one who boldly forges ahead with clear and detailed plans for Making America America Again.

Democrats can't pander to voters by denigrating Trump but then promising them Trump-lite with a wink. Promote progressive policies and plans worthy of a party that wants to lead this country without fear of being called "socialists" or "the radical left" or whatever else your opposing team chants.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/oct/15/how-sports-tactics-can-help-the-democrats-beat-donald-trump-in-2020
===================================
Jabbar is correct. The Corporate Democrats among them Biden, Buttigieg and Bloomberg are fighting desperately to preserve a perceived lead aided and abetted by the McMega-Media.

Chicago Alderman, Paddy Bauler (1890-1977) said in 1955 on the election of Daley the Elder, "Chicago ain't ready for reform yet", or "Chicago ain't ready for a reform mayor".

Today, the pundits employed by Corporate America, along with various Democratic Party stooges for Wall Street tell us America ain't ready for Reform.

bmcks November 29, 2019 at 4:21 PM
Yes, ML, so goes American 'Exceptionalism', after WW2 Victory. Today, so goes a Great American City in violence, all so shortsighted. I'm still confused with our never-ending wars overseas, as our cities rot in crime & violence, my main concern. I didn't grow up – or party! -later on in today's disaster areas of Baltimore or Philadelphia, etc.It was GREAT!

But somethings going on I don't know about, when the WORST cities have black Congresspeople (Maxime Waters?) living in 6.5$Mil mansions as their "districts" die.
I have NO PROBLEM with black people! Such a smear an insult. But it's worth investigating why these characters who have ruined their cities are supporters of Dems, & Billary! Oh! They spend & vote lavishly on more money for our wars, but nothing for their own cities!

Finally starting to figure it out: They're traitors to their own race, for their personal benefit. They make Dems "look proud", vs "REP's!" Yes, they too re dreadful maybe that's why I feel: TULCI GO! She's neither dreadful party!

wjastore November 29, 2019 at 5:32 PM
A long but interesting podcast with Tulsi Gabbard on the Joe Rogan show

https://www.youtube.com/embed/PdYud9re7-Q?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Eddie S November 29, 2019 at 7:05 PM
ML: Good citation of KA-J -- - although I've seen the same-sort of criticism of the Dems elsewhere, Kareem's sports analogy is very helpful in understanding the concept.

(I have to say that I got sick of the Dems milquetoast approach to politics. Maybe it was an understandable response to a frustrating right-wing zeitgeist, but DAMN, did they have to be SO passive against the Reps?? Even when they briefly held majorities in Congress under Obama, the wouldn't introduce/push bills that weren't 'filibuster-proof'!?!? I for one might still be voting Dem POTUS IF they had pushed those progressive bills., then let the Reps filibuster for weeks or months, meantime the Dems & Obama could've gone in front of the public daily and said something like "We're trying to help you by passing Bill X, but the Reps are filibustering and stopping Congress from getting any work done!" Let the government shut-down for a few weeks because of it and keep hammering away at the Reps for being the BLOCKERS, etc. Call their bluff, and use it against them during elections. Instead they tried to be overly accommodating & conciliatory BEFORE debate had even begun!)

Michael Murry November 29, 2019 at 7:46 PM
Yes. Eddie. The Democratic Party not only gets its ass kicked for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but it seems to have developed something of a masochistic taste for the Republican abuse. Hence two of my verse compositions essentially agreeing with your observations:

(1) From eight years ago. From "Hope" and "Change" to despair and the status quo. And with a Nobel Peace Prize for Endless War, too.

Congenital Stockholm Syndrome

He started by giving up quickly,
Surrendering early his case.
He offered to kiss their asses.
Replying, they pissed in his face.

Their urine, he thought, tasted strangely;
Yet not at all bad to his taste.
He'd gotten so used to it, plainly.
Why let such a drink go to waste?

The people who voted in favor
Of him and his promise of "change"
Now see in his many betrayals
A poodle afflicted with mange.

Each time that the surly and crazy
Republicans out for his skin
Condemn him for living and breathing,
He graciously helps them to win.

He'll turn on his base in an instant
With threats and disdain and neglect
While bombing some Muslims so Cheney
Might thrill to the lives that he's wrecked.

A black man in love with apartheid
He offers his stalwart support
To Zionists and their extortion
With "More, please!" his only retort.

A masochist begging for beatings
Obama takes joy in abuse
Receiving just what he has asked for
Which makes him of no earthly use

The little brown men that he's murdered
In homes far away from our land
Bring profits obscene to his backers
Who give him the back of their hand.

Obama seeks praise from the vicious
Republicans, no matter what.
He suffers, apparently, nothing
So much as his need to kiss butt.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2011

(2) From twelve years ago and on the Congressional side of the Surrender Monkey Syndrome:

Nancy the Negotiator

Nancy the Negotiator
Gives up first; surrenders later;
Takes her cards from off the table,
Then recites her loser fable:

"We don't have the votes we need,"
Nancy says, in tones that bleed:
"Mean Republicans will whine
If we do not toe their line."

Nancy bows to George and Dick
While her skinny ass they kick;
Writes them checks both blank and rubber,
Then proceeds to lamely blubber:

"We don't like what Dubya's doing.
Still, we quite enjoy the screwing.
Masochism's what we offer,
Helping crooks to loot the coffer"

"Sure, the squandered blood and treasure
Goes to those we will not measure.
Still, we promise you'll adore us
If you mark your ballot for us."

"Choices you don't have assail you,
Leaving only us who fail you.
Nonetheless, we've gotten fatter.
Why, then, should we think you matter?"

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2007

After six years in Uncle Sam's Canoe Club (the last eighteen months of that in the now-defunct Republic of South Vietnam) it didn't take me long to realize that the Republicans get paid a lavish salary to do what the fabulously wealthy demand, while the Democrats get a comparatively meager allowance to do what the Republicans tell them to do, also on behalf of the fabulously wealthy: namely, betray their own working-class anti-war base so that the Republicans will not have anything even remotely "leftist" to worry about. In truth, the Democratic party crawled up its own ass and died so many years ago that I think I've lost count.

Like Like

wjastore November 30, 2019 at 9:06 AM
Just what we don't need: two bought-and-paid-for political parties in the service of the wealthiest and the corporations. But at least the Republicans are (mostly) honest about their priorities

[Dec 02, 2019] Legitimate questions that need answers by The Saker

Dec 02, 2019 | www.unz.com

Priss Factor , says: Website November 28, 2019 at 4:40 am GMT

https://www.youtube.com/embed/yZk-fZUI8VI?feature=oembed

[Dec 01, 2019] Something about death threats that supposedly Fiona Hill is getting

Dec 01, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Hoax-Watch Prof Charged With Sending Threats To Herself Over Cancellation Of Course Zero Hedge by Tyler Durden Sun, 12/01/2019 - 14:30 0 SHARES

Via The College Fix,

An Australian professor has been charged with implementing a bogus harassment campaign against herself following the controversial cancellation of a degree program.

Dianne Jolley, a professor of environmental chemistry and toxicology at the University of Technology Sydney, allegedly sent threatening letters to herself between May and September as a protest against abolition of the degree in traditional Chinese medicine, university officials believe.

According to Stuff.com, Jolley, who's also the school's Dean of Science, claimed that in addition to the letters, various articles of clothing had been sent to her ... had clothes stolen from her backyard.

As a result, "significant security measures" were put in place to protect the professor. But after an investigation by Sydney Police, officials ended up charging Jolley with "obtaining a financial advantage by deception, giving false information about a person or property in danger, and making false representations resulting in a police investigation."

Jolley attorney Aaron Kerneghan said his client would plead "not guilty" to all charges.

[Dec 01, 2019] Angry Bear: Putin Beating Up People At Russia's Top University

Dec 01, 2019 | angrybearblog.com

That would be Moscow State University, the "Harvard" of Russia.

Not in the MSM at all, but I have mu sources, and apparently sometime last week the FSB, the successor to the domestic arm of the old KGB, raised Moscow State (whose main building is one of those "Stalin Gothic" skyscrapers) to capture a student who had been posting leaflets on walls protesting recent government actions. He was reortedly taken into the library and severely beaten to the point of torture.

Oh yes, VV Putin is such a lover of knowledge and science, just like his flunky, Donald J. Trump.

Happy Thanksgiving, you all.

Barkley Rosser

likbez , December 1, 2019 1:31 am

Barkley,

I think you suffer from chronic Russophobia. Or smoked something really strong. You should read Stephen Cohen more., although I am not sure that it can help.

You just describes the set of action so stupid that they are unrealistic.

Putin after all is a lawyer and he understand how the neoliberal MSM fueled by Western money would react to such an incident.

Can you explain why this student was not taken to court and charged with vandalizing property and forces to couple of month of community work plus to pay the cost of cleaning as is typical in such cases?

IMHO this is not how Russian authorities usually behave is such case -- they always suspect well organize western provocation -- look at Pussies provocations and the authorities reaction.

Why FSB needs to chaise a poor student giving neoliberal MSMs another golden opportunity to smear Russia, Not like you did -- without any evidence, but with a credible evidence? This is police work.

[Dec 01, 2019] Stephen Cohen (one of the few pundits who actually knows something about Russia) about false narrative that persist in the Democratic Party

Dec 01, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

JohnH -> anne... , November 28, 2019 at 03:46 PM

Stephen Cohen (one of the few pundits who actually knows something about Russia:)

"Almost daily for three years, Democrats and their media have told us very bad things about Donald Trump's life, character, and presidency. Some of them are true. But in the process, we have also learned some lamentable, even alarming, things about the Democratic Party establishment, including self-professed liberals. Consider the following:

The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic attitudes. Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an "attack" so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor. But there was no "attack" in 2016, only, as I have previously explained, ritualistic "meddling" of the kind that both Russia and America have undertaken in the other's elections for decades. Little can be more phobic than the allegation or belief that one has been "attacked by a hostile" entity. And yet this myth and its false narrative persist in the Democratic Party's discourse, campaigning, and fund-raising.

We have also learned that the heads of America's intelligence agencies under President Obama, especially John Brennan of the CIA and James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, felt themselves entitled to try to undermine an American presidential candidacy and subsequent presidency, that of Donald Trump. Early on, I termed this operation "Intelgate," and it has since been well documented by other writers, including Lee Smith in his new book. Intel officials did so in tacit alliance with certain leading, and equally Russophobic, members of the Democratic Party, which had once opposed such transgressions. This may be the most alarming revelation of the Trump years: Trump will leave power, but these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will remain.

We also learned that, contrary to Democratic dogma, the mainstream "free press" cannot be fully trusted to readily expose such abuses of power. Indeed, what the mainstream media -- leading national newspapers and two cable news networks, in particular -- chose to cover and report, and chose not to cover and report, made the abuses and consequences of Russiagate allegations possible. Even now, exceedingly influential publications such as The New York Times seem eager to delegitimize the investigation by Attorney General William Barr and his appointed special investigator John Durham into the origins of Russiagate. Barr's critics accuse him of fabricating a "conspiracy theory" on behalf of Trump. But the real, or grandest, conspiracy theory was the Russiagate allegation of "collusion" between Trump and the Kremlin, an accusation that was -- or should have been -- discredited by the Robert Mueller report.

And we have learned, or should have learned, that for all the talk by Democrats about Trump as a danger to US national security, it is their Russiagate allegations that truly endanger it. Consider two examples. Russia's new "hyper-sonic" missiles, which can elude US missile-defense systems, make new nuclear arms negotiations with Moscow imperative and urgent. If only for the sake of his legacy, Trump is likely to want to do so. But even if he is able to, will Trump be entrusted enough to conduct negotiations as successfully as did his predecessors in the White House, given the "Putin puppet" and "Kremlin stooge" accusations still being directed at him?"

https://www.thenation.com/article/inconvenient-truths-2/

ilsm -> JohnH... , November 29, 2019 at 09:19 AM
The Russia thingie/falsehoods are part of corrupt demrats assault on the US constitution. They are even now predicting their loss in 2020 due to "interference" and people wanting to know how corrupt the DNC [front running] select has been!

Demrat allies in the shadow revolving door government of neocon humbug factories are denouncing Trump for his ignoring their war mongering imperial objects.

RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to ilsm... , November 30, 2019 at 08:31 AM
"...assault on the US constitution..."

[Adding assault to injury? The US Constitution was damning enough on its own. What are they thinking inside the deep state apparatus? Don't they know that power and privilege is reserved for holders of wealth by the US Constitution? Who do they think that they are really working for?]

RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to JohnH... , November 30, 2019 at 08:26 AM
Friend ilsm may be less nuts than it appears, but friend ilsm is not less incomprehensible than it appears. Would it be out of place to thank you for ilsm's sake?

Our two-party system was largely useless after FDR, but our two-party system has been largely destructive since 1968. Let me know if anything really changes.

JohnH -> anne... , November 28, 2019 at 03:54 PM
Aaron Maté: "Impeachment Non-Bombshells Endanger Democrats in 2020

Unmerited hype about Gordon Sondland's testimony has overshadowed the potential damage that the impeachment saga poses for the presidential election."
https://www.thenation.com/article/impeachment-sondland-democrats/

Have I ever said how pathetic the Democratic establishment is? As for Pelosi's vaunted tactical skills? What BS!

RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to JohnH... , November 30, 2019 at 06:25 AM
Pelosi has been wagged by her party's tail.
RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to RC (Ron) Weakley... , November 30, 2019 at 06:29 AM
not that I would be ordinarily predisposed to defend her. The problem with delusions is that they can easily become self-perpetuating, even easier with the right hand on the tiller.
RC (Ron) Weakley said in reply to RC (Ron) Weakley... , November 30, 2019 at 06:34 AM
Sail Away

Pearls Before Swine

I have just come back from the land beyond the mountain
This is not a story I was told
When all the people are made out of wood
They build their houses of bones

Sail away, Oh sail away
The edge of the world is near
Sail away, Oh sail away from here

I have just come back from the land beyond the mountain
All the cigarettes are hand rolled
Nothing is bought and nobody is sold
And everything's made of gold

I have just come back from the land beyond the mountain
There a man with wounds I did see
Said: I do not want to escape from reality
I want reality to escape from me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBn9Ytr9o-c

Pearls Before Swine - Sail away

[Nov 30, 2019] Hill denied her close links to Soros

Nov 30, 2019 | www.infowars.com

During her testimony in the impeachment hearings this week, Fiona Hill dismissed charges she was a "globalist" by referring to the term as an "anti-Semitic" conspiracy theory, despite the fact that she writes for a publication literally called 'The Globalist'.

Hill was responding to a question by Democratic Representative for Illinois Raja Krishnamoorthi, who quoted Hill's earlier deposition in which she complained about Roger Stone labeling her "the globalist leftist [George] Soros insider."

Hill claimed that "a conspiracy" had been launched against her and that 'globalist' was an anti-Semitic trope, while admitting that she was a "leftist maybe," but implying she was not a globalist.

"This is the longest-running anti-Semitic trope that we have in history, and a trope against Mr. Soros was also created for political purposes, and this is the new Protocols of The Elders of Zion," Hill said.

This statement is somewhat at odds with Hill literally being a contributing writer for a publication called 'The Globalist'.

Stone also previously asserted that Hill was serving as George Soros' "mole" under the supervision of former NSA adviser H.R. McMaster.

Hill is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, which is considered to be one of the pre-eminent globalist institutions in the United States.

[Nov 30, 2019] Henry Kissinger Gets It US 'Exceptionalism' Is Over

Looks like exceptions in US political jargon means "no rivals"... Trump is still dreaming about "Full Spectrum Dominance" Otherwise he would not populate his administration with rabid neocons, leftover from Bush II administration. As well as people who were responsible for Obama color revolutions and wars. Instead of gratitude from neocons viper nest in the State Department he got Ukrainegate as a Thanksgiving present.
Notable quotes:
"... If the US cannot find some modus vivendi with China, then the outcome could be a catastrophic conflict worst than any previous world war, he admonished. ..."
"... A key remark made by Kissinger was the following: "So those countries that used to be exceptional and used to be unique, have to get used to the fact that they have a rival." ..."
"... In other words, he is negating the erroneous consensus held in Washington which asserts that the US is somehow "exceptional", a "uni-power" and the "indispensable nation". This consensus has grown since the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the US viewed itself as the sole super-power. That morphed into a more virulent ideology of "full-spectrum dominance". Thence, the past three decades of unrelenting US criminal wars and regime-change operations across the planet, throwing the whole world into chaos. ..."
"... While sharing a public stage with Kissinger, the Chinese leader added: "The two sides should proceed from the fundamental interests of the two peoples and the people of the world, respect each other, seek common ground while reserving differences, pursue win-win results in cooperation, and promote bilateral ties to develop in the right direction." ..."
"... Likewise, China and Russia have continually urged for a multipolar world order for cooperation and partnership in development. But the present and recent US governments refuse to contemplate any other order other than a presumed unipolar dominance. Hence the ongoing US trade strife with China and Washington's relentless demonization of Russia. ..."
"... This "exceptional" ideological mantra of the US is leading to more tensions, and ultimately is a path to the abyss. Henry Kissinger gets it. It's a pity America's present crop of politicians and thinkers are so impoverished in their intellect. ..."
Nov 29, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made prudent remarks recently when he said the United States is no longer a uni-power and that it must recognize the reality of China as an equal rival. The furor over a new law passed by the US this week regarding Hong Kong and undermining Beijing's authority underlines Kissinger's warning.

If the US cannot find some modus vivendi with China, then the outcome could be a catastrophic conflict worst than any previous world war, he admonished.

Speaking publicly in New York on November 14, the veteran diplomat urged the US and China to resolve their ongoing economic tensions cooperatively and mutually, adding: "It is no longer possible to think that one side can dominate the other."

A key remark made by Kissinger was the following: "So those countries that used to be exceptional and used to be unique, have to get used to the fact that they have a rival."

In other words, he is negating the erroneous consensus held in Washington which asserts that the US is somehow "exceptional", a "uni-power" and the "indispensable nation". This consensus has grown since the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the US viewed itself as the sole super-power. That morphed into a more virulent ideology of "full-spectrum dominance". Thence, the past three decades of unrelenting US criminal wars and regime-change operations across the planet, throwing the whole world into chaos.

Kissinger's frank assessment is a breath of fresh air amid the stale and impossibly arrogant self-regard held by too many American politicians who view their nation as an unparalleled power which brooks no other.

The seasoned statesman, who is 96-years-old and retains an admirable acumen for international politics, ended his remarks on an optimistic note by saying: "I am confident the leaders on both sides [US and China] will realize the future of the world depends on the two sides working out solutions and managing the inevitable difficulties."

Aptly, Kissinger's caution about danger of conflict was reiterated separately by veteran journalist John Pilger, who warned in an exclusive interview for Strategic Culture Foundation this week that, presumed "American exceptionalism is driving the world to war."

Henry Kissinger is indeed a controversial figure. Many US scholars regard him as one of the most outstanding Secretaries of State during the post-Second World War period. He served in the Nixon and Ford administrations during the 1970s and went on to write tomes about geopolitics and international relations. Against that, his reputation was badly tarnished by the US war in Vietnam and the horrendous civilian death toll from relentless aerial bombing across Indochina, believed to have been countenanced by Kissinger.

Kissinger has also been accused of supporting the military coup in Chile in 1973 against elected President Allende, and for backing the dirty war by Argentina's fascist generals during the 1970s against workers and leftists.

... ... ...

At times, President Donald Trump appears to subscribe to realpolitik pragmatism. At other times, he swings to the hyper-ideological mentality as expressed by his Vice President Mike Pence, as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mike Esper. The latter has labeled China as the US's "greatest long-term threat".

This week President Trump signed into law "The Human Rights and Democracy Bill", which will impose sanctions on China over alleged repression in its Hong Kong territory. Beijing has reacted furiously to the legislation, condemning it as a violation of its sovereignty.

This is exactly the kind of baleful move that Kissinger warned against in order to avoid a further poisoning in bilateral relations already tense from the past 16 months of US-China trade war.

One discerns the difference between Kissinger and more recent US politicians: the former has copious historical knowledge and appreciation of other cultures. His shrewd, wily, maybe even Machiavellian streak, informs Kissinger to acknowledge and respect other powers in a complex world. That is contrasted with the puritanical banality and ignorance manifest in Trump's administration and in the Congress.

Greeting Kissinger last Friday, November 22, during a visit to Beijing, President Xi Jinping thanked him for his historic contribution in normalizing US-China relations during 1970s.

"At present, Sino-US relations are at a critical juncture facing some difficulties and challenges," said Xi, calling on the two countries to deepen communication on strategic issues. It was an echo of the realpolitik views Kissinger had enunciated the week before.

While sharing a public stage with Kissinger, the Chinese leader added: "The two sides should proceed from the fundamental interests of the two peoples and the people of the world, respect each other, seek common ground while reserving differences, pursue win-win results in cooperation, and promote bilateral ties to develop in the right direction."

Likewise, China and Russia have continually urged for a multipolar world order for cooperation and partnership in development. But the present and recent US governments refuse to contemplate any other order other than a presumed unipolar dominance. Hence the ongoing US trade strife with China and Washington's relentless demonization of Russia.

This "exceptional" ideological mantra of the US is leading to more tensions, and ultimately is a path to the abyss. Henry Kissinger gets it. It's a pity America's present crop of politicians and thinkers are so impoverished in their intellect.

[Nov 30, 2019] The Transparent Cabal The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel Stephen J. Snie

Notable quotes:
"... Another episode in the sad story of recent American government. It starts with a 1996 paper entitled "A Clean Break, A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" published by an Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. The principal idea was to foment war in the Middle East and consequently destabilize Israel's enemies. ..."
"... No informed American can afford to not know the names Oded Yinon, AIPAC, The Clean Break, The NEOCONS. Knowledge is indeed power. > ..."
"... Hersh hoped that future historians would document the fragility of American democracy by explaining how eight or nine neoconservatives were able to overcome easily the bureaucracy, the Congress, and the press. Stephen Sniegoski, in The Transparent Cabal, has provided a detailed history of how the neoconservative cult achieved the takeover. ..."
"... The neoconservatives do not represent the only case in American history of a small group attempting to take over America. The Plot to Seize the White House (Jules Archer) provided a detailed account of General Smedley Butler's testimony to Congress about a secret plot to overthrow President Franklin Roosevelt. Butler, a Republican, authored War is a Racket. ..."
"... In a recently written best-seller two political scientists at the University of Chicago and Harvard (John Meirsheimer and Stephen J. Walt _The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy_) broke a long-standing taboo in the United States and risked charges of anti-Semitism by exposing the role of the powerful Israeli Lobby (AIPAC) in the United States and its push for war against Iraq and with its future sights on Iran. This book echoes many of the claims made by Meirsheimer and Walt and further shows the agenda of the small circle of neoconservatives in directing American foreign policy. The author maintains that the neoconservatives are a "transparent cabal", in that they have operated as a tight-knit secret group but their actions remain transparent. ..."
"... That old canard "anti-semitic" is heard again in one of the reviews of this book. Nonsense!!! If one is anti-semitic simply because he is critical of certain policies followed by Likud, then many Jews living in Israel are also Jew haters. ..."
"... Israeli politicians are, undertandably, looking out for the intestests of their nation state. However, many American pols are beholden to the Israeli lobby (of simply feaful of it) and often place American interests second to that of the lobby. ..."
Nov 30, 2019 | www.amazon.com

Although it is generally understood that American neoconservatives pushed hard for the war in Iraq, this book forcefully argues that the neocons' goal was not the spread of democracy, but the protection of Israel's interests in the Middle East. Showing that the neocon movement has always identified closely with the interests of Israel's Likudnik right wing, the discussion contends that neocon advice on Iraq was the exact opposite of conventional United States foreign policy, which has always sought to maintain stability in the region to promote the flow of oil. Various players in the rush to war are assessed according to their motives, including President Bush, Ariel Sharon, members of the foreign-policy establishment, and the American people, who are seen not as having been dragged into war against their will, but as ready after 9/11 for retaliation

Concerned Citizen , July 13, 2014

How and Why Israel Promoted the U.S. Invasion of Iraq

Every American should read this superb book about the intimate connection between the state of Israel and the Americans who planned and promoted the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 (and who still influence U.S. policy in the Middle East). This very well-researched and well-argued book will enlighten Americans who want to understand how the Jewish State of Israel powerfully shapes U.S. Middle East policy.

Stephen Sniegowski provides a detailed look at the network of die-hard pro-Israel Neoconservatives who have worked in the U.S. government, in think tanks, and in the news media to shape American foreign policy to serve the needs of Israel at the expense of the U.S. From media baron Rupert Murdoch, whose 175 newspapers around the world ALL editorialized in favor of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, to deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, to Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and later Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, to Vice President Dick Cheney, to the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle, the neoconservatives successfully persuaded President George W. Bush to invade Iraq to promote Israel's foreign policy interests.

Sniegowski describes how the Neocons promoted lies about Saddam Hussein's supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction and his supposed ties to al-Qaeda terrorists from a network of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Middle East Media Research Institute, Hudson Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the Center for Security Policy, and the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

He also traces the influence of Israeli Zionist Oded Yinon on the American Neoconservatives. Yinon wrote an article in 1982 entitled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s" that called for Israel to bring about the dissolution of many of the Arab states and their fragmentation into a mosaic of ethnic and sectarian groupings. This is basically what is happening to Iraq and Syria today. He also called for Israelis to accelerate the emigration of Palestinians from Israel, whose border he believed should extend to the Jordan River and beyond it.

Yinon's article influenced a paper written for the Israeli Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 by American neoconservatives Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm". This paper stated that Netanyahu should "make a clean break" with the Oslo peace process and reassert Israel's claim to the West Bank and Gaza. Like Yinon's article, it also called for the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the weakening of Syria to promote Israel's interests. It was written five years BEFORE the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. These same three men - Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser - who advised Netanyahu's Israeli government on issues of national security would later advise President George W. Bush to pursue virtually the same policies regarding the Middle East.

If you want to understand how and why powerful pro-Israel neoconservatives in the U.S. misled Americans and convinced President George W. Bush to order the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and how they persuaded the U.S. Congress to give Bush the authority to order the invasion, read this outstanding book.

Baraniecki Mark Stuart , March 13, 2010
The Failure of American Government

Another episode in the sad story of recent American government. It starts with a 1996 paper entitled "A Clean Break, A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" published by an Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. The principal idea was to foment war in the Middle East and consequently destabilize Israel's enemies.

The policy was adopted by the Israeli pro-settler right wing and Jewish activists in and around the Clinton and Bush administrations such as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser (who all helped produce the original document). They identified as targets Iraq, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia and were handed a golden opportunity after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre. Iraq was falsely presented as an Al Qaeda base and the media planted with stories about an imminent attack on the United States using WMD. Despite the CIA knowing all along that the WMD didn't exist, the US still invaded Iraq and the story was quietly and unbelievably changed to "building democracy".

As Sniegoski points out, the war has exceeded the cost of Vietnam and the same activists, now working through Hillary Clinton are looking for "incidents" in Iraq to trigger the next phase of the plan which is a US attack on Iran.

UPDATE October 2014:

And it gets worse: The 911 story itself keeps morphing. Google "Building 7", YouTube "911 Missing Links" or check the article at http://911speakout.org/7TOCPJ.pdf. >

Severo , May 16, 2016
A cornerstone in the quest for understanding the current Middle East Crisis.

Important book for those trying understand the chaos that is currently reigning in the Middle East. From the lies based NEOCON attack on Iraq trumpeted by the mainstream USA media as a fight to save Western Civilization, to the rise of ISIL.

This books will make those connections clear. No informed American can afford to not know the names Oded Yinon, AIPAC, The Clean Break, The NEOCONS. Knowledge is indeed power. >

Paul Sheldon Foote , January 26, 2010
The Neoconservative Cult and the Fragility of American Democracy

On January 27, 2005, [...] posted the remarks of Seymour Hersh (The New Yorker contributor) at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York that a neoconservative cult had taken over the American government.

Hersh hoped that future historians would document the fragility of American democracy by explaining how eight or nine neoconservatives were able to overcome easily the bureaucracy, the Congress, and the press. Stephen Sniegoski, in The Transparent Cabal, has provided a detailed history of how the neoconservative cult achieved the takeover.

Other books have stressed how the neoconservative ideology is contrary to traditional American values: Reclaiming the American Right (Justin Raimondo), America the Virtuous (Claes Ryn), Where the Right Went Wrong (Patrick Buchanan).

"Memoirs of a Trotskyist" in Neo-conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (Irving Kristol) provided a neoconservative account of the origins of neo-conservatism. Sniegoski noted correctly that the term neoconservative originated with leftists critical of their former comrades for attempting to infiltrate the Democratic and Republican parties. Thanks to leftists who call neoconservatives the ultra-right and to conservative dupes who think that anyone using a conservative label is a conservative, the neoconservative cancer has spread through the fragile American political body.

The neoconservatives do not represent the only case in American history of a small group attempting to take over America. The Plot to Seize the White House (Jules Archer) provided a detailed account of General Smedley Butler's testimony to Congress about a secret plot to overthrow President Franklin Roosevelt. Butler, a Republican, authored War is a Racket.

Unlike earlier secret plots to take over the American government, Sniegoski explained how it was possible for the neoconservatives to operate as a relatively transparent cabal. However, he observed that the neoconservatives used a Trojan horse technique to take over the American conservative movement. The goal of the neoconservatives is to promote endless wars regardless of whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in power.

The neoconservatives do not represent a popular mass movement in America. Instead, the neoconservatives rely upon the co-operation of other groups. Sniegoski provided extensive documentation of which groups enabled the neoconservatives. For example, the Christian Zionists duped their followers into sacrificing money and soldiers. Zionism originated with the writings of Moses Hess (who helped Karl Marx write The Communist Manifesto, was nicknamed the Communist Rabbi, and who is buried in Israel). In 1862, Moses Hess published Rome and Jerusalem. Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism and Zionism (Shlomo Avineri) provided a detailed explanation of the relationship between Communism and Zionism.

The reason for the fragility of American democracy is the failure of many Americans to understand the most basic aspects of the American political system and of their religions.

The Transparent Cabal is an important starting point for understanding how a neoconservative cult opposed to traditional American political and religious values is able to destroy America with endless wars.

New Age of Barbarism , October 14, 2008
A Brilliant Account of the Neoconservative War Agenda.

_The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, And the National Interest of Israel_, published in 2008 by Enigma Editions of IHS Press, by scholar Stephen J. Sniegoski is a thorough examination of the role of the neoconservatives in pushing for war in the Middle East (beginning with the war in Iraq and pushing onwards towards Iran) in order to protect the national interests of Israel. Sniegoski makes the claim that the neoconservatives have been the fundamental force behind the war efforts of the United States and have played a particularly prominent role in the Bush administration. While these claims have now become common knowledge, Sniegoski makes an important contribution by tracing the history of the neoconservative movement and its links to prominent pro-Jewish and pro-Israel groups. In particular, Sniegoski claims that neoconservativism is a tool of Zionism and the Likudniks of Israel. Sniegoski traces out how following the attacks of September 11, the neoconservative war hawks had a profound influence on the thinking of President Bush and offered him a ready made solution to his foreign policy agenda. In this book, Sniegoski also considers and refutes other theories as to the root causes behind America's intervention in Iraq (such as the role of oil and war profiteering) but explains how these theories lack the validity of that which lays the blame on the neoconservatives and their goals for Israeli dominance in the Middle East.

In a recently written best-seller two political scientists at the University of Chicago and Harvard (John Meirsheimer and Stephen J. Walt _The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy_) broke a long-standing taboo in the United States and risked charges of anti-Semitism by exposing the role of the powerful Israeli Lobby (AIPAC) in the United States and its push for war against Iraq and with its future sights on Iran. This book echoes many of the claims made by Meirsheimer and Walt and further shows the agenda of the small circle of neoconservatives in directing American foreign policy. The author maintains that the neoconservatives are a "transparent cabal", in that they have operated as a tight-knit secret group but their actions remain transparent.

This book begins with a Foreword by Congressman Paul Findley (famous author of _They Dare to Speak Out_ and longtime opponent of the Israeli Lobby) in which he explains the importance of Sniegoski's book and deflects the spurious charge of anti-Semitism. Following this, appears an Introduction by noted paleoconservative Paul Gottfried who explains his admiration for Sniegoski's book, offers some comparisons between Sniegoski's claims and those of other individuals, and contrasts the old non-interventionist limited government form of conservativism with that of the neoconservatives.

The first chapter of Sniegoski's book is entitled "The Transparent Cabal" and notes the disastrous consequences that have followed upon the Iraq war spurred on by the neoconservatives. The author explains what he means in calling the neoconservatives a "transparent cabal" and notes the importance of their Middle East, pro-Israeli agenda. The author explains how following the events of September 11, they came to take on a prominent role in influencing the thinking of the president (who had previously shown little interest in the Middle East).

The second chapter is entitled "The "Neocon-Israel" Claim: Bits and Pieces" and exposes the role of Israel's Likudnik party behind the neoconservatives. The author deflects claims of "anti-Semitism" which are frequently hurled at those who make these charges by showing that even many prominent Jews agree with this. Following this appears a chapter entitled "Who are the Neocons?" which shows how the neocons emigrated from their original home in the Democratic party of the McGovernite left into the Republican party as the New Left began to voice criticisms of Israel. The author shows that many of the neocons are actually socialists and Trotskyites parading under the label of "conservative". Further, the author shows the role of various intellectuals centering around New York City in creating the neoconservative movement.

Next, appears a chapter entitled "The Israeli Origins of the Middle East War Agenda" which shows how the goal of Middle East war to further the interests of Israel has been supported extensively by hawkish groups in Israel. The author explains how these groups came to have such a prominent role in influencing the policy of the United States and in suppressing the native population of Palestinians in Israel. Following, appears a chapter entitled "Stability and the Gulf War of 1991: Prefigurement and Prelude to the 2003 Iraq War" in which the author explains the importance of the first Gulf War of Bush I in prefiguring the Iraq War of Bush II. After this, appears a chapter entitled "During the Clinton Years" in which the author shows the continuing role of the neocons during the Clinton years.

Following this, appears a chapter entitled "Serbian Interlude and the 2000 Elections" in which the author explains how the war in Yugoslavia paved the way for the coming Iraq War of President Bush. This also explains the split that occurred among conservatives between those traditional conservatives who opposed the war and the neocons who firmly supported it. Following this appears a chapter entitled "George W. Bush Administration: The Beginning" in which the author explains the role that the neocons came to take in the Bush administration mentioning in particular the role of such figures as Wolfowitz and Cheney and the role of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Following this appears a chapter entitled "September 11", showing how the events of Sept. 11 allowed the neocon agenda to gain prominence in the mind of President Bush.

Next, appears a chapter entitled "Move to War" explaining how the neocons pushed for war against Sadaam Hussein presenting their case to the American people by claiming that Hussein was in possession of WMDs which could be used against America. Following this appears a chapter entitled "World War IV" explaining how the conflict in the Middle East came to be dubbed World War IV by certain intellectuals among the neocons.

Next, appears a chapter entitled "Democracy for the Middle East" showing the role of the neocons in foisting "democracy" onto various nations and their goal of global democratic revolution. The author also explains the role of the thinking of political philosopher Leo Strauss behind many of the neocons and his profoundly anti-democratic philosophy. Following this, appears a chapter entitled "Neocons' Post-Invasion Difficulties" showing how the invasion of Iraq turned out to be more serious and difficult than originally anticipated by the neocons. Next, appears a chapter entitled "Beginning of the Second Administration" showing the continuing role of the neocons under the second Bush administration.

Then, appears a chapter entitled "Israel, Lebanon, and the 2006 Election" showing the role of Lebanon and Syria in relationship to Israel and that of the 2006 election.

Next, appears a chapter entitled "2007: On to Iran" showing how the neocons continued to press for further wars in particular against Iran by alleging among other things that Ahmedinejad was a mad man with possible access to nuclear weapons. Following, appears a chapter entitled "The Supporting Cast for War" noting the role of Christian Zionists (which includes the beliefs of President Bush, although not his father), former Cold Warriors, and even prominent establishment liberals in supporting the Iraq war. The author notes however that the traditional foreign policy establishment elites and many in the intelligence agencies did not support the war, but were disregarded to further the neocon agenda. The author also contrasts the difference between the liberal elites who frequently were pro-war and the popular anti-war movement which had very little power.

Following this, the author turns to a chapter entitled "Oil and Other Arguments" in which the author considers the claims that the war was fought to obtain access to oil or for the interests of war profiteers and shows that while both groups certainly benefited they are not the real reason for the war. The book ends with a "Conclusion" in which the author expounds upon the continuing role of the neocons in influencing American foreign policy and a "Postscript" in which the author notes that no matter who wins the 2008 election that the neocon agenda will likely continue and is not likely to go away anytime soon.

This book offers a fascinating history and account of the role of the neoconservatives in pushing the United States into war. The author makes clear the influence of the Israeli Likudnik party behind the neocons and their goal of strengthening the position of Israel in the Middle East. It is important to understand the fundamental nature of the foreign policy elites who have been pushing us into war against Iraq and now with eyes towards Iran.

Honest Observer , December 30, 2009
CRITICISM OF ISRAEL IS NOT ANTI-SEMITISM

That old canard "anti-semitic" is heard again in one of the reviews of this book. Nonsense!!! If one is anti-semitic simply because he is critical of certain policies followed by Likud, then many Jews living in Israel are also Jew haters.

Let's put aside these negative and nasty characterizations and look at the facts.

Israeli politicians are, undertandably, looking out for the intestests of their nation state. However, many American pols are beholden to the Israeli lobby (of simply feaful of it) and often place American interests second to that of the lobby.

To suggest that there is such a lobby and that it is powerful is hardly anti-semitic. Nor is the author. He is simply stating verifible facts which any student of politics is free to do. He may be mistaken in his conclusions but that hardly makes him anti-semitic. And he may not be mistaken at all. He is not the first to suggest that our leaders are fearful of the Israeli lobby and do its bidding and often to the detriment of American interests .

Dennis R. Jugan , August 28, 2008
History will always link the Iraq War with the term 'neoconservative'

Stephen Sniegoski, a diplomatic historian, is uniquely qualified to write about the neoconservatives' involvement in the prolonged Iraq War originating in 2003. He accurately predicted their activities and allegiance in this entanglement in 1998, three years before the acts of 9-11 and two additional years before a traumatized nation yielded to a nescient, misdirected President, his Vice President/administration, and an ostensibly compliant bi-partisan House and Senate.

The author presents a tight outline which he cogently expands in intelligible detail, maintaining that the origins of the American war on Iraq revolve around the adoption of a war agenda whose basic structure was conceived in Israel to advance Israel's interests. The pro-Israel neoconservatives and a powerful Israel lobby in the United States fervently pushed its agenda. Ironically, he extracts his most persuasive evidence from an extensive neoconservative paper trail that's been clearly recognized by a discreet cadre of vigilant Americans for years. Thus the title, "The Transparent Cabal."

Dr. Sniegoski asks the appropriate question: "Who are the neoconservatives?" He provides insightful answers on their pertinent activities since 1972, those who shaped and mentored them, their immediate family/interconnected family networks, their prominent periodical publications, their past and present leadership, non-Jewish minority members, their persistent rise to positions of political influence and authority, their embrace of Christian Zionists, and their close ties to the extremely conservative Likud Party in Israel. He reveals their tactical affiliations with key, heavily endowed influential think tanks, and a vast number of powerful Israel-centric lobbying organizations that reactively finance and nurture their continued success.

Many readers will recognize his references to writers of previous books, articles and columns -- many of Jewish heritage -- who bravely fight against well financed, mainstream media-dominant opponents and their psychological surrogates active on the Internet. These opponents perniciously engage in personal attacks and retribution, indiscriminately applying irrelevant anti-semitic labels. They persist at attempting to sway public discourse by spreading misinformation, disinformation, and mostly NO RELEVANT INFORMATION to the public.

In various places throughout the book, the author notes curious relationships with current and former elected and appointed officials. He writes about the ongoing 2008 presidential campaign in a postscript, citing past and existing direct influences on specific candidates by the neoconservatives, the Israel Lobby and its supporters.

The book concludes with a summary of the paucity of benefits compared to the predictable losses of the American people over recent years. These are the real consequences of the Israel-inspired plan to "drain the swamp" (a euphemism for destabilizing perceived enemies then establishing precarious nominal democracies) that began with our misadventure in Iraq and was to proceed with subsequent U.S. military interventions in Iran and Syria. The few meager benefits and the enormous losses to the United States are compared to the strategic advantages that the State of Israel derives directly from our five-year induced military involvement in Iraq and our concomitant departure from past, longstanding policies of diplomacy and stability in the Middle East.

Sniegoski counsels, "it is hardly controversial to propose that elites, rather than the people as a whole, determine government policies, even in democracies."

Yet this war has a supporting cast of middle Americans. Many of them were traumatized by the events of 9-11 and reactively saw an act of patriotism in supporting retaliation against a falsely perceived enemy in Iraq. It's time to reconsider false arguments preceding the Iraq War that have only been cosmetically modified until the present day. It's time to dismiss incongruous ideas formed in the cauldron of confusion after 9-11.

Given today's realities, it DOES take patriotism and courage to insist on formally normalizing an entangled, unreciprocated military alliance with an Israeli government that burdens the taxpayers of the United States, promotes angst among its people, and imperils its military forces worldwide.

Know and embrace Thomas Jefferson's ideal of 'eternal vigilance' as citizens of the United States.
.
.
Facts in this book are reinforced in adjacent paragraphs and referenced in nearly 50 pages of notes. Readers are encouraged to read:

James B. Pate , June 12, 2019
The Transparent Cabal

Stephen J. Sniegoski has a doctorate from the University of Maryland and studied American diplomatic history. My review here will refer to him as "S," for short.

This book is about the American neoconservative movement. S goes from its founding through its influential role in getting the U.S. into the Iraq War, then he discusses the War's aftermath. S's argument is that the neoconservative agenda regarding the Middle East is designed to serve the interests of the state of Israel, as those interests are articulated by the right-wing Likud party there. This agenda supports weakening Arab nations surrounding Israel so that they cannot pose a threat to her. According to S, the neoconservatives supported such an agenda since their beginning as a movement, but 9/11 created an opportunity for this agenda to become the foreign policy of the United States during much of the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Here are some thoughts:

A. Looking broadly at the book itself, it is a standard narration of the events surrounding and including the Iraq War. Like a lot of people, I lived through that, so the sweeping narrative of the book was not particularly new to me. The story is essentially that the U.S. went into Iraq expecting to find weapons of mass destruction after 9/11, bombed the country and found that were no WMDs, and traveled the difficult road of trying to rebuild the country, amidst ethnic division, turmoil, and opposition from Iraqis.

B. That said, there were some things that I learned from this book. First, while neoconservatism is said to believe in spreading democracy in the Middle East, it is not necessarily committed to democracy, per se. Initially, it supported a new government of Iraq that would be led by the traditional, pre-Saddam tribal authorities, who were not democratic. Second, S seems to imply that even the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan was unnecessary, since the Taliban initially appeared cooperative in offering to help the U.S. to bring al-Qaeda to justice. Third, there are neoconservatives who have supported undermining even America's allies in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia. The different groups in Saudi Arabia was also interesting, for, as S notes, Shiites hold a significant amount of control over Saudi oil, even though the political establishment is Sunni. Fourth, S argues rigorously against the idea that the U.S. launched the Iraq War to get more oil. Saddam was offering U.S. oil companies opportunities to drill in Iraq, plus oil companies did not want the oil infrastructure of the country to be disrupted or shattered by war.

C. There were also things in the book that I was interested to learn more about, even though I had a rudimentary understanding of them before. For one, S chronicles George W. Bush's changing views on foreign policy, as he went from rejecting nation-building, while retaining a tough stance, to embracing nation building. In the early days of the Bush II Administration, long before the Iraq War, Condi Rice even explained on news shows why regime change in Iraq would be a mistake at that point. Second, S discusses the coalition that emerged to support the war in Iraq. The neocons wanted to protect Israel, but Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld embraced the Iraq War as a way to showcase the effectiveness of a lean military. Meanwhile, many Americans, frightened after 9/11, supported the Iraq War as a way to keep the U.S. safe. And Christian conservatives embraced the good vs. evil, pro-Israel stance of neoconservative policy. Third, S strategically evaluates moves that the U.S. made; for S, for example, the surge did not actually work, but more stability emerged in Iraq as different ethnic factions became separated from each other.

D. According to S, the Iraq War was a disaster. It stretched America's military, taking away resources that could have been used to find Osama bin-Laden. Yet, Israel got something that it wanted as a result: disarray among her Arab neighbors. An argument that S did not really engage, as far as I can recall, is that the Iraq War placed Israel even more in peril, since it increased the power of Iran by allowing Iraq to serve as a proxy for Iranian interests.

E. For S, neoconservatism is concerned about the security of Israel. Even its staunch Cold War policy is rooted in that concern, since the U.S.S.R. tended to support Arabs over the Israelis. S acknowledges, though, that there is more to neoconservatism that that. Neoconservatives supported a strong U.S. military intervention in the former Yugoslavia during the Clinton Administration, and neoconservatism also maintains stances on domestic issues, such as welfare.

F. S is sensitive to any charges of anti-Semitism that may be launched against his book. He emphatically denies that he is saying there was a Jewish conspiracy to get the U.S. into Iraq, for he observes that many Jews opposed the Iraq War. Moreover, S does not exactly present the U.S. government as a Zionist Occupied Government (ZOG), for the neoconservatives were long on the margins prior to the Presidency of George W. Bush. Even under Bush II, the traditional national security and intelligence apparatus was critical of the Iraq War, preferring more multilateralism and a focus on stability in the Middle East. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), long a bogeyman of right-wing conspiracy theorists, also had reservations about the Iraq War.

G. S largely depicts the Likud party in Israel, and neoconservatives, as supporting Israel's security as a nation, her protection, if you will. At the same time, S argues that Israel in 2006 was acting aggressively rather than defensively in its invasion of Lebanon, for Lebanon had coveted water-supplies.

H. Near the end of the Iraq War, S demonstrates, neoconservatives were calling on the U.S. to take an aggressive stance against Iran, going so far as to bomb the country. That, of course, is an issue that remains relevant today. S probably regards such a move as a mistake. At the same time, he can understand why Israel would be apprehensive about a nuclear-armed Iran. He thinks that Ahmadinejad has been incorrectly understood to say that Israel should be wiped off the map, but S still acknowledges that a powerful Iran could provide more support to the Palestinians, which would trouble Israel. Although S understands this, he seems to scorn the idea that Israel should get everything she wants and have hegemony.

I. S is open to the possibility that neoconservatives believe that their support for Israel is perfectly consistent with America's well-being. As S observes, the U.S. government since its founding has had people who believe that partisanship towards a certain nation -- -Britain or France -- -is not only good for its own sake but serves the interests of the United States. S disputes, however, that neoconservative policy is the only way to help the U.S. Could not one argue, after all, that the U.S. would want to be on the Arabs' good side, with all the oil the Arabs have? This analysis may be a little dated, since the U.S. now has some alternative sources of energy (fracking), but S makes this point in evaluating the historical stance of neoconservatism.

Philip Collier , September 10, 2014
silence is deafening by Philip Collier

I was interested to see the reviews of this book. Usually if any book suggests that Israel is less than perfect a group of Zionist fanatics surface with several reviews telling us that there nothing wrong Israel or American support of it.

Remarkably there is only one negative review of this book which has to be seen to be believed. This reviewer "yoda" from Israel charges in all seriousness that Sniegoski does not provide evidence that the neoconservatives are "predominantly Jewish " and are " strongly aligned with Israel". Asking the author to provide evidence for such
assertions is like asking him to give evidence that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow .

This is I believe the real reason that that there are relatively few attacks on this book.The author does not engage in shrill denunciations of Israel or of the neoconservatives . What he does do is quote at length what neocoservstives say and provide careful documentation for any factual claims. For the most part the reader is allowed to draw his own conclusions. Should the US continue to finance Israeli repression of Palestinians and perhaps go to war against Iran or anyone else who might object to Israeli policie?

Instead of denouncing Sniegoski "Yoda" should consider the sane Israelis in his own country . For example former Mossad chief Meir Dagan who said that a war with Iran was the "stupidest idea he had ever heard of." Also moviemaker Emmanuel Dror who interviewed virtually all the former directors of the Shin Bett ( Israel's internal security service ) who all called for disengaging from the occupied territories .

perhaps we all would be better off listening to these Isaelis rather than follow the neoconservatives into another disastrous war on the other side of the world.

T. Marsh , November 1, 2009
Fantastic Horror story, wait. This is real

This is going to be a very strange review coming from me. You see, I wrote a novel called "Other Nations" and well, people that liked it a lot, liked it, but then those that really disliked it disliked it because my "aliens among humans" were nice people, likeable people, even charismatic people, everyday suburban types even, living that kind of life. Among us. Next door, in the next city over. They wanted instead to see the aliens among us portrayed as well, pick your favorite genocidal maniac or mind-controlling dictator or creature so dementedly alien that no sense can be made of it. Well!

There are many types of true horror. The kind that passes itself off as my aliens among us are portrayed, well, I guess some people GET IT - and they liked it.

But I'm not here to push my book. I'm here to push THIS BOOK - because my god, this is REAL, not fantasy, it's REAL, not science fiction. And yes, they are among us with well -

BUY THIS BOOK. If you are too broke to buy it, get it from the library - and by all means - READ IT.

Just hope to whatever god you choose that neocons are removed from governmental influence and that their Amen corner is ignored. Hope to god, because if they suceed in doing the INSANITY they want to do - America will be FINISHED - if it's not finished already due to what these Fifth Columnists have done during the 8 years of Twilight Zone (GWB Rule).

And for those Jewish critics on here that might want to compare these neocon FACTS and the other FACTS openly available to all (which is WHY the book is called the TRANSPARENT cabal) - compare it to the Protocols - they better think twice about that. Becauase, you see, what's in here is real, real facts, provably real facts - and if Jews themselves compare this to the Procols? Some folks might get the idea that maybe that is real too. Perhaps George Soros (who is Jewish) needs to speak LOUDER against the neocons. They are, indeed, crazies, as Colin Powell called them. Crazies.

junglejuice , July 17, 2017
Israel's interests revealed

If you want to have an eye opener then read and see who were those Jewish players working and influencing everything in the Bush Admin.promoting war with Iraq, then this is your book of truth. The cabal of Jewish players come out of the woodwork in Stephen Sniegoski's great work. When step by step the plan was a clear war map laid out for the U.S. in detail and after you realize just who was working for whom in this criminal cabal of the American government.

When you have Jewish control of the main stream media and Jewish control in Washington, D.C., don't wonder why the facts were omitted to make all the right connections for the public to see in this lead up to a war from lies.

[Nov 30, 2019] Former CIA Analyst to CBN News: 'An American Insurrection is Now Underway' by Gary Lane

Nov 22, 2020 | www1.cbn.com
If you follow politics, you've heard people talking about the "deep state". But is there really some sort of coup going on at a deeper level among career bureaucrats in Washington, or is it just a fantasy?

At a recent Federalist Society dinner in our nation's capital, US Attorney General William Barr said an "avalanche of subpoenas" and constant attempts to derail Trump administration appointments only serve to 'incapacitate" the executive branch.

He stopped short of calling what is happening in Washington a political coup, but he suggested forces are engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly-elected government.

Referring to the "resistance" language used by Trump opponents, Barr said, "Now 'resistance' is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous and, indeed, incendiary notation to import into the politics of a democratic republic."

Appearing on this week's episode of the Global Lane, former CIA Analyst Michael Scheuer says he believes an American insurrection is now underway.

"The federal government, at least the executive branch, is being denied the ability to execute its responsibilities, whether it's here in Washington, or in places like Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco where, under the supremacy clause, Washington is very clearly responsible for immigration. There's much more disruption and much more insurrection in this country than Lincoln faced until the Confederates fired at Ft. Sumter. It's staggering to be in this position 160 years later," Scheuer said.

He says the only thing we've heard so far in the impeachment hearings is staffers saying they're very offended because the president didn't listen to their advice, contending it's more about sour grapes than evidence of a crime.

Scheuer also says there's clear ignorance about the Constitution on behalf of Congress. "When the Constitution says 'bribery', the Founders were talking about the President accepting bribes," not the president making a quid pro quo in exchange for foreign aid, he argues.

Scheuer says the bottom line is there's a deeper agenda at work here.

"What they're doing is, as Mr. Barr said, trying to tear down the institutions of this country. They're not the loyal opposition, they are an infestation of globalists who want to deny nationality to the United States and blend us in with the rest of the world," he contends.

The Global Lane airs Thursdays at 9:30 pm Eastern on the CBN News Channel . For a programming guide, click here .

[Nov 30, 2019] The Barr Summary 2.0

Nov 30, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Just as Barr noted Mueller's more equivocal finding on obstruction of justice, the Times acknowledges a "mixed bag of conclusions" that is "likely to give new ammunition to both Mr. Trump's defenders and critics in the long-running partisan fight over the Russia investigation."

Specifically: "Mr. Horowitz concluded that the F.B.I. was careless and unprofessional in pursuing the Page wiretap, and he referred his findings in one instance to prosecutors for potential criminal charges over the alteration of a document in 2017 by a front-line lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, 37, in connection with the wiretap application."

"The F.B.I. did cite the dossier to some extent to apply for the wiretap on Mr. Page," the Times reports elsewhere. "The inspector general will fault the F.B.I. for failing to tell the judges who approved the wiretap applications about potential problems with the dossier, the people familiar with the draft report said. F.B.I. agents have interviewed some of Mr. Steele's sources and found that their information differed somewhat from his dossier."

Oh.

Like the Mueller report, this falls well short of the maximalist conspiracy claims in circulation. Partisans were unrealistic to expect such unambiguous findings from Mueller or Horowitz, which is why Democrats are writing their own uncomplicated narrative in the Trump-Ukraine impeachment proceedings.

But if there was reason to be concerned about Trump-Russia contacts during the campaign, the investigators and corners they may have cut in probing the matter are not altogether unproblematic either -- and the full report could shed more light on how.

[Nov 30, 2019] OPCW Manipulation Of Its Douma Report Requires A Fresh Look At The Skripal 'Novichok' Case: were they actually poisoned with BZ as the initial stage of a false flag operation by British intelligence

Notable quotes:
"... Thank you b for this revision of the Skripal hoax. The find of pure Novichok was the fatal flaw from the very beginning. The UK is never to be trusted and inept to boot. ..."
"... "only a small amount of BZ is needed to produce complete incapacitation" ..."
"... Also holds for Novichok: Andrei Zheleznyakov, who had been exposed to a minute amount of Novichok in a lab accident five years prior wrote he was, "seared by brilliant colors and hallucinations." Many other sources mention foaming at the mouth, hallucinations and pinpoint pupils. ..."
"... And Litvinenko. The man who prepared the crucial MI6 secret presentation to the chairman of the public inquiry was a colleague of Pablo Miller, the agent runner of Skripal. His name, Christopher Steele. A man the foreign office told the FBI is not reliable!!! ..."
"... UN is owned by west will not pursue war crimes. Responsible parties should no longer lend it legitemacy. ..."
Nov 30, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

With regards to the revelations about the OPCW management manipulation of its staff reports the former UN weapon inspector Scott Ritter makes a very valid point :
Thanks to an explosive internal memo, there is no reason to believe the claims put forward by the Syrian opposition that President Bashar al-Assad's government used chemical weapons against innocent civilians in Douma back in April. This is a scenario I have questioned from the beginning. It also calls into question all the other conclusions and reports by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) , which was assigned in 2014 "to establish facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic."

Besides its activities around dubious 'chemical' incident in Syria there is another rather famous case in which the OPCW got involved: The alleged 'Novichok' attack on Sergei and Julia Scripal in Salisbury, Britain.

We discussed the OPCW involvement in the Skirpal case in our April 15 2018 report: Were the Skripals 'Buzzed', 'Novi-shocked' Or Neither?

The Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov, threw a bombshell at the British assertions that the collapse of the British secret agent Sergej Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March 4 in Salisbury was caused by a 'Novichok' nerve agent 'of a type developed by Russia'. (See our older pieces, linked below, for a detailed documentation of the case.)

  • The Skripal poisoning happened on March 4.
  • Eye witnesses described the Skripals as disoriented and probably hallucinating. The emergency personal suspected Fentanyl influence.
  • A few days later the British government claimed that the Skripals had been affected by a chemical agent from the 'Novichok' series which they attributed to Russia. It insinuated that the Skripals might die soon.
  • A doctor of the emergency center at the Salisbury District Hospital publicly asserted that none of its patients was victim of a 'nerve agent'.
  • On March 14, after much pressure from Russia, Britain finally invited the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to analyze the blood of the victims and to take environmental samples.
  • The OPCW arrived on March 19 and took specimen on the following days. It also received a share of the samples taken earlier by the British chemical weapon laboratory in Porton Down, which is only some 10 miles away from Salisbury.
  • The OPCW split the various samples it had in a certified laboratory in the Netherlands and then distributed them to several other certified laboratories for analysis.
  • One of those laboratories was the highly regarded Spiez Laboratory in Switzerland which is part of the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection and fully certified.
  • On April 12 the OPCW published a public version of the result of the analyses it had received from its laboratories.
  • A more extensive confidential version was given to the state members that make up the OPCW.

During a public speech yesterday Lavrov stated of the OPCW report:

[A] detailed and fairly substantial confidential version was distributed to the OPCW members only. In that report, in accordance with the OPCW way of conduct, the chemical composition of the agent presented by the British was confirmed, and the analysis of samples, as the report states, was taken by the OPCW experts themselves. It contains no names, Novichok or any other. The report only gives the chemical formula, which, according to our experts, points to an agent that had been developed in many countries and does not present any particular secret.

After receiving that report Russia was tipped off by the Spiez Laboratory or someone else that the OPCW report did not include the full results of its analysis.

According to Lavrov this is what the Spiez Laboratory originally sent to the OPCW:

"Following our analysis, the samples indicate traces of the toxic chemical BZ and its precursor which are second category chemical weapons. BZ is a nerve toxic agent, which temporarily disables a person. The psycho toxic effect is achieved within 30 to 60 minutes after its use and lasts for up to four days. This composition was in operational service in the armies of the US, the UK and other NATO countries. The Soviet Union and Russia neither designed nor stored such chemical agents. Also, the samples indicate the presence of type A-234 nerve agent in its virgin state and also products of its degradation."

The "presence of type A-234 nerve agent", an agent of the so called 'Novichok' series, in its "virgin state", or as the OPCW stated in "high purity", points to later addition to the sample. The 'Novichok' agents are not stable. They tend to fall rapidly apart. Their presence in "virgin state" in a sample which was taken 15 days after the Skripal incident happened is inexplicable. A scientist of the former Russian chemical weapon program who worked with similar agents, Leonid Rink, says that if the Skripals had really been exposed to such high purity A-234 nerve agent, they would be dead.

The whole case, the symptoms shown by the Skripals and their recuperation, makes way more sense if they were 'buzzed', i.e. poisoned with the BZ hallucinogenic agent, than if they were 'novi-shocked' with a highly toxic nerve agent.

The OPCW had send blood samples from the Skripals to the Spiez laboratory in Switzerland which found BZ, a psycho agent 25 times stronger than LSD. The OPCW hid this fact in its reports.

An attack with BZ on the Skripals would be consistent with the observed symptoms that bystanders had described. The Skripals were indeed hallucinating and behaved very strange with Sergei Skipal lifting his arms up to the sky while sitting on a bench. Exposure to BZ would also explain the Skripals' survival.

The OPCW explained the BZ find by claiming that it had mixed BZ into the probe to test the laboratory. Something which it said it regularly does. At that time I still believed in the OPCW and found that explanation reasonable :

The OPCW responded to Russian question about the BZ and high rate of A-234 in the Spiez Laboratory probe and report.

OPCW said today that it was a control probe to test the laboratory. Such probes are regularly slipped under the real probes to make sure that the laboratories the OPCW uses are able to do their job and do not manipulate their results.

That explanation is reasonable.

I guess we can close the BZ theories and go back to food poisoning as the most likely cause of the Skripals' illness.

In light of the OPCW management manipulation or suppression of the reports of its own specialists for the purpose of attributing the Douma incident to the Syrian government I have to change my opinion. I hereby retract my earlier acceptance of the OPCW's explanation in the Skripal case.

As we now know that the OPCW management manipulates reports at will we can no longer accept the 'control probe' excuse without further explanations or evidence.

Here is what seems to have happened.

The OPCW did not send a control sample to Spiez to test the laboratory. It sent the original samples from the Skripals. Spiez found BZ and reported that back to the OPCW. The OPCW suppressed the Spiez results in its own reports. Somehow Russia got wind of the Spiez results and exposed the manipulation.

Acceptance that the Skripals had been 'buzzed', not 'novi-shocked' is central to the Skripal case. It makes the whole Skripal case as a British operation to prevent the repatriation of Sergei Skripal to Russia much more plausible.

Posted by b on November 30, 2019 at 19:34 UTC | Permalink

vk , Nov 30 2019 19:46 utc | 1

By the writings from the Wehrmacht soldiers we have today, we can see that it was not Nazi ideology per se which convinced them to invade the Soviet Union, but the nine consecutive years of extremely virulent anti-Russian propaganda spread in Germany during the 1930s (plus the myth Bolshevik conspiracy caused 1918).

The West is preparing its population psychologically to go to war against Eurasia -- Russia + China. They are appealing to irrational propaganda to achieve so: painting the picture of "Russian deceitulness" (this plus the WADA propaganda warfare) and of "Chinese asiatic despostism" and "Chinese exotism". They are planning for the long term -- maybe even 20 to 30 years of consecutive brainwashing of their own population so they can cultivate unconditional hatred for the Eurasians.

If true, then this option also indicates the Western elites are anticipating their own decline or even a collapse. If Gramsci's theory on the rise of fascism holds true, then expect the rise of an Anglo-Saxon version of fascism.

Symen Danziger , Nov 30 2019 19:47 utc | 2

At MoA you get a 100% pure dose of honest reporting and fact finding! Thanks b.
uncle tungsten , Nov 30 2019 19:51 utc | 3
Thank you b for this revision of the Skripal hoax. The find of pure Novichok was the fatal flaw from the very beginning. The UK is never to be trusted and inept to boot.
james , Nov 30 2019 20:19 utc | 4
b - thanks for reconsidering this Skripal case in light of the OPSW scandal that is being kept under wraps.. This is another phony edifice erected by the west to create what @1 vk articulates - an anglo-saxon version of fascism towards eurasia..

the whole skripal affair is now standing on even more shaky ground..

Clueless Joe , Nov 30 2019 20:19 utc | 5
Spiez lab and its staff might not have as much reason to frame Russia or Syria for that kind of stuff, not being part of NATO despite being in a Western capitalist country.

It's quite possible that the bulk of the staff has no horses in that game and wants to just do the job - and it's very possible that one or two people there are pissed off enough to blow the whistle on one part of the ongoing fakeries.

After all, this occurred to people whose countries were heavily involved in such shenanigans (Scott Ritter, Craig Murray and Edward Snowden being good examples), and most probably also happened with the Douma report. Basically, it will be interesting to see if there's any whistleblowing about the Skripal analyses in the near future.

Beibdnn , Nov 30 2019 20:28 utc | 6
@vk in 20 to 30 years the East will have risen. All this propaganda will be for nothing. With the systems of mass communication and much greater lack of trust in authority and the MSM, these attempts to paint Russia and China in a bad light won't be as effective as is hoped. The western govts. and elites are hurting themselves far more than any war can hurt the new powers arising. I read somewhere, ( I apologise that I cannot find the article ), that the U.S. is planning a limited yield tactical nuclear weapon attack delivered by stealth bomber on Iran. I don't know if this is in any way true. However Ultimately Chess and the Chinese game of Go require far more sophisticated thinking than checkers or poker. The west is very predictable in it's thinking and the East is advancing faster than the west can sucessfully react.

@uncle tungsten. The U.K. authorities And management are incompetent and not to be trusted. Not so the scientists, engineers and others in the employ of the civil service.

psychohistorian , Nov 30 2019 20:51 utc | 7
Thanks for the Novichok/OPCW follow up b

It does makes sense that the Skripal's were buzzed as you write and that it is more propaganda falling apart. This time it is propaganda that was focused on Russia and I am glad to read that Lavrov is making the findings of the cover up more public. One can only hope that more threads of propaganda come unraveled and the putrid house of cards built to cover up the global private finance controlled Western society falls apart soon. At what point are there prosecutions for this sort of "war crimes" against countries?

WJ , Nov 30 2019 21:00 utc | 8
And this leads to further questions:

1. Why did Skripal desire to repatriate in so hidden a manner?

2. Why did the U.K. pull out all the stops to prevent him from exiting the country? What did they fear about his repatriation?

I think both questions lead us back to the Steele dossier.

RJPJR , Nov 30 2019 21:04 utc | 9
Clueless Joe @ 5 wrote: "Spiez lab and its staff might not have as much reason to frame Russia or Syria for that kind of stuff, not being part of NATO despite being in a Western capitalist country."

Actually, the Spiez lab is directly linked to NATO, as is Switzerland, through the smoke screen of the "Peace Partnership" ("Partenariat pour la paix" in its official French version).

It already go into big trouble once, quite a while ago, for being used by NATO to whitewash United States use of uranium/depleted uranium weapons. That, apparently, went down badly with most of the staff, so, if they are on the up-and-up, one might attribute it to: once burned, twice shy.

Canthama , Nov 30 2019 21:24 utc | 10
Nailed in the head. All and every work from @OPCW should be deeply investigated, it has, clearly, shown to be a corrupt organization, would like to see its leaders and key investigators involved in those many crimes arrested and in jail.
bevin , Nov 30 2019 21:26 utc | 11
Let us not confuse "The British" with an extreme right wing Tory faction, of which Johnson is the public face, which, as reports coming out today remind us, has been enormously financed by Russian kleptocrats.

It is this report chronicling the influence of these oligarchs in funding the Tory party (hundreds of millions of dollars were raised) which was suppressed when it was due to be released on the eve of the current general election.

The point is that it is this alliance between ultra right Tories, controlling the party through their secret financing, and anti-Putin oligarchs of the Khodorkovsy, Browder type, which has been behind the waves of russophobic propaganda and provocations of which Skripal is but one, particularly flagrant instance.
This is the wing of the Tory party eighty years on, which was ready to sign a peace agreement with Germany in May 1940. The terms of which would have preserved their power and the empire and allied the UK with Germany in the attack on the Soviet Union.
Not to put too fine a point on it- the current leadership of the Tory party under Johnson are crypto fascists.

james , Nov 30 2019 21:31 utc | 12
@ 7 psychohistorian.. that quote from b - "During a public speech yesterday Lavrov stated of the OPCW report" is actually from april 2018... it would be very good if lavrov actually did an update here given the latest info we now know have on the opcw process...
james , Nov 30 2019 21:32 utc | 13
fascinating comments bevin.. thanks..
S.O. , Nov 30 2019 21:33 utc | 14
As I said at the time, the OPCW has become a political weapon subject to the whims of the UK and US's foreign policy. (thus the formation of a new attribution initiative body given the power to blame to whoever the UK and US wants).

ANYTHING coming from the technical secretariat (in particular whilst under Robert Fairweather) should be considered compromised.

The only thing with any remaining credibility at all are the direct field reports and the individual lab reports, both of which are considered confidential to the secretariat.

John Dowser , Nov 30 2019 21:34 utc | 15
1. "It sent the original samples from the Skripals."

No, because that doesn't explain the A-234 found by the lab. They were then not original following the suggested theory. We have to choose between "adding BZ as test" or "adding A-234 to deceive".

Checking some OPCW docs like "OPCW on-site and off-site analysis of samples" mention one authentic sample combined with one control sample containing scheduled chemicals & one blank sample containing no scheduled chemicals. It also makes sense to have control substances to exclude grave errors or manipulation. In other words the explanation makes sense. If not BZ then another scheduled chemical would have been there. Not named by Lavrov for some reason? The simplest solution here remains that Lavrov was blowing smoke or a rare misfire.

2. From MoA's earlier article, quoting Science Direct

"only a small amount of BZ is needed to produce complete incapacitation"

This would conflict with "lifting his arms up to the sky while sitting on a bench". That's not complete at all.

3. "consistent with the observed symptoms "

Also holds for Novichok: Andrei Zheleznyakov, who had been exposed to a minute amount of Novichok in a lab accident five years prior wrote he was, "seared by brilliant colors and hallucinations." Many other sources mention foaming at the mouth, hallucinations and pinpoint pupils.

As for the timing, don't confuse "pure" drops with emulsions, the very reason Novichok was being weaponized as it could be kept active and applied through gel and other more static forms. Clearly exposure rate would differ based on application method and its success. Delays could easily occur when it needs to travel eg through skin.

M droy , Nov 30 2019 21:38 utc | 16
And Litvinenko. The man who prepared the crucial MI6 secret presentation to the chairman of the public inquiry was a colleague of Pablo Miller, the agent runner of Skripal. His name, Christopher Steele. A man the foreign office told the FBI is not reliable!!!
bevin , Nov 30 2019 21:41 utc | 17
@13 James
I should have added that the oligarchs involved are the Fifth Columnist 'westernisers" whose objection to Putin is that he is orientated towards Eurasia whereas they see their allies as Wall St and The City, which is where their ill gotten gains are.

In other words this is not about Russophobia so much as a last ditch stand for the maritime empire in which they are literally invested heavily. It goes without saying-or should do -- which middle eastern Apartheid state is also allied with the anti-Putin oligarchs. Which is why Vladimir, who knows what its all about, does everything he can, verbally, to demonstrate his solidarity with the afore unmentioned Apartheid regime.

jared , Nov 30 2019 21:49 utc | 18
Yeah so are they lying only to the public or to the government as well?

In the one case they are negligent and
In the second they are treasonous.

psychohistorian , Nov 30 2019 21:49 utc | 19
@ james #12 with the correction to my claim about the timing of the Lavrov statement...thanks.

@ bevin # 11 who writes that the British Tory party is a tool of Russian oligarchs...any documentation of that?

And writing about British Tory obfuscation, I am struggling with reading Web of Debt that keeps talking about Bank of England when I know it got nationalized in 1946 but where is the documentation about if/how the City of London Corp still has control behind the scenes? Or don't they? Your Tory claim seems like it should be about the City of London Corp folks but I have no data to back it up.

jared , Nov 30 2019 21:57 utc | 20
UN is owned by west will not pursue war crimes. Responsible parties should no longer lend it legitemacy.

[Nov 30, 2019] Amy Goodman fiasco

Nov 30, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

divadab , November 28, 2019 at 9:38 am

It was disappointing and informing when Amy repeated blatant anti-Syria (Assad the butcher, etc.) propaganda without any comment or counter. I don;t watch them any more they seem to be part of the overall apparatus, albeit the "controlled opposition".

Eureka Springs , November 28, 2019 at 7:23 pm

They were wrong from the beginning on Syria and showed little to no skepticism. Terribly disappointing after all this time that they are still so wrong – unwilling to admit it.

I had no idea they fell for the Russia absurdities.

Who butters their bread these days? Has that changed over the years?

Arizona Slim , November 28, 2019 at 9:40 am

Yup. They went bonkers over Russiagate. Which is why I no longer listen.

Some Guy in Beijing , November 29, 2019 at 2:53 am

Can I recommend "This is Hell"? It's a fantastic podcast/radio show that does in-depth interviews with all kinds of authors and thinkers. The show is unabashedly skeptical of capitalism and the established order. Its host, Chuck Mertz, gleefully jokes that it is intended to be the opposite of Amy Goodman's show. It keeps a snarky and dark sense of humor throughout. I'm surprised I've never seen it mentioned here in all my years as a lurker

Randy G , November 28, 2019 at 10:50 am

I used to be a huge enthusiast of DN -- proudly wore their t-shirts, contributed (modestly), and attended several speaking events to hear Amy Goodman in person.

Now I rarely listen -- unless I'm stuck in a car and it's randomly on the radio. It's 90% ID politics and Trump Derangement Syndrome. Once I started hearing dubious CIA talking points on Syria and Ukraine, and Adam Schiff reverbs on Russiagate, I gave up. I can get that stuff from MSNBC in unadulterated doses.

And Aaron Maté is a treasure in a journalistic wasteland. His interviews with Jimmy Dore are especially lively because they're a perfect combo: Aaron is informed and thoughtful, and Dore provides the biting satire, punching way, way, way above his weight class.

barefoot charley , November 28, 2019 at 11:15 am

Lest we forget, in the fog of circular firing-squad war surrounding the Pacifica board some 10 years ago, when it was narrowly prevented from monetizing (selling) a radio band or two, and Free Speech Radio News replaced DN as the strikers' news source, Amy privatized DN, took ownership of it, and at that time paid herself $400 per annum. Scams have consequences.

Lunker Walleye , November 28, 2019 at 11:23 am

Here in flyover territory, I listened to KPFA, which carries Democracy Now, for about 10 years because it was available on the internet and it kept me sane. DN gave a different perspective from other news coverage. Stopped listening to Pacifica around the time of the 2016 election because there was so much HRC favoritism expressed and they no longer air a favorite, "Twit Wit Radio".

Danny , November 29, 2019 at 2:13 am

We, family and friends, donated heavily to KPFA, >$500 a year each.

Once they started blaming my ancestors, and me, for everything wrong with America and world history, and then started claiming to represent (only) the interests of "students", "migrants", "women of color","transgender people" and other iPol nonsense, we stopped donating.
The above groups can support them.
We now donate to the classical music station KFFC and KPOO, the black entertainment station, which while spewing African-centric iPol nonsense occasionally, is a great station for music and is about as local as you can get.

Craig H. , November 28, 2019 at 1:02 pm

I haven't looked at Znet in a couple of years but I did so this morning and my worst fear was not realized. They have a ton of articles (I typed Syria chemical weapons into the search box on their home page and it returned a full page including Pepe Escobar and other writers I recognized and at the bottom of the page the little forward widget indicated 74 pages of search results) skeptical of the ruling class propaganda on chemical weapons use accusations at the Syrian government.

Amy Goodman doesn't read Znet? She doesn't have time?

xkeyscored , November 28, 2019 at 8:23 pm

Thank you. I hadn't come across Znet before.

[Nov 30, 2019] Beyond The DNC - Leaks, Hacks, and Treason by George Eliason George Eliason

Notable quotes:
"... This time frame gives a lot of latitude to both hacks and leaks happening on that server and still agrees with the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPs). According to Bill Binney, the former Technical Director for the NSA, the only way that data could move off the server that fast was through a download to a USB stick. The transfer rate of the file does not agree with a Guciffer 2.0 hack and the information surrounding Guciffer 2.0 is looking ridiculous and impossible at best. ..."
Nov 30, 2019 | www.mintpressnews.com

Here's what's different in the information I've compiled.

  • The group I previously identified as Fancy Bear was given access to request password privileges at the DNC. And it looks like the DNC provided them with it.
  • I'll show why the Podesta email hack looks like a revenge hack.
  • The reason Republican opposition research files were stolen can be put into context now because we know who the hackers are and what motivates them.

At the same time this story developed, it overshadowed the Hillary Clinton email scandal. It is a matter of public record that Team Clinton provided the DNC hackers with passwords to State Department servers on at least 2 occasions, one wittingly and one not. I have already clearly shown the Fancy Bear hackers are Ukrainian Intelligence Operators.

This gives some credence to the Seth Rich leak (DNC leak story) as an act of patriotism. If the leak came through Seth Rich, it may have been because he saw foreign Intel operatives given this access from the presumed winners of the 2016 US presidential election. No political operative is going to argue with the presumed president-elect over foreign policy. The leaker may have been trying to do something about it. I'm curious what information Wikileaks might have.

The real crime of the DNC hack wasn't the hack.

If only half of the following proved true in context and it's a matter of public record, that makes the argument to stop funding for Ukraine immediately barring an investigation of high crimes by Ukrainian Diaspora, Democrat, and Republican leaders in Congress, private Intel for hire, and Ukrainian Intel's attacks on the US government and political processes.

Perhaps it's time Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump should consider treason investigations across the board. Make America great again by bringing justice and civility back.

DNC Hack – High Crimes or Misdemeanors?

So what went on at the DNC way back in 2016? Do you know? Was it a hack or a leak? Does it matter?

Recently, an investigative journalist who writes under the name Adam Carter was raked over the coals. Carter writes at Disobedient Media and has been providing a lot of evidence supporting the DNC leak story former Ambassador Craig Murray and Wikileaks claim happened.

When the smear article came out and apparently it's blossoming into a campaign, a few people that read both of us wrote to the effect "looks like your work is the only thing left standing." I immediately rebuffed the idea and said Carter's work stands on its own . It has nothing to do with anything I've written, researched, or plan to.

I'd say the same about Scott Humor , Lee Stranahan , Garland Nixon , Petri Krohn , or Steve McIntyre . And there are many others. There has been a lot of good work on the DNC hacks and 2016 election interference. Oftentimes, what looks like contradictory information is complimentary because what each journalist is working on shows the story from a different angle.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/q9W3QsO75mM?rel=0&showinfo=0

There are a lot of moving parts to the story and even a small change in focus brings an entirely new story because it comes from a different direction.

Here's what I mean. If the DNC hack was really a leak, does that kill the "hack" story? No, it doesn't and I blame a lot of activist journalists for making the assumption that it has to work this way. If Seth Rich gave Ambassador Craig Murray a USB stick with all the "hacked info," it doesn't change an iota of what I've written and the evidence you are about to read stands on its own. But, this has divided people into camps before the whole situation could be scrutinized and that's still not done yet.

If for example you have a leak on Jan 5th , can you have "a hack" on Jan 6th , 7th, or 8th? Since there is so much crap surrounding the supposed hack such as law enforcement teams never examining the DNC server or maintaining control of it as evidence, could the hacks have been a cover-up?

Hang em' High

According to Obama the hacks continued until September 2016. According to ABC, Donna Brazile says the hacks didn't stop until after the elections in 2016. According to Crowdstrike the hacks continued into November.

Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile said Russian hackers persisted in trying to break into the organization's computers "daily, hourly" until after the election -- contradicting President Obama's assertion that the hacking stopped in September after he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin to "cut it out."-ABC

This time frame gives a lot of latitude to both hacks and leaks happening on that server and still agrees with the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPs). According to Bill Binney, the former Technical Director for the NSA, the only way that data could move off the server that fast was through a download to a USB stick. The transfer rate of the file does not agree with a Guciffer 2.0 hack and the information surrounding Guciffer 2.0 is looking ridiculous and impossible at best.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/L3cDZU9Tp7w?rel=0&showinfo=0

The DNC fiasco isn't that important of a crime. The reason I say this is the FBI would have taken control over material evidence right away. No law enforcement agency or Intel agency ever did. This means none of them considered it a crime Comey should have any part of investigating. That by itself presents the one question mark which destroys any hope Mueller has proving law enforcement maintained a chain of custody for any evidence he introduces.

It also says the US government under Barrack Obama and the victimized DNC saw this as a purely political event. They didn't want this prosecuted or they didn't think it was prosecutable.

Once proven it shows a degree of criminality that makes treason almost too light a charge in federal court. Rest assured this isn't a partisan accusation. Team Clinton and the DNC gets the spotlight but there are Republicans involved.

Identifying Team Fancy Bear

There are a couple of caveats that need to be made when identifying the Fancy Bear hackers . The first is the identifier used by Mueller as Russian FSB and GRU may have been true- 10 years ago. This group was on the run trying to stay a step ahead of Russian law enforcement until October 2016. So we have part of the Fancy bear hacking group identified as Ruskie traitors and possibly former Russian state security. The majority of the group are Ukrainians making up Ukraine's Cyber Warfare groups.

Identifying the hackers as FSB or GRU today is as helpful and has the same validity as identifying Special Prosecutor Mueller as a cashier at McDonalds because he worked there during school. It's insulting and self-defeating, so stop it.

How Mueller is Making a Russian Attribution for the DNC Hackers

If you look at the attribution section for the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber and specifically the section that deals with peacetime attributions of a non-state actor/ hacker we have an answer.

The hackers, OSINT, Cyber, spies, terrorists, etc call themselves volunteers to keep safe from State level retaliation, even though a child can follow the money. As volunteers motivated by politics and patriotism they are protected to a degree from retribution.

They don't claim State sponsorship or governance and the level of attack falls below the threshold of military action. Mueller has a lot of latitude for making the attribution Russian, even though the attacks came from Ukrainian Intel. Based on how the rules are written, because the few members of the coalition from Shaltai Boltai are Russian in nationality, Fancy Bear can be attributed as a Russian entity for the purposes of retribution. The caveat is if the attribution is proven wrong, the US will be liable for damages caused to the State which in this case is Russia.

How large is the Fancy Bear unit? According to their propaganda section InformNapalm, they have the ability to research and work in over 30 different languages.

This can be considered an Information Operation against the people of the United States and of course Russia. We'll get to why shortly.

After 2013, Shaltay Boltay was no longer physically available to work for Russia . The Russian hackers were in Ukraine working for the Ukrainian government's Information Ministry which is in charge of the cyber war. They were in Ukraine until October 2016 when they were tricked to return to Moscow and promptly arrested for treason.

From all this information we know the Russian component of Team Fancy Bear is Shaltai Boltai. We know the Ukrainian Intel component is called CyberHunta and Ukraine Cyber Alliance which includes the hacker group RUH8. We know both groups work/ worked for Ukrainian Intelligence. We know they are grouped with InformNapalm which is Ukraine's OSINT unit. We know their manager is a Ukrainian named Kristina Dobrovolska. And lastly, all of the above work directly with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike's Dimitry Alperovich.

In short, the Russian-Ukrainian partnership that became Fancy Bear started in late 2013 to very early 2014 and ended in October 2016 in what appears to be a squabble over the alleged data from the Surkov leak.

But during 2014,2015, and 2016 Shaltai Boltai, the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, and CyberHunta went to work for the DNC as opposition researchers.

The First Time Shaltai Boltai was Handed the Keys to US Gov Servers

The setup to this happened long before the partnership with Ukrainian Intel hackers and Russia's Shaltai Boltai was forged. The hack that gained access to US top-secret servers happened just after the partnership was cemented after Euro-Maidan.

In August 2009 Hillary Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff at the State Department Huma Abedin sent the passwords to her Government laptop to her Yahoo mail account. On August 16, 2010, Abedin received an email titled "Re: Your yahoo account. We can see where this is going, can't we?

"After Abedin sent an unspecified number of sensitive emails to her Yahoo account, half a billion Yahoo accounts were hacked by Russian cybersecurity expert and Russian intelligence agent, Igor Sushchin, in 2014. The hack, one of the largest in history, allowed Sushchin's associates to access email accounts into 2015 and 2016."

Igor Sushchin was part of the Shaltai Boltai hacking group that is charged with the Yahoo hack.

The time frame has to be noted. The hack happened in 2014. Access to the email accounts continued through 2016. The Ukrainian Intel partnership was already blossoming and Shaltai Boltai was working from Kiev, Ukraine.

So when we look at the INFRASTRUCTURE HACKS, WHITE HOUSE HACKS, CONGRESS, start with looking at the time frame. Ukraine had the keys already in hand in 2014.

The DNC's Team Fancy Bear

The "Fancy Bear hackers" may have been given the passwords to get into the servers at the DNC because they were part of the Team Clinton opposition research team. It was part of their job. Let that concept settle in for a moment.

According to Politico "In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists , government officials and private intelligence operatives . While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities -- including Ukrainian-Americans -- she said that, when Trump's unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump's ties to Russia, as well ."

me title=

The only investigative journalists, government officials, and private intelligence operatives that work together in 2014-2015-2016 Ukraine are Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukraine Cyber Alliance, and the Ministry of Information.

All of these hacking and information operation groups work for Andrea Chalupa with EuroMaidanPR and Irena Chalupa at the Atlantic Council . Both C halupa sisters work directly with the Ukrainian government's Intel and propaganda arms.

Since 2014 in Ukraine, these are the only OSINT, hacking, Intel, espionage, terrorist, counter-terrorism, cyber, propaganda, and info war channels officially recognized and directed by Ukraine's Information Ministry. Along with their American colleagues, they populate the hit-for-hire website Myrotvorets with people who stand against Ukraine's criminal activities.

Alexandra Chalupa hired this particular hacking terrorist group called Fancy Bear by Dimitry Alperovich and Crowdstrike at the latest in 2015. While the Ukrainian hackers worked for the DNC, Fancy Bear had to send in progress reports, turn in research, and communicate on the state of the projects they were working on. Let's face it, once you're in, setting up your Fancy Bear toolkit doesn't get any easier. This is why I said the DNC hack isn't the big crime. It's a big con and all the parties were in on it.

Indict Team Clinton for the DNC Hacks and RNC Hack

Hillary Clinton exposed secrets to hacking threats by using private email instead of secured servers. Given the information provided she was probably being monitored by our intrepid Ruskie-Ukie union made in hell hackers. Anthony Weiner exposed himself and his wife Huma Abedin using Weiner's computer for top-secret State Department emails. And of course Huma Abedin exposed herself along with her top-secret passwords at Yahoo and it looks like the hackers the DNC hired to do opposition research hacked her.

Here's a question. Did Huma Abedin have Hillary Clinton's passwords for her private email server? It would seem logical given her position with Clinton at the State Department and afterward. This means that Hillary Clinton and the US government top secret servers were most likely compromised by Fancy Bear before the DNC and Team Clinton hired them by using legitimate passwords.

The RNC Hack

According to the Washington Post , "Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach."

In January 2017 , criminal proceedings started for Edward Nedelyaev under articles 335 'spying' and 343

'inciting hatred or enmity." He was a member of the Aidar battalion. Aidar members have been cited for torture and murder. Although the translation isn't available on the linked video the MGB (LNR equivalent to the FBI) ask Aidar's Nedelyaev about his relationship with Ukraine's SBU. The SBU asked him to hack US presidential candidate Donald Trump's election headquarters and he refused. Asked if this was through convictions, he says no, explaining that he is not a hacker. The video was published on January 10, 2017 .

Taken at face value it really does show the ineptness of the SBU after 2014. This is why Ukraine relied (s) on the Diaspora financed Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukraine Cyber Alliance, RUH8, Bellingcat, Webradius, InformNapalm and associated parties.

The Ukrainians were hired to get the goods on Trump. Part of that is knowing where to start isn't it?

Fancy Bear's Second Chance at Top Secret Passwords From Team Clinton

How stupid would the Fancy Bear teams of Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, and RUH8 be if they had access to the DNC servers which makes it easier to get into the US State servers and not do that if it was their goal?

One very successful method of hacking is called social engineering. You gain access to the office space and any related properties and physically locate the passwords or clues to get you into the hardware you want to hack. This includes something as simple as looking over the shoulder of the person typing in passwords.

Let's be clear. The Fancy Bear hackers were hired by Alexandra Chalupa to work for DNC opposition research. On different occasions, Fancy Bear handler Kristina Dobrovolska traveled to the US to meet the Diaspora leaders, her boss Alexandra Chalupa, Irena Chalupa, Andrea Chalupa, US Dept of State personnel, and most likely Crowdstrike's Dimitry Alperovich. Alperovich was working with the hackers in 2015-16. In 2016, the only groups known to have Fancy Bear's signature tools called X-tunnel and X-Agent were Alperovich, Crowdstrike, and Fancy Bear (Shaltai Boltai, CyberHunta, Ukraine Cyber Alliance, and RUH8/RUX8. Yes, that does explain a few things.

Here is where it goes from bad to outright Fancy Bear ugly. Hillary Clinton retained State Dept. top secret clearance passwords for 6 of her former staff for research purposes from 2013 through prepping for the 2016 election. Were any foreigners part of the opposition research team for Team Hillary in 2014-2015-2016? The Clinton's don't have a history of vetting security issues well.

Let's recap. Clinton keeps 6 top secret passwords for research staff. Alexandra Chalupa is running a research department that is rich in (foreign) Ukrainian Intelligence operatives, hackers, terrorists, and a couple Ruskie traitors.

Kristina Dobrovolska was acting as a handler and translator for the US State Department in 2016. She is the Fancy Bear *opposition researcher handler manager. Kristina goes to Washington to meet with Chalupa.

Alexandra types in her password to show Dobrovolska something she found and her eager to please Ukrainian apprentice finds the keystrokes are seared into her memory. She tells the Fancy Bear crew about it and they immediately get to work looking for Trump material on the US secret servers with legitimate access. I mean, what else could they do with this? Turn over sensitive information to the ever corrupt Ukrainian government?

According to the Politico article , Alexandra Chalupa was meeting with the Ukrainian embassy in June of 2016 to discuss getting more help sticking it to candidate Trump. At the same time she was meeting, the embassy had a reception that highlighted female Ukrainian leaders.

Four Verkhovna Rada deputies there for the event included: Viktoriia Y. Ptashnyk, Anna A. Romanova, Alyona I. Shkrum, and Taras T. Pastukh.

According to CNN, DNC sources said Chalupa told DNC operatives the Ukrainian government would be willing to deliver damaging information against Trump's campaign . Later, Chalupa would lead the charge to try to unseat president-elect Trump starting on Nov 10, 2016.

Accompanying them Kristina Dobrovolska who was a U.S. Embassy-assigned government liaison and translator who escorted the delegates from Kyiv during their visits to Albany and Washington.

Kristina Dobrovolska is the handler manager working with Ukraine's DNC Fancy Bear Hackers . She took the Rada members to dinner to meet Joel Harding who designed Ukraine's infamous Information Policy which opened up their kill-for-hire-website Myrotvorets. Then she took them to meet the Ukrainian Diaspora leader doing the hiring. Nestor Paslawsky is the surviving nephew to the infamous torturer The WWII OUNb leader, Mykola Lebed.

The Podesta Hack – Don't Mess with OUNb Parkhomenko

I have no interest in reviewing his history except for a few points. Adam Parkhomenko, a Diaspora Ukrainian nationalist almost gained a position in the presumed Clinton White House. As a Ukrainian nationalist, his first loyalty, like any other Ukrainian nationalist, is to a fascist model of Ukraine which Stepan Bandera devised but with a win it would be in America.

During the 2016 primaries, it was Parkhomenko who accused Bernie Sanders of working for Vladimir Putin. Parkhomenko has never really had a job outside the Clinton campaign.

Adam Parkhomenko <img src="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/PARKHOMENKO-twitter.com-2018.08.14-04-34-11.png" alt="Adam Parkhomenko" width="355" height="454" srcset="https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/PARKHOMENKO-twitter.com-2018.08.14-04-34-11.png 355w, https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/PARKHOMENKO-twitter.com-2018.08.14-04-34-11-235x300.png 235w" sizes="(max-width: 355px) 100vw, 355px" /> Before Clinton declared her candidacy, Parkhomenko started a PAC for Hillary Clinton with the goal of getting millions of people email lists so the support was ready for a Clinton run. After she declared her candidacy, Robby Mook, Hillary's campaign manager decided to sideline Parkhomenko and didn't take on his full staff as promised. He reduced Parkomenko to a quiet menial position when he was brought onboard.

Ultimately, Podesta became responsible for this because he gave Parkhomenko assurances that his staff would be brought on and there would be no gaps in their paycheck. Many of them including Parkhomenko's family moved to Brooklyn. And of course, that didn't happen. Podesta was hacked in March and the Ukrainian nationalist Adam Parkhomenko was hired April 1st .

Today, Parkhomenko is working as a #DigitalSherlock with the Atlantic Council along with the Fancy Bear hackers and many of the people associated with them. Why could this be a revenge hack?

The Ukrainian Intel hackers are Pravy Sektor Ukrainian nationalists. Alexandra Chalupa is also an OUNb Bandera Ukrainian nationalist. This Ukrainian nationalist was on his way to becoming one of the most powerful people in America. That's why.

The DNC Leak- A Patriotic Act

At the same time her aides were creating "loyalty scores ", Clinton, "instructed a trusted aide to access the campaign's server and download the messages sent and received by top staffers. She believed her campaign had failed her -- not the other way around -- and she wanted 'to see who was talking to who, who was leaking to who.2'" After personally reading the email correspondence of her staffers, she called them into interviews for the 2016 campaign, where she confronted them with some of the revelations."-

Forget about the DNC. The hackers may have spent months surfing the US secret servers downloading and delivering top secret diplomatic files to their own government. The people entrusted with this weren't just sloppy with security, this is beyond treason.

It doesn't matter if it was Seth Rich, though I hope it was ( for identification's sake), who downloaded data from the DNC servers. The reasons supporting a leak are described by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This shows clearly why the leak to Wikileaks is much more plausible than a hack for the files taken in what is commonly called the DNC hack. This leak was one "hack" of many that was going on.

Imagine being this person inside the situations described above with the reality hitting you that things were very wrong. Even if they only saw parts of it, how much is too much? US government secrets were being accessed and we know this because the passwords were given out to the research teams the hackers were on.

It is very possible that giving the files to Wikileaks was the only safe way to be a whistleblower with a Democrat president supporting Team Hillary even as Team Hillary was cannibalizing itself. For detail on how the leak happened, refer to Adam Carter at DisobedientMedia.com and the VIPS themselves.

Today, this isn't a Democrat problem. It could just as easily been an establishment Republican.

Ukraine needs to pay for what their Intel Operators/ hackers have done. Stop funding Ukraine other than verifiable humanitarian aid. Call your Congressional Rep.

Next up – We are going to look at who has oversight over this operation and who's footing the bills.

Over the last 4 years, I've researched and written many stories that are still breaking in media today. Over the past 7 months we:

  • Identified Propornot
  • Identified Fancy Bear
  • Showed clearly why Mueller's evidence is rife with fraudulent data.
  • We solved the DNC Hack-Leaks and showed the how and why of what went on.

If you want to support investigative research with a lot of depth, please support my Patreon page. You can also support my work through PayPal as we expand in new directions over the coming year. For the last 4 years, it's been almost entirely self-supportive effort which is something when you consider I live in Donbass.

Top Photo | Former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile holds a copy of her book Hacks, detailing the hacking of the DNC, during a meeting of The Commonwealth Club, Nov. 9, 2017, in San Francisco. Marcio Jose Sanchez | AP

George Eliason is an American journalist that lives and works in Donbass. He has been interviewed by and provided analysis for RT, the BBC, and Press-TV. His articles have been published in the Security Assistance Monitor, Washingtons Blog, OpedNews, the Saker, RT, Global Research, and RINF, and the Greanville Post among others. He has been cited and republished by various academic blogs including Defending History, Michael Hudson, SWEDHR, Counterpunch, the Justice Integrity Project, among others.

Republish our stories! MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

[Nov 29, 2019] Where s the Collusion

Highly recommended!
Now after her deposition Aaron should interview Fiona Hill. I would like to see how she would lose all the feathers of her cocky "I am Specialist in Russia" stance. She a regular MIC prostitute (intelligence agencies are a part of MIC) just like Luke Harding. And probably both have the same handlers.
Brilliant interview !
Harding is little more than an intelligence asset himself and his idea of speaking to "Russians" is London circle of Russian emigrants which are not objective source by any means.
He's peddling a his Russophobic line with no substantiation. In fact, the interview constitutes an overdue exposure of this pressitute.
Notable quotes:
"... He's little more than an intelligence asset himself if his idea of speaking to "Russians" is to go and speak to a bunch of people who most certainly have their own ties back to the western intelligence agencies. ..."
"... Also "well this is the kind of person Putin is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. ..."
"... This interview is a wonderful illustration of everything that is horribly wrong with corporate media. I hope it goes viral. ..."
"... Very well put! Everything that is labeled as "conspiracy theory" when aimed towards the West, is "respectable journalism" when aimed at Russia. ..."
"... Navalny is a corrupt ex-politician just like his mentor that was caught red-handed taking a bribe from a German businessman "all on camera" at a restaurant. Most of corrupt politicians and businessmen that get caught by the Russian government always cry that they are politically repressed and the government is evil. ..."
"... Navalnys brother was the owner of a small transport company that Navalny helped secure contracts with government enterprises '' anywhere in the world that would be a conflict of interest" but that's not why he is in jail! His brother is in jail for swindling the postal service company for transportation costs. ..."
"... Aaron Mate is a brilliant interviewer. He keeps a calm demeanor, but does not let his guest get away with any untruths or non sequiturs. This one of the many reasons I love The Real News. I encourage anyone who appreciates solid journalism to donate to The Real News. ..."
"... GREAT follow up questions Aaron... Harding did not expect to get a real reporter... he obfuscates and diverts to other issues because he can not EVER provide any evidence... Going to Moscow will not tell you anything about whether or not the DNC server was hacked. ..."
"... Luke Harding is a complete and total idiot. He kept qualifying his arguments with "I've been to Moscow... I don't know if you know this, but I've been to Moscow..." and even at one point, "Some of my friends have been murdered." LOL, sure, whatever you say, Luke! Like you're so big time and such an all star journalist who isn't just trying to capitalize on the wild goose chase that is psychologically trapping leftists into delusions and wishful thinking. ..."
"... NSA monitors every communication over the internet. if the Russians hacked the DNC, there would be proof, and it would not take years to uncover. Look at the numbers: Clinton spent 2 billion, Russian "agents" spent 200k to "influence" the election. Great job Aaron for holding this opportunist's feet to the fire. Oh he's a story teller all right. You know a synonym of storyteller? LIAR!!!! ..."
"... Hes making so many factual wrong statements I don't know where to start here. ..."
"... His logic seems to be: Putin does things we don't like -> Trump getting elected is something we don't like -> Putin got Trump elected. ..."
Dec 28, 2017 | www.youtube.com

Our Hidden History , 4 days ago (edited)

That Harding tells Mate to meet Alexi Navalny, who is a far right nationalist and most certainly a tool of US intelligence (something like Russia's Richard Spencer) was all I needed to hear to understand where Luke is coming from.

He's little more than an intelligence asset himself if his idea of speaking to "Russians" is to go and speak to a bunch of people who most certainly have their own ties back to the western intelligence agencies. That's not how you're going to get the truth about Russia. He's all appeals to authority - Steele's most of all, even name dropping Kerry. To finally land on "oh well if you would read my whole book" is just getting to the silly season.

Also "well this is the kind of person Putin is" is a terrible argument. This isn't about either Putin or Trump really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred. Also, the ubiquitous throwing around of accusations of the murder of journalists in Russia is a straw man argument, especially when it is just thrown in as some sort of moral shielding for a shabby argument.

Few in the US know about these cases or what occurred, or of the many forces inside of Russia that might be involved in murdering journalists just as in Mexico or Turkey. But these cases are not explained - blame is merely assigned to Putin himself. Of course if someone here discusses he death of Michael Hastings, they're a "conspiracy theorist", but if the crime involves a Russian were to assign the blame to Vladimir Putin and, no further explanation is required.

Elizabeth Ferrari , 4 days ago

This interview is a wonderful illustration of everything that is horribly wrong with corporate media. I hope it goes viral.

Esen B. , 3 days ago

He is far right, he is calling "cockroaches" Central Asian/ex-USSR workers coming to Moscow and in general his tone is quite ultra-nationalistic.

Lemmy Motorhead , 3 days ago

Very well put! Everything that is labeled as "conspiracy theory" when aimed towards the West, is "respectable journalism" when aimed at Russia.

Esen B. , 3 days ago

That is the video about fire arm legalization "cockroaches ", even if you are not Russian speaking it's pretty graphic to understand the idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ILxqIEEMg

Esen B. , 3 days ago (edited)

And FYI - Central Asian workers do the low-wage jobs in Moscow, pretty like Mexicans or Puerto Ricans in US. Yet, that "future president" is trying to gain some popularity by labeling and demonizing them. Sounds familiar a bit?

trdi , 3 days ago (edited)

"definitelly ddissagree with that assertation about Alexei he's had nationalist views but he's definitely not far right and calling him a tool of US intelligence is pretty bs this is the exact same assertation that the Russian state media says about him."

I disagree that there is any evidence of Navalny being tool of US intelligence, but you are wrong for not recognizing that Navalny is ultranationalist. His public statements are indefensible. He is a Russian ultra nationalist, far right and a racist. Statements about cockroaches, worse than rats, bullets being too good etc - there is no way to misunderstand that.

Sendan , 3 days ago

Navalny is a corrupt ex-politician just like his mentor that was caught red-handed taking a bribe from a German businessman "all on camera" at a restaurant. Most of corrupt politicians and businessmen that get caught by the Russian government always cry that they are politically repressed and the government is evil.

Navalnys brother was the owner of a small transport company that Navalny helped secure contracts with government enterprises '' anywhere in the world that would be a conflict of interest" but that's not why he is in jail! His brother is in jail for swindling the postal service company for transportation costs.

MrChibiluffy , 3 days ago

I know he said that i agree he has those views but that was in 2010.

Yarrski , 3 days ago

@trdi I am a Russian. And I remember the early Navalny who made me sick to my stomach with absolutely disgusting, RACIST, anti-immigration commentaries. The guy is basically a NEO-NAZI who has toned down his nationalist diatribes in the past 10 or so years. Has he really reformed? I doubt it.

Mohamed Elmaazi , 2 days ago

This is a solid comment mate. Well thought out, with solid reasoning. How refreshing.

Nikita Gusarov , 2 days ago

MrChibiluffy, Navalny became relatively popular in Russia precisely at that time, especially during the White Ribbon protests in 2011/2012. I remember it very well myself.

I am Russian and I lived in Moscow at that time and he was the darling of the Russian opposition. He publicly defined his views and established himself back then and hasn't altered his position to this day.

What's more important is that around 2015 or so he made an alliance with the far-right and specifically Diomushkin who is a neo-nazi activist. I understand that people change their views, it's just that he hasn't.

MrChibiluffy , 2 days ago

Nikita Gusarov it still feels like the best chance for some form of populist opposition atm. Even though they just rejected him he has a movement. Would you rather vote for Sobchak?

annalivia1308 , 1 day ago

Yes. The US are looking to repeat Ukraine's regime change.

Ind Aus , 1 day ago

Lets not forget that one reason many voted for Trump was his rhetoric about improving the peace-threatening antagonism towards Russia, especially in order to help resolve the situation in Syria. It's not like it was secret he was trying to hide. He only moderated his views somewhat when the Democrat-engineered anti-Russian smear campaign took off and there was a concerted effort to tie him to Russia.

Is it crime surround yourself with people that will help you fullfill your pledges?

artemis12061966 , 1 day ago

Or the death of Gary Webb, prosecution of whistleblowers.....like Private Manning...

RipTheJackR , 9 hours ago

Our Hidden History... beautiful. Very well put mate :)

Gabriel Olsen , 3 hours ago

Yep, when he talked about murdering journalists, I paused the video and told my girlfriend about the murder of Michael Hastings. Oh an PS the USA puts journalists in Guantanamo. We play real baseball.

Luca Clemente , 4 days ago (edited)

Aaron Mate is a brilliant interviewer. He keeps a calm demeanor, but does not let his guest get away with any untruths or non sequiturs. This one of the many reasons I love The Real News. I encourage anyone who appreciates solid journalism to donate to The Real News.

TheJagjr4450 , 3 days ago

GREAT follow up questions Aaron... Harding did not expect to get a real reporter... he obfuscates and diverts to other issues because he can not EVER provide any evidence... Going to Moscow will not tell you anything about whether or not the DNC server was hacked.

dzedo53 , 4 days ago

Putin is a bad guy. Therefore he colluded with Trump back in 1987 to help Trump win the election in 2016. Why is that so hard to see?? LOL.

Noah , 14 hours ago

Luke Harding is a complete and total idiot. He kept qualifying his arguments with "I've been to Moscow... I don't know if you know this, but I've been to Moscow..." and even at one point, "Some of my friends have been murdered." LOL, sure, whatever you say, Luke! Like you're so big time and such an all star journalist who isn't just trying to capitalize on the wild goose chase that is psychologically trapping leftists into delusions and wishful thinking.

jodi houts , 4 days ago

Thank you Aaron Matè for calling out the bullshit. The dem party is dead until they take care of their own espionage and corruption.

KAREN Nichols , 4 days ago

Thank you for "holding his feet to the fire"...I wish more media was more skeptical as well. Good work!

david ackerman , 4 days ago

NSA monitors every communication over the internet. if the Russians hacked the DNC, there would be proof, and it would not take years to uncover. Look at the numbers: Clinton spent 2 billion, Russian "agents" spent 200k to "influence" the election. Great job Aaron for holding this opportunist's feet to the fire. Oh he's a story teller all right. You know a synonym of storyteller? LIAR!!!!

shadex08 , 4 days ago

Great job Aaron, your work here makes me feel even better about my contribution to the real news.

95percent air , 4 days ago

Wow Aaron Matte NICE JOB. I'm only half through, I hope you don't make him cry. Do u make him cry? Did I hear this guy say he's ultimately a storyteller? Lol.

Mal c.H , 4 days ago

It may seem like Trump has an alarming amount of associations with Russia, because he does.. that's how rich oligarchs work. But it's all just SPECULATION still. Why publish a book on this without a smoking gun to prove anything? Collusion isn't even a legal term, it's vague enough for people to make it mean whatever they want it to mean. People investigating and reporting on this are operating under confirmation bias. Aaron, you're always appropriately critical and you're always asking the right questions. You seem to be one of the few sane people left in media. Trump is a disgrace but there still is no smoking gun.

jodi houts , 4 days ago

As he gets deeper in the weeds of speculation he starts attacking Aaron's credibility.

Fixel Heimer , 4 days ago

Omg a bunch of unproven conspiracy crap.. Hes making so many factual wrong statements I don't know where to start here.. How would anyone in the years before his candidacy have thought Trump would gain any political relevance. I mean even the pro Hillary media thought until the end, their massive trump coverage would only help to get him NOT elected, but the opposite was the case. This guy is a complete joke as are his theses. Actually reminding me of the guardian's so called report about Russian Hacking in the Brexit referendum. Look here if you want to have a laugh http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/12/how-097-changed-the-fate-of-britain-not.html

Hugh Mungus , 4 days ago

His logic seems to be: Putin does things we don't like -> Trump getting elected is something we don't like -> Putin got Trump elected.

Katie B , 4 days ago

Collusion Rejectionist! Ha Ha. Funniest interview ever. Well done Aaron. The Real News taking a stand for truth. So what's in the book if there's no evidence? Guardian journalism? Stop questioning the official narrative, oh and have you heard of Estonia. :)) ps that smiley face was not an admission of my working for the Kremlin.

Antman4656 , 4 days ago

Best interview ever. Aaron held him to his theories and asked what evidence or proof he had and he didn't come up with one spec of evidence only hearsay and disputed theories. What a sad indictment this is on America. 1 year on a sensationalized story and still nothing concrete. What a joke and proof of gullibility to anyone who believes this corporate media Narritive. I guess at least they don't have to cover policies like the tax theft or net neutrality. This is why we need The Real news.

maskedavenger777 , 4 days ago (edited)

I'd rather have American business making business deals with Russia for things like hotels, rather than business deals with the Pentagon to aim more weapons at the Russians. When haven't we been doing business with Russians? We might as well investigate Cargill, Pepsi, McDonald's, John Deere, Ford, and most of our wheat farmers.

[Nov 29, 2019] Customer reviews Mr. Putin Operative in the Kremlin (Geopolitics in the 21st Century)

Fiona Hill books does not worth even 5% of any book written by Professor Stephen Cohen. In other words they are pathetic junk. Of the class that in UK(ream MI6) writes Luke Harding. may be they both have the same handlers. She is just a regular MIC prostitute, like all neocons.
And Putin is a KGB thug is a terrible. simplistic argument. Pure propaganda. This isn't about either Putin (or Trump) really, its about the long history of US-Russia relations and all that has occurred.
Notable quotes:
"... As I was reading, I felt that there was a strong bias against Putin and Russia by the authors ..."
"... "The onus will now be on the West to shore up its own home defenses, reduce the economic and political vulnerabilities, and create its own contingency plans if it wants to counter Vladimir Putin's new twenty-first century warfare." ..."
"... For anyone who is a Russian scholar, this is proof that the authors get Russia very wrong. They reveal themselves to be in the neocon camp of hawks who want to reactivate a new Cold War very badly. ..."
"... I am reminded of some books in the 1950s that were secretly backed by the CIA, and this book certainly feels like it has the same flavor. Hill and Gaddy totally ignore Russian scholars like Stephen Cohen in his analysis of the Russian situation, which is totally the opposite of mainstream thinking unfortunately these days. ..."
"... The neocon vision of what's wrong with Russia is so biased that it also ignores the writings of such foreign policy figures as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Briezinski, former US Secretarys of State, both of whom are much more closer in their visions of Russia to Cohen than they are to Hill and Gaddy. ..."
"... Yet the authors see only politics in Mr. Putin's tactics, and play down the West's own role in making him an antagonist. They take him to task for painting the Ukrainian insurrection of 2014 as a "fascist coup," and for denouncing Ukrainian nationalist partisan Stepan Bandera as a Nazi collaborator. Bandera and Hitler may have never met, but this was not necessary for the arming and use of Bandera's OUN to commit atrocities and war crimes on then-Soviet territory. Contrary to the authors' whitewash, Bandera's later persecution by Nazis consisted of special treatment in German camps, held on ice for postwar use. Of relevance is that the "regime change" of 2014 was largely the work of west Ukrainians - the backbone of the OUN movement and the very folks who today make Bandera a national hero. When he paints west Ukraine as again collaborating with Russia's enemy, Putin stands on solid historical ground. The West continues destabilizing actions all the while it blames Putin for the same. ..."
"... I rather think Putin grasps these "motives, mentality, and values" very well, as they seem inseparable from European economic hegemony and NATO expansion. His managed democracy comes off looking rather clean cut compared to US politics following the Citizens United ruling, where American oligarch David Koch engineered a fundamental change for the worse via the Supreme Court. In foreign policy, Putin has indeed been repeatedly "rebuffed" by the West for proposing anything that makes Russia a leading equal in its sphere. This shows not limited contacts with the West, but rather ongoing and painful ones. ..."
"... A poorly written smear that would make McCarthy blush. Recycled fear for the gullible citizens so desperately uneducated and unread. The Military Industrial Corporatists will pass it around as Bible ..."
Nov 29, 2019 | www.amazon.com

karenann , August 8, 2015

A deeply biased book

Hill and Gaddy are pretty good scholars. They do a good job of providing a psychological profile of Vladimir Putin and the way he operates in the Kremlin. But they have their limitations. One of the more annoying aspects of the book is that the authors return again and again both to Putin's graduate thesis on an American management book and his 1999 manifesto on his millennial goals for Russia. A better set of writers would have covered both subjects in one section and then moved on. But Hill and Gaddy sprinkle references to these documents about five times each throughout the book, which leads me to suspect that they are padding what would otherwise be a much shorter book.

As I was reading, I felt that there was a strong bias against Putin and Russia by the authors, but I couldn't quite pinpoint their slant until the last sentence, which is a doozy:

"The onus will now be on the West to shore up its own home defenses, reduce the economic and political vulnerabilities, and create its own contingency plans if it wants to counter Vladimir Putin's new twenty-first century warfare."

For anyone who is a Russian scholar, this is proof that the authors get Russia very wrong. They reveal themselves to be in the neocon camp of hawks who want to reactivate a new Cold War very badly. And in their analysis, they ignore the fact that Russia as a country is in fact deeply defensive country far more concerned with its internal boundaries and control than some aggressive Soviet power after World War II.

To be sure, Mr. Putin is no choir boy. Interestingly enough, the authors do not fully investigate the potentially criminal behavior that Putin performed with Russia's war on Chechnya. Hill and Gaddy could have strengthened their case if they had included some deeper analysis of Putin's behavior on this troublesome part of the Russian Empire. But instead they were intent on plowing their own rut, which while somewhat interesting -- ultimately becomes a little bit too pedantic.

I am reminded of some books in the 1950s that were secretly backed by the CIA, and this book certainly feels like it has the same flavor. Hill and Gaddy totally ignore Russian scholars like Stephen Cohen in his analysis of the Russian situation, which is totally the opposite of mainstream thinking unfortunately these days.

But in ignoring what Cohen has to say, the predominant attitude of the American and European foreign policy establishment is in lock step with Hill and Gaddy, which is why the book has been so heavily publicized.

The neocon vision of what's wrong with Russia is so biased that it also ignores the writings of such foreign policy figures as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Briezinski, former US Secretarys of State, both of whom are much more closer in their visions of Russia to Cohen than they are to Hill and Gaddy.

Yes, this book is all about sticking to the Rooskies, unfortunately. And the hidden motivator are all of the defense contracts that NATO can suck up, as well as all the bankers' books in reaming the Ukrainian economy as badly as they've reamed Greece. But the authors never tell you that this is their motivation, until the last paragraph.

Ultimately, this is an unsatisfying work.

corkpuller , July 22, 2018
Unprofessional writing, a high school level polemic, sad to say

Unprofessional writing, a profound disappointment. Reads like a high school essay - one that repeats a single thought over and over, even re-using the same phrases - than a proper biography. The content feels like it has been skimmed only from public sources. There is no sign of insight among the authors, nor even a curiosity as to what makes this important figure unique. One wonders where the interests lie in those who wrote laudative reviews. I am sad to say that this book is nothing more than a polemic, and moreover one that is repetitive and boring.

R. L. Huff , April 23, 2015
OK but blinkered

- look at Vladimir Putin and Mr. Putin's Russia. The book is based on intensive research and interviews with Putin, but I find it skewed by the Western biases it brings to the table. Yet it's not a demonization, as is so much of the Western Putin literature. It gives him credit for standing by the multi-racial and cultural realities of post-Soviet Russia. Compared to the real hardcore nationalists, Putin in fact has come across as a domestic liberal. The rising tide of Russian arch-nationalism, however, has taken its toll. Authors Hill and Gaddy correctly assess Putin's playing the nationalist card as a political manouver to keep one step ahead of his opponents - most of whom are not pro-Western liberal dissidents by any means. Courting the Russian Orthodox Church in recent years was one such strategy.

Yet the authors see only politics in Mr. Putin's tactics, and play down the West's own role in making him an antagonist. They take him to task for painting the Ukrainian insurrection of 2014 as a "fascist coup," and for denouncing Ukrainian nationalist partisan Stepan Bandera as a Nazi collaborator. Bandera and Hitler may have never met, but this was not necessary for the arming and use of Bandera's OUN to commit atrocities and war crimes on then-Soviet territory. Contrary to the authors' whitewash, Bandera's later persecution by Nazis consisted of special treatment in German camps, held on ice for postwar use. Of relevance is that the "regime change" of 2014 was largely the work of west Ukrainians - the backbone of the OUN movement and the very folks who today make Bandera a national hero. When he paints west Ukraine as again collaborating with Russia's enemy, Putin stands on solid historical ground. The West continues destabilizing actions all the while it blames Putin for the same.

The authors also lecture us on Putin's inability to grasp "Western values" as the root of his refusal to take the West on its own terms; on "how little Putin understands about us - our motives, our mentality, and, also, our values" (p.385) I rather think Putin grasps these "motives, mentality, and values" very well, as they seem inseparable from European economic hegemony and NATO expansion. His managed democracy comes off looking rather clean cut compared to US politics following the Citizens United ruling, where American oligarch David Koch engineered a fundamental change for the worse via the Supreme Court. In foreign policy, Putin has indeed been repeatedly "rebuffed" by the West for proposing anything that makes Russia a leading equal in its sphere. This shows not limited contacts with the West, but rather ongoing and painful ones.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking but tragically familiar. It's rather the West's (and the authors') failure to grasp regional history, and Putin's actions based on it, that fuel the "misunderstanding." Ukraine, for instance, had strong nationalist animosity toward the "Moskali" long before the 1930s holodomor/famine. Crimea was not transferred to Ukraine out of any degree of recognition of said suffering, as the authors allege on p. 367; but as part of a geo-political maneuver to Russify east Ukraine with more "loyal" ethnic Russians, exactly as in the Baltic states.

His aggressive handling of terrorists within Chechnya is "decried" by the West, the authors note. Yet within a decade the US and its NATO partners would be pursuing an aggressive course in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Yemen that make Russia look the provincial amateur. Putin in fact is *not* trying to recreate the USSR, as so often charged by Western pundits with an axe to grind, nor even the old Russian empire. His strategic thinking is dominated by security rationales. A wider invasive course would only threaten Russian security. At all times he sees his actions as defensive responses. If this is self-serving, it only puts him in good company: recall the American angst over the "dissident" Dixie Chicks; the livid anger over Edward Snowden.

In truth, Vladimir Putin is the Russian Ronald Reagan, bidding his citizens to "stand tall" against enemies from without and within working against the homeland. His stance on Ukraine, arming its "contras" in a border war against an enemy "satellite regime", may make him look the intolerant war jingo; but thus did Ronald Reagan appear outside the US. Ironically it's Reagan partisans who don't grasp

WooDog , November 22, 2019
PROPOGANDA , CIA DRIVEL,

A poorly written smear that would make McCarthy blush. Recycled fear for the gullible citizens so desperately uneducated and unread. The Military Industrial Corporatists will pass it around as Bible

Kindle Customer , April 28, 2017
The motto of the respected authors is "Russia is devil, West are angels". Conclusions made in the book are easy to predict.

The book gives advices what the US officials should say about Russia to advocate their (US's) dishonest and aggressive policy. See examples of such policy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Lybia.

Alexey Tuzikov , July 16, 2017
poor

The book has absolutely no connection to reality. The authors use their sick propaganda fantasies to maintain oppression of Russia.

X. Z. , August 8, 2015
"Putin is a thug and we are great! "

More facts than your usual MSM, but along the same line: "Putin is a thug and we are great!"

[Nov 29, 2019] Is Ukraine Vital to US Security? by Edward Lozansky

Notable quotes:
"... Rep. Tom Lantos of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who chaired this meeting, said that had Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev told us in 1989 that he was prepared to dissolve the USSR and the Warsaw Pact – and requested $1 trillion to do it – Congress would most likely agree to authorize $100 billion annually for 10 years. ..."
Nov 28, 2019 | original.antiwar.com

Posted on November 28, 2019 November 28, 2019 The ongoing impeachment inquiry of President Trump can certainly compete with Hollywood's most successful drama or comedy shows. However, when we deal with national security issues one expects the actors, in this case members of Congress and witnesses, to tell the truth. In this case, some do, but some regrettably do not. The whole picture, said House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, looks like a "Soviet-style" event.

As someone who grew up in the Soviet Union, I tend to agree with Mr. Scalise. When I listen to Adam B. Schiff and Co. they indeed remind me of Soviet apparatchiks who knew they were telling lies, contemptuous of the fact that their hearers didn't believe a single word they said. These were the unspoken rules everyone had to accept – or else. But for God's sake, we are in America, aren't we?

When Ukraine and all other Soviet republics, including Russia, became independent states, I organized with the help of Paul Weyrich, the late leader of the Free Congress Foundation, a trilateral meeting on Capitol Hill of legislators from the U.S. Congress, Russia's Duma and Ukraine's Rada.

The goal was to discuss what the US was prepared to do to help Russia and Ukraine in their difficult transition from communism to democracy.

Rep. Tom Lantos of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who chaired this meeting, said that had Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev told us in 1989 that he was prepared to dissolve the USSR and the Warsaw Pact – and requested $1 trillion to do it – Congress would most likely agree to authorize $100 billion annually for 10 years.

As it turned out, Gorby and his successor, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, did it by themselves. So why spend US taxpayers' money when the job is already being done? "You are on your own, guys," Mr. Lantos said.

If that message sounded cynical, well, politics always is. But it was also a bit misleading because the US did not leave Russia and Ukraine alone.

The story of how the Clinton administration helped destroy the Russian economy is described in some detail in a US congressional report titled "Russia's Road to Corruption: How the Clinton Administration Exported Government Instead of Free Enterprise and Failed the Russian People." The report outlines in detail why America, which was very popular in Russia in the late 1980s and early '90s, is now regarded by Russians as one of the most unfriendly countries.

As for Ukraine, billions of American tax dollars were and still are readily available, but for a different purpose. It was Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, who said: "The United States has supported Ukraine's European aspirations. We have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine."

Others say the purpose is to drive a wedge between Russia and Ukraine by breaking centuries-old family, religious and economic ties between the Slavic nations.

How all this corresponds to Western or in broader terms Judeo-Christian values is hard to explain.

Former senior CIA analyst Raymond McGovern, who was responsible for daily briefings on the USSR for President Reagan and knows the region well, reminds us that Mr. Putin made it immediately clear that Ms. Nuland's choice for Ukraine's post-coup d'etat pro-NATO government in 2014 and U.S.-NATO plans to deploy anti-ballistic missile systems around Russia's periphery and in the Black Sea were the prime motivating forces behind returning Crimea to Russia.

I'd like to remind that it was Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev who transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, emulating 19th century monarchs who at their pleasure shifted real estate together with its people from one noble house to another, no questions asked.

Those familiar with the history of this region know that America was on the Russian side against the Ottoman, British and French empires during the 1853-1856 Crimean War.

Mr. McGovern is right when he says that no one with a rudimentary knowledge of Russian history should have been surprised that Moscow would take no chances of letting NATO grab Crimea and Russia's only warm-water naval base.

Space does not allow mentioning all of the inconsistencies and outright lies presented by impeachment witnesses, but the statement by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent deserves the top prize. Mr. Kent went so far as to draw analogies between the American Revolution and the 2014 coup d'etat in Ukraine. According to him, Ukrainian battalions are equivalent to American Minutemen in 1776 fighting for independence from the British Empire.

It looks like Mr. Kent missed the recent letter from 40 members of Congress, including Rep. Eliot L. Engel, New York Democrat and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to his boss, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, describing the neo-Nazi Ukrainian Azov Battalion as a terrorist organization.
Do not look for logic here because the hatred of Mr. Trump made his enemies' behavior irrational.

Despite its pandemic corruption, Ukraine is now pronounced to be vital to the security of the United States and is being used as a pawn by Democrats and the swamp in attempts to orchestrate another coup – this time to overthrow the president of United States.

I and many other Americans believe that security of the US, and for that matter Ukraine or any other European country, would be much better served if we rethought American foreign policy and accepted the sad fact that under Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama it was a total disaster and imposed huge human and material costs on America and the world.

I agree with President Trump that "getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing." Since 63 million Americans voted for him, I assume that many of them share his opinion.

In fact, polls show that close to 60% of Americans think the same way, which means that not only "deplorables" understand what is best for their country. This is despite 24/7 anti-Russia hysteria in the fake news media and Congress, whose approval ratings are below 20% versus 80% disapproval.

In this political atmosphere, anyone who calls for resumption of U.S.-Russian dialogue is labeled as Mr. Putin's bootlicker or useful idiot at best. It was French President Macron who pronounced NATO's brain to be dead and has come up with some ideas on how to avoid, in the words of former Sen. Sam Nunn and many other serious analysts, the process of "sleepwalking into nuclear catastrophe."

Will Washington listen? Chances are not good, but what is the alternative?

Edward Lozansky is president of the American University in Moscow. Reprinted from the Washington Times with permission from the author.

[Nov 29, 2019] READ Transcript Of Fiona Hill's Opening Statement

How this Bush holdover got to the Trump administrating? She sounds like McCain and or Brennan relative ;-) I wonder was she a member of the 17 Intelligence agencies security assessment team. Looks like she would fit perfectly well among handpicked by Brennan "analysts", who wrote this document.
In her opening statement she lied about Russian interference, she lied about the role of intelligence services in 2016 elections, she lied about the role of Ukraine.
While being a chickenhawk with zero military experience and some questionable qualifications, she positioned herself as uberhawk. Actually to the right of Schiff and Hillary. Her position correlated perfectly well with the position of Her Majesty government. I do not know whether this is accidental of not. MI6 did play an important role in 2016 elections, so why not.
One thing is clear. This woman knows very well from which side her bread is buttered.
Notable quotes:
"... I -- and they -- thought I could help them with President Trump's stated goal of improving relations with Russia, while still implementing policies designed to deter Russian conduct that threatens the United States, including the unprecedented and successful Russian operation to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. ..."
"... As Republicans and Democrats have agreed for decades, Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine -- not Russia -- attacked us in 2016. ..."
Nov 21, 2019 | www.wgbh.org

Opening Statement of Dr. Fiona Hill to the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence November 21, 2019

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Nunes, and members of the Committee. Thank you for inviting me to testify before you today. I have a short opening statement.

I appreciate the importance of the Congress’s impeachment inquiry.

I am appearing today as a fact witness, as I did during my deposition on October 14 th , in order to answer your questions about what I saw, what I did, what I knew, and what I know with regard to the subjects of your inquiry. I believe that those who have information that the Congress deems relevant have a legal and moral obligation to provide it.

I take great pride in the fact that I am a nonpartisan foreign policy expert, who has served under three different Republican and Democratic presidents. I have no interest in advancing the outcome of your inquiry in any particular direction, except toward the truth.

I will not provide a long narrative statement, because I believe that the interest of Congress and the American people is best served by allowing you to ask me your questions. I am happy to expand upon my October 14 th deposition testimony in response to your questions today.

But before I do so, I would like to communicate two things.

First, I'd like to share a bit about who I am. I am an American by choice, having become a citizen in 2002. I was born in the northeast of England, in the same region George Washington's ancestors came from. Both the region and my family have deep ties to the United States.

My paternal grandfather fought through World War I in the Royal Field Artillery, surviving being shot, shelled, and gassed before American troops intervened to end the war in 1918.

During the Second World War, other members of my family fought to defend the free world fro m fascism alongside American soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

The men in my father's family were coalminers whose families always struggled with poverty.

When my father, Alfred, was 14, he joined his father, brother, uncles and cousins in the coal mines to help put food on the table.

When the last of the local mines closed in the 1960s, my father wanted to emigrate to the United States to work in the coal mines in West Virginia, or in Pennsylvania. But his mother, my grandmother, had been crippled from hard labor. My father couldn't leave, so he stayed in northern England until he died in 2012. My mother still lives in my hometown today.

While his dream of emigrating to America was thwarted, my father loved America, its culture, its history and its role as a beacon of hope in the world. He always wanted someone in the family to make it to the United States.

I began my University studies in 1984, and in 1987 I won a place on an academic exchange to the Soviet Union. I was there for the signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and when President Ronald Reagan met Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow. This was a turning point for me. An American professor who I met there told me about graduate student scholarships to the United States, and the very next year, thanks to h is advice, I arrived in America to start my advanced studies at Harvard.

Years later, I can say with confidence that this country has offered for me opportunities I never would have had in England. I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s, this would have impeded my professional advancement.

This background has never set me back in America. For the better part of three decades, I have built a career as a nonpartisan, nonpolitical national security professional focusing on Europe and Eurasia and especially the former Soviet Union. I have served our country under three presidents: in my most recent capacity under President Trump, as well as in my former position of National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In that role, I was the Intelligence Community's senior expert on Russia and the former Soviet republics, including Ukraine.

It was because of my background and experience that I was asked to join the National Security Council in 2017. At the NSC, Russia was a part of my por tfolio, but I was also responsible for coordinating U.S. policy for all of Western Europe, all of Eastern Europe (including Ukraine) and Turkey, along with NATO and the European Union. I was hired initially by General Michael 5 Flynn, K.T. McFarland, and General Keith Kellogg, but then started work in April 2017 when General McMaster was the National Security Advisor.

I -- and they -- thought I could help them with President Trump's stated goal of improving relations with Russia, while still implementing policies designed to deter Russian conduct that threatens the United States, including the unprecedented and successful Russian operation to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

This relates to the second thing I want to communicate.

Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country -- and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves. The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.

The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined. U.S. support for Ukraine -- which continues to face armed Russian aggression -- has been politicized.

The Russian government's goal is to weaken our country -- to diminish America's global role and to neutralize a perceived U.S. threat to Russian interests. President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter U.S. foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine, where Moscow wishes to reassert political and economic dominance.

I say this not as an alarmist, but as a realist. I do not think long-term conflict with Russia is either desirable or inevitable. I continue to believe that we need to seek ways of stabilizing our relationship with Moscow even as we counter their efforts to harm us. Right now, Russia's security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven false hoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.

As Republicans and Democrats have agreed for decades, Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine -- not Russia -- attacked us in 2016.

These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives. When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each another, degrade our institutions, and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy. I respect the work that this Congress does in carrying out its constitutional responsibilities, including in this inquiry, and I am here to help you to the best of my ability. If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must no t let domestic 8 politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm.

I am ready to answer your questions.

[Nov 29, 2019] Opinion I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

The following line of thinking closely resembles Fiona Hill Testimony: "Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations."
Also can be signed by Ms Hill: "On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin's spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better -- such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable."
Notable quotes:
"... I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. ..."
"... Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations. ..."
Sep 05, 2018 | www.nytimes.com

I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

The Times is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here . [Update: Our answers to some of those questions are published here .]

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It's not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump's leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

[The author of this Op-Ed will publish a book in November 2019 titled "A Warning."]

The dilemma -- which he does not fully grasp -- is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular "resistance" of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump's more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president's amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the "enemy of the people," President Trump's impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don't get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite -- not because of -- the president's leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief's comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

"There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next," a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he'd made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren't for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what's right even when Donald Trump won't.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin's spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better -- such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn't the work of the so-called deep state. It's the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until -- one way or another -- it's over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter . All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example -- a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion) .

[Nov 29, 2019] Manufacturing a pretext for the U.S. missile strike on Syria in April 2018 is nowhere near the biggest of OPCW's crimes. The OPCW is an accessory, both before and after the fact to the crime of mass murder.

Notable quotes:
"... The worst of these massacres happened in Ghouta in August 2013 when 2000 civilian hostages (rebel claim) were gassed to death by rebels and their pre-White Helmets "civil defence". The OPCW was there to cover up the crime and to fabricate evidence to assign blame to Syria. ..."
Nov 29, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Petri Krohn , Nov 29 2019 23:16 utc | 21

TAKE THEM TO THE HAGUE!

Manufacturing a pretext for the U.S. missile strike on Syria in April 2018 is nowhere near the biggest of OPCW's crimes. The OPCW is an accessory , both before and after the fact to the crime of mass murder.

It should now be clear to everyone that Syrian "rebels" gassed thousands of hostages in cellars, most likely with chlorine gas, and then paraded the victims in White Helmets snuff videos. OPCW conspired in this crime in both encouraging the terrorists to more murder and by protecting them afterward by assigning blame to Assad and the Syrian government.

The worst of these massacres happened in Ghouta in August 2013 when 2000 civilian hostages (rebel claim) were gassed to death by rebels and their pre-White Helmets "civil defence". The OPCW was there to cover up the crime and to fabricate evidence to assign blame to Syria.

We have been documenting these crimes and hoaxes at A Closer Look On Syria from December 2012. OPCW was used from the beginning to manufacture consent for war. See for example:

karlof1 , Nov 29 2019 23:52 utc | 24

Petri Krohn @21--

Of course, the OPCW is already there! I highly suggest Caitlin Johnstone's article b linked be read, which can be found here .

We should expand on Petri's number of people involved in this crime to include all the paid disinformation artists noted in Caitlin's essay at minimum. What becomes very clear in all this is the total collusion with OPCW upper level management--those whom the whistleblowers and their allies within OPCW petitioned--in these crimes as Petri contends. Until they are visibly replaced, nothing issued by OPCW has any credence.

Canthama , Nov 30 2019 0:21 utc | 26
OPCW has shown to be a pure political entity, used at will by few regimes in the UN to promote their agenda, b has done a tremendous job to humanity to bring the truth to the public worldwide. Syrians have paid the price for UN leaders support to global terrorism for too long. It must stop now.
iv>

/div

[Nov 29, 2019] Mainstream Policy Expert Reveals How He Was Silenced On Syria Truth Did Not Matter

Nov 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

A mainstream media and academic expert this week issued a rare admission : that pretty much everything the establishment has fed the public on Syria is false or distorted; but it remains that after tragic eight-year long war is slowly coming to a close, new indisputable facts are coming to light. " Truth did not matter at all," he admits after years of providing commentary for mainstream publications.

In a lengthy thread on Twitter, counter-terrorism author and assistant professor of political science and public policy at Northeastern University Max Abrahms exposed how he saw the 'narrative managers' at work from the inside of the establishment think tank world and media. As his own research came to uncover and document the truth of what was happening in Syria, "the media would excise me and the research from their stories" he revealed. His work in the early years of the war appeared in The New York Times and other major outlets, however, he was increasingly censored and pushed out of a number of platforms for speaking inconvenient truths.

Below is his full commentary , written in the wake of the new OPCW leaks which the mainstream is still trying hard to ignore.

Dr. Max Abrahms, screengrab via The Center For Strategic & International Studies.

Every day there are new revelations that the "rebels" were in cahoots not only with Al Qaeda but also ISIS and official reports of Assad using chemical weapons were doctored according to the reports' own authors.

Were you ever skeptical that Assad was authorizing chemical weapons attacks when they were the one thing that put his winning the war at risk?

Authors of the official reports linking him to chemical weapons usage have now supplied evidence that their own reports were doctored .

When I was interviewed about Syria's military using chemical weapons, I expressed skepticism as Assad bucked the political science literature by engaging in the one conduct that would reverse his hard-fought victory.

But the media would excise me and the research from their stories.

The #1 story should be that authors of the official reports linking Assad to WMD usage have supplied evidence that they were doctored in defiance of the scientific evidence and exploited to push regime change in Damascus, which risked creating the Islamic State war with Russia.

Until you get how you were duped into supporting regime change in Syria you'll get duped into supporting other costly ventures to the local population , international stability and our counterterrorism efforts.

Max Abrahms ✔ @MaxAbrahms

The mainstream narrative of the Syria conflict has imploded.

Every day there are new revelations that the "rebels" were in cahoots not only with Al Qaeda but also ISIS & official reports of Assad using chemical weapons were doctored according to the reports' own authors.

The story of doctored WMD reports and Al Qaeda-led rebels must be told.

What happened in Syria is the American political establishment decided that the ends justify the means. Truth did not matter at all. We were told Assad must go based on WMD reports their own authors say were doctored to support "rebels" who were Al-Qaeda-led and helping ISIS.

Watch this interview and determine yourself whether you find trustworthy the official report linking Assad to the chlorine attack which was sold in the

sold in the media as casus belli for toppling Assad and has now been exposed by the fact-finders themselves as doctored.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/SMSyLg1E49M

If you think politicians, think tanks and media got a lot wrong in the Iraq war wait until you hear about the Syria war.

If you cheered for another regime change war then it doesn't matter whether the casus belli lacks evidence. The media is unmoved that multiple scientists who made up the official investigation doubt that the Syrian military was behind the attacks or the use of chlorine at all.

Bernard_2011 , 4 minutes ago link

Apparently Trump is too dumb to question what the Deep State tells him on this matter. Assad did it. End of story.

Justapleb , 29 minutes ago link

This is how they roll out new deep state Mockingbird Media clones.

The older completely discredited clones are replaced with new ones who pretend to have been right there with us all along.

Look at Obama. One solitary vote among so many regarding Iraq and he gained the anti-war vote and a Nobel Prize. Then he went about personally making the kill orders by drone, allowing the wicked witch to overthrow Syria and sodomize their leader with a bayonet. Then on to Syria, various African countries, etc.

I'm sure this *** has written lots on returning the Golan Heights to Syria, returning the West Bank to the Palestinians, renouncing foreign aid to Israel, etc. Right? Not.

uhland62 , 51 minutes ago link

The mendacity of 'the system' can be infuriating when you and your work is targeted.

What I see today is not any different in any way from what my elders told me about the Third Reich and what I heard from East Berlin and the Soviet Union under Stalin and successors. I grew up in West Berlin and we did meet people, heard things.

Heil Hegemon - and Heil to all its lackeys! Heil!!!

truthseeker47 , 57 minutes ago link

Ron Paul was trying to tell everyone right from the git-go that the Syrian gas attacks were a false flag, and the evidence and logic supported a false flag operation. Even more annoying, the 100 or so Tomahawk missiles cost US taxpayers about a $million each. But maybe the missiles were getting old, and the military needed some practice shots.

MrBoompi , 1 hour ago link

We gassed some folks....

cwsuisse , 1 hour ago link

Steele is credible. I believe that the OPCW doctored the reports upon instructions. The narrative management on Syria has totally destroyed the trust in the western governments and has demonstrated that the US, the UK and the EU are not behaving any better than China or Russia.

QABubba , 44 minutes ago link

Someone needs to make an argument as to why we should believe any of these guys. I mean, after you have been proven liars so many times, should we not throw the rotten tomatoes?

strannick , 2 hours ago link

America will tell any lie, commit any atrocity, on behalf of its military industrial complex, bankster, Zionist elite, while manufacturing consent for its evil by its corrupt complicit Mainstream Media. Is that even news?

mailll , 2 hours ago link

It doesn't matter Max, we already knew all this news about Syria was fake. When they were trying to fulfill an agenda, which was to overthrow Syria for the sake of Israel, since Syria is part of this fictitious promised land, their lies help support this agenda. Just like the Zionist attacks on the world trade center and the pentagon with remote controlled airplanes and pre-planted controlled demolition explosives. They were followed up with a bunch of lies to the entire world telling us it was a handful of Muslims who have never flown jumbo jets before. And they performed top gun maneuvers with these jumbo jets and breached perhaps the greatest air defense system in the world with only primitive box cutters. I totally believe the US and Israel covertly created ISIS. And the support funds came from the Zionist controlled printing presses, and from the pentagon budget that was unaccounted for. But unfortunately, most Americans still drink the Kool-aid. They continue to believe their lies. And because of this, they will keep doing what they are doing.

White Nat , 2 hours ago link

Here's Jeffrey Epstein's BFF and Mossad handler Ehud Barak pinning the israeli 9/11 false flag on the Osama bin Laden donkey within hours of the attack.

A chief architect of 9-11, Ehud Barak, interviewed on BBC an hour after attacks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAueLjdKh1s

Married Israeli politician Ehud Barak is seen hiding his face entering Jeffrey Epstein's NYC townhouse

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7250009/Netanyahu-challenger-Ehud-Barak-hides-face-enters-entering-Jeffrey-Epsteins-mansion.html

The Harlequin , 2 hours ago link

...more on AVAAZ and Syria from my own archives, probably already republished here at the time!

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2014/09/17/syria-avaaz-purpose-the-art-of-selling-hate-for-empire/

https://www.activistpost.com/2016/01/avaaz-the-online-pro-war-propagandist-and-color-revolution-ngo.html

https://www.globalresearch.ca/avaaz-the-lobbyist-that-masquerades-as-online-activism/5314829

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/03/avaaz-sponsoring-fake-reporting-from-syria.html

JB Say , 2 hours ago link

That was a sloppy *** false flag too. The "agencies" are getting lazy because they own the press and Americans are incredibly dumbed down on foreign policy. The got away with 2 planes collapsing 3 WTC buildings so maybe they figure why bother even making it look convincing.

monty42 , 2 hours ago link

Since it follows a pattern, it's not even just Syria. The US regime is a state sponsor of terrorism, by their own definition, and go into countries and create chaos and revolution, attempting regime change, creating a crisis they then use as "justification" for escalating into open conflict against the victim. Accuse the victim nation of crimes, blanketing the world in propaganda to delude the masses. Try to focus their attention on a single bad guy in their narrative, a "brutal dictator" or whatnot. Attack by proxy and directly, sanction, bomb, etc until the victim is left unable to produce for their own needs, making them dependent, and then going in to apply the chains of debt to the victim to pay the empire to rebuild what they destroyed. Everyone gets rich, increased resources from theft, testing of weapons systems, dominion over the new vassal nation, etc, while the victim is subjugated.

Soloamber , 2 hours ago link

I would like to know who the "narrative managers " are because you know if they do it with Syria they are doing it on everything .

No wonder there is a growing contemptuous distrust of most of the MSM .

It is as if they act in concert and limit anything that doesn't support their agenda.

... ... ...

White Nat , 2 hours ago link

israel and their US sayanim want all of their enemies destroyed using US blood and treasure aka balkanizing the middle east.

Speeches that still matter: Gen Wesley Clark on US going to war in 7 countries in 5 yrs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTbg11pCwOc

The "memo" Wesley Clark refers to came directly from zionist war criminal Paul Wolfowitz who was whispering in the ear of Donald Rumsfeld the whole way.

Wolfowitz is perhaps better known not for writing the Wolfowitz Doctrine but for co-authoring Rebuilding America's Defenses, a report released in September 2000 by Zionist neocon think tank PNAC (The Project for a New American Century). The PNAC membership list is a "Who's Who" of American Zionist New World Order conspirators – in addition to Wolfowitz the list includes **** Cheney Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Kagan, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Richard Perle, Doug Feith and many others.

https://thefreedomarticles.com/wolfowitz-doctrine-us-plan-global-supremacy/

PNAC. Greater Israel Project. Oded Yinon Plan.

Long-term the tribe plans to rule the earth from the third temple in Jerusalem.

That's why they are working so hard to shut the goyim up and flood all white countries with third world sewage.

E Michael Jones and Vincent James Discuss the ADL

https://www.bitchute.com/video/CTSjzm8FYH8y/

Fentonbr , 2 hours ago link

Everyone now knows how corrupt it all is now, Thank God Clinton lost!

White Nat , 2 hours ago link

Hillary Clinton Email: 'Syria Must Be Destroyed For Israel'

https://neonnettle.com/features/1360-hillary-clinton-email-syria-must-be-destroyed-for-israel-

lwilland1012 , 2 hours ago link

Puppets have Masters.

The Harlequin , 2 hours ago link

"The mainstream narrative of the Syria conflict has imploded."

"Every day there are new revelations that the "rebels" were in cahoots not only with Al Qaeda but also ISIS & official reports of Assad using chemical weapons were doctored according to the reports' own authors."

IF YOU HAVE BEEN PAYING ATTENTION...

...you would know that the "narrative" imploded from the moment AVAAZ started handing out satellite phones to the "rebels" and "No-Fly Zone" became Clinton's cackling catch-cry ...in 2011!

UBrexitUPay4it , 2 hours ago link

Bless you for trying, but you would do less damage by quietly withdrawing. You just look silly. USA spent 4+ years fighting ISIS, during which time ISIS spread across the middle East. Russia stepped in with 40 aircraft, funded through their normal air force training program, and destroyed ISIS in 9 months.

Either Russians are superhuman warriors, or the west was lying when it claimed to be fighting ISIS. Which is it?

HRH of Aquitaine 2.0 , 3 hours ago link

The MSM in the US is compromised and is fully state media, at this point. Deep state, straight from the ******* pond scum suckers in DC.

[Nov 29, 2019] McCarthyism Redux by Riva Enteen

Notable quotes:
"... A few days after my article was printed, my nephew, who helped me edit the piece and works for corporate America, told me he's afraid to open certain websites on his work computer -- off the clock -- because he could be flagged as "suspicious" and questioned. McCarthy was limited to phone taps and other dirty tricks. ..."
Nov 13, 2019 | blackagendareport.com

The National Lawyers Guild, born in resistance to political witch-hunts, seems to have neutered itself in the face of the new wave of manufactured hysteria.

"The Guild has 'a sort of hip neoliberal mindset: anti-Russia, anti-China, anti-Syria etc.'"

I recently returned from a delegation to Russia, and now smell McCarthyism more clearly.

The delegation was organized by the Center for Citizen Initiatives , an invaluable 32-year old citizen diplomacy organization, but CCI said it would not to print the article I wrote about the delegation because it needed to say something critical of the Soviet period, not just praise. The article is titled Russian Pride and US Exceptionalism. A political decision was made that, in order to have access to some highly placed people, CCI needs to be "balanced" about the Soviet period and acknowledge the gulags. That could be a good strategic decision, but I was surprised. [Two weeks later, after the article was published widely with a very positive response, CCI did publish it.]

A few days after my article was printed, my nephew, who helped me edit the piece and works for corporate America, told me he's afraid to open certain websites on his work computer -- off the clock -- because he could be flagged as "suspicious" and questioned. McCarthy was limited to phone taps and other dirty tricks.

Edward Snowden is in Russia because he told us the state has access to everything. My nephew is pragmatic, not paranoid. When I told members of the delegation about him, several said they weren't surprised about his concern, and one called it tragic. I told them they were all extremely cougeous to go to Russia at this frenzied point in history. One elder, seasoned member, said McCarthyism is certainly here and she's very careful. I am not very careful because I hold on to the belief that since I'm not doing anything illegal, they can't get me. History proves otherwise.

"Edward Snowden is in Russia because he told us the state has access to everything."

I have been a proud member of the National Lawyers Guild for 35 years, but since Trump's election I have repeatedly challenged how it has become a partisan organization for the Democrats. The Guild's Democratic Party loyalty, exposed in a Black Agenda Report article , is reflected in its resistance to support for Julian Assange . A recent article by Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, exposes how Assange is being tortured before our eyes, with no pretense of the rule of law. Assange had support when he went after Bush's war, but is now publicly brutalized because he went after the Democrats , so is apparently a Russian asset responsible for Trump, as Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein are also "Russian assets." MSNBC claimed that because Gabbard didn't deny she was a Russian asset, she clearly is. Does that sound like McCarthy?

After I publicly exposed the partisan liberalism of the Guild in the Black Agenda Report , I was both chastised for airing dirty laundry and told I raised valid, important concerns about the political compass of the 82-year old organization. There was talk of the need for elders to provide political context, to help the current ahistorical political climate, which believes it's all Trump's fault. However, a third annual convention has occurred since Trump's election and none have addressed the new McCarthyism, or Assange, who is the victim of one of the most egregious cases of legal abuse in history and should be of grave concern to a legal organization such as the Guild.

"Assange had support when he went after Bush's war, but is now publicly brutalized because he went after the Democrats."

Recently, a former Guild president posted an article to the International Committee from Forbes with the ominous title: Russia Attempts To Take Over Venezuelan Oil, Creating A Challenge For The U.S. I responded to the committee and asked if I was missing something, but why can't Russia and Venezuela trade? Within minutes, a Guild member since 1974 asked to be taken off the list because of what he saw as "foolish ultra leftism (an infantile disorder to coin a phrase)" that was a "stupid discussion." Another said I was "lacking in ethical grounding."

One who thought my question was valid, said "I personally support any sovereign nation's ability to make alliances. Russia is not my enemy. Russia was invited into Venezuela just as it was invited into Syria. When I started law school in 2002, at the ripe old age of 52, the only thing I cared about was joining my school's Guild chapter. I have found a good deal of disappointment in the Guild ever since." Others added that the Guild has "a sort of hip neoliberal mindset: anti-Russia, anti-China, anti-Syria etc.," and that "If it's ultra-left to call out the Democrats, I wear the badge ultra-leftist as a badge of honor." One member cautioned, "as Riva said recently, being aware of source is very important." But the discussion has been shut down, with no plans to discuss the implications of the Guild helping to fan the flames of anti-Russia sentiment, let alone the need to quell them.

"If it's ultra-left to call out the Democrats, I wear the badge ultra-leftist as a badge of honor."

A long-time Guild comrade who is now all about anybody but Trump, and knows my nephew, said his story is just anecdotal. "I don't see an across-the-board 'new McCarthyism.' To rise to that level, what I'd need to see is a major concerted effort by the government to destroy the lives, careers and reputations of people accused of being insufficiently hostile to Russia." Are we waiting for the first obvious suicide of this McCarthy period?

An article about the recent conviction of seven Catholic peace activists for a Plowshares action generated this comment: "The greatest risk of nuclear war today comes from Trump Derangement Syndrome. The fact that the leadership of the Democratic Party would use Russia-gate, a pile of absurd lies, for political advantage, at the risk of initiating a nuclear war with Russia is beyond despicable."

The fear of exposing the depth of the rot is pervasive, counter-revolutionary and jeopardizes life itself. That Trump is the only anti-endless war candidate, other than Tulsi Gabbard, exposes the Democrats as the war party they are. Many hope that Trump is the wrecking ball that will knock it all down. Hopefully before somebody pushes the button.

Riva Enteen edited the book Follow the Money, interviews by Flashpoints producer Dennis J. Bernstein. She can be reached at [email protected] .

[Nov 28, 2019] WSJ story reopens the claim Comey had a report there was an email exchange between Loretta Lynch and Clinton claiming Lynch promised her the DOJ would go easy on Clinton.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... does the author think this alleged Lynch-Clinton campaign exchange will be part of the upcoming Horowitz report? ..."
Nov 28, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Factotum , 27 November 2019 at 11:57 AM

WSJ columnist today raises an old obscure issue today about the Clinton emails and Comey's calculated exoneration of Clinton's culpability.

This story reopens the claim Comey had a report there was an email exchange between Loretta Lynch and Clinton claiming Lynch promised her the DOJ would go easy on Clinton. Comey claimed when confronted with this memo, Lynch merely smiled like the Cheshire cat and nothing more was done.

This memo was later discredited as an alleged planted Russian hoax. Yet the memo story is again put in lead position on the opinion pages of the WSJ this very morning. Why was that? Not clear, but does the author think this alleged Lynch-Clinton campaign exchange will be part of the upcoming Horowitz report?

(WSJ: 11/27/19 - Holman Jenkins, Jr. - "Who will turn over the 2016 rocks")

[Nov 28, 2019] Soros girl Fiona Hill continues to amaze and astound; one of her latest wheezes is that the Russians fed disinformation to a naive Christopher Steele

Female neocon are more aggressive and bloodthirsty than man neocons. That's happens in animal world too.
Nov 28, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Mark Chapman November 23, 2019 at 11:44 pm

Fiona Hill continues to amaze and astound; one of her latest wheezes is that the Russians fed disinformation to a naive Christopher Steele so that they could frame themselves for interfering in the 2016 American presidential election.

https://www.checkpointasia.net/russia-framed-itself-for-russiagate-former-top-russia-expert-at-the-white-house/

As the subheading suggests: yeah – that makes sense.

Moscow Exile November 24, 2019 at 1:21 am
Yeah, the Russian expert Fiona, daughter of a Durham coalfield miner, whose expertise here was acquired whilst studying in the USSR for 1 academic year in 1987 on a Russian studies degree course. And, curiously enough, as an undergraduate here, she interned for NBC News.

Now how did she manage to do that, I wonder?

By a strange parallel, I too arrived in the USSR at the same time in order to study Russian, and furthermore, until 1985 I had been a Lancashire coal miner.

After having graduated, however, I came back here in 1993 and stayed; she, on the other hand, having graduated from St. Andrew's University, Scotland, on the advice of an American academic, applied for a postgraduate course of studies at Harvard, where, in 1991, she got a master's in Russian and history.

After that, it seems the world has been her lobster as regards getting paid for her expertise on matters Russian.

Now, where did I go wrong?


above: Hill, seated to the left of Scumbag Bolton at a meeting with "Vlad", Leader of the Orcs, June 27, 2018, Mordor..

[Nov 28, 2019] Sherlock, super hearing' Holmes 'Russia Did It' Hill testimony reveals deep state panic

Notable quotes:
"... While their testimony was unable to prove a quid pro quo or machiavellian Trump bribery, it did reveal the extent to which the Democrat party and the Deep State are in panic mode, as Obama White House corruption investigations into loans provided to Ukraine ramp up, and Ukraine election meddling in 2016 have now taken center stage. ..."
Nov 25, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Warren November 25, 2019 at 11:56 am

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Nqb7l2wICBE?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

'Sherlock, super hearing' Holmes & 'Russia Did It' Hill testimony reveals deep state panic
24 Nov 2019

The Duran

The Duran Quick Take: Episode 382.

The Duran's Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss Adam Schiff's decision to call up a super hearing, lip-reading David Holmes and Russia hating bureaucrat Fiona Hill to close out the impeachment inquiry clown show.

While their testimony was unable to prove a quid pro quo or machiavellian Trump bribery, it did reveal the extent to which the Democrat party and the Deep State are in panic mode, as Obama White House corruption investigations into loans provided to Ukraine ramp up, and Ukraine election meddling in 2016 have now taken center stage.

[Nov 28, 2019] Fiona Hill links to Soros by Julian Borger

Looks like both Yovanovich and Hill are connected to Soros and did his bidding instead of pursuing Trump policies as for Ukraine. Yovanovich was clearly dismiied due to her role in channeling damaging to Trump information during 2016 elections, the fact that she denies (as she denied the exostance of "do not procecute list"). And nothing can be taken serious from a government official until she denied it.
Notable quotes:
"... Fiona Hill, who was the senior director for Europe and Russia in the National Security Council (NSC) said other NSC staff had been "hounded out" by threats against them, including antisemitic smears linking them to the liberal financier and philanthropist, George Soros, a hate figure on the far right. ..."
"... This was a mishmash of conspiracy theories that I believe firmly to be baseless, an idea of an association between her and George Soros." ..."
"... "My entire first year of my tenure at the National Security Council was filled with hateful calls, conspiracy theories, which has started again, frankly, as it's been announced that I've been giving this deposition, accusing me of being a Soros mole in the White House, of colluding with all kinds of enemies of the president, and of various improprieties." ..."
"... "When I saw this happening to Ambassador Yovanovitch, I was furious," she said, pointing to "this whipping up of what is frankly an antisemitic conspiracy theory about George Soros to basically target nonpartisan career officials, and also some political appointees as well." ..."
"... Hill dismissed the suggestion that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election was a "conspiracy theory" intended to distract attention from Russia's well-documented role. ..."
Nov 28, 2019 | 112.international

Trump's ex-Russia adviser received death threats after testifying in impeachment hearings, - The Guardian

Fiona Hill has been subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation 16:22, 9 November 2019 Open source

The former top Russia expert at the White House has said she has been subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation, including death threats, which reached a new peak after she agreed to testify in congressional impeachment hearings, The Guardian reports.

Fiona Hill, who was the senior director for Europe and Russia in the National Security Council (NSC) said other NSC staff had been "hounded out" by threats against them, including antisemitic smears linking them to the liberal financier and philanthropist, George Soros, a hate figure on the far right.

In her testimony to Congress, Hill described a climate of fear among administration staff.

The UK-born academic and biographer of Vladimir Putin said that the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was the target of a hate campaign, with the aim of driving her from her post in Kyiv, where she was seen as an obstacle to some corrupt business interests.

Yovanovitch was recalled from Ukraine in May on Trump's orders. In a 25 July conversation with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Trump described Yovanovitch as "bad news" and predicted she was "going to go through some things". The former ambassador has testified she felt threatened by the remarks.

Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, led calls for Yovanovitch's dismissal, as did two of Giuliani business associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. All three are under scrutiny in hearings being held by House committees looking at Trump's use of his office to put pressure on the Ukrainian government to investigate his political opponents.

"There was no basis for her removal," Hill testified. "The accusations against her had no merit whatsoever. This was a mishmash of conspiracy theories that I believe firmly to be baseless, an idea of an association between her and George Soros."

"I had had accusations similar to this being made against me as well," Hill testified. "My entire first year of my tenure at the National Security Council was filled with hateful calls, conspiracy theories, which has started again, frankly, as it's been announced that I've been giving this deposition, accusing me of being a Soros mole in the White House, of colluding with all kinds of enemies of the president, and of various improprieties."

She added that the former national security adviser, HR McMaster "and many other members of staff were targeted as well, and many people were hounded out of the National Security Council because they became frightened about their own security."

"I received, I just have to tell you, death threats, calls at my home. My neighbours reported somebody coming and hammering on my door," Hill said, adding that she had also been targeted by obscene phone calls. "Now, I'm not easily intimidated, but that made me mad."

"When I saw this happening to Ambassador Yovanovitch, I was furious," she said, pointing to "this whipping up of what is frankly an antisemitic conspiracy theory about George Soros to basically target nonpartisan career officials, and also some political appointees as well."

In Yovanovitch's case, Hill said: "the most obvious explanation [for the smear campaign] seemed to be business dealings of individuals who wanted to improve their investment positions inside of Ukraine itself, and also to deflect away from the findings of not just the Mueller report on Russian interference but what's also been confirmed by your own Senate report, and what I know myself to be true as a former intelligence analyst and somebody who has been working on Russia for more than 30 years."

Hill dismissed the suggestion that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election was a "conspiracy theory" intended to distract attention from Russia's well-documented role.

... ... ...

[Nov 28, 2019] You never win back respect from someone who's sussed out your con.

Nov 28, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Joe Rogan Experience #1386 - Matt Taibbi - YouTube

Titus Sorensen 1 week ago

The fundamental mistake Joe makes in this discussion is thinking neoliberal media is the same thing as progressive media. Neoliberalism co-opts the language of progressive values while maintaining the status quo to appear inclusive and representative of popular ideas and values while doing nothing to support those ideas in any meaningful way. Progressive ideas inherently oppose the consolidation of information by private industry and monopoly in all forms and actively oppose neoliberal intellectual dishonesty via appeal to markets through corporate sanitized language.

lisa88n , 1 week ago (edited)

You're getting warmer , Matt is cool , now get his Hero , Chris Hedges On, let's gut this beast called empire.

MaybePotatoes , 1 week ago (edited)

57:19 It's not "both sides" that spread blatant misinformation, only one side (the establishment one) spreads blatant misinformation while the anti-establishment spreads the truth.

Suzanne O'Keeffe , 1 day ago div cla

ss="comment-renderer-text-content expanded"> Look, this is all explained by the fact that we have a One Party system run by and for the billionaires. As Yanis Varoufakis said, "We live in pure unclad plutocracies that depend for their legitimacy and replication that we think we live in democracies." When billionaires own the media, the billionaires' narrative will be the only story told. That means the standing order in these companies is to spike ANY story that exposes the reality of this real collaboration of the party leaders on policies that exploit and destroy the regular people. We need a new system and a new party --> Movement for a People's Party https://peoplesparty.org/

Major Bloodnok , 6 days ago

"We don't have any institutional respect anymore".. When even the broadsheets knowingly sow falsehoods or subtly mislead the public on a regular basis, you'd better be prepared for the harvest. You never win back respect from someone who's sussed out your con.

Matthew Lawton , 1 week ago (edited) div tabindex="0" role="

article"> Some thoughts: - You said that you wondered if there really could be that many people who have a problem with pedophilia, and I think the answer is simply "yes". I don't think it's at all uncommon. The area I live in is very small, a true Nowheresville USA that has farms surrounding it, and forests surrounding those farms. All the towns around here are like that or burned out mining towns that should have been entirely depopulated a generation ago. And at LEAST 3 times a week there's a story of someone form this general area trading pictures of little girls online or luring kids, or a teacher having sex with his or her students. There's nothing at all unusual about those stories showing up. We don't all gasp in shock because of course some creep fucked a kid, it's Tuesday. I think you should be careful, then, about trying to find explanations beyond the ordinary to explain Epstein's "success" as a professional monster. He catered to a robust client base, and I'd bet they're a fairly normal sampling of the general populace.

- "Freespeech norms in the USA/Gab attracts people who just want to spout off N-bombs": The trouble with this is the false dichotomy in which we've framed this argument. Speech is NOT an all or nothing proposition. Free speech absolutism is as equally dangerous as a fascist crackdown on what "sanctioned" speech is. People should NOT be allowed to just say anything without repercussions. The problem is the definitions. "Dead naming" is a ridiculous thing to punish someone for, where as calling a black person a "nigger" is a horrific thing because of the history behind that word. No other word int he English language even approaches the weight and violence of what that word represents. (Also why you should ALWAYS ignore anyone who meows "X is the 'n-word' for [insert group label here]) And for anyone foolish enough to meow, "Well WHO gets to decide?!"...we do. Like we decide EVERYTHING. Like I just offered a common sense example of "unsanctioned" speech done wrong, and "unsanctioned" speech done right. And Gab's attractiveness to alt-right hate mongers is nothing unique. Many people are absolutely fed up with the PC fascism that is RAMPANT on Reddit. I'm as far left as you can get without seizing the means of production literally and even I'm sick of being banned from subreddits simply for asking hard questions because I want to understand the arguments behind the issues. Being silenced for unpopular speech that causes no harm is ridiculous. But the equal opposite is Reddit's competition in Voat. It is an alt-right nazi paradise that makes all of Reddit's mistakes, but in a right leaning form of extremism instead of a left leaning form of extremism.

- Deplatforming: This is very thin ice, however I don't approve of the notion that we owe a voice to everyone. The paradox of tolerance( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance) is the crow bar every fascist or otherwise totalitarian regime in history has used to pry open public discourse. Yiannopoulos was not saying merely controversial things. He was advocating for fascism; an ideology that INHERENTLY leads to FAR more violent and aggressive forms of silencing than merely being kicked off Twitter. We can not afford to be so liberal with our democracy that we allow that democracy to sink under the weight of personal liberty. Screaming over free speech absolutism is immaturity of a very dangerous sort. And to be clear, we tried equality with these fascists before in the form of the Ku Klux Klan. Towns all over the US had non-engagement policies where public spaces were open tot hem so long as they filed the appropriate forms to assemble lawfully. Instead of confronting that hatred, we made sure people weren't there to challenge their ridiculous ideas. Know what happened? The people who wanted to find them did. And can you deny, Joe Rogan, that groups like they are enjoying a Renaissance post 2016? Sorry, not sorry: Some forms of speech erode freedom in a far more dangerous way than merely deplatforming a few dangerous groups.

While it may be fair to call it a necessary evil, "necessary" IS the key word here. You don't have to like it, but if you ignore history's lessons on what happens if you don't engage in a little culling of dangerous ideology from public spaces, you are unqualified to talk on the subject. - "I think there's a danger with social media not complying with the first amendment": This is a nonsense statement. It literally has no practical meaning. The first amendment doesn't grant you ANY rights or liberties. It prohibits the government from abridging them. It's kind of the entire basis of our legal system that rights and liberties are assumed to be inherent to the state of being born a human being (God-given). The government doesn't grant us them, nature/god does. Social media in no way conflicts with the first amendment. It only applies to government agencies. You do not now, nor have you ever had freedom of speech in private networks. You KNOW that, having to deal with Youtube's fuckery on a regular basis, and yet still that nonsense came out of your mouth...

Trudy , 1 week ago

These 2 think that they are being open minded when Twice! in the first 42 minutes they talk about how Hannity is so one sided - then they add "both sides" as if to sound even, but this whole discussion is left leaning. I don't watch Hannity but I do know all I heard Rachel Maddow talk about for 2 years was Russiagate. I really like these two guys but I wish they could see their own bias.

Peter Roth , 1 week ago

Rogan said: "There is no free speech platform that is universally accepted". I don't have extensive knowledge of how reddit governs speech, but my experience is that individual subreddits have their own rules on what gets moderated. Moderation coming from a specific community that you can join or not is in line with my view of free speech, rather than censorship coming from these behemoth corporations.

Bernie or Bust Television , 1 week ago

They also kill stories about Bernie or Bust. We need to get on your show to expose the truth about how few Sanders supporters will support a Democrat in the general election.

[Nov 28, 2019] Joe Rogan Experience #1386 - Matt Taibbi

Epstein murder/suicide was probably the most public elimination of critical witness...
Notable quotes:
"... “Biden to me is like having a flashlight with a dying battery and going for a long hike in the woods” - Joe Rogan 😅 1:28:33 ..."
Nov 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

HD , Nov 28 2019 19:45 utc | 38

Apologies if someone already posted this but on Nov 16 Joe Rogan and Matt Taibbi discussed the current state of the MSM in a wide-ranging conversation that I think most Barflies will find very interesting:

Joe Rogan Experience #1386 - Matt Taibbi) , Nov 16, 2019

Jeff phillips , 1 week ago

"Censorship is telling a grown man that he can't eat steak, because the baby can't chew it." - Mark Twain

Savannah Thomas , 1 week ago (edited)

“Biden to me is like having a flashlight with a dying battery and going for a long hike in the woods” - Joe Rogan 😅 1:28:33

T B , 1 week ago (edited)

“When the government's boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence.” - Gary Lloyd. We Americans are willingly blind to truth. It'll be the death of us.

Colin Hay , 1 week ago

George Orwell said it best: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever."

John Merlino , 1 week ago

Matt Taibbi: "they’re trying to sound like legitimate news, but they’re also completely selling out at the same time " perfectly sums up news outlets today, on both sides.

Tenzin Nordron , 11 hours ago (edited)

When I was a kid, i heard, on live radio broadcast, Oswald shot to death in Dallas Police Station - still think that's a more blatant murder of Witness.

Ricky Milano , 1 week ago

"There isn't the shame of screwing something up like there used to be." - Welcome to Hell everyone, we have jackets!!!

Adrienne Marini , 1 week ago

1:15:32 "There's also people that are like wolves trying to take out that baby joke wandering through the woods." So many good quotes in this podcast.

Major Bloodnok , 6 days ago

"We don't have any institutional respect anymore".. When even the broadsheets knowingly sow falsehoods or subtly mislead the public on a regular basis, you'd better be prepared for the harvest. You never win back respect from someone who's sussed out your con.

[Nov 28, 2019] Ukraine vs Iraq

Nov 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Bemildred , Nov 28 2019 17:10 utc | 23

Giraldi brings up again the stupidity of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the predictable and predicted results:

Iran May Be the Only Winner in Iraq

[Nov 28, 2019] Maria Butina -- free at last

Slightly edited Google translation
Oct 31, 2019 | neznaika-nalune.livejournal.com

As we drove back from springtime Buenos Aires into the nasty late-October weather of New England, there was at least one piece of good news - Butina had been released from the clutches of the US judicial system a couple of months earlier.

You have to understand that she is completely not guilty of what she was accused. In this article, The Spy Who Wasn't the famous American author and specialist in intelligence and espionage James Bamford, explains in detail why.

Butina is far from the heroine, but it is absurd to make her "the traitor" who allegedly "handed over the curators". She didn't have any secrets and practically did everything quite publicly, rattled about it in social networks or in multicast e-mails. Her task after the arrest was to break free and not to seek the "truth". The latter course of actions in in today's US is simply absurd. Now she can tell her version of the truth, which I trust immeasurably more than the version of American officialdom.

According to the available information she did everything sincerely and really believed that she could establish some personal ties and improve relations between Russia and the United States.

All her actions were dictated by naivety and not some terrible attempt to subvert the USA.

She was flattered by the attention of experienced older men with considerable means, who turned to be an undercover FBI informer who betrayed to her all the time.

The USA judicial system and media in this story has shown itself with a very vile, sadistic side, and we will remember it.

[Nov 28, 2019] Guccifer 2.0 certainly didn't make a genuine effort to "conceal a Russian identity," far from it

Nov 28, 2019 | www.reddit.com

Posted by u/PropagandaBot1 1 day ago

Guccifer 2.0 certainly didn't make a genuine effort to "conceal a Russian identity," far from it.

The persona made decisions that would leave behind a demonstrable trail of Russian-themed breadcrumbs, examples include: US politics (domestic)

  • Choosing the Russian VPN Service (using the publicly accessible default server in France) in combination with a mail service provider that would forward the sender's IP address.
  • Creating a blog and dropping a Russian emoticon in the second paragraph of the first post, something he only ever did one other time over months of activity (in which he used at a far higher frequency).
  • Tainting documents with Russian language metadata.
  • Going through considerable effort to ensure Russian language errors were in the first documents provided to the press.
  • Probable use of a VM set to Russian timezone while manipulating documents so that datastore objects with timestamps implying a Russian timezone setting are saved (in one of the documents, change tracking had been left on and recorded someone in a PST timezone saving one of Guccifer 2.0's documents after the documents had being manipulated in the Russian timezones!)
  • The deliberate and inconsistent mangling of English language (which was actually inconsistent with aspects of English language that Russians typically struggle with).
  • Guccifer 2.0 claimed credit for a hack that was already being attributed to Russians without making any effort to counter that perception and only denied it when outright questioned on it.

PropagandaBot1 -1 points · 1 day ago

http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Neocons/Hillary/guccifer20_false_flag_operation.shtml

[Nov 28, 2019] Yes, Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election

Nov 28, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

et Al November 25, 2019 at 4:43 am

The Greyzone: Yes, Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/11/23/yes-ukraine-interference-in-the-2016-presidential-election/

Meddling in the 2016 US presidential election by Ukrainian politicians and government agencies did indeed happen. No amount of denial is going to change that.

By Yasha Levine ####

Vis Fiona Hill (as ME & Mark referenced earlier), does she really think everyone else is stupid?

Anyway, it's not what the partisan media reports that matters but what the American voter thinks. If it's 'A pox on both your houses', then there will be plenty more shocks to the body politik to come and hopefully, real change.

Mark Chapman November 25, 2019 at 8:20 am
Thus the fierce struggle for regulation over the internet, and the flap about 'fake news' and how critical it is that you cede control over what you can see so that you can be 'protected' – it's all 'for your own safety'. A narrative can really only be driven home when the audience is not exposed to conflicting stories or evidence which does not fit the establishment tale.

[Nov 28, 2019] Sanders Calls Out MSNBC s Corporate Ownership -- In Interview On MSNBC HuffPost

Notable quotes:
"... Sanders went on to argue that "pressure has got to be put on media" to cover policy issues like income inequality and poverty more heavily, instead of devoting attention to sensational campaign moments and the state of political horse races. ..."
"... 'You know what, forget the political gossip. Politics is not a soap opera. Talk about the real damn issues facing this country.'" ..."
Nov 28, 2019 | www.huffpost.com

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has not been shy about his disdain for the mainstream media. But the Democratic presidential hopeful has rarely, if ever, articulated it as bluntly as he did in an interview that aired on MSNBC 's " The Rachel Maddow Show " on Friday night. Sanders called out the network for its corporate character in a novel exchange with host Rachel Maddow .

"The American people are sick and tired of establishment politics and economics, and by the way, a little bit tired of corporate media as well," Sanders told Maddow in an interview taped in Burlington, Vermont.

Maddow pressed Sanders for specifics on how he would change the media if he were president. "What's the solution to corporate media?" she asked.

"We have got to think of ways the Democratic party, for a start, starts funding the equivalent of Fox television," Sanders answered. Of course, MSNBC is a corporate media outlet that is widely seen as a Democratic version of Fox News because of the perceived sympathies of many of its political talk shows.

Sanders went on to argue that "pressure has got to be put on media" to cover policy issues like income inequality and poverty more heavily, instead of devoting attention to sensational campaign moments and the state of political horse races.

He then claimed that bringing that pressure to bear would be difficult, since corporate ownership makes it harder for news outlets to cover issues in a way that conflicts with the interests of top executives. "MSNBC is owned by who?" Sanders asked. "Comcast, our overlords," Maddow responded with a chuckle.

"All right, Comcast is not one of the most popular corporations in America, right?" Sanders said. "And I think the American people are going to have to say to NBC and ABC and CBS and CNN, 'You know what, forget the political gossip. Politics is not a soap opera. Talk about the real damn issues facing this country.'"

[Nov 28, 2019] Glaring anomalies in the Trump impeachment by General Vinod Saighal

Nov 28, 2019 | www.voltairenet.org

Clandestine actions by former US presidents to further their agenda have taken place in the past from time to time. Many never came to light while others were revealed or unearthed well after the events. The most questionable and controversial one took place during the Ronald Reagan presidency. It related to what became known as the Iran Contra Affair. It seems to have been directly conducted from the White House under the aegis of the President. In the Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Iran to bring about the release of American hostages held in Lebanon. Money from the Iran weapons-sale was then used to fund the Contras, a group of guerrilla "freedom fighters" opposed to the Marxist government of Nicaragua. Col. Oliver North who met President Reagan on several occasions was chosen to carry out the negotiations. It was also known in Iran as the McFarlane Affair. Oliver North was indicted on sixteen charges in the Iran–Contra affair and found guilty of three -- aiding and abetting obstruction of Congress, shredding or altering official documents and accepting a gratuity. His convictions were later overturned on the grounds that his immunized testimony had tainted his trial.

The most glaring omission in the impeachment trial on the part of Nancy Pelosi and the House democrats was not to have discussed the Vice President Biden and his son's dealings in Ukraine thoroughly prior to commencement of the impeachment hearings, in closed-door discussions if they felt that was necessary. Had they done so many questions that should have been thrashed threadbare might either not have arisen or if they arose they would have done their home work in advance and would have had answers ready. It was not the case. Vice President Biden was heading to become the leading democrat contender to take on Trump in the forthcoming 2020 elections. His chances were considered bright. Due diligence required that the former Vice President's and his son's involvement that many today would term questionable be thoroughly gone into by face-to-face interactions. Should doubts have arisen they might have decided to delay the impeachment hearings till all matters had been clarified to their satisfaction.

It is only a matter of time that Republican senators in the House bring it up as the hearings proceed. Or they might decide to turn the tables decisively in the Senate when the time came were the matter to reach the Senate. So far from what is known the Trump quid pro quo was related to the Ukrainian government investigating the Biden father and son's dealings. In recent weeks, Trump has relentlessly mocked Hunter Biden, to the point that his presidential campaign began selling shirts that say, "Where's Hunter?" highlighting that the former vice president's son had been out of the public spotlight for weeks. At a recent political rally, Trump noted that Hunter Biden had been thrown out of the Navy. Hunter Biden was discharged from the Navy Reserve in 2014 after failing a drug test and has struggled with alcohol and drug abuse. He told ABC News that, "like every single person that I've ever known, I have fallen and I've gotten up."

The House Democrats should realize that were the hearings to go deeper towards indicting Trump the tables might be turned on them. Were Mr. Biden to become or have become the Democrat presidential nominee sooner or later the people, the media and even representatives on the Capitol Hill would have raised the question as to whether former Vice President's dealings in Ukraine were questionable or not as these had started directly or by proxy while he was still in government. Further, was the involvement so deep that were he to ascend to the White House the Ukrainian government would be in a position to demand quid pro quo from time to time.

General Vinod Saighal

[Nov 28, 2019] New Study Russian Trolls Did Not Sow Discord - They Influenced No One

Notable quotes:
"... The IRA also bought advertisement to attract more people to its accounts. But the amount it spent was tiny. The final price tag for the 2016 election was $6.5 billion for the presidential and congressional elections combined. The IRA spend a total of $100,000 to promote its own accounts. But only some $45,000 of that was spend before the election. It was 0.000007 cent for every election dollar that was spend during that time. It is statistically impossible that the mostly apolitical IRA spending had any effect on the election. ..."
"... U.S. intelligence services tried to explain that away by claiming that the Russians wanted to "sow discord". There is zero evidence that this was really the case. It is simply an explanation that was made up because they failed to find a better one. ..."
"... FOX News is not pro-Trump because it wants to sow discord. Nor is CNN anti-Trump to serve that purpose. Both are in the business of attracting viewers to - in the end - sell advertisements. People flock to the TV station that fit to the opinion they already have. Both stations promote by and large similar products. ..."
"... The virtual IRA persona worked in a similar ways. They took political positions to attract people who already had a similar one. One persona did that for the left, another one for the right. Neither changed the opinions of their followers. ..."
"... of course it didn't matter, as when you have ignored 9-11 and everything else, you may as well buy into Russia influencing the election with some commercial enterprise like the ira... it's shocking actually, to see how many otherwise intelligent people can be bamboozled so easily via the cia with swamp media ..."
"... Every single mainstream media organization refers to Russian interference in the 2016 election as though it were a proven fact. When the government makes an unfounded assertion, it is reported one time as "government sources say" but every time thereafter it is referenced as fact. If you find an alternative source that contradicts the government lie and try to post it to social media, you will be tagged with a "Warning" that claims your story is "fake news". Orwellian doesn't begin to describe it. ..."
"... Once MSM propagandists broadcast 'Russian meddling' hundreds of thousands of times, their audience becomes impervious to the simplest of logic and barest of facts. ..."
"... The US media is still trying to breathe some life into a case which should have been declared dead on arrival, beltway politics must carry on its partisan shows, with the corporate media trying to whip audiences into a frenzy, over the most ridiculous plots in order to ignore that the body politic is corrupt beyond redemption and is as dead as US democracy. ..."
"... RT may have the insidious effect of injecting bits of reality-oriented counter news to the ubiquitous lame bought propaganda from American mass media. ..."
"... "One hates to be in the position of rooting for the Russians, but the Mueller Switch Project is so distasteful that it is hard not to enjoy the prospect of Mueller having to deal with an actual adversary in court. Meanwhile, this is probably the first time in the history of litigation that a plaintiff (here, prosecutor) has told a court that it may not have obtained good service of process on a defendant that has appeared to defend the case on the merits. Mueller to Court: We didn't really mean it, Judge! We had no idea they might actually show up!" ..."
"... The real sin of Russia, is not, of course, the nonsense election meddling, but its resistance against the US culture of open free markets, its threat of closing its markets to the US, its national doctrine against the Full Spectrum Dominance and US-led neo-liberal order. Its sin is economic nationalism. ..."
Nov 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

New Study: "Russian Trolls" Did Not "Sow Discord" - They Influenced No One

The U.S. has claimed that the Russia government tried to influence the 2016 election through Facebook and Twitter.

Russia supposedly did this through people who worked the Internet Research Agency (IRA) in St. Petersburg (Leningrad), Russia. The IRA people ran virtual persona on U.S. social networks which pretended to have certain political opinions. It also spent on advertising supposedly to influence the election. U.S. intelligence claimed that the purpose of the alleged Russian influence campaign was to "sow discord" within the United States.

But the IRA had nothing to do with the Russian government. It had no interests in politics. And a new study confirms that the idea that it was "sowing discord" is blatant nonsense.

The Mueller investigation indicted 13 Russian persons and three Russian legal entities over the alleged influence campaign. But, as we wrote at that time, there was more to it than the media reported:

The published indictment gives support to our long held believe that there was no "Russian influence" campaign during the U.S. election. What is described and denounced as such was instead a commercial marketing scheme which ran click-bait websites to generate advertisement revenue and created online crowds around virtual persona to promote whatever its commercial customers wanted to promote. The size of the operation was tiny when compared to the hundreds of millions in campaign expenditures. It had no influence on the election outcome.

The IRA hired people in Leningrad for little money and asked them to open accounts on U.S. social media. The virtual persona they created and ran were to attract as many persons to those accounts as possible. They did that by posting funny dog pictures or by taking strong political positions. They were 'influencers' who sold their customers' products to the people they attracted.

The sole purpose was the same as in any commercial media. Create content to attract 'eyeballs', then sell those eyeballs to advertisers.

As Point 95 of the Mueller indictment said :

Defendants and their co-conspirators also used the [financial] accounts to receive money from real U.S. persons in exchange for posting promotions and advertisements on the ORGANIZATION-controlled social media pages . Defendants and their co-conspirators typically charged certain U.S. merchants and U.S. social media sites between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per post for promotional content on their popular false U.S. persona accounts , including Being Patriotic, Defend the 2nd, and Blacktivist.

The was no Russian government campaign to influence the 2016 election. There was only a Russian commercial media enterprise that used sock-puppet accounts with quirky content to attract viewers and sold advertisement space to U.S. companies.

The IRA also bought advertisement to attract more people to its accounts. But the amount it spent was tiny. The final price tag for the 2016 election was $6.5 billion for the presidential and congressional elections combined. The IRA spend a total of $100,000 to promote its own accounts. But only some $45,000 of that was spend before the election. It was 0.000007 cent for every election dollar that was spend during that time. It is statistically impossible that the mostly apolitical IRA spending had any effect on the election.

That the IRA ran a marketing machine and not a political operation was also obvious when one analyzed the content that those sock puppet accounts posted. Most of it was apolitical. Where it was political it covered both sides. Some IRA accounts posted pro-Trump content, others posted anti-Trump stuff. Some were pro-Clinton others against her.

U.S. intelligence services tried to explain that away by claiming that the Russians wanted to "sow discord". There is zero evidence that this was really the case. It is simply an explanation that was made up because they failed to find a better one.

The real answer to the question why different IRA accounts posted on different sides of the political spectrum is that the IRA wanted to maximize its income. One has to cover both sides if one wants to optimize the number of eyeballs one attracts.

FOX News is not pro-Trump because it wants to sow discord. Nor is CNN anti-Trump to serve that purpose. Both are in the business of attracting viewers to - in the end - sell advertisements. People flock to the TV station that fit to the opinion they already have. Both stations promote by and large similar products.

The virtual IRA persona worked in a similar ways. They took political positions to attract people who already had a similar one. One persona did that for the left, another one for the right. Neither changed the opinions of their followers.

A recently published study which looked at Twitter users who followed IRA sock puppet accounts and their content confirms that. It found that the IRA sock puppets had no influence on the opinions of their followers.

The study by U.S. and Danish researchers is headlined Assessing the Russian Internet Research Agency's impact on the political attitudes and behaviors of American Twitter users in late 2017 . It found:

Using Bayesian regression tree models, we find no evidence that interaction with IRA accounts substantially impacted distinctive measures of political attitudes and behaviors over a 1-mo period. We also find that interaction with IRA accounts were most common among respondents with strong ideological homophily within their Twitter network , high interest in politics, and high frequency of Twitter usage. Together, these findings suggest that Russian trolls might have failed to sow discord because they mostly interacted with those who were already highly polarized.

Most hardcore Republicans watch FOX New, most hardcore Democrats watch CNN. Neither TV station changes the core opinions of their viewers. They reinforce them.

The "Russian trolls" were virtual persona created to cover -in total- a wide spectrum. Some persona played hardcore Republican, other played hardcore Democrats. They created and posted content that fit to the role they played. Each attracted followers with opinions similar to those the virtual persona pretended to have. No opinion was changed through those contacts. No discord was sown.

The IRA then sold advertisement space to vendors to monetize all eyeballs its virtual personas attracted.

The U.S. intelligence agencies pretended that the commercial IRA was a political agency. It helped them to sell animosity against Russia and to pretend that Trump was somehow colluding with Putin.

But it all never made any sense.

Posted by b on November 27, 2019 at 18:33 UTC | Permalink

james , Nov 27 2019 18:52 utc | 1

thanks b... of course it didn't matter, as when you have ignored 9-11 and everything else, you may as well buy into Russia influencing the election with some commercial enterprise like the ira... it's shocking actually, to see how many otherwise intelligent people can be bamboozled so easily via the cia with swamp media in tow... again - emptywheel is a good case in point.. complete drivel about russia stole my sandwich on a 24-7 basis.. they have their heads up their asses so far, there is no light able to shine in...
james , Nov 27 2019 18:54 utc | 2
as for twitter and facebook - two other NSA snoop dog outlets - there may be some value in these two creations, mostly with the intel agencies, but it is slim pickins' for most everyone else... the sooner they go the way of the dodo bird, the better..
plantman , Nov 27 2019 18:58 utc | 3
Excellent report.
Thanks.

Now that you've shown that the IRA was not a "Russian influence campaign", I hope you will refute the claims that were made on last Sunday's 60 Minutes
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-hackers-2016-election-democratic-congressional-campaign-committee-60-minutes-2019-11-24/

Title --How Russian intelligence officers interfered in the 2016 election, CBS

Alot of people still think 60 Minutes is a credible news source, but their wild and unsubstantiated claims in this segment really cast doubt on whether they can trusted or not.

Charles Dunaway , Nov 27 2019 19:18 utc | 4
Every single mainstream media organization refers to Russian interference in the 2016 election as though it were a proven fact. When the government makes an unfounded assertion, it is reported one time as "government sources say" but every time thereafter it is referenced as fact. If you find an alternative source that contradicts the government lie and try to post it to social media, you will be tagged with a "Warning" that claims your story is "fake news". Orwellian doesn't begin to describe it.
jeestun , Nov 27 2019 19:26 utc | 5
Once MSM propagandists broadcast 'Russian meddling' hundreds of thousands of times, their audience becomes impervious to the simplest of logic and barest of facts.

Science.

Jay , Nov 27 2019 19:27 utc | 6
"Most hardcore Republicans watch FOX New, most hardcore Democrats watch CNN."

No, most hard core Democrats are repulsed by CNN. The Democrats who watch CNN, and believe it, this goes for NPP, the NY Times, the New Yorker, and MSNBC, are Democratic Party loyalists. There's a big difference.

The first is set of people largely loyal to the party of FDR, and the other is a group of corporatists--largely loyal to big businesses like JP-Morgan Chase, Amazon, and many military contractors.

Lawrence Magnuson , Nov 27 2019 19:45 utc | 7
I watched a bit belatedly the 60 Minutes affair on the link provided. As the video was unusually very slow to appear, I read the text and then started looking around for when it was posted. Unbelievable. New stuff? I wrongly thought this had to be an old, superannuated piece. @emptywheel the producer or just the muse? This sort of nails down the coffin lid on a free media for me. And for you. We're in a very bad place.
uncle tungsten , Nov 27 2019 20:04 utc | 10
Lawrence Magnuson #7

Did you refer to Marcy Wheeler who scribbles the emptywheel blog. That gal is all rim and no spokes. The entire site is obsessive fantasising, Russia hating, Trump loathing to attract eyeballs and sell patreon donations.

Marcy couldn't fart and chew gum at the same time.

Cliff , Nov 27 2019 20:17 utc | 11
@b: Sorry b, but I don't buy it. Running a commercial scheme by posting *highly* political memes in a *foreign* country, such as promoting secession of Texas and California or inciting race tension, simply isn't a wise idea. Even if it weren't meant political, it still was political. Cat memes would have been a different story.
karlof1 , Nov 27 2019 20:32 utc | 13
Cliff @11 clearly falls off by failing to note b's and the study's major point--the Russian Government in no way meddled in the 2016 election. IRA as the commercial entity that didn't either has zero links to said government.
William Gruff , Nov 27 2019 20:32 utc | 14
It is funny how Cliff @11 apparently believes that commercial exploitation is innocent, but efforts at political influence are sinister.

This disorder is part and parcel of the disease that is destroying western culture. The total loss of perspective is also one of the key symptoms of the hysteria that is clearly still gripping the West.

I wonder if this is something that the West can ever possibly recover from? I figured by now the hysteria would have burned itself out, but here it still seems to be going strong.

pretzelattack , Nov 27 2019 20:33 utc | 15
uh cliff, what "highly political memes". 100k spent on pictures of kermit the frog hand puppets or "buff bernie" is not highly political, and even if they were, they influenced nobody. it's all horseshit.
bevin , Nov 27 2019 20:42 utc | 16
Cliff@11

It might not have been wise but it is obviously what happened.The important point is that there is not the slightest suggestion of there being any evidence that the Russian state was involved.

To put the matter in context: hundreds of other sets of influencers did what the IRA did but because none of them could be associated in any way with Russia their, collectively order of magnitude more important efforts, most of them pushing Clinton who was thought to be a clear favourite, but their work goes unanalysed.
Not that there is any evidence of the IRA's connection with the Kremlin except that it is located not in Moscow but Petrograd, where Putin is from. And that the hustler running the organisation is said to have supplied sandwiches to meetings in the Kremlin -- hence the media's coinage "Putin's Chef!"

b in this post is hammering yet one more nail into the coffin of Russiagate, there can't be much more room on the lid for more. And there isn't much room left in the coffin either-it already contains half of the Democratic Party, several presidential candidates, poor old Marcy wheeler and the entire Mainstream Media. High time it was six feet under.

S.O. , Nov 27 2019 20:54 utc | 18
Oh Noes!

You mean the russian click bait add spam farm, that looks and behaves like an add spam farm, which everyone with a functioning brain in their skulls said is an add spam farm... might just turn out to behave like an actual add spam farm?

Well, colour me amazed. ..it's like no one remembered geocities pop up storms or something.

Allen , Nov 27 2019 20:57 utc | 19
The US media is still trying to breathe some life into a case which should have been declared dead on arrival, beltway politics must carry on its partisan shows, with the corporate media trying to whip audiences into a frenzy, over the most ridiculous plots in order to ignore that the body politic is corrupt beyond redemption and is as dead as US democracy.

Is Trump a Putin stooge? Let's 'investigate' or continually mu(e)ll over this possibility even more! Meanwhile, the stooges in Washington we are instructed to call 'our representatives' remain bipartisan in pursuing the dictatorial goals of class elites, no matter which CEO is temporarily managing affairs for the Fortune 500.

Who needs Russian meddling in an electoral process that means next to nothing when it comes to affecting in the slightest the homegrown depravity of our oligarchy?

We still have plenty of Dem Party hacks telling us in the most convoluted language what to think about a report vomited out by a professional liar (See: Mueller Iraq War Crimes for but one example of Mueller's long and sordid career) and we are suppose to believe any of this? Oh and let's see we are suppose to care that an orange-haired, spray tanned criminal buffoon won the Kabuki (s)election in Potemkin Empire against the insanely corrupted and proven War Criminal Donkey Queen Bee? You just have to wonder how much per word these pundits are paid to pump out their bilge?

The entire "Russiagate" smokescreen is a perfect example of how propaganda works. Accuse your "enemy" of the very thing you have been doing in plain sight so that when accusations are levied against you it will be harder to make them stick- keep that external enemy front and center so that the real enemy within remains hidden.

To believe that the Mueller report ever was anything than a wax show piece in a stale play one must put aside all the obvious items such as- 1) Zero evidence; 2) US elections are already rigged by the US elites before a single vote is cast; 3) The US has been tampering in just about every countries elections for decades overtly and covertly; AND 4) Recent attempts BY THE US to ACTUALLY tamper in Russian elections through the ever-handy NED.

There is no other country that intervenes in the political affairs of foreign states so directly, regularly and shamelessly as the United States. American foreign policy is one massive intervention in the politics of other countries, running the gamut from propaganda, destabilization, financing of opposition parties, electoral fraud and coups to military bombardment and occupation.

Professor Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University assembled a database documenting as many as 81 occasions between 1946 and 2000 when Washington interfered in elections in other countries.

There is zero solid evidence that Russia "meddled" in the US elections. It is all speculation and innuendo. Even if one were to blindly assume that the stories were accurate, whatever Russia may or may not have done pales in comparison to the operations of US intelligence agencies all over the world, including within the United States itself, not to mention the billions of dollars spent by the corporate and financial elite to manipulate US elections and determine their outcome.

The claim, moreover, that Russian Twitter and Facebook posts are responsible for social discontent and "disruptions in the democracy" of the United States -- one of the most unequal countries in the world -- is beyond ludicrous.

Andrea Sutton , Nov 27 2019 21:39 utc | 20
I didn't believe that the Russians interfered with the election anyway, but this exposition of the raw data used by the intell. services as a basis for promulgating the fiction, is fascinating and hilarious if the consequencies hadn't been so dire. The basis is so utterly mundane and so "American" if you forgive my saying so, I mean the IRA was just trying to make money. I suppose the intell. services knew this, knew they were peddling lies as Pompeo says they are taught to do. All for what? Not just to hurt Trump. No, to feed a McCarthyite fear to keep the endless wars going. Evil.
Trailer Trash , Nov 27 2019 21:57 utc | 21
The "Russia Stole Our Election" story is wearing thin? Fortunately a UK stink tank has discovered a "Gun Gap" to scare us with:

British ground forces would be "comprehensively outgunned" in a conflict with Russia in Eastern Europe, according to a defence think-tank.

Research by the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) found that the Army, as well as Nato allies, has a "critical shortage" of artillery and ammunition.

The research comes ahead of a meeting of Nato leaders in London next week to mark the 70th anniversary of the alliance.

I know we are supposed to believe that US is so wonderful and exceptional that Russia, China, Iran, etc. all want to conquer it. But why would they want to? What would they do with a place like Detroit, Camden, and all the rest of the broken down infrastructure?

Trailer Trash , Nov 27 2019 22:00 utc | 22
I meant to add that there is an easy solution to the scary new Gun Gap: don't attack Russia (or anywhere else).
Clueless Joe , Nov 27 2019 22:02 utc | 23
"British ground forces would be "comprehensively outgunned" in a conflict with Russia in Eastern Europe"

So fucking what, if that were actually true? UK is a group of islands in NW Europe, it's not Poland, and UK hasn't any business to have troops in Eastern Europe to begin with; meanwhile, the European part of Russia is very much a big chunk of Eastern Europe; odds are that they'd have their military ready to defend and fight there. These useless hacks should come back only once they can claim that the British forces would be outgunned in a conflict with Russia in Essex; that would be worrying.

Robert Snefjella , Nov 27 2019 22:10 utc | 25
But there is a sense in which Russia may have subtly influenced the election. For any well informed American - and in my opinion finding such is more likely than say spotting a Sasquatch - the varied political presentations of say RT may have the insidious effect of injecting bits of reality-oriented counter news to the ubiquitous lame bought propaganda from American mass media.

And the Putin-effect over the last two decades too may be quite insidious: after all, in the realm dominated by political banality, lies, stupidity and bad acting, an articulate, and in practical terms effective, political leader of a major country is a rather extraordinary phenomenon. Such things are possible, discover wayward Americans! But what explains its near complete absence in our exceptional indispensable nation?

Putin and Russia: the success that haunts us.

karlof1 , Nov 27 2019 22:51 utc | 29
Obama's D-Party set up what the following article describes which I provide as a marker of that party's leadership's immoral mindset. Imagine what BigLie Media would do if this was done in Russia or China! We'd read/hear/see all about it 24/7/365.
Jackrabbit , Nov 27 2019 23:13 utc | 30
b neglected to mention a few things:

1) USA interferes in other countries elections all the time. Recent and very stark examples: Bolivia and Venezuela.

2) USA's broken, money-based electoral system practically invites "interference"/"meddling" by powerful interests and skews the results toward candidates that will serve powerful interests that can afford to support the electoral farce that provides an illusion of democracy.

3) Pro-Israel Zionists and Zionist organizations, like Haim Saban, Sheldon Adelson, and AIPAC, contribute huge sums to the duopoly that controls US politics. Their contribution is vastly greater than a few facebook ads.

4) The vast majority of the "Russian oligarchs" that are supposed to have influenced Trump are Jewish with closer ties to Israel than Russia.

!!

Montreal , Nov 27 2019 23:19 utc | 31
Bevin @ 17
Evgeny Progozhin - supposedly behind IRA - was - and maybe still is - VVP's chef. I think it is probably him who started that joke about his being a "hot-dog salesman" in St P. But he was much more than that.

More importantly he was the man who re-introduced fine restaurants to St Petersburg. In the nineties he opened several very good restaurants in a city which hadn't seen a decent meal since the Revolution - a bit like England before it joined the Common Market. He was a great perfectionist with a tremendous eye for detail. His difficulty was in finding staff in a city which had no history of training staff beyond the very low levels demanded by the Intourist hotels - and as soon as he trained them they were poached by would-be rivals, so often he gave the top places to French and English specialists.

The very best of his restaurants was the Old Customs House on the University Embankment. I haven't been there for a couple of years but in its hey-day it could match any restaurant in Europe.

He would also fly his staff to other Russian cities to lay on banquets for the President. He then went into mass catering and by the sounds of it different fields altogether. An admirable man, one of those who helped Russia into the 21st Century.

DougDiggler , Nov 27 2019 23:52 utc | 34
Let's compare the IRA's lame content to what is being emitted by the thousands of 'bots in Bolivia.
the pessimist , Nov 28 2019 2:06 utc | 36
Fresh Air has an interview with Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch of Fusion GPS posted on their page . There seems to be a full court press on to solidify the 'consensus' narrative, with stories on BBC and other main US news outlets, including many on NPR, 'explaining' various aspects of the Russophobic/Sinophibic view of the world, and attacking as 'conspiracy theories' that are proven false (mainly by way of reciting innuendo and accusations by anonymous sources and professional liars) any counter narratives.

In my experience, even if people retain some skepticism, they assume the main points of the narrative as proven fact to the extent that it is nearly impossible to have a reasoned discussion about the basic assumptions of the narrative.

I see that Chrystia Freeland has been appointed deputy prime minister of Canada.

Dr George W. Oprisko , Nov 28 2019 2:21 utc | 37
I am amazed.......... that one and all haven't noticed the inability of the USG to deal with any.... and I mean any.... issues affecting the people of the USA.
  • Lead in Drinking Water.....
  • Farm Bankruptcies.....
  • Failed Corn & soybean crops.....
  • Medical prescription costs going through the roof.
  • Key medicines no longer available to combat serious infections....
  • Boeings that are designed to crash....

INDY

FSD , Nov 28 2019 2:32 utc | 38
Examining direct state-actor involvement would be one thing. But this 'study' is little more than a sui generis, slow motion ethnic slur. What about Russian-American US citizens in Boston who happen to tweet benign and banal messages about nothing in particular? Can we get cooties from them as well? Does it come thru the WIFI?

The sizable Russian-American population has been absolutely stoic during this whole protracted episode. I can think of many other groups who'd be screaming bloody murder.

As for the IRA indictments, they were a sham from top to bottom. Here's the Powerline blog:

"One hates to be in the position of rooting for the Russians, but the Mueller Switch Project is so distasteful that it is hard not to enjoy the prospect of Mueller having to deal with an actual adversary in court. Meanwhile, this is probably the first time in the history of litigation that a plaintiff (here, prosecutor) has told a court that it may not have obtained good service of process on a defendant that has appeared to defend the case on the merits. Mueller to Court: We didn't really mean it, Judge! We had no idea they might actually show up!"

None other than Michael Moore is another IRA victim. So much for Trump-Russia.

https://fullspectrumdominoes.wordpress.com/2019/06/28/7864/

JW , Nov 28 2019 3:01 utc | 39
#21

"I know we are supposed to believe that US is so wonderful and exceptional that Russia, China, Iran, etc. all want to conquer it. But why would they want to? What would they do with a place like Detroit, Camden, and all the rest of the broken down infrastructure?"

Also, the greatest political system ever conceived in mankind according the Americans somehow can just simply crumble in the face of a tiny bit of alleged foreign money.

bevin , Nov 28 2019 3:12 utc | 40
The proverb " A dog will return to its vomit" obviously applies to New Yorker writers too. Jane Mayer, author of a famously gushing fanmag feature on Christopher Steele is at it again. https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/59965-focus-the-inside-story-of-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier
lysias , Nov 28 2019 3:28 utc | 41
Jane Mayer used to write good journalism. Her book "Dark Money" from a couple of years ago was an eye-opener. What happened to her? I guess the same question could be asked about Marcy Wheeler. And what happened to Democracy Now and Amy Goodman?
Innocent Civilian , Nov 28 2019 3:36 utc | 42
The real sin of Russia, is not, of course, the nonsense election meddling, but its resistance against the US culture of open free markets, its threat of closing its markets to the US, its national doctrine against the Full Spectrum Dominance and US-led neo-liberal order. Its sin is economic nationalism.

Its sin is taking shares of Christopher Steele's in Gazprom by force, who had them by tax fraud in the first place. Its sin is allowing Government of Russia holding more than half of the shares of Gazprom. Its sin is becoming self-reliant in oil and gas (and recently food thanks to sanctions), backed with a substantial military force. A huge country that can industrialize its resources and that can defend itself and deter any aggression on her soil. A recipe for nightmare for neo-liberals.

Since the Americans voted for a president who is against the neo-liberal order and promotes nationalism, they are on fire and afraid they are going to have to take it by four more years.

[Nov 28, 2019] Devin Nunes: CNN, Daily Beast are going to run for cover

Nov 28, 2019 | www.youtube.com

House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Devin Nunes speaks out on his plan to take news outlets to federal court amid the Trump impeachment probe. #FoxNews #Hannity

Bleach Bit , 1 day ago

Good to see Nunes is "throwing down the gauntlet" to these thugs!👌

Solid Asian Gold , 1 day ago

Dear CNN & Daily Beast: It's called "Freedom Of Press", not "Freedom Of Lies And Slander".

Cynthia Risser , 1 day ago

It's about time someone grew a spine and stands their ground against these morally bankrupt media companies! Thank you, Devin!! Kick them a few times for us!!

[Nov 27, 2019] Looks like "Full of Schiff" Dems are now full cooked and, unless something dramatic happens, lost their chances in 2020 elections

Nov 27, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

ph 11.26.19 at 10:42 am (no link)

As usual, Orange Watch presents a comment based on fact: namely that the damage done at the local and state level to Democrats shrinks the pool of experienced top-tier candidates to draw upon. The three front-runners are older than sixty by some distance, and they're running against a guy who's over seventy. Which leads to the cost of impeachment and the upcoming Senate trial. I just took a trip down memory lane to confirm the last time Democrats decided to go overboard without the fig-leaf of a view Republican votes.

I liked Russ Feingold. He took stands the Democratic elite didn't like, but when push came to shove on the ACA, Feingold sucked it up and voted for ACA, which passed the Senate straight down partisan lines – without a single Republican vote. Sounding familiar? So what happens in 2010. Feingold gets hammered from the left and the right for being a 'sell-out' and a 'big-pharma' stooge. Lost in all the hoopla over the 2010 Tea Party, was the fact that Feingold and others lower-down the ticket paid the price for supporting a policy they mostly opposed. From the NYT, Nov. 4, 2010.

" Mr. Feingold has served in the Senate for 18 years and was seeking his fourth term. Mr. Johnson, a plastics manufacturer who had never run for office, won with 52 percent of the vote, to Mr. Feingold's 47 percent.

Mr. Feingold was caught in an avalanche that crushed Democrats nationwide. Apart from capturing Mr. Feingold's seat, Republicans here made a clean sweep of state government, winning the governor's office and control of both houses of the State Legislature. One poll found that Mr. Obama's approval rating here had declined at a faster rate than in any other state."

Re-read the second paragraph and then go back and read OW's comment. Because, impeachment is forming along the same lines. Not one Republican vote of support in the House and likely zero in the Senate (unless of course one believes the fantasy that Republicans are going to toss one of the most successful Republican presidents ever.)

Most here, I suspect, believe that others share their view of the Republican party. That it's become a pliant tool of something called 'Trumpism.' The opposite is true – Trump has made peace with the Republican establishment. Neither side surrendered and contra the fantasy above – all sides including Trump realize they're better together. Why? Because the economy is booming and Republicans get to take credit for that, no new wars, better trade deals – we saw from the Emerson poll where the public is on the environment and impeachment. So, no Santa Mitch isn't going to do for Dems what the 25th, the insurance policy, pee-dossier, and son-of-pee dossier didn't do either – which is magically undo 2010.

Dems still haven't recovered from 2010 and OW seems to be the only one who grasps that much. Permitting 44 to turn over the Democratic party to the Clinton machine in 2015 made a bad situation much worse. The same night that GOP bubble-heads and never-Trumpers were whining about Trump losing big, and dragging down-ballot GOP candidates with him, the opposite was occurring. Trump killed at the electoral college and his momentum helped sweep Republicans to one of their best nights ever.

James Carville observed that night in 2016, Democrats haven't been this weak for more than half-a-century. Some Democrats learned the lesson and ran on 'just fix the damn roads' in 2018 and won. Impeachment is very, very likely to do what the ACA did to Dems in 2010. Rather than build on the hard-won victories of 2018, Democrats have decided to pursue a dead-end policy doomed to failure which will galvanize the GOP base and drive independents months before the election. Even a week ago, I wasn't sure whether Trump will be elected. I'm much, much more certain now. I warned in 2017 of the opportunity costs of looking for silver stake solutions to what OW and Carville correctly understand as bad policy, poor candidates, identity politics, and bad messaging.

So, Russia? My guess is that after the stomping that may very well fall upon the Dems, we might very well see real reform in the Democratic party, just as we have in the GOP. Trump's GOP protects businesses, individuals, Americans, opportunity, and social security. And all the bad shit that both parties always support. Dems need to figure out that Trump has stolen their message and is on the way to stealing their base. If minorities turn out for Trump (the GOP wet-dream) Dems are going to face a nightmare scenario. And 34 percent of African-Americans currently support Trump.

Bigly – the Bling President.

likbez 11.27.19 at 10:17 am ( 84 )
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

ph 11.26.19 at 10:42 am @72

James Carville observed that night in 2016, Democrats haven't been this weak for more than half-a-century. Some Democrats learned the lesson and ran on 'just fix the damn roads' in 2018 and won. Impeachment is very, very likely to do what the ACA did to Dems in 2010.

Rather than build on the hard-won victories of 2018, Democrats have decided to pursue a dead-end policy doomed to failure which will galvanize the GOP base and drive independents months before the election. Even a week ago, I wasn't sure whether Trump will be elected. I'm much, much more certain now. I warned in 2017 of the opportunity costs of looking for silver stake solutions to what OW and Carville correctly understand as bad policy, poor candidates, identity politics, and bad messaging.

So, Russia? My guess is that after the stomping that may very well fall upon the Dems, we might very well see real reform in the Democratic party, just as we have in the GOP. Trump's GOP protects businesses, individuals, Americans, opportunity, and social security. And all the bad shit that both parties always support. Dems need to figure out that Trump has stolen their message and is on the way to stealing their base. If minorities turn out for Trump (the GOP wet-dream) Dems are going to face a nightmare scenario. And 34 percent of African-Americans currently support Trump.

That's a very apt observation with one reservation: one major factor in 2018 success was Mueller investigation. Now there will be backlash against it, which favors Trump.

Moon of Alabama has a very interesting discussion of the Catch 22 style situation "Full of Schiff" Dems found themselves with "Pelosi impeachment gambit": in no way they can allow Senate trial, and they can't allow just a censure, or they lose the face (Schiff career is probably over at this point in any case)

-- If more Democratic swing-state representatives defect from the impeachment camp, which seems likely, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have a big problem. How can she proceed?

-- If the House votes down impeachment Donald Trump wins.

-- If the House holds no vote on the issue Donald Trump wins.

-- If the House votes for censure Donald Trump will have won on points and the issue will be over.

-- If the House votes for impeachment the case goes to the Senate for trial.

The Republican led Senate has two choices:

-- It can decide to not open an impeachment trial by simply voting against impeachment. Trump wins.

-- It can open a impeachment trial, use it to extensively hurt the Democrats and, in the end, vote against impeachment. Trump wins big time.

A senate impeachment trial would be a disaster for the Dems as Joe & Hunter and Adam Schiff get to testify under oath.

A censure means that Trump won on points and now can play victim in 2020 election. Situation which he likes and exploiting which he is a great master (that's why he wants the Senate trial). And which increases chances of his reelection. In the latter case that most probably means the end of career (if not prosecution) for Vindman, Hill and other "accusers" (Pelosi sacrificial pawns in this gambit)

My feeling is that Clinton democrats are doomed to be a failure in 2020. And that Democratic Party needs to reform (which they failed to do after 2016 fiasco.)

For the Democrats to reform that need first to acknowledge that their alliance with Wall Street is a dead end and that they need to try to serve as a vehicle for opposing the absolute rule of capital. At a minimum they should be capable of acknowledging the conflict that exists between the interests of capital and the rest of the population (Warren); and of expressing a principled determination to take the side of the majority of the population in this conflict.

[Nov 26, 2019] John Solomon Everything Changes In The Ukraine Scandal If Trump Releases These Documents

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Authored by John Solomon via JohnSolomonReports.com, ..."
"... Daily intelligence reports from March through August 2019 on Ukraine's new president Volodymyr Zelensky and his relationship with oligarchs and other key figures. ..."
"... State Department memos on U.S. funding given to the George Soros-backed group the Anti-Corruption Action Centre. ..."
"... The transcripts of Joe Biden's phone calls and meetings with Ukraine's president and prime minister from April 2014 to January 2017 when Hunter Biden served on the board of the natural gas company Burisma Holdings. ..."
"... All documents from an Office of Special Counsel whistleblower investigation into unusual energy transactions in Ukraine. ..."
"... All FBI, CIA, Treasury Department and State Department documents concerning possible wrongdoing at Burisma Holdings. ..."
"... All documents from 2015-16 concerning the decision by the State Department's foreign aid funding arm, USAID, to pursue a joint project with Burisma Holdings. ..."
"... All cables, memos and documents showing State Department's dealings with Burisma Holding representatives in 2015 and 2016. ..."
"... All contacts that the Energy Department, Justice Department or State Department had with Vice President Joe Biden's office concerning Burisma Holdings, Hunter Biden or business associate Devon Archer. ..."
"... All memos, emails and other documents concerning a possible U.S. embassy's request in spring 2019 to monitor the social media activities and analytics of certain U.S. media personalities considered favorable to President Trump. ..."
"... All State, CIA, FBI and DOJ documents concerning efforts by individual Ukrainian government officials to exert influence on the 2016 U.S. election, including an anti-Trump Op-Ed written in August 2016 by Ukraine's ambassador to Washington or efforts to publicize allegations against Paul Manafort. ..."
"... All State, CIA, FBI and DOJ documents concerning contacts with a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa and her dealings with the Ukrainian embassy in Washington or other Ukrainian figures. ..."
Nov 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by John Solomon via JohnSolomonReports.com,

There are still wide swaths of documentation kept under wraps inside government agencies like the State Department that could substantially alter the public's understanding of what has happened in the U.S.-Ukraine relationships now at the heart of the impeachment probe.

As House Democrats mull whether to pursue impeachment articles and the GOP-led Senate braces for a possible trial, here are 12 tranches of government documents that could benefit the public if President Trump ordered them released, and the questions these memos might answer.

  1. Daily intelligence reports from March through August 2019 on Ukraine's new president Volodymyr Zelensky and his relationship with oligarchs and other key figures. What was the CIA, FBI and U.S. Treasury Department telling Trump and other agencies about Zelensky's ties to oligarchs like Igor Kolomoisky, the former head of Privatbank, and any concerns the International Monetary Fund might have? Did any of these concerns reach the president's daily brief (PDB) or come up in the debate around resolving Ukraine corruption and U.S. foreign aid? CNBC , Reuters and The Wall Street Journal all have done recent reporting suggesting there might have been intelligence and IMF concerns that have not been fully considered during the impeachment proceedings.
  2. State Department memos detailing conversations between former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko . He says Yovanovitch raised the names of Ukrainians she did not want to see prosecuted during their first meeting in 2016. She calls Lutsenko's account fiction. But State Department officials admit the U.S. embassy in Kiev did pressure Ukrainian prosecutors not to target certain activists. Are there contemporaneous State Department memos detailing these conversations and might they illuminate the dispute between Lutsenko and Yovanovitch that has become key to the impeachment hearings?
  3. State Department memos on U.S. funding given to the George Soros-backed group the Anti-Corruption Action Centre. There is documentary evidence that State provided funding to this group, that Ukrainian prosecutor sought to investigate whether that aid was spent properly and that the U.S. embassy pressured Ukraine to stand down on that investigation. How much total did State give to this group? Why was a federal agency giving money to a Soros-backed group? What did taxpayers get for their money and were they any audits to ensure the money was spent properly? Were any of Ukrainian prosecutors' concerns legitimate?
  4. The transcripts of Joe Biden's phone calls and meetings with Ukraine's president and prime minister from April 2014 to January 2017 when Hunter Biden served on the board of the natural gas company Burisma Holdings. Did Burisma or Hunter Biden ever come up in the calls? What did Biden say when he urged Ukraine to fire the prosecutor overseeing an investigation of Burisma? Did any Ukrainian officials ever comment on Hunter Biden's role at the company? Was any official assessment done by U.S. agencies to justify Biden's threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. aid if Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin wasn't fired?
  5. All documents from an Office of Special Counsel whistleblower investigation into unusual energy transactions in Ukraine. The U.S. government's main whistleblower office is investigating allegations from a U.S Energy Department worker of possible wrongdoing in U.S.-supported Ukrainian energy business. Who benefited in the United States and Ukraine from this alleged activity? Did Burisma gain any benefits from the conduct described by the whistleblower? OSC has concluded there is a "substantial likelihood of wrongdoing" involved in these activities.
  6. All FBI, CIA, Treasury Department and State Department documents concerning possible wrongdoing at Burisma Holdings. What did the U.S. know about allegations of corruption at the Ukrainian gas company and the efforts by the Ukrainian prosecutors to investigate? Did U.S., Latvian, Cypriot or European financial authorities flag any suspicious transactions involving Burisma or Americans during the time that Hunter Biden served on its board? Were any U.S. agencies monitoring, assisting or blocking the various investigations? When Ukraine reopened the Burisma investigations in March 2019, what did U.S. officials do?
  7. All documents from 2015-16 concerning the decision by the State Department's foreign aid funding arm, USAID, to pursue a joint project with Burisma Holdings. State official George Kent has testified he stopped this joint project because of concerns about Burisma's corruption reputation. Did Hunter Biden or his American business partner Devon Archer have anything to do with seeking the project? What caused its abrupt end? What issues did Kent identify as concerns and who did he alert in the White House, State or other agencies?
  8. All cables, memos and documents showing State Department's dealings with Burisma Holding representatives in 2015 and 2016. We now know that Ukrainian authorities escalated their investigation of Burisma Holdings in February 2016 by raiding the home of the company's owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Soon after, Burisma's American representatives were pressing the State Department to help end the corruption allegations against the gas firm, specifically invoking Hunter Biden's name. What did State officials do after being pressured by Burisma? Did the U.S. embassy in Kiev assist Burisma's efforts to settle the corruption case against it? Who else in the U.S. government was being kept apprised?
  9. All contacts that the Energy Department, Justice Department or State Department had with Vice President Joe Biden's office concerning Burisma Holdings, Hunter Biden or business associate Devon Archer. We now know that multiple State Department officials believed Hunter Biden's association with Burisma created the appearance of a conflict of interest for the vice president, and at least one official tried to contact Joe Biden's office to raise those concerns. What, if anything, did these Cabinet agencies tell Joe Biden's office about the appearance concerns or the state of the various Ukrainian investigations into Burisma?
  10. All memos, emails and other documents concerning a possible U.S. embassy's request in spring 2019 to monitor the social media activities and analytics of certain U.S. media personalities considered favorable to President Trump. Did any such monitoring occur? Was it requested by the American embassy in Kiev? Who ordered it? Why did it stop? Were any legal concerns raised?
  11. All State, CIA, FBI and DOJ documents concerning efforts by individual Ukrainian government officials to exert influence on the 2016 U.S. election, including an anti-Trump Op-Ed written in August 2016 by Ukraine's ambassador to Washington or efforts to publicize allegations against Paul Manafort. What did U.S. officials know about these efforts in 2016, and how did they react? What were these federal agencies' reactions to a Ukrainian court decision in December 2018 suggesting some Ukrainian officials had improperly meddled in the 2016 election?
  12. All State, CIA, FBI and DOJ documents concerning contacts with a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa and her dealings with the Ukrainian embassy in Washington or other Ukrainian figures. Did anyone in these U.S. government agencies interview or have contact with Chalupa during the time the Ukraine embassy in Washington says she was seeking dirt in 2016 on Trump and Manafort?

[Nov 26, 2019] 'Idea Laundering' The American Conservative

Nov 26, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

We tend to think of propaganda as something generated by the state. This is a prime example of it coming from ideologues within universities, and making its way to the public via sympathizers in the mass media. Eventually, these lies become de facto truths, either because people really do believe in them, or the cost of questioning them becomes too great, so people conform. In time, younger people -- those who grew up being socialized into the lie -- don't know any different. In my interviews for my forthcoming book on lessons we must learn from the communist experience, a Ukrainian immigrant named Olga Grigorenko, recalling her Soviet childhood, said "Nobody told me that I was living in a lie. I was just living my life in my country, the Soviet Union. Nobody said it was a lie."

As she grew older, she came to see that in fact she lived within a system of lies. Her husband, Vladimir, spoke about how the ideology corrupted all knowledge. From the transcript:

Vladimir: For example, all history was represented as the fight between capitalism and the workers. It takes a really creative mind to see the system of classes from Marxism-Leninism presenting itself in ancient Egypt. But that's what they did. All history books were filled with that point of view. The Florentine Republic was the equal of the Great October Revolution – things like that. All our history books were like that. Every scientific paper was supposed to have a prefatory chapter describing how Marx and Engels were geniuses in that particular field of science, and how their findings anticipated whatever this scientific article described. Any and all sciences had to show a connection to the decision of the party in a previous convention.

Olga: But nobody believed in it.

Vladimir: But everybody knew that you had to say these things in order to be published.

More:

Olga: In high school and middle school, we had to write essays, like normal school kids do. But you never could write what you think about the subject. Never, ever. The subject could be interesting, but you never could put what do you think. You have to find some way to relate that to the communist view.

Vladimir: The general culture taught you this doublethink.

Olga: I remember when I was eight or nine years old, I came home from school and told my parents a funny anecdote about a famous Red Army hero, one that made him look bad. I just started to tell my parents, and my father looked at me and said, 'Never do that again. Not in our house, not anywhere. Just stop, and forget. You can't tell funny stories about communist leaders.' And I was afraid.

Vladimir: Sooner or later, society would tell you what you shouldn't say. And if you said it, you would end up in the camp.

We are reproducing that system here, in an American way. It begins with the ideological corruption of knowledge in the institutions of higher education, then moves out from there. How difficult do you imagine it would be within the New York Times newsroom, or any major American newsroom, to mount a serious challenge to the concepts of "whiteness," "patriarchy," and the like? In fact, we have an example of it, from this summer: the leaked transcript of the Times 's internal town hall meeting , in which an unnamed staffer told editor-in-chief Dean Baquet that "I just feel like racism is in everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our national reporting."

Baquet declined the opportunity to deliver a Journalistic Standards 101 lecture to this person, and instead gave a fuzzy non-answer ( read the transcript ; you'll see) praising the paper's then-upcoming "1619 Project," a massive initiative attempting to "reframe" American history around slavery.

If you'll recall, the 1619 Project was named for the year the first African slave arrived on American shores; the Times said that year, not 1776, ought to be remembered as the founding of America.

[Nov 26, 2019] Who debunked the Biden conspiracy theories by Colonel Lang

Notable quotes:
"... "US Officials" say the Bidens are pure in heart and deed? Hah! Is it not clear that The Borg (foreign policy establishment) hate Donald Trump and will say anything possible to injure him? ..."
"... "Debunked," "Discredited," "Conspiracy theories?" Trickery in the press is the real truth , trickery intended to protect the only viable candidate in the Democratic Party field. ..."
"... Lutsenko has had a pretty sketchy career, including charges of abuse of power, forgery and embezzlement among other things. https://heavy.com/news/2019/11/yuriy-lutsenko/ It's telling that Democrats and the mainstream media choose to cite such a character as their primary source for evidence that the Bidens did nothing wrong. Reminds me of Mark Twains old adage: "An honest politician is one who, once he's been bought, stays bought." More recently it seems that his loyalties have shifted, accusing Yovanovitch of giving him a list of people who should be protected. ..."
"... It's not really that complicated an inquiry to decide whether there is a need to go further; two questions: what did Hunter Biden do for the money; and Joe, did you get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired as you bragged you did, and why? Maybe throw in a third if the answer is "I did", what or who made you think that you could do that? ..."
Nov 26, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Two quotes:

"Graham's conspiracy theory-based investigation is rooted in the baseless allegation that Biden pressured Ukraine to remove a corrupt prosecutor in 2016 as a way to protect Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, against a corruption probe. Biden's son Hunter was previously a board member with Burisma until April this year.

There is no evidence to support allegations that Biden acted improperly in calling for the prosecutor general in charge of the Burisma probe to be ousted, and both Ukrainian and U.S. officials have said there is no merit to the claim. As many have since noted, the Burisma investigation was in fact dormant when the prosecutor general was forced out on accusations he was slow-walking corruption probes, among other things.

Trump brought up that debunked conspiracy during a July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, asking the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden as well as a baseless conspiracy involving the Democratic National Committee servers."

~American Independent

*******

"Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief. Much debate in epistemology centers on four areas:

(1) the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to such concepts as truth , belief , and justification , [1] [2]

(2) various problems of skepticism ,

(3) the sources and scope of knowledge and justified belief, and

(4) the criteria for knowledge and justification.

Epistemology addresses such questions as: "What makes justified beliefs justified?" " What does it mean to say that we know something? ", and fundamentally "How do we know that we know?"

~ wiki on epistemology

-------------

As in the example above from the "American Independent," the MSM and online projects like the American Independent incessantly insist that the simple fact that Hunter Biden and his dear old dad, a "Union Man," solicited money in Ukraine and in China for services not rendered proves nothing, that nothing has been proven against them and that any mention of these occurrences is evidence of harsh partisan rhetoric based on fantasy and equivalent to belief in the Loch Ness Monster.

Well, pilgrims I want to know who and what investigation or investigations cleared the Bidens of anything.

It is obvious that Hunter is qualified for employment as a bag man and not much else. He has a law degree? So what? As in the matter of the qualifications of doctors, not all learn much in medical or law school.

"US Officials" say the Bidens are pure in heart and deed? Hah! Is it not clear that The Borg (foreign policy establishment) hate Donald Trump and will say anything possible to injure him?

"Debunked," "Discredited," "Conspiracy theories?" Trickery in the press is the real truth , trickery intended to protect the only viable candidate in the Democratic Party field.

Posted at 01:13 PM in As The Borg Turns , government , Media , Politics | Permalink

Mark McCarty , 25 November 2019 at 01:44 PM

The article highlighted here, typically, is a lie. As documented in Moon of Alabama's timeline ( https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/11/a-timeline-of-joe-bidens-intervention-against-the-prosecutor-general-of-ukraine.html), Shokin was actively investigating Zlochevsky in February 2016, when Shokin seized his luxury car. Barely two weeks later, Biden was on the phone to Poroshenko demanding Shokin's firing. While this doesn't prove that Biden was motivated primarily by a desire to protect his son's employer, it is certainly consistent with that possibility.
Keith Harbaugh , 25 November 2019 at 01:48 PM
John Solomon has been very much in the lead on reporting from Ukraine which furthers what the MSM calls "conspiracy theories". While he earlier reported, or opined, from The Hill, now he evidently has been bumped (my opinion) from that perch, and now has own blog John Solomon Report : https://johnsolomonreports.com/

He has been roundly attacked in the media for opposing the party line on Ukraine, see especially this Paul Farhi (normally a balanced voice, but not in this case) column: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-a-conservative-columnist-helped-push-a-flawed-ukraine-narrative/2019/09/26/1654026e-dee7-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html

In any case, here are some recent columns where Solomon fires back at the MSM and the party line:

2019-11-22 https://johnsolomonreports.com/responding-to-lt-col-vindman-about-my-ukraine-columns-with-the-facts/
2019-11-20 https://johnsolomonreports.com/the-ukraine-scandal-timeline-democrats-and-their-media-allies-dont-want-america-to-see/
2019-11-20 https://johnsolomonreports.com/impeachment-surprise-how-adam-schiff-validated-my-reporting-on-ukraine/
2019-11-15 https://johnsolomonreports.com/the-15-essential-questions-for-marie-yovanovitch-americas-former-ambassador-to-ukraine/
2019-11-13 https://johnsolomonreports.com/the-real-ukraine-controversy-an-activist-u-s-embassy-and-its-adherence-to-the-geneva-convention/

2019-10-31 https://johnsolomonreports.com/debunking-some-of-the-ukraine-scandal-myths-about-biden-and-election-interference/

This last link is especially worthwhile.

It is tragic, IMO, how the MSM ignores the facts that Solomon documents in his columns.
It is possible that JS is a mouthpiece for corrupt elements in Ukraine,
but I think his points deserve more attention than they have been getting.
There are two sides to this story, not only one as Col. Lang pointed out in his root piece.

prawnik , 25 November 2019 at 01:57 PM
I recall that the Russiagate conspiracy theory was "proven" factual as well, and by many of the same people who claim that Biden's corruption has been "debunked". Even though it was absurd on its face and had been debunked numerous times, many people in fact continue to insist otherwise.
catherine , 25 November 2019 at 02:00 PM
Seriously....who would think Biden's son taking a highly paid position with a company in a foreign country that Biden was representing the US in wasn't a conflict of interest? Even the 'appearance' of a conflict of interest should be avoided in such situations.
I find Biden and his political 'career', greased by his 'good old Joe act' disgusting in so many ways it would take too long to describe them here.

It should be investigated but I doubt it will.

plantman , 25 November 2019 at 02:29 PM
The media really seems to be testing the limits of disinformation. More and more, the media wants to convince people that black is white and up is down. Fortunately, I don't think their plan is working all that well.

In the case of Hunter Biden, we are told that "There is no evidence to support allegations that Biden acted improperly".

Okay, that's one way to look at things, but I have found that even among my liberal friends, the fetid smell of corruption emitting from this case, is overpowering. And while most people might have a hard time sinking their teeth into a "quid pro quo", they do have a pretty good grasp of old fashioned influence peddling, which is what we are talking about.

So why has the media chosen to defend the crooked goings-on of public officials who were obviously up to no good? Don't they care about their credibility at all?

Seamus Padraig said in reply to plantman... , 25 November 2019 at 07:09 PM
Quid Pro Joe Biden.
JohnH , 25 November 2019 at 02:41 PM
Was the American Independent quote lifted from The NY Times? It sure sounds like it!

For some time I've been wondering how exactly Biden got cleared. Was there any formal investigation? Who conducted it? And how reliable are the facts when they come from a place like Ukraine, where anything, including the 'truth,' can be laundered?

What's become painfully obvious is how eagerly America's major news outlets, including the journals of record, participate in the laundering of truth.

Of course, that should have been obvious from the yellow journalism preceding the war in Iraq.

What's really scary are reports that "intelligence" services get most of their 'facts' from the very same truth laundering sources.

oldman22 , 25 November 2019 at 03:15 PM
too much to summarize, includes original government documents, read all for yourself please

State Department Releases Detailed Accounts Of Biden-Ukraine Corruption

by Tyler Durden

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/state-department-releases-detailed-accounts-biden-ukraine-corruption

Factotum , 25 November 2019 at 04:08 PM
I always got the impression the "wild, debunked conspiracy theory pushed by right wing nuts" was always referring to the Crowdstrike DNC computer investigation hoax that Trump tried to re-open.

They would never specifically refer to the Crowdstrike favor Trump specifically asked for in the phone call, instead they would substitute Trump asked about some "debunked, wild right wing conspiracy".

So they never explained how the Crowdstrike investigation hoax was debunked either.

To me this is far more interesting missing debunked conspiracy link - since it shows incredible coordination between the DNC, the "leak" of their DNC computer data, Ukrainian Crowdstrike, and finally the Mueller Report who used the DNC Crowdstrike investigation conclusoin hook line and sinker to reach their own official conclusions which is now "proven" operating dogma. Without ever doing an independent investigation themselves. How often does that happen?

To me the Crowdstrike connection begs further investigation - why would a Russian hating Ukrainian who was running Crowdstrike point the finger at the Russians and claim they "hacked" the DNC computers, but not let anyone else touch those same computers to corroborate that conclusion?

And then parlay this into Trump supporting Russian interference in the 2016 election. All too tidy for me. Feels like dark forces are still at work, and subverting language to achieve their ends.

Petrel , 25 November 2019 at 04:17 PM
Whatever happened to Joe Biden's taped boast, at the Council on Foreign Relations, that he gave President Poroshenko 6 hours to fire Prosecutor Shokin -- or else lose $1 Billion of US aid ?

How was this taped confession of QUID-PRO-QUO debunked ?

Factotum said in reply to Petrel... , 25 November 2019 at 07:16 PM
Quid pro quo becomes a fait accompli.
Upstate NY'er , 25 November 2019 at 04:34 PM
The media (approx. 99% of them) have been in the tank for Democrats since at least the Vietnam war.
Roger Ailes said why he didn't read the NY Times:
"You cover the bad news about America. You do. But you don't get up in the morning hating your country."
b , 25 November 2019 at 05:21 PM
The "debunked" is based on the claim the the Ukrainian General Prosecutor Shokin was not investigating Burisma or its owner Mykola Zlochevsky.

That claim is evidently false.

On Feb 2 2016 Shokin confiscated the houses (more like palaces) of Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky.

A news agency reports the seizure two days later (Note: European date format ddmmyy)
https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/322395.html

Eight days later Joe Biden launched an intense pressure campaign to get rid of Shokin. He personally calls Poroshenko on Feb 12, 18 and 19 to press for firing Shokin.

To think that this is unrelated is not reasonable.

The rest of the timeline shows further Biden influence in the case.

(I should update that timeline as a lot of additional evidence of Burisma lobbying State at that time has since come in.)

There are tons of additional dirt. The U.S. has control over the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and uses it to push all such investigations to its favor. NABU has itself been involved in serious corruption.
There is also a USAID/Soros paid NGO that has a similar function and is equally corrupt.

These organizations are used as weapons to put all Ukrainian assets into the hands of those that the U.S. embassy likes.

JohnH said in reply to b ... , 25 November 2019 at 11:25 PM
The debunkers seem to be citing Yuriy Lutsenko, who said that "he had no evidence of wrongdoing by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden or his son."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/23/fact-checking-president-trumps-wild-jabs-joe-biden/

Lutsenko was the guy who was appointed as Prosecutor General after Biden got the previous one fired. IOW Lutsenko owed his job to Biden.

Lutsenko has had a pretty sketchy career, including charges of abuse of power, forgery and embezzlement among other things. https://heavy.com/news/2019/11/yuriy-lutsenko/ It's telling that Democrats and the mainstream media choose to cite such a character as their primary source for evidence that the Bidens did nothing wrong. Reminds me of Mark Twains old adage: "An honest politician is one who, once he's been bought, stays bought." More recently it seems that his loyalties have shifted, accusing Yovanovitch of giving him a list of people who should be protected.

The only thing I can conclude is that Lutsenko is probably just trying to survive the shifting tides in the Ukrainian swamp and will say or do whatever it takes.

Ian56 , 25 November 2019 at 06:27 PM
"American Independent" is David Brock's Clinton / Soros linked Shareblue disinfo and troll brigade rebranded. It will obviously tell every lie going to protect the corrupt Corporate Dem Establishment, the Globalists and the Deep State. https://twitter.com/Ian56789/status/1198338991814250497
Flavius , 25 November 2019 at 09:22 PM
It's not really that complicated an inquiry to decide whether there is a need to go further; two questions: what did Hunter Biden do for the money; and Joe, did you get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired as you bragged you did, and why? Maybe throw in a third if the answer is "I did", what or who made you think that you could do that?

[Nov 26, 2019] Stay Strong, Go Long Bulletproof Russia Becomes Contrarian Haven

Nov 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Stay Strong, Go Long – Bulletproof Russia Becomes Contrarian Haven by Tyler Durden Tue, 11/26/2019 - 02:00 0 SHARES

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, 'n Guns blog,

It's a tough road being a contrarian on Russia. This is especially true today when the entirety of the U.S. and European political system is aligned to demonize Russia at nearly every level.

And the main reason for this is that Russia under President Vladimir Putin refuses to do the West's bidding both at home and abroad. The central tenet of U.S. foreign policy is that U.S. concerns, no matter where they are, are supreme and everyone else's are subordinate.

Russia under Putin doesn't play that game. He hasn't for nearly twenty years now. This is not to say, of course, that objectively speaking Putin is a good man or even a good leader. In studying Putin for the past seven years I've come to one inescapable conclusion.

He was exactly the leader Russia needed to dig the country out of the abyss it found itself in when he took over. He is exactly the kind of leader Russia needs to guide it through the next period of history.

So much analysis of Putin and Russia is so thoroughly ideologically tainted that, on that basis alone, it should be dismissed out of hand. And it has been successful enough that even the best analysts who are truly skeptical of the U.S. narrative still get some of the basics about Russia and Putin horribly wrong.

I've been recommending Russia as an investment to people since early 2015 and its state-owned gas giant Gazprom (NYSE:OGZPY) since mid-2014. I haven't wavered in that recommendation, despite the ups and downs.

And the reason for this is simple. While markets do not trade on fundamentals every day, over the long run a market's or stock's fundamentals do eventually overcome sentiment and assert themselves on the price.

So, in 2014 when oil prices collapsed so did the price of Gazprom. The ruble went through a crisis intended to oust Putin from power in revenge for his thwarting the U.S. takeover of Crimea.

Putin's deft handling of the ruble crisis and Russia's impeccable national balance sheet allowed both to survive and begin digging the country out of the latest hole placed in front of it.

Since then the U.S. has piled on obstacle after obstacle in front of Russia in the global marketplace for capital. The Magnitsky Act has been used like a bludgeon to scare investors away from the land of the Evil Putin.

False flags and overt provocations to war in Syria, Ukraine and the U.K. have slowed the pace of investment in Russia's capital markets. Gazprom for years languished both because of the political risks of U.S. pressure in Europe to stop first the South Stream and then the Nordstream 2 pipelines.

Frivolous lawsuits from Ukraine, the EU and the Baltics have dogged the company for years. The EU has changed its laws to retroactively try and gain a legal upper hand on Gazprom's pricing of natural gas. But, ultimately, none of it has worked.

Slowly, but surely, Russia's fundamentals and its stable and improving political situation are winning the hearts of investors looking for yield in a yield-free world.

An article in Forbes last week documented this shift in sentiment perfectly.

"They've made themselves bulletproof," says James Barrineau, co-head of emerging-market debt for Schroders Investment in New York.

"They can pay off all their foreign debts with their central bank reserves. Plus, they're cutting interest rates. The currency is very stable. And they have room on the fiscal side to spend on their economy."

The first point is something I pointed out in 2015. The numbers were this good then. And yet, the ratings agencies, like dutiful quislings, cut Russia's ratings to junk status.

And they did this against fundamentals like having enough money to pay off the entire country's debt load, public and private, and at the time at 13.3% debt-to-GDP ratio . Today that ratio stands, after a currency crisis, at just 11.8%.

Someone remind me what the U.S.'s is?

As always, what the world responded to was the hardship of the U.S. all but kicking Russia out of the dollar-funding markets. The only step not taken against Russia was removing it from the SWIFT interbank messsaging system.

That wasn't done for the same reasons that it wasn't reinstated by Trump on Iran after he pulled out of the JCPOA. It doesn't work. All it does is hasten the rate at which the country learns to work without U.S. dollars.

By 2019 Russia, China and Iran have alternatives to SWIFT to prosecute international trade outside of the U.S.'s purview. Once those transactions leave SWIFT the U.S. loses a very powerful monitoring tool.

And in surviving this full court press to destroy Russia financially and keep capital from fleeing there the U.S. has made it a stronger destination today than it would have ever been had it not gone this route.

Instead of isolating Russia financially and destroying the ruble, it actually made the dollar more suspect and raised the profile of the ruble across central Asia.

President Trump has weaponized the dollar to such an extent that he's raised the costs of using it for countries that do significant business with Russia above that of the ruble.

And it starts with the political stability created by Putin and his deft diplomatic corps, led by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Putin has made it a point of always keeping his promises on the world stage, no matter how rocky the relationship.

Trump on the other hand has unilaterally bullied and sanctioned most of the world for not doing what he wants. Putin keeps making this point over and over again, Trump is destroying the long-term viability of the dollar. The key to that statement being 'long-term.'

Because a country that acts honorably on the world stage, encourages trade over blackmail, honors its contracts even when the rules are arbitrarily changed against them and stands by its allies will generate the kind of good will that will increase the willingness of people locally to accept that country's currency.

Since Trump went on his sanction the world policy, the ruble has been on a tear in international markets. While mildly strengthening versus the dollar (0.8%), the ruble has risen 11% versus the total basket of its trading partners (REER).

This is the clearest picture I can paint of the ruble decoupling from the U.S. dollar and it's a trend worth watching into the future. Because as the dollar rises into the teeth of the brewing financial crisis (think European banking meltdown currently underway) the ruble will act as a port in the storm for those economies terminally short dollars.

With the Bank of Russia finally letting its boot off the neck of the Russian economy by lowering interest rates aggressively over the past four months, the Ruble hasn't degraded one bit.

If anything all this has done is strengthen demand for the ruble as pent-up demand in the form of huge domestic savings now can be deployed as new business loans and corporate bond issues at far better rates a few months ago.

NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST

ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX

Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.

Please enter a valid email Thank you for subscribing! Something went wrong. Please refresh and try again.

That said the Bank of Russia is still behind the curve by looking at the spread between the Overnight lending rate (a proxy for the benchmark rate) and the yield on a 1 year government note.

All that's happened since Elvira Nabullina began cutting rates is demand for Russian debt has skyrocketed as investors in the West search for safe returns and across Emerging Markets starved of dollars. And while the ruble is nowhere close to overthrowing the dollar on the global stage and likely never will, it only takes a small shift in demand to create outsized effects on markets as comparatively small as Russia's.

The rate of de-dollarization of the Russia economy is not as fast as the headlines would have you believe, but it is happening. The ruble now accounts for more than 30% of Russian exports and 20% of its overall international trade.

The world is insanely short dollars at this point and will continue to be for the next decade. That much is certain. It will fuel a massive dollar rally ove the next few years.

But Russia isn't alone in the woods anymore on this path. India, Turkey, China, Iran and others understand what that reliance on the dollar means during economic downturns. And they are working with Putin to lay the groundwork to keep their economies from collapsing as the dollars flow out.

This is why Putin and Xi have been adamant about building ways to bypass the dollar for local trade. It will allow the dollar short positions of local companies to fade just like did for Russian companies after the ruble crisis in 2015.

Now that we're four years beyond the worst of that and the political reality surrounding Russia far better than it was then, its stock market is booming, demand for its debt is rising and contrarian investors are looking for the next generational play to park their cash despite the obstacles the U.S. places in front of them.

The key for this will be the EU, as Russia's trade with the EU in euros is nearly as big as it is in dollars now. This is what will prompt the rescinding of sanctions against Russia this year.

When that happens you can expect a big pop in the Moscow Exchange.

* * *

Join My Patreon if you want the real story about what's going on in Russia Install the Brave Browser if you want to bypass the roadblocks to letting you do so.

[Nov 26, 2019] 11-21-19 David Stockman on the Phony 'Ukrainegate' Witch Hunt by Scott

Notable quotes:
"... David Stockman discusses everything that's going on with Ukraine and President Trump right now, which he says is nothing more than a shallow ploy to oust the president and to gin up fear around the general threat of Ukrainian and Russian power. Stockman reminds us that compared to America Russia has a tiny GDP and a weak military, posing no credible threat to the U.S. They would be perfectly happy to get along with us, he says, if it weren't for a deliberate effort to expand NATO right up to their borders. America should show the same willingness to cooperate with them. ..."
Nov 22, 2019 | scotthorton.org

Interviews

David Stockman discusses everything that's going on with Ukraine and President Trump right now, which he says is nothing more than a shallow ploy to oust the president and to gin up fear around the general threat of Ukrainian and Russian power. Stockman reminds us that compared to America Russia has a tiny GDP and a weak military, posing no credible threat to the U.S. They would be perfectly happy to get along with us, he says, if it weren't for a deliberate effort to expand NATO right up to their borders. America should show the same willingness to cooperate with them.

Discussed on the show:

David Stockman is the ultimate Washington insider turned iconoclast. He began his career in Washington as a young man and quickly rose through the ranks of the Republican Party to become the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He is the author of Trumped! , The Triumph of Politics , and his history of the financial crisis, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America .

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT , by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State , by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com ; Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom ; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott ; Washinton Babylon ; Liberty Under Attack Publications ; Listen and Think Audio ; TheBumperSticker.com ; and LibertyStickers.com .

Donate to the show through Patreon , PayPal , or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

[Nov 26, 2019] Neocon Uses Impeachment To Push Russophobic Agenda by David Stockman

Notable quotes:
"... She warned Republicans that legitimizing an unsubstantiated theory that Kyiv undertook a concerted campaign to interfere in the election – a claim the president pushed repeatedly for Ukraine to investigate – played into Russia's hands. ..."
"... "In the course of this investigation," Dr. Hill testified before the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment hearings, "I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests." ..."
"... government investigators examining secret records have found Manafort's name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort's main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych. ..."
"... Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych's pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine's newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau . Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials. ..."
"... In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies .. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin. ..."
"... Mr. Manafort's involvement with moneyed interests in Russia and Ukraine had previously come to light. But as American relationships there become a rising issue in the presidential campaign – from Mr. Trump's favorable statements about Mr. Putin and his annexation of Crimea to the suspected Russian hacking of Democrats' emails – an examination of Mr. Manafort's activities offers new details of how he mixed politics and business out of public view and benefited from powerful interests now under scrutiny by the new government in Kiev. ..."
"... Donald Trump wasn't the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country. ..."
"... Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found. ..."
"... President Petro Poroshenko's administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the race .. ..."
"... But Politico's investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another's elections. ..."
"... While it's not uncommon for outside operatives to serve as intermediaries between governments and reporters, one of the more damaging Russia-related stories for the Trump campaign – and certainly for Manafort – can be traced more directly to the Ukrainian government. ..."
"... Needless to say, Fiona Hill is among the worst of the neocon warmongers, and has made a specialty of demonizing Russia and propagating over and over flat out lies about what happened in Kiev during 2014 and after. Thus, in one recent attack she claimed, ..."
"... "In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation's embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin's desire to rebuild a Russian empire." ..."
"... On April 26, 1954. The decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet transferring the Crimea Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR ..Taking into account the integral character of the economy, the territorial proximity and the close economic and cultural ties between the Crimea Province and the Ukrainian SSR . ..."
"... NATO, with just 16 members in 1990, now includes 29 European states, with all of the expansion countries lying east of Germany. As this was unfolding, Russian leaders issued stern warnings about the consequences if America and the West sought to include in NATO either Ukraine or Georgia. Both are considered as fundamental to Russian security. ..."
"... True, many in western Ukraine have pushed for greater ties to the West and wanted their elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, to respond favorably to Western financial blandishments. But Yanukovych, tilting toward Russia, eschewed NATO membership for Ukraine, renewed a long-term lease for the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, and gave official status to the Russian language. These actions eased tensions between Ukraine and Russia, but they inflamed Ukraine's internal politics. And when Yanukovych abandoned negotiations aimed at an association and free-trade agreement with the European Union in favor of greater economic ties to Russia, pro-Western Ukrainians, including far-right provocateurs, staged street protests that ultimately brought down Yanukovych's government. Victoria Nuland gleefully egged on the protesters. The deposed president fled to Russia. ..."
"... Nuland then set about determining who would be Ukraine's next prime minister, namely Arseniy Yatsenyuk. "Yats is our guy," she declared to U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. When Pyatt warned that many EU countries were uncomfortable with a Ukrainian coup, she shot back, "Fuck the EU." She then got her man Yats into the prime minister position, demonstrating the influence that enables US meddling in foreign countries. ..."
"... That's when Putin rushed back to Moscow from the Winter Olympic Games at Sochi to protect the more Russian-oriented areas of Ukraine (the so-called Donbass in the country's east and Crimea in the south) from being swallowed up in this new drama. He orchestrated a plebiscite in Crimea, which revealed strong sentiment for reunification with Russia (hardly the "sham referendum" described by Taylor) and sent significant military support to Donbass Ukrainians who didn't want to be pulled westward. ..."
"... The West and America have always been, and must remain, wary of Russia. Its position in the center of Eurasia – the global "heartland," in the view of the famous British geographic scholar Halford Mackinder – renders it always a potential threat. Its vulnerability to invasion stirs in Russian leaders an inevitable hunger for protective lands. Its national temperament seems to include a natural tendency towards authoritarianism. Any sound American foreign policy must keep these things in mind. ..."
"... But in the increasingly tense relationship between the Atlantic Alliance and Russia, the Alliance has been the more aggressive player – aggressive when it pushed for NATO's eastward expansion despite promises to the contrary from the highest levels of the US government; aggressive when it turned that policy into an even more provocative plan for the encirclement of Russia; aggressive when it dangled the prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia; aggressive when it sought to lure Ukraine out of the Russian orbit with economic incentives; aggressive when it helped foster the street coup against a duly elected Ukrainian government; and aggressive in its continued refusal to appreciate or acknowledge Russia's legitimate geopolitical interests in its own neighborhood. ..."
"... George Kent and William B. Taylor Jr., in their testimony last week, personified this aggressive outlook, designed to squeeze Russia into a geopolitical corner and trample upon its regional interests in the name of Western universalism. If that outlook continues and leads to ever greater tensions with Russia, it can't end well. ..."
"... David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He's the author of three books, ..."
"... . He also is founder of David Stockman's Contra Corner and David Stockman's Bubble Finance Trader . ..."
Nov 25, 2019 | original.antiwar.com
This is part 3 of the two-part article run Friday

It's beginning to seem like an assault by the Zulu army of American politics – they just never stop coming.

We are referring to the Russophobic neocon Deep Staters who have trooped before Adam's Schiff Show to pillory POTUS for daring to look into the Ukrainian stench that engulfs the Imperial City – a rank odor that is owing to their own arrogant meddling in the the internal affairs of that woebegone country.

This time it was Dr. Fiona Hill who sanctimoniously advised the House committee that there is nothing to see on the Ukraine front that involved any legitimate matter of state; it was just the Donald and his tinfoil hat chums jeopardizing the serious business of protecting the national security by injecting electioneering into relations with Ukraine.

She warned Republicans that legitimizing an unsubstantiated theory that Kyiv undertook a concerted campaign to interfere in the election – a claim the president pushed repeatedly for Ukraine to investigate – played into Russia's hands.

"In the course of this investigation," Dr. Hill testified before the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment hearings, "I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests."

Folks, we are getting just plain sick and tired of this drumbeat of lies, misdirection and smug condescension by Washington payrollers like Fiona Hill. No Ukrainian interference in the 2016 US election?

Exactly what hay wagon does she think we fell off from?

Or better still, ask Paul Manafort who will spend his golden years in the Big House owing to an August 2016 leak to the New York Times about an alleged "black book" which recorded payments he had received from his work as an advisor to the Ukrainian political party of former president Yanakovych. As we have seen, the latter had been removed from office by a Washington instigated coup in February 2014.

By its own admission, this story came from the Ukrainian government and the purpose was clear as a bell: Namely, to undermine the Trump presidential campaign and force Manafort out of his months-old role as campaign chairman – a role that had finally brought some professional management to the Donald's helter-skelter campaign for the nation's highest office.

In the event, this well-timed bombshell worked, and in short order Manafort resigned, leaving the disheveled Trump campaign in the lurch:

government investigators examining secret records have found Manafort's name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort's main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych's pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine's newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau . Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies .. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Mr. Manafort's involvement with moneyed interests in Russia and Ukraine had previously come to light. But as American relationships there become a rising issue in the presidential campaign – from Mr. Trump's favorable statements about Mr. Putin and his annexation of Crimea to the suspected Russian hacking of Democrats' emails – an examination of Mr. Manafort's activities offers new details of how he mixed politics and business out of public view and benefited from powerful interests now under scrutiny by the new government in Kiev.

The bolded lines in the NYT story above tell you exactly where this was coming from. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau had been set up by an outfit called "AntAC", which was jointly funded by George Soros and the Obama State Department. And there can be little doubt that the Donald's accurate view at the time – that Crimea's reunification with Mother Russia after a 60 year hiatus which had been ordered by the former Soviet Union's Presidium – was unwelcome in Kiev and among the Washington puppeteers who had put it in power.

For want of doubt that the Poroshenko government was in the tank for Hillary Clinton, the liberal rag called Politico spilled the beans a few months later. In a January 11, 2017 story it revealed that the Ukrainian government had pulled out all the stops attempting to help Clinton, whose protégés at the State Department had been the masterminds of the coup which put them in office. Thus, Politico concluded,

Donald Trump wasn't the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

President Petro Poroshenko's administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the race ..

But Politico's investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another's elections.

While it's not uncommon for outside operatives to serve as intermediaries between governments and reporters, one of the more damaging Russia-related stories for the Trump campaign – and certainly for Manafort – can be traced more directly to the Ukrainian government.

Documents released by an independent Ukrainian government agency – and publicized by a parliamentarian – appeared to show $12.7 million in cash payments that were earmarked for Manafort by the Russia-aligned party of the deposed former president, Yanukovych.

The New York Times , in the August story revealing the ledgers' existence, reported that the payments earmarked for Manafort were "a focus" of an investigation by Ukrainian anti-corruption officials, while CNN reported days later that the FBI was pursuing an overlapping inquiry.

Yet Fiona Hill sat before a House committee and under oath insisted that all of the above was a Trumpian conspiracy theory, thereby reminding us that the neocon Russophobes are so unhinged that they are prepared to lie at the drop of a hat to keep their false narrative about the Russian Threat and Putin's "invasion" of Ukraine alive.

Needless to say, Fiona Hill is among the worst of the neocon warmongers, and has made a specialty of demonizing Russia and propagating over and over flat out lies about what happened in Kiev during 2014 and after. Thus, in one recent attack she claimed,

Russia today poses a greater foreign policy and security challenge to the United States and its Western allies than at any time since the height of the Cold War. Its annexation of Crimea, war in Ukraine's Donbas region, and military intervention in Syria have upended Western calculations from Eastern Europe to the Middle East. Russia's intervention in Syria, in particular, is a stark reminder that Russia is a multi-regional power ..

There is not a single true assertion in that quotation, of course, but we cite it for a very particular reason. Shifty Schiff & his impeachment tribunal have brought in Hill – and Lt. Colonel Vindman, Ambassador Taylor, George Kent and Tim Morrison previously – in order to created an echo chamber.

That's right. The Dems are parroting the neocon lies – whether they believe them or not – in order to propagate the impression that the Donald is undermining national security in his effort to take a different posture on Russia and Ukraine, and is actually bordering on treason.
Thus, Adam Schiff repeated the false neocon narrative virtually word for word at the opening of the public hearings:

"In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation's embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin's desire to rebuild a Russian empire."

That's pure rubbish. It's based on the Big Lie that the overwhelming vote of the Russian population of Crimea in March 2014 was done at the gun point of the Russian Army. And that event, in turn, is the lynch-pin of the hoary canard that Putin is seeking to rebuild the Soviet Empire.

So it is necessary to review the truth once again about how Russian Crimea had been temporarily appended to the Ukrainian SSR during Soviet times.

The allegedly "occupied" territory of Crimea, in fact, was actually purchased from the Ottomans by Catherine the Great in 1783, thereby satisfying the longstanding quest of the Russian Czars for a warm-water port. Over the ages Sevastopol then emerged as a great naval base at the strategic tip of the Crimean peninsula, where it became home to the mighty Black Sea Fleet of the Czars and then the Soviet Union, too.

For the next 171 years Crimea was an integral part of Russia (until 1954). That span exceeds the 170 years that have elapsed since California was annexed by a similar thrust of "Manifest Destiny" on this continent, thereby providing, incidentally, the United States Navy with its own warm-water port in San Diego.

While no foreign forces subsequently invaded the California coasts, it was most definitely not Ukrainian and Polish rifles, artillery and blood which famously annihilated The Charge Of The Light Brigade at the Crimean city of Balaclava in 1854; they were Russians defending the homeland from Turks, French and Brits.

And the portrait of the Russian "hero" hanging in Putin's office is that of Czar Nicholas I – whose brutal 30-year reign brought the Russian Empire to its historical zenith. Yet despite his cruelty, Nicholas I is revered in Russian hagiography as the defender of Crimea, even as he lost the 1850s war to the Ottomans and Europeans.

At the end of the day, security of its historic port in Crimea is Russia's Red Line, not Washington's. Unlike today's feather-headed Washington pols, even the enfeebled Franklin Roosevelt at least knew that he was in Soviet Russia when he made port in the Crimean city of Yalta in February 1945.

Maneuvering to cement his control of the Kremlin in the intrigue-ridden struggle for succession after Stalin's death a few years later, Nikita Khrushchev allegedly spent 15 minutes reviewing his "gift" of Crimea to his subalterns in Kiev.

As it happened, therefore, Crimea became part of the Ukraine only by writ of one of the most vicious and reprehensible states in human history – the former Soviet Union:

On April 26, 1954. The decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet transferring the Crimea Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR ..Taking into account the integral character of the economy, the territorial proximity and the close economic and cultural ties between the Crimea Province and the Ukrainian SSR .

That's right. Washington's hypocritical and tendentious accusations against Russia's re-absorption of Crimea imply that the dead-hand of the Soviet presidium must be defended at all costs – as if the security of North Dakota depended upon it!

In fact, the brouhaha about "returning" Crimea is a naked case of the hegemonic arrogance that has overtaken Imperial Washington since the 1991 Soviet demise.

After all, during the long decades of the Cold War, the West did nothing to liberate the "captive nation" of Ukraine – with or without the Crimean appendage bestowed upon it in 1954. Nor did it draw any red lines in the mid-1990's when a financially desperate Ukraine rented back Sevastopol and the strategic redoubts of the Crimea to an equally pauperized Russia.

In short, in the era before we got our Pacific port in 1848, and even during the 170-year interval since then, America's national security has depended not one whit on the status of Russian-speaking Crimea. That the local population has now chosen fealty to the Grand Thief in Moscow over the ruffians and rabble who have seized Kiev amounts to a giant: So what!

The truth is, when it comes to Ukraine there really isn't that much there, there. Its boundaries have been morphing for centuries among the quarreling tribes, peoples, potentates, Patriarchs and pretenders of a small region that is none of Washington's damn business..

Still, it was this final aggressive drive of Washington and NATO into the internal affairs of Russia's historic neighbor and vassal, Ukraine, that largely accounts for the demonization of Putin. Likewise, it is virtually the entire source of the false claim that Russia has aggressive, expansionist designs on the former Warsaw Pact states in the Baltics, Poland and beyond.

The latter is a nonsensical fabrication. In fact, it was the neocon meddlers from Washington who crushed Ukraine's last semblance of civil governance when they enabled ultra-nationalists and crypto-Nazis to gain government positions after the February 2014 putsch.

As we indicated above, in one fell swoop that inexcusable stupidity reopened Ukraine's blood-soaked modern history. The latter incepted with Stalin's re-population of the eastern Donbas region with "reliable" Russian workers after his genocidal liquidation of the kulaks in the early 1930s.

It was subsequently exacerbated by the large-scale collaboration by Ukrainian nationalists in the west with the Nazi Wehrmacht as it laid waste to Poles, Jews, gypsies and other "undesirables" on its way to Stalingrad in 1942-43. Thereafter followed an equal and opposite spree of barbaric revenge as the victorious Red Army marched back through Ukraine on its way to Berlin.

So it may be fairly asked. What beltway lame brains did not chance to understand that Washington's triggering of "regime change" in Kiev would reopen this entire bloody history of sectarian and political strife?

Moreover, once they had opened Pandora's box, why was it so hard to see that an outright partition of Ukraine with autonomy for the Donbas and Crimea, or even accession to the Russian state from which these communities had originated, would have been a perfectly reasonable resolution?

Certainly that would have been far preferable to dragging all of Europe into the lunacy of the current anti-Putin sanctions and embroiling the Ukrainian factions in a suicidal civil war. The alleged Russian threat to Europe, therefore, was manufactured in Imperial Washington, not the Kremlin.

In fact, in 1989 and 1990, the George H. W. Bush administration assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that if he accepted German unification, the West would not seek to exploit the situation through any eastward expansion – not even by "one inch," as then-secretary of state James Baker assured Gorbachev. But Bill Clinton reneged on that commitment, moving to expand NATO on an eastward path that eventually led right up to the Russian border.

So Robert Merry said it well in his excellent piece on the entire neocon Ukraine Scam that is being paraded before the Schiff Show.

That is, what is being desperately defended on Capitol Hill is not the rule of law, national security or fidelity to the Constitution of the United States., but a giant Neocon Lie that is needed to keep the Empire in business, and the world moving ever closer to an utterly unnecessary Cold War 2.0 between nation's each pointing enough nuclear warheads at the other to destroy the planet.

NATO, with just 16 members in 1990, now includes 29 European states, with all of the expansion countries lying east of Germany. As this was unfolding, Russian leaders issued stern warnings about the consequences if America and the West sought to include in NATO either Ukraine or Georgia. Both are considered as fundamental to Russian security.

True, many in western Ukraine have pushed for greater ties to the West and wanted their elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, to respond favorably to Western financial blandishments. But Yanukovych, tilting toward Russia, eschewed NATO membership for Ukraine, renewed a long-term lease for the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, and gave official status to the Russian language. These actions eased tensions between Ukraine and Russia, but they inflamed Ukraine's internal politics. And when Yanukovych abandoned negotiations aimed at an association and free-trade agreement with the European Union in favor of greater economic ties to Russia, pro-Western Ukrainians, including far-right provocateurs, staged street protests that ultimately brought down Yanukovych's government. Victoria Nuland gleefully egged on the protesters. The deposed president fled to Russia.

Nuland then set about determining who would be Ukraine's next prime minister, namely Arseniy Yatsenyuk. "Yats is our guy," she declared to U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. When Pyatt warned that many EU countries were uncomfortable with a Ukrainian coup, she shot back, "Fuck the EU." She then got her man Yats into the prime minister position, demonstrating the influence that enables US meddling in foreign countries.

That's when Putin rushed back to Moscow from the Winter Olympic Games at Sochi to protect the more Russian-oriented areas of Ukraine (the so-called Donbass in the country's east and Crimea in the south) from being swallowed up in this new drama. He orchestrated a plebiscite in Crimea, which revealed strong sentiment for reunification with Russia (hardly the "sham referendum" described by Taylor) and sent significant military support to Donbass Ukrainians who didn't want to be pulled westward.

The West and America have always been, and must remain, wary of Russia. Its position in the center of Eurasia – the global "heartland," in the view of the famous British geographic scholar Halford Mackinder – renders it always a potential threat. Its vulnerability to invasion stirs in Russian leaders an inevitable hunger for protective lands. Its national temperament seems to include a natural tendency towards authoritarianism. Any sound American foreign policy must keep these things in mind.

But in the increasingly tense relationship between the Atlantic Alliance and Russia, the Alliance has been the more aggressive player – aggressive when it pushed for NATO's eastward expansion despite promises to the contrary from the highest levels of the US government; aggressive when it turned that policy into an even more provocative plan for the encirclement of Russia; aggressive when it dangled the prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia; aggressive when it sought to lure Ukraine out of the Russian orbit with economic incentives; aggressive when it helped foster the street coup against a duly elected Ukrainian government; and aggressive in its continued refusal to appreciate or acknowledge Russia's legitimate geopolitical interests in its own neighborhood.

George Kent and William B. Taylor Jr., in their testimony last week, personified this aggressive outlook, designed to squeeze Russia into a geopolitical corner and trample upon its regional interests in the name of Western universalism. If that outlook continues and leads to ever greater tensions with Russia, it can't end well.

David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He's the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed , The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America and TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin And How to Bring It Back . He also is founder of David Stockman's Contra Corner and David Stockman's Bubble Finance Trader .

[Nov 25, 2019] Note of a State Deparment neocons giving testimony on Ukrainegate: please do not forget to mention Russia's aggressive training whales to spy on Norway, crickets to drive the US embassy in Cuba nuts, weaponizing Masha and the bear, using Pokemon to sow the seeds of discord, as well as contemplating on freezing up a few states,

Nov 25, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Zoran Aleksic bumbershoot • 6 days ago • edited

Agreed. However, an addendum, you seem to have forgotten to mention Russia's aggressive training whales to spy on Norway, crickets to drive the US embassy in Cuba nuts, weaponizing Masha and the bear, using Pokemon to sow the seeds of discord, contemplating on freezing up a few states, any many others the mere thought of gets one wound up.
Sid Finster Zoran Aleksic • 6 days ago
Your irony is going to be lost on the average frustrated russiagate conspiracy theorist.

[Nov 25, 2019] 11-21-19 David Stockman on the Phony 'Ukrainegate' Witch Hunt The Scott Horton Show

Nov 25, 2019 | scotthorton.org

11/21/19 David Stockman on the Phony 'Ukrainegate' Witch Hunt

by Scott | Nov 22, 2019 | Interviews David Stockman discusses everything that's going on with Ukraine and President Trump right now, which he says is nothing more than a shallow ploy to oust the president and to gin up fear around the general threat of Ukrainian and Russian power. Stockman reminds us that compared to America Russia has a tiny GDP and a weak military, posing no credible threat to the U.S. They would be perfectly happy to get along with us, he says, if it weren't for a deliberate effort to expand NATO right up to their borders. America should show the same willingness to cooperate with them.

Discussed on the show:

David Stockman is the ultimate Washington insider turned iconoclast. He began his career in Washington as a young man and quickly rose through the ranks of the Republican Party to become the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He is the author of Trumped! , The Triumph of Politics , and his history of the financial crisis, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America .

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT , by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State , by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com ; Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom ; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott ; Washinton Babylon ; Liberty Under Attack Publications ; Listen and Think Audio ; TheBumperSticker.com ; and LibertyStickers.com .

Donate to the show through Patreon , PayPal , or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

[Nov 25, 2019] WSWS: This utterly reactionary, pro-imperialist role played by the USA was demonstrated Friday in the tribute that Yovanovitch paid, in the course of her testimony, to Arsen Avakov, the Ukrainian interior minister

This is a replay of Vietnam Communist Domino Theory. May all those neocons rest in Eternal Hell.
Notable quotes:
"... Now is not the time to retreat from our relationship with Ukraine, but rather to double down on it. As we sit here, Ukrainians are fighting a hot war on Ukrainian territory against Russian aggression. ..."
"... I went to the front line approximately 10 times during a hot war sometimes literally as we heard the impact of artillery, and to see how our assistance dollars were being put to use. ..."
"... Ukraine, with an enormous land mass and a large population, has the potential to be a significant force multiplier on the security side And now Ukraine is a battleground for great power competition with a hot war for the control of territory and a hybrid war to control Ukraine's leadership. ..."
"... She explained that the US-funded and fascist-led "Maidan Revolution" of 2014, which she and other State Department officials absurdly called the "Revolution of Dignity," was part of this conflict. "That's why they launched the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, demanding to be a part of Europe," she declared. ..."
"... Diplomat George Kent invoked the same theme in his testimony last Wednesday, saying: ..."
"... Ukraine's popular Revolution of Dignity in 2014 forced a corrupt pro-Russian leadership to flee to Moscow. After that, Russia invaded Ukraine, occupying seven percent of its territory, roughly equivalent to the size of Texas for the United States ..."
"... Since then, more than 13,000 Ukrainians have died on Ukrainian soil defending their territorial integrity and sovereignty from Russian aggression. American support in Ukraine's own de facto war of independence has been critical in this regard. ..."
"... Kent subsequently compared the role of the United States in the Ukrainian civil war to that of Spain and France in the American War of Independence. In that conflict, Spain and France were officially at war with Great Britain, including formal declarations of war in 1778 and 1779. ..."
"... If Kent's analogy is true, then the United States is in an undeclared war with Russia. ..."
"... But when has this war ever been discussed with the American people? Was there ever a congressional vote to authorize it? ..."
"... When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces," she said, threatening the "president, or anyone else, [who] impedes or subverts the national security of the United States. ..."
"... "In an otherwise divided Washington, one of the few issues of bipartisan agreement for the past six years has been countering Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's broad plan of disruption. That effort starts in Ukraine, where there has been a hot war underway in the east for five years " ..."
"... @wendy davis ..."
"... @jim p ..."
"... @lotlizard ..."
"... Mykola Zlochevsky, former employer of Hunter Biden and current partner of the Atlantic Council ..."
"... @lotlizard ..."
"... @Linda Wood ..."
"... @snoopydawg ..."
"... @wendy davis ..."
"... @snoopydawg ..."
"... @snoopydawg ..."
"... @snoopydawg ..."
"... @wendy davis ..."
"... @Pluto's Republic ..."
"... @Pluto's Republic ..."
"... @wendy davis ..."
"... @Pluto's Republic ..."
"... @Linda Wood ..."
Nov 25, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

' Who decided the US should fight a "hot war" with Russia? ', 23 November 2019 . Andre Damon, wsws

"There is a saying attributed to the banker J.P. Morgan: " A man always has two reasons for what he does -- a good one and the real one ."

If the alleged "organized crime shakedown" by Trump was the "good" reason for the impeachment inquiry, the "real" reason has emerged over two weeks of public congressional hearings. The hearings have lifted the lid on a massive US conspiracy to spend billions of dollars to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014 and foment a civil war that has led to the deaths of thousands of people.

The impeachment drive is itself the product of efforts by sections of the intelligence agencies and elements within the State Department to escalate Washington's conflict with Russia, with potentially world-catastrophic consequences.

(the photo)
https://www.wsws.org/asset/b1b0532e-c1c2-4265-851c-7585d61378ab?renditio...

On Thursday, Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell showed a photo of Ukrainian President Zelensky in body armor on the "front lines" of the civil war in eastern Ukraine. He asked the State Department witnesses "why it's so important that our hard-earned tax dollars help President Zelensky and the men standing beside him fight Russia in this hot war?"

David Holmes, political counselor at the US embassy in Kiev, replied:

Now is not the time to retreat from our relationship with Ukraine, but rather to double down on it. As we sit here, Ukrainians are fighting a hot war on Ukrainian territory against Russian aggression.

Later in his testimony, Holmes pointed to the massive sums expended by the United States and its European allies to fight this "hot war," saying the US had provided $5 billion and its European allies $12 billion since 2014.
In her testimony last week, the former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich recalled that as ambassador:

I went to the front line approximately 10 times during a hot war sometimes literally as we heard the impact of artillery, and to see how our assistance dollars were being put to use.

She added:

Ukraine, with an enormous land mass and a large population, has the potential to be a significant force multiplier on the security side And now Ukraine is a battleground for great power competition with a hot war for the control of territory and a hybrid war to control Ukraine's leadership.

She explained that the US-funded and fascist-led "Maidan Revolution" of 2014, which she and other State Department officials absurdly called the "Revolution of Dignity," was part of this conflict. "That's why they launched the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, demanding to be a part of Europe," she declared.

Diplomat George Kent invoked the same theme in his testimony last Wednesday, saying:

Ukraine's popular Revolution of Dignity in 2014 forced a corrupt pro-Russian leadership to flee to Moscow. After that, Russia invaded Ukraine, occupying seven percent of its territory, roughly equivalent to the size of Texas for the United States

Since then, more than 13,000 Ukrainians have died on Ukrainian soil defending their territorial integrity and sovereignty from Russian aggression. American support in Ukraine's own de facto war of independence has been critical in this regard.

Kent subsequently compared the role of the United States in the Ukrainian civil war to that of Spain and France in the American War of Independence. In that conflict, Spain and France were officially at war with Great Britain, including formal declarations of war in 1778 and 1779.

If Kent's analogy is true, then the United States is in an undeclared war with Russia.

But when has this war ever been discussed with the American people? Was there ever a congressional vote to authorize it? Does anyone believe that if the question, "Do you want to spend billions of dollars to help Ukraine fight a war with Russia," were posed to the American public, the percentage answering yes would be anything more than minuscule? Of course, that question was never asked." [snip]

"But in the congressional hearings this week, government officials declared that any questioning of this aid is virtually treasonous. In her testimony on Thursday, former National Security Council officer Fiona Hill accused anyone who questions that "Ukraine is a valued partner" of the United States of advancing "Russian interests. "

" When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces," she said, threatening the "president, or anyone else, [who] impedes or subverts the national security of the United States. "

In 2017, Hill penned a blog post for the Brookings Institution calling Trump a "Bolshevik," echoing statements made more than 60 years ago by John Birch Society leader Robert W. Welch, who declared that President Eisenhower was a "communist."

Underlying the mad allegations of the Democrats that Trump is functioning as a "Russian asset" is a very real content: The extremely dangerous drive by factions within the state for a military confrontation between the United States and Russia, whose combined nuclear weapons arsenals are capable of destroying all of humanity many times over.

There is no "peace" faction within the American political establishment. No credence can be given to either one of the parties of US imperialism, which have, over the course of decades, presided over the toppling of dozens of governments, the launching of countless wars and the deaths of millions of people."

Patrick Martin from his Oct. 16, 2019 ' The Trump impeachment and US policy in Ukraine '

"This utterly reactionary, pro-imperialist role was demonstrated Friday in the tribute that Yovanovitch paid, in the course of her testimony, to Arsen Avakov, the Ukrainian interior minister (head of the domestic police) under both the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. Avakov is a principal sponsor of fascist militias such as the Azov Battalion , which glorify the Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II against the Soviet Union. In other words, the State Department officials being celebrated in the media for defending American democracy are actually working with the fascists in Ukraine .

While Yovanovitch hailed Avakov, Kent cited as his heroes among immigrants who have rallied to the defense of the United States Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, two of the biggest war criminals of the second half of the twentieth century ." [snip]
""The connection between the impeachment drive and differences on foreign policy was spelled out Friday on the front page of the New York Times, in an analysis by the newspaper's senior foreign policy specialist, David Sanger, a frequent mouthpiece for the concerns of the CIA, State Department and Pentagon, under the headline, " For President, Case of Policy vs. Obsession." [snip]

But Sanger goes on to spell out, in remarkably blunt terms, the real foreign policy issues at stake in the Trump impeachment. He writes,

"In an otherwise divided Washington, one of the few issues of bipartisan agreement for the past six years has been countering Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's broad plan of disruption. That effort starts in Ukraine, where there has been a hot war underway in the east for five years "

Trump, according to Sanger, has betrayed the anti-Russia policy outlined by his own administration in a Pentagon strategic assessment which declared that the "war on terror" had been superseded as the top US priority by "great-power competition," particularly directed at China and Russia. He sacrificed this policy to his own personal, electoral interests, as expressed in the comment by the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland: "President Trump cares more about the investigation of Biden" than about the military conflict between Ukraine and Russia."

edg on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 12:12pm

Don't mess with the Deep State.

They'll bust both your kneecaps and then fit you with cement overshoes and toss you into the ocean. Trump is finding out the hard way that entrenched interests in the US government wield vast veto power over anything a president wants to do.

edg on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 5:05pm
I wonder if Trump gets anything.

@wendy davis

He's his own worst enemy with his self-sabotaging Twitter rants, endless character assassinations, hastily burnt bridges, and conflicting statements that change based upon the last person he talked to. Trump doesn't inspire loyalty in those who work for him and around him. OTOH, that doesn't excuse the Deep State, an unelected cabal secretly running our government and risking our lives with endless wars and Russia baiting. If impeachment has shown nothing else, it's that the Deep State is real and usually gets its way.

jim p on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 1:59pm
They forget to mention

almost all the casualties are Russian speakers in the East. Back in the early coup days there were 37 claims that Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Which turned out to be none. I still remember when Pravda in New York had a blurred photo they claimed to be a Russ officer (and how do you get blurring in the digital age) which turned out to be a Ukranian officer facebook photo. They never explained how that happened.

wendy davis on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 9:59pm
'failed to mention'...

@jim p

great context. kent's number 13,000, and yes, they were likely all Novoroosians , if he hadn't pulled that figure out of his ass, anyway. photos of 'little green men' in ancient soviet uniforms, old tanks left over from the days of yore.

was kent counting the dead inside the trade unions massacre in odessa petrol-bombed by the neo-nazis?

lotlizard on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 2:03pm
David Stockman probes recent events in the Ukraine,

putting them in the context of the region's deeper past. The first two parts of a series.

Links are also given for the same articles at Antiwar.com (though for me at the moment that website times out without responding):

wendy davis on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 4:39pm
they look like fascinating

@lotlizard

in depth reads for later, and thank you, miz lizard. funny that the Atlantic council (at least one version) had chosen Zelenskiy based on promises to end corruption (read: so ukraine could have the lucre to enter Nato). and yet, he'd kept 9as per the photo caption) Mykola Zlochevsky, former employer of Hunter Biden and current partner of the Atlantic Council in hi cabinet, isn't it?

wendy davis on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 8:36am
so that others might

@lotlizard

be encouraged to read your stockman links to his 'The Ukrainian Influence Peddling Rings – A Microcosm of How Imperial Washington Rolls', David Stockman, November 13, 2019 , i'll offer a few excerpts. i rarely (if ever) call anything a 'must read', but even you, voice, might want to dig into this one (part I of II, if i get his drift).

i'm assumming his historical narrative is correct, as all the pieces i do know about are there are well, but what he writes i hadn't known is key, of course. his language is also colorful as all giddy-up, which i like, and good on him. he's lost me a bit in some sections, as he names names, lobbying firms, and so on, but that's on me, not stockman.

"The latest dispatch from the Wall Street Journal on the stench wafting westward from Kiev reveals more about the rotten foundation of UkraineGate than its authors probably understood.

Burisma Holdings' campaign to clean up its image in the West reached beyond the 2014 hiring of Hunter Biden, son of the then-U.S. vice president, to include other well-connected operatives in Washington, according to officials in both countries and government records.

The Ukrainian company, owned by tycoon Mykola Zlochevsky, also hired a lobbyist with close ties to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as a consulting group founded by top officials in the Clinton administration that specialized in preparing former Soviet-bloc countries to join NATO (Blue Star Strategies).

Soon the efforts bore fruit. With the help of a New York-based lawyer, Mr. Zlochevsky's U.S. consultants argued to Ukrainian prosecutors that criminal cases against the company should be closed because no laws had been broken.

Burisma later became a sponsor of a Washington think tank, the Atlantic Council, whose experts are often cited on energy and security policy in the former Soviet Union.

Simple translation: Zlochevsky was an ally, officeholder (minister of ecology and natural resources) and inner-circle thief in the ousted government of Viktor Yanukovych. He therefore needed to powder the pig fast and thoroughly in order to hold onto his ill-gotten billions.""
[longish snip of a who's who involvement]...................

"Finally, the Clinton wing of the Washington racketeering system had to be covered, too – hence the above mentioned Blue Star Strategies. And the bolded sentence from the WSJ story quoted below tells you all you need to know about its business, which was to " .help former Soviet countries prepare for NATO consideration".

That's right. With the Soviet Union gone, its 50,000 tanks on the central front melted-down for scrap and the Warsaw Pact disbanded, the rational order of the day was to declare "mission accomplished" for NATO and effect its own disbandment.

The great parachuter and then US president, George Bush the Elder, could have actually made a jump right into the giant Ramstein Air Base in Germany to effect its closure. At that point there was no justification for NATO's continued existence whatsoever.

But the Clinton Administration, under the baleful influence of Washington busybodies like Strobe Talbot and Madeleine Albright, went in just the opposite direction. In pursuit of Washington's post-1991 quest for global hegemony as the world's only superpower and putative keeper of the peace, they prepared the way for the entirety of the old Warsaw Pact to join NATO.

So doing, however, they also laid the planking for a revival of the cold war with the Kremlin. As the father of containment and NATO during the late 1940s, Ambassador George Kennan, observed at the time, the Clinton Administration's policy of expanding NATO to the very doorstep of Russia was a colossal mistake." [longish snip]
...............................
"So that's how the Imperial City rolls. People make policies which extend the Empire while in office – as did these Clintonistas with the NATO expansion project – and then cash-in afterwards by peddling influence in the corridors of the beltway on behalf of Washington's newly acquired vassals and supplicants.

In this case, all roads lead to the Atlantic Council, which is the semi-official "think tank" of NATO in Washington and is infested with Russophobes and Clinton/Biden operatives. The latter, of course, make a handsome living peddling anti-Putin propaganda – the better to grease the Washington purse strings for unneeded military spending and foreign aid, security assistance and weapons sales to the "front line" states allegedly in the path of Kremlin aggression."

thank you, miz lizard. love this title of his on the sidebar: ' Democrats Empower a Pack of Paranoid Neocon Morons '. ; )

i'll grab part II and read it greedily when i have more time.

putting them in the context of the region's deeper past. The first two parts of a series.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/david-stockman-exposes-ukrainian-...

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/david-stockman-exposes-ukrainian-...

Links are also given for the same articles at Antiwar.com (though for me at the moment that website times out without responding):

https://original.antiwar.com/david_stockman/2019/11/12/the-ukrainian-inf...

https://original.antiwar.com/david_stockman/2019/11/21/democrats-empower...

Linda Wood on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 2:12pm
Azov Battallion

and U.S. support:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion

The Special Operations Detachment "Azov", often known as Azov Battalion, Azov Regiment, or Azov Detachment, (Ukrainian: Полк Азов) is a Ukrainian National Guard regiment,[1][2][3][4] based in Mariupol in the Azov Sea coastal region.

In 2014, it gained notoriety after allegations emerged of torture and war crimes, as well as neo-Nazi sympathies and usage of associated symbols by the regiment itself, as seen in their logo featuring the Wolfsangel, one of the original symbols used by the German Nazi Party. In 2014, around 10-20% of the unit were neo-Nazis.[9] In 2018, a provision in an appropriations bill passed by the U.S. Congress blocked military aid to Azov on the grounds of its white supremacist ideology. [10] Members of the regiment come from 22 countries and are of various backgrounds.[11]

On 13 April 2014 Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov [nb 1] issued a decree authorizing creating new paramilitary forces from civilians up to 12,000.[22] The Azov Battalion (using "Eastern Corps" as its backbone[20]) was formed on 5 May 2014 in Berdiansk[23] by a white nationalist.[24] Many members of Patriot of Ukraine joined the battalion.[20] Among the early patrons of the battalion were a member of the Verkhovna Rada Oleh Lyashko, and an ultra-nationalist Dmytro Korchynsky and businessman Serhiy Taruta and Avakov.[25][20] The battalion then received training near Kiev by instructors with experience in the Georgian Armed Forces.[

In September 2014, the Azov battalion was expanded from a battalion to a regiment and enrolled into the National Guard of Ukraine.[23][33] At about this time it started receiving increased supplies of heavy arms.[33] The Azov battalion received funding from the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and other sources (believed to be Ukrainian oligarchs).

As of late March 2015, despite a second ceasefire agreement (Minsk II), the Azov Battalion continued to prepare for war, with the group's leader seeing the ceasefire as "appeasement".[33] In March 2015 Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced that the Azov Regiment would be among the first units to be trained by United States Army troops in their Operation Fearless Guardian training mission.[44][45] US training however was withdrawn on 12 June 2015, as US House of Representatives passed an amendment blocking any aid (including arms and training) to the battalion due to its Neo-Nazi background.[46] After the vote Congressman John Conyers thanked the House saying "I am grateful that the House of Representatives unanimously passed my amendments last night to ensure that our military does not train members of the repulsive neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, along with my measures to keep the dangerous and easily trafficked MANPADs out of these unstable regions."[45]

Since 2015 Azov is organising summer camps where children and teenagers receive practice in civil defense and military tactics mixed with lectures on Ukrainian nationalism.[48][20]

Since 2015 the Battalion has been upgraded to Regimental status and "Azov" is now officially called "Special Operations Regiment" , with combat duties focused on reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance, EOD disposal, interdiction and special weapons operations.

Foreign membership [edit]
According to The Daily Telegraph, the Azov Battalion's extremist politics and professional English social media pages have attracted foreign fighters,[30] including people from Brazil, Ireland, Italy, United Kingdom, France, America, Greece, Scandinavia,[2][30] Spain, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Russia. [2][56][57] About 50 Russian nationals are members of the Azov regiment.[58]

According to Minsk Ceasefire Agreements, foreign fighters are not allowed to serve in Ukraine's military:[66] since "Azov" Regiment was granted full military status, its foreign volunteers were compelled either to take Ukrainian citizenship, or to leave the Regiment.

Human rights violations and war crimes[edit]
Reports published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) have connected the Azov Battalion to war crimes such as mass looting, unlawful detention, and torture.[68][69] An OHCHR report from March 2016 stated that the organisation had "collected detailed information about the conduct of hostilities by Ukrainian armed forces and the Azov regiment in and around Shyrokyne (31km east of Mariupol), from the summer of 2014 to date. Mass looting of civilian homes was documented, as well as targeting of civilian areas between September 2014 and February 2015".[68] Another OHCHR report documented an instance of rape and torture

Rodnovery, symbolism and neo-Nazism [edit]

Emblem featuring a Wolfsangel and Black Sun
Most soldiers of Azov are followers of a Ukrainian nationalist type of Rodnovery (Slavic Native Faith), wherefrom they derive some of their symbolism (such as a variation of the swastika symbol kolovrat). They have also established Rodnover shrines for their religious rites, including one in Mariupol dedicated to Perun.[70][71][72][unreliable source] German ZDF television showed images of Azov fighters wearing helmets with swastika symbols and "the SS runes of Hitler's infamous black-uniformed elite corps".[73] Due to the use of such symbols, Azov has been considered to have connections with neo-Nazism, with members wearing neo-Nazi and SS symbols and regalia and expressing Neo-Nazi views.

The group's insignia features the Wolfsangel[78][79][80] and the Black Sun,[78][81][82] two Nazi-era symbols adopted by neo-Nazi groups.

In 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision blocking any training of Azov members by American forces, citing its neo-Nazi background. In previous years, between 2014 and 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives passed amendments banning support of Azov, but due to pressure from the Pentagon, the amendments were quietly lifted.[87][88][89] This move has been protested by Simon Wiesenthal Center which stated that the move highlights danger of Holocaust distortion in Ukraine.[89] On 26 June 2015, the Canadian defence minister declared as well, that training by Canadian forces or support would not be provided to Azov. [90]
While Azov Battalion troops have denied that the organization has any neo-Nazi or white supremacist beliefs, journalists stated that "numerous swastika tattoos of different members and their tendency to go into battle with swastikas or SS insignias drawn on their helmets make it very difficult for other members of the group to plausibly deny any neo-Nazi affiliations" .[85]

wendy davis on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 5:02pm
great info, amiga.

@Linda Wood

no more US training? dunno what to say to that. but i plugged '2018' into a bing search of azov torchlight parades and found this from 2016 instead (although there were some later, as well):

Ukrainian ultra-nationalist Azov battalion [as well as Right Sector' stages torch-lit march in Kharkov (VIDEOS)], 12 Dec, 2016 , RT.com

really according to Eva Bartlett who'd committed journalism in the donbass independent republics, zelenskiy hasn't been able to control them (as promised) either.

it's a good time to remember all who'd invested in the ukraine who had interest in the Maidan putsch, isn't it?

and U.S. support:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion

The Special Operations Detachment "Azov", often known as Azov Battalion, Azov Regiment, or Azov Detachment, (Ukrainian: Полк Азов) is a Ukrainian National Guard regiment,[1][2][3][4] based in Mariupol in the Azov Sea coastal region.

In 2014, it gained notoriety after allegations emerged of torture and war crimes, as well as neo-Nazi sympathies and usage of associated symbols by the regiment itself, as seen in their logo featuring the Wolfsangel, one of the original symbols used by the German Nazi Party. In 2014, around 10-20% of the unit were neo-Nazis.[9] In 2018, a provision in an appropriations bill passed by the U.S. Congress blocked military aid to Azov on the grounds of its white supremacist ideology. [10] Members of the regiment come from 22 countries and are of various backgrounds.[11]

On 13 April 2014 Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov [nb 1] issued a decree authorizing creating new paramilitary forces from civilians up to 12,000.[22] The Azov Battalion (using "Eastern Corps" as its backbone[20]) was formed on 5 May 2014 in Berdiansk[23] by a white nationalist.[24] Many members of Patriot of Ukraine joined the battalion.[20] Among the early patrons of the battalion were a member of the Verkhovna Rada Oleh Lyashko, and an ultra-nationalist Dmytro Korchynsky and businessman Serhiy Taruta and Avakov.[25][20] The battalion then received training near Kiev by instructors with experience in the Georgian Armed Forces.[

In September 2014, the Azov battalion was expanded from a battalion to a regiment and enrolled into the National Guard of Ukraine.[23][33] At about this time it started receiving increased supplies of heavy arms.[33] The Azov battalion received funding from the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and other sources (believed to be Ukrainian oligarchs).

As of late March 2015, despite a second ceasefire agreement (Minsk II), the Azov Battalion continued to prepare for war, with the group's leader seeing the ceasefire as "appeasement".[33] In March 2015 Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced that the Azov Regiment would be among the first units to be trained by United States Army troops in their Operation Fearless Guardian training mission.[44][45] US training however was withdrawn on 12 June 2015, as US House of Representatives passed an amendment blocking any aid (including arms and training) to the battalion due to its Neo-Nazi background.[46] After the vote Congressman John Conyers thanked the House saying "I am grateful that the House of Representatives unanimously passed my amendments last night to ensure that our military does not train members of the repulsive neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, along with my measures to keep the dangerous and easily trafficked MANPADs out of these unstable regions."[45]

Since 2015 Azov is organising summer camps where children and teenagers receive practice in civil defense and military tactics mixed with lectures on Ukrainian nationalism.[48][20]

Since 2015 the Battalion has been upgraded to Regimental status and "Azov" is now officially called "Special Operations Regiment" , with combat duties focused on reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance, EOD disposal, interdiction and special weapons operations.

Foreign membership [edit]
According to The Daily Telegraph, the Azov Battalion's extremist politics and professional English social media pages have attracted foreign fighters,[30] including people from Brazil, Ireland, Italy, United Kingdom, France, America, Greece, Scandinavia,[2][30] Spain, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Russia. [2][56][57] About 50 Russian nationals are members of the Azov regiment.[58]

According to Minsk Ceasefire Agreements, foreign fighters are not allowed to serve in Ukraine's military:[66] since "Azov" Regiment was granted full military status, its foreign volunteers were compelled either to take Ukrainian citizenship, or to leave the Regiment.

Human rights violations and war crimes[edit]
Reports published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) have connected the Azov Battalion to war crimes such as mass looting, unlawful detention, and torture.[68][69] An OHCHR report from March 2016 stated that the organisation had "collected detailed information about the conduct of hostilities by Ukrainian armed forces and the Azov regiment in and around Shyrokyne (31km east of Mariupol), from the summer of 2014 to date. Mass looting of civilian homes was documented, as well as targeting of civilian areas between September 2014 and February 2015".[68] Another OHCHR report documented an instance of rape and torture

Rodnovery, symbolism and neo-Nazism [edit]

Emblem featuring a Wolfsangel and Black Sun
Most soldiers of Azov are followers of a Ukrainian nationalist type of Rodnovery (Slavic Native Faith), wherefrom they derive some of their symbolism (such as a variation of the swastika symbol kolovrat). They have also established Rodnover shrines for their religious rites, including one in Mariupol dedicated to Perun.[70][71][72][unreliable source] German ZDF television showed images of Azov fighters wearing helmets with swastika symbols and "the SS runes of Hitler's infamous black-uniformed elite corps".[73] Due to the use of such symbols, Azov has been considered to have connections with neo-Nazism, with members wearing neo-Nazi and SS symbols and regalia and expressing Neo-Nazi views.

The group's insignia features the Wolfsangel[78][79][80] and the Black Sun,[78][81][82] two Nazi-era symbols adopted by neo-Nazi groups.

In 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision blocking any training of Azov members by American forces, citing its neo-Nazi background. In previous years, between 2014 and 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives passed amendments banning support of Azov, but due to pressure from the Pentagon, the amendments were quietly lifted.[87][88][89] This move has been protested by Simon Wiesenthal Center which stated that the move highlights danger of Holocaust distortion in Ukraine.[89] On 26 June 2015, the Canadian defence minister declared as well, that training by Canadian forces or support would not be provided to Azov. [90]
While Azov Battalion troops have denied that the organization has any neo-Nazi or white supremacist beliefs, journalists stated that "numerous swastika tattoos of different members and their tendency to go into battle with swastikas or SS insignias drawn on their helmets make it very difficult for other members of the group to plausibly deny any neo-Nazi affiliations" .[85]

snoopydawg on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 3:23pm
CIA honoring the Nazis in Ukraine

Despite a Jewish President, Ukraine keeps honoring Nazi collabos (with a bit of help from America)

It's great that Ukraine's revisionist far-right politics are at least getting some attention in the press. But what you won't read in these reports is that the U.S. government had recently sponsored a "cultural" exhibit that celebrated the Nazi collaborator who is now getting his own street in Kiev. You can't make this stuff up!

But we have to help the Nazis because Putin's Russia is invading and we owe it to them to.... blehh!

wendy davis on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 5:24pm
holy hell and christ

@snoopydawg

in a canoe!

yasha levine commits good journalism, there too! i'd never even heard of Nil Khasevych nor his Kil the Jews wood block prints. zelenskiy is not only jewish, but russian speaking, ukrainian is his second language as i understand it.

imagine now living on Khasevych; wouldn't you be proud? i'd been on yasha's account recently looking for his take (if any) on the intercept/NYT collaboration on the Iranaian leaks. i'd figured his link to the history if U S meddling at the bottom would speak at length about Pierre Omidyar's investments (centre UA, USAID, etc.) and maybe (then) monsanto/billy gates.

thank you; a whoosh -worthy exposé. do you get his newsletter, snoop?

p.s. on edit: i tried to subscribe, but it costs money. oh, well...

Despite a Jewish President, Ukraine keeps honoring Nazi collabos (with a bit of help from America)

It's great that Ukraine's revisionist far-right politics are at least getting some attention in the press. But what you won't read in these reports is that the U.S. government had recently sponsored a "cultural" exhibit that celebrated the Nazi collaborator who is now getting his own street in Kiev. You can't make this stuff up!

But we have to help the Nazis because Putin's Russia is invading and we owe it to them to.... blehh!

snoopydawg on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 5:48pm
Followed a Twitter link

@wendy davis

There is lots of good info on Twitter about the Ukraine system and corruption. Bibi didn't have any problems dealing with the neo Nazis there either which threw me for a loop. But then it was people in our country that made Hitler's war chest. Bush Sr., Ford and lots of others thought Hitler's system should be implemented here. Oh yeah and of course the banks..

Nunes sums it up perfectly.

Must watch: Low rent Ukrainian Sequel pic.twitter.com/URXgy8ush8

-- Devin Nunes (@DevinNunes) November 22, 2019

I don't know how many witnesses have admitted that there is no there there, but people hear what they want to hear Schiff just keeps rolling on.

#6

in a canoe!

Yasha Levine commits good journalism, there too! i'd never even heard of Nil Khasevych nor his Kil the Jews wood block prints. zelenskiy is not only jewish, but russian speaking, ukrainian is his second language as i understand it.

imagine now living on Khasevych; wouldn't you be proud? i'd been on yasha's account recently looking for his take (if any) on the intercept/NYT collaboration on the Iranaian leaks. i'd figured his link to the history if U S meddling at the bottom would speak at length about Pierre Omidyar's investments (centre UA, USAID, etc.) and maybe (then) monsanto/billy gates.

thank you; a whoosh -worthy exposé. do you get his newsletter, snoop?

p.s. on edit: i tried to subscribe, but it costs money. oh, well...

wendy davis on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 8:31pm
lol; great,

@snoopydawg

especially with the editing. but it' like the game of telephone, isn't it? 'he told me he overheard...', and someone told me s he heard..., yada, yada,

but just think if Pelosi hadn't limited the inquiry to One Phone call? 'as trump's puppet, is zelenskiy's claiming 'no quid pro quo worth anything?'

#WhataZoo.

#7

There is lots of good info on Twitter about the Ukraine system and corruption. Bibi didn't have any problems dealing with the neo Nazis there either which threw me for a loop. But then it was people in our country that made Hitler's war chest. Bush Sr., Ford and lots of others thought Hitler's system should be implemented here. Oh yeah and of course the banks..

Nunes sums it up perfectly.

Must watch: Low rent Ukrainian Sequel pic.twitter.com/URXgy8ush8

-- Devin Nunes (@DevinNunes) November 22, 2019

I don't know how many witnesses have admitted that there is no there there, but people hear what they want to hear Schiff just keeps rolling on.

snoopydawg on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 7:48pm
Ukraine tried to get Hillary elected is just CT right?

Nah not so much. Numerous websites wrote about it back when it happened just like they wrote about Hunter Biden and Burisma. But now I'm seeing the main stream media trying to tell us that it didn't happen that way. Well here's one article that hasn't been scrubbed yet.

Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire

01/11/2017 05:05 AM EST

Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.

Donald Trump wasn't the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort's resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump's campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine's foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia's alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.

Ahh that good ole but. Yes what people in Ukraine did was bad, but.... and here's the but.

Russia's effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, involved the country's military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials. They reportedly briefed Trump last week on the possibility that Russian operatives might have compromising information on the president-elect. And at a Senate hearing last week on the hacking, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said " I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we've seen in this case."

There's little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine. Longtime observers suggest that the rampant corruption, factionalism and economic struggles plaguing the country -- not to mention its ongoing strife with Russia -- would render it unable to pull off an ambitious covert interference campaign in another country's election. And President Petro Poroshenko's administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the race.

Yet Politico's investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another's elections.

Well there you have it. People in Ukraine were digging up dirt on people in Trump's campaign whilst Vlad only placed a few ads on FB and most of them were placed after the election was over. Badder Russia.

That Ukraine was trying to get Hillary elected was well known in the Ukraine government, but sure let's just say it never happened like that. Then of course there was Hillary hiring people in another country to dig up dirt too, but that doesn't count. Why? Reasons of course and because it was Hillary and the DNC doing it. See? Reasons.

Next paragraph starts with this.

Russia's meddling has sparked outrage from the American body politic. Lots of words about how that outraged people here...and more blah blah blah stuff.

Next paragrap

Ukraine, on the other hand, has traditionally enjoyed strong relations with U.S. administrations. Its officials worry that could change under Trump, whose team has privately expressed sentiments ranging from ambivalence to deep skepticism about Poroshenko's regime, while sounding unusually friendly notes about Putin's regime.

Poroshenko is scrambling to alter that dynamic, recently signing a $50,000-a-month contract with a well-connected GOP-linked Washington lobbying firm to set up meetings with U.S. government officials "to strengthen U.S.-Ukrainian relations."

Hmm hint of a quid pro quo there?

BTW. Lindsay Graham wants to investigate Hunter Biden and Joe says that he will regret doing that for the rest of his life. Stay tuned for the fireworks.

snoopydawg on Sat, 11/23/2019 - 8:06pm
Okay now that we have settled the facts here...

@snoopydawg

there has to be an effort to discredit what happened back then even though it's true.

Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says

Ahh yes Russia was the one that started that propaganda. Burisma and Biden was always on the up and up so don't even think that they weren't. I really don't know how people who believe everything about Russia Gate and now Ukraine Gate can keep their beliefs intact when there is so much information showing that what they believe is wrong or didn't happen the way they think it did.

Read more about this on Moon of Alabama

Nah not so much. Numerous websites wrote about it back when it happened just like they wrote about Hunter Biden and Burisma. But now I'm seeing the main stream media trying to tell us that it didn't happen that way. Well here's one article that hasn't been scrubbed yet.

Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire

01/11/2017 05:05 AM EST

Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.

Donald Trump wasn't the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton's allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort's resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump's campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine's foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia's alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.

Ahh that good ole but. Yes what people in Ukraine did was bad, but.... and here's the but.

Russia's effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, involved the country's military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials. They reportedly briefed Trump last week on the possibility that Russian operatives might have compromising information on the president-elect. And at a Senate hearing last week on the hacking, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said " I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we've seen in this case."

There's little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine. Longtime observers suggest that the rampant corruption, factionalism and economic struggles plaguing the country -- not to mention its ongoing strife with Russia -- would render it unable to pull off an ambitious covert interference campaign in another country's election. And President Petro Poroshenko's administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the race.

Yet Politico's investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another's elections.

Well there you have it. People in Ukraine were digging up dirt on people in Trump's campaign whilst Vlad only placed a few ads on FB and most of them were placed after the election was over. Badder Russia.

That Ukraine was trying to get Hillary elected was well known in the Ukraine government, but sure let's just say it never happened like that. Then of course there was Hillary hiring people in another country to dig up dirt too, but that doesn't count. Why? Reasons of course and because it was Hillary and the DNC doing it. See? Reasons.

Next paragraph starts with this.

Russia's meddling has sparked outrage from the American body politic. Lots of words about how that outraged people here...and more blah blah blah stuff.

Next paragrap

Ukraine, on the other hand, has traditionally enjoyed strong relations with U.S. administrations. Its officials worry that could change under Trump, whose team has privately expressed sentiments ranging from ambivalence to deep skepticism about Poroshenko's regime, while sounding unusually friendly notes about Putin's regime.

Poroshenko is scrambling to alter that dynamic, recently signing a $50,000-a-month contract with a well-connected GOP-linked Washington lobbying firm to set up meetings with U.S. government officials "to strengthen U.S.-Ukrainian relations."

Hmm hint of a quid pro quo there?

BTW. Lindsay Graham wants to investigate Hunter Biden and Joe says that he will regret doing that for the rest of his life. Stay tuned for the fireworks.

wendy davis on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 10:16am
ha, i'd run into that

@snoopydawg

this morning intending to grab some of his quotes and links here: ' November 20, 2019 , Impeachment Circus - Today's Bombshell Is Another Dud one chris cilizza link i'd given to linda wood to see if she or others might parse for me/us.

"The impeachment circus continued today with a refreshingly candid opening statement from Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the EU. Sondland was involved in diplomatic efforts in Ukraine. Instead of stonewalling Sondland just let it all out:

'Gordon D. Sondland testified that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed off on the pressure campaign, and that he told Vice President Mike Pence about an apparent link between military aid for Ukraine and investigations of Democrats. Mr. Sondland confirmed there was a "clear quid pro quo" for a White House meeting between President Trump and Ukraine's president.'
The anti-Trump media see this as another "bombshell" that will hurt him.

But it is more likely that Sondland's testimony will help President Trump and those involved on his side.

#8

there has to be an effort to discredit what happened back then even though it's true.

Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says

Ahh yes Russia was the one that started that propaganda. Burisma and Biden was always on the up and up so don't even think that they weren't. I really don't know how people who believe everything about Russia Gate and now Ukraine Gate can keep their beliefs intact when there is so much information showing that what they believe is wrong or didn't happen the way they think it did.

Read more about this on Moon of Alabama

Pluto's Republic on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 3:38pm
Today, Eric Zuesse dropped the most important document

@wendy davis

...I've ever read about Ukraine.

Ukraine, Trump, & Biden - The Real Story Behind "Ukrainegate"

Almost everything Americans have ever been told about US foreign policy is a lie. Almost everything we think we know is still a lie.

The Democrat's immediate goal is to install Mike Pence as President as soon as possible.

Everything depends on this. Pence is the continuation of Obama's Neocon policies in Ukraine and throughout the world. Biden is the premier Neocon on the 2020 ticket. His job is to lie himself into the nomination and pick-up a Neocon Vice President. If he loses to Pence, it doesn't matter. The CFR wins either way. And we're off to war with Russia.

This is a must read for those who want to know what is happening to them. And happening fast.

It will be hard to see the world the same way again.

#9.1

as with a hella busy 3-day weekend, i hadn't intended to, but what with the smoke coming out of my ears and all...

i'd long claimed that i'd want to go out in a first strike as well, and here we are just east of the shit-head capital of bumfuck, CO (h/t ed abbey).

now there are a number of NORAD sites , but most nations as i understand it still have No First Strike Rules, but the US no longer does, iirc (meaning: don't count on it). our daughter and her family live in el paso county, CO home of one or two, one an alt-site under cheyenne mountain.

i've often been a bit glib as to: 'Who will stop the US Empire? Those who can...and must.'
but i dunno who that might end up being, nor how including with nukes. but at this point, i guess it's all philosophical to me, as we're all living on borrowed time, and Live in the Moment when possible.

i do so wish i could help you ease your fears, my friend.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==

snoopydawg on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 3:59pm
Yep that is a must read

@Pluto's Republic

This video goes back to what was described in the article I posted above. The Nazis in Ukraine have ties to Hitler and we knew it.

//www.youtube.com/embed/fWkfpGCAAuw?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

wendy davis on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 7:15pm
sigh; kill me now.

@Pluto's Republic

there's no way i can read anything that long, especially in the zero-hedge format. but i found it at the duran, and an easier read on my eye-brain configuration at the saker . strategic culture usually carries his columns, but not this one...yet.

even scanning at the zero hedge version, i hadn't spotted pence's name. in which part (I-IV) was it? zuesse has always needed a good editor, imo. but yeah, Pentecostal Pence gives me the shivers.

#9.1.1

...I've ever read about Ukraine.

Ukraine, Trump, & Biden - The Real Story Behind "Ukrainegate"

Almost everything Americans have ever been told about US foreign policy is a lie. Almost everything we think we know is still a lie.

The Democrat's immediate goal is to install Mike Pence as President as soon as possible.

Everything depends on this. Pence is the continuation of Obama's Neocon policies in Ukraine and throughout the world. Biden is the premier Neocon on the 2020 ticket. His job is to lie himself into the nomination and pick-up a Neocon Vice President. If he loses to Pence, it doesn't matter. The CFR wins either way. And we're off to war with Russia.

This is a must read for those who want to know what is happening to them. And happening fast.

It will be hard to see the world the same way again.

wendy davis on Mon, 11/25/2019 - 10:09am
never mind;

@wendy davis

i read the comments on the saker version, what was key was what zuesse hadn't written (i.e. any mention of the CIA), and part IV at the duran,, withut elaborating, much of which i disagreed with.

#9.1.1.1

there's no way i can read anything that long, especially in the zero-hedge format. but i found it at the duran, and an easier read on my eye-brain configuration at the saker . strategic culture usually carries his columns, but not this one...yet.

even scanning at the zero hedge version, i hadn't spotted pence's name. in which part (I-IV) was it? zuesse has always needed a good editor, imo. but yeah, Pentecostal Pence gives me the shivers.

aliasalias on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 8:20pm
If someone wants to get vaporised right away be in DC

@Pluto's Republic or New York for sure. There are a lot of other target rich areas like Langley, the Silicon Valley area and certainly that big base in San Diego in California, the possible list is long because this Country is littered with military installations.

But I'd expect that if Russia had only two nukes to fire Washington DC and NY would be the instant decision. DC is 'evil Central' to most of the world, and NY City's Wall Street is its oxygen supply and without those two cities it's like chopping off the head of the snake. (no offense to snakes intended)

#9

It fills the soul with dread. There is no one left to fight the poisonous empire from the inside. All have succumbed. They will be along soon enough to clean up these fragments and send them down the memory hole. I'm going to dwell in the large-target cities from now on. I intend to be vaporized in the first strike.

Linda Wood on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 5:31pm
David Stockman's articles

are brilliant and vital to understanding the Ukraine situation. I think Part 2 is most important, even though I disagree with him on one point. He establishes how stupid and moronic the Democrats' impeachment witnesses are to suggest we have to fight Russia in Ukraine so we don't have to fight them here. He shows how minuscule Russia's conventional weapons systems are compared to ours, especially with respect to sea and air power, and then he states,

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/david-stockman-exposes-ukrainian-...

... Not surprisingly, Russia's pint-sized economy can not support a military establishment anywhere near to that of Imperial Washington. To wit, its $61 billion of military outlays in 2018 amounted to less than 32 days of Washington's current $750 billion of expenditures for defense.

Indeed, it might well be asked how Russia could remotely threaten homeland security in America short of what would be a suicidal nuclear first strike.

That's because the 1,600 deployed nuclear weapons on each side represent a continuation of mutual deterrence (MAD) – the arrangement by which we we got through 45-years of cold war when the Kremlin was run by a totalitarian oligarchy committed to a hostile ideology; and during which time it had been armed to the teeth via a forced-draft allocation of upwards of 40% of the GDP of the Soviet empire to the military.

By comparison, the Russian defense budget currently amounts to less than 4% of the country's anemic present day economy – one shorn of the vast territories and populations of Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and all the Asian "stans" among others. Yet given those realities we are supposed to believe that the self-evidently calculating and cautious kleptomaniac who runs the Kremlin is going to go mad, defy MAD and trigger a nuclear Armageddon?

Indeed, the idea that Russia presents a national security threat to America is laughable. Not only would Putin never risk nuclear suicide, but even that fantasy is the extent of what he's got. That is, Russia's conventional capacity to project force to the North American continent is nonexistent – or at best, lies somewhere between nichts and nothing.

I agree with Stockman that in a conventional war with the U.S., we win. But that's just exactly the problem. Russia can't have a conventional war with us or with NATO. It's defense from us is ONLY nuclear assured destruction. So the problem is not whether or not he's nuts. The problem is that we are nuts. Our government is nuts. Our government has a first strike policy, meaning our government considers it rational to eliminate a portion of the American people, which in our Nuclear Posture Review would be catastrophic, in order to win a war with Russia.

https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2018-02/new-us-nuclear-strategy...

... The NPR argues that additional low-yield options are "not intended to enable" nuclear war-fighting "[n]or will it lower the nuclear threshold" (p. 54). But this assertion ignores the fact that the stated purpose is to make their use "more credible" in the eyes of U.S. adversaries , which means that they are meant to be seen as "more usable."

The belief that a nuclear conflict could be controlled is dangerous thinking. The fog of war is thick, the fog of nuclear war would be even thicker. Such thinking could also have the perverse effect of convincing Russia that it could get away with limited nuclear use without putting its survival at risk.

Many military targets are in or near urban areas. It has been estimated that the use of even a fraction of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces could lead to the death of tens of millions of people in each country. An all-out exchange would kill hundreds of millions and produce catastrophic global consequences with adverse agricultural, economic, health, and environmental consequences for billions of people.

No country should be preparing to wage a "limited nuclear war" that neither side can guarantee would remain "limited." Rather, as Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev declared in 1985, today's Russian and U.S. leaders should recognize that "a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought."

wendy davis on Sun, 11/24/2019 - 8:55pm
thank you, amiga.

@Linda Wood

and i agree: it's not the defense budget that matters. in this nation, the defense industries are allowed to do 'cost over-runs', and russia's weapons of war and defensive war are clearly superior. see how many are wanting russian man-pads missile defense, for instance.

i'll take part two, but at anti-war.com to the café. commenter juliania loved part I witless! i was sad to read that justin raimondo has already crossed over, may he rest in power. one place i'd blogged for a time were outraged i tell you, Outraged, that a libertarian wrote for antiwar.com. needless to say, i didn't last long at the accursed dagblog.com.

are brilliant and vital to understanding the Ukraine situation. I think Part 2 is most important, even though I disagree with him on one point. He establishes how stupid and moronic the Democrats' impeachment witnesses are to suggest we have to fight Russia in Ukraine so we don't have to fight them here. He shows how minuscule Russia's conventional weapons systems are compared to ours, especially with respect to sea and air power, and then he states,

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/david-stockman-exposes-ukrainian-...

... Not surprisingly, Russia's pint-sized economy can not support a military establishment anywhere near to that of Imperial Washington. To wit, its $61 billion of military outlays in 2018 amounted to less than 32 days of Washington's current $750 billion of expenditures for defense.

Indeed, it might well be asked how Russia could remotely threaten homeland security in America short of what would be a suicidal nuclear first strike.

That's because the 1,600 deployed nuclear weapons on each side represent a continuation of mutual deterrence (MAD) – the arrangement by which we we got through 45-years of cold war when the Kremlin was run by a totalitarian oligarchy committed to a hostile ideology; and during which time it had been armed to the teeth via a forced-draft allocation of upwards of 40% of the GDP of the Soviet empire to the military.

By comparison, the Russian defense budget currently amounts to less than 4% of the country's anemic present day economy – one shorn of the vast territories and populations of Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and all the Asian "stans" among others. Yet given those realities we are supposed to believe that the self-evidently calculating and cautious kleptomaniac who runs the Kremlin is going to go mad, defy MAD and trigger a nuclear Armageddon?

Indeed, the idea that Russia presents a national security threat to America is laughable. Not only would Putin never risk nuclear suicide, but even that fantasy is the extent of what he's got. That is, Russia's conventional capacity to project force to the North American continent is nonexistent – or at best, lies somewhere between nichts and nothing.

I agree with Stockman that in a conventional war with the U.S., we win. But that's just exactly the problem. Russia can't have a conventional war with us or with NATO. It's defense from us is ONLY nuclear assured destruction. So the problem is not whether or not he's nuts. The problem is that we are nuts. Our government is nuts. Our government has a first strike policy, meaning our government considers it rational to eliminate a portion of the American people, which in our Nuclear Posture Review would be catastrophic, in order to win a war with Russia.

https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2018-02/new-us-nuclear-strategy...

... The NPR argues that additional low-yield options are "not intended to enable" nuclear war-fighting "[n]or will it lower the nuclear threshold" (p. 54). But this assertion ignores the fact that the stated purpose is to make their use "more credible" in the eyes of U.S. adversaries , which means that they are meant to be seen as "more usable."

The belief that a nuclear conflict could be controlled is dangerous thinking. The fog of war is thick, the fog of nuclear war would be even thicker. Such thinking could also have the perverse effect of convincing Russia that it could get away with limited nuclear use without putting its survival at risk.

Many military targets are in or near urban areas. It has been estimated that the use of even a fraction of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces could lead to the death of tens of millions of people in each country. An all-out exchange would kill hundreds of millions and produce catastrophic global consequences with adverse agricultural, economic, health, and environmental consequences for billions of people.

No country should be preparing to wage a "limited nuclear war" that neither side can guarantee would remain "limited." Rather, as Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev declared in 1985, today's Russian and U.S. leaders should recognize that "a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought."

[Nov 25, 2019] Democrats Can't Isolate Russia and Saudi Arabia without Fracking by Noah Rothman

The guy is not only a neocon, he also s an idiot. But unfortunately his way of thinking is typical for US neocons.
Nov 22, 2019 | www.commentarymagazine.com
On Wednesday night, a new Democratic foreign-policy consensus came together on the debate stage . For Democrats, it has become dogma that Saudi Arabia deserves only to be shamed and isolated by the United States, not treated like a valuable strategic partner.

Sen. Cory Booker accused the president of committing a "human-rights violation" by supporting the Saudi war against Iran-backed militias in Yemen without congressional consent. Former Vice President Joe Biden called the Saudi Kingdom a "pariah" and said its government has "very little social redeeming value." Sen. Bernie Sanders accused the Saudis of operating a "brutal dictatorship" and being an unreliable U.S. ally.

These criticisms are not unfounded. The Saudis were implicated in the murder of a U.S. resident. The Saudis do commit human-rights violations, both in domestic and foreign policy. The Saudis have encouraged the radicalization of their citizens and contributed to geopolitical insecurity in the age of Islamist terror. Democrats are not unjustified in their criticisms of the Kingdom, but it takes a special brazenness to issue these attacks on the Saudis while simultaneously calling for the banning of the technology that has made such displays of American geopolitical independence possible: fracking.

To his credit, Joe Biden has not called for the outright ban of hydraulic fracturing technology, but Sanders and Booker have . That policy, if realized, would relegate the United States to a strategically disadvantageous role vis-à-vis the world's largest energy exporters, including Saudi Arabia. It would also sacrifice one of the most miraculous developments of this decade: the revival of the American domestic energy industry.

Since 2013, domestic U.S. oil production has increased by 60 percent. In 2018, for the first time in 40 years, the United States outpaced Saudi Arabia's oil output and is estimated to have surpassed Russian production. American energy companies have become major exporters of crude oil and natural gas, and the U.S. is poised to become a net energy exporter for the first time since 1953 by the year 2022. This new glut of supply in the fossil-fuel market has substantially reduced the geopolitical clout of OPEC countries, including outcast nations like Nicolas Maduro's Venezuela and Vladimir Putin's Russia. That has enabled the U.S. to pursue precisely the kind of values-based foreign policy Democrats advocate.

It's no exaggeration to stress that this is among Putin's worst nightmares. He's confessed as much, in fact, according to former National Security Council official and Russia expert, Fiona Hill. In testimony before congressional investigators this week, Hill noted that Putin himself warned of the threat to Russian interests represented by fracking as early as 2011. The Russian president was among the first petrol-fueled despots who felt the sting of the American energy sector's technological revolution. In November 2013, just weeks before his ouster in the Maidan revolution, the Russia-friendly president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, signed a $10 billion deal with the U.S.-based multinational Chevron to explore and exploit the country's domestic shale gas deposits.

Leveraging Russian gas exports to Europe and the former Soviet Republics is a means by which Moscow has advanced its interests on the Continent. Breaking its hold on energy exports is in both America's commercial and geostrategic interests. There is no player on the international stage that Democrats would like to see marginalized more than Putin, and fracking creates more opportunities to achieve that objective. But Democrats would rather pander to the party's environmentalist wing and its irrational hostility toward this successful innovation.

Democrats can adopt as hawkish a posture toward Russia and Saudi Arabia as they like, but isolating these illiberal states is possible today only because of the domestic energy revolution they oppose. Democrats can have fracking and the marginalization of Putin and the House of Saud, or they can have neither. So far, they're opting for neither.

[Nov 25, 2019] To those who think Russia is nothing more than a gas station

Nov 25, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Peter AU1 , Nov 23 2019 6:43 utc | 59

King Lear 57 "he suffers from extreme naïveté, in that he assumes every new U$ president.."

obviously you have not watched many Putin interviews or speeches. Rather than naive, Putin hopes for the best and prepares for the worst - the reason Russia now has weapon superiority over US. Research into new weapons was begun back in 2002 - the moment US pulled out of ABS treaty. The same distrust carries through to politics, but is more in the line of speak softly and carry a big stick.

I guess you're another of those who think Russia is nothing more than a gas station and should mouth bravado to cover their (imaginary) weakness.

[Nov 25, 2019] Ukrainian inflience on 2016 election is a Russian Operation, US Intelligence Says

Notable quotes:
"... Fiona Hill, a "respected Russia scholar" and former senior White House official, added a harsh critique during testimony on Thursday. She told some of Mr. Trump's fiercest defenders in Congress that they were repeating "a fictional narrative." She said that it likely came from a disinformation campaign by Russian security services, which also propagated it. ..."
"... In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill's testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow's own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair. ..."
"... The accusations of a Ukrainian influence campaign center on actions by a handful of Ukrainians who openly criticized or sought to damage Mr. Trump's candidacy in 2016. ..."
"... Just keep in mind that those claims are unfounded. The 'handful' of Ukrainians managed, with help from the Democratic National Council, to push Trump's campaign manager to resign. They even bragged about it. Ukrainians were also the biggest foreign donors to Hillary Clinton's foundation. ..."
"... Those are "unfounded claims about Ukrainian interference". Because Putin pointed them out. However, let me assure you that neither the Times nor the CIA would ever make unfounded claims of a Russian operation. It is Russia that is trying 'to sow discord'. It is not an unfounded Democratic impeachment inquiry that does that. ..."
Nov 25, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says

Fiona Hill, a respected Russia scholar and former senior White House official, added a harsh critique during testimony on Thursday. She told some of Mr. Trump's fiercest defenders in Congress that they were repeating "a fictional narrative." She said that it likely came from a disinformation campaign by Russian security services, which also propagated it.

In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill's testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow's own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair.
...
The revelations demonstrate Russia's persistence in trying to sow discord among its adversaries -- and show that the Kremlin apparently succeeded, as unfounded claims about Ukrainian interference seeped into Republican talking points.

So there was no Ukrainian meddling, no Ukrainian interference. Claims thereof are unfounded! But just a few sentences later the piece curiously says something different:

The accusations of a Ukrainian influence campaign center on actions by a handful of Ukrainians who openly criticized or sought to damage Mr. Trump's candidacy in 2016.

Just keep in mind that those claims are unfounded. The 'handful' of Ukrainians managed, with help from the Democratic National Council, to push Trump's campaign manager to resign. They even bragged about it. Ukrainians were also the biggest foreign donors to Hillary Clinton's foundation.

However, because Putin once pointed that out, those claims must be unfounded. They must be Russian disinformation:

During a news conference in February 2017, Mr. Putin accused the Ukrainian government of supporting Hillary Clinton during the previous American election and funding her candidacy with friendly oligarchs.

It is not clear when American intelligence agencies learned about Moscow's campaign or when precisely it began.
...
One target was the leak of a secret ledger disclosed by a Ukrainian law enforcement agency that appeared to show that Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's onetime campaign chairman, had taken illicit payments from Ukrainian politicians who were close to Moscow. He was forced to step down from the Trump campaign after the ledger became public in August 2016, and the Russians have since been eager to cast doubt on its authenticity, the former official said.

Those are "unfounded claims about Ukrainian interference". Because Putin pointed them out. However, let me assure you that neither the Times nor the CIA would ever make unfounded claims of a Russian operation. It is Russia that is trying 'to sow discord'. It is not an unfounded Democratic impeachment inquiry that does that.

Posted by b on November 23, 2019 at 18:08 UTC | Permalink

Joshua , Nov 23 2019 18:25 utc | 1

Once the hilariously televised collapse of the DC government is complete...
james , Nov 23 2019 18:26 utc | 2
thanks for the laugh b! know i know to trust only the nyt, or Fiona Hill, the brit who was an intel analyst under bush 2 and etc.

those damn ruskies! wake me up when mccarthyism version 2 is over..

b , Nov 23 2019 18:27 utc | 3
More Russian meddling
james , Nov 23 2019 18:31 utc | 4
@3 b.. thats funny.. putin attacking tesla to build up export sales of lada!! i think he is onto something..
psychohistorian , Nov 23 2019 18:43 utc | 5
Maybe the CIA has decided that they need to make the claims more obtuse so that even the mentally competent have trouble explaining the 11 dimensional chess involved.

After all, if Trump singlehanded, as he claims, kept Xi from sending the troops into HK then Putin assuredly can influence American politics.....if Putin only could make it all go away.....what a waste of time, energy and money that could be spent on improving the lot of the poor, living on the streets in the US

When and how will the private finance empire circus end?

At least the US has Bernie and Tulsi calling out the coup in Bolivia for what it is.....maybe there is hope.

Jackrabbit , Nov 23 2019 18:53 utc | 6
Why did America First Trump hire Manafort?

Manafort was managing campaigns of pro-Russian political parties/candidates in Ukraine for 7 years or so before being hired by Trump. My understanding is that Manafort was warned that his work was undermining USA efforts in Ukraine.

Why did America First Trump bring on Flynn?

Flynn was known to be hated by the intelligence community for having told the world that the Obama Administration made a "wilful decision" to support the rise of ISIS.

Why did America First Trump make pleas for Putin to release Hillary's emails via Wikileaks?

It was already known that some of the emails contained top secret information. AFAIK, USA would consider any publication a crime.

These were set-ups.

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

Why was "independent", "socialist true believer", supposed man-of-integrity Sanders sheepdogging for Hillary ("enough with your damn emails")?

Why did Hillary, a seasoned campaigner with virtually unlimited resources, make so many grievous mistakes in the 2016 election? She snubbed Sanders and his supporters; took the black vote for granted; insulted whites as "deplorables"; chose not to campaign in the THREE STATES that she know would decided the election. Why didn't she pull out all the stops to win? For her beloved establishment? For her own aspirations as first women President? If she failed because she was "over confident" as some have suggested, then why did she pay for the Steele dossier as "insurance"? There was no need for insurance if she knew she would win and if she were unsure of winning she should have done everything possible to win (as any real candidate would have).

Why did America First Trump use British company Cambridge Analytica? We later learned that facebook provided the same info to dozens of other companies (debunking the initial excuse that Cambridge Analytica had special access to facebook info). Was it because the Russiagate disinfo and CIA election meddling campaign was located in UK?

Why did Trump initiate Ukrainegate by talking about investigating Biden on a diplomatic call? He's smart enough to know that such political machinations are handled behind the scenes.

This Reality Show Presidency is all about kayfabe as the Deep State restructures to meet the challenge from China and Russia, and seeks to manufacture consent for a war with Iran.

!!

psychohistorian , Nov 23 2019 18:56 utc | 7
So as I eat my breakfast I skim ZH and come across reporting of non-Russian political influence like the link below shows

Liberal 'dark money' operation behind ads urging Republicans to support impeachment

The take away quote
"
Defend American Democracy has spent six figures on television advertisements pressuring Republican members of Congress to "hold the president accountable for abusing his office and risking national security for his own gain." The group, which primarily targets swing-district Republicans, prominently features military veterans in its ads and presents itself as a veterans group to local media outlets.
........
The 501(c)(4) group is managed by Eric Kessler, a former Clinton administration official who runs the philanthropic firm Arabella Advisors. The anonymously funded nonprofit was behind several groups that ran "issue ads" to benefit Democrats during the 2018 midterms, as well as Demand Justice, a group that spent millions of dollars on ads attacking Brett Kavanaugh during his nomination to the Supreme Court. The Sixteen Thirty Fund and its sister 501(c)(3) nonprofit, New Venture Fund, have fiscally sponsored at least 80 of their own groups, bankrolling those entities in a way that leaves almost no paper trail.
"

The US has the best government Russian influence has not bought.

div> @b #3
I really think the twitter account is satire, judging from other tweets and the profile pic.

Posted by: c1ue , Nov 23 2019 19:00 utc | 8

@b #3
I really think the twitter account is satire, judging from other tweets and the profile pic.

Posted by: c1ue | Nov 23 2019 19:00 utc | 8

smoke , Nov 23 2019 19:14 utc | 9
So Russia hacked and attacked Hillary and DNC as Russia. (I believe that is still the official left-Dem-media meme, despite investigation producing no evidence.) And they attacked Trump disguised as Ukraine.

This sowing discord is a busy undertaking.

And rather unnecessary, considering the pre-existing state of discord in the nation and politics, a duplicitous Dem party lost in the wilderness, as it searches a popular cry that won't actually empower people, a Republican Party that was overwhelmed by a populist tide and candidate not sanctioned by the leadership, and a legacy media that can crank up divisions on command.

Jackrabbit , Nov 23 2019 19:14 utc | 10
Maybe I should've posted my comment @6 on the "Impeachment Circus" thread instead.

It just struck me that neoMcCarthist smearing of Russia (which is ongoing, as proven by b's post) was made possible via the kayfabe of Russiagate, which had it's origins in the 2016 election.

!!

Peter , Nov 23 2019 19:44 utc | 11
Fiona Hill...another bare faced liar whose name is not Hillary Clinton....I am no longer astonished that this crap is actually publishable despite the evidence available to anyone with at least two brain cells. Having followed on the Net the coup in Ukraine in 2014 from 2013 on via live blogs by Western corespondents who are not beholden to the MSM, I know what lies that latter "journaille" gets away with.
Red Ryder , Nov 23 2019 19:53 utc | 12
Fiona Hill is an expert on Russophobic content. Like Condi Rice, a Soviet Scholar, she knows nothing truthful about Russia. Else, why does she lie about Russia?

The think tanks, academia and State Dept. spew out the lies which the Media multiplies. 99% of Russian experts are Russophobes who possess little expertise, some practicing their propaganda for decades. Many of them excrete books on regular schedules.

The first test (since 2014) of any expert's credentials is his/her position on Crimea. The next test is on Russian aggression.
If anyone suggests Crimea does not belong to Russia (most especially the federal district of Sevastopol), then they are ignorant or lying. You either know that in 1954 Crimea was unconstitutionally given to Ukraine by the Ukrainian Khruschev. It was illegal by USSR law. 2014 corrected that injustice. The experts who profess otherwise are lying.

And if anyone suggests that the Russians are aggressors, they are lying. If Russia was an aggressor in Georgia or Ukraine, neither would have governments that are so anti-Russian or militaries that could form a small parade, much less beg for inclusion in NATO.
Russia reacted to Georgian aggression and mass murder. In Ukraine, the Donbass is a Russian assisted self-defense operation against an ethnic cleansing war. Russia's participation has been to save 2.5 million Russian-speaking Ukrainians from slaughter ('filtration' is the Ukie euphemism for killing the Donbass separatists who refuse Kiev's nazi regime).

Russian 'aggression' is a construct of propaganda. Taken in the context of NATO expansion and encroachment right to the borders of Russia, there is nothing but lies tied to the 'aggression' canard.

We have had 28 years of demonization of the Russian Federation. Russophobia is centuries old in some societies. Of late, it focuses on the attempts to separate away from Russia the brother republics of the CIS region of Eurasia. Fed lies, distortion of history, linguistic differences, religious issues and economic disadvantages, a mania against Russia has been cultivated. It all is led by "the experts" like Fiona Hill.

We see the same dynamic used against China with Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. Propaganda. Lies. Experts who mouth the Sinophobic fabrications are the talking heads on Media and on Congressional sideshows.

Russophobia and Sinophobia are industries now. Fame, publishing riches, TV appearances, YouTube videos abound with the 'expertise' of these haters.

Judge the output of these expert operatives. The content is always flawed. The truth is always hidden. But lies fly fast and loose.


uncle tungsten , Nov 23 2019 20:28 utc | 13
Booring topic, how is life in any other country. Is Duterte winning his war on dope peddlers?

I am sick of the mendacity of the USA circus. Is there any good news from another star?

RJPJR , Nov 23 2019 20:39 utc | 14
A bit of much needed parody:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaWeYqotUJs&list=PLYx4pXgdCwm4blkJrS5SnFCiGFnV1mByc&index=2

one of many by the same, if one keeps looking.

jayc , Nov 23 2019 20:43 utc | 15
Some people actually do believe this stuff, dependent on their partisan world view.

The IG report, which will outline abuses of the FISA system which appears to have authorized surveillance of Trump campaign by the FBI, is scheduled for release on December 9. The degree to which it will be damaging to the Russian collusion/hacking/sowing discord anti-Trump crowds was anticipated yesterday by the simultaneous publication by CNN and WaPo of assurances by unnamed "officials" that the report will not find anything but minor discrepancies. Getting out ahead of the story so obviously and more than a week in advance likely means the report will be damaging - although that may be just a Russian talking point.

@Lozion , Nov 23 2019 20:45 utc | 16
@12 Well said Red Ryder..
steven t johnson , Nov 23 2019 21:07 utc | 17
This is hilarious and a welcome return to sane!

But much as I enjoyed this, I still have to point out that if Ukrainian meddling was so important and their US consorts so treasonous, then Russian meddling was so important and *their* consorts so treasonous. You can't honestly have it both ways, either the Democrats' excusing Ukrainians or the Trumpists excusing Russia. Actually, you can't even honestly say you know either made any difference. No one sensible thinks either party meant to give aid and comfort to enemies of the US---the constitutional* definition of treason---unless you believe the US is justly in undeclared war with the rest of humanity. The only big difference is that it was Trump who openly asked for foreign assistance in a public speech. The only conclusion to draw from that is Trumpists are whiners who can dish it out but can't take it.

*The legalistic assholes who want to deny majority rule under shelter of the Electoral College on the fraudulent grounds that a technicality matters more really are against majority rule. Of course they also pretend that impeachment reverses elections. The cherry on top of this turd sundae? They would reject the 26th Amendment, which would have been invoked against Reagan as well as Trump (and possibly his original, Nixon, as well.) Pence is not even man enough to do his duty.

Jackrabbit , Nov 23 2019 21:20 utc | 18
RJPJR @14

Excellent!

Antoinetta III , Nov 23 2019 21:21 utc | 19
Jackrabbit @ 6

Why did the Hildabeast get the Steele Dossier as insurance if she was confident of victory?

For the same reason that a healthy person in their 20's or 30's, someone not in the least expecting to die for decades, purchases life insurance covering their family. Just "in case" the wildly improbable does indeed happen.

I can't see anyone who has a realistic chance of being elected president, let alone with the historic feat of being the first female president deliberately throwing all this away.

Antoinetta III

Paul Damascene , Nov 23 2019 21:25 utc | 20
No matter how often I'm brought to consider this, it still seems striking that 2 years and $40 million in US law fare waged by the Special Prosecutor is not enough to see Fiona Hill laughed out of chambers at her RussiaRussia harangue, whereas the NYT is able to establish an equivalent lack of foundation to the Ukraine meddling thesis in a thrice, notwithstanding rather substantial counter-evidence long in the public domain. Indeed the Grey Lady does not even try to debunk these claims, allowing herself instead to refer to them debunked. If you say so, apparently, or if you and your cohort say so often enough.

For any progressives still gaslighted by this, I invite you to consider a similar full-court legal, media, IC / Deep State campaign featuring most of the same actors, engaging next in the hobbling or destruction of a Bernie Sanders presidency.

Paul Damascene , Nov 23 2019 21:31 utc | 21
Psychohistorian @ 7:
"The US has the best government Russian influence has not bought."

Or, in a related formulation: The US has the best government that every source of influence not Russian will already have bought.

Paul , Nov 23 2019 21:40 utc | 22
Jackrabbit @ 6 and Antoinetta III @19:

Or the Steele Dossier was intended so much insurance as a cudgel to beat the fallen Donald, post-election loser, while he was down. This was the man whose most stirring electoral refrain was "lock her up." She and her masters would have had every reason to want to grind him into the dirt after beating him.

oldhippie , Nov 23 2019 21:47 utc | 23
@11&12

Fiona Hill studied Russian history with Richard Pipes, the Evil Empire man. Pipes is and was a laughingstock in academia. No one would study with him who had an actual interest in the supposed field of study. Being his protegé was simply a roll of the dice for a careerist. Hill also studied with a Ukrainian emigré named Szporlak. He was likely closer to awake during class than Pipes, who really was a very old fool while supervising Hill.

Condoleeza Rice notoriously wrote her dissertation about the postwar Czech military while having minimal ability in Russian and less in Czech. More likely it was simply ghostwritten. Full of egregious errors, placing Czech politicians at heart of action while they were actually teaching at University of Chicago.

steven t johnson , Nov 23 2019 22:04 utc | 24
Sorry, oldhippie, Pipes wasn't and is not a laughingstock in academia. He merely should have been. His son Daniel is doing the same in middle east studies and he's not a laughingstock either. It is hard to underestimate how little effect adhering to the basic scholarly standards can have in keeping out motivated reasoning, double standards, agendas, political servitude, etc. It is quite likely that Pipes has a better reputation than Stephen Cohen, J. Arch Getty or Sheila FitzPatrick. He certainly has a better reputation than a Mark Tauger.
oldhippie , Nov 23 2019 22:10 utc | 25
Pipes' classes at Harvard in 70s were a spectator sport. Come and see the Cold War fossil. Lectures routinely interrupted by gales of laughter. Yes, he had a comeback. No, no one has ever taken him or his 'scholarship' seriously. He simply happens to be useful. Daniel is just as bad.
rjp , Nov 23 2019 22:25 utc | 26
Paul @ 22, wrote: "She [Harridan Hillary] and her masters would have had every reason to want to grind him [Tweetie Bird] into the dirt after beating him."

I agree, but there was also the need to demonize Russia and V.V.Putin to lay the ground for the war against Russia. The campaign against Trump began in January 2016, launched by Brennan and the CIA, whose strumpet H.H. had been since back in Arkansas.

Already in July 2016, she was openly campaigning against V.V.P. There was ONE ( 1! ) foreign policy plank in her platform, and it was the no-fly zone over Syria. General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, testified before the United States Congress in mid-September 2016, on which occasion he was asked about the no-fly zone. He responded, promptly and unequivocally, that it would mean war with Russia.

If war with Russia had not been the objective, the Great Grey Whore would have used its position in New York to investigate Tweetie Bird and publish to the world, indeed, hammer to the world, the long grotesque story of his attempt to make a career in real estate, and the fraud he engaged in from the start. His string of bankruptcies was the most spectacular in the history of American business enterprise (this from somebody who has studied United States economic and financial history) instead of letting him constantly blather on about what a great businessman he was etc.

His father had him on the payroll when he was two, to the tune of $200,000, in order to pass wealth on to him without paying the very high gift tax. By the time his father died, he had made over to Tweetie Bird something in the neighborhood of $420 million. And Tweetie Bird squandered it all, plus the fabulous real-estate empire that his father had left him -- all gone...

In 2002, Tweetie Bird was over $3 billion (yes, BILLION) in debt to 72 banks in New York and no New York bank would give him a credit line, which he desperately needed to keep up his incessant refrain that money is no object for Donald Trump. So, he turned to the Russian oligarchs for whom he had been laundering money to generate cash flow. They gave him a credit line through the Cypriot banks that they controlled, and now they own him. They are his Russian connection, not V.V.P., who has been fighting the oligarchs since he first took office -- look at what V.V.P. did to Michail Khodokovski: ten years in the gulag (he's now living in Switzerland reduced to scraping by on the ten or so billion that he had squirreled away in Swiss banks).

Tweetie Bird owns NOTHING. Everything is in the name of the Trump Organization, to protect it from confiscation when the reckoning comes. And, since the T.O. publishes NOTHING about its affairs, it's reasonable to assume that he is in debt to his Cypriot banks, probably to the tune of five or six billion at this point, and that they hold liens on every piece of property he claims as his own.

Tweetie Bird is all about Tweetie Bird, exclusively. His pitch for détente with Russia was a classic case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason, to wit he intended to lift the sanctions if V.V.P. would round up the oligarchs who have Tweetie Bird over the barrel and pack them off to the gulag. However, in August 2017, Congress pulled the rung out from under him by reinforcing the sanctions and thus removing them from executive order purview and placing them under Congressional authority.

John-Albert Eadie , Nov 23 2019 22:28 utc | 27
Hilarious someone said. Really. The Russians would have to be superhuman geniuses to do half of what US 'Intelligence' says about them. It is transparently true, OTOH, that CIA and etc. are true clods and dolts. It's tautological really.
Ghost Ship , Nov 23 2019 22:48 utc | 28
Jackrabbit @ 6
My understanding is that Manafort was warned that his work was undermining USA efforts in Ukraine.

So what? Maybe Trump wanted to undermine the Washington Borg's efforts in Ukraine as they were counter to his principle foreign policy - cordial relations with Russia. Since Trump was very clear about this policy all through the election, he has every right to implement that policy regardless of what anyone opposed to him might think or try to do. It's one of the basic concepts of a democratic system (yeah, I am aware that the U.S. is a republic not a democracy, etc.) that the successful candidate should be able to implement any legal policy that was part of his manifesto.
As for Trump asking the Russians to look for Hillary Clinton's e-mails, it was a joke. Added to which it was a reference to the 30,000 "personal" e-mails that that idiot, Hillary Clinton, had managed to mislay and not the DNC and Podesta e-mails that were leaked by some unknown party to Wikileaks.
Taffyboy , Nov 23 2019 23:33 utc | 29
These low brow knuckle draggers know how to spin lies. Their useless parade of irrelevant nincompoops proves an ongoing campaign to demonize Russian people. We all see it here constantly on other blogs and MSN reports. These people know very well who their match is and cannot compete socially, on certain new military complexes, political maturity, etc. I offer Sergey Lavrov as a person not matched by any other nation. All western parasites in opposition pale in stature, political maturity, and brains. The Russians know what the deal is with these western crybabies, and know they are dealing with premature juveniles. These people show how weak they are by their actions and the Russians show patience. Oh, and that kayfabe word, Trump ..."be fake."... has much experience with it from his wrestling exposure. This farce has that written all over it, fake bullshit.

https://prowrestling.fandom.com/wiki/Kayfabe

GeorgeV , Nov 23 2019 23:43 utc | 30
I have been watching the Trump impeachment hearings farce on television over the past weeks and have heard enough BS by the so-called witnesses to fertilize the Sinai Desert. The real reason behind the hearings is not 'quid pro quo,' but 'cui bono' (who benefits). The parade of over-the-hill Cold War warriors has reinforced my belief that the impeachment hearings are essentially an attempt by the old Cold War guard to retain their privileges and positions of power in Washington. As for Ms. Fiona Hill, she is a prime example of the old dictum that states, "A Brit with an upper class accent reading the phone book sounds smarter to most Americans, than Abe Lincoln reading the Gettysburg Address.
karlof1 , Nov 24 2019 0:15 utc | 31
Macabre Comedy is the only appropriate descriptive term IMO. Russia is a very busy nation, every bit as busy as its leader VV Putin. Who within the Evil Outlaw US Empire's national government is even close to being Putin's equivalent? The vast majority are mere kindergarteners in comparison, Trump included. In case you've been asleep since 2007 or so, Putin and all of Russia are working their tails off to improve their nation and their comrades's wellbeing and in doing so have surpassed The Empire is qualitative military equipment, nuclear engineering, and a host of other areas, along with building several geoeconomic blocs of kindred nations to which the Empire can only answer with idiotic accusations and factless BigLie Media items.

If anything tells us how low the Evil Outlaw US Empire has sunk, it's this attempt to impeach a POTUS using bullshit for evidence. The would be emperor isn't the only one sans clothes--the entire imperial edifice is revealed as a scrawny, emaciated, traumatized waif that the curtain can no longer hide.

vk , Nov 24 2019 0:48 utc | 32
More 007 stuff on this Ukrainegate imbroglio:

Giuliani plays down Parnas link and repeats 'insurance' claim: Soviet-born go-betweens 'weren't James Bond'

Really?? , Nov 24 2019 2:26 utc | 33
Uncle Tungsten, @13

"Is there any good news from another star?"

As a matter of fact, there is, kinda.
Speaking of the fake news from Russia . . .
Spiegelonline has as story questioning the Browder version of the death (and role) of poor old Sergei Magnitsky:
https://www.spiegel.de/plus/russland-der-fall-magnitski-story-ohne-held-a-00000000-0002-0001-0000-000167093479

Headline: "How True Is the Story on Which the US Sanctions against Russia Are Based?"

Very good question!! Glad someone in the MSM is (finally) asking it . . .
"Mit seinen Aussagen zum Tod eines Whistleblowers brachte Bill Browder die Amerikaner gegen Putin auf. Doch seine Darstellung ist voller Widersprüche. Von Benjamin Bidder "

With his statements regarding the death of a whistleblower [Magnitsky was no such thing] Brill Browder [arch scumbag] stirred up the Americans against Putin. But his account is full of contradictions [you don't say].
And at Bidder's website in addition:
"Washington based its sanctions on Browder's account of Magnitsky's death."

Unfortunately the Spiegel story is behind a paywall. Perhaps someone here has a sub.

People here may recall that a very good documentary about the whole affair, "Behind the Scenes," made by Andrei Nekrasov, was buried in the USA but was available online. It is a great explanation of the scurrilous Browder and his role in getting the balling rolling in DC against Putin. Has great footage of Browder running away from cameras, men trying to serve subpoenas, and, in front of the camera, squirming-and-sweating-while-lying.

So it seems to me like good news if questions about Browder and his tale are raised in Der Spiegel---even though I haven't read the article.

Idland , Nov 24 2019 2:52 utc | 34
I have no argument with constitutional executive powers. I do have many arguments against Unitary Executive Theory. You can campaign on a policy and implement it once elected, but you can't use executive power with corrupt intent and claim immunity.
AntiSpin , Nov 24 2019 3:38 utc | 35
@ rjp | Nov 23 2019 22:25 utc | 26

I have been watching closely both the Trump and the Hillary misbehaviors for quite a while. Your post up above is, I think, the first string of assertions about the pair of them that I agree with without exception . As far as the activities that you covered in that post are concerned, you've got each of them nailed to a "T".

I hope we'll see further comments from you, that will exhibit the same degree of accuracy.

Richard , Nov 24 2019 8:11 utc | 36
The degree of dishonesty and blatant manipulation by the MSM has reached ridiculous levels. MSM journalists are not journalists, they are lying, evil peddlers of propaganda shilling for the military industrial complex; they are as blood-stained as the psychopathic elite that they so faithfully serve...they should be held responsible for their lies, up to and including prosecution for war crimes:

https://richardhennerley.com/2018/11/01/are-msm-journalists-war-criminals/

mk , Nov 24 2019 8:44 utc | 37

@Really #33

There is an article on telepolis (no paywall, in German) on the Spiegel piece, demasking the author Benjamin Bidder as someone who belatedly jumps on the bandwagon that others have set in motion, first and foremost the Russian filmmaker Andrej Nekrasov.


Quentin , Nov 24 2019 10:09 utc | 38
Really @ 33 Thanks for the reference to the Der Spiegel article questioning Magnitsky. Hij is absolutely ground zero of the whole Russia paranoia and Ukraine obsession. The US has lost all perspective: an insignificant place like Ukraine dominates its national and foreign policies while its own people have to pay the price.
Quentin , Nov 24 2019 10:19 utc | 39
Thanks mk @ 37. Sure Nekrasov investigated the Magnitsky story but his film was available to no one in the US and the EU in the standard outlets (TV, cinema, etc.). Der Spiegel is MSM as any MSM can be and it is then significant that the publication prints this article, even if Magnitsky and the anti-Russian mania he set in motion with the help of US politicians is still enigmatic. How can one man recruit the whole US political system to protect his personal wealth? Has a contributed to the campaign funds, Clinton Foundation, etc.?
Mina , Nov 24 2019 10:59 utc | 40
OT
The beggars and the saw-prince
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/356493/World/Region/US-and-France-vie-to-bolster-Gulf-security-at-Mana.aspx
uncle tungsten , Nov 24 2019 11:10 utc | 41
RJPJR #14

Thank you it made my day:
collusion blues is good

nietzsche1510 , Nov 24 2019 11:12 utc | 42
Hillary Clinton: "We better get to the White House if most of us do not want to end up at the lamp posts". O America, if you knew what these people are doing to the Americans----- after they got rid of president Kennedy.
uncle tungsten , Nov 24 2019 11:45 utc | 43
Really?? #33

Thanks heaps, always brightened up when I hear of Browder getting a flogging. You might enjoy this little spat:


Lt. Col. Vindman has shat in his shoe.

Even Ciaramella gets his name reproduced in one link.

uncle tungsten , Nov 24 2019 11:58 utc | 44
Ghost Ship #28

Thank you Ghost Ship, a timely reminder.

It is important to remember that Hillary Clinton as Sec of State transacted her entire computer communications operation on an unsecured server in a closet at her home. It was shared with the Clinton Foundation. It was never secured or in any way made available to the US Government IT security team.

Likewise she used unsecured phones.

That is what the problem was as that server would have been accessed by a number of state actors who would suspect some benefit might come their way if they peeked. A cinch for any state actor let alone a clever hacker.

Hillary Clinton is guilty of the single extreme national security breach in US history. And they are killing Assange to cover for her criminal treachery.

Bemildred , Nov 24 2019 12:00 utc | 45
Mina @40: A beggars banquet. A festival of corruption. I wonder when it will dawn on those needy greedheads that the Sauds are running on empty too ...
AnneR , Nov 24 2019 12:08 utc | 46
George @30

A minor point, true enough, but Fiona Hill does most definitely *not* have an ""upper class English" accent. (As a former Brit of English and working class origin, that is as apparent as could be.) Her accent is a much softened after many years away from her working class family origins in North-Eastern England - specifically, County Durham, and as many years trying to rid herself of those working class origins, taints there remains the local lilt to her diction.

Regarding her rank, stinking Russophobia - I would suggest that its origins were *not* from her background (her father was a coal miner) but rather from the fact that she spent her late teens and early adulthood under the Thatcher the Snatcher government and its deliberate ending of public ownership of basic services as it installed TINA - pure rapacious, plundering, mammon and moloch worshipping corporate-capitalism allied to imperialism.

Add to these likely background effects, the desire among some of those of working class origins who, on achieving a tertiary education have every intention of eschewing and disparaging their backgrounds and adopting wholeheartedly the worldview of the ruling elites. Not at all unusual, certainly in the UK.

Definitely totally distorted. Inaccurate (I doubt that she has ever spent much, if any, time in Russia with ordinary, working class Russians - ho no, too far down the ladder) and extremely partisan. Another Dem shill?

An aside: my late husband's friends are all highly educated and all (the American ones, anyway) glued to the impeachment hearings and gung-ho for them.... Education isn't all it's cracked up to be, clearly. (And For the record - I am very much anti-both parties.)

RJPJR , Nov 24 2019 12:09 utc | 47
Really?? @ 33 : thanks for reminding us about Andrei Nekrasov's "Behind the Scenes". The effort to bury it as well as the reaction (including -- especially? -- from among the Congresscritters) was an outstanding example of groupthink -- everybody move in lock-step with the prescribed belief and vilify, demonize those who dare to propose something different that contradicts the groupthink

Antispin @ 35, thanks for the compliment. I keep trying...

Glad some of you appreciated the parody. We need such cleverness. It is at the opposite end of the spectrum from groupthink, and it's a good antidote to the mind-numbing drivel of mendacious mainstream media.

AnneR , Nov 24 2019 12:19 utc | 48
In reply to Karlof1 - absolutely agree about the abilities of V. Putin and his team. If ONLY we had any government (had any akin to them over the past decades) as able, sensible, concerned about their country as Putin and his team clearly are, we'd be a peaceful, non-terroristic, economically more equal place. I would also include with V. Putin and his team, Xi and his government and the Iranian elected government - and Khamenei. Our lot are squealing, uneducated (in the true sense of the term) greedy, amoral children by comparison
RJPJR , Nov 24 2019 12:21 utc | 49
AnneR @ 46 wrote: "Education isn't all it's cracked up to be, clearly."

Education has both a very positive and a very negative dimension.

On the positive side is the socialization that puts one in touch with many people, most of whom, ideally, one would mot meet otherwise (not the least of whom are great teachers at all levels) and teaches one to get along with them. Also, on the positive side is learning: it saves one from constantly reinventing the wheel, so to speak, and gives a personal touch to imparted knowledge.

On the negative side is the lock-step conformity it can -- and more and more does -- impose on social mores. Also there is the transmission of the mindset and beliefs that Andrew Carnegie splendidly called the gospel of wealth (he was gung-ho for it, of course -- God made him rich because God wanted him to be rich...). Both of these are essential underpinnings to groupthink (which, by the way, was studied in depth at Yale University in the 1960s, and where it got it's name).

vk , Nov 24 2019 12:57 utc | 50
@ Posted by: AnneR | Nov 24 2019 12:08 utc | 46

There's a movie called "Billy Elliot", which takes place in the 1980s UK, that tells this story: the boy had a miner father and a miner older brother, with high class consciousness -- there's even a scene where they fight over one of the members who violated the strike and went to work.

But none of that matters of little Billy, as he wants to be a ballet dancer. The riot police, the strikes, all of that appears just as a background, the landscape, over which he and his best friend talk about wanting to do ballet.

The figure of Billy Elliot represents the transition in the UK from an industrial economy to a services one, and the transition of a social-democratic UK to a neoliberal UK.

Walter , Nov 24 2019 13:14 utc | 51
Many assume that "education" involves learning true things. There is reason for this assumption in engineering and math, as these actually involve logical proofs. However many professionals, presumably "educated" are ignorant of the basic science necessary for understanding and proving...pharmacists who are re-leaved of the obligation to, for example, ever take a chemistry class, or chemistry test. Thus the assumption is, well, not always valid. Other examples abound...look for a few. Ask, for example, the X-Ray technician a few questions about the physics of his job...

However the assumption fails entirely when one enters the bizarre realm of canonical myth...such as "history" or "political theory" or the Chicago School of Econ.

It is also often assumed that education involves teachers. I have not noticed that such people are, generally, of any value. Rather, the profession of teaching serves to park people who might upset matters in a place where they are under control and addicted to their paychecks, and serve up propaganda according to the rule.

And it is assumed that it involves a forum dedicated to what they call education, when in reality it is that forum where the process that binds takes place. The Toga, the Bath> "Hence, too, a liking sprang up for our style of dress, and the "toga" became fashionable. Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance, they called civilization, when it was but a part of their servitude." (Tacitus)

Think jeans and Hollywood, and propaganda.

One particularly egregious difference 'tween education is the exclusion of any formal study of Rhetoric and logic, with developed skill in these, as a basic prerequisite. Such matters are now generally ignored, and have been in the canonical syllabus of US "education" for, more or less, a century.

Now to the point> Why is that?

Piotr Berman , Nov 24 2019 13:35 utc | 52
AnneR @ 46 wrote: "Education isn't all it's cracked up to be, clearly."

Like with food, deprivation is bad, but content, the manner of serving etc. can have a variety of effects. Here we have an example of a narrower phenomenon, meritocracy. Somewhere I read that the imperial government of China had European guest and advisors who informed their host about certain advances in Europe like clock construction and improved cartography, but who also brought back information about the Chinese method of selecting officials on the basis of examinations. Initially, the English adopted civil service selected by examinations to rule India, and that worked so well that the system was extended for the government of England as well. Like in China, the key was to learn the wisdom of the classics. Of course, Confucius was replaced with Plato, Horace etc. Back in China, Confucius seems to be replaced by the study of the History of Chinese Communist Party -- obligatory regardless of the major.

However, what is outright sinister is the coupling of "narrative building" performed for intelligence/national security apparatus in USA and UK with academia. "Properly thinking" luminaries from top institutions of learning were recruited for the purpose, with Fiona Hill mentor being prime example. From what I understand, Richard Pipes left the position of the head of Russian and Slavic Studies at Harvard to be CIA consultant where he lead Team B to assess the intentions and capabilities of USSR. Unlike more realistic team A, Team B strongly exaggerated both sinister plans of USSR, basically suggesting that without heeding the constraints of MAD, they will attempt to subjugate the West, and the capabilities. Almost hiilariously, his team postulated that the symptoms of economic stagnation in USSR were faked to lull the West into complaisance. Recommendations of Team B were enthusiastically adopted by Reagan administration to justify acceleration of defense spending. Check "Team B" in Wikipedia. "I would say that all of it was fantasy. ... if you go through most of Team B's specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong." Needless to say, the theory of faked economic decline was absurd.

Lamentably, Pipes did not abandoned his teaching duties, and while he toiled as the head of Team B he was mentoring Ph. D. students including Fiona Hill.

Piotr Berman , Nov 24 2019 13:44 utc | 53
You can campaign on a policy and implement it once elected, but you can't use executive power with corrupt intent and claim immunity.

Posted by: Idland | Nov 24 2019 2:52 utc

You can use executive (and legislative, judiciary) power with corrupt intent and immunity, but you should not.

snake , Nov 24 2019 13:58 utc | 54
*The legalistic assholes who want to deny majority rule under shelter of the Electoral College on the fraudulent grounds that a technicality matters more really are against majority rule. Of course they also pretend that impeachment reverses elections. The cherry on top of this turd sundae? They would reject the 26th Amendment, which would have been invoked against Reagan as well as Trump (and possibly his original, Nixon, as well.) Pence is not even man enough to do his duty. by: steven t johnson @ 17 <=you might also be interested to know that these same types want to take control of all of the resources, all of the departments, all of the labor, and all of whatever else that exist in America so the USA can use them to conduct continuous war and manage the grey zone.. read on..

The white paper "Russian Strategic Intentions"[ https://cryptome.org/2019/07/Pentagon-Russia.pdf], caste its analysis of the future in terms of "competition and conflict" and presents, in its preface, a long list of those associated to the claim that the USA should use "all of its instruments of state power" in a comprehensive fashion, to manage grey area warfare, to promote elite interest in far away places, and to impose aggression (in environment, in economic activity, with influence campaigns, with paramilitary assault, with cyber intrusion, and with political warfare) as a defense to Russian grey zone global activities. What bull shit! no wonder Americans cannot understand Article II Presidents or the USA endangering Americans and their quality of life because the USA is involved in bombing, destructing and aggressing activities. The groups that wrote this report have decided they should decide for the American public, what the USA policy should be? I wonder what Americans would say about that?

Is it true that "Americans need go no further than think tanks and intelligence services supporting USA aggression in foreign lands, to find their enemies and to discover the cause of why their lot has been reduced to forth world peon status? Who in America allowed groups of the type that wrote this paper to decide, or even to think about deciding, for Americans what the USA should be doing? Why is not "war for ever, even when there is no war" the narrative debated by USA politicians competing to govern America? Governed Americans and governed Russians should build a stadium, outfit the personnel in Russian and USA governments, their think tanks and their intelligence services with uniforms, lock the two opposed teams in the stadium, and sell the TV rights to pay off the national debt of all of the nations of the world as these two teams as they fight it out to the last man, woman and paper tiger warrior.

Consider this fascinating assumption or projection => "Russia believes..there is no unacceptable or illegitimate form of deterrence, compellence, or escalation management(Goure).. [<= I cannot find in real life the continuum of conflict this group talks about?]. Like Russia's perception of its competition with the USA, its perception of conflict is dichotomous: one is either at war or not at war." I had no idea Russia could believe anything? Apparently think tanks supporting the USA; think Russia can think, and have concluded, as a result of their thoughts, that war exist, even when: there is no war? My USA cat jumped over the starry moon, while his Russian cow chased earthly rats? The so-called Russian grand (balance of powers) strategy vs whole of USA government liberal order management of the international grey zone => compels and escalates the USA, sez the report, to maintain a continuous state of war?
.. "Countering Russian provocations [<=competition maybe, but not provocation?] requires all instruments of USA national power, they say?" <=note: as long as not on American soil who cares?

Walter , Nov 24 2019 13:59 utc | 55
Piotr seems to agree with Walter. The general principle seems to be "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false" (Casey/ Honneger) and of course everyone must recall Clapper complaining about the Russians finding "fissures in our [US/CIA] tapestry" (one never hears the word "tapestry" in US English except, generally,in the phrase "tapestry of lies"...unless one is involved with curtains or one sort, or another...the term "Eiserner Vorhang" popularized by Churchill...that's a tapestry, ain't it?

If their lips move, they lie, friend. And do not look behind the green tapestry at the mighty Wurlitzer...

Walter , Nov 24 2019 14:19 utc | 56
Well, snake, the thalassocratic rule of the Anglosaxon diaspora into forward operating base (former republic) USA has evidently failed, and "they" now follow not the republic's laws, but the ukase of Imperial method. They have no other methods.

This was also the reason for England to start WW1. German industry and Ruski resources would (will/is/has) integrate(d) Heartland and create(d) a tellurocratic reality those Fine fella's down at the shop cannot abide.

Think of this as a loose connecting rod in a chevy motor...you know what's going to happen, but it's the only way to go...so you pretend it's ok...

All war is based on Deception.

Ant. , Nov 24 2019 14:27 utc | 57
@14

That was so beautifully sarcastic. A bit of good bass would have been nice for depth.

BM , Nov 24 2019 14:31 utc | 58
If US intelligence agencies are asserting that Ukraine meddling in the US election was a Russian operation, when in fact Ukraine did indeed heavily meddle in the elections, isn't that treason by the US intelligence agency officials concerned?
Walter , Nov 24 2019 14:55 utc | 59
" deny majority rule under shelter of the Electoral College on the fraudulent grounds that a technicality matters more really are..."

The US, formerly a Republic and remaining approximately Republican in institutional appearances and out-side form, has never been a democracy. It was not intended to be, though it had some democratic forms. ("Democracy" is without semantic value as it is used these days.)

That's not a trivial technical characteristic. It was intentional and basic. It's the lay of the Basic Law of the US since 1789 or so, and perhaps less so in the actual Basic Law c 1776...some claim the 1778 Law was not properly ratified...a sound argument once, eclipsed entirely by long custom, custom being the basis of all Law (and some Ukase).

Of course nowadays it's not even a Republic, more like an animated zombie largely under the incompetent control of several elite clubs, including foreign and also zionist and also financial clubs, which are in constant turmoil...because these clubs are running out of options.

When you are in a conflict set and run out of options, then you almost always lose...since everybody can see what you must do, and they themselves make plans to counter yours.

In this undertaking the Ruskis and the Chinese have preeminence.

It's already over... Soon they will realize that, and make deals.

............

BM, fair question about the Big T. It depends on who writes the History, curtain-makers or... At the present time Big T cannot exist, but...one may assume that the Russian Historians and the Chinese Historians will say "Big-T".

Ant. , Nov 24 2019 14:59 utc | 60
@54

"The legalistic assholes who want to deny majority rule under shelter of the Electoral College on the fraudulent grounds that a technicality matters more really are against majority rule."

You seem to advocating the concept of mob rule. Do you understand that a popular opinion is not necessarily a correct opinion?

Sasha , Nov 24 2019 15:34 utc | 61
Other important aspect of the Ukrainegate, which leads all the way to the Syriagate, of utmost importance for European security, since we are made aware that matters of security are directly in the hands of people strange, or in the way to be strange, to European interests and organzitions, keeping all European institutions hostage of the NATO military alliance´s interests, and which differs from the main point it is given here, that related to the meddling in US elections, as if that were what most matter...when it is the other way around, that the USUK complex meddles in each adn every aspect of Euroepan life, interests, prospects and security, underminig them all...

OSCE MONITOR IN UKRAINE IS BRITISH MILITARY AGENT MARK ETHERINGTON – HIS LAST JOB WAS FIGHTING IN SYRIA AGAINST THE ASSAD GOVERNMENT

Really?? , Nov 24 2019 16:08 utc | 62
Quentin 38
What does "Hij" mean?

Regarding Nekrasov/Film/MSM: Precisely.

I did watch that film when it was linked at an article about the whole affair at the Unz Review (now I think the Bitchute link is once again neutered). Before seeing this article I was virtually ignorant of the Magnitisky affair, scumbag Browder, and the putative affair's influence on American policy. Here is the UNz Review article, by Israel Shamir:
http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-good-fortune-of-mr-browder/?highlight=Browder

(sorry if not doing link properly)

It's a long story, which Shamir tells pretty clearly.
Kurz um, the American public was denied the chance to evaluate Browder's claims themselves by viewing the film. Truly, censorship at its most naked.

Bidder may be jumping on a bandwagon (and, I don't know what he actually writes!!) but Der Spiegel is 150% MSM, toeing the American line in most respects. So I do think even this headline is worth noting.

However, I have read a large portion of the Telepolis article and it should be read by anyone interested in Browder/Magnitsky. It is really a case study of an incredibly successful disinformation campaign. Which are only possible with active and passive collusion of many state and nonstate actors and of course the MSM media.
(Also, it looks as though Telepolis has been following this story in other articles that call out news organizations and EU entities for their complicity in pushing Browder's narrative and ignoring many counter-signs. Including canceling and otherwise burying Nekrasov's excellent film.)

Actually, the larger topic in light of the Russiagate and impeachment circuses being "clash of the titans' disinformation campaigns."

Here is Google translation of the Telepolis article headlined "Browder and the Magnitsky Narrative: End of a Disinformation Campaign?" by Florian Roetzer and dated today (again, apologies if I am violating a protocol):
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Browder-und-das-Magnitski-Narrativ-Ende-einer-Desinformationskampagne-4595245.html&prev=search ">https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Browder-und-das-Magnitski-Narrativ-Ende-einer-Desinformationskampagne-4595245.html&prev=search">https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Browder-und-das-Magnitski-Narrativ-Ende-einer-Desinformationskampagne-4595245.html&prev=search

steven t johnson , Nov 24 2019 16:14 utc | 63
oldhippie@25 The anecdotes about what the insiders kept secret is instructive. The gales of laughter did nothing to impair Pipes' academic reputation, nor were they meant to, I imagine. Being a respected academic means also being respected in government and in the media, which Pipes was. Team B and all that

Walter's babble about a Republic instead of a democracy is reactionary cant. The Constitution originally read that the electors would be in fact the electors, interposing against a majority to elect a responsible candidate, one determined to preserve the ruling class. In those times, that meant slavers, of course. But, in Washington's elections, Hamilton, concerned to prevent an inadvertent tie, intrigued to make sure John Adams got fewer electoral votes than the popular voting of the time required. Adams was irate. In Adams' own election, Hamilton supposedly tried to get the electors to switch votes so that a Pinckney of South Carolina was elected. (Adams was honest in pecuniary matters and rather intelligent, but he was something of a dingbat, which piety about the "Founding Fathers" refuses to admit.) Adams was even more furious. And Jefferson made political capital, swearing to all that his party's electors would vote the people's will. They did, and promptly created a constitutional crisis when Jefferson and Burr tied, throwing the election into the House. The intrigues aimed at overturning the people's will provoked talk of another revolution or the break up of the union.

The principle that electors are not agents to actually elect the president but mere cogs was established. It was affirmed by the incandescent fury of the Jacksonians at J.Q. Adams. And it was further confirmed when the contested election of 1876 again was loud with talk about uprisings. It was only the obscene withdrawal of troops from the South, protecting the Klan etc., that pacified the uproar. It was not until the political degeneration of the later years which lead the coward Gore to roll over. As mere agents of the popular vote, yes, the EC is a mere technicality. My guess is that Walter personally would sneer at a criminal defendant who relied on a technicality about their rights to get an acquittal. But the other Walters want to use a technicality to take away people's rights. Then they are so shameless as to pretend to virtue and wisdom.

As for the notion that the Electoral College is the enemy of the people's rights, instead of the states' right? In this thread there are idiots ranting about treason because of email server. If you want to see treason, look at the history of the Confederate States of America. That's treason. We have a national government, it's part of the constitution (14th Amendment is otherwise gibberish.) Thus, the Electoral College as a treaty compact between "sovereign" (semi-sovereign is not really a thing!) is also dead. The EC is just a technicality. Walter would implicitly have us believe that if the electors just picked someone else through conspiracy among themselves, then the President chosen would be the President because that's the Constitution, and that's just the way it is. Electors keeping faith with the people instead of their parties would have voted for the person who won the vote. And Walter wouldn't accept the result, no matter how much it followed the Constitution (which it would have!) because reactionary scum like Walter are always liars.

Ant. seems to think the minority of the good people should overrule the common peoples, aka the mob. It is doubtful Ant. would know the good people if they were in the same room. The assumption that Ant. is one of the good people is simply slavish adoration. Also, the only real meaning to "mob" is "collective noun for people rioting." An election is not a riot. This is slander by some whose rancid contempt for humanity at large should be directed first at Ant.

alaff , Nov 24 2019 16:26 utc | 64
V. Putin said that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but... American journalists, of course, are aware that this statement is unfounded, and, of course, is Russian disinformation. Because V. Putin said this.
Circe , Nov 24 2019 16:37 utc | 65
@60 Ant.
You seem to advocating the concept of mob rule. Do you understand that a popular opinion is not necessarily a correct opinion?

Gee! And here I was under the impression that THE MAJORITY of the people equals democracy. But because most Americans are nuts, Amerikkka, would be the exception to that rule.

By the same token, pretending the Electoral College equals democracy is also legitimizing the fact that a few married cousin crazies and evangelized bible thumpers from sparsely populated hicktowns and rednecks, and pretend gentry from the Confederacy have equal representation to the most populated states in the Union.

Let me though make a precise evaluation: Crazytown U.S.A. imposed karma Trump on the majority, because a big part of that majority betrayed liberal anti-war values to neoliberal peace equals war Nobel drone Obama and neoliberal hawk Killary cackling like a shrew at the Al-Qaeda gang slaughter of Gaddafi.

Now, Amerikka has a ZioCon for President that pardons and glorifies war criminals, that arms a proxy war committing starvation genocide, that steals oil resources from Syria, that wields economic tyranny against Venezuela and Iran for the purpose of regime change and control of foreign energy riches, that is meddling in Lebannon, Iraq and Latin American countries usurping the will of people, and who gives away territory in Syria and Palestine to Zionists not to mention his fascist takeover of the Judiciary and and total ignorance of the climate change threat.

So even though you're totally wrong on what democracy is, it doesn't matter, because Amerikkka's majority is getting exactly what it deserves for having betrayed and surrendered liberal values to Neocons like GWBush, Neolibs like Killary and all in service to Zionism and Zionists like Kissinger and billionaires like Saban and Adelson and the corporate sheisters on Wall Street.

Very few Americans have a mind of their own raised on the Zionist corporate media alphabet soup that scrambles the brain. So you're right, the majority, deserve the Trump karma imposed on them by the lowest crazy common denominator in Amerikkkan society promoted by the Electoral College and who are the most useful idiots of Zionist supremacy.

And then everyone wonders about the growing desperation manifested by mass tent cities, mass opiod consumption and mass incarceration. Amerikka is occupied and Trump is the enforcer of the occupier.

Now try and find a more precise observation of the truth.

AK74 , Nov 24 2019 17:11 utc | 66
America is an insane asylum that masquerades as the "world's leading democracy."

This country is truly unhinged and lives in its own Orwellian reality. The Ukraine/impeachment issue is only symptomatic of this broader pathology.

For the USA, it doesn't make a difference what actual reality is. What matters is that America defines what counts as reality itself--not matter how ludicrous or fake it is.

As a former high-level Bush Regime openly admitted in an interview with journalist Ron Suskind:

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

This American mentality is most evident in the USA's sociocidal wars of aggression around the world and the lies that America peddles to pimp for its wars--as well as its political balkanization, regime change, or destabilization campaigns that it dresses up as"pro-Democracy"(TM) movements:

Mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq

The fake War on Terrorism

The bogus War on Drugs

Humanitarian Intervention, or the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine

Freedom and Democracy

All-American Lies....

Americans truly are the people of the Big Lie.

There should be a Cordon Sanitaire placed around the United States (and its crime partners/allies) to prevent this American plague from infecting the rest of the word.

I'll be Reeferee , Nov 24 2019 17:14 utc | 67
@54 snake "Governed Americans and governed Russians should build a stadium, outfit the personnel in Russian and USA governments, their think tanks and their intelligence services with uniforms, lock the two opposed teams in the stadium, and sell the TV rights to pay off the national debt of all of the nations of the world as these two teams as they fight it out to the last man, woman and paper tiger warrior."

That's awesome! I was just listening to Devo's 1981 New Traditionalists album the other day, and while I put it on to listen to "Beautiful World" ("It's a beautiful world, for you...not me!"), the following song is "Enough Said" and these are the great lyrics:

"Take all the leaders from around the world
Put them together in a great big ring
Televise it as the lowest show on earth
And let them fight like hell to see who's king

Gather up the pieces when the fight is done
Then you'll find out living really can be fun

Enough said!"

You can find in youtube - too apropos to not share.

Curtis , Nov 24 2019 17:20 utc | 68
Jackrabbit 6
"took the black vote for granted"
So very true. Team HRC must have thought they could flip states like Pennsylvania by taking the cities just like BHO did. Instead the states "deplorables" were dismissed. BHO did the same but he had the cities in his pocket. But in today's PC hypocrisy, you can't point to race as being a major factor.
Schmoe , Nov 24 2019 17:22 utc | 69
Really? @62
That link just leads to a blank German to English Google translator for me (Firefox user). Could you post highlights?
Curtis , Nov 24 2019 17:23 utc | 70
psychohistorian 7
These NGOs and other organizations have an added influence on our politics. For some reason the MSM doesn't mention them much. It's like the White Helmets. Search for their history at YouTube and you get the official obfuscation. But toss in Purpose and AVAAZ and you find more.
Walter , Nov 24 2019 17:27 utc | 71
@ STJ #63> who wrote, inter alia> "reactionary scum like Walter are always liars." et sec

Many thanks, Friend. As no doubt all here are well-aware, the resort to ad hominem occurs when the speaker has no actual argument.

I am obliged. Glad you agree with Walter, and also very glad you do not like that...your inner-conflict may be part of the dialectic. I hope it works out for you, Steve.

see, if you like, McHenry,"The American Historical Review", vol. 11, 1906 p 618

Circe , Nov 24 2019 17:47 utc | 72
Here's another bull's eye observation: it's more efficient and cunning to manipulate through social media tech-savvy means and other localized machinations the really susceptible, dumb, but important groups in swing states made powerful by the Electoral College than to tackle the opinion of the urban majority with a few critical articles and the appearance of a pay-off ledger. Besides, the entirety of Europe was critical of candidate Trump. The criticism of Trump was not specfic to Ukraine alone. So either the meddling was based on a vast conspiracy of criticism or it was based on a campaign of targeted populist propaganda directed at the right and working class together with a perfectly-timed leak that the DNC was sabotaging Sanders cleverly meant to turn part of the left base against the Dem Party. I say the latter.

Now don't try to convince me that Ukraine would meddle to turn the left base of the Democratic side against Hillary when Ukraine preferred her. That logic just don't fly.

The question to ask is. Who had the unlimited financial resources, political connections and tech savvy to pull the meddling off? I'll give you some clues: it's the usual suspect, starts with Z and it's mostly based in Israel, the U.S. AND in the Russian oligarchy.

Trump is the Chosen Zionist President and there's nothing more to look at here. The Ukraine and Russia factors are superfluous and moot to that over-arching FACT.

Really?? , Nov 24 2019 17:48 utc | 73
Piotr 52

The most important thing is to learn to read and write.
Rhetoric and logic are important to follow after.
The basis of my comment is that I am currently reading Frederick Law Olmstead's The Cotton Kingdom.
Fascinating. Unvarnished look at the antebellum South. There was a lot of variation among states and communities. but the basics remain the same (he covers a very wide territory, both geog. and intellectually and makes very detailed observations of all that he encountered).
A huge factor (per FLO) in the mental, psychological, intellectual, economic etc impoverishment of the South was a lack of any cultural institutions, people lived too far apart to hire any kind of teachers, of course the slaves were virtually all of them also uneducated. but in, say, South Caroline 25% of the whites also could not read or write or do elementary sums.

As adults we all have the responsibility to (continue to) educate ourselves. I get nervous when I hear people putting a pox on education per se. There are no guarantees when human beings invent or are given various types of tools. Trying to win the argument by withholding the provision or preventing the acquisition of tools sounds akin to considering people "uppity" for using the intellectual tools they possess.

Walter , Nov 24 2019 17:52 utc | 74
@uncle tungsten | Nov 24 2019 11:58 utc | 44 (the email affair and server)

Assume that the Bruce-Partington Submarine plans (Y'all know yer Holmes?) are under control of Billary Jones, a senior official in an Imperial State. Billary needs money and has guilty secrets. He's being blackmailed by Oberstein, a spy.

Jones then accidentally leaves the plans where Oberstein sees and photographs them.


Hi there Stevie...conflict is debilitating, eh? Find the Franklin quote yet? He was there, and you? But I assume you haven't even realized it wuz Bennie F. Best o' luck.
(apologies to Conan Doyle)

Really?? , Nov 24 2019 18:11 utc | 75
69 Shmoe
Sorry about link not working. Esp since it was so long.
I usually activiate Google translate from a Google hit. But
I think you can also activate Google translate from the original webpage. This link pasted into a new window (the URL space) did get me to the translation:
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Browder-und-das-Magnitski-Narrativ-Ende-einer-Desinformationskampagne-4595245.html&prev=search ">https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Browder-und-das-Magnitski-Narrativ-Ende-einer-Desinformationskampagne-4595245.html&prev=search">https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Browder-und-das-Magnitski-Narrativ-Ende-einer-Desinformationskampagne-4595245.html&prev=search

In case that still does not work, type the title into your browser and then "translate." If you use Google you should get a hit that shows the German title with "translate this page" to the right.

Here is the title:
"Browder und das Magnitski-Narrativ: Ende einer Desinformationskampagne?"

Another way is to type "Google Translate German to English" into your browser. You get a page with a box for German text on the left and English translation on the right.

There are 99 comments so far and a few posters are scratching their heads about what Der Spiegel is up to with this apparent 180. So it might be interesting to paste a few of them into Google translate. Here is one:
"What is going on at the mirror (Spiegel)? Since the well-established narrative has been cultivated about the mean Russians since the founding and has been shown to 100% transatlantic loyalty, now suddenly something like that. Is this just an accidental slip of reason or is there more behind it?"

Google translate does make mistakes, beware. A typo can lead to absurdity.

Circe , Nov 24 2019 18:14 utc | 76
Oh, and one more salient, obvious fact in the form of a question: Why would the biggest and worst Neocon, Zionist shill in Congress, Lindsey Graham risk his dignity to such an extreme to rescue Trump's ass if Trump were not the Chosen Zionist President??? ... I'm waiting...10, 9, 8...

Lindsey is the barometer of who and what Zionists want and because they want Trump over Biden, Lindsey is now at war with his former Dem friend. Lindsey's a loyal subject of Zionism that butters his bread and that's why he'll do anything to protect Trump.

Per , Nov 24 2019 18:37 utc | 77
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 24 2019 11:10 utc | 41

The parody projects best is "Battle Hymn of the Republic - Modified for Relevance imho.

Circe , Nov 24 2019 19:09 utc | 78
I hear crickets in response to my question @76. I'll take that as a sign that you agree Trump is Chosen by Zionists from day one and for 4 more years.

You just can't deny the whole truth. To do so is a fool's errand.

Erelis , Nov 24 2019 19:32 utc | 79
Amazing really. Back some 3-4 years ago, the wiley Russians looked into the future to understand that they needed to blame the Ukrainians for interfering in the election. They predicted that deep state actors would reveal that Trump would in fact strong arm the Ukrainians into revealing dirt on Joe Biden.

As for the teaching of classical Rhetoric and Logic. Absolutely. Give people the tools to understand arguments and their validity. One of the best books I had and which I stupidly lost was a compendium of rhetorical devices as labeled in the original Latin and Greek by drunk monks of the Medieval Europe. It was just amazing how these rhetoricians drew up a taxology of the various techniques and tropes--from honest to dishonest. A great toolkit.

pogohere , Nov 24 2019 20:12 utc | 80
Really @75
"What is going on at the mirror (Spiegel)? Since the well-established narrative has been cultivated about the mean Russians since the founding and has been shown to 100% transatlantic loyalty, now suddenly something like that. Is this just an accidental slip of reason or is there more behind it?"

Something to do with gas? Going east?

Schmoe , Nov 24 2019 20:17 utc | 81
@ Really?
Thanks. It finally worked; perhaps using Chrome helped.
Walter , Nov 24 2019 20:29 utc | 82
@ Erelis | Nov 24 2019 19:32 utc | 79 There was once a defrocked Jesuit (with tenure at a major university) who taught sodomy to the choir and rhetoric to his friends and those whom he thought might be. He also favored snow... But...as you say, the original Latin and Greek. A good man, but a pervert, and not a pederast. I liked the guy, and he knew his subject, ah, the academic subject, to near perfection. He wrote speeches on the side for major political figures, for cash. Thus in part did my own inability to suspend disbelief become cemented. For money? Good thing they caught him...oh yeah, his popness also runs a cash an' carry, don't he? Well, somebody said... (Like Martin Luther?)

Anyway the reason to study rhetoric is that it shall be used against you. Knowing the Science and Art is your only safe defense, your only warning of true intent by rhetorical analysis and logical deduction matching real events and actions. Without Rhetoric you are a chump, a mark, a fool, and like sheep. Ewe! (haha) With it you can form reasoned ideas about the future intention of any speaker. This may be useful.

Piotr Berman , Nov 24 2019 20:38 utc | 83
The first test (since 2014) of any expert's credentials is his/her position on Crimea. The next test is on Russian aggression.
If anyone suggests Crimea does not belong to Russia (most especially the federal district of Sevastopol), then they are ignorant or lying.

Posted by: Red Ryder | Nov 23 2019 19:53 utc

I think that Red Rider is wrong here, starting from assumptions. One assumption is that rather than status quo 1-5 years before the time we are making a judgment, we should look back ca. 200 years etc. That could imply that India should belong to United Kingdom, subsequent treaties notwithstanding.

Even more wrong is the hidden assumption that there should be some general principles that guide "us" as to who owns what (they actually exist but wait) that hold regardless of "Washington consensus". Perhaps using lower case in "us" was misleading. History explains the ethnic and linguistic composition of Crimea etc. but really, everybody agrees the it is not the only determinant. But let us consider some cases:

Annexation of Tuva and Sikkim. Somehow, nobody cares.

De-facto annexation of North Cyprus which now operates as a quasi-independent state fully dependent on Turkey. Locals and Turks are satisfied, the rest of NATO and perhaps UN does not recognize legality, but apart of Greek speaking countries, nobody makes a big deal out of it. Sanctions? Hehe.

Annexation of Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. Universal mild disapproval, except for USA -- wholehearted approval there.

Crimea. Total need to apply severe sanction forever to maintain faith in "our" principles.

karlof1 , Nov 24 2019 21:44 utc | 84
Cynthia Chung invaded my brain and wrote the short essay that's been on the tip of my tongue for some months now, "On Churchill's 'Sinews of Peace'" . Within its body is linked two extremely important items, the first being Elliott Roosevelt's book about his father Franklin As He Saw It (available limited preview at link), and the second being an excerpt from that book of paramount importance .

The more well known name of Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" speech is "The Iron Curtain Speech" given at Fulton, Missouri on 5 March 1946, not quite 11 months after FDR's passing. Here is the opening appetizer from that speech Chung bases the rest of her essay upon:

"This threatening message was not only meant for the Soviets, but was also directed to the Americans and in between the lines Churchill stated ' Things are going to be very different from now on. Your dead president cannot protect you any longer .' Some may be surprised to hear such an aside comment, more likened to the outer ruminations of Shakespeare's Iago." [My Emphasis]

Things did immediately become different. I consistently point out that the Evil Outlaw US Empire immediately began violating the UN Charter and thus its own Constitution and Law of the Land upon its coming into force; however, what I've neglected to point out until now is that the UK also began violating it just as immediately as did France, although neither has anything similar to the US Constitution's Supremacy Clause that might be used to curb illegal behavior. I often point to historical What Ifs? as in this case regarding the coup made against Henry Wallace, FDR, and the wholesale overturning of the reasons given for waging the war and winning the peace. Ms. Chung does an excellent job of highlighting what those were, how they were smashed, and why. I really can't stress the great importance of her essay enough; its educational importance is second to none! Read it, save it, make sure its read by your entire family, take it to your kid's teachers, share it with everyone you know and those you don't. The only people I can conceive of who wouldn't want to know its contents are racists/imperialists--dare I say fascists--like Churchill. Three generations of people were subjected to a geopolitical power play that never should have occurred--the deaths, destruction, and wasted opportunities likely total in the Quadrillions of Dollars. I must admit some admiration for Chung's an optimist as she clearly shows in her conclusion; my adding it here in no way diminishes her essay's power and importance:

"The intended policies by Franklin D. Roosevelt for the post war world are still waiting to be implemented today.

"So what can we the people do about this? We can wake up to the fact that this has occurred and recognise that the mainstream presentation of world dichotomy today is just continuing this sickly narrative. That Russia and China are not some monstrous race and that we should weigh what is currently being offered as an olive branch with great and serious reflection. That is namely the Eurasian Economic Union and the New Silk Road which also applies immensely to the US.

"Let us not continue to remain shackled in despair and inaction but rather realise that there is a great opportunity still for the Century of the Common Man."

Erelis , Nov 24 2019 23:19 utc | 85
@Walter

Anyway the reason to study rhetoric is that it shall be used against you. Great story by the way.


Indeed.

steven t johnson , Nov 25 2019 3:31 utc | 86
Walter confirms being a liar when paragraphs of argument are miscalled "inter alia," then ignored. The snide insult by the way functions as a fallacious ad hominem, doubly confirms thatif Walter knows rhetoric, then Walter is doubly a liar. Last and least citing a 1906 volume of American Historical Review to someone who doesn't have university library access is a snob's rudeness. I'm defeated by the puzzle of what Walter thinks Walter has to be snobby about. A collection of American Historical Review isn't exactly nothing, but to get snobby over it? Really?

[Nov 25, 2019] Waht is the motivation behind the rabid Russophobia of the American neo-liberals and neocons

Notable quotes:
"... "...it is quite possible that the historically well-informed neocons are merely longing for the good old Bolshevik days in Russia." ..."
"... Neocons resurrect tribal memories to fan the flames ..."
"... Imo Vindman's testimony revealed a 'personal' grudge against Russia. Hill also displayed a 'obsession' with Russia imo..... its interesting her Russian instructor at Harvard was Richard Pipes, the supreme Russian hater. ..."
"... Perhaps you should consider the influence of Ukrainian emigre groups/lobbies. They are essentialy an extension of the Galician movement you refer to. ..."
"... Machiavelli warned repeatedly of the baleful results that listening to exiles gets you into (specifically concerning attempts to reinstate some exiles in the place they came from), George Washingtons farewell adress can be read in a similiar way. Here is the thing with exiles: ..."
"... Lets pretend that Atlantis exists, but 98% of Americans do not particularly care about this country. Now something happens there that genereates exiles. If those exiles are at least somewhat savy, they will passionately argue that the current atlantean government is pure evil. Other then that, they will strive to make themselfs usefull to the host nation. Now, lets pretend that you have 5 such atlantean exiles in a group of 100 politicians. The atlantean exiles would care primarily about condeming the atlantean government, and may be in a position to deliver political points in other areas to anyone who is asking. A normal "I dont care about Atlantis" politican will see a fairly simple cost benefit thing, I condemn Atlantis, something about which I do not care at all, and in return the exiles will back something I care about, like my health policy. ..."
"... This is by no means a rapid development, but give it a couple of decades and the exchange of many such small favors will essentially result in a large group of politicians who will underwrite things like "Atlantis delenda est", mostly because they dont actually care about Atlantis. ..."
"... I don't know why this campaign against Russia was launched but at least part of it was domestic political pressure from Clinton Dems towards Trump Reps. What better way to deflect criticism about the foreign influences on the Clinton Dems (massive bribes from the usual suspects, either direct or via the Clinton Fdn.) but by accusing your opponent of being in the pay of foreign powers? ..."
"... Hillary Clinton shrieking about "Russia Wikileaks" seems to me to be pure projection and also rationalising a cause for her defeat other than the incompetence and corruption of her campaign. ..."
"... Also it seems to me that the Russian defeat of the regime change op in Syria (altho the situation seems rather fluid at the moment...) is another motivation where Israel's interests loom large. ..."
"... A grandfather and great grandfather were in a Union regiment but that hardly is proof that I am a Union man. Unusual family demographics to be sure but even then those Ukrainians served in that SS unit over 70 years ago. I doubt they were even then motivated by National Socialist ideology. Hatred of Russians was likely the primary motivation, as now. The German invasion was an opportunity to settle scores. ..."
"... I understand the hatred but not the application of "Nazi" to any Ukrainian thinking. If "Nazi" merely connotes "thuggish" then perhaps that explains the Azov formations but I suspect much more is at work. Additional inquiry is warranted. ..."
"... Many of those in the Ukrainian SS units ended up in Canada after WW2, resulting in the very pro Ukranian actions of the Canadian Government post 2014. Their FM, Christina Freeland, is a descendant. ..."
"... After the fall of the Former Soviet Union in 1991, saw a resurgence of the OUN. ..."
"... The Ukrainian Nazi formations and political factions openly call themselves Nazis. For that matter, everyone else called them Nazis too, at least before they became useful to the neocons. I'll spare everyone an explanation of Ukrainian diaspora culture, but I will say that, before WWII, the principal Ukrainian nationalist folk devil wasn't Russia. It was Poland and the Jews. ..."
"... Could the anti Russia bias be as simple as the need to protect the empires of people in State and Defence etc that would be no longer needed if Russia was a 'good' guy? ..."
"... Then there is the MIC and the lobbying flows of money into Congress.Russia is far too important to too many insiders to be anything but an enemy. ..."
"... As pointed out earlier - the military industrial complex needs a Big Enemy to justify its exorbitant budgets. The Deep State, the Borg, the Blob, whatever you want to call it, needs a Big Enemy to justify its spying and increasingly blatant interference in domestic US politics. ..."
"... the Russian nation is greatly under populated and owns a staggering per cent of the planets natural resources of every description. envy by those look from the outside towards russia is alone sufficient justification for wanting to grab it for themselves as has been unsuccessfully tried for centuries. ..."
"... The irony, of course, is that in Jewish folk memory, the most pig-headed (pun intended) and virulent anti-Semites were the peasants of Galicia (western Ukraine) and Poland. ..."
"... I also share your bafflement and not just with the political positions of the likes of Victoria Nuland. What do US & UK hope to gain? I can't see any benefits. ..."
Nov 25, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

PavewayIV , 25 November 2019 at 12:54 AM

Giraldi suggests, "...it is quite possible that the historically well-informed neocons are merely longing for the good old Bolshevik days in Russia." That aligns more readily with neocons' (and their oligarch supporters') psychopathic obsession with power and control via the state. Giraldi also illustrates another more recent period in history when the neocons were not decidedly anti-Russian:
In fact, the neocons got along quite well with Russia when they and their overwhelmingly Jewish oligarchs and international commodity thieves cum financier friends were looting the resources of the old Soviet Union under the hapless Boris Yeltsin during the 1990s. Alarms about the alleged Russian threat only re-emerged in the neocon dominated media and think tanks when old fashioned nationalist Vladimir Putin took office and made it a principal goal of his government to turn off the money tap.

From Giraldi's article on Global Research: Hating Russia Is a Full-Time Job."Who is Driving the Hostility towards Russia?"
Neocons resurrect tribal memories to fan the flames

There was no monolithic 'Jewish Oligarch' club cashing in on Yeltsin's Russia. In the broadest sense, the western neocon-friendly Russian-Jewish oligarch group(s) were booted out by Putin, while rival group(s) stayed in Russia and submitted to Putin's reforms (whatever that means). Saker has written in the past about the various Jewish oligarch factions in Russia. It's complicated and beyond me.

Israel Shamir attempts to untangle the contradictory views on Ukraine from the State of Israel, Ukrainian-Jewish oligarchs, neocons and Jews from the US, Ukraine and Russia:

The Fateful Triangle: Russia, Ukraine and the Jews

Summary: 'Tribal' oversimplifies - no unified opinion. It's complicated. Mr. Shamir's views seem reasonable and go a long way to explaining the contradictions to me.

Andrei Martyanov (aka SmoothieX12) -> PavewayIV... , 25 November 2019 at 09:11 AM
Giraldi suggests, "...it is quite possible that the historically well-informed neocons are merely longing for the good old Bolshevik days in Russia."

I have a great deal of respect for Phil Giraldi but he is wrong here--it has nothing to do with "Bolshevism", whatever that means in the American context, but with settling accounts with 1930s purges of largely, not exclusively, Jewish Trotskists from the party and a consistent anti-Zionist position of USSR till the every end. Now, with Russia effectively de-fanging Israel, they go apoplectic. Modern neocons have zero relation to Bolshevism and if they dream about anything--it is mostly have Russia gone as such.

catherine , 25 November 2019 at 01:36 AM
''A question for me is the motivation behind the antipathy of the American neo-liberals and neocons toward Russia. There are a lot of Jews scattered among these groups. .... Or, do these people see Russia as a plausible geopolitical rival for the US? Surely it cannot be as simple, or simpleminded as that.''

Jews have next to zero political control in Russia and I do think that the Zionist see Russia, as the only other superpower, as a hindrance to their aims for one thing.
Also any state where Jews 'lost out' is subject to vilification and branded as evil.

Imo Vindman's testimony revealed a 'personal' grudge against Russia. Hill also displayed a 'obsession' with Russia imo..... its interesting her Russian instructor at Harvard was Richard Pipes, the supreme Russian hater.

As for the non Jewish Neos what would they do without a big scary enemy to fight?...they might have to actually concentrate on doing things for America.

If anyone is interested here is a nice tool for following congressional bills and etc.. Mostly good for counting all the money they are giving away and the sanctions on countries they are demanding....they aren't doing much of anything else in congress if you don't count the kangaroo court circus.

https://fmep.org/resources/?rsearch=&rcat%5B%5D=345
Legislative Round-ups
1. Bills, Resolutions, & Letters 2. Hearings 3. On the Record

Factotum , 25 November 2019 at 02:06 AM
How odd on PBS tonight - 'Secrets of Her Majesty's Secret Service" - an inside look at the worlds only defense against Russia -a love letter to M16 and it nearly 100 year "special relationship" with the US and CIA.

What strange timing for such a calculated PR piece for an extremely publicity shy Five Eyes operation. Were they trying to get ahead of the coming Russiagate investigation reports with this engaging documentary - we are in fact the James Bonds of the world and we know you Americans love James Bond.

Anyone else see it or have I gotten aa sinister cabal derangement syndrome behind even PBS "friendly" documentaries?

Paco , 25 November 2019 at 03:15 AM
It is plain to see, sour grapes after losing the great and possibly only opportunity for doing a Yugoslavia on the Russian Federation.
Mathias Alexander , 25 November 2019 at 03:23 AM
"A question for me is the motivation behind the antipathy of the American neo-liberals and neocons toward Russia"
Perhaps you should consider the influence of Ukrainian emigre groups/lobbies. They are essentialy an extension of the Galician movement you refer to.

" Is it Russia's relentless persecution of homosexuals?" What's the evidence for this persecution?

A.I.S. , 25 November 2019 at 04:18 AM
My 2 cents:

Essentially, when both 2 persons as contrary to each other as George Washington and Niccolo Machiavelli agree on something, it behoves one well to listen.

Machiavelli warned repeatedly of the baleful results that listening to exiles gets you into (specifically concerning attempts to reinstate some exiles in the place they came from), George Washingtons farewell adress can be read in a similiar way. Here is the thing with exiles:

Lets pretend that Atlantis exists, but 98% of Americans do not particularly care about this country. Now something happens there that genereates exiles. If those exiles are at least somewhat savy, they will passionately argue that the current atlantean government is pure evil. Other then that, they will strive to make themselfs usefull to the host nation. Now, lets pretend that you have 5 such atlantean exiles in a group of 100 politicians. The atlantean exiles would care primarily about condeming the atlantean government, and may be in a position to deliver political points in other areas to anyone who is asking. A normal "I dont care about Atlantis" politican will see a fairly simple cost benefit thing, I condemn Atlantis, something about which I do not care at all, and in return the exiles will back something I care about, like my health policy.

This is by no means a rapid development, but give it a couple of decades and the exchange of many such small favors will essentially result in a large group of politicians who will underwrite things like "Atlantis delenda est", mostly because they dont actually care about Atlantis.

This is not a specifically US thing at all. My understanding is that Russias WW1 decision to back Serbia was considerably influenced by a group of ethnically serbian/Montenegrin advisors (who, one has to say were otherwise loyal to Russia, and had fought with distinction in the Tsars wars, shedding their blood for Russia).

Babak Makkinejad -> A.I.S.... , 25 November 2019 at 10:56 AM
Affinity for Serbia has older antecedents. I think it was rooted in the common struggle against Muslim powers in earlier centuries.
divadab , 25 November 2019 at 06:12 AM
I don't know why this campaign against Russia was launched but at least part of it was domestic political pressure from Clinton Dems towards Trump Reps. What better way to deflect criticism about the foreign influences on the Clinton Dems (massive bribes from the usual suspects, either direct or via the Clinton Fdn.) but by accusing your opponent of being in the pay of foreign powers?

Hillary Clinton shrieking about "Russia Wikileaks" seems to me to be pure projection and also rationalising a cause for her defeat other than the incompetence and corruption of her campaign.

Also it seems to me that the Russian defeat of the regime change op in Syria (altho the situation seems rather fluid at the moment...) is another motivation where Israel's interests loom large.

It also seems to me to be stunningly stupid to have thrown away any potential alliance with Russia in favor of promoting Wahabist scum. And forcing Russia into the arms of the Chinese instead of recruiting them into the containment cordon.

Anyway, speaking as a denizen of Plato's cave, without direct knowledge of the reality of the thing it's mostly educated guesses on my part...

turcopolier , 25 November 2019 at 08:13 AM
J
A cabinet officer who thinks he can bargain with the president is too stupid to hold office. POTUS is not first among equals. This is not the UK.
Richard Ong , 25 November 2019 at 08:29 AM
A grandfather and great grandfather were in a Union regiment but that hardly is proof that I am a Union man. Unusual family demographics to be sure but even then those Ukrainians served in that SS unit over 70 years ago. I doubt they were even then motivated by National Socialist ideology. Hatred of Russians was likely the primary motivation, as now. The German invasion was an opportunity to settle scores.

I understand the hatred but not the application of "Nazi" to any Ukrainian thinking. If "Nazi" merely connotes "thuggish" then perhaps that explains the Azov formations but I suspect much more is at work. Additional inquiry is warranted.

And I still have no idea what "neoliberal" means.

JohninMK said in reply to Richard Ong... , 25 November 2019 at 10:09 AM
Many of those in the Ukrainian SS units ended up in Canada after WW2, resulting in the very pro Ukranian actions of the Canadian Government post 2014. Their FM, Christina Freeland, is a descendant.
prawnik said in reply to JohninMK... , 25 November 2019 at 10:53 AM
Folks like Freeland openly credit her SS grandfather for her ideology. When speaking in public, she does then to conveniently omit his services to the national Socialist state.
J -> Richard Ong... , 25 November 2019 at 10:40 AM
Try Stephan Bandera, he was as bad of a figure as what the Russians accused him of being. Bandera's legacy was that of a Nazi sympathizer and a real nut case too boot. He was one sick twisted individual.

After the fall of the Former Soviet Union in 1991, saw a resurgence of the OUN. These Russian hating individuals that composed the far-right Nazi resurgence in the Ukraine government, started terrifying the Russian enclaves in the Crimea, and those enclaves in turn called on their fellow Russian brothers in Russia for help, to which Putin and the Russian military came to their aid and the annexation of the Crimea by Russia took place so as to protect the Russian enclaves from further persecution by the Banderites. Bandera posters became more and more prevalent. The Euromaidan protests turned more and more violent, the wolfsangel that was formerly a symbol of the SS but was now taken up by the Azov Battalion and other militias, the old OUN war cry of "Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes" that was now ubiquitous among anti-Yanukovych protesters.

Here's some further reading regarding Stephan Bandera:


https://cup.columbia.edu/book/stepan-bandera-the-life-and-afterlife-of-a-ukrainian-nationalist/9783838206844


prawnik said in reply to Richard Ong... , 25 November 2019 at 10:52 AM
The Ukrainian Nazi formations and political factions openly call themselves Nazis. For that matter, everyone else called them Nazis too, at least before they became useful to the neocons. I'll spare everyone an explanation of Ukrainian diaspora culture, but I will say that, before WWII, the principal Ukrainian nationalist folk devil wasn't Russia. It was Poland and the Jews.
Fred , 25 November 2019 at 09:03 AM
That's a very interesting write up at Zerohedge. I believe we discussed the same conduct, though not the depth of corruption of US politicians, here while that was happening. The borg are starting to panic with the threat of a real investigation.
Diana C , 25 November 2019 at 09:45 AM
Thank you for the posting and thank all for the comments.

Some of us out here in The Middle can't really understand any of the behaviors of those good and not-so-good Swamp dwellers (any more than we can understand the behaviors of the La La Land Californian politicians.

I understand more about the issues involving our relationship with Ukraine by reading this post and comments than I ever would have been able to since I simply don't have time to get large books and many detailed published papers to read.

JohninMK , 25 November 2019 at 10:04 AM
Could the anti Russia bias be as simple as the need to protect the empires of people in State and Defence etc that would be no longer needed if Russia was a 'good' guy?

The US's 'independent' multi-national force NATO would clearly no longer be needed, so many years after the Warsaw Pact dissolved. Whilst the US 'occupation' forces all over the place, but especially in Europe, could return home to the US.

Then there is the MIC and the lobbying flows of money into Congress.Russia is far too important to too many insiders to be anything but an enemy.

Indeed, its boom time as China related structures are expanding in parallel rather than replacing those directed at Russia.

prawnik said in reply to JohninMK... , 25 November 2019 at 10:48 AM
As pointed out earlier - the military industrial complex needs a Big Enemy to justify its exorbitant budgets. The Deep State, the Borg, the Blob, whatever you want to call it, needs a Big Enemy to justify its spying and increasingly blatant interference in domestic US politics.

There are too many business ties with China, and our supply chains reach too deeply into that country, for it to serve as a Big Enemy without causing serious disruption.

So Russia it is.

ted richard , 25 November 2019 at 10:10 AM
the reasons for the agreed upon antipathy towards Russia is imo not the actual reason for the hostilities that have existed for at least the last 100 years and actually much longer.

the Russian nation is greatly under populated and owns a staggering per cent of the planets natural resources of every description. envy by those look from the outside towards russia is alone sufficient justification for wanting to grab it for themselves as has been unsuccessfully tried for centuries.

why complicate matters when simple greed answers so many of the questions asked about WHY the west hates russia.

prawnik , 25 November 2019 at 10:45 AM
The irony, of course, is that in Jewish folk memory, the most pig-headed (pun intended) and virulent anti-Semites were the peasants of Galicia (western Ukraine) and Poland.
Babak Makkinejad , 25 November 2019 at 10:59 AM
Col. Lang:

I also share your bafflement and not just with the political positions of the likes of Victoria Nuland. What do US & UK hope to gain? I can't see any benefits.

[Nov 23, 2019] Fiona Hill a rabid neocon promoting UK foreign policy within the USA government, a book writer of Luke Harding mold, was appointed by Trump in 2017 when Russiagate was in full broom

This is another remnant for Bush neocon team, a protégé of Bolton. Trump probably voluntarily appointed this rabid neocon, a chickenhawk who would shine in Hillary State Department. Interestingly she came from working class background. So much about Marx theory of class struggle. Brown, David (March 4, 2017). "Miner's daughter tipped as Trump adviser on Russia" . The Times. She also illustrate level pf corruption of academic science, because she got PhD in history from Harvard in 1998 under Richard Pipes, Akira Iriye, and Roman Szporluk. But at least this was history, not languages like in case of Ciaramella.
Such appointment by Trump is difficult to describe with normal words as he understood what he is buying. So he is himself to blame for his current troubles and his inability to behave in a diplomatic way when there was important to him question about role of CrowdStrike in 2016 election and creation of Russiagate witch hunt.
There is something in the USA that creates conditions for producing rabid female neocons, some elevator that brings ruthless female careerists with sharp elbows them to the establishment. She sounds like a person to the right of Madeline Albright, which is an achievement
With such books It is unclear whether she is different from Max Boot. She buys official Skripal story like hook and sinker. The list of her book looks like produced in UK by Luke Harding
Being miner daughter raised in poverty we can also talk about betrayal of her class and upbringing.
This also rises wisdom of appointing emigrants to the Administration and the extent they pursue policies beneficial for their native countries.
Nov 23, 2019 | en.wikipedia.org

Impeachment testimony

On October 14, 2019, responding to a subpoena , Hill testified in a closed-door deposition for ten hours before special committees of the United States Congress as part of the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump . [9] [10] [11]

Testimony to the House Intelligence Committee by Hill and David Holmes, November 21, 2019 , C-SPAN

She testified in public before the same body on November 21, 2019. [12] While being questioned by Steve Castor , the counsel for the House Intelligence Committee's Republican minority, Hill commented on Gordon Sondland 's involvement in the Ukraine matter: "It struck me when (Wednesday), when you put up on the screen Ambassador Sondland's emails, and who was on these emails, and he said these are the people who need to know, that he was absolutely right," she said. "Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand, and we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged." [13] In response to a question from that committee's chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff , Hill stated: "The Russians' interests are frankly to delegitimize our entire presidency. The goal of the Russians [in 2016] was really to put whoever became the president -- by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale -- under a cloud." [

Hill's books include:

[Nov 23, 2019] Soros and Clinton Connections of Extreme Neocon Globalist Fiona Hill who committed Perjury at the Ukrainegate Impeachment

Nov 23, 2019 | www.investmentwatchblog.com

Soros and Clinton Connections of Extreme Neocon Globalist Fiona Hill who committed Perjury at the Ukrainegate Impeachment Hearings the other day November 23, 2019 by IWB Facebook 0 Twitter Email RSS feed - Syndicate IWB Subscribe To Our Newsletter

by Ian56

Fiona Hill committed perjury by deliberately lying under oath to Congress that there was no Ukraine interference in the 2016 election, when this is a documented fact with multiple sources and witnesses.

She should be immediately prosecuted for perjury and sentenced to the maximum sentence of 5 years in jail.

She should also be prosecuted for failing to uphold her Oath of Office to protect the U.S. from all enemies, both foreign and domestic, of which she is undoubtedly one along with all of her close associates. Bribery by Foreign Despots such as the Saudis would certainly come under "working for a Foreign Power". And so would working on behalf of international banking cartels.

Ideally she should be prosecuted for Treason and spend the rest of her life in jail, but this would be harder to prove. I am sure lots of other crimes could be found to keep her in jail for a VERY long time if a suitable patriotic and honest investigator and prosecutor, working in the interests of ordinary Americans were to be found to pursue the cases against her.

Ukraine Interference in the 2016 election for the benefit of Hillary Clinton

DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa went to Ukraine's Embassy in Washington DC in early 2016 asking them to find dirt on Paul Manafort and Trump.

Poroshenko's regime in Ukraine complied with the request and sent whatever information they could find. These included the payments made to Manafort by the previous President Yanukovych for Manafort's lobbying work to improve Ukraine's relations with the EU between circa 2006 and February 2014. (Both the Podesta's also worked on this same lobbying contract to improve EU relations, but for some reason this hasn't been widely reported!)

This information resulted in the firing of Paul Manafort soon after the Republican Convention in 2016.

This has been confirmed by multiple members of Poroshenko's regime, Ukraine MPs and other witnesses, and was fairly widely reported in the mainstream media in late 2016 and 2017.

Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire. Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.
www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446

George Soros also played a significant role in financing Obama and Neocon Victoria Nuland's February 2014 Coup D'Etat in Ukraine which used Nazi thugs and snipers to murder both protesters and police.Victoria Nuland is the wife of extreme Neocon Robert Kagan who co-found PNAC to push the Neocon agenda with Bill Kristol in 1997.

Neocon Nuland's Coup in Ukraine installed a far right regime in Kiev which was designed to start a civil war against the more pro Russian east of Ukraine, wreck Ukraine's economy, further impoverish already poor Ukrainians and destabilize Europe.

It was also designed to loot Ukraine's remaining assets by U.S. multinationals and embezzle billions of dollars of IMF loans – see Joe and Hunter Biden corruption.
Ukrainian Oligarch Viktor Pinchuk had previously bribed the Clintons with $10m to engineer Regime Change in Ukraine.

The Pinchuk-Clinton Connection and the Coup in Ukraine: ian56.blogspot.com/2015/01/how-february-coup-in-kiev-was-plotted.html

Fiona Hill is an extreme Neocon Globalist , an enemy of Freedom and Democracy and all decent and honest Americans, and everyone else on the entire planet.

Fiona Hill worked for 6 years (2001-2006) at George Soros' anti Democracy "Open Society" which seeks to impoverish and enslave the 99%, and set up an authoritarian one world government ruled by a cabal of Oligarchs and Corporate CEOs.

Soros link found to Democrats' latest impeachment witness
www.lifesitenews.com/news/soros-link-found-to-democrats-latest-impeachment-witness

Fiona Hill is a George Soros Mole
aim4truth.org/2019/11/21/fiona-hill-is-a-george-soros-mole/

Fiona Hill is a member of the CFR. The Council on Foreign Relations is the main "Think Tank" and Lobbying Group for Globalism. It is funded by Oligarchs, the Big Banks, major multinationals and other major Corporations to pursue Corporatist policies which are directly against the interests of all ordinary people.
As above it seeks to impoverish and enslave the 99% and set up an authoritarian anti democracy one world government (the "New World Order").
George Soros is a senior member of the CFR.

Fiona Hill was hired by Neocon Globalist and George Soros puppet, General H.R McMaster as his top adviser on March 3, 2017. Hill was appointed as a Deputy Assistant to President Trump and his Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs.

Anti America, Neocon PNAC co-founder, Bill Kristol thoroughly approved of Neocon General McMaster's appointment as NSA, to replace General Michael Flynn.
twitter.com/BillKristol/status/833774627788881922

Who the hell was making all these Treasonous Globalist appointments within the Trump admin? Pretty much Trump's first appointment was extreme Neocon Globalist, religious extremist and enemy of all decent and honest Americans Mike Pompeo. Totally corrupt Neocon Globalist Corporatist, chair of the RNC, and America's enemy, Reince Priebus was appointed as Trump's Chief of Staff soon after.
Loads of treasonous extreme Neocon / Neoliberal Globalists followed soon after.

Fiona Hill's previous jobs include:

https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=3387

2009-2017 Brookings Institute.

The Brookings Institute is an extreme Neoliberal Globalist organisation, funded by major Corporations, Oligarchs and Foreign Despots to push for Globalism and more war.
Brookings was headed up by Strobe Talbott between 2002 and October 2017.

Strobe Talbott is an extreme Neoliberal Globalist, anti democracy, ...long term (since 1968) Clinton crony. Strobe Talbott was Bill Clinton's room mate at Oxford where they were both Rhodes Scholars. The Rhodes Scholarships, set up in Globalist Oligarch Cecil Rhodes' will, are grooming grounds for future Technocrats to pursue the Globalist agenda of anti democracy, authoritarian one world government.

List of Rhodes Scholars
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Rhodes_Scholars

Strobe Talbott was Bill Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State from 1994 to 2001.
He was favorite to be Hillary Clinton's Secretary of State if she had been "elected" in 2016.

Q: Who the hell appoints ANYONE who has worked for George Soros and the Brookings Institute for years?
A: NOBODY who has the best interests of America or ordinary Americans at heart.

The appointments of extreme Globalist Soros puppets, H.R. McMaster and Fiona Hill were both Treason by whoever promoted or approved them within the Trump admin.

2006-2009 National Intelligence Council for the War Criminal, totally Corrupt and Treasonous Bush Regime.

NOBODY who was pro America would even consider working for the criminal Neocon Bush regime who worked directly against America's best interests.

Q: Why would anyone in the so called "Conservative" admin of GW Bush even think of hiring someone who had just spent 6 years working for Conservatives' (and everybody else's) worst enemy, George Soros?

A: Neocons and Neoliberals are all working together for the Corporate Oligarchy to enslave the people.
There is very little difference between Neocons and Neoliberals, except for social policies which don't affect Corporate profits that are used as a smokescreen and "Divide and Conquer" Strategy to hide the fact there's no significant differences between Establishment GOP and Dems, Neocons and Neoliberals.
The Neocons and Neoliberals are both anti democracy, anti freedom, Globalists.

1991-1999 "John F. Kennedy School of Government" .

Both the "JFK" school, and Harvard which hosts it, are extreme Neoliberal Globalist indoctrination centers, which aim to produce anti democracy technocrats working for Corporate and Oligarch interests, directly against America's and ordinary Americans' interests. Lots and lots of extreme Globalists have come out of the Kennedy school.

See this Globalist lobbying paper campaigning against democracy, co-written by notorious Banking Gangster and Globalist Larry Summers.
www.hks.harvard.edu/courses/political-economy-globalization

Larry Summers, as Bill Clinton's Treasury Sec helped to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, which directly led to wild speculative excess, the exponential increase of tens of trillions of dollars of Derivatives, and the massive growth of the Shadow Banking Industry for money laundering, tax evasion and avoidance of any and all financial rules and regulations by protected insiders.

The repeal of Glass-Steagall led directly to the massive financial excesses and speculative asset bubbles of the early 2000's and the 2008 Financial Crash and worldwide depression.

Larry Summers & The Confidential Memo at the Heart of the Global Financial Crisis
www.vice.com/en_uk/article/gq8xww/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo

1991 Harvard
Fiona Hill was "taught", aka indoctrinated with, the Harvard Globalist view of "Russian History" by extreme Neocon, CFR member, Bilderberg attendee, "adviser" to Henry Scoop Jackson, and completely delusional "wrong on every count" Richard Pipes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pipes

Extreme Neocon Daniel Pipes is the son of Richard Pipes.

I bet Harvard didn't teach Fiona Hill that the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution was funded by Wall Street and Berlin Bankers, or that Hitler was funded and supplied by American Banks, Major Corporations and Oligarchs like the Rockefellers.
They don't teach any real history about anything at all, at Harvard.

The works of Stanford History Professor Antony Sutton
www.amazon.co.uk/l/B001K1S1ZE?_encoding=UTF8&redirectedFromKindleDbs=true&rfkd=1&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

In a superficial sense what Fiona Hill said at the impeachment hearings, that she is "non-partisan", was true. There is NO difference between Establishment GOP and Dems, Neocons and Neoliberals and she works for all of them.

In every meaningful sense she was totally lying.
She is on the side of the Oligarchs and major Corporations, for Corporatism and Globalism; and against the people, freedom, prosperity, and human rights.
Fiona Hill is the absolute enemy of every decent and honest human being on the entire planet.

Previous related article:

The REAL reasons why Ukrainegate is happening: The CIA's Neocon Plants Eric Ciamarella and Alexander Vindman, Joe Biden and Clinton Ukraine Corruption, Obama's Coup in Ukraine, and the Neocons push for WW3 With Russia
ian56.blogspot.com/2019/11/information-on-so-called-ukrainegate.html

[Nov 23, 2019] Fiona Hill British-born Russia expert drawn into impeachment storm US news

Notable quotes:
"... "She went in out of a sense of duty," a friend said. "Once she was in the White House, she tried to impose some sense of order and process on the chaos over Russia policy. When there was a State Department translator in meetings Trump meetings with Putin, that didn't happen by accident." ..."
"... She handed responsibilities to her successor, Tim Morrison, on 15 July, and actually left the White House on 19 July, six days before Trump's infamous call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which the US president asked for "a favour" in carrying out certain targeted investigations. ..."
"... It is unclear whether Trump's efforts to use Ukrainian reliance on the US to his political advantage affected the timing of Hill's departure ..."
"... The American chapter in her life opened quite by chance. After winning a scholarship to St Andrews University, she was in Moscow during the 1988 Reagan-Gorbachev summit and got an internship making coffee for the NBC Today Show. There, she met an American professor who suggested she apply for postgraduate studies at Harvard. ..."
"... some pointing to the fact that she knows Christopher Steele , the author of the famous 2016 dossier alleging Trump's collusion with the Kremlin, from a previous stint in government, in the National Intelligence Council. ..."
Oct 14, 2019 | www.theguardian.com

Fiona Hill, a coalminer's daughter from County Durham who became the top Russia expert in the White House, is the latest official to find herself at the eye of the impeachment storm engulfing Donald Trump .

British-born Hill arrived on Capitol Hill on Monday morning to give testimony behind closed doors to congressional committees investigating Trump's conduct in his relations with his Ukrainian counterpart.

The committees are looking for evidence on whether Trump abused his office to try to persuade the government in Kyiv to provide compromising material on a political opponent, former vice-president Joe Biden.

Hill is likely to be interviewed on a much broader range of subjects, however. She was senior director for Europe and Russia in the National Security Council (NSC) for more than two years, giving her a front seat at the struggle over US policy towards Moscow and Trump's peculiar personal attachment to Vladimir Putin.

Hill was brought into the White House by Trump's second national security adviser, HR McMaster, plucking her out of the Washington thinktank world, because of her expertise on Putin and Russia. She had co-written a book on the Russian autocrat, titled Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin , that stressed the extent that his KGB career had shaped his worldview.

"She went in out of a sense of duty," a friend said. "Once she was in the White House, she tried to impose some sense of order and process on the chaos over Russia policy. When there was a State Department translator in meetings Trump meetings with Putin, that didn't happen by accident."

Hill planned to work at the NSC for a year but was asked to stay on by McMaster's successor, John Bolton, despite calls to get rid of her from Trump acolytes, aware Hill was not a political loyalist.

She handed responsibilities to her successor, Tim Morrison, on 15 July, and actually left the White House on 19 July, six days before Trump's infamous call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which the US president asked for "a favour" in carrying out certain targeted investigations.

It is unclear whether Trump's efforts to use Ukrainian reliance on the US to his political advantage affected the timing of Hill's departure , but she is expected to testify about the emergence of a parallel Ukraine policy run by Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is commonly described as Trump's personal lawyer.

Giuliani clearly thought his channel, focusing on digging dirt on the Bidens, had priority, and has sought to portray Hill as being out of the loop.

"Maybe she was engaged in secondary foreign policy if she didn't know I was asked to take a call from President Zelenskiy's very close friend," he told NBC News .

Texts released by Congress between two diplomats working with Giuliani, the ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, and Kurt Volker, formerly special envoy for Ukraine, suggest that they expected more flexibility from Morrison, Hill's replacement.

Hill was born in Bishop Auckland, Durham, the daughter of a miner and a nurse, and became a dual national after marrying an American she met at Harvard. She still speaks with flat northern English vowels.

The American chapter in her life opened quite by chance. After winning a scholarship to St Andrews University, she was in Moscow during the 1988 Reagan-Gorbachev summit and got an internship making coffee for the NBC Today Show. There, she met an American professor who suggested she apply for postgraduate studies at Harvard.

Fusion GPS founders to release book on Trump's ties with Russia by Luke Harding

Since it became clear Hill would be an important witness in the House impeachment hearings, she has been subjected to furious attack on hard-right talkshows and conspiracy theories on social media, some pointing to the fact that she knows Christopher Steele , the author of the famous 2016 dossier alleging Trump's collusion with the Kremlin, from a previous stint in government, in the National Intelligence Council.

Such attacks have become a routine form of intimidation aimed at stopping officials like Hill saying what they know about the inner workings of the Trump White House.

Hill's manner is understated, precise and discreet. Since entering the White House, she has hardly talked to the press and not made appearances in the thinktank world. Her deposition to Congress puts her into an unaccustomed limelight.

"She was not looking forward to it but she knew she was going to testify. She will answer the questions and says what she knows, but she is not going to give some sweeping denunciation of the -> Trump administration ," her friend said.

"She has respect for the people she worked for, even if she didn't necessarily agree with them. They have all been in the same foxhole together."

[Nov 23, 2019] Is Fiona Hill a Sleeper Agent

Highly recommended!
She is a dual national... So it is possible that she has contacts with MI6 and other UK government agencies. The fact that she known Steele is really troubling.
"Fiona Hill is British-American so what if any connections are there back to UK Neocon think tanks and possible intelligence links?"
Notable quotes:
"... "What is sure is that you will never see a Neocon in frontline combat. Neither they nor their kids will die no matter what they do. Or so they think. This is one of the main reasons why these Neocons are the single biggest danger for the United States and the American people: they despise the real American people and they won't hesitate to sacrifice them, in large numbers if needed (9/11 anybody?) ." ..."
"... One of the more notorious Neocons is Robert Kagan who is married to Victoria Nuland who was at the US State Department. Russia's Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov, was well aware of what the Neocons were doing in Ukraine under Nuland, that when Sergey Lavrov entered a conference room where John Kerry and Victoria Nuland were, Lavrov curtly dismissed Nuland completely ignoring her . Fiona Hill and Robert Kagan along with other well known Neocons, work closely together at the Brookings Institute . ..."
"... The Neocons clearly do not like being referred to as Neocons, otherwise The Chicago Tribune wouldn't have ran the article with the title: " It's time to retire the 'neocon' label ." Adam Schiff is their front man in the senate who is " An Evil Bug-Eyed Fascist " leading this constant Trump-destroying Russia-hating as an " unbalanced hack ." ..."
"... Fiona Hill obtained her PhD under Richard Pipes who mentored her. Richard Pipes was the father of American historian and expert on American foreign policy and the Middle East, Daniel Pipes . If there ever was a hardcore ultra Neocon and Zionist it is Daniel Pipes despite being a trained scholar. ..."
"... We can see the ultra Neocon Daniel Pipes is not going to allow the US military to withdraw from Syria despite what President Trump announces ..."
"... When it first appeared in Washington in December 2013, the semi-thousand page biography of Vladimir Putin by two minor American think-tank researchers, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, was judged to be a valuable compilation of everything the US news media and other government-funded think-tanks had already reported, suspected or believed about the Russian president for the previous decade. No more, no less. In Russia, since no knowledgeable or politically significant Russian contributed evidence to the book, much less ..."
"... But had Hill not been appointed a few weeks ago as President Donald Trump's (lead image, right) director of Russia at the National Security Council (lead left), the principal foreign policy advisor serving the President, Hill's book, with its one thousand and one footnotes, and fifteen single-spaced pages of references, led by Hill and Gaddy themselves, The Economist, and extracts from the Voice of America, would have been as inconsequential as they have already proved to be for years. However, Trump's confidence in, and dependence on Hill's advice on Putin, and the campaign to impeach Trump himself for high crimes and misdemeanours in association with Putin, change the way the book must now be interpreted. ..."
"... The Daily Beast reported that Trump's aides wanted top NSC Russia expert Fiona Hill in the meeting between the presidents ..."
Nov 23, 2019 | www.abeldanger.org

"What is sure is that you will never see a Neocon in frontline combat. Neither they nor their kids will die no matter what they do. Or so they think. This is one of the main reasons why these Neocons are the single biggest danger for the United States and the American people: they despise the real American people and they won't hesitate to sacrifice them, in large numbers if needed (9/11 anybody?) ."

https://thesaker.is/the-trump-administration-goes-neocon-crazy/

Dems Kept Cheerleading Bush-Era Neocons – Now There's One In The White House

The question to be asking concerning Fiona Hill is, do her activities and policy decisions favor the Neocons? Fiona Hill is presently on a leave of absence from the Brookings Institute and this think tank is a major bastion of Neocon policies and networking with other Neocon-related think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. Contrary to the Heritage Foundation writing the Neocons are an " endangered species ", don't believe it, the Heritage Foundation remains whoring for Neocons.

One of the more notorious Neocons is Robert Kagan who is married to Victoria Nuland who was at the US State Department. Russia's Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov, was well aware of what the Neocons were doing in Ukraine under Nuland, that when Sergey Lavrov entered a conference room where John Kerry and Victoria Nuland were, Lavrov curtly dismissed Nuland completely ignoring her . Fiona Hill and Robert Kagan along with other well known Neocons, work closely together at the Brookings Institute .

American Wars Are off the Charts Under Donald Trump

The Neocons clearly do not like being referred to as Neocons, otherwise The Chicago Tribune wouldn't have ran the article with the title: " It's time to retire the 'neocon' label ." Adam Schiff is their front man in the senate who is " An Evil Bug-Eyed Fascist " leading this constant Trump-destroying Russia-hating as an " unbalanced hack ."

Adam Schiff-ting: Trump is unpatriotic – Doesn't matter If he's innocent

Fiona Hill obtained her PhD under Richard Pipes who mentored her. Richard Pipes was the father of American historian and expert on American foreign policy and the Middle East, Daniel Pipes . If there ever was a hardcore ultra Neocon and Zionist it is Daniel Pipes despite being a trained scholar. It is Daniel Pipes, Jared Kushner, David Friedman (US Ambassador to Israel), Ron Dermer (Israeli Ambassador to US) and Jason Dov Greenblatt, Trump special aide who are behind the "peace deal" for Palestine . According to Daniel Pipes, there can only be one victor in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the loser isn't going to be Israel.

The Neocons are already fully aware of just how dysfunctional America's government is and have clearly stepped in to take control under Trump . Look who was brought in to go after Venezuela, the most treacherous Neocon provocateur in Washington, Elliott Abrams. Donald Trump has been completely captured by the Neocons. And as far as Steve Bannon getting kicked out of the White House , the Neocons were behind his dismissal.

New Book: Deeply Corrupt Kushner Family Is Co-opting the White House – Excellent and Important Podcast (Fash the Nation)

The Prodigal Son-in-Law: Jared Kushner And The Rise Of The Neo-Cons In The Trump Admin

Thirty years a neocon provocateur

We can see the ultra Neocon Daniel Pipes is not going to allow the US military to withdraw from Syria despite what President Trump announces. When the record is considered it is pretty much easily observed Trump is being undermined when necessary and provided false intelligence when Neocon goals are revealed or compromised.

Daniel Pipes on Trump's Foreign Policy and Turkey's Erdoğan

Fiona Hill is British-American so what if any connections are there back to UK Neocon think tanks and possible intelligence links? Judging how much the British despise Russia, just look at the Skripal case as an example of what kinds of operations are deployed against Moscow.

Oops! NY Times Accidentally Unravels UK Government's Official Skripal Fairy Tale

https://www.youtube.com/embed/EWSp2QMzKv8

________

Source: Fort Russ

COLLUSION OR DIPLOMACY? A Trump 'Hawk' makes Surprise visit to Moscow

MOSCOW – The Russian media reported on the surprise trip of the adviser to President Donald Trump and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs of the National Security Council of the USA, Fiona Hill, to Moscow.

According to the Kommersant newspaper, a delegation from the White House led by Hill arrived in Moscow.

Neither the US nor the Russian authorities publicly reported on this visit.

During her trip, Hill met with representatives of the Security Council of Russia and the Russian Foreign Minister.

According to Kommersant, this is not Fiona Hill's first visit to Moscow as an adviser to the US president, but her previous visits were not known either .

Prior to joining the Trump Administration, Hill was part of the board of the Brookings Institution in Washington . As author of the biographical book 'Putin: an agent of the Kremlin' and former specialist of the National Intelligence Council, she has spoken publicly about the Russian authorities.

During a meeting held in 2018 Hill with the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoli Antonov, the senior official commented that in the relations between Moscow and Washington "it is likely that everything will get worse before it improves."

Please go to Fort Russ to read the entire article.

________

Source: Russia Insider

Vladimir Putin Is Safe If Donald Trump's Expert on Russia Is Fiona Hill, But Is Trump?

Trump is getting bad advice on Russia from his National Security Council

by John Helmer | Tuesday, May 16, 2017

When it first appeared in Washington in December 2013, the semi-thousand page biography of Vladimir Putin by two minor American think-tank researchers, Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, was judged to be a valuable compilation of everything the US news media and other government-funded think-tanks had already reported, suspected or believed about the Russian president for the previous decade. No more, no less. In Russia, since no knowledgeable or politically significant Russian contributed evidence to the book, much less.

The subsequent publication of chapters on the putsch in Ukraine in February 2014, the accession of Crimea, Russian military intervention in Syria in 2015, and the US war to overthrow Putin and fight Russia everywhere in cyberspace, added nothing more remarkable in Washington, and nothing novel (non-fictional sense) in Moscow.

<

But had Hill not been appointed a few weeks ago as President Donald Trump's (lead image, right) director of Russia at the National Security Council (lead left), the principal foreign policy advisor serving the President, Hill's book, with its one thousand and one footnotes, and fifteen single-spaced pages of references, led by Hill and Gaddy themselves, The Economist, and extracts from the Voice of America, would have been as inconsequential as they have already proved to be for years. However, Trump's confidence in, and dependence on Hill's advice on Putin, and the campaign to impeach Trump himself for high crimes and misdemeanours in association with Putin, change the way the book must now be interpreted.

Does the evidence that Hill spent two formative years as a student at an institute in Moscow where she rubbed shoulders with Russians bound for, and already bound to, the two state intelligence services, GRU (military intelligence) and SVR (foreign intelligence), require a counter-intelligence assessment because of the risk which was unforeseen until now?

Hill's Moscow time is a detail of her resume which has yet to be identified in US media reporting and Congressional committee vetting. But as a Russian source from the institute points out, " this is especially curious if we take into account the fact that the Moscow State Linguistic University is a source of supply of employees for GRU and SVR. It was during the Soviet period, and it remains the same nowadays ." As another Russian source familiar with the secret services points out, by the standard of investigation the CIA, FBI and the US media now apply to Trump, his appointees, business associates, advisers, family, and friends, does this detail require special scrutiny for Hill? " Her book ," claims the source, " is so full of false leads and dead-ends , don't the Americans wonder if Hill is a sleeper agent, recruited long ago with the mission to keep the Americans as ignorant of Russia as her book on Putin demonstrates?"

If Hill is a continuing Russian penetration risk at the White House , then is there also the risk that the potentially culpable General Michael Flynn, National Security Adviser between January 20 and February 13, 2017, and his successor General H.R. McMaster, have failed to protect Trump himself ?

In her book, Hill makes much of her Russian language and translation skills, including her own translation of Putin's campaign biography of 2000. She doesn't reveal that she got her skills from two years of study at the Maurice Thorez Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages .

The Thorez Institute was the Soviet-period name, commencing in 1935 to honour the French Communist Party leader from 1930, who spent the war years in the USSR before a brief term as Vice Premier of France. The institute operates at a converted 19 th century mansion on Ostozhenka Street, in Moscow's old city. Thorez's name was removed in 1990, but it sticks to the school as durably as the new acronym, MSLU. The institute itself says it cannot confirm the years Hill was a student there until it searches its old paper archives, and that may take weeks.

Please go to Russia Insider to read the entire article.

________

Source: emptywheel

Trump Was Worried HR McMaster or Fiona Hill Would Spy on His Conversation with Putin

July 7, 2017 |42 Comments |in Foreign Policy | by emptywheel

There were two infuriating stories earlier this week in preparation of today's meeting between President Trump and Vladimir Putin.

The Daily Beast reported that Trump's aides wanted top NSC Russia expert Fiona Hill in the meeting between the presidents .

According to two White House aides, senior Trump administration officials have pressed for Hill -- the National Security Council's senior director for Europe and Russia and the author of critical psychological biography of Putin -- to be in the room during the president's highly anticipated meeting with Putin.

If Hill is there, these officials believe, it will help the White House avoid the perception that the president is too eager to cozy up to the Kremlin. The hope is to avoid a repeat of Trump's last meeting with top Russian officials, during which he disclosed classified intelligence to two of the country's top diplomats -- and was pictured by Russian state media looking particularly friendly with them.

But it used linguistic gymnastics to avoid stating who might decide to keep Hill out of the meeting. Then Axios reported that just Trump, Rex Tillerson, and a translator would represent the US.

There will likely only be six people in the room when President Trump meets President Putin on Friday at the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.

According to an official familiar with the meeting's planning, it will be Trump, Putin, the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, and translators.

But it, too, remained silent about who decided to keep the attendee list so small (though admittedly, that detail was a less crucial part of their story).

Thankfully, the NYT has finally revealed that it was Trump, not Putin, who chose to limit attendees.

Only six people attended the meeting itself: Mr. Trump and his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson; Mr. Putin and his foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov; and two interpreters.

The Russians had agitated to include several more staff members in the meeting, but Mr. Trump's team had insisted that the meeting be kept small to avoid leaks and competing accounts later, according to an administration official with direct knowledge of the carefully choreographed meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity around the matter.

And he did so specifically to avoid leaks about what would transpire.

This means that Trump (personally, given the NYT portrayal) decided to exclude his National Security Advisor and top Russian advisor. And he did so, again, based on the NYT reporting, because he didn't want a competing account from coming out. He basically excluded the key staffers who should have been in the meeting, in spite of the wishes of aides, to avoid having Russian critics describing what really happened in his meeting with Putin.

Remember, this is not the first time Trump has excluded McMaster from a key meeting: he also left McMaster sitting outside his meeting with Bibi Netanyahu, after belatedly inviting Tillerson in.

＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿

Related:

[Nov 23, 2019] The Pitfalls of a Pit Bull Russophobe by Ray McGovern

Ray raised interesting question: was Fiona Hill on the list on Brennan experts who created 17 intelligence agencies.
Notable quotes:
"... Fiona Hill's "Russian-expert" testimony Thursday and her deposition on Oct. 14 to the impeachment inquiry showed that her antennae are acutely tuned to what Russian intelligence services may be up to but, sadly, also displayed a striking naiveté about the machinations of U.S. intelligence. ..."
"... Hill's education on Russia came at the knee of the late Professor Richard Pipes, her Harvard mentor and archdeacon of Russophobia. I do not dispute her sincerity in attributing all manner of evil to what President Ronald Reagan called the "Evil Empire." But, like so many other glib "Russia experts" with access to Establishment media, she seems three decades out of date. ..."
"... I have been studying the U.S.S.R. and Russia for twice as long as Hill, was chief of CIA's Soviet Foreign Policy Branch during the 1970s, and watched the "Evil Empire" fall apart. She seems to have missed the falling apart part. ..."
"... Hill has been conditioned to believe Russian President Vladimir Putin and especially his security services are capable of anything, and thus sees a Russian under every rock -- as we used to say of smart know-nothings like former CIA Director William Casey and the malleable "Soviet experts" who bubbled up to the top during his reign (1981 – 1987). Recall that at the very first meeting of Reagan's cabinet, Casey openly told the president and other cabinet officials: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." Were Casey still alive, he would be very pleased and proud of Hill's performance. ..."
"... "The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified." [Emphasis added.] ..."
"... A modicum of intellectual curiosity and rudimentary due diligence would have prompted her to look into who was in charge of preparing the (misnomered) "Intelligence Community Assessment" published on Jan. 6, 2017, which provided the lusted-after fodder for the "mainstream" media and others wanting to blame Hillary Clinton's defeat on the Russians. ..."
"... President Barack Obama gave the task to his National Intelligence Director James Clapper, whom he had allowed to stay in that job for three and a half years after he had to apologize to Congress for what he later admitted was a "clearly erroneous" response, under oath, to a question from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) on NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens. ..."
"... Just eight weeks after she joined the National Security Council staff, Clapper, during an NBC interview on May 28, 2017, recalled "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique." Later he added, "It's in their DNA." Clapper has claimed that "what the Russians did had a profound impact on the outcome of the election." ..."
"... As for the "Intelligence Community Assessment," the banner headline atop The New York Times on Jan. 7, 2017 set the tone for the next couple of years: "Putin Led Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Says." During my career as a CIA analyst, as deputy national intelligence officer chairing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), and working on the Intelligence Production Review Board, I had not seen so shabby a piece of faux analysis as the ICA. The writers themselves seemed to be holding their noses. They saw fit to embed in the ICA itself this derriere-covering note : "High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong ..."
"... "According to several current and former intelligence officers who must remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue," as the Times says when it prints made-up stuff, there were only two "handpicked analysts." Clapper picked Brennan; and Brennan picked Clapper. That would help explain the grossly subpar quality of the ICA. ..."
"... The general problem IMHO, to state obvious, is that there is no truth in the public discourse, only lies which support the narrative. And there is no penalty for the continuous lies, certainly not from what is called the press these days. ..."
"... I remember Phil Giraldi's comment months ago. He had worked for the CIA and now heads the Council for the National interest. He noted his surprise at how many within the CIA still clung to the cold war view of the Russians, ready to accept almost anything bad about the evil Russians. ..."
"... And it does seem the Russian haters still are living in the past and many have a huge impact on public policy and public opinion. It is a very dangerous affliction for the rest of the world. ..."
"... The greatest nation ever's permanent war system requires much deception & permanent enemies to keep the our economy going strong & the people distracted from the real issues. If everyone knew the truth, the world's biggest racket ever would fall apart and world peace would break out. ..."
"... American "intelligence" agencies will do exactly what "intelligence" agencies have done since time immemorial – they will perpetuate their position and power. The fact that that strips you of some of your freedom is a feature, not a bug. ..."
"... Hill's career advancement and access to the MSM depends on her faith in our "intelligence" agencies. And I doubt very much that Durham will be allowed to do his job probing the origins of RussiaGate. The evil ones will stop at nothing to keep control of the narrative. ..."
"... "It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled." Mark Twain ..."
Nov 22, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

• 7 Comments

Like so many other glib "Russia experts" with access to Establishment media, Fiona Hill, who testified Thursday in the impeachment probe, seems three decades out of date.

Special to Consortium News

Fiona Hill's "Russian-expert" testimony Thursday and her deposition on Oct. 14 to the impeachment inquiry showed that her antennae are acutely tuned to what Russian intelligence services may be up to but, sadly, also displayed a striking naiveté about the machinations of U.S. intelligence.

Hill's education on Russia came at the knee of the late Professor Richard Pipes, her Harvard mentor and archdeacon of Russophobia. I do not dispute her sincerity in attributing all manner of evil to what President Ronald Reagan called the "Evil Empire." But, like so many other glib "Russia experts" with access to Establishment media, she seems three decades out of date.

I have been studying the U.S.S.R. and Russia for twice as long as Hill, was chief of CIA's Soviet Foreign Policy Branch during the 1970s, and watched the "Evil Empire" fall apart. She seems to have missed the falling apart part.

Selective Suspicion

Are the Russian intelligence services still very active? Of course. But there is no evidence -- other than Hill's bias -- for her extraordinary claim that they were behind the infamous "Steele Dossier," for example, or that they were the prime mover of Ukraine-gate in an attempt to shift the blame for Russian "meddling" in the 2016 U.S. election onto Ukraine. In recent weeks U.S. intelligence officials were spreading this same tale, lapped up and faithfully reported Friday by The New York Times.

Hill has been conditioned to believe Russian President Vladimir Putin and especially his security services are capable of anything, and thus sees a Russian under every rock -- as we used to say of smart know-nothings like former CIA Director William Casey and the malleable "Soviet experts" who bubbled up to the top during his reign (1981 – 1987). Recall that at the very first meeting of Reagan's cabinet, Casey openly told the president and other cabinet officials: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." Were Casey still alive, he would be very pleased and proud of Hill's performance.

Beyond Dispute?

On Thursday Hill testified:

"The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified." [Emphasis added.]

Ah, yes. "The public conclusion of our intelligence agencies": the same ones who reported that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would never surrender power peaceably; the same ones who told Secretary of State Colin Powell he could assure the UN Security Council that the WMD evidence given him by our intelligence agencies was "irrefutable and undeniable." Only Richard-Pipeline-type Russophobia can account for the blinders on someone as smart as Hill and prompt her to take as gospel "the public conclusions of our intelligence agencies."

A modicum of intellectual curiosity and rudimentary due diligence would have prompted her to look into who was in charge of preparing the (misnomered) "Intelligence Community Assessment" published on Jan. 6, 2017, which provided the lusted-after fodder for the "mainstream" media and others wanting to blame Hillary Clinton's defeat on the Russians.

Jim, Do a Job on the Russians

President Barack Obama with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, 2011. (White House/ Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama gave the task to his National Intelligence Director James Clapper, whom he had allowed to stay in that job for three and a half years after he had to apologize to Congress for what he later admitted was a "clearly erroneous" response, under oath, to a question from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) on NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens.

And when Clapper published his memoir last year, Hill would have learned that, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's handpicked appointee to run satellite imagery analysis, Clapper places the blame for the consequential "failure" to find the (non-existent) WMD "where it belongs -- squarely on the shoulders of the administration members who were pushing a narrative of a rogue WMD program in Iraq and on the intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn't really there." [Emphasis added.]

But for Hill, Clapper was a kindred soul: Just eight weeks after she joined the National Security Council staff, Clapper, during an NBC interview on May 28, 2017, recalled "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique." Later he added, "It's in their DNA." Clapper has claimed that "what the Russians did had a profound impact on the outcome of the election."

As for the "Intelligence Community Assessment," the banner headline atop The New York Times on Jan. 7, 2017 set the tone for the next couple of years: "Putin Led Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Says." During my career as a CIA analyst, as deputy national intelligence officer chairing National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), and working on the Intelligence Production Review Board, I had not seen so shabby a piece of faux analysis as the ICA. The writers themselves seemed to be holding their noses. They saw fit to embed in the ICA itself this derriere-covering note : "High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong."

Not a Problem

With the help of the Establishment media, Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan, were able to pretend that the ICA had been approved by "all 17 intelligence agencies" (as first claimed by Clinton, with Rep. Jim Himes, D-CT, repeating that canard Thursday, alas "without objection)." Himes, too should do his homework. The bogus "all 17 intelligence agencies" claim lasted only a few months before Clapper decided to fess up. With striking naiveté, Clapper asserted that ICA preparers were "handpicked analysts" from only the FBI, CIA and NSA. The criteria Clapper et al. used are not hard to divine. In government as in industry, when you can handpick the analysts, you can handpick the conclusions.

Maybe a Problem After All

"According to several current and former intelligence officers who must remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue," as the Times says when it prints made-up stuff, there were only two "handpicked analysts." Clapper picked Brennan; and Brennan picked Clapper. That would help explain the grossly subpar quality of the ICA.

If U.S. Attorney John Durham is allowed to do his job probing the origins of Russiagate, and succeeds in getting access to the "handpicked analysts" -- whether there were just two, or more -- Hill's faith in "our intelligence agencies," may well be dented if not altogether shattered.

Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word , a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. After earning an M.A. in Russian Studies and serving as an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer, he worked as a CIA analyst, then branch chief, of Soviet foreign policy; then as a Deputy National Intelligence Officer, and finally as a morning briefer of the President's Daily Brief .

Tags: Fiona Hill Impeachment Ray McGovern Richard Pipes Russophobia

Tarus 77 , November 23, 2019 at 16:10

The general problem IMHO, to state obvious, is that there is no truth in the public discourse, only lies which support the narrative. And there is no penalty for the continuous lies, certainly not from what is called the press these days.

Susan J Leslie , November 23, 2019 at 10:49

Truth be told – the US is the real "Evil Empire"!

John Lamenzo , November 22, 2019 at 22:24

Great takedown Ray I managed a few minutes listening to her bloviation, even that was too much! Fascists always need an enemy even if they have to fictionalize one.

Herman , November 22, 2019 at 20:47

I remember Phil Giraldi's comment months ago. He had worked for the CIA and now heads the Council for the National interest. He noted his surprise at how many within the CIA still clung to the cold war view of the Russians, ready to accept almost anything bad about the evil Russians. Given the history since the dissolution of the USSR, it surprised Mister Giraldi as I recall. And it does seem the Russian haters still are living in the past and many have a huge impact on public policy and public opinion. It is a very dangerous affliction for the rest of the world.

Hard to forget Mueller (not a spook) when he announced that there was no collusion but vehemently stated that the Russians had interfered in the 2016 election and are a threat to do so in the future. That Russian might have interfered is not surprising since others countries do it far more and more effectively. That we do it far, far more often would seem to put a damper on the Russian narrative but it doesn't because the whole thing about Russia is crazy.

Another John , November 22, 2019 at 20:27

The greatest nation ever's permanent war system requires much deception & permanent enemies to keep the our economy going strong & the people distracted from the real issues. If everyone knew the truth, the world's biggest racket ever would fall apart and world peace would break out.

Jeff Harrison , November 22, 2019 at 20:08

American "intelligence" agencies will do exactly what "intelligence" agencies have done since time immemorial – they will perpetuate their position and power. The fact that that strips you of some of your freedom is a feature, not a bug.

Skip Scott , November 22, 2019 at 17:44

Hill's career advancement and access to the MSM depends on her faith in our "intelligence" agencies. And I doubt very much that Durham will be allowed to do his job probing the origins of RussiaGate. The evil ones will stop at nothing to keep control of the narrative.

"It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled." Mark Twain

[Nov 23, 2019] Fiona Hill a rabid neocon, a book writer of Luke Harding mold, was appointed by Trump in 2017 when Russiagate was in full broom

Trump probably voluntarily appointed this rabid neocon, who would shine in Obama administration with such figures as Hillary. Brown, David (March 4, 2017). "Miner's daughter tipped as Trump adviser on Russia" . The Times. Such actions are difficult to describe with normal words. So he is himself to blame for his current troubles and his inability to behave in a diplomatic way when there was important to him question about role of CrowdStrike in 2016 election and creation of Russiagate witch hunt.
There is something in the USA that creates conditions for producing rabid female neocons, some elevator that brings ruthless female careerists with sharp elbows them to the establishment. She sounds like a person to the right of Madeline Albright, which is an achievement
With such books It is unclear whether she is different from Max Boot. She buys official Skripal story like hook and sinker. The list of her book looks like produced in UK by Luke Harding
Being miner daughter raised in poverty we can also talk about betrayal of her class and upbringing.
This also rises wisdom of appointing emigrants to the Administration and the extent they pursue policies beneficial for their native countries.
Nov 23, 2019 | en.wikipedia.org

Impeachment testimony

On October 14, 2019, responding to a subpoena , Hill testified in a closed-door deposition for ten hours before special committees of the United States Congress as part of the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump . [9] [10] [11]

Testimony to the House Intelligence Committee by Hill and David Holmes, November 21, 2019 , C-SPAN

She testified in public before the same body on November 21, 2019. [12] While being questioned by Steve Castor , the counsel for the House Intelligence Committee's Republican minority, Hill commented on Gordon Sondland 's involvement in the Ukraine matter: "It struck me when (Wednesday), when you put up on the screen Ambassador Sondland's emails, and who was on these emails, and he said these are the people who need to know, that he was absolutely right," she said. "Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand, and we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged." [13] In response to a question from that committee's chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff , Hill stated: "The Russians' interests are frankly to delegitimize our entire presidency. The goal of the Russians [in 2016] was really to put whoever became the president -- by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale -- under a cloud." [

Hill's books include:

[Nov 23, 2019] Tulsi Gabbard, is being viciously slandered in article after article in neoliberal MSM

Nov 23, 2019 | www.unz.com

Durruti , says: November 22, 2019 at 5:57 pm GMT

Taken together, those twin hasbara refrains evoke a notion of divine punishment. JFK and RFK were punished for the sins of their Jew-hating, Nazi-loving father. Mind you, it was Yahweh who took vengeance, not Israel!

Brilliant article by Guyenot. Thoroughly well written & informative.

I note in passing:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020/democratic-establishment-reaches-boiling-point-with-tulsi-gabbard/ar-BBX8P8S?li=BBnb7Kz

A Congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard, is being viciously slandered in article after article in the Mainstream (Zionist) Media. Read the diatribe carefully, and learn some of how the People are misdirected-brainwashed.

Ms. Gabbard is, apparently, leading in the Polls, and the Zionist controller Power Elite are Panicky. They will do to Ms. Gabbard what they did to Ron Paul, and his campaign.

It is a sense of frustration that We-I are not able to Revenge the murder of our last Constitutional President, John F. Kennedy, the Destruction of our Republic, the millions of murders from November 22, 1963, to the present, or to effectively defend & protect this noble lady (Ms. Gabbard).

If we protect her, we protect ourselves and our Country. Freedom is not free. We must Pay for i t!

God Bless America!

Durruti

[Nov 23, 2019] Testimony to the House Intelligence Committee by Hill and David Holmes

The most interesting part of testimony is that CrowdStrike machinations in case of DNC leak which was artificially turns into Russian hack (and probably not without Crowdstyle server located in Ukraine). As this is connected to Steel which is a hot spot for the UK government was swiped under the carpet.
She actually met with Steele. She was shown Steele dossier before it was published.
Nov 21, 2019 | www.c-span.org

CrowdStrike was mentioned only is passing and was instantly dismissed by rabid neocon Hill. While this was the central issue with Zelensky administration.

All questioning was about semi-senile Biden, who is probably the most favorable contender on Democratic side for Trump.

[Nov 23, 2019] Are the Coup Plotters Against Trump Facing a Reckoning by Larry C Johnson - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Nov 23, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

I want to remind you of Bill Barr's speech to the Federalist Society a week ago. He made a specific point about the plot to sabotage Donald Trump's Presidency :

Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called "The Resistance," and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver available to sabotage the functioning of his Administration. Now, "resistance" is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous – indeed incendiary – notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic. What it means is that, instead of viewing themselves as the "loyal opposition," as opposing parties have done in the past, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government.

I believe that Bill Barr intentionally signaled that the sedition by the intelligence community, the FBI and the Department of Justice will not be allowed to slide. But he is going to do everything to punish them according to the law. He is committed to a rule of law and enforcing the laws of this country.

And then there is John Durham .

In the late 1990s, Durham was tapped by Bill Clinton's justice department to investigate Boston police and FBI agents' connections with infamous gangster James "Whitey" Bulger. That investigation ultimately identified corrupt law enforcement officials who had given the killer information he then used to kill informants and eventually became a part of the case that led to Bulger's conviction.

Durham's investigation implicated Robert Mueller. According to knowledgeable sources, the Clinton Justice Department would not allow Durham to bring charges against Mueller :

In the 1980's, while Mr. Connolly was working with Whitey Bulger, Mr. Mueller was assistant United States attorney in Boston in charge of the criminal division and for a period was the acting United States attorney here, presiding over Mr. Connolly and Mr. Bulger as a ''top-echelon informant.'' Officials of the Massachusetts state police and the Boston Police Department had long wondered why their investigations of Mr. Bulger were always compromised before they could gather evidence against him, and they suspected that the F.B.I. was protecting him.

Law enforcement officials also have said they wondered why the United States attorney's office seemed to give Mr. Bulger impunity. But hearings by United States District Judge Mark Wolf in 1998 found that Mr. Connolly had not told his bosses in the United States attorney's office about his work with Mr. Bulger. In general, Judge Wolf found what he described as a culture of secrecy in the F.B.I.'s handling of its informants that sometimes subverted the purpose of the program.

I do not believe that Bill Barr is going to prevent John Durham from following the evidence and charging those culpable with crimes. I suspect that this fact is weighing heavily on Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe, John Brennab, Jim Clapper and others in the FBI, DOJ and intelligence community. We will know more in a month.

blue peacock , 23 November 2019 at 02:14 AM

Larry

The most important outcome is transparency, where the public gets to see the breadth & depth of the activities including the collusion with the media to shape the narrative and the use of Congressional committees to further the narrative.

The public needs to be able to read about the entire plot and all the sub-plots and the cast of characters with the roles each played.

We need this to be able to comprehend the extent of violence to the rule of law by those entrusted with enforcement of the law and the operation of the nations' intelligence agencies.

We can judge when Durham is done if Barr's speech to the Federalist Society was just rhetorical or if he really meant it.

Jack said in reply to blue peacock... , 23 November 2019 at 11:55 AM
Yes. Agree. Informing the public about the true scale of the operation would be very helpful.

That's the acid question: What will Barr deliver?

Of course if he does that the propaganda organs will unleash their vitriol on him and claim he is Trump's bag carrier. It's not gonna change the minds of any NeverTrumper. It's value will be a record for posterity.

It is worth pondering, what about Trump has got so many of the elites so riled up? After all he is one of them. Bill & Hillary attended his wedding to Melania. He has been photographed at parties with Epstein and moved in celebrity social circles. He's been more zionist than others before him and he's fed the MIC handsomely. He's not reformed the surveillance state one iota. It remains at least as secretive and powerful as before. He's allowed multinational US corporations to repatriate overseas profits to buyback stock that financially rewards the managerial class. He's done nothing that attacks elite interests. Is it just that he beat them at their own game and their egos are bruised? In his first run for public office he wins the biggest prize by defeating the Bush dynasty and Senators and Governors long in Republican Party leadership and then the Most sure thing, the so entitled Clinton machine.

You see similar smear operations on Tulsi too. At least with her one can argue that she has never been a club member.

Patrick Armstrong -> Jack... , 23 November 2019 at 02:05 PM
"what about Trump has got so many of the elites so riled up?"

I don't think it's that hard to figure out: he's too orange, he's too much of an outsider, he broke Hillary's dream.

But the real crime was saying that the US should try to get along with Russia.

If he had never said the word "Russia" or "Putin" they'd still hate him but we'd be on the level of psychiatrists speculating that Twitter makes you crazy or something. And it would the the dims and their tame presstitutes saying that without the (powerful) back up of the deepstate/borg/blob

You can't run much of an impeachment circus on POTUS's choice of hair product, but Russia Russia Russia, that keeps going. He colluded with Putin; OK we can't prove that but he wasn't exonerated; he weakened brave little Ukraine in its fight against Putin. That's all they've got.

Diana C , 23 November 2019 at 11:51 AM
I did hear Barr's definition of "The Resistance" and was so happy that someone finally explained how evil that idea is in our Democratic Republic. I was so sick of those smug people I have met who proudly proclaim their allegiance to "The Resistance," as if they count themselves equal to the French Resistance in WWII against the Nazis.

My wish is that any of the "Resistance" who have made their living on tax-funded salaries are ripped out of those positions and placed in tax-funded prison cells. And this time, I would like it if they would be properly guarded so that they can't escape their shame and punishment through what will be judged as suicide.

In fact, I might enjoy it if the Smithsonian's National Zoo would add displays of the Resistors right next to any sort of display of venomous snakes.

(There, I've vented my frustration about how long this process for justice has taken and for the hours and hours of Adam Schiff on television screens. I am not usually a bitter person, but this whole episode has taken its toll on many of us who are just mere citizens and tax payers.)

Paul Damascene , 23 November 2019 at 11:51 AM
Among the questions that Larry's contribution begs here, is whether branches of this investigative trail lead back to Mueller himself. If we believe Durham will follow it to Whitey Bulger and Mueller's potential involvement in enabling murder, then why not to Uranium One, and his role in the approval of the sale, the (non)investigation of the bags of cash changing hands, the contributions to the Clinton Foundation and the Bill Clinton speech in Moscow for $500,000.

And if there, then why not to Mueller's role in the lead up, and follow up to 911?

[Nov 22, 2019] From "Communists under each bed" to "Russians under each bed" in less then 70 years

Nov 22, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Nov 21 2019 19:53 utc | 88

And the lies just keep on rolling :

"A former top White House Russia expert testified Thursday that the 'fictional narrative' embraced by President Donald Trump that Ukraine meddled in the US elections was fabricated by Russia to wreak havoc in US politics."

So reports one of NATO's BigLie Media outlets. FYI, as I wrote in 2016, no outside nation needs to "wreak havoc in US politics" as there're numerous home grown domestic sources already doing that in an ongoing manner since the 1850s. Isn't it a felony to lie to Congress?

[Nov 22, 2019] NeoMcCarthyism WMDs weapons of mass deceptions more dangerous than anarchy in thier effects on society

Notable quotes:
"... Copeland @ 33 said; "It seems like the primary role of the investigation, so far, is to advance the national security narrative that portrays Russia as the perpetual enemy of the US." Yes, it "seems" like it, because it is. The corporate empire needs enemies to keep the $ flowing. ..."
Nov 22, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

ben , Nov 21 2019 3:05 utc | 40

Copeland @ 33 said; "It seems like the primary role of the investigation, so far, is to advance the national security narrative that portrays Russia as the perpetual enemy of the US." Yes, it "seems" like it, because it is. The corporate empire needs enemies to keep the $ flowing.

Confrontation is much more profitable than peace...

snake , Nov 21 2019 13:02 utc | 62


WMDs weapons of mass deceptions more dangerous than anarchy and weapons

I included the following to make clear what is the above link is about..
@ Circe It would be a fair assumption that nothing on the internet is what it appears. When it matters, it is controlled. Internet like media is source of information and manipulation. One cannot rely on any single source. Everyone is lying much of the time. by: jared @ 55

Weapons of mass deception (WMDs)
Wireless weapons of mind control (WWMC_.

You will know when your government has begun to move in response to those that it governs when it:==>
1. quits spying on you
2. makes infecting UR computer with spyware, malware, and viri not only criminally illegal with 10 years automatic no early time release jail time but also makes actionable as a tort, victim recovery from the perpetrator Jury trials to establish damages.
3. amends the constitution to make it a life time in jail offence to conduct the affairs of government in secret or to classify any document as secret from anyone who is a citizen of America and is also a citizen of the Untied States of America.
4. has a budget for domestic needs at least 4x the size of the armament budget.
5. transitions power generation from grid to place of use and transitions from fossil fuel, nuclear fuel to solar and wind energy
6. gives free education and medical services at the highest level to all comers without regard to prior qualification.
7. recognizes all people of all race and all religion as one in the same person
8. puts news fakers and propagandist under the jail
9. admits pearl harbor, 9/11 and
10. allows the masses to determine not only the candidates for offices in the USA but also allows the masses to determine which candidate will serve the USA
11. allows any member of the governed masses to indite any sitting member of a government at any level, in the independent of the civil government, court of human rights, and allows that court of human rights to immediately remove the accused person from his or her position in government until a verdict can be rendered, and if that verdict is guilty, allows to and assist with enforcing the penalty assessed by the the human rights court for the human rights violation while in office or as a result of the power of the office.
12. makes it illegal to be a member of government at any level if that persons holds any citizenship but American and USA.

ben , Nov 21 2019 16:31 utc | 73
Just watching "the hate Russia circus" on MSM. If DJT wasn't such a greedy MF, this circus wouldn't be going on.

Let's be clear, Russia, and every other nation on earth, has the absolute right to defend itself, and it's people,

from being exploited by the U$A's corporate empire. The empire's record over time is clear, if it wants something you have, they'll take it.

DJT has no problem following the empire's dictates, but when he deviates and pursues his own personal enrichment at the expense of the empire's overall goals, things like the D.C. circus ensues.

I'll say this again, Russia, and all countries on earth have the RIGHT to defend themselves from our latest empires attacks, no matter in what form they appear..

[Nov 22, 2019] New neologism Putophrenia

Nov 22, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Adding to his useful Russophrenia , Bryan MacDonald has coined " Putophrenia ": "A condition where the sufferer believes Vladimir Putin is a crazed Russian nationalist who wants to destroy the West, and simultaneously, is, together with his cronies, robbing Russia blind & hiding all the dosh in the same West." These two neatly point up the absurdities of the Western propaganda line.

[Nov 22, 2019] Mueller report was just a smear because the crimes of these guys had nothing to do with the office of President.

Nov 22, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jackrabbit , Nov 21 2019 16:08 utc | 72

ralphieboy @60:
... five of his closest advisers and associates have been convicted or pleaded guilty of felony crimes

This is just a smear because the crimes of these guys had nothing to do with the office of President.

Manafort
He was likely set up and had no policy role. AFAIK, he has very little connection to Trump - but some connection to Roger Stone.

Roger Stone
Self-destructed by lying to Congress (and others) about his connections to Wikileaks. No impact on policy. His demise had nothing to do with Trump.

Flynn
He was likely set up because he told the world that the Obama Administration had made a "wilful decision" to support the rise of ISIS. That set-up came before the election. No affect on policy and Trump was not involved.

Cohen
As Trump's fixer he's closely connected to Trump but the Stormy Daniels fiasco had no connection to policy.

Papadopoulos
Fingered in the Russiagate nonsense, his "felony" was deceptiveness during an interview and that brought him 14 days in jail. Unlikely that he had any measurable affect on policy or close connection to Trump himself.

[Nov 21, 2019] Fireworks Erupt As Schiff Shields Questions Over Biden And Burisma

Nov 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Update 03:30 p.m.

me title=

Update 02:20 p.m.

Today's largely boring testimony included a few fireworks - notably when House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) prevented Republicans from recognizing Rep. Elise Stefanik to ask Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch questions about Hunter Biden and Ukrainian gas company Burisma.

me title=

And when Stefanik was allowed to question Yovanovitch, she pointed out that the Obama State Department prepared her to answer questions about perceived conflicts of interest regarding the unusual Biden arrangement .

me title=

***

In part two of Democrats' impeachment hearing drama, the public will hear from former American Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was removed from her post in the spring. Yovanovitch was removed from her post in the spring by the administration, and has been cast by Democrats as an honorable public servant sacked for tying to do the right thing.

As BBG reminds us, Yovanovitch testified in private on Oct. 11 that she felt she was recalled following a "concerted campaign" by President Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Because she left Ukraine in May, she clearly doesn't have any direct knowledge of Trump's efforts to elicit a quid pro quo - or as the Dems are now calling it, a bribe.

Yovanovitch testified that she felt "threatened" by the way Trump spoke about her on the July 25 call, which is at the center of the impeachment issue. Trump called her "bad news" and said "she's going to go through some things."

Watch her testimony live below (it's set to begin at 9 am ET):

https://www.youtube.com/embed/sPoc_sj1hgQ

Later, the committee will enter a closed-door session to hear from David Holmes, a staffer at the US embassy in Kyiv, about this week's revelation that Trump allegedly asked envoy Gordon Sondland on July 26 about the status of certain "investigations" he sought from Ukraine into the Bidens.

We're still waiting on President Trump to release a transcript of an April congratulatory call with Zelensky, something he promised to do, but has yet to follow through on.

Fortunately, so far, the hearings have been a disaster for the Dems, with even the NYT criticizing them as dull and boring. In response, the Dems tried to spice things up ahead of toady's hearing by talking up the possibility of a bribery charge against Trump.

* * *

After two years of reporting on Ukraine issues, the Hill's John Solomon said that Yovanovitch could still be an important fact witness, and that if he had his druthers, he would ask her these fifteen questions.

1. Ambassador Yovanovitch, at any time while you served in Ukraine did any officials in Kiev ever express concern to you that President Trump might be withholding foreign aid assistance to get political investigations started? Did President Trump ever ask you as America's top representative in Kiev to pressure Ukrainians to start an investigation about Burisma Holdings or the Bidens?

2. What was the Ukrainians' perception of President Trump after he allowed lethal aid to go to Ukraine in 2018?

3. In the spring and summer of 2019, did you ever become aware of any U.S. intelligence or U.S. treasury concerns raised about incoming Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his affiliation or proximity to certain oligarchs? Did any of those concerns involve what the IMF might do if a certain oligarch who supported Zelensky returned to power and regained influence over Ukraine's national bank?

4. Back in May 2018, then-House Rules Committee chairman Pete Sessions wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggesting you might have made comments unflattering or unsupportive of the president and should be recalled. Setting aside that Sessions is a Republican and might even have donors interested in Ukraine policy, were you ever questioned about his concerns? At any time have you or your embassy staff made comments that could be viewed as unsupportive or critical of President Trump and his policies?

5. John Solomon reported at The Hill and your colleagues have since confirmed in testimony that the State Department helped fund a nonprofit called the Anti-Corruption Action Centre of Ukraine that also was funded by George Soros' main charity. That nonprofit, also known as AnTac, was identified in a 2014 Soros foundation strategy document as critical to reshaping Ukraine to Mr. Soros' vision. Can you explain what role your embassy played in funding this group and why State funds would flow to it? And did any one consider the perception of mingling tax dollars with those donated by Soros, a liberal ideologue who spent millions in 2016 trying to elect Hillary Clinton and defeat Donald Trump?

6. In March 2019, Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko gave an on-the-record, videotaped interview to The Hill alleging that during a 2016 meeting you discussed a list of names of Ukrainian nationals and groups you did not want to see Ukrainian prosecutors target. Your supporters have since suggested he recanted that story. Did you or your staff ever do anything to confirm he had recanted or changed his story, such as talk to him, or did you just rely on press reports?

7. Now that both the New York Times and The Hill have confirmed that Lutsenko stands by his account and has not recanted, how do you respond to his concerns? And setting aide the use of the word "list," is it possible that during that 2016 meeting with Mr. Lutsenko you discussed the names of certain Ukrainians you did not want to see prosecuted, investigated or harassed?

8. Your colleagues, in particular Mr. George Kent, have confirmed to the House Intelligence Committee that the U.S. embassy in Kiev did, in fact, exert pressure on the Ukrainian prosecutors office not to prosecute certain Ukrainian activists and officials. These efforts included a letter Mr. Kent signed urging Ukrainian prosecutors to back off an investigation of the aforementioned group AnTac as well as engaged in conversations about certain Ukrainians like Parliamentary member Sergey Leschenko, journalist Vitali Shabunin and NABU director Artem Sytnyk. Why was the US. Embassy involved in exerting such pressure and did any of these actions run afoul of the Geneva Convention's requirement that foreign diplomats avoid becoming involved in the internal affairs of their host country?

9. On March 5 of this year, you gave a speech in which you called for the replacement of Ukraine's top anti-corruption prosecutor. That speech occurred in the middle of the Ukrainian presidential election and obviously raised concerns among some Ukrainians of internal interference prohibited by the Geneva Convention. In fact, one of your bosses, Under Secretary David Hale, got questioned about those concerns when he arrived in country a few days later. Why did you think it was appropriate to give advice to Ukrainians on an internal personnel matter and did you consider then or now the potential concerns your comments might raise about meddling in the Ukrainian election or the country's internal affairs?

10. If the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States suddenly urged us to fire Attorney General Bill Bar or our FBI director, would you think that was appropriate?

11. At any time since December 2015, did you or your embassy ever have any contact with Vice President Joe Biden, his office or his son Hunter Biden concerning Burisma Holdings or an investigation into its owner Mykola Zlochevsky?

12. At any time since you were appointed ambassador to Ukraine, did you or your embassy have any contact with the following Burisma figures: Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, lawyer John Buretta, Blue Star strategies representatives Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano, or former Ukrainian embassy official Andrii Telizhenko?

13. John Solomon obtained documents showing Burisma representatives were pressuring the State Department in February 2016 to help end the corruption allegations against the company and were invoking Hunter Biden's name as part of their effort. Did you ever subsequently learn of these contacts and did any one at State -- including but not limited to Secretary Kerry, Undersecretary Novelli, Deputy Secretary Blinken or Assistant Secretary Nuland -- ever raise Burisma with you?

14. What was your embassy's assessment of the corruption allegations around Burisma and why the company may have hired Hunter Biden as a board member in 2014?

15. In spring 2019 your embassy reportedly began monitoring briefly the social media communications of certain people viewed as supportive of President Trump and gathering analytics about them. Who were those people? Why was this done? Why did it stop? And did anyone in the State Department chain of command ever suggest targeting Americans with State resources might be improper or illegal?

[Nov 15, 2019] We need to get the globalist class under control: Sputnik is reporting that the US has spent $6.4 Trillion fighting wars that have killed 800,000 since Sept 11/01, that number is unbelievable, at least 1,500,000 dead in Iraq, 250,000 in Afghanistan, 750,000 in Syria.

Nov 15, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Kadath , Nov 14 2019 21:09 utc | 136

Sputnik is reporting that the US has spent $6.4 Trillion fighting wars that have killed 800,000 since Sept 11/01, that number is unbelievable, at least 1,500,000 dead in Iraq, 250,000 in Afghanistan, 750,000 in Syria.

The US military budget alone has averaged about 650 billion since then, plus the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were funded separately (around 200 million a year), plus CIA/ blackbook projects - 7 or 8 trillion is a more likely number.

When things get blown up, no one really knows what was actually bought and existed and what was just a phantom piece of equipment War has always been the ideal cover for corruption

[Nov 15, 2019] Russia is trying to re-industrialize because they're forced to: sanctions actually accelerates the process because Russian internal investors know there will be a reasonably long term market for Russian goods

Nov 15, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

c1ue , Nov 15 2019 16:23 utc | 164

@NemesisCalling #142

The problem with import substitution is that the factories that used to make these goods were largely moved to China. China isn't going to give them back.

So in order to attempt to substitute US made for the China imports, the factories have to be built first.

Secondly, China heavily subsidizes the early parts of the supply chains: raw materials and what not. This wouldn't hold true to American factories.

So while the goal and the theory are good, the problem is the execution.

Russia is doing it because they're forced to: sanctions actually accelerates the process because Russian internal investors know there will be a reasonably long term market for Russian goods so long as the sanctions hold true, and the sanctions also lock in Russian capital (that which was repatriated) to some extent.

[Nov 15, 2019] The level of lies Schiff is pushing made the USA not the "Empire of Illusions" but "Superempire of illusions"

Nov 15, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

bevin , Nov 13 2019 18:12 utc | 7

Inadvertently today I found myself trapped into listening for a couple of minutes to the nonsense that Schiff was spouting in the House of Horrors.
It is almost incredible that what he was doing, in essence, was to draw attention to the two great facts in this case, the first being the gangster Maidan coup, which the US no longer even pretends not to have brought about for its own purposes, and the second, the way in which the Vice President and his family set about profiting, personally, from the looting of every Ukrainian's fortune-every family's healthcare, pension plan, utility bill, home. In this case by saddling the people, dependent on gas heat to see them through the winter, with millions to be paid to Hunter Biden, friends of John Kerry and other assorted profiteers.
Like 'b' I find it almost impossible to believe that the Democrats are opening this can of worms and feeding it to the world.
But then I wonder if, perhaps, these people do not know something that foreigners cannot know, something about the societal stupidity and institutional ignorance for which the only country ever known to have supported "No Nothing" candidates is famous.
Perhaps Schiff and Pelosi know what they are doing and what they are doing is based upon HL Mencken's dictum:
"Nobody ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American people."

Jackrabbit , Nov 13 2019 18:45 utc | 11

bevin @7:
Like 'b' I find it almost impossible to believe that the Democrats are opening this can of worms and feeding it to the world.

Just don't claim (like I do) that Russiagate and Ukrainegate are kayfabe courtesy of Deep State 'managed democracy' or you're a nutcase that everyone will ignore.

Nah, just sit back and enjoy while the Democratic Party cuts its own throat for over the Ukrainegate nothingburger which will see no one held accountable for anything.

A partisan witch-hunt less than a year before the 2020 Election? Double-plus good for Trump's re-election.

But the possibility of a set-up is INCONCEIVABLE to naval-gazing Kool-Aid drinkers.

It's gotta be real because Bloomberg wants to join the Democratic race!

Just as he wanted to join the race in 2016? His intention to do so also underscored the reality of THAT race. Rinse, repeat. LOL. The dumbf*cks won't notice.

!!

james , Nov 13 2019 18:51 utc | 12
@ 11 jackrabbit.. you can claim that too and i am not ignoring you! i agree with bevin and b how this is insane what the dems are doing, but the whole usa political scenario is insane... at the same time i get cranky with regard to everything being laid at the deep states feet when no one can articulate just what the deep state is.. in fact, i think there are a number of powerful players running at cross purposes to each other, so i don't think it is as easy as you make out laying it all at the feet of this 'deep state'... sure, the political process is mostly a charade and i doubt it matters much who wins at this point...

but, i do think the usa continues to slide into a more precarious place that coincides with a multi polar world that the usa is also very resistant to... as for the people of the usa - maybe many of them are easily manipulated, but not all of them.. it is the same around the world... how does one explain how the protesters in bolivia or honk kong are so easily duped? no.. i think generally people are easily duped, but not all people..

Jackrabbit , Nov 13 2019 19:21 utc | 14
james

I'll make it easy for you.

Deep State: the unusual behavior and strange coincides driven by a small number of very well connected people that make little sense but advance the interests of the establishment.

Full-Spectrum Dominance (FSD) means controlled opposition everywhere. FSD in practice:

> Political kayfabe
Hillary makes mistakes that help elect Trump. Trump helps to get Pelosi elected as House Speaker.

> Compromising whistle-blowers
The Intercept turns in whistle-blowers.

> Co-opting dissent
Max B. as the new Assange.

karlof1 , Nov 13 2019 20:12 utc | 24
librul @16--

IMO, lumping the D-Party into the same boat doesn't reflect reality. A great many D-Party members were disenfranchised by the DNC during 2016; many know it and know why, and never swallowed Russiagate. Many of those D-Party folk are again backing Sanders and Gabbard because they're the genuine social-democratic faction the DNC abandoned as soon as Reagan won in 1980 since it supposedly was the Reagan Democrats that swung the election--an assumption never proven correct. And the DNC stated during the lawsuit over 2016 that it would repeat its actions again in 2016, 2020, and beyond. Thus there're two main factions: DNC-Corporate D-Party and small d social-democratic D-Party--both of which are clearly incompatible. It's the former of those two that Gabbard wants to purge; Sanders also seems willing but hasn't been as explicit as Gabbard. Thus we have the old House divided against itself cannot stand situation. Either you're with Obama, Clinton, the Banksters, and the further enslavement of citizens via debt-peonage and expansion of the Outlaw US Empire or you're with the Sanders and Gabbard social-democrats and liberation of citizens via the nationalization of education, health care and dignified retirement, and the neutering of the Outlaw US Empire. Unfortunately, both Gabbard and Sanders are adamant they won't run as 3rd Party POTUS candidates, which means the Corporate faction will get its candidate on the ballot unless something remarkable occurs--a coup within the DNC that totally purges the Obama/Clinton/Corporate faction.

Sorry, but that last phrase I find to be 100% fantastical--about as probable as Kentucky's #1 ranked basketball team losing at home to Evansville at much greater odds than the 40:1 cited for Evansville. Morrison said it was 5:1 50+ years ago, but I don't think people were as brainwashed then as now.

librul , Nov 13 2019 21:11 utc | 31
@Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 13 2019 20:12 utc | 24

Thanks karlof1,

I am aware not *every single* Democrat bought into Russiagate.

You seem to suggest that the corruption on full display by the DNC during 2016 inoculated
**some** Democrats to Russiagate if they were Bernie supports. Maybe. But we are faced with the puzzling contradiction that Bernie himself did not support the lawsuit brought by the Bernie supporters against the corrupt DNC ... AND ... AND ... Bernie has been a foaming-at-the-mouth supporter of the Russiagate hysteria!

"How can he not talk about the reality that Russia, through cyberwarfare, interfered in our election in 2016, is interfering in democratic elections all over the world, and according to his own CIA director will likely interfere in the 2018 midterm elections that we will be holding?" "How do you not talk about that unless you have a very special relationship with Mr. Putin?"

Who said the above? Rachael Maddow? Hillary Clinton? John Brennan? Why none other than Bernie Sanders!
And did you note that Bernie is being a megaphone for the CIA in this quote?

More and more and more Bernie Russiagate promoting quotes here (and 2018 had only begun!):

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/01/responding-to-bernies-promotion-of-the-new-cold-war/

juliania , Nov 14 2019 1:06 utc | 55
Nemesis@15 -"Trust me when I say" ... never trust anyone who says anything after that phrase! How exactly did the Dems play the right card with Russiagate? Do you mean they hoodwinked their supporters into believing Russia to be the enemy, so that is somehow 'the right card'? I'll stop there. You've completely confused me.
Nemesiscalling , Nov 14 2019 1:42 utc | 58
@55 Juliana

I mean "right" in that allowing Russiagate to seep into the waking consciousness of America took the pressure off the dems and what was going to be their reckoning. In effect, they have now doubled-down in the hope that the Trump phenomenon of nationalism will fade away and their rule will be restored. Whether or not Sanders plays into this I think we are yet to see, but, so far, Sanders has played ball with a lot of dem garbage.

Again, by the "right" play I mean as if a dark sorcerer had banked his continued favor with the king he serves on a magic brew that would muddle the King's brain and keep him from knowing of the Sorcerer's repulsive ambition. Such is the dems plan as well as many if not all of the republicans who secretly detest DJT but who don't speak up because their base believes in Trump.

Lurk , Nov 14 2019 1:52 utc | 59
I don't see the USA fragmenting, not before it has been bankrupted, foreclosed and liquidated.

The federal behemoths like the military, the alphabet agencies, the state department, the whitehouse will all fight for their life.

The giant corporations, including the federal reserve, will also object.

Individual states, even as a majority, are no match to the above.

Lurk , Nov 14 2019 1:52 utc | 59
I don't see the USA fragmenting, not before it has been bankrupted, foreclosed and liquidated.

The federal behemoths like the military, the alphabet agencies, the state department, the whitehouse will all fight for their life.

The giant corporations, including the federal reserve, will also object.

Individual states, even as a majority, are no match to the above.

/div> " Lessons To Learn From The Coup In Bolivia , Main | Trump And Zelensky Want Peace With Russia. The Fascists Oppose That. " November 13, 2019 Open Thread 2019-67 News & views ...

Posted by b on November 13, 2019 at 16:25 UTC | Permalink

" Lessons To Learn From The Coup In Bolivia | Main | Trump And Zelensky Want Peace With Russia. The Fascists Oppose That. " November 13, 2019 Open Thread 2019-67 News & views ...

Posted by b on November 13, 2019 at 16:25 UTC | Permalink

div
Don Bacon , Nov 13 2019 16:35 utc | 1
next page " New Yorker, Nov 18[sic], 2019
The Case Against Boeing . . here
librul , Nov 13 2019 17:07 utc | 2
Is Donald Trump to be the last President of the US of A?
Chevrus , Nov 13 2019 17:33 utc | 3
Please illustrate a situation where the executive branch/office of the USA would be suddenly discontinued...
karlof1 , Nov 13 2019 17:48 utc | 4
Chevrus @3--

5-mile diameter asteroid strike atop the White House without any warning whatsoever ought to do the deed.

Vonu , Nov 13 2019 18:00 utc | 5
Killing the president wouldn't kill the presidency any more efficiently than was done in Bolivia.
flankerbandit , Nov 13 2019 18:12 utc | 6
An excellent read on the MAX saga that Baconator pointed to...

Often I expect these stories in the media to get important technical details wrong...but here we see that this writer did his homework...

I have said this many times before, but the MCAS system is NOT an anti-stall system...it is there solely for the purpose of providing the right kind of stick feel to the pilot...

"On most airplanes, as you approach stall you can feel it," a veteran pilot for a U.S. commercial carrier told me.

Instead of the steadily increasing force on the control column that pilots were used to feeling -- and that F.A.A. guidelines required -- the new engines caused a loosening sensation.

This is exactly it...and this is why I have to wonder how exactly is MCAS going to be cleared to fly again...since the original, much less authoritative version was found inadequate in providing the stick force required...and the rejigged production version proved to be a surefire killer if it kicked in at low altitudes such as takeoff...

We recall that Captain Sullenberger called the MAX a 'death trap'...

So clearly the system's authority has to be dialed back...in which case the airplane handling qualities do not meet established requirements...

The story here tells of the struggle that the family of Ralph Nader's grand-niece, who perished in the Ethiopian flight, is waging to 'axe the max'...

Hopefully they will succeed, but I doubt it..the MAX can never be a good airplane...full stop...

bevin , Nov 13 2019 18:12 utc | 7
Inadvertently today I found myself trapped into listening for a couple of minutes to the nonsense that Schiff was spouting in the House of Horrors.
It is almost incredible that what he was doing, in essence, was to draw attention to the two great facts in this case, the first being the gangster Maidan coup, which the US no longer even pretends not to have brought about for its own purposes, and the second, the way in which the Vice President and his family set about profiting, personally, from the looting of every Ukrainian's fortune-every family's healthcare, pension plan, utility bill, home. In this case by saddling the people, dependent on gas heat to see them through the winter, with millions to be paid to Hunter Biden, friends of John Kerry and other assorted profiteers.
Like 'b' I find it almost impossible to believe that the Democrats are opening this can of worms and feeding it to the world.
But then I wonder if, perhaps, these people do not know something that foreigners cannot know, something about the societal stupidity and institutional ignorance for which the only country ever known to have supported "No Nothing" candidates is famous.
Perhaps Schiff and Pelosi know what they are doing and what they are doing is based upon HL Mencken's dictum:
"Nobody ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American people."
librul , Nov 13 2019 18:28 utc | 8
@Please illustrate a situation where the executive branch/office of the USA would be suddenly discontinued...

Posted by: Chevrus | Nov 13 2019 17:33 utc | 3

Just found your query. Quick and dead-on response is a major EMP event, but that is not what I had in mind.
Let me see if I can work up another, but necessarily lengthier response.

karlof1 , Nov 13 2019 18:35 utc | 9
As I noted on the Bolivia thread, BRICS is having its Summit today & tomorrow in Brasilia, and will likely be the most important of its brief life. So far, just this report :

"The heads of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will discuss issues related to economic, financial and cultural cooperation as well as arms control and joint efforts to counter terrorism.

"The leaders of the five member-states are to attend the BRICS Business Forum, and meet with the BRICS Business Council and the heads of the New Development Bank.

"In addition, Vladimir Putin will hold a number of bilateral meetings with the heads of state and government taking part in the summit."

I expect the atmosphere to be tense.

Gerhard , Nov 13 2019 18:36 utc | 10
librul @2 ending of the US of A?

No! But there will be a new "civil war" in the US around the mid of the next decade. Split occuring not south to north, but west to east; chaos further increased by immigrants from the middle & south Americas with their own agenda.

Forces (land & air), militia & DHS people of the eastern party may seek secure backing near frontier to Canada (area of Great Lakes therefore save). Some of the 'big capitalists' who feel more international than patriot will flee to outer South America (Argentinia, Chile).

Eventually a dead president (for that and for the civil war please look into cycles of US-history). Peace will come with the first female president. Keep watch on Tulsi Gabbard (but may be also another lady - as I am in Europe I am not familiar with all probable coming female candidates).

Why no permanent split of the States? There are internal benefits (common traffic, markets etc.) but more it is the outside pressure: to be able to compete with China it is a necessity for the States to remain united. Also the coming chaos in Europe and Russia demands unification of the US.

Now a very strange remark: some elites in the US have already accepted, even promote the tendency toward "civil war" to enable a 'reset' of the political, economical and social structure of the country. Furthermore, a seemingly weak US with a split in the military may lead Russia in temptation to make some mistake (towards Ukraine and Europe). And now a very, very strange remark: while some forces in the homeland are caught in civil disorder some other forces in the overseas may be involved in a foreign war. Extremely pointed out: the coming civil war in a very specific manner is a fake (to deceive and trap Russia - of course not Putin but his followers).

Today I had a look into George Friedman's book about the next hundred years. For the first view there is a lot of nonsense (disintegration of China etc.). But I agree that the power of the US will be restored during the century. And if not the same power as it was in the 1990s, then in every case the internal stability of the USA is completely guaranteed.

With greetings from Germany and with thanks to Bernhard for his valuable work, Gerhard

Jackrabbit , Nov 13 2019 18:45 utc | 11
bevin @7:
Like 'b' I find it almost impossible to believe that the Democrats are opening this can of worms and feeding it to the world.

Just don't claim (like I do) that Russiagate and Ukrainegate are kayfabe courtesy of Deep State 'managed democracy' or you're a nutcase that everyone will ignore.

Nah, just sit back and enjoy while the Democratic Party cuts its own throat for over the Ukrainegate nothingburger which will see no one held accountable for anything.

A partisan witch-hunt less than a year before the 2020 Election? Double-plus good for Trump's re-election.

But the possibility of a set-up is INCONCEIVABLE to naval-gazing Kool-Aid drinkers.

It's gotta be real because Bloomberg wants to join the Democratic race!

Just as he wanted to join the race in 2016? His intention to do so also underscored the reality of THAT race. Rinse, repeat. LOL. The dumbf*cks won't notice.

!!

james , Nov 13 2019 18:51 utc | 12
@ 11 jackrabbit.. you can claim that too and i am not ignoring you! i agree with bevin and b how this is insane what the dems are doing, but the whole usa political scenario is insane... at the same time i get cranky with regard to everything being laid at the deep states feet when no one can articulate just what the deep state is.. in fact, i think there are a number of powerful players running at cross purposes to each other, so i don't think it is as easy as you make out laying it all at the feet of this 'deep state'... sure, the political process is mostly a charade and i doubt it matters much who wins at this point...

but, i do think the usa continues to slide into a more precarious place that coincides with a multi polar world that the usa is also very resistant to... as for the people of the usa - maybe many of them are easily manipulated, but not all of them.. it is the same around the world... how does one explain how the protesters in bolivia or honk kong are so easily duped? no.. i think generally people are easily duped, but not all people..

Paul Damascene , Nov 13 2019 19:12 utc | 13
Karlof1 @ 9 --
"I expect the atmosphere to be tense..."

I do, as well. Though I imagine certain leaders might feel a temptation to suspend Brazil's membership, doing so would illustrate a structural weakness to be overcome by any legitimate multipolar body. That is, if the Empire is able to turn just one member (in this case Brazil), it may be used to weaken the organization as a whole.

Having just a limited exposure to Putin's approach to multipolarity, my understanding is that it is to be accepted that sovereign countries evolve along their own trajectories (as opposed to being subjected to "universal" "liberal" principles). If Brazil or Turkey decide that this means playing both sides off each other, it will be interesting to see whether there are any principled (as opposed to realpolitical or pragmatic) objections that Russia might offer.

Jackrabbit , Nov 13 2019 19:21 utc | 14
james

I'll make it easy for you.

Deep State: the unusual behavior and strange coincides driven by a small number of very well connected people that make little sense but advance the interests of the establishment.

Full-Spectrum Dominance (FSD) means controlled opposition everywhere. FSD in practice:

> Political kayfabe
Hillary makes mistakes that help elect Trump. Trump helps to get Pelosi elected as House Speaker.

> Compromising whistle-blowers
The Intercept turns in whistle-blowers.

> Co-opting dissent
Max B. as the new Assange.

Nemesiscalling , Nov 13 2019 19:22 utc | 15
@11 jackrabbit

Jackrabbit...where do you live in the US?

The reason I ask is because I have heard a load of bull about Russia's plans to Russianize the world and that Trump is his pawn since day -167 of his inauguration. I have heard this from coworkers, from friends, from family, seen it on Reddit, read it on neolib outlets like slate and the like. I'm wondering if you live in Trump country and just don't hear or see the Russophobia being played out in the beltway and on the elitest coastlines.

Trust me when I say that the dems played the right card, albeit a desperate one, when they started with the whole Russiagate nonsense. To you and I, b and others, Russiagate is nonsense. But tell that to the average dem or moron yuppie in their towers along our shining seas.

librul , Nov 13 2019 19:25 utc | 16
Please illustrate a situation where the executive branch/office of the USA would be suddenly discontinued...

Posted by: Chevrus | Nov 13 2019 17:33 utc | 3

An imminent one-two punch from IG Horowitz and John Durham has powerful players quaking
in their boots.

9/11 saw Americans willingly surrendering rights;
accepting a pack of lies, a myth, to explain the event;
militarism becoming the refuge for American's safety.

What are the limits of the rights that Americans are next willing to surrender?
**What are those limits?**
The Resistance, Democrats, no longer respects democratic rights -
no thought to the millions of voters that they would disenfranchise if
the nullification of Trump's election were successful via a coup (impeachment).

Five years ago would you have imagined that Democratic voters would be so cavalier
about democratic rights? So willing to accept the vacuous accusation that our
President is a Russian agent. Would resurrect the CIA - the torturing, kidnapping,
assassinating, war promoting, false flag creating, disinformation spewing CIA, - and ravenously swallow endless streams of McCarthyist propaganda.

How fast,how far, can we spiral downwards? Is the seizure of power too far down the spiral
to imagine? Five years ago would you have imagined the current decent of Democrats we have witnessed?

If the pretext, the myth, of the necessity of seizing power, were echoed by the mouthpiece MSM
would Democrats go along? Americans have surrendered rights in our near lifetime. Americans
worship militarism and their military heroes more than ever before. Americans have swallowed
hook-line-and-sinker the new-McCathyism and "Putin is an evil man".

An imminent one-two punch from IG Horowitz and John Durham has powerful players quaking
in their boots. To answer your question, I cannot imagine what players like John Brennan
are scheming. But as you know 9/11 was not beyond their criminal limit or capability.

Bemildred , Nov 13 2019 19:27 utc | 17
Paul Damascene @13: I generally share your view, about Putin's view, but I don't think Putin minds Erdogan playing both sides, Bolsonaro, yeah, but not Erdogan, he can play games with us all he wants. Keeps us distracted, and Erdogan doesn't like us "taking the oil", and we can't get in a shooting war with him, he's NATO. He's the military counter-balance to the Pentagon in Syria that Russia cannot be. So I think he will be thrashing around in N. Syria with Putin's consent until we leave (as long as he doesn't pick a fight with Assad.)

Bolsonaro he may see as something to wait for the end of.

It will be interesting and possibly informative to see what comes out of this meeting.

karlof1 , Nov 13 2019 19:33 utc | 18
Paul Damascene @13--

Thanks for your reply! Note that the main event is the Business Forum, which is an arena where genuine national interests usually reign. As you're likely aware, BRICS was formulated as an instrument to facilitate development via commerce and mutual investment and that its first major joint accomplishment was the formulation of the BRICS Development Bank to bypass the IMF, World Bank and the dollar dominated international trade regime. I found it curious that Global Times had zero articles on its main page related to the Summit, while Xinhuanet ran this short commentary overview which amounts to a short recap and cheerleading. We'll need to await the presser this evening to get a better feel.

Jackrabbit , Nov 13 2019 19:41 utc | 19
Nemesiscalling

I live in the 'elite' haven of Northeast USA. LOL.

!!

Chevrus , Nov 13 2019 19:42 utc | 20
You make an interesting point librul... It reminds me of the whole continuity of government scheme. 'In case of _____, break glass an impose martial law or whatever the manufactured disaster calls for. The fact that the north woods 911 bit worked is a testament to just how far the ptb are willing to go. You know, in regard to the USA perspective I can tell you from first hand experience that a steady diet of agitation propaganda as well loads of distraction have rendered a majority of the population easily lead no matter what stripes they might be wearing. Selling Russia as the bad bad guy was easy. Look if a large group of people buy the Bin Laden hit then the sky is the limit.

The 5 mile asteroid would pose a serious problem to most mammals, but given the amount of species self loathing being pedaled about.... My point about the executive branch and the question of 'is he the last' hinges on the fact that the president does nothing which is not somewhat scripted. We know what happens when they go "off the Rez"...

uncle tungsten , Nov 13 2019 19:45 utc | 21
Jackrabbit #14

"the Intercept turns in whistle-blowers"

That is why it was so named and why some journalists departed so promptly after commencing. It is fly paper.

psychohistorian , Nov 13 2019 19:56 utc | 22
Below is a ZH quote about the meeting with Trump and Erdogan today
"
"It's a great honor to be with President Erdogan... the ceasefire is holding very well, we've been speaking to the Kurds and they seem to be very satisfied, as you know we pulled back our troops quite a while ago..."

"I want to thank the President for the job they've [Turkey] done in Syria," Trump said of Erdogan.

And on that note, he already addressed the rationale for continued US troop presence in Syria, saying with Erdogan sitting next to him: "We are keeping the oil. We have the oil. The oil is secure. We left troops behind only for the oil."
"

To those Trump supporters, I would appreciate understanding how the keep the oil fits in with you saying Trump wants to get out of Syria?

Paul , Nov 13 2019 20:06 utc | 23
'Deep State' is just a convenient way of labeling something we can also call 'the illuminati', or 'the globalists', or 'the one percent', or 'Big Brother', etc.. We know that there are hidden powers. Some call them reptilians. Who knows? We can tell that they are there, though we cannot say exactly who they are and how they constitute their coherence, how they organize themselves. We can see pieces of the deeper pattern, but we cannot see the whole thing. So we use these vague and sometimes fanciful labels.

Right now a struggle is going on in Bolivia that is the world's struggle. Humanity is maybe in its final throes, there and in so many other places. Or maybe its the birth pains of who we were really meant to be. God help us.

karlof1 , Nov 13 2019 20:12 utc | 24
librul @16--

IMO, lumping the D-Party into the same boat doesn't reflect reality. A great many D-Party members were disenfranchised by the DNC during 2016; many know it and know why, and never swallowed Russiagate. Many of those D-Party folk are again backing Sanders and Gabbard because they're the genuine social-democratic faction the DNC abandoned as soon as Reagan won in 1980 since it supposedly was the Reagan Democrats that swung the election--an assumption never proven correct. And the DNC stated during the lawsuit over 2016 that it would repeat its actions again in 2016, 2020, and beyond. Thus there're two main factions: DNC-Corporate D-Party and small d social-democratic D-Party--both of which are clearly incompatible. It's the former of those two that Gabbard wants to purge; Sanders also seems willing but hasn't been as explicit as Gabbard. Thus we have the old House divided against itself cannot stand situation. Either you're with Obama, Clinton, the Banksters, and the further enslavement of citizens via debt-peonage and expansion of the Outlaw US Empire or you're with the Sanders and Gabbard social-democrats and liberation of citizens via the nationalization of education, health care and dignified retirement, and the neutering of the Outlaw US Empire. Unfortunately, both Gabbard and Sanders are adamant they won't run as 3rd Party POTUS candidates, which means the Corporate faction will get its candidate on the ballot unless something remarkable occurs--a coup within the DNC that totally purges the Obama/Clinton/Corporate faction.

Sorry, but that last phrase I find to be 100% fantastical--about as probable as Kentucky's #1 ranked basketball team losing at home to Evansville at much greater odds than the 40:1 cited for Evansville. Morrison said it was 5:1 50+ years ago, but I don't think people were as brainwashed then as now.

paul , Nov 13 2019 20:14 utc | 25
The 'Orwellian Globalists' may have overstepped, hubristically, when they chose an out-and-out racist, an outspoken racist, to be their puppet to head the new government in Bolivia. This may be just what was needed to provoke the MAJORITY indigenous people of Bolivia ...
Walter , Nov 13 2019 20:52 utc | 26
@ librul | Nov 13 2019 19:25 utc | 16 (Executive discon)

ED occurs immediately after last gold bar and last whore is loaded onto last 747 transporters to Patagonia.

...

Seriously, there's a naturally collegial grundnorm tween Ru and US, they simply need to work this out. The PE stand in the path, and act as impedance.

snake , Nov 13 2019 20:58 utc | 27
RT-UK TV Interview Syrian cause and Russian committment team to defeat borderless ideology of terrorism

Librul@16 responds to the statement by start, Chevrus @ 3. "Please
illustrate a situation where the executive branch/office of the USA
would be suddenly discontinued..." Chevrus @ 3, end

An imminent one-two punch from IG Horowitz and John Durham
has powerful players quaking in their boots.

9/11 saw Americans willingly surrendering rights;
accepting a pack of lies, a myth, to explain the event;
militarism becoming the refuge for American's safety.

What are the limits of the rights that Americans are next
willing to surrender? **What are those limits?**

How fast, how far, can we spiral downwards? Is the seizure of power
too far down the spiral to imagine? Five years ago would you have
imagined the current decent of Democrats we have witnessed?

Is media capable to determine who shall have the power? Can
media make Americans surrender their rights?

An imminent one-two punch from IG Horowitz and John Durham
has powerful players quaking in their boots. To answer your
question, I cannot imagine what players like John Brennan
are scheming. But as you know 9/11 was not beyond their
criminal limit or capability. by: librul @ 16


Snake says look at and carefully read the statements by Assad in Syria.. they
are very telling about circumstances here in the states. Assad distinguishes
top down ideology from bottom up cause a very interesting distinguishment.. ..

So to answer your question how far are Americans willing to allow the Oligarchs to
retract human rights in America: are their any limits to the willing surrender?

I think it is as Assad said in the above citation.. outside investors
instigated the unrest in Syria and used it as pretense to get their governments
to invade Syria so that the investors could privatize all of
Syria.. That is exactly what is happening in USA governed America.

Mu , Nov 13 2019 21:05 utc | 28
karlof1 @4
Your scenario doesn't reach its logical conclusion:

1) Asteroid strike is automatically blamed on "those damn rooskies".
2) Nuclear war ensues.
3) Far West, South, TransMissisippi and New England all secede with each claiming to be the rightful 'United State of America'.
4) Voila.

Mu

Formerly T-Bear , Nov 13 2019 21:08 utc | 29
@ karlof1 | Nov 13 2019 20:12 utc | 24

IIRC the Clintons rode into the Whitehouse on the Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC). The DLC has quietly morphed into the DNC (or stolen their ID). Proof might be found on identifying the faction controlling the Democratic Party's finance committee under the assumption whoever controls the finance also controls the party. Memory is a perfidious and ephemeral thing and goes down Alice's rabbit hole in nothing flat.

Do not vote for any incumBENT.

james , Nov 13 2019 21:10 utc | 30
@14 jackrabbit.. i am sorry, but it is too simplistic for me... your examples are fine, but as i see it, they random and not some orchestrated plot from up above... that is where we differ here... in fact, your overview is much too simplistic..you can make it simple for me, but the whole concept of deep state orchestrating everything here is much too simplistic..

@ 16 librul... good overview that is kind of how i see the democratic party here, although @ 24 karlof1 disagrees, it looks like that to this outsider / canuck.. here is the line from karlof1 that gives it away for me - "Unfortunately, both Gabbard and Sanders are adamant they won't run as 3rd Party POTUS candidates" which begs the question, why? my answer - they are useful shills for this same agenda..

librul , Nov 13 2019 21:11 utc | 31
@Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 13 2019 20:12 utc | 24

Thanks karlof1,

I am aware not *every single* Democrat bought into Russiagate.

You seem to suggest that the corruption on full display by the DNC during 2016 inoculated
**some** Democrats to Russiagate if they were Bernie supports. Maybe. But we are faced with the puzzling contradiction that Bernie himself did not support the lawsuit brought by the Bernie supporters against the corrupt DNC ... AND ... AND ... Bernie has been a foaming-at-the-mouth supporter of the Russiagate hysteria!

"How can he not talk about the reality that Russia, through cyberwarfare, interfered in our election in 2016, is interfering in democratic elections all over the world, and according to his own CIA director will likely interfere in the 2018 midterm elections that we will be holding?" "How do you not talk about that unless you have a very special relationship with Mr. Putin?"

Who said the above? Rachael Maddow? Hillary Clinton? John Brennan? Why none other than Bernie Sanders!
And did you note that Bernie is being a megaphone for the CIA in this quote?

More and more and more Bernie Russiagate promoting quotes here (and 2018 had only begun!):

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/01/responding-to-bernies-promotion-of-the-new-cold-war/

Lurk , Nov 13 2019 21:29 utc | 32
@ Gerhard | Nov 13 2019 18:36 utc | 10

I see a civil war in the USA as highly unlikely. The upper class has too much common interest and purpose. The lower classes are divided and powerless and in the near future only seem to be becoming more so. When the third-worldization reaches a critical point, a staged and managed revolution may be in the cards. Before a real revolution has any chance, the elites will have flooded the USA with immigrants from the south, ensuring further division of the lower classes and postponing any real challenge.

Overall, the societal foundation of the USA looks to have been crumbling for maybe five decades already and for the next few decades an acceleration of that process is more likely than a reversal. Don't be on the lookout for leaders or movements to change any of that. Only when the american people clean up their act, ie. their addiction to numbing drugs, empty consumerism and false jingoisms, will anything there ever change for good. Until that happens, the place will be withering more and more.

Not until the American elites start to fail to safeguard their own priviliges at the cost of the rest of the population will change happen.

I don't see the Russian aggression that you propose to be realistic or likely to happen. Russia does not need to reach abroad for energy, resources or food. Their main challenge is to manage the riches of the huge country with the people they have. Already the resurgence after the post-1990 crash (and the preceding stagnation) is an accomplishment worthy of admiration.

The Russian interest clearly is consolidation and defence, which is exactly what their policies have been showing on the international stage. Suggestions of aggression are pure projection by Atlanticists theselves. Instead of Washington trying to provoke Russian mistakes, the real game is about Moscow trying to contain NATO's erratic trashing and carefully preventing any catastrophic escalation.

To wit, what country did recently "update" its nuclear doctrine, suggesting the possibility of 'limited' use of nuclear weapons? Was it Russia, or ehhm... perhaps the USA?

The only uncertain factor between Russia and the USA is Europe. I expect a lot more American craziness towards Europe, as its effective leverage crumbles. Europe has not yet devolved as badly as the USA and the American implosion is a major risk factor for the Europeans.

h , Nov 13 2019 21:37 utc | 33
psychohistoiran @22 asks "To those Trump supporters, I would appreciate understanding how the keep the oil fits in with you saying Trump wants to get out of Syria?"

As someone who voted for Trump I can tell you I do not agree with this decision nor will I defend it. I hold the same sentiment pre 2016 that I do now - bring these endless wars to an end. Period. Am I disappointed in his walking back the decision to leave Syria entirely? You betcha.

Weeks ago when barflies were discussing Trump's withdrawal, someone corrected my understanding regarding the Kurds who took control of the oil fields, so to speak, and were selling the oil to SAA. My understanding of this newest policy is the Kurds will continue to manage and benefit from the sale of the oil. I could be wrong. Feel free to correct me if I am. But if my understanding of the arrangement is correct, the Kurds maintaining their role, then they are likely still selling the oil to the SAA. Then again, maybe not, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were.

So, management or control of the oil fields has changed, but it looks like everything else remains as it was before when the oil fields were managed/controlled by the Kurds.

What I do respect in the President's decision to leave NE Syria is removing troops from theater. The CIA's proxy war appears to have been shutdown. This w/o question I applaud, LOUDLY.

Lurk , Nov 13 2019 21:39 utc | 34
BTW, all this talk about asteroids and false flags makes me remind the brilliant nineties movie "Starship Troopers", in which Paul Verhoeven not only sort of presages 911 and the ensuing war on the bugs, but also smuggled into it the ephemeral phrase "Are you psychic?". I sometimes wonder how many people got that...
Ghost Ship , Nov 13 2019 21:40 utc | 35
paul @ 25
This may be just what was needed to provoke the MAJORITY indigenous people of Bolivia ...

I doubt it, without massive quantities of weapons similar to those received by the Syrian takfiris, the indigenous people don't stand a chance once the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly SOA) trained Washington-supported death squads get to work. It's going to be a massacre that'll be barely reported in MSM, because after the "election" they'll be anti-democratic. Bolivia is not Syria.

jayc , Nov 13 2019 21:45 utc | 36
The issue with the Americans is a hyper-partisan mindset has been instilled, akin to duelling sports teams, so one cheers for their team facts or context be damned. This used to be a Fox News-Republican phenomenon, but now has infected Dem supporters as well.

Break up of US would mean break up of Canada too. Look to the moves made by province of Alberta in response to fed election - a sort of firewall is being proposed where Alberta will take on fed gov responsibilities pension, health care, etc. Alberta is a Koch Bros oil republic, and any N American melt-down will result in formation of private fiefdoms - i.e. Alberta-Montana-Wyoming-South Dakota become Kochland.

Nemesiscalling , Nov 13 2019 21:51 utc | 37
@ jr

Then you must be a shut-in or unemployed to not see the dual-benefit of the deep state in that it stymies trump and resurrects Russia as a boogeyman. Nay! Thrice-benefit in that it also allows for an excuse to be horrifically status quo and gamble on everything returning to normal after the trump phenomenon runs its course and the duopoly reassert its grip.

Sasha , Nov 13 2019 21:55 utc | 38
@Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 13 2019 18:35 utc | 9

I wonder how in the Earth can anyone have cultural cooperation and join efforts against terrorism with a goon like Bolsonaro who has posted Twitters celebrating Bolivia´s coup and is known misses Pinochet ´s "expeditive measures" against communists...How this, so called group BRICS, can continue following its path, as if nothing had happened, especially since the coup in Bolivia...
Just today read the statements by Kremlin spokeman, Peshkov, and what to say, seemed to me quite soft his stance, throwing balons out...Sometimes I feel like to trust John Helmer on his assesment on the existence of two blocks in the Russian Federation, the stavka , and these people of the Kremlin office...

To this you add the Russian ambassador to the US, today visiting Kissinger ( the builder of the Condor Plan...) a man always like begging for better relations to this bully of a country, and this is one of the times when I wonder if i would not be supporting all this time just the people who wants to crush me...( meaning my now almost 6 years long support for the RF and concretely this adminsitration...)

I found quite different the unambiguous and strong statements by the Russian FM and Kremlin itself when Venezuela was about to suffer a coup, and now when the legitimate government of Bolivia has been sent into exile and his indigenous population on the verge of extermination by nazi thugs...

You can not be against nazis in the Ukraine and then support ( or be way too soft in your lack of condemnation...) nazis in Brasil or Bolivia (... or the EU...) or you are for international law and human rights, always, or not, but not only when business opportunities are in prospect....

Yes, today is one of those days when my consideration of the RF and Putin´s administration as a referent in keeping international order in the face of a lawless US just wobbles...

No se puede estar en misa y repicando al mismo tiempo

Waiting for the final statement of the meeting for to possibly take a determination on this issue...

james , Nov 13 2019 21:57 utc | 39
@ 36 jayc... kenney is a divisive politician.. i always think of alberta like the 'texas wannabe' of canada... they think highly of themselves and their oil, even when they can't get it out to the coast due the fact the people on the coast view all this very differently.. and now they are resorting to a type of quebec referendum option to use as leverage over the rest of canada.. it didn't work with quebec, and it definitely won't work with alberta.. at least quebec could legitimately claim itself a different type of culture... as for dividing up canada and the usa - it makes more sense to go along north south lines - cascadia being a good example of this.. koch republic would be a good name for that zone!!
Jen , Nov 13 2019 21:59 utc | 40
Gerhard @ 10:

You'd probably do well to study the history of China after the downfall of the Manchu Qing dynasty up to the 1930s at least (when Japan began invading the country and bringing its own forms of chaos, violence and enslavement) to get an idea of where the US might be heading if and when the Federal government falls. From the 1910s onwards, China was governed by warlords looking out for No 1, with their own armies.

Not so very different from the situation prevailing in Afghanistan and Libya. Talk about the chickens coming home to roost.

The other alternative is if the 50 states decide to be self-governing statelets or form their own federations among themselves or with neighbouring provinces and states in Canada and Mexico, or even abroad. Alaska may petition Moscow to be accepted back into the Russian Federation and Hawaii may seek another large patron to attach itself for security reasons. Washington and Oregon states may finally form a federation with British Columbia and call it Cascadia.

karlof1 , Nov 13 2019 22:07 utc | 41
librul @31--

Yeah, like Formerly T-Bear intoned about memory. I concede, but still note Gabbard hasn't faltered in her zeal. I finally finished my series of thoughts on the Bolivian thread regarding the Big Picture. IMO, Evil's sly enough to get elected even if it campaigned showing its attributes as in this image . If I were 20 years younger, I'd emigrate to Russia or China, but I'm not and doubt I've 20 years remaining on this orb. But I do think I've got the struggle properly diagnosed, although no cure's readily available.

Sasha , Nov 13 2019 22:14 utc | 42
Right now a struggle is going on in Bolivia that is the world's struggle.

@Posted by: Paul | Nov 13 2019 20:06 utc | 23

Indeed ,the same way I see it, and it seems that, in this one, Russian will not be with us...After all there is neither oil, nor weapons to sale in Bolivia, nor to the working poor people.....

Just today I was hearing Trump stating that he would like very much assisting to the next Vicotry Day parade in Moscow...Well, how to say ( wait for me while I go throwing up a bit...) Just here again, a bit back in myself...
Thus, this thug, who just has unleashed those rabid nazi death squads over the poor indigenous people of Bolivia is going to sit along the veterans who really fought the nazis in WWII, the few who still are alive to remember the 25 millions of their own who died in the battle fields, moreover taking into account that Trump´s father really was a nazi himself and supported Nazi Germany as if there was no tomorrow...If you though that of Netanyahu last year was way too much...to see how yo take this...

Seeing these things, no wonder that fascism advance without obstacles...Voting in the UN or passing all day energically protestingthe demolition of monuments to Soviet heros of WWII is not enough...It is neede to eergically protest when today´s nazis are salughterin currently lving people...

As happened during WWII, I fear, it will be us the people who will have to organize ourselves to fight this scourge...Putin, simply, will not be there....May be the Red Army will...

In a documentary about the 9th company of

Breadonwaters , Nov 13 2019 22:19 utc | 43
Gerhard @10;
I agree the US will split up. As a poli sci initiate, i was forced to consider the role of institutions acting in support of the polis. I wasn't impressed at the time. my disdain for the rot of leadership in most if not all institutions in the west, it was mostly for the greed....but i realize the cumulative effect is the fraying of those 'supports' of the nation itself. Consider:
The 16 intelligence agencies each have their own agendas, the regulatory agencies are revolving doors for industry placements, the FBI was crooked since the days of Hoover, the governments agencies are rife with oligarchy quislings .....and in the end the greed of those in power will be not be held back by any moral force. The police are militarized, murdering and robbing their own citizens.
Meanwhile, the MSM are owned by the oligarch, so there is no national forum where the corruption can be addressed on a national level. This leaves the blog sites such as MOA to lead the fight against the PTB. The problem is in the nature of the internet, which has no 'locus' as in a national voice. The internet has no center. As example, i am not a US citizen. When the polis finally hit the point where the Rentier economy has driven them to extreme reaction, they will not be thinking of reclaiming the vast American experiment, rather they will seek to at least control their little part of the world. I believe you will see blocs of similar states rising up to control whet they think is in their own best interests: The mid-west, the west coast and mountain states, the deep south, the eastern states will find common issues to crytalize around.
That's my read.
As a Canadian, my thoughts are how Canada will negotiate with these remainder blocs of former US states.
Paul Damascene , Nov 13 2019 22:21 utc | 44
James @ 39
I general concur with your brief reading of Jayson Kenney and Alberta talk of separatism. But on that score the comparison would not so much be to Texas as perhaps to Boris Johnson / Nigel Farage, in their moves to break away from the EU. I don't know that either of them (or Kenney) is all that passionate about separation itself, but the divisiveness -- and surfing various waves of polarization -- are what this new nihilist political wave seems to be about.
jayc , Nov 13 2019 22:31 utc | 45
I support the Cascadia concept. There's a wonderful work of speculative fiction called Ecotopia that is set in a Cascadia - although it was written before the digital hi-tech era and so could not predict that such an entity, short of a true revolution, would be run by Microsoft - Google - Apple etc.

A high speed rail link from Vancouver to Portland has been proposed, which is a forward-thinking policy initiative, but they are going to take a few years to think about it, and then another fifteen to twenty years to build it, and that itself will only happen if the "no new taxes" retrograde types don't stop it in its "tracks" (which they intend to do).

vk , Nov 13 2019 22:51 utc | 46
For speculation:

'NATO will be soiling its pants': Ukrainian tycoon seen as power behind president calls for 'new Warsaw Pact' with Moscow

Ghost Ship , Nov 13 2019 23:28 utc | 47
"We'll take $100 billion from the Russians.

Putin should be wary of Kolomoysky as Kolomoysky will most likely steal the lot.

Breadonwaters , Nov 13 2019 23:43 utc | 48
off topic: I've just realized how vexing the idea of a non-citizen army.
Imagine: The tax payer funds the majority of tax dollars to a bureau that funds its own production of weapons, recruitment, training personnel, maintenance of 800 or so bases across the world and, finally, deploying these recruits wherever it deems worthy, based on the directions of it's head, potus. its just so sweet: hire mercenaries, and do whatever you want across the planet....there are no draftees ....no one to criticize when the body bags return stateside. Some otherwise brain-dead fuck in the pentagon is enjoying lieutenant generalship, just for figuring out the army didn't need a draft...there were plenty of poor people, who could be had with a few bucks......
ptb , Nov 13 2019 23:46 utc | 49
re: Kolomoisky
Weird. He picked an interesting day to take on the IMF. Its a strange world.

Respect to his hair stylist in any case

Jackrabbit , Nov 13 2019 23:49 utc | 50
Nemesiscalling @37

I know you've bought into the notion of Trump fighting the Deep State.

It's a nice fairy-tale for the sheeple.

lizard , Nov 14 2019 0:07 utc | 51
jayc@45

I'm in Montana and working on a piece of fiction that anticipates the breakup of the States in the not-so-distant future. I did a little research on Cascadia and found that there's elements of white supremacism wanting to co-opt the idea of Cascadia for their own ethno-state fever dreams :

The far right is known to appropriate pop culture imagery, particularly for recruitment and to mitigate their viewpoints. But Alexander Reid Ross, a professor at Portland State University, explained that Cascadia, "a really important movement in the Pacific Northwest," is targeted specifically for its link to bioregionalism. "It implies a territorial imperative but doesn't necessarily involve anti-racism, according to the far right, so fascists appropriate it," he told me of Cascadia.

The appropriation began at least as far back as 2004, when a flag suspiciously similar to the Cascadian flag appeared on the cover of Harold Armstead Covington's book, A Distant Thunder. In 2008, Covington founded the white nationalist group Northwest Front, which calls for an "independent and sovereign White nation in the Pacific Northwest." The group later penned a disturbing rhyme on its website about this flag, the Tricolor flag, using language similar to Baretich's:

The sky is blue, and the land is green. The white is for the people, in between.

Cascadia appropriation has snowballed since then. In 2016, a man adopting the moniker Herrenvolk, a German word for "master race" used by the Nazis, helped form Cascadia, the "foremost" alt-right group in the Pacific Northwest. According to its website, its mission is to "regain our sovereignty and prevent foreign influence on our people." That goal correlates with the narrative of Cascadia as quintessential, and it echoes the groaning around Portland about newcomers spoiling the city.

in the narrative I'm working on, New Cascadia does become a white supremacist stronghold.

juliania , Nov 14 2019 0:47 utc | 52
I was somewhat puzzled by your Good and Evil post in the last thread, karlof1. Were you just being facetious or did I misread you to say that all would depend on the outcome of the 2020 election?.

I followed you on the course of 'the rest of the world' under leadership from Russia and China into multipolarity rather than one hegemon; I'd tend to agree with you on that concept, though maybe we'd have disagreements on the course of history up to that point. I have a literary turn of mind myself, and to me "good" literature (with a small g) always comes out on top - as with goodness in most other aspects of life learning as well.

All the same, it's hard for me to think the coming US election will really decide anything. That is, I don't see any of the candidates preparing his or herself to join 'the rest of the world'. That would be the good outcome for me and I just can't see it happening.

I'll be literary and say that maybe for nations 'the way up is the way down.' And while the disparity and struggle between wealthy and not in the US is starkly apparent, we are nowhere near bottoming out here yet. And I think we have to be; I think we will be - but when? I'll be literary again and say that for Tigger it was when he got all his bounce taken out of him. All of it. Not 'make America great' but rather 'help America survive yadayadayada...'

I'm kinda doubting I'll be around to see it. It's sort of that 'not with a bang but a wimper' sort of scenario - and we're a long way from wimpering yet.

Still, I feel very positive. I think 'the rest of the world' is going to be kinder than we deserve when it all boils down to the dregs. What a day that will be!

Curtis , Nov 14 2019 0:52 utc | 53
Nemesiscalling 15
Right you are. The Anti-Russia hype has been going on for a while but had a bit of a hiatus during King (W) Shrub II. Both parties worked to destroy the Russian economy during the 80s/90s with the Chicago/Harvard boys gutting it completely while enriching themselves. It accelerated under Obama while they presented us with the "Reset" switch. Apparently the Russians didn't play along so they became the bogeyman that gets inflated as time goes on. Trump tried but got dragged down in the process.

As to a US split, I live in the south. So I've wondered if California (for example) tried to leave if a US President would pull a Lincoln and destroy the state ... in order to save it.

juliania , Nov 14 2019 0:55 utc | 54
Sorry - 'whimper' and 'whimpering'. (I used to be such a good speller, truly!)
juliania , Nov 14 2019 1:06 utc | 55
Nemesis@15 -"Trust me when I say" ... never trust anyone who says anything after that phrase! How exactly did the Dems play the right card with Russiagate? Do you mean they hoodwinked their supporters into believing Russia to be the enemy, so that is somehow 'the right card'? I'll stop there. You've completely confused me.
psychohistorian , Nov 14 2019 1:28 utc | 56
Occupied Palestine continues killing people as documented in the report below from Reuters

"
GAZA (Reuters) - An Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip killed six members of a Palestinian family on Thursday, all of them civilians, medical officials and residents said, bringing the death toll in the territory from a 48-hour surge in fighting to 32.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the pre-dawn incident in Deir al-Balah, which came as cross-border shelling exchanges continued despite a ceasefire offer by the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad.

Israel killed an Islamic Jihad field commander on Tuesday, sparking cross-border rocket salvoes by the militant group and further Israeli strikes. Medics said 32 Palestinians have been killed, at least a third of them civilians.

Those killed in Thursday's attack on a home in Deir al-Balah included a woman and a child, medical officials said. Another 12 people were wounded, they said.
"

Sad to see this continue to go on and no resolution in sight, only escalation

Ian2 , Nov 14 2019 1:33 utc | 57
Formerly T-Bear | Nov 13 2019 21:08 utc | 29:

Speaking of the Clintons. Hillary Clinton says she's under 'enormous pressure' to enter 2020 race ROFL

Nemesiscalling , Nov 14 2019 1:42 utc | 58
@55 Juliana

I mean "right" in that allowing Russiagate to seep into the waking consciousness of America took the pressure off the dems and what was going to be their reckoning. In effect, they have now doubled-down in the hope that the Trump phenomenon of nationalism will fade away and their rule will be restored. Whether or not Sanders plays into this I think we are yet to see, but, so far, Sanders has played ball with a lot of dem garbage.

Again, by the "right" play I mean as if a dark sorcerer had banked his continued favor with the king he serves on a magic brew that would muddle the King's brain and keep him from knowing of the Sorcerer's repulsive ambition. Such is the dems plan as well as many if not all of the republicans who secretly detest DJT but who don't speak up because their base believes in Trump.

Lurk , Nov 14 2019 1:52 utc | 59
I don't see the USA fragmenting, not before it has been bankrupted, foreclosed and liquidated.

The federal behemoths like the military, the alphabet agencies, the state department, the whitehouse will all fight for their life.

The giant corporations, including the federal reserve, will also object.

Individual states, even as a majority, are no match to the above.

karlof1 , Nov 14 2019 1:55 utc | 60
TASS and Sputnik have both published short reports on events from the BRICS Summit in Brasilia. As I noted earlier, it revolved around the Business Forum, so most everything focused on economics, global trade, and the hindrances in the normal conduct of commerce:

"'Undoubtedly, the global economy was affected by the fact that methods of unfair competition, unilateral sanctions - including politically motivated ones are being used on a wider scale in the global trade, [and] protectionism is flourishing. Under those circumstances, BRICS nations have to take serious effort to ensure the development of their economies, to prevent the deterioration of the social situation and the fall of living standards, of our citizens' welfare,' Putin said at the closing ceremony of the BRICS business forum."

Hopefully, there'll be a full transcript of Putin's remarks and further reporting to digest tomorrow.

NemesisCalling , Nov 14 2019 2:06 utc | 61
@55 juliana

Re: trustworthy people, I meant that my eyes have seen first hand the effects of this whole Russiagate brainwashing. As a result, I don't talk politics with my family, and it is tenuous with my coworkers. Can you imagine a guy working in a west-coast city and actually has something positive to say about DJT?

I still say that DJT deserves an ENORMOURS!...ENORMOUS! amount of credit for awakening such terminology into the public lexicon as "Globalism," "nationalism," "fake news," and the like. How he was able to do this was very simple but absolutely revolutionary for any bonafide presidential candidate that I can remember or know. For myself, I view the issue as globalism as paramount and far more world-shattering than US imperialism.

Here is an interesting Frontline interview with Ann Coulter a week or so ago. It shines a light on how a guy like Trump was able to capture the public imagination. Hint: it wasn't because the Deep State was grooming him.

Lozion , Nov 14 2019 2:20 utc | 62
Looks like Bolivians are getting organized and fighting back. Thousands congregate in El Alto and Cochabamba:

https://twitter.com/maduro_en/status/1194679324986814466?s=21

Lets hope some Army units "defect" to the cause before bloodshed gets serious..

librul , Nov 14 2019 2:22 utc | 63
@Posted by: Ian2 | Nov 14 2019 1:33 utc | 57

"Speaking of the Clintons - 'Hillary Clinton says she's under 'enormous pressure' to enter 2020 race' - ROFL"

Yeah, she is being forced, will it be the 2020 Race or the loony bin she is eventually forced to enter?

https://imgur.com/LnUChXD


Sad Canuck , Nov 14 2019 2:38 utc | 64
For any of you who use protonmail. They seem to be touting their links to clearly compromised media sources such as Bellingcat quite strongly these days, and are pushing the empire's message on MH17, Ukraine, Scripals, Russiagate etc etc. I was an early adopter but they now seem compromised or simply deluded. Too bad, another one bites the dust.
juliania , Nov 14 2019 2:52 utc | 65
Got it, Nemesiscalling, sorry to be obtuse. But I'm afraid I do disagree. This whole phobia against Russia and anti-Trump scenario turned off huge numbers of their voters - some didn't vote but some actually held their noses and voted for Trump. To me (and I sure could be wrong) Dems just dug themselves a deeper hole with all of this. Save some sort of coup, I can't see them winning a year from now. If anything more US voters have wised up than were wised up before - you don't go back once eyes are opened.
sorghum , Nov 14 2019 3:15 utc | 66
@ 11 JR

I agree with your premise about this being kayfabe. From where I sit, there is no other explanation for any political party to make these endless attacks based on absolutely nothing over and over again. Attacks which can only maintain the charade from 2016 of Trump the Victim. Does anyone think that somehow the Dems suddenly stopped being to calculating psycho/sociopaths that they and the other side of the aisle are? Why would such shrewd players not verify what people like Vindeman had to say before putting them on the stand?

They keep undermining their own case over and over again.

I find it impossible that they would continue to stick their hands in the fire after being burned every single time before this, and with easily verifiable information. Especially when the attacks are ALWAYS over stupid shit and never go after anything he actually could be attacked for doing. What I keep seeing is like watching kindergarten kids try to kill a grown man with foam rocks.

We keep seeing this complex, convoluted, evil shit come out of DC and yet we simultaneously think these same players are morons? No freaking way. These attacks are the only thing that keeps Trump's base on his side as he keeps betraying them and the opposition keeps trying to outdo its last performance of stupid. I have seen a LOT of Trump supporters throw in the towel on him for things he has done in the last 3 years, yet they come back to his side after the newest stupid thing the left wing of the uni-party comes up with.
Shit, it isn't like Trump is even really shaking things up to cause such a ruckus!

[Nov 14, 2019] Andrew Weissmann.... The dirtiest of Mueller's people

Notable quotes:
"... They say he intimidated witnesses by threatening indictments, created crimes that did not exist and, in one case, withheld evidence that could have aided the accused. At one hearing, an incredulous district court judge looked down at an Enron defendant and told him he was pleading guilty to a wire fraud crime that did not exist. ..."
Oct 30, 2017 | www.washingtontimes.com

Posted by Jjdoc

quote:
Today, Mr. Weissmann stands as special counsel Robert Mueller's top gun in a squadron of nearly 20 prosecutors and scores of FBI agents delving into Trump-Russia. Mr. Weissmann is leading the probe into the biggest target to date, Paul Manafort, President Trump's onetime campaign manager.

How Mr. Weissmann operated over a decade ago offers possible glimpses at how he carries out orders today from his longtime mentor, Mr. Mueller.

He's a dirty "cop"

quote:
The backstory: Defense attorneys say Mr. Weissmann bent or broke the rules. As proof, they point to appeals court decisions, exhibits and witness statements.

They say he intimidated witnesses by threatening indictments, created crimes that did not exist and, in one case, withheld evidence that could have aided the accused. At one hearing, an incredulous district court judge looked down at an Enron defendant and told him he was pleading guilty to a wire fraud crime that did not exist.

This is the man going after Trump.

quote:
Mr. Weissmann's cases against Andersen and Merrill Lynch lay in shambles just a few years later.

The Supreme Court, in a 9-0 vote in 2005, overturned the Andersen conviction. A year later, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals erased all the fraud convictions against four Merrill Lynch managers. The jury had acquitted another defendant.

"People went off to prison for a completely phantom of a case," said Mr. Kirkendall.

[Nov 14, 2019] Fake news and its brainwashined supporters: Even if one tells them that one is not a Trump supporter, but rather a supporter of democracy who reviles the sadistic and criminal intel agencies and corporate Dems, they still heap scorn, mockery and ridicule.

Notable quotes:
"... The CIA is now openly operating on American soil in clear breach of its charter and U.S. law. There is absolutely no way this can be questioned. We must now contemplate the frightening similarities Russiagate and Ukrainegate share with the agency's classic coup operations abroad: Commandeering the media, stirring discontent with the leadership, pumping up the opposition, waving false flags, incessant disinformation campaigns: Maybe it was fated that what America has been doing abroad the whole of the postwar era would eventually come home. ..."
"... As we watch the latest US lead coup in Bolivia, my thoughts exactly. Using impeachment as a means of running a soft CIA coup is what we're witnessing. With the MSM in toe it's hard to know just how good or bad Trump is. What is the primary reason for going after him? Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with immigration or illegally lobbing bombs into Syria, or selling arms to the Saudis to bomb innocent Yemenis. These are all the right reasons, but hardly something the "deep state" cares about stopping. ..."
"... I think back to the Nixon and Clinton impeachments. None of them seemed to use pressing matters of international illegality (Cambodia/Laos and millions of SE Asians brutally killed, or in the case of Clinton the brutal killing of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children). Instead the charges were about a 3rd rate burglary and lying about sex with an intern. ..."
Nov 14, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Drew Hunkins , November 13, 2019 at 13:41

To state something I've bemoaned b/f here on CN, in most liberal circles one is mocked and ridiculed for pointing out that a deep state is indeed orchestrating a coup to unseat Trump. Even if one tells them that one is not a Trump supporter, but rather a supporter of democracy who reviles the sadistic and criminal intel agencies and corporate Dems, they still heap scorn, mockery and ridicule.

There is a segment of the U.S. population that's completely beyond reach when it comes to this all important issue.

Rob , November 13, 2019 at 13:06

I have felt from the beginning that Ukrainegate was a thin reed upon which to base impeachment, especially when Trump has committed a large number of other genuinely impeachable offenses. The menu of his impeachment-worthy acts is almost as large as a menu in a Chinese restaurant. Yet none of them appear to matter to the Democratic leadership, or as Nancy Pelosi once put it: Trump's not worth impeaching.

Now it appears that the Deep State has forced the Dems hand, and rabid dog Adam Schiff is foaming at the mouth in anticipation of tearing off a large piece of Donald Trump's hide. But as Patrick Lawrence has clearly explained, Trump will not be removed from office, and Joe Biden's reputation and presidential aspirations are in jeopardy. At least that last part is something to celebrate.

Guy , November 13, 2019 at 12:56

Thank you for exposing what has happened and is happening to the US system of governance or lack thereof .It is becoming glaringly obvious that the system is broken and many wonder if indeed it can be fixed without actually starting over from a clean sweep .It is like a cancer that has metastasized beyond hope of a cure .It has been very hard to watch as the destroyers of nations continue to create chaos in the state that was once an example to the world or so we were told.

Antonio Costa , November 13, 2019 at 12:31

"More urgently, what do the past three years of incessant efforts to unseat a president tell us about the power of unelected constituencies? The CIA is now openly operating on American soil in clear breach of its charter and U.S. law. There is absolutely no way this can be questioned. We must now contemplate the frightening similarities Russiagate and Ukrainegate share with the agency's classic coup operations abroad: Commandeering the media, stirring discontent with the leadership, pumping up the opposition, waving false flags, incessant disinformation campaigns: Maybe it was fated that what America has been doing abroad the whole of the postwar era would eventually come home.

What, at last, must we conclude about the ability of any president (of any stripe) to effect authentic change when our administrative state -- "deep," if you like -- opposes it?"

As we watch the latest US lead coup in Bolivia, my thoughts exactly. Using impeachment as a means of running a soft CIA coup is what we're witnessing. With the MSM in toe it's hard to know just how good or bad Trump is. What is the primary reason for going after him? Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with immigration or illegally lobbing bombs into Syria, or selling arms to the Saudis to bomb innocent Yemenis. These are all the right reasons, but hardly something the "deep state" cares about stopping.

So far it hasn't worked with Trump, but they may be hoping to bloody him enough to have the electorate do their dirty work, or will it backfire?

I think back to the Nixon and Clinton impeachments. None of them seemed to use pressing matters of international illegality (Cambodia/Laos and millions of SE Asians brutally killed, or in the case of Clinton the brutal killing of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children). Instead the charges were about a 3rd rate burglary and lying about sex with an intern.

Amazing how screwed up our priorities .but than again they're NOT OUR priorities are they.

[Nov 13, 2019] In Washington you are judged by the men you've destroyed. By this criteria Trump is a weakling

Nov 13, 2019 | www.unz.com

Wilberweld says: November 7, 2019 at 2:11 pm GMT 100 Words Trump's problem was described in simple terms by John Connelly when talking with Henry Kissinger. "Henry", he said, "In Washington you are judged by the men you've destroyed". Trump has not destroyed anyone, not Comey, not Brennan, not Klapper. So he is viewed as weak, an easy target. So they just keep piling on. Attacking Trump is viewed as a "penalty-free activity

[Nov 13, 2019] Trump will leave, but these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will remain

This is why the Deep State is called the Deep state. It is permanent
Nov 13, 2019 | www.unz.com

Biff , says: November 7, 2019 at 6:58 am GMT

Trump will leave power, but these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will remain.

Something the stupid voters never seem to realize – the permanent government doesn't give a rats ass about democracy, freedom, human rights, security, your dog, your property, and most of all – your integrity.
"Fuck you stupid voters – now go elect another moron – we've got governments to overthrow"

anonymous [128] Disclaimer , says: November 7, 2019 at 8:44 am GMT
" The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic attitudes."

As are the Republican establishment and even such faux dissidents as Andrew Napolitano and Patrick Buchanan in columns easily found here on The Unz Review.

Exceptionalia needs enemies to keep the sheep herded when the Red v Blue politics and increasingly absurd culture skirmishes aren't sufficiently distracting.

mark green , says: November 7, 2019 at 9:07 am GMT
Excellent summation of the current predicament involving Trump and his ruthless foes. The greatest and most ridiculous 'conspiracy theory' of all is Russiagate itself–yet this politicized hoax is not being allowed to die a natural death; thus the Demorat impeachment inquiry.

So now we have entered Stage Two of this toxic and unnecessary melodrama. We can thank the partisan, biased and subversive 'mainstream' media for this downward step.

Ironically, the media's rank dishonesty is turning Trump into a heroic figure. This is poetic justice.

Haven't our media overlords heard?–the Soviet Union is dead.

In its place is Christian Russia. So why the enmity?

Might these lingering tensions have more than a little to do with Putin's stubborn alliance with Syria and Iran? It sure looks that way.

It must be noted that Israel remains deeply disturbed over the Russia-Iran-Syria federation. But that's Israel's problem. America is not burdened by those historic antagonisms, regional rivalries, or security concerns. Americans should therefore be relieved. Only we're not allowed to be.

The Zionist state has deviously entwined its security interests with America's. Israel and Zio-America have been artificially conjoined at the political hip. Didn't you hear?

This political union is good for the Jews. The Americans?–less so. Far less.

Unless we can extricate ourselves, this unnatural 'partnership' may end in a cataclysm

Realist , says: November 7, 2019 at 1:55 pm GMT
@Biff

Something the stupid voters never seem to realize – the permanent government doesn't give a rats ass about democracy, freedom, human rights, security, your dog, your property, and most of all – your integrity.

The Deep State doesn't care about the unimportant internecine squabbles of the 'two parties' as long as their important issues are maintained. As a matter of fact it strengthens the false perception that there is a choice when voting.

Trump and the Deep State do not care what the American people want. They know that most American people are inane fools and will believe anything. Most Americans would rather watch America's Got Talent or Dancing With The Stars than be informed about important issues.

peter mcloughlin , says: November 7, 2019 at 1:58 pm GMT
I think if President Trump was faced with a Cuban Missile Crisis situation the outcome could be very different to the first time. On that occasion the two superpowers, despite coming close to open war, were able to contain and de-escalate. The conditions are very different today. As Professor Cohen says," The current state of US-Russian relations is unprecedentedly dangerous, not only due to reasons cited here -- a new Cold War fraught with the possibility of hot war." In this context it is essential the president is "fully empowered to cope with the multiple possibilities of a US-Russian military confrontation."
One problem is that the original Cold War was the peace, a post-world war environment: today we are in pre-world war environment. There is a dangerous misconception that a Cold War sequel will have the same peaceful ending. The world has experienced periods of peace (or relative peace) throughout history. The Thirty Years Peace between the two Peloponnesian Wars, Pax Romana, Europe in the 19th century after the Congress of Vienna, to name a few. The Congress System finally collapsed in 1914 with the start of World War One. That conflict was followed by the League of Nations. It did not stop World War Two. That was followed by the United Nations and other post-war institutions. But all the indications are they will not prevent a third world war.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Tsar Bomba 38-56-47 N, 77-9-32 W , says: November 7, 2019 at 2:10 pm GMT
"The New York Times seem eager to delegitimize the investigation by Attorney General William Barr and his appointed special investigator John Durham."

Ya know, the investigation would be a lot harder to delegitimize if it the guys doing it didn't whitewash Iran/Contra, like Barr, or systematic and widespread CIA torture, like Durham. You put lifelong CIA whores hot on the trail of illegal CIA domestic operations against political enemies? Come on. Nobody with a 3-digit IQ can keep a straight face.

You want this shit to stop? Then do to Langley what the Germans did to their Stasi. CIA investigation of CIA crimes do not pass the laff test anymore.

Wilberweld , says: November 7, 2019 at 2:11 pm GMT
Trump's problem was described in simple terms by John Connelly when talking with Henry Kissinger. "Henry", he said, "In Washington you are judged by the men you've destroyed". Trump has not destroyed anyone, not Comey, not Brennan, not Clapper. So he is viewed as weak, an easy target. So they just keep piling on. Attacking Trump is viewed as a "penalty-free activity
Norm Corin , says: November 7, 2019 at 3:18 pm GMT
@renfro Rand Paul, and possibly Bernie Sanders, are not honorable -- sufficiently honorable -- to propose if not accomplish this?
A123 , says: November 7, 2019 at 3:53 pm GMT

Russia's new "hyper-sonic" missiles, which can elude US missile-defense systems, make new nuclear arms negotiations with Moscow imperative and urgent. If only for the sake of his legacy, Trump is likely to want to do so

This makes little sense. Russia and the U.S. are not enemies, and are potentially allies. Why would a U.S.-Russia treaty be desirable? The U.S. wants to help Russia defend its South western border against dangerous nations, such as Turkey & Iran.

A U.S.-China treaty would be helpful, but China is unlikely to accept anything that might interfere with their colonial ambitions.
____

Also, the author is likely overestimating Russia's technical prowess. Does anyone remember the recent incident the Russians had with their nuclear powered "Skyfall" cruise missile? (1)

The mysterious explosion on August 8 at the Russian navy's range in Nyonoksa killed seven and spurred fears that Russia was testing its nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile, also known by the NATO codename 'Skyfall.' But U.S. intelligence indicates the fatal explosion occurred as Russia attempted to salvage a downed Skyfall missile from the ocean floor,

Russia has reportedly conducted five unsuccessful tests of Skyfall since November 2017, all resulting in loss of control and crashes. The longest test lasted for two minutes with the missile flying 22 miles, and the shortest lasted four seconds and five miles.

PEACE
_______

(1) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7409607/Russias-Skyfall-nuclear-cruise-missile-explosion-happened-salvage-mission-intel.html

follyofwar , says: November 7, 2019 at 9:40 pm GMT
@Giuseppe I'm a huge fan of Stephen Cohen's, but, with bi-partisanship dead, his calling for a new Church commission is pie-in-the-sky. Nothing good can happen until this impeachment farce is over.

In fact, I'd say that Barr and Durham better hurry up and indict someone. There is less than a year left before the next election, which only leaves a few weeks this year, and the first few months in 2020. Once there's like 3-4 months to go before the election it will be too late. And, BTW, where is the long-awaited IG Horowitz's report? Tick Tock guys.

Hail , says: Website November 7, 2019 at 11:21 pm GMT
@Peter Akuleyev

The fastest growing religion in Russia is Islam.

We've been hearing that for a long time, but one thing to remember is: Islam is a foreign(ers')-identity in Russia. It won't be taking over the political center in Russia anytime soon, nor getting any European-Russian converts.

Stochastic Determinist , says: November 8, 2019 at 6:22 am GMT
@Dan Hayes Russia hadn't seized anything. The Black Sea Fleet had always been stationed there. After the Ukrainian government proposed outlawing the Russian language and ethnic Ukrainians attacked the Crimean parliament, Crimeans, the vast majority of whom are ethnic Russians, moved to hold a referendum.
James N. Kennett , says: November 8, 2019 at 6:42 am GMT
@Giuseppe

As I have also argued repeatedly, a new Church Committee is urgently needed. It's time for honorable members of the Senate of both parties to do their duty.

The CIA activities restricted by the Church Committee never stopped. They continued "off the books", financed by drug trafficking, illegal arms sales, and (especially) by kickbacks from legitimate but overpriced arms contracts with Saudi Arabia. The close relationship with the Saudi royal family raises awkward questions about who this part of the CIA is really working for.

A new Church Committee would only be able to investigate the parts of the CIA that it can see. It is probably impossible for the US government to control the "off-books" parts of the CIA.

refl , says: November 8, 2019 at 6:59 am GMT

Here too there is an inconvenient truth: To the extent that Democrats any longer seriously discuss national security in the context of US-Russian relations, it mostly involves vilifying both Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. (Recall also that previous presidents were free to negotiate with Russia's Soviet communist leaders, even encouraged to do so, whereas the demonized Putin is an anti-communist, post-Soviet leader.)

Maybe, the fallacy is to think that Democrats were ever opposed to communism. As one can learn around here, WWII was the joint venture to destroy european national cultures and force them under globalist domination. The Roosevelt administration did about everything to strengthen communism. The current Russian leadership is as sanely nationalist as it gets. Possibly, that is the problem?

What struck me first, before I woke up, was that the ultimate accusation against Russia – before the Ukraine affair started – was that they were said to be homophopbic. While this can be a fault in the eyes of a dedicated liberal, to anyone who has lived through the Cold War, that accusation was outlandishly irrelevant.
The problem that liberal globalists have with Russia is exactly their sanity. Saying this, I do not want to insinuate that Republicans are sane, just for the record. They are the other side of the coin in the big charade.

GMC , says: November 8, 2019 at 7:09 am GMT
The Bolsheviks in Russia told everyone that they were a Political Party – just like the Communists Party etc. The Democrats and Republicans say the same thing , but they are more Bolshevik than any American wants to admit. The Wars, the Police state, the original European, African, Native American societies being destroyed is not the best example – if you are pushing for a NWO. It has failed but they are taking down as many as they can – along with their evil Order. This should one of the highest priority, of most writers today. Thanks Unz Rev.
Ilya G Poimandres , says: November 8, 2019 at 7:09 am GMT
@Dan Hayes From which entity? The country – existing as a unity upon the foundation of a constitution, known as Ukraine – stopped being that entity when a bunch of people toppled a constitutionally mandated government with an unconstitutional coup.

You demand peoples and regions of the former Ukraine remain united? Under what unifying law? The constitution? But the Maidan people tore it apart to get into power. Why would those that take the other side of the debate agree to be governed by law they know their opposition has already, and will again, trod on?

Practically speaking, Ukraine after Maidan is not the same entity as Ukraine before, as there is no social contract left that everyone is willing to be bound by.

Crimea being autonomous, had more freedom than the rest to jump ship, and so they did. But any region can now go, because anyone saying 'but the Constitution bans secession', forget that the people who speak this within Ukraine are those exact same people who tore the Constitution apart.

But don't think it'a just political entities such as Crimea that migrated to Russia of their own wills (as the UN Charter demands), millions of labourers have left for Russia from the remaining entity too, and there was no Putin there at each of their houses, giving personal pep talks over tea about how Russia is better, and how they should migrate accross the border. People chose with their own feet.

Here's a question – if tomorrow a bunch of gunmen threw out congress, the judiciary, and the executive from Washington DC, and replaced them with their own – would you consider that the individual states were then still bound to the federal government through the Constitution? Would you demand honour from one side, knowing fullwell that the other side is dishonourable?

S , says: November 8, 2019 at 7:59 am GMT

Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an "attack" so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor.

What's seemingly bizarre is that these modern day Dems with their 'Russiagate' obsession are the very same people who not so many years back would eat up a 1966 movie like 'The Russians Are Coming, the Russians are Coming', with it's message that the Soviet Union along with its Communism was perfectly innocuous (just a laugh really), and the Cold War itself was all a big joke, and pay to see it multiple times.

It's not so bizarre, though, as there is an underlining continuity in all this, then and now.

They hate the organic Russian people and their culture, then and now. That hasn't changed.

A USSR of the past with the Russian people safely subjugated/crushed under Soviet Communism, they like and are okay with.

A Russian Federation where the Russian people appear to have moved away from Communism they don't like. That's dangerous.

Russians shouldn't necessarily feel too bad though about this as they are not the only people so hated. These sorts hate most peoples which attempt to express their physical and cultural identity, often even their own at times.

There's a hatred for most all of humanity there which stems from an underlying self hatred with these types.

[Nov 13, 2019] The CONCORD MANAGEMENT CONSULTING LLC (Internet Research Agency) trial is getting weird.

Nov 13, 2019 | www.courtlistener.com
The CONCORD MANAGEMENT & CONSULTING LLC (Internet Research Agency) trial is getting weird.

This (one page) Order, dated October 25, was filed on November 8:

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.193580/gov.uscourts.dcd.193580.239.0_1.pdf

The main page for the trial is here:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6386795/united-states-v-internet-research-agency-llc/?filed_after=&filed_before=&entry_gte=&entry_lte=&order

[Nov 13, 2019] Trump will leave, but these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will remain

This is why the Deep State is called the Deep state. It is permanent
Nov 13, 2019 | www.unz.com

Biff , says: November 7, 2019 at 6:58 am GMT

Trump will leave power, but these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will remain.

Something the stupid voters never seem to realize – the permanent government doesn't give a rats ass about democracy, freedom, human rights, security, your dog, your property, and most of all – your integrity.
"Fuck you stupid voters – now go elect another moron – we've got governments to overthrow"

anonymous [128] Disclaimer , says: November 7, 2019 at 8:44 am GMT
" The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic attitudes."

As are the Republican establishment and even such faux dissidents as Andrew Napolitano and Patrick Buchanan in columns easily found here on The Unz Review.

Exceptionalia needs enemies to keep the sheep herded when the Red v Blue politics and increasingly absurd culture skirmishes aren't sufficiently distracting.

mark green , says: November 7, 2019 at 9:07 am GMT
Excellent summation of the current predicament involving Trump and his ruthless foes. The greatest and most ridiculous 'conspiracy theory' of all is Russiagate itself–yet this politicized hoax is not being allowed to die a natural death; thus the Demorat impeachment inquiry.

So now we have entered Stage Two of this toxic and unnecessary melodrama. We can thank the partisan, biased and subversive 'mainstream' media for this downward step.

Ironically, the media's rank dishonesty is turning Trump into a heroic figure. This is poetic justice.

Haven't our media overlords heard?–the Soviet Union is dead.

In its place is Christian Russia. So why the enmity?

Might these lingering tensions have more than a little to do with Putin's stubborn alliance with Syria and Iran? It sure looks that way.

It must be noted that Israel remains deeply disturbed over the Russia-Iran-Syria federation. But that's Israel's problem. America is not burdened by those historic antagonisms, regional rivalries, or security concerns. Americans should therefore be relieved. Only we're not allowed to be.

The Zionist state has deviously entwined its security interests with America's. Israel and Zio-America have been artificially conjoined at the political hip. Didn't you hear?

This political union is good for the Jews. The Americans?–less so. Far less.

Unless we can extricate ourselves, this unnatural 'partnership' may end in a cataclysm

Realist , says: November 7, 2019 at 1:55 pm GMT
@Biff

Something the stupid voters never seem to realize – the permanent government doesn't give a rats ass about democracy, freedom, human rights, security, your dog, your property, and most of all – your integrity.

The Deep State doesn't care about the unimportant internecine squabbles of the 'two parties' as long as their important issues are maintained. As a matter of fact it strengthens the false perception that there is a choice when voting.

Trump and the Deep State do not care what the American people want. They know that most American people are inane fools and will believe anything. Most Americans would rather watch America's Got Talent or Dancing With The Stars than be informed about important issues.

peter mcloughlin , says: November 7, 2019 at 1:58 pm GMT
I think if President Trump was faced with a Cuban Missile Crisis situation the outcome could be very different to the first time. On that occasion the two superpowers, despite coming close to open war, were able to contain and de-escalate. The conditions are very different today. As Professor Cohen says," The current state of US-Russian relations is unprecedentedly dangerous, not only due to reasons cited here -- a new Cold War fraught with the possibility of hot war." In this context it is essential the president is "fully empowered to cope with the multiple possibilities of a US-Russian military confrontation."
One problem is that the original Cold War was the peace, a post-world war environment: today we are in pre-world war environment. There is a dangerous misconception that a Cold War sequel will have the same peaceful ending. The world has experienced periods of peace (or relative peace) throughout history. The Thirty Years Peace between the two Peloponnesian Wars, Pax Romana, Europe in the 19th century after the Congress of Vienna, to name a few. The Congress System finally collapsed in 1914 with the start of World War One. That conflict was followed by the League of Nations. It did not stop World War Two. That was followed by the United Nations and other post-war institutions. But all the indications are they will not prevent a third world war.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Tsar Bomba 38-56-47 N, 77-9-32 W , says: November 7, 2019 at 2:10 pm GMT
"The New York Times seem eager to delegitimize the investigation by Attorney General William Barr and his appointed special investigator John Durham."

Ya know, the investigation would be a lot harder to delegitimize if it the guys doing it didn't whitewash Iran/Contra, like Barr, or systematic and widespread CIA torture, like Durham. You put lifelong CIA whores hot on the trail of illegal CIA domestic operations against political enemies? Come on. Nobody with a 3-digit IQ can keep a straight face.

You want this shit to stop? Then do to Langley what the Germans did to their Stasi. CIA investigation of CIA crimes do not pass the laff test anymore.

Wilberweld , says: November 7, 2019 at 2:11 pm GMT
Trump's problem was described in simple terms by John Connelly when talking with Henry Kissinger. "Henry", he said, "In Washington you are judged by the men you've destroyed". Trump has not destroyed anyone, not Comey, not Brennan, not Clapper. So he is viewed as weak, an easy target. So they just keep piling on. Attacking Trump is viewed as a "penalty-free activity
Norm Corin , says: November 7, 2019 at 3:18 pm GMT
@renfro Rand Paul, and possibly Bernie Sanders, are not honorable -- sufficiently honorable -- to propose if not accomplish this?
A123 , says: November 7, 2019 at 3:53 pm GMT

Russia's new "hyper-sonic" missiles, which can elude US missile-defense systems, make new nuclear arms negotiations with Moscow imperative and urgent. If only for the sake of his legacy, Trump is likely to want to do so

This makes little sense. Russia and the U.S. are not enemies, and are potentially allies. Why would a U.S.-Russia treaty be desirable? The U.S. wants to help Russia defend its South western border against dangerous nations, such as Turkey & Iran.

A U.S.-China treaty would be helpful, but China is unlikely to accept anything that might interfere with their colonial ambitions.
____

Also, the author is likely overestimating Russia's technical prowess. Does anyone remember the recent incident the Russians had with their nuclear powered "Skyfall" cruise missile? (1)

The mysterious explosion on August 8 at the Russian navy's range in Nyonoksa killed seven and spurred fears that Russia was testing its nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile, also known by the NATO codename 'Skyfall.' But U.S. intelligence indicates the fatal explosion occurred as Russia attempted to salvage a downed Skyfall missile from the ocean floor,

Russia has reportedly conducted five unsuccessful tests of Skyfall since November 2017, all resulting in loss of control and crashes. The longest test lasted for two minutes with the missile flying 22 miles, and the shortest lasted four seconds and five miles.

PEACE
_______

(1) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7409607/Russias-Skyfall-nuclear-cruise-missile-explosion-happened-salvage-mission-intel.html

follyofwar , says: November 7, 2019 at 9:40 pm GMT
@Giuseppe I'm a huge fan of Stephen Cohen's, but, with bi-partisanship dead, his calling for a new Church commission is pie-in-the-sky. Nothing good can happen until this impeachment farce is over.

In fact, I'd say that Barr and Durham better hurry up and indict someone. There is less than a year left before the next election, which only leaves a few weeks this year, and the first few months in 2020. Once there's like 3-4 months to go before the election it will be too late. And, BTW, where is the long-awaited IG Horowitz's report? Tick Tock guys.

Hail , says: Website November 7, 2019 at 11:21 pm GMT
@Peter Akuleyev

The fastest growing religion in Russia is Islam.

We've been hearing that for a long time, but one thing to remember is: Islam is a foreign(ers')-identity in Russia. It won't be taking over the political center in Russia anytime soon, nor getting any European-Russian converts.

Stochastic Determinist , says: November 8, 2019 at 6:22 am GMT
@Dan Hayes Russia hadn't seized anything. The Black Sea Fleet had always been stationed there. After the Ukrainian government proposed outlawing the Russian language and ethnic Ukrainians attacked the Crimean parliament, Crimeans, the vast majority of whom are ethnic Russians, moved to hold a referendum.
James N. Kennett , says: November 8, 2019 at 6:42 am GMT
@Giuseppe

As I have also argued repeatedly, a new Church Committee is urgently needed. It's time for honorable members of the Senate of both parties to do their duty.

The CIA activities restricted by the Church Committee never stopped. They continued "off the books", financed by drug trafficking, illegal arms sales, and (especially) by kickbacks from legitimate but overpriced arms contracts with Saudi Arabia. The close relationship with the Saudi royal family raises awkward questions about who this part of the CIA is really working for.

A new Church Committee would only be able to investigate the parts of the CIA that it can see. It is probably impossible for the US government to control the "off-books" parts of the CIA.

refl , says: November 8, 2019 at 6:59 am GMT

Here too there is an inconvenient truth: To the extent that Democrats any longer seriously discuss national security in the context of US-Russian relations, it mostly involves vilifying both Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. (Recall also that previous presidents were free to negotiate with Russia's Soviet communist leaders, even encouraged to do so, whereas the demonized Putin is an anti-communist, post-Soviet leader.)

Maybe, the fallacy is to think that Democrats were ever opposed to communism. As one can learn around here, WWII was the joint venture to destroy european national cultures and force them under globalist domination. The Roosevelt administration did about everything to strengthen communism. The current Russian leadership is as sanely nationalist as it gets. Possibly, that is the problem?

What struck me first, before I woke up, was that the ultimate accusation against Russia – before the Ukraine affair started – was that they were said to be homophopbic. While this can be a fault in the eyes of a dedicated liberal, to anyone who has lived through the Cold War, that accusation was outlandishly irrelevant.
The problem that liberal globalists have with Russia is exactly their sanity. Saying this, I do not want to insinuate that Republicans are sane, just for the record. They are the other side of the coin in the big charade.

GMC , says: November 8, 2019 at 7:09 am GMT
The Bolsheviks in Russia told everyone that they were a Political Party – just like the Communists Party etc. The Democrats and Republicans say the same thing , but they are more Bolshevik than any American wants to admit. The Wars, the Police state, the original European, African, Native American societies being destroyed is not the best example – if you are pushing for a NWO. It has failed but they are taking down as many as they can – along with their evil Order. This should one of the highest priority, of most writers today. Thanks Unz Rev.
Ilya G Poimandres , says: November 8, 2019 at 7:09 am GMT
@Dan Hayes From which entity? The country – existing as a unity upon the foundation of a constitution, known as Ukraine – stopped being that entity when a bunch of people toppled a constitutionally mandated government with an unconstitutional coup.

You demand peoples and regions of the former Ukraine remain united? Under what unifying law? The constitution? But the Maidan people tore it apart to get into power. Why would those that take the other side of the debate agree to be governed by law they know their opposition has already, and will again, trod on?

Practically speaking, Ukraine after Maidan is not the same entity as Ukraine before, as there is no social contract left that everyone is willing to be bound by.

Crimea being autonomous, had more freedom than the rest to jump ship, and so they did. But any region can now go, because anyone saying 'but the Constitution bans secession', forget that the people who speak this within Ukraine are those exact same people who tore the Constitution apart.

But don't think it'a just political entities such as Crimea that migrated to Russia of their own wills (as the UN Charter demands), millions of labourers have left for Russia from the remaining entity too, and there was no Putin there at each of their houses, giving personal pep talks over tea about how Russia is better, and how they should migrate accross the border. People chose with their own feet.

Here's a question – if tomorrow a bunch of gunmen threw out congress, the judiciary, and the executive from Washington DC, and replaced them with their own – would you consider that the individual states were then still bound to the federal government through the Constitution? Would you demand honour from one side, knowing fullwell that the other side is dishonourable?

S , says: November 8, 2019 at 7:59 am GMT

Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an "attack" so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor.

What's seemingly bizarre is that these modern day Dems with their 'Russiagate' obsession are the very same people who not so many years back would eat up a 1966 movie like 'The Russians Are Coming, the Russians are Coming', with it's message that the Soviet Union along with its Communism was perfectly innocuous (just a laugh really), and the Cold War itself was all a big joke, and pay to see it multiple times.

It's not so bizarre, though, as there is an underlining continuity in all this, then and now.

They hate the organic Russian people and their culture, then and now. That hasn't changed.

A USSR of the past with the Russian people safely subjugated/crushed under Soviet Communism, they like and are okay with.

A Russian Federation where the Russian people appear to have moved away from Communism they don't like. That's dangerous.

Russians shouldn't necessarily feel too bad though about this as they are not the only people so hated. These sorts hate most peoples which attempt to express their physical and cultural identity, often even their own at times.

There's a hatred for most all of humanity there which stems from an underlying self hatred with these types.

[Nov 12, 2019] It already is "Obamagate : John Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force by Philip Giraldi

Notable quotes:
"... Obama orchestrated the destruction of a political rival and he will get away scott free .because he's an oppressed and downtrodden dindu. ..."
"... But in fact Obama too is CIA nomenklatura, with the same depth of dynastic ties as GW Bush, albeit not at the same lofty level. ..."
"... This past election was CIA office politics, nothing more. Russigate is simply CIA eminence Hillary, the Queen of Mena, ratfucking a bumptious queue-jumper. She outranks Trump, who was merely a junior money-launderer for the CIA agents who looted the Soviet Union. It was her turn to take the figurehead head-of-state sinecure. She and Bill earned it with their lucrative Clinton Foundation covert-ops slush fund. ..."
"... And has been since the early 1950s when the Allen Dulles-Frank Wisner-James Jesus Angleton crew got rolling. They managed to thoroughly penetrate federal and state bureaucracies, the court systems, major corporations, the financial sector, and the mockingbird media. ..."
"... Clapper revealed that the preparers of the ICA were "handpicked analysts" from only the FBI, CIA, and NSA. He explained rather unconvincingly during an interview on May 28, 2017, that "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique," adding later that "It's in their DNA." ..."
Nov 12, 2019 | www.unz.com

Justvisitingsays: November 12, 2019 at 5:09 am GMT 100 Words The magic words are "FISA warrants".

The entire FISA court process has been exposed as an insane sham.

"The Secret Team" just took the absurdity of the process and raised it to the next level–injecting it into a political campaign.

It would be wonderful if they could fill a jail with every empty suit who touched those warrants–but I would be stunned if even one of them gets paraded around in the orange jump-suit they so richly deserve. Read More Replies: @Moi Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments

AWM , says: November 12, 2019 at 5:44 am GMT
It already is "Obamagate."

... ... ...

Alfred , says: November 12, 2019 at 7:09 am GMT
Looking on at this affair from outside the USA, it is clear that the power and influence of the USA is waning a lot faster than most people expected.

The replacement of the US military by mercenaries who are called other names was a first step. The sanctioning and punishing of allies for stepping out of line is the second step. BTW, it is notable how Japan and Australia are very keen to stay in line but the Europeans less so.

I suspect the third step will be to encourage a collapse of the Euro – so as to make wealthy Europeans shift their money to the USA in a panic.

It seems to me that the US public will be the last to learn of what is really happening. Even on this website there are sometimes letters or articles that mention 9/11 as a "terrorist" or "Saudi" act. How can one take anything such a person writes seriously?

The control of media and the internet seems to be the last part of the collapse. They will hang on to that to the very last moment.

Gall , says: November 12, 2019 at 9:37 am GMT
In the old days they used to give traitors the option of being hung or shot. Now they work for the CIA and become TV celebrities.
gotmituns , says: November 12, 2019 at 11:01 am GMT
I campaigned for Trump but was tricked. The die is caste now. There must be civil war and secession.
Realist , says: November 12, 2019 at 11:37 am GMT

John Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force
Could it become Obamagate?

Perhaps, but what is the point? All this bullshit is engineered to make dumbass Americans think justice is being served. Nothing will come of it no one will go to prison.

Realist , says: November 12, 2019 at 11:45 am GMT
@NPleeze

As if Trump weren't part and parcel of the Deep State.

His actions in Syria, Bolivia, Hong Kong, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, etc. all prove incontrovertibly that he is (and has always been) a member in fine standing of the Deep State. If he is a Manchurian Candidate, he is the true puppet of the Deep State, not the people or of Russia.

Exactly. I voted for Trump, but, as long ago as mid April 2017, I determined that he was a Deep Stater his actions are just too obvious to ignore.

Robert Dolan , says: November 12, 2019 at 11:47 am GMT
The Magic Negro cannot be touched and that is why nothing will be done about the biggest crime in the history of our nation Obama orchestrated the destruction of a political rival and he will get away scott free .because he's an oppressed and downtrodden dindu.
Realist , says: November 12, 2019 at 11:57 am GMT

There is considerable evidence that the American system of government may have been victimized by an illegal covert operation organized and executed by the U.S.

Which one are you referring to, Iran 1953, Kennedy assassination 1963, Gulf of Tonkin 1964 or the other dozens of examples?

Sbaker , says: November 12, 2019 at 12:25 pm GMT
@Realist

Exactly. I voted for Trump, but, as long ago as mid April 2017, I determined that he was a Deep Stater his actions are just too obvious to ignore.

This certainly explains the incessant attacks on Trump by the deep state.

onebornfree , says: Website November 12, 2019 at 12:38 pm GMT
"And this was not a CIA-only operation. Personnel from the FBI also were assigned to the Task Force "

This just in: both the CIA and FBI are unconstitutional, agencies.Get rid of them -and all of the other unconstitutional alphabet-soup agencies[FDA,EPA,SEC etc.etc.etc.]. No downsizing-trash them all- NOW!

This also just in: "Because they are all ultimately funded via both direct and indirect theft [taxes], and counterfeiting [via central bank monopolies], all governments are essentially, at their very cores, 100% corrupt criminal scams which cannot be "reformed","improved", simply because of their innate, unchangeble criminal nature." onebornfree

"Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class." Albert J. Nock

Regards, onebornfree

i

Biff , says: November 12, 2019 at 12:42 pm GMT
@Robert Dolan

The Magic Negro cannot be touched

That's pretty much it in a nutshell – put him on a shelf with the Clintons, and the Bush's.

Hapalong Cassidy , says: November 12, 2019 at 12:53 pm GMT
John Brennan just looks sinister. It would not surprise me if he were in the top 1% of most evil persons alive.
RVBlake , says: November 12, 2019 at 12:53 pm GMT
17 intelligence agencies. Really?
Anonymous [381] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2019 at 12:57 pm GMT
@Alfred Your point about 9/11 can't be made forcefully enough. We're going straight to hell unless Israel and its American confederates are brought to justice, these wars ended, and order restored. Clapper, Comey, Brennan, Mueller, Chertoff and the whole traitorous bunch are probably guilty as principals but almost certainly they're at least complicit as accessories before and after the fact. So naturally all we hear about is Russiagate.

The evidence overwhelmingly implicates Israel and not Saudi Arabia as you point out. That Building 7 was brought down by explosives has been proved beyond doubt by Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth, and as Dr. Alan Sobrosky put it, if Building 7 was brought down by explosives, so too were the Twin Towers. The official NIST reports and all related government narratives are preposterous. They're fairytales for fools inasmuch as the official mechanisms rely on a suspension of the laws of physics more fanciful than Jack and the Beanstalk. The story of the nineteen Arabs who couldn't handle Cessna 150s magically flying jetliners into precise targets is more absurd than fairytale tropes about flying carpets.

Yet for Conservatism Inc and Fox News, which both claim to oppose the Deep State and its narratives, there's no standard of evidence so low or preposterous that these cucks won't cling to it to cover up what they must now know is Israel's guilt. We can assume it's precisely because they're aware of Israel's guilt that they rule out the overwhelmingly conclusive circumstantial evidence pointing to Israel on the grounds such evidence is "anti-Semitic" and consequently false on apriori grounds. Moreover, any expert investigator qualified in the relevant field who uncovers and presents evidence implicating Israel is cast as the actual terrorist. It should go without saying they've reversed a millennium in the development of Western thought regarding the connection between evidence and conclusion, and they've done so for the basest of reasons. At least Conservatism Inc is being daily exposed for the controlled opposition and worthless club of preppy snots it's always been.

Ilyana_Rozumova , says: November 12, 2019 at 1:15 pm GMT
Brilliant Article.
The question is when deep state will finally admit that Globalism after all that sacrifice and evildoing are just sour grapes. As fox said in Ezops tale.
Phil the Fluter , says: November 12, 2019 at 1:16 pm GMT
Trump isn't so much a Manchurian candidate as a Khazarian candidate, dancing to the merry tune of his Zionist handlers.
Gracchus Babeuf , says: November 12, 2019 at 1:20 pm GMT
@NPleeze Agree. Only proviso, let's stop calling it the "Deep State". I prefer Kiriakou's term, the Federal Bureaucracy.
Gracchus Babeuf , says: November 12, 2019 at 1:22 pm GMT
@Realist Indeed tRump is just the NY street corner mobster being told what to do by the"godfather".
Greg Bacon , says: Website November 12, 2019 at 1:25 pm GMT

"the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique," adding later that "It's in their DNA."

Right, along with drinking vodka and eating borscht.

The one nation that did interfere in the 2016 election, and has inserted themselves into other elections to get their candidate elected, Israel remains untouched by this (((Deep State))).
There's plenty of evidence for the Zionists and Israeli-Firsters corrupting the election process for their fav nation, Israel, but the Operation Mockingbird asshats in the MSM won't go near that, not if they want to keep their cushy job, 5th Avenue penthouse and that chauffeured limo.

Anytime AIPAC comes to town, Congress gets into a fight with each other, trying to be the one that shows the most slavish loyalty to the nation that has attacked the USA numerous times, spies constantly on us, stealing our military, business and industrial secrets, had a hand in both murdering JFK, RFK and masterminded the 9/11 FF, and has an overwheling presence on the FED, yet most Americans don't know that, because the MSM keeps reporting lies, distortions and half-truths, and always presenting a boogeyman to hate, sometimes Russia, most times Muslims.

But fear not, that will soon come to an end, for when those TBTF Wall Street banks–in collusion with the FED–again crash the stock market and drag the economy down with their greed, that coming crash will make the one of 1929 seem like a picnic.
When that happens, what's left won't be of any interest to Israel to steal or manipulate.

steinbergfeldwitzcohen , says: November 12, 2019 at 1:31 pm GMT
The Deep State murdered Kennedy.
He planned on destroying the Fed and the CIA.
The Deep State required a president that COLLABORATED, like LBJ.
Then they figured, "why not put our guy in?'
Thus Bush 1.
Then Clinton (Bush 1 was his 'mentor') a pervert stooge.
Then Bush 2, a gaymail stooge.
Then Obomber, the gay Kenyan C_A stooge.
Then America says 'Enough', rejects the Witch and elects Trump.
Now the Deep State wants to kill America.
I think it's time for America to kill its' Deep State.
It is, after all, self-defense. Besides, hasn't this gone on long enough?
The alternative is to end up as the modern parallel of Rome.
Really No Shit , says: November 12, 2019 at 1:47 pm GMT
Clapper, Brennan and Comey " may not have operated on their own." Duh! You just remember, a donkey won't carry a heavy burden unless it's fed regularly. Find out who owns the beast and you will have the culprit!
Z-man , says: November 12, 2019 at 2:09 pm GMT
Phil, you should offer your services to the Trump defense/attack team*. Just stay away from Giuliani (grin). Good article and salvo against Brennan and the rest who deserve all the pain thay can get.

*Hey money is good especially around Christmas time. (Grin)

Realist , says: November 12, 2019 at 2:14 pm GMT
@Sbaker

This certainly explains the incessant attacks on Trump by the deep state.

You have no concept of a charade being perpetrated on the American people. You don't find it a little strange that Trump keeps hiring the Deep State denizens he purports to be fighting? You are incapable of detecting the friend/foe, psychological tactic used to deceive?

Patrikios Stetsonis , says: November 12, 2019 at 2:16 pm GMT
@Ilyana_Rozumova ..Aesop's tail
Sbaker , says: November 12, 2019 at 2:20 pm GMT
@Anonymous That's it. Your hearsay trumps thousands of eyewitnesses and conversations of the victims on flight 93 and in the pentagon.. You must be a first responder too. Talk about easily influenced–you are why the old media gets away with their corruption. Some anonymous source writes, says it on TV, and the lemmings follow.
Really No Shit , says: November 12, 2019 at 2:23 pm GMT
@Biff As we write, Obama probably is banging away some groupie in a DC mansion basement while the gorrila is frying chicken upstairs for Oprah.

And Bubba, most likely, is watching porn in the garage in Westchester and the wicked witch is massaging mrs. Wiener.

But it's Dubya worth looking into because he is out in the cowshed, buck naked save the cowboy boots and the ten-gallon hat, whipping himself silly for the "mission accomplished!"

Dave Sullivan , says: November 12, 2019 at 2:45 pm GMT
Or, Obama and the police agencies investigated a known organized crime stooge when it became apparent the GOP could offer no other candidate. Ironically, this was the original intent of the creation of the FBI. Don't play into the "victim trump" brand, he needs no help with it.
The other other other shoe drops , says: November 12, 2019 at 3:01 pm GMT
Thanks much for the most comprehensive précis yet of this bungled CIA putsch. The articles in sequence teasingly open Gina's kimono, giving us horripilating glimpses of her bushy penetralia. The question of Obama's involvement is the next step. CIA bots have been pushing a partisan perspective for some time. Those darn Democrats!

But in fact Obama too is CIA nomenklatura, with the same depth of dynastic ties as GW Bush, albeit not at the same lofty level. Just look at the oppo research, the best of which comes from sanitized glimpses of the errands candidates run for CIA. Obama's other passport is not Kenyan but Indonesian. It facilitated the youngster's schooling during Mom's year of living dangerously in Indonesia. Obama's dad and stepdad were CIA skins on the wall. Grandma was not in fact a drunk – she laundered the money for forcible overthrow and genocide in Indonesia at her bank job in Hawaii. Grandpa was a "furniture salesman," like Bibi, travelling around Asia under the hoariest old chestnut of NOC cover.

Young Barack was groomed as carefully as Bush minor. His only real job was BIC, a sheepish front perennially stuffed to bursting with NOCs. While he was still wet behind the ears he sported at falconry with a future head of state of Pakistan, for chrissakes, at a time when nobody could get in there. And he got out without getting his head sawed off. How? The youthful promise of this sullen stoner was somewhat obscure at that time. His GF was the Aussie daughter of Mike Barry's opposite number. And the Mockingbird unison of ecstatic acclaim when he rose to public prominence out of nowhere is the proof. His empty suit belings to CIA.

This past election was CIA office politics, nothing more. Russigate is simply CIA eminence Hillary, the Queen of Mena, ratfucking a bumptious queue-jumper. She outranks Trump, who was merely a junior money-launderer for the CIA agents who looted the Soviet Union. It was her turn to take the figurehead head-of-state sinecure. She and Bill earned it with their lucrative Clinton Foundation covert-ops slush fund.

Don't overthink it. Your government is CIA.

Buck Ransom , says: November 12, 2019 at 3:13 pm GMT
@Rabbi Zaius They sense the rumblings of White solidarity among "the forgotten men and women" of Trump's base and they do not cotton to this one little bit. Solidarity is forbidden to Whites. It is only for the coalition of the fringes, all of those groups whose alienation can be stoked to weaponize them against the descendants of those who founded and built the United States.
Justvisiting , says: November 12, 2019 at 3:21 pm GMT
@Dave Sullivan The FISA warrants had nothing to do with organized crime.

On second thought, that is not correct.

They _were_ organized crime.

(It is not necessary to defend Trump to understand this. FISA warrants based on known fake "evidence" are a stunning abuse of power–even within the slime-pit of DC.)

BL , says: November 12, 2019 at 3:27 pm GMT
Anyone at all familiar with Brennan knows that he was and remains the driver of the conspiracy to destroy first candidate, then President -Elect, and then POTUS Trump.

The same cannot be said of Comey and Clapper (especially).

It literally makes me sick to my stomach whenever I think about what it says about this great republic that seditious filth like him rose to such a powerful position. It's rather obvious he was willing to do anything including, I would submit, gift Russia and God Knows Who Else anything they wanted in return for helping him destroy our constitutional republic.

As I'm sure most here know, long before his 2016 election malefactions he had brazenly engaged in spying on Congress and, most despicably, had debased President Obama and the Office of the President through NYT revelations that every week Obama picked from his list of drone assassination targets.

. . . and it inevitably leads to the question "What did Obama know?"

Yes, though more important than that was what Obama was told (by Brennan) and what real options did he have as president given that Brennan had him by the short hairs.

I've long considered anyone's efforts to prematurely direct liability to President Obama as a bald attempt to protect Brennan. That worked for the purposes of a general, earlier on, cover up. It won't at this stage because it isn't even a close call when it comes to Democrats, elected and rank and file, choosing between the first black president and Brennan, the American Beria.

SunBakedSuburb , says: November 12, 2019 at 4:45 pm GMT
@The other other other shoe drops "Your government is CIA."

And has been since the early 1950s when the Allen Dulles-Frank Wisner-James Jesus Angleton crew got rolling. They managed to thoroughly penetrate federal and state bureaucracies, the court systems, major corporations, the financial sector, and the mockingbird media.

anon [113] Disclaimer , says: November 12, 2019 at 4:51 pm GMT
So Phil, was there any cooperation/communication between the Trump Task Force and the DNC dirt-diggers in Ukraine (Ali Chalupa et al), or were they completely independent actions?

... ... ...

Digital Samizdat , says: November 12, 2019 at 4:59 pm GMT

it was plausible to maintain that [the Russians] would have hoped that a weakened Clinton would be less able to implement the anti-Russian agenda that she had been promoting.

Not sure I follow this line of reasoning. If the Russians had tried unsuccessfully to throw the election to Trump and Hellary won anyway, how exactly would that leave her "weakened"? And wouldn't she have that much more reason to go after Russia?

My theory is that Hellary and her deep-swamp creatures only messed with Trump because they were certain he was going lose. And if they could then plausibly claim after the election that the Russians had interfered (albeit unsuccessfull) in the election, Hell-bitch could've used that as a pretext for well, I don't know. War? More sanctions? Inducting Ukraine into NATO? Invading Syria?

Clapper revealed that the preparers of the ICA were "handpicked analysts" from only the FBI, CIA, and NSA. He explained rather unconvincingly during an interview on May 28, 2017, that "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique," adding later that "It's in their DNA."

I had no idea Clapper was into HBD. Damn, he's biased!

PetrOldSack , says: November 12, 2019 at 5:11 pm GMT
@NPleeze There is a theater play going on, unending series, each episode catching some other superficial drift. A-l-l actors in the public view, their dialogues and declamations are scripted. Trump´s also. He is not the major character, just a single, temporary one. All media opinion pieces, what is news, are prompt readings. Rectal extraction is close.

Why is this possible? The public is beyond understanding. The ones who do, at least part of what is going on, being closer to some sectors of society where a whiff of the smell of power is perceived at clouded times, are interested. The middle classes are scraping and grabbing and bickering for the scraps of the table of the powerful. It takes them most of their career to even get to under the table. They are happy dogs, and scraps comparing to scraps makes them a diverse world of nothings.

It is hard work to come up with alternative policies, not rail into historical models proven wrong as to long term interests and goals of society. A path not to venture into, against instinct.

That makes for a fine world, while it lasts, and is upended by another cycle. The empty drum feeling in the head of most is stuffed with images and sound-bites that makes for a life behind a velvet curtain(Apple´s i-phone).

There is very little cognitive difference between the individuals at the top and the glorious bottom undesirables, they both like the sniff of the glue.

Carroll Price , says: November 12, 2019 at 5:12 pm GMT
Donald Trump's election (which was not supposed to be allowed to happen) forced into public view, the existence of a Deep State that's been in existence for more than 75 years. Although not widely recognized as such, JFK'S election accomplished the same thing, but to an even greater extent. Leaving me puzzled as to why Trump has been allowed to remain in office as long as he has without the Deep State subjecting him to a similar fate.

With one logical explanation being that, at this point in time, it would become obvious, even to the brain dead, who's actually in control of the US government.

[Nov 09, 2019] The Media's Obsession With Personalities Consortiumnews

Notable quotes:
"... Earlier in Stone's legal process his lawyers filed a motion to try to prove that Russia did not hack the DNC and Podesta emails. The motion revealed that CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC and Clinton campaign, never completed its report, and only gave a redacted draft to the FBI blaming Russia. The FBI was never allowed to examine the DNC server itself. ..."
"... Faced now with a criminal investigation into how the Russiagate conspiracy theory originated intelligence officers and their accomplices in the media and in the Democratic Party are mounting a defense by launching an offensive in the form of impeachment proceedings against Trump that is based on an allegation of conducting routine, corrupt U.S. foreign policy. ..."
"... Consortium News ..."
Nov 09, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Earlier in Stone's legal process his lawyers filed a motion to try to prove that Russia did not hack the DNC and Podesta emails. The motion revealed that CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC and Clinton campaign, never completed its report, and only gave a redacted draft to the FBI blaming Russia. The FBI was never allowed to examine the DNC server itself.

In the end, though, it doesn't matter if it were a hack or a leak by an insider. That's because the emails WikiLeaks released were accurate. When documents check out it is irrelevant who the source is. That's why WikiLeaks set up an anonymous drop box, copied by big media like The Wall Street Journal and others . Had the emails been counterfeit and disinformation was inserted into a U.S. election by a foreign power that would be sabotage. But that is not what happened.

The attempt to stir up the thoroughly discredited charge of collusion appears to be part of the defense strategy of those whose reputations were thoroughly discredited by maniacally pushing that false charge for more than two years. This includes legions of journalists. But principal among them are intelligence agency officials who laundered this "collusion" disinformation campaign through the mainstream media.

Faced now with a criminal investigation into how the Russiagate conspiracy theory originated intelligence officers and their accomplices in the media and in the Democratic Party are mounting a defense by launching an offensive in the form of impeachment proceedings against Trump that is based on an allegation of conducting routine, corrupt U.S. foreign policy.

Stone may be just a footnote to this historic partisan battle that may scar the nation for a generation. But he has the personality to be the poster boy for the Democrats' lost cause.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former correspondent for T he Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe , Sunday Times of London and numerous other newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe .

[Nov 09, 2019] They're gettin' the old gang back together

Nov 09, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

lotlizard on Fri, 11/08/2019 - 1:12am

@on the cusp
Debbie Wasserman Schultz could come roaring back as House Appropriations Committee chair.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article236811358.html

[Nov 08, 2019] Fake Arguments on Fake News by Binoy Kampmark

Notable quotes:
"... The modern attempt to evade such deceptions is conventional as much as it is flawed. It questions the very media that was meant to disseminate accounts at speed and attributes traditional monopolies of truth to a Fourth Estate long in tooth and very much on its sick bed. The New York Times , the Washington Post and the Financial Times have looked rather haggish at points. ..."
"... we need to worry about fake news. People dismiss it as frivolous. It's not. I think it's the biggest crisis that we face as humankind because it is dividing us. And as we're divided we're going to get to a point where democracy is no longer functioning." ..."
"... Behind such comments on the fakery of social media news is a paternalistic sneer, one directed against the great unwashed. Sometimes, the sneer targets a specific group, the abominations, the gullible freaks, the marginalised. ..."
"... There is an upside to all of this. It appears that only one part of the political spectrum – the far right – is really the target for extremist, sensational and conspiratorial content. Over social media, moderates and centrists tend not to be as susceptible." ..."
"... The battle over what is the fake and authentic in news easily dovetails into regulations of control and limitations on expression. It emboldens the censor and the police version of history. Laws criminalising it have been passed in countries as diverse as Malaysia, France, Germany and Russia. ..."
"... Singapore's own effort, the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019 , ostensibly targets electronic communications of false statements of facts, the use of online accounts to facilitate such communication and "enable measures to be taken to enhance transparency of online political advertisements, and for related matters." ..."
"... But of course; think-tanks and churnalists justifying their pay-packet with the same old regurgitated topics, year in, year out.. MSM / alt media; 5-eyes non-events.. ..."
"... There is only the one Gramscian Hegemony: and that is the hegemony of language over humanity. Which is invisibilised by the construction of Truth. Apparent truth. Contingent half-truth. The paradox to which is that if all news is fake news: this invites us into the Liar's Paradox. ..."
"... Fake news is false witness and false wits work to mask over truth and so cannot be a true with-ness or workability – and the attempt to make them work is the assertion and demand of denial presented as the sustainability of internalised identity structure. ..."
"... As such 'fake or false communication' represents a sense of separation and disconnecting conflict as derivative 'realities' that operate a weaponised defence set in fear and pain of loss – condensed and focused in a tyrannous mind-framing given power of fear. ..."
"... Fake news is itself the bait to engage reaction within the frame its sets. The mind of the personality does not primarily work through rationalisations, but through trust of its internalised structure – that has externalised reflection in social and cultural mores and institutions. Looking within needs to be the always awake corollary to looking 'out' in relational endeavour – or else we run on surfaces that deny – and so are then denied or undermined by – depth. ..."
"... Understanding that the government and those in the class: elite-wealth-greedy and their interrelated monopoly powered corporations, think tanks, charities and NGOs are constantly conspiring to find ways to deny human rights and to deny the rise to power of democratic forms of governments. ..."
"... Fake news? Was the Skripal/Salisbury farce a cover up for something far more sinister and deadly? ..."
Sep 19, 2019 | off-guardian.org

The constipated tedium that follows each call, denial and condemnation after another round of fake news and its giddying effects has become daily fare. Entire episodes with the sanctimonious and the solemn are being created to show up the citizen journalist, the blogger, the self-opinionated masturbator of news, in the hope that some high priest set will reclaim the ground.

That ground, supposedly, is "truth", a truly big word merely assumed by its advocates.

None of this is to deny that there is something dreary and depressing about accounts that are fabricated. But this is an age old matter, and one that centres on the old question: Should you trust what is ever published?

The facility to use language is as much a means of expression as deception. According to George Steiner, humanity's Babel dilemma – having a multiplicity of languages that seek to confuse rather than clarify – had as much to do with the need to deceive than anything else. Learn the language, learn the deception.

The modern attempt to evade such deceptions is conventional as much as it is flawed. It questions the very media that was meant to disseminate accounts at speed and attributes traditional monopolies of truth to a Fourth Estate long in tooth and very much on its sick bed. The New York Times , the Washington Post and the Financial Times have looked rather haggish at points.

There is a charmingly naïve assumption here: that the old press houses were somehow incapable of deception and censorship. The influence of media moguls; the cuts and modifications of the editorial boards and government censors, are all historically distant in such arguments.

All that is Fake is new because – and here an element of snobbery creeps in – it is generated by the vox pops brigade.

That viral freight helped along by social media is being treated as the problem, the medium as dissimulated message. The Four Corners episode which aired on Australia's national network on Monday is one such example, shrill in its concerns that the fake in news is undermining to democracy and its institutions.

Its list of interviewed subjects supply us a Who's Who of sceptics and critics about modern journalism and the dark steed called Fake News.

Claire Wardle, Executive director of First Draft, is one who earns her crust attacking this wave and engaged in the process she regards as "verification training for journalists". Her organisation supplies "Training and resources for journalists in an age of disinformation."

In her interview with Four Corners, she suggests how:

we need to worry about fake news. People dismiss it as frivolous. It's not. I think it's the biggest crisis that we face as humankind because it is dividing us. And as we're divided we're going to get to a point where democracy is no longer functioning."

Such a considerable overegging of that pudding is supplemented by other comments.

Veteran journalist John Carlin makes no secret of his aversion to social media platforms, and their means of getting the message through an intemperate scream rather than a sober debate.

"What social media does is give more weight and more value to the people who shout loudest."

But years before the clans of shouters got into the social media bubble, the Murdoch empire, through such trusty emissaries as The Sun , were happy pushing voters with reactionary prods and embellished accounts.

Behind such comments on the fakery of social media news is a paternalistic sneer, one directed against the great unwashed. Sometimes, the sneer targets a specific group, the abominations, the gullible freaks, the marginalised.

Phil Howard, director of the Computational Propaganda Project at Oxford, suggested in February last year that the condition for consuming and gorging the fake in news coverage is limited.

There is an upside to all of this. It appears that only one part of the political spectrum – the far right – is really the target for extremist, sensational and conspiratorial content. Over social media, moderates and centrists tend not to be as susceptible."

That is all fine, if you treat terms such as "moderate" and "centrists" as fundamentally immutable and immune to the witch's brew of conspiracy. All groups are susceptible, and the artery busting fury at WikiLeaks in exposing the underbelly of the Clinton campaign machine in 2016 all suggested that groups of any political persuasion are very happy to entertain dark pulls and urges.

Julian Assange, the celebrated truth sayer one day; pilloried Russian agent the next.

Technological reach has also given birth to a vibrant form of citizen journalism, the very sort frowned upon by conventional, often regulated networks.

In 2014, Time noted that "the growth of social media, facilitated by technological advances that allow Internet access even in a war zone, has made detailed, ground-level information on the war available online".

Such journalism is praised as fresh and fair when it seems to shed good light on a position; dark, bought and compromised when it does not. The term "fake" is as much tactical as anything else.

But press traditionalists remain wary: the global cutting back of the press corps has led to an increasing reliance on freelancing, leading to such fears as those of John Owen at City University in London:

news organisations can't contract out their duty of care and moral responsibility if they choose to air or publish freelancers."

The battle over what is the fake and authentic in news easily dovetails into regulations of control and limitations on expression. It emboldens the censor and the police version of history. Laws criminalising it have been passed in countries as diverse as Malaysia, France, Germany and Russia.

Some of this is being done with the connivance of the Fourth Estate, keen to accommodate the interests of state. Much information and content, as a result, is being inadvertently blocked .

Singapore's own effort, the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019 , ostensibly targets electronic communications of false statements of facts, the use of online accounts to facilitate such communication and "enable measures to be taken to enhance transparency of online political advertisements, and for related matters."

It reads like a gentle, sanitised effort, but its implications are beastly, permitting ministerial determinations on what, exactly, fake news might be.

Such laws, it follows, tend to be used with impunity, targeting any revelations and disclosures that might embarrass the state and its bumbling officials.

Sandra González-Bailón of the Annenberg School for Communication does make a sensible and cautionary point on such efforts.

The risk of governments regulating social media is that they will regulate something that we don't fully understand."

Nor, for that matter, do they.

While the authenticity verifiers marshalled across platoons of fact checkers might well be thinking they are doing us a service, nothing ever replaces the sceptical reader who covers multiple sources to identify an account and question it.

Never just read lines, but between them; never just accept news, but monitor its content and those who produce it. To the informed sceptic go the spoils of enlightenment.

eddie

But of course; think-tanks and churnalists justifying their pay-packet with the same old regurgitated topics, year in, year out.. MSM / alt media; 5-eyes non-events..

The "nothing to see here, move on" mantra is spot on regarding this dreary scenario, as if the five-eyes nightmare is of any importance to the other 90% of the Planet.. It isn't..

Doctortrinate
from seed to feed but how much do we need – how much is greed, overfeed, does it mislead in it's speed .to a stampede of the disagreed .is that the deed, for the masses concede, or do I misread ?
BigB
Verum ipsum factum

"Truth itself is constructed". Giambattista Vico.

There is only the one Gramscian Hegemony: and that is the hegemony of language over humanity. Which is invisibilised by the construction of Truth. Apparent truth. Contingent half-truth. The paradox to which is that if all news is fake news: this invites us into the Liar's Paradox.

This is not a mere linguistic paradox – as Nagurjuna demonstrated in the Madhyamika – the more you try to make a language true (concretise and axiomatise it) the more tautological, inconsistent, and self-contradictory it becomes. Godel and Tarski similarly showed the inherent limitations of any self-referential language system. And yet consensus reality is shared by all those who think that language maintains a one to one correspondence from concept to reality with no confession of doubt or inconsistency (signified=signifier with 100% correspondence and no 'remainder' of indeterminacy).

Which is demonstrably and experientially false. A dog is not a dog. A 'dog' (signified concept) is an entry point into the psychology of a self-referential sign system (semiotics, semiology) that exists only inside the head of the conceiver. The ignored deficiency of which gives language a preferential veridical status it neither warrants or deserves. Which ultimately means that conceptual reality and veridical reality are two separated things. One true and real separated by language. Separated by the differentiation of an inside and an outside of a non-existent thing (an individuated self). A thing that therefore only takes its existence from language.

Which is the Zen paradox: if reality is nodual – which it is – why do we continue to believe in a perspective paradox that is patently false? Duality is not reality. It can be clearly seen concepts do not match reality: on a one to one somatosensorial experiential or direct perceptive basis. I am not referencing a little standard deviation of reality and duality that can be easily rectified. Every pillar of our meta-constructivism of a shared paradoxical dualistic imaginary (consensus simulation 'reality' or apparency-based community) is a 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness'. Or an ontology of apparency replacing the real. No self. No projected duality.

Which brings me to the paradox of Fake news. Which reduces to various communities of speech and conception vying to make the more plausible and believable set of half truths/half lies. A battle of control of the right to verificationism of opinions – or stories about reality – concretised for a non-existent duality.

With the ones that have access to the levers to the major media having more control to shape the narrative. "Those who tell the stories rule society" said some Greek dude. All the time that 'society' is reduced to a dualist narrative constructivism: this will remain true. The narrative is the foundation of a society of control. If the voice in the head – the inner narrative – is held to be 'real' then it can be controlled. Not just controlled, it is already a self-deception if it is believed or believable. If it is anything like some of the chatter I have to listen to: it's all bollocks anyway.

There is no trivialisation in this. The whole ethos and etiology of suffering is a constructed and concretised fake narrative. Samsara is a fake news semantic. That's it. Belief in a separate self is the equiprimordial foundation of all fake news. Fake news is the propogation and prolongation of a fake self. Everyone knows this statement alone is valid.

Yes, it is all rather dense and impenetrable: but the bottom line is that what we think and what we are is not the same. Things appear in language that have no veridical correspondence in reality. Mind is an obvious example: as in the Bodhidharma saying "Show me your mind and I will pacify it for you". No mind. No person. No self. No individual. No space. No time. No coming. No going. No birth. No death. No Being. No non-Being. Sunyatvada.

We take invented and abstract terms, differentiate them, concretise them, then argue about who has the best artificial paradigm. Where there is merit in this: there is greater merit in exposing the whole process as the Samsaric semanticised Lie. Then perhaps we can live in peace without creating spurious factions of self and other. No self. No other. No lies. Simples.

Steve Hayes
Facebook has claimed it is a publisher in legal proceedings. It made the claim to justify its censorship of Laura Loomer. As a publisher, it does have the right to not publish.

However, as a publisher, it is responsible for all its content, leaving Facebook open to countless law suits, which would inevitably bankrupt it – precisely why it has always claimed it is not a publisher, but merely the provider of a platform.

This dilemma confronts all the social media platforms: if they want legal immunity, they have to be platforms, which means they cannot censor; if they want to censor (as the corporate and political elite want them to), they have to be publishers, making them responsible for all their content, which would destroy their business model. I wonder how they will solve this dilemma?

wardropper
I suppose the answer is to ensure that our highest Court is not corrupt. Then it can simply point to the yawning abyss between claiming you're a publisher sometimes and claiming you are not a publisher at other times, and make it illegal to claim that you both are, and are not, a publisher.

This sort of solution used to be called "common sense", and all our grandmothers and grandfathers had it. Now it has achieved the ridiculous status of being debatable. The ignorant fool is now our most revered role model, and we citizens of western society really ought to be ashamed of that, or, even better, fix it.

Brian Steere
Fake news is false witness and false wits work to mask over truth and so cannot be a true with-ness or workability – and the attempt to make them work is the assertion and demand of denial presented as the sustainability of internalised identity structure.

As such 'fake or false communication' represents a sense of separation and disconnecting conflict as derivative 'realities' that operate a weaponised defence set in fear and pain of loss – condensed and focused in a tyrannous mind-framing given power of fear.

That false witness may be seen as absurd or unsubstantiated or the lie of the intent to deny and corrupt truth, is not effective – excepting we see within ourselves and release allegiance. Because pointing out the errors of another will be interpreted as attack, and countered in like kind. Extending a true witness is to the willingness and freedom of others to see or hear and not a weaponising of 'truth' to the frame of the lie.

A mind set in attack is not looking or listening or open to communicate. All that is seen and heard under such a mind is serving the intent to survive upon the denial of the other. All that is said, shared or given is for the survival or sustainability of the self in its polarised identification.

Regardless the forms this may take, an underlying polarisation of the mind set against communication for its own 'survival', operates through the fear of pain of loss associated WITH communication, relationship and the opening and growing of trust.

Polarising corruption of conflicted communication sets fences, walls and tipping points of territory of possession and control that itself then operates a tipping point into insanity, unworkability, dysfunction, degradation, destruction as a denial of life brought unto death. There is an intention and act of stealing that reveals a true basis for having and being – the truth of possessing life is invisible to a mind in things and forces.

Fake news is itself the bait to engage reaction within the frame its sets. The mind of the personality does not primarily work through rationalisations, but through trust of its internalised structure – that has externalised reflection in social and cultural mores and institutions. Looking within needs to be the always awake corollary to looking 'out' in relational endeavour – or else we run on surfaces that deny – and so are then denied or undermined by – depth.

Internalised structure of conditioning beliefs and definitions, usurp and deny living communication of the heart of wholeness, or seeing and hearing truly. The first Call to correcting our sense of self, reality and world is a transparency to Self in place of mind-control-reaction. Unless self-honesty has a foundation from which to extend, then lies, passing off as the true of you, go forth and multiply – to return in their kind and measure – for such is the nature and fruit of idea given acceptance and allegiance in act.

What could possibly deliver us unto evil but a lie given power of identification as true – and persisted in?
If a polarised 'identity politics' rises to awareness as a tyrannous means of divide and rule, then learning to read our own identifications of reaction is the key to releasing OUR part in giving power to self-destructive masking illusion of protection from hate and fear as externalised powers set in opposition to Life. Forcefully expressed or clearly embodied communication is not inherently coercive or hateful – excepting to an identity set by hateful coercion as possession and control.

Communication is love in action, and not merely words or ideas wrapped around the same attempt to mask in the forms of acceptability with respect to our current spheres of significance. The desire to exist and to be known to exist is inherent to (our) existence – and yet the fixation in the FORM of its expression makes a mind-control or dis-possession that is simply NOT in our Right Mind – and therefore calls ONLY to restore alignment. Persisting in the attempt to GET RID of or overcome or escape dissonance in symptom works the effective denial of Cause – and therefore of the healing or undoing of effects and symptoms arising from a forcefully asserted mistaken identity.

It is impossible to ..

Continued on

https://willingness-to-listen.blogspot.com/2019/09/fake-news-is-false-witness-and-false.html

neverbefore
I would like to establish some commonality to this discussion of propaganda and how it is used to differentiate the masses in the world.

Understanding that the government and those in the class: elite-wealth-greedy and their interrelated monopoly powered corporations, think tanks, charities and NGOs are constantly conspiring to find ways to deny human rights and to deny the rise to power of democratic forms of governments.

If you are not in the class:wealth-elite-greed (Class:<= WEG); you will not be allowed to understand how fewer than 500,000 class:wealth-elite-greed (Class:<= WEG) members are deployed and how they are taught in private schools and by social networks that they are better than and masses and they must learn to work behind the scenes to find ways to control the masses in the world (8 billion people). Additionally, will you not be allowed to understand the policies governments engage in on behalf of the Class:<WEG to make the 8 billion fully dependent on the whims and needs of the 500,000 (16:1 control ratio?). Human survival exist at the please of Class:<=WEG.

There is always running in the background, a subversive negotiation between governments and class:wealth-elite-greed (Class:<= WEG) persons. (Class:<=WEG) persons depend on people container governments to maintain, and to protect the needs, wants, elite status, wealth and greedy aspirations of the members of the Class:<=WEG. The idea in these behind the scenes negotiations is to find ways to make and keep the masses highly dependent upon government policy, Class:<=WEG owned productive economic activity (jobs) and media propagated propaganda is used to mold the minds of the young and to guide the development of personality and psychology that the masses are allowed to believe and must accept (<= government knows best). But what is behind this government knows best dictate is tjat Class:<=WEG interest are directing the government to provide the jobs that will make the Class:<=WEG richer. Nothing government does is for the benefit of the masses, sometimes things the government does, indirectly benefits the masses.

Negotiations between the members of Class:<=WEG and government happen because the politicians need to get reelected, and the politicians are dependent upon the Class:<= WEG to invest in projects that allow the the leader to claim success but in fact jobs at factories and in large corporate establishments produce dependence on government and Class:<=WEG; and it is these dependencies that enable the Class:<=WEG persons to control the masses.

The Class:<=WEG folks want government to help them block, new members into Class <=WEG. Person Control ratio: 1 Class:<= WEG member/16000 controlled, ruled, governed persons.

The nation state system (NSS) has been very successful: it imposes divide and conquer
strategies. First you divide the masses into containerized groups, then you control
the information available to each of the containers, the controlled information differentiates the persons locked in the containers. If you tell the people in the red group that the people in the blue group are dangerous and need to be eliminated, and you train the Red group people to kill the blue group people, and then start a war, the blue group will not know what hit them.

The NSS stuffs its allocation of members of the masses into a controlled environment.
In that controlled environment information is controlled, icons are put along the walls,
highways, and in text books and mass circulated media. Because human cognition and
decision making capacities depends on its systems of past reference (knowledge, morality,
logic, evaluations (evidence/vs/faith), and a myriad of other things, the propaganda that
permeates the container actually molds the trapped human into a person acceptable to the
nation state. The classic explanation: J born to Jewish parents in NYC, S born to Shia
Parents in Iran are exchange to the non genetic parents. 24 years later, J will hate S and
S will hate J, neither can speak the language of the other and both see the world in a
different light then their genetic parents. The container environments controlled by rule
of law and use of force were different: Icons, propaganda, morality, and institutional
experiences produced the results as directed by the Class:<= WEG persons.

The Nation State Container (NSC) can be used to polarize the people in one group against
the people in the other. When the scope of events that constitute the news is limited
and that allowed to be known in each NSC is selected to be different and even selected to
oppose the view allowed to the people trapped in the other container polarization takes
place.

So fake news is really just tailored propaganda..explicitly designed for those in one of the
nation state people containers.

We should all begine to talk about the containment of people within a nation state as a people management tool used by the class:wealth-elite-greed group to control by polarization the masses. That tool has made it possible for the Class:<=WEG to use propaganda to develop most of the wars and to keep separated the humanity that constitute the masses.

Brian Steere
Did you intent your post to be in response to mine?

Identification is not JUST passive inheritance but actively acquired.

Propaganda is the weaponisation and marketisation of language – as distinct from its function AS communication.

The collective idea of the 'world' is not fixed, immutable or imposed.

I sense you want to make a structural container into and by which to explain your world. But it is your world – and others have their own structural filters and rules to 'explain' or justify their world.

If people can so easily be manipulated – as in some sense seems so – how and why?

I sketch the inner terrain of the mind that is shared by alliance no less than by polarised opposition – as a reflective opportunity to check your 'world' with who you recognise and accept yourself to be – instead of running on acquired and inherited conditioning.

The identification in fear – masked or packaged so as to seem protective against fear – is the 'containment'. Un-owned and unresolved conflict, divides and is ruled over by narrative control. If you can listen instead in the heart, then you have a basis on which to discern the meanings that you learn and teach or demonstrate, propagate or propagandize.

Truth has no need to deceive or coerce another in order to find reinforcement and sustainability – for its is that which sustains being. That does not mean I cant engage in communicating as I feel truly moved – but that is teaching who I am to a like quality in others. Teaching victimhood, grievance and revenge as an identity in righteousness and power is to emulate the very thing you seek to eradicate.

The build up of conditioned enmity that you illustrate may be protected from healing by propagandists who fear the peace would be a loss of identity – and yet for all that, you are living your choices within the conditions that you meet and by your choices, may change your perspective to significant release of hate and fear that may play into the agenda of others but is fully dumped in your life as your experience.

Much of our slavery is from an exclusive identification in the body – and to a world of bodies in which power asserts itself OVER bodies and is appeased and manipulated by strategies of deceit. I spoke to fantasy enacted upon the body above.

When we give creative power to that which is but an effect or symptom and not a true cause, we become the puppet of our own definitions.

How much freedom from conditioned thinking are you willing to accept, embrace and integrate? What IS narrative identity – and its corresponding continuity, control or desperation for sustainability in its own terms?

I live one step at a time.

vexarb
Published in 1918, after the Anglo Zio Capitalist oil grab known as WW1. Written by one of the few Englishmen who opposed the Empire's grab of the Afrikaaner Free Republics (Boer War 1899-1902).

The Century of Resource Wars has bred The Century of Lies: "The Free Press, by Hilaire Belloc.

Synopsis

These things appeared first of all in England, because England was the only province of Europe wherein the old Latin tradition ran side by side with the novel effects of Protestantism.
It was the defection of the English Crown, the immense booty rapidly obtained by a few adventurers, like the Cecils and Russells, and a still smaller number of old families, like the Howards, which put England, with all its profound traditions and with all its organic inheritance of the great European thing, upon the side of the Northern Germanies. It was
inevitable, therefore, that in England the fruits should first appear, for here only was there deep soil.

That fruit upon which our modern observation has been most fixed was Capitalism."

falcemartello
Qui tacet consentir videtur Silence betokens consent.
Post Scriptum:The Orwellian dystopian reality of language and who controls the narrative. Old Vico and Gramsci principles.
Docius in Fundem: The elites are running scared and tempest fugit.
vexarb
@Hammer&Sickle. Tempus fugit, OK; but what does Docius in Fundem mean -- the Bottom Line?
falcemartello
Old neapolitan latin expression. Last but not least. Literal meaning one could say bottom line. But in Naples it always reference to last but not least. They being the elites are having difficulty controlling the narrative hence the bogus news bogus academia bogus statutes bogus economy and bogus society. Western paradigm is nigh as a neapolitan i can only say "Ben venga la caduta di Roma Due".
But I digress the largest wealth gap since the Gilded age but hell whats a few million lives worth this day and age.
andyoldlabour
Fake news? Was the Skripal/Salisbury farce a cover up for something far more sinister and deadly?

Who has heard of the Gosport NHS Trust scandal, where at least 450 patients were found to have been killed by over prescribed medication?
The story broke in March/April 2018 at the same time as the so called poisoning of three people (and later death of one woman) by the most deadly nerve agent known to man, yet was quickly brushed under the carpet by the press as we were being force fed "news" for weeks and months on end about a clearly fabricated incident.
Nobody I have spoken to has heard of the Gosport cover up and doesn't believe me when I tell them of the numbers of patients involved.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/thousands-died-nhs-due-gosport-12783501

https://www.homecare.co.uk/news/article.cfm/id/1596982/Dr-Barton-linked-to-656-deaths-as-lethal-painkillers-shorten-pensioners-lives

https://www.carersuk.org/forum/news-and-campaigns/latest-caring-news/gosport-hospital-deaths-33516

andyoldlabour
RopeResearch

Indeed, I have been thinking exactly that. I suffer from a long time medical condition and have to use a sophisticated piece of medical equipment every day.

Until 3 months ago, that equipment was totally under my control as it had been for the past 17 years and it worked fine. 3 months ago I was informed that I would have to have a replacement, and then informed that the "specialists/technicians" at the hospital would be able to monitor me and make reqired chasnges via the cloud.

It is patently obvious to me that since this latest piece of kit was foist on me, my health has declined and it is definitely not doing the job that the old kit was doing.
I am worried, but don't know who to talk to or trust.

RopeResearch
Snowden said, we are all under surveillance. So, I imagine, with having a remotely controlled medical device, it would be wise to recite the national anthem every morning.

Some people with chronic medical conditions, also suffer from 'social isolation'. If you're in this situation, increasing social interaction is a very good step to take.

Stephen Morrell
For decades, the fourth estate has been sinking and shrinking ever further into an untruthful, but sponsored, and fact-scarce irrelevance, into a much-deserved abyss. The monopoly under which everyone has been deceived and manipulated is gone, and with each new exposure of its ruling class narratives as the dreary lies they are, or of its being so wedded to a mythical worldview that only the most seriously credulous, demented or cocooned can accept, the more the corporate media lashes out at those who point out that that media emperor has no clothes. The parallels with the decline of the US empire are striking, with the latter similarly lashing out at anyone who questions its 'exceptionalism', 'manifest destiny' and 'monopoly' on war making against 'aggression' and for 'peace'. Like the decaying US empire, the declining corporate media are 'projecting'.

The corporate media's main problem in trying to recover its lost 'authority' is that the help it enlists is severely compromised by the same profoundly reactionary capitalist ideology as its own. The Integrity Initiative (the UK's version of Project Mockingbird), Bellincat, and various 'fact checkers' are some of the more egregious examples. It's obviously projecting its own longtime MO of fake news onto online sources of actual facts and information, those that the rulers ('sponsors') wish the 'great unwashed' never to see. While Wikileaks has exposed them for their gross entrainment with imperialism, the corporate media's labelling the online fifth estate as 'fake news' is also fuelled by their own fear of being held to account, moreover in real time.

The speed of communications is such that ruling class narratives can be exposed so quickly while still topical that more often than not they fail to gain traction. Russiagate is the great example of corporate media fake news, where despite three years of relentless fact-free scaremongering and speculation, this classic piece of fake news never became an issue in any political survey of ordinary people. No longer must the public wait 50 years for a historian to dig up and expose the truth when it no longer matters. And it's now possible to hold a discussion laced with terms that used to be confined to history books, like: 'false flag attack', 'the military industrial (and congressional) complex', 'imperialism', 'ruling class', 'capitalism', 'proxy war', 'regime change', 'colour revolution', and so on.

There's no getting around the fact that the fifth estate is acquiring a critical mass that the fourth estate can't compete with. We're now seeing the emergence of excellent journalism that for years the fourth estate has refused to provide. While the 'reputable' titans like NYT, WP, BBC, Guardian et al. are failing, sites like offGuardian, The Grayzone, Consortium News, MintPress News, Global Research, Moon of Alabama, Black Agenda Report (with honourable mentions to RT and Sputnik), among a host of others, are going from strength to strength -- because they're providing much of the real 'fake news' everyone needs.

Seamus Padraig

"It appears that only one part of the political spectrum – the far right – is really the target for extremist, sensational and conspiratorial content. Over social media, moderates and centrists tend not to be as susceptible."

And what about the far left?

" news organisations can't contract out their duty of care and moral responsibility if they choose to air or publish freelancers."

Does that include 'Bellingcat'?

Ash
They studiously pretend there's no such thing as the left.
RopeResearch
Antidote?

A suggestion to include, in every new article in alternative media, a section titled 'Did you know?'.
This section shows at least one fact of criminality committed by the americans. The usefulness of such would be to increase awareness of why the empire does not deserve the political and economic power/clout it has now. Also it serves to replace (or at least explain) what would be labelled anti-americanism sentiments with Facts. Straight forward F.A.C.T.S.

Here is an example:

Did you know?

My Lai was just one of many massacres committed by America in Vietnam.

The industrial-scale slaughter was equivalent to a "My Lai each month"

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-23427726

Admin
So, you try to vote and the software tells you you've already done so?

The only reason for that would be if someone who shared your IP had previously voted. That's technically possible if you have a dynamic IP – most private homes do – but it seems quite unlikely it would happen routinely.

Does anyone else reading this get this problem?

FrankSpeaker
In our new age of Inverted Totalitarianism (Wolin), the shrill accusations of something being labelled as 'fake news' by the Establishment should instead be taken as a strong assurance of it being quite the opposite; the truth.
Gary Weglarz

Mossedegh is a communist – he had to go; Arbenz is a communist – he had to go; a "magic bullet" proves Oswald was a lone assassin; North Vietnam attacked the U.S. in the "Gulf of Tonkin" forcing us to unleash our American war machine; JRK, MalcolmX, MLK and RFK were all assassinated within five years of each other with no U.S. government involvement whatsoever; "We are not secretly bombing Cambodia and Laos;" Allende is a communist – he had to go; there are no death squads in Latin America and we're not training and arming those death squads that, well, don't exist; – this is just a brief tour of some of the highlights U.S. foreign and domestic policy of the freaking 1950's and 1960's! The reporting on all of it was "fake news." The news media lied about these events at the time, and they have done nothing to correct those lies in the present. The entire "purpose" of corporate sponsored MSM is to "lie to us" – duh.

IT'S ALL FAKE NEWS! Every freaking word that comes out of the State and its mouthpiece the Western corporate media on any matter of importance is complete propaganda. Bank on it.

The White Helmets, when they aren't murdering civilians and harvesting and selling human organs, are a "humanitarian organization," much respected in the West and worthy of their own fawning documentary. You can't make this stuff up – well – that's not true – they are literally "making this stuff up" all the time – out of whole cloth complete lies become our "reality" through endless repetition on endless Western media outlets.

The best one can say is that at least some decades ago the media didn't simply routinely treat us all like brain dead idiots the way they do today. From "Russiagate" to the "Skripnals" to the latest CIA sponsored "color revolution" happening coincidentally right where we happen to want one to happen – Western propaganda and the MSM that report it have devolved into completely surreal slapstick black-comedy and Western populations have become so dumbed down that only a relative few seem to notice.

Just saw this great quote from Gore Vidal on a Jimmy Dore episode that sums up our predicament here in the U.S. quite nicely:

"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the world. No first world country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity, much less dissent."

George Mc
Gore Vidal was always one of the most quotable commentators. Some example (probably paraphrased):

"Any order that has successfully demonized the word 'liberal' has effectively stifled all opposition to itself."

"America is the only country in the world that believes in socialism for the rich and private enterprise for the poor."

"'Conspiracy theory' has become a code for 'unspeakable truth'."

Fair dinkum
The ABC were thoroughly gelded under John (we'll follow the empires to war) Howard's regime.
They are now a PR unit for the Corparasites.

Nahh, they have an AGENDA to feed you, and you better eat it up and like it.

Gezzah Potts
Mostly now I don't watch or listen to ABC or SBS here in Oz anymore. Made an exception with the Houthis attack on the Abqaiq refinery. And yep, the coverage was so predictable. All in lock step with the narrative they want us to swallow: The West = Good Guys, Iran = Evil Guys.

Claire Wardle is just another apparatchik of the Anglo Zionist Empire. Remember doing some research on First Draft when it came to prominence a while back.
The more blatantly obvious they become in their dissemination of imperialist propaganda, the more people will hit the off button, stop buying newspapers, and just stop listening. And that'll be really good news indeed.

MASTER OF UNIVE
You don't get that everyone is online Internet reading the tripe hashed out whether it is legitimate or not. Most of the discourse is repetitious to a point of being drivel on most days.
Internet is only interesting when something is brewing for investigation. Most of the drivel offered up is mere repetitious propaganda and everyone realizes it but continues to read it anyways. Internet today is events driven. Bombast from the twittersphere is dying out and being replaced by geopolitical & macroeconomic risks inflicted & telegraphed mostly via the USA & Israel week-to-week.

Do you honestly think Zombies on Internet are going to all of a sudden wake the hell up and realize they are being programmed daily with programmed drivel to make them comfortable at their desktops?

Zombies on the Internet are not being programmed to critically think about all the advertisements that are being bombarded with second by second or how algos are reading their keystrokes and choices for webpages & consumer products.

Jeff Bezos is not going to educate the Internet Zombies on the finer points of marketing and the CIA is not going to let people know they run information operations either.

None in the tech world care.

Politicians follow directives of corporate sectors to control & mollify consumers everywhere.
They are not benevolent and the people they serve have monetary objectives alone. Control of populations is for the benefit of banks and the financial predator class miscreants that serve banks. Governments are corporations that serve banks.

If you turn the Internet off you would have to be off-grid and completely not tuned in to contemporary life of Orwellian newspeak in order to distance yourself from the propagandizers pushing Imperialism & dogmatism.

They sure as hell don't want people to believe in themselves as opposed to believing in the tripe they feed you.

MOU

Gezzah Potts
Thanks for your reply MOU. No, I've never used Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or whatever social media there is. None. And yes, I see every single day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year, people staring at their phones or laptops. Completely zombified; as you say. I get your point about digital mediums, tho was talking about the more traditional media like TV News or Newspapers.
bevin
" fake news I think it's the biggest crisis that we face as humankind because it is dividing us. "

She's harking back to the good old days when Australia's youth merrily joined up to fight "evil" in the Dardanelles because only a tiny minority, with no voice in the media, dissented from the propaganda. the ruling class doesn't like it when people laugh at their ludicrous lies. Such as the Skripal or Russiagate nonsenses, both of which are only credited by people who have neither the time or inclination to pay attention.

Them and the intellectuals/political class who have sold their souls, whose existence they deny, and other orifices for a few years of prosperity and the comfort that comes from siding with power.

[Nov 08, 2019] Scapegoating as the major neoliberal propaganda tool

Nov 08, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

Orange Watch 11.07.19 at 5:11 pm 71

Donald@63 :

The tendency to scapegoat rather than make the case for one's own merit is very deeply ingrained in our top-down liberal democratic systems; the Democratic establishment is unfortunately just getting back to core principles by shifting almost exclusively to this mode of discourse over the past decade.

From Guy Debord's 1988 Commentaries on the Society of the Spectacle :

This perfect democracy creates for itself its own inconceivable enemy, terrorism. In effect, it wants to be judged by its enemies moreso than by its results. The history of terrorism is written by the State; it is therefore instructive.

The spectator populations certainly cannot know everything about terrorism, but they can always know enough to be persuaded that compared to terrorism, anything else must seem to be more or less acceptable, and in any case more rational and democratic.

[Nov 08, 2019] Inconvenient Truths by Stephen F. Cohen

Notable quotes:
"... The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic attitudes. Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an "attack" so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor. ..."
"... We have also learned that the heads of America's intelligence agencies under President Obama, especially John Brennan of the CIA and James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, felt themselves entitled to try to undermine an American presidential candidacy and subsequent presidency, that of Donald Trump. ..."
"... We also learned that, contrary to Democratic dogma, the mainstream "free press" cannot be fully trusted to readily expose such abuses of power. ..."
"... Opponents of Barr's investigation into the origins of Russiagate say it is impermissible or unprecedented to "investigate the investigators." But the bipartisan Church Committee, based in the US Senate, did so in the mid-1970s. It exposed many abuses by US intelligence agencies, particularly by the CIA, and adopted remedies that it believed would be permanent. Clearly, they have not been. ..."
"... However well-intentioned Barr may be, he is Trump's attorney general and therefore not fully credible. As I have also argued repeatedly, a new Church Committee is urgently needed. It's time for honorable members of the Senate of both parties to do their duty. ..."
Nov 08, 2019 | www.unz.com

Almost daily for three years, Democrats and their media have told us very bad things about Donald Trump's life, character, and presidency. Some of them are true. But in the process, we have also learned some lamentable, even alarming, things about the Democratic Party establishment, including self-professed liberals. Consider the following:

The Democratic establishment is deeply and widely imbued with rancid Russophobic attitudes. Most telling was (and remains) a core "Russiagate" allegation that "Russia attacked American democracy during the 2016 presidential election" on Trump's behalf -- an "attack" so nefarious it has often been equated with Pearl Harbor. But there was no "attack" in 2016, only, as I have previously explained , ritualistic "meddling" of the kind that both Russia and America have undertaken in the other's elections for decades. Little can be more phobic than the allegation or belief that one has been "attacked by a hostile" entity. And yet this myth and its false narrative persist in the Democratic Party's discourse, campaigning, and fund-raising. We have also learned that the heads of America's intelligence agencies under President Obama, especially John Brennan of the CIA and James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, felt themselves entitled to try to undermine an American presidential candidacy and subsequent presidency, that of Donald Trump. Early on, I termed this operation " Intelgate ," and it has since been well documented by other writers, including Lee Smith in his new book . Intel officials did so in tacit alliance with certain leading, and equally Russophobic, members of the Democratic Party, which had once opposed such transgressions. This may be the most alarming revelation of the Trump years: Trump will leave power, but these self-aggrandizing intelligence agencies will remain. We also learned that, contrary to Democratic dogma, the mainstream "free press" cannot be fully trusted to readily expose such abuses of power. Indeed, what the mainstream media -- leading national newspapers and two cable news networks, in particular -- chose to cover and report, and chose not to cover and report, made the abuses and consequences of Russiagate allegations possible. Even now, exceedingly influential publications such as The New York Times seem eager to delegitimize the investigation by Attorney General William Barr and his appointed special investigator John Durham into the origins of Russiagate. Barr's critics accuse him of fabricating a "conspiracy theory" on behalf of Trump. But the real, or grandest, conspiracy theory was the Russiagate allegation of "collusion" between Trump and the Kremlin, an accusation that was -- or should have been -- discredited by the Robert Mueller report. And we have learned, or should have learned, that for all the talk by Democrats about Trump as a danger to US national security, it is their Russiagate allegations that truly endanger it. Consider two examples. Russia's new "hyper-sonic" missiles, which can elude US missile-defense systems, make new nuclear arms negotiations with Moscow imperative and urgent. If only for the sake of his legacy, Trump is likely to want to do so. But even if he is able to, will Trump be entrusted enough to conduct negotiations as successfully as did his predecessors in the White House, given the "Putin puppet" and "Kremlin stooge" accusations still being directed at him? Similarly, as I have asked repeatedly, if confronted with a US-Russian Cuban missile–like crisis -- anywhere Washington and Moscow are currently eyeball-to-eyeball militarily, from the Baltic region and Ukraine to Syria -- will Trump be as free politically as was President John F. Kennedy to resolve it without war? Here too there is an inconvenient truth: To the extent that Democrats any longer seriously discuss national security in the context of US-Russian relations, it mostly involves vilifying both Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. (Recall also that previous presidents were free to negotiate with Russia's Soviet communist leaders, even encouraged to do so, whereas the demonized Putin is an anti-communist, post-Soviet leader.)

The current state of US-Russian relations is unprecedentedly dangerous, not only due to reasons cited here -- a new Cold War fraught with the possibility of hot war. Whether President Trump serves one or two terms, he must be fully empowered to cope with the multiple possibilities of a US-Russian military confrontation. That requires ridding him and our nation of Russiagate allegations -- and that in turn requires learning how such allegations originated.

Opponents of Barr's investigation into the origins of Russiagate say it is impermissible or unprecedented to "investigate the investigators." But the bipartisan Church Committee, based in the US Senate, did so in the mid-1970s. It exposed many abuses by US intelligence agencies, particularly by the CIA, and adopted remedies that it believed would be permanent. Clearly, they have not been.

However well-intentioned Barr may be, he is Trump's attorney general and therefore not fully credible. As I have also argued repeatedly, a new Church Committee is urgently needed. It's time for honorable members of the Senate of both parties to do their duty.

[Nov 08, 2019] Unfree Media State Stenography and Shameful Silence Dissident Voice

Nov 08, 2019 | dissidentvoice.org

Unfree Media: State Stenography and Shameful Silence

by Media Lens / November 7th, 2019

A recent viral clip of Jeremy Corbyn featured vital truths about the corporate media that ought to be at the forefront of public consciousness in the approach to the UK General Election on December 12. The clip began:

A free press is essential to our democracy. But much of our press isn't very free at all.

Corbyn continued:

Just three companies control 71 per cent of national newspaper circulation and five companies control 81 per cent of local newspaper circulation.

This unhealthy sway of a few corporations and billionaires shapes and skews the priorities and worldview of powerful sections of the media.

And it doesn't stop with the newspapers, on and offline. Print too often sets the broadcast agenda, even though it is wedded so firmly to the Tories politically and to corporate interests more generally.

Corbyn's words were not from a recent speech. They were actually delivered as part of his Alternative Mactaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival in August 2018. But they remain as relevant as ever; hence being picked up anew by ' Tory Fibs ', a grassroots socialist Twitter account.

Corbyn shone a spotlight on the BBC:

The BBC should be freed of government control, democratised and made representative of the country it serves to help it do that.

The BBC is meant to be independent, but its charter grants governments the power to appoint the chair and four directors of the board and set the level of the licence fee.

As regular readers will be well aware, Media Lens has long highlighted the BBC's lack of independence and, more particularly, the insidious role of BBC News in protecting the establishment, promoting deference to the royal family and class system, as well as deflecting scrutiny of state and corporate crimes.

Corbyn concluded on the state of the media today:

We need to set journalists and citizens free to hold power to account, by breaking the grip of tech giants and billionaires on our media.

All this is arguably never more evident than when a General Election is looming. Right now, established power is fighting tooth and nail to maintain its control on society. Corporate media, including gatekeepers like the BBC and the Guardian – 'thus far and no farther', in the words of Noam Chomsky – play a central role in maintaining the destructive status quo.

Filtering Facts

The state-corporate management and manipulation of 'the news' relies on a subtle filtering process whereby leading journalists select – consciously or otherwise – which facts are 'fit' to be reported, and which can or should be ignored.

Consider an item on BBC News at Ten last Thursday when political editor Laura Kuenssberg reported Boris Johnson's visit to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. She presented the Prime Minister in a favourable light, having amiable encounters with people in Addenbrooke's. What the BBC did not show were the jeers of staff and patients ringing in Johnson's ears as he left the hospital. Nor did Kuenssberg report on the young medical student who was 'pushed aside by [a] Boris Johnson aide' while attempting to challenge Johnson on the NHS and the climate crisis. Julia Simons , who is training at the hospital to become a doctor, called his visit a 'PR stunt'.

We challenged the BBC political editor via Twitter:

Hello @bbclaurak,

Why did your @BBCNews at Ten piece on Boris Johnson's visit to a Cambridge hospital omit the part where he left with jeers from staff and patients ringing in his ears?

Our tweet was 'liked' and retweeted hundreds of times, but there was no reply from Kuenssberg. Her Twitter bio states:

I know it's fashionable, but even in 2019 there is nothing big or clever about shooting the messenger – tweets or retweets here aren't necessarily my view

But, by heavily filtering the facts that Kuenssberg selects to tweet or retweet, 'the messenger' has transformed into an echo chamber and amplifier of government propaganda. This phenomenon of state stenography – which, of course, is far from new – was highlighted in an excellent article recently by Peter Oborne, former chief political commentator of the Daily Telegraph . Under the title, 'British journalists have become part of Johnson's fake news machine', Oborne argued that:

From the Mail, The Times to the BBC and ITN, everyone is peddling Downing Street's lies and smears. They're turning their readers into dupes.

As Oborne noted, 'mainstream' political journalism too often relies upon whatever 'a senior No 10 source' says:

This modus operandi, which allow pro-government narratives to enter the public domain unmediated by proper interrogation, has become routine among political reporters since Johnson and his Vote Leave media team entered Downing Street.

Oborne observed:

There is an implicit deal. In return for access and information (much of it false) the political media spins a pro-government narrative.

As a recent example, Oborne pointed to the government's deceitful response to the leaked ' Yellowhammer dossier ' setting out the damaging consequences of a no-deal Brexit on the UK – a news story that 'deeply embarrassed' Boris Johnson and senior ministers. Downing Street responded by feeding a false claim to compliant journalists that the leak happened on Theresa May's watch; and that Remain-supporting ex-ministers led by Philip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer in May's Cabinet, were responsible. Newspapers were full of convenient headlines and stories about the alleged leakers, distracting attention from the damaging analysis of the leaked dossier itself. As Oborne noted, it turned out that the leaked document was dated nine days after Johnson came to power: the leak had occurred under his watch, not May's.

This issue of journalist access in return for maintaining a power-friendly narrative has long been known. The media's heavy reliance on state and corporate sources is one of the five 'news filters' – along with corporate ownership, advertising, flak and 'anti-Communism' – in the propaganda model of the media introduced by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in 'Manufacturing Consent' (1988).

Focusing on the country's two main political editors – the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg and Robert Peston of ITV News – Oborne added:

Political editors are so pleased to be given "insider" or "exclusive" information that they report it without challenge or question.

Oborne, as a senior journalist with experience and clout, was afforded follow-up media interviews to make his case. Perhaps the most noteworthy example was his fiery appearance on Radio 2 where he was interviewed by Amol Rajan, a former editor of the oligarch-owned Independent and now the BBC's media editor. You do not get to such exalted positions in the corporate media, as Rajan has done, by being a thorn in the side of the establishment. In a remarkable exchange, not only did Oborne name and shame major political editors for cosying up to power, he directly, and correctly, accused Rajan of the same. (Click here , starting at around 1:09:20; or, once the BBC link has expired, listen to the relevant segment here )

Oborne commented:

You, yourself, when you were Independent editor, notoriously sucked up to power. You are a client journalist yourself you were a crony journalist yourself. It's time this system was exploded.

Rajan blustered:

It's unbecoming of you, Peter, it's unbecoming.

When Oborne added that Rajan had also 'failed to notice' stories as BBC media editor, there was a brief stunned silence.

In 2014, when Rajan was the Independent's editor, he boasted of 'our proud record on coverage of Iraq'. We responded at the time:

Sorry, we have analysed the Independent's performance closely. Your record was and is shameful. Where to start?

Rajan did not reply. It was around this time that he blocked us on Twitter.

OPCW Whistleblowers Question The Douma Narrative

A further, grave example of present-day propaganda filtering involves the corporate media blanking of further proof that western powers, notably the US, have been manipulating the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Last month, WikiLeaks published evidence from an OPCW whistleblower showing that the international chemical watchdog had suppressed evidence suggesting that the Syrian government had not, in fact, mounted a chemical weapons attack in Douma , Syria, on April 7, 2018. In other words, there is clear authoritative testimony from an OPCW insider contradicting the endlessly repeated narrative that 'Assad used weapons against his own civilians' in Douma. This state-approved script, propagated throughout the major western news media, served as the 'justification' for the US, UK and France to launch missile strikes on Syria seven days later.

Shockingly, as reported by WikiLeaks, a panel of experts convened by the Courage Foundation, an independent British civil society organisation, reported that:

Not only did the panel find that OPCW tampered with the evidence to produce an outcome desired by the geopolitical actors involved in this instance, it tried to silence its own senior civil servants.

One member of the panel, Richard Falk – an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years – noted that the credibility of the panel's conclusions were strengthened by having José Bustani, a former Director-General of the OPCW, among its members.

Falk added:

Not only is there a lack of transparency and accountability with respect to the undertakings of major national governments, but there is a deliberate manipulation of evidence and obstruction of procedures designed to protect the citizenry against abuses of state, and in the case of major states, especially the United States, to protect the public interest.

This new testimony added to the earlier revelations in May that Ian Henderson, a senior OPCW scientist, had written a detailed report , suppressed by OPCW, calling into question the official version of events in Douma. As our media alert at the time noted, very little media coverage was devoted to this expert evidence questioning the Washington-stamped 'consensus' view.

Robert Fisk's article in the Independent ten days after the Douma incident was a vanishingly rare exception. He interviewed a Syrian doctor who told him that the victims of the alleged chemical attack had actually suffered from hypoxia – oxygen starvation in the dusty tunnels where they had taken refuge from bombing– and not gas poisoning. As we also observed in our media alert, BBC Syria producer Riam Dalati stated on Twitter that after almost six months of investigation he had concluded that:

I can prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged.

Two days after the Douma attack, he had tweeted :

Sick and tired of activists and rebels using corpses of dead children to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption. Then they wonder why some serious journos are questioning part of the narrative.

Dalati later deleted his tweet and set his Twitter account to 'private' status (it has since become accessible to the public again).

Typically, the BBC sought to minimise any public doubts about the official narrative on Douma by including only Syrian and Russian claims of 'fabrication'. There was little, or no, coverage of sceptical Western voices. In similar fashion, in the run-up to the Iraq war of 2003, BBC News and other 'mainstream' outlets had relegated credible allegations that the 'threat' of 'Iraqi WMD' was fake news to the 'evil dictator' Saddam Hussein.

Readers may recall that award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh had difficulty publishing his in-depth, sceptical reporting about an earlier alleged Syrian government chemical weapons attack at Ghouta in 2013. In the end, he had to publish in the London Review of Books , of all places ( here and here ).

This is so often the fate of the best journalism: pushed to the margins where it can be safely ignored.

Corporate Eyes Averted And Tongues Bitten

The fact that a second OPCW whistleblower has now revealed extremely serious manipulation of evidence surrounding what happened at Douma has been greeted by a wall of corporate media silence. However, it was mentioned briefly by Jonathan Steele, a former senior Middle East correspondent for the Guardian , in a radio interview with Paul Henley on the BBC World Service on October 27, 2019 (listen here ; from around 11:00; if no longer available from the BBC, listen to the extract archived here by Caitlin Johnstone and read her article ):

Jonathan Steele: I was in Brussels last week I attended a briefing by a whistleblower from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He was one of the inspectors who was sent out to Douma in Syria in April last year to check into the allegations by the rebels that Syrian aeroplanes had dropped two canisters of chlorine gas, killing up to 43 people. He claims he was in charge of picking up the samples in the affected areas, and in neutral areas, to check whether there were chlorine derivatives there

Paul Henley: And?

JS: and he found that there was no difference. So it rather suggested there was no chemical gas attack, because in the buildings where the people allegedly died there was no extra chlorinated organic chemicals than in the normal streets elsewhere. And I put this to the OPCW for comment, and they haven't yet replied. But it rather suggests that a lot of this was propaganda

PH: Propaganda led by?

JS: led by the rebel side to try and bring in American planes, which in fact did happen. American, British and French planes bombed Damascus a few days after these reports. And actually this is the second whistleblower to come forward. A few months ago there was a leaked report by the person [senior OPCW scientist Ian Henderson – mentioned earlier in this alert] who looked into the ballistics, as to whether these cylinders had been dropped by planes, looking at the damage of the building and the damage on the side of the cylinders. And he decided, concluded, that the higher probability was that these cylinders were placed on the ground, rather than from planes.

PH: This would be a major revelation

JS: it would be a major revelation

PH: given the number of people rubbishing the idea that these could have been fake videos at the time.

JS: Well, these two scientists, I think they're non-political – they wouldn't have been sent to Douma, if they'd had strong political views, by the OPCW. They want to speak to the Conference of the Member States in November, next month, and give their views, and be allowed to come forward publicly with their concerns. Because they've tried to raise them internally and been – they say they've been – suppressed, their views have been suppressed.

PH: Very interesting.

( Transcript courtesy of Tim Hayward of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media. )

In May, when the suppressed engineering assessment report on Douma by the OPCW's Ian Henderson was leaked, Lyse Doucet, the BBC's chief international correspondent, agreed that this was 'an important story'. Despite polite nudges from Media Lens, and others, she said no more on the matter. Did BBC colleagues have a quiet word in her ear?

Following revelations of a second whistleblower last week, we challenged her once more. She again ignored us, but she did reply to one of our Twitter followers:

Thanks Philip. I've been in Canada this month reporting on elections & in Afghanistan for most of Sept. I did forward the earlier information to programmes but was away during more recent news so other teams /programmes would have looked at it.

While it is heartening to see any reply – perhaps a measure of Doucet's desire to give at least the impression of being accountable to the public – it is a very evasive reply. It is remarkable that for five months she had not been around to report vital testimony from OPCW insiders blowing a hole in the official, US-friendly narrative used to 'justify' missile attacks on Syria. Clearly, she had decided it was not that important after all.

And what does 'so other teams /programmes would have looked at it' actually mean? What evidence did they examine? And how closely? Where are the BBC headlines and major coverage these revelations deserve? As far as we can tell, there has been no mention of the OPCW whistleblowers on the BBC News website; nor has there been any coverage on the main BBC News programmes. Our challenges to Paul Royall , editor of the BBC News flagship News at Six and Ten programmes, and Nick Sutton , editor of the BBC News website, have gone unanswered.

Meanwhile, the General Election on December 12 may well be, as Jeremy Corbyn says :

a once-in-a-generation chance to transform our country and take on the vested interests holding people back.

But time is rapidly running out for real change – whether that be on foreign policy, such as Syria, or the largest crisis now facing all of us. A global group of 11,000 scientists declared this week that the evidence is 'clear and unequivocal' that humanity is in a climate emergency. The stakes, then, are even higher than 'once-in-a-generation'. As Extinction Rebellion have repeatedly warned , there may not be more than one new generation of humanity that will survive, given the severity of climate breakdown.

Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The second Media Lens book, Newspeak: In the 21st Century by David Edwards and David Cromwell, was published in 2009 by Pluto Press. Read other articles by Media Lens , or visit Media Lens's website .

This article was posted on Thursday, November 7th, 2019 at 10:16pm and is filed under Boris Johnson , Jeremy Corbyn , Media , Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) , Syria , UK Media , UK Politics , United Kingdom , Whistleblowing .

[Nov 08, 2019] Scapegoating as the major neoliberal propaganda tool

Nov 08, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

Orange Watch 11.07.19 at 5:11 pm 71

Donald@63 :

The tendency to scapegoat rather than make the case for one's own merit is very deeply ingrained in our top-down liberal democratic systems; the Democratic establishment is unfortunately just getting back to core principles by shifting almost exclusively to this mode of discourse over the past decade.

From Guy Debord's 1988 Commentaries on the Society of the Spectacle :

This perfect democracy creates for itself its own inconceivable enemy, terrorism. In effect, it wants to be judged by its enemies moreso than by its results. The history of terrorism is written by the State; it is therefore instructive.

The spectator populations certainly cannot know everything about terrorism, but they can always know enough to be persuaded that compared to terrorism, anything else must seem to be more or less acceptable, and in any case more rational and democratic.

[Nov 07, 2019] Rigged Again Dems, Russia, The Delegitimization Of America s Democratic Process by Elizabeth Vos

Highly recommended!
Images removed.
Notable quotes:
"... The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The LA Times described the project as meant to "to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign. ..."
"... In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution for the breach was ever attempted. ..."
"... In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers argued that it was the party's right to select candidates. ..."
"... The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was protected by the First Amendment . ..."
"... The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race, ..."
"... f Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district. Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election in which Canova ran as an independent. ..."
"... Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal ballot destruction , improper transportation of ballots, and generally shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the Sun-Sentinel reported at the time: ..."
"... Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies. Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton's recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being "groomed" by Russia, and that the former Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a "Russian asset", were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments externalize what Gabbard called the "rot" in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet. ..."
"... Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon in a recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed titled: " Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent," ..."
Nov 07, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Elizabeth Vos via ConsortiumNews.com,

Establishment Democrats and those who amplify them continue to project blame for the public's doubt in the U.S. election process onto outside influence, despite the clear history of the party's subversion of election integrity. The total inability of the Democratic Party establishment's willingness to address even one of these critical failures does not give reason to hope that the nomination process in 2020 will be any less pre-ordained.

The Democratic Party's bias against Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential nomination, followed by the DNC defense counsel doubling down on its right to rig the race during the fraud lawsuit brought against the DNC , as well as the irregularities in the races between former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova, indicate a fatal breakdown of the U.S. democratic process spearheaded by the Democratic Party establishment. Influences transcending the DNC add to concerns regarding the integrity of the democratic process that have nothing to do with Russia, but which will also likely impact outcomes in 2020.

The content of the DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks demonstrated that the DNC acted in favor of Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 Democratic primary. The emails also revealed corporate media reporters acting as surrogates of the DNC and its pro-Clinton agenda, going so far as to promote Donald Trump during the GOP primary process as a preferred " pied-piper candidate ." One cannot assume that similar evidence will be presented to the public in 2020, making it more important than ever to take stock of the unique lessons handed down to us by the 2016 race.

Social Media Meddling

Election meddling via social media did take place in 2016, though in a different guise and for a different cause from that which are best remembered. Twitter would eventually admit to actively suppressing hashtags referencing the DNC and Podesta emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Additional reports indicated that tech giant Google also showed measurable "pro-Hillary Clinton bias" in search results during 2016, resulting in the alleged swaying of between 2 and 10 millions voters in favor of Clinton.

On the Republican side, a recent episode of CNLive! featured discussion of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which undecided voters were micro-targeted with tailored advertising narrowed with the combined use of big data and artificial intelligence known collectively as "dark strategy." CNLive! Executive Producer Cathy Vogan noted that SCL, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, provides data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations "worldwide," specializing in behavior modification. Though Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018, related companies remain.

The Clinton camp was hardly absent from social media during the 2016 race. The barely-legal activities of Clintonite David Brock were previously reported by this author to have included $2 million in funding for the creation of an online " troll army " under the name Shareblue. The LA Times described the project as meant to "to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical." In other words, the effort attempted to create a false sense of consensus in support for the Clinton campaign.

In terms of interference in the actual election process, the New York City Board of Elections was shown to have purged over one hundred thousand Democratic voters in Brooklyn from the rolls before the 2016 primary, a move that the Department of Justice found broke federal law . Despite this, no prosecution for the breach was ever attempted.

Though the purge was not explicitly found to have benefitted Clinton, the admission falls in line with allegations across the country that the Democratic primary was interfered with to the benefit of the former secretary of state. These claims were further bolstered by reports indicating that voting results from the 2016 Democratic primary showed evidence of fraud.

DNC Fraud Lawsuit

The proceedings of the DNC fraud lawsuit provide the most damning evidence of the failure of the U.S. election process, especially within the Democratic Party. DNC defense lawyers argued in open court for the party's right to appoint candidates at its own discretion, while simultaneously denying any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the impression that the DNC would act impartially towards the candidates involved.

In 2017, the Observer reported that the DNC's defense counsel argued against claims that the party defrauded Sanders' supporters by favoring Clinton, reasoning that Sanders' supporters knew the process was rigged. Again: instead of arguing that the primary was neutral and unbiased in accordance with its charter, the DNC's lawyers argued that it was the party's right to select candidates.

The Observer noted the sentiments of Jared Beck, the attorney representing the plaintiffs of the lawsuit:

"People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee -- nominating process in 2016 were fair and impartial, and that's not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that's what the Democratic National Committee's own charter says. It says it in black and white."

The DNC defense counsel's argument throughout the course of the DNC fraud lawsuit doubled down repeatedly in defense of the party's right to favor one candidate over another, at one point actually claiming that such favoritism was protected by the First Amendment . The DNC's lawyers wrote:

"To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes to selecting the party's nominee for public office ." [Emphasis added]

The DNC's shameless defense of its own rigging disemboweled the most fundamental organs of the U.S. body politic. This no indication that the DNC will not resort to the same tactics in the 2020 primary race,

Tim Canova's Allegations

If Debbie Wasserman Schultz's role as disgraced chairwoman of the DNC and her forced 2016 resignation wasn't enough, serious interference was also alleged in the wake of two contests between Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in Florida's 23rd congressional district. Canova and Wasserman Schultz first faced off in a 2016 Democratic primary race, followed by a 2018 general congressional election in which Canova ran as an independent.

Debacles followed both contests, including improper vote counts, illegal ballot destruction , improper transportation of ballots, and generally shameless displays of cronyism. After the controversial results of the initial primary race against Wasserman Schultz, Canova sought to have ballots checked for irregularities, as the Sun-Sentinel reported at the time:

"[Canova] sought to look at the paper ballots in March 2017 and took Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to court three months later when her office hadn't fulfilled his request. Snipes approved the destruction of the ballots in September, signing a certification that said no court cases involving the ballots were pending."

Ultimately, Canova was granted a summary judgment against Snipes, finding that she had committed what amounted to multiple felonies. Nonetheless, Snipes was not prosecuted and remained elections supervisor through to the 2018 midterms.

Republicans appear no more motivated to protect voting integrity than the Democrats, with The Nation reporting that the GOP-controlled Senate blocked a bill this week that would have "mandated paper-ballot backups in case of election machine malfunctions."

Study of Corporate Power

A 2014 study published by Princeton University found that corporate power had usurped the voting rights of the public: "Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."

In reviewing this sordid history, we see that the Democratic Party establishment has done everything in its power to disrespect voters and outright overrule them in the democratic primary process, defending their right to do so in the DNC fraud lawsuit. We've noted that interests transcending the DNC also represent escalating threats to election integrity as demonstrated in 2016.

Despite this, establishment Democrats and those who echo their views in the legacy press continue to deflect from their own wrongdoing and real threats to the election process by suggesting that mere discussion of it represents a campaign by Russia to attempt to malign the perception of the legitimacy of the U.S. democratic process.

Hillary Clinton's recent comments to the effect that Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is being "groomed" by Russia, and that the former Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein is a "Russian asset", were soon echoed by DNC-friendly pundits. These sentiments externalize what Gabbard called the "rot" in the Democratic party outward onto domestic critics and a nation across the planet.

Newsweek provided a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon in a recent op-ed penned by columnist Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent whose book capitalizes on Russiagate. In an op-ed titled: " Hillary Clinton Is Right. Tulsi Gabbard Is A Perfect Russian Asset – And Would Be A Perfect Republican Agent," Jamali argued :

"Moscow will use its skillful propaganda machine to prop up Gabbard and use her as a tool to delegitimize the democratic process. " [Emphasis added]

Jamali surmises that Russia intends to "attack" our democracy by undermining the domestic perception of its legitimacy. This thesis is repeated later in the piece when Jamali opines : "They want to see a retreat of American influence. What better way to accomplish that than to attack our democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of our elections." [Emphasis added]

The only thing worth protecting, according to Jamali and those who amplify his work (including former Clinton aide and establishment Democrat Neera Tanden), is the perception of the democratic process, not the actual functioning vitality of it. Such deflective tactics ensure that Russia will continue to be used as a convenient international pretext for silencing domestic dissent as we move into 2020.

Given all this, how can one expect the outcome of a 2020 Democratic Primary -- or even the general election – to be any fairer or transparent than 2016?

* * *

Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter, co-host of CN Live! and regular contributor to Consortium News. If you value this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.

[Nov 07, 2019] Imagine I worked for Putin, who was arming MS-13, and then Putin put me on trial because, for whatever reason, I stopped arming MS-13

Notable quotes:
"... How many establishment Dems (or even non-establishment Dems) have indicated that they have any objections to arming the Ukrainians? ..."
"... The Democrats position is that arming the Ukrainians is a good and moral thing to do and that Trump is terrible for threatening to stop it, which is far simpler, far more logical and, if one ignores its flagrant immorality, far easier to 'swallow'. ..."
"... As always 'reversing the polarities' gives clarity (imagine I worked for Putin, who was arming MS-13, and then Putin put me on trial because, for whatever reason, I stopped arming MS-13 .what would we think of Putin?). ..."
Nov 07, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

Hidari 11.05.19 at 1:54 pm 96

... How many establishment Dems (or even non-establishment Dems) have indicated that they have any objections to arming the Ukrainians? That would be in the region of about 'none', I would imagine.

... ... ...

The Democrats position is that arming the Ukrainians is a good and moral thing to do and that Trump is terrible for threatening to stop it, which is far simpler, far more logical and, if one ignores its flagrant immorality, far easier to 'swallow'.

As always 'reversing the polarities' gives clarity (imagine I worked for Putin, who was arming MS-13, and then Putin put me on trial because, for whatever reason, I stopped arming MS-13 .what would we think of Putin?).

[Nov 07, 2019] DNC Lawyers Argue Primary Rigging Is Protected by the First Amendment

Notable quotes:
"... They also failed to note the voice-modulated phone calls received by the law offices of the Becks which contained a caller-ID corresponding to the law offices of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a defendant in the case. In light of this context, the Becks hardly appear to be peddlers of conspiracy theory. ..."
Nov 07, 2019 | archive.is

The defense counsel also took issue with Jared Beck for what they termed as: " Repeatedly promoted patently false and deeply offensive conspiracy theories about the deaths of a former DNC staffer and Plaintiffs' process server in an attempt to bolster attention for this lawsuit." This author was shocked to find that despite the characterization of the Becks as peddlers of conspiracy theory, the defense counsel failed to mention the motion for protection filed by the Becks earlier in the litigation process.

They also failed to note the voice-modulated phone calls received by the law offices of the Becks which contained a caller-ID corresponding to the law offices of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a defendant in the case. In light of this context, the Becks hardly appear to be peddlers of conspiracy theory.

The DNC defense lawyers then argued:

" There is no legitimate basis for this litigation, which is, at its most basic, an improper attempt to forge the federal courts into a political weapon to be used by individuals who are unhappy with how a political party selected its candidate in a presidential campaign ."

The brief continued:

" To recognize any of the causes of action that Plaintiffs allege based on their animating theory would run directly contrary to long-standing Supreme Court precedent recognizing the central and critical First Amendment rights enjoyed by political parties, especially when it comes to selecting the party's nominee for public office."

It appears that the defendants in the DNC Fraud Lawsuit are attempting to argue that cheating a candidate in the primary process is protected under the first amendment. If all that weren't enough, DNC representatives argued that the Democratic National Committee had no established fiduciary duty "to the Plaintiffs or the classes of donors and registered voters they seek to represent." It seems here that the DNC is arguing for its right to appoint candidates at its own discretion while simultaneously denying any "fiduciary duty" to represent the voters who donated to the Democratic Party under the belief that the DNC would act impartially towards the candidates involved.

Adding to the latest news regarding the DNC Fraud Lawsuit was the recent finding by the UK Supreme Court, which stated that Wikileaks Cables were admissible as evidence in legal proceedings.

If Wikileaks' publication of DNC emails are found to be similarly admissible in a United States court of law, then the contents of the leaked emails could be used to argue that, contrary to the defendant's latest brief, the DNC did in favor the campaign of Hillary Clinton over Senator Sanders and that they acted to sabotage Sanders' campaign.

The outcome of the appeal of the DNC Fraud Lawsuit remains to be seen.

Elizabeth Vos is the Co-Founder and Editor in Chief at Disobedient Media .

[Nov 07, 2019] 3 Steps to Reviving the Russian Relationship

Notable quotes:
"... This period is when Clinton IMHO sent NATO in a wrong direction from being strictly defensive/political to getting involved in Yugoslavia which certainly irritated Russia. ..."
"... Then good old Obama and another Clinton deciding to overthrow Gaddafi and his whole Arab Spring foreign policy to include getting involved in Syria. These were disastrous decisions that the current POTUS inherited and is trying to change except the "deep state" is fighting him tooth and nail. ..."
"... Getting out of Ukraine would be a huge trust maker for Russia and it would be followed by sanctions being lifted allowing for a level playing field to begin working on the issues that need fixing. NATO isn't going away however the forward deployed forces in the Baltic's and Poland could over time in an agreed to reciprocal move say removing Iskander missiles from Kaliningrad could be accomplished. ..."
Nov 07, 2019 | nationalinterest.org

J Urie Z'ing Sui • 13 hours ago ,

You are 100% correct that trust is the number one point in coming to any agreement and currently there is very little trust on either side for varying reasons. One important fact that is overlooked by most people is the leadership of President George H. W. Bush and PM Margaret Thatcher during the transition from the Soviet Union/Warsaw pact to independent sovereign nations. The Bush was a WW II pilot and Thatcher earned the name Iron Lady for her decisive action in the Falklands War, both understood the world as it was in 1990. This statement highlights the view that prevailed from Bush at the time: "Not once, but three times, Baker tried out the "not one inch eastward" formula with Gorbachev in the February 9, 1990, meeting. He agreed with Gorbachev's statement in response to the assurances that "NATO expansion is unacceptable." Baker assured Gorbachev that "neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place," and that the Americans understood that "not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO's present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction." (See Document 6)"

These were complicated issues that involved a multitude of parties being negotiated by just a few i.e. US, UK, France and West Germany a holdover from the WW II model. The Poles, Czechs and others were not consulted and IMHO had they been the situation would have become untenable. It must be remembered that Poland and Czechoslovakia suffered heavily due to "large important nations" giving them away pre and post WW II. There was no written agreement nor official treaty between the west and the Soviet Union soon to be Russian Federation and I believe that was intentional for the reason I give above. George H. W. Bush was not reelected in 1992 and Bill Clinton became POTUS and he pursued a foreign policy that was entirely different. Some of his ideas used Thatchers earlier idea of a more political NATO with less emphasis on the original military mission which brought in the Partnerships for Peace program. That program was IMHO quite good as it stabilized countries that were wobbly in the 1990's after the breakup occurred. The Clinton White House had Madeline Albright an immigrant from Czechoslovakia as secretary of State and Zbigniew Brzezinski a former secretary of State and an academic that influenced his policies which were pro eastern European anti Russian. It was during this time that NATO expanded. The US is a country of immigrants and there is a large Polish population as well as other eastern Europeans and political considerations are always come into play.

This period is when Clinton IMHO sent NATO in a wrong direction from being strictly defensive/political to getting involved in Yugoslavia which certainly irritated Russia.

G.W. Bush basically continued the trend with regard to NATO but was preoccupied with 9/11 more than anything else. Bush thought that he understood Putin and even invited him to his ranch in Crawford, Texas which Putin accepted and they did seem to get along.

However 2008 and the Georgia War began the slide in relations between the two countries. Then good old Obama and another Clinton deciding to overthrow Gaddafi and his whole Arab Spring foreign policy to include getting involved in Syria. These were disastrous decisions that the current POTUS inherited and is trying to change except the "deep state" is fighting him tooth and nail.

Getting out of Ukraine would be a huge trust maker for Russia and it would be followed by sanctions being lifted allowing for a level playing field to begin working on the issues that need fixing. NATO isn't going away however the forward deployed forces in the Baltic's and Poland could over time in an agreed to reciprocal move say removing Iskander missiles from Kaliningrad could be accomplished.

Gaugamela39 • a day ago ,

Carthago delenda est. The policy of Cato the Censor should be applied in an unrelenting manner, leading to 'salting the earth' of Moscow.

dorotea Gaugamela39 • a day ago ,

Many have tried, usually ended up in those infamous endless Russian fields, in long boxes. See Pushkin, for the exact quote. But historical trivialities aside, there should be a way to satisfy Imperial hubris without 'salting the grounds'. Hannibal's elephants did not carry nukes in their trunks. Trying for the sixth time in the last 4 centuries to get Moscow grounds salted might end badly for the entire planet.

The Chosen One dorotea • a day ago ,

So it seems to me that only the advent of a nuclear weapon and the threat of an imminent deadly retaliation prevents a new "drang nach osten".

Z'ing Sui J Urie • 39 minutes ago • edited ,

Trust was not breached by Russia, military buildup, hostile threatening military, NATO expansion and refusal to negotiate on these issues did not originate from Russia. Russia has tried to negotiate, concede and de-escalate before. The West did not respond to those moves. Even US sanctions placed on Soviet Union were not removed from Russia, despite there being no reason for them to remain in place. This and other recent events (libya, iran deal etc) tells Russia and other global players that de-escalating with the West doesn't work.

Even now, West seems to be interested to trade with Russia at least in some areas. And Europe is increasingly frustrated with the United States. There is reportedly a number of EU initiatives aimed at gradually limiting US economic levers created during the Cold War. Rising economies will gradually offer more opportunities outside of the Western world. Multipolar wolrd was a slogan in the 00s, in the 2040es it might be a reality.

We know NATO will not maintain ABM and CFE, and it is apparently not interested in INF and Open Skies, and even START is in question now. NATO will withdraw troops if only Russia does something? Please, you don't really believe that. With INF gone, Iskander is outdated, it was a treaty-limited weapon. Moving it a few hundred klicks will not make NATO concede anything now.

A huge trust maker would be for all NATO members to publically admit on their web page that pledges to Russia were broken and at least some NATO officials feel responsibility for that. They've spent 27 years denying any verbal assurances, now that those assurances are declassified, they build other narratives about how those pledges did not matter. For there to be trust, there needs to be an admission that trust was there, and was broken, and not by Russia. No troop movements necessary even.

J Urie mal • a day ago • edited ,

Biden isn't going to win the next election Trump will be reelected in 2020. The current strain in relations with Russia has been inherited by Trump and even before he was elected the DNC and Hillary Clinton cooked up the "Russia colusion" story which after $46 million and 2 1/2 years no Russia collision. Of course now we have the Dems trying to impeach Trump which will not go anywhere in the Senate more waste of time and money. However there is the Justice Department I.G. report soon to be released and many of the people who brought you the Russia colusion hoax will be named. The Justice Department has an ongoing criminal investigation into the key players and will undoubtedly result in indictments and prosecutions.
The real reason all of this is going on is because the establishment both Dem's & Repub's along with the deep state look at Trump as an outsider who is tipping over their apple cart i.e. he is changing the foreign policy direction and they don't like it one bit so they create fake issues to try and stop him.
After his reelection I predict that more normal relations with Russia will resume.

dorotea Roma Ilto • 14 hours ago ,

Nowadays the actual attacks are manifested as 'hybrid warfare'. Of course Russia took the US intervention and financing of Chechen rebels as an attack back in the 2000 ties. She took fermenting and financing of the Georgian rose revolution as a hybrid attack, same as promises made to pres. Saakashvili to support him militarily and politically after his attack on Tskhinvali were taken as a hybrid attack. Same goes for both of the first color revolution in Ukraine, and then the Revolution of dignity of 2014 that pushed ultra-right government to power in Ukraine. In fact the NATO promise to both Georgia and Ukraine to take them in as members in 2008 right after Putin's warning in 2007 was the first move in the 'hybrid war'. The West had been warned, yet it decided to bulldoze its way across Eurasia and triggered the confrontation. The placings of Aegises ashore in Poland and Romania was the cherry on top. There can be be no meaningful compromise until the West backs off on the NATO enlargement. That 2008 conference was what had reanimated the image of the collective West as adversary for Russia.

What both sides should strive for though is at the very least to diminish the degree of danger to the planet. Russia would not back off because she finds it easy enough to corner individual EU states into minimal economic cooperation - Germany is already in recession and there is no way they are going to continue damaging their economy for the sake of US politics. And then there is China. When the Russians cannot buy goods from Germans they go for made in China, which in turn gets China secure oil and gas from Russia. Which make the repeat of pre-WW II situation with blockade on Japan pretty much impossible. Get realistic, the West is loosing this one and should count her chickens already.

Roma Ilto dorotea • 14 hours ago ,

Well, then the sanctions will continue, as will the policy of keeping Russian in check in the EU gas market.
What's interesting is that NATO never attacked Russia or threatened to attack Russia. Seems to me that Putin is simply using the expansion as a pretext for military aggression against the neighboring states. It's what the USSR did in 1939 against Finland. According the Soviet side, the war started after Finland attacked the Soviet Union...

dorotea Roma Ilto • 14 hours ago ,

Russia *needs* the sanctions for at least another 5 years. Her milk and beef production is still lagging compared to the deceased USSR and the only way her greedy oligarchs will heavily invest in cow herd rearing is to continue to block the Eastern European milk products to enter Russia. Chicken, eggs, pork and veggies are already up to speed, wheat production is exploding, the salmon breeding programme have started so the Norway is not getting her market back, bu the cow herds take longer to rear.
The Power of Siberia pipeline is being certified and filled right now - China would receive her first delivery of piped Russian gas in 2020, so it is good that EU is prepping or the squeeze - they are not going to continue getting unlimited cheap Russian gas, because Power of Siberia II is in the works.

Every individual NATO member had attacked Russia in the past 4 centuries ( including small but meaningful US contingent in the 1918), and some non-member allies had stomped those fields as well. So the Russians are not taking any chances with the buffer zone. All of Russia expansions to the West have always started with West invading first - then being rolled back league by league. But seriously - ? Russians can live with Europe staying where she is - if in turn Europe can learn to respect her civilization borders. The move on Ukraine and Georgia was not a wise one.

[Nov 07, 2019] Note on the the degradation of the elite.

Notable quotes:
"... There is a collection of Democratic and Republican politicians and think tanks funded by various corporations and governments and bureaucrats in the government agencies mostly all devoted to the Empire, but also willing to stab each other in the back to obtain power. They don't necessarily agree on policy details. ..."
"... They don't oppose Trump because Trump is antiwar. Trump isn't antiwar. Or rather, he is antiwar for three minutes here and there and then he advocates for war crimes. ..."
"... He is a fairly major war criminal based on his policies in Yemen. But they don't oppose him for that either or they would have been upset by Obama. They oppose Trump because he is incompetent, unpredictable and easily manipulated. And worst of all, he doesn't play the game right, where we pretend we intervene out of noble humanitarian motives. This idiot actually say he wants to keep Syrian oil fields and Syria's oil fields aren't significant to anyone outside Syria. ..."
"... Our policies are influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence ..."
Nov 07, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

Donald 11.07.19 at 4:37 am 64

" In a sense, the current NeoMcCartyism (Russophobia, Sinophobia) epidemic in the USA can partially be viewed as a yet another sign of the crisis of neoliberalism: a desperate attempt to patch the cracks in the neoliberal façade using scapegoating -- creation of an external enemy to project the problems of the neoliberal society.

I would add another, pretty subjective measure of failure: the degradation of the elite. When you look at Hillary, Trump, Biden, Warren, Harris, etc, you instantly understand what I am talking about. They all look like the second-rate, if not the third rate politicians. Also, the Epstein case was pretty symbolic."

I had decided to stay on the sidelines for the most part after making a few earlier comments, but I liked this summary, except I would give Warren more credit. She is flawed like most politicians, but she has made some of the right enemies within the Democratic Party.

On Trump and " the Deep State", there is no unified Deep State. There is a collection of Democratic and Republican politicians and think tanks funded by various corporations and governments and bureaucrats in the government agencies mostly all devoted to the Empire, but also willing to stab each other in the back to obtain power. They don't necessarily agree on policy details.

They don't oppose Trump because Trump is antiwar. Trump isn't antiwar. Or rather, he is antiwar for three minutes here and there and then he advocates for war crimes.

He is a fairly major war criminal based on his policies in Yemen. But they don't oppose him for that either or they would have been upset by Obama. They oppose Trump because he is incompetent, unpredictable and easily manipulated. And worst of all, he doesn't play the game right, where we pretend we intervene out of noble humanitarian motives. This idiot actually say he wants to keep Syrian oil fields and Syria's oil fields aren't significant to anyone outside Syria.

But yes, scapegoating is a big thing with liberals now. It's pathetic. Our policies are influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence .

For the most part, if we have a horrible political culture nearly all the blame for that is homegrown.

Donald 11.07.19 at 4:40 am (no link)

Sigh. Various typos above. Here is one --

Our policies are influenced in rather negative ways by various foreign countries, but would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence.
--

I meant to say I would be embarrassed to go to the extremes one regularly sees from liberals talking about Russian influence.

[Nov 06, 2019] More Evidence that The Comey FBI was a Malevolent Clown Show by Larry C Johnson

Notable quotes:
"... If Flynn actually had lied to Strzok and Pientka that fact would have been reflected in the notes and the original 302. But that did not happen. A normal routine would be to write up the 302 and put it into final within five days. That did not happen. The original 302 still has not been produced. However, Ms. Powell has presented exhibits showing that there were other versions of the 302 generated and that substantive, unsupportable changes were made. The "final" 302 essentially made the case that Flynn lied. ..."
"... But Sidney Powell has produced documentary evidence showing that Strzok stated he did not believe that Flynn lied. And there was more FBI misconduct. General Flynn, for example, was not advised of the need to have a lawyer present nor was he shown the transcript of the call that was illegally recorded by the NSA. At no point was he given a chance to correct the record. It was a total setup and designed to paint Flynn as a liar and a collaborator with the Russians. This is malevolently diabolical conduct by law enforcement officers. ..."
Nov 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

I believe in repentance and redemption. But the FBI remains an unrepentant, vile sinner. Yesterday, Tuesday, the FBI and the Department of Justice made a stunning admission in the Michael Flynn case--they mislabeled evidence. DOJ sheepishly admitted that the notes of the interview of Michael Flynn taken by Agent Pientka actually belonged to Agent Strzok and that the notes attributed to Strzok actually belonged to Pientka. Holy Guacamole, Batman. It is still not clear that the FBI is freely confessing its sin and is committed to turning its bureaucratic life around.

There is no good news in this for the government's case. At a minimum it exposes the FBI as incompetent clowns. At worse, it may be evidence of a deliberate effort to deceive the defense and the judge. It has been exposed because of the insistent demands of the principled Sidney Powell, a relentless Honey Badger. That woman will not quit in demanding that General Flynn be treated fairly. She knows right from wrong. Cannot say the same for the FBI. The Bureau is a disgrace.

Now that we know that the FBI mislabeled the notes taken by the FBI agents during their interview of General Flynn, it would appear the entire case is in jeopardy. The foundation of the charge that Flynn lied about his conversation with the Russian Ambassador is predicated on the notes the FBI agents took and then turned into a 302 report. I asked one of my retired FBI buddies (he served as a Special Agent in Charge of a large US city) if the agents were required to date and sign their notes. He replied: No, we did not sign and date notes. They were placed in a 1-A (evidence) Envelope which had our name and the date collected along with the file number and, I believe, the case title. The 1-As were kept as part of the original case file. They were not entered into evidence like other things we collected.

Those notes should have been placed in an "evidence" envelope with the appropriate name and date on the envelope. How could so-called professionals screw up something this basic?

There was something more nefarious afoot. Let's put this into the broader context. If Flynn actually had lied to Strzok and Pientka that fact would have been reflected in the notes and the original 302. But that did not happen. A normal routine would be to write up the 302 and put it into final within five days. That did not happen. The original 302 still has not been produced. However, Ms. Powell has presented exhibits showing that there were other versions of the 302 generated and that substantive, unsupportable changes were made. The "final" 302 essentially made the case that Flynn lied.

But Sidney Powell has produced documentary evidence showing that Strzok stated he did not believe that Flynn lied. And there was more FBI misconduct. General Flynn, for example, was not advised of the need to have a lawyer present nor was he shown the transcript of the call that was illegally recorded by the NSA. At no point was he given a chance to correct the record. It was a total setup and designed to paint Flynn as a liar and a collaborator with the Russians. This is malevolently diabolical conduct by law enforcement officers.

Honey Badger Powell's terrific lawyering and insistence on getting her hands on the evidence the US Government is withholding has now backed the Mueller team into a corner. Sidney Powell has exposed staggering misconduct and malfeasance. Michael Flynn will be exonerated. The only real question is whether or not the prosecutors will be held in contempt and tried.

Jack , 06 November 2019 at 11:55 AM

Larry

Why doesn't the FBI, just record an interview? It's not that video cameras and tape recorders are a new invention. Is the objective to manipulate using written interpretations of conversations?

Mr Zarate , 06 November 2019 at 12:16 PM
I'm worried there won't be any popcorn left by the time we get to the end of this sorry saga. It would be nice to think that success by Sidney Powell might be the start of the finale in this duplicitous story but I doubt it. The world is upside down and to many this is now a matter of belief not evidence, something that has been largely caused be an entirely partisan mainstream media (interested only in improving its revenue stream) and what can only be described as a totally gullible section of the voting public.
Upstate NY'er , 06 November 2019 at 01:14 PM
One thing, Flynn has one hell of a lawsuit against his prior lawyers - a well known swamp law firm. Egregious malpractice if not outright conspiring with the prosecutors.

LA Sox Fan -> Jack... , 06 November 2019 at 06:16 PM

FBI interviews are not recorded because if they were, then the interview subject could not be falsely charged with the felony of lying to a federal investigator.
Coleen Rowley -> Jack... , 06 November 2019 at 10:32 PM
I need to write about the long history of the FBI honoring J. Edgar Hoover's policy, even countering former Director Louis Freeh, after a meeting in mid 1990's with a federal judge who had same suggestion, ORDERED the FBI to begin tape recording confessions and even after many states like Minnesota, began to find their own constitutions required tape-recording (at least of custodial confessions). After Freeh ordered the FBI to begin tape-recording, a number of SACs argued the advantages for prosecutorial purposes of sticking with the old policy of allowing Agents to write up, from memory and notes, what subjects and witnesses said. The SACs made the point that juries would always tend to believe agents over the word of defendants. So Freeh backed down. Flynn's attorney ought to request these memos documenting how FBI policy was deliberately kept antiquated because it was advantageous.
artemesia said in reply to Upstate NY'er... , 06 November 2019 at 06:12 PM
Perhaps Larry Johnson knows -- Does Michael Flynn have some form of redress agains the government, some established protocol for compensation for the misery and expense he's been put through? Or are lawsuits against former lawyers his only option to try to recoup legal expenses?

Strozk's caree/life is over. An interesting meditation: is he an evil man, or did he get caught up in something larger than he could handle? (He thought he had what it took to swim with the sharks, but he was just a barnacle. Or steelhead trout.)

The "unidentified" supposed whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, is young - early 30s. Age of consent, for sure, but very young, the "age of youthful ambition," a different category from Strozk, the age of damn well should have known better. I would judge Eric -- whom I suspect was at very least put up to carrying out dirty deeds for Biden and careerism -- less harshly than Strozk.

Factotum , 06 November 2019 at 02:58 PM
How did Sidney Powell become involved in this long, on-going case? She can't ethically "solicit" the business, but someone must have put Flynn in touch with her -- at what point. What made Flynn seek legal advice elsewhere.

Flynn seemed so passive about facing these drummed up charges earlier in the case - what exactly was he trying to protect his son about that allegedly caused this legal passivity about his own case.

Love watching this unfold and the lessons in " big government" that come with it. But Flynn having to live out a modern day Greek tragedy is a very high price to pay for our civics lesson.

Factotum said in reply to Factotum... , 06 November 2019 at 07:46 PM
Asked and answered: Powell tussled dramatically in the past with Andrew Weissman over his role in the government's prosecution of Enron steam roller cases. She finally got court vindication for her clients 9 years later.

Why does Andrew Weissman's name keep popping up just about everywhere now, when one is looking in pari delitci (including our now famous Pierre Delecto)?

Brent , 06 November 2019 at 03:04 PM
From what I have read, I gather that the FBI in the Mueller / Comey era has made extensive use of "perjury traps". They then threaten charges to get someone to "flip" on someone bigger, in this case Trump. Flynn wouldn't flip even when they threatened to go after Flynn's son. So they decided to "F" him, as stated by Andrew McCabe.

The FBI has been thoroughly disgraced, and Wray is incapable of cleaning it up. He just wants to keep the dirt under the rug. It is too late for that, it is all coming out. US citizens deserve to know how dirty our FBI and CIA are - they are criminal organizations.

Andrei Martyanov (aka SmoothieX12) , 06 November 2019 at 04:07 PM
Is it just me (wink, wink) but I find it completely coincidental that both Strzok (100%) and Pientka (likely) are of Polish origins. Could it be my Russian paranoia. Nah, I am being unreasonable--those people never had a bad feeling towards Trump's attempts to boost Russian-American relations with Michael Flynn spearheading this effort. Jokes aside, however, I can only imagine how SVR and GRU are enjoying the spectacle. I can only imagine how many "free" promotions and awards can be attach to this thing as a free ride.

[Nov 06, 2019] The demonisation of Russia is all about the long term aim if destabilising, cracking it open and stealing it's resources

Nov 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Richard , Nov 5 2019 8:04 utc | 34

@13 Joost Your comment is spot on. The demonisation of Russia is all about the long term aim if destabilising, cracking it open and stealing it's resources. Russia is, in fact, the woreld's largets and most resource rich nation so its an irresistible target to the insane, greed-driven psychopath's who rule us.

First and foremost amongst those (and the most insane) is Hillary Clinton who it seems maybe preparing for another run at the presidency...a Hillary presidency risks a full out nuclear war.

You see, Hilary and the people who back her (and whom she faithfully serves) genuinely are psychopaths. They lack empathy, care, and humanity. They see only their own need and greed, only their own dysfunctional lust for power and wealth; they don't give a damn what it takes to satisfy their perverse desires and who dies in the process. Psychopaths (blinded by their own perversity) are also bad judges of risk and, in the minds of Hillary and her cabal of psychopaths, they actually do believe that the US could fight a 'limited' nuclear war against Russia, win it and steal all those lovely Russian resources.

The tragic misjudgement here, and why disgusting Hillary and her ilk are so dangerous, is that there is no such thing as a 'limited' nuclear war. A nuclear war would be global. And fatal.

https://richardhennerley.com/2019/10/21/hilary-clinton-is-back-be-afraid-very-afraid/

[Nov 06, 2019] British Government Disinformation Shop Lost Charity Status

Nov 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

The Integrity Initiative, as paid for by the British Foreign Office, Ministry of Defense, NATO and other such entities, will live on as a non-charitable entity with even less transparency. Its website, as well as that of Institute of Statecraft, is down. That it will now have to live in total secrecy will make it more difficult for it to recruit foreign journalists to spread its propaganda.

Since the Integrity Initiative was exposed the British government opened and financed a new secretive shop that will continue to spread anti-Russian disinformation :

On 3rd April, Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) minister Alan Duncan revealed his department's 'Counter Disinformation and Media Development Programme' - which bankrolls the Institute for Statecraft and its Integrity Initiative subsidiary - was funding a new endeavour, Open Information Partnership (OIP).

The announcement, buried in a response to a written parliamentary question, was supremely light on detail - Duncan merely said the effort would "respond to manipulated information in the news, social media and across the public space". Official fanfare was also unforthcoming - there was no accompanying press release, briefing document, or even mention of the launch by any government minister or department via social media channels.

The original proposal for the Open Information Partnership , as released by 'anonymous' , included the Institute of Statecraft , a Media Diversity Institute , Bellingcat , DFR Lab (i.e. the Atlantic Council) and some others in a so called ZINC Network . On the current OIP website the Institute of Statecraft 'charity' is no longer named.

---
Previous Moon of Alabama reports on the issue:

Tim Hayward provides a list (scroll down) of a large number of articles written here and elsewhere about the Integrity Initiative . Speaking of Bellingcat:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BfLPJpRtyq4RFtHJoNpvWQjmGnyVkfE2HYoICKOGguA/mobilebas

Posted by: NOBTS | Nov 4 2019 18:45 utc | 2

karlof1 , Nov 4 2019 18:49 utc | 3

At Kit Klarenberg's Twitter , there's a long tweet thread further detailing what b has written above. I can't help be wonder how the Monty Python troop would have portrayed the Institute for Statecraft and its parent the Integrity Initiative. It appears that the governments of the English speaking nations became addicted to lying to their citizens @1900 and are unable to kick the habit and instead have actually deepened their addiction. Elsewhere on the planet, it seems that people are learning it's easier to talk straight and transparently with other people and to pool resources and combine efforts to form a community of nations and humanity to better one and all. Seems simple enough to determine which is functional and which isn't.
/div> Oops! Googlehidden. Here's one that might work. An interesting compendium: https://www.comsuregroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Bellingcats-Digital-Toolkit.pdf

Posted by: NOBTS , Nov 4 2019 18:51 utc | 5

Oops! Googlehidden. Here's one that might work. An interesting compendium: https://www.comsuregroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Bellingcats-Digital-Toolkit.pdf

Posted by: NOBTS | Nov 4 2019 18:51 utc | 5

Symen Danziger , Nov 5 2019 11:34 utc | 41
Bellingcat only serves one interest, a propaganda/info laundering shop for NATO, the military industrial complex and some very rich people. The blatant lies about MH17, chemical weapons in Syria, OPCW, Russia, the list goes on and on.

By the time the people in the Netherlands find out how they have been manipulated with the MH17 narrative and the role of Bellingcat in this operation, hopefully they will torch the office of Bellingcat in The Hague and club the survivors to death like the Uktainian Nazi friends of Bellingcat did in Odessa.

The Ukrainian army shot down MH17. It was no accident. The Dutch were also involved with the 2014 coup in the Ukraine. Putting the blame on Russia is a political decision, its not based on facts. Dutch politicians are very dirty people. Burn in hell.

[Nov 06, 2019] Fake news as a culmination of neoliberal market-based epistemology: starting from the basic doctrine that markets are information processors more powerful than any human being or institution could ever hope to be, neoliberals like Hayek decided that the true origin point of the "road to serfdom" is the hubristic notion of a non-marketized Truth that people could hope to grasp for themselves without slaving themselves to the ongoing dictates of the market, which is why in neoliberal terms, this empowerment of hucksterish for-profit "fake news" grifters to freely manipulate people's base instincts according to the algorithmic logic of social media platforms and targeted ad networks is actually a sublime act of political virtue and seriousness

Nov 06, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

WLGR 11.05.19 at 12:27 am 42

Lefties have a lot of reasons to roll our eyes when liberals start talking about Putin and his horde of Rooskie bots comin' to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids, but most pertinent to this specific conversation, the underlying concerns about social media manipulation, fake news, etc. would be far better addressed by redirecting their ire from Russia and onto wait for it neoliberalism!

Seriously, I can't stress enough how much this whole conversation would benefit from grappling with Philip Mirowski's argument about fake news as a culmination of neoliberal market-based epistemology: starting from the basic doctrine that markets are information processors more powerful than any human being or institution could ever hope to be, neoliberals like Hayek decided that the true origin point of the "road to serfdom" is the hubristic notion of a non-marketized Truth that people could hope to grasp for themselves without slaving themselves to the ongoing dictates of the market, which is why in neoliberal terms, this empowerment of hucksterish for-profit "fake news" grifters to freely manipulate people's base instincts according to the algorithmic logic of social media platforms and targeted ad networks is actually a sublime act of political virtue and seriousness. It's not the big bad Rooskies who are driving this stuff, it's the neoliberalized/marketized logic of modern Western discourse itself, and the only reason it seems so jarring when we Westerners see the Russians doing it (e.g. Mirowski's quote from Adam Curtis on Putin advisor Vladislav Surkov) is because they're following our example in ways we haven't already trained ourselves to accept as normal.

[Nov 06, 2019] Hate Inc. Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another eBook Matt Taibbi Kindle Store

Nov 06, 2019 | www.amazon.com

I thought I understood this and many other things about the journalism business at a young age. I even knew everything that "off the record" entails -- really knew, as if it were a religious tenet -- before I hit junior high. I thought I was an expert.

Then I read Manufacturing Consent .

The book came out in 1988 and I read it a year later, when I was nineteen. It blew my mind.

Along with the documentary Hearts and Minds (about the atrocities of the Vietnam War) and books like Soul on Ice, In the Belly of the Beast, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Manufacturing Consent taught me that some level of deception was baked into almost everything I'd ever been taught about modern American life.

I knew nothing about either of the authors, academics named Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. It seemed odd that a book purporting to say so much about journalism could be written by non-journalists. Who were these people? And how could they claim to know anything about this business?

This was the middle of the George H. W. Bush presidency, still the rah-rah Top Gun eighties. Political earnestness was extremely uncool. America was awesome and hating on America was sad. Noam Chomsky was painted to me as the very definition of uncool, a leaden, hectoring bore.

But this wasn't what I found on the page. Manufacturing Consent is a dazzling book. True, like a lot of co-written books, and especially academic books, it's written in slow, grinding prose. But for its time, it was intellectually flamboyant, wild even.

The ideas in it radiated defiance. Once the authors in the first chapter laid out their famed propaganda model, they cut through the deceptions of the American state like a buzz saw.

The book's central idea was that censorship in the United States was not overt, but covert. The stage-managing of public opinion was "normally not accomplished by crude intervention" but by the keeping of "dissent and inconvenient information" outside permitted mental parameters: "within bounds and at the margins."

The key to this deception is that Americans, every day, see vigorous debate going on in the press. This deceives them into thinking propaganda is absent. Manufacturing Consent explains that the debate you're watching is choreographed. The range of argument has been artificially narrowed long before you get to hear it.

This careful sham is accomplished through the constant, arduous policing of a whole range of internal pressure points within the media business. It's a subtle, highly idiosyncratic process that you can stare at for a lifetime and nonetheless not see.

American news companies at the time didn't (and still don't) forbid the writing of unpatriotic stories. There are no editors who come blundering in, red pen in hand, wiping out politically dangerous reports, in the clumsy manner of Soviet Commissars.

Instead, in a process that is almost 100 percent unconscious, news companies simply avoid promoting dissenting voices. People who are questioners by nature, prodders, pains in the ass -- all good qualities in reporting, incidentally -- get weeded out by bosses, especially in the bigger companies. Advancement is meanwhile strongly encouraged among the credulous, the intellectually unadventurous, and the obedient.

As I would later discover in my own career, there are a lot of C-minus brains in the journalism business. A kind of groupthink is developed that permeates the upper levels of media organizations, and they send unconscious signals down the ranks.

Young reporters learn early on what is and is not permitted behavior. They learn to recognize, almost more by smell than reason, what is and is not a "good story."

Chomsky and Herman described this policing mechanism using the term "flak." Flak was defined as "negative responses to a media statement or program."

They gave examples in which corporate-funded think tanks like The Media Institute or the anti-communist Freedom House would deluge media organizations that ran the wrong kinds of stories with "letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits" and other kinds of pressure.

What was the wrong kind of story? Here we learned of another part of the propaganda model, the concept of worthy and unworthy victims . Herman and Chomsky defined the premise as follows:

A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy.

Under this theory, a Polish priest murdered by communists in the Reagan years was a "worthy" victim, while rightist death squads in U.S.-backed El Salvador killing whole messes of priests and nuns around the same time was a less "worthy" story.

What Herman and Chomsky described was a system of informal social control, in which the propaganda aims of the state were constantly reinforced among audiences, using a quantity-over-quality approach.

Here and there you might see a dissenting voice, but the overwhelming institutional power of the media (and the infrastructure of think-tanks and politicians behind the private firms) carried audiences along safely down the middle of a surprisingly narrow political and intellectual canal.

One of their examples was Vietnam, where the American media was complicit in a broad self-abnegating effort to blame itself for "losing the war."

An absurd legend that survives today is that CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, after a two-week trip to Vietnam in 1968, was key in undermining the war effort.

Cronkite's famous "Vietnam editorial" derided "the optimists who have been wrong in the past," and villainously imparted that the military's rosy predictions of imminent victory were false. The more noble course, he implied, was to face reality, realize "we did the best we could" to defend democracy, and go home.

The Cronkite editorial sparked a "debate" that continues to the present.

On the right, it is said that we should have kept fighting in Vietnam, in spite of those meddling commies in the media.

The progressive take is that Cronkite was right, and we should have realized the war wasn't "winnable" years earlier. Doing so would have saved countless American lives, this thinking goes.

These two positions still define the edges of what you might call the "fairway" of American thought.

The uglier truth, that we committed genocide on a fairly massive scale across Indochina -- ultimately killing at least a million innocent civilians by air in three countries -- is pre-excluded from the history of that period.

Instead of painful national reconciliation surrounding episodes like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, the CIA-backed anti-communist massacres in places like Indonesia, or even the more recent horrors in Middle Eastern arenas like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, we mostly ignore narrative-ruining news about civilian deaths or other outrages.

A media that currently applauds itself for calling out the lies of Donald Trump (and they are lies) still uses shameful government-concocted euphemisms like "collateral damage." Our new "Democracy Dies in Darkness" churlishness has yet to reach the Pentagon, and probably never will.

In the War on Terror period, the press accepted blame for having lost the most recent big war and agreed to stop showing pictures of the coffins coming home (to say nothing of actual scenes of war deaths).

We also volunteered to reduce or play down stories about torture ("enhanced interrogation"), kidnapping ("rendition"), or assassination ("lethal action," or the "distribution matrix").

Even now, if these stories are covered, they're rarely presented in an alarmist tone. In fact, many "civilian casualties" stories are couched in language that focuses on how the untimely release of news of "collateral damage" may hinder the effort to win whatever war we're in at the time.

"After reports of civilian deaths, U.S. military struggles to defend air operations in war against militants," is a typical American newspaper headline.

Can you guess either the year or the war from that story? It could be 1968, or 2008. Or 2018.

As Manufacturing Consent predicted -- with a nod to Orwell, maybe -- the scripts in societies like ours rarely change. 1

When it came time for me to enter the journalism business myself, I discovered that the Chomsky/Herman diagnosis was mostly right. Moreover, the academics proved prescient about future media deceptions like the Iraq War. Their model predicted that hideous episode in Technicolor.

But neither Herman nor Chomsky could have known, when they published their book in 1988, that the media business was going through profound change.

As it turned out, Manufacturing Consent was published just ahead of three massive revolutions. When I met and interviewed Chomsky for this book (see Appendix 2 ), we discussed these developments. They included:

1. The explosion of conservative talk radio and Fox-style news products. Using point of view rather than "objectivity" as commercial strategies, these stations presaged an atomization of the news landscape under which each consumer had an outlet somewhere to match his or her political beliefs. This was a major departure from the three-network pseudo-monopoly that dominated the Manufacturing Consent period, under which the country debated a commonly held set of facts.

2. The introduction of twenty-four-hour cable news stations, which shifted the emphasis of the news business. Reporters were suddenly trained to value breaking news, immediacy, and visual potential over import. Network "crashes" -- relentless day-night coverage extravaganzas of a single hot story like the Kursk disaster or a baby thrown down a well, a type of journalism one TV producer I knew nicknamed "Shoveling Coal For Satan" -- became the first examples of binge-watching. The relentless now now now grind of the twenty-four-hour cycle created in consumers a new kind of anxiety and addictive dependency, a need to know what was happening not just once or twice a day but every minute. This format would have significant consequences in the 2016 election in particular.

3. The development of the Internet, which was only just getting off the ground in 1988. It was thought it would significantly democratize the press landscape. But print and broadcast media soon began to be distributed by just a handful of digital platforms. By the late 2000s and early 2010s, that distribution system had been massively concentrated. This created the potential for a direct control mechanism over the press that never existed in the Manufacturing Consent era. Moreover the development of social media would amplify the "flak" factor a thousandfold, accelerating conformity and groupthink in ways that would have been unimaginable in 1988.

Maybe the biggest difference involved an obvious historical change: the collapse of the Soviet Union.

One of the pillars of the "propaganda model" in the original Manufacturing Consent was that the media used anti-communism as an organizing religion.

The ongoing Cold War narrative helped the press use anti-communism as a club to batter heretical thinkers, who as luck would have it were often socialists. They even used it as a club to police people who weren't socialists (I would see this years later, when Howard Dean was asked a dozen times a day if he was "too left" to be a viable candidate).

But the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet empire took a little wind out of the anti-communist religion. Chomsky and Herman addressed this in their 2002 update of Manufacturing Consent, in which they wrote:

The force of anti-communist ideology has possibly weakened with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the virtual disappearance of socialist movements across the globe, but this is easily offset by the greater ideological force of the belief in the "miracle of the market "

The collapse of the Soviets, and the weakening of anti-communism as an organizing principle, led to other changes in the media. Manufacturing Consent was in significant part a book about how that unseen system of informal controls allowed the press to organize the entire population behind support of particular objectives, many of them foreign policy objectives.

But the collapse of the Wall, coupled with those new commercial strategies being deployed by networks like Fox, created a new dynamic in the press.

Media companies used to seek out the broadest possible audiences. The dull third-person voice used in traditional major daily newspapers is not there for any moral or ethical reason, but because it was once believed that it most ably fulfilled the commercial aim of snatching as many readers/viewers as possible. The press is a business above all, and boring third-person language was once advanced marketing.

But in the years after Manufacturing Consent was published the new behemoths like Fox turned the old business model on its head. What Australian tabloid-merchant Rupert Murdoch did in employing political slant as a commercial strategy had ramifications the American public to this day poorly understands.

The news business for decades emphasized "objective" presentation, which was really less an issue of politics than of tone.

The idea was to make the recitation of news rhetorically watered down and unthreatening enough to rope in the whole spectrum of potential news consumers. The old-school anchorperson was a monotone mannequin designed to look and sound like a safe date for your daughter: Good evening, I'm Dan Rather, and my frontal lobes have been removed . Today in Libya

Murdoch smashed this framework. He gave news consumers broadcasts that were pointed, opinionated, and nasty. He struck gold with The O'Reilly Factor, hosted by a yammering, red-faced repository of white suburban rage named Bill O'Reilly (another Boston TV vet).

The next hit was Hannity & Colmes, a format that played as a parody of old news. In this show, the "liberal" Colmes was the quivering, asexual, "safe date" prototype from the old broadcast era, and Sean Hannity was a thuggish Joey Buttafuoco in makeup whose job was to make Colmes look like the spineless dope he was.

This was theater, not news, and it was not designed to seize the whole audience in the way that other debate shows like CNN's Crossfire were.

The premise of Crossfire was an honest fight, two prominent pundits duking it out over issues, and may the best man (they were usually men) win.

The prototypical Crossfire setup involved a bombastic winger like Pat Buchanan versus an effete liberal like New Republic editor Michael Kinsley. On some days the conservative would be allowed to win, on some days the liberal would score a victory. It looked like a real argument.

But Crossfire was really just a formalized version of the artificial poles of allowable debate that Chomsky and Herman described. As some of its participants (like Jeff Cohen, a pioneering media critic who briefly played the "liberal" on the show, about whom we'll hear more later) came to realize, Crossfire became a propagandistic setup, a stage trick in which the "left" side of the argument was gradually pushed toward the right over the years. It was propaganda, but in slow motion.

Hannity & Colmes dispensed with the pretense. This was the intellectual version of Vince McMahon's pro wrestling spectacles, which were booming at the time. In the Fox debate shows, Sean Hannity was the heel, and Colmes was the good guy, or babyface. As any good wrestling fan knows, most American audiences want to see babyface stomped.

The job of Colmes was to get pinned over and over again, and he did it well. Meanwhile rightist anger merchants like Hannity and O'Reilly (and, on the radio, Rush Limbaugh) were rapidly hoovering up audiences that were frustrated, white, and often elderly. Fox chief Roger Ailes once boasted, "I created a network for people 55 to dead." (Ailes is now dead himself.)

This was a new model for the media. Instead of targeting the broad mean, they were now narrowly hunting demographics. The explosion of cable television meant there were hundreds of channels, each of which had its own mission.

Just as Manufacturing Consent came out, all the major cable channels were setting off on similar whale hunts, sailing into the high demographic seas in search of audiences to capture. Lifetime was "television for women," while the Discovery Channel did well with men. BET went after black viewers. Young people were MTV's target audience.

This all seems obvious now, but this "siloing" effect that spread across other channels soon became a very important new factor in news coverage. Fox for a long time cornered the market on conservative viewers. Almost automatically, competitors like CNN and MSNBC became home to people who viewed themselves as liberals, beginning a sifting process that would later accelerate.

A new dynamic entered the job of reporting. For generations, news directors had only to remember a few ideological imperatives. One, ably and voluminously described by Chomsky and Herman, was, "America rules: pay no attention to those napalmed bodies." We covered the worthy victims, ignored the unworthy ones, and that was most of the job, politically.

The rest of the news? As one TV producer put it to me in the nineties, "The entire effect we're after is, 'Isn't that weird?'"

Did you hear about that guy in Michigan who refused to mow his lawn even when the town ordered him to? Weird! And how about that drive-thru condom store that opened in Cranston, Rhode Island? What a trip! And, hey, what happened in the O.J. trial today? That Kato Kaelin is really a doof! And I love that lawyer who wears a suede jacket! He looks like a cowboy!

TV execs learned Americans would be happy if you just fed them a nonstop succession of National Enquirer –style factoids (this is formalized today in meme culture). The New York Times deciding to cover the O.J. freak show full-time broke the seal on the open commercialization of dumb news that among other things led to a future where Donald Trump could be a viable presidential candidate.

In the old days, the news was a mix of this toothless trivia and cheery dispatches from the front lines of Pax Americana. The whole fam could sit and watch it without getting upset (by necessity: an important principle in pre-Internet broadcasting is that nothing on the air, including the news, could be as intense or as creative as the commercials). The news once designed to be consumed by the whole house, by loving Mom, by your crazy right-wing uncle, by your earnest college-student cousin who just came home wearing a Che T-shirt.

But once we started to be organized into demographic silos, the networks found another way to seduce these audiences: they sold intramural conflict.

The Roger Ailes types captured the attention of the crazy right-wing uncle and got him watching one channel full of news tailored for him, filling the airwaves with stories, for instance, about immigration or minorities committing crimes. Different networks eventually rose to market themselves to the kid in the Che T-shirt. If you got them in different rooms watching different channels, you could get both viewers literally addicted to hating one another.

There was a political element to this, but also not. It was commerce, initially. And reporters stuck in this world soon began to realize that the nature of their jobs had changed.

Whereas once the task was to report the facts as honestly as we could -- down the middle of the "fairway" of acceptable thought, of course -- the new task was mostly about making sure your viewer came back the next day.

We sold anger, and we did it mainly by feeding audiences what they wanted to hear. Mostly, this involved cranking out stories about people our viewers loved to hate.

Selling siloed anger was a more sophisticated take on the WWE programming pioneered in Hannity & Colmes . The modern news consumer tuned into news that confirmed his or her prejudices about whatever or whoever the villain of the day happened to be: foreigners, minorities, terrorists, the Clintons, Republicans, even corporations.

The system was ingeniously designed so that the news dropped down the respective silos didn't interfere with the occasional need to "manufacture" the consent of the whole population. If we needed to, we could still herd the whole country into the pen again and get them backing the flag, as was the case with the Iraq War effort.

But mostly, we sold conflict. We began in the early nineties to systematically pry families apart, set group against group, and more and more make news consumption a bubble-like, "safe space" stimulation of the vitriolic reflex, a consumer version of "Two Minutes Hate."

How did this serve the needs of the elite interests that were once promoting unity? That wasn't easy for me to see, in my first decades in the business. For a long time, I thought it was a flaw in the Chomsky/Herman model. It looked like we were mostly selling pointless division.

But it now seems there was a reason, even for that.

The news media is in crisis. Polls show that a wide majority of the population no longer has confidence in the press. Chomsky himself despairs at this, noting in my discussion with him (at the end of this book) that Manufacturing Consent had the unintended consequence of convincing readers not to trust the media.

There are many ways of mistrusting something, but people who came away from Manufacturing Consent with the idea that the media peddles lies misread the book. Papers like the New York Times, for the most part, do not traffic in outright deceptions.

The overwhelming majority of commercial news reporting is factual (with one conspicuous exception I'll get into later on), and the individual reporters who work in the business tend to be quite stubborn in their adherence to fact as a matter of principle. (Sadly, in the time it's taken to write this book, even this has begun to change some). Still, people should trust most reporters, especially local reporters, who tend to have real beats (like statehouses or courts), have few of the insular prejudices of the national media, and don't deserve the elitist tag. The context in which reporters operate is most often the problem.

Now, more than ever, most journalists work for giant nihilistic corporations whose editorial decisions are skewed by a toxic mix of political and financial considerations. Without understanding how those pressures work, it's very difficult for a casual news consumer to gain an accurate picture of the world.

This book is intended as an insider's guide to those distortions.

The technology underpinning the modern news business is sophisticated and works according to a two-step process. First, it creates content that reinforces your pre-existing opinions, and, after analysis of your consumer habits, sends it to you.

Then it matches you to advertisers who have a product they're trying to sell to your demographic. This is how companies like Facebook and Google make their money: telling advertisers where their likely customers are on the web.

The news, basically, is bait to lure you into a pen where you can be sold sneakers or bath soaps or prostatitis cures or whatever else studies say people of your age, gender, race, class, and political persuasion tend to buy.

Imagine your Internet surfing habit as being like walking down a street. A man shouts: "Did you hear what those damned liberals did today? Come down this alley."

You hate liberals, so you go down the alley. On your way to the story, there's a storefront selling mart carts and gold investments (there's a crash coming -- this billionaire even says so!).

Maybe you buy the gold, maybe you don't. But at the end of the alley, there's a red-faced screamer telling a story that may even be true, about a college in Massachusetts where administrators took down a statue of John Adams because it made a Hispanic immigrant "uncomfortable." Boy, does that make you pissed!

They picked that story just for you to hear. It is like the parable of Kafka's gatekeeper, guarding a door to the truth that was built just for you.

Across the street, down the MSNBC alley, there's an opposite story, and set of storefronts, built specifically for someone else to hear.

People need to start understanding the news not as "the news," but as just such an individualized consumer experience -- anger just for you.

This is not reporting. It's a marketing process designed to create rhetorical addictions and shut any non-consumerist doors in your mind. This creates more than just pockets of political rancor. It creates masses of media consumers who've been trained to see in only one direction, as if they had been pulled through history on a railroad track, with heads fastened in blinders, looking only one way.

As it turns out, there is a utility in keeping us divided. As people, the more separate we are, the more politically impotent we become.

This is the second stage of the mass media deception originally described in Manufacturing Consent .

First, we're taught to stay within certain bounds, intellectually. Then, we're all herded into separate demographic pens, located along different patches of real estate on the spectrum of permissible thought.

Once safely captured, we're trained to consume the news the way sports fans do. We root for our team, and hate all the rest.

Hatred is the partner of ignorance, and we in the media have become experts in selling both.

I looked back at thirty years of deceptive episodes -- from Iraq to the financial crisis of 2008 to the 2016 election of Donald Trump -- and found that we in the press have increasingly used intramural hatreds to obscure larger, more damning truths. Fake controversies of increasing absurdity have been deployed over and over to keep our audiences from seeing larger problems.

We manufactured fake dissent, to prevent real dissent.

[Nov 06, 2019] Manufacturing Fear and Loathing, Maximizing Corporate Profits! A Review of Matt Taibbi's Hate Inc. Why Today's Media Makes Us

Notable quotes:
"... "Manufacturing Consent," Taibbi writes, "explains that the debate you're watching is choreographed. The range of argument has been artificially narrowed long before you get to hear it" (p. 11). ..."
"... Americans were held captive by the boob tube affords us not only a useful historical image but also suggests the possibility of their having been able to view the television as an antagonist, and therefore of their having been able, at least some of them, to rebel against its dictates. Three decades later, on the other hand, the television has been replaced by iPhones and portable tablets, the workings of which are so precisely intertwined with even the most intimate minute-to-minute aspects of our lives that our relationship to them could hardly ever become antagonistic. ..."
"... The massive political revolution was, going all the way back to 1989, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and then of the Soviet Union itself -- and thus of the usefulness of anti-communism as a kind of coercive secular religion (pp. 14-15). ..."
"... our corporate media have devised -- at least for the time being -- highly-profitable marketing processes that manufacture fake dissent in order to smother real dissent (p. 21). ..."
"... And the smothering of real dissent is close enough to public consentto get the goddam job done: The Herman/Chomsky model is, after all these years, still valid. ..."
"... For Maddow, he notes, is "a depressingly exact mirror of Hannity . The two characters do exactly the same work. They make their money using exactly the same commercial formula. And though they emphasize different political ideas, the effect they have on audiences is much the same" (pp. 259-260). ..."
Nov 06, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Matt Taibbi's Hate Inc . is the most insightful and revelatory book about American politics to appear since the publication of Thomas Frank's Listen, Liberal almost four full years ago, near the beginning of the last presidential election cycle.

While Frank's topic was the abysmal failure of the Democratic Party to be democratic and Taibbi's is the abysmal failure of our mainstream news corporations to report news, the prominent villains in both books are drawn from the same, or at least overlapping, elite social circles: from, that is, our virulently anti-populist liberal class, from our intellectually mediocre creative class, from our bubble-dwelling thinking class. In fact, I would strongly recommend that the reader spend some time with Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004) and Listen, Liberal! (2016) as he or she takes up Taibbi's book.

And to really do the book the justice it deserves, I would even more vehemently recommend that the reader immerse him- or herself in Taibbi's favorite book and vade-mecum , Manufacturing Consent (which I found to be a grueling experience: a relentless cataloging of the official lies that hide the brutality of American foreign policy) and, in order to properly appreciate the brilliance of Taibbi's chapter 7, "How the Media Stole from Pro Wrestling," visit some locale in Flyover Country and see some pro wrestling in person (which I found to be unexpectedly uplifting -- more on this soon enough).

Taibbi tells us that he had originally intended for Hate, Inc . to be an updating of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent (1988), which he first read thirty years ago, when he was nineteen. "It blew my mind," Taibbi writes. "[It] taught me that some level of deception was baked into almost everything I'd ever been taught about modern American life .

Once the authors in the first chapter laid out their famed propaganda model [italics mine], they cut through the deceptions of the American state like a buzz saw" (p. 10). For what seemed to be vigorous democratic debate, Taibbi realized, was instead a soul-crushing simulation of debate. The choices voters were given were distinctions without valid differences, and just as hyped, just as trivial, as the choices between a Whopper and a Big Mac, between Froot Loops and Frosted Mini-Wheats, between Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, between Marlboro Lites and Camel Filters. It was all profit-making poisonous junk.

"Manufacturing Consent," Taibbi writes, "explains that the debate you're watching is choreographed. The range of argument has been artificially narrowed long before you get to hear it" (p. 11). And there's an indisputable logic at work here, because the reality of hideous American war crimes is and always has been, from the point of view of the big media corporations, a "narrative-ruining" buzz-kill. "The uglier truth [brought to light in Manufacturing Consent ], that we committed genocide of a fairly massive scale across Indochina -- ultimately killing at least a million innocent civilians by air in three countries -- is pre-excluded from the history of the period" (p. 13).

So what has changed in the last thirty years? A lot! As a starting point let's consider the very useful metaphor found in the title of another great media book of 1988: Mark Crispin Miller's Boxed In: The Culture of TV . To say that Americans were held captive by the boob tube affords us not only a useful historical image but also suggests the possibility of their having been able to view the television as an antagonist, and therefore of their having been able, at least some of them, to rebel against its dictates. Three decades later, on the other hand, the television has been replaced by iPhones and portable tablets, the workings of which are so precisely intertwined with even the most intimate minute-to-minute aspects of our lives that our relationship to them could hardly ever become antagonistic.

Taibbi summarizes the history of these three decades in terms of three "massive revolutions" in the media plus one actual massive political revolution, all of which, we should note, he discussed with his hero Chomsky (who is now ninety! -- Edward Herman passed away in 2017) even as he wrote his book. And so: the media revolutions which Taibbi describes were, first, the coming of FoxNews along with Rush Limbaugh-style talk radio; second, the coming of CNN, i.e., the Cable News Network, along with twenty-four hour infinite-loop news cycles; third, the coming of the Internet along with the mighty social media giants Facebook and Twitter.

The massive political revolution was, going all the way back to 1989, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and then of the Soviet Union itself -- and thus of the usefulness of anti-communism as a kind of coercive secular religion (pp. 14-15).

For all that, however, the most salient difference between the news media of 1989 and the news media of 2019 is the disappearance of the single type of calm and decorous and slightly boring cis-het white anchorman (who somehow successfully appealed to a nationwide audience) and his replacement by a seemingly wide variety of demographically-engineered news personæ who all rage and scream combatively in each other's direction. "In the old days," Taibbi writes, "the news was a mix of this toothless trivia and cheery dispatches from the frontlines of Pax Americana . The news [was] once designed to be consumed by the whole house . But once we started to be organized into demographic silos [italics mine], the networks found another way to seduce these audiences: they sold intramural conflict" (p. 18).

And in this new media environment of constant conflict, how, Taibbi wondered, could public consent , which would seem to be at the opposite end of the spectrum from conflict, still be manufactured ?? "That wasn't easy for me to see in my first decades in the business," Taibbi writes. "For a long time, I thought it was a flaw in the Chomsky/Herman model" (p. 19).

But what Taibbi was at length able to understand, and what he is now able to describe for us with both wit and controlled outrage, is that our corporate media have devised -- at least for the time being -- highly-profitable marketing processes that manufacture fake dissent in order to smother real dissent (p. 21).

And the smothering of real dissent is close enough to public consentto get the goddam job done: The Herman/Chomsky model is, after all these years, still valid.

Or pretty much so. Taibbi is more historically precise. Because of the tweaking of the Herman/Chomsky propaganda model necessitated by the disappearance of the USSR in 1991 ("The Russians escaped while we weren't watching them, / As Russians do ," Jackson Browne presciently prophesied on MTV way back in 1983), one might now want to speak of a Propaganda Model 2.0. For, as Taibbi notes, " the biggest change to Chomsky's model is the discovery of a far superior 'common enemy' in modern media: each other. So long as we remain a bitterly-divided two-party state, we'll never want for TV villains" (pp. 207-208).

To rub his great insight right into our uncomprehending faces, Taibbi has almost sadistically chosen to have dark, shadowy images of a yelling Sean Hannity (in lurid FoxNews Red!) and a screaming Rachel Maddow (in glaring MSNBC Blue!) juxtaposed on the cover of his book. For Maddow, he notes, is "a depressingly exact mirror of Hannity . The two characters do exactly the same work. They make their money using exactly the same commercial formula. And though they emphasize different political ideas, the effect they have on audiences is much the same" (pp. 259-260).

And that effect is hate. Impotent hate. For while Rachel's fan demographic is all wrapped up in hating Far-Right Fascists Like Sean, and while Sean's is all wrapped up in despising Libtard Lunatics Like Rachel, the bipartisan consensus in Washington for ever-increasing military budgets, for everlasting wars, for ever-expanding surveillance, for ever-growing bailouts of and tax breaks for and and handouts to the most powerful corporations goes forever unchallenged.

Oh my. And it only gets worse and worse, because the media, in order to make sure that their various siloed demographics stay superglued to their Internet devices, must keep ratcheting up levels of hate: the Fascists Like Sean and the Libtards Like Rachel must be continually presented as more and more deranged, and ultimately as demonic. "There is us and them," Taibbi writes, "and they are Hitler" (p. 64). A vile reductio ad absurdum has come into play: "If all Trump supporters are Hitler, and all liberals are also Hitler," Taibbi writes, " [t]he America vs. America show is now Hitler vs. Hitler! Think of the ratings! " The reader begins to grasp Taibbi's argument that our mainstream corporate media are as bad as -- are worse than -- pro wrestling. It's an ineluctable downward spiral.

Taibbi continues: "The problem is, there's no natural floor to this behavior. Just as cable TV will eventually become seven hundred separate twenty-four-hour porn channels, news and commentary will eventually escalate to boxing-style, expletive-laden, pre-fight tirades, and the open incitement to violence [italics mine]. If the other side is literally Hitler, [w]hat began as America vs. America will eventually move to Traitor vs. Traitor , and the show does not work if those contestants are not eventually offended to the point of wanting to kill one another" (pp. 65-69).

As I read this book, I often wondered about how difficult it was emotionally for Taibbi to write it. I'm just really glad to see that the guy didn't commit suicide along the way. He does describe the "self-loathing" he experienced as he realized his own complicity in the marketing processes which he exposes (p. 2). He also apologizes to the reader for his not being able to follow through on his original aim of writing a continuation of Herman and Chomsky's classic: "[W]hen I sat down to write what I'd hoped would be something with the intellectual gravitas of Manufacturing Consent ," Taibbi confesses, "I found decades of more mundane frustrations pouring out onto the page, obliterating a clinical examination" (p. 2).

I, however, am profoundly grateful to Taibbi for all of his brilliantly observed anecdotes. The subject matter is nauseating enough even in Taibbi's sparkling and darkly tragicomic prose. A more academic treatment of the subject would likely be too depressing to read. So let me conclude with an anecdote of my own -- and an oddly uplifting one at that -- about reading Taibbi's chapter 7, "How the News Media Stole from Pro Wrestling."

On the same day I read this chapter I saw that, on the bulletin board in my gym, a poster had appeared, as if by magic, promoting an upcoming Primal Conflict (!) professional wrestling event. I studied the photos of the wrestlers on the poster carefully, and, as an astute reader of Taibbi, I prided myself on being able to identify which of them seemed be playing the roles of heels , and which of them the roles of babyfaces .

For Taibbi explains that one of the fundamental dynamics of wrestling involves the invention of crowd-pleasing narratives out of the many permutations and combinations of pitting heels against faces . Donald Trump, a natural heel , brings the goofy dynamics of pro wrestling to American politics with real-life professional expertise. (Taibbi points out that in 2007 Trump actually performed before a huge cheering crowd in a Wrestlemania event billed as the "battle of the billionaires." Watch it on YouTube! https://youtu.be/5NsrwH9I9vE -- unbelievable!!)

The mainstream corporate media, on the other hand, their eyes fixed on ever bigger and bigger profits, have drifted into the metaphorical pro wrestling ring in ignorance, and so, when they face off against Trump, they often end up in the role of inept prudish pearl-clutching faces .

Taibbi condemns the mainstream media's failure to understand such a massively popular form of American entertainment as "malpractice" (p. 125), so I felt more than obligated to buy a ticket and see the advertised event in person. To properly educate myself, that is.

... ... ...

Steve Ruis , November 5, 2019 at 8:13 am

I have stopped watching broadcast "news" other than occasional sessions of NPR in the car. I get most of my news from sources such as this and from overseas sources (The Guardian, Reuters, etc.). I used to subscribe to newspapers but have given them up in disgust, even though I was looking forward to leisurely enjoying a morning paper after I retired.

I was brought up in the positive 1950's and, boy, did this turn out poorly.

Dao Gen , November 5, 2019 at 8:59 am

Matt Taibbi is an American treasure, and I love his writing very much, but we also need to ask, Why hasn't another Chomsky (or another Hudson), an analyst with a truly deep and wide-ranging, synthetic mind, appeared on the left to take apart our contemporary media and show us its inner workings? Have all the truly great minds gone to work for Wall Street? I don't have an answer, but to me the pro wrestling metaphor, while intriguing, misses something about the Fourth Estate in America, if it indeed still exists. And that is, except for radio, there is a distinct imbalance between the two sides of the MSM lineup. On the corporate liberal side of the national MSM team you have five wrestlers, but on the conservative/reactionary side you have only the Fox entry. Because of this imbalance, the corruption, laziness, self-indulgence, and generally declining interest in journalistic standards seems greater among the corporate liberal media team, including the NYT and WaPo, than the Fox team.

I'm not a fan of either Maddow (in her current incarnation) or Hannity, but Hannity, perhaps because he thinks he's like David, often hustles to refute the discourse of the corporate liberal Goliath team. Hannity obviously does more research on some topics than Maddow, and, perhaps because he began in radio, he puts more emphasis on semi-rationally structured rants than Maddow, who depends more on primal emotion, body language, and Hollywood-esque fear-inducing atmospherics.

I'd wager that in a single five-minute segment there will often be twice as many rational distinctions made in a Hannity rant than in a Maddow performance. In addition, for the last three years Hannity has simply been demonstrably right about the fake Russiagate propaganda blitz while Maddow has been as demonstrably wrong from the very beginning as propaganda industry trend-setter Adam Schiff. So for at least these last three years, the Maddow-Hannity primal match has been a somewhat misleading metaphor. The Blob and the security state have been decisively supporting (and directing?) the corporate liberal global interventionist media, at least regarding Russia and the permanent war establishment, and because the imbalance between the interventionist and the non-interventionist MSM, Russia and Ukraine are being used as a wedge to steadily break down the firewalls between the Dem party, the intel community, and the interventionist MSM. If we had real public debates with both sides at approximately equal strength as we did during the Vietnam War, then even pro wrestling-type matches would be superior to what we have now, which is truthy truth and thoughtsy thought coming to us from the military industrial complex and monopolistic holding companies. If fascism is defined as the fusion of the state and corporations, then the greatest threat of fascism in America may well be coming from the apparent gradual fusion of the corporate liberal MSM, the Dem party elite, and the intel community. Instead of an MSM wrestling match, we may soon be faced with a Japanese-style 'hitori-zumo' match in which a sumo wrestler wrestles with only himself. Once these sumo wrestlers were believed to be wrestling with invisible spirits, but those days are gone . http://kikuko-nagoya.com/html/hitori-zumo.htm

coboarts , November 5, 2019 at 9:59 am

"If we had real public debates" and if they were even debates where issues entered into contest were addressed point by point with evidence

Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg , November 5, 2019 at 10:03 am

Today's Noam Chomksy? Chomsky was part of the machine who broke ranks with it. His MIT research was generously funded by the Military Industrial Complex. Thankfully, enough of his latent humanity and Trotskyite upbringing shone through so he exposed what he was part of. So I guess today that's Chris Hedges, though he's a preacher at heart and not a semiotician.

neighbor7 , November 5, 2019 at 10:04 am

Thank you, Dao Gen. An excellent analysis, and your final image is usefully haunting.

a different chris , November 5, 2019 at 12:11 pm

> In addition, for the last three years Hannity has simply been demonstrably right about the fake Russiagate propaganda blitz while Maddow has been as demonstrably wrong

Eh. Read whats-his-name's (Frankfurter?) book On Bullshit . You are giving Hannity credit for something he doesn't really care about.

jrs , November 5, 2019 at 12:21 pm

I don't believe the media environment as a whole leans corporate Dem/neoliberal.

T.V. maybe, but radio is much more right wing than left (yes there is NPR and Pacifica, the latter with probably only a scattering of listerners but ) and it's still out there and a big influence, radio hasn't gone away. So doesn't the right wing tilt of radio kind of balance out television? (not necessarily in a good way but). And then there is the internet and I have no idea what the overall lean of that is (I mean I prefer left wing sites, but that's purely my own bubble and actually there are much fewer left analysis out there than I'd like)

Self Affine , November 5, 2019 at 9:05 am

Also,

Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism

by Sheldon S. Wolin

Critical deep analysis of not just the media but the whole American political enterprise and
the nature of our "democracy".

DJG , November 5, 2019 at 9:20 am

The whole review is good, but this extract should be quoted extensively:

While Frank's topic was the abysmal failure of the Democratic Party to be democratic and Taibbi's is the abysmal failure of our mainstream news corporations to report news, the prominent villains in both books are drawn from the same, or at least overlapping, elite social circles: from, that is, our virulently anti-populist liberal class, from our intellectually mediocre creative class, from our bubble-dwelling thinking class.

In short, stagnation and self-dealing at the top. What could possibly go wrong?

Yves Smith Post author , November 5, 2019 at 11:51 am

Are you serious? Maddow called Trump a traitor and accused him of betrayal in Russiagate, and was caught out when that fell apart. This was pointed out all over the MSM .

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/03/27/rachel-maddows-deep-delusion-226266

https://www.salon.com/2018/07/17/rachel-maddow-hits-the-panic-button-after-trump-putin-summit-this-is-the-worst-case-scenario/

Carolinian , November 5, 2019 at 9:52 am

This is great stuff. Thanks.

One quibble: the author says

Three decades later, on the other hand, the television has been replaced by iPhones and portable tablets

and then goes on to spend most of the article talking about television. I'd say television is still the main propaganda instrument even if many webheads like yours truly ignore it (I've never seen Hannity's show or Maddow's–just hear the rumors). Arguably even newspapers like the NYT have been dumbed down because the reporters long to be on TV and join the shouting. And it's surely no coincidence that our president himself is a TV (and WWE) star. Mass media have always been feeders of hysteria but television gave them faces and voices. Watching TV is also a far more passive experience than surfing the web. They are selling us "narratives," bedtime stories, and we like sleepy children merely listen.

Jerri-Lynn Scofield , November 5, 2019 at 9:54 am

This rave review has inspired me to add this to my to-read non-fiction queue. Currently reading William Dalrymple's The Anarchy, on the rise of the East India Company. Next up: Matt Stoller's Goliath. And then I'll get to Taibbi. Probably worth digging up my original copy of Manufacturing Consent as well, which I read many moons ago; time for a re-read.

Susan the Other , November 5, 2019 at 12:32 pm

almost every page of mine is dog-eared and marked along the edge with exclamation points

urblintz , November 5, 2019 at 1:41 pm

May I suggest Stephen Cohen's "War with Russia?" if it's not already on your list? In focusing on the danger emerging from the new cold war, seeded by the Democrats, propagated by corporate media (which he thinks is more dangerous than the first), Cohen clarifies the importance of diplomacy especially with one's nuclear rivals.

Imagine that

shinola , November 5, 2019 at 9:56 am

Support your local book store!

Off The Street , November 5, 2019 at 9:57 am

Us rubes knew decades ago about pro wrestling. There was a regional circuit and the hero in one town would become the villain in another town. The ones to be surprised were like John Stossel, who got a perforated eardrum from a slap upside the head for his efforts at in-your-face journalism with a wrestler who just wouldn't play along with his grandstanding. Somewhere, kids cheered and life went on.

The Historian , November 5, 2019 at 10:01 am

Ah, Ancient Athens, here we come – running back to repeat your mistakes! Our MSM media has decided that when we are not at our neighbor's throats, we should be at each other's throats!

teacup , November 5, 2019 at 10:11 am

I was watching old clips of the 'Fred Friendly Seminars' on YouTube. IMHO any channel that produced a format such as this would be a ratings bonanza. Imagine a round table with various media figures (corporate) left, (corporate) right, and independent being refereed by a host-moderator discussing topics in 'Hate, Inc.'. In wrestling it's called a Battle Royale. The Fourth Estate in a cage match!

@ape , November 5, 2019 at 10:12 am

And the smothering of real dissent is close enough to public consentto get the goddam job done: The Herman/Chomsky model is, after all these years, still valid.

This is important, if people don't want to be naive about what democracy buys. Democracy in the end is a ritual system to determine which members of an elite would win a war without actually having to hold the war. Like how court functions to replace personal revenge by determining (often) who would win in a fight if there were one, and the feudal system replaced the genocidal wars of the axial age with the gentler warfare of the middle ages which were often ritual wars of the elite that avoided the full risk of the earlier wars.

That, I think, is important -- under a democracy, the winner should be normally the winner of the avoided violent conflict to be sustainable. Thus, it's enough to get most people to consent to the solution, using the traditional meaning of consent being "won't put up a fight to avoid it". If the choices on the table are reduced enough, you can get by with most people simply dropping out of the questions.

Qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit

It shouldn't be a surprise that we've moved to "faking dissent" -- it's the natural evolution of a system where a lot of the effective power is in the hands of tech, and not just as in the early 20th century, how many workers you have and how many soldiers you can raise.

If you don't like it, change the technology we use to fight one another. We went from tribes to lords when we switch from sticks to advanced forged weapons, and we went from feudalism to democracy when we had factories dropping guns that any 15 year old could use (oversimplifying a bit). Now that the stuff requires expertise, you'd expect a corresponding shift in how we ritualize our conflict avoidance, and thus the organization of how we control communication and how we organize our rituals of power.

Aka, it's the scientists and the engineers who end up determining how everything is organized, and people never seem to bother with that argument, which is especially surprising that even hard-core Marxists waste their time on short-term politics rather than the tech we're building.

I'd be curious whether Taibbi thought about the issue of the nature of the technology and whether there are technological options on the horizon which drive the conflict in other directions. If we had only kept the laws on copyright and patent weaker, so that the implementation of communicative infrastructure would have stayed decentralized

Susan the Other , November 5, 2019 at 12:41 pm

Tabby's "manufacturing fake consent" was really the whole punchline – the joke's on us. Hunter S. Thompson, another of Taibbi's heroes, is, along with Chomsky, speaking to us through MT. Our media is distracting us from social coherence. Another thing it is doing (just my opinion) is it is overwhelming us to the point of disgust. Nobody likes it. And we protect ourselves by tuning it out. Turning it off. Once the screaming lunatics marginalize themselves by making the whole narrative hysterical, we just act like it's another family fight and we're gonna go do something else. When everyone is screaming, no one is screaming.

Jerry B , November 5, 2019 at 10:26 am

I have tried to read Hate Inc. and Taibbi's Griftopia but one of my main issues with Taibbi's writing is his lack of notes, references, or bibliography, etc. in his books. In skimming Hate Inc. it seems like a book I would enjoy reading, however my personal value system is that any book without footnotes, endnotes, citations, or at minimum a bibliography is just an opinion or a story. At least Thomas Frank's Listen Liberal has a section for End Notes/References at the end of the book. Again just my personal values.

Sbbbd , November 5, 2019 at 10:45 am

Another classic in the genre of manufactured consent through media from the age of radio and Adolf Hitler:

"The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", in the book Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer.

Joe Well , November 5, 2019 at 11:04 am

I am from Greater Boston, far, far from flyover country (which I imagine begins in Yonkers NY), but I sure grew up with pro wrestling as part of the schoolyard discourse. I certainly knew it was as much of a family affair as Disney on Ice and have trouble believing he thought otherwise though I will not impugn his honesty. I am very grateful to the author for taking the time to write this, but is it possible for a male who grew up in the US to be as deeply embedded in the MSNBC demo as he claims to be?

Seriously, how is it possible for a male raised in the US to not at least have some working familiarity with pro wrestling? My family along with my community was very close to the national median income–do higher income boys really not learn about WWF and WWE?

Seriously, rich kids, what was childhood like? I know you had music lessons and sports camps, what else? Was it really that different?

Carolinian , November 5, 2019 at 11:59 am

And it's not just the US. See the British WWE movie: Fighting With My Family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_with_My_Family

Yves Smith Post author , November 5, 2019 at 12:03 pm

Sorry, my blue collar, lifetime union member brother says your view is horseshit. All the knows about WWE and WWF is that they are big-budget fakery and that's why they are of no interest.

amfortas the hippie , November 5, 2019 at 1:38 pm

aye. in my blue to white collar( and back to blue to no collar) upbringing, wrestling was never a thing. it was for the morons who couldn't read. seen as patently absurd by just about everyone i knew. and this in klanridden east texas exurbia
wife's mexican extended familia oth luche libre is a big thing that all and sundry talked about at thanksgiving. less so these days possibly due to the hyperindiviualisation of media intake mentioned
(and,btw, in my little world , horseshit is a good thing)

BlueStater , November 5, 2019 at 11:11 am

Even allowing for my lefty-liberal bias, I do not see how it is possible to equate Fox Noise and MSNBC, or Hannity and Maddow, as "both-sides" extremists. Fox violates basic professional canons of fairness and equity on a daily basis. MSNBC occasionally does, but is quick to correct errors of fact. Hannity is a thuggish outer-borough New York schmuck without much education or knowledge of the world. Maddow is an Oxford Ph.D. and Rhodes Scholar. It is one of the evil successes of the right-wing news cauldron to have successfully equated these two figures and organizations.

Yves Smith Post author , November 5, 2019 at 12:05 pm

Huh? MSNBC regularly makes errors of omission and commission with respect to Sanders. They are still pushing the Russiagate narrative. That's a massive, two-year, virtually all the time error they have refused to recant.

The blind spots of people on the soi-disant left are truly astonishing.

semiconscious , November 5, 2019 at 1:08 pm

'Hannity is a thuggish outer-borough New York schmuck without much education or knowledge of the world. Maddow is an Oxford Ph.D. and Rhodes Scholar '

oh, well, then – end of conversation! i mean, god knows, it'd be a cold day in hell before a rhodes scholar, or even someone married to one, would ever lead us astray down the rosy neoliberal path to hell, while, at the same time, under the spell of trump derangement syndrome, actually attempt to revive the mccarthy era, eh?

Summer , November 5, 2019 at 12:11 pm

Actual drugs are being used to hinder debate as well as emotional drugs like hate.
They can't trust agency to be removed by words and images alone – the stakes are too high.
Now all of you go take a feel good pill and stop complaining!

McWatt , November 5, 2019 at 1:02 pm

I would like to know if Matt is doing any book signings any where around the states for this new title?

David , November 5, 2019 at 1:15 pm

I've been impressed with Taibbi's work, what I've read of it, but ironically this very article contains a quote from him which exemplifies the problem: his casual assertion that the US committed "genocide" in Indochina. Even the most fervent critics of US policy didn't say this at the time, for the very good reason that there was no evidence that the US tried to destroy a racial, religious, ethnic or nationalist group (the full definition is a lot more complex and demanding than that). He clearly means that the US was responsible for lots of deaths, which is incontestable. But the process of endless escalation of rhetoric, which this book seems to be partly about, means that everything now has to be described in the most extreme, absurd or apocalyptic tones, and at the top of your voice, otherwise nobody takes any notice. So any self-respecting war now has to be qualified as "genocide" or nobody will take any notice.

[Nov 05, 2019] Anti-Russian hysteria and the extensive disinformation campaign probably stems from a 'Five Eyes' strategy ... with the malign Uncle as its director.

Notable quotes:
"... Integrity Initiative. ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... 'Where a charity is providing education in respect of a controversial issue it must do so in a way that allows the people being educated to make up their own minds.' ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft. ..."
"... Integrity Initiative, ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft, ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... Open Information Partnership ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Media Diversity Institute ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Moon of Alabama ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... Integrity Initiative. ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... 'Where a charity is providing education in respect of a controversial issue it must do so in a way that allows the people being educated to make up their own minds.' ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft. ..."
"... Integrity Initiative, ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft, ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... Open Information Partnership ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Media Diversity Institute ..."
"... Institute of Statecraft ..."
"... Moon of Alabama ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
Nov 05, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

ben , Nov 4 2019 19:46 utc | 8

james @ 4 opined;"
thanks b... i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia... is this due some need to find someone to demonize, an outgrowth of christianity or god knows what? or is it purely to generate more money into the industrial military complex"

I'm with ya' james, this demonization of Russia, and any countries that refuse the empire's beck and call, is around to stay I'm afraid.

And yes, it's all of the above, but, mostly about the $.

semiconscious , Nov 4 2019 20:11 utc | 9

james @ 4;

'i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia... is this due some need to find someone to demonize, an outgrowth of christianity or god knows what? or is it purely to generate more money into the industrial military complex? what is the rationale?...'

They're the nuclear rival that don't import many of the u.s.'s consumer products. otherwise, it'd either be china, or both...

plus, of course, there's all them cold war memes that can be triggered in a sizable portion of the population's heads...

chet380 , Nov 4 2019 20:26 utc | 11
#4 James, #8 Ben --

I suspect the the antipathy to Russia and the extensive disinformation campaign stems from a 'Five Eyes' project and strategy ... with the malign Uncle as its director.

Joost , Nov 4 2019 20:41 utc | 13
@james #4 "i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia..."
Same motivation as all forgotten empires had. Even our cat want some of it, staring down on his employees from his basket high up on the fridge with that evil look on his face. We call it his World Domination Command Centre, WDCC for short. Global domination is what they crave. Kill the competition, loot its resources, more power, more money. America has been looted, devastated. Time for the locusts to move on to greener pastures. Russia is the promised land, the next wild west new world to colonize. Problem is, as always, the natives.
TEP , Nov 4 2019 21:11 utc | 14
I am hopeful that more and more of the population are realising that if an organisation is promoted by any western government as a source of information, then that organisation will provide disinformation by default. There are few, if any, journalists anywhere that are not part of the empirical disinformation program. Those that are not will be independent and, therefore, by alternate default, extremely wary of western government/government-funded/NGO sources. All the hegemon and it's vassals can do now is double-down and hope that the populations will go back to sleep.
Trisha , Nov 4 2019 21:22 utc | 16
As with all things evil, the British oligarchy began in the 1830s targeting Russia as a threat to its autocratic interests, in this case "defending" the Ottoman Empire against Russia.

The Brits were further scared out of their wits when the 1917 Russian Revolution was on the verge of establishing an anti-capitalist system. So they, along with a ragtag bag of co-conspirators including the United States, launched a military invasion of Russia.

That's right, U.S. troops landed at two places in Russia and fought against Russian soldiers. The Brits/U.S/et. al. suffered a humiliating defeat, leaving so quickly that U.S. dead soldiers were left behind buried in Soviet soil, to be repatriated years later.

But it's Russia that is the threat to "us", right?

Ort , Nov 4 2019 22:23 utc | 19
@ Trisha | Nov 4 2019 21:22 utc | 16
___________________________________________

Thanks for your informative comment. I'd started to reply to James that Russia has been a default "boogie-man" and Western scapegoat since the 19th Century, but that sounded unhelpfully circular-- and I didn't have the ambition to refresh my understanding with actual historical facts. ;)

The fact that a sort of Western "coalition of the willing" invaded Russia after the 1917 revolution is still a well-kept secret! It was never mentioned in my (US) school courses, from parochial school through the "Honors Survey of Western Civilization" course I took in college.


/div> " The MoA Week In Review - Open Thread 2019-64 , Main November 04, 2019 British Government Disinformation Shop Lost Charity Status - Continues In New Format

At the end of last year some enterprising 'anonymous' person released papers of the British Integrity Initiative. As we reported at that time:

The British government financed Integrity Initiative is tasked with spreading anti-Russian propaganda and thereby with influencing the public, military and governments of a number of countries. What follows is an contextual analysis of the third batch of the Initiative's internal papers which were dumped by an anonymous yesterday.

Christopher Nigel Donnelly (CND) is the co-director of The Institute for Statecraft and founder of its offshoot Integrity Initiative . The Initiative claims to "Defend Democracy Against Disinformation".

The Integrity Initiative does this by planting disinformation about alleged Russian influence through journalists 'clusters' throughout Europe and the United States.

Both, the Institute as well as the Initiative, claim to be independent Non-Government Organizations. Both are financed by the British government, NATO and other state donors.

There have been seven releases of Institute of Statecraft documents. They included proposals for large anti-Russian disinformation campaigns . The Institute of Statecraft suggested to impose anti-Russian sanctions as early as January 2015. Its head, the former NATO advisor and military spy Chris Donnelly , also proposed to synchronously expel a large number of Russian diplomats from western countries.

That plans seems to have been the blueprint for the March 2018 mass expulsion of Russian diplomats during the Skripal affair. Several of the other measures Donnelly and his ilk planned have since been implemented.

The Institute of Statecraft was registered as a charity under Scottish law. After the release of its papers the Scottish charity regulator OSCR investigated the status of the Institute . Unsurprisingly the OSCR found (pdf) that its shady behavior and its running of anti-Russian disinformation campaigns did not justify its status:

In the course of our inquiry we found that the charity was not meeting the charity test required for continuing registration as a charity in Scotland because:
  • its purposes were not entirely charitable
  • one of its most significant activities, a project known as Integrity Initiative, did not provide public benefit in furtherance of the charity's purposes
  • private benefit to charity trustees was not incidental to the charity's activities that advance its charitable purpose

The purpose of the charity was purportedly to educate the public. But the regulator found that the Integrity Initiative did not educate but only spread its own version of 'reality' i.e. disinformation. The charity lacked neutrality:

In addition, our Meeting the Charity Test guidance states that:

'Where a charity is providing education in respect of a controversial issue it must do so in a way that allows the people being educated to make up their own minds.'

OSCR's view is that the Integrity Initiative expressed a particular perspective intended to persuade the public to a specific point of view and, given the nature of the subject matter, it was not sufficiently neutral to advance education.

The crocks who were running the charity were filling their own pockets with the public money the 'charity' received:

To pass the charity test any private benefit must be incidental to the organisation's activities that advance its purposes, that is, it must be a necessary result or by-product of the organisation's activities and not an end in itself.

We were concerned at the level of private benefit that a number of the charity's trustees were gaining from the exercise of its functions.

There was no clear explanation as to why the salaries being paid to charity trustees were considered reasonable and necessary, and we had concerns about the charity trustees' decision-making process around these payments. We do not consider that this private benefit was incidental to the organisation's activities that advanced its purposes.

The regulator also noted a lack of record keeping and a lack of documentation of decision making by the Institute's trustees.

Unfortunately the charity regulator will not close down the Institute of Statecraft. It accepted that it rectified its behavior by taking a number of measures:

  • the charity has ceased to undertake any activity related to the Integrity initiative, and this is now undertaken by a non-charitable entity having no legal connection to the charity
  • the charity has ceased to remunerate any of its charity trustees
  • the charity is taking external guidance on governance
  • some charity trustees are to stand down as soon as replacement charity trustees can be identified

The Integrity Initiative, as paid for by the British Foreign Office, Ministry of Defense, NATO and other such entities, will live on as a non-charitable entity with even less transparency. Its website, as well as that of Institute of Statecraft, is down. That it will now have to live in total secrecy will make it more difficult for it to recruit foreign journalist to spread its propaganda.

Since the Integrity Initiative was exposed the British government opened and financed a new secretive shop that will continue to spread anti-Russian disinformation :

On 3rd April, Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) minister Alan Duncan revealed his department's 'Counter Disinformation and Media Development Programme' - which bankrolls the Institute for Statecraft and its Integrity Initiative subsidiary - was funding a new endeavour, Open Information Partnership (OIP).

The announcement, buried in a response to a written parliamentary question, was supremely light on detail - Duncan merely said the effort would "respond to manipulated information in the news, social media and across the public space". Official fanfare was also unforthcoming - there was no accompanying press release, briefing document, or even mention of the launch by any government minister or department via social media channels.

The original proposal for the Open Information Partnership , as released by 'anonymous' , included the Institute of Statecraft , a Media Diversity Institute , Bellingcat , DFR Lab (i.e. the Atlantic Council) and some others in a so called ZINC Network . On the current OIP website the Institute of Statecraft 'charity' is no longer named.

---
Previous Moon of Alabama reports on the issue:

Tim Hayward provides a list (scroll down) of a large number of articles written here and elsewhere about the Integrity Initiative .

Posted by b on November 4, 2019 at 17:57 UTC | Permalink

" The MoA Week In Review - Open Thread 2019-64 | Main November 04, 2019 British Government Disinformation Shop Lost Charity Status - Continues In New Format

At the end of last year some enterprising 'anonymous' person released papers of the British Integrity Initiative. As we reported at that time:

The British government financed Integrity Initiative is tasked with spreading anti-Russian propaganda and thereby with influencing the public, military and governments of a number of countries. What follows is an contextual analysis of the third batch of the Initiative's internal papers which were dumped by an anonymous yesterday.

Christopher Nigel Donnelly (CND) is the co-director of The Institute for Statecraft and founder of its offshoot Integrity Initiative . The Initiative claims to "Defend Democracy Against Disinformation".

The Integrity Initiative does this by planting disinformation about alleged Russian influence through journalists 'clusters' throughout Europe and the United States.

Both, the Institute as well as the Initiative, claim to be independent Non-Government Organizations. Both are financed by the British government, NATO and other state donors.

There have been seven releases of Institute of Statecraft documents. They included proposals for large anti-Russian disinformation campaigns . The Institute of Statecraft suggested to impose anti-Russian sanctions as early as January 2015. Its head, the former NATO advisor and military spy Chris Donnelly , also proposed to synchronously expel a large number of Russian diplomats from western countries.

That plans seems to have been the blueprint for the March 2018 mass expulsion of Russian diplomats during the Skripal affair. Several of the other measures Donnelly and his ilk planned have since been implemented.

The Institute of Statecraft was registered as a charity under Scottish law. After the release of its papers the Scottish charity regulator OSCR investigated the status of the Institute . Unsurprisingly the OSCR found (pdf) that its shady behavior and its running of anti-Russian disinformation campaigns did not justify its status:

In the course of our inquiry we found that the charity was not meeting the charity test required for continuing registration as a charity in Scotland because:
  • its purposes were not entirely charitable
  • one of its most significant activities, a project known as Integrity Initiative, did not provide public benefit in furtherance of the charity's purposes
  • private benefit to charity trustees was not incidental to the charity's activities that advance its charitable purpose

The purpose of the charity was purportedly to educate the public. But the regulator found that the Integrity Initiative did not educate but only spread its own version of 'reality' i.e. disinformation. The charity lacked neutrality:

In addition, our Meeting the Charity Test guidance states that:

'Where a charity is providing education in respect of a controversial issue it must do so in a way that allows the people being educated to make up their own minds.'

OSCR's view is that the Integrity Initiative expressed a particular perspective intended to persuade the public to a specific point of view and, given the nature of the subject matter, it was not sufficiently neutral to advance education.

The crocks who were running the charity were filling their own pockets with the public money the 'charity' received:

To pass the charity test any private benefit must be incidental to the organisation's activities that advance its purposes, that is, it must be a necessary result or by-product of the organisation's activities and not an end in itself.

We were concerned at the level of private benefit that a number of the charity's trustees were gaining from the exercise of its functions.

There was no clear explanation as to why the salaries being paid to charity trustees were considered reasonable and necessary, and we had concerns about the charity trustees' decision-making process around these payments. We do not consider that this private benefit was incidental to the organisation's activities that advanced its purposes.

The regulator also noted a lack of record keeping and a lack of documentation of decision making by the Institute's trustees.

Unfortunately the charity regulator will not close down the Institute of Statecraft. It accepted that it rectified its behavior by taking a number of measures:

  • the charity has ceased to undertake any activity related to the Integrity initiative, and this is now undertaken by a non-charitable entity having no legal connection to the charity
  • the charity has ceased to remunerate any of its charity trustees
  • the charity is taking external guidance on governance
  • some charity trustees are to stand down as soon as replacement charity trustees can be identified

The Integrity Initiative, as paid for by the British Foreign Office, Ministry of Defense, NATO and other such entities, will live on as a non-charitable entity with even less transparency. Its website, as well as that of Institute of Statecraft, is down. That it will now have to live in total secrecy will make it more difficult for it to recruit foreign journalist to spread its propaganda.

Since the Integrity Initiative was exposed the British government opened and financed a new secretive shop that will continue to spread anti-Russian disinformation :

On 3rd April, Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) minister Alan Duncan revealed his department's 'Counter Disinformation and Media Development Programme' - which bankrolls the Institute for Statecraft and its Integrity Initiative subsidiary - was funding a new endeavour, Open Information Partnership (OIP).

The announcement, buried in a response to a written parliamentary question, was supremely light on detail - Duncan merely said the effort would "respond to manipulated information in the news, social media and across the public space". Official fanfare was also unforthcoming - there was no accompanying press release, briefing document, or even mention of the launch by any government minister or department via social media channels.

The original proposal for the Open Information Partnership , as released by 'anonymous' , included the Institute of Statecraft , a Media Diversity Institute , Bellingcat , DFR Lab (i.e. the Atlantic Council) and some others in a so called ZINC Network . On the current OIP website the Institute of Statecraft 'charity' is no longer named.

---
Previous Moon of Alabama reports on the issue:

Tim Hayward provides a list (scroll down) of a large number of articles written here and elsewhere about the Integrity Initiative .

Posted by b on November 4, 2019 at 17:57 UTC | Permalink

div
NoOneYouKnow , Nov 4 2019 18:27 utc | 1
Thanks, B. It's a pity the people of the UK have no foreseeable recourse to stop shadow government operations like this that exist to disinform the people of the UK.
div> Speaking of Bellingcat:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BfLPJpRtyq4RFtHJoNpvWQjmGnyVkfE2HYoICKOGguA/mobilebas

Posted by: NOBTS , Nov 4 2019 18:45 utc | 2

Speaking of Bellingcat:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BfLPJpRtyq4RFtHJoNpvWQjmGnyVkfE2HYoICKOGguA/mobilebas

Posted by: NOBTS | Nov 4 2019 18:45 utc | 2

karlof1 , Nov 4 2019 18:49 utc | 3
At Kit Klarenberg's Twitter , there's a long tweet thread further detailing what b has written above. I can't help be wonder how the Monty Python troop would have portrayed the Institute for Statecraft and its parent the Integrity Initiative. It appears that the governments of the English speaking nations became addicted to lying to their citizens @1900 and are unable to kick the habit and instead have actually deepened their addiction. Elsewhere on the planet, it seems that people are learning it's easier to talk straight and transparently with other people and to pool resources and combine efforts to form a community of nations and humanity to better one and all. Seems simple enough to determine which is functional and which isn't.
james , Nov 4 2019 18:50 utc | 4
thanks b... i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia... is this due some need to find someone to demonize, an outgrowth of christianity or god knows what? or is it purely to generate more money into the industrial military complex? what is the rationale? i agree with @ 1 - noyk - it is unfortunate the uk people are used as guinea pigs on such a regular basis.. i suspect a similar exercise is in operation in canada and the west, although it seems the msm fulfills this role here...
NOBTS , Nov 4 2019 18:51 utc | 5
Oops! Googlehidden. Here's one that might work. An interesting compendium: https://www.comsuregroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Bellingcats-Digital-Toolkit.pdf
erik , Nov 4 2019 18:54 utc | 6
It seems that often products or organizations, which contain superlatives or anodyne expressions in their names, are generally sketchy...
karlof1 , Nov 4 2019 19:19 utc | 7
The Federalist declares it's published a scoop :

"CIA, FBI Informant Was Washington Post Source For Russiagate Smears."

The article details a segment of Russiagate's overall unraveling and outs WaPost's David Ignatius as part of Operation Mockingbird. And I see no reason to dispute the item's conclusion:

"These close connections between the Washington Post's Ignatius and individuals connected to the American and British intelligence communities, and the false reporting that has taken place over the last three-plus years, raise grave concerns that the warfare of the soft coup aimed at President Trump includes using the media to push propaganda."

The longer the above conclusion's denied, the wider the polarization becomes between those guided by facts and those following media fantasies.

ben , Nov 4 2019 19:46 utc | 8
james @ 4 opined;"
thanks b... i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia... is this due some need to find someone to demonize, an outgrowth of christianity or god knows what? or is it purely to generate more money into the industrial military complex"

I'm with ya' james, this demonetization of Russia, and any countries that refuse the empire's beck and call, is around to stay I'm afraid.

And yes, it's all of the above, but, mostly about the $.

semiconscious , Nov 4 2019 20:11 utc | 9
james @ 4;

'i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia... is this due some need to find someone to demonize, an outgrowth of christianity or god knows what? or is it purely to generate more money into the industrial military complex? what is the rationale?...'

they're the nuclear rival that don't manufacture many of the u.s.'s consumer products. otherwise, it'd either be china, or both...

plus, of course, there's all them cold war memes that can be triggered in a sizable portion of the population's heads...

David G , Nov 4 2019 20:13 utc | 10
The OSCR report includes the Institute for Statecraft's own description of its purposes, but nothing about its actual operations, other than the ones now being deemed unsatisfactory under the charities law.

So now that the Institute has committed not to run the Integrity Initiative, and not to enrich its trustees, what are its legitimate "charitable" activities that OSCR is kindly allowing it to continue with?

chet380 , Nov 4 2019 20:26 utc | 11
#4 James, #8 Ben --

I suspect the the antipathy to Russia and the extensive disinformation campaign stems from a 'Five Eyes' project and strategy ... with the malign Uncle as its director.

James , Nov 4 2019 20:31 utc | 12
As an Irish citizen, I think the British deep state - the original deep state -have been very successful at demonising the enemies of 'freedom' and 'civilisation', the Irish yes, also the Indians, Africans, Germans, french, Spanish, Muslims and now the Russians. Our enemies are not each other rather the deep state. Let's recognise who our real enemy is
Joost , Nov 4 2019 20:41 utc | 13
@james #4 "i don't understand why so much hate is directed at russia..."
Same motivation as all forgotten empires had. Even our cat want some of it, staring down on his employees from his basket high up on the fridge with that evil look on his face. We call it his World Domination Command Centre, WDCC for short. Global domination is what they crave. Kill the competition, loot its resources, more power, more money. America has been looted, devastated. Time for the locusts to move on to greener pastures. Russia is the promised land, the next wild west new world to colonize. Problem is, as always, the natives.
TEP , Nov 4 2019 21:11 utc | 14
I am hopeful that more and more of the population are realising that if an organisation is promoted by any western government as a source of information, then that organisation will provide disinformation by default. There are few, if any, journalists anywhere that are not part of the empirical disinformation program. Those that are not will be independent and, therefore, by alternate default, extremely wary of western government/government-funded/NGO sources. All the hegemon and it's vassals can do now is double-down and hope that the populations will go back to sleep.
james , Nov 4 2019 21:18 utc | 15
@8 ben / @ 9 semiconscious / @ 11 chet380.. yes, there is that too, but is that it? money as ben says rings true for me mostly... that is mostly how i see this...the agencies seem to be a front for western oligarchs.. the kleptomaniacs want access to all russian resources and have yet to be successful in getting it.. they succeeded in ukraine for the most part in having the kleptos gain control over much of ukraine.. the 2014 coop was meant to solidify more of that and poke russia in the eye too..

@ 13 joost... i would watch out for your cat! alas, we all seem to agree it is about wanting to loot russia... we share a similar viewpoint.. it is really sick how so many are ignorant pawns, or worse in all of this.. no wonder i make next to no money working in the music industry... i am in the wrong game and don't share a lack of ethics on such display with all these losers..

Trisha , Nov 4 2019 21:22 utc | 16
As with all things evil, the British oligarchy began in the 1830s targeting Russia as a threat to its autocratic interests, in this case "defending" the Ottoman Empire against Russia.

The Brits were further scared out of their wits when the 1917 Russian Revolution was on the verge of establishing an anti-capitalist system. So they, along with a ragtag bag of co-conspirators including the United States, launched a military invasion of Russia.

That's right, U.S. troops landed at two places in Russia and fought against Russian soldiers. The Brits/U.S/et. al. suffered a humiliating defeat, leaving so quickly that U.S. dead soldiers were left behind buried in Soviet soil, to be repatriated years later.

But it's Russia that is the threat to "us", right?

Jen , Nov 4 2019 21:34 utc | 17
Reading through the OCSR's document at the PDF link in B's post, I am surprised (should I be?) that during the entire decade-long period when the Institute of Statecraft was registered as a charity, the OCSR did not see fit at any time to remind the organisation of its responsibilities to keep proper records of its activities and decision-making, to provide a proper formal and transparent structure for its activities that could be shown to demonstrate a public benefit, and to have proper formal structures generally for its day-to-day running and governance activities. The Scottish public have every right to hold the OCSR to much higher standards of being a regulatory organisation making sure that charities are run properly as charities and not simply accept those charities' word that they will improve their operations when they have spent 10 long years taking money (some of it taxpayers' money) and misusing it.
Jackrabbit , Nov 4 2019 21:46 utc | 18
james @15:
they succeeded in ukraine for the most part in having the kleptos gain control over much of ukraine..

Ukraine is an economic disaster. Donbas and Crimea were the most valuable parts.

Ort , Nov 4 2019 22:23 utc | 19
@ Trisha | Nov 4 2019 21:22 utc | 16
___________________________________________

Thanks for your informative comment. I'd started to reply to James that Russia has been a default "boogie-man" and Western scapegoat since the 19th Century, but that sounded unhelpfully circular-- and I didn't have the ambition to refresh my understanding with actual historical facts. ;)

The fact that a sort of Western "coalition of the willing" invaded Russia after the 1917 revolution is still a well-kept secret! It was never mentioned in my (US) school courses, from parochial school through the "Honors Survey of Western Civilization" course I took in college.


Jackrabbit , Nov 4 2019 22:31 utc | 20
james @4

You ask too many questions... isn't it clear?

We hate THEM 'cause THEY hate US.

/snarc

Seriously, we've seen the movie and read the book. This is how "Red Scare" McCarthyism works.

!!

james , Nov 5 2019 0:10 utc | 21
@18 jr... disaster capitalism at its finest!!

@ 20..lol.. that is true... can't ver ask too many questions! and, it has been a repeat of mccarthyism.. it's bizarre to see so many otherwise intelligent people swallow this crap.. i think of emptywheel and how i used to think she was smart.. she is so busy looking at the trees, she's incapable of seeing the forest..

james , Nov 5 2019 0:21 utc | 22
@16 trisha... thanks... as i have mentioned here at moa numerous times, the book 'paris 1918' by Margaret Macmillan is an excellent book that gives an overview and discusses exactly what you are talking about.. i can't recommend the book enough..
https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/1135/Paris-1919
Ash Naz , Nov 5 2019 0:55 utc | 23
I ploughed through the Kit Klarenberg piece on Sputnik that b linked to and would have wept at the Orwellian inversions of truth in the OIP's 'mission statment' if I'd had any tears left after enduring the recent decades of lies and projection of the Empire's propaganda machine. The Mighty Wurlitzer at corporate-speak indeed. In fact all I could do was laugh like Group Captain Mandrake in Dr Strangelove when confronted with the madness of General Ripper.

Tragically, the opening paragraph of their statement sounded like something Caitlin Johnstone might pen, urging our side to be wary and vigilant of the propaganda of them .

"Democracy cannot thrive without honest, accurate and freely available information about the world around us We need to know where our information is coming from, we need to know the motives (good, bad or neither) of those providing the information, and be in the habit of thinking critically about everything we read and hear. Every one of us has the right to be properly informed – that knowledge gives us strength. Every one of us shares responsibility for informed engagement and critical thinking, to challenge the powerful and uncover the truth An engaged population, equipped with clarity and the truth, is the foundation for a world where we can all enjoy greater equality and greater peace."

"critical thinking"
"challenge the powerful"
"uncover the truth"

They are taking the tools that we need to deal with their perfidy, and pretending that they need to use them to "challenge the powerful and uncover the truth". I found this Orwellian inversion of the truth so chilling that I could only laugh.

In all seriousness, I can only presume that they actually believe their own lies.

vk , Nov 5 2019 3:10 utc | 26
The Wolfowitz Doctrine (1992) states that Russia should remain America's main enemy for the forseeable future because it inherited the USSR's nuclear arsenal. At least this is the official rationale.

But there may be another reason. Courtesy from Pepe Escobar's facebook page:

Francis Fukuyama interview: "Socialism ought to come back"

Trisha , Nov 5 2019 4:08 utc | 29
@22 James ... thanks for the "Paris 1919" book reference, luckily it's available at my local library. For a detailed history of (sadly) another in a long list of America's criminal acts of aggressive war, I highly recommend Russian Sideshow: America's Undeclared War, 1918-1920 by Robert L. Willett.
nietzsche1510 , Nov 5 2019 7:15 utc | 33
they are attacking Russia because they know that only military force can stop the collapse the fake Dollar & all the Jewish printed wealth which goes with it. "yes, the Dollar is our money, but, it is your problem" sort of imposed doctrine of the last half-century is coming to an end & no naval carriers could stop its fall.

[Nov 04, 2019] Adam Schiff's Impeachment Witness Tampering Julie Kelly RUTHFULLY YOURS

Nov 04, 2019 | www.ruthfullyyours.com

Adam Schiff's Impeachment Witness Tampering Julie Kelly

Posted By Ruth King on October 19th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/18/adam-schiffs-impeachment-witness-tampering/

The House Intelligence Committee chairman has lied with impunity to the American public and to Congress. Now he's running a secret inquiry, withholding evidence from colleagues, and may have coached the "whistleblower" behind Ukraine-gate.

H ouse Republicans on Monday will attempt to force a vote to censure Representative Adam Schiff (D.-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The resolution, authored by Rep. Andy Biggs (R.-Ariz.), has 170 Republican co-sponsors. (It's unclear why the remaining 27 GOP congressmen have not signed on.)

The motion condemns Schiff for actions that "misled the American people, bring disrepute upon the House of Representatives, and make a mockery of the impeachment process, one of this chamber's most solemn constitutional duties." It lists several specific offenses, including Schiff's repeated claims that he possessed solid evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and his intentional misrepresentation of the July phone call between Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

If Schiff were a Republican, his own colleagues would have dispatched him long ago. Compare the way Schiff's caucus is condoning his misdeeds with the way House Republicans in 2017 signed on to a bogus House ethics inquiry into Rep. Devin Nunes (R.-Calif.), sidelining his nascent investigation into the corrupt origins of the FBI's Trump-Russia probe for eight crucial months. (He was cleared of any wrongdoing.)

Schiff has lied with impunity to the American public and to Congress. He is suspected of leaking nonpublic, and in some instances, classified material to the press.

At the same time, Schiff is denying access to his secret impeachment proceedings and withholding information from House members. Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee sent a letter to Schiff on Friday, accusing him of failing to furnish documents related to his "impeachment inquiry," a clear violation of House rules. Yet Schiff remains a media darling and a hero of #TheResistance.

Schiff's Possible Crimes

But Schiff's repeated witness tampering is not just a breach of House protocol, it is a crime. In a bombshell article, Breitbart reported this week that Thomas Eager, a top Schiff aide, traveled to Ukraine in late August and met with the acting U.S. ambassador to that country. The diplomat, Bill Taylor -- who is temporarily occupying the position following Trump's removal of the previous ambassador -- is scheduled to testify next week before Schiff's ongoing impeachment tribunal.

According to Breitbart , Eager traveled to Ukraine from August 24 to August 31; Eager's meeting with Taylor was the first item of business. (The trip was approved by Schiff, according to official documents.)

The timing of the trip is suspicious for several reasons: The junket occurred during the exact timeframe that the "whistleblower" complaint concerning Trump's call with Ukranian President Zelensky was under consideration by the intelligence community's inspector general. On August 28, Schiff ominously tweeted that "Trump is withholding vital military aid to Ukraine, while his personal lawyer seeks help from the Ukraine government to investigate his political opponent."

But the report had not been submitted officially to Schiff's committee. Inspector General Michael Atkinson did not alert Schiff's committee about the complaint until September 9 over an internal disagreement about Atkinson's assessment that the complaint was of "urgent concern."

Coincidentally (or not), on that very same day , Taylor sent a text to Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union.

"As I said on the phone, I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign," Taylor wrote to Sondland, who seemed surprised by the message. "Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump's intentions," Sondland replied. "The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo's of any kind." The $250 million aid package was released two days later.

So, Schiff's lackey suddenly shows up in Ukraine at the end of August to meet with the fill-in American ambassador while his boss is concocting his latest collusion-based impeachment fantasy? What exactly did Eager and Taylor discuss?

Did Eager brief Taylor about the forthcoming "whistleblower" report , which also contained false accusations that Trump "is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election" while expressing alarm about a delay in American financial assistance to Ukraine? After all, there was no reason for Taylor to suggest the aid was tied to giving assistance to a political campaign since nothing of the sort had been reported by the news media. Why did Taylor send that text on the same day that Atkinson tattled to Schiff's committee about a hold-up of the "whistleblower" report?

Questions for Witnesses

Another question Republicans might want to ask Taylor is whether Eager told him that the committee already had talked to the "whistleblower" before the official report was prepared. In another example of his bad habit of tampering with witnesses, Schiff admitted that, despite his public protestations to the contrary, his committee had been approached by the "whistleblower" prior to filing the complaint on August 12.

An unnamed intelligence committee aide -- could it also be Eager? -- met with the still-anonymous "whistleblower" and advised the official how to proceed. He then notified his boss, Schiff, who later denied the pre-report rendezvous. Schiff told MSNBC on September 17 that "we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower." After the New York Times contradicted that claim on October 2, Schiff was forced to backpedal, insisting he should have been more clear. The Washington Post awarded Schiff four Pinocchios for his initial claim and subsequent excuse.

Now that his chicanery has been exposed, Schiff also is walking back his demand that the "whistleblower" immediately testify before his committee.

In addition to his most recent witness-tampering escapades, Schiff has a few more incidents on the books.

During his House testimony last February, Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal attorney, confessed that he had been in contact with the California Democrat in advance of the spectacle. "I spoke to Mr. Schiff about topics that were going to be raised at the upcoming hearing," Cohen told Rep. James Jordan (R.-Ohio). Reports later emerged that Schiff's staff traveled to New York on four separate occasions to meet with Cohen for more than 10 hours before his testimony, leading to legitimate questions about coaching a congressional witness.

And then there is the allegedly serendipitous meet-up in Aspen between Schiff and Glenn Simpson, the co-owner of Fusion GPS, as Simpson faced congressional scrutiny for his role in facilitating the bogus Trump-Russia collusion hoax and handling of the infamous Steele dossier. A few months after his encounter with Schiff in the summer of 2018, Simpson pleaded the Fifth before the House Intelligence Committee, which was controlled by Republicans at the time.

Tampering with a witness -- including attempts to "influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding" including a secret congressional tribunal -- is a federal offense . But although Schiff is a repeat offender, his Democratic colleagues refuse to denounce his bad behavior. Schiff is lucky he isn't a Republican. Julie Kelly Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. Her past work can be found at The Federalist and National Review. She also

[Nov 03, 2019] Growing Indicators of Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force by Larry C Johnson - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The Task Force also could carry out other covert actions, such as information operations. A nice sounding euphemism for propaganda, and computer network operations. There has been some informed speculation that Guccifer 2.0 was a creation of this Task Force. ..."
Nov 03, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Growing Indicators of Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force by Larry C Johnson Larry Johnson-5x7

The average American has no idea how alarming is the news that former CIA Director John Brennan reportedly created and staffed a CIA Task Force in early 2016 that was named, Trump Task Force, and given the mission of spying on and carrying out covert actions against the campaign of candidate Donald Trump.

This was not a simple gathering of a small number of disgruntled Democrats working at the CIA who got together like a book club to grouse and complain about the brash real estate guy from New York. It was a specially designed covert action to try to destroy Donald Trump.

A "Task Force" is a special bureaucratic creation that provides a vehicle for bring case officers and analysts together, along with admin support, for a limited term project. But it also can be expanded to include personnel from other agencies, such as the FBI, DIA and NSA. Task Forces have been used since the inception of the CIA in 1947. Here's a recently declassified memo outlining the considerations in the creation of a task force in 1958. The author, L.K. White, talks about the need for a coordinating Headquarters element and an Operational unit "in the field", i.e. deployed around the world.

A Task Force operates independent of the CIA " Mission Centers " (that's the jargon for the current CIA organization chart).

So what did John Brennan do? I am told by an knowledgeable source that Brennan created a Trump Task Force in early 2016. It was an invitation only Task Force. Specific case officers (i.e., men and women who recruit and handle spies overseas), analysts and admin personnel were recruited. Not everyone invited accepted the offer. But many did.

This was not a CIA only operation. Personnel from the FBI also were assigned to the Task Force. We have some clues that Christopher Steele's FBi handler, Michael Gaeta, may have been detailed to the Trump Task Force ( see here ).

So what kind of things would this Task Force do? The case officers would work with foreign intelligence services such as MI-6, the Italians, the Ukrainians and the Australians on identifying intelligence collection priorities. Task Force members could task NSA to do targeted collection. They also would have the ability to engage in covert action, such as targeting George Papadopoulos. Joseph Mifsud may be able to shed light on the CIA officers who met with him, briefed on operational objectives regarding Papadopoulos and helped arrange monitored meetings. I think it is highly likely that the honey pot that met with George Papadopoulos, a woman named Azra Turk, was part of the CIA Trump Task Force.

The Task Force also could carry out other covert actions, such as information operations. A nice sounding euphemism for propaganda, and computer network operations. There has been some informed speculation that Guccifer 2.0 was a creation of this Task Force.

In light of what we have learned about the alleged CIA whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, there should be a serious investigation to determine if he was a part of this Task Force or, at minimum, reporting to them.

When I described this to one friend, a retired CIA Chief of Station, his first response was, "My God, that's illegal." We then reminisced about another illegal operation carried out under the auspices of the CIA Central American Task Force back in the 1980s. That became known to Americans as the Iran Contra scandal.

I sure hope that John Durham and his team are looking at this angle. If true it marks a new and damning indictment of the corruption of the CIA. Rather than spying on genuine foreign threats, this Task Force played a critical role in creating and feeding the meme that Donald Trump was a tool of the Russians and a puppet of Putin.

[Nov 03, 2019] Little mentioned is the server in Ukraine which was brought up in the phone call. Barr's investigation has become a criminal investigation and interested in a server in Ukraine. The impeachment farce is trying to put the focus on Biden, but the server may be what they are trying to protect

Nov 03, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Peter AU 1 , Nov 2 2019 1:00 utc | 82

Petri Krohn's comment @37 "ERIC CIARAMELLA IS NOT A WHISTLEBLOWER - HE IS A SUSPECT"

Little mentioned is the server in Ukraine which was brought up in the phone call. Barr's investigation has become a criminal investigation and interested in a server in Ukraine.

The impeachment farce is trying to put the focus on Biden, but the server may be what they are trying to protect.

This impeachment show looks to be a rearguard or defensive action to try and stop the Barr criminal investigation into russiagate.

[Nov 03, 2019] The Saker interviews Michael Hudson by Michael Hudson and The Saker

Nov 03, 2019 | www.unz.com

Listen ॥ ■ ► RSS

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?app_id=&channel=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter.php%3Fversion%3D44%23cb%3Df2f5b191d988b7c%26domain%3Dwww.unz.com%26origin%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.unz.com%252Ff274ead5c8d4fc6%26relation%3Dparent.parent&container_width=75&href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Fmhudson%2Fthe-saker-interviews-michael-hudson%2F&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&send=false&show_faces=false&width=90

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/share_button.php?app_id=&channel=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter.php%3Fversion%3D44%23cb%3Df2cafb22f75d61a%26domain%3Dwww.unz.com%26origin%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.unz.com%252Ff274ead5c8d4fc6%26relation%3Dparent.parent&container_width=0&href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Fmhudson%2Fthe-saker-interviews-michael-hudson%2F&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&type=button

http://www.unz.com/mhudson/the-saker-interviews-michael-hudson/ Email This Page to Someone
Remember My Information


=> List of Bookmarks ◄ ► ◄ ► ▲ ▼ Remove from Library B Show Comment Next New Comment Next New Reply Read More Reply Agree/Disagree/Etc. More... This Commenter This Thread Hide Thread Display All Comments
AgreeDisagreeLOLTroll These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Troll, or LOL with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period. Email Comment Ignore Commenter Follow Commenter
Bookmark Toggle All ToC ▲ ▼ Add to Library Search Text Case Sensitive Exact Words Include Comments Search Clear Cancel

Introduction: I recently spoke to a relative of mine who, due to her constant and voluntary exposure to the legacy AngloZionist media, sincerely believed that the three Baltic states and Poland had undergone some kind of wonderful and quasi-miraculous economic and cultural renaissance thanks to their resolute break with the putatively horrible Soviet past and their total submission to the Empire since. Listening to her, I figured that this kind of delusion was probably common amongst those who still pay attention and even believe the official propaganda. So I asked Michael Hudson, whom I consider to be the best US economists and who studied the Baltics in great detail, to reply to a few very basic questions, which he very kindly did in spite of being very pressed on time. Once again, I want to sincerely thank him for his kind time, support and expertise.

* * *

The Saker: The US propaganda often claims that the three Baltic states are a true success, just like Poland is also supposed to be. Does this notion have a factual basis? Initially it did appear that these states were experiencing growth, but was that not mostly/entirely due to EU/IMF/US subsidies? Looking specifically at the three Baltic states, and especially Latvia, these were the "showcase" Soviet republics, with a high standard of living (at least compared to the other Soviet republics) and a lot of high-tech industries (including defense contracts). Could you please outline for us what truly happened to these economies following independence? How did they "reform" their economies going from an ex-Soviet one to the modern "liberal" one?

Michael Hudson: This is a trick question, because it all depends on what you mean by "success."

The post-Soviet neoliberalism has been a great success for kleptocrats at the top. They gave themselves the public domain, from key industries to prime real estate. But the Balts largely let their Soviet industries collapse, making no effort to salvage or reorganize them.

Much of the problem, of course, was that all the linkages to Soviet-era industry were torn apart as the Soviet Union was disbanded. With their supplier and final markets closed down from Russia to Central Asia, the Baltic economies had to start afresh – with a very right-wing tax policy and no government help whatsoever, as the government itself had become privatized in the hands of former officials and grabitizers.

Lithuania was marginally better in having some industrial policy. EU and NATO accession in 2004, along with easy credit, kicked off property bubbles in the Baltics, largely inflated by Swedish banks that made a bonanza off these countries that lacked their own banks or public credit creation. The resulting 2008 crashes were the largest in the world as a percent of GDP, with Latvia suffering the world's biggest contraction.

The neoliberal western advisors who took control of these economies – as if this was the only alternative to Soviet bureaucracy – imposed crushing austerity programs to restore macroeconomic "stability" meaning security of their land and infrastructure grabs. This was applauded by Europe's bankers, who thought the Balts had discovered a workable recipe allowing austerity governments to retain power in a seeming democracy. These policies would have collapsed governments anywhere else, but the ability to emigrate, plus ethnic divisions against Russian speakers, allowed these governments to survive.

It's a historically specific situation, but Europe's bankers promote it as a generalized model. George Soros's INET and his associated front institutions have been leaders in subsidizing this financialization-cum-grabitization. The result has been a massive exodus of prime working age people from Lithuania and Latvia. (Estonians simply commute to Finland.) Meanwhile, their economies are buoyed by foreign bank lending, which sends profits back to home countries and can be reversed at any time.

Politically, the neoliberal revolution also has been a success for U.S. Cold Warriors, who sent over native Balts from Georgetown and other universities to impose "free market" doctrine – that is, a market "free" of domestic regulation against theft of the public domain, against monopolies, against land taxes and other income taxes. The Baltic states, like most of the rest of the former Soviet Union, became the Wild East.

What was left to the Baltic countries was land and real estate. Their forests are being cut down to sell wood abroad. I describe all this in my book Killing the Host .

The Saker: After independence, the Baltic states had tried to cut as many ties with Russia as possible. This included building (rather silly looking) fences, to forcing the Russians to develop their ports on the Baltic, to shutting down large (or selling to foreign interests which then shut them down) and profitable factories (including a large nuclear plant I believe), etc. What has been the impact of this policy of "economic de-Sovietization" on the local economies?

Michael Hudson: Dissolution of the Soviet Union meant that Baltic countries lost their traditional markets, and had to shift their focus to Western Europe and, to some extent, Asia.

Latvia and Estonia had been assigned computer and information technology, and they have found this to be much in demand. When I was in Japan, for instance, CEOs told me that they were looking to Latvia above all to outsource computer work.

Banking also was a surviving sector. Gregory Lautchansky, former vice-rector at the University of Riga had been a major player already in the 1980s for moving out Russian oil and KGB money. (His company, Nordex, was sold to Mark Rich.) Many banks continued to shepherd Russian flight capital via offshore banking centers into the United States, Britain and other countries. Cyprus of course was another big player in this.

The Saker: Russians are still considered "non-citizens" in the Baltic republics; what has been the economic impact of this policy, if any, of anti-Russian discrimination in the Baltic states?

ORDER IT NOW

Michael Hudson: Russian-speakers, who do not acquire citizenship (which requires passing local language and history tests), are blocked from political office and administrative work. While most Russian speakers below retirement age have now acquired that citizenship, the means by which citizenship must be acquired has caused divisions.

Early on in independence, many Russians were blocked from government, and they went into business, which was avoided by many native Balts during the Soviet era because it was not as remunerative as going into government and profiting from corruption. For instance, real estate was a burden to administer. Russian-speakers, especially Jewish ones, have wisely focused on real estate.

The largest political party is Harmony Center, whose members and leadership are mainly Russian-speaking. But the various neoliberal and nationalist parties have jointed to block its ability to influence law in Parliament.

Since Russian speakers are only able to "vote with their feet," many have joined in the vast outflow of emigration, either back to Russia or to other EU countries. Moreover, the poor quality of social benefits has led to few children being born.

The Saker: I often hear that a huge number of locals (including non-Russians) have emigrated from the Baltic states. What has caused this and what has been the impact of this emigration for the Baltic states?

Michael Hudson: The Baltic states, especially Latvia, have lost about 30 percent of their population since the 1990s, especially those of working age. In Latvia, about 10 percent of the loss were Russians who exited shortly after independence. The other 20 percent have subsequently emigrated.

The European Commission forecasts that Latvia's working-age population will decline by 1.6% annually for the next 20 years, while the birth rate remains as stagnant as it was in the late 1980s. The retired population (over age 65) will rise to half a million people by 2030, more than a quarter of today's population, and perhaps about a third of what remains. This is not a domestic market that will attract foreign or local investment.

And in any case, the European Union has viewed the post-Soviet economies simply as markets for their own industrial and agricultural exports, not as economies to be built up by public subsidy as the European countries themselves, the U.S. and Chinee economies have done. The European motto is, "Give a man a fish, and he will be fed all day with your surplus fish and consumer goods – but give him a fishing rod and we will lose a customer."

Readers who are interested might want to look at the following books and articles. I think the leading work has been done by Jeffrey Sommers and Charles Woolfson.

    The Contradictions of Austerity: The Socio-Economic Costs of the Baltic Model (London: Routledge Press, 2014). Editors, J. Sommers & C. Woolfson. Foreword, J. Galbraith. ISBN: 978-0-415-82003-5. Jeffrey Sommers, "No People, Big Problem': Democracy And Its Discontents In Latvia's National Elections," Social Europe, October 17, 2018. Jeffrey Sommers, "Decline of the Demos: Latvia, the Face of New Europe and Austerity's Return," in F. Jaitner, T. Olteanu and T. Spöri, eds., Crises in the Post-Soviet Space: From the dissolution of the Soviet Union to the conflict in Ukraine (Routledge Press, 2018) pp. 195-209. ISBN 9780815377245. Jeffrey Sommers, " Austerity as a global prescription and lessons from the neoliberal Baltic experiment." Economic & Labour Relations Review. Keynote article, 25:3 (fall 2014) pp. 1-20. DOI 10.1177/1035304614544091. Co-authored with C. Woolfson and A. Juskaa.

The Saker: Finally, what do you believe is the most likely future for these states? Will the succeed in becoming a "tiny anti-Russia" on Russia's doorstep? The Russians appear to have been very successful in their import-substitution program, at least when trying to replace the Baltic states: does that mean that the economic ties between Russia and these states is now gone forever? Is it now too late, or are there still measures these countries could take to reverse the current trends?

Michael Hudson: Trump's trade sanctions against Russia hurt the Baltic countries especially. One of their strong sectors was agriculture. Lithuania, for instance, was known for its cheese, even in Latvia. The sanctions led Russian dairy farming to develop their own cheese-making, and agriculture has become one of Russia's strongest performing sectors.

This is a market that looks like it will be permanently lost to the Baltic states. In effect, Trump is helping Russia follow precisely the policy that made American agriculture rich: agricultural isolation has forced domestic replacement for hitherto foreign food. I expect that this will lead to consumer goods and other products as well.

The Saker: thank you for your time and replies!

PeterMX , says: November 3, 2019 at 7:01 am GMT

I am in Tallinn, Estonia right now. Just how good an economy is performing is often hard to determine by talking to people, because like economists, many people have different perceptions. I was just talking to a Russian-Estonian who was telling me how much better Lithuanians and Latvians are then Estonians at doing things and how much cheaper things are there. It is true that things are much cheaper in the other Baltic countries because Estonia (a tiny country of just over 1 million people) has taken off. Since the 2008 econmic collapse housing prices have shot up and in Tallinn there is building going on all over the city. But, my acquaintance is wrong about other things. Estonians do things very well and Tallinn is a very nice city, with beautiful cafes, clean and well kept streets and crime is very low. It is a very good city, except it is now very expensive, especially considering how much people make here. The weather is not nice, except for in the summer and there are friendly Estonians but they don't have a reputation for being particularly friendly, even among themselves. I have not been back to Latvia yet, but when I was in Riga years ago, it was a gorgeous city, bigger than Tallinn too. I think they do things very well there too. The Russians I speak to here are often friendly and based on what I have been told, relations between Russians and Estonians are much better than when I was here in the early 2000's.

No offense is intended to Russians, but the Baltic countries had large German populations that played a key role in the development of the cultures and peoples of these countries. There were also many Jews here prior to WW II. By the time WW II had begun the German populations were much smaller than they had been and at the end of the war the Jewish populations were much smaller. Jews were targeted in Latvia and Lithuania and many Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians were shipped off to far off places in the USSR during the war. I believe the Jews were largely pro communist and welcomed the Soviet takeover of these countries in 1940, while the Latvian and Estonian peoples were pro German, thus explaining the hard feelings between Balts and Jews.. They wanted independence and formed legions to fight alongside the German army during WW II.

These countries were very advanced before WW II, having engineering industries and the Russian Empire's first auto company was formed in Riga before WW I. While engineering may have been restarted after WW II, these countries populations were decimated and they never returned to their former heights. Perhaps they still can.

GMC , says: November 3, 2019 at 7:33 am GMT
I'm assuming that these 3 East European countries are being bombarded with the same propaganda as the Ukies are, so Russian speakers and those intelligent enough to see the game being played will be belittled and isolated. But the Russian folks living in Russia have a birds eye view of what is going on in the west and their puppet countries. Russia TV and debate programs, just have to show the delinquencies that are daily happenings in the States, and Europe, in order to make the Ru people say – No Thanks to that way of life. As far as the new Russian cheeses that are now in the markets -lol – they make a lightly smoked gouda that is really good and is about 120-140 roubles a kilo. And, they are making more cheddar that is a white medium taste as well. No scarcity of good natural food in Russia and No POlice state. Spacibo Unz Rev.
Anonymous [159] Disclaimer , says: November 3, 2019 at 8:18 am GMT
The trade volume between Russia and the Baltic states has actually risen, despite the sanctions. The Baltics send food products and booze to Russia (and another 150 countries, food exports to Russia actually grew in 2016-2018). As well as chemical products and pharmaceuticals. Meldonium, btw, is made in Latvia and is still being sent to Russia (as well as 20 other countries), not for athletes, but for regular folks. Work is being carried out on a new generation Meldonium pill (the biggest market will be Russia).

Growth in the Baltic states has been 3-4% in the last few years. GDP per capita, as well as HDI, is higher than in Russia. Foreign investment, including from Russia, has been growing (Russia was the second largest investor in Latvia in 2018). Savings rates are growing, too. After a relative quiet period after 2010, the number of Russian (and other tourists) has grown again.

Estonia's population stopped shrinking in 2016 and is now growing in fact. They've seen immigration from Finland, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, as well as returning Estonians.

Emigration is a problem, of course, but this is partly because the Baltic states are the only former USSR republics whose citizens were even given work permits in the West, imagine what would happen if these permits were given to Russians from the regions.

Neo-liberal policies are of course bad and certain types of investment should be controlled, but to say that there are no social services in the Baltic states is complete nonsense. Due to generous parental payments, birthrates have risen significantly since the 1990s – in fact, birthrates in the Baltics are now slightly higher than the EU average. Life expectancy is also growing. Latvia covers IVF treatments in full. There are free school lunches.

Yes, it is true that some of the Soviet era factories should've been salvaged but the problem was they were not competitive globally at that time (and there was no capital to remodel them). The Soviet market was a closed one. However, some businesses were salvaged. There is local manufacturing (electronics, pharmaceuticals, etc).

Not everything is ideal, but it is also not the kind of gloom and doom as you paint.

Jake , says: November 3, 2019 at 11:46 am GMT
If the Anglo-Zionist Empire comes to save you, you should expect to be raped: culturally and religiously as well as economically.
onebornfree , says: Website November 3, 2019 at 3:48 pm GMT
Saker says: "Initially it did appear that these states were experiencing growth, but was that not mostly/entirely due to EU/IMF/US subsidies?"

"Foreign Aid Makes Corrupt Countries More Corrupt":

"Any time a government hands out money, not just foreign aid, it breeds corruption And there are few better examples than Ukraine – just don't tell the House impeachment hearings. Counting on foreign aid to reduce corruption is like expecting whiskey to cure alcoholism .If U.S. aid was effective, Ukraine would have become a rule of law paradise long ago . The surest way to reduce foreign corruption is to end foreign aid."

http://jimbovard.com/blog/2019/10/29/foreign-aid-makes-corrupt-countries-more-corrupt/

Anon [424] Disclaimer , says: November 3, 2019 at 5:16 pm GMT
@onebornfree The EU gives every year about 2,500 million euros to the 3 Baltic countries ( 6 million people the three of them ) , and 9000 million euros to Poland ( 38 million people ) , plus more billions to other eastern members .

Older members of the EU , specially the UK which is going out , Greece witch was tortured ( again ) economically by Germany , and south Europe in general are not very happy about admitting so many ex-soviets countries en the EU and subsidizing them .

AnonFromTN , says: November 3, 2019 at 9:31 pm GMT
@SeekerofthePresence

Recovery and self-sufficiency since Yeltsin show the brilliance of the Russian people

It's not so much brilliance as sheer necessity to survive under sanctions. But some results were better than anyone expected. Say, food before sanctions used to be so-so in the provinces and downright bad in Moscow because of abundance of imported crap. Now the food is exclusively domestic, fresh and tasty. Russia never had traditions of making fancy cheeses. Now, to bypass sanctions, quite a few Italian and French cheese-makers started production in Russia, so in the last 2-3 years domestically made excellent fancy cheeses appeared in supermarkets. Arguably, Russian agriculture benefited by sanctions more than any other sector, but there are success stories virtually in every industry. Sanctions and Ukrainian stupidity served as a timely wake up call for Russian elites, who earlier wanted to sell oil and natural gas and buy everything else. Replacing imports after the sanctions were imposed had a significant cost in the short run, but in the long run it made Russia much stronger, economically and militarily. Speak of unintended consequences.

Kazlu Ruda , says: November 3, 2019 at 11:58 pm GMT
My mom is from Lithuania and I've been there several times. We have second cousins our age.

Her father was a surveyor for the Republic in the 20s and 30s, charged with breaking up the manors and estates and the state distributing the land to the peasantry. It was near-feudalism. There was very little industrialization; that which existed were in a few urban centers. One interesting comment from her was that the "Jews were communists". From what I've read they were the urban working class, but perhaps part of the socialist/Jewish Bund?

There is no doubt that the Soviet period unleashed considerable industrialization and modernization. Lithuania had some of the best infrastructure in the USSR. Its traditional culture was really celebrated.

When I first visited, not long after the fall of the USSR, there were enormous, vacant industrial plants. The collective farms were in the process of being sold off the western European agribusiness firms. One relative through marriage was from the Ukraine, with a PhD in Physics and had been employed in the military industries -- she was cleaning houses thereafter.

Any usable industrial enterprises were quickly sold off. The utilities are all foreign owned. Part of EU mandates are "open" electricity "markets", which resulting in DC interconnections costing hundreds of millions with the west to import very high priced electricity. The EU has paid for "Via Baltica", a highway running from Poland to Estonia; it is choked with trucks carrying imports and there are huge distribution and fulfillment centers along the highway. Such progress, huh?

There had been good public transport in the earlier years of independence, but that has been replaced with personal automobiles -- usually western European used cars that pollute a lot. Trakai is a commuter town to Vilnius with a medieval castle (restored in Soviet times). First time I went it was very pleasant. Second time in 2018 the place was choked with cars and not very nice at all.

The impact of emigration cannot be over-stated. College educated young people leave by the hundreds of thousands. Those that remain are paid very low wages (e.g., 1000 euros for a veterinarian or dentist), but pay west European prices for many essentials. Housing is cheaper than the west.

Last time in Kazlu Ruda there were huge NATO exercises in progress and even bigger ones planned for 2020. German units were billeted at an airbase nearby, rumored to have been a CIA black site. How fitting, as the Germans with the Lithuanian Riflemens Union exterminated a quarter of a million Jews in a matter of months (see Jager Report on Wikipedia). There is a Red Army graveyard in the town that has the remains of perhaps 350 soldiers killed in the area driving out the Nazis. I was frankly surprised it was still there.

Lithuania hasn't been independent since the days of the Pagans and Vytautas. It surely isn't independent today.

Anecdotal -- yes. But based on personal observation.

[Nov 03, 2019] Ratcliffe rats out the Schiff show

Notable quotes:
"... A former federal prosecutor who sits on the committee tasked by Democrats with removing President Donald Trump from office blasted Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., as being unfit to oversee the process. Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Tex., told The Federalist on Friday that Schiff's problem isn't mere partisan political bias, it's that Schiff has a conflict of interest given his secret interactions with the anti-Trump whistleblower before his false complaint against Trump was even submitted. ..."
"... "It's more than just bias -- it's an actual legal conflict of interest," Ratcliffe told The Federalist. "Schiff is using his authority as a Chairman presiding over an impeachment inquiry to prevent the investigation and discovery of facts about his own actions or the actions of his staff." ..."
Nov 03, 2019 | www.citizenfreepress.com

John Ratcliffe ✔ @RepRatcliffe

This is impeachment effort 3.0 by Schiff. After twice falsely accusing the President of treason with Russia and obstructing justice, Democrats put Schiff in charge of impeachment 3.0 with someone who became a whistleblower after meeting with Schiff's staff.

A former federal prosecutor who sits on the committee tasked by Democrats with removing President Donald Trump from office blasted Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., as being unfit to oversee the process. Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Tex., told The Federalist on Friday that Schiff's problem isn't mere partisan political bias, it's that Schiff has a conflict of interest given his secret interactions with the anti-Trump whistleblower before his false complaint against Trump was even submitted.

"It's more than just bias -- it's an actual legal conflict of interest," Ratcliffe told The Federalist. "Schiff is using his authority as a Chairman presiding over an impeachment inquiry to prevent the investigation and discovery of facts about his own actions or the actions of his staff."

[Nov 03, 2019] Rep. John Ratcliffe: Adam Schiff's Problem Isn't That He's Biased, It's That He's Running A Corrupt Process

Notable quotes:
"... "He is essentially a witness in the trial over which he is presiding," Ratcliffe continued. "He has a conflict of interest because his testimony is relevant to the origins of the impeachment process that he is simultaneously conducting, directing and managing." ..."
"... Although Schiff initially claimed that he and his staff had never interacted with the anti-Trump complainant and didn't even know who he was, the New York Times reported that the whistleblower secretly coordinated with Schiff's Democratic staff, who then urged him to file a complaint against the president. ..."
"... "Despite initially denying any contact with the whistleblower, Schiff had already been briefed about at least one meeting between his staff and that individual prior to the filing of the complaint," Ratcliffe said. "Material facts about the date, nature and extent of that meeting as well as any other contacts, communication or possible coordination between Chairman Schiff, his staff and the whistleblower were never disclosed by any of those parties to ICIG Michael Atkinson -- facts confirmed in the sworn testimony of ICIG Atkinson which Chairman Schiff is refusing to release." ..."
"... Testimony by Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael Atkinson revealed that the whistleblower, whom Real Clear Investigations has identified as former National Security Council (NSC) staffer and current Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst Eric Ciaramella, concealed his contacts with Schiff from the ICIG in his complaint form. If the anti-Trump complainant did, in fact, refuse to disclose previous disclosures of his allegations to Congress or the news media, he could be subject to felony criminal penalties for making false statements. The final portion of the whistleblower form requires whistleblowers to attest under penalty of perjury that they have neither misstated nor concealed material facts in their complaints. ..."
"... Schiff has refused to detail the breadth of his interactions with the anti-Trump complainant or explain why he lied about his staff's collusion with the complainant. Ratcliffe told The Federalist that Schiff's behavior was an "outrageous offense to legal due process." ..."
"... "Your actions both past and present are incompatible with your duty as Chairman of this Committee, which alone in the House of Representatives has the obligation and authority to provide effective oversight of the U.S. intelligence community," they continued . "As such, we have no faith in your ability to discharge your duties in a manner consistent with your Constitutional responsibility and urge your immediate resignation as Chairman of this Committee. Sean Davis is the co-founder of The Federalist. ..."
Nov 03, 2019 | thefederalist.com

"The person who planted fake evidence shouldn't be the one ruling on the admissibility of fake evidence," Ratcliffe said of Schiff on Friday. November 1, 2019 By Sean Davis A former federal prosecutor who sits on the committee tasked by Democrats with removing President Donald Trump from office blasted Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., as being unfit to oversee the process. Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Tex., told The Federalist on Friday that Schiff's problem isn't mere partisan political bias, it's that Schiff has a conflict of interest given his secret interactions with the anti-Trump whistleblower before his false complaint against Trump was even submitted.

"It's more than just bias -- it's an actual legal conflict of interest," Ratcliffe told The Federalist . "Schiff is using his authority as a Chairman presiding over an impeachment inquiry to prevent the investigation and discovery of facts about his own actions or the actions of his staff."

"He is essentially a witness in the trial over which he is presiding," Ratcliffe continued. "He has a conflict of interest because his testimony is relevant to the origins of the impeachment process that he is simultaneously conducting, directing and managing."

Although Schiff initially claimed that he and his staff had never interacted with the anti-Trump complainant and didn't even know who he was, the New York Times reported that the whistleblower secretly coordinated with Schiff's Democratic staff, who then urged him to file a complaint against the president.

"The person who planted fake evidence shouldn't be the one ruling on the admissibility of fake evidence," Ratcliffe said on Friday.

"Despite initially denying any contact with the whistleblower, Schiff had already been briefed about at least one meeting between his staff and that individual prior to the filing of the complaint," Ratcliffe said. "Material facts about the date, nature and extent of that meeting as well as any other contacts, communication or possible coordination between Chairman Schiff, his staff and the whistleblower were never disclosed by any of those parties to ICIG Michael Atkinson -- facts confirmed in the sworn testimony of ICIG Atkinson which Chairman Schiff is refusing to release."

Testimony by Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael Atkinson revealed that the whistleblower, whom Real Clear Investigations has identified as former National Security Council (NSC) staffer and current Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst Eric Ciaramella, concealed his contacts with Schiff from the ICIG in his complaint form. If the anti-Trump complainant did, in fact, refuse to disclose previous disclosures of his allegations to Congress or the news media, he could be subject to felony criminal penalties for making false statements. The final portion of the whistleblower form requires whistleblowers to attest under penalty of perjury that they have neither misstated nor concealed material facts in their complaints.

"I certify that all of the statements made in this complaint (including any continuation pages) are true, complete, and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief," whistleblowers are required to attest under penalty of perjury. "I understand that, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 1001, a false statement or concealment of a material fact is a criminal offense punishable by a fine of up to $10,000, imprisonment for up to five years, or both."

Schiff has refused to detail the breadth of his interactions with the anti-Trump complainant or explain why he lied about his staff's collusion with the complainant. Ratcliffe told The Federalist that Schiff's behavior was an "outrageous offense to legal due process."

"Chairman Schiff has likewise refused to allow any inquiry by Republicans into these material facts which may bear on the credibility and motivation of the whistleblower and perhaps Chairman Schiff," Ratcliffe said. "Republicans have been and continue to be deprived of the ability to investigate these material facts which can only be ascertained from the sworn testimony of Chairman Schiff, his staff and the whistleblower."

"Chairman Schiff is a material fact witness in the same impeachment inquiry that Democrats have authorized him to preside over," Ratcliffe continued. "It's an outrageous offense to legal due process and any standard of fairness."

Earlier this year, all nine Republican lawmakers on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence called on Schiff to step down as chairman due to his repeated lies about treasonous Russian collusion by the president.

"The findings of the Special Counsel conclusively refute your past and present assertions and have exposed you as having abused your position to knowingly promote false information, having damaged the integrity of this Committee, and undermined faith in U.S. government institutions," they wrote.

"Your actions both past and present are incompatible with your duty as Chairman of this Committee, which alone in the House of Representatives has the obligation and authority to provide effective oversight of the U.S. intelligence community," they continued . "As such, we have no faith in your ability to discharge your duties in a manner consistent with your Constitutional responsibility and urge your immediate resignation as Chairman of this Committee. Sean Davis is the co-founder of The Federalist.

[Nov 02, 2019] WATCH Udo Ulfkotte – Bought Journalists by Terje Maloy

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... We drove for hours through the desert, towards the Iraqi border. Approx. 20-30 kilometers from the border, there really was nothing. First of all no war. There were armored vehicles and tanks, burned-out long ago. The journalist left the bus, splashed the contents of the cans on the vehicles. We had Iraqi soldiers with us as an escort, with machine guns, in uniform. You have to imagine: tanks in a desert, burned out long ago, now put on fire. Clouds of smoke. And there the journalists assemble their cameras. ..."
"... So I gathered courage and asked one of the reporters: 'I understand one thing, they are great pictures, but why are they ducking all the time? ' ..."
"... I'll finish, because I am not here to make satire today. I just want to say that this was my first experience with truth in journalism and war reporting. ..."
"... Then a certain type of reporting is expected. Which one? Forget my newspaper, this applies in general. At the start of the trip, the journalist gets a memo – today it is electronic – in his hand. If you are traveling abroad, it is info about the country, or the speeches that will be held. This file contains roughly what will happen during this trip. In addition there are short conversations, briefings with the politician's press manager. He then explains to you how one views this trip. Naturally, you should see it the same way. No one says it in that way. But is is approximately what one would have reported. ..."
"... He explained that a recruitment board from the intelligence services had participated. But I had no idea that the seminar Introduction to Conflict Studies was arranged by the defense forces and run by the foreign intelligence service BND, to have a closer look at potential candidates among the students, not to commit them. They only asked if they, after four such seminars, possibly could contact me later, in my occupation. ..."
"... Two persons from BND came regularly to the paper, to a visiting room. And there were occasions when the report not only was given, but also that BND had written articles, largely ready to go, that were published in the newspaper under my byline. ..."
"... But a couple of journalists were there, they told about it. Therefore I repeat: Merkel invited the chief editors several times, and told them she didn't want the population to be truthfully and openly informed about the problems out there. For example, the background for the financial crisis. If the citizens knew how things were, they would run to the bank and withdraw their money. So beautifying everything; everything is under control; your savings are safe; just smile and hold hands – everything will be fine. ..."
"... From one hour 18 minutes onwards, Ulfkotte details EU-Inter-State Terror Co-operation, with returning IS Operatives on a Free Pass, fully armed and even Viktor Orban had to give in to the commands of letting Terrorists through Hungary into Germany & Austria. ..."
"... Everybody who works in the MSM, without exception, are bought and paid for whores peddling lies on behalf of globalist corporate interests. ..."
"... Udo's voice (in the form of his book) was silenced for a reason – that being that he spoke the truth about our utterly and completely corrupt Western fantasy world in which we in the West proclaim our – "respect international law" and "respect for human rights." His work, such as this interview and others he has done, pulled the curtain back on the big lie and exposed our oligarchs, politicians and the "journalists" they hire as simply a cadre of professional criminals whose carefully crafted lies are used to soak up the blood and to cover the bodies of the dead, all in order to hide all that mayhem from our eyes, to insure justice is an impossibility and to make sure we Western citizens sleep well at night, oblivious to our connection to the actual realities that are this daily regime of pillage and plunder that is our vaunted "neoliberal order." ..."
"... "The philosopher Diogenes (of Sinope) was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, 'If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.' To which Diogenes replied, 'Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king"." ..."
"... So Roosevelt pushed Hitler to attack Stalin? Hitler didn't want to go East? Revisionism at it most motive free. ..."
"... Pushing' is synonymous for a variety of ways to instigate a desired outcome. Financing is just one way. And Roosevelt was in no way the benevolent knight history twisters like to present him. You are outing yourself again as an easliy duped sheep. ..."
"... Lebensraum was first popularized in 1901 in Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum Hitler's "Mein Kampf" ( 1925) build on that: he had no need for any American or other push, it was intended from the get go. ..."
"... This excellent article demonstrates how the Controlling Elite manipulates the Media and the Message for purposes of misdirecting attention and perception of their true intentions and objective of securing Global Ownership (aka New World Order). ..."
"... Corporate Journalism is all about corporatism and the continuation of it. If the Intelligence Community needs greater fools for staffing purposes in the corporate hierarchy they look for anyone that can be compromised via inducements of whatever the greater fools want. ..."
"... Bought & paid for corporate Journalists are controlled by the Intelligence Agencies and always have been since at least the Second World War. The CIA typically runs bribery & blackmail at the state & federal level so that when necessary they have instant useless eaters to offer up as political sacrifice when required via state run propaganda, & impression management. ..."
"... Assuming that journalism is an ethical occupation is naïve and a fools' game even in the alternative news domain as all writers write from bias & a lack of real knowledge. Few writers are intellectually honest or even aware of their own limits as writers. The writer is a failure and not a hero borne in myth. Writers struggle to write & publish. Bought and paid for writers don't have a struggle in terms of writing because they are told what to write before they write as automatons for the Intelligence Community knowing that they sold their collective souls to the Prince of Darkness for whatever trinkets, bobbles, or bling they could get their greedy hands on at the time. ..."
"... Once pond scum always pond scum. ..."
"... It is a longer process in which one is gradually introduced to ever more expensive rewards/bribes. Never too big to overwhelm – always just about what one would accept as 'motivation' to omit aspects of any issue. Of course, omission is a lie by any other name, but I can attest to the life style of a journalist that socializes with the leaders of all segments of society. ..."
"... Professional whoring is as old as the hills and twice as dusty. Being ethical is difficult stuff especially when money is involved. Money is always a prime motivator but vanity works wonders too. Corporatists will offer whatever inducements they can to get what they want. ..."
"... All mainstream media voices are selling a media package that is a corporatist lie in and of itself. Truth is less marketable than lies. Embellished news & journalistic hype is the norm ..."
Oct 06, 2019 | off-guardian.org

WATCH: Udo Ulfkotte – Bought Journalists Terje Maloy

Subtitled and transcribed by Terje Maloy

https://www.youtube.com/embed/3ZLgW3hgRBY

In 2014, the German journalist and writer Udo Ulfkotte published a book that created a big stir, describing how the journalistic profession is thoroughly corrupt and infiltrated by intelligence services.

Although eagerly anticipated by many, the English translation of the book, Bought Journalists , does not seem to be forthcoming anytime soon.

[We covered that story at the time – Ed.]

So I have made English subtitles and transcribed this still very relevant 2015-lecture for those that are curious about Ulfkotte's work. It covers many of the subjects described in the book.

Udo Ulfkotte died of a heart attack in January 2017, in all likelihood part of the severe medical complications he got from his exposure to German-made chemical weapons supplied to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.

Transcription

[Only the first 49 minutes are translated; the second half of the lecture deals mostly with more local issues]

Introducer Oliver: I am very proud to have such a brave man amongst us: Udo Ulfkotte

Udo Ulfkotte: Thanks Thanks for the invitation Thanks to Oliver. I heard to my great surprise from Oliver that he didn't know someone from the intelligence services (VVS) would be present. I wish him a warm welcome. I don't mean that as a joke, I heard this in advance, and got to know that Oliver didn't know. If he wants – if it is a man – he can wave. If not? no? [laughter from the audience]

I'm fine with that. You can write down everything, or record it; no problem.

To the lecture. We are talking about media. we are talking about truth. I don't want to sell you books or such things. Each one of us asks himself: Why do things develop like they do, even though the majority, or a lot of people shake their heads.

The majority of people in Germany don't want nuclear weapons on our territory. But we have nuclear weapons here. The majority don't want foreign interventions by German soldiers. But we do.

What media narrates and the politicians say, and what the majority of the population believes – seems often obviously to be two different things.

I can tell you this myself, from many years experience. I will start with very personal judgments, to tell you what my experiences with 'The Lying Media' were – I mean exactly that with the word 'lying'.

I was born in a fairly poor family. I am a single child. I grew up on the eastern edge of the Ruhr-area. I studied Law, Political Science and Islamic Studies. Already in my student years, I had contact with the German Foreign Intelligence, BND. We will get back to that later.

From 1986 to 2003, I worked for a major German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), amongst other things as a war reporter. I spent a lot of time in Eastern and African countries.

Now to the subject of lying media. When I was sent to the Iran-Iraq war for the first time, the first time was from 1980 to July 1986, I was sent to this war to report for FAZ. The Iraqis were then 'the good guys'.

I was bit afraid. I didn't have any experience as a war reporter. Then I arrived in Baghdad. I was fairly quickly sent along in a bus by the Iraqi army, the bus was full of loud, experienced war reporters, from such prestigious media as the BBC, several foreign TV-stations and newspapers, and me, poor newbie, who was sent to the front for the first time without any kind of preparation. The first thing I saw was that they all carried along cans of petrol. And I at once got bad consciousness, because I thought: "oops, if the bus gets stuck far from a petrol station, then everyone chips in with a bit of diesel'. I decided to in the future also carry a can before I went anywhere, because it obviously was part of it.

We drove for hours through the desert, towards the Iraqi border. Approx. 20-30 kilometers from the border, there really was nothing. First of all no war. There were armored vehicles and tanks, burned-out long ago. The journalist left the bus, splashed the contents of the cans on the vehicles. We had Iraqi soldiers with us as an escort, with machine guns, in uniform. You have to imagine: tanks in a desert, burned out long ago, now put on fire. Clouds of smoke. And there the journalists assemble their cameras.

It was my first experience with media, truth in reporting.

While I was wondering what the hell I was going to report for my newspaper, they all lined up and started: Behind them were flames and plumes of smoke, and all the time the Iraqis were running in front of camera with their machine guns, casually, but with war in their gaze. And the reporters were ducking all the time while talking.

So I gathered courage and asked one of the reporters: 'I understand one thing, they are great pictures, but why are they ducking all the time? '

'Quite simply because there are machine guns on the audio track, and it looks very good at home.'

That was several decades ago. It was in the beginning of my contact with war. I was thinking, the whole way back:'Young man, you didn't see a war. You were in a place with a campfire. What are you going to tell?'

I returned to Baghdad. There weren't any mobile phones then. We waited in Hotel Rashid and other hotels where foreigners stayed, sometimes for hours for an international telephone line. I first contacted my mother, not my newspaper. I was in despair, didn't know what to do, and wanted to get advice from an elder person.

Then my mother shouted over the phone: 'My boy, you are alive!' I thought: 'How so? Is everything OK?'

'My boy, we thought ' 'What's the matter, mother?' 'We saw on TV what happened around you' TV had already sent lurid stories, and I tried to calm my mother down, it didn't happen like that. She thought I had lost my mind from all the things that had happened in the war – she saw it with her own eyes!

I'll finish, because I am not here to make satire today. I just want to say that this was my first experience with truth in journalism and war reporting.

That is, I was very shocked by the first contact, it was entirely different from what I had experienced. But it wasn't an exceptional case.

In the beginning, I mentioned that I am from a fairly poor family. I had to work hard for everything. I was a single child, my father died when I was young. It didn't matter further on. But, I had a job, I had a degree, a goal in life.

I now had the choice: Should I declare that the whole thing was nonsense, these reports? I was nothing, a newbie straight out of uni, in my first job. Or if I wanted to make money, to continue, look further. I chose the second option. I continued, and that for many years.

Over these years, I gained lots of experience. When one comes from university to a big German newspaper – everything I say doesn't only apply to FAZ, you can take other German or European media. I had contact with other European journalists, from reputable media outlets. I later worked in other media. I can tell you: What I am about to tell you, I really discovered everywhere.

What did I experience? If you, as a reporter, work either in state media financed by forced license fees, or in the big private media companies, then you can't write what you want yourself, what you feel like. There are certain guidelines.

Roughly speaking: everyone knows that you won't, for example in the Springer-newspapers – Bild, die Welt – get published articles extremely critical of Israel. They stand no chance there, because one has to sign a statement that one is pro-Israel, that one won't question the existence of the state of Israel or Israeli points of view, etc.

There are some sort of guidelines in all the big media companies. But that isn't all: I learned very fast that if one doesn't – I don't mean this negatively – want to be stuck in the lower rungs of editors, if one wants to rise; for me this rise was that I was allowed to travel with the Chancellor, ministers, the president and politicians, in planes owned by the state; then one has to keep to certain subjects. I learned that fast.

That is, if one gets to follow a politician – and this hasn't changed to this day – I soon realized that when I followed the president or Chancellor Helmut Kohl etc, one of course isn't invited because your name is Udo Ulfkotte, but because you belong to the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Then a certain type of reporting is expected. Which one? Forget my newspaper, this applies in general. At the start of the trip, the journalist gets a memo – today it is electronic – in his hand. If you are traveling abroad, it is info about the country, or the speeches that will be held. This file contains roughly what will happen during this trip. In addition there are short conversations, briefings with the politician's press manager. He then explains to you how one views this trip. Naturally, you should see it the same way. No one says it in that way. But is is approximately what one would have reported.

All the time you no one tells you to write it this or that way but you know quite exactly that if you DON'T write it this or that way,then you won't get invited next time. Your media outlet will be invited, but they say 'we don't want him along'. Then you are out.

Naturally you want to be invited. Of course it is wonderful to travel abroad and you can behave like a pig, no one cares. You can buy what you want, because you know that when you return, you won't be checked. You can bring what you want. I had colleagues who went along on a trip to the US.

They brought with them – it was an air force plane – a Harley Davidson, in parts. They sold it when they were back in Germany, and of course earned on it. Anyway, just like the carpet-affair with that development minister, this is of course not a single instance. No one talks about it.

You get invited if you have a certain way of seeing things. Which way to see things? Where and how is this view of the world formed? I very often get asked: 'Where are these people behind the curtain who pulls the wires, so that everything gets told in a fairly similar way?'

In the big media in Germany – just look yourself – who sit in the large transatlantic think-tanks and foundations,the foundation The Atlantic Bridge, all these organizations, and how is one influenced there? I can tell from my own experience.

We mustn't talk only theoretically. I was invited by the think-tank The German Marshall Fund of the United States as a fellow. I was to visit the United States for six weeks. It was fully paid. During these six weeks I could this think-tank has very close connections to the CIA to this day, they acquired contacts in the CIA for me and they got me access to American politicians, to everyone I wanted. Above all, they showered me with gifts.

Already before the journey with German Marshall Fund, I experienced plenty of bought journalism. This hasn't to do with a particular media outlet. You see, I was invited and didn't particularly reflect over it, by billionaires, for example sultan Quabboos of Oman on the Arabian peninsula.

When sultan Qabboos invited, and a poor boy like me could travel to a country with few inhabitants but immense wealth, where the head of state had the largest yachts in the world, his own symphony orchestra which plays for him when he wants – by the way he bought a pub close to Garmisch-Patenkirchen, because he is a Muslim believer, and someone might see him if he drank in his own country, so he rather travels there. The place he bought every day fly in fresh lamb from Ireland and Scotland with his private jet. He is also the head of an environmental foundation.

But this is a digression. If such a person, who is so incredibly rich, invites someone like me, then I arrive first class. I had never traveled first class before. We arrive, and a driver is waiting for me. He carries your suitcase or backpack. You have a suite in the hotel. And from the very start, you are showered with gifts. You get a platinum or gold coin. A hand-weaved carpet or whatever.

I interviewed the sultan, several times. He asked me what I wanted. I answered among other things a diving course. I wanted to learn how to dive. He flew in a PADI-approved instructor from Greece. I was there for two weeks and got my first diving certificate. On later occasions, the sultan flew me in several times, and the diving instructor. I got a certificate as rescue diver, all paid for by the sultan. You see, when one is attended to in such a way, then you know that you are bought. For a certain type of journalism. In the sultan's country, there is no freedom of the press.

There are no human rights. It is illegal to import many writings, because the sultan does not wish so. There are reports about human rights violations, but my eyes are blind. I reported, like all German media when they report about the Sultanate of Oman, to this day, only positive things. The great sultan, who is wonderful. The fantastic country of the fairy tale prince, overshadowing everything else – because I was bought.

Apart from Oman, many others have bought me. They also bought colleagues. I got many invitations through the travel section in my big newspaper. 5-star. The reportage never mentioned that I was bought, by country A or B or C. Yemenia, the Yemeni state airline, invited me to such a trip.

I didn't report about the dirt and dilapidation in the country, because I was influenced by this treatment, I only reported positively, because I wanted to come back. The Yemenis asked me when I had returned to Frankfurt what I wished In jest, I said "your large prawns, from the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean, they were spectacular.", from the seaport of Mocha (Mocha-coffee is named after it). Two days later, Yemenia flew in a buffet for the editorial office, with prawns and more.

Of course we were bought. We were bought in several ways. In your situation: when you buy a car or something else, you trust consumer tests. Look closer. How well is the car tested? I know of no colleagues, no journalists, who do testing of cars, that aren't bribed – maybe they do exist.

They get unlimited access to a car from the big car manufacturers, with free petrol and everything else. I had a work car in my newspaper, if not, I might have exploited this. I had a BMW or Mercedes in the newspaper. But there are, outside the paper, many colleagues who only have this kind of vehicle all year round. They are invited to South Africa, Malaysia, USA, to the grandest travels, when a new car is presented.

Why? So that they will write positively about the car. But it doesn't say in these reports "Advertisement from bought journalists".

But that is the reality. You should also know – since we are on the subjects of tests – who owns which test magazines? Who owns the magazine Eco-test? It is owned by the Social Democrats. More than a hundred magazines belong to the Social Democrats. It isn't about only one party, but many editorial rooms have political allegiance. Behind them are party political interests.

I mentioned the sultan of Oman and the diving course, and I have mentioned German Marshall Fund. Back to the US and the German Marshall Fund. There one told me, they knew exactly, 'hello, you were on a diving course in Oman ' The CIA knew very precisely. And the CIA also gave me something: The diving gear. I received the diving gear in the United States, and I received in the US, during my 6-week stay there, an invitation from the state of Oklahoma, from the governor. I went there. It was a small ceremony, and I received an honorary citizenship.

I am now honorary citizen of an American state. And in this certificate, it is written that I will only cover the US positively. I accepted this honorary citizenship and was quite proud of it. I proudly told about it to a colleague who worked in the US. He said 'ha, I already have 31 of these honorary citizenships!'

I don't tell about this to be witty, today I am ashamed, really.

I was greedy. I accepted many advantages that a regular citizen at my age in my occupation doesn't have, and shouldn't have. But I perceived it – and that is no excuse – as entirely normal, because my colleagues around me all did the same. But this isn't normal. When journalists are invited to think-tanks in the US, like German Marshall Fund, Atlantic Bridge, it is to 'bring them in line', for in a friendly way to make them complicit, naturally to buy them, to grease them with money.

This has quite a few aspects that one normally doesn't talk about. When I for the first time was in Southern Africa, in the 80s, Apartheid still existed in South Africa, segregated areas for blacks and whites. We didn't have any problems with this in my newspaper, we received fully paid journeys from the Apartheid regime to do propaganda work.

I was invited by the South-African gold industry, coal industry, tourist board. In the first invitation, this trip was to Namibia – I arrived tired to the hotel room in Windhoek and a dark woman lay in my bed. I at once left the room, went down to the reception and said 'excuse me, but the room is already occupied' [laughter from the audience]

Without any fuss I got another room.

Next day at the breakfast table, this was a journalist trip, my colleagues asked me 'how was yours?' Only then I understood what had happened. Until then, I had believed it was a silly coincidence.

With this I want to describe which methods are used, maybe to film journalists in such situations, buy, make dependent. Quite simply to win them over to your side with the most brutal methods, so that they are 'brought in line'.

This doesn't happen to every journalist. It would be a conspiracy theory if I said that behind every journalist, someone pulls the wires.

No. Not everyone has influence over the masses. When you – I don't mean this negatively – write about folk costume societies or if you work with agriculture or politics, why should anyone from the upper political spheres have an interest in controlling the reporting? As far as I know, this doesn't happen at all.

But if you work in one of the big media, and want up in this world, if you want to travel with politicians, heads of state, with CEOs, who also travel on these planes, then it happens. Then you are regularly bought, you are regularly observed.

I said earlier that I already during my study days had contact with the intelligence services.

I will quickly explain this to you, because it is very important for this lecture.

I studied law, Political Science and Islamology, among other places in Freiburg. At the very beginning of my study, just before end of the term, a professor approached me. Professors were then still authority figures.

He came with a brochure, and asked me: 'Mr. Ulfkotte, what are your plans for this vacation?'

I couldn't very well say that I first planned to work a bit at a building site, for then to grab my backpack and see the ocean for the first time in my life, to Italy, 'la dolce vita', flirting with girls, lie on the beach and be a young person.

I wondered how I would break it to him. He then came with a brochure [Ulfkotte imitating professor]: 'I have something for you a seminar, Introduction to Conflict Studies, two weeks in Bonn I am sure you would want to participate!'

I wondered how I would tell this elderly gentleman that I wanted to flirt with girls on the beach. Then he said 'you will get 20 Marks per day as support, paid train journey, money for books 150 Marks You will naturally get board and lodging.' He didn't stop telling me what I would receive.

It buzzed around in my head that I had to achieve everything myself, work hard. I thought 'You have always wanted to participate in a seminar on Introduction to Conflict Studies!'

So I went to Bonn from Freiburg, and I saw other students who had this urge to participate in this seminar. There were also girls one could flirt with, about twenty people. The whole thing was very strange, because we sat in a room like this one, there were desks and a lectern, and there sat some older men and a woman, they always wrote something down. They asked us about things; What we thought of East Germany, we had to do role play.

The whole thing was a bit strange, but it was well paid. We didn't reflect any further. It was very strange that in this house, in Ubierstraße 88 in Bonn, we weren't allowed to go to the second floor. There was a chain over the stairs, it was taboo.

We were allowed to go to the basement, there were constantly replenished supplies of new books that we were allowed to get for free. Ebay didn't exist then, but we could still sell them used. Anyway, it was curious, but at the end of the fortnight, we were allowed to go up these stairs, where we got an invitation to a continuation course in Conflict Studies.

After four such seminars, that is, after two years, someone asked me 'you have probably wondered what we are doing here'.

He explained that a recruitment board from the intelligence services had participated. But I had no idea that the seminar Introduction to Conflict Studies was arranged by the defense forces and run by the foreign intelligence service BND, to have a closer look at potential candidates among the students, not to commit them. They only asked if they, after four such seminars, possibly could contact me later, in my occupation.

They gave me a lot of money. My mother has always taught me to be polite. So I said 'please do', and they came to me. I was then working in the newspaper FAZ from 1986, straight after my studies.

Then the intelligence services came fairly soon to me. Why am I telling you this? The newspaper knew very soon. It is also written in my reference, therefore I can say it loud and clear. I had very close contact with the intelligence service BND.

Two persons from BND came regularly to the paper, to a visiting room. And there were occasions when the report not only was given, but also that BND had written articles, largely ready to go, that were published in the newspaper under my byline.

I highlight certain things to explain them. But if I had said here: 'There are media that are influenced by BND', you could rightly say that 'these are conspiracy theories, can you document it?'

I CAN document it. I can say, this and that article, with my byline in the paper, is written by the intelligence services, because what is written there, I couldn't have known. I couldn't have known what existed in some cave or other in Libya, what secret thing were there, what was being built there. This was all things that BND wanted published. It wasn't like this only in FAZ.

It was like this also in other media. I told about it. If we had rule of law, there would now be an investigation commission. Because the political parties would stand up, regardless of if they are on the left, in the center or right, and say: What this Ulfkotte fella says and claims he can document, this should be investigated. Did this occur in other places? Or is it still ongoing?'

I can tell you: Yes it still exists. I know colleagues who still have this close contact. One can probably show this fairly well until a few years ago. But I would find it wonderful if this investigation commission existed.

But it will obviously not happen, because no one has an interest in doing so. Because then the public would realize how closely integrated politics, media, and the secret services are in this country.

That is, one often sees in reporting, whether it is from the local paper, regional papers, TV-channels, national tabloids and so-called serious papers.

Put them side by side, and you will discover that more than 90% looks almost identical. A lot of subjects and news, that are not being reported at all, or they are – I claim reported very one-sided. One can only explain this if one knows the structures in the background, how media is surrounded, bought and 'brought onboard' by politics and the intelligence services; Where politics and intelligence services form a single unity. There is an intelligence coordinator by the Chancellor.

I can tell you, that under the former coordinator Bernd Schmidbauer, under Kohl, I walked in and out of the Chancellery and received stacks of secret and confidential documents, which I shouldn't have received.

They were so many that we in the newspaper had own archive cabinets for them. Not only did I receive these documents,but Schmidbauer should have been in jail if we had rule of law. Or there should have been a parliamentary commission or an investigation, because he wasn't allowed

For example if I couldn't bring along the documents if the case was too hot, there was another trick. They locked me in a room. In this room were the documents, which I could look through. I could record it all on tape, photograph them or write them down. When I was done, I could call on the intercom, so they could lock me out. There were thousands of these tricks. Anonymous documents that I and my colleagues needed could be placed in my mail box.

These are of course illegal things. BUT, you ONLY get them if you 'toe the line' with politics.

If I had written that Chancellor Helmut Kohl is stupid, a big idiot, or about what Schmidbauer did, I would of course not have received more. That is, if you today, in newspapers, read about 'soon to be revealed exposures, we will publish a big story based on material based on intelligence', then none of these media have dug a tunnel under the security services and somehow got hold of something secret. It is rather that they work so well with intelligence services, with the military counterespionage, the foreign intelligence, police intelligence etc, that if they have got hold of internal documents, it is because they cooperate so well that they received them as a reward for well performed service.

You see, in this way one is in the end bought. One is bought to such a degree that at one point one can't exit this system anymore.

If I describe how you are supplied with prostitutes, bribed with cars, money; I tried to write down everything I received in gifts, everything I was bribed with. I stopped doing so several years ago, more than a decade ago.

It doesn't make it any better, but today I regret everything. But I know that it goes this way with many journalists.

It would make me very happy if journalists stood up and said they won't participate in this any longer, and that they think this is wrong.

But I see no possibility, because media corporations in any case are doing badly. Where should a journalist find work the next day? It isn't so that tens of thousands of employers are waiting for you. It is the other way round. Tens of thousands of journalists are looking for work or commissions.

That is, from pure desperation one is happy to be bribed. If a newsroom stands behind or not an article that in reality is advertising, doesn't matter, one goes along. I know some, even respected journalists, who want to leave this system.

But imagine if you are working in one of the state channels, that you stand up and tell what you have received. How will that be received by your colleagues? That you have political ulterior motives etc.

September 30 [2015], a few days ago, Chancellor Merkel invited all the directors in the state channels to her in the Chancellery. I will claim that she talked with them about how one should report the Chancellors politics. Who of you [in the audience] heard about this incident? 3-4-5? So a small minority. But this is reality. Merkel started already 6 years ago, at the beginning of the financial crisis, to invite chief editors ..she invited chief editors in the large media corporations, with the express wish that media should embellish reality, in a political way. This could have been only claims, one could believe me or not.

But a couple of journalists were there, they told about it. Therefore I repeat: Merkel invited the chief editors several times, and told them she didn't want the population to be truthfully and openly informed about the problems out there. For example, the background for the financial crisis. If the citizens knew how things were, they would run to the bank and withdraw their money. So beautifying everything; everything is under control; your savings are safe; just smile and hold hands – everything will be fine.

In such a way it should be reported. Ladies and gentlemen, what I just said can be documented. These are facts, not a conspiracy theory.

I formulated it a bit satirically, but I ask myself when I see how things are in this country: Is this the democracy described in the Constitution? Freedom of speech? Freedom of the press?

Where one has to be afraid if one doesn't agree with the ruling political correctness, if one doesn't want to get in trouble. Is this the republic our parents and grandparents fought for, that they built?

I claim that we more and more – as citizens – are cowards 'toeing the line', who don't open our mouths.

It is so nice to have plurality and diversity of opinions.

But it is at once clamped down on, today fairly openly.

Of my experiences with journalism, I can in general say that I have quit all media I have to pay for, for the reasons mentioned. Then the question arises, 'but which pay-media can I trust?'

Naturally there are ones I support. They are definitely political, I'll add. But they are all fairly small. And they won't be big anytime soon. But I have quit all big media that I used to subscribe to, Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine, etc. I would like to not having to pay the TV-license fee, without being arrested because I won't pay fines. But maybe someone here in the audience can tell me how to do so without all these problems?

Either way, I don't want to financially support this kind of journalism. I can only give you the advice to get information from alternative, independent media and all the forums that exist.

I'm not advertising for any of them. Some of you probably know that I write for the publishing house Kopp. But there are so many portals. Every person is different in political viewpoint, culturally etc. The only thing uniting us, whether we are black or white, religious or non-religious, right or left, or whatever; we all want to know the truth. We want to know what really happens out there, and exactly in the burning political questions: asylum seekers, refugees, the financial crisis, bad infrastructure, one doesn't know how it will continue. Precisely with this background, is it even more important that people get to know the truth.

And it is to my great surprise that I conclude that we in media, as well as in politics, have a guiding line.

To throw more and more dust in the citizens' eyes to calm them down. What is the sense in this? One can have totally different opinions on the subject of refugees with good reasoning.

But facts are important for you as citizens to decide the future. That is, how many people will arrive? How will it affect my personal affluence? Or will it affect my affluence at all? Will the pensions shrink? etc. Then you can talk with people about this, quite openly. But to say that we should open all borders, and that this won't have any negative consequences, is very strange. What I now say isn't a plug for my books. I know that some of them are on the table in front.

I'm not saying this so that you will buy books. I am saying this for another reason that soon will be clear. I started to write books on certain subjects 18 years ago. They have sold millions. It is no longer about you buying my books. It is important that you hear the titles, then you will see a certain line throughout the last ten years. One can have different opinions about this line, but I have always tried to describe, based on my subjective experiences, formed over many years in the Middle East and Africa.

That there will be migration flows, from people from culture areas that are like; if one could compare a cultural area with an engine, that one fills petrol in a diesel engine then everyone knows what will happen, the engine is great, diesel is great, but if there too much petrol, then the engine starts to splutter and stop.

I have tried to make you aware of this, with drastic and less drastic words. What we can expect, and ever faster. The book titles are SOS Occident; Warning Civil War; No Black,Red, Yellow [the colors in the German flag], Holy War in Europe; Mecca Germany.

I just want to say, when politicians and media today claim no one could have predicted it, everything is a complete surprise; Ladies and Gentlemen, this is not at all surprising. The migration flows, for years warnings have been coming from international organizations, politicians, experts, exactly about what happened and it is predictable, if we had a map over North Africa and the Middle East..

If the West continues to destabilize countries like Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, country by country, Iraq when we toppled Saddam Hussein, Afghanistan. We as Europeans and Germans have spent tens of billions on a war where we allegedly defend peace and liberty, at the mountain range Hindu Kush [in Afghanistan]. And here, in front of our own door, we soon have Hindu Kush.

We have no stabilization in Afghanistan. Dozens of German soldiers have lost their lives for nothing. We have a more unstable situation than ever.

You can have your own opinions. I am only saying that these refugee flows didn't fall from the sky. It is predicable, that if I bomb and destabilize a country, that people – it is always so in history – it hasn't anything to do with the Middle East or North Africa. I have seen enough wars in Africa. Naturally they created refugee flows.

But all of us didn't want to see this. We haven't prepared. And now one is reacting in full panic, and what is most disconcerting with this, is when media and politicians, allegedly from deepest inner conviction, say: 'this was all a complete surprise!'

Are they drunk? What are they smoking? What sort of pills are they eating? That they behave this way?

End transcription

The transcription has been edited for clarity, and may differ from the spoken word. The subtitles and transcription are for the first 49 minutes of the lecture only. Subtitled and transcribed by Terje Maloy. This article is Creative Commons 4.0 for non-commercial purposes.
Terje Maloy ( Website ) is a Norwegian citizen, with roots north of the Arctic Circle. Nowadays, he spends a lot of time in Australia, working in the family business. He has particular interests in liberty, global justice, imperialism, history, media analysis and what Western governments really are up to. He runs a blog , mostly in Norwegian, but occasionally in English. He likes to write about general geopolitical matters, and Northern Europe in particular, presenting perspectives that otherwise barely are mentioned in the dominant media (i.e. most things that actually matter).
Tim Jenkins
From 1:18 minutes, Ulfkotte reveals without question, that the EU Political 'elite's' combined intelligence services work with & propagate . . .

Terror, Terrorists & Terrorism / a conscious organised Politics of FEAR ! / Freedom of Movement, of fully armed IS Agents Provocateurs & with a Secret Services get out of jail free card, 'Hände Weg Nicht anfassen', it's 'Hammertime', "U Can't Touch this", we're armed state operatives travelling to Germany & Austria, " don't mess with my operation !" & all journalists' hands tied, too.

The suggestions & offers below to translate fully, what Ulfkotte declares publicly, make much sense. It is important to understand that even an 'Orban' must bow occasionally, to deep state Security State Dictators and the pressures they can exert in so many ways. Logic . . . or else one's life is made into hell, alive or an 'accidental' death: – and may I add, it is a curiously depressing feeling when you have so many court cases on the go, that when a Gemeinde/Municipality Clerk is smiling, celebrating and telling you, (representing yourself in court, with only independent translator & recorder), "You Won the Case, a superior judge has over-ruled " and the only reply possible is,

"Which case number ?"

life gets tedious & time consuming, demanding extreme patience. Given his illness, surely Ulfkotte and his wife, deserve/d extra credit & 'hot chocolate'. Makes a change to see & read some real journalism: congrats.@OffG

Excellent Professional Journalism on "Pseudo-Journalist State Actors & Terrorists". If you see a terrorist, guys, at best just reason with him or her :- better than calling

INTERPOL or Secret Services @theguardian, because you wouldn't want a member of the public, grassing you up to your boss, would you now ? ! Just tell the terrorist who he really works for . . . Those he resents ! Rather like Ulfkotte had to conclude, with final resignation. My condolences to his good wife.

Wilmers31
Very good of you to not forget Ulfkotte. If I did not have sickness in the house, I would translate it. Maybe I can do one chapter and someone else can do another one? What's the publisher saying?
jgiam
It's just a long unedited speech.
Tim Jenkins
You wouldn't say that if you could speak German, my friend ! ?

From one hour 18 minutes onwards, Ulfkotte details EU-Inter-State Terror Co-operation, with returning IS Operatives on a Free Pass, fully armed and even Viktor Orban had to give in to the commands of letting Terrorists through Hungary into Germany & Austria.

But, don't let that revelation bother you, living under a Deep State 'Politic of Fear' in the West and long unedited speeches gets kinda' boring now, I know a bit like believing in some kinda' dumbfuk new pearl harbour, war on terror &&& all phoney propaganda fairy story telling, just like on the 11/9/2001, when the real target was WTC 7, to hide elitist immoral endeavours, corruption & the missing $$$TRILLIONS$$$ of tax payers money, 'mislaid' by the D.o.D. announced directly the day before by Rumsfeld, forgotten ? Before ramping the Surveillance States abilities in placing & employing "Parallel Platforms" on steroids, so that our secret services can now employ terror & deploy terrorists at will .., against us, see ?

Plus ca change....
I remember on a similar note a 60 Minutes piece just prior to Clinton's humanitarian bombing of Serbian civilian infrastructure (and long ago deleted, I'm sure) on a German free-lancer staging Kosovo atrocities in a Munich suburb, and having the German MSM eating it up and asking for more. (WWII guilt assuagement at work, no doubt).
mark
Everybody who works in the MSM, without exception, are bought and paid for whores peddling lies on behalf of globalist corporate interests.
That is their job.
That is what they do.
They have long since forfeited all credibility and integrity.
They have lied to us endlessly for decades and generations, from the Bayonetted Belgian Babies and Human Bodies Turned Into Soap of WW1 to the Iraq Incubator Babies and Syrian Gas Attacks of more recent times.

You can no longer take anything at face value.
The default position has to be that every single word they print and every single word that comes out of their lying mouths is untrue.
If they say it's snowing at the North Pole, you can't accept that without first going there and checking it out for yourself.
You can't accept anything that has not been independently verified.

This applies across the board.
All of the accepted historical narrative, including things like the holocaust.
And current Global Warming "science."
We know we have been lied to again and again and again.
So what else have we been lied to without us realising it?

mark
Come to think of it, I need to apologise to sex workers.
I have known quite a few of them who have quite high ethical and moral standards, certainly compared to the MSM.
And they certainly do less damage.
Vert few working girls have blood on their hands like the MSM.
Compared to them, working girls are the salt of the earth and pillars of the community.
Seamus Padraig

Compared to them, working girls are the salt of the earth and pillars of the community.

I heartily agree. Even if one disapproves morally of prostitution, how can it possibly be worse to sell your body than to sell your soul?

Oliver
Quite. Checking things out for yourself is the way to go. Forget 'Peer Reviews', just as bent as the journalism Ulfkotte described. DIY.
Mortgage
So natural, all it seems

Part II:
Bought Science

Part III:
Bought Health Services

mapquest directions
The video you shared with great info. I really like the information you share. boxnovel
Gary Weglarz
I knew we were in dangerous new territory regarding government censorship when after waiting several years for Ulfkotte's best selling book to finally be available in English – it suddenly, magically, disappeared completely – a vanishing act – and I couldn't get so much as a response from, much less an explanation from, the would be publisher. Udo's book came at a time when it could have made a difference countering the fact-free complete and total "fabrication of reality" by the U.S. and Western powers as they have waged a brutal and ongoing neocolonial war on the world's poor under the guise of "fighting terrorism."

Udo's voice (in the form of his book) was silenced for a reason – that being that he spoke the truth about our utterly and completely corrupt Western fantasy world in which we in the West proclaim our – "respect international law" and "respect for human rights." His work, such as this interview and others he has done, pulled the curtain back on the big lie and exposed our oligarchs, politicians and the "journalists" they hire as simply a cadre of professional criminals whose carefully crafted lies are used to soak up the blood and to cover the bodies of the dead, all in order to hide all that mayhem from our eyes, to insure justice is an impossibility and to make sure we Western citizens sleep well at night, oblivious to our connection to the actual realities that are this daily regime of pillage and plunder that is our vaunted "neoliberal order."

Ramdan
After watching the first 20 min I couldn't help but remembering this tale:

"The philosopher Diogenes (of Sinope) was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, 'If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.' To which Diogenes replied, 'Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king"."

which is also the reason why such a large part of humanity lives in voluntary servitude to power structures, living the dream, the illusion of being free..

Ramdan
"English Translation of Udo Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalists" Suppressed?" at Global Research 2017!!

https://www.globalresearch.ca/english-translation-of-udo-ulfkottes-bought-journalists-suppressed/5601857

Francis Lee
Just rechecked Amazon. Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys the News by Udo Ulfkotte PH.D. The tag line reads.

Hard cover – currently unavailable; paperback cover – currently unavailable; Kindle edition – ?

Book burning anyone?

nottheonly1
No translation exists for this interview with Udo Ulfkotte on KenFM, the web site of Ken Jebsen. Ken Jebsen has been in the cross hairs of the CIA and German agencies for his reporting of the truth. He was smeared and defamed by the same people that Dr. Ulfkotte had written extensively about in his book 'Gekaufte Journalisten' ('Bought Journalists').

The reason why I add this link to the interview lies in the fact that Udo Ulfkotte speaks about an important part of Middle Eastern and German history – a history that has been scrubbed from the U.S. and German populations. In the Iraq war against Iran – that the U.S. regime had pushed for in the same fashion the way they had pushed Nazi Germany to invade the U.S.S.R. – German chemical weapons were used under the supervision of the U.S. regime. The extend of the chemical weapons campaign was enormous and to the present day, Iranians are born with birth defects stemming from the used of German weapons of mass destruction.

Dr. Ulfkotte rightfully bemoans, that every year German heads of state are kneeling for the Jewish victims of National socialism – but not for the victims of German WMD's that were used against Iran. He stresses that the act of visual asking for forgiveness in the case of the Jewish victims becomes hypocrisy, when 40 years after the Nazis reigned, German WMD's were used against Iran. The German regime was in on the WMD attack on Iran. It was not something that happened because they had lost a couple of thousand containers with WMDs. They delivered the WMD's to Iraq under U.S. supervision.

Ponder that. And there has never been an apology towards Iran, or compensations. Nada. Nothing. Instead, the vile rhetoric and demagogery of every U.S. regime since has continued to paint Iran in the worst possible ways, most notably via incessant psychological projection – accusing Iran of the war crimes and crimes against humanity the U.S. and its Western vassal regimes are guilty of.

Here is the interview that was recorded shortly before Udo Ulfkotte's death:

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

If enough people support the effort, I am willing to contact KenFM for the authorization to translate the interview and use it for subtitles to the video. However, I can't do that on my own.

nottheonly1
Correction: the interview was recorded two years before his passing.
Antonym
the U.S. regime had pushed for in the same fashion the way they had pushed Nazi Germany to invade the U.S.S.R.

So Roosevelt pushed Hitler to attack Stalin? Hitler didn't want to go East? Revisionism at it most motive free.

nottheonly1
It would help if you would use your brain just once. 'Pushing' is synonymous for a variety of ways to instigate a desired outcome. Financing is just one way. And Roosevelt was in no way the benevolent knight history twisters like to present him. You are outing yourself again as an easliy duped sheep.

But then, with all the assaults by the unintelligence agencies, it does not come as a surprise when facts are twisted.

Antonym
Lebensraum was first popularized in 1901 in Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum Hitler's "Mein Kampf" ( 1925) build on that: he had no need for any American or other push, it was intended from the get go. The timing of operation Barbarossa was brilliant though: it shocked Stalin into a temporary limbo as he had his own aggressive plans.
Casandra2
This excellent article demonstrates how the Controlling Elite manipulates the Media and the Message for purposes of misdirecting attention and perception of their true intentions and objective of securing Global Ownership (aka New World Order).

This approach has been assiduously applied, across the board, over many years, to the point were they now own and run everything required to subjugate the 'human race' to the horrors of their psychopathic inclinations. They are presently holding the global economy on hold until their AI population (social credit) control system/grid is in place before bringing the house down.

Needless to say, when this happens a disunited and frightened Global Population will be at their mercy.

If you wish to gain a full insight of what the Controlling Elite is about, and capable of, I recommend David Icke's latest publication 'Trigger'. I know he's been tagged a 'nutter' over the past thirty years, but I reckon this book represents the 'gold standard' in terms of generating awareness as a basis for launching a united global population counter-attack (given a great strategy) against forces that can only be defined as pure 'EVIL'.

MASTER OF UNIVE
Corporate Journalism is all about corporatism and the continuation of it. If the Intelligence Community needs greater fools for staffing purposes in the corporate hierarchy they look for anyone that can be compromised via inducements of whatever the greater fools want. Engaging in compromise allows both parties to have complicit & explicit understanding that corruption and falsehood are the tools of the trade. To all-of-a-sudden develop a conscience after decades of playing the part of a willing participant is understandable in light of the guilt complex one must develop after screwing everyone in the world out of the critical assessment we all need to obtain in order to make decisions regarding our futures.

Bought & paid for corporate Journalists are controlled by the Intelligence Agencies and always have been since at least the Second World War. The CIA typically runs bribery & blackmail at the state & federal level so that when necessary they have instant useless eaters to offer up as political sacrifice when required via state run propaganda, & impression management.

Assuming that journalism is an ethical occupation is naïve and a fools' game even in the alternative news domain as all writers write from bias & a lack of real knowledge. Few writers are intellectually honest or even aware of their own limits as writers. The writer is a failure and not a hero borne in myth. Writers struggle to write & publish. Bought and paid for writers don't have a struggle in terms of writing because they are told what to write before they write as automatons for the Intelligence Community knowing that they sold their collective souls to the Prince of Darkness for whatever trinkets, bobbles, or bling they could get their greedy hands on at the time.

Developing a conscience late in life is too late.

May all that sell their souls to the Intel agencies understand that pond scum never had a conscience to begin with.

Once pond scum always pond scum.

MOU

nottheonly1
What is not addressed in this talk is the addictive nature of this sort of public relation writing. Journalism is something different altogether. I know that, because I consider myself to be a journalist at heart – one that stopped doing it when the chalice was offered to me. The problem is that one is not part of the cabal one day to another.

It is a longer process in which one is gradually introduced to ever more expensive rewards/bribes. Never too big to overwhelm – always just about what one would accept as 'motivation' to omit aspects of any issue. Of course, omission is a lie by any other name, but I can attest to the life style of a journalist that socializes with the leaders of all segments of society.

And I would also write a critique about a great restaurant – never paying a dime for a fantastic dinner. The point though is that I would not write a good critique for a nasty place for money. I have never written anything but the truth – for which I received sometimes as much as a bag full of the best rolls in the country.

Twisting the truth for any form of bribes is disgusting and attests of the lowest of any character.

MASTER OF UNIVE
Professional whoring is as old as the hills and twice as dusty. Being ethical is difficult stuff especially when money is involved. Money is always a prime motivator but vanity works wonders too. Corporatists will offer whatever inducements they can to get what they want.

All mainstream media voices are selling a media package that is a corporatist lie in and of itself. Truth is less marketable than lies. Embellished news & journalistic hype is the norm.

If the devil offers inducements be sure to up the ante to outsmart the drunken sot.

MOU

[Nov 02, 2019] At the Feet of Mammon by Philip Farruggio

Notable quotes:
"... Of course, when the die was cast and Rumsfeld's famous Shock and Awe campaign began, the three major news talk channels, CNN, MSNBC and FOX, were all over us with cheerleading. ..."
"... Swinton's use of the phrase 'Intellectual prostitutes' rang true then. ..."
"... As the war criminal Mr. Obama stated, when in 2008 many of his own party wanted to have hearings on the pre-emptive attack and occupation of Iraq, that it was time to 'Move forward'. Forward he did by increasing the number of drone murderous assaults by Tenfold! ..."
"... Now that he is out of office, Barack, the 'Hope and Change' king, just purchased a home for $8.1 million. Tell that to the suckers who fell for his rhetoric in the Afro American communities. ..."
Oct 20, 2019 | off-guardian.org

He stated:

There is no such thing at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press There is not ONE of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print!

I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with The business of journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread We are the tools of rich men behind the scenes.

We are jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes!"

We only need go back a few short years to see the utter magnitude of what Swinton was talking about. Remember the illegal and immoral USA invasion and occupation of Iraq? Most of the 'levers of empire' were pushed to accommodate that bit of lying, disinformation and half truths.

This writer remembers when Phil Donahue had his nightly news/talk show on MSNBC. By February of 2003 or thereabouts, Jeff Cohen, Phil's producer, recalls how he was told to have TWO pro invasion guests on for every anti invasion guest. Remember, at that time General Electric Corp. owned MSNBC. Yet, that was not enough to satisfy the empire. On February 23 the Donahue show was cancelled, although the ratings were pretty good.

You see, by that time, late February, the machine was all ready for the attack. It just needed a few more morsels of propaganda to sink into both the Congress and of course the consumers Sorry, I mean the citizenry.

This writer was extremely agitated by the high level of Pro invasion info coming over the embedded mainstream print and electronic media. One slight consolation was when C-Span actually 'did the correct thing' and showed a Canadian news channel's coverage of the impending doom.

Of course, when the die was cast and Rumsfeld's famous Shock and Awe campaign began, the three major news talk channels, CNN, MSNBC and FOX, were all over us with cheerleading.

FOX was so off the radar that no critique is needed. However, CNN and MSNBC, trying to look like 'Neutral Journalism 101', could not contain their peanut gallery mindsets, the one that John Swinton referred to in his famous speech.

You had Aaron Brown, Lester Holt and little Katie Couric (of flagship station NBC, owned by GE), along with Brian Williams (later to be outed, for but awhile, for his phony news stories in Iraq) all right there celebrating the 'Liberators of Iraq'.

They all wore their flag buttons on their lapels, and little Katie was filmed strolling through the halls of NBC shouting 'Marines Rock!' Of course, Lester Holt did the 'right (wing) thing' and now is a respected anchor so much so that good ole Lester moderates presidential debates.

Swinton's use of the phrase 'Intellectual prostitutes' rang true then.

Now we come to a recent bit of disgrace. Ellen Degeneres, the highly celebrated and successful daytime talk show hostess and proud gay woman, was seen sitting with Junior Bush at a Dallas Cowboys game, in the exclusive owner's box area.

She has had Junior on her show to talk about his painting, has visited him at his ranch, and considers him a 'Nice guy'. Junior has, on record as president, never did squat to help with the AIDs pandemic, and allowed his far right evangelical beliefs to keep him from ever speaking favorably about gay rights etc.

Yet, this openly gay woman, who must have felt alarmed by our illegal invasion (OR DID SHE?), must have had friends who were enraged by that invasion at the time.

All the many alternative news blips must have gotten to her eyes and ears, telling her that the Bush/Cheney gang were WAR CRIMINALS! Yet Ms. DeGeneres continues to satisfy the lie which tells us to take a pass on the dastardly things done by the war criminals in the White House.

As the war criminal Mr. Obama stated, when in 2008 many of his own party wanted to have hearings on the pre-emptive attack and occupation of Iraq, that it was time to 'Move forward'. Forward he did by increasing the number of drone murderous assaults by Tenfold!

Now that he is out of office, Barack, the 'Hope and Change' king, just purchased a home for $8.1 million. Tell that to the suckers who fell for his rhetoric in the Afro American communities.

Anyone but the foolish people who still support Mr. Trump realize that he is as much of a populist as the man he emulates with his body gestures: Il Duce!

Nothing ever changes when the majority of working stiffs suck in the foul air that comes from the mouths of the empire's minions, whether they be presidents, congress people or (so called) journalists and talk show hosts. It is time for those of good conscience to boycott the lot of them!

Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 400 of his works posted on sites like Global Research, Greanville Post, OffGuardian, Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, , Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust , whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has an internet interview show, 'It's the Empire... Stupid' with producer Chuck Gregory.

peeWee

Pretty good article. Pity you had to spoil it with the Trump populist Mussolini comparison at the end. Don't get me wrong I am no Trump fan but are you saying that much of the stuff written about him is not propaganda? So when it comes to Trump the media are ..even handed? honest? ..unbiased? (LOL). P.S. How many wars did Bush try and stop? How many wars did Obama stop? Is stopping wars now "populism"? Even I can see that the highest levels of the US government have been compromised by the intelligence agencies and corrupt partisan actors. Need I remind you that it was a "populist" who called out the FAKE NEWS?
Doctortrinate
The News Today, as slipshod as you like – but how far is it different from those diligent yesterdays. Broadcasts, built upon a complex Fabrication, to deceive it's willing dependants into accepting falsifications as an authentic constant of everyday reality.

So, until the demoi discard the pleasure of blissful ignorance, for the painful truth whatever the spin, however its dressed, the story will continue, trapped in it's own invention, lost in a pernicious labyrinth where every redundant turn forgets the last.

MASTER OF UNIVE
Corporatism is Fascism, and Fascists that tow the party line are always utilized for purposes of impression management much like props on a TV program are. Dubya is a corporatist whore just as daytime talk show hosts are too. Assuming that corporatist whores should have integrity is naïve in the extreme.

If you watch television you are an automaton without enough reason to be able to turn the television off given that you have been programmed to mindlessly adhere to whatever the television coughs up daily.
If you watch mindless Fascists entertaining mass murderers like George W. Bush at ballgames that host the Military Industrial Complex for halftime shows you are _Functionally Retarded_ and likely skimmed over this article whilst locked in a trance state of ignorance & a lack of education.

FUCK America & American television.

It's a bankrupt Corporation that is $22 trillion in debt that it will never pay back, suckers!

MOU

wardropper
" Mr. Obama stated, when in 2008 many of his own party wanted to have hearings on the pre-emptive attack and occupation of Iraq, that it was time to 'Move forward' "

And I will never, ever, forget Nancy Pelosi's dismissive shrug when many of that same party were calling for Bush's impeachment on account of that illegal invasion:
"Impeachment is off the table." Decent Americans no longer have a representative in the US government. As Swinton clearly implies, those who hire today's journalists bear practically all the responsibility for this.

hollyPlastic
A glaring example of how much the West loves freedom is shown in this UN briefing on Torture, this week.

Spoiler: the room is basically empty.

https://www.rt.com/news/471016-assange-torture-violations-un/

This serves a good demonstration of how stupid Hong Kong protesters are in believing that there is a 'West/UK/US' supporting their quest for 'Democracy' and 'Freedom'.

milosevic
you mean Hollywood movies aren't an accurate source of information about world politics and history???
hollyPlastic
Look and you'll see that according to the Controlled Corporate Mass Media, there are, in this period of history, three pillars that are supporting Western civilisation:
  • Pillar One: Peroxide. Look how very blonde people are getting on mainstream media. You can't miss it. Good investment to buy shares in Peroxide factories.
  • Piller Two: White Skin. Whether it's using Photoshop or Skin Whitening Products, people are looking very white in their photos, these days.
  • Pillar three: Piercing Blue Eyes. That must be using photoshop, because there aren't eyes that are so blue in real life like you see nowadays in the photos.

And

The Blonde is getting blonder. Even, black is now turning blonde. The White is getting whiter. The Blue is getting bluer.

Other pillars of Western Civilisation are somewhat behind the scene and include the proliferation/sales of weapons of mass destruction, breaking international laws, as well as, the withdrawal from treaties which restrict the deployment of nuclear missiles.

mark
Ah, but everybody knows Bombing Brown People and Torturing Brown People is good for them. We only do it for their benefit. And this in no way contradicts Our Values and Our Rules Based Order. All these benighted natives and lesser breeds are jolly grateful for all our lofty sermons and pious lectures about human rights.
milosevic
indeed, it's the white man's burden .
padre
I find it very interesting, how people need to worship something!It seems to me that they aren't able to admit, that there are things that are not clear to them!For instance, we know very little about the universe, so we declare God made it!
hollyPlastic
There is a poignant remark made on these pages which goes something like this:

When surviving depends on believing, the mind works wonders

I think the implications of 'believing' in order to survive are profound. People need to believe in order to fit in, in order to get a job, in order to get a promotion, in order to get married, in order to get enough food to feed their offspring, and in order to 'look' free.

Not to forget, by believing in Jesus, you give your proxy support to plunder every inch of the Earth, and kill as many brown-skin people as possible.

hollyPlastic

I describe this situation we face as mind control warfare

It is indeed. Thanks for the valuable thoughts!

Tim Jenkins
Mammon avoids questioning & analysing incredible endless lies by 'Schiff for brains'. When actually, just like Norman Bates in Psycho, Adam Schiff is actually the "whistleblower", with bent whistle all he needs is a wig and a rocking chair 🙂
Tim Jenkins
Correction: an electric rocking chair, lol
Gezzah Potts
Jayzus . Adam fecken Schiff. Complete wackjob extraordinaire, tho in Washington DC he has s(ch)tiff competition. Someone the Liberal bourgie professional types here in Aussie regard with dewy eyed fondness and admiration for leading the . Resistance. Gag. Can things get anymore surreal? Do you sometimes feel like you've dropped acid by mistake such is the bizarre happenings, um, happening. Do you think the Mad Hatter would be perplexed at the state of our World? I know I bloody am
bob
Hey man, there's nothing wrong with the way the British regime treats its sick people .

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/months-of-pip-distress-hastened-my-brothers-death/

. is there?

vexarb
Bob, nothing wrong at all -- if you worship St.Margaret of Muck, patron saint of the AZC.

"There's no such thing as a social conscience".

Pyewacket
Eugenics mate, it's been back in fashion here for the past decade. But instead of dying in a death camp, you die on the street, or your own home, if you have one.
vexarb
AOO, you mean Trump's Time to Bring Them Back might be genuine? I give him credit because I understand his problem: he has to face his Jewish daughter and her Likudnik husband.

"It is easier to rule an Empire than to manage a family" -- Montaigne

vexarb
ps Not only face but live with. Trump's sincerity is in the same awkward family position as Cher in "Moonstruck" when she and her boyfriend meet her father and his girlfriend at the Opera, and she says to her father:

"I'm not sure whether I saw you".

mark
The only 2 reputable journalists who tried to cover Iraq honestly were Donahue and Chris Hedges. Needless to say, both were immediately sacked. Needless to say, all the cheerleading whores with blood on their hands prospered greatly and are still in situ peddling new lies.
Graft
Unfortunately Donahue is not on the working mans side he just didn't want a war and Chris Hedges is controlled opposition that's why he has his own tv show and lost a tonne of support for his outright lies about Lenin
mark
I don't agree with either of them on different issues but I wouldn't question their integrity.
Ramdan
"But the more fundamental problem is that Americans are too nice. That may seem like a paradox, since we are a country that blithely bombs the world and then weeps with self-pity and affronted dignity when the little people we just stomped on fail to forgive us for tearing out their fingernails. In fact, our niceness is itself a symptom of the moral obliviousness that permits us to enact atrocities in the first place. Niceness is not friendliness, not hospitality, not charity and not goodness. Niceness is the blank grin on the face of the psychopath: it is the public enactment of all the forms of love and kindness without the troublesome burden of loving anyone or treating people with kindness.

This is what an Ellen DeGeneres is really getting at when she brags about being friends with those who have "different beliefs." It is not a matter of actual emotional attachment to any system of values, and it's certainly not a matter of transcending minor political squabbles to form some approximation of a community. [ ]
Rather, she is saying that it is more personally and professionally convenient just to be nice to whatever person happens to be in the same grandstand for the same spectacle of large men grievously injuring each other. It is not that there are disparate values to be bridged in order to form a diverse and tolerant society. Instead, it is hankering after the ease of a society in which there is no necessity to form a core of values beyond the practical calculation of personal and social advantage."

Ellen DeGeneres and the American Psychopath

mark
Dubya rehabilitated himself by slagging off the Orange Man. So he's now a jolly decent chap and all round good egg. Certainly outweighs a little thing like a couple of million dead sand niggers.
Graft
As jimmy Bore said on his show liberals love Bush nowadays but they still fucking hate Ralph Nader, because he gave us ..Bush! Mind officially blown
Ramdan
This is an interesting (as for debate) assessment of the motives and the way we (mis)construct reality .

"in the interests of survival" but "survival" of what?

"survival" of a mind construct as in "I don't like this but I NEED to do it to survive, to STAY ALIVE, to keep eating, to not to die"?

"Survival" as in the indegenous kids eating from dumpsters? ( here and here ) .

OR "survival" of our INTERNALIZED adoration of Mammon as the provider for pleasurable moments and the utter avoidance of the non-pleasurable.

survival of a vehement desire for what is mentally, socially and culturally construed as 'satisfactory', 'laudable', 'praiseworthy', 'deserving' .which basically is the adoration of wealth, and 'upper' social status, of celebrity and of all other things that represent the ACTUAL internal adoration of Mammon.

Is in this- seemingly 'innocuous' – way that reality is subverted and we (unconsciously) construct the uber-materialistic worldview that continues to discard the honest, deep human, spiritual values that can save us from this madness.

I would rather remember again, and old, "crazy" guy .

"A philosopher named Aristippus, who had quite willingly sucked up to Dionysus and won himself a spot at his court, saw Diogenes cooking lentils for a meal. "If you would only learn to compliment Dionysus, you wouldn't have to live on lentils."

Diogenes replied, "But if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn't have to flatter Dionysus."
― Diogenes of Sinope

[Nov 01, 2019] Viable Opposition The Legal Connection Between Washington and Kiev

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Note this key excerpt from the letter of transmittal: ..."
"... " Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes: taking of testimony or statements of persons; providing documents, records, and articles of evidence; serving documents; locating or identifying persons; transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related to restraint, confiscation, forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the requested state. " ..."
"... The Treaty was reported favourable by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on September 27, 2000, consented to ratification by the Senate on October 18, 2000 and ratified by the President of the United States on January 5, 2001. The Treaty was entered into force on February 27, 2001. Here are the title page of the Treaty and the signature page: ..."
"... With this background and while I don't want to appear to be pro- or anti-Trump, it is very, very clear that the current POTUS was within the law under the Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters between the United States and Ukraine when it comes to asking Ukraine to investigate a potential criminal matter. ..."
October 15, 2019 | viableopposition.blogspot.com

With the Trump impeachment procedures ongoing and the connection to his conversation about the Biden family with Ukraine President Zelenskyy, there has been very little coverage of an important aspect of the relationship between Washington and Kiev. While none of us can speak to the actual intent of Donald Trump's remarks be it for personal gain or for other reasons, there is background information that may help illuminate the context of the discussion between the two world leaders.

In case you haven't read the pertinent section of the transcript of the conversation, here it is:

" President Zelenskyy : Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him having your trust and your confidence and have personal relations with you so we can cooperate even more so. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly.. That I can assure you.

President Trump : Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that's really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.

President Zelenskyy : I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all, I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation. Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved, by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine as far as I recall her name was Ivanovich. It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough.

President Trump : Well, she's going to go through some things. I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I'm sure you will figure it out. I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything. Your economy is going to get better and better I predict. You have a lot of assets. It's a great country. I have many Ukrainian friends, their incredible people." (my bolds)

Now, let's look back in time to 1998. On July 22, 1998, a treaty was signed between Ukraine and Washington.

The Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters was signed in Kiev on the aforementioned date. Here is an excerpt from the The original letter of submittal from the Department of State to the President's office dated October 19, 1999 which states the following:

"I have the honor to submit to you the Treaty between the United States of America and Ukraine on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters with Annex (``the Treaty''), signed at Kiev on July 22, 1998. I recommend that the Treaty be transmitted to the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification.
Also enclosed, for the information of the Senate, is an exchange of notes under which the Treaty is being provisionally applied to the extent possible under our respective domestic laws, in order to provide a basis for immediate mutual assistance in criminal matters. Provisional application would cease upon entry into force of the Treaty.

The Treaty covers mutual legal assistance in criminal matters. In recent years, similar bilateral treaties have entered into force with a number of other countries. The Treaty with Ukraine contains all essential provisions sought by the United States. It will enhance our ability to investigate and prosecute a range of offenses. The Treaty is designed to be self-executing and will not require new legislation." (my bold)

The Treaty was then transmitted by the President of the United States (Bill Clinton) to the Senate on November 10, 1999 (Treaty Document 106-16 -106th Congress - First Session) as shown on this letter of transmittal from Bill Clinton's office:

Note this key excerpt from the letter of transmittal:

" Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes: taking of testimony or statements of persons; providing documents, records, and articles of evidence; serving documents; locating or identifying persons; transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related to restraint, confiscation, forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the requested state. "

The Treaty was reported favourable by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on September 27, 2000, consented to ratification by the Senate on October 18, 2000 and ratified by the President of the United States on January 5, 2001. The Treaty was entered into force on February 27, 2001. Here are the title page of the Treaty and the signature page:

Here are the first two pages of the Treaty which outline the scope of assistance that is to be offered by both nations as well as the limitations on assistance:

... ... ...

If you wish to read the Treaty in its entirety, please click here .

With this background and while I don't want to appear to be pro- or anti-Trump, it is very, very clear that the current POTUS was within the law under the Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters between the United States and Ukraine when it comes to asking Ukraine to investigate a potential criminal matter.

[Nov 01, 2019] Color revolution is a method of using a minority to render the country ungovernble, waving a simplistic banner against corruption and for (undefined) democracy, which leaves the masses unorganized and eschews even a platform, in favor of a secret coterie run by intelligence againces

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... And there is the real definition, which is using a minority to render the country ungovernble, waving a simplistic banner against corruption and for undefined democracy, which movement leaves the masses unorganized and eschews even a platform lest they organize, in favor of a secret coterie. ..."
"... No matter how you view Trump, it is undeniable that several signs of a color revolution were present in Russiagate (and Ukrainegate, which is, in essence, Russiagate 2.0 -- a counterattack on the attempt by Trump to investigate the origins of Russiagate). ..."
Nov 01, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

steven t johnson 10.31.19 at 8:35 pm 46

Faustusnotes@43 continues the meltdown, notably forgetting his own list of non-rigid class societies (nations, ) retreating to the UK and Australia. Reminding everyone of the widely accepted definition for color revolution would have been useful. There is the propaganda notion, a vague image of the outraged people rising en masse to throw out the Communists/Communist-adjacent corrupt (unlike all others of course,) government. Inasmuch as likbez specifically denied a mass movement, this is still as much a red herring as it was when first brandished.

And there is the real definition, which is using a minority to render the country ungovernble, waving a simplistic banner against corruption and for undefined democracy, which movement leaves the masses unorganized and eschews even a platform lest they organize, in favor of a secret coterie. Thus when the Astroturf does drive out the current administration, mirabile dictu! nothing changes except its receptivity to international capital. The fundamental color revolution mechanism it seems to me is the hiding of the real program, the true commitment to capital, behind a facade.

Lastly, the idea that likbez just made stuff up is remarkable. If anything, it seems to me that likbez has been heavily influenced by the thesis of Quinn Slobodian's The Globalists. But that book may be touted largely as (unread) proof somebody disreputable isn't acceptable in polite company, not really useful otherwise.

Surprisingly, nastywoman confirms my general impression is really seeing the EU as the inspiration for a better society, without radicalism, much less revolution. I agree there's nothing worse than revolution except not having a revolution, which I guess takes us back to square one. The EU of course is really the Maastricht treaty, the Lisbon treaty, the announcement that elections can't change policy, technocrats as PM in Italy, Greece, etc. In short, nastywoman confesses to incoherence. But nastywoman can take joy in correctly spotting that I'm a disgusting old person too vile to understand rap and can hope I'll be dead soon, and blight humanity no more.

likbez 10.31.19 at 11:22 pm (no link)

Faustusnotes 10.30.19 at 2:38 pm @43

'Color revolution ' has a specific meaning and what happened to Lula and Trump ain't it

You probably never read Gene Sharp, who passed in Feb 2018. Claims of "corruption" and "unfair" election results (which includes foreign influence on elections) are classic color revolution methods described in detail in his books.

Participation of intelligence agencies and controlled by them MSM is a distinctive feature of any color revolution: is it, in essence, a modern, very sophisticated variant of a false flag operation. Controlled/influenced (often indirectly) by intelligence agencies MSM essentially serve the role similar to airforce in modern neocolonial wars (and the level of control is staggering starting from the operation Mockingbird; see Journalists for Hire How the CIA Buys the News by Dr. Udo Ulfkotte).

No matter how you view Trump, it is undeniable that several signs of a color revolution were present in Russiagate (and Ukrainegate, which is, in essence, Russiagate 2.0 -- a counterattack on the attempt by Trump to investigate the origins of Russiagate).

Here is the list adapted from the writings on the topic by former CIA analyst Larry C Johnson and Colonel Lang (DIA). The latter led intelligence analysis of the Middle East and South Asia for the Defense Department and world-wide HUMINT activities in a high-level equivalent to the rank of a lieutenant general. He runs well respected
Sic Semper Tyrannis blog.

Both think that the CIA pulled the main strings. They noted the following:

  1. -- Obama officials efforts in establishing surveillance on Trump campaign on a false pretext (FICA memo scandal, etc.) ;
  2. -- CrowdStrike false flag operation with DNC -- converting the internal leak into Russian break-in;
  3. -- MI6 fabrication of Steele dossier using materials from the USA obtained via Fusion GPS and Brennan and rehashing them as an original British intelligence.
  4. -- Brennan use of Steele dossier to produce "17 intelligence agencies assessment," which served as the signal of unleashing of Russiagate hysteria in neoliberal MSM and the official start of Russiagate.
  5. -- Rosenstein gambit with using firing of Comey as a convenient pretext for appointment Mueller (appointment of the Special Prosecutor was in the cards anyway and was inescapable for Trump as it was a preplanned action by the plotters, and they controlled all the necessary strings; this probably was the meaning of the word "insurance" in Strzok-Page text messages).
  6. -- McCabe's opening of FBI investigation of Trump links to Russia.
  7. -- Alexandra Chalupa machination with getting dirt on Trump and his associates (Manafort) from Poroshenko government (which was a client state anyway so it is funny that Schiff now tries to claim that Ukraine can exercise foreign influence; it is a USA controlled entity; the country in a debt trap ).
  8. -- Systematic attempts to entrap Trump associates with connection to the Russian government by CIA, MI6 and Italian intelligence (Misfud entrapment operation, Felix Sater entrapment operation with idea of building of Trump hotel in Moscow, Halper entrapment attempt, MI6 entrapment operation with Natalia Veselnitskaya visit to Trump tower, etc.).

I think that under the weight of those facts, the picture is more or less clear -- this was a color revolution.

[Nov 01, 2019] How The Obama Administration Set In Motion Its Coup Against Trump by Lee Smith

Notable quotes:
"... "To any rational person," says Nunes, "it looks like they were scheming to produce a get-out-of-jail-free card -- for the president and anyone else in the White House. They were playing Monopoly while the others were playing with fire. Now the Obama White House was in the clear -- sure, they had no idea what Comey and Brennan and McCabe and Strzok and the rest were up to." ..."
"... Meanwhile, Obama added his voice to the Trump-Russia echo chamber as news stories alleging Trump's illicit relationship with the Kremlin multiplied in the transition period. He said he hoped "that the president-elect also is willing to stand up to Russia." ..."
"... After refusing to act while the Russian election meddling was actually occurring, Obama responded in December. He ordered the closing of Russian diplomatic facilities and the expulsion of thirty- five Russian diplomats. The response was tepid. The Russians had hacked the State Department in 2014 and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2015. And now Obama was responding only on his way out. ..."
"... Even Obama partisans thought it was weak. "The punishment did not fit the crime," said Michael McFaul, Obama's former ambassador to Russia. "The Kremlin should have paid a much higher price for that attack." ..."
"... But the administration wasn't retaliating against Russia for interfering in a US election; the action was directed at Trump. Obama was leaving the president-elect with a minor foreign policy crisis in order to box him in. Any criticism of Obama's response, never mind an attempt to reverse it, would only further fuel press reports that Trump was collaborating with the Russians. ..."
"... Obama's biggest move against Trump was to order CIA director John Brennan to conduct a full review of all intelligence relating to Russia and the 2016 elections. He requested it on December 6 and wanted it ready by the time he left office on January 20. But the sitting president already knew what the intelligence community assessment (ICA) was going to say, because Brennan had told him months before. ..."
"... Brennan's handpicked team of CIA, FBI, and NSA analysts had started analyzing Russian election interference in late July. In August, Brennan had briefed Harry Reid on the dossier and may have briefed Obama on it, too. Earlier in August, Brennan sent a "bombshell" report to Obama's desk. ..."
Nov 01, 2019 | thefederalist.com

The following is an excerpt from Lee Smith's book out October 29, " The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History ."

AFTER DONALD TRUMP was elected forty-fifth president of the United States, the operation designed to undermine his campaign transformed. It became an instrument to bring down the commander in chief. The coup started almost immediately after the polls closed.

Hillary Clinton's communications team decided within twenty-four hours of her concession speech to message that the election was illegitimate, that Russia had interfered to help Trump.

Obama was working against Trump until the hour he left office. His national security advisor, Susan Rice, commemorated it with an email to herself on January 20, moments before Trump's inauguration. She wrote to memorialize a meeting in the White House two weeks before.

On January 5, following a briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also present.

President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities "by the book." The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.

From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia. . . .

The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Comey said he would.

The repetition of "by the book" gave away the game -- for there was nothing normal about any of it.

Rice wrote an email to herself. It commemorated a conversation from two weeks before. The conversation was about the FBI's investigation of the man who was about to move into the White House -- an investigation from which Obama was careful to distance himself. During the conversation, the outgoing president instructed his top aides to collect information ("ascertain") regarding the incoming administration's relationship with Russia.

"To any rational person," says Nunes, "it looks like they were scheming to produce a get-out-of-jail-free card -- for the president and anyone else in the White House. They were playing Monopoly while the others were playing with fire. Now the Obama White House was in the clear -- sure, they had no idea what Comey and Brennan and McCabe and Strzok and the rest were up to."

Boxing Trump in on Russia

Meanwhile, Obama added his voice to the Trump-Russia echo chamber as news stories alleging Trump's illicit relationship with the Kremlin multiplied in the transition period. He said he hoped "that the president-elect also is willing to stand up to Russia."

The outgoing president was in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss everything from NATO to Vladimir Putin. Obama said that he'd "delivered a clear and forceful message" to the Russian president about "meddling with elections . . . and we will respond appropriately if and when we see this happening."

After refusing to act while the Russian election meddling was actually occurring, Obama responded in December. He ordered the closing of Russian diplomatic facilities and the expulsion of thirty- five Russian diplomats. The response was tepid. The Russians had hacked the State Department in 2014 and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2015. And now Obama was responding only on his way out.

Even Obama partisans thought it was weak. "The punishment did not fit the crime," said Michael McFaul, Obama's former ambassador to Russia. "The Kremlin should have paid a much higher price for that attack."

But the administration wasn't retaliating against Russia for interfering in a US election; the action was directed at Trump. Obama was leaving the president-elect with a minor foreign policy crisis in order to box him in. Any criticism of Obama's response, never mind an attempt to reverse it, would only further fuel press reports that Trump was collaborating with the Russians.

Spreading Intelligence to Spring Leaks

In the administration's last days, it disseminated intelligence throughout the government, including the White House, Capitol Hill, and the intelligence community (IC). Intelligence was classified at the lowest possible levels to ensure a wide readership. The White House was paving the way for a campaign of leaks to disorient the incoming Trump team.

The effort, including the intended result of leaks, was publicly acknowledged in March 2017 by Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration.

Obama's biggest move against Trump was to order CIA director John Brennan to conduct a full review of all intelligence relating to Russia and the 2016 elections. He requested it on December 6 and wanted it ready by the time he left office on January 20. But the sitting president already knew what the intelligence community assessment (ICA) was going to say, because Brennan had told him months before.

Brennan's handpicked team of CIA, FBI, and NSA analysts had started analyzing Russian election interference in late July. In August, Brennan had briefed Harry Reid on the dossier and may have briefed Obama on it, too. Earlier in August, Brennan sent a "bombshell" report to Obama's desk.

When Brennan reassembled his select team in December, it was to have them reproduce their August findings: Putin, according to Brennan, was boosting the GOP candidate. And that's why only three days after Obama ordered the assessment in December, the Washington Post could already reveal what the intelligence community had found.

"The CIA," reported the December 9 edition of the Post , "has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system."

The story was the first of many apparently sourced to leaks of classified information that were given to the Post team of Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima, and Greg Miller. The reporters' sources weren't whistle-blowers shedding light on government corruption -- rather, they were senior US officials abusing government resources to prosecute a campaign against the newly elected commander in chief. The article was the earliest public evidence that the coup was under way. The floodgates were open, as the IC pushed more stories through the press to delegitimize the president-elect.

A Wave of Leak-Sourced Stories All Saying the Same Thing

The same day, a New York Times article by David E. Sanger and Scott Shane echoed the Post 's piece. According to senior administration officials, "American intelligence agencies have concluded with 'high confidence' that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton's chances and promote Donald J. Trump."

A December 14 NBC News story by William M. Arkin, Ken Dilanian, and Cynthia McFadden reported that "Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News."

The ICA that Obama ordered gave political operatives, the press, and his intelligence chiefs a second shot at Trump. They'd used the Steele Dossier to feed the echo chamber and obtain surveillance powers to spy on the Trump campaign. The dossier, however, had come up short. Trump had won.

But now, on his way out of the White House, Obama instructed Brennan to stamp the CIA's imprimatur on the anti-Trump operation. As Fusion GPS's smear campaign had been the source of the preelection press campaign, the ICA was the basis of the postelection media frenzy. It was tailored to disrupt the peaceful transition of power and throw the United States into chaos.

Because Trump hadn't been elected by the US public, according to the ICA, but had been tapped by Putin, he was illegitimate. Therefore, the extraconstitutional and illegal tactics employed by anti-Trump officials were legitimate. The ultimate goal was to remove Trump from office.

"If it weren't for President Obama," said James Clapper, "we might not have done the intelligence community assessment . . . that set off a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today."

Nunes agrees. "The ICA," he says, "was Obama's dossier."

Changing the Intelligence Assessment

Nunes is sitting in his office in the Longworth House Office Building along with his communications director, Jack Langer, a forty-six-year-old former book editor and historian with a PhD from Duke University.

"The social media attacks on Devin began shortly after the election," Langer remembers. "They're all hinting at some vast conspiracy involving Russia that the chairman of the Intelligence Committee is part of. And we have no idea what they're talking about."

Nunes points out that his warnings about Russia fell on deaf ears for years. "And all of a sudden I'm a Russian agent," says the congressman.

Now Langer and Nunes see that the attacks were first launched because the congressman had been named to Trump's transition team. "I put forward [Mike] Pompeo for CIA director," says Nunes. "He came from our committee."

The attacks on Nunes picked up after the December 9 Washington Post article. The assessment provided there was not what the HPSCI chairman had been told. The assessment had been altered, and Nunes asked for an explanation. "We got briefed about the election around Thanksgiving," he says. "And it's just the usual stuff, nothing abnormal. They told us what everyone already knew: 'Hey, the Russians are bad actors, and they're always playing games, and here's what they did.'"

By providing that briefing, the IC had made a mistake. When it later changed the assessment, the November briefing was evidence that Obama's spy chiefs were up to no good. "I bet they'd like to have that back," says Nunes. "They briefed us before they could get their new story straight."

'They Kept Everyone Else Away from It'

Nunes acknowledges that he was caught off guard by many things back then. "We still thought these guys were on the up and up," he says. "But if we knew, we'd have nailed them by mid-December, when they changed their assessment. 'Wait, you guys are saying this now, but you said something else just a few weeks ago. What's going on?'"

After the Post story, Nunes wanted an explanation. "We expressed deep concern, both publicly and privately," says Langer. "We demanded our own briefing to try to determine whether that Post story was true or false. They refused to brief us. They said, 'We're not going to be doing that until we finish the ICA.'"

Nunes says the fact that the IC conducted an assessment like that was itself unusual. "I don't know how many times they'd done that in the past, if ever," he says. "But if the IC is operating properly, when someone says what can you tell me on X or Y or Z, they have it ready to pull up quickly. The tradecraft is reliable, and the intelligence products are reliable." That was not the case with the ICA. There were problems with how the assessment had been put together.

"If you really were going to do something like an assessment from the intelligence community, then you'd get input from all our seventeen agencies," says Nunes. "They did the opposite. It was only FBI, CIA, NSA, and DNI. They siloed it, just like they had with Crossfire Hurricane. They kept everyone else away from it so they didn't have to read them in."

'Manipulation of Intelligence for Political Purposes'

Nunes released several statements in the middle of December. The HPSCI majority, read a December 14 statement, wanted senior Obama intelligence officials "to clarify press reports that the CIA has a new assessment that it has not shared with us. The Committee is deeply concerned that intransigence in sharing intelligence with Congress can enable the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes."

After the statements warned of political foul play in the IC's assessments, the social media attacks on Nunes became more regular. "They were constant," says Langer.

Anti-Trump operatives recognized that Nunes was going to be a problem. The HPSCI chair had previously called out the IC for politicizing intelligence. "They said that we had defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria," says Nunes, "and I knew that wasn't true. Then they withheld the Osama bin Laden documents to conceal that Al Qaeda worked with Iran, because the administration was protecting the Iran deal. So when I saw them changing this assessment of the 2016 election in midstream, I knew it was the same old trick: they were politicizing intelligence."

The speed with which Brennan's handpicked analysts produced the ICA and then got a version of it declassified for public consumption was another sign that something wasn't right. "All throughout Obama's two terms, his IC chiefs aren't paying attention to Russian actions," says Nunes. "We give them more money for Russia, which they don't use. But now they know so much about Putin that they manage to produce a comprehensive assessment of Russian intentions and actions regarding election interference in a month -- at Christmastime, when everything slows down. And then they produce a declassified version in a manner of weeks. None of this is believable."

Three different versions of the ICA were produced: an unclassified version, a top secret one, and another highly compartmentalized version. According to a January 11, 2017, Washington Post story by Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima, and Karen DeYoung, an annex summarizing the dossier was attached to the versions that were not declassified.

'Designed to Have a Political Effect'

The FBI had been working from Steele's reports for more than half a year. Including the dossier along with the ICA would provide Comey with ammunition to take on the president-elect. Both he and Brennan were manipulating intelligence for political purposes.

"A lot of the ICA is reasonable," says Nunes. "But those parts become irrelevant due to the problematic parts, which undermine the entire document. It was designed to have a political effect; that was the ICA's sole purpose."

The assessment's methodological flaws are not difficult to spot. Manufacturing the politicized findings that Obama sought meant not only abandoning protocol but also subverting basic logic. Two of the ICA's central findings are that:

  • Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.
  • Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.

To know preferences and intentions would require sources targeting Putin's inner circles -- either human sources or electronic surveillance. As Nunes had previously noted, however, US intelligence on Putin's decision-making process was inadequate.

But even if there had been extensive collection on precisely that issue, it would be difficult to know what was true. For instance, the closest you can get to Putin's inner circle is Putin himself. But even capturing him on an intercept saying he wanted to elect Trump might prove inconclusive. It is difficult to judge intentions because it is not possible to see into the minds of other people. How would you know that Putin was speaking truthfully? How would you know that the Russian president didn't know his communications were under US surveillance and wasn't trying to deceive his audience?

Quality control of information is one of the tasks of counterintelligence -- to discern how you know what you know and whether that information is trustworthy. There was no quality control for the Trump-Russia intelligence. For instance, Crossfire Hurricane lead agent Peter Strzok was the FBI's deputy assistant director of counterintelligence. Instead of weeding out flawed intelligence on Russia, the Crossfire Hurricane team was feeding Steele's reports into intelligence products. Yet the ICA claimed to have "high confidence" in its assessment that "Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President- elect Trump." What was the basis of that judgment?

According to the ICA:

Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.

"Most likely" and "almost certainly" are rhetorical hedges that show the assessment could not have been made in "high confidence." Putin may have held a grudge against Clinton, but there is no way of knowing it.

The supporting evidence deteriorates more the farther the ICA purports to reach into Putin's mind.

Beginning in June, Putin's public comments about the US presidential race avoided directly praising President-elect Trump, probably because Kremlin officials thought that any praise from Putin personally would backfire in the United States.

This is absurd. Part of the evidence that Putin supported Trump is that he avoided praising Trump. It is difficult enough to determine intentions by what someone says. Yet the ICA claims to have discerned Putin's intentions by what he did not say.

There is no introductory philosophy class in logic where reasoning like that would pass muster. Yet Brennan's handpicked group used it as the basis of its assessment that Putin had helped Trump.

Moscow also saw the election of President-elect Trump as a way to achieve an international counterterrorism coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

This may be an accurate description of how Putin saw Trump. But Trump's predecessor also wanted to coordinate anti- ISIS operations with Moscow. On this view, Trump would have represented a continuation of Obama's ISIS policy. Why would this make Trump's victory suspicious to Obama's intelligence chiefs?

Curious Inaccuracies about Russia's RT Network

The ICA also pointed to documentary evidence of Putin's intentions: English-language media owned by the Russian government, the news site Sputnik, and the RT network, were critical of Clinton.

State-owned Russian media made increasingly favorable comments about President-elect Trump as the 2016 US general and primary election campaigns progressed while consistently offering negative coverage of Secretary Clinton.

Curiously, just days before the election, the informant the US government sent after the Trump campaign praised the Democratic candidate in an interview with Sputnik. "Clinton would be best for US-UK relations and for relations with the European Union," Stefan Halper told the Kremlin-directed media outlet. "Clinton is well-known, deeply experienced, and predictable. US-UK relations will remain steady regardless of the winner although Clinton will be less disruptive over time."

The ICA includes a seven-page appendix devoted to RT, the central node, according to the document, of the Kremlin's effort to "influence politics, fuel discontent in [ sic ] US."

Adam Schiff appeared on RT in July 2013. He argued for "making the FISA court much more transparent, so the American people can understand what's being done in their name in the name of national security, so that we can have a more informed debate over the balance between privacy and security."

RT's editor in chief, Margarita Simonyan, is a master propagandist, according to the ICA. The document fails to mention that Simonyan heads another Moscow-owned media initiative, Russia Beyond the Headlines , a news supplement inserted into dozens of the West's leading newspapers, including the New York Times . Russia Beyond the Headlines has been delivered to millions of American homes over the last decade. By contrast, RT's US market share is so small that it doesn't qualify for the Nielsen ratings. Virtually no one in the United States watches it.

Taking the logic of Brennan's handpicked team seriously would mean that the publishers of the New York Times played a major role in a coordinated Russian effort to elect Donald Trump.

'It Was an Operation to Bring Down Trump'

Nunes realized even then the purpose of Obama's dossier. "Devin figured out in December what was going on," says Langer. "It was an operation to bring down Trump."

There was no evidence that any Trump associate had done anything improper regarding the Russians, and Nunes was losing patience. "We had serious things the committee wanted to do," he says. "With Trump elected, we could do some big stuff, like with China."

Still, it was important for HPSCI to maintain control of the Russia investigation. Otherwise, Democrats and Never Trump Republicans were likely to get their wish to convene a bipartisan commission to investigate Russian interference -- with the purpose of turning it on Trump.

"Before they started floating the idea of a special counsel, the big idea was a special commission like the 9/11 Commission," says Langer. It was outgoing secretary of state John Kerry who first came forward with the proposal.

The point was to change the power dynamic. "In a normal committee," says Langer, "the majority has the power, and that happened to be us. They wanted to strip our power and make it fifty-fifty."

"Bipartisan" was a euphemism for "anti-Trump." "It would have been a complete joke," says Nunes. "A combination of partisan hacks from the left and people who hated Trump on the right."

Democrats led by Schiff and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer were joined by the late John McCain, the most active of the Never Trump Republicans. After the election, the Arizona senator had instructed his aide David Kramer to deliver a copy of the Steele Dossier to Comey.

"God only knows who they'd have populated that committee with," says Nunes. "Anyone they could control. It would have been a freak show."

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan defended HPSCI's independence. On the Senate side, Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr had only one move. To deflect demands for an independent commission, he effectively ceded control of the Senate investigation to his vice chair, Democrat Mark Warner.

No Evidence of Collusion Years Later

Still, Nunes believed that all the talk of Trump and Russia was a waste of time. "They kept promising us evidence of collusion, week after week, and they came up with nothing."

Nunes's disdain for the ICA forced the Crossfire Hurricane team's hand. "Right around the time that they came out with the ICA, they kept saying that we were waiting on something to show us, something important that was coming in," he says. "They said it was some significant figure who they couldn't quite track down yet."

But the FBI knew exactly where its missing link was, the piece of evidence that they thought would convince hardened skeptics like Nunes that collusion was real. They didn't have to chase him down, because he was sitting at home in Chicago. He submitted to a voluntary interview January 27 and without a lawyer because he had no idea what the FBI had in store for him.

The Crossfire Hurricane team was figuring how they were going to set up the Trump adviser they'd used to open up the investigation in July 2016: George Papadopoulos. Lee Smith is the media columnist at Tablet.

[Nov 01, 2019] Russia, Ukraine, and Donald Trump by Stephen F. Cohen

Nov 01, 2019 | www.unz.com

Cohen notes that the Russian press, which follows American politics closely, has resulted in a consensus that all of this -- Russiagate, Ukrainegate -- was created to stop Trump from having better relations with Russia. Thus, it is important that Putin had been told the reason Trump cannot engage in détente is because of Trump being shackled.

Cohen noted that expert opinion in Russia -- which informs the Kremlin leadership, including Putin -- has soured on the United States; the older generation of Russian America specialists who like America, who visit regularly and appreciate American culture, have become utterly disillusioned and cannot promote a Russian-American partnership given what has happened to Trump.

Regarding Ukraine, Cohen notes it shares a very large border with Russia, tens of millions of intermarriages, language, culture and history, and although the United States shares none of this with Ukraine, the United States has declared Ukraine is a strategic ally, and this would be equivalent to Russia stating that Mexico is its strategic ally, which is preposterous; the term "strategic" clearly has military implications.

renfro , says: November 1, 2019 at 4:49 am GMT

I agree with Cohen.

Congress (and the Jewish groups) ruined Nixon's effort with Russia.
Now congress and the eternally stupid Dems are ruining Trump's efforts.

I have argued for years that we should have taken Russia in as an ally affter WWII.

Alfred , says: November 1, 2019 at 5:14 am GMT
Your line of thinking might reflect the way some people in the US Establishment look on the matter. However, this is militarily a non-starter. Attacking Russia with nuclear weapons would immediately result in the disappearance of the USA.

IMHO, Ukraine and other countries has been a gift to corrupt US politicians. The money they send to Ukraine never ends in the hands of those who are supposed to get it -- the Ukrainian peoples (it is de facto several countries). The money is redirected into the hands of US and Ukrainian politicians and Jewish oligarchs.

The weapons that are sent to Ukraine are largely sold off to countries in the Middle East -- countries which in turn give them to terrorists on their payrolls. This money largely benefits the upper echelons of the army of Ukraine.

S , says: November 1, 2019 at 6:01 am GMT
Powerful elements amongst the US power elites and their hangers on wish to provoke a war with Russia. The obtainment of total world power would seem to be the ultimate objective.

Z Brzizinski in his late 1990's book The Grand Chessboard specifically points out the importance of Ukraine to US ambitions in Eurasia.

Excerpts below from an 1853 US geo-political book called The New Rome elaborate further. I see the mid 19th century book and it's contents potentially as 'a suggestion' being put into the US public's mind to let them know what was expected of them in the future, and why, as most people in the US, then and now, are rather indifferent about Russia, just as most Russians are probably indifferent about the United States.

Similarly, Russia could be being manipulated into a war with the US, a war which potentially could largely destroy both the US and Russia, which indeed may be the idea as part of a larger picture.

People have their refusal.

Has Mr Cohen read this generally unknown 1853 book, The New Rome ?

Some excerpts from The New Rome linked below:

US and UK are free, Russia is not.

pg 155

'Freedom is now limited to the oceanic world, to England and America; Russia, with its continental dependencies, is despotic..'

After US and UK form a united front and conquer Germany (the center of power upon continental Europe) and consolidate control over it, the US and Russia will then square off.

pg 109

'Thus the lines are drawn. The choirs are marshalled on each wing of the world's stage, Russia leading the one, the United States the other. Yet the world is too small for both, and the contest must end in the downfall of the one and the victory of the other.'

Global projection of US air power is to be the key for final US victory over Russia.

pg.155-156

'It [air power] will give us the victory over Russian continentalism. American air-privateers will be down upon the Russian garrisons, to use our own expressive slang, 'like a parcel of bricks'

https://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/the_new_rome_or_the_united_states_of_the_world_1853

https://archive.org/details/politicalprophec00goeb/page/n3

Erebus , says: November 1, 2019 at 6:05 am GMT
There's a treaty obliging the USA and Ukraine to cooperate in the prosecution of criminal matters. One wonders why it seems to have escaped notice.
Dan Hayes , says: November 1, 2019 at 6:25 am GMT
Who transcribed the broadcast (Giraldi?). BTW, I regard the transcription as very fair and accurate.

Listening to the very last stages of the broadcast I felt that Batchelor became somewhat confrontational towards Cohen. As a matter of fact Cohen remarked that Batchelor will be getting a lot of phone calls and emails over that!

Franz , says: November 1, 2019 at 6:32 am GMT

Here is the obvious explanation.
Zio-Globalist led by Rothschild are dead set to destroy, or at least neutralize Russia.

Keep in mind another clear and obvious point: The Zio-Globalists now see the USA as totally expendable. There is some sign they are throwing it to the curb right now.

To be fair, Netanyahu said as much years ago. America would be tossed when no longer needed. Well, that day is coming close. Productive facilities leaving the nation is nearing its half-century mark, and now even films and TV shows mostly film in Canada, the UK, etc., even though they are sold as US products, which they are mostly not.

Destroy and Russia and USA, part one. Get them to blame each other, part two. Three? They'll both still have lots of bombs

Jake , says: November 1, 2019 at 1:03 pm GMT

@Ilyana_Rozumova “Russia now is last resistance to Globalist control of all world.
China for Globalists is not really a problem. When Globalists will control Russia than China will like it not, will be controlled by flow of energy.”

That is essentially the situation. If Russia is forced to be something close to a vassal of the Anglo-Zionist Empire, then China will be faced with being forced into the same boat. The Chinese might well prefer nuclear war, and unleashing 5 million men at arms, with another 5 million in training camps.

The leaders of the Anglo-Zionist Empire would not care a teeny tiny bit if Korea, southeast Asia, the Philippines, and Japan were to be decimated. They would be tickled pink to fill those lands with black Africans and Sunni Arabs, with Jews running the local shows

Emslander , says: November 1, 2019 at 1:20 pm GMT
@Baron Ukraine is lebensraum . It has had little importance in geopolitical affairs until Russia stupidly gave it its independence upon the breakup of the Soviet Union. Now it’s a slush fund for the most prominent Democrat politicians. It’s also become another conveniently remote shithole for justifying insane military spending.

[Nov 01, 2019] The Piece of Presstitute Excrement known as the NYTimes Has Had to Admit that Yes there Is a Deep State at War with President Trump by Paul Craig Roberts

Nov 01, 2019 | www.unz.com

This is a surprisingly good report from Robert Merry. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52461.htm

The only mistake Merry makes is his erroneous statement that Trump held up aid to Ukraine to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate the Ukrainian firm that made $1,750,000 payments to the corrupt Biden and his corrupt son. The transcript of the telephone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president shows no Quid Pro Quo, and the Ukrainian president says there was none. The Quid Pro Quo was entirely on Biden's part when he told the president of Ukraine to fire the prosecutor investigating the firm that was paying him and his son seven figures in protection money or forfeit $1 billion in US aid. You can watch it here: https://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-joe-biden-forced-ukraine-to-fire-prosecutor-for-aid-money/C1C51BB8-3988-4070-869F-CAD3CA0E81D8.html

Moreover, even it Trump did threaten to withhold aid from a country that was covering up corruption by a US vice president and his son, that is the US president's right. There is no reason whatsoever that a president should permit US taxpayers' money to be given to a government that covers up corruption by a vice president of the United States.

We know for a fact that there was corruption by Vice President Biden. He bragged about it before the Council on Foreign Relations. You can watch him doing so here: https://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-joe-biden-forced-ukraine-to-fire-prosecutor-for-aid-money/C1C51BB8-3988-4070-869F-CAD3CA0E81D8.html

Biden's son has admitted that he used poor judgment taking money from a firm in order to protect it from prosecution.

Even if Trump did what the Democrats allege, which he did not, there is nothing illegal or unethical about it whatsoever. Compared to the tactics US prosecutors use to convict the innocent, Trump's conversation with the president of Ukraine is far above the highest ethics known to US prosecutors.

Why aren't the Democrats complaining about the criminally illegal treatment of Julian Assange and Manning? The reason is that the Democrats, the most utterly corrupt political organization on the face of the Earth, are bought and paid for by the Deep State. The Democrats are dog excrement to the core. They are traitors to America and to our Constitutional order. The entire party should be arrested and put on trial for sedition to overthrow the government of the United States.

[Oct 31, 2019] Adam Schiff Coached Alexander Vindman Throughout Impeachment Testimony Nunes

Oct 31, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Adam Schiff Coached Alexander Vindman Throughout Impeachment Testimony: Nunes by Tyler Durden Wed, 10/30/2019 - 16:50 0 SHARES

Rep. Devin Nunes claims that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff was coaching Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the director of European affairs at the National Security Council (NSC) , as he told House committees that he "did not think it was proper" for President Trump to ask Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to investigate former VP Joe Biden during a July 25 phone call.

" I have never in my life seen anything like what happened today , during the testimony of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman," Nunes told Fox News ' "Hannity."

" It was unprecedented ," Nunes continued. "I mean, they've been bad at most of these depositions, but to interrupt us continually to coach the witness , to decide what we're going to be able to ask the witness."

"And, to see someone coach a witness, this isn't the first time that Schiff -- Schiff is very good at coaching witnesses."

Watch: (relevant part @ 1:30)

https://www.youtube.com/embed/AddJ1huQUeY

"When we asked [Vindman] who he spoke to after important events in July -- Adam Schiff says, 'no, no, no, we're not going to let him answer that question," said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) discussing Vindman's testimony - saying that Schiff seemed to be breaking his own rules for the hearings according to shtfplan.com .

AI Agent , 8 minutes ago link

I want the Globalist to give us much better seditionist and traitors. They ones they gave us are totally inept and stupid clowns.

I'm sure they can spend a few bucks more and by lying little shits who are actually competent.

I M DeMan , 23 minutes ago link

Why isn't Debbie Wasserman in jail?

jeff montanye , 11 minutes ago link

because she is mossad and imo so is imran awan who was allowed to skip out on any real investigation of his and his families crimes.

same as epstein.

gold_silver_as_money , 34 minutes ago link

The "whistleblower's" identity is out, apparently. And he invited a DNC operative who was a Ukrainian-American into the White House to help dig up dirt on Trump...the best part is the operative's name: Alexandra Chalupa. Time to drop the chalupa.
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/10/30/whistleblower_exposed_close_to_biden_brennan_dnc_oppo_researcher_120996.html

jeff montanye , 36 minutes ago link

the current rules for the impeachment "inquiry" are not the rules used with clinton, nixon or andrew johnson after the civil war. the president's party's representatives and the executive branch have fewer rights to due process. this house vote is not to open a traditional impeachment investigation, far less a vote to impeach a president. it is to provide sheeple-confusing optics to continue a lawfare-designed process to abuse the president.

imo the dems don't, at all, want to impeach the president and give him a relatively fair trial in the senate. they want to continually investigate him under historically unfair rules, leaking bits of testimony to their dependable sycophants in the mockingbird state media.

Templar X , 55 minutes ago link

October 30, 2019 Meet another of Trump Accuser - Leonid Vindman - Iran and Libya Smuggler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kiwTP-PP10

[Oct 31, 2019] Seditious Conspiracy / Sketchy Witness Schiff Blocks Questioning of NSC Staffer Alexander Vindman to Protect Him from Legal Exposure

Oct 31, 2019 | theconservativetreehouse.com

Holy smokes, this Alexander Vindman witness is very sketchy. Generally suspected of being "whistle-blower #2", records show Vindman had numerous contacts with registered foreign agents, while a member of the National Security Council. [ FARA link – pg 4 ]

Additionally, it is highly likely Vindman leaked the content of presidential phone calls illegally while he was a member of the National Security Council; which explains why Adam Schiff would not permit Vindman to answer questions about who he talked to.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_WBpt8OdnJU?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

.

The New York Times is reporting that sketchy Vindman attempted to manipulate the CIA transcripts of President Trump's call with Ukraine President Zelenskyy to meet Vindman's ideological interpretations. [Vindman had a hidden agenda "spying" while inside the NSC]

In an effort to bolster his very sketchy credibility; and likely in an effort to avoid the appearance of sedition; Schiff's Lawfare staff recommended Vindman wear his military uniform to the hearing today, though Vindman never wore the uniform for his NSC job.

[ Link to FARA document – Page 4 ]

( Open Secrets ) – sA little known U.S.-based attorney quietly poured six figures into foreign influence operations for President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, hoping to be rewarded with a job in his administration, foreign agent records identified by OpenSecrets show.

The new Foreign Agent Registration Act records reveal previously unreported meetings with Trump administration officials and details of a six-figure lobbying campaign promoting Zelensky's interests in the U.S. during the leadup to his election and now-infamous phone call with President Donald Trump .

[ ] Notable among the Trump officials contacted was Alexander Vindman , who oversees European affairs at the National Security Council. Vindman was one of five Trump administration officials chosen for a delegation to Zelensky's inauguration featured in the whistleblower complaint alongside Kurt Volker , the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine who resigned after fallout from the whistleblower's allegations. ( read more )

President Volodymyr Zelensky and First Lady Olena Zelenska with U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and the U.S. delegation attending the inauguration, which included U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon D. Sondland, the National Security Council's Director for European Affairs Alexander Vindman and Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine Joseph Pennington. ( Source )

We the people know , October 30, 2019 at 10:03 am

I believe I've found some video with Vindman with John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Amy Klobuchar in Ukraine on 12/29/16. You can see him on the left @ the :18 mark and again @ the end starting at the 1:38.
AP
(29 Dec 2016) US senators visiting eastern European allies to discuss security issues called for sanctions against Russia for interfering in the presidential election by hacking American political sites and email accounts.

Their demands came amid ongoing discussions among US officials on an imminent response to alleged Russian meddling that would ensure the US takes action before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

"We will be urging increases in sanctions on Russia for what they just attempted to do in the United States election which they have attempted to do in other parts of the world," said US senator John McCain during his visit to Lithuania on Thursday.

Russian officials have denied the Obama administration's accusation that the highest-levels of the Russian government were involved in trying to influence the US presidential election.

Speaking after talks with Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite in Vilnius, the US lawmakers reaffirmed Washington's commitment to the Baltics.

McCain is accompanied by US Senators Amy Klobuchar and Lindsey Graham in their visits to Russian neighbours, the Baltic States, Ukraine, and Georgia as well as Montenegro.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/gnyjdrP91yA?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Compare to this photo, he's got a bad toupee and a much enhanced uniform and he's lost some weight.
https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-alexander-vindman-army-nsc-veteran-trump-ukraine-2019-10/
Here's Vindman walking and smiling:

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

I guess we've got some questions for Lindsey.

Like Liked by 1 person

DeWalt , October 30, 2019 at 10:19 am
That is a poster perfect picture of a Ticket Puncher. This is an ideal Leftist Military Commander. What a joke.

Like Liked by 5 people

Jederman , October 30, 2019 at 4:47 pm
What I find odd is this guy is an 05 (errand boy) on the NSC. How out of control is the NSC when an 05, is editing official transcripts of presidential conversations? Who told him to do it? To whom did he express his concern before he was told to edit them?

Like Like

Gort , October 30, 2019 at 3:23 am
On Laura Ingram's show the other night, former Deputy Assistant Attorney Genera John Yoo observed that Alexander Vindman may have committed espionage.

"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." -- Samuel Johnson

That would explain the uniform.

Like Liked by 12 people

LivLovely101 , October 30, 2019 at 10:14 am
My thoughts exactly. If you need to SHOW how patriotic you are by wearing your uniform, then it is no more than a costume.
He has that look; 100% Grade A USA inspected A**h**e!

Like Liked by 7 people

LivLovely101 , October 30, 2019 at 10:14 am
My thoughts exactly. If you need to SHOW how patriotic you are by wearing your uniform, then it is no more than a costume.
He has that look; 100% Grade A USA inspected A**h**e!
Blind no longer , October 30, 2019 at 10:01 am
I believe he is too! I thought I heard Jim Jordan refer to him as the whistleblower but I may not have been listening closely enough.
He sure fits the profile.

I think they thought President Trump would never release the transcript and planned to set the narrative with the schiff remarks at that hearing. President Trump blew it up with the release. This champion of Ukraine thought he'd never have to be seen or heard of and could continue spying and leaking, imho.
Hope he is exposed along with schiff and goes down hard without all those badges on his uniform.

Like Liked by 2 people

dayallaxeded , October 30, 2019 at 12:39 pm
I didn't make it clear above, but I'm hoping this sh-tbag is determined to be fraudulently wearing some of those badges and tabs. He dishonors every dayum one of them.

Like Liked by 3 people

Mike Robinson , October 30, 2019 at 7:43 am
You aren't a "witness" when you're lying, even when you're saying what somebody else prefers to hear. You're just committing perjury.

The House is not crafting "articles of impeachment," but an unconstitutional "writ of attainder." Most absurdly, they are trying to do it based on false representations about a conversation, the true content of which has been declassified and affirmed by the other party to the call.

These people are carving a place of infamy in US history far worse than that of Joseph McCarthy.

FilthySanchez0302 , October 30, 2019 at 8:08 am
UCMJ article 94: (2) with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of lawful civil authority, creates, in concert with any other person, revolt, violence, or other disturbance against that authority is guilty of sedition
(b) A person who is found guilty of attempted mutiny, mutiny, sedition, or failure to suppress or report a mutiny or sedition shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct."
Make an example out of this a-hole. Traitor.
Bluto , October 30, 2019 at 1:45 pm
His twin brother (likely the official he supposedly complained twice to) is a White House lawyer. His older brother is an investment banker doing business in Eastern Europe, Asia, Russia, and the Middle East.

I wonder who would stand to lose money if corruption were to be investigated in Ukraine?

mylabs5 , October 30, 2019 at 9:55 am
So a while back I posted that the DoE (Dept. of Energy) was involved. To keep your eyes on the DoE. Now you know. And parts of this runs through their email system just like at State except Perry is not involved like Hillary was. But he may have found something that made him want to leave the post.

POTUS needs to have the new Sec Engery audit the system. There's gold there. Trust me on this too.

Don't know if it's been posted yet, but Vindman tried to change the draft of the call. The WH uses voice recognition software for the calls so that there is a record of who said what. He tried to infer that the software was wrong and that Trump had said the word "Burisma" (which doesn't matter). He also tried to get the agents who transcribed to change the draft of the call citing the error. He as denied.
That's solid evidence for tampering with evidence along with violation of the espionage act. Now since he is part of the this scam he's also guilty of obstruction. Add 5 yrs to his Leavenworth stay.

Here's POTUS problem with all of this. The corruption goes so far and so deep in all these agencies, Congress, Senate, military that if he goes scorched earth the gov may just fall if. That's how pervasive it is. He's going to have to be a neurosurgeon operating with a scalpel to carve out the cancer and it's going to take timing, precision, quiet and patience. After all that's been done to him I'm not sure he'll be able to hold back when the Durham reports comes out (which I believe will be the public predicate for his actions to clean up the mess).
I'm praying for him.

Mike Robinson , October 30, 2019 at 10:33 am
There is not just "voice recognition software," but several human stenographers who compare their notes and ensure that the transcription is correct. It is a binding official record of the exchange, and routinely classified. Naturally, the many people who are right now lying to their teeth about what actually happened want to dispute and to change that record to suit their purposes.

But you really can see right through this whole thing. Until she realized that Ukraine had resumed investigating, and that they were talking with our DOJ, Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler, Obama, Biden, and many others really weren't all that concerned. But now they know that they've been talking to Durham and that his investigation has turned criminal. They know that they've all individually been hip-waders-deep in corruption in Ukraine, but now there is no American official to "give them six hours." They suddenly became desperate to throw out this President because he has both the willingness and the determination to put them all in jail. As do the Ukranians.

Like Liked by 3 people

Mike Robinson , October 30, 2019 at 10:38 am
P.S.: You definitely see the "Swamp business-as-usual reflexes" at work here. None of them perceive that Joe Biden (and by direct implication, Barak Obama) actually did anything wrong. They watch "Biden's boast" and shrug and say, "so what?" 🤷‍♂️ 😇

They gather around and protect him as though strong-arming another nation to drop a criminal investigation (a.k.a. "obstruction of justice") was the most ordinary thing for the VPOTUS to do. When the President asks another President to cooperate in law enforcement, as we have a treaty that calls for both countries to do, they see it as "smearing." Because, in their accustomed-to-corruption eyes, what Biden did is perfectly normal. Unfortunately for them, in the eyes of the law, it is not. Biden confessed on camera to a clearly impeachable offense, and implicated his boss while doing so.

Cynthia , October 30, 2019 at 11:13 am
Of interest, the Ukraine "quid pro quo" phone call took place THE DAY AFTER Mueller's testimony blew up . . . The actors were in place and they planned this to a T.
Concernedcitizen , October 30, 2019 at 11:27 am
With the unveiling of Whistleblower #2 (Vindman), Schiff and his Lawfare staff are trying to rescue their flagging "whistleblower" impeachment scam. Essentially, Vindman is claiming that President Trump released a false transcript of his conversation with Ukraine President Zelensky. The NYT article is an attempt to help Vindman and his co-conspirators get out in front of allegations that Vindman attempted to manipulate the wording of the transcript to create an impeachable offense.
2Alpha , October 30, 2019 at 3:52 pm
Additional Ukraine info From American Spectator interesting details

An Impeachment Defense: It Most Justifiably Means Going on Offense
https://spectator.org/an-impeachment-defense-it-most-justifiably-means-going-on-offense/

ShainS , October 29, 2019 at 11:09 pm
This all reads like a bad "Fusion GPS" Glenn Simpson novel from a year ago. Oh, wait

Like Liked by 19 people

GB Bari , October 29, 2019 at 11:42 pm
So now the sleazy Lawfare / Deep State plot is to build a narrative around the dropped words in the phone call that are represented by ellipses in the transcript.

Great. When nothing exists in a spot in the conversation they can fabricate & claim whatever they want because, if a recording doesn't exist, no one can refute the fabricated words besides other first hand witnesses who were listening on the phone call. So it boils down to hearsay: He said vs. He said.

That's all they have.

Unless Pelousy & Co's trip to Ukraine included a fishing expedition for a potential Ukrainian Gov't. recording of the phone call.

Like Liked by 6 people

TheHumanCondition , October 30, 2019 at 1:25 am
It's the continuation of absolute PHALE! From pee pee tapes that don't exist to the "imcoupment", nothing. Nothing but phale.
Marc , October 30, 2019 at 1:42 am
It's past time for the US to stop this dual citizenship nonsense along with birth-rite citizenship. At the very least, force dual citizens to renounce their other country's citizenship if they want to run for office, serve in the military, or lobby foreign governments.
California Joe , October 29, 2019 at 11:18 pm
Vindman testified today that he was listening to President Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian President and there was no quid pro quo shakedown by President Trump. In fact, he said that the transcript of the call that President Trump made public was, in fact, accurate. Doesn't this invalidate and show the initial whistle-blower complaint to the IC OIG was a lie?
BlackKnightRides , October 29, 2019 at 11:18 pm
I repeat my earlier suspicions regarding the potential sketchiness of Rick Perry's resignation just after the Ukrainian allegations began to break particularly given the snake pit of Obama Holdovers er EMBEDS operating in Ukrainian-affiliated circles.
Sentient , October 29, 2019 at 11:21 pm
Yeah, Alexander Vindman was "concerned" about the president asking Ukraine to look into Crowdstrike and the Bidens. So Alexander felt compelled to talk with the attorney for the National Security Council assigned to ethics affairs his brother, Yevgeny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Vindman
BlackKnightRides , October 29, 2019 at 11:28 pm
How to THWART the House's SHAMpeachment fraud.
[updated from yesterday]

AG BARR must GO on OFFENSE by SEIZING the INITIATIVE on multiple fronts!

1. AG Barr immediately APPEALS Judge Howell's ruling directly to SCOTUS.

• The House has unconstitutionally tried to intimidate testimony from the Executive Branch.

• The House has NO authority to Subpoena in search of crimes without an Impeachment Inquiry.

• The House has NOT launched an Impeachment Inquiry with vote of its entire membership.

• House actions constitute a SHAMpeachment fraud.

• District Judges have no Constitutional authority to approve a Congressional SHAMpeachment.

• Given that the Constitution directs that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court preside over any Senate Trial following an Impeachment by the House, ONLY SCOTUS can rule on the DUE PROCESS requirements for a Constitutional Impeachment according to the Rule of Law.

2. AG Barr announces he has launched three CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS that involve the Majority Caucus of the House of Representatives including their members on the Judiciary, Intelligence and Ways & Means Committees:

• POLITICAL RACKETEERING $50 Million funneled through Feinstein's former Chief of Staff

• SEDITION Pelosi, Schiff, Vindman et al

• TREASON Vindman

3. AG Barr forwards SUBPOENAS from his designated investigators to the Speaker, Majority Leader and Committee Chairmen requiring that they immediately surrender all records of related testimony and investigations, and that they preserve all historical records until the investigations and any prosecutions have been completed.

4. NOTIFY Demo☭rat House Leadership that they are Criminal Investigation TARGETS for OBSTRUCTION of JUSTICE (familiar theme for them), including

• Colluding in a fraudulent SHAMpeachment that fabricated Evidence

• Rigging Witness Testimony

• Threatening and intimidating Witnesses

• Doctoring and withholding or concealing Evidence

• Using a SCIF in a cover-up of their Obstruction of Justice

5. INDICT Pelosi and her Committee Chairmen NOW.

• The Gang of Eight became willing Accomplices.

• Start with the Demo☭rat House Leadership leaves the Senate off the hook, but exposed to being taken out, in case they want to raise their heads from their foxholes.
=====
All 3 Investigations must tap all NSA and Federal Surveillance powers
with ALACRITY.

Like Liked by 21 people

Jan , October 30, 2019 at 1:34 am
Fingers crossed, I hope this happens BUT the DOJ is also mostly comprised of never-Trumpers and career lawyers/staff who agree with the Deep State that does not want anything changed and disagree with the policies of this President, i.e., mini-Yates.

Hopefully, Trump's legal team is more brilliant than we know, as is White House legal counsel.

nobodyspecial1958 , October 29, 2019 at 11:47 pm
This is a little off topic but I read an article today titled, "Mittens, the Deep State and the on going Coup against Potus" on Red State. Original article was by a Polish writer, and I found it be an amazing article if true. It details how the Russian collusion narrative originated in 2014 and was to be used against whoever ran in 2016. They didn't know trump would be the nominee. It was for whoever won the nomination.
It talks a lot about John Brennan and a guy named Joseph Cofer Black and their involvement in the 911 attacks. Both these guy have ties to burisma but the point about mittens is that Black was his foreign policy adviser and mitt wants Trump shut down before it gets him too. It is a long article that covers a lot of territory and has several places you can click to read even more about it. I think the red state article has a good commentary on the original article and helps tie it together with what's going on. This post doesn't even scratch the surface of it but the article clears up a lot of thing even if you already understand what's going on. Well worth the read.

[Oct 31, 2019] The Failed FBI Plot to Paint Trump Doing Deals with Putin by Larry C Johnson

Notable quotes:
"... The Kremlin's cultivation operation on TRUMP also had comprised offering him various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia ..."
"... Honestly, the more that emerges, the more I wonder under what inducements Mueller consented to figurehead this steaming heap of offal. (The rest of the gang at least had the excuse of assuming Clinton would win, but Mueller agrees to step into it, through the tainted subterfuge of Comey's no less, once Trump was already elected.) ..."
"... And then there's Ukraine. I know PL has just stressed the impropriety of a uniformed officer detailed to the NSC doing what he's done -- because he disagrees with the President's policy on Eastern Europe, by his own admission, which includes urging Zelensky to investigate those allied with the Borg in Ukraine for attempting to influence the outcome of the election in favour of Clinton. ..."
"... A shame Trump couldn't just leave the Biden investigation to the professionals, but then maybe he's having trouble trusting his subordinates. Wonder why. ..."
"... Fred -> indus56... , 30 October 2019 at 03:19 PM ..."
"... The "professionals" ensured the Burisma investigation was closed by the prior Ukraine government. By all means cover up corruption at the top of the Obama administration. Kompromat would never happen there. BTW I wonder if Pussy Riot will be joining the band of the same name at their next concert? https://www.infoconcert.com/artiste/kompromat-175468/concerts.html ..."
"... catherine said in reply to indus56... , 30 October 2019 at 04:54 PM ..."
"... Is it normal procedure to edit phone call memos? ..."
"... National security official tells Congress he tried to add edits to White House memo about Trump Ukraine call ..."
"... The proposed edits of the call were to include Trump mentioning possible recordings of Joe Biden discussing corruption in Ukraine and Ukraine's president mentioning the Burisma gas company specifically. ..."
"... https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/national-security-official-tells-congress-he-tried-add-edits-white-n1073726 ..."
"... Flavius , 30 October 2019 at 02:31 PM ..."
"... Shame on the FBI for many failings in their handling of the Steele report. Of course the Agents responsible for evaluating the report knew that Sater was an informant or asset; but the report reeks of bullshit anyway. ..."
"... "Speaking to a trusted compatriot in June 2016 sources A and B, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure and a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin respectively,.." "Trusted compatriot... sources A and B... senior...figure... former...(but) still active..." what does this nonsense even mean? Specifics? To use the word specifics to describe what is being put on offer is a joke. Those specifics wouldn't serve to predicate a FISC wire on Joe Shit the Ragman let alone a candidate for President of the United States. ..."
"... There should have been no action taken on Steele's offerings absent Steele's fully identifying every source cited in his document, the precise circumstances surrounding their receipt of the information, the precise circumstances of Steele's receipt of the information from the so called sources, and either access to the sources themselves or. damn good reason why not. ..."
"... The Agents not pinning this guy down knowing that he was a paid political operative doing Oppo research makes the whole thing truly shocking. It's going to be very telling if and when the files come out that were used to administer the handling not only of Sater but also Steele. ..."
"... ex PFC Chuck , 30 October 2019 at 03:44 PM ..."
"... Although he may be a pariah to some who hang out here, during a recent interview with Joe Rogan Edward Snowden offered some intriguing views of the Borg/Deep State from his experience and perspective. He sees it as a conglomeration of interest groups inside and outside of the government who have interests that sometimes compete and sometimes cooperate. The video is over 2 hours long, and it's almost all Snowden talking and very little of Rogan. ..."
Oct 31, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

To appreciate the lies and corruption that are the foundation of the conspiracy to destroy the Presidency of Donald Trump by the FBI, the CIA and the DNI, one need only look at how Robert Mueller lied about FBI informants who were targeting the Trump team.

Let us look specifically at Felix Sater. Felix Sater has been a fully signed up Confidential Human Source for the FBI since 1998. His original plea deal was signed off on by Mueller's deputy, Andrew Weismann. But you would not know any of this if you relied solely on the Mueller Report.

Here is how Mueller portrays Sater:

In approximately September 2015, Felix Sater, a New York based real estate advisor, contacted Michael Cohen, then-executive vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Donald J. Trump. Sater had previously worked with the Trump Organization and advised it on a number of domestic and international projects. Sater had explored the possibility of a Trump Tower project in Moscow while working with the Trump Organization and therefore knew of the organization's general interest in completing a deal there.

This is fundamentally dishonest. Sater was more than a mere "real estate advisor" who had previously worked with Trump. He was and is a fully signed up FBI Confidential Human Source. Not my opinion. It is a fact. An excellent article by Newsweek reporter Bill Powell, Donald Trump Associate Felix Sater Is Linked to the Mob and the CIA -- What's His Role in the Russia Investigation? , provides an excellent review of Sater's history and involvement with the FBI. One of the surprising revelations from Powell is that Felix Sater was a childhood friend of Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer. Let that sink in for a moment. The FBI informant, Felix Sater, was a long time friend of Cohen.

Sater was playing a role scripted by the FBI and deliberately designed to feed the meme that Trump was dealing with the Russians.

The covert op to paint Trump as a Russian stooge was not left to Sater alone. Christopher Steele, a British spy who was hired by Fusion GPS, conveniently produced a report insisting that the Russians were working overtime to get Trump in bed with them on "lucrative real estate deals." The Steele report dated 20 June 2016 makes the following claims:

Speaking to a trusted compatriot in June 2016 sources A and B, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure and a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin respectively, the Russian authorities had been cultivating and supporting US Republican presidential candidate, Donald TRUMP for at least 5 years. . . .

In terms of specifics, Source A confided that the Kremlin had been feeding TRUMP and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, for several years (see more below). . . .

The Kremlin's cultivation operation on TRUMP also had comprised offering him various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia , especially in relation to the ongoing 2018 World Cup soccer tournament. How ever, so far, for reasons unknown, TRUMP had not taken up any of these.

Pay attention. Who offered Trump the deal in Moscow? FELIX SATER. Was he a Russian agent? No. He was the FBI's Joe.

If the Steele Dossier was true, Trump should have had multiple offers for projects on in Russia, especially Moscow. Steele claims Putin's people were feeding Trump information and opportunity. So where is the evidence of such activity? There is none. Just Felix Sater, FBI snitch.

Robert Mueller tried in vain to advance the lie that Trump was doing deals in Moscow. His report states:

In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately September 2015, Felix Sater . . . contacted Cohen (i.e., Michael Cohen) on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert), a Russian real-estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov. Sater had known Rozov since approximately 2007 and, in 2014, had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City. Sater later contacted Rozov and proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would license the name and brand from the Trump Organization but construct the building on its own. Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee of I.C. Expert. (see page 69 of the Mueller Report).

Who was pushing the project in Moscow? FELIX SATER. Not Michael Cohen and certainly not Donald Trump. Sater was the instigator. At no time did he testify that he was directed by Trump or anyone else in the Trump organization to reachout to the Russians. And don't forget what Christopher Steele claimed -- the Russians were in a frenzy supposedly to offer Trump lucrative deals. That was and is a monumental lie.

Sater was and is an FBI informant. Sater was not just a private entrepreneur looking to make some coin. We know without a doubt that Sater was a fully signed up FBI informant. Sater's status as an FBI snitch was first exposed in 2012 (you can read the letter confirming Sater's status as an FBI snitch here ). Another inconvenient fact excluded from the Mueller report is that one of Mueller's Chief Prosecutors, Andrew Weissman, signed the deal with Felix Sater in December 1998 that put Sater into the FBI Informant business . Sater was used multiple times in the next decade by the FBI to make cases against Russian spies and mobsters.

How could Robert Mueller neglect to mention this critical fact? This was not the oversight of a senile old man. It was deliberate obfuscation.

The question that prosecutor Robert Durham needs to ask is who directed Sater to pitch the Trump team in September 2015 to pursue a deal in Moscow? The answer probably lies in Sater's FD-1023s. A 1023 is a report that an FBI agent must file every time he meets with a Confidential Human Source. This was an orchestrated attempt to set up Donald Trump as a Russian stooge. But it did not start in July 2016 as the FBI falsely claims. It started in September 2015. Who authorized this?

Posted at 10:20 AM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink

Reblog (0) Comments

Factotum , 30 October 2019 at 12:12 PM

Add to the curious terminology used by the guy setting up the Trump Tower meeting with the female lawyer who promised dirt on Clinton - he described her as the "Crown Prosecutor" for Russia (no such thing)- more likely also on M16's payroll working in cahoots with Brennan and the CIA?
indus56 , 30 October 2019 at 12:49 PM
I'm not sure if LJ is presenting anything new here on Sater, though it's damning enough to merit a refresh. I suppose many reading this for the second time will, as I do, feel impatient that this has been out there for some time, and nothing official has yet come of it, from Horowitz or Durham. Perhaps that impatience is fuelled by what appears to be a repeat performance using the same comic-opera playbill, this time with Ukraine. I recognize that the wheels of justice grind slowly; the Borg can manufacture these colour-tempests much more quickly, and so continue to control the news cycles (in addition to controlling the news).

Honestly, the more that emerges, the more I wonder under what inducements Mueller consented to figurehead this steaming heap of offal. (The rest of the gang at least had the excuse of assuming Clinton would win, but Mueller agrees to step into it, through the tainted subterfuge of Comey's no less, once Trump was already elected.)

Nor is it easy to maintain confidence in Barr through the rumbling over his role in Iran Contra, the family connections with the CIA, with its attendant opportunities to develop kompromat to hold over the family. Then there's Horowitz's reputation for playing softball...

And then there's Ukraine. I know PL has just stressed the impropriety of a uniformed officer detailed to the NSC doing what he's done -- because he disagrees with the President's policy on Eastern Europe, by his own admission, which includes urging Zelensky to investigate those allied with the Borg in Ukraine for attempting to influence the outcome of the election in favour of Clinton.

A shame Trump couldn't just leave the Biden investigation to the professionals, but then maybe he's having trouble trusting his subordinates. Wonder why.

Fred -> indus56... , 30 October 2019 at 03:19 PM
Indus56,

The "professionals" ensured the Burisma investigation was closed by the prior Ukraine government. By all means cover up corruption at the top of the Obama administration. Kompromat would never happen there. BTW I wonder if Pussy Riot will be joining the band of the same name at their next concert?
https://www.infoconcert.com/artiste/kompromat-175468/concerts.html

catherine said in reply to indus56... , 30 October 2019 at 04:54 PM
Is it normal procedure to edit phone call memos?

National security official tells Congress he tried to add edits to White House memo about Trump Ukraine call

The proposed edits of the call were to include Trump mentioning possible recordings of Joe Biden discussing corruption in Ukraine and Ukraine's president mentioning the Burisma gas company specifically.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/national-security-official-tells-congress-he-tried-add-edits-white-n1073726

Flavius , 30 October 2019 at 02:31 PM
Shame on the FBI for many failings in their handling of the Steele report. Of course the Agents responsible for evaluating the report knew that Sater was an informant or asset; but the report reeks of bullshit anyway.

"Speaking to a trusted compatriot in June 2016 sources A and B, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure and a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin respectively,.." "Trusted compatriot... sources A and B... senior...figure... former...(but) still active..." what does this nonsense even mean? Specifics? To use the word specifics to describe what is being put on offer is a joke. Those specifics wouldn't serve to predicate a FISC wire on Joe Shit the Ragman let alone a candidate for President of the United States.

There should have been no action taken on Steele's offerings absent Steele's fully identifying every source cited in his document, the precise circumstances surrounding their receipt of the information, the precise circumstances of Steele's receipt of the information from the so called sources, and either access to the sources themselves or. damn good reason why not.

The Agents not pinning this guy down knowing that he was a paid political operative doing Oppo research makes the whole thing truly shocking. It's going to be very telling if and when the files come out that were used to administer the handling not only of Sater but also Steele.

ex PFC Chuck , 30 October 2019 at 03:44 PM
Although he may be a pariah to some who hang out here, during a recent interview with Joe Rogan Edward Snowden offered some intriguing views of the Borg/Deep State from his experience and perspective. He sees it as a conglomeration of interest groups inside and outside of the government who have interests that sometimes compete and sometimes cooperate. The video is over 2 hours long, and it's almost all Snowden talking and very little of Rogan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efs3QRr8LWw

[Oct 30, 2019] Breaking Ethics Complaint Filed Against Adam Schiff

Oct 30, 2019 | www.redstate.com

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is now taking action.

He's filed an ethics complaint after the Star Chamber leader, House Intel Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA). Normally, actual impeachment proceedings would proceed out of the Judiciary Committee, which would have been under that Chair, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). But Pelosi delegated it to Schiff instead, another break from precedent and proper procedure.

Gaetz's complaint alleges that Schiff's handling of the proceedings has been full of unethical actions, including
"distorting @POTUS 's call with President Zelensky, lying to the public about 'Russian collusion', and blocking members of Congress from attending impeachment depositions," according to Townhall.

me title=

me title=

"Nancy Pelosi's impeachment resolution gives unprecedented power to the Intelligence Committee Chairman, Adam Schiff," Gaetz told reporters ahead of filing his complaint. "That's deeply troubling to me for a few reasons. First, Adam Schiff has proven in this process that he cannot adhere to the fundamental principles of fairness. Second, and I would say most important for my work today, is that Adam Schiff has violated the ethical rules of the House of Representatives."

Gaetz point out how Schiff had deceived the public about what was said on the Trump phone call with Ukraine's President Zelensky, making up things that were not in fact said and claiming Trump's words were "'like a classic organized crime shakedown'" on the call. Gaetz also referenced the lie that Schiff told about the Russia investigation claiming that there was "more than circumstantial evidence" that Trump had colluded with Russia.

Additionally, Gaetz noted rules Schiff was in violation of including, "A Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner may not be excluded from nonparticipatory attendance at a hearing of a committee or subcommittee [ ] unless the House by majority vote authorizes a particular committee or subcommittee, for purposes of a particular series of hearings on a particular article of legislation or on a particular subject of investigation, to close its hearings to Members, Delegates, and the Resident Commissioner by the same procedures specified in this subparagraph for closing hearings to the public."

Holding a closed hearing for impeachment hearings that do not contain classified information or have any specific reason to be closed is outrageous.

Schiff also didn't tell the truth about prior contacts that he and his aide had had with the Ukraine whistleblower. On that basis alone, he really should recuse himself from the matter.

Gaetz's filing comes the day after a big dust-up when Schiff intervened during a hearing and wouldn't let Republicans ask questions of Lt. Col Alexander Vindman. Schiff stopped Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) from asking Vindman who he had spoken to about the matter. According to Jordan, Schiff said, "No, no, no, we're not going to let him answer that question," as though he were Vindman's lawyer and not the head of a committee which is supposed to be impartial and getting at the truth.

Rep. Steve Scalise told Fox News that Pelosi needed to declare a "mistrial."

"This has been a tainted process from the start. What happened today confirms even worse just how poorly Adam Schiff is handling this process, denying the ability for Republicans to even ask basic questions that are critical to the heart of whether or not a President of the United States is impeached."

[Oct 29, 2019] The New York Times itself is part of the Deep State it initially denied and now wholeheartedly supports

Notable quotes:
"... Not that this should surprise anyone who is familiar with Operation Mockingbird and The New York Times' part in co-operating with the CIA to plant CIA-origin reports with reporters who were either willing volunteers or unaware innocents or to practise self-censorship to appease the CIA. ..."
"... The Deep State has little to nothing to do with "rule of law." It is simply the law of the jungle: might makes right, exercised behind the scenes by the true power brokers and their minions. It is not partisan. It does use both parties to put on a show to distract the people while owning and using major parts of both ..."
"... It is they who have us in Syria now to steal Syria's oil. It is they who were enraged that Trump, an outsider, won the election contrary to all expectations and predictions. It is they who control most of the media. They are not the friends of the American people; in fact, they are our mortal enemies. ..."
"... They have hijacked our government and our foreign policy, which they operate largely for their own interests and not in the true interests of the American people. ..."
"... They use the media to sell us on what they are doing, appealing to our pride, our patriotism, the project of spreading peace, prosperity, democracy, and freedom to the world, the project of promoting human rights, the project of prosperity--whatever works to convince us that we should be in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Syria, and Kosovo, and in hundreds of military bases around the world. They equally exploit left and right; thus dividing us, they conquer. ..."
Oct 29, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jen , Oct 28 2019 21:51 utc | 75

I'm sure I'm not the only person here who sees the headlines B has linked to and other NYT headlines (and some of the actual articles themselves, if I have the time and patience to read them) and realised that The New York Times itself is part of the Deep State it initially denied and now wholeheartedly supports. Not that this should surprise anyone who is familiar with Operation Mockingbird and The New York Times' part in co-operating with the CIA to plant CIA-origin reports with reporters who were either willing volunteers or unaware innocents or to practise self-censorship to appease the CIA.
Arthur , Oct 28 2019 17:22 utc | 14
The Deep State has little to nothing to do with "rule of law." It is simply the law of the jungle: might makes right, exercised behind the scenes by the true power brokers and their minions. It is not partisan. It does use both parties to put on a show to distract the people while owning and using major parts of both.

It is they who have us in Syria now to steal Syria's oil. It is they who were enraged that Trump, an outsider, won the election contrary to all expectations and predictions. It is they who control most of the media. They are not the friends of the American people; in fact, they are our mortal enemies.

They have hijacked our government and our foreign policy, which they operate largely for their own interests and not in the true interests of the American people.

They use the media to sell us on what they are doing, appealing to our pride, our patriotism, the project of spreading peace, prosperity, democracy, and freedom to the world, the project of promoting human rights, the project of prosperity--whatever works to convince us that we should be in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Syria, and Kosovo, and in hundreds of military bases around the world. They equally exploit left and right; thus dividing us, they conquer.

[Oct 28, 2019] Expert Panel Finds Gaping Plot-Holes In OPCW Report On Alleged Syrian Chemical Attack by Caitlin Johnstone

Highly recommended!
This implicates State Department in the attempt to run a false flag operation. If we add that the State Department is the key organization behind for color revolution against Trump that picture becomes even more disturbing. This is really a neocon vipers nest.
Notable quotes:
"... This was because the public had already been shown that highly suspicious chemical attacks tended to happen when the Trump administration begins pushing for a reversal of standing US Syria policy, as I noted in April 2017 immediately following the alleged attack in Khan Shaykhun. ..."
"... "I was able to predict Douma in 2018 because it happened already almost exactly 1 year prior, at Khan Shaykhun, April 4, 2017," Cox told me on Twitter earlier today. ..."
"... And, like clockwork, on April 7 2018 dozens of civilians in Douma were killed in an incident which was quickly reported as a Syrian government chemical attack by all the usual establishment narrative managers on Syria , with everyone from the White Helmets to Charles Lister to Eliot Higgins to Julian Röpcke loudly flagging it on social media to draw the attention of mainstream news outlets who were slower to pick up the story. ..."
"... Long before any investigation into this suspicious incident could even be begun, much less completed, the US State Department declared it to have been a chemical weapons attack perpetrated by the Syrian government, saying "the Assad regime must be held accountable", and that Russia "ultimately bears responsibility" for the attack. Which was of course mighty convenient for US geostrategic interests. ..."
"... On the 14th of April 2018, the US, UK and France launched an airstrike on the Syrian government as punishment for using chemical weapons, citing secret "intelligence" which the US government claimed gave them "very high confidence that Syria was responsible." The public has to this day never been permitted to see this intelligence. This all happened before any formal international investigation could take place. ..."
"... The OPCW conducted their investigation, and in July 2018 published an interim report saying that "no organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products were detected, either in the environmental samples or in plasma samples from the alleged casualties." This ruled out sarin gas, invalidating earlier reports by Syria war pundits like Charles Lister who claimed that sarin had been used, but it didn't rule out chlorine gas. In March of this year the OPCW issued its final report saying forensics were consistent with chlorine gas use and advancing a ballistics report which strongly implicated the Assad government by implying it was an aerial drop (Syrian opposition militias have no air force). The official Twitter account for the UK Delegation to the OPCW tweeted at the time that the report "confirms chemical weapons used, demonstrating the vital importance of OPCW's work. This confirmed chlorine attack was only the latest example of Asad regime's CW attacks on its own population." ..."
"... In May of this year, a leaked internal document from the OPCW investigation was published by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media which completely contradicts the findings of the official report published in March. The leaked Engineering Assessment said that "observations at the scene of the two locations, together with subsequent analysis, suggest there is a higher probability both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft," which would implicate the forces on the ground in the incident rather than the Assad government. ..."
"... The OPCW indirectly confirmed the document's authenticity by telling the press that its release had been "unauthorised". Climate Audit's Stephen McIntyre published an excellent thread breaking down how the document invalidates the OPCW's claims which you can read by clicking here . Establishment narrative managers had a very difficult time spinning the fact that the OPCW had taken it upon itself to hide findings from the public which dissented from its official report on an incident which preceded an international act of war upon a sovereign nation, and all the implications that necessarily has for the legitimacy of the organization's other work. ..."
"... "Based on the whistleblower's extensive presentation, including internal emails, text exchanges and suppressed draft reports, we are unanimous in expressing our alarm over unacceptable practices in the investigation of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, near the Syrian capital of Damascus on 7 April 2018. We became convinced by the testimony that key information about chemical analyses, toxicology consultations, ballistics studies, and witness testimonies was suppressed, ostensibly to favor a preordained conclusion ." ..."
"... "The convincing evidence of irregular behaviour in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirms doubts and suspicions I already had. I could make no sense of what I was reading in the international press. Even official reports of investigations seemed incoherent at best. The picture is certainly clearer now, although very disturbing. " ..."
"... "The interpretation of the environmental analysis results is equally questionable. Many, if not all, of the so-called 'smoking gun' chlorinated organic chemicals claimed to be not naturally present in the environment' (para 2.6) are in fact ubiquitous in the background, either naturally or anthropogenically (wood preservatives, chlorinated water supplies etc). The report, in fact, acknowledges this in Annex 4 para 7, even stating the importance of gathering control samples to measure the background for such chlorinated organic derivatives. Yet, no analysis results for these same control samples (Annex 5), which inspectors on the ground would have gone to great lengths to gather, were reported." ..."
"... "One alternative ascribing the origin of the crater to an explosive device was considered briefly but, despite an almost identical crater (understood to have resulted from a mortar penetrating the roof) being observed on an adjacent rooftop, was dismissed because of ' the absence of primary and secondary fragmentation characteristics'. In contrast, explosive fragmentation characteristics were noted in the leaked study ." ..."
"... "Contrary to what has been publicly stated by the Director General of the OPCW it was evident to the panel that many of the inspectors in the Douma investigation were not involved or consulted in the post-deployment phase or had any contribution to, or knowledge of the content of the final report until it was made public . The panel is particularly troubled by organisational efforts to obfuscate and prevent inspectors from raising legitimate concerns about possible malpractices surrounding the Douma investigation." ..."
Oct 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

The Courage Foundation , an international protection and advocacy group for whistleblowers, has published the findings of a panel it convened last week on the extremely suspicious behavior of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in its investigation of an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria last year. After hearing an extensive presentation from a member of the OPCW's Douma investigation team, the panel's members (including a world-renowned former OPCW Director General) report that they are "unanimous in expressing our alarm over unacceptable practices in the investigation of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, near the Syrian capital of Damascus on 7 April 2018."

I'll get to the panel and its findings in a moment, but first I should provide some historical background so that readers who aren't intimately familiar with this ongoing scandal can fully appreciate the significance of this new development.

In late March of last year, President Trump publicly stated that the US military would soon be withdrawing troops from Syria, causing some with an ear to the ground like independent US congressional candidate Steve Cox to predict that there would shortly be a false flag chemical weapons attack in that nation. This was because the public had already been shown that highly suspicious chemical attacks tended to happen when the Trump administration begins pushing for a reversal of standing US Syria policy, as I noted in April 2017 immediately following the alleged attack in Khan Shaykhun.

"I was able to predict Douma in 2018 because it happened already almost exactly 1 year prior, at Khan Shaykhun, April 4, 2017," Cox told me on Twitter earlier today.

"Khan Shaykhun also occurred within days of the Trump Admin saying we're leaving Syria."

And, like clockwork, on April 7 2018 dozens of civilians in Douma were killed in an incident which was quickly reported as a Syrian government chemical attack by all the usual establishment narrative managers on Syria , with everyone from the White Helmets to Charles Lister to Eliot Higgins to Julian Röpcke loudly flagging it on social media to draw the attention of mainstream news outlets who were slower to pick up the story.

There was immediate skepticism, partly because acclaimed journalists like Sy Hersh have been highlighting plot holes in the official story about chemical weapons in Syria since 2013, partly because Assad would stand nothing to gain and everything to lose by using a banned yet highly ineffective weapon in a battle he'd already essentially won in that region, and partly because the people controlling things on the ground in Douma were the Al Qaeda-linked extremist group Jaysh-al Islam and the incredibly shady narrative management operation known as the White Helmets. Those groups, unlike the Assad government, most certainly would stand everything to gain by staging a chemical attack in the desperate hope that it would draw NATO powers into attacking the Syrian government and perhaps saving their necks.

Long before any investigation into this suspicious incident could even be begun, much less completed, the US State Department declared it to have been a chemical weapons attack perpetrated by the Syrian government, saying "the Assad regime must be held accountable", and that Russia "ultimately bears responsibility" for the attack. Which was of course mighty convenient for US geostrategic interests.

On the 14th of April 2018, the US, UK and France launched an airstrike on the Syrian government as punishment for using chemical weapons, citing secret "intelligence" which the US government claimed gave them "very high confidence that Syria was responsible." The public has to this day never been permitted to see this intelligence. This all happened before any formal international investigation could take place.

The OPCW conducted their investigation, and in July 2018 published an interim report saying that "no organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products were detected, either in the environmental samples or in plasma samples from the alleged casualties." This ruled out sarin gas, invalidating earlier reports by Syria war pundits like Charles Lister who claimed that sarin had been used, but it didn't rule out chlorine gas. In March of this year the OPCW issued its final report saying forensics were consistent with chlorine gas use and advancing a ballistics report which strongly implicated the Assad government by implying it was an aerial drop (Syrian opposition militias have no air force). The official Twitter account for the UK Delegation to the OPCW tweeted at the time that the report "confirms chemical weapons used, demonstrating the vital importance of OPCW's work. This confirmed chlorine attack was only the latest example of Asad regime's CW attacks on its own population."

In May of this year, a leaked internal document from the OPCW investigation was published by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media which completely contradicts the findings of the official report published in March. The leaked Engineering Assessment said that "observations at the scene of the two locations, together with subsequent analysis, suggest there is a higher probability both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft," which would implicate the forces on the ground in the incident rather than the Assad government.

The OPCW indirectly confirmed the document's authenticity by telling the press that its release had been "unauthorised". Climate Audit's Stephen McIntyre published an excellent thread breaking down how the document invalidates the OPCW's claims which you can read by clicking here . Establishment narrative managers had a very difficult time spinning the fact that the OPCW had taken it upon itself to hide findings from the public which dissented from its official report on an incident which preceded an international act of war upon a sovereign nation, and all the implications that necessarily has for the legitimacy of the organization's other work.

Throughout this time, critical thinkers like myself have been aggressively smeared as deranged conspiracy theorists, war crimes deniers and genocide deniers for expressing skepticism of the establishment-authorized narrative on Douma. Which takes us to today.

The Courage Foundation panel who met with the OPCW whistleblower consists of former OPCW Director General José Bustani (whose highly successful peacemongering once saw the lives of his children threatened by John Bolton during the lead-up to the Iraq invasion in an attempt to remove him from his position), WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson , Professor of International Law Richard Falk , former British Army Major General John Holmes , Dr Helmut Lohrer of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, German professor Dr Guenter Meyer of the Centre for Research on the Arab World, and former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East Elizabeth Murray of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

So these are not scrubs. These are not "conspiracy theorists" or "Russian propagandists". These are highly qualified and reputable professionals expressing deep concerns in the opaque and manipulative way the OPCW appears to have conducted its investigation into the Douma incident. Some highlights from their joint statement and analytical points are quoted below, with my own emphasis added in bold:

"Based on the whistleblower's extensive presentation, including internal emails, text exchanges and suppressed draft reports, we are unanimous in expressing our alarm over unacceptable practices in the investigation of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, near the Syrian capital of Damascus on 7 April 2018. We became convinced by the testimony that key information about chemical analyses, toxicology consultations, ballistics studies, and witness testimonies was suppressed, ostensibly to favor a preordained conclusion ."

"The convincing evidence of irregular behaviour in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirms doubts and suspicions I already had. I could make no sense of what I was reading in the international press. Even official reports of investigations seemed incoherent at best. The picture is certainly clearer now, although very disturbing. "
~ Bustani

"A critical analysis of the final report of the Douma investigation left the panel in little doubt that conclusions drawn from each of the key evidentiary pillars of the investigation (chemical analysis, toxicology, ballistics and witness testimonies,) are flawed and bear little relation to the facts. "

From the section on Chemical Analysis:

"The interpretation of the environmental analysis results is equally questionable. Many, if not all, of the so-called 'smoking gun' chlorinated organic chemicals claimed to be not naturally present in the environment' (para 2.6) are in fact ubiquitous in the background, either naturally or anthropogenically (wood preservatives, chlorinated water supplies etc). The report, in fact, acknowledges this in Annex 4 para 7, even stating the importance of gathering control samples to measure the background for such chlorinated organic derivatives. Yet, no analysis results for these same control samples (Annex 5), which inspectors on the ground would have gone to great lengths to gather, were reported."

"Although the report stresses the 'levels' of the chlorinated organic chemicals as a basis for its conclusions (para 2.6), it never mentions what those levels were -- high, low, trace, sub-trace? Without providing data on the levels of these so-called 'smoking-gun' chemicals either for background or test samples, it is impossible to know if they were not simply due to background presence . In this regard, the panel is disturbed to learn that quantitative results for the levels of 'smoking gun' chemicals in specific samples were available to the investigators but this decisive information was withheld from the report ."

"The final report also acknowledges that the tell-tale chemicals supposedly indicating chlorine use, can also be generated by contact of samples with sodium hypochlorite, the principal ingredient of household bleaching agent (para 8.15). This game-changing hypothesis is, however, dismissed (and as it transpires, incorrectly) by stating no bleaching was observed at the site of investigation. (' At both locations, there were no visible signs of a bleach agent or discoloration due to contact with a bleach agent' ). The panel has been informed that no such observation was recorded during the on-site inspection and in any case dismissing the hypothesis simply by claiming the non -observation of discoloration in an already dusty and scorched environment seems tenuous and unscientific ."

From the section on Toxicology:

"The toxicological studies also reveal inconsistencies, incoherence and possible scientific irregularities. Consultations with toxicologists are reported to have taken place in September and October 2018 (para 8.87 and Annex 3), but no mention is made of what those same experts opined or concluded. Whilst the final toxicological assessment of the authors states ' it is not possible to precisely link the cause of the signs and symptoms to a specific chemical ' (para 9.6) the report nonetheless concludes there were reasonable grounds to believe chlorine gas was the chemical (used as a weapon)."

"More worrying is the fact that the panel viewed documented evidence that showed other toxicologists had been consulted in June 2018 prior to the release of the interim report. Expert opinions on that occasion were that the signs and symptoms observed in videos and from witness accounts were not consistent with exposure to molecular chlorine or any reactive-chlorine-containing chemical. Why no mention of this critical assessment, which contradicts that implied in the final report, was made is unclear and of concern. "

From the section on Ballistic Studies:

"One alternative ascribing the origin of the crater to an explosive device was considered briefly but, despite an almost identical crater (understood to have resulted from a mortar penetrating the roof) being observed on an adjacent rooftop, was dismissed because of ' the absence of primary and secondary fragmentation characteristics'. In contrast, explosive fragmentation characteristics were noted in the leaked study ."

From the section titled "Exclusion of inspectors and attempts to obfuscate":

"Contrary to what has been publicly stated by the Director General of the OPCW it was evident to the panel that many of the inspectors in the Douma investigation were not involved or consulted in the post-deployment phase or had any contribution to, or knowledge of the content of the final report until it was made public . The panel is particularly troubled by organisational efforts to obfuscate and prevent inspectors from raising legitimate concerns about possible malpractices surrounding the Douma investigation."

I'll leave it there for now.

* * *

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported , so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , checking out my podcast on either Youtube , soundcloud , Apple podcasts or Spotify , following me on Steemit , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , purchasing some of my sweet merchandise , buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone , or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I'm trying to do with this platform, click here . Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I've written) in any way they like free of charge.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

[Oct 28, 2019] Maria Butina Denies She's a Russian Spy -- Says She Was Railroaded by 'Anti-Russian Hysteria'

Oct 28, 2019 | pluralist.com

Oct 27, 2019

In her first interview since her release from federal prison in the United States, Maria Butina denied ever acting as a spy for Russia and said she pleaded guilty in her case because she didn't stand a chance for a fair trial because of "anti-Russian hysteria" in the U.S.

Butina, 30, was released from jail in Florida on Friday after serving most of an 18-month prison sentence. She was deported to Russia, where she gave her first interview to RT, the Russia-owned media outlet.

"I've never been a spy, and I have never been charged with any espionage charges," she said in an interview that aired Saturday.

"I did plea to be a foreign agent, because, look I am in solitary confinement in jail facing 15 years, knowing that statistically Americans plea in more than 90 percent of cases. Why do they do that?"

She added that "if you go to trial, you're going to lose that trial."

"Especially me, a Russian, on trial in Washington, D.C., in the middle of anti-Russian hysteria? I would have gotten all 15 years. So, my choice was obvious."

A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted Butina on July 17, 2018, on charges that she acted as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia and conspired to do the same.

She pleaded guilty Dec. 13, 2018, to the conspiracy charge, and admitted that she operated under the direction of Aleksandr Torshin, who previously served as deputy chairman of Russia's central bank, to establish "unofficial ties" to Republican political operatives in the U.S.

Butina captured media attention well before the indictment, in part because of her appearance -- she has long red hair and a penchant for guns. Butina and Torshin operated a group called Right to Bear Arms, which advocated for gun rights in Russia.

Through that group, Butina and Torshin established relationships with executives at the National Rifle Association. They also made contacts with conservative political operatives, and attempted to establish ties with the Trump campaign.

U.S. prosecutors initially floated the theory that Butina used sex as part of a scheme to collect information from targets. But they admitted in a Sept. 8, 2018, court filing that their interpretation of allegedly salacious text messages was inaccurate.

Butina's lawyer, Robert Driscoll, also accused prosecutors of withholding exculpatory information regarding Butina, who studied at American University in Washington, D.C., before her arrest.

In a July 26 letter to the Justice Department, Driscoll pointed to statements made by Patrick Byrne, the now-former CEO of Overstock.com, who said he was tasked by the FBI to develop a relationship with Butina and keep tabs on her. Byrne said he told his contacts at the FBI that he did not believe Butina was engaged in wrongdoing.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].

[Oct 28, 2019] Could we please kill the Blob's "gift to Putin" meme?

Oct 28, 2019 | nonzero.org

Oct 26 2019 American foreign policy elites are in near-unanimous agreement that President Trump's withdrawal of troops from northern Syria, along with the ensuing influx of Russian and Syrian troops, is a "gift to Putin." Some variant of that phrase has over the past two weeks appeared in headlines from the venerable New York Times, the venerable Foreign Affairs, and the quasi-venerable CNN, among other mainstream outlets.
Russian elites have joined their American counterparts in viewing recent developments in Syria as a zero-sum game that Russia won and the United States lost. One Russian newspaper touted Russia's "triumph in the Middle East," and an analyst on Russian TV said this triumph is "sad for America."
There are certainly things to be sad about. It's sad that Trump's withdrawal -- impulsively ordered, with no diplomatic preparation -- has caused so much more havoc and suffering, especially for the Kurds, than was necessary. And to me, at least, it's sad that Trump, in his record-setting incompetence, is giving military withdrawals a bad name.
But I don't buy the premise of the "gift to Putin" meme -- that a decline of American influence in Syria, and a commensurate growth in Russian influence, is inherently a sad thing for America. This shift may well be good for Putin, but it could also be, in the long run, good for the United States and good for the Middle East broadly.

Some people may find the previous sentence, with it's win-win overtones, deeply disorienting if not flat-out unintelligible. The Cold War idea that the U.S. and Russia are playing a zero-sum game has gotten a second wind in recent years, in part because of genuine contentions between the two but also because of #Resistance psychology. Acting on the intuition that the friend of my enemy is my enemy, lots of anti-Trumpers look at the often-cozy relationship between Trump and Vladimir Putin (including their symbiosis during the 2016 presidential campaign) and conclude that Russia must be thwarted at every stop.
But what most needs thwarting is this archaic way of looking at foreign policy -- as a Manichaean struggle for influence between the United States and its allies, on the one hand, and the forces of darkness on the other. The U.S. shares important interests with Russia -- and, for that matter, with Russian allies Syria and Iran -- and the sooner it recognizes that, the better.
I noted one example of this in last week's newsletter: Russia and Syria and Iran are enemies of ISIS, one of the final obstacles to firm regime control of Syria. So any reprieve to ISIS granted by America's abrupt withdrawal may be temporary.
But a larger and more critical point is that the challenge facing Russia and its client regime in Syria -- not just consolidating control of Syria but rebuilding a devastated country -- leaves Russia with no interest in the further destabilization of the Middle East. Which is good, because it's hard to imagine the Middle East getting much more unstable -- especially along the fault line between Iran and Syria on the one hand and Israel and Saudi Arabia on the other -- without another disastrous war breaking out.
Russia has already shown signs of being able to play a constructive role here -- a fact that, oddly, has been emphasized even by some who buy the "gift to Putin" thesis. Hal Brands of the American Enterprise Institute -- in a Bloomberg Opinion essay titled, "Putin Conquered the Middle East. The U.S. Can Get It Back" -- notes that "Putin has shown diplomatic flexibility, keeping the lines open to nearly all players throughout the region."
Brands laments "the collapse of America's position in the region and Moscow's ascendance as the key power broker in the Syrian civil war." He goes on: "Moscow, in partnership with Iran and its proxies, has made itself the centerpiece of the diplomacy and regional power struggles surrounding that conflict. To what other capital would both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran's Quds Force, trek to discuss Middle Eastern security?"
Not Washington, certainly -- and that's the point! It isn't just that Russia shares America's interest in a stable Middle East. It's that Russia, unlike America, is in a position to do something about it. Yet Brands is so busy recoiling at Russia's regional rise that he doesn't welcome, or perhaps even quite recognize, its potential benefits -- even as he comes tantalizingly close to spelling them out.
Brands's disposition is shared by many in the American foreign policy establishment. They combine an awareness that America hasn't translated its regional power into productive diplomacy with a deep aversion to any waning of that power. This isn't as ironic as it may sound. Many, perhaps most, of them see America's diplomatic impotence as a product of the Trump era. They want to preserve American influence so that, once Trump is gone, it can again be used wisely.
Hope is a wonderful thing, but in this case you have to wonder what its historical basis is. When exactly in recent American history could you have gotten an Iranian leader, and not just an Israeli leader, to trek to Washington? Would that be, say, right after George W. Bush declared Iran part of the "axis of evil"? Even Barack Obama, more intent on improving relations with Iran than any recent president, never got all the way to rapprochement.
To read the rest of this piece, go to Politico Magazine . [ Back story: A Politico editor who read the piece in last week's NZN that noted the shared Russian-US interest in subduing ISIS asked me if I wanted to do a piece on other non-zero-sum aspects of Russia's growing influence in the Middle East -- in other words, a piece that would rebut the "gift to Putin" argument more broadly. This piece, published in Politico Magazine a few hours before this week's newsletter came out, is the result.]

[Oct 28, 2019] My Speech on the Deep State Plot by Larry C Johnson

Regardless of what do you think about Donald Trump, what intelligence community did was a plain vanilla coup d'état approved by Obama and coordinated by run by Brennan faction in CIA. With active participation of factions of FBI (Counterintelligence department), Department of Justice (several highly placed officials) and State Department (which is a real neocon vipers nest so the majority of high level officials, especially connected with the Ukrainian color revolution participated) eagerly participated in the coup.
They left too many fingerprints in this and now Barr hopefully will brings some individuals to justice for this coup.
Notable quotes:
"... I was fortunate to participate in a forum in August sponsored by the Ron Paul Institute. Here is my presentation on the attempted coup by US Law Enforcement and the Intelligence Community. ..."
Oct 28, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

I was fortunate to participate in a forum in August sponsored by the Ron Paul Institute. Here is my presentation on the attempted coup by US Law Enforcement and the Intelligence Community.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/GgRJ6UuPWM0

Posted at 12:00 PM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink

Turcopolier , 28 October 2019 at 01:00 PM

All

I was invited to this meeting and regret now that I did not attend.

[Oct 28, 2019] Frothing Hysterics The Fumes Of Fanaticism by James Howard Kunstler

Notable quotes:
"... You'd think that the failure of Mr. Mueller's extravaganza might have chastened them just a little - a $32 million-dollar effort starring the most vicious partisan lawyers inside-the-Beltway, 2,800 subpoenas issued over two years, 500 search warrants exercised, and finally nothing whatever to pin on Mr. Trump - except the contra-legal assertion that now he must prove his innocence. ..."
"... General Michael Flynn , for ditto? You may have noticed that General Flynn's case is shaping up to be the biggest instance of prosecutorial misconduct since the Dreyfus affair (France, 1894-1906, which badly-educated Americans most certainly know nothing about). ..."
"... Last week he put out a narrative that US Chargé d'Affaires to Ukraine Bill Taylor fired a gun-that-smoked fer sure in testimony. Except, of course, as per Mr. Schiff's usual practice, he refused to issue any actual transcript of the interview in evidence, while there are plenty of indications that Mr. Taylor's second-hand gossip was roundly refuted under counter-questioning by the non-Jacobin minority members of the House intel Committee. ..."
"... Mr. Schiff's pattern lo these many months of strife has been to claim ultimate proof of wrongdoing only to have it blow up in his face. It's a face that many Americans are sick of seeing and hearing from, and I am serenely confident that before this colossal scandal is resolved, the Congressman from Hollywood will be fatally disgraced, as was his role-model, Senator Joseph McCarthy, before him. ..."
Oct 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Judging by the volume of intemperate emails and angry social media blasts that come my way, the party of impeachment seems to be inhaling way too much gas from the smoking guns it keeps finding in the various star chambers of its inquisition against you-know-who. You'd think that the failure of Mr. Mueller's extravaganza might have chastened them just a little - a $32 million-dollar effort starring the most vicious partisan lawyers inside-the-Beltway, 2,800 subpoenas issued over two years, 500 search warrants exercised, and finally nothing whatever to pin on Mr. Trump - except the contra-legal assertion that now he must prove his innocence.

When you state just that, these frothing hysterics reply that many background figures - if not the Golden Golem of Greatness himself - were indicted and convicted of crimes by Mr. Mueller's crew. Oh yes!

  • The Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency was indicted for spending $400,000 on Facebook ads (and never extradited or tried in a court-of-law). Pretty impressive victory there!
  • The hacking of Hillary Clinton's emails by "Russia"? Still just alleged, never proven, with plenty of shady business around the search for evidence.
  • Paul Manafort, on tax evasion of money earned in Ukraine, 2014? We'll see about that as the whole filthy business of the 2014 Ukraine regime change op under Mr. Obama gets reviewed in the months ahead.
  • George Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI? Stand by on that one, too; still a developing story.
  • General Michael Flynn , for ditto? You may have noticed that General Flynn's case is shaping up to be the biggest instance of prosecutorial misconduct since the Dreyfus affair (France, 1894-1906, which badly-educated Americans most certainly know nothing about).

To set the record straight I'm forced to repeat something that these New Age Jacobins seem unable to process: you don't have to be a Trump cheerleader to be revolted by the behavior of his antagonists, which is a stunning spectacle of bad faith, dishonesty, incompetence, and malice -- and is surely way more toxic to the American project than anything the president has done . Every time I entertain the complaints of these angry auditors, I'm forced to remind myself that these are the same people who think that "inclusion" means shutting down free speech, who believe that the US should not have borders, who promote transsexual reading hours in the grammar schools, and who fiercely desire to start a war with Russia.

That's not a polity I want to be associated with and until it screws its head back on, I will remain the enemy of it. In fact, in early November I'm traveling to New York City, where the Jacobin city council has just made it a crime to utter the phrase illegal alien in a public place, with a $250,000 penalty attached. I challenge their agents to meet me in Penn Station and arrest me when I go to the information kiosk and inquire if they know what is the best place in midtown Manhattan to meet illegal aliens.

The volume of Jacobin hysteria ratcheted up to "11" late last week when the news broke that the Attorney General's study of RussiaGate's origins was upgraded to a criminal investigation, and that a voluminous report from the DOJ Inspector General is also about to be released. What do you suppose they're worried about? Naturally the Jacobins' bulletin board, a.k.a The New York Times , fired a salvo denouncing William Barr -- so expect his reputation to be the next battle zone for these ever more desperate fanatics. Talk of preemptively impeaching him is already crackling through the Twitter channels. That will be an excellent sideshow.

Meanwhile, how is Rep, Adam Schiff's secret proceeding going?

Last week he put out a narrative that US Chargé d'Affaires to Ukraine Bill Taylor fired a gun-that-smoked fer sure in testimony. Except, of course, as per Mr. Schiff's usual practice, he refused to issue any actual transcript of the interview in evidence, while there are plenty of indications that Mr. Taylor's second-hand gossip was roundly refuted under counter-questioning by the non-Jacobin minority members of the House intel Committee.

Mr. Schiff's pattern lo these many months of strife has been to claim ultimate proof of wrongdoing only to have it blow up in his face. It's a face that many Americans are sick of seeing and hearing from, and I am serenely confident that before this colossal scandal is resolved, the Congressman from Hollywood will be fatally disgraced, as was his role-model, Senator Joseph McCarthy, before him.

[Oct 28, 2019] Putin Derangement Syndrome Craziester And More Craziester

Notable quotes:
"... Libs and neocons are too stupid to see the Russia situation with any clarity. They think it's still 1951 and they're battling the commies hither and yon. ..."
"... Oh, and Putin is still here. Despite the sanctions and despite the Soros funded color revolution against him. Don't get me wrong, I don't trust him much (neither do I trust any politician in the world) but he is the result of the US policy of the 90s to push Russia further into the ground. ..."
"... That color revolution might get stepped up a bit now since Rosneft decided to trade oil and gas only in Euro. ..."
"... US diplomacy and foreign policy has become amateur hour and who can steal the most the fastest, real fuckups. ..."
"... I just watched CNN's 1-hour prime-time special on "Russian spying" on State Department in 1999 (which was, like, 20 years ago. I guess the Russians also colluded in the 2000 presidential elections with the aim of electing George W. Bush) I kid you not. These guys are about as subtle as a gigantic iron mace. ..."
"... Fortunately this is not 1938 ! Now its easy for people to look behind the curtain using the internet and see this is all BS . It only takes one voiciferous truth teller , to get all the 'believing' sheeple to also have a look behind the curtain . I suspect this hysteria is designed to keep Gov slaves in line : toe the line or get the boot . ..."
"... Is it just coincidental, the Deep State and minion (dupe) based "Resistance" from day one of (actually before) Trumps inauguration - which more recently looks distinctly like a coup attempt? ..."
Oct 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

10/27/2019

Authored by Patrick Armstrong via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

... Somebody leaked e-mails from the DNC showing that it was rigging the nomination for Clinton and she lost a 99% certain election. Immediately, her campaign settled on blaming Russia for both.

That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. [9 November 2016] Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument. (From Shattered , quoted here .)

The bogus – bogus because most of the people on his team were part of the conspiracy and knew there was no collusion – Mueller investigation dragged on until – despite the endless " bombshells " – it finally stopped. But the crazies insist not guilty but not exonerated ! And Trumputin's principal conspiracist rants on .

Wikipedia tells us that " A conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful actors, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable. " The CIA, referring to the Kennedy assassination, is said to have coined the expression in 1967 . The "trusted source" media (an description it likes to award itself) is dead set against "conspiracy theories" and quick to denounce them as crazy , prejudiced and criminal . For example, Trump's statement that Mueller was a hitman, is a "conspiracy theory" as are Trump's ideas about the Bidens and Ukraine .

Everything I mention below comes from "trusted sources". Therefore we must assume that all of them – Putin wants Trump to buy Greenland, Russians want to get Americans arguing about pizza, Russians have no moral sense and all the rest – are not "conspiracy theories" but honestly "more probable".

Mere evidence – for example that the DOJ Admits FBI Never Saw Crowdstrike Report on DNC Russian Hacking Claim or No Evidence – Blame Russia: Top 5 Cases Moscow Was Unreasonably Accused of Election Meddling or U.S. States: We Weren't Hacked by Russians in 2016 or The Myth of Russian Media Influence by Larry C Johnson .. or Biden admitting to doing what USA Today insists is nothing but a conspiracy theory invented by Trump – makes no difference . The dial is turned up one more and we are solemnly and (incoherently – Paul Robinson again ) warned that Russia might/could meddle in Canada's forthcoming election.

Anti-Russia prejudice can have unhappy consequences. We have just learned that Putin phoned Bush a couple of days before 911 to warn him that something long-prepared and big was coming out of Afghanistan. Other Russian warnings had been dismissed by Condoleezza Rice – supposedly a Russia "expert" – as "Russian bitterness toward Pakistan for supporting the Afghan mujahideen". One is reminded of Chamberlain's dismissal of Stalin's attempts to form an anti-Hitler alliance because of his "most profound distrust of Russia" ( see Habakkuk comment ). In some alternate universe they listened to Moscow in the 1930s and in the 2000s, but, in the one we live in, they didn't. And they don't.

Or maybe (foolish optimism!) this is starting to end: after all, it's been a complete failure. I especially enjoyed the NYT, that bastion of the Russian-conspiracy/Putin-superpowers/Trump-treason meme, solemnly opining : "That means President Trump is correct to try to establish a sounder relationship with Russia and peel it away from China. But his approach has been ham-handed and at times even counter to American interests and values." Ham-handed! – here's the NYT's view of the Trump-Putin " love affair " again if you missed it the first time. And now it's Trump's fault that relations with Russia aren't better! French President Macron has recently said that " I believe we should rebuild and revise the architecture of trust between Russia and the European Union ." And Trump rather brutally delivered the message to Ukraine's new president that he ought to talk to Putin .

Well, we'll see. Russophobia runs deep and the Russians have probably got the message. As long as we're stuck in a mindset of " Nine Things Russia Must Do Before Being Allowed to Rejoin the G7 " it's not going to change. An arrogant invitation is not an invitation.

Jazzman , 46 minutes ago link

The ossified club of the imperialist G7 has served its time and the times they are a changin'. Without China as the 2nd (and soon) largest economy, nothing goes in this world and ever since 2014 Russia was forced to look to the East for not bowing down to the imperial US and its minions in the G7, ousted from the G8.

Thus only the broader spectrum of the G20 makes any sense in the context of the world economy.

Footprint , 1 hour ago link

Paperclips carried the last message from the Wolf's lair: "The western world must unite against the slavic hordes".

.

They are still peddling the same mantra. Kind of sad, really. The world is going through a phase change. All the symptoms are there:

Global cooling; Failing crops; African Swine Fever; huge asymmetric response from the world population over energy price increases... Other signs are more subtle but the dying culture of the shopping mall must be noted; Amazon; Alexa.

The US is following the lead of the ghosts of WWII to its own detriment. Brzezinsky's Grand Chessboard is no more, all its objectives have been defeated. The "World order" nightmare is fading away fast.

Baron Samedi , 2 hours ago link

One has to be amazed that these desperate MSM & political idiots get so much mileage out of this dead horse. Worse yet is that anyone - catching the first whiff of a Russiadiddit narrative - doesn't reflexively just pass on and ignore it.

presterjohn1198 , 2 hours ago link

Libs and neocons are too stupid to see the Russia situation with any clarity. They think it's still 1951 and they're battling the commies hither and yon.

What those two aforementioned groups of dumb asses represent is mr global in their corner and, in the other corner, national culture and sovereignty.

Joe A , 2 hours ago link

Back then, I remember you saying (I remember because I have a brain the size of a planet) that Putin was finished and that you would be out of here. You indeed disappeared for a while to come back some time ago. Back then, your postings were more elaborate and eloquent. Now, not so much. Makes me wonder what happened to you in the meanwhile...

Oh, and Putin is still here. Despite the sanctions and despite the Soros funded color revolution against him. Don't get me wrong, I don't trust him much (neither do I trust any politician in the world) but he is the result of the US policy of the 90s to push Russia further into the ground.

That color revolution might get stepped up a bit now since Rosneft decided to trade oil and gas only in Euro.

jeff montanye , 7 minutes ago link

imo the operative date is 2001 not 2014. and all the yinon wars that followed (including ukraine).

francis scott falseflag , 3 hours ago link

A Brief Compendium of Nonsense About Putin\

Excellent piece.

BTW, do you remember that the US bombed the ISIS tanker trucks before Putin did on November 19, 2015? In a campaign called Tidal Wave II?

https://impeachobamatoday.blogspot.com/2015/11/us-finally-takes-trumps-suggestion-to.html

https://www.bing.com/search?q=us+bombs+isis+tanker+trucks+nov15%2C+16+2015&PC=U316&FORM=CHROMN

According to Google and Michael R. Gordon of the NYT, there was a bombing of 116 ISIS tanker trucks on Monday November 16, 2015, three days before the Russian attack. And then again on Monday November 23, 2015, four days after the Russian bombing, when the US destroyed 295 ISIS tankers.

I remember nothing about "Tidal Wave II", and the US attack 3 days before the renown Russian attack. But hey, I'm an oldtimer and my memory is dim. Do you? Or is this an example of the Pentagon's 'Memory Hole' and Winston Smith's day job?

francis scott falseflag , 2 hours ago link

Why don't you STFU? Like there are more honest politicians in the leadership of the House, Senate or in the Oval office?

How the **** did George W Bush get to be the owner a baseball team? His father.

And how did your pal Hunter Biden get $50,000 a month in Ukraine after the Maidan Coup? His father.

If you don't know what you're saying, SHUT THE **** UP.

heretickle , 53 minutes ago link

(1) after all Geroge Herbert Walker Bush was a corrupt crook who stole the money from the AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic political opposition.

(2) after all William Jefferson Clinton is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic political opposition.

(3) after all George W Bush is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic political opposition.

(4) after all **** Cheney is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic political opposition.

(5) after all Barak Hussein Obama is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic political opposition.

(6) after all Joe Biden is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic political opposition.

(7) after all Hillary Clinton is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic political opposition.

(8) after all Victoria Nuland is a corrupt crook who stole the money from the AMERICAN people, just to enrich his family and lackeys, and is nothing but a blatant tyrant, who will not allow any real democratic election, nor any sort of real democratic political opposition.

We could go on for days

jeff montanye , 1 minute ago link

upvote for including chameleon victoria nuland. she works for democrats, republicans, the private sector. she's likud mossad 24/7.

dogfish , 1 hour ago link

If anybody cares to notice look who Trump attended that game with, all of his war monger friends.

Hadenough1000 , 3 hours ago link

Read in their own words as the DNC went insane election night -- - Read the new book for sale on amazon the night 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' began the democrats are insane with LOSER hate

the whole russia deal was a con

their deranged hate for our President is why we must remove them all from office

rtb61 , 3 hours ago link

I like Putin as the alien love child reincarnation of Rasputin, see, it is all in the name ;DDD.

The more US and EU media attacked Putin in that PR=B$ way, the more popular Putin became.

Here's an attack. Putin is doing deals with Saudi Arabia, this after Saudi Arabia funded terrorism in Chechnya killing thousands of Russians, I mean it is really bad, the optics would be quite damaging, in fact I challenged them on it via Vesti and was immediately censored, no bad language just pointing out reality.

The funny thing is, the US B$=PR machine can not use it because it would mean attacking Saudi Arabia. So there they have a great opportunity to really stick it to Putin, taking Saudi Arabia money after Saudi Arabia funded the murder of thousands of Russians, really bad political optics (to be clear my beef is with Saudi Arabia and their murdering Australians with the terrorist funding the House of Saud did all over the globe and not with the Russian government, apart from them letting the House of Saud get away with it, just like the slimey American government).

Passed it onto Voice of America, to stick it to Vesti with a damned if you do and damned if you don't message and as you can guess, silence from the US government, bwa hah hah. Their chance to attack and silence because they would also have to attack the House of Saud.

Now the reason Russia media was uptight and hence the government, well, after all the US **** ups all over the place, they stand to gain diplomatic alliances with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and then add in Russian Oil and well, the US just clumsily and stupidly handed over control of oil to Russia, if they can tie up the deal with Saudi Arabia and so US sent more troops to Saudi Arabia during the negotiation process, what a pack of clowns.

Oil is yesterdays tech, nuclear energy is where the focus should be and there are much better designs available including a low output reactor, quite a smart design, it is all changing and the US really has to push nuclear, abandon oil and make deals with Australia and Japan, one for uranium and the other for manufacturing including rebuilding US manufacturing.

US diplomacy and foreign policy has become amateur hour and who can steal the most the fastest, real fuckups.

Justin Case , 3 hours ago link

One only needs to review the JFK, Saddam, Milosevic, Augusto Pinochet, Mark David Chapman and Manuel Noriega stories as examples.

Justin Case , 3 hours ago link

I think the label first became widely used to slander people who questioned the details surrounding the JFK assassination, and forty years later, there aren't too many thinking people who still believe the Warren Commission's "lone gunman" explanation. That explanation is doubted by everyone who has taken the time to look into the details, and believed only by people who refuse to.

Which is "theory" and which is fact? In the absence of a full confession, this can only be decided by a preponderance of evidence, and it would be silly to come to a conclusion on any matter without looking at all the evidence available. This is only common sense, just as it is safe to assume some degree of guilt or complicity on the part of anyone who lies about an event, or tries to hide, plant, or destroy any type of evidence.

Conspiracy theories arise from evidence. After the government releases an explanation of a particular event, a conspiracy theory is only born because evidence exists to disprove their explanation, or at least call it into question. There's nothing insane about it, unless you define sanity as believing whatever the government tells you. In light of the fact that our government lies to us regularly, I would define believing everything they tell you as utter stupidity.

The orthodox, for their part, dismiss the unorthodox as conspiracy theorists (by which term they mean: people whose opinions are based in something other than objective reality – if it were objectively real, the sources which provide the orthodox with their opinions would have told them about it).

In July of 1996, flight 800 exploded over Long Island. Shortly after their terrorist explanation failed scrutiny, our government then explained the event by claiming that a faulty electrical system caused a spark that ignited a fuel tank, and the people who doubted this explanation were quickly labeled "conspiracy theorists." More than a hundred witnesses saw a missile travel from the ground up to the plane just prior to its explosion, but rather than being treated as eyewitnesses to an event, they were labeled "conspiracy theorists," which label allowed all subsequent investigation to ignore the strongest evidence in the matter.

Our "investigative" news agencies decided to accept and disseminate the official story, and they helped us forget the U.S. naval station nearby, the fact that missiles were regularly test fired there, and naturally, they paid no heed to more than a hundred "conspiracy theorists" who saw the plane get blown out of the sky by a missile. I believe that the U.S. Navy accidentally shot down flight 800, and that's my belief because it's the most sensible explanation that can be drawn from the available evidence. I'm not theorizing about conspiracies, but there are conflicting explanations of the event, and if the Navy did accidentally blow a passenger plane out of the sky, who would have a motive to lie about it? The U.S. government, or a hundred witnesses?

phillyla , 3 hours ago link

The one thing that always puzzled me about flight 800 was why a gas tank explosion lead to no more waiting in your cars outside the terminals and additional gate security?

"Responding to repeated criticisms of the security at Kennedy International Airport after the crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800, Port Authority officials announced a series of changes yesterday intended to make it more difficult for anyone to plant a bomb on a plane."

But it was the jet fuel fumes from sitting on the hot tarmac and a frayed wire. So how in the world did someone think about the B word?

fireant , 3 hours ago link

Putin is a breath of fresh air compared to the insane American left

Hadenough1000 , 3 hours ago link

All day long the left knows we should be friends with Russia INSTEAD of CHINA. Thats what the killers don't want

DEDA CVETKO , 4 hours ago link

I just watched CNN's 1-hour prime-time special on "Russian spying" on State Department in 1999 (which was, like, 20 years ago. I guess the Russians also colluded in the 2000 presidential elections with the aim of electing George W. Bush) I kid you not. These guys are about as subtle as a gigantic iron mace.

I practically had to be hospitalized for acute lobotomy. An hour later, I still feel like 3/4s of my brain were surgically sucked out by Jeff Zucker. Will have to have me some Russian sex soon to regain some of my missing IQ.

heretickle , 4 hours ago link

..........Wikipedia tells us that " A conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful actors, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable. " The CIA, referring to the Kennedy assassination, is said to have coined the expression in 1967 ............

Interesting.

Within the first few years after the Kennedy Assassination, the American people were collecting evidence and pointing fingers at the CIA, the Military Industrial Complex, the Mossad and Israel. The late Michael Collins Piper provides all the evidence necessary in his book FINAL JUDGEMENT to realize that Israel had Kennedy killed.

1967 is the same year Israel murdered 34 US Servicemen and injured over 200 others during its cowardly attack on the USS Liberty.

In the mid-sixties, the world was first introduced in full baloney mode to the Holocaust.

Intersting coincidence.

Maybe the deep state (Central Banks and Israel) desparately needed a BAIT and SWITCH to hide their tracks.

Today, our kids must bow before the Holocaust g_d and yet few realize that JFK wanted to eliminate Israel's nuclear weapons and was instead sacrificed for GREATER ISRAEL

Hadenough1000 , 3 hours ago link

The same bastard HO. LBJ killed JFK like he killed 60,000 of my fellow Vietnam soldiers

youshallnotkill , 4 hours ago link

For Bibi, being against him, equates to Antisemitism, for Trump being critical of him is Anti-American, for ZH being opposed to Putin is a Anti-Russian.

Anti-Russia prejudice can have unhappy consequences.

Let't nobody tell you that ZH didn't warn you!

DelusionsCrowded , 4 hours ago link

Fortunately this is not 1938 ! Now its easy for people to look behind the curtain using the internet and see this is all BS . It only takes one voiciferous truth teller , to get all the 'believing' sheeple to also have a look behind the curtain . I suspect this hysteria is designed to keep Gov slaves in line : toe the line or get the boot .

TrustbutVerify , 4 hours ago link

So, is the anti-Russia/anti-Putin a head fake? By looking to be oh-so over the top freaked out about anything Russian, and taking on the mantle of looking freaked out (though in actuality are not), Democrats are perhaps intentionally making him look less harmful and dangerous by comparison.

After all, the Russian communist form of government, a dictatorship run by a small percentage of elites, is exactly the road down which Democrats want to take the U.S. Similar comparisons of this fashion can be made with the Chinese communist government, too.

The Democratic primary was obviously rigged. Democrats thought, with insider help from the FBI, CIA, IRS and others, that the actual election was rigged, too.

Is it just coincidental, the Deep State and minion (dupe) based "Resistance" from day one of (actually before) Trumps inauguration - which more recently looks distinctly like a coup attempt? With, of course, the vast majority of news outlets (virtually all Left leaning) in the US pushing and covering the obvious subversion. Hence, the astoundingly intense looks of deep shock on TV when it was realized an "outsider," Trump, would win?

[Oct 28, 2019] Larry Johnson says that James Clapper and John Brennan set up a CIA task force to prevent Trump from winning the 2016 election

Oct 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Bob In Portland , Oct 27 2019 18:22 utc | 49

Larry Johnson says that James Clapper and John Brennan set up a CIA task force to prevent Trump from winning the 2016 election. That is quite possible or even likely. There will be bureaucratic traces of it and some people will sing. Barr and Durham will find them. Where will it end? Well ...

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi - 23:26 UTC · Oct 25, 2019
LOL. Barack Obama is going to love this interview his former DIA James Clapper just gave to CNN about the Durham probe: "It's frankly disconcerting to be investigated for having done... what we were told to do by the president of the United States."
Clapper: Trump administration is sending us this message
Don't expect AG Barr to come up with a real investigation of any CIA op against Trump. Barr worked for the CIA in the 70s while he was going to law school in Washington, DC. As Attorney General his first time around he protected the first Bush regime from the Iran-contra fallout. It was Robert Swan Mueller III, the very special prosecutor of Manuel Noriega, who managed to not notice the cocaine and weapons moved through Panama for Ollie North and friends. Or, for that matter, all the money-laundering the CIA was doing through Panamanian banks.

[Oct 28, 2019] Did Obama and Breanna organize a secret CIA task force to ensure Clinton won?

Oct 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

steven t johnson , Oct 27 2019 16:37 utc | 27

A secret CIA task force to ensure Clinton won? It would have started by telling the world that Clinton was the patriot who stood up and repeated what she was told to say by the CIA.

It could have continued by presenting a report that Clinton Ca$h was dingbat. And that the CIA found no evidence of email server practices being used by foreign agencies. And under the table it could have pressured Comey to keep his useless mouth shut and actually be competent enough to control his underlings' mouths too. If they had any real competence, they could have either planted stories (true!) in the foreign media about Trump's business career or exposed the ongoing Cambridge Analytica sleaze.

If they had any real competence, they knew the biggest asset Trump had was billions of dollars of free publicity that wasn't ever going to go to Bernie Sanders. It's not clear why they'd think a CIA task force would help that. Rich people not buying advertising from Trump megaphones was the solution there.

But of course the rich people are the #1 Trumpists, because Wall Street, the real swamp, is Trump's native habitat.

Lastly of course it is not at all clear why they think impeaching Trump is going to give them what they want, any more than it's clear how Trump isn't giving them enough of what they want.

It's not like he actually draining the "Swamp," even in the half-wits' definition of the "Swamp" as elected politicians who follow the law or the unnamed and unnameable conspirators of the Deep State.

Look, the dirt the Clinton campaign had was the Access Hollywood tape, and they used it. (Not officially of course.) And, supposing, for a deranged moment, that Seth Rich leaked the DNC emails to Julian Assange, why does Trump want to kill Jullian Assange?

The call for Bill Barr to rig up to rig up a fake conspiracy charge is contemptible. It shows you how people could have sincerely believed Moscow show trials.

Bob In Portland , Oct 27 2019 18:22 utc | 49

Don't expect AG Barr to come up with a real investigation of any CIA op against Trump. Barr worked for the CIA in the 70s while he was going to law school in Washington, DC. As Attorney General his first time around he protected the first Bush regime from the Iran-contra fallout. It was Robert Swan Mueller III, the very special prosecutor of Manuel Noriega, who managed to not notice the cocaine and weapons moved through Panama for Ollie North and friends. Or, for that matter, all the money-laundering the CIA was doing through Panamanian banks.

[Oct 28, 2019] DOJ Barr and Durham close in on Brennan, Clapper and Comey (Video)

Oct 28, 2019 | theduran.com

The Duran's Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss the DOJ's Russiagate probe taking it up a notch, to now be turned into criminal investigation.

Deep State officials John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey better lawyer up.

Remember to Please Subscribe to The Duran's YouTube Channel. Via Zerohedge

What began as an administrative review by the Justice Department into the origins of Russiagate has "shifted" to a criminal inquiry , according to the New York Times , citing two people familiar with the matter.

The move will allow prosecutor John H Durham the power to subpoena documents and witnesses, to impanel a grand jury, and to file criminal charges . Durham's progress has been closely monitored by Attorney General William Barr, who appointed the veteran investigator in May , tasking him with looking into FBI and CIA intelligence gathering operations surrounding the 2016 US election.

As the Daily Caller ' s Chuck Ross notes, Barr said on April 10 that he believed "spying" had taken place against the Trump campaign , and that he doesn't buy former FBI officials' version of how the collusion investigation began.

Little is known about Durham's activities so far in the investigation. The Times report said it is unclear when the investigation took on a criminal element, or what specific crime Durham is investigating.

Durham accompanied Barr to Italy late in September as part of an inquiry into U.S. intelligence agents' activities there during the 2016 campaign. They also inquired about Joseph Mifsud, a mysterious Maltese professor who established contact with Trump aide George Papadopoulos in 2016. – Daily Caller

Just over three weeks ago , the Times also reported that President Trump asked the Australian Prime Minister to help Barr uncover the origins of "Russiagate," a move which Justice Department officials said "would be neither illegal nor untoward for Trump to ask."

And according to NBC News , Durham has set his sights on former CIA Director John Brennan and former national intelligence director James Clapper .

Durham's investigation has been running parallel to a probe by Justice Department Inspector General (and registered Democrat) Michael Horowitz, who told Congress on Thursday that he expects his report to be "lengthy," but able to be made mostly available to the public.

The Durham probe is similar to a Justice Department inspector general's investigation into the FBI's surveillance of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, told Congress on Thursday that the report of that investigation is "lengthy" and that he anticipates most of it will be made public.

Horowitz has been investigating whether the FBI misled the foreign surveillance court in spy applications against Page. Investigators relied heavily on the Steele dossier in the applications, though information in that document was largely unverified. Unlike Durham, Horowitz has not had subpoena power, and cannot use a grand jury as part of his investigation. – Daily Caller

And of course, with Durham's administrative review turning into a criminal probe , the Times has already given away the predictable response from the left; Barr is investigating the Obama intelligence community to help Trump win in 2020. Nothing to see here folks, right?

[Oct 27, 2019] Frat Boy Thermopylae The American Conservative

Notable quotes:
"... The Democrats are the ones who are twisting the "protocols" regarding private hearings to protect the seditious liars and their lies... To paraphrase the Washington Post : "Democracy Dies In The Darkness"... The Darkness created by the shadowy deep state and those who dwell in it ! ..."
"... Without expressing any opinion on the truth or falsity of Taylor's testimony or any of it, the idea that being a West Point graduate and Vietnam vet is some kind of assurance of probity is a joke. ..."
"... Have you learned nothing from RussiaGate, from the various imperial wars on Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Serbia, etc.? All these were based on flat out lies promoted by cleancut, well dressed, well spoken, impeccably credentialed monsters. Many of them veterans themselves. All of them lying without shame, and lauded for telling lies. ..."
"... You realize that we are an empire, and our institutions act the way that imperial institutions do? Imperial institutions cannot be hindered by things like honesty and "rule of law", because the empire cannot survive if its freedom of action is restrained. ..."
"... Is your anti Russian phobia a product of Slavic racism or of disliking orthodox countries or what? Why do you pro war liberals obsess over Russia so much? I think it is empire envy. ..."
"... I Keep reading about this "aid to ukraine" improperly tied to an investigation of a rival. But this "aid" to Ukraine is really just weapons isn't it? Weapons meant to stoke conflict with a nuclear power. The deep state and the pro war liberals will never let This country move past militarism ..."
Oct 27, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Amadeus Mozart • 2 days ago

I'd like to commend Rep. Gaetz for this very well justified act of 'civil disobedience' to draw attention to this farce of a travesty of a sham of a mockery of a witchhunt. This so-called "impeachment" is totally consistent with the manufacturing of "evidence" to justify an "investigation" of Trump's campaign to keep him from being elected as well.

I'm glad we have someone standing up to these corrupt lying leaking Democrat bullies. It would be nice if we could have an investigation of the actual and documented illegal campaign contributions of Hillary to her attorney to Chris Steele, but that water has passed under the bridge by now.

But if we're going to go down the rabbit hole of campaign finance law violations, I'd like to propose that the quite obvious main and only real (non-manufactured) reason for these so-called "impeachment" hearings is to prevent Trump from being re-elected (as opposed to investigating "corruption").

Thus the Democrats' activities are quite obviously a misappropriation of taxpayer funds and an illegal donation to the political campaigns of the Democratic party. I demand an investigation. In secret of course.

As you rightfully said, the rule of law is a pain in the butt, after all. The double standard is infuriating.

We are coming to a point in American society where the only meaningful "truth" belongs to whoever wins. If that is true, under those circumstances, you've got to decide whom you trust more to protect your interests. Is it Adam Schiff or Donald Trump? If you choose not to decide, you've still made a choice. Or are elections only supposed to have consequences if Democrats win them?

CoyoteTheClever • 2 days ago
Matt Gaetz is one of those few Republicans in on the fundamental truth of our country: We are an empire in decline and politics is 100% theatre. And so he puts on one of the best shows on television.

Yeah, he is likely a nihilist, but I can't really call him a grifter any more than you could call Milo or Jacob Wohl grifters. They are performance artists, dressing up in conservative drag and giving everyone the show of their lifetime, and they are so dedicated to it they don't break character. In wrestling it is called kayfebe.

If you are in on the joke, these people are amazing, true heroes of late capitalism, exposing the absurdities of our commodified democracy and news cycle.

The Other Sands CoyoteTheClever • 2 days ago
The standards for a sitting Congressman representing 800,000 Americans should probably be a bit higher than the standards for alt-right YouTube dancing bears.
CoyoteTheClever The Other Sands • 2 days ago
As our country winds down and enters the end of its natural lifespan, and every country has a lifespan, don't fool yourself, because no human creations last forever, some of the dancing bears we get aren't going to be quite as funny as Matt Gaetz, and there are only going to be more and more of them coming out of the woodwork.

So I think we should appreciate people like him while we can, who at least elevate the art to something legitimately entertaining, and are generally pretty harmless. "I love the president so much I may never love another president again." is an amazing line, for instance, and I'll never understand anyone who doesn't appreciate it. That's something he put care and thought into.

People like entertainment. They elected an entertainer as president for a reason, and he is representing a lot more than 800,000 Americans. But I'm sure those 800,000 Americans are pretty happy with the entertainment they are getting from Gaetz too, even if they might not appreciate the nuances of his performance and only like that he is "triggering the libs" or somesuch. And maybe some of them do see how his performance implicates them too and they just don't care because it is such a fun show. I know if Matt Gaetz were running for president (Against some neo-liberal like Buttigieg, not against someone I like) I'd be tempted to vote for him just to add fuel to the fire.

Amirite CoyoteTheClever • 11 hours ago
You wouldn't think it was so funny if that fuel they were adding was to your burning house.

But you think you'll be long gone before the house burns down, so you don't care.

Dale McNamee • 2 days ago
The Democrats are the ones who are twisting the "protocols" regarding private hearings to protect the seditious liars and their lies... To paraphrase the Washington Post : "Democracy Dies In The Darkness"... The Darkness created by the shadowy deep state and those who dwell in it !
Rod Dreher Moderator Dale McNamee • 2 days ago
"The seditions liars and their lies"? Bill Taylor is a West Point graduate, decorated Vietnam vet, and was G.W. Bush's appointee to be Ukraine ambassador. The smears aren't going to stick to him.
CoyoteTheClever Rod Dreher • 2 days ago
Like they didn't stick to Mueller, Comey, Mattis, McCain, Romney, and whoever else is the white knight of the week who will save liberal decadence from Trump. As if!

He will be down in the mud with the rest of them, loathed by Trump's base and forgotten by the Democrats once the next savior conservative messiah comes along. Eventually there won't be enough Never Trump zombies in the Bush establishment morgue left to revive, and what then?

They certainly aren't going to work with the left to concentrate on substance and policy rather than the Trump news cycle, so I imagine liberals will just all collectively die from despair

Sid Finster CoyoteTheClever • 2 days ago
Remember how John Bolton became the Savior of The Republic once he resigned (or was fired) from the Trump Maladministration?

If that were not enough, witness the Team D rehabilitation of Dubya and Dick Cheney, who were Team D folk devils not so long ago.

Sid Finster Rod Dreher • 2 days ago
Without expressing any opinion on the truth or falsity of Taylor's testimony or any of it, the idea that being a West Point graduate and Vietnam vet is some kind of assurance of probity is a joke.

Have you learned nothing from RussiaGate, from the various imperial wars on Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Serbia, etc.? All these were based on flat out lies promoted by cleancut, well dressed, well spoken, impeccably credentialed monsters. Many of them veterans themselves. All of them lying without shame, and lauded for telling lies.

Not "misspeaking", as if they were merely overenthusiastic in defense of the Freedom, but lying. And their lies killed innocent people on a hitlerian scale.

You only don't recognize this, because you are fortunate enough to live in America, where you don't have to see your children droned and your country destroyed because some monster claims to be bringing you the freedom.

You realize that we are an empire, and our institutions act the way that imperial institutions do? Imperial institutions cannot be hindered by things like honesty and "rule of law", because the empire cannot survive if its freedom of action is restrained.

Amirite Sid Finster • a day ago
So "Russiagate" was based on lies?

... ... ..

Sid Finster Amirite • a day ago
Meeting a Russian person now is a crime, unpatriotic to boot is it?
Patrick Constantine Amirite • 10 hours ago
Is your anti Russian phobia a product of Slavic racism or of disliking orthodox countries or what? Why do you pro war liberals obsess over Russia so much? I think it is empire envy.
sawbuck57 • 2 days ago
If the Democrats are so concerned with confidentiality then why are the anti-Trump snippets of testimony the only things getting leaked?

Bill Taylor's testimony was shredded in 90 seconds of cross-examination by a Republican member of the Committee. Funny, that didn't make the time breathless coverage of the umpteenth bombshell. (Or is it "The Walls Are Closing In!" this week?

By any standard of fairness, Schiff should have recused himself due to a monumental conflict of interest. He had contact with the main complainant prior to the filing of the complaint. A Dem Senator visited Taylor in the Ukraine several weeks ago. Nothing to see here.

As Ben Franklin was noted as saying: "Well, Doctor, what have we got -- a Republic or a Monarchy?"

"A Republic, if you can keep it."

Well, we didn't keep it. This is purely Political Kabuki Theater. Both sides deserve to lose. At this point, with the Dems tilting so hard left, and the Rockefeller Wing (Re-branded as NeoCons for some silly reason) of the Republicans ever-waiting for their ascendance it remains for most of the country wish both sides could lose - if for nothing else than to just stop the noise.

"A nation is born a stoic and dies an epicurean" Will Durant

cestusdei • 2 days ago
I do not trust our "betters" to hold closed door trials. After 2 years of Russia Russia Russia I don't believe a word they say. Shiff told us he had ironclad evidence of Russian collusion, I saw him say it at the interview. He lied. When a politician says "trust me" the last thing we should do is trust him. Open hearings, transparency, due process...we should demand
temp anon cestusdei • 2 days ago
There is no trial yet. If there is one, that will be in the Senate, presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in full view of everyone.
JonF311 temp anon • 2 days ago
That's what they're afraid of: a veritable conga line of skeletons, loosed from the Trumpian closet, cha-chaing across the Senate chamber in front of the whole world.
cestusdei temp anon • 2 days ago
Oh this is a trial. A show trial. Our Stalinist Dems do miss the old USSR.
Amirite cestusdei • 2 days ago
But you loved all the closed door meetings in the Benghazi hearings, that was totally fine.

Now it's your turn.

cestusdei Amirite • 2 days ago
Actually that did involve intelligence NOT an impeachment. Apples and oranges. But thanks for reminding us of the lies and ineptitude that got American's killed by Obama and Clinton in Libya. They lied and people died.
Deoxy • 2 days ago
If Schiff weren't selectively leaking like a sieve, your argument might have some merit.

As it is, easily the best reason to believe they are doing as they are doing is FOR the purpose of only leaking the parts they want.

And it goes far beyond simply "closed door" - the controls enacted are extreme, at least for the Republicans, yet somehow, certain *very convenient* bits find their way to the press, time after time. After time. After TIME.

The whole thing is a farce, designed to allow control of the narrative, facts be hanged.

janicefahy • 2 days ago
Brilliant comparison to that Animal House scene - thanks for that! The facts on the ground are so devastating to Trump than even his most lickspittle toadies can't properly defend them, and so they scheme up weak stunts like this. The mind boggles.
L617 • 2 days ago
This stunt just proves why the deposition phase of the inquiry should not happen in front of the cameras. What a bunch of tools.
HarryTruman2016 • 2 days ago
I suppose all the Trump supporters would be on this very page defending Barack Obama if he called the Saudi Crown Prince in 2011 and told him that any military aid is contingent on investigating the Bush family and any business ties they have with Saudi Arabia because Jeb Bush might run in 2012. Totally legal. No problem and nothing to see.
Tony D. HarryTruman2016 • a day ago
Well, you're forgetting that the typical Trump supporter despises the Bushes and everything they stand for...
HarryTruman2016 Tony D. • 19 hours ago
That is not the point. What you write is simply deflection. If any President other than Trump did this, Republicans would be (correctly) moving to impeach and remove. So I ask again: would it have been OK if Obama called the Saudis and held up military aid until they provided him information damaging to the Bush family?
Ted • 2 days ago • edited
The picture is funny, but you're on the wrong side of this, Dreher. I've finally realized why Schiff and his merry men, but especially Schiff, give me such agita.

Let's pick a date, or an incident: Bork. Since then, long before then, but let's pick a date, the Democrats have stood for moral anarchy . The only chance they had to show they retained a shred of principle was the Gulf War (both Gulf Wars, actually, but let's take the second), and there their response was, at least legislatively, muted to say the least (considering their Senatorial champion was the Lion of Chappaquiddick...) Since then it's been what? Feminism, abortion, and that more abundantly, all LGBTQ all the time, micro regulation of speech and behavior, race hustling, and--ha ha--more unjust unnecessary wars and the destruction of the white middle class. The soft totalitarianism we talk about in these boxes--no need to go on. The usual menu of "liberal" horror.

And this guy is to be impeached because he cusses in public? It's not adding up for me. Schiff's behavior is outrageous (read Kim Strassel today) but he's getting the job done. You might want to call it soft Leninism.

Amirite Ted • a day ago
Not sure why so many conservatives hang their hat on Bork. This man was the guy who committed the Saturday Night Massacre, this is who you stake your moral ground on?

Conservatives are so angry Dems stopped the guy who tried to shield Nixon from accountability? It's moral anarchy for Congress to refuse to confirm a president's nomination for the Supreme Court? Congress is supposed to give a president's nominee a hearing and a vote, not a rubber stamp. Congress if fully within it's constitutional rights to not confirm a president's nominee, and it's hard to find a less fit man for the Supreme Court than Bork was.

Meanwhile your guys refused to even grant a hearing to President Obama's nominee. I guess that's OK because you don't acknowledge the rights of Democrats under the Constitution.

Ted Amirite • 19 hours ago
You don't really think the Democrats got together to destroy Bork professionally and personally because he signed off on Nixon's firings, do you? You can't be that dumb. If you'd like to know why, it was keeping Roe v. Wade alive. And that is moral anarchy, pal.
Amirite Ted • 12 hours ago • edited
So you offer a conspiracy theory, a belief.

You know what's moral anarchy? Supporting an immoral character like Bork because you think he's going to help you get rid of Roe vs Wade. Kind of reminds of the deal you RWers have struck with Trump. You support a man you know is morally debased because you think he will help you restore a white Christian conservative America.

It just boggles my mind you RWers are mad Democrats refused to confirm a man who help cover up one of the most egregious acts an American president has ever committed. A person who would commit such an unethical act was not fit for a seat on the Supreme Court, I shouldn't even have to say this.

Ted Amirite • 9 hours ago
And you offer an unsupported calumny. Bork was "morally debased"? By what standard? By whose standard? John Dean's? Elliot Richardson's? Remember when they rifled through his borrowing habits at Blockbuster and it turned out he was a Fred Astaire fan? They were expecting maybe Leni Riefenstahl. Or hoping for it. And a conspiracy is usually thought of as somewhat secret. The Lion of Chappaquiddick was pretty up front about what he didn't like about Bork.

And I think Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus was far worse than anything Nixon did. Have fun with that one, pal.

Ro Si • 2 days ago
"The Democrats have offered no plausible and persuasive rationale for holding these proceedings in secret and keeping the evidence and testimony behind closed doors."
Other than that they're simply following the rules established by a previous Republican congress.
ADCWonk • 2 days ago
Below, someone wrote: "By any standard of fairness, Schiff should have recused himself due to a
monumental conflict of interest. He had contact with the main
complainant prior to the filing of the complaint."

Using that standard, Barr should have recused himself a thousand times over, no?

Franklin_Evans • 2 days ago
Coined by a Randian objectivist fantasy author. It is absolute truth, but knowing the source will become the utmost irony because for some, it will be personal proof of it.

People will believe a lie because they're afraid it might be true, or because they want it to be true.

The Trump candidacy and tenure in office is a non-stop series of examples proving this.

The author is Terry Goodkind.

sb • 2 days ago
Yet again, I note Rod, that there is more than one explanation over this hysterical impeach Trump nonsense.

This 'aid' is actually 'US military assistance'. Did it ever occur to you 'impeachers' that Trump may have deliberately been avoiding such a meeting with his top 4 warmongers precisely so as to avoid US 'aid' escalating the military tension betwen Ukraine and Russia? (and getting the US firmly tied into that fight?)

Trump was elected in part on a platform of no more foreign wars, and he seems genuinely committed to that (at least when he thinks he can). Maybe the withheld 'aid' was all just leverage for a Biden investigation, but it may also be Trump trying not to get pressured and bullied into more conflicts (which all prior Presidents were happy to go along with) in the face of a deep state totally committed to a condition of forever war.

As an anti-war activist who campaigned against the Afghan and Iraq wars, in Trump's shoes I would also have tried to avoid fueling an existing dangerous conflict that brings no benefit to my nation (other than a few arms sales) but may drag us into a war with major nations. Same situation repeating right now in Syria - no major benefit to US in staying, and staying may drag US into conflict between Turks and Kurds and Syria & Russia.

Not saying Trump has acted lawfully always - just that he may have been trying to avoid military escalation (at the same time as getting dirt on Biden). Lets not jump to obvious conclusions when they may not be so obvious.

Thomas Kaempfen • 2 days ago
Thugs disrupting a Constitutional and legal proceeding doing the people's business in order to protect their Dear Leader -- that's not frat-boy stuff. There's a much better "f" word to label that.
KevinS • a day ago
If these people were testifying in public, I'm sure the Trumpists would find a reason to oppose that as well. But I hope they are ready for the public phase when they will need to defend Trump on the substance rather than voice procedural complaints. And calling people like Taylor never-Trumpist "human scum" (what a classy president we have) is not going to cut it.
TISO_AX2 • a day ago
Democrats say these House Intelligence Committee procedures
aren't official hearings, but rather the equivalent of depositions,
meant to gather facts that will later be examined and argued over in
public hearings.

If that's the case they shouldn't be characterizing themselves as having an "impeachment inquiry." This is not in any legal sense an impeachment. It's an inquiry without a cause...political games. The abberant activities of Dems trying to remove the US President where there are no crimes justifies abberant reactions from the opposition. Since they are going to abuse the House of Representatives and pursue unprincipled and unprecedented antagonism of a co-equal branch of government, why should the GOP be idealistic and proper under such circumstances? I find Schiff to be a lot more of a problem than Gaetz.

Rod Dreher Moderator TISO_AX2 • a day ago
No, it's the first stage of an inquiry. They're gathering evidence -- and Republican reps are there to question too -- that will be used in open impeachment hearings.
TISO_AX2 Rod Dreher • a day ago • edited
Concerning Republican reps on the committee...apparently they're not getting all the evidence. If they're not it's not bi-partisan, and it's irregular. Also, Schiff did not notify Republicans on the committee of an intelligence official who came to one of his aides with concerns about President Trump before filing a whistleblower complaint. If that's true he's withholding evidence. I'm sure he has a good reason for that...if you know what I mean.
October 18, 2019 By Chrissy Clark

All nine GOP members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence penned a letter to Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., lambasting him for hiding documents related to Democrats' impeachment inquiry.

"We are concerned that the Majority is knowingly withholding Committee documents related to your so-called 'impeachment inquiry' from the Minority," the letter reads. " it has come to our attention that the Majority is not uploading (or providing physical copies of) certain
Committee documents related to your 'impeachment inquiry' to its document repository, thus withholding the existence of such documents from the Minority."

Skiddle DeDe • a day ago
I think you don't like the Republicans playing by the same rules and tricks Democrats do. Looks different when the shoe is on the other foot, huh? Think KFC eating and setting all night on the senate floor.
Ro Si Skiddle DeDe • 10 hours ago
If you think that freshly squeezed orange juice you have every morning tastes odd, it's because those are apples you're using.
Shakes_McQueen • a day ago
"The Democrats have offered no plausible and persuasive rationale for holding these proceedings in secret and keeping the evidence and testimony behind closed doors. Given the character of the people in question, it is safe to assume that their reasons for doing so are corrupt and motivated by narrowly calculated political self-interest. "

That's a heck of a leap in logic there, Kevin. And kind of incredible in light of Kevin McCarthy previously admitting on national television that the Benghazi Select Committee's purpose was to tank Clinton's poll numbers. Would Kevin agree that committee was corrupt then, I guess?

These are depositions, not hearings. Public hearings come later, once depositions are complete, and there's no more opportunity for deposed subjects to coordinate details. Then a Senate trial after that, where Trump gets all the "due process" he has been disingenuously complaining about.

It's amusing to me how it seems to be lost in all of this, that half of the people sitting in on these depositions are REPUBLICANS.

Patrick Constantine • 15 hours ago
I Keep reading about this "aid to ukraine" improperly tied to an investigation of a rival. But this "aid" to Ukraine is really just weapons isn't it? Weapons meant to stoke conflict with a nuclear power. The deep state and the pro war liberals will never let This country move past militarism
anon • 14 hours ago
If you supported the Schiff parody-as-truth from the other week but this bothers you, then you are an anti-Trump partisan. Conversely, if you support this but had a problem with Schiff, you are a pro-Trump partisan. And that is okay because impeachment is a political act. Just don't dress it up and pretend your side follows the rule of law and the other side doesn't. Both sides are engaging in politics to convince the public. And we'll be just fine as long as both sides stick with that, and obey the constitutional rules for impeachment. We'll only get in serious trouble if folks decide to go extra constitutional:

Tlaib: Democrats looking into how to arrest Trump officials
https://www.foxnews.com/pol...

Or if someone from the military tries to intervene:
https://www.nytimes.com/201...

Chris Mallory • 4 hours ago
Nothing done by the US government should be done behind closed doors. Every thing should be done in the open with full disclosure to the citizens.
Ted • 2 days ago • edited
The picture is funny, but you're on the wrong side of this, Dreher. I've finally realized why Schiff and his merry men, but especially Schiff, give me such agita.

Let's pick a date, or an incident: Bork. Since then, long before then, but let's pick a date, the Democrats have stood for moral anarchy . The only chance they had to show they retained a shred of principle was the Gulf War (both Gulf Wars, actually, but let's take the second), and there their response was, at least legislatively, muted to say the least (considering their Senatorial champion was the Lion of Chappaquiddick...) Since then it's been what? Feminism, abortion, and that more abundantly, all LGBTQ all the time, micro regulation of speech and behavior, race hustling, and--ha ha--more unjust unnecessary wars and the destruction of the white middle class. The soft totalitarianism we talk about in these boxes--no need to go on. The usual menu of "liberal" horror.

And this guy is to be impeached because he cusses in public? It's not adding up for me. Schiff's behavior is outrageous (read Kim Strassel today) but he's getting the job done. You might want to call it soft Leninism.

sb • 2 days ago
Yet again, I note Rod, that there is more than one explanation over this hysterical impeach Trump nonsense.

This 'aid' is actually 'US military assistance'. Did it ever occur to you 'impeachers' that Trump may have deliberately been avoiding such a meeting with his top 4 warmongers precisely so as to avoid US 'aid' escalating the military tension betwen Ukraine and Russia? (and getting the US firmly tied into that fight?)

Trump was elected in part on a platform of no more foreign wars, and he seems genuinely committed to that (at least when he thinks he can). Maybe the withheld 'aid' was all just leverage for a Biden investigation, but it may also be Trump trying not to get pressured and bullied into more conflicts (which all prior Presidents were happy to go along with) in the face of a deep state totally committed to a condition of forever war.

As an anti-war activist who campaigned against the Afghan and Iraq wars, in Trump's shoes I would also have tried to avoid fueling an existing dangerous conflict that brings no benefit to my nation (other than a few arms sales) but may drag us into a war with major nations. Same situation repeating right now in Syria - no major benefit to US in staying, and staying may drag US into conflict between Turks and Kurds and Syria & Russia.

Not saying Trump has acted lawfully always - just that he may have been trying to avoid military escalation (at the same time as getting dirt on Biden). Lets not jump to obvious conclusions when they may not be so obvious.

Shakes_McQueen • a day ago
"The Democrats have offered no plausible and persuasive rationale for holding these proceedings in secret and keeping the evidence and testimony behind closed doors. Given the character of the people in question, it is safe to assume that their reasons for doing so are corrupt and motivated by narrowly calculated political self-interest. "

That's a heck of a leap in logic there, Kevin. And kind of incredible in light of Kevin McCarthy previously admitting on national television that the Benghazi Select Committee's purpose was to tank Clinton's poll numbers. Would Kevin agree that committee was corrupt then, I guess?

These are depositions, not hearings. Public hearings come later, once depositions are complete, and there's no more opportunity for deposed subjects to coordinate details. Then a Senate trial after that, where Trump gets all the "due process" he has been disingenuously complaining about.

It's amusing to me how it seems to be lost in all of this, that half of the people sitting in on these depositions are REPUBLICANS.

Patrick Constantine • 15 hours ago
I Keep reading about this "aid to ukraine" improperly tied to an investigation of a rival. But this "aid" to Ukraine is really just weapons isn't it? Weapons meant to stoke conflict with a nuclear power. The deep state and the pro war liberals will never let This country move past militarism
anon • 14 hours ago
If you supported the Schiff parody-as-truth from the other week but this bothers you, then you are an anti-Trump partisan. Conversely, if you support this but had a problem with Schiff, you are a pro-Trump partisan. And that is okay because impeachment is a political act. Just don't dress it up and pretend your side follows the rule of law and the other side doesn't. Both sides are engaging in politics to convince the public. And we'll be just fine as long as both sides stick with that, and obey the constitutional rules for impeachment. We'll only get in serious trouble if folks decide to go extra constitutional:

Tlaib: Democrats looking into how to arrest Trump officials
https://www.foxnews.com/pol...

Or if someone from the military tries to intervene:
https://www.nytimes.com/201...

[Oct 27, 2019] Given the fact that she got a first hand look at the Outlaw US Empire's injustice system and its tie-in with BigLie Media, the comments by the now back in Russia Maria Butina carry some legitimate weight that're worth reading

I am sure that this stupid girl who allowed to make herself a scapegoat due to her pathological fascination with arms (and a romance with FBI informer -- so she was like a bug under microscope all the time).
But one of her comments stand out: "'I believe that the Americans are wonderful people, but they have lost their legal system" i would add the neo-McCarthyism campaign also means that the US neoliberal elite lost their sanity, trying to please MIC and Wall street oligarchs who via intelligence agencies, lobbyists and MSM essentially run the place mind.
Notable quotes:
"... I sorta feel like Winston Smith: Am I the only one who sees and understands what's actually happening?! Well, I've shared what I know, so I'm no longer alone. But that's not very satisfying, nor is it satisfactory. ..."
Oct 27, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Oct 26 2019 20:35 utc | 19

Given the fact that she got a first hand look at the Outlaw US Empire's injustice system and its tie-in with BigLie Media, the comments by the now back in Russia Maria Butina carry some legitimate weight that're worth reading: "'I believe that the Americans are wonderful people, but they have lost their legal system,' Butina said. 'What is more, they are routinely losing their country. They will lose it unless they do something'.... "'I am very proud of my country, of my origin,' Butina stressed. 'And I come to realize it more and more.'"

Should I bold the following, maybe make the lettering red, and put it in all caps:

"They are routinely losing their country."

I know this is an international bar, but the general focus has long been on the Outlaw US Empire. IMO, Maria Butina is 100% correct. The topic of this thread is just further proof of that fact.

As I tirelessly point out, the federal government has routinely violated its own fundamental law daily since October 1945. The media goes along with it robotically.

And aside from myself, I know of no other US citizen that's raised the issue--not Chomsky, not Zinn, not anyone with more credentials and public accessibility than I. I sorta feel like Winston Smith: Am I the only one who sees and understands what's actually happening?! Well, I've shared what I know, so I'm no longer alone. But that's not very satisfying, nor is it satisfactory.

Peter AU 1 , Oct 26 2019 21:46 utc | 30
"They are routinely losing their country."

Part and parcel of democracy. Western style democracy at least. Perhaps others can set theirs up better, though allways, the achilles heel of democracy is information, or media. Who oversees ensuring voters recieve accurate information.

The oz state of NSW had something that broke through this for a bit. ICAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Commission_Against_Corruption_(New_South_Wales)

It took complaints from the public and investigated them. They did not have power to bring charges, but for a time findings were made public. Once it got onto a money trail it would keep following and that would lead to other money trails. It was a state agency and had to stop at state borders but most money trails led to federal politics. It was defanged when they came too close to federal politics.

Something like this in a countries constitution could work though it could be corrupted the same as anything else.

[Oct 27, 2019] Facebook as a propaganda arm of neoliberals

Oct 27, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

"Rupert Murdoch wanted Mark Zuckerberg to pay him for news stories -- and now Facebook is going to do just that" [ ReCode ]. "Facebook's news section will give some publishers, like News Corp, millions of dollars a year for making their journalism available to Facebook Facebook will roll out its news section Friday as an "alpha" launch, available to a couple hundred thousand US users; it won't get a wider release for a few months .

Users who click on the icon will see headlines for a handful of top stories, selected by Facebook editors -- from partners like the Wall Street Journal (which is owned by News Corp), Business Insider, and BuzzFeed -- and a personalized selection of headlines selected by Facebook's algorithmic software. Clicking on those headlines will send users to the publishers' own sites, where Facebook users can read the entire story for free.

And while sites with subscription-based business models will have to let Facebook users see individual articles without paying, they'll be able to keep their paywalls mostly intact: If you click on a Wall Street Journal article via Facebook's news section, you'll be able to read that one story, but if you click on a subsequent WSJ piece, you'll be asked to pay up .. the program Zuckerberg is announcing Friday appears rather straightforward: Facebook will pay publishers for work they already make and then share to the platform, which means it is pure profit."

I'd be interested in screen shots and any reactions from any NC readers who (still) use Facebook are serving as guinea pigs for this program; my email address is below.

[Oct 26, 2019] FBI Entrapped Flynn With Manipulated Evidence As Clapper Allegedly Issued Kill Shot Order Court Docs

Flynn's story became a classic story of FBI entrapment...
Notable quotes:
"... The Federalist ..."
"... According to the 37-page motion , a team of " high-ranking FBI officials orchestrated an ambush-interview of the new president's National Security Advisor, not for the purpose of discovering any evidence of criminal activity -- they already had tapes of all the relevant conversations about which they questioned Mr. Flynn -- but for the purpose of trapping him into making statements they could allege as false ." ..."
"... Notably, Lisa Page lied to the DOJ, saying that she didn't recall whether she took part in editing Flynn's 302 form . ..."
"... Then, quoting from a sealed statement by Strzok, Powell reveals that over next two weeks, there were "many meetings" between Strzok and [FBI Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe to discuss "whether to interview [] National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and if so, what interview strategies to use." ..."
"... Another startling claim in Powell's filing references a purported conversation between former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Washington Post reporter David Ignatius, which claims Clapper told the reporter "words to the effect of 'take the kill shot on Flynn,' after Ignatius reportedly obtained the transcript of Flynn's phone calls. ..."
"... Lastly, Powell's filing also notes that US District Judge Rudolph Contreras, who recused himself after accepting Flynn's guilty plea, had a personal relationship with Peter Strzok , according to text messages. ..."
Oct 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

FBI Entrapped Flynn With Manipulated Evidence As Clapper Allegedly Issued 'Kill Shot' Order: Court Docs by Tyler Durden Sat, 10/26/2019 - 11:30 0 SHARES

A bombshell court filing from Michael Flynn's new legal team alleges that FBI agents altered a '302' form - the official record of the former national security adviser's interview - that resulted in the DOJ charging him with lying to investigators.

Early last week Flynn attorney Sidney Powell filed a sealed reply to federal prosecutors' claims that they have satisfied their requirements for turning over evidence in the case. A minimally redacted copy of the reply brief was made public late last week, revealing the plot to destroy Flynn , as reported by The Federalist 's Margot Cleveland.

According to the 37-page motion , a team of " high-ranking FBI officials orchestrated an ambush-interview of the new president's National Security Advisor, not for the purpose of discovering any evidence of criminal activity -- they already had tapes of all the relevant conversations about which they questioned Mr. Flynn -- but for the purpose of trapping him into making statements they could allege as false ."

At the heart of the matter is the 302 form 'documenting' an FBI interview in which Flynn was asked about his conversations with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Powell alleges that FBI lawyer Lisa Page edited her lover Peter Strzok's account of the interview - texting him, "I made your edits."

The edits explained via The Federalist :

"On February 10, 2017, the news broke -- attributed to 'senior intelligence officials' -- that Mr. Flynn had discussed sanctions with Ambassador Kislyak, contrary to what Vice President Pence had said on television previously." Following this leak, "overnight," Flynn's 302 was changed -- and substantively so. " Those changes added an unequivocal statement that 'FLYNN stated he did not' -- in response to whether Mr. Flynn had asked Kislyak to vote in a certain manner or slow down the UN vote."

" This is a deceptive manipulation " Powell highlighted, " because, as the notes of the agents show, Mr. Flynn was not even sure he had spoken to Russia/Kislyak on this issue . He had talked to dozens of countries." The overnight changes to the 302 also included the addition of a line, indicating Flynn had been question on whether "KISLYAK described any Russian response to a request by FLYNN."

But the agent's notes do not include that question or answer, Powell stressed, yet it was later made into the criminal offense charges against Flynn . And "the draft also shows that the agents moved a sentence to make it seem to be an answer to a question it was not ," Powell added.

Here's Powell describing how they know the 302 form was altered:

Notably, Lisa Page lied to the DOJ, saying that she didn't recall whether she took part in editing Flynn's 302 form .

Laying the groundwork

Leading up to the interview with Flynn, the text messages reveal that the FBI wanted to capitalize on news of the 'salacious and unverified' Steele dossier - and whether they "can use it as a pretext to go interview some people," Strzok texted Page.

Then, quoting from a sealed statement by Strzok, Powell reveals that over next two weeks, there were "many meetings" between Strzok and [FBI Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe to discuss "whether to interview [] National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and if so, what interview strategies to use." And "on January 23, the day before the interview, the upper echelon of the FBI met to orchestrate it all . Deputy Director McCabe, General Counsel James Baker, Lisa Page, Strzok, David Bowdich, Trish Anderson, and Jen Boone strategized to talk with Mr. Flynn in such a way as to keep from alerting him from understanding that he was being interviewed in a criminal investigation of which he was the target."

Next came "Comey's direction to 'screw it' in contravention of longstanding DOJ protocols," leading McCabe to personally call Flynn to schedule the interview . Yet none of Comey's notes on the decision to interview Flynn were turned over to defense. Even Obama-holdover "Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates candidly opined that the interview 'was problematic' and ' it was not always clear what the FBI was doing to investigate Flynn ," Powell stressed. Yet again, the prosecution did not turn over Yates' notes, but only "disclosed a seven-line summary of Ms. Yates statement six months after Mr. Flynn's plea." -The Federalist

'Kill Shot'

Another startling claim in Powell's filing references a purported conversation between former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Washington Post reporter David Ignatius, which claims Clapper told the reporter "words to the effect of 'take the kill shot on Flynn,' after Ignatius reportedly obtained the transcript of Flynn's phone calls.

Clapper's spokesman told Fox News that he "absolutely did not say those words to David Ignatius," adding "It's absolutely false" and "absurd."

Powell claims that Ignatius was given the Flynn-Kislyak call transcripts by a Pentagon official who was also Stefan Halper's "handler." Halper - who was paid over $1 million by the Obama administration - was one of many spies the FBI sent to infiltrate the Trump campaign.

Halper, in 2016, contacted several members of the Trump campaign including former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos and former aides Carter Page and Sam Clovis.

"The evidence the defense requests will eviscerate any factual basis for the plea and reveal the conduct so outrageous -- if there is not enough already -- to mandate dismissal of this prosecution for egregious government misconduct ," Powell wrote. - Fox News

Lastly, Powell's filing also notes that US District Judge Rudolph Contreras, who recused himself after accepting Flynn's guilty plea, had a personal relationship with Peter Strzok , according to text messages.

"The government knew that well in advance of Mr. Flynn's plea that Judge Contreras was a friend of Peter Strzok and his recusal was even discussed in an exchange of multiple texts," writes Powell, referencing Strzok-Page texts discussing Strzok and Contreras speaking "in detail" about anything "meaningful enough to warrant recusal."

"The government knew that well in advance of Mr. Flynn's plea that Judge Contreras was a friend of Peter Strzok and his recusal was even discussed in an exchange of multiple texts."

Meanwhile, Clapper - who is now under criminal investigation - is getting nervous...

Perhaps Obama should be too? Law Crime

[Oct 26, 2019] Russian 'Agent' Maria Butina Freed From Prison, Leaves US For Moscow

Oct 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Convicted Russian agent Maria Butina was released from a Florida prison on Friday and embarked on a 13-hour plane ride back to Russia. Butina served an 18-month sentence for conspiring to act as an unregistered agent for the Kremlin to influence US conservative gun-rights group, reported Reuters .

Butina, 31, was released early Friday from prison in Tallahassee, Florida, due to good behavior and a change in federal law. Her original release was expected in early November, Butina's attorney, Robert Driscoll, told Reuters.

Upon her release from jail, she was immediately detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities and taken to Miami International Airport for a 6 pm est. flight to Moscow.

... ... ...

Moribundus , 12 minutes ago link

'Like a bad Hollywood flick with allegations as surreal as Alice in Wonderland' - Russia's Butina on US arrest.

USA "justice" is not like in Hollywood movies, and YOU could be the next victim on USA territory - innocent and sent to prison, or strapped to a table and put to death; or robbed of your life savings by American lawyers.

The Hollywood image, versus the grim reality

Once you have digested the fact that America has the world's largest prison gulag, another major thing to digest is the USA government, and much of America, is primarily a sales organization, whose chief tool is hype and propaganda and outright lies. America is a culture built on sales and advertising; it focuses on portraying an image, not the reality beneath it.

Brazen Heist II , 46 minutes ago link

The Mockingbird Lugenpresse just needs to say "with Russian connections" and that's all they think your average dumb American needs to convulse into a fit of uncontrollable Russophobia.

American politics is inherently racist.

Moribundus , 2 hours ago link

The tragic reality of the world's biggest corrupt legal system -America's rigged courts, bribed judges, fake and phony trials, extortion by lawyers, and over 2 million prisoners in the USA gulag. USA "justice" is not like in Hollywood movies, and YOU could be the next victim on USA territory - innocent and sent to prison, or strapped to a table and put to death; or robbed of your life savings by American lawyers. YOU can be tortured, have your freedom and rights taken away, and people in America are afraid to help you, or even tell what happened to you.

The recent pattern of American violations of international law are ultimately based in the corruption of the USA domestic legal system. Phony USA courts are very dangerous even for travellers and visitors to America, who can easily wind up among the USA's more than 2 million prisoners, or lose all their family's possessions to corrupt American lawyers. All world citizens should know how the corrupt USA legal system, is a danger to every traveller, visitor, and guest worker from overseas, and to every individual who takes the risky step of entering upon American territory.

The reality is that the United States of America, which proclaims itself the "land of freedom", has the most dishonest, dangerous and crooked legal system of any developed nation. Legal corruption is covering America like a blanket. The corruption of the USA legal system is well-known, but also well-hidden, by the news services of America's corporate-owned media. The US media companies are afraid both of reprisal, and of the social revolution that would come from exposing the truth.

Quite amazingly, Americans and the American government, continually criticize the legal systems and so-called "political" legal proceedings in other countries such as China, Russia, and even Belgium among many other places. Yet, for example, the proportion of prisoners is 30 times higher in the USA than in China, even though China is a country regularly criticized and denounced by the USA government.

No one imprisons people as readily, or casually, as does America. As you learn more about America's horrifying legal system, you find out how easily and carelessly America arrests people, and tosses innocent people into prison. It is estimated that America has at least 100,000 completely innocent people in jail, but the statistics of innocence may well run far higher. The number of people known to be innocent, and yet who were actually sentenced to death in recent years in America, is already running into the hundreds.

The USA jailing of more than 2 million people is also, quite literally, a revival of slavery and slave labor, on a scale not seen since the days of the Nazis. USA business corporations are using these prisoners as a giant slave labor pool. Prisoners are forced to produce goods and products while earning mere pennies per hour, which they sometimes have to pay back to the prison for their own upkeep. The expanding system of USA prison slave labor is not only a major source of business profit, but also a wedge to drive down the wages of workers outside the prison walls.
Understanding that America has such a huge percentage of even its own people in prison, is to start to understand the subconscious fear behind much of American life. Before you set foot in America, you should have a clear picture of the terror of America's legal system - the judges and lawyers and money and bribery, that have made this system of fear so pervasive. There is not yet enough public media information about America's domestic legal horrors, horrors which have been rapidly increasing. And the American public, even the victims of its legal system, have a hard time realizing why it is so hard to fight legal corruption there.

American prisons are often horrible, with lots of torment of prisoners, like you would expect in some petty dictatorship. Conditions are brutal in USA jails; rape and beatings are common, and there is little help for abused inmates. In addition to the many official USA executions, numerous people are also illegally killed in jail cells, "mysteriously" said to have hanged themselves or "found stabbed to death".

In the regular functioning of the USA courts, America's domestic lawyers and judges, threaten people with illegal jailing, and rape, torture and murder in jail, just like the threats used by Americans against Iraqi subjects of the American occupation.

Theoretically, torture and abuse is totally outlawed by America's Constitution, but some of the nice words in America's Constitution hold little power anymore, despite how often people quote them. The Americans who still believe the Constitution protects them, are mostly those people who haven't yet dealt with the judges and lawyers of America's corrupt legal system.

The only people who really can get expect some fairness in American courts are multi-millionaires and big corporations. Nobody else really matters to American judges and lawyers.

Jury trials are actually very rare in America, unlike what you see in the movies. Most cases are settled through some deal or extortion or intimidation, before there is an actual trial. If there is a jury trial, they tend to stack the jury with un-educated idiots who will tend to believe whatever lies they are told by the judge and the government.

Americans love to talk about "taking it all the way to the Supreme Court!", but this is a nearly empty hope. The U.S. Supreme Court simply refuses to consider most cases that are presented to it.

The Hollywood image, versus the grim reality

Once you have digested the fact that America has the world's largest prison gulag, another major thing to digest is the USA government, and much of America, is primarily a sales organization, whose chief tool is hype and propaganda and outright lies. America is a culture built on sales and advertising; it focuses on portraying an image, not the reality beneath it.

This is why America was so casual about inventing and selling the lies about "weapons of mass destruction" to help start the Iraq invasion.

The selling never stops, in Washington or Hollywood. America sells political lies like Hollywood sells movies.

In the Hollywood version, there are brave lawyers who will fight for your rights, to win justice for you in the American courts. In reality, you can't find an American lawyer brave enough to fight judicial corruption, even if you are innocent and the judge's friends have threatened to murder you, or to send you to jail for the rest of your life.

In reality, there is almost nothing you can do against misconduct, and even open felony crime, committed against you by American judges and lawyers. All of the official complaint procedures you find on the internet, or at the courthouse or in the law books, turn out to be a joke, a farce and a fraud.

You can also forget about America's human rights and civil liberties groups, even though it looks, at first, like there are many such groups on the internet. Many such groups are just money-raising groups which don't help victims, or are tied to the two main political parties or some narrow agenda. They are all scared of the legal system, too, and there is no one with any significant funding or money, who is out there helping the victims of legal corruption. They can't find lawyers to help them, either.

MalteseFalcon , 2 hours ago link

Butina's case was one of the latest examples of anti-Russian hysteria . American media identified her as a Russian spy in 2018 and accused her of trading sex for political favors.

Alas I had no political favors to offer.

gro_dfd , 3 hours ago link

Disgusting that this harmless, interesting, (and attractive) young woman had to undergo such idiocy inflicted upon her by our government.

jmg , 3 hours ago link

"Russian gun activist Maria Butina . . . recalled that the FBI kept asking the same things about her activities over and over again because 'they just couldn't believe that people can do good things for no special reason, simply because they believe in friendship between the countries and strive for people's right for self-protection.' The lengthy interrogation was just for show, to make it look like the investigators 'were doing something serious,' while they had nothing.

"Before her sentencing in April, Butina spent eight months in custody, much of the time in a 'super freezing' cell in solitary confinement. There was hardly any heating inside, Butina recalls, and most cells had no view from the windows other than a brick wall.

"The Russian ultimately chose to plead guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent and was sentenced to 18 months in prison, with some of the term counted as time served. She did it because she did not believe that she would get a fair trial – especially in a jury trial - after being slandered and demonized by the US media.

"'I would have been tried by the same people who watch the news and get 15 years,' she said. Butina claimed that she would have 'fought till the end' if she was given a chance to stand trial 'before an international independent court with an objective view on my case.'"

'Like a bad Hollywood flick with allegations as surreal as Alice in Wonderland' - Russia's Butina on US arrest
https://www.rt.com/russia/471925-maria-butina-rt-interview-prison/

jmg , 3 hours ago link

Maria, the Russian girl who loved America:

"'As time passed, Byrne became more and more convinced that Maria was what she said she was -- an inquisitive student in favor of better U.S.-Russian relations -- and not an agent of the Russian government or someone involved in espionage or illegal activities,' the letter states. 'He states he conveyed these thoughts and the corroborating facts and observations about Maria to the government.'"

Lawyer for accused Russian agent Maria Butina alleges prosecutorial misconduct, reveals relationship with CEO | Fox News | July 26, 2019
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/lawyer-for-accused-russian-agent-maria-butina-alleges-prosecutorial-misconduct-reveals-relationship-with-ceo

[Oct 26, 2019] Expose The Enemy

Oct 26, 2019 | www.exposetheenemy.com

DONATE
New York-Tel Aviv-Moscow Triangle
  • Slide title Write your caption here Button
  • Slide title Write your caption here Button
  • Slide title Write your caption here Button
  • Slide title Write your caption here Button
New York - Tel Aviv - Moscow Triangle
This section contains the materials that document the background of Trump - Russia. From the banking houses of New York, to the Bolshevik Revolution. From the New School to the Neo-Cons. From the arming of Irgun to the creation of the Zionist state of Israel. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the mafia state that rose out of the USSR. The development of international criminal networks, think tanks, governments, oligarchy and multinational corporate control of our politics, interests, technology, freedoms and even our minds. The Life of an American Jew Living in Racist Marxist Israel
Jack Bernstein The Soviets would institute a pro-Arab policy solely as a camouflage for its true intention, which was to furnish aid to the Arabs, but never enough to enable the Arabs to destroy Israel.
The Soviets would open the gates of Soviet satellite countries to Jewish immigration to Israel. Should this be insufficient, Soviet Russia then would open its own gates to immigration. <strong>The Soviets would absolutely guarantee the security of Israel.
Both the Soviet Union and Israel would share intelligence reports.
The latest scientific developments that the US provides Israel are channeled on to the Soviet Union. The main center through which this scientific information passes is Israel's Weizman Institute in the town of Rehoovot about 40 kilometers south of Tel Aviv. The Controversy Of Zion (Book)
Douglas Reed This is the text area for this paragraph. To change it, simply click here and start typing.Once you've added your content, you can customize the design using different colors, fonts, font sizes and bullets. Highlight the words you want to design and choose from the various options in the text editing bar. All Israeli Prime Ministers linked to USSR/Russian Empire
Jon Swinn This infographic details the links each Israeli Prime Minister has to the USSR/Russian Empire. TRUMP IS PUPPET OF KISSINGER, CFR AND ROTHSCHILDS, THE TRUE ARCHITECTS OF RUSSIAN COLLUSION
David Livingstone A vital read detailing the history that has led to the present day situation we face. NIXON CENTER -- KREMLIN  --  TRUMP
Zarina Zabrisky The Center for the National Interest, former Nixon Center, a hosting institution for Trump's first foreign policy speech and the adviser who helped writing the speech have multiple long-term ties to the Kremlin. Red Mafiya - How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America
Robert Friedman New York -- Moscow -- Tel Aviv Triangle
Fitzpatrick Israel and the Soviets are ideological allies – both follow the ideas of Karl Marx, so both are communist/socialist. Yet, the Soviets supplied military equipment to the Arabs -- Israel's enemies; and at the same time, the Soviet Union's enemy, the United States, was arming Israel.
To understand the treachery which Zionist/ Bolshevik Jews are capable and to understand the treachery which took place before and during the 1973 War, I must explain the New York/ Moscow/Tel Aviv Triangle. PUTIN DOSSIER
Fitzpatrick Exposing Russian president Vladimir Putin and his crypto-Soviet state for the Judeo-masonic, Chabad mafiya collaborators that they are THE AMERICAN AWAKENING - NEW YORK - TEL AVIV - MOSCOW AXIS
Michael Herzog and Brendon O'Connell Part 1 - 18 June 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3GpnUF_nwA Part 2 - 22 June 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kso1KWHXmNo&t=1688s Rare Interview with Gordon Thomas author of Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy
Gordon Thomas Gordon Thomas is interviewed on TruNews about his book Robert Maxwell Israel's Superspy. AT PUTIN'S SIDE, AN ARMY OF JEWISH BILLIONAIRES
Gil Stern Watching the group of mega-wealthy interact, one cannot help but wonder how so many affluent businessmen in the former Soviet Union are Jewish. On Multiple Fronts, Russian Jews Reshape Israel
Phillip Reeves "I was [politically] on the left, and I thought it was possible to reach an agreement with the Arabs. But after 20 years, I no longer think an accord is possible," he says.
Most of Israel's Russian-speaking community, including Esterman, is on the right these days. Since they now make up about 15 percent of Israel's 8 million people, they wield considerable political clout and have played a significant role in the general rightward shift of the Israeli electorate.
Russian-speaking immigrants form the base of the influential right-wing nationalist party Yisrael Beiteinu. The party has teamed up with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud to form a bloc that is leading the polls ahead of this month's elections.
Galili argues that immigrants from the former Soviet Union have made a considerable impact on the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- not least because of their resistance to the idea of giving up territory. Russian Immigrants in Israeli Politics: The Past, the Recent Elections and the Near Future
Arkadi Mazin Since the beginning of the large-scale immigration to Israel from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, Israel's community of Russian speakers has played an dominant role in Israeli politics. Some maintain that it has tipped the balance and decided the final outcome in all the elections since then, perhaps with the exception of the most recent ones. Nevertheless, as will be shown, the Russian-speaking community's vote played a major role in these elections, too. From this, it may be concluded that the electoral behavior of the Russian-speaking community in Israel differs from that of the majority of the Israeli population. And indeed, as has been observed in various areas of life, such as consumer behavior, media and entertainment, as well as from the political-electoral perspective, the Russian-speaking community in Israel is commonly viewed as a separate sector, alongside two other important minority sectors – the ultra-Orthodox and Arab – and the "general Israeli population." An Emerging Alliance: Russia and Israel
Robert Zapesochny The core of this growing alliance is the more than one million Israeli citizens who were born in the former Soviet Union. Between 1970 and 1988, only 291,000 Jews, and their non-Jewish relatives, were allowed to leave the Soviet Union (165,000 went to Israel, and 126,000 went to the United States).
In 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev ended restrictions on Jewish emigration, in part for better relations with the United States. From 1989 to 2006, 1.6 million Soviet Jews, and their family members, left the former Soviet Union (979,000 went to Israel, 325,000 to the U.S. and 219,000 to Germany).
Earlier this year, President Putin said, "Russia and Israel have developed a special relationship primarily because 1.5 million Israeli citizens come from the former Soviet Union, they speak the Russian language, are the bearers of Russian culture, Russian mentality. They maintain relations with their relatives and friends in Russia, and this make the interstate relations very special."
Israel also needs Russia, as well. Israel's Start-Up Nation has been fueled by one million Russian-speaking Israelis. For this economic miracle to continue, the Israelis will need more engineers from the former Soviet Union. The Russian-speaking Israelis will have plenty of talent to choose from in the former Soviet Union. According the World Economic Forum, in 2015, Russia graduated 454,000 engineers and Ukraine graduated 130,000 engineers. THE DEBILITATING BRAIN DRAIN
Shilomo Maital Israel has gained immensely from the brain gain of one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union during the years 1990-1999. According to a study by Sarit Cohen of Bar-Ilan University and Chang-Tai Hsieh from Princeton University, 60 percent of the Russian-speaking immigrants who arrived in Israel between 1989 and 1990 were college educated, twice the proportion of college-educated Israelis. From 1990 to 1993, their study notes, "57,000 [Russian immigrants] had worked as engineers and 12,000 as medical doctors; in contrast, there were only 30,000 engineers and 15,000 medical doctors in Israel in 1989."
That brain gain was a one-time stroke of luck. Many of the brain-gain Russian-speaking engineers and doctors are now retiring, and many of the educated Israelis who could replace them are going abroad. Israel's former Soviet immigrants transform adopted country
Harriet Sherwood The million-plus citizens of the former Soviet Union who migrated to Israel in the past 20 years have not only made new lives of their own but they have transformed their adopted country. They have influenced the culture, hi-tech industry, language, education and, perhaps most significantly, Israeli politics.
Jews in the former Soviet Union were largely banned from making aliya – migrating to Israel – before the collapse of the empire. But from 1990 onwards they came in their thousands, and they now constitute around 15% of Israel's 7.7 million population.
Strictly speaking not all of them are Jewish. In traditional Judaism only someone whose mother is Jewish or who has undergone a formal conversion to Judaism is a Jew. But from 1990 anyone from the former Soviet Union who had a Jewish father or grandparent, or who was married to someone meeting those criteria, was granted Israeli citizenship under the country's law of return. The Million Russians That Changed Israel to Its Core
Masha Zur Glozman The authors begin their story toward the end of the 1980s, after Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir realized that Mikhail Gorbachev was prepared to release those Jews who longed to leave the Soviet Union, because he wished to obtain American loan guarantees for the far-reaching reforms he had planned.
Bronfman and Galili describe the clandestine and open channels through which the State of Israel acted to advance this immigration, and the various interests involved, such as the desire to bolster the "demographic data" (a euphemism for increasing Israel's Jewish population ). Yitzhak Shamir, the Prime Minister Who Spied on Me
Aluf Benn According to Meridor, Shamir's most important contribution was convincing the U.S. administration under President George Bush Sr. to desist from issuing refugee visas to Soviet Jews. Up to 1989, Jews leaving the USSR could choose to immigrate either to the United States or to Israel, with many choosing the U.S. Shamir was opposed to this "defection," as it was termed at the time. He believed Jews ought to settle in Israel, whether they were from a Russian gulag or Brooklyn. He persuaded the American government and U.S. Jewish organizations that the Soviet Jews weren't refugees, that they had a homeland in Israel. Then the floodgates of the collapsing Soviet Empire opened wide, and a million Jews along with their relatives immigrated to Israel. Had Shamir not insisted, today, many of them would have been living on the shores of the Hudson River. Shamir Wants U.S. Pressure on Emigrants
The so-called "dropout" rate among Jews who leave the Soviet Union has reached as high as 80% in recent years. "Dropouts" are Jews who claim political refugee status from the United States when they reach Vienna rather than fly to Israel. How Russia's rich elite spend their billions in London
Roman Borisovich Wealthy [Jewish] oligarchs have become a fixture of the British landscape during the past 20 years. But what do they offer to the country's culture? Rich Russians: The Wealthiest Oligarchs Who Call London Home
Alisher Usmanov and Roman Abramovich are joined in the capital by a host of lesser-known wealthy compatriots Vladimir Putin told me a personal story in the Kremlin
This video includes excerpts from the speeches of Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, Attorney Alan Dershowitz, and footage of the legendary Chabad Lubavitch "Roll Call" at the 2006 International Conference of Shluchim. Putin's Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar friend of Nathaniel Rothschild.
"My call to fame is actually being Mr. Rothschild's friend and it is a pleasure to honour Mr. Rothschild and David Slager for what they have done here in Oxford for the Oxford University Chabad Society." - Chief Rabbi Lazar The KGB's Middle East Files: 'Illegals' in Israel
Ronen Bergman In 1992, Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB archivist, defected to the West with a trove of top secret documents from the Soviet intelligence agency, which helped expose many Russian agents and assets in Israel and elsewhere. This series of articles explores these documents and brings to light the secrets they revealed. Russian Firm to Train Israelis in Hot Tech Fields
Ruti Levy Fifty Israeli students – most of them computer science graduates or veterans of army technology units – will begin a program in October to learn the ins and outs of some of the hottest fields in Israeli high-tech, such as data science and machine learning.
he classes will meet at Tel Aviv University, but no Israeli academic institution is involved. The syllabus was written and the lecturers hired and paid for by the Russian company Yandex. The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin
Ben Schreckinger Chabad of Port Washington, a Jewish community center on Long Island's Manhasset Bay, sits in a squat brick edifice across from a Shell gas station and a strip mall. The center is an unexceptional building on an unexceptional street, save for one thing: Some of the shortest routes between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin run straight through it. Know Your Oligarch: A Guide to the Jewish Billionaires in the Trump-Russia Probe
Ron Kampeas Of 10 billionaires with Kremlin ties who funneled political contributions to Donald Trump and a number of top Republican leaders, at least five are Jewish Russia's Chief Rabbi Reportedly Paid Secret Visit to Iran on Trip Organized by Putin
Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar secretly visited Iran almost six months ago as part of a diplomatic trip organized by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Israeli media reported over the weekend.
The Islamic Republic opposed the rabbi's arrival, but Putin himself insisted on Lazar's participation in the diplomatic mission, the website Ynetnews reported. The trip was reportedly headed by the chairman of Russia's State Duma and included talks in the Iranian parliament.
Lazar, who heads the Chabad movement in Russia, is considered close to Putin and is often accused of supporting the president unconditionally in exchange for his regime's seal of approval for Chabad.
Israel has argued for months that Iran needs to withdraw its forces from the war-torn country. In recent weeks, senior U.S. officials have stated that while both Russia and the U.S. agree with Israel that Iran needs to exit Syria, it is currently unrealistic for Russia to force Iran out of the country. DONALD TRUMP, CHABAD-LUBAVITCH AND THE OLIGARCHS
Despite his alignment with the racist right, Trump has professed ultra-right views on Israel. His connections with Israel also extend to his broad ties with the Russian mafia, many of whom hold dual citizenship in Israel. The Russian mafia is closely associated with Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic movement that derived originally from Sabbateanism. Putin: 'I support the struggle of Israel'
Chaim Lev, Ari Yashar Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday met with a delegation of rabbis, led by Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar, and rabbis of the Rabbinical Center of Europe (RCE).
"I follow closely what's going on in Israel," said Putin during the long meeting, which was held in Moscow.
"I support the struggle of Israel as it attempts to protect its citizens. I also heard about the shocking murder of the three youths. It is an act that cannot be allowed, and I ask you to transmit my condolences to the families," added the Russian president, in referring to the abduction and murder of three teens in June by Hamas terrorists. PUTIN AND NETANYAHU TO STRIKE DEAL ON LEVIATHAN GAS FIELD
Erica Mills Israeli foreign affairs analyst, Ehud Yaari, says Russian President Vladimir Putin & Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu want to strike a deal on the Leviathan field Ronald S. Lauder: Russia's fight against anti-Semitism isn't just good for Jews – it's good for Russia as well
"At a time when global terrorism singles out Jews around the world, at a time when we see the impact of intolerance and hate on every continent, here in Russia, the Jewish community is thriving. Jewish kindergartens and Jewish schools are filled to capacity, synagogues are crowded on Shabbat. But Jews in Western Europe are seriously thinking of leaving," Lauder said.
"President [Vladimir] Putin has made Russia a country where Jews are welcome. And that's not just a good thing for Jews. It is good for Russia as well," Lauder said. "It is because of this unprecedented change that the World Jewish Congress looks to continue to work with Russia. We want to be able to count on Russia as a solid friend." PUTIN TO NETANYAHU: ISRAEL, RUSSIA 'UNCONDITIONAL ALLIES' IN WAR AGAINST TERROR
Israel and Russia agreed to strengthen their regional military cooperation, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin met face-to-face in the Kremlin on Tuesday.
The two leaders agreed to tightened their cooperation in the fight against terrorism and stressed the importance of ending regional violence such as in Syria. They also reiterated the importance of Israel ending its short-term conflict with Turkey and its long-standing one with the Palestinians.
"We discussed the continued coordination between our two militaries in the region, which already works quite well," Netanyahu told reporters at a joint press conference in the Kremlin with Putin after their meeting.
It is their fourth meeting in the last year, and their third in Moscow. The Countless Israeli Connections to Mueller's Probe of Trump and Russia
Chemi Shalev The Israeli media usually takes scant interest in Robert Mueller's investigations. It prefers to dwell on Donald Trump's supposedly pro-Israeli policies. Last week's report in the New York Times about the participation of Joel Zamel, the Australian-born "Israeli specialist in social media manipulation," in an August 3, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York was an exception to the rule. The FBI, the Times reported, had even come to Israel to search the offices of Zamel's company. Here was a direct Israeli link to the scandal that has bewitched much of America since Trump was first elected. Mueller reveals ANOTHER effort to arrange a Trump-Putin meeting – this one involving the chief Rabbi of Russia known as 'Putin's Rabbi' who visited Trump Tower in 2016
Geoff Earle Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report sketches out yet another effort to arrange a meeting between Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin – this time from a man touting a connection to the Chief Rabbi of Russia.
The Trump-Putin meeting never occurred, but Rabbi Berel Lazar, known as 'Putin's Rabbi,' did attend a Trump Tower meeting in 2016 with the man who pitched it. Here are 5 shady ways Trump, Israel and Russia are colluding on the world stage
Tana Ganeva In the latest bizarre twist in the Paul Manafort saga, the Guardian reports that Manafort may have conspired with an Israeli official to manipulate members of the Obama administration into supporting Viktor Yanukovych over Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine, and link the latter to anti-Semitism. Yanukovych was Russia's chosen candidate.
1. As Bashar al-Assad moves to consolidate power in Syria, the US, Russia and Israel seem united in their efforts to throw Hezbollah, a proxy of Iran, out of the conflict. In mid-August, Secretary of State John Bolton told ABC that the three countries are united in this goal.
3. During the President's much derided one-on-one talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump assured the world that the security of Israel is a priority for both Russia and the United States.
4. House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia, the writer Craig Unger writes about how up to 59 Russian oligarchs have been cultivating Donald Trump and his associates for years, through such means as New York's unregulated real estate industry.
As the Times of Israel has pointed out, many of these wealthy Russian business-people also have ties to Israel.
5. So far, the President has made good on his promise to prioritize the interests of the current Israeli government.
It's not a surprise when Trump flouts international norms. But his decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem sparked furor around the world and led to deadly protests by Palestinians.
The administration dismissed the demonstrations, in which multiple civilians were killed, as 'unfortunate propaganda'. Paul Manafort: Trump's ex-campaign chair agrees to cooperate with Mueller
Jon Swaine Manafort may have conspired with an Israeli official to manipulate members of the Obama administration into supporting Viktor Yanukovych over Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine, and link the latter to anti-Semitism. Yanukovych was Russia's chosen candidate.
Manafort allegedly orchestrated a plan to smear a Yanukovych domestic rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, by disseminating "with no fingerprints" allegations that Tymoshenko had paid for the murder of a Ukrainian official. "My goal is to plant some stink on Tymo," Manafort wrote in a message.
He also allegedly schemed to have "Obama Jews" exert pressure on Barack Obama's administration to support Yanukovych and disavow Tymoshenko, and conspired with an Israeli government official to spread allegations linking Tymoshenko to antisemitism. Manafort allegedly wrote in one message to an unidentified associate: "I have someone pushing it on the NY Post. Bada bing bada boom. MATIMOP, Skolkovo deepen Israel-Russia start-up cooperation
Israeli Industry Center for R&D (MATIMOP) and Russia's Skolkovo Foundation will shortly announce a call for papers for joint R&D project by Israeli and Russian start-ups to obtain support from Office of the Chief Scientist in Israel and the Skolkovo Foundation. Skolkovo Foundation VP Stanislav Naumov said, "The difference between Russia and Israel's entrepreneurial system required thinking together to find a formula for cooperation. The formula we reached enables us to move forward to the stage of extensive collaboration by ventures of the two countries. The special call for papers that we are publishing is another important stage in developing cooperation between Russia and Israel, which began a year ago with the fostering of innovation and the commercialization of advanced technologies."
Israel-Skolkovo Center co-managing director Alexander Zinigrad said, "This is the first time that special binational collaboration for start-ups has been declared in Israel. This is an important measure, which gives a great boost to the cooperation that began in the summer of 2011 between the start-up industry in Israel and the Skolkovo Foundation. Since the establishment of the Israel-Skolkovo Center, we have received scores of inquiries from Israeli start-up companies every month. Within less than a year, we have assisted six Israeli start-up companies at Skolkovo." Putin Reveals Who Will Be the Lord of the World
"Artificial intelligence is not only the future of Russia, but the future of all mankind. It holds both tremendous opportunities and is fraught with scarcely predictable dangers. Whoever takes the lead in this sphere will become Lord of the World," President Putin told Russian schoolchildren during an open lesson on their first day of the new school year. Hillary's Secret Kremlin Connection Is Quickly Unraveling
John Schindler Exactly how Clinton profited off deals with Skolkovo is something the American public has a right to know before November 8.
Then there's the matter of what Skolkovo actually is. In truth, it's nothing like Silicon Valley except in outward appearance. It's a fully state-driven enterprise -- funded largely by the Kremlin and acting on its orders. It does the bidding of the Russian government, and President Putin has taken intense interest in his high-tech complex, understanding its value to the country's defense and security sector. Yandex Partners With Tel Aviv University to Launch AI Study Program, Scholarships
Amarella Wenkert The Russian technology company will launch the Yandex Machine Learning Initiative, offering courses in artificial intelligence and financial support to students and faculty Modeled on Yeshiva University, first Jewish university to open in Russia
Modeled after Yeshiva University in the United States, The Jewish University of Moscow is a private institution with a student body of 200 whose budget comes mostly from donors and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, dean Alexander Lebedev told JTA earlier this week.
The university -- whose faculties include economics, law, humanities and Jewish studies – comprises two existing Jewish community colleges: Institute XXI century for men and Institute Machon CHaMeSH for women. Their reconstitution as campuses of a single, state-recognized university is a first in Russian history, according to Lebedev. Russian VC shows the love to Israeli startups
Abigail Klein Leichman Titanium Investments unveils its $50 million venture capital fund geared mainly to Israeli companies such as Feedvisor, Any.do and MUV Interactive. US backs Israel's proposal for railway link to Gulf
The US has expressed support for an Israeli plan to revive a historic railroad network linking the Jewish state to Gulf countries.
Jason Greenblatt, US President Donald Trump's peace envoy, hailed the proposal on Monday as an Israeli minister visits Oman to present the "Tracks for Regional Peace" project. How Russia Created a Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center Even Vladimir Putin Can Tolerate
Olga Gershenson The museum project was initiated by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia -- the umbrella organization for Chabad-Lubavitch in Russia -- supported by the Kremlin and financed by a handful of Russian Jewish oligarchs at a cost of $50 million. The journey to museum from garage began in 2001, when Moscow City Hall donated the dilapidated building to the Hasidic Jewish Community Center. The idea was that the building would house a cultural center, including an exhibition on Jewish culture and an art gallery. While this site is neither central nor easily accessible to tourists, it is part of an entire campus of Jewish religious and cultural organizations that sprouted in the post-Soviet era in the traditionally Jewish neighborhood (to the extent that Moscow has Jewish neighborhoods) of Maryina Roshcha. The museum building shares its territory with a Jewish day school, a yeshiva, a medical center and several Jewish charity organizations.
Several years of faltering attempts to renovate the garage building ended in 2007, when Roman Abramovich, a federation board member, restored it. In 2008 it opened its doors to the public as the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, managed by Dasha Zhukova, Abramovich's girlfriend at the time. Top Israeli officials were part of KGB spy ring -- report
Toi Staff KGB files reportedly revealed the existence of an extensive Soviet spy ring in Israel, encompassing Knesset members, senior IDF officers, engineers, members of the Israeli intelligence community, and others who worked on classified projects.
Top-secret KGB documents reported on by the Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth Wednesday detailed the extent of the network of agents run by the Soviet secret service.
The documents were copied over a period of 20 years by Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior KGB archivist who defected to the UK in 1992. His edited notes on various KGB operations were released in 2014 and are stored in Churchill College in Cambridge; his handwritten notes remain classified by MI5. Soviet documents 'show Abbas was KGB agent'; Fatah decries 'smear campaign'
Tamar Pileggi Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was a Soviet spy in Damascus in the 1980s, Israel's Channel 1 television reported Wednesday, citing information it said was included in an archive smuggled out of the USSR.
According to Channel 1's foreign news editor Oren Nahari, the famed Mitrokhin archive, kept by KGB defector Vasily Mitrokhin, revealed that Abbas was a Soviet mole in Damascus in 1983.
The documents -- obtained by Israeli researchers Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez -- purportedly show that Abbas, code-named Krotov (mole), was involved with the Soviets while Mikhail Bogdanov, today Vladimir Putin's envoy to the Middle East. was stationed in Damascus. KGB Infiltrated Highest Echelons of Israel's Army, Business, and Political Leadership
Richard Silverstein The Israeli military censor compelled Bergman to suppress the names of the most damaging of the KGB spies working in Israel in a three-part series published in recent weeks by Ynet. In part four of his series, Bergman secured the cooperation of an Israeli triple agent who worked for the CIA, KGB and Shabak. The ex-spy agreed to be interviewed and for his identity to be exposed. But the IDF censor, Col. Ariella Ben Avraham, so eviscerated the proposed article that it could not be published. As a result, it will be some time before we learn this individual's identity. Given that the former spy agreed to be identified and the incident presumably occurred decades ago, one wonders what the censor is protecting except her own power and prerogative to render secret what should be known in any other democratic society. Lieberman Appointed Israeli KGB Agent to Senior Government Role, Then He Disappeared
Richard Silverstein Bergman, who is compelled by the military censor to suppress the names of almost all of the spies, tells (Nana recounts the story at 3:05 of this news report) of a Soviet Jew born in south-central Russia in the mid-1950s. He studied engineering and was considered quite proficient in his field of study. The spy, whose code-name was Bejan, was recruited to an elite Soviet espionage school, where he was trained in the field of spycraft. He made aliyah to Israel and was inducted into the IDF shortly thereafter. He joined the officer training school and from there rose quickly in the ranks until he was appointed the chief of one of the army's most critical infrastructure ventures. He was privy to a multitude of highly secret material including the location of bases, infrastructure facilities, data on the order of battle, and preparations for future wars.
After retiring from the IDF, he turned to various jobs in private industry. Later, he was appointed by Avigdor Lieberman, who himself has often been rumored to be a Russian intelligence asset, to a senior post. Then suddenly, Bejan disappeared in 2005. He has not been heard from since.
He is not the first person in Lieberman's circle to suffer a strange, mysterious fate. News1 detailed the circumstances in which several key witnesses in the last Lieberman investigation who either committed suicide, disappeared, or "forgot" key elements of their previous testimony. Among them are Michael Falkov, a Lieberman communications advisor who disappeared in 2014. Yosef Shuldiner was found shot to death in an Israeli cemetery in 2006. Artium Borovik, a senior Russian journalist close to the Kremlin, whom Lieberman used to lobby on behalf of his business ventures, died in a mysterious plane crash in 2008. Daniella Mourtzi was the corporate accountant for five Cyprus-based Lieberman companies which were fronts. She was to testify as part of the government investigation into Lieberman's shady business dealings about his ownership of the companies. But before her time came to testify, she suddenly developed amnesia and couldn't recall a thing. Another witness in Moldova (where Lieberman was born) was interrogated and shortly afterward had a fatal stroke. Soviet spies infiltrate Mossad, sources say
Richard Sale Soviet infiltration of Israel's spy agency, Mossad, is the most serious blow to Israeli intelligence since the 1970s and U.S. intelligence also was breached as a result, U.S. sources reveal.
Mossad has been penetrated by 'highly placed' Soviet moles and a full-scale internal counterintelligence investigation is under way, the intelligence sources said.
A Justice Department source said U.S. counterintelligence agents became aware of the Israeli-Soviet espionage pipeline when data stolen by Jonathan Jay Pollard, a U.S. Navy analyst convicted of spying for Israel, was 'traced to the Eastern bloc.'
Intelligence sources said data reaching the Soviets via this route included sensitive U.S. weapons technology and strategic information about the defense forces of Turkey, Pakistan and moderate Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia.
U.S. intelligence analysts said the Pollard data was traded to the Soviets in return for promises to increase emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel.
One analyst said Israel's 'right-wing' Jews are involved with spying for the Soviets and called it 'ironic,' noting that left-wing elements were responsible for similar scandals in the past. No Love Lost
Yossi Melman "There is a paradoxical situation," says the chief rabbi of Moscow. "The Jews in Russia have power, money and influence, as never before; yet at the same time the situation of the Jewish community is at an all-time low." A guide to the wars of the Jewish oligarchs in Russia. Why Data Science is Booming in Israel
Jacob Maslow Yandex, the "Google of Russia," is going to expand into Israel. The tech firm, the largest in Russia, will be launching a few services in Israel. The firm will be launching Yandex Music in just a few weeks, and then there are additional plans for Israel.
Times of Israel broke the news that Yandex is still thinking about opening a taxi venture in Israel and also plans to offer an eight-month course in data science. Yandex plans to introduce their Y-Data initiative in Israel, a course that will be very similar to what is already running in Russia. Exploring Al Qaeda's Murky Connection To Russian Intelligence
John Schindler [Note: This is an unusually controversial piece, even for my blog, for reasons that will quickly become obvious. Linkages between Al-Qa'ida and Russian intelligence have been discussed in hushed tones among spies in many countries, for years, and this matter has been a "hobby file" of mine for some time. Here is a think-piece on it, in the hope of spurring additional discussion and research into this important yet murky matter. This is particularly necessary given rising tensions between Moscow and the West at present. 'The USSR Is Our Second Homeland,' Said One Kibbutznik When Stalin Died
Tom Segev In fact, it is of interest to recall - incredible as it may seem - that Stalin's Soviet Union was once at the center of Israeli identity. In the first Knesset, the left-wing Mapam (United Workers Party ) was the second-largest faction, with 19 seats. During the debate over the makeup of the government that was held in the Knesset on March 10, 1949, one of Mapam's two leaders, Ya'akov Hazan of Kibbutz Mishmar Ha'emek, said: "For us, the Soviet Union is the fortress of world socialism, it is our second homeland, the socialist one." That comment could go down as one of the 10 most-quoted sentences in the history of Israeli politics. Jabotinsky's Likud Was Anything but a Liberal Bastion
Ofri Ilany While Ze'ev Jabotinsky has in recent years been lionized as the picture of a faultless liberal standout, there is no justification for describing Likud as a movement that was once liberal and has deteriorated into fascism.
David Ben-Gurion visited the Soviet Union in 1923, and drew inspiration from the Leninist form of organization and use of power. He described Lenin admiringly as "an iron-willed man who would not spare human life or the blood of the innocent on behalf of the revolution." In the wake of that visit, Ben-Gurion built his political party into a power-centric revolutionary organization that was not squeamish about using whatever means possible to realize its objectives. RUSSIANS AND JEWS: THE ODD COUPLE
Jonathan Adelman Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in the last three years gone nine times to a Russia that has promoted dozens of Russian Jews to become oligarchs in the new Russia. FROM RUSSIA WITH JEWS
Amiram Barkat and Yossi Melman Zvi Magen did what few Israelis would dare to do: He rejected a tempting, well-paying job offer from Arcadi Gaydamak, the Israeli-Russian oligarch, whom the State Prosecutor's office is considering putting on trial for money laundering, and who is wanted in France on suspicion of illegal arms trading with Angola. Gaydamak wanted Magen to head the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations in Russia (KEROOR). This is an off-the-shelf organization that came to life about 18 months ago under the aegis of Gaydamak, who contributes money to it and acts as its president. Magen received the generous offer a few months ago, while he was still head of Nativ, but preferred to join the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya as head of a new Euro-Asia institute that will conduct "studies from the Balkans to Mongolia."
Magen, a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces reserves and a former ambassador to Ukraine and Russia, has headed Nativ for almost seven years. He concluded his term of office at the beginning of last month, but his successor has only just been named. Last week, Naomi Ben Ami, Israel's ambassador to Ukraine, was chosen to head Nativ. This is the first time in the history of the Israeli intelligence community that a woman has been named to head one of its agencies - although Nativ in fact is no longer involved in intelligence. HOLY RUSSIA SACRED ISRAEL
Dominic Rubin Jewish‐Christian Encounters in Russian Religious Thought Russia's use of false flag terrorism facilitating the rise of Putin
'September, 1998: Kremlin Insider Predicts 'Massive Unrest' to Journalist' March 19, 1999: Bombing in Russian Market Near Chechnya Kills Fifty. June 6, 1999: Kremlin False Flag Terror Plot Rumors Surface in Swedish Newspaper July 22, 1999: Russian Journalist Alleges Destabilization Plot by Kremlin Insiders September 9, 1999: Apartment Blast in Moscow Kills 94; Chechen Rebels Blamed September 13, 1999: Second Moscow Apartment Bombing Kills 118; Chechen Rebels Blamed September 22-24, 1999: FSB Agents Plant Large Bomb in Ryazan: 'Security Exercise' or Terror Plot?
Henry Kissinger's criminal sale of nuclear weapons technology to Soviet Russia in 1972
Antony Sutton Kalmanowich affair shows KGB-Israeli mafia link
Thierry Lalevee and Joseph Brewda On Dec. 23, 1987, Israeli businessman Shabtai Kalmanowich was arrested by Israeli authorities on charges of being "a spy for the Soviet Union." Since his emigration from Lithuania in 1971, Kalmanowich had become a leading figure in the Israeli political and business establishment, directing a far-flung diamond, gold, gambling, prostitution, and armstrafficking empire, based in Africa, West Germany, and New York City. When Israeli authorities announced Kalmanowich's arrest on Jan. 10, however, they failed to mention the fact that millionaire Kalmanowich was also an officer in the Israeli foreign intelligence service, the Mossad. Kalmanowich was something of the late CIA director Bill Casey's ideal intelligence officer: He made a fortune as he carried out espionage. Kalmanowich is certainly not the first Soviet Jewish emigre caught as a spy; there have been four or five over recent years. Analyzing this phenomenon, a former head of Israeli military intelligence reported on Israeli television that there are two kinds of spies among the emigres: those who are blackmailed because their families have remained behind, and those who are ideologically committed to Soviet communism. Kalmanowich belonged to the second category. The Chicago School of Economics
Jon Swinn This infographic displays the connections and people known collectively as the 'Chicago School'. The strong links to the elites are identified. The neoconservative as well as Thatcherism and the false opposition libertarian movement find their roots in the 'Chicago School'. This is essential background information into understanding the next infographic 'Rise of the Neo-Cons / Wohlstetter Network'. The Rise of the Neo-Cons / Wohlstetter Network
Jon Swinn This infographic displays the links between some of the important players behind the creation of the neoconservative movement, 9/11 and resulting War on Terror. [Perle, Feith, Gaffney] Suspected Soviet Cell Wrote Reagan's Long-Term Strategy
Jeffrey Steinberg Jackson - Vanik amendment
Jackson organized the political movement to link trade and emigration in America's relations with the Soviet Union in concert with Jewish activists, but he soon took matters into his own hands. Jackson drafted what would become the Jackson–Vanik amendment in the summer of 1972 and introduced it to the Ninety-second Congress on October 4, 1972. Jackson's efforts, rooted in his own domestic political calculations and ideological distrust of and antipathy toward the Soviet Union, complicated the Nixon White House's pursuit of Detente, which it had worked on since 1969. However, three-quarters of the Senate co-sponsored the amendment, neutralizing opposition from President Nixon.
Jackson's staffer Richard Perle said in an interview that the idea belonged to Jackson, who believed that the right to emigrate was the most powerful among the human rights in certain respects: "if people could vote with their feet, governments would have to acknowledge that and governments would have to make for their citizens a life that would keep them there." While there was some opposition, the American Jewish establishment on the whole and Soviet Jewry activists (particularly the Washington Committee for Soviet Jewry and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry) supported the amendment...
Soviet Union
At first the Jackson–Vanik amendment did little to help free Soviet Jewry. The number of exit visas declined after the passing of the amendment. However, in the late 1980s Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to comply with the protocols of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Lazin (2005) states that scholars differ on how effective the amendment was in helping Soviet Jews. Some argue that it helped bring the plight of Soviet Jews to the world's attention, while others believe it hindered emigration and decreased America's diplomatic bargaining power.
Since 1975 more than 500,000 refugees, large numbers of whom were Jews, evangelical Christians, and Catholics from the former Soviet Union, have been resettled in the United States. An estimated one million Soviet Jews have immigrated to Israel in that time.
Jackson-Vanik also led to great changes within the Soviet Union. Other ethnic groups subsequently demanded the right to emigrate, and the ruling Communist Party had to face the fact that there was widespread dissatisfaction with its governance
Russia
In 2003, Vladimir Putin pursued an economic agenda for Russia to begin normalized trade relations with the West which included Russia joining the European Union and the repeal of the Jackson-Vannik amendment. Putin tried to use his relationships with both the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was the head of the European Union's Council in 2003, to gain Russia's membership in the European Union, and also Hank Greenberg, who was the chairman and CEO of the American International Group (AIG), to repeal the Jackson-Vannik provisions in the United States.[20] Putin wished for Greenberg to support through Greenberg's AIG greater development of the nascent Russian home-mortgage market.
On November 16, 2012 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would repeal the Jackson–Vanik amendment for Russia and Moldova. After approval by the Senate, the law repealing the effects of the Jackson–Vanik amendment on Russia and Moldova was signed together with Magnitsky bill by President Barack Obama on December 14, 2012.
Excerpt from Robert Friedman's Red Mafiya -
America's gates were opened to Jewish mobsters by the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which withheld most-favored-nation status from Marxist countries that restricted Jewish emigration. According to Mr. Friedman, the Soviets were happy to oblige during the 1970s by "emptying their jails of thousands of hard-core criminals, dumping vast numbers of undesirables" on an unsuspecting United States. More than 40,000 Soviet Jews settled in Brighton Beach which soon became the seat of the "Organisatsiya," the new Jewish mob. Initially assisted by the Genovese crime family and the politically astute and well-connected Jewish rabbi Ronald Greenwald, the Jewish mobsters, some of whom have Ph.D.s in mathematics, physics and engineering, as well as MBAs, quickly expanded their operations to include bank fraud, money laundering, Medicare and insurance fraud, counterfeiting, drug dealing, natural gas bootlegging - scams which netted billions of dollars. The mob has even infiltrated the National Hockey League through its intimidation of Russian and Ukrainian players. The Soviet mole network running U.S. counterintelligence
At the very beginning of 1988, a purported "official CIA evaluation" of the Jonathan Jay Pollard spy case surfaced among senior French intelligence officers. The essential conclusion of the dossier, according to French officials who directly reviewed it, was that the Pollard case showed only that "one or two" KGB agents had infiltrated Israeli intelligence. No higher-level problems were shown to exist within the Mossad. The purported document went on to say, that while senior Israeli officials, including Ariel Sharon and Rafael "Dirty Rafi" Eytan, would be cut off from continued collaboration with their American counterparts, there was no evidence suggesting that the pair were either Soviet "moles" or involved in any witting perfidy with Moscow. Whether or not the document was a bona fide CIA damage assessment, the evaluation, as reported, is a fraud. Not only was Jonathan Jay Pollard merely one small fish in an extensive Soviet "false flag" espionage ring run through the highest levels of Israeli intelligence; the same ring, operating principally through Israeli and social democratic channels, has successfully penetrated the inner sanctums of the Reagan administration's counterintelligence apparatus. The "CIA document" bears mentioning, because it perhaps provides a clue to the identities of some of the "bigger fish"-American and Israeli-who are still in place, attempting to "damage control" the continuing search for "other Pollards. " The Israeli spy network that Jonathan Pollard left behind
Joseph Brewda Sanhedrin Asks Putin and Trump to Build Third Temple in Jerusalem
Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz The Nascent Sanhedrin is calling on Russian President Vladmir Putin and US president-elect Donald Trump to join forces and fulfill their Biblically-mandated roles by rebuilding the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
Rabbi Hillel Weiss, spokesman for the Sanhedrin, contacted Breaking Israel News to announce that the election of Trump, who has promised to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, coupled with Putin's expressed desire for the Temple to be rebuilt, prompted the Jewish court to send a letter offering the two the opportunity to act as modern-day Cyrus figures: non-Jewish kings who recognize the importance of Israel and the Temple. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: 200 years together - English audiobook
Part 1
Part 2

How One Man Influenced The Republican Party's Transformation Into The Grand Old Putin Party

Grant Stern Grant Stern's 10 part series on the Grand Old Putin Party. Part 1 - Prologue Part 2- Putin's Propagandist Eerily Predicted Trump's Relationship With General Flynn and Dana Rohrabacher Last Year Part 3- Putin's Favorite Congressman Secretly Met With Paul Manafort After The FBI Warned Russian Agents Were Recruiting Him Part 4- The GOP's Favorite Russian Professor Spent Decades Building Conservative Ties To Moscow Part 5- American University In Moscow: Linked To Russian State, But Fake Like TrumpU Part 6- Here's Lozansky Introducing Republicans To The Father Of Russian Foreign Intelligence -- And Putin's Mentor Part 7- Soviet Human Rights Activists Believed Lozansky Worked With Russian Intelligence Part 8- From Orange Revolution To "Stars And Stripes Revolution" Part 9- Opinion: Edward Lozansky's Russia Lobby Compromised The Republican Party Part 10- Opinion: Without Ed Lozansky, Trump-Russia Could Not Have Happened Communism Among Jewish Children in Russia Nov 5, 1924
The Communist Child Movement, according to figures published here, includes 7,000 organized Jewish children in the Ukraine and 2,000 in White Russia. The work among the Jewish "pioneers", as they are called, is conducted exclusively in the Yiddish language. There are five detachments of Jewish "pioneers" in Witebsk, three in Homel, a Jewish "pioneer" base in Minsk, and scores of detachments in Odessa and Kiev. "Pioneer" clubs are attached to the schools, children's homes and workshops. A proposal is now made for the publication of a special Yiddish magazine for the Communist Child Movement. Freiheit Calls on Jews to Desert Zionism, Back Soviets Nov 9, 1930
Calling upon the Jewish workers to desert the Zionist cause and to fight for Soviet Russia and Communism, an editorial in Friday's Freiheit, New York Yiddish Communist organ, enumerates what it alleges to be Jewish failures in Palestine with regard to land settlement, and contrasts this with what it regards as the great success of Jewish land settlement in Russia within recent years.
"During the past five years the Soviet Union has settled three hundred thousand Jews on the land," says the editorial. "During the coming five years it will build a large new settlement in Bira-Bidjan. Wherever Jews live in compact masses the whole governmental apparatus is conducted in Yiddish. If great Jewish masses will come to Bira-Bidjan a Soviet Republic will be organized there.
"All this is being done by the Soviet Republic without noise, without trumpeting; it is part of the general work of building up the country. The Jews in the Soviet Union have equal rights together with all citizens. Jewish books and periodicals are being issued at the expense of the government. Anti-Semitism is being uprooted with an iron hand.
"In Palestine it is just the opposite. There during the past fifty years hundreds of millions of dollars have poured in, nevertheless only about twenty thousand Jews are settled upon the land. There everything is kept up by philanthropy, and there is no room for a large Jewish population. There the ruler is the British imperialistic power which has encouraged pogroms and which now declares openly that it will give the Jews no governmental power in Palestine. There Jews are being settled upon alien soil from which the peasants are being driven off by force, although they have been living there scores and hundreds of years. There a poisonous hatred on the part of the local population towards the aliens who come with the bayonet and the dollar exists, and the masses have already revolted against the alien oppressors."
"Down with Zionism! Long live the Soviet Union!" JEWS CREATED COMMUNISM
Dewey (Buddy) Tucker THE JEWS AND THE COMMUNIZATION OF RUSSIA
Elizabeth Dilling Very few people are aware of the extent to which Jews were responsible for the Communization of Russia, first through organizing of the unsuccessful revolution of 1905, and then the later and successful Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Both were heavily financed by outside Jewish financial and banking houses, and ultimately resulted in Jews assuming control of what had become the Russian Soviet Government. Concurrently, Jewish machinations in the United States, Germany and elsewhere helped set the stage for the take-over. The Three Holodomor Genocides
"You must understand. The leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. The October Revolution was not what you call in America the "Russian Revolution." It was an invasion and conquest over the Russian people. More of my countrymen suffered horrific crimes at their bloodstained hands than any people or nation ever suffered in the entirety of human history. It cannot be understated. Bolshevism was the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant of this reality is proof that the global media itself is in the hands of the perpetrators." Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Nobel-Prize-winning novelist, historian and victim of Jewish Bolshevism (Marxism). Woodrow Wilson And The Zionist Network
Infographic highlighting the Zionist influence surrounding Woodrow Wilson, his rise to power and historical events during his presidency and the role of the Zionist powers in the creation of WW1, WW2, creation of the Federal Reserve system, Bolshevik Revolution, Great Depression etc. Geneva Versus Peace
Comte de Saint-Aulaire Comte de Saint-Aulaire, French Ambassador to Great Britain in the 1920s, discussed his meetings with Kuhn, Loeb, & Co. financiers. They had discussions regarding why they [the Kuhn, Loeb, &; Co. bankers] financed the Bolshevik Revolution. One of them said (p. 80): "You say that Marxism is the very antithesis of capitalism, which is equally sacred to us. It is precisely for this reason that they are direct opposites to one another, that they put into our hands the two poles of this planet and allow us to be its axis. These two contraries, like Bolshevism and ourselves, find their identity in the International. These opposites, which are at the antipodes to one another in society and in their doctrines meet again in the identity of their purpose and end, the remaking of the world from above by the control of riches, and from below by revolution. Our mission consists in promulgating the new law and in creating a God, that is to say in purifying the idea of God and realizing it, when the time shall come. We shall purify the idea by identifying it with the nation of Israel, which has become its own Messiah. The advent of it will be facilitated by the final triumph of Israel, which has become it's own Messiah."
This same financier also said (pp. 83-84):
"our essential dynamism makes use of the forces of destruction and forces of creation, but uses the first to nourish the second. Our organization for revolution is evidenced by destructive Bolshevism and for construction by the League of Nations which is also our work. Bolshevism is the accelerator and the League is the brake on the mechanism of which we supply both the motive force and the guiding power. What is the end? It is already determined by our mission. It is formed of elements scattered throughout the whole world, but cast in the flame of our faith in ourselves. We are a League of Nations which contains the elements of all others." Israeli support for anti-Ukrainian separatists of "Novorussia"
Sean Jobst Eurasianists and Nazbols link Ukraine with Israel, ignoring Putin's close alliance with Israel and the central involvement of hardcore Zionists like Avigdor Eskin in Dugin's networks. They rewrite this narrative to deceive Western dissidents opposed to Zionism and Jewish power, into signing off on their own anti-Ukrainian subversion. Their efforts to enlist support for separatists who openly proclaim themselves a Communist "People's Republic", include bizarre claims that have been refuted by no less a figure as Donetsk leader Denis Pushilin, who openly touts himself as "Chairman of the Soviet" while his fighters brandish Soviet flags and include many foreign Communists. Borscht Belt: Will Israel Spurn America for Russia?
Lincoln Mitchell FOR MOST OF LAST YEAR, THE WEST STRUGGLED TO find an appropriate response to Russia's incursions into Crimea and eastern and southern Ukraine. Many European and North American governments strongly condemned Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, but Israel has been noticeably silent.
In the past, Israel has been similarly mum on Russian aggression -- or worse. In 2008, when the Russia-Georgia war began, Israel cut its previously substantial military support for Georgia and withdrew its military advisors.
Why has Israel declined to slap Russia? Because the Jewish state may someday need Russia as a powerful ally if relations with the U.S. wither -- something that's not an immediate risk but not necessarily unthinkable . The Partition Plan, November 29, 1947: Soviet Support for Establishing Israel in Perspective
Alex Grobman Given the Soviet Union's avowed hostility to Zionism, the Soviet vote "came as a great surprise, as a bombshell," recounted Moshe Sharett, then head of the Jewish Agency's political department. When May Day Was a Major Event in Israel
Armin Rosen It wasn't just that Stalin's Red Army had liberated Auschwitz, or that "the Soviets had shipped Czech weapons to the IDF in 1948" and supported Jewish statehood at a crucial moment, including in the United Nations partition vote in 1947. The ties went deeper than any political alliance: For many, Zionism was an avowedly secular pro-labor movement with the same utopian aims as Communism itself. As Halevi writes, the logo of the newspaper for the Hashomer Hatzair Marxist Zionist movement translated to "For Zionism -- For Socialism -- For the Fraternity of Nations."
May Day was a major event for some Israeli communities, outranking most of the Jewish holidays in importance. Stalin's Jews
Sever Plocker We mustn't forget that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish Back in the USSR?
David Horovitz Chabad's chief rabbi The Jewish leader closest to Putin is Chabad's Berel Lazar, one of Russia's two chief rabbis, a Milan-born, New York-ordained emissary, who first came here in the late 1980s on several trips to teach Judaism to refuseniks and was then appointed by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, to help revive and strengthen the Jewish community as the Soviet Union entered its death throes in 1990.
A father of 12 aged 49, with a graying beard and the trademark Chabad warmth -- he immediately invites me for Shabbat dinner when we meet -- Lazar works from a book-lined sixth-floor office in the Moscow Jewish Community Center building that houses his now-thriving Maryina Roshcha District synagogue.
When he arrived, Lazar recalls, there was "an underground" of people leading a return to Judaism. By 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev had granted "unofficial permission to open a school and a yeshiva." And when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, most everyone whose Judaism was important to them was leaving. "The place was emptying out. The Israeli embassy was sure there'd be no Jews left," says Lazar. "They laughed at us as we tried to fix up synagogues. It was a conveyor belt: come to shul, learn Hebrew, go to Israel. No one thought there'd be a future here." Putin Welcomes Kissinger: 'Old Friends' to Talk Shop
Ellen Berry Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin will meet Friday with former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to discuss world affairs, including elections in Russia and the United States, said Mr. Putin's press secretary, Dmitri S. Peskov.
Mr. Peskov said Mr. Kissinger requested the meeting in late November or early December. The two men are "old friends" who have met 8 or 10 times over the years, once dining at Mr. Kissinger's home in New York, he said. Mr. Peskov said Mr. Putin was interested in Mr. Kissinger's counsel about domestic politics, among other subjects.
"He values everyone's point of view, and especially such a wise man as Henry Kissinger," Mr. Peskov said. Alexander Dugin - The one Russian linking Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Henry Meyer, Onur Ant Dugin, who's been described as everything from an occult fascist to a mystical imperialist, lost his prestigious job running the sociology department at Moscow State University in 2014 after activists accused him of encouraging genocide. Thousands of people signed a petition calling for his removal after a rant in support of separatists in Ukraine in which he said, "kill, kill, kill." What is Duginism and why it matters
Youtube video by Freedom Alternative. Duginist publication calls Russians and Jews "chosen peoples"
Sean Jobst The volume was part of an effort to strengthen ties between the Eurasianist movement and Chabad and far-right-wing Zionist movements, approvingly quoting one of Bromberg's contemporaries (Lev Karsavin, who greeted the Soviet regime) about the "primordial tie between the Jewish people and Russia". Dugin has praised the predominant Jewish role in Bolshevism as representing a continued "positive" Jewry, that can now contribute to "the general struggle against Western culture" and to the founding of the "Great Eurasian Empire". He extolled "messianic national-bolshevism" as "the spiritual union of Jewish and Russian eurasianists". Rise of the NazBols
MAGA OPUS Bitchute video. Holocaust Deniers in Russia Now Face Five Years in Prison
ussian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Monday making the denial of Nazi crimes and distortion of the Soviet Union's role in the World War Two a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in jail.
The law, described by critics as an attempt to curb freedom of expression to appease conservative Russians, the ex-KGB spy's main support base, also criminalises the public desecration of war memorials.
The Kremlin has used World War Two as a pillar to unite a society that Putin has said lost its moral bearings following the 1991 Soviet collapse.
It has become increasingly risky for Russians to dispute an official line that glorifies the wartime achievements of the Soviet leadership and plays down its errors.
The new law would ban "wittingly spreading false information about the activity of the USSR during the years of World War Two". LIFE AFTER PUTIN: THE JARED KUSHNER OF RUSSIA
Fiona Zublin The putative son-in-law is the son of Nikolay Shamalov, one of Putin's longtime friends and hockey buddies. "Putin made Shamalov Jr. a billionaire and effected a transfer of wealth to the next generation," Dawisha says. Nikolay is also a shareholder in Rossiya Bank -- described by the BBC as the "personal bank" of Russian oligarchs -- and was sanctioned by the U.S. and EU after tensions mounted over the annexation of Crimea in 2014, along with several other Russian banks and businessmen. Former Israeli double agent shot dead near Putin's office
Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem Shabtai Kalmanovich, a former Israeli double agent who penetrated Golda Meir's government on behalf of the KGB, has been shot dead in Moscow.
Kalmanovich, who later became a prominent businessman and allegedly had links with the Russian mafia, died after an unidentified gunman fired at least 20 shots into his chauffeur-driven Mercedes Benz. Mr Kalmanovich's driver was seriously wounded in the incident.
"Kalmanovich had practically no chance of surviving," a police official was quoted as saying by Russia's Interfax news agency. "He died on the spot from numerous gun wounds." A figure with a colourful if chequered past, Kalmanovich and his Jewish family immigrated to Israel from Lithuania in 1971.
After becoming an Israeli citizen, he joined the Israeli Labour Party, was appointed to a position in the government press office and became a mole for the KGB. Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul
Robert Younes Was Robert Maxwell a Soviet spy? FBI files reveal US fears the media mogul was working for Russia
Rob Cooper Stalin & Secret Diaries: "Soviet Involvement in the Creation of the State of Israel"
The Maisky Diaries ed by Gabriel Gorodetsky, review: 'a spectacular find'
Nicholas Shakespeare n February 1953, two weeks before Stalin's death, Ivan Maisky, Soviet ambassador to London from 1932 to 1943, was arrested and accused of being a British spy. Interrogated 36 times in his Lubyanka cell, the stocky exdiplomat was detained for two years without books, pen or paper.
Rehabilitated in 1960 and desperate to write his memoirs, he was granted one year of limited access to his personal archive, which included the 1,500-page diary Maisky had kept while in London, when he enjoyed automatic access to the chief personalities of the day.
Published in the Sixties and written under the twin clouds of purges and censorship, his memoirs were apologetic, misleading and selective - and not terribly interesting. Then, in 1993, the historian Gabriel Gorodetsky discovered Maisky's original diary in the Russian Foreign Ministry. "Spiced with anecdotes and gossip", this differed radically from the official version. Its candid depictions of the British political and social scene reminded Gorodetsky of Samuel Pepys. Harry Hopkins, Soviet agent
But there are still many people alive who can remember when the chief confidant of President Franklin Roosevelt was a man named Harry Hopkins. And they will be understandably astonished to learn that in a message dated May 29, 1943, Iskhak Akhmerov, the chief Soviet "illegal" agent in the United States at the time, referred to an Agent 19 who had reported on discussions between Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in Washington at which the agent had been present. Only Harry Hopkins meets the requirements for this agent's identity. Small wonder that Akhmerov, in a lecture in Moscow in the early 1960s, identified Hopkins by name as "the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States." It took 50 years to bludgeon Alger Hiss' defenders into admitting that this suave bureaucrat, who rose to be chief of the State Department's Office of Special Political Affairs, had actually been a Soviet agent all along. And it will probably take another 50 to force Franklin Roosevelt's admirers to concede that their hero's closest confidant and adviser was yet another Soviet agent. But the documents and the testimony are now on the public record, and they make it plain that those of us who sounded the warning about Soviet espionage and policy subversion 50 years ago didn't know the half of it. The Resumption Of Russian-"Israeli" Free Trade Talks Proves Ties Are Fantastic
Andrew Korybko No, Russian-"Israeli" ties aren't in a state of "crisis" after the latter bombed Syria earlier this month, but are actually enjoying an unprecedented flourishment that won't be offset by whatever happens in the Arab Republic, and Moscow might even tie Tel Aviv into the same multilateral free trade area that has recently expanded to include Iran.
"Israel's" bombing of Syria earlier this month predictably prompted many in the Alt-Media to declare that this time Russia will surely 'teach its ally a lesson' by openly turning into the 'anti-Zionist crusader state' that their dogma has indoctrinated them into imagining that it's been this entire time. They were, as is becoming the norm, totally wrong, and three specific events prove that ties between the two sides aren't in a state of "crisis" but are rather flourishing, with the latest milestone in their relationship being the resumption of free trade talks. Israel and Russia are NOT on the verge of war. They are allies!
Andrew Korybko The alternative media community, especially its social media iteration, is experiencing collective psychosis in hallucinating that "Israel" and Russia are on the verge of war with one another.
The prevailing narrative is that Israeli "Defense Minister" Lieberman's threat to destroy Syria's air defense systems is tantamount to a declaration of war against Russia, with the assumption being that Moscow is on a crusade against Zionism and has thus become Tel Aviv's worst enemy.
There's no diplomatic way to say this, but the presumptions on which such a crazy conclusion has been reached are absolutely and utterly wrong.
Far from being Israel's hated nemesis like many in the alternative media community wishfully pretend that it is, Moscow is one of Tel Aviv's closest allies, and this is entirely due to President Putin's deliberate policies. Not only does he enjoy a very strong personal friendship with Netanyahu, but President Putin also sees a lot of opportunity to advance his country's interests in Israel through the large Russian diaspora there. Does anyone still seriously think that Russia and Israel aren't allies
Andrew Korybko Russian Oil Giant Rosneft Expands in Middle East
Russia's state-owned oil company Rosneft has begun to expand its operations in the Middle East with deals in Libya and Iraq, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday.
Rosneft, which is run by Putin ally Igor Sechin, struck a deal to purchase an undisclosed amount of crude oil from the Libyan National Oil Corp on Monday. The deal will also allow the Russian company to invest in exploration and production in the volatile North African country.
The chairman of National Oil Corp welcomed the deal, saying it would help to stabilize the warring country's economy.
"We need the assistance and investment of major international oil companies to reach our production goals and stabilize our economy," NOC Chairman Mustafa Sanalla said in a statement.
Rosneft announced on the same day it had struck a deal with authorities of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq to purchase oil until 2019. The deal with Kurdish authorities will also allow the Russian company to invest in exploration and production. REPORT: MAJORITY OF ISRAELI OIL IMPORTED FROM KURDISTAN
Sharon Udasin On Sunday night, The Financial Times reported that Israel had imported as much as 77 percent of its oil supply from Kurdistan in recent months, bringing in some 19 million barrels between the beginning of May and August 11. During that period, more than a third of all northern Iraqi exports, shipped through Turkey's Ceyhan port, went to Israel, with transactions amounting to almost $1b., the report said, citing "shipping data, trading sources and satellite tanker tracking."
Nonetheless, Dr. Amit Mor, CEO of the Eco Energy Financial and Strategic Consulting firm, confirmed to The Jerusalem Post that "for some time, Kurdish oil [has been arriving] to the Ashkelon petroleum port." In all likelihood, he explained, the oil was being stored at the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company facilities for commercial reasons, by international trading firms and investors. Israel's refineries may then be purchasing the oil from the international companies, he added.
Importing Kurdish oil could be beneficial to Israel from both geostrategic and economic perspectives, according to Mor.
"Although I don't think the Kurds are having major difficulties in exporting their oil these days, it is very sensible for the Israeli refineries to purchase Kurdish oil via Turkey's Ceyhan petroleum port, as it takes only one day of sailing for oil tankers to reach the Ashkelon petroleum port. Such is also the case for [Azerbaijani] oil," he said. The Truth about Oil and the Iraq War, 15 Years Later
Gary Vogler The oil agenda I discovered and experienced was to supply Iraq oil to Israel. The players were the neoconservatives in the Bush Administration, their favorite Iraqi – Dr Ahmed Chalabi and the Israeli government. One of the motives was because Israel was paying a huge premium for its oil imports and this premium had just started in the late1990s. The agenda called for the reopening of the old Kirkuk to Haifa pipeline and its significant expansion. When this pipeline plan became unattainable in the 2nd half of 2003 then Chalabi took other actions to get inexpensive Iraqi oil to Israel.
A much more credible explanation for intentionally destroying the Syrian export pipeline than what Secretary Rumsfeld told the NY Times was found in the British press. The Guardian, a London newspaper, quoted a retired CIA agent just after the Syria pipeline attack. "It has long been a dream of a powerful section of the people now driving the Bush administration and the war in Iraq to safeguard Israel's energy supply. Russia is suspected of deploying troops to Libya, but what's Moscow's play in this muddy conflict?
"Vladimir Putin wants to make the war-torn North African country 'his new Syria.'" Citing sources in British intelligence, the tabloid claimed that Russia has already embedded "dozens" of GRU agents and Spetsnaz troops in eastern Libya, and established two military bases in the coastal towns of Tobruk and Benghazi, supposedly using the Wagner private military group as "cover." Russian Kalibr anti-ship missiles and S-300 air-defense systems are also reportedly on the ground in Libya. The tabloid's sources claimed that the Kremlin has sided with the warlord General Khalifa Haftar in an effort to "seize control of the country's coastline." This would allegedly give Russia the power to unleash a "fresh tidal wave of migrants" across the Mediterranean "like a tap."
note - Khalifa Belqasim Haftar studied in Egypt and the Soviet Union, also at the M.V. Frunze Military Academy. He is a fluent Russian speaker. In 1969, Haftar took part in the coup that brought Muammar Gaddafi to power and overthrew the monarchy. 9/11 inside job "impossible to conceal," says Vladimir Putin
"Claims that the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 were orchestrated by US intelligence agencies are "complete nonsense," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told attendees of a youth forum" How the War on Terrorism Did Russia a Favor
Simon Shuster "Putin, who had been the first to call Bush with his sympathy after learning of the 9/11 attacks, graciously offered to help with the invasion of Afghanistan" Putin: Russia warned U.S. of Iraq terror
"Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country warned the United States several times that Saddam Hussein's regime was planning terror attacks on the United States and its overseas interests" REPORT: IRAN ACCUSES RUSSIA OF GIVING ISRAEL CODES FOR SYRIAN AIR DEFENSES
Yasser Okbi, Maariv Hashavua According to the source, Damascus and Tehran "were shocked" every time the Russian-made air defense system did not work to defend Syria's airspace, or even give notification that the air space had been penetrated in order to evacuate outposts prior to the airstrike. The systems are supposed to identify the takeoff of Israeli Air Force jets from their bases because of the small distance between the countries and is even supposed to attempt to target the planes and any missiles that are fired from them.
According to the source, three weeks ago, during Iranian military maneuvers, Iranian engineers hacked into the codes of the S-300, but when the Bavar-373 was not working in conjunction with the Russian air defense system the experiment was suspended.
The source said further that the Iranian Defense Ministry sent several engineers to Syria to change the codes of the air defense system that was under the control of the Syrian army, without Moscow's knowledge. "They succeeded in changing some of the codes last month and therefore when the Israel fighter jets took off from their bases - the air defense system succeeded in identifying them and firing interceptor missiles at them and at the missiles they had launched." Russia canceled S-300 deal with Assad, report says
Ron Friedman Despite official statements to the contrary, Russia will not transfer a shipment of advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Syria, an unnamed senior Russian official has told London's Sunday Times.
According to Sunday's report, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu managed to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin of the risk such a deal posed to regional stability and Israeli civilians, during a meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi earlier this month, leading to the cancelation of the planned sale of six S-300 batteries to Bashar Assad's regime.
In their meeting, Netanyahu reportedly warned Putin that Moscow's sale of the sophisticated missile defense system to Assad could push the Middle East into war, and argued that the S-300 had no relevance to Assad's civil-war battles against rebel groups. Netanyahu visits Moscow in secret to obstruct Iran missile sale
Rory McCarthy Russia and Israel were both facing domestic embarrassment today after it emerged that the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, had taken a secret trip to Moscow to persuade the Russians not to sell anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.
Officials in Moscow and Jerusalem were left backtracking after they initially denied media reports that Netanyahu flew by private jet to Russia to discourage the Kremlin from giving the Iranians Russia's advanced S-300 system Israel, Russia to cooperate on foreign troop exit from Syria - Netanyahu
Putin's Double Game in Syria: Russian-Israeli Cooperation
Sean Jobst Assorted Assad groupies and Putin cultists use as "evidence" of Putin's alleged chess-playing hidden "maneuvering" against Israel, his support for the Syrian government side in Syria's war. They simply ignore all evidence to the contrary, not least of which they're at a complete loss to explain why the Russian air force never engages with Israeli planes attacking their alleged "allies" in Syria, including this very week. Why is Putin always silent even in token criticism?
Much can be said about the Kremlin's role in setting the stage for what later became ISIS, by exporting thousands of extremists from its occupied territories in the Caucasus in 2013 and 2014, knowing full well they'd go to Syria. The flow of Russian-speaking fighters has continued to ISIS and other armed Wahhabist groups in Syria, yet we're supposed to believe this large number couldn't leave the Russian borders without complicity from the security services? Senior Russian Rabbi Says Putin's Ouster Would Endanger Jews
Boroda's Federation is among several Russian Jewish organizations that credit Putin for facilitating efforts to re-consolidate Russia's Jewish community of 350,000 after decades of communist repression.
Under Putin, dozens of synagogues have been renovated with government support and a massive Jewish museum was opened in Moscow with state funding.
"In Russia, there is virtually unlimited freedom of religion and the Jewish community must ensure this situation continues," Boroda said. "The support for religious institutions is wider than in the United States and defense of Jews against manifestations of anti-Semitism is greater than in other European countries. We do not have the privilege of losing what we have achieved and the support of the government for the community." Russia-Israel Relationship Transformed by Syria Conflict
Lidia Averbukh and Margarete Klein The American Jews Who Are Proud to Be Pro-Putin
Lev Stesin An alarming number of Jews who fled authoritarian Soviet Russia for America are now admirers of Mr. Putin, a peculiar show of intellectual sclerosis and utter ethical failure
President Donald Trump is one more factor in these shifting attitudes. Many Russian-speaking Jews have flocked en masse to support him. His direct tone and 'toughness' fell on fertile ground. Many abhor the Democratic Party in general and the radical tendencies of its extreme left wing in particular. They tend to think of liberalism as a modern-day reincarnation of Communism, and of Islam as a modern-day Nazism and the biggest threat facing the world. Grey is not a color they know: you're either with or against them. The Democratic Order's Berezovsky Trap
Phil Butler It was Litvinenko the UK government and the mainstream media said was "probably" ordered killed by Vladimir Putin. But the other side of the story tells of two who were intricately involved in the steeping criminal activity Boris Yeltsin essentially resigned over, and the literal theft of the heritage of the Russian people from the instant of perestroika onward. In a poisonous bit of irony, a slew of Russian mafia outcasts and New World Order captains have now fallen into the same game of blackmail and murderous betrayal, or something my Dutch colleague Holger Eekhof refers to as "The Berezovsky Trap". The Berezovsky Trap Revisited: The Israel Connection
Phil Butler The Russian mafia we've seen on TV is also known as the "Red Octopus", but this organization is really the Jewish mafia in disguise. The story you are reading comes full circle when you research how the Jewish mafia has links to Mossad, the Rothschild family, the Federal Reserve Bank, and to powerful Jewish organizations such as AIPAC and the ADL. Like I mentioned, the Chuck Schumer-Komorov-Ivankov association is one clue to how deep and intricate this organization's "screws" go into the American system. Laura Radanko, in her book "The Superpower of Crime", gives up the goods on Russian Jews as instruments for Israeli aims:
"During the detente days of the early 1970s, when Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had agreed to allow the limited emigration of Soviet Jews, thousands of hard-core criminals, many of them released from Soviet Gulags by the KGB, took advantage of their nominal Jewish status to swarm into the United States ." https://journal-neo.org/2017/05/08/the-berezovsky-trap-revisited-the-israel-connection/ RUSSIAN OLIGARCH WANTED TO TURN MY JOKE INTO REALITY
Jon Schwartz "Berezovsky also had another brilliant idea, which to his regret Putin did not grasp: creating a fake two-party system, with Putin at the head of a socialist-democrat sort of party and Berezovsky leading a neoconservative one, or the other way around."
Here are Berezovsky's exact words, in an interview with Gessen from 2008:
When Putin became president, I was for a long time in a state of profound naiveté. Well, I went to him I told him: "Listen, Volodya, what happened: we destroyed the entire political space. Devoured, not destroyed, but devoured it. We absolutely dominated Look, I'll suggest that we can not have effective political system, if there's a tough competition. So I suggest we create an artificial two-party system. So, let's say, the left and right. A Socially Oriented party and neo-conservatives liberal party. Choose any. And I'll make another party. At the same time, my own heart is closer to neoconservatives, and I think so, you [Putin] are socially oriented. " I earnestly believed then that he understood it. But I think that even then he looked at me like I was crazy. The Hidden Author of Putinism: How Vladislav Surkov invented the new Russia
Peter Pomerantsev There is no mention of holy wars in Surkov's vision, none of the cabaret used to provoke and tease the West. But there is a darkling vision of globalization, in which instead of everyone rising together, interconnection means multiple contests between movements and corporations and city-states -- where the old alliances, the EUs and NATOs and "the West," have all worn out, and where the Kremlin can play the new, fluctuating lines of loyalty and interest, the flows of oil and money, splitting Europe from America, pitting one Western company against another and against both their governments so no one knows whose interests are what and where they're headed. Documentary - HyperNormalisation
Adam Curtis We live in a time of great uncertainty and confusion. Events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control. Donald Trump, Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, random bomb attacks. And those who are supposed to be in power are paralysed - they have no idea what to do.
This film is the epic story of how we got to this strange place. It explains not only why these chaotic events are happening - but also why we, and our politicians, cannot understand them.
It shows that what has happened is that all of us in the West - not just the politicians and the journalists and the experts, but we ourselves - have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. But because it is all around us we accept it as normal.
But there is another world outside. Forces that politicians tried to forget and bury forty years ago - that then festered and mutated - but which are now turning on us with a vengeful fury. Piercing though the wall of our fake world.
Alternative links
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh2cDKyFdyU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUiqaFIONPQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thLgkQBFTPw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM PUTINISM: INTRODUCTION
Zarina Zabrisky translation of excerpts from a blog Putinism As Is by a Radio Svoboda analyst and blogger Artem Kruglov. In the light of Helsinki Summit 2018 and Trump/Putin relationship, it is important to know these facts of Putin's background. "The group around Putin today is the same as the one that brought him to power from St. Petersburg in the 1990s," wrote celebrated author Karen Dawisha in her book Putin's Kleptocracy. In today's political climate it is critical for the EU and US analysts, journalists and general audience to understand the true origin and background of the Russian mafia state. "In the 90s, gangsters and the KGB fused into one structure," said Olga Litvinenko... This structure is what we now call a mafia state. "Putin was never in business and he does not have 'business associates,'" noted Nikita Kulachenkov, a forensic accountant and political activist fighting against corruption in the Russian government, has also served as a principal investigator at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Moscow and founded by Alexei Navalny. "Russian oligarchs do not own their fortunes. They can't hide their money. They need the status quo and will fight for it, using the mafia methods"  --  even if it requires taking these mafia methods to the West.
Read the profiles of Putin's allies. The incomplete list of their achievements includes cocaine and heroin trade, illegal arms trafficking, running prostitution rings, using child labor for diamond mining, smuggling, extortion, assassinations, dismemberment, blackmail, racketeering, theft, money-laundering and much more.
Is Israel becoming a mafia state?
Simona Weinglass
Some 25% of the revenue of Israel's lauded high-tech sector comes from shady or fraudulent industries; three-quarters of MKs are said to be in thrall to special interest groups.
Israel has become one of the world's leading exporters of investment scams, stealing an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion per year from victims worldwide.
Despite the fact that Israeli police recently announced that these investment scams are largely run by organized crime, which has grown to "monstrous proportions" as a consequence of little to no law enforcement for years, the Israeli government, parliament and authorities have to date proved unwilling or unable to shut them down, in part because these fraudulent industries have a powerful lobby in the Knesset. How Russia's mafia is taking over Israel's underworld
Billions invested in Israel
Former police chief Asaf Hefetz says £2.5bn ($4bn) of organised crime money from the former Soviet Union has been invested in Israeli real estate, businesses and banks in the past seven years. Jewish-American organized crime
The History of the Jews and the Mob
Youtube video featuring Jewish 'tough guy' Myron Sugerman, the "Last Jewish Gangster," running his mouth for an hour complaining about antisemitism while bragging about their criminal history. The deluded Sugerman spills the beans on how the Jewish mob played in arming Jewish terrorists in the Middle-East. Israeli Mafia
Out of prison, notorious Russian mobster yearns to return home
Jake Pearson New York's most notorious living Russian (Jewish) mobster just wants to go back to the motherland.
Once flush from heroin trafficking, tax fraud schemes and other criminal enterprises, Boris Nayfeld is now 70, fresh out of prison for the third time, divorced and broke. And he is left with few job prospects in his adopted country, at least those in line with his experiences.
"I can't do nothing," Nayfeld griped in a thick Russian accent between shots of vodka at a restaurant a few blocks north of Brooklyn's Brighton Beach neighborhood, which has been a haven for immigrants from the former Soviet Union since the 1970s. "Give me a chance to start a new life." Human Trafficking: Russian Mafia and the Israeli Connection
The illegal trafficking of human beings is a growing international crime. Criminal groups have developed a brisk trade selling tens of thousands of women into prostitution. The result is virtual enslavement, as Attorney General John Ashcroft emphasized in announcing new regulations for dealing with traffickers and their victims. Russian mafia, and its connections in Israel, provide an example of how the trade works.
The newspaper ad is hard to resist: a high paying job as a waitress or secretary or model, and it helps to be young and pretty.
For desperate women in the shrunken economies of Russia, Ukraine, and other states of the former Soviet Union, the offer from abroad is too good to be true, and of course it is not. But they do not know that as they make their first contact with the elaborate traffic in prostitution. Sharp Increase in Sex Trafficking in Years Since Israel Lifted Visa Restrictions
Or Kashti Justice Ministry official says criminals are bringing in women from Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Russia and Georgia on three-month tourist visas.

Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking in Women: Israel's Blood Money

Esther Hertzog and Erella Shadmi Destination Israel for Sex 'Slaves'
Eric Silver "On the third night I was desperate," she says. "I tried to break out. I shouted for help. But it was no use. Two men, who spoke Russian with a Georgian accent, carted me off to a massage parlour. When I refused to work there, they beat me up. They raped me, punched my body, slapped my face. I agreed." Israel becoming 'safe haven for paedophiles' with laws that allow any Jews to legally return, activists claim
Peter Walker 14 Israelis suspected of running child sex trafficking ring in Colombia
Toi Staff Fourteen Israelis are suspected by Colombian authorities of running a child sex trafficking ring which marketed tour packages from Israel to the Latin American country aimed at businessmen and recently discharged soldiers, according to reports on Monday.. Israeli who headed Colombia child prostitution ring arrested in Portugal
An ex-Israeli soldier wanted in Colombia for heading a child prostitution ring and sex trafficking offences has been arrested in Portugal.
Forty-five-year-old Assi Ben-Mosh – also known as Assi Moosh – was arrested near the Portuguese capital Lisbon on Wednesday during an operation by Spain's Guardia Civil police force. The Guardia Civil said in a statement that Ben-Mosh is thought to have been hiding on the Spanish island of Ibiza, and then in Barcelona, before eventually being arrested in Portugal this week. It added that Ben-Mosh had been using a fake Israeli ID, the Times of Israel reported yesterday.
Ben-Mosh is wanted by Colombian authorities for running a child prostitution ring in the small fishing village of Taganga, located on the South American country's Caribbean coast. He, along with a group of ex-Israeli soldiers, reportedly turned the luxury Benjamin Hostel into a "sex and drug den" in which more than 250 underage girls were subjected to sexual exploitation. The shocking story of Israel's disappeared babies
Jonathan Cook His biological parents - recent immigrants to Israel from Tunisia - were told their child had died during delivery. They were sent home without a death certificate and denied the chance to see their baby's body or a grave. A Field Guide to Israeli Organized Crime
Assaf Gur Exploring an underworld of gambling, drug trafficking, arms dealing, extortion, assassination, and corruption 'Israel's First Oligarch' Grigori Lerner ¦ How a Serial Criminal Got Help From an Israeli Government Minister
Gidi Weitz and Maya Zinshtein Immigrant Absorption Minister Sofa Landver pursued business ties with serial criminal Gregory Lerner. Her former chief of staff had links to Alexei Zakharenko, a Russian tycoon who disappeared two years ago. New facts from police files, published here for the first time.
He also admitted to receiving $37 million fraudulently from Mostroy, a Russian bank, establishing a series of straw companies that he controlled, and committing numberless forgeries. He admitted to having defrauded Semion Mogilevich, who holds Russian and Israeli citizenship and is high on the FBI's most-wanted list. Reputed Israeli Ecstasy Dealer Charged in U.S.
NEW YORK - An Israeli, once reputedly the world's most active ecstasy dealer, was extradited from Spain and charged in a U.S. court Wednesday with recruiting women nightclub strippers as couriers and laundering millions of dollars in cash.
Known as "The Fat Man," Oded Tuito was designated as a drug kingpin by the U.S. government a year ago. He pleaded not guilty in a U.S. District Court in Brooklyn to charges of supervising the trafficking of millions of ecstasy pills to New York from Paris, Brussels and Frankfurt.
Prosecutors accused Tuito, a 41-year-old Israeli citizen who lived in New York, California and France before his arrest in May 2001 in Barcelona of operating the international trafficking scheme since 1997. Israeli Organ-trafficking Ring Busted
Ukrainian police have smashed an Israeli-run organ-trafficking network illegally recruiting organ donors to send their body parts to Israel.
Ukrainian authorities said on Friday that twelve people, most of them Israelis, were arrested for taking part in a scheme to recruit organ donors from Ukraine and other former Soviet countries via internet and transplant the organs into Israelis who had ordered them in advance.
The network, which sought mostly kidneys, offered as much as USD 10,000 per body part and according to Ukraine's interior ministry most of the organ donors were impoverished young women.
The head of the ministry's department on human trafficking, Yuriy Kucher, said the transplant surgeries, which cost up to USD 200,000 an operation, were performed in Kiev, Azerbaijan and Ecuador. Israeli Organ Trafficking and Theft: From Moldova to Palestine
Alison Weir The fact is, however, that Israeli organ harvesting – sometimes with Israeli governmental funding and the participation of high Israeli officials, prominent Israeli physicians, and Israeli ministries – has been documented for many years. Among the victims have been Palestinians.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes is Chancellor's Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley, the founder of Organ Watch, and the author of scholarly books and articles on organ trafficking. She is the pundit mainstream media call upon when they need expert commentary on the topic.5
While Scheper-Hughes emphasizes that traffickers and procurers come from numerous nations and ethnicities, including Americans and Arabs, she is unflinchingly honest in speaking about the Israeli connection:
"Israel is at the top," she states. "It has tentacles reaching out worldwide." Organ Trafficking: Anatomy of a network. Israeli nexus #1
Robert Maxwell Organ Trafficking: Anatomy of a network. Israeli nexus #1 Israeli organ trafficker walks free in Cyprus
An Israeli man convicted of international human organ trafficking walked free on Tuesday, after Russian authorities failed to challenge a Larnaca judge who dismissed an extradition request. Gangsters of the Mediterranean
Seb Rotella In hundreds of telephone calls intercepted during the year before Petrov's arrest in 2008, Spanish investigators listened as the mob boss chatted with powerful businessmen, notorious criminals and high-level officials in the government of Vladimir Putin. During one trip to Russia, Petrov called his son to say he had just met with a man who turned out to be the Russian defense minister -- and to report that they had sorted out a land deal, the sale of some airplanes, and a scheme to invest in Russian energy companies. Britain's contribution to fighting Russian organised crime is 'less than negative', says renowned prosecutor
Tom Embury-Dennis Britain's contribution to fighting Russian organised crime is "less than negative", one of Europe's leading prosecutors has said.
Jose Grinda, hailed as the man who "brought down the Russian mafia in Spain", condemned the UK's lack of cooperation in a fight which has gone increasingly global.
"We have a wonderful relationship with the United States," the Spanish prosecutor told The American Interest magazine. "However we have a very serious problem in fighting organised crime with the UK. The truth behind McMafia: London is 'the jurisdiction of choice' for Russian crime gangs
Robert Verkaik
"Unfortunately, London has become the global centre for laundering the money and reputations of Russian organised criminals. McMafia brings that realisation into the living rooms of people all over the country. Hopefully, this will actually lead to some political change and tougher rules in the future." Russians kill Dublin drugs lord in Spain
Henry McDonald Russian mafia hitmen shot dead Dublin gangland member Paddy Doyle on the Costa del Sol, senior gardai claimed this weekend
Doyle, the survivor of a vicious criminal turf war in south Dublin which has claimed at least 10 lives, was gunned down in Estepona last Monday. Veteran detectives with the Garda Siochana's 'Operation Anvil', the drive against Dublin's crime gangs, said the 27-year-old had beaten up a close relative of a Russian mafia leader based on the southern Spanish coastline.
'From what our Spanish colleagues have told us, this was a professional Russian hit. There were 13 shots and we don't think they wasted a bullet. It has a military-trained assassin written all over it, possibly ex-special forces,' a senior detective told The Observer. 'The intelligence coming back from the Costa del Sol is that Paddy Doyle crossed the Russian mafia, which is something you do there at your peril.' Cold blood: Shocking CCTV footage of Kinahan enforcer's murder
Owen Conlon and Stephen Breen THIS is the moment the Kinahans' main enforcer met his end at the hands of Russian gangsters -- with the blessing of his old boss Christy. WATCH: RUSSIAN MAFIA LEADER ARRESTED ON SPAIN'S COSTA DEL SOL WHILE 'PLOTTING GANG RIVAL'S MURDER'
Luke Madeira One of the leaders is said to be third-in-command of the mafia and was arrested as the group held a meeting in which they were said to be planning the assassination of a rival gang leader.
According to El Correo, the planned assassination of a rival gang leader was to warn other clans of their strength in Europe.
The suspects were also thought to have been trying to restructure the organisation after Policia Nacional arrested 129 members of the clan in June, including seven highly ranked members.
The investigation was then reopened in July after a former leader of a criminal gang in Lithuania was spotted in Marbella. Roman Abramovich invests $10m in StoreDot
June 15, 2014 | According to reports by the "Wall Street Journal" Russian billionaire and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich invested $10 million in StoreDot. StoreDot is an Israeli startup producing electronics using bio-organic materials and recently made a splash in the headlines when it revealed a method for charging a Samsung smartphone in 30 seconds. The investment was carried out through Abramovich's asset management company Millhouse LLC, making this is the second investment of the firm in Israel. Israeli crowd-funding company i-Angels raises $2.25M from Millhouse Capital.
March 25, 2015 | Israeli crowd-funding company iAngels has raised $2.25 million in a seed round led by investment firm Millhouse Capital, which is owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. iAngels enables private investments in early-stage startups. It was founded in 2013 by Mor Assia and Shelly Hod Moyal. Roman Abramovich invests in AltaIR
October 26, 2015 | Millhouse Capital, the investment fund owned by Roman Abramovich is investing an undisclosed amount in AltaIR, the venture capital firm led by Russian-Austrian investor Igor Ryabenkiy. AltaIR has already invested in almost 80 companies from Israel, the US, Europe and Australia. Among its early stage investments in Israel are Gbooking, Crowdx, Klear, and Correlor. Oligarch Roman Abramovich Leads $21m Investment in Startup AnyClip
Inbal Orpaz Russian-British billionaire Roman Abramovich is deepening his presence in Israeli high-tech, leading a $21 million investment round in the start-up AnyClip Media. Russian Internet Giant Yandex Acquiring Israeli Geolocation Startup KitLocate
Inbal Orpaz Yandex, a Russian Internet company that operates the country's most popular search engine, said on Tuesday that it was acquiring Israel's KitLocate and plans to turn the startup into the basis a research and development center for an undisclosed price. Israeli social analytics startup Klear secures $1.5 million from Altair and TMT
Israeli startup Klear, formerly known as Twtrland, has raised $1.5 million in new funding from Altair and TMT Investments, two international venture funds with Russian backers.
The company defines its product as "a social intelligence platform that helps you do smarter marketing." It has rebranded to Klear, since the platform now looks at data from Facebook and Instagram in addition to Twitter, and plans to integrate other social networks, including Pinterest, Google Plus, and LinkedIn, TechCrunch notes. BILLIONAIRE ROMAN ABRAMOVICH REVEALED AS $30M. TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY DONOR
Greer Fay Cashman Yandex: Tool of Russian Disinformation and Cyber Operations in Ukraine
Sergey Sukhankin The recent decision by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to ban popular Russian social networks VKontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki, on May 15 (see EDM, June 7), provoked serious debate both inside Ukraine and abroad. Now that the initial anxiety over that ban has somewhat subsided, it is worth analyzing other, less commented-on but no less important, elements of the decree.
Aside from social networks, Poroshenko's May 15 decree bans Russian Internet search engine giant Yandex, some information technology (IT) programs, as well as anti-virus software (including Kaspersky and Doctor Web) that have allegedly been undermining Ukrainian information and cyber security. According to Colonel Oleksandr Tkachuk, from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), approximately 300 of the largest Ukrainian companies and corporations use Russian IT programs "directly controlled by the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB]" (Espreso.tv, April 27). Moreover, the Ukrainian side has suffered huge financial losses as a direct result of using Russian products. In his interview, the head of the information security division of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Valentin Petrov, noted that Ukraine annually spends approximately one billion hryvnas (roughly $39 million) on Russian IT and software products (Ukrinform.ua, May 17). Russia's Billionaire Usmanov Among Investors Of Uber Taxi Service
USM Holdings owned by Russia's business magnate Alisher Usmanov and his partners is one of investors of the popular Uber taxi service, a source close to the company told TASS on Sunday.
The official representatives of USM and Uber in Russia have declined to comment on the reports.
Uber is an international transportation network company that develops mobile app for requesting trips with personal drivers. The company provides services in 360 cities in 64 countries of the world.
In Russia, the company began operations in 2013. In October 2015, Uber said it planned to launch services in all Russian million-strong cities this year. The value of the car-booking company is estimated at $62.5 billion, CNBC reported earlier this month citing sources.
USM Holdings Ltd. is an international company that has assets in metals and mining industry, telecommunications, the Internet and mass media. USM's main shareholders are Alisher Usmanov, Vladimir Skoch and Farhad Moshiri. Usmanov has earlier invested in Apple, Facebook, Alibaba, JD.com and other high-technology companies. VK taken over by the Kremlin claims founder Pavel Durov.
Durov started VKontakte, later known as VK, in 2006, which was initially influenced by Facebook.[16] During the time when he and his brother Nikolai built upon the VKontakte website, the company grew to a value of $3 billion.[5]
In 2011, he was involved in a standoff with police in St. Petersburg when the government demanded the removal of opposition politicians' pages after the 2011 election to the Duma; Durov posted a picture of a dog with his tongue out wearing a hoodie and the police left after an hour when he did not answer the door.[15][16]
In 2012, Durov publicly posted a picture of himself extending his middle finger and calling it his official response to Mail.ru's efforts to buy VK.[15] In December 2013, Durov was pressured[vague] into selling his 12% of VK stock to Ivan Tavrin, the owner of the major Russian internet company Mail.ru,[5] who subsequently sold it to Mail.ru, giving it 52% majority ownership of VK. In 2014, Mail.ru bought all remaining shares and became the sole owner of VK.[17][18]
Durov then claimed the company had been effectively taken over by Vladimir Putin's allies,[23][24] suggesting his ouster was the result of both his refusal to hand over personal details of users to federal law enforcement and his refusal to hand over the personal details of people who were members of a VKontakte group dedicated to the Euromaidan protest movement.[23][24] Durov then left Russia and stated that he had "no plans to go back"[24] and that "the country is incompatible with Internet business at the moment".[3] Mossad Launches New Social Media Account on VKontakte to Recruit Russians
Mossad is known for being a very secretive spy agency responsible for intelligence collection, covert operations and counterterrorism. Its director reports directly to the Prime Minister. A new group called "Mossad" has appeared on Vkontakte. According to information on the group's page anyone who wants to "say something" should click on the link provided below. Usmanov's Mail.ru Israeli technology connections.
Israeli mobile video platform secures $2 million from Mail.ru Group Magisto, an Israeli cloud-based mobile video platform, announced on Friday a $2 million investment from Mail.Ru Group, the LSE-listed Russian Internet giant. The investment is designed to fuel further growth and customer acquisition.
In addition, Magisto has integrated its offering into Odnoklassniki.ru, a subsidiary of Mail.Ru Group and the second largest social network in Russia with 33 million daily unique visitors.
Image recognition startup Cortica nabs $1.5M from Russian tech leader Mail.Ru Now the startup will have backing from Mail.Ru, which has a major presence in the Russian-speaking markets. Mail.Ru Group claims that its sites reach 86 percent of Russian-speaking Internet users every month. It operates top Russian email service Mail.Ru, two of the largest IM services (Mail.Ru Agent and ICQ), and two of the three largest Russian social networking sites (My World and Odnoklassniki.ru). Additionally, it owns a minority equity stake in top Russian social network Vkontakte.
"We are really excited to work with Mail.Ru Group," Cortica CEO and co-founder Igal Raichelgauz said in a statement. "Mail.ru shares our vision for leveraging Image2Text technology for visual search and contextual advertising and taking users' web surfing experience to a whole new level."
Cortica was founded in 2007 and has employess in New York City, Sunnyvale, Calif. and Israel.
https://www.cortica.com/ - The first AI capable of human-level image understanding.
ARCHIMEDICX Announces Partnership with Mail.Ru Group, Providing Millions with Access to the Best Medical Care in the World
a big data search engine for specialized medical facilities around the world, is announcing a partnership with Mail.Ru Group, the largest internet company in Russia. Mail.Ru Group will integrate ARCHIMEDICX onto its platform on Health Mail.Ru (the most popular health portal in Russia), allowing any user who searches for medical problems to use the ARCHIMEDICX search engine. Together, they will provide millions of users with vast information about the top treatment facilities in the world.
Billionaire Alisher Usmanov's partnership with Alibaba reveals his strategy for survival in the era of sanctions
Russian oligarchs are making difficult decisions in the face of possible new sanctions. Some are trying to do everything to distance themselves from those in the Kremlin. While others are doing the exact opposite and getting as close to the authorities as they can. The best example of the latter is Alisher Usmanov, who  --  on his 65th birthday no less  --  announced a deal fully in line with the government's aim to build economic ties with China. On September 11, telecommunications giant Megafon (partially owned by Usmanov), internet group Mail.ru Group (Usmanov owns 15% via Megafon), and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) announced the creation of a joint venture with Alibaba Group.
Usmanov publicly supports the "digital transformation" announced by Putin, a key part of the president's election campaign. Together with state conglomerate Rostec and Gazprombank, Usmanov in May announced the creation of a new digital company, MF Technology. Usmanov has also talked about a joint investment fund. All of this, of course, makes Usmanov very vulnerable to sanctions. But the billionaire has likely earned what he was probably fighting for in the first place: the Kremlin's loyalty. On his last birthday, Usmanov received a personal telegram from Putin. Kazakh Rakishev is a lead investor of Russian VC who held major stake in Mobl i
Rakishev is the lead investor of Fastlane Ventures, a Russian tech development company, he held a major stake in the Israeli visual media platform Mobli, and invested in the Russian bank card and loyalty program company IQcard. Rakishev is Chairman of Net Element International, a global technology group based in the US that specializes in value-added transaction services and mobile payments. The whole truth about Kenes Rakishev
Rakishev and Imangal Tasmagambetov
It is believed that in part Kenes Rakishev is a nominal figure. In reality, all the assets and billions that he allegedly owns belong to the higher elite of Kazakhstan, which uses Kenes as a screen. It's about the test of Rakishev Imangale Tasmagambetov,
Timur Kulibayev (the head of Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev), the head of the KNB Karime Massimov. Rakishev himself categorically denies such statements, assuring himself that he has achieved everything himself, thanks to his talents. And here is that he says under oath about his test Tasmagambetov. . Moshe Hogeg, Singulariteam partners (Rakishev) sued for $50m
"Embezzlement of tens of millions of shekels"
"Forbes Magazine" named Rakishev as one of the 50 most influential people in Kazakhstan, with wealth in excess of $2 billion. According to the statement of claim, Chen, a director in IDC Holdings, was a consultant in enterprises led by Singulariteam, including stox.com.
The manager of Singulariteam in 2014 was Adi Sheleg, a former shares trader who turned state's witness in the IDB share offering case, in which Nochi Dankner was later convicted of share manipulation. Singulariteam's chairperson in 2014 was former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was convicted of accepting a bribe in the Hazera Genetic case in 2015. Olmert served 18 months in prison in 2016-2017 for this conviction. Singulariteam's current chairperson is Hogeg. Lev Leviev claims to have personally appointed 8 of 18 members of the Knesset.
In this article we give an entertaining conversation Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, the current billionaire, and then "key holder" from the Treasury of WOMEN. Abramovich says that yesterday, when they were at Chernomyrdin, Polezhaev showed him (Berezovsky) a letter addressed to Yeltsin. Polezhaev spoke by A. Korabelshikov, he said that to meet the President now impossible, but he'll talk to Livshits, who must give this letter. Abramovich asked whether Berezovsky to deliver the letter to Livshits, he replies in the affirmative. Abramovich reports that yesterday he met Levayev. Levayev said that he is great friends with Netanyahu and if it is necessary that Netanyahu spoke in support of Yeltsin, he (Levayev) can organize. Levayev also said that of the 18 members of the Israeli government, he personally appoints 8, including the Minister of energy. So they will have plans there Russia oligarch and Pres. of Israeli Jewish Congress, Vladimir Slutsker is a serious criminal
If analysts immediately suspected in this contract murder the political underpinnings, the investigation initially stubbornly clung to only the version of the connection of the crime with the commercial activities of the retired general. The son of the murdered, Boris Trofimov, then also suggested that his father's involvement in the conflict between the owners of the company, Vladimir Slutsker and Ambartsum Safaryan, who at that time was very tense, divided. Criminal list of Mikhail Fridman (Alfa Bank, Genesis Prize, CFR)
"Mikhail Fridman - Friend of Bibi, Putin and linked to Trump, allegedly. Dual citizen of Israel and Russia." - Jon Swinn
Part 1 - https://rucriminal.info/en/material/664?hl=israel Is Jewish Oligarch the Cyber Link Between Donald Trump and Russia?
Larry Cohler-Esses Is a Russian Jewish oligarch with Israeli citizenship and close ties to both Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu running a secret cyber-communications channel between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russian authorities?
That question, about billionaire Mikhail Fridman, is at the heart of a new and detailed investigative report by Franklin Foer, the former editor of The New Republic, published Tuesday on the news website Slate.
According to a story published in The New York Times just hours after Foer's report went live, FBI investigators looked into -- and ultimately came to doubt -- evidence that a mysterious server registered to the Trump Organization was receiving regular covert email communiqués from two servers registered to Fridman's Alfa Bank, the largest commercial bank in Russia. Tea Pain - Alfa Bank server connection to Trump Tower
Trump Tower's "Stealth Russian Data Machine"
Jared Kushner is currently taking a victory lap, crowin' about his "Stealth Data Machine" that put Donald Trump over the top in the 2016 race. Let's pry off the lid and peer into the inner-workings of this "Data Machine."
Major Alfa Bank-Trump Tower Breakthrough! The funny thing about mysteries is sometime the answer is starin' you right in the face so intently you can't see it. A year ago, Tea Pain saw a signal in the noise that got him lookin' into the mystery of the Trump Tower/Alfa Bank server scandal.
Trump Tower's "Stealth Russian Data Machine"
Mikhail Fridman's bank is linked to financing the installation of nuclear reactors in Iran.
Tara Palmeri Fridman's Alfa Bank provided financing throughout the 2000s to Atomstroyexport, the state-owned Russian nuclear vendor that installed the reactors at Bushehr, according to reports.
DIAMOND KINGS, LUXURY CONDOS, CORRUPT COPS AND CHINESE SPIES
Zarina Zabrisky In 2008, a self-pronounced Putin's friend, USSR-born Israeli Lev Leviev sold $710 million in Manhattan real estate to a subsidiary of the infamous 88 Queensway Group. In 2011, Blackstone bought 51% of one of three properties, the old New York Times Building. In 2015, Jared Kushner's company bought the remaining 49%. The Mueller Report, Alfa Bank, and the Deep State
Peter Dale Scott As the Guardian reported in 2002, Alfa's 1990s clout in Washington was demonstrated when its oil company, Tyumen,
was loaned $489m in credits by the US Export-Import Bank after lobbying by Halliburton . The [Clinton] White House and State Department tried to veto the Russian deal. But after intense lobbying by Halliburton the objections were overruled on Capitol Hill [which then was Republican controlled] . The State Department's concerns were based on the fact that Tyumen was controlled by a holding conglomerate, the Alfa Group, that had been investigated in Russia for mafia connections. Fridman is behind Alfa group Russia-Israel investments
Netanyahu's 'list of millionaires'
List of potential donors prepared by then-opposition leader in 2007 provides peek into his fundraising industry in US. Officials include extreme rightists, people who got in trouble with law.
Included in the list of prominently Jewish millionaires and billionaires appears the name 'Donald Trump'. Genesis Prize: Flattering Oligarchs and Laundering Their Ill-Gotten Gains
Richard Silerstein Among the oligarchs are Mikhail Fridman (net worth, $18-billion and 46th on Forbes list of the richest people in the world and second richest Russian) and some of his cronies, Petr Aven (chairman of Alfa Bank, Russia's largest commercial bank) and Stan Polovets (who made his billions in Russian energy). Here's a Foreign Policy article from way back in 2000, detailing how these crooks stripped assets and stole billions.
" Asset-stripping has also victimized major international oil companies. In a highly publicized case, [Mikhail] Fridman's Tyumen Oil Company (TNK) allegedly stole Sidanko's most valuable assets by manipulatinig the bankruptcy process. According to defrauded Sidanko shareholders (who include BP Amoco), the theft was carried out through the corrupt appointment of a TNK-friendly receiver, the unlawful reduction of the claims of major creditors such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (in which the United States holds shares), and a rigged bankruptcy "auction" in which only TNK-affiliated companies could bid." Psy Group sister company controlled by Russian billionaire
Scott Stedman A month-long investigation into the corporate structure of the private intelligence company that met with Donald Trump Jr., Erik Prince, and George Nader in the middle of the 2016 election campaign has revealed that a sister company of Psy Group is controlled by a Russian billionaire. Investigation links Psy Group to Macedonian Troll Farms
Justin Hendrix New Knowledge also looks closely at "Kris Crawford," another Facebook account PSY-Group used in the pitch material obtained by the Wall Street Journal. While he appears to be an American man, Crawford's URL suggests his Facebook page used to belong to a "Martina Jakimovska." "Looking through the 'Kris Crawford's' account history it's still possible to see when Martina updated her profile photo and used Facebook to check in at a location in Macedonia," New Knowledge notes. The fake news machine: Inside a town gearing up for 2020
Veles used to make porcelain for the whole of Yugoslavia. Now it makes fake news.
This sleepy riverside town in Macedonia is home to dozens of website operators who churn out bogus stories designed to attract the attention of Americans. Each click adds cash to their bank accounts.
The scale is industrial: Over 100 websites were tracked here during the final weeks of the 2016 U.S. election campaign, producing fake news that mostly favored Republican candidate for President Donald Trump. Meet the shady Putin crony funding Russia's troll farm and mercenary army
Zack Beauchamp Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man widely referred to as "Putin's chef," doesn't actually prepare food. Instead, he cooks up international plots -- like Russia's campaign to use social media to undermine Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and promote Donald Trump's.

Prigozhin was among the 13 Russian nationals indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in February and is by far the most well-known. His ties to Putin go back to at least 2001: He's worked on everything from election interference to setting up pro-Putin newspapers to sending Russian mercenaries to Syria to fight on behalf of Bashar al-Assad's regime.
A recent Washington Post report says that he personally approved a Russian mercenary attack on US forces stationed in eastern Syria in early February; US intelligence, per the Post, intercepted a conversation where he promoted the idea.
"Putin's chef" would be better described as Putin's fixer: someone who does the Russian leader's dirty work, while giving Putin plausible deniability if things go wrong Deeper Than Blackwater

Jon Swinn Utkin became the CEO of Concord Management and Consulting LLC, which belongs to the Concord company group and is co-owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin.[8]
Prigozhin, or "Putin's chef" as he is also known, is among the 13 Russian nationals indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for his connections to troll farms involved in an operation to assist U.S. President Donald Trump win the 2016 Presidential election. According to the indictment , Mueller accuses troll farm company Internet Research Agency employees of "posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas, operating social media pages and groups designed to attract U.S. audiences."[9]
Prigozhin's Concord Management is directly involved with the administration of troll farm Internet Research Agency, according to documents published by hackers from Anonymous International.[10]
Understanding Krysha
The Putin-Prigozhin relation is great example of the "Krysha" concept. Krysha means roof and is a slang word for protection. In exchange for contracts with the Kremlin, oligarchs such as Prigozhin work on behalf of the Mafiya State.[11] Internet Research Agency
Kremlin-linked Billionaire, Netanyahu Friend Donated to Trump's Private Legal Fund
Len Blavatnik, who made his fortune in the former Soviet Union in the oil business, appears on a legal defense fund list uncovered by the Wall St. Journal A Soviet-born billionaire who is considered close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu donated to a private legal defense fund for U.S. President Donald Trump, the Wall Street Journal revealed. Israel questions PM's billionaire friend over corruption charges
Israeli police are to fly to London today to question billionaire businessman Len Blavatnik in relation to corruption charges facing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Haaretz.
The Soviet-born media investor will primarily be questioned as to whether Netanyahu was involved in the sale of a television channel in 2015 to Arnon Mozes, publisher of Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, as part of "Case 2000". It is alleged that Netanyahu tried to negotiate a deal with Mozes, offering legislation that would impede the activities of Mozes' rival paper, Israel Hayom, in return for more favourable media coverage of the prime minister and his policies. Blavatnik's ties to the Bronfmans.
Blavatnik's the Bronfman Buyer! Oil Tycoon Spills $50 M.-Plus for Townhouse
Every kvetching New Yorker wants more space. But only a Russian-born, Harvard-trained oil tycoon would want more legroom than a 14-room Fifth Avenue co-op (bought just this year for $27.5 million) and an East 63rd Street palace (bought two years ago for $31.25 million).
Those properties didn't content Len Blavatnik. According to two sources, he's the buyer for Seagram heir Edgar Bronfman Jr.'s 31-foot-wide townhouse at 15 East 64th.
Time Inc. Shares Rise After Reported Buyout Bid from Bronfman, Blavatnik
Edgar Bronfman Jr. and billionaire investors reportedly offered $18 a share for Time. Shares of Time Inc. were soaring as much as 20 percent ahead of the closing bell on Monday after the New York Post reported that the parent of magazines like People, Sports Illustrated and Time had turned down an acquisition offer from Edgar Bronfman Jr., Leonard Blavatnik and Ynon Kreiz.
Billionaire Len Blavatnik Buys Warner Music Group (From Bronfman) For $3.3 Billion

The billionaire oligarchs behind Alfa-Access-Renova (AAR)

Mikhail Fridman The oligarchs behind Alfa-Access-Renova (AAR) include Fridman.At 47, he has an estimated wealth of $15.1bn, making him Russia's seventh richest man.
Fridman and Peter Aven founded the Alfa Group Consortium – a holding company which controls Alfa Bank, Alfa Capital, Tyumen Oil, several construction material firms and a supermarket chain.
Len Blavatnik The multibillionaire recently agreed to pay $3.3bn for Warner Music via his industrial holding company Access Industries. Blavatnik is a major petrochemicals investor, but has occasionally bought media assets. Access has a controlling stake in Top Up TV, the pay-TV business.
Born in the Soviet Union in 1957, he emigrated with his family to the US in 1978. He lives in New York and London, where he has a home in Kensington Palace Gardens.
Viktor Vekselberg Ukraine-born oil and metals baron Vekselberg is overseeing a turnaround at aluminium giant UC Rusal, which he formed with fellow billionaire, Oleg Deripaska. Made first million selling scrap copper from old cables. In the 1990s together with fellow billionaire Leonard Blavatnik bought aluminum smelters to form a company called Sual. Consummate dealmaker also has interests in chemicals, utilities and telecoms.
Owns Fabergé egg collection.
German Khan A native of Kiev, graduated from the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys in 1988. The next year, with former classmate Fridman, co-founded Alfa-Eco, a commodities trader and predecessor of Alfa Group. Heads Alfa Group's oil business as executive director and board member of oil company TNK-BP. He enjoys hunting and has a large collection of sporting guns and rifles. MOSCOW'S SECRET WEAPON: THE ISRAELI MOSSAD AND THE ZIONIST CULTS
Putin met with the Exxon Mobil CEO, Jewish organisation leaders in Washington
Russia and Israel's Technion Agree to Launch Satellite in Joint Venture
Russia and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have agreed to a joint venture that will launch a satellite into space in 1995.
After a five-member delegation arrived here to finalize details of the venture, the agreement was signed Monday between the Technion and the Russian STC Complex. The Russian firm was established in 1991 to convert Soviet military technology into Russian civilian enterprises.
The Gurwinl-TechSat communications satellite was designed and built over a period of three years at a cost of $3.5 million. The satellite is scheduled to be launched into space in March, along with two other satellites from a site about 560 miles from Moscow. Create your business website with Powered by 123-reg Website Builder. Share by:

[Oct 26, 2019] Russiagate Probe Has Some Ambiguous News

Notable quotes:
"... The official GOP talking points are that the Impeachment trial is a Deep State partisan witch hunt, being conducted in private and the equivalent of a coup or an attempt to overturn the 2016 elections. This is just being done to create some image that those talking points are substantiated. ..."
"... The impeachment is an Intelligence Community (aka Deep State) operation condoned by the Dems. They have decided to widen the scope to include lots of crimes, rather than just the phone call/funding block issue. This ups the ante, as Trump could easily get out of that, but being continuously assaulted with new claims will be much more difficult. Thus, transforming his investigation into the completely QueenOfWarmongers rubbish known as RussiaGate into a criminal probe with supeona power and so forth creates a counter narrative which Trump can use to defend himself. ..."
"... As for handcuffs, my targets would be Bush, Cheney, Clapper and Brennan, and possibly Mueller too (see his 'management' of the Anthrax attacks). ..."
"... Brennan in cuffs will require his partners in crime at the Oval Office meeting of the principles in late 2016 to be led away in handcuffs also. The 2016 Oval Office meeting which launched the FISA court referral will necessarily implicate the POTUS. ..."
"... Tax evasion took down gangster Al Capone. Like Al Capone a lesser charge will have John Brennan viewing the world through iron bars. For the intelligence community to actively attempt to decide an election and then actively attempt the coup of a President is damn, damn, damn serious but it pales in comparison to the 9/11 false flag. John Brennan stood at the apex of the 9/11 treachery (interestingly, Robert Mueller was involved too, but his role appears limited to the cover up). It appears John Brennan will get away with 9/11. ..."
"... In other words the Mueller investigation literally was a conspiracy theory. Any mass media organization that discusses "conspiracy theories" but fails to point out this biggest one of them all is engaged in deliberate deceit. ..."
"... I suspect that John Bolton is in fact the mastermind behind this fake "whistleblower" stunt. it's the sort of action Bolton would do as the master bureaucrat, spread false rumors of what the call between Trump and Zelensky contained among his subordinates and Neocon fellow travellers to feed into the narrative of a corrupt deal with Zelensky to derail Trumps plans in Ukraine and Russia and feed the Democrats impeachment push. Trump declassifying the transcript of the conversation probably caught him by surprise and threw a wrench into his plans since Trump has refused to declassify documents in the past and the State Department probably would have argued that Trump not declassify the conversation. ..."
"... In an extraordinarily rare move, he ordered an inquiry into the prosecutors' handling of the case. Judge Sullivan insisted that the misconduct allegations were "too serious and too numerous" to be left to an internal Justice Department investigation. He appointed Washington lawyer Henry F. Schuelke III of Janis, Schuelke & Wechsler to investigate whether members of the trial team should be prosecuted for criminal contempt. ..."
Oct 26, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Russiagate Probe Has Some Ambiguous News

Here is a news wording that I, as a non-native English speaker, can easily understand.

Justice Dept. Is Said to Open Criminal Inquiry Into Its Own Russia Investigation

Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter. The move gives the prosecutor running it, John H. Durham, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to convene a grand jury and to file criminal charges.

In contrast these formulations in Bezos' blog on the very same issue are confusing me.

Justice Dept. investigation of Russia probe is criminal in nature, person familiar with case says

The federal prosecutor tapped by Attorney General William P. Barr to examine the origins of the FBI's probe of President Trump's 2016 campaign is conducting an investigation officials consider criminal in nature, according to a person familiar with the matter.
...
The significance of officials deeming Durham's probe "criminal" is difficult to determine by itself.
...
It was not immediately clear whether officials' consideration of his work as criminal represented a shift in the seriousness of his investigation or whether a grand jury had been convened.

Durham's work is considered as criminal? The investigation itself has committed a crime? The attorney is a criminal?

One wonders if this choice of phrasing was intended to be ambiguous.

Anyway.

I for one will cheer when Durham puts handcuffs on John Brennan.

Posted by b on October 25, 2019 at 12:09 UTC | Permalink

alain , Oct 25 2019 12:14 utc | 1

i'll drink to that, too. we're not the only ones.
ralphieboy , Oct 25 2019 12:15 utc | 2
The official GOP talking points are that the Impeachment trial is a Deep State partisan witch hunt, being conducted in private and the equivalent of a coup or an attempt to overturn the 2016 elections. This is just being done to create some image that those talking points are substantiated.
Bemildred , Oct 25 2019 12:40 utc | 3
WaPo text looks un-edited, bad grammar, missing particles, solecisms, tsk.
Andrew Weed , Oct 25 2019 12:49 utc | 5
why only John Brennan? Comey as well and all those shenanigans!
Fuzzball , Oct 25 2019 12:49 utc | 6
In order to understand this, you need to start with impeachment, and then look at what is behind that.

The impeachment is an Intelligence Community (aka Deep State) operation condoned by the Dems. They have decided to widen the scope to include lots of crimes, rather than just the phone call/funding block issue. This ups the ante, as Trump could easily get out of that, but being continuously assaulted with new claims will be much more difficult. Thus, transforming his investigation into the completely QueenOfWarmongers rubbish known as RussiaGate into a criminal probe with supeona power and so forth creates a counter narrative which Trump can use to defend himself.

This seems pretty obvious.

The more interesting thing is, why did Polosi take on the impeachment inquiry? Well, it will burn Biden, which is probably good because he's lost it. And, it will create all this anti-Trump sentiment. But, her job, via the DNC is to get a nominee who will keep the status quo and defeat Trump. They are currently putting their apples in the Warren bucket. This is acceptable to the powers behind the scenes (MIC/Oil/...) as she will do the least amount of change.

But, Polosi and the core Dems bigger problems are Burnie and Gabbard. They represent radical change and the powers that should not be will do whatever they can to prevent that. And, the bigger problem there is that Bernie's strategy is to create a movement which will continue to engage. From his 2016 campaign you get AOC and Omar who are also radical. Thus, this is a threat which will need to be constantly fought. And, with the lack of engagement by the younger generation with the standard media outlets, they are even harder to control.

Now that the cat is out of the bag about RussiaGate, I imagine that the powers that be are pissed off with QueenOfWarmongers for her stupid claims about Gabbard and Stein being Russian assets. Flogging a dead horse (does not make it run faster). This just further enrages those who are for more radical change.

Meanwhile, the "gang of four" are learning, independently and from Bernie, how power works in DC. This represents a further challenge.

As for handcuffs, my targets would be Bush, Cheney, Clapper and Brennan, and possibly Mueller too (see his 'management' of the Anthrax attacks).

Charles Misfeldt , Oct 25 2019 13:03 utc | 7
IMO this investigation of the Mueller investigation is one part revenge and the rest is gathering the evidence against Trump in order to bury it ahead of Trumps reelection. The full Mueller report nor the evidence to produce it have been released and with this new investigation controlled by Trumps protector it never will be while Barr and Trump are still in power.

The conservative ruling power elite are staging a coup in America in order to establish permanent conservative minority control of the levers of power and they see this as their last best hope of achieving that goal. Buckle up this is going to get ugly as the conservatives are starting to panic.

Rich , Oct 25 2019 13:10 utc | 8
Brennan in cuffs will require his partners in crime at the Oval Office meeting of the principles in late 2016 to be led away in handcuffs also. The 2016 Oval Office meeting which launched the FISA court referral will necessarily implicate the POTUS. However, I don't see these events materializing because compared to the president Trump replaced, Trump has been far less urbane, educated and civil. All we usually ask of presidents is to be cool and sophisticated when ordering the drone murders of our fellow U.S. Citizens, case in point as ordered by Barack Obama with the 8-year old Nasser al Awlaki and her 16-year old brother, Abdulrahman.
librul , Oct 25 2019 13:20 utc | 9
Tax evasion took down gangster Al Capone. Like Al Capone a lesser charge will have John Brennan viewing the world through iron bars. For the intelligence community to actively attempt to decide an election and then actively attempt the coup of a President is damn, damn, damn serious but it pales in comparison to the 9/11 false flag. John Brennan stood at the apex of the 9/11 treachery (interestingly, Robert Mueller was involved too, but his role appears limited to the cover up). It appears John Brennan will get away with 9/11.

But, like Al Capone, John Brennan will live out his life caged up with his own kind.

Richard , Oct 25 2019 13:28 utc | 10
With any luck this may all lead back to Obama, he is a truly evil man who (literally) got away with murder. Perhaps if he got dragged away in handcuffs with Trump, Brennan et al then we'd finally get a true assessment of his time as president...

https://richardhennerley.com/2018/10/15/lets-be-honest-about-obama/

Barovsky , Oct 25 2019 13:45 utc | 11
why only John Brennan? Comey as well and all those shenanigans!

Posted by: Andrew Weed | Oct 25 2019 12:49 utc | 5

Why not the whole shebang?! They all have blood on their hands.

librul , Oct 25 2019 13:47 utc | 12
From the early days of Russiagate I expected that the truth would never come out. (This is the US of A, after all) Democrats would continue to live in their media
shaped delusions. (I am a Green Party voter). What truth did come out would be shaped by the media to keep the Democratic voters steadfast in their heartfelt delusions.

Reuters has an article linked from their front page that is similar in intent to the Bezo-blog that b has pointed out. I tried to choose a couple of paragraphs from the Reuters article so that you would get the intent of it, but it is the *whole* thing, so read it.

**While reading it** try and see the article from the viewpoint of a brainwashed Democrat. The article was designed to feed confirmation bias.

Read the whole thing, please.

Here are two unsurprising paragraphs:

Democrats and some former law enforcement officials say Barr is using the Justice Department to chase unsubstantiated conspiracy theories that could benefit the Republican president politically and undermine former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
Mueller's investigation found that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump, and led to criminal convictions of several former campaign aides. But Mueller concluded that he did not have enough evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy with Russia.

U.S. Justice Department Russia probe review now criminal investigation: source

GDPBULL , Oct 25 2019 14:12 utc | 13
The wording is on purpose to allow a large segment of their low IQ readers to misunderstand the implications of the new development.
Russ , Oct 25 2019 14:48 utc | 14
Well, James Howard Kunstler has been waiting expectantly for a long time for this to begin, and he's crowing today.

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-sound-of-shoes-dropping-in-the-night/

The short of it: They're now already acting like a bunch of cockroaches scrambling when the light's turned on, all looking to pin the blame on someone else.

He'd also love to see leading media propagandists charged, something I wholeheartedly agree with. (Though I'd string up all the propagandists for much worse crimes than Russiagate, which like "impeachment" was never anything more than retarded political theater.)

William Gruff , Oct 25 2019 15:33 utc | 15
Only two options here folks: Either the Washington Bezos Post is a) staffed by deliberate liars or it is b) staffed by morons who cannot construct a comprehensible sentence.

Well, there is a third possibility: c) Both of the above.

psychohistorian , Oct 25 2019 15:36 utc | 16
The US is now a country that has a growing cabal of current and past leadership that are criminally complicit in deceiving the American public as is detailed in the Joe Rogan Experience #1368 - Edward Snowden video that is almost 3 hours long....see Petri comment # 67 in Open Thread for link.....this is not Snowden the glitz movie but Snowden the very intelligent and humanistically patriotic person.

The recent phase of deception, according to Snowden has its roots in the 3 letter spy agencies having overstepped constitutional bounds after 9/11. While the deception about monitoring of Americans is criminal, its long term underlying goal is, and has been, to cover up the take over of America by the international cult behind private finance led empire.

In case all missed the slow frog boiling transition, what use to be a country that was established to be by and for the people (E Pluribus Unum) has now been turned into a tool of unilateral financial control of the world that is faltering because China/Russia, et al are not going along with the program.

The ongoing deception house of cards is collapsing as Might-Makes-Right can no longer hold it together. The demise of the private finance/property/inheritance centered social contract of the West is not a straight forward collapse as we are seeing, but collapsing it is.

How so very interesting to watch unfold.....as Snowden would encourage you, each of us has our opportunity to play our part in evolving our society.....play your part without fear like Snowden encourages and has provided such moving example of.

information_agent , Oct 25 2019 15:38 utc | 17
I find it impossible to get my hopes up that justice will ever be served to anyone in a position of authority or malign influence in this country because they're all part of the same Kabuki theater designed to keep us divided, confused, and unable to coalesce around a strategy to confront them.

These investigations are always the stalling tactic they use to keep one side hoping for justice while making the opposing side feel that it's the victim of a witch hunt, and invariable both sides will be disappointed in the results while the power structure will remain intact.

The only time anything resembling "justice" is served is when some low-level persons with enough name recognition to make headlines, i.e. Martha Steward or these celebrity parents who paid to get their kids into college, are sacrificed in order to maintain the illusion of a functioning justice system. In reality the justice system we have is nothing more than another line in the phalanx of defense the ruling elites (see: globalists, capitalists, zionists) have built to protect their corrupt position of power.

Nobody who lies us into wars, orchestrates terrorist attacks (real or synthetic) against us, or smuggles heroin from Afghanistan to a city near you as part of a domestic destabilization campaign will ever get into trouble until we bring that trouble directly to them outside of official channels.

Paul Damascene , Oct 25 2019 15:45 utc | 18
Fuzzball @ 6:

To your list of indictments of Mueller you might add his role in the run up to 9/11 and in its (non)investigation; the Whitey Bulger travesty in Boston; Uranium One. I'm sure there's more. Precisely contrary to the Paladin of integrity portrait of Mueller, the Swamp would have so much on this guy as to make him a safe pair of hands with the Russiagate IO. Who else (unless senile) would want that turkey on their record?

Paul Damascene , Oct 25 2019 15:49 utc | 19
Fuzzball @ 6--
And to your list of other perps, we might consider adding:
Cheryl Mills, Clinton counsel
Susan Rice
Samantha Power
Comey the canary
Clinton herself
Glenn Simpson

and Mr. No-Scandal himself, Hoops and change $$ cha-ching.

David G , Oct 25 2019 15:52 utc | 20
That WashPost article, born to confuse, is bizarre. Good catch.

As for Durham, is it known here that he has a track record of covering up for CIA misdeeds: viz. , briefly, torture and destruction of evidence of torture? A pretty odd choice for Trump to have made to uncover the plot against him.

William Gruff , Oct 25 2019 15:52 utc | 21
re: the quote from Reuters by librul @12

"...Mueller ... did not have enough evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy..."

In other words the Mueller investigation literally was a conspiracy theory. Any mass media organization that discusses "conspiracy theories" but fails to point out this biggest one of them all is engaged in deliberate deceit.

Likklemore , Oct 25 2019 16:51 utc | 22
Here is Sidney Powell, General Michael Flynn's Attorney on that "Insurance Policy" of Peter Strzok and his lover Lisa Page:
Bombshell Court Filing Shows Michael Flynn FBI Interview Transcript Edited to Incriminate Him

In a seismic legal filing, lawyers for Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, have produced evidence they allege points to a "plot to set up an innocent man and create a crime" – conduct "so shocking to the conscience and so inimical to our system" they argue the case against him must be dismissed.

In the document, Flynn's lead legal representative Sydney Powell contends the very foundation of his prosecution, a 24th January 2017 FBI interview in which the Bureau alleges he lied about speaking with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak in December 2016.[.]

[.]
"I made your edits" to Michael Flynn's 302 -- his FBI report from the interview Mueller used to convict him

What edits were made?

Were they a part of their " insurance policy"

Who knew?

We need answers.[.]

We are going to need a lot of orange suits.

Bemildred , Oct 25 2019 16:52 utc | 23
This is a long inteview with Angelo Codevilla, a conservative writer, academic, and card carrying member of the Borg. I first ran into him around the time Russia went in to save Assad, in Asia Times. Some interesting views on the Borg, Russiagate, Snowden, Syria, Kissinger, etc.

The Codevilla Tapes

karlof1 , Oct 25 2019 16:56 utc | 24
Once upon a time if a person having a superior position in government or business got caught in an indisgression that impugned his/her honor, the individual would pull their pistol from their desk drawer and solve the problem as that was deemed the right & proper course of action -- the honorable thing to do to redeem one's self.

Thus once discovered after his first incident, for example, Bill Clinton would have spared us all much crap by ending his days while Governor of Arkansas; and before him, Nixon; and before him, Ike; and before him, Truman; Boeing's CEO; etc.

Alas, there's no sense of honor held by those seeking high office or corporate leadership. Perhaps the only such person to ever have publicly expressed any contrition for his position was Andrew Carnegie in his Gospel of Wealth .

But Philanthropy cannot ever atone for violation of the public trust. Even gangsters have a Code of Honor, but US politicians and all too many bureaucrats--nah: their code is anything goes in the pursuit of power. IMO, it's such Moral Bankruptcy that gnaws at most of us barflies regardless of our politics. The Ds are just as guilty as the Rs but none ever go to jail or get impeached, although occasionally one resigns. On more than one occasion, I've thought it best just to liquidate the entire governing structure, instruments and denizens of the federal government and begin again from scratch.

It seems fair to observe that the transition from the Depression to the final depravity of WW2 must have collectively damaged/shifted the nation's moral center, or is that merely wishful thinking in order to deal with the reality that at bottom the USA is a massively immoral construct that must constantly lie to itself lest it wake up to its depravity. How would kids today even sense that? Easy, through the utterly depraved levels of violence present within things deemed games that teach how to dehumanize and kill other humans at a very young age. So, it's actually very simple: A sick, depraved society produces a sick, depraved government and businesses. One wonders what sort of entity is In God We Trust.

psychohistorian , Oct 25 2019 17:09 utc | 25
A number of weeks ago I was sent an email by one of my state Senators, Jeff Merkley. I shared that email with fellow barflys as well as my response. Just today I received a "response" to my rant about our failing country and below is that email which I think is indicative of how lost America has become.....this is from what many would consider to be one of the "better/progressive/representative of the people" Senators in the US....sigh

"
Dear James,

Thank you for contacting me to share your views about President Trump and the impeachment inquiry opened in the House of Representatives. I appreciate hearing from you on this serious issue.

I have heard from Oregonians in large numbers expressing their concerns about statements made and actions taken by President Trump. I have also heard from some Oregonians who oppose the impeachment inquiry. I would much prefer that the Senate take up the many House-passed bills to address the real needs of working Oregonians, but I also believe we have a sworn constitutional duty to uphold the rule of law and ensure that federal office-holders are using their powers for the public interest, not their own.

Testimony and accounts from a number of people directly involved in U.S. foreign policy lay out extensive efforts by President Trump and his aides to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate President Trump's political opponents and, it appears, to condition U.S. aid on whether Ukraine succumbed to that pressure. The president also publicly called on the governments of both Ukraine and China to investigate his political opponents during a press conference on the White House lawn.

These actions are deeply concerning. The goal of U.S. foreign policy should always be to protect American interests and American security. We cannot sacrifice those core objectives for any individual's political or personal gain. The Founders were worried about exactly this scenario, of a president corrupting U.S. foreign policy to serve himself, rather than the American public, and explicitly discussed it during the Constitutional Convention as a prime rationale for impeachment.

I also believe that the detailed case laid out by the Special Counsel of obstruction of justice by the President warrants impeachment. Over 1,000 former federal prosecutors of both parties have written to Congress to say that any other individual would be indicted on multiple felony counts based on the evidence compiled by the Special Counsel.

I believe in those words carved above the Supreme Court, "Equal Justice Under Law." If the Department of Justice will not indict a sitting president then impeachment is the only avenue available to ensure that nobody, not even the president, is above the law.

Impeachment should never be taken lightly, and never be used as a tool of partisan politics. Disliking a president or their policy choices is not grounds for impeachment, but a president corrupting his office and subverting the rule of law is. If the House does take the solemn step of impeaching the President, I will work to ensure that there is a fair trial in the Senate that presents the American people with a complete picture of the evidence and the appropriate context to understand its significance.

I will continue to fight for an America where every individual – no matter how powerful – is held accountable to the law. America's founders created the impeachment process precisely for that reason.

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and your engagement in our democracy. I hope you continue to contact me about issues that matter to you.

All my best,

Jeffrey A. Merkley
United States Senator
"

So the kabuki hiding the cult of global private finance empire continues

karlof1 , Oct 25 2019 17:53 utc | 26
@25--

"Equal Justice Under Law" Why wasn't that applied to Obama and Clinton since Merkley was Senator then? What about Pelosi for not doing her duty to impeach George W Bush? And as we all know, the list could go on and on. As I wrote above @24, Immorality rules the roost. There're an average of 135 suicides daily within the USA, but none of them are politicos. IMO, they need to do their part too and not leave it up to veterans.

Alpi , Oct 25 2019 18:05 utc | 27
@psychohistorian. 25

Senator Merkley's letter, although sounding nice and righteous, fails to address the selectivity in "Equal justice under law" that plagues this judicial system, hence rendering it useless. If there was equality in justice, they should go back to the crimes of Reagan, the Bushes, the Clintons and Obama before they get to Trump. By the way, Trump is guilty of many crimes and I'm not discounting them, worst of all posing as a president.

The exhibit below is just a sample of how the deep state is working feverishly to get their agenda back on tack. John Bolton who is the embodiment of the rot and filth that that exist in American politics is now throwing more fuel into this fire.

Goes to show that there is no line between the democrats and republicans. These animals are all woven from the same cloth.

https://sputniknews.com/us/201910251077151859-fired-trump-advisor-boltons-lawyers-in-touch-with-democrats-impeachment-probe--report/

Michael Droy , Oct 25 2019 18:08 utc | 28
Obama will get away - no one wants to prosecute a black president. But by 2035 he will be known as the president with the worst reputation in history.
winston2 , Oct 25 2019 18:13 utc | 29
Brennan knows where all the bodys are buried, much as I'd like to see him behind bars,
Its about as likely as me keeping Unicorns in my back paddock.
Sorry, the game is delay, delay and delay.
Its a threat and warning from Trump, but a bluff, because it simply will not happen.
c1ue , Oct 25 2019 18:32 utc | 30
@Bemildred #23
Second the reference.
And I add this snippet: bold is David Samuels, not bold is Angelo Codevilla
There was one quote, I forget who it came from, but it came out of an interaction of one of the reasonably high-up war planners in the Defense Department and a journalist for, I think it was, The Atlantic. And the quote was that power creates its own reality. So it doesn't matter what we say, because even if it's not true now, by the time we're finished we will make it true. And therefore there is no real difference between statements that are true or false, as long as we make them.

Do you have the sense that a similar attempt to manufacture reality was at play in what at this point are the still-unknown interactions between the CIA, the FBI, and the Obama White House with regard to the surveillance of Donald Trump's associates, and the attempt to suggest some vast Putin-Trump conspiracy to game American elections, and whatnot?

I don't think that it went that far. Or I should say, I don't think the people involved thought about it that deeply.

I would agree.

I think what you had was a small pooling of resources to tweak the news cycle with regard to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, which then turned into something very major.

After the election.

After the election. It was, like Watergate, a minor attempt to gain marginal advantage. Which then, unintended by the people involved at the time, became something very big, which escaped everyone's control.

I believe that there are a whole bunch of people in Washington right now who are quaking in their boots because the House Intelligence Committee has shaken loose some of the documents involved. Because in the long run there are no secrets in Washington. And one can then wonder about the quality of the people who imagined that the things they did could remain secret.

It really was a marvel. The idea was that if we all say it together long enough and we shout it loud so nothing else can be heard, then it will become the effective truth, Machiavelli's verita effettuale. But I mean, there is a limit to this. I have some close personal friends who are more on the left, and I said to them: OK. Where's the evidence? Who did what when to whom? Where are the quids and where are the quos? What's going on here? And all they could say is, "Well, the investigation is going on."

What is not clear is just how much of the reality will come into the public's consciousness.

Whose fault is this?

The fault here is not of Democrats on the left. The fault here is of Donald Trump and his friends who have refused to enforce the most basic laws here. The most obvious one is Section 798, (18 U.S. Code), the simple comment statute. Now anybody in the intelligence business knows that this is the live wire of security law. It is a strict liability statute. It states that any revelation, regardless of circumstance or intent, any revelation period, of anything having to do with U.S. communications intelligence is punishable by the 10 and 10. Ten years in the slammer, and $10,000 fine. Per count.

Now the folks who went to The Washington Post and The New York Times in November and December of 2016 and peddled this story of the intelligence community's conclusion that Trump and the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, these people ipso facto violated §798.

Considering these matters are highly classified, and that the number of the people involved is necessarily very small, identifying them is child's play. But no effort to do that has been made.

AshenLight , Oct 25 2019 18:34 utc | 31
@ Posted by: Michael Droy | Oct 25 2019 18:08 utc | 28

I doubt it (the second part) -- are you familiar with the depth of delusion of his supporters? It's all about perception; they never noticed the underlying reality of his tenure, so why would they start? They'll be more than happy to attribute it all to Agent Orange or whoever becomes their subsequent bête noire/obsessive hate figure.

jonny law , Oct 25 2019 18:45 utc | 32
I just hope its not:

Bombshell: criminal investigation
Its the Tipping Point
The Walls are Closing In
The Beginning of the End
....

I hope they get a Comey or a Clapper and not just give us a Strozk.

Trailer Trash , Oct 25 2019 19:16 utc | 33
>Why not the whole shebang?! They all have blood on their hands.
> Posted by: Barovsky | Oct 25 2019 13:45 utc | 11


Because there would be no one left to give orders to the peons! How would we know what to do without self-important Dear Leaders incorrectly telling us how to do our jobs, like at Boeing?

Yes they all have blood on their hands. The motto "We must all hang together or we shall surely all hang separately" comes to mind, except that there is no honor among these thieves. Instead the DC Dunces have formed a circular firing squad, and everyone is waiting to see who will shoot first.

karlof1 , Oct 25 2019 19:25 utc | 34
Here's a report saying the slogan to be used in protests this weekend against Trump is "Nobody is Above the Law." Unfortunately, that's one of the biggest of all BigLies. If that were true, then we wouldn't be having this Impeachment free-for-all at all because Trump and all his predecessors would already be in jail along with most of Congress, numerous bureaucrats and businesspeople. It's a crying shame I'm barred from commenting at the website I cited, but that's because I called out the crimes of Obama and Clinton, et al--talk about double standards and total lack of credibility. If I were to attend one of the protests, I'd carry a placard calling out the BigLie. If any barflies do, I hope they'll carry a similar placard as the wholesale lack of applying the law is at the root of our collective corruption problem.
Jen , Oct 25 2019 19:43 utc | 35
The Jeff Bozo Propaganda Rag article was written by one Matt Zapotosky who covers Justice Dept issues for the newspaper's national security team. He has a Bachelor of Journalism degree from Ohio University.

Does this background seem to MoA barflies to be a bit odd? Shouldn't writers specialising in Justice Dept issues have some understanding of the legal system and its operations, to the extent of having law degrees themselves? Does the national security team at WaPo not smell as if it's stacked to the rafters with intel agents telling people what to write?

One wonders also what Journalism students are taught at universities in Western countries these days.

Trailer Trash , Oct 25 2019 19:43 utc | 36
How is it that Trump demonstrators, whether for him or against him, are unable to notice the Empire's world-wide killing machine that never sleeps? Huge crowds around the world shouted "Hands Off Iraq" before the 2003 invasion. What happened to them? Did they all get too old and sick to do anything anymore?
vk , Oct 25 2019 19:52 utc | 37
Administrative investigation: purely internal, with only disciplinary consequences.

Criminal investigation: involves law violation and law enforcing institutions, have criminal consequences.

Trailer Trash , Oct 25 2019 19:54 utc | 38
I used to know a journalism professor. He said most of his students were preparing for a corporate career in public relations. Not many were interested in learning how to reveal the crimes of the empire.

It was similar with a labor law class I audited a long time ago. I was the only labor-oriented student. The rest were headed for "human resources management" or to be corporate anti-labor lawyers.

Shadow , Oct 25 2019 20:00 utc | 39
There aren't enough handcuffs for all of these treasonous, criminal scum going back a hundred years. May I suggest hemp rope? It's reusable and environmentally friendly.
uncle tungsten , Oct 25 2019 20:15 utc | 40
karlof1 #34

Common dreams = common delusions

My placard might be "jail Clinton and Biden"

Sure there are many on the list, but those two are my strategic choice.

james , Oct 25 2019 20:25 utc | 41
thanks b... it is hard to see this getting traction if the msm is unwilling to address the news in an unbiased manner, or leaves out critical information on what is taking place inside the political system of the usa and the role that the cia-fbi has played in creating the mueller investigation... thus the question of just who is Joseph Mifsud, remains off the radar of most, in spite of how important this question about who he is in all of this... disobedient media was asking this same question back in an article from april 4 2018 - All Russiagate Roads Lead To London As Evidence Emerges Of Joseph Mifsud's Links To UK Intelligence

i just can't see the msm cooperating here and that means trumps pushback on all this is going to be hard to get traction unless something changes.. it will be framed as 'trump trying to evade the impeachment process on him'...

so just where is joseph mifsud and what role has he played in all this? the dem crowd claim he is russian intel! who is he and what agencies was he connected to? he played George Papadopoulos like a fiddle.. what agency was he working for? we need to know the answer to this to get some traction here..

PJB , Oct 25 2019 20:25 utc | 42
It is all following the predictions of the mysterious Q-anon, who has not been heard from since the message board 8 Chan was taken off-line in the wake of mass shootings and the MSM claiming right-wing white supremacists etc used 8 Chan for manifestos of their sick views (despite using FaceBook, Twitter, general internet etc as well).

There were - in the 3570 'Q drops' (posts) from 29 Oct 2017 to 2 Aug 2019 - many indications that Q was a group of US military intelligence agents who had close access to the Trump administration and were using 8 Chan as a back channel communication to the public to circumvent the MSM. At least that is the narrative and it is worth doing your own research to see what you think.

Q predicted a week or so before it happened that mass shootings would be used for that purpose to silence this back channel - but that the 'plan' would still go ahead - involving Barr, Durham and Horowitz to take down the 'deep state', starting by exposing and prosecuting the 'Russiagate' fake conspiracy as the planned coup of the DNC-Clinton campaign-FBI-CIA-elements within UK&Australia-CNN-MSNBC-NYT-WaPo etc.

That 'plan' seems to be now unfolding - right according to plan.

But maybe just a crazy coincidence...

MadMax2 , Oct 25 2019 20:32 utc | 43
@16 psychohistorian
The eternal powers available inside a constant state of emergency. Bush enabled Obama enabled Trump. Especially via the post 9-11 editions of the sure-to-be-passed NDAA, signed into the next year, l sometimes on the eves of midnight before the turn of the new year.

Have listened to half the Rogan-Snowden podcast so far. It's the stuff we all know is happening, but the fine detail of how we got here are just so compelling.

If Google knows what you had for breakfast then 'In Don We Trust'

chu teh , Oct 25 2019 20:49 utc | 44
: karlof1 | Oct 25 2019 16:56 utc | 24

re ...One wonders what sort of entity is In God We Trust.

There was an explanation that fit/s the observed scene quite closely and even yields/ed some prescient results. When I 1st heard it, my pause-button locked:

"God has an infinite sense of humor".


BraveNewWorld , Oct 25 2019 20:52 utc | 45
This is smoke and mirrors to take the heat off Trump after Juliani's "drug deal" didn't deliver. They have tried this before with Rosenstein and couldn't even get an indictment out of the grand jury. A judge just ordered the elease of the Muller evidence that Barr has been deperatly trying to hide. If it shows that Barr was hiding it to protect the Trump clan the gig is up on this whole tin foil hat cult Briebart and Fox have been manufacturing.
james , Oct 25 2019 20:52 utc | 46
the latest from larry johnson at sst..

Barr Changes the Dynamic, The Threat of Obstruction of Justice

Rob , Oct 25 2019 20:53 utc | 47
@karlof1 (26) If Pelosi had tried to impeach GW Bush, presumably for starting a war against Iraq on false pretenses, the process would have severely damaged members of the Democratic caucus, all but one of whom were complicit in approving that war. They did not formally authorize or declare war, but they most definitely supported it. It's the same with Russiagate and involves some of the same characters. The last thing they want is to have their own complicity in a deep state/Clinton plot exposed.
Peter AU 1 , Oct 25 2019 20:58 utc | 48
james

Johnson had mentioned this being in the works some time ago. Looks like a section of the swamp will be drained in a ig way - perhaps leaving Trumping a very powerful position for his next term... which may not be a good thing.

Peter AU 1 , Oct 25 2019 21:16 utc | 49
james just read your post @41

Looks like Trump's opponents will be trying to use the media against him and the investigation.
Although they have the media onside, if the investigation is above board then the Trump faction will have the military. It was a fairly major conspiracy to prent Trump gaining office and then trying to remove him from office that also involved foreign powers. If it comes under subversion or something like that,then I take it the military may be able to act to enforce the investigation findings.
Will be interesting.

evilempire , Oct 25 2019 21:43 utc | 50
Ukrainegate involves much more egregious crimes than Russiagate.
How exactly have we come to this? It is now an "abuse of power"
to investigate corruption. There is nothing suspicious whatsoever
about the timing of Trump's request to Zelensky. He had to wait till
a more favorable administration came to power in Ukraine to make the
request and Biden had already announced his candidacy by then. Poroshenko
has been accused of accepting a 100 million dollar bribe to terminate the
investigation of Burisma and Hunter Biden. What is Burisma anyway? Has
it ever produced a single cu. ft. of gas or a single barrel of oil? Or
was it a front for money laundering and all the rest of the stories about it
are a crock of shit? Where does it get all the cash to throw at sleazy
politicians and their creepy relatives? The federal government is a vast
criminal conspiracy desperately trying to cover ut its crimes. Ukraine
is a monumental crime scene. The entire country should be cordoned off with
police tape. Under the Obama administration, a Walpurgisnacht of demonically
possessed democrats and some republicans,descended upon Ukraine in a satanic
orgy of rape, looting, pillage and corruption.
librul , Oct 25 2019 21:44 utc | 51
This is apropos.

And makes my day.

"At some point the lawyers for the media companies will wake up and realize that spreading lies on behalf of people facing criminal charges could expose them to obstruction charges as well."

Quote is from linked article at
@Posted by: james | Oct 25 2019 20:52 utc | 46

Thanks for the link, james

uncle tungsten , Oct 25 2019 21:46 utc | 52
PJB #42


Thank you, that sounds valid to me. Links would be helpful. I usually have limited connections to those sources as I am not a fan. I do like the intrepid musings of amazing polly when she is outing the maxwell/epstein team and their captured media.

Joetv , Oct 25 2019 22:02 utc | 53
The use of 'ambiguity' is criminal. Can someone tell me what's going on.

Democrats PR provider gets an A for this one.

karlof1 , Oct 25 2019 22:15 utc | 54
chu the @44--

Thanks for your reply! Wasn't that a George Carlin quip or perhaps from Cache-22 ?

Rob @47--

Thanks for your reply! As you'll know if you've read enough of my writings here, I hold both Ds & Rs in contempt and judge them unfit to govern as most are guilty of one or more crimes, and at the very least of subverting the Constitution they swore to uphold and defend. On the current Syria thread, I wrote why that's so here .

evilempire @50--

"The federal government is a vast criminal conspiracy desperately trying to cover ut[sic] its crimes."

That's an excellent summation of its behavior since 1945. I'd go back further in time, but I haven't found enough evidence to prove a bi-partisan criminal conspiracy prior to then, although the collusion between FDR and Wendell Willkie in 1940 merits further investigation.

goldhoarder , Oct 25 2019 22:15 utc | 55
Brennan, Comey, Clapper, Clinton, Obama? It is pretty crazy. Clinton should just be locked up for her own good. LOL
PJB , Oct 25 2019 22:42 utc | 56
gold hoarder @ 55,

Agree "it is pretty crazy". What's more crazy is if you read through the sometimes riddle like nature of 'Q' - it is all predicted in detail: www.qmap.pub

Two sides of the Deep State at civil war - nationalist-industrial/military/DIA (with Fox News and some alt-media) versus globalist-financial-industrial/CIA/FBI (with most MSM).

ben , Oct 25 2019 23:06 utc | 57
ia @ 17 said; "The only time anything resembling "justice" is served is when some low-level persons with enough name recognition to make headlines, i.e. Martha Steward or these celebrity parents who paid to get their kids into college, are sacrificed in order to maintain the illusion of a functioning justice system. In reality the justice system we have is nothing more than another line in the phalanx of defense the ruling elites (see: globalists, capitalists, zionists) have built to protect their corrupt position of power."

Agreed, just more Kabuki..

snake , Oct 25 2019 23:10 utc | 58
While we here on B's set are following his He done it, no she did it, sure enough they did it script. the drivers behind the the political actors are the corporate sponsors. How about lets discussing them?

I want to know more about Burisma Holdings in the Ukraine,
who are the oil companies in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Gaze, and Lebanon Egypt etc. ?

It is interesting to study drug trafficking in Afghanistan.

The politicians are corporate driven yet no one is working that angle. Politicians are immune, but private corporate persons are not. Lets look at wall street how do they play in this..

Lochearn , Oct 25 2019 23:11 utc | 59
And so Moon of Alabama finally you have uncovered the trolls. Finally you have exposed Jack and Donkey. It took a long while. All that time the doubts were sown but we were never taken in. I would speculate that they sent money... B. has to survive.
ben , Oct 25 2019 23:13 utc | 60
P.S. Anything touched by AG Barr should be investigated. He as a sordid history.
https://www.nationalmemo.com/bill-barrs-remarkable-history-of-scandalous-cover-up/?cn-
bevin , Oct 25 2019 23:19 utc | 61
And so Moon of Alabama finally you have uncovered the trolls. Finally you have exposed Jack and Donkey..." Lochearn@59
Any references? I do hope that you are right. Last week I described them as the Mutt 'n' Jeff of trolling on this site.
Lochearn , Oct 25 2019 23:29 utc | 62
@ 61 bevin

Let me say that I consider you to be one of the brightest, most original commenters out there.

I think it was karlof1, another outstanding member of this forum, that raised doubts about the Rabbit which coincided with my own thinking.

james , Oct 26 2019 0:20 utc | 63
@48/49 peter au... interesting speculation.. will wait and see what comes of all this..

@ 60 ben... would you say the same of mueller who was head of the fbi at the time of 9-11? what does he know and when did he know it? lots of hidden bodies in both these peoples pasts... maybe one's actions can even out the others here?

Miss Lacy , Oct 26 2019 0:22 utc | 64
to Rob #47 - and you all. I believe that Pelosi's husband works high up in the MIC. Just as Teresa May's hubby did. The May family picked up a little extra coin on the bombing of Syria re the "poisoned spies." Just so, Feinstein's hubby is a RE dealer/developer in SanFran. When the US Post Office got knee capped who do you suppose bought up the prime lovely
old Post office? It's all pretty sick - and has been going on for decades. Term limits and public campaign financing is the
only solution. Never happen, but "never say never."
james , Oct 26 2019 0:28 utc | 65
@51 librul.. that is a good quote you grabbed their... we'll see what comes of all this..
Bemildred , Oct 26 2019 0:36 utc | 66

The Plundering of Ukraine by Corrupt American Democrats

A talk with Oleg Tsarev reveals the alleged identity of the "Trump/Ukraine Whistleblower"

Here

Peter AU 1 , Oct 26 2019 0:48 utc | 67
Ukraine played a part in Russiagate so I guess, due to the timing, this is the appropriate thread.

https://sputniknews.com/world/201910261077153626-trump-terminates-suspension-of-duty-free-trade-with-ukraine---white-house/

"I have determined that Ukraine has made progress in providing adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights. Accordingly, it is appropriate to terminate the suspension of the duty-free treatment," Trump said in a proclamation on Friday."

Kadath , Oct 26 2019 0:48 utc | 68
RE: Alpi #25

I suspect that John Bolton is in fact the mastermind behind this fake "whistleblower" stunt. it's the sort of action Bolton would do as the master bureaucrat, spread false rumors of what the call between Trump and Zelensky contained among his subordinates and Neocon fellow travellers to feed into the narrative of a corrupt deal with Zelensky to derail Trumps plans in Ukraine and Russia and feed the Democrats impeachment push. Trump declassifying the transcript of the conversation probably caught him by surprise and threw a wrench into his plans since Trump has refused to declassify documents in the past and the State Department probably would have argued that Trump not declassify the conversation.

Willow , Oct 26 2019 1:15 utc | 69
@Psychohistorian #16, you wrote

"The US is now a country that has a growing cabal of current and past leadership that are criminally complicit in deceiving the American public"

Obama legalized deceiving the American public in his 2012 NDAA, when "Constitutional Law Professor" Obama repealed the Smith-Mundt Act, the propaganda ban that had been in effect since around 1948. He literally legalized lying to us. Bet you never heard of it. Reporter Michael Hastings blew the whistle on this and we all know what happened to him. https://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-legalizes-propaganda-2012-5

pogohere , Oct 26 2019 1:25 utc | 70

And this all will be heard and judged by Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has asked Flynn several times to consider retracting his guilty plea because the judge smelled a rat:

A Cautionary Tale: The Ted Stevens Prosecution

From Washington Lawyer, October 2009

By Anna Stolley Persky

April 7, 2009,

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia unleashed his fury before a packed courtroom. For 14 minutes, he scolded. He chastised. He fumed. "In nearly 25 years on the bench," he said, "I've never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I've seen in this case."

It was the culmination of a disastrous prosecution: the public corruption case against former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK).

Stevens was convicted in October 2008 of violating federal ethics laws by failing to report thousands of dollars in gifts he received from friends. But a team of prosecutors from the U.S. Department of Justice is accused of failing to hand over key exculpatory evidence and knowingly presenting false evidence to the jury.

The Stevens case is a cautionary tale. It reminds lawyers and nonlawyers alike of the power and failures of our legal system and those who have sworn to uphold the rule of law. At the center of the story are real people: an old and powerful politician, a crack defense team, determined prosecutors, and their supervisors.

"This is a fascinating case study for all lawyers," says criminal defense lawyer Stanley M. Brand, a partner at Brand Law Group, P.C. "In these high-stakes cases, both sides can get pretty aggressive and push the envelope. It's great to be aggressive -- it's great to push, but this case reminds people that they have to observe the limits and the rules."

For months Judge Sullivan had warned U.S. prosecutors about their repeated failure to turn over evidence. Then, after the jury convicted Stevens, the Justice Department discovered previously unrevealed evidence. Meanwhile, a prosecution witness and an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) came forward alleging prosecutorial misconduct. Finally, newly appointed U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that he had had enough and recommended that the seven-count conviction against the former Alaska senator be dismissed.

On April 7, Judge Sullivan did just that. But he was far from done.

In an extraordinarily rare move, he ordered an inquiry into the prosecutors' handling of the case. Judge Sullivan insisted that the misconduct allegations were "too serious and too numerous" to be left to an internal Justice Department investigation. He appointed Washington lawyer Henry F. Schuelke III of Janis, Schuelke & Wechsler to investigate whether members of the trial team should be prosecuted for criminal contempt.

h , Oct 26 2019 2:00 utc | 71
Starting w/evilempires comment, which is Wow. Then Miss Lacy, maybe goldherder too but not sure, to Kadath and then Willow and pogohere I'm not sure I'm at b's site. Great comments. But certainly not the norm. Things that makes one go hhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm...welcome, btw.
evilempire , Oct 26 2019 3:14 utc | 72
Bemildred
This article seems to contradict many of the points in the link you posted.
Really?? , Oct 26 2019 3:32 utc | 74
Richard #10

"Doing very nicely, thank you. $400, 000 a time for speeches to those nice chaps from Wall Street and a $65 million dollar advance for his biography "

And spent $14 mill for a house on Martha's Vineyard. Who ponied up for that, I wonder. Obamas go home!!!

Bemildred , Oct 26 2019 3:52 utc | 75
evilempire @72:

"This article seems to contradict many of the points in the link you posted."

No doubt, and it's from 2014. I've read half-a-dozen versions of Biden in Ukraine, all of them different. That one is all one guy talking, so not much as evidence of anything. But interesting. Another one had Kolomoisky as the master hand behind the Burisma deception, and the nominal boss as cutout for him. The guy I posted doesn't mention that. They all seem to agree it's about gas though. I notice that 2014 piece you posted says Kerry was involved too, but he would be being SoS.

It stinks any way you slice it. The main thing I take from it at the moment is the big explosion it caused when Trump went after it is indicative of it's political importance. A weapon in the war in DC. Poor Zelenski, he is caught in the middle. A comedian.

Did you have a point of view about it, or just sussing out mine?

The War in Washington seems to be heating up.

oglalla , Oct 26 2019 4:05 utc | 76
Fellow barflies, please stop disrespecting other well-behaved patrons whose opinions you find unappealing.

If you don't like certain commenters' opinions, check the author before reading each comment.

Some here previously complained about JR being "one note". Well, arguably, we can characterize psycho and circe similarly. But, they each speak up to remind us of their fairly unique (at least one this board) perceptions and how new events relate to their mental model of how things work. I find each of their viewpoints interesting and plausible, as well as yours -- except when you're making unjustified negative personal remarks.

evilempire , Oct 26 2019 4:22 utc | 77
My opinion right now is that the article you linked may be major disinformation. Zlochevsky wasn't even the owner of Burisma in 2012. The article at nakedcapitalism and even b have reported that the owners were Kolomoiski and perhaps Pinchuk.
Bemildred , Oct 26 2019 4:28 utc | 78
evilempire @77: Yes, Naked Capitalism is pretty scrupulous. I tend to think it's Kolomoiski too, thanks for sharing you view and the link. I was wondering what people here would think about it.
Bemildred , Oct 26 2019 4:31 utc | 79
evilempire @77: You think Shamir is disinfo? I've not been impressed in the past, but he seemed more a crank.
snake , Oct 26 2019 4:43 utc | 80
breaking news interruption please excuse. Middle East Military footprint size increasing Something up? Trump et al. to stay in Syria and take on Turkey, defend the oil and deal with the Russians? ..Iran getting nervous.. backdoor flight Israel (Netanyohu?) to Saudi flight a clue ?

Will the real fat woman please sing.?

Peter AU 1 , Oct 26 2019 5:13 utc | 81
snake

There has been a steady US build up for some time now. A few here, a few there, but numbers constantly increasing.

[Oct 25, 2019] Trump-Haters, Not Trump, Are The Ones Wrecking America s Institutions, WSJ s Strassel Says

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "I've always felt that the media leaned left. That wasn't a surprise to anyone. "But what we've seen over the past three years is something entirely different. This is the media actively engaging on one side of a partisan warfare. It's overt." ..."
"... "We had a media cheerleading the FBI for meddling in American politics. Can you ever imagine a time in American history where the media would have played such a role? ..."
"... "I keep warning my friends on the other side of the aisle: Think about the precedent you are setting here," Strassel said. ..."
Oct 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Trump-Haters, Not Trump, Are The Ones Wrecking America's Institutions, WSJ's Strassel Says by Tyler Durden Thu, 10/24/2019 - 17:15 0 SHARES

Authored by Irene Luo and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times,

The anti- Trump "Resistance" has devastated core American institutions and broken longstanding political norms in seeking to defeat and now oust from office President Donald Trump, said Kimberley Strassel, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal and member of the Journal's editorial board.

"And this, to me, is the irony, right? We've been told for three years that Donald Trump is wrecking institutions," Strassel said in an interview with The Epoch Times for the "American Thought Leaders" program.

" But in terms of real wreckage to institutions, it's not on Donald Trump that public faith in the FBI and the Department of Justice has precipitously fallen. That's because of Jim Comey and Andy McCabe. It's not on Donald Trump that the Senate confirmation process for the Supreme Court is in ashes after what happened to Brett Kavanaugh. It's not on Donald Trump that we are turning impeachment into a partisan political tool."

The damage inflicted by the anti-Trump Resistance is the subject of Strassel's new book, "Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America."

Strassel uses the term "haters" deliberately, to differentiate this demographic from Trump's "critics."

In Strassel's view, all thoughtful critics of Trump - and she counts herself among them - would look at Trump the same way that they have examined past presidents - namely, to call him out when he does something wrong, but also laud him when he does something right.

" The 'haters' can't abide nuance. To the Resistance, any praise - no matter how qualified - of Trump is tantamount to American betrayal, " Strassel writes in "Resistance (At All Costs)."

She told The Epoch Times: "Up until the point at which Donald Trump was elected, what happened when political parties lost is that they would retreat, regroup, lick their wounds, talk about what they did wrong.

"That's not what happened this time around. Instead, you had people who essentially said we should have won."

From the moment Trump was elected, this group believed Trump to be an illegitimate president and therefore felt they could use whatever means necessary to remove him from office , Strassel said.

'Unprecedented Acts'

"One thing I try really hard to do in this book is enunciate what rules and regulations and standards were broken, what political boundaries were crossed, because I think that that's where we're seeing the damage," Strassel said.

The "unprecedented acts" of the Resistance have caused the public to lose trust in longstanding institutions such as the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Justice, and cheapened important political processes like impeachment, she said.

The Resistance fabricated and pushed the theory that it was Trump's collusion with Russia that won him the presidency, not the support of the American people, and lied about the origins of the so-called evidence -- the Steele dossier -- that was used by the FBI to justify a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, Strassel said.

"We have never, in the history of this country, had a counterintelligence investigation into a political campaign," she said.

In an anecdote that Strassel recounts in her book, she asked former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) if there was anything in America's laws that could have prohibited this situation.

Nunes, who had helped write or update many laws concerning the powers of the intelligence community, replied, "I would never have conceived of the FBI using our counterintelligence capabilities to target a political campaign.

"If it had crossed any of our minds, I can guarantee we'd have specifically written: 'Don't do that.'"

In Strassel's view, the Resistance is partially fueled by deep-seated anger, or what others have termed "Trump derangement syndrome" -- an inability to look rationally at a man so far outside of Washington norms.

But at the same time, in Strassel's view, much of the Resistance is motivated by a desire to amass political power using whatever means necessary.

"That involves removing the president who won. That involves some of these other things that you hear them talking about now: packing the Supreme Court, getting rid of the electoral college, letting 16-year-olds vote," she said.

"These are not reforms. Reforms are things that the country broadly agrees are going to help improve stuff. This is changing the rules so that you get power, and you stay in power."

The impeachment inquiry into the president, based on his phone call with Ukraine's president, is just another example of how the Resistance is violating political norms and relying on flimsy evidence to try to remove him from office, she said.

Testimony in the inquiry has taken place behind closed doors, led by three House committees, and Democrats have so far refused to release transcripts from the depositions of former and current State Department employees.

"[Impeachment] is one of the most serious and huge powers in the Constitution. It was meant always by the founders to be reserved for truly unusual circumstances. They debated not even putting it in because they were concerned that this is what would happen," Strassel said.

In the impeachment inquiries against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, Strassel said, American leaders "understood the great importance of convincing the American public that their decision to use this tool was just and legitimate.

"So if you look back at Watergate, they had hundreds of hours of testimony broadcast over TV that people tuned into and watched. It's one of the reasons that Richard Nixon resigned before the House ever held a final impeachment vote on him, because the public had been convinced. He knew he had to go," she said.

But now, instead of access to the testimonies, the public is receiving only leaked snippets and dueling narratives.

"You have Democrats saying, 'Oh, this is very bad.' And Republicans saying, 'Oh, it's not so bad at all.' What are Americans supposed to think?" Strassel said.

Bureaucratic Resistance

Within the federal bureaucracy, there is a "vast swath of unelected officials" who have "a great deal of power to slow things down, mess things up, file the whistleblower complaints, leak information, actively engage against the president's policies," Strassel said.

"It's their job to implement his agenda. And yet a lot of them are part of the Resistance, too," she said.

Data shows that in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, government bureaucrats overwhelmingly contributed toward the Clinton campaign over the Trump campaign.

Ninety-five percent, or about $1.9 million, of bureaucrats' donations went to Clinton, according to The Hill's analysis of donations from federal workers up until September 2016. In particular, employees at the Department of Justice gave 97 percent of their donations to Clinton. For the State Department, it was even higher -- 99 percent.

"Imagine being a CEO and showing up and knowing that 95 percent of your workforce despises you and doesn't want you to be there," Strassel said.

Strassel pointed to when former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, publicly questioned the constitutionality of Trump's immigration ban and directed Justice Department employees to disobey the order.

"It was basically a call to arms," Strassel said. "What she should've done is honorably resigned if she felt that she could not in any way enforce this duly issued executive order.

"It really kicked off what we have seen ever since then: The nearly daily leaks from the administration, the whistleblower complaints," as well as "all kind of internal foot-dragging and outright obstruction to the president's agenda."

According to a report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, in Trump's first 126 days in office, his administration "faced 125 leaked stories -- one leak a day -- containing information that is potentially damaging to national security under the standards laid out in a 2009 Executive Order signed by President Barack Obama."

Activist Media

Strassel says the media has played a critical role in bolstering the anti-Trump Resistance.

"I've been a reporter for 25 years," Strassel said.

"I've always felt that the media leaned left. That wasn't a surprise to anyone. "But what we've seen over the past three years is something entirely different. This is the media actively engaging on one side of a partisan warfare. It's overt."

Along the way, the media have largely abandoned journalistic standards, "whether it be the use of anonymous sources, whether it be putting uncorroborated accusations into the paper, whether it's using biased sources for information and cloaking them as neutral observers," she said.

Among the many examples of media misinformation cited in Strassel's book is a December 2017 CNN piece that claimed to have evidence that then-candidate Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. had been offered early access to hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee. But it turned out the date was wrong . Trump Jr. had received an email about the WikiLeaks release one day after WikiLeaks had made the documents public.

"If it hurts Donald Trump, they're on board," Strassel said. And in many cases, the attacks on Trump have been contradictory.

"He's either the dunce you claim he is every day or he's the most sophisticated Manchurian candidate that the world has ever seen. You can't have it both ways.

"He's either a dictator and an autocrat who is consolidating power around himself to rule with an iron fist, or he's the evil conservative who's cutting regulations."

Contrary to claims of authoritarianism, Trump has significantly decreased the size of the federal government. Notably, he reduced the Federal Register, a collection of all the national government's rules and regulations, to the lowest it's been since Bill Clinton's first year in office.

"You can't be a libertarian dictator," Strassel said.

In addition to the barrage of attacks on Trump, the media has actively sought to "de-legitimize anybody who has a different viewpoint than they do, or who is reporting the facts and the story in a way other than they would like them to be presented."

"They would love to make it sound as though none of us are worthy of writing about this story," she said.

"The media is supposed to be our guardrails, right? When a political party transgresses a political boundary, they're supposed to say 'No, that's beyond the pale.'"

Instead, "they indulged this behavior," Strassel said.

"We had a media cheerleading the FBI for meddling in American politics. Can you ever imagine a time in American history where the media would have played such a role?

"In a way, I blame that for so much else that has gone wrong."

Long-Term Consequences

Strassel says the actions taken by the Resistance will have long-term consequences for America.

"I keep warning my friends on the other side of the aisle: Think about the precedent you are setting here," Strassel said.

For example, if Joe Biden wins the presidency in 2020 but Republicans take back the House, would the Republican-dominated House immediately launch impeachment proceedings against Biden for alleged corruption in Ukraine?

"I wouldn't necessarily use the word [corruption], but there's a lot of Republicans who happily would. And if they thought they'd get another shot at the White House, why not?" Strassel said.

It's short-term thinking, she said, just like Sen. Harry Reid's decision in 2013 to drop the number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster for lower-court judges.

"Did he really stop to think about the fact that it paved the way for Republicans to get rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court judges?" Strassel said.

If there's any rule in Washington, "it's that when you set the bar low, it just keeps going lower," Strassel said.

"Donald Trump is going to be president for at most another five years. But the actions and the destruction that's coming with some of this could be with us for a very long time," she said.

"Should anyone allow their deep disregard for one particular man to so change the structure and the fabric of the country?"

[Oct 25, 2019] Just in time for Halloween! : MadCow is crying agian -- now she is afraid of the sound of shoes dropping in the night

Oct 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Rachel Maddow's trademark pouty-face got a workout as she strained to imagine " what the thing is that Durham might be looking into." Yes, that's a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, all right with a sputtering fuse sticking out of it.

... ... ...

Over in the locked ward of CNN, Andy Cooper and Jeff Toobin attempted to digest the criminal investigation news as if someone had ordered in a platter of shit sandwiches for the green room just before air-time. Toobin pretended to not know exactly who the mysterious Joseph Misfud was, and struggled to even pronounce his name

... ... ...

As for impeachment, ringmaster Rep. Adam Schiff is surely steaming straight into his own historic Joe McCarthy moment when somebody of incontestable standing denounces him as a fraud and a scoundrel and the mysterious workings of nonlinear behavior tips the political mob past a criticality threshold, shifting the weight of consensus out of darkness and madness. It has happened before in history.

5fingerdiscount , 1 hour ago link

Out of 300,000,000 Americans how many watch cable news?

3,000,000 tops?

Rick Madcow averaged 432,000 this month.

[Oct 25, 2019] MSNBC Democrats = CIA Democrats

https://caucus99percent.com/content/msnbc-democrats

Matt Taibbi recently coined the term MSNBC Democrats to describe those who primarily get their news from MSNBC instead of other sources. They are more likely to believe Russiagate is a fact. According to new polling data, they are also far more likely to believe the economy is bad.

The online poll, by data firm Morning Consult, asks the same five core questions as the University of Michigan's well-known consumer sentiment survey, and for nearly two years has been collecting about 210,000 responses a month, compared to 500 or so each month for the Michigan survey.

American voters face the same set of economic facts, from low unemployment to the risks from a trade war, but the survey's index of overall sentiment - at 108 just above the 100 line that separates positive from negative impressions of the economic outlook - masked the huge divide between those who approve of Trump, whose views measured a far rosier 136, and those who disapprove of the president, with a reading of 88 .

The results, weighted by factors like age, race and sex, to be nationally representative, were similarly skewed based on media consumption. Viewers of conservative-leaning Fox News registered 139 for current sentiment about the economy; viewers of MSNBC, an outlet often critical of Trump, registered 89 . Readers of the New York Times sat in the middle at 107, near those who get their news from Facebook (110) and Twitter (112).

Source: Watch Fox News? You likely think the U.S. economy is great. MSNBC viewers not so much -- Reuters, 10/24/2019

This chart from the article shows respondents' view of the economy by news source:

The results shouldn't be surprising to anyone paying attention. MSNBC is in the liberal fake news business while Fox is in the conservative fake news business. Interestingly, the New York Times falls in the middle. This sort of makes sense. While I don't trust their political reporting, especially anything Russiagate related, their coverage of the economy does seem to be fair and balanced.

Ummm ... edg, the Economy IS Bad

I think the economy is shit, personally, and professionally. It's pretty expensive to live these days.

Negative interest rates are not what I would expect in a functioning economy... And say nothing of corporate balance sheets, gold repatriation and denials of repatriation, Q4, and a shit ton of big banksters just dying to have a bail-in.

But, I think that the MSNBC Democrat would simply blame Drumpf.

Just found it an interesting angle to essay. Stopped clocks and whatnot.

[Oct 25, 2019] Just in time for Halloween! : MadCow is crying agian -- now she is afraid of the sound of shoes dropping in the night

Oct 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Rachel Maddow's trademark pouty-face got a workout as she strained to imagine " what the thing is that Durham might be looking into." Yes, that's a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, all right with a sputtering fuse sticking out of it.

... ... ...

Over in the locked ward of CNN, Andy Cooper and Jeff Toobin attempted to digest the criminal investigation news as if someone had ordered in a platter of shit sandwiches for the green room just before air-time. Toobin pretended to not know exactly who the mysterious Joseph Misfud was, and struggled to even pronounce his name

... ... ...

As for impeachment, ringmaster Rep. Adam Schiff is surely steaming straight into his own historic Joe McCarthy moment when somebody of incontestable standing denounces him as a fraud and a scoundrel and the mysterious workings of nonlinear behavior tips the political mob past a criticality threshold, shifting the weight of consensus out of darkness and madness. It has happened before in history.

5fingerdiscount , 1 hour ago link

Out of 300,000,000 Americans how many watch cable news?

3,000,000 tops?

Rick Madcow averaged 432,000 this month.

[Oct 25, 2019] Barr Changes the Dynamic, The Threat of Obstruction of Justice by Larry C Johnson - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Oct 25, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

I do not believe in coincidence. I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that these three events occurred late last night:

1. The investigation of the roots of the plot to destroy Donald Trump and his Presidency is now a criminal matter.

2. A letter from Inspector General Horowitz announcing that his report on the FISA fraud would be out shortly with no major redactions.

3. The Government caved to Honey Badger Sidney Powell and allowed her to fully expose criminal conduct by Michael Flynn's prosecutors.

What is going on? Two words. Bill Barr. The Attorney General has pulled the trigger and altered the landscape in the Russiagate saga. Having been granted full authority by the President to declassify information, including intel from the CIA and the NSA, he has now acted in a powerful, but low key way.

The announcement that this is now a criminal investigation means that anyone, including FBI agents and CIA officers, who try to hold back information or hide information will be vulnerable to obstruction of justice charges. Criminal penalties attach. Faced with possible charges of obstruction, FBI Director Christopher Wray and his sycophants last night folded like a cheap tent in a hurricane in terms of blocking release of the Inspector General report on FISA abuses. They also withdrew the FBI objections to the Exhibits that Sidney Powell had attached to her brief explaining why the FBI had engaged in criminal activity against her client, General Mike Flynn.

When Durham goes to the CIA, the DIA and the NSA asking questions and demanding documents they must cooperate or face criminal charges. That is the gamechanger. President Trump granted Bill Barr full authority to declassify any classified information. That includes anything collected by the CIA or the NSA. Neither intelligence agency can hide behind the claim that something is classified. If they try, they will face being charged with obstruction of justice.

Bill Barr has a spine of steel and plays by the book. He does not color outside the lines. I do not think the Deep State fully understands or appreciates the depth of peril they now face. The lies and the withholding of key documents that have been common practice over the last two and a half years will come to a screeching halt. At some point the lawyers for the media companies will wake up and realize that spreading lies on behalf of people facing criminal charges could expose them to obstruction charges as well.

That is what last night means.

Take John Brennan, for example. He is on the hook for perjury. While under oath before Congress Brennan denied any knowledge of the Hillary-financed Christopher Steele dossier prior to December 2016. But that is not true. Look for Brennan to be taking the fifth and saying goodby to his TV gig. This is only the beginning.

With respect to the devastating brief filed by Michael Flynn's attorney, Sidney Powell, I want to encourage you to read the piece penned by Sundance put up at The Conservative Treehouse . A great summary and a chance to read the actual documents yourself.

Fred , 25 October 2019 at 05:06 PM

Three aces make a fine hand. It would be better to have four. I recommend Trump have Secretary of the Navy Spencer recall Admiral Mcraven to active duty and charge him with multiple violations of the UCMJ. That should put the military brass on notice that the jig is up and they better obey civilian authority, i.e. Trump, or they'll be held to account.
CK , 25 October 2019 at 05:15 PM
And just in time, Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee has declared that the Mueller Grand Jury materials must be turned over to the house Judiciary committee.
Factotum , 25 October 2019 at 05:15 PM
Coincidence now also the Obama judge who just ruled the House impeachment "inquiry" committee has the right to all redacted Mueller report Grand Jury testimony. By next Wednesday.
blue peacock , 25 October 2019 at 05:43 PM
Larry,

The media spin will be Barr is acting as Trump's personal enforcer and using the powers of the state to go after our great law enforcement and intel agencies while pursuing right wing conspiracy theories.

In any case it seems there may be a race now between Nancy/Schiff & Barr/Durham.

It will be interesting to see who flips first and how far Durham's investigation goes and if it will go up the chain to answer the question what did Obama know and when? And more importantly if it will uncover collusion among foreign and domestic intelligence to interfere in an election and frame a president?

h , 25 October 2019 at 05:50 PM
I echo what Larry is encouraging readers here to do, that is read 'Honey Badger's' brief plus the footnotes. It's splodey head material.

What these mutts did to the rule of law is unsettling to the nth degree. Flynn is and was always innocent of the crappola charges. It's all clearly communicated in her 37-page filing which also includes new detail with email communications, texts etc in her Exhibits.

As for the Radical Deep State cabal, putting this country and all of her people through the hell they've created out of thin air, not to forget our allies, we MUST now demand a full-no-holds-bar airing of the entire caper/coup attempt. Let the chits fall where they will but they MUST fall. And they MUST pay dearly for the destruction to the countless innocent lives who were targeted and destroyed by their intentional malice. They MUST pay dearly for dividing the people of our country simply because they lost their power, their throne, their New World Order wet dream. And they MUST pay dearly for the sheer hell they've put Trump, Melania and all of their kids through as a family AND as our President.

Go get em Barr and Durham! Americans stand beside you in your pursuit of justice.

akaPatience , 25 October 2019 at 06:41 PM
I CANNOT believe the Strzok-Page texts revealing they'd altered the 302s for Gen. Flynn's January 2017 FBI interview are JUST NOW coming to light. This occurred nearly THREE YEARS AGO! And it's probably cost the general several hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. God only knows what it's cost Americans in morale and treasure.

I hope this is going to go a long way in diminishing the FBI's chances of blaming its seditious conduct on the CIA, when it's becoming more and more apparent that they were co-conspirators. Has anyone heard of any sanctimonious tweets from the self-righteous James Comey today???

And leftists have the nerve to call Trump voters fascists... SMFH.

Rick Merlotti , 25 October 2019 at 07:30 PM
Take John Brennan- to jail.

[Oct 25, 2019] Escobar Vladimir Putin, Syria s Pacifier-In-Chief by Pepe Escobar

The devastation created in Syria by the USA and its allies who recruited and armed the ISIS fighters and "moderate islamists" with weapons captured in Libya after fall of Libyan government and start of the civil war will be remembered for generations. Obama and Hillary were key war criminals in this game.
But the gamble to remove Assad using Islamists as the driving force and then somehow deal with islamists failed.
Now the USA, Israel and KSA suffered a geopolitical defeat.
Notable quotes:
"... The Russia-Turkey deal establishes a safe zone along the Syrian-Turkish border – something Erdogan had been gunning for since 2014. There will be joint Russia-Turkey military patrols. The Kurdish YPG (People's Protection Units), part of the rebranded, US-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces, will need to retreat and even disband, especially in the stretch between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, and they will have to abandon their much-cherished urban areas such as Kobane and Manbij. The Syrian Arab Army will be back in the whole northeast. And Syrian territorial integrity – a Putin imperative – will be preserved. ..."
"... This is a Syria-Russia-Turkey win-win-win – and, inevitably, the end of a separatist-controlled Syrian Kurdistan. Significantly, Erdogan's spokesman Fahrettin Altun stressed Syria's "territorial integrity" and "political unity." That kind of rhetoric from Ankara was unheard of until quite recently. ..."
Oct 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

Russia-Turkey deal establishes 'safe zone' along Turkish border and there will be joint Russia-Turkey military patrols

The negotiations in Sochi were long – over six hours – tense and tough. Two leaders in a room with their interpreters and several senior Turkish ministers close by if advice was needed. The stakes were immense: a road map to pacify northeast Syria, finally.

The press conference afterwards was somewhat awkward – riffing on generalities. But there's no question that in the end Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan managed the near impossible.

The Russia-Turkey deal establishes a safe zone along the Syrian-Turkish border – something Erdogan had been gunning for since 2014. There will be joint Russia-Turkey military patrols. The Kurdish YPG (People's Protection Units), part of the rebranded, US-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces, will need to retreat and even disband, especially in the stretch between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, and they will have to abandon their much-cherished urban areas such as Kobane and Manbij. The Syrian Arab Army will be back in the whole northeast. And Syrian territorial integrity – a Putin imperative – will be preserved.

This is a Syria-Russia-Turkey win-win-win – and, inevitably, the end of a separatist-controlled Syrian Kurdistan. Significantly, Erdogan's spokesman Fahrettin Altun stressed Syria's "territorial integrity" and "political unity." That kind of rhetoric from Ankara was unheard of until quite recently.

Putin immediately called Syrian President Bashar al Assad to detail the key points of the memorandum of understanding. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov once again stressed Putin's main goal – Syrian territorial integrity – and the very hard work ahead to form a Syrian Constitutional Committee for the legal path towards a still-elusive political settlement.

Russian military police and Syrian border guards are already arriving to monitor the imperative YPG withdrawal – all the way to a depth of 30 kilometers from the Turkish border. The joint military patrols are tentatively scheduled to start next Tuesday.

On the same day this was happening in Sochi, Assad was visiting the frontline in Idlib – a de facto war zone that the Syrian army, allied with Russian air power, will eventually clear of jihadi militias, many supported by Turkey until literally yesterday. That graphically illustrates how Damascus, slowly but surely, is recovering sovereign territory after eight and a half years of war.

Who gets the oil?

For all the cliffhangers in Sochi, there was not a peep about an absolutely key element: who's in control of Syria's oilfields , especially after President Trump's now-notorious tweet stating, "the US has secured the oil." No one knows which oil. If he meant Syrian oil, that would be against international law. Not to mention Washington has no mandate – from the UN or anyone else – to occupy Syrian territory.

The Arab street is inundated with videos of the not exactly glorious exit by US troops, leaving Syria pelted by rocks and rotten tomatoes all the way to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they were greeted by a stark reminder. "All US forces that withdrew from Syria received approval to enter the Kurdistan region [only] so that they may be transported outside Iraq. There is no permission granted for these forces to stay inside Iraq," the Iraqi military headquarters in Baghdad said.

The Pentagon said a "residual force" may remain in the Middle Euphrates river valley, side by side with Syrian Democratic Forces militias, near a few oilfields, to make sure the oil does not fall "into the hands of ISIS/Daesh or others." "Others" actually means the legitimate owner, Damascus. There's no way the Syrian army will accept that, as it's now fully engaged in a national drive to recover the country's sources of food, agriculture and energy. Syria's northern provinces have a wealth of water, hydropower dams, oil, gas and food.

As it stands, the US retreat is partial at best, also considering that a small garrison remains behind at al-Tanf, on the border with Jordan. Strategically, that does not make sense, because the al-Qaem border between Iran and Iraq is now open and thriving.

Map: Energy Consulting Group

The map above shows the position of US bases in early October, but that's changing fast. The Syrian Army is already working to recover oilfields around Raqqa, but the strategic US base of Ash Shaddadi still seems to be in place. Until quite recently US troops were in control of Syria's largest oilfield, al-Omar, in the northeast.

There have been accusations by Russian sources that mercenaries recruited by private US military companies trained jihadi militias such as the Maghawir al-Thawra ("Army of Free Tribes") to sabotage Syrian oil and gas infrastructure and/or sell Syrian oil and gas to bribe tribal leaders and finance jihadi operations. The Pentagon denies it.

Gas pipeline

As I have argued for years, Syria to a large extent has been a key ' Pipelineistan' war – not only in terms of pipelines inside Syria, and the US preventing Damascus from commercializing its own natural resources, but most of all around the fate of the Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline which was agreed in a memorandum of understanding signed in 2012.

This pipeline has, over the years, always been a red line, not only for Washington but also for Doha, Riyadh and Ankara.

The situation should dramatically change when the $200 billion-worth of reconstruction in Syria finally takes off after a comprehensive peace deal is in place. It will be fascinating to watch the European Union – after NATO plotted for an "Assad must go" regime change operation for years – wooing Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus with financial offers for their gas.

NATO explicitly supported the Turkish offensive "Operation Peace Spring." And we haven't even seen the ultimate geoeconomic irony yet: NATO member, Turkey, purged of its neo-Ottoman dreams, merrily embracing the Gazprom-supported Iran-Iraq-Syria 'Pipelineistan' road map .

frankthecrank , 2 minutes ago link

NATO explicitly supported the Turkish offensive "Operation Peace Spring." And we haven't even seen the ultimate geoeconomic irony yet: NATO member, Turkey, purged of its neo-Ottoman dreams, merrily embracing the Gazprom-supported Iran-Iraq-Syria 'Pipelineistan' road map .

except, I thought the EU and the US cut Erdogan off from military supplies?

https://www.washingtonpost.com › world › europe › 2019/10/14

Oct 14, 2019 - European leaders warn of ISIS revival with Turkish invasion of Syria ... condemned the Turkish incursion and agreed on an informal, E.U. -wide ban on arms sales to Ankara. ... That is a direct security threat to the European Union." AD ... who escape from Syrian prison camps could make their way to France.

And, six hours isn't ****. The deal was cut long before that meeting. Funny Assad wasn't there -- it's his country. Or is it? given that he couldn't resupply his army, what choice did he have?

DEDA CVETKO , 2 minutes ago link

Some people build alliances. Other people backstab their allies and friends.

Some people build infrastructure. Others drone-bomb it and smart-bomb it and depleted-uranium-bomb it..

Some people invest in people. Other people invest in WeWork and $1.3 trillion death-and-destruction budget.

Such is life, alas.

McDuff71 , 14 minutes ago link

...oh to be rid of this vipers nest of **** bought to you by George Sr and Jnr, Obamawambachamawamba and of course Killary and Co along with quite a few Repub. necons...

I worked in Syria before all this **** went down and I can tell you it was thriving and probably the best exemplar in the mid east; I hope they get back to where they should never have been torn down from...

Trump is the one that deserves the credit here, no one else...

Svastic , 15 minutes ago link

Read the entire crap all through again as well as anything that is published in the Saker blog. While they feign sympathy for Syria (with oodles of Zionist plots to get the reader emotionally-activated), their true intent is to promote Turkey's interests.

There is hardly any mention of Turkey's role in the genocide in Syria, and the sex-slave and organ trafficking markets it had facilitated. Turkey appears white as snow and anything bad can be blamed on an exiled Gulen.

Who is threatening to flood White Europe with millions Muslim refugees...? ...

Northbridge , 4 minutes ago link

Don't forget who was buying ISIS oil.

Arising , 25 minutes ago link

All the U.S foreign policies in Syria are brought to you by your friendly neighborhood zionist.

[Oct 25, 2019] Justice Department Opens Probe Into Possible Spying on Trump by Chris Strohm

Not conspiracy theory. This is a fact: " A conspiracy theory promoted by some conservatives holds that Ukrainian operatives, and not Russians, tried to influence the American election to help Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton. "
Bloomberg got it wrong: this is plotter who are trying to obscure Barr investigatiom with Ukrainegate, nor "The expansion of the Durham inquiry, which was first reported by the New York Times, comes as an impeachment investigation in the U.S. House has become a growing threat to the Trump presidency."
Notable quotes:
"... The expansion of the Durham inquiry, which was first reported by the New York Times, comes as an impeachment investigation in the U.S. House has become a growing threat to the Trump presidency. Even before Durham received his new powers, Democrats and others had expressed concerns that Trump wanted to weaponize the Justice Department to further his political aims. ..."
"... Since then, Barr has displayed a strong personal interest in advancing the probe, including traveling twice in recent months to ask Italian intelligence officials for help. He also has been in contact with Australian and British officials. ..."
"... FBI and CIA officials have said that they conducted legal and court-authorized surveillance when they learned of the Russian interference. But Trump and his allies contend that the surveillance -- which they call spying -- was an illegal operation to damage his campaign and presidency. ..."
"... A conspiracy theory promoted by some conservatives holds that Ukrainian operatives, and not Russians, tried to influence the American election to help Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and one of the leaders of the impeachment investigation, and Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler released a joint statement late Thursday night in response to news about the Durham inquiry. "These reports, if true, raise profound new concerns that the Department of Justice under Attorney General William Barr has lost its independence and become a vehicle for President Trump's political revenge," the congressmen said. ..."
Oct 24, 2019 | www.bloomberg.com
  • Prosecutor looking into Russia investigation given new powers
  • Expanded investigation comes amid impeachment peril for Trump

The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into whether Donald Trump or his 2016 presidential campaign was illegally spied upon, according to a person familiar with the matter, escalating the controversy surrounding an inquiry that has remained largely secret for months.

John Durham, the federal prosecutor leading the effort, now has the authority to convene a grand jury and issue subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify or turn over documents.

Trump and his allies have long contended that the investigation into Russian interference in the election, which led to the inquiry headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, originated with false accusations and was politically motivated.

The expansion of the Durham inquiry, which was first reported by the New York Times, comes as an impeachment investigation in the U.S. House has become a growing threat to the Trump presidency. Even before Durham received his new powers, Democrats and others had expressed concerns that Trump wanted to weaponize the Justice Department to further his political aims.

Until now, Durham, who heads the U.S. attorney's office in Connecticut, has been doing a review into U.S. counterintelligence activities conducted by the CIA, FBI and other agencies before and after the 2016 election, especially related to Trump's campaign and the early days of his presidency.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee in May he was concerned there may have been improper spying, though he added at the time he didn't have any concrete evidence. Shortly after the hearing, Barr appointed Durham to lead the review.

Trump Is 'Proud' of Barr for Investigating Russia Probe Origins

Since then, Barr has displayed a strong personal interest in advancing the probe, including traveling twice in recent months to ask Italian intelligence officials for help. He also has been in contact with Australian and British officials.

Trump has ordered intelligence agencies to cooperate with the review and gave Barr wide authority to declassify documents.

FBI and CIA officials have said that they conducted legal and court-authorized surveillance when they learned of the Russian interference. But Trump and his allies contend that the surveillance -- which they call spying -- was an illegal operation to damage his campaign and presidency.

Ironically, the impeachment inquiry began over Trump's activities involving Ukraine. A conspiracy theory promoted by some conservatives holds that Ukrainian operatives, and not Russians, tried to influence the American election to help Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and one of the leaders of the impeachment investigation, and Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler released a joint statement late Thursday night in response to news about the Durham inquiry. "These reports, if true, raise profound new concerns that the Department of Justice under Attorney General William Barr has lost its independence and become a vehicle for President Trump's political revenge," the congressmen said.

-- With assistance by Billy House

( Updates with Schiff and Nadler response, in final two paragraphs )
Published on ‎October‎ ‎24‎, ‎2019‎ ‎10‎:‎00‎ ‎PM

[Oct 24, 2019] The difference between the reality that we perceive and the way it is portrayed in the media is so stark the it reminds people about the USSR before the collapse

Notable quotes:
"... The difference between the reality that we perceive and the way it is portrayed in the media is so stark that sometimes I am not sure whether it is me who is insane or the world - the MSM and the cool-aid drinking libtards whose animosity against Trump won't let them distinguish black from white. Not that they were ever able to understand the real state of affairs. Discussions with them have always been about them regurgitating the MSM talking points without understanding any of it. ..."
Oct 24, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

ancientarcher , 24 October 2019 at 11:19 AM

Colonel, thanks for spelling it out so clearly.

The difference between the reality that we perceive and the way it is portrayed in the media is so stark that sometimes I am not sure whether it is me who is insane or the world - the MSM and the cool-aid drinking libtards whose animosity against Trump won't let them distinguish black from white. Not that they were ever able to understand the real state of affairs. Discussions with them have always been about them regurgitating the MSM talking points without understanding any of it.

While it will always be mystifying to me why so many people on the street blindly support America fighting and dying in the middle east, the support of the MSM and the paid hacks for eternal war is no surprise. I hope they get to send their children and grandchildren to these wars. More than that, I hope we get out of these wars. Trump might be able to put an end to it, and not just in Syria, if he wins a second term, which he will if he is allowed to contest the next election. There is however a chance that the borg will pull the rug from under him and bar him from the elections. Hope that doesn't come to pass.

[Oct 24, 2019] Indeed Orwell's "1984" referred to the UK as "Airstrip One" and this Brexit fiasco surely proves that Outside Influences not only run the Judiciary when necessary, but also plant poison on doorknobs when it suits them

Looks like the USA intelligence agencies are way too sophisticated now for their own good...
Oct 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

imo , Oct 24 2019 2:42 utc | 43

@8 Trailer Trash

Indeed Orwell's "1984" referred to the UK as "Airstrip One" and this Brexit fiasco surely proves that Outside Influences not only run the Judiciary when necessary, but also plant poison on doorknobs when it suits them.

The ever servile Australian government to the empire du jour does nothing to honor their passport pledge. We would have to assume it qualifies as Orwell's "Airstrip Two"

In contrast to Assange's predicament (and Manning I assume), the main point of this post is to mention the recent Joe Rogan interview of Edward Snowden (touting his book) -- http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/edward-snowden

Nearly three hours of mostly Snowden rambling on. I stayed with it to the end. A few items of interest but mostly just noise. I found him initially somewhat suspicious -- by the end I was more neutral. However, what a display of American arrogance and ingratitude. The Russian government has saved his bacon and has given him refuge with great freedoms he would not have in the USA -- or Airstrip One ... or, HK, or any South American backyard colony. And yet he makes no attempt to thank them and even virtually panders to the American anti-Russian meme. He has even dabbled in Russian opposition politics via local newspaper comments. What an ungrateful guest! (Or still an agent @ work?) I would entirely understand the Russians putting him on a plane back to the USA tomorrow. Ungrateful little character, imo. And says a lot about the way Americans treat the external world from inside their little fishbowl. Simply a doormat for convenience.

The main take away for me came towards the end where Snowden outlines the special legal conditions and laws that the US government enforces to control presentation of evidence in these cases. These same 'servant' thugs who are stepping into the now 3rd-world UK court system and pulling the strings on Australia's Assange. The same crew that Snowden worked with and blew the whistle on (apparently).

Snowden makes great bravado about being willing to go back to the USA and face the music -- if only he could say in court why he did it (something the legal Act prohibits apparently). In this, and a few other matters of history, I find him less than genuine. Is/was he a plant? .... I'm still out with the jury on that.

[Oct 23, 2019] The Atlantic Council Strikes Back! caucus99percent

Notable quotes:
"... NATO has become an end run around the UN in legitimizing our dirty little wars. No wonder they are going after Tulsi. ..."
"... War and spooks. It makes it me absolutely disgusted to see intelligent, left-leaning people following obvious traps into xenophobia and fascism. People I love talking about Russian conspiracies, foreign "assets", etc. ..."
Oct 23, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

konondrum on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 12:57pm

What was Hillary Clinton thinking? The 2016 Democratic nominee, for some reason, felt the need to insert herself into the 2020 race with an attack on Tulsi Gabbard, an oddball Democratic presidential contender who barely registered in polls. The congresswoman from Hawaii is a completely discreditable candidate -- more on that in a moment -- but Clinton's accusation that Gabbard is a tool of the Russians was so blunt and clumsy that it has added new life to a primary bid that should never have existed in the first place. Within a day, Gabbard was already fundraising off of it, a development as predictable as a sunrise.

Oh no! The great neo-liberal hope proves herself inept again, and the rest of the spooks get antsy. Damn it Hillary, you're not supposed to directly say that. You're supposed to imply it from unverifiable sources. Geez, you're making us all look like amateurs over here.

Here we are again, watching the people that foiseted Her onto us in the first place, gnashing their teeth because she can't play even the most elementary of politics.

Moreover, Clinton is also right that both Stein and Gabbard are favorites of the Russian government, which has rushed social-media bots and state-controlled media to their defense at various times. Stein even got a seat at a dinner with Vladimir Putin, an honor one might think is a bit out of the weight class of a super-minor American candidate. The fact that Stein was sitting at the same table as Putin, along with the retired general, future Donald Trump appointee, and current felon Michael Flynn, should have raised alarm bells because Putin never wastes a minute of his day on people who cannot be of use to him. But once Trump was in the race, Russia focused its efforts on getting him elected, and Stein was left to do what damage she could as a third-party spoiler.

And this is great! We're just going to repeat everything she said, embellish it, and pretend like it's common knowledge! Brilliant!

Makes Kamala's answer the other day look especially telling. Well, of course , everyone knows that... But god, don't say that out loud!

Minor edits for spelling and clarity

Atlantic Council = NATO

The Atlantic Council of the United States was established in 1961 by former Secretaries of State Dean Acheson and Christian Herter to bolster support for NATO. The name is derivative of North Atlantic Council, the highest governing body of NATO.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-insiduous-role-of-the-atlantic-council...

NATO creates war...

+ On April 23, 1999, NATO rocketed the central studio of Radio Televisija Srbije (RTS), the state-owned broadcasting corporation in Belgrade, destroying the building. Sixteen civilian employees of RTS were killed and 16 wounded. Amnesty International concluded the attack was a war crime.

+ In a Feb. 12, 2010 atrocity that was kept secret until March 13, US Special Forces killed a teenage girl, a pregnant mother of 10, a pregnant mother of 6, a police officer and his brother, and were accused of then trying to cover-up the killings by digging bullets out of the victims' bodies, washing the wounds with alcohol and lying to superior officers.

+ While bombing Libya in March 2011, NATO refused to aid a group of 72 migrants adrift in the Mediterranean Sea. Only nine people on board survived. The refusal was condemned as criminal by the Council of Europe.

+ On Nov. 26, 2011, NATO jets bombed and rocketed an allied Pakistani military base for two hours, killing 26 Pakistani soldiers and wounding dozens more. NATO refuses to apologize

.
https://theduran.com/worse-than-obsolete-nato-creates-enemies/

And now they are including Columbia and Brazil...how convenient that they both border Venezuela
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-brazil-latam-interview-idUSKCN1R...

NATO has become an end run around the UN in legitimizing our dirty little wars. No wonder they are going after Tulsi.

konondrum on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 1:23pm
NATO is in the business of war, hot or cold

War and spooks. It makes it me absolutely disgusted to see intelligent, left-leaning people following obvious traps into xenophobia and fascism. People I love talking about Russian conspiracies, foreign "assets", etc.

My wife is from Hawaii, and she used to respect Tulsi a great deal. It's heartbreaking for me to watch her fall for this shit.

Lookout on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 1:26pm
What is she falling over?

@konondrum

They are coming after her because she is calling out their dirty little wars. You think she is a NATO supporter?

konondrum on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 1:37pm
To be honest

@Lookout I think it's because she actually went to school for Political Science. She was in fact, an intern in the Clinton administration.

Now, she left politics because she was disgusted by it.... I can only imagine how gross it is up close and personal. But, I think like many women of her time, and a true feminist, she's fallen for Hillary's victimization game.

When I told her I made my first political donation yesterday, she was excited. When I told her it was to Tusi, for what Clinton had said, she became immediately combative. But when, I in exasperation, yelled "I'M DOING IT TO DEFEND A WOMAN!" I think it finally clicked. I'm hoping that maybe she can finally see that she is just a nasty, vindictive woman.

#2

They are coming after her because she is calling out their dirty little wars. You think she is a NATO supporter?

Lookout on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 1:54pm
Didn't realize who "her" was, sorry.

@konondrum

Thought you meant Tulsi had fallen for some BS.

#2.1 I think it's because she actually went to school for Political Science. She was in fact, an intern in the Clinton administration.

Now, she left politics because she was disgusted by it.... I can only imagine how gross it is up close and personal. But, I think like many women of her time, and a true feminist, she's fallen for Hillary's victimization game.

When I told her I made my first political donation yesterday, she was excited. When I told her it was to Tusi, for what Clinton had said, she became immediately combative. But when, I in exasperation, yelled "I'M DOING IT TO DEFEND A WOMAN!" I think it finally clicked. I'm hoping that maybe she can finally see that she is just a nasty, vindictive woman.

edg on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 4:18pm
Great comment.

@lizzyh7

Feminism isn't about saying women are better than men but saying women are as capable as men.

Exactly right. My wife and I own a company. She's better at sales and customer service than I am, so she does that. I'm better at marketing and technology issues, so I do that. We each have strengths and weaknesses. The best policy for us, and I posit for society in general, is to base decisions on quantifiable facts, not on gender.

#2.1.1 may consider herself a true feminist, her unrelenting support of women as THE answer to our problems says to me, in my own opinion, she's really no feminist. Feminism isn't about saying women are better than men but saying women are as capable as men. To me, the uttering of women who say, like some twit in the media a couple weeks ago, that "women aren't corrupt" is actually a highly sexist thing to say. Women with real power in our corrupt system are indeed as corrupt as any man is and seem fully capable of using their corruption to get ahead. And there have been many women historically who proved that capability rather well.

I have a couple of friends who are on the same wavelength in too many ways for me. Both are younger than I am so some of that might be generational differences in perception, but I think a lot of it is also the media hype of MeToo, Trump, etc. I get extremely frustrated with them at times but I have learned lately not to even respond to the latest outrage and keep reminding them, which both do not really like, that woman or man, in this world, that choice matters about as much as the one between R and D...

Hillary and her disgusting minions sicken me with their sexism talk. They make an open mockery of real sexism and they feel absolutely no shame doing it. Anything to get ahead after all, they do not care how many real women they step on, bomb, and kill to get there either.

Snode on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 5:31pm
I think

@edg generally, women just think a little different. It was a woman, accountant, that confronted Ken Lay and brought down Enron. She had nothing to gain. It was a woman FBI agent that noticed foreign nationals were taking flying lessons that didn't include landing an aircraft. Her observations were dismissed. Men say, do this, you will prosper, women say do this, it's the right thing to do. Because that's what they teach their kids. Yes, women can emulate men, the glass ceiling omits that those standing on the top rung are standing on the fingers of those below them. But damn it, we need a different way of thinking.

#2.1.1.2

Feminism isn't about saying women are better than men but saying women are as capable as men.

Exactly right. My wife and I own a company. She's better at sales and customer service than I am, so she does that. I'm better at marketing and technology issues, so I do that. We each have strengths and weaknesses. The best policy for us, and I posit for society in general, is to base decisions on quantifiable facts, not on gender.

Cant Stop the M... on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 6:03pm
Feminism is about creating a world in which

@lizzyh7

women are not shamed, objectified, exploited, deprived of choice, deprived of freedom, deprived of opportunity, abused, or killed for being women.

#2.1.1 may consider herself a true feminist, her unrelenting support of women as THE answer to our problems says to me, in my own opinion, she's really no feminist. Feminism isn't about saying women are better than men but saying women are as capable as men. To me, the uttering of women who say, like some twit in the media a couple weeks ago, that "women aren't corrupt" is actually a highly sexist thing to say. Women with real power in our corrupt system are indeed as corrupt as any man is and seem fully capable of using their corruption to get ahead. And there have been many women historically who proved that capability rather well.

I have a couple of friends who are on the same wavelength in too many ways for me. Both are younger than I am so some of that might be generational differences in perception, but I think a lot of it is also the media hype of MeToo, Trump, etc. I get extremely frustrated with them at times but I have learned lately not to even respond to the latest outrage and keep reminding them, which both do not really like, that woman or man, in this world, that choice matters about as much as the one between R and D...

Hillary and her disgusting minions sicken me with their sexism talk. They make an open mockery of real sexism and they feel absolutely no shame doing it. Anything to get ahead after all, they do not care how many real women they step on, bomb, and kill to get there either.

FutureNow on Mon, 10/21/2019 - 7:31am
Like any other faith-based ideology,

@lizzyh7
feminism is as feminism does.

#2.1.1 may consider herself a true feminist, her unrelenting support of women as THE answer to our problems says to me, in my own opinion, she's really no feminist. Feminism isn't about saying women are better than men but saying women are as capable as men. To me, the uttering of women who say, like some twit in the media a couple weeks ago, that "women aren't corrupt" is actually a highly sexist thing to say. Women with real power in our corrupt system are indeed as corrupt as any man is and seem fully capable of using their corruption to get ahead. And there have been many women historically who proved that capability rather well.

I have a couple of friends who are on the same wavelength in too many ways for me. Both are younger than I am so some of that might be generational differences in perception, but I think a lot of it is also the media hype of MeToo, Trump, etc. I get extremely frustrated with them at times but I have learned lately not to even respond to the latest outrage and keep reminding them, which both do not really like, that woman or man, in this world, that choice matters about as much as the one between R and D...

Hillary and her disgusting minions sicken me with their sexism talk. They make an open mockery of real sexism and they feel absolutely no shame doing it. Anything to get ahead after all, they do not care how many real women they step on, bomb, and kill to get there either.

OzoneTom on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 1:41pm
It seemed out of place until I re-read

@Lookout
"..watch her fall for this shit."
Reading the "her" as being the wife made more sense.

#2

They are coming after her because she is calling out their dirty little wars. You think she is a NATO supporter?

konondrum on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 1:28pm
I love this too...

Gabbard herself has already ruled out such a challenge, but that is beside the point. Gabbard has now vowed to take her fight to the convention, where she might argue that the nominee, whom Clinton will applaud and support, is just another tool of the Democratic, neoconservative, neoliberal, warmongering, globalist establishment.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Le Frog on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 1:29pm
We can say with certainty that Omnishambles Clinton

is a Donald Trump asset.

I sure hope that Tulsi gets a boost out of this nonsense. No matter what one may think of her as a candidate, I am all for a bigger group of voices, and I am definitely on my feet applauding Tulsi's response.

Correct me if this is wrong, but I saw a graphic on Twitter or Reddit last night that may very well explain why Tulsi Gabbard was targeted by the Great White Failure: every one of the major candidates were either Clinton state delegates or Clinton superdelegates - with the exceptions of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. Also floating around was the Wikileaks email from the Clinton Cabal to Tulsi, chastising her for resigning. Suddenly, the vicious and vindictive swipe makes sense.

There was also lot of speculation online too about whether the Ghoul of Politics Past was testing the smear job waters to see what would knock Tulsi, with the plan to debut the same hits against Bernie Sanders. I can believe it.

Just to throw the question out there too: do you think other candidates should be asked about this? I'm now of two minds. On one hand, I believe it's a fair question, and I especially want to hear all of them demanding that Clinton provide proof of her pretty serious allegations. Seems to me that no one has asked for the receipts yet. On the other, the press shouldn't have time to be asking candidates what they think; they should all be swarming Hillary Clinton, demanding to see her alleged evidence. A third part of me wonders why we are still giving this human herpes any attention whatsoever. She should be relegated to the same heap that Glenn Beck currently occupies, where no one gives a rat's ass about her or her "opinions."

OzoneTom on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 1:59pm
I believe that Jill Stein might be able to press a case

@Le Frog
Based on Fmr. Sec. Clinton's libelous statement. The language was more direct and absolute.

Rep. Gabbard should get a bump but she, and certainly Sen. Sanders, have bigger fish to fry than jumping up and down every time Her rattles the car keys.

is a Donald Trump asset.

I sure hope that Tulsi gets a boost out of this nonsense. No matter what one may think of her as a candidate, I am all for a bigger group of voices, and I am definitely on my feet applauding Tulsi's response.

Correct me if this is wrong, but I saw a graphic on Twitter or Reddit last night that may very well explain why Tulsi Gabbard was targeted by the Great White Failure: every one of the major candidates were either Clinton state delegates or Clinton superdelegates - with the exceptions of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. Also floating around was the Wikileaks email from the Clinton Cabal to Tulsi, chastising her for resigning. Suddenly, the vicious and vindictive swipe makes sense.

There was also lot of speculation online too about whether the Ghoul of Politics Past was testing the smear job waters to see what would knock Tulsi, with the plan to debut the same hits against Bernie Sanders. I can believe it.

Just to throw the question out there too: do you think other candidates should be asked about this? I'm now of two minds. On one hand, I believe it's a fair question, and I especially want to hear all of them demanding that Clinton provide proof of her pretty serious allegations. Seems to me that no one has asked for the receipts yet. On the other, the press shouldn't have time to be asking candidates what they think; they should all be swarming Hillary Clinton, demanding to see her alleged evidence. A third part of me wonders why we are still giving this human herpes any attention whatsoever. She should be relegated to the same heap that Glenn Beck currently occupies, where no one gives a rat's ass about her or her "opinions."

Le Frog on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 2:05pm
The smear on Jill Stein was unbelievable

@OzoneTom I would love to see a lawsuit from Jill Stein.

#4
Based on Fmr. Sec. Clinton's libelous statement. The language was more direct and absolute.

Rep. Gabbard should get a bump but she, and certainly Sen. Sanders, have bigger fish to fry than jumping up and down every time Her rattles the car keys.

Lookout on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 1:52pm
Posted this discussion in another essay....

@Le Frog

...but it fits this conversation too
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/10/20/max-blumenthal-on-why-hillary-clinton... (22 min)
Max Blumenthal says that Clinton's comments reflect a continued effort by Democratic neo-liberals to deflect responsibility for their loss to Trump in 2016; marginalize voices like Gabbard and Stein's who challenge their pro-war, corporatist agenda; and preview their potential future attacks on Bernie Sanders.

is a Donald Trump asset.

I sure hope that Tulsi gets a boost out of this nonsense. No matter what one may think of her as a candidate, I am all for a bigger group of voices, and I am definitely on my feet applauding Tulsi's response.

Correct me if this is wrong, but I saw a graphic on Twitter or Reddit last night that may very well explain why Tulsi Gabbard was targeted by the Great White Failure: every one of the major candidates were either Clinton state delegates or Clinton superdelegates - with the exceptions of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. Also floating around was the Wikileaks email from the Clinton Cabal to Tulsi, chastising her for resigning. Suddenly, the vicious and vindictive swipe makes sense.

There was also lot of speculation online too about whether the Ghoul of Politics Past was testing the smear job waters to see what would knock Tulsi, with the plan to debut the same hits against Bernie Sanders. I can believe it.

Just to throw the question out there too: do you think other candidates should be asked about this? I'm now of two minds. On one hand, I believe it's a fair question, and I especially want to hear all of them demanding that Clinton provide proof of her pretty serious allegations. Seems to me that no one has asked for the receipts yet. On the other, the press shouldn't have time to be asking candidates what they think; they should all be swarming Hillary Clinton, demanding to see her alleged evidence. A third part of me wonders why we are still giving this human herpes any attention whatsoever. She should be relegated to the same heap that Glenn Beck currently occupies, where no one gives a rat's ass about her or her "opinions."

snoopydawg on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 7:02pm
Wikileaks on Tulsi's 'betrayal'

@Le Frog

Representative Gabbard, We were very disappointed to hear that you would resign your position with the DNC so you could endorse Bernie Sanders, a man who has never been a Democrat before. When we met over dinner a couple of years ago I was so impressed by your intellect, your passion, and commitment to getting things done on behalf of the American people. For you to endorse a man who has spent almost 40 years in public office with very few accomplishments, doesn't fall in line with what we previously thought of you. Hillary Clinton will be our party's nominee and you standing on ceremony to support the sinking Bernie Sanders ship is disrespectful to Hillary Clinton. A woman who has spent the vast majority of her life in public service and working on behalf of women, families, and the underserved. You have called both myself and Michael Kives before about helping your campaign raise money, we no longer trust your judgement so will not be raising money for your campaign.

Darnell Strom & Michael Kives

Ooh..bet that hurt.

These are the guys who represent lots of powerful people in government, the media and Hollywood. If you want to go anywhere then you need them on your side.

is a Donald Trump asset.

I sure hope that Tulsi gets a boost out of this nonsense. No matter what one may think of her as a candidate, I am all for a bigger group of voices, and I am definitely on my feet applauding Tulsi's response.

Correct me if this is wrong, but I saw a graphic on Twitter or Reddit last night that may very well explain why Tulsi Gabbard was targeted by the Great White Failure: every one of the major candidates were either Clinton state delegates or Clinton superdelegates - with the exceptions of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. Also floating around was the Wikileaks email from the Clinton Cabal to Tulsi, chastising her for resigning. Suddenly, the vicious and vindictive swipe makes sense.

There was also lot of speculation online too about whether the Ghoul of Politics Past was testing the smear job waters to see what would knock Tulsi, with the plan to debut the same hits against Bernie Sanders. I can believe it.

Just to throw the question out there too: do you think other candidates should be asked about this? I'm now of two minds. On one hand, I believe it's a fair question, and I especially want to hear all of them demanding that Clinton provide proof of her pretty serious allegations. Seems to me that no one has asked for the receipts yet. On the other, the press shouldn't have time to be asking candidates what they think; they should all be swarming Hillary Clinton, demanding to see her alleged evidence. A third part of me wonders why we are still giving this human herpes any attention whatsoever. She should be relegated to the same heap that Glenn Beck currently occupies, where no one gives a rat's ass about her or her "opinions."

konondrum on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 2:04pm
Check out the author of this piece too.... Looks like a fun guy!

Thomas M. Nichols
He closes the article with this tidbit -

As a former Republican who will vote for the Democratic nominee again in 2020, I hope that I never have to talk about Tulsi Gabbard again. I can only hope that enough Democratic Party leaders can convince Hillary Clinton to feel the same way.

Check out his book! -

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (!!!!)

Technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism. Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise shows how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer service model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, among other reasons. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both.

doh1304 on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 4:12pm
Someone famous said the same thing in like 1850

@konondrum @konondrum
But I can't remember who. The big quote was something like, "In America every shopkeeper is an expert."

Thomas M. Nichols
He closes the article with this tidbit -

As a former Republican who will vote for the Democratic nominee again in 2020, I hope that I never have to talk about Tulsi Gabbard again. I can only hope that enough Democratic Party leaders can convince Hillary Clinton to feel the same way.

Check out his book! -

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (!!!!)

Technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism. Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise shows how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer service model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, among other reasons. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both.

The Liberal Moonbat on Mon, 10/21/2019 - 6:31am
I HATE being right

@konondrum This is just what I need: My worst of all fears confirmed.

It wasn't so long ago that "standing up to experts" was just something crank Texas dentists got skewered by Stephen Colbert for...but now?

Thomas M. Nichols
He closes the article with this tidbit -

As a former Republican who will vote for the Democratic nominee again in 2020, I hope that I never have to talk about Tulsi Gabbard again. I can only hope that enough Democratic Party leaders can convince Hillary Clinton to feel the same way.

Check out his book! -

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (!!!!)

Technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism. Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise shows how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer service model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, among other reasons. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both.

konondrum on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 2:52pm
"misguided intellectual egalitarianism"

Ohhhhh.... it's poetry!

Alright, I'm just going to leave it here, and soak in a nice warm bath of irony.

Dr. John Carpenter on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 5:13pm
One thing I'm real curious about

Will any of HER buddies address anything in Tulsi's tweet aside from Russia? I think not. HER is going to have to take the "rot" comment on the chin because I'm sure they really really don't want to have that conversation.

So, I am glad Tulsi opened that door and I hope she doesn't let up on it. Russiagate is, after all, a symptom of the corruption in the party, just like Trump is.

Shahryar on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 5:16pm
Hillary Rot-ham Clinton

I really do think the woman is insane.

Lookout on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 5:56pm
Another fun piece... and Tulsi's latest

from Tim Black...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ja8tpElxlo (35 min - the first 20 or so should do you)
2 min

//www.youtube.com/embed/NJ9ofm5y-pQ?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

gulfgal98 on Mon, 10/21/2019 - 5:21am
Glad to see Tim Black's latest piece posted here

@Lookout I watched it yesterday and was amazed by his take on it, especially after he had harsh words for Tulsi regarding her version of Medicare for All. To be sure, Time Black is a big Bernie supporter, but his latest on Tulsi is excellent.

from Tim Black...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ja8tpElxlo (35 min - the first 20 or so should do you)
2 min

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==

MrWebster on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 6:57pm
Just as Bernie made m4a a thing Tulsi made regime change a thing

I was sorta confused about why Hillary did it. Mostly I thought to open door to attack Bernie. In many ways that door is closed now given the reaction of the masses. I now think Hillary's comments were meant to sideline not so much the candidate Tulsi but her messages of anti-war and anti-regime change. I think her constant iteration just like Bernie's constant iteration of m4a, was reaching people way beyond her poll numbers.

It boils down to this:

Atlantic Council (war mongers) = regime change and war is good. Losing ground.
Tulsi: regime change and war is bad. Winning ground.

Tulsi's influence goes beyond her poll numbers. She is thee most dangerous candidate to the establishment because she is winning the ideological battle over foreign policy and war.

OzoneTom on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 8:15pm
Her was trying to draw Bernie in to resuscitate the Russia line

@MrWebster
Nothing today should be about Her. It is straight from the Trump playbook. Allowing this absurd slander to distract us from keeping our eyes on the prize is a win for Her.

Senator Sanders and Representative Gabbard are moving ahead on the front. They are depending on the rest of us to resist on the flanks.

"Not me, Us!" is not just a slogan...

I was sorta confused about why Hillary did it. Mostly I thought to open door to attack Bernie. In many ways that door is closed now given the reaction of the masses. I now think Hillary's comments were meant to sideline not so much the candidate Tulsi but her messages of anti-war and anti-regime change. I think her constant iteration just like Bernie's constant iteration of m4a, was reaching people way beyond her poll numbers.

It boils down to this:

Atlantic Council (war mongers) = regime change and war is good. Losing ground.
Tulsi: regime change and war is bad. Winning ground.

Tulsi's influence goes beyond her poll numbers. She is thee most dangerous candidate to the establishment because she is winning the ideological battle over foreign policy and war.

gulfgal98 on Mon, 10/21/2019 - 5:29am
^^^This!!!^^^

@MrWebster Excellent comment that reflects my own view of what is going on here.

Just as Bernie's 2016 Presidential campaign has greatly changed the dommestic policy landscape, the oligarchy and the MIC are seeing that Tulsi Gabbard's 2020 Presidential campaign is beginning to take hold in changing the political landscape foreign policy wise. The empire is coming apart and they are lashing back.

I was sorta confused about why Hillary did it. Mostly I thought to open door to attack Bernie. In many ways that door is closed now given the reaction of the masses. I now think Hillary's comments were meant to sideline not so much the candidate Tulsi but her messages of anti-war and anti-regime change. I think her constant iteration just like Bernie's constant iteration of m4a, was reaching people way beyond her poll numbers.

It boils down to this:

Atlantic Council (war mongers) = regime change and war is good. Losing ground.
Tulsi: regime change and war is bad. Winning ground.

Tulsi's influence goes beyond her poll numbers. She is thee most dangerous candidate to the establishment because she is winning the ideological battle over foreign policy and war.

Fionnsboy on Sun, 10/20/2019 - 8:44pm
It could be a distraction....

...something to do with HER server, wasn't it? But what I REALLY think is going on, and I could be totally wrong, is that Bernie is considering Tulsi as his VP pick, when and if, and this is to sow enough doubt and deceit about Tulsi that it wounds Bernie. But one thing I know for sure: that Clinton hag is one evil bitch!

Hawkfish on Mon, 10/21/2019 - 9:10am
Love your .sig! n/t

@Fionnsboy

...something to do with HER server, wasn't it? But what I REALLY think is going on, and I could be totally wrong, is that Bernie is considering Tulsi as his VP pick, when and if, and this is to sow enough doubt and deceit about Tulsi that it wounds Bernie. But one thing I know for sure: that Clinton hag is one evil bitch!

[Oct 23, 2019] New York Times Fakes The Record About Arming The Syrian Rebels

Notable quotes:
"... Clearly, the US hopes wrench Turkey from the Russian embrace. Moscow's studied indifference toward the US-Turkish cogitations betrays its uneasiness. Conceivably, Erdogan will expect Putin to take a holistic view, considering Russia's flourishing and high lucrative economic and military ties with Turkey and the imperative to preserve the momentum of Russia-Turkey relationship. ..."
"... If the US policy in Syria in recent years promoted the Kurdish identity, it has now swung to the other extreme of stoking the fires of Turkish revanchism. This is potentially catastrophic for regional stability. ..."
"... the main outcome will be that Turkey feels it has western support for its long-term occupation of Syrian territory. ..."
"... Arguably, US expects Turkey's cooperation to strengthen its strategy in Syria (and Iraq) where it seeks to contain Iran's influence. From Ankara, Pompeo travelled to Jerusalem to brief Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. " ..."
Oct 23, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

New York Times Fakes The Record About Arming The Syrian Rebels

History as faked by the New York Times :

Kurds' Sense of Betrayal Compounded by Empowerment of Unsavory Rivals
Ben Hubbard, David D. Kirkpatrick, NYT 18. Oct 2019

Now, [..] the sense of betrayal among the Kurds [..] is matched only by their outrage at who will move in: Turkish soldiers supported by Syrian fighters the United States had long rejected as extremists, criminals and thugs .
...
The deadly battles [..] have also given new leeway to Syrian fighters once considered too extreme or unruly to receive American military support.
...
Grandly misnamed the Syrian National Army, this coalition of Turkish-backed militias is in fact largely composed of the dregs of the eight-year-old conflict's failed rebel movement.

Early in the war [..] the military and the C.I.A. sought to train and equip moderate, trustworthy rebels to fight the government and the Islamic State.

A few of those now fighting in the northeast took part in those failed programs, but most were rejected as too extreme or too criminal . Some have expressed extremist sensibilities or allied with jihadist groups.

The reality is the opposite of what the NYT claims. The majority of the groups now fighting with the Turkish army had earlier received support from the U.S. Even their nominal leader is the same one who the U.S. earlier paid, armed and promoted.

COMPONENTS OF THE NATIONAL ARMY AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE UNIFICATION
Ömer Özkizilcik, SETA, October 2019

On August 31, the Syrian National Coalition came together and elected the president and the cabinet of the Syrian Interim Government in which Abdurrahman Mustafa was elected president and Salim Idriss was elected defense minister . With the new cabinet, the Syrian Interim Government became more active on the ground, started visiting each faction of the National Army, and accelerated the stalled negotiations to unite the National Army and the NLF under one command.
Salim Idriss with U.S. Senator John McCain

bigger
Salim Idriss with Guy Verhofstadt, then leader of the ALDE group in the European Parliament

bigger
Among the 41 factions that joined the merger, 15 are from the NLF and 26 from the National Army. Thirteen of these factions were formed after the United States cut its support to the armed Syrian opposition. Out of the 28 factions, 21 were previously supported by the United States , three of them via the Pentagon's program to combat DAESH. Eighteen of these factions were supplied by the CIA via the MOM Operations Room in Turkey, a joint intelligence operation room of the 'Friends of Syria' to support the armed opposition. Fourteen factions of the 28 were also recipients of the U.S.-supplied TOW anti-tank guided missiles.

The SETA study provides a detailed list of the groups involved in the current Turkish invasion of Syria. Not only is their commander Salim Idriss a former U.S. stooge but the majority of these groups did receive U.S. support and weapons.


bigger

The New York Times claim that only "a few of those" who now fight the YPG Kurds took part in the U.S. programs is a blatant lie.

The NYT piece quotes three 'experts' who testify that the 'rebels' the U.S. had armed are really, really bad:

"These are the misfits of the conflict, the worst of the worst," said Hassan Hassan, a Syrian-born scholar tracking the fighting. "They have been notorious for extortion, theft and banditry, more like thugs than rebels -- essentially mercenaries."

It was Hassan Hassan who since the start of the conflict lobbied for arming the rebels from his perch at the UAE's media flagship The National .

Another 'expert' quoted is the Israeli propagandist Elizabeth Tsurkov:

"They are basically gangsters, but they are also racist toward Kurds and other minorities," said Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. "No human should be subjected to their rule."

Tsurkov earlier lauded the Israeli hiring and arming of the very same 'Syrian rebels'.

Another 'expert' quoted by the Times is a co-chair of the 'congressionally sponsored bipartisan Syrian Study Group':

"We are turning areas that had been controlled by our allies over to the control of criminals or thugs, or that in some cases groups were associated or fighting alongside Al Qaeda," said Ms. Stroul, of the Syrian Study Group. "It is a profound and epic strategic blunder."

The 'Syrian Study Group' wants to prolong the war on Syria. Ms. Stroul and her co-chair Michael Singh reside at the Washington Institute which is a part of the Zionist lobby and has long argued for 'arming the Syrian rebels'.

The Times report does not mention that the 'experts' it quotes all once lobbied for arming the very same groups they are now lamenting about. When these groups ran rampant in the areas they took from the Syrian government the Times and its 'experts' were lauding them all the way. No effort to support them was big enough. All crimes they committed were covered up or excused.

Now, as the very same rebels attack the Kurds, they are suddenly called out for being what they always have been.

Posted by b on October 20, 2019 at 11:19 UTC | Permalink

Richard , Oct 20 2019 11:46 utc | 1

Hah! More lies from the NYT....mainstream media in the west has deteriorated into a propaganda channel for the Military Industrial Complex and the oligarchy, pumping out a never ending tide of lying filth aimed at more and more war (more and more weapon sales) and promoting and preserving predatory capitalism (more money for the Billionaire class, less for you).

In my own reading of MSM press and my own watching of the MSM Talking Heads I believe I've indentified 8 techniques that amoral, dangerous, barely competent idiots that have the cheek to call themselves journalists use to lie to you, the reader/viewer/listener. Here's my list...

https://richardhennerley.com/2018/10/16/8-techniques-journalists-use-to-lie-to-you/

DontBelieveEitherPr. , Oct 20 2019 12:12 utc | 2
Okay how practical.
Now only is the NYT trying to whitewash themselves by faking, they are also kind enough to do the same for their Jihadi lovin partners in crime.
How empathic! How sensible! Like a true moral authority.

BTW: It seems my previous claims were right. The Turks made a 180 and allied with the US again, reviving the NATO allaince. Now that the Kurds are out of the way in Turk-US relations, US and NATO has much more to offer than Russia, and noe Erdogan has support from NATO and will not be deterred by Putin.
B, i respect you immensly, but your belief the Turkish invasion was Erdogan doing some secret Putin plan was unproven at the time, and now, AT LEAST since the US-Turk deal, is obsolte.

Read M. K. BHADRAKUMARs blog, he thought like you, but after the US-Turk deal, EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED:

https://indianpunchline.com/us-stokes-the-fires-of-turkish-revanchism/

"The extraordinary US overture to Turkey regarding northern Syria resulted in a joint statement on Thursday, whose ramifications can be rated only in the fulness of time , as several intersecting tracks are running.

The US objectives range from Trump's compulsions in domestic politics to the future trajectory of the US policies toward Syria and the impact of any US-Turkish rapprochement on the geopolitics of the Syrian conflict.

Meanwhile, the US-Turkish joint statement creates new uncertainties. The two countries have agreed on a set of principles -- Turkey's crucial status as a NATO power ; security of Christian minorities in Syria; prevention of an ISIS surge; creation of a "safe zone" on Turkish-Syrian border; a 120-hour ceasefire ("pause") in Turkish military operations leading to a permanent halt, hopefully.

The devil lies in the details. Principally, there is no transparency regarding the future US role in Syria . The Kurds and the US military will withdraw from the 30-kilometre broad buffer zone. What thereafter? In the words of the US Vice-President Mike Pence at the press conference in Ankara on Thursday,

"Kurdish population in Syria, with which we have a strong relationship, will continue to endure. The United States will always be grateful for our partnership with SDF in defeating ISIS, but we recognise the importance and the value of a safe zone to create a buffer between Syria proper and the Kurdish population and -- and the Turkish border. And we're going to be working very closely ."

To be sure, everything devolves upon the creation of the safe zone. Turkey envisages a zone stretching across the entire 440 kilometre border with Syria upto Iraqi border, while the US special envoy James Jeffrey remains non-committal, saying it is up to the "Russians and the Syrians in other areas of the northeast and in Manbij to the west of the Euphrates" to agree to Turkey's maximalist stance.

Herein lies the rub. Jeffrey would know Ankara will never get its way with Moscow and Damascus. In fact, President Bashar al-Assad told in unequivocal terms to a high-level Russian delegation visiting Damascus on Friday, "At the current phase it is necessary to focus on putting an end to aggression and on the pullout of all Turkish, US and other forces illegally present in Syrian territories."

Is there daylight between Moscow and Damascus on this highly sensitive issue? Turkish President Recep Erdogan's forthcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on October 22 may provide an answer.

Clearly, the US hopes wrench Turkey from the Russian embrace. Moscow's studied indifference toward the US-Turkish cogitations betrays its uneasiness. Conceivably, Erdogan will expect Putin to take a holistic view, considering Russia's flourishing and high lucrative economic and military ties with Turkey and the imperative to preserve the momentum of Russia-Turkey relationship.

If the US policy in Syria in recent years promoted the Kurdish identity, it has now swung to the other extreme of stoking the fires of Turkish revanchism. This is potentially catastrophic for regional stability. The heart of the matter is that while Turkey's concerns over terrorism and the refugee problem are legitimate, Operation Peace Spring has deeper moorings: Turkey's ambitions as regional power and its will to correct the perceived injustice of territorial losses incurred during the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. The ultra-nationalistic Turkish commentator (and staunch supporter of Erdogan) wrote this week in the pro-government daily Yeni Safak:

"Turkey once again revived the millennium-old political history on Anatolian territory. It took action with a mission that will carry the legacy of the Seljuks, the Ottomans, the Republic of Turkey to the next stage It is not possible to set an equation in this region by excluding Turkey – it will not happen. A map cannot be drawn that excludes Turkey – it will not happen. A power cannot be established without Turkey – it will not happen. Throughout history, both the rise and fall of this country has altered the region the mind in Turkey is now a regional mind, a regional conscience, a regional identity. President Erdoğan is the pioneer, the bearer of that political legacy from the Seljuks, the Ottomans, and the Turkish Republic to the future."

Trump is unlikely to pay attention to the irredentist instincts in Turkish regional policies. Trump's immediate concerns are to please the evangelical Christian constituency in the US and silence his critics who allege that he threw the Kurds under the bus or that a ISIS resurgence is imminent. But there is no way the US can deliver on the tall promises made in the joint statement. The Kurds have influential friends in the Pentagon. (See the article by Gen. Joseph Votel, former chief of the US Central Command, titled The Danger of Abandoning our Partners.) Nonetheless, the main outcome will be that Turkey feels it has western support for its long-term occupation of Syrian territory.

All in all, it's a "win-win" for Erdogan insofar as he got what he wanted -- US' political and diplomatic support for "the kind of long-term buffer zone that will ensure peace and stability in the region", to borrow the words of Vice President Pence. A Turkish withdrawal from Syrian territory can now be virtually ruled out. State secretary Mike Pompeo added at the press conference in Ankara on Thursday that there is "a great deal of work to do in the region. There's lots of challenges that remain."

Pompeo said Erdogan's "decision to work alongside President Trump will be one that I think will benefit Turkey a great deal." Arguably, US expects Turkey's cooperation to strengthen its strategy in Syria (and Iraq) where it seeks to contain Iran's influence. From Ankara, Pompeo travelled to Jerusalem to brief Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. "

DontBelieveEitherPr. , Oct 20 2019 12:16 utc | 3
Add to that, that the Turks now threaten SAA with "full out war".

John Helmers latest post sheds light on the fact, that the Russian military leadership and the Stavka in general has warned Putin since the Idlib deal again and again to no avail that the Turks would do this.

Which seems now to have been proven true since the US-Turk deal, which in essence changed everything overnight.

http://johnhelmer.net/in-the-war-for-syrias-highway-m4-the-kremlin-turks-have-been-beaten-to-the-punch-by-the-russian-general-staff-foreign-ministry-for-the-moment/

oldhippie , Oct 20 2019 12:21 utc | 4
As the extremity of propaganda in mainstream news becomes more obvious a few American consumers of news do begin to have doubts. Most continue to be entirely uncritical. The barflies here are in the habit of being critical, analytic, skeptical when reading any news from any source. That is not the American way.

The cohort of educated prosperous middle class readers of the NYT has total faith in NYT. Having the paper edition on the doorstep in the morning is a badge of membership. A totem that gives them status. Questioning any word or phrase or clause that appears in print is wrong. Asking questions means something is wrong with you. The Times is never wrong. Those who doubt the Times have mental health issues. Or they are alt-right. Or they are deplorable. For the intended audience the propaganda feed is always completely effective. Readers of the Times will never untie the knot.

oldhippie , Oct 20 2019 12:21 utc | 4
As the extremity of propaganda in mainstream news becomes more obvious a few American consumers of news do begin to have doubts. Most continue to be entirely uncritical. The barflies here are in the habit of being critical, analytic, skeptical when reading any news from any source. That is not the American way.

The cohort of educated prosperous middle class readers of the NYT has total faith in NYT. Having the paper edition on the doorstep in the morning is a badge of membership. A totem that gives them status. Questioning any word or phrase or clause that appears in print is wrong. Asking questions means something is wrong with you. The Times is never wrong. Those who doubt the Times have mental health issues. Or they are alt-right. Or they are deplorable. For the intended audience the propaganda feed is always completely effective. Readers of the Times will never untie the knot.

Walter , Oct 20 2019 12:29 utc | 5
"Why" always seem like a good question, eh? The NYT lies...why?

This quote caught my attention> " The powerful and historical walls to study today are those of the Kremlin." (Fisk, information clearing house)

As it was for Winston's "Ministry of Truth" (Orwell) the NYT article is necessary. That's the significance - not the lies but the necessity of lies...

And under what situations are lies required? Think about that when (if) you read Fisk's analysis. (I am not a fan of Fisk, but his views in this instance align with my own rather well)

Fisk article title> "Trump's disgrace in the Middle East is the death of an empire. Vladimir Putin is Caesar now"

Some may recall that the monks on Mt Athos quietly elected VVP as the Byzantine Emperor (about 2 years ago) - the Eastern branch of Christianity continues whilst nominally christian(western) branch is fake and perverse ritual and worse...while his Popeness in Rome has as Luther saw... I think Luther said it was a vast brothel...

Does this need Daniel to read the writing...


which is?

mene mene tekel upharsin (well somebody said..)

By the way my vote for the clown-man was cast because I reasoned the best esthetic feature in the freak parade at the end of empire would be a clown act. I am indebted to the late George Carlin for the symbolism.

I am proved right? I think so. Dogs bark and caravan continue...and many expect dollars to go weimarish. then?

Red Corvair , Oct 20 2019 12:57 utc | 7
Ahh.. "experts"... Hassan Hassan is not a Syrian-born scholar, but a Syrian "born-scholar"... Nuance. Or is it "a natural-born-scholar"? ...
As for Israeli propagandist Elizabeth Tsurkov, those very same "bad extremists" she now repudiates on Twitter she once excused for mutilating children "because they were deeply traumatised"... A very coherent "expert"!!
From The Grayzone, Ben Norton and Aaron Maté (and Dan Cohen) about Tsurkov: Western pundits who lobbied for Syrian rebels now admit they are jihadist extremists, Oct. 16 (about Tsurkov, go about 1:45 and the rest):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkg4wJFpc_E
Now Tsurkov seems rather busy rooting for some "color revolution" to take place in Lebanon. Where is Israel?...
As for the picture of Guy Verhofstadt next to Salim Idriss, it seems very aptly to epitomize the EU "politics" about the Syrian conflict: "How tasty those American boots are!! Wanna lick more American boots, please!!"
BM , Oct 20 2019 13:11 utc | 8
Ahh.. "experts"... Hassan Hassan is not a Syrian-born scholar, but a Syrian "born-scholar"... Nuance. Or is it "a natural-born-scholar"? ...

If he is writing nothing but lies he is not any kind of scholar at all except a fake scholar. Nor is he a journalist. He is a propagandist, nothing else. Call a spade a spade.


-----


Ahhh, I've just posted to the Media and Pundits thread, but it should have come here much more sensibly. Anyway the post is top a new page over there, on Trump and Syria's oil fields.

Sunny Runny Burger , Oct 20 2019 13:18 utc | 9
The new narrative seems to me to have everything to do with Turkey and nothing to do with Russia. A comment in the last Syria-related thread.

Then again there are so many loose ends concerning Turkey that almost anything could happen (coup attempt and "cleansing", dead ambassadors, Cyprus, Greece, Armenia, Syria, ISIS and others, Kurds, weapon deals, shooting down a Russian plane, annoying Europe and the EU as well as the US and just about everybody, some only politically but many militarily as well (at least the US, Germany, and France), the list surely goes on).

As I commented I'm not convinced Turkey will survive this, are they able to stop and reverse if they find they've set themselves up?

Clueless Joe , Oct 20 2019 14:19 utc | 10
Turkey might be playing a double-game, or plan to betray one side - whether it'll be US or Russia remains to be seen. But that this is all a clever NATO plot conflicts a bit with the fact that the US is systematically destroying its bases in NE Syria. Sure, that might be because they don't want the SAA to use them and to plunder them for techs and scraps, but that would also make things more complicated for a Turkish take-over - it will surely considerably slow the process if the Turkish army and its lackeys have to do everything back from scratches.
Besides, odds are that Putin has taken that into consideration and has some contingency measures ready, just in case - not that they could fully stop Turkish aggression in its tracks in a couple of hours, but still.
Stever , Oct 20 2019 14:46 utc | 11
Meanwhile Nicholas Kristof at the NYTimes also is whitewashing Obama's Syrian policy. He conveniently forgets Timber Sycamore (the CIA's second largest operation, over $1 billion) to overthrow Assad - 2013-2017, that allowed ISIS to get a firm foothold.

Trump Takes Incoherence and Inhumanity and Calls It Foreign Policy

"It was just five years ago that an American president, faced with a crisis on Syria's border, acted decisively and honorably."

"Barack Obama responded with airstrikes and a rescue operation in 2014 when the Islamic State started a genocide against members of the Yazidi sect, slaughtering men and forcing women and girls into sexual slavery. Obama's action, along with a heroic intervention by Kurdish fighters, saved tens of thousands of Yazidi lives."

"Contrast Obama's move, successfully working with allies to avert a genocide, with President Trump's betrayal this month of those same Kurdish partners in a way that handed a victory to the Islamic State, Turkey, Syria, Iran -- and, of course, Russia, ."

Nathan Mulcahy , Oct 20 2019 14:53 utc | 12

@ Walter 5: "I reasoned the best esthetic feature in the freak parade at the end of empire would be a clown act"

Just love it!!

On a side note. Last night met with a new friend couple for dinner. Both are highly educated and work in technical professions. Accordingly they pride themselves in logical thinking ability. I wanted to check out their political leanings and asked about Trump's troop pullback in Syria. Not surprisingly, both were outraged. When asked about their rationale the expected answer was Trump's betrayal of the Kurds. I politely pointed out that our troops' presence in Syria violates both domestic and international laws. That was news to them!!! One of them did lamely point out that Assad is a brutal dictator. Being new "friends", we refrained from further in depth political discussions. That incidence further convinced me of the impending total collapse of the empire.

Don Bacon , Oct 20 2019 15:25 utc | 13
There has been some discussion regarding Syrian oilfields, here's some more on that.

The Syrian Democratic Council is the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, including sites of Syrian oilfields. The SDC's stated mission is working towards the implementation of a "secular, democratic and decentralized system for all of Syria. The Syrian Democratic Council was established on 10 December 2015 in Al-Malikiyah.

Here is a letter dated Jan 21, 2019 from the SDC to the CEO of Global Development Corporation (GDC) Inc. in New Jersey, "a formal acceptance of your company, GDC, to represent the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) in all matters related to the sale of oil owned by SDC . .the estimate off production of crude oil to be 400,000 barrels per day. . .current daily production is 125,000 barrels. ."

The CEO of New Jersey's GDC (no mention on the web) is Mordechai (Moti) Kahana (Hebrew: מוטי כהנא‎; born February 28, 1968, Jerusalem, Israel) is an Israeli-American businessman and philanthropist. He is most notable for his work for the civil war refugees in Syria. . .Since 2011 he heads a group of Israeli businessmen and American Jews who travel to the Syrian refugee camps to provide humanitarian aid to Syrian Civil War refugees.. . He paid for Senator John McCain's trip to war-torn Syria. . . here .

The GDC mailing address is the Roxbury Mall, 275 Route 10 E, Succasunna, NJ.

Hausmeister , Oct 20 2019 15:27 utc | 14

Southfront reports that Turkish mercenaries have taken over Ras Al-Ayn. Did I overlook something? Why didn't the SAA take over after the SDF left?
Don Bacon , Oct 20 2019 15:54 utc | 15
re: Salim Idriss a former U.S. stooge
WSJ, Jun 12, 2013
Rebels Plead for Weapons in Face of Syrian Onslaught
A top Syrian rebel commander has issued a desperate plea for weapons from Western governments to prevent the fall of his forces in Aleppo, pushing the Obama administration to decide quickly whether to agree to arm rebels for the first time or risk the loss of another rebel stronghold just days after the regime's biggest victory.

Gen. Salim Idris, the top Syrian rebel commander backed by the West, issued a detailed request in recent days to the U.S., France and Britain for antitank missiles, antiaircraft weapons and hundreds of thousands of ammunition rounds, according to U.S. and European officials and Mr. Idris's request to the Americans, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Gen. Idris's call comes at a pivotal moment in Syria's war, following rapid-fire gains by Bashar al-Assad forces, including last week's recapture of Qusayr, a strategic town near the Lebanon border. Fighters from Hezbollah, which were crucial in helping the Assad regime to take Qusayr, are now massing around Aleppo, say rebels and Western officials. . . here


This was after H. Clinton (SecState) and D. Petraeus (CIA) wanted to fully arm the US-supported rebels but President Obama declined. Clinton had resigned Feb 1, 2013.
worldblee , Oct 20 2019 16:57 utc | 16
I am shocked, shocked, shocked, to find out that lying is going on in the establishment of the NYT.
james , Oct 20 2019 17:24 utc | 17
thanks b... stellar writing and comments throughout... i especially liked your last line :
"Now, as the very same rebels attack the Kurds, they are suddenly called out for being what they always have been."

@13 don bacon - the address says it all.. The GDC mailing address is the Roxbury Mall, 275 Route 10 E, Succasunna, NJ.

james , Oct 20 2019 17:27 utc | 18
regarding the nyt, larry johnson has a post up on sst here.. i quote from it :
"Let us start with a reminder of how damn corrupt the NY Times and its reporters are. Consider this paragraph penned by Adam Goldman and William Rashbaum:

Closely overseen by Mr. Barr, Mr. Durham and his investigators have sought help from governments in countries that figure into right-wing attacks and unfounded conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation, stirring criticism that they are trying to deliver Mr. Trump a political victory rather than conducting an independent review.

"Unfounded conspiracy theories?" What a damn joke."

karlof1 , Oct 20 2019 17:31 utc | 19
Wow! Quite a knee jerk reaction by the NY Times to Max Blumenthal's 16 Oct article in The Grayzone , "The US has backed 21 of the 28 'crazy' militias leading Turkey's brutal invasion of northern Syria," which I linked to Friday. It's great to see such a reaction to what for most people's an obscure online publication.

Notice of MoA website change: I must now type in my name and email every time I want to comment after years of never needing to do so. My issue might be related to the one ben encountered in thinking he couldn't comment, which you can't if those two fields aren't filled.

Tom Ratliff , Oct 20 2019 17:47 utc | 20
@snake #6

See the growing collection of related techniques by David Martin (aka dcdave): Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression

"Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government. When the government lacks an effective, fact-based defense, other techniques must be employed. The success of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, compliant press and a mere token opposition party..."

Cloak And Dagger , Oct 20 2019 18:12 utc | 21
Trump should not have sent Pence and Pompeo to Turkey. They will do everything possible to derail the rollback of the US in Syria. They are both more subtle than Bolton, but they are both neocons. If you want anything done, you have to do it yourself.

[Oct 23, 2019] FBI-DOJ Likely to Throw the CIA and Clapper Under the Bus by Larry C Johnson - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Oct 23, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

20 October 2019 FBI/DOJ Likely to Throw the CIA and Clapper Under the Bus by Larry C Johnson Larry Johnson-5x7

Law Enforcement versus the Intel Community. That's the battle we will likely see unleashed when the Horowitz report comes out next week. The New York Times came out Saturday with info clearly leaked from DOJ that can be summarized simply--the FBI was relying on the intel community (products from the CIA and NSA) under the leadership of Jim Clapper. If they relied on bad, unverified information it ain't their fault. They trusted the spies.

Let us start with a reminder of how damn corrupt the NY Times and its reporters are. Consider this paragraph penned by Adam Goldman and William Rashbaum:

Closely overseen by Mr. Barr, Mr. Durham and his investigators have sought help from governments in countries that figure into right-wing attacks and unfounded conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation, stirring criticism that they are trying to deliver Mr. Trump a political victory rather than conducting an independent review.

"Unfounded conspiracy theories?" What a damn joke. The facts of a conspiracy to take out Donald Trump or cripple him are very clear. Robert Mueller and Jim Comey lied when they claimed that Joseph Mifsud, who tried to entrap George Papdopoulus in London, was a Russian agent. Nope. He worked for western intelligence. Unless Comey and DOJ have a document or documents from the CIA or NSA stating that Mifsud worked for the Russians, they have no where to hide. Plus, prosecutor John Durham now has Mifsud's blackberries. What do you think is the likelihood that Mifsud was in communication with FBI or CIA or MI6 personnel? Very likely. Then there is Stefan Halper, who played a key role in a sophisticated counterintelligence operation that involved the FBI, the CIA British Intelligence and the media. The ultimate target was Donald Trump. Halper's part of the operation focused on using an innocent woman who had the misfortune of being born in Russia, Svetlana Lokhova, to destroy General Michael Flynn. Halper and Mifsud both were involved in targeting General Michael Flynn. Not a conspiracy?

Halper's nefarious activities included manufacturing and publishing numerous false and defamatory statements. Halper, for example, falsely claimed that Svetlana Lokhova was a "Russian spy" and a traitor to her country. He also circulated the lie that Lokhova had an affair with General Flynn on the orders of Russian intelligence. Not content to use the unwitting Svetlana as a weapon against General Flynn, Stefan Halper also acted with malice to destroy Svetlana Lokhova's professional career and business by asserting that she was not a real academic and that her research was provided by Russian intelligence on the orders of Vladimir Putin.

Thanks to Robert Mueller we have clear evidence of a conspiracy against Trump. Mueller's investigation of Trump "collusion" with Russia prior to the 2016 Presidential election focused on eight cases:

Proposed Trump Tower Project in Moscow --

George Papadopolous --

Carter Page --

Dimitri Simes --

Veselnetskya Meeting at Trump Tower (June 16, 2016)

Events at the Republican Convention

Post-Convention Contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak

Paul Manafort

One simple fact emerges--six of the eight cases or incidents of alleged Trump Campaign interaction with the Russians investigated by the Mueller team, the pitch to "collude" with the Russian Government or Putin originated with FBI informants, MI-6 assets or people paid by Fusion GPS, not Trump or his people. There is not a single instance where Donald Trump or any member of his campaign team initiated contact with the Russians for the purpose of gaining derogatory information on Hillary or obtaining support to boost the Trump campaign. Not one.

Simply put, Trump and his campaign were the target of an elaborate, wide ranging covert action designed to entrap him and members of his team as an agent of Russia.

We do not need to say anything about Dmitri Simes, who was unfairly smeared by even being named as target in the investigation. And the "non" events at the Republican Convention, pure nonsense.

The other six cases "investigated" my Mueller and his team of clowns are damning.

THE PROPOSED TRUMP TOWER PROJECT IN MOSCOW, according to Mueller's report, originated with an FBI Informant--Felix Sater. Mueller was downright dishonest in failing to identify Sater as an FBI informant. Sater was not just a private entrepreneur looking to make some coin. He was a fully signed up FBI informant. Sater's status as an FBI snitch was first exposed in 2012. Sater also was a boyhood chum of Michael Cohen, the target being baited in this operation. Another inconvenient fact excluded from the Mueller report is that one of Mueller's Chief Prosecutors, Andrew Weissman, signed the deal with Felix Sater in December 1998 that put Sater into the FBI Informant business .

All suggestions for meeting with the Russian Government, including Putin, originated with Felix Sater. The use of Sater on this particular project started in September 2015.

GEORGE PAPADOPOLOUS. Papadopolous was targeted by British and U.S. intelligence starting in late December 2015, when he is offered out of the blue a job with the London Centre of International Law and Practice Limited (LCILP) , which has all the hallmarks of a British intelligence front. It is Joseph Mifsud, working for LCILP, who introduces the idea of meeting Putin following a lunch with George in London.

And it is Mifsud who raises the possibility of getting dirt on Hillary. During Papadopolous' next meeting with Mifsud, George writes that Mifsud:

leaned across the table in a conspiratorial manner. The Russians have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, he tells me. "Emails of Clinton," he says. "They have thousands of emails."

More than three weeks before the alleged Russian hack of the DNC, Mifsud is peddling the story that the Russians have Clinton's emails. Conspiracy?

CARTER PAGE. The section of the Mueller report that deals with Carter Page is a total travesty. Mueller and his team, for example, initially misrepresent Page's status with the Trump campaign--he is described as "working" for the campaign, which implies a paid position, when he was in fact only a volunteer foreign policy advisor. Mueller also paints Page's prior experience and work in Russia as evidence that Page was being used by Russian intelligence, but says nothing about the fact that Page was being regularly debriefed by the CIA and the FBI during the same period. In other words, Page was cooperating with US intelligence and law enforcement. But this fact is omitted in the Mueller report. The Christopher Steele dossier was used as "corroborating" intel to justify what was an illegal FISA warrant. The FBI lied about the veracity of that dossier. Conspiracy?

TRUMP TOWER MEETING (JUNE 9, 2016). This is another glaring example of a plant designed to entrap the Trump team. Mueller, once again, presents a very disingenuous account:

On June 9, 2016, senior representatives of the Trump Campaign met in Trump Tower with a Russian attorney expecting to receive derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. The meeting was proposed to Donald Trump Jr. in an email from Robert Goldstone, at the request of his then-client Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian real-estate developer Aras Agalarov.

The real problem is with what Mueller does not say and did not investigate. Mueller conveniently declines to mention the fact that Veselnitskaya was working closely with the firm Hillary Clinton hired to produce the Steele Dossier. Even the corrupt NBC News got these damning facts about Veselnitskaya on the record:

The information that a Russian lawyer brought with her when she met Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016 stemmed from research conducted by Fusion GPS, the same firm that compiled the infamous Trump dossier, according to the lawyer and a source familiar with the matter.

In an interview with NBC News, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya says she first received the supposedly incriminating information she brought to Trump Tower -- describing alleged tax evasion and donations to Democrats -- from Glenn Simpson , the Fusion GPS owner, who had been hired to conduct research in a New York federal court case.

Unfounded Conspiracy?

PAUL MANAFORT. If Paul Manafort had rebuffed Trump's offer to run his campaign, he would be walking free today and still buying expensive suits and evading taxes along with his Clinton buddy, Greg Craig. Instead, he became another target for DOJ and intel community and the DNC, which were desperate to portray Trump as a tool of the Kremlin. Thanks to John Solomon of The Hill, we now know the impetus to target Manafort came from the DNC :

The boomerang from the Democratic Party's failed attempt to connect Donald Trump to Russia's 2016 election meddling is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow's pesky neighbor, Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases tried, to help Hillary Clinton .

In its most detailed account yet, Ukraine's embassy in Washington says a Democratic National Committee insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump's campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country's president to help.

In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort 's dealings inside the country, in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.

Manafort was not colluding, but the Clinton campaign and the Obama Administration were colluding with Ukraine.

GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN . This is the biggest travesty. Flynn was being targeted by the intel community with the full collaboration of the FBI. Thanks to his new attorney, the Honey Badger Sidney Powell, there is an avalanche of evidence showing prosecutorial misconduct and an unjustified, coordinated effort by the Obama team to frame Flynn as catering to the Russians. It is a lie and that will be fully exposed in the coming weeks.

Any fair reporter with half a brain would see these events as pointing to a conspiracy. But not the liars at the New York Times. But the Times does tip us off to the upcoming mad scramble for life boats. It will it the FBI and DOJ against the DNI, the CIA and NSA. According to the Times:

It is not clear how many people Mr. Durham's team has interviewed outside of the F.B.I. His investigators have questioned officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence but apparently have yet to interview C.I.A. personnel, people familiar with the review said. Mr. Durham would probably want to speak with Gina Haspel, the agency's director, who ran its London station when the Australians passed along the explosive information about Russia's offer of political dirt.

There is no abiding affection between the FBI and the CIA. They mix like oil and water. In theory the FBI only traffics in "evidence." The CIA deals primarily with well-sourced rumors. But the CIA will argue they were offering their best judgement, not a factual conclusion. Brennan and Clapper will insist they were not in a position to determine the "truth" of what they were reporting. It is "intel" not evidence.

The Horowitz report will not deal with the CIA and NSA directly. Horowitz can only point out that the FBI folks insisted that they were relying on the intel community and had no reason not to trust them. This is likely to get ugly and do not be surprised to see the intel folks try to throw the FBI under the bus and vice versa. Grab the popcorn.

turcopolier ,

LJ

They should squeeze Clapper. When he has been shown the instruments of torture he will squeal like the human piggy in "Deliverance."

jonst said in reply to turcopolier ... ,
I agree 100%, Clapper can be flipped.
jonst ,
You seem to have faith Larry, and I am not offering this sarcastically, that the Misfud Blackberries still have relevant data on them. I would be very surprised, (albeit pleasantly so) and disappointed, if MI6 was that sloopy.
Jack , 20 October 2019 at 12:43 PM
Larry

Thanks for keeping on this story.

While I don't have much confidence in Barr & Durham actually indicting Brennan, Clapper, Comey, et al, nor do I believe that they'll lay out in clear terms the collusion between law enforcement, intelligence, corporate media, political operatives, foreign governments and intelligence agencies to frame a presidential candidate & campaign, I hope that some of these putschists will be made to pay at least a modest amount of their personal gains through their media and consulting gigs. As David Habakkuk has noted I hope the defamation lawsuit by Ed Butowsky is successful and that is then used as a template by others to go after all those complicit in this travesty.

What I find despicable is the hypocrisy and moralizing tone of all these smear merchants. These same characters now smearing Tulsi Gabbard using the same tropes. But even more, my utter disgust is with all the DC cocktail circuit propagandists in the media who are no longer even pretending.

I'm too old to see this happen, but my hope is that future generations will see the complete destruction of the political duopoly and the media-intelligence propaganda complex. They've been such a destructive force over the past five decades.

eakens , 20 October 2019 at 12:43 PM
It's going to be a full court press to get Trump out of office if we are expecting things to start shaking loose in weeks.
MP98 , 20 October 2019 at 12:43 PM
Anyone know who Durham is using as investigators?
Not the FBI,I hope.

[Oct 23, 2019] the Novichok Chimera fades further caucus99percent

Oct 23, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

the Novichok™ Chimera fades further

wendy davis on Mon, 10/21/2019 - 9:19am

Dawn Sturgess, guardian photo

[Oct 22, 2019] It's four more years of the Trumpian Reich folks, with Russian Spetsnaz patrolling the streets, gigantic banners with the faces of Trump and Putin hanging in the football stadiums, National Vodka-for-Breakfast Day, babushkas, the whole nine yards by CJ Hopkins

Notable quotes:
"... Authored (satirically) by CJ Hopkins vis The Unz Review, ..."
Oct 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored (satirically) by CJ Hopkins vis The Unz Review,

So, it looks like that's it for America, folks. Putin has gone and done it again. He and his conspiracy of Putin-Nazis have "hacked," or "influenced," or "meddled in" our democracy.

Unless Admiral Bill McRaven and his special ops cronies can ginny up a last-minute military coup , it's four more years of the Trumpian Reich, Russian soldiers patrolling the streets, martial law, concentration camps, gigantic banners with the faces of Trump and Putin hanging in the football stadiums, mandatory Sieg-heiling in the public schools, National Vodka-for-Breakfast Day, death's heads, babushkas, the whole nine yards.

[Oct 22, 2019] Russia Is All They ve Got - Exposing The Agents Of Empire by Mike Krieger

Notable quotes:
"... This is when it became clear it wasn't just political operatives pushing fake news about Russian influence, but that "respected" mass media would be leading the charge for them. The rest is pretty much history. MSNBC, CNN, The Washington Post, etc have been spewing outlandish Russiagate nonsense for three years straight, and despite the complete failure of special counsel Robert Mueller to find any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, these agents of empire refuse to stop. ..."
"... Americans like to sneer at more transparently unfree societies around the world, but when you think about the disturbing implications of former spooks delivering news to the public, one can't help but conclude that mass media in 2019 looks like a gigantic propaganda campaign targeting U.S. citizens. Moreover, as can be seen by the recent attacks by Clinton and her allies in the media on Gabbard, they aren't easing up. ..."
"... Comey was a senior vice president for Lockheed Martin before returning to Washington ..."
"... Excuse me, the voting going on up there for sanctions on Russia for various bogus things has been pretty much unanimous and bipartisan. ..."
Oct 22, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

– Arundhati Roy

Last week, Hillary Clinton called Tulsi Gabbard (and Jill Stein) Russian agents on a podcast. More specifically :

"I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on someone who's currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She's the favorite of the Russians," said Clinton, apparently referring to Rep. Gabbard, who's been accused of receiving support from Russian bots and the Russian news media. "They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far." She added: "That's assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she's also a Russian asset. Yeah, she's a Russian asset -- I mean, totally. They know they can't win without a third-party candidate. So I don't know who it's going to be, but I will guarantee you they will have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states that they most needed."

Tulsi subsequently responded to this slanderous accusation with a series of devastating blows.

Her tweets set off a firestorm, and even if you're as disillusioned by presidential politics as myself, you couldn't help but cheer wildly that someone with a major political platform finally stated without any hint of fear or hesitation exactly what so many Americans across the ideological spectrum feel.

Of course, this has far wider implications than a high profile feud between these two. The "let's blame Russia for Hillary's loss" epidemic of calculated stupidity driven by Ellen-Democrats and their mouthpieces across corporate mass media began immediately after the election. I know about it on a personal level because this website was an early target of the neoliberal-led new McCarthyism courtesy of a ridiculous and libelous smear in the Washington Post over Thanksgiving weekend 2016 (see: Liberty Blitzkrieg Included on Washington Post Highlighted Hit List of "Russian Propaganda" Websites) .

This is when it became clear it wasn't just political operatives pushing fake news about Russian influence, but that "respected" mass media would be leading the charge for them. The rest is pretty much history. MSNBC, CNN, The Washington Post, etc have been spewing outlandish Russiagate nonsense for three years straight, and despite the complete failure of special counsel Robert Mueller to find any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, these agents of empire refuse to stop. The whole charade seems more akin to an intelligence operation than journalism, which shouldn't be surprising given the proliferation of former intelligence agents throughout mass media in the Trump era.

Here's a small sampling via Politico's 2018 article: The Spies Who Came in to the TV Studio

Former CIA Director John Brennan (2013-17) is the latest superspook to be reborn as a TV newsie. He just cashed in at NBC News as a "senior national security and intelligence analyst" and served his first expert views on last Sunday's edition of Meet the Press .

The Brennan acquisition seeks to elevate NBC to spook parity with CNN, which employs former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director Michael Hayden in a similar capacity.

Other, lesser-known national security veterans thrive under TV's grow lights. Almost too numerous to list, they include Chuck Rosenberg , former acting DEA administrator, chief of staff for FBI Director James B. Comey, and counselor to former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III; Frank Figliuzzi , former chief of FBI counterintelligence; Juan Zarate , deputy national security adviser under Bush, at NBC; and Fran Townsend , homeland security adviser under Bush, at CBS News.

CNN's bulging roster also includes former FBI agent Asha Rangappa ; former FBI agent James Gagliano ; Obama's former deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken ; former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers ; senior adviser to the National Security Council during the Obama administration Samantha Vinograd ; retired CIA operations officer Steven L. Hall; and Philip Mudd , also retired from the CIA.

Americans like to sneer at more transparently unfree societies around the world, but when you think about the disturbing implications of former spooks delivering news to the public, one can't help but conclude that mass media in 2019 looks like a gigantic propaganda campaign targeting U.S. citizens. Moreover, as can be seen by the recent attacks by Clinton and her allies in the media on Gabbard, they aren't easing up.

Which brings us to the crux of the issue. Why are they doing this? Why is Clinton, with zero evidence whatsoever, falsely calling a sitting U.S. Congresswoman, a veteran with two tours in Iraq, and someone polling at only 2% in the Democratic primary a "Russian asset." Why are they so afraid of Tulsi Gabbard?

It's partly personal. Tulsi was one of only a handful of congressional Democrats to set aside fears of the Clintons and their mafia-like network to endorse Bernie Sanders early in 2016. In fact, she stepped down from her position as vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee to do so. This is the sort of thing a petty narcissist like Hillary Clinton could never forgive, but it goes further.

Tulsi's mere presence on stage during recent debates has proven devastating for the Ellen Degeneres wing of the Democratic party. She effectively ended neoliberal darling Kamala Harris' chances by simply telling the truth about her horrible record, something no one else in the race had the guts to do.

Embedded video

In other words, Tulsi demolished Kamala Harris and put an end to her primary chances by simply telling the truth about her on national television. This is how powerful the truth can be when somebody's actually willing to stand up and say it. It's why the agents of empire -- in charge of virtually all major institutions -- go out of their way to ensure the American public is exposed to as little truth as possible. It's also why they lie and scream "Russia" instead of debating the actual issues.

But this goes well beyond Tulsi Gabbard. Empire requires constant meddling abroad as well as periodic regime change wars to ensure compliant puppets are firmly in control of any country with any geopolitical significance. The 21st century has been littered with a series of disastrous U.S. interventions abroad, while the country back home continues to descend deeper into a neo-feudal oligarchy with a hunger games style economy. As such, an increasing number of Americans have begun to question the entire premise of imperial foreign policy.

To the agents of empire, dominant throughout mainstream politics, mega corporations, think-tanks and of course mass media, this sort of thought crime is entirely unacceptable. In case you haven't noticed, empire is a third-rail of U.S. politics. If you dare touch the issue, you'll be ruthlessly smeared, without any evidence, as a Russian agent or asset. There's nothing logical about this, but then again there typically isn't much logic when it comes to psychological operations. They depend on manipulation and triggering specific emotional responses.

There's a reason people like Hillary Clinton and her minions just yell "Russia" whenever an individual with a platform criticizes empire and endless war. They know they can't win an argument if they debate the actual issues, so a conscious choice was made to simply avoid debate entirely. As such, they've decided to craft and spread a disingenuous narrative in which anyone critical of establishment neocon/neoliberal foreign policy is a Russia asset/agent/bot. This is literally all they've got. These people are telling you 2+2=5 and if you don't accept it, you're a traitorous, Putin-loving nazi with a pee pee tape. And these same people call themselves "liberal."

Importantly, it isn't just a few trollish kooks doing this. It's being spread by some of the most powerful people and institutions in the country, including of course mass media.

For example:

Embedded video

This inane verbal vomit is considered "liberal" news in modern America, a word which has now lost all meaning. Above, we witness a collection of television mannequins questioning the loyalty of a U.S. veteran who continues to serve in both Congress and the national guard simply because she dared call out America's perpetually failing foreign policy establishment.

To conclude, it's now clear dissent is only permitted so long as it doesn't become too popular. By polling at 2% in the primary, it appears Gabbard became too popular, but the truth is she's just a vessel. What's really got the agents of empire concerned is we may be on the verge of a tipping point within the broader U.S. population regarding regime change wars and empire. This is why debate needs to be shut down and shut down now. A critical mass of citizens openly questioning establishment foreign policy cannot be permitted. Those on the fence need to be bullied and manipulated into thinking dissent is equivalent to being a traitor. The national security state doesn't want the public to even think about such topics, let alone debate them.

Ultimately, if you give up your capacity for reason, for free-thought and for the courage to say what you think about issues of national significance, you've lost everything. This is what these manipulators want you to do. They want you to shut-up, to listen to the "experts" who destroy everything they touch, and to be a compliant subject as opposed to an active, empowered citizen. The answer to such a tactic is to be more bold, more informed and more ethical. They fear truth and empowered individuals more than anything else. Stand up tall and speak your mind. Pandering to bullies never works.

* * *

Liberty Blitzkrieg is now 100% ad free. To make this a successful, sustainable thing consider the following options. You can become a Patron . You can visit the Support Page to donate via PayPal, Bitcoin or send cash/check in the mail.

Manipuflation , 52 seconds ago link

For those of us who grew up during the Cold War going to Russia is intense. I have never been so scared in my life as when that plane touched down at Pulkovo 2. And I though Dulles was a shithole.

Russians love art and they have fantastic museums and fantastic architecture. Food is a bit sketchy but you can make do. No fat women there that I saw. In fact, you will see some of the most beautiful women in the world there. Trust me on that.

I loved my first trip there. I can't hate Russia.

francis scott falseflag , 38 minutes ago link

Why are they doing this?

Because they're ******* losing and they know it.

Pelosi is smart enough to know that all roads lead to Putin. But is she smart enough to know that're not just American and its 'allied' Western 'roads', but now its all the roads in the world.

Because the world finally understands that Putin is the only peacemaker on the scene. And that most of the disputes the international community is saddled with are a direct result of American foreign policy and the excesses of its economy.

The world is tired of being dragged through Hell at the whim of a handful of American neocon devotees of Paul Wolfowitz and the fallacious Wolfowitz Doctrine which was credited with having won the Cold War for the West and has been in effect ever since.

Except there seems to be some doubt now who actually won the Cold War with America scrambling to get out of Syria, leaving behind a symbolic force of a couple of thousand troops.

That's the reason for everything that's going on America today. Russia, under Putin, has turned the tables on Congress, the neocons, the warmongers, and those politicians and elite who want the Middle East and its vast reserves of oil to continue to be destabilized by intranational, neighborly hatreds, by terrorism and by America's closest ally, Israel to continue to expand its borders with its policy of settlements. This problematic situation is scrupulously avoided in America and the West's MSM, and can only be seen in foreign media. Which brings us back to Putin.

Is he following the strategies of Sun Tzu, who advises you to

  • 'appear weak when you are strong and strong when you are weak.'
  • 'all warfare is based on deception'

'victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first then try to win.'

swmnguy , 15 minutes ago link

Hillary Clinton is obviously testing the waters for a last-minute, swoop-in candidacy. She sees Biden deflating and realizes there's nobody to keep the Democratic nomination firmly in corporate hands. She wants them to beg her, though.

gold_silver_as_money , 36 minutes ago link

So..."Tulsi Gabbard didn't deny being a Russian asset," you say?

Sounds like a page out of the Dems -- now Trump's -- playbook. Dance around the smear indirectly. Then fire back mercilessly

Manipuflation , 54 minutes ago link

If you go to Russia, you will not come back as you were when you departed. You will never look at things the same way ever again in your life.

artistant , 16 minutes ago link

Russia is an IMPEDIMENT to Apartheid Israhell's design for the MidEast .

Without Russia, ASSAD would be long gone and IRAN would have been bombed to oblivion, and Greater Israhell would have been fulfilled and ruling over the MidEast.

In other words, Russia bashing by Jewish-controlled politicians and in Jewish-controlled Western media is simply PAYBACK .

PoopFilled , 21 minutes ago link

in russia, trump is a bad guy

Vuke , 22 minutes ago link

I am a Russian Agent. Well, not formally but act as one. Only in elections though as Russia forbids (after losing 30 million dead in WW2) any military or violent interference. Agent may be too strong a word as my actions reflect the beauty of Russian literature, music and philosophy. (qv Kropotkin, Rimsky Korsakoff etc. etc.) Maybe a spokesman?

In this coming election vote for the agent of your choice. Gabbard, Trump, (Cackles, hang on and wait for this one) or Biden ( on whom we await a conversion). This agency stuff is fun. Can't wait.

DanausPlex , 47 minutes ago link

The quid pro quo for many Deep State bureaucrats comes after they are no longer in office as typified by jobs as "experts" with the corrupt news networks. Comey was a senior vice president for Lockheed Martin before returning to Washington. Trump is outing them all and they are out to destroy him.

If the Russians are so bad, why did we give them our Uranium? Hillary and corrupt Washington Swamp dwellers in action. How many in Congress opposed the deal? We need Trump to be reelected to Make America Great Again.

Salsa Verde , 32 minutes ago link

I remember in the 80's Democrats would mercilessly lampoon and make fun of Conservatives for their (at the time) hard-line stance against the Soviet Union and how we should just get over it: peace, love and b*llsh*t. My how times have changed.

Nunny , 40 seconds ago link

You need a scorecard to keep track these days. Barry lampooned Mitt for speaking against the Russians, like they were the 'good guys' (ahem, 'tell Vlad' and Kills power reset button) Make up your ******* minds people.

Maxamillia , 32 minutes ago link

If Russia wants to Destroy America.. Why Not.. America is Working to Destroy Her

Just Get it Over With... Were Tired Of Waiting...

We All Want To Go Somewhere... Truth is Is Not What Ur All All Waiting For Tis Where Were Going...

Let Those Missiles Fly....Come On Boys..

Show Us Your Might...

ebear , 44 minutes ago link

Dear Hillary and Co.,

Thank you for bringing my attention to Russia. Had it not been for your constant denunciations, I probably would never have investigated that nation to the extent that I have, and that would have been my loss. Allow me to explain.

As a permanent student of human history and culture, I've traveled to, and studied many different nations, from Japan, China and Thailand, to Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, but somehow I managed to completely miss Russia. Of course I was familiar with the Western narrative concerning communism and the USSR - I grew up with that - but I never fully understood Russian culture until, by your actions, you forced me to look into it.

I've since studied their history intently, and have studied their language to the point where I can at least make myself understood. I've spoken to Russian expats, read numerous books, watched their TV shows, listened to their music, and have kept a close eye on current events, including the coup in Ukraine and Russia's response to that event. At this point I feel well enough prepared to travel to Russia and I'm looking forward to my upcoming trip with great anticipation.

I operate on the basic premise that I'm nobody special - that there are thousands of people just like me with a deep interest in human affairs, who, like myself, have been prompted to investigate a culture that, for various reasons, has been largely overlooked in the West. So, on my own and their behalf I thank you for providing the impetus to focus our attention in that regard. It's probably not what you intended, but it is what it is. Thanks to you, many hundreds, if not thousands of people have now undertaken a study of Russia and her people, and that can only be a good thing, as the more we know about each other, the less we have to fear, and the less likely we are to come into conflict with one another.

condotdo , 39 minutes ago link

it is just another attack on a WHITE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC NATION, it is as simple as that , "THEY" must destroy the white race

DesertRat1958 , 53 minutes ago link

We are all Russians now.

hispanicLoser , 47 minutes ago link

Yeah you definitely want to trot out the niggers when youre catapulting the crazy talk. They'll swallow anything.

slicktroutman , 55 minutes ago link

Bravo well written and right on the mark. If Tulsi wasn't a gun grabber and openly supported the 2nd Amendment she would be a front runner, only a few steps behind Trump. And by the way, don't trust those 2% Polls. We all know the polls are pure ********.

Joiningupthedots , 49 minutes ago link

When one Colonel Gary Powers was shot down in his USAF U2 spy plane in 1960 and captured alive he was asked by his then KGB interrogators what the difference was between the Republican and Democratic parties.......and he admitted to being at a loss to explain that there was any fundamental difference at all.

Therein lies the root problem with the American political system. All through the process it arrives at the same outcomes and it doesnt matter who you vote for.

It could be argued that it is in effect a one party system as both are indistinguishable from each other ultimately as they push the America PLC agenda.

The entire system is held captive by secretive and "invisible" unelected groups who call the shots and if you push too hard they have you killed one way or another.....all the esoteric secret societies of any significance are represented.

The question therefore is this; Is America any different to China other than the wallpaper coverings?

To paraphrase Mark Twain; If voting really mattered they wouldn't let you do it.

SolidGold , 1 hour ago link

Tulsi Gabbard is the Dems Donald Trump and they don't like that. That simple.

Epstein101 , 1 hour ago link

Jews control the DNC

Jews control the news media

Jews hate a white, Christian Russia they can not exploit as they once (twice!) did.

Jews want Syria smashed for Greater Israel.

Everything else is commentary.

https://russia-insider.com/en/big-tech-oligarchs-best-tool-censoring-internet-jewish-adl/ri27797

Manipuflation , 1 hour ago link

Russia is an interesting place to visit. There is no good way to describe Russia because you have to go there and see it for yourself.

SolidGold , 59 minutes ago link

Russia is the "bad" one because they literally have no debt

and a ****-load of resources.

Seek Shelter , 1 hour ago link

In a real poll, involving all possible voters, Tulsi Gabbard would be a hell of a lot higher than 2%.

Arising , 1 hour ago link

Those on the fence need to be bullied and manipulated into thinking dissent is equivalent to being a traitor

This is true with Trumptards on this comments board. They unquestionably follow lies, manipulative, and hollow Trump doctrine without thinking.

Just yesterday there was and idiot spewing out that 'Assange was treasonous' before engaging his cerebral matter to realise you cannot be a traitor against a country that's not yours.

pwall70 , 54 minutes ago link

The same can be said for leftards and CNN. Goes both ways, just like you.

chunga , 1 hour ago link

Excuse me, the voting going on up there for sanctions on Russia for various bogus things has been pretty much unanimous and bipartisan.

[Oct 22, 2019] US foreign policy is now based on virtual facts

Being a neoconservative should receive at least as much vitriolic societal rejection as being a Ku Klux Klan member or a child molester, but neocon pundits are routinely invited on mainstream television outlets to share their depraved perspectives.
Notable quotes:
"... Some of the "virtual facts:" ..."
"... The Soviet Union never ended. Russia is still communist and an inevitable and indeed indispensable enemy of the US. Anyone who challenges that certitude is an obvious agent of the Russian government. ..."
"... Iran is the "greatest supporter of terrorism" in the world." ..."
"... The Syrian Arab Government is an abomination on the scale of Nazi Germany and must be destroyed and replaced by God knows what . ..."
"... Saudi Arabia is a deeply friendly state and ally of the US. ..."
"... It is beyond scary to see just how entrenched and powerful Deep State is and how it involves/controls both political parties ..."
"... I doubt there is any magic bullet website or other source of information that would turn people over night. A good start would be encouraging them to read transcripts of various Putin and Lavrov speeches and pressers, also Valdai Club, economic forum ect. ..."
"... The colonel's complaint implicitly assumes that things were not always thus. My adult experience since I saw a war up close has been that the "facts" of our public discourse are always simplified and usually grossly distorted. ..."
"... Not only are the MSM married to a narrative but they feel compelled to attack the few who ever challenge the orthodoxy. For example, 'Tulsi Gabbard met with the war criminal Assad'. ..."
"... It is certainly true that Russia is being demonized in all the MSM I have sampled. A frequent criticism is that Putin, like Assad, and earlier Saddam and Quadaffi, is essentially an illegitimate ruler of his country, ruling through brute force and without the consent of his countrymen. (Thus the WaPo editorials routinely call Putin a "thug", just as they call Assad a "butcher".) ..."
"... Not to defend Trump and his balance sheet mindset with respect to the Saudis, the reality is that both parties and presidents from George H.W to Bill Clinton to W and Obama have treated the Saudi monarchy as our "friend", even when they sponsored the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11. ..."
"... Tony Blair became a wealthy man after his prime ministership on the back of money thrown his way by the Arab sheikhs ..."
Oct 22, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Mika B remarked a couple of years ago on the show that she and her sex slave stage in the early morning that the social media were out of control because it is the job of the MSM to tell people what to think. The Hillary stated recently that life was better when there were only three TeeVee news outlets because it was easier to keep things under control. Now? My God! Any damned fool can propagate unauthorized "facts." What? Who?

Well, pilgrims, the US government (along with our British and Israeli helpmates and masters) are the preeminent creators and purveyors of the manufactured virtual facts on which we base our policy. These "facts" are "ginned up" in the well moneyed hidden staff groups of "hidden" candidates that are devoted to the seizure of power made possible by a deluded electorate. These "facts" are then propagated and reinforced through relentless IO campaigns run by executive "bots" in the MSM and in such remarkable and imaginative efforts as the "White Helmets" film company manned by jihadis and managed by clubby Brits left over from the Days of The Raj (sob). These "facts" are now so entrenched in the general mind that they can be used to denounce people like Rep. (major ) Gabbard as traitors because they challenge them.

Some of the "virtual facts:"

  • The Soviet Union never ended. Russia is still communist and an inevitable and indeed indispensable enemy of the US. Anyone who challenges that certitude is an obvious agent of the Russian government.
  • Iran is the "greatest supporter of terrorism" in the world." Iran is so designated by the State Department on the annual list of terrorism supporting states which asserts this to be true on the basis of Iranian support of Lebanese Hizbullah and Palestinian Hamas, calling them "terrorist" groups rather than anti -Israeli nationalist resistance organizations. This Zionist inspired propaganda is spread far and wide by neocon "useful idiots" like Maria Bartiromo and Jesse Watters.
  • The Syrian Arab Government is an abomination on the scale of Nazi Germany and must be destroyed and replaced by God knows what ... "They gassed their own people!" Bullshit! There is no objective evidence for that. There are nothing but propaganda statements by the FUKUS governments unsupported by any real evidence. The MI-6 funded (with USAID money) Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (located in a basement in England) as well as the White Helmets murder/propaganda operation states that the SAG is guilty as charged but independent investigation says that assertions of SAG guilt are untrue.
  • Saudi Arabia is a deeply friendly state and ally of the US. How mad an idea is this! This theocratic, absolute monarchy is a friend of the US? How insane an idea! Trump has a balance sheet where a soul should be and that is the basis for the belief that MBS and/or his "country" are our friends. pl

Harper , 21 October 2019 at 07:50 PM

Yes I fully concur. We have gone from fact-based news to faith-based fake news led by the MSM. I recall at the start of the Iraq War in March 2003, the line was out that British PM Tony Blair was George W. Bush's "poodle," forgetting entirely that it was the first of the British "dodgy dossiers" that made the totally discredited claim that Saddam had gotten tons of yellow cake from Niger. So the British have no military resources but they continue to maintain the idea that they can manipulate the U.S. and make up for the demise of the old British empire.

The Steele dossier was the second British "dodgy dossier" that got the ball rolling on Trump the Russian mole and Putin's "poodle."

So much fraud. But now social media must be patrolled and anyone daring to challenge the voice of the MSM must be purged by Google, Facebook, Twitter et al.

My question is: When will the machinations of the Big Lie MSM Wurlitzer cross the line and trigger the backlash that they secretly fear so much? MSM has to destroy Trump by 2020 or else his "fake news" polemic will stick... because there is no much truth to it. The messenger may be crude, but he has the bully pulpit to have a real impact.

I await the release, as Larry Johnson pointed out, of the Horowitz IG report on the origins of the fake Trump-Russia collusion line. Also the pending Barr-Durham larger report which is zeroing in on John Brennan.

Fred -> Harper... , 22 October 2019 at 08:28 AM
Harper,

"MSM has to destroy Trump by 2020 or else..."
The MSM are joined by all those folks who were wined, dined, and degraded by Jeffrey Epstein and Hollywood hero Harvey Weinstein. Nobody seems to care about who Jeffrey abused, or who enjoyed his island paradise. Harvey, he's about to buy a free ride out of jail. Meanwhile we jail idiots who "bribe" there kids way into that "elite" institution - UCLA.

Vig said in reply to Harper... , 22 October 2019 at 11:31 AM
Great response Harper,

an ideal study would no doubt want to look into the Italy-GB-US angle already concerning the "first dossier", or whatevers. Didn*t that have mediawise an intermediate French angle?

But is that what is looked at? At present?

VietnamVet , 21 October 2019 at 08:03 PM
Colonel,

This is what happens when the deciders believe their own propaganda. The media now says that a residual force of American troops and contractors will stay behind at the Deir ez-Zor oil fields and Al-Tanf base near the Jordon border. The media moguls dare not mention that the real intention is to prevent the Syrian Arab Army from retaking its own territory or that Turkey is seizing thousands of square miles of Syria. Syrians with Russia, Chinese and Iranian aid won't quit until Syria is whole again and rebuilt. This means that America continues its uninvited unwinnable war in the middle of nowhere with no allies for no reason at all except to do Israel's bidding and to make money for military contractors. The swamp's regime change campaign failed. The Houthis' Aramco attack shows that the gulf oil supply is at risk and can be shut down at will. Continuing these endless wars that are clearly against the best interests of the American people is insane.

CK said in reply to VietnamVet... , 22 October 2019 at 10:05 AM
It strikes me, as a matter of observable fact, that the Houthi attack had almost no long run affect on oil production. Everything was back to normal within 10 days. I think that the attack was allowed to occur for exactly one reason and that was to start a shooting war between the USA as KSA's great defender and Iran as the horrible nation that has a mild dislike for Israel.
It failed. So far.
To believe that the 24/7/52 AWACS, Ground radar, Israeli radar, and the overlapping close in radar coverage of the Saudi oil fields all failed to detect the drones and cruise missiles is to believe in more miracles than I can handle on a good day. It also means that assets in other parts of this world covered by these same type of radars are just as vulnerable to local disaffected groups.
j , 21 October 2019 at 08:22 PM
The FUKUS thinks we are all a bunch of brainless sheep to be led by a ring in our noses. The 'Muktar' is clueless regarding our Saudi brethren, he's supposed to administer how the overlords say he's to administer, nothing more. The CIA administration still has a hard-on because they blew it regarding Iran and they're still embarrassed about it.

In two days, counting closer to a day and a half will be the sad anniversary (October 23) where the Israeli government willfully with forethought let our Marines and other service personnel bunked with them at the barracks in Beirut die needlessly, because Nahum Admoni wanted U.S. to get our noses bloodied.

Never mind that the Russians lost close to 30 million to the brotherhood of the Operation Paper Clip, and the Bormann Group that today controls from behind the scenes most of the World's money thanks to Martin creating over 750 corporations initially to start with, that has expanded like a Hydra. Any time that truth (Russia is no longer Communist) rears its ugly head, the Bormann group goes into overdrive to ensure that the big lie perpetuates.

The FUKUS think we're all a bunch of sheep to be led off a cliff, and the propaganda mills have created the trail right up to the edge of the precipice that the sheep are trotting.

Heaven help our children and grandchildren.

Larry Johnson , 21 October 2019 at 08:29 PM
Amen. The landslide of disinformation and bullshit disseminated on a daily basis by a pliant media is happily lapped up by ignorant, uninformed Americans. I've had quite an exchange with a liberal friend of mine who was shrieking MSNBC talking points on Syria and the Kurds. Mind you, this fellow never served a day in the military. Never held a clearance in his life. Didn't know a thing about JOPES and how Special Ops forces use a series of written orders signed off on by the CJCS. Yet, he was qualified to criticize Trump. At the same time not one of his kids or grandkids are signed up to fight on that frontline. I told him politely to STFU and get educated before trying to comment on something he knows nothing about.
Thanks Colonel.
JJackson said in reply to Larry Johnson ... , 22 October 2019 at 06:41 AM
I am British and did consider the military in my youth but if I were that age now I would not. Having seen what my political master, and yours, have asked the military to do the danger of being sent on some counter product regime change mission or to prop-up someone I would rather fight is just too great. I would only end up refusing to follow orders which I understand the military takes a rather dim view of.
Vig said in reply to JJackson... , 22 October 2019 at 12:03 PM
... regime change mission or to prop-up someone I would rather fight is just too great.

once upon a time, and strictly I had opted not to believe either side before that, but yes, at one point I wondered fully aware they may be legitimate complaints, how would the UCK, or the Kosovo Liberation Army become the "Western" partner in war.

In hindsight I was made aware of this one grandiose British officer ... once upon a time.

Fred -> JJackson... , 22 October 2019 at 12:04 PM
JJackson,

"if I were that age now..." That is the same line used by the American left since the '60s.
"I would only end up refusing to follow orders..."
Samantha Power at the UN and James Comey at the FBI both had a "higher loyalty" than to the elected government or the Constitution on which it is based. That's why they are busy trying to subvert it.

The Twisted Genius , 21 October 2019 at 10:01 PM
There's a lot of truth there, Colonel. Life would be better with just three TV new outlets, huh. Which three? Can you imagine being limited to three cable new outlets? Actually most people probably limit themselves to three news outlets or less. They find an echo chamber and stick with it. I thank God I don't have cable or satellite TV and I have too many interests to engage with talk radio.

I couldn't agree more with your characterization of "virtual facts" about Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. I also agree that those who continue to view Russia as an implacable enemy bent on our destruction and world domination are liars and/or fools. The Soviet Union was just a phase, a phase now past. Russia never ended. Conversely, those who insist that Russia is a newly minted nation of glitter farting unicorns incapable of nefarious behavior are also fools and/or liars. Russia is a formidable competitor, fully capable and willing to take prudent actions in pursuit of her interests. We should respect her and seek cooperation where we can and tolerance where we must.

How the never-Trumpers treat Tulsi Gabbard is shameful. What Clinton recently said is mild compared to what others have been saying for quite some time. Calling Tulsi a Russian asset is foolishly wrong. That Russia may prefer Tulsi over other potential Presidential candidates should be seen as a positive thing. A policy of mutual respect, cooperation and tolerance between our two countries would benefit the entire world.

Sbin , 21 October 2019 at 10:21 PM
The nonsense is endless.

America needed to restore the Kuwait monarchy for freedom and democracy. Remember defense Secretary Dick Cheney sending captured Iraq arms to the Taliban.

Same play book was used to run Libyan arms through Bengazi to Wahhabism freedom fighter "ISIS" and the al Lindsey McCain head choppers.

Babak Makkinejad -> Sbin... , 21 October 2019 at 11:25 PM
The nonsense will end since not even the United States can endure these costs. Did you hear Trump? 8 trillion yankee dollars and nothing to show for it.
Fred -> Babak Makkinejad... , 22 October 2019 at 08:23 AM
Babak,

He left out thousands dead and injured and not a single one of them a politician, banker, professor or news anchor.

walrus , 21 October 2019 at 11:43 PM
What is highly alarming, almost terrifying, is that really well educated people who have achieved great things in their careers and are pillars of society believe this crap.

I had dinner guests last week; a former Chairman of a bank and his wife who is a highly acclaimed Professor of public Health and Epidemiology who told me how awful Trump and Putin are neither of these friends are what you could remotely classify as Social Justice leftists.

My problem is that I don't know where to start to try and put them right without them thinking I'm a tinfoil hatted conspiracy nut. I wish there was a website dedicated solely to purveying basic truthful information that is not perhaps as esoteric as SST. Should I try and start one or are there already good examples to point to?

Voatboy -> walrus... , 22 October 2019 at 05:10 AM
https://www.wanttoknow.info/ is a useful resource for educating citizens.
John B said in reply to walrus... , 22 October 2019 at 09:21 AM
I'm thinking this is so far and so deep there is nothing that can or will be done. Trump's election and presidency has lifted the curtain on the puppet show. This recent Syria troop removal is Trump's second attempt at openly declaring troops will be pulled out of Syria only to have the military has said, "Um, no, we will stay and simply relocate."

Trump openly called for FISA warrants to be declassified only to have the DOJ and FBI either ignore and defy him. Groups like Judicial Watch and others go into court to get the requested information through FOIA and DOJ and FBI lawyers and the courts block them.

It is beyond scary to see just how entrenched and powerful Deep State is and how it involves/controls both political parties. Trump has faced hurricane winds of opposition from day one and has been constantly subverted by his own party and his own people. I don't know how he can get up every day and continue to fight the obvious and concerted Deep State coup against him. I pray for him. I pray the rosary for him.

There are members within Trump's own party who have agreed that there should be an investigation into the impeachment of Trump for running a yellow light (at most). Again, members of his own party. Renowned Constitutional lawyers John Yoo and Alan Dershowitz, from Cal-Berkeley and Harvard laws schools respectively, have said that not only has Trump done nothing, even remotely, which could trigger an impeachment inquiry but if Congress were to do so it would be unconstitutional and illegal. But alas, who would enforce this? Deep State snakes like John Roberts at the Supreme Court? Robert has already signed off on the coup ( https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/john-roberts-mitch-mcconnell-trump-impeachment-trial.amp).

The only thing that separates America from falling into the abyss is Trump, a handful of people in Washington, a few conservative talk show hosts, and about 40% of America. Many people have talked a good game at points but I think in the end are just double agents of the dark side/Deep State (Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, ... IG Horowitz, etc.). And some, such as Chris Wray, are unabashed dark side/Deep State agents in good standing.

As St. Thomas More said, "The times are never so bad that a good man cannot live in them." I have faith in Barr. I have faith in Durham. Two men whose Catholic faith is integral to every aspect of their lives and work. But with as pervasive, entrenched, and powerful as the Deep State is I'm skeptical they have the power to do anything. Btw, here's U.S. Attorney John Durham's lecture before the Thomistic Institute at Yale (hosted by the Dominican Order): https://soundcloud.com/thomisticinstitute/perspective-of-a-catholic-prosecutor-honorable-john-durham

One thing that really amuses me is that the marionettes of Deep State in the media and politics actually believe that once Trump is gone their puppet show theatre can resume like nothing happened. Sorry, but there is no coming back from this. They will be lucky if the worst thing that happens is a sizable part of of the American populace protests by throwing sand in the gears. I'm afraid it will end much worse.

Peter AU 1 said in reply to walrus... , 22 October 2019 at 01:12 PM
I doubt there is any magic bullet website or other source of information that would turn people over night. A good start would be encouraging them to read transcripts of various Putin and Lavrov speeches and pressers, also Valdai Club, economic forum ect.

Most only get to see the odd sentence or paragragh in western MSM with an entirely fictional story built around it, so perhaps and MSM piece like that and the transcript of the relevant presser or speech alongside it.

I suspect the fine detail in Putin and Lavrov's replies to press questions rather than cliches would surprise many people.

Glorious Bach said in reply to walrus... , 22 October 2019 at 02:29 PM
Walrus--100% my experience as well. Many dinners with "liberal" even "progressive" friends, mostly of the retired kind require great psychic energy. Their Overton Window is 1"-square, making exchanges very difficult to squeeze even minimal bits of political reality.

My daily blog tour, like MW's above, takes me through: Moon of Alabama, Naked Capitalism, SST, Caitlin Johnstone, Grayzone and a few others. I'm intel gathering -- but I need to figure out how to convey broader perspectives even to my 40-45 year-old children and their friends. Inside the Beltway assumptions are hard to de-program.

Vegetius , 22 October 2019 at 12:13 AM
The CIA is a clear and present danger.
b , 22 October 2019 at 01:31 AM
While I agree with the essence of the post I disagree with the characterization of SOHR. It tends to get its stuff right. I have listed several significant events where SOHR disagreed with the official narrative: On Sources And Information - The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights . Those are exactly the moments where SOHR is disregarded by the pressitude.

It is the selective quoting of such sources that paint them as partisan even as they try to stay somewhat neutral.

---
@Pat - Any comment to the Gen. McRaven op-ed in the NYT?
Our Republic Is Under Attack From the President
If President Trump doesn't demonstrate the leadership that America needs, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office.

Isn't it a call to mutiny? It seems to me to be far beyond the allowed political comment from a retired General.

Anonymous , 22 October 2019 at 01:34 AM
Those that look up the pole, all they see is assholes. Those that look down all they see is assholes, but those that look straight ahead, they see which path to take.
fredw , 22 October 2019 at 08:13 AM
The colonel's complaint implicitly assumes that things were not always thus. My adult experience since I saw a war up close has been that the "facts" of our public discourse are always simplified and usually grossly distorted.

Is the Iranian regime terrible? Well, yes, but it is also a regime that holds real elections and often loses them. Not in the same league of awful with Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

Similarly with the other examples. The "facts" have in each case a basis in truth but do not by themselves give a true picture. Is our discourse more unfair to Russia than it was to Nasser's Egypt? Is our promotion of Saudi Arabia any worse than our adulation of Chiang Kai-shek?

Christian J Chuba , 22 October 2019 at 08:30 AM
Not only are the MSM married to a narrative but they feel compelled to attack the few who ever challenge the orthodoxy. For example, 'Tulsi Gabbard met with the war criminal Assad'.

It would do our vaunted free press wonders if they traveled to Damascus instead of repeating the same tired talking points about Syria. I'll never forget the look on Gabbard's face when she talked about the Syrians came up to her and said, 'why are you attacking us, what did we do to you'. Meeting real people can undo a lifetime of blather and must be stopped at all cost.

turcopolier , 22 October 2019 at 08:56 AM
b Perhaps memory fails me but I think SOHR propagated the SAG gas attacks mythology. I have stated that McRaven should be recalled to active duty and court-martialed. I could find several punitice articles in UCMJ under which he could be charged.
CK said in reply to turcopolier ... , 22 October 2019 at 10:21 AM
When McCain returned from the Hanoi Hilton he could have been prosecuted for treason he was not because "peace with honour" overrode UCMJ and honour. McRaven is being offered up as a distraction. Call him back to active duty yes, and assign him somewhere dreary, unimportant and far from CONUS. Ignore the stuff he is blathering while he is retired, if he repeats blather while on active duty then the navy might be able to recover some honour.
Elora Danan said in reply to turcopolier ... , 22 October 2019 at 12:50 PM
No...your memory does not fail you, Colonel, the SOHR was the main source cited at MSM level on the alleged protests which gave place to the destruction of Syria and the legitimation and labelling of alleged "moderate rebels" which then resulted being but terrorist jihadi groups brought mainly from abroad under financing and mtrainning of non Syrian actors...

The source on the alleged atrocities commited by Assad was SOHR at the first years of the war on Syria, along with Doctors Without Borders and "special envoys" by British and French main papers reporting from the former, and first, "Baba Amr" caliphate in Homs....I am meaning the times of Sunday Times´ Marie Colvin and the other woman from Le Figaro , who then resulted or KIA or caught amongst the jihadists ranks along with other foreign "special envoys" who then were released in a truce with Assad through a safe corridor, especially made for that end, to Lebanon.

I fear SOHR was the source of the super-trolling consisting on inundating the MSM comments sections, like that of El País , with dozens of vertical doctored photographs every time any of us aware entered commenting to debunk their fake news.
I remember this since that was the starting point of Elora as net activist...( till then, just a baby, peacefully growing up...unaware....but had no election, felt it was a duty, since, as you comment here, so few people aware...Having known Syria few years before she could not believe what they were telling about Assad, who, eventhough not being perfect, as it has been long ago proved any other leader in the world is, had managed to show the visitant a flourishing Syria where misery present at other ME countries was almost absent...

It is only lately, when the Syrian war was obviously lost for the US coalition, that the SOHR started contradicting some fake claims by the White Helmets, especially last two alleged chemical attacks, if Elora´s not wrong.

Why this, why now, why in this form? Probably those powers behind SOHR trying to secure a part in the cake of reconstruction and future of Syria...since, it got obvious, love for Syria is not amongst one of their mottos...

Dave P. said in reply to Elora Danan... , 22 October 2019 at 04:04 PM
This news just broke:
Trump approves $4.5 million in aid for Syria's White Helmets

WASHINGTON -- US President Donald Trump has authorized $4.5 million in aid for Syria's White Helmets group, famed for rescuing wounded civilians from the frontlines in the civil war, the White House says today...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-approves-4-5-million-in-aid-for-syrias-white-helmets/

Steve , 22 October 2019 at 09:41 AM
Col Lang,
I'm an extremely grateful for you and your blog. We are all very fortunate to have you.
PeterVE , 22 October 2019 at 09:58 AM
Thank you for this refuge from the noise. How long before the strangling of information makes its way here, and to Craig Murray, Naked Capitalism, and others who look on with clear eyes?
Terry , 22 October 2019 at 10:13 AM
Humans are copy/paste artists and generally not very good at creative thinking. When shown a series of steps to achieve a reward people will repeat all the steps including clearly unnecessary ones. Monkeys will drop unnecessary steps and frequently show more creativity by using a different method to achieve the reward instead of copying.

The old story goes how a woman always cut the ends off a roast before putting it in a pan. When her daughter asks why she doesn't know, asks her mother who doesn't know and asks the great grandmother who laughs and says her pan was too small.

I suspect it is a functional tradeoff that lets us transfer great amounts of cultural information and maintain a civilization of sorts. It creates a tough environment for innovators and allows for easy manipulation of the majority.

Nature of course always has a sprinkling of minority traits in the gene pool to allow for sudden changes in the environment. Most likely those of us that are more critical thinkers and like in depth, multi-dimensional viewpoints and historical knowledge are always going to be standing by watching the crowd do their copy/paste thing.

The rise of the internet giving easy access to more "sources" means more fragmentation in worldviews than ever before depending on where people copy/paste from.

prawnik , 22 October 2019 at 10:56 AM
To be fair, Russia is portrayed as a sort of resurrected Soviet Union intent on world conquest when the audience are conservatives.

Russia portrayed as a fascist theocracy when the audience are liberals.

prawnik , 22 October 2019 at 11:05 AM
Re: only three TV channels and they all said the same thing!

Once Upon a Time, not so long ago, publishing news was hard. For one thing, you needed a printing press, which was big, expensive and required housing and specialized technicians to operate it. Not only that, but a printing press cost money for every sheet of paper printed, and you had to spend more money to distribute what he printed.

They say that "freedom of the press belongs to those who own one" but there's more! Unless you were already rich and planned to publish as an expensive and time-consuming hobby, you needed an income stream. You would get some money from subscriptions, but subscriptions are really a means to sell advertising. Dependence on advertising meant that there were some people the publisher had to keep happy, and others he could not afford to annoy.

Anyone who knows anything about local news knows this. At best, it's a tightrope walk between giving subscribers the news they want to know, and not infuriating your advertisers. The result was a sort of natural censorship. Publishers had to think long and hard before they published anything that would tork the bigwigs off. The fact that a publisher was tied to a physical location and physical assets also made libel suits much easier.

The same thing applied to broadcast TV, only more so. It took orders of magnitude more money, and you were restricted to a limited amount of bandwidth.

The internet changed all that. Now, any anonymous toolio with a laptop ($299 cheap at WallyWorld) and WiFi (free at many businesses) can go into the news publishing business by nightfall, and with worldwide distribution and an advertising revenue stream, to boot. Marginal cost of readership is zero.

Needless to say, this development has The People That Matter very concerned, and they are working hard to stuff that genie back into the bottle.

casey , 22 October 2019 at 11:32 AM
For what it's worth, I found the late Udo Ulfkotte's personal-experience book "Bought Jounalism" to be quite interesting on this topic, as it details the kind of nuts-and-bolts of print-media prostitution. But I would really like to see an org-chart sometime of the overlapping, possibly competing, mission control centers (if that's the right phrase) that control the various "Wurlitzer" messaging and who, ultimately, is on charge of these. It has been intriguing to watch, since Kerry uttered his "the Internet makes it very hard to govern" line years ago, the blurry outline of a vast operation to shut down any non-approved media messages, now including all social media. To give credit where credit is due, "they" sure have done a bang-up job in feeding bullshit across all platforms down the throats of a Western people, like a goose being fattened up for foie gras.
Jack , 22 October 2019 at 12:04 PM
"...the US government (along with our British and Israeli helpmates and masters) are the preeminent creators and purveyors of the manufactured virtual facts on which we base our policy."

Sir

I've been perplexed for some time what the objectives are of these virtual fact creators? When one digs into who the movers & shakers are in the virtual fact creation apparatus then it seems very much analogous to the Jeffrey Epstein orbit. Folks bound together through the carrot of extraordinary personal gain and the stick of personal destruction. Your Drinking the Koolaid, is a seminal work in exploring how these virtual facts are created and how those who challenge the creation are marginalized and even destroyed personally.

IMO, policy making on the basis of virtual facts extends beyond foreign policy to economic and financial policy as well as healthcare policy in the US. The symptoms are seen in growing wealth inequality and increased market concentration globally and financial policy completely unmoored from common sense and sophistry an important element in virtual fact creation.

We're seeing signs of the early breakdown in social cohesion with social unrest in France, Spain, Hong Kong, Chile, Lebanon, Ecuador. Brexit and the election of Trump despite the intensity and vitriolic nature of how the media was used against them. The impeachment of Trump another tool in the desperate attempt to retain and consolidate power. Maybe we're in the Fourth Turning as Howe & Strauss label it.

Keith Harbaugh , 22 October 2019 at 12:43 PM
"The Soviet Union never ended. Russia is still communist ..."
In the interest of specificity and accountability, where/who in the MSM are asserting that?
You (PL) are making a serious charge.
Just who is guilty of perpetrating such a blatant falsehood?
Terry said in reply to Keith Harbaugh... , 22 October 2019 at 04:19 PM
Google "Russia like USSR". It has to be google tho, not Qwant or Duckduckgo. The bias is thick on google.

Back in the U.S.S.R.? How Today's Russia Is Like the Soviet Era
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/back-u-s-s-r-how-todays-russia-soviet-era-n453536

Russia vs. Ukraine: More Russians Want the Soviet Union and Communism Back Amid Continued Tensions

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-vs-ukraine-soviet-union-communism-1264875

Putin's Russia is becoming more Soviet by the day

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/02/26/putins-russia-is-becoming-more-soviet-by-the-day/

Joseph Stalin: Why so many Russians like the Soviet dictator

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47975704

Putin says he wishes the Soviet Union had not collapsed and many Russians agree.

www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/03/03/putin-says-he-wishes-he-could-change-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union-many-russians-agree/&usg=AOvVaw22Q9M8lhhTo8IYh6rl-FCi

oldman22 , 22 October 2019 at 01:04 PM
John Helmer has today published a comprehensive piece on Syria.
The details of history and current affairs are comprehensive.
Highly recommended, a reference work.
His cartoon is good too!
http://johnhelmer.net/oil-and-water-dont-mix-the-solution-to-the-war-in-syria/print/
oldman22 , 22 October 2019 at 01:13 PM
pardon me, should have said the article that John Helmer published
was written by Gary Busch
divadab , 22 October 2019 at 01:15 PM
well it seems to me that the groundwork is being laid for an authoritarian state - and it already has sophisticated tools that are unprecedented in their scope and depth and ability to store data. And the whole enterprise is based on three rules:
1) secrecy - data is restricted to "insiders";
2) deception - the "outsiders" (you know, the citizens) are regarded as a herd of cattle to be managed - with lies and disinformation so we don't get any ideas;
3) ruthless enforcement to dehumanize and destroy dissent. Just consider the torture and destruction of Journalist Julian Assange: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

Not sure what the appropriate response is but I spend a lot of time at my camp working in the woods. Thanks, Colonel Lang, for maintaining this site.

turcopolier , 22 October 2019 at 01:24 PM
Elora Danan

You are more and more interesting.

turcopolier , 22 October 2019 at 01:28 PM
Keith Harbaugh
This is my opinion. I am uninterested in proving anything to you. If you listen to what is said on the MSM (including Fox) it is evident that in the "minds" of the media squirrels Russia is just the USSR in disguise. Try listening to what they are saying as sub-text.
Jackrabbit , 22 October 2019 at 02:21 PM
Thank you pl!
Keith Harbaugh , 22 October 2019 at 02:25 PM
The request was not just for my benefit, but with the thought that it would be useful to document the occurrences of such clearly false statements in the media.

It is certainly true that Russia is being demonized in all the MSM I have sampled. A frequent criticism is that Putin, like Assad, and earlier Saddam and Quadaffi, is essentially an illegitimate ruler of his country, ruling through brute force and without the consent of his countrymen. (Thus the WaPo editorials routinely call Putin a "thug", just as they call Assad a "butcher".)

I am certainly not endorsing that view, just reporting what I hear and read. When I hear that, I harken back to my graduate school days, when the same sort of charges were leveled against America, which was usually spelled "Amerika", or sometimes "AmeriKKKa", and described as a racist, imperialist, fascist country whose establishment must be "Smashed". I believe the core group of people who so wanted a revolution in America in 1970 (which they essentially got, as we have seen over the last 50 years) are much the same as those now demonizing Russia.

Here is some specificity on their complaints against Russia back then: They were not opposed to the USSR, or communism. Many of them were in effect communists. The cry among many was : "Marx, Mao, and Marcuse" (Herbert Marcuse was a former Brandeis professor who extolled cultural Marxism). What they did have, in spades, was a feeling that their ancestors had been victimized by the Czarist regime in Russia, which, among other supposed sins, had not done enough to prevent pogroms against them. They seemed to have a deep fear of the Russian people, based on their long experience with them.

My suspicion (actually, belief) is that the opposition to Putin is based on the fact that he is sometimes viewed as a throwback to the the Czars, and that is definitely not something looked upon favorably by many Jews.

arze , 22 October 2019 at 02:33 PM
This is SOHR, Tweet, Dec. 6, 2014

"Regime forces use Chlorine gas to stop ISIS advances in Der-Ezzor military airport http://fb.me/4qb09QhnH
3:01 AM - 6 Dec 2014"

https://twitter.com/syriahr/status/541185710443995136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dw.com%2Fen%2Fsyrian-observatory-reports-assad-gas-attack-on-is%2Fa-18113807

blue peacock , 22 October 2019 at 03:33 PM
Col. Lang,

"Trump has a balance sheet where a soul should be and that is the basis for the belief that MBS and/or his "country" are our friends."

Not to defend Trump and his balance sheet mindset with respect to the Saudis, the reality is that both parties and presidents from George H.W to Bill Clinton to W and Obama have treated the Saudi monarchy as our "friend", even when they sponsored the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11.

Tony Blair became a wealthy man after his prime ministership on the back of money thrown his way by the Arab sheikhs.

[Oct 22, 2019] Bernie Blasts Hillary s Outrageous Gabbard Russian Asset Smear

Oct 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

While the mainstream liberal media remains firmly in the pocket of the Clintons' propaganda machine, spewing russophobic accusations at any and every one who dares question the establishment and military-industrial complex line, there are some - on the left - that are willing to step up and defend Tulsi Gabbard against the latest delusional suggestion from Hillary that she is a 'Russian asset'.

President Trump was quick to blast Hillary's accusation :

So now Crooked Hillary is at it again! She is calling Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard "a Russian favorite," and Jill Stein "a Russian asset." As you may have heard, I was called a big Russia lover also (actually, I do like Russian people. I like all people!). Hillary's gone Crazy!

... ... ...

The Vermont senator (and runner-up to Hillary for the 2016 Democratic nomination) called such accusations "outrageous," pointing to Gabbard's background as a military veteran: "Tulsi Gabbard has put her life on the line to defend this country. People can disagree on issues, but it is outrageous for anyone to suggest that Tulsi is a foreign asset."

However, Hillary's attack dogs will be quick to point out that Sanders himself is a "Russian asset." Tags

Qanon , 44 minutes ago link

Careful Bernie. You almost died once this year already, you don't need any help.

Anunnaki , 1 hour ago link

Sanders. Too little late. Just die and spare us your sheep dogging ********.

Just enjoy the house Hillary gave you for spreading your cheeks for this evil woman

TeraByte , 2 hours ago link

What the circular firing squad left undone, will be accomplished by infighting between Clintonites and "moderates" ( a too positive concept). May the Deluge drown you all in 2020.

Petkattash , 2 hours ago link

Bernie should have kicked HRC in the nuts 4 years ago when he had the chance...

Someone Else , 2 hours ago link

...Tulsi served two tours of duty in the Middle East, and she continues her service as a Major in the Army National Guard. Tulsi's 2005 deployment was a 12-month tour at Logistical Support Area Anaconda in Iraq, where she served in a field medical unit as a specialist with a 29th Support Battalion medical company. She was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal at the end of this tour.

NA X-15 , 2 hours ago link

Has anybody heard Elizabeth Warren condemn Hillary Clinton? No? Hmmmm:

https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/07/report-clinton-working-behind-scenes-elizabeth-warren/

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren are reportedly developing a close political friendship that might prove pivotal to deciding the Democratic presidential nomination.

Both have kept in touch since Warren announced her decision to seek the Democratic nomination last February, NBC News reported Saturday.

"Hillary Clinton would absolutely have influence over a number of delegates to this convention," Deb Kozikowski, the vice-chairwoman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, told NBC, referring to the possibility that Clinton could help Warren secure delegates if there is no clear nominee heading into the Democratic National Convention next summer .

One Democratic strategist told NBC that Clinton has been watching and approving of Warren's campaign as the senator has unveiled a series of increasingly progressive policy proposals.

Anunnaki , 1 hour ago link

Fakeajewea is too clever by half. If she ties herself to Hillary in any significant way, she will lose bigly

[Oct 22, 2019] A Call for a Coup Plus a Week Like No Other for Tulsi Gabbard by Philip Giraldi

Notable quotes:
"... And then there is the Great Hillary Clinton caper. In an interview last week Hillary claimed predictably that Donald Trump is "Vladimir Putin's dream," and then went on to assert that there would be other Russian assets emerging, including nestled in the bosom of her own beloved Democratic Party ..."
"... Tulsi responded courageously and accurately "Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton . ..."
"... Tulsi has in fact been attacked relentless by the Establishment since she announced that she would be running for the Democratic nomination. Shortly before last Tuesday's Democratic candidate debate the New York Times ..."
"... quid pro quos ..."
"... Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is ..."
Oct 22, 2019 | www.unz.com

There was what might be described as an extraordinary amount of nonsense being promoted by last week's media. Unfortunately, some of it was quite dangerous. Admiral William McRaven, who commanded the Navy Seals when Osama bin Laden was captured and killed and who has been riding that horse ever since, announced that if Donald Trump continues to fail to provide the type of leadership the country needs, he should be replaced by whatever means are necessary. The op-ed entitled "Our Republic is Under Attack by the President" with the subtitle "If President Trump doesn't demonstrate the leadership that America needs, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office" was featured in the New York Times, suggesting that the Gray Lady was providing its newspaper of record seal of approval for what might well be regarded as a call for a military coup.

McRaven's exact words, after some ringing praise for the military and all its glorious deeds in past wars, were that the soldiers, sailors and marines now must respond because "The America that they believed in was under attack, not from without, but from within."

McRaven then elaborated that "These men and women, of all political persuasions, have seen the assaults on our institutions: on the intelligence and law enforcement community, the State Department and the press. They have seen our leaders stand beside despots and strongmen, preferring their government narrative to our own. They have seen us abandon our allies and have heard the shouts of betrayal from the battlefield. As I stood on the parade field at Fort Bragg, one retired four-star general, grabbed my arm, shook me and shouted, 'I don't like the Democrats, but Trump is destroying the Republic!'"

It is a call to arms if there ever was one. Too bad Trump can't strip McRaven of his pension and generous health care benefits for starters and McRaven might also consider that he could be recalled to active duty by Trump and court martialed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And the good admiral, who up until 2018 headed the state university system in Texas, might also receive well merited pushback for his assessment of America's role in the world over the past two decades, in which he was a major player, at least in terms of dealing out punishment. He wrote ""We are the most powerful nation in the world because we try to be the good guys. We are the most powerful nation in the world because our ideals of universal freedom and equality have been backed up by our belief that we were champions of justice, the protectors of the less fortunate."

Utter bullshit, of course. The United States has been acting as the embodiment of a rogue nation, lashing out pointlessly and delivering death and destruction. If McRaven truly believes what he says he is not only violating his oath to defend the constitution while also toying with treason, he is an idiot and should never have been allowed to run anything more demanding than a hot dog stand. Washington has been systematically blowing people up worldwide for no good reasons, killing possibly as many as 4 million mostly Muslims, while systematically stripping Americans of their Bill of Rights at home. "Good guys" and "champions of justice" indeed!

And then there is the Great Hillary Clinton caper. In an interview last week Hillary claimed predictably that Donald Trump is "Vladimir Putin's dream," and then went on to assert that there would be other Russian assets emerging, including nestled in the bosom of her own beloved Democratic Party . She said, clearly suggesting that it would be Tulsi Gabbard, that "They're also going to do third-party again. I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on someone who's currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She's the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far."

Clinton explained how the third-party designation would work, saying of Jill Stein, who ran for president in 2016 as a Green Party candidate, "And that's assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she's also a Russian asset. Yeah, she's a Russian asset -- I mean, totally. They know they can't win without a third-party candidate. So I don't know who it's going to be, but I will guarantee you they will have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states that they most needed."

Tulsi responded courageously and accurately "Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton . You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It's now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly."

Tulsi has in fact been attacked relentless by the Establishment since she announced that she would be running for the Democratic nomination. Shortly before last Tuesday's Democratic candidate debate the New York Times ran an article suggesting that Gabbard was an isolationist, was being promoted by Russia and was an apologist for Syria's Bashar al-Assad. In reality, Gabbard is the only candidate willing to confront America's warfare-national security state.

The Hillary Clinton attack on Gabbard and on the completely respectable Jill Stein is to a certain extent incomprehensible unless one lives in the gutter that she and Bill have wallowed in ever since they rose to prominence in Arkansas. Hillary, the creator of the private home server for classified information as well as author of the catastrophic war against Libya and the Benghazi debacle has a lot to answer for but will never be held accountable, any more than her husband Bill for his rapes and molestations. And when it comes to foreign interference, Gabbard is being pilloried because the Russian media regards her favorably while the Clinton Foundation has taken tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments and billionaires seeking quid pro quos , much of which has gone to line the pockets of Hillary, Bill and Chelsea.

Finally, one comment about the Democratic Party obsession with the Russians. The media was enthusing last Friday over a photo of Speaker Nancy Pelosi standing up across a table from President Trump and pointing at him before walking out of the room. The gushing regarding how a powerful, strong woman was defying the horrible chief executive was both predictable and ridiculous. By her own admission Pelosi's last words before departing were "All roads lead to Putin." I will leave it up to the reader to interpret what that was supposed to mean.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]

[Oct 22, 2019] Few Democrats dared to step up against the "queen of warmongers."

Oct 22, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

While Mayor Pete was a little evasive on actually talking down the "Russian asset" accusation, he did question it, saying that "statements like that ought to be backed by evidence."

"I don't know what the basis is for that," he said.

"But I consider her to be a competitor. I respect her service. I also have very different views than she does, especially on foreign policy, and I would prefer to have that argument in terms of policy which is what we do at debates and what we're doing as we go forward."

Another 2020 presidential hopeful, former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke, also dismissed the Gabbard claim , insisting the focus of the presidential campaign should be on the economy, climate change and other issues affecting Americans.

"That's not correct. Tulsi is not being groomed by anyone. She is her own person," he told reporters after delivering a keynote address Saturday at the Alabama Democratic Conference Semi-Annual Convention in Birmingham.

"Obviously (she) has served this country, continues to serve this country in uniform, in Congress, as a candidate for presidency so I think those facts speak for themselves."

Andrew Yang also defended Gabbard :

" Tulsi Gabbard deserves much more respect and thanks than this. She literally just got back from serving our country abroad."

And now, having been cheated of his chance against Hillary in 2016 - running to her side like a loyal party comrade after the DNC practically ran him out of the party - a post-heartattack Bernie Sanders - perhaps with little left to lose - has finally come out swinging at Clinton.

The Vermont senator (and runner-up to Hillary for the 2016 Democratic nomination) called such accusations "outrageous," pointing to Gabbard's background as a military veteran: "Tulsi Gabbard has put her life on the line to defend this country. People can disagree on issues, but it is outrageous for anyone to suggest that Tulsi is a foreign asset."

NA X-15 , 2 hours ago link

Has anybody heard Elizabeth Warren condemn Hillary Clinton? No? Hmmmm:

https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/07/report-clinton-working-behind-scenes-elizabeth-warren/

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren are reportedly developing a close political friendship that might prove pivotal to deciding the Democratic presidential nomination.

Both have kept in touch since Warren announced her decision to seek the Democratic nomination last February, NBC News reported Saturday.

"Hillary Clinton would absolutely have influence over a number of delegates to this convention," Deb Kozikowski, the vice-chairwoman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, told NBC, referring to the possibility that Clinton could help Warren secure delegates if there is no clear nominee heading into the Democratic National Convention next summer .

One Democratic strategist told NBC that Clinton has been watching and approving of Warren's campaign as the senator has unveiled a series of increasingly progressive policy proposals.

Anunnaki , 1 hour ago link

Fakeajewea is too clever by half. If she ties herself to Hillary in any significant way, she will lose bigly

[Oct 22, 2019] Hillary claims that Gabbard is being groomed to run as a third-party spoiler candidate, stealing votes from Warren or Biden, exactly as Jill Stein (who, according to Clinton, is also totally a Russian asset )

Notable quotes:
"... "I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate." ..."
"... The Times piece goes on to list an assortment of unsavory, extremist, white supremacist, horrible, neo-Nazi-type persons that Tulsi Gabbard has nothing to do with, but which Hillary Clinton, the Intelligence Community, The Times , and the rest of the corporate media would like you to mentally associate her with. ..."
Oct 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden Mon, 10/21/2019 - 22:25 0 SHARES

Authored (satirically) by CJ Hopkins vis The Unz Review,

So, it looks like that's it for America, folks. Putin has gone and done it again. He and his conspiracy of Putin-Nazis have "hacked," or "influenced," or "meddled in" our democracy. Unless Admiral Bill McRaven and his special ops cronies can ginny up a last-minute military coup , it's four more years of the Trumpian Reich, Russian soldiers patrolling the streets, martial law, concentration camps, gigantic banners with the faces of Trump and Putin hanging in the football stadiums, mandatory Sieg-heiling in the public schools, National Vodka-for-Breakfast Day, death's heads, babushkas, the whole nine yards.

We probably should have seen this coming.

That's right, as I'm sure you are aware by now, president-in-exile Hillary Clinton has discovered Putin's diabolical plot to steal the presidency from Elizabeth Warren, or Biden, or whichever establishment puppet makes it out of the Democratic primaries. Speaking to former Obama adviser and erstwhile partner at AKPD Message and Media David Plouffe, Clinton revealed how the godless Rooskies intend to subvert democracy this time:

"I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate."

She was referring, of course, to Tulsi Gabbard, sitting Democratic Member of Congress, decorated Major in the Army National Guard, and long shot 2020 presidential candidate. Apparently, Gabbard (who reliable anonymous sources in the Intelligence Community have confirmed is a member of some kind of treasonous, Samoan-Hindu, Assad-worshipping cult that wants to force everyone to practice yoga) has been undergoing Russian "grooming" at a compound in an undisclosed location that is probably in the basement of Mar-a-Lago, or on Sublevel 168 of Trump Tower.

In any event, wherever Gabbard is being surreptitiously "groomed" (presumably by someone resembling Lotte Lenya in From Russia With Love ), the plan (i.e., Putin's plan) is to have her lose in the Democratic primaries, then run as a third-party "spoiler" candidate, stealing votes from Warren or Biden, exactly as Jill Stein (who, according to Clinton, is also "totally a Russian asset") stole them from Clinton back in 2016, allowing Putin to install Donald Trump (who, according to Clinton, is still being blackmailed by the FSB with that "kompromat" pee-tape) in the White House, where she so clearly belongs.

Clinton's comments came on the heels of a preparatory smear-piece in The New York Times , What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To? , which reported at length on how Gabbard has been "injecting chaos" into the Democratic primaries . Professional "disinformation experts" supplied The Times with convincing evidence (i.e., unfounded hearsay and innuendo) of "suspicious activity" surrounding Gabbard's campaign. Former Clinton-aide Laura Rosenberger (who also just happens to be the Director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy , "a bipartisan transatlantic national security advocacy group" comprised of former Intelligence Community and U.S. State Department officials, and publisher of the Hamilton 68 dashboard) "sees Gabbard as a potentially useful vector for Russian efforts to sow division."

The Times piece goes on to list an assortment of unsavory, extremist, white supremacist, horrible, neo-Nazi-type persons that Tulsi Gabbard has nothing to do with, but which Hillary Clinton, the Intelligence Community, The Times , and the rest of the corporate media would like you to mentally associate her with.

Richard Spencer, David Duke, Steve Bannon, Mike Cernovich, Tucker Carlson, and so on. Neo-Nazi sites like the Daily Stormer . 4chan, where, according to The New York Times , neo-Nazis like to "call her Mommy."

In keeping with professional journalistic ethics, The Times also reached out to experts on fascism, fascist terrorism, terrorist fascism, fascist-adjacent Assad-apologism, Hitlerism, horrorism, Russia, and so on, to confirm Gabbard's guilt-by-association with the people The Times had just associated her with. Brian Levin, Director of the CSU Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, confirmed that Gabbard has "the seal of approval" within goose-stepping, Hitler-loving, neo-Nazi circles. The Alliance for Securing Democracy (yes, the one from the previous paragraph) conducted an "independent analysis" which confirmed that RT ("the Kremlin-backed news agency") had mentioned Gabbard far more often than the Western corporate media (which isn't backed by anyone, and is totally unbiased and independent, despite the fact that most of it is owned by a handful of powerful global corporations, and at least one CIA-affiliated oligarch). Oh, and Hawaii State Senator Kai Kahele, who is challenging Gabbard for her seat in Congress, agreed with The Times that Gabbard's support from Jew-hating, racist Putin-Nazis might be a potential liability.

"Clearly there's something about her and her policies that attracts and appeals to these type of people who are white nationalists, anti-Semites, and Holocaust deniers."

But it's not just The New York Times , of course. No sooner had Clinton finished cackling than the corporate media launched into their familiar Goebbelsian piano routine, banging out story after television segment repeating the words "Gabbard" and "Russian asset." I've singled out The Times because the smear piece in question was clearly a warm-up for Hillary Clinton's calculated smear job on Friday night. No, the old gal hasn't lost her mind. She knew exactly what she was doing, as did the editors of The New York Times , as did every other establishment news source that breathlessly "reported" her neo-McCarthyite smears.

As I noted in my previous essay , 2020 is for all the marbles, and it's not just about who wins the election. No, it's mostly about crushing the "populist" backlash against the hegemony of global capitalism and its happy, smiley-faced, conformist ideology. To do that, the neoliberal establishment has to delegitimize, and lethally stigmatize, not just Trump, but also people like Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn and any other popular political figure (left, right, it makes no difference) deviating from that ideology.

  • In Trump's case, it's his neo-nationalism.
  • In Sanders and Corbyn's, it's socialism (or at least some semblance of social democracy).
  • In Gabbard's, it's her opposition to the Corporatocracy's ongoing efforts to restructure and privatize the Middle East (and the rest of the entire planet), and their using the U.S. military to do it.

Ask yourself, what do Trump, Sanders, Corbyn, and Gabbard have in common? No, it's not their Putin-Nazism it's the challenge they represent to global capitalism. Each, in his or her own way, is a symbol of the growing populist resistance to the privatization and globalization of everything. And thus, they must be delegitimized, stigmatized, and relentlessly smeared as "Russian assets," "anti-Semites," "traitors," "white supremacists," "fascists," "communists," or some other type of "extremists."

Gabbard, to her credit, understands this, and is focusing attention on the motives and tactics of the neoliberal establishment and their smear machine. As I noted in an essay last year , "the only way to effectively counter a smear campaign (whether large-scale or small-scale) is to resist the temptation to profess your innocence, and, instead, focus as much attention on the tactics and the motives of the smearers as possible ." This will not save her, but it is the best she can do, and I applaud her for having the guts to do it. I hope she continues to give them hell as they finish off her candidacy and drive her out of office.

Oh, and if you're contemplating sending me an email explaining how these smear campaigns don't work (or you spent the weekend laughing about how Hillary Clinton lost her mind and made an utter jackass of herself), maybe check in with Julian Assange, who is about to be extradited to America, tried for exposing U.S. war crimes, and then imprisoned for the remainder of his natural life.

If you can't get through to Julian at Belmarsh, you could ring up Katharine Viner at The Guardian, which has ruthlessly smeared Assange for years, and published outright lies about him , and is apparently doing very well financially.

And, if Katharine is on holiday in Antigua or somewhere, or having tea with Hillary in the rooftop bar of the Hay-Adams Hotel , you could try Luke Harding (who not only writes and publishes propaganda for The Guardian , but who wrote a whole New York Times best-seller based on nothing but lies and smears). Or try Marty Baron, Dean Baquet, Paul Krugman, or even Rachel Maddow, or any of the other editors and journalists who have been covering the Putin-Nazi " Attack on America ," and keeping us apprised of who is and isn't a Hitler-loving "Russian asset."

Ask them whether their smear machine is working... if you can get them off the phone with their brokers, or whoever is decorating their summer places in the Hamptons or out on Martha's Vineyard .

Or ask the millions of well-off liberals who are still, even after Russiagate was exposed as an enormous hoax based on absolutely nothing , parroting this paranoid official narrative and calling people "Russian assets" on Twitter. Or never mind, just pay attention to what happens over the next twelve months. In terms of ridiculous official propaganda , spittle-flecked McCarthyite smears, and full-blown psychotic mass Putin-Nazi hysteria, it's going to make the last three years look like the Propaganda Special Olympics.

* * *

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .

[Oct 22, 2019] It's four more years of the Trumpian Reich folks, with Russian Spetsnaz patrolling the streets, gigantic banners with the faces of Trump and Putin hanging in the football stadiums, National Vodka-for-Breakfast Day, babushkas, the whole nine yards by CJ Hopkins

Notable quotes:
"... Authored (satirically) by CJ Hopkins vis The Unz Review, ..."
Oct 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored (satirically) by CJ Hopkins vis The Unz Review,

So, it looks like that's it for America, folks. Putin has gone and done it again. He and his conspiracy of Putin-Nazis have "hacked," or "influenced," or "meddled in" our democracy.

Unless Admiral Bill McRaven and his special ops cronies can ginny up a last-minute military coup , it's four more years of the Trumpian Reich, Russian soldiers patrolling the streets, martial law, concentration camps, gigantic banners with the faces of Trump and Putin hanging in the football stadiums, mandatory Sieg-heiling in the public schools, National Vodka-for-Breakfast Day, death's heads, babushkas, the whole nine yards.

[Oct 21, 2019] Toe The Line Or Be Destroyed Tulsi Gabbard Dismantles Establishment Hit-Job In Viral Video

This post generated over 2K comment on zero hedge...
Looks like Tulsi masterfully capitalized on Hillary mistake. after Russiagate the change of being Russian agent does not have the same byte as before and now can even be played to one's advantage as a sign of anti neoliberal establishment orientation. Which is what Tulsi did.
Tulsi would be a powerful Secretary of State I think, if she did not win the nomination...
Notable quotes:
"... "If you stand up to the rich and powerful elite and the war machine, they will destroy you and discredit your message... ," says Gabbard, who said she's suffered smears " from day one of this campaign. " ..."
"... Great! Thank you Hillary Clinton," Gabbard tweeted late on Friday afternoon. " You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain ." ..."
"... "From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose." Gabbard added. ..."
"... And now, Gabbard has capitalized on Hillary's hubris and unchallenged conspiracy theory to fundraise and increase her visibility. ..."
"... For comparison, a real protest looks like Gilet Jaunes. Some people started protesting because they are being disenfranchised by their own government. They were already in real pain long before Macron went backward on all his campaign promises. ..."
Oct 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

"Toe The Line Or Be Destroyed": Tulsi Gabbard Dismantles Establishment 'Hit-Job' In Viral Video by Tyler Durden Sun, 10/20/2019 - 16:57 0 SHARES

Tulsi Gabbard unleashed her latest counterattack to the establishment hit-job against her, after Hillary Clinton suggested she's an Russian asset.

"If you stand up to the rich and powerful elite and the war machine, they will destroy you and discredit your message... ," says Gabbard, who said she's suffered smears " from day one of this campaign. "

In a Sunday tweet accompanied by a video which has nearly 450,000 views on Twitter (and 18,000 on YouTube) as of this writing, Gabbard writes "Hillary & her gang of rich, powerful elite are going after me to send a msg to YOU: "Shut up, toe the line, or be destroyed." But we, the people, will NOT be silenced."

Tulsi Gabbard ✔ @TulsiGabbard

Hillary & her gang of rich, powerful elite are going after me to send a msg to YOU: "Shut up, toe the line, or be destroyed." But we, the people, will NOT be silenced. Join me in taking our Democratic Party back & leading a govt of, by & for the people! http:// tulsi.to/take-it-back

Last week, Clinton told Democratic operative and podcast host David Plouffe that "Russians" were "grooming" a female Democratic candidate - clearly referring to Gabbard.

"I'm not making any predictions but I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate," Clinton said, in apparent reference to Gabbard, a Hawaii Army National Guard major who served in Iraq. " She's the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far. "

https://www.youtube.com/embed/mNLJ3i2oRyg

Tulsi hit back, tweeting to Hillary:

Great! Thank you Hillary Clinton," Gabbard tweeted late on Friday afternoon. " You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain ."

"From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose." Gabbard added.

And now, Gabbard has capitalized on Hillary's hubris and unchallenged conspiracy theory to fundraise and increase her visibility.

LEEPERMAX , 17 minutes ago link

Hillary has Bait & Switched everyone into talking about Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia

Because her real TREASONOUS ACTS occurred in Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine.

rtb61 , 31 minutes ago link

People are seeing entirely too much into this. Seriously this is nothing but some crazy old crone, extremely jealous of someone else and wanting revenge, honestly all I see is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrUEjpHbUMM . No political scam, not grand strategy, just a really jealous vengeful old crone, HRC can see Tulsi Gabbard winning and in infuriates her, fills her with jealousy fueled rage, Tulsi in every way better than Hillary, smarter, more popular, prettier (never forget this can really freak out women) and younger (ohh the rage) and HRC blames Tulsi and Jill for HRC's arrogant public failure.

History will think extremely poorly of Hillary Rodham Clinton, extremely poorly.

ChaoKrungThep , 20 minutes ago link

Oh dear, you really don't understand US politics, do you? "They" could get a dead horse elected with the right connections.

Roger Casement , 37 minutes ago link

Consider what is occurring here. Citizen Hillary has started a media circus with 1 of the 12 - or is it 16? - "candidates" the spy infested DNC is fielding. The C_A MSM mouthpieces are shilling this white noise, blocking out any more important, more difficult reporting if not analysis of world events they don't want in the news.

World Events like the Clinton, Obama, Biden, Kerry, Pelosi, Feinstein and Schiff scandals in Ukraine and China, how well things are going in Syria and who the real villains there have been, how well negotiations are going with China, how the Syrian refugee crisis is being settled in the best way for all concerned and how the C_A plan to start WW3 has been exposed.

The C_A can repeat this op another 11 Times. This is good because they are lazy and stupid, but even so you can expect them to **** it up in some way every time. Evil has recruiting problems. Remember Hillary laughing about obliterating civilization in Libya. Remember the corpse of Gadafi being dragged through the street by her mercs. Remember who stole Libya's gold, and Ukraine's gold.

Consider all these "best" pictures of Gabbard. The method is obvious: Don't listen to the pettiness and low news value of this PR stunt, just look at the cutie. This fits the media op signature of the Tavistock faggots on loan to Soros. Here are a few more:

BLM: Look at us. We all black! Don't listen to our demands, we still working on them, but whoever you are we coming for your stuff.

Antifa: Look at us. We all revolutionaries! We like to rumble! Don't listen to our message. We don't have one. We're really a lot of fun. Come to us, children, or we'll mess you up.

Naked woman protests: We are women! Every day we pretend to be smart but we're really emotionally unbalanced fools! REEEEEE... Our message is, we need to be taken care of like babies. When you take off your clothes to protest, you've already lost.

For comparison, a real protest looks like Gilet Jaunes. Some people started protesting because they are being disenfranchised by their own government. They were already in real pain long before Macron went backward on all his campaign promises. The government of France has been bought and paid for from top to bottom by a few rich Jews and they are destroying civilization just like Hillary did Libya, only they are in the subversion stage. The bombing is still to come. If you doubt me, dig for stories about who Macron is meeting with, who he takes orders from. This is a peek into the real criminals behind the current form of the EU. Thousands of people in the street. A few big protests got the imagination of the world, giving Macron ulcers. Good. They got solidarity. Then Macron started sending in the thugs and gestapo. Then he sent in EU troops suited up for urban warfare. Both the optics and the message of this are devastating to the cabal, worldwide.

IMO the best thing to do is to follow this circus and all that follow loosely. If you can't turn it around on them, for instance pointing out that Gabbard is CFR and her positions are folly, do not give it the clicks (((they))) expect. At least screw up their stats, make their psychological warfare "experts" lose their jobs or at least work day and night to keep up, until they melt down in pools of their own saliva.

What this stunt is, is "opening a second media front". They created this meaningless drivel to hide the news that is favorable to Trump and good for everybody in the world, and bad for the cabal. This is all they got. This is the best they can do. They have nothing to offer but lies, threats and tyranny. As Hillary said, her policy is to keep them dumb, keep them poor and keep them hungry. They are all gangsters.

Consider how cheap it is to do an op like this. That is the signature of the DS. They like cheap ops because they can do so many.

The best we can do is open second fronts right back at them. Expose errors, omissions and lies in their fake news, as well as what their lies are meant to conceal. It is fun to watch when the first slavos of their campaigns immediately fall apart and get thrown back at them. Sometime real news gets out.

Tomorrow is the Canadian election. It will be a good message to them if Trudeau gets destroyed.

Brexit deadline is coming up. Pelosi swore that if they Brexit she will do all the crimes she can to obstruct US-UK trade. Pretty sure she used up whatever stolen credibility she had with that admission of lawless tyranny.

Point is, Brexit will have a significant meaning to Americans and gangsters like her will be in the spotlight. We want good will and trade with the UK. If this is obstructed, Pelosi has already said she's responsible and obstructing trade will have criminal consequences on the US side. Learn all you can, keep track and if you get the chance, share any damning facts you find.

[Oct 20, 2019] Putin sarcastic remark on Western neoliberal multiculturalism

Highly recommended!
Oct 17, 2019 | www.unz.com

"If minorities prefer Sharia Law, then we advise them to go to those places where that's the state law.

Russia does not need minorities. Minorities need Russia, and we will not grant them special privileges, or try to change our laws to fit their desires, no matter how loud they yell "discrimination"

-Vladimir Putin

[Oct 20, 2019] Quiz for the day: Does this whistleblower even exist? Or is it a composite creation of the CIA, Schiff and Co?

Notable quotes:
"... Do the Democrats and their allies in the deep state increasingly look like the Keystone Kops? ..."
Oct 20, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

dbriz Kyle Stirkenburg • 5 days ago • edited

Quiz for the day: Does this “whistleblower” even exist? Or is it a composite creation of the CIA, Schiff and Co?

Did Schiff and friends turn ghostly white when Trump called their bluff by releasing the transcript?

Is Pelosi’s new found reticence a result of her self annoyance that she let herself get talked into this new debacle and payback is to let Schiff shift in the wind dangling over the thought that no one in the CIA wants to walk the plank for him?

Do the Democrats and their allies in the deep state increasingly look like the Keystone Kops?

[Oct 20, 2019] Russo-Japanese War financed by Jacob Schiff The Strange Side of Jewish History by David

Oct 20, 2019 | strangeside.com

December 20, 2012

Without lifting a gun, Jacob H. Schiff crushed the Czarist army and plunged its finest battleships down to a watery grave! Schiff, a direct descendant of the Maharam Schiff, was born in Frankfurt in 5607/1847. Although he studied at Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch's religious school, it can hardly be said that he kept to his alma mater's standards once he had left for the US at the age of eighteen. Instead, he devoted his energies to high fi nance and became managing director of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., one of the two most influential private international banking houses of the Western Hemisphere.

At the turn of the last century, he wielded his powerful influence against Czar Nicholas II after the eruption of the Russo-Japanese War in 5664/1904. It was largely thanks to Schiff's efforts that the struggle ended in a crushing defeat over Russia, leading Russia's Minister of Finance to declare in 5671/1911, "Our government will never forgive or forget what the Jew Schiff did to us He was one of the most dangerous men we had against us abroad."

BLACKMAIL
Schiff had an iron scruple when it came to lending money. He could not tolerate Czarist Russia's inhuman persecution of its Jewish subjects and believed that no Jew should lend the Czar a cent. He harbored a withering contempt for the world of Jewish finance that lent Russia money during the 5650s/1890s with no strings attached. Jewish finance should have demanded better conditions for Russia's Jews, he criticized. "But, instead, [it] closed its eye to make a despicable profit, and rendered service to the Russian government, selling her Jewish subjects for a few pieces of silver."

Then came the opportunity of a lifetime. In February 5664/1904, Schiff invited a number of Jewish communal leaders to a meeting in his home. "Within 72 hours, war will break out between Japan and Russia," he informed the gathering. "The question has been presented to me of undertaking a loan to Japan. I would like to get your views as to what effect my undertaking of this would have upon the Jewish people in Russia." Whatever they told him, Schiff left the meeting convinced that his best course was to threaten Russia with financial blackmail. He would convince Russia that mistreating Jews came at disastrous cost. Through his widespread influence, he made it difficult for Russia to raise loans in the US at even three to four times the normal profit.

Desperate, Russia's anti-Semitic Minister of the Interior, Vyacheslav von Plehve, let it be known via proxy that he was willing to confer with Schiff and formulate some kind of deal.

Schiff wrote back: "June 21, 1904 I must repeat that the unwillingness of American money markets to take up Russian financing are due purely to the disgust that is felt here against a system of government which permits such things as the recent Kishinev episode [a major pogrom] and the legal discrimination which is the order of the day in Russia

"If his Excellency von Plehve really wants me to come he must not say that he is prepared to see me; he must say that he wishes to see me – and the invitation must be addressed to me directly. The only condition which I must lay down is this: I cannot enter a country which admits me only by special consideration and which is closed to all members of the Jewish faith except by special dispensation. If I am to come to Russia, the existing restriction against the issuing of passports for foreign Jews must first be abolished "

The meeting never took place. When Russian Jews objected to Schiff's strategy, well cognizant of the fact that it might backfire onto their heads, Schiff brushed their objections aside with a spurious argument: "It is simply one more case of the experience which Moses had in Egypt when he intervened for the Children of Israel and tried to stir them up, 'but they hearkened not unto him, for anguish of spirit and for bondage ( Shemos 6:9).'" Schiff also helped organize the distribution of revolutionary literature to Russian POWs held in Japan.

JAPANESE DESPERATION
Besides stymieing Russia's finances, Schiff actively supported the Japanese cause. Baron Korekiyo Takahashi, the Japanese official in charge of selling war bonds, was desperate. New York bankers showed no interest in investing in Japan's war and even in Britain, Japan's official ally, the pickings were minimal.

In his diary, Takahashi complains how the fantastically wealthy Rothschild House refused to contribute a penny:

"The House of Rothschild cannot come in openly during the war. If they did, it will be known to St. Petersburg. They cannot do anything that might inflict oppression on the Jews by the Russian Government."

Then Takahashi struck gold at a London dinner. Who was sitting next to him but Jacob H. Schiff! Takahashi poured out his heart to the powerful financier, informing him that Japan needed at least five million pounds sterling (thirty million dollars) to continue her life-and-death struggle. And much more would be needed later on.

His appeal fell on willing ears. Only a few weeks earlier, Schiff had written to Rothschild claiming that the only hope for Russian Jews was for Russia to suffer an upheaval resulting from the Russo- Japanese War. Here, at last, was his golden opportunity to make this happen.

"A system of government capable of such cruelties and outrages at home as well in foreign relations must be overhauled from the foundations up in the interests of the oppressed race, the Russian people, and the world at large and taught an object lesson," he told the Japanese statesman.

Schiff agreed to set US financial machinery in motion and raise the required funds. "[It was not] so much [because of] my father's interest in Japan," his daughter, Frieda, explained later, "but, rather, his hatred of Imperial Russia and its anti-Semitic policies that prompted him to take this great financial risk." He would show Russia that the dollar was mightier than the sword.

JAPANESE WAR BONDS
As good as his word, Schiff proceeded to spur major US banks and insurance companies into action. After subscriptions to the Japanese bonds opened at 10:00am, May 12, 5664/1904, the bonds sold like wildfire, and even more so after Japan began overwhelming the Russian army on land and at sea.

People were almost breaking down doors to get their hands on Japanese bonds. The New York Times of March 1, 5665/1905, describes scenes of market madness.

"When the office force arrived for work, the lower corridor outside the doors of the banking house was jammed with people so that it was hardly possible to reach the elevators. Outside the portal, there was a double line of people extending across William Street and two or three doors up Pine Street."

"An employee reported: 'They fairly tore us to pieces Until 11 or 12 o'clock, we had not time to breath.'"

Altogether, of the total of 410 million dollars raised by Japan to win its war, 180 million dollars was raised in the US. After Japan's victory in 5665/1905, Schiff was granted diplomatic honors in Britain and Japan. The British king, Edward VII, invited him for a luncheon at Buckingham Palace. Then he was invited by the Japanese emperor to personally receive one of Japan's highest honors, the Second Order of the Sacred Treasure.

"It is the first time the Emperor has invited a foreign private citizen to have a repast at the palace; heretofore, only foreign princes having been thus honored," he boasted.

Schiff and a large entourage of relatives, friends and servants set off in four private rail coaches to San Francisco and sailed off to Japan by liner, pausing briefly en route to visit Queen Liliuokalani of Honolulu. Later, during a festive lunch at the Japanese Imperial Palace, Schiff surprised his royal hosts by lifting his glass in a toast, "To the Emperor, first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen." In Japan, toasts were unknown.

He made a second mistake by casually remarking to Baron Takahashi's fifteenyear- old daughter, Wakiko, "You must come and visit us in New York some time." The Japanese baron understood that his daughter had been invited to stay with the Schiffs for three years! Schiff's wife was less than delighted.

"Mother believes it somewhat of a responsibility we are undertaking in assuming charge of the responsibility of the girl and her education," Schiff recorded at the time, "but we have decided to assume the responsibility."

IN RETROSPECT
In retrospect, Schiff's personal duel with the Czar of Russia probably caused more harm than good. The Jews were targeted as scapegoats for his defeat and suffered a series of violent pogroms. In addition, Schiff's powerful influence reinforced the "Jewish International Conspiracy" myth, portrayed in the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" that the Czar's secret police had disseminated in 5663/1903.

Although Schiff's efforts during the Japanese war and later during World War I helped precipitate the Russian Revolution, this only led to a repression far worse than anything the Jews ever suffered under the Czars.

Years later, it seemed that Schiff's private war might have a positive spinoff after all. During the 5690s/1930s, when Germany began deporting tens of thousands of Jews, the Japanese remembered the great power the Jew Schiff had wielded during their war and considered that it might be a good idea to have people like him living in Japan. This gave rise to the Fugu Plan that might have saved hundreds of thousands of Jews.

The Fugu (Puffer Fish) is regarded as a rare delicacy in Japan. The only problem is that its flesh contains deadly poison that has to be carefully prepared by an expert, leaving only enough poison to provide a pleasant tingling sensation; inexpertly prepared Fugu fish paralyzes and kills. In the same vein, the Japanese believed that although the Jews were a valuable asset, like the delicious Fugu fish, they needed to be watched carefully in order to keep them from putting their "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" plots into action. Plans were made to create autonomous Jewish settlements in the Far East. For various reasons, the Fugu Plan collapsed. In summation, there is little doubt that Schiff's strong-arm tactics were an irresponsible, risky gamble in contravention to the navi's advice in times of adversary: "Go, My nation, come into your rooms and close your doors after you. Hide for a little moment until anger passes" ( Yeshayahu 26:20).

(Sources: 1) Best, Gary Dean. "Financing a Foreign War: Jacob H. Schiff and Japan, 1904-05." American Jewish Historical Review no. 61 1971/72; 2) Birmingham, Stephen. Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York. New York: Harper & Row, 1967; 3) Cohen, Naomi Wiener. Jacob H. Schiff: a Study in American Jewish Leadership. Hanover, N.H.: Brandeis University Press, 1999; 4)

[Oct 20, 2019] Was Adam Schiff running a spy operation against the White House by Monica Showalter

If this is true, then "Schiff spy scandal" might became a serious liability for neoliberal Dems in 2020 elections. Schiff is scion of a very un[leasent character who was reposible for Russo-Japanese war: Russo-Japanese War – financed by Jacob Schiff The Strange Side of Jewish History
Notable quotes:
"... Abigail Grace, who worked at the NSC until 2018, was hired in February, while Sean Misko, an NSC aide until 2017, joined Schiff's committee staff in August, the same month the whistleblower submitted his complaint . ..."
"... The whistleblower was an NSC official who worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and who has expertise in Ukraine, the Washington Examiner has reported . ..."
"... later emerged that a member of his staff had spoken to the whistleblower before his complaint was submitted on Aug. 12. The Washington Post concluded that Schiff "clearly made a statement that was false. ..."
"... Schiff was essentially running an illegal spy operation against the White House, recruiting his staffers, having them recruit their whistleblowers, grooming them up, changing the rules so they could file their complaints, and then lying that they knew anything about the lunatic efforts to get President Trump impeached. See, they were just standing there, minding their own business when all this stuff happened. Everything that did happen was just...a coincidence. ..."
"... Trump's been having a bad time with public opinion in the wake of the Schiff operation orchestrating the media coverage as well. But the facts on the ground suggest it was all an illegal spying operation on the president. ..."
"... It's an abuse of his office, for sure, given that Schiff is supposed to be focused on intelligence ..."
"... Image credit: Caricature by Donkey Hotey via Flickr , CC BY-SA 2.0 . ..."
"... Schiff was essentially running an illegal spy operation against the White House, recruiting his staffers, having them recruit their whistleblowers, grooming them up, changing the rules so they could file their complaints, and then lying that they knew anything about the lunatic efforts to get President Trump impeached. See, they were just standing there, minding their own business when all this stuff happened. Everything that did happen was just...a coincidence. ..."
"... The Lives of Others ..."
Oct 12, 2019 | www.americanthinker.com

Seems every day brings a new revelation about Democratic efforts to rig an impeachment of the president. The false claims and astonishing conflicts of interest being thrown out there are piling up fast.

The latest, from the San Francisco Examiner, exposes House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff's choice of staffers, who it turns out were two disgruntled Deep-Staters from the White House who had actually worked with the so-called "whistleblower":

Abigail Grace, who worked at the NSC until 2018, was hired in February, while Sean Misko, an NSC aide until 2017, joined Schiff's committee staff in August, the same month the whistleblower submitted his complaint .

The whistleblower was an NSC official who worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and who has expertise in Ukraine, the Washington Examiner has reported .

A career CIA analyst with Ukraine expertise, the whistleblower aired his concerns about a phone conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to a House Intelligence Committee aide on Schiff's staff. He had previously informed the CIA's legal counsel's office.

Schiff initially denied he knew anything about the complaint before it was filed, stating on Sep. 17: "We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to."

But it later emerged that a member of his staff had spoken to the whistleblower before his complaint was submitted on Aug. 12. The Washington Post concluded that Schiff "clearly made a statement that was false. "

Grace, 36, was hired to help Schiff's committee investigate the Trump White House. That month, Trump accused Schiff of "stealing people who work at White House." Grace worked at the NSC from 2016 to 2018 in U.S.-China relations and then briefly at the Center for a New American Security think tank, which was founded by two former senior Obama administration officials.

So these people were all buddies beforehand, and this would explain why the so-called whistleblower had been sneaking around with Schiff's staff before he made his whistleblower complaint.

And that came only after someone with influence was able to get the inspector general of the Intelligence Community (IGIC) to change the rules about whistleblowers needing no firsthand knowledge about the wrongdoing they were supposedly reporting. Once that rules change was put into place, the whistleblower got going.

More and more, this sounds like a pre-planned setup. One Trump operative has a very good summary of what seems to have been really going on as these anything but exculpatory stories mount:

Schiff was essentially running an illegal spy operation against the White House, recruiting his staffers, having them recruit their whistleblowers, grooming them up, changing the rules so they could file their complaints, and then lying that they knew anything about the lunatic efforts to get President Trump impeached. See, they were just standing there, minding their own business when all this stuff happened. Everything that did happen was just...a coincidence.

Experienced intelligence operatives, and apparently this Trump operative has this sort of background, like to say there are no coincidences.

As facts continue to roll out, it's getting more and more obvious that Schiff's operation was to orchestrate this impeachment scenario all along, going into high gear with the flame-out of the Mueller investigation.

Trump's been having a bad time with public opinion in the wake of the Schiff operation orchestrating the media coverage as well. But the facts on the ground suggest it was all an illegal spying operation on the president.

signed on to GOP rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona's call to condemn and censure Schiff for this sick little illegal freelance operation to spy on Trump.

It's an abuse of his office, for sure, given that Schiff is supposed to be focused on intelligence , not on being one of those creepy secret police characters in The Lives of Others . It's also an outrageous misuse of taxpayer dollars. In light of this Schiff spy operation, and if Democrats don't want some backatcha next time there's a Dem in office with a Republican House, it really ought to be every last one of them signed up to that Biggs list.

Image credit: Caricature by Donkey Hotey via Flickr , CC BY-SA 2.0 . Seems every day brings a new revelation about Democratic efforts to rig an impeachment of the president. The false claims and astonishing conflicts of interest being thrown out there are piling up fast.

The latest, from the San Francisco Examiner, exposes House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff's choice of staffers, who it turns out were two disgruntled Deep-Staters from the White House who had actually worked with the so-called "whistleblower":

Abigail Grace, who worked at the NSC until 2018, was hired in February, while Sean Misko, an NSC aide until 2017, joined Schiff's committee staff in August, the same month the whistleblower submitted his complaint .

The whistleblower was an NSC official who worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and who has expertise in Ukraine, the Washington Examiner has reported .

A career CIA analyst with Ukraine expertise, the whistleblower aired his concerns about a phone conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to a House Intelligence Committee aide on Schiff's staff. He had previously informed the CIA's legal counsel's office.

https://lockerdome.com/lad/9371484590420070?pubid=ld-8832-1542&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanthinker.com&rid=aim4truth.org&width=500

Schiff initially denied he knew anything about the complaint before it was filed, stating on Sep. 17: "We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to."

But it later emerged that a member of his staff had spoken to the whistleblower before his complaint was submitted on Aug. 12. The Washington Post concluded that Schiff "clearly made a statement that was false."

Grace, 36, was hired to help Schiff's committee investigate the Trump White House. That month, Trump accused Schiff of "stealing people who work at White House." Grace worked at the NSC from 2016 to 2018 in U.S.-China relations and then briefly at the Center for a New American Security think tank, which was founded by two former senior Obama administration officials.

So these people were all buddies beforehand, and this would explain why the so-called whistleblower had been sneaking around with Schiff's staff before he made his whistleblower complaint.

And that came only after someone with influence was able to get the inspector general of the Intelligence Community (IGIC) to change the rules about whistleblowers needing no firsthand knowledge about the wrongdoing they were supposedly reporting. Once that rules change was put into place, the whistleblower got going.

More and more, this sounds like a pre-planned setup. One Trump operative has a very good summary of what seems to have been really going on as these anything but exculpatory stories mount:

me title=

Schiff was essentially running an illegal spy operation against the White House, recruiting his staffers, having them recruit their whistleblowers, grooming them up, changing the rules so they could file their complaints, and then lying that they knew anything about the lunatic efforts to get President Trump impeached. See, they were just standing there, minding their own business when all this stuff happened. Everything that did happen was just...a coincidence.

Experienced intelligence operatives, and apparently this Trump operative has this sort of background, like to say there are no coincidences.

As facts continue to roll out, it's getting more and more obvious that Schiff's operation was to orchestrate this impeachment scenario all along, going into high gear with the flame-out of the Mueller investigation.

Trump's been having a bad time with public opinion in the wake of the Schiff operation orchestrating the media coverage as well. But the facts on the ground suggest it was all an illegal spying operation on the president.

And that's a far more concrete crime than anything Trump is accused of committing. Right now, Schiff has 109 congressional representatives signed on to GOP rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona's call to condemn and censure Schiff for this sick little illegal freelance operation to spy on Trump.

It's an abuse of his office, for sure, given that Schiff is supposed to be focused on intelligence, not on being one of those creepy secret police characters in The Lives of Others . It's also an outrageous misuse of taxpayer dollars. In light of this Schiff spy operation, and if Democrats don't want some backatcha next time there's a Dem in office with a Republican House, it really ought to be every last one of them signed up to that Biggs list.

Veritas Aequitas 6d

"... inspector general of the Intelligence Community (IGIC) to change the rules about whistleblowers needing no firsthand knowledge about the wrongdoing they were supposedly reporting. Once that rules change was put into place, the whistleblower got going." Doesn't that beg the question IF Atkinson had any past relationships with any of these people in his former position? I believe I read somewhere that Atkinson somehow was involved in the Steele Dossier from his former job.

walterbyrd ElBaron 6d

> So someone changes the rules. So why can't the rules be changed back?


I suspect the ICIG rules about accepting hearsay "evidence" will be changed back - if they haven't already been.

mondo_cane Follow Full Profile mondo_cane ElBaron 6d

Our government has always operated this way. Nothing new here. It only seems "run worse" because the results are out in the open for all to see. Whereas, the same thing could be done in secret and you'd never know about it (the changes in the rules).


Which do you prefer? The sloppy American way, or the secretive Chinese way?

I'm sorry to say we have only these two choices. The sloppy American way is preferable to me because it's the better part of our openly democratic republic and our Constitution.


The current problems and distractions we are dealing with are the result of Biden, Schiff, and the Democrat's attempts to be secretive about what they're doing. So, we have to wonder why these people don't want their actions to be known.


We should delight in seeing such illegitimate secrets exposed.

Divi_Julius_Augustus mondo_cane 6d

"...The sloppy American way, or the secretive Chinese way?" What difference does it make if the criminals are never indicted? The fact that I know of don't know makes no difference. We know politicians are dirty scum, anyway..

ElBaron mondo_cane 6d

Good post.

But I think it's not good enough to just accept rampant corruption, surely things could be better than this?

Also, it's not so much the Dems in question but the entire system.

And I see little evidence that the system is changing.

Though as you point out, one big shift is that more of us have become aware of how bad it is.

And as you point out, it's always been that way, going back at least to 1913... but more like forever and with all systems.


And if it is forever and all systems, then maybe it's better we DON'T get to see all the dirty laundry all the time, including that nothing is done about it. Maybe better not to know! Maybe that's the only way to make the country 'great' again!?

[Oct 20, 2019] FBI-DOJ Likely to Throw the CIA and Clapper Under the Bus by Larry C Johnson - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Oct 20, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

20 October 2019 FBI/DOJ Likely to Throw the CIA and Clapper Under the Bus by Larry C Johnson Larry Johnson-5x7

Law Enforcement versus the Intel Community. That's the battle we will likely see unleashed when the Horowitz report comes out next week. The New York Times came out Saturday with info clearly leaked from DOJ that can be summarized simply--the FBI was relying on the intel community (products from the CIA and NSA) under the leadership of Jim Clapper. If they relied on bad, unverified information it ain't their fault. They trusted the spies.

Let us start with a reminder of how damn corrupt the NY Times and its reporters are. Consider this paragraph penned by Adam Goldman and William Rashbaum:

Closely overseen by Mr. Barr, Mr. Durham and his investigators have sought help from governments in countries that figure into right-wing attacks and unfounded conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation, stirring criticism that they are trying to deliver Mr. Trump a political victory rather than conducting an independent review.

"Unfounded conspiracy theories?" What a damn joke. The facts of a conspiracy to take out Donald Trump or cripple him are very clear. Robert Mueller and Jim Comey lied when they claimed that Joseph Mifsud, who tried to entrap George Papdopoulus in London, was a Russian agent. Nope. He worked for western intelligence. Unless Comey and DOJ have a document or documents from the CIA or NSA stating that Mifsud worked for the Russians, they have no where to hide. Plus, prosecutor John Durham now has Mifsud's blackberries. What do you think is the likelihood that Mifsud was in communication with FBI or CIA or MI6 personnel? Very likely. Then there is Stefan Halper, who played a key role in a sophisticated counterintelligence operation that involved the FBI, the CIA British Intelligence and the media. The ultimate target was Donald Trump. Halper's part of the operation focused on using an innocent woman who had the misfortune of being born in Russia, Svetlana Lokhova, to destroy General Michael Flynn. Halper and Mifsud both were involved in targeting General Michael Flynn. Not a conspiracy?

Halper's nefarious activities included manufacturing and publishing numerous false and defamatory statements. Halper, for example, falsely claimed that Svetlana Lokhova was a "Russian spy" and a traitor to her country. He also circulated the lie that Lokhova had an affair with General Flynn on the orders of Russian intelligence. Not content to use the unwitting Svetlana as a weapon against General Flynn, Stefan Halper also acted with malice to destroy Svetlana Lokhova's professional career and business by asserting that she was not a real academic and that her research was provided by Russian intelligence on the orders of Vladimir Putin.

Thanks to Robert Mueller we have clear evidence of a conspiracy against Trump. Mueller's investigation of Trump "collusion" with Russia prior to the 2016 Presidential election focused on eight cases:

Proposed Trump Tower Project in Moscow --

George Papadopolous --

Carter Page --

Dimitri Simes --

Veselnetskya Meeting at Trump Tower (June 16, 2016)

Events at the Republican Convention

Post-Convention Contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak

Paul Manafort

One simple fact emerges--six of the eight cases or incidents of alleged Trump Campaign interaction with the Russians investigated by the Mueller team, the pitch to "collude" with the Russian Government or Putin originated with FBI informants, MI-6 assets or people paid by Fusion GPS, not Trump or his people. There is not a single instance where Donald Trump or any member of his campaign team initiated contact with the Russians for the purpose of gaining derogatory information on Hillary or obtaining support to boost the Trump campaign. Not one.

Simply put, Trump and his campaign were the target of an elaborate, wide ranging covert action designed to entrap him and members of his team as an agent of Russia.

We do not need to say anything about Dmitri Simes, who was unfairly smeared by even being named as target in the investigation. And the "non" events at the Republican Convention, pure nonsense.

The other six cases "investigated" my Mueller and his team of clowns are damning.

THE PROPOSED TRUMP TOWER PROJECT IN MOSCOW, according to Mueller's report, originated with an FBI Informant--Felix Sater. Mueller was downright dishonest in failing to identify Sater as an FBI informant. Sater was not just a private entrepreneur looking to make some coin. He was a fully signed up FBI informant. Sater's status as an FBI snitch was first exposed in 2012. Sater also was a boyhood chum of Michael Cohen, the target being baited in this operation. Another inconvenient fact excluded from the Mueller report is that one of Mueller's Chief Prosecutors, Andrew Weissman, signed the deal with Felix Sater in December 1998 that put Sater into the FBI Informant business .

All suggestions for meeting with the Russian Government, including Putin, originated with Felix Sater. The use of Sater on this particular project started in September 2015.

GEORGE PAPADOPOLOUS. Papadopolous was targeted by British and U.S. intelligence starting in late December 2015, when he is offered out of the blue a job with the London Centre of International Law and Practice Limited (LCILP) , which has all the hallmarks of a British intelligence front. It is Joseph Mifsud, working for LCILP, who introduces the idea of meeting Putin following a lunch with George in London.

And it is Mifsud who raises the possibility of getting dirt on Hillary. During Papadopolous' next meeting with Mifsud, George writes that Mifsud:

leaned across the table in a conspiratorial manner. The Russians have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, he tells me. "Emails of Clinton," he says. "They have thousands of emails."

More than three weeks before the alleged Russian hack of the DNC, Mifsud is peddling the story that the Russians have Clinton's emails. Conspiracy?

CARTER PAGE. The section of the Mueller report that deals with Carter Page is a total travesty. Mueller and his team, for example, initially misrepresent Page's status with the Trump campaign--he is described as "working" for the campaign, which implies a paid position, when he was in fact only a volunteer foreign policy advisor. Mueller also paints Page's prior experience and work in Russia as evidence that Page was being used by Russian intelligence, but says nothing about the fact that Page was being regularly debriefed by the CIA and the FBI during the same period. In other words, Page was cooperating with US intelligence and law enforcement. But this fact is omitted in the Mueller report. The Christopher Steele dossier was used as "corroborating" intel to justify what was an illegal FISA warrant. The FBI lied about the veracity of that dossier. Conspiracy?

TRUMP TOWER MEETING (JUNE 9, 2016). This is another glaring example of a plant designed to entrap the Trump team. Mueller, once again, presents a very disingenuous account:

On June 9, 2016, senior representatives of the Trump Campaign met in Trump Tower with a Russian attorney expecting to receive derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. The meeting was proposed to Donald Trump Jr. in an email from Robert Goldstone, at the request of his then-client Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian real-estate developer Aras Agalarov.

The real problem is with what Mueller does not say and did not investigate. Mueller conveniently declines to mention the fact that Veselnitskaya was working closely with the firm Hillary Clinton hired to produce the Steele Dossier. Even the corrupt NBC News got these damning facts about Veselnitskaya on the record:

The information that a Russian lawyer brought with her when she met Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016 stemmed from research conducted by Fusion GPS, the same firm that compiled the infamous Trump dossier, according to the lawyer and a source familiar with the matter.

In an interview with NBC News, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya says she first received the supposedly incriminating information she brought to Trump Tower -- describing alleged tax evasion and donations to Democrats -- from Glenn Simpson , the Fusion GPS owner, who had been hired to conduct research in a New York federal court case.

Unfounded Conspiracy?

PAUL MANAFORT. If Paul Manafort had rebuffed Trump's offer to run his campaign, he would be walking free today and still buying expensive suits and evading taxes along with his Clinton buddy, Greg Craig. Instead, he became another target for DOJ and intel community and the DNC, which were desperate to portray Trump as a tool of the Kremlin. Thanks to John Solomon of The Hill, we now know the impetus to target Manafort came from the DNC :

The boomerang from the Democratic Party's failed attempt to connect Donald Trump to Russia's 2016 election meddling is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow's pesky neighbor, Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases tried, to help Hillary Clinton .

In its most detailed account yet, Ukraine's embassy in Washington says a Democratic National Committee insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump's campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country's president to help.

In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort 's dealings inside the country, in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.

Manafort was not colluding, but the Clinton campaign and the Obama Administration were colluding with Ukraine.

GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN . This is the biggest travesty. Flynn was being targeted by the intel community with the full collaboration of the FBI. Thanks to his new attorney, the Honey Badger Sidney Powell, there is an avalanche of evidence showing prosecutorial misconduct and an unjustified, coordinated effort by the Obama team to frame Flynn as catering to the Russians. It is a lie and that will be fully exposed in the coming weeks.

Any fair reporter with half a brain would see these events as pointing to a conspiracy. But not the liars at the New York Times. But the Times does tip us off to the upcoming mad scramble for life boats. It will it the FBI and DOJ against the DNI, the CIA and NSA. According to the Times:

It is not clear how many people Mr. Durham's team has interviewed outside of the F.B.I. His investigators have questioned officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence but apparently have yet to interview C.I.A. personnel, people familiar with the review said. Mr. Durham would probably want to speak with Gina Haspel, the agency's director, who ran its London station when the Australians passed along the explosive information about Russia's offer of political dirt.

There is no abiding affection between the FBI and the CIA. They mix like oil and water. In theory the FBI only traffics in "evidence." The CIA deals primarily with well-sourced rumors. But the CIA will argue they were offering their best judgement, not a factual conclusion. Brennan and Clapper will insist they were not in a position to determine the "truth" of what they were reporting. It is "intel" not evidence.

The Horowitz report will not deal with the CIA and NSA directly. Horowitz can only point out that the FBI folks insisted that they were relying on the intel community and had no reason not to trust them. This is likely to get ugly and do not be surprised to see the intel folks try to throw the FBI under the bus and vice versa. Grab the popcorn.

[Oct 20, 2019] CIA Analysts Lawyer Up As Brennan, Clapper Ensnared In Expanding Russiagate Probe

Oct 20, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

CIA Analysts Lawyer Up As Brennan, Clapper Ensnared In Expanding Russiagate Probe by Tyler Durden Sat, 10/19/2019 - 14:30 0 SHARES

CIA analysts involved in the intelligence assessment of Russia's activities during the 2016 US election have begun to hire attorneys, as Attorney General William Barr expands his investigation into the origins of the Russia probe, led by US Attorney John Durham.

US Attorney John Durham

The prosecutor conducting the review, Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham , has expressed his intent to interview a number of current and former intelligence officials involved in examining Russia's effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, including former CIA Director John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James Clapper , Brennan told NBC News. - NBC

NBC learned of the 'lawyering up' from three former CIA officials "familiar with the matter," while two more anonymous leakers claim there's tension between the Justice Department and the CIA over what classified documents Durham has access to .

With Barr's approval, Durham has expanded his staff and the timeframe under scrutiny, according to a law enforcement official directly familiar with the matter. And he is now looking into conduct past Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2017 , a Trump administration official said.

One Western intelligence official familiar with Durham's investigation leaked that Durham has been asking foreign officials questions related to former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos , who was fed the rumor that Russia had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton by a Maltese professor, Joseph Mifsud. While US media has sought to portray Mifsud as a Russian asset, the self-described member of the Clinton foundation has far stronger ties to the West .

me title=

According to congressional testimony given by Papadopoulos last October as well as statements he's made over Twitter, the whole thing was an FBI setup - as a 'woman in London, who was the FBI's legal attache in the UK' and "had a personal relationship to Bob Mueller after 9/11" was the one who recommended that he meet with Mifsud in Rome.

me title=

As the theory goes ; Mifsud, a US intelligence asset, feeds Papadopoulos the rumor that Russia has Hillary Clinton's emails shortly after he announces he's going to join the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos repeats the email rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who alerts Australia's intelligence community, which notifies the FBI, which then launches operation "Crossfire Hurricane" during which the FBI sent multiple spies (including a 'honeypot') to infiltrate the Trump campaign . Notably, former FBI employee Peter Strzok flew to London to meet with Downer the day after Crossfire Hurricane was launched - while Strzok's boss, Bill Priestap was in London the day before the Downer-Papadopoulos encounter .

me title=

And if this is all true, Durham has a lot to untangle - including the Clinton / DNC-funded Steele Dossier.

[Oct 20, 2019] Quiz for the day: Does this whistleblower even exist? Or is it a composite creation of the CIA, Schiff and Co?

Notable quotes:
"... Do the Democrats and their allies in the deep state increasingly look like the Keystone Kops? ..."
Oct 20, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

dbriz Kyle Stirkenburg • 5 days ago • edited

Quiz for the day: Does this “whistleblower” even exist? Or is it a composite creation of the CIA, Schiff and Co?

Did Schiff and friends turn ghostly white when Trump called their bluff by releasing the transcript?

Is Pelosi’s new found reticence a result of her self annoyance that she let herself get talked into this new debacle and payback is to let Schiff shift in the wind dangling over the thought that no one in the CIA wants to walk the plank for him?

Do the Democrats and their allies in the deep state increasingly look like the Keystone Kops?

[Oct 20, 2019] Putin sarcastic remark on Western neoliberal multiculturalism

Highly recommended!
Oct 17, 2019 | www.unz.com

"If minorities prefer Sharia Law, then we advise them to go to those places where that's the state law.

Russia does not need minorities. Minorities need Russia, and we will not grant them special privileges, or try to change our laws to fit their desires, no matter how loud they yell "discrimination"

-Vladimir Putin

[Oct 20, 2019] Unasked Questions About US-Ukrainian Relations by Stephen F. Cohen

Notable quotes:
"... Russia hating is the lynchpin of oligarchic deepstate MIC MSM propaganda. Take that away and the fat cats are revealed as the naked face of evil that they are. Hating Russia (and China) supposedly justifies all their crimes. ..."
Oct 20, 2019 | www.unz.com

The transcript of President Trump's July 25 telephone conversation with Ukraine's recently elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has ignited the usual anti-Trump bashing in American political-media circles, even more calls for impeachment, with little, if any, regard for the national security issues involved. Leave aside that Trump should not have been compelled to make the transcript public and ask: Which, if any, foreign leaders will now feel free to conduct personal telephone diplomacy with an American president directly or indirectly, of the kind that helped end the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, knowing that his or her comments might become known to domestic political opponents? Consider instead only the following undiscussed issues:

§ Even if former vice president Joseph Biden, who figured prominently in the Trump-Zelensky conversation, is not the Democratic nominee, Ukraine is now likely to be a contested, and poisonous, issue in the 2020 US presidential election. How did the United States become so involved in Ukraine's torturous and famously corrupt politics? The short answer is NATO expansion, as some of us who opposed that folly back in the 1990s warned would be the case, and not only in Ukraine. The Washington-led attempt to fast-track Ukraine into NATO in 2013 -- 14 resulted in the Maidan crisis, the overthrow of the country's constitutionally elected president Viktor Yanukovych, and to the still ongoing proxy civil war in Donbass. All those fateful events infused the Trump-Zelensky talk, if only between the lines.

§ Russia shares centuries of substantial civilizational values, language, culture, geography, and intimate family relations with Ukraine. America does not. Why, then, is it routinely asserted in the US political-media establishment that Ukraine is a "vital US national interest" and not a vital zone of Russian national security, as by all geopolitical reckoning it would seem to be? The standard American establishment answer is: because of "Russian aggression against Ukraine." But the "aggression" cited is Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for anti-Kiev fighters in the Donbass civil war, both of which came after, not before, the Maidan crisis, and indeed were a direct result of it. That is, in Moscow's eyes, it was reacting, not unreasonably, to US-led "aggression." In any event, as opponents of eastward expansion also warned in the 1990s, NATO has increased no one's security, only diminished security throughout the region bordering Russia.

§ Which brings us back to the Trump-Zelensky telephone conversation. President Zelensky ran and won overwhelmingly as a peace-with-Moscow candidate, which is why the roughly $400 million in US military aid to Ukraine, authorized by Congress, figured anomalously in the conversation. Trump is being sharply criticized for withholding that aid or threatening to do so, including by Obama partisans. Forgotten, it seems, is that President Obama, despite considerable bipartisan pressure, steadfastly refused to authorize such military assistance to Kiev, presumably because it might escalate the Russian-Ukrainian conflict (and Russia, with its long border with Ukraine, had every escalatory advantage). Instead of baiting Trump on this issue, we should hope he encourages the new peace talks that Zelensky has undertaken in recent days with Moscow, which could end the killing in Donbass. (For this, Zelensky is being threatened by well-armed extreme Ukrainian nationalists, even quasi-fascists. Strong American support for his negotiations with Moscow may not deter them, but it might.)

§ Finally, but not surprisingly, the shadow of Russiagate is now morphing into Ukrainegate. Trump is also being sharply criticized for asking Zelensky to cooperate with Attorney General William Barr's investigation into the origins of Russiagate, even though the role of Ukrainian-Americans and Ukraine itself in Russiagate allegations against Trump on behalf of Hillary Clinton in 2016 is now well-documented .

We need to know fully the origins of Russiagate, arguably the worst presidential scandal in American history, and if Ukrainian authorities can contribute to that understanding, they should be encouraged to do so. As I've argued repeatedly, fervent anti-Trumpers must decide whether they loathe him more than they care about American and international security. Imaging, for example, a Cuban missile -- like crisis somewhere in the world today where Washington and Moscow are militarily eyeball-to-eyeball, directly or through proxies, from the Baltic and the Black Seas to Syria and Ukraine. Will Trump's presidential legitimacy be sufficient for him to resolve such an existential crisis peacefully, as President John F. Kennedy did in 1962?

Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback and in an ebook edition. His weekly conversations with the host of The John Batchelor Show, now in their sixth year, are available at www.thenation.com.

Realist , says: October 4, 2019 at 12:06 am GMT

Trump is an agent of the Deep State, playing good cop to the bad cop Deep State. I have been saying this since mid April 2017. His multitude of actions belie his promises. Trump is a quisling to his supporters.

Here is an excellent article that comports with my view of Trump.

http://www.alt-market.com/index.php/articles/3949-trump-cannot-be-anti-globalist-while-working-with-global-elites

Ron Unz , says: October 4, 2019 at 3:35 am GMT
@Dan Hayes

I am puzzled why Cohen is permitted to publish in the Nation. Is it due to his marriage to its publisher or to the magazine's remnant infatuation with the Soviet state? Just asking.

The whole situation is a rather ironic

Prof. Cohen is certainly one of America's most eminent Russia scholars, and I think that for decades he was regarded as one of the most left-leaning ones, regularly denounced for his leftism by all the Neocons and other rightwingers. I remember I used to see him on the PBS Newshour, sometimes paired with a conservative critic of the Soviets. I'd guess that past history plus being married to the publisher of The Nation is what gives him his residual foothold there.

I'd suspect that if someone had told him a couple of decades ago that by the late 2010s he'd be blacklisted from the MSM and denounced as a "Russian agent," he probably would have been greatly saddened at the disheartening turn in American society, but not totally shocked. He probably would have regarded such a scenario as having a 10% possibility.

But if someone would have told him that the people denouncing and blacklisting him would have been the *liberal Democrats* and some of their most "excitable" elements would be accusing him of being a "Neo-Nazi White Supremacist Russian Agent" he would have thought the entire country had gone on LSD.

It's sad that our entire country has gone on LSD

The whole situation is actually a perfect parallel to the various past American purges I've often covered in my articles:

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-our-great-purge-of-the-1940s/

renfro , says: October 4, 2019 at 4:31 am GMT

Russia is the excuse for US actions in the Ukraine as it was in the ME.
What is America without a big bad boogeyman like Russia?.
Certainly not a “Superpower’ defending the world.
Without enemies like Russia we would be nothing but big rich country.
And all the Neos and Zios and politicians would have to use Viagra instead of war to squirt out their poison.

A lot of countries like the Ukraine have gotten a lot of US taxpayer money by ‘standing up to a Russian takeover’….and are laughing all the way to their bank.

sally , says: October 4, 2019 at 4:47 am GMT
How did the United States become so involved in Ukraine’s torturous and famously corrupt politics?

The short answer is NATO expansion <= maybe something different? I like pocketbook expansion..
NATO Expansion provides cover and legalizes the private use of Presidential directed USA resources to enable a few to make massively big profits at the expense of the governed in the target area.

Behind NATO lies the reason for Bexit, the Yellow Jackets, the unrest in Iraq and Egypt, Yemen etc.

Hypothesis 1: NATO supporters are more corrupt than Ukraine officials.
Hypothesis 2: NATO expansion is a euphemism for USA/EU/ backed private party plunder to follow invade and destroy regime change activities designed to dispossess local Oligarchs of the wealth in NATO targeted nations? Private use of public force for private gain comes to mind.

I think [private use of public force for private gain] is what Trump meant when Trump said to impeach Trump for investigating the Ukraine matter amounts to Treason.. but it is the exactly the activity type that Hallmarks CIA instigated regime change.

A lot of intelligence agency manipulation and private pocketbook expanding corruption can be hidden behind NATO expansion.. Please prove to me that Biden and the hundreds of other plunders became so deeply involved in Ukraine because of NATO expansion?

mark green , says: October 4, 2019 at 6:06 am GMT
It is more than ironic that the Dems (and their like-minded cronies in Big Media) are up in arms over Trump’s attempt in find ‘dirt’ about Joe Biden when the ‘dirt’ looks and smells like actual corruption. Have laws been broken? Was Biden selling influence through his son? Stranger things have happened. At the very least, it looks as though Joe Biden crossed an ethical line. This will likely cost him the nomination.

Similarly, the news media should–if it was doing its job–pursue leads that would help find the source behind the missing server and the Fake News that helped justify the toxic and duplicitous ‘Russiagate’ investigation. But they’d rather pursue Trump instead. I have never witnessed a more partisan and bloodthirsty Fourth Estate.

Why is the media so utterly uninterested in finding out who/how the fake Putin-Trump ‘conspiracy’ was cooked up in the first place? Doesn’t it make sense the Trump would want to find out more? Justice demands it. False intelligence can sow chaos and start wars.

Consider, for instance, the manufactured lies (Saddam’s phantom WMD, links to 911, etc) that were used to justify Zio-America’s annihilation of Iraq. What intelligence agency cooked up these falsehoods? Who spoon-fed these fairy tales to G.W. Bush and Colin Powell?

Not only have these questions never been answered, they are seldom even asked! The Deep State has gone rogue. And Big Media is covering it up.

animalogic , says: October 4, 2019 at 7:29 am GMT
This whole ridiculous drama may profit the Dem’s in the longer term — that is, by removing that corrupt, dementia ridden nit-wit Biden from the presidential competition.
As president, Biden would be a greater sock puppet than even GWB…of course, “sock puppet” maybe just what the Dem’s want….
Patric , says: October 4, 2019 at 8:13 am GMT
@renfro renfro said “And all the Neos and Zios and politicians would have to use Viagra instead of war to squirt out their poison.”

Very well said indeed!

Beckow , says: October 4, 2019 at 8:16 am GMT
The key question is what is the gain in separating Ukraine from Russia, adding it to NATO, and turning Russia and Ukraine into enemies. And what are the most likely results, e.g. can it ever work without risking a catastrophic event?

There are the usual empire-building and weapons business reasons, but those should function within a rational framework. As it is right now, the most likely outcome of the Western initiative in Ukraine will be substantially lower living standards than there would be otherwise for most Ukrainians. And an increase in tensions in the region with inevitable impact on the business there. So what exactly is the gain and for whom?

Mikhail , says: • Website October 4, 2019 at 8:33 am GMT
@Ron Unz Thanks to Tucker Carlson’s show, some folks on the left like Cohen, Mate and Greenwald, are more likely to get air time on Fox News than MSNBC and CNN.
Observator , says: October 4, 2019 at 11:15 am GMT
The current CIA talking point is that it is illegal for the President to seek foreign assistance for his campaign. One might also slant it that the President of the United States has an obligation to the people who elected him to require an allied, friendly government to reopen the investigation of Biden because there is adequate reason to suspect that the Democrats are running yet another corrupt criminal for President. Incidentally, this puts Zelensky in a very awkward position, as one of the backers of his transition from sitcom star to President of Ukraine was a principal in Burisma

It is not the threat of impeachment that will energize Trump’s base; it is the grotesque, constant character assassination in the (largely CIA manipulated) media that will return him to the White House. The American people have a sense of fairness. They have always been of better character than the reprobates we are allowed to vote for. Whatever happened to trusting the democratic process, instead of using intelligence assets to engineer domestic regime change?

History is not made by nice guys. Trump has torn a big hole in the tissue of lies about what this country is and what it stands for, and that is too much for those who make their living deceiving us.

mike k , says: October 4, 2019 at 11:53 am GMT
Russia hating is the lynchpin of oligarchic deepstate MIC MSM propaganda. Take that away and the fat cats are revealed as the naked face of evil that they are. Hating Russia (and China) supposedly justifies all their crimes.
eah , says: October 4, 2019 at 11:55 am GMT
The Washington-led attempt to fast-track Ukraine into NATO in 2013–14 resulted in the Maidan crisis, the overthrow of the country’s constitutionally elected president Viktor Yanukovych, and to the still ongoing proxy civil war in Donbass.

Which exemplifies the stupidity and arrogance of the American military/industrial/political Establishment — none of that had anything to do with US national security (least of all antagonizing Russia) — how fucking hypocritical is it to presume the Monroe Doctrine, and then try to get the Ukraine into NATO? — none of it would have been of any benefit whatsoever to the average American.

[Oct 20, 2019] Reconciling these seemingly irreconcilable Syrian and Turkish demands is now Putin's problem. If he can work this out, he ought to get the Nobel Prize by Patrick J. Buchanan

Looks like our stable genius" pushed Putin against Erdogan and sided with Erdogan in the process.
Notable quotes:
"... The U.S. has seven NATO allies on the Med -- Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Albania, Greece and Turkey, and two on the Black Sea, Romania and Bulgaria. We have U.S. forces and bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Djibouti. Russia has no such panoply of bases in the Middle East or Persian Gulf. ..."
"... There is first President Erdogan, who is demanding a 20-mile deep strip of Syrian borderland to keep the Syrian Kurds from uniting with the Turkish Kurds of the PKK. Erdogan wants the corridor to extend 280 miles, from Manbij, east of the Euphrates, all across Syria, to Iraq. ..."
"... Then there is Bashar Assad, victorious in his horrific eight-year civil war, who is unlikely to cede 5,000 square miles of Syrian territory to a permanent occupation by Turkish troops. ..."
"... The Syria of which Putin is now supposedly king contains Hezbollah, al-Qaida, ISIS, Iranians, Kurds, Turks on its northern border and Israelis on its Golan Heights. Five hundred thousand Syrians are dead from the civil war. Half the pre-war population has been uprooted, and millions are in exile in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Europe. ..."
"... Our foreign policy elites have used Trump's decision to bash him and parade their Churchillian credentials. But those same elites appear to lack the confidence to rally the nation to vote for a war to defend what they contend are vital American interests and defining American values. ..."
"... Endless demonization of Putin by the elitist press is pure idiocy. Putin's aim is no different from any decent leader. Do the best for your countrymen and countrywomen; yet without harming others. ..."
"... The answer lies in the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Sadly, today's USA revenue to large extent dependent on militaristic revenue; even though most of that revenue ends up in the coffers of the MIC, supported by the media that is sustained by the MIC. Yet, I still believe that with a bit of pain Americans can turn around this horrid situation. ..."
"... The war in Syria and the growth of ISIS was entirely the result of actions by the Obama administration - and it is an outrage that no one in a position of power, not even Donald Trump, has called the Democrats out on this. ..."
"... Oh yeah, Name you seem to have forgotten Obama authorizing CIA training the moderate rebels (AKA Al qaida or moderate head choppers). By the way we handed the ME at least to Iran when Bush invaded Iraq under the false pretenses. Saintly Obama wanted to look forward but not backward on the false pretenses and he in turn engaged on the same BS as Bush. When history is written in a few years all this will come out. ..."
"... ISIS formed in the chaos that was the Iraq War, neat how you guys never accept blame for anything. ..."
"... The people who are obsessed w/staying in Syria, just for the sake of denying Russia a 'victory', at admitting that they just want to be a spoiler. They want to keep Syria partitioned into two weak states and not allow it to reform into a single state and heal. ..."
"... Our imperialists must have misread Tacitus, because it seems they aspire to making peaceful deserts. ..."
"... Putin is trusted in the middle east (and in most of the rest of the world) because he is an intelligent, consistent and respected world leader. Now compare this to the clown show of US politicians (Republican and Democrat). ..."
"... No serious person can say that US politicians are better than Putin, which is also the reason Putin is so demonized by the US political elite. ..."
Oct 20, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

"Russia Assumes Mantle of Supreme Power Broker in the Middle East," proclaimed Britain's Telegraph .

The article began:

"Russia's status as the undisputed power-broker in the Middle East was cemented as Vladimir Putin continued a triumphant tour of capitals traditionally allied to the U.S."

"Donald Trump Has Handed Putin the Middle East on a Plate" was the title of yet another Telegraph column. "Putin Seizes on Trump's Syria Retreat to Cement Middle East Role," declared the Financial Times .

The U.S. press parroted the British: Putin is now the new master of the Mideast. And woe is us.

Before concluding that Trump's pullout of the last 1,000 U.S. troops in Syria is America's Dunkirk, some reflection is needed.

Yes, Putin has played his hand skillfully. Diplomatically, as the Brits say, the Russian president is "punching above his weight."

He gets on with everyone. He is welcomed in Iran by the Ayatollah, meets regularly with Bibi Netanyahu, is a cherished ally of Syria's Bashar Assad, and this week was being hosted by the King of Saudi Arabia and the royal rulers of the UAE. October 2019 has been a triumphal month.

Yet, consider what Putin has inherited and what his capabilities are for playing power broker of the Middle East.

He has a single naval base on the Med, Tartus, in Syria, which dates to the 1970s, and a new air base, Khmeimim, also in Syria.

The U.S. has seven NATO allies on the Med -- Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Albania, Greece and Turkey, and two on the Black Sea, Romania and Bulgaria. We have U.S. forces and bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Djibouti. Russia has no such panoply of bases in the Middle East or Persian Gulf.

We have the world's largest economy. Russia's economy is smaller than Italy's, and not a tenth the size of ours.

And now that we are out of Syria's civil war and the Kurds have cut their deal with Damascus, consider what we have just dumped into Vladimir Putin's lap. He is now the man in the middle between Turkey and Syria.

He must bring together dictators who detest each other. There is first President Erdogan, who is demanding a 20-mile deep strip of Syrian borderland to keep the Syrian Kurds from uniting with the Turkish Kurds of the PKK. Erdogan wants the corridor to extend 280 miles, from Manbij, east of the Euphrates, all across Syria, to Iraq.

Then there is Bashar Assad, victorious in his horrific eight-year civil war, who is unlikely to cede 5,000 square miles of Syrian territory to a permanent occupation by Turkish troops.

Reconciling these seemingly irreconcilable Syrian and Turkish demands is now Putin's problem. If he can work this out, he ought to get the Nobel Prize.

"Putin is the New King of Syria," ran the op-ed headline in Thursday's Wall Street Journal.

The Syria of which Putin is now supposedly king contains Hezbollah, al-Qaida, ISIS, Iranians, Kurds, Turks on its northern border and Israelis on its Golan Heights. Five hundred thousand Syrians are dead from the civil war. Half the pre-war population has been uprooted, and millions are in exile in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Europe.

If Putin wants to be king of this, and it is OK with Assad, how does that imperil the United States of America, 6,000 miles away?

Wednesday, two-thirds of the House Republicans joined Nancy Pelosi's Democrats to denounce Trump's decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and dissolve our alliance with the Kurds. And Republican rage over the sudden abandonment of the Kurds is understandable.

But how long does the GOP believe we should keep troops in Syria and control the northeastern quadrant of that country? If the Syrian army sought to push us out, under what authority would we wage war against a Syrian army inside Syria?

And if the Turks are determined to secure their border, should we wage war on that NATO ally to stop them? Would U.S. planes fly out of Turkey's Incirlik air base to attack Turkish soldiers fighting in Syria?

If Congress believes we have interests in Syria so vital we should be willing to go to war for them -- against Syria, Turkey, Russia or Iran -- why does Congress not declare those interests and authorize war to secure them?

Our foreign policy elites have used Trump's decision to bash him and parade their Churchillian credentials. But those same elites appear to lack the confidence to rally the nation to vote for a war to defend what they contend are vital American interests and defining American values.

If Putin is king of Syria, it is because he was willing to pay the price in blood and treasure to keep his Russia's toehold on the Med and save his ally Bashar Assad, who would have gone under without him.

Who dares wins. Now let's see how Putin likes his prize.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.

Sydney • 2 days ago

Endless demonization of Putin by the elitist press is pure idiocy. Putin's aim is no different from any decent leader. Do the best for your countrymen and countrywomen; yet without harming others. At a recent interview with Arabic media a UAE journalist tried to drive a wedge between Russia and Iran in favor of Saudi Kingdom by challenging Putin to condemn Iran for alleged attacks on Saudi oil installations by Iran.

To which Putin skillfully replied: "Russia will never be friends 'with one country against another' in the Middle East". Nor would Putin condemn Iran unless he was presented with clear evidence - not just accusations - of Iran's guilt. Point in case: Putin does it better than others; sure, but why is that bad?

Oh of course envy and fear of one being exposed for inept leadership. Time long overdue to shake hands with Putin and Russia.
https://www.rt.com/russia/o...

Doug Wallis • 2 days ago
I haven't a concern for Russia in the middle east.
  1. Russia is doing the US the biggest unasked favor proving where our friends and allies loyalties in the middle east lay by forcing them to make choices in the face of shifting alliances that they wouldn't reveal if the US continued its presence.
  2. Russia is depopulating and it has choke points with China, with Central Asia, with the middle east and Europe. Russia will eventually not have the population to defend all these choke points and will eventually withdraw and focus on its own national security. At that time, I think its possible to see Russia shift its relationship in eastern Europe while distancing itself from Chinese expansionism that might one day want its old north pacific territories back (like what is today Vladivostok and Sakhalin).
Sydney Doug Wallis • 2 days ago
Depopulating? Where did you get that from? Population decrease in Russia stopped. By the latest stats it is just about breaking even (death rates = birth rates). Moreover, population is growing albeit very slowly. Sorry but Russkies won't die out like extinct species. As far as its own national security; well, the old notion of "Russia is, more or less, a giant gas station pretending to be a real country." is as dead as Senator McCain, who pretended to know something about Russia; alas he was sadly and dangerously uninformed.
https://www.forbes.com/site...
Sid Finster Doug Wallis • 2 days ago • edited
1. Trump has no plan or strategy in the Middle East.
2. Russia is not depopulating, nor has it been doing so for some time now.
Fayez Abedaziz • 2 days ago
Let me get this straight:
  1. The US has troops and a base or more in Syria? I don't see any Syrian army bases in the US...
  2. And, the US is telling/demanding where the Syrian army come and goes in...Syria? What the hell is wrong with this picture? You know!?
  3. Oh, now hypocrite neo-con enabler Pelosi and some of the freaky other politicians are concerned with human lives in Syria? Ha ha

But...not about the lives of children dying in Yemen and Afghanistan and Gaza? How come? And, the US is telling Turkey what it had better do with it's border?
Also, friends and enemies o' mine,just which entity, nation and group is not a US ally?

Ally? What does that mean? As if the American people know the hell that words means anymore and as if there's even a meaning to that. And the American people do not watch the news, read magazines (news) as they did before. They don't know what is going on in the world, they gave up.

People under 50 automatically tune world news out, thanks mostly to the phonies at CNN and the major, basically neo-con supporting networks confusing the public, purposely so that they don't see the misery that is in the nations of the MId-East thanks to US invasions and bombings. Just look at cnn-they spend all day talking about what Trump or some politician said, no coverage of battles overseas, unless it benefits the continuing spinning of the news for intervention and so on.

The US won't get a grip and stop threatening nation after nation (while Russia does not) and so, people all over the world are thinking, you now what, look at how dumb Americans are that they allow people from Obama, Hillary, Schumer, Pelosi, Graham and more to conduct foreign policy that makes enemies for America daily. And don't forget Cheney and that group, too from before. These people are actually an insult to America.

Compare how the leaders of Russia and America talk and conduct themselves.

Russia has Lavrov, the gentleman diplomat, the US has Pompeo and the likes of Bolton and Kushner, the Israeli lobbyist and the Presidents son in law.

How does a so-called Republic allow the President to have his daughter and Kushner, her husband, to be security/foreign policy advisers. You're really losing it, America.

Sydney Fayez Abedaziz • 2 days ago
Well argued and reasoned.
Mercerville • 2 days ago
"But those same elites appear to lack the confidence to rally the nation to vote for a war to defend what they contend are vital American interests and defining American values."

No, they don't lack "confidence". They've got all the confidence in the world. What they lack is competence, integrity, and credibility with the American people and the rest of the world. They have dragged America through the mud in the Middle East for nearly two decades. They transformed the once proud American military and diplomatic corps into a customer service operation for Israel and Saudi Arabia.

We don't need more lectures and directives about "our interests" and "Western values" that always turn out to be Israeli and Saudi Arabian interests and values. We need new foreign policy elites, free of the current elite's miserable record of failure, corruption, and subordination to foreign interests. Above all, we need to get out of the Mideast swamps that the younger Bush and Obama pushed us into, bring our troops back to America, start defending America and American interests again.

Sydney Mercerville • a day ago
How simple and true what U've said. Sounds like a sound position and logical too. So why is this not happening? The answer lies in the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Sadly, today's USA revenue to large extent dependent on militaristic revenue; even though most of that revenue ends up in the coffers of the MIC, supported by the media that is sustained by the MIC. Yet, I still believe that with a bit of pain Americans can turn around this horrid situation.
Emmet Sweeney • 2 days ago
The war in Syria and the growth of ISIS was entirely the result of actions by the Obama administration - and it is an outrage that no one in a position of power, not even Donald Trump, has called the Democrats out on this.
Name Emmet Sweeney • 2 days ago
Which action was that and how is Trump withdrawal any different form said action, except for handing Russia and Iran the influence in the ME
Mrm Penumathy Name • a day ago
Oh yeah, Name you seem to have forgotten Obama authorizing CIA training the moderate rebels (AKA Al qaida or moderate head choppers). By the way we handed the ME at least to Iran when Bush invaded Iraq under the false pretenses. Saintly Obama wanted to look forward but not backward on the false pretenses and he in turn engaged on the same BS as Bush. When history is written in a few years all this will come out.
Zoran Aleksic Name • a day ago
Absolutely. Handing the ME to the Russians, when we all know it belongs to the US by some divine appointment.
=marco01= Emmet Sweeney • a day ago
ISIS formed in the chaos that was the Iraq War, neat how you guys never accept blame for anything.
chris chuba • 2 days ago
The people who are obsessed w/staying in Syria, just for the sake of denying Russia a 'victory', at admitting that they just want to be a spoiler. They want to keep Syria partitioned into two weak states and not allow it to reform into a single state and heal.

Trump is indeed our Dorian Gray, he is just outwardly reflecting our narcissism, 'if we don't get to do it then no one else can'.

tweets21 • 2 days ago
Obvious Pat we have no consistent foreign policy in the region since we inherited the mantle from the Brit Empire post WW 2. Oil and Israel were a marketable justification for our wars and changing partners ( regime change ), for a long time. Now neither is relevant. We have all the fossil fuels we need, and Israel is all powerful.. Long term I doubt the Russians will make a difference, in the Muslim quest to resurrect the Ottoman Empire. We have lost too many of our sons and daughters. get out.
LostForWords • 2 days ago
Trump is a genius. At the moment, Syria is a poisoned chalice to anyone accepting responsibility for it. Russia is only there because they cannot get a naval base in any other Mediterranean country.

When, or if peace is achieved in Syria, it will be the US that swoops in to market the brands the Arabs love. The Syrians won't be buying Russian products.

NoNonsensingPlease LostForWords • a day ago
Name an American brand the "Arabs love": Toyota, Lexis, Rollex, Sony, Nikon, Panasonic, Samsung, iPhone (made in China)? Which one(s). While their infrastructure and basic technology are and will continue to be Russian.
Sceptical Gorilla • 2 days ago
Our imperialists must have misread Tacitus, because it seems they aspire to making peaceful deserts.
NotYouNotSure • 2 days ago
Putin is trusted in the middle east (and in most of the rest of the world) because he is an intelligent, consistent and respected world leader. Now compare this to the clown show of US politicians (Republican and Democrat).

No serious person can say that US politicians are better than Putin, which is also the reason Putin is so demonized by the US political elite.

Trump=Obama • 2 days ago • edited
The Middle East is home to oil, terrorism, access points for maritime transportation (The Red Sea, The Bosphorus, Suez Canal, Persian Gulf). It is strategically important. It was a mistake for Obama to leave Iraq before there was a stable situation and it is a mistake for Trump to leave before there is a stable situation.

To say, "Just let them all fight it out" is foolhardy and likely just a rationalization for your mistake to support the narcissistic fool in the White House.

Zoran Aleksic • 2 days ago
" Who dares wins. Now let’s see how Putin likes his prize. " With a smirk on my face, I look forward to seeing you fail.
John Sobieski • 2 days ago
I don't think Putin is going to be unhappy about it. The various powers of the ME will now go to him for favors, and he will get favors in return. I doubt US interests will be among them.
cdugga • 2 days ago
Putin said, I've got your no fly zone right here. After Russian deployment of the SA400's, america had no choice but to begin withdrawal.

And kind of missing from Buchanan's list of putin friends, is erdogan himself.

So, it will be interesting to see what happens now. Putin holds all the cards and is in the best position of anybody on the planet to broker a deal between assad and erdogan. Part of that deal will likely be very bad for those who threw their lot in with the US.

Turkey is not a small country and has an enormous military. Buchanan himself said that we should stay out of Syria and let the Turks deal with ISIS.

But they were too smart for that, and had their own coup to worry about. I have always thought that the US should have brokered a homeland for the kurds. It would have been hard, but now it is impossible.

Turkey is now a client state of Russia much more than a member of NATO. At least in appearance. They now buy SA400's and SU-57's from mother russia.

Who supplies and maintains your best weapon systems indicates who your real allies are. What has the US lost? I would say we lost anybody across the globe that we ever hoped would ally with us against the new sino-russian superpower. Russia has unlimited space and resources. China has unlimited people and no limits on its technical growth and markets. The US? We are the biggest debtor third world nation that has ever existed. But hey, we have the most stable genius as our president, and the sky is the limit for what he will accomplish other than permanent tax cuts for corporations. Right? The right again.

Except for 2 wrongs, they wouldn't even exist. Can faith overcome inconvenient truth? Real faith probably could by accepting inconvenient truth. But real faith is mostly dead. It was replaced with tax free religiosity and assault weaponry sponsored by corporate fascist government. I watched it happen. And his story is being rewritten in days or weeks instead of years and decades.

bt • a day ago
It's not often that I would agree with Pat B. Essentially never.

But on this point, yes. If Putin wants the Middle East, by all means proceed.

That region has been messing up our politics for literally my whole life - It is most decidedly not a Promised Land for the United States. Let the Saudis and the Iranians and the Russians and the Turks fight it out. It should be lovely. The Israelis call sell weapons to all of them.

Amadeus Mozart • a day ago
Thank you for this small bit of obvious wisdom, Mr. Buchanan. Your insights are very common sensical here, and thus, most valuable. Too bad they will mostly fall on the deaf ears of our moronic "Elites".
Cascade Joe • a day ago
I believe Obama said that Putin would be overwhelmed in Syria. However, Putin has overseen an excellent strategy of picking an area of insurgents, militarily pounding them, then offering them free passage to a safe area (Idlib). After doing this across Syria, he and Assad now have all of the jihadist groups in one place where they can pound them senseless or just sit back and wait for them to start shooting each other.

Trump did not screw up the Kurds' clearing of ISIS above the Euphrates. Now he has given Putin and Assad the results of that. I expect the PA team will stabilize that area in short order.

So, Idlib and NW Syria will be a cauldron for a while. Now Al Tanf is the only insurgent holdout. Be interesting to see how that unfolds.

MPC • 17 hours ago
Lest Trumpland forget, there is a reason we got involved in the region. Jihadists can and will use neglect to later come after us.

Putin shows us how its done. 3 billion or so, find good Muslims (anyone other than Sunni islamists) and help them blow up, conquer, and occasionally repress the bad Muslims.

We spent several TRILLION ourselves and thousands of American lives for nothing. We never had a single achievable objective in any of these conflicts.

Donald is a moron for selling out the Kurds, who it cost nothing to back, to Turkey but the DC elites made this inevitable by refusing to cut a deal with Assad for the Kurds. He's been the only realistic option for a long time now.

[Oct 19, 2019] Russian agents under every bed

Highly recommended!
Oct 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

S , Oct 19 2019 15:33 utc | 24

Okay, let's recap:

1) Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset (Clinton).
2) Jill Stein is a Russian asset (Clinton).
3) Donald Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987 ( Intelligencer ).
4) Rand Paul is "working for Vladimir Putin" ( McCain , Greg Olear ).
5) Bernie Sanders is "just a tool" to the Russians ( The Washington Post ).

I'm sure Bernie will turn from "just a tool" into "an asset" in no time if his poll numbers become too high. After all, nobody forgot his fraternizing with the enemy in a sauna in USSR !

[Oct 19, 2019] Kunstler One Big Reason Why America Is Driving Itself Bat$hit Crazy

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... It's a major unanticipated consequence of the digital "revolution." It has gotten us stuck looking backward at events, obsessively replaying them, while working overtime to spin them favorably for one team or the other, at the expense of actually living in real time and dealing with reality as it unspools with us. If life were a ballgame, we'd only be watching jumbotron replays while failing to pay attention to the action on the field. ..."
"... The stupendous failure of the Mueller Investigation only revealed what can happen when extraordinary bad faith, dishonesty, and incompetence are brought to this project of reinventing "truth" -- of who did what and why -- while it provoked a counter-industry of detecting its gross falsifications. ..."
"... Perhaps you can see why unleashing the CIA, NSA, and the FBI on political enemies by Mr. Obama and his cohorts has become such a disaster. When that scheme blew up, the intel community went to the mattresses, as the saying goes in Mafia legend and lore. The "company" found itself at existential risk. Of course, the CIA has long been accused of following an agenda of its own simply because it had the means to do it. It had the manpower, the money, and the equipment to run whatever operations it felt like running, and a history of going its own way out of sheer institutional arrogance, of knowing better than the crackers and clowns elected by the hoi-polloi. The secrecy inherent in its charter was a green light for limitless mischief and some of the agency's directors showed open contempt for the occupants of the White House. Think: Allen Dulles and William Casey. And lately, Mr. Brennan. ..."
Oct 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Here's one big reason that America is driving itself batshit crazy : the explosion of computerized records, emails, inter-office memos, Twitter trails, Facebook memorabilia, iPhone videos, YouTubes, recorded conversations, and the vast alternative universe of storage capacity for all this stuff makes it seem possible to constantly go back and reconstruct reality. All it has really done is amplified the potential for political mischief to suicide level.

It's a major unanticipated consequence of the digital "revolution." It has gotten us stuck looking backward at events, obsessively replaying them, while working overtime to spin them favorably for one team or the other, at the expense of actually living in real time and dealing with reality as it unspools with us. If life were a ballgame, we'd only be watching jumbotron replays while failing to pay attention to the action on the field.

Before all this, history was left largely to historians, who curated it from a range of views for carefully considered introduction to the stream of human culture, and managed this process at a pace that allowed a polity to get on with its business at hand in the here-and-now -- instead of incessantly and recursively reviewing events that have already happened 24/7. The more electronic media has evolved, the more it lends itself to manipulation, propaganda, and falsification of whatever happened five minutes, or five hours, or five weeks ago.

This is exactly why and how the losing team in the 2016 election has worked so hard to change that bit of history. The stupendous failure of the Mueller Investigation only revealed what can happen when extraordinary bad faith, dishonesty, and incompetence are brought to this project of reinventing "truth" -- of who did what and why -- while it provoked a counter-industry of detecting its gross falsifications.

This dynamic has long been systematically studied and applied by institutions like the so-called "intelligence community," and has gotten so out-of-hand that its main mission these days appears to be the maximum gaslighting of the nation -- for the purpose of its own desperate self-defense. The "Whistleblower" episode is the latest turn in dishonestly manipulated records, but the most interesting feature of it is that the release of the actual transcript of the Trump-Zelensky phone call did not affect the "narrative" precooked between the CIA and Adam Schiff's House Intel Committee. They just blundered on with the story and when major parts of the replay didn't add up, they retreated to secret sessions in the basement of the US capitol.

Perhaps you can see why unleashing the CIA, NSA, and the FBI on political enemies by Mr. Obama and his cohorts has become such a disaster. When that scheme blew up, the intel community went to the mattresses, as the saying goes in Mafia legend and lore. The "company" found itself at existential risk. Of course, the CIA has long been accused of following an agenda of its own simply because it had the means to do it. It had the manpower, the money, and the equipment to run whatever operations it felt like running, and a history of going its own way out of sheer institutional arrogance, of knowing better than the crackers and clowns elected by the hoi-polloi. The secrecy inherent in its charter was a green light for limitless mischief and some of the agency's directors showed open contempt for the occupants of the White House. Think: Allen Dulles and William Casey. And lately, Mr. Brennan.

The recently-spawned NSA has mainly added the capacity to turn everything that happens into replay material, since it is suspected of recording every phone call, every email, every financial transaction, every closed-circuit screen capture, and anything else its computers can snare for storage in its Utah Data Storage Center. Now you know why the actions of Edward Snowden were so significant. He did what he did because he was moral enough to know the face of malevolence when he saw it. That he survives in exile is a miracle.

As for the FBI, only an exceptional species of ineptitude explains the trouble they got themselves into with the RussiaGate fiasco. The unbelievable election loss of Mrs. Clinton screwed the pooch for them, and the desperate acts that followed only made things worse. The incompetence and mendacity on display was only matched by Mr. Mueller and his lawyers, who were supposed to be the FBI's cleanup crew and only left a bigger mess -- all of it cataloged in digital records.

Now, persons throughout all these agencies are waiting for the hammer to fall. If they are prosecuted, the process will entail yet another monumental excursion into the replaying of those digital records. It could go on for years. So, the final act in the collapse of the USA will be the government choking itself to death on replayed narratives from its own server farms.

In the meantime, events are actually tending in a direction that will eventually deprive the nation of the means to continue most of its accustomed activities including credible elections, food distribution, a reliable electric grid, and perhaps even self-defense.

[Oct 19, 2019] Tulsi Gabbard on Twitter Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and person

Oct 19, 2019 |

Tulsi Gabbard ‏ 1:20 PM - 18 Oct 2019

Great! Thank you @ HillaryClinton . You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a ...

Tulsi Gabbard ‏ 1:20 PM - 18 Oct 2019

... concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and ...

Tulsi Gabbard ‏ 1:20 PM - 18 Oct 2019

... powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It's now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.

[Oct 19, 2019] Schiff Staffer Flew To Ukraine 2 Months Ago, Met With Impeachment Witness

So after the EuroMaydan coup d'état there is real feast of Atlantists using Ukrainian money and they want it to continue.
Notable quotes:
"... A staffer for Rep. Adam Schiff's House Intelligence Committee flew to Ukraine in late August on a trip organized and sponsored by the Atlantic Council, where he met with a key witness for the Democrats' ongoing impeachment efforts. ..."
"... The witness, acting US Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor , is scheduled to provide a deposition next week as part of Schiff's inquiry into President Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, according to Breitbart News . ..."
"... Trump, among other things, asked Zelensky to renew an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who were both paid handsomely by gas giant Burisma Holdings while Biden was Vice President, according to prior reports and a new allegation by Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach, who says he has proof that $900,000 was funneled from Burisma to the elder Biden . ..."
"... Ambassador Taylor , meanwhile, has a "close relationship" with the Atlantic Council, "writing analysis pieces published on the Council's website and serving as a featured speaker for the organization's events," according to the report, which adds that "He also served for nine years as senior advisor to the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council, which has co-hosted scores of events with the Atlantic Council. ..."
"... Interestingly, Eager's trip to Ukraine occurred 12 days after a CIA officer (who previously worked for Joe Biden) filed a whistleblower complaint on August 12, using second-hand information regarding Trump's call with Zelensky. ..."
"... Taylor, meanwhile, will be deposed by House Democrats over text messages which showed him suggesting that President Trump was using his office to pressure Ukraine into investigating Biden. ..."
"... Taylor's attorney, John Bellinger, "served at the National Security Council and as the State Department's lead lawyer under President George W. Bush's administration," according to Breitbart - which adds that Bellinger is a prominent "Never Trump" Republican who participated in drafting a 2016 letter warning that Trump could be the "most reckless President in American history." ..."
Oct 18, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

A staffer for Rep. Adam Schiff's House Intelligence Committee flew to Ukraine in late August on a trip organized and sponsored by the Atlantic Council, where he met with a key witness for the Democrats' ongoing impeachment efforts.

The witness, acting US Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor , is scheduled to provide a deposition next week as part of Schiff's inquiry into President Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, according to Breitbart News .

Trump, among other things, asked Zelensky to renew an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who were both paid handsomely by gas giant Burisma Holdings while Biden was Vice President, according to prior reports and a new allegation by Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach, who says he has proof that $900,000 was funneled from Burisma to the elder Biden .

Ambassador Taylor , meanwhile, has a "close relationship" with the Atlantic Council, "writing analysis pieces published on the Council's website and serving as a featured speaker for the organization's events," according to the report, which adds that "He also served for nine years as senior advisor to the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council, which has co-hosted scores of events with the Atlantic Council.

The Schiff staffer, Thomas Eager , meanwhile, partook in the Ukraine trip as a member of the Atlantic Council Eurasia Congressional Fellowship - directly sponsored by Burisma via a 2017 "cooperative agreement."

A closer look at the itinerary for the August 24 to August 31 trip shows that the delegation's first meeting upon arrival in Ukraine was with Taylor.

Spokespeople for Schiff's office did not reply to multiple Breitbart News requests sent over the course of the last three days for comment on Eager's meeting with Taylor.

When Breitbart News first reported on Eager's visit to Ukraine two weeks ago, Schiff's office quickly replied to several comment requests, denying any impropriety related to Eager's association with the Atlantic Council or the trip.

The unanswered Breitbart email requests to Schiff's office from the past three days posed the following question:

While in Ukraine, did Mr. Eager speak to Mr. Taylor about the issue of reports about any representatives of President Trump looking into alleged Biden corruption in Ukraine?

- Breitbart

Interestingly, Eager's trip to Ukraine occurred 12 days after a CIA officer (who previously worked for Joe Biden) filed a whistleblower complaint on August 12, using second-hand information regarding Trump's call with Zelensky.

Schiff's office, meanwhile, directed the whistleblower to a Democratic operative attorney who has previously worked for Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer. Schiff initially lied about the initial contact, later claiming he "should have been much more clear" after he had been caught.

Taylor, meanwhile, will be deposed by House Democrats over text messages which showed him suggesting that President Trump was using his office to pressure Ukraine into investigating Biden.

Taylor's attorney, John Bellinger, "served at the National Security Council and as the State Department's lead lawyer under President George W. Bush's administration," according to Breitbart - which adds that Bellinger is a prominent "Never Trump" Republican who participated in drafting a 2016 letter warning that Trump could be the "most reckless President in American history."

Read the rest of the report here .

[Oct 19, 2019] The Democratic Party Should Suspend Hillary Clinton

Notable quotes:
"... I suspect that Gabbard has very little chance of beating Trump because he is also campaigning - quite successfully - against 'endless wars', and Gabbard is too radical for most Americans. ..."
"... This sparks some interesting questions, such as, exactly who are party members, and how do they become members? The actual structure and functioning of political parties in the US is seldom discussed, and I wonder why that is. "Opaque" seems to be a good description ..."
"... The primary voting system is a huge financial subsidy to the two officially approved parties, which are, of course, merely two branches of the Business Party. ..."
"... Good for Tulsi. I love the way she punches. She not only decked Clinton in one, but she got a lot of other important points across at the same time. ..."
"... Whenever she tries to curve her stance close to the establishment, she comes off as someone who is running for Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense; as someone with her eyes on a high status job in the establishement. ..."
"... Hillary Clinton can't be thrown out of the Dem party because she in a sense IS the Dem party as it stands now, a long way from its roots. The Dem party now has been fully integrated into the bureaucracy, the intelligence services and the corporate media similar to how Tony Blair in the UK took the Labour Party to be deeply embedded in the UK establishment. ..."
"... Hillary is still around because she literally owns the Democrat party. Follow the funding: in 2016, almost all of it flowed through HRC. Not just the presidential, but the state and significant part of the local. ..."
Oct 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Hillary Clinton has gone mad :

Hillary Clinton appeared to suggest that Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is the "favorite of the Russians" to win the 2020 presidential election and is being groomed by Moscow to run as a third-party candidate against the eventual Democratic nominee.
...
The Russians already have their "eye on somebody who's currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate," she said, in an apparent reference to Gabbard.

"She's the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her, so far," Clinton told David Plouffe, the podcast's host and the campaign manager for former President Obama's 2008 campaign.

"And that's assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she's also a Russian asset," Clinton added, referring to the 2016 Green Party presidential candidate.

The responses were appropriate:

Tulsi Gabbard @TulsiGabbard - 22:20 UTC · Oct 18, 2019
Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a ...
... concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know -- it was always you, through your proxies and ...
... powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.

It's now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.

The Streisand effect of Clinton's shoddy remark will help Tulsi Gabbard with regards to name recognition. It will increase her poll results. With Joe Biden faltering and Elizabeth Warren increasingly exposed as a phony Clinton copy, Bernie Sanders could become the Democrats leading candidate. Then the “favorite of the Russians” smear will be applied to him.

Clinton should be suspended from the Democratic Party for damaging it's chances to regain the White House. But the Democratic establishment would rather sabotage the election than to let one of the more progressive candidates take the lead.

Voters do not like such internal squabble and shenanigans. The phony Ukrainegate 'impeachment inquiry' is already a gift for Trump. Messing with the candidate field on top of that will inevitably end with another Trump presidency.

Brendan , Oct 19 2019 14:14 utc | 6

and Suspend her from what? a lamp post? That's a little bit harsh.

Hillary is actually doing something constructive for the first time in her career - by giving a boost to Tulsi Gabbard who is the only candidate who challenges the military industrial complex, which has probably caused more death and destruction than anyone else in history.

I suspect that Gabbard has very little chance of beating Trump because he is also campaigning - quite successfully - against 'endless wars', and Gabbard is too radical for most Americans.

But none of the other Democratic candidates stand a chance of beating Trump either. The two front-runners are medically unfit for any important challenging job - Biden (senility) and Sanders (recent heart attack/stroke?).

librul , Oct 19 2019 14:29 utc | 9

Tulsi is urging Hillary to "enter the race" !! Hillary is foaming at the mouth with desire to enter the 2020 race. Is Tulsi working for Hillary?

Behind the scenes it was decided to make HunterBidenGate the pretext for a Trump impeachment. This, it was thought, would damage Trump AND Biden and make way for the resurrection of Hillary Clinton. There were so many other pretexts available but they chose this one.

Gambits everywhere !

Trailer Trash , Oct 19 2019 14:42 utc | 11
"Clinton should be suspended from the Democratic Party"

This sparks some interesting questions, such as, exactly who are party members, and how do they become members? The actual structure and functioning of political parties in the US is seldom discussed, and I wonder why that is. "Opaque" seems to be a good description. Even a quick review of the Wikipedia entry reveals little.

As best I can tell, a person is a party member by checking the box on the voter registration form. The few times I have registered, I did not check a box for any party. It is none of the state's business who I associate with or vote for.

It is also not the state's business to supervise and fund the selection of party candidates. But that is what happens in the US. The primary voting system is a huge financial subsidy to the two officially approved parties, which are, of course, merely two branches of the Business Party.

Peter AU 1 , Oct 19 2019 14:48 utc | 13
The Clinton delusional ranting probably needs to be looked at in the light of this.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/10/18/tulsi-nails-national-tv-us-regime-change-wars/

"It didn't come much clearer nor more explicit than when Gabbard fired up the Democratic TV debate this week. It was billed as the biggest televised presidential debate ever, and the Hawaii Representative told some prime-time home-truths to the nation:

"Donald Trump has blood of the Kurds on his hands, but so do many of the politicians in our country from both parties who have supported this ongoing regime-change war in Syria that started in 2011 along with many in the mainstream media who have been championing and cheer-leading this regime-change war."

The 38-year-old military veteran went on to denounce how the US has sponsored Al Qaeda terrorists for its objective of overthrowing the government in Damascus."

paul , Oct 19 2019 14:58 utc | 16
Good for Tulsi. I love the way she punches. She not only decked Clinton in one, but she got a lot of other important points across at the same time. The way she tries to finesse her stances on Iran, India and Israel is disturbing though.

Whenever she tries to curve her stance close to the establishment, she comes off as someone who is running for Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense; as someone with her eyes on a high status job in the establishement.

When she's forthright, punches hard and says the things that many people are thinking but few dare say - as she did in her statement on Syria, but didn't in her statement on Iran - she comes off as the first real candidate for President that I've seen in my lifetime (I don't count the likes of Dennis Kucinich, who never seemed to actually want to win).

If Tulsi is serious about doing the world good, this is the path she needs to take. Speak the truths no one else is willing to say; punch hard; stick with it. Yeah and be willing to die for it. If they can't stop you, which I don't think they can, they'll come gunning for you...

Don Bacon , Oct 19 2019 15:04 utc | 17
Finally, at last, foreign affairs (i.e wars) has made it into a presidential campaign, and by a veteran, with veterans currently being sanctified in the U.S. The women (Tulsi, Jill and Hillary) are getting down and dirty, too, which is always a good thing and a feature of politics in time past, as in the Truman era. President Harry Truman: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. If you cannot handle the pressure, you should not remain in a position where you have to deal with it."

Let's hope that they get into the details of Hillary's failures, including Libya, Somalia, and especially Syria. Let's get it on! In the last election she never was forced to answer for her specific failures. Now's the time.

Ludwig , Oct 19 2019 15:19 utc | 20
Hillary Clinton can't be thrown out of the Dem party because she in a sense IS the Dem party as it stands now, a long way from its roots. The Dem party now has been fully integrated into the bureaucracy, the intelligence services and the corporate media similar to how Tony Blair in the UK took the Labour Party to be deeply embedded in the UK establishment.

What Trump has successfully done from the right that Sanders/Gabbard (like Corbyn in the UK) are struggling to do from the left is to attack the establishment that's in a permanent state of warfare abroad and at home against its "enemies" and unfettered capitalism at home For a brief moment it was hoped by progressives that Obama - who defeated the faces of the establishment, Clinton and McCain in 2008 - would really fight the establishment but he ended up becoming more of a celebrity politician like Trudeau who talked a good game but was unable to effect real change on the ground which of course led to a large number or African Americans not voting in 2016 and a lot of white blue collar Obama 2008 voters going for Trump.

The corporate media which has been totally corrupted and infiltrated by intelligence agencies - quote openly versus covertly as in the past - is going to make every effort to shut down not just Gabbard but Sanders and ensure that Warren - a wannabe feel-gooder like Obama - be completely neutered to effect real change.

c1ue , Oct 19 2019 16:08 utc | 30
Hillary is still around because she literally owns the Democrat party. Follow the funding: in 2016, almost all of it flowed through HRC. Not just the presidential, but the state and significant part of the local.

[Oct 19, 2019] Hillary Clinton slanders Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, Green Party candidate Jill Stein as Russian spies by Andre Damon

Notable quotes:
"... Clinton's claims, made without the slightest effort at factual substantiation, are an attempt to criminalize the anti-war statements of the two candidates as treasonous. ..."
"... Clinton's attacks on Gabbard and Stein make clear once again that the Democrats' assertions of "Russian meddling" in the 2016 election were primarily aimed not at Trump, but at the anti-war and anti-capitalist sentiments that led millions of people to refuse to vote for her in 2016. They underscore how the Democrats have appropriated the McCarthyite tactics historically associated primarily with the Republican right. ..."
"... As a central part of their anti-Russia campaign, Clinton and the Democrats promoted the media effort to poison public opinion against journalist Julian Assange by slandering him as a "Russian agent," preparing the way for the Trump administration to indict him on bogus sedition charges and secure his imprisonment in London under conditions that threaten his life. ..."
"... "That's assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not, because she's also a Russian asset," Clinton said. "Yes, she's a Russian asset, I mean, totally. They know they can't win without a third-party candidate." ..."
"... Gabbard replied to Clinton's slander on Twitter by declaring, "Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain." Gabbard's performance in this week's Democratic presidential debate no doubt put her in Clinton's crosshairs. Gabbard vowed, "As president, I will end these regime-change wars," and "would make sure that we stop supporting terrorists like Al Qaeda in Syria, who have been the ground force in this ongoing regime-change war." ..."
"... Gabbard's true statement that the United States -- with Clinton as secretary of state under Obama -- had allied with forces linked to Al Qaeda in the drive to overthrow the Syrian government was passed over in total silence by the rest of the candidates and the CNN and New York Times moderators. It was then blacked out in the post-debate media coverage of the event. ..."
"... In an earlier debate, Gabbard said the greatest geopolitical danger facing the United States was the threat of nuclear war -- another taboo in the broadcast media, which routinely demands that the United States "stand up" to Russia without mentioning what a military confrontation with the nuclear-armed country would look like. ..."
Oct 19, 2019 | www.wsws.org

Hillary Clinton, the widely despised former Democratic Party presidential candidate, has slandered two of her political opponents -- Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein -- as traitors and Russian spies.

The World Socialist Web Site has fundamental political differences with both Ms. Gabbard and Dr. Stein. But Clinton's claims, made without the slightest effort at factual substantiation, are an attempt to criminalize the anti-war statements of the two candidates as treasonous.

Clinton's attacks on Gabbard and Stein make clear once again that the Democrats' assertions of "Russian meddling" in the 2016 election were primarily aimed not at Trump, but at the anti-war and anti-capitalist sentiments that led millions of people to refuse to vote for her in 2016. They underscore how the Democrats have appropriated the McCarthyite tactics historically associated primarily with the Republican right.

As a central part of their anti-Russia campaign, Clinton and the Democrats promoted the media effort to poison public opinion against journalist Julian Assange by slandering him as a "Russian agent," preparing the way for the Trump administration to indict him on bogus sedition charges and secure his imprisonment in London under conditions that threaten his life.

At the same time, in the name of countering the supposed menace of Russian "fake news," the Democrats pressured Google to slash search traffic to left-wing political websites and insisted that Facebook and Twitter delete left-wing accounts with millions of followers.

In a podcast interview published Thursday, Clinton told former Obama adviser David Plouffe, "I think they've got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate." Implicitly but clearly referring to Gabbard, Clinton continued, "She's the favorite of the Russians."

"They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her," Clinton added.

Asked later if the former secretary of state was referring to Gabbard in her comment, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill told CNN, "If the nesting doll fits "

Clinton then went on to make her strongest assertion yet that Jill Stein was a "Russian asset."

"That's assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not, because she's also a Russian asset," Clinton said. "Yes, she's a Russian asset, I mean, totally. They know they can't win without a third-party candidate."

Gabbard replied to Clinton's slander on Twitter by declaring, "Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain." Gabbard's performance in this week's Democratic presidential debate no doubt put her in Clinton's crosshairs. Gabbard vowed, "As president, I will end these regime-change wars," and "would make sure that we stop supporting terrorists like Al Qaeda in Syria, who have been the ground force in this ongoing regime-change war."

Gabbard's true statement that the United States -- with Clinton as secretary of state under Obama -- had allied with forces linked to Al Qaeda in the drive to overthrow the Syrian government was passed over in total silence by the rest of the candidates and the CNN and New York Times moderators. It was then blacked out in the post-debate media coverage of the event.

In an earlier debate, Gabbard said the greatest geopolitical danger facing the United States was the threat of nuclear war -- another taboo in the broadcast media, which routinely demands that the United States "stand up" to Russia without mentioning what a military confrontation with the nuclear-armed country would look like.

Toward the end of Thursday's interview, Clinton implicitly called for censorship. She condemned the growth of internet news outlets, which have broadened the number and range of sources of information available to the population.

"I think it's a lot harder for Americans to know what they're supposed to believe," she said. In the 1970s, with only three major national newspapers, "It was a much more controllable environment."

Jill Stein advocates the reform of capitalism and is an opponent of Marxism. She has stated that she is opposed to "state socialism." Tulsi Gabbard, a veteran of the Iraq war and major in the Hawaii National Guard, describes herself as a "hawk" in many aspects of US foreign policy.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the statements they have made in opposition to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria correspond to the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of the American people, who see these wars of aggression launched on the basis of lies, which have killed and maimed millions, as a criminal squandering of lives and resources.

Clinton, speaking for a rabidly pro-war faction of the American financial oligarchy and the military-intelligence establishment, sees these sentiments as treasonous and argues for their criminalization.

Her statements make clear once again that the working class has no stake in the struggle between the Trump faction and his opponents in the Democratic Party and intelligence apparatus. Trump, relying on fascistic appeals to his right-wing base, is seeking to turn the United States into a personalist dictatorship. But Clinton's faction does not oppose his concentration camps for immigrants or his pro-corporate agenda. Rather, it opposes Trump on the grounds that he is "soft" on Russia and insufficiently aggressive in waging America's wars.

Eve • 43 minutes ago

Isn't it funny that the Clinton trolls were weaponizing her gender in the last election, screaming "sexist!" at anyone who criticized her for her actual policies and corrupt practices, slandering Sanders supporters as "Bernie Bros", and to the point of Albright claiming there was a special place in hell for women who didn't support her, while the Queen of Warmongering, who was besties with Trump, married to Bill, took cash from Weinstein, and flew with Epstein (all serial rapists) gets to baselessly smear women as treasonous spies without a peep from the liberal feminists, metoo-ers, and media mouthpieces? And, for a cherry on top, she's on tour for a book called "Gutsy Women"!
Barbar • an hour ago
Gabbard, after deftly doing a front-stabbing number on Bad Cop Harris, torpedoing Saint Obomber's "legacy" with his bungled attempt to surf AQ to regime-change in Syria and rightly ripping the agitprop rags NYT and CNN some fresh axeholes, has indeed now flushed out the deranged Alien Queen, wildly spitting globs of steaming molecular acid at the one who dared wound her drones.

She raises some ugly home truths rarely heard from bourgeois politicians at this level and, having busted the media blackout to get back in the debates, for her troubles is now receiving what amount to transparent public death threats from a top Mafiosa desperate to evade any proper scrutiny of her own and the Party's many warcrimes.

Regardless of the rest of her politics, one has to recognise Gabbard's personal bravery in tackling dangerous predators like this and hope she has an extremely dedicated 24/7 armed personal protection detail, to ward off the elevated risk of Arkancide.

лидия • 2 hours ago
""I think it's a lot harder for Americans to know what they're supposed to believe," she said. In the 1970s, with only three major national newspapers, "It was a much more controllable environment.""

This is a true voice of bourgeois democracy, of course.

jet1685 • 2 hours ago
" 'That's assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not, because she's also a Russian asset,' Clinton said. 'Yes, she's a Russian asset, I mean, totally. They know they can't win without a third-party candidate.' "

"We came, we saw, he died." -- Clinton on Khaddafy

But can you guess who uttered the following quote(hint: it is not the "white nationalist" Donald Trump, who unlike some public figures is politically apt enough not to say "white people" aloud):
"Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and whites in both states who had not completed college are supporting me." *

The capitalist Democratic Party is a loudmouthed, racist buffoon.

* working hard when not hardly working--but maybe it's not just whites

Ol' Hippy • 2 hours ago
The vile, vindictive nature of Mrs Clinton has reached new lows as her seeming unaccepting the loss of the '16 election to shift the blame to anyone but her. She is why we have Trump. She really needs to fade away and quit meddling in our elections.
Eric Sommer • 2 hours ago • edited
"Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain." - An Interview with Tulsi Gabbard regarding the role of HIllary Clinton, the military-industrial complex, and her anti-war stance here. To my surprise, she makes the clear connection that Clintons claim that she is a 'russian asset' is aimed also at demonizing all Americans who oppose the war-regime.
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[Oct 19, 2019] Russia hating is the lynchpin of oligarchic deepstate MIC MSM propaganda. Take that away and the fat cats are revealed as the naked face of evil that they are. Hating Russia (and China) supposedly justifies all their crimes.

Oct 19, 2019 | www.unz.com

mike k , says: October 4, 2019 at 11:53 am GMT

Russia hating is the lynchpin of oligarchic deepstate MIC MSM propaganda. Take that away and the fat cats are revealed as the naked face of evil that they are. Hating Russia (and China) supposedly justifies all their crimes.

[Oct 19, 2019] Russian agents under every bed

Highly recommended!
Oct 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

S , Oct 19 2019 15:33 utc | 24

Okay, let's recap:

1) Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset (Clinton).
2) Jill Stein is a Russian asset (Clinton).
3) Donald Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987 ( Intelligencer ).
4) Rand Paul is "working for Vladimir Putin" ( McCain , Greg Olear ).
5) Bernie Sanders is "just a tool" to the Russians ( The Washington Post ).

I'm sure Bernie will turn from "just a tool" into "an asset" in no time if his poll numbers become too high. After all, nobody forgot his fraternizing with the enemy in a sauna in USSR !

[Oct 19, 2019] Trump's insight, and in no small part it explains his continued survival, is his refusal to accept the appearance of his fully possessing his Article II powers. Most especially in the context of the National Security State.

Oct 19, 2019 | www.unz.com

MLK , says: October 4, 2019 at 1:08 pm GMT

Leave aside that Trump should not have been compelled to make the transcript public . . . .

It's tempting to view Trump's presidency as sui generis. With norms and seemingly well-settled historical precedents broken, with the liability casually laid at his feet by most observers, even if not wholly out to destroy him.

Knowing its intent was remove him from office, Trump nevertheless ordered unprecedented cooperation with the Mueller investigation. A brilliant move in hindsight. I don't recall very much handwringing about the bad precedent this set for presidential power.

Trump's insight, and in no small part it explains his continued survival, is his refusal to accept the appearance of his fully possessing his Article II powers. Most especially in the context of the National Security State.

Utz has written how even Eisenhower was foiled from negotiating to reduce tensions with the Soviet Union/Krushchev. If they could derail the POTUS then doing so with those that followed him should have been easy by comparison and, I think, was. The trend since, as the USG's global power grew, was for president's to ever quickly give way upon after office to the role of what I call Figurehead/Pitchman. It's a Safe Space, as was palpably obvious through Obama's two terms.

While Figurehead/Pitchman versus Real POTUS is, of course, a spectrum not a dichotomy, Trump for reasons I don't need to belabor has effectively constituted a sharp break.

So, decisions of his like the following, facially a diminution of his authority, which passed without a great deal of notice, struck me as him protecting himself from his authorizing military actions designed to end his presidency:

https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/trumps-total-authorization-military-gives-deep-concerns

The longer Trump survives the further these highest order threats of nuclear war and to our Constitutional Republic recede. Even if it doesn't seem that way at moments like this.

It's childish nonsense the idea that any foreign state, including Russia, thought Trump would win, much less wanted him to do so. It's equally juvenile, especially close to three years hence, to not understand that foreign adversaries and allies alike awaited a resolution of this factional war internally within the US, avoiding catastrophe in the meantime.

Thankfully, at least so far, since Trump took the oath, the foreign powers for which a Hillary presidency would have been a geopolitical gift of historic proportions (e.g. China; Iran), have largely made their peace with that lost opportunity.

[Oct 16, 2019] Schiff: Public Has No Right To Observe Impeachment Inquiry...Then Kicks GOP Lawmaker Out

If sleazy Schiff represents the average level of credibility of the US lawmakers, the country is in real trouble.
Notable quotes:
"... Based on a politically biased CIA officer's second-hand complaint over a phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky in which Trump asked for an investigation of former VP Joe Biden, House Democrats have forged ahead with their impeachment inquiry despite several damaging revelations to their narrative; namely that the whistleblower worked with former Biden and two Schiff staffers. ..."
"... The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.- John F. Kennedy ..."
"... Adam Schiff is a descendant of a long line of traitors (banking). Get rid of him. ..."
"... This is not an impeachment proceeding, it is a coup attempt. Because of the ineptness of the participants it is falling apart. A real whistleblower cannot remain anonymous. This person is not a whistleblower but a leaker and a spy and a member of an intelligence agency. ..."
Oct 16, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) says that the public shouldn't be allowed to observe hearings in the ongoing impeachment inquiry, as doing so may allow Republicans to then "fabricate testimony" (and totally not because their case is falling apart).

On Sunday, Schiff told host Margaret Brennan that the ongoing impeachment inquiry is "analogous to a grand jury proceeding," which is "done out of the public view initially."

https://youtu.be/EnN2TlNu3CI

Based on a politically biased CIA officer's second-hand complaint over a phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky in which Trump asked for an investigation of former VP Joe Biden, House Democrats have forged ahead with their impeachment inquiry despite several damaging revelations to their narrative; namely that the whistleblower worked with former Biden and two Schiff staffers.

More importantly, a transcript of the call in question reveals no such pressure or quid pro quo by Trump.

Meanwhile, Schiff booted GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz out of Monday morning testimony with former White House Russia adviser Fiona Hill, who resigned shortly before President Trump's call with Zelensky.

Interesting, Schiff went from calling for Trump to release a transcript of the Zelensky call and the whistleblower complaint - which Trump did, to wanting everything done through non-public, 'secretive' proceedings.

slightlyskeptical , 13 minutes ago link

Of course this type of proceeding is done in private. Anyone who expects anything else obviously hasn't been around long. Do the police let your lawyers consult with them before charging you with a crime. No way Jose! You are an idiot if you think there is any problem with this "secrecy".

Akzed , 11 minutes ago link

The house hasn't taken an impeachment vote, so no"impeachment inquiry" is taking place and this whole charade is extra-legal.

chappaquawoods , 28 minutes ago link

This Impeachment Inquiry does't pass muster in publics eye. Democrats are going to loose the election !

The Deplorable Goblin Front Hole , 41 minutes ago link

The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.- John F. Kennedy

bunnyswanson , 45 minutes ago link

Adam Schiff is a descendant of a long line of traitors (banking). Get rid of him.

lizzie dw , 52 minutes ago link

This is not an impeachment proceeding, it is a coup attempt. Because of the ineptness of the participants it is falling apart. A real whistleblower cannot remain anonymous. This person is not a whistleblower but a leaker and a spy and a member of an intelligence agency. The latest is that the the leaker will not appear anywhere to give testimony. How does that work? Also, it seems that in order for the House of Representatives to send real subpoenas they need to have judicial authority, which they get when the members vote for or against impeachment. Then there can be an impeachment proceeding. Don't forget that as the media is complicit (remember, 6 companies own 90% of all media) we are being beat over the head every day with this fake news, instead of news of actual events. As for the rest of us, when 2020 rolls around everyone needs to remember that voting is 100% more effective than complaining on the internet.

fezline , 1 hour ago link

We are living in the twilight zone people...

It is highly likely Trump will lose the next election because this time the dems actually think they are going to lose so they will pull out all the stops. They will also get away with it.. you want to know why? Well first remove your emotional attachment to what you want to believe and just read what I have to say with an open mind.

Hillary got away with everything. Schiff is getting away with everything he is doing. Pelosi is getting away with everything she is doing. They are spying on the president and actually moving forward on impeachment because they didn't like the fact that he is investigating something real when they think it's ok for them to have used the FISA courts for a witch hunt and they got away with it and are still getting away with it. Epstein was murdered and nothing was done about it. People are allowed to post death threats and make jokes about killing the POTUS without any repercussions but a violent video meme themed on Trump fighting back against the networks and his enemies was condemned. Antifa is always given a pass and they are supported in the media, anyone defending themselves against antifa that actually comes out on top gets arrested and charged to the fullest extent. A child was demonized on national television for standing with a smile while a native American attempted to antagonize him while a large group of black activists also antagonized the kids telling them they looked like future school shooters. Jessie Smollet got away with staging a hate crime. The murder of Seth Rich has been swept under the rug.

The list goes on and on... Those of you who are still on the Q train really need to wake the **** up... There will be no mass arrests... There will be no justice... The only way to get justice is to get off your *** and become active. Write your congress person, go to protests, investigate and expose corruption in your own town. This is the only way to change things... If all you do is sit and wait for a LARP to tell you it is all going to be ok because of some master plan well then you are just falling for their efforts to placate you and keep you at bay... Trust me when I say that Trump is in trouble in 2020 because the DEMs are going to cheat in every way that they can and they will get away with it even if they are caught and I have proven this with everything I wrote above.

boooyaaaah , 2 hours ago link

Maybe Trumps stand on keeping American soldiers out of the Mid East quagmire will do the trick

There are enough Vietnam vets that remember the lying waste that was.

Nixon who got us out was pilloried by ...yes....the main stream media.

[Oct 16, 2019] Protecting the 'Whistleblower' Other Preposterous Pranks by James Howard Kunstler

Notable quotes:
"... Of course, the effort to "protect" the "whistleblower" has been a juke all along. For one thing, he-she-it is not a "whistleblower" at all; was only labeled that via legalistic legerdemain to avoid revealing the origin of this affair as a CIA cover-your-ass operation. ..."
"... One also clearly senses that all the smoke-and-mirrors are a desperate attempt to divert attention from a soon-to-drop DOJ Inspector General's report which, by the way, will only be an overture to much more damaging action likely to come from Attorney General William Barr's proceeding. After all, Michael Horowitz, inspector general of theDepartment of Justice, was not allowed under the rules to compel the testimony of persons outside the Department of Justice, which would now include Andrew McCabe, James Comey and many others at the center of the RussiaGate prank. ..."
"... That also includes the probable chief pranksters, former CIA head John Brennan and James Clapper, former director of National Intelligence, the midwives of RussiaGate. The pair have been running around on cable news with both their hair and their pants on fire in recent weeks. Back in March, before the Mueller report flopped, and when Barr was commissioned to look into all the RussiaGate shenanigans, Brennan comically claimed that he "received bad information and suspected there was more than there actually was. ..."
Oct 15, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

James Howard Kunstler marvels at Adam Schiff's tactical idiocy and savors the bit of media agitprop about James Comey in Saturday's New York Times.

By James Howard Kunstler
Clusterfuck Nation

A n eerie silence cloaked the political landscape this lovely fall weekend as the soldiers in this (so far) administrative civil war scrambled for position in the next round of skirmishes. Rep. Adam Schiff fell back on the preposterous idea that he might not produce his "whistleblower" witness at all in the (so far) hypothetical impeachment proceeding. He put that one out after running a similarly absurd idea up the flagpole: that his "whistleblower" might just testify by answering written questions. I was waiting for him to offer up testimony by Morse code, carrier pigeon or smoke signals.

Of course, the effort to "protect" the "whistleblower" has been a juke all along. For one thing, he-she-it is not a "whistleblower" at all; was only labeled that via legalistic legerdemain to avoid revealing the origin of this affair as a CIA cover-your-ass operation. Did Schiff actually think he could conceal this figure's identity in a Senate impeachment trial, when it came to that -- for what else is impeachment aimed at? Anonymous sources are not admissible under American due process of law. Schiff must have missed that class in law school.

All of this hocus-pocus suggests to me that there is no "whistleblower," that it is a phantom confabulation of gossip threads that unraveled the moment Trump released the transcript of his phone call to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, aborting Schiff's game plan. The ensuing weeks of congressional Keystone Kops buffoonery since then appears to conceal a futile effort by Schiff and his confederates to find some fall guy willing to pretend that he-she-it is the "whistleblower." He might as well ask for a volunteer to gargle with Gillette Blue Blades on NBC's Meet the Press .

The Keystone Cops in a typical pose in 1914 in "In the Clutches of the Gang." (Mack Sennett Studios, Wikimedia Commons)

One marvels at Schiff's tactical idiocy. But just imagine the panicked consternation it must be triggering among his Democratic colleagues. Notice that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been hiding out during this latest phase of the action. She may sense that there is nothing left to do but allow Schiff to twist slowly, slowly in the wind, as he has hung himself out to dry. She should have known better since every previous declaration of conclusive evidence by Schiff over the past three years has proved to be false, knowingly and mendaciously so.

One also clearly senses that all the smoke-and-mirrors are a desperate attempt to divert attention from a soon-to-drop DOJ Inspector General's report which, by the way, will only be an overture to much more damaging action likely to come from Attorney General William Barr's proceeding. After all, Michael Horowitz, inspector general of theDepartment of Justice, was not allowed under the rules to compel the testimony of persons outside the Department of Justice, which would now include Andrew McCabe, James Comey and many others at the center of the RussiaGate prank.

That also includes the probable chief pranksters, former CIA head John Brennan and James Clapper, former director of National Intelligence, the midwives of RussiaGate. The pair have been running around on cable news with both their hair and their pants on fire in recent weeks. Back in March, before the Mueller report flopped, and when Barr was commissioned to look into all the RussiaGate shenanigans, Brennan comically claimed that he "received bad information and suspected there was more than there actually was."

That lame admission will not avail to protect him or the CIA, an agency that is behind the administrative civil war. It has been a rogue agency for a long long time, but may have finally overplayed its hand, along with the newer adjunct agencies that have been stitched onto it since 9/11/01 -- the dark network that goes by the name Intelligence Community . So many shoes are ready to drop on them that the din might drown out all the John Philip Sousa marches ever played in the lobby at Langley, let alone the thin trilling of a fake whistleblower.

Apart from these fateful developments the prize for the week's most transparently disingenuous bit of media agitprop goes to Saturday's New York Times puff piece on former FBI Director Jim Comey, which actually sets him up for federal indictment on something like sedition or treason. Get a load of this:

The Times' caption on this photo states: "James Comey plans to spend the next 13 months working to drive President Trump from power." Oh, really? By what means, exactly? Single-handedly or with whom? And how did the strategy he kicked off in 2016 work out? In case Barr is looking for some way to attribute motive to the actions that he's investigating, he may need to seek no further. Also, consider that The New York Times and its Editor-in-Chief Dean Baquet, and publisher A.G. Sulzberger may be named as unindicted co-conspirators in the three-year campaign of sedition (freedom of the press, of course). Alert the shareholders.

BIO: James Howard Kunstler is author of "The Geography of Nowhere," which he says he wrote "Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work." He has written several other works of nonfiction and fiction. Read more about him here .

This article first appeared on his blog, ClusterfuckNation .

[Oct 15, 2019] This New York Times article about @TulsiGabbard is perfect. It belongs in a museum to show how the NYT DNC smear anyone who expresses any dissenting views: accuse them of serving RUSSIA white nationalists, quote Neera Tanden Laura McCarthy Rosenberg, etc.

Oct 15, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

anne , October 12, 2019 at 07:46 AM

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1183018481354248192

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald

This New York Times article about @TulsiGabbard is perfect. It belongs in a museum to show how the NYT & DNC smear anyone who expresses any dissenting views: accuse them of serving RUSSIA & white nationalists, quote Neera Tanden & Laura McCarthy Rosenberg, etc.

What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To? - The New York Times

6:56 AM - 12 Oct 2019

[ Radical, unethical Democratic National Committee folks are determined to defame and destroy an heroic Democratic member of congress, a combat veteran and still serving member of the armed forces, reelected with a 70% majority in 2018. ]

anne -> anne... , October 12, 2019 at 07:58 AM
Astonishing the Democratic leadership calumny of a Democratic member of Congress, a woman, of Indian and Samoan heritage, a combat veteran and serving member of the armed forces. Such is self-styled supposed Democratic leadership, steeped in the terrible terrifying tradition of Joseph McCarthy.
Fred C. Dobbs , October 12, 2019 at 09:11 AM
(The price of admission, so as to be
able to read the posts of others, is
for now, posting something, anything.)

What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?
https://nyti.ms/33s1Aj8
NYT - Lisa Lerer - October 12

WASHINGTON -- Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump's former chief strategist, is impressed with her political talent. Richard B. Spencer, the white nationalist leader, says he could vote for her. Former Representative Ron Paul praises her "libertarian instincts," while Franklin Graham, the influential evangelist, finds her "refreshing."

And far-right conspiracy theorists like Mike Cernovich see a certain MAGA sais quoi.

"She's got a good energy, a good vibe. You feel like this is just a serious person," Mr. Cernovich said. "She seems very Trumpian." ...

Fred C. Dobbs , October 12, 2019 at 09:13 AM
(The price of admission, so as to be
able to read the posts of others, is
for now, posting something, anything.)

What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?
https://nyti.ms/33s1Aj8
NYT - Lisa Lerer - October 12

WASHINGTON -- Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump's former chief strategist, is impressed with her political talent. Richard B. Spencer, the white nationalist leader, says he could vote for her. Former Representative Ron Paul praises her "libertarian instincts," while Franklin Graham, the influential evangelist, finds her "refreshing."

And far-right conspiracy theorists like Mike Cernovich see a certain MAGA sais quoi.

"She's got a good energy, a good vibe. You feel like this is just a serious person," Mr. Cernovich said. "She seems very Trumpian." ...

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to Fred C. Dobbs... , October 12, 2019 at 09:25 AM
Among her fellow Democrats, Representative Tulsi Gabbard has struggled to make headway as a presidential candidate, barely cracking the 2 percent mark in the polls needed to qualify for Tuesday night's debate. She is now injecting a bit of chaos into her own party's primary race, threatening to boycott that debate to protest what she sees as a "rigging" of the 2020 election. That's left some Democrats wondering what, exactly, she is up to in the race, while others worry about supportive signs from online bot activity and the Russian news media. ...

On podcasts and online videos, in interviews and Twitter feeds, alt-right internet stars, white nationalists, libertarian activists and some of the biggest boosters of Mr. Trump heap praise on Ms. Gabbard. They like the Hawaiian congresswoman's isolationist foreign policy views. They like her support for drug decriminalization. They like what she sees as censorship by big technology platforms. ...

Ms. Gabbard has disavowed some of her most hateful supporters, castigating the news media for giving "any oxygen at all" to the endorsement she won from the white nationalist leader David Duke. But her frequent appearances on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show have buoyed her support in right-wing circles.

Both Ms. Gabbard and her campaign refused requests for comment about her support in right-wing circles or threat to boycott the debate. Even some political strategists who have worked with her are at a loss to explain her approach to politics.

"She's a very talented person but I'm not sure, I just don't know what to say about the campaign exactly," said Mark Longabaugh, a Democratic strategist who worked with Ms. Gabbard when she was campaigning for Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2016. ...

anne -> Fred C. Dobbs... , October 12, 2019 at 09:50 AM
Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump's former chief strategist, is impressed with her political talent....

-- Lisa Lerer

[ This is a vile article, contemptible for the New York Times to have printed. An heroic member of congress, a woman, a person of color, a combat veteran, a serving member of the armed forces, a person who serves others to seek peace, is being contemptibly slandered.

Shame, shame, shame for writing and printing such an article. ]

kurt -> anne... , October 15, 2019 at 04:15 PM
You and a number of the posters here are horribly naive about the Nixon Rat(bad word omitted)s. Tulsi has been working with them. This should be automatically disqualifying.
anne -> Fred C. Dobbs... , October 12, 2019 at 09:55 AM
What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?

-- Lisa Lerer

[ The opening paragraph of this article alone is beyond all decency. This is an article that is actually destructive of democracy. ]

ilsm -> anne... , October 12, 2019 at 04:40 PM
Gabbard is a veteran, very much younger than I, she also is the most opposed to the neocon permanent war (strong in securing the US' post WW II world order)agenda which seems to be standard democrat stance.

[Oct 10, 2019] There is no reason that anyone should treat George Bush with respect: he is a war criminal, who escaped justice

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... George W. Bush's presidency wasn't just morally bankrupt. In a superior reality, the Hague would be sorting out whether he is guilty of war crimes. Since our international institutions have failed to punish, or even censure him, surely the only moral response from civil society should be to shun him. But here is Ellen DeGeneres hanging out with him at a Cowboys game: ..."
"... This is what we say to children who don't want to sit next to the class misfit at lunch. It is not -- or at least it should not -- be the way we talk about a man who used his immense power to illegally invade another country where we still have troops 16 years later. His feet should bleed wherever he walks and Iraqis should get to throw shoes at him until the end of his days. ..."
"... DeGeneres isn't a role model for civility. Her friendship with Bush simply embodies the grossest form of class solidarity. From a lofty enough vantage point, perhaps Bush's misdeeds really look like minor partisan differences. Perhaps Iraq seems very far away, and so do the poor of New Orleans, when the stage of your show is the closest you get to anyone without power." ..."
"... There is no reason that anyone should treat George Bush with respect. ..."
Oct 09, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

EMichael , October 09, 2019 at 04:05 PM

Despicable. She is actually saying Bush's actions were just a difference of opinion, as opposed to causing hundreds of thousands of deaths.

I have never watched anything she has ever done without thinking about it. Now I will never watch anything she does because of her imbecility.

Nobody Should Be Friends With George W. Bush by Sarah Jones

"Comedian Ellen DeGeneres loves to tell everyone to be kind. It's a loose word, kindness; on her show, DeGeneres customarily uses it to mean a generic sort of niceness. Don't bully. Befriend people! It's a charming thought, though it has its limits as a moral ethic. There are people in the world, after all, whom it is better not to befriend. Consider, for example, the person of George W. Bush. Tens of thousands of people are dead because his administration lied to the American public about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and then, based on that lie, launched a war that's now in its 16th year. After Hurricane Katrina struck and hundreds of people drowned in New Orleans, Bush twiddled his thumbs for days. Rather than fire the officials responsible for the government's life-threateningly lackluster response to the crisis, he praised them, before flying over the scene in Air Force One. He opposed basic human rights for LGBT people, and reproductive rights for women, and did more to empower the American Christian right than any president since Reagan.

George W. Bush's presidency wasn't just morally bankrupt. In a superior reality, the Hague would be sorting out whether he is guilty of war crimes. Since our international institutions have failed to punish, or even censure him, surely the only moral response from civil society should be to shun him. But here is Ellen DeGeneres hanging out with him at a Cowboys game:

And here is Ellen DeGeneres explaining why it's good and normal to share laughs, small talk, and nachos with a man who has many deaths on his conscience:

Here's the money quote from her apologia:

"We're all different. And I think that we've forgotten that that's okay that we're all different," she told her studio audience. "When I say be kind to one another, I don't mean be kind to the people who think the same way you do. I mean be kind to everyone."

This is what we say to children who don't want to sit next to the class misfit at lunch. It is not -- or at least it should not -- be the way we talk about a man who used his immense power to illegally invade another country where we still have troops 16 years later. His feet should bleed wherever he walks and Iraqis should get to throw shoes at him until the end of his days.

Nevertheless, many celebrities and politicians have hailed DeGeneres for her radical civility:

There's almost no point to rebutting anything that Chris Cillizza writes. Whatever he says is inevitably dumb and wrong, and then I get angry while I think about how much money he gets to be dumb and wrong on a professional basis. But on this occasion, I'll make an exception. The notion that DeGeneres's friendship with Bush is antithetical to Trumpism fundamentally misconstrues the force that makes Trump possible. Trump isn't a simple playground bully, he's the president. Americans grant our commanders-in-chief extraordinary deference once they leave office. They become celebrities, members of an apolitical royal class. This tendency to separate former presidents from the actions of their office, as if they were merely actors in a stage play, or retired athletes from a rival team, contributes to the atmosphere of impunity that enabled Trump. If Trump's critics want to make sure that his cruelties are sins the public and political class alike never tolerate again, our reflexive reverence for the presidency has to die.

DeGeneres isn't a role model for civility. Her friendship with Bush simply embodies the grossest form of class solidarity. From a lofty enough vantage point, perhaps Bush's misdeeds really look like minor partisan differences. Perhaps Iraq seems very far away, and so do the poor of New Orleans, when the stage of your show is the closest you get to anyone without power."

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/ellen-degeneres-is-wrong-about-george-w-bush.html

... ... ...

...I am all in favor of Tulsi Gabbard's anti-war stance, but this comment shows me she is too childish to hold any power.

Tulsi Gabbard
‏Verified account @TulsiGabbard
22h22 hours ago

.@TheEllenShow msg of being kind to ALL is so needed right now. Enough with the divisiveness. We can't let politics tear us apart. There are things we will disagree on strongly, and things we agree on -- let's treat each other with respect, aloha, & work together for the people.

There is no reason that anyone should treat George Bush with respect.

[Oct 09, 2019] Schiff role in Ukrainegate

Notable quotes:
"... To cap it off, on Tuesday we learned that the whistleblower has "a professional relationship with one of the 2020 candidates" - as revealed by Inspector General Michael Atkinson during a closed-door interview with the House last Friday. ..."
"... take two shots ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... take eight shots ..."
"... Politico ..."
"... Keep reading for an interesting Biden connection ..."
Oct 09, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

... ... ...

To review; the wheels of impeachment were set in motion after the original whistleblower, a CIA officer, approached House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff's office with second-hand information (a contact Schiff lied about ) that Trump was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election."

One of Schiff's aides then directed the whistleblower, a registered Democrat, to a Democratic operative attorney worked for Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer. The CIA officer then filed a whistleblower complaint on a recently altered form which now allows for the submission of second-hand information.

To cap it off, on Tuesday we learned that the whistleblower has "a professional relationship with one of the 2020 candidates" - as revealed by Inspector General Michael Atkinson during a closed-door interview with the House last Friday.

How visibly shaken are we talking about?

According to a memo written by the first whistleblower on July 26, the day after the Trump-Zelensky call, the White House official said the call was "crazy," "frightening" and "completely lacking in substance related to national security."

Meanwhile, the actual whistleblower complaint claims:

  • Trump " sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President's 2020 reelection bid."
  • " the President pressured Mr. Zelenskyy to..."

( take two shots )

So let's take a look at the 'pressure' impeachment-hungry Democrats continue to claim Trump applied:

"I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it . I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike ... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it . As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that's possible . "

The transcript makes clear no such pressure was applied, while Zelensky himself publicly stated that " nobody pushed me " to investigate matters requested by the Trump administration and Rudy Giuliani. Democrats have also claimed that nearly $400 million in US military aid was paused in order to use as leverage to kick start an investigation, however that theory has been relegated to at least the side-burner after it emerged that Zelensky had no clue it was being withheld at the time of the call.

Whatever the case, Democrats appear to be following the original script - as though Trump never released the transcript and all we know comes from inaccurate reporting first peddled through MSM outlets .

For example - the Washington Post 's original reporting from September 18th, when the whistleblower story broke:

"Trump's interaction with the foreign leader included a "promise" "

The Wall Street Journal on September 21:

"President Trump in a July phone call repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden's son, according to people familiar with the matter, urging Volodymyr Zelensky about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani"

( take eight shots )

Yet, with the record having been set straight by both the transcript and Zelensky, and the CIA whistleblower's credibility in tatters, Democrats appear to have passed the point of no return - with a few realizing that the GOP-controlled Senate could flip the impeachment effort on Democrats by airing the Bidens' dirty laundry along with other 'matters' in a very public trial going into the 2020 election.

Conspiracies everywhere

After Robert Mueller and the FBI took more than three years to prove an actual "conspiracy theory" that Trump was 'colluding' with Russia, the Times describes documented Ukrainian election meddling in 2016 as just that - writing that the whistleblower "detailed key aspects of the [Trump-Zelensky] conversation, including Mr. Trump's request for investigations into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, and a conspiracy theory about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election. "

( take a shot )

As a matter of fact, a DNC operative did coordinate with Ukrainians to meddle in the 2016 election to benefit Hillary Clinton, as has been by now widely reported . Veteran Democratic operative Alexandra Chalupa worked directly with the Ukrainian Embassy in the United States, along with investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, to target Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort according to Politico .

" They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa ," said Andrii Telizhenko, who worked in the embassy at the time, adding "the embassy worked very closely with" Chalupa.

"If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump's involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September," Telizhenko recalls Chalupa saying.

Thanks to Chalupa's outreach on behalf of Clinton and the DNC, Artem Sytnyk , Ukraine's Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU - which Joe Biden helped form) and lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko released a "black ledger" containing off-book payments to Manafort . In December of 2018, a Ukrainian court ruled that Sytnyk and Leshchenko " acted illegally " by releasing Manafort's name, according to the Kiev post ( Keep reading for an interesting Biden connection ).

There's your "conspiracy theory."

Mute Button , 1 minute ago link

Advise to the Democrats.

Drop the chalupa.

Warthog777 , 4 minutes ago link

visibly shaken... Reminds me of "I strenously object"...

You gotta be shittin me.

ConqueringFools , 12 minutes ago link

LOL haha.......American leadership are a bunch of eunuchs! My god.......our inner cities are basically third world shitholes.........we've got ****** shaboons slashing patrons throats in McDonald's and some grown man snowflake is "visibly shaken" by a goddamn nothing burger of a phone call between Presidents? Fuk outta here!

Obi-jonKenobi , 13 minutes ago link

It's being reported this week by the AP and others that Energy Secretary Rick Perry was involved in pressuring Ukrainian president Zelensky to place hand-picked allies of Trump on the board of the state gas company, Naftogaz, in order to steer business to insiders that have given big bucks to Trump and the Republicans, insiders like Soviet-born businessmen Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman whose company, Global Energy Producers LLC, made massive donations to Trump and the Republicans and which stood to make millions supplying liquid natural gas to Ukraine if allies placed on the board of Naftogaz could steer business to them. And Trump's so-called lawyer, Rudy Giuliani was in the middle of this facilitating the connections at the same time he was helping Trump pressure the new president to investigate the Bidens and other matters such as Manafort and CrowdStrike.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that Don the Con and his band of thieves were involved in their own corruption in Ukraine even as they hypocritically pushed for an investigation into the Bidens. And although this is mostly the kind of corruption that involves insiders who made large political donations getting the payoff they hoped for - which is, unfortunately, perfectly legal - it wandered into possible criminal territory when it involved removing from positions of power people seen as obstructions to this attempt to gorge at the trough. That included the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and members of the supervisory board of the state gas company, Naftogaz, who are supposed to help root out corruption. Not if Trumptards have their way!

And, laughably, Trump is using concern for corruption in the Ukrainian government as his cover for pushing for an investigation of the Bidens. And he hopes to get away with it with his usual barrage of chutzpah and lies . . . and with the help of the ignorant rubes that support him.

Confucious 222 , 11 minutes ago link

From 1999-2014, Ukraine donated more money to the Clinton Foundation than any other foreign country.

Biden, Pelosi, Kerry, & Romney all have children working for Ukrainian gas companies.

And all of the people I mentioned want Trump impeached. Are you connecting the dots yet?

i poop pink ice cream , 11 minutes ago link

"Meddling" in the U.S. election? 99% of the "meddling" comes from the the Israelis. When do they get called on the carpet?

Justapleb , 15 minutes ago link

Stop calling them whistleblowers.

They are alleged hearsay accusers. And we have the ******* TRANSCRIPT.

We are out of our minds. A person who did not hear the conversation, who did not read the transcript, is put before us instead of the transcript itself - and acting like they need witness protection.

Clown World.

blindfaith , 19 minutes ago link

ATTENTION TROLLS:

Rudy – For years Obama had a pay for play operation in his administration and it's disgusting and one of the reasons they're fighting so hard – If Biden comes out, so does Clinton come out and about three others. This goes right to the top of the Obama administration and the administration that says, 'I didn't have scandals' will be the most scandal ridden administration in our history. Obama didn't care about ethics. He didn't care otherwise it wouldn't happen.

Joe – That's right

Rudy – A Vice President should have been stopped from doing this by a President who had the slightest bit of integrity. But a Chicago 'pol' like Obama – pay for play eight times – millions of dollars to your Vice President [Biden] and hundreds of millions of dollars to your Secretary of State [Hillary Clinton]. They just bought the offices. Crooks.

Warm milk, hankies, and blankets for the trolls.

jmagoo , 23 minutes ago link

OK so I have come to the conclusion:

USA is made up of largely people who will vote Trump back in 2020, but because of this Democrats have no ability to control themselves and so lies, hear say, and just general jackholery will be their direction. Fine. I am cool with it bitch all you want, have fun making up lies to make yourselves feel better but most of the rest of us. We just feel bad for you, its like an emotional break down of someone you know. It's kinda scary, but at the same time I am no longer interested in rebuking you for being "off" you just have to seek help at this point. As for Trump, he's not the greatest president but the insanity of what's gone on has forced him to be our choice again because no party is willing to put forth middle of the ground candidates that appeal to the country as whole.

Remember this we're all Americans and we're just worried about you TDS people at this point, you need help. And Trump would be best to put the entire congress on hiatus as did Boris Johnson until the next election.

Moneycircus , 20 minutes ago link

Huey Long - there was a Democrat who at least had a platform.

Ex post facto logic says he was assassinated because he was a populist or worse. ********. He was assassinated because he appealed to the people and was thus a threat.

https://youtu.be/hphgHi6FD8k

KuriousKat , 23 minutes ago link

There was a time Dems in Government stood for something..

In examining the CIA's past and present use of the U.S. media, the Committee finds two reasons for concern. The first is the potential, inherent in covert media operations, for manipulating or incidentally misleading the American public. The second is the damage to the credibility and independence of a free press which may be caused by covert relationships with the U.S. journalists and media organizations.
Sen.Frank Church

He became an important figure in American foreign policy and chaired the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1979 to 1981. He was one of the first Senators to publicly oppose the Vietnam War , and co-sponsored legislation to curtail the war. In 1975, Church led the Church Committee, which inspired the passage of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the creation of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence .

WTF happened to Them...

They took a beautiful thing and turned it against us..unrecognizable..

[Oct 09, 2019] The only 'Russian bots' to meddle in US elections belonged to Democrat-linked 'experts'

Another day, another false flag operation...
Notable quotes:
"... New Knowledge's victory lap was short-lived. On December 19, a New York Times story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created a fake army of Russian bots, as well as fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama's 2017 special election for the US Senate. ..."
"... Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake Twitter accounts with Russian names, and had them follow Moore. They also operated several Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded voters to support a write-in candidate instead. ..."
"... In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had "orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet. ..."
Oct 09, 2019 | www.rt.com

US cyber-security experts have blamed Russia for meddling in American elections since 2016. Now it has emerged that authors of a Senate report on 'Russian' meddling actually ran a "false flag" meddling operation themselves. A week before Christmas, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report accusing Russia of depressing Democrat voter turnout by targeting African-Americans on social media. Its authors, New Knowledge, quickly became a household name.

Described by the New York Times as a group of "tech specialists who lean Democratic," New Knowledge has ties to both the US military and intelligence agencies. Its CEO and co-founder Jonathon Morgan previously worked for DARPA, the US military's advanced research agency. His partner, Ryan Fox, is a 15-year veteran of the National Security Agency who also worked as a computer analyst for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Their unique skill sets have managed to attract the eye of investors, who pumped $11 million into the company in 2018 alone. Morgan and Fox have struck gold in the "Russiagate" racket, which sprung into being after Hillary Clinton blamed Moscow for Donald Trump's presidential victory in 2016. Morgan, for example, is one of the developers of the Hamilton 68 Dashboard, the online tool that purports to monitor and expose narratives being pushed by the Kremlin on Twitter. The dashboard is bankrolled by the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy – a collection of Democrats and neoconservatives funded in part by NATO and USAID.

It is worth noting that the 600 "Russia-linked" Twitter accounts monitored by the dashboard are not disclosed to the public, making it impossible to verify its claims. This inconvenience has not stopped Hamilton 68 from becoming a go-to source for hysteria-hungry journalists, however.

From the way it was formed to the secrecy of its "methods" to the blatantly false assumptions on which its claims rest, "Hamilton68" is probably the single most successful media fraud & US propaganda campaign I've seen since I've been writing about politics. It's truly shocking.

-- Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 22, 2018
Troll hunters or bot farm?

New Knowledge's victory lap was short-lived. On December 19, a New York Times story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created a fake army of Russian bots, as well as fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama's 2017 special election for the US Senate.

Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake Twitter accounts with Russian names, and had them follow Moore. They also operated several Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded voters to support a write-in candidate instead.

In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had "orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet."

It worked. The botnet claim made a splash on social media and was further amplified by Mother Jones , which based its story on expert opinion from Morgan's other dubious creation, Hamilton 68.

Russian trolls tracked by #Hamilton68 are taking an interest in the AL Senate race. What a surprise. pic.twitter.com/Nz1PNmuT2R

-- Jonathon Morgan (@jonathonmorgan) November 10, 2017

Ultimately, Moore ended up losing the race by a miniscule 1.5 percentage points – making his opponent Doug Jones the first Democrat to represent Alabama in the US Senate in over 25 years.

Money trail and weak apologies

Things got even weirder when it turned out that Scott Shane, the author of the Times piece, had known about the meddling for months, because he spoke at an event where the organizers boasted about it!

Shane was one of the speakers at a meeting in September, organized by American Engagement Technologies, a group run by Mikey Dickerson, President Barack Obama's former tech czar. Dickerson explained how AET spent $100,000 on New Knowledge's campaign to suppress Republican votes, " enrage" Democrats to boost turnout, and execute a "false flag" to hurt Moore. He dubbed it "Project Birmingham."

This gets even weirder: NYT reporter @ScottShaneNYT , who broke the Alabama disinfo op story, learned of it in early September when he spoke at an off-the-record event organized by one of the firms that perpetrated the deception https://t.co/gIAytOh2yy

-- Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) December 28, 2018

The money for the venture came from a $750,000 contribution to AET by Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn and a big Democrat donor. Once that emerged, Hoffman offered a public apology for his connection to the shady operation, but insisted that he didn't know what his money was going towards.

" I find the tactics that have been recently reported highly disturbing ," Hoffman said in a statement.

"For that reason, I am embarrassed by my failure to track AET -- the organization I did support -- more diligently as it made its own decisions to perhaps fund projects that I would reject."

As for Shane, he told BuzzFeed that he was "shocked" by the revelations, but had signed a nondisclosure agreement at the request of AET, so he could not talk about it further.

Spin and denial

Shane's spin on the tale was that New Knowledge "imitated Russian tactics" as part of an "experiment" that had a budget of "only" $100,000 and had no effect on the election. Yet these tactics are only considered "Russian" because New Knowledge and similar outfits said so! Moreover, New Knowledge's budget in Alabama was greater than the reported amount spent by "Russians" on the 2016 US presidential election, yet Moscow's alleged meddling was supposed to be decisive, while New Knowledge's failed?

New Knowledge responded to the Times story by insisting that the "false flag" operation was actually a benign research project. In a statement posted on Twitter, the company's CEO claimed that its activities during the Alabama Senate race were conducted in order to "better understand and report on the tactics and effects of social media disinformation."

My statement on this evening's NYT article. pic.twitter.com/lsJuRqiffL

-- Jonathon Morgan (@jonathonmorgan) December 20, 2018

Morgan emphasized that he in no way took part in an influence campaign, and warned people not to mischaracterize his "research."

While the New York Times seemed satisfied with his explanation, others pointed out that Morgan had used the Hamilton 68 dashboard to give his "false flag" more credibility – misleading the public about a "Russian" influence campaign that he knew was fake.

New Knowledge's protestations apparently didn't convince Facebook, which announced last week that five accounts linked to New Knowledge – including Morgan's – had been suspended for engaging in "coordinated inauthentic behavior."

Meddlers unmasked

The final nail in the coffin of Morgan's story came on Thursday, when the leaked secret after-action report from "Project Birmingham" was published online, showing that those behind the Alabama campaign knew perfectly well what they were doing and why.

BREAKING: Here's the after-action report from the AL Senate disinfo campaign.

**an exclusive release by @JeffGiesea https://t.co/VXrCeb8LAD

-- Jeff Giesea🌿 (@jeffgiesea) December 28, 2018

So, it turns out there really was meddling in American democracy by "Russian bots." Except they weren't run from Moscow or St. Petersburg, but from the offices of Democrat operatives chiefly responsible for creating and amplifying the "Russiagate" hysteria over the past two years in a textbook case of psychological projection.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

[Oct 09, 2019] Here they go again Senate reheats 'Russian meddling' claims, using assertions as evidence -- RT USA News

Notable quotes:
"... "much of this Volume's analysis is derived from" ..."
"... "Russian troll farm" ..."
"... "Intelligence Community Assessment," ..."
"... "Strategic Communications Center of Excellence." ..."
"... "a cybersecurity company dedicated to protecting the public sphere from disinformation attacks." ..."
"... "orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet." ..."
"... "Russian" ..."
"... "significantly informed the Committee's understanding of Russia's social media-predicated attack against our democracy," ..."
"... Ever since Hillary Clinton blamed "Russian hackers" ..."
Oct 09, 2019 | www.rt.com

Here they go again: Senate reheats 'Russian meddling' claims, using assertions as evidence 9 Oct, 2019 00:05 Get short URL Here they go again: Senate reheats 'Russian meddling' claims, using assertions as evidence Here they go again: Senate reheats 'Russian meddling' claims, using assertions as evidence Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee look at a placard showing 'Russian social media manipulation' at a November 1, 2017 hearing. © REUTERS/Joshua Roberts Follow RT on RT The Senate Intelligence Committee's final report on 'Russian interference' in the 2016 US presidential election is short on evidence and long on reheated assertions and innuendo from 'experts' exposed as actual election meddlers. There is little new in the 85-page , partially redacted document released on Tuesday, that has not been made public by the committee previously – including the accusations that "Russia" focused on stoking anger and resentment among African-Americans, for example .

There is a reason for that. By the committee's own admission, "much of this Volume's analysis is derived from" the work of two Technical Advisory Groups (TAG), which produced two public reports back in December 2018, to the same kind of fawning press coverage the report is receiving now.

NEW: The Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections involved using social media content to mostly target African-Americans, a new Senate committee report concludes. https://t.co/7BRUmiG18T

-- NPR (@NPR) October 8, 2019

Not surprisingly, the report's "findings" are being cited as conclusive proof that Democrats were right and President Donald Trump was wrong about 2016, Russia, Ukraine and the US presidential election.

The Senate Intelligence Committee unveiled a sweeping new bipartisan report showing Russian efforts to boost Trump's White House bid on social media during the 2016 U.S. election https://t.co/TUjUhBdMnc

-- POLITICO (@politico) October 8, 2019

The only trouble with that is that the committee provides no actual evidence for any of its claims – only assertions. For example, their description of the Internet Research Agency – the "Russian troll farm" – is basically copied over from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of a dozen of its alleged members. Yet a federal judge presiding over the case ruled back in May that allegations cannot be treated as established evidence or conclusion, coming close to finding Mueller's prosecutors in contempt.

Another nail in Russiagate coffin? Federal judge destroys key Mueller report claim READ MORE: Another nail in Russiagate coffin? Federal judge destroys key Mueller report claim

Another document presented as evidence is the January 2017 "Intelligence Community Assessment," the disingenuously named work of a small group of people, hand-picked by the Obama administration's DNI and chiefs of the CIA, FBI and NSA – all of whom, except for the NSA, have since been implicated in what seems to be a campaign to spy on Trump, delegitimize his presidency, and have him impeached.

The Senate report also quotes testimonies from Obama aides such as Ben Rhodes – helpfully redacted of course – Gen. Philip Breedlove, the NATO commander who tried to set off a war with Russia; professional "Russian bot" hunters like Clint Watts and Thomas Rid; and NATO's "Strategic Communications Center of Excellence."

The best part, however, has to be the reliance on New Knowledge, presented as "a cybersecurity company dedicated to protecting the public sphere from disinformation attacks." In reality, New Knowledge was exposed by the New York Times as the outfit that actually ran bots and disinformation operations during the 2017 Alabama special election for the US Senate, targeting Republican candidate Roy Moore on behalf of Democrats – while blaming Russia! In an internal memo, New Knowledge executives boasted how they "orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet."

The other TAG, led by British academics and researchers, found that the activity of 'Russian trolls' increased after the election – by 238 percent on Instagram, 59 percent on Facebook, 52 percent on Twitter, and 84 percent on YouTube. So it was influencing elections retroactively?

Left unsaid was that the absolute quantity of "Russian" posts was minuscule, a proverbial drop in the bucket compared to the billions of social media posts generated and consumed by the US electorate during the campaign.

Also on rt.com Worst meddler ever? 'Russian' Facebook ads 'trolling US election' went completely unseen

These are the people who "significantly informed the Committee's understanding of Russia's social media-predicated attack against our democracy," as this week's report puts it.

Ever since Hillary Clinton blamed "Russian hackers" for the revelations of corruption within the DNC in July 2016, the Washington establishment has been eager to blame Moscow for all the ills of the US political system, real or imagined. The Senate Intelligence Committee's report seems to be nothing more than an attempt to reheat the long-cold corpse of a conspiracy that should have been buried with the Mueller Report and allowed to rest in peace.

[Oct 07, 2019] Karl Muck wasn't the only musician arrested and interned as an emery alien during WW I

Oct 07, 2019 | www.unz.com

Johnny Walker Read , says: October 7, 2019 at 1:09 pm GMT

@Logan

it's quite amazing that nothing similar happened only two decades later in WWII

Oh it did, we just changed the target race to the Japanese, as like Dan states, the German race had been sufficiently castigated in the previous war, never to recover.

Our Supreme Allied Commander was said to have been of Jewish German descent (((Eisenhauer))).
And yes, we know with which blood line he sided with.

Observator , says: October 7, 2019 at 1:55 pm GMT
Just one item about the Statue of Liberty. Its association with Emma Lazarus' later ode to immigration has eclipsed the original meaning of the great monument. French sculptor Bartholdi named his creation "Goddess Liberty enlightening the world." He conceived the idea for the statue on July Fourth 1865 to commemorate the suppression of the slaveholder insurrection two months earlier; Lazarus' poem was not added until1903. Bartholdi proposed to give the statue to the people of America as an enduring monument to their successful struggle to preserve the world's sole experiment in republican self-government.

Americans of 1865 understood it was their responsibility to maintain the free institutions of their republic as an example to the world, not to function as an asylum for its poor and downtrodden. It was the world's peoples' task to fight free government in their own homelands, not to relocate to ours. While Europe's despots cheered the collapse of America's first republic in 1861, there was an immense outpouring of support among the common folk for the Union and the hope for democracy in their own nations that it inspired. Mindful of the 1848 republican revolutions that convulsed the Old Word, British and European rulers dared not endorse the Confederate oligarchy, lest they trigger a new round of class warfare in their own restive kingdoms.

Mass immigration of non-English speaking people was allowed for the first time in the corrupt laissez-faire Gilded Age that followed the Civil War because the victorious northern capitalists needed vast supplies of cheap labor to do the hard manual and industrial work that Americans did not wish to do, having fought a costly war to abolish the most grotesque form of exploitation of labor, and which four million ex-slaves could no longer be compelled to do without wages.

Republic , says: October 7, 2019 at 2:17 pm GMT
It seems that Karl Muck wasn't the only musician arrested and interned as an emery alien during WW I. Another conductor, Ernst Kunwald of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra was also arrested.

In fact so many other musicians were arrested that Karl Muck was able to conduct a full symphony orchestra when he made his last performance at the Interment camp at Fort Oglethorpe , Georgia

It is highly likely that those musicians were denounced by their artistic rivals in order to gain advancement

Poupon Marx , says: October 7, 2019 at 7:17 pm GMT
@Dennis Gannon "We can learn from those mistakes."

We have not, up to the present time ..

Old Palo Altan , says: October 7, 2019 at 7:36 pm GMT
Curious that so far no one has mentioned just how magnificent a conductor actually Muck was. His version of Parsifal, available on CD from I think Naxos is a supreme revelation of the difference between a good conductor like, say, Karajan, and a sublimely great one like Muc...

[Oct 07, 2019] The Karl Muck Scandal by Fordham T. Smith

History repeats, first as tragedy, then as farce...
Oct 07, 2019 | www.unz.com

It seems that Burrage initially approached this project with only a superficial understanding of her subject matter. The subtitle of her work is Classical Music and Xenophobia in World War I America . The dust jacket blurb tips her hand even more (or, more likely, that of her publishers):

One of the cherished narratives of American history is that of the Statue of Liberty welcoming immigrants to it shores. Accounts of the exclusion and exploitation of Chinese immigrants in the late nineteenth century and Japanese internment during World War II tell a darker story of American immigration. Less well known, however, is the treatment of German-Americans and German nationals in the United States during World War I. Initially accepted and even welcomed into American society, at the outbreak of the war this group would face rampant intolerance and anti-German hysteria.

From such vain moral posturing, one can conclude that this book will amount to yet another blunt instrument with which the Left can pummel supporters of President Trump for wishing to build a wall on the Mexican border and limit non-white immigration. If we can shame people for past xenophobia, according to this strategy, perhaps we can conquer xenophobia today and allow the huddled masses of future Democrats to keep streaming into America. (Stephen Jay Gould attempted a similar kind of history-shaming – only with psychometrics – in his thoroughly debunked The Mismeasure of Man. )

Burrage hits a snag, however, when she reveals Muck's true character. He was the most celebrated conductor in America at the time. Under his leadership, the BSO became the nation's leading orchestra, which aided greatly in keeping Boston at the forefront of American high society and culture. Affable, charismatic, and cultured, Muck was extremely popular in Boston, and, shortly after arriving at the behest of financier and BSO founder Henry Lee Higginson in 1906, became a de facto member of Boston's aristocracy.

This aristocracy was so famous, it had a name: the Boston Brahmins . Boston was also home to a very large German population and was ground zero for Germanophilia in New England. German businesses, German newspapers, German food, and German culture were highly visible in Beantown in the early twentieth century. Of course, everybody loved German classical music, which Muck was all too happy to provide.

Higginson was Muck's biggest booster, despite not being German himself. They were close friends who had much in common, culturally and ideologically. Both were highly aristocratic and conservative. Higginson had spent many years in Germany and Austria in his youth studying piano, and was fluent in German. In a peculiar coincidence, both men had similar scars on their right cheeks. Muck received his from a fencing duel in his youth, and Higginson from a Confederate saber during the Civil War.

But who was Karl Muck? He was a highly educated man of world-class talent who was proud of his German roots, possessed nationalistic sympathies for his nation of birth, and held the realistic opinions on race which were common in his day. This was, after all, the heyday of writers such as Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard, and Henry Adams. Race realism, as well as cultural chauvinism and a healthy support for eugenics, were de rigueur in educated circles back then. And this included a relatively mild form of anti-Semitism among the still-strong WASP elites:

[Muck's] racial views also affected his actions and judgment. When composer Ernest Bloch presented his Three Jewish Poems for inclusion on the Boston Symphony program, Muck was reluctant to debut the work if Bloch did not change the title. Bloch supposedly responded, "Dr. M[uck] you speak exactly like my Jewish friends, who advised me to change the title for obvious reasons." Bloch defended the title of his piece, to which Muck replied, "If there were more Jews like you, there would be less anti-Semitism."

Higginson was worse in this regard – or better, depending on your perspective. He supported immigration restriction in order to keep undesirables out of America and was a race patriot almost as much as he was an American patriot. He was a leading member of the Immigrant Restriction League, and was well ensconced in the national power circles of the day, being cousins with fellow immigration hawk Senator Henry Cabot Lodge . Higginson used his contacts in government to bust musician's unions. He also wrangled with Jewish attorney and future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis , who sought to curtail Higginson's various business interests in the name of trust-busting. And this, according to Burrage, informed Higginson's negative opinions of Jews.

Not surprisingly, Burrage considers Higginson's racial views "flawed," and then describes Higginson and the Immigrant Restriction League like so:

The league also used pseudo-scientific dogma to divide European white men into biological categories, classifying eastern Europeans into the most inferior type to justify their arguments. Its view of nationalism was built on an "ideology of kinship to enthrone their own tribe and oppress others." It justified discrimination, arguing that America could "improve its race" by selecting immigrants based on "appropriate national origins." The league was influenced by eugenicist Madison Grant, who wrote The Passing of the Great Race (1916), which promoted a theory of "Nordic" racial supremacy and advocated the separation or removal of all "worthless" and "unfit" types. It was inspired by scientist Robert DeCourcy Ward, who publicized his view that "science decrees restrictions on the new immigration for the conservation of the 'American race."' Higginson's father-in-law, Harvard professor Louis Agassiz, was a prolific writer and teacher on the topic of scientific racism, believing that races were distinct and unequal and could be classified based on climatic zones. Boston's upper classes feared that foreigners would replace their own native stock, and they worried about "biological defeat." Immigration restriction was a "phase of national defense" against "the strange invaders who seemed so grave a threat to their class, their region, their country, and their race."

After stepping back from this and having a cigarette, I believe most of us on the Dissident Right will conclude that we were all born a century and a half too late.

Getting over that, there is so much to unpack here, one hardly knows where to begin. Yes, there's the stunned respect we all must have for this Higginson fellow, who was related to both Henry Cabot Lodge and Louis Agassiz (whom Gould heartily denounced in Mismeasure ), and who was able to speak in defense of white, ethnocentric interests so candidly. The Boston Brahmins had every reason to worry about biological defeat; we're entering the jaws of that defeat today. Also, this passage should be met with some sadness regarding the hidebound chauvinism whites used to have toward other whites. This attitude will have to be discarded entirely for whites to have enough solidarity to thrive in the next century.

Most apropos to The Karl Muck Scandal , however, is how Burrage attempts to paint Karl Muck as the victim of xenophobia. Of course, he was. He was a perfectly innocent man when federal authorities arrested and incarcerated him in March 1918. But Muck and Higginson were Dissident Rightists back when the not-so-Dissident Right ruled the roost in America. So Burrage is in effect going to bat for someone on the Right in order to strike a blow for the Left. How's that for irony?

The story undergoes a few more twists before completely unraveling. If there is a villain in this book, it is New York socialite Mrs. William (Lucie) Jay, who really didn't like Germans. Jay, whose deceased husband was descended from early American statesman John Jay, tirelessly lobbied for Muck's dismissal from the BSO all throughout the war. Muck hired too many German musicians, or he played too much German music, according to her. The woman organized committees to ban all German music. She tried to prevent the BSO from playing in New York. She spread false rumors about Muck in order to discredit him. She hurled insults at him as often as possible. She called for boycotts. She accused him of supporting the German military effort. She also (ahem) muck -raked his life, searching for sexual impropriety. As anti-German feeling in America grew more and more intense, Jay's attacks on Muck grew more and more strident.

Here she is at her hysterical best:

Rather a thousand times that the orchestral traditions fade from our lives than one hour be added to the war's duration by clinging to this last tentacle of the German octopus!

Then there was the "Star-Spangled Banner" non-scandal which got the attention of the entire country. In October 1917, the BSO had received numerous requests to play the "Star-Spangled Banner" before a concert in Providence, Rhode Island. Since it was late and the programs had already been printed, Higginson decided to ignore the requests. The song hadn't yet become the national anthem (which wouldn't happen until 1931) and didn't quite fit in with the pieces the BSO was slated to play that evening, anyway. Of course, Higginson didn't bother to tell Muck about this, and allowed the oblivious maestro to conduct a concert free of star-spangled banners.

In an astonishingly brazen instance of "fake news," John Rathom, the editor of the Providence Journal, then accused Muck of deliberately refusing to play the patriotic anthem because of his German sympathies. Not only did this story later appear in newspapers all across the country, but Rathom kept the momentum going with even more accusations:

The zealous newspaperman spread reports among his readership that Muck was pro-German and a friend of Kaiser Wilhelm. Rathom distorted the facts, claiming to uncover foreign espionage plots that were later revealed to be fraudulent. Once such plot suggested that Muck intended to destroy American munitions factories. On November 21, 1917, the New York Times reported that Rathom "thrilled and enthused" seven hundred members of the Pilgrim Publicity Association at the Boston City Club with a story of "German spies in Boston" outlining his great campaign against them.

This damaged Muck's reputation overnight, and Lucie Jay later used it relentlessly to incite violent hatred against him. (Burrage speculates that Jay and Rathom colluded in Muck's character assassination, but no one knows for sure.) Thousands of influential Americans were now onboard Lucie Jay's muck-up-Muck train. People were calling for the conductor's assassination, internment, or deportation. Crowds as far away as Baltimore were chanting "Kill Muck! Kill Muck!" It got so bad that the authorities had to step in to determine if Muck was indeed a dangerous enemy alien. In all cases, they found no evidence of wrongdoing – but not for lack of trying. Some investigators feared that Muck was putting coded messages in his musical scores. Others theorized that he kept a disassembled radio transmitter in his Maine summer house with which he signaled German U-boats. (The apparatus belonged to the landlord, and was unbeknownst to Muck.)

Regardless, we should remember that this was a period when the American war machine was churning out absolutely vicious anti-German propaganda – and the people were beginning to believe it and take part in the suppression of all things German. Violence against German-Americans became quite common during this time. So these false accusations from Jay and Rathom threatened to have deadly consequences.

A First World War-era anti-German propaganda poster A German-American after being whipped, tarred, and feathered in August 1918

Despite her hypermodern moral posturing, Burrage does provide useful scholarship. Most notable in The Karl Muck Scandal is her well-researched contention that Lucie Jay was not all that she was cracked up to be. Jay may indeed have been an American patriot. She may also have been as anti-German as advertised. But her real motivations behind ruining Karl Muck's life were far pettier. She was on the Board of Directors of the New York Philharmonic (NYP), and was jealous of the BSO's star conductor. Other than the brief period from 1909 to 1911, when Gustav Mahler waved their baton, the Knickerbockers really did play second fiddle to the Celtics back then – and that bothered a lot of wealthy and powerful people in Gotham. Taking out the NYP's top rival in the most literal sense became Lucie Jay's idée fixe throughout the wa,r and ultimately made her the Tonya Harding of classical music.

Burrage reveals another reason for Jay's hatred for Muck, and this one's even pettier. Yeah, it was all about money:

Jay had even deeper motives for her persistent attacks on the Boston Symphony that cut to the heart of her own economic security. In September of 1906, her brother Hermann had passed away. Estranged from his wife, much of his estate was bequeathed to Mrs. Jay and her brother Charles. Mrs. Jay acquired a large share in the North German Lloyd Steamship Line and presumably railroad stocks from the Vanderbilt interests as well. It made logical sense to support her family's interests and further their progress within the United States, which was threatened, as we shall see, by political forces directly related to the BSO.

And what were these political forces? None other than Henry Lee Higginson and his powerful anti-immigration allies in government. Since the 1880s, millions of immigrants, many of whom were Eastern European Jews, had been streaming into America from Europe on steamships, making Mrs. William Jay and her family richer and richer by the mile. Immigration was Mrs. Jay's bagel and cream cheese, as it were, and Higginson with all his race realism and polite anti-Semitism was threatening to spoil the bar mitzvah. That's basically it. So, let's now appreciate another level of irony in which Burrage is forced to cast a pro-immigration harpy like Jay as the villain in a drama that's ostensibly pro-immigration.

Unbelievable as it sounds, there's even more irony to this story. Lucie Jay, as it turns out, was herself German! Her maiden name was Oelrich – a fact she obscured beneath her husband's time-honored and quite Anglo last name. It seems to me that the obsession behind Jay's Muck-hate was a form of ethnocentrism in reverse, the kind of contempt born only from familiarity. I can't prove this, but it seems to be the prime motivator here. America was pulled into a war with Germany, and Jay felt especially betrayed by her own people whenever they expressed sympathy for the enemy. And in Muck's case, this was at least half-true. Before America's entry into the war, he had actively supported his homeland and was on excellent terms with the German ambassador in Washington. He also never applied for American citizenship and never denounced Germany. For a person like Lucie Jay, who wanted to erase or hide everything about her that was German, what Karl Muck did (and did not do) must have seemed like treason.

The story could have ended here. Worn down by years of slander, libel, hostility, and death threats, Karl Muck and his wife Anita decided to leave for Germany. He resigned from the BSO in March 1918 and was preparing to depart when he was hit with the bombshell news that the Massachusetts District Attorney would not let him leave. Apparently, the DA was intrigued by Lucie Jay's previous unproven accusations of sexual impropriety, and felt that Muck may have a skeleton rattling around in his closet after all. And after a thorough investigation by the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), they found it. Muck had been having an affair with a 22-year-old mezzo-soprano named Rosamond Young.

This wasn't a mere summer fling; he was madly in love with her, so much so that he wrote her love letters and promised to divorce his wife for her. Yes, he was a married man in his late 50s. Yes, under normal circumstances, this would be quite the scandal. But it hardly amounts to law-breaking. Yet the BOI and powerful anti-German elements in the federal government – especially hardline Attorney General and rabid Hun-hater A. Mitchell Palmer – were determined to make it so. And under what contrived pretenses did they finally nab Muck?

Well, Muck (kind of) violated the Comstock Act of 1873 , which forbade sending anything obscene or immoral by US Mail. Apparently, sappy quotes such as this qualified as "obscene":

But can't you see, my darling, how much harder it is for me to renounce the love that grew between us so sublimely? Must we, for the sake of foolish sentiments that are imposed on us by others, foreswear the love that is divine and inexpressible by common language? No, a thousand times, no! You are mine and I am your slave and so I must remain.

He also (sort of) violated the Mann White Slavery Act of 1910 , which prohibited transporting women or girls across state lines "for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose." Muck had apparently "abducted" Young every time he traveled with her out of state with the BSO to perform.

Such flimsy reasons to arrest a man may seem ridiculous today, but they were deadly serious back then. Yes, the US government needed to keep a lid on the immoral behavior of its citizens (if only it would do so today!), and yes, white slavery was quite the menace back then. However, Karl Muck's arrest clearly amounted to abuse.

And the abuse did not end there. American authorities then blackmailed Muck into being interned as an enemy alien at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia in return for their keeping quiet about his affair with Young. It was either that or going public and trying him as a sexual deviant in a Boston court – a humiliation that would ruin him, Young, and Anita regardless of the trial's outcome. Honorable gentleman that he was, Muck "was only too proud to shoulder" the burden of internment, and opted for the extended vacation in Georgia. He stayed there for a year and a half.

Then, while Muck was serving time behind barbed wire and machine guns in the sweltering Georgia heat, the US government reneged on its promise and allowed the Boston press to publicize his affair and his love letters to Young anyway. This caused nearly all of what remained of Muck's fan base to abandon him. The Boston Brahmins did so as well, likely because distancing themselves from Muck would keep the heat off their own sexual indiscretions, of which, according to Burrage, there were many. Unfortunately, Higginson was counted among this number – although in his case he seemed to be acting more out of wartime American patriotism than sexual hypocrisy.

If this weren't enough, the US authorities then stole all of Muck's assets. When they finally deported him nine months after the war, he went back to Germany flat broke.

Logan , says: October 5, 2019 at 1:36 pm GMT

Given the vitriolic hatred of Germans in WWI, it's quite amazing that nothing similar happened only two decades later in WWII. Best demonstrated by the family name of the #1 General of the Allied forces in Europe.
Dan Hayes , says: October 6, 2019 at 4:57 am GMT
@Logan Logan:

The remnants of America's still virulent World War I germanophobia had taken its toll. By World War II it had essentially totally eviscerated German-American culture and political strength. A job well-done by the Anglo-American establishment!

Carlton Meyer , says: Website October 7, 2019 at 4:14 am GMT
This short documentary mentions German-American persecution during World War I, and the massive numbers of draft dodgers. It also notes problems with the British royals German roots, including the fact the Kaiser was a first cousin and buddy of the King of England. Most Americans don't realize that Anglo-Saxons were Germans who immigrated to England!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/psXYMiBM1JE?feature=oembed

[Oct 06, 2019] How An Ever Sanctioning Superpower Is Losing Its Status

Notable quotes:
"... Combat crews of S-400, in Astrakhan Region, held combat exercises against hypersonic target-missiles "Favorit PM" and destroyed all targets. The statement of the press-service of Western Military District announced. The crews of S-400 Triumphs were from the units of air-defense of Leningrad Army of Air Force and Air Defense of Western Military District. ..."
Oct 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

" When Ukraine's Prosecutor Came After His Son's Sponsor Joe Biden Sprang Into Action | Main October 04, 2019 How An Ever Sanctioning Superpower Is Losing Its Status

The Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke yesterday at the yearly Valdai Discussion Club meeting in Sochi. A video with English translations and excerpts of the transcript are here .

With regards to the global system Putin made an interesting historic comparison:

in the 19th century they used to refer to a "Concert of Powers." The time has come to talk in terms of a global "concert" of development models, interests, cultures and traditions where the sound of each instrument is crucial, inextricable and valuable, and for the music to be played harmoniously rather than performed with discordant notes, a cacophony. It is crucial to consider the opinions and interests of all the participants in international life. Let me reiterate: truly mutually respectful, pragmatic and consequently solid relations can only built between independent and sovereign states .

Russia is sincerely committed to this approach and pursues a positive agenda.

The Concert of Europe was the balance of power system between 1815 to 1848 and from 1871 to 1914:

A first phase of the Concert of Europe, known as the Congress System or the Vienna System after the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), was dominated by five Great Powers of Europe: Prussia, Russia, Britain, France and Austria. [...] With the Revolutions of 1848 the Vienna system collapsed and, although the republican rebellions were checked, an age of nationalism began and culminated in the unifications of Italy (by Sardinia) and Germany (by Prussia) in 1871. The German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck re-created the Concert of Europe to avoid future conflicts escalating into new wars. The revitalized concert included France, Britain, Austria, Russia, and Italy with Germany as the main continental power economically and militarily.

Bismark's concert kept peace in a usually warring Europe for 43 years. If Putin wants to be the new Bismarck I am all for it.

Putin also made a rather extraordinary announcement :

Russian president Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow is helping China build a system to warn of ballistic missile launches.

Since the cold war, only the United States and Russia have had such systems, which involve an array of ground-based radars and space satellites. The systems allow for early spotting of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Speaking at an international affairs conference in Moscow on Thursday, Putin said Russia had been helping China develop such a system. He added that "this is a very serious thing that will radically enhance China's defence capability".

His statement signalled a new degree of defence cooperation between the two former Communist rivals that have developed increasingly close political and military ties while Beijing and Washington have sunk into a trade war.

That is as good for China as it is for Russia. China has an immediate need for such a system because the U.S. is taking a significantly more bellicose posture against it.

The U.S. left the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia to build a nuclear missiles force in South Asia that will aim at China. It is now looking for Asian countries in which it could station such weapons. China is using its economic might to prevent that but the U.S. is likely to succeed.

While China has capable weapons and can defend itself against a smaller attack the U.S. has about 20 times more nuclear warheads than China. It could use those in an overwhelming first strike to decapitate and destroy the Chinese state. An early warning system will give China enough time to detect such an attack and to launch its own nuclear deterrent against the U.S. The warning systems will thus checkmate the U.S. first strike capability.

Over the last two years Russia and China both unveiled hypersonic weapons. Currently the U.S. has neither such weapons nor any defensive system that can protect against these.

Russia was smart enough to develop both - the super fast offensive weapon and a defense against it. Via Andrei Martyanov we learn of a recent Russian press notice:

Translation: Combat crews of S-400, in Astrakhan Region, held combat exercises against hypersonic target-missiles "Favorit PM" and destroyed all targets. The statement of the press-service of Western Military District announced. The crews of S-400 Triumphs were from the units of air-defense of Leningrad Army of Air Force and Air Defense of Western Military District.

And what this "Favorit PM" missile-target complex is? Very simple, it is deeply modernized good ol' S-300 P series which allows to use missiles of types 5V55 which have their explosives removed and are capable of atmospheric maneuverable flight with the velocities of Mach=6 (in excess of 7,000 kilometers per hour). These are genuine hyper-sonic missile-targets and, evidently, and I don't have any reasons to doubt it, S-400 had very little problems shooting them down.

On top of the missile warning system China will also want to have that most capable air and missile defense system. Russia will make it a decent offer.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's talked a day earlier than Putin. His speech and the Q & A with him are here . The talk was mostly about the Middle East and Lavrov's tone was rather angry while he passed through a long list of U.S. sins in the region and beyond. There were also some interesting remarks about Turkey, Syria and the Ukraine. The most interesting passage was his response to a question about U.S. sanction against Russia to which some senators want to add even more. Lavrov said:

I have heard that Marco Rubio and Ben Cardin are two famous anti-Russia-minded members of the US Congress. I don't think that this implies that they have any foresight. Those with a more or less politically mature opinion of the situation should have realised long ago that the sanctions don't work in the direction they wanted them to work. I believe that they will never work. We have a territory and its riches that were bestowed on us by God and our ancestors, we have a feeling of personal dignity, and we also have the armed forces. This combination makes us very confident. I hope that economic development and all the investment that has been made and continues to be made will also pay off in the near future.

The U.S. loves to dish out sanctions left and right and the Trump administration has increased their use. But sanctions, especially unilateral ones, do not work. The U.S. has not recognized that because it has never assessed whether those sanctions fulfill their aims. A recent Government Accountability Office report found :

The Departments of the Treasury (Treasury), State (State), and Commerce (Commerce) each undertake efforts to assess the impacts of specific sanctions on the targets of those sanctions. [...] However, agency officials cited several difficulties in assessing sanctions' effectiveness in meeting broader U.S. policy goals , including challenges in isolating the effect of sanctions from other factors as well as evolving foreign policy goals. According to Treasury, State, and Commerce officials, their agencies have not conducted such assessments on their own.

The U.S. sanctions and sanctions and sanctions but never checked if sanctions work to the intended purpose. The efforts to sanction Russia have surely led to some unintended consequences. They are the reason why the alliance between China and Russia deepens every day. The U.S. has the exorbitant privilege of having its own currency being used as the international reserve. The sanctioning of U.S. dollar transactions is the reason why the U.S. is now losing it :

Russia's Rosneft has set the euro as the default currency for all its new export contracts including for crude oil, oil products, petrochemicals and liquefied petroleum gas, tender documents showed.

The switch from U.S. dollars, which happened in September according to the tender documents published on Rosneft's website, is set to reduce the state-controlled firm's vulnerability to potential fresh U.S. sanctions.

Washington has threatened to impose sanctions on Rosneft over its operations in Venezuela, a move which Rosneft says would be illegal.

Iran has taken comparable steps. It now sells oil to China and India in either local currencies. Other countries will surely learn from this and will also start to use other currencies for their energy purchases. As the transactions in dollars decrease they will also start to use other currencies for their reserves.

But the U.S. is not losing its financial or sole superpower status because of what China or Russia or Iran have done or do. It is losing it because its has made too many mistakes.

Those states who, like Russia, have done their homework will profit from it.

Posted by b on October 4, 2019 at 18:03 UTC | Permalink

Don Bacon , Oct 4 2019 18:33 utc | 1

next page " b: [Iran] now sells oil to China and India
Not to India, but India has said that that will change. India has to be deliberate because it is angling for a permanent seat in the UNSC.
Red Ryder , Oct 4 2019 18:35 utc | 2
Russia is building a network of missile defense, early warning, electronic weapons systems that will ring Greater Eurasia, not just the Russian Federation.

Russia may not produce smart phones and have their own Amazon or Alibaba scale e-commerce platform, but they have the world class defenses and leading edge counter-strike weapons that overwhelm anything the US has or will have for a decade to come.

Putin and Lavrov have laid out the diplomatic talking points for a safer, saner world.

And as the saying goes, if you don't talk to Lavrov, then you can talk with Shoigu (MOD).

The Russians have warned the West. Maybe the West is hard of hearing.
But what is clear, the rest of the world has heard it and they are gravitating toward Russia and China.

Don Bacon , Oct 4 2019 18:36 utc | 3
b: The U.S. sanctions and sanctions and sanctions . . .
It even sanctions itself, with tariffs. Free trade is dead!
Jackrabbit , Oct 4 2019 18:38 utc | 4
It is losing it because its has made too many mistakes.

A statement that deserves to be unpacked. I think at the core of the "mistakes" is a certain exceptionalist attitude which carries with it a combination of greed and hubris that promotes moral turpitude.

Kiza , Oct 4 2019 18:38 utc | 5
When the re-alignment of Russia and China started, I compared them to two soldiers, standing back-to-back, defensively pointing their guns forward. This is becoming an integrated continental defense now. Do you think that the two missile warning system will remain separate? It is sad that it had to come to this, but the AngloZionist mindset of domination and exploitation is what it is. Russia and China are not benevolent, but a big majority of countries prefers their economic approach to the Western military - bombed and killed if you do not comply with master's wishes. Simply, the West is a one-trick-pony in decline,
Beibdnn. , Oct 4 2019 18:39 utc | 6
As the U.S.A.slowly petrifies into an ever more fragile state of existence will the blow that finally causes it to fracture into a state of catastrophic impotence,( in it's eyes ) mean that it will die with a whimper or a bang?
Will the politik of the U.S.A.wake up before it's demise and re-orientate it's ethos so as to integrate with the new order instigated from the east or, like an enraged, immature being try to bring the rest of the world down with it?
I hope wiser minds than those in the Senate prevail. However I'm not really that optimistic that they are capable of serious self reflection.
Sally Snyder , Oct 4 2019 18:39 utc | 7
Here is an article that looks at a WikiLeaks document that explains how the United States Army is preparing to help Washington achieve its national strategic objectives:

https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/04/us-power-wielding-unconventional.html

This Army manual gives us a very clear view of how Washington uses manipulation through its influence on the World Bank, IMF, OECD and other "global" groups to wage unconventional warfare on any nation that doesn't share its view of how the world should function and that threatens America's control of the globe, including nations like Venezuela, Iran, Russia and North Korea.

Barovsky , Oct 4 2019 18:41 utc | 8
While China has capable weapons and can defend itself against a smaller attack the U.S. has about 20 times more nuclear warheads than China. It could use those in an overwhelming first strike to decapitate and destroy the Chinese state.

b, in a nuclear exchange, all it takes is a tiny fraction of the US/China/Russia's nuclear arsenals to finish off human civilisation, so numbers are irrelevant. Radiation knows no borders.

Paul Damascene , Oct 4 2019 18:46 utc | 9
Such contributors and Don Bacon, Grieved and Karlof1 might help me (dis)confirm this, but my impression is that Russia is or could make a case for selling only or primarily defensive weapons, to pretty much anyone ... with the effect and, say, the intent, to make wars of aggression, particularly pre-emptive strikes, much less tempting.

By shifting the field advantage towards defense, can it be plausibly proposed that Russia is working to make the world, overall, a safer place (even if their primary intent might be to make it safer from attacks initiated by the Unipolar Axis)?

Barovsky , Oct 4 2019 18:49 utc | 10
Posted by: Don Bacon | Oct 4 2019 18:36 utc | 3

b: The U.S. sanctions and sanctions and sanctions . . .
It even sanctions itself, with tariffs. Free trade is dead!

Don, there's NEVER been free trade, ever, no matter how far back you look in history. Free trade is imperial speak for the dominant economies dictating to the weaker.

William H Warrick , Oct 4 2019 18:50 utc | 11
These Globalist maniacs we are supposed to fear are unbelievably stupid.
Barovsky , Oct 4 2019 18:53 utc | 12
Posted by: Paul Damascene | Oct 4 2019 18:46 utc | 9
my impression is that Russia is or could make a case for selling only or primarily defensive weapons, to pretty much anyone ...

Isn't this exactly what they're doing. Martynov's writings reveal this proces in detail. It's a process that has its origins in WWII, a process that also has economic implications for Russia.

psychohistorian , Oct 4 2019 18:56 utc | 13
Thanks for the posting b

I agree with Barovsky in comment # 8 about the MAD nature of any nuclear war

I also want to posit that until China has its own air and missile defense system that Russia will use its to insure that any nuclear attack on China will result in global MAD

@ b who wrote
"
But the U.S. is not losing its financial or sole superpower status because of what China or Russia or Iran have done or do. It is losing it because its has made too many mistakes.
"
it is not the US necessarily that has the sole financial superpower status but the cult of global private finance ownership that is international and not just the US. And now that financial superpower status is not just being challenged from outside the Western nations of empire but from within as I continue to write about in the latest Open Thread. The US state of California has instantiated public finance for the state...it was signed into law this past Wednesday and the Western MSM has yet to report or comment on this game changing initiative.....speaks volumes to the threat it creates to global private finance because California has the 5th largest GDP in the world.

Casey , Oct 4 2019 19:09 utc | 14
I had been leaning toward the scenario where the Empire would, eventually, have to be put down in a violent confrontation, with a CBG sunk, but I am really feeling now, given the Singapore deal in the EAEU with India and Iran in the wings and the missile-shield over PRC and Rosneft selling product in Euros and Syria and Iran and Venezuela not being wiped out, that maybe, just maybe, the Empire will be left in the dust, with no climactic confrontation required. Maybe I am being naive, but there seems to be evidence to support that idea.
rt4 , Oct 4 2019 19:31 utc | 15
I wish since a while for an US American Gorbachov. This kind of person only is able to bring down the still running war economy. You would expect some hero like spiritual leader is necessary. The only thing what was special about the russian version for that job, he was young. Able to imagine a world without that permanent pressure, that everybody can feel in every cell of society. Of course, I hoped that trump maybe will do this, but he is twisted in his own challenges, already old, no real love for the people around him in general. The actual task is to lead down US from the sole position of power to become the most important country in the world. I hope US Americans can fell save one day without spending half of world's expanses on war, which equals that US budget is more than half for this reason. Who will be able to explain to voters, this isn't a sound deal?
Barovsky , Oct 4 2019 19:34 utc | 16
Posted by: Casey | Oct 4 2019 19:09 utc | 14

I'm loathe to posit this but if the US follows the demise of previous empires, then only war will accomplish this but perhaps, just perhaps the mold (or is that mould?) has been broken? After all, WWI and WWII came about because of competition between dominant economies and ultimately a redivision of the world into new blocs. But then again, the emergence of the USSR changed everything, the most momentous event of the 20th century. So perhaps we need a new USSR but this time a transnational USSR?

Barovsky , Oct 4 2019 19:37 utc | 17
PS: Let's call it WUSR, the World Union of Socialist Republics?
Summer Diaz , Oct 4 2019 19:39 utc | 18
My country is in a sorry state of affairs indeed, and listening to those around me, a common theme occurs, a wish that that slow-coming line in the sand which will truly mark the end of our illusion of exceptionalism would just get here and be done, so we, or those of us who are left afterward, can work through those damnable five stages of grieving, and begin the process of reconstruction and healing what remains.

Judging by comments made here, I've withdrawn hope of either party having anything to present the citizenry as a way out of our demise, so coast toward that necessary line we do. Is that too negative?

Barovsky , Oct 4 2019 19:39 utc | 19

Posted by: William H Warrick | Oct 4 2019 18:50 utc | 11

These Globalist maniacs we are supposed to fear are unbelievably stupid.

Stupid maybe but incredibly dangerous!

Kiza , Oct 4 2019 19:49 utc | 20
Slightly off topic, but is not the Western use of children for nefarious purposes increasing? From the first Hong King rioter who got shot for attacking a policeman, at all of his 14 years of age, through Epstein's sexual use of young girls for blackmail, to Greta and the climate change screaming kids. If you are younger than 18, and without or with weak parental oversight due to challenging economic conditions (struggle to survive), you are a fair game for the Western "elite". Earn some pocket money by burning down Hong Kong.

This will only increase, because it runs parallel to the tactics of turning adults against each other to miss to notice the "elite's" hand in all of their pockets. Fight each other people and send your children into the front lines. That is how they channel anger toward's "elite's" alternative-model enemies (China) and away from the real perpetrators and the real issues. This is why the images of Hong Kong riots overlap with the two minute hate from the movie 1984.

Finally, the Communist elite used children too, to do the dying in revolutions, to report their own parents the communist authorities and to severely punish ideological opponents. The use of children is nothing new, but it shows total moral depravity.

Don Bacon , Oct 4 2019 20:02 utc | 21
@ Sally Snyder 7
Thank you for that! And I thought Special Forces was only interested in assassinations.

As you indicate, it's surprising that they put such self-damaging information in print. They think they're invincible, so we need more Lavrovs to set them straight.

uncle tungsten , Oct 4 2019 20:22 utc | 22
re Paul Damascene #9, I see mutually assured defense as a highly desirable strategy emerging from Russia and China. If that new 'mad' is expanded to friendlies in the middle east then a very large sector of the planets continents can be enclosed in a single defensive frame.

I see this as a mighty good potential to arrest the lunatic tendency to war constantly being chanted by the five eyes and their vassal toadies.

Certainly the elimination of nuclear weapons entirely should be the global objective. Failing that, the prevention of ground blasts with the consequent dust and threat of nuclear winter is desirable in my view. High altitude interception may prevent premature detonation of attacking warheads but it will most likely lead to highly contaminated hot spots on ground.

There is an evil in warmongering that is utterly beneath contempt.

imoverit , Oct 4 2019 20:46 utc | 23
I see on AMN, the Syrian News site, an article speaking about a new KFC in terrorist-held Idlib ...

If this isn't a statement about who is collaborating in these wars I don't know what is !! It is partially about the globalists wanting to increase the extent of their reach (apart from all the religious and cultural issues too)

Hoarsewhisperer , Oct 4 2019 20:47 utc | 24
...
...but my impression is that Russia is or could make a case for selling only or primarily defensive weapons, to pretty much anyone ... with the effect and, say, the intent, to make wars of aggression, particularly pre-emptive strikes, much less tempting.

By shifting the field advantage towards defense, can it be plausibly proposed that Russia is working to make the world, overall, a safer place (even if their primary intent might be to make it safer from attacks initiated by the Unipolar Axis)?
Posted by: Paul Damascene | Oct 4 2019 18:46 utc | 9

Imo that's a perfectly sane assessment. It's just an unfortunate prerequisite, and a sign of the times, that M.A.D. had to be looming in the background before the wisdom could be recognised and de-escalation could commence.

Don Bacon , Oct 4 2019 20:47 utc | 25
@ PD 9
shifting the field advantage towards defense

>Actually all nations are supposed to concentrate on defense. The US changed its War Dept to Defense Dept. --( to throw us off? ) There are few nations that have an overwhelming offensive capability. Its expensive and requires a lot of people, including mostly draftees.
> The F-35 jet fighter now goes for about $150 million per copy, in large part because it is stealthy and can get through enemy defenses. At least that's the plan. But after eighteen years (and counting) of development, the F-35 still has not been approved for full production. That's an offensive weapon.
> Another expensive piece of gear is the aircraft carrier, now going for $13 billion per copy, and several of the newfangled complex features on the new carrier design don't work. High maintenance, too. Of eleven carriers only two are deplorable currently, none on the east coast. Carriers have been mostly used to facilitate bombing runs over defenseless third-world countries. They need a cheap defense.
> Regarding soldiers, few countries have a draft, or a large draft, any longer. No more major land armies, required for offense. People are expensive, and 70% of US youth don't qualify for service.
> The US Marine Corps is now going through a change with a new commandant. The main US enemy now is China, and there's no thought of any war on China itself, only on allied islands they might grab. So the Marines want to back out of their land warfare stance and concentrate on Iwo-Jima type operations like the good old days. New USMC Commandant Berger: "We are too heavy, too cumbersome. We're built for another Desert Storm. We have to go on a diet. . .we're not going to go head-to-head, tank-on-tank," he said
> The recent Houthi attack on Saudi Arabia was a wake-up call. Drones and missiles, inexpensive unstoppable and effective.
> So there's a lot of work to do, but yes one can say there is a trend from offense to defense, and little by little the world might be safer against offensive actions.

Don Bacon , Oct 4 2019 20:54 utc | 26
@25 - carriers
Make that deployable, not deplorable. Freudian slip.
Barovsky , Oct 4 2019 21:03 utc | 27
@#9:
I see mutually assured defense as a highly desirable strategy emerging from Russia and China. If that new 'mad' is expanded to friendlies in the middle east then a very large sector of the planets continents can be enclosed in a single defensive frame.

Excellent observation Uncle! It's the Empire (and its vassals) versus the planet.

vk , Oct 4 2019 21:03 utc | 28
@ Posted by: rt4 | Oct 4 2019 19:31 utc | 15

There will never be an American Gorbachev because the American system is completely different from the Soviet system.

In the USSR, the Communist Party was everything and commanded all the sociometabolical aspects of society through a centralized State. When the Gorbachev killed the Party, he killed the USSR. That's why it simply collapsed overnight and in a relatively peaceful way.

The USA is a pure-blood capitalist society. It functions through a confederation of capitalists, who command and owns different parts of the means of production. The State, albeit powerful, is just one instutition among many others in this free market anarchy. The USA, therefore, is a relatively decentralized society (for its size, it is incredibly decentralized). In this sense, the USA is more akin to the old Roman Empire than any other recent liberal or late-feudal empire.

My guess is the USA will degenerate slowly and very violently and chaotically, with a succession of weak POTUS over a course of at least many decades. It can or cannot lose territory in this process (I don't think it ever will, unless you're talking about Puerto Rico and other possessions in the Southwestern Pacific). It almost certainly will provoke many more wars against foreign nations in the process. It will be a very dangerous period of Humanity's History, if not mark its end (if a total nuclear war happens).

--//--

I don't think Putin wants to be "the next Bismarck". Bismarck's new Concert was a failure: it didn't relieve pressure between the imperialist powers in Europe and only gathered pressure overtime in order to create an even bigger meatgrinder (WWI), which generated an even bigger revolution (1917). By all intents and purposes, Bismarck's foreign polices were an abject failure. His domestic record, on the other side, is stellar, since he turned Germany into a world superpower which, by 1900, had already surpassed the UK in industrial terms to reach second place overall (behind only the much bigger USA).

Taffyboy , Oct 4 2019 21:03 utc | 29
..."But the U.S. is not losing its financial or sole superpower status because of what China or Russia or Iran have done or do. It is losing it because its has made too many mistakes."...

The cadaver that is the USA, a ruptured spleen of financial criminality, is in it's end stage of sucking the life of the world, it's host. Russia, China, and like minded sovereign states are backstopping the US buck into oblivion with their gold purchases. Gold continues to show the absurdities of the financial status of the US dollar. Gold is inoculating these states that are being sanctioned and financially harassed. The USA, is a drunken bum in the gutter looking for his next drink. Time is running short as the world economies are now contracting into a spiral down the toilet drain taking the great financial criminal with it.

DontBelieveEitherPr. , Oct 4 2019 21:03 utc | 30
If any politicians on the global chessboard can rival the statesmanship and intellect in strategy, it sure is Putin.
Before him maybe de Gaulle, Helmut Schmidt or Churchill. But now? No where in the western states.

To the growing ties with China and Russia: Irony is, Putin warned the western world, that if his and Russia's preference of joining the western states would be denied, Russia would be forced into China's arms, even though they are culturally and religiously much more tied to Europe and the western world.

US and NATO policy brought the Russians to see the former "yellow menace" as their only hope; Equally China was forced into the arms of its Russian neighbor, despite the Chinese tradition of seeing the Russians equally as a not much loved neighbor.
So the "social Imperialists" and "Barbarians" of Russia and the "Yellow Menace" were forced to overcome their old prejudices.

De Gaulle once said: "One day the Russians will realize again that they are white." Meaning, when the Soviet system would come crashing down, the Russians would realize, that they and their culture are European, and not Asian.
When this prophecy actually came true, and Yeltsin and Putin tried to rebuild the bridges back to their cultural fellow European states, the Neocons destroyed that historic chance of healing decades and century old wounds.

Putin and Russia actually tried for over a decade to avert this. Only most recently the fight in the Russian bureaucracy is leading into going into the partnership with China more broadly. It still is a partnership not of love or true desire, but of simple survival. And that won't likely ever change.

I am currently reading a great book of the legendary German-French journalists and author Peter Scholl-Latour about the new cold war against Russia. he published it IIRC over 12 years ago, with research since the 90s for it, and including previous reports from his visits in Russia since 1958.
He saw what he discusses here 20 years ago. And the strategic consequences of this idiotic rejection of Russia's wish to come back into the fold of European nations by the US will haunt us for generations to come, if it is not fixed.

Only way to that would be if we would have politicians in the EU and Europeans states like Putin; more concrete: With the backbone, strategic insight, and a strong stand on national sovereignty.

But with the current politicians in the EU and its states? Certainly no one on the left, as "sovereignty" is now seen as "Nazi", and left politicians at least here in Germany being "educated" by NATO think tanks, supporting military "interventions". The only ones who realize how important sovereignty is for any country, are the new right like Salvini, Le Pen, and the Nigel Farage. Which maybe a big part of why they are so hysterically attacked by the MSM and establishment.

But sovereignty is important for the left too, and historically e.g. the older generations social democrats here knew that. People like Helmut Schmidt realized that no people can be free, and exercise its self-determination as a nation, without true sovereignty.

But the time of politicians of this class and caliber in the west is long gone. Maybe another reason, why our politicians hate Putin so much. ;)

Barovsky , Oct 4 2019 21:05 utc | 31
Apologies, @#22 not #9
Ian2 , Oct 4 2019 21:19 utc | 32
It should be obvious to anyone that we're going to see some kind of a joint Sino-Russian military organization like NORAD. I was wondering about this after Russia sold their S-400 to China. However, I'm not sure if the Chinese, or Russia, would be open to a Warsaw Pact version 2. IMO, the inevitable collapse would be like the Soviet Union as WMDs will prevent a war fought directly between the larger powers. In the meantime, expect more proxy wars fought globally.

Kiza | Oct 4 2019 19:49 utc | 20:

It's always been like this as that is the most impressionable stage of one's life. I don't know if this is an increase or not, but I see these useful idiots as activation of sleeper cells cultivated in educational institutions.

steven t johnson , Oct 4 2019 21:20 utc | 33
The "Concert of Powers" was marked by numerous wars. Great power conflict in Europe was avoided in favor of colonial wars. England against Indians, Africans and Asians, but Russia against Turks too. So much for "truly mutually respectful..." relations. Putin speaks gibberish. Today, "sovereign" means claiming the right to wage war at will. This is not a premise for solid relationships, but shifting alliances against the current enemy.

It is incidentally highly unlikely that a basket of currencies could possibly substitute for a single reserve. If people couldn't make bimetallism work, making bi-, tri-, poly-fiat currency work isn't happening either. The fluctuations in relative value will destabilize the financial systems of smaller powers.

Kooshy , Oct 4 2019 21:31 utc | 34
Don
I don't see possibility of India getting a UNSC permanent seat any time coming soon, it's a permanent wishful thinking on India's part. India will need to resolve her problems with Kashmir and Pakistan before even she be considered. Indian realist analyst know this well. As matter of fact I don't see any hope that anytime soon we can see a structural change in UN. It's more possible UN be dissolved like the League was before it be reformed. US and India only can be short term tactical allies against China, and not even strategic allies since they both have different postures toward the subcontinent's, Indian Ocean states.
Sorghum , Oct 4 2019 21:33 utc | 35
@ 27 Barofsky

Exactly, which is why I am both confused and frustrated by people taking a side in the Ukraine-gate farce. Does it matter which flavor of evil is currently provably less corrupt? They all have almost the same goals: peanuts and platitudes to placate the peasants at home and Full Spectrum Imperial Dominance abroad. I get trying to figure out the Gordian Knot, but the Make Believe of Good Cop/Bad Cop is annoying.

Willy2 , Oct 4 2019 21:39 utc | 36
- No, when Rosneft is chosing the Euro as its trading currency then that will increase - IMO - the risk of a (MAJOR) war.
dh , Oct 4 2019 21:40 utc | 37
@23 It's true! A KFC opened in Idlib. Here is a video with some amusing comments.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1247614/pg1

Willy2 , Oct 4 2019 21:51 utc | 38
- Wars like WW 1 & WW 2 are not going to happen anymore because such wars have simply too expensive. But instead we'll see a series of smaller wars or proxy wars.
lysias , Oct 4 2019 21:53 utc | 39
Germany before Hitler was a pluralist capitalist society like America has been. Didn't stop Hitler from centralizing everything.

If Germany could have a Hitler, America can have its Gorbachev.

Jen , Oct 4 2019 21:54 utc | 40
VK @ 28:

I should think that one reason for the failure of the Second Concert of Europe was that Britain was determined to eliminate Germany as an economic and political rival and as an example of what centralised government economic and social planning could do to improve people's lives and the conditions in which they lived and worked. The reforms that Bismarck brought to Germany, if only to keep 1848-style revolutions at bay, challenged the prevailing laissez-faire economic policies (precursor to neoliberalism in our day) in Britain that favoured the landowning and military elites.

The period 1871 - 1914 was one in which British aristocracy "revitalised" itself (for want of a better term) by taking brides from American families that made their wealth from investing in railway development across the US and in new American industries. (Perhaps "vampirising" American money is the better term.) The classic examples of such marriages are those of Consuelo Vanderbilt, of the wealthy Vanderbilt family, marrying into the Spencer-Churchill family; and of Winston Churchill's mother marrying his father. Acquiring American wealth in this way was one way in which British elites could maintain enough power to keep a grip on British politics and British colonial politics.

The same period was also one in which European powers competed to chop up Africa and Asia into colonies or "spheres of influence". So in a sense, the Europeans were already at war with each other (and the Second Concert was a facade, just as the Cold War of the late 20th century was a facade): they conducted this war away from their own publics, in areas distant and remote enough, that most incidents of mass violence or outright land theft could be covered up. The major exception was Belgian King Leopold's treatment of the area that is now the Democratic Republic of Congo / Congo (Kinshasa) as he ruled it in the manner of a mediaeval feudal lord and the atrocities committed there by his government were on a scale too huge to ignore.

c1ue , Oct 4 2019 21:54 utc | 41
@Paul Damascene #9
Not strictly true.
Two nations, one with sword and shield but the other with only a shield. The first nation can attack with little fear of reprisal.
Russia is still not going to sell defensive weapons to anyone unless there is a clear overall strategic benefit.
lysias , Oct 4 2019 21:57 utc | 42
Norman Angell argued in "The Great Illusion" that a great war was no longer economically possible. Published in 1909.
lysias , Oct 4 2019 22:06 utc | 43
Ironic that the Great War had to wait until 1914, when Britain's Liberal government was adopting many of Bismarck's social welfare measures.

I suspect that America's increasing hostility to China reflects a fear of contagion from the more successful and fairer Chinese system. Just like Britain and Germany in 1914.

Peter AU 1 , Oct 4 2019 22:16 utc | 44
A number of the S-300 standard missiles are just into the hypersonic range.
Missile spec section in wikipedia give missile velocity and maximum target velocity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_missile_system#Missiles

Two are listed as being good for target velocity up to 6,415 mph which is well into hypersonic range.
Another two, target velocities up to 11,185mph - mach 14.7 according mph to mach converter.

lysias , Oct 4 2019 22:19 utc | 45
Helmut Schmidt's books on China are impressive, but it's striking that in the first one, "Nachbar China," of 2006, he totally failed to anticipate the economic collapse of 2008.
Barovsky , Oct 4 2019 22:42 utc | 46
Posted by: lysias | Oct 4 2019 22:06 utc | 43

Actually, that's not true. When the UK went to war in 1914, they discovered that their soldiers were so undernourished and unfit to fight for the Empire, that a series of 'social reforms' were enacted to improve the lot of the working class (or cannon fodder).

Annie , Oct 4 2019 22:50 utc | 47
"While China has capable weapons and can defend itself against a smaller attack the U.S. has about 20 times more nuclear warheads than China. It could use those in an overwhelming first strike to decapitate and destroy the Chinese state."

B, I read your analysis of the China weapons parade and came away with the impression that US air & sea superiority was over. I thought China already had the S-400 too. I had no idea that the US was in possession of more nukes than China. I hope that China gets that system set up quickly, as well as the S-400.

The US is a psychopathic control freak, whose mask has slipped, yet the only one who doesn't know that is Washington, but when it realizes it, that's when it will become far more dangerous and may think that their time for a US first nuke strike is running out. Let's hope they are not that stupid.

Ian2 , Oct 4 2019 23:07 utc | 48
Anybody that believes China have only 290 nukes are naive. Look at all those DF-41 and JL-2/3 missiles they've made. Some of those missiles have MIRV capability.
William Gruff , Oct 4 2019 23:21 utc | 49
Ian2 @48

What point does lying that way about a deterrence weapon serve? China only has nukes to deter America from attacking them. The nukes are not intended to ever actually be used, so why would they lie and pretend to have less than they really have? That makes no sense. If anything they would lie and pretend to have more than they really do to enhance their deterrence.

Secret weapons do not make an effective deterrence.

On the other hand, like Japan China probably has big stockpiles of fissile materials sufficiently enriched that they could make many hundreds of additional nukes in a matter of a couple weeks, or maybe even just days, if they needed to.

William Gruff , Oct 4 2019 23:42 utc | 50
Ian2 @48

Just to clarify, a 100kg solid chunk of iron traveling at hypersonic speeds and with decent accuracy would ruin the day for an American aircraft carrier. No nuke is needed.

Furthermore, if China has only 290 nukes, but 5,000 launch vehicles, which ones out of that 5,000 are armed and have to be destroyed if America does a first strike and wants to avoid several dozen of its biggest cities being turned into glowing craters in response? Hint: All 5,000.

So you see, China doesn't really need much more than 290 nukes to prevent America from attacking, assuming Americans are not stupid. Unfortunately that could very well be a losing bet.

Josh , Oct 4 2019 23:45 utc | 51
Washington is not a nation. It is only a city. If the rest of the world wants an honest glimpse of what this city intends, all it has to do is look at what it has done, and is still doing, to America's population. Take an honest look, disregarding all testimony. When you completely disregard the narrative of dc and the media, the picture becomes quite stark quite quickly.
FKA_Realist , Oct 5 2019 0:00 utc | 52
> Washington is not a nation. It is only a city.
Posted by: Josh | Oct 4 2019 23:45 utc | 51

The only "city" you should worry about is The City of London. The root of evil on this planet, for the past few centuries.

---
[Iran] now sells oil to China and India

Posted by b on October 4, 2019 at 18:03 UTC | Permalink

The exploitation of Iranian national wealth continues to support the Cabal's projects.

lysias , Oct 5 2019 0:13 utc | 53
The reason for the constitutional crisis in Britain in 1910, which resulted in the House of Lords losing most of its power, was that the Lords refused to approve Lloyd George's People's Budget, which, according to Wikipedia, "introduced unprecedented taxes on the lands and incomes of Britain's wealthy to fund new social welfare programs." The upshot of the crisis was that the budget became law.
Don Bacon , Oct 5 2019 0:16 utc | 54
. . . picked this up on the web:
In his seminal work On War, Carl von Clausewitz famously declared that, in comparison to the offense, "the defensive form of warfare is intrinsically stronger than the offensive."

The defender being in his homeland contributes to defensive strength. It's certainly contributed to US offensive failures in the last fifty years. It took the mighty US Army four years and over a thousand deaths to pacify Baghdad. So what to do, the US has reverted to high-level aerial bombing and long-range artillery to kill foreigners. This increases US opposition, creating more enemies. No shortage of them.

karlof1 , Oct 5 2019 0:44 utc | 55
lysias @53--

Gotta give you a big Shout-Out for providing that ultra important fact as that marked the beginning of the reaction to Classical Economists in the UK which was already happening within the Outlaw US Empire, thus the seed of UK's Neoliberalism was planted and watered. It also brought the UK and US elite together mind-set-wise.

Josh @51--

Your observation is 100% on the mark! The utterly gross neglect of the USA's human capital's been ongoing for decades, and was given a great boost by the adoption of Neoliberalism as basic policy during Carter's presidency, which was subsequently turbocharged by Reagan/Bush. Profit before people had always been present; but after the "Saving the bond-holders" deliberately deep recession caused by Volker from 1979-1982, there would be no more policies aimed at improving social welfare. Instead, they were targeted for destruction as the Full Employment Act of 1946 was 100% ignored by both Rs & Ds as jobs went offshore and the Rust Belt oxidized.

--//--

Today, the hollowed-out Outlaw US Empire is a mere Paper Tiger reduced to using terrorists and terrorism as its policy tools. Slowly, the nations of the world are enacting a de facto form of containment that will eventually result in the diminishment of The Empire's abilities and force it to become a normal nation for the first time in its history--hopefully without a nuclear conflagration.

ben , Oct 5 2019 0:46 utc | 56
Putin is a voice of reason in a very sick and twisted world, one that is dominated by an evil empire whose only purpose seems to be global corporate hegemony.

His voice should be heard by the American people.

Grieved , Oct 5 2019 1:28 utc | 57
@2 Red Ryder - Russia is building a network of missile defense, early warning, electronic weapons systems that will ring Greater Eurasia, not just the Russian Federation.

Always good to see your sweeping strategic view from the commanding heights. I quoted your opening sentence because it makes such total sense, and also sounds so good. Mackinder has no need to turn in his grave - the heartland has upended the world to save him the trouble ;)

There will be the invulnerable Eurasia, and the outside.

~~

I'm enjoying all the comments jumping onto the notion of Mutual Assured Defense. It seems a concept that many here can readily relate to - and sign me up for sure. Thanks to Paul Damascene for the concept, and uncle tungsten for coining the phrase.

Sharmine Narwani in her recent interview with Ross Ashcroft cited a Twitter comment somebody made, to the effect that the S-400 was Russia's foreign policy. She was struck by how perfectly this actually works as a policy. In a world where everybody has an S-400, no war. Mutually assured defense.

I have long theorized, without a grain of collateral to prove it, that there is only one security strategy for Russia. If I had a border as extensive as Russia's, I would see that the only security possible for me would rest in an entire world at peace.

Therefore Russia works towards peace. It's how she conquers the world. As we saw in Chechnya and in Syria, Russia builds and not destroys. Syria in particular over a long period showed us precisely how Russia fights - not to "win", not to destroy an enemy, but purely to lock down the peace and make everything safe. Only those restless souls who would not become still were killed.

China too shares this same understanding of the Tao - not surprisingly of course. The game is not to crush the opponent but to render the fight unnecessary. If China conquers the world it will mean the Mandate Of Heaven has come to rule everywhere. The fight will become unnecessary.

~~

Federico Pieraccini in his latest article had this to say about China's strategy:

Beijing's strategy seems to be designed to progress in phases, modulating according to the reaction of the US, whether aggressive or mild; a kind of capoeira dance where one never actually hits one's opponent even when one can.

I had to look it up, Brazil's amazing contribution to world peace, the capoeira. I had never heard of it and now I will never forget it. A brilliant comment from Pieraccini.

Peace is coming to the world faster than war is being left room to break out. And this is because peacemaking is as dynamic an activity as warmaking . But by its very nature of not breaking things, it is far less visible.

Don Bacon , Oct 5 2019 1:47 utc | 58
. . .from Putin
Truly mutually respectful, pragmatic and consequently solid relations can only built between independent and sovereign states.
. . .from the UN Charter
The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
somebody , Oct 5 2019 2:25 utc | 59
Putin is pointing backwards not forwards when you think it through.

No "souvereign" state can be independent in the age of global supply chains and markets, refugees and global warming. The world is interdependent and always has been since the evolution of the human species in Africa.

"Souvereignty" and statehood has always been achieved (and lost) by military power. It is a recipe for war.

This is for the theory. Now for the practice. Of course, Russia has been intervening in the affairs of other "souvereign" states. Of course Iran has been striving for dominance in the Middle East. And of course Eastern European states feel squeezed between Russia, the US and Germany. And of course China pressures Vietnam for the resources of the South China Sea.

Putin is talking about being polite.

Europe will have neither economic nor political or military power dealing with Russia, the US or China as individual "sovereign" states. And this is what this populist dance is about.

The US has not lost influence because of the sanctions, they have lost influence because they have no longer the technological edge and "souvereign states" have the alternative of allying with Russia and China. That is a binary choice, not souvereinty.

Paul Damascene , Oct 5 2019 2:36 utc | 60
ciue @ 41:
An intelligent observation, thanks. Though I find myself wondering if the world in which everyone has a shield, and only one, a sword, is not, perhaps, a world quite changed.

In reading Don Bacon @ 58 and Grieved @ 57, something slid into place for me. As a child of the Enlightenment, pained as I have been--for all its failings--to see it slip under the waves, it has been especially painful to see the West despoiling its legacies of democracy and universal human rights. Nothing has done these more damage than our corrupt, cynical exploitation of them. When I look to the emergent multipolar model with not inconsiderable relief, I see it as one in which democracy will not necessarily be a central value or form of polity.

But if this multipolar principle of the sovereign equality among all of its members is considered from a certain vantage point, the principle's equivalent in a democratic system of individuals would be an acceptance of its various citizens as of fundamentally equal worth regardless of their ideologies or beliefs.

Perhaps if that feature of our own systems were not so close to being lost, a glimpse of this quality of an international comity wouldn't come to me now as a revelation.

somebody , Oct 5 2019 2:44 utc | 61
Posted by: Grieved | Oct 5 2019 1:28 utc | 57

I guess it is a Rorschach test. I don't see how anything in Syria has been resolved peacefully, I just don't. I am not blaming Russia for it. Putin virtually waited until it became clear that the US (Obama) would not intervene.

Russians had the worst WWI and WWII experience, plus Chechnya and Afghanistan. No Russian leader would be able to motivate them for anything else but defense. It took the Moscow apartment bombings to motivate them for the Chechen war.

Political power in China has grown out of the barrel of a gun - since Mao Tse Tung. It has grown out of the barrel of a gun world wide since the invention of gun powder.

Peace might come not because of defense systems but because of cheap and simple technology to defeat these defense systems.

snake , Oct 5 2019 2:49 utc | 62
weaponized economics USA says it has ability to affect the economic environment, says it can influence international financial institutions .. says it can use such abilities and influence to cement multinational coalitions for unconventional warfare campaigns or dissuade adversary nation-state governments from supporting competitors"

financial blackmail .[nations either join/suffer], the stores of value can be exploited.. the economic space is a war zone the tax, interest rates, legal and bureaucratic measures used locally, by target states, can be [manipulated] to persuade adversaries, allies, and surrogates to modify their behavior.. Entire agencies specialize in identifying. opportunities where financial weapon(s) can be used to provide leverage [to achieve goals]? Thank you Sally Snyder @ 7 for that link and great explanation. I want to add that I see evidence the USA uses that same strategy domestically against the leaders of its states, its cities, its counties, its political parties and privately against the leaders and activist the world over. Americans rarely have the opportunity you afforded @7 to understand why things are happening in the USA the way they are.

new subject:
The Great War had to wait until 1914, when Britain's Liberal government was adopting many of Bismarck's social welfare measures.to Lysias @ 43 <==I certainly do agree with your reason.. Consider the following

The great war was on hold since 1897, waiting on the British and French bankers to create a means to finance the war. That financing required the warriors in Europe to invade and overthrow the US Constitutional prohibition (Article I, Section 9, paragraph 4) which prohibited Capitation or other direct taxes, not based in proportion to the population. Amendment 16 ratifed on February 3, 1913 reads, the Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Within minutes after the US. Supreme court took up taking non proportional taxes from the pockets of working Americans the privately owned Federal reserve bank was created, and made by congress the central bank of the world (1913). So to recap, British adoption of Bismarck's measures had little to do with the war in Europe, instead it was the the money to be taken by taxation from the pockets of every American that satisfied the bankers requirement of suitable and ample capital (Federal Reserve Act of 1913); USA taxes on Americans would collateral the FR lending, and the USA would guarantee the taxes would be collected and rendered as required. Once constitutional intent was thwarted, the federal Reserve could lend to the global warriors who wanted to destroy Germany and take the oil rich land (entire Middle East) from the Ottoman. It took two world wars and trillions of tax dollars, not to mention millions of lives, for the pubic nations states to enable the private theft of the oil rich Middle East lands owned by the Ottomans.

additionally .. Barovsky responded also to lysias @ 43 with "Actually, that's not true. When the UK went to war in 1914, they discovered that their soldiers were so undernourished and unfit to fight for the Empire, that a series of 'social reforms' were enacted to improve the lot of the working class (or cannon fodder).by: Barovsky @ 46

Don Bacon , Oct 5 2019 2:55 utc | 63
@ somebody 61
I don't see how anything in Syria has been resolved peacefully, I just don't.
Russia's strategy of giving foes a choice of fighting or being bused elsewhere, a choice they took, was a truly unique peaceful resolution. Never been done before, to my knowledge. Revolutionary. Wonderful. Peaceful. I liked it.
Don Bacon , Oct 5 2019 3:08 utc | 64
@ PD 60

If I may: A big part of national strategy is to have the populace focusing on "foreign threats" which takes citizens' minds of their domestic problems. Part of "sovereign equality" is (at the national level) to mind our own business, not somebody else's.

George Washington dedicates a large part of his farewell address to discussing foreign relations and the dangers of permanent alliances between the United States and foreign nations, which he views as foreign entanglements.

Later, we have "War is the Health of the State"
by Randolph Bourne (1918) . . here
". . .The republican State has almost no trappings to appeal to the common man's emotions. What it has are of military origin, and in an unmilitary era such as we have passed through since the Civil War, even military trappings have been scarcely seen. In such an era the sense of the State almost fades out of the consciousness of men. With the shock of war, however, the State comes into its own again. The Government, with no mandate from the people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations, which slowly bring it into collision with some other Government, and gently and irresistibly slides the country into war. . ."

b4real , Oct 5 2019 3:10 utc | 65
I think we are seeing more like russia/china using a strategy similar to Muhammad Ali's rope a dope against the u.s. They are both spending their money wisely on building effective military forces, both defensive and offensive, but they are not wasting their treasure on imperialist adventures. At the same time, everywhere U.S. has tried to corner a market or extend itself, they have been getting cut off at the knees by either Russia or China. Russia put a monkey wrench in U.S. goals in Ukraine, Syria and Venezuela. U.S. went after Iran and China stepped in with a huge oil purchase and development project. Now I'm reading that Russia is getting ready to assist Cuba in a major way.

Was it napoleon who said, "when you see your enemy making mistakes, let him"? (paraphrase) I think they are going to continue trying to avoid a fight while they wait for the U.S. to either come to its senses, collapse or come to blows, but they won't be the instigator.

U.S. is capitalist and this kind of society is more likely to destruct through a financial collapse or a civil war than declaring war on either China or Russia. Not that war with China or Russia can be ruled out, but if it occurred I think it would probably start as a result of U.S. accidental blowing something up with one of our smart missiles....

This (entertaining) article was written by some street fellow in ukraine around the time Yanukovich was ousted, but the similarities between Ukraine and US shares a common perspective of a lot of USA common folk. In usa,you don't ever get to own much (its all leased or financed) and even if you do, its not hard for them to find a way to liberate it from you.


b4real

chu teh , Oct 5 2019 4:14 utc | 66
Barovsky | Oct 4 2019 22:42 utc | 46

re WW1 UK malnourished soldiers

I recall US journalist George Seldes remarking his observations as he met the UK conscripts coming to the WW1 front. His on-the-scene notes of malnourishment and inability to handle repetitive lifting of ammunition to feed mortars/small cannon, relative to German conscripts, were telling. Explains the postwar emphasis on sports and diet just to prep for the next war. Lessons perhaps also applied to American emphasis on spoprts may just be the overt signs of underlying gov covert funding/subsidies and legislation enabling "league" monopolies.

Ian2 , Oct 5 2019 4:23 utc | 67
@William Gruff:

Why the understatement? It's the same reason why militaries don't showcase their latest greatest hardware to the public. Secrecy provides maneuvering room and is only revealed when appropriate. It's also about managing fear and public opinion in hopes of exerting some influence over your adversary.

AFAIK, China have not officially stated their holdings. The 290 figure is really an estimate given by various NGOs.

ziogolem , Oct 5 2019 4:25 utc | 68
Time is on the side of the new eastern powers, that is, with each passing month the US military (& economic) superiority shrinks.
I think that is why China has been able to exercise such restraint with HK, they can put up with the tantrums till 2047.

The big danger is if those who own the USA try to use their advantage before they lose it.

They already assume that an apocalypse is inevitable;
When the elite retreat to bunkers and private islands in Hawaii, New Zealand, Tasmania or Patagonia , their main concern is how to keep the deplorable's grubby hands off their stuff when the shit finally hits the fan.

chu teh , Oct 5 2019 4:51 utc | 69
...re China's invention of gun powder. IIRC Marco Polo brought it back to Europe in 1400s at a time when China had already advanced it to hand-held-cannon status.

Note well that Europe itself was already in an advanced state of acquisitive madness, as much as could be enabled by formations of swords and horses occasionally being an overwhelming weapon .

With gunpowder, force-of-arms were now an overwhelming weapon in far more areas of the continent.

Then, and only then, could a Columbus et al have set out on voyages of discovery with confident ability to claim any "new" lands for some king who would fund the mission.

I submit, there is no way a Columbus could set-sail unless he had on-board such overwhelming weapons.

Else, landing anywhere without such would only permit some sly smiling and trading and scouting. Any overtly aggressive landing party would be slaughtered by the sheer numbers of home-team locals.

Re "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely", gunpowder was the 1st overwhelming weapon that enabled conquest.

The 2nd overwhelming weapon was the atom-bomb. But IMO, some heroic figures understood the ramifications its overwhelming-nature; thus they felt motivated to force its sharing, bec a monopoly guaranteed its use to permit limitless conquering.

Then at that point, science was funded by .govs to invent the next overwhelming weapon and use it before any delicious target could duplicate it. We are here.

The acquisitive-syndrome.

FSD , Oct 5 2019 4:54 utc | 70
Lavrov: "Those with a more or less politically mature opinion of the situation should have realised long ago that the sanctions don't work in the direction they wanted them to work."


Oswald Spengler is good here. What he called Western 'money-thinking' is moving at the moment in contrary, self-extinguishing, directions. Full spectrum dominance, bankrolled by reserve currency status, seeks the whole enchilada and potentially once had the wherewithal to achieve it --if not for the punitive subtractions necessitated by sanctions regimes. Compounding matters, the exiled nations, having escaped the comforts of the lab, develop fearsome powers of self-reliance (what North Korea proudly calls juche). Banded together, these hardened exiles will some day go on to decimate the King's Army:


"Spengler, more poet than historian, offers the penetrating eye of the stranger. His prescience for the Russian destiny is paraphrased by Kerry Bolton here:

The Russian soul is not the same as the Western Faustian, as Spengler called it, the 'Magian' of the Arabian civilization, or the Classical of the Hellenes and Romans. The Western Culture that was imposed on Russia by Peter the Great, what Spengler called Petrinism, is a veneer The Russian soul expresses its own type of infinity, albeit not that of the Westerner's Faustian soul, which becomes enslaved by its own technics at the end of its life-cycle."

Many of those 'technics' fall under what Spengler called "money-thinking". At the twilight of its life-cycle the West threatens to withhold its toxicity from all those who don't 'play fair', plying its financial sanctions like an overused tool-set: fractional reserve banking, impudent debt-money that arrives ex nihilo seeking its keep from God-knows-where, leverage that belabors ever-narrowing denominators of intrinsic value."

https://thesaker.is/sins-without-recourse-beast-without-remorse/

The Western debt pyramid can ill-afford meting out the punishment of exile. On the contrary it needs everything on Earth plus the minerals of passing meteors and Martian water. However its petulance and hubris can't resist banishing nations that displease it. When its petulance exceeds its own diminishing critical mass, the seesaw tips against it.

Peter AU 1 , Oct 5 2019 4:58 utc | 71
Re ""power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely", gunpowder was the 1st overwhelming weapon that enabled conquest."
The history of empires is as long as the history of agriculture and herding, nearly ending with the advent of nuclear weapons and MAD.
Only one country left trying that needs some sense knocking into it.
somebody , Oct 5 2019 6:05 utc | 72
Posted by: Don Bacon | Oct 5 2019 2:55 utc | 63

I don't think the bussing to Idlib was Russian strategy. The Syrian civil proxy war was a lot about demographics, Hezbollah tried to save Shiites from mixed areas, dito the Syrian state with their supporters. It was a local solution that was necessary as Jihadi fighters come with huge families. Turkey might have had a part as their interest was to have the Jihadis at the border to fight against the Kurdish groups. You may have noticed that the Syrian government with support of Russia now attacks the Jihadi fighters in Idlib.

Russia's strategy was to force Turkey on its side without alienating Iran or Syrians. Iran at one stage seemed ready to support a religious power share the type of Lebanon. The Russian intervention stopped that idea.

Russia saved the Syrian state and the Syrian state insisted on being secular and getting rid of all internal ennemies. That is a kind of peace but the peace of the graveyard.

somebody , Oct 5 2019 6:27 utc | 73
Actually it is quite funny that Putin has started to go back to the 19th century, to "development models, interests, cultures and traditions " and the "concert of power".

After the Congress of Vienna there was the Russio-Persian war, the Russio-Turkish war, the battle of Warsaw against Poland, the Crimean war against the Ottoman empire, Britain and France, advancement in Central Asia and one of the tsars banned Ukrainian language in print. Never mind the tsars successfully fighting the rebellions of the Russian middle classes. Though in 1861 Russian serfs were finally freed as they were needed in newly developing industries. The century ended in 1900 with the Russification of Finland, making Russian the official language.

Never trust a historic reference.

psychohistorian , Oct 5 2019 6:29 utc | 74
@ Peter AU 1 who wrote about the history of empires
"
Only one country left trying that needs some sense knocking into it.
"
That is occurring as we write our textual white noise about the details but the approach is not a Western knocking some sense into it but an Eastern Art of War approach.

It came to me today that instead of WWIII we need to think of what the world is going through as a Civilization war or evolution, assuming we make it out the other side of the conflict. The current empire is trying everything in its quiver of arrows short of MAD to retain control over the form of social organization with private finance at its core.

But the social organization of the East does not think like that and wants to spread the wealth and ownership broadly. The East has been taken advantage of and maligned by the West for centuries and they are not going to continue to let that happen. So they have organized themselves to beat the West at its own game but are doing so according to the Art of War meme instead of trying to knock some sense into the West. Since the East is good at playing the long game in relation to the West they are incrementally wearing down and constraining the West until it collapses of its inability to bully and Might-Makes-Right itself forward.

As we are watching the end game of those efforts, IMO. I don't see the West holding its control on empire for much longer because the East is giving example of a better and more equitable way that will be and is winning over country after country that have been client states of empire held in place by the jackboot of global private finance.

We are witnessing a Civilization war of our species and it is quite the spectacle, eh?

Tom , Oct 5 2019 6:52 utc | 75
Another example of the ever sanctioning superpower is losing its status. "Whistleblower accuses largest US military shipbuilder of putting 'American lives at risk' by falsifying tests on submarine stealth coating" Another day, another example of failure of the MIC to deliver.

Huntington Ingalls Industries, which spun-off from Northrop Grumman in 2011, "knowingly and/or recklessly" filed falsified records with the Navy claiming it had correctly applied a coating, called a Special Hull Treatment, to Virginia-class attack submarines which would allow the vessels to elude enemy sonar, the Sept. 26 complaint alleges.
Instead, the complaint said, Huntington Ingalls' Newport News Shipbuilding facility in Virginia took shortcuts that allegedly "plagued" the class of submarines with problems, and then retaliated against the employee who spoke up about the issues. At this rate most of the US navy will be tied up at their home port waiting for repairs.

According to the complaint, Lawrence, a senior engineer at Huntington Ingalls who has worked there since 2001, has provided evidence of the alleged issues at the company's Newport News Shipbuilding facility in Virginia. Stay safe Lawrence.

https://taskandpurpose.com/lawsuit-huntington-ingalls-whistleblower

Peter AU 1 , Oct 5 2019 6:53 utc | 76
psychohistorian

My thoughts also. And we do live in very interesting times for sure.
When I say knocking some sense into, that includes something along the lines of a soviet style collapse which is the preferable option.

albagen , Oct 5 2019 7:11 utc | 77
@ b4real
re: napoleon quote

replace 'let him' with 'don't interrupt him'

MadMax2 , Oct 5 2019 7:56 utc | 78
~By The Western debt pyramid can ill-afford meting out the punishment of exile.~
71 FSD

Yeah, it is curious. You would think, with an understanding of its own system - infinite growth backed by debt - that empire would wisely choose to employ its tentacles, not deny them. Especially with most states outside of North Korea being open for business in some shape or form. At this rate the US Treasury will need to authorize the advance sale of mortgages to the burgeoning colonies on the moon.

To navigate to the summit for the best part of a century. And to squander those gains within the space of half a young lifetime.

Barovsky , Oct 5 2019 7:58 utc | 79
Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Oct 5 2019 4:58 utc | 71

"power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely"

Correction: It's the quest for power that corrupts....

Jack Garbo , Oct 5 2019 8:30 utc | 80
Putin's concept of strong defense is sound. You don't attack if the other side can defend itself. You negotiate. In Thailand, we rarely see street fights (except between drunk foreigners).
Why? The national sport is lethal Muay Thai (kick boxing), so you never start a fight, since the other side can fight, too. You talk it over, negotiate.
A User , Oct 5 2019 8:38 utc | 81
Lot of nonsense in this thread. From "gunpowder was the 1st overwhelming weapon that enabled conquest." When it is trivially simple to argue that the trained, uniformed and properly regimented Roman Army which came 1500 years earlier was both a better example and likely not the first.
Equally facile is the claim that "It's the quest for power that corrupts" Whilst its probably true that some have been corrupted reaching for power it is equally true that many who for various reasons were not corrupted in the quest, either because they acquired it through serendipity by way of hereditary or accident, came into power as naive or ideologically principled upstarts yet as with every leader, they were corrupted by power as they were convinced no one else could do it (be the bossfella) as well as they.

Emperor Claudius comes to mind as an earlyish big time boss destroyed by power, but callow youths thrust into power as clan leader when dad and/or older bros were killed in battle and went on to become bigger arseholes than Dad, are examples which go back to when us mob first walked upright.

Peter AU 1 , Oct 5 2019 8:47 utc | 82
Barovsky
I quoted a sentence by chu teh and was replying to the piece about gunpowder.

As for the power corrupts part, take a look at the US prior to the fall of the Soviet Union and then what it has become during the time it held virtually absolute power..

Elora Danan , Oct 5 2019 9:18 utc | 83
Yesterday night The Godfather was broadcasted in a foreign private channel....

I saw a comrade telling about that and arguing that this movie contains the world...and it is that indeed it encompasses the history of the USA...

"I have "worked" all my life for the welfare of my family, and I have always refused to be a puppet moved by the threads of the powerful. With you I had other projects Michael. I thought that one day you could move those threads. Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone, or more".

Even in the meeting of all the mafia families in New York for to reach a "pact of no agression" someone states:

"After all, we are not communists..."

somebody , Oct 5 2019 9:18 utc | 84
Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Oct 5 2019 8:47 utc | 82


As for the power corrupts part, take a look at the US prior to the fall of the Soviet Union and then what it has become during the time it held virtually absolute power

That's a myth .

In the decades since the 1972 Watergate scandal, more charges of corruption have been leveled against members of presidential administrations than in the preceding two centuries. Perhaps the most lasting achievement of Ronald Reagan's presidency was the astonishingly successful campaign to delegitimate government itself, at least in the eyes of many citizens, and to enshrine individual economic self-interest, manifested in unregulated "private enterprise," as the paramount value of American life. That transformation, like the rise of so-called rational choice and utility maximization as the governing paradigms in the social sciences, has encouraged citizens to seek wealth -- and to avoid paying taxes or participating in civil society -- as the only sensible strategy. As a result, the homely virtues of self-discipline, moderation, and reciprocity preached by Enlightenment thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Abigail Adams now strike many Americans as outmoded advice for suckers. If "greed is good," as the Wall Street character Gordon Gekko asserted, then Donald J. Trump's career of swindling, debt dodging, and tax evasion might serve as a model to emulate rather than an object lesson in the mainstreaming of corrupt business practices.1

Peter AU 1 , Oct 5 2019 9:29 utc | 85
somebody
US has always been corrupt. Now it can scarcely function. Like a drug pusher consuming too much of the product.
Russ , Oct 5 2019 9:39 utc | 86
No one familiar with Alexander Hamilton, Roger "open the purses of the people" Morris or the roots of the Shay's Rebellion, Whiskey Rebellion, North Carolina Regulator movement and other people's movements and actions, or the 1787-88 counter-revolutionary coup carried out by the Constitutional Convention for the purpose of centralizing economic and military power toward social control and building a continental empire (anyone in any doubt about that should read the proceedings and the Federalist Papers; Hamilton was especially forthcoming about the imperial motivation), would have any illusions about how deeply corruption is inherent in the US system.

Same for imperialism. And all subsequent US history starting and continuing with the genocide of the First Nations bears this out.

Elora Danan , Oct 5 2019 10:11 utc | 87
With respect to sanctions, the EU central power ( i.e. Germany ) impossed harsh sanctions that ended being implemented in full only by southern countries like Spain, who are those who have seen their commercial excahnges with Russia diminished to the least with the conseuqent loses for national business, while, in fact, German business continue their exchnage with Russia as if nothing had happened...

Now that Trump impose import tariffs to Europe, the most affected are, again, those who fulfilled the US sanctions plan towayds Russia at the letter, i.e. Spain and southern countries...

If these Southern European Countries would have a sovereign government with any respect for the people who vote them, they will extract the consequent lesson from all of this...and would apply the recipe for all this with respect to Russia, Iran, and so on...

The lesson would translate like "the more you comply with US mandate on sanctions against any other country you have nothing against, even at the price of harming badly your own economy, the more sanctions/import tariffs will be impossed on yourself at the first necessity...", which is the old lesson from primary school, "the more weak you would show in front of a bully...more beating will come..., oor already in grown mafiosi, "more "special tax" for "protection" to pay"...

Then it is Spain who hosts most of US nuclear deterrence and AFRICOM central command...If Spain would have a sovereign government with a hint of respect for the people who vote it, an ultimatum will be possed in front of the yankees, "eliminate import tariffs, stop meddling with national economy, or pack your things and go home"

Elora Danan , Oct 5 2019 10:27 utc | 88
1.3 billion paper money to prevent the collapse of the Wall Street Stock Exchange.


The Federal Reserve of the United States has injected about 278,000 million dollars in the money market in four days. After injecting 53,000 million dollars earlier this week, the Federal Reserve renewed these operations three times for astronomical amounts representing 75,000 million per day, and has already announced that it will continue to do so daily until October 10.

The newspaper Le Figaro (1) describes as "astronomical" that jet of fiat money that, however, does not seem to worry the New York Stock Exchange, with a Dow Jones index that remained above 27,000 points throughout week. It is normal because, as the Efe agency says, "Wall Street feeds on the flexibility of the Fed" (2), that is, the massive emissions of paper money.

It has no different menu to nourish itself and, as specialists say, "the reasons that lead to lower interest rates are usually not good."

The resistance of Wall Street is explained because these operations only affect the interbank market, which is short of liquidity "temporarily". Banks that are financed on a daily basis in this market would suffer a shortage of liquidity as a result of large debt issues by the Treasury and a strong demand for liquidity from companies facing fiscal maturities.

But there are more than enough reasons for speculators to worry. "The reasons may be not only technical," says the newspaper. Some financial institutions have refused to make their funds available to the market, indicating the possible vulnerability of a participant (bank or companies) who may not be able to repay the amounts borrowed on a day-to-day basis. If this situation is confirmed, which is synonymous with the loss of mutual trust in the interbank market, it could be a more serious crisis than in 2008.

The President of the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell, who took office in February last year, has no different alternative. He has been a member of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve since 2012 and knows nothing more than routine: since the late 1970s he is the first president of the Federal Reserve that does not even have a bachelor's degree in economics. Does he need it?

The question is whether the gigantic mass of fiat money that it has put into circulation will be sufficient to avoid a collapse like that of 2007, or another even greater collapse will occur.

snake , Oct 5 2019 10:38 utc | 89
Russ @ 86.. can you tell me more about the continental congress. where can the biographies and histories be had which might shed some real light on John Hanson first president(1781-1783) of the United States in Congress Assembled(1776-1789) .. and Samuel Huntington (Conn), and Thomas McKeen (Delaware) and the others who were elected and served as Presidents of the [Continental Congress<= the government that defeated the British and that existed between 1776 and 1789}, before the lobbyist imposed ratification to install the US Constitution {a document that cut off (terminated) the right of self determination and denied bottom up democracy to the people of the several nations that were in America at the time]. Before the constitution, the people could and did impose democracy on those who were in charge of the local, state and central governments (The Articles of Confederation, central government from 1776 to 1789] after the Constitution, [the governed were never heard from again. ]. ..
Russ , Oct 5 2019 12:47 utc | 90
@ snake 89

Here's a piece I wrote some years ago on the 1787-88 convention and its goals.

https://attempter.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/the-american-revolution/

William Gruff , Oct 5 2019 13:19 utc | 91
somebody @59 sez: ""Souvereignty" and statehood ... is a recipe for war."

This is the mindset of the hegemon (or the servant of hegemony, whatever). They cannot even imagine "Truly mutually respectful, pragmatic and consequently solid relations" between nations any more than they can imagine others seeking that. They assume that everyone else is motivated to dominate as they are. They project their own damage from having been born into an intensely competitive, egotistical, identity -obsessed culture onto the rest of humanity out of sheer ignorance that things could possible be any different elsewhere.

Western culture, with the purest expression being in the United States, exalts in the individual. That sounds like a noble and wonderful thing on the surface, but the practical effect is to atomize society into isolated and competing hermetic entities. Community is displaced to accommodate the self. This environment favors the sociopath and the psychopath, which is why in the West sociopaths and psychopaths most easily accumulate power and rise to the tops of all of those societies' institutions. It is not surprising that those born into such an environment imagine it to be the natural order and human nature because that is all they know and experience.

But of course that is not human nature. The species would have died out far more than a hundred thousand years ago if it were. Human nature is to build community, and given the opportunity that is precisely what they do. Community, though, is a threat to the power of the psychopaths who ascend to the top of capitalist society, so in all institutions in which those psychopaths gain power they discourage and fight and dismantle community and replace it with social order built around themselves.

This psycho-driven culture grew to dominate in the West because, like slave-based societies before, it was economically progressive. Due to the immaturity of communication technology, individual psychos could assemble and coordinate larger social organizations directed at production than the population could naturally assemble on its own. But technology progresses and naturally formed human communities grow in scale and scope over time. This made slave-based economies obsolete, and is now in the process of obsoleting psycho-centric economies. It should come as no surprise that this replacement is occurring most rapidly in cultures where the psycho-centrism had not fully established itself.

Considering the above, my bet is that as we see China's BRI project mature in Africa, that continent will experience a Renaissance of epic proportions, perhaps even dwarfing China's accomplishments of the last half century. This is because African cultures are similar to the Chinese and other Asian cultures in that they have not yet been fully assimilated into the western worship of "individualism" , so their natural human tendencies towards community-building are not yet corrupted and subverted.

If China's transition to the dominant progressive power on the planet doesn't shatter the dangerous American myth of exceptionality, then big portions of Africa moving into first world status surely will. That's still some decades away, but we should be able to see undeniable signs of movement in that direction by about 2030 to 2040 (growth in industrial output and movement up the value added chain, dramatic development of infrastructure, rapid increases in academic attainment, significant declines in poverty, etc).

Naturally, that is something that few westerners, particularly Americans, can wrap their heads around because they have a flawed (Hobbesian) understanding of human nature. As they do with China now, westerners will deny the evidence from their own eyes with regards to Africa for as long as they can.

bevin , Oct 5 2019 13:27 utc | 92
wikipedia makes no mention of it but for a long time Thomas McKeen was famous as the villain in William Cobbett's The Democratic Judge or The Equal Liberty of the Press.
McKeen was a very nasty piece of work-his origins in Delaware are coincidental
bevin , Oct 5 2019 13:33 utc | 93
"...that is not human nature. The species would have died out far more than a hundred thousand years ago if it were. Human nature is to build community, and given the opportunity that is precisely what they do. Community, though, is a threat to the power of the psychopaths who ascend to the top of capitalist society, so in all institutions in which those psychopaths gain power they discourage and fight and dismantle community and replace it with social order built around themselves..."
How true, if a little unfair to psychopaths.
financial matters , Oct 5 2019 13:37 utc | 94
Elora Danan @ 88

Very interesting.
I don't think it's the use of fiat money itself that's so important but what it's used for. The money you describe as being used to support Wall Street is a great example of the wrong use. Supporting a derivative led financial speculation benefitting the 1% vs the belt and road which is oriented to real economic development which would be a wise productive use of fiat.
-------------

In a famous critical remark directed at China's heavy reliance on western-style, debt-led growth – an anonymous author (thought to be Xi or close colleague), noted (sarcastically) the notion that big trees could be grown 'in the air'. Which is to say: that trees need to have roots, and to grow in the ground. Instead of the 'virtual', financialised 'activity' of the West, real economic activity stems from the real economy, with roots planted in the earth. The 'Belt and Road' is just this: intended as a major catalyst to real economics.When the music stops and the derivative structure starts unraveling showing multiple claims on ownership who will prevail. I think that there's a new sheriff in town with the power to back up the 'roots in the ground' team.Posted by: financial matters | Jan 22, 2019 8:46:28 AM | 100

snake , Oct 5 2019 13:42 utc | 95
The 1776 Constitution was on a vector. By contrast, the 1788 Constitution was designed to foreclose any further democratic movement. On the contrary, its main vector was to concentrate power and wealth up the hierarchy, and to help build an empire for this new ruling class.] the empire class ...needed a constitution which would centralize government, strongly concentrate it, turn it into a versatile and brutal weapon on behalf of finance assaults, military aggression, and police repression. There's only one path forward: We must resume the American Revolution. by Russ @ 90..


very interesting.. 2012 .. discussion.. your paper .thanks . but still no background on the people who brought about the 1776 government. and who operated it between its inception 1776 and the Bankers coup that regime changed the 1776 government into the 1788 Constitution of the United States of America.
As you said in your article, everyone should know about Article 6 in the constitution of the United States of America (the 1788 government) it saved British and French Aristocracy <=and kept in power the very people the Americans had sought to remove=> from the Americans who fought the war. It says All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, shall be as valid against the US under this Constitution, as under the confederation (but no where do I see court cases that say under the 1776 government, that claims to lands, granted by foreign kings and Queens (land grant estates) were valid? In fact, what I see is that the Articles of Confederation government was planning to deny title to, and confiscate the lands which traced to the land grants (G. Washington owned half of West Virginia and all of Virginia) and the AoC plan was to distribute the land grant lands so confiscated among the people who lived in America equally?

Don Bacon , Oct 5 2019 13:47 utc | 96
@WG 91
. . . as we see China's BRI project mature in Africa, that continent will experience a Renaissance of epic proportions
Yes, and they've got a head start:
African countries with GDP growth rates above 5% in 2018
Libya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, The Gambia, Senegal, Uganda, Burkina Faso. Kenya, Guinea, Ghana, Egypt, Niger.
Also: China 6.5, US 2.8, France 1.5, Germany 1.4, UK 1.3 . . here
BM , Oct 5 2019 13:52 utc | 97
Lot of nonsense in this thread. From "gunpowder was the 1st overwhelming weapon that enabled conquest."
Posted by: A User | Oct 5 2019 8:38 utc | 81

...re China's invention of gun powder. IIRC Marco Polo brought it back to Europe in 1400s at a time when China had already advanced it to hand-held-cannon status.
Posted by: chu teh | Oct 5 2019 4:51 utc | 69

Agree with the lot of nonsense bit, although there is also a lot of interest. It is true that China discovered gunpowder, but not sure about the "hand-held-canon status". My version of reality had it that due to differences of perspective between East and West, China discovered gunpowder and used it for firecrackers, and (allegedly) never thought of using it for weapons. Similarly knowledge of the configuration of the stars in relation to location was discovered by the arabs, long before this knowledge was exploited by Europeans for navigation. The claim being, that the practical Europeans put scientific discovery to use for practical benefits while the East - which discovered important segments of that scientific discovery long before - had "merely" put it to spiritual, cultural and other transcendent uses.

I absorbed the above factoids (gunpowder and the stars) over half a century ago before I would have looked at such claims sufficiently critically; to what extent such factoids might be really true I am not quite sure, although I remain somewhat sceptical about the "hand-held-canon" claim. The broader claim though about the application of scientific discovery needs to be reexamined more impartially.

William Gruff , Oct 5 2019 14:03 utc | 98
Ian2 @67: "Secrecy ... is only revealed when appropriate."

And the appropriate moment to reveal a strategic doomsday arsenal that only exists to prevent attack is when that arsenal is fielded. This point is so obvious that it was raised with humorous intent in the 1964 Kubrick movie Dr. Strangelove .

You only keep weapons systems secret that you intend to use in attacks in order to surprise your victims. Since America is violently aggressive and regularly attacks other countries, the US maintains this sort of policy. America is exceptional in this regard, though. America's focus is on offensive weaponry to attack other countries with, so keeping those weapons secret helps limit America's victims' abilities to prepare and defend themselves. Military secrecy is therefore the tool of the aggressor intended to facilitate sucker-punching its victims. Weapons intended to discourage such attacks must be advertised loud and clear for their intended deterrence to succeed. This is why Russia openly announces their new weapons and why China shows theirs off in parades.

China does not intend to use their nukes. They are not like America which is building tactical nukes to make atomic weapons more palatable to use in practice. There are no countries in the world that China has shown any interest in attacking anyway, unlike America which maintains a list of target countries that it is working itself up to attacking.

braindead , Oct 5 2019 14:07 utc | 99
aaaaand the 1 mirrion $ question is: who funds the army?

- the people in the tent cities
- the oligarchs
- none of the above

jo6pac , Oct 5 2019 14:22 utc | 100
Who says V Putin doesn't have sense of humor as trolls Amerika.

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

, This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted. Working... Your comment could not be posted. Error type: Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment Name:

Email:

URL:
Allowed HTML Tags:

< B>Text</B> → Text
<I>Text</I> → Text
< U>Text</U> → Text
<BLOCKQUOTE>Text</BLOCKQUOTE>
< A HREF="http://www.aclu.org/">Headline (not the URL)</A> → Headline (not the URL)

Working... " When Ukraine's Prosecutor Came After His Son's Sponsor Joe Biden Sprang Into Action | Main

next page "

Verify your Comment Previewing your Comment

[Oct 05, 2019] Trumpenstein Must Be Destroyed! by C.J. Hopkins

Oct 05, 2019 | www.unz.com

The [neo]liberal mob was standing around with their torches and pitchforks in a state of shock. Doctor Mueller, the "monster hunter," had let Trumpenstein slip through his fingers. The supposedly ironclad case against him had turned out to be a bunch of lies made up by the Intelligence Community, the Democratic Party, and the corporate media.

Russiagate was officially dead . The President of the United States was not a Russian secret agent. No one was blackmailing anyone with a videotape of Romanian prostitutes peeing on a bed where Obama once slept. All that had happened was, millions of liberals had been subjected to the most elaborate psyop in the history of elaborate deep state psyops which, ironically, had only further strengthened Trumpenstein, who was out there on the Portico balcony, shotgunning Diet Cokes with one hand and shaking his junk at the mob with the other.

It wasn't looking so good for "democracy."

[Oct 03, 2019] adjudicated

Notable quotes:
"... Washington Post ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... the text does not read the way government people write. It sounds instead like an op-ed, a mediocre journalist "connecting the dots," a Maddow exclusive combining anonymous sources with dramatic conclusions. Sure, maybe the whistleblower had help writing it, but that's not the point. The point is that the complaint was written for the media. It was written to be leaked. It wasn't even about an intelligence matter. Maybe that's why the DOJ quickly rejected its accusations, and why both the Times ..."
"... If the whistleblower really is an analyst, he is not a very good one. He mixes second-hand sources with public ones to mimic a weary Dem narrative of foreign election help much like the Steele Dossier . The complainant witnessed nothing himself and produced no primary documents. The sourcing is as vague as "more than half a dozen officials have informed me of various facts." No law is cited because none applied; the whistleblower simply recorded his interpretation into bullet points, like the punchlines from Russiagate no one laughed at. ..."
"... The whistleblower's expected testimony will be played as high drama but actually it is meaningless; he has an opinion but his accusations were made without hearing the call or reading the transcript. At least he's in good company: Nancy Pelosi also declared her support for impeachment before she'd heard the call or seen the transcript. ..."
"... Elizabeth Warren will emerge as the nominee . Goodbye then to all the minor Dems, see you in 2024, perhaps running against Mike Pence after Trump's second term ..."
"... The case is weak, though with their House majority, that might not stop the Dems from impeaching a president just months ahead of an election based on a partisan interpretation of a few words to a minor world leader. ..."
"... Democrats are taking that road instead of talking about jobs, health care, immigration, or any of the other issues voters do care about. ..."
"... Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of ..."
Oct 03, 2019 | www.nytimes.com

the whistleblower complaint before the thing was leaked to the Washington Post . The original complaint was passed from the Intelligence Community Inspector General to the DOJ, which determined there was no crime and closed the case. Officials found that the transcript did not show that Trump had violated campaign finance laws by soliciting a thing of value, such as the investigation, from a foreign national. Even as Democrats bleat about how corrupt the DOJ is, at some point during any impeachment, they will need to make clear what evidence they have that finds crime where DOJ did not. No one is above the law, sure, but which law exactly are we talking about here?

Trump is apparently no better at cover-ups than he is at extortion. He got no dirt on Biden even as Ukraine pocketed its aid money (Ukraine, in fact, knew nothing about the aid being frozen while Trump supposedly was shaking them down), and his so-called cover-up concluded with him releasing in unprecedented fashion both the complaint and the transcript. For a cover-up to even begin, you have to have something to cover, and a phone call that led nowhere doesn't need to be covered up. In fact, it's on the internet right now.

Advertisement

But the complaint says that the transcript was moved from one secure computer server inside the White House to an even more secure server. That's a cover-up! Not discussed is that Congress had no more access to the first server than the second. Exactly who was blocked from seeing the transcript when it was on the more secure system who would have had access to it otherwise? It seems the main person who suddenly couldn't grab the transcript was the whistleblower. To make all this work, Democrats either have to argue for less cybersecurity or impeach for over-classification. And of course, the Obama administration also stored records of select presidential phone calls on the exact same server .

Bottom line: Trump asked the Ukrainian president to take calls from Bill Barr and Rudy Giuliani to talk about corruption, a bilateral issue since the Obama administration with or without Hunter Biden. There was no quid pro quo. Maybe a good scolding is deserved, but sloppy statesmanship is not high crimes and misdemeanors.

Something else is wrong. The whistleblower is a member of the intel community (the New York Times says CIA), but the text does not read the way government people write. It sounds instead like an op-ed, a mediocre journalist "connecting the dots," a Maddow exclusive combining anonymous sources with dramatic conclusions. Sure, maybe the whistleblower had help writing it, but that's not the point. The point is that the complaint was written for the media. It was written to be leaked. It wasn't even about an intelligence matter. Maybe that's why the DOJ quickly rejected its accusations, and why both the Times and the Huffington Post praised the writing, commenting on how much clearer the complaint was than Mueller's legalese.

And that's a problem. A whistleblower complaint is meant to point out violations of law in the language of prosecutors. It is legalese. A complaint requires data and references. The evidence I needed to explain waste in Iraq's reconstruction ended up at over 230 published pages. Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers originally ran into multiple volumes to prove that the government lied about Vietnam. Ed Snowden needed terabytes of data to demonstrate NSA illegality.

The Hazards of 'Normalizing' Impeachment Impeachment 2.0 is Trainwrecking U.S. Foreign Policy

If the whistleblower really is an analyst, he is not a very good one. He mixes second-hand sources with public ones to mimic a weary Dem narrative of foreign election help much like the Steele Dossier . The complainant witnessed nothing himself and produced no primary documents. The sourcing is as vague as "more than half a dozen officials have informed me of various facts." No law is cited because none applied; the whistleblower simply recorded his interpretation into bullet points, like the punchlines from Russiagate no one laughed at.

The whistleblower's expected testimony will be played as high drama but actually it is meaningless; he has an opinion but his accusations were made without hearing the call or reading the transcript. At least he's in good company: Nancy Pelosi also declared her support for impeachment before she'd heard the call or seen the transcript.

Here's where things stand. After three years of trying to keep Trump from assuming office, then cycling through ways to throw him out, this plops onto the field. If an impeachment vote comes, it will literally be with Trump having only a few months left in his term. This is no longer about overturning 2016; it is about circumventing 2020, fear by the Democrats of what will happen if they let the deplorables vote again. Is the Dem slate that weak? They are acting as if they have nothing to lose by trying impeachment.

Pity Nancy Pelosi, who tried to hold back her colleagues. Now instead of answering the needs of constituents, Democrats will instead exploit their majority in the House to hold hearings that will likely lead to a show vote that would have embarrassed Stalin. History will remember Pelosi as the mom who, after putting up with the kids' tantrums for hours, finally gave in only a few blocks from home. She'll regret spoiling dinner over a hefty glass of white wine, but what could she do: they just wouldn't shut up and her nerves were shot. Have you had to listen to AOC complain from the back seat for two hours in traffic?

The last thing Joe Biden needed was more baggage. It'll take awhile for him to realize it, but he's done, doomed by kompromat never actually found. Impeachment will so dominate the media that no one will listen to whatever the other primary Dems have to say. Kamala Harris in the midst of all this was so desperate for attention she was still trying to drum up support for impeaching Brett Kavanaugh .

Elizabeth Warren will emerge as the nominee . Goodbye then to all the minor Dems, see you in 2024, perhaps running against Mike Pence after Trump's second term .

The case is weak, though with their House majority, that might not stop the Dems from impeaching a president just months ahead of an election based on a partisan interpretation of a few words to a minor world leader. Impeachment didn't even come up in the last Democratic debate, yet heading into the early caucuses, the faces of the party will be Adam Schiff and the agita-driven Hillary. Democrats are taking that road instead of talking about jobs, health care, immigration, or any of the other issues voters do care about.

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People , Hooper's War: A Novel of WWII Japan , and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent.

[Oct 02, 2019] MSM tri to swipe under the rad facts of Ukranine interfernce in 2016 elections

Oct 02, 2019 | abcnews.go.com

me name=

Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, defended himself Sunday on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" from accusations lodged by the president's former homeland security adviser that he has trafficked unfounded theories about foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Interested in Donald Trump? Add Donald Trump as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Donald Trump news, video, and analysis from ABC News. Donald Trump Add Interest

Tom Bossert, the former White House official, took aim at Giuliani earlier on "This Week," calling it a mistake for the president to have hired him in the first place. He also called out Giuliani for repeating a "completely false" theory that Ukraine – not Russia – was responsible for interference in the 2016 election.

me name=

"At this point I am deeply frustrated with what [Giuliani] and the legal team is doing and repeating that debunked theory to the president," Bossert, who is now an ABC contributor, said. "It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again."

Giuliani fired back later in the show, telling Stephanopoulos, "Tom Bossert doesn't know what he's talking about I'm not peddling anything."

me name=

The president's personal attorney also sought to defend his role in pressing Ukrainians to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, the fallout from which has led to an impeachment inquiry in Congress.

"Everything I did was to defend my client and I am proud of having uncovered what will turn out to be a massive pay-for-play scheme," Giuliani told Stephanopoulos.

The "pay-for-play scheme" Giuliani has accused Biden of perpetrating in Ukraine dates back to 2016 and the dismissal of the country's former prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin. At the time, Biden was leading U.S. policy toward Ukraine with an emphasis on cracking down on corruption.

He called for Shokin to be fired.

At one point, Giuliani waved what he said were several affidavits, including one by Shokin defending himself, which he said verified his claims that Shokin was dismissed as a result of his investigation of Burisma and Hunter Biden.

It was not immediately clear how the documents verified those claims.

Trump and Giuliani have accused Biden of calling for Shokin's dismissal because his office was investigating Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company where Biden's son, Hunter, had a seat on the board of directors.

"This is not about getting Joe Biden in trouble," Giuliani said. "This is about proving that Donald Trump was framed by the Democrats."

PHOTO: President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speak during a meeting in New York on September 25, 2019, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speak during a meeting in New York on September 25, 2019, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. more +

But the assertion that Biden acted to help his son has been undercut by widespread criticism of Shokin from several high-profile international leaders, including members of the European Union and International Monetary Fund, who said Biden's recommendation was well justified.

(MORE: Trump administration changed foreign-leader call-storage methods after leaks)

The IMF threatened to withhold aid to Kiev in early 2016, citing "Ukraine's slow progress in improving governance and fighting corruption," according to Christine Lagard, the IMF's managing director.

Giuliani also sought to undermine a whistleblower complaint, which was filed in August and released publicly last week, that describes the nature of the president's phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and an apparent effort within the White House to "lock down" records of the conversation.

"The whistleblower says, 'I don't have any direct knowledge, I just heard things,'" Giuliani said. "I'm not saying [the whistleblower] was false, I'm saying he could have heard it wrong."

(MORE: President Trump will be held 'accountable' in wake of whistleblower complaint: Adam Schiff)

Stephanopoulos cited several examples from the complaint in which the whistleblower accurately described the content of Trump's conversation with Zelenskiy as compared to the transcript.

The whistleblower, who has not been identified, claimed that at least a half dozen administration officials had raised concerns that Trump had used "the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election."

PHOTO: The annual Free Iran Conference for the first time at Ashraf 3, the headquarters of the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran on July 13, 2019, near Duress in Albania. Siavosh Hosseini/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The annual Free Iran Conference for the first time at Ashraf 3, the headquarters of the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran on July 13, 2019, near Duress in Albania. more +

Democrats have accused the president of using his desire for an investigation into the Bidens as leverage with Zelenskiy, particularly in light of the fact that the White House had, at the time, withheld nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine.

It was later released.

Giuliani's name is invoked more than 30 times in the whistleblower's complaint.

When Stephanopoulos asked Giuliani whether he will cooperate with the House Intelligence Committee, for which Rep. Adam Schiff is the chair, Giuliani said he wouldn't cooperate with Schiff. But when pressed said he would "consider it" if his client, the president, signed off.

"I'm a lawyer. It's his privilege, not mine," he responded. "If he decides that he wants me to testify, of course I'll testify, even though I think Adam Schiff is an illegitimate chairman. He has already prejudged the case."

(MORE: From a controversial phone call to impeachment calls: A Trump whistleblower timeline)

In his interview on "This Week," Giuliani sought to clarify the timeline of his conversations with Ukrainians and insisted he did not instigate communications.

"November of 2016, they first came to me," Giuliani said of the alleged outreach from Ukrainians through the State Department. "The Ukrainians came to me. I didn't go to them."

The State Department and its chief, Mike Pompeo, have faced scrutiny for their handling of Giuliani's overtures to the Ukrainians. The former U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, helped coordinate at least one interaction Giuliani had with an aide to Zelenskiy in Madrid in May, Volker confirmed.

(MORE: Only 17% of Americans surprised by Trump's actions tied to Ukraine: POLL)

Giuliani has claimed the State Department directed him to act and has said he briefed Volker and the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, after his meetings with Ukrainians.

On Friday, ABC News reported that Volker had resigned from his post with the State Department. House Democrats still plan to interview him next week as part of their impeachment inquiry, according to a congressional aide.

Giuliani planned to speak at a conference in Armenia next week, according to a schedule. But he cancelled after news outlets reported that several Kremlin officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin would also be in attendance.

[Oct 02, 2019] The alliance of neoliberals and neocons tries to ostracize Putin and has some level of success

Notable quotes:
"... Giuliani planned to speak at a conference in Armenia next week, according to a schedule. But he cancelled after news outlets reported that several Kremlin officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin would also be in attendance. ..."
Oct 02, 2019 | abcnews.go.com

Giuliani has claimed the State Department directed him to act and has said he briefed Volker and the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, after his meetings with Ukrainians.

On Friday, ABC News reported that Volker had resigned from his post with the State Department. House Democrats still plan to interview him next week as part of their impeachment inquiry, according to a congressional aide.

Giuliani planned to speak at a conference in Armenia next week, according to a schedule. But he cancelled after news outlets reported that several Kremlin officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin would also be in attendance.

[Oct 01, 2019] Twisted Pair, Part 1 US UK Barrelling Towards Great Troubles

So we have three elements of the CIA operation Russiagate II: Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi and unknown person who authorized the change in the form.
Notable quotes:
"... House Intelligence Committee head Adam Schiff supposedly sat on the 'whistleblower' complaint for over a month. ..."
"... By the way, the term whistleblower is a terrible misnomer, but everyone's using it, can't undo that anymore. Still, you can't be a CIA agent, be planted somewhere, leak on what goes on there and then be labeled a whistleblower. That works only if you share CIA secrets. ..."
"... Niceties aside, it appears that Schiff sat on the complaint since August 12 . First question is: why? But there are other questions as well. Two weeks ago, Schiff complained that acting DNI chief Joseph Maguire refused to share the contents of the complaint with Congress. But Maguire did that only after consulting with his legal counsel: ..."
"... Note the date. Also note the term 'urgent'. Which didn't keep Schiff from sitting on it for 5-6 weeks. And note that Schiff knew what was in the complaint, despite Politico reporting that "the confluence of factors led him to believe the complaint involved Trump or other senior executive branch officials." ..."
"... Okay, so why did he sit on the letter? Is it possible this has been a set-up all along? Snippet no. 2 became known on September 24 ..."
"... Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings. This raises questions about the intelligence community's behavior regarding the August submission of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. The new complaint document no longer requires potential whistleblowers who wish to have their concerns expedited to Congress to have direct, first-hand knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing that they are reporting. ..."
"... The internal properties of the newly revised "Disclosure of Urgent Concern" form, which the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG) requires to be submitted under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA), show that the document was uploaded on September 24, 2019, at 4:25 p.m., just days before the anti-Trump complaint was declassified and released to the public. ..."
"... Why were the changes made? Who authorized them? Can anyone who hears something from their gossipy aunt now become a whistleblower? Can the aunt? ..."
"... Back in December 2018 CTH noted the significant House rule changes constructed by Nancy Pelosi for the 116th congress [..] With the House going into a scheduled calendar recess, those rules are now being used to subvert historic processes and construct the articles of impeachment. A formal vote to initiate an "impeachment inquiry" is not technically required; however, there has always been a full house vote until now. ..."
"... "Pelosi called for impeachment without having seen the transcript or the complaint. That will forever be weird." ..."
"... PS: I don't get the attention for the whistleblower. The only interesting parties involved are the people who fed him/her their info. Are they also CIA by any chance? Let's ask them. ..."
Oct 01, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

... ... ...

Over the past few days, a series of snippets have appeared that each make me think: can this be true? The first such snippet is that House Intelligence Committee head Adam Schiff supposedly sat on the 'whistleblower' complaint for over a month.

By the way, the term whistleblower is a terrible misnomer, but everyone's using it, can't undo that anymore. Still, you can't be a CIA agent, be planted somewhere, leak on what goes on there and then be labeled a whistleblower. That works only if you share CIA secrets.

Niceties aside, it appears that Schiff sat on the complaint since August 12 . First question is: why? But there are other questions as well. Two weeks ago, Schiff complained that acting DNI chief Joseph Maguire refused to share the contents of the complaint with Congress. But Maguire did that only after consulting with his legal counsel:

Schiff: Top Intel Official Has Refused To Turn Over 'Urgent' Whistleblower Complaint

Schiff ripped Maguire for breaching a law that requires him to share with Congress any whistleblower complaint deemed urgent by the intelligence community's inspector general. He said the confluence of factors led him to believe the complaint involved Trump or other senior executive branch officials.

But DNI general counsel Jason Klitenic insisted in a letter to Schiff on Tuesday that Maguire had followed the letter of the law in blocking the transmission of the complaint to Congress. The whistleblower statute governing his agency, he said, only applies when the complaint involves a member of the intelligence community. Because it was aimed at a person outside the intelligence community, he said, the whistleblower statute does not apply to this scenario.

Under the statute, Klitenic stated, deeming a whistleblower complaint "urgent" is only valid when it applies to conduct by someone "within the responsibility and authority" of the DNI. Therefore, he said, after consulting with the Justice Department, he determined the complaint did not qualify as an "urgent" concern requiring transmittal to Congress.

Note the date. Also note the term 'urgent'. Which didn't keep Schiff from sitting on it for 5-6 weeks. And note that Schiff knew what was in the complaint, despite Politico reporting that "the confluence of factors led him to believe the complaint involved Trump or other senior executive branch officials."

Okay, so why did he sit on the letter? Is it possible this has been a set-up all along? Snippet no. 2 became known on September 24:

Intel Community Secretly Gutted Requirement Of First-Hand Whistleblower Knowledge

Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings. This raises questions about the intelligence community's behavior regarding the August submission of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. The new complaint document no longer requires potential whistleblowers who wish to have their concerns expedited to Congress to have direct, first-hand knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing that they are reporting.

The brand new version of the whistleblower complaint form, which was not made public until after the transcript of Trump's July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the complaint addressed to Congress were made public, eliminates the first-hand knowledge requirement and allows employees to file whistleblower complaints even if they have zero direct knowledge of underlying evidence and only "heard about [wrongdoing] from others."

The internal properties of the newly revised "Disclosure of Urgent Concern" form, which the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG) requires to be submitted under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA), show that the document was uploaded on September 24, 2019, at 4:25 p.m., just days before the anti-Trump complaint was declassified and released to the public.

Here's what the requirements looked like before the changes:

Why were the changes made? Who authorized them? Can anyone who hears something from their gossipy aunt now become a whistleblower? Can the aunt?

And then a few days ago there was this little tid-bit, snippet no. 3, which seems to fit right into a pattern:

Pelosi's House Rule Changes are Key Part of "Articles of Impeachment"

Back in December 2018 CTH noted the significant House rule changes constructed by Nancy Pelosi for the 116th congress [..] With the House going into a scheduled calendar recess, those rules are now being used to subvert historic processes and construct the articles of impeachment. A formal vote to initiate an "impeachment inquiry" is not technically required; however, there has always been a full house vote until now.

The reason not to have a House vote is simple: if the formal process was followed the minority (republicans) would have enforceable rights within it. Without a vote to initiate, the articles of impeachment can be drawn up without any participation by the minority; and without any input from the executive. This was always the plan that was visible in Pelosi's changed House rules.

Anyone can be a whistleblower, all it takes is for the intelligence community to express an interest in your aunt's gossip. And then anything anyone says can be used to draw up an article of impeachment. Which can then be voted on by the Democrat majority in Congress, and accepted.

Which has no practical meaning, obviously, because there will be no Senate majority to actually impeach Trump. It's pure theater. And anyway, impeached for what? For asking Ukraine assistance in investigating 2016 election meddling? Sure, you can rephrase that as "digging up dirt", but isn't that phrasing by now a purely partisan thing and hence worthless?

I see two options. A few days ago I wrote: "Pelosi called for impeachment without having seen the transcript or the complaint. That will forever be weird." If that is true, as we've been led to believe by both the protagonists and the press, it is weird indeed. But now there is another option on the table.

Namely, that Pelosi has known the contents of the complaint since August 12, when the 'whistleblower' wrote to Adam Schiff, or soon thereafter. And that she, too, sat on it. Urgent or not. And then a few days ago went all-in for impeachment. No matter what the exact details here are, it very much looks like a well-prepared operation, step by step.

I started out with the term Twisted Pair for the US and UK, because both countries raise the question: how are they going to remain governable? Leave or Remain, GOP or Democrat, the trenches are being dug deeper fast. The only way forward appears to be even deeper divides. GOP and Democrats are a Twisted Pair all by themselves.

PS: I don't get the attention for the whistleblower. The only interesting parties involved are the people who fed him/her their info. Are they also CIA by any chance? Let's ask them.

[Oct 01, 2019] Aussie PM Confirms No Coercion, Was Ready To Assist In Mueller Origins Probe

Sep 30, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Less than an hour after the New York Times dropped their 'bombshell' whistleblower claims that President Trump coerced the Australian PM into assisting his investigation into the origins of the Mueller probe, the Aussie PM's office has destroyed the narrative in two short sentences. An official statement confirmed:

"The Australian Government has always been ready to assist and cooperate with efforts that help shed further light on the matters under investigation. The PM confirmed this readiness once again in conversation with the President"

So, the Aussies were always ready and willing to help (with no Trump coercion required) and the Aussies reiterated such facts (with no apparent prodding from Trump).

So another 'bombshell' embarrasses the media...

* * *

As we enter a new era of anonymous whistleblowers heading into the 2020 election (a new anti-Trump strategy telegraphed by former CIA Director, John Brennan ), the New York Times is out with a report that President Trump asked the Australian Prime Minister to help Attorney General William Barr uncover the origins of "Russiagate," according to yet another 'whistleblower.'

A transcript of the call has been restricted to a small group of the president's aides, according to the Times , which compared it to the "unusual decision" similar to how the Trump administration restricted access to the transcript of a July call with the President of Ukraine (which the last administration routinely did according to former national security adviser Susan Rice ).

According to the Times , Trump was "using high-level diplomacy to advance his personal political interests," however "Justice Department officials have said that it would be neither illegal nor untoward for Mr. Trump to ask world leaders to cooperate with Mr. Barr. "

President Trump initiated the discussion in recent weeks with Mr. Morrison explicitly for the purpose of requesting Australia's help in the Justice Department review of the Russia investigation , according to the two people with knowledge of the discussion. Mr. Barr requested that Mr. Trump speak to Mr. Morrison , one of the people said. - NYT

Of note, Barr appointed career prosecutor John H. Durham to investigate the origins of "Russiagate," a move which Trump and his allies have suggested may be potentially helpful for the White House .

Trump's request effectively meant that Australia would be investigating itself over the participation of Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in an alleged spying - and potential setup - on the Trump campaign.

Shortly after Trump aide George Papadopoulos announced his intention to work for the 2016 campaign, he was lured to London in March of 2016, where Maltese professor and self-described Clinton foundation member Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor that Russia had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

Papadopoulos would later relay this information to Downer, who passed it to the FBI, which in turn launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane - the FBI's official investigation into the Trump campaign.

The F.B.I.'s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election began after Australian officials told the bureau that the Russian government had made overtures to the Trump campaign about releasing political damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Australian officials shared that information after its top official in Britain met in London in May 2016 with George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who told the Australian about the Russian dirt on Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Papadopoulos also said that he had heard that the Russians had "thousands" of Mrs. Clinton's emails from Joseph Mifsud , an academic. Mr. Mifsud, who was last seen working as a visiting professor in Rome, has disappeared. - NYT

Barr began a review of the Russia investigation earlier this year with the stated goal of determining whether the US intelligence community under Obama acted inappropriately - for example, when they sent Stefan Halper - a spy who had been paid over $1 million during Obama's presidency - to infiltrate Trump campaign aides Papadopoulos and Carter Page .

Last week the DOJ announced that it was exploring how other countries, including Ukraine, "played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign."

Whatever the findings, we're sure the new 'whistleblower strategy' is sure to deflect from any actual wrongdoing which may have been committed by government officials.

[Sep 30, 2019] Stephen Miller calls whistleblower a 'partisan hit job' in fiery interview

Highly recommended!
This is deep state operation, Russiagate II, pure and simple
Stephen Miller proved to be formidable debater. His jeremiad against the Deep State at 12:55 was brilliant. Former South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy says people have stopped sharing information with the House Intelligence Committee because Chair Adam Schiff is the most deeply partisan member who is "leaking like a sieve"
The problem with Pelosi bold move is that she does not have votes for impeachment, but the dirt uncovered might sink any Democrat changes for 2020
Notable quotes:
"... Stephen Miller is amazing at wrestling and smacking down this Democratic Operative Chris Wallace ..."
"... Wallace is a minion of the globalists. ..."
"... Stephen Miller is CORRECT -- there is no more integrity and confidence in government affairs when it can be turned into ammunition against the President of the United States. Chris Wallace really ought to work for CNN. ..."
"... Chris Wallace Incorrect. We have the Docs that expose the corruption on the part of the Biden. We have his legal team basically threatening the new prosectutor saying in lawyer speak "Hey you saw how we got the last prosecutor fired? I'd suggest you cooperate with us or you will get fired next" .450 pages from Biden's son legal team at Burisma, Ukrainian Embassy Official Docs and State Department Docs. ..."
"... Also last time I checked Donald Trump is the head of the executive branch he can direct anyone to go find anything, and I haven't seen one person show me where he can't. ..."
Sep 30, 2019 | www.youtube.com

john scott , 3 hours ago

This hit job is George Soros and Son and his Lawyers

We2 , 21 minutes ago

Wallace is one of the Deep State swamp creature plants that he is talking about!

YahshuaLovesMe , 8 seconds ago

this interviewer Chris Wallace is a subversive. so it seems to me. he is a saboteur.

Salvador , 46 seconds ago

Stephen Miller is amazing at wrestling and smacking down this Democratic Operative Chris Wallace

vermeea1 , 17 minutes ago

FOX is a part of the Oligarch Deep State.

Reverend Fry , 7 minutes ago

Wallace is a minion of the globalists.

YahshuaLovesMe , 14 seconds ago

Stephen Miller is a genius.

Flash , 5 minutes ago

Stephen Miller is CORRECT -- there is no more integrity and confidence in government affairs when it can be turned into ammunition against the President of the United States. Chris Wallace really ought to work for CNN.

Russ Hansen , 1 minute ago

Biden and the whistle blower hahaha they need to go to jail

Lloyd Noland , 6 minutes ago

Chris Wallace Incorrect. We have the Docs that expose the corruption on the part of the Biden. We have his legal team basically threatening the new prosectutor saying in lawyer speak "Hey you saw how we got the last prosecutor fired? I'd suggest you cooperate with us or you will get fired next" .450 pages from Biden's son legal team at Burisma, Ukrainian Embassy Official Docs and State Department Docs.

Wallace you sir you are a paritsan hack. Anyone can read the docs too thats whats sad. I'm only 70 pages in and its bad for the Biden's jailtime bad.

Also last time I checked Donald Trump is the head of the executive branch he can direct anyone to go find anything, and I haven't seen one person show me where he can't.

[Sep 29, 2019] Marie L. Yovanovitch blocked visa to the senior prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk

Notable quotes:
"... The senior prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk never got an answer, and he says it's because the visas were blocked by the U.S. Ambassador. The Ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch is a career diplomat (since 1986) who served under both Democratic and Republicans and was appointed to her present position in August 2016 by former President Obama. ..."
Jun 19, 2019 | lidblog.com

Originally from: New Report Indicates Case Against Paul Manafort Is Fruit Of The Poisonous Tree - The Lid by Jeff Dunetz

The FBI knew the Steele dossier was nonsense before they used it to get the FISA court to issue the warrant to begin spying on Carter Page leading to the Russia collusion hoax. John Solomon of The Hill found a second document that the FBI knew contained false information, but they used it to get the search warrant against Paul Manafort anyway.

Per Solomon:

The second document, known as the "black cash ledger," remarkably has escaped the same scrutiny, even though its emergence in Ukraine in the summer of 2016 forced Paul Manafort to resign as Trump's campaign chairman and eventually face U.S. indictment.

Trending: Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) Introduces Motion To Censure Adam Schiff

In search warrant affidavits, the FBI portrayed the ledger as one reason it resurrected a criminal case against Manafort that was dropped in 2014 and needed search warrants in 2017 for bank records to prove he worked for the Russian-backed Party of Regions in Ukraine.

There's just one problem: The FBI's public reliance on the ledger came months after the feds were warned repeatedly that the document couldn't be trusted and likely was a fake, according to documents and more than a dozen interviews with knowledgeable sources.

When the NY Times reported the news about the ledger, they positioned it as a big scandal as they do with almost everything associated with Donald Trump:

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych's pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine's newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

( ) The papers, known in Ukraine as the "black ledger," are a chicken-scratch of Cyrillic covering about 400 pages taken from books once kept in a third-floor room in the former Party of Regions headquarters on Lipskaya Street in Kiev. The room held two safes stuffed with $100 bills, said Taras V. Chornovil, a former party leader who was also a recipient of the money at times. He said in an interview that he had once received $10,000 in a "wad of cash" for a trip to Europe.

Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine's top anti-corruption prosecutor, told John Solomon that he had told his State Dept contacts and FBI agents that his colleagues who found the ledger thought it was bogus around the same time the Times published the story late August 2916.

"It was not to be considered a document of Manafort. It was not authenticated. And at that time it should not be used in any way to bring accusations against anybody," Kholodnytsky said, recalling what he told FBI agents.

This is the second incident of Obama's State Department ignoring Ukraine evidence. Two months ago we learned that senior member of Ukraine's Prosecutor General's International Legal Cooperation Dept. told John Solomon that since last year, he's been blocked from getting visas for himself and a team to go to the U.S. to deliver evidence of Democratic party wrongdoing during the 2016 election to the DOJ. The senior prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk never got an answer, and he says it's because the visas were blocked by the U.S. Ambassador. The Ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch is a career diplomat (since 1986) who served under both Democratic and Republicans and was appointed to her present position in August 2016 by former President Obama.

Solomon gives some more examples of the FBI being told the ledger was as real as a three-dollar bill. But that's when it gets really dicey because according to three of Solomon's sources, Mueller's team of political hitmen and the FBI were given copies of one of the warnings.

Because they knew the ledger was false Mueller and the FBI couldn't use the ledger to establish probable cause to investigate Manafort because it " would require agents to discuss their assessment of the evidence -- and instead cited media reports about it." Even though the feds assisted on one of those stories as sources

For example, agents mentioned the ledger in an affidavit supporting a July 2017 search warrant for Manafort's house, citing it as one of the reasons the FBI resurrected the criminal case against Manafort.

"On August 19, 2016, after public reports regarding connections between Manafort, Ukraine and Russia -- including an alleged 'black ledger' of off-the-book payments from the Party of Regions to Manafort -- Manafort left his post as chairman of the Trump Campaign," the July 25, 2017, FBI agent's affidavit stated.

Three months later, the FBI went further in arguing probable cause for a search warrant for Manafort's bank records, citing a specific article about the ledger as evidence Manafort was paid to perform U.S. lobbying work for the Ukrainians.

"The April 12, 2017, Associated Press article reported that DMI [Manafort's company] records showed at least two payments were made to DMI that correspond to payments in the 'black ledger,' " an FBI agent wrote in a footnote to the affidavit.

Guess who helped the AP with their story -- the DOJ's Andrew Weissmann who later moved to the special prosecutor's office and became Mueller's chief hit-man.

So just as they had done in the anti-Trump investigation "the FBI cited a leak that the government had facilitated and then used it to support the black ledger evidence, even though it had been clearly warned about the document."

Whether or not Paul Manafort deserved to be jailed is irrelevant. Part of the search warrants against him were lies that the prosecutors knew were false. The judgments against him should be tossed out because they contain the fruit of the poisonous tree. Our justice system promises equal justice for all, but the FBI and Special Prosecutor cheated in the case of Manafort.

There is much more to John Solomon's report. I recommend you click here and give it a read.

[Sep 29, 2019] Marie L. Yovanovitch blocked visa to the senior prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk

Notable quotes:
"... The senior prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk never got an answer, and he says it's because the visas were blocked by the U.S. Ambassador. The Ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch is a career diplomat (since 1986) who served under both Democratic and Republicans and was appointed to her present position in August 2016 by former President Obama. ..."
Jun 19, 2019 | lidblog.com

Originally from: New Report Indicates Case Against Paul Manafort Is Fruit Of The Poisonous Tree - The Lid by Jeff Dunetz

The FBI knew the Steele dossier was nonsense before they used it to get the FISA court to issue the warrant to begin spying on Carter Page leading to the Russia collusion hoax. John Solomon of The Hill found a second document that the FBI knew contained false information, but they used it to get the search warrant against Paul Manafort anyway.

Per Solomon:

The second document, known as the "black cash ledger," remarkably has escaped the same scrutiny, even though its emergence in Ukraine in the summer of 2016 forced Paul Manafort to resign as Trump's campaign chairman and eventually face U.S. indictment.

Trending: Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) Introduces Motion To Censure Adam Schiff

In search warrant affidavits, the FBI portrayed the ledger as one reason it resurrected a criminal case against Manafort that was dropped in 2014 and needed search warrants in 2017 for bank records to prove he worked for the Russian-backed Party of Regions in Ukraine.

There's just one problem: The FBI's public reliance on the ledger came months after the feds were warned repeatedly that the document couldn't be trusted and likely was a fake, according to documents and more than a dozen interviews with knowledgeable sources.

When the NY Times reported the news about the ledger, they positioned it as a big scandal as they do with almost everything associated with Donald Trump:

Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych's pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine's newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.

( ) The papers, known in Ukraine as the "black ledger," are a chicken-scratch of Cyrillic covering about 400 pages taken from books once kept in a third-floor room in the former Party of Regions headquarters on Lipskaya Street in Kiev. The room held two safes stuffed with $100 bills, said Taras V. Chornovil, a former party leader who was also a recipient of the money at times. He said in an interview that he had once received $10,000 in a "wad of cash" for a trip to Europe.

Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine's top anti-corruption prosecutor, told John Solomon that he had told his State Dept contacts and FBI agents that his colleagues who found the ledger thought it was bogus around the same time the Times published the story late August 2916.

"It was not to be considered a document of Manafort. It was not authenticated. And at that time it should not be used in any way to bring accusations against anybody," Kholodnytsky said, recalling what he told FBI agents.

This is the second incident of Obama's State Department ignoring Ukraine evidence. Two months ago we learned that senior member of Ukraine's Prosecutor General's International Legal Cooperation Dept. told John Solomon that since last year, he's been blocked from getting visas for himself and a team to go to the U.S. to deliver evidence of Democratic party wrongdoing during the 2016 election to the DOJ. The senior prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk never got an answer, and he says it's because the visas were blocked by the U.S. Ambassador. The Ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch is a career diplomat (since 1986) who served under both Democratic and Republicans and was appointed to her present position in August 2016 by former President Obama.

Solomon gives some more examples of the FBI being told the ledger was as real as a three-dollar bill. But that's when it gets really dicey because according to three of Solomon's sources, Mueller's team of political hitmen and the FBI were given copies of one of the warnings.

Because they knew the ledger was false Mueller and the FBI couldn't use the ledger to establish probable cause to investigate Manafort because it " would require agents to discuss their assessment of the evidence -- and instead cited media reports about it." Even though the feds assisted on one of those stories as sources

For example, agents mentioned the ledger in an affidavit supporting a July 2017 search warrant for Manafort's house, citing it as one of the reasons the FBI resurrected the criminal case against Manafort.

"On August 19, 2016, after public reports regarding connections between Manafort, Ukraine and Russia -- including an alleged 'black ledger' of off-the-book payments from the Party of Regions to Manafort -- Manafort left his post as chairman of the Trump Campaign," the July 25, 2017, FBI agent's affidavit stated.

Three months later, the FBI went further in arguing probable cause for a search warrant for Manafort's bank records, citing a specific article about the ledger as evidence Manafort was paid to perform U.S. lobbying work for the Ukrainians.

"The April 12, 2017, Associated Press article reported that DMI [Manafort's company] records showed at least two payments were made to DMI that correspond to payments in the 'black ledger,' " an FBI agent wrote in a footnote to the affidavit.

Guess who helped the AP with their story -- the DOJ's Andrew Weissmann who later moved to the special prosecutor's office and became Mueller's chief hit-man.

So just as they had done in the anti-Trump investigation "the FBI cited a leak that the government had facilitated and then used it to support the black ledger evidence, even though it had been clearly warned about the document."

Whether or not Paul Manafort deserved to be jailed is irrelevant. Part of the search warrants against him were lies that the prosecutors knew were false. The judgments against him should be tossed out because they contain the fruit of the poisonous tree. Our justice system promises equal justice for all, but the FBI and Special Prosecutor cheated in the case of Manafort.

There is much more to John Solomon's report. I recommend you click here and give it a read.

[Sep 29, 2019] Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) Introduces Motion To Censure Adam Schiff

Sep 29, 2019 | lidblog.com

Opening the Thursday's hearing to question acting DNI Joseph Maguire, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), put on an act to make people watching believe he was reading directly from the transcript of the President Trump call with the Ukraine President. But Schiff made up fictional dialog in an apparent effort make a benign phone conversation into something it wasn't, and convince the viewing public that the President did something wrong. Andy Biggs

To many including Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) this was unacceptable. The day after the hearing, he introduced a motion to censure and condemn Adam Schiff's latest lies.

"During yesterday's hearing, Chairman Schiff's opening statement included a blatantly false retelling of President Trump's conversation with the Ukrainian president. Democrats previously initiated an impeachment inquiry, which leads to one of the most serious, constitutional duties of Members of Congress: removal of the President of the United States. Through this process, if the President has committed high crimes or misdemeanors, Congress may overturn the election of the President and the will of the American people. It is therefore inexcusable to toy with the process and mislead the American public with such a statement."

Here is the test of the resolution

Condemning and censuring Adam Schiff, Representative of California's 28th Congressional District

Whereas, President Trump released the transcript of a call between him and the President of Ukraine;

Whereas, President Trump subsequently released the whistleblower complaint of August 12, 2019;

Whereas, in a September 26, 2019, hearing on the whistleblower complaint, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff purported to relay the content of the phone call to the American people;

Whereas, instead of quoting directly from the available transcript, Chairman Schiff manufactured a false retelling of the conversation between President Trump and President Zelensky;

Whereas, this egregiously false and fabricated retelling had no relationship to the call itself;

Whereas, these actions of Chairman Schiff misled the American people, bring disrepute upon the House of Representatives, and make a mockery of the impeachment process, one of this chamber's most solemn constitutional duties;

Whereas, for more than two years, Chairman Schiff has spread false accusations that the Trump Campaign colluded with Russia;

Whereas on March 20, 2017, then Ranking Member Schiff read out false allegations from the Steele dossier accusing numerous Trump associates of colluding with Russia;

Whereas, then-Ranking Member Schiff falsely claimed in a March 2017 interview to have "more than circumstantial evidence of collusion with Russia;

Whereas, then-Ranking Member Schiff negotiated with Russian comedians who he believed to be Ukrainian officials to obtain materials to damage the President of the United States politically;

Whereas, members of the Intelligence Committee have lost faith in his objectivity and capabilities as Chairman, with every Republican member on the Committee having signed a letter calling for his immediate resignation as Chairman;

Whereas, Chairman Schiff has gravely hindered the ability of the Intelligence Committee to fulfill its oversight responsibilities of the Intelligence Community, an indispensable pillar of our national security.

Resolved, That --

  1. The House of Representatives censures and condemns Representative Adam Schiff for conduct that misleads the American people in a way that is not befitting an elected Member of the House of Representatives;
  2. Representative Adam Schiff will forthwith present himself in the well of the House for the pronouncement of censure; and
  3. Representative Adam Schiff will be censured with the public reading of this resolution by the Speaker.

Bravo Rep. Biggs. While I doubt Nancy Pelosi will ever allow this motion to be voted on, it's worth the try.

[Sep 28, 2019] Schiff converts impeachment process into parody

Sep 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Don Bacon , Sep 26 2019 22:30 utc | 85

Schiff does parody for impeachment.

Rep. Adam Schiff's full opening statement on whistleblower complaint including Schiff's comedic version of Trump's phone call to Zelensky:

"We've been very good to your country. Very good. No other country has done as much as we have. But you know what? I don't see much reciprocity here. I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you, though. And I'm gonna say this only seven times, so you better listen good. . .I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand, lots of it. On this and on that. I'm going to put you in touch with people...and by the way don't call me again. I'll call you when you've done what I asked." . . . here

Schiff later admitted that he included words in his opening statement that the president did not say, noting that his characterization was meant to be taken "at least, in part, in parody." . .get the hook

[Sep 28, 2019] Trump Slams Fraud Adam Schiff For Reading Fabricated Mafia Version Of Ukraine Transcript

Notable quotes:
"... In response, President Trump called for Schiff's resignation, tweeting on Friday " Rep. Adam Schiff fraudulently read to Congress, with millions of people watching, a version of my conversation with the President of Ukraine that doesn't exis t," adding "He was supposedly reading the exact transcribed version of the call, but he completely changed the words to make it sound horrible, and me sound guilty." ..."
Sep 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden Fri, 09/27/2019 - 09:40 0 SHARES

President Trump on Friday called for the resignation of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) after the House Intelligence Committee Chairman kicked off a Thursday hearing with a completely fabricated version of a phone call between President Trump and Ukrainan President Volodomyr Zelensky .

To recap on Schiff's alternate reality:

"The fact that that's not clear is a separate problem in and of itself. Of course, the president never said, 'If you don't understand me, I'm going to say it seven more times.' My point is that's the message that the Ukraine president was receiving, in not so many words," Schiff later clarified, adding "My summary of the president's call was meant to be at least part in parody."

An unapologetic Schiff - who has made several mafia analogies regarding the situation - later told CNN 's Wolf Blitzer that he was mocking President Trump and suggested that everyone should have known that.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/3VnG98ljhms?start=547

In response, President Trump called for Schiff's resignation, tweeting on Friday " Rep. Adam Schiff fraudulently read to Congress, with millions of people watching, a version of my conversation with the President of Ukraine that doesn't exis t," adding "He was supposedly reading the exact transcribed version of the call, but he completely changed the words to make it sound horrible, and me sound guilty."

"Adam Schiff therefore lied to Congress and attempted to defraud the American Public. He has been doing this for two years. I am calling for him to immediately resign from Congress based on this fraud! "

Trump later tweeted:

What else has Schiff fabricated?

[Sep 28, 2019] Pretending that Russia is some default source of evil inventions is the true intellectual dishonesty

Sep 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

james , Sep 26 2019 20:04 utc | 59

@48 piotr.. "Pretending that Russia is some source of evil inventions is the true intellectual dishonesty." exactly... i'm thinking the amount of ignorance that the western MSM has happily shed on this has won over a number of otherwise intelligent people... it is friggin' shocking... many folks like Kool-Aid it seems, including otherwise intelligent people...

[Sep 25, 2019] Neolib/neocon in Democratic Party from now on will be viewed as The Children of Lieutenant Schmidt (a fictional society of swindlers from the 1931 classic The Little Golden Calf by Ilf and Petrov).

Sep 25, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

im1dc , September 25, 2019 at 05:23 PM

Interesting day in Presidential politics today. I assume most here are sick of hearing about it further today. I enjoy speculating on what Speaker Pelosi might do with the results of the Impeachment Inquiry by the House.

Assumption: The House finds grounds for Impeaching Trump and hands it to Pelosi. What will she do or rather what can she do? She can have the full House vote to Impeach and march the Articles over to the Senate. She can have the House Censure Trump, not vote to Impeach, and go no further at this time. That brings Trump's crimes to light, but saves the country from a Political Trial in the Senate, that won't convict Trump.

She can hold the Committee's report for review and not go forward until and unless she see's the POLITICAL need. She can, IMO, have the House vote Articles of Impeachment and then HOLD them in the House waiting to take them to the Senate at a much later date of her choice or never. The Senate cannot act until the Speaker delivers the Articles of Impeachment. No where does the Constitution declare WHEN those Articles, once voted, must be delivered, only that they are to be.

She can set a new precedent if she desires. Who can stop her?

This would allow the Articles to float over Trump's head - and the Re-Election campaign serving to restrain Trump, like a cudgel over his head - preventing or at least limiting more of Trump's outrageous unconstitutional and illegal acts in Office until Election 2020.

Simultaneously this would allow The House to continue its multiple investigations of Trump, including the IRS Whistle Blower complaint, further checking Trump, and even to open more investigations into Trump's abuse of Office, e.g., his use of AG Barr on Ukraine/Biden as well as investigations of AG Barr pursuing Ukraine/Biden.

Not to mention other investigations into Trump including NY's pursuit of Trump's Tax Returns, which could well be as revealing as the Ukraine phone call transcript.

So, while today was interesting in D.C., the future is far more so, imho.

likbez -> im1dc... , September 25, 2019 at 06:17 PM
Let's face it:
  1. Biden is now a zombie and has less then zero changes to beat Trump. Even if nothing explosive will be revealed by Ukraine-gate, this investigation hangs like albatross around his neck. Each shot at Trump will ricochet into Biden. Add to this China and the best he can do is to leave the race and claim unfair play.
  2. Trump now probably will be reelected on the wave of indignation toward Corporate Dems new witch hunt. People stopped believing neoliberal MSM around 2015, so now neolibs no longer have the leverage they get used to. And by launching Ukraine-gate after Russiagate they clearly overplayed their hand losing critical mass of independents (who previously were ready to abandon Trump.)
  3. If unpleasant facts about neolib/neocon machinations to launch Ukraine-gate leak via alternative press via disgruntled DNC operatives or some other insiders who are privy to the relevant discussions in the Inner Party, they will poison/destroy the chances of any Dem candidate be it Warren or anybody else. Joining this witch hunt greatly damages standing of Warren exposing her as a mediocre, malleable politician ( unlike Tulsi )
  4. Instead of running on policy issues the Democrats again tried to find vague dirt with which they can tarnish Trump. This is a huge political mistake which exposes them as political swindlers.

Neolib/neocon in Democratic Party from now on will be viewed as "The Children of Lieutenant Schmidt" (a fictional society of swindlers from the 1931 classic "The Little Golden Calf" by Ilf and Petrov).

I would say that Pelosi might now be able to understand better the situation in which Wasserman-Shultz had found herself in 2016 and resign.

IMHO this is a kind of zugzwang for neoliberal Dems. There is no good exit from this situation: After two years of falsely accusing Trump to have colluded with Russia they now allege that he colluded with Ukraine.

In addition to overpaying their hand that makes it more difficult for the Democrats to hide their critical role in creating and promoting Russiagate.

Here is one post from MoA which tries to analyze this situation:

== quote ==
nil , Sep 25 2019 19:37 utc | 24
I think what's going in the brain trust of the DNC is something like this:

i. Biden is a non-starter with the public. He'll be devoured alive by the Republicans, who only need to bring up his career to expose his mendacity.

ii. Warren might be co-opted, having been a Republican and fiscal conservative up to the mid-90s, but what if she isn't?

iii. Sanders is a non-starter, but with the "people who matter". Rather than having to threaten him with the suspicions around his wife, or go for the JFK solution, they'd rather [make that] he didn't even get past the primaries, much less elected.

iv. As a CNN talking head said weeks ago, it's better for the wealthy people the DNC is beholden to that their own candidate loses to Trump if that candidate is Sanders.

So better to hedge their bets start impeachment hearings, give Trump ammunition to destroy Sanders or Warren. That way, the rich win in all scenarios:

a. If Biden wins the nomination, the campaign will be essentially mudslinging from both sides about who is more corrupt. The rich are fine with whoever wins.

b. If Warren gets the nomination and is co-opted, the media will let the impeachment hearings die out, or the House themselves will quickly bury it.

c. If Warren gets the nomination and is not co-opted, or if Sanders get it, the impeachment will suck up all the air of the room, Trump will play the witchhunt card and will be re-elected.

[Sep 25, 2019] Michael Flynn pleads Fifth, refuses to be 'paraded, harassed or disparaged' by Adam Schiff

Sep 25, 2019 | www.washingtontimes.com

im1dc...Reply Monday, September 23, 2019 at 05:07 PM

"Michael Flynn pleads Fifth, refuses to be 'paraded, harassed or disparaged' by Adam Schiff"

By Rowan Scarborough...The Washington Times...Monday, September 23, 2019...7:12 p.m.

likbez said in reply to im1dc...

"Michael Flynn pleads Fifth, refuses to be 'paraded, harassed or disparaged' by Adam Schiff"

Looks like Adam Schiff who is part of Israel lobby like to take risks.

Flynn saga is about Israel not about Russia. He contacted Russia ambassador at the request of Kushner who ask him to try to block Russian vote in UN against Israel.

What if the testimony blow out in his face like was the case with Lewandowski

Reply Tuesday, September 24, 2019 at 10:16 PM

[Sep 24, 2019] Michael Flynn pleads Fifth, won't testify before Adam Schiff, House intelligence committee by Rowan Scarborough

Notable quotes:
"... The attorney for retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn is refusing to let the former national security adviser testify before Rep. Adam B. Schiff , saying the California Democrat disregards "ethics in your theatrical demand." ..."
"... Ms. Powell said in her letter to Mr. Schiff that Flynn "will not appear before your committee on September 25, 2019 to be paraded, harassed or disparaged for doing so." ..."
"... She accused Mr. Schiff of a "disregard for propriety, professionalism, prior practices and ethics in your theatrical demand." ..."
Sep 23, 2019 | www.washingtontimes.com

The attorney for retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn is refusing to let the former national security adviser testify before Rep. Adam B. Schiff , saying the California Democrat disregards "ethics in your theatrical demand."

Attorney Sidney Powell said Monday in a letter that Flynn is invoking his rights under the Fifth Amendment to avoid being "paraded, harassed or disparaged" by Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Mr. Schiff , who took committee control in January, has launched an investigation into nearly every aspect of President Trump's life.

Mr. Schiff was a big proponent of the Democratic Party-financed dossier sourced to the Kremlin. The dossier's charges of Trump election conspiracy proved unfounded.

Ms. Powell is mounting a vigorous effort in federal court to dismiss the case against Flynn , who pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents in the Trump White House's early days. She accuses the Robert Mueller prosecution team of withholding evidence favorable to him.

The Mueller probe failed to establish an election conspiracy between Trump allies and Moscow.

Flynn admitted to lying about discussions he had with the Russian ambassador about U.S. sanctions. He cooperated with the prosecution on a lobbying investigation unrelated to the 2016 election.

Ms. Powell said in her letter to Mr. Schiff that Flynn "will not appear before your committee on September 25, 2019 to be paraded, harassed or disparaged for doing so."

She accused Mr. Schiff of a "disregard for propriety, professionalism, prior practices and ethics in your theatrical demand."

[Sep 24, 2019] The Plan to Trip Up Trump Consortiumnews

Notable quotes:
"... "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Papadopoulos replied according to his recent book , "Deep State Target." But what if he had instead chuckled or said something stupid in order to puff himself up? Based on previous FBI entrapment cases , the answer seems clear: after threatening him with prosecution, the bureau would have outfitted him with a wire so that he could bring down other campaign officials. It wouldn't have stopped until it snared the ultimate prize –Trump himself. ..."
"... Trump told reporters in May he wanted Australia's role to be investigated by the Justice Department. Comey's Trump Tower meeting was important because it led directly to the publication of the notorious dossier that would generate endless headlines and cripple the incoming Trump administration even though it was full of baloney. ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Instead of electing presidents, Americans would merely submit them to the FBI for review. ..."
"... With the Electoral College and the Supreme Court already overturning the popular vote in two of the last five presidential elections, voters would have a fourth branch to contend with – the intelligence community. ..."
"... As Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer told MSNBC'S Rachel Maddow at the height of the Russiagate madness: "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community – they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you." Had Comey succeeded in bringing down Trump, they may have had a seventh. ..."
"... Le Monde Diplomatique ..."
Sep 24, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Before the Trump Tower visit, Comey sat down with top FBI brass – Chief of Staff James Rybicki, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, General Counsel James Baker, and others involved with the Russiagate investigation – to strategize about the upcoming meeting.

Page 17 of the OIG report tells of what they were up to:

"Baker and McCabe said that they agreed that the briefing needed to be one-on-one, so that Comey could present the 'salacious' information in the most discreet and least embarrassing way. At the same time, we were told, they did not want the President-elect to perceive the one-on-one briefing as an effort to hold information over him like a 'Hoover-esque type of plot.' Witnesses interviewed by the OIG also said that they discussed Trump's potential responses to being told about the 'salacious' information, including that Trump might make statements about, or provide information of value to, the pending Russian interference investigation."

As the final sentence shows, Comey's job was to confront Trump about the alleged 2013 Moscow incident and see whether he would give the FBI reason to advance its Russiagate investigation to a whole new level, that of the presidency itself.

This was the same approach the FBI would employ a couple of weeks later after listening in on a telephone conversation between Mike Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and not liking what it heard about plans to bolster U.S.-Russian relations. The solution was to send a couple of agents to quiz the newly-appointed national security adviser and see how he would respond. After telling Flynn not to bother bringing along a lawyer because it was just a friendly chat and "they wanted Flynn to be relaxed, and they were concerned that giving the warnings might adversely affect the rapport" – as a follow-up memo noted – the agents caught the ever-voluble Flynn fudging various details. Three weeks later, he found himself out of office and in disgrace. Ten months after that, he was in federal court pleading guilty to making false and misleading statements.

Another Set-Up

Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department's inspector general. (Wikimedia Commons)

Now we know from the OIG report that this was apparently the goal with regard to Trump.

Russiagate began nine months earlier with a smallarmy of intelligence agents buzzing around a naïve young Trump adviser named George Papadopoulos. [See " Spooks Spooking Themselves ," May 31, 2018.] An Anglo-Maltese academic named Joseph Mifsud, an individual with strong Anglo-American intelligence connections, wined and dined him and told him that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails."

An Australian diplomat, former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer , who was similarly connected, invited him out for drinks and then passed along the fruits of the conversation to Canberra, which related them to Washington. A Belorussian-American businessman who worked for Steele offered Papadopoulos $30,000 a month under the table. A U.S. intelligence asset named Charles Tawil presented him with $10,000 in cash. A long-time CIA informant named Stefan Halper flew Papadopoulos to London and barraged him with questions:

"It's great that Russia is helping you and the campaign, right, George? George, you and your campaign are involved in hacking and working with Russia, right? It seems like you are a middleman for Trump and Russia, right? I know you know about the emails."

"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Papadopoulos replied according to his recent book , "Deep State Target." But what if he had instead chuckled or said something stupid in order to puff himself up? Based on previous FBI entrapment cases , the answer seems clear: after threatening him with prosecution, the bureau would have outfitted him with a wire so that he could bring down other campaign officials. It wouldn't have stopped until it snared the ultimate prize –Trump himself.

Trump told reporters in May he wanted Australia's role to be investigated by the Justice Department. Comey's Trump Tower meeting was important because it led directly to the publication of the notorious dossier that would generate endless headlines and cripple the incoming Trump administration even though it was full of baloney.

Most of what we know about that meeting in the early days of the Trump administration comes from a memo that Comeydashed off minutes later and then lightly revised the next morning.

According to his memo, Comey met one-on-one with Trump to tell him about the Steele dossier because

"the content [was] known at IC [intelligence community] senior level and I didn't want him caught cold by some of the detail . I said I wasn't saying this was true, only that I wanted him to know both that it had been reported and that the reports were in many hands. I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material and that we were keeping it very close-hold."

But Comey's memo was disingenuous, starting with his line about not wanting to give the media "the excuse to write that the FBI has the material." Leaks are an integral part of Washington, as an insider and a leaker like Comey knows.

As Comey must have also known, his very decision to brief Trump on the dossier wound up triggering press attention to it.

Four days later, Buzzfeed posted the dossier on its website. The source remains anonymous but it's easy to imagine that either Director of National Intelligence James Clapper or CIA Director John Brennan spilled the beans. They both accompanied Comey to the meeting and were appalled by Trump's call for a rapprochement with Russia.

Comey's memo also rings false where it says he "wasn't saying this was true, only that I wanted him to know both that it had been reported and that the reports were in many hands."

Glenn Simpson, the ex- Wall Street Journal reporter whose private Washington intelligence firm, Fusion GPS, commissioned the dossier on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC, told the House intelligence committee that Steele began sharing his findings with the FBI "in July or late June" of 2016. (See p. 60 of testimony transcript ).

That means that the bureau had the Moscow Ritz-Carlton report in hand six months prior to the Trump Tower meeting. Surely, this is enough time to reach some conclusion as to its veracity.

'Might Make Statements'

Had Trump fallen into Comey's trap, millions of Americans would no doubt have cheered – and given Trump's dismal record in office, who can blame them? But the implications are chilling, and not just for rightwing dissidents. Instead of electing presidents, Americans would merely submit them to the FBI for review.

With the Electoral College and the Supreme Court already overturning the popular vote in two of the last five presidential elections, voters would have a fourth branch to contend with – the intelligence community.

As Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer told MSNBC'S Rachel Maddow at the height of the Russiagate madness: "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community – they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you." Had Comey succeeded in bringing down Trump, they may have had a seventh.

Daniel Lazare is the author of "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy" (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique and blogs about the Constitution and related matters at D aniellazare.com .

Richard A. , September 24, 2019 at 15:13

I think Russiagate is more than just smearing Trump, it's also about smearing Russia. The war lobby here in the US and the UK are trying to manipulate public opinion in to hating Russia.

R Zarate , September 24, 2019 at 05:02

And now there are calls to impeach Trump for asking for an investigation into Biden! It speaks volumes about the MSM that there was no uproar when H.B. took the job at Bursima, I remember the White House putting out a release at the time saying they could see no conflict of interest, I guess the lack of conflict was it was par for the course to enrich family members.

By the bye. So Trump gets impeached, then what? Didn't do Clinton any harm.

CitizenOne , September 23, 2019 at 23:26

It is an interesting history filled with plots within plots to destroy Trump for the audacity to win the presidential election. True he won the election with a lot of help from Cambridge Analytica and his election team which included Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos (the nube) Paul Manafort (the former partner in the Black, Stone, Manafort and Kelly lobby firm) , Rick Gates and Michael Flynn.

All these people were indicted under the Mueller probe but yet Trump escaped without a scratch on his record. To pull this off Trump abandoned all of them in turn claiming he hardly knew them and had no involvement. How Trump escaped from the Mueller investigation has nothing to do with his innocence and everything to do with the lack of evidence tying him to the crimes his associates admitted to under intense scrutiny by the Mueller Special Council Investigation into the alleged Russian Hacks which supposedly threw the election toward Trump. Michael Cohen, Trump's long time lawyer was also convicted of paying off two women that alleged Trump arranged for sex with the women and later paid them off handsomely allegedly by orders from Trump.

It is like Trump won his freedom because there was no evidence to convict him despite the many people who were closely associated with himwho fell as victims to the special prosecutors zeal for indictments of Trump's inner guard.

In the end the Mueller report all but exonerated Trump with Mueller claiming Trump had committed impeachable evidence but that Mueller could do nothing about that leaving his conclusions up to the court of popular appeal as to whether or not Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice in the entire Russia Gate story.

Trump accurately called out the testimony of Comey before Congress into what he knew about the Russian attempt to hack the election as fake news. Trump banked on what the intelligence community would share about the election result and he won big time when the Mueller investigation into Russian hacking of the election produced no tangible connection between Trump and the alleged hackers. The Steel dossier was also l shown to be just more fake news paid for by the democrats.

The longer Trump remains in charge the less likely that he will be implicated in a scandal although the new allegations that he attempted to get the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden has the potential to raise a new round of fake news decrying that the president has engaged in yet more impeachable offenses.

robert e williamson jr , September 23, 2019 at 21:23

Beware of the Department of Justice, mad dogs and dogs of war.

Appears to be FBI disruption of the domestic governmental tranquility for the unique purpose of disrupting a duly elected president.

I mean the FBI bill themselves as the domestic counter intelligence apparatus and CIA apparently agrees. Maybe CIA is actually running another of their counter intelligence covert mission that involves the undoing of Ole Donny J. .

No I didn't say it, no mention of the dreaded "executive action" my me.

My assumption is that this may be simply collateral damage from the investigation into the Russia meddling in the 2016 elec . . . . .

. . . and the beat goes on, la da da dee . . . !

That far away look in the eyes of the old democratic leaders is the look of "the fear" (H.S.T.). They watch as the repugs, their partners in crime get skewered , by the same DOJ that will skewer them in a New York second given a chance.

DOJ and the USAG leading the shock troops of the National Socialists take over.

Sandra Thompson , September 23, 2019 at 20:58

One of your best lines: "Instead of electing presidents, Americans would merely submit them to the FBI for review." Liked last couple of paragraphs too. Thank you

Abby , September 23, 2019 at 19:43

So Comey knowingly and blatantly lied to the incoming president and it was that incoming president that got investigated? How the hell does that make sense to the Russia Gaters? And then they elevated Comey after he got fired? This makes as much sense as people thinking that Robert Mueller was going to save the country.

After reading Parry's essay on Joe ByeDone from 2014 after the Obama coup in Ukraine that showed how corrupt the powerful people in our government are I don't even know why people bother to vote anymore. The country is run by people behind the scenes who use congress critters to do their dirty work and give them cover. And with our corrupt military industrial complex setting the world on fire I think it's time for the empire to burn.

Ray McGovern , September 23, 2019 at 18:46

VERY GOOD PIECE, DAN. THANKS. Ray McGovern

Martin , September 23, 2019 at 15:27

I read somewhere early on that someone was peddling the steele-dossier to many different outlets weeks or even months before trump's briefing, but they wouldn't bite (too fantastic) until the feds legitimized it. The people should be informed about these mechanics.

Dan Anderson , September 23, 2019 at 15:09

Here's the warning before being sworn in:
January 3, 2017 – Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer: "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you. So, even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he is being really dumb to do this."
Rachel Maddow: "What do you think the intelligence community would do if they were motivated to?"
Schumer: "I don't know, but from what I am told, they are very upset with how he has treated them and talked about them," -- The Rachel Maddow Show Jan 3, 2017

[Sep 23, 2019] Apparently now that the notion Russia interfered in the US presidential election to tip the vote to Trump has become an article of faith that much of the world regards as established fact

Highly recommended!
This is a apt demonstration of the raw power of the US neoliberal MSM propaganda.
Notable quotes:
"... This is a very interesting process: no matter how absurd is the particular notion and how many contravening facts exist, the power of neoliberal MSM is such that soon enough it is viewed as an established and indisputable fact. As you aptly call it "an article of faith". ..."
"... So we can state that neoliberal MSM are performing part of functions that in Medieval Europe was performed by the Church. Kind of giant televangelism pulpit in the mega church of neoliberalism ..."
Sep 23, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Mark Chapman September 21, 2019 at 3:52 pm

Interesting – apparently now that the notion Russia interfered in the US presidential election to tip the vote to Trump has become an article of faith that much of the world regards as established fact, it is safe to advance on that a little. Now Donald Trump actually asked Vladimir Putin to hack the emails of his democratic rival.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ukraine-if-youre-listening–how-trump-tries-to-quell-controversies-by-saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud/2019/09/20/8e68aad0-dbc1-11e9-adff-79254db7f766_story.html

Curiously, the Washington Post's recently-adopted new slogan is "Democracy dies in darkness". So telling the readers any old shit that you made up and can offer no proof whatsoever is true is infinitely better than darkness. And they wonder why academic standards are slipping, and why Americans faithfully believe things that few other countries accept as true. All the while they are cultivating a nation of dunces which believes anything it is told by its government.

likbez

"apparently now that the notion Russia interfered in the US presidential election to tip the vote to Trump has become an article of faith that much of the world regards as established fact,"

Mark, you are a very astute political observer!

This is a very interesting process: no matter how absurd is the particular notion and how many contravening facts exist, the power of neoliberal MSM is such that soon enough it is viewed as an established and indisputable fact. As you aptly call it "an article of faith".

So we can state that neoliberal MSM are performing part of functions that in Medieval Europe was performed by the Church. Kind of giant televangelism pulpit in the mega church of neoliberalism

[Sep 22, 2019] The US media has become a cesspool of bottom-feeders all looking for the 'gotcha' moment, while the business and profession of journalism in general has morphed to uncritical relay of government propaganda.

Sep 22, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Mark Chapman September 16, 2019 at 9:05 am

Young people in the west, generally speaking, are know-it-alls convinced of their own absolute currency of knowledge, and most of what they believe they know comes from reading newspapers and watching television. I say this from experience as, like all of us, I was young once and thought I knew it all, and I got almost all my information from newspapers and television news, although some came from professional journals like the US Naval Institute Proceedings. I grew up believing Russia was a grey and colourless place where hopeless people in shabby, ill-fitting clothes trudged dispiritedly from one line-up to another, then home to their tenth-floor walk-up concrete box shared with from eight to a dozen other family members and relatives.

Of course, it WAS like that for some people. Just as it likely was for the poor in the west, although they were all but invisible then save for occasional charity drives to 'help the less fortunate'. I was a huge fan of the United States, loving pretty much everything about it, as my first foreign trips with the Navy were to places like New London, Connecticut (right across the river from Groton, the headquarters of submarine builders Electric Boat) and Boston. I was a big fan of the U.S. Navy, and in many respects I still am – it was and is mostly a professional service with capable leaders and sound ethics common to seagoing services the world over.

It was in the area of the USA's political system that gradual and then total disillusionment took place. Any respect I might once have had for the media vanished at about the same time.

The media has become a cesspool of bottom-feeders all looking for the 'gotcha' moment, while the business and profession of journalism in general has morphed to uncritical relay of government propaganda.

From that same link, a very interesting dissection of the Salisbury poisonings. We've become used to mocking or horrified refutations of the UK government's line that it could only have been Russia, but this source does it with considerable detail; for instance, the formula originally devised by Vil Marzayanov and his compatriots in the Soviet Union was later patented by a US Chemical lab.

https://timhayward.wordpress.com/2018/05/10/briefing-note-update-on-the-salisbury-poisonings-2/

[Sep 22, 2019] Alleged Novichok victim Rowley seeks to sue Russia for $1.25 mln

Sep 22, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile September 22, 2019 at 7:36 am

22 SEP, 12:25
Alleged Novichok victim Rowley seeks to sue Russia for $1.25 mln
According to Patrick Maguire, the lawyer of the British citizen, Rowley has continued to suffer from "serious side effects from the toxin he ingested"

"This has affected my life in a huge way. I want justice" -- Rowley.

[Sep 21, 2019] Edward Snowden On The NSA, His Book 'Permanent Record' And Life In Russia NPR

Sep 21, 2019 | www.npr.org

In 2013, Edward Snowden was an IT systems expert working under contract for the National Security Agency when he traveled to Hong Kong to provide three journalists with thousands of top-secret documents about U.S. intelligence agencies' surveillance of American citizens.

To Snowden, the classified information he shared with the journalists exposed privacy abuses by government intelligence agencies. He saw himself as a whistleblower. But the U.S. government considered him a traitor in violation of the Espionage Act .

After meeting with the journalists, Snowden intended to leave Hong Kong and travel -- via Russia -- to Ecuador, where he would seek asylum. But when his plane landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, things didn't go according to plan.

"What I wasn't expecting was that the United States government itself ... would cancel my passport," he says.

Snowden was directed to a room where Russian intelligence agents offered to assist him -- in return for access to any secrets he harbored. Snowden says he refused.

"I didn't cooperate with the Russian intelligence services -- I haven't and I won't," he says. "I destroyed my access to the archive. ... I had no material with me before I left Hong Kong, because I knew I was going to have to go through this complex multi-jurisdictional route."

Snowden spent 40 days in the Moscow airport, trying to negotiate asylum in various countries. After being denied asylum by 27 nations, he settled in Russia, where he remains today.

"People look at me now and they think I'm this crazy guy, I'm this extremist or whatever. Some people have a misconception that [I] set out to burn down the NSA," he says. "But that's not what this was about. In many ways, 2013 wasn't about surveillance at all. What it was about was a violation of the Constitution."

Snowden's 2013 revelations led to changes in the laws and standards governing American intelligence agencies and the practices of U.S. technology companies, which now encrypt much of their Web traffic for security. He reflects on his life and his experience in the intelligence community in the memoir Permanent Record.

On Sept. 17, the U.S. Justice Department filed suit to recover all proceeds from the book, alleging that Snowden violated nondisclosure agreements by not letting the government review the manuscript before publication; Snowden's attorney, Ben Wizner, said in a statement that the book contains no government secrets that have not been previously published by respected news organizations, and that the government's prepublication review system is under court challenge.

[Sep 21, 2019] Poisoner In Chief Details The CIA s Secret Quest For Mind Control

Notable quotes:
"... Kinzer notes that the top-secret nature of Gottlieb's work makes it impossible to measure the human cost of his experiments. "We don't know how many people died, but a number did, and many lives were permanently destroyed," he says. Ultimately, Gottlieb concluded that mind control was not possible. Ultimately, Gottlieb concluded that mind control was not possible. After MK-ULTRA shut down, he went on to lead a CIA program that created poisons and high-tech gadgets for spies to use. Kinzer writes about Gottlieb and MK-ULTRA in his new book, Poisoner in Chief. ..."
"... Sidney Gottlieb, can now be seen as the man who brought LSD to America. He was the unwitting godfather of the entire LSD counterculture. ..."
"... In the early 1950s, he arranged for the CIA to pay $240,000 to buy the world's entire supply of LSD. He brought this to the United States, and he began spreading it around to hospitals, clinics, prisons and other institutions, asking them, through bogus foundations, to carry out research projects and find out what LSD was, how people reacted to it and how it might be able to be used as a tool for mind control. ..."
"... Whitey Bulger was one of the prisoners who volunteered for what he was told was an experiment aimed at finding a cure for schizophrenia. As part of this experiment, he was given LSD every day for more than a year. He later realized that this had nothing to do with schizophrenia and he was a guinea pig in a government experiment aimed at seeing what people's long-term reactions to LSD was. Essentially, could we make a person lose his mind by feeding him LSD every day over such a long period? ..."
"... Bulger wrote afterward about his experiences, which he described as quite horrific. He thought he was going insane. He wrote, "I was in prison for committing a crime, but they committed a greater crime on me." ..."
"... And towards the end of his life, Bulger came to realize the truth of what had happened to him, and he actually told his friends that he was going to find that doctor in Atlanta who was the head of that experiment program in the penitentiary and go kill him. ..."
"... The CIA mind control project, MK-ULTRA, was essentially a continuation of work that began in Japanese and Nazi concentration camps. Not only was it roughly based on those experiments, but the CIA actually hired the vivisectionists and the torturers who had worked in Japan and in Nazi concentration camps to come and explain what they had found out so that we could build on their research. ..."
"... For example, Nazi doctors had conducted extensive experiments with mescaline at the Dachau concentration camp, and the CIA was very interested in figuring out whether mescaline could be the key to mind control that was one of their big avenues of investigation. So they hired the Nazi doctors who had been involved in that project to advise them. ..."
"... CIA officers in Europe and Asia were capturing enemy agents and others who they felt might be suspected persons or were otherwise what they called "expendable." They would grab these people and throw them into cells and then test all kinds of, not just drug potions, but other techniques, like electroshock, extremes of temperature, sensory isolation -- all the meantime bombarding them with questions, trying to see if they could break down resistance and find a way to destroy the human ego. So these were projects designed not only to understand the human mind but to figure out how to destroy it. And that made Gottlieb, although in some ways a very compassionate person, certainly the most prolific torturer of his generation. ..."
"... [Gottlieb] operated almost completely without supervision. He had sort of a checkoff from his titular boss and from his real boss, Richard Helms, and from the CIA director, Allen Dulles. But none of them really wanted to know what he was doing. This guy had a license to kill. He was allowed to requisition human subjects across the United States and around the world and subject them to any kind of abuse that he wanted, even up to the level of it being fatal -- yet nobody looked over his shoulder. He never had to file serious reports to anybody. I think the mentality must have been [that] this project is so important -- mind control, if it can be mastered, is the key to global world power. ..."
"... The end of Gottlieb's career came in 1972, when his patron, Richard Helms, who was then director of the CIA, was removed by [President Richard] Nixon. Once Helms was gone, it was just a matter of time until Gottlieb would be gone, and most important was that Helms was really the only person at the CIA who had an idea of what Gottlieb had been doing. So as they were both on their way out of the CIA, they agreed that they should destroy all records of MK-ULTRA ..."
"... Gottlieb actually drove out to the CIA records center and ordered the archives to destroy boxes full of MK-ULTRA records. ... However, it turns out that there were some [records] found in other places; there was a depot for expense account reports that had not been destroyed, and various other pieces of paper remain. So there is enough out there to reconstruct some of what he did, but his effort to wipe away his traces by destroying all those documents in the early '70s was quite successful. ..."
Sep 09, 2019 | npr.org
Heard on Fresh Air Terry Gross

CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb headed up the agency's secret MK-ULTRA program, which was charged with developing a mind control drug that could be weaponized against enemies.

Courtesy of the CIA

During the early period of the Cold War, the CIA became convinced that communists had discovered a drug or technique that would allow them to control human minds. In response, the CIA began its own secret program, called MK-ULTRA, to search for a mind control drug that could be weaponized against enemies.

MK-ULTRA, which operated from the 1950s until the early '60s, was created and run by a chemist named Sidney Gottlieb. Journalist Stephen Kinzer, who spent several years investigating the program, calls the operation the "most sustained search in history for techniques of mind control."

Some of Gottlieb's experiments were covertly funded at universities and research centers, Kinzer says, while others were conducted in American prisons and in detention centers in Japan, Germany and the Philippines. Many of his unwitting subjects endured psychological torture ranging from electroshock to high doses of LSD, according to Kinzer's research.

"Gottlieb wanted to create a way to seize control of people's minds, and he realized it was a two-part process," Kinzer says. "First, you had to blast away the existing mind. Second, you had to find a way to insert a new mind into that resulting void. We didn't get too far on number two, but he did a lot of work on number one."

The Picture Show Found In The Archives: Military LSD Testing

Kinzer notes that the top-secret nature of Gottlieb's work makes it impossible to measure the human cost of his experiments. "We don't know how many people died, but a number did, and many lives were permanently destroyed," he says. Ultimately, Gottlieb concluded that mind control was not possible.

Ultimately, Gottlieb concluded that mind control was not possible. After MK-ULTRA shut down, he went on to lead a CIA program that created poisons and high-tech gadgets for spies to use.

Kinzer writes about Gottlieb and MK-ULTRA in his new book, Poisoner in Chief.

Interview highlights Poisoner in Chief

Poisoner in Chief

Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control

by Stephen Kinzer

Hardcover, 354 pages |

purchase

close overlay Buy Featured Book
Title
Poisoner in Chief
Subtitle
Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control
Author
Stephen Kinzer

Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How?

On how the CIA brought LSD to America

As part of the search for drugs that would allow people to control the human mind, CIA scientists became aware of the existence of LSD, and this became an obsession for the early directors of MK-ULTRA. Actually, the MK-ULTRA director, Sidney Gottlieb, can now be seen as the man who brought LSD to America. He was the unwitting godfather of the entire LSD counterculture.

In the early 1950s, he arranged for the CIA to pay $240,000 to buy the world's entire supply of LSD. He brought this to the United States, and he began spreading it around to hospitals, clinics, prisons and other institutions, asking them, through bogus foundations, to carry out research projects and find out what LSD was, how people reacted to it and how it might be able to be used as a tool for mind control.

Now, the people who volunteered for these experiments and began taking LSD, in many cases, found it very pleasurable. They told their friends about it. Who were those people? Ken Kesey , the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , got his LSD in an experiment sponsored by the CIA by MK-ULTRA, by Sidney Gottlieb. So did Robert Hunter, the lyricist for the Grateful Dead, which went on to become a great purveyor of LSD culture. Allen Ginsberg , the poet who preached the value of the great personal adventure of using LSD, got his first LSD from Sidney Gottlieb. Although, of course, he never knew that name.

So the CIA brought LSD to America unwittingly, and actually it's a tremendous irony that the drug that the CIA hoped would be its key to controlling humanity actually wound up fueling a generational rebellion that was dedicated to destroying everything that the CIA held dear and defended.

On how MK-ULTRA experimented on prisoners, including crime boss Whitey Bulger

Whitey Bulger was one of the prisoners who volunteered for what he was told was an experiment aimed at finding a cure for schizophrenia. As part of this experiment, he was given LSD every day for more than a year. He later realized that this had nothing to do with schizophrenia and he was a guinea pig in a government experiment aimed at seeing what people's long-term reactions to LSD was. Essentially, could we make a person lose his mind by feeding him LSD every day over such a long period?

Meet 'The Brothers' Who Shaped U.S. Policy, Inside And Out

Author Interviews Meet 'The Brothers' Who Shaped U.S. Policy, Inside And Out

Bulger wrote afterward about his experiences, which he described as quite horrific. He thought he was going insane. He wrote, "I was in prison for committing a crime, but they committed a greater crime on me."

And towards the end of his life, Bulger came to realize the truth of what had happened to him, and he actually told his friends that he was going to find that doctor in Atlanta who was the head of that experiment program in the penitentiary and go kill him.

On the CIA hiring Nazi doctors and Japanese torturers to learn methods

The CIA mind control project, MK-ULTRA, was essentially a continuation of work that began in Japanese and Nazi concentration camps.

Stephen Kinzer, author of 'Poisoner in Chief'

The CIA mind control project, MK-ULTRA, was essentially a continuation of work that began in Japanese and Nazi concentration camps. Not only was it roughly based on those experiments, but the CIA actually hired the vivisectionists and the torturers who had worked in Japan and in Nazi concentration camps to come and explain what they had found out so that we could build on their research.

For example, Nazi doctors had conducted extensive experiments with mescaline at the Dachau concentration camp, and the CIA was very interested in figuring out whether mescaline could be the key to mind control that was one of their big avenues of investigation. So they hired the Nazi doctors who had been involved in that project to advise them.

Another thing the Nazis provided was information about poison gases like sarin, which is still being used. Nazi doctors came to America to Fort Detrick in Maryland, which was the center of this project, to lecture to CIA officers to tell them how long it took for people to die from sarin.

On the more extreme experiments Gottlieb conducted overseas

Gottlieb and the CIA established secret detention centers throughout Europe and East Asia, particularly in Japan, Germany and the Philippines, which were largely under American control in the period of the early '50s, and therefore Gottlieb didn't have to worry about any legal entanglements in these places. ...

CIA officers in Europe and Asia were capturing enemy agents and others who they felt might be suspected persons or were otherwise what they called "expendable." They would grab these people and throw them into cells and then test all kinds of, not just drug potions, but other techniques, like electroshock, extremes of temperature, sensory isolation -- all the meantime bombarding them with questions, trying to see if they could break down resistance and find a way to destroy the human ego. So these were projects designed not only to understand the human mind but to figure out how to destroy it. And that made Gottlieb, although in some ways a very compassionate person, certainly the most prolific torturer of his generation.

On how these experiments were unsupervised

This guy [Sidney Gottlieb] had a license to kill. He was allowed to requisition human subjects across the United States and around the world and subject them to any kind of abuse that he wanted, even up to the level of it being fatal -- yet nobody looked over his shoulder.

Stephen Kinzer

[Gottlieb] operated almost completely without supervision. He had sort of a checkoff from his titular boss and from his real boss, Richard Helms, and from the CIA director, Allen Dulles. But none of them really wanted to know what he was doing. This guy had a license to kill. He was allowed to requisition human subjects across the United States and around the world and subject them to any kind of abuse that he wanted, even up to the level of it being fatal -- yet nobody looked over his shoulder. He never had to file serious reports to anybody. I think the mentality must have been [that] this project is so important -- mind control, if it can be mastered, is the key to global world power.

On how Gottlieb destroyed evidence about his experiments when he left the CIA

The end of Gottlieb's career came in 1972, when his patron, Richard Helms, who was then director of the CIA, was removed by [President Richard] Nixon. Once Helms was gone, it was just a matter of time until Gottlieb would be gone, and most important was that Helms was really the only person at the CIA who had an idea of what Gottlieb had been doing. So as they were both on their way out of the CIA, they agreed that they should destroy all records of MK-ULTRA.

Gottlieb actually drove out to the CIA records center and ordered the archives to destroy boxes full of MK-ULTRA records. ... However, it turns out that there were some [records] found in other places; there was a depot for expense account reports that had not been destroyed, and various other pieces of paper remain. So there is enough out there to reconstruct some of what he did, but his effort to wipe away his traces by destroying all those documents in the early '70s was quite successful.

Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.

Correction Sept. 9, 2019

A previous photo caption incorrectly referred to the CIA's MK-ULTRA program as MS-ULTRA.

[Sep 21, 2019] Spy vs Spy vs Spy The Mysterious Mr. Smolenkov

Notable quotes:
"... Or alternatively, Smolenkov might have been someone who was turned after recruitment or a genuine agent who was trying to respond to urgent demands from his controller in Washington, who was de facto ..."
"... Scott also believes, as do I, that the story was leaked because John Brennan and his associates knew that they were deliberately marketing phony intelligence on Russia to undermine Trump and are trying to preempt any investigation by Attorney General William Barr on the provenance of the Russiagate story. ..."
"... The reality is that spying is a highly creative profession, with operational twists and turns limited only by one's imagination. In this case, unless someone actually succeeds in interviewing Oleg Smolenkov and he decides to tell the complete truth as he sees it, the American public might never know the reality behind the latest spy story. ..."
Sep 21, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org

The account that appeared in the mainstream media went something like this: A midlevel Russian official named Oleg Smolenkov was recruited decades ago by the CIA. He eventually wound up in an important office in the Kremlin that gave him access to President Vladimir Putin. Smolenkov was the principal source of information confirming that Russia, acting on Putin's instructions, was trying to interfere in the 2016 presidential election to defeat Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump. It was claimed that Smolenkov was actually able to photograph documents in Putin's desk. CIA concerns that a mole hunt in the Kremlin resulting from the media revelations concerning Russian interference in the election might lead to Smolenkov resulted in a 2016 offer to extract him and his family from Russia. This was successfully executed during a Smolenkov family vacation trip to Montenegro in 2017. The family now resides in Virginia.

The CNN story and other mainstream media that picked up on the tale embroidered it somewhat, suggesting that although Smolenkov was the CIA's crown jewel, the US has a number of "high level" spies in Moscow. It was also claimed that the timetable for the exfiltration was pushed forward by CIA in 2017 after it was noted that Donald Trump was particularly careless with classified information and might inadvertently reveal the existence of the source. The allegation about Trump carelessness came, according to CNN, after a May 2017 meeting between Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in which the president reportedly shared sensitive information on Syria and ISIS that had been provided by Israel.

Variants of the CNN story appeared subsequently in the New York Times headlined C.I.A. Informant Extracted From Russia Had Sent Secrets to US for Decades , which confirmed that the extraction took place in 2017 though it also asserts that the decision to make the move came in 2016 when Barack Obama was still president.

Taibbi observes, correctly, that CNN and the other mainstream elements reporting the story elaborated on it through commentary coming from anonymous "former senior intelligence officials." As the networks have all hired ex-spooks, it raises the interesting possibility that employees of the media are themselves providing comments on intelligence operations that they were personally involved in, meaning that they might deliberately promote a narrative that does not cast them in a bad light.

Next morning's Washington Post story US got key asset out of Russia following election hacking touched all bases and also tried hard to implicate Trump. It confirmed 2016 as the time frame for the decision to carry out the exfiltration and also mentioned the president's talk with Lavrov in May 2017, though the meeting itself was not cited as the reason for the move. As Taibbi observes, "So why mention it?"

The Russians have denied that Smolenkov was an important official and have insisted that the whole story might be something of a fabrication. And the alleged CIA handling of the claimed top-level defector somewhat bears out that conclusion. Normally, a former top spy is resettled in the US or somewhere overseas in a fake name to protect him or her from any possible attempt at revenge by their former countrymen. In Smolenkov's case, easily public accessible online county real estate records indicate that he bought a $1 million house in Stafford Virginia in 2018 using his own true name .

If the Russians were truly conducting a mole hunt that endangered Smolenkov it may have been because the US media and their anonymous intelligence sources have been bragging about how they have "penetrated the Kremlin." A Washington Post June 2017 articled called " Obama's Secret Struggle to Punish Russia for Putin's Election Assault is typical. In that article , the author describes how CIA Director John Brennan secured a "feat of espionage" by running spies "deep within the Russian government" that revealed Russia's electoral interference.

So, the Smolenkov story has inconsistencies and one has to question why it was deliberately leaked at this time. The only constant in the media coverage is the repeated but completely evidence-free suggestion that the mole was endangered and had to be removed because of Donald Trump's inability to keep a secret. One has to consider the possibility that the story has been leaked at least in part due to the continuing effort by the national security state to "get Trump."

Highly recommended is former weapons inspector Scott Ritter's fascinating detailed dissection of Smolenkov's career as well as a history of the evolution of CIA spying against Russia . Scott speculates on why the leak of the story took place at all, examining a number of scenarios along the way. Smolenkov, who, according to former CIA officer Larry Johnson, has oddly never been polygraphed to establish his bona fides , might have been a double agent from the start, possibly a low level functionary allowed to work for the Americans so the Russian FSB intelligence service could feed low level information and control the narrative. It is a "dirty secret" within the Agency that many agents are recruited by case officers for no other reason than to enhance one's career. Such agents normally have no real access and provide little reporting.

Or alternatively, Smolenkov might have been someone who was turned after recruitment or a genuine agent who was trying to respond to urgent demands from his controller in Washington, who was de facto John Brennan, by producing a dramatic report that was basically fabricated. Or the story itself might be completely false, an attempt by some former and current officials at CIA to demonstrate a great success at a time when the intelligence community is under considerable pressure.

Scott also believes, as do I, that the story was leaked because John Brennan and his associates knew that they were deliberately marketing phony intelligence on Russia to undermine Trump and are trying to preempt any investigation by Attorney General William Barr on the provenance of the Russiagate story. If it can be demonstrated somehow that the claims of Kremlin interference came from a highly regarded credible Russian source then Brennan and company can claim that they acted in good faith. Of course, that tale might break down if anyone bothers to interview Smolenkov.

Another theory that I tend to like is that the CIA might be making public the Smolenkov case in an attempt to lower the heat on another actual high-level source still operating in Moscow. If Russia can be convinced that Smolenkov was the only significant spy working in the Kremlin it might ratchet down efforts to find another mole. It is an interesting theory worthy of spy vs. spy, but one can be pretty sure that Russian counterintelligence has already thought of that possibility and will not be fooled.

The reality is that spying is a highly creative profession, with operational twists and turns limited only by one's imagination. In this case, unless someone actually succeeds in interviewing Oleg Smolenkov and he decides to tell the complete truth as he sees it, the American public might never know the reality behind the latest spy story.

[Sep 20, 2019] The Narcissism of the West

The USA clearly overextended itself with all those neocon global neoliberal empire games. So for Canada, to think of it as an independent country is somewhat naive. It is vassal of Washington at best, a colony at worst.
But RussiaGate is not about Russia and its attitude to the West. Russiagate is about crisis of neoliberalism and cracks in the facade of the neoliberal society, the cracks that the ruling elite tried to patch by redirecting anger to the external enemy.
This is the point that the author seems do not understand. all russigate stupidity is just at attempt to use the image of expernal enemy to rally the nation and produce at this some kind of artificial unity. Unity that now is severely lacking in the USA.
Sep 20, 2019 | irrussianality.wordpress.com
West. Boosted by victory in the Cold War, believing that our systems represent the 'end of history', we in the West have come to see ourselves as 'masters of the universe'. We are all that matters.

And so it follows that we must be at the top of everybody else's agenda, and that whatever anybody else in the world does, it must somehow be about us.

Take the paranoid stories I've been covering on this blog about how the Russians are bound to 'meddle' in Canada's upcoming general election. Why on earth do people here think that this is so likely, given that the choice is between a governing party whose foreign minister is banned from entering Russia and an opposition party whose leader is banned from entering Russia? The answer lies in our strange belief that we're actually really important. Canada is a G7 country after all. Of course the Russians will target us. We matter! Except that in reality we don't.

As was mentioned in the report by Sergey Sukhankin which I critiqued a week or so ago, Russians who study international affairs don't look at Canada as a truly independent country. To most of them, we're just an appendage of the United States. Our belief that the opposite is true – that we're a big player, that our elections really matter to foreign countries, that they're bound to try to undermine us because 'WE'RE IMPORTANT!' – is narcissism pure and simple.

Canadians aren't the only one guilty of this. Americans have a similar problem. It's why they had such a huge problem understanding what Saddam Hussein was up to after his defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. Faced with apparent Iraqi obstruction of US demands, they assumed that this meant that Saddam was plotting some sort of evil revenge against the United States. In fact, it turned out that he wasn't thinking of the Americans at all; his real concerns were to do with Iran. You can find lots of examples like that. Americans are told that they must fight the Taliban because of the danger that terrorists might again use Afghanistan to strike the United States. But is the average Talibani really thinking about America? Or is he thinking about his home, his family, his village – all things local? If the Iranians are helping the Syrian government, is it because they view the war in Syria as part of a global struggle against the United States, or is it because Syria is next door to Iran and what happens there is of direct importance to Iran's own security? The answers, I think, are pretty clear.

To put it another way, states (and non-state actors) have their own interests unconnected to us. The fact that their pursuit of their interests sometimes makes them clash with Western states who are pursuing different interests doesn't mean that they're doing what they doing because of us. Moreover, as the balance of power in the world shifts, it's likely that more and more often the West will become less and less of a factor in non-Western states' calculations. As Derek Averre says with reference to Russia in another part of the LSE report:

We are in danger of missing the fact that European norms are becoming less important as a reference point against which Russia's political elite measures its policy. Indeed, Ted Hopf's argument – that Russia constructs its identity in relation to the US/Europe as 'significant others' – should be subject to appraisal at this time of far-reaching change in Russian foreign policy.

In short, it's not all about us, and becoming less and less about us with every passing day. But arrogance and narcissism prevent us from seeing this. As a result we stumble from foreign policy blunder to foreign policy blunder . Unless and until we are able to come off our high horses and recognize that we're not the centre of the universe, we're going to keep getting things horribly wrong.

[Sep 19, 2019] Pelosi Unloads On Nadler; Tells Him To Drop 'Moby Dick' Like Impeachment Obsession

Notable quotes:
"... "Sadly, the country spent over three years and 40 million taxpayer dollars on these investigations," said Lewandowski. "It is now clear the investigation was populated by many Trump haters who had their own agenda -- to try and take down a duly elected president of the United States," Lewandowski said in his opening statement - later adding "We, as a Nation, would be better served if elected officials like you concentrated your efforts to combat the true crises facing our country, as opposed to going down rabbit holes like this hearing." ..."
"... Nadler and Schiff and those in their camp have a single-minded purpose: Never, ever , again allow the unwashed to get away with a successful rebellion. ..."
Sep 18, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blasted House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler last week over his 'Moby Dick'-like obsession with impeaching President Trump - days before Trump's 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski wiped the floor with Congressional Democrats during a contentious five-hour hearing on Tuesday in front of Nadler's panel.

Pelosi's comments came during a closed-door Capitol Hill meeting of Democrats last week, where she complained that Judiciary Committee aides have advanced the impeachment push "far beyond where the House Democratic Caucus stands," according to Politico .

" And you can feel free to leak this ," Pelosi added, according to several people who were there.

It was the latest sign of the widening schism between Pelosi and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, two longtime allies who are increasingly in conflict over where to guide the party at one of its most critical moments.

Both Pelosi and Nadler, who have served in the House together for more than 25 years, insist their relationship remains strong. But their rift over impeachment is getting harder and harder to paper over amid Democrats' flailing messaging on the topic and a growing divide in the caucus. - Politico

And while Pelosi aides told Politico that Nadler has coordinated with her office on investigations, legal strategy and messaging - and Pelosi has signed off on all the Judiciary Committee's court filings against Trump, the House Speaker has been expressing skepticism for months that a successful impeachment in the House would only lead to "exonerating" Trump on the campaign trail after the effort dies in the GOP-led Senate.

Pelosi has privately clashed with Nadler over his aggressive impeachment agenda, arguing the public does not support it and it does not have the 218 votes to pass on the House floor. So far, about 137 Democrats say they would vote to open an official impeachment inquiry.

...

The relationship between the two veteran lawmakers has become strained . While Pelosi has blocked the House from formally voting to open an impeachment inquiry, Nadler declared he is authorized to begin one even without a House vote. - Washington Examiner

"Am I concerned? The answer is yes!," Florida Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala told the Washington Examiner . "In my district, I'm not getting asked about impeachment. I'm being asked about healthcare, I'm being asked about the environment, and about infrastructure. It's not like around the country they are thinking about impeachment. It's a Washington phenomenon as far as I can tell."

... ... ...

During Tuesday's 'impeachment' hearing, Corey Lewandowski beat Congressional Democrats like a red-headed stepchild - starting with his opening statement:

"Sadly, the country spent over three years and 40 million taxpayer dollars on these investigations," said Lewandowski. "It is now clear the investigation was populated by many Trump haters who had their own agenda -- to try and take down a duly elected president of the United States," Lewandowski said in his opening statement - later adding "We, as a Nation, would be better served if elected officials like you concentrated your efforts to combat the true crises facing our country, as opposed to going down rabbit holes like this hearing."

" As for actual 'collusion,' or 'conspiracy,' there was none. What there has been, however, is harassment of the president from the day he won the election ."

"Corey Lewandowski was very precise," Rep. Matt Gaetz, a member of the House panel, told Fox News ' Sean Hannity. "And House Democrats looked like a dog that had chased a car and then caught it and then did not know what to do about it ."

Norm Corin , 8 minutes ago link

Nadler and Schiff and those in their camp have a single-minded purpose: Never, ever , again allow the unwashed to get away with a successful rebellion.

That's the reason a now 90% controlled Trump can't be allowed to escape unscathed, no matter how otherwise useless the exercise -- even by the standards of their own (apparent) issue agendas.

[Sep 18, 2019] Jerry Nadler is aiming to become the Rachael Maddow of Adam Schiffs

Humor aside Corey Lewandowski Opening statement deserves to be listened. Just 5 min.
This was obviously a Dog & Pony show by Nadler and his gang who can't shoot strait
Sep 18, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Seminole Nation , 5 hours ago

"Jerry Nadler is aiming to become the Rachael Maddow of Adam Schiffs" – Dan Bongino (3-24-19)

Gilbert Perea , 9 hours ago

You have to laugh , I wonder if Mr. Cowen has a chicken wing in his jacket pocket.

RIC shady , 7 hours ago

"The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all." - Valery Legasov, Soviet chemist

ZENIGMATV , 3 hours ago

Nadler:Corey what time is it? Corey :It's 2pm. Nadler: The clock shows 1:59 . Charge Corey for lying to Congress! All a gotcha game by a group of angry haters.

ZENIGMATV , 3 hours ago

Nadler:Corey what time is it? Corey :It's 2pm. Nadler: The clock shows 1:59 . Charge Corey for lying to Congress! All a gotcha game by a group of angry haters.

Jim Carpenter , 6 hours ago

Nadler provides so much comic relief!!!! He is definitely one of my all time favorite oafs.

Forever Joy , 9 hours ago

40 million tax payer dollars wasted...boom! Pathetic, thanks Democrats!

Bobwehada Babyitzaboy , 3 hours ago

3rd time. If that were good for the left they wouldn't shut up about it. This is another witch hunt with attempt to deceive

Dr.Roberto Rodriguez Jr. , 5 hours ago

What a joke. Democratic live in a fantasy world

Ricky Alfaro , 5 hours ago

Corey is toast!

Teresa Upchurch , 8 hours ago

This is obviously a Dog & Pony show by the Nadler nerd group of Demonrats! Can't even follow the House rules. Sickening !!!

[Sep 18, 2019] "Why do Dems continue this charade?" Trump ally Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) asked. Lewandowski replied: "I think they hate this president more than they love their country."

Dems still beat a dead horse, This is so stupid that there are chances that they will lose electins to Trump again.
Corey Lewandowski Opening statement - YouTube
Notable quotes:
"... "If instead of focusing on petty and personal politics, the committee focused on solving the challenges of this generation, imagine how many people we could help." ..."
"... He also took a swipe at Trump's 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, and her handling of emails, and criticized the "Obama-Biden administration" for its inability to stop Russia election interference -- dropping the name of the former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate. ..."
"... Nadler is an incompetent idiot with a Napoleon complex. Why did this hearing ever happen and televised when it was certain it was going to be a bust. ..."
"... More of our vicious, counterproductive political duopoly. This was just one example of what is happening in general with our current political processes - a lot of stagnation. ..."
Sep 17, 2019 | www.washingtonpost.com

He set the tone in his opening statement, mocking Democrats and ridiculing what he called the "fake Russia collusion narrative."

"We as a nation would be better served if elected officials like you concentrated your efforts to combat the true crises facing our country as opposed to going down rabbit holes like this hearing," Lewandowski said. "If instead of focusing on petty and personal politics, the committee focused on solving the challenges of this generation, imagine how many people we could help."

... ... ...

He also took a swipe at Trump's 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, and her handling of emails, and criticized the "Obama-Biden administration" for its inability to stop Russia election interference -- dropping the name of the former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate.

"Donald Trump was a private citizen and had no more responsibility than I did to protect the 2016 election," he said. "That fell to the Obama-Biden administration and they failed. "

... ... ...

At times the hearing was almost comical. When Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) asked Lewandowski, "Are you the hit man, bag man, the lookout or all of the above?" Lewandowski replied: "I think I'm the good-looking man, actually."

Lewandowski also scolded Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) for saying the tooth fairy was not real: "My children are watching, so thank you for that."

Republicans, meanwhile, used their time to praise the president and sympathize with Lewandowski because Democrats asked him to testify.

"Why do Dems continue this charade?" Trump ally Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) asked. Lewandowski replied: "I think they hate this president more than they love their country."

=== 5 minutes ago Lewandowski made everyone including himself look foolish and today’s circus proved nothing except Nadler is an incompetent idiot with a Napoleon complex. Why did this hearing ever happen and televised when it was certain it was going to be a bust. 1 minute ago One of the commentators said this was exactly to be expected … He said the Dems requested this hearing because their constituents wanted it. I think plenty of us knew what was gonna happen -- as it often does in these situations, regardless of party. More of our vicious, counterproductive political duopoly. This was just one example of what is happening in general with our current political processes - a lot of stagnation.

I think we need to get away from parties, they naturally lead to antagonism, and an "us vs them" mentality, and fighting. I have some ideas (humble and basic) on doing away with parties at ourconstitution.info , Outreach, Other Comments.

We must do something; take back Washington's lead -- he couldn't stand parties. Much scarier stuff as well -- rise of the Medical-Military Industrial, " a lot of killers" (Trump to O'Reilly, video on my LInks page), in and out of hospitals. Some are concerned also that the military and CIA are running the Country -- I see a big problem with these career positions vs desires of an oncoming president. Apparently, these orgs, if they don't like a president or policy, just wait them out (or kill them), "contributing" to this current disgrace of a Constitutional Republic. What to do about that? Something needs to be done... Maybe those personnel should be changed out, they can be as much or more dangerous than a president for life...

It is Our Republic, Of, By, and For The People, as long as we can keep it. Protest with me in Miami, or wherever you are, before it is too late.

[Sep 18, 2019] Jerry Nadler is aiming to become the Rachael Maddow of Adam Schiffs

Humor aside Corey Lewandowski Opening statement deserves to be listened. Just 5 min.
This was obviously a Dog & Pony show by Nadler and his gang who can't shoot strait
Sep 18, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Seminole Nation , 5 hours ago

"Jerry Nadler is aiming to become the Rachael Maddow of Adam Schiffs" – Dan Bongino (3-24-19)

Gilbert Perea , 9 hours ago

You have to laugh , I wonder if Mr. Cowen has a chicken wing in his jacket pocket.

RIC shady , 7 hours ago

"The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all." - Valery Legasov, Soviet chemist

ZENIGMATV , 3 hours ago

Nadler:Corey what time is it? Corey :It's 2pm. Nadler: The clock shows 1:59 . Charge Corey for lying to Congress! All a gotcha game by a group of angry haters.

ZENIGMATV , 3 hours ago

Nadler:Corey what time is it? Corey :It's 2pm. Nadler: The clock shows 1:59 . Charge Corey for lying to Congress! All a gotcha game by a group of angry haters.

Jim Carpenter , 6 hours ago

Nadler provides so much comic relief!!!! He is definitely one of my all time favorite oafs.

Forever Joy , 9 hours ago

40 million tax payer dollars wasted...boom! Pathetic, thanks Democrats!

Bobwehada Babyitzaboy , 3 hours ago

3rd time. If that were good for the left they wouldn't shut up about it. This is another witch hunt with attempt to deceive

Dr.Roberto Rodriguez Jr. , 5 hours ago

What a joke. Democratic live in a fantasy world

Ricky Alfaro , 5 hours ago

Corey is toast!

Teresa Upchurch , 8 hours ago

This is obviously a Dog & Pony show by the Nadler nerd group of Demonrats! Can't even follow the House rules. Sickening !!!

[Sep 17, 2019] The Devolution of US-Russia Relations by Tony Kevin

Highly recommended!
Sep 17, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

A retired Australian diplomat who served in Moscow dissects the emergence of the new Cold War and its dire consequences.

I n 2014, we saw violent U.S.-supported regime change and civil war in Ukraine. In February, after months of increasing tension from the anti-Russian protest movement's sitdown strike in Kiev's Maidan Square, there was a murderous clash between protesters and Ukrainian police, sparked off by hidden shooters (we now know that were expert Georgian snipers) , aiming at police. The elected government collapsed and President Yanukevich fled to Russia, pursued by murder squads.

The new Poroshenko government pledged harsh anti-Russian language laws. Rebels in two Russophone regions in Eastern Ukraine took local control, and appealed for Russian military help. In March, a referendum took place in Russian-speaking Crimea on leaving Ukraine, under Russian military protection. Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, a request promptly granted by the Russian Parliament and President. Crimea's border with Ukraine was secured against saboteurs. Crimea is prospering under its pro-Russian government, with the economy kick-started by Russian transport infrastructure investment.

In April, Poroshenko ordered full military attack on the separatist provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine. A brutal civil war ensued, with aerial and artillery bombardment bringing massive civilian death and destruction to the separatist region. There was major refugee outflow into Russia and other parts of Ukraine. The shootdown of MH17 took place in July 2014.

Poroshenko: Ordered military attack.

By August 2015, according to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates, 13,000 people had been killed and 30,000 wounded. 1.4 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced, and 925,000 had fled to neighbouring countries, mostly Russia and to a lesser extent Poland.

There is now a military stalemate, under the stalled Minsk peace process. But random fatal clashes continue, with the Ukrainian Army mostly blamed by UN observers. The UN reported last month that the ongoing war has affected 5.2 million people, leaving 3.5 million of them in need of relief, including 500,000 children. Most Russians blame the West for fomenting Ukrainian enmity towards Russia. This war brings back for older Russians horrible memories of the Nazi invasion in 1941. The Russia-Ukraine border is only 550 kilometres from Moscow.

Flashpoint Syria

Russian forces joined the civil war in Syria in September 2015, at the request of the Syrian Government, faltering under the attacks of Islamist extremist rebel forces reinforced by foreign fighters and advanced weapons. With Russian air and ground support, the tide of war turned. Palmyra and Aleppo were recaptured in 2016. An alleged Syrian Government chemical attack at Khan Shaykhun in April 2017 resulted in a token U.S. missile attack on a Syrian Government airbase: an early decision by President Trump.

NATO, Strategic Balance, Sanctions

An F-15C Eagle from the 493rd Fighter Squadron takes off from Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, March 6, 2014. The 48th Fighter Wing sent an additional six aircraft and more than 50 personnel to support NATO's air policing mission in Lithuania, at the request of U.S. allies in the Baltics. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Emerson Nunez/Released)

Tensions have risen in the Baltic as NATO moves ground forces and battlefield missiles up to the Baltic states' borders with Russia. Both sides' naval and air forces play dangerous brinksmanship games in the Baltic. U.S. short-range, non-nuclear-armed anti-ballistic missiles were stationed in Poland and Romania, allegedly against threat of Iranian attack. They are easily convertible to nuclear-armed missiles aimed at nearby Russia.

Nuclear arms control talks have stalled. The INF intermediate nuclear forces treaty expired in 2019, after both sides accused the other of cheating. In March 2018, Putin announced that Russia has developed new types of intercontinental nuclear missiles using technologies that render U.S. defence systems useless. The West has pretended to ignore this announcement, but we can be sure Western defence ministries have noted it. Nuclear second-strike deterrence has returned, though most people in the West have forgotten what this means. Russians know exactly what it means.

Western economic sanctions against Russia continue to tighten after the 2014 events in Ukraine. The U.S. is still trying to block the nearly completed Nordstream Baltic Sea underwater gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. Sanctions are accelerating the division of the world into two trade and payments systems: the old NATO-led world, and the rest of the world led by China, with full Russian support and increasing interest from India, Japan, ROK and ASEAN.

Return to Moscow

In 2013, my children gave me an Ipad. I began to spend several hours a day reading well beyond traditional mainstream Western sources: British and American dissident sites, writers like Craig Murray in UK and in the U.S. Stephen Cohen, and some Russian sites – rt.com, Sputnik, TASS, and the official Foreign Ministry site mid.ru. in English.

In late 2015 I decided to visit Russia independently to write Return to Moscow , a literary travel memoir. I planned to compare my impressions of the Soviet Union, where I had lived and worked as an Australian diplomat in 1969-71, with Russia today. I knew there had been huge changes. I wanted to experience 'Putin's Russia' for myself, to see how it felt to be there as an anonymous visitor in the quiet winter season. I wanted to break out of the familiar one-dimensional hostile political view of Russia that Western mainstream media offer: to take my readers with me on a cultural pilgrimage through the tragedy and grandeur and inspiration of Russian history. As with my earlier book on Spain 'Walking the Camino' , this was not intended to be a political book, and yet somehow it became one.

I was still uncommitted on contemporary Russian politics before going to Russia in January 2016. Using the metaphor of a seesaw, I was still sitting somewhere around the middle.

My book was written in late 2015 – early 2016, expertly edited by UWA Publishing. It was launched in March 2017. By this time my political opinions had moved decisively to the Russian end of the seesaw, on the basis of what I had seen in Russia, and what I had read and thought during the year.

I have been back again twice, in winter 2018 and 2019. My 2018 visit included Crimea, and I happened to see a Navalny-led Sunday demonstration in Moscow. I thoroughly enjoyed all three independent visits: in my opinion, they give my judgements on Russia some depth and authenticity.

Russophobia Becomes Entrenched

Russia was a big talking point in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the initially unlikely Republican candidate Donald Trump's chances improved, anti-Putin and anti-Russian positions hardened in the outgoing Obama administration and in the Democratic Party establishment which backed candidate Hillary Clinton.

Russia and Putin became caught up in the Democratic Party's increasingly obsessive rage and hatred against the victorious Trump. Russophobia became entrenched in Washington and London U.S. and UK political and strategic elites, especially in intelligence circles: think of Pompeo, Brennan, Comey and Clapper. All sense of international protocol and diplomatic propriety towards Russia and its President was abandoned, as this appalling Economist cover from October 2016 shows.

My experience of undeclared political censorship in Australia since four months after publication of 'Return to Moscow' supports the thesis that:

We are now in the thick of a ruthless but mostly covert Anglo-American alliance information war against Russia. In this war, individuals who speak up publicly in the cause of detente with Russia will be discouraged from public discourse.

In the Thick of Information War

When I spoke to you two years ago, I had no idea how far-reaching and ruthless this information war is becoming. I knew that a false negative image of Russia was taking hold in the West, even as Russia was becoming a more admirable and self-confident civil society, moving forward towards greater democracy and higher living standards, while maintaining essential national security. I did not then know why, or how.

I had just had time to add a few final paragraphs in my book about the possible consequences for Russia-West relations of Trump's surprise election victory in November 2016. I was right to be cautious, because since Trump's inauguration we have seen the step-by-step elimination of any serious pro-detente voices in Washington, and the reassertion of control over this haphazard president by the bipartisan imperial U.S. deep state, as personified from April 2018 by Secretary of State Pompeo and National Security Adviser Bolton. Bolton has now been thrown from the sleigh as decoy for the wolves: under the smooth-talking Pompeo, the imperial policies remain.

Truth, Trust and False Narratives

Let me now turn to some theory about political reality and perception, and how national communities are persuaded to accept false narratives. Let me acknowledge my debt to the fearless and brilliant Australian independent online journalist, Caitlin Johnstone.

Behavioural scientists have worked in the field of what used to be called propaganda since WW1. England has always excelled in this field. Modern wars are won or lost not just on the battlefield, but in people's minds. Propaganda, or as we now call it information warfare, is as much about influencing people's beliefs within your own national community as it is about trying to demoralise and subvert the enemy population.

The IT revolution of the past few years has exponentially magnified the effectiveness of information warfare. Already in the 1940s, George Orwell understood how easily governments are able to control and shape public perceptions of reality and to suppress dissent. His brilliant books 1984 and Animal Farm are still instruction manuals in principles of information warfare. Their plots tell of the creation by the state of false narratives, with which to control their gullible populations.

The disillusioned Orwell wrote from his experience of real politics. As a volunteer fighter in the Spanish Civil War, he saw how both Spanish sides used false news and propaganda narratives to demonise the enemy. He also saw how the Nazi and Stalinist systems in Germany and Russia used propaganda to support show trials and purges, the concentration camps and the Gulag, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, German master race and Stalinist class enemy ideologies; and hows dissident thought was suppressed in these controlled societies. Orwell tried to warn his readers: all this could happen here too, in our familiar old England. But because the good guys won the war against fascism, his warnings were ignored.

We are now in Britain, U.S. and Australia actually living in an information warfare world that has disturbing echoes of the world that Orwell wrote about. The essence of information control is the effective state management of two elements, trust and fear , to generate and uphold a particular view of truth. Truth, trust and fear : these are the three key elements, now as 100 years ago in WWI Britain.

People who work or have worked close to government – in departments, politics, the armed forces, or top universities – mostly accept whatever they understand at the time to be 'the government view' of truth. Whether for reasons of organisational loyalty, career prudence or intellectual inertia, it is usually this way around governments. It is why moral issues like the Vietnam War and the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq were so distressing for people of conscience working in or close to government and military jobs in Canberra. They were expected to engage in 'doublethink' as Orwell had described it:

Even in Winston's nightmare world, there were still choices – to retreat into the non-political world of the proles, or to think forbidden thoughts and read forbidden books. These choices involved large risks and punishments. It was easier and safer for most people to acquiesce in the fake news they were fed by state-controlled media.

'Trust, Truth and False Narratives'

Fairfax journalist Andrew Clark, in the Australian Financial Review , in an essay optimistically titled "Not fake news: Why truth and trust are still in good shape in Australia", (AFR Dec. 22, 2018), cited Professor William Davies thus:

"Most of the time, the edifice that we refer to as "truth" is really an investment of trust in our structures of politics and public life' 'When trust sinks below a certain point, many people come to view the entire spectacle of politics and public life as a sham."

Here is my main point: Effective information warfare requires the creation of enough public trust to make the public believe that state-supported lies are true.

The key tools are repetition of messages, and diversification of trusted voices. Once a critical mass is created of people believing a false narrative, the lie locks in: its dissemination becomes self-sustaining.

Caitlin Johnstone a few days ago put it this way:

" Power is being able to control what happens. Absolute power is being able to control what people think about what happens. If you can control what happens, you can have power until the public gets sick of your BS and tosses you out on your ass. If you can control what people think about what happens, you can have power forever. As long as you can control how people are interpreting circumstances and events, there's no limit to the evils you can get away with."

The Internet has made propaganda campaigns that used to take weeks or months a matter of hours or even minutes to accomplish. It is about getting in quickly, using large enough clusters of trusted and diverse sources, in order to cement lies in place, to make the lies seem true, to magnify them through social messaging: in other words, to create credible false narratives that will quickly get into the public's bloodstream.

Over the past two years, I have seen this work many times: on issues like framing Russia for the MH17 tragedy; with false allegations of Assad mounting poison gas attacks in Syria; with false allegations of Russian agents using lethal Novichok to try to kill the Skripals in Salisbury; and with the multiple lies of Russiagate.

It is the mind-numbing effect of constant repetition of disinformation by many eminent people and agencies, in hitherto trusted channels like the BBC or ABC or liberal Anglophone print media that gives the system its power to persuade the credulous. For if so many diverse and reputable people repeatedly report such negative news and express such negative judgements about Russia or China or Iran or Syria, surely they must be right?

We have become used to reading in our quality newspapers and hearing on the BBC and ABC and SBS gross assaults on truth, calmly presented as accepted facts. There is no real public debate on important facts in contention any more. There are no venues for dissent outside contrarian social media sites.

Sometimes, false narratives inter-connect. Often a disinformation narrative in one area is used to influence perceptions in other areas. For example, the false Skripals poisoning story was launched by British intelligence in March 2018, just in time to frame Syrian President Assad as the guilty party in a faked chemical weapons attack in Douma the following month.

The Skripals Gambit

The Skripals gambit was also a failed British attempt to blight the Russia –hosted Football World Cup in June 2018. In the event, hundreds of thousands of Western sports fans returned home with the warmest memories of Russian good sportsmanship and hospitality.

How do I know the British Skripals narrative is false? For a start, it is illogical, incoherent, and constantly changes. Allegedly, two visiting Russian FSB agents in March 2018 sprayed or smeared Novichok, a deadly toxin instantly lethal in the most microscopic quantities, on the Skripals' house front doorknob. There is no video footage of the Skripals at their front door on the day. We are told they were found slumped on a park bench, and that is maybe where they had been sprayed with nerve gas? Shortly afterwards, Britain's Head of Army Nursing who happened to be passing by found them, and supervised their hospitalisation and emergency treatment.

Allegedly, much of Salisbury was contaminated by Novichok, and one unfortunate woman mysteriously died weeks later, yet the Skripals somehow did not die, as we are told. But where are they now? We saw a healthy Yulia in a carefully scripted video interview released in May 2018, after an alleged 'one in a million' recovery. We were assured her father had recovered too, but nobody has seen him at all. The Skripals have simply disappeared from sight since 16 months ago. Are they now alive or dead? Are they in voluntary or involuntary British custody?

A month after the poisoning, the UK Government sent biological samples from the Skripals to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons , for testing. The OPCW sent the samples to a trusted OPCW laboratory in Spiez, Switzerland.

Lavrov Spiez BZ claims, April 2018

A few days later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dramatically announced in Moscow that the Spiez lab had found in the samples a temporary-effect nerve agent BZ, used by U.S. and UK but not by Russia, that would have disabled the Skripals for a few days without killing them. He also revealed the Spiez lab had found that the Skripal samples had been twice tampered with while still in UK custody: first soon after the poisoning, and again shortly before passing them to the OPCW. He said the Spiez lab had found a high concentration of Novichok, which he called A- 234, in its original form. This was extremely suspicious as A-234 has high volatility and could not have retained its purity over a two weeks period. The dosage the Spiez lab found in the samples would have surely killed the Skripals. The OPCW under British pressure rejected Lavrov's claim, and suppressed the Spiez lab report.

Let's look finally at the alleged assassins.

'Boshirov and Petrov'

These two FSB operatives who visited Salisbury under the false identities of 'Boshirov' and 'Petrov' did not look or behave like credible assassins. It is more likely that they were sent to negotiate with Sergey Skripal about his rumoured interest in returning to Russia. They needed to apply for UK visas a month in advance of travel: ample time for the British agencies to identify them as FSB operatives, and to construct a false attempted assassination narrative around their visit. This false narrative repeatedly trips over its own lies and contradictions. British social media are full of alternative theories and rebuttals. Russians find the whole British Government Skripal narrative laughable. They have invented comedy skits and video games based on it. Yet it had major impact on Russia-West relations.

The Douma False Narrative

I turn now to the claimed Assad chemical weapons attack in Douma in April 2018.This falsely alleged attack triggered a major NATO air attack on Syrian targets, ordered by Trump. We came close to WWIII in these dangerous days. Thanks to the restraint of the then Secretary of Defence James Mattis and his Russian counterparts, the risk was contained.

The allegation that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used outlawed chemical weapons against his own people was based solely on the evidence of faked video images of child victims, made by the discredited White Helmets, a UK-sponsored rebel-linked 'humanitarian' propaganda organisation with much blood on its hands. Founded in 2013 by a British private security specialist of intelligence background, James Le Mesurier, the White Helmets specialised in making fake videos of alleged Assad regime war crimes against Syrian civilians. It is by now a thoroughly discredited organisation that was prepared to kill its prisoners and then film their bodies as alleged victims of government chemical attacks.

White Helmets

As the town of Douma was about to fall to advancing Syrian Government forces, the White Helmets filled a room with stacked corpses of murdered prisoners, and photographed them as alleged victims of aerial gas attack. They also made a video alleging child victims of this attack being hosed down by White Helmets. A video of a child named Hassan Diab went viral all over the Western world.

Hassan Diab later testified publicly in The Hague that he had been dragged terrified from his family by force, smeared with some sort of grease, and hosed down with water as part of a fake video. He went from hero to zero overnight, as Western governments and media rejected his testimony as Russian and Syrian propaganda.

In a late development, there is proof that the OPCW suppressed its own engineers' report from Douma that the alleged poison gas cylinders could not have possibly been dropped from the air through the roof of the house where one was found, resting on a bed under a convenient hole in the roof.

I could go on discussing the detail of such false narratives all day. No matter how often they are exposed by critics, our politicians and mainstream media go on referencing them as if they are true. Once people have come to believe false narratives, it is hard to refute them.

So it is with the false narrative that Russian internet interference enabled Trump to win the 2016 U.S. presidential elections: a thesis for which no evidence was found by [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller, yet continues to be cited by many U.S. liberal Democratic media as if it were true. So, even, with MH17.

Managing Mass Opinion

This mounting climate of Western Russophobia is not accidental: it is strategically directed, and it is nourished with regular maintenance doses of fresh lies. Each round of lies provides a credible platform for the next round somewhere else. The common thread is a claimed malign Russian origin for whatever goes wrong.

So where is all this disinformation originating? Information technology firms in Washington and London that are closely networked into government elites, often through attending the same establishment schools or colleges like Eton and Yale, have closely studied and tested the science of influencing crowd opinions through mainstream media and online. They know, in a way that Orwell or Goebbels could hardly have dreamt, how to put out and repeat desired media messages. They know what sizes of 'internet attraction nodes' need to be established online, in order to create diverse critical masses of credible Russophobic messaging, which then attracts enough credulous and loyal followers to become self-propagating.

Firms like the SCL Group (formerly Strategic Communication Laboratories) and the now defunct Cambridge Analytica pioneered such work in the UK. There are many similar firms in Washington, all in the business of monitoring, generating and managing mass opinion. It is big business, and it works closely with the national security state.

Starting in November 2018, an enterprising group of unknown hackers in the UK , who go by the name 'Anonymous', opened a remarkable window into this secret world. Over a few weeks, they hacked and dumped online a huge volume of original documents issued by and detailing the activities of the Institute for Statecraft (IfS) and the Integrity initiative (II). Here is the first page of one of their dumps, exposing propaganda against Jeremy Corbyn.

We know from this material that the IfS and II are two secret British disinformation networks operating at arms' length from but funded by the UK security services and broader UK government establishment. They bring together high-ranking military and intelligence personnel, often nominally retired, journalists and academics, to produce and disseminate propaganda that serves the agendas of the UK and its allies.

Stung by these massive leaks, Chris Donnelly, a key figure in IfS and II and a former British Army intelligence officer, made a now famous seven-minute YouTube video in December 2018, artfully filmed in a London kitchen, defending their work.

He argued – quite unconvincingly in my opinion – that IfS and II are simply defending Western societies against disinformation and malign influence, primarily from Russia. He boasted how they have set up in numerous targeted European countries, claimed to be under attack from Russian disinformation, what he called 'clusters of influence' , to 'educate' public opinion and decision-makers in pro-NATO and anti-Russian directions.

Donnelly spoke frankly on how the West is already at war with Russia, a 'new kind of warfare', in which he said 'everything becomes a weapon'. He said that 'disinformation is the issue which unites all the other weapons in this conflict and gives them a third dimension'.

He said the West has to fight back, if it is to defend itself and to prevail.

We can confirm from the Anonymous leaked files the names of many people in Europe being recruited into these clusters of influence. They tend to be significant people in journalism, publishing, universities and foreign policy think-tanks: opinion-shapers. The leaked documents suggest how ideologically suitable candidates are identified: approached for initial screening interviews; and, if invited to join a cluster of influence, sworn to secrecy.

Remarkably, neither the Anonymous disclosures nor the Donnelly response have ever been reported in Australian media. Even in Britain – where evidence that the Integrity Initiative was mounting a campaign against [Labour leader] Jeremy Corbyn provoked brief media interest. The story quickly disappeared from mainstream media and the BBC. A British under-foreign secretary admitted in Parliamentary Estimates that the UK Foreign Office subsidises the Institute of Statecraft to the tune of nearly 3 million pounds per year. It also gives various other kinds of non-monetary assistance, e.g. providing personnel and office support in Britain's overseas embassies.

This is not about traditional spying or seeking agents of influence close to governments. It is about generating mass disinformation, in order to create mass climates of belief.

In my opinion, such British and American disinformation efforts, using undeclared clusters of influence, through Five Eyes intelligence-sharing, and possibly with the help of British and American diplomatic missions, may have been in operation in Australia for many years.

Such networks may have been used against me since around mid-2017, to limit the commercial outreach of my book and the impact of its dangerous ideas on the need for East-West detente; and efficiently to suppress my voice in Australian public discourse about Russia and the West. Do I have evidence for this? Yes.

It is not coincidence that the Melbourne Writers Festival in August 2017 somehow lost all my sign-and-sell books from my sold-out scheduled speaking event; that a major debate with [Australian writer and foreign policy analyst] Bobo Lo at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne was cancelled by his Australian sponsor, the Lowy institute, two weeks before the advertised date; that my last invitation to any writers festival was 15 months ago, in May 2018; that Return to Moscow was not shortlisted for any Australian book prize, though I entered it in all of them ; that since my book's early promotion ended around August 2017, I have not been invited to join any ABC discussion panels, or to give any talks on Russia in any universities or institutes, apart from the admirable Australian Institute of International Affairs and the ISAA.

My articles and shorter opinion commentaries on Russia and the West have not been published in mainstream media or in reputable online journals like Eureka Street, The Conversation, Inside Story or Australian Book Review . Despite being an ANU Emeritus Fellow, I have not been invited to give a public talk or join any panel in ANU (Australian National University) or any Canberra think tank. In early 2018, I was invited to give a private briefing to a group of senior students travelling on an immersion course to Russia. I was not invited back in 2019, after high-level private advice within ANU that I was regarded as too pro-Putin.

In all these ways – none overt or acknowledged – my voice as an open-minded writer and speaker on Russia-West relations seems to have been quietly but effectively suppressed in Australia. I would like to be proved wrong on this, but the evidence is there.

This may be about "velvet-glove deterrence" of my Russia-sympathetic voice and pen, in order to discourage others, especially those working in or close to government. Nobody is going to put me in jail, unless I am stupid enough to violate Australia's now strict foreign influence laws. This deterrence is about generating fear of consequences for people still in their careers, paying their mortgages, putting kids through school. Nobody wants to miss their next promotion.

There are other indications that Australian national security elite opinion has been indoctrinated prudently to fear and avoid any kind of public discussion of positive engagement with Russia (or indeed, with China).

There are only two kinds of news about Russia now permitted in our mainstream media, including the ABC and SBS: negative news and comment, or silence. Unless a story can be given an anti-Russian sting, it will not be carried at all. Important stories are simply spiked, like last week's Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivistok, chaired by President Putin and attended by Prime Ministers Abe, Mahathir and Modi, among 8500 participants from 65 countries.

The ABC idea of a balanced panel to discuss any Russian political topic was exemplified in an ABC Sunday Extra Roundtable panel chaired by Eleanor Hall on July, 22 2018, soon after the Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki. The panel – a former ONA Russia analyst, a professor of Soviet and Russian History at Melbourne University, and a Russian émigré dissident journalist introduced as the 'Washington correspondent for Echo of Moscow radio' spent most of their time sneering at Putin and Trump. There were no other views.

A powerful anti-Russian news narrative is now firmly in place in Australia, on every topic in contention: Ukraine, MH17, Crimea, Syria, the Skripals, Navalny and public protest in Russia. There is ill-informed criticism of Russia, or silence, on the crucial issues of arms control and Russia-China strategic and economic relations as they affect Australia's national security or economy. There is no analysis of the negative impact on Australia of economic sanctions against Russia. There is almost no discussion of how improved relations with China and Russia might contribute to Australia's national security and economic welfare, as American influence in the world and our region declines, and as American reliability as an ally comes more into question. Silence on inconvenient truths is an important part of the disinformation tool kit.

I see two overall conflicting narratives – the prevailing Anglo-American false narrative; and valiant efforts by small groups of dissenters, drawing on sources outside the Anglo-American official narrative, to present another narrative much closer to truth. And this is how most Russians now see it too.

The Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki in July 2018 was damaged by the Skripal and Syria fabrications. Trump left that summit friendless, frightened and humiliated. He soon surrendered to the power of the U.S. imperial state as then represented by [Mike] Pompeo and [John] Bolton, who had both been appointed as Secretary of State and National Security Adviser in April 2018 and who really got into their stride after the Helsinki Summit. Pompeo now smoothly dominates Trump's foreign policy.

Self-Inflicted Wounds

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (Gage Skidmore)

Finally, let me review the American political casualties over the past two years – self-inflicted wounds – arising from this secret information war against Russia. Let me list them without prejudging guilt or innocence. Slide 20 – Self-inflicted wounds: casualties of anti-Russian information warfare.

Trump's first National Security Adviser, the highly decorated Michael Flynn lost his job after only three weeks, and soon went to jail. His successor H R McMaster lasted 13 months until replaced by John Bolton. Trump's first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson lasted just 14 months until his replacement by Trump's appointed CIA chief (in January 2017) Mike Pompeo. Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon lasted only seven months. Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is now in jail.

Defence Secretary James Mattis lasted nearly two years as Secretary of Defence, and was an invaluable source of strategic stability. He resigned in December 2018. The highly capable Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman lasted just two years: he is resigning next month. John Kelly lasted 18 months as White House Chief of Staff. Less senior figures like George Papadopoulos and Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen both served jail time. The pattern I see here is that people who may have been trying responsibly as senior U.S. officials to advance Trump's initial wish to explore possibilities for detente with Russia – policies that he had advocated as a candidate – were progressively purged, one after another . The anti-Russian U.S. bipartisan imperial state is now firmly back in control. Trump is safely contained as far as Russia is concerned .

Russians do not believe that any serious detente or arms control negotiations can get under way while cold warriors like Pompeo continue effectively to control Trump. There have been other casualties over the past two years of tightening American Russophobia. Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning come to mind. The naive Maria Butina is a pathetic victim of American judicial rigidity and deep state vindictiveness.

False anti-Russian Government narratives emanating from London and Washington may be laughed at in Moscow , but they are unquestioningly accepted in Canberra. We are the most gullible of audiences. There is no critical review. Important contrary factual information and analysis from and about Russia just does not reach Australian news reporting and commentary, nor – I fear – Australian intelligence assessment. We are prisoners of the false narratives fed to us by our senior Five Eyes partners U.S. and UK.

To conclude: Some people may find what I am saying today difficult to accept. I understand this. I now work off open-source information about Russia with which many people here are unfamiliar, because they prefer not to read the diverse online information sources that I choose to read. The seesaw has tilted for me: I have clearly moved a long way from mainstream Western perceptions on Russia-West relations.

Under Trump and Pompeo, as the Syria and Iran crises show, the present risk of global nuclear war by accident or incompetent Western decision-making is as high as it ever was in the Cold War. The West needs to learn again how to dialogue usefully and in mutually respectful ways with Russia and China. This expert knowledge is dying with our older and wiser former public servants and ex-military chiefs.

These remarks were delivered by Tony Kevin at the Independent Scholars Association of Australia in Canberra, Australia on Wednesday.

Watch Tony Kevin interviewed Friday night on CN Live!

Tony Kevin is a retired Australian diplomat who was posted to Moscow from 1969 to 1971, and was later Australia's ambassador to Poland and Cambodia. His latest book is Return to Moscow, published by UWA Publishing.

Bruce , September 17, 2019 at 08:58

Excellent article. It's very interesting to see how the state and its media lackey set the narrative.

Most of this comment relates to the Skripals but also applies to other matters (the Skripals writing was some of Craig Murray's finest work in my opinion). One of the hallmarks of a hoax is a constantly evolving storyline. I think governments have learned from past "mistakes" with their hoaxes/deception where they've given a description of events and then scientists/engineers/chemists etc have come in and criticised their version of events with details and scientific arguments. Nowadays, governments are very reluctant to commit to a version of events, and instead rely on the media (their propaganda assets) to provide a scattergun set of information to muddy the waters and thoroughly confuse the population. The government is then insulated from some of the more bizarre allegations (the headlines of which are absorbed nonetheless), and can blame it on the media (who would use an anonymous government source naturally). Together with classifying just about everything on national security grounds, they can stonewall for as long as they want.

The British are masters of propaganda. They maintained a global empire for a very long time, and the prevailing view (in the west at least) was probably one of tea-drinking cricket playing colonials/gentlemen. But you don't maintain an empire without being absolutely ruthless and brutal. They've been doing this for a very long time.

When we hear something from the BBC or ABC, we should think "State Media".
That's probably why its got a nice folksy nickname of "aunty" .build up the trust.

Leslie Louis , September 17, 2019 at 04:00

Society is suffering the extreme paradox; there is the potential for everyone to have a voice, but the last vestiges of free speech have been whittled away. Fake news is universal, assisted by the fake "left". It is impossible to get published any challenge to even the most outlandish versions of identity politics. As the experience of Tony Kevin exemplifies, all avenues for dissent against hegemonic orthodoxies are closed off.
Disinformation is now an essential weapon in waging hot and cold wars. Cold War historians are well informed on false flags, "black ops", and other organised dirty tactics. I do not know what happened to the Skripals, and while it is legitimate to bear in mind KGB assassinations, despite the enormous resources at its disposal, the English security state has been unable to construct a credible case. Surely scepticism is provoked by the leading role being played by the notorious Bellingcat outfit.

Zenobia van Dongen , September 17, 2019 at 00:29

Here is part of an eyewitness account:
"After the Orange Revolution which began in Kiev, the country was divided literally into two parts -- the supporters of integration with Russia and the supporters of an independent Ukraine. For almost 100 years belonging to the Soviet Union, the propaganda about the assistance and care from our "big brother" Russia, in Ukraine as a whole and the Donbass in particular has borne fruit. At the end of February 2014, some cities of the Southeast part were boiling with mass social and political protest against the new Ukrainian government in defense of the status of the Russian language, voicing separatist and pro-Russian slogans. The division took place in our city of Sloviansk too. Some people stood for separation from Ukraine, while Ukrainian patriots stood for the unity of our country.
On April 12, 2014 our city of Sloviansk in the Donetsk region was seized by Russian mercenaries and local volunteers. From that moment onward, armed assaults on state institutions began. The city police department, the Sloviansk City Hall, the building of the Ukraine Security Service was occupied. Armed militants seized state institutions and confiscated private property. They threatened and beat people, and those who refused to obey were taken away to an unknown destination and people started disappearing. The persecution and abduction of patriotic citizens began."

Michael McNulty , September 16, 2019 at 11:36

Watching Vietnam news coverage as a kid in the '60s I noticed the planes carpet-bombing South East Asia were American, not Russian. And as I only watched the footage and never listened to the commentary (I was waiting for the kids programs that followed) the BS they came out with to explain it all never reached me. I saw with my own eyes what the US really was and is, and always believed growing up they were the belligerent side not Russia. Once the USSR fell it was clear there were no longer any constraints on US excesses.

dean 1000 , September 15, 2019 at 18:17

Doublethink, not to mention doublespeak, is so apt to describe what is happening. If Orwell was writing today it would have to be classified as non-fiction.

Free speech is impossible unless every election district has a radio/TV station where candidates, constituents, and others can debate, discuss and speak to the issues without bending a knee to large campaign contributors or the controllers of corporate or government media. It may start with low-power pirate radio/TV broadcasts. No, the pirate speakers will not have to climb a cell tower to broadcast an opinion to the neighborhood or precinct.
If genuine free speech is going to exist it will start as something unauthorized and unlawful. If it sticks to the facts it will quickly prove its value.

Download a free pdf copy of '1984.' https://www.planetebook.com/free-ebooks/1984.pdf

Njegos , September 15, 2019 at 03:39

Excellent article. The only exhibit missing was reference to Bill Browder's lies. Browder's rubbish has been exposed by intrepid journalists and documentary makers such as Andrei Nekrasov, Sasha Krainer and Lucy Komisar but to read or listen to our media, you'd think BB was some sort of human rights hero. That's because BB's fairy tale fits nicely into the MSM's hatred of Putin and Russia. Debunk Browder and a major pillar of anti-Russia prejudice collapses. Therefore, Browder will never face any serious questions by the MSM.

John A , September 16, 2019 at 09:18

judges of the European Court of Human Rights published a judgement a fortnight ago which utterly exploded the version of events promulgated by Western governments and media in the case of the late Mr Magnitskiy. Yet I can find no truthful report of the judgement in the mainstream media at all.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/09/the-magnitskiy-myth-exploded/

MSM propaganda by omission. Anything that doesn't fit the government narrative gets zero publicity.

Jim Ingram , September 14, 2019 at 21:12

Well said and needing to be said Tony.

Mr. Dan , September 14, 2019 at 19:41

I have stopped following australian mainstream media including the darlings of the 'left' ABC/SBS over a decade ago, completely. My disgust with their 'coverage' of the 2008 GFC was more than enough. Since 2008-9 things have deteriorated drastically into conspiracy theory propaganda by omission la-la land *it seems*, given I don't tune in at all.

The author has a well supported view. I find it a little naive in him thinking that the MSM has that much power over shaping public opinion in australia.

People who want to be informed do so. The half intelligent conformists on hamster wheel of lifetime mortgage debt have 'careers' to hold onto, so parroting the group think or living in ignorance is much easier. The massive portion of australian racists, inbred bogans and idiots that make up the large LNP, One Nation etc. voting block are completely beyond salvation or ability to process, and critically evaluate any information. The smarter ones drool on about the 'UN Agenda 21' conspiracy at best. Utterly hopeless.

I don't expect things to change as the australian economy is slowly hollowed out by the rich, and the education system (that has always been about conforming, wearing school uniform and regurgitating what the teacher/lecturer says at best) is gutted completely. Welcome to australistan.

Fran Macadam , September 14, 2019 at 19:21

Note that the prohibition against false propaganda to indoctrinate the domestic population by the American government was lifted by President Obama at the tail end of his administration. The Executive Order legalizes all the deceptive behavior Tony itemizes in his article.

Josep , September 17, 2019 at 04:10

I thought it was Reagan who did that by abolishing the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. At least in terms of television and radio (?) broadcasts.

Stephen Morrell , September 14, 2019 at 19:02

Thank you Tony for your thoughtful talk (and interview on CN Live! too).

What's encouraging is this cohort of what might be called 'millennial journalists' coming through willing to do 'shoe-leather' journalism and stand up to smears and flack for revealing uncomfortable facts and truth. They're the online 5th estate holding the 4th to account (to steal Ray McGovern's apt view), and they're congealing against the onslaught.

Some include Max Blumenthal and Rania Kahlek (both now being pilloried by MSM and others for visiting Syrian government held areas and reporting that life isn't hellish as MSM would have everyone believe heaven forbid); Vanessa Bealey who's exposed a lot of White Helmet horrors and false-flag attacks in Syria (and being attacked by all and sundry for exposing the White Helmets in particular); Abby Martin whose Empire Files are excellent and always edifying; Dan Cohen who has written the best expose of the actors behind the Hong Kong rioting and co-authored the best expose of the background of Guaido et al.; Whitney Webb of Mint Press whose series on Epstein is overwhelming and likely a ticking timebomb; Caitlin Johnstone of course; and Aaron 'Buzzsaw' Mate who made his first mark with a wonderful takedown interview of Russiaphobe MI6 shill Luke Harding. Others too of course, with most appearing or having written pieces on CN. John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Greg Palast, et al. won't drop off their twigs disappointed.

This, along with the fact that MSM -- that cowed and compromised fourth estate -- increasingly is held in such laughable contempt by most people under about 50 yr, is highly encouraging indeed. Truth is the new black.

nwwoods , September 15, 2019 at 11:49

The Blogmire is an excellent resource for detailed analysis of the Skripal hoax. The author happens to be a long-time resident of Salisbury, and is intimately familiar with the topography, public services, etc., and a very thorough investigator.

John Wright , September 14, 2019 at 18:35

I'm not surprised that Mr. Kevin is being isolated and shunned by the Australian establishment. Truth and truth tellers are always the first casualties of war. I do hope that his experience will encourage him to increase his resistance to the corrosiveness of mendacious propaganda and those who promulgate it.

Truth is the single best weapon when fighting for a peaceful future.

If Australia is to flourish in the 21st century, it really needs to understand Russia and China, how they relate to each other, and how this key alliance will interface with the rest of the world. Australia and Australians simply cannot afford to get sucked down further by facilitating the machinations of the collapsing Anglo-American Empire. They have served the empire ably and faithfully, but now need to take a cold hard look at reality and realign their long-term interests with the coming global power shift. If not, they could literally find themselves in the middle of an unwinnable and devastating war.

* * *

The first Anglo-American Russian cold war began with the Russian revolution and was only briefly suspended when the West needed the Soviet people to throw themselves in front of the Nazi blitzkrieg in order to save Western Europe. Following their catastrophically costly contribution to the victory on the Continent, the Russians were greeted with an American nuclear salute on their eastern periphery, signalling their return to the diplomatic and economic deep freeze.

While the Anglo-American Empire solidified and extended its hold on the globe, the enlarged but war-ravaged and isolated Soviet Union hunkered down and survived on scraps and sheer will until its collapse in 1989. Declaring the cold war over, and with promises to help their new Russian friends build a prosperous future, the duplicitous West then ransacked their neighbors resources and sold them into debt peonage. The Russians cried foul, the West shrugged and Putin pushed back. Unable to declaw the bear, the west closed the cage door again and the second cold war commenced.

* * *

The first cold war was essentially an offensive war disguised as a defensive war. It enabled the Anglo-American Empire to leverage its post-war advantage and establish near total dominance around the globe through naked violence and monetary hegemony.

Today, with its dominance rapidly slipping away, the Anglo-American Empire is waging a truly defensive cold war. On the home front, they fight to convince their subjects of their eternal exceptionalism with ever more absurd and vile propaganda denigrating their adversaries . Abroad, they disrupt and defraud in a desperate attempt to delay the demise of the PetroDollar ponzi.

The Russians and the Chinese, having both been brutally burned by the Western elites, will not be fooled into abandoning their natural geographic partnership. They are no longer content to sit quietly at the kids' table taking notes. While they may not demand to sit at the head of the table, it is clear that they will insist on a round table, and one that is large enough to include their growing list of friends.

If the Americans don't smash the table, it could be the first of many peaceful pot lucks.

John Read , September 15, 2019 at 02:11

Well said. Great comments. Thanks to Tony Kevin.

Mia , September 14, 2019 at 18:33

Thank you Tony for continuing to shine light on the pathetic propaganda information bubble Australians have been immersed in .. you demonstrate great courage and you are not alone ??

Peter Loeb , September 14, 2019 at 12:58

WITH THANKS TO TONY KEVIN

An excellent article.

There is a lack of comments from some of the common writers upon whose views I often rely.

Personally, I often avoid the very individual responses from websites as I have no way
of checking out previous ideas of theirs. Who funds them? With which organizations are they
affiliated? And so forth and so on.

Peter Loeb, Boston, Massachusetts

Peter Sapo , September 14, 2019 at 10:24

As a fellow Australian, everything Tony Kevin said makes perfect sense. Our mainstream media landscape is designed to distribute propaganda to folk accross the political spectrum. Have you noticed that the ABC regurgitates stories from the BBC? The BBC has a long history (at least since WW2) of supporting government propaganda initiatives. Based on this fact, it is hard to see how ABC and SBS don't do the same when called upon by their minders.

Francis Lee , September 14, 2019 at 09:48

I just wonder where the Anglo-Zionist empire thinks it is going. It should be obvious that any NATO war against Russia involving a nuclear exchange is unwinnable. It seems equally likely the even a conventional war will not necessarily bring the result expected by the assorted 'experts' – nincompoops living in their own fantasy world. The idea that the US can fight a war without the US homeland becoming very much involved basically ended when Putin announced the creation of Russia's set of advanced hypersonic missile system. But this was apparently ignored by the 'defence' establishment. It was not true, it could not possibly be true, or so we were told.

Moreover the cost of such wars involving hundreds of thousands of troops and military hardware are massively expensive and would occasion a massive resistance from the populations affected. It was the wests wars in Korea, and Indo-China that bankrupted the US and led to the US$ being removed from the gold standard. The American military is rapidly consuming the American economy, or at least what is left of it. From a realist foreign policy perspective this is simply madness. Great powers end wars, they don't start them. Great powers are creditor nations, not debtor nations. Such is the realist foreign policy view. But foreign policy realists are few and far between in the Washington Beltway and MIC/NSA Pentagon and US/UK/AUSTRALIAN MSM.

Thus the neo-hubris of the English speaking world is such that if it is followed to its logical conclusion then total annihilation would be the logical outcome. A sad example of not very bright people who face no domestic opposition, believing in their own bullshit:

"American elites proved themselves to be master manipulators of propaganda constructs But the real danger from such manipulations arises not when those manipulations are done out of knowledge of reality, which is distorted for propaganda purposes, but when those who manipulation begin to sincerely believe in their own falsifications and when they buy into their own narrative. They stop being manipulators and they become believers in a narrative. They become manipulated themselves." (Losing Military Supremacy – Andrei, Martyanov)

Or maybe just the whole thing is a bluff. Those policy elites maybe just want to loot the US Treasury for more cash to be put their way.

John Wright , September 15, 2019 at 19:15

The self-serving Israeli Zionists know that the American cow is running dry and their days of freely milking it are coming to an end. They have an historic relationship with Russia and, leveraging their nuclear arsenal, know they can make a deal with the emerging China-Russia-centric global paradigm to extort enough protection to maintain their armed enclave for the foreseeable future. Their no so hidden alliance with the equally sociopathic Saudis will become even more obvious for all to see.

Israel, like China and Russia, knows how to play a long game. Thus, Israel will consolidate its land grab with the just announced expansion into the Jordan Valley and quietly continue as much ethnic cleansing as possible while the rest of the world is preoccupied with the incipient global power shift (True victims of history, the Palestinians have no real friends). While they will bemoan the loss of their muscular American stooge, Israel enjoyed a very lucrative 70 year run and will part with a pile of useful and deadly toys. They're also fully aware that no one else will ever let them take advantage to the degree they've been able to with the U.S.A. (Unlimited Stupidity of Arrogance?)

Eventually, the social schizophrenia that is the state of Israel will catch up with them and they will implode. Let's hope that breakdown doesn't involve the use of their nuclear arsenal.

Yes, the U.S. Treasury will continue to be looted until the last teller turns the lights out or the electricity is shut off, whichever comes first.

The Western transnational financial elites will accept their losses, regroup and make deals with the new bosses where they can; but their days of running the game unopposed are over.

Today is a good day to learn Mandarin (or Russian, if you prefer to live in Europe).

Bill , September 16, 2019 at 03:36

Very well said and I agree with a lot of what you say.

Tiu , September 14, 2019 at 06:01

Won't be too long before writing articles like this will get you busted for "hate-speech" (e.g. anything that is contrary to the official version prescribed by the "democratically elected" government)
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/uk-tony-blair-think-tank-proposes-end-free-speech
Personally I always encourage people to read George Orwell, especially 1984. We're there, and have been for a long time.

geeyp , September 14, 2019 at 01:15

Tony Kevin – Nice rundown of what ails society. You have a fine writing style that gets the point across to the reader. Kudos and cheers.

Michael , September 13, 2019 at 22:34

The 'modernization' of the Smith Mundt Act in 2013 "to authorize the domestic dissemination of information and material [PROPAGANDA] about the United States intended primarily for foreign audiences" was a major nail in the Democracy coffin, consolidating the blatant ruling of the US Police State by our 17 Intelligence Agencies (our betters). The Telecommunications Act of 1996 lead to ownership of (>80%) of our media (the MSM by a handful of owners, all disseminating the same narratives from above (CIA, State Department, FBI etc) and squelching any dissenting views, particularly related to foreign policies.
Tony's article sadly just confirms the depth and breadth of our Global Stasi, with improved, innovative and (mostly) subtle surveillance, and the controlling constant interference with alternate viewpoints and discussions, the real basis for free societies. It is bad enough to be ruled by neoliberal psychopathic hyenas and jackals, soon we won't be able to even bitch about what they are doing.

Tom Kath , September 13, 2019 at 21:42

The most impressive article I have read in a very long time. I congratulate and thank Tony.
I have myself recently addressed the issue of whether it is a virtue to have an "open mind". – The ability to be converted or have your mind changed, or is it the ability to change your own mind ?
Tony Kevin clearly illustrates the difference.

Litchfield , September 13, 2019 at 16:11

Great article.
Please keep writing.
Do start a website, a la Craig Murray.
There are people who are proactively looking for alternative viewpoints and informed analysis.
How about starting a website and publishing some excerpts of your book there?

Or, sell chapters separately by download from your website?
You could also have a discussion blog/forum there.

John Zimmermann , September 13, 2019 at 16:02

Excellent essay. Thanks Mr. Kevin.

rosemerry , September 13, 2019 at 15:37

At least Tony Kevin was an Australian ambassador, not like Mike Morrell and the chosen russop?obes the USA assumes are needed as diplomats!! Now he is treated as Stephen Cohen is- a true expert called "controversial" as he dares to go by real facts and evidence, not prejudice.

If instead of enemies, the West could consider getting to understand those they are wary of, and give them a chance to explain their point of view and actually listen and reflect on it.
(Dmitri Peskov valiantly explained the Russian official response as soon as the "Skripal poisoning" story broke, but it was fully ignored by UK/US media, while all of Theresa May's fanciful imaginings were respectfully relayed to the public).

geeyp , September 14, 2019 at 23:26

As you usually are with your comments, you are spot on again, rosemerry.

Martin - Swedish citizen , September 13, 2019 at 14:46

Excellent article!
I find the mechanics of how the propaganda is spread and the illusion upheld the most important part of this article, since this knowledge is required to counter it.
When (not if) the fraud becomes more common knowledge, our societies are likely to tumble.

Pablo Diablo , September 13, 2019 at 14:45

Whoever controls the media, controls the dialogue.
Whoever controls the dialogue, controls the agenda.

peter mcloughlin , September 13, 2019 at 13:40

' The present risk of global nuclear war is as high as it ever was in the Cold War.' And possibly higher. The Cold War, though dangerous, was the peace. The world has experienced periods of peace (or relative peace) throughout history. The Thirty Years Peace between the two Peloponnesian Wars, Pax Romana, Europe in the 19th century after the Congress of Vienna, to name a few. The Congress System finally collapsed in 1914 with the start of World War One. That conflict was followed by the League of Nations. It did not stop World War Two. That was followed by the United Nations and other post-war institutions. But all the indications are they will not prevent a third world war. The powers that are leading us towards conflagration see this as a re-run of the first Cold War. They are dangerously mistaken.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/

Guy , September 13, 2019 at 13:21

With so many believing the lies ,how will this mess ever come to light . I don't reside in Australia but anywhere in the Western world the shakedown is the same .In my own house ,the discussion on world politics descends into absolute stupidity . As one can't get past the constant programming that has settled in the minds of the comfortable with the status quo of lies by our media. There are intelligent sources of news sources but none get past the absolutely complete control of MSM.So the bottom line is ,for now ,the lies and liars are winning the propaganda war.

Anton Antonovich , September 13, 2019 at 13:16

He speaks the truth. Liars and dissemblers have won over the minds and hearts of so many lazy shameful citizens who will not accept the truth Tony Kevin wants to share with the world.

junaid , September 13, 2019 at 13:08

Washington resumes military assistance to Kyiv. According to American lawmakers, Ukraine is fighting one of the main enemies. "Contain Russia": what the US pays for Ukraine

"Contain Russia": what the US pays for Ukraine

Lily , September 13, 2019 at 23:42

The Pentagon is using the Ukrainian territory for experiments on chemical weapons.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3T9ktfz_FfA

John A , September 14, 2019 at 06:55

Anyone or article who spells Kiev as Kyiv can be safely ignored as western anti-Russia propaganda. It's a true tell.

Robert Edwards , September 13, 2019 at 12:53

The Cold war is totally manufacture to keep the dollars flowing into the MIC – what a sham . and a disgrace to humanity.

Cavaleiro Marginal , September 13, 2019 at 12:52

"The key tools are repetition of messages, and diversification of trusted voices. Once a critical mass is created of people believing a false narrative, the lie locks in: its dissemination becomes self-sustaining."

This had occurred in Brazil since the very first day of Lula's presidency. Eleven years late, 2013, a color revolution began. Nobody (and I mean REALLY nobody) could realize a color revolution was happening at that time. In 2016, Dilma Rousseff was kicked from power throughout a ridiculous and illegal coup perpetrated by the parliament. In 2018 Lula was imprisoned in an Orwellian process; illegal, unconstitutional, with nothing (REALLY nothing) proved against him. Then a liar clown was elected to suppress democracy

I knew on the news that in Canada and Australia the police politely (how civilized ) went to some journalist's homes to have a chat this year. Canadians and Aussies, be aware. The fascism's dog is a policial state very well informed by the propaganda they call news.

Robert Fearn , September 13, 2019 at 12:48

As a Canadian author who wrote a book about various tragic American government actions, like Vietnam, I can relate to the difficulties Tony has had with his book. I would mail my book, Amoral America, from Canada to other countries, like the US, and it would never arrive. Book stores would not handle it, etc. etc.

Josep , September 17, 2019 at 05:21

Not to disagree, but some years ago I read about anecdotes of anti-Americanism in Canada, coming from both USians and Canadians, whether it be playful banter or legitimate criticism. I believe it is more concentrated among the people than among the governmental elites (with the exception of the Iraq War era when both the people and the government were against it). And considering what you describe in your book and the difficulty you've faced in distributing it abroad, maybe the said people are on to something.

Stephen , September 13, 2019 at 11:44

This interview by Abby Martin with Mark Ames is a little dated but is a fairly accurate history. I post it to try and counter the nonsense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7HwvFyMg7A

All the empire wants is to do it all again.

Jeremy Kuzmarov , September 13, 2019 at 10:33

Outstanding article and analysis. Thank you Sir! Jeremy Kuzmarov

Jeff Harrison , September 13, 2019 at 10:17

Thank you, sir. A far better peroration than I could have produced but what I have concluded nonetheless.

Skip Scott , September 13, 2019 at 10:10

Fantastic article. Left unmentioned is the origin of the west's anti-Russia narrative. Russia was being pillaged by the west under Yeltsin, and Russia was to become our newest vassal. Life expectancy dropped a full decade for the average Russian under Yeltsin. The average standard of living dropped dramatically as well. Putin reversed all that, and enjoys massive popular support as a result. The Empire will never tolerate a national leader who works for the benefit of the average citizen. It must be full-on rape, pillage and plunder- OR ELSE. Keep that in mind as we watch the latest theatrical performances by our DNC controlled "Commander in Chief" wannabes.

Realist , September 17, 2019 at 05:48

?The ongoing success of the "Great Lie" (that Washington is protecting the entire world from
anarchy perpetrated by a few bad actors on the global stage) and all of its false narrative subtexts
(including but far from limited to the Maidan, Crimea, Donbass, MH-17, the Skripals, gassing
"one's own people," piracy on the high Mediterranean, etc) just underscores how successful was
the false flag operation known as 9-11, even as the truth of that travesty is slowly being
unraveled by relentless truth-seekers applying logic and the scientific method to the problem.
Most Americans today would gladly concur, if queried, that Osama bin Laden was most certainly
a perfidious tool of Russia and its diabolical leader, Mr. Putin (be sure to call him "Vlad," to
conjure up images of Dracula for effect). The Winston Smith's are rare birds in America or in
any of its reliable vassal states. Never mind that the spooks from Langley (and the late
"chessmaster") concocted and orchestrated all these tales from the crypt.

Lily , September 13, 2019 at 07:54

Great summary of the developement of a new cold war. The narrative of the Mainstream Media is dangerous as well as laughable. I am glad to hear the Russian reaction to this bullshit propaganda. As often the people are so much wiser than their government – at least in the West.

During the Football WM a famous broadcaster of the German State TV channel ARD, who is a giftet propagandist, regrettet publicly the difficulty to convince the stubborn Germans to look at Russia as an enemy because they have started to look at Russia as a friend long ago.

Contrary to the people and the big firms who are completely against the sanctions against Russia and 100 % pro Northstream the German government with Chancelor Merkel is one of the top US vassalles. Even the Green Party which started as an environmental and peace party are now against North Stream and in favour of the filthy US fracking gas thanks to NATO propaganda although Russia has never let them down. Most of "Die Grünen" party have been turned into fervent friends of our American occupants which is very sad.

Thank you Tony Kevin. It has been great to read your article. I cant wait to read your book 'Return to Moscow' and to watch your interview on CN Live.

Godfree Roberts , September 13, 2019 at 07:37

Good summary of the status quo. From my experience of writing similarly about China, precisely the same policies and forces are at work.

The good news is that they are failing.

junaid , September 13, 2019 at 07:15

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced the end of the war in Syria and the country's return to a state of peace. "Syria is returning to normal life": Lavrov announced the end of the war

"Syria is returning to normal life": Lavrov announced the end of the war

Gezzah Potts , September 13, 2019 at 05:47

You hit several nails squarely on the head with your excellent article Tony. Thank you for the truth of how the media is in Australia. It is indeed chilling where all this is leading. The blatant lies just spewed out as fact by both ABC and SBS. They, in my opinion are nothing but stenographers for the Empire, of which Australia is a fully subservient vassal state, with no independence.
I try to boycott all Australian presstitutes . Oops, I mean 'media' now. Occasionally, I do slip up and watch SBS or The Drum or News on ABC.
Virtually all my news comes from independent news sites like this one.
I have been accused of being a 'Putin lover', a Russian troll, a conspiracy theorist, while people I know have claimed that "Putin is a monster whose murdered millions of people".
On and on this crap goes. And the end result? Ask Stephen Cohen. Things are very surreal now. Sadly, you've been made an Unperson Tony.

Robyn , September 13, 2019 at 04:08

Bravo, Tony, great article. I enjoyed your book and recommend it to CN readers who haven't yet read it.

The world looks entirely different when one stops reading/watching the MSM and turns to CN, Caitlin Johnstone and many others who are doing a sterling job.

Cascadian , September 13, 2019 at 03:52

I don't know which is worse, to not know what you are (reliably uninformed) and be happy, or to become what you've always wanted to be (reliably informed) and feel alone.

Realist , September 14, 2019 at 00:19

Knowing the truth has always seemed paramount to me, even if it means realising that the entire world and all in it are damned, and deliberately by our own actions. Hope is always the last part of our essence to die, or so they say: maybe we will somehow be redeemed through our own self-immolation as a species.

Deb , September 13, 2019 at 02:54

As an Australian I have no difficulty accepting what Tony Kevin has said here. He should do what Craig Murray has done start a website.

[Sep 17, 2019] Explaining CIA's 'Agent Smolenkov'

Notable quotes:
"... This damage to supposed bastions of US journalism cannot be overstated. More than two years of spinning speculation-cum-reporting about Russian collusion with Trump and/or interference in US politics has produced not a crumb of substantive fact. ..."
"... So when they got the chance to seemingly resurrect their buried "Russiagate" yarn with this latest fable about agent Oleg Smolenkov being exfiltrated from Russia to the US, they leapt at it because their equally buried reputations are also at stake. ..."
"... As far as we can tell, an anonymous intelligence source started the ball rolling. The source is likely to be former CIA chief John Brennan or former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Both are hangouts for the anti-Trump media since they lost their intel jobs at the beginning of 2017, and both are believed to have seeded the "Russiagate" narrative in 2016 from before Trump was elected. ..."
"... Thus, if Smolenkov is peddling fiction to his former handlers in the CIA, that means he has no credibility as a "top mole". ..."
"... Again, opportunism is the key. Somebody came up with a lurid story about "Russian interference" in US democracy and "collusion" with Trump. Maybe it was Smolenkov who saw an opportunity to win a big pay day from his CIA patrons by flogging them a blockbuster. ..."
"... CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, Brennan and Clapper are so much damaged goods from past failure of "Russiagate" fabrications, they find an opportunity to salvage their disgraced names by outing the hapless Smolenkov at this juncture. ..."
"... There is a sinister similarity here to the Sergei Skripal case in England. Is Smolenkov being set up for hit which can then be conveniently blamed on Russia as "revenge" by the Russophobic, anti-Trump, deep state US media? ..."
Sep 17, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org

The saga of daring escape by a supposed Russian CIA agent from the Kremlin's clutches and then the added twist of a security-risk American president putting the agent's life in danger does indeed sound like a pulp fiction novel, as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov put it.

How to explain this sensational story? "Opportunism" is one word that comes to mind.

The news media who pushed the story, CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post, are vehemently "anti-Trump". Any chance to damage this president and they grab it.

Also, perhaps more importantly, these media are desperate to salvage their shot-through journalistic credibility since the "Russiagate" narrative they had earnestly propagated died a death, after the two-year Mueller circus finally left town empty-handed.

This damage to supposed bastions of US journalism cannot be overstated. More than two years of spinning speculation-cum-reporting about Russian collusion with Trump and/or interference in US politics has produced not a crumb of substantive fact. That means those media responsible for the "Russiagate" nonsense have forfeited that precious quality – credibility. They no longer deserve to be categorized as news services, and are more appropriately now listed as fiction peddlers.

So when they got the chance to seemingly resurrect their buried "Russiagate" yarn with this latest fable about agent Oleg Smolenkov being exfiltrated from Russia to the US, they leapt at it because their equally buried reputations are also at stake.

As far as we can tell, an anonymous intelligence source started the ball rolling. The source is likely to be former CIA chief John Brennan or former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Both are hangouts for the anti-Trump media since they lost their intel jobs at the beginning of 2017, and both are believed to have seeded the "Russiagate" narrative in 2016 from before Trump was elected.

Notably, the current CIA assessment of the latest US media reporting on the exfiltrated spy is that the reporting is "false" and "misguided". In particular, the CNN spin that the agent (Smolenkov) had to be extricated from Russia in 2017 because Langley feared that Trump may have endangered the supposed Kremlin mole when he hosted Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in the White House in May 2017.

Also of note is the dismissive response from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who rubbished the reports. He was head of the CIA during 2017. (Admittedly, Pompeo is a self-confessed liar.)

According to CNN, NY Times and Washington Post, the former spy in the Kremlin, named as Oleg Smolenkov by subsequent Russian media reporting, was a top mole with direct access to President Vladimir Putin. It is claimed that Smolenkov confirmed allegations about a Putin-directed plot to interfere in US presidential elections. The agent is said to have also confirmed that Putin (allegedly) ordered the hacking of the Democratic party's central database to obtain scandalous material on Hillary Clinton which was then fed to the Wikileaks whistleblower site for the purpose of scuttling her bid for the presidency in November 2016, thus favoring Trump.

Smolenkov was allegedly providing this information on a purported Kremlin interference campaign in 2016.

The US media claim Smolenkov was exfiltrated from Russia by the CIA in June 2017 – out of concern for his safety, which CNN reported was being jeopardized by President Trump due to his implied compromised relations with Putin. Smolenkov and his family disappeared while on a holiday in Montenegro in June 2017.

After the story broke earlier this week about the exfiltrated Kremlin mole, subsequent media reporting tracked down Oleg Smolenkov and his wife living in a $1-million-dollar mansion in Stafford, Virginia. Curiously, public records showed the house purchase was in their names, which seems odds for a supposed top-level spy, who had apparently committed extreme betrayal against the Kremlin, to be living openly. The family apparently fled the house to unknown whereabouts on September 9 after the story about his alleged spy role broke this week.

Who is Oleg Smolenkov? The Kremlin said this week that he previously worked in the presidential administration, but he was sacked "several years ago". He did not have direct access to President Putin's office, according to the Kremlin. For his part, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov says he never heard of the man before, never mind ever having met him.

It is understood that Smolenkov previously worked in the Russian embassy in Washington under ambassador Yuri Ushakov (1999-2008). Smolenkov reportedly continued working for Ushakov when the diplomat returned to Moscow after his ambassadorial tenure in the US.

Here is where we may speculate that Smolenkov was recruited by the CIA during his diplomatic assignment in the US. But we assume that the Kremlin's assessment is correct; he did not have a senior position or access to Putin's office. By contrast, the US media are claiming Smolenkov was "one of the CIA's most valuable assets" in the Kremlin and that he was providing confirmatory information that Putin was (allegedly) running an interference campaign to subvert the US presidential elections.

The discerning detail as to the truth of the imbroglio is revealed by the US media claims that Smolenkov corroborated the alleged hacking into the Democratic party database in 2016. However, that specific allegation has been disproven by several top hacker experts, notably William Binney who was formerly technical head at the US National Security Agency. There was no hacking. The damaging information on Hillary Clinton was leaked by a Democratic party insider, possibly Seth Rich, who soon after was shot dead by an unknown attacker. In short, the entire narrative about the Kremlin hacking into the Democratic party is a fiction. The premise to "Russiagate" is baseless.

Thus, if Smolenkov is peddling fiction to his former handlers in the CIA, that means he has no credibility as a "top mole".

Again, opportunism is the key. Somebody came up with a lurid story about "Russian interference" in US democracy and "collusion" with Trump. Maybe it was Smolenkov who saw an opportunity to win a big pay day from his CIA patrons by flogging them a blockbuster. Or maybe, Brennan and Clapper (known liars in the public record) dreamt up a scheme of Kremlin malignancy to benefit Trump, and if that could be tied to Trump then his election would be discredited and nullified. But what they needed was a "Kremlin source" to "corroborate" their readymade story of "Russian interference". Step forward Oleg Smolenkov – fired and out of work – to do the needful "corroboration" and in return he gets a new life for himself and family with a mansion in a leafy Virginian suburb.

CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, Brennan and Clapper are so much damaged goods from past failure of "Russiagate" fabrications, they find an opportunity to salvage their disgraced names by outing the hapless Smolenkov at this juncture.

That then raises the grave question of why he was permitted to live openly in his own name?

There is a sinister similarity here to the Sergei Skripal case in England. Is Smolenkov being set up for hit which can then be conveniently blamed on Russia as "revenge" by the Russophobic, anti-Trump, deep state US media?

[Sep 17, 2019] Meddling schmeddling by PaulR

Notable quotes:
"... dezinformatziia, active measures ..."
"... active measures ..."
"... "We vote for one party which is 100% anti-Russian rather than for another party which is 100% anti-Russian? Is that the point? Because here in Canada, that's basically the choice on offer [A]t the end of the day we're still going to end up electing somebody determined to prove that he or she is more anti-Russian that the next guy or girl. " ..."
"... For Heaven's sake, the worst country for meddling in other nations' internal affairs is the US, by far! With respect to the Arctic, both Canada and Russia signed the Treaty of the Sea, under which various challenges to ownership of the seabed are settled by the terms of the treaty. The US, of course didn't sign it. Why would they when they sincerely believe that their impressive military can just grab whatever pieces of the Arctic they want. ..."
Sep 17, 2019 | irrussianality.wordpress.com

September 10, 2019

15 Comments

You may have missed it in the all the excitement around the world, but Canada has a general election coming up in October. As you know, elections equal Russian meddling. They're when our Eastern friends pull out all their computer bots, fire up their trolls, and start spreading shedloads of disinformation in order to confuse and disorientate us, so that we lose our faith in democracy and then we we well I'm not sure what we're meant to do then; the ultimate aim of it all rather defeats me. We vote for one party which is 100% anti-Russian rather than for another party which is 100% anti-Russian? Is that the point? Because here in Canada, that's basically the choice on offer. Those pesky Russkies can confuse us all they like with their dezinformatziia, active measures , and maskirovka , but at the end of the day we're still going to end up electing somebody determined to prove that he or she is more anti-Russian that the next guy or girl. Meddling, schmeddling – it's not going to make a blind bit of difference to the result.

None of this stops the fearmongers, however, and so it was that yesterday the Canadian press was happily quoting a new report from the University of Calgary, saying that, 'Russia could meddle in Canada's election due to "growing interest" in Arctic'. Now, I've been saying for a while now that these worries are exaggerated, but for some reason 'Professor at University of Ottawa says it's a load of nonsense' doesn't generate any headlines, whereas 'part-time lecturer in Calgary says it's so' is national news. Well, so be it. We all know that the press has its biases. So rather than rely on the media, I thought I'd better check out what the report in question actually has to say, and it turns out that it's not quite what you'd imagine, at least not entirely.

The report is written by one Sergey Sukhankin who is said to be 'a Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation' in Washington DC, and to be currently 'teaching at the University of Alberta and MacEwan University (Edmonton)'. According to his Linkedin page, he has a 3 month contract to teach a single course at the former, and a 9 month contract as a lecturer in the latter. He's also listed as an 'Associate Expert at the International Center for Policy Studies (Kyiv).' Anyway, he starts off his report encouragingly enough by declaring that he aims 'to give a more balanced and nuanced picture of the situation, particularly with regard to Canada', and it is a 'tactical error to label as disinformation or propaganda every news item emanating from Russia. This creates the perception of a Russian disinformation machine that is much more powerful than it really is.' Personally, I would say that it's not a 'tactical error', it's just plain wrong, but at least Sukhankin isn't trying to overdo things. But this praiseworthy restraint doesn't mean that he wants us to let down our guard. No, he says, 'the peril is real', 'the West must stick to confronting the Kremlin', and (and this is the bit which got the headlines):

The Kremlin has a growing interest in dominating the Arctic, where it sees Russia as in competition with Canada. This means Canada can anticipate escalations in information warfare Perceived as one of Russia's chief adversaries in the Arctic region, Canada is a prime target in the information wars, with Russia potentially even meddling in the October 2019 federal election.

There's a leap of logic here which I must admit I failed to understand. Why does 'competition' in the Arctic 'mean' that Canada 'can anticipate escalations in information warfare', let alone 'meddling' in the election? Why does the one necessarily lead to the other? I don't see it. It would only make sense if the second part (the meddling) helped achieve some objectives in the first part (competition in the Arctic) but Sukhankin doesn't show how they would. He just connects two unconnected things. But we'll get back to the Arctic a little later. For now, let's return to the report.

This essentially has two parts. The first is a fairly standard summary of the general argument that Russia is engaged in some sort of information war designed to undermine the West from within. It makes reference to the normal vocabulary of Soviet active measures and the like, as well as to the conventional list of sources, such as Peter Pomerantseve, Michael Weiss, and Edward Lucas (not the most reliable types in my opinion). In short, it doesn't add anything new. By contrast, the second part, which specifically focuses on alleged Russian information operations against Canada, is much more interesting.

Russian disinformation about Canada, says Sukhankin, is centred on four themes:

  1. 'Canada as a safe haven of russophobia and (neo)fascism.
  2. 'Canada as part of the colonial forces in the Baltic Sea region'.
  3. 'Canada as Washington's useful satellite'.
  4. 'Canada as a testing ground for the practical implementation of immoral Western values.'

The extent to which these could all be called 'disinformation' is debatable ('Canada as Washington's useful satellite' doesn't seem entirely inaccurate to me). But the key point Sukhankin makes is that these themes reflect the Russian government's own internal, domestic political priorities – i.e. its desire to convince its own citizens that its policies are right, by means of discrediting others. In general, says Sukhankin, Russian propaganda targets 'the following audiences, prioritized from the greatest to the smallest'.

  • The Russian domestic audience
  • The post-Soviet area (including the russophones in the three Baltic States)
  • The Balkans and east-central Europe
  • Western and southern Europe
  • The U.S.
  • The rest of the world

Canada, therefore, falls into the lowest priority of targets. This reflects the fact that, as Sukhankin says, 'Russians don't see Canada as a fully independent political actor'. To be frank, we're not high on Russia's information war hitlist. The Russian government doesn't care that much about us, and it cares even less about our internal politics. Consequently, says Sukhankin, while the Russian media and social media do publish anti-Canadian stories, the point of them isn't to 'meddle' in Canadian internal affairs. Rather, he says, in what to me is the most crucial statement in his report:

Russia's anti-Canadian propaganda, which still plays a marginal part compared to other theatres, is primarily tailored for domestic Russian consumption – it is not designed for a Canadian audience. [my underlining]

Here, therefore, we run into a huge problem. We're told to fear the genuine 'peril' of Russian disinformation, and Russian 'meddling' in Canada's election, but we're also told that Russia doesn't actually care very much about Canadian internal affairs and that in any case Russian disinformation isn't targeted at Canadians. It seems to me that you can't have it both ways. If it's not targeted at Canadians, then it doesn't constitute meddling, interference, or anything else of the sort. The logical conclusion of Sukhankin's analysis is that we should calm down a little and stop worrying so much.

That, however, would not fit with the current zeitgeist . Although his logic points him in one direction, Sukhankin apparently feels a desperate need to nonetheless throw in something about the dangers of Russian interference in Canadian internal affairs. So all of a sudden, completely out of the blue, and unconnected with anything else, in his final paragraph he suddenly throws in a quotation from the head of that most neutral of trustworthy academic sources, the head of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress Alexandra Chiczij, saying that, 'The Kramlin's propaganda machine will increasingly target our country with anti-Canadian fabrications in an attempt to sow discord, conflict, and to undermine our democratic institutions.' Sukhankin then adds that this might happen 'during the 2019 Canadian federal election.' No evidence to support this claim – which is entirely at odds which everything which preceded it – is produced. Why would Russia suddenly become so interested in Canadian internal affairs? Sukhankin thinks he has an answer, 'from this author's point of view, Moscow's next theme could be the Arctic', he says. But since this is his last paragraph, he doesn't have time to develop this thought. As I said, it just comes out of the blue.

It's also rather odd. As I said earlier, it's not at all clear why interfering in Canada's election (exactly how, Sukhankin never makes clear) would promote Russia's interests in the Arctic. But more than that it ignores the nature of Russian-Canadian Arctic politics. In my conversations with both Canadian and Russian officials, the Arctic is always mentioned as a zone of cooperation rather than competition. In an era when Canadian and Russian diplomats barely talk to each other, the Arctic is the one subject they both think it's actually possible to discuss in a constructive manner. Conversations about how to improve Canada-Russia relations generally take the form of something like, 'Let's not aim too high. Let's just take little steps, and focus on areas where agreement is possible, especially the Arctic'. To pick on the Arctic as the subject likely to provoke Russia (for purposes unknown) to 'meddle' in Canada's oncoming election (by means and to effect unknown) seems to me to completely misread the situation.

In short, what we have here is a report which tells us that Canada doesn't matter much to Russians, and that to date Russians have shown little or no interest in targeting Canadian public opinion, let alone interfering in Canadian politics, and yet which nonetheless concludes that we face the 'peril' of Moscow 'potentially even meddling in the October 2019 federal election'. I don't know about you, but that doesn't make any sense to me.

  1. Mitleser says: September 10, 2019 at 3:00 pm "4. Canada as a testing ground for the practical implementation of immoral Western values.'"

    Reminds me of one of the comments to an another article of yours.

    " Canada has generally been the test case for new features of this "western universalism," and, as a peripheral resource-based economy tightly tied into globalized value-chains, we have often been intellectually colonized by liberal-internationalist views (for good and ill). Unlike Russia, as we are small in population and sit next to the US, we have rarely had the capacity (or the will) to resist US-led "universalism," but our analysis when we have tried has been much the same as Remizov's ."
    https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2017/11/02/interview-with-mikhail-remizov/#comment-6953

    Like Like Reply

  2. Mao Cheng Ji says: September 10, 2019 at 3:46 pm "in order to confuse and disorientate us"

    May I ask: do you, Canadians, typically say " disorientate ", in the British manner? Or was it your British identity speaking?

    Anyhow. I envy the hack who thought of "sow discord". I love it. It's so biblical: "he that soweth discord among brethren."

    Clearly, it could only be SATAN.

  1. dewittbourchier says: September 10, 2019 at 4:13 pm We should not be surprised at how febrile things are.

    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/01/the-real-story-behind-the-havana-embassy-mystery

    Quite literally US diplomats in Cuba, and with them many US policymakers and journalistic organisations descended into mass hysteria about Cicadas.

  1. Alex Kramer says: September 10, 2019 at 6:35 pm Makes sense to me as both Canadian academia and media are full of dipshit Russophobes.
  1. Karl Kolchak says: September 10, 2019 at 8:22 pm If Russia wants the weakest possible Canada, wouldn't it be in their interests to see a feckless little poodle like Trudeau remain as PM?
  1. Lyttenburgh says: September 11, 2019 at 5:21 am "We vote for one party which is 100% anti-Russian rather than for another party which is 100% anti-Russian? Is that the point? Because here in Canada, that's basically the choice on offer [A]t the end of the day we're still going to end up electing somebody determined to prove that he or she is more anti-Russian that the next guy or girl. "

    [WARNING/ATTENTION/УВАГА!]

    This is very lowbrow, but relevant

    Now, on a more serious note – about propacondom Sergey Sukhankin (formerly from Kaliningrad oblast, RF).

    He's one of those "professional victims of the Putinist Regime", that "miraculously" escaped our Northern Mordor, and now spends ink, bytes and bodily fluids in a ceaseless struggle with the Dark Overlord. "Russian interference" is both his idea fix and bread and butter. E.g., check out his logorrhea on "Russian trace" in Catalonia's referendum (published by his sponsors in Jamestown foundation AKA CIA). There are many stock accusations, about RT, "pro-Kremline profiles" in FB and Twitter, and, the horror of horrors, the fact that the Immortal Regiment now dares to happen on the sacred soil of the country, which dispatched the Blue Division to the Abode of all Evil. He admits, that to proof the fact that the "Russian meddling" was the cause of what transpired in Catalonia (uh, you remember what happened back then, right?) is difficult, but what is without doubt, is that it benefits Kremlin and the Terrible Russkiy Mir.

    Sukhankin is also an active participant in the anti-Russian propaganda efforts of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), where he regularly rubs shoulders and tries to imitate another well known "researcher" and expert on Russian maskirovka, dezinformatsiya and active measures, Russophobic fantasy and sci-fi author Mark Galeotti.

    1. archie1954 says: September 17, 2019 at 3:57 pm For Heaven's sake, the worst country for meddling in other nations' internal affairs is the US, by far! With respect to the Arctic, both Canada and Russia signed the Treaty of the Sea, under which various challenges to ownership of the seabed are settled by the terms of the treaty. The US, of course didn't sign it. Why would they when they sincerely believe that their impressive military can just grab whatever pieces of the Arctic they want.

      As a matter of fact, the US wants to separate Canada right across the middle by designating the waterway between the mainland and the Arctic Islands as an international one. It is the US which is meddling in Canada's internal affairs, not Russia!

      Like Like Reply

  2. Patrick Armstrong says: September 11, 2019 at 7:35 am The guys just trying to get a job by saying what the Boss wants to hear.
  1. Josh says: September 11, 2019 at 8:45 am It always baffles me how, usually motivated by an American Russophobe, the Arctic gets used or abused for this polemic. As you correctly point out, the Arctic council is an example of multipolar peaceful talks. In addition, we forget that when we look at the Arctic sea routes opening up, that it is primarily the NEP – the route along Russia and in Russian waters – is the one more navigable. Yet even to keep that one open for the small amount of time per year, Russia has a lot of maintenance to do with expensive ice breakers. It follows quite logically that Russia puts a lot of effort and money into this; and the regimented discipline of the army is the better and cheaper option for the safety and rescue services.

    If Canada wanted to do the same thing in the NWP, not only is this route much more treacherous, iced up and difficult, the investment would be higher than that which Russia is making, while global warming will only help this passage marginally.

    All this to say that the sea routes are the most talked about issues here; mineral, oil and other deposits along the continental shelves are dealt with rigourously and with full support from all sides through the UN. The only small conflict is the disputed island between Canada and the US.

[Sep 17, 2019] Russia Absolutely Pwn3d The FBI During Obama Years Report

Sep 17, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Transmedia001 , 8 minutes ago link

Another media spin in preparation of the public proof that the Steale dossier and Russia Gate was a soft coup and media hoax. Articles like this allow the traitors to argue that they didn't know it was fake or that certain assets were not Russian because the Russians were several steps ahead manipulating the situation using FBI hacked coms.

Time to start setting fire to every MSM outlet and making s'mores as we watch it all burn.

Koba the Dread , 21 minutes ago link

What a terrible typographical error. Somehow the word "Russian" was inserted in this text when the word "Israeli" was supposed to be used. Hey, typographers, pay more attention.

MaxThrust , 25 minutes ago link

"The technical break-through allowed Russian spies in American cities, key insights into how FBI surveillance teams were operating. "

The Russians learned how the FBI goes about lying to cover up for it's actions. How "False Flag" operations are coordinated and how entrapment schemes are run.

NiggaPleeze , 31 minutes ago link

We didn't understand that they were at political war with us already in the second term

Spying is not political war, moron. But fact is the Evil Empire never stopped its war against Russia - under Yeltsin they just moved it inside the country with their *** oligarch traitors, getting Russia to dismantle its industry, etc.

beemasters , 47 minutes ago link

According to a report this week, Israel has been spying on the White House. While that news itself isn't shocking, the Trump administration's response – or lack thereof – has taken many in DC by surprise.

But, unlike past administrations, the Trump team has not taken any action against surveillance by one of its closest allies, and spying on US soil has had no real consequences for Israel, American officials said.

Israeli spying is not new – but the Trump administration's response is

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/israel-trump-spy-white-house-netanyahu-surveillance-a9104776.html

They are now voting for the next POTUS in Israhell, as we speak. Will it be Netanyahu again?

Neochrome , 52 minutes ago link

We didn't understand that they were at political war with us

Is that why US was (is) spying on Merkel?

youshallnotkill , 54 minutes ago link

Russia Absolutely Pwn3d The FBI During Obama Years

And this headline makes abundantly clear which side the Tylers cheer for.

(Not that there was any doubt about it).

Joiningupthedots , 1 hour ago link

So the FBI wants more money for "integrated" communications or something?

This **** is not dissimilar to the CIA/MI6 pet rock trasmitters in the Moscow parks.

Spy agencies spy on each other....its their job LOL

Heroic Couplet , 1 hour ago link

"Shortly before the Obama administration approved a deal granting Russia 20% of America's uranium," LInk? If Russia mines uranium in the Western Hemisphere, it cannot export it. See Forbes Magazine, 13Dec2018, the article debunking Hillary-Uranium One.

booboo , 1 hour ago link

All roads lead to that neocon infested festering cesspool of anti American shitlips called the State Department. With friends like that who needs "the Russians"

truthalwayswinsout , 1 hour ago link

How can you believe this?

If the Russians did crack certain communications and the US knew it, they would use that to really screw the Russians and let them think they had us by the balls.

And they certainly would no be admitting any of it in an article.

Totally_Disillusioned , 1 hour ago link

And all the while the FBI / DOJ was running cover for the Clintonn Foundation and the Clintons, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the Awan brothers and surveilling American citizens with help of contractors. NOT ONE FBI whistle blower came forward...

I have been asking "Why?" At first I thought perhaps the threats to self/family may be the reason, but I'm now convinced THEY WERE ALL IN ON THE CORRUPTION. This agency is totally and thoroughly corrupt and beyond redemption. This is why Wray continues to carry water for the corrupt FBI leadership. Time to completely dismantle and re-engineer into the US Marshalls office.

[Sep 15, 2019] How the UK Security Services neutralised the country s leading liberal newspaper by Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis

Highly recommended!
Essentially neoliberal MSM were hijacked. Which was easy to do. The current anti-Russian campaign is conducted under the direct guidance of MI6 and similar agencies
Notable quotes:
"... committee minutes note the secretary saying: "The Guardian was obliged to seek advice under the terms of the DA notice code." The minutes add: "This failure to seek advice was a key source of concern and considerable efforts had been made to address it." ..."
"... These "considerable efforts" included a D-Notice sent out by the committee on 7 June 2013 – the day after The Guardian published the first documents – to all major UK media editors, saying they should refrain from publishing information that would "jeopardise both national security and possibly UK personnel". It was marked "private and confidential: not for publication, broadcast or use on social media". ..."
"... "The FT [Financial Times] and The Times did not mention it [the initial Snowden revelations] and the Telegraph published only a short". It continued by noting that only The Independent "followed up the substantive allegations". It added, "The BBC has also chosen to largely ignore the story." ..."
"... The British security services had carried out more than a "symbolic act". It was both a show of strength and a clear threat. The Guardian was then the only major newspaper that could be relied upon by whistleblowers in the US and British security bodies to receive and cover their exposures, a situation which posed a challenge to security agencies. ..."
"... The increasingly aggressive overtures made to The Guardian worked. The committee chair noted that after GCHQ had overseen the smashing up of the newspaper's laptops "engagement with The Guardian had continued to strengthen". ..."
"... But the most important part of this charm and threat offensive was getting The Guardian to agree to take a seat on the D-Notice Committee itself. The committee minutes are explicit on this, noting that "the process had culminated by [sic] the appointment of Paul Johnson (deputy editor Guardian News and Media) as a DPBAC [i.e. D-Notice Committee] member". ..."
"... The Guardian's deputy editor went directly from the corporation's basement with an angle-grinder to sitting on the D-Notice Committee alongside the security service officials who had tried to stop his paper publishing. ..."
"... In November 2016, The Guardian published an unprecedented "exclusive" with Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, Britain's domestic security service. The article noted that this was the "first newspaper interview given by an incumbent MI5 chief in the service's 107-year history". It was co-written by deputy editor Paul Johnson, who had never written about the security services before and who was still sitting on the D-Notice Committee. This was not mentioned in the article. ..."
"... The MI5 chief was given copious space to make claims about the national security threat posed by an "increasingly aggressive" Russia. Johnson and his co-author noted, "Parker said he was talking to The Guardian rather than any other newspaper despite the publication of the Snowden files." ..."
"... Just two weeks before the interview with MI6's chief was published, The Guardian itself reported on the high court stating that it would "hear an application for a judicial review of the Crown Prosecution Service's decision not to charge MI6's former counterterrorism director, Sir Mark Allen, over the abduction of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his pregnant wife who were transferred to Libya in a joint CIA-MI6 operation in 2004". ..."
"... The security services were probably feeding The Guardian these "exclusives" as part of the process of bringing it onside and neutralising the only independent newspaper with the resources to receive and cover a leak such as Snowden's. They were possibly acting to prevent any revelations of this kind happening again. ..."
"... The Guardian's coverage of anti-Semitism in Labour has been suspiciously extensive, compared to the known extent of the problem in the party, and its focus on Corbyn personally suggests that the issue is being used politically. While anti-Semitism does exist in the Labour Party, evidence suggests it is at relatively low levels. Since September 2015, when Corbyn became Labour leader, 0.06% of the Labour membership has been investigated for anti-Semitic comments or posts. In 2016, an independent inquiry commissioned by Labour concluded that the party "is not overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism. Further, it is the party that initiated every single United Kingdom race equality law." ..."
"... A former Guardian journalist similarly told us: "It is significant that exclusive stories recently about British collusion in torture and policy towards the interrogation of terror suspects and other detainees have been passed to other papers including The Times rather than The Guardian." ..."
"... The Guardian had gone in six short years from being the natural outlet to place stories exposing wrongdoing by the security state to a platform trusted by the security state to amplify its information operations. A once relatively independent media platform has been largely neutralised by UK security services fearful of being exposed further. Which begs the question: where does the next Snowden go? DM ..."
Jan 01, 2019 | dailymaverick.co.za

The Guardian, Britain's leading liberal newspaper with a global reputation for independent and critical journalism, has been successfully targeted by security agencies to neutralise its adversarial reporting of the 'security state', according to newly released documents and evidence from former and current Guardian journalists.

The UK security services targeted The Guardian after the newspaper started publishing the contents of secret US government documents leaked by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden in June 2013.

Snowden's bombshell revelations continued for months and were the largest-ever leak of classified material covering the NSA and its UK equivalent, the Government Communications Headquarters. They revealed programmes of mass surveillance operated by both agencies.

According to minutes of meetings of the UK's Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee, the revelations caused alarm in the British security services and Ministry of Defence.

" This event was very concerning because at the outset The Guardian avoided engaging with the [committee] before publishing the first tranche of information," state minutes of a 7 November 2013 meeting at the MOD.

The DSMA Committee, more commonly known as the D-Notice Committee, is run by the MOD, where it meets every six months. A small number of journalists are also invited to sit on the committee. Its stated purpose is to "prevent inadvertent public disclosure of information that would compromise UK military and intelligence operations". It can issue "notices" to the media to encourage them not to publish certain information.

The committee is currently chaired by the MOD's director-general of security policy Dominic Wilson, who was previously director of security and intelligence in the British Cabinet Office. Its secretary is Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds OBE, who describes himself as an "accomplished, senior ex-military commander with extensive experience of operational level leadership".

The D-Notice system describes itself as voluntary , placing no obligations on the media to comply with any notice issued. This means there should have been no need for the Guardian to consult the MOD before publishing the Snowden documents.

Yet committee minutes note the secretary saying: "The Guardian was obliged to seek advice under the terms of the DA notice code." The minutes add: "This failure to seek advice was a key source of concern and considerable efforts had been made to address it."

' Considerable efforts'

These "considerable efforts" included a D-Notice sent out by the committee on 7 June 2013 – the day after The Guardian published the first documents – to all major UK media editors, saying they should refrain from publishing information that would "jeopardise both national security and possibly UK personnel". It was marked "private and confidential: not for publication, broadcast or use on social media".

Clearly the committee did not want its issuing of the notice to be publicised, and it was nearly successful. Only the right-wing blog Guido Fawkes made it public.

At the time, according to the committee minutes , the "intelligence agencies in particular had continued to ask for more advisories [i.e. D-Notices] to be sent out". Such D-Notices were clearly seen by the intelligence services not so much as a tool to advise the media but rather a way to threaten it not to publish further Snowden revelations.

One night, amidst the first Snowden stories being published, the D-Notice Committee's then-secretary Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Vallance personally called Alan Rusbridger, then editor of The Guardian. Vallance "made clear his concern that The Guardian had failed to consult him in advance before telling the world", according to a Guardian journalist who interviewed Rusbridger.

Later in the year, Prime Minister David Cameron again used the D-Notice system as a threat to the media.

" I don't want to have to use injunctions or D-Notices or the other tougher measures," he said in a statement to MPs. "I think it's much better to appeal to newspapers' sense of social responsibility. But if they don't demonstrate some social responsibility it would be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act."

The threats worked. The Press Gazette reported at the time that "The FT [Financial Times] and The Times did not mention it [the initial Snowden revelations] and the Telegraph published only a short". It continued by noting that only The Independent "followed up the substantive allegations". It added, "The BBC has also chosen to largely ignore the story."

The Guardian, however, remained uncowed.

According to the committee minutes , the fact The Guardian would not stop publishing "undoubtedly raised questions in some minds about the system's future usefulness". If the D-Notice system could not prevent The Guardian publishing GCHQ's most sensitive secrets, what was it good for?

It was time to rein in The Guardian and make sure this never happened again.

GCHQ and laptops

The security services ratcheted up their "considerable efforts" to deal with the exposures. On 20 July 2013, GCHQ officials entered The Guardian's offices at King's Cross in London, six weeks after the first Snowden-related article had been published. At the request of the government and security services, Guardian deputy editor Paul Johnson, along with two others, spent three hours destroying the laptops containing the Snowden documents.

The Guardian staffers, according to one of the newspaper's reporters, brought "angle-grinders, dremels – drills with revolving bits – and masks". The reporter added, "The spy agency provided one piece of hi-tech equipment, a 'degausser', which destroys magnetic fields and erases data."

Johnson claims that the destruction of the computers was "purely a symbolic act", adding that "the government and GCHQ knew, because we had told them, that the material had been taken to the US to be shared with the New York Times. The reporting would go on. The episode hadn't changed anything."

Yet the episode did change something. As the D-Notice Committee minutes for November 2013 outlined: "Towards the end of July [as the computers were being destroyed], The Guardian had begun to seek and accept D-Notice advice not to publish certain highly sensitive details and since then the dialogue [with the committee] had been reasonable and improving."

The British security services had carried out more than a "symbolic act". It was both a show of strength and a clear threat. The Guardian was then the only major newspaper that could be relied upon by whistleblowers in the US and British security bodies to receive and cover their exposures, a situation which posed a challenge to security agencies.

The increasingly aggressive overtures made to The Guardian worked. The committee chair noted that after GCHQ had overseen the smashing up of the newspaper's laptops "engagement with The Guardian had continued to strengthen".

Moreover, he added , there were now "regular dialogues between the secretary and deputy secretaries and Guardian journalists". Rusbridger later testified to the Home Affairs Committee that Air Vice-Marshal Vallance of the D-Notice committee and himself "collaborated" in the aftermath of the Snowden affair and that Vallance had even "been at The Guardian offices to talk to all our reporters".

But the most important part of this charm and threat offensive was getting The Guardian to agree to take a seat on the D-Notice Committee itself. The committee minutes are explicit on this, noting that "the process had culminated by [sic] the appointment of Paul Johnson (deputy editor Guardian News and Media) as a DPBAC [i.e. D-Notice Committee] member".

At some point in 2013 or early 2014, Johnson – the same deputy editor who had smashed up his newspaper's computers under the watchful gaze of British intelligence agents – was approached to take up a seat on the committee. Johnson attended his first meeting in May 2014 and was to remain on it until October 2018 .

The Guardian's deputy editor went directly from the corporation's basement with an angle-grinder to sitting on the D-Notice Committee alongside the security service officials who had tried to stop his paper publishing.

A new editor

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger withstood intense pressure not to publish some of the Snowden revelations but agreed to Johnson taking a seat on the D-Notice Committee as a tactical sop to the security services. Throughout his tenure, The Guardian continued to publish some stories critical of the security services.

But in March 2015, the situation changed when the Guardian appointed a new editor, Katharine Viner, who had less experience than Rusbridger of dealing with the security services. Viner had started out on fashion and entertainment magazine Cosmopolitan and had no history in national security reporting. According to insiders, she showed much less leadership during the Snowden affair than Janine Gibson in the US (Gibson was another candidate to be Rusbridger's successor).

Viner was then editor-in-chief of Guardian Australia, which was launched just two weeks before the first Snowden revelations were published. Australia and New Zealand comprise two-fifths of the so-called "Five Eyes" surveillance alliance exposed by Snowden.

This was an opportunity for the security services. It appears that their seduction began the following year.

In November 2016, The Guardian published an unprecedented "exclusive" with Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, Britain's domestic security service. The article noted that this was the "first newspaper interview given by an incumbent MI5 chief in the service's 107-year history". It was co-written by deputy editor Paul Johnson, who had never written about the security services before and who was still sitting on the D-Notice Committee. This was not mentioned in the article.

The MI5 chief was given copious space to make claims about the national security threat posed by an "increasingly aggressive" Russia. Johnson and his co-author noted, "Parker said he was talking to The Guardian rather than any other newspaper despite the publication of the Snowden files."

Parker told the two reporters, "We recognise that in a changing world we have to change too. We have a responsibility to talk about our work and explain it."

Four months after the MI5 interview, in March 2017, the Guardian published another unprecedented "exclusive", this time with Alex Younger, the sitting chief of MI6, Britain's external intelligence agency. This exclusive was awarded by the Secret Intelligence Service to The Guardian's investigations editor, Nick Hopkins, who had been appointed 14 months previously.

The interview was the first Younger had given to a national newspaper and was again softball. Titled "MI6 returns to 'tapping up' in an effort to recruit black and Asian officers", it focused almost entirely on the intelligence service's stated desire to recruit from ethnic minority communities.

" Simply, we have to attract the best of modern Britain," Younger told Hopkins. "Every community from every part of Britain should feel they have what it takes, no matter what their background or status."

Just two weeks before the interview with MI6's chief was published, The Guardian itself reported on the high court stating that it would "hear an application for a judicial review of the Crown Prosecution Service's decision not to charge MI6's former counterterrorism director, Sir Mark Allen, over the abduction of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his pregnant wife who were transferred to Libya in a joint CIA-MI6 operation in 2004".

None of this featured in The Guardian article, which did, however, cover discussions of whether the James Bond actor Daniel Craig would qualify for the intelligence service. "He would not get into MI6," Younger told Hopkins.

More recently, in August 2019, The Guardian was awarded yet another exclusive, this time with Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Neil Basu, Britain's most senior counter-terrorism officer. This was Basu's " first major interview since taking up his post" the previous year and resulted in a three-part series of articles, one of which was entitled "Met police examine Vladimir Putin's role in Salisbury attack".

The security services were probably feeding The Guardian these "exclusives" as part of the process of bringing it onside and neutralising the only independent newspaper with the resources to receive and cover a leak such as Snowden's. They were possibly acting to prevent any revelations of this kind happening again.

What, if any, private conversations have taken place between Viner and the security services during her tenure as editor are not known. But in 2018, when Paul Johnson eventually left the D-Notice Committee, its chair, the MOD's Dominic Wilson, praised Johnson who, he said, had been "instrumental in re-establishing links with The Guardian".

Decline in critical reporting

Amidst these spoon-fed intelligence exclusives, Viner also oversaw the breakup of The Guardian's celebrated investigative team, whose muck-racking journalists were told to apply for other jobs outside of investigations.

One well-placed source told the Press Gazette at the time that journalists on the investigations team "have not felt backed by senior editors over the last year", and that "some also feel the company has become more risk-averse in the same period".

In the period since Snowden, The Guardian has lost many of its top investigative reporters who had covered national security issues, notably Shiv Malik, Nick Davies, David Leigh, Richard Norton-Taylor, Ewen MacAskill and Ian Cobain. The few journalists who were replaced were succeeded by less experienced reporters with apparently less commitment to exposing the security state. The current defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh, started at The Guardian as head of media and technology and has no history of covering national security.

" It seems they've got rid of everyone who seemed to cover the security services and military in an adversarial way," one current Guardian journalist told us.

Indeed, during the last two years of Rusbridger's editorship, The Guardian published about 110 articles per year tagged as MI6 on its website. Since Viner took over, the average per year has halved and is decreasing year by year.

" Effective scrutiny of the security and intelligence agencies -- epitomised by the Snowden scoops but also many other stories -- appears to have been abandoned," a former Guardian journalist told us. The former reporter added that, in recent years, it "sometimes seems The Guardian is worried about upsetting the spooks."

A second former Guardian journalist added: "The Guardian no longer seems to have such a challenging relationship with the intelligence services, and is perhaps seeking to mend fences since Snowden. This is concerning, because spooks are always manipulative and not always to be trusted."

While some articles critical of the security services still do appear in the paper, its "scoops" increasingly focus on issues more acceptable to them. Since the Snowden affair, The Guardian does not appear to have published any articles based on an intelligence or security services source that was not officially sanctioned to speak.

The Guardian has, by contrast, published a steady stream of exclusives on the major official enemy of the security services, Russia, exposing Putin, his friends and the work of its intelligence services and military.

In the Panama Papers leak in April 2016, which revealed how companies and individuals around the world were using an offshore law firm to avoid paying tax, The Guardian's front-page launch scoop was authored by Luke Harding, who has received many security service tips focused on the "Russia threat", and was titled "Revealed: the $2bn offshore trail that leads to Vladimir Putin".

Three sentences into the piece, however, Harding notes that "the president's name does not appear in any of the records" although he insists that "the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage".

There was a much bigger story in the Panama Papers which The Guardian chose to downplay by leaving it to the following day. This concerned the father of the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, who "ran an offshore fund that avoided ever having to pay tax in Britain by hiring a small army of Bahamas residents – including a part-time bishop – to sign its paperwork".

We understand there was some argument between journalists about not leading with the Cameron story as the launch splash. Putin's friends were eventually deemed more important than the Prime Minister of the country where the paper published.

Getting Julian Assange

The Guardian also appears to have been engaged in a campaign against the WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who had been a collaborator during the early WikiLeaks revelations in 2010.

One 2017 story came from investigative reporter Carole Cadwalladr, who writes for The Guardian's sister paper The Observer, titled "When Nigel Farage met Julian Assange". This concerned the visit of former UKIP leader Nigel Farage to the Ecuadorian embassy in March 2017, organised by the radio station LBC, for whom Farage worked as a presenter. Farage's producer at LBC accompanied Farage at the meeting, but this was not mentioned by Cadwalladr.

Rather, she posited that this meeting was "potentially a channel of communication" between WikiLeaks, Farage and Donald Trump, who were all said to be closely linked to Russia, adding that these actors were in a "political alignment" and that " WikiLeaks is, in many ways, the swirling vortex at the centre of everything".

Yet Cadwalladr's one official on-the-record source for this speculation was a "highly placed contact with links to US intelligence", who told her, "When the heat is turned up and all electronic communication, you have to assume, is being intensely monitored, then those are the times when intelligence communication falls back on human couriers. Where you have individuals passing information in ways and places that cannot be monitored."

It seems likely this was innuendo being fed to The Observer by an intelligence-linked individual to promote disinformation to undermine Assange.

In 2018, however, The Guardian's attempted vilification of Assange was significantly stepped up. A new string of articles began on 18 May 2018 with one alleging Assange's "long-standing relationship with RT", the Russian state broadcaster. The series, which has been closely documented elsewhere, lasted for several months, consistently alleging with little or the most minimal circumstantial evidence that Assange had ties to Russia or the Kremlin.

One story, co-authored again by Luke Harding, claimed that "Russian diplomats held secret talks in London with people close to Julian Assange to assess whether they could help him flee the UK, The Guardian has learned". The former consul in the Ecuadorian embassy in London at this time, Fidel Narvaez, vigorously denies the existence of any such "escape plot" involving Russia and is involved in a complaint process with The Guardian for insinuating he coordinated such a plot.

This apparent mini-campaign ran until November 2018, culminating in a front-page splash , based on anonymous sources, claiming that Assange had three secret meetings at the Ecuadorian embassy with Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort.

This "scoop" failed all tests of journalistic credibility since it would have been impossible for anyone to have entered the highly secured Ecuadorian embassy three times with no proof. WikiLeaks and others have strongly argued that the story was manufactured and it is telling that The Guardian has since failed to refer to it in its subsequent articles on the Assange case. The Guardian, however, has still not retracted or apologised for the story which remains on its website.

The "exclusive" appeared just two weeks after Paul Johnson had been congratulated for "re-establishing links" between The Guardian and the security services.

The string of Guardian articles, along with the vilification and smear stories about Assange elsewhere in the British media, helped create the conditions for a deal between Ecuador, the UK and the US to expel Assange from the embassy in April. Assange now sits in Belmarsh maximum-security prison where he faces extradition to the US, and life in prison there, on charges under the Espionage Act.

Acting for the establishment

Another major focus of The Guardian's energies under Viner's editorship has been to attack the leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.

The context is that Corbyn appears to have recently been a target of the security services. In 2015, soon after he was elected Labour leader, the Sunday Times reported a serving general warning that "there would be a direct challenge from the army and mass resignations if Corbyn became prime minister". The source told the newspaper: "The Army just wouldn't stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul, to prevent that."

On 20 May 2017, a little over two weeks before the 2017 General Election, the Daily Telegraph was fed the story that "MI5 opened a file on Jeremy Corbyn amid concerns over his links to the IRA". It formed part of a Telegraph investigation claiming to reveal "Mr Corbyn's full links to the IRA" and was sourced to an individual "close to" the MI5 investigation, who said "a file had been opened on him by the early nineties".

The Metropolitan Police Special Branch was also said to be monitoring Corbyn in the same period.

Then, on the very eve of the General Election, the Telegraph gave space to an article from Sir Richard Dearlove, the former director of MI6, under a headline: "Jeremy Corbyn is a danger to this nation. At MI6, which I once led, he wouldn't clear the security vetting."

Further, in September 2018, two anonymous senior government sources told The Times that Corbyn had been "summoned" for a "'facts of life' talk on terror" by MI5 chief Andrew Parker.

Just two weeks after news of this private meeting was leaked by the government, the Daily Mail reported another leak, this time revealing that "Jeremy Corbyn's most influential House of Commons adviser has been barred from entering Ukraine on the grounds that he is a national security threat because of his alleged links to Vladimir Putin's 'global propaganda network'."

The article concerned Andrew Murray, who had been working in Corbyn's office for a year but had still not received a security pass to enter the UK parliament. The Mail reported, based on what it called "a senior parliamentary source", that Murray's application had encountered "vetting problems".

Murray later heavily suggested that the security services had leaked the story to the Mail. "Call me sceptical if you must, but I do not see journalistic enterprise behind the Mail's sudden capacity to tease obscure information out of the [Ukrainian security service]," he wrote in the New Statesman. He added, "Someone else is doing the hard work – possibly someone being paid by the taxpayer. I doubt if their job description is preventing the election of a Corbyn government, but who knows?"

Murray told us he was approached by the New Statesman after the story about him being banned from Ukraine was leaked. "However," he added, "I wouldn't dream of suggesting anything like that to The Guardian, since I do not know any journalists still working there who I could trust."

The Guardian itself has run a remarkable number of news and comment articles criticising Corbyn since he was elected in 2015 and the paper's clearly hostile stance has been widely noted .

Given its appeal to traditional Labour supporters, the paper has probably done more to undermine Corbyn than any other. In particular, its massive coverage of alleged widespread anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has helped to disparage Corbyn more than other smears carried in the media.

The Guardian and The Observer have published hundreds of articles on "Labour anti-Semitism" and, since the beginning of this year, carried over 50 such articles with headlines clearly negative to Corbyn. Typical headlines have included " The Observer view: Labour leadership is complicit in anti-Semitism ", " Jeremy Corbyn is either blind to anti-Semitism – or he just doesn't care ", and " Labour's anti-Semitism problem is institutional. It needs investigation ".

The Guardian's coverage of anti-Semitism in Labour has been suspiciously extensive, compared to the known extent of the problem in the party, and its focus on Corbyn personally suggests that the issue is being used politically. While anti-Semitism does exist in the Labour Party, evidence suggests it is at relatively low levels. Since September 2015, when Corbyn became Labour leader, 0.06% of the Labour membership has been investigated for anti-Semitic comments or posts. In 2016, an independent inquiry commissioned by Labour concluded that the party "is not overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism. Further, it is the party that initiated every single United Kingdom race equality law."

Analysis of two YouGov surveys, conducted in 2015 and 2017, shows that anti-Semitic views held by Labour voters declined substantially in the first two years of Corbyn's tenure and that such views were significantly more common among Conservative voters.

Despite this, since January 2016, The Guardian has published 1,215 stories mentioning Labour and anti-Semitism, an average of around one per day, according to a search on Factiva, the database of newspaper articles. In the same period, The Guardian published just 194 articles mentioning the Conservative Party's much more serious problem with Islamophobia. A YouGov poll in 2019, for example, found that nearly half of the Tory Party membership would prefer not to have a Muslim prime minister.

At the same time, some stories which paint Corbyn's critics in a negative light have been suppressed by The Guardian. According to someone with knowledge of the matter, The Guardian declined to publish the results of a months-long critical investigation by one of its reporters into a prominent anti-Corbyn Labour MP, citing only vague legal issues.

In July 2016, one of this article's authors emailed a Guardian editor asking if he could pitch an investigation about the first attempt by the right-wing of the Labour Party to remove Corbyn, informing The Guardian of very good inside sources on those behind the attempt and their real plans. The approach was rejected as being of no interest before a pitch was even sent.

A reliable publication?

On 20 May 2019, The Times newspaper reported on a Freedom of Information request made by the Rendition Project, a group of academic experts working on torture and rendition issues, which showed that the MOD had been "developing a secret policy on torture that allows ministers to sign off intelligence-sharing that could lead to the abuse of detainees".

This might traditionally have been a Guardian story, not something for the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times. According to one civil society source, however, many groups working in this field no longer trust The Guardian.

A former Guardian journalist similarly told us: "It is significant that exclusive stories recently about British collusion in torture and policy towards the interrogation of terror suspects and other detainees have been passed to other papers including The Times rather than The Guardian."

The Times published its scoop under a strong headline , "Torture: Britain breaks law in Ministry of Defence secret policy". However, before the article was published, the MOD fed The Guardian the same documents The Times were about to splash with, believing it could soften the impact of the revelations by telling its side of the story.

The Guardian posted its own article just before The Times, with a headline that would have pleased the government: "MoD says revised torture guidance does not lower standards".

Its lead paragraph was a simple summary of the MOD's position: "The Ministry of Defence has insisted that newly emerged departmental guidance on the sharing of intelligence derived from torture with allies, remains in line with practices agreed in the aftermath of a series of scandals following the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq." However, an inspection of the documents showed this was clearly disinformation.

The Guardian had gone in six short years from being the natural outlet to place stories exposing wrongdoing by the security state to a platform trusted by the security state to amplify its information operations. A once relatively independent media platform has been largely neutralised by UK security services fearful of being exposed further. Which begs the question: where does the next Snowden go? DM

The Guardian did not respond to a request for comment.

Daily Maverick will formally launch Declassified – a new UK-focused investigation and analysis organisation run by the authors of this article – in November 2019.

Matt Kennard is an investigative journalist and co-founder of Declassified . He was previously director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London, and before that a reporter for the Financial Times in the US and UK. He is the author of two books, Irregular Army and The Racket .

Mark Curtis is a leading UK foreign policy analyst, journalist and the author of six books including Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World and Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam .

[Sep 15, 2019] Demythologizing the Roots of the New Cold War by Ted Snider

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Like the Cold War, the new cold war was triggered by an American lie. It was a lie so duplicitous, so all encompassing, that it would lead many Russians to see the agreement that ended the cold war as a devastating and humiliating deception that was really intended to clear the way for the US to surround and finally defeat the Soviet Union. It was a lie that tilled the soil for all future "Russian aggression." ..."
"... That key promise made to Gorbachev was shattered, first by President Clinton and then subsequently supported by every American President: NATO engulfed Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999; Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004, Albania and Croatia in 2009 and, most recently, Montenegro. ..."
"... When Clinton decided to break Bush's promise and betray Russia, George Kennen, father of the containment policy, warned that NATO expansion would be "the most fateful error of American foreign policy in the entire post-cold-war era." "Such a decision," he prophesied, "may be expected to . . . restore the atmosphere of the cold war in East-West relations . . .." ..."
"... As Matlock explains, the urgent transition allowed "privileged insiders[to] join the criminals who had been running a black market [and to] steal what they could, as fast as they could." The sudden, uncompromising transition imposed on Russia by the United States enabled, according to Cohen, "a small group of Kremlin-connected oligarchs to plunder Russia's richest assets and abet the plunging of some two-thirds of its people into poverty and misery." ..."
"... The rape of Russia was funded, overseen and ordered by the United States and handed over by President George H.W. Bush to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Much of their advice, Matlock says generously, "was not only useless, but sometimes actually damaging." ..."
"... The economic policies wrestled onto Russia by the US and the transition experts and international development experts it funded and sent over led to, what Cohen calls, "the near ruination of Russia." Russia's reward for ending the Cold War and joining the Western economic community was, in Cohen's words, "the worst economic depression in peacetime, the disintegration of the highly professionalized Soviet middle class, mass poverty, plunging life expectancy [for men, it had fallen below sixty], the fostering of an oligarchic financial elite, the plundering of Russia's wealth, and more." ..."
"... By the time Putin came to power in 2000, Cohen says, "some 75% of Russians were living in poverty." 75%! Millions and millions of Russian lives were destroyed by the American welcoming of Russia into the global economic community. ..."
"... But before Putin came to power, there was more Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin was a necessity for Clinton and the United States because Yeltsin was the pliable puppet who would continue to enforce the cruel economic transition. But to continue the interference in, and betrayal of, the Russian people economically, it would now be necessary to interfere in and betray the Russian democracy. ..."
"... Intoxicated with American support, Yeltsin dissolved the parliament that had rescinded his powers and abolished the constitution of which he was in violation. In a 636-2 vote, the Russian parliament impeached Yeltsin. But, President Clinton again sided with Yeltsin against the Russian people and the Russian law, backed him and gave him $2.5 billion in aid. Clinton was blocking the Russian people's choice of leaders. ..."
"... "Funded by the US government," Cohen reports, Americans "gave money to favored Russian politicians, instructed ministers, drafted legislation and presidential decrees, underwrote textbooks, and served at Yeltsin's reelection headquarters in 1996." ..."
"... Asserting its right as the unipolar victor of a Cold War it never won, betraying the central promise of the negotiated end of the cold war by engulfing Russia's neighbors, arming those nations against its written and signed word and stealing all Russian hope in capitalism and democracy by kidnapping and torturing Russian capitalism and democracy, the roots of the new cold war were not planted by Russian lies and aggression, as the doctrinal Western version teaches, but by the American lies and aggression that the fact checked, demythologized version of history reveals. ..."
Sep 09, 2019 | original.antiwar.com

When Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev received his peace prize in 1990, the Nobel Prize committee declared that "the two mighty power blocs, have managed to abandon their life-threatening confrontation" and confidently expressed that "It is our hope that we are now celebrating the end of the Cold War." Recently, U.N. General Secretary António Guterres funereally closed the celebrations with the realization that "The Cold War is back."

In a very short span of history, the window that had finally opened for Russia and the United States to build a new international system in which they work cooperatively to address areas of common interest had slammed back closed. How was that historic opportunity wasted? Why was the road from the Nobel committee's hope to the UN's eulogy such a short one?

The doctrinal narrative that is told in the U.S. is the narrative of a very short road whose every turn was signposted by Russian lies, betrayal, deception and aggression. The American telling of history is a tale in which every blow to the new peace was a Russian blow. The fact checked version offers a demythologized history that is unrecognizably different. The demythologized version is also a history of lies, betrayal, deception and aggression, but the liar, the aggressor, is not primarily Russia, but America. It is the history of a promise so historically broken that it laid the foundation of a new cold war.

But it was not the first promise the United States broke: it was not even the first promise they broke in the new cold war.

The Hot War

Most histories of the cold war begin at the dawn of the post World War II period. But the history of U.S-U.S.S.R. animosity starts long before that: it starts as soon as possible, and it was hot long before it turned cold.

The label "Red Scare" first appeared, not in the 1940s or 50s, but in 1919. Though it is a chapter seldom included in the history of American-Russian relations, America actively and aggressively intervened in the Russian civil war in an attempt to push the Communists back down. The United States cooperated with anti-Bolshevik forces: by mid 1918, President Woodrow Wilson had sent 13,000 American troops to Soviet soil. They would remain there for two years, killing and injuring thousands. Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev would later remind America of "the time you sent your troops to quell the revolution." Churchill would record for history the admission that the West "shot Soviet Russians on sight," that they were "invaders on Russian soil," that "[t]hey armed the enemies of the Soviet government," that "[t]hey blockaded its ports, and sunk its battleships. They earnestly desired and schemed for its downfall."

When the cause was lost, and the Bolsheviks secured power, most western countries refused to recognize the communist government. However, realism prevailed, and within a few short years, by the mid 1920s, most countries had recognized the communist government and restored diplomatic relations. All but the US It was not until several years later that Franklin D. Roosevelt finally recognized the Soviet government in 1933.

The Cold War

It would be a very short time before the diplomatic relations that followed the hot war would be followed by a cold war. It might even be possible to pin the beginning of the cold war down to a specific date. On April 22 and 23, President Truman told Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov to "Carry out his agreement" and establish a new, free, independent government in Poland as promised at Yalta. Molotov was stunned. He was stunned because it was not he that was breaking the agreement because that was not what Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had agreed to at Yalta. The final wording of the Yalta agreement never mentioned replacing Soviet control of Poland.

The agreement that Roosevelt revealed to congress and shared with the world – the one that still dominates the textbook accounts and the media stories – is not the one he secretly shook on with Stalin. Roosevelt lied to congress and the American people. Then he lied to Stalin.

In exchange for Soviet support for the creation of the United Nations, Roosevelt secretly agreed to Soviet predominance in Poland and Eastern Europe. The cold war story that the Soviet Union marched into Eastern Europe and stole it for itself is a lie: Roosevelt handed it to them.

So did Churchill. If Roosevelt's motivation was getting the UN, Churchill's was getting Greece. Fearing that the Soviet Union would invade India and the oil fields of Iran, Churchill saw Greece as the geographical roadblock and determined to hold on to it at all cost. The cost, it turned out, was Romania. Churchill would give Stalin Romania to protect his borders; Stalin would give Churchill Greece to protect his empire's borders. The deal was sealed on October 9, 1944.

Churchill says that in their secret meeting, he asked Stalin, "how would it do for you to have ninety percent predominance in Romania, for us to have ninety percent predominance in Greece? . . ." He then went on to offer a fifty-fifty power split in in Yugoslavia and Hungary and to offer the Soviets seventy-five percent control of Bulgaria. The exact conversation may never have happened, according to the political record, but Churchill's account captures the spirit and certainly captures the secret agreement.

Contrary to the official narrative, Stalin never betrayed the west and stole Eastern Europe: Poland, Romania and the rest were given to him in secret. Then Roosevelt lied to congress and to the world.

That American lie raised the curtain on the cold war.

The New Cold War

Like the Cold War, the new cold war was triggered by an American lie. It was a lie so duplicitous, so all encompassing, that it would lead many Russians to see the agreement that ended the cold war as a devastating and humiliating deception that was really intended to clear the way for the US to surround and finally defeat the Soviet Union. It was a lie that tilled the soil for all future "Russian aggression."

At the close of the cold war, at a meeting held on February 9, 1990, George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State, James Baker, promised Gorbachev that if NATO got Germany and Russia pulled its troops out of East Germany, NATO would not expand east of Germany and engulf the former Soviet states. Gorbachev records in his memoirs that he agreed to Baker's terms "with the guarantee that NATO jurisdiction or troops would not extend east of the current line." In Super-power Illusions , Jack F. Matlock Jr., who was the American ambassador to Russia at the time and was present at the meeting, confirms Gorbachev's account, saying that it "coincides with my notes of the conversation except that mine indicate that Baker added "not one inch." Matlock adds that Gorbachev was assured that NATO would not move into Eastern Europe as the Warsaw Pact moved out, that "the understanding at Malta [was] that the United States would not 'take advantage' of a Soviet military withdrawal from Eastern Europe." At the February 9 meeting, Baker assured Gorbachev that "neither the President or I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place."

But the promise was not made just once, and it was not made just by the United States. The promise was made on two consecutive days: first by the Americans and then by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. According to West German foreign ministry documents, on February 10, 1990, the day after James Baker's promise, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher told his Soviet counterpart Eduard Shevardnadze "'For us . . . one thing is certain: NATO will not expand to the east.' And because the conversation revolved mainly around East Germany, Genscher added explicitly: 'As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned, this also applies in general.'"

A few days earlier, on January 31, 1990, Genscher had said in a major speech that there would not be "an expansion of NATO territory to the east, in other words, closer to the borders of the Soviet Union."

Gorbachev says the promise was made not to expand NATO "as much as a thumb's width further to the east." Putin also says mourns the broken promise, asking at a conference in Munich in February 2007, "What happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them."

Putin went on to remind his audience of the assurances by pointing out that the existence of the NATO promise is not just the perception of him and Gorbachev. It was also the view of the NATO General Secretary at the time: "But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. [Manfred] Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: 'The fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.' Where are those guarantees?"

Recent scholarship supports the Russian version of the story. Russian expert and Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, Richard Sakwa says that "[r]ecent studies demonstrate that the commitment not to enlarge NATO covered the whole former Soviet bloc and not just East Germany." And Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University and of Russian Studies and History at New York University, adds that the National Security Archive has now published the actual documents detailing what Gorbachev was promised. Published on December 12, 2017, the documents finally, and authoritatively, reveal that "The truth, and the promises broken, are much more expansive than previously known: all of the Western powers involved – the US, the UK, France, Germany itself – made the same promise to Gorbachev on multiple occasions and in various emphatic ways."

That key promise made to Gorbachev was shattered, first by President Clinton and then subsequently supported by every American President: NATO engulfed Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999; Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004, Albania and Croatia in 2009 and, most recently, Montenegro.

It was this shattered promise, this primal betrayal, this NATO expansion to Russia's borders that created the conditions and causes of future conflicts and aggressions. When, in 2008, NATO promised Georgia and Ukraine eventual membership, Russia saw the threat of NATO encroaching right to its borders. It is in Georgia and Ukraine that Russia felt it had to draw the line with NATO encroachment into its core sphere of influence. Sakwa says that the war in Georgia was "the first war to stop NATO enlargement; Ukraine was the second." What are often cited as acts of Russian aggression that helped maintain the new cold war are properly understood as acts of Russian defense against US aggression that made a lie out of the promise that ended the Cold War.

When Clinton decided to break Bush's promise and betray Russia, George Kennen, father of the containment policy, warned that NATO expansion would be "the most fateful error of American foreign policy in the entire post-cold-war era." "Such a decision," he prophesied, "may be expected to . . . restore the atmosphere of the cold war in East-West relations . . .."

The broken promise restored the cold war. Though it is the most significant root of the new cold war, it was not the first. There was a prior broken promise, and this time the man who betrayed Russia was President H.W. Bush.

The end of the Cold War resulted from negotiations and not from any sort of military victory. Stephen Cohen says that "Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush negotiated with the last Soviet Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, what they said was the end of the Cold War on the shared, expressed premise that it was ending 'with no losers, only winners.'"

The end of the Cold War and the end of the Soviet Union occurred so closely chronologically that it permitted the American mythologizers to conflate them in the public imagination and create the doctrinal history in which the US defeat of the Soviet Union ended the cold war. But the US did not defeat the Soviet Union. Gorbachev brought about what Sakwa calls a "self-willed disintegration of the Soviet bloc." The Soviet Union came to an end, not by external force or pressure, but out of Gorbachev's recognition of the Soviet Union's own self interest. Matlock flatly states that "pressure from governments outside the Soviet Union, whether from America or Europe or anywhere else, had nothing to do with [the Soviet collapse]." "Cohen demythologizes the history by reinstating the chronological order: Gorbachev negotiated the end of the cold war "well before the disintegration of the Soviet Union." The Cold War officially ended well before the end of the Soviet Union with Gorbachev's December 7, 1988 address to the UN

Matlock says that "Gorbachev is right when he says that we all won the Cold War." He says that President Reagan would write in his notes, "Let there be no talk of winners and losers." When Gorbachev compelled the countries of the Warsaw Pact to adopt reforms like his perestroika in the Soviet Union and warmed them that the Soviet army would no longer be there to keep their communist regimes in power, Matlock points out in Superpower Illusions that "Bush assured Gorbachev that the United States would not claim victory if the Eastern Europeans were allowed to replace the Communist regimes that had been imposed on them." Both the reality and the promise were that there was no winner of the Cold War: it was a negotiated peace that was in the interest of both countries.

When in 1992, during his losing re-election campaign, President Bush arrogantly boasted that "We won the Cold War!" he broke his own promise to Gorbachev and helped plant the roots of the new cold war. "In psychological and political terms," Matlock says, "President Bush planted a landmine under the future U.S.-Russian relationship" when he broke his promise and made that claim.

Bush's broken promise had two significant effects. Psychologically, it created the appearance in the Russian psyche that Gorbachev had been tricked by America: it eroded trust in America and in the new peace. Politically, it created in the American psyche the false idea that Russia was a defeated country whose sphere of interest did not need to be considered. Both these perceptions contributed to the new cold war.

Not only was the broken promise of NATO expansion not the first broken American promise, it was also not the last. In 1997, when President Clinton made the decision to expand NATO much more than an inch to the east, he at least signed the Russia-NATO Founding Act , which explicitly promised that as NATO expanded east, there would be no "permanent stationing of substantial combat forces." This obliterated American promise planted the third root of the new cold war.

Since that third promise, NATO has, in the words of Stephen Cohen, built up its "permanent land, sea and air power near Russian territory, along with missile-defense installations." US and NATO weapons and troops have butted right up against Russia's borders, while anti-missile installations have surrounded it, leading to the feeling of betrayal in Russia and the fear of aggression. Among the earliest moves of the Trump administration were the moving of NATO troops into Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria and nearby Norway.

Mikhail Gorbachev, who offered the West Russia and cooperation in place of the Soviet Union and Cold War, was rewarded with lies, broken promises and betrayal. That was the sowing of the first seeds of the new cold war. The second planting happened during the Yeltsin years that followed. During this stage, the Russian people were betrayed because their hopes for democracy and for an economic system compatible with the West were both destroyed by American intervention.

The goal, Matlock too gently explains, "had to be a shift of the bulk of the economy to private ownership." What transpired was what Naomi Klein called in The Shock Doctrine "one of the greatest crimes committed against a democracy in modern history." The States allowed no gradual transition. Matlock says the "Western experts advised a clean break with the past and a transition to private ownership without delay." But there was no legitimate private capital coming out of the communist system, so there was no private money with which to privatize. So, there was only one place for the money to come. As Matlock explains, the urgent transition allowed "privileged insiders[to] join the criminals who had been running a black market [and to] steal what they could, as fast as they could." The sudden, uncompromising transition imposed on Russia by the United States enabled, according to Cohen, "a small group of Kremlin-connected oligarchs to plunder Russia's richest assets and abet the plunging of some two-thirds of its people into poverty and misery."

The rape of Russia was funded, overseen and ordered by the United States and handed over by President George H.W. Bush to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Much of their advice, Matlock says generously, "was not only useless, but sometimes actually damaging."

Sometimes damaging? In the first year, millions lost their entire life savings. Subsidy cuts meant that many Russians didn't get paid at all. Klein says that by 1992, Russians were consuming 40% less than they were the year before, and one third of them had suddenly sunk below the poverty line. The economic policies wrestled onto Russia by the US and the transition experts and international development experts it funded and sent over led to, what Cohen calls, "the near ruination of Russia." Russia's reward for ending the Cold War and joining the Western economic community was, in Cohen's words, "the worst economic depression in peacetime, the disintegration of the highly professionalized Soviet middle class, mass poverty, plunging life expectancy [for men, it had fallen below sixty], the fostering of an oligarchic financial elite, the plundering of Russia's wealth, and more."

By the time Putin came to power in 2000, Cohen says, "some 75% of Russians were living in poverty." 75%! Millions and millions of Russian lives were destroyed by the American welcoming of Russia into the global economic community.

But before Putin came to power, there was more Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin was a necessity for Clinton and the United States because Yeltsin was the pliable puppet who would continue to enforce the cruel economic transition. But to continue the interference in, and betrayal of, the Russian people economically, it would now be necessary to interfere in and betray the Russian democracy.

In late 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin won a year of special powers from the Russian Parliament: for one year, he was to be, in effect, the dictator of Russia to facilitate the midwifery of the birth of a democratic Russia. In March of 1992, under pressure from the, by now, impoverished, devastated and discontented population, parliament repealed the dictatorial powers it had granted him. Yeltsin responded by declaring a state of emergency, re-bestowing upon himself the repealed dictatorial powers. Russia's Constitutional Court ruled that Yeltsin was acting outside the constitution. But the US sided – against the Russian people and against the Russian Constitutional Court – with Yeltsin.

Intoxicated with American support, Yeltsin dissolved the parliament that had rescinded his powers and abolished the constitution of which he was in violation. In a 636-2 vote, the Russian parliament impeached Yeltsin. But, President Clinton again sided with Yeltsin against the Russian people and the Russian law, backed him and gave him $2.5 billion in aid. Clinton was blocking the Russian people's choice of leaders.

Yeltsin took the money and sent police officers and elite paratroopers to surround the parliament building. Clinton "praised the Russian President has (sic) having done 'quite well' in managing the standoff with the Russian Parliament," as The New York Times reported at the time. Clinton added that he thought "the United States and the free world ought to hang in there" with their support of Yeltsin against his people, their constitution and their courts, and judged Yeltsin to be "on the right side of history."

On the right side of history and armed with machine guns and tanks, in October 1993, Yeltsin's troops opened fire on the crowd of protesters, killing about 100 people before setting the Russian parliament building on fire. By the time the day was over, Yeltsin's troops had killed approximately 500 people and wounded nearly 1,000. Still, Clinton stood with Yeltsin. He provided ludicrous cover for Yeltsin's massacre , claiming that "I don't see that he had any choice . If such a thing happened in the United States, you would have expected me to take tough action against it." Clinton's Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, said that the US supported Yeltsin's suspension of parliament in these "extraordinary times."

In 1996, elections were looming, and America's hegemonic dreams still needed Yeltsin in power. But it wasn't going to happen without help. Yeltsin's popularity was nonexistent, and his approval rating was at about 6%. According to Cohen, Clinton's interference in Russian politics, his "crusade" to "reform Russia," had by now become official policy . And so, America boldly interfered directly in Russian elections . Three American political consultants, receiving "direct assistance from Bill Clinton's White House," secretly ran Yeltsin's reelection campaign. As Time magazine broke the story , "For four months, a group of American political consultants clandestinely participated in guiding Yeltsin's campaign."

"Funded by the US government," Cohen reports, Americans "gave money to favored Russian politicians, instructed ministers, drafted legislation and presidential decrees, underwrote textbooks, and served at Yeltsin's reelection headquarters in 1996."

More incriminating still is that Richard Dresner, one of the three American consultants, maintained a direct line to Clinton's Chief Strategist, Dick Morris. According to reporting by Sean Guillory , in his book, Behind the Oval Office , Morris says that, with Clinton's approval, he received weekly briefings from Dresner that he would give to Clinton. Based on those briefings, Clinton would then provide recommendations to Dresner through Morris.

Then ambassador to Russia, Thomas Pickering, even pressured an opposing candidate to drop out of the election to improve Yeltsin's odds of winning.

The US not only helped run Yeltsin's campaign, they helped pay for it. The US backed a $10.2 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan for Russia, the second-biggest loan the IMF had ever given. The New York Times reported that the loan was "expected to be helpful to President Boris N. Yeltsin in the presidential election in June." The Times explained that the loan was "a vote of confidence" for Yeltsin who "has been lagging well behind in opinion polls" and added that the US Treasury Secretary "welcomed the fund's decision."

Yeltsin won the election by 13%, and Time magazine's cover declared: "Yanks to the rescue: The secret story of how American advisers helped Yeltsin win". Cohen reports that the US ambassador to Russia boasted that "without our leadership we would see a considerably different Russia today." That's a confession of election interference.

Asserting its right as the unipolar victor of a Cold War it never won, betraying the central promise of the negotiated end of the cold war by engulfing Russia's neighbors, arming those nations against its written and signed word and stealing all Russian hope in capitalism and democracy by kidnapping and torturing Russian capitalism and democracy, the roots of the new cold war were not planted by Russian lies and aggression, as the doctrinal Western version teaches, but by the American lies and aggression that the fact checked, demythologized version of history reveals.

Ted Snider writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.

[Sep 13, 2019] The US Massively Underestimates the Trade War Blowback by Robert Berke

Notable quotes:
"... Trade wars and sanctions are economic weapons against rival regimes, and like actual military warfare, often lead to unanticipated and sometimes devastating blowback from the targeted regimes. ..."
"... At the same time, western companies were forced to withdraw from Russian mega-deals because of sanctions. The best-known example was Exxon, forced by sanctions to walk away from an Arctic joint venture with Russia's state-owned oil giant, Rosneft, where it had invested $3.2 billion. In their very first effort, the partners successfully drilled oil wells containing 750 million barrels. ..."
"... The trade war with China that has led to tariffs on billions of dollars in Chinese exports to the US, and as a result, Russia and China have moved even closer. It remains an absolute mystery why no one in the west had foreseen the blowback from economic warfare leading to an alliance between two of its most powerful adversaries. ..."
"... The US acts as if it has been blind-sided by the Russian/China moves, even though years before it undertook economic warfare against them, China, the world's largest energy importer, agreed to finance oil and gas multi-billion-dollar pipelines in neighboring Russia. Now Russia has become China's largest energy supplier, equaling or perhaps even surpassing its energy supplies to Europe. ..."
"... As stated by Global Village Space (GBS) , China and Russia rushed to aid Iran, with China replacing Total, in a 25-year deal estimated to be worth some $400 billions. With that, China inherits a bonanza, providing much needed finance and technology to a country that was and could again become one of the world's leading energy producers. China is looking to finance $280 billion to develop Iran's gas, oil and petrochemicals industries, along with $120 billion to improve transport and manufacturing, making it a key partner in China's Road and Belt program. ..."
"... The deal also gives China the right to buy any or all Iranian oil, gas, and petrochemicals products at a minimum guaranteed 12% discount to global benchmarks, plus an additional discount of 6-8% for risk adjusted compensation. Financing will proceed using local currencies, avoiding the costs of converting to a hard currency like the US dollar or the Euro, giving the Beijing yet another 10% cost advantage. ..."
"... In direct defiance of US sanctions against Iran, China has stepped into the breach, increasing its oil purchases from Iran while becoming Iran's major energy trade and finance partner. Like Russia, it seems that Iran is moving towards a military alliance with China. If the west worries about China's expansive moves in the South China Sea, along China's own borders, what to make then of China moving in on Hormuz, where some 30% of world oil is transited each day? ..."
"... It is well known that the US has been in secret meetings with Iran representatives, much to the dismay of the Saudi Arabia and Israel. As Bloomberg reports, after the G7 meeting, Trump publicly and repeatedly stated he was ready to meet with Iran's President, Hassan Rouhani. Bloomberg also reported that in a meeting with his Cabinet, Trump announced that he was ready to ease sanctions as a possible way to open negotiations between the two countries. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin agreed with the President, while National Security Advisor Bolton voiced strong opposition, that only one day later, led to his firing. Secretary of State Pompeo stated that Trump may meet on the sidelines of the upcoming UN meeting with Iran's President. ..."
"... The EU defence industry initiative, the ECB's money transfer service, the EU army (or defence collaboration :) are all longer term policies aimed at reducing the EU's reliance on systems that are controlled by the USA. ..."
"... Sanctions are the modern equivalent of siege warfare, only the target is a nation, not a city. ..."
"... John Bolton is clueless. He's a throwback to ruthless American competition and cowboy capitalism. And he appears to be an idiot. ..."
"... Consumer spending is going to struggle the rest of the year as it rebalances and manufacturing is heading to a full blown recession by December as auto companies try and get their balance sheets under control. ..."
Sep 13, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Yves here. Even though most readers know the general point very well, that US trade and financial sanctions haven't brought targets to their knees, and had instead pushed them to find allies, but it's useful to have detail to flesh out the story. There are some bits one can quibble with, like the "annexation of Crimea" bit, and the US objectives for its sanctions against Russia. At least under the Obama Administration, the belief was that they would damage the economy severely and force a regime change.

By Robert Berke, an energy financial analyst with experience as a government consultant to the State of Alaska. Originally published at OilPrice

Trade wars and sanctions are economic weapons against rival regimes, and like actual military warfare, often lead to unanticipated and sometimes devastating blowback from the targeted regimes.

A prime example was President Obama sanctioning Russia over its annexation of Crimea. The sanctions were designed to block Russia from any access to western financing, aimed at causing a dire financial and economic crisis in Russia that would force it to relinquish Crimea and end support for Ukraine's breakaway territories.

In fact, the sanctions did cause Russia to enter a short-lived recession. But it also had other, much more drastic results for the West. It forced Russia to move closer to China, and Moscow saw Beijing as a great alternative to western financing for Russian industries.

At the same time, western companies were forced to withdraw from Russian mega-deals because of sanctions. The best-known example was Exxon, forced by sanctions to walk away from an Arctic joint venture with Russia's state-owned oil giant, Rosneft, where it had invested $3.2 billion. In their very first effort, the partners successfully drilled oil wells containing 750 million barrels.

As noted by Reuters, the withdrawal was costly:

Exxon will post an after-tax loss of $200 million as a result of pulling out of the Rosneft deal, but the true costs for the company run much deeper. Exploring and developing giant offshore fields in Russia was supposed to provide long-term growth for the company, and, in recent years, has seen falling reserves.

But the opportunity losses are likely to be far higher for Exxon, the company that famously missed the US shale revolution. The long-term deal with Rosneft, expected to continue for decades, included exploration for oil in the Black Sea, enormous shale resources in Western Siberia, and the development of three large blocks in the Arctic (Kara Sea).

The trade war with China that has led to tariffs on billions of dollars in Chinese exports to the US, and as a result, Russia and China have moved even closer. It remains an absolute mystery why no one in the west had foreseen the blowback from economic warfare leading to an alliance between two of its most powerful adversaries.

China's major state-owned oil companies and its Silk Road fund each became 10% partners in Russia's first major Arctic LNG (liquified natural gas), project in the Yamal Peninsula, undertaken with Novatek, Russia's largest independent gas producer. The project offers great prospects for enormous expansion.

The US acts as if it has been blind-sided by the Russian/China moves, even though years before it undertook economic warfare against them, China, the world's largest energy importer, agreed to finance oil and gas multi-billion-dollar pipelines in neighboring Russia. Now Russia has become China's largest energy supplier, equaling or perhaps even surpassing its energy supplies to Europe.

A similar scenario is taking place in the Persian Gulf where the US has withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal, while imposing economic sanctions on Iranian oil exports. The French energy giant, Total, that in recent years has been a leading international oil company in that country, was forced to withdraw because of sanctions, just like Exxon in Russia's Arctic, it left billions of dollars on the table.

This may also answer the question as to why French Prime Minister Macron was so intent on inviting the Iranian Foreign Secretary to the recent G7 meeting in France. It's also no secret that French carmakers Peugeot and Renault are the main suppliers to Iran's auto assembly plants.

As stated by Global Village Space (GBS) , China and Russia rushed to aid Iran, with China replacing Total, in a 25-year deal estimated to be worth some $400 billions. With that, China inherits a bonanza, providing much needed finance and technology to a country that was and could again become one of the world's leading energy producers. China is looking to finance $280 billion to develop Iran's gas, oil and petrochemicals industries, along with $120 billion to improve transport and manufacturing, making it a key partner in China's Road and Belt program.

The deal also gives China the right to buy any or all Iranian oil, gas, and petrochemicals products at a minimum guaranteed 12% discount to global benchmarks, plus an additional discount of 6-8% for risk adjusted compensation. Financing will proceed using local currencies, avoiding the costs of converting to a hard currency like the US dollar or the Euro, giving the Beijing yet another 10% cost advantage.

GBS further reports that the security for these projects will include up to 5,000 Chinese security personnel on the ground in Iran to protects Chinese projects and to safeguard the transit of energy products from Iran to China, including security for the very strategic Hormuz Straits.

In direct defiance of US sanctions against Iran, China has stepped into the breach, increasing its oil purchases from Iran while becoming Iran's major energy trade and finance partner. Like Russia, it seems that Iran is moving towards a military alliance with China. If the west worries about China's expansive moves in the South China Sea, along China's own borders, what to make then of China moving in on Hormuz, where some 30% of world oil is transited each day?

If these are considered winning policies for the West, one has to ask what failure looks like.

The West is already slowly becoming aware of the blowback this disastrous policy has caused. Evidence for this can be found in Macron's efforts to persuade Trump towards a peaceful resolution with Iran.

It is well known that the US has been in secret meetings with Iran representatives, much to the dismay of the Saudi Arabia and Israel. As Bloomberg reports, after the G7 meeting, Trump publicly and repeatedly stated he was ready to meet with Iran's President, Hassan Rouhani. Bloomberg also reported that in a meeting with his Cabinet, Trump announced that he was ready to ease sanctions as a possible way to open negotiations between the two countries. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin agreed with the President, while National Security Advisor Bolton voiced strong opposition, that only one day later, led to his firing. Secretary of State Pompeo stated that Trump may meet on the sidelines of the upcoming UN meeting with Iran's President.

The firing of Bolton was immediately followed by a fall in the price of oil and gold. Allowing Iran to continue to increase supplies into already well supplied oil markets will add downward pressure on oil prices. For the Trump administration, this is not necessarily a bad thing unhappy consumers at the gas pump make for unhappy voters.

Similarly, the Trump Administration badly needs to move towards ending the trade war with China in order to calm global markets. The recent announcement of the resumption of trade talks between the US and China in October may provide an opportunity for a similar easing of tariffs and a path towards further resolution.

Although these actions could help to quell global tensions, it may be too late to reverse some of the serious damage caused by US-led economic warfare. Once China positions itself in Iran, it will not likely be interested in withdrawing from its new strategic position in the Middle East, that it gained as a result of US near sighted foreign policy.

Prior to the election, we may see a breakthroughs in the trade war, and the alleviation of sanctions with Russia, Iran, China, and perhaps even North Korea, but the US will almost certainly see the negative consequences from adversaries it helped to expand and strengthen.

The Rev Kev , September 13, 2019 at 5:48 am

Can't speak much about the effects of the Chinese sanctions but I know a little bit about the Russian ones. These Russian sanctions are biting hard but not the way they were intended and it is not only the big oil companies that are losing big. Since they kicked in Russia has lost about $50 billion in trade with the European Union which kinda stings. But in the same time frame, the European Union has lost about $240 billion.

Considering that fact that these sanctions were never for their benefit but for solidarity with the US, that is a very expensive price tag. The US lost only about $17 billion but I remember reading that after the sanctions kicked in, trade between the U and Russia actually increased. Europe is a big loser here, particularly with agriculture. When the EU sanctioned Russian products to the EU, the Russians did the same to them a few weeks later which came as a shock. Since then Russia has made huge investments into growing their own food crops and those markets will never come back again for the EU. As an example, Russia is once more a world leader in the production of wheat second only to the US and has learned the value of autarky.

You see these results in all sorts of areas as the country started phasing out imports and replacing them with domestically made products. They even started making marine engines out of necessity as they were denied purchase of foreign ones. People might remember how Russia was going to buy two specially built ships from France but France reneged under pressure from Washington.

France not only had to give back all the money the Russians paid but also had to compensate Russia for all related costs that the Russians made. In the end France paid Russia over a billion dollars which was triple what the Russians initially paid. And now the Russians are constructing their own ships of this class in the Crimea using the knowledge acquired from France. Perhaps it is things like this that has cause Macron to open up contacts with Russia once more in spite of what Washington demands.

https://www.rt.com/business/462291-putin-sanctions-eu-losses/

Add in the purchase of gold stocks, developing financial systems in case the US cuts Russia off from the SWIFT clearance systems, the development of weaponry that makes the deployment of nuclear missile systems in Europe futile, you realise that Washington has massively underestimated the response of counties like Russia, China and Iran and depended on unicorn wishes instead.

fajensen , September 13, 2019 at 7:03 am

But in the same time frame, the European Union has lost about $240 billion. Considering that fact that these sanctions were never for their benefit but for solidarity with the US, that is a very expensive price tag.

Well, Looks like Donald Trump let "The Swamp(tm)" run loose and they went and over-torqued the screws!

Some decision makers in within the EU have begun to see the US sanctions against everything and everyone as having the true goals of ablating EU's influence on the world while hampering EU-based businesses. There are initiatives and polices that hints at "cutting the cord" are quietly being introduced.

The EU defence industry initiative, the ECB's money transfer service, the EU army (or defence collaboration :) are all longer term policies aimed at reducing the EU's reliance on systems that are controlled by the USA.

The 'North Stream' pipeline and keeping the Iran deal kinda alive are more immediate and direct challenges, as was the total unwillingness to join in any of the planned military adventures involving Syria and Iran.

France is being rather open about about it. Possibly to test out on behalf of the EU what the USA is actually willing to do to exact revenge and enforce compliance, possibly also because opposing the USA in France remains a reliable way to win votes.

Carolinian , September 13, 2019 at 8:51 am

It's not just Trump. Our Congress is totally at the beck of special pleaders such as LNG exporters and arms companies. All seek to use the US economic weapon to further their own interests.

John A , September 13, 2019 at 7:17 am

Plus, Russia is determinedly GMO free. The more the US goes down the GMO route, the less likely the food trade with the EU – the European dogs wont eat GMO dogfood. Post Brexit perhaps, Britain will accept US foods, all the more reason to insist on a proper border if NI remains part of the 'UK'.

notabanker , September 13, 2019 at 9:43 am

It's not just GMO, but the level and quality of technocratic oversight. US government agencies are incapable of regulating anything in the private sector. While the EU is still greatly influenced by private money, it has not completely sold out.

rd , September 13, 2019 at 2:16 pm

The EU has effectively sidelined FAA on the the 737 MAX: https://www.heraldnet.com/business/boeing-737-max-jet-to-face-separate-test-by-eu-regulators/

What US airline would fly the 737 MAX if the FAA says go ahead but the EASA holds back on approval?

US regulatory capture has now become so blatant that the rest of the world is starting to ignore US regulators.

jackiebass , September 13, 2019 at 6:17 am

What is ignored by media is the harm sanctions inflict on the people living in these countries. I think it should be considered a crime against humanity and our leaders should be prosecuted. Sanctions are a weapon that is just as harmful as weapons to kill. We only seem to look at the economic effects and ignore the social effects.

Ander Pierce , September 13, 2019 at 9:13 am

Sanctions are the modern equivalent of siege warfare, only the target is a nation, not a city.

I've known in a vague intuitive way that US sanctions would alienate nations and isolate the US, it's useful seeing how exactly these sanctions are backfiring with more nuance!

John , September 13, 2019 at 7:15 am

What is the next step after you have sanctioned everything and everyone and the reaction is a shrug and a work around? Sanctions do have their bite, but they are, or are becoming, a more effective tool for global economic and political realignment than a means to accomplish their stated purpose.

Susan the other` , September 13, 2019 at 10:38 am

Good question. I am wondering the same thing. There is a vague pattern here with Russia, the most resource-rich oil producer. We don't want Russia to take off too fast. What can be left in the ground should be left in the ground. And maybe that was the existential threat posed by Exxon – a private, profit seeking US corporation geared to do everything fast in order to make their profits.

Just thinking about slamming the breaks on manufacturing and consumption and how this can make a mess of the oil industry if it is going for profits – race to the bottom (currently). Rather, anyone thinking straight would want to conserve oil, control it's production and marketing. John Bolton is clueless. He's a throwback to ruthless American competition and cowboy capitalism. And he appears to be an idiot.

Watt4Bob , September 13, 2019 at 7:18 am

There was a discussion of China's role in manufacturing drugs for Big Pharma on the news last night, truly frightening.

They've already been found to be selling us contaminated drugs, what happens when they refuse to deliver anything other than fentanyl?

I find it hard to understand how we're going to recover from the damage done by the short-sighted, wholesale outsourcing of our manufacturing to China.

Drake , September 13, 2019 at 10:52 am

Given the centrality of drugs to American life, we should categorize them as sensitive items of national security and declare a war on foreign drugs. That would brilliantly combine the failed policies of the past with the failed policies of the present. We could make exceptions for most-favored nations like Colombia or Afghanistan.

I'm not even sure how sarcastic I'm being. ;)

Chauncey Gardiner , September 13, 2019 at 12:53 pm

As in military conflicts, the fog of geoeconomic war together with partisan lens and poor leadership can prevent adversaries from developing an accurate assessment of reality. The writer has raised some examples that support his view pertaining to pushback, and he could be right as The Rev Kev so eloquently pointed out here WRT Russia. However, whether his article provides an accurate overview of the current state of play remains an open question IMO.

Setting aside deeply troubling questions about our national values and whether sanctions should ever be employed due to their very damaging effects on domestic populations, together with their evident past failure to realize policy goals, there are credible accounts that China is now confronting a U.S. dollar shortage; that China has significant issues in its financial system and economy; and that the people of China are seeing sharply rising food prices as a result of decreased supplies of pork and soybeans. These issues are being perceived as sufficient to cause China's leaders to be receptive to negotiating resolution of the current tariffs, trade, intellectual property, and investment impasse on terms favorable to the U.S. Whether this will be so remains to be seen, of course.

Sound of the Suburbs , September 13, 2019 at 2:27 pm

A multi-polar world became a uni-polar world with the fall of the Berlin Wall and Francis Fukuyama said it was the end of history. It was all going so well, until the neoliberals got to work. The US created an open, globalised world with the Washington Consensus. China went from almost nothing to become a global super power.

That wasn't supposed to happen, let's get the rocket scientists onto it. Maximising profit is all about reducing costs. China had coal fired power stations to provide cheap energy. China had lax regulations reducing environmental and health and safety costs. China had a low cost of living so employers could pay low wages. China had low taxes and a minimal welfare state.

China had all the advantages in an open globalised world. "The Washington Consensus was always going to work better for China than the US" the rocket scientists.

If the US left this running it would be China first and America second. PANIC!

marku52 , September 13, 2019 at 3:48 pm

It seems since about the Vietnam war era, US FP has been run by hubristic idiots with delusions of grandeur. Its foreign policy 101 that you never, never, set policy to drive your 2 largest rivals to alliance.

Yet these morons did exactly that. Since Trump, there have been many retirements form the State Dept.

And maybe that's not such a bad thing. They show no evidence of competence.

GF , September 13, 2019 at 3:50 pm

According to this linked article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-13/russia-wants-to-rent-out-more-farmland-for-food-exports-to-asia

Russia is leasing out old collective farm lands that was abandoned in the eastern part of the country to Asian countries to farm and grow the export food products needed. It seems the collective farms were abandoned and now the Russian government is re-purposing the vast amounts of land available.

"Russia is now considering requests from Asian firms to farm another 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) -- an area roughly the size of Jamaica, according to the head of a government agency."

It may be said that Trump's tariffs are the best things that could have happened to China and Russia.

notabanker , September 13, 2019 at 3:55 pm

If it leads to us not growing corn and soybeans, it may be a good thing for the US as well.

Andy Raushner , September 13, 2019 at 4:16 pm

Frankly, I think it has pushed up consumer spending and that is about it. In other words, this economy has overcapacity problems in the auto sector and its relation to junk corporate debt, is not good.

Consumer spending is going to struggle the rest of the year as it rebalances and manufacturing is heading to a full blown recession by December as auto companies try and get their balance sheets under control.

[Sep 13, 2019] Something to thank Russians for

Sep 13, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Robert McGregor , September 13, 2019 at 3:43 pm

I'm no fan of Trump, but I would like to see a comparison of the total "US instigated foreign fatalities" for his last 2 & 1/2 years compared with Obama's last 2 & 1/2 years, and what we guess the number would have been under Hillary. I'm sorry, but I think Trump's number would be the lowest. In coming up with an explanation, I like to use the "Reality Show Entertainment Value" theory which many have described. In this case, people like to watch Trump bullshitting and freaking out the establishment, but they really don't like watching dead bodies burn up or be carried away in body bags. That reality is not attractive entertainment, despite the fantasy of it being bankable entertainment when Tarantino flame throws a teenager at the end of "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood."

Obama and Hillary are not "reality TV fans." They are more immersed in their megalomaniac view of themselves as world actors, and will willfully kill a few hundred thousand if they think it advances their misguided objectives.

Jonathan Holland Becnel , September 13, 2019 at 4:07 pm

Whoa there, buddy.

Spoiler alert.

-Tarantino fan :)

P.S. 'It 2' is def one of the best movies of the year. Still need to see Parasite and the Joker.

Punxsutawney , September 13, 2019 at 7:21 pm

Well, the "Liberal" excuse for this is that Putin is controlling him. Well if so, that's one thing to thank the Russians for.

[Sep 13, 2019] Trump the Russian Puppet. A Story That Just Will Not Die -- Strategic Culture

RussiaGate serves several very useful political purposes. First and foremost it supports exorbitant financing of MIC at the expense of everybody else, and as such it will not be abandoned, facts be dammed. In this sense Philip Giraldi is right. BTW intelligence agencies are apart of MIc and they (and first of all Brennan's faction of CIA and FBI (counterintelligence)) are the main force in RussiaGate. US government also was instrumental for the same reasons: for them maintaning EU hostility to Russia and preventing alliance of Russia and Germany is the ancient geopolitical goal, the goal which contributed to flaring two world wars.
But in view of Trump appointment of a war criminal and rabid warmonger Bolton as well as his track record of incompetence and impulsivity one can feel some sympathy to those who try to impeach Trump ;-)
Sep 13, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org
Philip Giraldi September 12, 2019 © Photo: Wikimedia Certainly, there are many things that President Donald Trump can rightly be criticized for, but it is interesting to note how the media and chattering classes continue to be in the grip of the highly emotional but ultimately irrational "Trump derangement syndrome (TDS)." TDS means that even the most ridiculous claims about Trump behavior can be regurgitated by someone like Jake Tapper or Rachel Maddow without anyone in the media even daring to observe that they are both professional dissemblers of truth who lie regularly to enhance their professional resumes.

There are two persistent bogus narratives about Donald Trump that are, in fact, related. The first is that his campaign and transition teams collaborated with the Russian government to defeat Hillary Clinton. Even Robert Mueller, he of the famous fact-finding commission, had to admit that that was not demonstrable. The only government that succeeded in collaborating with the incoming Trumpsters was that of Israel, but Mueller forgot to mention that or even look into it.

Nevertheless, Russia as a major contributing element in the Trump victory continues to be cited in the mainstream media, seemingly whenever Trump is mentioned, as if it were demonstrated fact. The fact is that whatever Russia did was miniscule and did not in any way alter the outcome of the election. Similarly, allegations that the Kremlin will again be at it in 2020 are essentially baseless fearmongering and are a reflection of the TDS desire to see the president constantly diminished in any way possible.

The other narrative that will not die is the suggestion that Donald Trump is either a Russian spy or is in some other, possibly psychological fashion, controlled by Russian President Vladimir Putin. That spy story was first floated by several former senior CIA officers who were closely tied to the Hillary Clinton campaign, apparently because they believed they would benefit materially if she were elected.

Former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell was the most aggressive promoter of Trump as Russian spy narrative. In August 2016, he wrote a New York Times op-ed entitled "I Ran the CIA. Now I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton." Morell's story began with the flat assertion that "Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president – keeping our nation safe Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security."

In his op-ed, Morell ran through the litany of then GOP candidate Trump's observed personality and character failings while also citing his lack of experience, but he delivered what he thought to be his most crushing blow when he introduced Vladimir Putin into the discussion. Putin, it seems, a wily ex-career intelligence officer, is "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

How can one be both unwitting and a recruited agent? Some might roll their eyes at that bit of hyperbole, but Morell, who was a top analyst at the Agency but never acquired or ran an actual spy in his entire career, goes on to explain how Moscow is some kind of eternal enemy. For Morell that meant that Trump's often stated willingness to work with Putin and the nuclear armed state he headed was somehow the act of a Manchurian Candidate, seen by Morell as a Russian interest, not an American one. So much for the presumed insider knowledge that came from the man who "ran the CIA."

The most recent "former intelligence agents'" blast against Trump appeared in the Business Insider last month in an article entitled "US spies say Trump's G7 performance suggests he's either a 'Russian asset' or a 'useful idiot' for Putin." The article cites a number of former government officials, including several from the CIA and FBI, who claimed that Trump's participation at the recent G7 summit in Biarritz France was marked by pandering to Putin and the Kremlin's interests, including a push to re-include Russia in the G-7, from which it was expelled after the annexation of Crimea.

One current anonymous FBI source cited in the article described the Trump performance as a "new low," while a former senior Justice Department official, labeled Trump's behavior as "directly out of the Putin playbook. We have a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office." An ex-CIA officer speculated that the president's "intent and odd personal fascination with President Putin is worth serious scrutiny," concluding that the evidence is "overwhelming" that Trump is a Russian asset, while other CIA and NSA veterans suggested that Trump might be flattering Putin in exchange for future business concessions in Moscow.

Another recently retired FBI special agent opined that Trump was little more than "useful idiot" for the Russians, though he added that it would not surprise him if there were also Russian spies in Trump's inner circle.

The comments in the article are almost incoherent. They come from carefully selected current and former government employees who suffer from an excess of TDS, or possibly pathological paranoia, and hate the president for various reasons. What they are suggesting is little more than speculation and not one of them was able to cite any actual evidence to support their contentions. And, on the contrary, there is considerable evidence that points the other way. The US-Russia relationship is at its lowest point ever according to some observers and that has all been due to policies promoted by the Trump Administration to include the continuing threats over Crimea, sanctions against numerous Russian officials, abrogation of existing arms treaties, and the expansion of aggressive NATO activity right up to the borders with Russia.

Just this past week, the United States warned Russia against continuing its aerial support for the Syrian Army advance to eliminate the last major terrorist pocket in Idlib province. Once against, Washington is operating on the side of terrorists in Syria and against Russia, a conflict that the United States entered into illegally in the first place. Either Donald Trump acting as "the Russian agent" actually thinks threatening a Moscow that is pursuing its legitimate interests is a good idea or the labeling of the president as a "Putin puppet" or "useful idiot" is seriously misguided.

[Sep 13, 2019] The War in Eastern Ukraine May be Coming to an End But Do Any Americans Care? by Jeremy Kuzmaro

Ukraine is mainly the result of attempt of the USA to encircle Russia well as EU design for economic Drang nach Osten -- attempt to displace Russia in xUSSR republics.
So they pushed Ukraine into the pat that Baltic republic were already known for.
Notable quotes:
"... Ukraine's newly elected comedian president Volodymyr Zelensky called the prisoner exchange a "first step" in ending the war in Eastern Ukraine, which has killed an estimated 13,000 civilians. ..."
"... In a subsequent referendum, 89% in Donetsk and 96% in Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine voted for independence, which the new government of Petro Poroshenko government did not accept. ..."
"... She told U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in a telephone conversation that was tapped and later leaked that Arseniy Yatsenyuk, neoliberal head of the "Fatherland" Party, should be Prime Minister as he was thought to have the "economic" and "governing experience." ..."
"... Nuland further revealed that the U.S. had invested over $5 billion in "democracy promotion" in Ukraine since 1991 through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which was carrying on the kind of work previously undertaken by the CIA during the Cold War. ..."
"... NED president Carl Gershman called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and an important interim step towards toppling [Russian President Vladimir] Putin who "may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself." ..."
"... To help achieve this end, the Obama administration pledged $1 billion in loan guarantees to the post-coup government in Ukraine, which Putin considered as the "ideological heirs of [Stephen] Bandera, Hitler's accomplice in World War II." ..."
"... Swayed by a slick lobbying campaign backed by supporters of the Afghan mujahidin in the 1980s looking for a new cause and by the Senate's Ukraine Caucus, the Obama administration further provided nearly $600 million in security assistance to the Ukrainian military. ..."
"... American military advisers embedded in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry provided rocket propelled grenades, carried out training exercises and planned military operations including with members of the fascist Azov battalion, which had Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel patches emblazoned on their sleeves. ..."
Sep 13, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

On Saturday September 7, Russia and Ukraine agreed to a prisoner swap which has brought hope of improved relations between the two countries and an end to the 5-year long conflict in Eastern Ukraine.

A peace accord is being planned for later this month in Normandy involving Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany.

Ukraine's newly elected comedian president Volodymyr Zelensky called the prisoner exchange a "first step" in ending the war in Eastern Ukraine, which has killed an estimated 13,000 civilians.

The Ukraine War remains largely unknown to the American public even though the United States has had a great stake in it.

The war started after a coup d'états in Ukraine in February 2014, which overthrew the democratically elected pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovuch.

In a subsequent referendum, 89% in Donetsk and 96% in Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine voted for independence, which the new government of Petro Poroshenko government did not accept.

The United States was a heavy backer of the coup and dirty war that unfolded in the East.

Victoria Nuland, the head of the State Department's European desk, traveled to Ukraine three times during the protests that triggered the coup, handing out cookies to demonstrators.

She told U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in a telephone conversation that was tapped and later leaked that Arseniy Yatsenyuk, neoliberal head of the "Fatherland" Party, should be Prime Minister as he was thought to have the "economic" and "governing experience."

Nuland further revealed that the U.S. had invested over $5 billion in "democracy promotion" in Ukraine since 1991 through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which was carrying on the kind of work previously undertaken by the CIA during the Cold War.

Ukraine has long been considered an important bridge between Eastern and Western Europe and holds lucrative oil and gas deposits.

NED president Carl Gershman called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and an important interim step towards toppling [Russian President Vladimir] Putin who "may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself."

To help achieve this end, the Obama administration pledged $1 billion in loan guarantees to the post-coup government in Ukraine, which Putin considered as the "ideological heirs of [Stephen] Bandera, Hitler's accomplice in World War II."

Swayed by a slick lobbying campaign backed by supporters of the Afghan mujahidin in the 1980s looking for a new cause and by the Senate's Ukraine Caucus, the Obama administration further provided nearly $600 million in security assistance to the Ukrainian military.

It was supplied with counter-artillery radars, anti-tank systems, armored vehicles and drones in a policy expanded upon by Trump.

Before and after the Ukrainian military's campaign began, Secretary of State John Kerry, CIA Director John Brennan, and Vice President Joe Biden visited Kiev, followed by a flow of senior Pentagon officials.

A back-door arms pipeline was set up through the United Arab Emirates and Blackwater mercenaries were allegedly deployed.

American military advisers embedded in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry provided rocket propelled grenades, carried out training exercises and planned military operations including with members of the fascist Azov battalion, which had Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel patches emblazoned on their sleeves.

Obama's National Security adviser, Samantha Power, claimed that the [Ukrainian] governments "response [to alleged provocations by eastern rebels] [was] reasonable, it is proportional, and frankly it is what any of our countries would have done."

The Ukrainian military and allied warlord and neo-Nazi militias were not acting reasonably or proportionally, however, when they carried out artillery and air attacks on cities and struck residential buildings, shopping malls, parks, schools, hospitals and orphanages in Eastern Ukraine, and tortured and executed POWs in what amounted to clear war crimes.

NYU Professor Stephen Cohen notes that even The New York Times , which mainly deleted atrocities from its coverage, described survivors in Slovyansk living "as if in the Middle Ages."

That the American public knows nothing of these events is a sad reflection of the superficiality of our media and decline in the quality of international news coverage.

It is also a testament to the failing of the political left, which has embraced the cause of immigrant and Palestinian rights and fighting climate change, legitimately, but neglected the plight of the Eastern Ukrainian people. Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Jeremy Kuzmarov

Jeremy Kuzmarov is the author of The Russians are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (Monthly Review Press, 2018).

[Sep 12, 2019] Dances With Bears: MARK GALEOTTI IS A FACT FAKER HIS BOOK ON RUSSIAN CRIME IS A HATE CRIME, A WAR CRIME

Sep 12, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

et Al September 9, 2019 at 9:14 am

I only mentioned Mark 'Gerasimov' Galeotti recently linked to a MT source one of you posted and hey, presto

Dances With Bears: MARK GALEOTTI IS A FACT FAKER – HIS BOOK ON RUSSIAN CRIME IS A HATE CRIME, A WAR CRIME
http://johnhelmer.net/mark-galeotti-is-a-fact-faker-his-book-on-russian-crime-is-a-hate-crime-a-war-crime/

Repeating lies over and over makes old-fashioned Joseph Goebbels-type propaganda. Repeating lies, then contradicting them; moving them from one government-paid think-tank to another; footnoting a new lie to an older version; quoting policemen and gangsters saying fatuities; adding slang and the words of pop songs -- this is still Goebbels-type but stretched out and product-diversified to make its author more money. This is Mark Galeotti's method .
####

The rest at the link and a deep dive on Galeotti himself.

[Sep 11, 2019] John Brennan's and Jim Clappers' Last Gasp by Larry C Johnson

Highly recommended!
The fact that Smolenkov purchased house on his name excludes his "extraction" to the USA. He probably legally emigrated amazing some serious money in Russia
Notable quotes:
"... [Smolenkov] follows Ushakov back to Moscow, where he is a mid-level paper pusher doing administrative support for Ushakov. The CIA gets copies of Putin's itineraries that Smolenkov photographs. He is a big hit, but ultimately produces nothing of vital importance because all truly sensitive information is hand carried by principles, and never seen by administrative staff. Moreover Ushakov advises on international relations, and would not be privy to anything dealing with intelligence. Ushakov, as a long-serving Ambassador to the US, would be asked by Putin to opine on US politics. Smolenkov has access to Ushakov's post-meeting verbal comments, which he turns over to the CIA. ..."
"... The initial reports of the Steele Dossier appeared in June 2016. This coincided with John Brennan ordering Moscow Station to turn up the heat on Smolenkov to gain access to what Putin is thinking. But Smolenkov has no real direct access. Instead, he starts fabricating and/or exaggerating his access to convince his CIA handler that he is on the job and worth every penny he is being paid by US taxpayers. ..."
"... The information Smolenkov creates is passed to his CIA handler via the secure communications channel set up when he was signed up as a spy. But these reports are not handled in the normal way that sensitive human intelligence is treated at CIA Headquarters. Instead, the material is accepted at face value and not vetted to confirm its accuracy. My intel friend, citing a knowledgeable source, indicates that Smolenkov was not polygraphed. ..."
"... This raised red flags in the CIA Counterintelligence staff, especially when Brennan starts briefing the President using the information provided by Smolenkov. Brennan responds by locking most of the CIA's Russian experts out of the loop. Later, Brennan does the same thing with the National Intelligence Council, locking out the National Intelligence Officers who would normally oversee the production of a National Intelligence Assessment. In short, Brennan cooked the books using Smolenkov's intelligence, which had it been subjected to normal checks and balances would never have passed muster. It's Brennan's leaks to the press that eventually prompt the CIA to pull the plug on Smolenkov. ..."
"... The dossier attributed to Steele, it has seemed to me, showed every sign of being the proverbial 'camel produced by a committee.' ..."
"... Although I know that fabricating evidence and corrupting judicial proceedings is part of its supposed author's 'stock in trade', I think it is unclear whether he contributed all that much to the dossier. ..."
"... His prime role, I think, was to contribute a veneer of intelligence respectability to a farrago the actual origins of which could not be acknowledged, so it could be used in support of FISA applications and in briefings to journalists. ..."
"... Although it had started much earlier, the moving into 'high gear' of the conspiracy behind 'Russiagate, of which the dossier was one manifestation, and the phone 'digital forensics' produced by 'Crowdstrike' and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait another, were I think essentially panicky 'firefighting' operations. ..."
"... Part of this involved turning the conspiracy to prevent Trump being elected into a conspiracy to destabilise his Presidency and ensure he did not carry through on any of his 'anti-Borgist' agenda. ..."
Sep 11, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

A flood of news in the last 24 hours regarding Russiagate. I am referring specifically to reports that the CIA ex-filtrated Oleg Smolenkov, a mid-level Russian Foreign Ministry bureaucrat who reportedly hooked himself on the coat-tails of Yuri Ushakov, who was Ambassador to the US from 1999 through 2008. He was recruited by the CIA (i.e., asked to collect information and pass it to the U.S. Government via his or her case officer) at sometime during this period. Smolenkov is being portrayed as a supposedly "sensitive" source. But if you read either the Washington Post or New York Times accounts of this event there is not a lot of meat on this hamburger.

Regardless of the quality of his reporting, Smolenkov is the kind of recruited source that looks good on paper and helps a CIA case officer get promoted but adds little to actual U.S. intelligence on Russia. If you understood the CIA culture you would immediately recognize that a case officer (CIA terminology for the operations officer tasked with identifying and recruiting human sources) gets rewarded by recruiting persons who ostensibly will have access to information the CIA has identified as a priority target. In this case, we're talking about possible access to Vladimir Putin.

If you take time to read both articles you will quickly see that the real purpose of this "information operation" is to paint Donald Trump as a security threat that must be stopped. This is conveniently timed to assist Jerry Nadler's mission impossible to secure Trump's impeachment. But I think there is another dynamic at play--these competing explanations for what prompted the exfiltration of this CIA asset say more about the incompetence of Barack Obama and his intel chiefs. John Brennan and Jim Clapper in particular.

A former intelligence officer and friend summarized the various press accounts as the follows and offered his own insights in a note I received this morning:

[Smolenkov] follows Ushakov back to Moscow, where he is a mid-level paper pusher doing administrative support for Ushakov. The CIA gets copies of Putin's itineraries that Smolenkov photographs. He is a big hit, but ultimately produces nothing of vital importance because all truly sensitive information is hand carried by principles, and never seen by administrative staff. Moreover Ushakov advises on international relations, and would not be privy to anything dealing with intelligence. Ushakov, as a long-serving Ambassador to the US, would be asked by Putin to opine on US politics. Smolenkov has access to Ushakov's post-meeting verbal comments, which he turns over to the CIA.

The initial reports of the Steele Dossier appeared in June 2016. This coincided with John Brennan ordering Moscow Station to turn up the heat on Smolenkov to gain access to what Putin is thinking. But Smolenkov has no real direct access. Instead, he starts fabricating and/or exaggerating his access to convince his CIA handler that he is on the job and worth every penny he is being paid by US taxpayers.

The information Smolenkov creates is passed to his CIA handler via the secure communications channel set up when he was signed up as a spy. But these reports are not handled in the normal way that sensitive human intelligence is treated at CIA Headquarters. Instead, the material is accepted at face value and not vetted to confirm its accuracy. My intel friend, citing a knowledgeable source, indicates that Smolenkov was not polygraphed.

This raised red flags in the CIA Counterintelligence staff, especially when Brennan starts briefing the President using the information provided by Smolenkov. Brennan responds by locking most of the CIA's Russian experts out of the loop. Later, Brennan does the same thing with the National Intelligence Council, locking out the National Intelligence Officers who would normally oversee the production of a National Intelligence Assessment. In short, Brennan cooked the books using Smolenkov's intelligence, which had it been subjected to normal checks and balances would never have passed muster. It's Brennan's leaks to the press that eventually prompt the CIA to pull the plug on Smolenkov.

There is public evidence that Brennan not only cooked the books but that the leaks of this supposedly "sensitive" intelligence occurred when he was Director and lying Jim Clapper was Director of National Intelligence. If Oleg Smolenkov was really such a terrific source of intel, then where are the reports? It is one thing to keep such reports close hold when the source is still in place. But he has been out of danger for more than two years. Those reports should have been shared with the Senate and House Intelligence committees. If there was actual solid intelligence in those reports that corroborated the Steele Dossier, then that information would have been leaked and widely circulated. This is Sherlock Holmes dog that did not bark.Then we have the odd fact that this guy's name is all over the press and he is buying real estate in true name. What the hell!! If the CIA genuinely believed that Mr. Smolenkov was in danger he would not be walking around doing real estate deals in true name. In fact, the sources for both the Washington Post and NY Times pieces push the propaganda that Smolenkov is a sure fire target for a Russian retaliatory hit. Really? Then why publish his name and confirm his location.

That leaves me with the alternative explanation--Smolenkov is a propaganda prop and is being trotted out by Brennan to try to provide public pressure to prevent the disclosure of intelligence that will show that the CIA and the NSA were coordinating and operating with British intelligence to entrap and smear Donald Trump and members of his campaign.

I want you to take a close look at the two pieces on this exfiltration (i.e., Washington Post and NY Times) and note the significant differences

REASON FOR THE EXFILTRATION :

Let's start with the Washington Post:

The exfiltration took place sometime after an Oval Office meeting in May 2017, when President Trump revealed highly classified counterterrorism information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, said the current and former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation.

What was the information that Trump revealed? He was discussing intel that Israel passed regarding ISIS in Syria. (See the Washington Post story here .) Why would he talk to the Russians about that? Because every day, at least once a day, U.S. and Russian military authorities are sharing intelligence with one another in a phone call that originates from the U.S. Combined Air Operations Center (aka CAOC) at the Al Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar. Trump's conversation not only was appropriate but fully within his right to do so as Commander-in-Chief.

What the hell does this have to do with a sensitive source in Moscow? NOTHING!! Red Herring.

The NY Times account is more detailed and damning of Obama instead of Trump:

But when intelligence officials revealed the severity of Russia's election interference with unusual detail later that year, the news media picked up on details about the C.I.A.'s Kremlin sources.

C.I.A. officials worried about safety made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia. The situation grew more tense when the informant at first refused, citing family concerns -- prompting consternation at C.I.A. headquarters and sowing doubts among some American counterintelligence officials about the informant's trustworthiness. But the C.I.A. pressed again months later after more media inquiries. This time, the informant agreed. . . .

The decision to extract the informant was driven "in part" because of concerns that Mr. Trump and his administration had mishandled delicate intelligence, CNN reported. But former intelligence officials said there was no public evidence that Mr. Trump directly endangered the source, and other current American officials insisted that media scrutiny of the agency's sources alone was the impetus for the extraction. . . .

But the government had indicated that the source existed long before Mr. Trump took office, first in formally accusing Russia of interference in October 2016 and then when intelligence officials declassified parts of their assessment about the interference campaign for public release in January 2017. News agencies, including NBC, began reporting around that time about Mr. Putin's involvement in the election sabotage and on the C.I.A.'s possible sources for the assessment.

Trump played no role whatsoever in releasing information that allegedly compromised this so-called "golden boy" of Russian intelligence. The NY Times account makes it very clear that the release of information while Obama was President, not Trump, is what put the source in danger. Who leaked that information?

WHAT DID THE SOURCE KNOW AND WHAT DID HE TELL US?

But how valuable was this source really? What did he provide that was so enlightening? On this point the New York Times and Washington Post are more in sync.

First the NY Times:

The Moscow informant was instrumental to the C.I.A.'s most explosive conclusion about Russia's interference campaign: that President Vladimir V. Putin ordered and orchestrated it himself . As the American government's best insight into the thinking of and orders from Mr. Putin, the source was also key to the C.I.A.'s assessment that he affirmatively favored Donald J. Trump's election and personally ordered the hacking of the Democratic National Committee .

The Washington Post provides a more fulsome account:

U.S. officials had been concerned that Russian sources could be at risk of exposure as early as the fall of 2016, when the Obama administration first confirmed that Russia had stolen and publicly disclosed emails from the Democratic National Committee and the account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta.

In October 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a joint statement that intelligence agencies were "confident that the Russian Government directed" the hacking campaign. . . .

In January 2017, the Obama administration published a detailed assessment that unambiguously laid the blame on the Kremlin, concluding that "Putin ordered an influence campaign" and that Russia's goal was to undermine faith in the U.S. democratic process and harm Clinton's chances of winning.

"That's a pretty remarkable intelligence community product -- much more specific than what you normally see," one U.S. official said. "It's very expected that potential U.S. intelligence assets in Russia would be under a higher level of scrutiny by their own intelligence services."

Sounds official. But there is no actual forensic or documentary evidence (by that I mean actual corroborating intelligence reports) to back up these claims by our oxymoronically christened intelligence community.

Vladimir Putin ordered the hack? Where is the report? It is either in a piece of intercepted electronics communication and/or in a report derived from information provided by Mr. Smolenkov. Where is it? Why has that not been shared in public? Don't have to worry about exposing the source now. He is already in the open. What did he report? Answer--no direct evidence.

Then there is the lie that the Russians hacked the DNC. They did not. Bill Binney, a former Technical Director of the NSA, and I have written on this subject previously ( see here ) and there is no truth to this claim. Let me put it simply--if the DNC had been hacked by the Russians using spearphising (this is claimed in the Robert Mueller report) then the NSA would have collected those messages and would be able to show they were transferred to the Russians. That did not happen.

This kind of chaotic leaking about an old intel op is symptomatic of panic. CIA is already officially denying key parts of the story. My money is on John Brennan and Jim Clapper as the likely impetus for these reports. They are hoping to paint Trump as a national security threat and distract from the upcoming revelations from the DOJ Inspector General report on the FISA warrants and, more threatening, the decisions that Prosecutor John Durham will take in deciding to indict those who attempted to launch a coup against Donald Trump, a legitimately elected President of the United States.

blue peacock , 10 September 2019 at 02:34 PM

I'm always skeptical of NY Times and WaPo and CNN reporting on anything national security related. It seems there is always an axe to grind.

I don't know why folks believe these media outlets have any credibility.

Larry Johnson -> blue peacock... , 10 September 2019 at 03:16 PM
Important to focus on the fact they are telling different and even contradictory stories. That's confusion on the part of the deep state.
Ana said in reply to Larry Johnson ... , 11 September 2019 at 10:00 AM
... And what helps us to decode the plot!
turcopolier -> blue peacock... , 11 September 2019 at 09:47 AM
BP

As I told LJ yesterday while he was writing this piece I have a slightly different theory of this matter. It is true that CIA suffered for a long time from a dearth of talent in the business of recruiting and running foreign clandestine HUMINT assets. This was caused by a focus by several CIA Directors on technical collection means rather than espionage. This policy drove many skilled case officers into retirement but the situation has much improved in the last decade and it must be remembered that an agency only needs a few skilled case officers with the right access to human targets to acquire some very fine and useful well placed foreign agents (spies). IMO it is likely that CIA has/had several well placed Russian assets in Moscow of whom Smolenkov was probably the least useful and the most expendable. It may well be that Brennan was using the chicken feed provided by Smolenkov to fuel the conspiracy run by him and Clapper against Trump's campaign and presidency, but Brennan left office and then the CIA under other management was faced with the problem of a Russian government which was told in the US press by implication that either the US had deep penetrations of Russian diplomatic and intelligence communications or that there were deep penetration moles in Moscow. that being the case it seems likely to me that the Russians would have been beating the bushes looking for the moles. In that situation the CIA may have decided to exfiltrate Smolenkov and his wife while leaving enough clues along the way that would have indicated that he might have been THE MOLE. People do not need a lot of encouragement to accept thoughts that they want to believe. A point in favor of this theory is that once CIA had him in the States they quickly lost interest in him, terminated their relationship with him and paid him his back pay and showed him the door. No new identity, no resettlement, he was given none of that. Finding himself alone in a strange land, Smolenkov then bought a house in the suburbs of Washington in HIS OWN NAME. Say what? That would not have happened if CIA had maintained some sort of relationship with him. And then... someone in CIA leaked the story of the exfiltration as movie plot to "a former senior intelligence officer" who gives sit to Sciutto at CNN. Why would they do that? IMO they would have though that having the story appear in the media would reinfocer Smolenkov's importance in Russian minds. Well, pilgrims, Clapper fits the bill as the "former blah, blah". He is an employee of CNN. CNN hates Trump and they quickly broadcast the story far and away. Unfortunately for CNN the story immediately began to disintegrate even in the eyes of the NY Times. The Smolenkov/Brennan affair will undoubtedly be part of the road that leads to doom for Brennan and Clapper but the possible CIA story is equally interesting.

ambrit , 10 September 2019 at 03:51 PM
Sir;
The fact that Mr. Smolenkov is out and about in his new home in the West shows that he is a small fish. As you say, if he was really in danger, he would be living somewhere in the West now under a new name and maybe a new face. The fact that his 'handlers' allow this lax security to happen is a sign of how unimportant he is. Unless, my inner cynic prompts, he is destined to become one of the "honoured dead," perhaps by a false flag 'liquidation.'
How low will Clapper and Brennan et. al. go?
Thanks for keeping this matter front and centre.
Fred , 10 September 2019 at 04:22 PM
So the son of Our Man in Havana went to Moscow. It would make a decent movies if it weren't for the damage Brennan and company have done to us. Obama, of course, knew nothing......
Diana C , 10 September 2019 at 04:49 PM
I have lost hope that anyone--especially Brennan and Clapper--will be held accountable for their attempt to "launch a coup" (as you put it).

Since their coup attempt ultimately failed, most people will be wanting just to move on.

As an unimportant citizen liveing in a fly-over state, I feel very angry that my tax dollars were wasted on these many government hearings and enormously expensive investigations rather than on actually on governing and improving the governing of our country.

The least we should be able to expect is that people who live off our tax dollars should be held accountable for all that wasted expense and for the lack of actual governing going on in The House and The Senate. So many problems that need the attention of our elected representative and Senators were ignored while elected representatives and representatives got to capture the spotlight and try to become "media stars" while accomplishing nothing.

I also feel terrible that men have been sent to prison for seemingly nothing and have their lives ruined for nothing but the chance of some to grand stand and claim they are really doing the jobs they were sent to do. So many people with no real sense of honor or of what is right and what is wrong.

Thanks, Larry. You have been consistently one of the good guys. (And I bet you are happy now that Yosemite Sam Bolton is no longer advising the POTUS.)

fredw , 10 September 2019 at 06:09 PM
"The fact that his 'handlers' allow this lax security to happen is a sign of how unimportant he is."

It indicates to me that he and any handlers believe that the Russians are OK with it. That could be for various reasons. But relying on Russian tolerance because he is a "small fish" seems incredibly trusting. Neither fled agents nor their handlers are known for their trusting natures. They have had some reasons stronger than that for their unconcern. Whether those reasons will survive publicity remains to be seen.

Oscar , 10 September 2019 at 06:31 PM
Are those CIA agents as stupid, naive & incompetent as you paint them to be?
If that's the case our country is in real danger! You are. Pro Trump
and, you are basically defending him, but Putin do own Donald Trump,whether you like it or not!
turcopolier -> Oscar ... , 11 September 2019 at 08:56 AM
Oscar
What is the evidence for "Putin do own Trump?"Is it Trump's attempts to conduct foreign policy relationships with Russia? That is his job.
JohnH , 10 September 2019 at 08:16 PM
My question is: why did they push this report now? Any way you cut it, the Times and Post are just providing some trivia and drivel. Without substance, they can accomplish nothing and substance has been what's been missing all along.

I doubt that Democrats, having been burned once, are eager to explore Brennan's smoke and mirrors again. It's never been a big concern to voters. And unless Brennan & Co. can do better than this superficial stuff, voters are never going to be concerned.

Maybe the Times and Post just felt sorry for Brennan, who's been off barking at the moon for years now.

Factotum , 10 September 2019 at 08:40 PM
Have a cup of Ovomaltine.
Rhondda , 10 September 2019 at 08:48 PM
...Smolenkov is a propaganda prop and is being trotted out by Brennan to try to provide public pressure to prevent the disclosure of intelligence that will show that the CIA and the NSA were coordinating and operating with British intelligence to entrap and smear Donald Trump and members of his campaign...

Well said. Thank you for following this closely and shining the light! You are an amazing American patriot, Mr. Larry C. Johnson. A glass in your honor!

plantman , 10 September 2019 at 09:13 PM
I think AG Barr might have cut these guys (Brennan and Clapper) some slack and let them off the hook, but NOW, what can he do but prosecute??

Brennan has shown that he is going to persevere with his fallacious attacks on Trump come hell or high water.

He needs to be stopped and brought to justice...

[email protected] -> plantman... , 11 September 2019 at 08:51 AM
Haha! Dream on. Barr IS CIA...remember his role back in the Slick WIlly days in Mena Arkansas?
Roy G , 10 September 2019 at 11:27 PM
IMO this scenario is the most plausible, Thanks for the sanity check. That said, given the desperation by these Sorcerer's Apprentices, I would be on the lookout for Mr. Smolenkov lest he be 'Skirpal-ed' in the coming weeks.
anon , 10 September 2019 at 11:36 PM
This whole story convinces now more than ever before that there is a high level spy/mole in the us administration and intelligence community.The only question is it spying for russia or china or both.Just a beautiful thing to watch.Those knickers,must surely be in a knot by now.
Even rocketman had a giggle.
Jim Ticehurst , 10 September 2019 at 11:52 PM
How many CIA Assets have been exposed..Tortured and Murdered During The Barrack Obama Reign...In May..2014 HE Paid a Surprise Visit to Afghanastan..His White House Bureau Chief Sent out an email to Reporters with a List of Who would meet With President Obama..It Contained the NAME of the CIA...Chief of Station in Kabul...Now that is REAL MESSY..
turcopolier , 11 September 2019 at 08:59 AM
[email protected]

Is there any basis for any of your assertions or are you just running your mouth?

David Habakkuk , 11 September 2019 at 10:37 AM
Larry,

Having been away from base, I have not been able to comment on some very fascinating recent posts.

Both your recent pieces, and Robert Willman's most helpful update on the state of play relating to the unraveling of the frame-up against Michael Flynn, have provided a lot to chew over.

Among other things, they have made me think further about the 302s recording the interviews with Bruce Ohr produced by Joseph Pientka – a character about whom I think we need to know more.

On reflection, I think that the picture that emerges of Ohr as an incurious and gullible nitwit, swallowing whole bucket loads of 'horse manure' fed him by Christopher Steele and Glenn Simpson, may be a carefully – indeed maybe cunningly – crafted fiction.

The interpretation your former intelligence officer friend puts on the Smolenkov affair, and also some of what Sidney Powell has to say in the ''Motion to Compel' on behalf of Flynn, both 'mesh' with what I have long suspected.

The dossier attributed to Steele, it has seemed to me, showed every sign of being the proverbial 'camel produced by a committee.'

Although I know that fabricating evidence and corrupting judicial proceedings is part of its supposed author's 'stock in trade', I think it is unclear whether he contributed all that much to the dossier.

His prime role, I think, was to contribute a veneer of intelligence respectability to a farrago the actual origins of which could not be acknowledged, so it could be used in support of FISA applications and in briefings to journalists.

Although it had started much earlier, the moving into 'high gear' of the conspiracy behind 'Russiagate, of which the dossier was one manifestation, and the phone 'digital forensics' produced by 'Crowdstrike' and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait another, were I think essentially panicky 'firefighting' operations.

They are likely to have been responses, first, to the realisation that material leaked from the DNC was going to be published by WikiLeaks, and then the discovery, probably significantly later, that the source was Seth Rich, and his subsequent murder.

Although the operation to divert responsibility to the Russians which then became necessary was strikingly successful, it did not have the expected result of saving Hillary Clinton from defeat.

What I then think may have emerged was a two-pronged strategy.

Part of this involved turning the conspiracy to prevent Trump being elected into a conspiracy to destabilise his Presidency and ensure he did not carry through on any of his 'anti-Borgist' agenda.

In different ways, both the framing of Flynn, and the final memorandum in the dossier, dated 13 December 2016, were part of this strategy.

Also required however was another 'insurance policy' – which was what the Bruce Ohr 302s were intended to provide.

The purpose of this was to have 'evidence' in place, should the first prong of the strategy run into problems, to sustain the case that people in the FBI and DOJ, and Bruce and Nellie Ohr in particular, were not co-conspirators with Steele and Simpson, but their gullible dupes.

This brings me to an irony. Some people have tried to replace the 'narrative' in which Steele was an heroic exposer of a Russian plot to destroy American democracy by an alternative in which he was the gullible 'patsy' of just such a plot.

In fact there is one strand, and one strand only, in the dossier which smells strongly to me of FSB-orchestrated disinformation.

Some of the material on Russian cyber operations, including critically the suggestions about the involvement of Aleksej Gubarev and his company XBT which provoked legal action by these against BuzzFeed and Steele, look to me as though they could come from sources in the FSB.

But, if this is so, the likely conduit is not through Steele, but from FSB to FBI cyber people.

How precisely this worked is unclear, but I cannot quite get rid of the suspicion that Major Dmitri Dokuchaev just might be serving out his sentence for treason in a comfortable flat somewhere above the Black Sea. Indeed, I can imagine a lecture to FSB trainees on how to make 'patsies' of people like the Ohrs.

If this is so, however, it mat also be the case that these are attempting to make 'patsies' of Steele and Simpson.

[Sep 11, 2019] On possible Oleg Smolenkov connection to Steele dossier

Sep 10, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

librul , Sep 10 2019 19:54 utc | 19

Is someone brewing up some fresh Novichok nerve agent as we speak?

Don't touch those doorknobs, Oleg!

for future reference: this post was for amusement purposes only

[Sep 11, 2019] There is the possibility that CIA extracted a minor source to divert attention from someone or someones who remain(s) in place.

Notable quotes:
"... So, this fully-spun story, apparently a mix of fact and fiction, arises at this moment to prop up the Russia-leaked-email hoax? ..."
"... If that's the case, does that mean this story's "authors" release it now to keep at least part of the Russia hoax alive as the Flynn case plods toward charges being dropped or because the Concord case is turning into a cluster f*k? Maybe someone is worried about the DNC-insider-leaked-email story breaking out? We need to talk about Rich? ..."
"... if I am wrong in supposing that a senior Chekist would never, as a question of policy, have been allowed a passport for foreign travel for him and his family. ..."
"... If Oleg Smolenkov reported allegedly "valuable" insider information about Russia's interference in US elections, as they say first hand, then why did Mueller's investigation fail? ..."
"... The New York Times story resurrects the Russia collusion hoax. This time the proof comes from Oleg Smolenkov. The story is identical to what the Steele dossier claimed: Putin personally directed a campaign to interfere in the US presidential elections. ..."
"... Every part of Steele narrative has already been shown to be a hoax and a fabrication. What proves that the Steele dossier is a work of fiction is that it is written from a fly-on-the-wall point of view. Only a person who was sitting in the same room with Putin when he had secret meetings could have written it. So how many moles did the West have sitting on Putin's desk? It seems like the CIA mole and Steele's secret source are one and the same source. But if Oleg Smolenkov was CIA's most tightly guarded secret, how did the information end up in Steele's dossier? ..."
"... Larry Johnson just posted about this on SST, and his take seems much more plausible: Desperation on the part of Clapper and his cabal as the chickens are coming home to roost. This story is chock full of holes, and the media hackery is disintegrating under its own weight. ..."
"... Perhaps someone should advise Smolenskov to stay away from park benches after eating seafood and to not touch doorknob's etc. ..."
"... "For those curious about what's going on with this bizarre Russia 'spy' story: Burr/Durham know Steele was fed obvious disinformation, they know who originated it, they know who peddled it, and it's just a matter of rounding up the whole network." ..."
"... In his third entry, he poses the following question: "So the only two unanswered questions about this particular pre-emptive leak campaign from the usual Russia hoax suspects are 1) why now, and 2) what specific event or official revelation are they trying to get ahead of?" ..."
"... Why the CIA would allow such a spy, once extradited, to live under his real name is beyond me. ..."
"... Because this man has nothing to do with "spies", "secrets" and "special services". He is an ordinary civilian, a former official from Russia. Many Russian ex- lives in abroad, including high-ranking persons. Smolenkov of course had no access to any "secrets", and had no access to entourage of the Russian president. ..."
"... That's the end of Smolenkov's anonymous quiet comfortable lifesyle. It doesn't send out a very reassuring message - that the CIA can publicly expose someone it considers a very useful asset. There must be a good reason why they threw Smolenkov under the bus in that way. ..."
"... It must be a very nice house. A 3-ish acre lot in that neighborhood has an assessment of $140k for the land. But the assessment for improvements for this house is over $900k while others in the neighborhood are more in the $600k range. I was looking at the aerial photos and trying to pick out what seem to be other nice houses, including ones with swimming pools which this one lacks, and which also have big garages (this one has 4 car garage apparently), but couldn't find a neighbor above an assessment in the $600k's. ..."
"... The only way that he's the 'source' of the Steele fiction is if the whole thing was in the style of LeCarre's "The Tailor of Panama" where everyone is lying and inflating what they know and people at the top are paying out good money for this because it suits their little power games. But any Moscow tailor with a couple of important customers would be positioned to run that scam as well as an aide to an aide to a foreign minister. ..."
"... My personal guess, he made his money by the more typical corruption in Russia, which means he was working for an oligarch. He lost his job, possibly during one of Putin's anti-corruption cleanup campaigns. He decided to move to DC with his oligarch money because he'd served 10 years in the embassy there and he liked the area. He is buying property in his own name because he's not part of any sort of witness/spy protection program and nobody in the USG is setting him up with a fake identity. ..."
"... Sergei Skripal was not just an turncoat for UK he also worked for Estonian intelligence. It seems to me the poisoning fits better as an Estonian job, to keep relations in Europe with Russia in very bad shape. It's easy to say that the Russians wouldn't be so incompetent, also goes for the UK, which could have come up with something more compelling if they pre planned it as false flag. ..."
"... Joe Mifsud and Claire Smith of MI6, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, especially FBI special agent Joseph Pientka plus that BIG shot FBI agent (who's name I forget) are the names to remember. Why aren't Misud and Smith extradited to face inquiry? ..."
"... So what is emerging? is Mueller due in court to prosecute the Russian ad agency that has fully shirt fronted him? Is Flynn business about to upend a steaming pot of turds over Mueller and other heads. Is Seth Rich about to be posthumously knighted by some New York monarch for his role in smashing the HRC cart in public? Or is Julian Assange about to be put through more torture for being a journalist and publisher? ..."
Sep 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

b , Sep 10 2019 18:01 utc | 2

Pat Lang has this interesting take :
All

And then there is the possibility that CIA extracted a minor source to divert attention from someone or someones who remain(s) in place. The open purchase of a house in the outer suburbs of Washington by the extracted would seem to support the possibility that this is all a diversion. The narrative continues that "a former senior intelligence official" told Sciutto, an Obama man, at CNN of all this. Clapper is "a former senior intelligence official" and a CNN "contributor" (employee) is he not? He is dumb enough to have had this story planted on him.

Double games, triple games ... Spies are so confusing ...

james , Sep 10 2019 18:14 utc | 3

thanks b... i agree about your comment on pls comment - double / triple and etc games can be played with spies... what seems clear to me is that some in the cia-msm want to frame trump.. this one feel apart fairly quickly... the frame up of russia over skripal has never been addressed by the usa.. in fact, most folks - using ew as an example - are still drinking the russia done it koolaid 24/7..
james , Sep 10 2019 18:14 utc | 3 casey , Sep 10 2019 18:18 utc | 4
So, this fully-spun story, apparently a mix of fact and fiction, arises at this moment to prop up the Russia-leaked-email hoax?

If that's the case, does that mean this story's "authors" release it now to keep at least part of the Russia hoax alive as the Flynn case plods toward charges being dropped or because the Concord case is turning into a cluster f*k? Maybe someone is worried about the DNC-insider-leaked-email story breaking out? We need to talk about Rich?

Funny about Lang and his crew. So much practical experience and yet they would make an interesting case study of extreme psychological compartmentalization as a means of denial.

Hoarsewhisperer , Sep 10 2019 18:19 utc | 5
Lucky Oleg & Antonina. In Oz a 760 square metre house used be known as having an area of 81 squares (8,172 square feet. In well-maintained condition such a 3-storey house anywhere in Oz would cost between A$2.5 million and A$3.5 million. Being in AmeriKKA Oleg's house probably has a basement too. That's another $150,000 minimum if it's damp-proof and ventilated.
karlof1 , Sep 10 2019 18:24 utc | 6
Nice networking by 4 BigLie Media outlets to make certain Russia knows where this man and his family reside. Maybe it's for an Outlaw US Empire sequel to MI-6's Novochock BigLie to be sprung as the election heats up. If I were the Smolenskovs, I'd demand an immediate identity change, sell ASAP and move to Idaho.
Michael Droy , Sep 10 2019 18:31 utc | 7
If Skripal could live safely under his own name I guess this guy could too. It just makes it easier for the US to get him in their own time. I don't really see this guy served any purpose until he was outed. Just a late effort to pretend that Russiagate had any credibility.
Montreal , Sep 10 2019 18:32 utc | 8
I wish that there was a resident Russian on this site, as there is on Craig Murray's.

That person could then tell me if I am wrong in supposing that a senior Chekist would never, as a question of policy, have been allowed a passport for foreign travel for him and his family.

Sergei , Sep 10 2019 18:33 utc | 9
If Oleg Smolenkov reported allegedly "valuable" insider information about Russia's interference in US elections, as they say first hand, then why did Mueller's investigation fail?
Petri Krohn , Sep 10 2019 18:57 utc | 10
WAS SMOLENKOV A SOURCE FOR THE STEELE DOSSIER?

The New York Times story resurrects the Russia collusion hoax. This time the proof comes from Oleg Smolenkov. The story is identical to what the Steele dossier claimed: Putin personally directed a campaign to interfere in the US presidential elections.

Every part of Steele narrative has already been shown to be a hoax and a fabrication. What proves that the Steele dossier is a work of fiction is that it is written from a fly-on-the-wall point of view. Only a person who was sitting in the same room with Putin when he had secret meetings could have written it. So how many moles did the West have sitting on Putin's desk? It seems like the CIA mole and Steele's secret source are one and the same source. But if Oleg Smolenkov was CIA's most tightly guarded secret, how did the information end up in Steele's dossier?

Roy G , Sep 10 2019 19:10 utc | 11
Larry Johnson just posted about this on SST, and his take seems much more plausible: Desperation on the part of Clapper and his cabal as the chickens are coming home to roost. This story is chock full of holes, and the media hackery is disintegrating under its own weight.
Arioch , Sep 10 2019 19:19 utc | 12
> Obama administration .... Russia had stolen .... Democratic National Committee and ..... John Podesta.

So we have to allege that Podesta's laptop between naked underage girls photos had list of CIA secret agents in Russian government? What else rid it contain and where did Podesta stole those lists?

Same question about Paki-managed DNC server. Was managing CIA agents in foreign governments outsourced to DNC or what?

"Once in the lifetime of yer townfolk! F..en circus! Imbecile clowns! Degenerate tamers! Deformed strongmen! Dysfunctional acrobats! Don't miss out!"

Qua , Sep 10 2019 19:21 utc | 13
Perhaps someone should advise Smolenskov to stay away from park benches after eating seafood and to not touch doorknob's etc.
Uncle $cam , Sep 10 2019 19:24 utc | 14
Speaking of outed Spy's..."Undercover" -- Valerie Plame for Congress "When elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers"
Gigi , Sep 10 2019 19:26 utc | 15
@2
Diversion is one of the three possibilities that I can think of:

1) clan wars within US special services, particularly in view of the 2020 elections.

2) diversion (as suggested by col. Pat Lang)

3) preparation of the ground to make this guy a "sacrificial lamb" like Scripal, to avoid any new rapprochement between the US and Russia after the end of the Muller report.

(comment originally posted at http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2019/09/he-was-never-qualified-to-start-with.html#disqus_thread )

james , Sep 10 2019 19:35 utc | 16
@11 roy g.. this is what i said @3 "what seems clear to me is that some in the cia-msm want to frame trump.. this one feel apart fairly quickly..." for others who want to read larry johnsons latest at sst here...

@4 casey - last line.. ditto my thoughts..

karlof1 , Sep 10 2019 19:39 utc | 17
Interesting Tweet thread by a Sean M Davis has 5 entries and almost 1000 retweets beginning with this:

"For those curious about what's going on with this bizarre Russia 'spy' story: Burr/Durham know Steele was fed obvious disinformation, they know who originated it, they know who peddled it, and it's just a matter of rounding up the whole network."

In his third entry, he poses the following question: "So the only two unanswered questions about this particular pre-emptive leak campaign from the usual Russia hoax suspects are 1) why now, and 2) what specific event or official revelation are they trying to get ahead of?"

The easy answer is the story itself is enough of a distraction as the 1000 retweets show.

Clueless Joe , Sep 10 2019 19:44 utc | 18
I tend to agree with Larry Johnson (at Pat Lang's) that this guy wasn't that useful back then. He might have become more useful, had he stayed at the Kremlin and rose further up the ladder, granted; or Obama's top guys assumed he wouldn't and it wasn't an issue to risk to burn him.
Clueless Joe , Sep 10 2019 19:44 utc | 18
I tend to agree with Larry Johnson (at Pat Lang's) that this guy wasn't that useful back then. He might have become more useful, had he stayed at the Kremlin and rose further up the ladder, granted; or Obama's top guys assumed he wouldn't and it wasn't an issue to risk to burn him.
librul , Sep 10 2019 19:54 utc | 19
Is someone brewing up some fresh Novichok nerve agent as we speak?

Don't touch those doorknobs, Oleg!

for future reference: this post was for amusement purposes only

alaff , Sep 10 2019 19:57 utc | 20
This whole story is entirely in the spirit of Hollywood comics. I had a good laugh when I saw the news about the "valuable spy successfully extracted from Russia".

Here are some reasons why this is fake/disinformation:

1) The news was published by CNN. I think there's no need to explain whether it is worth taking seriously the "sensations" published by news outlets with a reputation like CNN.

2) Sorry, but you must be a complete idiot (in the medical sense) to openly declare in the media that you had a "very valuable spy" in the immediate circle of the president of the Russian Federation (or any other country). Just because in this way you, by your own hands, are giving your opponent the reason to "strengthen control", conduct checks and identify those [other] people who might be able to work for you for a long time and be useful. When this really takes place in real life (the presence of a spy of the highest rank, close to the head of state), then this becomes public only after many years/decades, when the 'Top Secret' stamp is removed from the documents, you know.

3) V.Putin is a former intelligence officer. To put it mildly, it is very naive to assume that the presence of an "American spy" (close to Putin) would not be known to a person with Putin's experience/knowledge/capacity.

4) To be a spy, a member of the inner circle of the President of Russia (or any other country) and not to be exposed, one need to have extraordinary abilities and competencies. This is the highest class. In recent years, it seems only the lazy one did not notice and did not note the monstrous degradation of the American political class. These people do not know how to behave in a civilized society, do not have the traditions and culture of diplomacy and communication. The situation is similar in the American defense industry. With this level of decline in the competence of the American elite (political, military, etc.), to assume that they have such a ultra-high-class spy is at least very strange.

5) The fact that the "valuable spy" in the inner circle of the Russian president is pure CNN fiction is confirmed in practice. What I mean:

  • - If Smolenkov is really a "very valuable spy" and had access to "secrets," it's rather strange that he didn't tell the CIA, for example, about the Crimean operation of the Russian Federation in 2014. Russia's actions then began for the United States (and not only for the United States, by the way) a complete surprise. This is some really strange "valuable spy" who did not know anything about the intentions and actions of the Russian leadership in the spring of 2014.
  • - If Smolenkov is really a "very valuable spy," and had access to "secrets," the fact that he knew nothing and did not tell the CIA about Russia's plans to launch the Syrian campaign in September 2015 looks unusually strange. Just to remind that the actions of Russia then became a complete surprise for the United States. They did not know anything about this and did not expect such a development of events. Within a month before the official start of the Syrian campaign, Russia transferred equipment and weapons to Syria. This remained a secret for all intelligence services in the world, no one noticed anything. Even Israel, located in close proximity to Syria, made a "discovery" about the presence of the Russian military there only 2 days before the start of Russia's actions in the SAR. A rather strange "valuable spy" who was completely ignorant of Russia's plans/actions in the Syrian direction.
  • - If Smolenkov is really a "very valuable spy" and had access to "secrets", it is very strange that he did not know anything and did not inform the CIA about the development by Russia of the latest weapons presented by President Putin in the spring of 2018. The presentation of the latest models of Russian weapons was a real shock for the United States, and I remember that at first the Americans, smiling, called all this "cartoons." Now they no longer laugh. The development of these weapons was carried out for many years. It's somehow strange that a "very valuable spy" never found out about it.

6) Serious Russian experts unequivocally spoke out that all this was fake and that Smolenkov certainly could not be a spy. In particular, Armen Gasparyan, one of the leading Russian political scientists, historian, writer (incidentally, who wrote several books on intelligence), spoke quite fully about this in his recent commentary .

Why the CIA would allow such a spy, once extradited, to live under his real name is beyond me.

Because this man has nothing to do with "spies", "secrets" and "special services". He is an ordinary civilian, a former official from Russia. Many Russian ex- lives in abroad, including high-ranking persons. Smolenkov of course had no access to any "secrets", and had no access to entourage of the Russian president.

An attempt to present Smolenkov as a "valuable spy" from exactly the same series as the clumsy attempt by the British government to introduce two Russian civilians (Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov) as "GRU agents". It is hardly reasonable to take this seriously.

However, all this is just my personal opinion.

Brendan , Sep 10 2019 20:05 utc | 21
That's the end of Smolenkov's anonymous quiet comfortable lifesyle. It doesn't send out a very reassuring message - that the CIA can publicly expose someone it considers a very useful asset. There must be a good reason why they threw Smolenkov under the bus in that way.
Mao Cheng Ji , Sep 10 2019 20:33 utc | 22
$925K for a 8k sqft house on 1.2 hectares? Sounds like a bargain. Not a very nice neighborhood, perhaps?
Sorghum , Sep 10 2019 20:52 utc | 23
This guy could not possibly be what the CIS and media are presenting to be. Living under his own name in Virginia? Could it be any simpler to find him? The Russians do have search engines, too.

B may be right that this is a double or triple play, but find it hard to see the benefits to pretending to have had a deep mole in the Kremlin. I also find it implausible that any Russsian diplomat who has been stationed in DC would not be viewed as potentially compromised. It would be relatively simple to feed him bullshit and see what filters into DC.

Margaret , Sep 10 2019 20:59 utc | 24
Many thoughtful comments here. My take, as a fan of Le Carre and Mad Magazine's Spy vs Spy cartoon, is that USA's spy was discovered and turned. He was dismissed, employed somewhere close by, and fed chicken feed for his CIA masters. When they realized he was a failure, the CIA got him and his family out with the possible object of turning him into a propaganda subject. Of course he would have to die first, but CIA could make it look like the Russians did it.
Smiley , Sep 10 2019 21:05 utc | 25
I'm generally interested in how spies are referred to in corporate media stories.

For instance, we were told constantly that Skirpal was a 'Russian Spy'. This ran contrary to the normal usage, which would have referred to a British Spy within the Russian government as a 'British Spy'. If that signaled a general change in language, then Solemenkov, would also be referred to as a Russian Spy and not as an American Spy. He shares with Skirpal having a Russian nationality, while he was spying for the Americans. Of course, when the propagandists are going for an emotional reaction, they can be relied on to use whichever helps tilt the story in their direction.

Smiley , Sep 10 2019 21:07 utc | 26
Historically, spy agencies aren't really known for their great humanity in pulling out a spy who is in a useful position just because they fear for that spy's safety. The more common course of action for Spy Bosses is to keep the spy in place, keep pushing for more, more, more information from the spy, before perhaps holding a brief moment of silence over their spy ending up in prison.
S , Sep 10 2019 21:18 utc | 27
@karlof1 #6:
Maybe it's for an Outlaw US Empire sequel to MI-6's Novochock BigLie to be sprung as the election heats up.

That's what I thought as well. Why would the MSM hype a spy other than establishing his persona in the public eye, to be followed by some event later? Either he's a double agent and they will kill him and blame it on Russia, or he is not a double agent and they will use him to announce some "strong evidence" of Trump–Russia connection.

Sabine , Sep 10 2019 21:57 utc | 28
so when can we expect the US / Russia to finally save us all from ourselfs?

fuck are you guys not tired of this bullshit kabuki theatre that you get fed daily in order to keep you amused and busy?

William Gruff , Sep 10 2019 22:09 utc | 29
Part of the intention of this farce is to give the CIA and the CIA News Network (CNN) the opportunity to pretend that they are not knotted together like mating dogs (I leave it up to the reader to guess which one is the bitch).
Madeira , Sep 10 2019 22:11 utc | 30
A theory:

1. Smolenkov was the source of the Steele Report, in other words he received a substantial payment to come up with fictional "dirt" on Trump.

2. With all the publicity about the Steele report, Brennan/Obama/etc. were scared (and with good reason) that the Russians would figure out that Smolenkov was the source and would then make a grand show of his confessing to how he had made everything up at the request of US/UK intelligence agencies.

3. Therefore he was extricated for a very good reason (if you are Obama/Brennan, that is).

4. His extrication is now being used as an anti-Trump weapon, but also as a pre-emptive measure to reduce the fallout if (or when) reports emerge that Smolenkov was the source for Steele.

Peter AU 1 , Sep 10 2019 22:33 utc | 31
Be interesting to know what was occurring if Smolenkov was the source for the Steele report. Whatever information he was sending, that he just left on holidays makes me think Russian intel were on the ball and had started feeding him a bit of disinformation.
karlof1 , Sep 10 2019 22:35 utc | 32
Sabine @28--

I don't expect the US--and by US I mean the Current Oligarchy--to save anyone, while Russia is very busy trying to save its current and future populace--the differences being quite extreme. Since the US isn't intent on saving anyone, it wants to ensure its populace thinks other governments act the same way toward their populaces so the US populace doesn't get any ideas about saving itself from its own viscous government. Busting that narrative is what keeps us busy--There IS an alternative.

Smiley , Sep 10 2019 22:41 utc | 33
From digging around on the property site (from the link).

It must be a very nice house. A 3-ish acre lot in that neighborhood has an assessment of $140k for the land. But the assessment for improvements for this house is over $900k while others in the neighborhood are more in the $600k range. I was looking at the aerial photos and trying to pick out what seem to be other nice houses, including ones with swimming pools which this one lacks, and which also have big garages (this one has 4 car garage apparently), but couldn't find a neighbor above an assessment in the $600k's.

The neighborhood as a whole has had its valuations decline in the 2018 biannual assessment. Not sure why, but maybe the neighborhood of 20 year old mansions isn't as hot as some newer developments. The last previous lowering of assessment values occurred during the Great-Not-A-Depression in the 2008 revaluations. Note, the land is not considered to have lower values, but all of the homes on the street have had the assessments of the improvements on the property lowered in the last reassessments.

Hard to tell much about the selling price from neighboring properties. Many of the neighbors bought their homes direct from the construction company back in the early years of the century. So not too many direct compares for homes bought in 2018.

Smiley , Sep 10 2019 22:54 utc | 34
A point that appears to have missed by several is that an aide to an aide to the foreign minister is not likely to have access to Putin's super-top-secret plans to use a few thousand dollars worth of utube and twit ads to change the course of multi-billion dollar American election, nor would he have access to information that might be used to blackmail a potential foreign leader. Both would be closely held secrets and apparently way above his pay grade. Often the FM wouldn't know of either, and both operations would be compartmentalized into a close team Putin can trust.

The only way that he's the 'source' of the Steele fiction is if the whole thing was in the style of LeCarre's "The Tailor of Panama" where everyone is lying and inflating what they know and people at the top are paying out good money for this because it suits their little power games. But any Moscow tailor with a couple of important customers would be positioned to run that scam as well as an aide to an aide to a foreign minister.

My personal guess, he made his money by the more typical corruption in Russia, which means he was working for an oligarch. He lost his job, possibly during one of Putin's anti-corruption cleanup campaigns. He decided to move to DC with his oligarch money because he'd served 10 years in the embassy there and he liked the area. He is buying property in his own name because he's not part of any sort of witness/spy protection program and nobody in the USG is setting him up with a fake identity.

Turner , Sep 10 2019 23:02 utc | 35
Does anyone really believe that the Kremlin takes as the truth what they hear on CNN?
karlof1 , Sep 10 2019 23:11 utc | 36
Smiley @33&34--

House likely bought by CIA and annual upkeep--taxes etc.--also paid by them.

MoA's investigators have fairly well established that Skripal was the most likely contributor to the Steele Dossier given the overall web of established connections--that was most certainly an MI-6 operation in league with DNC/HRC officials, not CIA, although CIA was involved in Russiagate Cover-up.

In examining Russia's foreign policy, where were the compromises generated by this alleged spy? Aside from the UNSC vote debacle on Libya, I see nothing but a string of successes, although the Ukraine Coup wasn't debauched. IMO, Outlaw US Empire policy toward Russia has failed spectacularly, and it is within the US government where I'd expect to find well placed spies.

james , Sep 10 2019 23:15 utc | 37
@35 turner.. no.. and no one here at moa believes anything out of the western msm either... see @ 29 william gruff comment for more meaningful lingo on the set up..
Uncle $cam , Sep 10 2019 23:21 utc | 38
Does anyone really believe that the Kremlin takes as the truth what they hear on CNN?

ha! Emphatically, Yes, most Mericans, think they think that.. Because most Mericans think everyone but Merican's are stupid.

Smiley , Sep 10 2019 23:21 utc | 39
Here's a tough problem for a counter-intelligence agent. Find the source of info for a fictional report.

Normally, after a link, one avenue of investigation would be to check who had access to the leaked information. But, if the report is completely fictional, then there is no list of people who had access to information that didn't exist. Everyone or no one had equal access to the non-existent information. The Tailor of Moscow had the same access to the non-existent information as did Putin's closest personal aide. Who done it?

willie , Sep 10 2019 23:30 utc | 40
Headline in le Figaro:

Ingérence russe :la CIA disposait d'une source haut-placée au Kremlin.
Russian collusion: CIA had high placed source at the Kremlin.

A lot of commentators see the incongruence of this title and make jokes about it. Really, when a superpower becomes a source of jokes and ridicule, than the end might be nigh.

Jackrabbit , Sep 11 2019 0:30 utc | 41
Evidence-free accusations of Russian meddling. Now with extra sauce.

<> <> <> <> <> <>

We don't really know WHY this spy was extracted. Anyone that believes that Russiagate was deliberately planned as part of the new Cold War is not surprised at yet another attempt to strengthen the nonexistent case for Russian meddling.

JasonT , Sep 11 2019 0:44 utc | 42
smiley @34 seems to have the most logical take on this.
GoldmanKropotkin , Sep 11 2019 0:47 utc | 43
The first report in US Press about Putin personally involved was on Dec 14 2016.
Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said.

Putin's objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a "vendetta" against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to "split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn't depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore," the official said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-officials-putin-personally-involved-u-s-election-hack-n696146

Notice the source is spies working for US Allies. Remember that the NSA did not sign off on the Russian interference/hacking because they were concerned that too much critical info rested on intelligence from a single foreign country.

Sergei Skripal was not just an turncoat for UK he also worked for Estonian intelligence. It seems to me the poisoning fits better as an Estonian job, to keep relations in Europe with Russia in very bad shape. It's easy to say that the Russians wouldn't be so incompetent, also goes for the UK, which could have come up with something more compelling if they pre planned it as false flag.

Notice how we have some sources saying concern grew after the Trump Putin meeting, where supposedly Trump gave Israeli intelligence to Putin on Syria, I think they were concerned Trump would have no problem revealing a spy for another government, much like he was free with foreign intelligence.

I don't think the exfiltration was the real source but someone to sacrifice, to protect the real source, who is working for Estonian intelligence. To me this seems like it is possibly Anton Vaino, Chief of Staff of the Kremlin since August 2016, Deputy Chief of Staff of Kremlin before that. This is not to say his info is accurate, but is in line with the foreign policy of Estonia to alienate everyone with Russia.

Yeah, Right , Sep 11 2019 0:57 utc | 44
Just out of curiousity, if what has been reported is true then what reason would Mueller have to exclude this from his report? The dude is proof of the Russia-did-it!! narrative. Check.The dude has already been extracted. Check. The Russians must have already noticed that he has done a runner. Check.

What would stop Mueller from producing a one-paragraph report that starts with: "we know the following to be true because for the last decade everything that Putin did was being relayed to us by an aide to the foreign policy advisor to the Kremlin, since extracted and now living in the USA".

I mean, bit of a slam-dunk, don't you think?

uncle tungsten , Sep 11 2019 3:00 utc | 45
I call it a red herring, and I bet this sucker has been fully set up. Publicly listed address and all the indicators are that he is held in reserve to throw to the dogs whenever the action gets too close to the mongrel perpetrators.

Joe Mifsud and Claire Smith of MI6, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, especially FBI special agent Joseph Pientka plus that BIG shot FBI agent (who's name I forget) are the names to remember. Why aren't Misud and Smith extradited to face inquiry?

So what is emerging? is Mueller due in court to prosecute the Russian ad agency that has fully shirt fronted him? Is Flynn business about to upend a steaming pot of turds over Mueller and other heads. Is Seth Rich about to be posthumously knighted by some New York monarch for his role in smashing the HRC cart in public? Or is Julian Assange about to be put through more torture for being a journalist and publisher?

This poor Russian sod is a patsy for the vicious deep state game that now needs to prey on him and deliver his carcass to the howling mob and so distract them again. This Friday's quiet press releases might hold a clue.

snake , Sep 11 2019 3:47 utc | 46
plausible

maybe

where is the diversion.. lots of activity in Afghanistan and Golan today.. Turkey is moving into N. Syria.. Venezuela.. where is the diversion/

dltravers , Sep 11 2019 3:51 utc | 47
This guy will probably be making the rounds on CNN and cable news promoting the Steele dossier and the Russian collusion hoax as its complete disintegration is now fully evident. Offer up some turds on a plate, dress it up with a pinch a parsley and the truth will be avoided.

The whole 2 year media storm of lies on Russian collusion will be avoided by offering up another turd on a plate. This guy will pull down a few million and the media will never admit their false reporting.

Jen , Sep 11 2019 4:54 utc | 48
It would seem that a great deal has certainly changed at the CIA since 2003 when Valerie Plame was revealed as a spy by a newspaper journalist who was given the information about her during a phone conversation with someone close to the White House at the time, apparently to punish her ambassador husband Joseph Wilson for going to Niger to verify if that country had exported uranium to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Then there was shock and anger at the time that the cover of a CIA operative had been blown.

Now the CIA doesn't even bother to give Smolenkov and his family new identities and biographies to explain their living in Washington DC, and even co-operates with the outgoing Obama administration in 2016 in risking the exposure of one of its own to try to stop Donald Trump from ensconcing himself in the White House.

Something certainly has changed in the culture of the CIA: while it was always a political animal, it is becoming an extremely ideological one as well.

Sunny Runny Burger , Sep 11 2019 5:40 utc | 49
The idea that this could be a fake spy is interesting.

Sabine wrote:

fuck are you guys not tired of this bullshit kabuki theatre that you get fed daily in order to keep you amused and busy?

Only speaking for myself I ignore almost all of it (and actively treat it as propaganda, deception, and manipulation) and take a lot of breaks. I test the waters (or sewage) from time to time but I don't expect much and have no right to expect anything either.

However despite such sentiments the last decade seems like it has been an improvement although too many people (and probably me as well) are searching for "replacements" to failures when maybe there shouldn't be any: any false choice requires at least two wrong answers but there could be any number .

az , Sep 11 2019 9:16 utc | 51
In Bulgaria is a spy scandal too.
Reschetnikov is banned for ten years to visit Bulgaria. A reporter from NYT has tried to interview him before steps are take in Bulgaria to investigate the case. The officials say the Russians wanted to divert Bulgaria to the asia-project and that money-laundering was used to finance subversive activities. The case started on 9.09 2019. Today the parliament heard the statements of the agencies. Nothing new they sayed
az , Sep 11 2019 9:20 utc | 52
I think the Nato-gang want to have a military war in the black sea. Turkey did not close the Bosporus for the Russians, so they lost the war in Syria.
Josh , Sep 11 2019 10:53 utc | 53
Sounds fishy, the whole thing. Of course, when everyone is lying about everything while they are pretending to fight with each other, it may well get a bit convoluted. CIA outing thrir own dude on their own propaganda outlet is quite strange though. Also, their dude just trotting about using his real name (in a publicly listed mansion no less),... ehh... Who knows...
Josh , Sep 11 2019 11:05 utc | 54
Of course, they could be trying to 'put him on the spot' to use him for yet another propaganda push (whether he wants to play along, or not). But, again, the whole thing seems a bit strange.
milomilo , Sep 11 2019 11:30 utc | 55
i would caution people here on patrick lang's views on this issue. remember he is an existensialist american "patriot" who stop at nothing and will approve of any warcrime to held up the mighty american empire. Look at patrick lang's history , he is ex intelligence and thus never left the "services" even when he is "retired".

Pat lang's hate toward those who criticize american empire is legendary.. just look at his own comments on SST.

another one to watch is patrick lang's friend called TTG which also US intelligence and it is not unknown for this guy to post or inject nonsense narrative on SST especially on intelligence matters concerning russia.

The posts that seems clean of US narrative lies seem to come from Publius Tacitus and Walrus. But then again never take off your mandatory antipropaganda shield especially on SST owned by ex spook who love the american empire and military trashing of the world

Sunny Runny Burger , Sep 11 2019 12:34 utc | 56
The following rumor (through sputniknews.com) is sort of educational even if it should turn out to not be true (its Boolean value is essentially irrelevant which is interesting as a separate matter as well): Trump mistrusts spies etc .
donkeytale , Sep 11 2019 12:41 utc | 57
Sabine - are you guys not tired of this bullshit kabuli theatre

No, we are tirelessly...chasing our own tails...endlessly drinking one exclusive flavour of koolaid...The Infotainment Sickness Unto Death...

cirsium , Sep 11 2019 14:25 utc | 58
@Jen, 48

It wasn't just shock. Scooter Libby, Cheney's (?) Chief of Staff, broke a federal law when he exposed Valerie Palme as a CIA operative. He served part of a prison sentence for this. Joseph Wilson verified that Saddam Hussein did not buy yellow cake. After his report was ignored, he wrote an article about his findings. I remember reading it in the International Herald Tribune. It put the WMD narrative in doubt.

[Sep 11, 2019] Even during Obama second term it was clear Putin and his staff did not trust the Obama administration to tell the truth about the weather let alone anything important.

Notable quotes:
"... Its said a reputation arrives on foot and departs on horseback and with ours all you can see now is the tail wafting the air. ..."
Sep 11, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

ted richard , 10 September 2019 at 08:47 PM

does it really matter any longer?

If you think that Russia or China or Iran takes this clown show seriously or trusts in word one Washington will follow through on what they say i have a bridge to sell you.

even during Obama's second term it was clear Putin and his staff did not trust the Obama administration to tell the truth about the weather let alone anything important.

to get anything done now with Russia or China or Iran i suspect its become impossible. all that's left between Washington, Moscow and Beijing is to avoid a nuclear ww3.

we have an impasse which is impossible to bridge. Russia and China are creating a new world order for those that become a part that's philosophically, morally and economically incompatible with the one Washington and its European vassals are trying to sustain.

only one winner will emerge from the struggle and i do not mean war although that is not impossible once one side reaches denouement point of economic degradation.

Its said a reputation arrives on foot and departs on horseback and with ours all you can see now is the tail wafting the air.

[Sep 11, 2019] NYT tries to save Russiagate narrative using Smolenkov defection

Sep 11, 2019 | www.nytimes.com

Some former intelligence officials said the president's closed-door meetings with Mr. Putin and other Russian officials , along with Twitter posts about delicate intelligence matters , have sown concern among overseas sources.

"We have a president who, unlike any other president in modern history, is willing to use sensitive, classified intelligence however he sees fit," said Steven L. Hall, a former C.I.A. official who led the agency's Russia operations. "He does it in front of our adversaries. He does it by tweet. We are in uncharted waters."

But the government had indicated that the source existed long before Mr. Trump took office, first in formally accusing Russia of interference in October 2016 and then when intelligence officials declassified parts of their assessment about the interference campaign for public release in January 2017. News agencies, including NBC , began reporting around that time about Mr. Putin's involvement in the election sabotage and on the C.I.A.'s possible sources for the assessment.

The following month, The Washington Post reported that the C.I.A.'s conclusions relied on "sourcing deep inside the Russian government." And The New York Times later published articles disclosing details about the source .

The news reporting in the spring and summer of 2017 convinced United States government officials that they had to update and revive their extraction plan, according to people familiar the matter.

The extraction ensured the informant was in a safer position and rewarded for a long career in service to the United States. But it came at a great cost: It left the C.I.A. struggling to understand what was going on inside the highest ranks of the Kremlin.

The agency has long struggled to recruit sources close to Mr. Putin, a former intelligence officer himself wary of C.I.A. operations. He confides in only a small group of people and has rigorous operational security, eschewing electronic communications.

James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence who left office at the end of the Obama administration, said he had no knowledge of the decision to conduct an extraction. But, he said, there was little doubt that revelations about the extraction were "going to make recruiting assets in Russia even more difficult than it already is." Correction : Sept. 10, 2019

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the timing of the initial reporting on the C.I.A.'s 2016 exfiltration offer to a Russian informant. An offer that appears to be the same one that The New York Times described was reported in 2018 in Bob Woodward's book "Fear."

[Sep 11, 2019] We don't really know WHY this spy was extracted. Anyone that believes that Russiagate was deliberately planned as part of the new Cold War is not surprised at yet another attempt to strengthen the nonexistent case for Russian meddling.

OK, lets' assume that neoliberal MSM are not lying. Then why Mueller did not include him in his report? He was already in the USA since June 2017. It is unclear when he was fired by russians.
Also as Smolenkov for a long time lived in the USA he knew very well what the USA wants and could lie with impunity trying to earn more money. In a way similar personality as Skripal.
Is the idea to create the second Skripals-style false poisoning hysteria to help to sustain RussiaGate?
Notable quotes:
"... The only way that he's the 'source' of the Steele fiction is if the whole thing was in the style of LeCarre's "The Tailor of Panama" where everyone is lying and inflating what they know and people at the top are paying out good money for this because it suits their little power games. But any Moscow tailor with a couple of important customers would be positioned to run that scam as well as an aide to an aide to a foreign minister. ..."
"... My personal guess, he made his money by the more typical corruption in Russia, which means he was working for an oligarch. He lost his job, possibly during one of Putin's anti-corruption cleanup campaigns. He decided to move to DC with his oligarch money because he'd served 10 years in the embassy there and he liked the area. He is buying property in his own name because he's not part of any sort of witness/spy protection program and nobody in the USG is setting him up with a fake identity. ..."
"... MoA's investigators have fairly well established that Skripal was the most likely contributor to the Steele Dossier given the overall web of established connections--that was most certainly an MI-6 operation in league with DNC/HRC officials, not CIA, although CIA was involved in Russiagate Cover-up. ..."
"... In examining Russia's foreign policy, where were the compromises generated by this alleged spy? Aside from the UNSC vote debacle on Libya ..."
"... A lot of commentators see the incongruence of this title and make jokes about it. Really,when a superpower becomes a source of jokes and ridicule, than the end might be nigh. ..."
"... We don't really know WHY this spy was extracted. Anyone that believes that Russiagate was deliberately planned as part of the new Cold War is not surprised at yet another attempt to strengthen the nonexistent case for Russian meddling. ..."
"... The first report in US Press about Putin personally involved was on Dec 14 2016 ..."
"... I don't think the exfiltration was the real source but someone to sacrifice, to protect the real source, who is working for Estonian intelligence. To me this seems like it is possibly Anton Vaino, Chief of Staff of the Kremlin since August 2016, Deputy Chief of Staff of Kremlin before that. This is not to say his info is accurate, but is in line with the foreign policy of Estonia to alienate everyone with Russia. ..."
"... Just out of curiosity, if what has been reported is true then what reason would Mueller have to exclude this from his report? The dude is proof of the Russia-did-it!! narrative. Check. The dude has already been extracted. Check. The Russians must have already noticed that he has done a runner. Check. ..."
"... What would stop Mueller from producing a one-paragraph report that starts with: "we know the following to be true because for the last decade everything that Putin did was being relayed to us by an aide to the foreign policy advisor to the Kremlin, since extracted and now living in the USA". ..."
"... Well, I just think Putin had more important things to think about than the charade that is now the US electoral process. Probably he felt (I'm guessing of course) that the whole Russiagate scenario was a desperate move to throw a curtain over the demise of American democracy that served his, Putin's, purposes very well because it kept the idiots busy while he shored up the badly leaking ship of his own state. ..."
"... And I go with Smiley@34 - no spy of even mediocre caliber would agree to being placed in such an exposed position under his own name, for crying out loud! ..."
"... It doesn't make sense that he would leave himself exposed if either in Russia or in the US he had undercover connections of this sort. Just doesn't make sense. But that he was the best the US operatives could come up with right now simply speaks to further deterioration of US ability to field persuasive stories. ..."
"... Putin hasn't had to worry about vendettas or showing corruption in American politics. Take a reliable poll. Who in the US thinks our politics ISN'T corrupt? ..."
"... We didn't need Putin, mastermind though he is, to 'create an image' of American unreliability. Was it Putin who reneged on so many treaties? Was it Putin who antagonized the Koreas? Was it Putin who set up the trade war with China? Was it Putin who threatened and sanctioned Russia, Iran, Venezuela? ..."
"... What can the Russians do to get ahead of the narrative on the likely impending demise of Smolenkov by novichok or polonium poisoning? ..."
"... The concern is about the three hundred million other Americans who are at least partially captured by the false narratives pumped out non-stop from their Plato's Cave displays. Is there anything that the Russians can do now to inoculate some Americans against the hard sell they will be facing when the corporate mass media ( Mighty Wurlitzer ) cranks up the multi-channel marketing campaign for the United States' own Skripal farce? ..."
Sep 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Smiley , Sep 10 2019 22:54 utc | 34

A point that appears to have missed by several is that an aide to an aide to the foreign minister is not likely to have access to Putin's super-top-secret plans to use a few thousand dollars worth of utube and twit ads to change the course of multi-billion dollar American election, nor would he have access to information that might be used to blackmail a potential foreign leader.

Both would be closely held secrets and apparently way above his pay grade. Often the FM wouldn't know of either, and both operations would be compartmentalized into a close team Putin can trust.

The only way that he's the 'source' of the Steele fiction is if the whole thing was in the style of LeCarre's "The Tailor of Panama" where everyone is lying and inflating what they know and people at the top are paying out good money for this because it suits their little power games. But any Moscow tailor with a couple of important customers would be positioned to run that scam as well as an aide to an aide to a foreign minister.

My personal guess, he made his money by the more typical corruption in Russia, which means he was working for an oligarch. He lost his job, possibly during one of Putin's anti-corruption cleanup campaigns. He decided to move to DC with his oligarch money because he'd served 10 years in the embassy there and he liked the area. He is buying property in his own name because he's not part of any sort of witness/spy protection program and nobody in the USG is setting him up with a fake identity.

karlof1 , Sep 10 2019 23:11 utc | 36

Smiley @33&34--

House likely bought by CIA and annual upkeep--taxes etc.--also paid by them.

MoA's investigators have fairly well established that Skripal was the most likely contributor to the Steele Dossier given the overall web of established connections--that was most certainly an MI-6 operation in league with DNC/HRC officials, not CIA, although CIA was involved in Russiagate Cover-up.

In examining Russia's foreign policy, where were the compromises generated by this alleged spy? Aside from the UNSC vote debacle on Libya, I see nothing but a string of successes, although the Ukraine Coup wasn't debauched. IMO, Outlaw US Empire policy toward Russia has failed spectacularly, and it is within the US government where I'd expect to find well placed spies.

Smiley , Sep 10 2019 23:21 utc | 39
Here's a tough problem for a counter-intelligence agent. Find the source of info for a fictional report.

Normally, after a link, one avenue of investigation would be to check who had access to the leaked information. But, if the report is completely fictional, then there is no list of people who had access to information that didn't exist. Everyone or no one had equal access to the non-existent information.

The Tailor of Moscow had the same access to the non-existent information as did Putin's closest personal aide. Who done it?

willie , Sep 10 2019 23:30 utc | 40
Headline in le Figaro: Ingérence russe :la CIA disposait d'une source haut-placée au Kremlin (Russian collusion: CIA had high placed source at the Kremlin.)

A lot of commentators see the incongruence of this title and make jokes about it. Really,when a superpower becomes a source of jokes and ridicule, than the end might be nigh.

Jackrabbit , Sep 11 2019 0:30 utc | 41
Evidence-free accusations of Russian meddling. Now with extra sauce.

<> <> <> <> <> <>

We don't really know WHY this spy was extracted. Anyone that believes that Russiagate was deliberately planned as part of the new Cold War is not surprised at yet another attempt to strengthen the nonexistent case for Russian meddling.

GoldmanKropotkin , Sep 11 2019 0:47 utc | 43
The first report in US Press about Putin personally involved was on Dec 14 2016.
Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said.

Putin's objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a "vendetta" against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to "split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn't depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore," the official said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-officials-putin-personally-involved-u-s-election-hack-n696146

Notice the source is spies working for US Allies. Remember that the NSA did not sign off on the Russian interference/hacking because they were concerned that too much critical info rested on intelligence from a single foreign country.

Sergei Skripal was not just an turncoat for UK he also worked for Estonian intelligence. It seems to me the poisoning fits better as an Estonian job, to keep relations in Europe with Russia in very bad shape. It's easy to say that the Russians wouldn't be so incompetent, also goes for the UK, which could have come up with something more compelling if they pre planned it as false flag.

Notice how we have some sources saying concern grew after the Trump Putin meeting, where supposedly Trump gave Isreali intelligence to Putin on Syria, I think they were concerned Trump would have no problem revealing a spy for another government, much like he was free with foreign intelligence.

I don't think the exfiltration was the real source but someone to sacrifice, to protect the real source, who is working for Estonian intelligence. To me this seems like it is possibly Anton Vaino, Chief of Staff of the Kremlin since August 2016, Deputy Chief of Staff of Kremlin before that. This is not to say his info is accurate, but is in line with the foreign policy of Estonia to alienate everyone with Russia.

Yeah, Right , Sep 11 2019 0:57 utc | 44
Just out of curiosity, if what has been reported is true then what reason would Mueller have to exclude this from his report? The dude is proof of the Russia-did-it!! narrative. Check. The dude has already been extracted. Check. The Russians must have already noticed that he has done a runner. Check.

What would stop Mueller from producing a one-paragraph report that starts with: "we know the following to be true because for the last decade everything that Putin did was being relayed to us by an aide to the foreign policy advisor to the Kremlin, since extracted and now living in the USA".

I mean, bit of a slam-dunk, don't you think?

juliania , Sep 11 2019 14:57 utc | 58

Well, I just think Putin had more important things to think about than the charade that is now the US electoral process. Probably he felt (I'm guessing of course) that the whole Russiagate scenario was a desperate move to throw a curtain over the demise of American democracy that served his, Putin's, purposes very well because it kept the idiots busy while he shored up the badly leaking ship of his own state.

And I go with Smiley@34 - no spy of even mediocre caliber would agree to being placed in such an exposed position under his own name, for crying out loud!

This was a guy who had big money stashed away, wanted to be in a place where rich guys are held in high esteem, planned his exit from a no-longer-friendly-to-rich-folk environment (if you had money in Russia these days, you should use it for the good of the country).

It doesn't make sense that he would leave himself exposed if either in Russia or in the US he had undercover connections of this sort. Just doesn't make sense. But that he was the best the US operatives could come up with right now simply speaks to further deterioration of US ability to field persuasive stories.

And this gave me some amusement:

Putin's objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a "vendetta" against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to "split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn't depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore," the official said. [Quote from Goldman Kropotkin@43]

Putin hasn't had to worry about vendettas or showing corruption in American politics. Take a reliable poll. Who in the US thinks our politics ISN'T corrupt?

juliania , Sep 11 2019 15:11 utc | 59
We didn't need Putin, mastermind though he is, to 'create an image' of American unreliability. Was it Putin who reneged on so many treaties? Was it Putin who antagonized the Koreas? Was it Putin who set up the trade war with China? Was it Putin who threatened and sanctioned Russia, Iran, Venezuela?

We, our leaders, masterminded it all. Sorry, Mr. Putin - you lose that enviable title. We own it.

William Gruff , Sep 11 2019 15:50 utc | 60

What can the Russians do to get ahead of the narrative on the likely impending demise of Smolenkov by novichok or polonium poisoning?

I know some here might say "Everyone would know it is a false flag if Smolenkov gets assassinated!" and that is certainly true if by "everyone" one means the regular readers here and at a few other analysis sites that are not controlled by the empire.

The concern is about the three hundred million other Americans who are at least partially captured by the false narratives pumped out non-stop from their Plato's Cave displays. Is there anything that the Russians can do now to inoculate some Americans against the hard sell they will be facing when the corporate mass media ( Mighty Wurlitzer ) cranks up the multi-channel marketing campaign for the United States' own Skripal farce?

[Sep 11, 2019] What can the Russians do to get ahead of the narrative on the likely impending demise of Smolenkov by novichok or polonium poisoning?

Sep 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

William Gruff , Sep 11 2019 15:50 utc | 60

What can the Russians do to get ahead of the narrative on the likely impending demise of Smolenkov by novichok or polonium poisoning?

I know some here might say "Everyone would know it is a false flag if Smolenkov gets assassinated!" and that is certainly true if by "everyone" one means the regular readers here and at a few other analysis sites that are not controlled by the empire.

The concern is about the three hundred million other Americans who are at least partially captured by the false narratives pumped out non-stop from their Plato's Cave displays. Is there anything that the Russians can do now to inoculate some Americans against the hard sell they will be facing when the corporate mass media ( Mighty Wurlitzer ) cranks up the multi-channel marketing campaign for the United States' own Skripal farce?

[Sep 11, 2019] On view of Russiagate hysteria it is pretty clear that Vladimir Putin s observations about American society and the growing sense that middle class America is being left behind is accurate

Sep 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Sally Snyder , Sep 11 2019 17:43 utc | 3

Given that Washington continuously claims that Russians are responsible for the election of Donald Trump, here is an interesting look at what Vladimir Putin had to say about why Donald Trump was elected:

https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/09/vladimir-putin-on-americas-middle-class.html

While drawing links from economic class to voting patterns is difficult given that education impacts voting rates, it is pretty clear that Vladimir Putin's observations about American society and the growing sense that middle class America is being left behind is accurate. It is becoming increasingly clear that globalization benefits the few at the top and leaves behind the vast majority of society who feel that their place in society is under threat.

[Sep 11, 2019] On possible Oleg Smolenkov connection to Steele dossier

Sep 10, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

librul , Sep 10 2019 19:54 utc | 19

Is someone brewing up some fresh Novichok nerve agent as we speak?

Don't touch those doorknobs, Oleg!

for future reference: this post was for amusement purposes only

[Sep 10, 2019] Being called a narcissist by Jim Comey is akin to being accused of having sex with underage girls by the late Jeffrey Epstein by Larry C Johnsons

Highly recommended!
Sep 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Diana C ,

"Being called a narcissist by Jim Comey is akin to being accused of having sex with underage girls by the late Jeffrey Epstein."

As usual, your analogy here is spot on. I'm still giggling.

[Sep 10, 2019] If bombing is/was punishment for use chemical weapons, US would have to keep bombing itself to this day , as punishments for what they did to Vietnam

Sep 10, 2019 | www.unz.com

Paw , says: September 10, 2019 at 3:26 am GMT

If bombing is/was punishment for use chemical weapons , US would have to keep bombing itself to this day , as punishments for what they did to Vietnam ..And elsewhere.

On its own population as well..

[Sep 10, 2019] PATRICK LAWRENCE The Establishment is Changing its Tune on Russia

Notable quotes:
"... Macron then outdid himself: "We are living the end of Western hegemony," he told the assembled envoys. ..."
"... Macron is an opportunistic main-chancer in European politics, and it is not at all certain how far he can or will attempt to advance his new vision of either the West or Europe in the Continent's councils of state. But as evidence of a new current in Western thinking about Russia, the non–West in general, and Europe's long-nursed desire for greater independence from Washington, the importance of his comments is beyond dispute. ..."
"... Macron may prove a pushover, or a would-be Gaullist who fails to make the grade. Or he may have just announced a long-awaited inflection point in trans–Atlantic ties. Either way, he has put highly significant questions on the table. It will be interesting to see what responses they may elicit, not least from the Trump White House. ..."
"... who in their right mind would trust the U.S. anymore for any reason? ..."
"... Until now, the conflict with Russia has resulted in the conversion of the Ukrainian (and other formerly eastern bloc countries) economy from highly industrial to a supplier of cheap labor, some agricultural products, and raw materials to the EU. ..."
"... The empire's war machine always needs a boogeyman. ..."
"... America has earned the mistrust of most of the world. Although establishing a good relationship with Russia is a good idea, using it to isolate Russia probably will not work. ..."
"... Many of Patrick's observations are astute and well-reasoned. But he is ABSOLUTELY WRONG to put any faith whatsoever in Trump being able to negotiate ANYTHING of importance, whether it be with North Korea or Russia. Wake up! There is "no one home" in Donald Trump!! ..."
"... We are witnessing a severely incapacitated, mentally ill individual pretending to be a leader, who is endangering the entire planet. If this doesn't scare the shit out of you, you need to have your head examined! ..."
"... IMHO, it is a fool's errand for our policy makers to think that Russia can be "peeled away from China", or that Russia and China has not seen through that strategy as another ploy by the West to retain hegemony. ..."
"... The West has been hostile to Russia since its inception as a non-monarchy in 1917. ..."
"... The New York Times has played an effective Orwellian role in recent years, simply by reflecting unannounced policy directives – notably the smooth shifts in designated official enemies from ISIS to Russia/Putin to China/Xi all in the space of six short years. ..."
"... The Times has become nothing but a bunch of stenographers for the Intelligence Community. ..."
"... You nailed it in calling it Orwellian. ISIS as "official" enemy indeed is a classic representation of 'doublespeak.' All of those *accidental* U.S. arms-drops on their positions, helicopters showing up to rescue their leaders, the apparent invisibility of those oil tanker fleets freely and blatantly running the highways into Turkey for several years ..."
"... As much of that oil was shipped to Israel by Erdogan's kid at below market prices, it was another testament to the duplicitous nature of the entire scheme to bring Syria down. Fail. Epic fail. I love it. That egg looks great on Netanyahu's face. ..."
"... Trump and the establishment punish and sanction Russia but get along fine with MBS Mohammad Bone Sawman. I voted for Trump but got Hillary's foreign policy. The Devil runs America. ..."
Sep 10, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

In desultory fashion over the past month or so, we have had indications that the policy cliques in Washington are indeed reconsidering the Cold War II they set in motion during the Obama administration's final years. And President Donald Trump, persistent in his effort to reconstruct relations with Russia, now finds an unlikely ally in Emmanuel Macron. This suggests a nascent momentum in a new direction.

"Pushing Russia away from Europe is a profound strategic mistake," the French president asserted in a stunning series of remarks to European diplomats immediately after the Group of 7 summit in Biarritz late last month.

This alone is a bold if implicit attack on the hawkish Russophobes Trump now battles in Washington. Macron then outdid himself: "We are living the end of Western hegemony," he told the assembled envoys.

It is difficult to recall when a Western leader last spoke so truthfully and insightfully of our 21 st century realities, chief among them the inevitable rise of non–Western nations to positions of parity with the Atlantic world. You have nonetheless read no word of this occasion in our corporate media: Macron's startling observations run entirely counter to the frayed triumphalism and nostalgia that grip Washington as its era of preeminence fades.

President Donald J. Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron in joint press conference in Biarritz, France, site of the G7 Summit, Aug. 26, 2019. (White House/ Andrea Hanks)

There is much to indicate that the West's aggressively hostile posture toward Russia remains unchanged. The Russophobic rhetoric emanating from Washington and featured daily in our corporate television broadcasts continues unabated. Last month Washington formally abandoned the bilateral treaty limiting deployment of intermediate-range ballistic missiles, signed with Moscow in 1987. As anyone could have predicted, NATO now suggests it will upgrade its missile defense systems in Poland and Romania. This amounts to an engraved invitation to the Russian Federation to begin a new arms race.

But a counter-argument favoring a constructive relationship with Russia is now evident. This is not unlike the abrupt volte-face in Washington's thinking on North Korea: It is now broadly accepted that the Korean crisis can be resolved only at the negotiating table.

The Times Are Changing

The New York Times seems to be on board with this this sharp turn in foreign policy. It reported the new consensus on North Korea in a news analysis on July 11. Ten days later it published another arguing that it's time to put down the spear and make amends with Moscow. Here is the astonishing pith of the piece: "China, not Russia, represents by far the greater challenge to American objectives over the long term. That means President Trump is correct to try to establish a sounder relationship with Russia and peel it away from China."

It is encouraging that the Times has at last discovered the well-elaborated alliance between Moscow and Beijing. It took the one-time newspaper of record long enough. But there is another feature of this article that is important to note: It was published as a lead editorial. This is not insignificant.

It is essential, when reading the Times , to understand the close -- not to say corrupt -- relations it has maintained with political power in Washington over many generations. This is well-documented in histories of the paper and of institutions such as the CIA. An editorial advancing a policy shift of this magnitude almost certainly reflects the paper's close consultations, at senior levels of management, with policy-setting officials at the National Security Council, the State Department, or at the Pentagon. The editorial is wholly in keeping with Washington's pronounced new campaign to designate China as America's most dangerous threat.

It is impossible to say whether Trump is emboldened by an inchoate shift of opinion on Russia, but he flew his banner high at the Biarritz G–7. Prior to his departure for the summit in southwest France he asserted that Russia should be readmitted to the group when it convenes in the U.S. next year. Russia was excluded in 2014, following its annexation of Crimea in response to the coup in Kiev.

Trump repeated the thought in Biarritz, claiming there was support among other members for the restoration of the G–8. "I think it's a work in progress," he said. "We have a number of people that would like to see Russia back."

Macron is plainly one of those people. It was just after Trump sounded his theme amid Biarritz's faded grandeur -- and what an excellent choice for a convention of the Western powers -- that the French president made his own plea for repairing ties with Russia and for Europe to escape its fate as "a theater for strategic struggle between the U.S. and Russia."

Biarritz from the Pointe Saint-Martin, 1999. (Wikimedia Commons)

"The European continent will never be stable, will never be secure, if we don't pacify and clarify our relations with Russia," Macron said in his address to Western diplomats. Then came his flourish on the imminent end of the Atlantic world's preeminence.

"The world order is being shaken like never before. It's being shaken because of errors made by the West in certain crises, but also by the choices made by the United States in the past few years -- and not just by the current administration."

Macron is an opportunistic main-chancer in European politics, and it is not at all certain how far he can or will attempt to advance his new vision of either the West or Europe in the Continent's councils of state. But as evidence of a new current in Western thinking about Russia, the non–West in general, and Europe's long-nursed desire for greater independence from Washington, the importance of his comments is beyond dispute.

The question now is whether or how soon better ties with Moscow will translate into practical realities. At present, Trump and Macron share a good idea without much substance to it.

Better US-Russia Ties May Be in Pipeline

But Trump may have taken a step in the right direction. Within days of his return from Biarritz, he put a hold on the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a military aid program that was to provide Kiev with $250 million in assistance during the 2019 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1 and runs to Sept. 30, 2020. The funds are designated for weaponry, training and intelligence support.

Trump has asked his national security advisers to review the commitment. The delay, coming hard on his proposal to readmit Russia to a reconstituted G–8, cannot possibly be read as a coincidence.

There will be other things to watch for in months to come. High among these is Trump's policy toward the Nord Stream 2 pipeline linking Russian gas fields to terminals in Western Europe, thereby cutting Ukraine out of the loop. Trump, his desire to improve ties with Moscow notwithstanding, has vigorously opposed this project. The Treasury Department has threatened sanctions against European contractors working on it. If Trump is serious about bringing Russia back into the fold, this policy will have to go. This may mean going up against the energy lobby in Washington and Ukraine's many advocates on Capitol Hill.

To date, U.S. threats to retaliate against construction of Nord Stream 2 have done nothing but irritate Europeans, who have ignored them, while furthering the Continent's desire to escape Washington's suffocating embrace. This is precisely the kind of contradiction Macron addressed when he protested that Europeans need to begin acting in their own interests rather than acquiesce as Washington force-marches them on a never-ending anti–Russia crusade.

Macron may prove a pushover, or a would-be Gaullist who fails to make the grade. Or he may have just announced a long-awaited inflection point in trans–Atlantic ties. Either way, he has put highly significant questions on the table. It will be interesting to see what responses they may elicit, not least from the Trump White House.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune , is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is "Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century" (Yale). Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist . His web site is Patrick Lawrence . Support his work via his Patreon site .

Erelis , September 10, 2019 at 18:49

A few European countries may develop warmer relations .but reproachment with Russia will not happen in our lifetimes. Macron offered nothing but rhetoric. The West continues economic warfare and a militaristic stance toward Russia. Western institutions and interests are too tied into Russo-phobia to give it up–it is a financial and emotional heroin to the West. Break the Russian/Chinese alliance? Ain't gonna happen.

As for the NYTimes. They recently have published unsubstantiated accounts about some spy close to Putin who swears by gawd that Putin personally ordered Trump's victory. How is it going to be possible for Trump or even a new democratic president to engage Russia diplomatically with such widely published and accepted propaganda?. Every leading democratic party candidate have sworn to the Russiagate hoax and issued highly aggressive rhetoric. They will be called traitors if they even speak with Putin unless they attempt to punch out Putin.

Jim Glover , September 10, 2019 at 17:36

Now that the war monger Bolton is gone that is good news for pursuing Peace.
It is also good that Patrick points out what has been hiding in plain site from the divide and conquer propaganda from the mass media that the Cold War and the old ones have always been about the West against the East. Maybe the Trump challengers can join the new Pursuit of Peace for the good of Humanity. It Can't hurt!

Stephen M , September 10, 2019 at 15:14

This is as good a time as any to point to an alternative vision of foreign policy. One based on the principle of non-interference, respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and, above all, international law. One based on peaceful coexistence and mutual cooperation. A vision of the world at peace and undivided by arbitrary distinctions. Such a world is possible and even though there are currently players around the world who are striving in that direction we need look no further than our own history for inspiration. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you one Henry A. Wallace, for your consideration.

(The following excerpts from an article by Dr. Dennis Etler. Link to the full article provided below.) --

The highest profile figure who articulated an alternative vision for American foreign policy was the politician Henry Wallace, who served as vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1940-1944 and ran for president in 1948 as the candidate of the Progressive Party.

After he became vice president in 1940, as Roosevelt was increasingly ill, Wallace promoted a new vision for America's role in the world that suggested that rather than playing catch up with the imperial powers, the United States should work with partners to establish a new world order that eliminated militarism, colonialism and imperialism.

Wallace gave a speech in 1942 that declared a "Century of the Common Man." He described a post-war world that offered "freedom from want," a new order in which ordinary citizens, rather than the rich and powerful, would play a decisive role in politics.
That speech made direct analogy between the Second World War and the Civil War, suggesting that the Second World War was being fought to end economic slavery and to create a more equal society. Wallace demanded that the imperialist powers like Britain and France give up their colonies at the end of the war.
In diplomacy, Wallace imagined a multi-polar world founded on the United Nations Charter with a focus on peaceful cooperation. In contrast, in 1941 Henry Luce, publisher of Time Magazine, had called for an 'American century,' suggesting that victory in war would allow the United States to "exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit."
Wallace responded to Luce with a demand to create a world in which "no nation will have the God-given right to exploit other nations. Older nations will have the privilege to help younger nations get started on the path to industrialization, but there must be neither military nor economic imperialism." Wallace took the New Deal global. His foreign policy was to be based on non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty.
--
Sadly, since then, despite occasional efforts to head in a new direction, the core constituency for US foreign policy has been corporations, rather than the "common man" either in the United States, or the other nations of the world, and United States foreign relations have been dominated by interference in the political affairs of other nations. As a result the military was transformed from an "arsenal for democracy" during the Second World War into a defender of privilege at home and abroad afterwards.

-- -
Foreign aid for Wallace was not a tool to foster economic dominance as it was to become, but rather "economic assistance without political conditions to further the independent economic development of the Latin American and Caribbean countries." He held high "the principle of self-determination for the peoples of Africa, Asia, the West Indies, and other colonial areas." He saw the key policy for the United States to be based on "the principles of non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations and acceptance of the right of peoples to choose their own form of government and economic system."

--

Wallace's legacy suggests that it is possible to put forth a vision of an honest internationalism in US foreign policy that is in essence American. His approach was proactive not reactive. It would go far beyond anything Democrats propose today, who can only suggest that the United States should not start an unprovoked war with Iran or North Korea, but who embrace sanctions and propagandist reports that demonize those countries.

Rather than ridiculing Trump's overtures to North Korea, they should go further to reduce tensions between the North and the South by pushing for the eventual withdrawal of troops from South Korea and Japan (a position fully in line with Wallace and many other politicians of that age).
Rather than demonizing and isolating Russia (as a means to score political points against Trump), progressives should call for a real détente, that recognizes Russia's core interests, proposes that NATO withdraw troops from Russia's borders, ends sanctions and reintegrates Russia into the greater European economy. They could even call for an end to NATO and the perpetuation of the dangerous global rift between East and West that it perpetuates.
Rather than attempt to thwart China's rise, and attack Trump for not punishing it enough, progressives should seek to create new synergies between China and the US economically, politically and socioculturally.
-- -
In contrast to the US policy of perpetual war and "destroying nations in order to save them," China's BRI proposes an open plan for development that is not grounded in the models of French and British imperialism. It has proposed global infrastructure and science projects that include participants from nations in Africa, Asia, South and Central America previously ignored by American and European elites -- much as Wallace proposed an equal engagement with Latin America. When offering developmental aid and investment China does not demand that free market principles be adopted or that the public sector be privatized and opened up for global investment banks to ravish.
--
The United States should be emulating China, its Belt and Road Initiative and Community of Common Destiny, as a means of revitalizing its political culture and kicking its addiction to a neo-colonial concept of economic development and growth. Rather than relying on militarization and its attendant wars to spark the economy, progressives should demand that the US work in conjunction with nations such as China and Russia in building a sustainable future rather than creating one failed state after another.

Link to the full article provided below.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/henry-wallaces-internationalism-path-american-foreign-policy-could-have-taken-still-can/5683683

Alan Ross , September 10, 2019 at 15:09

Now it is clear why the CIA spilled the phony beans on a spy they had in Putin's inner circle – to revive the anti-Russian animus that has been dying down.

Rob , September 10, 2019 at 12:00

But if there is a rapprochement between the U.S. and Russia, will that put the brakes on the new arms race?Surely, the defense industry will fight that with every fiber of their being. China alone is not so great a potential military adversary as to warrant so a great expenditure. Or is it? I have little doubt that some interested parties will see it that way.

David Otness , September 10, 2019 at 11:16

A breath of fresh air ?
Dare we hope?
Good luck peeling away Russia from China, they have some very solid bonds established. Besides, who in their right mind would trust the U.S. anymore for any reason?

... ... ...

Vera Gottlieb , September 10, 2019 at 11:04

Well, for far too long has Europe allowed itself to be "run" by the US. And sadly, Europe – up to now- has lacked the backbone to stand up to the Americans. Time to realize that, even without the US, the sun will still rise in the East America this America the other why should we have to wait until the US makes up it's mind on anything. We are grown up folks who can manage very well by ourselves without constantly having to worry as to what the US might do or say. Enough of this blackmail.

Richard A. , September 10, 2019 at 10:18

Prime Minister Abe favors readmitting Russia into the G7: https://youtu.be/yOC5g31cL30

Robert , September 10, 2019 at 10:02

Insightful, Patrick. This new shift will present many new challenges and opportunities for the US and Russia. I can see that if Trump is permitted (by deep state and NATO) as much access to Putin as Netanyahu has had, I can see a far more balanced US foreign policy and certainly a large step toward reducing world conflicts. Iran may be convinced to negotiate with Trump for removal of sanctions coupled with a new nuclear deal. I have no idea if this will impact the Iran-China oil/security agreement which is a (very expensive, unpopular but necessary) lifesaver for Iran and huge investment opportunity for China (backed with up to 5000 Chinese military). Syria needs the removal of US sanctions to stabilize its economy, and with the US onside, more pressure can be put on Turkey to stop arming the terrorists in Idlib, enforce their removal/surrender, and accommodate the Kurds within Syria. Finally, with EU participation, I can see rapid settlement of the civil war in Eastern Ukraine, and normalization of trade with Russia. Until now, the conflict with Russia has resulted in the conversion of the Ukrainian (and other formerly eastern bloc countries) economy from highly industrial to a supplier of cheap labor, some agricultural products, and raw materials to the EU.

AnneR , September 10, 2019 at 09:51

Mr Lawrence, apparently the tune has not changed re Russiagate, not really. That is if the news item on the BBC World Service this a.m. is owt to go by.

This was all about some supposed CIA asset in the Kremlin that they got out in 2017 (Smolenkov according to RT and Sputnik) who played a role, so the BBC said in furtherance of maintaining Russophobia, in providing said "reputable" secret agency (as now so viewed by the Demrats and DNC) with info about Russian – nay, Putin's personal – interference in the 2016 US presidential election. All of the (dis/mis) information that the MSM presstitutes have been selling us on both sides of the pond re the "heinous" activities of Russia-Putin were rehearsed again from Russiagate to Russian attempted and completed assassinations of escaped/released ex-spies, Skripal among them.

They, the US-UK-IS deep states, will not let it go. And their stenographers in the MSM continue to propagate the real dis/misinformation in order to keep the corporate-capitalist-imperialist western dominance warmongering/war-profiteering status quo in operation.

Meanwhile, NPR (and PBS doubtless) are to be headed by one John Lansing, who till now was in charge of that dispenser of "the truth, whole and unadulterated" the Voice of America and Radio Marti; and the BBC is partnering with DARPA-Mossad via Google, FB, Twit and the rest of the internet behemoths, as they told us (well, they didn't advert to the underlying structure, of course). Why is the BBC so doing? In order, they said, to ensure that we, the plebeians, the mindless bewildered herd, are no longer subjected to, no longer have our perspectives distorted by "Dis or Misinformation."

Heartening to know, ain't it, that they – the really existing state-funded and controlled media – have our best interests at heart?

Patrick Lawrence , September 10, 2019 at 16:26

I'm v pleased you picked up on this shard of nonsense, AnneR, and then took the trouble to write of it. I thought to do the same while reading this morn's New York Times. A flimsier, more obvious propaganda ploy I have not seen in a while, and this is saying something. This fellow must be Guccifer 2's in-law or something. My read: Those who recklessly over-invested in the Russiagate universe thought it would go away the instant HRC was elected. They're now stuck w/ it three years on, and this is another effort to keep it alive long enough to get it into the histories. They'll never make it. Transparently horse-droppings. Tks again for writing. Patrick.

Skip Scott , September 10, 2019 at 09:23

The empire's war machine always needs a boogeyman. Macron is proposing transitioning to a multi-polar world, and ending its vassal status to empire. Good luck with that. We can only hope that Putin's countering of our war machine keeps MAD a reality, and that the example that Russia and China are setting in opposition to empire will encourage other vassals to rebel. Waging peace in a multi-polar world is the only moral course of action. The war machine, with its huge waste of manpower and resources, is the main factor in our current path to extinction. Reining it in is the first step to ensure mankind's survival.

Herman , September 10, 2019 at 09:11

America has earned the mistrust of most of the world. Although establishing a good relationship with Russia is a good idea, using it to isolate Russia probably will not work. Meremark's comments puts it very well. Meeremark is on the mark.

Peter Janney , September 10, 2019 at 08:23

Many of Patrick's observations are astute and well-reasoned. But he is ABSOLUTELY WRONG to put any faith whatsoever in Trump being able to negotiate ANYTHING of importance, whether it be with North Korea or Russia. Wake up! There is "no one home" in Donald Trump!!

We are witnessing a severely incapacitated, mentally ill individual pretending to be a leader, who is endangering the entire planet. If this doesn't scare the shit out of you, you need to have your head examined!

jessika , September 10, 2019 at 07:47

The US has been fed b.s. for so long and it's hard to see getting the country in any decent shape, foreign policy or otherwise. The Pentagon and alphabet agencies have been calling the shots since the days of the Dulles bros. I can't see anything other than a top heavy collapse since this long con. It's good to hear Macron saying this and good for Orange Bejesus wanting to get along with Russia, but how far gone have humans gone before Mother Nature gives us the swiftest kick due to our stupidity?

peter mcloughlin , September 10, 2019 at 05:09

I agree with Patrick Lawrence's perceptive analyses of 'frayed triumphalism and nostalgia'. An empire on the rise, for example modern China, is probably less dangerous than one in decline. There are more of the latter type, making geopolitics dangerously unstable, and increasingly difficult to prevent world war, where the pattern of history seems to be pointing us.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/

Moi , September 10, 2019 at 02:54

Zhu, if you are not aware, China has just delivered the biggest F.You to the US in geopolitical history by more or less buying Iran oil.

China is to invest $US280 billion upgrading Iran's oil and gas sectors, unlocking a further $500 billion of otherwise unrecoverable oil, upping it's own oil purchases, opening factories to make "made in China" products, etc.

They also get to deploy 5,000 Chinese "security officers" so if the US attacks Iran they could kill lots of Chinese military.

See: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190907-a-blow-to-washington-china-to-invest-280-billion-in-iranian-sectors-targeted-by-sanctions/

Zhu , September 10, 2019 at 00:46

Should be "not submit, noy obey."

incontinent reader , September 10, 2019 at 00:39

IMHO, it is a fool's errand for our policy makers to think that Russia can be "peeled away from China", or that Russia and China has not seen through that strategy as another ploy by the West to retain hegemony. As for inviting Russia back into the G-8 and Russia's response, the following exchange at last week's Eastern Economic Forum in Vliadivostok is instructive [Yandex/Google translation of the Russian text]:

Sergey Brilev: Mr Abe, I would like to ask you about this. When I just said, "the big Seven" We all heard the report that President Trump was at the last summit of the "Seven" a kind of lawyer [advocate] for the Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin. You've seen it from the inside. Without breaking any obvious rules, after all it is a closed club, maybe you will tell how it was? (Laughter.)

Shinzo Abe: As for the G–7, there used to be a G-8, there was a discussion that creative influence on the international community is important. But as President Putin is well aware, because he took part in the" G-8″, there are such rules: you can only quote yourself, so other leaders can not be quoted. So I can't say exactly what President Trump said there, for example. But I personally said that Russian influence, Russian creative influence, plays an important role in solving international problems. Therefore, I raised the issue of Russia's possible return to this format. (Applause.)

Sergei Brilev: if they call, will you go, Mr President?

Vladimir Putin: Where?

S. Brilev: The "G-8". In the States, I think it's next. There, however, will be the height of Trump's campaign.

Vladimir Putin: At the time, the next "G-8" was to be held in Russia.

Sergei Brilev: In Sochi, yes.

Vladimir Putin: We are open. If our partners want to come to us, we will be happy. (Applause.) But we did not postpone it, our partners postponed it. If they want to restore the "Eight", please. But I think it's clear to everyone today, and President Macron just recently said publicly that the West's leadership is coming to an end. I cannot imagine an effective international organization that works without India and without China. (Applause.)

Any format is always good, it is always a positive exchange of views, even when it is held in a raised tone, as far as I understand, and it was this time in the "Seven", it is still useful. Therefore, we do not refuse any format of cooperation.

Jeff Harrison , September 10, 2019 at 00:32

I have to object on several levels, Patrick.

"Are Western democracies, the U.S. and France in the lead, rethinking the hostility toward Russia they conjured out of nothing since Moscow responded to the coup Washington cultivated in Ukraine five years ago?" Good question but it beggars the truth that The West has been hostile to Russia since its inception as a non-monarchy in 1917. The US refused to recognize it until 1933. The classic phrase "godless communist hordes" was intended to drive home the point that the commies were theoretically atheists and they were not capitalists. Russia helped it along by trying to spread communism just as the US is trying to spread capitalism now (we like to claim we're spreading democracy but that's bunk.) I'm not sure which is more distasteful, having some foreign economic structure shoved down your throat (communism) or some foreign political structure shoved down your throat (totalitarian dictatorship). Both suck.

"China, not Russia, represents by far the greater challenge to American objectives over the long term. That means President Trump is correct to try to establish a sounder relationship with Russia and peel it away from China." I realize you're quoting the Times but mind if I ask, what, precisely, are American objectives? If our objective was to simply live peaceably with the other nations of the world and dazzle them with the brilliance of every little thing we did, nobody, not Russia, not China, nobody could challenge that objective. But that's not our objective, now is it? It could be best characterized by the weekly exchange between Pinkie and The Brain. Pinkie: What are we going to do this week, Brain? Brain: Same thing we do every week, Pinkie. Establish world domination. That's never going to work. There are too many people in this world and too many countries in this world who will not put up with diktats from somebody else for the Brain to succeed.

As for the G7 becoming the G8, as I've already said, it's not gonna happen. Putin has already said that it should include India and China. The West won't accept that. Frankly, if membership in "the club" can be lifted as easily as it was last time, why should Russia be interested? As I've said, I think that Russia has turned eastward. If the west has something on offer, great but they wouldn't be looking for it. Russia has managed to make the sanctions regime very painful for the EU even though the EU doesn't seem to notice. Offering Russia a very junior chair at the G7 whilst maintaining the sanctions and other visions of economic warfare against Russia is not a calculus that Russia will be interested in.

This could turn into the one bridge too far for the Europeans.

Zhu , September 9, 2019 at 21:13

It'll be China, China, china, next. How dare they prosper! How dare they not submit and not obey!

jaycee , September 9, 2019 at 20:07

The New York Times has played an effective Orwellian role in recent years, simply by reflecting unannounced policy directives – notably the smooth shifts in designated official enemies from ISIS to Russia/Putin to China/Xi all in the space of six short years.

Judging by the Times' own comment sections, a fair number of the general public are quick to internalize a hatred of the "enemy" without reflection on how/why the object of their ire can be one day one villain, and then a whole new villain the next.

Steve , September 10, 2019 at 07:11

The Times has become nothing but a bunch of stenographers for the Intelligence Community. The days of them treating their sources with skepticism are LONG gone. I'm no fan of Ben Rhodes, but that guy was spot-on when he referred to the Washington press corps as a bunch of 20-something know-nothings whose ignorance makes them easily manipulated into becoming an echo chamber of support for whatever policies their government sources are pushing.

lysias , September 10, 2019 at 08:21

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

David Otness , September 10, 2019 at 11:01

" .. notably the smooth shifts in designated official enemies from ISIS to Russia/Putin to China/Xi all in the space of six short years."

You nailed it in calling it Orwellian. ISIS as "official" enemy indeed is a classic representation of 'doublespeak.' All of those *accidental* U.S. arms-drops on their positions, helicopters showing up to rescue their leaders, the apparent invisibility of those oil tanker fleets freely and blatantly running the highways into Turkey for several years. (The Russians sure found them in a hurry.) As much of that oil was shipped to Israel by Erdogan's kid at below market prices, it was another testament to the duplicitous nature of the entire scheme to bring Syria down. Fail. Epic fail. I love it. That egg looks great on Netanyahu's face.

Brent , September 9, 2019 at 20:00

Trump and the establishment punish and sanction Russia but get along fine with MBS Mohammad Bone Sawman. I voted for Trump but got Hillary's foreign policy. The Devil runs America.

Tim , September 9, 2019 at 19:48

Yes Bob, it would be a good change, except, if Britain is co-opted by the US, then it will be a wholly owned subsidy and block change in Europe.

Tim Jones , September 9, 2019 at 20:50

subsidiary

Tim Jones , September 9, 2019 at 19:40

Just hope Brexit is negotiated and Britain is not fully taken over by Washington as a new investment opportunity.

Ikallicrates , September 10, 2019 at 10:57

US corporations did indeed anticipate that post Brexit UK would be a new investment opportunity. The US health insurance industry, for example, was poised to swoop down on the UK as soon as the Tories finished destroying the NHS. But thanks to BoJo's bungling of Brexit, the Tories could lose the next general election, so they've reversed direction and are appeasing angry Brits by promising to save the NHS. By bringing down the Tories, BoJo may make Britain great again (#MBGA).

Meremark , September 9, 2019 at 19:18

RT said Putin says Russia in G-8 is improvident without China and India economies and geo-strategies also figured in. A G-10 league?

Putin's chessmanship is operaticly clean. not to be confused with poker as people generally do confuse. This lacks the bluffing of poker; in this the pieces of global power projection are standing on the board, chess obvious.

Maybe not so easy to peel Russia apart from China, if that's Plan B kicking around the Pentagon. At some point maybe they can consider Plan Delta ? which stands for change.

Steve , September 10, 2019 at 07:03

Let's be honest, the G-7 is pretty outdated. Canada and Italy are pretty much out of their league. America's hat and a fourth western European power seem unnecessary. Replace them with China and India, and bring Russia back in to make it the G-8.

floyd gardner , September 10, 2019 at 11:28

Thank you, Meremark. Putin does not take his directives from the NYT.

Daniel Rich , September 9, 2019 at 19:17

Macron, a Rothschild pawn, gives as much abut true Democrat as he does about the Yellow Vests' protest

No, no, not the Hong Kong, US flags waving goons, but ordinary French citizens who're fed up with the direction their government moves onward to, the ones you hear nothing about.

Bob Van Noy , September 9, 2019 at 17:25

Thank you Patrick Lawrence, if your analysis is correct it would be a turning point in international relations and extremely significant. I like to think that the web has put us about a week or two ahead of the headlines here at CN, so if the NYT is finally calling the events accurately, it would by a stunning breakthrough

[Sep 10, 2019] Now it is more then two years since intellignce againces started to push the Russiagate hoax

Sep 10, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Lyttennburgh said in reply to The Twisted Genius ... , 10 September 2019 at 03:20 AM

Ok, TTG. What's your proof? How can you believe, religiously, everything claimed without any proof?

The CNN article provided enough rope to hang itself with it. Literally anyone can try to verify it in a few easy steps:

1) Make a list of RusGov ranking officials by, say, May 2016.
2) See, who's absent in the current composition of the RusGov
3) Find out, who amongst those absent is no longer in Russia.
4) Of them, find out who had any kind of plausible potential to be the CIA asset, by having the access to all sorts of data and "insight into Putin's head" as per this CNN article.

Go ahead! Hey, anyone - care to join?

Ken , 09 September 2019 at 10:20 PM
After over two years of the Russiagate hoax pushed by the intelligence agencies, it's surprising you now uncritically swallow this new story.
confusedponderer said in reply to The Twisted Genius ... , 10 September 2019 at 06:11 AM
TTG,

re " I don't believe he's a Russian asset, either. His personality makes him unsuitable as a controlled asset. "

I think the key word here is indeed controlled . I have doubts that anyone can control him, and that excludes himself.

Should it ever come to the D's going for impeachment (which would IMO be understandable if unwise and pricely) and succeed - what would the US get instead?

Pence.

The difference that that dude is white & white and not orange & yellow. That's about it. Pence likely would immediately pardon Trump for whatever he was found to have done.

He is probably just as far right as Trump, only more discrete and self controlled - and of course evangelical. The evangelical part can be somewhat problematic as seen in Brazil under also evangelical Bolsonaro.

One of Bolsonaro's "underling politicos", formerly an evangelical bishop (or something like that) demanded to confiscate US marvel comics since in these comics some superheros , ghasp, were gay - and that that is utterly unacceptable since it undermines Brazil's ... immensely high moral principles.

Also, since Boslonaro took office the destruction of Amazonas, compared to the last year, has reportedly already doubled - and we're only in early september by now.

CK -> The Twisted Genius ... , 10 September 2019 at 07:23 AM
"His personality makes him unsuitable as a controlled asset."
and yet the IC keeps trying to do just that.
Eric Newhill , 10 September 2019 at 07:23 AM
Crappily assembled Steele dossier/crossfire hurricane coup d'etat fails. Democrats are floating only craven extremist nutjobs that most Americans can't handle and whose policies can't possibly work in the real world. So they will certainly lose in 2020. All manner of hyper aggressive negative media BS has failed. What's a power crazed global elitist to do? :-(

On to deep state plan F!!! Trump is a national security risk because he's CRAZY! and irresponsible! This one will stick. Sure. Bring out the liars! Spin the story! That's the ticket. And we can still shout "Racist!" all day every day.

Yawn.

Lyttennburgh , 10 September 2019 at 07:23 AM
And Lo and behold - some people (think) they've found the mole! Meet Oleg Smolenkov.

https://twitter.com/lincolnpigman/status/1171207593559281665

If (if!) true, it means:

a) CIA didn't bother to provide a new identity to this "high value asset", whose home is ludicruously easy to google

b) The guy in question was neither member of the RusGov (the Cabinet of the Ministers), neither was he a member of the Security Council, nor he was a "silovik". He was a secretary in Russia's embassy in D.C. In 2010 he became referent in the department of the Presidential Administration ( https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%B5%D1%84%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82_%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B0_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D0%A4%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%B8). This shows that either CNN is dumb, and can't distinguish between the RusGov and the Administration of the President, or they were lying, or... that's another guy.

b , 10 September 2019 at 05:38 AM
According to the NYT the guy was asked to exfiltrate in 2016, way be fore Trump, but at first rejected.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/09/us/politics/cia-informant-russia.html
"when intelligence officials revealed the severity of Russia's election interference with unusual detail later that year, the news media picked up on details about the C.I.A.'s Kremlin sources.

C.I.A. officials worried about safety made the arduous decision in late 2016 to offer to extract the source from Russia. The situation grew more tense when the informant at first refused, citing family concerns -- prompting consternation at C.I.A. headquarters and sowing doubts among some American counterintelligence officials about the informant's trustworthiness. But the C.I.A. pressed again months later after more media inquiries. This time, the informant agreed."

This has nothing to do with Trump but with leaks from Brennan and Co who outed the spy. He worked in the Kremlin administration and had good but not top access.

Kommersant reports that the guy's name is Oleg Smolenko.
He and his wife bought a house in Stafford Virginia, LOT 28 HUNTERS POND, under their own name.
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4087921

Maybe Pat or someone else in the area can visit them and find out how much of their information is true and how much is bonkers. I'd bet on 50:50.

anon , 10 September 2019 at 05:38 AM
Most of trump and the 7 Russians is fake news. The fact is that the USA has sought Russian assistance in pressuring Israel. The rest is a smoke screen. The whole scenario is being carefully managed so as to not set off a middle east war. The outcome of this project coming at the tail end of the Arab spring will become clear after the election.
turcopolier , 10 September 2019 at 09:20 AM
All

And then there is the possibility that CIA extracted a minor source to divert attention from someone or someones who remain(s) in place. The open purchase of a house in the outer suburbs of Washington by the extracted would seem to support the possibility that this is all a diversion. The narrative continues that "a former senior intelligence official" told Sciutto, an Obama man, at CNN of all this. Clapper is "a former senior intelligence official" and a CNN "contributor" (employee) is he not? He is dumb enough to have had this story planted on him.

Peter VE , 10 September 2019 at 09:58 AM
I'm sure Mr. Smolenko has been following the story of Sergei Skripal and wondering if perhaps he would have been better off going to prison in Russia....
Rhondda , 10 September 2019 at 10:08 AM
Info-seeding operation: plausible 'Kremlin source' needed for bare-naked Steele dossier...?
turcopolier , 10 September 2019 at 10:16 AM
Rhondda

Say what?

Rhondda said in reply to turcopolier ... , 10 September 2019 at 10:29 AM
LOL Sorry. Too terse? It strikes me that this CNN assertion is useful -- to provide a fig-leaf, albeit lacy, for the wretched Steele dossier's 'Kremlin source'.

I'm always amazed how little it takes and how little there is there. I'm probably wrong, but that's what came to my mind.

[Sep 10, 2019] 'One America News' Claims Defamation In $10 Million Lawsuit Against Rachel Maddow

Sep 10, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

It looks as though liberals may never learn that just because they disagree with someone's opinion, it doesn't automatically make them a tool of the Russian government. And leading the charge of liberals disseminating Russiagate nothingburgers, of course, continues to be Rachel Maddow.

Conservative television network One America News (OAN) is suing Rachel Maddow for $10 million after she referred to the network as "paid Russian propaganda" . OAN filed the defamation suit in federal court in San Diego, according to AP . OAN is a small, family owned conservative network that is based in San Diego and has received favorable Tweets from the President. It is seen as a competitor to Fox News.

OAN's lawsuit claims that Maddow's comments were retaliation after OAN President Charles Herring accused Comcast of censorship. The suit said that Comcast refuses to carry its channel because "counters the liberal politics of Comcast's own news channel, MSNBC."

It was about a week after Herring e-mailed a Comcast executive when Maddow opened her show by referring to a Daily Beast report that claimed an OAN employee also worked for Sputnik News, which has ties to the Russian government. Maddow said: "In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda. Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government."

Except Maddow, likely still upset from spending 3 years trying to promulgate a Russian hoax that didn't exist, didn't quite get her facts straight. Big surprise.

OAN said in its lawsuit that while reporter Kristian Rouz was associated with Sputnik News, he worked solely as a freelancer for them and was not a staff employee of OAN. And the lawsuit includes a statement from Rouz stating that while he has written some 1,300 articles over the past 4 and a half years for Sputnik, he has "...never written propaganda, disinformation, or unverified information." Skip Miller, OAN's attorney stated:

"One America is wholly owned, operated and financed by the Herring family in San Diego. They are as American as apple pie. They are not paid by Russia and have nothing to do with the Russian government. This is a false and malicious libel, and they're going to answer for it in a court of law."

The lawsuit included an August 6th letter from an NBC Universal attorney who stated that "OAN publishes content collected or created by a journalist who is also paid by the Russian government for writing over a thousand articles. Ms. Maddow's recounting of this arrangement is substantially true and therefore not actionable."

We'll see about that.

Bone-Machine , 13 seconds ago link

A fate worse than death; being stuck in a 10x10 room for eternity with Maddow.

EenuschOne , 25 seconds ago link

"MSNBC interrupts Rachel Maddow's scissoring to bring you an urgent news update."

Bay of Pigs , 58 seconds ago link

Pulling for OAN.

How is Maddow still on TV? Who watches that **** anymore?

[Sep 10, 2019] If bombing is/was punishment for use chemical weapons, US would have to keep bombing itself to this day , as punishments for what they did to Vietnam

Sep 10, 2019 | www.unz.com

Paw , says: September 10, 2019 at 3:26 am GMT

If bombing is/was punishment for use chemical weapons , US would have to keep bombing itself to this day , as punishments for what they did to Vietnam ..And elsewhere.

On its own population as well..

[Sep 10, 2019] Behaving like a normal country

Sep 10, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Martin , Sep 10 2019 4:56 utc | 24

As newly appointed US Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, was reported to have claimed about wanting for Russia to ''behave like a normal country'', Sergey Lavrov urged for him to clarify what he means by ''normality'' during a press conference in the Russian capital; if Russia was to behave like the US, it would have had to bomb Iraq, Libya, supporting an armed, anti-constitutional coup in Kiev, and allocating millions in the interference in the affairs of other countries, as in the ''promotion of democracy'' in Russia.

Sergey Shoygu did not have much to add, but what he did add could not be clearer: Russia will probably have to remain being ''not normal''.

[Sep 10, 2019] A recurring theme in international relations and diplomacy is that dealing with the Americans is like dealing with children. Of course when the American is trying to kill you, as they a often want to do, the actions of the petulant child take on new meaning.

Notable quotes:
"... For the detached observer the juvenile behavior of groups of Americans is plain to see, both in this comment section and in the world at large. ..."
"... This is somewhat curious as this "normal nation" seems to have hit the neocon talking points as SecDef Esper used similiar phrase as applied to Russia. Russian MinFin responded: "he called upon us to act as a normal country [as such] and not like the United States," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press briefing in the Russian capital: Otherwise, we should have been acting like the US, bombing Iraq and Libya in blatant violation of international law " ..."
"... If there is any country in the world that is less "normal" in the scope and ambitions of its foreign policy than ours, I can't think of which one it would be ..."
"... I can think of one in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. As a matter of fact, USA's foreign policy is their foreign policy. ..."
"... This is somewhat curious as this "normal nation" seems to have hit the neocon talking points as SecDef Esper used similar phrase as applied to Russia. ..."
"... Russian MinFin responded: "he called upon us to act as a normal country [as such] and not like the United States," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press briefing in the Russian capital: Otherwise, we should have been acting like the US, bombing Iraq and Libya in blatant violation of international law " ..."
"... Similar to his rhetoric about other countries not following the "rules-based order". The US, which abandons and ignores treaties, or doesn't enter them in the first place but lectures others who have that they need to follow them. Who refuses to be judged by the ICC, UN and others yet wants them to hold others to account. And who call for regime-change of others based on rigged or suspect elections, yet refuses to fix its own crappy system and corruption. ..."
Sep 10, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

ted01 , Sep 10 2019 7:17 utc | 26

"...and hope an adult wins."

This can never happen. All Americans are inherently childish. They are all a product of the same environment, the same educational system and the same all pervasive 'cultural' influences. This transcends ethnic boundaries for those born in the US or those who arrived at an early age.

For the detached observer the juvenile behavior of groups of Americans is plain to see, both in this comment section and in the world at large.

A recurring theme in international relations and diplomacy is that dealing with 'the Americans' is like dealing with children. Of course when the American is trying to kill you, as they a often want to do, the actions of the petulant child take on new meaning.

Taras77 11 hours ago
This is somewhat curious as this "normal nation" seems to have hit the neocon talking points as SecDef Esper used similiar phrase as applied to Russia.
Russian MinFin responded: "he called upon us to act as a normal country [as such] and not like the United States," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press briefing in the Russian capital: Otherwise, we should have been acting like the US, bombing Iraq and Libya in blatant violation of international law "
Chris in Appalachia 10 hours ago
" If there is any country in the world that is less "normal" in the scope and ambitions of its foreign policy than ours, I can't think of which one it would be."

I can think of one in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. As a matter of fact, USA's foreign policy is their foreign policy.

Taras77 11 hours ago
This is somewhat curious as this "normal nation" seems to have hit the neocon talking points as SecDef Esper used similar phrase as applied to Russia.

Russian MinFin responded: "he called upon us to act as a normal country [as such] and not like the United States," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press briefing in the Russian capital: Otherwise, we should have been acting like the US, bombing Iraq and Libya in blatant violation of international law "

Chris in Appalachia 10 hours ago
" If there is any country in the world that is less "normal" in the scope and ambitions of its foreign policy than ours, I can't think of which one it would be."

I can think of one in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. As a matter of fact, USA's foreign policy is their foreign policy.

Humboldt Octopus 7 hours ago
Similar to his rhetoric about other countries not following the "rules-based order". The US, which abandons and ignores treaties, or doesn't enter them in the first place but lectures others who have that they need to follow them. Who refuses to be judged by the ICC, UN and others yet wants them to hold others to account. And who call for regime-change of others based on rigged or suspect elections, yet refuses to fix its own crappy system and corruption.

This is also a thing about leftists with Trump Derangement Syndrome, who are oh-so-upset about Trump, either ignorant or lying that he's at all an aberration. The US has consistently flouted international law, waged illegal wars and staged violent coups and assassinations, and killed tens of thousands of innocents, under nearly all Presidents, including Obama.

[Sep 10, 2019] Trump has, unfortunately, shown himself to be completely untrustworthy on the international stage

Notable quotes:
"... I personally suspect that Trump has a negative net worth, and hopes that if he marches to Adelson's orders, he might get a nice pay-off at the end. It's the only thing that explains all this. ..."
Sep 10, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Kent • 19 hours ago

I think it is highly unlikely Trump can pull off detente with the Chinese or anyone else before the next election. He has, unfortunately, shown himself to be completely untrustworthy on the international stage. Under what circumstance are the Chinese going to sign some agreement with him, when he might just throw out new tariffs a week later?

What are the Taliban going to agree to when the US wants to leave thousands of troops in Afghanistan?

I personally suspect that Trump has a negative net worth, and hopes that if he marches to Adelson's orders, he might get a nice pay-off at the end. It's the only thing that explains all this.

[Sep 09, 2019] Will NPR Now Officially Change Its Name to National Propaganda Radio? by Edward Curtin

The main achievement of neoliberal and imperial (warmongering) propaganda in the USA is that it achieved the complete, undisputed dominance in MSM
Pot Calling the Kettle Black: "The Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation machine is being unleashed via new platforms and continues to grow in Russia and internationally. Russia seeks to destroy the very idea of an objective, verifiable set of facts as it attempts to influence opinions about the United States and its allies. It is not an understatement to say that this new form of combat on the information battlefield may be the fight of the 21st century."
Notable quotes:
"... Back in the 1960s, the CIA official Cord Meyer said the agency needed to "court the compatible left." ..."
"... The CIA therefore secretly worked to influence American and world opinion through the literary and intellectual elites. ..."
"... Then in 1977, Carl Bernstein wrote a long piece for Esquire – “The CIA and the Media” – naming names of journalists and media (The New York Times, CBS, etc.) that worked hand-in-glove with the CIA, propagandizing the American people and the rest of the world. ..."
Sep 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org

Back in the 1960s, the CIA official Cord Meyer said the agency needed to "court the compatible left."

Right-wing and left-wing collaborators were needed to create a powerful propaganda apparatus that would be capable of hypnotizing audiences into believing the myth of American exceptionalism and its divine right to rule the world.

The CIA therefore secretly worked to influence American and world opinion through the literary and intellectual elites.

Frances Stonor Saunders comprehensively covers this in her 1999 book, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA And The World Of Arts And Letters, and Joel Whitney followed this up in 2016 with Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers, with particular emphasis on the complicity between the CIA and the famous literary journal, The Paris Review.

By the mid-1970s, as a result of the Church Committee hearings, it seemed as if the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc. had been caught in flagrante delicto and disgraced, confessed their sins, and resolved to go and sin no more.

Then in 1977, Carl Bernstein wrote a long piece for Esquire – “The CIA and the Media” – naming names of journalists and media (The New York Times, CBS, etc.) that worked hand-in-glove with the CIA, propagandizing the American people and the rest of the world.

It seemed as if all would be hunky-dory now with the bad boys purged from the American “free” press. Seemed to the most naïve, that is, by which I mean the vast numbers of people who wanted to re-stick their heads in the sand and believe, as Ronald Reagan’s team of truthtellers would announce, that it was “Morning in America” again with the free press reigning and the neo-conservatives, many of whom had been “converted” from their leftist views, running things in Washington.

... ... ...

...read Lansing’s July 10, 2019 testimony before the House Appropriations Sub-Committee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs: “United States Efforts to Counter Russian Disinformation and Malign Influence.”

Here is an excerpt:

USAGM provides consistently accurate and compelling journalism that reflects the values of our society: freedom, openness, democracy, and hope. Our guiding principles—enshrined in law—are to provide a reliable, authoritative, and independent source of news that adheres to the strictest standards of journalism…

Russian Disinformation. And make no mistake, we are living through a global explosion of disinformation, state propaganda, and lies generated by multiple authoritarian regimes around the world. The weaponization of information we are seeing today is real. The Russian government and other authoritarian regimes engage in far-reaching malign influence campaigns across national boundaries and language barriers.

The Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation machine is being unleashed via new platforms and continues to grow in Russia and internationally. Russia seeks to destroy the very idea of an objective, verifiable set of facts as it attempts to influence opinions about the United States and its allies. It is not an understatement to say that this new form of combat on the information battlefield may be the fight of the 21st century.

Then research the history of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Voice of America, Radio and Television Marti, etc. You will be reassured that Lansing’s July testimony was his job interview to head National Propaganda Radio.

Edward Curtin writes, and his writing on varied topics has appeared widely over many years. He writes as a public intellectual for the general public, not as a specialist for a narrow readership. He believes a non-committal sociology is an impossibility and therefore sees all his work as an effort to enhance human freedom through understanding. His website is edwardcurtin.com

[Sep 09, 2019] no title

Notable quotes:
"... And behind it all, the demonization (demonetization) of Russia (and Putin) still continues. ..."
"... is admittedly so cool (given the advanced technology) to be dropping bombs on women and children for the uncountable time, clearly we now know we are going broke killing the innocent. We are bludgeoning them to the point that we have broken our rifles on their corpses. Time to let off. ..."
Sep 09, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

jared , Sep 9 2019 17:36 utc | 119

Excellent posting on RT: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/468193-russiagate-collusion-trump-election/

Which is re-publication of article by Stephen Cohen on The Nation -
https://www.thenation.com/article/what-we-still-do-not-know-about-russiagate/

Very well written and keeping focus on what's important. Very useful, revealing event with many issues remaining to be fully considered regarding behaviors of
- the elected officials,
- the "intelligence" "community",
- the media,
- the public.

And behind it all, the demonization (demonetization) of Russia (and Putin) still continues.

There likely are cases where Russia is acting nefariously or in bad faith, but who could tell given all the b/s they are feeding us.

So it's clear (to anyone interested) that they are misleading us, and (I think) clear why they are misleading us, but that does stop the the constant stream of crap in the media - "news" and "entertainment".

Is their target audience the most obtuse among us?

While is admittedly so cool (given the advanced technology) to be dropping bombs on women and children for the uncountable time, clearly we now know we are going broke killing the innocent. We are bludgeoning them to the point that we have broken our rifles on their corpses. Time to let off.

Leaving aside the need to feed the war machine (particularly in light of slowing economy), many on both sides seemed to fear that the public had succeeded in electing a populist and that could not be allowed. So they attacked him knowing the technocratic state would support them. But Trump out-smarted them and went all in deep state, elitest and sooth the worried vested interests and their owners. So that's all past us now. Still, kind of hard to over-look. Does Shiff take himself seriously?

[Sep 09, 2019] Robert Mueller was "special counsel" in name only. The real boss was Andrew Weissman

Notable quotes:
"... The "report" was his work. Mueller never looked for anything, never found anything and never wrote anything. ..."
"... The entire charade was part of the "resistance" to straight jacket Trump until the mid term elections, a strategy put in motion by Comey and Brennan, which achieved the desired result: Republicans lost the House. ..."
"... Of course there was "little Russia in Russiagate." The narrative was all disinformation set loose by Crowdstrike and Fusion GPS, paid for by Hillary and the DNC with the blessing of President Obama. Welcome to the tin foil hat brigade as contributor. ..."
Sep 09, 2019 | www.unz.com

Officially, at least in the FBI's version, its operation "Crossfire Hurricane," the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign that began in mid-2016 was due to suspicious remarks made to visitors by a young and lowly Trump aide, George Papadopoulos. This too is not believable, as I pointed out previously . Most of those visitors themselves had ties to Western intelligence agencies. That is, the young Trump aide was being enticed, possibly entrapped, as part of a larger intelligence operation against Trump. (Papadopoulos wasn't the only Trump associate targeted, Carter Page being another.)

But the question remains: Why did Western intelligence agencies, prompted, it seems clear, by US ones, seek to undermine Trump's presidential campaign? A reflexive answer might be because candidate Trump promised to "cooperate with Russia," to pursue a pro-détente foreign policy, but this was hardly a startling, still less subversive, advocacy by a would-be Republican president. All of the major pro-détente episodes in the 20th century had been initiated by Republican presidents: Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan.

So, again, what was it about Trump that so spooked the spooks so far off their rightful reservation and so intrusively into American presidential politics? Investigations being overseen by Attorney General William Barr may provide answers -- or not.

... ... ...

It is true, of course, that Barr and Durham, as Trump appointees, are not the ideal investigators of Intel misdeeds in the Russiagate saga. Much better would be a truly bipartisan, independent investigation based in the Senate, as was the Church Committee of the mid-1970s, which exposed and reformed (it thought at the time) serious abuses by US intelligence agencies. That would require, however, a sizable core of nonpartisan, honorable, and courageous senators of both parties, who thus far seem to be lacking.

There are also, however, the ongoing and upcoming Democratic presidential debates. First and foremost, Russiagate is about the present and future of the American political system, not about Russia. (Indeed, as I have repeatedly argued, there is very little, if any, Russia in Russiagate.) At every "debate" or comparable forum, all of the Democratic candidates should be asked about this grave threat to American democracy -- what they think about what happened and would do about it if elected president. Consider it health care for our democracy.

Anon [421] • Disclaimer says:

September 9, 2019 at 5:24 pm GMT • 100 Words

"former special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of "collusion."

Let me unpack that for you, esteemed professor: RM was "special counsel" in name only. The real boss was Andrew Weissman. The "report" was his work. Mueller never looked for anything, never found anything and never wrote anything.

The entire charade was part of the "resistance" to straight jacket Trump until the mid term elections, a strategy put in motion by Comey and Brennan, which achieved the desired result: Republicans lost the House.

Of course there was "little Russia in Russiagate." The narrative was all disinformation set loose by Crowdstrike and Fusion GPS, paid for by Hillary and the DNC with the blessing of President Obama. Welcome to the tin foil hat brigade as contributor.

Kolya Krassotkin , says: September 9, 2019 at 5:02 pm GMT

Given the impunity with which Israel nakedly interferes in American elections, worrying about Russian interference is laugh-out-loud funny.

But I forgot. Israel is our best "friend."

[Sep 09, 2019] The Four Horsemen Cometh by Frank Lee

Notable quotes:
"... Rickards had previously worked for the CIA (possibly still does – who knows?) but now seems to be a free-wheeling business executive, writer and strategic analyst. He tends to circulate outside of the usual middle-ranking semi-elite circles preferring to consort with the less observable, higher-ranking coteries of the inner-party. Moreover, he has nothing but disdain for the run-of-the-mill talking heads to be found (in abundance) in the media and academia – the outer-party. ..."
"... History is the first casualty of media micro-second attention span. An army of pseudo-savants saturate the airways to explain that tariffs are bad, trade wars hurt growth and mercantilism are a throwback to the 17th century. These sentiments come from mainstream liberals and conservatives and tag-along journalists trained in the orthodoxy of so-called free-trade and the false if comforting belief that trade deficits are the flipside of capital surpluses. So, what is the problem? The problem is that perpetual trade deficits have put the United States on a path to a crisis of the US$."[ 1 ] ..."
"... Obama, both Bushes, and Bill Clinton were globalists, defined as those willing to trade-off or compromise US interests for the sake of a stronger global community even conservative hawks like Reagan and JFK were firmly in the globalist camp, as they relied on NATO, the UN and the IMF to pursue their cold war goals. ..."
"... LBJ's administration contrived to conduct the Vietnam War as well as an expensive social programme, simultaneously. A guns plus butter economy. (The original version of the Guns versus butter argument was given in a speech on January 17, 1936, in Nazi Germany. The then Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels stated: "We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms." ) ..."
"... Globally, the leading manufacturer of auto-vehicles is Volkswagen followed by Toyota. GM are 4th and Ford are 8th of ten. Hardly market leaders anymore, but Rickards apportions the blame to 'unfair practices' by foreign manufacturers and argues instead for tariffs. The same goes for other trade partners. Fact that the United States has to a large extent been deindustrialised was a political choice of its own making. ..."
"... There were a number of advantages which accrued to the dollar contingent on the ending of gold convertibility which Eichengreen listed these in his book. But the principle one was making the surplus nations of the world pay for America's wars with an unconvertible currency. Instead of being paid for in gold, or at least a gold-backed currency the world produced goods and services for a piece of green paper backed by nothing. ..."
"... This was to be expected quite simply because at bottom Rickards is a sophist much in the tradition of Protagoras, Gorgias and Thrasymachus "I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger" [ 12 ] ..."
"... A view which Rickards would certainly endorse. Beneath the Upper Manhattan, polished chic, there resides a ruthless Cold Warrior. The further one digs into the book, the more this becomes apparent. ..."
"... Many of us are aware of the problems of the USD but few are able to so succinctly explain why and connect the dots to expose the true picture. The bottom line is that the lifespan of the USD as king is almost over ..."
"... The US has been exposed, and so well said, as a predator nation .There must be a reason why China and Russia are buying up as much gold as their economy will permit .The exchange medium used for trade since time immemorial . ..."
"... The Wall Street ethos has always been 'kill or be killed' where bears eat, and bulls eat, but pigs get slaughtered! The problem with today's market & stock valuations is that they are as hyperinflated as Real Estate Commercial & Residential sectors are which leaves no wiggle room for price discovery until there is a system wide crash that mean reverts the valuations back to a realistic price. ..."
"... All that is happening now is that Trump is trying to solve his country's intractable economic and financial problems by looting the rest of the planet. This is not a new development, but Trump is at least refreshingly honest in his public pronouncements. ..."
"... The Nazi Empire imposed tribute on its conquests in identical fashion. Send us your industrial output, agricultural produce and raw materials. In return we'll give you a big credit balance at the Reichsbank. ..."
"... The current (real) military budget is $1,134 billion, around 60% higher than the fictitious figure that is normally touted. ..."
"... Gold could form some kind of basis for exchange in a collapse setting. Other desirable barter items would be alcohol, cigarettes, basic drugs like aspirin and paracetamol, electrical batteries, fuel and similar goods. Maybe ammunition as well. Goods were priced in cigarettes in postwar Germany. ..."
"... Bismarck is normally credited with the choice between Guns and Butter. Goebbels was suggesting that Guns will bring Butter. ..."
"... The crime in all this is in the pursuit of money -- ultimately a wholly artificial concept -- we're wasting immense amounts of resources and human potential, spreading misery and despoliation all over the planet and generally behaving like really awful global citizens. We can and must do better. ..."
"... American exceptionalism, for example, takes it for granted that we in the West are good, and therefore the East must become more like us. But we are logically, and morally, obliged to look at this from the opposite perspective too: What if the Chinese take it for granted that they are good, and therefore the West must become more like them? ..."
"... American parasitism writ large over the last half century has amply signified to the entire world that 'manifest destiny' was merely a ruse to foist American hegemony onto all sovereign nations at the behest of an out-of-control American Oligopoly that was power-tripping post WW2 & drunk on the souls of the poor sots all over the entire world with their power hungry warmongering Military Industrial Complex. ..."
"... Its not "American". We just happen to be the chosen host for this part of history. Before us it was the British Empire that was top dog. ..."
"... You have made the common mistake of asserting that it is America, instead of those who govern (the USA and its pundits) that have engineered the problems you point out. ..."
"... To condense this lengthy essay: This ship is sinking. ..."
Sep 07, 2019 | off-guardian.org/

"Aftermath" is the latest addition to three previous publications by Rickards, Currency Wars (2011), The Death of Money (2014), The Road to Ruin (2016). Together, with the present offering (Aftermath, 2019), the author uses the analogy of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to illustrate the themes of his four books. The latest book is thematic in its approach to the events which have taken place in the world in general and the United States in particular during this period.

HIGH SOCIETY

Rickards had previously worked for the CIA (possibly still does – who knows?) but now seems to be a free-wheeling business executive, writer and strategic analyst. He tends to circulate outside of the usual middle-ranking semi-elite circles preferring to consort with the less observable, higher-ranking coteries of the inner-party. Moreover, he has nothing but disdain for the run-of-the-mill talking heads to be found (in abundance) in the media and academia – the outer-party.

His observations of this social stratum are unapologetic and caustic:

History is the first casualty of media micro-second attention span. An army of pseudo-savants saturate the airways to explain that tariffs are bad, trade wars hurt growth and mercantilism are a throwback to the 17th century. These sentiments come from mainstream liberals and conservatives and tag-along journalists trained in the orthodoxy of so-called free-trade and the false if comforting belief that trade deficits are the flipside of capital surpluses. So, what is the problem? The problem is that perpetual trade deficits have put the United States on a path to a crisis of the US$."[ 1 ]

As is apparent, his contempt is palpable.

It should be said that much of his writing and theorising is at times occasioned by a high level of sophistication, alas sadly lacking in most of his contemporaries. But for all his refinement and eloquence that doesn't stop him being, from Off Guardian's perspective (and mine), on the other side – the side of the Anglo-Zionist empire.

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

Throughout this book and previous books there runs a familiar leitmotif; a sense of betrayal by the present dominant section of the US elite. This is not by any means an unusual political phenomenon and bears comparison with the stab-in-the-back myth – a notion doing the rounds in Germany circa 1918.

It held that the German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield but it was 'traitors' on the home front, especially the traitorous republicans who overthrew the Hohenzollern monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918–19.

This precedent loosely corresponds to Rickards' belief in the perfidy of the current leadership of the US and his vitriol is directed against this globalist faction who are firmly ensconced in both Democrat and Republican parties and whom, he argues, have sold the pass in terms of America's strategic interests. He writes:

Obama, both Bushes, and Bill Clinton were globalists, defined as those willing to trade-off or compromise US interests for the sake of a stronger global community even conservative hawks like Reagan and JFK were firmly in the globalist camp, as they relied on NATO, the UN and the IMF to pursue their cold war goals.

However, all was not lost. As a result of

the Presidential election of 2016 when Donald Trump was sworn in on 17 January 2017 as the strongest nationalist since Theodore Roosevelt. For the first time in 100 years a committed nationalist was sitting in the Oval Office." [ 2 ]

The event was obviously political grist to Rickards' mill.

However, precisely how this liberation of the US from the domestic globalists' stranglehold was to be brought about wasn't made clear, and in fact is barely touched upon by Rickards.

Trump, for all his bombast and promises to Make America Great Again (MAGA), and pursue a radical foreign policy of withdrawal from globalist wars of choice and military adventurism, has been conspicuous by its absence.

Moreover, from the outset he has been beset by the ancien regime of neo-conservatives and neo-liberals – Bolton, Pompeo and Pence – entrenched in key US institutions, as well as various think-tanks and media who are still doggedly set upon the realization of neo-con foreign policy goals.

It seems odd that Rickards doesn't see fit to comment on this important development given that Trumps' campaign promises have disappeared almost without trace since he entered the Oval Office.

IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID

Rickards is on firmer ground, however, when dissecting the 8th wonder of the world – US economic policy. The US sovereign debt (i.e., the debt of the Federal Government) to GDP is now at a record, this is unprecedented for a peacetime administration.

In addition, it is also worth noting the magnitude of US private debt and unfunded future liabilities, pensions, Medicaid, social security and so forth.

This would include household debt, student debt, financial debt, corporate debt, and municipal debt. Add this to sovereign debt and you get a figure roughly 5 times US sovereign debt, and even this is regarded as being a conservative figure according to many – see David Stockman, John Mauldin et al).

According to Rickards, the present situation has been largely the result of excess spending by both Democratic and Republican administrations. The spending has either been on 'Defence' – a Republican favourite – or social like L.B. Johnson's 'Great Society' programme – a Democratic favourite.

LBJ's administration contrived to conduct the Vietnam War as well as an expensive social programme, simultaneously. A guns plus butter economy. (The original version of the Guns versus butter argument was given in a speech on January 17, 1936, in Nazi Germany. The then Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels stated: "We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms." )

LBJ's guns-and-butter policies were enacted in the late sixties at the height of the Vietnam war and the Tet Offensive. The utopian attempt to have the best of both worlds brought LBJ's administration to an end; more importantly, perhaps it was also the beginning of the process which brought down the curtain on the post WW2 economic world order established at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944.

Because the costs of the Vietnam war were superimposed on the economy not far effectively from full employment, the US domestic sector was severely destabilised.

Instead of taxing the nation to pay for the war, the government engaged in the more acceptable practice of deficit financing

Vietnam showed that neither the United States nor any other democratic nation can ever again afford the foreign exchange costs of conventional warfare, although the periphery was still kept in line by American military initiatives most recently in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

The lesson in the long term is that peace will be maintained only by governments refusing to finance the military and other excesses of the increasingly indebted imperial power." [ 3 ]

The figure for the US sovereign debt – began to rise relentlessly from the 1980s onwards approaching wartime levels by the time of the 2008 blowout.

It has been estimated by some economic theorists that any sovereign Debt-to-GDP figure greater than 60% represents a tripwire whereby governments should act to rein in government expenditures.

The EU Maastricht criteria, for example, stipulated that EU Debt-to-GDP should not go over 60% except in certain circumstances and an annual budgetary deficit should not be more than 3%.

That is a pretty tight monetary and fiscal policy EU style, but not to be outdone the spendthrift US was to go on a wild binge in both fiscal and monetary terms the result of which is a now an unpayable mountain of debt. This gives an indication of how far US economic policymaking has drifted away from any viable economic strategy.

Rickards fulminates:

To see how America came to this pretty pass we, one needs to review almost 40 years of fiscal policy under Presidents Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama and Trump from the period 1981-2019." [ 4 ]

Under Reagan in 1981 US Debt-to-GDP ratio was 32.5%. The President was gung-ho for tax cuts and big spending increases, particularly 'defence' spending. This trend was continued under the tutelage of the Bushes and Clinton, and Debt-to-GDP ratio rose to 56.4% when Bush Jr, took office and had risen to 82% by the time he left.

The Obama years saw the Debt-to-GDP rise to 100%. The diagram below 2009 debt-to-GDP was 82.3% This figure has risen inexorably to over 100% in 2018. Yep, here we have the dreaded law of Diminishing returns. Every new dollar of input gives you 90 cents of output.

The above diagram illustrates the growth of debt vis-à-vis National Income (GDP) since the 2008 blowout. Debt has been growing progressively faster than National Income.

The US economy, like the US shale oil industry, has become a Ponzi scheme in all but name. The Fed's issuance of new debt to pay off existing debt signals the key moment of the Minsky crisis.[ 5 ]

There doesn't appear to be any viable way out this predicament short of a straight default. But Rickards argues that 'the United States will never default on its debt because the Fed can simply print the money and to pay it off.' This will involve an engineered inflation to wipe out the debt. But in fact, inflation is the default, a default by the back door. Getting paid in worthless currency is in essence no different than not getting paid at all.

NO EXIT

As for solutions to a crisis which has seemingly reached the point of no return, all that Rickards can offer is a Japanese scenario of low or zero growth punctuated by recession for the United States and by implication for the rest of the world. The United States had its first long decade from 2007 to 2017 and is now into its second decade.

This growth pattern will persist absent of inflationary breakout which the Fed seems powerless to ignite in the short run; a war; or severe depression perhaps caused by a new financial crisis.[ 6 ]

Not much of a prospect for the average family then. But Rickards does give some useful advice to his more opulent readers on how they should diversify their assets.

There are apparently "luxury bombproof bunkers built in former missile silos and expansive estates in New Zealand loaded with rations and good wines."

Really? At this point one wonders if Mr Rickards is being serious or just smug.

SOCIAL IMMOBILITY AND THE RISE OF OLIGARCHY

The social and economic impact on levels of inequality in both the US and globally have been extremely deleterious and seem set to continue. Inequality in income and wealth – a phenomenon identified and outlined by Thomas Piketty – is resulting in societies which more and more resemble feudal economic and social structures rather than textbook capitalism. Social class is hardening into social caste and rates of social mobility are decelerating at an alarming rate.

The liberal notion that the individual is the author of his/her own destiny has become a very dubious proposition when the drawbridges of advantage, birth and preferment are drawn up. Moreover, high levels of income/wealth are not conducive to growth since the new aristocracy owns most of the wealth/income which is hoarded rather than spent on investment and/or consumption. Stagnation, idled capital and rent extraction becomes the economic norm.

Inequality is common in college admissions where the wealthy and connected continue to send their sons and daughters to elite schools while the middle-class are restrained by sky-high tuitions and the burden of student loans.

It's true in the housing market where the rich picked up mansions on the cheap in foreclosure sales whilst the middle-class were frozen in mortgage negative equity.

It's true in health care, where the rich could afford all the insurance they needed while the middle class were handicapped by unemployment and the loss of job-related benefits. These disparities also affected the adult children of the middle-class. There are no gold-plated benefits packages in the gig society

Research shows that fewer than 50% of all children aged 30 today earn more than their parents did at the same age. This 50% figure compares with 60% who earned more in 1971, and 80% who earned more in 1950.

The American dream of each generation earning more than the prior generation is collapsing before our eyes The middle class is getting poorer on a relative basis and lagging further behind the rich whose incomes absorb an increasing share of total GDP The manner in which the rich become rich is variable.

It could be due to a number of unrelated factors Problems arise in the way that the rich stay rich become richer and pass on wealth to their children and grandchildren." [ 7 ]

It is a matter of common knowledge that the traditional techniques of preserving and creating wealth have been long established in law, customs, education and socialization; these traditional methods being practised over decades, if not centuries, have produced a system of elite self-recruitment, one moreover which endures through time.

Many of the richest US citizens – e.g., Buffet, Bezos, Zuckerberg – pay minimal tax demands. Much of the wealth of the richest Americans is never taxed because they hold onto real estate and stocks and pass them onto their beneficiaries tax-free. This is one of a perfectly legal method of avoiding tax; there are many more too numerous to cite which include various other examples of tax avoidance/evasion.

Levels of income and wealth inequality within states are usually measured by what is called the Gini Co-efficient. This measure is a commonly used measure of income inequality that condenses the entire income distribution for a country into a single number between 0 and 1 or 0% to 100%: the higher the number, the greater the degree of inequality. A rough estimate of inequality is a figure above 40%.

The United States and China are in the low forties, surrounded by underdeveloped and developing states such as The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Burundi and El Salvador. At the other end of the spectrum are Sweden, Norway and Iceland.

In this connection the by now well-known study carried out by two American academics at Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and North western University Prof Benjamin Page argue that the US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence."

In plain English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.

The two professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain income levels and organised interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted.

Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to be a democratic society are seriously threatened."

In summation, both gentlemen concluded that in essence the US was an oligarchy not a properly functioning democracy. All very true but somewhat self-evident.

Rickards regards the present situation as being irreversible. He does not present any alternative to this trend other than some vague hopes that the 'nationalist' President in the Oval Office will turn things around – MAGA in fact.

The golden age of post WW2 capitalism ended when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard in August 1971, which was in effect a default by the US. Holders of surplus dollars in Europe who were no longer able to swap these dollars for gold but were merely presented with other US$s with which they had to purchase US Treasurys (Bonds) debts which were never going to be repaid. In the age of fiat currencies Europe and various other holders of US Treasuries were in fact subsidizing the United States.

POOR LITTLE AMERICA

At this point the book becomes one long whinge about how hard done-by America has been and how the rest of the world has taken advantage of this benign gentle giant. This rather bizarre belief calls for further analysis. The US pays some of the bill for NATO whilst European nations pay insufficient amounts for the 'defence' of their countries.

It should be pointed out, however, that in terms of military hardware the NATO alliance is standardized to American specifications. This means large-scale purchasing of US war materiel which is a gift bonus to the US armaments industry.

Then Germany has the nerve to buy Russian gas transported to Europe via Nordstream 2 which is cheaper and more reliable than US Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), when in fact they should be buying more expensive and less reliable US LNG. Apparently, Germany ought really to be subsidising the US shale oil Ponzi racket. Bad, ungrateful Germany.

Then comes the incessant carping regarding trade policy and trade deals. The US in its speed to become a cool, post-modern, financialised economy apparently forgot about the importance of production. In the automobile industry the once dominant US triad of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are no longer in the vanguard and Japan, with South Korea catching up, is now the leading country in the export of auto vehicles, a position which the US once held. It was the Japanese auto industry which pioneered production methods including just-in-time deliveries and lean production (Toyota). Was anyone stopping the Americans from innovating?

In rank order. Figures quoted in Global Shift – Peter Dicken.

Volkswagen, Germany: Annual Output 8,576,94 Toyota, Japan: Annual Output 8,381.968 Hyundai, South Korea: Annual Output 6,761,074 General Motor, USA: Annual Output 6,608,567 Honda, Japan: Annual Output 4,078,376 Nissan, Japan: Annual Output 3,830,954 Ford, USA: Annual Output 3,123,340 PSA, France: Annual Output 2,554,059 Suzuki, Japan: Annual Output 2,483,721 Renault, France: Annual Output 2,302,769

Globally, the leading manufacturer of auto-vehicles is Volkswagen followed by Toyota. GM are 4th and Ford are 8th of ten. Hardly market leaders anymore, but Rickards apportions the blame to 'unfair practices' by foreign manufacturers and argues instead for tariffs. The same goes for other trade partners. Fact that the United States has to a large extent been deindustrialised was a political choice of its own making.

If the US has lost ground in the competition for trade on world markets that is because of its own insular provincialism and hubris, not foreign competitive malpractice. Moreover, much of its productive industry which remains has been outsourced to low cost venues such as China. The US more than anyone should know that its competitors are simply using the same policies that it itself used during the 19th century to break British trade hegemony.

It has been the same story with agriculture. Trade liberalization (this must rank as the greatest misnomer of trade theory) and trade treaties have been an example of the blatant unfairness of such agreements. During the Uruguay round of 'talks' (1982-2000):

the United States pushed other countries to open up their markets to areas of 'our' (i.e. the US's) strength, but resisted, successfully so, to efforts to make us reciprocate.

Construction and maritime services, the areas of advantage of many developing countries were not included in the new agreement. Worse still, financial services liberalization was arguably even harmful to some developing countries: as large international (read American) banks squelched local competitors denying them the funds they garnered would be channelled to the international firms with which they felt comfortable, not the small and medium-sized local firms

As foreign banks took over the banking systems of like Argentina and Mexico worries about small and medium sized firms within these countries being starved of funds have been repeatedly voiced.

Whether these concerns are valid or not, whether they are exaggerated or not, is not the issue: the issue is that countries should have the right to make these decisions themselves, as the United States did in its own country during its formative years; but under the new international rules that America had pushed, countries were being deprived of that right.

Suffice it to say that agriculture has always been a flagrant example of the double standards inherent in the US trade liberalization agenda. Although we insisted that other countries reduce their barriers to our products and eliminate the subsidies for which those products competed against ours, the United States kept barriers for the goods produced by the developing countries, and the US continued massive subsidies to its own produce. [ 8 ] EXORBITANT PRIVILEGE

Oh, I almost forgot: the imperial tribute that the world pays to the hegemon; aka the reserve status of the dollar. The role of the US dollar in the world's political economy gives it advantages which the rest of the dollar surplus-states are dragooned into accepting. In the late sixties early seventies, the US was on the verge of technical bankruptcy due to its spending profligacy at home and military adventurism in Indochina. It had three choices of how to deal with this acute problem.

[The] 3 courses open to the US government on the collapse of the Gold Pool in London in 1968 were: immediately pull out of the war in South-East Asia and cut back overseas and domestic military expenditure to allow the dollar to firm again on world markets; to continue the war paying for its foreign exchange costs with further outflows of Fort Knox gold; or to induce the Europeans and other payments surplus areas to continue to accumulate surplus dollars and dollar equivalents (US Treasuries) not convertible into gold." [ 9 ]

Of course, it was option three that appealed and Nixon in his television broadcast was to announce a 'temporary' suspension of gold sales by the US to its overseas 'partners'.

The date in question, 15 August 1971, marked the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. The temporary suspension soon morphed into a permanent one and a global fiat currency regime based on the dollar came into being. This represented a culmination of a situation in which the US manipulation of the dollar was termed the 'Exorbitant Privilege' by the senior French politician Valery Giscard d'Estaing. And privilege it was.

The central political fact is that the dollar standard places the direction of the world monetary policy in the hands of a single country which thereby acquires great influence over the economic destiny of others. It is one thing to sacrifice sovereignty in the interests of interdependence; it is quite another when the relationship is one-way.

The difference is that between the EEC(EU) and a colonial empire. The brute fact is that the acceptance of a dollar standard necessarily implies a degree of asymmetry in power which, although it actually existed in the early post-war years, had vanished by the time that the world sliding into a reluctant dollar standard." [ 10 ]

There were a number of advantages which accrued to the dollar contingent on the ending of gold convertibility which Eichengreen listed these in his book. But the principle one was making the surplus nations of the world pay for America's wars with an unconvertible currency. Instead of being paid for in gold, or at least a gold-backed currency the world produced goods and services for a piece of green paper backed by nothing.

Quite a clever little racket when you think about it.

Better still is the way that the two biggest surplus nations, Japan and China, have been the US's main creditors, bankrolling the US by buying its Treasuries. This had another intended, or perhaps unintended effect: long term interest rates on US bonds came down (since bond prices and bond interest rates move in opposite directions) and enabled the property bubble to expand until the inevitable blow-out in 2008.

In mafia terms the US dollar has been a 'made' currency enjoying a set of privileges and protection which it did not earn but foisted upon others. This is a unique dispensation which is enjoyed by the US to which the rest of the world is excluded.

However, it is in the nature of things that privileges will ultimately get abused. In pushing its luck to the point of abuse the US should be aware that initial signs are that the world is sloughing off the US dollar. As it proceeds in that direction, the US currency will lose its position as the global reserve asset. Holders of trillions of dollar-denominated assets will become sellers eventuating in a collapse of the currency.

The US economy lives like a parasite off its partners in the global system, with virtually no savings of its own. The World produces whilst North America consumes. The advantage of the US is that of a predator whose advantage is covered, by what others agree, or are forced, to contribute.

Washington uses various means to make up for its deficiencies: for example, repeated violations of the principles of liberalism, arms exports, and the hunting-down of oil super-profits (which involves the periodic felling of producers; one of the real motives behind the wars in Iraq and Central Asia).

But the fact is that the bulk of the American deficit is covered by capital inputs from Europe and Japan, China and the South, rich oil-producing countries and comprador classes from all regions, including the poorest, in the third world, to which should be added the debt-service levy that is imposed on nearly every country in the periphery of the global system. The US superpower depends from day to day on the flow of capital which sustains its economy and society. The vulnerability of the United States represents a serious danger to Washington's project." [ 11 ]

In light of the above we may conclude that – in spite of the irritating name-dropping – Rickards' books are interesting well written and well-argued; per contra they are very light on facts which have been left deliberately unexamined as well as counter-narratives which have also been ignored.

This was to be expected quite simply because at bottom Rickards is a sophist much in the tradition of Protagoras, Gorgias and Thrasymachus "I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger" [ 12 ]

A view which Rickards would certainly endorse. Beneath the Upper Manhattan, polished chic, there resides a ruthless Cold Warrior. The further one digs into the book, the more this becomes apparent.

NOTES:-
  • [1] Rickards – Aftermath – page.21
  • [2] Ibid., – page.65
  • [3] Michael Hudson – Super Imperialism – pp.298/99, 32.
  • [4] Rickards – Ibid. – page.66
  • [5] Hyman Minsky's theories about debt accumulation received revived attention in the media during the subprime mortgage crisis of the late 2000s. The New Yorker has labelled it "the Minsky Moment". Minsky argued that a key mechanism that pushes an economy towards a crisis is the accumulation of debt by the non-government sector. He identified three types of borrowers that contribute to the accumulation of insolvent debt: hedge borrowers, speculative borrowers, and Ponzi borrowers.
  • The "hedge borrower" can make debt payments (covering interest and principal) from current cash flows from investments. For the "speculative borrower", the cash flow from investments can service the debt, i.e., cover the interest due, but the borrower must regularly roll over, or re-borrow, the principal. The "Ponzi borrower" (named for Charles Ponzi, see also Ponzi scheme) borrows based on the belief that the appreciation of the value of the asset will be sufficient to refinance the debt but could not make sufficient payments on interest or principal with the cash flow from investments; only the appreciating asset value can keep the Ponzi borrower afloat.
  • [6] Rickards – Ibid., page.85
  • [7] Rickards – Ibid., page.239
  • [8] Joseph Stiglitz – The Roaring 90s – pp.206/207
  • [9] Gold Pool 1968. The price of one troy ounce of gold was pegged to US$35. The larger the gap, known as the gold window, between free market gold price and the foreign exchange rate, the more tempting it was for nations to deal with internal economic crises by buying gold at the Bretton Woods price and selling it in the gold markets. It couldn't last and it didn't.
  • [10] Michael Hudson – Ibid. – p.309
  • [11] Barry Eichengreen – Exorbitant Privilege – passim.
  • [12] Plato – The Republic. Facebook Twitter Reddit Pinterest WhatsApp vKontakte Email

Frank Lee left school at age 15 without any qualifications, but gained degrees from both New College Oxford and the London School of Economics (it's a long story). He spent many years as a lecturer in politics and economics, and in the Civil Service, before retirement. He lives in Sutton with his wife and little dog.


Guy

Excellent article by Frank Lee. Many of us are aware of the problems of the USD but few are able to so succinctly explain why and connect the dots to expose the true picture. The bottom line is that the lifespan of the USD as king is almost over .There will not be any rabbit pulled out of the hat to make America great again.That is a feel good cliché used to further induce the population to go back to sleep.

The US has been exposed, and so well said, as a predator nation .There must be a reason why China and Russia are buying up as much gold as their economy will permit .The exchange medium used for trade since time immemorial .

FoodBowl
Measuring 'National Debt as a Portion of the US Economy' is for economics classes and for newspapers to publish. The Criminal Elites look at things differently. They measure the National Debt as a Portion of the 'FEROCIOUS BOMBING POWER the US Possess'. Also, 'Spreading Chaos Capabilities' is added to the Bombing Power.

From this point of view, they see enormous assets, and the debts becomes less worrying as they see less urgency to deal with this ever growing liabilities.

Fair dinkum
No analysis required because it's always been the same. The few exploit the many. This has fed the cancers of psychopathy, messiah complexes and endless wars.
We are rushing towards the midnight sun.
MASTER OF UNIVE
The Wall Street ethos has always been 'kill or be killed' where bears eat, and bulls eat, but pigs get slaughtered! The problem with today's market & stock valuations is that they are as hyperinflated as Real Estate Commercial & Residential sectors are which leaves no wiggle room for price discovery until there is a system wide crash that mean reverts the valuations back to a realistic price.

Warren Buffett is currently sitting on $55 billion in cash so that he does not get destroyed on the upcoming systemic wide crash. Buffett has never pulled this kind of bread from the table in his lifetime whilst waiting for a systemic crash & the inevitable fat tail blowout that is poised to rip the face off of the USA & EU as their eyeballs get ripped out too.

Ripping a face off & ripping eyeballs out is day trader speak for kicking counterparties in the groin for the deal. The French Revolution was all about teaching the financial elite predator class of monetary control freaks who the boss really is when the gravy train slows during Financial Winter.

And if they can't take the heat they should get out of the kitchen!

RW

mark
All that is happening now is that Trump is trying to solve his country's intractable economic and financial problems by looting the rest of the planet. This is not a new development, but Trump is at least refreshingly honest in his public pronouncements.

It has always been thus.

  • The Roman Empire imposed tribute on its subjects. You have to send us so much grain, cattle, so many slaves, so much timber for shipbuilding, so much precious metal and base metal, so many wild beasts for our circuses. In return we won't kill you.
  • The Nazi Empire imposed tribute on its conquests in identical fashion. Send us your industrial output, agricultural produce and raw materials. In return we'll give you a big credit balance at the Reichsbank.
  • Uncle Sugar says send me your BMWs, fine wines, electronic gadgets, oil and minerals. In return I'll give you some worthless little pieces of green paper you can exchange for worthless IOUs called Treasury Bills.

The current (real) military budget is $1,134 billion, around 60% higher than the fictitious figure that is normally touted.

The trade deficit is $900 billion. The budget deficit $1,175 billion, over 20% of the overall budget.

America is borrowing around $4 billion a day from the rest of the world. Uncle Sam is the biggest scrounger, parasite, leech, bludger, and panhandler in the history of the planet.

The official national debt of $22.5 trillion understates the true position by a factor of over ten. Every US man, woman, child, and babe in arms is in hock to the tune of over $700,000.

Antonym
Trump != the Swamp. They hate him.
RobG
The global economy is about to crash, yet again (because it's never really recovered from the 2008 crash)'. Answers on a postcard, please (and one that doesn't involve giving the banksters eye-watering amounts of money).
Frank Lodge
Without reading the book in question, this seems like an thoroughly sound and incisive review. Just one thing, "cometh" takes a singular subject.
BigB
Rickards attitude is famously: "Buy gold" to which he creates a fear porn scenario around the coming recession. His solution: "Buy gold". Not, lets look at the conditions that are causing the underlying boom and bust business cycles and find a solution that works for humanity. His solution: "Buy gold" which the likes of he and the others who are driving the business cyclical waves of mutilation have already done to hedge their portfolios. Fuck Ricards. I have no time for those who wish to profit from the overfinancial immiseration of humanity. And you know where you can stick your gold.

Good luck to anyone who produces gold in an actual collapse scenario. So you need to buy guns and bodyguards for self-protection if you buy gold...

mark
Gold could form some kind of basis for exchange in a collapse setting. Other desirable barter items would be alcohol, cigarettes, basic drugs like aspirin and paracetamol, electrical batteries, fuel and similar goods. Maybe ammunition as well. Goods were priced in cigarettes in postwar Germany.

Gold would probably be of use. Gemstones, jewellery, would not. 99.9% of people are unable to distinguish a real diamond from a piece of glass.

bevin
"he original version of the Guns versus butter argument was given in a speech on January 17, 1936, in Nazi Germany." Not for the first time Wikipedia is wrong here. Bismarck is normally credited with the choice between Guns and Butter. Goebbels was suggesting that Guns will bring Butter.
Martin Usher
Its nice to see this in a book but its really common knowledge. The only thing I'd dispute is this notion of an 'elite', there is no such thing, its just greed holding the reins -- its like a mass FOMO, nobody's willing to take the long view because it might mean they'll miss out on what they can grab right now.

The danger we face from this is that if a large enough economic bloc runs by more rational rules then its going to eventually cream us economically. This forces us to destroy it. This is what's at the bottom of our problems with China. The USSR wasn't strong or well organized enough to pose a real threat to us so it could be taken down primarily by economic means. The Chinese learned their lesson from the Russian experience and 'played nice' which they built their country up -- we all heard the commentariat from a few years ago about them 'not really being communists any more'. Now they're in a position to look us in the eye so we've got to confront them, to take them down. (You'll notice that one of the conditions that will end the trade war is the 'liberalizing of capital markets' -- that is, we need to take over their banking system and currency.) If -- when -- this fails then the only recourse would be actual war.

The crime in all this is in the pursuit of money -- ultimately a wholly artificial concept -- we're wasting immense amounts of resources and human potential, spreading misery and despoliation all over the planet and generally behaving like really awful global citizens. We can and must do better.

wardropper
And we certainly must stop talking about "taking down" the Chinese, and instead actually try to understand where they come from, with their roots in a far more ancient civilized society than ours.

American exceptionalism, for example, takes it for granted that we in the West are good, and therefore the East must become more like us. But we are logically, and morally, obliged to look at this from the opposite perspective too: What if the Chinese take it for granted that they are good, and therefore the West must become more like them?

I have been to China, and found the people there to consist of the same mixtures of honest, good, nondescript, sinister and deplorable as we have here at home.

They also share exactly the same fundamental problem as we do: Their politicians and their people, like ours, are two entirely separate things. Of course the origins of Chinese, or Russian, society are different from ours, but that is no reason to despise them. Our origins are often pretty despicable too.

Antonym
The Chinese people are as materialistic or spiritual as any; it is the local deep state (CPC) totalitarian culture that needs to change.
Robbobbobin
"The crime in all this is in the pursuit of money -- [w]e can and must do better."

Three thousand years?

He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity. –Ecclesiastes 5:10

Two thousand years?

For the love of money is the root of all evil –1 Timothy 6:10

Surely the Anti Deceased Equine Distress Society has lobbied some sort of statute of limitations onto the books by now?

MASTER OF UNIVE
American parasitism writ large over the last half century has amply signified to the entire world that 'manifest destiny' was merely a ruse to foist American hegemony onto all sovereign nations at the behest of an out-of-control American Oligopoly that was power-tripping post WW2 & drunk on the souls of the poor sots all over the entire world with their power hungry warmongering Military Industrial Complex.

Proof of their combined ignorance with respect to Cybernetics & Systems Theory was their willingness to follow the likes of the Vietnam War architects that assumed incorrectly that they could impose a closed-looped cybernetic control system over world finance & mercantilism throughout the entire world at the behest of academic failures like Macnamera who would not know a 'closed-looped cybernetic' from an open-looped cybernetic if his life & legacy depended on it.

Simply put, American printing presses at the privately owned Federal Reserve cannot even remotely help or assist in anymore financial profligacy for the Neoconservative or Neoliberal camps of the cerebrally sclerotic & Early Onset Dementia riddled, & uneducated, financial buffoons that emanated out of the now defunct Chicago School headed up by Strauss et al. in the 60s & 70s.

All the macroeconomic indicators over the last two decades have clearly indicated that the Greenspan era of asset inflation was nothing more than the undoing of Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker's hard won success during his tenure pre-Greenspan 'Maestro' halcyon days of animal spirits run amok.

In brief, the United States of America can eat my shorts as it is solely responsible for manufacturing a finance control system & requisite money pump fraud that is nothing more than a worldwide Ponzi scheme to defraud the entire world of disposable income & discretionary income gain so that all gains accrue to the rentier class of speculative investors like Warren Buffett & Bob Paulson.

Bottom line is that Warren Buffett will have to purchase all the new automobiles, trucks, houses, mansions, cottages, farms, cites, towns, railroads, roads, & precious metals as the emerging markets & first world markets all decouple just as Professor Emeritus Benoit Mandelbrot hypothesized they would just before he died.

Go ahead, America, print the fake fiat greenbacks to infinity in vain hope of extricating yourselves from the intractable financial muck & mire you are most assuredly going to find yourselves in this approaching October 2019.

Go ahead, Punk, make my day!

Are you feeling lucky, Punk?

RW

Martin Usher
Its not "American". We just happen to be the chosen host for this part of history. Before us it was the British Empire that was top dog.

Money has no particular loyalty to a country. In pre-WW1 Europe the bourgeois were all intermarried, connected primarily by wealth and power regardless of their nominal nationality, our present equivalent are similarly connected. Just like WW1 when the chips are down we -- the ordinary people -- will be sacrificed on the alter of patriotism while they'll survive and prosper.

MASTER OF UNIVE
March 10th 2008 around 11:00am Bear Stearns time New York shitty was the virtual end of American hegemony worldwide forever more into the obvious future of Macroeconomics & Macroprudential Policy as an ongoing concern. Debt-to-GDP of all sovereign Western imperialist nations is intractably North of any semblance of sustainability vis-a-vis Finance worldwide or within Emerging Economies or First World Developed Economies.

Intractable debt limits were broached when Nixon declared the bankruptcy of the Bretton Woods infrastructure of gold backed USA Reserve Currency Status and then opted in ignorance for the petro-dollar bait & switch fiat USD Finance capture worldwide which has now come home to roost across the rust belt of the heartland USA, and in places that were once bastions of manufacturing for the middle class USA blue collar worker such as Detroit or Chicago. Today the business model of the USA is transnationalist whereby places across the USA are not even remotely financed into that transnationalist Wall Street model of Finance that is wholly parasitic to the point of crashing mainstreet USA across all sectors of the Service Sector Industries that were supposed to be replacing the long lost USA Manufacturing Base that was offshored to the Third World sovereigns that would temporarly increase profit margins for the transnationalist class of corporate parasites run amok to collectively destroy all life on Planet Earth for centuries to come if we are lucky.

RW

martin

You have made the common mistake of asserting that it is America, instead of those who govern (the USA and its pundits) that have engineered the problems you point out.

Why would the two parties in congress (Article II followers) and the two fellows with the Article II power, continue to [expand the debt in fake, made up and useless expenses], unless they were controlled by external forces?

Maybe bankers and their high powered corporations are finding they can no longer easily dupe Americans into delivering their resources into the pockets of the wealthy. Maybe the American people have drawn the line, no more, will they produce for the IMF, world bank?

Maybe Americans have decided to refuse the tax burdens imposed to retire the fed debt? Maybe foreign nations have denied the banks and their corporations access to their resources as a means to pay the USA debt? Maybe script has been recognized as a false capital in-capable of ruling the world? Maybe organized criminals have taken up positions in the western governments and used those positions to force on the governed many things? Maybe burdening the USA with debt is part of the plan to bankrupt America? <==but why should the banks bankrupt America, why has access to education been limited, why has the USA spied on Americans? Why have the governed Americans been denied access to the USA? Has the USA retired Americans from productive jobs, in order to accelerate the demise of America? The USA has made Americans into debtors obligated to pay bankers in the form of taxes to be collected by the USA and remitted to the bankers. <= just as is now occurring in Britain, Greece, France, and other places. Privatization, monopolization and conversion from public to private franchising and ownership have served as the transforming agents that have made the elite so wealthy.

Economic Zionism. as opposed to government regulated capitalism, condones no competition, allows no prisoners and either takes or destroys all likely competitive elements (persons, corporations, or nations) Economic Zionism demands the government that governs (as in USA governance over Americans) assist in rendering Americans broke. Is it because until Americans are broke, the EZ bandits are hampered? Is scooping resources into private, monopoly powered, already wealthy hands, the goodies to be had the goal? Maybe the USA is a privatizing agent instead of a benefactor serving Americans?

In USA governed America, there is much very-productive farm land, millions of tons of minerals, many productive seaports, and tons and tons of money making monopolies (patents, copyrights, royalties, government franchised goodies, lucrative government contracts, and plenty of government services and resources) to be privatized for profit. The goodies are located in thousands of acres of rich farmland, the major ports and services attached thereto, and embedded within little domestic American companies which the USA debt will eventually burden into bankruptcy. After all "scalping a bankruptcy" is historically a speciality of economic zionism.

MASTER OF UNIVE
In 1994 JPMorgan management & traders went on a little holiday in Miami to concoct the Global Ponzi of debt & risk associated with loans into what is known today as the Financialization Process whereby bank risk would be shuffled off of investment bank balance sheets and onto those speculators that wanted to purchase all that risk involved in the bank portfolios en masse because they knew how to offload that risk to unsuspecting greater fools that were always certain to come knocking in a climate of upward growth and yield curve convexity. But the chink in their financial alchemy was obviously debt limits and the ability to track the risk to the system as a whole given that all transactions in the derivatives world are dark & unregulated due to the helmsmen like the Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who previous to being nominated as Treasury Secretary was in fact the top man at Goldman Sachs where he raked in approximately a smooth billion before traversing the revolving door between the Whore House & Goldman Sachs New York shitty offices.

Casino Banking morphed into Late Stage Ponzi Capitalism when Bob Paulson wanted more Residential Mortgage Backed Security issuance and pressured Goldman Sachs into providing more issuance via NINJA loans & Liar Loans after 05 when the Wall Street speculators had to go bottom feeding for loan issuance in order to meet investor demand & apatite for their unhinged Gordon Gecko greed.

'Maestro' Greenspan emphasized his 'flaw' in his macroeconomic model of the world when the investor greed broached fat tails on the order of a 10% crash of the power laws of distributions of loan issuance. Greenspan never assumed that the Financialization Process would exceed a default scenario greater than 5-7% of no-performing loans in the subprime issuance tranche.

American exceptionalism via Henry Paulson USA Treasury Secretary 08 is what rendered American Late Stage Ponzi Capitalism wholly defunct going forward into 2020 & beyond with a permanent lower bound CB Interest Rate Regime & specter of WW3 hot conflagration.

My money is on the pinko Commie bastards this time round the sovereign insolvency loop of domestic misery USA.

WELCOME to the New World Disorder!

RW

nottheonly1
To condense this lengthy essay: This ship is sinking.

This would include household debt, student debt, financial debt, corporate debt, and municipal debt. Add this to sovereign debt and you get a figure roughly 5 times US sovereign debt, and even this is regarded as being a conservative figure according to many

One – at least on this side of the screen – cannot but think that all this is by design. The cart is driven intentionally off the cliff. To start off with a clean slate? Where the wealthy still have their wealth, but the suckers are depending on hand-outs?

An old proverb alledges that: To borrow brings sorrow.

To which only those who make loads of money from lending will disagree. Where are the solutions? No solutions, just listicles as to how bad it all is? Sure, the West is reminiscent of the HMS Titanic – with the slight difference of the hole made by the iceberg (debt) extending over the whole length of the ship. It is listing beyond dancing.

Well, I am willing to tell a secret (that isn't one anymore for quite some time):

  • Outlaw/prohibit Interest .
  • Prohibit capital gains . Or tax them with 99%.
  • Prevent under all circumstances a continuation of Performanceless Profits .

Make them punishable with prison time of no less than half of the age at which they were perpetrated. You're 30? You're going in for 15. You're 65? Easy math.

Fact is, that there are solutions galore to save our souls. Problem is, those whose lives are depending on them, don't demand them to be implemented. And why would the wealthy tax non-payers like Bezos et al want to change their 'winning team'? That is a well known no-no. The only solution the masses of the little people can hope for is 'Force Majeur' that works to their benefit. Shall we wait for that to happen?

[Sep 09, 2019] "'The New Normal': Trump's 'China Bind' Can Be Iran's Opportunity" by Alastair Crooke, and "Who Is Holding Back the Russian Economy?" by Tom Luongo.

Notable quotes:
"... Twice in the same sentence we get told what that assumption is: "America's technology leadership" which so clearly no longer exists in weaponry, electronics, nuclear engineering, rocketry, high speed rail and mass transportation, low energy building techniques, and a host of other realms. This same sort of thinking pervades every defense doctrine paper produced during Trump's administration--the planners have eaten and all too well digested their own propaganda about the backwardness of Russia, China and Iran. ..."
"... This does not imply some rabid anti-Americanism, but simply the experience that that path is pointless. If there is a 'clock being played out', it is that of the tic-toc of western political and economic hegemony in the Middle East is running down ..."
"... [with] Iran repeating the same old routines, whilst expecting different outcomes is, of course, one definition of madness. A new US Administration will inherit the same genes as the last. ..."
"... "And in any case, the US is institutionally incapable of making a substantive deal with Iran. A US President – any President – cannot lift Congressional sanctions on Iran. The American multitudinous sanctions on Iran have become a decades' long knot of interpenetrating legislation: a vast rhizome of tangled, root-legislation that not even Alexander the Great might disentangle: that is why the JCPOA was constructed around a core of US Presidential 'waivers' needing to be renewed each six months. Whatever might be agreed in the future, the sanctions – 'waived' or not – are, as it were, 'forever'. ..."
"... "If recent history has taught the Iranians anything, it is that such flimsy 'process' in the hands of a mercurial US President can simply be blown away like old dead leaves. Yes, the US has a systemic problem: US sanctions are a one-way valve: so easy to flow out, but once poured forth, there is no return inlet (beyond uncertain waivers issued at the pleasure of an incumbent President)." ..."
Sep 09, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org

Speculation's abounded about the political loyalty of the head of Russia's central bank Elvira Nabullina. Luongo simply explains:

"Nabullina has always been a controversial figure because she is western trained and because the banking system in Russia is still staffed by those who operate along IMF prescriptions on how to deal with crises.

"But those IMF rules are there to protect the IMF making the loans to the troubled nation, not to assist the troubled nation actually recover....

"The fundamental problem is a miseducation about what interest rates are, and how they interact with inflation and capital flow. Because of this, the medicine for saving an economy in trouble is, more often than not, worse than the disease itself.

"If Argentina's fourth default in twenty years doesn't prove that to you, nothing will."

It sounds like he's been reading Hudson's J is for Junk Economics !

The real rescue is Putin's aggressive de-dollarization policy that's finally rid Russia of "dollar-dependency":

"She [Nabullina] keeps jumping at the shadows of a dollar-induced crisis. But the Russian economy of 2019 is not the Russian economy of 2015. Dollar lending has all but evaporated and the major source of demand for dollars domestically are legacy corporate loans not converted to rubles or euros."

The key for me is to weave the content emphasis of Putin's Eastern Economic Conference speech with his increasing pressure on Nabullina for the bank to support this very important development policy direction and show China and other nations that Russia's extremely serious about the direction being taken. Just Putin's language about mortgage rate reductions as an attracter ought to be a huge message for Nabullina to respond properly. And a further kick in the pants was provided by the massive deal announced between China and Iran. Luongo briefly alludes to foreign policy in his article, its regional economic aspects, while omitting aspects hidden by the US-China Trade War, specifically Russia's now very clear technological supremacy to the Outlaw US Empire.

This brings us to Crooke's article in which he inadvertently tells us the #1 false assumption in Trump's Trade War policy with China:

"To defend America's technology leadership , policymakers must upgrade their toolkit to ensure that US technology leadership can withstand the aftershocks." [My Emphasis]

Twice in the same sentence we get told what that assumption is: "America's technology leadership" which so clearly no longer exists in weaponry, electronics, nuclear engineering, rocketry, high speed rail and mass transportation, low energy building techniques, and a host of other realms. This same sort of thinking pervades every defense doctrine paper produced during Trump's administration--the planners have eaten and all too well digested their own propaganda about the backwardness of Russia, China and Iran.

I could write further about the supposed handcuffing of POTUS by the unconstitutional and illegal sanction regime "imposed" by the US Congress. Crooke mentions as a significant hindrance--but if it was indeed a hindrance, any POTUS could break it by suing to prove its unconstitutional, illegal standing, yet no effort is put into that, begging the question Why? Crooke spends lots of space about this but fails to see the above solution:

"The pages to that chapter have been shut. This does not imply some rabid anti-Americanism, but simply the experience that that path is pointless. If there is a 'clock being played out', it is that of the tic-toc of western political and economic hegemony in the Middle East is running down , and not the 'clock' of US domestic politics. The old adage that the 'sea is always the sea' holds true for US foreign policy.

And [with] Iran repeating the same old routines, whilst expecting different outcomes is, of course, one definition of madness. A new US Administration will inherit the same genes as the last.

"And in any case, the US is institutionally incapable of making a substantive deal with Iran. A US President – any President – cannot lift Congressional sanctions on Iran. The American multitudinous sanctions on Iran have become a decades' long knot of interpenetrating legislation: a vast rhizome of tangled, root-legislation that not even Alexander the Great might disentangle: that is why the JCPOA was constructed around a core of US Presidential 'waivers' needing to be renewed each six months. Whatever might be agreed in the future, the sanctions – 'waived' or not – are, as it were, 'forever'.

"If recent history has taught the Iranians anything, it is that such flimsy 'process' in the hands of a mercurial US President can simply be blown away like old dead leaves. Yes, the US has a systemic problem: US sanctions are a one-way valve: so easy to flow out, but once poured forth, there is no return inlet (beyond uncertain waivers issued at the pleasure of an incumbent President)."

Being British, we should excuse Crooke for not knowing about the crucial Supremacy Clause within the US Constitution, but that doesn't absolve any POTUS if that person is really intent on talking with Iran--or any other sanctioned nation. IMO, the Iranians know what I know and have finally decided the Outlaw US Empire's marriage to Occupied Palestine won't suffer a divorce anytime soon. The result is the recent very active change in policy direction aimed at solidifying the Arc of Resistance and establishing a Persian Gulf Collective Security Pact that will end in check mating the Empire's King thus causing further economic problems for the Empire.

Crooke does a good job of summarizing my comment and many more made over the year regarding the reasons for the utter failure of Outlaw US Empire policy:

"Well, here is the key point: Washington seems to have lost the ability to summon the resources to try to fathom either China, or the Iranian 'closed book', let alone a 'Byzantine' Russia. It is a colossal attenuation of consciousness in Washington; a loss of conscious 'vitality' to the grip of some 'irrefutable logic' that allows no empathy, no outreach, to 'otherness'. Washington (and some European élites) have retreated into their 'niche' consciousness, their mental enclave, gated and protected, from having to understand – or engage – with wider human experience."

The only real way for the Outlaw US Empire to regain its competitive "niche" with the rest of the world is to mount a massive program of internal reform verging on a revolution in its outcome. It's patently obvious that more of the same will yield more of the same--FAILURE--and the chorus of inane caterwauling by BigLie Media over where to place the blame.

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 9 2019 17:24 utc | 118

[Sep 08, 2019] 8-30-19 John Kiriakou on the Deep State's Search for a 'Russiagate' Scalp The Scott Horton Show

Sep 08, 2019 | scotthorton.org

John Kiriakou fills in some of the details of the real story of Maria Butina, the alleged Russian spy who is said to have conspired with the 2016 Trump campaign. The problem with the official narrative, explains Kiriakou, is that Butina is not a spy at all and there's no evidence for illegal activity, except for a Foreign Agents Registration form that she should have filled out but did not. For this relatively minor, first time offense, Butina is serving more than a year in prison and has had her name and reputation completely and falsely destroyed. She has also been used in order to build a case of alleged collusion between President Trump and Vladimir Putin, which Kiriakou says is just as flimsy as the case against Butina.

Discussed on the show:

  • "JOHN KIRIAKOU: In Search of a Russiagate Scalp: The Entrapment of Maria Butina" ( Consortium News )
  • "Foreign Agents Registration Act | Department of Justice" ( justice.gov )
  • "The Russian Spy Who Wasn't | The New Republic" ( The New Republic )

John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer and author of The Convenient Terrorist: Two Whistleblowers' Stories of Torture, Terror, Secret Wars, and CIA Lies and Doing Time Like A Spy . He is the host of Loud and Clear on Sputnik Radio. Follow him on Twitter @JohnKiriakou .

[Sep 08, 2019] Shephen Cohen: What We Still Do Not Know About Russiagate

Sep 08, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

True Blue , 1 minute ago link

It is hard, if not impossible, to think of a more toxic allegation in American presidential history than the one leveled against candidate, and then president, Donald Trump that he "colluded" with the Kremlin in order to win the 2016 presidential election

Oh, I can think of one, and it absolutely isn't mere allegation: every one of those pimps at the State and Federal level colludes with Tel Aviv every ******* day. They get their marching orders from a foreign country whose 'dual citizens' even infest every branch of our government and at every level.

Yet not a word is spoken.

Unless you buy Mel Gibson a beer or three.

PKKA , 4 minutes ago link

Marxism-Leninism today is opposed by bourgeois ideology. The state ideology of the ruling class of the US bourgeoisie is militant Zionism.

Modern Zionism is an extremely nationalist, racist ideology, it is politics and practice that express the interests of the big Jewish bourgeoisie. The main content of modern Zionism is militant chauvinism, racism, anti-communism and anti-Sovietism, the aim is to conquer world domination and assert the so-called New World Order.

Fidel Castro, noted that at the end of World War II, which the peoples were waging against fascism, a new government arose that imposed the current absolutist and tough order.

WHAT is this new, parallel power and its "elite core"?

The top-level parallel secret government, or real, parallel power, its "elite core" - these are Jewish bankers and industrialists, members of the 60 families that govern the United States, openly located on Capitol Hill in full view of the White House, US Congress on Downing Street 10 (and in the British Parliament). These are the servants of the World Government and the New World Order. Or, the new Fascism!

Cabreado , 5 minutes ago link

If We as an organization can't even admit there was an attempted coup on the Presidency, and don't even care...

How 'bout we talk about what We do know...
the DOJ is defunct, and the Rule of Law is broken.

stonedogz , 11 minutes ago link

ANSWER: It came from the top. Obama. Obama was to be Hillary's pick for SC Justice by a planned post Obama RBG retirement. It is the only plausible explanation for the coup and for why an aging, terminally ill Justice would risk her Seat for nomination by a Republican administration.

RBG is pragmatic as much as she is tenacious. And handing her seat gambled like that in an election year was not a risk she would have taken given both her age and her health.

Her ideology would not have risked that except for one reason: To have that hallowed seat pass to a former President, the first Black President, and one with an ideology almost identical to her own plus an easy confirmation given Obama's experience in Constitutional law.

When Trump came up in the poles and Hillary's star looked to be dimming about July of 2016 (the 4th to be specific) (when they breach loaded her like an oat bag into the back of that iconic SUV on national TV) Plan B was officially rolled out, Obama rolled it out and an FBI official would later boast both of Obama's intimate knowledge of the plan and that this was to be the backup plan should the election favor Trumps win.

Textual evidence by those running the both the FISA warrants and the planting of spies into Trumps campaign all point to the Commander in Chief being both briefed but also directing at the very last minute and unprecedented Executive Order allowing all of the Intelligence Agencies full intra-agency access to all mutual intelligence.

They thought they could seed the collusion early, and if it didn't take, overturn the election early with an impeachment following the certain dirt that they overwhelmingly knew Mueller would find on Trump.

Trump, he had to be dirty. Look at anyone in the media and who was as rich as he was... just look at the women he's dated...

Inspite of rabid Obama staffers in the White House leaking and outing those under investigation and especially at the State Department then Mueller's Gang of 13 Clinton supporting prosecutors along with the top leaders in the now mutually cooperative Intelligence Cabal the 35 million dollars and 2 years of probing and intimidation of witnesses couldn't produce a single slab of sidewalk with the DNA evidence that Trump had actually spit on it. They couldn't find it or anything.

And now its all coming out....

Interesting to note that the best chance for Obama to reclaim the motive for the Coup is that Biden has already said that he will nominate Obama, who by his truest actions as the Traitor in Chief, to the Supreme Court if elected.

That's why Obama orchestrated the Coup so that he could sit in the highest Chair of Government and influence it more than he could as President... for the rest of his life.

ohm , 13 minutes ago link

Are Barr and Durham, whose own careers include associations with US intelligence agencies, determined to uncover the truth about the origins of Russiagate?

Have you seen Barr charge anyone with a crime? Has Barr given Durham the power to charge anyone with a crime? Barr is just the Deep State's cleanup man.

ohm , 13 minutes ago link

Are Barr and Durham, whose own careers include associations with US intelligence agencies, determined to uncover the truth about the origins of Russiagate?

Have you seen Barr charge anyone with a crime? Has Barr given Durham the power to charge anyone with a crime? Barr is just the Deep State's cleanup man.

ze_vodka , 24 minutes ago link

We know it was fake.

We know Hillary and Obama paid for and directed it.

We also know that Not a single one of the Actual Criminals will ever go to prison.

Johnny Fingers , 30 minutes ago link

This is simple:

What is the evidence that:

1) The DNC was 'hacked;'

2) At the direction of the Russian state?

you need both.

Well, the wish-thinking of the products of incest like Steverino999 aside - the *evidence* is essentially non-existent.

Clapper's DNI report, which deliberately used hand-picked analysts from only 3 agencies, a report which relied on Ukrainian and Clinton-linked CrowdStrike for image analysis, since the feds NEVER SEIZED AND EXAMINED THE ******* SERVER - (or interviewed Assange, or Binney, or Murray) is not only NOT proof, and NOT even credible evidence... it is in fact evidence of a deliberate effort to fudge intel to both 1) blame Russia Russia Russia (too white, and Christian, and not totally controlled by the usual suspects , you see) and denigrate Trump's election win.

The idea that our democracy is threatened by clickbait ads (or seeing the corruption of The Establishment's candidate) is preposterous and depends on people receptively watching their (((television))) and not giving a moment's thought as to how or why an ad that somehow changes someone's vote, to the extent it ever happened, isnt what democracy is.

If the complaint is 'they were lies' and leaving aside the truth of the clickbait lie, the MSM by that standard is the most guilt of election 'meddling' given their lies and omissions that were all designed to propel Al Qaeda-arming, charity-robbing, inveterate crook Hillary Clinton into office.

You should never believe a thing, sinply because you want it to be true.

I will change my mind when someone presents something approaching credible evidence that the DNC was hacked by Russia, and that but-for seeing Hillary's corruption (did the media actually ever really cover the content of the emails? ) Americans would have voted for her more...

And that's essentially the argument: Americans learned what a piece of **** Hillary is and so didnt vote for her, so they were brainwashed by a foreign state.

It is ******* absurd, and relies on 1) ignorance, 2) stupidity, and 3) motivated reasoning.

And other factors:

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/amp/

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/amp/

gro_dfd , 11 minutes ago link

@Johnny Fingers: You present an excellent overview of Russiagate, especially the total lack of evidence that the DNC leaks originated with Russia. Thank you!

PKKA , 36 minutes ago link

Do you know how much the United States has funded Israel since 1949? These many billions are no longer calculable! American taxpayers are very kind and rich. And this is not only money, it is the supply of food products, economic assistance and weapons.
And how many American young men died in the Middle East defending the interests of Israel?

Yippie21 , 35 minutes ago link

A strong Israel is worth every dollar.

ohm , 22 minutes ago link

Why? Specifically, what benefit has Israel ever brought to the US?

Johnny Fingers , 17 minutes ago link

To whom, other than Israel?

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/israel-is-not-americas-ally/

http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/israel-is-no-ally/

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

Stainless Steel Rat , 22 minutes ago link

IF America actually defended itself as Israel does, there would be no need to Press 2 for Spanish (much less Press 1 for English as a 2nd language in New Delhi.)

Israel does more for American interests in the Middle East than the reverse.

That's Bang for the Buck, Bibi!😎

ohm , 10 minutes ago link

Israel does more for American interests

Do you have an example?

Johnny Fingers , 9 minutes ago link

Israel is a liability in virtually every way.

Yippie21 , 36 minutes ago link

What if there was active spying on a Presidential campaign by a outgoing administration to aid a candidate preferred? What if every lever available was pulled to cover up, minimize and excuse actual violations of Federal law by the outgoing administration to aid that same candidate. What if, somehow, out of nowhere, the opposition candidate overcame the odds and won triggering the outgoing administration to set up a foreign policy mess ( accusing Russia of _______ and throwing a bunch of them out of the US less than a month before the new President takes office ).

Then, the same outgoing aperachiks of the departing administration go about framing the new President, leaking and acting in a seditious manner to undermine and ultimately even overthrow the new President. A coup... sedition... by the permanent political class within the CIA, State, FBI and DOJ. Oh, and the national press corps..... IN ON IT up to their eyeballs and willing participants.

Nice , huh?

G-R-U-N-T , 37 minutes ago link

'All YOUR SERVERS ARE BELONG TO US'!!!

Nothing can stop what's coming, Nothing!!!

Grab your popcorn, sit back and enjoy the show.

San Pedro , 38 minutes ago link

The cost of the Russiagate hoax By Thomas Lifson The media that promoted the hoax originally generated by the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Party are in full denial mode. They don't merely ignore their role, they defend it.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/the_cost_of_the_russiagate_hoax.html

oldanalyst , 38 minutes ago link

The intelligence agencies went off the reservation to cover up years of illegal spying and surveillance of US citizens by the Obama administration as they accumulated the info needed to "influence" people. To prove me wrong, you must prove that Admiral Mike Rogers is a liar.

Why? Money. The slush funds of foreign aid, foundations, think tanks and big donor money. Billions were at stake. Think Biden, Gore, Clinton, Obama and almost every prominent politician you can name. All rich beyond our deplorable dreams.

Yippie21 , 32 minutes ago link

I'd say, not only money... but these folks believe their own book. They live that elitist BS globalist " right side of history " **** and are ideologues. They are all intermarried to other career folks in the DC / NYC pool and they and everyone they hang out with are wealthy because of it and they actually can't imagine what the hell has happened to their setup.

otschelnik , 41 minutes ago link

Much better would be a truly bipartisan, independent investigation based in the Senate,

Well Prof. Cohen normally would agree with you. But given the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is run by a Democratic hack like Warner, who tried to get in direct contact with dossier author Steele "without a paper trail", his aide Wolff was leaking to his underaged lover at the NYT, and a RINO like Burr who would be happy if Trump were impeached for sedition or something else, so don't hold your breath.

847328_3527 , 44 minutes ago link

When MuleHer said he never heard of Fusion GPS during the Congressional hearings, everyone knew the $50 million Russia Gate "investigation" was a complete farce.

Shameful Barr has not indicted anyone. Confirms how corrupt the system is and why so many Americans are disillusioned.

MadelynMarie , 29 minutes ago link

maybe they're leaking it out slowly, to gradually acclimatize the public to how corrupt things actually are

that's the BS Dave at x22 peddles!! always making excuses and covering for the fact that NOTHING IS HAPPENING!!

And the public doesn't need to be acclimated to how corrupt the govt is--everybody already knows!!!

Barr is a deep state swamp rat, who has a long history of covering for the intelligence agencies!! He's there to keep things covered up!

Barr's DOJ continues to protect Killary:

https://www.sott.net/article/419982-Whats-so-damaging-to-Hillary-that-the-DOJ-continues-to-withhold-a-requested-email-to-Senator-Grassley

https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-09-05-fitton-trump-justice-dept-fighting-to-protect-hillary-clinton.html

Barr's DOJ refuses to prosecute Comey, Strozk, and McCabe.

And, so far, nothing has come of this either:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/10/26/grassley_refers_avenatti_swetnick_to_doj_for_criminal_investigation_138471.html

J S Bach , 54 minutes ago link

"What We Still Do Not Know About Russiagate"

Simple question... What more can one possibly know about something that did not exist? Answer? Nothing.

Period... end of discussion. Move on to topics of importance such as the largest sex/pedophile/blackmail/treason/spy scandal in recorded history with Jeffrey Epstein and his Maxwell/Mossad darlings. ALL of our energies and concern must be poured into matters such as these... for if we do not, our doom is sealed.

gold_silver_as_money , 59 minutes ago link

But but but...Trump is still nothing more than a Zionist puppet.

Yeah, that makes so much sense, given that just about all of Congress is in their pocket but the political establishment still hates his guts AND he has managed to deescalate conflicts in the region.

Johnny Fingers , 54 minutes ago link

And the Bolsheviks weren't mostly Jewish because the Zionists were mostly Jewish.

🥴

AND he has managed to deescalate conflicts in the region.

Dumbest thing I've read this week - you absolute ******* idiot.

gold_silver_as_money , 51 minutes ago link

Countervailing facts please?

Did we ramp up in Ukraine?

Did we use Syria as an excuse to openly engage Russia?

Have we staged troops in Taiwan?

Have we started a hot war via Eastern Europe?

Did we oust Assad?

Did we bomb Iran?

PS **** you. Obama and Hillary went to town in the Middle East leaving Trump to clean it up, proposing a pragmatic and non-psychopath-neocon approach to dealing with adversaries from campaign days until the present time. At a minimum, not ramping up existing conflicts counts as a deescalation in my book. I do believe you are the idiot.

MadelynMarie , 17 minutes ago link

https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/tit-for-tat-why-did-mueller-let-trump-off-the-hook/

... then everything changed. And after it changed, Mueller released his report saying: "Trump is not guilty after all!" So, what changed? Trump changed.

Think about it: In mid December 2018, Trump announced the withdrawal of all U.S. troops in Syria within 30 days. But instead of withdrawal, the US has been sending hundreds of trucks with weapons to the front lines. The US has also increased its troop levels on the ground, the YPG (Kurdish militia, US proxies) are digging in on the Syria-Turkish border, and the US hasn't lifted a finger to implement its agreements with NATO-ally Turkey under the Manbij Roadmap. The US is not withdrawing from Syria. Washington is beefing up its defenses and settling in for the long-haul. But, why? Why did Trump change his mind and do a complete about-face?

The same thing happened in Korea. For a while it looked like Trump was serious about cutting a deal with Kim Jong un. But then, sometime after the first summit, he began to backpeddle. at the Hanoi Summit, Trump blindsided Kim by making demands that had never even been previously discussed. Kim was told that the North must destroy all of its chemical and biological weapons as well as its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs before the US will take reciprocal steps. In other words, Trump demanded that Kim completely and irreversibly disarm with the feint hope that the US would eventually lift sanctions.

Trump made these outrageous demands knowing that they would never be accepted. Which was the point, because the foreign policy establishment doesn't want a deal. They want regime change, they've made that perfectly clear. But wasn't Trump supposed to change all that? Wasn't Trump going to pursue "a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past"?

Yes, that was Trump's campaign promise. So, what happened?

There are other signs of capitulation too; like providing lethal weapons to the Ukrainian military, or nixing the short-range nuclear missile ban, or joining the Saudi's genocidal war on Yemen, or threatening to topple the government of Venezuela, or stirring up trouble in the South China Sea. At every turn, Trump has backtracked on his promise to break with tradition and "stop toppling regimes and overthrowing governments." ' At every turn, Trump has joined the ranks of the warhawks he once criticized.

Trump is now marching in lockstep with the foreign policy establishment. In Libya, in Sudan, in Somalia, in Iran, in Lebanon, he is faithfully implementing the neocon agenda. Trump "the peacemaker" is no where to be found, while Trump the 'madman with a knife' is on the loose.

Is that why Mueller let Trump off the hook? Was there a quid pro quo: "You follow our foreign policy directives and we'll make Mueller disappear? It sure looks like it.

gold_silver_as_money , 56 minutes ago link

But but but...Trump is a nothing more than a Zionist puppet.

Yeah, that makes so much sense, given that just about all of Congress is in their pocket but the political establishment still hates his guts AND he has managed to deescalate conflicts in the region.

G-R-U-N-T , 56 minutes ago link

"What We Still Do Not Know About Russiagate"

Absolutely damn right, most haven't a clue about the MOAB that's coming down on these treasonous anti-American bitchez.

This network to take down our dear POTUS spans worldwide, they're be hell to pay once the unredacted FISA warrants/302's are released for public view, the IG report, Huber investigation and Durham the 'prosecutor' burp up undeniable indictments and prosecutions for sedition, treason and crimes against humanity.

Uranium 1, Weiner laptop, Clinton emails, Clinton Foundation, Epstein perv's with names big names, will be blown wide open making many people ill hearing and seeing the nature of who and what these massively corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, corporate dignitaries, have been involved with. Many are resigning, both dems, repubs, ceo's, why, because (((they))) know what's coming and the DS is full blown panic, just look at their lapdog MSM going thoroughly crazy. Indeed, they're doing everything they can to take down Trump hoping to save themselves from the HAMMER, NO DEALS, even the those in the press will be indicted for conspiracy and attempted coup to take down a standing President.

Pain is coming!!!

[Sep 07, 2019] 14 Strange Facts Exposed As General Flynn's Endgame Approaches

Sep 07, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Here are just some of the twists and turns in the case, which has gone on for more than three years.

  1. Flynn's trip to Russia in 2015, where it was claimed Flynn went without the knowledge or approval of the DIA or anyone in Washington, was proven not to be true .
  2. Flynn was suspected of being compromised by a supposed Russian agent, Cambridge academic Svetlana Lokhova, based on allegations from Western intelligence asset Stefan Halper. This was also proven to be not true.
  3. Flynn's phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were framed as being incredibly shady and a potential violation of the Logan Act . This allegation was always preposterous .
  4. Unnamed intelligence officials leaked the details of the Flynn-Kislyak phone calls to The Washington Post.
  5. FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joseph Pientka were dispatched by Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe to interview Flynn at the White House, even though the FBI had already reviewed the transcripts of the calls and cleared Flynn of any crimes .
  6. Both FBI Director James Comey and McCabe testified to Congress that Flynn didn't lie.
  7. Despite what McCabe and Comey both testified to under oath before Congress, the Mueller special counsel's office decided to prosecute Flynn for perjury in November of 2017 .
  8. The very strange post-dated FD-302 form on the FBI's January 2017 interview of Flynn that wasn't filled out until August 2017, almost seven months afterward, is revealed in a court filing by Flynn's defense team .
  9. FBI agent Pientka became the "DOJ's Invisible Man," despite the fact that Congress has repeatedly called for him to testify. Pientka has remained out of sight and out of mind more than a year and a half since his name first surfaced in connection with the Flynn case.
  10. Judge Rudolph Contreras was removed from the Flynn case immediately after accepting Flynn's guilty plea and was replaced by Judge Emmit Sullivan .
  11. Sullivan issued what's known as a Brady order to prosecutors -- which ordered them to immediately turn over any exculpatory evidence to Flynn's defense team. Flynn's team then made a filing alleging the withholding of exculpatory evidence .
  12. Flynn was given a chance to withdraw his guilty plea by Judge Sullivan but refused , and insisted to go forward with sentencing.
  13. Flynn suddenly fired his lawyers for the past two years and hired Sidney Powell to lead his new legal team following special counsel Robert Mueller's disastrous testimony to Congress . And now, the latest startling development:
  14. Flynn filed to have the Mueller prosecution team replaced for having withheld exculpatory evidence , despite Sullivan having directly ordered them to hand any such evidence over months ago.

Now, it's not that far-fetched of an idea that the Mueller special counsel prosecutors would hide exculpatory evidence from the Flynn defense team, since they've just admitted to having done exactly that in another case their office has been prosecuting .

The defense team for Internet Research Agency/Concord, more popularly known as "the Russian troll farm case," hasn't been smooth going for the Mueller prosecutors.

First, the prosecution team got a real tongue-lashing from Judge Dabney L. Friedrich in early July , when it turned out they had no evidence whatsoever to prove their assertion that the Russian troll farms were being run by the Putin government.

Then, in a filing submitted to the court on Aug. 30, the IRA/Concord defense team alerted Judge Friedrich that the prosecutors just got around to handing them key evidence the prosecutors had for the past 18 months. The prosecution gave no explanation whatsoever as to why they hid this key evidence for more than a year.

It's hard to see at this point how the entire IRA/Concord case isn't tossed out.

What would it mean for Flynn's prosecutors to have been caught hiding exculpatory evidence from him and his lawyers, even after the presiding judge explicitly ordered them in February to hand over everything they had?

It would mean that the Flynn case is tossed out, since the prosecution team was caught engaging in gross misconduct.

Now you can see why Flynn refused to withdraw his guilty plea when Judge Sullivan gave him the opportunity to do so in late December 2018.

A withdrawal of the guilty plea or a pardon would let the Mueller prosecution team off the hook.

And they're not getting off the hook.

Flynn hired the best lawyer he possibly could have when it comes to exposing prosecutorial misconduct. Nobody knows the crafty, corrupt, and dishonest tricks federal prosecutors use better than Powell, who actually wrote a compelling book about such matters, entitled " License to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice ."

Everything this Mueller prosecution team did in withholding exculpatory evidence from Flynn's defense team -- and continued to withhold even after Judge Sullivan specifically issued an order about it -- is going to be fully exposed.

Defying a federal judge's Brady order is a one-way ticket to not only getting fired, it's a serious enough offense to warrant disbarment and prosecution.

If it turns out Mueller special counsel prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence -- not only in the IRA/Concord case, but also in the cases against Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, and others -- that will have a huge impact.

If they are willing to withhold exculpatory evidence in one case, why wouldn't they do the same thing in other cases they were prosecuting? Haven't they have already demonstrated they are willing to break the rules? Tags

Tirion , 3 minutes ago link

We have become a third-world country. Even throwing Mueller and his entire prosecutors' team in jail would not be enough to restore confidence in our legal system. But it would be a start.

consistentliving , 2 hours ago link

On or about December 28, 2016, the Russian Ambassador contacted FLYNN.

c. On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN called a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team ("PTT official"), who was with other senior ·members of the Presidential Transition Team at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian Ambassador about the U.S. Sanctions. On that call, FLYNN and 2 Case 1:17-cr-00232-RC Document 4 Filed 12/01/17 Page 2 of 6 the PTT official discussed the U.S. Sanctions, including the potential impact of those sanctions on the incoming administration's foreign policy goals. The PIT official and FLYNN also discussed that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the situation. d. Immediately after his phone call with the PTT official, FLYNN called the Russian Ambassador and requested that Russia not escalate the situation and only respond to the U.S. Sanctions in a reciprocal manner. e. Shortly after his phone call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with the PTT official to report on the substance of his call with the Russian Ambassador, including their discussion of the U.S. Sanctions. f. On or about December 30, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin released a statement indicating that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to the U.S. Sanctions at that time. g. On or about December 31, 2016, the Russian Ambassador called FLYNN and informed him that Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to FL YNN's request. h. After his phone call with the Russian Ambassador, FLYNN spoke with senior members of the Presidential Transition Team about FL YNN's conversations with the Russian Ambassador regarding the U.S. Sanctions and Russia's decision not to escalate the situation.

https://www.justice.gov/file/1015126/download

Charlie_Martel , 2 hours ago link

The coup plot between the international intelligence community (which includes our FBI-CIA-etc) and their unregistered foreign agents in the multinational corporate media is slowly being revealed.

Mah_Authoritah , 2 hours ago link

The truth is so precious that it must be spoon fed.

Transmedia001 , 3 hours ago link

Here’s another possibility... elites in the US Gov set on running a soft coup against a duly elected president and his team made up a whole pile of **** and passed it off as truth.

spoonful , 2 hours ago link

Agreed, so long as you put Flynn on the side of the elites

Boris Badenov , 3 hours ago link

The Manafort thing has me totally riled since HRC's "Password" guy and his brother were PARTNERS with manafort, did the same damn things, and were NOT investigated.

Donald Trump is many things to many people, but is not his social personna to be patient. He is being VERY patient to let this unfold, to "give a man enough rope" or political party and its owner, as it may be....

Donna Brazile's book is under-rated: it holds they keys as to who ran the DNC and why after Obie bailed.

TheAnswerIs42 , 3 hours ago link

Our local community rag (Vermont) had an opinion piece last week about "The slide towards Facism", where the author breathlessly stated that she had learned from a MSNBC expose by Rachel Maddow that the administration was firing researchers at NASA and EPA as well as cutting back funding for LGBTQ support groups. Oh the horror. The author conveniently forgot that the same dyke had lied for 2 years about Russia,Russia,Russia but it's still OK to believe any **** that drops out of her mouth.

This is the level of insanity happening around here. Of course it is Bernie's turf.

People who are so stupid and gullible deserve everything they are gonna get.

LEEPERMAX , 4 hours ago link

14 Strange Facts About Mueller's "Michael Flynn Scam"

https://youtu.be/ksb8VsOMqQg

LEEPERMAX , 4 hours ago link

MUELLER and his "Band of Legal Clowns" have played us all for "Absolute Fools" again and again.

THE U.S. IS A CAPTURED OPERATION

Drop-Hammer , 4 hours ago link

Poor Flynn. Rail-roaded by ZOG and Obama and Hillary and Co. I hope beyond hope that the truth is revealed and that he can sue the **** out of the seditionists/(((seditionists))) who put him into this mess such that his great-great-grandchildren will never have to work.

I also blame Trump for throwing Flynn under the bus.

Westcoastliberal , 3 hours ago link

Trump didn't throw Flynn under the bus, I think he would pardon him later, but Trump needs to let this play out. Otherwise the left will bury him.

just the tip , 36 minutes ago link

trump threw flynn under the bus when trump said the reason he let flynn go was flynn lied to pence.

Homer E. Rectus , 4 hours ago link

If they are willing to withhold exculpatory evidence in one case, why wouldn’t they do the same thing in other cases they were prosecuting? Haven’t they have already demonstrated they are willing to break the rules?

Duh! Because it's easy and the media never covers it and AG Barr and FBI director Wray will cover it all up. America no longer operates under rule of law, and now we all know it. Never cooperate with them!

Roger Casement , 4 hours ago link

Mike Flynn stands for us. Help him put handicapped trolls out of work.

Buy lunch for Sidney Powell. o7

https://mikeflynndefensefund.org/

ztack3r , 4 hours ago link

flynn didn't rape children, to buzy trying to fight liberators of iraq and afganistan from invasion... that's his major crime.

I guess, kelly, mattis, mcmaster neither are on the child rape trend. but what can they do? when the entire cia and doj and fbi are full on controlled and run by the pedos? it's like when all the cardinals and the pope are pedos, what a bishop to do...

Why would CIA Rothschild'd up puppet Trump pick only the best William Barr?

Who told Acosta to cut no prosecution deal with Epstein? George Bush? Robert Mukasey? or Bob Mueller?

Trump, Barr, Bush, Mueller all on the same no rule of law national no government pys op , for Epstein & 9/11 clean op team Poppa Bush, Clinton, & Mossad.

Barr: CIA operative

It is a sobering fact that American presidents (many of whom have been corrupt) have gone out of their way to hire fixers to be their attorney generals.

Consider recent history: Loretta Lynch (2015-2017), Eric Holder (2009-2015), Michael Mukasey (2007-2009), Alberto Gonzales (2005-2007), John Ashcroft (2001-2005),Janet Reno (1993-2001), **** Thornburgh (1988-1991), Ed Meese (1985-1988), etc.

Barr, however, is a particularly spectacular and sordid case. As George H.W. Bush’s most notorious insider, and as the AG from 1991 to 1993, Barr wreaked havoc, flaunted the rule of law, and proved himself to be one of the CIA/Deep State’s greatest and most ruthless champions and protectors :

  • Barr was a full-time CIA operative, recruited by Langley out of high school, starting in 1971. Barr’s youth career goal was to head the CIA.
  • CIA operative assigned to the China directorate, where he became close to powerful CIA operative George H.W. Bush, whose accomplishments already included the CIA/Cuba Bay of Pigs, Asia CIA operations (Vietnam War, Golden Triangle narcotics), Nixon foreign policy (Henry Kissinger), and the Watergate operation.
  • When George H.W. Bush became CIA Director in 1976, Barr joined the CIA’s “legal office” and Bush’s inner circle, and worked alongside Bush’s longtime CIA enforcers Theodore “Ted” Shackley, Felix Rodriguez, Thomas Clines, and others, several of whom were likely involved with the Bay of Pigs/John F. Kennedy assassination, and numerous southeast Asian operations, from the Phoenix Program to Golden Triangle narco-trafficking.
  • Barr stonewalled and destroyed the Church Committee investigations into CIA abuses.
  • Barr stonewalled and stopped inquiries in the CIA bombing assassination of Chilean opposition leader Orlando Letelier.
  • Barr joined George H.W. Bush’s legal/intelligence team during Bush’s vice presidency (under President Ronald Reagan) Rose from assistant attorney general to Chief Legal Counsel to attorney general (1991) during the Bush 41 presidency.
  • Barr was a key player in the Iran-Contra operation, if not the most important member of the apparatus, simultaneously managing the operation while also “fixing” the legal end, ensuring that all of the operatives could do their jobs without fear of exposure or arrest.
  • In his attorney general confirmation, Barr vowed to “attack criminal organizations”, drug smugglers and money launderers. It was all hot air: as AG, Barr would preserve, protect, cover up, and nurture the apparatus that he helped create, and use Justice Department power to escape punishment.
  • Barr stonewalled and stopped investigations into all Bush/Clinton and CIA crimes, including BCCI and BNL CIA drug banking, the theft of Inslaw/PROMIS software, and all crimes of state committed by Bush
  • Barr provided legal cover for Bush’s illegal foreign policy and war crimes
  • Barr left Washington, and went through the “rotating door” to the corporate world, where he took on numerous directorships and counsel positions for major companies. In 2007 and again from 2017, Barr was counsel for politically-connected international law firm Kirkland & Ellis . Among its other notable attorneys and alumni are Kenneth Starr, John Bolton, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and numerous Trump administration attorneys. K&E’s clients include sex trafficker/pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital.

A strong case can be made that William Barr was as powerful and important a figure in the Bush apparatus as any other, besides Poppy Bush himself.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/ciabushiran-contra-covert-operative-fixer-william-barr-nominated-attorney-general/5662609

my new username , 4 hours ago link

That's FBI lawfare: either you plead guilty of crimes you did not commit, or we frame your son, as well as bankrupt you.

Roger Casement , 5 hours ago link

Mike Flynn stands for us. Going to buy guns or butter for the cause?

These consiglieres went after his son. They aren't lawyers. They are hitmen.

https://mikeflynndefensefund.org/

ztack3r , 4 hours ago link

there is a war on america, and the DoD and men like flynn are too arrogant, dumb, and proud to admit they have been fucked and conned deeply by men way smarter than them...

we don't need ******* brains, but killers to wage this revolution against the american pedostate.

and that, what they master, they don't want to do.

if they want money, they should have learned to trade and not kill...

[Sep 06, 2019] Trump vs MSM spectacle gets boring

Notable quotes:
"... Anyone read Ronan Farrows "War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence"? In one passage he describes a meeting at the State Department where they are complaining that nobody is interested in their policy prescriptions and decide that the problem is that they need some graphs. They all turn to Farrrow and look at him as he is the youngest in the meeting and figure he is the only one who would know how to do that. "Ageism" he thought. ..."
"... The problem with the mainstream media calling out Trump is that this is like the pot calling a kettle black. Trump is awful, sure. But so is the corporate media with its pro-war and neoliberal economic agenda. ..."
"... As Ian Welsh notes, the press is Trump's enemy, not the servant of the people: https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-press-is-trumps-enemy-not-the-lefts-friend/ ..."
"... RussiaRussiaRussia has been very profitable, not only personally for the talking heads in the intelligence community but for the press. Removing clearance not only hits the talking heads in the wallet, it disrupts the relation between the press and its network of anonymous sources. ..."
"... Re 2), there seems to be an element of induced demand to support the preponderance of repetitive coverage, somewhat akin to the dopamine manipulation in video games and on social media websites. Bug and feature. ..."
Sep 06, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

The Rev Kev , August 17, 2018 at 7:59 am

This author is right. I do not know if you would call what the media did a form of virtue-signalling or whatever but the net effect is a demonstration that the media is into coordinated campaigns. I do not think that people have forgotten the "This Is Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy" Sinclair script a few months ago. This is just more of the same.
I don't even know why they act so b***-hurt when Trump attacks their honesty. In the last few months I have seen them call him a traitor, a gay-bitch, they have called for a military coup to unseat him, they have begged for the deep state to rescue them, they have elevated people who are responsible for the deaths of thousands of American soldiers to the ranks of noble heroes of the Republic. As far as I am concerned, they have made their own bed and now they can lay in it, even if they have to share it with Donald J. Trump.

Kokuanani , August 17, 2018 at 9:20 am

Big media outlets need not actually report news that affects your life and point to serious solutions for social ills. They can just bad mouth Trump.

Substitute "The Democratic Party" for "big media outlets" and you've got another accurate picture.

Angie Neer , August 17, 2018 at 1:40 pm

Yesterday when I looked at the NYT online, the big featured graphic in the center of the page, typically a photo, was a rotating feed of Trump tweets, in headline-sized text. It struck me as a new low in the pathetic Trump-media feedback loop. It's all a game of "made you look!"

Bill Smith , August 17, 2018 at 2:05 pm

Yeah, they probably got a summer intern to do that.

Anyone read Ronan Farrows "War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence"? In one passage he describes a meeting at the State Department where they are complaining that nobody is interested in their policy prescriptions and decide that the problem is that they need some graphs. They all turn to Farrrow and look at him as he is the youngest in the meeting and figure he is the only one who would know how to do that. "Ageism" he thought.

Altandmain , August 17, 2018 at 6:25 pm

The problem with the mainstream media calling out Trump is that this is like the pot calling a kettle black. Trump is awful, sure. But so is the corporate media with its pro-war and neoliberal economic agenda.

As Ian Welsh notes, the press is Trump's enemy, not the servant of the people: https://www.ianwelsh.net/the-press-is-trumps-enemy-not-the-lefts-friend/

A case could be made that independent media like Naked Capitalism is doing a key public service. Not the corporate media though, whose main objective is always to maximize advertising revenues and to impose the views of its owners, the very rich, on society.

Lambert Strether , August 18, 2018 at 2:32 pm

Two random comments on this topic:

1) The best justification for giving officials formally out of government clearance on either side of the revolving door is that you may need to call on them for advice. It seems to me that this incentivizes "intelligence" over wisdom. And for wisdom, long experience plus open sources should be enough. (For example, if you want to call in an ex-official on North Korean nukes, they don't really need to know the details of the latest weaponry, or Kim's weight gain, or whatever. That can be explained to them by the customer , as needed. What's really needed is an outside voice -- the role played by an honest consultant -- plus wisdom about power relations on the Korean peninsula. No need for clearance there.)

2) RussiaRussiaRussia has been very profitable, not only personally for the talking heads in the intelligence community but for the press. Removing clearance not only hits the talking heads in the wallet, it disrupts the relation between the press and its network of anonymous sources.


Enquiring Mind, August 18, 2018 at 9:02 pm

Re 2), there seems to be an element of induced demand to support the preponderance of repetitive coverage, somewhat akin to the dopamine manipulation in video games and on social media websites. Bug and feature.

[Sep 06, 2019] MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell hits Russiagate rock bottom The Grayzone

Sep 06, 2019 | thegrayzone.com

AARON MATÉ: When it comes to Russiagate, there have been too many embarrassing media stories to count. And somehow, after nearly three years of this, the most discredited journalists are finding new ways to discredit themselves. The latest is Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC. Speaking another prominent conspiracy theorist, Rachel Maddow, O'Donnell shared this bombshell claim.

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL : This single source close to Deutsche Bank has told me that the Trump – Donald Trump's loan documents there show that he has co-signers. That's how he was able to obtain those loans. And that the co-signers are Russian oligarchs.

RACHEL MADDOW : What? Really?

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL : That would explain, it seems to me, every kind word Donald Trump has ever said about Russia and Vladimir Putin, if true.

AARON MATÉ: Well it turns out, it's not true, or at least, there's no evidence for it. According to MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell's "information came from a single source who has not seen the bank records." And so, O'Donnell had to retract his story after less than 24 hours.

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: I should not have said it on air or posted it on Twitter. I was wrong to do so. This afternoon, attorneys for the president sent us a letter asserting the story is false. They also demanded a retraction. Tonight, we are retracting the story.

AARON MATÉ: But in the process of walking back his story, O'Donnell also said this.

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: Saying 'if true' as I discussed the information was simply not good enough. I did not go through the rigorous verification and standards process here at MSNBC before repeating what I heard from my source.

AARON MATÉ: That's about as dubious a claim as Lawrence O'Donnell's retracted one. When it comes to the Trump-Russia story, the idea of "a rigorous verification and standards process" at MSNBC is a joke. The bulk of this network's output for more than two years has been innuendo and conspiracy theories about a non-existent Trump-Russia plot and a massive Russia interference campaign.

This also was not the first time that MSNBC has used the 'if true' caveat to put something on air. Take the time Lawrence O'Donnell himself speculated that Vladimir Putin orchestrated a chemical weapons attack in Syria to distract the media from his ties to Donald Trump.

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: If Vladimir Putin, if, if, if Vladimir Putin masterminded the last week in Syria, he has gotten everything he could have asked for . Go ahead. Do a small chemical attack. Nothing – nothing like the big ones you've done in the past. Just big enough to attract media attention so that my friend in the White House will see it on TV. And then Donald Trump can fire some missiles at Syria that will do no real damage, and then the American news media will change the subject from Russian influence in the Trump campaign and the Trump transition and the Trump White House. It's perfect.

AARON MATÉ: By the way that was in April 2017 -- more than two years ago. Fast forward to say, July 2018, when MSNBC's Chris Hayes brought on liberal writer Jonathan Chait to ponder if Donald Trump has been a Russian military intelligence asset since 1987.

CHRIS HAYES: In a new cover story for New York Magazine, Writer Jonathan Chait argues we have not allowed ourselves to consider the full range of possibilities. Chait lays out what could be considered the worst-case scenario for Trump-Russia collusion, that Donald Trump has been a Russian intelligence asset since 1987.

AARON MATÉ: Then there's Rachel Maddow. I don't know, take your pick. How about, Putin may use the pee tape & other kompromat to force Trump into withdrawing US troops near Russia.

RACHEL MADDOW : And here's the question. Is the new president going to take those troops out? After all the speculation, after all the worry, we are actually about to find out if Russia maybe has something on the new president? We're about to find out if the new president of our country is going to do what Russia wants once he's commander-in-chief of the U.S. military starting noon on Friday. What is he going to do with those deployments?

AARON MATÉ: Trump didn't withdraw those troops. How about also, Vladimir Putin got Trump to hire Paul Manafort as his campaign manager.

RACHEL MADDOW: I mean, take the view from Moscow. If you know a guy who needs a presidential campaign manager, how about our friend Paul? Right? From the Russian's point of view, who would be the better choice to run Donald Trump's presidential campaign? From our perspective in the United States, Paul Manafort made no sense. Who's he? From the Russian perspective, he'd be the obvious choice.

AARON MATÉ: Speaking of hiring decisions, there was also Vladimir Putin getting Trump to hire Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.

RACHEL MADDOW: Rex Tillerson – who Donald Trump had never met, had never had anything to do with before, had never laid eyes on before. How did Rex Tillerson get that job? He must have come very highly recommended – by someone. [MSNBC screen shows Putin with Tillerson].

AARON MATÉ: By the way, when Trump later fired Rex Tillerson, Maddow blamed that on Putin as well. So you get the picture. Lawrence O'Donnell's story was not MSNBC's first glaring error. Before this one, there was just no accountability for them. But the biggest problem here is not that these stories are embarrassing the cable news hosts and pundits who promote them. The Trump- Russia conspiracy theory has degraded journalism, and seriously undermining the actual resistance to Donald Trump.

Think about what a gift it is for Trump that his media critics constantly validate his claims about fake news. And it's an even bigger gift to Trump that his media and political foes have spent the bulk of their air time on a moronic conspiracy theory, instead of his actual policies, and the damage that they do.

So the Russiagate conspiracy theory has done serious damage. And it will continue to do so unless there is some minimal accountability for the people who promote it and profit from it. Because when you think about the fact that MSNBC hosts and others are still doing this – still promoting the Russiagate conspiracy theory, and still calling themselves journalists in the process – well, this is my response.

RACHEL MADDOW : What? Really?

Aaron Mate headshot Aaron Maté

[Sep 06, 2019] Didn't I tell you American get their reality from their Plato's Cave screens? The message being sent to Americans by the Current Neoliberal Oligarchy is Get Out; We Don't Need You! as they fight tooth nail to destroy what little remains of the pathetic to begin with welfare state, while dumbing-down education

Sep 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

William Gruff , Sep 5 2019 20:00 utc | 28

"Do you really think they spend $400 on a hammer?"

That line comes straight out of a movie . Didn't I tell you American get their reality from their Plato's Cave screens?

I briefly worked in a machine shop that did DoD contract work. We would buy washers by the pound from the hardware store down the street, heat seal them individually into little plastic baggies with the part number printed on them, and then sell them to the Navy for $50 each .

Yeah, the military pays $400 each, if not a good deal more, for their hammers.

karlof1 , Sep 5 2019 20:23 utc | 35

To focus exclusively on weapons is to focus on the wrong aspect of a nation's strength. I always find it funny in a very sadistic manner that the Outlaw US Empire is constantly declared to be the richest nation on the planet when it has at minimum 30 Million people well below the far too low poverty line, millions more mal-nourished, millions more kept in a state of ignorance, and with a wealth disparity problem of an enormous magnitude where 3 men own as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the population, or @165 Million people.

What all that and more not included spells out to me is that the Outlaw US Empire is the planet's most Dysfunctional nation.

Russia in stark contrast as clearly shown by Putin's speech I linked to above is striving very hard to overcome the dysfunctions applied to it by outside actors and the previous system in ways only Bernie Sanders is promoting while Trump and the neoliberals from both political parties continue to do the exact opposite by striving to escalate the dysfunctions.

The message being sent to Americans by the Current Neoliberal Oligarchy is Get Out; We Don't Need You! as they fight tooth & nail to destroy what little remains of the pathetic to begin with welfare state, while dumbing-down education and promoting carcinogenic foodstuffs. Putin's contrasting message: Come Here! I Welcome You! Here are the many inducements to become Russian and fulfill your abilities and destiny! No! It's not a pipe dream; read his speech! One of the most important factors in a nation's strength is the opportunities it provides for its citizens and how well that collective cares for itself via the mediums of government and culture. In that respect, IMO, the USA is in the worst shape its ever been due to its insane level of moral corruption.

Putin's trolling points directly at that last sentence. It's his way of pounding his shoe on the podium and saying We'll bury you all while smiling wryly. Moreover, other national leaders are beginning to abandon the dysfunctional Outlaw US Empire as they find it irrational and impossible to deal with.

The same goes for the EU with its similar domineering neoliberal nature. Putin was correct about the demise of Liberalism. What needs to rise up and replace it is a mother-like humanistic social order that cares for and provides opportunities to fulfill one's abilities while also paying close attention to the condition of the planet that supports us.

what did I just read , Sep 5 2019 20:32 utc | 38
Ok, lets clear this misunderstanding up. The nuclear missile is not hypersonic and Putin never sold these weapons as "super weapons" ala Trump. That's an ungenerous reading. A while back, Putin gave a speech before the parliament in which he detailed some new weapons systems.

The point of it all was to highlight the foolish and dangerous assumptions on which aggressive Western policy towards Russia rest. One of these assumptions is that the US could launch a first strike against Russia and be safe from retaliation behind it's ABM screen. In reality, that system is incapable of stopping any significant number of current ballistic warheads and that further, Russia was now fielding systems that can circumvent or penetrate that defense easily.

He listed several of these systems. Two were hypersonic, the kinzhal and avangard. Another was the new ICBM, RS-28 Sarmat. It is powerful enough to send the warheads into orbit. From there they no longer follow a strict ballistic path and can circle the earth to any target they choose, making them impossible to predict and defend against. It is a concept tried in the early 70's but then withdrawn called fobos.

The last of the strategic weapons were based around the new miniaturized nuclear reactor that had just been perfected. It is being applied to a cruise missile and a sub-torpedo concept. The nuclear cruise missile will have practically unlimited range, but it will be subsonic not hypersonic.

William Gruff , Sep 5 2019 20:44 utc | 40
Clue for the clueless: "Secret weapons" are only useful for surprise attacks... sucker punches. Defensive weapons intended to deter attacks only work as a deterrence if they are advertised. The very fact that Putin announced the existence of the new weapons is in and of itself proof that those weapons are intended to deter aggression, not be used aggressively.

The corollary to this fact is that if the United States really does have secret weapons like attack sharks with frickin` laser beams on their heads, then those are intended as offensive first strike weaponry.

Why is it that Americans are proud of being seen as the most offensive people on the planet? Arguing for the existence of super secret weapons is arguing for Americans being the biggest scumbag villains alive. It is strange that many Americans don't get that. Super-secret weapons don't deter and defend, their secrecy can only surprise America's victims.

This is part and parcel of why I am always arguing that Americans are literally mentally ill.

[Sep 04, 2019] The Future of the Grand Spectacle which is the USA reality by C.J. Hopkins

Sep 04, 2019 | www.unz.com

If you want a vision of the future, don't imagine "a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever," as Orwell suggested in 1984 . Instead, imagine that human face staring mesmerized into the screen of some kind of nifty futuristic device on which every word, sound, and image has been algorithmically approved for consumption by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ("DARPA") and its "innovation ecosystem" of "academic, corporate, and governmental partners."

The screen of this futuristic device will offer a virtually unlimited range of "non-divisive" and "hate-free" content, none of which will falsify or distort the "truth," or in any way deviate from "reality." Western consumers will finally be free to enjoy an assortment of news, opinion, entertainment, and educational content (like this Guardian podcast about a man who gave birth , or MSNBC's latest bombshell about Donald Trump's secret Russian oligarch backers ) without having their enjoyment totally ruined by discord-sowing alternative journalists like Aaron Maté or satirists like myself.

"Fake news" will not appear on this screen. All the news will be "authentic." DARPA and its partners will see to that. You won't have to worry about being "influenced" by Russians, Nazis, conspiracy theorists, socialists, populists, extremists, or whomever. Such Persons of Malicious Intent will still be able to post their content (because of "freedom of speech" and all that stuff), but they will do so down in the sewers of the Internet where normal consumers won't have to see it. Anyone who ventures down there looking for it (i.e., such "divisive" and "polarizing" content) will be immediately placed on an official DARPA watchlist for "potential extremists," or "potential white supremacists," or "potential Russians."

Once that happens, their lives will be over (i.e., the lives of the potentially extremist fools who have logged onto whatever dark web platform will still be posting essays like this, not the lives of the Persons of Malicious Intent, who never had any lives to begin with, and who by that time will probably be operating out of some heavily armed, off-the-grid compound in Idaho). Their schools, employers, and landlords will be notified. Their photos and addresses will be published online. Anyone who ever said two words to them (or, God help them, appears in a photograph with them) will have 24 hours to publicly denounce them, or be placed on DARPA’s watchlist themselves.

The Alarmist , says: September 4, 2019 at 9:02 am GMT

@El Dato Dude, you watch RT? You may as well go turn yourself in at the local Federal Building.
The Alarmist , says: September 4, 2019 at 9:03 am GMT
I’d laugh, if this was actually satire and not the reality unfolding before our very eyes.

[Sep 04, 2019] The good news is that the truth can't be further suppressed without ever increasing oppression which in turn exposes the lies of the oppressor.

Sep 04, 2019 | www.unz.com

Anonymous [623] Disclaimer , says: September 4, 2019 at 11: 08 am GMT

Instead, imagine that human face staring mesmerized into the screen of some kind of nifty futuristic device on which every word, sound, and image has been algorithmically approved for consumption by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ("DARPA") and its "innovation ecosystem" of "academic, corporate, and governmental partners."

I'd say we're already 80% there. The good news is that the truth can't be further suppressed without ever increasing oppression which in turn exposes the lies of the oppressor. Everything changes when the lies stop working on their own and the liar resorts to force. His audience switches from being cooperative dupes to uncooperative rebels who will have to be forced into compliance. That's a very different environment and the clock starts ticking.

The other good news is that we already have a critical mass of people who are fairly red-pilled and they can't be plugged back into the matrix. It doesn't work like that.

onebornfree , says: Website September 4, 2019 at 11:39 am GMT
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right." ― George Orwell, 1984

"Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me."
― George Orwell, 1984

Regards, onebornfree

Mulegino1 , says: September 4, 2019 at 2:10 pm GMT

but the global capitalist ruling classes need to keep everyone whipped up into a shrieking apoplectic frenzy over anything other than global capitalism until they can win the War on Populism and globally implement the New Normality, after which the really serious reality policing can finally begin.

A plurality of idiots is already whipped up into " a shrieking apoplectic frenzy" over things that are nothing but magnified trivia or worse than useless. Hymiewood and the entertainment industrial complex, which includes but is not limited to counter-cultural merde celebrity gossip and vacuous spectator sports, has done what no top down totalitarian (whether soft or hard) agenda could ever hope to do.

Panem et circenses no longer require a geographically fixed venue, of course.

All the kosher vanguard of Antichrist requires is enough slack jawed infotainment consumers to gaze in passive and somnolent wonderment at the flat screen. The screen is a modern day temple of Moloch wherein the physical sacrificing of offspring is not necessary (there is enough of that nowadays anyway). The only sacrifice required is that of one's conscience and reason- to make one a better and more inclusive citizen, of course.

[Sep 04, 2019] The problem of deep fakes

Sep 04, 2019 | www.unz.com

El Dato , says: September 3, 2019 at 11:31 pm GMT

RT had something on this:

DARPA unleashes anti-meme militia to fight deepfakes & 'polarizing' viral content

Machine-generated content is getting better really quickly.

Also:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/06/13/congress_ai_deepfake_probe/

https://www.youtube.com/embed/tdLS9MlIWOk?feature=oembed

[Sep 04, 2019] The Future of the Grand Spectacle which is the USA reality by C.J. Hopkins

Sep 04, 2019 | www.unz.com

If you want a vision of the future, don't imagine "a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever," as Orwell suggested in 1984 . Instead, imagine that human face staring mesmerized into the screen of some kind of nifty futuristic device on which every word, sound, and image has been algorithmically approved for consumption by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ("DARPA") and its "innovation ecosystem" of "academic, corporate, and governmental partners."

The screen of this futuristic device will offer a virtually unlimited range of "non-divisive" and "hate-free" content, none of which will falsify or distort the "truth," or in any way deviate from "reality." Western consumers will finally be free to enjoy an assortment of news, opinion, entertainment, and educational content (like this Guardian podcast about a man who gave birth , or MSNBC's latest bombshell about Donald Trump's secret Russian oligarch backers ) without having their enjoyment totally ruined by discord-sowing alternative journalists like Aaron Maté or satirists like myself.

"Fake news" will not appear on this screen. All the news will be "authentic." DARPA and its partners will see to that. You won't have to worry about being "influenced" by Russians, Nazis, conspiracy theorists, socialists, populists, extremists, or whomever. Such Persons of Malicious Intent will still be able to post their content (because of "freedom of speech" and all that stuff), but they will do so down in the sewers of the Internet where normal consumers won't have to see it. Anyone who ventures down there looking for it (i.e., such "divisive" and "polarizing" content) will be immediately placed on an official DARPA watchlist for "potential extremists," or "potential white supremacists," or "potential Russians."

Once that happens, their lives will be over (i.e., the lives of the potentially extremist fools who have logged onto whatever dark web platform will still be posting essays like this, not the lives of the Persons of Malicious Intent, who never had any lives to begin with, and who by that time will probably be operating out of some heavily armed, off-the-grid compound in Idaho). Their schools, employers, and landlords will be notified. Their photos and addresses will be published online. Anyone who ever said two words to them (or, God help them, appears in a photograph with them) will have 24 hours to publicly denounce them, or be placed on DARPA’s watchlist themselves.

The Alarmist , says: September 4, 2019 at 9:02 am GMT

@El Dato Dude, you watch RT? You may as well go turn yourself in at the local Federal Building.
The Alarmist , says: September 4, 2019 at 9:03 am GMT
I’d laugh, if this was actually satire and not the reality unfolding before our very eyes.

[Sep 04, 2019] Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig Acquitted Over Lying About Ukraine Work

Sep 04, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Assistant US Attorney Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez told jurors that Craig's status as a very experienced Washington attorney meant that he should have known better than to lie.

"It doesn't get more experienced than Mr. Craig," said Campoamor-Sanchez. "He's a man of position. He's very careful about what he does and how he does it."

Still, Campoamor-Sanchez added, Craig chose to conceal information in order to prevent potentially damaging details about his firm's work with Ukraine from surfacing . He said those details included payment arrangements for the report, which allowed the bulk of Skadden's more than $4 million fee to be provided by a wealthy Ukrainian businessman sympathetic to Yanukovych's government.

Ukraine's Ministry of Justice stated publicly in 2012 that it had agreed to pay Skadden about $12,000 for its work . Although Craig and his law firm did tell the FARA unit about the third-party payer situation, it declined to reveal the particular individual because he didn't want his identity disclosed. Much of the money Skadden received for the report was wired through a bank account in Cyprus controlled by former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. - Bloomberg

The core of the US Government's case revolved around emails between Craig and a New York Times journalist, along with a hand-delivered copy of the Ukraine report to the journalist's Washington home prior to it being made public. Craig wrote that the Ukrainians "have determined" that the reporter should be allowed an exclusive first look at the report. Craig also offered to discuss the report.

Jurors also heard testimony from former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates, who cooperated under a plea deal. Gates, during his work for Manafort's consulting firm, helped facilitate third-party payments to Skadden for its report.

At that time, both Manafort and Gates were advising Yanukovych, whom they helped get elected.

The government attempted to use Gates's testimony to paint Craig as a willing participant in the public relations plan for the Skadden report. But Craig's defense team cited Gates's past crimes, conspiracy and lying to federal investigators, to discredit his testimony.

" He is, in plain and simple terms, a con artist ," Murphy said during closing arguments. "This is a man who will do anything to get probation." - Bloomberg

In January, Skadden turned over $4.6 million it made in Ukraine in a deal struck with the Justice Department. The firm admitted that it should have registered for its 2012 and 2013 work, and that Craig made "false and misleading oral and written statements."

DEDA CVETKO , 10 minutes ago link

What a difference a president makes! You work for Trump - you are guilty as hell. You work for Clintons and Obamas, innocent, your honor.

The Deep State meets the American Justice. And they all lived happily everafter.

Kan , 21 minutes ago link

Did Bidens son register as a foreign representative after joining the Ukraine gas board for all those shekels before the color revolution party the CIA threw over there in crimea with british intel?

Does schumer register as a dual citizen and foreign agent he swore loyalty too when he got the citizenship in a foreign country? how about the other hundreds of isrhll foreign agents and dual citizens in congress and senate.. Lets not even talk about the CFR that holds every single position of power in Washington and is your deep state...

Are any of these people registered foreign agents? Hmm... still napping waiting for an american to show up and dismantle this crazy in DC.

Macho Latte , 30 minutes ago link

The 74-year-old Craig, a former top legal adviser to both Bill Clinton and Obama

Nuff said

[Sep 04, 2019] What We Still Do Not Know About Russiagate by Stephen F. Cohen's

Notable quotes:
"... It must again be emphasized: It is hard, if not impossible, to think of a more toxic allegation in American presidential history than the one leveled against candidate, and then president, Donald Trump that he "colluded" with the Kremlin in order to win the 2016 presidential election -- and, still more, that Vladimir Putin's regime, "America's No. 1 threat," had compromising material on Trump that made him its "puppet." Or a more fraudulent accusation. ..."
"... Was it plausible, for example, that Trump, a longtime owner and operator of international hotels, would commit an indiscreet act in a Moscow hotel that he did not own or control? Or that, as Steele also claimed, high-level Kremlin sources had fed him damning anti-Trump information even though their vigilant boss, Putin, wanted Trump to win the election? ..."
"... Nor was Russian "meddling" in the election anything akin to a "digital Pearl Harbor," as widely asserted, and it was certainly far less and less intrusive than President Bill Clinton's political and financial "interference" undertaken to assure the reelection of Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1996. ..."
"... Nonetheless, Russiagate's core allegation persists, like a legend, in American political life -- in media commentary, in financial solicitations by some Democratic candidates for Congress, and, as is clear from my own discussions, in the minds of otherwise well-informed people. The only way to dispel, to excoriate, such a legend is to learn and expose how it began -- by whom, when, and why. ..."
"... Why did Western intelligence agencies, prompted, it seems clear, by US ones, seek to undermine Trump's presidential campaign? ..."
"... the repeatedly hapless Comey seems incapable of having initiated such an audacious operation against a presidential candidate, still less a president-elect. As I have long suggested, John Brennan and James Clapper, head of the CIA and Office of National Intelligence under Obama respectively, are the more likely culprits. ..."
"... First and foremost, Russiagate is about the present and future of the American political system, not about Russia. (Indeed, as I have repeatedly argued, there is very little, if any, Russia in Russiagate.) ..."
"... At every "debate" or comparable forum, all of the Democratic candidates should be asked about this grave threat to American democracy -- what they think about what happened and would do about it if elected president. Consider it health care for our democracy. ..."
Sep 04, 2019 | www.thenation.com

It must again be emphasized: It is hard, if not impossible, to think of a more toxic allegation in American presidential history than the one leveled against candidate, and then president, Donald Trump that he "colluded" with the Kremlin in order to win the 2016 presidential election -- and, still more, that Vladimir Putin's regime, "America's No. 1 threat," had compromising material on Trump that made him its "puppet." Or a more fraudulent accusation.

Even leaving aside the misperception that Russia is the primary threat to America in world affairs, no aspect of this allegation has turned out to be true, as should have been evident from the outset. Major aspects of the now infamous Steele Dossier, on which much of the allegation was based, were themselves not merely "unverified" but plainly implausible.

Was it plausible, for example, that Trump, a longtime owner and operator of international hotels, would commit an indiscreet act in a Moscow hotel that he did not own or control? Or that, as Steele also claimed, high-level Kremlin sources had fed him damning anti-Trump information even though their vigilant boss, Putin, wanted Trump to win the election? Nonetheless, the American mainstream media and other important elements of the US political establishment relied on Steele's allegations for nearly three years, even heroizing him -- and some still do, explicitly or implicitly.

Not surprisingly, former special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of "collusion" between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. No credible evidence has been produced that Russia's "interference" affected the result of the 2016 presidential election in any significant way. Nor was Russian "meddling" in the election anything akin to a "digital Pearl Harbor," as widely asserted, and it was certainly far less and less intrusive than President Bill Clinton's political and financial "interference" undertaken to assure the reelection of Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1996.

Nonetheless, Russiagate's core allegation persists, like a legend, in American political life -- in media commentary, in financial solicitations by some Democratic candidates for Congress, and, as is clear from my own discussions, in the minds of otherwise well-informed people. The only way to dispel, to excoriate, such a legend is to learn and expose how it began -- by whom, when, and why.

Officially, at least in the FBI's version, its operation "Crossfire Hurricane," the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign that began in mid-2016 was due to suspicious remarks made to visitors by a young and lowly Trump aide, George Papadopoulos. This too is not believable, as I pointed out previously . Most of those visitors themselves had ties to Western intelligence agencies. That is, the young Trump aide was being enticed, possibly entrapped, as part of a larger intelligence operation against Trump. (Papadopoulos wasn't the only Trump associate targeted, Carter Page being another.)

But the question remains: Why did Western intelligence agencies, prompted, it seems clear, by US ones, seek to undermine Trump's presidential campaign? A reflexive answer might be because candidate Trump promised to "cooperate with Russia," to pursue a pro-détente foreign policy, but this was hardly a startling, still less subversive, advocacy by a would-be Republican president. All of the major pro-détente episodes in the 20th century had been initiated by Republican presidents: Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan.

So, again, what was it about Trump that so spooked the spooks so far off their rightful reservation and so intrusively into American presidential politics? Investigations being overseen by Attorney General William Barr may provide answers -- or not. Barr has already leveled procedural charges against James Comey, head of the FBI under President Obama and briefly under President Trump, but the repeatedly hapless Comey seems incapable of having initiated such an audacious operation against a presidential candidate, still less a president-elect. As I have long suggested, John Brennan and James Clapper, head of the CIA and Office of National Intelligence under Obama respectively, are the more likely culprits.

The FBI is no longer the fearsome organization it once was and thus not hard to investigate, as Barr has already shown. The others, particularly the CIA, are a different matter, and Barr has suggested they are resisting. To investigate them, particularly the CIA, it seems, he has brought in a veteran prosecutor-investigator, John Durham.

Which raises other questions. Are Barr and Durham, whose own careers include associations with US intelligence agencies, determined to uncover the truth about the origins of Russiagate? And can they really do so fully, given the resistance already apparent? Even if so, will Barr make public their findings, however damning of the intelligence agencies they may be, or will he classify them? And if the latter, will President Trump use his authority to declassify the findings as the 2020 presidential election approaches in order to discredit the role of Obama's presidency and its would-be heirs?

Equally important perhaps, how will mainstream media treat the Barr-Durham investigation and its findings? Having driven the Russiagate narrative for so long and so misleadingly -- and with liberals perhaps finding themselves in the incongruous position of defending rogue intelligence agencies -- will they credit or seek to discredit the findings?

It is true, of course, that Barr and Durham, as Trump appointees, are not the ideal investigators of Intel misdeeds in the Russiagate saga. Much better would be a truly bipartisan, independent investigation based in the Senate, as was the Church Committee of the mid-1970s, which exposed and reformed (it thought at the time) serious abuses by US intelligence agencies. That would require, however, a sizable core of nonpartisan, honorable, and courageous senators of both parties, who thus far seem to be lacking.

There are also, however, the ongoing and upcoming Democratic presidential debates. First and foremost, Russiagate is about the present and future of the American political system, not about Russia. (Indeed, as I have repeatedly argued, there is very little, if any, Russia in Russiagate.)

At every "debate" or comparable forum, all of the Democratic candidates should be asked about this grave threat to American democracy -- what they think about what happened and would do about it if elected president. Consider it health care for our democracy.

This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the host of The John Batchelor Show . Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at TheNation.com .

Stephen F. Cohen Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback and in an ebook edition. His weekly conversations with the host of The John Batchelor Show, now in their sixth year, are available at www.thenation.com .

[Sep 03, 2019] Russiagate as crocodile tears of western propaganda

Highly recommended!
Sep 02, 2019 | www.yahoo.com

Rob, yesterday

So all the fuss about "Russian hacking" was crocodile tears western propaganda.

[Sep 03, 2019] Russiagate as crocodile tears of western propaganda

Highly recommended!
Sep 02, 2019 | www.yahoo.com

Rob, yesterday

So all the fuss about "Russian hacking" was crocodile tears western propaganda.

[Aug 30, 2019] Russiagate skeptics are vindicated, but conspiracy theorists are rewarded (w- Glenn Greenwald) - YouTube

Aug 30, 2019 | www.youtube.com

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1"> Russiagate skeptics are vindicated, but conspiracy theorists are rewarded (w/ Glenn Greenwald)

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1"> Watch later

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1"> Share

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1"> Info Shopping

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1"> Tap to unmute

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 68 48" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1"> If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device. 29:01 Next (SHIFT+n) Glenn Greenwald on the Amazon fires and the fight for Brazil's future Up Next

Autoplay is paused

l="#fff" focusable="false" d="M 19.41 20.09 L 14.83 15.5 L 19.41 10.91 L 18 9.5 l -6 6 l 6 6 Z" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 32 32" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1">

l="#fff" focusable="false" d="m 12.59 20.34 l 4.58 -4.59 l -4.58 -4.59 l 1.41 -1.41 l 6 6 l -6 6 Z" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 32 32" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1"> The Grayzone Subscribe 47K You're signed out Videos you watch may be added to the TV's watch history and influence TV recommendations. To avoid this, cancel and sign in to YouTube on your computer.

l="#fff" focusable="false" d="M 19 6.41 L 17.59 5 L 12 10.59 L 6.41 5 L 5 6.41 L 10.59 12 L 5 17.59 L 6.41 19 L 12 13.41 L 17.59 19 L 19 17.59 L 13.41 12 Z" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="100%" height="100%"> Share An error occurred while retrieving sharing information. Please try again later.

l="#fff" focusable="false" d="M 19 6.41 L 17.59 5 L 12 10.59 L 6.41 5 L 5 6.41 L 10.59 12 L 5 17.59 L 6.41 19 L 12 13.41 L 17.59 19 L 19 17.59 L 13.41 12 Z" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="100%" height="100%"> Switch camera

l="#fff" focusable="false" d="M 19 6.41 L 17.59 5 L 12 10.59 L 6.41 5 L 5 6.41 L 10.59 12 L 5 17.59 L 6.41 19 L 12 13.41 L 17.59 19 L 19 17.59 L 13.41 12 Z" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="100%" height="100%"> 0:00 12:51

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1">

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1"> 0:15 / 12:51

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1">

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1">

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1">

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1">

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1">

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1">

s="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 36 36" focusable="false" width="100%" height="100%" version="1.1"> Watch Queue Queue Watch Queue Queue

The next video is starting Watch Queue Queue __count__/__total__ Find out why Russiagate skeptics are vindicated, but conspiracy theorists are rewarded (w/ Glenn Greenwald) The Grayzone

Loading... Unsubscribe from The Grayzone?

Working...

47K

Loading...

Loading...

Working... Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Sign in Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Sign in Add translations 16,584 views Like this video? Sign in to make your opinion count. Sign in Don't like this video? Sign in to make your opinion count. Sign in

Loading...

Loading... Transcript The interactive transcript could not be loaded.

Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Published on Aug 28, 2019

* Pushback with Aaron Maté *
Support Pushback by joining our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate

Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept joins Aaron Maté to discuss the disappearance of Russiagate after Robert Mueller's testimony; how Andrew McCabe has become the latest former U.S. intelligence official to join either CNN and MSNBC; and the absence of accountability for those who continue to promote what he calls the "moronic, irrational, baseless, conspiracist narrative" of Donald Trump as a Russian asset.

||| Pushback with Aaron Maté |||

Pushback on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate
Pushback on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pushbackshow
Aaron Maté on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aaronjmate
Listen to Pushback on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/pushbackshow
https://thegrayzone.com/pushback

||| The Grayzone |||

Find more reporting at https://thegrayzone.com

Support our original journalism at Patreon: https://patreon.com/grayzone

Twitter: https://twitter.com/grayzoneproject
Facebook: https://facebook.com/thegrayzone
Minds: https://minds.com/thegrayzone Category News & Politics Comments • 259 Add a public comment...

Andrew Hackett , 1 day ago

Both of your guy's hard work is appreciated...

Oren Albert Meisel , 1 day ago

Aaron and Glenn are two massive beacons of truth in these dark times of journalistic decay

garyweglarz , 1 day ago (e

dited)

Lovey Dovey Doo , 1 day ago

The American "left" is not left, which explains why they love the CIA and the FBI.

Guo Mashi , 1 day ago div

class="comment-renderer-text-content expanded"> Greenwald hits the nail on the head. Hillary's little RUSSIA! RUSSIA!! RUSSIA!!! crying-boo-boo-hissy-fit has brought the world to the brink of destruction. Anyone still think that woman would have been a better president? Madame President "If I can't have it I will destroy the world"? This issue is not about past battles, but rather about what the DNC does now. Hillary 2.0 in whatever form they try to excrete upon us is just as dangerous. If the DNC can't offer a real choice for us and only comes up with another obsequious sniveling doorman for the MIC, we are truly and irrevocably doomed.

Brian Everill , 1 day ago (edited)

Mueller? Does he live in the United States of Amnesia? "Lying" is institutionalized in the United States of Hypocrisy? It is a corrupt and broken ethos, has been since its inception?

AR Frances , 1 day ago

Someone like Warren or really any of them, if they win the White House, will have to be very tough with Russia so Glenn is right. Increases to the military will be knee-jerk, nuclear clock too close to midnight.

GHart , 1 day ago (edited)

US Political Establishment: "Thank you Robert Mueller for the 3 years of providing evidence-free conspiracy theories, nonsensical distractions, hysterical red-baiting, and massive deflection from the corruption that seeps through both parties in America. You've served your purpose, now it's time for you to go down the memory hole!"

M Martin , 1 day ago

CNN and MSNBC are status quo outlets... they're just overly excited to have gov professionals and known republicans willing to come out and talk about how mean Trump is... nevermind focusing on policy issues that everyday Americans actually care about and want information and votes on

[Aug 30, 2019] Hollywood reboots Russophobia for the New Cold War by Max Parry

See also National Security Cinema The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood by Matthew Alford
Aug 30, 2019 | www.unz.com

It is apparent that the caricature of the Soviet Union in both productions is really a stand-in for the present-day Russian government under Vladimir Putin. As only American exceptionalism could permit, Hollywood did not hold the same disdain for his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, whose legacy of high inflation and national debt have since been eliminated. In fact, most have forgotten that the same filmdom community outraged about Russia's supposed interference in the 2016 U.S. election made a celebratory movie back in 2003, Spinning Boris , which practically boasted about the instrumental role the West played in Yeltsin's 1996 reelection in Russia.

The highly unpopular alcoholic politician benefited from a near universal media bias as virtually all the federation's news outlets came under the control of the 'oligarchs' (in America known simply as billionaires) which his economic policies of mass privatization of state industry enriched overnight.

Yeltsin initially polled at less than 10% and was far behind Communist Party candidate Gennady Zyuganov until he became the recipient of billions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) thanks to his corrupt campaign manager, Anatoly Chubais, now one of the most hated men in all of Russia. After the purging of votes and rampant ballot-box stuffing, Yeltsin successfully closed the gap between his opponent thanks to the overt U.S. meddling.

Spinning Boris was directed by Roger Spottiswoode, who previously helmed an installment in the James Bond series, Tomorrow Never Dies . The 1997 entry in the franchise is one of thousands of Hollywood films and network television shows exposed by journalists Matthew Alford and Tom Secker as having been influenced or directly assisted by the Pentagon and CIA in their must-read book National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood. Based on evidence from documents revealed in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, their investigation divulges the previously unknown extent to which the national security complex has gone in exerting control over content in the film industry. While it has always been known that the military held sway over movies that required usage of its facilities and equipment to be produced, the level of impact on such films in the pre-production and editing stages, as well as the control over non-military themed flicks one wouldn't suspect to be under supervision by Washington and Langley, is exhaustively uncovered.

As expected, Hollywood and the military-industrial complex's intimate relationship during the Cold War is featured prominently in Alford and Secker's investigative work. It is unclear whether HBO or Netflix sought US military assistance or were directly involved with the national security state in their respective productions, but these are just two recent examples of many where the correlated increase in geopolitical tensions with Moscow is reflected. The upcoming sequel to DC's Wonder Woman set to be released next year , Wonder Woman 1984, featuring the female superhero " coming into conflict with the Soviet Union during the Cold War in the 1980s ", is yet another. Reprising her role is Israeli actress and IDF veteran is Gal Gadot as the title character, ironically starring in a blockbuster that will demonize the Eurasian state which saved her ethnicity from extinction. Given the Pentagon's involvement in the debacle surounding 2014's The Interview which provoked very real tensions with North Korea, it is likely they are at least closely examining any entertainment with content regarding Russia, if not directly pre-approving it for review.

Ultimately, the Western panic about its imperial decline is not limited to assigning blame to Moscow. Sinophobia has manifested as well in recent films such as the 2016 sci-fi film Arrival where the extra-terrestrials who reach Earth seem more interested in communicating with Beijing as the global superpower than the U.S. However, while the West forebodes the return of Russia and China to greater standing, you can be certain its real fear lies elsewhere. The fact that Chernobyl and Stranger Things are as preoccupied with portraying socialism in a bad light as they are in rendering Moscow nefarious shows the real underlying trepidation of the ruling elite that concerns the resurgence of class consciousness. The West must learn its lesson that its state of perpetual war has caused its own downfall or it could attempt a last line of defense that would inevitably conscript all of humanity to its death as the ruling class nearly did to the world in 1914 and 1939.

[Aug 29, 2019] First McCabe, then; Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Strzok, the Ohrs, Steele (in absentia) Clinton Campaign people, etc. - Sic Sempe

Notable quotes:
"... "Who will watch the watchers?" Well, if Barr and company are not going to indict these characters, the answer is NOBODY! ..."
"... If you read the long litany of articles on SST by David Habakkuk and Larry Johnson, the pattern of a soft coup conspiracy against the possibility of HC's defeat is quite clear. ..."
Aug 29, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"Federal prosecutors have been weighing for well over a year whether to charge McCabe, after the Justice Department's inspector general alleged that McCabe had misled investigators several times about a media disclosure regarding the investigation into Hillary Clinton's family foundation.

By the inspector general's telling, McCabe approved the disclosure and later -- when asked about the matter by investigators with the FBI's inspection division and inspector general's office -- denied having done so. McCabe's attorney has said previously that his statements "are more properly understood as the result of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and honest failures of recollection based on the swirl of events around him." Lying to investigators is a federal crime."

Washpost

-------------

This whole thing has the odor of something by Dostoevsky, C&P maybe?

"Who will watch the watchers?" Well, if Barr and company are not going to indict these characters, the answer is NOBODY!

If you read the long litany of articles on SST by David Habakkuk and Larry Johnson, the pattern of a soft coup conspiracy against the possibility of HC's defeat is quite clear.

And then following her loss, largely brought on IMO, by her unwillingness to cultivate the Deplorables, the semi-Deplorables and the Irredeemable Deplorables, this disdain on her part for ordinary people was further displayed in her offhand dismissal of coal miners as future wards of the state.

Once she had lost, the plot rolled on in an effort to make the ultimate Deplorable a failure in office.

It is de rigeur to write that both parties should feel equally wounded by the plot but they do not. pl

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/justice-dept-could-be-nearing-decision-on-whether-to-charge-andrew-mccabe/2019/08/26/0e1a636c-c840-11e9-a1fe-ca46e8d573c0_story.html

turcopolier ,

PRC90
We have to make it clear that fidelity to the constitution is not a pretense. IMO HRC and Obama are at the heart of this matter, but better to scourge them and let them go.

[Aug 28, 2019] Russiagate: It really is that simple

How are "Russian Oligarchs" different than "American Oligarchs" who bought Trump? Inquiring minds want to know :)
Notable quotes:
"... The mass media is desperate to propagate a fake narrative, they keep making "mistakes." Over and over. For 3 freakin years. ..."
Aug 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Mike Krieger summed the farce up best:

Michael Krieger

@LibertyBlitz

Replying to @LibertyBlitz

The mass media is desperate to propagate a fake narrative, they keep making "mistakes." Over and over. For 3 freakin years. It really is that simple.

[Aug 28, 2019] Fabricating the Russian DNC Hack by Larry C Johnson

Aug 28, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

I will make this very simple. The DNC emails that ultimately were published on Wikileaks likely originated with a DNC staffer, Seth Rich. It was not the Russians. The decision to blame the Russians was an intelligence construct that was concocted once U.S. and British intelligence officials plotting against Donald Trump realized that Rich had downloaded the emails and was communicating with Julian Assange and his cohorts.

Here are the facts:

  1. It was 29 April 2016 , when the DNC claims it became aware its servers had been penetrated. No claim yet about who was responsible.
  2. According to CrowdStrike founder , Dimitri Alperovitch, his company first supposedly detected the Russians mucking around inside the DNC server on 6 May 2016. A CrowdStrike intelligence analyst reportedly told Alperovitch that:
    1. Falcon had identified not one but two Russian intruders: Cozy Bear, a group CrowdStrike's experts believed was affiliated with the FSB, Russia's answer to the CIA; and Fancy Bear, which they had linked to the GRU, Russian military intelligence.
  3. The Wikileaks data shows that the last message copied from the DNC network is dated Wed, 25 May 2016 08:48:35.
  4. 10 June 2016--CrowdStrike waited until 10 June 2016 to take concrete steps to clean up the DNC network. Alperovitch told Esquire's Vicky Ward that: 'Ultimately, the teams decided it was necessary to replace the software on every computer at the DNC. Until the network was clean, secrecy was vital. On the afternoon of Friday, June 10, all DNC employees were instructed to leave their laptops in the office."
  5. On June 14, 2016, Ellen Nakamura, a Washington Post reporter who had been briefed by computer security company hired by the DNC -- Crowdstrike--, wrote:
    1. Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach.
    2. The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC's system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts.
    3. The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some Republican political action committees, U.S. officials said. But details on those cases were not available.
  6. 15 June, 2016, an internet "personality" self-described as Guccifer 2.0 surfaces and claims to be responsible for the hacks but denies being Russian. However, the meta data in the documents posted by Guccifer 2.0 appear to be deliberately crafted to show "Russian" involvement.
  7. The DNC emails that were released on July 22, 2016 by Wikileaks covered the period from January 2015 thru 25 May 2016.

Continue reading "Fabricating the Russian DNC Hack by Larry C Johnson" "

Posted at 02:14 AM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mightypeon , 28 August 2019 at 03:48 AM

The FSB is not really Ruusias CIA equvalent though. It is more akin to an unholy alliance of homeland security and the FBI. GRU is kind of like DIA + the army, navy, air force and marine intelligence. Closest thing to the CIA Russia has would be the SVR, but their overall remit is still somewhat different.
Oscar Peterson , 28 August 2019 at 11:23 AM
Nice laydown. One really needs this sort of step-by-step letdown to get and keep the facts straight.

Some sort of link chart/diagram that could be updated as needed would be great.

Between the DNC emails, the Steele faux-dossier, Seth Rich, Guccifer 2.0, and whatever connection there might be to Skripal and the British, it's really challenging to keep all the players and actions in the right relationship to one another.

One side question: Where does DC Leaks fit into this?

[Aug 28, 2019] Russiagate: It really is that simple

How are "Russian Oligarchs" different than "American Oligarchs" who bought Trump? Inquiring minds want to know :)
Notable quotes:
"... The mass media is desperate to propagate a fake narrative, they keep making "mistakes." Over and over. For 3 freakin years. ..."
Aug 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Mike Krieger summed the farce up best:

Michael Krieger

@LibertyBlitz

Replying to @LibertyBlitz

The mass media is desperate to propagate a fake narrative, they keep making "mistakes." Over and over. For 3 freakin years. It really is that simple.

[Aug 26, 2019] The article about how many intelligence officials (retired) now work for the corporate press is misleading. It does not take into account the "undeclared" operatives such as Anderson Cooper and Rachael Maddow

Aug 26, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Babyl-on , Aug 25 2019 19:42 utc | 28

The article about how many intelligence officials (retired) now work for the corporate press is misleading. It does not take into account the "undeclared" operatives such as Anderson Cooper and Rachael Maddow. Cooper went to work for the CIA and they out him in his job, Maddow is a Rhodes Scholar, a trained apparatchik for the elites.

This is nothing new, after WWII, when the press was most compliant and the CIA was formed the press was "taken over" by the newly reforming and consolidating of deep state power. There was Operation Mockingbird which was exposed long ago but nothing changes if they get caught they just reorganize and continue.

[Aug 26, 2019] 20 Years of Demonization of Putin by the Western experts

The level of "experts" is pretty dismal. While some quotes are apt, the general level is horrible for such an important topic., Not a single one put Putin career in context of ascendance of neoliberalism from 1990 to 2007 and then crash and decline with the USA economics entering the period of secular stagnation. not a single one.
Most of those are neocons or some king of imperialists who believe in God given right for the USA to dominate the globe. That's another problem.
Notable quotes:
"... At the same time, with the demands of the Ukraine crisis on the Russian military, it will be stretched to sustain operations in Syria. Given the risks, the buildup is not likely a cynical play to whip up patriotic fervor and bolster Putin's domestic rating; it is rather an effort to defend Russian national interests. ..."
"... Putin and the Kremlin recognized Americans’ anger with the political establishment, because they are always on the alert for it at home. … Putin and the Kremlin seemed to recognize that this election was really a referendum on America’s future. The November 8 ballot, as Trump also understood, was more like the June 23 Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. ..."
"... The demonization of Putin is a reflection of our declining confidence in our own capabilities. It's easier to blame Putin. He's pursuing Russian national interests, but he's not running world affairs ..."
"... Putin stands in the mainstream of a centuries-old Russian foreign policy tradition and worldview and he enjoys broad elite support and popular consent for his policies. Any approach premised mainly on "being tough" with Putin (as Hillary Clinton promises) or on charming him into making a deal (as Trump does) misses the point entirely. ( New York Times , 10.25.16) ..."
"... Putin was personally angered by events in Libya and the death of President Muammar Qaddafi at the hands of rebels as Qaddafi tried to flee Tripoli after NATO’s intervention in the civil war there. In Putin’s view (again expressed openly in his public addresses and in interviews), the United States was now responsible for a long sequence of revolutions close to Russia’s borders and in countries with close ties to Moscow. ( Brookings, 02.10.16 ) ..."
"... Henry Kissinger : “For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” ( The Washington Post, 03.05.14 ) ..."
"... Russia's antipathy toward the general thrust of the Bush administration's foreign policy, particularly what Putin and his entourage came to see as Washington's excessive unilateralism and disposition to use force, also did more than its share of damage. ( Foreign Affairs , 07.01.2009) ..."
"... Putin has no reliable interlocutors in the West from his perspective, only a handful of intermediaries. And he simply does not trust anyone. ..."
"... Henry Kissinger : Starting with American support for the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, Putin has gradually convinced himself that the U.S. is structurally adversarial. By “structural,” I mean that he may very well believe that America defines its basic interest as weakening Russia, transforming us from a potential ally to another foreign country that he balances with China and others. ( The Atlantic, 11.10.16 ) ..."
"... Thomas Graham and Rajan Menon : In Moscow’s reading, the United States had masterminded the revolution [in Ukraine] to install a pro-Western figure as president over the candidate endorsed by Putin. Putin soon came to view the revolution in Ukraine as a dress rehearsal for regime change in Russia itself. ..."
"... In Putin’s view, the United States, the European Union and NATO have launched an economic and proxy war in Ukraine to weaken Russia and push it into a corner. As Valery Gerasimov, chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, has underscored, this is a hybrid, 21st-century conflict, in which financial sanctions, support for oppositional political movements and propaganda have all been transformed from diplomatic tools to instruments of war. Putin likely believes that any concession or compromise he makes will encourage the West to push further. ( The Washington Post, 02.05.15 ) ..."
Aug 07, 2019 | www.russiamatters.org
  • Angela Stent : The experience of the past sixteen years suggests that Putin is a pragmatic leader willing to make deals if he believes they are in Russia's interest. ( Carnegie Moscow Center, 10.31.16 )
  • Fiona Hill : In Putin's mindset, the main threats to Russia right now lie inside Russia, where Trojan horses and Fifth Columnists have been deployed by the West to exacerbate and exploit Russia's internal contradictions and divisions. In the Russian worldview, the sprawling multiethnic and multiconfessional states of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union were always strong in territory, but weak politically. The Soviet Union was vulnerable because of all the infighting among national elites, just as the Russian empire fell apart because of separatist and popular revolts when it was embroiled in war. In each case, in Putin's view, the West -- the Germans in World War I, the United States in the Cold War -- exploited internal fissures to help bring the colossus to its knees. ( Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences , 04.13.16)
  • Timothy Colton : There's a culturally ingrained view in Russia that in order for this country to stay together and stay afloat, it has to have an effective state. And this is Putin's core belief -- I think it drives everything else. ... And he has, to a considerable extent, delivered on his promise. ( Interview with RT , 06.29.14, 25:55)
  • Dimitri Simes : Putin is a strong Russian patriot who sees the state as a key driver of society. He does not view democracy as an end, but rather as a means of government under appropriate circumstances. ( Politico , 03.13.14)
  • Leon Aron : After his election as president in 2000, Putin added to this agenda an overarching goal: the recovery of economic, political and geostrategic assets lost by the Soviet state in 1991. Although he has never spelled it out formally, Putin has pursued this objective with such determination, coherence, and consistency that it merits being called the Putin Doctrine. ( Foreign Affairs , 03.08.13)
  • Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy : Putin's favorite quote these days is, "We do not need great upheavals. We need a great Russia," a paraphrase of Stolypin's famous rebuke to his fellow Duma deputies in 1907: "You, gentlemen, are in need of great upheavals; we are in need of a Great Russia." ( The National Interest, 01.01.12 )
  • Henry Kissinger : Geopolitically, Putin governs a country with 11 time zones. Few countries in history have started more wars or caused more turmoil than Russia in its eternal quest for security and status. It is also true, however, that at critical junctures Russia has saved the world's equilibrium from forces that sought to overwhelm it: from the Mongols in the 16th century, from Sweden in the 18th century, from Napoleon in the 19th century and from Hitler in the 20th century. ( The Atlantic, 11.10.16 )
  • Timothy Colton : Putin's political persona is very much based on a skepticism about or a rejection of what happened to Russia in the 1990s. ( Speech at Wellesley College , 03.04.15, 34:57)
  • Henry Kissinger : Putin is a serious strategist -- on the premises of Russian history. ( The Washington Post, 03.05.14 )
  • Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy : His family's harrowing tale from World War II fits neatly into the national historical narrative -- one in which Russia constantly battles for survival against a hostile outside world. The critical lesson from centuries of domestic turbulence, invasion and war is that the Russian state always survives in one form or another. Every calamity weathered reaffirms Russia's resilience and its special status in history. This has been a rhetorical touchstone for Putin, as well as for many others from his generation. Throughout his presidency, Putin has raised survivalism from the personal to the national level. ( Foreign Policy, 02.15.13 )
Putin's personality
  • Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy : Vladimir Putin needs to be taken seriously. He will make good on every promise or threat -- if Putin says he will do something, then he is prepared to do it; and he will find a way of doing it, using every method at his disposal. ( Brookings, 01.13.17 )
  • Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy : [C]ontrary to the prevailing external assessment, Putin is a strategic planner. The notion that Putin is an opportunist, at best an improviser, but not a strategist, is a dangerous misread. Putin thinks, plans, and acts strategically. ( Brookings, 01.13.17 )
  • Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy : Putin is best understood as a composite of multiple identities that stem from those experiences, and which help explain his improbable rise from KGB operative and deputy mayor of St. Petersburg to the pinnacle of Russian power. Of these multiple identities, six are most prominent: Statist, History Man, Survivalist, Outsider, Free Marketeer, and Case Officer. … Putin has made a virtue of this outsider status throughout his presidency, stressing his connections to “ordinary” Russians and distancing himself from Moscow’s resented elites. … As a case officer in the KGB, Putin had learned how to identify, recruit and run agents, and acquired the patience to cultivate sources. He also learned how to collect, synthesize and use information. These tools proved invaluable in bringing Russia’s oligarchs to heel. ( Foreign Policy, 02.15.13 )
  • Anatol Lieven : The president’s personal abstemiousness and intense self-discipline are part of the Putin image, an essential aspect of what makes him the anti-Yeltsin—which makes him admired by a large majority of Russians. He gives no impression of playing an assumed role. ( The Globalist , 12.03.07)

NATO-Russia relations:

  • Thomas Graham and Rajan Menon, referring to growing cooperation between Russia and the U.S. and NATO in 2002 : Symbolically at least Russia was recognized as a great power. As U.S.-Russian relations grew warmer, Putin toned down his objections to the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the NATO decision to expand to seven countries in Eastern Europe, including the three former Soviet Baltic states. But the optimism proved short-lived. ( The Boston Review , 09.12.17)
  • Fiona Hill : Ultimately, in pursuing Russia’s goals, Putin is a pragmatist. He has to keep a watchful eye on the home front, and Russia does not have the military or economic resources for the mass-army, total-mobilization approach that it adopted during the Cold War to defend itself against the United States and NATO. Putin has to combine conventional, nuclear and non-conventional, non-military—so-called “hybrid”—means of defense. ( Brookings, 03.03.16 )
  • Fiona Hill : The preferred scenario for Russia in Europe, as Putin has repeatedly made clear, would be one without NATO and without any other strategic alliances that are embedded in the European Union’s security concepts. ( Brookings, 02.10.16 )
  • Olga Oliker : Putin’s language on nuclear weapons is encouraging in that he speaks of improving, not increasing, the force. Putin’s question to Trump about a New START extension suggests an interest in keeping the agreement going at least until 2026—right around the time Russia’s all-modern force can be expected to come into being. ( Arms Control Association , May 2017)

Syria and MiddleEast

  • Fiona Hill : The religious wars in the Middle East are not a side show for Russia. Thousands of foreign fighters have flocked to Syria from Russia, as well as from Central Asia and the South Caucasus, all attracted by the extreme messages of ISIS and other groups. ( Brookings, 05.23.16 )
  • Thomas Graham : At the same time, with the demands of the Ukraine crisis on the Russian military, it will be stretched to sustain operations in Syria. Given the risks, the buildup is not likely a cynical play to whip up patriotic fervor and bolster Putin's domestic rating; it is rather an effort to defend Russian national interests. ( The National Interest , 09.15.15)
  • Fiona Hill : Putin firmly opposes U.S. policy toward Syria and the threat of force against Iran. But his opposition stems neither from anti-Americanism nor a desire to back the Iranian mullahs or Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in their struggles with the West. It is rooted in his obsession with stability. Helping Tehran secure a nuclear weapon and keeping Assad in Damascus are not Putin’s goals. But an Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, and NATO or the United Nations intervening in Syria to forcibly remove Assad, would increase global volatility. ( New York Times, 02.04.13 )

Elections interference: (aka Russiagate false flag operation by CIA and MI6)

  • Fiona Hill : Putin and the Kremlin recognized Americans’ anger with the political establishment, because they are always on the alert for it at home. … Putin and the Kremlin seemed to recognize that this election was really a referendum on America’s future. The November 8 ballot, as Trump also understood, was more like the June 23 Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. ( Brookings, 11.11.16 )

Energy exports from the former Soviet Union:

  • Graham Allison: He has often expressed his deep conviction that the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century" was the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He has reflected on the analysis by former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar that identifies the squeeze on Soviet finances caused by the sharp drop in oil prices in the mid-1980s as the primary proximate cause of that event. ( National Interest , , 11.11.14)
  • Angela Stent : Nowhere was the symbiotic relationship between the political and the commercial more evident than in Russia’s rise as an energy power—arguably the most significant aspect of Putin’s foreign policy, combining traditional geopolitics with instruments from the world of globalization to implement them. ( Europe-Asia Studies, 07.18.08 )
  • Robert Legvold : It is not easy to trace the precise connection between official foreign policy and Russia's giant energy company Gazprom or its national electricity combine, RAO UES. Yet there is little question that the less-than-gentle efforts of these and other Russian corporate interests to acquire large equity stakes in pipelines, refineries, power grids and other strategically significant economic entities accord well with Putin's desire to increase Russia's influence throughout the post-Soviet space. ( Foreign Affairs , 09.01.2001)
U.S.-Russian relations in general:
  • Dmitri Trenin : [Putin] understands the vast asymmetries between Russia and America. He knows that the arms race with the United States undermined the Soviet economy; a repeat of it would kill Russia’s. He likely realizes that self-imposed isolation, via sanctions on Western companies, would be much worse for Russia than any U.S.-driven attempt to isolate it from without. He should see that fanning xenophobia and anti-Americanism at home would hardly bring any benefits but instead would hurt relations with other countries, not just the United States, and retard Russia’s development still further. The Soviet Union tried to deal with the United States from a position of an equal, which it was not, and eventually quit the stage; the Russian Federation, starting from a position of weakness, has to be smarter. Putin, the judo fighter, certainly gets it. ( Foreign Policy , 07.31.17)
  • Paul Saunders : Consider Russia’s policy toward the United States in the fall of 2001, immediately following the September 11 attacks. Russian President Vladimir Putin is widely known as the first foreign leader to contact President George W. Bush following the attacks. He appears to have made a strategic decision to assist the United States in order to pursue a closer relationship. If President Putin becomes convinced that he will never be able to build a functional relationship with Washington—no matter what he does or who is in power—American preferences will lose much of their remaining power in restraining Russia’s conduct. ( Russia Matters , 03.17.17)
  • Thomas Graham : The demonization of Putin is a reflection of our declining confidence in our own capabilities. It's easier to blame Putin. He's pursuing Russian national interests, but he's not running world affairs. ( NPR , 01.18.17)
  • Graham Allison : The objective of American policy is not to placate Russia or please Putin. Rather, it is to advance vital U.S. national interests. As seen during Obama’s second term, when treated primarily as a “foe,” Russia can undermine important American objectives. If it can be persuaded to act more as a partner, within the framework of a sustainable, if difficult, working relationship, Moscow can help advance U.S. foreign-policy objectives in a number of ways. ( The National Interest , 12.18.16)
  • Matthew Rojansky : First, we need to stop obsessing over Putin. Our problem is with Russia. Putin stands in the mainstream of a centuries-old Russian foreign policy tradition and worldview and he enjoys broad elite support and popular consent for his policies. Any approach premised mainly on "being tough" with Putin (as Hillary Clinton promises) or on charming him into making a deal (as Trump does) misses the point entirely. ( New York Times , 10.25.16)
  • Matthew Rojansky : We are now simply seeing what it looks like when a major power acts in furtherance of what it understands to be its interests, irrespective of U.S. interests. ( Quartz , 08.19.16)
  • Fiona Hill : Putin was personally angered by events in Libya and the death of President Muammar Qaddafi at the hands of rebels as Qaddafi tried to flee Tripoli after NATO’s intervention in the civil war there. In Putin’s view (again expressed openly in his public addresses and in interviews), the United States was now responsible for a long sequence of revolutions close to Russia’s borders and in countries with close ties to Moscow. ( Brookings, 02.10.16 )
  • Henry Kissinger : “For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” ( The Washington Post, 03.05.14 )
  • Dmitri Trenin : Putin wants partnership, but not in the sense that he works on the U.S. agenda and gets paid a commission for helping out. He understands the U.S. is much stronger than Russia, but he nevertheless demands a relationship of equals. ( Carnegie Moscow Center , 09.13.13)
  • Timothy Colton and Henry Hale : The message of his [Putin’s] campaigns might thus be characterized as follows: Russia's future lies in cooperation rather than conflict with the west, but the west is an unreliable partner that frequently harbors ill or disrespectful intentions regarding Russia and that therefore must constantly be kept in check at the same time that cooperation must still be pursued. ( Slavic Review , 2009)
  • Robert Legvold : U.S.-Russian relations soured not only because of frictions between Washington and Moscow over issues such as NATO enlargement, the status of Kosovo and Washington's plans to place a ballistic missile defense system in central Europe. Russia's antipathy toward the general thrust of the Bush administration's foreign policy, particularly what Putin and his entourage came to see as Washington's excessive unilateralism and disposition to use force, also did more than its share of damage. ( Foreign Affairs , 07.01.2009)
  • Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy : Putin has no reliable interlocutors in the West from his perspective, only a handful of intermediaries. And he simply does not trust anyone. ( Brookings, 01.13.17 )
  • Angela Stent : The eternal question of whether Russia really belongs to Europe complicates the EU-Russia relationship. Putin has said "Russia is a natural member of the 'European family' in spirit, history and culture," though he has made it clear that Russia does not seek to join the EU. But Russians have become disillusioned with Europe's lecturing of them and remain divided over whether to join Europe or pursue a Eurasian path. Despite this mutual ambivalence, and though Russia is a challenging partner, the EU as a whole remains committed to encouraging the Kremlin to become more European. The alternative is a more obstructionist Russia isolated from the West. ( The National Interest, 03.01.07 )
  • Paul Saunders : In short, while Putin is clearly eager to work with the United States, he is prepared to do so only on terms that do not damage what he views as Russian interests. Putin also has his eye on Russia's other options—China—and even the capacity to play a central role in alternative institutions outside the West. ( The National Interest , 09.11.06)
  • Timothy Colton : The imposition of American and European Union sanctions over Russian behavior in Ukraine gave Putin a chance to hold forth against an internal “fifth column” of sympathizers with the West. ( Daedalus , Spring 2017)
  • Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy : Putin seeks a “New Yalta” with the West in political and security terms. As he defines Moscow’s sphere of influence in this new arrangement, that sphere extends to all the space in Europe and Eurasia that once fell within the boundaries of the Russian Empire and the USSR. Within these vast contours, Putin and Russia have interests that need to be taken into account, interests that override those of all others. For Putin, Russia is the only sovereign state in this neighborhood. None of the other states, in his view, have truly independent standing—they all have contingent sovereignty. The only question for Putin is which of the real sovereign powers (Russia or the United States) prevails in deciding where the borders of the New Yalta finally end up after 2014. … In the meantime, until a “new Yalta” is thrashed out, Russia and the West will remain at war. … This game of chicken will be a long one. Putin’s goal is security for Russia and his system. The means to achieve that goal is deterrence. … [T]here is no definitive endgame. He will keep on playing as long as he perceives the threat to last. ( Brookings, 01.13.17 )
  • Timothy Colton : Putin has had no shortage of the chances, time in position and power levers at his fingertips to assemble an outright dictatorship in the Russian Federation. Working from his platform within the state machine, given his rapport with his products of the security and military services (the siloviki), and the fruits of pre-2014 growth being there for the plucking, Putin, in my view, could have become the Francisco Franco or Omar al-Bashir of Russia. He has chosen not to do so. ( Comparative Politics , April 2018)
  • Matthew Rojansky : For Putin, dysfunction is useful since it reinforces the longstanding narrative that Washington aims to contain Russia geopolitically and degrade it economically, with the ultimate objective of regime change. This narrative yields one inescapable conclusion for the majority of Russian voters: Only Vladimir Putin is capable of guaranteeing their safety and wellbeing. ( The National Interest , 07.07.17)
  • Anatol Lieven : To judge by the elections and every opinion poll in this area, the overwhelming mass of the Russian establishment and Russian people approve of Putin’s foreign-policy record. If Western governments want to pursue reasonably good relations with Russia, this is the reality with which they will have to work. For the foreseeable future, like it or not, what we see is what we will get. … Consider, for a moment, if Putin were to fail. There is no Thomas Jefferson waiting in the wings. Instead, he would almost certainly be replaced by a figure and a movement that are just as authoritarian but more nationalist, more anti-Western, more populist and less committed to market reform. ( The National Interest , 04.03.12)
  • Timothy Colton, on Russia’s handling of the 2008-2009 financial crisis: I would give them a pretty good grade… You see here the effects of some rather smart things that the Putin people did: saving this money, putting it away in a fund that could be used to get over hard times… I think you have to give them pretty good marks for managing the crisis. But what the crisis has done, it seems to me, is revealed at a deeper level the underlying structural problems. ( Interview with Russia Today , 09.16.10, 6:03)
  • Rawi Abdelal : Over the past 10 years, during which time Putin has led the country as president or premier, he has strengthened Russia’s nascent capitalist economy and institutions.
  • ... Putin recast the state’s relationship with the oligarchs, forcing some, such as Boris Berezovsky, into self-imposed exile and sending others, notably Mikhail Khodorkovsky, to prison. Other oligarchs quickly learned to play by Putin’s three rules: Do not get involved in politics; do not buy politicians; and pay your taxes. ( Harvard Business Review , February 2010)
  • Anatol Lieven : In the case of Russia, anyone professing to respect the views of ordinary Russians must also recognize that a majority has supported Putin and his authoritarian program because their experience of pseudo-democracy in the 1990s was so terrible. ( Carnegie Endowment for International Peace , 01.14.05)

Ukraine

  • Henry Kissinger : Starting with American support for the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004, Putin has gradually convinced himself that the U.S. is structurally adversarial. By “structural,” I mean that he may very well believe that America defines its basic interest as weakening Russia, transforming us from a potential ally to another foreign country that he balances with China and others. ( The Atlantic, 11.10.16 )
  • Thomas Graham and Rajan Menon : In Moscow’s reading, the United States had masterminded the revolution [in Ukraine] to install a pro-Western figure as president over the candidate endorsed by Putin. Putin soon came to view the revolution in Ukraine as a dress rehearsal for regime change in Russia itself. Putin believed it was part of the United States’ larger effort to construct a unipolar world based on its values and interests, a world that it could dominate with little regard for other major powers. In response Putin began working to fortify Russia against Western influence and interference. ( The Boston Review , 09.12.17)
  • Steven Pifer : Putin sees Russians & Ukrainians as one people. Said so in Kyiv in 2013. Does not understand he thereby denies Ukrainian history, culture. ( Twitter , 05.26.17)
  • Roger McDermott and Stephen Cimbala : Putin’s actions in Crimea were not entirely sui generis : They were preceded by a context of demands upon Russia from its post-Cold War military and geostrategic setting, compared to that of the Soviet Union. Putin’s policy is not the result of psychodrama. It is the product of his having lived in strategic history and his (and our) understanding of that history. ( The Journal of Slavic Military Studies , 10.14.16)
  • Anatol Lieven : Russia’s restraint in Ukraine shows that there is no serious reason to fear that Mr. Putin is ready to create a new, worse international crisis by attacking the Baltic states or Poland. ( New York Times , 03.18.16)
  • Steven Pifer : A weak Ukrainian government incapable of meeting the challenges before it ensures that the Maidan model will have little attraction for the Russian populace. This consideration could mean that Mr. Putin wants a failed Ukrainian state. ( Testimony before U.S. Senate , 03.04.15)
  • Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy : The logic of sending weapons to Ukraine seems straightforward and is the same as the logic for economic sanctions: to change Vladimir Putin’s “calculus.” … We strongly disagree [with calls on the West to provide military support to Ukraine]. The evidence points in a different direction. If we follow the recommendations of this report, the Ukrainians won’t be the only ones caught in an escalating military conflict with Russia. ( The Washington Post, 02.05.15 )
  • Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy : Our problem is that we do not fully understand Putin’s calculus, just as he does not understand ours. In Putin’s view, the United States, the European Union and NATO have launched an economic and proxy war in Ukraine to weaken Russia and push it into a corner. As Valery Gerasimov, chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, has underscored, this is a hybrid, 21st-century conflict, in which financial sanctions, support for oppositional political movements and propaganda have all been transformed from diplomatic tools to instruments of war. Putin likely believes that any concession or compromise he makes will encourage the West to push further. ( The Washington Post, 02.05.15 )

[Aug 26, 2019] What we need to know from the Horowitz report by Byron York

Notable quotes:
"... And what did the spying involve? In such intelligence work, wiretaps are recorded; transcripts are made. The same can be true for person-to-person conversations between FBI informants and Trump campaign figures. In May, Trey Gowdy, the former Republican congressman who read deeply into Trump-Russia materials when he was in the House, strongly implied the FBI had transcripts of informant communications. ..."
"... "If the bureau is going to send an informant in, the informant is going to be wired," Gowdy told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo. "And if the bureau is monitoring telephone calls, there's going to be a transcript of that." ..."
"... "Where are the transcripts, if any exist," Gowdy continued, "between the informants and the telephone calls to George Papadopoulos?" ..."
"... And then the biggest questions: If there was evidence gained from the wiretapping and informing, what was it? Was it valuable? What did it tell the FBI about Russia and the Trump campaign? And did it prove that the Justice Department was right all along to spy on the campaign -- that the spying was, in the words of Attorney General William Barr, "adequately predicated"? ..."
"... Here is why Republicans are skeptical. Special counsel Robert Mueller had access to the results of the FBI's spying, and Mueller could not establish that there was any conspiracy or coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. After a two-year investigation with full law enforcement powers, Mueller never alleged that any American took part in any such conspiracy or coordination. ..."
"... And even if it were entirely declassified, Horowitz will not tell the whole story of spying and the 2016 election. Horowitz is the inspector general of the Justice Department and does not have the authority to investigate outside the department. For example, he cannot probe the actions of the Central Intelligence Agency and its then-director John Brennan during the period in question. ..."
Aug 20, 2019 | www.washingtonexaminer.com

There will be much to learn in Inspector General Michael Horowitz's upcoming report on the Trump-Russia investigation, but most of it will likely boil down to just two questions. One, how much did the Obama Justice Department spy on the Trump campaign? And two, was it justified?

Many Democrats would immediately protest the word "spying." But the public already knows the FBI secured a warrant to wiretap low-level Trump adviser Carter Page a few months after Page left the campaign. The public also knows the FBI used informant Stefan Halper to gather information on other Trump campaign figures. And the public knows the FBI sent an undercover agent who went by the alias "Azra Turk" to London to tease information out of another low-level Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos.

Was that all? Were there more? Horowitz should give definitive answers.

And what did the spying involve? In such intelligence work, wiretaps are recorded; transcripts are made. The same can be true for person-to-person conversations between FBI informants and Trump campaign figures. In May, Trey Gowdy, the former Republican congressman who read deeply into Trump-Russia materials when he was in the House, strongly implied the FBI had transcripts of informant communications.

"If the bureau is going to send an informant in, the informant is going to be wired," Gowdy told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo. "And if the bureau is monitoring telephone calls, there's going to be a transcript of that."

"Where are the transcripts, if any exist," Gowdy continued, "between the informants and the telephone calls to George Papadopoulos?"

The "if any exist" was Gowdy's way of casting his statements as a hypothetical, but there was no doubt he was speaking from the knowledge he gained as a congressional investigator.

And then the biggest questions: If there was evidence gained from the wiretapping and informing, what was it? Was it valuable? What did it tell the FBI about Russia and the Trump campaign? And did it prove that the Justice Department was right all along to spy on the campaign -- that the spying was, in the words of Attorney General William Barr, "adequately predicated"?

Here is why Republicans are skeptical. Special counsel Robert Mueller had access to the results of the FBI's spying, and Mueller could not establish that there was any conspiracy or coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. After a two-year investigation with full law enforcement powers, Mueller never alleged that any American took part in any such conspiracy or coordination.

So, Republicans know the end result of the investigation, but they don't know how it began. Yes, they know the official story of the start of what the FBI called Crossfire Hurricane -- that it began with a foreign intelligence service (Australia) telling U.S. officials that Papadopoulos appeared to have foreknowledge of a Russian plan to release damaging information about Hillary Clinton. But they don't think it's the whole story.

That's where Horowitz comes in.

There's one big potential problem that people on Capitol Hill are talking about, and that is the issue of classified information. Everyone expects a significant amount of Horowitz's report to be classified. How much, no one is quite sure. But the fact is, the report was done to tell the American people what the nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies did during the 2016 election. Issuing a report with page after page blacked out would not be a good way to do that. But no one will know the extent of the classification issue until Horowitz is ready to go public.

And even if it were entirely declassified, Horowitz will not tell the whole story of spying and the 2016 election. Horowitz is the inspector general of the Justice Department and does not have the authority to investigate outside the department. For example, he cannot probe the actions of the Central Intelligence Agency and its then-director John Brennan during the period in question.

That will be the role of another investigator, John Durham, the U.S. attorney appointed by Barr to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. Durham is working with the support of top Republicans on Capitol Hill, like Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, who recently said, "I really am very curious about the role that the CIA played here."

But first, the Horowitz report. It will be an important step in answering the questions of how much spying took place and whether it was justified. It's long past time Americans learned what happened.

[Aug 25, 2019] The G7 Should Pressure China but Find a Solution with Russia The National Interest

Aug 25, 2019 | nationalinterest.org
  • Show more replies

  • Digit • 6 hours ago ,

    Divide and conquer. Fooled us once, you're a genius. Fool us twice...don't bet on it.

    Artiom Beknazaryan • 7 hours ago ,

    Nice plan, except it's too late. I don't think Russia will agree to this proposal. The West is very antagonized both in Russian elites and common people. Even if some high ranking officials will be happy to struck a deal common people will still perceive USA and the west as enemies. On the contrary China's reputation and karma is not as tainted as America's in the eyes of the majority in Russia. At this point any concession given to West will be met with disdain.

    Sarastro92 Artiom Beknazaryan • 7 hours ago ,

    Correct. NATO has thousands of troops on the Russian border and surrounds Western Russia by land and sea ... meanwhile the US preparing new cruise missile programs to be stationed in the EU... Putin would be a fool to play nice in the face of such a military buildup... in fact, he'd be deposed if he tried. No... the die is cast... the Russia-China Alliance is tightly cemented.

    Mark Thomason • 11 hours ago ,

    I agree, but for a slightly different reason.

    One opponent at a time, as much as possible.

    As many allies as you can get.

    It is just basic good sense.

    BegpaH Mark Thomason • 2 hours ago ,

    https://youtu.be/JNq-r3b4ARs

    Vladdy Mark Thomason • 8 hours ago ,

    Yeah, those stu..d Russians will never guess how tricky you are :-)))

    peter mcloughlin • 12 hours ago ,

    Doug Bandow gives fair and reasoned arguments. The current trend appears to be towards war. The question of enticing Moscow away from Beijing is a logical one. But does Russia fear China as an enemy more than it fears America? Who would benefit from hostilities between these two – America? That would not serve Russia's strategic interests.

    The challenge in the 21st century is not repeating the mistakes of the twentieth. History shows vital interests drive nations to war: but it is in nobody's interest to fight a third world war.
    https://www.ghostsofhistory...

    Artiom Beknazaryan peter mcloughlin • 7 hours ago ,

    I don't think here in Russia we fear anyone. We live in an era of powerful thermonuclear weapons. Russia has fully operational nuclear triad with thousands of warheads. Any military scenario against us trigger a final judgement day for human civilization. President Putin openly said that. At this point Russia is more or less isolationist trying to sever itself from global production chains to be more independent. The trade with US is minuscule, so basically US has the stick but lacks carrot. On the other hand China lacks what Russia really needs, so it's more of an allie of convenience. Basically all Russia needs is being left alone and being able to influence it's own region. Vast natural resources and population can really provide this kind of isolationism. But the US can't stop poking the bear, so enraged bear can really be pissed and provide China a helping hand.

    Digit Artiom Beknazaryan • 6 hours ago ,

    History had more than once proven isolation only lead to destruction. China was in the same boat a few centuries ago.

    BegpaH Digit • 4 hours ago • edited ,

    Isolated from US and vassals doesn't mean completelly isolated. As author mentioned G7 is only 1/10 of World's population. And France, Germany and Italy are eager to restore pre-sanction relations. Also having China, power on the rise (contrary to declining West) in your corner is a very good thing.

    Gary Sellars • a day ago ,

    "However, Beijing's widespread, sometimes brutal crackdown at home, increasingly threatening approach to both Hong Kong and Taiwan, and more aggressive stance toward territorial disputes challenge common Western interests and values. "

    What "brutal crackdown"? I presume he means HK but the response of the Chinese gov is hardly brutal. On the contrary, the authorities there have been been far more passive and restrained than the west would be. Try shutting down a major US airport with a demonstration and see long it takes for US robo-cops to cover the tiled floors in protester blood and fill jail cells with unconscious bodies. Consider the (mostly unreported) brutality in France as M(i)cron orders his gendarmes to use force to suppress growth of the Gilets Jaunes movement.

    What "aggressive stance" to territorial disputes? Chinese aren't blockading any areas of the SCS and are not preventing freedom of navigation. They have claimed a number of SCS rocks and minor islands, but the fact remains that none of the largest 18 islands are Chinese controlled yet no-one wants to level the same charges against Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam or Malaysia that control them. The Chinese maintain an active military presence around their own bases in the SCS, but they don't act to stop other traffic in the area, and no-one has any actual legitimate business with these isolated rocks, either now or before the ChiComs claimed them.

    Bandow is spinning a load of BS with these and other assertions of a fake reality. Its just part of a superficial narrative intended to support the idea of a "benevolent and democratic" US selflessly guarding the "free world" against an "authoritarian police state" that is "challenging and undermining the global rules-based system". It a load of baloney that well-expired but Bandow the organ-grinder keep turning the handle to make the public monkies dance for the amusement and hidden agendas of Cato Institutes elites paymasters.

    Gary Sellars • a day ago ,

    "Kyiv would be left to forge whatever economic ties it desired east and west."

    Really? When did the ruling elites of the US and EU change their policies? It was the refusal of the Eurotrash to accept Ukraine accepting Russian cash and economic assistance in 2014 that led to the Ultra-nationalist putsch with US/EU full support. Yanukovich wanted a deal and the EU refused to give him one he could accept, then threw their weight behind his forced removal and shut-out the possibility of Ukraine having economic relations with its largest trading partner (Russia).

    BTW in English we have always spelled the city as Kiev, not Kyiv. Bandow is clearly pandering to the Ukropi nationalists and anti-Russia radicals.

    Gary Sellars • a day ago ,

    "In return, Russia could abandon support for Donbas rebels in Ukraine, grant Kyiv full navigational access in contested waters, and stop using natural gas as a weapon."

    Russia isn't about to abandon Donbass while the Ukies show no regard for civilian lives in their incessant shelling attacks and repeated violations of "truces". Kiev is attacking Donbass and intent on advancing, not the other way around, so a cessation of conflict is in their court, not Donetsk or Lugansk.

    Kiev has full access to "contested waters" (presumably access to the Azov Sea) but they need to follow protocols. It is their refusal to play by the rules (and the deliberate provocations by the SBU) that is the crux of the problems.

    Russia doesn't use natural gas as a weapon. She simply sells gas to willing customers (who buy it from her due to good prices and a long established record as a reliable supplier). Russia is understandably looking for alternative routes of transit to avoid nations that are her traditional antagonists and who wish to use gas transit as leverage over her. Why should Russia allow unfriendly nations to have the ability to shutdown her gas exports? Ukraine was stealing gas for years which led to the cessation of gas supplies while custody transfer violations were investigated and stopped. Why should Russia maintain transit through unfriendly nations and allow them to gain transit fees? If they cease their Russia-baiting BS things might change, but that is their decision to make, and Russia will act in the meantime according to her interests.

    Doug Bandow tries to play the moderate but he recycles the worst agitprop tropes about Russia. To be expected from a minion of the Cato Institute I suppose...

    Digit Gary Sellars • 6 hours ago ,

    Thank you once again. Nicely written.

    Allalin • a day ago ,

    I would highly recommend that Doug Bandow get a lecture in Russian Foreign Politics. This is not just a market with a handful dollar. Bandow might be a visiting Student a MGIMO for Russian Foreign Politics which is based on trust and reliability for years. Besides, Peking is by far the largest economic Partner of Russia. President Putin is not interested on G7 membership. It lacks results and is a further "bla, bla" Organisation without any success. Economic sanctions are more an issue for western Europe. As example Francs lost 50% of their Russian Trade about 12B USD.

    US inferior Foreign Politics lacks all of it. It's an Ad-Hoc organised Ministry with interference from the President.

    Vladdy • a day ago ,

    Aren't these guys really stup!d? They are discussing should Russia be in G8 or not, while Putin many times said that this organization is useless for Russia! :-)))

[Aug 24, 2019] George Kennan on Russia Insights and Recommendations

Highly recommended!
The more things change the more they stay the same. The level of paranoia of the neoliberal elite toward Russia probably exceeds the level achieved during the Cold War I, and their intellectual level is considerably lower, so the danger is greater.
Notable quotes:
"... I am coming to believe that it will never be possible to achieve anything resembling a sophisticated understanding of Russia in American governmental and journalistic circles. ..."
"... The lingering tendencies in [the United States] to see Russia as a great and dangerous enemy are simply silly, and should have no place in our thinking. We have never been at war with Russia, should never need to be and must not be. ..."
Aug 24, 2019 | www.russiamatters.org
  • I find the view of the Soviet Union that prevails today in large portions of our governmental and journalistic establishments so extreme, so subjective, so far removed from what any sober scrutiny of external reality would reveal, that it is not only ineffective but dangerous as a guide to political action. This endless series of distortions and oversimplifications; this systematic dehumanization of the leadership of another great country; this routine exaggeration of Moscow's military capabilities and of the supposed iniquity of Soviet intentions; this monotonous misrepresentation of the nature and the attitudes of another great people ... this reckless application of the double standard to the judgment of Soviet conduct and our own; this failure to recognize, finally, the communality of many of their problems and ours as we both move inexorably into the modern technological age; and this corresponding tendency to view all aspects of the relationship in terms of a supposed total and irreconcilable conflict of concerns and of aims: these, believe me, are not the marks of the maturity and discrimination one expects of the diplomacy of a great power; they are the marks of an intellectual primitivism and naïveté unpardonable in a great government. ( The New York Review of Books , 01.21.82)
  • Above all, we must learn to see the behavior of the leadership of that country [the Soviet Union] as partly the reflection of our own treatment of it. If we insist on demonizing these Soviet leaders -- on viewing them as total and incorrigible enemies, consumed only with their fear or hatred of us and dedicated to nothing other than our destruction -- that, in the end, is the way we shall assuredly have them -- if for no other reason than that our view of them allows for nothing else -- either for them or for us. ( The New York Review of Books , 01.21.82)
  • On forcing Russia into concessions in a letter to J. Lukacs [1] : I would like to say that it never pays, in my opinion, for one great power to take advantage of the momentary weakness or distraction of another great power in order to force upon it concessions it would never have accepted in normal circumstances. (Letter written in 1990 via " Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs ," 2010)
  • I fear the consequences of his [U.S. President Jimmy Carter's] moralism -- with respect both to Southern Africa and to the Soviet Union. The question of pressure on behalf of the Russian "dissidents" is one of those highly complicated political questions in which one has to work with contrary forces, carefully gauging the best compromise line between them. (Letter written in 1977 via " Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs ," 2010)
  • One great part of the U.S. government professes to be seeking peace with Moscow; another great part of it -- CIA and the Pentagon -- appears to live and act on the assumption that we are either at war with Russia or are about to be. Both of these attitudes have their domestic cliques and constituencies; and our good president, anxious to return the support of both of them, wages peace, demonstratively, out of one pocket, and war, clandestinely, out of the other. Hence -- his split mind. (Letter written in 1977 via " Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs ," 2010)
  • I am coming to believe that it will never be possible to achieve anything resembling a sophisticated understanding of Russia in American governmental and journalistic circles. Recognizing this, to begin to think that it should be best if the relationship between the two countries were to be, over the long term (and by this conscious choice), a cold and distant one, directed solely to the maintenance of peace, but avoiding both polemics and the search for intimacy -- a disillusioned relationship in other words, in which the avoidance of unnecessary misunderstandings in practical questions would be given a higher priority than the search for any real philosophical understanding or any wide ranging agreement on political values. (Letter written in 1983 via " Through the History of the Cold War: The Correspondence of George F. Kennan and John Lukacs ," 2010)
  • The lingering tendencies in [the United States] to see Russia as a great and dangerous enemy are simply silly, and should have no place in our thinking. We have never been at war with Russia, should never need to be and must not be. ... The greatest help we can give will be of two kinds: understanding and example. The example will of course depend upon the quality of our own civilization. It is our responsibility to assure that this quality is such as to be useful in this respect. We must ask ourselves what sort of example is going to be set for Russia by a country that finds itself unable to solve such problems as drugs, crime, decay of the inner cities, declining educational levels, a crumbling material substructure and a deteriorating environment. The understanding, on the other hand, will have to include the recognition that this is in many ways a hard and low moment in the historical development of the Russian people. They are just in process of recovery from all the heartrending reverses that this brutal century has brought to them. We , too, may someday have our low moments. ( Foreign Affairs , 12.01.90)

[Aug 24, 2019] Rachel Maddow, where are you?

Now there's something that could actually make the Mueller Report look legitimate.
Aug 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

anon in so cal , August 23, 2019 at 6:38 pm

Putin derangement syndrome:

"Putin's most innovative, and dangerous, weapon. The dogs will be handed out to Democrats on election night, suppressing the vote and guaranteeing a second Trump term. Rachel Maddow, where are you?"

https://twitter.com/RealScottRitter/status/1164939107610570752?s=20

hunkerdown , August 23, 2019 at 7:28 pm

It's Bull Connor redux, but nicer and more intersectional.

[Aug 24, 2019] Russiagate has elements which are similar to anti-Semitism hysteria in Nazi Germany

Aug 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org

Reader mark

This is a case of setting up a ludicrous straw man.

Suppose for the sake of argument it was established that the Russian state actually did try to kill Skripal. Of course they didn't, but assume they did.

It would be entirely legitimate to say "the Russians" did it. This wouldn't be racist, or bigoted, or anything else. It wouldn't mean that all 150 million Russians were personally involved, or approved of this action, or played an active part in it, or even that they knew of it or could care less about it.

It wouldn't be some kind of racist trope that bus driver Mr. Ivanovich in Novosibirsk was somehow responsible.

Any more than 300 million Americans and 60 million British were personally responsible for the conspiracy to invade Iraq, or Bush's and Blair's criminal war of aggression.

In like manner the 9/11 atrocity was carried out by a few hundred individuals. Mostly Israeli and dual national Americans, and a significant number of Israel First stooge goys serving Zionist interests.

The vast majority of Jews and Israelis in the world played no part at all, and are just passive recipients of the cover conspiracy theories to explain it away.

This is just a smokecreen that is habitually thrown up whenever anyone connects the dots between Silverstein, a 200 strong Mossad ring, Chertoff, and so many others.

[Aug 24, 2019] The Media's Massive Credibility Problem

Notable quotes:
"... Only 38 percent said national political coverage is accurate and reliable, while 42 percent said it is not. "We asked about national political reporters. Are they credible? Are they reliable?" said Rasmussen. "And you know, a little more than 1 out of 3 people say yes. When we ask about Wikipedia, we get the exact same answer. So what's -- what's happening is we have a world where people look at journalists like they look at Wikipedia." ..."
"... All this created a national hunger for alternative sources of information. The addition of Fox News, conservative talk radio, and conservative news websites and blogs in the '90s is decried as the dawn of a new era of "misinformation." ..."
"... The media's dramatic tilt has clearly taken a toll on their image. Rasmussen told Attkisson that 78 percent of voters say reporters don't report news so much as they promote their agenda: "They think they use incidents as props for their agenda rather than seeking accurate record of what happened. Only 14 percent think that a journalist is actually reporting what happened." ..."
Aug 24, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org

On her weekly Sinclair TV show, "Full Measure," on Aug. 18, former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson interviewed pollster Scott Rasmussen about journalists' standing in the public square. They're about as trusted as Wikipedia, the website considered so unreliable that school teachers often tell students they can't cite it as a source for their research papers.

Only 38 percent said national political coverage is accurate and reliable, while 42 percent said it is not. "We asked about national political reporters. Are they credible? Are they reliable?" said Rasmussen. "And you know, a little more than 1 out of 3 people say yes. When we ask about Wikipedia, we get the exact same answer. So what's -- what's happening is we have a world where people look at journalists like they look at Wikipedia."

You hear the media elites often break out the nostalgia for an era when the American people had "shared facts." Translation: a time when all Americans had the "mainstream" media to tell them what the "facts" were, and when those in that "mainstream" enjoyed a monopoly in their industry. Facts always seemed carefully arranged for political impact. For example, the TV anchors told us the Vietnam War was an unwinnable quagmire. Watergate was the worst scandal in American history. The Soviet Union only wanted peace. The wealthy were greedy. Planet Earth would succumb to global warming. And Planned Parenthood cares about children.

All this created a national hunger for alternative sources of information. The addition of Fox News, conservative talk radio, and conservative news websites and blogs in the '90s is decried as the dawn of a new era of "misinformation."

The media's dramatic tilt has clearly taken a toll on their image. Rasmussen told Attkisson that 78 percent of voters say reporters don't report news so much as they promote their agenda: "They think they use incidents as props for their agenda rather than seeking accurate record of what happened. Only 14 percent think that a journalist is actually reporting what happened."

That result is just devastating. The "news" media no longer exist.

Then Rasmussen added a layer of public cynicism: "If a reporter found out something that would hurt their favorite candidate, only 36 percent of voters think that they would report that." The public sees the media for what they are: flagrant activists manipulating the democratic process.

Attkisson also interviewed former CNN anchor Frank Sesno to react to this massive credibility problem. Sesno toed the company line and, in so doing, tripped over his own tongue. "The public understands fundamentally what journalism should be," he said. "They don't understand how it's actually practiced." What does that mean? The public isn't well-informed enough to know how well-informed it would be if it were to trust the press?

If media organizations really wanted to improve their image, they would address public skepticism seriously, taking some very simple steps. Stop trying to bury every bit of good news for President Trump and every bit of bad news for Bernie, Biden & Co. Try to acknowledge that policy debates have two sides. It is fair to question climate change, support our national identity and oppose the abortion industry trafficking human carnage.

Is it too late? Conservatives have walked away from these networks and newspapers, which means that their audiences are now mostly liberals who reject everything conservatives champion. Obviously, from all we've witnessed, liberal journalists are much more sensitive to criticism from fellow liberals than they are to the American public. That's unlikely to change, so the credibility crisis will only deepen.

creators.com

[Aug 24, 2019] Why should the American public trust the neoliberal MSM taking into account their dismal record in truthfulness and honest reporting

Aug 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org

As the mainstream media consistently rush to judgment, speculation too often becomes fact before all the evidence is considered (ie Russiagate) as the MSM is relied on to provide factual and critical background information.

And yet since 65% of the American public believe that the MSM is peddling fake news begs the question of why should detailed reporting on these tragic events be left to a discredited media establishment or that their information on these recent shootings be considered truthful?

Why should the American public trust the MSM for what may have already been determined to be a 'hate' crime without providing evidence of the hate – as the Divide and Rule Game continues undeterred sowing division and conflict among the American people.

It remains unclear exactly why either tragedy is being specifically labeled a "hate" crime instead of felony murder as if there is a larger agenda to establish 'hate' as a bona fide.

Obviously, such barbaric mass killings are not normal behavior as the rationale for such conduct must stem from some deep emotional depravity just as the epidemic of suicides of young white males who have lost hope in American society makes no more sense.

There is an endemic crisis throughout the country and the political class are responsible. Decades after federal government elimination of grants for community mental health programs, 'hate' is the favorite determinant factor as the world's most violent nation creates a generation of emotionally or mentally unstable young men, many of whom may be on mind-numbing psychiatric drugs.

Since the MSM has failed to inform the American public of advanced mind control practices; perhaps the MSM itself and the young shooters are part of widespread experiment using MK Ultra or other state-of-the-art brain manipulation techniques. How would the American public ever know which might be true?

[Aug 24, 2019] Putin strongly objects to the USA start of production of midrange rockets which can be used from Romania s and Poland s existing launching facilities

While this is a Russian site with specific audience, comments show that people reject the USA policy which might creates problems for the USA in the future. Not the USA neoliberal/neocon elite cares.
This decisions just had shown to the whole would that Trump is a clown capable of twitting, not much more. Other people make key decisions for the county.
Aug 24, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Drew Hunkins , August 23, 2019 at 13:33

off topic:

Putin's taking the gloves off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAfyftONbFY&list=LLWzo4sS343MNLWEG7VvwJ_Q&index=3&t=222s

Franz Bauer , 1 day ago

The deep state that controls the US are lying criminal psychopaths. Any agreements and treaties negotiated with them aren't worth the time or paper they are written on.

Narayana Narayana , 1 day ago

We love honourable putin's each decision because he always gives with legal proof. Love you honourable putin and Russia people. From India.

rafael albizu , 1 day ago (edited)

Super hypersonic russian rockets need just 5 minutes to hit target, & they're in Russian land, not in foreign usurped countries

Brian Ahern , 1 day ago

all.putin wants world peace but the Americans whats to tell everyone what to do and start wars what.they.sould buid a wall.around america stop them getting out

394pjo , 1 day ago (edited) div tabindex="0" role="artic

le"> We can certainly expect Poland and Romania to be targeted with Nuclear munitions at the very least. There will likely be an official Russian announcement of this fact as well. In the event of a breakout of hostilities with Nato then Russia will target the military infrastructure in both countries and vaporise them immediately. Unfortunately a very large number of Polish and Romanian civilians will be caught in the blasts. That will be tragic of course.

pulaat , 1 day ago

I live in the Netherlands and I am on the side of Russia. Europe is disgusting for not condemning the USA intentions. Eu will regret it. When bombs fall on Europe because of these incompetent leaders we will not forget.

Drew Hunkins , 1 day ago div tabindex="0" role="art

icle"> The Western public MUST, MUST become very familiar pronto with the few intellectuals, scholars, journalists, writers and authors who have been at the forefront for global peace and world justice for decades! It's our only hope! Right now the only sane voice on the national stage is Tulsi Gabbard. People must start reading: John Pilger, James Petras, Diana Johnstone, Stephen Lendman, Ray McGovern, Finian Cunningham, Andre Vltchek, Michael Parenti, Stephen Cohen, The Saker, Caitlin Johnstone, Paul Craig Roberts.

Techno Tard , 1 day ago

Good one U.S.A. government! Lets try to instigate a fkn war where we can actually be attacked on our home land!

Luis martins , 1 day ago (edited)

tit-for-tat that was the right words from Putin

Madaleine , 1 day ago

USA a decadent nation run by global mafia . Cannot trust what they say , is proven by their actions Sold their soul to the devil for money and power. Yet they will fail God is in charge!

Drew Hunkins , 1 day ago div tabindex="0" role="articl

e"> The double standard in the West is breathtaking. It's as simple as the Golden Rule: merely try to imagine the reaction in New York, London, Washington, Paris, Chicago, Boston if Russia or China were to do the exact same thing in southern Canada or the Caribbean. The Washington military empire builders could possibly destroy humanity with their reckless and imperial behavior. They simply cannot accept any sovereign nation-states that 1.) give the finger to Wall Street or the idea of the uni-polar world Washington's intent on establishing, or 2.) gives diplomatic support to the Palestinians or is even a mild thorn in the side of Israel. For further reading, see the following scholars, intellectuals, journalists and writers: James Petras, Diana Johnstone, John Pilger, Stephen Lendman, Michael Parenti, Finian Cunningham, Andre Vltchek and a few others I'm forgetting at the moment.

George Mavrides , 1 hour ago

US ramping up for a war before dollar collapse. However, a war against Russia and China is not one they can win.

JimmyRJump , 1 day ago (edited) div tabindex="0" role="articl

e"> Under Trump the USA are rapidly steering towards an open dictatorship, something they've been doing for years but more covertly. The USA have always been shouting the loudest about democracy and freedom but that's just a façade while they bully the world and their own people into submission. The curtain is falling faster and faster now. Oh, and ask the American Natives what the Americans do with treaties...

orderoutofchaos621 , 20 hours ago

The US does not want friendship with Russia, it seeks to either control it or destroy it. Since the first option isn't going to happen, it's obvious what's next and it'll start with more sanctions, expanding NATO into Georgia and Ukraine and placing nuclear missiles on Russia's Eastern and Western border.

Bernt Sunde , 1 day ago div class=

"comment-renderer-text-content expanded"> All it takes, is 1 single warhead fired from ex. Poland to reach Moscow. How many launchers do USA have placed in these countries near Russia? Is Moscow more than 500 KM away from any NATO border? If the enemy sets up catapults outside your city walls, isn't that a clear sign the enemy intend to fire those catapults against your walls? So what do you do? Do you sit and wait? Or do you take out the catapults before they break down your walls? As far as any strategist see this, it can be only one solution for survival.

joshron99 , 1 day ago div class="c

omment-renderer-text-content expanded"> During FDR's 'Pearl Harbor' speech he said, "It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago." There are echoes of this speech in Putin's words ( 02:18 ) and the type of treachery referred to by Roosevelt applies to the American exit from the INF. America has become a nation holding "a big stick" and loudly shouting about it (contrary to an earlier Roosevelt's advice). The White House acknowledged (and the NYT reported) that we are involved in seven wars right now (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Niger). We have 38 "named" foreign military bases as well as upwards of 600 overseas military installations of some sort including "lily pads," i.e., "cooperative security locations" and an undisclosed number of "black" locations. Our military budget is pushing towards a trillion dollars per year ($717 billion this year). We are threatening small countries such as Venezuela with military action (and yes, something needs to be done for the good of the people there but that should not include an American military attack which President Trump, our Secretary of State ("and his colleague") have said is "on the table." And now, we are dumping nuclear weapons treaties. We have truly become a country which "lives by the sword." Good luck to us all.

Deon Richards , 10 hours ago

Okay , so this is a broadcast of the President of Russia speaking to his security council right , this is official researched factual intel ....has to be on that level ...right . Now to the few negative responses I have come across ,what intel do you have and where did you get it...

Mad Rooky , 4 hours ago

Poland and Romania wanted to be on the safe side, but now they are getting a crosshair painted on their countries. What irony.

Drew Hunkins , 1 day ago

Instead of addressing and trying to ameliorate this most dangerous development, let's instead focus on Trump's idiotic and diversionary comments and tweets about buying Greenland or some such other nonsense.

[Aug 24, 2019] Rachel Maddow, where are you?

Now there's something that could actually make the Mueller Report look legitimate.
Aug 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

anon in so cal , August 23, 2019 at 6:38 pm

Putin derangement syndrome:

"Putin's most innovative, and dangerous, weapon. The dogs will be handed out to Democrats on election night, suppressing the vote and guaranteeing a second Trump term. Rachel Maddow, where are you?"

https://twitter.com/RealScottRitter/status/1164939107610570752?s=20

hunkerdown , August 23, 2019 at 7:28 pm

It's Bull Connor redux, but nicer and more intersectional.

[Aug 23, 2019] Is nonsense economic throes promoted by NYT a deliberate policy or are they really ignorant ?

Aug 23, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

templar555510 , August 23, 2019 at 8:41 am

Spot-on . Whenever I read this nonsense in the NYT or elsewhere I always ask myself the same question ' Is this deliberate or are they really ignorant ? ' . I suspect the latter, but I could be wrong.

MichaelSF , August 23, 2019 at 12:17 pm

There's no reason it can't be both.

[Aug 23, 2019] Is nonsense economic throes promoted by NYT a deliberate policy or are they really ignorant ?

Aug 23, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

templar555510 , August 23, 2019 at 8:41 am

Spot-on . Whenever I read this nonsense in the NYT or elsewhere I always ask myself the same question ' Is this deliberate or are they really ignorant ? ' . I suspect the latter, but I could be wrong.

MichaelSF , August 23, 2019 at 12:17 pm

There's no reason it can't be both.

[Aug 22, 2019] Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne Quits As 'Deep State' Remarks Cause Uproar

While Butina is definitely a gun crazy idiotess (and 18 mouth while a little bit harsh is more or less fair punishment for being such a idiot unless we remember that Epstein got less then that for supposedly much more complicated foreign influence scheme ) , this guy now looks like a sinister double dealing crook, who on one hand supported and encouraged Butina "adventures" with NRA while sleeping with her, but on the other rat the girl to FBI...
Notable quotes:
"... The Russian girl, Maria Butina, must have had the worst lawyer on the planet. To get 18 months in prison for trying to infiltrate the NRA to get the NRA to influence the American government on behalf of Russia. That's the NRA, not the NSA. That's even a crime? That case was lame, even by Muller standards ..."
Aug 22, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Byrne's August 12 press release drew attention to his three-year relationship with Russian spy Maria Butina, though it wasn't specifically mentioned. He made the statement to reveal his issues with how the federal government handled its case against Butina, The New York Times reported.

The spy's work came to light after her July 2018 arrest. Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison in April for conspiring to infiltrate the National Rifle Association on behalf of Russia.

... ... ...

Promethus

, 15 minutes ago link

The Russian girl, Maria Butina, must have had the worst lawyer on the planet. To get 18 months in prison for trying to infiltrate the NRA to get the NRA to influence the American government on behalf of Russia. That's the NRA, not the NSA. That's even a crime? That case was lame, even by Muller standards

vienna_proxy , 11 minutes ago link

infiltrate? have you heard her speak? she has the heaviest Russian accent possible. she's no spy, she might as well wear a Russian flag.

DoctorFix , 5 minutes ago link

About as believable as the Skirpal fiasco. Has anyone even heard much lately?

Kafir Goyim , 24 minutes ago link

My Rabbi made me see that "coming forward" meant telling the public (not just the government) the truth.

Oy Vey. Now I understand why it's so hard to understand if this guy has anything at all, and if so, what the hell it is.

Heroic Couplet , 36 minutes ago link

If Robert Mueller didn't need Byrne's help, most likely he is easy to ignore. Thanks, Robert Mueller, for showing the US and Byrne the priority.

[Aug 21, 2019] Solomon If Trump Declassifies These 10 Documents, Democrats Are Doomed

Highly recommended!
They are afraid to admin that a color revolution was launched to depose Trump after the elections of 2016. Essentially a coup d'état by intelligence agencies and Clinton wing of Democratic Party.
Notable quotes:
"... The 53 House Intel interviews. House Intelligence interviewed many key players in the Russia probe and asked the DNI to declassify those interviews nearly a year ago, after sending the transcripts for review last November. There are several big reveals, I'm told, including the first evidence that a lawyer tied to the Democratic National Committee had Russia-related contacts at the CIA. ..."
"... The Stefan Halper documents. It has been widely reported that European-based American academic Stefan Halper and a young assistant, Azra Turk, worked as FBI sources . ..."
"... Page/Papadopoulos exculpatory statements. Another of Nunes' five buckets, these documents purport to show what the two Trump aides were recorded telling undercover assets or captured in intercepts insisting on their innocence. Papadopoulos told me he told an FBI undercover source in September 2016 that the Trump campaign was not trying to obtain hacked Clinton documents from Russia and considered doing so to be treason. ..."
"... The 'Gang of Eight' briefing materials. These were a series of classified briefings and briefing books the FBI and DOJ provided key leaders in Congress in the summer of 2018 that identify shortcomings in the Russia collusion narrative. ..."
"... The Steele spreadsheet. I wrote recently that the FBI kept a spreadsheet on the accuracy and reliability of every claim in the Steele dossier. According to my sources, it showed as much as 90 percent of the claims could not be corroborated, were debunked or turned out to be open-source internet rumors. ..."
"... The Steele interview. It has been reported, and confirmed, that the DOJ's inspector general (IG) interviewed the former British intelligence operative for as long as 16 hours about his contacts with the FBI while working with Clinton's opposition research firm, Fusion GPS. It is clear from documents already forced into the public view by lawsuits that Steele admitted in the fall of 2016 that he was desperate to defeat Trump ..."
"... The redacted sections of the third FISA renewal application. This was the last of four FISA warrants targeting the Trump campaign; it was renewed in June 2017 after special counsel Robert Mueller 's probe had started, and signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein . It is the one FISA application that House Republicans have repeatedly asked to be released, and I'm told the big reveal in the currently redacted sections of the application is that it contained both misleading information and evidence of intrusive tactics used by the U.S. government to infiltrate Trump's orbit. ..."
"... Records of allies' assistance. Multiple sources have said a handful of U.S. allies overseas – possibly Great Britain, Australia and Italy – were asked to assist FBI efforts to check on Trump connections to Russia. ..."
"... Attorney General Bill Barr's recent comments that "the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign, to me, is unprecedented and it's a serious red line that's been crossed." ..."
Aug 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

As the Russiagate circus attempts to quietly disappear over the horizon, with Democrats preferring to shift the anti-Trump narrative back to "racist", "white supremacist", "xenophobe", and the mainstream media ready to squawk "recession"; the Trump administration may have a few more cards up its sleeve before anyone claims the higher ground in this farce we call an election campaign.

As The Hill's John Solomon details, in September 2018 that President Trump told my Hill.TV colleague Buck Sexton and me that he would order the release of all classified documents showing what the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other U.S. intelligence agencies may have done wrong in the Russia probe.

And while it's been almost a year since then, of feet-dragging and cajoling and deep-state-fighting, we wonder, given Solomon's revelations below, if the president is getting ready to play his 'Trump' card.

Here are the documents that Solomon believes have the greatest chance of rocking Washington, if declassified:

1.) Christopher Steele 's confidential human source reports at the FBI. These documents, known in bureau parlance as 1023 reports, show exactly what transpired each time Steele and his FBI handlers met in the summer and fall of 2016 to discuss his anti-Trump dossier. The big reveal, my sources say, could be the first evidence that the FBI shared sensitive information with Steele, such as the existence of the classified Crossfire Hurricane operation targeting the Trump campaign. It would be a huge discovery if the FBI fed Trump-Russia intel to Steele in the midst of an election, especially when his ultimate opposition-research client was Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The FBI has released only one or two of these reports under FOIA lawsuits and they were 100 percent redacted. The American public deserves better.

2.) The 53 House Intel interviews. House Intelligence interviewed many key players in the Russia probe and asked the DNI to declassify those interviews nearly a year ago, after sending the transcripts for review last November. There are several big reveals, I'm told, including the first evidence that a lawyer tied to the Democratic National Committee had Russia-related contacts at the CIA.

3.) The Stefan Halper documents. It has been widely reported that European-based American academic Stefan Halper and a young assistant, Azra Turk, worked as FBI sources . We know for sure that one or both had contact with targeted Trump aides like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos at the end of the election. My sources tell me there may be other documents showing Halper continued working his way to the top of Trump's transition and administration, eventually reaching senior advisers like Peter Navarro inside the White House in summer 2017. These documents would show what intelligence agencies worked with Halper, who directed his activity, how much he was paid and how long his contacts with Trump officials were directed by the U.S. government's Russia probe.

4.) The October 2016 FBI email chain. This is a key document identified by Rep. Nunes and his investigators. My sources say it will show exactly what concerns the FBI knew about and discussed with DOJ about using Steele's dossier and other evidence to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in October 2016. If those concerns weren't shared with FISA judges who approved the warrant, there could be major repercussions.

5.) Page/Papadopoulos exculpatory statements. Another of Nunes' five buckets, these documents purport to show what the two Trump aides were recorded telling undercover assets or captured in intercepts insisting on their innocence. Papadopoulos told me he told an FBI undercover source in September 2016 that the Trump campaign was not trying to obtain hacked Clinton documents from Russia and considered doing so to be treason. If he made that statement with the FBI monitoring, and it was not disclosed to the FISA court, it could be another case of FBI or DOJ misconduct.

6.) The 'Gang of Eight' briefing materials. These were a series of classified briefings and briefing books the FBI and DOJ provided key leaders in Congress in the summer of 2018 that identify shortcomings in the Russia collusion narrative. Of all the documents congressional leaders were shown, this is most frequently cited to me in private as having changed the minds of lawmakers who weren't initially convinced of FISA abuses or FBI irregularities.

7.) The Steele spreadsheet. I wrote recently that the FBI kept a spreadsheet on the accuracy and reliability of every claim in the Steele dossier. According to my sources, it showed as much as 90 percent of the claims could not be corroborated, were debunked or turned out to be open-source internet rumors. Given Steele's own effort to leak intel in his dossier to the media before Election Day, the public deserves to see the FBI's final analysis of his credibility. A document I reviewed recently showed the FBI described Steele's information as only "minimally corroborated" and the bureau's confidence in him as "medium."

8.) The Steele interview. It has been reported, and confirmed, that the DOJ's inspector general (IG) interviewed the former British intelligence operative for as long as 16 hours about his contacts with the FBI while working with Clinton's opposition research firm, Fusion GPS. It is clear from documents already forced into the public view by lawsuits that Steele admitted in the fall of 2016 that he was desperate to defeat Trump , had a political deadline to make his dirt public, was working for the DNC/Clinton campaign and was leaking to the news media. If he told that to the FBI and it wasn't disclosed to the FISA court, there could be serious repercussions.

9.) The redacted sections of the third FISA renewal application. This was the last of four FISA warrants targeting the Trump campaign; it was renewed in June 2017 after special counsel Robert Mueller 's probe had started, and signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein . It is the one FISA application that House Republicans have repeatedly asked to be released, and I'm told the big reveal in the currently redacted sections of the application is that it contained both misleading information and evidence of intrusive tactics used by the U.S. government to infiltrate Trump's orbit.

10.) Records of allies' assistance. Multiple sources have said a handful of U.S. allies overseas – possibly Great Britain, Australia and Italy – were asked to assist FBI efforts to check on Trump connections to Russia. Members of Congress have searched recently for some key contact documents with British intelligence . My sources say these documents might help explain Attorney General Bill Barr's recent comments that "the use of foreign intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign, to me, is unprecedented and it's a serious red line that's been crossed."

These documents, when declassified, would show more completely how a routine counterintelligence probe was hijacked to turn the most awesome spy powers in America against a presidential nominee in what was essentially a political dirty trick orchestrated by Democrats.

rahrog , 2 minutes ago link

America's Ruling Class is laughing at all you fools still falling for the Rs v Ds scam.

Stupid people lose.

LibertyVibe , 3 minutes ago link

I disagree with Solomon. Nothing will "doom" the swamp unless the righteous few are willing to indict, prosecute and carry out sentencing for the guilty. Exposing the guilty accomplishes nothing, because anyone paying attention already knows of their crimes. Those who want to believe lies will still believe them after the truth comes out.
It's ALL A WASTE OF TIME unless we follow through.

#TheDailyNews #DrainTheSwamp

Lord Raglan , 5 minutes ago link

Where's all the other, earlier docs Trump was going to declassify? Just wondering..............

TheFQ , 16 minutes ago link

Does anyone see a pattern here after the 2009 Tea Party movement began?

2009 - Republicans: "If we win back the House, we can accomplish our agenda."

2011 - Republicans: "If we win back the Senate, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE: After winning back the House)

2012 - Republicans: "If we win back the Senate, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE: 2 YEARS After winning back the House)

2013 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE: 1 YEAR after winning back the House and the Senate)

2014 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE: 2 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)

2015 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE: 3 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)

2016 - Republicans: "If we win back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE: 4 YEARS after winning back the House and the Senate)

2017 - Republicans: "Now that we've won back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE: After winning back the House 6 YEARS AGO and the Senate 4 YEARS AGO)

2018 - Republicans: "Now that we've won back the Presidency, we can accomplish our agenda." (NOTE: After winning back the House 7 YEARS AGO and the Senate 5 YEARS AGO)

2019 - John Solomon - "If Trump Declassifies These 10 Documents, Democrats Are Doomed"

I hate to say it, but I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, JOHN.

ALL WE HAVE HEARD OVER THE COURSE OF THIS DECADE IS "IF THIS HAPPENS...THEN THEY ARE DOOMED / WE CAN ACCOMPLISH OUR AGENDA / YADDA YADDA YADDA.

WHEN THE FOLLOWING ARE FOUND GUILTY OF TREASON, THEN AND ONLY THEN WILL I BELIEVE YOU:

  • CLINTONS
  • OBAMA
  • BIDEN
  • KERRY
  • BRENNAN
  • CLAPPER
  • COMEY
  • MCCABE
  • MUELLER
  • WEISSMAN
  • STRZOK
  • RICE
  • POWERS
  • LYNCH
  • YATES
  • ET AL

WHY ARE THESE TREASONOUS, VILE, CORRUPT CRIMINALS NOT INDICTED FOR TREASON?

WTF?

FFS...

benb , 12 minutes ago link

WHY ARE THESE TREASONOUS, VILE, CORRUPT CRIMINALS NOT INDICTED FOR TREASON?

Because the people doing the indicting are in on it.

enfield0916 , 36 minutes ago link

As if there's any major philosophical difference between the Librtads and Zionist Cocksuckvatives.

Both sides use the .gov agencies to subvert and ignore the Constitution whenever possible. Best example is WikiLeaks and how each party wished Assange would just go away when he revealed damaging information about both sides on multiple occasions.

[Aug 21, 2019] Further US sanctions on Russia. Russian gdp growth is very low now, forecasts are about mere 1,2 % per anum, and thus Russia's share of world GDP is declining

Notable quotes:
"... EU is the power, that took part in creating narco-haven in Kosovo, murdering children of Iraq, building sex slaves markets in Libya, destroying what was left of democracy in Ukraine. EU power is diminishing? Let it crash and burn if you ask me. ..."
Aug 21, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Arioch , Aug 20 2019 14:22 utc | 83

> Further US sanctions on Russia. Russian gdp growth is very low now, forecasts are about mere 1,2 % per anum, and thus Russia's share of world GDP is declining.

Posted by: Passer by | Aug 20 2019 13:15 utc

You think "harming Russia" is a good answer to question "how does it boost USA the hegemon?". Well, let's suppose it...

Problem then is, Russia does not care that much about nominal GDP and even about PPP GDP. It is "average temperature in hospital", where some patients are in 41C fever and others in 4C morgue, but on average they all have that healthy 36,6C.

However, even for those sanctions that did hit Russia and EU hard (and those were enacted mostly in 2015), under the "China-Russia double helix" model, economic soft power is Chinese responsibility, so targetting EU and Russia economically was perhaps a mis-aiming, like would be targetting China militarily.

Also, take a single line - "congress obliges Trump to enlist Russian officials for sanctions" and do the search in both pro-Clinton Google and in DDG. first page of Google has zero relebvant results. DDG however starts with

Trump Administration Sends Congress List of Possible Russia ...
www.nytimes.com/2017/10/26/us/politics/trump-russia-sanctions.html

Congress has tied Trump's hands on Russian sanctions - Vox
www.vox.com/2017/7/29/16061878/trump-russian-sanctions-sign

Congress Forces Trump to Sanction Russia - Fash the Nation
fashthenation.com/2018/03/congress-forces-trump-to-sanction-russia/

Trump Finally Imposes Russia Sanctions That Congress Ordered ...
www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/trump-finally-imposes-russia-sanctions-that-congress-ordered-months-ago/

Is 2017 so far ago that we already forgot it? Trump has no freedom of choice to sanction Russia or not. It is not his authority to make this choice. Trump is ordered to sanction and he would do. If he has any leeway, it is to how specifically sanction, but even that choice is framed into UIS domestic politic fuel, as a vehicle to fry Trump over being "Putin's shil" and looking "not enough" into evil Russians.

> China postponed for overtaking the US in gdp MER to 2032 from 2024.

Estimations are just that, estimations. Guesses into the future mixed with propaganda. If you don't buy Trump's tweets about "China begging for deal" and Obama's about "Russian economy in tatters" - why to buy these estimations?

> Indian growth downgraded - which taken together with China means slowing down Asia's rise.

Pro-American Modi in power of India was a definite win for USA. But I do not think Trump did it in 2016. Such events are grown for years and years of undercover works.

Same for the Brazil fiasco, which i perceive was much heavier blow upon BRICS than Modi. But Brazilian coup was in preparation yet before Trump's oath. May 2016 was the FINAL act, prepared months before: nytimes.com/interactive/2016/world/americas/brazil-dilma-rousseff-impeachment.html

> Iran in recession - long term growth is low - it means that Iran's share of the world economy is now declining. This will lower Iranian influence in the long term.

Long term? like Trump is planning for long term? Would he, like Putin, still be American president in 2016+18=2034 ?
Well, maybe. However does it boost much US the hegemon position today?

Also notice how this pushes Iran back to Russian bucket. Before JCPOA Iran was flirting with "Lesser Satan" a lot, promising to buy russian airliners, promising to barter Iranian goods (oil and others) for Russian goods, thus de facto letting Russia be quasi-monopolistic seller of Iranian goods on world market for any margin Russia would manage to extract. All those hints and kinda-plans were squashed instantly after JCPOA. Iran rushed to trade with EU directly, to buy Boeing and Airbis jets.... But was shot into the leg before it started. I think China would also find their way to be "big helping brother" to Iranian economy, on some conditions of course.

> Venezueala in deep recession

True, and this is again fitting the isolationist bill, to a degree. If Team Trump ready to exclude USA from global trade - it would have to secure oil supply. Enslaving a nearby oil-containing nation would do.

Additionally, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States–Venezuela_relations lists 2014 as start of economic sanctions against Venezuela. So, Trump has inherited "office of Venezuelan affairs" from Cinton/Obama. And... he brought it to light and headlines by making that idiotic wannabe-coup. The sh*t that previously USA did silently pretending whitegloved "shining beacon", Trump exposed.

Did it really made USA position better in 2018 than it was in 2014? I doubt. To me it seemes more like T.T. accelerated things and "threw it all on the table" making Venezuela "hit the rock bottom". Now Venezuela can adjust to the new brave world, while USA would probably not be in position to tighten its grip - it already burned all the reserves and in so clumsy way, that Bolton and Co became a laughing stock. If anything, it exposed that while most gov't there would be paying lip service to USA, none would go with something material. France invaded with USA Libya, Germany invaded with USA Serbia, but none enlisted to invade Venezuela with USA.

> In Latin America most governments are now US puppet governments.

Brazil was indeed a huge blow into the BRICS dream. But i see it more of that indirect, covert "soft power" that USA secret services prepared and rushed to implement before Trump.

> Weakened the EU, via support for Brexit and other ways - it means that the euro will not be a viable alternative for replacing the dollar

Basically turning EU elites against USA and splitting "Western Hegemony" into rivaling factions.

From multipolar view circa 2010, would it be much difference for, say, Russia or China or Iran, whether USD or EUR would be "reserve currency"?

After Alexander of Macedonia died his empire split to pieces, and some of those pieces soon started warring. Did this enhance Greek hegemony or reduced it?

When COMECOM and Warsaw Pact disbanded did it enhanced Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe or reduced it? But it slashed exports of those lands, Bulgaria is not more agriculture super-power it used to be, "Ikarus" bus is still often meet in Moscow street but in the "remnants of old times still able to run" kind, Poland is no more producing ocean-grade ships. So, was it enhancing USSR share of world economy then?

Also, didn't he kind of forced EU elites into Chinese OBOR camp? That said, similarly Russia was forced towards China in 2013-2014 by Western lunacy, so i would not say it was Trump's novelty to push EU eastwards.

EU was in with US in looting Libya, EU was in with US in looting Serbia, now US calls for EU to join in "patrolling" Persian Gulf and response is... like the one about invading Venezuela. Hegemon became stronger?

> Trade wars seem to be hitting EU's export dependent economy pretty hard.

And i wish to see more of those wars not less. Won't you? EU is the power, that took part in creating narco-haven in Kosovo, murdering children of Iraq, building sex slaves markets in Libya, destroying what was left of democracy in Ukraine. EU power is diminishing? Let it crash and burn if you ask me.

> Turkey has serious economic problems - partly due to the US again - which again means slowing down multipolarity

Wasn't in 2012 Turkey part of Hegemon entourage neck-deep in bloody ISIS affair?
Wasn't Turkey for decades be knockign into closed EU membership doors?
Wasn't Turkey send their people into Germany to intertwine and cross-influence?

Turkey as part of multipolarity? Maybe. But exactly because it was prohibited from what they see their place in global western world. However i am not very sure that would West offer "larger piece" to Turkey in their crippling hegemony, turkey would not turn back yet again. Goog thing, it would be hard to do as few believe western promises today, but again, didn't Trump (but other western politicians too, and including many pre-Trump) invested into making West glaringly "not agreement-capable" in but everyone's view?

Trump could smash Turkey and instate Kudistan.
Trump could smash Kurds and make amends with Erdo.
Instead Trump is breaking pots with both. Neither Kurds not Turks no trust "the shining beacon".

> Overall situation - the US share in the world economy is declining at slower rates than before

Won't this mean Trump's economic policy is if limited success?

> the retarding of growth of everyone else, which means defacto slowing down multipolarity and the replacement of the US dollar

That may be what some faction of Team Trump counting upon. But i have reservations.
Uni-polarity is not about economic growth. It is about trading on One True Market, hegemon's one.
And when everything goes down, another factors start to weigh in. Like elasticity of demand and replacement with cheaper substitutes. Like, if i need a tooling for my house, i would perhaps want to purchase Japanese Makita or German Bosh. Those are famous brands with decades of well earned reputation. But if i only can salivate on them, then perhaps i can go with some cheaper Chinese knock-off? Or perhaps to blow the dust from my grandpa's old tool and purchase nothing at all? If i can buy genuine American Levi's it is a fad, but if i can, then perhaps i will make it in Turkey-made or China-made or Philipinnes-made or even Syria-made jeans? You know, their cut is not that fitting as European or American, but perhaps we can deal with it for the price? If in Russia i can no more buy Czech or German beer as before 2014, then perhaps i can sooth myself with apple cidre from semi-eastern Altai region of Russia? And then, will my gov't still had the same need for USD for those adjusted trade transactions, as it used to?

[Aug 20, 2019] They just can't get enough of that Novichok

I never suspected that UK authorities will be such obvious idiots. This is a clear sign of complete degeneration of the UK elite.
Aug 15, 2019 | telegraph.co.uk
A new victim's been discovered!

'Second officer was poisoned with Novichok in Salisbury incident, police reveal', ,

"Counter Terrorism Detectives, who are investigating the nerve agent attack in 2018, have confirmed that traces of Novichok have been found in a blood sample which was taken at the time from a second police officer.

The officer from Wiltshire Police, who does not wish to be identified , was involved in the response to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

The Telegraph understands the male officer displayed signs at the time of the incident that indicated exposure to a very small amount of Novichok .

He received appropriate medical treatment at the time and returned to duties shortly afterwards.

A police spokesman told the Telegraph the officer was part of the initial response.

Forensic examination of the officer's blood sample, taken in March 2018, has since been carried out by scientists at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory.

The forensic test – which uses a different method to that used to assess the clinical effects of nerve agent poisoning – has now given detectives confirmation that traces of Novichok were present.

The officer, the fourth person to be confirmed through forensic testing as a victim of the initial Salisbury attack, has been informed and continues to receive support from Wiltshire Police along with other officers and staff affected by the events in Salisbury and Amesbury last year."

Well, now that number depends on Gina Haspel's report about the dead ducks and sick children poisoned by the Novichoked bread the Skripals had been tossing to the ducks, doesn't it? But Officer Nick Baily was allegedly #5.

"The spokesman said: "some of the other police officers that attended the scene may have been exposed, but it is possible to find forensic traces [of Novichok] in blood that have no health implications at the time". [snip]

"The UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats and the US expelled 60 more in retaliation for poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March last year, blaming the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, for the botched assassination attempt."

From the link above:

'British authorities are confident they know "everything worth knowing" about the assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal, including a trail right up to Vladimir Putin."


"The Russian intelligence agency behind the Salisbury nerve agent attack has been dismantled in the UK [<Moscow spins webb of lies] and will remain out of action for years to come, according to government sources.

The threat posed by the GRU, which carried out the attempted assassination of Skripal last March, has been severely curtailed as a result of the counter-terror investigation that exposed the agents who carried out the attack.'

"Counter-terror police working with the intelligence services were able to piece together the plot to murder Colonel Skripal, a former GRU officer who had sold secrets to MI6, using CCTV, including footage from the streets close to the Col Skripal's home in Salisbury, and from passenger flight manifests and immigration data at the time of the attempted hit."

(with photos of GRU Boris and Natasha)

'Novichok Sickened 2nd British Officer, Police Say', August 15, 2019 , nytimes.com, Anna Schaverien

"Another officer, Detective Sgt. Nick Bailey, became critically ill after going to Mr. Skripal's home to investigate the attack. Mr. Skripal, a former colonel in Russia's military intelligence, and his daughter, Yulia, had been found unconscious and slumped on a bench.

Sergeant Bailey, who made contact with the nerve agent through the house's door handle, made a full recovery. Last Sunday, he ran a marathon to raise money for the intensive-care unit at the hospital where he was treated.

Two other people, Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, also suffered high levels of exposure to Novichok as a result of the poisoning. They were accidentally exposed to residue in Amesbury, a town near Salisbury, months after the initial episode .

Both were critically sickened on July 1 when Ms. Sturgess sprayed a substance that she thought was [Nina Ricci l'air du Novichoque ] perfume onto her wrist from a bottle that Mr. Rowley, her boyfriend, had found. Investigators believe the vial was used to transport the Novichok that poisoned the Skripals. Mr. Rowley survived, but Ms. Sturgess died .

In the wake of the attack, tensions escalated to their highest pitch in decades between Britain and Russia, which London blamed for the poisoning. Moscow denied any involvement." [snip]

"The European Union placed economic sanctions on the two suspects and two senior Russian military intelligence officials in January. And this month President Trump signed an executive order imposing new sanctions on Russia over the episode."

From the Aug. 1 NYT : 'Mr. Trump has been reluctant to take punitive actions against Russia, instead seeking better relations with Moscow despite its well-documented interference in the 2016 election.

But in recent weeks, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have criticized his administration's delay in taking what they have called legally mandated action to follow up on sanctions imposed last August.' [snip]

On Monday, the top Democrat and Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee sent a joint letter to the White House threatening new congressional action to force the administration's hand.

"Failure by the administration to respond to Russia's unabashed aggression is unacceptable and would necessitate that Congress take corrective action," wrote the members, Eliot L. Engel, Democrat of New York, and Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas.

The law provided the administration with numerous sanctions to choose from. The executive order released by the White House on Thursday banned loans or other assistance to Russia by international financial institutions and prohibited most loans from American banks to Russia's government."

"They are suspected groundlessly," the Kremlin's spokesman told reporters when the European Union imposed travel bans and asset freezes on the suspects. " We have still not heard any evidence ."

A year after the poisoning, and after 13,000 hours of cleaning, the British government announced that the decontamination of the former Skripal home was complete. But the investigation into the attack continues.

"There are parts of the picture that we are continuing to piece together," the Metropolitan Police statement said."

All of which begs the question: what new sanctions will the US and UK levy on Russia? Of course we'll never know where Sergei and Yulia are, will we?

And sure we remember when they raised a new roof because some of that Novichok gel (or was it a spray?) on the Skripal's front door knob migrated upstairs into the attic or something

This may have been my favorite story, though: ' Public toilet in Salisbury 'may have been used by Russian agents to prepare deadly Novichok', themirror.co./uk.com , Aug. 4, 2018

"A public toilet may be where Russian agents mixed deadly Novichok used to try and assassinate ex-spy Sergei Skripal , according to reports .

It is thought Met Police counter terror cops are investigating the likelihood that the assassins smuggled the components to the nerve agent into the country then mixed it in a public toilet in Salisbury.

Forensic teams have discovered low-level contamination in toilets in the city's Queen Elizabeth Gardens."

But I'll turn it over to BBC news : 'BBC to dramatise Salisbury Novichok poisoning', 17 May 2019 , bbc.com/news

"The new drama is being written by Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn who said in a joint statement: "We feel extremely privileged to be telling this story.

"Extensive, meticulous research is at the heart of how we like to work and we've been overwhelmed by the generosity of the people of Salisbury who have opened up to us over the past few months and continue to do so."

Piers Wenger, controller of BBC Drama, added: "The poisonings in Salisbury shocked the nation and had a huge impact on an unsuspecting community.

"This drama will capture the bravery, resilience and personal experience of the local people who faced a situation of unimaginable horror, so close to home."

Casting for the drama is yet to be announced."

An historical bonus from the good Ambassador: ' Pure: Ten Points I Just Can't Believe About the Official Skripal Narrative', March 7, 2109, Craig Murray, craigmurray .org; a few snippets:

"I still do not know what happened in the Skripal saga, which perhaps might more respectfully be termed the Sturgess saga. I cannot believe the Russian account of Boshirov and Petrov, because if those were their real identities, those identities would have been firmly established and displayed by now. But that does not mean they attempted to kill the Skripals, and there are many key elements to the official British account which are also simply incredible.

Governments play dark games, and a dark game was played out in Salisbury which involved at least the British state, Russian agents (possibly on behalf of the state), Orbis Intelligence and the BBC. Anybody who believes it is simple to identify the "good guys" and the "bad guys" in this situation is a fool. When it comes to state actors and the intelligence services, frequently there are no "good guys", as I personally witnessed from the inside over torture, extraordinary rendition and the illegal invasion of Iraq. But in the face of a massive media campaign to validate the British government story about the Skripals, here are ten of the things I do not believe in the official account:

3) Nursing Care

The very first person to discover the Skripals ill on a park bench in Salisbury just happened to be the Chief Nurse of the British Army , who chanced to be walking past them on her way back from a birthday party. How lucky was that? The odds are about the same as the chance of my vacuum cleaner breaking down just before James Dyson knocks at my door to ask for directions. There are very few people indeed in the UK trained to give nursing care to victims of chemical weapon attack, and of all the people who might have walked past, it just happened to be the most senior of them!

The government is always trying to get good publicity for its armed forces, and you would think that the heroic role of its off-duty personnel in saving random poisoned Russian double agents they just happened to chance across, would have been proclaimed as a triumph for the British military. Yet it was kept secret for ten months. We were not told about the involvement of Colonel Alison McCourt until January of this year, when it came out by accident. Swollen with maternal pride, Col. McCourt nominated her daughter for an award from the local radio station for her role in helping give first aid to the Skripals, and young Abigail revealed her mother's identity on local radio – and the fact her mother was there "with her" administering first aid."

6) Mark Urban/Pablo Miller

The BBC's "Diplomatic Editor" is a regular conduit for the security services. He fronted much of the BBC's original coverage of the Skripal story. Yet he concealed from the viewers the fact that he had been in regular contact with Sergei Skripal for months before the alleged poisoning, and had held several meetings with Skripal.

This is extraordinary behaviour. It was the biggest news story in the world, and news organisations, including the BBC, were scrambling to fill in the Skripals' back story. Yet the journalist who had the inside info on the world's biggest news story, and was actually reporting on it, kept that knowledge to himself. Why? Urban was not only passing up a career defining opportunity, it was unethical of him to continually report on the story without revealing to the viewers his extensive contacts with Skripal.

The British government had two immediate reactions to the Skripal incident. Within the first 48 hours, it blamed Russia, and it slapped a D(SMA) notice banning all media mention of Skripal's MI6 handler, Pablo Miller. By yet another one of those extraordinary coincidences, Miller and Urban know each other well, having both been officers together in the Royal Tank Regiment, of the same rank and joining the Regiment the same year."

Conclusion

I do not know what happened in Salisbury. Plainly spy games were being played between Russia and the UK, quite likely linked to the Skripals and/or the NATO chemical weapons exercise then taking place on Salisbury Plain yet another one of those astonishing coincidences."

Weird how literally every one of thes poisioning incidents keep happening less than 10 miles from the uk's largest and most notorious deadly chemical weapons factory. The fascist uk regime should really stop murdering its own people with chemical weapons https://t.co/zvIXrJ57eK

-- Handsome Man of Steel (@HandsomeSteel) August 16, 2019

(cross-posted from Café Babylon

MrWebster on Mon, 08/19/2019 - 2:44pm

Novichok is all these things

At first Novichok described as thee most deadilest chemical weapon in the world. It immediate kills anybody exposed to it and any unprotected first responders.

It failed to immediately kill to anybody exposed to it.
Seems more like a bad flu instead.

Novichok degrades almost immediately.
Norvichock can stay around for months in a perfume bottle.

Only Russians can and did make it.
For a few bucks, university chem majors made a batch.

wendy davis on Mon, 08/19/2019 - 4:52pm
arrrrr, matey!

@MrWebster

the nerve agent is a chimera in time, too! you can even pull it out of a hat, like a wabbit!

thanks for the great chuckle-worthy additions, Mr.Webster. ; )

p.s. it did kill dawn sturgess, as far as we've been told, but iirc, there were extenuating circumstances given her addiction history. i love it that officer bailey ran a marathon recently, too.

and the saga continues....will it ever end?

At first Novichok described as thee most deadilest chemical weapon in the world. It immediate kills anybody exposed to it and any unprotected first responders.

It failed to immediately kill to anybody exposed to it.
Seems more like a bad flu instead.

Novichok degrades almost immediately.
Norvichock can stay around for months in a perfume bottle.

Only Russians can and did make it.
For a few bucks, university chem majors made a batch.

Alligator Ed on Mon, 08/19/2019 - 2:54pm
The tweet says it all

Just so happens, etc.

Another well-researched article. Thanks.

Now where can I find l'air du Novichoque ? This could ultimately shorten my Christmans shopping list next year.

wendy davis on Mon, 08/19/2019 - 5:20pm
who on earth is on your

@Alligator Ed

xmas list, santa gator? looks like ya gotta either keep your eyes peeled for knock-offs, or head to the soviet union... light bulb! maybe they left a few bottles hidden in the roof of that bog in the salisbury park!

wendy davis on Mon, 08/19/2019 - 5:19pm
and all those bad pennies...

@travelerxxx

are addin' up to a fistful of dollars and pound notes by now, aren't they? i'd call it humiliating, myownself.

i did dig out more from craig murray on pablo miller, orbus, et.al., cuz i'd needed a refresher: Where They Tell You Not to Look , april 30, 2019 lots of tweets, plus this great aaron maté interview w/ luke harding.

by the by, i finally heard from Rosette Sewali, Producer & Membership Relations Manager after i'd asked TRNN why is might be that neither sharmini piries nor paul jay have been there since june 13; she wrote back:

'Thanks for your email. Paul and Sharmini have been on leave since early June. Updates will be available when we have more information .'

??????

'At the very beginning of the of the Skripal incident, the security services blocked by D(SMA) notice any media mention of Pablo Miller and told the media not to look at Orbis and the Steele dossier on Trump, acting immediately to get out their message via trusties in the BBC and Guardian. Gordon Corera, "BBC Security Correspondent", did not name the source who told him to say this, but helpfully illustrated his tweet with a nice picture of MI6 Headquarters.

'MI6's most important media conduit (after Frank Gardner) is Luke Harding of the Guardian.'
..................
'Given that the Steele dossier is demonstrably in large degree nonsense, it seems to me more probable the idea was to silence Skripal to close the danger that he would reveal his part in the concoction of this fraud. Remember he had sold out Russian agents to the British for cash and was a man of elastic loyalties. It is also worth noting that Luke Harding has a bestselling book currently on sale, in large part predicated on the truth of the Steele Dossier.

Steele, MI6 and the elements of the CIA which are out to get Trump, all would have a powerful motive to have the Skripal loose end tied.
Rule number one of real investigative journalism: look where they tell you not to look .'

[Aug 20, 2019] How the British Government subjected thousands of people to chemical and biological warfare trials during Cold War

Notable quotes:
"... The research reveals, for the first time, that around 4600 kilos of the chemical, zinc cadmium sulphide (now thought to be potentially carcinogenic, on account of its cadmium content) were dispersed from ships, aircraft and moving lorries between 1953 and 1964. ..."
"... Professor Schmidt's investigation – published on 9 July as a book, Secret Science – has revealed that commuters on the London underground were also used as guinea pigs on a substantially larger scale than previously thought. ..."
"... The new research reveals, for the first time, that in another British imperial possession, Nigeria, a location was found for chemical warfare field trials. In an area called Obanaghoro in southern Nigeria, four British Cold War scientific missions spent a total of around 15 months dispersing, and assessing the effects of, large quantities of experimental nerve gas weapons. The advantage of the location was that it permitted field trials to be carried out in a tropical environment – and, of course, that it was not in Britain or Australia. ..."
"... Ulf Schmidt's book, Secret Science, is published today on 9 July, by Oxford University Press. ..."
Aug 11, 2019 | independent.co.uk

Substantial quantities were also dispersed across parts of the English Channel and the North Sea. It's not known the extent to which coastal towns in England and France were affected.

The research reveals, for the first time, that around 4600 kilos of the chemical, zinc cadmium sulphide (now thought to be potentially carcinogenic, on account of its cadmium content) were dispersed from ships, aircraft and moving lorries between 1953 and 1964.

Read more

Professor Schmidt's investigation – published on 9 July as a book, Secret Science – has revealed that commuters on the London underground were also used as guinea pigs on a substantially larger scale than previously thought.

The new research has discovered that a hitherto unknown biological warfare field trial was carried out in the capital's tube system in May 1964.

The secret operation – carried out by scientists from the government's chemical and biological warfare research centre at Porton Down, Wiltshire - involved the release of large quantities of bacteria called Bacillus globigii. The scientists were keen to discover whether 'long distance travel of aerosols' in the tube network 'was due to transportation within trains' or through the tube's air ventilation systems.

At the time, the government thought that Bacillus globigii bacteria were harmless – but they are today regarded as a cause of food poisoning, eye infections, and even septicaemia. It is not known whether the authorities attempted to properly test the bacterium before releasing it into the tube system. An earlier series of tube field trials, in July 1963, has been known to historians for many years.

However, the new research has now revealed that some of the British scientists involved had grave misgivings about the field trials that had been carried out. Indeed some had long felt that it was not politically advisable to conduct large-scale trials in Britain with live bacterial agents.

One particular test – involving live plague bacteria – was carried out off the west coast of Scotland in 1952. It's long been known that a fishing vessel inadvertently passed through the cloud of bacteria and that the authorities were very worried that the fishermen might contract the disease.

The plague bacteria field trials, though at sea, took place only a few miles from the Isle of Lewis which had a population of several thousand.

The government scientists, carrying out the trials, banked on the fact that the prevailing wind normally blew away from the coast. If, however, the wind had changed direction, thousands of Hebrideans would have been at risk from plague infection, says Professor Schmidt.

Equipment for the isolation of patients in a germ free atmosphere, which was developed at Porton Down in collaboration with the Institute of Child Health (Getty)

Following the fishing vessel incident, the scientists were eager to carry out any further potentially very hazardous field trials outside the UK. Prime Minister Churchill therefore approved a plan to carry out tests in a British overseas territory, the Bahamas.

New research shows that the government scientists took the view that the Bahamas was the best place "on the surface of the globe" to carry out tests "without restrictions".

In 1954, the British government sent Cold War biological warfare scientists to an area of sea near an uninhabited island in the Bahamas to release clouds of dangerous Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis viruses. These organisms were capable of causing, in humans, high fever, long term fatigue, headaches and occasionally death.

The new research reveals, for the first time, that in another British imperial possession, Nigeria, a location was found for chemical warfare field trials. In an area called Obanaghoro in southern Nigeria, four British Cold War scientific missions spent a total of around 15 months dispersing, and assessing the effects of, large quantities of experimental nerve gas weapons. The advantage of the location was that it permitted field trials to be carried out in a tropical environment – and, of course, that it was not in Britain or Australia.

The extent that local people (including locally employed field trial personnel) were affected by the nerve agents is not known.

Historians have so far been unable to find out who did the particularly hazardous work of 'hand-charging' the nerve agent artillery shells, mortar bombs and aircraft cluster bombs. Likewise they have not been able to discover the extent to which local Nigerian soils were contaminated or whether nearby villages and schools were affected by any of the toxic clouds that would have been blown across the countryside.

"The government records I've been looking at are conspicuously silent on all this," said Ulf Schmidt.

"Officials had clearly good reasons as to why the kind of experiments undertaken in Nigeria were strictly prohibited on the British mainland, which is why the files and photographic records surrounding Britain's post-war nerve agent testing in Africa were regarded as particularly sensitive," he said.

Professor Schmidt's research has also revealed the vast scale of Cold War chemical warfare tests carried out on 'volunteer' British service personnel here in the UK – involving numbers of people much greater than previously thought.

His investigation now suggests that up to 30,000 secret chemical warfare substance experiments were carried out, mainly at Porton Down, on more than 14,000 British soldiers between 1945 and 1989. He believes that, in most cases, the servicemen were not given sufficient information to allow them to give properly informed consent.

Ulf Schmidt's book, Secret Science, is published today on 9 July, by Oxford University Press.

Spreading diseases: 'Harmless' proxies

Aircraft, lorries and ships spread 4,600kg of cadmium sulphide in one decade

Zinc Cadmium Sulfide ultra-fine particles

. This inorganic compound was used by Cold War scientists in the UK and the US as a supposedly harmless proxy to simulate the behaviour, in the lower atmosphere and on the ground, of biological warfare substances. However it is still not known whether particles of ZCS that may have become embedded in people's lungs for decades could ultimately cause disease.

Bacillus globigii . This bacterium was used as a supposedly harmless proxy to simulate the behaviour, in terms of dispersal and penetration, of biological warfare aerosols. Although not considered harmful when it was used in Cold War field trials, it is now known to be capable of causing fevers, food poisoning (occasionally resulting in death), peritonitis and septicaemia .

Pasteurella pestis (now known as Yersina pestis) . Clouds of this highly infections bacterium were dispersed only over areas of sea – but nevertheless very near to Lewis, a Scottish Island with thousands of inhabitants. In order not to infect the islands, it appears that the scientists relied entirely on the wind not changing direction and speed. This bacterium is the one that has caused plague epidemics worldwide in the past (including those of the medieval world's Black Death).

Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis. Clouds of this virus were dispersed over an area of sea close to an uninhabited island in the Bahamas. The virus debilitates or kills horses and donkeys and can also cause severe fever and even death in humans. Mosquitos spread the virus further by biting equines.

G-series nerve agents. Clouds of this chemical warfare weapon were dispersed during field trials in a small part of southern Nigeria, some miles north of the town of Warri. G-series nerve agents were first developed by the Nazis before and during World War Two. The group includes substances like sarin and attacks the human nervous system, causing loss of bodily function and normally death. Survivors are likely to suffer long-term neurological damage and psychiatric disorders.

[Aug 19, 2019] Now where can I find l'air du Novichoque ? This could ultimately shorten my Christmas shopping list the next year

These idiots just keep digging themselves deeper and deeper into that hole they're in. It's almost embarrassing, even if I didn't wish them the worst.
Aug 19, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

[Aug 19, 2019] Now where can I find l'air du Novichoque ? This could ultimately shorten my Christmas shopping list the next year

These idiots just keep digging themselves deeper and deeper into that hole they're in. It's almost embarrassing, even if I didn't wish them the worst.
Aug 19, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

[Aug 19, 2019] Conspiracy theory label can generate propaganda sufficiently toxic to severely damage or even destroy political opponents. For instance, Russiagate.

Aug 19, 2019 | www.unz.com

Sean McBride says: August 17, 2019 at 7:57 pm GMT 100 Words "dominate both polls" = "dominate both poles"?

A nice analysis of the rhetorical structure of conspiracy theories in general.

Another important aspect of this: the use of conspiracy theories to generate propaganda sufficiently toxic to severely damage or even destroy political opponents. For instance, Russiagate.

The mainstream media, since 2016, while railing against the conspiratorial mindset expressed in Internet alternative media channels, have been wallowing in it, promoting it with all the power at their disposal. Talk about twisty and sinister doublethink. One could almost describe it as diabolical.

They are often portraying false conspiracy theories as truth, and true conspiracy research as lies -- turning reality upside down and inside out.

[Aug 19, 2019] The Seth Rich story tells us how corruption spreads. The Mayor of DC, Muriel Bowser, tells Peter Newsham, the guy in charge of the Seth Rich investigation, to shut it down.

Aug 19, 2019 | www.unz.com

si1ver1ock , says: August 17, 2019 at 10:42 pm GMT

The Seth Rich story is coming back to life. A fellow named Butowski is exposing things.

He claims that Ellen Ratner of Fox News told him that Seth Rich and his brother Aaron gave Wikileaks Hillary's emails. Julian Assange is said to have told Ellen Ratner.

The story is that the cover-up came down from now disgraced FBI agent, Andrew McCabe, to the Mayor of DC and on down to the police. They were told to sit on the case.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/0M3Z4eE6cJA?feature=oembed

Twodees Partain , says: August 18, 2019 at 3:27 pm GMT
@si1ver1ock Here's a link to a detailed written article about the Butowski story and the lawsuit he has filed.

https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/deep-state-have-finally-met-their-match-ed-butowsky/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Deep+State+Have+Finally+Met+their+Match+-+Ed+Butowsky

Not everyone prefers viewing a video.

Si1ver1ock , says: August 18, 2019 at 1:58 pm GMT
The Seth Rich story tells us how corruption spreads. The Mayor of DC, Muriel Bowser, tells Peter Newsham, the guy in charge of the Seth Rich investigation, to shut it down.

Then, a year later she promotes him to Chief of Police.

[Aug 18, 2019] Trump Slams NYT After Leaker Reveals Pivot From Russiagate To Racism Witch Hunt

Notable quotes:
"... "The failing New York Times, in one of the most devastating portrayals of bad journalism in history, got caught by a leaker that they are shifting from the Phony Russian Collusion Narrative (the Mueller Report & his testimony were a total disaster), to a Racism Witch Hunt ," Trump wrote on Twitter ..."
"... Systematic deception by the press is a national security issue. In a real crisis, 2/3rds of this country is not going to believe either the government nor the media. That will be a real problem, and it's a massive weakness. ..."
"... Neoliberal MSM propaganda like heroin. Those "news" outlets don't care about actual facts or news, they are more script writers than anything else. ..."
Aug 18, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Trump Slams NYT After Leaker Reveals Pivot From 'Russiagate' To 'Racism Witch Hunt'

by Tyler Durden Sun, 08/18/2019 - 11:49 0 SHARES

President Trump slammed the "failing New York Times" on Sunday after leaked comments from executive editor Dean Baquet revealed that the paper is pivoting from the Russia narrative (which he described as being "a little tiny bit flat-footed") to 'Trump is a racist.'

"The failing New York Times, in one of the most devastating portrayals of bad journalism in history, got caught by a leaker that they are shifting from the Phony Russian Collusion Narrative (the Mueller Report & his testimony were a total disaster), to a Racism Witch Hunt ," Trump wrote on Twitter, adding "'Journalism' has reached a new low in the history of our Country. It is nothing more than an evil propaganda machine for the Democrat Party. The reporting is so false, biased and evil that it has now become a very sick joke But the public is aware! The reporting is so false, biased and evil that it has now become a very sick joke But the public is aware!"

Sanity Bear , 13 minutes ago link

Systematic deception by the press is a national security issue. In a real crisis, 2/3rds of this country is not going to believe either the government nor the media. That will be a real problem, and it's a massive weakness.

MrAToZ , 37 minutes ago link

Neoliberal MSM propaganda like heroin. Those "news" outlets don't care about actual facts or news, they are more script writers than anything else. These pretend journalists have conjured up a narrative and it is all about repeat repeat repeat, keeping that constant drip going into the vein of the Dem constituency. It's been going on for decades and the only people that are too stupid to see it are the Dems themselves.

[Aug 17, 2019] Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome (PTDS)

Highly recommended!
Aug 17, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

ewmayer , July 31, 2018 at 6:05 pm

"Somebody called it Trump derangement syndrome."

I believe that the full and proper name of the psychiatric disorder in question is Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome [PTDS].

Symptoms include:

  • Eager and uncritical ingestion and social-media regurgitation of even the most patently absurd MSM propaganda. For example, the meme that releasing factual information about actual election-meddling (as Wikileaks did about the Dem-establishment's rigging of its own nomination process in 2016) is a grave threat to American Democracy™;
  • Recent-onset veneration of the intelligence agencies, whose stock in trade is spying on and lying to the American people, spreading disinformation, election rigging, torture and assassination and its agents, such as liar and perjurer Clapper and torturer Brennan;
  • Rehabilitation of horrid unindicted GOP war criminals like G.W. Bush as alleged examples of "norms-respecting Republican patriots";
  • Smearing of anyone who dares question the MSM-stoked hysteria as an America-hating Russian stooge.

[Aug 17, 2019] Debunking the Putin Panic by Stephen F. Cohen

Highly recommended!
Aug 17, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

STEPHEN COHEN: I'm not aware that Russia attacked Georgia. The European Commission, if you're talking about the 2008 war, the European Commission, investigating what happened, found that Georgia, which was backed by the United States, fighting with an American-built army under the control of the, shall we say, slightly unpredictable Georgian president then, Saakashvili, that he began the war by firing on Russian enclaves. And the Kremlin, which by the way was not occupied by Putin, but by Michael McFaul and Obama's best friend and reset partner then-president Dmitry Medvedev, did what any Kremlin leader, what any leader in any country would have had to do: it reacted. It sent troops across the border through the tunnel, and drove the Georgian forces out of what essentially were kind of Russian protectorate areas of Georgia.

So that- Russia didn't begin that war. And it didn't begin the one in Ukraine, either. We did that by [continents], the overthrow of the Ukrainian president in [20]14 after President Obama told Putin that he would not permit that to happen. And I think it happened within 36 hours. The Russians, like them or not, feel that they have been lied to and betrayed. They use this word, predatl'stvo, betrayal, about American policy toward Russia ever since 1991, when it wasn't just President George Bush, all the documents have been published by the National Security Archive in Washington, all the leaders of the main Western powers promised the Soviet Union that under Gorbachev, if Gorbachev would allow a reunited Germany to be NATO, NATO would not, in the famous expression, move two inches to the east.

Now NATO is sitting on Russia's borders from the Baltic to Ukraine. So Russians aren't fools, and they're good-hearted, but they become resentful. They're worried about being attacked by the United States. In fact, you read and hear in the Russian media daily, we are under attack by the United States. And this is a lot more real and meaningful than this crap that is being put out that Russia somehow attacked us in 2016. I must have been sleeping. I didn't see Pearl Harbor or 9/11 and 2016. This is reckless, dangerous, warmongering talk. It needs to stop. Russia has a better case for saying they've been attacked by us since 1991. We put our military alliance on the front door. Maybe it's not an attack, but it looks like one, feels like one. Could be one.

Disturbed Voter , July 30, 2018 at 6:32 am

Real politik. Don't bring a knife to a gun fight. Don't start fights in the first place. The idea that American leadership is any better than mid-Victorian imperialism, is laughable.

Jerri-Lynn Scofield , July 30, 2018 at 8:15 am

Here's the RNN link to part one: The Russia "National Security Crisis" is a U.S. Creation .

integer , July 30, 2018 at 7:12 am

AARON MATE: We hear, often, talk of Putin possibly being the richest person in the world as a result of his entanglement with the very corruption of Russia you're speaking about

Few appear to be aware that Bill Browder is single-handedly responsible for starting, and spreading, the rumor that Putin's net worth is $200 billion (for those who are unfamiliar with Browder, I highly recommend watching Andrei Nekrasov's documentary titled " The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes "). Browder appears to have first started this rumor early in 2015 , and has repeated it ad nauseam since then, including in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017 . While Browder has always framed the $200 billion figure as his own estimate, that subtle qualifier has had little effect on the media's willingness to accept it as fact.

Interestingly, during the press conference at the Helsinki Summit, Putin claimed Browder sent $400 million of ill-gotten gains to the Clinton campaign. Putin retracted the statement and claimed to have misspoke a week or so later, however by that time the $400 million figure had been cited by numerous media outlets around the world. I think it is at least possible that Putin purposely exaggerated the amount of money in question as a kind of tit-for-tat response to Browder having started the rumor about his net worth being $200 billion.

Blue Pilgrim , July 30, 2018 at 11:39 am

The stories I saw said there was a mistranslation -- but that the figure should have $400 thousand and not $400 million. Maybe Putin misspoke, but the $400,000 number is still significant, albeit far more reasonable.

Putin never was on the Forbes list of billionaires, btw, and his campaign finance statement comes to far less. It never seems to occur to rabid capitalists or crooks that not everyone is like them, placing such importance on vast fortunes, or want to be dishonest, greedy, or power hungry. Putin is only 'well off' and that seems to satisfy him just fine as he gets on with other interests, values, and goals.

integer , July 30, 2018 at 12:03 pm

Yes, $400,000 is the revised/correct figure. My having written that "Putin retracted the statement" was not the best choice of phrase. Also, the figure was corrected the day after it was made, not "a week or so later" as I wrote in my previous comment. From the Russia Insider link:

Browder's criminal group used many tax evasion methods, including offshore companies. They siphoned shares and funds from Russia worth over 1.5 billion dollars. By the way, $400,000 was transferred to the US Democratic Party's accounts from these funds. The Russian president asked us to correct his statement from yesterday. During the briefing, he said it was $400,000,000, not $400,000. Either way, it's still a significant amount of money.

JohnnyGL , July 30, 2018 at 2:54 pm

I hadn't heard about the revision/edit to the $400M, thanks!

Seems crazy to think how much Russo-phobia seems to have been ginned up by one tax-dodging hedgie with an axe to grind.

Procopius , July 31, 2018 at 1:11 am

There's something weird about the anti-Putin hysteria. Somehow, many, many people have come to believe they must demonstrate their membership in the tribe by accepting completely unsupported assertions that go against common sense.

Eureka Springs , July 30, 2018 at 7:58 am

In a sane world we the people would be furious with the Clinton campaign, especially the D party but the R's as well, our media (again), and our intel/police State (again). Holding them all accountable while making sure this tsunami of deception and lies never happens again.

It's amazing even in time of the internetz those of us who really dig can only come up with a few sane voices. It's much worse now in terms of the numbers of sane voices than it was in the run up to Iraq 2.

CenterOfGravity , July 30, 2018 at 12:52 pm

Regardless of broad access to far more information in the digital age, never under estimate the self-preservation instinct of American exceptionalist mythology. There is an inverse relationship between the decline of US global primacy and increasingly desperate quest for adventurism. Like any case of addiction, looking outward for blame/salvation is imperative in order to prevent the mirror of self-reflection/realization from turning back onto ourselves.

integer , July 30, 2018 at 9:28 am

we're not to believe we're not supposed to believe we're supposed to believe

Believe whatever you want, however your comment gives the impression that you came to this article because you felt the need to push back against anything that does not conform to the liberal international order's narrative on Putin and Russia, rather than "with an eagerness to counterbalance the media's portrayal of Putin". WRT to whataboutism, I like Greenwald's definition of the term :

"Whataboutism": the term used to bar inquiry into whether someone adheres to the moral and behavioral standards they seek to impose on everyone else. That's its functional definition.

Rojo , July 30, 2018 at 12:25 pm

Invoking "whataboutism" is a liberal team-Dem tell.

Amfortas the Hippie , July 30, 2018 at 2:20 pm

aye. I've never seen it used by anyone aside from the worst Hill Trolls.
Indeed, when it was first thrown at me, I endeavored to look it up, and found that all references to it were from Hillaryites attempting to diss apostates and heretics.

Jonathan Holland Becnel , July 30, 2018 at 8:22 pm

Eh, probably

John Oliver, whos been completely sucking lately with TDS, did a semi decent segment on Whataboutism.

Eureka Springs , July 30, 2018 at 9:52 am

The degree of consistency and or lack of hypocrisy based on words and actions separates US from Russia to an astonishing level. That is Russia's largest threat to US, our deceivers. The propaganda tables have turned and we are deceiving ourselves to points of collective insanity and warmongering with a great nuclear power while we are at it. Warmongering is who we are and what we do.

Does Russia have a GITMO, torture Chelsea Manning, openly say they want to kill Snowden and Assange? Is Russia building up arsenals on our borders while maintaining hundreds of foreign bases and conducting several wars at any given moment while constantly threatening to foment more wars? Is Russia dropping another trillion on nuclear arsenals? Is Russia forcing us to maintain such an anti democratic system and an even worse, an entirely hackable electronic voting system?

You ready to destroy the world, including your own, rather than look in the mirror?

rkka , July 30, 2018 at 9:52 am

You're talking about extending Russian military power into Europe when the military spending of NATO Europe alone exceeds Russia's by almost 5-1 (more like 12-1 when one includes the US and Canada), have about triple the number of soldiers than Russia has, and when the Russian ground forces are numerically smaller than they have been in at least 200 years?

" to put their self-interests above those of their constituents and employees, why can't we apply this same lens to Putin and his oligarchs?"

The oligarchs got their start under Yeltsin and his FreeMarketDemocraticReformers, whose policies were so catastrophic that deaths were exceeding births by almost a million a year by the late '90s, with no end in sight. Central to Yeltsin's governance was the corrupt privatization, by which means the Seven Bankers came to control the Russian economy and Russian politics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semibankirschina

Central to Putin's popularity are the measures he took to curb oligarchic predation in 2003-2005. Because of this, Russia's debt:GDP ratio went from 1.0 to about 0.2, and Russia's demographic recovery began while Western analysis were still predicting the death of Russia.

So Putin is the anti-oligarch in Russian domestic politics.

Blue Pilgrim , July 30, 2018 at 12:17 pm

"While it's true that power corrupts"

I know of many people who sacrifice their own interests for those of their children (over whom they have virtually absolute power), family member and friends. I know of others who dedicate their lives to justice, peace, the well being of their nation, the world, and other people -- people who find far greater meaning and satisfaction in this than in accumulating power or money. Other people have their own goals, such as producing art, inventing interesting things, reading and learning, and don't care two hoots about power or money as long as their immediate needs are met.

I'm cynical enough about humans without thinking the worst of everyone and every group or culture. Not everyone thinks only of nails and wants to be hammers, or are sociopaths. There are times when people are more or less forced into taking power, or getting more money, even if they don't want it, because they want to change things for the better or need to defend themselves.
There are people who get guns and learn how to use them only because they feel a need for defending themselves and family but who don't like guns and don't want to shoot anyone or anything.

There are many people who do not want to be controlled and bossed around, but neither want to boss around anyone else. The world is full of such people. If they are threatened and attacked, however, expect defensive reactions. Same as for most animals which are not predators, and even predators will generally not attack other animals if they are not hungry or threatened -- but that does not mean they are not competent or can be dangerous.

Capitalism is not only inherently predatory, but is inherently expansive without limits, with unlimited ambition for profits and control. It's intrinsically very competitive and imperialist. Capitalism is also a thing which was exported to Russia, starting soon after the Russian Revolution, which was immediately attacked and invaded by the West, and especially after the fall of the Soviet Union. Soviet Russia had it's own problems, which it met with varying degrees of success, but were quite different from the aggressive capitalism and imperialism of the US and Europe.

Not every culture and person are the same.

BenX , July 30, 2018 at 3:28 pm

The pro-Putin propaganda is pretty interesting to witness, and of course not everything Cohen says is skewed pro-Putin – that's what provides credibility. But "Putin kills everybody" is something NOBODY says (except Cohen, twice in one interview) – Putin is actually pretty selective of those he decides to have killed. But of course, he doesn't kill anyone, personally – therefore he's an innocent lamb, accidentally running Russia as a dictator.

rkka , July 31, 2018 at 9:11 am

The most recent dictator in Russian history was Boris Yeltsin, who turned tanks on his legislature while it was in the legal and constitutional process of impeaching him, and whose policies were so catastrophic for Russians (who were dying off at the rate of 900k/yr) that he had to steal his re-election because he had a 5% approval rating.

But he did as the US gvt told him, so I guess that makes him a Democrat.

Under Putin Russia recovered from being helpless, bankrupt & dying, but Russia has an independent foreign policy, so that makes Putin a dictator.

Plenue , July 30, 2018 at 3:54 pm

"Does any sane person believe that there will ever be a Putin-signed contract provided as evidence? Does any sane person believe that Putin actually needs to "approve" a contract rather than signaling to his oligarch/mafia hierarchy that he's unhappy about a newspaper or journalist's reporting?"

Why do you think Putin even needs, or feels a need, to have journalists killed in the first place? I see no evidence to support this basic assumption.

The idea of Russia poised to attack Europe is interesting, in light of the fact that they've cut their military spending by 20%. And even before that the budgets of France, Germany, and the UK combined well exceeded that of Russia, to say nothing of the rest of NATO or the US.

Putin's record speaks for itself. This again points to the absurdity of claiming he's had reporters killed: he doesn't need to. He has a vast amount of genuine public support because he's salvaged the country and pieced it back together after the pillaging of the Yeltsin years. That he himself is a corrupt oligarch I have no particular doubt of. But if he just wanted to enrich himself, he's had a very funny way of going about it. Pray tell, what are these 'other interpretations'?

"The US foreign policy has been disastrous for millions of people since world war 2. But Cohen's arguments that Russia isn't as bad as the US is just a bunch of whattaboutism."

What countries has the Russian Federation destroyed?

witters , July 31, 2018 at 1:30 am

Here is a fascinating essay ["Are We Reading Russia Right?"] by Nicolai N. Petro who currently holds the Silvia-Chandley Professorship of Peace Studies and Nonviolence at the University of Rhode Island. His books include, Ukraine
in Crisis (Routledge, 2017), Crafting Democracy (Cornell, 2004), The Rebirth of Russian Democracy (Harvard, 1995), and Russian Foreign Policy, co-authored with Alvin Z. Rubinstein (Longman, 1997). A graduate of the University of Virginia, he is the recipient of Fulbright awards to Russia and to Ukraine, as well as fellowships from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington,
D.C., and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. As a Council on Foreign Relations Fellow, he served as special assistant for policy toward the Soviet Union in the U.S. Department of State from 1989 to 1990. In addition to scholarly publications
on Russia and Ukraine, he has written for Asia Times, American Interest, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian (UK), The Nation, New York Times, and Wilson Quarterly. His writings have appeared frequently on the web sites of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and The National Interest.

I warn you – it is terrifying!

http://npetro.net/resources/Petro-FF+Spring+2018.pdf

Carolinian , July 30, 2018 at 8:55 am

Thanks for so much for this. Great stuff. Cohen says the emperor has no clothes so naturally the empire doesn't want him on television. I believe he has been on CNN one or two times and I saw him once on the PBS Newshour where the interviewer asked skeptical questions with a pained and skeptical look. He seems to be the only prominent person willing to stand up and call bs on the Russia hate. There are plenty of pundits and commentators who do that but not many Princeton professors.

Thye Rev Kev , July 30, 2018 at 9:04 am

It has been said in recent years that the greatest failure of American foreign policy was the invasion of Iraq. I think that they are wrong. The greatest failure, in my opinion, is to push both China and Russia together into a semi-official pact against American ambitions. In the same way that the US was able to split China from the USSR back in the seventies, the best option was for America to split Russia from China and help incorporate them into the western system. The waters for that idea have been so fouled by the Russia hysteria, if not dementia, that that is no longer a possibility. I just wish that the US would stop sowing dragon's teeth – it never ends well.

NotTimothyGeithner , July 30, 2018 at 9:45 am

The best option, but the "American exceptionalists" went nuts. Also, the usual play book of stoking fears of the "yellow menace" would have been too on the nose. Americans might not buy it, and there was a whole cottage industry of "the rising China threat" except the potential consumer market place and slave labor factories stopped that from happening.

Bringing Russia into the West effectively means Europe, and I think that creates a similar dynamic to a Russian/Chinese pact. The basic problem with the EU is its led by a relatively weak but very German power which makes the EU relatively weak or controllable as long as the German electorate is relatively sedate. I think they still need the international structures run by the U.S. to maintain their dominance. What Russia and the pre-Erdogan Turkey (which was never going to be admitted to the EU) presented was significant upsets to the existing EU order with major balances to Germany which I always believed would make the EU potentially more dynamic. Every decision wouldn't require a pilgrimage to Berlin. The British were always disinterested. The French had made arrangements with Germany, and Italy is still Italy. Putting Russia or Turkey (pre-Erdogan) would have disrupted this arrangement.

John Wright , July 30, 2018 at 11:11 am

>which is oddly not easy to locate on its site

It appeared to me that Aaron Mate knew he was dealing with a weak hand by the end of the interview.

When Mate stated "it's widely held that Putin is responsible for the killing of journalists and opposition activists who oppose him."

There are many widely held beliefs in the world, and that does not make them true.

For example, It was widely held, and still may be believed by some, that Saddam Hussein was involved in the events of 9/11.

It is widely believed that humans are not responsible, in any part, for climate change.

Mate may have been embarrassed when he saw the final version and as a courtesy to him, the interview was made more difficult to find.

pretzelattack , July 30, 2018 at 11:35 am

iirc he didn't say it was true.

Elizabeth Burton , July 30, 2018 at 7:18 pm

The Crimea voted to be annexed by Russia by a clear majority. The US overran Hawaii with total disregard for the wishes of the native population. Your comparison is invalid.

vato , July 31, 2018 at 3:37 am

"Putin's finger prints are all over the Balkan fiasco".How is that with Putin only becoming president in 2000 and the Nato bombing started way beforehand. It's ridiculous to think that Putin had any major influence at that time as govenor or director of the domestic intelligence service on what was going during the bombing of NATO on Belgrad. Even Gerhard Schroeder, then chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, admitted in an interview in 2014 with a major German Newspaper (Die Zeit) that this invasion of Nato was a fault and against international law!

Can you concrete what you mean by "fingerprints" or is this just another platitudes?

ewmayer , July 31, 2018 at 6:05 pm

"Somebody called it Trump derangement syndrome."

I believe that the full and proper name of the psychiatric disorder in question is Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome [PTDS].

Symptoms include:

o Eager and uncritical ingestion and social-media regurgitation of even the most patently absurd MSM propaganda. For example, the meme that releasing factual information about actual election-meddling (as Wikileaks did about the Dem-establishment's rigging of its own nomination process in 2016) is a grave threat to American Democracy™;

o Recent-onset veneration of the intelligence agencies, whose stock in trade is spying on and lying to the American people, spreading disinformation, election rigging, torture and assassination and its agents, such as liar and perjurer Clapper and torturer Brennan;

o Rehabilitation of horrid unindicted GOP war criminals like G.W. Bush as alleged examples of "norms-respecting Republican patriots";

o Smearing of anyone who dares question the MSM-stoked hysteria as an America-hating Russian stooge.

[Aug 17, 2019] Unleashing country-wide epidemic of Russophenia and anti-Russian hysteria as well as stifling debate regarding the US policy toward a nation armed with thousands of nuclear weapons might be not such a huge folly as some think

Aug 17, 2019 | nationalinterest.org

RAP999 • 2 years ago ,

Look at the bright side. If the Russkies nuke Washington and NYC think how much better off the rest of the country will be.

[Aug 17, 2019] The Anti-Russia Inquisition Intensifies by Ted Galen Carpenter

Images and links to video removed.
The title sounds like it was written yesterday, despite the fact the article is two years ago. That suggest that Russophobia is the official policy of both parties. Why they are trying to remove Trump, who folded after thee month in power, is less clear. May be the crimes they committed are such that anybody in power then Clinton gang is very dangerous for them.
Please looks also at selected comments. They are definitely sounds as written yesterday.
Notable quotes:
"... Congressional Democrats and their media allies have renewed their offensive in the past two weeks. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) even argues that the evidence already amassed seems to be enough to warrant President Trump's impeachment. It was especially notable that no prominent Democrat denounced such an inflammatory accusation. Indeed, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee appear to be escalating their concept of what constitutes a thorough investigation, now insisting that any contact by advisers to the Trump campaign with any Russian official be subject to scrutiny. ..."
"... They and their neoconservative allies also insist on a laser-like focus on the alleged misdeeds of the Trump people and nothing else. ..."
"... Such an outrageous accusation might have made even the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy blush. That it came from a prominent Republican also suggests that the current bout of Russophobia is not purely a partisan phenomenon. The broader implications are extremely worrisome. A campaign appears to be underway to intimidate and silence critics of the current policy toward Russia, and even policy regarding NATO. ..."
"... The track record on previous group think on such decisions as the military interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, and Libya also confirms that it can produce truly tragic results. Creating a similar situation of stifling debate regarding U.S. policy toward a nation armed with thousands of nuclear weapons is the essence of folly. ..."
May 07, 2017 | nationalinterest.org

or a brief period in April, it appeared that the campaign that Democrats and neo-conservative Republicans were waging for a comprehensive investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election had peaked and was beginning to ebb. The Trump administration's decision to launch missile strikes against a Syrian air base despite Russian President Vladimir Putin vehement objections to the assault on his ally, quieted accusations that Trump was Putin's puppet. Indeed, hawks in both parties praised Trump for taking action in Syria, and the president's supporters at Fox News and elsewhere contended that the U.S. attack discredited the notion that he was guilty of appeasing Russia.

But the hiatus in the allegations of collusion was only temporary. Worse, the resurgent anti-Russia hysteria has broader, ominous implications for U.S. foreign policy and the health of political discourse in the United States.

Congressional Democrats and their media allies have renewed their offensive in the past two weeks. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) even argues that the evidence already amassed seems to be enough to warrant President Trump's impeachment. It was especially notable that no prominent Democrat denounced such an inflammatory accusation. Indeed, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee appear to be escalating their concept of what constitutes a thorough investigation, now insisting that any contact by advisers to the Trump campaign with any Russian official be subject to scrutiny.

They and their neoconservative allies also insist on a laser-like focus on the alleged misdeeds of the Trump people and nothing else. The current scandal erupted full force when leaked reports from the U.S. intelligence community that newly installed National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign and discussed sensitive issues, including the ongoing U.S. economic sanctions against Russia, thus apparently undermining the Obama administration's policies. Flynn's action showed poor judgment, and his attempt to conceal the contact from Vice President Mike Pence, was even worse. A recent Washington Post article contends that Flynn went ahead with his meeting even though senior Trump campaign officials cautioned against it and warned him that it was almost certain that U.S. intelligence agencies were electronically monitoring Kislyak and all of his contacts.

Examining Flynn's behavior is appropriate, but even that investigation should focus not only on his questionable Russia contacts but on the leak of the intelligence report outing him. Indeed, an intelligence official's unmasking the identity of an American citizen in that fashion constitutes a felony. However, except for perfunctory statements from a few Democratic members of Congress that such an illegal leak also needed to be investigated, little interest has emerged in actually doing so.

Such an outrageous accusation might have made even the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy blush. That it came from a prominent Republican also suggests that the current bout of Russophobia is not purely a partisan phenomenon. The broader implications are extremely worrisome. A campaign appears to be underway to intimidate and silence critics of the current policy toward Russia, and even policy regarding NATO.

Attempting to enshrine Washington's group think on crucial issues is unhealthy for any democratic system. The track record on previous group think on such decisions as the military interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, and Libya also confirms that it can produce truly tragic results. Creating a similar situation of stifling debate regarding U.S. policy toward a nation armed with thousands of nuclear weapons is the essence of folly.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at the National Interest, is the author of 10 books, the contributing editor of 10 books, and the author of more than 650 articles on international affairs.

nicksorokin • 2 years ago ,

Mr. Carpenter makes the excellent point that political sobriety, rational thought and action, and responsible dialogue is missing from the cadre of drum beating anti-Trump die hearts, who are using the made-up Trump collusion story to destroy the Trump presidency.
Their kamikaze style political tactics will end badly for the democrats, who will be pulverized during the next election for neglecting the people’s business in favor of political scandal, turmoil and extremist partisan behavior.
Keep it up Chuck, you are working overtime to insure greater Republican gains.

RedBaron9495 • 2 years ago ,

Actually, I am an agent of all people who disapprove of Washington’s willingness to use nuclear war in order to establish Washington’s hegemony over the world, but let us understand what it means to be a “Russian agent.”

It means to respect international law, which Washington does not. It means to respect life, which Washington does not. It means to respect the national interests of other countries, which Washington does not. It means to respond to provocations with diplomacy and requests for cooperation, which Washington does not. But Russia does. Clearly, a “Russian agent” is a moral person who wants to preserve life and the national identity and dignity of other peoples.

RussG • 2 years ago ,

Aren't people in the US getting tired of the Russia bashing? Really. And don't the Russia bashers know that the longer this goes on, without evidence, the public is slowly waking up to the truth. Now to blame Russia for the US failings in Afghanistan is beyond ridiculous. Keep it up, kiddies.

greg789 • 2 years ago ,

Neo-cons and Democrats - Traitors all.

dsafd asdfasdf • 2 years ago ,

Russian troll! Carpenter paid by putin! Lock him up! Send him back to Moscow!

deliaruhe • 2 years ago ,

The success of the web of lies that got 65 to 75 percent of Americans to believe that Saddam had WMD and was responsible for 9/11 only encourages these regime-change lunatics. All they have to do now is articulate the equivalent of Bush’s “We cannot wait for the smoking gun, which might come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” — i.e., we don’t need evidence, we just need to generate enough fear — and they’ll have all the public support they could possibly need to commence with their program of regime change at home, followed by regime change in Russia. That’s the diabolical beauty of governing a population through the politics of fear — which has been the practise since the beginning of the first Cold War.

johnnydavis1 • 2 years ago ,

It's interesting that the Democrats and the media didn't seem very interested in Hillary Clinton's foreign ties (and the money she received), or the potential blackmail that could have been tied to any of her "missing" emails that the Russians and others probably have.

toolateformost johnnydavis1 • 2 years ago ,

Its interesting that you are ignoring the traitor in the white house.
Trump will look great in orange

Wyrdless toolateformost • 2 years ago ,

Do you have any evidence?

toolateformost Wyrdless • 2 years ago ,

I can't share it with you because it's classified and I don't (unlike Trumps administration) believe in sharing sensitive information with Russian stooges.

Wyrdless toolateformost • 2 years ago ,

LOL, love the sarcasm

Kizar_Sozay • 2 years ago ,

The media is upset the Russians (allegedly) did what American journalists should have been doing.

St Reformed • 2 years ago ,

Russia [aka Soviet Union] was simply a "red herring" (pun intended) during the Cold War days when the Left always blamed American first. Now post-Soviet autocratic Russia is a lethal menace behind every GOP trash can. The irony is so rich.

VoteOutIncumbents • 2 years ago ,

I am old enough to have a conscious memory of the end days of the McCarthy smears. This seems a lot like that. Wild charges, no evidence. Senator McCarthy always "had" a list of 57, 95, or 212 active communists in the State Department, he just never got around to disclosing names. Evidence? The Democrats don't seem to need it. Just investigate, investigate, investigate. Anything to distract from the true reasons for Clinton's loss. The party of FDR wrote off the white working class. They thought they'd have enough minority and female voters to win. They didn't.

odys • 2 years ago ,

Oh, oh. Mike Rogers, Obama's head of the NSA is testifying that the NSA did NOT have high confidence that the wusskies interfered to help Trump win. I wonder if Boris Badanoff and Natasha threatened him and his family?

odys • 2 years ago • edited ,

Maybe we should call in moose and squirrel.

Look, Democrats just cannot bring themselves to accept the blame for their loss, no surprise, they truly believe they are on the right side of history, Cuba, North Korea, and venezuela not withstanding. But the aging cold warriors, like McNasty, pine for the days when people used to seek their opinion on the USSR.

dannyboy116 • 2 years ago ,

Thank you for an excellent article. Building a sense of hysteria against the one country in the world with as many nuclear weapons as us is truly foolish and dangerous.

Robert • 2 years ago ,

And the best part in this fishing expedition of democRATS and politicized government agencies is that they have found NOTHING, only the daily, weekly and monthly fabrications cooked backstage by MSM and accomplices agents leaning or part of Obanus regime..

The Dead Rabbits • 2 years ago ,

Really good piece. So why does DC go bonkers over Russia but not deeper and more problematic connections of politicians and public figures such as with Turkey, China, or Israel? It's all about the emails and Hillary's lame excuses.

R. Arandas • 2 years ago ,

I find it ironic because during the Cold War, it was generally Republicans who opposed the Soviet Union and its foreign policy the most strongly, with both language and action, while Democrats favored conciliation with American rivals. Nowadays, however, conservatives seem more pro-Russia while liberals seem much more hostile.

Wyrdless • 2 years ago ,

Let's be realistic, given the enormous number of leaks about Trump, if there was anything to this we would know by now.

That's why I say :. Bring on the investigation!

It will just end in the entire media/Dem establishment looking bad.

Also:. Why would Putin want a US president that has a very aggressive pro drilling stance and who wants a larger US military?

I would imagine it's the last thing he wants. Putin would probably *VASTLY* prefer Sanders who is anti-energy, anti-military and honeymooned in Moscow during the cold war as a political statement.

Drinas Philip K • 2 years ago ,

Buhaha You assume that I am a russian/live in Russia because I dare (oh, by the Gods what a sacrilege!) to support russian foreign policy..
This alone is a good example of the delusional and zealot-like nature of russophobes such as you..
Learn my uneducated "friend" that I live in an EU country, born and raised here-and judging by the median US salary there is a great chance I make more $$ than you..But then again only a cretin would judge a country based solely on these metrics..(Well, a cretin and a russophobe in your case..)

Wakko • 2 years ago ,

Americans don't see it, but this anti-russian craze is creating serious pressures in Europe, where voters more and more consider EU governments' blind following of U.S. foreign policy as dangerous to their interests. Contrary to U.S. establishment, we Europeans are not supremacists who believe that only their opinions and ways are the right ones and the whole world needs to bow down to them. Remember what is the basis of democracy? It's pluralism of opinions and civilised discussion. If Washington continues this ideological war for longer time, it may cause serious problems for NATO.

[Aug 17, 2019] Clapper: "the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique

Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another. It may also include prejudice , discrimination , or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity , or the belief that members of different races or ethnicities should be treated differently. [1] [2] [3] Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These views can take the form of social actions , practices or beliefs, or political systems in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities. [2] [1] [4]
Notable quotes:
"... Given the Democratic Party's reliance on the Russia narrative, these types of comments are likely to continue and worsen as the highly polarized investigations continue ..."
May 30, 2017 | observer.com

During an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd on May 28, Clapper said, "If you put that in context with everything else we knew the Russians were doing to interfere with the election," he said. "And just the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So, we were concerned."

It's unclear what Clapper meant or what evidence he has to suggest that Russians are "almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor." His comments are xenophobic towards an entire ethnicity and are far beyond criticism of Putin and the Russian government.

His comments go far into neo-McCarthyist territory, which many critics and skeptics have warned the Democratic Party and intelligence community against. Clapper jumped from explaining the investigation into Russia's role in the election to propagating an unhealthy and unfounded definition of the Russian people. These comments are the type of sentiments that provoke such policies as deporting all Russians from the United States, severing all ties with Russians, banning all multi-national corporations from engaging in business with Russians, dispelling the Russian Embassy, and setting off a chain of events that exponentially increase the likelihood of military conflict between two nuclear superpowers.

In the United States alone, nearly three million people claim direct Russian ancestry and almost one million people speak Russian. However, Russia's interference in the election and the current political climate have fostered an environment in which Clapper could say this on national television without anyone batting an eye. Chuck Todd ignored the comment and proceeded with the interview as though Clapper's response was normal.

The mainstream media have contributed to this Russiophobic rhetoric by perpetuating, elevating and sensationalizing the Russia narrative. Several hucksters and conspiracy theorists have gained massive followings from crying Russia at every opportunity, such as British Conservative Louise Mensch and former Bill Clinton volunteer director Claude Taylo r, who continue duping followers into believing they have exclusive sources or insight into the "smoking gun" on Trump's ties with Russia. By interviewing them, the mainstream media have irresponsibly elevated these people as reliable sources on the subject. The New York Times even published an op-ed by Mensch, who has furthered baseless claims that Russia was behind Anthony Weiner's sexting crimes and has called Bernie Sanders a "Russian agent."

Given the Democratic Party's reliance on the Russia narrative, these types of comments are likely to continue and worsen as the highly polarized investigations continue .

[Aug 17, 2019] The idea or impetus to launch the investigation of Butina came courtesy of Christopher Steele, who was relaying rumor and conjecture to Bruce Ohr

Aug 17, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Shifting gears, there are two very important pieces recently posted at The Conservative Tree House that I encourage you to read:

The first piece focuses on CEO Patrick Byrne and the role he played in trying to entrap and portray Marina Butina as a Russian agent.

What is not emphasized in the piece, and it is something I want to direct you to, is that the idea or impetus to launch the investigation of Butina came courtesy of Christopher Steele, who was relaying rumor and conjecture to Bruce Ohr.

You can find this information in the Bruce Ohr 302s that Judicial Watch also secured.

Marina Butina was unfairly and unjustly portrayed and prosecuted as a Russian intelligence agent. It was a damn lie. I do not ever want to hear another American complaining about an American State Department or CIA employee who is entrapped and unfairly prosecuted in Russia.

We have done the same damn thing that we have accused the Soviets of doing. The same thing. It is shameful

[Aug 17, 2019] Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome (PTDS)

Highly recommended!
Aug 17, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

ewmayer , July 31, 2018 at 6:05 pm

"Somebody called it Trump derangement syndrome."

I believe that the full and proper name of the psychiatric disorder in question is Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome [PTDS].

Symptoms include:

  • Eager and uncritical ingestion and social-media regurgitation of even the most patently absurd MSM propaganda. For example, the meme that releasing factual information about actual election-meddling (as Wikileaks did about the Dem-establishment's rigging of its own nomination process in 2016) is a grave threat to American Democracy™;
  • Recent-onset veneration of the intelligence agencies, whose stock in trade is spying on and lying to the American people, spreading disinformation, election rigging, torture and assassination and its agents, such as liar and perjurer Clapper and torturer Brennan;
  • Rehabilitation of horrid unindicted GOP war criminals like G.W. Bush as alleged examples of "norms-respecting Republican patriots";
  • Smearing of anyone who dares question the MSM-stoked hysteria as an America-hating Russian stooge.

[Aug 17, 2019] Unleashing country-wide epidemic of Russophenia and anti-Russian hysteria as well as stifling debate regarding the US policy toward a nation armed with thousands of nuclear weapons might be not such a huge folly as some think

Aug 17, 2019 | nationalinterest.org

RAP999 • 2 years ago ,

Look at the bright side. If the Russkies nuke Washington and NYC think how much better off the rest of the country will be.

[Aug 17, 2019] The Campaign Press: Members of the 10 Percent, Reporting for the One Percent

Aug 17, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Our Famously Free Press

"The Campaign Press: Members of the 10 Percent, Reporting for the One Percent" [Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone ]. "Anyone who's worked in the business (or read Manufacturing Consent) knows nobody calls editors to red-pencil text.

The pressure comes at the point of hire. If you're the type who thinks Jeff Bezos should be thrown out of an airplane, or that it's a bad look for a DC newspaper to be owned by a major intelligence contractor, you won't rise.

Meanwhile, the Post has become terrific at promoting Jennifer Rubins and Max Boots. Reporters watch as good investigative journalism about serious structural problems dies on the vine, while mountains of column space are devoted to trivialities like Trump tweets and/or simplistic partisan storylines.

Nobody needs to pressure anyone. We all know what takes will and will not earn attaboys in newsrooms. Trump may have accelerated distaste for the press, but he didn't create it. He sniffed out existing frustrations and used them to rally anger toward 'elites' to his side.

The criticism works because national media are elites, ten-percenters working for one-percenters.

The longer people in the business try to deny it, the more it will be fodder for politicians. Sanders wasn't the first, and won't be the last."

• Yep. I'm so glad Rolling Stone has Matt Taibbi on-board. Until advertisers black-list "the One Percent," I suppose.

[Aug 17, 2019] Where are they now? Who knows? Who asks?

Aug 17, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Sophie Siebert , August 14, 2019 at 13:30

I'm experiencing a virulent case of deja vu here, that usually leads to hopelessness. I, like many readers, eagerly devoured the news of the Scripals – every contradiction, reframing, new bit of evidence. It's fair to say I was obsessed. Where are they now? Who knows? Who asks? I expect the same here. Another step on our downward path, to be preempted by yet another.

The best one can say is that with every one of these "incidents" we all become a little less sure of our old assumptions, more skeptical. Leading where?

[Aug 16, 2019] Ministry of truth materialized in XXI century in a neoliberal way by Kit Knightly

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Latest is the secretive Andy Pryce squandering millions of public money on the "Open Information Partnership" (OIP) which is the latest name-change for the Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, just like al-Qaeda kept changing its name. ..."
"... In true Orwellian style, they splashed out on a conference for "defence of media freedom", when they are in the business of propaganda and closing alternative 'narratives' down. And the 'media' they would defend are, in fact, spies sent to foreign countries to foment trouble to further what they bizarrely perceive as 'British interests'. Just like the disgraceful White Helmets, also funded by the FO. ..."
"... "The Guardian is struggling for money" Surely, they would be enjoying some of the seemingly unlimited US defense and some of the mind control programmes budgets. ..."
Aug 16, 2019 | off-guardian.org

OffGuardian already covered the Global Media Freedom Conference, our article Hypocrisy Taints UK's Media Freedom Conference , was meant to be all there was to say. A quick note on the obvious hypocrisy of this event. But, in the writing, I started to see more than that. This event is actually creepy. Let's just look back at one of the four "main themes" of this conference:

Building trust in media and countering disinformation
"Countering disinformation"? Well, that's just another word for censorship. This is proven by their refusal to allow Sputnik or RT accreditation. They claim RT "spreads disinformation" and they "countered" that by barring them from attending. "Building trust"? In the post-Blair world of PR newspeak, "building trust" is just another way of saying "making people believe us" (the word usage is actually interesting, building trust not earning trust). The whole conference is shot through with this language that just feels off. Here is CNN's Christiane Amanpour :
Our job is to be truthful, not neutral we need to take a stand for the truth, and never to create a false moral or factual equivalence."
Being "truthful not neutral" is one of Amanpour's personal sayings , she obviously thinks it's clever. Of course, what it is is NewSpeak for "bias". Refusing to cover evidence of The White Helmets staging rescues, Israel arming ISIS or other inconvenient facts will be defended using this phrase – they will literally claim to only publish "the truth", to get around impartiality and then set about making up whatever "truth" is convenient. Oh, and if you don't know what "creating a false moral quivalence is", here I'll demonstrate: MSM: Putin is bad for shutting down critical media. OffG: But you're supporting RT being banned and Wikileaks being shut down. BBC: No. That's not the same. OffG: It seems the same. BBC: It's not. You're creating a false moral equivalence . Understand now? You "create a false moral equivalence" by pointing out mainstream media's double standards. Other ways you could mistakenly create a "false moral equivalence": Bringing up Gaza when the media talk about racism. Mentioning Saudi Arabia when the media preach about gay rights. Referencing the US coup in Venezuela when the media work themselves into a froth over Russia's "interference in our democracy" Talking about the invasion of Iraq. Ever. OR Pointing out that the BBC is state funded, just like RT. These are all no-longer flagrant examples of the media's double standards, and if you say they are , you're "creating a false moral equivalence" and the media won't have to allow you (or anyone who agrees with you) air time or column inches to disagree. Because they don't have a duty to be neutral or show both sides, they only have a duty to tell "the truth" as soon as the government has told them what that is. Prepare to see both those phrases – or variations there of – littering editorials in the Guardian and the Huffington Post in the coming months. Along with people bemoaning how "fake news outlets abuse the notion of impartiality" by "being even handed between liars the truth tellers". (I've been doing this site so long now, I have a Guardian-English dictionary in my head).

Equally dodgy-sounding buzz-phrases litter topics on the agenda. "Eastern Europe and Central Asia: building an integrated support system for journalists facing hostile environments" , this means pumping money into NGOs to fund media that will criticize our "enemies" in areas of strategic importance. It means flooding money into the anti-government press in Hungary, or Iran or (of course), Russia. That is ALL it means. I said in my earlier article I don't know what "media sustainability" even means, but I feel I can take a guess. It means "save the government mouthpieces". The Guardian is struggling for money, all print media are, TV news is getting lower viewing figures all the time. "Building media sustainability" is code for "pumping public money into traditional media that props up the government" or maybe "getting people to like our propaganda". But the worst offender on the list is, without a doubt "Navigating Disinformation"

https://www.youtube.com/embed/1vbSj1WQqUw?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

"Navigating Disinformation" was a 1 hour panel from the second day of the conference. You can watch it embedded above if you really feel the need. I already did, so you don't have to. The panel was chaired by Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian Foreign Minister. The members included the Latvian Foreign Minister, a representative of the US NGO Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Information

Have you guessed what "disinformation" they're going to be talking about? I'll give you a clue: It begins with R. Freeland, chairing the panel, kicks it off by claiming that "disinformation isn't for any particular aim" . This is a very common thing for establishment voices to repeat these days, which makes it all the more galling she seems to be pretending its is her original thought. The reason they have to claim that "disinformation" doesn't have a "specific aim" is very simple: They don't know what they're going to call "disinformation" yet. They can't afford to take a firm position, they need to keep their options open. They need to give themselves the ability to describe any single piece of information or political opinion as "disinformation." Left or right. Foreign or domestic. "Disinformation" is a weaponised term that is only as potent as it is vague. So, we're one minute in, and all "navigating disinformation" has done is hand the State an excuse to ignore, or even criminalise, practically anything it wants to. Good start. Interestingly, no one has actually said the word "Russia" at this point. They have talked about "malign actors" and "threats to democracy", but not specifically Russia. It is SO ingrained in these people that "propaganda"= " Russian propaganda" that they don't need to say it.

The idea that NATO as an entity, or the individual members thereof, could also use "disinformation" has not just been dismissed it was literally never even contemplated. Next Freeland turns to Edgars Rinkēvičs, her Latvian colleague, and jokes about always meeting at NATO functions. The Latvians know "more than most" about disinformation, she says. Rinkēvičs says disinformation is nothing new, but that the methods of spreading it are changing then immediately calls for regulation of social media. Nobody disagrees. Then he talks about the "illegal annexation of Crimea", and claims the West should outlaw "paid propaganda" like RT and Sputnik. Nobody disagrees. Then he says that Latvia "protected" their elections from "interference" by "close cooperation between government agencies and social media companies". Everyone nods along. If you don't find this terrifying, you're not paying attention. They don't say it, they probably don't even realise they mean it, but when they talk about "close cooperation with social media networks", they mean government censorship of social media. When they say "protecting" their elections they're talking about rigging them. It only gets worse. The next step in the Latvian master plan is to bolster "traditional media".

The problems with traditional media, he says, are that journalists aren't paid enough, and don't keep up to date with all the "new tricks". His solution is to "promote financing" for traditional media, and to open more schools like the "Baltic Centre of Media Excellence", which is apparently a totally real thing .

It's a training centre which teaches young journalists about "media literacy" and "critical thinking". You can read their depressingly predictable list of "donors" here . I truly wish I was joking. Next up is Courtney Radsch from CPJ – a US-backed NGO, who notionally "protect journalists", but more accurately spread pro-US propaganda. (Their token effort to "defend" RT and Sputnik when they were barred from the conference was contemptible).

She talks for a long time without saying much at all. Her revolutionary idea is that disinformation could be countered if everyone told the truth. Inspiring. Beata Balogova, Journalist and Editor from Slovakia, gets the ship back on course – immediately suggesting politicians should not endorse "propaganda" platforms. She shares an anecdote about "a prominent Slovakian politician" who gave exclusive interviews to a site that is "dubiously financed, we assume from Russia". They assume from Russia. Everyone nods.

It's like they don't even hear themselves.

Then she moves on to Hungary. Apparently, Orban has "created a propaganda machine" and produced "antisemitic George Soros posters". No evidence is produced to back-up either of these claims. She thinks advertisers should be pressured into not giving money to "fake news sites". She calls for "international pressure", but never explains exactly what that means. The stand-out maniac on this panel is Emine Dzhaparova, the Ukrainian First Deputy Minister of Information Policy. (She works for the Ministry of Information – nicknamed the Ministry of Truth, which was formed in 2014 to "counter lies about Ukraine". Even The Guardian thought that sounded dodgy.)

She talks very fast and, without any sense of irony, spills out a story that shoots straight through "disinformation" and becomes "incoherent rambling". She claims that Russian citizens are so brainwashed you'll never be able to talk to them, and that Russian "cognitive influence" is "toxic like radiation." Is this paranoid, quasi-xenophobic nonsense countered? No. Her fellow panelists nod and chuckle. On top of that, she just lies. She lies over and over and over again. She claims Russia is locking up Crimean Tartars "just for being muslims", nobody questions her. She says the war in Ukraine has killed 13,000 people, but doesn't mention that her side is responsible for over 80% of civilian deaths.

She says only 30% of Crimeans voted in the referendum, and that they were "forced". A fact not supported by any polls done by either side in the last four years, and any referenda held on the peninsula any time in the last last 30 year. It's simply a lie. Nobody asks her about the journalists killed in Ukraine since their glorious Maidan Revolution . Nobody questions the fact that she works for something called the "Ministry of Information". Nobody does anything but nod and smile as the "countering disinformation" panel becomes just a platform for spreading total lies.

When everyone on the panel has had their ten minutes on the soapbox, Freeland asks for recommendations for countering this "threat" – here's the list:

  1. Work to distinguish "free speech" from "propaganda", when you find propaganda there must be a "strong reaction".
  2. Pressure advertisers to abandon platforms who spread misinformation.
  3. Regulate social media.
  4. Educate journalists at special schools.
  5. Start up a "Ministry of Information" and have state run media that isn't controlled, like in Ukraine.

This is the Global Conference on Media Freedom and all these six people want to talk about is how to control what can be said, and who can say it. They single only four countries out for criticism: Hungary, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Russia .and Russia takes up easily 90% of that. They mention only two media outlets by name: RT and Sputnik. This wasn't a panel on disinformation, it was a public attack forum – a month's worth of 2 minutes of hate. These aren't just shills on this stage, they are solid gold idiots, brainwashed to the point of total delusion.

They are the dangerous glassy eyes of a Deep State that never questions itself, never examines itself, and will do anything it wants, to anyone it wants whilst happily patting itself on the back for its superior morality. They don't know, they don't care. They're true believers. Terrifyingly dead inside. Talking about state censorship and re-education camps under a big sign that says "Freedom". And that's just one talk. Just one panel in a 2 day itinerary filled to the brim with similarly soul-dead servants of authority. Truly, perfectly Orwellian.

Jonathan Jarvis

https://southfront.org/countering-russian-disinformation-or-new-wave-of-freedom-of-speech-suppression/

Read and be appalled at what America is up to .keep for further reference. We are in danger.

Tim Jenkins
It would serve Ms. Amanpour well, to relax, rewind & review her own interview with Sergei Lavrov:-

Then she might see why Larry King could stomach the appalling corporate dictatorship, even to the core of False & Fake recording of 'our' "History of the National Security State" , No More

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H7aKGOpSwE

Amanpour was forced to laugh uncontrollably, when confronted with Lavrov's humorous interpretations of various legal aspects of decency & his Judgement of others' politicians and 'Pussy Riots' >>> if you haven't seen it, it is to be recommended, the whole interview, if nothing else but to study the body language and micro-facial expressions, coz' a belly up laugh is not something anybody can easily control or even feign that first spark of cognition in her mind, as she digests Lavrov's response :- hilarious

Einstein
A GE won't solve matters since we have a Government of Occupation behind a parliament of puppets.

Latest is the secretive Andy Pryce squandering millions of public money on the "Open Information Partnership" (OIP) which is the latest name-change for the Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, just like al-Qaeda kept changing its name.

In true Orwellian style, they splashed out on a conference for "defence of media freedom", when they are in the business of propaganda and closing alternative 'narratives' down. And the 'media' they would defend are, in fact, spies sent to foreign countries to foment trouble to further what they bizarrely perceive as 'British interests'. Just like the disgraceful White Helmets, also funded by the FO.

Pryce's ventriloquist's dummy in parliament, the pompous Alan Duncan, announced another £10 million of public money for this odious brainwashing programme.

Tim Jenkins
That panel should be nailed & plastered over, permanently:-

and as wall paper, 'Abstracts of New Law' should be pasted onto a collage of historic extracts from the Guardian, in offices that issue journalistic licenses, comprised of 'Untouchables' :-

A professional habitat, to damp any further 'Freeland' amplification & resonance,

of negative energy from professional incompetence.

Francis Lee
Apropos of the redoubtable Ms Freeland, Canada's Foreign Secretary.

The records now being opened by the Polish government in Warsaw reveal that Freeland's maternal grandfather Michael (Mikhailo) Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator from the beginning to the end of the war. He was given a powerful post, money, home and car by the German Army in Cracow, then the capital of the German administration of the Galician region. His principal job was editor in chief and publisher of a newspaper the Nazis created. His printing plant and other assets had been stolen from a Jewish newspaper publisher, who was then sent to die in the Belzec concentration camp. During the German Army's winning phase of the war, Chomiak celebrated in print the Wehrmacht's "success" at killing thousands of US Army troops. As the German Army was forced into retreat by the Soviet counter-offensive, Chomiak was taken by the Germans to Vienna, where he continued to publish his Nazi propaganda, at the same time informing for the Germans on other Ukrainians. They included fellow Galician Stepan Bandera, whose racism against Russians Freeland has celebrated in print, and whom the current regime in Kiev has turned into a national hero.

Those Ukrainian 'Refugees' admitted to Canada in 1945 were almost certainly members of the 14th Waffen SS Division Galizia 1. These Ukie collaboraters – not to be confused with the other Ukie Nazi outfit – Stepan Bandera's Ukrainian Insurgent Army -were held responsible for the massacre of many Poles in the Lviv area the most infamous being carried out in the Polish village of Huta Pienacka. In the massacre, the village was destroyed and between 500] and 1,000 of the inhabitants were killed. According to Polish accounts, civilians were locked in barns that were set on fire while those attempting to flee were killed. That's about par for the course.
Canada's response was as follows:

The Canadian Deschênes Commission was set up to investigate alleged war crimes committed by the collaborators

Memorial to SS-Galizien division in Chervone, Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine

The Canadian "Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes" of October 1986, by the Honourable Justice Jules Deschênesconcluded that in relation to membership in the Galicia Division:

''The Galicia Division (14. Waffen grenadier division der SS [gal.1]) should not be indicted as a group. The members of Galicia Division were individually screened for security purposes before admission to Canada. Charges of war crimes of Galicia Division have never been substantiated, either in 1950 when they were first preferred, or in 1984 when they were renewed, or before this Commission. Further, in the absence of evidence of participation or knowledge of specific war crimes, mere membership in the Galicia Division is insufficient to justify prosecution.''

However, the Commission's conclusion failed to acknowledge or heed the International Military Tribunal's verdict at the Nuremberg Trials, in which the entire Waffen-SSorganisation was declared a "criminal organization" guilty of war crimes. Also, the Deschênes Commission in its conclusion only referenced the division as 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr.1), thus in legal terms, only acknowledging the formation's activity after its name change in August 1944, while the massacre of Poles in Huta Pieniacka, Pidkamin and Palikrowy occurred when the division was called SS Freiwilligen Division "Galizien". Nevertheless, a subsequent review by Canada's Minister of Justice again confirmed that members of the Division were not implicated in war crimes.

Yes, the west looks after its Nazis and even makes them and their descendants political figureheads.

mark
Most of these people are so smugly and complacently convinced of their own moral superiority that they just can't see the hypocrisy and doublethink involved in the event.
Mikalina
Eva Bartlett gives a wider perspective:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/londons-media-freedom-conference-smacks-irony-critics-barred-no-mention-jailed-assange/5683808
Harry Stotle
Freedom-lover, Cunt, will be furious when he hears about this!

Apparently Steve Bell is doubleplusbad for alluding to the fact Netanyahu has got his hand shoved deep into Tom Watson's arse – the Guardian pulled Bell's most recent ouvre which suggests the media's antisemitism trope might not be quite as politically untainted as the likes of Freedland, Cohen and Viner would have you believe.
https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/guardian-cartoonist-steve-bell-specious-charge-of-antisemitism-in-email-to-all-paper-1.486570

Meanwhile Owen Jones has taken to Twitter to rubbish allegations that a reign of terror exists at Guardian Towers – the socialist firebrand is quoted as saying 'journalists are free to say whatever they like, so long as it doesn't stray too far from Guardian-groupthink'.

Tutisicecream
Good analysis Kit, of the cognitive dissonant ping pong being played out by Nazi sympathisers such as Hunt and Freeland.

The echo chamber of deceit is amplified again by the selective use of information and the ignoring of relevant facts, such as the miss reporting yesterday by Reuters of the Italian Neo-Nazi haul of weapons by the police, having not Russian but Ukrainian links.

Not a word in the WMSM about this devious miss-reporting as the creation of fake news in action. But what would you expect?

Living as I do in Russia I can assure anyone reading this that the media freedom here is on a par with the West and somewhat better as there is no paranoia about a fictitious enemy – Russians understand that the West is going through an existential crisis (Brexit in the UK, Trump and the Clinton war of sameness in the US and Macron and Merkel in the EU). A crisis of Liberalism as the failed life-support of capitalism. But hey, why worry about the politics when there is bigger fish to fry. Such as who will pay me to dance?

The answer is clear from what Kit has writ. The government will pay the piper. How sweet.

I'd like to thank Kit for sitting through such a turgid masquerade and as I'm rather long in the tooth I do remember the old BBC schools of journalism in Yelsin's Russia. What I remember is that old devious Auntie Beeb was busy training would be hopefuls in the art of discretion regarding how the news is formed, or formulated.

In other words your audience. And it ain't the public

Steve Hayes
The British government's "Online Harms" White Paper has a whole section devoted to "disinformation" (ie, any facts, opinions, analyses, evaluations, critiques that are critical of the elite's actual disinformation). If these proposals become law, the government will have effective control over the Internet and we will be allowed access to their disinformation, shop and watch cute cat videos.
Question This
The liberal news media & hypocrisy, who would have ever thought you'd see those words in the same sentence. But what do you expect from professional liars, politicians & 'their' free press?

Can this shit show get any worse? Yes, The other day I wrote to my MP regards the SNP legislating against the truth, effectively making it compulsory to lie! Mr Blackford as much as called me a transphobic & seemed to go to great length publishing his neo-liberal ideological views in some scottish rag, on how right is wrong & fact is turned into fiction & asked only those that agreed with him contact him.

Tim Jenkins
"The science or logical consistency of true premise, cannot take place or bear fruit, when all communication and information is 'marketised and weaponised' to a mindset of possession and control." B.Steere
Mikalina
I saw, somewhere (but can't find it now) a law or a prospective law which goes under the guise of harassment of MPs to include action against constituents who 'pester' them.

I've found a link for the Jo Cox gang discussing it, though.
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/new-research-on-the-intimidation-and-harassment-of-mps-featured-in-inaugural-conference

Question This
I only emailed him once! That's hardly harassment. Anyway I sent it with proton-mail via vpn & used a false postcode using only my first name so unlikely my civil & sincere correspondence will see me locked up for insisting my inalienable rights of freedom of speech & beliefs are protected. But there again the state we live in, i may well be incarcerated for life, for such an outrageous expectation.
Where to?
"The Guardian is struggling for money" Surely, they would be enjoying some of the seemingly unlimited US defense and some of the mind control programmes budgets.
Harry Stotle
Its the brazen nature of the conference that is especially galling, but what do you expect when crooks and liars no longer feel they even have to pretend?

Nothing will change so long as politicians (or their shady backers) are never held to account for public assets diverted toward a rapacious off-shore economic system, or the fact millions of lives have been shattered by the 'war on terror' and its evil twin, 'humanatarian regime change' (while disingenuous Labour MPs wail about the 'horrors' of antisemitism rather than the fact their former leader is a key architect of the killings).

Kit remains a go-to voice when deconstructing claims made by political figures who clearly regard the MSM as a propaganda vehicle for promoting western imperialism – the self-satisfied smugness of cunts like Jeremy Cunt stand in stark contrast to a real journalist being tortured by the British authorities just a few short miles away.

It's a sligtly depressing thought but somebody has the unenviable task of monitoring just how far our politicians have drifted from the everyday concerns of the 'just about managing' and as I say Mr Knightly does a fine job in informing readers what the real of agenda of these media love-ins are actually about – it goes without saying a very lengthy barge pole is required when the Saudis are invited but not Russia.

Where to?
This Media Freedom Conference is surely a creepy theatre of the absurd.

It is a test of what they can get away with.

Mikalina
Yep. Any soviet TV watcher would recognise this immediately. Message? THIS is the reality – and you are powerless.
mark
When are they going to give us the Ministry of Truth we so desperately need?

[Aug 16, 2019] Lapdogs for the Government and intelligence agencies by Greg Maybury

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... We know our disinformation program is complete when almost everything the American public believes is false.' ..."
"... Using groundbreaking camera and lighting techniques, Riefenstahl produced a documentary that mesmerized Germans; as Pilger noted, her Triumph of the Will 'cast Adolf Hitler's spell'. She told the veteran Aussie journalist the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on the "submissive void" of the public. ..."
"... All in all, Riefenstahl produced arguably for the rest of the world the most compelling historical footage of mass hysteria, blind obedience, nationalistic fervour, and existential menace, all key ingredients in anyone's totalitarian nightmare. That it also impressed a lot of very powerful, high profile people in the West on both sides of the pond is also axiomatic: These included bankers, financiers, industrialists, and sundry business elites without whose support Hitler might've at best ended up a footnote in the historical record after the ill-fated beer-hall putsch. (See here , and here .) ..."
"... The purpose of this propaganda barrage, as Sharon Bader has noted, has been to convince as many people as possible that it is in their interests to relinquish their own power as workers, consumers, and citizens, and 'forego their democratic right to restrain and regulate business activity. As a result the political agenda is now confined to policies aimed at furthering business interests.' ..."
Aug 16, 2019 | off-guardian.org

Lapdogs for the Government

Here was, of course, another surreal spectacle, this time courtesy of one of the Deep State's most dangerous, reviled, and divisive figures, a notable protagonist in the Russia-Gate conspiracy, and America's most senior diplomat no less.

Not only is it difficult to accept that the former CIA Director actually believes what he is saying, well might we ask, "Who can believe Mike Pompeo?"

And here's also someone whose manifest cynicism, hypocrisy, and chutzpah would embarrass the much-derided scribes and Pharisees of Biblical days.

We have Pompeo on record recently in a rare moment of honesty admitting – whilst laughing his ample ass off, as if recalling some "Boy's Own Adventure" from his misspent youth with a bunch of his mates down at the local pub – that under his watch as CIA Director:

We lied, cheated, we stole we had entire training courses.'

It may have been one of the few times in his wretched existence that Pompeo didn't speak with a forked tongue.

At all events, his candour aside, we can assume safely that this reactionary, monomaniacal, Christian Zionist 'end-timer' passed all the Company's "training courses" with flying colours.

According to Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times, all this did not stop Pompeo however from name-checking Wikileaks when it served his own interests. Back in 2016 at the height of the election campaign, he had ' no compunction about pointing people toward emails stolen* by Russian hackers from the Democratic National Committee and then posted by WikiLeaks."

[NOTE: Rosenberg's omission of the word "allegedly" -- as in "emails allegedly stolen" -- is a dead giveaway of bias on his part (a journalistic Freudian slip perhaps?), with his employer being one of those MSM marques leading the charge with the "Russian Collusion" 'story'. For a more insightful view of the source of these emails and the skullduggery and thuggery that attended Russia-Gate, readers are encouraged to check this out.]

And this is of course The Company we're talking about, whose past and present relationship with the media might be summed up in two words: Operation Mockingbird (OpMock). Anyone vaguely familiar with the well-documented Grand Deception that was OpMock, arguably the CIA's most enduring, insidious, and successful psy-ops gambit, will know what we're talking about. (See here , here , here , and here .) At its most basic, this operation was all about propaganda and censorship, usually operating in tandem to ensure all the bases are covered.

After opining that the MSM is 'totally infiltrated' by the CIA and various other agencies, for his part former NSA whistleblower William Binney recently added , ' When it comes to national security, the media only talk about what the administration wants you to hear, and basically suppress any other statements about what's going on that the administration does not want get public. The media is basically the lapdogs for the government.'

Even the redoubtable William Casey , Ronald Reagan's CIA Director back in the day was reported to have said something along the following lines:

We know our disinformation program is complete when almost everything the American public believes is false.'

In order to provide a broader and deeper perspective, we should now consider the views of a few others on the subjects at hand, along with some history. In a 2013 piece musing on the modern significance of the practice, my compatriot John Pilger ecalled a time when he met Leni Riefenstahl back in 70s and asked her about her films that 'glorified the Nazis'.

Using groundbreaking camera and lighting techniques, Riefenstahl produced a documentary that mesmerized Germans; as Pilger noted, her Triumph of the Will 'cast Adolf Hitler's spell'. She told the veteran Aussie journalist the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on the "submissive void" of the public.

All in all, Riefenstahl produced arguably for the rest of the world the most compelling historical footage of mass hysteria, blind obedience, nationalistic fervour, and existential menace, all key ingredients in anyone's totalitarian nightmare. That it also impressed a lot of very powerful, high profile people in the West on both sides of the pond is also axiomatic: These included bankers, financiers, industrialists, and sundry business elites without whose support Hitler might've at best ended up a footnote in the historical record after the ill-fated beer-hall putsch. (See here , and here .)

" Triumph " apparently still resonates today. To the surprise of few one imagines, such was the impact of the film -- as casually revealed in the excellent 2018 Alexis Bloom documentary Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes -- it elicited no small amount of admiration from arguably the single most influential propagandist of recent times.

[Readers might wish to check out Russell Crowe's recent portrayal of Ailes in Stan's mini-series The Loudest Voice , in my view one the best performances of the man's career.]

In a recent piece unambiguously titled "Propaganda Is The Root Of All Our Problems", my other compatriot Caitlin Johnstone also had a few things to say about the subject, echoing Orwell when she observed it was all about "controlling the narrative".

Though I'd suggest the greater "root" problem is our easy propensity to ignore this reality, pretend it doesn't or won't affect us, or reject it as conspiratorial nonsense, in this, of course, she's correct. As she cogently observes,

I write about this stuff for a living, and even I don't have the time or energy to write about every single narrative control tool that the US-centralised empire has been implementing into its arsenal. There are too damn many of them emerging too damn fast, because they're just that damn crucial for maintaining existing power structures.'

The Discreet Use of Censorship and Uniformed Men

It is hardly surprising that those who hold power should seek to control the words and language people use' said Canadian author John Ralston Saul in his 1993 book Voltaire's Bastards–the Dictatorship of Reason in the West .

Fittingly, in a discussion encompassing amongst other things history, language, power, and dissent, he opined, ' Determining how individuals communicate is' an objective which represents for the power elites 'the best chance' [they] have to control what people think. This translates as: The more control 'we' have over what the proles think, the more 'we' can reduce the inherent risk for elites in democracy.

' Clumsy men', Saul went on to say, 'try to do this through power and fear. Heavy-handed men running heavy-handed systems attempt the same thing through police-enforced censorship. The more sophisticated the elites, the more they concentrate on creating intellectual systems which control expression through the communications structures. These systems require only the discreet use of censorship and uniformed men.'

In other words, along with assuming it is their right to take it in the first place, ' those who take power will always try to change the established language ', presumably to better facilitate their hold on it and/or legitimise their claim to it.

For Oliver Boyd-Barrett, democratic theory presupposes a public communications infrastructure that facilitates the free and open exchange of ideas.' Yet for the author of the recently published RussiaGate and Propaganda: Disinformation in the Age of Social Media , 'No such infrastructure exists.'

The mainstream media he says, is 'owned and controlled by a small number of large, multi-media and multi-industrial conglomerates' that lie at the very heart of US oligopoly capitalism and much of whose advertising revenue and content is furnished from other conglomerates:

The inability of mainstream media to sustain an information environment that can encompass histories, perspectives and vocabularies that are free of the shackles of US plutocratic self-regard is also well documented.'

Of course the word "inability" suggests the MSM view themselves as having some responsibility for maintaining such an egalitarian news and information environment. They don't of course, and in truth, probably never really have! A better word would be "unwilling", or even "refusal". The corporate media all but epitomise the " plutocratic self-regard" that is characteristic of "oligopoly capitalism".

Indeed, the MSM collectively functions as advertising, public relations/lobbying entities for Big Corp, in addition to acting as its Praetorian bodyguard , protecting their secrets, crimes, and lies from exposure. Like all other companies they are beholden to their shareholders (profits before truth and people), most of whom it can safely be assumed are no strangers to "self-regard", and could care less about " histories, perspectives and vocabularies" that run counter to their own interests.

It was Aussie social scientist Alex Carey who pioneered the study of nationalism , corporatism , and moreso for our purposes herein, the management (read: manipulation) of public opinion, though all three have important links (a story for another time). For Carey, the following conclusion was inescapable: 'It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.' This former farmer from Western Australia became one of the world's acknowledged experts on propaganda and the manipulation of the truth.

Prior to embarking on his academic career, Carey was a successful sheep grazier . By all accounts, he was a first-class judge of the animal from which he made his early living, leaving one to ponder if this expertise gave him a unique insight into his main area of research!

In any event, Carey in time sold the farm and travelled to the U.K. to study psychology, apparently a long-time ambition. From the late fifties until his death in 1988, he was a senior lecturer in psychology and industrial relations at the Sydney-based University of New South Wales, with his research being lauded by such luminaries as Noam Chomsky and John Pilger, both of whom have had a thing or three to say over the years about The Big Shill. In fact such was his admiration, Pilger described him as "a second Orwell", which in anyone's lingo is a big call.

Carey unfortunately died in 1988, interestingly the year that his more famous contemporaries Edward Herman and Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media was published, the authors notably dedicating their book to him.

Though much of his work remained unpublished at the time of his death, a book of Carey's essays – Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty -- was published posthumously in 1997. It remains a seminal work.

In fact, for anyone with an interest in how public opinion is moulded and our perceptions are managed and manipulated, in whose interests they are done so and to what end, it is as essential reading as any of the work of other more famous names. This tome came complete with a foreword by Chomsky, so enamoured was the latter of Carey's work.

For Carey, the three "most significant developments" in the political economy of the twentieth century were: the growth of democracy the growth of corporate power; and the growth of propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

Carey's main focus was on the following: advertising and publicity devoted to the creation of artificial wants; the public relations and propaganda industry whose principal goal is the diversion to meaningless pursuits and control of the public mind; and the degree to which academia and the professions are under assault from private power determined to narrow the spectrum of thinkable (sic) thought.

For Carey, it is an axiom of conventional wisdom that the use of propaganda as a means of social and ideological control is 'distinctive' of totalitarian regimes. Yet as he stresses: the most minimal exercise of common sense would suggest a different view: that propaganda is likely to play at least as important a part in democratic societies (where the existing distribution of power and privilege is vulnerable to quite limited changes in popular opinion) as in authoritarian societies (where it is not).' In this context, 'conventional wisdom" becomes conventional ignorance; as for "common sense", maybe not so much.

The purpose of this propaganda barrage, as Sharon Bader has noted, has been to convince as many people as possible that it is in their interests to relinquish their own power as workers, consumers, and citizens, and 'forego their democratic right to restrain and regulate business activity. As a result the political agenda is now confined to policies aimed at furthering business interests.'

An extreme example of this view playing itself right under our noses and over decades was the cruel fiction of the " trickle down effect " (TDE) -- aka the 'rising tide that would lift all yachts' -- of Reaganomics . One of several mantras that defined Reagan's overarching political shtick, the TDE was by any measure, decidedly more a torrent than a trickle, and said "torrent" was going up not down. This reality as we now know was not in Reagan's glossy economic brochure to be sure, and it may have been because the Gipper confused his prepositions and verbs.

Yet as the GFC of 2008 amply demonstrated, it culminated in a free-for all, dog eat dog, anything goes, everyman for himself form of cannibal (or anarcho) capitalism -- an updated, much improved version of the no-holds-barred mercenary mercantilism much reminiscent of the Gilded Age and the Robber Barons who 'infested' it, only one that doesn't just eat its young, it eats itself!

Making the World Safe for Plutocracy

In the increasingly dysfunctional, one-sided political economy we inhabit then, whether it's widgets or wars or anything in between, few people realise the degree to which our opinions, perceptions, emotions, and views are shaped and manipulated by propaganda (and its similarly 'evil twin' censorship ,) its most adept practitioners, and those elite, institutional, political, and corporate entities that seek out their expertise.

It is now just over a hundred years since the practice of propaganda took a giant leap forward, then in the service of persuading palpably reluctant Americans that the war raging in Europe at the time was their war as well.

This was at a time when Americans had just voted their then-president Woodrow Wilson back into office for a second term, a victory largely achieved on the back of the promise he'd "keep us out of the War." Americans were very much in what was one of their most isolationist phases , and so Wilson's promise resonated with them.

But over time they were convinced of the need to become involved by a distinctly different appeal to their political sensibilities. This "appeal" also dampened the isolationist mood, one which it has to be said was not embraced by most of the political, banking, and business elites of the time, most of whom stood to lose big-time if the Germans won, and/or who were already profiting or benefitting from the business of war.

For a president who "kept us out of the war", this wasn't going to be an easy 'pitch'. In order to sell the war the president established the Committee on Public Information (aka the Creel Committee) for the purposes of publicising the rationale for the war and from there, garnering support for it from the general public.

Enter Edward Bernays , the nephew of Sigmund Freud, who's generally considered to be the father of modern public relations. In his film Rule from the Shadows: The Psychology of Power , Aaron Hawkins says Bernays was influenced by people such as Gustave le Bon , Walter Lippman , and Wilfred Trotter , as much, if not moreso, than his famous uncle.

Either way, Bernays 'combined their perspectives and synthesised them into an applied science', which he then 'branded' "public relations".

For its part the Creel committee struggled with its brief from the off; but Bernays worked with them to persuade Americans their involvement in the war was justified -- indeed necessary -- and to that end he devised the brilliantly inane slogan, "making the world safe for democracy" .

Thus was born arguably the first great propaganda catch-phrases of the modern era, and certainly one of the most portentous. The following sums up Bernays's unabashed mindset:

The conscious, intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.'

The rest is history (sort of), with Americans becoming more willing to not just support the war effort but encouraged to view the Germans and their allies as evil brutes threatening democracy and freedom and the 'American way of life', however that might've been viewed then. From a geopolitical and historical perspective, it was an asinine premise of course, but nonetheless an extraordinary example of how a few well chosen words tapped into the collective psyche of a country that was decidedly opposed to any U.S involvement in the war and turned that mindset completely on its head.

' [S]aving the world for democracy' (or some 'cover version' thereof) has since become America's positioning statement, 'patriotic' rallying cry, and the "Get-out-of-Jail Free" card for its war and its white collar criminal clique.

At all events it was by any measure, a stroke of genius on Bernays's part; by appealing to people's basic fears and desires, he could engineer consent on a mass scale. It goes without saying it changed the course of history in more ways than one. That the U.S. is to this day still using a not dissimilar meme to justify its "foreign entanglements" is testament to both its utility and durability.

The reality as we now know was markedly different of course. They have almost always been about power, empire, control, hegemony, resources, wealth, opportunity, profit, dispossession, keeping existing capitalist structures intact and well-defended, and crushing dissent and opposition.

The Bewildered Herd

It is instructive to note that the template for 'manufacturing consent' for war had already been forged by the British. And the Europeans did not 'sleepwalk' like some " bewildered herd ' into this conflagration.

For twenty years prior to the outbreak of the war in 1914, the then stewards of the British Empire had been diligently preparing the ground for what they viewed as a preordained clash with their rivals for empire the Germans.

To begin with, contrary to the opinion of the general populace over one hundred years later, it was not the much touted German aggression and militarism, nor their undoubted imperial ambitions, which precipitated its outbreak. The stewards of the British Empire were not about to let the Teutonic upstarts chow down on their imperial lunch as it were, and set about unilaterally and preemptively crushing Germany and with it any ambitions it had for creating its own imperial domain in competition with the Empire upon which Ol' Sol never set.

The "Great War" is worth noting here for other reasons. As documented so by Jim Macgregor and Gerry Docherty in their two books covering the period from 1890-1920, we learn much about propaganda, which attest to its extraordinary power, in particular its power to distort reality en masse in enduring and subversive ways.

In reality, the only thing "great" about World War One was the degree to which the masses fighting for Britain were conned via propaganda and censorship into believing this war was necessary, and the way the official narrative of the war was sustained for posterity via the very same means. "Great" maybe, but not in a good way!

In these seminal tomes -- World War One Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War and its follow-up Prolonging the Agony: How the Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WWI by Three-And-A-Half Years -- Macgregor and Docherty provide a masterclass for us all of the power of propaganda in the service of firstly inciting, then deliberately sustaining a major war.

The horrendous carnage and destruction that resulted from it was of course unprecedented, the global effects of which linger on now well over one hundred years later.

Such was the enduring power of the propaganda that today most folks would have great difficulty in accepting the following; this is a short summary of historical realities revealed by Macgregor and Docherty that are at complete odds with the official narrative, the political discourse, and the school textbooks:

It was Great Britain (supported by France and Russia) and not Germany who was the principal aggressor in the events and actions that let to the outbreak of war; The British had for twenty years prior to 1914 viewed Germany as its most dangerous economic and imperial rival, and fully anticipated that a war was inevitable; In the U.K. and the U.S., various factions worked feverishly to ensure the war went on for as long as possible, and scuttled peacemaking efforts from the off; key truths about this most consequential of geopolitical conflicts have been concealed for well over one hundred years, with no sign the official record will change; very powerful forces (incl. a future US president) amongst U.S. political, media, and economic elites conspired to eventually convince an otherwise unwilling populace in America that U.S. entry onto the war was necessary; those same forces and many similar groups in the U.K. and Europe engaged in everything from war profiteering, destruction/forging of war records, false-flag ops, treason, conspiracy to wage aggressive war, and direct efforts to prolong the war by any means necessary, many of which will rock folks to their very core.

But peace was not on the agenda. When, by 1916, the military failures were so embarrassing and costly, some key players in the British government were willing to talk about peace. This could not be tolerated. The potential peacemakers had to be thrown under the bus. The unelected European leaders had one common bond: They would fight Germany until she was crushed.

Prolonging the Agony details how this secret cabal organised to this end the change of government without a single vote being cast. David Lloyd George was promoted to prime minister in Britain and Georges Clemenceau made prime minister in France. A new government, an inner-elite war cabinet thrust the Secret Elite leader, Lord Alfred Milner into power at the very inner-core of the decision-makers in British politics.

Democracy? They had no truck with democracy. The voting public had no say. The men entrusted with the task would keep going till the end and their place-men were backed by the media and the money-power, in Britain, France and America.

Propaganda Always Wins

But just as the pioneering adherents of propaganda back in the day might never have dreamt how sophisticated and all-encompassing the practice would become, nor would the citizenry at large have anticipated the extent to which the industry has facilitated an entrenched, rapacious plutocracy at the expense of our economic opportunity, our financial and material security, our physical, social and cultural environment, our values and attitudes, and increasingly, our basic democratic rights and freedoms.

We now live in the Age of the Big Shill -- cocooned in a submissive void no less -- an era where nothing can be taken on face value yet where time and attention constraints (to name just a few) force us to do so; [where] few people in public life can be taken at their word; where unchallenged perceptions become accepted reality; where 'open-book' history is now incontrovertible not-negotiable, upon pain of imprisonment fact; where education is about uniformity, function, form and conformity, all in the service of imposed neo-liberal ideologies embracing then prioritising individual -- albeit dubious -- freedoms.

More broadly, it's the "Roger Ailes" of this world -- acting on behalf of the power elites who after all are their paymasters -- who create the intellectual systems which control expression through the communications structures, whilst ensuring these systems require only 'the discreet use of censorship and uniformed men.'

They are the shapers and moulders of the discourse that passes for the accepted lingua franca of the increasingly globalised, interconnected, corporatised political economy of the planet. Throughout this process they 'will always try to change the established language.'

And we can no longer rely on our elected representatives to honestly represent us and our interests. Whether this decision making is taking place inside or outside the legislative process, these processes are well and truly in the grip of the banks and financial institutions and transnational organisations. In whose interests are they going to be more concerned with?

We saw this all just after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) when the very people who brought the system to the brink, made billions off the dodge for their banks and millions for themselves, bankrupted hundreds of thousands of American families, were called upon by the U.S. government to fix up the mess, and to all intents given a blank cheque to so do.

That the U.S. is at even greater risk now of economic implosion is something few serious pundits would dispute, and a testament to the effectiveness of the snow-job perpetrated upon Americans regarding the causes, the impact, and the implications of the 2008 meltdown going forward.

In most cases, one accepts almost by definition such disconnects (read: hidden agendas) are the rule rather than the exception, hence the multi-billion foundation -- and global reach and impact -- of the propaganda business. This in itself is a key indicator as to why organisations place so much importance on this aspect of managing their affairs.

At the very least, once corporations saw how the psychology of persuasion could be leveraged to manipulate consumers and politicians saw the same with the citizenry and even its own workers, the growth of the industry was assured.

As Riefenstahl noted during her chinwag with Pilger after he asked if those embracing the "submissive void" included the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? " Everyone ," she said.

By way of underscoring her point, she added enigmatically: 'Propaganda always wins if you allow it'.

Greg Maybury is a freelance writer based in Perth, Australia. His main areas of interest are American history and politics in general, with a special focus on economic, national security, military, and geopolitical affairs. For 5 years he has regularly contributed to a diverse range of news and opinion sites, including OpEd News, The Greanville Post, Consortium News, Dandelion Salad, Global Research, Dissident Voice, OffGuardian, Contra Corner, International Policy Digest, the Hampton Institute, and others.

nottheonly1

This brilliant essay is proof of the reflective nature of the Universe. The worse the propaganda and oppression becomes, the greater the likelihood such an essay will be written.

Such is the sophistication and ubiquity of the narrative control techniques used today -- afforded increasingly by 'computational propaganda' via automated scripts, hacking, botnets, troll farms, and algorithms and the like, along with the barely veiled censorship and information gatekeeping practised by Google and Facebook and other tech behemoths -- it's become one of the most troubling aspects of the technological/social media revolution.

Very rarely can one experience such a degree of vindication. My moniker 'nottheonly1' has received more meaning with this precise depiction of the long history of the manipulation of the masses. Recent events have destroyed but all of my confidence that there might be a peaceful way out of this massive dilemma. Due to this sophistication in controlling the narrative, it has now become apparent that we have arrived at a moment in time where total lawlessness reigns. 'Lawlessness' in this case means the loss of common law and the use of code law to create ever new restrictions for free speech and liberty at large.

Over the last weeks, comments written on other discussion boards have unleashed a degree of character defamation and ridicule for the most obvious crimes perpetrated on the masses through propaganda. In this unholy union of constant propaganda via main stream 'media' with the character defamation by so called 'trolls' – which are actually virtual assassins of those who write the truth – the ability of the population, or parts thereof to connect with, or search for like minded people is utterly destroyed. This assault on the online community has devastating consequences. Those who have come into the cross hairs of the unintelligence agencies will but turn away from the internet. Leaving behind an ocean of online propaganda and fake information. Few are now the web sites on which it is possible to voice one's personal take on the status quo.

There is one word that describes these kind of activities precisely: traitor. Those who engage in the character defamation of commenters, or authors per se, are traitors to humanity. They betray the collective consciousness with their poisonous attacks of those who work for a sea change of the status quo. The owner class has all game pieces positioned. The fact that Julian Assange is not only a free man, but still without a Nobel price for peace, while war criminals are recipients, shows just how much the march into absolute totalitarianism has progressed. Bernays hated the masses and offered his 'services' to manipulate them often for free.

Even though there are more solutions than problems, the time has come where meaningful participation in the search for such solution has been made unbearable. It is therefore that a certain fatalism has developed – from resignation to the acceptance of the status quo as being inevitable. Ancient wisdom has created a proverb that states 'This too, will pass'. While that is a given, there are still enough Human Beings around that are determined to make a difference. To this group I count the author of this marvelous, albeit depressing essay. Thank you more that words can express. And thank you, OffGuardian for being one of the last remaining places where discourse is possible.

GMW
Really great post! Thanks. I'm part of the way through reading Alex Carey's book: "Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty," referenced in this article. I've learned more about the obviously verifiable history of U.S. corporate propaganda in the first four chapters than I learned gaining a "minor" in history in 1974 (not surprisingly I can now clearly see). I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in just how pervasive, entrenched and long-standing are the propaganda systems shaping public perception, thought and behavior in America and the West.
Norcal
Wow Greg Maybury great essay, congratulations. This quote is brilliant, I've never see it before, "For Carey, the following conclusion was inescapable: 'It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.' "

Too, Rodger Ailes was the man credited with educating Nixon up as how to "use" the TV media, and Ailes never looked back as he manipulated media at will. Thank you!

nondimenticare
That is also one of the basic theses of Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize speech.
vexarb
I read in 'Guns, Germs and Steel' about Homo Sapiens and his domesticated animals. Apparently we got on best in places where we could find animals that are very like us: sheep, cattle, horses and other herd animals which instinctively follow their Leader. I think our cousins the chimpanzee are much the same; both species must have inherited this common trait from some pre-chimpanzee ancestor who had found great survival value in passing on the sheeple trait to their progeny. As have the sheep themselves.

By the way, has anybody observed sheeple behaviour in ants and bees? For instance, quietly following a Leader ant to their doom, or noisily ganging up to mob a worker bee that the Queen does not like?

Andy
Almost unbelievable that this was commisioned by the BBC 4 part series covering much of what is in Gregs essay. Some fabulous old footage too. https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/
S.R.Passerby
I'd say the elites are both for and against. Competing factions. It's clear that many are interested in overturning democracy, whilst others want to exploit it.

The average grunt on the street is in the fire, regardless of the pan chosen by the elites.

[Aug 16, 2019] One of the ways the Deep State undermines conspiracy theories is to plant evidence purporting to support the theory, but easily disproved by easily available information

Notable quotes:
"... Even more importantly, we should all be troubled by efforts to shut down content and discussions labeled "false and misleading" on major social media platforms . ..."
"... Conspiracies can be found out by many different ways e.g. documents uncovered, discrepancies, evidence that contradicts what has been claimed etc. ..."
"... "A two decade old CT, like 9/11, or worse, one six decades old (the JFK assassination), are false because they would have involved too many people–someone would have blown the whistle, if only on their deathbed." ..."
"... "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. ..."
"... The old adage 'two men can keep a secret, if one of them is dead' applies here. ..."
"... This co-ordinated and global media attack on the 'Conspiracy Theorist' is co-ordinated and Global for good reason. ..."
"... The determination of international deepstate to make illegal any question or recognition of it under guise of 'Conspiracy theorist=domestic terrorist/anti-semite/anti-Zionist/BDS/trump supporting white supremacist(etc)'- conflating those ULTRA memes with growing awareness of the Anglo/Yankee/zionist PSYOPS underway globally, mean we are entering a choke point in progression of reason, truth and beauty. ..."
"... The danger of the conspiracy theorist to the present world order, is that most of the BIG ones, the nasty ones, are true. And CIA operation Mockingbirds' job (Quote) 'is to Guard against the illicit Transformation of Probability into Certainty," that they are . ..."
"... Ultimately, the average conspiracy theorist has a better grasp of how the world works than the average liberal. ..."
"... The reality is that the ruling class and its public servants really do have a parasitic and predatory relationship to the vast majority of humanity ..."
"... I like Michael Moore's response when asked if he believed the conspiracy theories which were floating about at the time: "Just the ones that are true" ..."
"... A conspiracy theory, like any theory is as strong as the evidence put forward to support it. ..."
"... One of the ways they will do this is to plant "evidence" purporting to support the theory, but easily disproved by easily available information. Unfortunately,it is a sad fact that far too many "conspiracy theorists" readily accept and share along with genuine evidence, this planted "evidence" to the wider internet, thereby undermining the solid evidence of a conspiracy, by associating it with the easily disprovable nonsense. ..."
"... For example, after the attack on the WTC Kissinger was appointed to the head the 9/11 commission (before stepping down). ..."
"... 'Conspiracy theorists' would have thought – why are neocons appointing a mass-murdering neocon to investigate an event that might have involved neocons (raising obvious credibility issues) – whereas those who regard conspiracy theorists as dribbling fruitcakes would have welcomed the appointment of the nobel peace prize winner. ..."
OffGuardian

Noam Chomsky has pointed out , the more educated we are, the more we are a target for state-corporate propaganda. Even journalists outside the mainstream may internalize establishment values and prejudices. Which brings us to Parramore's embrace of the term "conspiracy theory." Once a neutral and little-used phrase, "conspiracy theory" was infamously weaponized in 1967 by a memo from the CIA to its station chiefs worldwide.

Troubled by growing mass disbelief in the "lone nut" theory of President Kennedy's assassination, and concerned that "[c]onspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization," the agency directed its officers to "discuss the publicity problem with friendly and elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)" and to "employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose."

As Kevin Ryan writes , and various analyses have shown :

In the 45 years before the CIA memo came out, the phrase 'conspiracy theory' appeared in the Washington Post and New York Times only 50 times, or about once per year. In the 45 years after the CIA memo, the phrase appeared 2,630 times, or about once per week."
While it turns out that Parramore knows something about this hugely successful propaganda drive, she chose in her NBC piece to deploy the phrase as the government has come to define it, i.e., as "something that requires no consideration because it is obviously not true." This embeds a fallacy in her argument which only spreads as she goes on. Likewise, the authors of the studies she cites, who attempt to connect belief in "conspiracy theories" to "narcissistic personality traits," are not immune to efforts to manipulate the wider culture. Studies are only as good as the assumptions from which they proceed; in this case, the assumption was provided by an interested Federal agency. And what of their suggested diagnosis?

The DSM-5's criteria for narcissism include "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity a need for admiration and lack of empathy." My experience in talking to writers and advocates who -- to mention a few of the subjects Parramore cites -- seek justice in the cases of the political murders of the Sixties , have profound concerns about vaccine safety , or reject the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 , does not align with that characterization.

On the contrary, most of the people I know who hold these varied (and not always shared) views are deeply empathic, courageously humble, and resigned to a life on the margins of official discourse, even as they doggedly seek to publicize what they have learned. A number of them have arrived at their views through painful, direct experience, like the loss of a friend or the illness of a child, but far from having a "negative view of humanity," as Parramore writes, most hold a deep and abiding faith in the power of regular people to see injustice and peacefully oppose it. In that regard, they share a great deal in common with writers like Parramore: ultimately, we all want what's best for our children, and none of us want a world ruled by unaccountable political-economic interests. If we want to achieve that world, then we should work together to promote speech that is free from personal attacks on all sides. Even more importantly, we should all be troubled by efforts to shut down content and discussions labeled "false and misleading" on major social media platforms.

Who will decide what is false and what is true? ... ... ...

President Kennedy said:

a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
Perhaps we should take a closer look at ideas that so frighten the powers-that-be. Far from inviting our ridicule, the people who insist that we look in these forbidden places may one day deserve our thanks.
John Kirby is a documentary filmmaker. His latest project, Four Died Trying, examines what John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were doing in the last years of their lives which may have led to their deaths.
George
I am responding to an earlier comment you made because, for some reason, I cannot reply to it in the proper place.

"The old adage 'two men can keep a secret, if one of them is dead' applies here."

Wrong: secrets can be uncovered even if both of them are dead.

"The conspiracies we know about are exposed because someone talks, or a computer gets hacked."

Conspiracies can be found out by many different ways e.g. documents uncovered, discrepancies, evidence that contradicts what has been claimed etc.

"A two decade old CT, like 9/11, or worse, one six decades old (the JFK assassination), are false because they would have involved too many people–someone would have blown the whistle, if only on their deathbed."

Always a bad sign when you start to repeat "would have". Lots of presumption here.

"No new facts have emerged because the only people who knew anything are long dead, taking the reasons to their graves .."

New facts can emerge all the time even regarding the most ancient of events.

" .or in the case of 9/11, because there was no great conspiracy, beyond the one reported."

So you now have godlike omniscience?

"A propensity for subscribing to conspiracy theories, is, sad to say, indicative of mental inadequacy "

There's no point in going much further here. You now devolve into psychobabble which, as always, is based on the dogmatic assertion that you are right. (cf. the formerly mentioned godlike omniscience)

Ragnar
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.

It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." These words are attributed to Joseph Goebbels.

-So, George, it would hardly make a difference whether the State is Marxist or Capitalist. It's either power or truth. They are inherently different and can not be reconciled. Ultimately, there is no bridge possible.

However, so-called "common" goals are of a lower order and cooperation here is possible, temporarily. These relationships are unstable and prone to breaking up precisely because they're ultimately not common at all. The principle are different and the personalities too. Ships Passing In The Night, like. -See?

George
We all have common goals. Basically the goals of life and health. And these are hardly goals "of a lower order". If that was true then we must be living in a state of "postmodernist relativity" where anyone can decide arbitrarily what matters. And that would certainly lead to your ships-passing-in-the-night scenario i.e. the ultimate divide-and-rule vision.

As for power, the late Marxist writer Ellen Meiksins Wood noted that, in modern times, we have an unprecedented degree of political freedom. But the reason for that is that power no longer lies in politics. It lies in economics. What is the point of having formal rights when your livelihood is gone?

William HBonney

The old adage 'two men can keep a secret, if one of them is dead' applies here.

The conspiracies we know about are exposed because someone talks, or a computer gets hacked. A two decade old CT, like 9/11, or worse, one six decades old (the JFK assassination), are false because they would have involved too many people – someone would have blown the whistle, if only on their deathbed. No new facts have emerged because the only people who knew anything are long dead, taking the reasons to their graves, or in the case of 9/11, because there was no great conspiracy, beyond the one reported.

A propensity for subscribing to conspiracy theories, is, sad to say, indicative of mental inadequacy. Such people are unable to deal with the complexities of the world as it is, and therefore seek to make it a world of black and white, good and evil, heroes and villains. The internet, with its blurring of fantasy and fact enables them. This is why discussions like this get so polarised.

TFS

1. 9/11 and JFK are false because WILLIAM HBonney has declared it so.

Boom, thanks for watching kids.

2. In other news, some Conspiracy Theorists Imagined 747-E4Bs above Washington at the time of 9/11 and 25+second delay introduced into the Air Traffic Control System but the Official Conspiracy Account of 9/11 didn't discuss it because there was nothing to see.

3. In related news, HWB wack jobs go on one

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/07/no_author/new-york-fire-commissioners-call-for-new-9-11-investigation-about-pre-planted-explosives/

4. Corbett, goes off on one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXYswf3lzU8

5. And again, Corbett goes even more mental. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWLis-TVB2w

6. But it's ok kidz, because HWB wack jobs, like first responders, police, fire personnel architects, physicists, former military personnel, pilots, Nobel Peace Prixe winners, medical experts, etc etc all collectively asertained that the Official Conspiracy Theory of 9/11 is about as usefull as the Warren Commission Report.

7. HOWEVER, HWB THINKS YOU'RE A WACK JOB.

r. rebar
unless & until someone goes to jail -- there are no conspiracies & as silence is -- like any commodity -- only as good as the price paid to maintain it -- those who know have a real vested interest in not talking (it's not a secret if you tell someone)
roger morris
Ms Parramore is doing nothing more than her profession and tenure demands. Witting or un-witting. This co-ordinated and global media attack on the 'Conspiracy Theorist' is co-ordinated and Global for good reason.

It is the 'Great Wurlitzer' at full throat coinciding with extraordinary reductions in internet freedoms of information flow. The determination of international deepstate to make illegal any question or recognition of it under guise of 'Conspiracy theorist=domestic terrorist/anti-semite/anti-Zionist/BDS/trump supporting white supremacist(etc)'- conflating those ULTRA memes with growing awareness of the Anglo/Yankee/zionist PSYOPS underway globally, mean we are entering a choke point in progression of reason, truth and beauty.

A read of the Cass Sunstein/Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule Paper describing 'Conspiracy theory' as a 'crippled Epistemology' and determining 'COINTELPRO' type strategies to counter the danger of their truth becoming certainty, will enlighten those in the dark of IIO methodology and expose Ms Parramore as a true MOCKINGBIRD.

The danger of the conspiracy theorist to the present world order, is that most of the BIG ones, the nasty ones, are true. And CIA operation Mockingbirds' job (Quote) 'is to Guard against the illicit Transformation of Probability into Certainty," that they are .

mathias alexand
Try this for conspiracy thinking

https://lorenzoae.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/part-2/

George
Good link. I like this bit:

"Ultimately, the average conspiracy theorist has a better grasp of how the world works than the average liberal. Even the most outlandish "conspiracy theory" in existence -- that people like George W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth are shape-shifting, extra-dimensional reptilians -- is closer to the truth than what liberals believe.

The reality is that the ruling class and its public servants really do have a parasitic and predatory relationship to the vast majority of humanity "

I've often felt there is a lot of (metaphorical!) truth in David Icke's ravings, although the reptile image is unfortunate in that actual reptiles are amongst the most sedate and peaceful creatures.

Molloy
Eichmann and today's useful idiots; Hannah Arendt

(start Arendt quote)

Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a "monster," but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown. And since this suspicion would have been fatal to the whole enterprise, and was also rather hard to sustain, in view of the sufferings he and his like had caused so many millions of people, his worst clowneries were hardly noticed. What could you do with a man who first declared, with great emphasis, that the one thing he had learned in an ill-spent life was that one should never take an oath ("Today no man, no judge could ever persuade me to make a sworn statement. I refuse it; I refuse it for moral reasons. Since my experience tells me that if one is loyal to his oath, one day he has to take the consequences, I have made up my mind once and for all that no judge in the world or other authority will ever be capable of making me swear an oath, to give sworn testimony.

I won't do it voluntarily and no one will be able to force me"), and then, after being told explicitly that if he wished to testify in his own defense he might "do so under oath or without an oath," declared without further ado that he would prefer to testify under oath? Or who, repeatedly and with a great show of feeling, assured the court, as he had assured the police examiner, that the worst thing he could do would be to try to escape his true responsibilities, to fight for his neck, to plead for mercy -- and then, upon instruction of his counsel, submitted a handwritten document that contained a plea for mercy?

As far as Eichmann was concerned, these were questions of changing moods, not of inconsistencies, and as long as he was capable of finding, either in his memory or on the spur of the moment, an elating stock phrase to go with them, he was quite content.
(end quote)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1963/02/16/eichmann-in-jerusalem-i

Molloy
Chomsky dealing with the indoctrinated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLcpcytUnWU&app=desktop Why it is important to call out the so-called 'Global Elite' facilitators on here.

And why it is essential to understand what Eichmann was facilitating (and the madness that morphed into the same apartheid bigotry in the 21st century).

Better understand than be hanged.

Gary Weglarz

I appreciate the article, but the sentence below is offered with no logical or rational support – it is simply an evidence free assertion:

("But Parramore and many journalists like her are neither assets of an intelligence service nor unthinking tools of big media; ) – really?

It is quite clear that if someone "is" (an asset of an intelligence service) that they will certainly not be broadcasting this fact to the world or to friends and family. And for someone to assert that "conspiracies" don't exist in the real world requires a level of credulity that most intelligent and rational people the least bit familiar with the historical record would find rather difficult to muster up. I dare say it would be much easier in fact to prove the assertion that our Western history is simply the "history of conspiracies" given the oligarchic control of Western populations for millennia. This is hardly "rocket science" as they say. We do have a rather well documented historical record to fall back on to show the endless scheming of Western oligarchy behind the backs of Western populations.

wardropper
I like Michael Moore's response when asked if he believed the conspiracy theories which were floating about at the time: "Just the ones that are true"
John Thatcher
A conspiracy theory, like any theory is as strong as the evidence put forward to support it. Often people offer as fact conspiracies that only as yet exist as theories,with greater or lesser amounts of evidence to support.I have no doubt that interested parties who are the accused in these theories, will mount efforts to discredit any theory mounted against them or those they represent.

One of the ways they will do this is to plant "evidence" purporting to support the theory, but easily disproved by easily available information. Unfortunately,it is a sad fact that far too many "conspiracy theorists" readily accept and share along with genuine evidence, this planted "evidence" to the wider internet, thereby undermining the solid evidence of a conspiracy, by associating it with the easily disprovable nonsense.

Harry Stotle

Isn't it high time we had a term to describe those who always accept the official version of events after controversial political incidents no matter how implausible this account might be?

For example, after the attack on the WTC Kissinger was appointed to the head the 9/11 commission (before stepping down).

'Conspiracy theorists' would have thought – why are neocons appointing a mass-murdering neocon to investigate an event that might have involved neocons (raising obvious credibility issues) – whereas those who regard conspiracy theorists as dribbling fruitcakes would have welcomed the appointment of the nobel peace prize winner.

Anyway, here's a clip of Henry – the believers in everything the government say would never have considered the objections raised in the film – such questions are tantamount to mental illness according to these 'progressives'.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/YcxjJDlbnC4?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

[Aug 16, 2019] Punishing the World With Sanctions by Philip Giraldi

Aug 16, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org

August 15, 2019 © Photo: Flickr Sanctions are economic warfare, pure and simple. As an alternative to a direct military attack on a country that is deemed to be misbehaving they are certainly preferable, but no one should be under any illusions regarding what they actually represent. They are war by other means and they are also illegal unless authorized by a supra-national authority like the United Nations Security Council, which was set up after World War II to create a framework that inter alia would enable putting pressure on a rogue regime without going to war. At least that was the idea, but the sanctions regimes recently put in place unilaterally and without any international authority by the United States have had a remarkable tendency to escalate several conflicts rather than providing the type of pressure that would lead to some kind of agreement.

The most dangerous bit of theater involving sanctions initiated by the Trump administration continues to focus on Iran. Last week, the White House elevated its extreme pressure on the Iranians by engaging in a completely irrational sanctioning of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The sanctions will have no effect whatsoever and they completely contradict Donald Trump's repeated assertion that he is seeking diplomacy to resolving the conflict with Iran. One doesn't accomplish that by sanctioning the opposition's Foreign Minister. Also, the Iranians have received the message loud and clear that the threats coming from Washington have nothing to do with nuclear programs. The White House began its sanctions regime over a year ago when it withdrew from the JCPOA and they have been steadily increasing since that time even though Iran has continued to be fully compliant with the agreement. Recently, the US took the unprecedented step of sanctioning the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is part of the nation's military.

American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has made clear that the sanctions on Iran are intended to cause real pain, which, in fact, they have succeeded in doing. Pompeo and his accomplice in crime National Security Advisor John Bolton believe that enough pressure will motivate the starving people to rise up in the streets and overthrow the government, an unlikely prospect as the American hostility has in fact increased popular support for the regime.

To be sure, ordinary people in Iran have found that they cannot obtain medicine and some types of food are in short supply but they are not about to rebel. The sanctioning in May of Iranian oil exports has only been partially effective but it has made the economy shrink, with workers losing jobs. The sanctions have also led to tit-for-tat seizures of oil and gas tankers, starting with the British interception of a ship carrying Iranian oil to Syria in early July.

Another bizarre escalation in sanctions that has taken place lately relates to the Skripal case in Britain. On August 2 nd , Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing a package of new sanctions against Moscow over the alleged poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in March 2018. The order "prohibit[s] any United States bank from making any loan or providing any credit except for loans or credits for the purpose of purchasing food or other agricultural commodities or products." The ban also includes "the extension of any loan or financial or technical assistance by international financial institutions," meaning that international lenders will also be punished if they fail to follow Washington's lead.

The sanctions were imposed under the authority provided by the US Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act adopted in 1991, which imposes penalties for use of chemical weapons. Novichok, which was reportedly used on the Skripals, is a chemical weapon developed in the labs of the Soviet Union, though a number of states are believed to currently have supplies of the agent in their arsenals. Russia can appeal the sanctions with 90 days by providing "reliable assurance" that it will not again use chemical weapons.

Russia has strenuously denied any role in the attack on the Skripals and the evidence that has so far been produced to substantiate the Kremlin's involvement has been less than convincing. An initial package of US-imposed sanctions against Russia that includes the export of sensitive technologies and some financial services was implemented in August 2018.

Venezuela is also under the sanctions gun and is a perfect example how sanctions can escalate into something more punitive, leading incrementally to an actual state of war. Last week Washington expanded its sanctions regime, which is already causing starvation in parts of Venezuela, to include what amounts to a complete economic embargo directed against the Maduro regime that is being enforced by a naval blockade.

The Venezuelan government announced last Wednesday that the United States Navy had seized a cargo ship bound for Venezuela while it was transiting the Panama Canal. According to a government spokesman, the ship's cargo was soy cakes intended for the production of food. As one of Washington's raisons d'etre for imposing sanctions on Caracas was that government incompetence was starving the Venezuelan people, the move to aggravate that starvation would appear to be somewhat capricious and revealing of the fact that the White House could care less about what happens to the Venezuelan civilians who are caught up in the conflict.

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez condemned the move as "serious aggression," and accused the Trump Administration of trying to impede Venezuela's basic right to import food to feed its people.

One of the most pernicious aspects of the sanctions regimes that the United States is imposing is that they are global. When Washington puts someone on its sanctions list, other countries that do not comply with the demands being made are also subject to punishment, referred to as secondary sanctions. The sanctions on Iran's oil exports, for example, are being globally enforced with some few exceptions, and any country that buys Iranian oil will be punished by being denied access to the US financial and banking system. That is a serious penalty as most international trade and business transactions go through the dollar denominated SWIFT banking network.

Finally, nothing illustrates the absurdity of the sanctions mania as a recent report that President Trump had sent his official hostage negotiator Robert O'Brien to Stockholm to obtain freedom for an American rap musician ASAP Rocky who was in jail after having gotten into a fight with some local boys. The Trumpster did not actually know the lad, but he was vouched for by the likes of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, both of whom have had nice things to say about the president. The negotiator was instructed to tell Sweden that if they did not release Rocky there would be "negative consequences." Who can doubt that the consequences would undoubtedly have included sanctions?

It has reached the point where the only country that likes the United States is Israel, which is locked into a similar cycle of incessant aggression. To be sure Donald Trump's rhetoric is part of the problem, but the indiscriminate, illegal and immoral use of sanctions, which punish whole nations for the presumed sins of those nations' leaders, is a major contributing factor. And the real irony is that even though sanctions cause pain, they are ineffective. Cuba has been under sanctions, technically and embargo, since 1960 and its ruling regime has not collapsed, and there is no chance that Venezuela, Iran or Russia's government will go away at any time soon either. In fact, real change would be more likely if Washington were to sit down at a negotiating table with countries that it considers enemies and work to find solutions to common concerns. But that is not likely to happen with the current White House line-up, and equally distant with a Democratic Party obsessed with the "Russian threat" and other fables employed to explain its own failings.

[Aug 15, 2019] One of the many purposes of Russiagate was to misdirect people away from the fact that Trump's election represents (among other things) a huge split in the ruling class, which can roughly be described as one between extractive industries (energy, agriculture, mining, etc.) and finance, media and tech.

Aug 15, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Michael Fiorillo , , August 14, 2019 at 11:53 am

" (the) factional struggle evident in the rise of Trump "

Thank you.

One of the many purposes of Russiagate was to misdirect people away from the fact that Trump's election represents (among other things) a huge split in the ruling class, which can roughly be described as one between extractive industries (energy, agriculture, mining, etc.) and finance, media and tech. A map of the 2016 election results strongly supports this analysis. Thus, Comcast was more than happy to give free reign to Rachel Maddow's two+ years of disinfotainment

This split in the ruling class would provide an immense opportunity if the US had a real functioning Left, rather than lumpen bourgeois and childish virtue signalling about open borders and reparations.

[Aug 14, 2019] Grandpa Putin Loses Another Bet

Aug 14, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

FZ , Aug 14 2019 1:02 utc | 100

@ B, you overlooked this one. . .

Grandpa Putin Loses Another Bet
TrueStory Gazette, Aug. 2019

Several anonymous, unverified, and possibly non-existent sources announced today that they know, might know, or could possibly have heard from unknown others, who they suspect might know or could have reasonably speculated that Vladimir Putin lost a bet he made with his 2-year old grandson, Vladimir, Jr.

We caught up with the young Putin as he emerged from his daycare school in central Moscow. "Yes, he said, it is true. Grandpa lost the bet we made last week. We wagered about how long Western media could cling to even a microcosm of credibility. Grandpa said it would last until the end of this year, but I bet him that it would be gone much sooner than that."

Two-year old Putin, who is an avid reader of Moon of Alabama, said that when he woke up this morning he read the latest article. He said, "I just rubbed Grandpa's face into that article. He shrieked. He was so embarrassed. He had to admit that western media's credibility is already totally kaput, not even a shred of credibility left, zero."

"Now Grandpa is the laughing stock of my daycare center. One of my classmates, who is four, said 'how could your Grandpa be so dumb. Even a two-year old could see that western media's credibility is in the dumpster. Your Grandpa is such a loser!'"

The young Putin, who stands only up to our reporter's waist, said that he is studying English but still struggles with difficult words like "history." But he is not shy. When asked what was the prevailing political view at his childcare center, he looked our reporter in the eye, raised both fists, and loudly proclaimed, "All of us kids agree that U.S. Empire is a hysterectomy!"

We asked Vladimir, Jr. about the stakes of his bet, what did he win? He said, "Grandpa said I could have a place called Camp Pendleton in California to make a playground for kids but I will have to wait a little while until he acquires it. I'm going to make it a playground for Russian and American kids and we also will invite all of the kids from Central America and Mexico."

Asked if he knew that Camp Pendleton was a U.S. military base, he replied, "I don't know what it is now, but it's going to be a great playground for kids." And he added, "Look Pal, my Grandpa loses lots of times. He loses his keys and his wallet and every bet he ever made with me. But one thing about Grandpa, he ALWAYS KEEPS HIS PROMISES!"

[Aug 14, 2019] Grandpa Putin Loses Another Bet

Aug 14, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

FZ , Aug 14 2019 1:02 utc | 100

@ B, you overlooked this one. . .

Grandpa Putin Loses Another Bet
TrueStory Gazette, Aug. 2019

Several anonymous, unverified, and possibly non-existent sources announced today that they know, might know, or could possibly have heard from unknown others, who they suspect might know or could have reasonably speculated that Vladimir Putin lost a bet he made with his 2-year old grandson, Vladimir, Jr.

We caught up with the young Putin as he emerged from his daycare school in central Moscow. "Yes, he said, it is true. Grandpa lost the bet we made last week. We wagered about how long Western media could cling to even a microcosm of credibility. Grandpa said it would last until the end of this year, but I bet him that it would be gone much sooner than that."

Two-year old Putin, who is an avid reader of Moon of Alabama, said that when he woke up this morning he read the latest article. He said, "I just rubbed Grandpa's face into that article. He shrieked. He was so embarrassed. He had to admit that western media's credibility is already totally kaput, not even a shred of credibility left, zero."

"Now Grandpa is the laughing stock of my daycare center. One of my classmates, who is four, said 'how could your Grandpa be so dumb. Even a two-year old could see that western media's credibility is in the dumpster. Your Grandpa is such a loser!'"

The young Putin, who stands only up to our reporter's waist, said that he is studying English but still struggles with difficult words like "history." But he is not shy. When asked what was the prevailing political view at his childcare center, he looked our reporter in the eye, raised both fists, and loudly proclaimed, "All of us kids agree that U.S. Empire is a hysterectomy!"

We asked Vladimir, Jr. about the stakes of his bet, what did he win? He said, "Grandpa said I could have a place called Camp Pendleton in California to make a playground for kids but I will have to wait a little while until he acquires it. I'm going to make it a playground for Russian and American kids and we also will invite all of the kids from Central America and Mexico."

Asked if he knew that Camp Pendleton was a U.S. military base, he replied, "I don't know what it is now, but it's going to be a great playground for kids." And he added, "Look Pal, my Grandpa loses lots of times. He loses his keys and his wallet and every bet he ever made with me. But one thing about Grandpa, he ALWAYS KEEPS HIS PROMISES!"

[Aug 13, 2019] The Man Who Weaponizes And Loses Everything

Don't forget when Putin weaponized Beluga Whales
Also Putin said he wont do any deals with the US until they have become mature enough to hold on to them.:)
Aug 13, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Putin's Russia weaponizes everything , including humor, health information, giant squids, robotic cockroaches, tedium and postmodernism.

At the same time these outlets tell us that Putin is losing many things, or already lost them.

Which bears asking: Is there a causality between weaponizing and losing stuff?

[Aug 13, 2019] Russia is behind everything: Russia Caused Far Right Nationalism (if you believe the media) by Steven D

Notable quotes:
"... So, at last, buried deep within the Times story, is the source for its claim that Russia is behind everything. So, what is the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), and who is behind it? ..."
"... If you go to Wikipedia, you find it was founded by George Weidenfeld, a famous London publisher, lifelong Zionist and friend to, among others, Angela Merkel, Kurt Waldheim (yes, that Kurt Waldheim) and too many Israeli politicians and military figures to count. When he died in 2016, he was granted the singular honor by Israel of burial at the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Before his death, he founded a chair for Israel Studies at University of Sussex, for the purpose of countering criticism of Israel . ..."
"... Weidenfeld died at the age of 96 in 2016. During the last few years of his life, he emphasized that he regarded Israel studies as explicitly political. ..."
"... ISD partners with and receives funding from a number of private social media multinational corporations, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft. It also has ties to numerous governmental agencies around the world, including the US State Department, a plethora of NGOs and several US and UK neoliberal think tanks, like the Brookings Institution, as well as charitable foundations ranging from The Carnegie Corporation to the Open Societies Foundation (founder: George Soros). All in all, ISD is deeply tied to groups promoting the global status quo. Many of them also take a confrontational stance when it comes to Russia , while ignoring any bad actions by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and, of course, the United Sates. ..."
"... Neoliberalism, a policy model that advocates the control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector, has been a dominant ideology since the 1980s. It rests on two main planks. Firstly, by increased competition that is achieved through deregulation and the opening up of domestic markets and, secondly, through privatization and limits on the ability of government to run fiscal deficits and accumulate debt, the paper – dated June 2016 - explained. [...] ..."
"... The IMF authors also state that the costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent and such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda. They further argue that increased inequality in turn hurts the level and sustainability of growth. ..."
"... I'm just dumbfounded at how many people have thrown out their reasoning skills and bought into the Russian propaganda nonsense. ..."
"... But you don't have a right to say whatever you want about Israeli politics, stooge. ..."
"... Nice. I like to remind people of that time when Putin came before congress and told them to vote against Obama's Iran treaty and got a standing ovation. ..."
"... totally nuts. "Team Putin", "I long for...Putin in the Hague", "...watched Rachael Maddow...", someone dissing Caitlin Johnstone because she's Australian, "Dorsey and Gabbard and Assad and Putin, they're all in the same boat", "Russians actually showed up in Sweden and offered to pay immigrants to act out a riot." ..."
Aug 13, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

Steven D on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 12:40pm I know it's difficult to pull away from the Epstein murder suicide (which Russia caused by the way if you believe MsNBC ), but I saw a story in the NY Times today that blames Russia for the rise of right wing nationalism everywhere, even in Sweden .

Of course, Trump is blamed as well, because he and Putin are best buds. And what they want, apparently is "far-right wing nationalism" to spread across the entire globe.

To dig beneath the surface of what is happening in Sweden, though, is to uncover the workings of an international disinformation machine, devoted to the cultivation, provocation and amplication of far-right, anti-immigrant passions and political forces. Indeed, that machine, most influentially rooted in Vladimir V. Putin's Russia and the American far right , underscores a fundamental irony of this political moment: the globalization of nationalism.

The central target of these manipulations from abroad -- and the chief instrument of the Swedish nationalists' success -- is the country's increasingly popular, and virulently anti-immigrant, digital echo chamber.

A New York Times examination of its content, personnel and traffic patterns illustrates how foreign state and nonstate actors have helped give viral momentum to a clutch of Swedish far-right web sites.

Russian and Western entities that traffic in disinformation, including an Islamaphobic think tank whose former chairman is now Mr. Trump's national security adviser, have been crucial linkers to the Swedish sites, helping to spread their message to susceptible Swedes.

Beyond the fact that these bare-faced allegations in the Times article about Russia's influence in spreading right wing nationalism are not supported by any, well, facts, is the reality that Sweden, just as in the United States has a long history of nationalist and nativist movements.

The nationalist party in Sweden is the Sverigedemokraterna, ort Sweden Democrats. According to Wikipedia , it was formed in 1988, or more than 30 years ago. Not surprisingly, with the increase in immigration, especially refugees from the Middle East, the party has shown significant growth over the last decade, similar to the rise in strength of nationalist parties and movements in other European countries such as France, Austria, the Netherlands, Greece and Germany .

An article in The Harvard Political Review, dated February 11, 2017 , sums up nicely the factors that have led to the ascendancy of right wing nationalism in Europe.

These right nationalist campaigns, including those of Brexit and Trump, have run on two fundamental ideas currently trending in many western countries: uplifting the poor working class in a crippling globalized economy, and constricting immigration from the Middle East. Although the political clashes in culture and economics seems to be the major driving forces of the rise of the far right, there is another factor at work. The economy and immigration concerns have only been political speaking points disguising the true catastrophe of modern politics: the loss of the general public's trust in institutions .

Two and a half years later, however, The New York Times is having none of those squishy nuanced arguments. It focuses its narrative primarily on Putin and Russia as the source of rising right wing nationalism.

At least six Swedish sites have received financial backing through advertising revenue from a Russian- and Ukrainian-owned auto-parts business based in Berlin, whose online sales network oddly contains buried digital links to a range of far-right and other socially divisive content.

Writers and editors for the Swedish sites have been befriended by the Kremlin. And in one strange Rube Goldbergian chain of events, a frequent German contributor to one Swedish site has been implicated in the financing of a bombing in Ukraine, in a suspected Russian false-flag operation.

The distorted view of Sweden pumped out by this disinformation machine has been used, in turn, by anti-immigrant parties in Britain, Germany, Italy and elsewhere to stir xenophobia and gin up votes, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue , a London-based nonprofit that tracks the online spread of far-right extremism.

So, at last, buried deep within the Times story, is the source for its claim that Russia is behind everything. So, what is the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), and who is behind it?

If you go to Wikipedia, you find it was founded by George Weidenfeld, a famous London publisher, lifelong Zionist and friend to, among others, Angela Merkel, Kurt Waldheim (yes, that Kurt Waldheim) and too many Israeli politicians and military figures to count. When he died in 2016, he was granted the singular honor by Israel of burial at the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Before his death, he founded a chair for Israel Studies at University of Sussex, for the purpose of countering criticism of Israel .

Weidenfeld died at the age of 96 in 2016. During the last few years of his life, he emphasized that he regarded Israel studies as explicitly political.

Teaching the subject, he said, was "very important" in universities "with an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic presence." Weidenfeld's comments indicate that he conflated criticism of Israel as a state with bigotry against Jews.

ISD partners with and receives funding from a number of private social media multinational corporations, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft. It also has ties to numerous governmental agencies around the world, including the US State Department, a plethora of NGOs and several US and UK neoliberal think tanks, like the Brookings Institution, as well as charitable foundations ranging from The Carnegie Corporation to the Open Societies Foundation (founder: George Soros). All in all, ISD is deeply tied to groups promoting the global status quo. Many of them also take a confrontational stance when it comes to Russia , while ignoring any bad actions by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and, of course, the United Sates.

Obviously, it's become a reflexive response by the corporate and legacy media in the US to blame Russia for all our troubles regarding race and political polarization, as if none of these problems existed before Trump assumed office. Certainly, I agree Trump's actions have enabled right wing extremists and exacerbated racial tensions in our country, but neither he nor Russia created the problems of racism and xenophobia that have been with us since the beginning of American history. To continue to harp on Russia as the sole bad actor in foreign and domestic affairs around the world is ludicrous, especially as it ignores the underlying factors that are driving right wing nationalism: increasing poverty, massive wealth and income inequality (which has arguably surpassed the levels that existed prior to the Great Depression ) and the increasing efforts in the media to divide people from one another along racial and ethnic lines.

No one who benefits from these levels of income and wealth inequality wants to point out the real reason why populist/nationalist movements are attracting more and more followers. As always, it's the economy, stupid. A 2016 study conducted by the IMF , hardly a bastion of radical leftists, makes this point very clear:

Instead of delivering growth, some neoliberal policies have increased inequality and have not delivered as expected, according to a 2016 report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Neoliberalism, a policy model that advocates the control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector, has been a dominant ideology since the 1980s. It rests on two main planks. Firstly, by increased competition that is achieved through deregulation and the opening up of domestic markets and, secondly, through privatization and limits on the ability of government to run fiscal deficits and accumulate debt, the paper – dated June 2016 - explained. [...]

The IMF authors also state that the costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent and such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda. They further argue that increased inequality in turn hurts the level and sustainability of growth.

Obviously, that isn't the reality that the powers that be in our country want to promote - not at all. It might give people the idea that, instead of living in a democracy, we are actually governed by puppets of wealthy and powerful corporations that are squeezing us dry to benefit their bottom lines. Those in control of our two major parties much prefer disinformation, such as the promotion of the conspiracy theory that our former Cold War adversary bears most, if not all, of the blame for everything bad happening in our country, from the election of Trump to gun violence to political polarization. Telling the truth would be harmful to their interests. These same powerful and wealthy interests would risk the takeover of governments around the world by fascist and right wing authoritarian regimes, rather than change existing policies that favor unfettered capitalism and globalism, policies that are literally threatening our future on this planet.

In short, expect more truthiness like this from the Times and other media outlets when it comes to explaining the causes of right wing nationalism here and abroad:

As the 2018 elections approached, Swedish counterintelligence was on high alert for foreign interference. Russia, the hulking neighbor to the east, was seen as the main threat. After the Kremlin's meddling in the 2016 American election, Sweden had reason to fear it could be next.

"Russia's goal is to weaken Western countries by polarizing the debate," said Daniel Stenling, the Swedish Security Service's counterintelligence chief. "For the last five years, we have seen more and more aggressive intelligence work against our nation."

But as it turned out, there was no hacking and dumping of internal campaign documents, as in the United States. Nor was there an overt effort to swing the election to the Sweden Democrats , perhaps because the party, in keeping with Swedish popular opinion, has become more critical of the Kremlin than some of its far-right European counterparts.

Instead, security officials say, the foreign influence campaign took a different, more subtle form: helping nurture Sweden's rapidly evolving far-right digital ecosystem.

Oh those subtle Russkies! How they manage the time to destroy the democracies of every country on earth is beyond me, but then, I'm not a reporter for The New York Times.

MrWebster on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 3:04pm

Russia also behind some left wing movements

The NYTimes in 2016 put the blame for the movement against TPP squarely on Putin.

In Attempted Hit Piece, NYT Makes Putin Hero of Defeating TPP

And a few more.

PUTIN IS FUNDING GREEN GROUPS TO DISCREDIT NATURAL GAS FRACKING

Anti-GMO articles tied to Russian sites, ISU research shows

POLITICS JANUARY 30, 2018 Russian Trolls Stoked Anger Over Black Lives Matter More Than Was Previously Known

But blaming the rise of far right nationalism on Russia is definitely a major point as it diverts attention from the many and varied causes for it which goes to the very heart of the globlist neoliberal capitalist order. Just as a side note, academia is one of the important stalwarts in the diversion as they are gladly producing phony studies of tweets, etc which confirm these beliefs.

BTW, the idea that Russia was responsbile for the rise of white nationalism and racism goes back a while now. There were a few diaries on TOP that got a lot of attention claiming Putin had a major hand in Charotsville when it occurred.

I am surprised by the continued insistence that Russia is making "divisions" over BLM. It is an obvious attempt to minimalize America racism, and also to marginalize BLM and smear it as Russian lackies (shades of the Civil Rigths movement and MLK). This originally caused some anger within Black activists so the narrative became that Russians were pushing both pro-BLM and anti-BLM messages (although wink wink, we know the Russians are really anti-Black).

k9disc on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 3:32pm
Interesting... If You Look at the IMF Quote, They Are Still

doing neoliberalism, they've just switched the type of market. It looks like a good fit if you are looking at tanking the labor market. Import cheap, disempowered labor to create the market that you want.

I was going to say something about how Globalists are really pushing immigration too far. It would be better to rise the standard of living in your colonies and vassal states, but that would cost money and dilute control, so instead you import them and shift to domestic colonialism.

Inserting large, non-assimilated populations into democratic states IS a problem to many people. Loss of self governance - "We didn't get a say in this.", loss of a national or cultural identity - which becomes white vs non-white, it rigs the labor market and promotes inequality via a two tiered economic system.

But that IMF quote jumped out at me, and they're still doing neoliberalism, but they're doing it to crush labor markets instead of opening markets or tapping international labor markets. It fits well within neoliberal ideology.

snoopydawg on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 4:27pm
Both parties are pushing Russia Gate on us

Rubio is saying that Russian bots are spreading the Clintons killed Epstein crap on Twitter. Seriously? But he says nothing about Trump who retweeted a tweet saying that the Clintons killed Epstein. Or s lil Marco calling Trump a Russian bot?

Then there's this one.

HeyRussians, writing here on an AMERICAN platform, I have a constitutional right to say whatever I want about American or Russian politics. No one is forcing you to read what I say. Stop with the demands for censorship. Russian "sovereignty" does not extend to Twitter.

-- Michael McFaul (@McFaul) August 11, 2019

Shahryar on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 4:53pm
the comments are frightening

@snoopydawg

totally nuts. "Team Putin", "I long for...Putin in the Hague", "...watched Rachael Maddow...", someone dissing Caitlin Johnstone because she's Australian, "Dorsey and Gabbard and Assad and Putin, they're all in the same boat", "Russians actually showed up in Sweden and offered to pay immigrants to act out a riot."

Rubio is saying that Russian bots are spreading the Clintons killed Epstein crap on Twitter. Seriously? But he says nothing about Trump who retweeted a tweet saying that the Clintons killed Epstein. Or s lil Marco calling Trump a Russian bot?

Then there's this one.

HeyRussians, writing here on an AMERICAN platform, I have a constitutional right to say whatever I want about American or Russian politics. No one is forcing you to read what I say. Stop with the demands for censorship. Russian "sovereignty" does not extend to Twitter.

-- Michael McFaul (@McFaul) August 11, 2019

snoopydawg on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 5:01pm
Aren't they though?

@Shahryar

I'm just dumbfounded at how many people have thrown out their reasoning skills and bought into the Russian propaganda nonsense.

Here's Rubio's tweet..

Marco Rubio

#Putin bots & trolls are aggressively pushing hashtags on social media promoting Trump & Clinton conspiracies about #Epstein death.

It's sad (and frightening) to see so many Americans on both sides of partisan unwittingly helping them.

Putin has weaponized our polarization.

I agree that it's sad and frightening that so many believe him.

#7

totally nuts. "Team Putin", "I long for...Putin in the Hague", "...watched Rachael Maddow...", someone dissing Caitlin Johnstone because she's Australian, "Dorsey and Gabbard and Assad and Putin, they're all in the same boat", "Russians actually showed up in Sweden and offered to pay immigrants to act out a riot."

snoopydawg on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 5:14pm
This one zings!

@Shahryar

But you don't have a right to say whatever you want about Israeli politics, stooge.

Nice. I like to remind people of that time when Putin came before congress and told them to vote against Obama's Iran treaty and got a standing ovation.

#7

totally nuts. "Team Putin", "I long for...Putin in the Hague", "...watched Rachael Maddow...", someone dissing Caitlin Johnstone because she's Australian, "Dorsey and Gabbard and Assad and Putin, they're all in the same boat", "Russians actually showed up in Sweden and offered to pay immigrants to act out a riot."

lotlizard on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 6:08am
Twenty-nine standing ovations, to be exact.

@snoopydawg
https://www.salon.com/2011/05/24/netanyahu_standing_ovations/

Congress treated Bibi like the Lady from Twenty-Nine Palms .

#7.1

But you don't have a right to say whatever you want about Israeli politics, stooge.

Nice. I like to remind people of that time when Putin came before congress and told them to vote against Obama's Iran treaty and got a standing ovation.

Alligator Ed on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 5:06pm
That tweet is a pathetic mixed message

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg The Hillbots, not the Rooskies, are all in for restricting "hate speech", which means anybody who disagrees with them. Talk about xenophobia. Dems have this in spades, as well as more than a few Repugnants. We are being outmaneuvered away from peaceful co-existence to Russia ruins everything.

Orange man bad is corollary to RussiaRussiaRussia.

Rubio is saying that Russian bots are spreading the Clintons killed Epstein crap on Twitter. Seriously? But he says nothing about Trump who retweeted a tweet saying that the Clintons killed Epstein. Or s lil Marco calling Trump a Russian bot?

Then there's this one.

HeyRussians, writing here on an AMERICAN platform, I have a constitutional right to say whatever I want about American or Russian politics. No one is forcing you to read what I say. Stop with the demands for censorship. Russian "sovereignty" does not extend to Twitter.

-- Michael McFaul (@McFaul) August 11, 2019

detroitmechworks on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 5:07pm
Yep, according to the new speech parameters.

@Alligator Ed Mentioning that Israel units have skulls and reapers on their unit patches and then playing this video is considered anti-semitic.

//www.youtube.com/embed/hn1VxaMEjRU?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

ludwig ii on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 8:39pm
So Twitter is an "AMERICAN" platform

@snoopydawg guaranteeing American constitutional rights? But I thought the current Democratic talking point is that the big tech monopolies are private companies so they can censor and misinform with impunity. Does McFail also concede that we have a right to privacy on that wonderful "AMERICAN" platform?

It's hilarious this was Obama's ambassador to Russia. I didn't think you were supposed to hate the people, culture, and government of the country to whom you had been assigned as a diplomat.

Rubio is saying that Russian bots are spreading the Clintons killed Epstein crap on Twitter. Seriously? But he says nothing about Trump who retweeted a tweet saying that the Clintons killed Epstein. Or s lil Marco calling Trump a Russian bot?

Then there's this one.

HeyRussians, writing here on an AMERICAN platform, I have a constitutional right to say whatever I want about American or Russian politics. No one is forcing you to read what I say. Stop with the demands for censorship. Russian "sovereignty" does not extend to Twitter.

-- Michael McFaul (@McFaul) August 11, 2019

snoopydawg on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 11:56pm
Can you imagine the outrage if the things that people are

@ludwig ii

saying about Russia were instead directed at Israel? AIPAC would be in front of congress daily to get people to stop saying those things.

Misfud is the guy who told Papadapoulus that Russia had Hillary's emails who then 'got drunk and blabbed it to the Dutch ambassador' who then told someone in the FBI who then decided to open an investigation into the Trump campaign. I just read that this information about Misfud has come to the intelligence committee's attention. So I'm sure that any day now we will be told to forget everything we've been told about how Trump colluded with Russia right? Any day...yup...congress is going to tell us that the two year long propaganda campaign that they have been pushing on us was false. Just like Trump said it was. Any..day..

#7 guaranteeing American constitutional rights? But I thought the current Democratic talking point is that the big tech monopolies are private companies so they can censor and misinform with impunity. Does McFail also concede that we have a right to privacy on that wonderful "AMERICAN" platform?

It's hilarious this was Obama's ambassador to Russia. I didn't think you were supposed to hate the people, culture, and government of the country to whom you had been assigned as a diplomat.

Cant Stop the M... on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 5:00pm
Rubio is clearly working with the Clintons

@snoopydawg

Has been a big promoter of Russiagate for years, since near the beginning. How do I know he's working with the Clintons? Longtime Clinton ally and co-chair of the Hillary Clinton Transition Team, Neera Tanden, repeatedly cites him as a source of validity for Russiagate in this video. You can make a drinking game out of how many times she says "Marco Rubio."

//www.youtube.com/embed/zoOQEImqd2U?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

Cant Stop the M... on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 5:03pm
One really weird thing about that video

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

is that Chris Cuomo actually behaves like a real journalist. I wonder how many more talking heads up there in corporateworld actually would like to be journalists?

Wonder what it was about Neera that pushed him over the edge and made him betray his journalistic leanings.

Maybe Chris Cuomo is a Russian asset.

#7

Has been a big promoter of Russiagate for years, since near the beginning. How do I know he's working with the Clintons? Longtime Clinton ally and co-chair of the Hillary Clinton Transition Team, Neera Tanden, repeatedly cites him as a source of validity for Russiagate in this video. You can make a drinking game out of how many times she says "Marco Rubio."

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==

karl pearson on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 5:03pm
Society's Institutions

The economy and immigration concerns have only been political speaking points disguising the true catastrophe of modern politics: the loss of the general public's trust in institutions.

Years ago in a sociology class, I learned that 5 components are necessary for a functioning society: family, education, religion, an economic structure, and a political system. These 5 elements are interrelated, so when one goes awry, other parts are affected. It is no secret that our political system is broken and our economic system (neoliberalism) is cracking. Many mainstream churches are losing membership, being replaced by non-affiliated ones. For a couple of decades public education has been the enemy due to right-wing conservatives, hoping to replace this system with private and home schooling. Public universities are in their crosshairs, too. Of course, all these malfunctioning components affect the basic structure of a society: the family. I'm afraid we're in for a bumpy ride, before the air is cleared.

k9disc on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 6:32pm
5 components are necessary for a functioning society:

5 components are necessary for a functioning society: family, education, religion, an economic structure, and a political system.

Corporate owns all of them, save the family, but they're working on it...

Education - completely corporate dominated with public acquiescence.
Political - Think tanks create policy for sponsored talent to ratify
Religion - Atheism, Megachurches, televangelists, political activity, NGOs as slush funds
Economic - Private FED, banks, ratings institutions, bailed out by stakholder bail-in
Family - 2 worker families, tv as baby sitter, mobile phones

Seriously, corporate owns or can significantly disrupt all 5 pillars of a functioning society. It's rather terrifying.

@karl pearson

The economy and immigration concerns have only been political speaking points disguising the true catastrophe of modern politics: the loss of the general public's trust in institutions.

Years ago in a sociology class, I learned that 5 components are necessary for a functioning society: family, education, religion, an economic structure, and a political system. These 5 elements are interrelated, so when one goes awry, other parts are affected. It is no secret that our political system is broken and our economic system (neoliberalism) is cracking. Many mainstream churches are losing membership, being replaced by non-affiliated ones. For a couple of decades public education has been the enemy due to right-wing conservatives, hoping to replace this system with private and home schooling. Public universities are in their crosshairs, too. Of course, all these malfunctioning components affect the basic structure of a society: the family. I'm afraid we're in for a bumpy ride, before the air is cleared.

The Voice In th... on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 10:43am
Religion needed for a functioning society?

@k9disc
I think not.

5 components are necessary for a functioning society: family, education, religion, an economic structure, and a political system.

Corporate owns all of them, save the family, but they're working on it...

Education - completely corporate dominated with public acquiescence.
Political - Think tanks create policy for sponsored talent to ratify
Religion - Atheism, Megachurches, televangelists, political activity, NGOs as slush funds
Economic - Private FED, banks, ratings institutions, bailed out by stakholder bail-in
Family - 2 worker families, tv as baby sitter, mobile phones

Seriously, corporate owns or can significantly disrupt all 5 pillars of a functioning society. It's rather terrifying.

#8

k9disc on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 12:43pm
Actually, I Think It Is. And Perhaps Religion Is a Poor Choice

of word, but I think in any society larger than a tribe you have to have some kind of common ground, a common belief system - cultural mores and values. If you look at secular humanism and atheism as religion or belief system, it completely fits.

Politics and science are near religions for many people at this point in time, IMO, replete with priests, choirs, dogma, and blasphemy.

Politics and science are also highly material at this point in time. Values are predicated on profits and social control and ideas are nothing more than mechanistic computations. If you suggest something that costs profits or removes social control, or you offer ideas that say we're in anything but a mechanistic, dead, dumb universe, you're blaspheming.

I'd say they did a pretty fine job of creating new religions and belief systems, and they are every bit as dogmatic and stupid as their big boss man in the sky predecessors.
@The Voice In the Wilderness

#8.1
I think not.

k9disc on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 12:44pm
Also, Just to Note... I Was Working From the List Provided

upthread.
@The Voice In the Wilderness

#8.1
I think not.

snoopydawg on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 7:04pm
Kambama's fully on board with Russia Gate

Kamala seems so much more passionate about displacing blame onto Russia for structural US racism than about fighting the disenfranchisement of black and brown citizens, including the many she gleefully sent to prison. https://t.co/hpcTt7QRtF

-- Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) August 11, 2019

She said that Russian bots were helping push what Tulsi said about her and they spread the "taking a knee" when it was Kaepernick who started it. Kamillary for this BS! She hired Hillary's campaign team as well as her lawyers. Hillary got people to go to the Hamptons for a Harris fundraiser.

on the cusp on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 7:11pm
Facism all the way up to

the White House, propaganda from all sources of public information.
It feels like 1943.

Steven D on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 9:51pm
More like 1933

@on the cusp with nukes.

the White House, propaganda from all sources of public information.
It feels like 1943.

Pricknick on Sun, 08/11/2019 - 10:25pm
Late to the game

but is very good to hear from you again Steven.

snoopydawg on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 2:12am
Russia + Vlad + Epstein + Trump

Trump is a student of Hitler & a disciple of Putin, with whom he's had several secret conversations with Putin giving him advice. Putin certainly knows how to make troublesome people disappear while keeping enough distance to claim plausible deniability & may have given Trump some tips on how to do the same (assuming Trump hadn't already learned that from his ample experience with mobsters).

A disciple? A student of Hitler? Seriously where do people come up with this sh*t? And why do others agree with that person? SMDH. I can't understand how anyone can believe this.

wokkamile on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 8:39am
According to one of

Trump's previous wives, Donald kept a copy of a book of Hitler's speeches on the bedside table.

The Voice In th... on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 10:46am
ex-wives tell a lot of lies

@wokkamile
ex-husbands too

Trump's previous wives, Donald kept a copy of a book of Hitler's speeches on the bedside table.

Deja on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 11:14am
That's why the ATF . . .

@The Voice In the Wilderness
. . . didn't take my tip seriously. The lady on the other end of the line was all ears about the assault rifles stamped "US ARMOURY" that I reported being hidden in the garage of where I had lived, as well as something I had never seen that might have been a grenade launcher due to the size of the barrel.

However, when she found out I was the "estranged" wife of the person who possessed them, she actually told me my tip would not go any further because "estranged" wives can't be believed.

No way in hell I was going to report it while I was still living there. I did it after going into hiding almost a thousand miles away. Our son and I remained in hiding for 6 years, until the ex also almost killed the next love of his life in front of a neighbor. We were freed by that neighbor's testimony and a 99 year prison sentence for retaliation (he held her at gunpoint too after being released on no bond for assaulting her because his dad was buddies with the local judge). But yeah, ex wives lie.

Now I know: If you see something, say not a goddamned thing because you won't be believed anyway.

#13
ex-husbands too

wokkamile on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 4:22pm
Indeed. Ex wives

@The Voice In the Wilderness can also tell some inconvenient truths. This one is backed by the fellow who gave him the book . When a reporter, who had heard about this, asked Trump about it, he claimed it was a copy of Mein Kampf, and that anyway it's all innocent enough because the friend who gave it to him was a Jew.

When the friend was contacted, he clarified that it wasn't MK but My New Order, a book of Hitler's speeches. And that, actually, he isn't Jewish.

This story definitely seems to be true.

#13
ex-husbands too

travelerxxx on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 9:05pm
I think she told the truth.

@wokkamile

Further, Trump's ex-wife brought this up - if I remember correctly - 20, or more, years ago. It was from an interview in Vanity Fair. You can dredge it up online if you want. The Vanity Fair site was where I read it years ago.

I don't think Trump was planning a presidential bid back in the day, so the revelation of Trump's reading material wasn't quite the bombshell then. Curious? Yes, even then. Hardly surprising if you've followed Trump's antics over the decades.

#13.1 can also tell some inconvenient truths. This one is backed by the fellow who gave him the book . When a reporter, who had heard about this, asked Trump about it, he claimed it was a copy of Mein Kampf, and that anyway it's all innocent enough because the friend who gave it to him was a Jew.

When the friend was contacted, he clarified that it wasn't MK but My New Order, a book of Hitler's speeches. And that, actually, he isn't Jewish.

This story definitely seems to be true.

wokkamile on Mon, 08/12/2019 - 10:00pm
No need to dredge

@travelerxxx the link to that VF article is at the top of the article I linked above.

We know he had a brief bid for the presidency in the 2000 cycle, iirc.

And practicing his speechmaking with the Hitler speeches: reminds me that Hitler himself spent years before he came to power practicing in front of a mirror, with a photographer capturing images.

No, Donald is not Hitler. But does have authoritarian/dictatorial tendencies, along with the desire to whip up the crowd on an ignorant populist basis, including racial division.

#13.1.2

Further, Trump's ex-wife brought this up - if I remember correctly - 20, or more, years ago. It was from an interview in Vanity Fair. You can dredge it up online if you want. The Vanity Fair site was where I read it years ago.

I don't think Trump was planning a presidential bid back in the day, so the revelation of Trump's reading material wasn't quite the bombshell then. Curious? Yes, even then. Hardly surprising if you've followed Trump's antics over the decades.

travelerxxx on Tue, 08/13/2019 - 3:01am
Tired eyes

@wokkamile

...the link to that VF article is at the top of the article I linked above.

And so it is! I missed it! Thanks.

#13.1.2.1 the link to that VF article is at the top of the article I linked above.

We know he had a brief bid for the presidency in the 2000 cycle, iirc.

And practicing his speechmaking with the Hitler speeches: reminds me that Hitler himself spent years before he came to power practicing in front of a mirror, with a photographer capturing images.

No, Donald is not Hitler. But does have authoritarian/dictatorial tendencies, along with the desire to whip up the crowd on an ignorant populist basis, including racial division.

[Aug 13, 2019] Putin is the Emmanuel Goldstein of the Neoliberal World Order, every bad decision, every mistake, every failure, especially the ones that were obviously flawed from the start, are the results of that dastardly Putin.

Aug 13, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Aug 13 2019 15:43 utc | 29

Much of that crap appears to be Projection. Putin's Polices Destroying Russian Farmers will probably be next since as you'll learn once you click that it's the exact opposite. It looks quite possible that the opening up of ag lands in Russia's Far East will see China cease its imports of soybeans from the Western Hemisphere as it's already done so in response to Trump's Trade War. As the article notes:

"Net farm income in America has plunged by nearly half over the last five years from $123.4 billion in 2013 to $63 billion last year. It plummeted by 16 percent last year alone."

And with China's market closed, the result this year will be even worse. And it's all Putin's fault!

And to make matters worse, Putin has weaponized the Outlaw US Empire's budget deficit, forcing it to spend "more than twice as fast as tax collections" and now stands at $867 Billion through "the first 10 months of the budget year." (No link, from Business section of today's newspaper.) IMO, that will be headlined as: Putin Loses Control Over Russia's Budget as Deficit Skyrockets!

It's this one most of us are hopeful of reading soon:

Putin Sinks US Empire Without Firing One Shot.

FSD , Aug 13 2019 15:53 utc | 32

@karlof1

Yes, we're in rich psychological terrain. Aberrant terrain, to the extent such things can be extrapolated to system behavior.

It's a psychological projection. The Full Spectrum Dominance crowd feels their quest receding into permanent incompletion. So they wishfully project their sense of loss onto the opponent. Wanting everything, dominance perceives alternate visions as being nothing less than obstinate escapees. Who knew they were in a figmentary prison in the first place? Competing visions, through no real fault of their own, become weapon pointed at this totalizing vision. Heck, they're not even competing. They're just living.

Dominance's blind spot is that it never stops to ask if others want to be dominated. This makes it structurally myopic and prone to self-deception.

The same psychology is found in the sanctioning impulse. "In order to preserve our sense of omnipotence, we hereby subtract you from the game board." But pariah nations, while perhaps vanishing psychologically to the offended party ('you're dead to me now') don't vanish in any existential sense. They re-gather under different umbrellas: SCO, OBOR, AIIB, etc.

Too many subtractions and the subtractees acquire a critical mass all their own. Subtraction adds up. There is an opportunity here to exploit the Empire's irrational denialism -via the rational accumulation of estranged and heretofore 'banished' interests.

One day, the lesser critical mass will achieve parity, then dominance or perhaps simply multipolarity. Before that day, a ruinous world war could happen first. This latter decision has already been taken since pre-kinetic versions of WW3 are popping up everywhere at once as though instigated by some spanning Hidden Hand.

Pro Jection , Aug 13 2019 16:00 utc | 33
It is called projection. We know that the western banking maffia is losing it. Freud would have confirmed.
Kadath , Aug 13 2019 16:47 utc | 40
Putin is the Emmanuel Goldstein of the Neoliberal World Order, every bad decision, every mistake, every failure, especially the ones that were obviously flawed from the start, are the results of that dastardly Putin. It's amazing how in the Empire of the Lies, a competent political leader of a sovereign country is becoming a Lex Luthor like supervillain mastermind.

It's almost romantic that these Western elites spend so much time high up in their ivory towers surrounded by the wastelands of their own making, clutching their pearls, thinking about Putin and wondering how he will get to them.

ToivoS , Aug 13 2019 17:59 utc | 53
We should note that Obama was the first to announce Putin would fail in Syria when the Russians came to help out the Assad government against the US backed Takfaris. The results of Russian support were quite spectacular. Of course, the war is still going on but there is no question that Russia saved the Syrian state. Can anyone mention a single military victory that the US has achieved since what? Grenada under Reagan and Bush I against Panama ?? Other than those two "victories" the US has lost every war it has engaged in since the end of WWII.
Mishko , Aug 13 2019 17:59 utc | 54
It gets confusing, but that is the point of all this.
We should be scared of our hero, tragic anti-hero, uber villain and rolemodel.
Not just Russians under the bed, but THE Russian under the bed.
Or so many a lady (or not, as the case may be) might wish or be fearful of or both...
(In other news: Epstein dead? Highly unlikely, ever so doubtful, I do side with Aangirfan on this)
S , Aug 13 2019 18:26 utc | 56

I especially like how Putin lost in Crimea. One of his best losses, in my opinion.

Also, Masha and the Bear , Russia's ultimate weapon in the war for the minds of the Western youth, continues its march across the globe: the "Маша плюс каша" episode is at 4.08 billion views ( 4th most-viewed video on YouTube ) and growing fast, set to overtake Wiz Khalifa's "See You Again" (4.20 billion) and Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" (4.35 billion) in the coming weeks.

so , Aug 13 2019 18:40 utc | 59
If Putin ran for President of the United States of America I'd vote for him in a heartbeat.
S , Aug 13 2019 19:51 utc | 73
@Bemildred #10: What a great piece by Patrick Armstrong. Very logical and rational. Perfect for deprogramming people brainwashed by the Mockingbird Media.
Nathan Mulcahy , Aug 13 2019 19:56 utc | 74
How much more do the lobotomized American Sheeple (generally not represented in this forum) need to realize that the mainstream "news" media are the propaganda arms of the western (Anglo-Zionist) power structure?

Enjoy a similar example, this with Putin's "bitch".
https://youtu.be/rLEchPZm318


ben , Aug 13 2019 20:16 utc | 77
"Let us be clear here. It is the United States who has broken its word and treaties consistently. We said we wouldn't move NATO up to Russia's borders and then we did. We unilaterally walked away from the ABM treaty, we unilaterally walked away from the Iran nuclear deal, we unilaterally walked away from the INF treaty and we will almost certainly walk away from the nuclear test ban treaty. We always allege violations from the other side but never provide any proof of said violations. The United States has invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria - so far without consequences. The United States has fomented coups in Ukraine (twice), Georgia, probably in Brazil, Venezuela (twice) - again, without consequences. And people wonder why I gag when I listen to Pompous pontificate that Iran needs to start acting like a normal nation."

Posted by: Jeff | Aug 13 2019 17:03 utc | 43

Clear, concise, and right on target. Should be on a handbill, and passed out to the general public. Thanks Jeff!!

alain , Aug 13 2019 20:32 utc | 79
Breaking News : Putin has a private army now. How devilish. CNN is definitely a bunch of clowns, that makes you laugh everytime they talk. Enjoy this one:

https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/08/africa/putins-private-army-car-intl/

[Aug 13, 2019] Understandably, senator McConnell' has reacted with aghast over the political attacks. He called it "modern-day McCarthyism" harking back to the Cold War years of Red Baiting. He even said it was worse that the past McCarthyism. And he has a point there.

Aug 13, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

psychohistorian , Aug 12 2019 5:03 utc | 67

Below is a link to a Strategic Culture posting that speaks to my comment above (#58) claim of public ignorance and ability to be manipulated

Moscow Mitch, Secret Russian Subs and Russophobia Derangement

The take away quote
"
At a recent political event in his home state of Kentucky, McConnell was heckled and booed by Democrat supporters chanting "Moscow Mitch, Moscow Mitch!" The protesters were wearing T-shirts and brandishing placards with images of McConnell donning a Cossack hat with Soviet-era hammer and sickles.

Understandably, the 77-year-old senator has reacted with aghast over the political attacks. He called it "modern-day McCarthyism" harking back to the Cold War years of Red Baiting. He even said it was worse that the past McCarthyism. And he has a point there.

McConnell's exasperation is borne out of the complete irrational vacuousness of the accusations. The six-time elected lawmaker is the longest-serving Republican senator. He is a grandee of the traditionally rightwing party, with an "impeccable" record of being hawkish towards Russia and President Vladimir Putin.

How anyone can construe that good ole boy McConnell is a Russian stooge is too absurd for words. What the accusations do betray is the total derangement and politically illiterate condition of mainstream American political and media culture.
"

Jackrabbit , Aug 12 2019 4:24 utc | 64

Grieved thanks for the warning but ...

Sometimes it's appropriate to call out, for the benefit of others, the propaganda memes and dishonest arguments employed by a pro-establishment commenter.

One such trick is the pretense that a pro-establishment commenter is concerned about "cynicism" or "conspiracy theories". You see, thinking for yourself may cause a reluctance to love Big Brother. And sharing that thinking in an open forum is even more problematical.

A pro-establishment commenter with pro-establishment concerns often attempts to cover their tracks. They claim to be socialist and/or that they are seeking "common ground" but such characterizations are merely honey for the distasteful medicine that the pro-establishment commenter seeks to administer.

Unsuspecting readers often fall prey to the soothing words of a pro-establishment trickster. Sometimes even supporting the pro-establishment commenter's right to express views that are already well-covered in MSM. But just as "SALE" sounds sooo appealing yet often is not what it seems, concerns of a pro-establish commenter are often misleading and crafted to confuse and misdirect.

So I implore you ... don't be fooled. Think for yourself. And don't take allow yourself to be swindled by a "SALE" that is really just bait and switch.

[Aug 13, 2019] The new war is essentially economic; it is a war of sanctions and limiting free movement of ship movements around the globe. It is a war of tankers and oil platforms.

Aug 13, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Grieved , Aug 12 2019 3:09 utc | 51

@2 BM

Wow, that is an outstanding tour d'horizon from Magnier you linked. This is a keeper to show others who may be amenable to learning about today's Middle East balance of forces, and how it has been arrived at.

Succinct yet very comprehensive, the piece not only catches up the histories of recent years, but provides an analysis of today and the near-to-mid-term future - both military and geopolitical. It speaks of the various lessons learned along the way, including the lessons being absorbed in real time today as the confrontation between Iran and the US has barely yet begun and yet racked up totally instructive scores.

The new war is essentially economic; it is a war of sanctions and limiting free movement of ship movements around the globe. It is a war of tankers and oil platforms. It is a starvation war where no one can threaten the enemy with a return to the "stone age" because the firepower is now universally available . Yemen is the best example: the threat of bombing Dubai forced the Emirates to seek Iranian mediation to prevent a missile attack against them. The Houthis, despite years of Saudi bombing of Yemen, have also managed to bomb Saudi airports, military bases and oil stations in the heart of Saudi Arabia, using cruise missiles and armed drones. [My emphasis]

And Hezbolllah has cemented its standing with nations in the region, expanded its skill from guerrilla and small-theater to nation-size theater, and this:

It has run intensive courses in the use of its drones, used its precision missiles with accuracy, produced thousands of highly trained Special Forces and it has fought an enemy (al-Qaeda) that is much more motivated to fight to the death than any Israeli Special Forces units. [My emphasis]

Israel is essentially paralyzed. Even to the extent, as Magnier relates, of being careful to warn Hezbollah drivers before bombing its supply trucks, because "Israel wanted to avoid human casualties among Hezbollah officers, fully aware of the price of retaliation. " My emphasis again.

The bad guys have fallen behind - as we know, but as Magnier illustrates so clearly in this appraisal, with his review of the initial western strategies just a few years ago and how they have all been rendered null. Even the US now is an antique target for modern missile and drone technology - and the battle-hardened skill with these weapons definitely resides with the Levant axis rather than with the imperialists and their dogs.

The future? This:

Gaza, along with Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad, are all highly equipped by Tehran with sufficient missiles to inflict real damage on Israel and on US forces deployed in the Middle East. Israel is playing around by targeting various objectives tactically but with no real strategic purpose- only for Netanyahu to keep himself busy and train his Air Force, and to gain publicity in the media. Soon, when Syria recovers and Iraq is stronger, the Israeli promenade will have to cease. Hezbollah in Lebanon may also find a way in the near future to keep its irregular but organised army busy by firing anti-air missiles against Israeli jets and imposing new rules of engagement.

Here's the link again:
From 2006 to 2019: after failures in Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Yemen, war is no longer an option for Israel

Great job, Elijah J. Magnier!

[Aug 12, 2019] Russiagate is the idea around which varied interests can be organized

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Like the Wolfowitz explanation of the Iraq War, Russiagate is the idea around which varied interests can be organized. Cold Warriors like to hate on Russia. It justifies arms spending and their own importance. Clintonistas need an excuse to distract from her being a loser. The DNC needs an excuse for manipulating the candidate selection in favor of donor interests. "Moderates" need a distraction from their ongoing refusal to address the interests of voters. ..."
Aug 12, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Mark Thomason , August 12, 2019 at 10:34

Like the Wolfowitz explanation of the Iraq War, Russiagate is the idea around which varied interests can be organized. Cold Warriors like to hate on Russia. It justifies arms spending and their own importance. Clintonistas need an excuse to distract from her being a loser. The DNC needs an excuse for manipulating the candidate selection in favor of donor interests. "Moderates" need a distraction from their ongoing refusal to address the interests of voters.

[Aug 12, 2019] Clinton and to rush to Brexit? Why, the evil Russians, of course, are behind it all by Craig Murray

Russophrenia is rampant in the USA those days...
From comments: "I’ll say it again. Why aren’t progressive Dimocraps clamoring to have Hillary water-boarded so the truth can be heard?."
Aug 12, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Douglas Adams famously suggested that the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. In the world of the political elite, the answer is Russiagate. What has caused the electorate to turn on the political elite, to defeat Hillary

[Aug 12, 2019] Russiagate is Dead, but for the Political Establishment, it is Still the New 42 by Craig Murray

"Mueller's Inquiry was never a serious search for truth is that at no stage was any independent forensic independence taken from the DNC's servers, instead the word of the DNC's own security consultants was simply accepted as true. Finally no progress has been made – or is intended to be made – on the question of who killed Seth Rich, while the pretend police investigation has "lost" his laptop. "
See also Robert Muller: Establishment Sweethard helped Bush to see the Iraqq war https://youtu.be/mK5T_rZmVyg
Notable quotes:
"... Like the Wolfowitz explanation of the Iraq War, Russiagate is the idea around which varied interests can be organized. Cold Warriors like to hate on Russia. It justifies arms spending and their own importance. Clintonistas need an excuse to distract from her being a loser. The DNC needs an excuse for manipulating the candidate selection in favor of donor interests. "Moderates" need a distraction from their ongoing refusal to address the interests of voters. ..."
Aug 12, 2019 | consortiumnews.com
... ... ...

So, there we have it. Russiagate as a theory is as completely exploded as the appalling Guardian front page lie published by Kath Viner and Luke Harding fabricating the "secret meetings" between Paul Manafort and Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy. But the political class and the mainstream media, both in the service of billionaires, have moved on to a stage where truth is irrelevant, and I do not doubt that Russiagate stories will thus persist. They are so useful for the finances of the armaments and security industries, and in keeping the population in fear and jingoist politicians in power.

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

michael , August 12, 2019 at 19:53

So far there is as much evidence presented that Martians interfered in the 2016 Election as RUSSIANS!!!
Just a much needed excuse to blow on the dying embers of the Cold War and get the nuclear weapons ready.
I'm still waiting for Robert Mueller to be tried for lying to Congress (when asked who hired him, instead of saying "I have no idea", he said "Bush!" It is a matter of public record that Reagan hired him, a blatant lie! Is Michael Flynn out of jail yet?)

Drew Hunkins , August 12, 2019 at 14:49

" and I do not doubt that Russiagate stories will thus persist. They are so useful for the finances of the armaments and security industries, and in keeping the population in fear and jingoist politicians in power "

They are also extremely useful as a scapegoat for the corporate warmongering DNC to camouflage the genuine reasons they lost to Trump of all people.

Mark Thomason , August 12, 2019 at 10:34

Like the Wolfowitz explanation of the Iraq War, Russiagate is the idea around which varied interests can be organized. Cold Warriors like to hate on Russia. It justifies arms spending and their own importance. Clintonistas need an excuse to distract from her being a loser. The DNC needs an excuse for manipulating the candidate selection in favor of donor interests. "Moderates" need a distraction from their ongoing refusal to address the interests of voters.

jessika , August 12, 2019 at 09:38

"Those whom the gods would destroy they first drive mad".

Larry Mofield , August 12, 2019 at 08:41

If Russia actually wanted to help someone win I think it would be Hilary because Trump is a plain shooter from the hip and takes nothing off of nobody.
If anything Sanders should had sued the DNC and Hilary for rigging the DNC
Go figure why he has kept his mouth shut.

Bif Webster , August 12, 2019 at 11:13

Putin preferred Obama to his running mates as well. But you won't ever hear that on the corporate "news" media.

Others sued on behalf of Bernie. That case died in south Florida, near Wasserman-Schultz's district yeah, and the excuse was, "The DNC is a 'private organization" and do what they like, apparently. However, the "judge" did not find it odd that a private entity can run a public election? And how there's an obvious conflict of interest involved?

Bernie kept his mouth shut because he's inside the Belly of the Beast.

Martin , August 12, 2019 at 11:54

i think there was something of a lawsuit, but the judge decided that the rigging was an inside thing to which no external laws applied. if you got a non-profit or a company and there's no internal rules that forbid the rigging of votes, rigging is not illegal. the superdelegates still exist.

Seer , August 12, 2019 at 12:04

He kept his mouth shut because advancing "My Revolution" was more important. And, because he's NOT a Democrat: he's only "allowed" to run as one: he is therefore a little more constrained. Had he lashed out he'd have NOT been allowed to run again as a Democrat -- bank on that!

Tulsi Gabbard, on the other hand, is a Democrat, in which case she really couldn't be kicked out: it was she who acted as Bernie's mouth on this matter.

Trump is a piece of crap. There's nothing straight about him at all. He's a con-man of the highest order. Other than give money to the rich he's done nothing: and "nothing," is probably the best that could have been hoped for given that he could have started some wars (he hasn't found one that he feels safe would not undermine his presidency, otherwise he'd be lighting it up). The reason the guy is so good at firing people is because he's so crappy about firing them.

Oh yeah, I have not cast a single vote for anyone I have mentioned here.

evelync , August 12, 2019 at 13:20

Interesting question, Larry Mofield!

Bernie's not a stupid guy and I believe (as does Cornel West and Noam Chomsky) he's dedicated to policies that serve working people and sustainability.(as I see it – reversing the NeoLiberal agenda in order to restore a level playing field for working people and also to shift to a democratic, non imperial foreign policy.)

So why didn't he, let's call him "David", not aim his slingshot at the DNC, let's call it "Goliath"?

Probably because a single stone in a slingshot was hopeless. He was up against a massive corrupt network of hangers on, IMO, who rabidly shouted down the person who dared to question Clinton's policies.

For an even more recent example of a delusional grandiose, imperial mind set, let's take the 200+ people affiliated with the JFK School of Government at Harvard. The ones who accepted the School's shameful withdrawal of Chelsea Manning's honorary fellowship because Pompeo and Morrell attacked it with Cold War rhetoric. Manning's crime? Telling people the truth about horrific wrongdoing she witnessed in Iraq. When I emailed 200 people at the JFK School a shame-on-you letter I heard back from only one who chastised (threatened) me for not understanding "National Security" .say what????) Others chimed in to agree with her. (I shared that email with Robert Parry at the time and he emailed back that he didn't blame me for being outraged. He was such a wonderful person.)

So Bernie had the whole MSNBC related propaganda machine at his throat.
– think Mimi Rocah's recent "he makes my skin crawl" comment, knowing surely, that her words would be applauded over there.
and think all the people who have accepted since 2016 that the Russians cost Hillary Clinton the election in denial over the truth – a flawed candidate who seemed to consider her constituency the big banks and the polluters and the war machine.

I know lifelong conservative Republicans who liked Bernie in 2016 and like him now because they find him truthful but didn't trust Clinton and some voted for Trump in order to beat her.

This country is filled with a patronage network of well off established people including Democrats who believe everything's fine as it is and are willing to shut their eyes to what's not working – the financial crisis of the working class, the racism underlying the for profit prison system and immigration system, the horrific endless regime change wars and the massive deregulation of banks on Bill Clinton's watch and much more, including the Climate Crisis.

It's taken almost 3 years to discredit what apparently was a faux "excuse" why Hillary Clinton lost. Too many voters in key states didn't trust her to serve their interests because she clearly was an apparatchik for the MICIMATT.

Enough of Trump's voters were willing to gamble on this "unknown" character who piggy backed off what Bernie was saying at the time – too bad he was lying ..

rosemerry , August 12, 2019 at 15:39

The whole suggestion has ignored any words and actions of Pres. Putin, who is careful to keep to the truth. He often stated that he would accept whoever the US population chose (ie did not even want to lean towards the one claiming to desire better relations, let alone interfere) because the difference between US administrations was small and policies unlikely to change in 2016. Because the US constantly causes "régime change" does not mean that Russia does. The quick decision to "blame Russia" immediately after Trump's win, activated by Obama expelling diplomats and stealing their US property, set the ball rolling and it has not stopped.

phillip sawicki , August 12, 2019 at 08:37

T he AP and no doubt other media are setting the stage for claiming that if Trump is reelected in 2020, the Russians again were responsible. As HItler learned, repeat a lie often enough and it will assume the appearance of truth. It's not surprising that the Democrats led by Hillary are behind this maneuver. The Dems have been blaming Russia ever since Truman did so in 1945.

Sally Snyder , August 12, 2019 at 08:05

As shown in this article, key Western countries including the United States have put in place a mechanism that is supposed to protect us from election meddling:

https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-g7-rapid-response-mechanism.html

Given the anti-Russia bias that took root and has become pervasive in the West since 2014 and, in particular, since the Hillary Clinton loss in 2016 which is blamed on Russian-sourced disinformation, it is interesting to see that the G7 has been driven to take extreme moves to battle what they see as an "evil Russia".

jdd , August 12, 2019 at 07:05

Devastating. A cogent and insightful analysis of Judge Koeltl's decision. Thank you Ambassador Murray.

Michaelevan Hammond , August 12, 2019 at 02:16

What's hilarious is that Binney was able to discern that the download was later split in two and then transmitted state side. Think of when you download a movie or a file .. it doesn't come in 2 parts, you either download the whole thing or it is an error/fail. Binney is able to show that the whole thing is one download at 49mbps impossible speed for transatlantic transmission .he absolute fastest you can achieve over the cable is 29mbps ..plus there are 6-12 NSA monitoring junctions added to the cable to capture such things and not one had any Russians attempting to "hack"(2001 term). It was all just deflection for Hillary and she may we'll have selfishly killed the Dems party.

Realist , August 12, 2019 at 00:37

Russiagate is not "dead." It has more lives than a cat bitten by a vampire. It is permanently undead. The antithesis of a dead parrot.

Check out some of its latest incarnations:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-11/moscow-mitch-secret-russian-subs-and-russophobia-derangement

How many times does Rachel Maddow have to tell you? Anyone who did not vote for Hillary Clinton and refuses to back her never-ending, constantly metamorphosing coup against Trump has got to be a Putin agent even Mitch McConnell. Check back tomorrow for the latest Maddowsplaining on this and other bad crazyness.

Seer , August 12, 2019 at 12:07

I agree. The FACT that the US has been sanctioning Russia for the better part of 100 years pretty much tells it all. It's about the West's ruling elite keeping Their game going: but, nothing lasts forever, and this game is about to run out on them (the perpetual growth model, which has given them their power, is ending).

Realist , August 12, 2019 at 00:18

Unless he was being sarcastic, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough tweeted that the Russians were probably behind Jeff Epstein's "suiciding" in the high security NYC federal lockup!

Anyone who truly believes that Epstein actually took his own life probably does still have a severe case of Putin Derangement Syndrome, aka Russophrenia, Russiagate-itis, -osis or whatever ya wanna call it. Their minds cannot co-exist within both the Deep State Matrix and objective reality at the same time. Blaming all evil in the world on Russia gives them license to act outside conventional morality with impunity.

Mark Stanley , August 12, 2019 at 11:32

Yes, they are endeavoring to tip-toe around this one. If Epstein had started squealing, the excrement would really have hit the fan. After his purported suicide, the smokescreen "conspiracy" word popped up immediately in every mainstream mention of Epstein.
If the populace found out about the deranged sexual practices of too many of the world's elites it would certainly upset the apple cart–to use an American expression.

Seer , August 12, 2019 at 15:51

This IS VERY DEEP! First three parts of this most excellent four part series is available, starting with this one (Mint Press also needs supporting).

https://www.mintpressnews.com/shocking-origins-jeffrey-epstein-blackmail-roy-cohn/260621/

After reading this I now understand why Trump won't release his tax returns.

Realist , August 12, 2019 at 18:12

Seer,

Probably, because like Romney, he didn't pay any.

Dershowitz's client Leonna Helmsley explained the principle decades ago: "Only the little people pay taxes." Probably as truthful a description of the American system as you will ever hear. Sadly, it went down the memory hole because the media will never mention it again. Investigative reporters like David Cay Johnston have to write individually researched books on the subject and hope that the swamp creatures don't seek retribution against him some dark night.

The most the public is ever going to get in this world is perhaps a brief glimmer of the truth through the hard work and suffering of individuals like Assange, Manning and a few other brave altruistic souls, but never justice. The system is set up to sacrifice the lives of millions for the benefit of dozens.

[Aug 12, 2019] RAY McGOVERN Rich's Ghost Haunts the Courts Consortiumnews

Notable quotes:
"... That epithet has a sordid history in the annals of U.S. intelligence. Legendary CIA Director Allen Dulles used the "brand-them-conspiracy-theorists" ploy following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy when many objected -- understandably -- to letting him pretty much run the Warren Commission, even though the CIA was suspected of having played a role in the murder. The "conspiracy theorist" tactic worked like a charm then, and now. Well, up until just now. ..."
"... U.S. Courts apply far tougher standards to evidence than do the intelligence community and the pundits who loll around lazily, feeding from the intelligence PR trough. This (hardly surprising) reality was underscored when a Dallas financial adviser named Ed Butowsky sued National Public Radio and others for defaming him about the role he played in controversial stories relating to Rich. On August 7, NPR suffered a setback, when U.S. District Court Judge Amos Mazzant affirmed a lower court decision to allow Butowsky's defamation lawsuit to proceed. ..."
"... NPR gave Isikoff 37 minutes on its popular Fresh Air program to spin his yarn about how the Seth Rich story got started. You guessed it; the Russians started it . No, we are not making this up. ..."
"... It is far from clear that Isikoff can be much help to NPR in the libel case against it. Isikoff's own writings on Russiagate are notably lacking in "verifiable statements of fact" -- information that cannot be verified. ..."
"... In any case, The Washington Post , had already debunked Isikoff's claim (which later in his article he switched to being only "purported") by pointing out that Americans had already tweeted the theory of Rich's murder days before the alleged Russian intervention. ..."
"... Butowsky's libel lawsuit can now proceed to discovery, which will include demands for documents and depositions that are likely to shed light on whatever role Rich may have played in leaking to WikiLeaks . If the government obstructs or tries to slow-roll the case, we shall have to wait and see, for example, if the court will acquiesce to the familiar government objection that information regarding Rich's murder must be withheld as a state secret? Hmmm. What would that tell us? ..."
"... During discovery in a separate court case, the government was unable to produce a final forensic report on the "hacking" of the Democratic National Committee. The DNC-hired cyber firm, CrowdStrike, failed to complete such a report, and that was apparently okay with then FBI Director James Comey, who did not require one. ..."
"... The thorny question of "persuasive sourcing," came up even more starkly on July 1, when federal Judge Dabney Friedrich ordered Robert Mueller to stop pretending he had proof that the Russian government was behind the Internet Research Agency's supposed attempt to interfere via social media in the 2016 election. Middle school-level arithmetic can prove the case that the IRA's use of social media to support Trump is ludicrous on its face. ..."
"... As journalist Patrick Lawrence put it recently: "Three years after the narrative we call Russiagate was framed and incessantly promoted, it crumbles into rubble as we speak." ..."
"... In a long interview with Lauria a few months ago in New Zealand aired this month on CN Live! , Kim Dotcom provided a wealth of detail, based on what he described as first-hand knowledge, regarding how Democratic National Committee documents were leaked to WikiLeaks in 2016. ..."
"... The major takeaway: the evidence presented by Dotcom about Seth Rich can be verified or disproven if President Trump summons the courage to order the director of NSA to dig out the relevant data, including the conversations Dotcom says he had with Rich and Rich may have had with WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. ..."
"... Dotcom said he put Rich in touch with a middleman to transfer the DNC files to WikiLeaks . ..."
"... Mark Twain is said to have warned, "How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!" After three years of "Russia-Russia-Russia" in the corporate -- and even in some "progressive" -- media, this conditioning will not be easy to reverse. ..."
Aug 12, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Simply letting the name "Seth Rich" pass your lips can condemn you to the leper colony built by the Washington Establishment for "conspiracy theorists," (the term regularly applied to someone determined to seek tangible evidence, and who is open to alternatives to "Russia-did-it.")

Rich was a young DNC employee who was murdered on a street in Washington, DC, on July 10, 2016. Many, including me, suspect that Rich played some role in the leaking of DNC emails to WikiLeaks . There is considerable circumstantial evidence that this may have been the case. Those who voice such suspicions, however, are, ipso facto , branded "conspiracy theorists."

That epithet has a sordid history in the annals of U.S. intelligence. Legendary CIA Director Allen Dulles used the "brand-them-conspiracy-theorists" ploy following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy when many objected -- understandably -- to letting him pretty much run the Warren Commission, even though the CIA was suspected of having played a role in the murder. The "conspiracy theorist" tactic worked like a charm then, and now. Well, up until just now.

Rich Hovers Above the Courts

U.S. Courts apply far tougher standards to evidence than do the intelligence community and the pundits who loll around lazily, feeding from the intelligence PR trough. This (hardly surprising) reality was underscored when a Dallas financial adviser named Ed Butowsky sued National Public Radio and others for defaming him about the role he played in controversial stories relating to Rich. On August 7, NPR suffered a setback, when U.S. District Court Judge Amos Mazzant affirmed a lower court decision to allow Butowsky's defamation lawsuit to proceed.

Judge Mazzant ruled that NPR had stated as "verifiable statements of fact" information that could not be verified , and that the plaintiff had been, in effect, accused of being engaged in wrongdoing without persuasive sourcing language.

Isikoff: Russians started it. (Wikipedia)

Imagine! -- "persuasive sourcing" required to separate fact from opinion and axes to grind! An interesting precedent to apply to the ins and outs of Russiagate. In the courts, at least, this is now beginning to happen. And NPR and others in similarly vulnerable positions are scurrying around for allies.??The day after Judge Mazzant's decision, NPR enlisted help from discredited Yahoo! News pundit Michael Isikoff (author, with David Corn, of the fiction-posing-as-fact novel Russian Roulette ). NPR gave Isikoff 37 minutes on its popular Fresh Air program to spin his yarn about how the Seth Rich story got started. You guessed it; the Russians started it . No, we are not making this up.

It is far from clear that Isikoff can be much help to NPR in the libel case against it. Isikoff's own writings on Russiagate are notably lacking in "verifiable statements of fact" -- information that cannot be verified. Watch, for example, his recent interview with Consortium News Editor Joe Lauria on CN Live!

Isikoff admitted to Lauria that he never saw the classified Russian intelligence document reportedly indicating that three days after Rich's murder the Russian SVR foreign intelligence service planted a story about Rich having been the leaker and was killed for it. This Russian intelligence "bulletin," as Isikoff called it, was supposedly placed on a bizarre website that Isikoff admitted was an unlikely place for Russia to spread disinformation. He acknowledged that he only took the word of the former prosecutor in the Rich case about the existence of this classified Russian document.

In any case, The Washington Post , had already debunked Isikoff's claim (which later in his article he switched to being only "purported") by pointing out that Americans had already tweeted the theory of Rich's murder days before the alleged Russian intervention.

' Persuasive Sourcing' & Discovery ??

Butowsky's libel lawsuit can now proceed to discovery, which will include demands for documents and depositions that are likely to shed light on whatever role Rich may have played in leaking to WikiLeaks . If the government obstructs or tries to slow-roll the case, we shall have to wait and see, for example, if the court will acquiesce to the familiar government objection that information regarding Rich's murder must be withheld as a state secret? Hmmm. What would that tell us?

Butowsky: Suit could reveal critical information. (Flickr)

During discovery in a separate court case, the government was unable to produce a final forensic report on the "hacking" of the Democratic National Committee. The DNC-hired cyber firm, CrowdStrike, failed to complete such a report, and that was apparently okay with then FBI Director James Comey, who did not require one.

The incomplete, redacted, draft, second-hand "forensics" that Comey settled for from CrowdStrike does not qualify as credible evidence -- much less "persuasive sourcing" to support the claim that the Russians "hacked" into the DNC. Moreover, CrowdStrike has a dubious reputation for professionalism and a well known anti-Russia bias.

The thorny question of "persuasive sourcing," came up even more starkly on July 1, when federal Judge Dabney Friedrich ordered Robert Mueller to stop pretending he had proof that the Russian government was behind the Internet Research Agency's supposed attempt to interfere via social media in the 2016 election. Middle school-level arithmetic can prove the case that the IRA's use of social media to support Trump is ludicrous on its face.

Russia-gate Rubble

As journalist Patrick Lawrence put it recently: "Three years after the narrative we call Russiagate was framed and incessantly promoted, it crumbles into rubble as we speak." Falling syllogism! Step nimbly to one side.

The "conspiracy theorist" epithet is not likely to much longer block attention to the role, if any, played by Rich -- the more so since some players who say they were directly involved with Rich are coming forward.

In a long interview with Lauria a few months ago in New Zealand aired this month on CN Live! , Kim Dotcom provided a wealth of detail, based on what he described as first-hand knowledge, regarding how Democratic National Committee documents were leaked to WikiLeaks in 2016.

The major takeaway: the evidence presented by Dotcom about Seth Rich can be verified or disproven if President Trump summons the courage to order the director of NSA to dig out the relevant data, including the conversations Dotcom says he had with Rich and Rich may have had with WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.

Dotcom said he put Rich in touch with a middleman to transfer the DNC files to WikiLeaks . Sadly, Trump has flinched more than once rather than confront the Deep State -- and this time there are a bunch of very well connected, senior Deep State practitioners who could face prosecution .

Another sign that Rich's story is likely to draw new focus is the virulent character assassination indulged in by former investigative journalist James Risen.

Not Risen to the Challenge

Risen: Called Binney a "conspiracy theorist." (Flickr)

On August 5, in an interview on The Hill's "Rising," Risen chose to call former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney -- you guessed it -- a "conspiracy theorist" on Russia-gate, with no demurral, much less pushback, from the hosts.

The having-done-good-work-in-the-past-and-now-not-so-much Risen can be considered a paradigm for what has happened to so many Kool-Aid drinking journalists. Jim's transition from investigative journalist to stenographer is, nonetheless unsettling. Contributing causes? It appears that the traditional sources within the intelligence agencies, whom Risen was able to cultivate discreetly in the past, are too fearful now to even talk to him, lest they get caught by one or two of the myriad surveillance systems in play.

Those at the top of the relevant agencies, however, are only too happy to provide grist. Journalists have to make a living, after all. Topic A, of course, is Russian "interference" in the 2016 election. And, of course, "There can be little doubt" the Russians did it.

"Big Jim" Risen, as he is known, jumped on the bandwagon as soon as he joined The Intercept , with a fulsome article on February 17, 2018 titled " Is Donald Trump a Traitor? " Here's an excerpt:

"The evidence that Russia intervened in the election to help Trump win is already compelling, and it grows stronger by the day.

"There can be little doubt now that Russian intelligence officials were behind an effort to hack the DNC's computers and steal emails and other information from aides to Hillary Clinton as a means of damaging her presidential campaign. Russian intelligence also used fake social media accounts and other tools to create a global echo chamber both for stories about the emails and for anti-Clinton lies dressed up to look like news.

"To their disgrace, editors and reporters at American news organizations greatly enhanced the Russian echo chamber, eagerly writing stories about Clinton and the Democratic Party based on the emails, while showing almost no interest during the presidential campaign in exactly how those emails came to be disclosed and distributed." (sic)

Poor Jim. He shows himself just as susceptible as virtually all of his fellow corporate journalists to the epidemic-scale HWHW virus (Hillary Would Have Won) that set in during Nov. 2016 and for which the truth seems to be no cure. From his perch at The Intercept , Risen will continue to try to shape the issues. Russiagaters major ally, of course, is the corporate media which has most Americans pretty much under their thumb.

Incidentally, neither The New York Times, The Washington Post , nor The Wall Street Journal has printed or posted a word about Judge Mazzant's ruling on the Butowsky suit.

Mark Twain is said to have warned, "How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!" After three years of "Russia-Russia-Russia" in the corporate -- and even in some "progressive" -- media, this conditioning will not be easy to reverse.

Here's how one astute observer with a sense of humor described the situation last week, in a comment under one of my recent pieces on Consortium News:

" One can write the most thought-out and well documented academic-like essays, articles and reports and the true believers in Russiagate will dismiss it all with a mere flick of their wrist. The mockery and scorn directed towards those of us who knew the score from day one won't relent. They could die and go to heaven and ask god what really happened during the 2016 election. God would reply to them in no uncertain terms that Putin and the Russians had absolutely nothing to do with anything in '16, and they'd all throw up their hands and say, 'aha! So, God's in on this too!' It's the great lie that won't die."

I'm not so sure. It is likely to be a while though before this is over.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. Ray was a CIA analyst for 27 years; in retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

[Aug 12, 2019] Clinton and to rush to Brexit? Why, the evil Russians, of course, are behind it all by Craig Murray

Russophrenia is rampant in the USA those days...
From comments: "I’ll say it again. Why aren’t progressive Dimocraps clamoring to have Hillary water-boarded so the truth can be heard?."
Aug 12, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Douglas Adams famously suggested that the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. In the world of the political elite, the answer is Russiagate. What has caused the electorate to turn on the political elite, to defeat Hillary

[Aug 11, 2019] Maybe Putin should urge the Russian Paralament to pass an Epstein Act and start sanctioning the hell out of US leaders.

Aug 11, 2019 | www.unz.com

The Alarmist , says: August 10, 2019 at 8:58 pm GMT

Maybe Putin should urge the Russian Paralament to pass an Epstein Act and start sanctioning the hell out of US leaders.

[Aug 11, 2019] Maybe Putin should urge the Russian Paralament to pass an Epstein Act and start sanctioning the hell out of US leaders.

Aug 11, 2019 | www.unz.com

The Alarmist , says: August 10, 2019 at 8:58 pm GMT

Maybe Putin should urge the Russian Paralament to pass an Epstein Act and start sanctioning the hell out of US leaders.

[Aug 08, 2019] The Mainstream Media Wants The Mifsud Story To Just Go Away

Notable quotes:
"... "I can report absolutely that the Durham investigators have now obtained an audiotape deposition of Joseph Mifsud, where he describes his work, why he targeted George Papadopoulos , who directed him to do that, what directions he was given, and why he set that entire process of introducing Papadopoulos to Russia in motion in March of 2016, which is really the flashpoint the starting point of this whole Russia collusion narrative," Solomon told Fox News' Sean Hannity. ..."
"... You can't save the Russian collusion narrative, if you can't find any real Russians anywhere in the story. The FBI under James Comey will then be seen as having engaged in an operation to entrap people, and "Russian agents" turn out to be fakes working for the FBI and who were making fake offers of Russian help to the Trump campaign. ..."
"... Mifsud turning out to be a fake Russian agent working for the FBI ..."
"... To have to admit that the story was actually right, while they themselves were still peddling the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, would be a most bitter pill for many of these 'legitimate' news outlets to swallow. ..."
"... And yet when it comes to recent developments about Mifsud, a key player in this Trump-Russia collusion narrative, many mainstream reporters appear indifferent at best, or outrightly hostile at worst to these latest developments. ..."
"... While many of these mainstream media reporters have been desperately trying to find some way to save the Trump/Russian collusion narrative, the last thing they want to have to report is that the supposed key Russian agent that started this whole Spygate thing wasn't really a Russian agent, but was instead an FBI asset pretending to be a Russian agent. ..."
Aug 07, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

The Mainstream Media Wants The Mifsud Story To Just Go Away

by Tyler Durden Wed, 08/07/2019 - 22:35 0 SHARES

Authored by Brian Cates via The Epoch Times,

While many mainstream media journalists have been spinning fantasies for more than two years, based on Russian collusion stories being handed to them by anonymous sources, crack reporter John Solomon of The Hill has been pursuing real leads and uncovering actual evidence.

Now, Solomon is reporting that an audiotape containing professor Joseph Mifsud's deposition has been given to both U.S. Attorney John Durham's investigators and to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"I can report absolutely that the Durham investigators have now obtained an audiotape deposition of Joseph Mifsud, where he describes his work, why he targeted George Papadopoulos , who directed him to do that, what directions he was given, and why he set that entire process of introducing Papadopoulos to Russia in motion in March of 2016, which is really the flashpoint the starting point of this whole Russia collusion narrative," Solomon told Fox News' Sean Hannity.

"I can also confirm that the Senate Judiciary Committee has also obtained the same deposition," he said.

Mifsud , who I have written about extensively in previous columns , is the key that turns the lock to the lid of this Pandora's box that we refer to as "Spygate."

So I'm wondering why Solomon appears to be the only mainstream reporter pursuing this Mifsud story.

I suspect it's because many DNC Media outlets, after having fallen deeply and passionately in love with the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, are reluctant to call attention to something that would be the final nail in its coffin.

The last thing the mainstream media wants right now would be for Mifsud to go on the record with both Durham's investigative team and with Congress to say he was working for the FBI and was only pretending to be a Russian agent.

If Mifsud was an FBI asset sent to entrap Papadopoulos, then there are no real Russian agents anywhere in this entire Trump-Russia collusion story.

Foreign policy advisor to US President Donald Trump's election campaign, George Papadopoulos goes through security at the US District Court for his sentencing in Washington, DC on Sept. 7, 2018. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

Ponder what that means for a minute.

You can't save the Russian collusion narrative, if you can't find any real Russians anywhere in the story. The FBI under James Comey will then be seen as having engaged in an operation to entrap people, and "Russian agents" turn out to be fakes working for the FBI and who were making fake offers of Russian help to the Trump campaign.

Some of these news media outlets are still - at this late date - claiming there's some life left in the Russian collusion narrative. Mifsud is literally the last dying hope for these people that somewhere in all of this there is a real Russian asset and real collusion. They literally need Mifsud to be a real asset of the Putin government. And if Mifsud goes on the record to officially affirm he was working for the FBI, then the media's last dying hope is gone forever.

To hear the mainstream media tell it, Mifsud turning out to be a fake Russian agent working for the FBI is a "conspiracy theory" created by "right-wing zealots" such as Reps. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

To have to admit that the story was actually right, while they themselves were still peddling the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, would be a most bitter pill for many of these 'legitimate' news outlets to swallow.

Which likely explains why Solomon appears to be just about the only mainstream reporter pursuing the Mifsud story. If there are any other major news outlet reporters out there avidly pursuing the facts about Mifsud and his reported contacts and testimony to Justice Department investigators, they're being pretty quiet about it.

What are the mainstream news reporters who are ignoring the Mifsud story telling themselves, anyway?

"I can't pursue this new information on Mifsud, because it's taking the story where I don't want it to go!"?

That's a thought process that happens only to a political activist disguised as a reporter. No real reporter would ever think that way.

And yet when it comes to recent developments about Mifsud, a key player in this Trump-Russia collusion narrative, many mainstream reporters appear indifferent at best, or outrightly hostile at worst to these latest developments.

While many of these mainstream media reporters have been desperately trying to find some way to save the Trump/Russian collusion narrative, the last thing they want to have to report is that the supposed key Russian agent that started this whole Spygate thing wasn't really a Russian agent, but was instead an FBI asset pretending to be a Russian agent.

These selfsame media reporters have spent more than two years mocking the idea that Mifsud is an FBI asset as something straight out of the right-wing fever swamp of convoluted nonsense conspiracy theories. This is why so many political activists masquerading as journalists are desperately hoping that somehow the Mifsud story will just go away and die on its own.

My instinct says they're going to be massively disappointed soon.

leodogma1 , 17 minutes ago link

The only one's ever colluding with the Russians was Hillary the "******* Rotten" Clinton, Obongo "the One" and the usual suspects (Comey,Clapper,Brennan,Lynch,) et.al .. FBI/DOJ/CIA Rats, British UN-intelligence,Australian & Ukraine interference. The DNC server was never hacked by Russians but copied, the Steele/Fusion GPS dossier was a work of worn out fiction that was originally put together in 2007 and used against McCain.

Nelbev , 28 minutes ago link

Worth a read,

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/05/nunes_mueller_report_cherry-picked_information_to_portray_mifsud_as_russian_agent_he_was_really_a_western_agent.html# !

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/05/05/maria-bartiromo-and-devin-nunes-discuss-predicate-of-spygate-and-mueller-dossier/

Russian agent Mifsud working with Papadopoulos to get Hillary emails claimed by DNC/Crowdstrike/Perkins Coie hacked by Russians before destroyed by Hillary under subpoena, just a FBI paid actor to keep the narrative going and covering up illegal spying on Trump, NSA 702 "about" querries by private contractors ang gov. violating FISA which happened much earlier.

greenskeeper carl , 28 seconds ago link

Conservative treehouse does a better job than just about anywhere else I've seen of tying that all together. But, if they are correct about this, as they've been correct about a lot of things, it won't change anything or matter at all. None of these people will ever be indicted, much less spend a single day in jail. Sad, but true. In a year and a half trump will most likely be gone, and all of this will be memory holed.

TrustbutVerify , 55 minutes ago link

Most Democrats still adhere to the Trump - Russia collusion narrative. And they wonder why some Leftists like Roseanne Barr admit 'Democrats have gone insane.' An opinion shared by most of the rest of the country. And yet public speeches by Trump are enthusiastically attended by thousands - a story very much minimized by these same "news" outlets.

Those Democrats exist within a media bubble (95% of press outlets - online, too) working for the Deep State (99% are Democrats) that misinforms them. Perhaps they are intentionally self-duped. Though it remains shocking how deeply deluded they are.

Justapleb , 30 minutes ago link

They adhere to the hoax because they knew it was a hoax to begin with.

The dems have never been sincere calling people racist, sexist, Hitler, then Russian or Assad stooges, etc.

Their Saul Alinsky tactic is to shriek incessantly, always accuse, never take the defensive because your position is indefensible. You can't argue why offering open borders and free health care to 7 billion people is rational.

That is why the violence is so important to them, and so important to keep concealing the deep state/democratic crime syndicate.

Charlie_Martel , 59 minutes ago link

The main stream media is the mouth piece of the intelligence community.

Walking Turtle , 54 minutes ago link

The main stream media is the mouth piece of the intelligence community.

The main stream media is [ currently ] the mouth piece of the [ criminal Deep State ] intelligence community.

There; fify. The "Intelligence Community" in its entirety is hardly any monolith of pure evil. There are cadres and factions within every agency, including Old-School Patriot.

MUST be said now and then lest others lose perspective. And that is all. 0{:-\o[

Oldwood , 1 hour ago link

None of it matters.

The progressives will happily embrace the worst criminal behavior by our government as JUSTIFIED to depose the devil incarnate Trump.

There is only one principle...winning. The law is THEIR weapon devised to punish their enemies and control their minions. All means are justifiable to the ends, and the vast majority of those "serving" in government have no hesitancy in abusing their power to fulfill the larger agenda.

They will have proof and undeniable facts...to no avail because those charged with the prosecution of their own, will NOT.

DEDA CVETKO , 1 hour ago link

I have spoken with my crystal ball, and it told me something rather unintelligible about Mifsud, MI-6, Seth Rich and Vince Foster.

Does anyone have any idea what my crystal ball was talking about?

Demologos , 34 minutes ago link

When I asked my magic 8-ball if Mifsud was See Aye Ehh, it answered "very likely"

DEDA CVETKO , 20 minutes ago link

Smart balls you got there!

fezline , 1 hour ago link

More sensationalism... how many articles are you going to post saying the spygate situation is about to blow up? I would love for it to happen but unlike the libtards hanging on Rachel Maddow's every word... when I hear the walls are closing in for over 2 or 3 months straight... I start to call ********... Give up the sensationalism Tyler... it's straight up MSM flavor ********.

[Aug 07, 2019] Gaslighting Americans with Russiagate

Aug 07, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

I figured that since 'gaslighting' is a relatively new term, and although I already had a general idea what it meant from context, it would be best to look it up. I was surprised to learn the concept of ' gaslighting ' has been around since 1938.

"a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's belief."

In America's case, gaslighting – like charity – begins at home, and the full force of US government efforts to convince the skeptical that America is more powerful and influential than ever, is still kicking ass and taking names, is felt by Americans.

Mark Chapman July 31, 2019 at 10:40 am

I repeat the assessment of Veteran Intelligence Professional for Sanity (VIPS), to the effect that the hack – if you can call it that – could not have been carried out over the internet, as the data-transfer rate was far too high. In fact, it had all the fingerprints of a portable device such as a thumb drive, coupled directly to the server at a convenient USB port. And then Democratic staffer Seth Rich died, with no convincing explanation for his death. Conservative American techhies tried to explain it away with a barrage of bullshit about how that level of bandwidth could be realized over the internet and how various tags and suchlike proved it was the Russians, but the Russians certainly would know better by now than to leave those kinds of traces, and the US intelligence agencies are quite proud of their ability to insert identifiers to make a transmission appear to have originated someplace else. It's kind of like how Israel and the Ukrainian SBU destroyed people's faith in voice intercepts.

Further musing, from the sublime

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-01/if-there-really-was-evidence-russian-hacking-nsa-would-have-it

To the attempt-to-have-one's-cake-and-eat-it, decidedly less sublime.

https://thefederalist.com/2017/03/21/russians-did-not-hack-election/

The latter reference, despite its hopeful headline, merely argues the election was not 'hacked'; it was 'meddled with', and since the Russians wanted Trump to win, they probably did get up to mischief, we're pretty sure.

This one even speculates that Russia wants American voters to know it can hack them anytime it likes.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/election-cybersecurity/

The electorate is now so polarized, demoralized and witless with fear and fury that voting in America is merely a knee-jerk homage to democracy. Nobody will be remotely surprised if the winner is not who they voted for, even if everyone says "Hey! I voted for him/her too!!" They will just look at each other, nod significantly, and whisper "The Russians". And when you think about it, that's just about where the US government wants them, except for the part about their legitimacy being conferred by Vladimir Putin. That's going to be a hard one for the winner to spin away.

et Al August 1, 2019 at 4:27 am
US intelligence agencies are quite proud of their ability to insert identifiers to make a transmission appear to have originated someplace else. ..

Yes, the famous 'Vault 7' set of NSA tools that were leaked, including a reversing tool so that they can check if someone is trying to pass off their sneaky cyber stuff as American when it's not.

Northern Star July 31, 2019 at 3:17 pm
"PART II: Gaslighting
Author's Note: Because "NATO" these days is little more than a box of spare parts out of which Washington assembles "coalitions of the willing", it's easier for me to write "NATO" than "Washington plus/minus these or those minions".

Both Devastating .Absolutely spot on devastating: (Above is excerpt from the first link)

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/psychoanalysing-nato-projection-and-gaslighting/

"The majority of Americans accept mass murder under the pretext of the right to protect, because their ability to form rational and reasoned opinions has been engineered out of them. This is now the definition of US exceptionalism. It is their ability to manipulate the world into accepting their lawlessness and global hegemony agenda. In seeking to impose its own image upon our world the US has drifted so far from its founding principles, one wonders how they will ever return to them. They have employed a recognised form of torture to ensure capitulation to their mission of world domination which entails the mental, physical and spiritual torture of target civilian populations.

In conclusion, the US has indeed achieved exceptionalism. The US has become an exceptional global executioner and persecutor of Humanity. Imperialism is a euphemism for the depths of abuse the US is inflicting upon the people of this world."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47139.htm

Mark, Your piece is every bit as eloquent and relentless in denouncing the *absolutely* unredeemable, thus subject to that demanded by moral economy.

[Aug 07, 2019] Integrity Initiative forthcoming reviews of forthcoming Assange book: Luke Harding can be relied on to add his 2 cents' worth of conspiracy paranoid garbage, Shaun Walker will be parsing the book for dill references and non-Russia experts like Marina Hyde and Natalie Nougat-head will want a crack as well at reviewing the book.

Aug 07, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Jennifer Hor August 2, 2019 at 1:01 pm

Look out for the bad reviews from The Fraudian's writers: Luke Harding can be relied on to add his 2 cents' worth of conspiracy paranoid garbage, Shaun Walker will be parsing the book for dill references and non-Russia experts like Marina Hyde and Natalie Nougat-head will want a crack as well at reviewing the book.

Probably the only half-decent reviews will be from Mary Dejevski and Prof. Stephen Cohen but theirs will be buried in a back page or inaccessible behind an Error 404 wall.

[Aug 07, 2019] It's the 6th Division now!

Aug 07, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

et Al August 2, 2019 at 3:48 am

It's the 6th Division now!

The Register: New British Army psyops unit fires rebrandogun, smoke clears to reveal I'm sorry, Dave
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/01/british_army_shows_us_its_cyber_ring/

This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardise it

6 (UK) Division is the new organisational home for the Army's "asymmetric edge", comprising all things "Intelligence, Counter-Intelligence, Information Operations, Electronic Warfare, Cyber and Unconventional Warfare".

Launched this morning, 6 Div is a rebranding of the formation formerly known as Force Troops Command, which covered a hotchpotch of Royal Signals, Intelligence Corps and other units, including the infamous 77 Brigade
####

Don't forget to hit the comments for hilarity!

Also, the timing of the announcement says plenty, i.e. slipping it in to the news stream when people have already gone on holiday and all the BREXIT and other bollocks. I've not seen this reported on the tv in the UK – which is currently facing severe flooding etc.

et Al August 2, 2019 at 4:07 am
Is it just me or is all the PPNN reporting that 'Putin's support has dropped to levels not seen since 2011!'. Of course they don't actually give you any numbers and cherry pick dodgy poll numbers but there really is this Pavlovian reaction anytime there is a demonstration in Russia, like undertakers gathering at an allegedly dangerous road crossing waiting for some cyclist to be dragged under a trash lorry so that they can tut tut and then profit from the cyclist's misfortune. Nix that, the PPNN are just professional versions of MacBeth's witches, something which they don't understand is a story .
Mark Chapman August 2, 2019 at 3:01 pm
Putin is in as much danger of being unceremoniously chucked out of office as he is of choking to death on his grandmother's knitting. The west is ever hopeful, and dutifully rallies to the glorification of every new dissident firebrand, but whether or not they know it, they are just going through the motions. The only group, and I mean the only one, that would benefit from Putin's overthrow would be the disaffected kreakliy and the poncy forgotten semi-intellectuals. They would be feted by the west as political visionaries, and perhaps given minor government positions to satisfy their vanity. But who else would make out like a bandit? The military? Hardly – the west, after years of giggling about Russia's decrepit military, lapsed into an uneasy silence on the subject just about the time that long-distance Kalibr cruise-missile attack took place from the Caspian Sea into Syria, and a west given meddling-room would want to disband the Russian military, if anything, down to a token force of absolutely-trustworthy sycophants who would probably be issued with American weapons. The oligarchs? Hardly – western business would be snapping up former state assets while simultaneously carrying out an 'anti-corruption drive' under the new President's imprimatur. Small businesses? Hardly – corporate interest would be in melding large state interests into the Corporate Borg, and their method is to squeeze out small business in order to expand market share. The people? Hardly – Russia would be a convenient place to move all the refugee immigrants from that entire hemisphere, while the stubborn loyalty of the population to Putin would not be forgotten.

It is no coincidence that it is always the same people who show up to bitch and carp about how dreadful Putin is, and how Russia needs American-style freedom and democracy and non-stop Pride parades and all the trappings of fresh admission to Club West. They are the only people who would stand to benefit from driving Putin out. Nobody else is interested.

Mark Chapman August 2, 2019 at 4:50 pm
They're just trying to get some mileage out of Olga what's-her-name, and make it look like a drop in Putin's poll numbers happened exactly at the moment this young political firebrand emerged. Pretty sad, really, but you can't tell 'em, and it wouldn't make any difference. They have to try, it's the same instinct that makes a dog lick its nose if you smear cheese on it. The western media would rush to interview and endorse a talking Russian toad if it said "I hate Putin".

[Aug 06, 2019] Antiwar.com vs. the Decline of American Journalism by Justin Raimondo

Notable quotes:
"... it turned out that the very people who were up in arms about "fake news" were the ones propagating their own version of it. WikiLeaks did much to expose their game by publicizing the key role played by the Legacy Media in acting as an extension of the Clinton campaign. However, the real unmasking came after the November election, when the rage of the liberal elites became so manifest that "reporters" who would normally be loath to reveal their politics came out of the closet, so to speak, and started telling us that the old journalistic standard of objectivity no longer applied. The election of Trump, they averred, meant that the old standards must be abandoned and a new, and openly partisan bias must take its place. In honor of this new credo, the Washington Post has adopted a new slogan: " Democracy dies in darkness "! ..."
"... Rep. Gabbard's "crime" was to challenge the US-funded effort to overthrow the regime of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad as contrary to our interests and the prospects for peace in the region. For that she has been demonized in the media – and, not coincidentally, the very same media that is now an instrument in the hands of our "intelligence community." For ..."
"... And of course it's not just the Washington Post : the entire "mainstream" media is now colluding with the "intelligence community" in an effort to discredit and derail any efforts at a rapprochement with Russia. We haven't seen this kind of hysteria since the frigid winter of the cold war. ..."
"... My longtime readers will not be shocked by any of this: during the run up to the Iraq war, the media was chock full of fake news about Saddam Hussein's fabled weapons of mass destruction, which all the "experts" told us were certainly there and ready to rain death and destruction at any minute. Who can forget the series of articles by Judith Miller that adorned the front page of the New York Times – which were merely Bush administration talking points reiterated by Donald Rumsfeld & Co. on the Sunday talk shows? Miller has now become synonymous with the very concept of fake news – and yet how quickly we forget the lesson we should have learned from that shameful episode in the history of American journalism . ..."
"... Blinded by partisan bias, all too willing to be used as an instrument of the Deep State -- and determined to "control exactly what people think," which is, as Mika Brzezinski put it the other day, " our job " – the English-speaking media has become increasingly unreliable. This has become a big problem for us here at Antiwar.com: we now have to check and re-check everything that they report as fact. Not that we didn't do that anyway, but the difference is that, these days, we have to be more careful than ever before linking to it, or citing it as factual. ..."
"... The day of the "alternative media" has passed. We are simply part of the media, period: the increasingly tiny portion of it that doesn't fall for war propaganda, that doesn't have a partisan agenda, and that harkens back to the "old" journalistic standards of yesteryear – objective reporting of facts. That doesn't mean we don't have opinions, or an agenda – far from it! However, we base those opinions on what, to the best of our ability, we can discern as the facts. ..."
"... And we have a pretty good record in this regard. Back when everyone who was anyone was telling us that those "weapons of mass destruction" were lurking in the Iraqi shadows, we said it was nonsense – and we were right. As the "experts" said that war with Iraq would "solve" the problem of terrorism and bring enlightenment to the Middle East, we said the war would usher in the reign of chaos – and we were right. We warned that NATO expansion would trigger an unnecessary conflict with Russia, and we were proved right about that, too. The Kosovo war was hailed as a "humanitarian" act – and we rightly predicted it would come back to haunt us in the form of a gangster state riven by conflict. ..."
"... There's one way in which we are significantly different from the rest of the media – we depend on our readers for the financial support we need to keep going. The Washington Post has Jeff Bezos, one of the wealthiest men in the world – not to mention a multi-million dollar contract with the "intelligence community." The New York Times has Carlos Slim, another billionaire with seemingly bottomless pockets. We, on the other hand, just have you. ..."
Aug 06, 2019 | original.antiwar.com

We're not the alternative media – we're the best media you've got!

Posted on August 06, 2019 August 4, 2019 The more things change, the more they stay the same: the sun comes up in the morning; another Hitler arises in the fantasies of the foreign-policy establishment; and Josh Rogin writes another column attacking Tusli Gabbard, the most pro-peace candidate in the Democratic lineup. Justin blasted Rogin the first time he tried this, back in February of 2017, proving that the whole story was "fake news". We think it's important to revisit Justin's analysis of the media-enhanced demand for war. As Justin notes, the only real alternative to this, the only real "alternative media," are sites like Antiwar. com and WikiLeaks.

This column is also timely because it was written during another Antiwar.com fundraising drive. That time, we had $31,000 in matching funds, now we have $40,000, and as usual we need your support. Please donate – the War Party media is backed by billionaires, so we need all friends of peace.

Originally published February 24, 2017

If we look at the phrase itself, it seems to mean the media that presents itself as the alternative to what we call the "corporate media," i.e. the New York Times , the Washington Post , your local rag – in short, the Legacy Media that predominated in those bygone days before the Internet. And yet this whole arrangement seems outdated, to say the least. The Internet has long since been colonized by the corporate giants: BuzzFeed, for example, is regularly fed huge dollops of cash from its corporate owners. And the Legacy Media has adapted to the primacy of online media, however reluctantly and ineptly. So the alternative media isn't defined by how they deliver the news, but rather by 1) what they judge to be news, and 2) how they report it.

And that's the problem.

There's been much talk of "fake news," a concept first defined by the "mainstream" media types as an insidious scheme by the Russians and/or supporters of Donald Trump to deny Hillary Clinton her rightful place in the Oval Office. Or it was Macedonian teenagers out to fool us into giving them clicks. Or something. Facebook and Google announced a campaign to eliminate this Dire Threat, and the mandarins of the "mainstream" reared up in righteous anger, lecturing us that journalistic standards were being traduced.

Yet it turned out that the very people who were up in arms about "fake news" were the ones propagating their own version of it. WikiLeaks did much to expose their game by publicizing the key role played by the Legacy Media in acting as an extension of the Clinton campaign. However, the real unmasking came after the November election, when the rage of the liberal elites became so manifest that "reporters" who would normally be loath to reveal their politics came out of the closet, so to speak, and started telling us that the old journalistic standard of objectivity no longer applied. The election of Trump, they averred, meant that the old standards must be abandoned and a new, and openly partisan bias must take its place. In honor of this new credo, the Washington Post has adopted a new slogan: " Democracy dies in darkness "!

This from the newspaper that ran a front page story citing the anonymous trolls at PropOrNot.com as credible sources for an account of alleged "Russian agents of influence" in the media – a story that slimed Matt Drudge and Antiwar.com, among others.

This from the newspaper that ran another big story claiming the Russians had infiltrated Vermont's power grid without bothering to check with the power company .

This from the newspaper that regularly publishes "news" accounts citing anonymous "intelligence officials" claiming the Trump administration is rife with Russian "agents."

This from the newspaper that published a piece by foreign affairs columnist Josh Rogin that falsely claimed Rep. Tulsi Gabbard's trip to Syria was funded by a group that is "nonexistent" and strongly implied she was in the pay of the Syrian government or some other foreign entity. Well after the smear circulated far and wide, the paper posted the following correction:

" An earlier version of this op-ed misspelled the name of AACCESS Ohio and incorrectly stated that the organization no longer exists. AACCESS Ohio is an independent non-profit organization that is a member of the ACCESS National Network of Arab American Community organizations but is currently on probation due to inactivity. The op-ed also incorrectly stated that Bassam Khawam is Syrian American. He is Lebanese American. This version has been corrected."

In other words, the entire story was fake news .

Rep. Gabbard's "crime" was to challenge the US-funded effort to overthrow the regime of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad as contrary to our interests and the prospects for peace in the region. For that she has been demonized in the media – and, not coincidentally, the very same media that is now an instrument in the hands of our "intelligence community." For it is these spooks who, for years, have been canoodling with the Saudis in an effort to rid the region of the last secular obstacle to the Sunni-ization of the Middle East. That they have Tulsi Gabbard in their sights is no surprise.

And of course it's not just the Washington Post : the entire "mainstream" media is now colluding with the "intelligence community" in an effort to discredit and derail any efforts at a rapprochement with Russia. We haven't seen this kind of hysteria since the frigid winter of the cold war.

My longtime readers will not be shocked by any of this: during the run up to the Iraq war, the media was chock full of fake news about Saddam Hussein's fabled weapons of mass destruction, which all the "experts" told us were certainly there and ready to rain death and destruction at any minute. Who can forget the series of articles by Judith Miller that adorned the front page of the New York Times – which were merely Bush administration talking points reiterated by Donald Rumsfeld & Co. on the Sunday talk shows? Miller has now become synonymous with the very concept of fake news – and yet how quickly we forget the lesson we should have learned from that shameful episode in the history of American journalism.

So fake news is nothing new, nor is the concept of the "mainstream" media as a megaphone for war propaganda. What's different today is that many are waking up to this fact – and turning to the "alternative." I've been struck by this rising phenomenon over the past year or so: Matt Drudge gave Antiwar.com a permanent link. Our audience has increased by many thousands. And I've been getting a steady stream of interview requests. I was quite pleased to read the following in a recent piece in The Nation about the media's fit of Russophobia and the key role played by the journalist I. F. Stone during the 1950s:

"To conclude where I began, think for a moment about I.F. Stone during his haunted 1950s. While he was well-regarded by a lot of rank-and-file reporters, few would say so openly. He was PNG [persona non grata] among people such as [ New York Times publisher Arthur] Sulzberger – an outcast .

"Now think about now.

"A few reporters and commentators advise us that the name of the game these days is to sink the single most constructive policy the Trump administration has announced. The rest is subterfuge, rubbish. This is prima facie the case, though you can read it nowhere in the Times or any of the other corporate media. A few have asserted that we may now be witnessing a coup operation against the Trump White House. This is a possibility, in my view. We cannot flick it off the table. With the utmost purpose, I post here one of these pieces. "A Win for the Deep State" came out just after Flynn was forced from office. It is by a writer named Justin Raimondo and appeared in a wholly out-of-bounds web publication called Antiwar.com. I know nothing about either, but it is a thought-provoking piece."

Well, we aren't quite "wholly out of bounds," except in certain circles, but all in all this is a great compliment – and it's illustrative of author Patrick Lawrence's point, which is that

"We, readers and viewers, must discriminate among all that is put before us so as to make the best judgments we can and, not least, protect our minds. The other side of the coin, what we customarily call 'alternative media,' assumes an important responsibility. They must get done, as best they can, what better-endowed media now shirk. To put this simply and briefly, they and we must learn that they are not 'alternative' to anything. In the end there is no such thing as 'alternative media,' as I often argue. There are only media, and most of ours have turned irretrievably bad."

We here at Antiwar.com take our responsibility to you, our readers and supporters, very seriously. We're working day and night, 24/7, to separate fact from fiction, knee-jerk "analysis" from intelligent critique, partisan bullshit from truth. And we've had to work much harder lately because the profession of journalism has fallen on hard times.

Blinded by partisan bias, all too willing to be used as an instrument of the Deep State -- and determined to "control exactly what people think," which is, as Mika Brzezinski put it the other day, " our job " – the English-speaking media has become increasingly unreliable. This has become a big problem for us here at Antiwar.com: we now have to check and re-check everything that they report as fact. Not that we didn't do that anyway, but the difference is that, these days, we have to be more careful than ever before linking to it, or citing it as factual.

The day of the "alternative media" has passed. We are simply part of the media, period: the increasingly tiny portion of it that doesn't fall for war propaganda, that doesn't have a partisan agenda, and that harkens back to the "old" journalistic standards of yesteryear – objective reporting of facts. That doesn't mean we don't have opinions, or an agenda – far from it! However, we base those opinions on what, to the best of our ability, we can discern as the facts.

And we have a pretty good record in this regard. Back when everyone who was anyone was telling us that those "weapons of mass destruction" were lurking in the Iraqi shadows, we said it was nonsense – and we were right. As the "experts" said that war with Iraq would "solve" the problem of terrorism and bring enlightenment to the Middle East, we said the war would usher in the reign of chaos – and we were right. We warned that NATO expansion would trigger an unnecessary conflict with Russia, and we were proved right about that, too. The Kosovo war was hailed as a "humanitarian" act – and we rightly predicted it would come back to haunt us in the form of a gangster state riven by conflict.

I could spend several paragraphs boasting about how right we were, but you get the idea. Our record is a good one. And we intend to make it even better. But we can't do it – we can't do our job – without your help.

There's one way in which we are significantly different from the rest of the media – we depend on our readers for the financial support we need to keep going. The Washington Post has Jeff Bezos, one of the wealthiest men in the world – not to mention a multi-million dollar contract with the "intelligence community." The New York Times has Carlos Slim, another billionaire with seemingly bottomless pockets. We, on the other hand, just have you.

Okay, I'll cut to the chase: we've come to a crucial point in our current fundraising campaign, and now it's make it or break it time for Antiwar.com.

A group of our most generous supporters has pledged $40,000 in matching funds – but that pledge is strictly conditional . What this means is that we must match that amount in the short time left in our campaign in order to get the entire $40,000.

Please, send your tax-deductible donation now – because we're not the "alternative media," we're the best media you've got.

[Aug 06, 2019] Team Pelosi is just grandstanding using Russiagate as a smoke screen. I mean, who could take them seriously, when they haven't bothered to try and do anything to strengthen integrity of the elections for decades?

Aug 06, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

kurt -> Julio ... , August 05, 2019 at 01:06 PM

There are some other big institutional failures playing into this. The press has for the better part of the last 40 years pretended that both parties were both acting in good faith and just had different ideas about what worked best - which clearly isn't true. They also engaged in a false "it's both sides" narrative. The Dems took way too long to figure out that the Rs are insurgent, anti-democratic, and unafraid to destroy the country to gain power. The big internet companies knew what was going on with Cambridge and the Russians and did nothing about it. Our voting infrastructure has been taken over by partisans that are actively ensuring that votes can be meddled with. I mean - it is a huge convergence of events - and while I think you are acting in good faith, there are a bunch of posters who are acting like force multipliers for Russia and the Sarandon types. I don't see how anyone can ignore the threat of foreign interference, the fact that Trump did in fact collude with Russia by any definition of the word, the fact that the Mueller report all but says "there were crimes, but we cant get the evidence because of obstruction," and the obvious fact that the R establishment has gone full on anti-democracy and be pro democracy. We are in a much scary place than I think most people understand or are willing to admit. Remember, Hitler was a joke and then he wasn't.
kurt -> kurt... , August 05, 2019 at 01:07 PM
Also - just so it doesn't go unsaid. Bernie LOST the primary by millions of votes. This is undeniable.
kurt -> kurt... , August 05, 2019 at 05:28 PM
The accusation that Dems have done nothing about voter security is belied by the fact that TODAY there are 2 simple bills being held up by Moscow Mitch. It is belied by the fact that Dems in all 50 states tried to enact paper trails. It is impossible to have a discussion about anything when some people just insist on a set of facts that are not facts. It is stupid and embarrassing. The interwebs are an fen sewer.
JohnH -> kurt... , August 05, 2019 at 05:53 PM
LOL!!! Two bill after 20 years??? And motivated by dubious fears of Russian meddling when corporations, billionaires, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and others have been meddling for decades without so much as a whimper from kurt's beloved Democrats!!!

And, of course, Team Pelosi finally gets around to introducing some bills only when it's obvious to any idiot, even kurt, that they won't get past the Senate!!!

IMO, Team Pelosi is just grandstanding. I mean, who could take them seriously, when they haven't bothered to try and do anything for decades?

JohnH -> kurt... , August 05, 2019 at 06:06 PM
"Kids at hacking conference show how easily US elections could be sabotaged:"
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/22/us-elections-hacking-voting-machines-def-con

But has Team Pelosi cared enough to do something about it until she got Putin Derangement Syndrome? No, of course, not asleep at the wheel appeasing or complicit with the monied interests who have ample resources to subvert elections.

JohnH -> kurt... , August 05, 2019 at 02:21 PM
And what did Ds do during the last 40 years to fix the voting infrastructure? Gore and Kerry just shrugged and let Bush become President. And Ds never mounted any sort of effort to secure the hackable, inauditable voting machines.

Simply put, Kurt's beloved Ds we're engaged in appeasement or complicity... take your pick.

[Aug 05, 2019] UK 'up to its neck' in Russiagate affair, says George Galloway, as secret texts reveal British role

Barr now has goods to jail major conspirators for life. It is unlikely happened but we can hope.
Notable quotes:
"... "Turns out it was Britain that was the foreign country interfering in American affairs," former MP George Galloway told RT, speaking about the new revelations published by the Guardian about early British involvement in the 'Russiagate' investigation. ..."
"... The Guardian reported on texts between former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and Jeremy Fleming, his then counterpart at MI5, who now heads GCHQ. The two men met in 2016 to discuss "our strange situation" – an apparent reference to Russia's alleged interference in US domestic politics. ..."
"... British intelligence "appears to have played a key role in the early stages," the report said. ..."
"... Galloway said the revelation was not surprising because people "already knew" that British intelligence had played a part in the Russia-related investigations in the US. He recalled that it was former British spy Christopher Steele who drew up the now-infamous Steele dossier, which made multiple unverifiable and salacious claims about Trump and has since been largely discredited. Britain is "up to its neck in the whole Russiagate affair," he said. ..."
"... Asked what the UK stood to gain by trying to implicate Russia in a US election scandal at a time when then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson was dismissing baseless claims of Russian interference in the Brexit campaign, Galloway noted that Johnson's comments on Russia have appeared to strangely sway between friendly and antagonistic. ..."
"... In June 2016, the FBI opened a covert investigation codenamed 'Crossfire Hurricane' into Trump's now disproven collusion with Moscow, which was later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller. ..."
Jul 31, 2019 | www.rt.com

While hysteria raged about possible Russian "interference" in the 2016 US election, British intelligence officials were secretly playing a "key role" in helping instigate investigations into Donald Trump, secret texts have shown. "Turns out it was Britain that was the foreign country interfering in American affairs," former MP George Galloway told RT, speaking about the new revelations published by the Guardian about early British involvement in the 'Russiagate' investigation.

The Guardian reported on texts between former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and Jeremy Fleming, his then counterpart at MI5, who now heads GCHQ. The two men met in 2016 to discuss "our strange situation" – an apparent reference to Russia's alleged interference in US domestic politics.

British intelligence "appears to have played a key role in the early stages," the report said.

www.youtube.com/embed/y0X5ubiSd0M

Galloway said the revelation was not surprising because people "already knew" that British intelligence had played a part in the Russia-related investigations in the US. He recalled that it was former British spy Christopher Steele who drew up the now-infamous Steele dossier, which made multiple unverifiable and salacious claims about Trump and has since been largely discredited. Britain is "up to its neck in the whole Russiagate affair," he said.

The texts also reveal that the Brexit vote was viewed by some in the FBI as something that had been influenced by Russia.

Asked what the UK stood to gain by trying to implicate Russia in a US election scandal at a time when then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson was dismissing baseless claims of Russian interference in the Brexit campaign, Galloway noted that Johnson's comments on Russia have appeared to strangely sway between friendly and antagonistic.

Johnson is like "a sofa that bears the impression of the last person to sit upon him," the former MP quipped. What happens next will depend on who is leading the tango, "the orange man in Washington or the blonde mop-head in London."

In June 2016, the FBI opened a covert investigation codenamed 'Crossfire Hurricane' into Trump's now disproven collusion with Moscow, which was later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Ultimately, the two-year-long probe that followed came up short, producing no evidence to prove a conspiracy or collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russia

See also:

Also on rt.com Fear behind fury: As DNI, Ratcliffe could expose FISA files that Russiagaters hope stay buried

[Aug 05, 2019] US federal court exposes Democratic Party conspiracy against Assange and WikiLeaks by Eric London

Notable quotes:
"... The ruling exposes the illegality of the conspiracy by the US government, backed by the governments of Britain, Ecuador, Australia and Sweden and the entire corporate media and political establishment, to extradite Assange to the US, where he faces 175 years in federal prison on charges including espionage. ..."
"... The dismissal of the civil suit exposes massive unreported conflicts of interest and prosecutorial misconduct and criminal abuse of process by those involved. The criminal prosecution of Assange has nothing to do with facts and is instead aimed at punishing him for telling the truth about the war crimes committed by US imperialism and its allies. ..."
"... The judge labeled WikiLeaks an "international news organization" and said Assange is a "publisher," exposing the liars in the corporate press who declare that Assange is not subject to free speech protections. Judge Koeltl continued: "In New York Times Co. v. United States ..."
"... New York Times Co. v. United States ..."
"... The DNC's baseless complaint cited the New York Times ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Everyone seems to forget one thing.. Assange knows who gave Assange the DNC data. At some point you have to entertain the idea that eventually he'll play that card. ..."
"... The DNC never allowed a REAL cyber-inspection of it's servers, did they? They also never said the information contained in the supposedly 'stolen' E-Mails was "WRONG" or "INACCURATE", have they? It says volumes.... Occam's Razor points to disgruntled DNC employee Seth Rich using a large capacity flash drive to download the E-Mails, etc which he then passed to someone who got it to Wikileaks. For which he was killed!! ..."
"... No. they never did. Also, if you examine Mueller's BS indictments, the domain they claim was used to phish for Podesta's password (and others) was registered on the same day or perhaps the day before they unsealed the indictment. It's a total fabrication, start to finish! ..."
"... That's just one example of many. The Malware they allegedly 'discovered' (by a Ukranian owned security company Crowdstrike) was not Russian, it was Ukrainian and been floating around the internet for years prior to this alleged non-existent 'hack'.. The whole thing has more holes than proverbial swiss ..."
"... For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations ..."
"... Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match ..."
"... It is beyond astonishing that Democrats and the media have successfully shifted 99% of the public's attention AWAY FROM the actual content of what information was stolen from top ranking Democrats, especially the Hillary for President Campaign. ..."
"... beaglebailey > michiganderforfreedom ..."
"... ironically surely an equally damning 'leak' came from the DNCs own ex-Chair Donna Brazille in her self-serving 'memoir' Hacks ... in it she revealed Obama left DNC $24m in debt and Hillary Clinton then bailed it out and effectively bought the entire apparatus as her personal plaything. When that is understood all the 'corruption' about rigging the primaries against Sanders wasn't rigging at all, after all he was standing on Clinton's private property at the time. Blair and Brown dutifully followed the same NSA playbook and left Labour broke, presumably so Blair's 'charity' could then step in to buy it... but Corbyn then balanced the books in 6 months of his taking over ..."
"... The corporate media, having already gone to great lengths to convict Assange of such in the court of public opinion, would like to see that "conviction" stand. ..."
"... "The DNC's published internal communications allowed the American electorate to look behind the curtain of one of the two major political parties in the United States during a presidential election." That's precisely the kind of "problem" the bourgeoisie will no longer tolerate. ..."
"... Reporting the truth “undermined and distorted the DNC's ability to communicate the party's values and visions to the American electorate.” ..."
"... They're sick and tired of basic democratic rights almost as much as they're sick and tired of the working class ..."
Jul 31, 2019 | www.wsws.org

In a ruling published late Tuesday, Judge John Koeltl of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York delivered a devastating blow to the US-led conspiracy against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

In his ruling, Judge Koeltl, a Bill Clinton nominee and former assistant special prosecutor for the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, dismissed "with prejudice" a civil lawsuit filed in April 2018 by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) alleging WikiLeaks was civilly liable for conspiring with the Russian government to steal DNC emails and data and leak them to the public.

Jennifer Robinson, a leading lawyer for Assange, and other WikiLeaks attorneys welcomed the ruling as "an important win for free speech."

The decision exposes the Democratic Party in a conspiracy of its own to attack free speech and cover up the crimes of US imperialism and the corrupt activities of the two parties of Wall Street. Judge Koeltl stated:

If WikiLeaks could be held liable for publishing documents concerning the DNC's political financial and voter-engagement strategies simply because the DNC labels them 'secret' and trade secrets, then so could any newspaper or other media outlet. But that would impermissibly elevate a purely private privacy interest to override the First Amendment interest in the publication of matters of the highest public concern. The DNC's published internal communications allowed the American electorate to look behind the curtain of one of the two major political parties in the United States during a presidential election. This type of information is plainly of the type entitled to the strongest protection that the First Amendment offers.

The ruling exposes the illegality of the conspiracy by the US government, backed by the governments of Britain, Ecuador, Australia and Sweden and the entire corporate media and political establishment, to extradite Assange to the US, where he faces 175 years in federal prison on charges including espionage.

The plaintiff in the civil case -- the Democratic Party -- has also served as Assange's chief prosecutor within the state apparatus for over a decade. During the Obama administration, Democratic Party Justice Department officials, as well as career Democratic holdovers under the Trump administration, prepared the criminal case against him.

The dismissal of the civil suit exposes massive unreported conflicts of interest and prosecutorial misconduct and criminal abuse of process by those involved. The criminal prosecution of Assange has nothing to do with facts and is instead aimed at punishing him for telling the truth about the war crimes committed by US imperialism and its allies.

The judge labeled WikiLeaks an "international news organization" and said Assange is a "publisher," exposing the liars in the corporate press who declare that Assange is not subject to free speech protections. Judge Koeltl continued: "In New York Times Co. v. United States , the landmark 'Pentagon Papers' case, the Supreme Court upheld the press's right to publish information of public concern obtained from documents stolen by a third party."

As a legal matter, by granting WikiLeaks' motion to dismiss, the court ruled that the DNC had not put forward a "factually plausible" claim. At the motion to dismiss stage, a judge is required to accept all the facts alleged by the plaintiff as true. Here, the judge ruled that even if all the facts alleged by the DNC were true, no fact-finder could "draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged."

Going a step further, the judge called the DNC's arguments "threadbare," adding: "At no point does the DNC allege any facts" showing that Assange or WikiLeaks "participated in the theft of the DNC's information."

Judge Koeltl said the DNC's argument that Assange and WikiLeaks "conspired with the Russian Federation to steal and disseminate the DNC's materials" is "entirely divorced from the facts." The judge further ruled that the court "is not required to accept conclusory allegations asserted as facts."

The judge further dismantled the DNC's argument that WikiLeaks is guilty-by-association with Russia, calling the alleged connection between Assange and the Russian government "irrelevant," because "a person is entitled to publish stolen documents that the publisher requested from a source so long as the publisher did not participate in the theft."

Judge Koeltl also rejected the DNC's claim "that WikiLeaks can be held liable for the theft as an after-the-fact coconspirator of the stolen documents." Calling this argument "unpersuasive," the judge wrote that it would "eviscerate" constitutional protections: "Such a rule would render any journalist who publishes an article based on stolen information a coconspirator in the theft."

In its April 2018 complaint, the DNC put forward a series of claims that have now been exposed as brazen lies, including that Assange, Trump and Russia "undermined and distorted the DNC's ability to communicate the party's values and visions to the American electorate."

The complaint also alleged: "Russian intelligence services then disseminated the stolen, confidential materials through GRU Operative #1, as well as WikiLeaks and Assange, who were actively supported by the Trump Campaign and Trump Associates as they released and disclosed the information to the American public at a time and in a manner that served their common goals."

At the time the DNC filed its complaint, the New York Times wrote that the document relies on "publicly-known facts" as well as "information that has been disclosed in news reports and subsequent court proceedings." The lawsuit "comes amid a swirl of intensifying scrutiny of Mr. Trump, his associates and their interactions with Russia," the Times wrote.

It is deeply ironic that Judge Koeltl cited the Pentagon Papers case, New York Times Co. v. United States , in his ruling.

The DNC's baseless complaint cited the New York Times eight times as "proof" of Assange and WikiLeaks' ties to Russia, including articles by Times reporters Andrew Kramer, Michael Gordon, Niraj Chokshi, Sharon LaFraniere, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Eric Lichtblau, Noah Weiland, Alicia Parlapiano and Ashley Parker, as well as a July 26, 2016 article by Charlie Savage titled "Assange, avowed foe of Clinton, timed email release for Democratic Convention."

The first of these articles was published just weeks after the New York Times hired James Bennet as its editorial page editor in March 2016. James Bennet's brother, Michael Bennet, is a presidential candidate, a senator from Colorado and former chair of the DNC's Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. In 2018, Bennet signed a letter to Vice President Mike Pence noting he was "extremely concerned" that Ecuador had not canceled asylum for Assange, who was then trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

"It is imperative," the letter read, "that you raise US concerns with [Ecuadorian] President [Lenin] Moreno about Ecuador's continued support for Mr. Assange at a time when WikiLeaks continues its efforts to undermine democratic processes globally."

In April 2019, after the Trump administration announced charges against Assange, the New York Times editorial board, under James Bennet's direction, wrote: "The administration has begun well by charging Mr. Assange with an indisputable crime." Two weeks later, Michael Bennet announced his presidential run and has since enjoyed favorable coverage in the Times editorial page.

Additionally, the father of James and Michael Bennet, Douglas Bennet, headed the CIA-linked United States Agency for International Development in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

On Wednesday, the Times published a brief, six-paragraph article on page 25 under the headline, "DNC lawsuit against election is dismissed." In its online edition, the Times prominently featured a link to its special page for the Mueller Report, which is based on the same DNC-instigated threadbare lies that Judge Koeltl kicked out of federal court

LC • 9 hours ago

Everyone seems to forget one thing.. Assange knows who gave Assange the DNC data. At some point you have to entertain the idea that eventually he'll play that card.

Liberalism Has Failed • 2 days ago

The DNC never allowed a REAL cyber-inspection of it's servers, did they? They also never said the information contained in the supposedly 'stolen' E-Mails was "WRONG" or "INACCURATE", have they? It says volumes.... Occam's Razor points to disgruntled DNC employee Seth Rich using a large capacity flash drive to download the E-Mails, etc which he then passed to someone who got it to Wikileaks. For which he was killed!!

LC > Liberalism Has Failed • 9 hours ago

No. they never did. Also, if you examine Mueller's BS indictments, the domain they claim was used to phish for Podesta's password (and others) was registered on the same day or perhaps the day before they unsealed the indictment. It's a total fabrication, start to finish!

That's just one example of many. The Malware they allegedly 'discovered' (by a Ukranian owned security company Crowdstrike) was not Russian, it was Ukrainian and been floating around the internet for years prior to this alleged non-existent 'hack'.. The whole thing has more holes than proverbial swiss


Tradairn > SFWhite • a day ago

Then why does the US keep interfering in other countries' political processes? You've become the schoolyard bully of the world.

SFWhite > Tradairn • 18 hours ago

Quoting from JFK's speech archived in the JFK Library:
THE PRESIDENT AND THE PRESS: ADDRESS BEFORE THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION, APRIL 27, 1961
https://www.jfklibrary.org/...

If the press is awaiting a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat conditions, then I can only say that no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent.

It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions--by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper.

***For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.***

michiganderforfreedom • 2 days ago

It is beyond astonishing that Democrats and the media have successfully shifted 99% of the public's attention AWAY FROM the actual content of what information was stolen from top ranking Democrats, especially the Hillary for President Campaign.

Had the actual Content of what had been stolen was simply meeting schedules, work shift assignments, lawn sign purchase orders and speech notes, NONE of this scandal would have happened!!

But, the CONTENT of what was stolen revealed the upper echelon of Democrat Party leadership to be nothing but lying, conniving, cheating, law-breaking dirty politicians who are hell-bent on bringing down the American Federation at any cost.

If the actual Content had been cookie recipes and wedding plans, we would not have been put though this traumatic national wringer!!

beaglebailey > michiganderforfreedom • 7 hours ago

This was the reason Hillary's campaign came up with the idea to blame it on Russia. This kept people from focusing on their content and it worked. To this day Hillary's supporters think that her rigging the primary is a conspiracy theory. And it's why they believe that Russia interfered with the election. How sad to see people who saw through the Saddam had WMDs have fallen for the new WMDs scam.

Charlotte Ruse • 4 days ago

"The decision exposes the Democratic Party in a conspiracy of its own to attack free speech and cover up the crimes of US imperialism and the corrupt activities of the two parties of Wall Street."

One should never forget that the corrupt political duopoly is controlled by the military/security/surveillance/corporate state. Assange, published documents revealing to millions that the US committed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, murdered innocent civilians, and slaughtered two Reuter Reporters.

Revealing atrocities is BAD MARKETING for the military industry which for decades has been robbing the US Treasury blind. Assange's documents threatens the "official narrative" spread by the state-run mainstream news convincing the public to passively accept the plundering of the US Treasury to enhance the wealth of a small cabal of war profiteer gangsters.

In other words, Assange is being attacked by the US Government because he revealed that a big CON GAME is being perpetuated against the American public by the security state.

Dennis Stein > Charlotte Ruse • 3 days ago

“We’ll Know Our Disinformation Program Is Complete When Everything the American Public Believes Is False”

—CIA Director William Casey at an early February 1981 meeting of newly elected President Reagan.

Adrian • 4 days ago

Great news on Assange... but ironically surely an equally damning 'leak' came from the DNCs own ex-Chair Donna Brazille in her self-serving 'memoir' Hacks ... in it she revealed Obama left DNC $24m in debt and Hillary Clinton then bailed it out and effectively bought the entire apparatus as her personal plaything. When that is understood all the 'corruption' about rigging the primaries against Sanders wasn't rigging at all, after all he was standing on Clinton's private property at the time. Blair and Brown dutifully followed the same NSA playbook and left Labour broke, presumably so Blair's 'charity' could then step in to buy it... but Corbyn then balanced the books in 6 months of his taking over

Ed Bergonzi • 5 days ago

This is good news. But now the advantage is with Trump. What will the Democrats do if Trump presses for extradition claiming "national security" concerns, i.e., Assange's exposure of US war crimes. I think their present silence regarding Judge Koeltl's decision speaks volumes.

Greg • 5 days ago • edited

"Going a step further, the judge called the DNC’s arguments “threadbare,” adding: “At no point does the DNC allege any facts” showing that Assange or WikiLeaks “participated in the theft of the DNC’s information.”

The corporate media, having already gone to great lengths to convict Assange of such in the court of public opinion, would like to see that "conviction" stand.

"On Wednesday, the Times published a brief, six-paragraph article on page 25..."

Greg • 5 days ago • edited

"The DNC's published internal communications allowed the American electorate to look behind the curtain of one of the two major political parties in the United States during a presidential election." That's precisely the kind of "problem" the bourgeoisie will no longer tolerate.

Reporting the truth “undermined and distorted the DNC's ability to communicate the party's values and visions to the American electorate.”

They're sick and tired of basic democratic rights almost as much as they're sick and tired of the working class. They practically come out and say it: "There was no attempt by other reporters to pursue the matter, and Conway then began to rant about Trump's reasons for targeting the four congresswomen, saying, “He's tired, a lot of us are sick and tired of this country—of America coming last, to people who swore an oath of office.”

[Aug 03, 2019] ENOUGH AND NOT TOO MUCH By Patrick Armstrong - Sic Semper Tyrannis

Aug 03, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

ENOUGH AND NOT TOO MUCH By Patrick Armstrong

Russianbear

(First published at Strategic Culture Foundation, I put it here to see what the Committee thinks about it )

Moscow will not engage in an exhausting arms race, and the country's military spending will gradually decrease as Russia does not seek a role as the "world gendarme," President Vladimir Putin said. Moscow is not seeking to get involved in a "pointless" new arms race, and will stick to "smart decisions" to strengthen its defensive capabilities, Putin said on Friday during an annual extended meeting of the Defense Ministry board. "Intelligence, brains, discipline and organization" must be the cornerstones of the country's military doctrine, the Russian leader said. The last thing that Russia needs is an arms race that would "drain" its economy, and Moscow sure does not want that "in any scenario," Putin pointed out.

– RT, 22 December 2017

It's easy to forget it today, but the USSR was, in its time, an "exceptionalist" country. It was the world's first socialist country – the " bright future "; it set an example for all to follow, it was destined by History. It had a mission and was required by History to assist any country that called itself "socialist". The USSR had bases and interests all over the world. As the 1977 USSR Constitution said :

the Soviet state, a new type of state, the basic instrument for defending the gains of the revolution and for building socialism and communism. Humanity thereby began the epoch-making turn from capitalist to socialism.

A novus ordo seclorum indeed.

Russia, however, is just Russia. There is no feeling in Moscow that Russia must take the lead any place but Russia itself. One of the reasons, indeed, why Putin is always talking about the primacy of the UN, the independence of nation states, the impermissibility to interfere in internal activities – the so-called " Westphalian " position – is that he remembers the exceptionalist past and knows that it led to a dead end . Moscow has no interest in going abroad in search of internationalist causes.

Internationalism/exceptionalism and nationalism: the two have completely different approaches to constructing a military. The first is obsessed with " power projection ", " full spectrum superiority ", it imagines that its hypertrophied interests are challenged all over the planet. Its wants are expensive, indeterminate, unbounded. The other is only concerned with dealing with enemies in its neighbourhood. Its wants are affordable, exact, finite. The exceptionalist/interventionist has everything to defend everywhere; the nationalist has one thing to defend in one place. It is much easier and much cheaper to be a nationalist: the exceptionalist/interventionist USA spends much more than anyone else but always needs more ; nationalist Russia can cut its expenditure .

The USSR's desire to match or exceed the USA in all military areas was a contributing factor to the collapse of its alliance system and the USSR itself. Estimates are always a matter for debate, especially in a command economy that hid its numbers (even when they were calculable), but a common estimate is a minimum of 15% of the USSR's production went to the military. But the true effort was probably higher. The USSR was involved all over the world shoring up socialism's "bright future" and that cost it at home.

Putin & Co's "bright future" is for Russia only and the world may do as it wants about any example or counterexample it may imagine there. While Putin may occasionally indulge himself by offering opinions about liberalism and oped writers gas on about the Putin/Trump populism threat , Putin & Co are just trying to do what they think best for Russia with, as their trust ratings suggest (in contrast with those of the rulers of the "liberal" West), the support and agreement of most Russians.

The military stance of the former exceptionalist country is all gone. As the USSR has faded away, so have its overseas bases and commitments: the Warsaw Pact is gone together with the forward deployment of Soviet armies; there are no advisors in Vietnam or Mozambique; Moscow awaits with bemusement the day next January when the surviving exceptionalist power and its minions will have been in Afghanistan twice as long as the USSR was. The United States, still exceptionalist, still imagining it is spreading freedom and democracy, preventing war and creating stability , has bases everywhere and thinks that it must protect "freedom of navigation" to and from China in the South China Sea. It has yet to learn the futility of seeing oneself as The World's Example.

Putin & Co have learned: Russia has no World-Historical purpose and its military is just for Russia. They understand what this means for Russia's Armed Forces:

Moscow doesn't have to match the US military; it just has to checkmate it.

And it doesn't have to checkmate it everywhere, only at home. The US Air Force can rampage anywhere but not in Russia's airspace; the US Navy can go anywhere but not in Russia's waters. It's a much simpler job and it costs much less than what Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev were attempting; it's much easier to achieve; it's easier to plan and carry out. The exceptionalist/interventionist has to plan for Everything; the nationalist for One Thing.

Study the enemy, learn what he takes for granted and block it. And the two must haves of American conventional military power as it affects Russia are 1) air superiority and 2) assured, reliable communications; counter those and it's checkmated: Russia doesn't have to equal or surpass the US military across the board, just counter its must haves .

Russia's comprehensive and interlocking air defence weaponry is well known and well respected: it covers the spectrum from defences against ballistic missiles to small RPVs, from complex missile/radar sets to MANPADS; all of it coordinated, interlocking with many redundancies. We hear US generals complaining about air defence bubbles and studies referring to Russia's " anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) exclusion zones ". Russian air defence has not been put to the full-scale test but we have two good indications of its effectiveness. The first was the coordinated RPV attack on Russian bases in Syria last year in which seven were shot down and six taken over , three of them landed intact . Then, in the FUKUS attack of April 2018, the Russians say the Syrian AD system (most of which is old but has benefited from Russian coordination) shot down a large number of the cruise missiles. ( FUKUS' claims are not believable ).

The other area, about which even less is known are Russian electronic warfare capabilities: " eye-watering " says a US general; " Right now in Syria we are operating in the most aggressive EW environment on the planet from our adversaries. They are testing us everyday, knocking our communications down, disabling our EC-130s, etcetera ." Of course, what the Americans know is only what Russia wants them to know. There is speculation about an ability to spoof GPS signals . AEGIS-equipped warships seem to have trouble locating themselves ( HNoMS Helge Ingstad ) or avoiding being run into ( USS Lake Champlain , USS John McCain , USS Fitzgerald ). Bad seamanship may, of course, be the cause and that's what the US investigations claim . So more rumour than fact but a lot of rumour.

In the past two or three decades US air power has operated with impunity; it has assumed that all GPS-based systems (and there are many) will operate as planned and that communications will be free and clear. Not against Russia. With those certainties removed, the American war fighting doctrine will be left scrabbling.

But AD and EW are not the only Russian counters. When President Bush pulled the USA out of the ABM Treaty in 2001 , Putin warned that Russia would have to respond. Mutual Assured Destruction may sound crazy but there's a stability to it: neither side, under any circumstance, can get away with a first strike; therefore neither will try it. Last year we met the response : a new ICBM, a hypersonic re-entry vehicle, a nuclear-powered cruise missile with enormous flight time and a similar underwater cruise missile. No defence will stop them and so MAD returns. A hypersonic anti-shipping missile will keep the US Navy out of Russian waters. And, to deal with the US Army's risible ground forces in Europe , with or without NATO's other feeble forces , Russia has re-created the First Guards Tank Army . Checkmate again.

No free pass for US air power, strained and uncertain communications, a defeated ground attack and no defence against Russian nuclear weapons. That's all and that's enough.

And that is how Moscow does it while spending much less money than Washington. It studies Washington's strengths and counters them: "smart decisions". Washington is starting to realise Russia's military power but it is blinded and can only see its reflection in the mirror: the so-called " rising threat from Russia " would be no threat to a Washington that stayed at home.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

- Sun Tzu

ted richard , 02 August 2019 at 04:19 PM

he is of course correct in his over all views. russian missile and EW technology is already, today, at least a generation ahead of what the pentagon fields for combat. rendering effective pentagon military power projection neutered against both russia and china as well as any ally they choose to support (think syria for sure, iran?, venezuela?)

the problem washington faces is they sold out the federal government decades ago to banking and corporate interest which as time has proven repeatedly are NOT aligned with the best interests of the american citizenry, and like anyone who sups with the devil a bargain is a bargain, once taken there is no going back.

the problem for washington is that banking and corporate interests require plunder to operate properly as currently structured. maximize short term gain for private ownership while either put off long terms costs (pollution etc) well into the future or like in 2008 socialize the losses across the entire tax payer (a euphemism for serf) base while handily keeping all those fed vomited bailouts private.

as russia, china, iran, venezuela erect signs backed up by force saying.."this is a plunder free zone" and, what with unencumbered assets becoming ever harder to locate for anglo american capitalism a crisis is emerging as forward motion (real growth) slows to a crawl or goes below zero which renders all the debt entangled corporations, especially governments and citizens susceptible to gravity once the trigger of ''no confidence''' hits the public consciousness. increasing debt is directly correlated to decreasing growth need to sustain the debt load. like unsuccessfully dieting a vicious circle.

all russia and china have to do to prevail over washington and its empire at this point is WAIT.... while keeping their swords bright and their domestic intentions true (by taking care of their own).

gravity once widespread public no confidence emerges will do all heavy lifting.

The Twisted Genius , 02 August 2019 at 04:25 PM
Excellent analysis, Patrick. It shows what can be accomplished when you don't blow your whole wad on force projection and seeking full spectrum dominance at the same time. Seeking dominant capability at our borders and territorial waters is doable, but projecting that all over the world is a losing proposition. The Russian strategy reminds me of the Swiss defensive model.

BTW, while the Russian bears and our Grizzlies are both brown bears, they are different species.

Patrick Armstrong -> The Twisted Genius ... , 02 August 2019 at 06:07 PM
I've always been intrigued by Switzerland -- more guns than anywhere but pretty peaceful; really understands neutrality (which is actually a pretty cold-blooded position). I remember reading some time ago that Switzerland General Guisan (hah! name just came to me, ultimate senility is at least a week away!) told the Germans that, if they invaded, the Swiss would blow the tunnels thereby rendering Switzerland useless to an invader.

Never seen so many measelshafts as there. (You old Cold Warriors might recognise the term from Germany back in The Day (not entirely sure of the spelling).

But definitely a country that minds its own business but makes sure its more expensive to conquer than it's worth. Finland is (or was) another example. (Which is why it's so disappointing to see the current rulers in Helsinki sucking up to NATO.)

Faugh Sir! Wikipedia says a clades not a species.

Patrick Armstrong -> MP98... , 02 August 2019 at 06:11 PM
Well, many of us will live to see whether that's correct or not. My assumption is that China is so arrogant (Middle Kingdom means between Heaven and Earth) that they really don't care what the rest of us do as long as business happens.

But ya gotta admit that the USA/UK/West/Whatever-you-want-to-call-it rule has been pretty disastrous.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jihadists+us+embassy+poll+tripoli&t=ffnt&iax=images&ia=images&iai=http%3A%2F%2Fa.abcnews.go.com%2Fimages%2FInternational%2Fatm_libya_140901_16x9_992.jpg

MP98 said in reply to Patrick Armstrong ... , 02 August 2019 at 10:58 PM
Got me there.
The western alliance - since the fall of the USSR - has been pretty useless if not downright dangerous.
As for China, they may have gone too far in that "inscrutable oriental" act and begun to believe their own BS.
Dao Gen said in reply to MP98... , 02 August 2019 at 10:57 PM
Throughout its long history China has never tried to dominate foreign countries. It never tried to conquer Japan, for example, which had some very productive silver and gold mines. On the other hand, the Mongols tried twice (unsuccessfully) to invade Japan during their short period of dominance. China did try meddle in Korean politics and use Korea as a buffer zone, though a few times the Koreans threw them out. China also tried to secure buffer zones in the west and south. Even now, though, they seem to feel that they are destined to be the world's middle country, and they don't seem to have a hankering to invade or directly control foreign areas to gain Lebensraum, even though they have a huge population. And they have no tradition of global colonialism. It is not in the culture or the economic history.

As for the New Silk Road, it does not seem to be as self-serving and manipulative as the DoS and Pompeo are constantly claiming. China has an ancient continuous culture, and the Chinese seem to know full well by now that lasting prosperity only happens when all parties prosper. Mutual dependence and mutual recognition are a deep part of Chinese and all east Asian cultures, though the Japanese samurai ethic briefly went berserk and disregarded that wisdom back in the 1930s! The Chinese spirit of innovation-within-tradition and dynamic business management (including state management) is also likely to keep them confident in their own ability to be creative and cutting edge, so they will probably be less likely to try to suppress other economies the way Trump is trying to do. I imagine Chinese leaders are hoping that mutual prosperity and interdependence will make ideologies like "full spectrum dominance" risible relics of the past. Culture is long, turbulence happens.

Linda , 02 August 2019 at 05:36 PM
I really learned a lot from this article. Thank you for posting
Tom Wonacott , 02 August 2019 at 06:01 PM
Moscow will not engage in an exhausting arms race, and the country's military spending will gradually decrease as Russia does not seek a role as the "world gendarme," President Vladimir Putin said

While Vladimir Putin is one of the most astute observers of foreign policy in the world (running circles around Obama and Trump), he is also a politician. I sincerely doubt that Russia gradually plans on decreasing spending on their military in any meaningful way. That is for home consumption because about 35-40 percent of Russians live on $300 per month or less. Putin's popularity is also dropping even though it remains quite high (Paul Goble: Window on Eurasia -- New Series: Nearly 40 Percent of Russians Subsist on Less than... https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/nearly-40-percent-of-russians-subsist.html?spref=tw):

Thirty-seven percent of Russians life on 19,000 rubles or less a month, Rosstat says, a figure that works out to a subsistence of ten US dollars or a less a day, 23.2 percent live on less than 15,000 rubles a month (under seven dollars a day); and 12 percent have incomes under 10,000 rubles a month (five dollars a day).
Patrick Armstrong -> Tom Wonacott... , 02 August 2019 at 06:17 PM
I'm coming to think that you are that rare species of a POLITE troll. Russians like VVP, they trust him and buy the package. And they get it that Russia is under attack (they aren't living in a news bubble. They see Western stuff.)

Nobody in the West comes anywhere close to his numbers.

PS Paul Goble just prints anti-Putin stuff and is mostly entertainment.

PPS. check my link to SIPRI on reductions.

rkka said in reply to Tom Wonacott... , 02 August 2019 at 07:26 PM
After 8 years of the governance of Boris Yeltsin & the Free Market Reformers, 30% of Russians were living on $1.50/day or less as their country unstoppably descended into social catastrophe & strategic irrelevance.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/302220/

The place has since transformed, much for the better.

LA Sox Fan , 02 August 2019 at 07:44 PM
What happened to the USSR and it's empire should serve as a warning to the USA. We have two huge oceans defending us, yet we spend more to maintain our far flung empire than the USSR ever did. One day, the taxpayers of this country are no longer going to pay for an empire that they don't profit from.
ISL , 02 August 2019 at 10:05 PM
thanks for the analysis - a shame the general did not expand on what Russian capabilities iN EW were eye watering.

Interesting "The first was the coordinated RPV attack on Russian bases in Syria last year in which seven were shot down and six taken over, three of them landed intact." According to the article, the drones were controlled from 100 km distant. This really doesnt sound like jihadi technology. So very interesting that Russia was able to take over the RPVs which were either US or Israeli...

ISL said in reply to ISL... , 03 August 2019 at 11:17 AM
should have added the citation from your piece:

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201801081060595102-russia-drone-attack-hmeimim/

John Minehan , 03 August 2019 at 07:31 AM
The US (with those two oceans as its eastern and western boundaries) is a maritime power.

We are also still a sufficiently important maritime power that we have some level of responsibility for maintaining freedom of the seas (as with the issues with the pirates operating out of Puntland in southern Somalia in the late 2000s), a situation that has existed (in some form) since the Roman Republic made the Med "Mare Nostrum."

Russia has always been (mostly) a land power.

Given this, the US (even if it does not "seek to fight monsters" in Nietzsche's terms) has the Force Projection task thrust upon it in a way Russia doesn't.

Even if we sought to be non-interventionist (as I think we should), we still have more on our plate than Russia. (The PRC has the same inherent problem.)

Since we have a force projection mission thrust upon us as a maritime power, full spectrum dominance (in at least the areas where our ships operate) is an implied task.

So, I think the two thoughts I have about this article are:

1) we have broader defense needs than the Russians, based on being a maritime power; and

2) since our plate is already full, it makes little sense to add to that burden.

Bill H -> John Minehan... , 03 August 2019 at 10:21 AM
Britain is an island. Australia, while designated a continent, is also an island. Please compare their "maritime power" status to ours, their defense spending as a percentage of gdp to ours, and their number of foreign bases to ours, and explain.
John Minehan said in reply to Bill H ... , 03 August 2019 at 11:00 AM
Please compare those things to similar sized maritime nations and evaluate this in the context of the former preeminence of the Royal Navy and its adjunct forces.

For extra credit consider the likelihood that the Royal Navy is to some degree an adjunct of the US Navy,

John Minehan , 03 August 2019 at 10:18 AM
This is interesting: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/03/russia-separatism-vladimir-putin-227498

As, for example, the history of the Western Roman Empire indicates (with the possible exception of the Five Good Emperors and the early Tetrarchy during and immediately following the reign of Diocletian), authoritarian states have some problems with succession.

Putin seems to have more of a "read" than any other world leader on the global stage right now, but the answer to who follows him is likely be: "To the strongest."

Patrick Armstrong -> John Minehan... , 03 August 2019 at 11:01 AM
Not very interesting. Russia was "finished" 2 decades ago and the same stuff is endlessly recycled.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/05/russia-is-finished/302220/
John Minehan said in reply to Patrick Armstrong ... , 03 August 2019 at 02:22 PM
Russia is interesting, in a lot of ways.

Putin has been a smarter, more discerning leader than most presently on the world stage and that has lent credibility. He has an advantage, as a retired LTC in the old KGB of having some level of training and experience in both geo-politics and reading people and assessing strengths and weaknesses.

On the other hand, the demographics may actually be worse than the US or the EU (See, e.g., https://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP162/index2.html.)

Even given that, Russia has a decided advantage over many places in terms of natural resources and in controlling what may be thought of as "global key terrain" (Mackinder's "Heartland").

They have a kind of lasting Jominian advantage. With BRI/OBOR, they are somewhat in the position of the guy in the Western who owns the land the Railroad is going to come through (or, possibly, not).

Given its size, position and history, it is questionable if Russia is ever "finished," but while it has come back from its dire position 20 years ago, it still is notably weaker than it was in the 1980s. As Mr. Armstrong's article indicates that may matter less than fact it appears strong enough to advance its own interests.

[Aug 03, 2019] US Imposes New Sanctions on Russia Over March 2018 Skripal Poisoning

Tramp is trying to lease neocons again and again
Aug 03, 2019 | news.antiwar.com

New sanctions are to punish Russia for not making promises after last sanctions

Jason Ditz Posted on August 2, 2019 August 2, 2019 Categories News Tags Russia , Trump

The White House has announced that President Trump has imposed a new round of sanctions against Russia on Friday . The sanctions are nominally about the March 2018 Skripal poisoning in Britain, which the US has already issued sanctions over.

According to spokesman Hogan Gidley, the new sanctions are being imposed because of the last round of sanctions. In the previous sanctions the US demanded Russia offer them assurances that they'd stop poisoning people.

Russia never made any such assurances, since they denied poisoning Skripal in the first place. But not admitting guilt and offering the US promises, the US felt the need to impose another round of sanctions, which are probably going to set the stage for more future sanctions for the same reason.

Officials claim Russia is "required" to offer the US assurances about poisonings under US law, and the White House insists these new sanctions prove that President Trump is harder on Russia than anyone else has ever been at any time.

[Aug 02, 2019] Gotta love it! Democrats are beside themselves with outrage at Russian meddling but they could care less about election meddling that cost them wins in 2000 (Florida), and 2004 (Ohio.)

Aug 02, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

JohnH -> EMichael... , July 26, 2019 at 07:25 AM

Gotta love it! Democrats are beside themselves with outrage at Russian meddling but they could care less about election meddling that cost them wins in 2000 (Florida), and 2004 (Ohio.) And they won't say a word about blatant meddling going on right now. In fact, they want to turn the meddlers into censors to determine what information the American people can use to make decisions about who will govern them:

"On June 28th, 2019 in the immediate hours following the first Democratic Presidential debate, millions of Americans were searching online for information about Tulsi Gabbard. In fact, according to multiple news reports, Tulsi was the most searched candidate on Google. Then, without any explanation, Google suspended Tulsi's Google Ads account.

For hours, Tulsi's campaign advertising account remained offline while Americans everywhere were searching for information about her. During this time, Google obfuscated and dissembled with a series of inconsistent and incoherent reasons for its actions. In the end, Google never explained to us why Tulsi's account was suspended.

Google controls 88 percent of all internet search in the United States – essentially giving it control over our access to information. That's one reason why Tulsi has been a vocal proponent of breaking up the tech monopolies. And no matter what the motivation was for doing so, Google's arbitrary and capricious decision to suspend Tulsi's Google Ads account during a critical moment in our campaign should be of concern to all political candidates and in fact all Americans. Because if Google can do this to Tulsi, a combat veteran and four term Congresswoman who is running for the nation's highest office, Google can do this to any candidate, from any party, running for any office in the United States."

Vote for Tulsi! End election meddling by Big Tech, banksters, billionaires, and multi-nationals, meddlers that the Democratic yield shields.


ilsm -> JohnH... , July 28, 2019 at 05:14 PM
You cannot make up the effects of unaddressed angst (now mass psychosis) over Hillary (put her in jail) losing to Trump!

Thy delude themselves to think that putting the deep state in the middle of election campaigns and who they can talk to, might as well ask the Gestapo!

[Aug 02, 2019] As Ronald Reagan said "trust but verify", and if you do not think and trust too much you are mislead.

Aug 02, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

ilsm -> im1dc... , July 31, 2019 at 04:26 PM

Refute this:

All reporting is edited. The bent you got from Mueller was different on CNN last Wed night than on Fox.

If you listened to Fox Mueller was all there. If you watched Fox you got GOP questions and a sad looking stumbling old man.

I won't even go in to the differing treatment of sad Nancy Pelosi.

Mueller has no position in government to know any more than you or I about the "interference" by whomever in favor of whomever.

As Ronald Reagan said "trust but verify", and if you do not think and trust too much you are mislead.

Both trust and verify require thought and criticism.

[Aug 02, 2019] Making of the presstitute

Aug 02, 2019 | www.unz.com

annamaria , says: July 31, 2019 at 1:50 pm GMT

@anon Making the presstitute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brock

While he was at Berkeley, David Brock contributed an op-ed to The Wall Street Journal entitled "Combating Those Campus Marxists". It drew the attention of John Podhoretz, who at the time was the editor of Insight, a weekly newsmagazine published by The Washington Times.

Podhoretz flew Brock to Washington, D.C., for an interview and hired him as a writer of the weekly conservative news magazine Insight on the News, a sister publication of The Washington Times After working at Insight, Brock spent some time as a fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

Brock was formerly the domestic partner of William Grey; Fox News reported that their relationship ended in a bitter, three-year-long legal battle in which "Brock and Grey traded angry accusations, replete with charges of blackmail, theft and financial malfeasance"

Brock's claim that the Clintons have never committed any wrongdoing has received criticisms from many who have cited instances of abuse

[Aug 02, 2019] Does the New York Times Have an Editing Program that Automatically Puts "Free" Before "Trade?

Aug 02, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

anne , August 02, 2019 at 04:21 AM

http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/does-the-new-york-times-have-an-editing-program-that-automatically-puts-free-before-trade

August 1, 2019

Does the New York Times Have an Editing Program that Automatically Puts "Free" Before "Trade?"
By Dean Baker

Readers must be wondering because it happens so frequently in contexts where it is clearly inappropriate. The latest example is in an article * about the state of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination following the second round of debates.

The piece told readers:

"After a few candidates used the Detroit debate to demand that Mr. Biden account for Mr. Obama's record on issues such as deportations and free trade, Mr. Biden was joined by some of the former president's advisers, who chastised the critics for committing political malpractice."

The word "free" in this context adds nothing and is in fact wrong. The Obama administration did virtually nothing to promote free trade in highly paid professional services, like physicians services, which would have reduced inequality. It only wanted to reduce barriers that protected less educated workers, like barriers to trade in manufactured goods.

And, it actively worked to increase patent and copyright protections, which are the complete opposite of free trade. These protections also have the effect of increasing inequality.

Given the reality of trade policy under President Obama it is difficult to understand why the New York Times felt the need to modify "trade" with the adjective "free." Maybe it needs to get this editing program fixed.

* https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/us/politics/biden-obama.html

[Aug 02, 2019] Barr will start a criminal investigation on Obama, for attempting to swing the 2016 election using the deep sate, after Labor Day!

Aug 02, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

ilsm -> im1dc... , July 25, 2019 at 05:59 PM

Barr will start a criminal investigation on Obama, for attempting to swing the 2016 election using the deep sate, after Labor Day!

If CNN were not running the DEM debates someone would ask Biden "what did you know when about the FBI malfeasances?"

Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to ilsm... , July 26, 2019 at 06:55 AM
The investigations into
the Russia investigations, explained
https://www.vox.com/2019/5/29/18634410/russia-investigations-barr-trump-explained
via @voxdotcom - May 29, 2019

"INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS," President Donald Trump tweeted in April, days before the Justice Department released the Mueller report to the public.

Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have argued throughout the years-long investigation into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia that the entire probe began based on shoddy intelligence and that federal law enforcement illegally spied on members of the campaign.

But now that special counsel Robert Mueller's probe has concluded -- and Trump has a particularly receptive attorney general running the Justice Department -- the push to "investigate the investigators" has moved from rhetoric to reality.

There are several reviews of the Russia probe currently underway, both of which predate Barr. They include one by the Justice Department's internal watchdog, whose findings are expected in the coming weeks, and another inquiry overseen by Utah federal prosecutor John Huber, which was prompted by Republican complaints about the Russia probe and the handling of Hillary Clinton-related scandals.

Attorney General William Barr is also conducting his own inquiry. Barr tapped the US attorney for Connecticut to help examine the origins of the Russia probe.

But media reports suggest the AG is closely invested in this process. And last week, the president gave Barr's inquiry a substantial boost. At Barr's request, Trump signed a memo ordering US intelligence agencies to cooperate with Barr and giving the AG sweeping powers to declassify intelligence documents as part of his audit. ...

im1dc -> ilsm... , July 26, 2019 at 08:25 AM
Try to keep up, ilsm.

Barr already has an investigation on Obama.

It can't go anywhere because there is no there there.

Recall of Trump's Birther lie and you have Barr's anti-DEM/Obama/Hillary/Mueller BS.

ilsm -> im1dc... , July 26, 2019 at 07:24 PM
there is so much more to the Steele dossier and the crooked FISA.....

there are a number of former FBI and CIA operators who should be wearing tracking bracelets.

why Mueller never looked in to the reasons there is so much spied data on Trump?

kurt -> ilsm... , July 30, 2019 at 01:48 PM
You mean the FISA warrant that happened a full 4 months prior to Steele Dossier even existing? None of what you claim here makes sense unless you are trying to justify these (and other) illegal acts by POTUS.
Fred C. Dobbs said in reply to ilsm... , July 27, 2019 at 05:29 AM
Trump Tries to Think Up Crime
by Obama, Comes Up With 'Wrote Book'
NY Mag - Jonathan Chait

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/trump-investigate-obama-book.html

... Trump believes that everybody is a crook and views demands that he follow the law as mere hypocrisy. Here he pivots immediately from his rage that he is being asked to comply with basic ethical norms -- in this same interview Trump threatened to raise tariffs on French wine, a move that would benefit Trump's own winery -- to insinuations that President Obama probably committed financial crimes, too.

Trump's claim that Republicans never investigated Obama is especially bizarre. Congress held eight separate investigations on Benghazi alone. The redundancy was deemed necessary because conservatives simply refused to accept findings that no scandal had taken place.

Trump, reaching for evidence that Obama probably did something just as unethical as Trump did, comes up with Obama's book. You can almost see the wheels turning in Trump's brain as he tries to summon some damning piece of evidence about his predecessor. ...

ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , July 28, 2019 at 06:36 PM
Nixon did not use federal employees or money and was several layers above the break-in.

Obama at best can plead, I did not know........ which could only fly if Hillary and Holder were in charge.

kurt -> ilsm... , July 30, 2019 at 01:50 PM
None of this makes sense. The FISA warrant came after a Trump staffer drunkenly bragged about getting info from Russia. This has already been investigated by the FBI. Hint: Hannity, Levine, and Savage are propaganda mouthpieces. Stop listening to them.

[Aug 01, 2019] Comey Avoids DOJ Prosecution On Memo Leak; FISA Abuse Still On The Table

Aug 01, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Former FBI Director James Comey will avoid prosecution after illegally leaking personal memos in the hopes of instigating the special counsel's investigation into the 2016 US election, as reported yesterday by The Hill 's John Solomon and confirmed today by Fox News .

According to Solomon, DOJ Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz referred Comey for possible prosecution under laws governing the handling of classified information, however Attorney General William Barr has declined to prosecute - as the DOJ does not believe they have enough evidence of Comey's intent to violate the law.

"Everyone at the DOJ involved in the decision said it wasn't a close call," an official told Fox News . "They all thought this could not be prosecuted."

That said, it's important to note that this decision was the result of a 'carve-out' investigation separate of the IG probe on FISA abuse .

The Conservative Treehouse lays out the situation:

This is NOT the Inspector General Michael Horowitz report on DOJ and FBI FISA abuse.

This is a carve-out.

...

From the outset it was reported and confirmed that U.S. Attorney John Huber was assigned to assist Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Huber's job was to stand-by in case the IG carved out a particular concern, discovered during his investigation, that might involve criminal conduct.

Earlier this week Matt Whitaker said : "John Huber is reviewing anything related to Comey's memos and the like. "

Put the two data points together and what you realize is that during the OIG review of potential DOJ and FBI FISA abuse IG Horowitz investigated the Comey Memo's and then passed that specific issue along to John Huber for DOJ review.

The IG criminal referral for the James Comey memo leaking was a carve-out sent to U.S. Attorney John Huber.

...

This is not the inspector general report on DOJ and FBI FISA abuse. This is an IG report carved out of the larger investigation. - Conservative Treehouse

In short, we will first see an IG report just covering Comey, with a more comprehensive report to follow on FISA abuse. _arrow 1

chunga , 2 minutes ago

Every day this gets a little more humiliating.

libertysghost , 2 minutes ago

So it has to be proven that the head of the FBI knew what the frikin laws were that he was violating?

Knowing the laws were not in his job description?

Aside from that not being a standard for determining prosecution for anyone else aside from Deep Staters, the claim is laughable on its face. Did Comey's office (or Comey himself) ever provide evidence for the prosecution of ANY individual for ANYTHING where they argued "intent" didn't matter? I'm 100% sure he did. So why is this hard to point out in showing that "intent" doesn't matter?

FFS...this is a scam. I was leery as soon as Trump handing over declassification to Barr. We will know who is involved in the cover up by their response to this...in particular those claiming to be at the front lines of demanding consequences for the spying/coup.


Bavarian , 3 minutes ago

This was always small potatoes. FISA and the involvement in setting up the coup will involve the meat of his convictions anyway. Anyone thinking he's walking isn't paying attention.

I am Groot , 5 minutes ago

Comey: Oh I'm sorry, I didn't mean to help throw a coup.

Barr: Ok, no problem, we won't charge you. We know it was just an accident. You're all good. You can go on CNN and rub everybody's nose in it now

Real Estate Guru , 14 minutes ago

What makes you think that Comey didn't cut a deal with Barr to get the others, folks? Stay tuned!

You do the math.

I am Groot , 12 minutes ago

WHY THE **** WOULD BARR CUT A DEAL WITH ANY OF THOSE TREASONOUS ***** !

THEY ARE ALL GUILTY AS HELL ! ! !

Real Estate Guru , 11 minutes ago

I agree. But this fool might be naming Obama for all we know. That would be worth it, or Hillary.

Either way, he is going down on the FISA warrants. He signed off on them.

I am Groot , 8 minutes ago

Obama is fucked six ways to Sunday. They have the FBI text messages that prove he was directing all of this and was neck deep in it.

spyware-free , 12 minutes ago

Then why not state that as the reason? There is enough evidence to prosecute. They could have at the least waited and added the charge to future indictments instead of dismissing right away.

buckboy , 13 minutes ago

Prosecuting Comey by DOJ risks DOJ involvement and alike................just too many to protect.

TruthAbsolute , 13 minutes ago

haha the USA has a two tier justice system...You poor sick Patriots!

libertysghost , 21 minutes ago

Comey will walk and Trump will be impeached for "obstructing" an investigation into a non-existent crime, because he tried to defend himself against the coup proclaiming his innocents.

If this happens...

Cabreado , 22 minutes ago

Maintaining some sense of optimism just got a little harder...

enough of this , 23 minutes ago

All those dire pronouncements by conservative pundits that Comey would be nailed for taking classified information home from his office and releasing it to his friend, who in turn leaked it to the press was all ********. It turns out Comey could do it with impunity and he knew he would skate because his deep-state pals at the DOJ would never indict him for doing so. Rigged justice system = Rigged outcome.

SRV , 25 minutes ago

Flynn is facing 5 years for a clear FBI trap, after spying on everything he said in the WH... not a good start for Barr... and if he's a plant, it's over.

Real Estate Guru , 20 minutes ago

Flynn is a Patriot. He is not going down. He has not even been sent anywhere. Relax. if they had him, he would be in jail by now. He is like the invisible russians that Mueller convicted of nothing. They showed up by the way, and wanted to see the evidence...Mueller just blew them off. Mueller is a shill for Weissmann, he is clueless, feeble, and doesnt know one damn thing. No sentencing of anybody. Flynn is a hero, not a criminal. That tells you everything you need to know.

Real Estate Guru , 27 minutes ago

They have something far larger than this, and they don't want to lose the first case on him. Don't worry, the stuff that is coming out on this guy will easily convict him within weeks. It will involve the FISA warrants.

- Hannity, Soloman

Stay tuned...much more to come Patriots!

LookAtMeme.com , 14 minutes ago

Who said that they have to charge Comey piecemeal starting with smaller charges and therefore it's best to let him skate on those smaller charges? Prosecutors regularly load up charges against defendants.

RagaMuffin , 28 minutes ago

Unless he can be nailed on a larger charge, this is how the Swamp protects its own, particularly since intent is not the basis of whether the law was broken?

Roger Rabbit , 23 minutes ago

He IS going to be nailed on a much bigger charge: FISA abuse. It's already well established he lied to the FISA court. Too bad they are all Jesuit graduates though, hence why they've taken no corrective action, and never objected to what was obviously FISA fraud.

LookAtMeme.com , 16 minutes ago

It's already well established by Comey's own congressional testimony that he purposely leaked FBI documents in order to prompt an investigation of the President.

LookAtMeme.com , 5 minutes ago

If they intend to prosecute Comey for other crimes later then they don't have to "waste time" exonerating him now. They can throw the entire ball of wax at him at a later date. The man admitted to congress that he leaked FBI documents in order to prompt an investigation of the President. We all know this.

Ergo I.C. , 31 minutes ago

"... however Attorney General William Barr has declined to prosecute - as the DOJ does not believe they have enough evidence of Comey's intent to violate the law."

WTH! FBI agents went to Comey's house a month after he was fired to pick up documents he was not suppose to have. Not enough evidence to show intent my ***!

[Jul 31, 2019] Jessica's comment to Alia might as well have been made to Maddow, in her silo: " I can think of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections."

Jul 31, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Lambert Strether Post author , July 30, 2019 at 11:37 pm

Certainly CNN put on a debate that was superior to MSNBC in every way. There weren't any horrid technical problems like microphone failures, and the moderation was superior, too. (Jessica's comment to Alia might as well have been made to Maddow, in her silo: " I can think of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections.")

[Jul 31, 2019] Stages of capitalist development explain more than white papers and propaganda can conceal.

Jul 31, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

donkeytale , Jul 30 2019 12:10 utc | 80

Stages of capitalist development explain more than white papers and propaganda can conceal. The relevant comparative period is 1990 - present (China/Russia) versus 1950-1980 (US/West).
Ex-communist countries like Russia and China have experienced the same decline in the share of public property, but starting from a much higher level of public wealth. The share of net public wealth was as large as 70–80 percent in both countries in 1980, and fell to 20 percent (Russia) and 30–35 percent (China) in 2015.

The Chinese share is higher but not incomparable to that observed in Western high-income countries during the "mixed economy" period (1950–1980).

In other words, China and Russia have ceased to be communist in that public ownership is no longer the dominant form of property. However, these countries still have much more significant public wealth than Western high-income economies, due largely to lower public debts and greater public assets.

[Jul 29, 2019] The Real Reason The Propagandists Have Been Promoting Russia Hysteria by Caitlin Johnstone

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "After watching seven hours of a spectacle that felt much more cruel than enlightening, I cannot avoid pondering a question which honestly gives me no joy to ponder: just how much damage has MSNBC in particular done to the left?" The Hill's Rising star began, before excoriating her former employer's "fevered speculations" about an "Infowars conspiracy theory" and the way it hosted people like Jonathan "maybe Trump has been a Russian asset since the 1980s" Chait and "conspiracy gadfly Louise Mensch" in search of ratings bumps. ..."
"... "This whole setup has done more damage to the Democrats' chances of winning back the White House than anything that Trump could ever have dreamed up," Ball argued. "Think about all the time and the journalistic resources that could have been dedicated to stories that, I don't know, that a broad swath of people might actually care about? Healthcare, wages, the teachers' movement, whether we're going to war with Iran? I'm just spitballing here. ..."
"... Ball argued that the fact that MSNBC is doing so much damage to the Democratic Party in the name of ratings proves that MSNBC isn't "on Team D in the same way that Fox News is on Team R", saying they're really just in it for the money. But this is where Ball gets it wrong. It is of course true that ratings are a factor, and that conspiracy theories can be used to sell advertising space, but MSNBC would have had a much easier time marketing conspiracy theories about Trump's loyalties to Israel and Saudi Arabia , both of which would have had vastly more factual evidence to back them up. The only difference is that the US-centralized empire doesn't have agendas that it wants to advance against those two countries. ..."
"... Ball is correct that MSNBC doesn't serve the Democratic party, but she's incorrect that it serves only money. MSNBC, which is now arguably a more aggressive war propaganda network than Fox News, serves first and foremost the US national security state. And so do all the other western mainstream news networks. ..."
"... From the Pentagon's point of view, US hegemony good, Russia-China alliance very, very bad. ..."
"... I t was determined with the help of influential neoconservative think tankers that the US must maintain this unipolar paradigm at all costs. As soon as that view became the establishment orthodoxy , any threat to US hegemony was now interpreted as a threat to national security. An "attack" on America was no longer limited to physical attacks on US soil, or even on US allies and assets: any attempt to escape unipolarity is now treated as a direct attack on the empire. ..."
"... This is why we've seen nations like Iraq, Libya and Syria spoken about by the propagandists as "enemies" as though they pose some kind of direct threat to the American people. There was never any actual threat to the physical United States, but those nations were not complying with the dictates of US hegemony, and that noncompliance was treated as a direct attack. ..."
"... This "if you're not obeying us you're attacking us" mentality is ridiculous on its face and no right-thinking citizen would ever consent to it, which is why the consent manufacturers need to promote imaginary nonsense like weapons of mass destruction, a Russian "attack" on American democracy, and a conspiracy theory about the Kremlin infiltrating the highest levels of the US government. It's got nothing to do with actual fears of those nations posing any threat to actual Americans. It's about continuing to rule the world. ..."
Jul 28, 2019 | ronpaulinstitute.org

Former MSNBC host Krystal Ball slammed her ex-employer's relentless promotion of the Russiagate conspiracy theory following the embarrassing spectacle of Robert Mueller's hearing before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Wednesday.

"After watching seven hours of a spectacle that felt much more cruel than enlightening, I cannot avoid pondering a question which honestly gives me no joy to ponder: just how much damage has MSNBC in particular done to the left?" The Hill's Rising star began, before excoriating her former employer's "fevered speculations" about an "Infowars conspiracy theory" and the way it hosted people like Jonathan "maybe Trump has been a Russian asset since the 1980s" Chait and "conspiracy gadfly Louise Mensch" in search of ratings bumps.

"This whole setup has done more damage to the Democrats' chances of winning back the White House than anything that Trump could ever have dreamed up," Ball argued. "Think about all the time and the journalistic resources that could have been dedicated to stories that, I don't know, that a broad swath of people might actually care about? Healthcare, wages, the teachers' movement, whether we're going to war with Iran? I'm just spitballing here.

I actually heard some pundit on Chris Hayes last night opine that independent women in middle America were going to be swayed by what Mueller said yesterday. Are you kidding me? This is almost as bonkers and lacking in factual basis as that time Mimi Rocah said that Bernie Sanders is not pro-women because that was what her feelings told her. Rocah, by the way, a political prosecutor with no political background, is only opining at MSNBC because of her role in leading viewers to believe that any day now SDNY is going to bring down Trump and his entire family."

Ball argued that the fact that MSNBC is doing so much damage to the Democratic Party in the name of ratings proves that MSNBC isn't "on Team D in the same way that Fox News is on Team R", saying they're really just in it for the money. But this is where Ball gets it wrong. It is of course true that ratings are a factor, and that conspiracy theories can be used to sell advertising space, but MSNBC would have had a much easier time marketing conspiracy theories about Trump's loyalties to Israel and Saudi Arabia , both of which would have had vastly more factual evidence to back them up. The only difference is that the US-centralized empire doesn't have agendas that it wants to advance against those two countries.

Ball is correct that MSNBC doesn't serve the Democratic party, but she's incorrect that it serves only money. MSNBC, which is now arguably a more aggressive war propaganda network than Fox News, serves first and foremost the US national security state. And so do all the other western mainstream news networks.

Consider the way the Syrian province of Idlib is being reported on right now, to pick one of many possible examples. Al-Qaeda-controlled Idlib is the final stronghold of the extremist militant groups that the US and its allies flooded Syria with in a premeditated campaign to effect regime change, and Syria and its allies are fighting to recapture the region. They are using methods that are identical to those commonly used by the US and its allies, yet the bombing campaigns of the US-centralized empire receive virtually no critical coverage while western mainstream outlets like CNN and the BBC are churning out brazenly propagandistic pieces about the evils of the Assad coalition's airstrikes.

"Civilians are dying in Idlib, just as they died in their thousands in recent US UK air strikes in eg Raqqa and Mosul," political analyst Charles Shoebridge observed on Twitter today. "The difference is that when it's (often unverified) claims that Russia or Syria are doing the killing, US UK media make it front page news."

There are many gaping plot holes in the Russiagate narrative that outlets like MSNBC have been bashing everyone over the head with, but the most obvious and easily provable of them is the indisputable fact that Donald Trump has escalated tensions against Russia more than any US president in decades. You never hear anyone talk about this self-evident fact in all the endless yammering about Russia, though, because it doesn't advance the agendas of either of America's two mainstream parties, and it doesn't advance the interests of US imperialism. Democrats don't like acknowledging the fact that Trump has been consistently and aggressively working directly against the interests of Moscow , and Trump supporters don't like acknowledging that their president is just as much of a neocon-coddling globalist as those they claim to oppose, so the war machine has gone conveniently unchallenged in manufacturing new cold war escalations against a nation they've had marked for destruction since the fall of the Soviet Union.

In a very interesting new Grayzone interview packed full of ideas that you'll never hear voiced on western mass media, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov spoke openly about the various ways that Russia, China, and other nations who've resisted absorption into the blob of the US power alliance have been working toward the creation of a multipolar world. Ryabkov said other nations have been watching the way the dominance of the US dollar has been used to economically terrorize noncompliant nations into subservience by way of sanctions and other manipulations, with Washington expecting that the dollar and the US financial system will remain "the cardiovascular system of the whole organism."

"That will not be the case," Ryabkov said. "People will bypass, in literal terms. And people will find ways how to defend themselves, how to protect themselves, how to guarantee themselves against any emergencies if someone comes up at the White House or whatever, at the Treasury, at the State, and says 'Hey guys, now we should stop what is going on in Country X, and let's squeeze them out.' And this country sits on the dollar. So they will be done the moment those ideas will be pronounced. So China, Russia and others, we create alternatives that we will most probably continue using not just national currencies, but baskets of currencies, currencies of third countries, other modern barter schemes."

"We will use ways that will diminish the role of dollar and US banking system with all these risks of assets and transactions being arrested, being stopped," Ryabkov concluded.

That, right there, is the real reason you're being sold Russia hysteria today.

And it isn't just on the matter of financial systems in which the unabsorbed powers are uniting against the imperial blob. Russia and China just carried out their first joint air patrol on Tuesday, drawing a hostile response from imperial vassals Japan and South Korea.

"Russian and Chinese bombers on 'first' joint patrol in the Asia-Pacific region. The China-Russia alliance has become a reality and will last for long time," reads a post by one Russian Twitter commentator in response to the news.

The emergence of this alliance, which the Chinese government has warned Washington is 'not vulnerable to interference', has been something the west has feared for a long time. A Pentagon white paper published this past May titled "Russian Strategic Intentions" mentions the word "China" 108 times. Some noteworthy excerpts:

  • The world system, and American influence in it, would be completely upended if Moscow and Beijing aligned more closely.
  • The allies' goal should be deterrence. At the same time, the US should bilaterally engage Russia to peel them away from China's orbit.
  • He also encourages the development of the US's 'capability to effectively foster distrust and unease between the Russia Federation and China.'
  • Along with Beijing, Moscow seeks a multipolar world in which US hegemony comes to an end. As Alexander Lukin recently pointed out, the 'common ideal of a multipolar world [has] played a significant role in the rapprochement between Russia and China.'
  • Russia and China were explicitly mentioned in the 2018 National Defense Strategy as the great powers with which the US is in competition. Both Russia and China have come a long way since the 1990s, and the 'friendship' that emerged in the immediate post-Tiananmen period and continued to grow over the years now today appears to be one of the strongest bilateral alliances on the planet.
  • Together, Russia's tentacles on its former Soviet neighbors and Moscow's strategic alliance with Beijing in pursuit of a multipolar world (in which the US is no longer the global hegemon) form the two main pillars upon which Putin's grand strategy rests. All other aspects of its foreign policy behavior can be traced back to this dual-pronged grand strategy.

I think you get the picture. From the Pentagon's point of view, US hegemony good, Russia-China alliance very, very bad. Analysts like the white paper's authors, and even The New York Times editorial board , have urged the drivers of US foreign policy to attempt to lure Moscow away from Beijing, the latter rightly perceived as the greater long-term threat to US dominance due to China's surging economic power. But diplomacy has clearly been ruled out toward this end, with only a steadily escalating campaign to shove Russia off the world stage now deemed acceptable.

It was determined with the help of influential neoconservative think tankers that the US must maintain this unipolar paradigm at all costs. As soon as that view became the establishment orthodoxy , any threat to US hegemony was now interpreted as a threat to national security. An "attack" on America was no longer limited to physical attacks on US soil, or even on US allies and assets: any attempt to escape unipolarity is now treated as a direct attack on the empire.

This is why we've seen nations like Iraq, Libya and Syria spoken about by the propagandists as "enemies" as though they pose some kind of direct threat to the American people. There was never any actual threat to the physical United States, but those nations were not complying with the dictates of US hegemony, and that noncompliance was treated as a direct attack.

This "if you're not obeying us you're attacking us" mentality is ridiculous on its face and no right-thinking citizen would ever consent to it, which is why the consent manufacturers need to promote imaginary nonsense like weapons of mass destruction, a Russian "attack" on American democracy, and a conspiracy theory about the Kremlin infiltrating the highest levels of the US government. It's got nothing to do with actual fears of those nations posing any threat to actual Americans. It's about continuing to rule the world.

Reprinted with permission from Medium.com . Support Ms. Johnstone's work on Patreon or Paypal .

[Jul 29, 2019] The great antisemitism witchhunt McCarthyism redux by John Wight

Notable quotes:
"... Reds under the bed has been replaced with antisemites under the bed; this with the full and open complicity of a mainstream media whose dread over the prospect of transformational political change is entwined in tight embrace with that of an Establishment -- political and security -- in ensuring nothing but nothing will ever change in this country apart from the colour of the curtains on the windows in Downing Street. ..."
"... There is nothing more grotesque than being lectured to about antisemitism, or any other form of racism, by apologists for a racist apartheid state. Yet this grotesquerie is precisely where we have arrived at in response to Corbyn's unlikely elevation to the leadership of the Labour Party. ..."
"... I think one has to appreciate, despite all the 'far-left' labels stuck on him, that Corbyn only appeared to be a 'raving looney leftie' in comparison with the rightwing Blairite majority of MPs who've controlled the Labour Party for so long and capitulated to and followed a Thatcherite political agenda, for decades. ..."
"... Anti-semitism oldest form of gas lighting that was ever created in the western world especially after the second world war. If one were to go to Palestine it is not uncommon to find some ebraic semite wearing a t shirt with on it printed an IDF soldier taking aim at a pregnant arab semite. Israel has to be exposed for what it is. It is an anglo-zionist colonial outpost.. Zionism was born in England it pre dates Herzl. ..."
"... The key to the anti-Semitism problem is the conflation of Judaism with Zionism. This didn't happen by accident, it is a deliberate and relatively modern policy. (An old (Jewish) friend described the indoctrination he got to me growing up. That was quite a long time ago, its probably so ingrained now that nobody notices this process any more.) ..."
"... The comparison to a witch hunt is perfectly accurate. The attack works by mere accusation. The facts, evidence, criteria of evaluation are all irrelevant. ..."
Jun 29, 2019 | OffGuardian
This article was first published on March 1st of this year, however, it is given fresh relevance in the wake of Labour's reinstatement, and then re-suspension, of Derby MP Chris Williamson

Photo: The Crucible at the Pacific Conservatory Theatre

PUTNAM: Now look you, sir. Let you strike out against the Devil, and the village will bless you for it! Come down, speak to them -- pray with them. They're thirsting for your word, Mister! Surely you'll pray with them.

PARRIS: (swayed) I'll lead them in a psalm, but let you say nothing of witchcraft yet. I will not discuss it. The cause is yet unknown. I have had enough contention since I came; I want no more.
Arthur Miller – The Crucible

In his magisterial autobiography, Timebends , describing his motivation behind his classic work The Crucible (extracted above) -- the most compelling and enduring allegorical piece of drama to grace the American theatre -- Arthur Miller reveals the following:

What I sought was a metaphor, an image that would spring out of the heart, all-inclusive, full of light, a sonorous instrument whose reverberations would penetrate to the centre of this miasma. For if the current degeneration of discourse continued, as I had every reason to believe it would, we could no longer be a democracy, a system that requires a certain basic trust in order to exist."

The 'miasma' referred to by Miller in the above passage was the atmosphere of censorious paranoia whipped up by the anti-Communist witchhunts of the 1940s and 1950s, starting under the auspices of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), established in 1938, joined thereafter by Senator Joseph McCarthy's Senate hearings into alleged Communist infiltration from the late 1940s.

The period concerned, commonly referred to as McCarthyism, illuminated the parameters of free speech and expression in a country and culture which prides itself on both. It drilled home the profound truth that tyranny is less the by-product of totalitarian political systems and more the product of totalitarian ideas and nostrums that sustain political orthodoxy in a given space and time. And, too, whenever those ideas and nostrums come under challenge, said democracy is exposed as a cloak behind which mendacity resides, ruthlessly seeking malcontents to expose and miscreants to punish.

In Britain in 2019 we need no longer turn to US history for an understanding of McCarthyism and its execrable fruits.

For in Britain in 2019 McCarthyism is with us and among us, corroding our public and political discourse, poisoning it with the untruths, lies and mendacious smears of some of the most malignant political forces that ever existed in these islands.

Reds under the bed has been replaced with antisemites under the bed; this with the full and open complicity of a mainstream media whose dread over the prospect of transformational political change is entwined in tight embrace with that of an Establishment -- political and security -- in ensuring nothing but nothing will ever change in this country apart from the colour of the curtains on the windows in Downing Street.

Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party has to intents been usurped by his deputy Tom Watson, a man for whom Shakespeare's "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!" line from The Tempest could have been written with in mind.

Labour Friends of Israel

Watson is the Labour Party's Matthew Hopkins, the infamous witch-hunter whose reign of terror in 17th century Britain finds its metaphorical equivalent in the 21st century with the objective not of locating and hanging out to dry antisemites but instead anti-Zionists, which means to say genuine anti-racists.

For what is Zionism if not racism, a species of white supremacy responsible for relegating the humanity of five million men, women and children of the illegally occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip to that of latter-day Helots?

Adding to the mountain of intellectual and moral ordure erected in service to this miasma of untruth and base hypocrisy, are the findings of a UN investigation into the Palestinians killed and wounded by Israeli snipers during last year's Great Return March in Gaza.

According to the UN's Santiago Canton:

Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity."

In diplomatic-speak, Mr Canton is here referencing the manner in which Israeli soldiers shot down dozens of unarmed Palestinians -- among them children, medics and journalists -- like deer in a forest, with some of those Israeli soldiers caught on tape laughing and celebrating their 'kills'.

It is to this monstrosity of an apartheid state Tom Watson and his friends are giving succour and sanction; and it this supremacist juggernaut of oppression we are expected to accept as compatible with left-wing progressive values.

There is nothing more grotesque than being lectured to about antisemitism, or any other form of racism, by apologists for a racist apartheid state. Yet this grotesquerie is precisely where we have arrived at in response to Corbyn's unlikely elevation to the leadership of the Labour Party.

His legacy as a staunch supporter of Palestinian human rights and self-determination has been weaponised against him and his supporters by a pro-Israel lobby within and without the Labour Party, plumbing depths of indecency last witnessed during the era of McCarthyism across the Atlantic.

For those who doubt how deeply entrenched the pro-Israel lobby now is within the UK body politic, Al Jazeera's blistering documentary The Lobby is required viewing.

Given the context and the stakes involved in this ongoing witch hunt and smear campaign, the lack of meaningful resistance on the part of Corbyn is unconscionable; his refusal to mobilise his base in the face of it inexplicable. The result has not been to see it disappear but for it to prosper and grow in ferocity.

Be under no illusion either of the complicity of key figures in and around the Labour leadership in whipping up and/or acquiescing in this baseless hysteria -- Lansman, McDonnell et al. -- to the point where Corbyn has been rendered well nigh unelectable as a prospective prime minister.

That this is a smear campaign and witchhunt conducted, regardless of the fog of obfuscation deployed to the contrary, on behalf of a foreign power -- and an apartheid power at that -- compounds the offence.

But this issue is now bigger than Corbyn. It is about where we stand on matters of intellectual and moral integrity; and most of all on the rights we accrue to an oppressed people and those of their oppressor. Future generations are watching and waiting for the stance that we take.

Arthur Miller understood this, which is why his light will shine forever bright as a beacon of moral courage in an age of deceit.

End.

Ben Trovata

"They misunderestimated me."George Bush,the Younger,Nov. 6, 2000.

I'll not supply any facts. None whatsoever,saying only: Corbyn( I believe) is made of better material. Blairites must be expelled, or otherwise, go away!

MichaelK
I think one has to appreciate, despite all the 'far-left' labels stuck on him, that Corbyn only appeared to be a 'raving looney leftie' in comparison with the rightwing Blairite majority of MPs who've controlled the Labour Party for so long and capitulated to and followed a Thatcherite political agenda, for decades.

Corbyn himself isn't really a 'revolutionary' or even a radical. He's what half a century ago would have been described as a pretty normal, middle-of-the-road, Labour social democrat, barely on the left of the Party at all. But some of this is debatable, depending on where one stands on the spectrum personally. It's a sign of how far 'left' politics and 'left' discourse has degenerated in the UK, and political culture's moved so far to the right, that Corbyn, like a relic of a bygone era, is perceived as far more leftwing than he actually is, in reality.

What he is though, is ineffective as a leader. He lacks authority, I think, because he fundamentally lacks a set of strong ideas that show what he stands for and where he wants the country to move. There's no real narrative that mobilises support for him, and this is the curse of Labour; the leadership's fear of mobilising the membership and their supporters and votes in the country, too much and too far, which could easily lead to them raising their expectations way beyond what's 'realistic' and possible within the boundaries of bourgeois liberal democracy. Labour fought for political power in parliament; but didn't believe in openly challenging economic power in society in any meaningful way, because that strategy was simply not allowed because it was 'revolutionary' and not reformist.

mark
Of course Corbyn is a "raving loony lefty."
He wants to re nationalise the railways (maybe.)
And build a few council houses (maybe.)
How raving loony is that?
Obviously he's a raving loony.
Oh, and he objects to the genocide of the Palestinians.
Obviously a raving anti semite as well.
Just ask the Board of Deputies and Margaret Hodge and the Daily Mail. They'll explain it all to you.
Barovsky
More to the point; he's a (Labour) Party man. The Party comes first, regardless. For almost 130 years the Labour Party has been an integral part of British capitalism and imperialism and the British state. Thus Corbyn, a run-of-the-mill social democrat is concerned only with the survival of the Party and he will do whatever is necessary in its defence including defenestrating his election manifesto (compare his draft with the one finally circulated in 2017)!

Should he by some chance actually end up as PM, what are the odds of him actually reversing austerity when he's already sold out over every key part of his original manifesto?

There are going to be a lot of very disappointed and once more disconnected Labour voters.

mathias alexand
What is this "leadership" and "authority" thing? As for his ideas he could have any number of them that you will never hear about in the MSM.
Maggie
True Mathias, but you can see and hear about them on the Jimmy Dore Show whose shows truly are a breath of fresh air:

Bernie Sanders of Britain and why he is widely loved, and sadly rare. July 2016

https://www.youtube.com/embed/a29WF44jDug?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Labour Party Platform, Amazingly specific and pro worker. May 2017

https://www.youtube.com/embed/vI073wq2zKY?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Jeremy Corbyn Delivers Inspiring Speech June 2017

https://www.youtube.com/embed/8RsSPOcVcNM Wimbledon issues ban on chanting Jeremy Corbyn July 2017

https://www.youtube.com/embed/0MwqZkBOEz0 Pro Jeremy Corbyn ad makes Right wingers cry.July 2017

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ptC-0_gObNM NBC News Smears Jeremy Corbyn as an anti semite. July 2017

https://www.youtube.com/embed/F4d-ZAPx1q4 BBC Andrew Neil smashes Jeremy Corbyn Smear on Live TV Feb 2018

https://www.youtube.com/embed/IJZkYDYh37U Corbyn responds rationally to Russian nerve attack and is immediately smeared March 2018

https://www.youtube.com/embed/OsnAIUZIt8M Corbyn smeared as anti semite for attacking Bankers. September 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9US9v0ndus

And on and on it goes, and the sh*t does stick. For the majority of people eventually just cave in and believe this Zionist garbage.

falcemartello
Anti-semitism oldest form of gas lighting that was ever created in the western world especially after the second world war. If one were to go to Palestine it is not uncommon to find some ebraic semite wearing a t shirt with on it printed an IDF soldier taking aim at a pregnant arab semite. Israel has to be exposed for what it is. It is an anglo-zionist colonial outpost.. Zionism was born in England it pre dates Herzl.

Hence until more exposure of the brutal nature of the Israeli zionist and their parents the anglo-zionist becomes exposed then the diluted term of anti semite will continue to be used. I find that with the dying western paradigm so will this gaslighting term become irrelevant .If any intellectual honesty were to be used the real anti semites are the zionist.

Post Scriptum : Israel has a shelf life and it is omploding with in hence so will zionism.

Having experience racism first hand growing up and still being exposed to it today for mhy ethnicity I am not fortunate enough as the ashkanazi /zionist to deflect and gaslight my oppressors.

harry law
Former South African Minister Ronnie Kasrils himself Jewish on Thursday accused Israel of conducting a policy against the Palestinians that was "worse" than apartheid.

Speaking on the sidelines of a UN meeting on the situation in the Palestinian territories, Kasrils said South Africa's townships had never been attacked by helicopter gunships and tanks, in contrast to the military means employed by Israel.

https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/israel-worse-than-apartheid-sa-kasrils-352481

andyoldlabour
Labour Friends of Israel, Conservative Friends of Israel, Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel – all different organisations?

No, of course they are not, even if the ordinary man in the street may think so.

They are all controlled by the Israeli state, to do the bidding of that state, to demonise any person who shows empathy with the plight of the Palestinian people, any person who dares criticise the actions of the Israeli state.

On the other hand, you have Jewish Friends of Labour, seen by the Israeli state as "self hating Jews", the "wrong type of Jew".
What we are seeing at the moment is – Zio-McCarthyism.

Capricornia Man
'McCarthyism' is exactly what I have been calling the witch-hunt for some time. It's surprising that the term is taking so long to come into general use when it is the appropriate term based on historical analogy, as shown by the article. The pile-on against anyone who dares to support the political and national rights of the Palestinians induces physical illness in anyone remotely interested in justice and truth.

The rancid 'liberal' media frames its "coverage" by treating accusations of 'antisemitism' not as the thing which has to be proved, but as the proof itself. A classic McCarthyite process.

The vast majority of Britons must be fed up having their politics held up to ransom in this manner. Stand up for yourselves and by-pass the fifth column and the coward element in the Labour Party.

vwbeetle
To read the Guardian, one would think that Williamson has no supporters in Labour whatsoever. As far as the Guardian is concerned, Jewish Voice for Labour and its condemnation of the witch hunt and smear campaign against Corbyn and Williamson and anyone who supports Palestinian rights, does not exist. Up until a couple of years ago I was a regular contributor on CIF discussion threads, largely rebutting Zionists and their propaganda and outright lies. I was eventually blocked, probably because large numbers of Zionists reported me, despite the fact that I largely restricted my posts to historical facts. Over the past two years it is almost impossible to make comments on CIF about any article about Israel/Palestine, or the anti-semitism smear campaign. What has happened at the Guardian? Does anyone know why the paper seems to have changed course?
MichaelK
The lurch to the political right at the Guardian is linked to the Snowden and Assange revelations that challenged the cosy ideological relationship between the media and the state, to a degree that is simply not allowed, if one wants to be seen as loyal and responsible. There are consequences is one, as an individual, group or institution, is perceived as being illoyal by the Establishment and the state.

Assange and Snowden pulled the Guardian over an invisible line, into a grey area, at the time, which was perceived as being tantamount to treason, and now the Guardian has been successfully reined in once more and now co-opperates with the state on matters relating to 'national security.' The damage, has been undone and a proper and reasonable relationship established.

Haltonbrat
The Guardian has been pro-Zionist since the days of editor CP Scott who introduced the Zionist leader to Looyd George and supported the Zionists in his writings in the Manchester Guardian.
Shardlake
It all changed, and not for the better, after Alan Rusbridger left. It's as much a mouthpiece now for this appalling government as the Murdoch press and their like. There's been a continual shift in centre ground politics to the right since the days of Thatcher.

We are seeing what Edward Bernays described in 1928 as the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.

Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of.

In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.

It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Stephen Morrell
PS. The Labour Party never fails to disappoint
Stephen Morrell
It's time to stop calling Israel an 'apartheid state'. Snipers today, missiles and bombs tomorrow, with deliberate and active ruination of amenity, infrastructure and the means to live -- by siege, every day.

Israel's atrocities are not simply 'crimes against humanity'. They're crimes directed against a particular ethnic/national/racial segment of humanity. That's called genocide. Netanyahu and his gang are genocidal, and consequently the garrison state of Israel is also a 'genocide state'. Time to start applying the g-word.

Haltonbrat
Yes, The actions of Israel meet the UN definition of genocide.
mark
The Times of Israel, a national newspaper, quite openly advocated genocide. It called for the Palestinian people to be exterminated at concentration camps in the desert. The "Justice" Minister, a woman called Shaked, called for Palestinian mothers to be exterminated, so that no Palestinian children could be born. Two rabbis in Israel published a book called "The King's Torah." It called for all Palestinian children to be murdered.

Killing a goy, any goy, is a Mitzvah, a praiseworthy act.

If the Jews get the war with Iran they have been trying to incite and agitate for for so long, they will use this as cover to carry out actual genocide on a massive scale.

People need to give up completely on Labour. It is infested wall to wall with 30 shekel whores.

maggie
Hi Mark, Do you have links to the information you have posted please.

If we give up on Labour, then who do we rely on? I think what we should be doing is focussing all our energies on removing (de selecting) the 90 "friends of Israhell" who have been baying for Chris Williamson and Jeremy Corbyn to be removed permanently from the Labour Party. Beginning with the evil with Hodge, and her cronies headed by Tom Watson.

mark
The Times of Israel, 1/8/14.
"When Genocide Is Permissible", by Yochanan Gordon.
Openly advocates, endorses and justifies the genocide of the Palestinians.

Ayelet Shaked, 14/7/14.
"Mothers of all Palestinians should be killed. They have to die and their houses should be demolished. They are all our enemies and their blood should be on our hands."
A day before Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khudair was kidnapped and burned alive by 6 Jew thugs, Shaked published a call for the genocide of the Palestinians in Facebook.
"The entire Palestinian people is the enemy, including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure."
She called for the slaughter of Palestinian mothers. "to prevent them giving birth to little snakes."

The King's Torah, 230 page book published 2009 by Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva. Authors Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur. Endorsed by many leading rabbis.
It openly incites and calls for the extermination of the Palestinians, and explains how this is morally justified.
It is a call for indiscriminate extermination.
The killing of children, en masse, responds to "the existence of an internal need for revenge."
"In the face of revenge, no one is innocent, be they old, young, children, men or women, and regardless of their health."
It rejects any notion of international law and the protection of civilians in time of war, or international humanitarian law on the prevention of genocide. Israel is above international law, because Jews are superior to Gentiles and the lives of Gentiles have no value.

Jews are indoctrinated from birth to hate all the goyim.
Israel is an openly genocidal, terrorist, racist state.
There is no doubt that in the event of a major war with Iran, it would use this as cover to commit genocide, which has been long planned.

Stephen Morrell
I apologise for taking up so much space in replying to your very telling question about what alternative is there to Labour. First, it should now be clear to everyone that Labour, whether led by Corbyn or any other 'left' social democrat, is no answer to the dire situation we face. Right now there is no mass party on this planet that can provide the leadership necessary, let alone serve as the instrument, for the revolutionary change so desperately needed to excise the malignancy of capitalism from the human social organism. This is a crisis of revolutionary leadership.

The bourgeois Greens are not the answer either, and most of the traditional left and 'far' left are mired in one form or another of opportunistic kow-towing to Corbyn and Labour or the Greens. This isn't to say that one should never vote Labour, the party of the working class. It's to say that one should only give support to Labour, as 'a rope supports a hanging man' (Lenin), when it furthers revolutionary and class consciousness in the working class. The working class, as politically backward as it might be now in many ways, is the only class with the social power to overthrow the capitalists -- it can stop and start production at will and, most importantly, if it had the political consciousness and leadership to do so, it could take over production and overthrow capitalism. Such a consciousness is smothered and suppressed by Labour and the current leaders of the trade unions (such as the latter currently exist).

Presently Labour deserves no vote because under Corbyn they've refused to support Brexit and are pushing for a second referendum. Tony Benn, Corbyn's mentor, would have been railing against him over his betrayal of this fundamental class issue in Britain. Corbyn is Blair lite. On the EU he's Blair quiet.

If in power, Corbyn would either be forced to bow to the diktats of capital and the ruling class or be pushed out, and pronto. Already forces centred on MI6's The Guardian, the Zionist lobby, the aristocratic feudal relics, the military, 'the City' rentiers, and of course the Blairites, have been undermining him because of his mild reformist and foreign policy stances. However, the ruling class would rush to Corbyn and Labour, or another 'left' alternative, if their rule were seriously threatened by an awakened working class. Before fascism, Corbyn would be their best and last hope.

What then of the left and far left? They're all still propaganda groups. We have the likes of the SP, SWP, Socialist Alternative and so on, who've advocated a vote for Labour unconditionally at just about every election. And they've also supported the bourgeois Greens. In doing so, they provide no alternative to Labour. Instead their strategy is to try to pressure Labour to the left. How's that been working? Corbyn still supports the EU. How many times has he mentioned Julian Assange? Or the basic necessity to do away with the monarchy and House of Lords and all the other 'traditions of the dead generations [that] weigh like a nightmare upon the living' (Marx). At least in the US, the ISO (followers of the late Tony Cliff) have decided to sate their opportunistic appetites and dissolve themselves to join the Democratic Socialists of America (ie, social democrats inside a bourgeois party, the Democratic Party of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Then we have the Socialist Equity Party, ostensibly 'Trotskyist' and followers of David North, that declares trade unions in principle to be an instrument for the subjugation of the working class. Imagine that: the prime defense organs of the working class historically are written off in advance because their leaderships betray the rank and file (which they do, but not always, not inevitably). Outfits like the SEP don't have a perspective to take these trade union leaderships on from within and fight to replace them with a revolutionary leadership in the heat of struggle to turn the unions into real working class defense organs.

Consequently, a revolutionary consciousness cannot be developed from within the working class in struggle for it to act in its own historic interests. The SEP have a slew of other programmatic issues that are awry as well, but their outlook boils down to opportunism afraid of itself.

This isn't to say that the World Socialist Website is completely useless. It isn't, but its articles on workers and trade union struggles in particular need to be taken with a large grain of salt.

In short, if there are only propaganda groups at the moment that pose an alternative to Labour, then it at least behoves those looking for an alternative to Labour to not waste time or effort on any group that can't get even the basics of a program right, let alone before they even dirty their hands in actual struggle.

What's left then? Right now, the first criteria to look out for is if an ostensibly revolutionary group advocates 'No vote to Labour', and draws a class line for Brexit and against a new referendum; one that works consistently to destroy any illusions in the bourgeois state and its parliament ever being 'reformed' to act in the interests of the working class -- which means also exposing those who do. That's pretty fundamental, but it's a start.

So far the only group that does these things in the UK is the Spartacist League of Britain. See:
https://www.icl-fi.org/english/wh/index.html
and
https://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1157/brexit.html

mark
Very shrewd assessment. But I'd say a re run of pre war Weimar is the most likely outcome. People are far more likely to turn to far worse than Trump or Farage as things deteriorate. Expect to see more Zionist controlled opposition like the EDL.
maggie
Mmm.. Stephen, a very interesting reply.. and links, which I will read and try to digest, though I have to confess a lot of the information contained therein, at 'first glance' I thought had been tried, tested and failed owing to the avarice of the capitalists and their power to remove the ground from under our feet.
This may be the wrong interpretation? But I will read the links more thoroughly and try to get my head around the concepts.

What I think we could do immediately, is to have the one man one vote system, to elect the 'man/woman' we choose to represent us and dispense with 'parties' altogether.
Surely, it can't be that difficult with today's technology, which would automatically dispense with the ballot box and the inherent frauds that continually happen.
Or am I being too simplistic and naïve?
Then again.. isn't this just the Russian system, and was that of Libya?

Stephen Morrell
The organs of power that spring up during revolutions are what work at the time. They're not created a priori, but they go on to serve the basis for the exercise of mass democracy. The Paris Commune had the The Committee of Public Safety, Russia had soviets (Russian for workers' council) that first arose in 1905 and again in 1917. The basis for their power rests on a politically conscious and armed constituency that has risen up which can recall elected representatives at any time (because they're armed).

Soviets elect representatives to higher soviet bodies (collegiate system), but their main purpose is to decide and vote on what, not whom. On an economic plan for example.

In contrast, bourgeois democracy at most gives you the privilege of voting for which scumbag will oppress you for the next 4 or 5 years. This is not to denigrate democratic rights but it is the way capitalist rule is disguised and legitimated; and we're made to feel responsible for outcomes because we participated in voting in elections. We help the executioner load his gun. One should never confuse elections with democracy.

I can recommend the following reading list which might help:

EH Carr, "What is History" (a great, broad-brushed approach to understanding different stages in human history and development).

K Marx, F Engels, "The Communist Manifesto"

F Engels, "Socialism Utopian and Scientific"

VI Lenin, "What Is To Be Done" (On the need for a party of the Bolshevik type)

VI Lenin, "State and Revolution" (On why the existing state must be smashed replaced by a new one, and what happens to it after a socialist revolution)

LD Trotsky, "Lessons of October" (On why the revolution occurred in backward Russia and not Germany)

LD Trotsky, "Results and Prospects" (On why backward countries in the epoch of imperialism not being able make a bourgeois revolution whose tasks can only be accomplished by a proletarian revolution -- the theory of 'Permanent Revolution')

LD Trotsky, "The Revolution Betrayed" (Why Stalin arose and soviet democracy was smashed in the USSR)

Some of these are a little heavy going and polemical (eg, Lenin), and Marx is full of historical and literary references, but patience will be rewarded. Except for EH Carr (available as a Penguin classic), these can all be accessed at: https://www.marxists.org/

espartaco
Too much ado about nothing It is very simple Socialism has NOTHING to do with religion Judaism, Christianism, Islamism or whatever. They invite these kind problems because the bourgeois that control Labour, allowed every kind of minorities to infiltrate the Party (and all other parties) to, eventually, destroy it through religious, racial and minority wars. What you see is what you get when leftist minoritymongering has taken over politics. The solution is very simple, all religious groups should be thrown out of the party, together with all the bourgeois. MP's first !!!
lundiel
I agree. We currently have MPs of all parties acting as agents for their countries of birth, or as agents of third countries (Ms Smeeth). This worked when they (agents) had no real political power, they were limited to cultural exchange visits etc. The change came with the growth in size and power of our security services .there's more than one way to skin a cat like Corbyn!
Maggie
Fear not Lundiel, the work is already begun . Jeremy will NEVER be allowed to lead.

Anonymous 'Civil Servants' (Deep State Operatives) have briefed the media regarding the allegedly frail condition of possible PM-to-be Jeremy Corbyn on the basis of – no evidence whatever.
Understandably, Corbyn is very angry about this demanding an investigation into the leak.

Given the story is without foundation and knowing the threat the establishment sees in Corbyn, a leader whose policies include the creation of a National Bank (aaaarghh the fiend the fiend) and the renationalisation of public utilities (including transport) a leader whose knee-jerk reaction to Ashkenazi Jewish assaults against the Semitic population in Israel is to speak out loudly and boldly in defence of Palestinians' rights

given all this, we know that the idea of Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister of Great Britain is absolutely unacceptable to our ruling 'establishment'.

Let it be said then what Mr Corbyn and his inner circle must be thinking about the appearance of this non-story that the establishment is 'creating the option to eliminate' Mr. Corbyn (by heart attack dart?) in the event of his winning or threatening to win a UK general election.

Performing such a national service would be 'business as usual' for our "protectors" at MI5.

For example -Keith Mothersson: After he died in 2009, his obituary appeared in The Guardian.

The following facts are not included in the obituary of this heroic absolute gentleman:

"Keith created an organisation in 2008/9 called "ALL FAITHS FOR 9/11 TRUTH".
He, like most members of '9/11 Truth (UK & Ireland)', saw 9/11 truth as a spiritual (as much as a political) matter.
He went round the country meeting religious leaders and forming connections and bonds between the various groups he had organised. There were C of E, Catholic, Muslim (the largest group based in a couple of the biggest mosques in the country), Buddhist, and even a Jewish group.
I was involved with Keith, approaching 'Catholic' leaders (as an aside, the couple I tried to talk to [it was early days] were hostile to the idea even engaging with the issue maybe, for someone who has taken vows of obedience, this is an issue for the Pope alone)."

The thing is that Keith was the connection and bond between the groups he had started forming.

He lived in Perth, Scotland. On one evening during September 2009 Keith returned to his house in Perth. He arrived home in a dishevelled state, exhausted and confused. He told his partner that he been accosted by a group of men on the walk home and had "a terrible struggle in a van". He had been held down then released. He repeated "Why me?" to himself a few times before his partner helped him to bed.

She told friends that when Keith woke up he didn't know who he was. He did not recognise her either. He was taken to hospital where he lay silently in bed for two weeks before dying.

A multi-faith, well-organised, religious collective demanding answers re 9/11 represented a genuine threat to the "Deep State".
Keith had gone too far. He was "eliminated" and his nascent organisation along with him.
And there is no one to whom one can even report this terrible crime. Such is the nature of our society.
https://wwwkevboyle.blogspot.com/2019/06/corbyns-health-and-keith-mothersson.html

Jeremy Corbyn is not a fool. He understands very well the 'options' for the Deep State such a story creates and what this leak could possibly imply.. that is why I believe he may look as if he is indecisive?

Mucho
Very interesting Maggie, thanks
andyoldlabour
That is indeed correct. The various politicians who are involved in this disgraceful hounding of Corbyn and others, have pledged alliegence to Israel and the interference of Israel in the politics of the UK.
Martin Usher
The key to the anti-Semitism problem is the conflation of Judaism with Zionism. This didn't happen by accident, it is a deliberate and relatively modern policy. (An old (Jewish) friend described the indoctrination he got to me growing up. That was quite a long time ago, its probably so ingrained now that nobody notices this process any more.)

I may have a very simplistic view of things but to me Judaism is an Abrahamic religion with deep roots going back thousands of years. Zionism is a relatively modern European movement that dates from the latter half of the 19th century that has origins and aims that are not unlike many other 'volk' movements from the same period. Most of these were relatively harmless, 'back to the land' sorts of things but the racial undertones provided the underpinnings for, among others, the Nazis.

I know I'll probably get flamed for saying this but seriously there's a huge undercurrent of racism in some parts of Jewish society. I was first made aware of this many years ago when and old (goy) friend made the mistake of marrying an Orthodox girl. Up to that point I had only known secular/reform Jews so didn't think too much of it but the reaction from her family was quite extreme, protracted and not at all nice. The culture's there if you look for it -- its actually not unlike radical Islam in mindset so if it ever gets to a position of power (e.g. in modern Israel) then its going to be trouble for the untermensch!

Ramdan
"Israeli Zionism is the singular cancer that has been forcefully injected into the minds of world leaders across the globe; a cancer that these similarly affected leaders would wantonly force upon what little remains of the moral, civilized and correct conscience of man."

https://www.globalresearch.ca/rise-and-kill-first-the-secret-israeli-worldwide-assassination-program/5682052

vwbeetle
Zionism is a malevolent influence upon the body politic of the western world.
Francis Lee
The picture of Tom Watson and the other political 5th Columnists in the Labour party standing in front of a very large blue and white star of David flag tells us all we need to know. A bit like a political group in the UK sporting a Hammer and Sickle flag at Tory party conference. Labour Friends of Israel is of course a Zionist front in the LP. It's object is to further Israeli interests, and therefore it necessarily means against British interests. What else would they be doing? Promoting socialism perhaps? LFI has already been set in motion to get Corbyn and his co-thinkers to change their ways or else. In this sense also the British elite are working hand-in-glove with LFI and the Israelis, and it wouldn't at all surprise me if the CIA were not also involved at some level.

The trouble with Labour is that it doesn't want to be regarded as being 'extreme' or 'unrespectable'; oh dear no. We've even done away with Clause 4. Now how much higher do you want us to jump? We want to be Her Majesty's loyal opposition. 'Pale pink humbug' as Orwell called it. He called it right.

mathias alexand
Labour is hampered by a lack of internal democracy which goes back to its origins as an alliance of pre-existing groups like trade unions, etc.
DunGroanin
The Obsessive Groaniads daily pile of AS mud slinging, Barbara Ellen froths
"maddening, mendacious, slippery, gormless, prevaricating'
she snarls NOT writing about the tory clowns.
"I've long been anti-Corbyn for reasons beyond Brexit (antisemitism, anybody?)"
She raves and slobbers not realising that she is projecting.

Another article there by a 'famous' author – ive never heard of – has his unnamed publicist getting lots of free advertising for his 'great' writings for free because he thinks he has been subjected to AS!

Complete Utter Nonsensical Crappery by the shameless gormless Groaniad.

Ho hum – wait till the next government tasks the completion and implementation of Leveson 2.

Gezzah Potts
DG . What do you expect from these presstitute stenographers. Full boycott of all mainstream media, including alleged 'progressive' media. On a tangent, used to read Barbara Ellen many years ago (30?) when she wrote for the NME which was basically my 'bible' back then. How sad the once great Babs Ellen has become a . Slug.
DunGroanin
Ah the NME – a bible for us back in the day – see how it was taken out and shot after it supported Corbyn in 2017.

A very accidental death it suffered.

Imagine what they would bave done to Russell Brand if he had had the same influence.

Yes i'm afraid most of the neolib con artiste creatures of the Obssezsive Groan are beyond saving. They will sizzle in the light.

Gezzah Potts
Thanks DG. I only know the NME is now online only, didn't know the reasons for its print demise. I wonder what the late Steven Wells would have made of all this ludicrous crap? I just can't tolerate the cretinous craven presstitutes in the MSM anymore. Gets me too fecked off knowing what they're loudly spouting is pro empire, pro imperialist bullshit in the service of the 0.01℅. Good site for you to check is Neoliberalism Softpanorama. A vast treasure trove of info.
Francis Lee
What is difficult to forgive is the fact in times gone by, and occasionally today, the Jewish intelligentsia have made a huge input into the development of western civilization. In terms of politics, Marx, Rosa Luxembourg, Greogy Lukacs, Eduard Bernstein, Leon Trotsky, Leonard Woolf; in terms of social theory, Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt; in terms of literaure Franz Kafka, Saul Bellow. Contemporary intellectuals being Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and possibly a less well-known and very courageous Jewish oppositionist, Gideon Levy, who writes for Haaretz. These were the guys I cut my teeth on as a student and whom I still revere to a great extent. It was the Jewish intelligentsia who led the opposition against the forces of reaction, particularly in Europe.

Times have changed it seems, Israel and Zionism are now the forces of reaction.

John Calvert
Yes. But how many of those great names would have willingly and proudly posed in front of the national flag of the state of Israel?
Philip Toal
Facts would be appreciated in light of the truth that G. levy, Finkelstein, Pappe etc. are indeed alive and well. It's apparently a case of informed opinions based on pure facts as opposed to ignorance as to who is alive or dead that is issue important.
Chris W
Antinationalism for goyim and nationalism for jews – because goyim have these genocidal tendencies Many, many Jews deep down believe that Non-Jews want to kill them, so pre-emptive strikes is the way to go. Most of all strikes against the ethnic and religious identity of non-Jewish people, because those identities make a people strong. So socialist Jews in Europe and zionist ones everywhere fight the same pro-Jewish/anti-goyim fight
harry law
John McDonnell encapsulates for me the pathetic spinelessness of the Labour Party, in a long interview with the Jewish news the interviewer asked him why Corbyn shared platforms with Anti-semites "So when we're talking about sharing a platform with anti-Semites, we're not talking about people who are just supportive of the Palestinian cause, do you think it might be time for an apology"?

JmD: "You have to look at why he was sharing platforms, it was not to endorse them, it was to try and engage with them".
There you have it, his friend Corbyn spent the past 30 years of his life traversing the country addressing Palestinian and antiwar groups and offering them his support, then in one sentence McDonnell throws his friend under the bus "it was not to endorse them". With a friend like McDonnell who needs enemies.
My advice to McDonnell is get on your belly and crawl and then ask for forgiveness from the Board of Deputies, it still will not be enough. They will only be happy when Corbyn is destroyed.

mark
However much you grovel and appease these people, it is never enough. Give $10 billion to Israel and you're anti semitic because you haven't given it $50 billion. Fight 5 wars for Israel, and you're anti semitic because you haven't fought 10 wars for Israel.

Netanyahu explained it all quite well.

"If we get caught, they will just replace us with persons of the same cloth. So it does not matter what you do. America is a golden calf, and we will suck it dry, chop it up and sell it off piece by piece till there is nothing left but the world's biggest welfare state that we will create and control. Why? Because it is the Will of God and America is big enough to take the hit. So we can do it again and again and again. This is what we do to countries that we hate. We destroy them very slowly and make them suffer for refusing to be our slaves."

To America, add Britain.

Steve Hayes
The comparison to a witch hunt is perfectly accurate. The attack works by mere accusation. The facts, evidence, criteria of evaluation are all irrelevant. Accuse emotively, and construe any dissent or even scepticism as proof of guilt. This is the modus operandi of the witch hunters, the arbiters of truth and the only acceptable version of reality. This becomes a loyalty test. Anyone who refuses to support the witch hunters is either already a witch or in imminent danger of becoming one. https://viewsandstories.blogspot.com/2018/09/on-dog-whistles-and-witch-finders.html
Harry Stotle
'The attack works by mere accusation. The facts, evidence, criteria of evaluation are all irrelevant. Accuse emotively, and construe any dissent or even scepticism as proof of guilt. This is the modus operandi of the witch hunters' – hammer, welcome to head of nail.
Maggie
Right out of Goebel's hand book
  • "This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it."
  • "The truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
  • "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Steve Hayes
Maggie I am pretty sure that none of the quotes you attribute to Goebbels were said/written by him. Perhaps you could cite your source(s)?
Mucho
Hurricane survivors forced to pledge allegiance to Israel to receive Support (In Texas Town) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqOIeUTx8VQ&t=11s

Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney talks with PressTV about how the Israeli Lobby owns both the Congress and the Senate and how AIPAC and the ADL took her out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_VNOk7Wv5A

More than 200 British MPs sign a pledge to Israel https://unitedwithisrael.org/over-200-uk-candidates-sign-pro-israel-pledge/

Montel Jordan – This Is How We Do It https://www.youtube.com/embed/0hiUuL5uTKc

Mucho
More than 200 British MPs sign a pledge to Israel ..should say Candidates for election, not MPs

[Jul 28, 2019] Mueller Crumbles Under Questioning by Barbara Boland

Highly recommended!
On one hand Mueller supported and promoted the witch hunt which is the Russiagate. On the other water suddenly became a little bit hot for him and his henchmen as there is a slight chance that Barr is not joking.
Mueller is the first prosecutor in the history of Justice Department who claimed that he does not exonerate the falsely accused of Russian connections President. Which is 100% pure McCartuism-style witch hunt. Of course as he supported Iraw WDM and presided over Anthrax investigation (or cover up to be more correct) this is easy for him to be legal innovator in this area.
Notable quotes:
"... the report was clear that members of Trump's team had been encouraged to lie to investigators, and this had been widely reported throughout the media and in several books. ..."
"... On many important questions, Mueller stated that he could not comment because those matters were under investigation by other departments, or they were not "in my purview." That was his response to questions about the Steele report and the FISA warrant used to spy on the Trump campaign, which are under investigation by the Department of Justice. But he also responded this way to questions on the Russia investigation. How can the special prosecutor charged with investigating whether Russia interfered with our elections decline comment on the topic? ..."
"... Well that proves it, I guess. After all, did Mueller testify to Congress as to the extent of Iraq's much-vaunted WMD program, and lo! there it was(n't)! ..."
"... Or for that matter, Mueller claimed that Concord Management had ties to the Russian government. Turns out that he had no evidence for his claim. ..."
"... Mueller is the god that failed. The Democrats considered him their savior. It was "wait til the Mueller report". "Soon it will be Mueller time". "Just wait on Mueller, you'll see." ..."
"... Then, in the Mueller hearing they quoted scripture from the book of Mueller, asking their savior to provide more divine wisdom on the scripture. But he was no god. He was a human whose mental faculties had declined due to the aging process all of us mortals must endure. And it became abundantly clear that he had been just a figurehead in a witch hunt by radical major Democratic party donor prosecutors. Mueller was shamelessly used by morally bankrupt Democrat apparatchiks. ..."
"... To all the Mueller supporters, he couldn't even answer simple questions like "when did you and your team conclude there was no collusion/conspiracy with Russia?" ..."
"... That question 1) fell under his purview, 2) arose from the four corners of his report, 3) not in anyway prohibited by the DoJ directive and 4) not about something that would be easy to forget. ..."
"... Yet he refused to answer. Some stand up guy he is. ..."
Jul 28, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

That answer appears to directly contradict page 180 of the report which states, "As defined in legal dictionaries, collusion is largely synonymous with conspiracy as that crime is set forth in the general federal conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. 371," Collins pointed out.

"Are you sitting here today testifying something different than what your report states?"

Mueller stuttered and appeared confused, flipped to the relevant page of the report, and said that he would defer to the report.

Throughout the hearing, Democratic members would read the definition of corruption or obstruction and then try to get Mueller to explain how various actions did not qualify or why the report did not reach a finding. Each time, Mueller declined to comment.

To say that watching his testimony was painful is an understatement.

In an exchange with Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) that exemplifies the entire hearing, the Pennsylvania Republican asked, "You made a decision not to prosecute, right?"

"No, we made a decision not to decide whether to prosecute or not."

In the afternoon intelligence committee hearing, Rep. John Ratcliffe asked Mueller to clear up confusion regarding his morning testimony, where he appeared to contradict the report on the question of whether he had whiffed on an indictment because the Office of Legal Counsel said it was not possible to indict a sitting president.

"What I wanted to say [in the morning] is that we did not make any determination with regard to culpability, in any way. We did not start that process, down the road," said Mueller.

But in his morning testimony before the House Judiciary committee, he said: "The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed."

See if you can make sense of this exchange:

Democratic Rep. Andre Carson: "Would you agree that these acts demonstrated a betrayal of the democratic values our country rests on?"

Mueller: "I can't agree with that. Not that it's not true, but I cannot agree with it."

This was typical of Mueller's bizarre testimony throughout the day.

Democrats used the hearing to read huge portions of the report, as well as Donald Trump's tweets and campaign utterances, as if somehow they were covering new ground. In one such exchange, a member asked: "Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged Russian interference?"

Mueller: "Yes."

Question: "And then Trump and his campaign lied about it to cover it up?"

Mueller: "Yes."

Anyone who has followed news coverage of the Mueller report knows that line of questioning is not breaking new ground, as the report was clear that members of Trump's team had been encouraged to lie to investigators, and this had been widely reported throughout the media and in several books.

Even so, Democrats persisted in reading publicly available Trump statements aloud. During his portion of time, Rep. Mike Quigley chose to read Trump's campaign trail statements about Wikileaks .

"I love Wikileaks."

"This Wikileaks is like a treasure trove."
"Boy, I love reading those Wikileaks."

He then asked Mueller to react to Trump's statements. "Problematic is an understatement, in terms of giving some hope or some boost to what is and should be illegal activity," Mueller said. Did we really need Mueller's opinion on Trump's statements uttered on the stump, all of which were made before he was elected president? How is this type of commentary valuable?

On many important questions, Mueller stated that he could not comment because those matters were under investigation by other departments, or they were not "in my purview." That was his response to questions about the Steele report and the FISA warrant used to spy on the Trump campaign, which are under investigation by the Department of Justice. But he also responded this way to questions on the Russia investigation. How can the special prosecutor charged with investigating whether Russia interfered with our elections decline comment on the topic?

Congressional hearings aren't like a court room. There's no judge that can order an uncooperative witness to answer. That's one of the many reasons that highly politicized Congressional hearings often quickly descend into kangaroo-court style bludgeoning of the witness.

Yet today, because the confused witness appeared flummoxed by rapid-fire questions and by the contents of his own report, his evasions and memory lapses instead undermined the credibility of the report itself, and had people questioning whether Mueller had really led the investigation or not.

Barbara Boland is 's foreign policy and national security reporter. Follow her on Twitter @BBatDC.

eddie parolini • 3 days ago • edited

In reference to Russia meddling in the 2016 election, he specifically said that Russia had meddled in the past, Russia was meddling as of right now, and Russia would continue to meddle in the future.

I guess that qualifies as having nothing to say about Russia meddling if you want to believe that he had nothing to say about Russia meddling in our elections.

Sid Finster eddie parolini • 3 days ago • edited
Well that proves it, I guess. After all, did Mueller testify to Congress as to the extent of Iraq's much-vaunted WMD program, and lo! there it was(n't)!

https://fas.org/irp/congres...

Or for that matter, Mueller claimed that Concord Management had ties to the Russian government. Turns out that he had no evidence for his claim.

https://assets.documentclou...

gdpbull • 3 days ago
Mueller is the god that failed. The Democrats considered him their savior. It was "wait til the Mueller report". "Soon it will be Mueller time". "Just wait on Mueller, you'll see."

Then, in the Mueller hearing they quoted scripture from the book of Mueller, asking their savior to provide more divine wisdom on the scripture. But he was no god. He was a human whose mental faculties had declined due to the aging process all of us mortals must endure. And it became abundantly clear that he had been just a figurehead in a witch hunt by radical major Democratic party donor prosecutors. Mueller was shamelessly used by morally bankrupt Democrat apparatchiks.

But they will not stop just because their god failed. They will find another god and keep right on investigating.

MAGA_Ken • 2 days ago
To all the Mueller supporters, he couldn't even answer simple questions like "when did you and your team conclude there was no collusion/conspiracy with Russia?"

That question 1) fell under his purview, 2) arose from the four corners of his report, 3) not in anyway prohibited by the DoJ directive and 4) not about something that would be easy to forget.

Yet he refused to answer. Some stand up guy he is.

[Jul 28, 2019] Antisemitism prejudices projection on Russians

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication." In fact, Putin rejects the claim many times publicly saying that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections as a matter of policy. Maybe I'm gullible, but I find his disclaimer pretty convincing.... ..."
"... Is there an unseen connection between the Democrat leadership and the Intel agencies??? And --if there is-- does that mean we are headed for a one-party system??? ..."
"... The Russians trying to rig the elections meme was a fallback for the failure of the “trump is a russianstooge" meme. ..."
Jul 28, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Andrei Martyanov (aka SmoothieX12) -> catherine... , 27 July 2019 at 11:30 PM
Here are some insights into the minds of many movers and shakers in Russiagate:

Key US officials behind the Russia investigation have made no secret of their animus towards Russia.

"I do always hate the Russians," Lisa Page, a senior FBI lawyer on the Russia probe, testified to Congress in July 2018. "It is my opinion that with respect to Western ideals and who it is and what it is we stand for as Americans, Russia poses the most dangerous threat to that way of life."

As he opened the FBI's probe of the Trump campaign's ties to Russians in July 2016, FBI agent Peter Strzok texted Page: "fuck the cheating motherfucking Russians Bastards. I hate them I think they're probably the worst. Fucking conniving cheating savages."

Speaking to NBC News in May 2017, former director of national intelligence James Clapper explained why US officials saw interactions between the Trump camp and Russian nationals as a cause for alarm: "The Russians," Clapper said, "almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So we were concerned."

In a May interview with Lawfare, former FBI general counsel Jim Baker, who helped oversee the Russia probe, explained the origins of the investigation as follows: "It was about Russia, period, full stop. When the [George] Papadopoulos information comes across our radar screen, it's coming across in the sense that we were always looking at Russia. we've been thinking about Russia as a threat actor for decades and decades."

https://www.thenation.com/article/questions-mueller-russiagate/

It was always about Russians no matter what they do or don't do. Large strata of US so called "elite" is obsessed with Russia. Not even China.

plantman , 27 July 2019 at 12:55 PM

I believe Larry Johnson is right when he says:

"You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication." In fact, Putin rejects the claim many times publicly saying that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections as a matter of policy. Maybe I'm gullible, but I find his disclaimer pretty convincing....

My question for Larry Johnson requires some speculation on his part: How did the claims of "Russia meddling" which began with the DNC and Hillary campaign, take root at the FBI, CIA and NSA???

Is there an unseen connection between the Democrat leadership and the Intel agencies??? And --if there is-- does that mean we are headed for a one-party system???

Walrus , 27 July 2019 at 12:55 PM
The Russians trying to rig the elections meme was a fallback for the failure of the “trump is a russianstooge" meme.

[Jul 28, 2019] Exculpatory evidence withheld in Butina case by FBI -- Butina rich boyfriend was FBI informant from day one

So essentially he helped FBI to entrap Maria Butina... Nice behavior of a romantic partner ;-) .
Notable quotes:
"... Butina's lawyer, Robert Driscoll, also confirmed the relationship between Byrne and Butina. Driscoll stated that he also had relayed the information to the FBI and prosecutors earlier during his trial, and asked repeatedly about any Brady material -- exculpatory information – that the bureau may have collected from Byrne on Butina, to no avail. The bureau denied it had any information regarding Byrne and Butina's relationship, said Driscoll. ..."
"... "Orally, during debrief sessions with Maria, I directly told the government that I believed Patrick Byrne, Chief Executive of Overstock.com, who had a sporadic relationship with Maria over a period of years prior to her arrest, was a government informant. My speculation was flatly denied. My associate Alfred Carry made similar assertions in a separate debrief that he covered and was also rebuffed." ..."
"... " Mr. Byrne has now contacted me and has confirmed that he, indeed, had a 'non-standard arrangement' with the FBI for many years, and that beginning in 2015 through Maria's arrest, he communicated and assisted government agents with their investigation of Maria. During this time, he stated he acted at the direction of the government and federal agents by, at their instruction, kindling a manipulative romantic relationship with her. He also told me that some of the details he provided the government regarding Maria in response was exculpatory - that is, he reported to the government that Maria's behavior and interaction with him was inconsistent with her being a foreign agent and more likely an idealist and age-appropriate peace activist." ..."
"... "It was something I knew I had to do," he told this reporter. "Those running the operation were not honest and in the end I realized I was being used in some sort of soft coup." ..."
"... DOJ officials said they could not comment on Byrne's allegations. ..."
"... "Subsequent to Maria's arrest, incarceration, plea, and sentencing, Byrne has felt remorse for the role he played in Maria's situation. In view of recent reports of other alleged government misconduct, he has also expressed a fear that political motives may have influenced the government's handling of Maria's case," Driscoll told Durham in his letter. ..."
Jul 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Via SaraCarter.com,

If what you already know about the FBI's investigation into President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia has you wondering what can come next, "make sure you are sitting down because it's about to get worse," said Patrick Byrne, the philanthropist and CEO of the mega online retail chain Overstock.com.

Byrne revealed never published details about his intimate relationship with the Russian gun right's activist and libertarian, Maria Butina, who is now serving out her sentence after pleading guilty in 2018 to working as a foreign agent in the U.S. without registering.

In an interview several weeks ago, Byrne recounted first meeting Butina at Freedom Fest 2015. He described the relationship that developed between the two and revealed that he had initiated contact in July, 2015 with the FBI after his first meeting with Butina. He also disclosed that he met twice with Justice Department attorneys in April, 2019 giving a total of seven hours of interviews on the separate occasions. A source directly familiar with the interviews, confirmed those meetings took place.

Butina's lawyer, Robert Driscoll, also confirmed the relationship between Byrne and Butina. Driscoll stated that he also had relayed the information to the FBI and prosecutors earlier during his trial, and asked repeatedly about any Brady material -exculpatory information – that the bureau may have collected from Byrne on Butina, to no avail. The bureau denied it had any information regarding Byrne and Butina's relationship, said Driscoll.

On Thursday, Driscoll sent a letter to United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr t o investigate the FBI's handling of the Russia investigation; Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who is conducting an investigation into the bureau's origins of the Trump probe and Corey Amundson, with the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility.

"In writing, the government denied the existence of any such Brady material," Driscoll stated in his letter.

"Orally, during debrief sessions with Maria, I directly told the government that I believed Patrick Byrne, Chief Executive of Overstock.com, who had a sporadic relationship with Maria over a period of years prior to her arrest, was a government informant. My speculation was flatly denied. My associate Alfred Carry made similar assertions in a separate debrief that he covered and was also rebuffed."

" Mr. Byrne has now contacted me and has confirmed that he, indeed, had a 'non-standard arrangement' with the FBI for many years, and that beginning in 2015 through Maria's arrest, he communicated and assisted government agents with their investigation of Maria. During this time, he stated he acted at the direction of the government and federal agents by, at their instruction, kindling a manipulative romantic relationship with her. He also told me that some of the details he provided the government regarding Maria in response was exculpatory - that is, he reported to the government that Maria's behavior and interaction with him was inconsistent with her being a foreign agent and more likely an idealist and age-appropriate peace activist."

"As an adjunct university professor and CEO of a public company, Mr. Byrne is a credible source of information, who from my view has little to gain but much to lose by disclosing a sporadic relationship with Maria . His claims are worthy of investigation. Indeed, he has much to say about the government's handling of Maria's case that go far beyond the Brady issue I raise in this letter. Regardless of these other issues, which I suggest you pursue directly with him, I was told the following by Mr. Byrne," Driscoll's letter states.

Full letter below:

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/420018705

Overstock.Com

Byrne's decision to come forward didn't come lightly. However, he said it was necessary after watching what had transpired between the FBI, the intelligence community and the probe into President Trump's campaign over the past several years.

"It was something I knew I had to do," he told this reporter. "Those running the operation were not honest and in the end I realized I was being used in some sort of soft coup."

Familiar with the possible backlash he will face, he made the decision to go public after speaking to his mentor and longtime friend billionaire Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett, whom Byrne describes as his 'Rabbi,' sent SaraACarter.com a statement Tuesday night confirming his meeting with Byrne at his home in Omaha, Nebraska several weeks ago.

"I've known Patrick and his family for more than 40 years," Buffett said in an email to this reporter.

"His father, Jack Byrne, saved GEICO in 1976 and I met his three boys when they were teenagers. Both Mark, the middle son, and Patrick, the youngest, worked for Berkshire Hathaway. Patrick helped the company without pay in solving a difficult business problem. Patrick is very intelligent and patriotic. He comes by Omaha periodically to see me. At the most recent visit – a few weeks ago – though I know nothing about the subject he was describing, I told him to follow his conscience."

Byrne's Reveal

There are only several other reporters with knowledge of what you are about to read and another who is aware of the situation with Byrne. Byrne recounted his story of his involvement with the FBI and DOJ on video during the private meeting he arranged with this reporter, and several others.

The meeting between Byrne and the journalists took place in New York City. It was a little more than three hours long, for the most part completely on the record and videotaped. He told his story in seven parts.

He said his motivation is to get the truth to the American people about his role with the FBI and what transpired. There were allegations that Byrne revealed regarding other aspects of his involvement with the FBI that could not be verified.

This reporter relayed the full extent of Byrne's allegations to the FBI last week. On Wednesday the FBI declined to comment on Byrne's allegations.

Byrne, who is not the typical CEO, is a is familiar with big public battles. A Libertarian with a doctorate in philosophy, Byrne took on Wall Street in 2005. Byrne launched a massive campaign against hedge fund market manipulation and the possibility they were going to crash Wall Street. Some financial giants, along with members of the media, were chomping at the bit to destroy him, he recalled. It wasn't until the market crashed in 2008 and he won his battle in court that those enemies backed off. But at the time, enemies of Byrne on Wall Street flooded the news with stories making him out to be crazy, "even a picture with a UFO coming out of my head, " said Byrne.

Byrne said he didn't come forward sooner about his contacts with the FBI, which he describes as a 'non standard' relationship with the government, because he wanted to be "judicious and let the system play out," he said, referring to the government's ongoing investigation into the FBI's handling of the Russia Trump probe.

"But I can't trust that's what's going to happen," he said.

" I've been holding my breath for more than 12 months watching everything unfold. I've never met Trump, never gave the guy money, as soon as he said the stuff about John McCain I stopped listening at the time. This isn't about Trump, it's about what's right for the American people. The public should know the truth."

Earlier this year Byrne approached the DOJ and met with lawyers on April 5th and 30th. The first meeting was without counsel in Washington D.C. A source directly familiar with the interviews confirmed Byrne's account of the meetings.

DOJ officials said they could not comment on Byrne's allegations.

Driscoll noted that the information provided by Byrne should be investigated by Durham.

"Subsequent to Maria's arrest, incarceration, plea, and sentencing, Byrne has felt remorse for the role he played in Maria's situation. In view of recent reports of other alleged government misconduct, he has also expressed a fear that political motives may have influenced the government's handling of Maria's case," Driscoll told Durham in his letter.

Byrne's "recollection of certain conversations with government agents would appear to validate his concern," Driscoll said.

Byrne Reveals Details About Butina To FBI

In those interviews with Justice Department attorneys, Byrne revealed details about his intimate relationship with the Russian gun right's activist Butina . Byrne was a keynote speaker on July, 8, 2015 at Freedom Fest, a yearly Libertarian gathering that hosts top speakers in Las Vegas. Shortly after his address, Butina approached him. She was flattering and repeatedly told him she was a fan of his, saying she was a graduate student that had studied the famous libertarian Militon Friedman.

He spoke to her shortly and "brushed her off."

The young redheaded Russian graduate student then approached him again over the course of the conference and explained that she worked for the Vice Chairman of the Central Bank of Russia and sent by them to make contact with Byrne.

She also said "did you know you're a famous man in Russia, we watch videos about you and your relationship with Milton Freeman."

She said she was appointed to lead Russia's gun right's group by Lieutenant-General Mikhail Kalashnikov, who was a Russian general, most notably known for his AK-47 machine gun design. The designation by Kalashnikov is considered a huge honor and Byrne then had an "extensive conversation about Russian history and I understood her designation about Kalishnikov was significant."

She wanted to invite Byrne to Russia to speak at the Central Bank before dignitaries. The speaking engagement would be at a major resort for three days. Butina told Byrne the event would offer him the opportunity to meet senior Russian officials and oligarchs. He didn't accept the offer because of his security clearance. He then reported Butina and her offer to the FBI.

Communication In Disguise Of A Romantic Relationship

She told Byrne "we will communicate in disguise of a romantic relationship, I wish to make arrangements with you for this to happen."

Butina had to have a reason to be texting Byrne and believed that "she was being monitored and proposed that we disguise our discussions as a romantic relationship," Byrne said.

He admitted he was intrigued by Butina's intelligence and believed that she if anything could've been a great contact and possible opportunity for peace.

"I have been involved with three peace efforts in my life, and stranger things have happened than that someone positive came from such an encounter. However, I was also keenly aware that she might be a Red Sparrow instead."

Interestingly, then-candidate Donald Trump (who had only recently announced his candidacy for president), was also a keynote speaker at the 2015 event. During a public question and answer, Butina asked Trump several questions, as has been extensively reported by numerous outlets. Byrne had already left Las Vegas by the day Trump spoke and has never communicated with Trump.

Low Level Security Clearance Related To Work At Council On Foreign Relations.

Byrne said he had received a low level security clearance early in his career and "after something like this happens, there's a number you call and I called that number and said there is something interesting, or note worthy going on."

When he contacted the FBI and then subsequently for the next few months "instead what I got was vague instructions that it would be ok to get to know her better."

He said there was very little response from the FBI after his initial contact, until Butina asked him to come meet her in New York City. He told the FBI he didn't want any vague instructions on whether to meet Butina or not because "I didn't want my security clearance to get pulled."

At that point the FBI gave him an explicit "green light" to meet with her. He rented a hotel room with two bedrooms because he was under the impression that the romantic texts were simply her way to cover for communicating with him. However, she arrived at the hotel beforehand, occupied the room before Byrne's arrival, and when he arrived, she made clear that her flirtatious texts were not simply a disguise.

Byrne said that the FBI agents made clear they were skeptical that Butina might be of interest, dismissing her as simply a normal 26 year old Russian graduate student. Over time, Byrne and Butina developed an intimate relationship but at the same time he alleges he was continuously reporting on Butina to the FBI in an effort to convince them that it might be worthwhile to introduce her to some of his contacts at the Council on Foreign Relations. He also noted he reported to the FBI his interactions more frequently with Butina starting in December, 2015, both out of a desire not to lose the possibility of something good coming from this encounter, but also, because Butina was starting to speak more frequently of meeting with big shots in Republican circles.

Butina's lawyer, Robert Driscoll, told this reporter that Byrne's disclosure regarding his contact with bureau agents is significant, revealing and should be investigated by the DOJ.

"Patrick Byrne is publicly saying that he was dealing with the government in regards to Maria and I would suspect that the FBI has reports or information regarding these meetings," said Driscoll, who noted that he repeatedly asked the FBI for all documentation collected on Butina, including interviews with witnesses, notes and any other form of documentation. The FBI, however, repeatedly told Driscoll that there was no exculpatory information to give.

"It would be a Brady violation," said Driscoll.

"I would have to see if we have to go to court or not. I will have to go the the Office of Professional Responsibility. We've asked for the Brady material repeatedly and from the sound of it, it looks like there should be Brady material. We need an explanation to why they didn't turn any information over to us with regard to Byrne."

In 2018, Butina pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without registering. U.S. prosecutors had to walk back accusations they had made during the trial that she was a Russian spy using sex as a tool to gain influence and access. Prosecutors did have evidence that she was passing information to her confidant, high-level Russian official, Alexander Torshin, who headed a Russian bank linked to the Kremlin. Butina is currently serving out her sentence in Florida's FCI Tallahassee minimum security prison, which ends on Oct. 25. The guilty plea was not an admission that Butina was a Russian spy but a failure to register herself as a Russian citizen working on behalf of her country, Driscoll said.

Byrne's relationship with Butina was confirmed by a source directly involved in Butina's investigation. The source confirmed that "she had a relationship with Byrne, they did meet at Freedom Fest in 2015 and had met at various points afterwards in different places. She had nothing negative to say, he always treated her well."

Oddly, Byrne's name was not disclosed by prosecutors in the case or by the FBI. And despite the government's earlier efforts to paint Butina as a Russian spy attempting to infiltrate Republican circles she was never investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe, which charged 25 Russian agents with interfering in the U.S. election. Further, the FBI, unlike convicted Russian bombshell spy Anna Chapman , did nothing to stop Butina from meeting with high level Republican and conservative figures. The bureau also didn't warn those conservative figures she had made contact with, even though they had her under surveillance and allegedly Byrne had been reporting on her during that time. As noted in a column by The Hill's John Solomon Chapman's actions were handled differently than Butina. When one of Chapman's associates, who went by the name of Cynthia Murphy, made contact with Alan Patricof, a major Democratic donor close to Hillary Clinton , the FBI acted swiftly to arrest the entire cell.

Driscoll said there was suspicion that the FBI did not disclose all the information it had on Butina and he stated that he believed "Patrick is not the only one" who was giving information to the FBI.

"We've thought of several possibilities and some we are more confidant than others. I'm firmly convinced," said Driscoll, who shared numerous letters and emails with this reporter that he exchanged with the FBI.

Byrne, the FBI and Butina

Although, Byrne was then concerned about Butina's possible motives, he eventually became convinced that she was an intellectual being used by both the Russians and American intelligence apparatus. She was stuck between two highly contentious and secretive governments, he claimed. He relayed those concerns to the FBI, he said.

"From January through March, in 2016 and I was telling (the FBI) I was 50/50, that this was a real opportunity and 50 that it was Red Sparrow," said Byrne, referencing the American film about Russian spy's who are trained to use sex as a tool to retrieve information from sources. He said he believed more in the possibility that Butina could be someone with the right connections to be an opportunity for U.S. officials to better understand Russia.

"I actually think that back then I was two-thirds, one-third. It was two-thirds opportunity and maybe one-third, threat. As those months went on, those odds shifted, he said. "She had insisted to me that she was not a spy," said Byrne. "Yet the more she swanked around in political circles, the more concerned I became that she would get herself in trouble."

"I was surprised that there was no appetite in letting me connect her to people I know at CFR who are qualified to take such a meeting, but in fact the 'men in black' were telling me that was absolutely ridiculous," said Byrne, who noted that their refusal to even consider pursuing the prospect was something he found "odd."

"Eventually, her conversations became less about philosophy and it became clear that she was doing things that made me quite uncomfortable," stated Byrne. "She was basically schmoozing around with the political class and eventually she said to me at one point I want to meet anyone in the Hillary campaign, the Cruz, the Rubio campaigns."

Butina had also told Byrne, that Torshin, the Russian politician who she had been assisting while she was in the U.S., had sent her to the United States to meet other libertarians and build relations with political figures. She repeated to him numerous times that she was not a spy, even when he directly asked her.

Byrne said he warned Butina: "Maria the United States is not like Russia" and knowing powerful people 'like oligarchs and politicians' won't help if the FBI believes a line has been crossed. Byrne believed Butina was naive but not blameless. He said during the interview if "you're reporting to any Russian official and you're doing this stuff and not disclosing yourself, there are these men in black here and they don't really give a shit who you know here -that's not going to save you."

Driscoll noted in his letter to Durham and Horowitz the extent of Byrne's relationship with the FBI.

" At some point prior to the 2016 election, when Byrne's contact with Maria diminished or ceased, the government asked and encouraged him to renew contact with her and he did so, continuing to inform the government of her activities. Byrne states he was informed by government agents that his pursuit and involvement with Maria (and concomitant surveillance of her) was requested and directed from the highest levels of the FBI and intelligence community."

"As time passed, Byrne became more and more convinced that Maria was what she said she was -- an inquisitive student in favor of better U.S.-Russian relations -- and not an agent of the Russian government or someone involved in espionage or illegal activities. He states he conveyed these thoughts and the corroborating facts and observations about Maria to the government."

flyonmywall , 20 minutes ago link

So he was banging some decent ***** and reporting it to the FBI.

Talk about playing it on both ends. That's fucked up.

Moneycircus , 52 minutes ago link

The USA is quite the police state... anyone who's anybody has some kind of security clearance and must take orders from the FBI political police, My God!

"Byrne said he had received a low level security clearance early in his career and "after something like this happens, there's a number you call and I called that number and said there is something interesting, or note worthy going on"."

"Byrne said he warned Butina: "Maria the United States is not like Russia" and knowing powerful people 'like oligarchs and politicians' won't help if the FBI believes a line has been crossed."


"Byrne states he was informed by government agents that his pursuit and involvement with Maria (and concomitant surveillance of her) was requested and directed from the highest levels of the FBI and intelligence community"."

Bituman_2000 , 52 minutes ago link

The only reason this *** Rat came forward now, is because he fears the investigation will find out he was helping in the so called "soft coup".

They all deserve the death penalty.

keeboredworrier , 24 minutes ago link

Israel has many dual citizens in the USA even working for the US govt in many 3 letter agencies including the FBI, CIA, NSA as well as departments within the white house, Pentagon and Congress. Make them all register too.

ohm , 2 hours ago link

The FBI always has always been an incompetent crime fighting organization. The FBI specializes in murder, blackmail and entrapment. The FBI should have never been created and should be disbanded ASAP. The FBI is just another example of the Federal government usurping power from the states. Some FBI highlights include

  • murdering 76 Branch Davidians in Waco,
  • murdering Randy Weaver's wife at Ruby Ridge.
  • Sending Dr, Martin Luther King recordings of his sexual adventures and threatening to publish them unless he committed suicide
  • Systematic fraud at the FBI crime lab.
  • Warned by Russia about the Boston marathon bombers but dis nothing to stop them.

The hits go on and on,

DaiRR , 2 hours ago link

Under prosecutors become both civilly and criminally liable for their misdeeds, including withholding exculpatory evidence, the justice system will remain corrupt and the state will continue to use courts to abuse and destroy innocent people. Weissmann et al are criminals.

onewayticket2 , 2 hours ago link

Papadopoulos is on his way to Greece now to get the $10K in "marked bills" the FBI gave him (but he didn't bring back to the US or otherwise spend - instead he contacted.....The Feds...but not after being searched thoroughly at the Airport upon arrival for FBI Agents looking for the Cash!!!).

ENTRAPMENT, boys and girls. $1 says he never makes it home and the safe in which it's hidden is never found. Be safe, George.

[Jul 28, 2019] Has it crossed anyone's mind that the reason the FBI weren't allowed to view the DNC servers was because they would discover evidence of massive DNC illegality

Notable quotes:
"... Perhaps evidence of direct communication between clapper, brennan, steele, Downer and the British IC in preparation for the attack on the Trump campaign? ..."
"... What if the RussiaGate campaign was planned to go ahead BEFORE the DNC was actually hacked, using faked evidence? What if Seth Rich became aware of this operation and tried to spike it? What if the DNC planned to fake the Russian penetration evidence themselves, but Seth Rich dumped the real stuff? ..."
"... Of course the FBI wasn't allowed to see the actual evidence nor did they request a subpoena to obtain it. ..."
Jul 28, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

walrus , 28 July 2019 at 02:07 AM

Has it crossed anyone's mind that the reason the FBI weren't allowed to view the DNC servers was because they would discover evidence of massive DNC illegality in the form of unattributable clickbait operations and suchlike? Perhaps evidence as well of direct collusion between the DOJ and IC community to destroy Trumps campaign as well?

Perhaps evidence of direct communication between clapper, brennan, steele, Downer and the British IC in preparation for the attack on the Trump campaign?

What if the RussiaGate campaign was planned to go ahead BEFORE the DNC was actually hacked, using faked evidence? What if Seth Rich became aware of this operation and tried to spike it? What if the DNC planned to fake the Russian penetration evidence themselves, but Seth Rich dumped the real stuff?

Fred -> walrus ... , 28 July 2019 at 02:07 AM
Walrus,

Of course the FBI wasn't allowed to see the actual evidence nor did they request a subpoena to obtain it.

[Jul 28, 2019] Dementia or very skillful, convincing acting: Mueller would have looked a lot better if he had only taken the time to read... the Mueller report.

Mueller came across as an old man.... muddling.... confused.... He was out of his depth. One would have to conclude that he is not remotely credible based on his inability to answer questions and apparent ignorance of a report he is supposed to have authored. Embarrassingly inept!
Jul 28, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Hangfire-13 , 2 days ago

Mueller would have looked a lot better if he had only taken the time to read... the Mueller report.

William Jones , 2 days ago

Better to be thought a fool than recognized as an accomplice.

Solgato Blogopogo , 1 day ago

Mueller sold America on the existence of WMDs in Iraq too.

BigWater59 , 1 day ago

This was a dog and pony show with the main act being a dementia patient in poor health. SAD

Steven Trekking , 2 days ago

FFS, I live in the UK and even I have heard the link between Fusion GPS and the dodgy dossier. Has Mueller been working alone in a cave or something? Has he tried Wikipedia?

Ivana Seymore , 2 days ago

I think we should bring Mueller to the stand as a witness for his investigation of nineleven...

George Christiansen , 2 days ago div tabindex="0" role="artic

le"> The had the lesson taught to them, but I seriously doubt that they learned anything. I also think that Mueller was largely playing dumb. His job is to continue to raise doubt, not to bring clarity. He is till doing a great job in that regards. I hope it leads to jail time.

Ron Preece , 3 days ago

$30,000,000 down the toilet. Mueller deserves the Roger Stone Treatment !

Amani jm , 3 days ago

div> Collussion and Obstruction are synonymus? Muller: NO But Your report said so. Muller: I stick with the report. Hahahahaah

Steve Lee , 2 days ago

In all honesty either Muller was lying, unbelievably incompetent or genuinely has some form of dementia and that is meant in a true honest opinion..

dotatough , 1 day ago

"They do not deserve to rule, that much is clear." Love ya Tucc

Eric Sanders , 3 days ago

Did anyone ask Mueller if he actually wrote the report?

Elizabeth Maldonado , 2 days ago (edited)

Mueller's playing dum to cover his own hide and the democraps should be ashamed wasting tax payers money & that bringing the only work they done in 2 years corrupt sorry individuals

Bleyluige , 1 day ago

Like someboday said, the person who learned most about the Mueller report during the hearing was Robert Mueller!

balsawerkz , 2 days ago

When are leaders going to call out Adam Schiff on his extremely obvious cocaine eyes?

Carlos Matos , 1 day ago (edited)

Tucker spitting some hard truth there at 7:30

Edmund007013 , 1 day ago

Mueller obviously has deep dementia and should be in a nursing home. Great Summary Tucker ! Well done !

Chris Wriight , 1 day ago

"Daft old man blinking in the sunlight after his curtain was torn away" hit the nail on the head😂

Ken H , 3 days ago

Recall Nadler and Schiff. Those stuffed, spineless suits.

Joel Martin , 1 day ago

So basically the whole "Russia" investigation was complete sham!

Tad Ulrich , 14 hours ago

Well worth watching this just for Tucker's superb commentary alone! With this Mueller fiasco, a stake has been driven deep into the Deep State's heart.

Jennie Gall , 2 days ago

OR it's a BRILLIANT RUSE in this Political Theater. He was ACTING. This isn't the real Robert Mueller.

Robert Boothby , 3 days ago

Tucker, that was another fine job. "The ruling class did this to us". Well said and spot on! Keep it up for as long as they allow it. Thank you.

[Jul 28, 2019] The Russiagate Fever is breaking caucus99percent

Jul 28, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

The Russiagate Fever is breaking

gjohnsit on Sat, 07/27/2019 - 5:21pm The ruling elites have compared Russiagate to Pearl Harbor , 9/11 , and Kristallnacht.
Yet for some reason, the American public has refused to agree with it's importance .

In a recent Gallup poll on problems facing the country, the "Situation with Russia" was such a marginal concern that it did not even register.

In fact, Republicans have flat out rejected the konspiracy theory altogether. A fact that the elites refused to accept.

Fortunately, the MSNBC-watching Democrats were willing to give the investigation the benefit of the doubt.
Until now .

Since the public release of a redacted version of the Mueller report, Democrats have grown more skeptical that the Russia investigation was conducted fairly, according to a new poll.
...Both Democrats and Republicans have tilted toward a belief that the inquiry, which wrapped up this spring after almost two years, was not conducted fairly. An April survey -- conducted shortly after the report's release -- found that 46 percent of voters thought the probe had been fair, compared with 29 percent who felt it had been unfair.

But there was a much bigger swing among Democrats, the most recent poll found. Among Democratic voters, the number who consider the investigation unfair shot up by 15 percentage points since then, while the number who thought it had been a fair investigation dropped by 9 points.
It's unclear what accounts for Democrats' plummeting confidence -- it's possible that they feel the investigation was unfair in that the outcome was too favorable to President Donald Trump; believe that Mueller was boxed in by Trump's Justice Department; or feel that it's unfair because the president has not faced any serious consequences as a result of the investigation.

Right. It was unfair FOR Trump. ROTFL.

It's obvious that the elites in the media have completely lost touch with the vast majority of the public. They don't even attempt to understand us. Nor do they give us any credit for being able to come to logical conclusions different from what they are selling.

It's also obvious that the MSM has no Plan B, for what happens after Russiagate flops.
They've even started pointing fingers at each other.

But the American political press found Mueller insufficiently dazzling.
The New York Times declared, in language Trump could have written himself, "Mueller's Performance Was a Departure From His Much-Fabled Stamina." The Washington Post announced, "On Mueller's Final Day on the National Stage, a Halting, Faltering Performance," and, in a separate piece, dubbed Mueller a "weary old man."

Although other pieces from the same outlets covered the substance of Mueller's testimony, the conclusion that he had failed to excite his audience framed the totality of coverage.

Maybe it's because Mueller didn't say anything new. Maybe because he refused to answer nearly 200 questions.
Maybe it's because the whole thing feels like an artificial scandal designed to distract us from things of importance. And it isn't working.

snoopydawg on Sat, 07/27/2019 - 7:34pm
Mueller said that the Russian interference is as big as 9/11

What a crock of pootie. Just like he lied about WMDs, he's lying to the country again. As Jim Jordan pointed out Misfud was the person who got the whole thing rolling. Misfud told Papadapolous that Russia had dirt on Hillary. Did Mueller interview Misfud and ask him how he knew that? Of course not because Mueller knew that Misfud has ties to the state department. As do most of the people sent out to try to entrap Trump. Mueller did get away with lying to congress when he talked about the IRA and their connections to Russian intelligence after the judge told him not to. But this pretty much sums it up.

Why no impeachment? Reason 1 - Because Mueller would be forced by the defense to answer the 198 times he refused. Mifsud & Kilimnick are Western operatives! @aaronjmate @stranahan @caitoz @nikoCSFB @TFL1728 @21WIRE @jimmy_dore @freedomrideblog @

-- Garland Nixon (@GarlandNixon) July 27, 2019

The Voice In th... on Sat, 07/27/2019 - 9:09pm
I'd much rather that Osama bin Laden bought

@snoopydawg
Facebook ads instead of flying lessons for his followers.

What a crock of pootie. Just like he lied about WMDs, he's lying to the country again. As Jim Jordan pointed out Misfud was the person who got the whole thing rolling. Misfud told Papadapolous that Russia had dirt on Hillary. Did Mueller interview Misfud and ask him how he knew that? Of course not because Mueller knew that Misfud has ties to the state department. As do most of the people sent out to try to entrap Trump. Mueller did get away with lying to congress when he talked about the IRA and their connections to Russian intelligence after the judge told him not to. But this pretty much sums it up.

Why no impeachment? Reason 1 - Because Mueller would be forced by the defense to answer the 198 times he refused. Mifsud & Kilimnick are Western operatives! @aaronjmate @stranahan @caitoz @nikoCSFB @TFL1728 @21WIRE @jimmy_dore @freedomrideblog @

-- Garland Nixon (@GarlandNixon) July 27, 2019

The Liberal Moonbat on Sat, 07/27/2019 - 8:04pm
"Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and Kristallnacht???"

For their despicable insensitivity and wrongful appropriation of others' suffering, they were subsequently eaten alive by social-warrior Twitter mobs, beaten into delivering sniveling, shame-drenched public recantations, and passively accepted losing their jobs no matter how good they might otherwise have been at them...Right? RIGHT?

Linda Wood on Sat, 07/27/2019 - 11:40pm
Fever from Russiagate

causes me to read Tucker Carlson in order to cool off.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-the-russia-hoax-is-over-a...

Tucker Carlson: The Russia hoax is over and it's time to hold people accountable for years of lies.
By Tucker Carlson | Fox News - July 26, 2019

The Russia hoax ended on Wednesday -- we can say that. It ended not with a bang, but with the muddled half-memories of a fading old man slipping in and out of focus.

America sat transfixed by Robert Mueller's halting testimony before Congress. No honest person could have come away at the end believing that the president of the United States colluded with the Russian government to steal an election. That was the allegation, you'll remember.

And then, after the most extensive investigation in modern American history, we found the truth. And so, we can say conclusively, once again, what we told you the day this all started, the whole thing is a crock. It never happened. They were lying to you. That's clear now. The debate is over.

But that doesn't mean the Russia story has quite ended. There are loose ends. For two and a half years, some of the most powerful people in America -- supposedly serious, well-educated people, very smart people -- these people made wild and untrue and totally reckless allegations about issues critical to the life of this country, all on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. It's hard to believe they did that. But they did do it.

What should happen to these people now? Congressman Adam Schiff, for example. Schiff claimed he possessed actual evidence of Russian collusion. And he didn't just say that one time, he said it repeatedly.

... But what about his enablers? And there are a lot of them --the journalists, the pundits, the fellow lawmakers who helped Adam Schiff tell his lies. These are the people you'll remember who blithely accused the sitting president of the United States of treason.

One of them was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has said, among other things, the following: "Trump's eagerness to sell out America proves the Russians must have something personally politically or financially on President Trump."

It proves that Trump is committing treason. Think about that. Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House, third in line for the presidency. She is the country's most powerful lawmaker, supposedly a wise and sober person. And yet, there she was telling you it's been proved that the president of the United States is working for a hostile foreign power.

Has any Speaker in American history ever said something that irresponsible? Maybe nothing comes to mind. But if you think that's shocking, consider this: Pelosi is still saying that. "Tucker Carlson Tonight's" investigative producer, Alex Pfeiffer, ran into Pelosi Thursday afternoon on Capitol Hill and asked her. Listen to what she told our show.

Alex Pfeiffer, Fox News investigative producer: Speaker Pelosi, Alex Pfeiffer of "Tucker Carlson Tonight." In January, you wondered what Putin had on Trump. After yesterday, are you any closer to figuring that out?

Pelosi: We have it up on the courts right now.

Pfeiffer: Are you any closer to figuring out what Putin has on Trump?

Pelosi: That's why we need to have him to answer our subpoena.

Pfeiffer: You still think Putin might have some sort of blackmail on the president?

Pelosi: I wonder what Putin has politically, financially or personally.

Pfeiffer: So our president could be subject to blackmail, you think?

The exchange isn't long, but it really tells you everything you need to know. Pelosi told our show President Trump is a traitor who is committing treason. And yet, she doesn't want to impeach him. How does that make sense?

Well, it only makes sense when you understand that Pelosi doesn't mean a single word that she says. Everything is political, meaning it's only about power.

That's not just annoying. It's also ominous. And here's why.

Fifteen years ago this spring, we invaded Iraq to stop a WMD program that didn't exist. Thousands of American troops died in the process, trillions of dollars were wasted. It was the single greatest mistake in this country in generations. And yet -- and here's the key -- nobody in Washington was ever punished for it.

The people who planned it went on to even better jobs. One of them is now our national security adviser, John Bolton. Five years after the Iraq War, our economy collapsed. Remember that? The subprime meltdown? The specific causes were complex, but the themes were instantly recognizable -- greed and stupidity. And yet, once again, no one was ever punished.

Now, fast forward another 11 years to today, right now. America stands on the brink of yet more foolish foreign entanglements, and on the brink of and potentially another financial meltdown. Why is that? Because nobody in Washington has learned anything. And why would they learn anything? When they screw up there are never any consequences. They skate by on the usual mixture of aggression and BS. "Nothing to see here, keep moving."

Imagine for a second, what would happen if you let your kids act like that? Well, they'd been in prison by now. So, maybe it's time to stop the cycle in Washington.

How about this? If you get caught lying about the big things, whether it's about weapons of mass destruction, or subprime mortgages or Russian collusion, you have to admit it and serve penance, -- not necessarily prison time, though we're open. But punishment of some kind.

You can't stay in Washington, making six times the average American salary. You can't do that. No, sorry.

You've got to leave. You've got to relocate to Camden, New Jersey, maybe or Gary, Indiana, and do something useful. Like clean motel rooms for minimum wage, put the little "sanitized for your protection" strips on toilets. Not forever, just for a decade or two, until you've learned your lesson. Call us when you've done that, but not before.

Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on July 25, 2019.

[Jul 28, 2019] I hate to say it, but corporate Democrats along with those who Maddow has totally brainwashed are still true believers in the entire lie.

Jul 27, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Drew Hunkins , July 25, 2019 at 15:01

PCR just posted a piece over at his site in which he declares that Russiagate is now over. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/07/25/repub

I hate to say it, but corporate Democrats along with those who Maddow has totally brainwashed are still true believers in the entire lie. You cannot get through to these people, they will not come to terms with the fact that they've been hoodwinked and bamboozled for the last three years. They read it in WaPo and the NYTimes and heard it on NPR so it's gospel.

For the next 40 years these people will be writing essays, books and giving talks about how the evil Russians interfered in our democracy [sic] to elect their preferred president. It's maddening and perhaps beyond hope.

Rob , July 25, 2019 at 17:18

To your point, the NYT is warning that Russia will interfere AGAIN in the next election. They take it as a given that they interfered in the last one, and so do many, if not most, of their readers, notwithstanding the absence of evidence. This is a full-on, non-stop propaganda effort. Facts will not get in the way.

anon4d2 , July 25, 2019 at 20:37

So we need evidence that Russia
1. Is interfering on both sides of every controversy;
2. Is representing the majority of the US better than the incumbents; or
3. Is plotting with Holland to take over the universe with UFOs and occult powers;
But perhaps it is better to concentrate on the influence of Israel, which is fact.

Drew Hunkins , July 26, 2019 at 10:24

“This is a full-on, non-stop propaganda effort. Facts will not get in the way.”

Exactly!

[Jul 28, 2019] There may be some fireworks with that judge because of Mueller's statements. He was expressly warned by the judge that she would consider a range of sanctions were there any repetition

This is semi-senile Deep State patsy just was unable to change the course on the middle of the action ;-)
Jul 28, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Paul Merrell , July 25, 2019 at 15:53

@ "Mueller implied in his testimony that there was a link between the IRA and the Russian government despite an order from a judge for him to stop making that connection."

There may be some fireworks with that judge because of Mueller's statements. He was expressly warned by the judge that she would consider a range of sanctions were there any repetition. On the other hand, as far as I could tell a few years ago when I had last researched the topic, federal judges are very reluctant to sanction federal attorneys. I could find only one published instance where that had occurred, and it was only a measly $500 penalty. (Rule 11 sanctions are supposed to compensate the other side for the expenses of opposing an unjustifiable position, as measured by the reasonable billing rate of the other side's lawyers, although judges do have authority for departures.)

Misbehavior by federal lawyers is exceedingly common, I suspect precisely because they are so seldom held to account for unprincipled behavior. That Mueller conducted such a shoddy investigation is no surprise to me.

Me Myself , July 25, 2019 at 13:31

Robert Mueller can easily be seen as carrying democrats hopes and dreams just like a good Mueller.
Why does it matter where truth of damning information about our government officials comes from ( rhetorical ).
I appreciate knowing it.
Watching what appears to be a modern day Coup d'état in this country is more than just disappointing not surprising though.
No focus from congress on what was clearly demonstrated in the evidence provided by publishing's of undisputed truth by (Chelsea Manning .Julian Assange and Others)

I thought it would be interesting living in the Middle Ages, once upon a time, Its not as fun as thought it might.

[Jul 27, 2019] Russia interfered on a massive scale ($3,684 was spends on ads on which $1932 on promoting Trump) and is doing it again as we sit here! Just how massive? They spent $100,000 on clickbait ads from a company owned by a man who was in a photo with the evil mastermind!

Highly recommended!
Jul 27, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Glennn , July 26, 2019 at 12:16

Russia interfered on a massive scale and is doing it again as we sit here! Just how massive? They spent $100,000 on clickbait ads from a company owned by a man who was in a photo with the evil mastermind!

How evil? Well do the math. $43,000 to $46,000 of that was spent during the election and of those ads 8.4 percent were political. That's $3,684 dollars.

But the political ads were aimed in both directions so that's roughly $1,932 spent "promoting" Trump.

And now Mueller tells us the evil mastermind is at it again -- as we sit here -- probably spending even more this time. Let us know when he's spent a full thousand dollars Bob and we'll start loading the bombs.

Oh, and we found all this out for around thirty million dollars.

stephen kelley , July 25, 2019 at 22:34

think about it! with the myriad of problems we must contend with: growing social inequality, huge tax breaks for the rich, government deregulation of private business, a climate catastrophe, unending wars, nuclear annihilation spurred on especially by u.s. imperialism, the gutting of what little social safety net we have left and so on and so so on. and we are supposed to be outraged at supposed foreign interference with our supposed democratic process? please, this is total insanity!!!

John Wolfe , July 25, 2019 at 18:29

Of course, relatively speaking, it’s a nothing. Every knowledgeable person knows that we in the US orchestrated both the financing and the strategy of the 1996 Yeltsin campaign -- a political rescue so efficiently carried out that our operatives bragged brazenly about it to Time Magazine, which made it the cover story for its July 14, 1996 edition (“Yanks to the Rescue”).

The Lamestream Corporate media always underplayed the fact that Yeltsin ordered the execution of 1,100 demonstrators who protested the IMF backed “reforms”, and that Clinton approved of his deadly and heavy hand in implementing a neoliberal economic order. Clinton never threatened to suspend aid to the Russian Federation despite its numerous abuses of human rights.

Also forgotten is that Yeltsin ordered the Russian Parliament (Duma) shelled before it could vote on Yeltsin’s economic “reforms”, which were implemented at the point of a gun. At various times between 1993 and 1997, it was Yeltsin who declared martial law, suspended the Duma, and declared himself possessed of dictatorial powers.

How many Americans ever knew this? 20%? How many remember it today? Maybe 5%? That means there is no context for gauging Muellers’ testimony.

But, it is, by MSNBC standards, Vladimir Putin who is Evil Incarnate. Has Maddow ever mentioned Yeltsin, a tyrant of the first order? No, because at GE, Comcast, and NBC, tyranny in the name of enforcing neoliberalism is perfectly acceptable.

This post is a bit off topic, and is a bit relativistic, as I know we should be concerned if it is really true that Manafort was giving internal polling data to a Russian Federation person so that the IRA could better target swing states in our Midwest.

Bob Van Noy , July 26, 2019 at 08:26

John Wolfe, your comment is not off topic at all, it’s crucial to further understanding of the totality of the Russia did it mentality, and That is well documented in a small but powerful book called “Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance” by F. William Engdahl which I will link.

The American People have been propagandized so thoroughly that they can hardly recognize the truth any longer.

Too, I will link an article in Off Guardian this morning that is worth mentioning if one wants to see Real Reporting On MH-17.

https://www.amazon.com/Manifest-Destiny-Democracy-Cognitive-Dissonance/dp/3981723732

And:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/07/26/mh17-call-for-justice/

[Jul 27, 2019] Understanding the Roots of the Obama Coup Against Trump by Larry C Johnson

Highly recommended!
Evidence accumulates that Obama was the real leader of this color revolution against Trump with Brannan as his chief lieutenant and Comey as a willing accomplice.
Now that the dust has settled, one must ask why the Deep State wanted Trump gone. Why does the Obama-Clinton mafia hates him so much? Is this due to Trump committed an unforgivable sin in suggesting we “get along with Russia” and thus potentially cut the revenues of military-industrial complex ? This is not true -- Trump inflated the Pentagon budget to astronomical height. Then why ?
Notable quotes:
"... The full details of the plot to take out Donald Trump remain to be revealed. But there should now be no doubt that his effort was not the work of a few rogue intelligence and law enforcement officials acting on their own. This was a full blown covert action undertaken with the full knowledge and blessing of Barack Obama. ..."
"... Operation Crossfire Hurricane was launched the end of July 2016. CIA Director John Brennan briefed key Democrat members of Congress in early August on allegations that Donald Trump was colluding with Vladimir Putin. And Peter Strzok traveled to London in early August 2016 to meet with the CIA and with Alexander Downer, who was claiming that George Papadopolous was talking up the Russians. Following that trip Strozk texted the following to his mistress, Lisa Page : ..."
"... We also know that Senior Obama Administration officials, such as NSC Director Susan Rice and UN Ambassdor Samantha Power, were pushing to "unmask" Trump campaign officials who were named in US intelligence documents. ..."
"... Let us look at this from another angle. If the Russians were actually trying to interfere in the 2016 election, then it was known to both US intelligence and law enforcement. Hell, we are told in the Mueller report that the FBI detected the Russians trying to hack the DNC way back in 2015. If there really was intelligence on Russian efforts to meddle why did the Obama Administration do nothing other than sanction FBI's Crossfire Hurricane? ..."
"... On what basis did Barack Obama insist it was impossible to rig the US Presidential election? This is a critical anomaly. Why was the Obama team asleep at the switch, especially on the intel front, it the Russians actually were engaged in rigging the election to install Donald Trump? ..."
"... Obama seemed to have got a taste for spying on his domestic political opponents from monitoring Israeli attempts to block the Iran nuclear deal. I think the lock her up stuff really scared the Obama people, who had much to hide. ..."
Jul 27, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

The full details of the plot to take out Donald Trump remain to be revealed. But there should now be no doubt that his effort was not the work of a few rogue intelligence and law enforcement officials acting on their own. This was a full blown covert action undertaken with the full knowledge and blessing of Barack Obama.

As I have written previously , the claim that Russia tried to hijack our election is a damn lie. But you do not have to take my word for it. Just listen to Barack Obama speaking in October 2016 in response to Donald Trump's expressed concerns about election meddling :

"There is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could even rig America's elections, in part because they are so decentralized. There is no evidence that that has happened in the past, or that there are instances that that could happen this time," the president said to the future president in October 2016.

"Democracy survives because we recognize that there is something more important than any individual campaign, and that is making sure the integrity and trust in our institutions sustains itself. Becasue Democracy works by consent, not by force," Obama said.

"I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place. It is unprecedented. It happens to be based on no fact. Every expert regardless of political party... who has ever examined these issues in a serious way will tell you that instances of significant voter fraud are not to be found. Keep in mind elections are run by state and local officials."

It is important to remember what had transpired in the Trump/Russia collusion case by this point. Operation Crossfire Hurricane was launched the end of July 2016. CIA Director John Brennan briefed key Democrat members of Congress in early August on allegations that Donald Trump was colluding with Vladimir Putin. And Peter Strzok traveled to London in early August 2016 to meet with the CIA and with Alexander Downer, who was claiming that George Papadopolous was talking up the Russians. Following that trip Strozk texted the following to his mistress, Lisa Page :

Strzok: And hi. Went well, best we could have expected. Other than [REDACTED] quote: " the White House is running this. " My answer, "well, maybe for you they are." And of course, I was planning on telling this guy, thanks for coming, we've got an hour, but with Bill [Priestap] there, I've got no control .

Page: Yeah, whatever (re the WH comment). We've got the emails that say otherwise.

The White House clearly knew. But Strzok's text is not the only evidence. We also know that Senior Obama Administration officials, such as NSC Director Susan Rice and UN Ambassdor Samantha Power, were pushing to "unmask" Trump campaign officials who were named in US intelligence documents.

There are only two possibilities:

  1. Obama was being briefed by Susan Rice and DNI James Clapper and CIA Director about the project to take out Trump, or
  2. Obama was kept in the dark.

Let us look at this from another angle. If the Russians were actually trying to interfere in the 2016 election, then it was known to both US intelligence and law enforcement. Hell, we are told in the Mueller report that the FBI detected the Russians trying to hack the DNC way back in 2015. If there really was intelligence on Russian efforts to meddle why did the Obama Administration do nothing other than sanction FBI's Crossfire Hurricane?

On what basis did Barack Obama insist it was impossible to rig the US Presidential election? This is a critical anomaly. Why was the Obama team asleep at the switch, especially on the intel front, it the Russians actually were engaged in rigging the election to install Donald Trump?

turcopolier , 26 July 2019 at 04:19 PM

All

My wife was for many years an election official in Virginia. IMO Obama was right in saying that a US presidential election is impossible to "rig." The US Constitution requires that federal elections be run by the states WITHOUT federal supervision. As a result the methods and equipment in the states and the various parts of the states vary widely and the state systems are not tied together with a national electronic network as, for example, the system is in France where the result of a national election is reported on TeeVee immediately when the polls close.

Bill H , 26 July 2019 at 04:51 PM
Asking the question, "Can you cite one specific case where a single vote was definitively changed by Russian meddling?" causes panic in a person who is declaiming about the evils of Russian meddling in our elections.
Alexandria , 26 July 2019 at 07:02 PM
Bill H,

When you ask that question, the invariable retort is that the Russians are so clever that you wouldn't know that you were being gulled; or, when I say that I have never seen a Russian produced facebook ad, the rejoinder is that the Russians concentrated on Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and, of course, I would have been privy to the bot-sent emails and facebook ads generated by the Internet Research Agency.

Jack said in reply to The Twisted Genius ... , 27 July 2019 at 12:41 AM
TTG

You've maintained all along that the Russians interfered in the election, yet I believe it is your position that the Russians did not change a single vote. Is that correct or do you believe the Russians changed the votes before tabulation?

What did the Russians do that the Trump and Hillary campaigns did not do? Did they also turnout the tens of thousands who showed up for Trump rallies that Hillary could never muster? Are they still turning out thousands at recent Trump rallies? I'm curious how come Brennan and Clapper could not turn out thousands to Hillary's rallies when according to our German friend "b", the omnipotent US Intel services just turned out a quarter of the population of Hong Kong to protest CCP authoritarianism?

Did the Israeli, Saudi and Chinese governments interfere in the election? How would you compare what they did to what you believe the Russians did?

uieter about it. All that is very different from the absolute covert nature of the Russian IO in the 2016 election. I have no idea what China did or is doing.

Larry Johnson -> The Twisted Genius ... , 27 July 2019 at 11:36 AM
You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication. The lies on this are enormous. If the FBI really had detected GRU hacking of the DNC in 2015, which is claimed in the fabricated meme, then you would expect the FBI and the other counter intel elements of the USG to take action. THEY DID NOTHING.

The issue of Russian hacking only emerged when Hillary and the DNC learned that DNC emails were going to be put out by WIKILEAKS. Again, not one shred of actual evidence that the Russians did it, but blaming the Russians became a convenient excuse in a bid to divert attention from the real story--i.e,. Hillary and the DNC colluded to defeat Bernie Sanders.

The only real solid evidence of colluding with foreigners, in this case the Ukraine, comes courtesy of Hillary and her campaign. Hiring a foreign intel officer (ie. Steele) who then takes info from Russians of questionable background and spread it around as "truth". That was not a Russian IO. Pure Clinton IO.

blue peacock said in reply to The Twisted Genius ... , 27 July 2019 at 12:29 PM
"What the Russians did was insert misattributed information and disinformation into the election cycle...That is what separates the Russian IO from anything Clinton, Trump or any of their supporters did."

I believe supporters of both candidates did exactly what you say the Russians did - insert misattributed information & disinformation into the media stream. If you watch MSNBC or Fox on any given day there is much assertion & opinion masquerading as news. And the Twitter & Facebook and blog universe are teeming with stories and innuendo that are more fiction than fact all from anonymous accounts.

The Russia Collusion hysteria is replete with examples of "misattributed information and disinformation". It seems that yellow journalism is as American as apple pie.

The whole opaque PAC structure with names like "Americans for Democracy" funded by chain structures hiding the real financiers and calling up down is something that we see growing in every election cycle and is already of significant scale both in terms of financing and dubiousness.

It is also rather common that "experts" who are called upon to opine on issues routinely never disclose their conflicts of interest. Jeffrey Sachs and so many others on the payroll of CCP entities never disclose those payments as they extoll the virtues of offshoring our industrial base to China and are apologists for CCP espionage.

The Twisted Genius -> blue peacock... , 27 July 2019 at 01:42 PM
Blue peacock, supporters of Clinton and Trump did not put out misattributed info. They both put out truth, innuendo, exaggerations, misleading info and even outright lies, but they put it out as themselves. They didn't represent themselves as someone other than who they were. The PAC structure comes close to skirting this requirement for truthful attribution, but a quick internet search blows away the facades of these PACs. What the Russians did was pure black propaganda.
Fred -> The Twisted Genius ... , 27 July 2019 at 09:23 AM
TTG,

You mean the kindly grandmother, Loretta Lynch, Attorney General of the United States, did not inform President Obama that the FBI had obtained a FISA warrant to surveil the Republican candidate for the presidency and members of his staff becasue he was working with Russians? Or do you mean that James Comey failed to tell his boss, Loretta Lynch; or do you mean John Brennan failed to tell Obama about that Steele dossier from Fusion GPS that Mueller know anything about; or do you mean that James Clapper failed to tell Jeh Johnson about that too? The Russians made them do all those things as part of an interference campaign, right? It couldn't have been they were corrupt and incompetant.

"Instead, Obama...." made an "If you like your doctor, you can keep you doctor" statement that he knew was completely false. Trump didn't win, Russians influenced Americans to vote for Trump, just ask the losers of the election, their paid sources and their colleagues in Congress. In fact Americans love Hilary so much she's just where in the polls right now?

catherine , 27 July 2019 at 12:20 AM
I continue to be astounded by the outrage at "Russian meddling". So some Russians used the internet to post true or false information on candidates in a election.... so what?...millions of American partisan trolls were doing the same thing for or against a candidate. We had tons of fake info written by American bloggers and posters all over the net, Facebook, twitter etc..

Its not like Putin came to the US and gave a speech to congress in favor of Trump ...as Netanyahu did in appearing before the US congress and urging them to go against President Obama's Syria policy for heaven's sake.
It is so ridiculous I have given up hope of finding enough IQs above that of a cabbage to form a sane government.

LondonBob , 27 July 2019 at 06:57 AM
Obama seemed to have got a taste for spying on his domestic political opponents from monitoring Israeli attempts to block the Iran nuclear deal. I think the lock her up stuff really scared the Obama people, who had much to hide.
J , 27 July 2019 at 12:27 PM
This has shown two things IMO

1. The FBI cannot be trusted to uphold defend and protect our Constitution, as they sought actively to overturn a duly elected POTUS.; and

2 - Mueller's incompetence is astounding.

Is the only entity of the Defense Department called the U.S. Army the only ones left actually upholding, defending, and protecting our Constitution and our Constitution processes? I don't see the other entities of the DOD called Navy and Air Force doing their jobs upholding our Constitution!

Thumbs up to the Army, thumbs down to the Navy and Air Force!

Mark Logan said in reply to J... , 27 July 2019 at 02:14 PM
J,

I'm a little more charitable to the FBI. The Trumps lied their asses off to the FBI about their foreign contacts. Which IMO, wrong or right, left the FBI all but no recourse but to investigate those lies. Even if the lies were simply based in long-seated personal habits, it takes investigation to prove that is the case.

plantman , 27 July 2019 at 12:55 PM
I believe Larry Johnson is right when he says:

"You have no evidence for the so-called Russian IO. It is a fabrication." In fact, Putin rejects the claim many times publicly saying that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections as a matter of policy. Maybe I'm gullible, but I find his disclaimer pretty convincing....

My question for Larry Johnson requires some speculation on his part: How did the claims of "Russia meddling" which began with the DNC and Hillary campaign, take root at the FBI, CIA and NSA???

Is there an unseen connection between the Democrat leadership and the Intel agencies??? And --if there is-- does that mean we are headed for a one-party system???

rg , 27 July 2019 at 01:46 PM
Larry, sorry to nitpick, but I have such regard for your work that it pains me to see the typographical error in your second sentence, where you say "his error" shortly after referring to Trump. I'm guessing that you meant to say "this error", but it reads as if it means "Trump's error".

And while I'm at it, your last sentence has "it" instead of "if".

Keep up your great work for this excellent website.

turcopolier , 27 July 2019 at 03:35 PM
Mark Logan

Sadly naive in that you think the conspirators were actually acting in good faith. You think they were right when they used the Steele Dossier in applying for a FISA warrant in Colyyer's Star Chamber? Steele was a paid informant for the FBI as was Page.

turcopolier , 27 July 2019 at 03:35 PM
Mark Logan

How do you know "they lied their asses off?" Mueller's report stated that no American had conspired with the Russians,

[Jul 27, 2019] Mueller Magoo by W. James Antle III

Notable quotes:
"... He demonstrated a thin grasp of his own report's findings, even as he implored lawmakers in both parties to read it. He asked members of Congress to repeat their questions 48 times . ..."
"... That's not to say Mueller did nothing for Democrats. He said President Trump was not "exculpated" by his report. He raised the specter of falsified documents and all but said that he punted on obstruction of justice only because a sitting president cannot be indicted under existing Justice Department guidelines. He gamely testified his investigation was no "witch hunt." And some of his seeming confusion was likely strategic: he was trying to avoid giving partisans easy footage confirming their talking points. ..."
"... While Democrats have not totally given up on "collusion," moving the goalposts away from Hillary Clinton's detailed explanation of how the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the election toward vaguer references to "contacts" and "foreign help," obstruction of justice was the name of the game. Mueller acknowledged that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone in the Trump campaign with collusion-related crimes, even if he stopped short of calling that an exoneration of the president. Paul Manafort, George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Roger Stone -- these were not criminal masterminds. In fact, they were all incredibly sloppy. If they had colluded, they all could easily have been charged. ..."
"... No one who could be indicted was charged with aiding the president in obstructing the investigation either. ..."
"... The real answer Mueller declined to give appears to be that his obstruction allegations would have hinged heavily on Trump's use presidential powers under Article II of the Constitution. The Justice Department under Barr's leadership does not believe this amounted to obstruction in theory or practice. Thus the self-evidently never-fired Mueller was reduced to dropping breadcrumbs and hoping congressional Democrats would find them. ..."
"... Mueller's seeming lack of familiarity with his own investigation lessened the GOP's problem because it helps shift the focus to the "angry Democrats" in the special counsel's office -- people like Andrew Weissman, who attended Hillary's election night party -- rather than Mueller himself. The Democrats are still at square one, trying to dial back Manchurian candidate expectations among the base and shift the impeachment rationale to Trump's passive willingness to benefit from Russian interference without expressing a modicum of outrage. ..."
"... With 95 Democrats willing to impeach Trump over mean tweets, anything is possible. But it's going to take a lot more than Mueller to move House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into that camp. ..."
"... The Steele dossier, whether a truthful compilation or a complete fabrication, is itself an attempt by foreign spies to influence our election. "Collusion" staring us in the face right here. ..."
"... The public spectacle was heart-breaking. It was obvious that Mueller had lost some mental faculties. Surely his special investigative team had to know that, having worked with him for 2+ years, and so the Democrat leadership had to know that as well. And yet they insisted he testify, even though he basically begged to not testify and let him just go off into the twilight of retirement. But no, they threatened to subpoena him. ..."
"... Actually, Trump committed a lot of unforced errors, as well as being generally lazy, stupid and unprepared. ..."
"... With this in mind, to believe the RussiaGate conspiracy theories, one must simultaneously believe that the Russians have abilities that border on psychic mind control superpowers, but at the same time, these same evil geniuses cannot be bothered to plan what to do if their nefarious schemes actually worked out. ..."
"... One can easily accept that Trump is a roaring moron, but one also has to believe that his alleged puppetmaster cannot take the time to consult an attorney or a peruse a copy of the United States Code, available for free on the internet to anyone who bothers to take a peek. And that's just the legal requirements. I won't even go into the clownshow that was Trump's appointments and staffing. ..."
"... The testimony was a complete success because it maintained the status quo. Trump is not going anywhere, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that Russia tampered with the election rendering even more sanctions and increasing cold war tensions, and the only ones indicted were accused of process crimes. Meanwhile, the business of Goldman Sachs gets done in the halls of power. ..."
"... Robert "Saddam has WMD of Mass Destruction" Mueller has been the bag man for the establishment for a long time. Even his dotage, he still managed to perform his job flawlessly. ..."
"... 12 indictments against often former employees of a Russian clickbait farm for spectacularly laughable memes that will never amount to anything because there will never be a trial. One of the parties showed up in court and demanded actual evidence as part of discovery, causing Mueller to desperately ask for a continuance. The judge called Mueller out by denying it. The judge also called Mueller out by showing that he had no evidence that the defendant at issue had any ties tot he Russian government. ..."
"... A paltry $150k was spent for online ads over two years, by Russians, they tell you. They also tell you that about half those ads didn't run until after the election was over and that most of the ads didn't endorse a specific candidate or policy. Yet, you insist this Russian social media blitz altered the outcome of your election somehow. With well north of $3 billion spent on traditional advertising, leave it to MSM to float a turd of such odious girth. ..."
"... Next, Mueller indicts 13 Russian intelligence journeymen and it will never amount to anything. None of them will ever be extradited. There will never be a trial. Never a legal discovery process. No burden of proof that they actually hacked or colluded. No US intelligence agency has ever examined the servers in question. ..."
"... An impeachment is another word for "indictment", and as the saying goes you can indict a ham sandwich. Or impeach a baloney sandwich. If Trump were to wind up in the dock it would be "anything goes", including subpoenas being issued to Madame Hillary. There won't be any impeachment. Too much of a danger of overflowing sewage. ..."
"... Seth Rich could rise up from the dead and show us all, live on CNN, how he leaked the DNC emails, right after DWS confessed on MSNBC to ordering Seth Rich's murder and HRC admitted under oath that she invented russiagate on a bet with Podesta to see whether people really are that stupid and gullible, and CNN, MSNBC and the entire DNC and their cultists would keep pushing the conspiracy theory, never even missing a beat. ..."
"... I'm glad Mr. Mueller finally admitted publicly that he held the President to an Orwellian standard of "probably guilty, which we can't prove, until proven innocent, which we never do" that no American has ever been held to by law enforcement. ..."
Jul 25, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testifies before the House Intelligence Committee about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in the Rayburn House Office Building July 24, 2019(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) The late Sen. Arlen Specter ended the drive to impeach Bill Clinton by invoking Scottish law and voting "not proven" in the 42rd president's Senate trial. Democrats hope to begin the drive to impeach Donald Trump with a finding by special counsel Robert Mueller that the worst allegations against the 45th president are not proven.

Even this task was made more difficult by the former FBI director and Trump-Russia investigator's unimpressive public congressional testimony. Mueller had trouble identifying questioners. He demonstrated a thin grasp of his own report's findings, even as he implored lawmakers in both parties to read it. He asked members of Congress to repeat their questions 48 times .

The uber-competent G-man about whom liberals sang Christmas carols was not on display Wednesday. "Mueller Time" gave way to Mr. Magoo.

A cursory glance at Politico 's homepage revealed the damage. "'Euphoria': White House, GOP exult after a flat Mueller performance," blared the top headline. Another reads, "Bob Mueller is struggling." And another: "Impeachment drive slowed by Mueller's troubles." Even the New York Times could only manage: "Mueller sticks to script but shows flashes of indignation."

"This is delicate to say, but Mueller, whom I deeply respect, has not publicly testified before Congress in at least six years," fretted Barack Obama's man David Axelrod. "And he does not appear as sharp as he was then."

That's not to say Mueller did nothing for Democrats. He said President Trump was not "exculpated" by his report. He raised the specter of falsified documents and all but said that he punted on obstruction of justice only because a sitting president cannot be indicted under existing Justice Department guidelines. He gamely testified his investigation was no "witch hunt." And some of his seeming confusion was likely strategic: he was trying to avoid giving partisans easy footage confirming their talking points.

But Democrats wanted much more. Ever since Attorney General William Barr released his summary, they have wanted to challenge his framing of the report. His testimony, like that 448-page document, contained plenty of damning information. The bottom line -- that Mueller could not prove a Trump-Russia conspiracy to swing the 2016 presidential election and lacks a convincing explanation for his obstruction equivocation -- remains unchanged.

While Democrats have not totally given up on "collusion," moving the goalposts away from Hillary Clinton's detailed explanation of how the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the election toward vaguer references to "contacts" and "foreign help," obstruction of justice was the name of the game. Mueller acknowledged that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone in the Trump campaign with collusion-related crimes, even if he stopped short of calling that an exoneration of the president. Paul Manafort, George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Roger Stone -- these were not criminal masterminds. In fact, they were all incredibly sloppy. If they had colluded, they all could easily have been charged.

If Justice Department regulations on presidential indictments did not prevent a finding of insufficient evidence to charge conspiracy, why did these guidelines require Congress to make the final determination on obstruction? No one who could be indicted was charged with aiding the president in obstructing the investigation either.

The real answer Mueller declined to give appears to be that his obstruction allegations would have hinged heavily on Trump's use presidential powers under Article II of the Constitution. The Justice Department under Barr's leadership does not believe this amounted to obstruction in theory or practice. Thus the self-evidently never-fired Mueller was reduced to dropping breadcrumbs and hoping congressional Democrats would find them.

Both parties entered the hearings with a fundamental problem. For Republicans, how do you discredit Mueller for his negative findings about the president while also affirming his failure to prove an election-related conspiracy as definitive? The Democrats' dilemma was that they knew Trump had behaved badly in response to Russian election interference and the subsequent investigation, but hoped Mueller would discover something worse. When he merely supplied color and a reliable narrator for what we largely already knew, many Democrats wanted to pivot back to impeaching Trump over that unseemly behavior.

Mueller's seeming lack of familiarity with his own investigation lessened the GOP's problem because it helps shift the focus to the "angry Democrats" in the special counsel's office -- people like Andrew Weissman, who attended Hillary's election night party -- rather than Mueller himself. The Democrats are still at square one, trying to dial back Manchurian candidate expectations among the base and shift the impeachment rationale to Trump's passive willingness to benefit from Russian interference without expressing a modicum of outrage.

You can argue that we should expect more from a president than to simply have refrained from directly conspiring with a hostile foreign power to reach the White House. Yet that case becomes harder to make when that is precisely what you have conditioned rank-and-file Democrats to expect from the Mueller report. No dramatic reading of that report, least of all by a 74-year-old clearly no longer accustomed to congressional testimony, will deliver on those expectations.

With 95 Democrats willing to impeach Trump over mean tweets, anything is possible. But it's going to take a lot more than Mueller to move House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into that camp.

stevek9 • 3 days ago

I would say this is by far the most charitable interpretation of Mueller's testimony I've seen. He didn't want to talk about the 'Steele Dossier' ... the whole basis for the Russiagate farce, and then claimed he didn't know who GPS Fusion was ... the outfit hired by Clinton to write the dossier in the first place. That this whole pile of rubbish was not laughed out of existence is a tribute to the ability of the media (who hated Trump), to convince a large number of people of a preposterous fantasy.

He reminds me a little bit of my dad, and a little bit of Cato the Younger. But to his fellow Republicans--he's Mr. Magoo.

Wilfred • 3 days ago
The Steele dossier, whether a truthful compilation or a complete fabrication, is itself an attempt by foreign spies to influence our election. "Collusion" staring us in the face right here.

Why haven't the Democrats been investigated for it?

rick allen Wilfred • 2 days ago
Maybe because there's a little difference between hiring a private firm to do opposition research, and Russian military intelligence stealing and releasing tens of thousands of private documents from one political party to help the other win the Presidency?
Fabian Wilfred • a day ago
The dossier is not an attempt by foreign spies. It's an attempt by the Democrats to use foreign spies.
WorkingClass • 3 days ago
The majority of House Democrats voted against impeachment. I would say this was a good day for Democrats.
KevinS • 3 days ago
"You can argue that we should expect more from a president than to simply have refrained from directly conspiring with a hostile foreign power to reach the White House."

Ya think?

tweets21 • 2 days ago
Even after the spectacle, and the grueling two years of media hype, nothing has moved the dial from those who hate Trump, and those who are Trump supporters. The 2020 election may again come down to the electoral college system. We already know where voters on the upper east coast and California stand. Major populations.
gdpbull • 2 days ago
The public spectacle was heart-breaking. It was obvious that Mueller had lost some mental faculties. Surely his special investigative team had to know that, having worked with him for 2+ years, and so the Democrat leadership had to know that as well. And yet they insisted he testify, even though he basically begged to not testify and let him just go off into the twilight of retirement. But no, they threatened to subpoena him.

By all accounts, Mueller had a long a admirable career. Its disgusting that most people's memory of him and his legacy will be of this last public embarrassing spectacle.

The Democratic Party has shown its complete lack of moral compass. When it comes to politics, anything goes, including the destruction of people's lives. They even eat their own when its considered politically expedient. The Anita Hill hearings, Kavannah hearings, me too movement, show me the man and the people around him, we'll find the crimes mentality. What's next? Murder? It would not surprise me in the least.

Its clear now that the entire Russian collusion narrative was a set-up by the Democratic party. It was all about entrapment, perjury traps, and selective media leaking.

Connecticut Farmer gdpbull • 2 days ago
The bottom line was, is, and always will be as follows: The Democrat Party expected their candidate to win in a cakewalk over Trump. If she won we wouldn't have heard one word about these Russians (Oh, and by the way, do these "Russians" have names?). It was Clinton's election to lose and she promptly went out and lost it! Period! End of story! In their eyes the candidate of "The Deplorables" won and the Democrats are enraged--so enraged that since Election Day 2016 they have been doing all they can do to delegitimize the election and Trump's status as POTUS. And all the while-- thanks to BOTH parties--the nation's infrastructure steadily crumbles and the immigration crisis remains unresolved (to cite just two examples).
interguru • 2 days ago
On impeachment: Just imagine that Barak Obama had illegally spent $120,000 of his campaign cash for hush money to his prostitute. What would happen?
Micha_Elyi interguru • 2 days ago • edited
"On impeachment: Just imagine that Barak Obama had illegally spent $120,000 of his campaign cash for hush money to his prostitute. What would happen?"--interguru

Democrats would rise in unison and begin shouting "It's only about sex!" And that time, they'd be correct.

Admit it, interguru, all the covering for Clinton that the Democrats conducted in order to yank his lying-under-oath balls out of the fire rendered impotent their usual tactics of denigrate and defame.

JeffK from PA interguru • a day ago
Then Republicans might actually like him. Hold him up as a 'real man'.
Sid Finster interguru • a day ago
Fine, but that has nothing to do with the russiagate conspiracy theory.

In fact, if Trump were really a puppet of Russia, they'd never let him commit an unforced error that pointless. Some money could be funneled from any of a million sources, and nobody would be any the wiser.

Actually, Trump committed a lot of unforced errors, as well as being generally lazy, stupid and unprepared.

https://www.theguardian.com...

With this in mind, to believe the RussiaGate conspiracy theories, one must simultaneously believe that the Russians have abilities that border on psychic mind control superpowers, but at the same time, these same evil geniuses cannot be bothered to plan what to do if their nefarious schemes actually worked out.

Orwell wept.

One can easily accept that Trump is a roaring moron, but one also has to believe that his alleged puppetmaster cannot take the time to consult an attorney or a peruse a copy of the United States Code, available for free on the internet to anyone who bothers to take a peek. And that's just the legal requirements. I won't even go into the clownshow that was Trump's appointments and staffing.

Salt Lick • 2 days ago
The testimony was a complete success because it maintained the status quo. Trump is not going anywhere, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that Russia tampered with the election rendering even more sanctions and increasing cold war tensions, and the only ones indicted were accused of process crimes. Meanwhile, the business of Goldman Sachs gets done in the halls of power.

Robert "Saddam has WMD of Mass Destruction" Mueller has been the bag man for the establishment for a long time. Even his dotage, he still managed to perform his job flawlessly.

Paddywagon • 2 days ago
*42nd president's Senate trial
Sid Finster jimrussell • 2 days ago
What utter nonsense, unless you believe that "Russia" wrote the DNC emails, or that a clickbait troll farm (see paragraph 95 of the IRA indictment if you don't believe me) that has no discernable connection tot he Russian government has some amazing influence over gullible American voters.
Sid Finster jimrussell • a day ago
12 indictments against often former employees of a Russian clickbait farm for spectacularly laughable memes that will never amount to anything because there will never be a trial. One of the parties showed up in court and demanded actual evidence as part of discovery, causing Mueller to desperately ask for a continuance. The judge called Mueller out by denying it. The judge also called Mueller out by showing that he had no evidence that the defendant at issue had any ties tot he Russian government.

https://www.courthousenews....

A paltry $150k was spent for online ads over two years, by Russians, they tell you. They also tell you that about half those ads didn't run until after the election was over and that most of the ads didn't endorse a specific candidate or policy. Yet, you insist this Russian social media blitz altered the outcome of your election somehow. With well north of $3 billion spent on traditional advertising, leave it to MSM to float a turd of such odious girth.

Next, Mueller indicts 13 Russian intelligence journeymen and it will never amount to anything. None of them will ever be extradited. There will never be a trial. Never a legal discovery process. No burden of proof that they actually hacked or colluded. No US intelligence agency has ever examined the servers in question.

Russians didn't write the emails and Julian Assange is emphatic that Russia had nothing to do with them. Yet, no one in our vast and vaunted intelligence community has bothered to interview him. As they say, a smart lawyer never asks a question if he might not want to hear the answer.

Everything, all of it, is based on intel supplied by a cyber security firm on the DNC payroll. You can't make this shit up.

The other indictments are thoroughly unrelated to hacking or collusion by anybody, much less Russia.

W Porter • 2 days ago • edited
Sen Specter did NOT "end the drive to impeach Bill Clinton", as the opening sentence of this article declares. The drive to impeach Bill Clinton ended when the House passed articles of impeachment. That's right: Bill Clinton was actually impeached. No, he wasn't "convicted" in his senate trial (thanks to Specter) and so wasn't removed from office. But he was, actually, impeached.

Good question for trivia buffs: Only one of these presidents was impeached: Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Which one was it? (Hint: Nixon resigned before the House impeached him.)

Connecticut Farmer W Porter • 2 days ago
An impeachment is another word for "indictment", and as the saying goes you can indict a ham sandwich. Or impeach a baloney sandwich. If Trump were to wind up in the dock it would be "anything goes", including subpoenas being issued to Madame Hillary. There won't be any impeachment. Too much of a danger of overflowing sewage.
Sid Finster • 2 days ago
Seth Rich could rise up from the dead and show us all, live on CNN, how he leaked the DNC emails, right after DWS confessed on MSNBC to ordering Seth Rich's murder and HRC admitted under oath that she invented russiagate on a bet with Podesta to see whether people really are that stupid and gullible, and CNN, MSNBC and the entire DNC and their cultists would keep pushing the conspiracy theory, never even missing a beat.
Amanda Powell Sid Finster • 2 days ago
I see the fever swamp is well represented today.
𝙆𝙧𝙖𝙯𝙮 𝙐𝙣𝙘𝙡𝙚 • 2 days ago
I'm thinking the Democrats just wanted Mueller to give them the go ahead on impeachment... that way they could always blame it on him if the ploy failed... Too bad they are such cowards that none of the want to sign their name to impeachment proceedings...
MM • 2 days ago
I'm glad Mr. Mueller finally admitted publicly that he held the President to an Orwellian standard of "probably guilty, which we can't prove, until proven innocent, which we never do" that no American has ever been held to by law enforcement.

I'll illustrate:

  • "If we had had confidence the President clearly committed a crime, we would have said so. We did not make a determination as to whether the President did commit a crime."
  • "If we had had confidence the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not make a determination as to whether the President did commit a crime."

Can anybody tell me the legal difference between those two statements? I really don't see any. Also, what was fascinating about Mr. Mueller's press conference was when he said this:

  • "These indictments contain allegations and we are not commenting on the guilt or the innocence of any specific defendant. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty."

He actually paid indicted Russian nationals who will never stand trial in this country more constitutional lip service than Trump. Absolutely gorgeous...

Bag Man • 2 days ago
If the Democrats were using Mueller as their smoking gun to nail Trump it failed miserably. If they still want to impeach go ahead. It guarantees Trump's reelection.
Rossbach • a day ago
Mueller's investigation ended after all the subpoenas had been served, all the witnesses had been deposed, and all the evidence analyzed. If, after that, he could not determine that the president had committed a crime, then, according to established jurisprudential practice, the decision is that he is not guilty. It is singular that the 2 accusations, collusion and obstruction, were evaluated differently.

In the case of conspiracy ("collusion") the final report says, "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." In the case of obstruction of justice, the final report says, "If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment."

So, in the case of conspiracy, the prosecutor had to prove that the President was guilty ("did not establish" conspiracy); in the case of obstruction, they had to prove that he was innocent ("did not commit obstruction"). Why did different standards apply to the two accusations?

Mueller said he didn't recommend that the grand jury indict the President for obstruction because one cannot indict a sitting President. But the President either obstructed justice or he didn't. If he did, why didn't Mueller say so? He didn't have to recommend as indictment in order to state a conclusion based on facts revealed in the investigation. What he appears to be saying is that because he couldn't prove that the President did not commit obstruction, he would recommend that congress play impeachment politics with the issue.

So, instead of a resolution of this matter, Mueller decided to bequeath to the nation a festering sore that, with that aid of congressional Democrats, would continue to undermine the President's administration.

[Jul 27, 2019] Russia interfered on a massive scale ($3,684 was spends on ads on which $1932 on promoting Trump) and is doing it again as we sit here! Just how massive? They spent $100,000 on clickbait ads from a company owned by a man who was in a photo with the evil mastermind!

Highly recommended!
Jul 27, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Glennn , July 26, 2019 at 12:16

Russia interfered on a massive scale and is doing it again as we sit here! Just how massive? They spent $100,000 on clickbait ads from a company owned by a man who was in a photo with the evil mastermind!

How evil? Well do the math. $43,000 to $46,000 of that was spent during the election and of those ads 8.4 percent were political. That's $3,684 dollars.

But the political ads were aimed in both directions so that's roughly $1,932 spent "promoting" Trump.

And now Mueller tells us the evil mastermind is at it again -- as we sit here -- probably spending even more this time. Let us know when he's spent a full thousand dollars Bob and we'll start loading the bombs.

Oh, and we found all this out for around thirty million dollars.

stephen kelley , July 25, 2019 at 22:34

think about it! with the myriad of problems we must contend with: growing social inequality, huge tax breaks for the rich, government deregulation of private business, a climate catastrophe, unending wars, nuclear annihilation spurred on especially by u.s. imperialism, the gutting of what little social safety net we have left and so on and so so on. and we are supposed to be outraged at supposed foreign interference with our supposed democratic process? please, this is total insanity!!!

John Wolfe , July 25, 2019 at 18:29

Of course, relatively speaking, it’s a nothing. Every knowledgeable person knows that we in the US orchestrated both the financing and the strategy of the 1996 Yeltsin campaign -- a political rescue so efficiently carried out that our operatives bragged brazenly about it to Time Magazine, which made it the cover story for its July 14, 1996 edition (“Yanks to the Rescue”).

The Lamestream Corporate media always underplayed the fact that Yeltsin ordered the execution of 1,100 demonstrators who protested the IMF backed “reforms”, and that Clinton approved of his deadly and heavy hand in implementing a neoliberal economic order. Clinton never threatened to suspend aid to the Russian Federation despite its numerous abuses of human rights.

Also forgotten is that Yeltsin ordered the Russian Parliament (Duma) shelled before it could vote on Yeltsin’s economic “reforms”, which were implemented at the point of a gun. At various times between 1993 and 1997, it was Yeltsin who declared martial law, suspended the Duma, and declared himself possessed of dictatorial powers.

How many Americans ever knew this? 20%? How many remember it today? Maybe 5%? That means there is no context for gauging Muellers’ testimony.

But, it is, by MSNBC standards, Vladimir Putin who is Evil Incarnate. Has Maddow ever mentioned Yeltsin, a tyrant of the first order? No, because at GE, Comcast, and NBC, tyranny in the name of enforcing neoliberalism is perfectly acceptable.

This post is a bit off topic, and is a bit relativistic, as I know we should be concerned if it is really true that Manafort was giving internal polling data to a Russian Federation person so that the IRA could better target swing states in our Midwest.

Bob Van Noy , July 26, 2019 at 08:26

John Wolfe, your comment is not off topic at all, it’s crucial to further understanding of the totality of the Russia did it mentality, and That is well documented in a small but powerful book called “Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance” by F. William Engdahl which I will link.

The American People have been propagandized so thoroughly that they can hardly recognize the truth any longer.

Too, I will link an article in Off Guardian this morning that is worth mentioning if one wants to see Real Reporting On MH-17.

https://www.amazon.com/Manifest-Destiny-Democracy-Cognitive-Dissonance/dp/3981723732

And:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/07/26/mh17-call-for-justice/

[Jul 26, 2019] Tucker: Democrats believed Mueller would save America. But he is A daft old man blinking in the sunlight once the curtain has been opened

Highly recommended!
He was like a deer in headlights. Mueller's testimony riddled with shaky moments, incomplete answers - YouTube
Looks like Mueller is not currently mentally capable of programming his microwave, never mind to be the primary author of his eport or supervise the investigation.
Shouldn't James Comey and Rod Rosenstein be sitting there, its obvious to me that Mueller is the patsy here.
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller : What page are you referencing? I can't find it" ..."
"... Rep: "Sir, you have the report upsidedown" ..."
Jul 26, 2019 | www.youtube.com

cannonball666 , 19 hours ago

Mueller: What page are you referencing? I can't find it"

Rep: "Sir, you have the report upsidedown"

Kris Roberts , 23 hours ago

"A daft old man blinking in the sunlight once the curtain has been opened"

Diana Seip , 1 day ago

Nadler should be charged with elderly abuse making Mueller testify today.

Louis Frost, 1 day ago

What's Fusion GPS???
Houston we have a problem,

[Jul 26, 2019] Tucker What should happen to those who lied about Russian collusion

Highly recommended!
Jul 26, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Joe DeHaan , 6 hours ago

They should be charged with treason ! Investigation under false pretenses , ILLEGAL ! Contempt, obstruction ! Pick one !

John Roberts , 6 hours ago (edited)

They should be charged with sedition and hung in the capital square. BAN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!

Gary V , 6 hours ago

What a joke... MULLER appeared SENILE and incompetent led by Dems & their lawyers.

Troy Vincent , 2 hours ago

Exactly Tucker. Serious accountability is what we need for these maliciously lying government officials.

hp , 5 hours ago

Tucker is the last hope for main stream media. Keep up the good work.

Paul Haggar , 5 hours ago

Maybe Putin should get a twitter account haha...... I wonder how he likes the sanctions Pres Trump has placed on Russia

cardsblues219 , 7 hours ago

Schiff has to be charged with treason.

F16 Pilot 4 TRUMP , 4 hours ago (edited)

Tucker you forgot to mention the millions of Iraqs that got killed in the Gulf war over wmds..

Stephan Desy , 5 hours ago

I agree wholeheartedly with Tucker Carlson...This whole stupid Russia hysteria propagated by most of the media made me, an old timer liberal, agree with Tucker. Well played Democratic Party... well played.

G7Batten Batten , 2 hours ago

Exact on the spot as so often. Absolutely nothing will change unless the guilty are punished. May God continue to protect and guide you Tucker.

Zlatko Sich , 7 hours ago

Prison time, for Lying when you work for government. Same for journalists and television(lying and fake news ). This is a solution.

Ryan Mangrum , 43 minutes ago

It was a coup attempt. They should be charged with sedition and/or treason.

Guitarzan , 6 hours ago

Tucker's question about what should happen to the people who attempted to reverse the will of the American people? The answer is very straightforward. Those found guilty of sedition and treason should by law hanged by the neck until dead. This might discourage further efforts to undermine the will of the American people.

Frank Perez , 2 hours ago

They should go to jail, let's make an example of them. They wasted millions of the American tax money on a witch hunt...

[Jul 26, 2019] Barr's Russiagate Origin Probe Pivots To 'Smoking Gun' Tapes With Exculpatory Evidence

Notable quotes:
"... Mueller is not currently mentally capable of programming his microwave, never mind author a report or conduct an investigation. ..."
"... I think if Barr digs deep enough he is going to see a foreign country was In control of Hillary during her state department days, and potentially Bubba during his presidency, remember how those secrets got leaked to China during Bill's Presidency? The preceding would also implicate that inner circle assisting Hill Dog, ie Comey, Clapper, MCabe, Brennan and the rest of those rat bastards BTW where is the computer guy that they were all using who got nabbed just before fleeing on a jet out of the country, What about Huma? ..."
"... Mueller was the token 'R'/Marine Vet/Never Trumper hired to give this corruption an air of 'fairness'. He was a tool, and has been for decades. Special place for him somewhere. ..."
"... Unfortunately the DNC clowns have discovered how to use Hillary's projection techniques and they are using them more and more. No matter what they do or what we discover they do they project it back on us. ..."
Jul 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Barr's Russiagate Origin Probe Pivots To 'Smoking Gun' Tapes With Exculpatory Evidence

by Tyler Durden Fri, 07/26/2019 - 17:05 0 SHARES

A DOJ internal review of the Russia investigation is now focusing on transcripts of (not-so) covertly recorded conversations between former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos and 'at least one government source' during an overseas conversation in 2016.

In particular, DOJ investigators are focusing on why certain exculpatory (or exonerating) evidence from the transcripts was not included in subsequent FBI surveillance warrant applications , according to Fox News , citing two sources familiar with the review.

"A source told Fox News that the "exculpatory evidence" included in the transcripts is Papadopoulos denying having any contact with the Russians to obtain the supposed "dirt" on Clinton," according to the report.

And while Fox doesn't name the 'government source,' it's undoubtedly Australian diplomat and Clinton ally Alexander Downer, who was "idiotic enough" to spy on Papadopoulos with his phone, according to the former Trump aide.

But Papadopoulos did not only meet with Mifsud and Downer while overseas. He met with Cambridge professor and longtime FBI informant Stefan Halper and his female associate, who went under the alias Azra Turk. Papadopoulos told Fox News that he saw Turk three times in London: once over drinks, once over dinner and once with Halper. He also told Fox News back in May that he always suspected he was being recorded . Further, he tweeted during the Mueller testimony about "recordings" of his meeting with Downer . - Fox News

"These recordings have exculpatory evidence," one source told Fox , adding " It is standard tradecraft to record conversations with someone like Papadopoulos -- especially when they are overseas and there are no restrictions. "

The recordings in question pertain to conversations between government sources and Papadopoulos, which were memorialized in transcripts. One source told Fox News that Barr and Durham are reviewing why the material was left out of applications to surveil another former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page.

" I think it's the smoking gun ," the source said. - Fox News

Also under review by AG Barr and US Attorney John Durham of Connecticut is the actual start date of the original FBI investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the US election.

Former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) first revealed the existence of transcripts documenting the secretly recorded conversations earlier this year.

"If the bureau's going to send in an informant, the informant's going to be wired, and if the bureau is monitoring telephone calls, there's going to be a transcript of that," Gowdy said on Fox News in May.

"Some of us have been fortunate enough to know whether or not those transcripts exist. But they haven't been made public, and I think one, in particular ... has the potential to actually persuade people," he continued, adding "Very little in this Russia probe I'm afraid is going to persuade people who hate Trump or love Trump. But there is some information in these transcripts that has the potential to be a game-changer if it's ever made public. "

According to the report, the transcripts are currently classified - however President Trump's May order to approve declassification at AG Barr's discretion means they may see the light of day. And even if not, the declassification allowed Barr to barge in on DNI Director Dan Coats' office and demand the files .

A source told Fox News that without the declassification order signed by Trump, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was not going to give anyone access to the files -- over concerns for protecting sources and methods. But another source told Fox News in May that Coats, along with CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Chris Wray, are all working "collaboratively" with Barr and Durham on the review.

Barr and Durham are also trying to pinpoint the actual "start date" of the investigation, according to a source. - Fox News

As passionately laid out by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) during this week's Mueller testimony, the FBI officially opened the Russia investigation after Papadopoulos told Downer about a rumor (told to him by Clinton Foundation member Joseph Mifsud) that Russia had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/QC529hakU6U

That said, some have suggested that the FBI probe began long before Downer's report to intelligence agencies .

On Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., challenged former Special Counsel Mueller over when the investigation started.

"The FBI claims the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began on July 31, 2016, but in fact, it began before that," Nunes said. "In June 2016, before the investigation was officially opened, Trump campaign associates Carter Page and Stephen Miller were invited to attend a symposium at Cambridge University in July 2016. Your office, however, did not investigate who was responsible for inviting these Trump associates to the symposium." - Fox News

"Maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusations started," said Jordan on Wednesday, adding "Here's the good news -- that's exactly what Bill Barr is doing and thank goodness for that."

Ida_Noe , 2 minutes ago link

For what it's worth, I think the whole thing started w/Her campaign, in particular: Podesta (means, motive and opportunity). I think it began as a cheating strategy and snowballed into a coup; many ppl involved... Trump won (Thank G--!) and they've been trying to cover their tracks ever since

Anunnaki , 27 minutes ago link

They used Mueller's stellar reputation to unleash a Clinton/FBI witch hunt behind the scenes.

so obvious Mueller had nothing to do with the report with his name n it.

now his reputation is dog ****

SHADEWELL , 22 minutes ago link

Mueller is not currently mentally capable of programming his microwave, never mind author a report or conduct an investigation.

We are seeing a spectacular display of an ill advised poorly thought out conspiracy to take Trump down...

No one is really looking at why the desperation to get Hillary in, remember Cuntlery herself stated that if Trump were to be elected "we will all hang"

I think if Barr digs deep enough he is going to see a foreign country was In control of Hillary during her state department days, and potentially Bubba during his presidency, remember how those secrets got leaked to China during Bill's Presidency? The preceding would also implicate that inner circle assisting Hill Dog, ie Comey, Clapper, MCabe, Brennan and the rest of those rat bastards BTW where is the computer guy that they were all using who got nabbed just before fleeing on a jet out of the country, What about Huma?

Why the desperation to obliterate the server with bleach bit, and hammer pound the phones?

And what about the infamous Clinton Body Count...

Just sayin

whatafmess , 39 minutes ago link

Suddenly "enhanced interrogation" makes a whole lot more sense... Lets see how the tough marine remembers his training. As for Mifsud, he will likely instantly remember his past life as a canary the moment he's shown a fuckin phone book...

Fuckin traitors, no mercy

Nunny , 45 minutes ago link

Mueller was the token 'R'/Marine Vet/Never Trumper hired to give this corruption an air of 'fairness'. He was a tool, and has been for decades. Special place for him somewhere.

SHADEWELL , 57 minutes ago link

Becoming pretty clear at this point that the ***** that perpetrated this treason have pretty much already played out every option

Yes that's right Cuntlery...your time is coming Bitch. At what point do they just punt for the good of the country and accept guilt quietly. Nadler and Schiff keep pushing it, will go very badly after Horowitz report

rodguy911 , 15 minutes ago link

Unfortunately the DNC clowns have discovered how to use Hillary's projection techniques and they are using them more and more. No matter what they do or what we discover they do they project it back on us. With unending driveby complicity it always buys at least a few weeks or gets them to the next news cycle where they feel safe again. Complex criminality wreaks of the company.

moobra , 1 hour ago link

Alexander Downer is a the classic groomed fwit who was given a path to power so he could be controlled. He was the national leader of the opposition but was such a *** he was unelectable and dumped. Most cartoonists in Australia depict him in fishnet stockings. The usual *** of his generation who could never come out (like Mcron). Quite effeminate and in *** terms would be the bottom.

What a stumbling clown trying to play James Bond.

JBLight , 1 hour ago link

"That said, some have suggested that the FBI probe began long before Downer's report to intelligence agencies ."

The patriots already know that the entire Russia/Trump probe was just cover for illegal spying that they were doing WITHOUT FISA approval. The Russia/Trump probe was going to be their excuse.

LEEPERMAX , 1 hour ago link

The president was framed by the following BRITISH operatives:

  • Robert Hannigan
  • Richard Dearlove
  • Arvinder Sambei
  • Alison Saunders
  • Mark Malloch-Brown
  • Nick Clegg and Richard Allan
  • Geoffrey Pattie
  • British Privy Council
Respect_The_Cock , 1 hour ago link

Mueller was a figurehead. In doing more reading and talking to some folks - I wonder how much he is to blame.

Hear me out: I don't think Mueller had his fastball when they installed him as Weismann's American Hero Gentile Beard - and they knew it.

so, who wanted Mueller so bad?

#GetWeissman

jeff montanye , 1 hour ago link

it's fortuitous in any case as the great first cause of the last generation of government malfeasance, 9-11, was investigated by mueller as head of the fbi for the bush administration. it keeps that more in the public eye and mind. it let's people see that the deep state is bipartisan: helps republican bush and democrat clinton. just as long as they both help the likud mossad.

fitZHugh , 38 minutes ago link

There's a LOT for which to blame Mueller. Whitey Bulger, Ruby Ridge, Pan Am flight 103 come immediately to mind. As for who wanted him so bad, I would hazard a guess it was all the democrats on his "staff" who needed the cover of a "conservative republican". I know, hard to say that with a straight face.

[Jul 26, 2019] Johnstone How To Inoculate Yourself From Establishment Bullshit

Jul 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Johnstone: How To Inoculate Yourself From Establishment Bullshit

by Tyler Durden Fri, 07/26/2019 - 20:05 0 SHARES

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

In a recent interview with CBS This Morning host Gayle King, former First Lady Michelle Obama contrasted her husband's presidency with that of his successor by claiming that unlike Trump, the Obama family had had "no scandal".

"I had to sit in [Trump's inauguration] audience, one of a handful of people of color and then listen to that speech, and all that I had sort of held onto for eight years, watching my husband get raked over the coals, feeling like we had to do everything perfectly, you know, no scandal," Obama said.

"Yeah," King responded.

"No nothing," Obama said "No nothing!"

"Yes. No scandal," King said.

You hear this claim a lot from Democrats. There was a viral tweet with tens of thousands of shares shortly before the 2016 election which read, "8 years. No scandals. No mistresses. No impeachment hearings. Just class and grace, personified." It's a very common refrain which resurfaces in memes and tweets periodically, usually as criticisms of the sitting president.

Of course, the only reason anyone can attempt to claim that Barack Obama had "no scandals" is because in our bat shit crazy world, murdering, oppressing and exploiting large numbers of people isn't considered scandalous.

me title=

In a sane, healthy world, a presidency like Obama's would be looked upon with abject horror. Actually in a sane, healthy world a warmongering Wall Street crony like Obama would never have been elected in the first place, but if you were to show the members of a healthy, harmonious society the way that president used his power to do what he did to Libya and Syria, to continue and expand all of Bush's most evil policies, to divert the push for economic justice into a neoliberal orgy for eight years, those people would recoil in absolute revulsion.

The only reason liberals think Obama had a low-key, drama-free presidency is because that presidency was normalized for them by the establishment narrative managers of the political/media class. If that class had been shrieking about Obama's warmongering, surveillance expansion, persecution of whistleblowers, crony capitalism etc in the way that it's been shrieking about Trump's nonexistent Russia ties or his obnoxious tweets, these same people would see Obama as a horrible monster. But the propagandists didn't do that, because it would hinder the cause of bloodthirsty imperialism abroad and crushing austerity at home.

The plutocrat-owned media and the plutocrat-owned politicians have the ability to control what people view as normal and what they view as weird, just by not reacting with alarm to occurrences they want normalized and reacting hysterically to occurrences they want rejected.

Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard's fairly mild differences with US foreign policy orthodoxy, for example, are treated as so freakishly bizarre that you routinely see establishment pundits making fascinatingly absurd statements about her and getting away with it. The Hill 's Reid Wilson posted a tweet that got thousands of likes and shares saying "Hot take/prediction: Tulsi Gabbard is going to endorse Trump in the end." Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden shared Wilson's tweet with the hysterical caption, "My prediction: Tulsi runs as third party Green candidate to help Trump win. I will take bets on this." Again, thousands of likes and retweets.

me title=

Neither of these things are going to happen. Both Wilson and Tanden know they will never happen. Gabbard is a fairly conventional center-left Democrat who just wants to scale back US warmongering somewhat; she's so well within the establishment-authorized Overton window that she just voted in favor of a House anti-BDS bill for Christ's sake. But because she opposes a few aspects of the forever war and says it's a good idea to communicate with world leaders who the US government doesn't like, establishment attack dogs are acting like Hawaii's second congressional district is being represented by some kind of eldritch tentacle beast from the Andromeda Galaxy.

I'm highlighting some of the more glaring recent examples here, but this sort of thing is happening all the time with varying degrees of subtlety. The public's perceptions of events are continually being distorted by an establishment narrative management machine which controls what people view as normal and what they view as abnormal. You notice this very quickly when you start cultivating your news sense and paying attention to what news stories the mass media choose to give tons of coverage to and what stories they all but ignore; you notice almost immediately that there's very little connection between how important a story is and how much news coverage it receives. The factor that determines the extent of coverage is the advancement of establishment interests and advertising revenue, in that order. Actual newsworthiness barely registers.

The way to rob the narrative managers of their ability to manipulate our sense of normalcy is to create an image of a sane and healthy world for ourselves to hold onto at all times, and to make that image into our own personal sense of what normal is. By having a vivid picture of what a sane and healthy world would look like in your mind, the false normal that the propagandists are trying to sell you will have no purchase.

Many people want to change the world, but hardly anyone ever sits down and creates a clear, positive image for themselves of a world in which all positive changes have been successfully put into full effect. Most people tend to just look at the current hot topic debates they're seeing in the news over healthcare, immigration policies, gun control, austerity policies, abortion, LGBTQ issues, police brutality etc, and hope that those specific issues are resolved in their preferred way. But what if you zoomed out to a much bigger picture and imagined a healthy and harmonious world in which all our major problems have been resolved, and we've built something beautiful together? What would that be like?

I can't envision such a world for you, because you and I will have different ideas about what a perfectly healthy and harmonious world looks like. I'm not trying to give you a specific image, I'm trying to get you to make a solid, lucid image of your own creation that can't be replaced by the false normal the narrative managers are trying to implant in your mind day in and day out. Don't hold back; go all the way and make the world as perfect as possible. All your ideas about what changes you might make are "realistic" or "unrealistic" are corrupted by propaganda anyway, so just create a perfect world.

me title=

This is worth setting aside an hour or two and investing some serious mental energy into. Once you've got a positive image of a healthy and harmonious world, and once you have a really clear image of what it would be like to live in that world, it's kind of like you become someone from that imaginary world who stepped into this one and gets to see it for the first time. You get to see life through the eyes of someone for whom "normal" isn't endless violence, oppression, exploitation and degradation, but for whom normal is the absence of those things. This makes all of the insanity in this world stand out like a black fly on a white sheet of paper, and gives you the ability to clearly see and describe precisely what needs to change about our situation here.

You've already had a taste of this if you've ever had the unfortunate experience of having to explain what war is to a small child. Nothing about war makes sense to a creature who is looking at this world with fresh eyes; the confusion and upset which immediately flashes over their face will make you feel like an idiot even if you oppose war, just for being a part of a world where grown-ups engage in such idiotic behavior. Someone who came into this world from a healthy and harmonious parallel earth would see it very much the same way.

Imagine if war weren't normalized. Imagine if a US plane dropping a bomb on foreign soil and ripping human bodies to shreds was treated as the horrific event that it actually is and given weeks of extensive investigative coverage, instead of something that happens many times every single day without any mention at all. A pundit on Fox or MSNBC will tell you that you're a delusional imbecile if you think this should cease immediately. Anyone who's seeing our world with unindoctrinated eyes knows you're a delusional imbecile if you don't.

All the injustices we're trained like dogs to see as normal are like this. Corruption. Plutocracy. Wage slavery. The way the homeless are treated. The fact that there are homeless at all. Police militarization. The drug war. Prisons for profit. Government surveillance. Propaganda. All of these things are inherently disgusting, but we lose our accurate sense of disgust because we've been tricked into accepting them as normal. So remove the scales from your eyes by creating a new normal for yourself.

* * *

The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported , so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , purchasing some of my sweet merchandise , buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone , or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I'm trying to do with this platform, click here . Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I've written) in any way they like free of charge.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

[Jul 26, 2019] Tucker: Democrats believed Mueller would save America. But he is A daft old man blinking in the sunlight once the curtain has been opened

Highly recommended!
He was like a deer in headlights. Mueller's testimony riddled with shaky moments, incomplete answers - YouTube
Looks like Mueller is not currently mentally capable of programming his microwave, never mind to be the primary author of his eport or supervise the investigation.
Shouldn't James Comey and Rod Rosenstein be sitting there, its obvious to me that Mueller is the patsy here.
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller : What page are you referencing? I can't find it" ..."
"... Rep: "Sir, you have the report upsidedown" ..."
Jul 26, 2019 | www.youtube.com

cannonball666 , 19 hours ago

Mueller: What page are you referencing? I can't find it"

Rep: "Sir, you have the report upsidedown"

Kris Roberts , 23 hours ago

"A daft old man blinking in the sunlight once the curtain has been opened"

Diana Seip , 1 day ago

Nadler should be charged with elderly abuse making Mueller testify today.

Louis Frost, 1 day ago

What's Fusion GPS???
Houston we have a problem,

[Jul 25, 2019] When Alex Stamos announced that the Internet Research Agency's ad buys were a drop in the ocean, Zuckerberg was promptly taken to the Congressional Woodshed and told to report to the Atlantic Council.

Notable quotes:
"... I think he fails to understand that Facebook is now an NSA asset. ..."
Jul 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

GramSci , , , July 23, 2019 at 8:04 am

When Alex Stamos announced that the Internet Research Agency's ad buys were a drop in the ocean, Zuckerberg was promptly taken to the Congressional Woodshed and told to report to the Atlantic Council. Those two billion-odd fake accounts may be a fraud perpetrated on the advertisers, but they are invaluable to US "law" enforcement and to US propaganda, where the ability to open a fake account on Facebook gives the illusion of privacy.

With all due respect to Mr. Greenspan and his Lowell House creds, I think he fails to understand that Facebook is now an NSA asset.

Summer , , July 23, 2019 at 11:55 am

+1
NSA and other law enforcement asset.
Remember stories about stupid criminals on the run who took the time to update their Facebook page?

The Rev Kev , July 23, 2019 at 10:38 am

This is a fascinating article and it certainly put a smile on my dial. As an asset for use by governments around the world, Facebook may be too invaluable to just let sink. One guy reported that he was in a meeting with Facebook’s top brass including the Zuck when a head honcho of the FBI came into the meeting and sang Zuck’s praises for all the help that Facebook gave the FBI. So the question remains. Just how many “real” Facebook accounts does Facebook have? Ones that people check on daily. Now that is the killer question.

[Jul 24, 2019] Robert Mueller literally just said he wasn t familiar with Fusion GPS

Looks like Mueller currently is not capable of programming his microwave, never mind to write a report or supervise an investigation.
Jul 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

My Lord. My Lord. Drug test everyone in Washington. Everyone!

Velocitor , 8 minutes ago link

He never heard of Fusion GPS!?!?? Whaaaa????

That would be like Archibald Cox saying he never heard of Watergate! Does Mueller have Alzheimer's? If he doesn't know that much, what's the point of even talking to him?

Dems should have adjourned right then, to save further embarrassment.

RictaviousPorkchop , 37 minutes ago link

After that performance Mueller should be on street corner begging for change.

[Jul 24, 2019] And now it might be Obama turn

Jul 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

MoreFreedom , 50 seconds ago link

I'm glad Democrats are hanging their hat on the fact that a president can be indicted when he's out of office for obstruction of justice. So they won't object when Barr indicts Obama.

[Jul 24, 2019] RAY McGOVERN A Non-Hack That Raised Hillary's Hackles – Consortiumnews

Jul 22, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

On the third anniversary of the release by WikiLeaks of the DNC emails, Ray McGovern looks back at how the DNC diverted the damaging contents into a trumped up conspiracy blaming Russia with no evidence at all.

By Ray McGovern
Special to Consortium News

T hree years ago Monday WikiLeaks published a trove of highly embarrassing emails that had been leaked from inside the Democratic National Committee. As has been the case with every leak revealed by WikiLeaks , the emails were authentic. These particular ones, however, could not have come at a worse time for top Democratic Party officials.

The emails made it unmistakably clear that the DNC had tipped the scales sharply against Democratic insurgent Bernie Sanders, giving him a snowball's chance in hell for the nomination. The posting of the DNC emails is also widely seen as having harmed the the electoral prospects of Hillary Clinton, who could not escape responsibility completely, while a handful of the very top DNC officials were forced to immediately resign.

Relatively few Americans read the actual emails, their attention diverted to the incessant media-fostered question: Why Did the Russians Hack the DNC to Hurt Hillary? For the millions of once enthusiastic Democrats who favored Sanders, however, the disclosure that the nomination process had been fixed came as a bitter pill, leaving a sour taste in their mouths and a passive-aggressive reluctance to promote the candidacy of one they considered a usurper. Having had a huge stake in Bernie's candidacy, they had little trouble seeing through the diversion of attention from the content of the emails.

Clinton Prevails

A mere four days after the WikiLeaks release, a well orchestrated Democratic Convention nominated Clinton, while many Sanders supporters loudly objected. Thus, she began her campaign under a cloud, and as more and more Americans learned of the fraud that oozed through the DNC email correspondence -- including the rigging of the Democratic primaries -- the cloud grew larger and darker.

On June 12, 2016, six weeks before the convention, WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange had announced in an interview on British TV, "We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton We have emails pending publication."

Independent forensic investigations demonstrated two years ago that the DNC emails were not hacked over the Internet, but had been copied onto an external storage device -- probably a thumb drive. Additional work over recent months has yielded more evidence that the intrusion into the DNC computers was a copy, not a hack, and that it took place on May 23 and 25, 2016.

The DNC almost certainly knew what had happened -- not only that someone with physical access to DNC computers had copied thousands of emails, but also which ones they had copied, and thus how prejudicial to the Clinton campaign they would be when they saw the light of day.

And so, candidate Clinton, the DNC, and the mainstream media (forever quoting anonymous "current and former intelligence officials") appear to have colluded, deciding the best defense would be a good offense. No one knew how soon WikiLeaks would publish the emails, but the DNC offense/defense would surely have to be put in place before the convention scheduled to begin on July 25. That meant there were, at most, six weeks to react. On July 24, about 48 hours after the leaks were published, and a day before the convention, the DNC first blamed Russia for hacking their emails and giving them to WikiLeaks to sabotage Clinton.

A Magnificent Diversion

Clinton: Already blaming the Russians at DNC 2016 convention. (Wikipedia)

Granted, it was a stretch -- and the DNC would have to hire a pliable cybersecurity firm to back up their claim. But they had good reason to believe that CrowdStrike would perform that service. It was the best Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook and associates could apparently come up with. If they hurried, there would be just enough time to prepare a PR campaign before the convention and, best of all, there was little doubt that the media could be counted on to support the effort full bore.

When WikiLeaks published the emails on July 22, 2016, just three days before the Democratic convention, the propagandists were ready to deflect attention from the damning content of the DNC emails by repeating incessantly that the Russians hacked the emails and gave them to WikiLeaks to hurt Clinton.

It pretty much worked like a charm. The late Senator John McCain and others were quick to call the Russian "hack" an "an act of war." Evidence? None. For icing on the cake, then-FBI Director James Comey decided not to seize and inspect the DNC computers. Nor, as we now know, did Comey even require a final report from CrowdStrike.

Eight months after the convention, in remarks at the Clinton/Podesta Center for American Progress on April 6, 2017, Clinton's PR director, Jennifer Palmieri, could scarcely contain her pride that, after a difficult start, she was ultimately successful in keeping the Russian bear front and center.

Transcribed below (verbatim) are some of Palmieri's more telling remarks when asked to comment, from her insider perspective, on "what was actually going on in late summer/early fall."

" I did appreciate that for the press to absorb the idea that behind the stage that the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton was too fantastic for people to, um, for the press to process, to absorb . But then we go back to Brooklyn and heard from the -- mostly our sources were other intelligence, with the press who work in the intelligence sphere, and that's where we heard things and that's where we learned about the dossier and the other story lines that were swirling about And along the way the administration started confirming various pieces of what they were concerned about what Russia was doing. [Emphasis added.]

"And we did finally get to the point on October 7, when the administration came out with a very stunning [memorandum]. How stunning it was for both the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of Homeland Security to put out a statement – a long statement – that said with high confidence that Russia was interfering in the election and they were also directing the timing of the leaks. And it named the institutions – WikiLeaks, DC Leaks, and Guccifer – as being Russian-led, and how stunning that was to be that certain and that public. So I do think that the answer for the Democrats now in both the House and the Senate is to talk about it more and make it more real ."

And so, the Magnificent Diversion worked as intended.

Recognizing Liminal Time

But not all journalists fell for it. Patrick Lawrence (once of The Nation , now of Consortium News ) was onto the ruse from the start. He says he had "fire in the belly" on the morning of July 25, 2016, the day the Democratic convention began, and that he dashed off an article "in one long, furious exhale" within 12 hours of when the media started really pushing the "the Russians-did-it" narrative. The title of his article, pointed out to me a few months ago by VIPS member Todd Pierce, was "How the DNC fabricated a Russian hacker conspiracy to deflect blame for its email scandal a disturbing resemblance to Cold War red-baiting."

Lawrence's off-the-cuff ruminations , which Salon published the next day are extraordinarily prescient and worth reading in full. He instinctively recognized the email disclosure-cum-media-obfuscation campaign as a liminal event. Here are some excerpts, reprinted here with Lawrence's permission:

"Now wait a minute, all you upper-case "D" Democrats. A flood light suddenly shines on your party apparatus, revealing its grossly corrupt machinations to fix the primary process and sink the Sanders campaign, and within a day you are on about the evil Russians having hacked into your computers to sabotage our elections Is this how lowly you rate the intelligence of American voters?

The Sanders people have long charged that the DNC has had its fingers on the scale in favor of Hillary Clinton's nomination. The prints were everywhere Last Friday WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 DNC email messages providing abundant proof that Sanders and his staff were right all along. The worst of these, involving senior DNC officers, proposed Nixon-esque smears having to do with everything from ineptitude within the Sanders campaign to Sanders as a Jew in name only and an atheist by conviction.

The caker came on Sunday, when Robby Mook appeared on ABC's "This Week" and CNN's "State of the Union" to assert that the D.N.C.'s mail was hacked "by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump." He knows this because "experts" -- experts he will never name -- have told him so.

the Clinton campaign now goes for a twofer. Watch as it advances the Russians-did-it thesis on the basis of nothing, then shoots the messenger, then associates Trump with its own mess -- and, finally, gets to ignore the nature of its transgression (which any paying-attention person must consider grave). Preposterous, readers. Join me, please, in having absolutely none of it. There is no "Russian actor" at the bottom of this swamp, to put my position bluntly. You will never, ever be offered persuasive evidence otherwise. [Emphasis added.]

Trump, to make this work, must be blamed for his willingness to negotiate with Moscow. This is now among his sins. Got that? Anyone who says he will talk to the Russians has transgressed the American code. I am developing nitrogen bends Which way for a breath of air?"

Sad Sequel

A year later Lawrence was commissioned by The Nation to write an investigative report on the so-called "Russian hack." On August 9, 2017, after he interviewed several Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, among others, The Nation published his findings in an article entitled "A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack." Lawrence wrote, "Former NSA experts, now members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), say it wasn't a hack at all, but a leak -- an inside job by someone with access to the DNC's system."

Again, Lawrence got it right -- this time relying less on his own experience and intuition than on applied science as practiced by real technical experts with no axes to grind. But, sadly, that cut across the grain of the acceptable Russia-gate narrative, and a furor erupted among Hillary followers still licking their wounds over her loss. It proved simply too much for them to entertain the notion that Clinton was quite capable, with help from the likes of Mook, to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory -- without any help from Vladimir Putin.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. An ex-CIA analyst, his expertise on Russia goes back a half-century. He prepared and briefed The President's Daily Brief for Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, and in retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

If you value this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.

8197

Tags: DNC Hillary Clinton James Comey John McCain Patrick Lawrence Ray McGovern Robby Mook WikiLeaks

Post navigation ← PATRICK LAWRENCE: Brighter US-Iran Prospects When Warriors Become Saints → 77 comments for "RAY McGOVERN: A Non-Hack That Raised Hillary's Hackles"

Hide Comments

Curious , July 23, 2019 at 23:34

My comment went in where and landed in the ether. If it does get posted as a reply to Realist I apologize for the redundancy. Please delete second attempt

Curious , July 23, 2019 at 23:31

Test

Carolyn Grassi , July 23, 2019 at 23:31

Thanks again Ray for your detailed comprehensive coverage on what may be called The DNC coverup. If only my progressive left-leaning friends in California could see the light of day on this fiasco of Russian hacking. Several times I've sent your excellent analysis to these folks, whose only reply is Silence! Sad really that hatred of Trump and Hillary's loss has blinded them. So like in the McCarthy era out to get folks and today, of all things, with the help of the intelligence community, they used to criticize. I wonder what John le Carre would write about the state of affairs in America. Ray, you have company with Glenn Greenwald and Stephen F. Cohen. I call you Voices in the Wilderness. Keep on writing, speaking out. The country needs you more than ever! sincere thanks, Carolyn Grassi, Pacifica, CA

Hawaiiguy , July 23, 2019 at 16:28

Still waiting for her indictments to roll in, until I see one for jaywalking I'm in firm belief the deep state isn't as close to peril as some may think. Heck Jeffrey Epstein is long gone from the media and he was absolutely the most powerful pedophile walking thr streets. But the Borg is all mighty as defending silence proves once again.

Meremark , July 23, 2019 at 16:10

When the post is the truth, (Mr. McGovern: huzzah, huzzah!), then trolls clog the comments, usually (as in the present case) with by VOLUME, QUANTITY, arguing against a certain Clear Quality of tone in the sound of the ring of Truth.

When the post has little or no truth, then comments are few or self-defeating and the trolls needn't bother fogging the pen and so they don't?

IMO this post seems to have waaaay more comments than usual. hmmmm .

O Society , July 23, 2019 at 14:47

All I can do is shake my head. The 2020 election is on the visible horizon and not only did the actors who rigged the 2016 election for Donald Trump go unpunished and off the hook, we've allowed them to grow bigger and better, and we're going to let them do it again.

http://osociety.org/2019/07/22/the-great-hack-the-film-that-goes-behind-the-scenes-of-the-facebook-data-scandal

emma peele , July 23, 2019 at 18:03

But, but, but Putin

LIBERAL PROF: Big Tech moved 'rock bottom minimum' of 2.6 million votes to Hillary in 2016

A liberal professor and "very strong public supporter of Hillary Clinton" is raising the alarms about Google manipulation of millions of unwitting voters in recent elections, as well as the potential impact for 2020.
Dr. Robert Epstein, former editor of Psychology Today and acclaimed psychologist who founded the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, discussed his research before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, and his testimony was mind-boggling.

"You testified before this committee that Google's manipulation of votes gave at least 2.6 million additional votes to Hillary Clinton in the year 2016. Is that correct?" Sen. Ted Cruz questioned

https://youtu.be/rNvgl38TLvI

robert e williamson jr , July 23, 2019 at 14:45

SWEET! HOWEVER–>> On my local cable satellite channel Vice channel carried a story all about how the russians did it.

You folks out there taking VICE at is word are being played, again, by the MSM.

But how sweet it is caught a clinton behaving worse that NIXON, have the repugniklans right where they belong but alas the dims are still clueless on who to run. So much for our highly touted and worthless 2 party system.

You cannot make this shit up. And to Bobby Kwasnik I can only say "What in the hell are you drinking son?"

Hawaiiguy , July 23, 2019 at 16:31

Took you long 3nough to figure that out, I did the first time they focused on hot Israeli women in forces. It's a total zionist rag.

Drew Hunkins , July 23, 2019 at 14:14

Great comment.

I especially liked "my late husband and I kept asking: where and when are they going to actually start discussing the *content* of the emails themselves? Never."

Alas, so true.

Stay strong AnneR. Don't let them get you down.

Dan , July 23, 2019 at 12:39

You're putting a lot of faith on former experts who got the DNC forensic evidence , how?
and assume that the evidence was not a breadcrumb left to mislead and implicate Seth Rich.
( In some circumstances the perfect hack would have no traces, but if the data will be leaked, the leaker would leave behind misleading evidence.)
Its within russian spycraft to leave behind misleading evidence, implicate someone and
have them killed to cover it up.
I have never seen why these experts have done more than fall for it.
don't know, just say'n

Rob Roy , July 23, 2019 at 14:31

Proof? Julian Assange said several times I heard him myself .so there you are. The emails were leaked from inside the DNC, not hacked by the Russians. That's why JA is being killed off and not allowed any access to the public. BTW, the DNC computers were never examined by the investigators. Why? The day Hillary said, "Seventeen intelligence agencies .." I knew it was a lie that she would build on forever. Besides, I know Putin.

David , July 23, 2019 at 14:46

You are putting a lot of faith in a dubious private entity in the hire of the DNC. No US legal authority examined the DNC's server. Crowdstrike, the dubious entity in the pay of the DNC made a claim that there was a Russian hack but provided no evidence. Not only did they not provide evidence, we have recently learned that they didn't even generate a report. CrowdSstrike claimed that it knew it was a Russian hack because they found Cyrillic writing and the name of a former KGB head. Sounds damned clumsy of the Russians.
William Binney, the former chief technical officer of the NSA was able to determine from the information that is available that it was technically infeasible for their to have been a hack originating in Russia. The material was down loaded internally on to a thumb drive. Binney's assessment corroborates ambassador Graig Muarry's assertion that he received the down loaded material. Both Maurry and Assange publicly requested that they be interviewed by the FBI. The FBI chose not to examine the DNC server. Mueller also chose to decline Maurry and Assange's request for an interview. Mueller stated that "It would have been better to have the FBI forensic experts examine the server but CrowdStrike is a high class outfit." It decidedly is not. Basing his conclusions on the claims of a private entity that was far from being a disinterested party is at best negligent and at worst corrupt. Mueller took extraordinary measures to avoid taking any steps that could yield a result different from what was claimed in his report.

It gets worst for the believers of Russian interference. A federal judge has threatened prosecutors with contempt of court making claims against the Russian internet company whose advertisements were alleged to be efforts to interfered in the US presidential elections that it has no evidence to support. The "Russian interference" hoax has been exposed.

Andrew Thomas , July 23, 2019 at 14:48

Dan, Ray I think if you go back and read everything that Ray was only able to summarize in this particular post, you will discover that the scenario you outlined just does not fit the known facts.

EricT , July 23, 2019 at 15:24

Misleading evidence being left behind is also within our own intelligence agencies as well. See the vault 7 releases.

Eddie , July 23, 2019 at 11:46

What is overlooked in all these shenanigans is the utter depravity that Mdm. Clinton and her cabal of fellow psychopaths reached in order obscure their crimes and to seize power. By blaming Russia and Vladimir Putin for "hacking" into DNC's emails, the Clinton crime family and their useful idiots in the corporate media increased tensions that could have led to a nuclear holocaust.

Clinton and the rest of the fetid cesspool that ran her campaign were willing to risk annihilating the planet so that Clinton could slither in the White House where the gravy train of bribes could flow like the Amazon River. Meanwhile, the corrupt to its core FBI fixed things so that Mdm. Clinton and her cronies did not wind up in the gulag that her husband created when he ran the gravy train.

Roland James , July 23, 2019 at 11:03

In the Dec 5, 2016 issue of The Nation is a column 'En la Lucha' (The fight continues) by Cesar Vargas, co-director of the Dream Action Coalition: "I had known that Trump would become president once it was revealed the Democratic Party had rigged the primary in favor of Hillary Clinton."
Clinton beat Sanders by 3.7 million votes. Sanders has never said that the Democratic primary was rigged, nor has he questioned the legitimacy of the result. Yes, the DNC was biased in favor of Clinton, who has been a Democrat her entire adult life, unlike Sanders, an Independent until he wanted to run for president. ("Progressives who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election made a 'bad mistake'."-Noam Chomsky. // In a 50R/50D country with a winner-take-all system, 3rd party candidates are the marginal difference. Especially this year in Wi, Mi and Pa.) More below**
My central concern over the last couple of decades has been the Global Climate Crisis, which will likely swamp everything else; the CO2 "bullets" from the Big American Way of Life are already causing death and destruction around the world. In 2015, though i was a Sanders supporter, i was worried that Sanders would 'sow the wind' but likely wouldn't win the Democratic primary. Then many of his energized supporters wouldn't support the Democratic nominee with their votes and/or with their poisonous and conspiratorial rhetoric adding to the Clinton pile-on led by the right wing hate machine. Therefore, the country and the whole world would 'reap the whirlwind' with 'climate change is a hoax' Donald Trump, accelerating the race to catastrophe.

Roland James

** "The infamous hack of DNC emails that "proved" the organization had its thumb on the scale for Clinton? Perhaps nothing has been more frustrating for people in the politics business to address, because the conspiracy is based on ignorance. Almost every email that set off the "rigged" accusations was from May 2016. (One was in late April; I'll address that below.)
Even in the most ridiculous of dream worlds, Sanders could not have possibly won the nomination after May 3 -- at that point, he needed 984 more pledged delegates, but there were only 933 available in the remaining contests. And political pros could tell by the delegate math that the race was over on April 19, since a victory would require him to win almost every single delegate after that, something no rational person could believe. Sanders voters proclaimed that superdelegates, elected officials and party regulars who controlled thousands of votes, could flip their support and instead vote for the candidate with the fewest votes.
In other words, they wanted the party to overthrow the will of the majority of voters.
That Sanders fans were wishing for an establishment overthrow of the electorate more common in banana republics or dictatorships is obscene. (One side note: Sanders supporters also made a big deal out of the fact that many of the superdelegates had expressed support for Clinton early in the campaign. They did the same thing in 2008, then switched to Obama when he won the most pledged delegates. Same thing would have happened with Sanders if he had persuaded more people to vote for him.)
This is important because it shows Sanders supporters were tricked into believing a false narrative. Once only one candidate can win the nomination, of course the DNC gets to work on that person's behalf. Of course emails from that time would reflect support for the person who would clearly be the nominee. And given that their jobs are to elect Democrats, of course DNC officials were annoyed that Sanders would not tell his followers he could not possibly be the nominee. Battling for the sake of battling gave his supporters a false belief that they could still win -- something that added to their increasingly embittered feelings.
According to a Western European intelligence source, Russian hackers, using a series of go-betweens, transmitted the DNC emails to WikiLeaks with the intent of having them released on the verge of the Democratic Convention in hopes of sowing chaos. And that's what happened -- just a couple of days before Democrats gathered in Philadelphia, the emails came out, and suddenly the media was loaded with stories about trauma in the party. Crews of Russian propagandists -- working through an array of Twitter accounts and websites, started spreading the story that the DNC had stolen the election from Sanders. (An analysis provided to Newsweek by independent internet and computer specialists using a series of algorithms show that this kind of propaganda, using the same words, went from Russian disinformation sources [like duran] to comment sections on more than 200 sites catering to liberals, conservatives, white supremacists, nutritionists and an amazing assortment of other interest groups.)
The fact that the dates of the most controversial emails -- May 3, May 4, May 5, May 9, May 16, May 17, May 18, May 21 -- were after it was impossible for Sanders to win was almost never mentioned, and was certainly ignored by the propagandists trying to sell the "primaries were rigged" narrative. (Yes, one of them said something inappropriate about his religious beliefs. So a guy inside the DNC was a jerk; that didn't change the outcome.) Two other emails -- one from April 24 and May 1 -- were statements of fact. In the first, responding to Sanders saying he would push for a contested convention (even though he would not have the delegates to do so), a DNC official wrote, "So much for a traditional presumptive nominee." Yeah, no kidding. The second stated that Sanders didn't know what the DNC's job actually was -- which he didn't, apparently because he had not ever been a Democrat before his run.
Bottom line: The "scandalous" DNC emails were hacked by people working with the Kremlin, then misrepresented online by Russian propagandists to gullible fools who never checked the dates of the documents. And the media, which in the flurry of breathless stories about the emails would occasionally mention that they were all dated after any rational person knew the nomination was Clinton's, fed into the misinformation.In the real world, here is what happened: Clinton got 16.9 million votes in the primaries, compared with 13.2 million for Sanders. The rules were never changed to stop him, even though Sanders supporters started calling for them to be changed as his losses piled up."-Kurt Eichenwald

AnneR , July 23, 2019 at 14:07

Would you by chance be a Dem shill? You certainly seem to be acting as such.

Russia (by which every Dem seems to mean "the Kremlin" "Putin") did *not* interfere in that election for or against the Strumpet, for or against HRC. Talk about "misinformation"!

So now you (and your ilk?) are blaming Sanders' supporters??

So far as I'm aware the neither the DNC (bought by the Clintons) nor HRC herself ever pointed the finger at Bernie's supporters or Bernie himself as culpable of the story you've come up with.

Andrew Thomas , July 23, 2019 at 15:00

You guys never give up, do you? If there is any actual "evidence" of a Russian, or for that matter any other "hack" that comes out tomorrow, I will be utterly amazed and happy to come back to this page to apologize. There will not be any. Mueller may try to suggest that it exists somewhere in the "redactions." But that will be bullshit.

emma peele , July 23, 2019 at 16:30

Trump and Clinton were the 2 most hated candidates in US history and Hillary even picked TRUMP .

with the help of the MSNBC and CNN both in the bag for Clinton,that helped give Trump 6 BILLION in free airtime

and MSNBC fired Ed Shultz fro wanting to cover Sanders ..but that not tampering in election right?

Americans' Distaste For Both Trump And Clinton Is Record-Breaking

No past candidate comes close to Clinton, and especially Trump, in terms of engendering strong dislike a little more than six months before the election.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/

RECORD BREAKING!!

Hillary Clinton is more unpopular than Donald Trump. Let that sink in

"Donald Trump is one of the least popular politicians in the history of the United States. Yet, Trump is still more popular than Hillary Clinton. Let that sink in.

According to the latest Bloomberg National Poll, Trump has a net favorability of 41% whereas Clinton has a net favorability of 39%. If Democrats are to escape the political wilderness, they will have to leave Clinton and her brand of politics in the woods. "

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/19/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-unpopular-polling

There was plenty of fraud during the nomination process My parents waited in line for 6 hrs in AZ because they closed 90% of the polling places in Maricopa country and people had their parties changed from Democrat to republican.Even employees in the state house.

That never happened before.

Paul Merrell , July 23, 2019 at 16:43

Roland, you'll never convince me that Hillary Clinton was preferable to Donald Trump. Both were the product of scraping the bottom of the U.S political barrel, but Trump was never the war-monger that war criminal Hillary Clinton blatantly was and is. Since even Trump was equivocal about his willingness to use military force, neither one was qualified to be president in my book. I do not vote for war criminals or war criminal wannabes. (I've personally experienced war.) You have to be a Peace candidate to cross my threshold of eligibility. Maybe you are different, eager to have more blood on your hands. But do you realize that the U.S. has killed some 20 million foreign people since World War II ended? Do you feel no responsibility for that when you choose for whom to vote?

As for your Russia-Gate B.S., you are visiting the web site that has done more to prove that Russia-Gate has no basis in reality than any other. To begin your encounter with Russia-Gate reality, I recommend the following Google search query:

site: https://consortiumnews.com/ "Consortium News' Record on Russia-gate"

And perhaps top that off with https://consortiumnews.com/2019/07/12/concord-management-and-the-end-of-russiagate/

jmg , July 23, 2019 at 10:38

So, in summary, Brennan, Comey, Clinton, etc. didn't accept the lawful election results, and decided to just lie, like it's nothing, in order to -- in fact -- try to suspend American democracy, start an extremely lucrative -- for some -- second cold war with Russia as the chosen and needed "enemy", and give the power back to the deep state and war profiteers. Simple as that.

George Hebbard , July 23, 2019 at 10:31

This whole story is getting more bizarre. Beside the lying and the false news, and the questions about the potential thumb drive download by Seth Rich (who was later killed, like Jody Foster..) now we see https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-22/cia-wants-make-it-easier-jail-journalists-congress-isnt-stopping-it which says the government is complicit in destroying our first amendment rights to sensor their evil ways .
Ungh!

jmg , July 23, 2019 at 10:29

So, in summary, Brennan, Comey, Clinton, etc. didn't accept the lawful election results, and decided to just lie, like it's nothing, in order to -- in fact -- try to suspend American democracy and give the power back to the deep state and war profiteers. Simple as that.

jmg , July 23, 2019 at 16:35

Sorry, duplicate post. You can delete this one, thank you.

Perry Logan , July 23, 2019 at 07:19

"A forensic report claiming to show that a Democratic National Committee insider, not Russia, stole files from the DNC is full of holes, say cybersecurity experts.

"In short, the theory is flawed," said FireEye's John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at FireEye, a firm that provides forensic analysis and other cybersecurity services."

https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346468-why-the-latest-theory-about-the-dnc-not-being-a-hack-is-probably-wrong

David , July 23, 2019 at 17:20

Perry, why do you think the FBI chose not to use its own forensic experts? Why would Mueller base his highly inflammatory claims exclusively the of statements made by a private company that was hired by the DNC, a dubious entity that asserts it failed to even generate a report outlining it's conclusions? Why did the FBI decline the requests of Ambassador Maurry and Julian Assange for an interview? The fact is, Mueller failed to produce anything that a reasonable person would define as evidence. For some people, the lack of evidence does not matter. They are certain in the way that religious believers are certain.

Mueller worked assiduously to minimize the risk that he would find evidence that contradicted the result he intended to provide when he undertook his "investigation."

Realist , July 23, 2019 at 05:04

.

Marko , July 23, 2019 at 01:37

I smell a rat in the Hersh / Butowsky saga. Apparently there was a second phone call between Hersh and Butowsky, after the initial one that was so revealing , and which Butowsky wisely recorded. In the second call – not recorded as far we know – Hersh informs Butowsky that Andrew McCabe was his "Deep Throat" in the FBI , who fed him the info and/or documents. This looks like a poison pill to me , one that Hersh went along with either willingly ( more likely – so as to save his own skin ) , or unwillingly as a useful idiot (unlikely – Hersh isn't that dumb ).

The idea that McCabe was a "White Hat" feeding Hersh the info saying that Aaron and Seth Rich were the DNC leakers is laughable , and I think it's quite likely that Isikoff and/or Hersh will use this poison pill to paint Butowsky ( and , by extension , Ty Clevenger , his attorney) as conspiracy cranks. All Hersh has to do is say " Look , I fed this guy a bunch of crap , and he scarfed it up. Only a complete nutjob could believe that McCabe was my source. "

The first , recorded , call may have been all true , or it could have been a set-up from the beginning. I suspect the former. My guess is someone got to Hersh between the first and second call and suggested that he better remove himself from the battlefield , lest something unfortunate happen. The McCabe "poison pill' was his getaway ticket , and he was happy to use it.

Hersh appears to be throwing Butowsky under the bus , and Isikoff will describe the resulting carnage with glee.

I hope I'm wrong about all this.

Dr. William Fusfield , July 23, 2019 at 09:59

Marko you raise several interesting issues about Hersh's role in all this, but it is hard to say what it might actually be without having a transcript of the second phone call with Butowsky. Does such a transcript exist? Or are you going on some other source?

Rob Roy , July 23, 2019 at 14:47

Marko, first of all, Sy Hersh doesn't "throw people under the bus." Never. Second, he's the purist of all journalists. If you think otherwise, you don't know the man, a reporter of whom no other has higher standards in his profession.

geeyp , July 22, 2019 at 23:57

The DNC literally did shoot the messenger in my opinion. Innocent until proven guilty, I know. Hillary Clinton and her underlings need to ask for forgiveness from many, many people in this country. One of the saddest historical footnotes in our history. She is such a pant load.

Dr. William Fusfield , July 22, 2019 at 23:30

I also want to say how much I enjoyed the comments on this and Ray's previous articles. Evidently Consortium readers are an intelligent, clever, and sardonic bunch!!

Dr. William Fusfield , July 22, 2019 at 23:27

Another very fine article, Ray!! The simple truth of this sordid matter is finally going to get a hearing I believe. As for me, who like you and a few others, especially Patrick Lawrence, Glen Greenwald, Aaron Mate and Caitlin Johnstone, could smell the bullshit all the way from the chicken coup from the git-go, I can't wait to sit back, pour myself a nice Guiness in a tall glass, and watch Mr. Mueller fumble around nervously attempting to deal with all of the pointed questions from angry Dems who will be accusing him of not lying enough on behalf of their Russiagate ghost! Anyway, great work, as usual, Ray!!

Ray McGovern , July 23, 2019 at 16:08

Thanks Dr. Fusfield,

Just between us, I only drink on even-numbered days.*** So -- for me, at least -- it was GREAT news that the Mueller testimony would be tomorrow, the 24th, and not the 17th as formerly scheduled. Tomorrow will be a two-Guinness day. My tall glass is crystal-clean and the Guinness is already hidden away in the back of the refrigerator.

I cannot recall ever having had lower expectations from Congressional hearings, but it is, I suppose, always possible that something instructive might inadvertently escape. If so, I am confident the Guinness will be more help than hindrance as muse to any writing I might undertake at that point.

Ray

*** Re the even-numbered days: It's a self-imposed discipline -- a sensible way of coping with my problem of liking "the creature " (as one of my Irish grandmothers called it) far too much. Slainte!

Bill , July 22, 2019 at 22:07

What did Obama know and when did he know it?

Realist , July 23, 2019 at 05:01

Obama knew he was sandbagging the Russians to set them up as all-purpose fall guys later when he spoke to Medvedev about his "flexibility" of action in foreign policy prior to the 2012 election. (First I'll get re-elected, then we'll have a "reset," you'll bend over backwards to accommodate me, and you guys will never know what hit you when I deliver the sucker punch.) In fact, it started long before that conversation.

As soon as he was elected every action he took was against Russian interests or to besmirch their reputation in the public arena, even as Putin took several actions to save Obama's hide, such as giving him the opportunity to duck his rash "red line" statements on Syria when it was clear neither the American people nor the Congress wanted this country in another middle eastern war. Putin also bent over backwards to accommodate American sanctions against Iran in its phony crusade against Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program.

He rolled Putin on anti-ballistic missile deployments in Romania and Poland, after Dubya had stuck the shiv in by "withdrawing" from the ABM treaty (otherwise known as breaking your word).

He, under the influence of Hitlery, lied to Putin about his true intentions to overthrow and assassinate Gaddaffi rather than simply protect some poor civilians caught between the gunsights of the "evil dictator" and the "brave freedom fighters" defending Benghazi, aka the head choppers from al Qaeda (or whatever their nom du jour). Springtime for Hitlery and al Nusra, winter for Gaddaffi and Libya. This is what happens to suckers who believe anything Washington says.

He and Hitlery set Victoria Nuland and John McCain loose on Ukraine where their minions overthrew the elected government in a bloody coup on the Maidan. Because he wasn't going to be fooled again, Putin acted quickly to preserve critical Russian interests (i.e., their only warm-water naval base and access to the Mediterranean in Crimea). Putin refrained from intervening on the side of the Russian population in the Donbass, nor did he entertain their pleas for annexation by Russia, though he got blamed for these things all the same by Obomber's propaganda machine.

Obama knew definitively that it was Ukraine that shot down the Malaysian passenger plane with a Buk missile, yet he suppressed all evidence of such in the kangaroo court that was held to smear Russia for this terrible event. In fact, I wouldn't put it past his den of spook advisors to have actually had a hand in Ukraine's actions, just as they had in the Maidan. Why does the president of Malaysia believe this? And why were they, the owners of the aircraft, not allowed to participate in the investigation? Just as Russia, which did have significant evidence to present, was not allowed any role in the process, while Ukraine was given a free hand to withhold and manipulate data? Bigger hoax here than the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations rolled into one.

Obama's propaganda machine repeatedly blamed Syria for using chemical weapons against civilians, and as a pretext for American involvement in the armed conflict on the side of his mercenary headchoppers, when he knew damned well Syria had no such weapons because the American navy had incinerated them after Assad turned them over via the agreement brokered by the Russians. Always more deception and betrayal directed against Putin and Russia. Are we seeing a pattern that started long before Hitlery masterminded "Russiagate" in the wake of the Wikileaks revelations?

Obama often used John Kerry in the many bait and switch ruses used against Putin and Assad. Putin lobbied hard both in Washington and at the UN for an alliance with the American backstabbers to contain "Isis/Daesh/al Nusra/ al Qaeda" terrorists within Syria. How many times did Putin and Assad think they had a deal, a carefully defined ceasefire, only to have the Syrian army strafed and decimated by American air forces long before the ink dried on the worthless agreements?

Who put the Turks up to downing the Russian fighter bomber as it approached, but didn't cross, the Turkish border? Cui bono? How did that help Turkey? Rather, whose agenda did it actually help? What did Hitlery promise but to escalate that tactic a hundred-fold with the irresponsible "no fly" zone she proposed as part of her foreign policy during the campaign? No doubt that reckless rush to start World War III took a lot of votes away from the witch.

Who helped the internal opposition inside of Turkey to organize the unsuccessful coup against Erdogan? Sure wasn't Putin who apparently saved the guy's life by warning him of more Washington skullduggery. If the Washington Deep State wants to blame someone for Erdogan's purchase of the Russian S-400 missiles defense system and his very fortunate escape from being saddled with that gigantic F-35 contract, blame Obomber and Hitlery for their ill-conceived strikes against foreign leaders. They both need to go back and re-read "the Prince" for comprehension.

I'm sure I'm forgetting most of the outrages and provocations that Obama and Madame President Clinton directed at Putin and Russia (which actual President Trump mindlessly continues). But the point is that this very virulent and focussed anti-Russian movement was hard core policy of the nominally-ruling Democrats from the day they received the baton from Dubya Bush. Obama continued it long after the catastrophic election that Hitlery lost. He continued it till the day Trump was inaugurated, stridently blaming the Russians for stealing the election from Hitlery and punishing them with massive diplomatic expulsions during the height of the holidays and the seizure of millions of dollars worth of uncompensated properties.

All without one iota of proof. Ever. Just like the ever-growing snowball of anti-Russian economic sanctions that Obama, and now Trump with the enthusiastic participation of Congress, started immediately after the coup in Ukraine never had a justifiable foundation and will seemingly never end. How could I nearly have forgotten the sanctions? I guess they get lost in the enormous mass of other groundless actions taken against Russia by Obomber and his muse Hitler. I wonder, will he be proud that he made it all possible if the nuclear-tipped missiles do start flying? Words do not describe how I have come to loathe that deceiving traitor to every principle he ran for office on.

Carry on, Mr. McGovern. I don't know how you can maintain the spirit to face the arduous task of trying to uncover all these depredations every day whilst the perpetrators work overtime trying to deceive and mislead you and other truth-seekers. It must be a stunning experience (not a joyful one) whenever you are able to turn over a relevant rock to expose the vile creatures underneath. Get them, Ray, get them all, before they take down the world in their pursuit of MIC profits and every last resource offered by the planet.

Rob Roy , July 23, 2019 at 14:54

Marko, first of all, Sy Hersh doesn't "throw people under the bus." Never. Second, he's the purist of all journalists. If you think otherwise, you don't know the man, a reporter of whom no other has higher standards in his profession.

Rob Roy , July 23, 2019 at 14:58

Wonderful commentary, Realist, per usual. You speak for me.
One caveat..according to an investigation by a German aeronautical engineer, a BUK didn't take down the airplane it was shot down from the air by another aircraft, not a Russian one.
He offers extensive proof.

Realist , July 23, 2019 at 16:50

Yes, I'm familiar with that possibility. Either could be correct. I didn't want to become too verbose and picayune. We'd need the actual data that Washington and the EU are suppressing to zero in on the truth. The only hypothesis that ought to be discarded upon cursory inspection is that Russia deliberately shot that plane down. That's as crazy as the claim that Putin invaded Ukraine to seize the Donbass. You'd have to assume he loves unnecessary and expensive quagmires the way the conflict has unfolded, when his troops could have occupied Kiev within 48 hours if he did invade. Quagmires are the hallmark of American military actions. Inquiring minds want to know why the Ukie pilot of the jet fighter prowling the vicinity at the time of the shoot-down never testified and later committed suicide. Parsimony says to me: guilty conscience.

Nearly forgot Obama's incendiary goodbye kiss to Putin when he promised retaliatory American action against Russia, perhaps in the form of a cyber attack "at a time and place of our choosing," for its alleged theft of the presidential election. Putin had too much character to use that threat as a constant all-purpose foil against never-ending American provocations. He simply moved on, always trying to improve relations, which some observers, such as PCR, feel is a mistake.

Thanks for the input, RR.

Anonymot , July 23, 2019 at 16:47

Essentially I agree with you, but even you are still riding the surface details. I've been writing for over a decade about this, but since I'm neither a journalist, politician or celebrity, no one pay much attention. That makes me a conspiracy theorist with all of its negative connotations. I'm not that either. Suffice it to say that I'm an American who has lived and worked in many places in the world and politics, domestic and international are a pet passion that I've followed for decades.

Obama and Hillary's anti-Russia drive has its roots in pre-WW II anti-communism when many significant capitalists were friends and financiers of Nazi-Germany. After the war the Dulles brothers took over all American foreign policy as Secretary of State and Director of the CIA. They were joined by many Senators from Joe McCarthy to Sen. Prescott Bush. No one else had the ear of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson on foreign matters other than State and the CIA with the CIA having information to whisper deeper than State's. That's why we went in to lose Korea, , the Bay of Pigs, and Vietnam. Losses all, they still generates massive profits for the MIC and installed that state of mind throughout the DC bureaucracy. Then came Prescott's son, the CIA in person.

It is my personal assessment, having worked in Arkansas when Clinton was Governor and corruption was just part of the landscape, that the powers of the day had little trouble convincing Bill that he could become very, very wealthy if he just left foreign policy decisions to them and role played. They were right. And when Prescott's grandson, George, was mature enough, he stepped in with his extreme right wing crowd, ready to install regime changes everywhere.

After Bush, when a zebra with Democrat stripes could have won given the catastrophe of baby Bush, I am perfectly convinced that they sought two different minority figures, a woman obsessed by the idea of wealth and fame and very pro- a certain kind of feminism, plus a man who desired wealth, but also had the cause of the blacks to promote. "The loser at the DNC Convention will be President after the winner serves his or her term(s), but the foreign policy is ours and you will enunciate it." Bingo.

Hillary lost because she was unbelievably inept at lying and covering her double-tongued role with Democrats' speeches and Wall Street speeches. She also clearly didn't know anything about foreign affairs despite her flying all over the world for photo ops that gave the impression she did.

When Assange exposed her professional ineptitude and implied he had more (that might include her personal affairs,) who had the anti-Putin idea of returning to the Cold War? It certainly wasn't the well spoken, but ill-informed Hillary. It was classic intelligence agency.

And she lost to a different kind of mad person who thinks walking a tightrope is good foreign policy no matter what the risk. The mindset of the MIC and intelligence agencies have almost got him under control after 2 1/2 years, but the Democrats, still ruled by the Clinton crowd are so inept that we may end up crowded between a Trump win in 2020 or a straightforward coup d'etat.

Ray McGovern , July 23, 2019 at 21:42

Dear Anonymot,

Very helpful remarks: between you and Realist et al. -- what a rich, instructive discussion.

Ray

Ray McGovern , July 23, 2019 at 21:38

Dear Realist,

An excellent tutorial. Very much appreciated.

Ray

Curious , July 23, 2019 at 23:29

Realist, one of your best of the best comments.
Not only did the Nobel Peace winner gladly get involved in the Ukraine coup with 'Victory' Nuland, but they had to do it during Russia's shining moment to the world, the Winter Olympics in Sochi. What arrogance. And, when Obama said about Russia, "well, they don't make anything" my blood curdled.
You make another good point about the tragic downed airliner. Why send the black boxes to the UK? All we heard was 'there was nothing of interest in them', Right. We know Putin was flying back from Brazil that day and with the skill level shown by Ukraine these past few years, they could have mixed up planes. It's hard to say.

And then to have the USB lead the investigation (as Robert reported) with the Netherlands (and the Aussies. Again, why?) when it was reported the USB were the very organization that went to all the ATC towers and confiscated the recording tapes? Russia sent the raw radar data to the investigation team in the Netherlands and they came back with the retort "we can't read them" Russia offered technical experts to help and this was ignored, as was the 2 tests done by the makers of the Buks, Almez-Antey proving the blast pattern was an old model no longer in Russias' inventory but in Ukraines. And they get away with all this crap?
One last thought: Putin heads a country that has 11 time zones, and we have 3. Why do so many people think he is just sitting around twiddling his thumbs trying to upset a US election? And he raised a good point when he said, at that time the House and the Senate were Republican controlled. Did he do that too?
He sees the US invalidating international agreements left and right, causing more and more military activity on his borders because of NATO needing an enemy to stay relevant, not to mention the increased funding of course, which is many times more than his own military funding.
Why meddle in an election? He has enough on his plate with all his ethic issues, and now the encroachment on his borders by the 'good guys with guns and missiles'.
The US population has become more provincial and ethnocentric than I have ever witnessed and most of them don't know how large Russia is. It's a wonderful country.
Because of US ignorance about Russia it's almost as if they perceive it as a little country where Putin has all the time in the world to play games, instead of his real purpose. Which is now to protect his country from the US/NATO military propaganda machine and its hardware surrounding his country. This must take up all of his time, but the ignorant still think he has time to meddle in the corrupt US election system.
It's foolishness to the core. Only Mueller and his ilk have that kind of time and tax money to screw around with wasted time.

Annie , July 22, 2019 at 21:58

Immediately after the leak Robbie Mook immediately said the Russians did it, and I remember thinking how does he know, and saw it as ridiculous, laughable. I was a Sanders supporter, and I knew the Democratic party who is known to side lines their liberals wanted him gone from the beginning. MSNBC helped a lot, since throughout his campaign they would often refer to him as an old curmudgeon.

mbob , July 22, 2019 at 21:49

"Thus, she began her campaign under a cloud, and as more and more Americans learned of the fraud that oozed through the DNC email correspondence -- including the rigging of the Democratic primaries -- the cloud grew larger and darker."

Dear Ray,

The most detailed description of how the DNC rigged the primary process -- and the evidence in favor of it -- is in "Democracy Lost: A Report on the Fatally Flawed 2016 Democratic Primaries." (You can find it on the web.) It's independent of Wikileaks.

It provides at least 6 different sources of evidence supporting its allegation of DNC rigging. [1] Direct voter suppression that disproportionately affected Sanders. [2] Registration tampering (with photocopies of altered ballots.) [3] Inaccurate voting machine counts favoring Clinton (Clinton received unaccountably more votes in precincts using the most "hackable" machines. In all states, Clinton performed best on machines that don't leave a paper trail.) [4] Exit poll discrepancies of a unprecedented amount, which did not occur in Republican primaries held on the same day! [5] Eyewitness caucus abuses, as in Iowa and Nevada. [6] DNC collusion with media to smear Sanders.

It states that the combined effects of the rigging was more than enough to have thrown the nomination to Clinton.

I've never seen any debunking of this report which (at least superficially, appears sound and) was written by credible authors.

But, on the other hand, I've seen no independent validation of the report by anyone, including Consortium News.

Do you know anything about it?

Yours

mbob

John Drake , July 22, 2019 at 21:46

Way to go Ray. I find the comment about " Is this how lowly you rate the intelligence of American voters" interesting because it is so accurate-the lowly bit that is. With the assistance (collusion) of the MSM the whole sordid scam has become the dominant paradigm, especially as liberals grasp at the American tradition of red baiting (even though those former reds are devout capitalists) to find sketchy ways of ousting Trumpenfuhrer. Unfortunately these efforts are by passing his more real faults and making the Democrats looking like fools and sore losers. Now he can play the" oh poor me I am being picked on game."
The Clinton family has done tremendous damage to our nation, from financial deregulation, the bombing of Yugoslavia and Libya, influence peddling and fixing the election among many other sins.

Litchfield , July 23, 2019 at 11:51

Agree.
Only an idiot could think that trying to bring Trump down by, basically, bringing false charges against him was a good long-term strategy. Of course, they t hought the strategy only had to be short-term, until Hillary won the election, became president, and could then really deliver the corpse of Trump.

But some on the "left" are still hewing to this concept that Trump is so bad that Mueller must be right about *something.* They still do not get that this false accusation has *helped* Trump, not hurt him. Meanwhile he has gotten away with murder in another part of the forest.

These smart folks are so stupid.

Jeff Harrison , July 22, 2019 at 20:40

Thank you, Ray for a very good summary and thank you also for highlighting how shabbily The Nation treated Patrick after he gave them some very fine work. Now all we need is for people who write the narrative in the MSM to start telling the truth and that would be a neat trick.

Gary Steinberg , July 23, 2019 at 05:54

Once one sells his soul, he doesn't get it back And today, Brenner and Crapper work for MSM. RT probably more reality-based than CNN. This news coup is more than 50 years in the making and has taken quite a toll on the state of the American mind. So, quite a trick,
indeed.

Heman , July 22, 2019 at 19:08

Through all this, the media never focused on the emails themselves, at least to any real extent. Whether the information became available through a hack or download seems a minor issue that someone is deliberately trying to right the election of the president of the United States.

If for example, the worst sort of person fingered an actual murderer, would you ignore the murderer and go after the person who fingered them. It could only be accomplished if those who had the power to do that actually conspired to do it.

M. McGovern does an excellent job in the article making clear what happened. But was it really important, at least as important, that the evil Russians did or did not do it. An objective observer would be grateful that someone or some agency bought the information to light.

Of on top of it all is the gross hypocrisy surrounding the issue. We make Russia look like pikers when it comes to interference and comparing parties that interfere with our elections, do we really want to focus only on Russia?

AboutWhich , July 23, 2019 at 11:30

Heman, I'm surprised no one has attempted to respond to your two comments. They are both inane. Trolling are you?

As for Tulsi, she left the DNC way before these leaked emails, and for the same reason as what they exposed but which DEM-Americans ignored. What does her leaving say about her? That she's not easily duped. Honest truth-seekers usually aren't.

To Ray, great article!

Jack Schiht , July 22, 2019 at 18:18

All this resulting in the Seth Rich murder cover up, even Donna Brazille is still disturbed by the Seth Rich murder, but no one else in Washington DC is permitted to even remember the Seth Rich murder.
This cover up turned into an excuse for losing the election, and immediately after the election it was the outline of the coup, fleshed out by the professionals who do this to normally protect our country. This is a plot worthy of the professionals who wrote the script and starred in the roles.
The coup is ongoing and given legitimacy and dignity by all but a few in Washington DC.
No one dares do anything about it, Barr is waiting for the election to see if perhaps he can drop the charade of concern over this coup.
It may be up to we the people to stop this coup, and we don't have use of the courts. We have other options.

Uros Ruma , July 22, 2019 at 18:02

Brilliant article!

Eric32 , July 22, 2019 at 17:55

How much of this bizarre behavior and story lining can be compared to the behavior of drug addicts and alcoholics being told they're messed up – that they have a problem?

They're inside a fantasy, they need the fantasy, they're being told that it is a fantasy. Many people have seen how bizarre the antics, lying, avoidance, deception can get with such individuals. I think we're seeing it being played out by a group.

Anonymous , July 22, 2019 at 20:17

There is a massive difference – one uses it as a crutch to cover up a wound and make it through the day, the other uses it as a pogo stick. Politicians and bigshots don't need this fantasy – they knowingly use it as a weapon.

Nathan Mulcahy , July 22, 2019 at 17:46

Russian Collusion = Saddam's WMD 2.0.

Also a test to recognize the sheetlet from the thinking.

Heman , July 22, 2019 at 17:42

"Is this how lowly you rate the intelligence of American voters? " Quoted above from Lawrence article. That was 2016, it is now 2019, so now you know. Maybe something better to describe us than intelligence. Gullible,, conditioned, intellectually lazy and just too much to think about, all come to mind.

In all this Tulsi Gabbard comes to mind, resigning in protest. What does that say about her as a presidential candidate?

Fran Macadam , July 22, 2019 at 16:55

If only the truth could make it to the bought corporate media hacks, and not be spiked.

evelync , July 22, 2019 at 16:33

Thank you Ray (Veteran Intelligence Professional for Sanity) McGovern.
Your recounting of what really happened is like a balm for the open wound of having to hear the bullcrap shoveled on us ad nauseum .
And perhaps the saddest part of this very sad tale of the loss of a progressive candidate who could have changed the course of this country for the better – (victims of that kneecapping of the Sanders campaign include our democracy, the millions of people who lost so much as the neoliberal DNC machine including the Clintons helped shift the country away from New Deal protections and also include the millions of people around the world dislocated or destroyed by our corrupt foreign policy that feeds our MICIMATT)- the saddest part is that the political candidate who had fought for working people against the corruption of the DNC machine was then turned on for biting his lip and saying that Mrs Clinton was a better choice than Mr Trump possibly because Sanders may have considered it important, for example, that a Clinton Supreme Court choice would not have included a Kavanaugh .
Senator Sanders' key supporter then and now, philosopher Cornel West, did not follow that lead (nor did I but it was easy in Texas to cast a protest vote)

Human history I'm sure is filled with this kind of chicanery.
We're living a nasty lesson not least of which is how our courageous whistleblowers and their publishers are punished for simply sharing the truth when that truth hurts powerful people ..

Lies, cleverly spun, seem to be more easily accepted. Even though they never quite pass the smell test.
Yes, General Powell, that smell test included your sorry performance at the U.N.

And Secretary Clinton – if you had spun around in 2016 during that ill-fated presidential debate and said "back off fat man" more voters might have trusted you enough to cast their ballot for you.
But true to form for you, calculated political correctness, apparently, meant more to you than the honesty and courage to show your unhappiness with Trump's ill manners

ethan allen , July 22, 2019 at 20:51

Re: evelync
Excellent comment!! And thanks to Ray McGovern for acknowledging the prescience and professional journalism of Patrick Lawrence, not only his seeing through the duplicity and cowardly corruption of the political operatives and their sycophantic media stenographers, but for being determined to inform a disillusioned, confused and too often hostile electorate.
As Usual,
EA

Bobby Kwasnik , July 23, 2019 at 00:48

Please don't try to disguise your insanity in a veiled love-fest with Mr. McGovern. As evidenced by this weeks news about the inability for Sanders to even run the economics of his own 2020 campaign, why do you think that he could run the economics of a nation? And after everything Mr. McGovern has written, you still acquiesce to Clinton as the shining light on the hill. Delusional! All things being equal, at the very least, if President Trump was not elected none of us would even know about all the shams and shenanigans of Clinton and the DNC.

Susan J Leslie , July 23, 2019 at 08:32

Talk about delusional – you are the epitome. Trump is no better than the rest – he just can't stop his tiny fingers from twittering and his orange mouth from blithering

Blessthebeasts , July 23, 2019 at 12:12

It's unfortunate that the Republicans, like Mueller, are going along with the Russian meddling BS. This is the central piece of the whole sordid affair and of course has no basis in fact. Pull it out of the narrative and it all comes tumbling down. Tomorrow's testimony is the perfect setting to expose the sham but sadly, the Republicans will not seize the opportunity.

Mangy vermen , July 23, 2019 at 15:29

A man uncovers massive coordinated INTERNAL election fraud and corruption within the democratic party and was silenced to protect and secure the biggest election fraud in U S history, the 2016 DNC primary .the evidence on the DNC servers would not only reveal the insider who leaked, it could have exposed a hell of a lot of worse crimes..like voting infrastructure Fixing predicted outcomes..but also who covered it up,and the intelligence agencies involvement, including their MSM spokesman ..

evelync , July 23, 2019 at 12:33

Sorry Bobby Kwasnik, I did not intend to imply that Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is a shining light – far from it. I am unable to come up with anything she stood for or accomplished that did not seem calculated to achieve personal power for herself. Many of the policies she supported both foreign and domestic obviously served the financial interests of the oligarchs who are taking us down a dangerous path leading to unsustainability and planetary destruction.
The dangerous path I'm referring to is covered in today's Tomgram written by Andrew Bacevich.
Typing this into your search engine, if you're interested, should bring it up for you:
"Tomdispatch Andrew Bacevich future history"
Btw, as you may know, retired army colonel and Boston University history prof. Andrew Bacevich is I think a true conservative, so rare today.
Are you sure that Donald Trump's election had anything to do with the exposure of the "shams and shenanigans"? I think a lot of that credit goes to the work done by wikileaks and their sources.
(There are plenty of other publications that expose the Clinton machine – Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer is one. BTW, the sleazy way Donald Trump earned his wealth is nothing to be proud of either.)
We're all caught up in a maelstrom of insanity, IMO. Believing that Donald Trump is anything but a self promoter and smooth talker and genius political manipulator may eventually leave you disappointed. He may occasionally do the right thing by the people of this country but only when he thinks it will serve his own momentary/monetary interests.
I'm willing to openly admit to you that my mental health is no better or worse than most ..
It's a wonder that we're not all running around screaming, lol.
Cheers.

b.grand , July 23, 2019 at 20:38

" .the saddest part is that [Sanders] . was then turned on for biting his lip and saying that Mrs Clinton was a better choice than Mr Trump "

No, he got what [the disdain] he deserved. The real saddest part was that he didn't really fight for the nomination. He was the PC "gentleman" who gave the Hildabeast an easy ride. Bobby Kwasnik got you more right than you realize. Trump was the better choice. Without him, all the DNC shenanigans would have been swept under the rug and almost everyone would have gone back to sleep. Instead of pussy hatted marchers, the "women" would have been swooning, like the Blacks swooned for Obama.

Bad as it is, this beats Pres. Hilligula, and Sanders weakness lost him much support that's not coming back, and shouldn't.

Clark M Shanahan , July 23, 2019 at 12:49

Sorry Bobby, Trump did win the electoral college.
and:
"As evidenced by this weeks news about the inability for Sanders to even run the economics of his own 2020 campaign,"

I really was annoyed with all those "Hillary's got the Chops" trolls, in 2016.

And today: Many in the "Cult of Mueller" need to acknowledge, just as Noam Chomsky stated, that Russiagate has probably procured the 2020 election for Trump.
The snark from the Cult is simply abusive. Besides being wrong with your contention, Sanders belongs nowhere in the subject at hand.

Stygg , July 23, 2019 at 13:40

So you think the President "runs the economics of a nation"?

Val Taire , July 23, 2019 at 13:08

Regarding your concluding paragraph: Hillary would never state "back off fat man" because it was she, Bill and DNC who approved Trump as her Presidential "Pied Piper" opponent. Any doubt, view Robert Reich's blog from early 206 to General Election 2016. Comments on his blog are littered with HRC trolls demanding our votes while we steadfastly maintained she was not worthy of our votes. Yes, based on her Wikileaks, based on her usurping Bernie, based on her CF, based on her support of rapist spouse while labeling us "misogynists", based on her Pied Piper Strategy -- we informed Reichwing HRC Camp that Trump would win the Presidency.

Hilly was lazy. Pied Piper campaign required no effort and MSM was more than happy to water carry the Pied Piper Strategy for Hilly. Hilly could though, campaign in Hollywood, Harvey's and Rothschild's Creme de la creme fundraisers in Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Hamptons -- but ignore Wisconsin and PA, correct?

I'll point out other points regarding her "ill-fated Presidential debate". Demanding Bernie"s tax records while CF had their CF charity license revoked in State of Massachusetts for financial and other irregularities; simultaneously, Eric Schneiderman was intentionally withholding investigation of CF. I'm fact, Clinton's were forced to revile NY CF tax records.

Goldman Sachs paid speeches by Hillary was the other Huuuge point raised during that "ill-fated" debate. She promised to release these yet failed to do so. How did we receive content of those speeches? Through leakers, yes GS employees and excerpts from WL.

Furthermore, it wasn't "political correctness" that kept Hilly from yelling "back off fat man". It was fear of being exposed for Pied Piper Strategy; after all, even WL had evidence of her Pied Piper gem. You refer also to Trump's ill manners in your last paragraph while ignoring Hillary's legendary ill manners. Eighteen years post BillyBoy's Cigar Capers, she has Vanity Fair disinvite Monica Lewinsky from a NY Gala which Monica had already RSVP'd to. There are man ex-SS employees who can attest to her ill manners as well.

In closing, I'll leave you with two names that speak volumes about Hilly's ill manners and seething anger upon being exposed for her lies and corruption. Harmon Wilfred and Julian Assange. Harmon was Hilly's first political refugee, simply because he had records of Gov. Clinton's financial corruption. He was forced to flee to Canada, where Hilly sent Michael Horowitz and other prosecutor goons to falsely imprison and litigate him. Later, when serving in DC, same Michael Horowitz (now IG Horowitz), had Harmon"s children removed from him. Yes, Horowitz was serving on a Child Abuse Advisory Board (voluntary position) and arranged for that gross miscarriage of justice. Twenty years later, Harmon sits in NZ, stateless, without a passport, imprisoned by Hilly's and Five Eyes Mafiaosa type agreement. Should Harmon attempt to leave NZ , he faces immediate extradition to US. Should his Canadian wife attempt to visit him, she is banned at most ports. She will face arrest.

Trump will win 2020. Bernie is not an option, he has been fully co-opted courtesy of Hilly and DNC. DNC has intentionally flooded Presidential race with twenty-one candidates, one of whom is an AWAN House Dem, Tim "AWAN" Ryan. Julian Castro is twin brother of Joacquin "AWAN" Castro. Should Castro win Presidency, or be selected VP, Castro would have ability to pardon his twin and thirty-one House AWAN Dems. And to be clear, we know this flooding of race is to keep Bernie from receiving highest number of electoral votes. So keep flooding, keep jerking with SuperDelegate rules. I DemExited 2016. The Pied Piper has won. Deal with it.

h , July 22, 2019 at 16:01

Hey Ray, have you read Ed Butowsky's lawsuit? If not, I highly recommend you and your team do so – https://www.scribd.com/document/417578836/Butowsky-Complaint

Chet Roman , July 22, 2019 at 23:27

And Ray should see the short video of Ellen Ratner confirming at a symposium on Nov. 9, 2016 that she had a 3-hour conversation with Assange a few days before (Nov. 5, 2016) and he said that it was not the Russians (as he has been saying for a long time) but was an inside job. In the video she doesn't state that it was Seth and Aaron Rich who gave the emails to Assange but Butowsky claims in his lawsuit that is exactly what Assange told Ratner and asked her to tell Rich's parents to give them some perspective regarding Seth's murder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M3Z4eE6cJA

Anonymous , July 22, 2019 at 15:55

If you are an individual and you invent and publish conspiracy theories, you could get sent off to a psychiatric ward and deprived of liberty (including religious liberty in many states) and property without due process – something which is otherwise reserved for enemy combatants ("terrorists") and now (at least seemingly) illegal immigrants.

If you work in mainstream journalism, politics, or public relations, you might get a promotion.

Drew Hunkins , July 22, 2019 at 15:43

The whole notion the Kremlin hacked the '16 prez election or that Moscow somehow interfered in it is the biggest propaganda accomplishment I've ever witnessed. In some ways it's even beyond the 2002/'03 "Saddam has WMD! Saddam's in bed with al-Qaeda" business.

Despite there being absolutely no credible evidence that any such interference existed, millions of otherwise semi-intelligent liberal minded folks have been lapping up this canard as if it were their mother's milk. Mueller's left with egg on his face after his report embarrassingly stated that the Russian's interfered. What a load of malarkey that judge Friedrich has easily seen as having no substance prompting her to slap a well deserved gag order on the prosecutor. A prosecutor who was probably aligned with the Winter Hill gang to one degree or another!

This disconcerting group-think from the liberal intelligentsia should elicit gales of laughter if it weren't so utterly imbecilic and dangerous.

AnneR , July 23, 2019 at 09:40

Yes, Drew H, the "liberal Intelligentsia" continue to indulge in this bizarro groupthink and clearly willingly. One might say, so much for being members of the (self designated) "intelligentsia."

As soon as this whole farrago hit the MSM fan and they began spraying out their DNC cover bullshit, my late husband and I kept asking: where and when are they going to actually start discussing the *content* of the emails themselves? Never.

So one can only conclude that the liberal intelligentsia (of whom many include my late husband's friends – few of whom have continued to be in touch with me because I am far more abrasive than he) are *true* Dem party supporters: i.e. thoroughly bourgeois, very soft left (identitarian politics with a little generalized medicare help for the masses thrown in) and Russophobic under their thin patina of "progressiveness" (whatever that really means).

One might be forgiven, surely, for asking: to what significant end all of that highly expensive secondary and tertiary education if you have fallen for, and remain wedded to, the Clintonite-DNC lies and more lies of Russiagate?

The only answer I can come up with is: that it fits in with their underlying worldview; that it allows them to continue to support the imaginary "left" headed side of the single party. Sanders is hardly a Leninist, but he was, it seems a little too "revolutionary" for the property-owning, deeply corporate-capitalist leaning liberal intelligentsia (as of course, being liberal they would be).

Skip Scott , July 23, 2019 at 15:05

The reason it fits with their "underlying world view" is they are passive consumers of MSM propaganda. They are not critical thinkers. They are also mostly isolated within their little clique, and are purposely separated from the seeing the horrible consequences of our war machine. As long as they can sip on their lattes in Starbucks, check their portfolio on their smart phone, and nobody does a drone strike on them, all is good with their world. The reason they hate Trump so much is that he has ripped off the mask and revealed the hypocrisy. When our "war criminal in chief" was a smooth talking blackish man it was easy to ignore the ugly underbelly of unrestrained capitalism seeking global hegemony. You could put a "Coexist" bumper sticker on your car and forget Obama was having his "Terror Tuesdays" in the company of John Brennan.

b.grand , July 23, 2019 at 21:36

AnneR, there are no heroes: Bernie endorses Russiagate. He's only revolutionary in rhetoric, most of which would never pass any Congress. The way he deferred to Hillary, what hope that he's stand up to R2P & hawkish Dems and the MIC?

[Jul 24, 2019] And now it might be Obama turn

Jul 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

MoreFreedom , 50 seconds ago link

I'm glad Democrats are hanging their hat on the fact that a president can be indicted when he's out of office for obstruction of justice. So they won't object when Barr indicts Obama.

[Jul 24, 2019] Fraud of Facebook user numbers

Jul 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

bruce , July 23, 2019 at 4:14 pm

I have three Facebook accounts. The two I never ever look at are the one for my cat and the one for my feminine alter ego. My own account is used for only one thing, watching "People You May Know" to see how far they've penetrated my graph; occasionally disturbing, occasionally hilarious. I've never looked at my "wall", issued or accepted a friend request, posted anything, messaged anyone but they have my email, and wow do I hate this company!

May 2018, a woman I loved and was ultimately going to get to move in died (age 70, natural causes). Twice a week on average I get emails from Facebook inviting me to read her most recent messages. You can imagine how I feel about that. SHE DED!

Facebook has boasted on the order of 2-3 billion users, a significant percentage of the world's population, and I don't believe a word of it. One may assume that the early adopters were people with more tech savvy, affluence and most important, leisure time to screw around on the internet, and the proles don't have a lot of leisure time. Moreover, the value to the advertiser of a set of eyeball impressions is directly related to the amount of disposable income those eyeballs have, and sure, India has about one and a half billion people, but a lot of them have zero disposable income and zero leisure time.

Die Facebook die!

otishertz , July 23, 2019 at 5:37 pm

From the cited lawsuit:

"Based on a combination of publicly available research and Plaintiffs' own analysis, among 18-34 years-olds in Chicago, for example, Facebook asserted its Potential Reach was approximately 4 times (400%) higher than the number of real 18-34 year-olds with Facebook accounts in Chicago. Based on a combination of publicly available research and Plaintiffs' own analysis, Facebook's asserted Potential Reach in Kansas City was approximately 200% higher than the number of actual 18-54 year-olds with Facebook accounts in Kansas City. This inflation is apparent in other age categories as well."

otishertz , July 23, 2019 at 5:40 pm

"These foundational representations are false. Based on publicly available research and Plaintiffs' own analysis, Facebook overstates the Potential Reach of its advertisements. For example, based on publicly available data, Facebook's purported Potential Reach among the key 18-34 year-
22 old demographic in every state exceeds the actual population of 18-34 year-olds ."

[Jul 24, 2019] If one accepts that FB user numbers are fraudulent, the Russiagate narrative falls apart.

Notable quotes:
"... Russiagate, the most extensive disinformation/propaganda campaign since Iraqi WMD, has fallen/is falling apart without any need to reference fake Facebook accounts. ..."
"... The Collusion narrative/conspiracy theory was preposterous from the get-go, riven with internal inconsistencies, and the recent Federal court ruling that prevents Mueller from continuing to publicly accuse Concord management of "undermining our democracy" (that's a hot one) discredits the second of the three bases of the narrative. ..."
Jul 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Unsympathetic , , July 23, 2019 at 8:29 am

If one accepts that FB user numbers are fraudulent, the Russiagate narrative falls apart.

What if the fake ads were only "viewed" by fake accounts?

Larry , , July 23, 2019 at 8:38 am

Bingo. But it's a great story for political elites to paper over their complete failure to maintain their control.

Michael Fiorillo , , July 23, 2019 at 9:42 am

Russiagate, the most extensive disinformation/propaganda campaign since Iraqi WMD, has fallen/is falling apart without any need to reference fake Facebook accounts.

The Collusion narrative/conspiracy theory was preposterous from the get-go, riven with internal inconsistencies, and the recent Federal court ruling that prevents Mueller from continuing to publicly accuse Concord management of "undermining our democracy" (that's a hot one) discredits the second of the three bases of the narrative.

Someday the McResistance TM and unhinged liberals possessed by magical thinking must grapple with the fact that Trump was elected in America, by Americans, and that there is no Santa Claus.

Then again, maybe not.

[Jul 24, 2019] In case you didn't notice, Mueller has been enjoined from making any more claims about those Facebook pages as products of Russian state actors, since the accused unexpectedly showed up in court and demanded discovery of evidence, which Saint Santa Claus Mueller was unable to provide.

Notable quotes:
"... "Russia" with respect to Facebook was "Internet Research Agency," a Russian troll farm that ran a teeny number of ads in terms of both volume and dollar spend. A Federal judge ordered Muller to quit trying to depict its principals as connected to the Russian government because it was prejudicial to their case. No connection has ever been established nor is it it likely to be established. The ads were stunningly amateurish, all over the map in terms of messages, and apparently 25% were never viewed, and IIRC, over half ran after the election. ..."
Jul 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Michael Fiorillo , July 23, 2019 at 2:14 pm

Yep, those "Buff Bernie" and "Jesus Arm Wrestling With Satan" pages, often written in broken English and most of which appeared after the election, really did the job, didn't they?

In case you didn't notice, Mueller has been enjoined from making any more claims about those Facebook pages as products of Russian state actors, since the accused unexpectedly showed up in court and demanded discovery of evidence, which Saint Santa Claus Mueller was unable to provide.

Give it up, already: Trumpismo must be defeated politically, through traditional and creative political methods, and not via wishful thinking based on an opportunistic convergence of interests among the Clinton/Obama/Donor Class wing of the Democratic Party, factions in the National Security State that don't consider him an effective steward of empire, and a corporate media that gave him billions in free media but now wants us to think it opposes him.

Leslie Moonves of CBS' quote about how Trump was bad for America, but great for CBS shareholders, says far more about Trump's victory than all the hair-on-fire reports about Russia and Putin.

If there isn't some kind of reckoning for this disgraceful episode, which has only inoculated Trump against reports of what he actually is doing, and is an inestimable political gift to him, the Next Trump is going to make far more sinister use of it.

John Wright , July 23, 2019 at 2:16 pm

I look at the "Facebook threw the election to Trump" story as equivalent to blaming the camel's back breaking last piece of straw for the camel's injury without observing that the entire prior heavy straw loading made this possible.

The exposure of HRC's "deplorables" comment, or her "public positions vs private positions" comment or her selection of Tim Kaine as VP or her Wall Street speeches could have all been far more significant in her loss than any liked/forwarded Russian Facebook postings.

I have never done Facebook, so perhaps I am completely in the dark as far as its influence on potential voters.

How does one know that actual votes were flipped via a Facebook posting?

For example, if the Facebook forwarding content served only for confirmation bias, perhaps a very small number of voter minds were changed, as the voters were already Trump leaning.

That is a fundamental problem of any advertising/influence campaign, getting an ad possibly viewed is one thing, knowing that it was influenial is very difficult.

How exactly did Mueller determine, with any confidence, that voters' minds were changed via the Facebook platform?

If Mueller determined that these Facebook postings were truly influential in changing would be HRC voters to Trump voters, he could have a new, very profitable, career in the advertising industry.

jrs , July 23, 2019 at 2:36 pm

Question for you: Can you prove that the influence of social media was greater than the influence of mainstream media which covered Trump CONSTANTLY?

Mainstream media gave Trump $2 billion worth of free media, more coverage than any other candidate by far.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-2-billion-free-media_n_56e83410e4b065e2e3d75935

I find it hard to believe social media had more of an effect than constant mainstream media coverage and as far as I know noone has accused them of being influenced by Russians. Can you show otherwise on either of those points?

Because if the negative influence of Putin whatever it may be is less than the negative influence of selling ad revenue on t.v. well then the problem is capitalism not Russian oligarchy destroying democracy.

Yves Smith Post author , July 23, 2019 at 5:36 pm

You need to get that knee tended to.

"Russia" with respect to Facebook was "Internet Research Agency," a Russian troll farm that ran a teeny number of ads in terms of both volume and dollar spend. A Federal judge ordered Muller to quit trying to depict its principals as connected to the Russian government because it was prejudicial to their case. No connection has ever been established nor is it it likely to be established. The ads were stunningly amateurish, all over the map in terms of messages, and apparently 25% were never viewed, and IIRC, over half ran after the election.

[Jul 24, 2019] Have you all forgotten how BOJO leaned himself out of the window, outdoing himself and his degenerate former boss by accusing Russia of poisoning the Skripals and whoever else with 'Novi-shock'?

Jul 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

nottheonly1 , Jul 24 2019 17:59 utc | 178

After having read all of the comments, I like to ask a question.

Neither in the story, nor in the comment section, I found any remark about the Skripal affair.

Have you all forgotten how BOJO leaned himself out of the window, outdoing himself and his degenerate former boss by accusing Russia of poisoning the Skripals and whoever else with 'Novi-shock'?

And this pathetic liar and accuser of Russia with as much as ZERO evidence is now at the helm of HMS Titanic?

No wonder people can't figure out what's really going on in the world. Considering his rabid "The Russians did it" tripe as FM, he should have been barred from public office for the rest of his life.

Unless, of course, it's all nothing but low grade ham theater, with everybody playing their role - including the Russians. But I do remember the kind of actions this guy wanted to take against Russia, for 'highly likely' having been behind this fairy tale of a double agent and his daughter.

So, please humor me about how much you remember of the stellar performance of this utter joke calling for sanctions and worse against Russia.

Now what?

[Jul 23, 2019] Some thoughts about Mueller testimony

Notable quotes:
"... Imagine you are a horny 15 year old boy and you have been promised sex with an incredible Hollywood talent. Driven by surging hormones your anticipation and excitement are off the scale. You are taken to the place where the tryst will happen. And you open the door. Waiting of you is Barney Fife. ..."
Jul 23, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Imagine you are a horny 15 year old boy and you have been promised sex with an incredible Hollywood talent. Driven by surging hormones your anticipation and excitement are off the scale. You are taken to the place where the tryst will happen. And you open the door. Waiting of you is Barney Fife.

That sort of sums up what is likely to happen tomorrow when Robert Mueller testifies before the House Judiciary and the House Intelligence committees. I have shut off almost all cable news. I cannot stomach the relentless hype about tomorrow's supposed "big day."

Blackberet , 23 July 2019 at 02:18 PM

Hmmm, given how the legacy media has managed to completely misinterpret what Mueller's Report actually says, imagine what a field day they will have interpreting "nothing" to mean something. Now, I wonder what that something might be...?

[Jul 23, 2019] UK's May Takes Parting Shot At Putin In Desperate Diversion From Failure

Jul 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Putin was apparently explaining a fairly straightforward and, to many observers, valid assessment of international politics. Namely, that Western establishments and institutions, including the mainstream media, are experiencing a crisis in authority. That crisis has arisen over several years due to popular perception that the governance of the political class is not delivering on democratic demands of accountability and economic progress. That in turn has led people to seek alternatives from the established parties, a movement in the US and Europe which is denigrated by the establishment as "populist" or rabble rousing.

Putin was not advocating any particular politics or political figures. He was merely pointing out the valid observation that the so-called liberal establishment has become obsolete, or dysfunctional.

In her speech this week, May sought to lay on a sinister spin to Putin's remarks as being somehow him egging on authoritarianism and anti-democratic politics.

Another example of distortion came from Donald Tusk, the European Council President, who also said of Putin's interview:

"I strongly disagree with the main argument that liberalism is obsolete. Whoever claims that liberal democracy is obsolete, also claims that freedoms are obsolete, that the rule of law is obsolete and that human rights are obsolete For us in Europe, these are and will remain essential and vibrant values. What I find really obsolete are: authoritarianism, personality cults, the rule of oligarchs."

Tusk's depiction of Putin being anti-democratic, anti-human rights and anti-law is a specious misdirection, or as May would say, "cynical falsehood".

Political leaders like May and Tusk are living in denial. They seem to suffer from a charmed delusion that all is rosy with the state of Western democracy. That somehow Western states are the acme of benign "liberalism".

By blaming evident deep-seated problems of poverty and apathy towards establishment politics on "sinister" targets of "populism" and "authoritarian strong men" is a form of escapism from reality.

In May's case, she has added good reason to escape from reality. Her political career is ending in disaster and disgrace for having led Britain into a shambles over its Brexit departure from the European Union. Of course, she would like a distraction from her abysmal record, and she seemed to find one in her farewell speech by firing a dud diatribe at Putin.

But let's re-examine her self-congratulatory claim more closely. "No one comparing the quality of life or economic success of liberal democracies like the UK, France and Germany to the Russian Federation would conclude that our system is obsolete."

There are two parts to that.

First, May is giving the usual establishment spiel about presumed superiority of Western "liberal democracy" as opposed to politics and governance in Russia.

This week coming, May hands in her resignation as Conservative party prime minister to the unelected head of state, Queen Elizabeth. The British monarch and her heirs rule as official head of state by a presumed "divine order". Some democracy that is!

May's successor will either be Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt. The next prime minister of Britain will be elected solely by members of Britain's Conservative party. As the Washington Post noted this week, the Tory party represents less than one per cent of the British population. So, the new leader of the United Kingdom is being decided not by a democratic national mandate, but by a tiny minority of party members whose demographic profile is typically rightwing, ardent nationalists, pro-militarist, white and elderly males. Moreover, the "selection" of new leader comes down to a choice between two politicians of highly dubious quality whose foreign policy tendency is to play sycophants to Washington. The way Johnson and Hunt have, for example, lent support to Trump's reckless aggression towards Iran is a portent of further scraping and bowing to American warmongering typical of Britain's "special relationship".

In the second part of May's presumed virtuous liberal democracy, she hails the "quality of economic success" of her nation as opposed to Russian society.

No-one, least of all Putin, is denying that reducing poverty is a social challenge for Russia. In a recent nationwide televised Q&A, the "elected" (please note) head of the Russian state called poverty reduction a priority for his government. However, Russia certainly doesn't need advice from the United Kingdom or many other Western states on that issue.

A recent major study in Britain found that some 21 per cent of the population (14 million people) are living in poverty. Homelessness and aggravated crime figures are also off the charts due to collapsing public services over a decade of economic austerity as deliberate government policy. The inequality gap between super-rich and poverty among the mass of people has exploded to a chasm in Britain, as in the US and other Western states.

These are some of the urgent issues that Putin was referring to when he asserted the "liberal idea is obsolete". Can anyone objectively surveying the bankrupt state of Western societies honestly dispute that?

Western states are fundamentally broken down because "liberalism" is an empty term which conceals rapacious corporate capitalism and the oligarchic rule of an elite political class. The advocates of "liberalism" like Britain's May, Johnson, Hunt or Tusk are the ones who are anti-democracy, anti-human rights and anti-law. Their denial about the systemic cause of poverty and injustice within their own societies and their complicity in American imperialist warmongering in the Middle East or belligerence towards Russia and China is the true "quality" of their "democratic principles".

If that's not obsolete then what is? And that's why May took a weird parting shot at Putin in a desperate diversion from reality.

[Jul 22, 2019] The press of the United States? It is a parasitic growth that battens on the capitalist class

Jul 22, 2019 | jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com

"The press of the United States? It is a parasitic growth that battens on the capitalist class. Its function is to serve the established by moulding public opinion, and right well it serves it.

I know nothing that I may say can influence you. You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party.

There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy.

You talk verbosely in antiquated terminology of your love of liberty, and all the while you wear the scarlet livery of the Iron Heel."

Jack London, The Iron Heel

[Jul 22, 2019] Comey Under DOJ Investigation For Misleading Trump While Targeting Him In FBI Probe

Notable quotes:
"... Former FBI Director James Comey has been under investigation for misleading President Trump - telling him in private that he wasn't the target of an ongoing FBI probe, while refusing to admit to this in public. ..."
"... Comey was essentially "running a covert operation" against Trump - which began with a private "defensive briefing" shortly after the inauguration. RCI 's sources say that Horowitz has pored over text messages between the FBI's former top-brass and other communications suggesting that Comey was in fact conducting a "counterintelligence assessment" of the president during their January 2017 meeting in New York. ..."
"... What's more, the FBI couldn't treat Trump as a suspect - formally, as they didn't have the legal grounds to do so according to former FBI counterintelligence lawyer Mark Wauck. " They had no probable cause against Trump himself for 'collusion' or espionage ," he said, adding "They were scrambling to come up with anything to hang a hat on, but had found nothing." ..."
"... According to House Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), Comey and the rest of the FBI's top team (including Peter Strzok and Lisa Page) were attempting to "stop" Trump's presidency for political reasons. ..."
"... "You have the culmination of the ultimate spying, where you have the FBI director spying on the president, taking notes [and] illegally leaking those notes of classified information" to the MSM, said Nunes in a recent interview. ..."
"... Comey is just the political class operative who they brought in to save Scooter Libby's butt in the Valerie Flame leak. Then he got a seven figure job as a reward at a hedge fund (with no prior experience in the financial industry). Then, they took him off the bench to be FBI director. ..."
"... The larger problem is that the "five eyes" system is broken in favor of British surveillance and interference in our elections, and, the Patriot Act practice of "masking" is a complete violation of the fourth amendment and a fraud. From a fourth amendment analysis, it's like letting the police search everyone's house every day as long as they don't look at the name on the address. ..."
"... This investigation would explain why Comey, Brennan, and other members of Barry Obama's regime are very quiet, while Congressional Democrats are freaking out. ..."
"... Does the DOJ investigate British agents? Serious question. ..."
Jul 22, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Former FBI Director James Comey has been under investigation for misleading President Trump - telling him in private that he wasn't the target of an ongoing FBI probe, while refusing to admit to this in public.

According to RealClearInvestigations ' Paul Sperry, "Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will file a report in September which contains evidence that Comey was misleading the president " while conducting an active investigation against him.

Even as he repeatedly assured Trump that he was not a target, the former director was secretly trying to build a conspiracy case against the president, while at times acting as an investigative agent . - RCI

According to two US officials familiar with Horowitz's upcoming report on FBI misconduct, Comey was essentially "running a covert operation" against Trump - which began with a private "defensive briefing" shortly after the inauguration. RCI 's sources say that Horowitz has pored over text messages between the FBI's former top-brass and other communications suggesting that Comey was in fact conducting a "counterintelligence assessment" of the president during their January 2017 meeting in New York.

What's more, Comey had an FBI agent in the White House who reported the activities of Trump and his aides, according to 'other officials familiar with the matter.'

The agent, Anthony Ferrante, who specialized in cyber crime, left the White House around the same time Comey was fired and soon joined a security consulting firm, where he contracted with BuzzFeed to lead the news site's efforts to verify the Steele dossier, in connection with a defamation lawsuit. -RCI

According to the report, Horowitz and his team have examined over 1 million documents and conducted over 100 interviews - including sit-downs with Comey and other current and former FBI and DOJ employees. "The period covering Comey's activities is believed to run from early January 2017 to early May 2017, when Comey was fired and his deputy Andrew McCabe, as the acting FBI director, formally opened full counterintelligence and obstruction investigations of the president."

McCabe's deputy, Lisa Page, appeared to dissemble last year when asked in closed-door testimony before the House Judiciary Committee if Comey and other FBI brass discussed opening an obstruction case against Trump prior to his firing in May 2017. Initially, she flatly denied it , swearing: "Obstruction of justice was not a topic of conversation during the time frame you have described." But then, after conferring with her FBI-assigned lawyer, she announced: " I need to take back my prior statement ." Page later conceded that there could have been at least "discussions about potential criminal activity" involving the president . -RCI

Comey coordination

Sperry notes that Comey wasn't working in isolation on the Trump effort. In particular, Horowitz has looked at the January 6, 2017 briefing on the infamous 'Steele Dossier' - a meeting which was used by BuzzFeed, CNN and others to legitimize reporting on the dossier's salacious and unsubstantiated claims .

Comey's meeting with Trump took place one day after the FBI director met in the Oval Office with President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to discuss how to brief Trump -- a meeting attended by National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who would soon go to work for CNN. -RCI

While Comey claims in his book, "A Higher Loyalty" that he didn't have "a counterintelligence case file open on [Trump]," former federal prosecutor and National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy notes that just because Trump's name wasn't on a formal file or surveillance warrant doesn't mean that he wasn't under investigation.

"They were hoping to surveil him incidentally, and they were trying to make a case on him," said McCarthy. " The real reason Comey did not want to repeat publicly the assurances he made to Trump privately is that these assurances were misleading . The FBI strung Trump along, telling him he was not a suspect while structuring the investigation in accordance with the reality that Trump was the main subject ."

What's more, the FBI couldn't treat Trump as a suspect - formally, as they didn't have the legal grounds to do so according to former FBI counterintelligence lawyer Mark Wauck. " They had no probable cause against Trump himself for 'collusion' or espionage ," he said, adding "They were scrambling to come up with anything to hang a hat on, but had found nothing."

What remains unclear is why Comey would take such extraordinary steps against a sitting president . The Mueller report concluded there was no basis for the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theories. Comey himself was an early skeptic of the Steele dossier -- the opposition research memos paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign that were the road map of collusion theories -- which he dismissed as "salacious and unverified." -RCI

According to House Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), Comey and the rest of the FBI's top team (including Peter Strzok and Lisa Page) were attempting to "stop" Trump's presidency for political reasons.

"You have the culmination of the ultimate spying, where you have the FBI director spying on the president, taking notes [and] illegally leaking those notes of classified information" to the MSM, said Nunes in a recent interview.

Read the rest of Sperry's report here .

AI Agent , 4 minutes ago link

They will whitewash Comey. The deep state is alive and well, the DoJ and the FBI are as corrupt as they were the day before Trump took office.

Why do I say this? Well, the canary hasn't fallen off her perch yet. Hillary Clinton is still singing her song, and even making noises like she's going to run again, and she's not in prison. They have her solid on over a hundred felony counts of mishandling classified documents and they've not touched her. Proof of life that the Deep State is still in power.

MoreFreedom , 8 minutes ago link

So, was the Steele dossier the ex post facto excuse for illegally spying on Trump, or was it the ex post facto diversion for ALL of Obama's spying on politically powerful people, which we know included spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee, spying on reporters, and spying on Trump. I'll bet Obama hopes the investigation doesn't get into all of his spying activities, and I wouldn't be surprised government officials in charge of the spying equipment are keeping it covered up because they don't want to lose their jobs (for either allowing such to happen, or because they fear the spying apparatus will be eliminated).

Did Obama also spy on SCOTUS justices, Congressmen, other Senators and other rich and powerful people? I'll bet he did, because we haven't seen all the unmasking documentation, and Obama took it to his library so no one can see it (at least so he thinks). Further, look at the way Brennan, Clapper, Comey and Rice are disparaging Trump (they protest too much). And look at how all the allegations about Trump are blowing right back into the faces of the Democrats who've shown their MO is to accuse their political opponents, of the illegal activity in which the Democrats are engaged.

They need to go to jail, for a long time, if not be executed for treason.

SgtShaftoe , 4 minutes ago link

Did Obama spy on SCOTUS justices, et al? - Yes. Look up project HAMR or "Hammer". MI5/6 was spying on all Americans comms to circumvent legal frameworks (5 eyes). Google is now fully Chinese intelligence - TREASON. It's coming and it's gonna blow most people's minds.

dcmbuffy , 10 minutes ago link

Just the minute the FBI begins making recommendations on what should be done with its information, it becomes a Gestapo.

J. Edgar Hoover

i at least agree with him on this one thought.

peippe , 9 minutes ago link

you realize J.Edgar probably said the above with a smile on his face.

Playtime's Over , 8 minutes ago link

been going on for longer than Obongo, but he put an inner cooled turbo on it.

radar99 , 13 minutes ago link

it all started with Obama. Time to investigate him and hang him for treason

SgtShaftoe , 8 minutes ago link

It started a very long time ago. 1913 was a notable date, so was JFK's assassination. So was 9/11. So was Operation Paperclip. These monsters have been slithering around a while. Now it's time for them to go bye-bye. Dark to Light. Execute.

Indelible Scars , 13 minutes ago link

B-B-But Nadler said...

JaxPavan , 14 minutes ago link

This goes back to Obama asking MI6 to surveil Trump and his campaign, and to continue it past the inauguration.

JaxPavan , 13 minutes ago link

correction: GCHQ

JaxPavan , 6 minutes ago link

Comey is just the political class operative who they brought in to save Scooter Libby's butt in the Valerie Flame leak. Then he got a seven figure job as a reward at a hedge fund (with no prior experience in the financial industry). Then, they took him off the bench to be FBI director.

The larger problem is that the "five eyes" system is broken in favor of British surveillance and interference in our elections, and, the Patriot Act practice of "masking" is a complete violation of the fourth amendment and a fraud. From a fourth amendment analysis, it's like letting the police search everyone's house every day as long as they don't look at the name on the address.

That our broken secrecy system effectively legalized Watergate under Obama and the "five eyes" is the real problem that needs fixing.

Stainless Steel Rat , 1 hour ago link

Three Things We Know For Sure

1. Trump did not collude with Russia

2. Mueller was sent on a witch hunt

3. Somebody's going under the bus

If not Comey, then who?

StiffLittleFinger , 39 minutes ago link

“I executed the session exactly as planned,”* Comey reported back to his “sensitive matter team.”

*in the meeting with Obama the day before

Equinox7 , 45 minutes ago link

This investigation would explain why Comey, Brennan, and other members of Barry Obama's regime are very quiet, while Congressional Democrats are freaking out. The end of the Deep State is starting.

valerie24 , 21 minutes ago link

Let’s hope so. The clock is ticking and this needs to happen by early 2020 or it won’t happen at all.

carbonmutant , 1 hour ago link

Are Comey's phones being bugged?

punchasocialist , 43 minutes ago link

Does the DOJ investigate British agents? Serious question.

[Jul 22, 2019] Russians believe that the Skripal affair has been much more damaging to HMG than it has to Russia

Jul 22, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Noirette , Jul 22 2019 15:15 utc | 154

....Russians believe that the Skripal affair has been much more damaging to HMG than it has to Russia, and have no interest in removing the mystery surrounding it - the more people delve, the more it stinks. Montreal @ 135 on Skripal thread.

I have heard similar, along the lines 'storm in a tea cup makes the Brits ridiculous',.. Putin knows what went down (or at least what didn't and the rough scenario.)

Remember when VP said in public that he encouraged the two Russians identified as 'culprits' (tourists in Salisbury..) to come forward - they promtly did so, correctly figuring that this was a protection guarantee for them. They hated, were afraid, to do it, and set stupid conditions with the Head of RT, trying to limit personal image damage. She couldn't refuse because of VP's advice.

Putin could publicly wonder why Britain is keeping them incommunicado. What are the Brits hiding? Even a devoted Empire supporter would have to agree that it is most peculiar. Yet Putin claims to have no knowledge on the subject, which is almost certainly untrue. Rob 136 that thread.

The Russians have made, and make, regular requests to have access to the Skripals via the usual channels, int'l etc. (+ by Red Cross if need be.) They are turned down everytime, but the situation is complex, as GB has various 'excuses' to hand: -> for protection of Skripals -> Yulia has stated she does not want -> Sergei is a swapped spy and etc. etc. (briefly and not 'legal' terms.) Conventional moves from the Russian side.

Putin has strenuously stated that traitors are the vilest scum, in harmony imho with his general principles as presented to the public, so why should he do SFA to help, or stand by, Sergei, who sold his country's 'secrets' for paltry sums and privileges .. (and Yulia, who is most likely? involved somehow? - maybe not .. -) On the other hand, Sergei did his time, has been pardoned, can do as he likes, where is the problem, the rule of law is such .. (alaff at 137 that thread makes that point forcibly..)

> The Russians sneer at this crazed hyped-up scenario of Novichok poisoning, re. some minor incident, rightly so, imho. Which does NOT mean the Skripals weren't targeted with some 'substance', hospitalized, etc. nor that Dawn Sturgess didn't die, and Charlie survived but has lost his agency and sense, nor that Porton Down was involved somehow.

The Skripals are kept incommunicado because they can't be allowed to speak out about what happened. Clue: nothing to do with Novichok or anything of world importance.

These local minor stories, situations, which may even be fabricated or 'engineered', are cynically upgraded to world-wide-media horrors by pols and the media, to manipulate the plebs with movie-script scenarios they can understand and relate to and take sides on and also at the same time 'be divided' endlessly discussing BS about this that the other and what more etc. etc.

[Jul 21, 2019] Putin Confirms Sergei Skripal Wanted To Go Back To Russia

Notable quotes:
"... Putin now confirms that Skripal was indeed willing to come back to Russia. Oliver Stone thinks Skripal wanted to present something to the press. If Skripal had publicly said that he made up and wrote the Steele dossier, the anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign by the Clinton 'resistance' would have been over. The whole Mueller investigation nonsense would never have happened. ..."
"... The reality probably is thus: The Brits cold-bloodedly poisoned him and his daughter to tar the Russians. Then a straight British fabrication story that holds no water anywhere along the way. They did it, and he had no value to them, so why not? His daughter? She's Russian. Of no use to them. ..."
"... In the scheme of things, it was a trivial act of poisoning with a huge payoff, which they achieved. ..."
"... The Skripals were doped with BZ nerve agent. It is likely that Sergei has been maintained in a near vegetative state with psychotropic drugs since then as a means to keep him in storage. There was no novichok other than the fresh batch made at Porton Down and used to amateurishly spike the sample sent to the OPCW for analysis. ..."
"... The scenario b describes is the most probable of all that I've heard. Spook agencies such as the MI6 and CIA like to think of themselves as thrifty with their assets and thus accomplish multiple objectives with a single operation. They believe themselves to be clever that way. For this reason they would have been unlikely to have doped the Skripals for the sole purpose of implicating Russia. There are any number of other ways that they could have arranged an incident that makes Russia look bad. The operation would have had to serve other purposes as well, and silencing Sergei and preventing his embarrassing return to Russia would be suitable additional purposes. There were likely other objectives within the operation as well such as smoking out leakers. ..."
"... It would be well to remember that in early March last year, about the same time that the Skripals were found collapsed on the park bench in The Maltings shopping centre by Alison McCourt and her award-winning heroic teenage daughter, that the Syrian Arab Army liberated Douma / East Ghouta (or most of that area anyway) near Damascus and captured 300 terrorists. Among the captured fighters were found British and French "military advisors". The British government (and probably likely the French government: do people remember that Moscow also thumped Paris over its role in the Skripal poisoning saga?) needed a diversion from that sorry tale that would have exposed Britain and France's sordid roles in the failed US-led invasion of Syria and the overthrow of Syria's government. ..."
"... It is possible that Skripal, living alone in his house and his pets, and facing a lonely future in Britain after his daughter, the other surviving member of his family, started making wedding arrangements that would have meant fewer visits to Britain to see her father, had contemplated returning to Russia and had made known his wish to a few people he thought he could trust. ..."
"... It might very well be that - unfortunately for the Skripals - Skripal's handler and British government spook agencies were and are as much taken with conspiracy thinking and the conspiracy mind-set as Oliver Stone was (in his interview with Vladimir Putin) and those agencies feared that Skripal was going to spill the beans about his (possible) involvement in the Steele dossier and implicate them. ..."
"... Thanks b, a timely post. I sometimes suspect that the outing of Integrity Initiative and Institute for Statecraft was a Russian payback for the defaming antics perpetrated by the MI6 morons. I have no proof as it was meticulously anonymous. Its a comforting thought here in the gaslit studio of humanity. ..."
"... Putin states now openly it helped "to cause a scandal" supposedly for various geopolitical reasons. ..."
"... As I understood it, Sergei Skripal was more mercenary than spook, in the business of selling info because he could profit from it. In other words, more Aldrich Ames or Hanssen than Philby. ..."
"... He may have overplayed his hand - obviously, his plans leaked out - and UK intelligence (perhaps with the US involved) decided to stage the incident. Or perhaps - as is possible with someone who'll play both sides - Sergei was the leaker in an attempt to gain more currency with Moscow. ..."
"... The British police knew of the perfume bottle early on. The first theory of the poisoning presented to the public was that Yulia had brought the novichok from Russian in her luggage. There was even speculation that it was in a perfume bottle that Yulia had suddenly decided to open on the bench. (This did not sound plausible at the time as it would not explain how the novichok hit Sergei.) ..."
"... We know the police were all over looking for the missing perfume bottle. They could not find it, because Sergei had already dumped it in the charity bin. Maybe Sergei even told them where he put it, but Charlie had found it before MI6 could recover it. ..."
"... There is no Russian state component in it. Not even a Roque element. The claim is total BS. Short analysis shows, that management of this "case" is entirely in the realm of the UK. ..."
"... A lot of elements of this operation had to be prepared upfront and controlled while the operation is unfolding. It remains open, whether or not the skripals where in on the plot, probably not. But anyone asserting the "Russia did it/novichok" story does lack the sanity to be trusted with state matters. ..."
"... Both from interview transcripts and RT article it's clear that the part P. says he does not believe is that S. has been poisoned by the British services (in response to Stone's question floating such a possibility). ..."
"... if Skripal suspected that the bottle contained something dodgy, wouldn't you think the last place he'd dispose of it would be a charity bin, if he were an intelligent ex-spook? ..."
"... That remark by Putin was actually in response only to the question of whether UK spooks poisoned Skripal to stop him returning to Russia, not about whether Skripal wanted to return: ..."
"... However, since the "agent" found by Swiss was Agent BZ, it might be more interesting to hear what poster 101 has to say about synthesizing BZ... ..."
"... From what I have heard, the Russians believe that the Skripal affair has been much more damaging to HMG than it has to Russia, and have no interest in removing the mystery surrounding it - the more people delve, the more it stinks. ..."
"... As an inhabitant of the UK, I can say that a lot of us were very shocked when the Government was trying to stuff these obvious lies down our throats, and it is what got a few of us onto alternative media - sick to death as we already were of the Brexit poison in the MSM. So a belated thank you to b, and your colleagues, what would we do without you. ..."
"... Btw, just to remind - Boris Berezovsky also was going to come back from UK to Russia, he wrote a letter to Putin. But "suddenly" it happened so that Berezovsky committed a "suicide". We can only guess what he could tell if he returned to Russia. Someone really did not want this information to become known... ..."
"... The presence of HMG nurse on site, and the subsequent Monty Pythom-esque cover up, seems proof enough that the UK had foreknowledge and without question, worked to keep the Russophobia stoked high not only after the incident, but the later killed a UK citizen to continue the incident. Mr. P is being diplomatic. ..."
Jul 21, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Putin Confirms: Sergei Skripal Wanted To Go Back To Russia

Filmmaker Oliver Stone recently interviewed the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. The transcript was published yesterday evening. Most of the interview is about Ukraine. A separate piece will cover that country. There is also a passage about the U.S. election.

But the most interesting bits from Putin are about the Skripal affair.

The British and Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia were impaired by some chemical substance in early March 2018 in Salisbury. Britain blamed the incident on Russia. CIA Director Gina Haspel, a former CIA station chief in London, used fake pictures of the incident to deceive Trump and to push him to kick out 60 Russian diplomats. (The NYT later ran cover for Haspel.)

We have speculated since the very beginning of the Skirpal case that the 'former' spy wanted to go back to Russia. Putin now confirms , to my knowledge for the first time, that this was the case (underline added):

Oliver Stone: What has happened to Skripal? Where is he?

Vladimir Putin: I have no idea. He is a spy, after all. He is always in hiding.

Oliver Stone: They say he was going to come back to Russia. He had some information.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, I have been told that he wants to make a written request to come back.

Oliver Stone: He knew still and he wanted to come back. He had information that he could give to the world press here in Russia.

Vladimir Putin: I doubt it. He has broken the ranks already. What kind of information can he possess?

The information Sergei Skripal possessed might have been related to the U.S. election and the Steele dossier which alleged that Russia had dirt on Trump. On March 8 2018, only a few days after the Sergei and Julia Skripal were allegedly poisoned, we discussed the connection in our first post on the Skripal affair :

[Christopher] Steele was an MI6 undercover agent in Moscow around the time when Skripal was recruited and handed Russian secrets over to the MI6. He [later] ran the MI6 Russia desk so anything about Skripal will have passed through him. It is very likely that they personally knew each other. Pablo Miller, who worked for Steele's private company [Orbis], lived in the same town as Skripal and they seems to have been friends since Miller had recruited him. Miller or someone else attempted to cover up the connection to Steele by editing his LinkedIn entry.

Here are some question:

  • Did Skripal help Steele to make up the "dossier" about Trump?
  • Were Skripal's old connections used to contact other people in Russia to ask about Trump dirt?
  • Did Skripal threaten to talk about this?

If there is a connection between the dossier and Skripal, which seems very likely to me, then there are a number of people and organizations with potential motives to kill him. Lots of shady folks and officials on both sides of the Atlantic were involved in creating and running the anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign. There are several investigations and some very dirty laundry might one day come to light. Removing Skripal while putting the blame on Russia looks like a convenient way to get rid of a potential witness.

The British government issued a D-Notice which prohibited the British press from further mentioning Pablo Miller.

We also speculated that Skripal wanted to go back to Russia:

The most curious point in the affair though is the visit of the daughter. She had just come from Moscow to visit her lonely father when both were poisoned in a rather sensational way. There must be some reason why she was involved in this.

  • Did she have a bad message for him?
  • Did they both decide that suicide was the only way out?
  • Was locally bought Fentanyl involved as the local press had reported?

or

  • Was the lonely old man Sergej Skripal preparing to go back to his homeland Russia?
  • Did he offer a some kind of "gift" as apology to the Russian government that his trusted daughter would take to Moscow?
  • Did someone find out and stop the transfer?

The above questions are all highly speculative. But the connection between Steele and Skripal is way too deep to be irrelevant here. It certainly deserves more digging.

Putin now confirms that Skripal was indeed willing to come back to Russia. Oliver Stone thinks Skripal wanted to present something to the press. If Skripal had publicly said that he made up and wrote the Steele dossier, the anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign by the Clinton 'resistance' would have been over. The whole Mueller investigation nonsense would never have happened.

Pablo Miller, the British spy, also appeared in the papers of the shady Integrity Initiative :

There is additional suspicion that the Integrity Initiative, whose primary function is to stoke Russophobia, was one of the brains behind the Skripal incident.

The Initiative was also involved in the Steele dossier and the russophobic anti-Trump campaign. Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow, is employed by the Institute for Statecraft , the shadowy parent organization of the Integrity Initiative funded by the Ministry of Defense and Foreign Office. It was Andrew Wood who helped to disseminate the Steele dossier to U.S. Senator John McCain. McCain then gave the dossier to FBI Director James Comey. The FBI used the dossier first to get FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, and, after Comey was fired, to launch a counter-intelligence investigation (section 3) against Trump himself.

Here is a theory how all this may come together. Back in 2015 the Institute of Statecraft and its russophobic director Colonel Donnelly discussed how to increase sanctions on Russia. In 2016 the Steele dossier was created in an attempt to connect Trump to Russia. Steele's colleague Pablo Miller and his spy Sergei Skripal were quite likely involved in creating the dossier. The dossier was disseminated with the help of Donnelly's Institute of Statecraft .

For some reason the Skripals had to be taken out. Sergei Skripal probably threatened to spill the beans about the dossier after it became public. The highly scripted 'Novichok' incident in Salisbury was staged to remove Skripal and to smear Russia with an alleged murder attempt. Colonel McCourt, the trusted army nurse, was asked to help on the scene. After the Skripal incident, and with no evidence shown, Russia was blamed and massive sanctions followed. The Integrity Initiative , the propaganda arm of the Institute of Statecraft , analyzes the media results of the Skripal affair and continues to stoke the anti-Russia campaign.

It might be possible that Steele's 'dirty dossier', the Skripal case and the Integrity Initiative operation are unrelated. But that chance for that now tends towards zero.

The weak part of that theory was always that we did not know for sure if Sergei Skripal really wanted to go back to Russia. We now know that this was the case. Oliver Stone seems to know that Skripal wanted to go public about something. That makes the theory fit even better.

Putin does not believe that the Skripals were poisoned to kill them:

Oliver Stone: Who poisoned him? They say English secret services did not want Sergei Skripal to come back to Russia?

Vladimir Putin: To be honest, I do not quite believe this. I do not believe this is the case.

Oliver Stone: Makes sense. You do not agree with me?

Vladimir Putin: If they had wanted to poison him, they would have done so.

Oliver Stone: Ok, that makes sense. I don't know. Who did then?

Vladimir Putin: After all, this is not a hard thing to do in today's world. In fact, a fraction of a milligram would have been enough to do the job. And if they had him in their hands, there was nothing complicated about it. No, this does not make sense. Maybe they just wanted to provoke a scandal.

Oliver Stone: I think it is more complicated. You know, you think I am much too much of a conspiracy guy.

Vladimir Putin: I do not believe this.

Oliver Stone: I have seen things. I do.

Vladimir Putin: You should not.

When and where will the Oliver Stone documentary about the Skripal affair have its premiere?

---
Previous Moon of Alabama posts on the Skripal case:

Zanon , Jul 20 2019 17:04 utc | 1

Doubt that, Skripal's enemies is in Russia, Putin have earlier stated Skripal was a traitor and should be treated as such. Why Skripal would go Russia after he deliberately moved out of Russia after an assault most likely carried out by someone in Russia, that makes no sense.
DG , Jul 20 2019 17:11 utc | 3
"Maybe they just wanted to provoke a scandal." ... he is right
bjd , Jul 20 2019 17:21 utc | 4
Ukraine.
CD Waller , Jul 20 2019 17:28 utc | 5
Zanon,

On what do base your conclusion that the Skripals were most likely poisoned by someone in Russia?

semiconscious , Jul 20 2019 17:37 utc | 6
@3

this sounds like the most straight-forward explanation to me, as well...

b , Jul 20 2019 17:46 utc | 7
@Zanon @1

Doubt that, Skripal's enemies is in Russia, Putin have earlier stated Skripal was a traitor and should be treated as such. Why Skripal would go Russia after he deliberately moved out of Russia after an assault most likely carried out by someone in Russia, that makes no sense.

Skripal was caught in Russia when he spied for the Brits. He went to jail for five or so years. Then the Brits wanted to exchange him for a Russian agent they (or the U.S.) had caught. Skripal was released from jail for having served most his time and exchanged. Russia has no more interest in persecuting him. Skripal did not 'deliberately move out of Russia'. There was no assault by Russia on him.

padre , Jul 20 2019 17:50 utc | 8
Zanon you statement it typical misinformation, you took only a part of Putin statement!Yes, he said that, but he also said, that he already served his time for that so he is of no interest to the authorities!
jayc , Jul 20 2019 18:10 utc | 10
It's been a full year now since Yulia's last (controlled) appearance to the public. The notion that the Skripals are in some kind of "witness protection program" has been suggested but never confirmed. There's no indication as to what they may have been witness to, let alone any statement of fact from them at all regarding the Salsbury events. This is highly unusual since the UK government made such a high-profile international incident of it all. Is Putin asked of the apparent forced disappearance of a Russian citizen (Yulia Skripal)?
elkern , Jul 20 2019 18:14 utc | 12
This adds some weight to the theory that the two Russian "tourists" were delivering something (paperwork? fake passports? ) that Skripal wanted, not trying to kill him. Or, perhaps, they picked up something FROM Skripal?

The sentence where Putin confirms Stone's idea that Skripal wanted to go back to Russia is oddly stated:

"Yes, I have been told that he wants to make a written request to come back."

1. Putin used present tense: Skripal "wants", rather than "wanted". Doesn't that imply some communication since the "incident"?
2. The bit about the "written request" part is way more specific than I would have expected. It sounds like Skripal wasn't just vaguely dreaming about going back to Mother Russia, but was taking steps to do so. Were the "tourists" delivering the proper bureaucratic Form that Skripal would need to fill out?

I may be reading way to much into this - it could just be idiosyncratic aspects of Putin speaking in English, or bad translation.

Red Ryder , Jul 20 2019 18:25 utc | 14
Who would not poison him and his daughter? The Russians. If he wanted to return, he would have to possess information that was worth taking him back and letting him live out his life in peace.
Would the crap Trump wanted to know be that infrmation?

He was being handled by Mi6 and knew he had no way to communicate with the Russians.
He needed his daughter to cut a deal.

The Brits could have easily pierced Skirpal's communication with his daughter (even if it was a whisper in her ear).
Would he risk his life and his daughter's life for such a long-shot 'deal'?

And the foundation question in all this is "Did Skirpal work on the Steele Dossier, and what did he contribute to that document?"

It's all a MacGuffin.

The reality probably is thus: The Brits cold-bloodedly poisoned him and his daughter to tar the Russians. Then a straight British fabrication story that holds no water anywhere along the way. They did it, and he had no value to them, so why not? His daughter? She's Russian. Of no use to them.

In the scheme of things, it was a trivial act of poisoning with a huge payoff, which they achieved.

Highly Likely it was a dirty trick by the Russophobic Brits. Nothing more. Sloppy Mi6 poisoning.

Mina , Jul 20 2019 18:29 utc | 15
He speaks in the present, not in the past. And says 'he is a spy' meaning the guy kept working for the Brits in the recent years. The Skripal affair was possibly used by May when she was cornered during the Brexit negotiation. No doubt it had other effects as well, such as forbidding any EU deal with the Russians over Syria.
DontBelieveEitherPr. , Jul 20 2019 18:46 utc | 19
Mina: Good catch.. IMHO all our speculations are futile anyway at this point. BOTH sides DO NOT want to know us the whole truth. Only time will tell, when those people directly involve actually talk and present hard evidence.
DontBelieveEitherPr. , Jul 20 2019 18:49 utc | 21
Addition: I would asume the Interview will be worth a watch anyway. The "Putin Interviews" makes for an interesting watch.Though stone seems sometimes more taken away by his own world view and narrative. But he has his hearth in the right place i assume, and provides some insights to western mass media watchers that they would otherwise never get.
DG , Jul 20 2019 18:53 utc | 23
There was no poisoning ... nobody died of Novichok ... Skripal and his daughter are alive and well ... the incident was staged ... it was a kabuki piece of anti - Russia malarkey poorly executed
Russ , Jul 20 2019 18:57 utc | 24
If Skripal had publicly said that he made up and wrote the Steele dossier, the anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign by the Clinton 'resistance' would have been over. The whole Mueller investigation nonsense would never have happened.

I doubt that. The Russiagate-mongers have always been totally proof against any and all evidence of reality, from day one to today. In this case they would've just said he was lying, either to suck up to Putin and/or because Putin threatened him.

et Al , Jul 20 2019 19:01 utc | 25
Boris Berezovsky wanted to return to Russia too...
Ghost Ship , Jul 20 2019 19:05 utc | 26
Why has Skripal never given a public interview? Because he's dead? Nah, the idiots in the Conservative government would have milked that dry. My best guess is that the British government know that he'll say something very damaging to the Conservative government and that can't be allowed to happen. What that something could be can only be guessed at, but it could be that the Steele Report was authorised and approved by the Conservative government.
gzon , Jul 20 2019 19:19 utc | 29
This is one event I get nowhere with. In fact the only piece of information that gives me any info that I feel credible is how convinced a UK ambassador I am familiar with was about Russia being behind it, not by details given in person to me but just how they went about in reaction. There are ambassadors and ambassadors, and this one being a nicer person, quite meticulous, and not one to purposefully lie. That proves nothing though :( .

Did they move to the US in the end ?

Zanon , Jul 20 2019 19:45 utc | 33
Oliver stone is already attacked by liberals in the media:

"Oliver stone's latest piece of pro-putin-propaganda may be his most shameless move yet"
https://www.thedailybeast.com/revealing-ukraine-oliver-stones-latest-piece-of-pro-putin-propaganda-may-be-his-most-shameless-move-yet

and second article startts with:

"Filmmaker and conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone has made no secret of his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but now he has taken it to a whole new level by trying to make him his 22-year-old daughter's godfather. "

https://www.yahoo.com/news/oliver-stone-asks-vladimir-putin-031303288.html

somebody

Oliver stone is not a journalist, he asks questions he want to get exposure, is hidden in the western media.

Rob , Jul 20 2019 19:46 utc | 35
So, the question remains: Where in the world are the Skripals at this very moment? I do not believe that Putin does not know the answer, but for reasons of his own, he is keeping it to himself. Possibly, he wants the whole affair to disappear quietly down the memory hole. Of course, the story may return to the public eye someday. Sort of like a cold-case murder that finally gets solved.
ben , Jul 20 2019 19:52 utc | 36
@33 said;"Oliver stone is already attacked by liberals in the media:"

These are not "liberals", they are pretend liberals. MSM personnel are totally CORPORATE.

Their job is to protect the MIC's profits, and as such, hating RUSSIA funnels more $ in to
the system.

james , Jul 20 2019 19:56 utc | 38
@35 rob.... the skripals are being frozen out by the same means at the uk's D-notice... do the math.. it is very clear.. it has nothing to do with putin, in fact they need to keep skripals out of the picture forever, or until that is way past it's by use date - 30 years??
Michael Droy , Jul 20 2019 20:13 utc | 40
I don't think the Putin statement makes any difference. It confirms the Theory that the Russians did it equally as well as it confirms that the Brits or Americans did it.
MRD applies.
And it won't convince anyone either.

Whereas Chief Nursing Officer (Army): Colonel Alison McCourt OBE ARRC QHN L/QARANC, has pretty much convinced everyone something was dodgy about the affair. That and the ducks and most recently "the Antidote" that saved Charlie Rowley's life and just happened to be carried by the ambulance staff that arrived at his door. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jul/08/revealed-anti-nerve-agent-drug-was-used-for-first-time-in-uk-to-save-novichok-victim

And of course the "believe 10 incredible things before breakfast" claims in the straits of Hormuz this month. We are getting close to the point where May or Trump is going to flat out call their own intelligence services liars and creators of false flags.

William Gruff , Jul 20 2019 20:17 utc | 43
The Skripals were doped with BZ nerve agent. It is likely that Sergei has been maintained in a near vegetative state with psychotropic drugs since then as a means to keep him in storage. There was no novichok other than the fresh batch made at Porton Down and used to amateurishly spike the sample sent to the OPCW for analysis.

Putin refers to Sergei being a spy in the present tense since Putin knows that once someone is a spook they are always a spook. It is not a career one can retire from.

The scenario b describes is the most probable of all that I've heard. Spook agencies such as the MI6 and CIA like to think of themselves as thrifty with their assets and thus accomplish multiple objectives with a single operation. They believe themselves to be clever that way. For this reason they would have been unlikely to have doped the Skripals for the sole purpose of implicating Russia. There are any number of other ways that they could have arranged an incident that makes Russia look bad. The operation would have had to serve other purposes as well, and silencing Sergei and preventing his embarrassing return to Russia would be suitable additional purposes. There were likely other objectives within the operation as well such as smoking out leakers.

Do feel pity for the Atlantic Council trolls who are tasked with trying to subtly reinforce the nonsense novichok narrative. Theirs is not an easy job.

somebody , Jul 20 2019 20:18 utc | 44
add to 32

This here, by the way, was the rumour that Skripal wrote a letter to Putin asking to return .

Spread by the Guardian and the BBC.

The former Russian intelligence officer, who came to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap, regretted being a double agent and wanted to visit his family, his friend Vladimir Timoshkov told the BBC.

So HMG was embarrassed they could not protect their spy?

William Gruff , Jul 20 2019 20:29 utc | 45
As for Putin's responses to Stone being more ambiguous than you would like, please consider Putin's position. He is trying to be diplomatic and is unlikely to come out and make blunt accusations even if he is certain about them beyond any shadow of doubt. He needs to leave his "partners" in Britain and the US the wiggle room to climb down from their nonsense if they come to their senses. Furthermore, if he gives signals that Russia is willing to repatriate the Skripals then that could sign the Skripals' death warrant. Best for the Skripals if the British and Americans feel confident that the Skripals are securely pinned down.

You have to be careful what you say when dealing with psychopaths that you don't trigger them into violence with a misplaced word.

harry , Jul 20 2019 20:37 utc | 46
I thought this made a lot of sense https://southfront.org/michael-antony-the-alternative-skripal-narrative/
Jen , Jul 20 2019 21:13 utc | 50
It would be well to remember that in early March last year, about the same time that the Skripals were found collapsed on the park bench in The Maltings shopping centre by Alison McCourt and her award-winning heroic teenage daughter, that the Syrian Arab Army liberated Douma / East Ghouta (or most of that area anyway) near Damascus and captured 300 terrorists. Among the captured fighters were found British and French "military advisors". The British government (and probably likely the French government: do people remember that Moscow also thumped Paris over its role in the Skripal poisoning saga?) needed a diversion from that sorry tale that would have exposed Britain and France's sordid roles in the failed US-led invasion of Syria and the overthrow of Syria's government.

At the same time a military exercise in which troops apparently rehearsed a poisoning incident had just been completed in the Salisbury / Porton Down area. McCourt had taken part in that exercise.

It is possible that Skripal, living alone in his house and his pets, and facing a lonely future in Britain after his daughter, the other surviving member of his family, started making wedding arrangements that would have meant fewer visits to Britain to see her father, had contemplated returning to Russia and had made known his wish to a few people he thought he could trust. But whether he had information about his role (or no role) in cooking up the stories in the Steele dossier that Oliver Stone suggested he had, that he was planning to tell the Kremlin, is another thing. It might very well be that - unfortunately for the Skripals - Skripal's handler and British government spook agencies were and are as much taken with conspiracy thinking and the conspiracy mind-set as Oliver Stone was (in his interview with Vladimir Putin) and those agencies feared that Skripal was going to spill the beans about his (possible) involvement in the Steele dossier and implicate them.

These people are spies after all, and once a spook, always a spook. And spooks also look for a scheme that can hit two (and more) birds with the one stone; any consequences that arise, such as what to tell the public, can be dealt with later. Hence, the poisoning incident, that can be blamed on Russia and justify further sanctioning and arms build-up and expenditures (benefiting then PM Theresa May's husband financially), that deflects attention away from what just happened in Syria, and which removes someone from (possibly) telling the truth about supposed Russian involvement in the 2016 US Presidential elections, was a concoction too good to pass up.

uncle tungsten , Jul 20 2019 21:30 utc | 53
Thanks b, a timely post. I sometimes suspect that the outing of Integrity Initiative and Institute for Statecraft was a Russian payback for the defaming antics perpetrated by the MI6 morons. I have no proof as it was meticulously anonymous. Its a comforting thought here in the gaslit studio of humanity.

I had a good laugh at one poster who had it on good authority from a trustworthy ambassador that the Skripals are in USA. The ambassadors of the world are usually well versed in gaslighting. More on that subject at Corbet Report or Thomas Sheridan.

The big problem with Skripals etc was that they would reveal the complicity of the UK in developing the Steele dirty dossier to get Hillary the vulgar elected. They backed the wrong team and got caught playing dirty.

Mike-O , Jul 20 2019 21:49 utc | 55
Finding ambiguity or evasiveness in President Putin's answers to Skripal-related questions is not surprising - after all he knows that anything he says will automatically be discredited by the MSM echo chambers. By keeping his answers open-ended he challenges the western public to ask questions and find their own answers. Sadly, few will read or view with the open minds often found here at MoA.
Don Karlos , Jul 20 2019 22:07 utc | 58
Russian and English transcripts are not identical. In the Russian version, they both speak in the past sense, literally:

-It WAS said, that he would return to Russia, that he has some information
-Yes, I WAS told, he wants to write a paper, ask to return
-It WAS said that he intendED to return here and to provide some information to the press

From grammar, that was all said in the past, and was accurate as of that past moment (: the present tense is used after "that")

The source was not explained by either of them (...and indeed FWIW it reminds of Berezovsky...)

gzon , Jul 20 2019 22:08 utc | 59
From an establishment mouthpiece

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sergei-and-yulia-skripal-offered-new-identities-with-cia-help-ztf896rnj

but it makes sense because they would be recognised everywhere in UK.

I don't get the insinuation from you Uncle T, I mean that is not what I said if it was me you meant. Same goes for WG insinuating there are trolls on board, it puts an air of uncertainty amongst commentators like they have to check what they say not to be called troll, and that is trolling. Why not just criticise a commentator directly and allow the discussion to continue from that instead if you are serious, of setting the whole board on edge ?

karlof1 , Jul 20 2019 22:22 utc | 60
When I linked to the Putin-Stone transcript yesterday on the open thread, I purposely omitted the Skripal discussion and posted the bit about American culture. I did so because of its convoluted nature, as many have noted. I read it 3-4 times and I still couldn't make sense of it via my usual methods of discourse analysis. In fact, the entire transcript is a series of convolutions. It would be better to see the filmed original and go from there. Of course, the Kremlin seemed okay with the transcript's form otherwise it wouldn't have been published.

As for the kidnapping of the Skripals by the UK government, IMO that's now the real scandal, but there seems no interest in it as BigLie Media has dumped the affair down its memory hole. And the truth of the matter is yet another reason why the UK's Deep State cannot allow Corbyn to gain power. Somehow, the UK citizenry must oust the Tories and Blairites, install Corbyn, and regain control over their destiny. Until that happens, the Skripals's fate and so much more will remain unanswered.

karlof1 , Jul 20 2019 22:54 utc | 61
As for the UK-sponsored Lie Machines, Kit Klarenberg continues his excellent work uncovering their schemes and continues to get his reporting published by Sputnik , as with the item linked within the above tweet:

"A reminder of when Integrity Initiative's bff @haynesdeborah, who'd been writing about #Skripal on an almost daily basis for over a year, believed an NYT story that totally contradicted the official Salisbury narrative and her own reporting on the subject."

Kit's just one of a small army of excellent online investigators worthy of following on Twitter and their publishing outlets.

John Dowser , Jul 20 2019 23:28 utc | 64
"For some reason the Skripals had to be taken out".

Is in this case perhaps not the simplest provided reason not also the best candidate? Skripal f#@&ed his old KGB buddies and he got payed back while of course, for dual use purposes, Putin states now openly it helped "to cause a scandal" supposedly for various geopolitical reasons. Russia already see itself at war, it's not "hoping".

Putin 2010" "Traitors will kick the bucket, believe me. Those other folks betrayed their friends, their brother in arms" and "Whatever they got in exchange for it, those 30 pieces of silver they were given, they will choke on them."

Putin 2019 (FT interview)" "Treason is the gravest crime possible and traitors must be punished. I am not saying that the Salisbury incident is the way to do it. Not at all. But traitors must be punished."

Now do we *really* need a complex theory when Putin calls it openly "the gravest crime possible"? Of course, some parties could have used this tension but sometimes we should not look for complexity when simpler solutions are there: motive, some evidence, perpetrator and murder weapon. Just not very *refined* but efficiency in terms of killing was perhaps not even the point being made. What is being demonstrated is willingness and means.

Evelyn , Jul 20 2019 23:44 utc | 65
Vladimir Putin : Is there an American culture?

GOOD QUESTION!

Lochearn , Jul 20 2019 23:45 utc | 67
Oliver Stone. Well, at least he tries. His most brilliant film, in my opinion, was Natural Born killers which was Kubrikesque as a sort of new take on A Clockwork Orange. But being a great film director does not make you a great researcher and analyst.

Putin most definitely has a sense of humour and I think that's what keeps him going.

... ... ...

Ort , Jul 21 2019 0:23 utc | 68
Just to throw it into the bubbling pot, there was that single report in May that Sergei Skripal, like ET, had finally phoned home. IIRC, earlier (c. March or April) there was a story with an audio clip about a telephone call between Yulia and her cousin in Russia.

I'm providing this link to a Telegraph article about the Sergei call just as a starting point for anyone who may be curious. I certainly can't vouch for the Telegraph's veracity, and of course have no rational way to assess the account's authenticity and significance.

"Sergei Skripal heard for the first time since poisoning in phone call, relatives say"

True or not, like every other "development" in this riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma of l'affaire Skripal, it raises far more questions than it answers.

FWIW, I think Putin's intellect and statesmanship is impressive. But he's undoubtedly a bit of a Cheshire Cat.

karlof1 , Jul 21 2019 0:28 utc | 69
Now here's a comment about US society that's more complex than Putin's:

"... what is actually the American essence: a society & economy built on pervasive and persistent structural racism."

Hard to fault that opinion. The overall context it was made in the reader can discover.

Rely , Jul 21 2019 0:54 utc | 71
As I understood it, Sergei Skripal was more mercenary than spook, in the business of selling info because he could profit from it. In other words, more Aldrich Ames or Hanssen than Philby.

He was selling info to MI6 in exchange for cash and a holiday home in Spain. He got caught, spent some time in jail and Russia swapped him because there was no further damage he could do.

It was probably that same mercenary spirit that made him want to go back and he would have known he'd have to make his wares really appealing to Moscow to let him back in. I'd think the Steele dossier and Russiagate seemed like a perfect opportunity for him to state - or perhaps -- overstate the importance of his information.

He may have overplayed his hand - obviously, his plans leaked out - and UK intelligence (perhaps with the US involved) decided to stage the incident. Or perhaps - as is possible with someone who'll play both sides - Sergei was the leaker in an attempt to gain more currency with Moscow.

I'd think that Putin knows exactly what went on and this would also explain why Russia hasn't been making a stink about one of their citizens - Yulia - being held prisoner/hostage in the UK for well over a year.

Petri Krohn , Jul 21 2019 2:07 utc | 72
Did Sergei Skripal dump the perfume bottle?

Michael Antony provides the best explanation for how the Nina Ricci box ended up in the charity box.

The Alternative Skripal Narrative - Michael Antony, The Saker Blog , February 17, 2019

Let's take the famous Nina Ricci perfume bottle, laced with novichok, which was found in a rubbish bin or charity bin by a homeless man and given weeks later to his woman friend, who tragically died after spraying it on her wrist. The police/MI6 narrative is that this perfume bottle was used to transport the novichok from Russia in the baggage of one of the alleged GRU men caught on CCTV in Salisbury. The novichok was then sprayed on the door handle of the Skripals' house. The assassins then callously threw away the bottle (which they knew contained enough novichok to kill more people) in a dustbin or charity bin, demonstrating their indifference to loss of life as well as their indifference to leaving clues all over the place. There are problems with this narrative.

The homeless man claimed he had found the perfume bottle still in its box sealed in cellophane, proof it was not reopened after it had been laced with novichok and professionally repackaged. The bottle could not therefore have been used (as claimed) to spray the novichok on the doorknob, or the cellophane seal would have been broken. Assassins far from home don't usually carry around cellophane-wrapping machines to repackage opened perfume bottles, especially when they are just going to chuck them in the bin. Nor would they take the risk, having fitted the separate spray nozzle onto the bottle and sprayed the doorknob, of disassembling it again to put it back in the box, knowing that a drop on their skin would kill them. And where would they perform this delicate operation? On the street? This poisoned perfume bottle was therefore never reopened, never used and it affected nobody until it ended up in the hands of the homeless man. So who or what was it intended for?

Ladies' perfume bottles are normally intended for women. How many women are there in this story? Only one. The only possible explanation for the existence of this unopened, unused bottle of perfume laced with novichok is that it was a poisoned gift meant for Yulia Skripal. Why didn't she open it? Because she had a spy father who took one look at it and said: "Don't touch it!"

So here is the alternative narrative. MI6 had the bright idea of putting novichok in a Nina Ricci perfume bottle and sending it as a birthday present to Yulia Skripal at her father's house. Her birthday was on 17th March, but the present was probably delivered on the 3rd, the day she arrived, so as to nip their escape plan in the bud. It was meant to seem like a present from her family or boyfriend. No doubt the parcel had Russian stamps on it, designed to frame the Russian state when the Skripals were found dead in their house with an open perfume bottle in Yulia's hands. Unfortunately for MI6, Sergei took one look at this Nina Ricci perfume bottle and his spy instincts smelled danger. He refused to open it, but instead went for a long walk with it and put it in a rubbish bin or charity bin half-way across town. There it was found by the homeless man and given to his woman friend, a victim of MI6's murderous callousness. Even after MI6 knew it had gone missing, they did not warn the public to beware of picking up a Nina Ricci perfume bottle because they didn't want to give themselves away as the assassins.

The British police knew of the perfume bottle early on. The first theory of the poisoning presented to the public was that Yulia had brought the novichok from Russian in her luggage. There was even speculation that it was in a perfume bottle that Yulia had suddenly decided to open on the bench. (This did not sound plausible at the time as it would not explain how the novichok hit Sergei.)

Suitcase spy poisoning plot: nerve agent 'was planted in luggage of Sergei Skripal's daughter' - The Telegraph , March 15, 2018

The nerve agent that poisoned the Russian spy Sergei Skripal was planted in his daughter's suitcase before she left Moscow, intelligence agencies now believe.

Senior sources have told the Telegraph they are convinced the Novichok nerve agent was hidden in the luggage of Yulia Skripal, the double agent's 33-year-old daughter.

They are working on the theory that the toxin was impregnated in an item of clothing or cosmetics or else in a gift that was opened in his house in Salisbury, meaning Miss Skripal was deliberately targeted to get at her father.

We know the police were all over looking for the missing perfume bottle. They could not find it, because Sergei had already dumped it in the charity bin. Maybe Sergei even told them where he put it, but Charlie had found it before MI6 could recover it.

Yeah, Right , Jul 21 2019 3:03 utc | 76
@1 Zanon posits a big ol' pile of tripe.

Zanon: "Doubt that, Skripal's enemies is in Russia, Putin have earlier stated Skripal was a traitor and should be treated as such."

He *was* a traitor, and he *was* treated as such: arrest, trial, conviction, imprisonment.

But business is business. Once the Russians had let him rot away in prison for years then there was still some residual value to be squeezed from him i.e. a spy-swap.

The rules of that game are very well-defined: you agree on the people, you do the swap-over, and then you walk away.

The dude you hand over goes into anonymous retirement, and both sides are content that they have done the right thing by their own.

Zanon: "Why Skripal would go Russia after he deliberately moved out of Russia after an assault most likely carried out by someone in Russia"

Oh, pllllllllllease. That sentence makes no chronological sense.

This is the sequence of events that makes the most sense:
1) Skripal is recruited by Pablo Miller
2) Skripal spies on behalf of the British
3) Skripal is caught and imprisoned by the Russians
4) Skripal is swapped for some Russian spies
5) Skripal "retires" to Salisbury
6) Skripal and Miller concoct the entire "dossier" in a pub, laughing uproariously
7) Skripal sees The Shit Hit The Fan in the USA over that "dossier"
8) Skripal thinks "Oh, crap, this could end badly" and puts out some feelers
9) Skripal's daughter brings a message: Two men are coming in a few days to talk to you, you can trust them, the deal they will propose is that you will be welcome back to Russia if you agree dump on the "dossier" in a press conference.

The two dudes turn up, but no meeting took place because someone else "novichoked" Skripal before he could get to that meeting.

Zanon: ", that makes no sense."

Pig's arse it doesn't. It. Makes. Perfect. Sense.

Skripal was swapped because as far as the Russians were concerned that was all the value he had left to him.

Once he got involved in the "dossier" then his value to the Russians skyrocket i.e. he could blow the lid off "Russiagate", but only if the Russians can get him back to Moscow.

They tried, and they failed. Someone else got to him first.

Yeah, Right , Jul 21 2019 3:17 utc | 77
@49 Zanon "I am not here to post syncopath comments as you do, "

Zanon, baby, you are here for one purpose only: to suggest - time after tedious time - that Vladimir Putin is to blame for everything that happens in this world.

A poisoning in Salisbury? Putin ordered the hit. Israel bombs Syria? That was Putin's idea. Iran is in Syria? Putin has already agreed to get rid of them. Blaming the Russians is your one and only trick.

Yeah, Right , Jul 21 2019 3:23 utc | 78
@65 John Dowser, your argument makes no sense.

Skripal was arrested and spent 5 years in a Russian prison. If "his old KGB buddies" had wanted him dead then that's when he would have been killed.

Why on Earth would they swap him, watch him go into "retirement" in Salisbury, and only then slap their foreheads and shout "Oh, shit, we gosh-darned forgot to kill him. Better send some guys over there and bump him off".

dltravers , Jul 21 2019 4:30 utc | 79
@ William Gruff

Yesterday you posted an interesting heads up about state dept and Atlantic council trolls working here. The context being crowing about the Panamanian deflagging of the Iranian vessel.

They fear this blog that much to commit resources in order to change minds? I an disappointed that Kissinger has not shown up yet. It makes me feel lowly and unimportant.

Even if Putin is perceived to be our enemy having a conversation would make some sense. The West fears that they could not stand in a room with him openly and beat him in a debate. His intellect would outclass them on every level. Minds would be changed and they fear that hence the fear of even having a conversation about him.

This garbage works on many but I have noticed that people do eventually begin to think differently if you softly point things out when the conversation turns that direction. They fear open conversations like this unless they can tightly control and edit.

curious man , Jul 21 2019 6:38 utc | 80
Posted by: Evelyn | Jul 20 2019 23:44 utc | 66

Vladimir Putin: Is there an American culture?

GOOD QUESTION!

ABC News :

"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is warning that Russian agents could seek to further divide Americans by exploiting U.S. passions over whether pineapple belongs on pizza.

It's a cheesy, playful warning -- but it's trying to deliver a serious message. Posted online Wednesday by the department's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the tongue-in-cheek warning aims to help Americans identify and protect against propaganda campaigns from Russia and other foreign adversaries.

After all, the DHS warning says, Russian agents are capable of simultaneously insisting online that "Being anti-pineapple is un-American!" while also pushing out posts saying "Millennials are ruining pizza!""

curious man , Jul 21 2019 7:03 utc | 81
Posted by: Evelyn | Jul 20 2019 23:44 utc | 66

Vladimir Putin: Is there an American culture?

GOOD QUESTION!

Business Insider :

" A recent survey of 3,000 kids found that being a YouTube star was a more sought-after profession than being an astronaut among kids in the US and the United Kingdom.

Children ages 8 to 12 in the US, the UK, and China were recently polled in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, which resulted in the first person to walk on the moon.

Kids in the US and the UK were three times as likely to want to be YouTubers or vloggers as astronauts, while kids in China were more likely to want to be astronauts."

Results of the Harris Poll survey https://tinyurl.com/yybydxhe

Norwegian , Jul 21 2019 7:14 utc | 82
Here's a simple hypothesis: Sergey Skripal was involved with the fabrication of the Steele dossier (we know this). Therefore, he was a risk to the UK government and security services, as well as the US "democrats". Quite possibly Skripal signalled that he wanted to return to Russia, but if he didn't he was still a risk because of what he knew. So TPTB made up the story that the "russians had poisoned the Skripals with Novichok". As always in these cases, it serves more than one purpose. In this case they got rid of the Skripal risk and they could blame Russia again.
Joost , Jul 21 2019 8:04 utc | 84
First Recorded Successful Novichok Synthesis was in 2016 – By Iran, in Cooperation with the OPCW
This has always smelled fishy to me. Why Iran? One of the most sanctioned countries in the world is allowed to make nerve agents, supported by OPCW? Why not some top class western chemical lab like Porton Down?

Could it be that PD already made the stuf but did not want to take credit, just in case it ever proved useful in blaming some Douma-style incident to Russia? But before that happened, everyone and his cat must know what Novichok is and that only Russia can make it. It had to be introduced to the public somehow. And then the wrong President got elected.

Brendan , Jul 21 2019 8:17 utc | 86
@somebody, # 44
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov quickly denied that claim last year: "No. That's not true," https://sputniknews.com/europe/201803241062856023-skripal-letter-putin-return/

I agree with what you said in #32. What Putin might have meant was that he was told the story, not that it was true.

moscowexile , Jul 21 2019 8:43 utc | 88
@ Piotr Berman

I understand Russian and I speak a language with a similar grammar, and I have no idea how to say "he said that he wants" in a way that implies something different than a wish made at the time of speaking ("he wants") or a wish that existed before he spoke ("he wanted"). Implication about wishing after the time of speaking would require some elaboration, you cannot make it by selecting tenses.

In Russian, as I have written above, one reports the tense as used by the person whose action one is reporting. Thus:

"I want to go back to Russia" [Я хочу вернуться в Россию] is reported in Russian literally as: Он сказал, что хочет вернуться в Россию [He said that he wants to go back to Russia], whereas in English, one should say: He said that he wanted to go back to Russia.

However, in Russian, one can add, for example, the term якобы in order to express one's doubts about the veracity of that action which one is reporting:

Он сказал, что хочет, якобы, вернуться в Россию [literally: He said that he, allegedly, wants to go back to Russia].

curious man , Jul 21 2019 9:23 utc | 90
Posted by: Joost | Jul 21 2019 8:04 utc | 95

First Recorded Successful Novichok Synthesis was in 2016 – By Iran,
in Cooperation with the OPCW

This has always smelled fishy to me. Why Iran?

Cornell chemistry professor states 'Novichok so simple to make, many labs could do it' -- The Skwawkbox, 05/04/2018

Dave Collum :

I asserted that any credible organic chemist could make novichok nerve agents. Here is my final exam in my 1st year graduate organic synthesis course. Only one kid of 15 lost any points. Uniquely Russian technology my ass....

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DdvJfIgUwAE6u17.jpg

David B. Collum is a Prof of Organic Chemistry @ Cornell.
somebody , Jul 21 2019 9:25 utc | 91
Posted by: Brendan | Jul 21 2019 8:17 utc | 97

RT clarifies

Stone asked the Russian leader if he believes in the theory that Sergei Skripal wanted to return to Russia and divulge some secrets but was stopped by the British government.

"Honestly, I don't really believe it. I don't believe it," Putin replied.

curious man , Jul 21 2019 9:25 utc | 92
Sorry ...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DdvJfIgUwAE6u17.jpg

curious man , Jul 21 2019 9:46 utc | 95
Files from the Porton Down military laboratory were found in a trash can in Northern London. It's the laboratory where, according to the British authorities, nobody could walk out with the poison on the eve of the Skripal poisoning. Classified documents are a terrorist's dream, according to British intelligence agencies. So, they managed to walk out with them but failed to walk out with the poison?

Political analyst Alexander Nekrasov is now speaking from London. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaee-URe04g

curious man , Jul 21 2019 9:56 utc | 96
Mystery surrounds elusive sanctions on Russia -- The Hill, 07/18/19

The Trump administration has not imposed a second round of sanctions on Russia over the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain more than eight months after telling Congress that Moscow had triggered them.

State Department officials have repeatedly insisted the United States intends to impose new sanctions, which are required under a law passed by Congress in 1991 on eliminating chemical and biological weapons.

But several months have passed without news, and members of Congress say they have heard little from the administration on the topic.

A former government official familiar with the matter told The Hill that the State and Treasury departments finalized a proposed sanctions package by March at the latest, but top officials have yet to sign off.

"Options have been ready to go for several months at this point and senior folks in the administration haven't made the decision or given the green light to roll them out," the former official said.

Bloomberg reported at the end of March that the White House had received the sanctions package and that State and Treasury were waiting for the White House to sign off before they issued the new punishment for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.

The reason for the lack of action is shrouded in mystery. The White House did not offer a comment for this story.

<...>

curious man , Jul 21 2019 10:06 utc | 97
Putin: Why Would Anybody Be Interested in Skripal? He Served His Time For Being Traitor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM4J8zwf7wU
Insane scenario , Jul 21 2019 10:27 utc | 98
C'mon guys, the handling of the case shortly after the event rules out any Russian induced poisoning, circumstantial evidence does not fit a nerve agent. Its an utmost hilarious propaganda narrative. The Russian state orders an attack with an internationally banned weapon of mass destruction on the territory of a Nato member? For late revenge, hurt feelings? Doesn't anybody realize how stupid that sounds? The scenario brought forward, with the perfume bottle, could (thinking opsec) have easily involve thousands of innocent victims. Imagine the opening of the bottle in a mall. There is no Russian state component in it. Not even a Roque element. The claim is total BS. Short analysis shows, that management of this "case" is entirely in the realm of the UK.

The opcw sampling, the coincidental first responder military nurse, Pablo Miller...

A lot of elements of this operation had to be prepared upfront and controlled while the operation is unfolding. It remains open, whether or not the skripals where in on the plot, probably not. But anyone asserting the "Russia did it/novichok" story does lack the sanity to be trusted with state matters.

curious man , Jul 21 2019 10:36 utc | 99
UK: Police threaten to treat the publication of leaked information as criminal -- Reporters Without Borders, July 15, 2019 - Updated on July 16, 2019

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns recent threats made by the London Metropolitan Police to treat the publication of leaked information as a "criminal matter" - marking the latest move to restrict press freedom in the UK in favour of national security.

Following a series of media reports containing details from leaked diplomatic cables preceding the resignation of Sir Kim Darroch from his post as UK Ambassador to the US, the London Metropolitan Police threatened to treat the publication of leaked documents as criminal.

[...] On 12 July, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu stated that "The publication of leaked communications, knowing the damage they have caused or are likely to cause, may also be a criminal matter...I would advise all owners, editors and publishers of social and mainstream media not to publish leaked government documents that may already be in their possession, or which may be offered to them, and to turn them over to the police or give them back to their rightful owner, Her Majesty's Government."

The following day, 13 July, Basu appeared to partially back down, stating that the Met "respects the rights of the media and has no intention of seeking to prevent editors from publishing stories in the public interest in a liberal democracy. The media hold an important role in scrutinising the actions of the state." However, Basu maintained that publication "could also constitute a criminal offence, and one that carries no public interest defence".

<...>

uncle tungsten , Jul 21 2019 10:37 utc | 100
They are most likely in a black site lock up in Swest of England. Life sentence for sure. There are plenty of suitable estates that are probable black sites. Every nation has them I guess for their special prisoners. Julia and Sergei are prisoners of conscience, no habeas corpus in UK.
Don Karlos , Jul 21 2019 10:49 utc | 101
previous page @97 Brendan, @ 102

Both from interview transcripts and RT article it's clear that the part P. says he does not believe is that S. has been poisoned by the British services (in response to Stone's question floating such a possibility).

On 24 March 2018 BBC posted a piecemeal-videoed interview with S. classmate named Vladimir Timoshkov, who said that sometime in 2012 S. called him from London for about 30 minutes, argued that he did not commit treason since his allegiance had been to the USSR, and "wrote to Putin" (timing not provided) asking for full pardon to be able to return to Russia on family grounds. Writing to Putin was denied by Kremlin to BBC, and by Peskov in Russian media the next day.

Exact meaning is unclear. Timoshkov recollection is not very confident, he is not entirely sure about the year when this conversation took place, or the exact wording. It's not impossible that S. only planned to write such letter, not actually wrote it, and that such a possibility is tentatively confirmed by P. (However Stone version is coming back with some 'information', not coming on family grounds).

It is also possible that S. wrote such letter few years earlier, around the time of the spy swap in 2010. He had to write to Pres. Medvedev asking for pardon, at least formally, and it is not impossible that he was retelling some bits from that earlier letter. (Pardon was granted after it was requested).

jen , Jul 21 2019 11:01 utc | 102
Petri Krohn @ 74:

The problem with Michael Antony's explanation is that the charity bin has to remain untouched and unopened or emptied from about 5 March to about 5 July or the first week of July at least. That would be roughly four months from the time Sergei Skripal pops the bottle into the bin to the time Charlie Rowley finds the package and gives it to Dawn Sturgess who then opens the package, applies the perfume to her wrists and promptly keels over.

Plus if Skripal suspected that the bottle contained something dodgy, wouldn't you think the last place he'd dispose of it would be a charity bin, if he were an intelligent ex-spook?

Brendan , Jul 21 2019 11:01 utc | 103
@somebody # 102 ,
RT is mixing two different questions in one sentence: "Stone asked the Russian leader if he believes in the theory that Sergei Skripal wanted to return to Russia and divulge some secrets but was stopped by the British government. "Honestly, I don't really believe it. I don't believe it," Putin replied."

That remark by Putin was actually in response only to the question of whether UK spooks poisoned Skripal to stop him returning to Russia, not about whether Skripal wanted to return:

Oliver Stone: Who poisoned him? They say English secret services did not want Sergei Skripal to come back to Russia?

Vladimir Putin: To be honest, I do not quite believe this. I do not believe this is the case.

John Smith , Jul 21 2019 11:47 utc | 104
b: "Filmmaker Oliver Stone recently interviewed the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. The transcript was published yesterday evening. Most of the interview is about Ukraine. A separate piece will cover that country. There is also a passage about the U.S. election."

The "passage" about Ukraine is no less interesting. For example,

Oliver Stone: I remember you were telling me about the Obama phone call, Obama and you had an agreement that there would be no firing on the last day. And he gave you a promise that he would

Vladimir Putin: You know, while Obama is no longer President, there are certain things we do not discuss in public. At any rate, I can say that the US did not follow through on the agreements that we reached during this phone call [ my emphasis ]. I will stop there without going into detail.

truth seeker , Jul 21 2019 11:52 utc | 106
b: "Filmmaker Oliver Stone recently interviewed the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. The transcript was published yesterday evening. Most of the interview is about Ukraine. A separate piece will cover that country. There is also a passage about the U.S. election."

The "passage" about Ukraine is no less interesting. For example,

Oliver Stone: I remember you were telling me about the Obama phone call, Obama and you had an agreement that there would be no firing on the last day. And he gave you a promise that he would

Vladimir Putin: You know, while Obama is no longer President, there are certain things we do not discuss in public. At any rate, I can say that the US did not follow through on the agreements that we reached during this phone call [ my emphasis ]. I will stop there without going into detail.

Yeah, Right , Jul 21 2019 12:45 utc | 112
@109 Insane scenario "C'mon guys, the handling of the case shortly after the event rules out any Russian induced poisoning, circumstantial evidence does not fit a nerve agent."

I was always puzzled by how inept the British government's pronouncements were following the poisoning of the Skripals.

But once Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov were fingered then the penny dropped.

Here are my two hypotheses:
a) Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov were Russian intelligence officers sent to make contact with Sergei Skripal to parlay a deal.
b) British intelligence knew all about their upcoming visit (perhaps Yulia had been instructed to vouch for them, and was sloppy)

Easy-peasy: poison the Skripals at that park bench, then do some detective work to "discover" that those two weaselly-looking Russians were in Salisbury at the exact some time that Ol' Sergei was keeling over.

Open and shut case, m'lord.

Only the two Russians had left Salisbury (1:50pm) before the Skripals had even entered the Mill Pub (2:20pm). Therefore they could not possibly have attacked Sergei and Yulia at that park bench (4:15pm).

Shit, meet Fan.

Q: What do the Brits do once they find out that they had no fall-guy?
A: Scramble. Improvise. Wave their arms around like demented pigeons.

For starters, keep very quiet about Petrov and Boshirov until it is possible to come up with some way to squeeze them into the narrative.

And, for goodness sake, squash any suggestion that the Skripals had been attacked at that park bench. No, perish the thought, even if it is the obvious conclusion.

Errrr, how about the car! No, that's stupid. The poison was in Zizzi's? No, that doesn't actually help. The ducks... no, get a grip man, that's dumber than the car... ummm.. umm.. umm..

Flunky: What about the doorknob?
Flustered: What?
Flunky: We can claim they smeared the poison on the doorknob.
Flustered: Oh, what the heck. OK, we'll go with that.
Flunky: And Petrov and Boshirov?
Flustered: Yes, yes [waves hand] release their pictures.

These are facts:
a) Petrov and Boshirov were on a train back to London by 2pm
b) Sergei and Yulia were found on that park bench around 4pm
c) The Brits therefore had to come up with a timeline that has the Skripals poisoned well *before* 2pm but only collapsing *after* 4pm.

What we see now is the result of that need i.e. it is an insult to the intelligence, but the only way for the Brits to pin the attack on their pre-planned fall-guys.

truth seeker , Jul 21 2019 12:51 utc | 113
Posted by: Evelyn | Jul 20 2019 23:44 utc | 66

Vladimir Putin: Is there an American culture?

GOOD QUESTION!

Yes, of course, there is.

NHL, NBA, NFL, KFC, McDonald's, hamburgers, hotdogs, coke and other junk food...

panem et circenses!

Joke!

Walter , Jul 21 2019 12:55 utc | 114
@ in re organic chem prof and novowhatever... The Prof is obviously correct, dd simple. There are guys in jails, busted for dope, who could make novowhatever...

However, since the "agent" found by Swiss was Agent BZ, it might be more interesting to hear what poster 101 has to say about synthesizing BZ...

"I asserted that any credible organic chemist could make novichok nerve agents. Here is my final exam in my 1st year graduate organic synthesis course. Only one kid of 15 lost any points. Uniquely Russian technology my ass...."

So, Professor Collum, speak, please, to matter of BZ, as this seems far more interesting and congruent with observations.

Thanks.

William Gruff , Jul 21 2019 13:06 utc | 115
Nothing wrong with paid work being tiring. It lets the employee know they have earned their shekels, or benjamins as the case may be. It helps keep the "impostor syndrome" at bay.

I wonder if Sergei got impostor syndrome when he was writing up his part of the Steele Dossier or if he was just enjoying an opportunity to be creative?

Noirette , Jul 21 2019 14:59 utc | 125
The weak part of that theory was always that we did not know for sure if Sergei Skripal really wanted to go back to Russia.

b top post.

Iirc, Sergei's desire to do so was reported from various sources, Viktoria Skripal (niece) in first place, Yulia perhaps as well. It was just a part of the story for those who were gripped by it, incl. me. Getting the quotes together would take hours, in any case they might be contested, be merely some 'option', etc.

Makes sense: his wife and son had died, his (one guesses beloved) daughter was established in Russia, he never adapted except superficially, was never successful, in GB. (i can't speak to steele dossier etc.)

Sergei holding Yulia post birth: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43353178

Guardian, by Luke Harding, published an article stating that Sergei did not at first believe that Russia 'poisoned him' - parts ring very true, and are counter to the MSM narrative.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/02/sergei-skripal-initially-did-not-believe-russia-tried-to-kill-him-book

Sergei is alive (I tend to believe that), just as Yulia said in her last phone call.

Sergei called Viktoria (niece) who is living with and taking care of his mother, May 2019.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/23/sergei-skripal-heard-first-time-since-poisoning-phone-call-relatives/

Putin knows pretty much what happened but won't say imho.

Here a report on upping spy vs spy stories to inflame international relations co. Putin.

https://tass.com/world/1065970

Formerly T-Bear , Jul 21 2019 15:07 utc | 126
Theresa May should be installed in the Tower of London until she habeas the Scripal's corpses or provides verifiable information as to their estate. Should said Theresa May expire in said Tower of London, she can do so in knowledge and consolation that so many much better than herself have done so already.

The Tower of London stands as the best monument to the liquidation of the British Monarchy and their Royal Family as well as the Aristocracy that supports that enterprise. May it soon be so dedicated. Maybe the lies will then stop.

Only an opinion (and prayer).

Russ , Jul 21 2019 15:11 utc | 127
Posted by: Bemildred | Jul 21 2019 14:45 utc | 123

"I tend to think they are deceased, or they would have been trotted out for more coerced interviews."

I disagree with those. As it is, it seems literally no one in Britain cares about this case. (I'm not there, but I'm assuming if there were a civil liberties group trying to make a public issue of their disappearance, loudly demanding of the government, "Where are the Skripals? Are you illegally imprisoning them?", that I would've read about it here at some point.) So why remind the people of their bizarrely disappeared existence?

As for killing them, though, if the government were smart in this case (I know they're stupid in general, yes), they'd still keep them alive just in case there somehow were public pressure to produce them. Look at the mistake Richard III made.

William Gruff , Jul 21 2019 15:15 utc | 128
Arioch @122 pointed out: "...maybe for Putin there is really nothing of importance that Skrypal could know and tell."

This is an significant distinction. Does it really matter to Putin or Russian geostrategic interests if Sergei Skripal wanted to announce that he was one of the authors of the Steele Dossier, and that he just did it for fun and profit? To the British and the Americans this would be a huge embarrassment, but aside from some sweet schadenfreude what would Russia gain from it?

From Stone's perspective this issue would be very important, but from Putin's, not so much. When assigning an issue importance, one must always consider to whom the issue is important as importance is rarely universal.

Bemildred , Jul 21 2019 15:55 utc | 132
russ @127: I said deceased, not killed by UK, that was some other posters.

The UK government has not showed a shred of intelligence for several decades now. They take orders from us, and we are not really their friends, we intend to rule, not ally. you can't get more naive than that. But I don't really care, like with Kashoggi, I want to know where there are now, before I starting putting emotional weight behind any stories I'm being told about how they got there.

(Not trying to get in your face, just like accurate representation of what I said.)

Don Karlos , Jul 21 2019 16:14 utc | 134
@ Arioch 124

Actually, he would have quite a number of ways to "write to P", if he really wanted.

E.g. he could (a) send an electronic message directly using electronic letter submission option on the official website, or (b) he could ask Yulia to do so for him, and she had a social media account (that's how his classmate established a contact with him), + almost surely a email address,+ able to visit (c) or similarly via Victoria (d) or that classmate (e) or come to any Rus. consulate anywhere and ask for it to be done --and one of his UK acquaintances was telling he visited the embassy 'often' (f) or do it in lots of other ways he could easily come up with, given his background in intelligence, + contacts and experience, even if his communications were monitored

Montreal , Jul 21 2019 16:15 utc | 135
From what I have heard, the Russians believe that the Skripal affair has been much more damaging to HMG than it has to Russia, and have no interest in removing the mystery surrounding it - the more people delve, the more it stinks.

As an inhabitant of the UK, I can say that a lot of us were very shocked when the Government was trying to stuff these obvious lies down our throats, and it is what got a few of us onto alternative media - sick to death as we already were of the Brexit poison in the MSM. So a belated thank you to b, and your colleagues, what would we do without you.

Rob , Jul 21 2019 16:30 utc | 136
@james (38) Not sure what your point is re Putin's silence on the Skripal's whereabouts. Putin could publicly wonder why Britain is keeping them incommunicado. What are the Brits hiding? Even a devoted Empire supporter would have to agree that it is most peculiar. Yet Putin claims to have no knowledge on the subject, which is almost certainly untrue. His reason for this is unclear, but Putin is nothing if not shrewd. In time, the story will come out one way or another.
alaff , Jul 21 2019 16:32 utc | 137
@ Zanon, #1:
Doubt that, Skripal's enemies is in Russia, Putin have earlier stated Skripal was a traitor and should be treated as such. Why Skripal would go Russia after he deliberately moved out of Russia after an assault most likely carried out by someone in Russia, that makes no sense.

It seems you just watch/read MSM too much. "would go Russia", "moved out of Russia", "by someone in Russia" etc. Russia, Russia, Russia...

The thing is that Russia has nothing to do with all this stuff (mean, "Skripal case").
Yes, Putin called Skripal a traitor. Why? Because Skripal is a traitor.
If you didn't know, Putin is used to calling a spade a spade, without prevarication or double meanings.

"Why Skripal would go Russia"

You reason in categories that you understand, although in reality people may have dozens of reasons to do what you do not understand.
Why Skripal would go Russia? Well, don't you think the answer may be that Skripal simply love Russia? Because Russia is his Motherland, his home, his country. Because he has his mother here, relatives, friends etc.
He can love Russia, his country, even in spite of the harm that has caused her by his betrayal.
He may experience shame, remorse, and other feelings. Don't you think about it?

And you don't understand the main thing. Because of Western MSM propaganda it may seems to people that something is "wrong" with living in Russia.
This is pure nonsense. Just to remind - Skripal was arrested, and he served his time in Russian jail, according to law.
Then he was officially pardoned and was released free. Since that moment he was free to do whatever he wanted.

The right to come back to Russia was/is his right.
There's no law in Russia that if you served prison term and was released, you can't come back from another country.
So, i repeat, Skripal can do whatever he wants.

The fact that Putin called him a traitor does not matter. Traitors can come back, bastards can come back, liars can come back etc.
If you have no problems with the law, the Russian state will have no complaints about you.
Since 2011, when Skripal was pardoned, he is clean under Russian law, so can do whatever he wants.

Btw, just to remind - Boris Berezovsky also was going to come back from UK to Russia, he wrote a letter to Putin. But "suddenly" it happened so that Berezovsky committed a "suicide". We can only guess what he could tell if he returned to Russia. Someone really did not want this information to become known...

Casey , Jul 21 2019 17:49 utc | 143
The presence of HMG nurse on site, and the subsequent Monty Pythom-esque cover up, seems proof enough that the UK had foreknowledge and without question, worked to keep the Russophobia stoked high not only after the incident, but the later killed a UK citizen to continue the incident. Mr. P is being diplomatic.
Don Karlos , Jul 21 2019 18:11 utc | 144
The guy who said that Skripal has been visiting the embassy "monthly" is Valery Morozov, who has a refugee status in the UK. He made the claim in interviews to Western and Russian opposition media, saying that he did not like that and stopped his contacts with S.

E.g. here https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fellow-russian-exile-claims-poisoned-12146023 and https://tvrain.ru/news/znakomyj-459957/ here. Video seems gone, the text is still there.

Apparently not confirmed by the embassy

FWIW

PS. For the official website submission, one does not need to "authorize" it, one needs to provide the full name, email, and phone number on electronic form, that's all. It may be not the best way but the office is required to confirm receipt and to answer. Of course it may not be the kind of answer which he sought...

Zanon , Jul 21 2019 19:41 utc | 145
alaff

Very easy, Skripal have not moved to Russia, nor has his daughter. he is not friend of Russian state, after the swap he kept working with intelligence services in the whole of the west, giving them information on Russia. You don't go back to live freely in the nation you repeatedly committed high treason against, then, you are just foolish, begging to be killed.

karlof1 , Jul 21 2019 21:11 utc | 150
flankerbandit @149--

Ditto your thanks! Zanon's been outed as a troll for months, yet he keeps being fed and FUDs with its fellows.

[Jul 19, 2019] The 'Unconstitutional Animus' Against UK Labour Leader by Johanna Ross

Notable quotes:
"... A couple of weeks ago, The Times of London published an article about senior civil servants fearing U.K. opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn was "too frail" to be prime minister. Reportedly they also thought he "lacks both a firm grasp of foreign affairs and the domestic agenda. ..."
"... This is the same civil service that is supposed to maintain complete neutrality and according to its code "must not act in a way that unjustifiably favours or discriminates against particular individuals or interests." ..."
"... Corbyn fought back, arguing that it was unacceptable that civil servants were briefing newspapers on an elected politician. He demanded an independent inquiry into who was spreading such fabrications in the press and "compromising the integrity of the civil service." ..."
"... Miller, who runs the Bristol-based Organisation for Propaganda Studies, said the scheme was found to be spreading its own disinformation and openly criticizing opposition leader Corbyn and his party. ..."
"... Miller said this was clear from the very beginning of the Integrity Initiative when it was regularly engaged in tweeting or retweeting attacks on Corbyn and his closest advisors. ..."
"... Miller calls the use of taxpayers' money to interfere in domestic politics an affront to democracy. ..."
"... Chris Williamson, a Labour MP and Corbyn supporter who was trying to investigate the Integrity Initiative, found himself suspended from the party after he was targeted with allegations of anti-Semitism. ..."
"... Corbyn's call for an independent investigation into the civil service leak to the press has also, as expected, been rejected by the government. ..."
"... If you enjoyed this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one. ..."
"... Jews in Europe and the US have gone from being heavily discriminated against to having much more influence on government than their numbers warrant. I'm going to tell the Netanyahu joke to make my point. Don't know who to credit. Kudos anyway. "It is not anti-Semitic to disagree with Benjamin Netanyahu as he is as white as the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan." ..."
"... If the Integrity Initiative really is shut down, the little Simon Bracey-Lane will be free to cross the pond and campaign for Bernie just like he did in 2015 / 2016. Nah, just kiddin', his cover is blown. But seriously, campaign managers for Tulsi Gabbard best be on guard against inflation from these snakes. ..."
"... This is a joke right. You say communist and you reference China, but in the last century it was ok to ship nearly the entire industrial base of Western Democracies to China so that a bunch of fat cat tycoons, investment bankers, hedge funders et al could become so rich they finally had enough money to purchase the U.S. Government, and it looks like the government of Britain too. ..."
"... This incessant accusation of antisemitism against anyone who supports justice for Palestinians does seem to be effective. A decade ago when I first noticed this smear tactic I assumed it would be self defeating on the part of the Zionists and their backers. It sort of seemed obvious that such a tactic would be self limiting with the broader world beginning to reject such slander. However, it seems the smear is more effective today than it was ten years ago. So depressing. Watching Corbyn's supporters ripping apart his own base in the Labour Party in an effort to appease the Israelis is appalling -- it seems the more that is conceded the more aggressive the Zionist become. Ten years ago it was proper to describe the West Bank as "occupied territory", soon it will be considered antisemitic to even go that far. ..."
"... in 2015, an unnamed, serving British general was quoted saying that if a Corbyn government implemented his well-established anti-imperial and anti-nuke agenda, "there would be mass resignations at all levels [of the military] and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-army-could-stage-mutiny-under-corbyn-says-senior-serving-general-10509742.html ..."
"... As Mayhew noted, 'the turning point' was the speech of George Marshall the US Secretary of State in June 1947. From 'the middle of 1947 onwards, decisions were taken towards uniting the free world, at the expense of widening the gap with the Communist world our immediate objective changed, from "one world" to "one free world"'. ..."
"... . That is what all of this is about: this is all a campaign by capitalists, plutocrats, oligarchs, monarchs, aristocrats, to keep expandable, pitiful average plebs from ever voting for something better than corporate serfdom and debt slavery. ..."
Jul 19, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

The 'Unconstitutional Animus' Against UK Labour Leader July 16, 2019 • 39 Comments

Johanna Ross spoke with David Miller, a propaganda researcher, after the recent publicity of U.K. civil service murmurings about Jeremy Corbyn's "fitness."

By Johanna Ross
in Edinburgh, Scotland
Special to Consortium News

A couple of weeks ago, The Times of London published an article about senior civil servants fearing U.K. opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn was "too frail" to be prime minister. Reportedly they also thought he "lacks both a firm grasp of foreign affairs and the domestic agenda."

This is the same civil service that is supposed to maintain complete neutrality and according to its code "must not act in a way that unjustifiably favours or discriminates against particular individuals or interests."

Corbyn fought back, arguing that it was unacceptable that civil servants were briefing newspapers on an elected politician. He demanded an independent inquiry into who was spreading such fabrications in the press and "compromising the integrity of the civil service."

Controversial BBC graphic seeking to link Corbyn to Russia.

For David Miller, a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, who investigates concentrations of power and ways to hold them accountable, the idea that the British civil service may not be impartial in its operations is hardly surprising.

Far from ever being objective, he told Consortium News that the civil service now clearly has "an unconstitutional animus against a potential Corbyn government and has been briefing against it one way or another through various agencies for some time now."

Catalog of Smears

Indeed, the anti-Corbyn bias within the establishment has been obvious in the catalog of smears on Corbyn and his team since he came to the Labour leadership; from allegations of being a "Soviet sleeper" to being "anti-Semitic" and now to questions about his overall fitness.

David Miller: Faction fight against Corbyn. (University of Bristol)

Miller said most of the allegations were created by a number of organisations and individuals who are "involved in a faction fight with the Corbyn leadership."

Noam Chomsky, a leading U.S. social critic, is among those who have spoken out against what he termed a "witch hunt" against the Labour leader and his supporters.

Whether or not anti-Semitism exists in the party, Miller said the accusations are out of hand. "Almost everyone who says anything which is either critical of Israel or critical of the party's response to the anti-Semitism crisis is denounced as an anti-Semite," Miller said. "The question is how long will it be before everyone sees that the people who are involved in this have overreached themselves."

Attempts to undermine potential socialist governments are of course, not new.

Miller gives the example of the Zinoviev case – when a fake letter was published in the Daily Mail in 1924 just prior to the general election, suggesting Communists in Britain were taking orders from Moscow. The goal was clearly to undermine the British Labour movement.

Miller also points to the case of former Prime Minister Harold Wilson. "Despite what may now be said by some elements of the security state," Miller said that British agencies were engaged in an active plot to undermine Wilson's elected government.

As another example, Miller offered the "Information Research Department," first proposed in 1947 and sold to the cabinet as a bipartisan, anti-Communist and anti-American propaganda operation. In fact, Miller described it as a "secret, covert, anti-Communist propaganda operation which in the 70s was engaged in undermining the Wilson government."

Today, Miller said, similar agencies in the U.K. government are doing the same thing.

Harold Wilson in 1986. (Allan Warren, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Integrity Initiative

As an example, Miller cites the Integrity Initiative; organized by the government's Institute for Statecraft, which has a stated mission of countering "Russian disinformation and malign influence by harnessing existing expertise and establishing a network of experts, opinion formers and policy makers to educate national audiences in the threat and to help build national capacities to counter it." Its website is incidentally now empty pending an investigation into the "theft of its data" – after a hack exposed detail of the extent to which the government-funded program was itself engaged in disinformation.

Miller, who runs the Bristol-based Organisation for Propaganda Studies, said the scheme was found to be spreading its own disinformation and openly criticizing opposition leader Corbyn and his party.

"Corbyn has recently said in relation to the most recent criticism from the civil service that there are people in the establishment that are trying to undermine Corbyn, his office, his advisors and supporters of him," Miller said. "And that's what the Integrity Initiative was doing."

Cartoon published by Punch after the Zinoviev letter was released, depicting a Bolshevik campaigning for Ramsay MacDonald, head of the short-lived Labour government of 1924. (Wikimedia Commons)

Miller said this was clear from the very beginning of the Integrity Initiative when it was regularly engaged in tweeting or retweeting attacks on Corbyn and his closest advisors.

Miller calls the use of taxpayers' money to interfere in domestic politics an affront to democracy.

"A government-funded project was engaged in attacking the leader of the opposition," Miller said, "which is unconstitutional and something the U.K. civil service should not be involved in they crossed the line when they started attacking Corbyn. And when we look back on this period, the Integrity Initiative, its funding by the Foreign Office and its base in British military intelligence will be one of the strands of the activities which will be seen to have been a secret state campaign against the elected leader of the Labour party."

Miller would like to see an investigation into the attacks on Corbyn and whether they had been effectively funded by the Foreign Office, but doesn't hold out much hope of that happening.

Six months ago, Shadow Home Secretary Emily Thornberry demanded answers to how this could have happened, with no result.

And Chris Williamson, a Labour MP and Corbyn supporter who was trying to investigate the Integrity Initiative, found himself suspended from the party after he was targeted with allegations of anti-Semitism.

Corbyn's call for an independent investigation into the civil service leak to the press has also, as expected, been rejected by the government.

Johanna Ross is a freelance journalist based in the United Kingdom.

If you enjoyed this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.

Michael McNulty , July 18, 2019 at 05:52

After he won the second round to remain Labour Party leader Corbyn should have left the party to form a new socialist party, taking his large following and their subscriptions with him. He would have had three years behind him with a new movement, one which would not have had the back-stabbers and poisoners he's having to deal with daily. It would have been quite established now and a real political force. I think the Labour Party is so polluted that the left must break away; it's the only way we can overturn the excesses and failures of neo-liberalism which for most people is a truly dreadful system.

Maz Palmer , July 17, 2019 at 15:02

They are all much worse than bozos (or Bezos); they are all plutocrats, oligarchs, neo-liberal neo-fascist capitalists. That is what all of this is about: this is all a campaign by capitalists, plutocrats, oligarchs, monarchs, aristocrats, to keep expandable, pitiful average plebs from ever voting for something better than corporate serfdom and debt slavery.

Hopelb , July 17, 2019 at 21:52

Upvote!

Piotr Berman , July 17, 2019 at 14:55

"lacks both a firm grasp of foreign affairs and the domestic agenda."

It makes me wonder how Teresa May and her Cabinet, including the next PM, fares in such assessment. Nincompoops, loud mouths, poodles, and worshipers of woodoo economics.

James , July 17, 2019 at 14:22

I get it. Corbyn is Pro-Palestinian, anti-war and Pro-Worker so they are trying to get rid of him.

All I see are articles attacking him. Are there people/forces behind him supporting him? Is his support significant among other Labour MP's and the Public at large?

Piotr Berman , July 17, 2019 at 16:11

The problem is that UK public opinion is quite chaotic at this point and "everything is possible". At some point, four parties had roughly the same poll numbers: Tories, Brexit, Labour and LibDems. However, in the last two weeks Labour and Tories gained with Labour ahead. In a system with single seat districts, "anything can happen", and a recent by-election suggested that Labour may have an advantage in "foot soldiers", volunteers who walk around a district chatting up voters. The internal fights in Labour attracted many new members, and from the point of view of "sensible folks in the Establishment", this is the worst type of rubble. No respect for monarchy, the Trident, necessity of low taxes on business and the rich and so on. And anti-Semitic to boot.

So the meaning of "Corbyn is frail" is that while he himself seems mild mannered, his victory will unleashed the unwashed hordes wrecking everything which is good and he hold dear, like the monarchy, the Trident and so on.

Piotr Berman , July 17, 2019 at 16:45

The problem is that UK public opinion is quite chaotic lately and "everything is possible". At some point, four parties had roughly the same poll numbers: Tories, Brexit, Labour and LibDems. However, in the last two weeks Labour and Tories gained with Labour ahead. In a system with single seat districts, "anything can happen", and a recent by-election suggested that Labour may have an advantage in "foot soldiers", volunteers who walk around a district chatting up voters. The internal fights in Labour attracted many new members, and from the point of view of "sensible folks in the Establishment", this is the worst type of rabble. No respect for the monarchy, the Trident, the necessity of low taxes on business and the rich and so on. And anti-Semitic to boot.

So the meaning of "Corbyn is frail" is that while he himself seems mild mannered, his victory would unleashed unwashed hordes wrecking everything which is good and that we hold dear, like the monarchy, the Trident and so on.

Jeff Ewener , July 17, 2019 at 13:26

Gob-smacking. To call a man with the intelligence, experience, sensitivity & integrity of Jeremy Corbyn "unfit" to be the British Prime Minister, while a monstrosity like Boris Johnson is standing on the doorstep of Number 10 – just takes the breath away.

rosemerry , July 17, 2019 at 15:45

Not to mention the former "New Labour" leaders whose policies fell far away from the traditional policies Corbyn has held to and which caused so many Britons to support him as leader.

Hayman Fan , July 18, 2019 at 11:49

Integrity? Are you joking? Corbyn has been anti-EU for 40 years. In fact, he is the only main party leader who voted leave in the last people's vote (aka the referendum). But he has tried to hid that fact. He has been sitting on the fence and playing politics with the issue. Many fools in Britain believe Corbyn is a remainer. A man of integrity would have explained to the British people his long held position on the EU and Brexit. But he didn't do that because he isn't a man of integrity. He wants to con his way into power and if he gets there (looking unlikely right now), he and his Stalinist henchpeople will wield that power ruthlessly.

Richard Kuper , July 17, 2019 at 12:37

Fascinating article. May we repost it on jvl.org.uk?

Eddie , July 17, 2019 at 12:36

Comment that I posted on the Malware article do not post.

Zenobia van Dongen , July 17, 2019 at 11:39

In English-speaking countries anti-Semitic is just a code word for pro-Islamic. Miller himself is deeply involved in efforts to make extremist Islam respectable and justifying terrorist indoctrination.

Simeon Hope , July 17, 2019 at 13:05

Okay, I'll take your comment as made in good faith but you will need to back it up with good evidence. Where is it?

Qui? , July 18, 2019 at 03:22

Palestinians are semites, as the rest of the Arabs. So who is the real antisemite now?

Truth first , July 17, 2019 at 11:37

A "communist" who is against war, nukes and massive inequality is OK by me.

Hayman Fan , July 18, 2019 at 07:28

Is it indeed. Then your are a fool. Pol Pot was a communist who was against war and nukes and massive inequality. But implementing totalitarism by force didn't turn out well for the Cambodian people. And it wouldn't turn out well for the British people either. Except for Corbyn and his henchpeople of course.

dean 1000 , July 17, 2019 at 10:42

Jews in Europe and the US have gone from being heavily discriminated against to having much more influence on government than their numbers warrant. I'm going to tell the Netanyahu joke to make my point. Don't know who to credit. Kudos anyway. "It is not anti-Semitic to disagree with Benjamin Netanyahu as he is as white as the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan."

Given the influence of US and European Jews it is well past time for them to stop screaming anti-semitism when someone has a divergent opinion. They should stop using Semitic people as human shields.

The left also likes to hurl anti-Semitism at political opponents when they don't have a relevant answer.

Unfounded criticism of Jews is anti-Jewish rather than anti-Semitic. Call it what it is.

Ron Striebig , July 17, 2019 at 06:26

As Albert Einstein says Capitalism is an Evil supported by those who are terrified of Jeremy Corbyn because like Jesus he is a true Socialist

Que Nelle , July 17, 2019 at 05:52

To be accused of antisemitism by zionists that champion the racist entity israel, is a badge of honor.

Vivian O'Blivion , July 17, 2019 at 03:30

If the Integrity Initiative really is shut down, the little Simon Bracey-Lane will be free to cross the pond and campaign for Bernie just like he did in 2015 / 2016. Nah, just kiddin', his cover is blown. But seriously, campaign managers for Tulsi Gabbard best be on guard against inflation from these snakes.

Hayman Fan , July 17, 2019 at 02:51

Guys be careful with this. Corbyn is a communist. He is surrounded by Stalinists. Their modus operandi is entryism + free stuff + perpetual attacks on cultural norms. They used to laud the USSR. Then Venezuala. Now China. If they ever manage to grab power, they will stamp on individual liberty. Just like China does. The Muslim vote is very important to them and whilst they despise conventional religions, they will happily 'buy' Muslim votes with anti Israeli and anti Semitic rhetoric. The loudest voices speaking up against Corbyn and his henchpeople are on the left. Be a little bit circumspect.

Truth first , July 17, 2019 at 11:36

A "communist" who is against war, nukes and massive inequality is OK by me.

Simeon Hope , July 17, 2019 at 13:09

Errr what ? Israel does enough on its own to show how anti-Arab and undemocratic it is without the need for Jeremy Corbyn to add anything. I'm a socialist. I support what Mr Corbyn is doing to promote socialism in the UK. There's not the slightest evidence he's an anti-Semite, and the tiny amount of anti-Semitism in the Labour party is dwarfed by what's emanating from the right against Jews and Muslims.

Just say no , July 17, 2019 at 13:58

This is a joke right. You say communist and you reference China, but in the last century it was ok to ship nearly the entire industrial base of Western Democracies to China so that a bunch of fat cat tycoons, investment bankers, hedge funders et al could become so rich they finally had enough money to purchase the U.S. Government, and it looks like the government of Britain too. That's where we are today.

There may be "communists" lurking somewhere mostly in the imagination who are trotted out whenever a left person obtains a plurality. What has happened to Jeremy Corbyn is horrifying and we have our own issues in the U.S. with the endless smears and lies regarding the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. We live in a world of fabrication, sanctions enough to go around for everyone. Even the little state of RI is sanctioned by Moody's for having the effrontery to pass a bill which "gives too much away to labor" but Moody's and the other ratings agencies gave triple AAA ratings to junk during the "great recession" plain and simple, and no one cared. We need a Nuremburg trial for Capitalism and all its practioners.

Piotr Berman , July 18, 2019 at 00:33

"You say communist and you reference China, "

You are wrong is several ways. First, "There may be "communists" lurking somewhere mostly in the imagination who are trotted out whenever a left person obtains a plurality." Corbyn was observed to be a threat the moment he was elected Labour leader, something that stumped large segments of "informed public". Due to the surprise element, the anti-Semitic angle was not exploited properly, with possible exception of some Zionist whack jobs who harranged him. Instead, two points were raised that really jolted my attention.

First, Corbyn was sooo extreme that he advocated discontinuation of Trident program and even, horror!, the entirety of British nuclear arms program. You could as well raise huge signs ?????? ?y???? ???????! on English shores.

Second, his bicycling habits were compared to China during the orthodox Communist year, when riding on non-descript bikes was heavily supported by pre-Capitalist leadership.

Mind you, a person of note may ride a bike without shame, but not the cheap and aged specimen favored by Corbyn. Finally, compromising photos were found showing Corbyn relaxing and revealing his red socks.

Paul Merrell , July 17, 2019 at 23:40

@ "Hayman Fan"

A rather dubious name, methinks. See https://preview.tinyurl.com/y3us8776

Sounds like you just couldn't stand not posting a troll comment on an article about your own activities, yes?

ToivoS , July 16, 2019 at 22:54

This incessant accusation of antisemitism against anyone who supports justice for Palestinians does seem to be effective. A decade ago when I first noticed this smear tactic I assumed it would be self defeating on the part of the Zionists and their backers. It sort of seemed obvious that such a tactic would be self limiting with the broader world beginning to reject such slander. However, it seems the smear is more effective today than it was ten years ago. So depressing. Watching Corbyn's supporters ripping apart his own base in the Labour Party in an effort to appease the Israelis is appalling -- it seems the more that is conceded the more aggressive the Zionist become. Ten years ago it was proper to describe the West Bank as "occupied territory", soon it will be considered antisemitic to even go that far.

David G , July 16, 2019 at 21:21

In addition, in 2015, an unnamed, serving British general was quoted saying that if a Corbyn government implemented his well-established anti-imperial and anti-nuke agenda, "there would be mass resignations at all levels [of the military] and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-army-could-stage-mutiny-under-corbyn-says-senior-serving-general-10509742.html

David G , July 16, 2019 at 21:07

" the 'Information Research Department,' first proposed in 1947 and sold to the cabinet as a bipartisan, anti-Communist and anti-American propaganda operation."

"Anti-American" is a slip, right? I assume it was pro-American (or pro-USAian).

David Miller , July 17, 2019 at 04:17

My apologies, I was paraphrasing the work of Lyn Smith in her article on IRD in Millennium in 1980. It should really be 'anti capitalist'. According Smith the founder of IRD (Christopher Mayhew) put forward a plan to set up a cold war propaganda agency:

'Mayhew put forward his ideas: the campaign should be as positive as possible laying stress on the merits of Social Democracy but, he pointed out "we shouldn't appear as defenders of the status quo but should attack Capitalism and Imperialism along with Russian Communism" In fact at this early stage, the idea was more of a "third force" propaganda attacking Capitalism as well as communism (this, however, was not to last for, as later documents reveal, anti Communism soon cam to the fore).'(Covert British Propaganda: The Information Research Department: 1947-77, Millennium, 9(1), p68-9)

In fact the idea that it would be anti capitalist was a ruse used by Mayhew to deceive the left members of the British cabinet. As my colleague and I Will Dinan summarised in our book A Century of Spin (Pluto Press, 2008, p130-1):

IRD was not created with the knowing support of the Labour Cabinet. The author of the paper which went to the cabinet – Christoper Mayhew – was a Labour right winger and cold warrior. He dissembled to the cabinet about the purpose and function of the IRD by claiming that it was to be a 'Third Force' campaign, understood as policy intended by the left to be independent of both the US and the USSR. According to Mayhew himself:

I thought it was necessary to present the whole campaign in a positive way, in a way which Dick Crossman and Michael Foot would fi nd it hard to oppose. And they were calling for a Third Force so I recommended in the original paper I put to Bevin that we call it a Third Force propaganda campaign.

As Mayhew noted, 'the turning point' was the speech of George Marshall the US Secretary of State in June 1947. From 'the middle of 1947 onwards, decisions were taken towards uniting the free world, at the expense of widening the gap with the Communist world our immediate objective changed, from "one world" to "one free world"'.

It is interesting, in this light, to reflect what might/will happen once a Corbyn government is elected with – how should we put this – a minority of leftists in the cabinet.

David G , July 17, 2019 at 15:27

Very interesting! I guess the propagandists back then had a little more finesse than the idiotic bludgeoning the US/UK establishment is laying on us these days. Thanks for the clarification, David Miller!

Jeff Harrison , July 16, 2019 at 21:05

The British Political Class has the same problem as the American Political Class – No integrity, No Honesty, No ethics. Just the sort of bozos we need running countries.

Maz Palmer , July 17, 2019 at 14:59

They are all much worse than bozos (or Bezos); they are all plutocrats, oligarchs, neo-liberal neo-fascist capitalists. That is what all of this is about: this is all a campaign by capitalists, plutocrats, oligarchs, monarchs, aristocrats, to keep expandable, pitiful average plebs from ever voting for something better than corporate serfdom and debt slavery.

[Jul 18, 2019] The more "effective" the sanctions, the closer to war

Jul 18, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

elkern , Jul 17 2019 16:08 utc | 31

Trailer Trash is exactly right about brittle supply chains. To "maximize Shareholder value" (the Prime Directive from Wall Street), corporations are maximizing (not optimizing) efficiency, at the expense of long-term priorities.

Summer Diaz is sorta right about what I might describe as US cultural/political obesity, but I don't look forward to living here after the shit hits the fan. There are lotsa crazy bastards with guns. We'll see real race war, starvation, all 4 Horsemen.

Re questions about Israel's fate in Marandi's scenario: I think it's smart that he/they don't talk about retaliation against Israel. Everybody knows that Iran has the ability to really hurt Israel (sans Nukes, they probably can't obliterate it); but this threat is much better left unsaid, just hanging in the air. Threatening Israel would be bad PR, decreasing chances that EU, Russia, & China can talk the US back from the brink of WWIII. And making sure Israel knows they're in danger - without bragging about it - gets (non-crazy) Zionists in USA to help prevent all-out war!

It's OK for Iran to talk about the threat to KSA, UAE, etc, because everybody hates them anyway, and cutting off the world's energy supply is their Doomsday Bomb. They need to remind the world that if the US attacks Iran, everybody loses.

karlof1 , Jul 17 2019 16:23 utc | 32

Three main antagonists have aimed at post-revolution Iran: The Outlaw US Empire, Occupied Palestine, and Saudi Arabia, the latter being the most recent and vulnerable, while the first two have already waged varying degrees of war with the Empire's Economic War having existed for 40+ years. The Levant's former Colonial powers--Turkey, France, UK--are feeble, and in Turkey's case is allied with Iran while being spurned by NATO and EU. Lurking in the background are Russia and China's designs for Eurasian Integration which only the Outlaw US Empire seeks to prevent as such integration benefits Saudi Arabia, Occupied Palestine, France and UK. Thus the only entity that might benefit from non-hybrid war with Iran is the Outlaw US Empire--Occupied Palestine's interests actually lie with becoming part of an Integrated Eurasia not in trying to impede it. And the same goes for the other nations occupying the Arabian Peninsula--but they all need to come to their senses by deeply examining their actual long term interests as Qatar seems to have done in its rapprochement with Iran.

But, just how would a non-hybrid conflict with Iran benefit the Outlaw US Empire if it consumes its regional allies? Would it bring more riches or create greater debt atop the human cost? Most analysts have pointed to the Empire's vulnerability upon the trashing of the current global economic structure. Indeed, the only visible benefit might accrue from slowing Eurasian Integration. Then there's the highly negative result to the Empire's global credibility which is already scrapping rock bottom and the likely end of Dollar Hegemony and the Free Lunch it's lived on for the past 70+ years. But what about the fulfillment of the Christian Rapture Myth? Sorry, but there should be no need to answer that fantastical, magical, thinking. Not a very good balance sheet is it as liabilities seem to vastly outweigh assets. Unfortunately, such logic is ignored by ideologues drunk on magical thinking. And these results don't take into consideration an escalation into global nuclear conflict that's in nobody's interest.

But as noted, Trump's up a tree and keeps climbing higher onto ever thinner, more precarious branches. Iran offered him a chance to climb down if he removes illegal sanctions and returns to JCPOA, which Pompeo promptly replied to with a lie that Iran would negotiate on its ballistic missiles, thus giving the overall goal away.

So, Trump can't/won't climb down and non-hybrid conflict would do great damage to Outlaw US Empire interests, which is where we were at July's beginning.

goldhoarder , Jul 17 2019 16:41 utc | 33
Iran will respond to a limited military strike with a massive and disproportionate counterstrike targeting both the aggressor and its enablers.
Which will be the green light for an even more violent & disproportionate counterstrike on Iran. Make no mistake - there are plenty of gung-ho Washington & Tel Aviv power brokers who want to trash Iran. And they will do it, given the chance. The above scenario is precisely what the war gods are hoping for.

I don't know about that. The US and Israel would really be opening up a can of worms. Any over reaction by the USA and Israel gives Russia, India, and China a precedent to follow. China might it easy to settle their difficulties with Taiwan. Kiev might go up in a mushroom cloud. The USA isn't the only country in the world with problems. If they don't play by the rules it just leads to more rule breakers.

arata , Jul 17 2019 16:47 utc | 34
An Alternate Scenario
There is a saying in Persian language called "Namad Maali" translates as "feltman massag", it means slow killing.
This proverb is very often used in contemporary Persian language but most of the people do not know the actual origin of the proverb.
There is an interesting legend behind it. Holagu Khan, a Mongol ruler, the grandson of Chengiz Khan conquered Baghdad on year 1258, and captured the Caliph Al-Mo'tasam, the last Caliph of Abbasid dynasty. Holagu decided to execute the Caliph and finish the 500 years Muslim caliphate.
Many statesmen begged him to hold on. They told him that the caliph is legitimate successor of prophet Mohammad. Caliphate is the pillar of the world, if you remove this pillar there will be sun eclipse, thunder storm and total darkness. Holagu, with his shamanistic believes fearing sky revenge was yielding, but he consulted his prime minister a Persian mullah, Nasir al-Din Tusi. Nasir told him do not worry, these are total nonsense, all of our great Shai twelve imams were direct descendants of prophet Mohammad, they were inherently innocent, while Abbasid are not direct descendants of prophet. See that our imams, eleven out of twelve, were martyred, there was no sun eclipse, no thunder storm, no darkness of the world.
Holagu was bold enough to carry out the execution. Other statesmen brought forward a group of astrologists who searched through their horoscopes and studied signs of stars and concluded that all the signs are catastrophic, if a drop of caliph's blood drops on earth, there will be a devastating thunder storm, rain of bloods pours down from sky and end of world ...
Holagu consulted Nasi again. Nasir being a great humorist, told him not worry, we can devise a pretty easy solution for your peace of mind, send the caliph to hot bath of feltman workshop, order to be wrapped in felt, they will give him a hot water bath with soap, they will roll him slowly over and over, as they are crafting a felt, his life will be ended peacefully in massage, without a drop of blood, meanwhile I will assign one of my intelligent apprentice who is familiar with sky ways ( Nasir was a great mathematician and Astronomer, he founded a famous observatory, he was inventor of trigonometry), to sit on the roof top of the feltman workshop, he will monitor any changes on sky if there is a minor change, he will signal to the feltman to release the caliph.
President Vladimir Khan has been giving warnings to Ayatollah do not burn JCPOA, do not close Strait of Hurmoz. Ayatollah is telling him do not worry we are giving a feltman massage. Just tell Xi khan do not lean his back against the wall street pillar, clean up your hands from future fund casino, the pillars are collapsing slowly.



jason , Jul 17 2019 17:13 utc | 35
the US and its allies are bluffing. don't get caught up in wars and rumors of it. the only way it was going to happen was if syria and iraq fell and both of them didn't.

when it didn't. they resort back to the usual MO, look busy.

OutOfThinAir , Jul 17 2019 17:31 utc | 36
A reminder from Iran that they can hit back.

Hopefully folks who can influence power have been reading the Guns of August.

Possible miscalculations are everywhere and the parties are no strangers to false flags and proxy actors.

So I'm crossing my fingers for strong back channel communications.

I'm not expecting outright major war. Perhaps a skirmish or two, but a negotiated deal is still the most likely outcome.

c1ue , Jul 17 2019 17:56 utc | 37
@C I eh? #14
I don't see China as the same situation as Russia.
The Russians who have largely supported Putin despite economic ill-effects from sanctions are, at best, 1 generation removed from 1991-1996 post-Soviet collapse privation. They remember the bad times and how to get through them.
The mainland Chinese today are 2 generation removed from the famines in the 50s and 60s, and furthermore there is a largely generational break due to the Cultural Revolution.
I don't see China collapsing, but I also don't see the mainstream population taking a oil-starvation induced economic collapse well at all, because the deal is social repression if the economy and standards of living continue to improve.
The difference is French cheese and EU fruits and vegetables - luxury goods vs. oil = energy = everything.
Uncle Jon , Jul 17 2019 17:57 utc | 38
There seems to be misconception about Kuwait, in particular.

Kuwaitis are fed up with the Saudis and are more Iranophile than anything. They see who is a true regional power.

Recently, I happen to be invited to a diplomatic function, welcoming a new Kuwaiti ambassador (Not in US). There were several businessmen associates of the new ambassador at that function. In an impromptu conversation, they professed their love for anything Iranian or Persian, from culture and history to food and the people, and their disdain for the Saudis and their ruling family.

In fact, one of them, much to my shock, uttered the circulating rumor that the ruling family in SA are actually Jews. He said everyone in the region knows about this open secret but afraid to talk about. That was a revelation for me coming from a Kuwaiti since I never did pay attention to those rumors.

I think in the event of a regional conflict, Kuwait will be spared by Iran. What would happen to the ruling family will be another story.

james , Jul 17 2019 18:04 utc | 39
thanks Seyed Mohammad Marandi.. i agree with your headline...

the usa is not agreement friendly.. everything is on their terms only... they rip up contracts when a new president doesn't like it, and make endless demands of others under threat, just like bullies do. they sanction countries and don't mind killing, starving and subjecting people in faraway lands to their ongoing and desperate means of domination.. nothing about the usa is friendly... they spend all their money on the military not just because it works so well for wall st and the corporations but because they think they can continue to bully everyone and anyone indefinitely.. they get support from the obvious suspects and all the other colonies of the usa - europe, canada and etc - turn a type of blind eye to it all, fearful they might be next if they step out of line.. thus, all these chattel countries fail in line with the usa regime sanctions...

basically, the prognosis isn't good.. none of the colonies are capable of speaking up to the usa regime, largely because they lack strong leadership and independence of thought in all this... we continue to slip towards ww3 and at present all the observing countries sit on their hands waiting for the next shoe to drop.. that is where we are at present with regard the ramp up to war on iran...

Harry Law , Jul 17 2019 21:24 utc | 60
The Gulf states know they would be in the front lines in any conflict, Saudi and UAE infrastructure destruction would mean Kings, Princes and Emir's scurrying from their destroyed countries because of their inability to sell oil and feed their people, as one Iranian General said.. the US bases in the region are not threats, "they are targets". Its true Iran has an army of 500,000, they also have millions of military aged men who would form militias and have the reputation of taking their shrouds with them into battle.
I think a major miscalculation by Trump, initiating this kind of scenario is unlikely, those other whack jobs Pence, Pompeo and Bolton are a cause for concern, just hear this nutcase Lindsey Graham threatening the Europeans....
"The United States should sanction "to the ground" European countries that continue to trade with Iran under the 2015 nuclear deal and refuse to join America's pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic, says top Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
"I will tell the Europeans, 'If you want to side with the Iranians, be my guest, but you won't use an American bank or do business with the American economy,'" Graham said".
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/07/16/601067/US-Graham-Trump-Iran-JCPOA-EU-sanction-to-ground
William Herschel , Jul 17 2019 21:39 utc | 61
Punitive sanctions against nations with a powerful military establishment have an incredibly poor track record. Germany after WWI. Japan prior to Pearl Harbor. And one might add Russia today. The more "effective" the sanctions, the closer to war.

But, of course, military planners in the U.S. and Israel have already picked out the targets for nuclear strikes during the very first wave of attacks on Iran. It will be nuclear first, ask questions later. Heil Trump has already said he will use nuclear weapons: "obliterate". But will even that work? I doubt it. Iran must expect nuclear attacks in the first wave. Yes, their urban populations will be destroyed, but their military? I doubt it.

Formerly T-Bear , Jul 17 2019 21:54 utc | 62
@ Harry Law | Jul 17 2019 21:24 utc | 60

The folks who now are called Iranian once fought the most militaristic society ever - the Spartans. There is likely a memory of that conflict still, and the lessons learned. They face a military that no longer remembers Vietnam or its lessons. Sanctions are an act of war, not military war but war against another who have been made into enemies nonetheless. Be mightily careful who you make your enemy, one sage reminds that you become like them. Look at those the U.S. has made enemy: Hitler and National Socialism; Mussolini and Fascism; Stalin and State Authoritarianism; Franco and Military Repression; and the list continues substantially, and then look at the U.S. in a distortion free mirror and what does one see?

Maracatu , Jul 17 2019 22:00 utc | 63
Taking into consideration the novel Rand Paul intervention, the likely way forward is this, and I'm sure it is what Putin (the master negotiator) has in mind: Trump blundered badly by throwing out the JCPOA, but he needs a way out that allows him to save face and even turn it into a partial "win". On the world stage (ie. for the public) it needs to look like Trump accedes to reinstate the JCPOA IN EXCHANGE for Iran withdrawing from Syria! This will not only save the nuclear deal, thereby reducing tensions, but it will force Israel to back down and shut up. Israel can't complain and Trump can sell it as an achievement of his, "without having to go to war". The US, of course will have to give Iran, Syria and Russia something in exchange: Iran and Russia ultimately bolstered their forces in Syria in order to save Assad. All things considered, Assad has won the war, so the reason for the bolstered Iranian and Russian presence no longer applies. What the US must agree to is to suspend its efforts to overthrow Assad (which Trump has been trying to do via the withdrawal of US troops in northern Syria), thereby returning the country to the status quo ante. The wild card in all of this, however, is Turkey's presence in Syria. Perhaps China can lend a helping hand on that issue?
Yeah, Right , Jul 17 2019 22:14 utc | 64
@35 "when it didn't. they resort back to the usual MO, look busy."

I agree with that comment, though I will add that for this Administration "looking busy" has a Keystone Cops look about it.

I mean, let's be real here: Norman Schwarzkopf did not make a single move against Iraq until he had well over 500,000 GI's at his command, and Tommy Franks was not willing to restart the Crash Boom Bang until he had built up his army to just shy of 500,000 soldiers.

And Iraq then was nowhere near as formidable as Iran is now.

Where are the troop buildups? Where is the CENTCOM army?
Nowhere. And no sign of it happening.

There is a real possibility that Bolton might get his way and start his dinky little war, only to find that the USA loses a great big war before he even manages to get out of bed.

CENTCOM is not ready for war, nowhere close to it, and for that reason alone Iran is correct to tell the USA that if Trump launches a "limited strike" then their response will be "it's on, baby".

Beibdnn. , Jul 17 2019 22:51 utc | 67
@ William Herschel 61. If the U.S. or anyone else uses any type of Nuclear weapons against Iran, a declared ally of Russia, it will result in an immediate and full scale Nuclear retaliation. This is a recent statement made by Vladimir Putin. Pompeo, Bolton et all are well aware of this. The U.S. might talk of using tactical nukes but despite their Hubris, even the most pro war in the Pentagon know what the results of that type of planned anihilation will have on the U.S. mainland. People like Lindsey Graham are merely empty vessels making a lot of noise.
karlof1 , Jul 17 2019 23:14 utc | 69
Why would Iran allow any Western nation to save face through negotiations or otherwise? Khamenei yesterday tweeted several statements that were later posted to his website:

"At this meeting, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran stressed that Western governments' arrogant behavior is the main obstacle in establishing ties and maintained: Western governments' major vice is their arrogance. If they face a weak government, their arrogance will be effective. But if that country knows the truth about them and resists, the Western governments will be defeated.

"Referring to problems rising between Iran and the European partners of the JCPOA, Ayatollah Khamenei said: Now, in the matters between us and the Europeans, the problems persist, because of their arrogance.

"The Leader of the Islamic Revolution highlighted Iran's commitment to the JCPOA -- also known as the Iran Deal -- and criticized European dignitaries of the deal for breaching it, saying: As stated by our Foreign Minister, who works hard, Europe has had eleven commitments, none of which it has met. The Foreign Minister, despite his diplomatic considerations, is clearly stating that. But what did we do? We acted based on our commitments, and even beyond that.

"Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated that Iran continued to stay within the JCPOA despite the fact that the EU partners of the JCPOA as well as the British government violated the international plan of action and yet demanded Iran to stay with its promises: Now that we have started to reduce our commitments, they step forward. They are very insolent, and they have not abided by their eleven commitments. We have just started to reduce some of our commitments, and this process will surely continue."

The hypothetical suggestion Zarif made in his interview with NBC News was just that--hypothetical--as it had to spell out again for the apparently illiterate, deaf or both SoS Pompeo and BigLie Media presstitutes.

In his arrogance, Trump climbed up the tree he's now stuck within; and as I've pointed out again and again, Iran isn't going to help him in his climb down--they'll be no face saving for the arrogant Western nations. I mean, how clear can the Iranians make that?! They quite well understand the very real interests at stake I put forth in my comment @32. And the Turks on their own have upped the stakes with Erdogan assuring :

"that his country is prepared to leave NATO during a meeting with Russian Deputy Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

"'I met twice with Turkish President Recep Erdogan and he told me personally that Turkey was willing to withdraw from NATO,' Zhirinovsky wrote."

Trump seems desperate for a way to climb down from his tree. Controversial Kentucky Senator Rand Paul apparently volunteered his services as an emissary to Iran , which Trump okayed but Paul's office is being mum about. As noted, Iran isn't going to talk unless tangible, visible concessions are made prior to any talks occurring--concessions Zarif and Rouhani have already stated as the minimum required: Ending all illegal sanctions and return to JCPOA.

Uncle Jon , Jul 17 2019 23:38 utc | 72
@karlof1 69

Iran just announced that they would be open to talk about ballistic missiles when US stops selling arms in the Middle East.

You have to hand it to the Iranians. In the one-up-manship game, they are a formidable opponent. Obviously, there is less than zero chance that would ever happen, but they are super smart in driving the message of US arrogance home. I am happy to see they don't take any shit from the Empire.

Master negotiators at work.

[Jul 18, 2019] Brennan used using Dmitri Alperovitch of 'Crowdstrike' as a tool to corrupt the processes of investigation of DNC leaks.

Notable quotes:
"... Moreover, if, as the memorandum asserted, 'British officials' were also aware that the 'most reliable intelligence' exonerated the Syrian government, rather fundamental questions arose as to how the JIC had felt able to claim precisely the reverse in support of David Cameron's unsuccessful attempt on 29 August to win Commons' support for British participation in air strikes. ..."
"... At the time, the Director General, Defence and Intelligence at the FCO was one Robert Hannigan, who in April 2014 would be appointed as Director of GCHQ. The National Security Adviser was a certain Sir Kim Darroch, whose appointment as Ambassador to the U.S. would be announced in August 2015. Both have been in the news, in relation to 'Russiagate.' ..."
"... Obviously, the same question arises about both of them as about Brennan: are they 'Gleiwitz types', who were actively complicit in preparing a murderous 'false flag', or were they simply part of a rather stupid Anglo-American 'dog', whom the 'tail', in the shape of the jihadists and their Turkish, Saudi and Qatari backers, could 'wag', as they chose? ..."
"... From the articles which Seymour Hersh published in the 'London Review of Books', and other materials, it became evident that the Defense Intelligence Agency, then headed by General Flynn, had been aware of the likelihood of fresh 'false flags' -- after the small scale incidents in spring 2013. ..."
"... An argument that 'Sundance' has repeatedly made is that a lot of what was happening in mid-2016, including the dossier attributed to Steele, had to do with the need to find justifications for these questionable surveillance operations. ..."
"... While I think there is something in this, I have long thought that the discovery that a mass of material exfiltrated from the DNC, and was going to be published by 'WikiLeaks', and the subsequent murder of Seth Rich, are likely to have been critically important triggers. ..."
"... panic-stricken improvisation found alike in the dossier, and the claims about the 'digital forensics' made by Dmitri Alperovitch of 'CrowdStrike', and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait. ..."
"... A week later, Butowsky filed a new action, in which the suggestion of a very-wide ranging conspiracy to suppress the truth about both the DNC leaks and Rich's murder was turned into a catalogue of defamation claims against a long list of people, including, as well as a variety of lawyers involved, CNN, the'Nw York Times', Vox, and the DNC. ..."
"... 'That Seth Rich was wacked because he stole the DNC emails and transferred them to Wikileaks is a conspiracy theory. It is possible and even plausible, but there is no evidence to confirm it. Many people seem to believe it because it makes more sense than the competing conspiracy theory, that Russia hacked the DNC and handed the emails to Wikileaks. Isikoff's claim, that Russia planted the Rich conspiracy theory, has no sound base. That theory existed before anything "Russian" mentioned it.' ..."
"... Reading the full text of Ms. Craven's report, I can see quite how well justified was Larry's suggestion in his post that Folkenflik and NPR were on a very sticky wicket indeed (as we say in England.) ..."
"... However, 'fools rush in', as the saying goes, so Isikoff decided to conspire with Deborah Sines, apparently the former U.S. assistant attorney in charge of investigating Seth Rich's murder, to suggest that suggestions that the victim had been the source of the material from the DNC published by 'WikiLeaks' originated as just another Russian plot. ..."
"... It appears that prior to the publication of his 'report', Isikoff talked to Butowsky, who in his efforts to dissuade him explained that his involvement in the whole affair began when Ellen Ratner, a news analyst with Fox, and sister of the late Michael Ratner, who had been an attorney for Assange, contacted him in Fall 2016 about a meeting she had with her that figure. ..."
"... And then, not particularly surprisingly, Butowsky and Clevenger abandoned their inhibitions about identifying Ellen Ratner as a source, and filled in a lot of 'blanks' in their 'narrative' about how Seth Rich lived and died. ..."
"... Among the many problems for Brennan and his co-conspirators -- among whom, on the British side, Hannigan and Darroch, and also Sedwill, are very important -- one relates to the way that the capabilities of 'scientific forensics', in all kinds of areas, have increased by leaps and bounds in recent years. ..."
"... This has meant that they have had little option but to corrupt the processes of investigation. The ludicrous claims by Dmitri Alperovitch of 'Crowdstrike' and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait, which nobody but a fool -- congenital 'useful idiot' one might say -- or a knave would dare to defend in public, are only one of many cases in point. ..."
Jul 18, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

David Habakkuk , 16 July 2019 at 01:14 PM

Larry,

One does not like to admit to having been one of John Brennan's 'useful idiots' -- I had thought I could see through any of the 'active measures' which he and his co-conspirators, on both sides of the Atlantic, could dream up. But I had swallowed whole the notion that Michael Flynn had been stupid enough knowingly to get involved in Erdoğan's feud with Gülen.

In fairness, however, I do think that when dealing with spiders like the former head of the CIA, a prudent fly needs to be sure he, or she, gets competent legal advice at the outset.

It may perhaps be interesting to put your account together with a post by 'Sundance' on the 'Conservative Treehouse' site on 14 July, headlined 'Devin Nunes Discusses Upcoming Mueller Testimony '

This takes up the issue, on which its author has commented extensively, of illegitimate access by contractors to the databases of NSA intercepts -- an issue which is clearly bound up with that of the use of such material to create the 'web' in which Flynn found himself hopelessly entangled.

The post by 'Sundance' suggests, just as you do, that the driving force behind what has happened was actually John Brennan. The April 2017 ruling by FISA Court Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer does not definitely establish that the illegitimate access of contractors started in 2012, but it definitely strongly suggests that it did.

Reading the 6 September 'Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity' memorandum to Obama, entitled 'Is Syria a Trap?', whose signatories included both you and Colonel Lang, it seemed overwhelmingly likely to some of us who were familiar with both your writings that Brennan had to have been involved in a conspiracy with the Turks, Saudis, and Qataris.

(To my surprise, this can no longer be accessed at the 'Consortium News' site. However, it is still available at http://www.shoah.org.uk/2013/09/10/page/2/ .)

One relevant question related to whether the role of the Americans involved in this conspiracy was simply 'ex post facto' exploitation of the patent 'false flag' sarin atrocity at Ghouta the previous 21 August to attempt to inveigle the United States into toppling Assad, or whether there was 'ex ante' complicity.

Moreover, if, as the memorandum asserted, 'British officials' were also aware that the 'most reliable intelligence' exonerated the Syrian government, rather fundamental questions arose as to how the JIC had felt able to claim precisely the reverse in support of David Cameron's unsuccessful attempt on 29 August to win Commons' support for British participation in air strikes.

At the time, the Director General, Defence and Intelligence at the FCO was one Robert Hannigan, who in April 2014 would be appointed as Director of GCHQ. The National Security Adviser was a certain Sir Kim Darroch, whose appointment as Ambassador to the U.S. would be announced in August 2015. Both have been in the news, in relation to 'Russiagate.'

Obviously, the same question arises about both of them as about Brennan: are they 'Gleiwitz types', who were actively complicit in preparing a murderous 'false flag', or were they simply part of a rather stupid Anglo-American 'dog', whom the 'tail', in the shape of the jihadists and their Turkish, Saudi and Qatari backers, could 'wag', as they chose?

From the articles which Seymour Hersh published in the 'London Review of Books', and other materials, it became evident that the Defense Intelligence Agency, then headed by General Flynn, had been aware of the likelihood of fresh 'false flags' -- after the small scale incidents in spring 2013.

And it was clear enough, if one bothered to study the 'open source' material at all carefully, that the DIA had been a key locus of opposition to the strategies being pursued by Brennan, together with his British co-conspirators.

Accordingly, the fact that an 'interagency memorandum of understanding', which according to Collyer's judgement looks as though it may well date from 2012 -- the year Brennan was appointed to head the CIA -- appears to have led, in that year, to the granting of access to the material, through the FBI, to outside contractors, looks somewhat interesting. (This is well covered by 'Sundance'.)

So, I find myself asking whether in fact this gross abuse of the role of the NSA was not linked at the outset to the divisions within the American intelligence apparatus and military about policy towards the Middle East, and also whether this may not be relevant to assessing the role of Robert Mueller, who was FBI Director through until September 2013.

An argument that 'Sundance' has repeatedly made is that a lot of what was happening in mid-2016, including the dossier attributed to Steele, had to do with the need to find justifications for these questionable surveillance operations.

While I think there is something in this, I have long thought that the discovery that a mass of material exfiltrated from the DNC, and was going to be published by 'WikiLeaks', and the subsequent murder of Seth Rich, are likely to have been critically important triggers.

Among other things, I do not think that the version given by 'Sundance' can explain the air of panic-stricken improvisation found alike in the dossier, and the claims about the 'digital forensics' made by Dmitri Alperovitch of 'CrowdStrike', and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait.

I see that there has now been a dramatic escalation in the legal battles which began when Ed Butowsky bought his initial action against David Folkenflik and his 'NPR' colleagues in June 2018. The discovery process in that action was followed by an 'Amended Complaint' on 5 March this year.

A week later, Butowsky filed a new action, in which the suggestion of a very-wide ranging conspiracy to suppress the truth about both the DNC leaks and Rich's murder was turned into a catalogue of defamation claims against a long list of people, including, as well as a variety of lawyers involved, CNN, the'Nw York Times', Vox, and the DNC.

On 9 July, Michael Isikoff published a story alleging that the claims about Rich and his murder were the result of a Russian 'active measures' operation -- to use a favourite phrase of TTG's.

A useful account, with links, is provided by our colleague 'b', at 'Moon of Alabama', at https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/07/isikoff-who-first-peddled-the-fake-steele-dossier-invents-new-russian-influence-story.html .

Concluding his piece, 'b' wrote:

'That Seth Rich was wacked because he stole the DNC emails and transferred them to Wikileaks is a conspiracy theory. It is possible and even plausible, but there is no evidence to confirm it. Many people seem to believe it because it makes more sense than the competing conspiracy theory, that Russia hacked the DNC and handed the emails to Wikileaks. Isikoff's claim, that Russia planted the Rich conspiracy theory, has no sound base. That theory existed before anything "Russian" mentioned it.'

As it happens, Butowsky and his lawyer, Ty Clevenger, obviously decided it was time to, as it were, 'unmask their batteries', and provide some of the evidence they have been accumulating.

There is another useful post by 'Sundance', which in turn links to a very interesting post on the Gateway Pundit' site. From there, you can access both Clevenger's blog post, and the text of the 'Amended Complaint.'

(See https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/07/15/lawsuit-claims-julian-assange-confirmed-dnc-emails-received-from-seth-rich-not-a-russian-hack/ .)

It seems likely that Butowsky and Clevenger were pushed into acting a bit sooner than they had intended. The fact that the name of Ellen Ratner, clearly a pivotal participant, was misspellled 'Rattner' in the 'Amended Complaint', is likely to be an indication of this.

However, I also think that Clevenger, who seems to me a first-class 'ferret', could do with the services of an old-style secretary, who checked his productions before they went out.

turcopolier , 16 July 2019 at 02:34 PM
As I have previously mentioned, I testified several times in Collyer's Washington district court on non-FISA matters. My impression was that she is a very ambitious woman who wishes always to do DoJ's bidding.

David Habakkuk -> turcopolier ... , 18 July 2019 at 01:28 PM

Pat,

Your recollections of Collyer had, unfortunately, slipped my mind when I posted my comment above. So, unfortunately, had Larry's post on Judge Caroline M. Craven's denial in her report dated 17 April 2019 of the Motion to Dismiss filed by David Folkenflik and his NPR colleagues in the defamation case brought against them by Ed Butowsky.

At the time of his post, the full text of the judgement was only available on PACER, which requires a subscription. However, looking at the 'Court Listener' site, I now see that both it and some other key documents in the case are freely available.

(See https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7244731/butowsky-v-folkenflik/ .)

Reading the full text of Ms. Craven's report, I can see quite how well justified was Larry's suggestion in his post that Folkenflik and NPR were on a very sticky wicket indeed (as we say in England.)

And I can also see more clearly why, following the judgement, Butowsky and Ty Clevenger felt they were in a position to launch an action both against some of the major legal players in the cover-up of the fact that the materials published by the DNC were leaked by Seth Rich, not hacked by the Russians, and also key disseminators of the cover-up, CNN, the NYT, and Vox.

The most important documents in that case are also now free available on 'Court Listener', at https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14681570/butowsky-v-gottlieb/ .

What looks to have happened subsequently is a natural enough process of escalation.

Among those who rather actively promoted the hogwash attributed to Christopher Steele was Michael Isikoff, who is, apparently, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News. In April, he was reported in 'Vanity Fair' conceding that 'I think it's fair to say that all of us should have approached this, in retrospect, with more skepticism'.

(See https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/04/the-steele-dossiers-moment-of-truth-arrives-journalists-argue-its-impact .)

Any 'investigative reporter' worth his or her salt would have done elementary checks on the dossier immediately, and not touched it with a bargepole -- again, as we used to say in England. Also, even among the incompetent and corrupt, common prudence might have suggested caution.

However, 'fools rush in', as the saying goes, so Isikoff decided to conspire with Deborah Sines, apparently the former U.S. assistant attorney in charge of investigating Seth Rich's murder, to suggest that suggestions that the victim had been the source of the material from the DNC published by 'WikiLeaks' originated as just another Russian plot.

(See https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-the-true-origins-of-the-seth-rich-conspiracy-a-yahoo-news-investigation-100000831.html .)

It appears that prior to the publication of his 'report', Isikoff talked to Butowsky, who in his efforts to dissuade him explained that his involvement in the whole affair began when Ellen Ratner, a news analyst with Fox, and sister of the late Michael Ratner, who had been an attorney for Assange, contacted him in Fall 2016 about a meeting she had with her that figure.

Although Butowsky intended the conversation to be 'off the record', and the idea was emphatically not that Isikoff would contact Ellen Ratner, he did. It seems that -- not particularly surprisingly, in the current climate -- she lied to him, and he was stupid enough to think that this meant he could get away with publishing his story.

(See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/07/breaking-lawsuit-outs-reporter-ellen-ratner-as-source-for-seth-rich-information/ .)

And then, not particularly surprisingly, Butowsky and Clevenger abandoned their inhibitions about identifying Ellen Ratner as a source, and filled in a lot of 'blanks' in their 'narrative' about how Seth Rich lived and died.

I am still in the process of digesting the new information. However, a couple of preliminary observations about the implications may be worth making.

Among the many problems for Brennan and his co-conspirators -- among whom, on the British side, Hannigan and Darroch, and also Sedwill, are very important -- one relates to the way that the capabilities of 'scientific forensics', in all kinds of areas, have increased by leaps and bounds in recent years.

This has meant that they have had little option but to corrupt the processes of investigation. The ludicrous claims by Dmitri Alperovitch of 'Crowdstrike' and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait, which nobody but a fool -- congenital 'useful idiot' one might say -- or a knave would dare to defend in public, are only one of many cases in point.

What is really dangerous for the conspirators, however, is when the problems they have in contesting rational arguments about the 'scientific forensics' come together with problems relating to more 'old-fashioned' kinds of evidence: crucially, 'witness testimony'.

This, I think, may now be happening.

It also seems to me quite likely that some of those 'in the know' -- including perhaps Rosemary Collyer -- had seen what was liable to happen a good while ago, and decided that a prudent 'rat' keeps its options open.

[Jul 17, 2019] 13 Russian Indictments -- Letter From Putin to Mueller

Notable quotes:
"... I originally published this as a satirical Facebook Note on February 21, 2018, after the New York Times reported on February 16, 2018 that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had indicted 13 Russians. ..."
Jul 15, 2019 | medium.com

Michael Weddle Follow Jul 15 · 3 min read

I originally published this as a satirical Facebook Note on February 21, 2018, after the New York Times reported on February 16, 2018 that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had indicted 13 Russians.

February 21, 2018

The Honorable Robert Swan Mueller III
Special Investigating Counsel
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530–0001

Dear Mr. Mueller:

I read with great interest your indictments of 13 Russian citizens and three Russian corporations.

Please note that Russia encourages you to continue your investigatory efforts as we are confident you will find that neither myself or any representatives of my office and government have anything to do with what many of your politicians and media members are describing as "Russian collusion" or "Russian meddling" with the US 2016 elections.

Also, as a side note, please know that we in Russia are completely surprised at how you conducted your 2016 election. From the vantage point of anyone living outside of America those elections did not appear fair at all. We in Russia are surprised by this as we thought you were a better nation than what we saw from your 2016 national elections.

Although the United States of America and The Russian Federation hold no formal extradition treaty agreement, please be advised I am willing to use the powers of my office to contact those whom you've indicted and I will do my utmost to encourage them to come to America in order to stand the trial of your indictments. We are confident that your jurisprudence system for legal discovery will produce both remarkable and enlightening evidence for your investigation.

On a mundane matter, would you be willing to pay for the costs of their travel and housing expenses while they stand trial in America, or would you prefer that The Russian Federation to cover this expense?

Finally, please find attached a copy of the Constitution of The Russian Federation. You are welcome to share with your fellow citizens as we are confident they will become very surprised by what they learn from reading the contents of our Constitution.

http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-01.htm

Very truly yours,

Vladimir Putin, President The Russian Federation

PS: I strongly recommend that your FBI, NSA and DHS departments thoroughly examine the DNC computers in order to determine if they were actually "hacked." I'm confident you will discover that the documents published by Wikileaks were the product of an inside "leak" onto a thumb drive. Please note that I am shocked that the thoroughness of your investigation has not yet accomplished this simple and obvious task.

[Jul 17, 2019] 13 Russian Indictments -- Letter From Putin to Mueller

Notable quotes:
"... I originally published this as a satirical Facebook Note on February 21, 2018, after the New York Times reported on February 16, 2018 that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had indicted 13 Russians. ..."
Jul 15, 2019 | medium.com

Michael Weddle Follow Jul 15 · 3 min read

I originally published this as a satirical Facebook Note on February 21, 2018, after the New York Times reported on February 16, 2018 that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had indicted 13 Russians.

February 21, 2018

The Honorable Robert Swan Mueller III
Special Investigating Counsel
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530–0001

Dear Mr. Mueller:

I read with great interest your indictments of 13 Russian citizens and three Russian corporations.

Please note that Russia encourages you to continue your investigatory efforts as we are confident you will find that neither myself or any representatives of my office and government have anything to do with what many of your politicians and media members are describing as "Russian collusion" or "Russian meddling" with the US 2016 elections.

Also, as a side note, please know that we in Russia are completely surprised at how you conducted your 2016 election. From the vantage point of anyone living outside of America those elections did not appear fair at all. We in Russia are surprised by this as we thought you were a better nation than what we saw from your 2016 national elections.

Although the United States of America and The Russian Federation hold no formal extradition treaty agreement, please be advised I am willing to use the powers of my office to contact those whom you've indicted and I will do my utmost to encourage them to come to America in order to stand the trial of your indictments. We are confident that your jurisprudence system for legal discovery will produce both remarkable and enlightening evidence for your investigation.

On a mundane matter, would you be willing to pay for the costs of their travel and housing expenses while they stand trial in America, or would you prefer that The Russian Federation to cover this expense?

Finally, please find attached a copy of the Constitution of The Russian Federation. You are welcome to share with your fellow citizens as we are confident they will become very surprised by what they learn from reading the contents of our Constitution.

http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-01.htm

Very truly yours,

Vladimir Putin, President The Russian Federation

PS: I strongly recommend that your FBI, NSA and DHS departments thoroughly examine the DNC computers in order to determine if they were actually "hacked." I'm confident you will discover that the documents published by Wikileaks were the product of an inside "leak" onto a thumb drive. Please note that I am shocked that the thoroughness of your investigation has not yet accomplished this simple and obvious task.

[Jul 17, 2019] Merkel Ally Narrowly Elected To Top EU Post, Averting Major Institutional Crisis

Looks like EU sanctions will continue
Jul 17, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

In light of historical events, it would be ironic if that particular twist comes back to bite Poland some day in the not too distant future.

TeethVillage88s , 10 hours ago link

Money, Money, Money,... Old Money, Factories, Russian Mercheant, German Industrialist, American Slave owner... Nord Deutscheland, Bremen, was heavily Communist... Family would understand the power of Communist Equality and Serfdom.

Von der Leyen's great-grandfather was the cotton merchant Carl Albrecht (1875–1952), who married Mary Ladson Robertson (1883–1960), an American who belonged to the Ladson family , a family of the southern aristocracy from Charleston, South Carolina . Her American ancestors had played a significant role in the British colonization of the Americas and the Atlantic slave trade .

admin user , 11 hours ago link

Merkel Ally Narrowly Elected To Top EU Post, Prolonging "Major Institutional Myopia"

FTFY

schroedingersrat , 12 hours ago link

Von der Leyen is a tool for the anglo-zio complex. Well done USA for installing your woman as head of the EU.

Aurelian77 , 13 hours ago link

She has SEVEN children. Very unusual for a European leader...

Davidduke2000 , 13 hours ago link

An old Soviet General said the EU is like the old Soviets , the leaders were not elected, they were appointed by others mostly their friends and the EU process is the same, fat cats appoint other fat cats instead of direct elections.

[Jul 17, 2019] Sic Transit Gloria Mueller by Ray McGovern

Mueller looks more and more like dirty Clinton fixer.
Notable quotes:
"... The Feb. 2018 indictment referred repeatedly to the IRA simply as a "Russian organization." But in Mueller's report 14 months later, the "Russian organization" had somehow morphed into "Russia." The IRA's lawyers argued, in effect, that Mueller's ipse-dixit "Russia did it" does not suffice as proof of Russian government involvement. Federal Judge Friedrich agreed and ordered Mueller to cease promoting his evidence-less charge against the IRA; she added that "any future violations of her order will trigger a range of potential sanctions." ..."
"... In testimony to Congress in October 2017, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch had cautioned earlier that from 2015 to 2017, "Americans using Facebook were exposed to, or 'served,' a total of over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds." Shamefully misleading "analysis" by Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti in a 10,000-word article on September 20, 2018 made the case that the IRA's 80,000 posts helped deliver the presidency to Trump. ..."
"... Shane and Mazzetti neglected to report the 33 trillion number for needed context, even though the Times ' own coverage of Stretch's 2017 testimony stated outright: "Facebook cautioned that the Russia-linked posts represented a minuscule amount of content compared with the billions of posts that flow through users' News Feeds everyday." ..."
"... CrowdStrike, the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, the Justice Department admitted. ..."
"... With Erin Ratner being named as a conduit between Seth Rich and Wikileaks in a lawsuit yesterday – the second flimsy leg of Mueller's claims – gets cut off at the knees. ..."
Jul 17, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

... ... ...

Requiem for 'Interference'

Daniel Lazare's July 12 Consortium News piece shatters one of the twin prongs in Mueller's case that "the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion." It was the prong dripping with incessant drivel about the Kremlin using social media to help Trump win in 2016.

Mueller led off his Russiagate report, a redacted version of which was published on April 18, with the dubious claim that his investigation had

" established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election principally through two operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign, and then released stolen documents."

Judge to Mueller: Put Up or Shut Up

Mueller: Needs more time. (Flickr)

Regarding the social-media accusation, Judge Friederich has now told Mueller, in effect, to put up or shut up. What happened was this: On February 16, 2018 a typically credulous grand jury -- the usual kind that cynics say can be persuaded to indict the proverbial ham sandwich -- was convinced by Mueller to return 16 indictments of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and associates in St. Petersburg, giving his all-deliberate-speed investigation some momentum and a much-needed, if short-lived, "big win" in "proving" interference by Russia in the 2016 election. It apparently never occurred to Mueller and the super-smart lawyers around him that the Russians would outsmart them by hiring their own lawyers to show up in U.S. court and seek discovery. Oops.

The Feb. 2018 indictment referred repeatedly to the IRA simply as a "Russian organization." But in Mueller's report 14 months later, the "Russian organization" had somehow morphed into "Russia." The IRA's lawyers argued, in effect, that Mueller's ipse-dixit "Russia did it" does not suffice as proof of Russian government involvement. Federal Judge Friedrich agreed and ordered Mueller to cease promoting his evidence-less charge against the IRA; she added that "any future violations of her order will trigger a range of potential sanctions."

More specifically, at the conclusion of a hearing held under seal on May 28, Judge Friedrich ordered the government "to refrain from making or authorizing any public statement that links the alleged conspiracy in the indictment to the Russian government or its agencies." The judge ordered further that "any public statement about the allegations in the indictment . . . must make clear that, one, the government is summarizing the allegations in the indictment which remain unproven, and, two, the government does not express an opinion on the defendant's guilt or innocence or the strength of the evidence in this case."

Reporting Thursday on Judge Friedrich's ruling, former CIA and State Department official Larry C. Johnson described it as a "potential game changer," observing that Mueller "has not offered one piece of solid evidence that the defendants were involved in any way with the government of Russia." After including a lot of useful background material, Johnson ends by noting:

"Some readers will insist that Mueller and his team have actual intelligence but cannot put that in an indictment. Well boys and girls, here is a simple truth–if you cannot produce evidence that can be presented in court then you do not have a case. There is that part of the Constitution that allows those accused of a crime to confront their accusers."

IRA Story a 'Stretch'

Last fall, investigative journalist Gareth Porter dissected and debunked The New York Times 's far-fetched claim that 80,000 Facebook posts by the Internet Research Agency helped swing the election to Donald Trump. What the Times story neglected to say is that the relatively paltry 80,000 posts were engulfed in literally trillions of posts on Facebook over the two-year period in question -- before and after the 2016 election.

Stretch and executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google hauled before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism on Oct. 31, 2017.

In testimony to Congress in October 2017, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch had cautioned earlier that from 2015 to 2017, "Americans using Facebook were exposed to, or 'served,' a total of over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds." Shamefully misleading "analysis" by Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti in a 10,000-word article on September 20, 2018 made the case that the IRA's 80,000 posts helped deliver the presidency to Trump.

Shane and Mazzetti neglected to report the 33 trillion number for needed context, even though the Times ' own coverage of Stretch's 2017 testimony stated outright: "Facebook cautioned that the Russia-linked posts represented a minuscule amount of content compared with the billions of posts that flow through users' News Feeds everyday."

The chances that Americans saw any of these IRA ads -- let alone were influenced by them -- are infinitismal. Porter and others did the math and found that over the two-year period, the 80,000 Russian-origin Facebook posts represented just 0.0000000024 of total Facebook content in that time. Porter commented that this particular Times contribution to the Russiagate story "should vie in the annals of journalism as one of the most spectacularly misleading uses of statistics of all time."

And now we know, courtesy of Judge Friederich, that Mueller has never produced proof, beyond his say-so, that the Russian government was responsible for the activities of the IRA -- feckless as they were. That they swung the election is clearly a stretch.

The Other Prong: Hacking the DNC

The second of Mueller's two major accusations of Russian interference, as noted above, charged that "a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign, and then released stolen documents." Sadly for Russiagate aficionados, the evidence behind that charge doesn't hold water either.

CrowdStrike, the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, the Justice Department admitted.

The revelation came in a court filing by the government in the pre-trial phase of Roger Stone, a long-time Republican operative who had an unofficial role in the campaign of candidate Donald Trump. Stone has been charged with misleading Congress, obstructing justice and intimidating a witness.

The filing was in response to a motion by Stone's lawyers asking for "unredacted reports" from CrowdStrike challenging the government to prove that Russia hacked the DNC server. "The government does not possess the information the defendant seeks," the DOJ filing says.

Small wonder that Mueller had hoped to escape further questioning. If he does testify on July 24, the committee hearings will be well worth watching.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and a presidential briefer. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. His colleagues and he have been following closely the ins and outs of Russiagate.

Carlos , July 17, 2019 at 12:52

With Erin Ratner being named as a conduit between Seth Rich and Wikileaks in a lawsuit yesterday – the second flimsy leg of Mueller's claims – gets cut off at the knees.

cletus , July 17, 2019 at 05:29

just read your article at lewrockwell on 7/17.

you gave all the facts that irrefutably condemn the mueller hoax and reveal what a con man he is. I salute you for this.

unfortutunately, you then come to a conclusion that cannot be supported by an reasonable person.

you think that mueller's con will be called out by the republicans on the committee.

what a joke. They will avoid like the plague revealling that the russia claims by mueller are a hoax.
they'll focus completely on ' you did conclude that trump didn't collude with the russians, right?"

anyone who's been paying attention at all knows this.

Robert G. Hilton , July 17, 2019 at 01:13

There was no expert report showing hacking because the expert had found that the Russians did not hack. Simple as that. The way it works is, that an expert puts nothing in writing until AFTER orally consulting with the attorney who hired him. If the news is bad for said attorney, then the expert is instructed NEVER to put the bad news in writing. I used to hire experts when I litigated patent infringement cases, and that is the way it works. If you pay the expert, then you make the rules. The judge may understand this too. I'm pretty sure that the Crowd Strike expert also gave Muller (Andrew Wiseman?) the same news about no hacking.

michael weddle , July 16, 2019 at 22:41

Why, shortly after Random Juan claimed the presidency, was a Crowdstrike employee trying to stoke the Venezuelan coup?

https://steemit.com/venezuela/@michaelweddle/crowdstrike-employee-tweeting-pro-coup-propaganda-on-venezuela

Bailey , July 16, 2019 at 20:27

I wish that this constant debunking of Russia Gate would be doing some good. Sadly it's not. Most of the members of daily kos believe everything about Russia Gate and even after reading some of the great essays written here that debunks it they instead say that this website has been bought out by Russia.

I once thought that if people really looked at the evidence or lack of it that they would wake up and smell the propaganda. It has always been so obvious to me that there was never any there there and I couldn't understand how people bought into it. But I think it has to do with who people voted for in the last election. Hillary's supporters just can't believe that she could have lost without outside interference. Sad.

ex-PFC Chuck , July 16, 2019 at 18:08

A post yesterday at The Conservative Treehouse expands on a Gateway Pundit post about an amended filing to the court in a Texas libel suit that could blow the whole Russia-gate hoax wide open, taking with it whatever shred of credibility the Mueller Report might still have. Not to mention the rationale for silencing Assange, General Flynn's prosecution, and the murder of Seth Rich.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/07/15/lawsuit-claims-julian-assange-confirmed-dnc-emails-received-from-seth-rich-not-a-russian-hack/

Vera Moldt , July 16, 2019 at 17:13

It looks like this fraudulent fable has finally been debunked by the US judicial system. Now the Hillary bots will have to come up with another excuse for her wealthy donors as to why she lost the election to a much maligned TV host that spent a small fraction of her campaign funding. This also takes some of the fuel out of using the Russiagate fraud for a march to war with Russia that was accompanied by large defense spending increases. Russiagate was the perfect gift to the Clinton campaign apologists and the MIC that needs a causus belli to feed the public war machine. That gift box has now been unraveled to display an empty box. I'm surprised Ray McGovern did not bring up the issue of the alleged hacking of DNC emails to have been contrary to the capability of the internet at that time. The rate of transfer was consistent with downloading to a flash drive but impossible for transfer of packets across an IP network – further debunking the Russia hacking narrative. This whole house of cards has crashed in and it seems that it will be impossible for the Russiagate fraudsters to reconstruct their tawdry myth.

jaycee , July 16, 2019 at 14:08

Perceptive bloggers identified the IRA as a commercial clickbait operation two years ago. Everything about that operation was consistent with that description. Describing the IRA as a Russian government psy-op program, in turn, was inconsistent with the evidence at hand and so required the assumption that its purpose was to "sow chaos", or similar guesswork. It should be remembered that the Facebook / Twitter people were initially reluctant to go along with the latter theory, and only came on board after a great deal of pressure from members of Congress such as Mark Warner. So this whole nonsensical story was magnified at the insistence of powerful Democratic congressional persons, and Mueller was simply bolstering their arguments – which was his job it appears. The result has been not only a false consciousness deliberately seeded through the public, but also a raft of social media and alternative news censorship which has been silencing both alt-right and progressive voices.

Jeff Harrison , July 16, 2019 at 13:45

Thanx, Ray. I've said from the outset that Russiagate was bullshit perpetrated by Three Names who just couldn't stand the fact that this was the latest in a long string of failures that this incompetent, arrogant woman perpetrated on the American people. It was bullshit from jump street because Three Names won the election by 3M votes but in the American presidential election you not only need the votes, you need the distribution. Distribution she didn't have. Russia (or any other actor sufficiently large and determined) can sway votes for one candidate or another but they can't sway distribution. I personally thought the claim that Russia via the Internet Research Agency sought to sway the election by disparaging Three Names and pumping up Thump. Three Names won by 3M votes. Looks like Russia's IRA did a spectacularly poor job of meddling.

There are some take aways from this that the government should be looking into/doing something about.
1. Russiagate never had any legs. The legs that it got came from an effort by the deep state to create them out of thin air. The deep state tried to take on the role of the Praetorian Guard in old Rome. Their role originally was to protect the emperor but it morphed over the years into picking who would be the emperor. The likes of Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Struck (however you spell it) and his femme fatale (at a minimum, there may be more) should all be marched off to jail and locked up for a considerable period of time for their attempts to destroy our democracy (or republic – a distinction without a difference).

2. Seth Rich's murder needs to be actually investigated now that he has been outed as the source of the leak to Wikileaks.

3. The Republican party needs to be banned as a political party. Any clear eyed view of the 2016 election will conclude that the decades old effort by the Republicans at voter suppression and gerrymandering are what resulted in the 2016 results. 80,000 votes in three states that the Republicans have invested great voter suppression efforts – Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania would have changed the election results. This should have been a major neon sign that winner take all for electoral votes is a bad idea. If proportional EC votes were mandated, third parties would have a chance and our presidential elections might become actual contests. Otherwise, we'll continue to have elections that are between two candidates – worse and worser.

John Puma , July 16, 2019 at 12:36

The proportion of IRA "stories" among total Facebook postings
in the period in question, can be expressed in manner a bit more
readily grasped: on average, one IRA posting appeared among
every 412 million total. For perspective the US population is now
about 330 million.

The FBIs bungling with Crowdstrike information is reminiscent
of its reported 9-11 careless incompetence.

Jill , July 16, 2019 at 13:06

This may be why NPR featured that story:

"Businessman Ed Butowsky filed a lawsuit on Monday that outed FOX News reporter Ellen Ratner was his source for the Seth Rich information.

This comes after Michael Isikoff's report last week that labeled Butowsky as a Russian source."

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/07/breaking-lawsuit-outs-reporter-ellen-ratner-as-source-for-seth-rich-information/

Chet Roman , July 16, 2019 at 13:12

Yahoo's reporter Michael Isikoff is a sock puppet for the CIA/FBI that provided the info to NPR and was one of the first to spread the lies told to him by Steele about Russian interference. He must have tried to head off the lawsuit filed today. Ed Butowsky filed a lawsuit against the liberal media claiming defamation and business disparagement. He claims that Assange told Ellen Ratner (Fox News analyst and sister of Assange's lawyer who passed away) that Seth and Aaron Rich provided the emails to Wikileaks.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/07/15/lawsuit-claims-julian-assange-confirmed-dnc-emails-received-from-seth-rich-not-a-russian-hack/

Kieron , July 16, 2019 at 17:22

I don't think anyone with a couple of brain cells would dismiss the idea that an insider with the DNC having access to delicate, perhaps damaging material, being what seems on the surface, to be the victim of a motiveless murder would ask the question, was there any connection between Seth Rich's demise and the crap storm that ensued after the Wikileaks release. Really hello !

LarcoMarco , July 16, 2019 at 17:46

"NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Michael Isikoff" – what a predictable farce! "We talked to Deborah Sines, who was the federal prosecutor in charge of the investigation into Seth Rich's death. She was an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. attorney's office in the District of Columbia, which prosecutes local murders. And she would see these conspiracy theories about her case circulating on the Web. She was – she wanted to find out where they were coming from."

At least we now know that Seth Rich's death is/was a Federal case. No more claiming the DCPD has jurisdiction. But no disclosures of the contents of Seth Rich's cell phone and laptop.

Eric32 , July 16, 2019 at 10:38

The author seems consumed by this carnival of politicized legalized covert intelligence operations, by people and entities trying to retain money and power.

What's important is that the system hasn't been working for decades, and there's going to be increasingly serious problems, maybe fatal ones, rising if a big overhaul doesn't occur.

Al Pinto , July 16, 2019 at 09:43

The DNC and MSM sold, and sold well, the Russiagate to the general public. Does it really matter, if the "Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has now come apart at the seams"? Neither the DNC, nor the MSM will report/mention either of the court case, pretty much a blackout for the general public.

Even, if these court cases are widely reported, do you really believe that the majority of the people would change their mind? After almost three years, there's no way that these people will change their mind. The only change that widely reporting these court cases would result in is, that Trump and HRC supporters would hate each other even more.

This Russiagate will be with us pretty much forever, it'll morph in to accusing people of being Russian agents and/or Russian Bots. We already see this taking place and just wait, until next year. It's not going to be pretty

michael , July 16, 2019 at 12:40

Aaron Mate has done a brilliant job researching and debunking Russiagate. Unfortunately for him, he is now ostracized and has to survive on the margins, with other people with critical thinking skills.

Blessthebeasts , July 16, 2019 at 13:28

You're right. The truth doesn't matter, just the BS narrative that has been shoved down our throats for the last few years. It never made any sense to anyone who really thought about it but the media whores just keep spewing total nonsense and they surely won't change their ways now. The fact that the entire crock is really irrelevant to the majority of our citizens doesn't matter to them a bit.

AnneR , July 16, 2019 at 09:42

Thank you again Mr McGovern for another article on this never ending saga. While I hope that sanity begins to dawn among the so-called progressives, I have serious doubts.

1. Neither the BBC World Service nor NPR have mentioned (at least while I've been listening) Judge Friedrich's ruling vis a vis provide the evidence (discovery) to the IRA 12's lawyers or tear up the indictment (essentially). Indeed, I've not heard, on the MSM, anything about those 12 IRA folks employing a lawyer and challenging Mueller's indictment. Silence works as well as obfuscation, lies.

2. The Demrats simply will not let their Russophobia go. I gather (from RT – tut tut I must be an RU bottle) that Ms Harris AIPAC schmoozer, keen and eager lock 'em up and throw away the key, corporate-capitalist crony Kamala has been accusing the Russians of stirring up the controversy surrounding Kaepernick's bending of the knee. The Russians and their bots did it.

3. And then this morning on NPR – a Steve Inskip interview with Michael Isikoff focusing on the Seth Rich "conspiracy theory" and of course the whole thing (or that segment which I could stomach hearing) presumed as a matter of established, and thus true, fact that everything that went wrong for the DNC's HRC campaign was caused by the Russians – for which read Putin. Isikoff was there as an "investigative" journalist for "Yahoo News" – and his "investigation" had shown that the Russians were – who else – behind the conspiracy theory that Seth Rich was killed by HRC thugs in order to keep him permanently quiet about corruption in the DNC. (Corruption – a rather mealy-mouthed way of avoiding bringing into NPR daylight what the DNC were actually doing: determining who would be the Dem candidate willy nilly of who the voters wanted. But this mealy-mouthedness is fully in keeping with NPR's basic silence on what Wikileaks revealed via that insider download.)

Orwellian. Propaganda at its Bernays, Goebbels best. Despair . This business is *not* going away. The Demrats – both in DC and their bourgeois/progressive supporters have far too much invested in the whole confabulation for them to admit that the former deliberately lied and the latter were willing? hoodwinked.

Ray McGovern , July 16, 2019 at 14:57

Dear AnneR,

Thanks for your comment. I would like it if somehow "despair," could be disallowed.

There are enough of us, after all. And, as Annie Dillard put it, "There never was anybody but us."

I also take some inspiration from the dismal-sounding, yet somehow uplifting words of I. F. Stone:

"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you're going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins."

THE CHALLENGE IS TO ACCEPT THAT, AND FIND JOY IN TRYING -- AND EVEN IN LOSING.

I believe the losing does not last forever; think we all need to do our part in the "interim."

Best regards,

Ray

DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 19:44

That sums things up precisely, Ray.

None of us may live to see a complete turn-around, yet it is the honest effort to encourage and build the foundation for that fundamental systemic change to conscious and principled human awareness which is the measure we must make of ourselves.

Your sense of moral presence, Ray, is very much appreciated.

It serves as inspiration for all, and especially the young, who already understand, and encourages, as example, those who are coming to understand.

DW

AnneR , July 17, 2019 at 08:33

Dear Mr McGovern – thank you for reading and replying to my comment.

And, yes, I do understand the objection to despair – though not, might I add, any thought that its frank expression be expunged!

Were it only the whole Russiagate fabrication, delusions, time and money waste (oh well, only taxpayers' money) and fallout that was so dreadfully wrong, being heinously enacted. Indeed were it all that our taxes were being wasted on.

Perhaps that's it – Russiagate while distracting from the things that the DNC and HRC did, said, *also* makes for good deflection from the war crimes we are committing, the never ending imperialist warmongering we are engaged in, from the fact that many Demrats voted for those nice tax breaks given to the wealthiest tiers in our society, that many of those Demrats voted to hand over to the MIC *even more* loot even as the Pentagon can't account for the billions, or whatever fantastikal amount, it has already received over the years, deflection from the fact that despite such a "good" economy increasing numbers of people are living ever more economically precarious lives, rents rise astronomically, healthcare is a joke (or would be were its lack not so serious for so many). And that's not to mention the realities of climate change or the continuing (and MSM ignored) 70 plus year plight of Palestinians, among so many others.

My late husband used to tell me to write to NPR, the BBC, to let them know that they weren't codding everyone with their disinformation, non-information, lack of objectivity – their propaganda. And I did, often and used to ask for a response. Did I even get those? You must be joking

AnneR , July 17, 2019 at 14:08

In case someone might think that I expected either the BBC or NPR to alter their ways because of my "letters" (interestingly the BBC only allows/ed for around 1000 characters or something equally useless) – no. But when (in the case of the BBC) you can tick the "please reply" box and get total silence, not even a "thank you for your blah blah we shan't pay any attention to your complaints ," in response it is pretty frustrating.

As for NPR – I stopped our contributions. Why would we *pay* for the privilege of being propagandized? I just wish we had stopped them years earlier

Anyway, thank you Mr McGovern for your continuing coverage of this whole affair. I just wish my late partner in life and love had known of this website.

ML , July 16, 2019 at 09:24

Each morning when I arise, I get my coffee and settle down to read Consortium News. I also make a habit of a quick perusal of what the stenographers are jawing about on CNN today, there is a real doozy smearing Assange. The spinners are working overtime to patch over all the holes in their hoax story. I couldn't get through the whole thing because it's another smear piece and a long one including the old saw that Assange smeared feces on the Ecuadorian embassy's walls. I had to stop reading. Gosh, I can't abide those people. Thanks Ray, for telling the truth. We are drowning in $h** out there in la-la land. CN offers a much-needed dose of reality medicine. Thank you kindly, all.

Skip Scott , July 16, 2019 at 10:19

Here's a good essay by Caitlin Johnstone regarding the Assange hit-piece.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/new-cnn-assange-smear-piece-is-amazingly-dishonest-even-for-cnn-e7c361d98639

Marko , July 16, 2019 at 07:31

Even worse news for the Russiahoaxers is the recent revelation , documented in a lawsuit , that Ellen Ratner , sister of deceased Wikileaks' lawyer Michael Ratner, met with Assange in the fall of 2016 and was told by him that Aaron and Seth Rich provided the DNC leaks to Wikileaks. Ed Butowsky was made aware of this , with instructions by Ms. Ratner for him to relay the information to the Rich family. When he did so , in December 2016 , he was told by Joel Rich , Seth's father , that he was already aware of his sons' involvement.

This is no longer conspiracy talk , folks. Ed Butowsky is not dumb enough to make these claims on court documents without knowing he can back them up. Shit is about to get real for Mueller and the DNC.

"BREAKING: Lawsuit Outs Reporter Ellen Ratner as Source for Seth Rich Information" @ Gateway Pundit

Skip Scott , July 16, 2019 at 08:43

Wow! Thanks Marko. Here's the link.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/07/breaking-lawsuit-outs-reporter-ellen-ratner-as-source-for-seth-rich-information/

DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 09:37

Well, Skip Scott, either this revelation will put "paid" to the "Russia-did-it!" charade, or else the Voracious Memory Hole will act like a giant black hole and the event horizon will be swallowed into total nothingness as a new Middle-Eastern Adventure captures the hearts and minds of the happy warriors and consumers of U$ Imperialism.

Whatever happens, it will be wholey interesting times ahead.

DW

jmg , July 16, 2019 at 10:01

There was a related, extensive 2018 interview about Butowsky's private investigation into the Seth Rich case to help the family, what they found, and what happened (the DNC assigned someone to represent the family, etc.; the mentioned lawsuits were later dropped/dismissed). It included, without naming Ratner, the unverified mention: "his friend came back from London with information that he said he wanted to get to the Rich family." Since this alleged private message appears to be not only doubtful, but of course also not confirmed by WikiLeaks, we can't really know if it happened or not.

Ed Butowsky Sits Down With Gateway Pundit for First Interview After Being Sued by Family in Seth Rich Murder Mystery -- March 19, 2018
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/03/ed-butowsky-sits-first-interview-gateway-pundit-sued-family-seth-rich-murder-mystery/

Eric32 , July 16, 2019 at 11:17

I wonder why Seth's murder hasn't been solved?
I wonder why there's almost no media attention paid?

O Society , July 16, 2019 at 17:32

Marko, polo! Here it is:

Seth Rich, disgruntled DNC worker, blows the whistle on HillBillary Clinton rigging the Democratic presidential primary against Bernie Sanders, so he gives data supporting his discovery of rigging to Wikileaks. Rich got the data on a thumdrive downloaded at DNC HQ itself.

No Russians, no hacking, just a whistleblower on the fraud ironically called US "democracy." We've all seen the data Rich leaked. Emails detailing HillBillary Clinton's graft and fraud and collusion against Sanders.

No wonder no other candidates besides Sanders ran against HillBillary, for they all knew the fix was in from its inception!

I dunno who killed Seth Rich, but I do know the Democratic party stole the election from Bernie, then projected its own crimes onto Russia, same way a kid projects his own crime of breaking a cookie jar on his brother when he tells Momma "He dit it –> He ate the cookies and broke the jar!" Meanwhile, there's chocolate smeared all over the DNC's face.

We have evidence for this, the leaked emails themselves tell the story

Gregory Herr , July 16, 2019 at 18:15

Seth Rich copied and leaked the DNC e-mails and was murdered for it. For this to become irrefutable common knowledge will be quite one godsend of a reality check. Maddow might not be able to get out of bed for weeks.

Repeat after me Rachel there was no Russian hack, there was no Russian hack, there was no Russian hack

jmg , July 16, 2019 at 07:13

From the Brennan–Comey–Rogers assessment/opinion (January 6, 2017):

"We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. . . .

"- High confidence generally indicates that judgments are based on high-quality information from multiple sources. High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong.

"- Moderate confidence generally means that the information is credibly sourced and plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence."

Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

-- -- –

"When they say they have 'high confidence', that means they don't have any evidence!"
-- Bill Binney, former NSA Technical Director

DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 07:10

Thank you, Ray McGovern for this splendid article laying out the facts which make clear the absurdities of these last several years. One hopes, now that the "Russia-did-it" canard is fully exposed, by US courts, that the truth may finally get through, over or around, the media wall of enforced ignorance and Mueller hero-worship, and reach the ears and eyes of the people.

Should that actually happen, it might even be possible that other truth, long subject to media manipulation and distortion, the cases of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning come readily to mind, could be seen in the honest light of day after an almost eight year protracted nightmare of media driven deceit, psychological torture, and deliberately vicious character assassination is revealed, in Assange's case, as it might well be, by Nils Melzer's report to the UN.

The legacy U$ corporate media have much to answer for, from promulgating lies that led to war, to missile attacks, and to brutal economic sanctions, a form of economic warfare, to efforts to start a new Cold War, and to aggrandize intelligence agencies which have sought to pervert justice and to illegally influence the political process by falsely accusing, on the flimsy words of partisan political operatives, another nation of the very actions those agencies have used, repeatedly and for many decades,to destroy the political processes of other nations, including the very nation singled out to take the blame for Hillary Clinton's abysmal and pathetic failure in the 2016 election.

What a waste of time, resources, trust, and energy it has bee, these last years, yet it was all so very profitable and lucrative for the media, even if it were "not good" for the country.

The media have damned and convicted themselves.

The U$ intelligence agencies have exposed themselves as corrupt, completely dishonest, vindictive, petty, and thoroughly untrustworthy.

It remains to be seen if the people have learned anything, and whether they will do anything with this costly, yet necessary, education.

DW

Allan , July 16, 2019 at 07:04

Will Adam Schiff spend the week with Bob Mueller to get their story straight

UserFriendly , July 16, 2019 at 05:18

?Unfortunately this is partially bunk. The first bit the judge didn't rule that there was no evidence, she ruled that Mueller publicly saying that the IRA = kremlin and they did try to help Trump win was prejudicial in the case against the IRA (quite obviously so). But him not being able to say that during his testimony should go over well with the democrats. Of course if he actually wanted to explain all he would have to do is drop the case against the IRA because it's never going to trial anyways. Almost makes you wonder if he filed those charges expressly so he wouldn't have to connect the imaginary dotts.

Aiya , July 16, 2019 at 11:03

What they called "trying to help Trump" was a miniscule amount of social media posts, 56% of which were made AFTER the election. And Facebook had to look 3 times to come up with ANYTHING–what they finally reported were posts coming from Russia or eastern Europe, posts in Cyrillic language, and posts from people with Russian/European names.

[Jul 17, 2019] Who's Afraid of William Barr by Stephen F. Cohen

Notable quotes:
"... New York Times ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the host of ..."
"... Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the host of The John Batchelor Show . Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at ..."
"... War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate ..."
Jul 17, 2019 | www.thenation.com
his Wikipedia biography , he has -- or he had -- "a sterling reputation" both among Republicans and Democrats. That changed when Barr announced his ongoing investigation into the origins of Russiagate, a vital subject I, too, have explored .

As Barr explained , "What we're looking at is: What was the predicate for conducting a counterintelligence investigation on the Trump campaign. How did the bogus narrative begin that Trump was essentially in cahoots with Russia to interfere with the U.S. election?" Still more, Barr, who is empowered to declassify highly sensitive documents, made clear that his primary focus was not the hapless FBI under James Comey but the CIA under John Brennan. Evidently this was too much for leading Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, who assailed Barr for having "just destroyed the scintilla of credibility that he had left." Not known for a sense of irony, Schumer accused Barr of using "the words of conspiracy theorists," as though Russiagate itself is not among the most malign and consequential conspiracy theories in American political history.

More indicative is the reaction of the generally liberal pro-Democratic New York Times and Washington Post , the country's two most important political newspapers, to Barr's investigation. Leaning heavily on the "expert" opinion of former intelligence officials and McCarthy-echoing members of Congress such as Adam Schiff, both papers went into outrage mode. The Times bemoaned Barr's "drastic escalation of [Trump's] yearslong assault on the intelligence community" while rejecting "the president's unfounded claims that his campaign had been spied on," even though some forms of FBI and CIA infiltration and surveillance of the 2016 Trump campaign are now well documented. (See, for example, Lee Smith's reporting .)

Unconcerned by the activities of either agency, the papers warned ominously that Barr's probe "effectively strips [the CIA] of its most critical power: choosing which secrets it shares and which remain hidden." It "could be tremendously damaging to the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies." Not surprisingly, given the Times ' three-year role in promulgating Russiagate allegations, it preempted Barr's investigation by declaring that US intelligence agencies' covert actions were part of "a lawful investigation aimed at understanding a foreign power's efforts to manipulate an American election." Considering what is now known, this generalization seems a whitewash both of the Times ' coverage and the agencies' conduct. (In the Post , see coverage by Toluse Olorunnipa and Shane Harris .)

Hillary Clinton, also not surprisingly, agreed. As paraphrased by Matt Stevens in the Times on May 3 , she accused Barr of diverting attention "from what the real story is. The real story is the Russian interference in our election." According to the defeated Democratic candidate, "the Russians were successful in sowing 'discord and divisiveness' in the country, and helping Mr. Trump." But who has actually sowed more "discord and divisiveness" in America -- the Russians or Mrs. Clinton and her supporters, by still refusing to accept the legitimacy of her electoral loss and Trump's victory?

Unfortunately, but predictably, Barr's investigation has become polarizing, with Fox News, for example, bannering each new unsavory Russiagate revelation and the Times and the Post mostly ignoring them altogether. In particular, the Democratic Party, once traditionally skeptical of intelligence agencies, is becoming the party of an intel cult and thus of the new US-Russian Cold War. Only a few of the party's leaders, notably presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, demur from this dangerous folly. (Might Democratic reticence also be due to the circumstance that the intelligence chiefs now under investigation were appointees of former President Obama, who has been remarkably silent about the entire Russiagate saga? What, as I have asked previously, did Obama know, when did he know it, and what did he do?)

Everyone who cares about the quality of American political life, no matter what they think about Trump, should encourage Barr's probe. To resort to a familiar cliché, Russiagate allegations have become a spreading cancer in American politics, with Democratic congressional candidates raising funds by promising, despite the exculpatory findings of Robert Mueller regarding "collusion," to fight evil "Trump-Putin" forces in Washington. Meanwhile, some Republicans, despite ample contrary evidence, preposterously blame Russia itself -- for the infamous Steele Dossier, for example. (By the way, for more irony, Trump is regularly accused in the above-cited news accounts of "siding with" Russian President Vladimir Putin in denying that any "collusion" determined the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, a conclusion also reached by Mueller, thereby putting Trump, Putin, and Mueller on the same "side.")

Current Issue View our current issue Subscribe today and Save up to $129.

Ideally, we would have an investigation of the intelligence agencies entirely independent of the White House and headed by an eminent political figure who is not a presidential appointee, as was the 1975 Senate Church Committee. For now, we have only Trump's attorney general, William Barr. Nonetheless, we should support him, however conditionally. Rogue intelligence agencies subvert democracy, and the next candidate they target -- as they did Trump -- may be yours.

This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the host of The John Batchelor Show . Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at TheNation.com .William Barr, a two-time attorney general who served at the CIA in the 1970s, would seem to be an ultimate Washington insider. According to his Wikipedia biography , he has -- or he had -- "a sterling reputation" both among Republicans and Democrats. That changed when Barr announced his ongoing investigation into the origins of Russiagate, a vital subject I, too, have explored .

As Barr explained , "What we're looking at is: What was the predicate for conducting a counterintelligence investigation on the Trump campaign. How did the bogus narrative begin that Trump was essentially in cahoots with Russia to interfere with the U.S. election?" Still more, Barr, who is empowered to declassify highly sensitive documents, made clear that his primary focus was not the hapless FBI under James Comey but the CIA under John Brennan. Evidently this was too much for leading Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, who assailed Barr for having "just destroyed the scintilla of credibility that he had left." Not known for a sense of irony, Schumer accused Barr of using "the words of conspiracy theorists," as though Russiagate itself is not among the most malign and consequential conspiracy theories in American political history.

More indicative is the reaction of the generally liberal pro-Democratic New York Times and Washington Post , the country's two most important political newspapers, to Barr's investigation. Leaning heavily on the "expert" opinion of former intelligence officials and McCarthy-echoing members of congress such as Adam Schiff, both papers went into outrage mode. The Times bemoaned Barr's "drastic escalation of [Trump's] yearslong assault on the intelligence community" while rejecting "the president's unfounded claims that his campaign had been spied on," even though some forms of FBI and CIA infiltration and surveillance of the 2016 Trump campaign are now well documented. (See, for example, Lee Smith's reporting .)

Support Progressive Journalism

If you like this article, please give today to help fund The Nation 's work.

Unconcerned by the activities of either agency, the papers warned ominously that Barr's probe "effectively strips [the CIA] of its most critical power: choosing which secrets it shares and which remain hidden." It "could be tremendously damaging to the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies." Not surprisingly, given the Times ' three-year role in promulgating Russiagate allegations, it preempted Barr's investigation by declaring that US intelligence agencies' covert actions were part of "a lawful investigation aimed at understanding a foreign power's efforts to manipulate an American election." Considering what is now known, this generalization seems a whitewash both of the Times ' coverage and the agencies' conduct. (Writing for the Post , see coverage by Toluse Olorunnipa and Shane Harris .)

Hillary Clinton, also not surprisingly, agreed. As paraphrased by Matt Stevens in the Times on May 3 , she accused Barr of diverting attention "from what the real story is. The real story is the Russian interference in our election." According to the defeated Democratic candidate, "the Russians were successful in sowing 'discord and divisiveness' in the country, and helping Mr. Trump." But who has actually sowed more "discord and divisiveness" in America -- the Russians or Mrs. Clinton and her supporters, by still refusing to accept the legitimacy of her electoral loss and Trump's victory?

Unfortunately, but predictably, Barr's investigation has become polarizing, with Fox News, for example, bannering each new unsavory Russiagate revelation and the Times and Post mostly ignoring them altogether. In particular, the Democratic Party, once traditionally skeptical of intelligence agencies, is becoming the party of an intel cult and thus of the new US-Russian Cold War. Only a few of the party's leaders, notably presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, demur from this dangerous folly. (Might Democratic reticence also be due to the circumstance that the intelligence chiefs now under investigation were appointees of former President Obama, who has been remarkably silent about the entire Russiagate saga? What, as I have asked previously, did Obama know, when did he know it, and what did he do?)

Everyone who cares about the quality of American political life, no matter what they think about Trump, should encourage Barr's probe. To resort to a familiar cliché, Russiagate allegations have become a spreading cancer in American politics, with Democratic congressional candidates fund-raising by promising, despite the exculpatory findings of Robert Mueller regarding "collusion," to fight evil "Trump-Putin" forces in Washington. Meanwhile, some Republicans, despite ample contrary evidence, preposterously blame Russia itself -- for the infamous Steele Dossier, for example. (By the way, for more irony, Trump is regularly accused in the above-cited news accounts of "siding with" Russian President Vladimir Putin in denying that any "collusion" determined the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, a conclusion also reached by Mueller, thereby putting Trump, Putin, and Mueller on the same "side.")

Ideally, we would have an investigation of the intelligence agencies entirely independent of the White House headed by an eminent political figure who is not a presidential appointee, as was the 1975 Senate Church Committee. For now, we have only Trump's attorney general, William Barr. Nonetheless, we should support him, however conditionally. Rogue intelligence agencies subvert democracy, and the next candidate they target -- as they did Trump -- may be yours.

This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the host of The John Batchelor Show . Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at TheNation.com . Ad Policy Stephen F. Cohen Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his new book War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback and in an ebook edition.

[Jul 17, 2019] Rachel Maddow's report on Monday night

Jul 17, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

ranney , July 16, 2019 at 16:56

That's a great article Ray. Thank you!
Now I am wondering if there is any chance you could take apart Rachel Maddow's report on Monday night. I confess I turned her off about half way through it, because I couldn't stand listening to her lies. But she was going on about how Russia gave wikileaks the DNC stuff and how some new evidence proves it.

I wondered at the time why she was doing this again, but now I understand – it was because of the Judge and I think word must have come down to trash Assange (she did have some nasty things to say about him). None of what I heard made sense to me or why it was taking up so much of her hour so I turned back to NPR, but the vehemance of her lies (she was pushing this version pretty hard) stuck with me.

So could you write something about this please? If not on CN maybe you could give us a link to another web site or broadcast that discusses what she is doing and the damage she is causing.

Thanks again for your efforts to keep this story straight.

Joe Tedesky , July 16, 2019 at 15:52

Finally after proving that she was the worst possible presidential candidate the Democrat's could have ever endorsed our anointed one Madam Hillary left her wandering party with the oversold ominous Russia Gate fiasco to waste this country's easily distracted valuable time with. This waste of time should be criminally prosecuted for all the disruption it has caused. Such a parting spectacle of arrogance it is that Hillary Clinton left her struggling party with these multiple claimed allegations without evidence filled nonsensical accusations of Russian collusion that the country is even more divided than ever due too even more unreal false flag issues for it's citizenry to deal with. Where in this Hillary created event is Patriotism to be found? Like where is love of country even considered when releasing upon the world such a mean spirited compromise driven hoax? When it comes to this issue of Russia Gate Investigation the wrong party is being investigated.

Skip Scott , July 17, 2019 at 07:20

Hi Joe-

I think you might be giving Hillary too much credit as being the "creator" of RussiaGate. She was certainly on board, but I think it is most likely John Brennan's baby.

For the evil ones leading our so-called "intelligence" agencies, there is no patriotism, only power. They are servants of an empire that goes beyond our borders. They seek global dominance for the Oligarchy at any cost. Patriotism is for us "little" folk. For them it is a quaint notion to be used to manipulate the proles.

Al Pinto , July 16, 2019 at 09:43

The DNC and MSM sold, and sold well, the Russiagate to the general public. Does it really matter, if the "Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has now come apart at the seams"? Neither the DNC, nor the MSM will report/mention either of the court case, pretty much a blackout for the general public.

Even, if these court cases are widely reported, do you really believe that the majority of the people would change their mind? After almost three years, there's no way that these people will change their mind. The only change that widely reporting these court cases would result in is, that Trump and HRC supporters would hate each other even more.

This Russiagate will be with us pretty much forever, it'll morph in to accusing people of being Russian agents and/or Russian Bots. We already see this taking place and just wait, until next year. It's not going to be pretty

DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 12:17

I do not know where you got the CNN story, ML, though it appears you got it straight from gift-donkey's mouth.

From RT (today, at 11AM Eastern time)

"CNN has released a new 'exclusive' report, accusing Julian Assange of conspiracy with Russia (including RT) to meddle in the 2016 US election.

Citing a report compiled by a private Spanish security company – but not providing any of it – the network basically rehashed the entirety of the Russiagate conspiracy on Monday "

The whole article is well worth a gander, as the Dem-media attempt goose up the drivel for what they hope will be a slam dunk (most fowl).

Apparently, the Dem-leaning MSM has no intention of letting go the lucrative idiocy of 'Russia-did-it! with the angry assistance of Awful Assange.

The MSM is not bound, of course, by the legal constraints now judicially imposed upon Mueller and other government agents, so they can claim and conflate whatever they wish.

Thus, Skip Scott's very legitimate concerns, about the amnesia memory hole, may well be assuaged by a media hell-bent on slathering lipstick on this particular pig as they attempt, once again, to launch it into perpetual orbit,
at least until after Assange is locked away for the rest of his life.

Perhaps getting Assange and continuing to demonize Russia is far more important to certain "interests", than is the other service of Russiagate, the saving of private-public Hillary's reputation of being the permanent victim of vast conspiracies as official history. She may now be relegated to the hoary realm of legend and myth. (Which may be the best that wannabees may hope for, short of making the ultimate "great" career move.)

The two-fer-one deal may be unraveling, at least in part.

Getting Assange must be the real deep state/media deal.

DW

ML , July 16, 2019 at 16:07

Hey DW, yes, it was on CNN yesterday. It was ridiculous. Full of lies and spin. Today, I didn't see it still there, but it might have been hiding in the shadows on that sorry site. Can't stand to spend more than about 5 minutes there, just to see what they're lying and obfuscating about any given day

Skip Scott , July 17, 2019 at 07:42

I hope you are right and that we are witnessing the death throes of empire. I also hope for some kind of retribution for the masters and their evil servants.

I can't watch the world news at all, but even local news goes to the "national" desk to torture those of us just interested in what's going on locally. I walk out of the room or push the mute button. I don't have any TV at home, but I have been caregiving an elderly uncle for the past 2-1/2 yrs at his place. I don't know who is more demented, my uncle or CNN.

Susan J Leslie , July 16, 2019 at 08:57

Liberals had better wake up now to realize that Russiagate was all a hoax perpetrated by Clinton and cronies because she lost the 2016 election. I'm ashamed to say I voted for Hillary – wow what a huge mistake on my part. Fortunately she did lose the election or who knows where we'd be now. Don't get me wrong, Trump is an absolute nightmare but at the very least you know where he is coming from. On the other hand Clinton , Obama and other mainstream politicians are underhanded, secretive and subversive all while smiling and selling us lie after lie We came, we saw, he died? What the hell kind of sick, deluded person would say such a thing?

O Society , July 16, 2019 at 14:13

What Robert Mueller hasn't done is provide any public evidence of Russian collusion, which was his mandate.

Show me the money. Where's the evidence? That's correct, show me the evidence. You know, the evidence Mueller (or anyone else has) Donald Trump committed treason as John Brennan says, and is guilty of collusion with Putin, as Hillary Clinton says.

I mean, you can't can't show me where the evidence is because there isn't any. No pee tapes, no smoking guns, no nothing. And that's a problem. A big problem, because it means the entire Mueller spaghetti Western unraveled into something not even my cat is interested in playing with. The yarn got no evidence.

Prove me wrong. Please. We know how this story ends and have from the beginning. There's no evidence. It's bullshit. Yes, every word that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth is bullshit. Problem is Trump's lies don't exonerate Clinton and Obama's lies. All the stuff coming out of Comey, Clapper, and Brennan's mouths is bullshit too.

https://osociety.org/2018/07/20/ten-things-which-would-convince-me-its-not-a-witchunt/

Marko , July 16, 2019 at 07:31

Even worse news for the Russiahoaxers is the recent revelation , documented in a lawsuit , that Ellen Ratner , sister of deceased Wikileaks' lawyer Michael Ratner, met with Assange in the fall of 2016 and was told by him that Aaron and Seth Rich provided the DNC leaks to Wikileaks. Ed Butowsky was made aware of this , with instructions by Ms. Ratner for him to relay the information to the Rich family. When he did so , in December 2016 , he was told by Joel Rich , Seth's father , that he was already aware of his sons' involvement.

This is no longer conspiracy talk , folks. Ed Butowsky is not dumb enough to make these claims on court documents without knowing he can back them up. Shit is about to get real for Mueller and the DNC.

"BREAKING: Lawsuit Outs Reporter Ellen Ratner as Source for Seth Rich Information" @ Gateway Pundit

[Jul 17, 2019] The key role of MSM is to keep the populace focused as best it can on relatively trivial matters and diverted from the most urgent topics of our time by PAUL STREET

Jul 12, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

Alongside and consistent with other privilege- and power-serving missions, so-called mainstream corporate media's role is to keep the populace focused as best it can on relatively trivial matters and diverted from the most urgent topics of our time.

Kamala Harris Wants to Kill Your Health Insurance

Two Sundays ago, in a fit of masochistic media research, I watched some cable news talking heads do their weekly news roundups. CNN had a panel of know-it-all neoliberals who reflected on the Democratic Party's first two presidential debates. Everyone agreed that Kamala Harris had been the big winner but had erred badly by embracing "the abolition of private health insurance."

That's how CNN's "expert commentators" describe Medicare for All – not as high quality and low-cost health care as a human right with great direct and collateral benefits resulting from the eviction of corporate profit from coverage. Not as a great potential social and human rights victory, but as destruction : the "abolition" of (unmentionably parasitic, classist, exclusionary, inferior, and expensive, for-profit) health insurance.

Not that Senator Harris would seriously fight for Single Payer. She wouldn't. She's a corporate Democrat .

But I digress.

The chattering CNN craniums shifted to the United States Women's World Cup soccer team that was triumphing in Paris. The panelists applauded the team's star, Megan Rapione, a lesbian who refuses to visit the Donald Trump White House. (Good for her, but why not visit and spit in the Malignant One's eye?).

Joy Reid Blames Russia for Anti-Kamala Birtherism

Over on the openly partisan-Democratic cable network MSNBC (hereafter "MSDNC"), morning host Joy Reid was going off about the Huxwellian idiocy of Donald Trump's DMZ handshake with Kim Jong-Un and the strange kind of love Trump has for the North Korean dictator and other authoritarian heads-of-state. As usual with MSDNC, it was hard to detect the line separating the network's proper criticism of Trump from its deep investment in U.S. imperialism .

Consistent with the investment, Reid turned to the noxious racist vulgarity of online rightists who claim that Kamala Harris isn't a "real African-American." Reid showed viewers a copy of the Mueller Report and claimed without a hint of proof that the neo-Birther Internet campaign against Harris was directed by the Russians? Her evidence? The Mueller Report, completed prior to the Harris smear.

... ... ...

[Jul 17, 2019] Reasons to Suspect that Seth Rich Participated in the Leaking of the DNC Emails to Wikileaks

Notable quotes:
"... Sy Hersh stated that he has a trusted source inside the FBI who told him that he had seen a secret FBI report regarding an analysis of Seth's laptop, on which they found evidence that Seth had offered samples of DNC emails to WIkileaks and offered a much larger batch in return for payment; and that Seth subsequently had provided the DNC emails to Wikileaks via a drop box. ..."
"... Seth Rich was murdered, for no clear reason – no valuable belongings taken - several weeks after the DNC emails were exfiltrated from the DNC. The creator of the Guccifer 2.0 hoax would have had strong motivation to eliminate (or otherwise silence) the actual leaker, to prevent his hoax from being unmasked. Unmasking the hoax could have had a devastating impact on Hillary's campaign. ..."
"... Murray states that he had a meeting in Washington DC in September 2016 with someone involved in this leak - hence he may have privileged insight on this issue. ..."
"... Mueller's tale of how he allegedly transferred the emails to Wikileaks is overtly absurd ..."
Jul 07, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

Reasons to Suspect that Seth Rich Participated in the Leaking of the DNC Emails to Wikileaks

veganmark on Fri, 07/05/2019 - 10:38pm

The evidence that Russian intelligence hacked the DNC to provide the DNC emails which Wikileaks published is wholly unconvincing. In particular, the Guccifer 2.0 persona identified by the ICA and the Mueller report as the hacker, is clearly no Russian, and Mueller's tale of how he allegedly transferred the emails to Wikileaks is overtly absurd.

Julian Assange has strongly hinted that Seth Rich could be the leaker, and offered a reward for info leading to the apprehension of his killer. He further asserts, quite definitively, that Russian government hackers were not the source.

Wikileaks has repeatedly retweeted essays implying that Seth was the leaker.

Craig Murray, Julian's close associate, assures us that the Wikileaks DNC and Podesta releases were the result of leaks by individuals with legal access to the material, not hacks.

Sy Hersh stated that he has a trusted source inside the FBI who told him that he had seen a secret FBI report regarding an analysis of Seth's laptop, on which they found evidence that Seth had offered samples of DNC emails to WIkileaks and offered a much larger batch in return for payment; and that Seth subsequently had provided the DNC emails to Wikileaks via a drop box.

Larry Johnson, former CIA agent, claims that he has two inside sources that confirm this.

Kim Dotcom claims that Seth was the leaker, and that he assisted him in this effort.

Ed Bukowsky claims that a source close to Julian told him confidentially that Seth and Aaron Rich were the sources of the released DNC emails, and asked him to contact Seth's parents about this. Bukowsky claims that, when he informed Seth's father about this, he said "I already know that". It was only after the DNC "helpfully" provided the Rich family with "crisis consultant" Brad Bauman that the Rich family publicly denounced any suspicion that Seth had been the leaker. Reportedly, the Riches have become persuaded that the Wikileaks releases were responsible for the election of Trump, and they don't want to admit that Seth could have had anything to do with that.

Seth Rich was murdered, for no clear reason – no valuable belongings taken - several weeks after the DNC emails were exfiltrated from the DNC. The creator of the Guccifer 2.0 hoax would have had strong motivation to eliminate (or otherwise silence) the actual leaker, to prevent his hoax from being unmasked. Unmasking the hoax could have had a devastating impact on Hillary's campaign.

As to the source of the Podesta emails published by Wikileaks, Craig Murray assures us that the well known spearphishing of Podesta's computer is a red herring. Rather, he states that Podesta was being monitored by the NSA owing to his business ties to Ukraine.

Someone in the NSA who had access to these emails - presumably someone upset with Hillary's campaign - leaked them to Wikileaks. Murray states that he had a meeting in Washington DC in September 2016 with someone involved in this leak - hence he may have privileged insight on this issue.

This...

Mueller's tale of how he allegedly transferred the emails to Wikileaks is overtly absurd

was explained in the report by saying that someone from Trump's campaign gave Julian the information when they went to London. Did Robert get that information from the guardian article written by Luke Harding? If so, lol! Wikileaks debunked this article the minute it came out and no one from the Ecuadorian embassy or from London's many CCTV cameras showed any video evidence of it happening.

There are so many holes in this whole Russia Gate saga that I'm surprised anyone is believing it. Guess you cross posted this on ToP right?

Anja Geitz on Sat, 07/06/2019 - 11:41am
If that is indeed the reason Seth Rich's parents

Have denied Seth's involvement with WikiLeaks, its a shame they lack the courage and moral conviction their son had.

TheOtherMaven on Sat, 07/06/2019 - 11:44am
Lost one son, don't want to lose the other?

@Anja Geitz

A reminder from an old-time Illuminati game player: "Government" and "Criminal" are not opposites. They are sometimes co-attributes.

[Jul 15, 2019] "Where is the evidence [for Russigate]? There is none."

Notable quotes:
"... The whole story of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is "crazy," he says. Hillary Clinton had done everything wrong as a candidate, had led the Democratic Party into misfortune. There was no need for anything Russian. "Where is the evidence? There is none." ..."
"... Two years ago Hersh published a piece on Syria in Welt. He needs to go to Deutschland to get published, being banned from the MSM. ..."
"... Just like Col. Lang, Juan Cole and so many others. Our press is strictly controlled to focus on The Narrative. ..."
"... "Please watch this clip. It captures Russiagate perfectly: blaming Russian bots, neoliberals like Kamala Harris show ignorance about domestic injustices & contempt for those fighting it; while at the same time, sounding like deranged conspiracy theorists in the process." ..."
"... Lots of garbage trying to pollute our minds. Truth is the only antidote, but at times it's hard to find. Search for it and fight complacency. ..."
Jul 15, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Other issues:

Form a portrait of Seymour Hersh in the German weekly Die Zeit (my translation):

The whole story of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is "crazy," he says. Hillary Clinton had done everything wrong as a candidate, had led the Democratic Party into misfortune. There was no need for anything Russian. "Where is the evidence? There is none."

Use as open thread ...

Posted by b on July 14, 2019 at 13:16 UTC | Permalink

bjd , Jul 14 2019 13:30 utc | 1

I wonder if Hersch's analysis is a first in a major German newspaper. If so, that is major breakthrough into Western MSM.
asdf , Jul 14 2019 13:44 utc | 3

When if ever is Hersch going to publicly voice his thoughts on Seth Rich, as shared in the following phone recording? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=giuZdBAXVh0

Bart Hansen , Jul 14 2019 14:56 utc | 12

One - bjt

Two years ago Hersh published a piece on Syria in Welt. He needs to go to Deutschland to get published, being banned from the MSM.

Just like Col. Lang, Juan Cole and so many others. Our press is strictly controlled to focus on The Narrative.

karlof1 , Jul 15 2019 4:57 utc | 64

Aaron Mate says :

"Please watch this clip. It captures Russiagate perfectly: blaming Russian bots, neoliberals like Kamala Harris show ignorance about domestic injustices & contempt for those fighting it; while at the same time, sounding like deranged conspiracy theorists in the process."

Intro to most recent In The Now:

"This is really good -- from calling out U.S. foreign policy that causes ppl to migrate to the history of the term 'concentration camps' to the larger tradition of racist, state sanctioned violence against ppl from the Southern border region."

Lots of garbage trying to pollute our minds. Truth is the only antidote, but at times it's hard to find. Search for it and fight complacency.

[Jul 14, 2019] Putin as an old fashioned liberal who opposes neoliberalism

Notable quotes:
"... Israel Shamir can be reached at [email protected] ..."
Jul 14, 2019 | www.unz.com

If you have ever traveled in Russia outside of Moscow, you certainly have some horrible stories to tell about its atrocious roads, food and lodging or rather lack thereof. Things have changed greatly, and they keep changing. Now there are modern highways, plenty of cafés and restaurants, a lot of small hotels; plumbing has risen to Western standards; the old pearls of architecture have been lavishly restored; people live better than they ever did. They still complain a lot, but that is human nature. Young and middle-aged Russians own or charter motor boats and sail their plentiful rivers; they own country houses ("dachas") more than anywhere else. They travel abroad for their vacations, pay enormous sums of money for concerts of visiting celebrities, ride bikes in the cities – in short, Russia has become as prosperous as any European country.

This hard-earned prosperity and political longevity allows President Putin to hold his own in the international affairs. He is one of a few experienced leaders on the planet with twenty years at the top job. He has met with three Popes of Rome, four US Presidents, and many other rulers. This is important: 93-years old Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad who ruled his Malaysia for 40 years and has been elected again said the first ten years of a ruler are usually wasted in learning the ropes, and only after first twenty does he becomes proficient in the art of government. The first enemy a ruler must fight is his own establishment: media, army, intelligence and judges. While Trump is still losing in this conflict, Putin is doing fine – by his Judoka evasive action.

Recently a small tempest has risen in the Russian media, when a young journalist was detained by police, and a small quantity of drugs was allegedly discovered on his body. The police made many mistakes in handling the case. Perhaps they planted the evidence to frame the young man; perhaps they had made the obvious mistakes to frame the government. The response has been tremendous, as if the whole case had been prepared well in advance by the opposition hell-bent to annoy and wake up the people's ire against the police and administration. Instead of supporting the police, as Putin usually does, in this case he had the journalist released and senior police officers arrested. This prompt evasive action undid the opposition's build-up by one masterly stroke.

Recently he openly declared his distaste for liberalism in the interview for the FT . This is a major heresy, like Luther's Ninety-five Theses. "The liberals cannot dictate Their diktat can be seen everywhere: both in the media and in real life. It is deemed unbecoming even to mention some topics The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population." Putin condemned liberals' drive for more immigration. He called Angela Merkel's decision to admit millions of immigrants a "cardinal mistake"; he "understood" Trump's attempt to stop the flow of migrants and drugs from Mexico.

Putin is not an enemy of liberalism. He is rather an old-fashionable liberal of the 19 th century style. Not a current 'liberal', but a true liberal, rejecting totalitarian dogma of gender, immigration, multiculturalism and R2P wars. "The liberal idea cannot be destroyed; it has the right to exist and it should even be supported in some things. But it has no right to be the absolute dominating factor."

In Putin's Russia liberalism is non-exclusive, but presents just one possible line of development. Homosexuals are not discriminated against nor promoted. There are no gay parades, no persecution of gays, either. Russian children aren't being brainwashed to hate their fathers, taken away from their families and given to same-sex maniacs, as it happened in the recent Italian case . Kids aren't being introduced to joys of sex in primary schools. People are not requested to swear love to transgenders and immigrants. You can do whatever you wish, just do not force others to follow you – this is Putin's first rule, and this is true liberalism in my book.

There is very little immigration into Russia despite millions of requests: foreigners can come in as guest workers, but this does not lead to permanent residency or citizenship. The Police frequently check foreign-looking people and rapidly deport them if found in breach of visa rules. Russian nationalists would want even more action, but Putin is a true liberal.

... ... ...

Why does Putin care about the US? Why can't he just stop taking dollars? This means he is an American stooge! – an eager-for-action hothead zealot would exclaim. The answer is, the US has gained a lot of power; much more than it had in 1988, when Reagan negotiated with Gorbachev. The years of being the sole superpower weren't wasted. American might is not to be trifled with.

New York Times insinuated.

True, Russia is big enough to survive even that treatment, but Russians have got used to a good life, and they won't cherish being returned to the year 1956. They took action to prevent these worst-case scenarios; for instance, they sold much of their US debt and moved out of Microsoft , but these things are time-consuming and expensive. Putin hopes that eventually the US will abandon its quest for dominance and assume a live-and-let-live attitude as demanded by the international law. Until it happens, he is forced to play by Washington rules and try to limit antagonism.

An experienced broker came in, promising to deliver the deal. It is the Jewish state, claiming to have the means to navigate the US in the desired direction. This is a traditional Jewish claim, used in the days of the WWI to convince the UK to enter the deal: you give us Palestine; we shall bring the US into the European war on your side. Then it worked: the Brits and their Aussie allies stormed Gaza, eventually took over the Holy Land, issued the Balfour declaration promising to pass Palestine to the Jews, and in return, fresh American troops poured into the European theatre of war, causing German surrender.

This time, the Jewish state proposed that Putin should give up his ties with Iran; in return, they promised to assist in general warming of Russo-American relations. Putin had a bigger counter-proposal: Let the US lift its Iran sanctions and withdraw its armed forces from Syria, and Russia will try to usher Iranian armed forces out of Syria, too. The ensuing negotiations around Iran-Syria deal would lead to recognition of the US and Israel interests in Syria, and further on it could lead to negotiations in other spheres.

This was a clear win-win proposal. Iran would emerge free of sanctions; Israel and the US would have their interests recognised in Syria; the much-needed dialogue between Russia and the US will get a jump-start. But Israel does not like win-win proposals. The Jewish state wants clear victories, preferably with their enemy defeated, humiliated, hanged. Israel rejected the proposal, for it wanted Iran to suffer under sanctions.

... ... ...

Russia certainly wants to live in peace with the US, but not at the price Mr Netanyahu suggested. Mr Patrushev condemned the US sanctions against Iran. He said that Iran shot down the giant American drone RQ-4A Global Hawk worth more than a hundred million dollars over Iranian territory, not in the international airspace as the Pentagon claimed. He stated that American "evidence" that Iran had sabotaged tankers in the Persian Gulf was inconclusive. Russia demanded that the United States stop its economic war against Iran, recognize the legitimate authorities of Syria, led by President Bashar Assad, and withdraw its troops from Syria. Russia expressed its support for the legitimate government in Venezuela. Thus, Russia showed itself at this difficult moment as a reliable ally and partner, and at the same time assured the staggering Israeli leadership of its friendship.

The problem is that the drive for war with Iran is not gone. A few days ago, the Brits seized an Iranian super-tanker in the Straits of Gibraltar. The tanker was on its way to deliver oil to Syria. Before that, the United States had almost launched a missile attack on Iran. At the last moment, when the planes were already in the air, Trump stopped the operation. It is particularly disturbing that he himself unambiguously hinted that the operation was launched without his knowledge . That is, the chain of commands in the US is now torn, and it is not clear who can start a war. This has to be taken into account both in Moscow and in Tehran.

... ... ...

Russia wants to help Iran, not out of sheer love to the Islamic Republic, but as a part of its struggle for multi-polar world, where independent states carry on the way they like. Iran, North Korea, Venezuela – their fight for survival is a part and parcel of Russia's struggle. If these states will be taken over, Russia can become the next victim, Putin feels.

... ... ...

In this situation, Putin tries to build bridges to the new forces in Europe and the US, to work with nationalist right. It is not the most obvious partner for this old-fashioned liberal, but they fit into his idea of multi-polarity, of supremacy of national sovereignty and of resistance to the world hegemony of Atlantic powers. His recent visit to Italy, a country with strong nationalist political forces, had been successful; so was his meeting with the Pope.

In the aftermath of the audience with the Pope, Putin strongly defended the Catholic Church, saying that "There are problems, but they cannot be over-exaggerated and used for destroying the Roman Catholic Church itself. I get the feeling that these liberal circles are beginning to use certain problems of the Catholic Church as a tool for destroying the Church itself. This is what I consider to be incorrect and dangerous. After all, we live in a world based on Biblical values and traditional values are more stable and more important for millions of people than this liberal idea, which, in my opinion, is really ceasing to exist". For years, the Europeans haven't heard this message. Perhaps this is the right time to listen.

Israel Shamir can be reached at [email protected]

anonymous [340] Disclaimer , says: July 6, 2019 at 1:16 pm GMT

"President Trump seems to have some positive ideas, but his hands are tied up."

Pitifully naive.

Al Moanee , says: July 6, 2019 at 8:27 pm GMT
@Per/Norway

The author is referring to WWI and the Balfour Declaration of Nov 1917 which indeed was drafted on behalf of Jewish Zionist interests who in return did their level best in bringing Wilson, who was long backed by NYC banking interests (hence the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 enacted on his watch), into the war which materially changed its dynamics and outcome.

A123 , says: July 6, 2019 at 10:32 pm GMT

The Ukraine in all this? I would think it a far bigger concern for Russia in any trilateral meeting.

Do not expect anything on the Ukraine in the near future. Trump wants the DNC to nominate guaranteed loser Biden. Then he can beat him senseless using 'Ukrainian tampering with U.S. elections' via Biden's family business interests (1).
_____

Now that the Mueller exoneration is complete, the door is open to improved U.S. – Russia relations. The important thing is looking at Putin's and Trump's actions , more so than their words.

Trump's words sound 'officially concerned' about Crimea. However, this is primarily for EU consumption. What actions has the Trump administration taken about Crimea? Little or nothing depending on how you score the matter. So tacit acknowledgement pending a quid pro quo .

Putin administration words (but not Putin himself) have said strong sounding things about Iran. However, there are no actions that support a deep relationship.
-- Russia sells munitions to Iran on a 'cash & carry' basis along with many other nations including Turkey. Russia and Israel have much stronger ties on the military equipment basis. Look at their recent joint sale of AWACS to India (2).
-- Russia continues to let the Israeli air force freely strike Iranian al'Hezbollah and al'Quds targets in Syria.

It looks like the quid pro quo arrangement will be Crimea for an Iranian exit from Syria. It's a deal that would help peace throughout the region.

PEACE
______

(1) https://www.thenation.com/article/joe-biden-ukraine-burisma-holdings/

(2) https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-to-buy-2-more-awacs-worth-rs-5-7k-crore-from-israel/articleshow/67765253.cms

Priss Factor , says: July 6, 2019 at 10:33 pm GMT

Was Pat Robertson right about World War I?

https://israelpalestinenews.org/rothschild-reveals-crucial-role-ancestors-played-balfour-declaration-creation-israel/

A123 , says: July 6, 2019 at 11:08 pm GMT

But he is hampered by his "deep state", by Pompeo and Bolton; about the latter, Trump himself said that he wants to fight with the whole world. Presidents can't always remove the ministers from whom they want to get rid of – even the absolute monarchs of the past did not always succeed.

Actually, Trump is using Bolton against the deep state.

First and foremost, it is and advanced and skillful form of ' Good Cop – Bad Cop '. When Bolton says something and Trump openly disagrees, it places the Fake Steam Media complex in an untenable position. If they treat the story fairly, they embrace the anathema of saying positive things about Trump. But they do not have any options to twist the facts into their desired anti-American propaganda.

Secondarily, it also cleverly drives a wedge between two DNC factions:

-1- The true Clintonista believer, stricken by Trump Derangement Syndrome [TDS], will not accept anything less than Impeachment. Preferably followed by turning him over to the Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa.
-2- Those with a less deranged view realise that a successful Impeachment process would generate President Pence. And, he would be much more likely to accept Bolton's advice. Perhaps Pence would pick Bolton to be Vice President.

Look at the circular firing squad that is forming up in the DNC nomination process to see how Trump's deliberate agitation of various factions is working in his favor. The TDS faction is winning and as a result the eventual DNC candidate will be unelectable.

PEACE

Rabbitnexus , says: July 7, 2019 at 2:49 am GMT
@AghaHussain sts plans have failed to materialise in Syria. The author here does a very good job of explaining Russia's position and between his and Saker's analyses your argument is kaput and only fools would buy it.

The Zionists went away empty handed with their visits to Russia and President Putin and if anything Russia's resistance to the Zionists has hardened lately.

People who have two dimensional thinking and a limited box of clues seem to think it is as simple as just saying no and digging their heels in but that way makes wars. Russia does not have the sort of power nor an insane leadership that it would take for that.

A123 , says: July 7, 2019 at 2:39 pm GMT
@animalogic to be rebuilt.

The best hope for an internal Iranian solution is IRGC enlightened self interest. A fairly bloodless replacement of Khameni with a general from the IRGC. It worked in Egypt and the world welcomed that military solution. One can be 99% certain that replacing Khameni would be just as welcome.

The new 'General Ayatollah in Chief' would have a free hand to disengage from Khameni's extremism. The economic recovery from ending sanctions would guarantee internal popularity. Think of it as MIGA, Make Iran Great Again , though they are unlikely to use that exact phrase.

PEACE

iendly Neighbourhood Terrorist , says: Website July 13, 2019 at 1:48 pm GMT

It's ludicrous to imagine that Russians are so wedded to the good life that they do not dare antagonise Amerikastan. What "good life" is this? Ask the pensioners struggling on a few thousand rubles a month how the hell they are supposed to manage. The luxuries enjoyed by the yuppies in Moscow (most of whom, fluently English speaking and firmly pro-Amerikastani, are a fifth column of Quislings) are not the life that the factory worker in Volgograd or the farmer outside St Petersburg will recognise.

Che Guava , says: July 13, 2019 at 3:42 pm GMT

Pres. Putin seems to be a pretty good person.

I want to sidetrack the thread to the matter of Edward Snowden.

Putin made a comment early on 'a strange young man'.

I understand exactly what he was saying. I am the same. No leaks. ht is a matter of honour.

OTOH, confronted by wall-to-wal evil bullshit as he was, I think he was not in the wrong (but have a little internal conflict on that, since the secrets 4 have to keep now are ooly technical and at times commercial, such a dilemna never arises.

In no situation would such be ethical.

he was sorry for Sowden's girlfriend, he dumped her. but, not long after, she was with him. Very romantic. Doubtless, Russian secret services had some role.

I like the happy ending there, it is very romantic.

Would make a great movie, but not possible from Hollywood, perhaps Russia could revive its moribund film industry?

Republic , says: July 13, 2019 at 3:44 pm GMT
@Malacaay

http://www.unz.com/akarlin/10-ways-russia-better-than-usa/

Anatoly Karlin published this two years ago:

10 ways Russia is better than the US

Agent76 , says: July 13, 2019 at 4:29 pm GMT

Oct 20, 2018 Putin: Russia Getting Rid Of US Dollar Matter Of National Security

Russian president Vladimir Putin: "That's what our American friends are doing. They're undermining trust in the dollar as a universal payment instrument and the main reserve currency."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/4fECrSQ9ifM?feature=oembed

Jun 8, 2018 Putin hints at end of dollar system – Direct Line 2018

Vladimir Putin has held his 16th Direct Line Q&A on June 7th.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/z01S7lOq-qI?feature=oembed

AnonFromTN , says: July 13, 2019 at 6:28 pm GMT
@AmRusDebate t in 2014, and had gone so deep that there is no light at the end of the tunnel now. It is still used by the Empire as an annoying sore right next to Russia, but that's all it can be. It did not and could not deliver what the Empire was hoping for. The imperial planners never take into account the critical condition for their "color revolutions" to bring US-friendly compradores to power anywhere: the country in question must be rotten through and through. Thus, instead of useful sharp tools they get worthless pieces of shit. They are still trying to use an inevitable stink for their purposes, but that's the only use shit is good for.
AnonFromTN , says: July 13, 2019 at 6:56 pm GMT
@Fiendly Neighbourhood Terrorist

It's not just Moscow yuppies. Visit any provincial city in Russia today and you'd see that it looks way better than it ever did in the USSR. There are cafes everywhere and lots of people in them spending serious money, because they can afford that. Drive on any road, in or between the cities, and you can see that the roads are in a better shape than they ever were, and there are lots of gas stations, cafes, and hotels along them, all doing brisk business. Russians have ten times more cars now than they had in the USSR, and they drive a lot.

RadicalCenter , says: July 13, 2019 at 7:04 pm GMT
@A123 be deployed right on Russia's border on yet another side. Russia would be readily bottled up and be denied the freedom to navigate through the surrounding waters. And it would be more vulnerable to land invasion from more points.

Russia should continue disentangling itself from US and US-Controller financial systems and institutions. Keep becoming more able to sustain its people without so many imports of foodstuffs and manufactured goods alike.

Far from giving up Crimea, Russia should bide its time and wait to retake the Donbass region or more when Ukraine collapses, breaks up, and/or is outright occupied by the US.

Ace , says: July 13, 2019 at 7:19 pm GMT
@A123

I rather doubt you're in any position to judge whether Khameni is a sociopath.

And your fixation on regime change is noted. The ultimate expression of Western arrogance: You, you benighted, retrograde, sociopathic worm, are not a fit chief executive of your nation so we have decided you must go. If we have to kill hundreds of thousands of your people that's just an unavoidable cost of our being the excellent people we are.

RadicalCenter , says: July 13, 2019 at 7:25 pm GMT
@Twodees Partain

Trump should put the warmongering establishment on the back foot by firing Bolton and hiring Tulsi Gabbard.

Watch the media contort itself deciding how to slander and attack a partly nonwhite "progressive" "pro-choice" woman who is also a veteran, LOL.

What if trump did this a month BEFORE the election?

Beefcake the Mighty , says: July 13, 2019 at 9:55 pm GMT
@Harbinger

Liberalism in the West today is similar to communism in the SU in the late 80's: a decrepit ideology that offers nothing to ordinary people and whose adherents are incapable of anything but mouthing the same rubbish over and over. It will similarly die a well-deserved death.

[Jul 13, 2019] Mueller Does Not Have Evidence That The IRA Was Part of Russian Government Meddling by Larry C Johnson

Highly recommended!
Looks like Mueller and his team were extremely sloppy and just milked the US government and try to feed rumors to the media.
Mueller emerged as a stooge of Clinton mafia.
Notable quotes:
"... In short, the US Government cannot come out and declare that Concord Management, for example, was acting on behalf or or in collaboration with the Russian Government without presenting actual evidence. A prosecutor cannot simply claim that Concord is a Putin Stooge. ..."
"... The lawyers for Concord Management read the Mueller report and noted significant discrepancies between what was alleged in the original complaint and what was asserted as "fact" in the Mueller report. ..."
"... On April 25, 2019, Concord filed the instant motion in which it argues that the Attorney General and Special Counsel violated Local Rule 57.7 by releasing information to the public that was not contained in the indictment. Concord's main contention is that the Special Counsel's Report, as released to the public, and the Attorney General's related public statements improperly suggested a link between the defendants and the Russian government and expressed an opinion about the defendants' guilt and the evidence against them. ..."
"... Concord's lawyers wanted Judge Friedrich to find Robert Mueller and Attorney General Barr in contempt for violating rule 57.7. ..."
"... the Court has entered an order limiting public statements about this case moving forward and cautions the government that any future violations of that order will trigger a range of potential sanctions. ..."
"... But the Judge did not stop there. She pointed out some glaring discrepancies between the Mueller Report and the actual indictment: ..."
"... By attributing IRA's conduct to "Russia" -- as opposed to Russian individuals or entities -- the Report suggests that the activities alleged in the indictment were undertaken on behalf of, if not at the direction of, the Russian government. ..."
"... But the activities of the IRA and Concord Management are not established. In fact, Mueller's own report undermines his claims, as noted in a recent article by Nation's Aaron Mate. ..."
"... Mate's article, as I mentioned in a previous piece, does an excellent job of showing that the Mueller Report is based on heartfelt beliefs but devoid of corroborating evidence. ..."
"... I think Mueller, Weissman, et al did not expect Concord to contest their indictment. They believed they could continue their PR effort that Russia changed the outcome of the election by sending out tweets and Facebook posts without anyone calling them out. ..."
"... The national security surveillance state is only going to get bigger and more powerful. I suppose that is the real competition between the CCP & the USA who can get more totalitarian sooner. ..."
"... a very valuable recent piece in the 'Epoch Times' about the questions that need to be put to Mueller, Jeff Carlson discusses some of the problems relating both to Christopher Steele's involvement with Oleg Deripaska, and the involvement of Fusion GPS with Natalia Veseltnitskaya which led to the Trump Tower meeting. (See https://www.theepochtimes.com/33-key-questions-for-robert-mueller_2988876.html .) ..."
"... Andrew McCarthy, in the 'National Review', picks up one of the most interesting, and puzzling, moments in the fascinating notes by Kathy Kavalec of the conversation she had with Steele when Jonathan Winer brought him to see on her in October 2016. (See https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/oleg-deripaska-fbi-russia-collusion-theory/ ) ..."
"... 'Moreover, by January 2017, F.B.I. agents had tracked down and interviewed one of Mr. Steele's main sources, a Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in the West, according to a Justice Department document obtained by The New York Times and three people familiar with the events. After questioning him, F.B.I. officials came to suspect that the man might have added his own interpretations to reports from his own sources that he passed on to Mr. Steele, calling into question the reliability of the information.' ..."
"... Without wanting to prejudge things, it seems to me quite likely that what Horowitz has been contemplating is a kind of 'limited hangout'. So, the idea could be to suggest that Steele did have sources, that however these were not as reliable as he thought they were, but everything was done in good faith etc etc. In the light of information coming out, including that in the Friedrich ruling, he may however have decided to 'hold his horses.' ..."
"... It is important that the general pattern of assuming that Putin is some kind of omnipotent Sauron-figure, which has clearly left Mueller open to a counter-attack by Concord, was given a classic expression in the testimony which Glenn Simpson gave to the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017. ..."
"... Litvinenko himself, as well as having been a key member of the late Boris Berezovsky's 'information operations team', was an agent, as distinct from an informant, of MI6: accounts differ as to whether Steele was his personal 'handler' (John Sipher), or had never met him (Luke Harding). ..."
"... Also relevant is the fact that Shvets, a fanatical Ukrainian nationalist, and an important figure in the original 'Orange Revolution', was also a key member of Berezovsky's 'information operations' team. ..."
"... The account of his career by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier in his 2016 study 'Missing Man' is a tissue of sleazy evasions, not least in relation to the role of Levinson in 'investigating' the notorious mobster Semion Mogilevich, a key figure in 'information operations' against both Putin and Trump, and also the opponents of Yulia Tymoshenko. ..."
"... A large question involved is how co-operation between not simply elements in MI6 and the CIA, but also in the FBI, with the oligarchs who refused to accept Putin's terms goes back a very long way. ..."
Jul 13, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Mueller Does Not Have Evidence That The IRA Was Part of Russian Government Meddling by Larry C Johnson

In the criminal case against alleged Russian operatives--Internet Research Agency and Concord Management and Consulting LLC--a Federal judge has declared that Robert Mueller has not offered one piece of solid evidence that these defendants were involved in any way with the Government of Russia. I think this is a potential game changer.

The world of law as opposed to the world of intelligence is as different as Mercury and Mars. The intelligence community aka IC can traffic in rumor and speculation. IC "solid" intelligence may be nothing more than the strident assertion of a source who lacks actual first hand knowledge of an event. The legal world does not enjoy that kind of sloppiness. If a prosecutor makes a claim, i.e., Jack shot Jill, then said prosecutor must show that Jack owned a firearm that matches the bullets recovered from Jill's body. Then the prosecutor needs to show that Jack was with Jill when the shooting took place and that forensic evidence recovered from Jack showed he had fired a firearm. Keep this distinction in mind as you consider what has transpired in the case against the Internet Research Agency and Concord Management and Consulting.

To understand why Judge Friedrich ruled as she did you must understand Local Rule 57.7. That rule: restricts public dissemination of information by attorneys involved in criminal cases where

"there is a reasonable likelihood that such dissemination will interfere with a fair trial or otherwise prejudice the administration of justice." It also authorizes the court "[i]n a widely publicized or sensational criminal case" to issue a special order governing extrajudicial statements and other matters designed to limit publicity that might interfere with the conduct of a fair trial. . . .

The rule prohibits lawyers associated with the prosecution or defense from publishing, between the time of the indictment and the commencement of trial, "[a]ny opinion as to the accused's guilt or innocence or as to the merits of the case or the evidence in the case."

In short, the US Government cannot come out and declare that Concord Management, for example, was acting on behalf or or in collaboration with the Russian Government without presenting actual evidence. A prosecutor cannot simply claim that Concord is a Putin Stooge.

The lawyers for Concord Management read the Mueller report and noted significant discrepancies between what was alleged in the original complaint and what was asserted as "fact" in the Mueller report.

On April 25, 2019, Concord filed the instant motion in which it argues that the Attorney General and Special Counsel violated Local Rule 57.7 by releasing information to the public that was not contained in the indictment. Concord's main contention is that the Special Counsel's Report, as released to the public, and the Attorney General's related public statements improperly suggested a link between the defendants and the Russian government and expressed an opinion about the defendants' guilt and the evidence against them.

Concord's lawyers wanted Judge Friedrich to find Robert Mueller and Attorney General Barr in contempt for violating rule 57.7.

Judge Friedrich gave Concord a partial victory:

Although the Court agrees that the government violated Rule 57.7 , it disagrees that contempt proceedings are an appropriate response to that violation. Instead, the Court has entered an order limiting public statements about this case moving forward and cautions the government that any future violations of that order will trigger a range of potential sanctions.

But the Judge did not stop there. She pointed out some glaring discrepancies between the Mueller Report and the actual indictment:

The Special Counsel Report describes efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. . . . But the indictment . . . does not link the defendants to the Russian government. Save for a single allegation that Concord and Concord Catering had several "government contracts" (with no further elaboration), id. ¶ 11, the indictment alleges only private conduct by private actors.

. . . the concluding paragraph of the section of the [Mueller] Report related to Concord states that the Special Counsel's "investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by" Concord's co-defendant, the Internet Research Agency (IRA). By attributing IRA's conduct to "Russia" -- as opposed to Russian individuals or entities -- the Report suggests that the activities alleged in the indictment were undertaken on behalf of, if not at the direction of, the Russian government.

Similarly, the Attorney General drew a link between the Russian government and this case during a press conference in which he stated that "[t]he Special Counsel's report outlines two main efforts by the Russian government to influence the 2016 election." . . . The "[f]irst" involved "efforts by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company with close ties to the Russian government, to sow social discord among American voters through disinformation and social media operations." Id. The "[s]econd" involved "efforts by Russian military officials associated with the GRU," a Russian intelligence agency, to hack and leak private documents and emails from the Democratic Party and the Clinton Campaign.

The Report explains that it used the term "established" whenever "substantial, credible evidence enabled the Office to reach a conclusion with confidence." . . . It then states in its conclusion that the Special Counsel's "investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by the IRA." In context, this statement characterizes the evidence against the defendants as "substantial" and "credible," and it provides the Special Counsel's Office's "conclusion" about what actually occurred.

But the activities of the IRA and Concord Management are not established. In fact, Mueller's own report undermines his claims, as noted in a recent article by Nation's Aaron Mate. Although Mueller claims that it was "established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by" Concord's co-defendant, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), he provided no such evidence.

According to Mate :

After two years and $35 million, Mueller apparently failed to uncover any direct evidence linking the Prigozhin-controlled IRA's activities to the Kremlin. His best evidence is that "[n]umerous media sources have reported on Prigozhin's ties to Putin, and the two have appeared together in public photographs."

Mate's article, as I mentioned in a previous piece, does an excellent job of showing that the Mueller Report is based on heartfelt beliefs but devoid of corroborating evidence.

Some readers will insist that Mueller and his team have actual intelligence but cannot put that in an indictment. Well boys and girls, here is a simple truth--if you cannot produce evidence that can be presented in court then you do not have a case. There is that part of the Constitution that allows those accused of a crime to confront their accusers.

Posted at 11:09 PM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink

Sonal Chawhan , 12 July 2019 at 05:38 AM

Impressive！Thanks for the post
SAS Base and Advance

Peter VE , 12 July 2019 at 09:14 AM

Minor quibble: Judge Friedrich is a woman. I expect that this will get no play from the MSM, since Judge Friedrich was appointed by Trump, and "everyone" knows she's just covering up for him.

Larry Johnson -> Peter VE... , 12 July 2019 at 11:37 AM

Thanks. Never heard of a chick named, "Dabney." I was thinking Dabney Coleman. Dating myself.

Peter VE -> Larry Johnson ... , 12 July 2019 at 02:17 PM

Maybe her name is misspelled reference to Dagney Taggart...

Flavius , 12 July 2019 at 10:33 AM

Under the conditions and in the environment that it was returned, this indictment was Mueller and his partisan team throwing raw meat fo the media so as to prolong their mission, nothing more. Once filed, no one involved ever expected to appear in a courtroom to prosecute anyone, or defend any part of it. It was an abuse of process, pure and simple.

Consider it as a count against Mueller, his competence or his integrity, maybe both. He let himself become a tool.

pretzelattack -> Flavius... , 12 July 2019 at 07:27 PM

Johnson refers to "heartfelt beliefs" but i doubt Mueller believes his own bs. in this i guess he distinguishes himself from earlier witch-hunters, who apparently sincerely believed their targets were minions of satan.

blue peacock , 12 July 2019 at 11:33 AM

I think Mueller, Weissman, et al did not expect Concord to contest their indictment. They believed they could continue their PR effort that Russia changed the outcome of the election by sending out tweets and Facebook posts without anyone calling them out.

It seems on the current trajectory both the Trump colluded with Russia and our law enforcement & IC attempted a soft-coup will die on the vine. The latter because Trump is unwilling to declassify. It seems for him it was all just another reality TV show and him tweeting "witch hunt" constantly was what the script called for.

The next time the IC & law enforcement who now must believe that they are the real power behind the throne decide to exercise that power it will be a doozie.

The national security surveillance state is only going to get bigger and more powerful. I suppose that is the real competition between the CCP & the USA who can get more totalitarian sooner.

https://theintercept.com/2019/07/11/china-surveillance-google-ibm-semptian/

David Habakkuk , 12 July 2019 at 12:39 PM

Larry,

A fine piece.

I think a large question is raised as to how far the kind of sloppiness in the handling of evidence which Judge Friedrich identified in the Mueller report may have characterised a great deal of the treatment of matters to do with the post-Soviet space by the FBI and others – including almost all MSM journalists – for a very long time.

Unfortunately, one also finds this among some of the most useful critics of 'Russiagate'. So, for example, in a very valuable recent piece in the 'Epoch Times' about the questions that need to be put to Mueller, Jeff Carlson discusses some of the problems relating both to Christopher Steele's involvement with Oleg Deripaska, and the involvement of Fusion GPS with Natalia Veseltnitskaya which led to the Trump Tower meeting. (See https://www.theepochtimes.com/33-key-questions-for-robert-mueller_2988876.html .)

He then however goes on to write: 'In other words, not only was the firm that hired Steele, Fusion GPS, hired by the Russians, but Steele himself was hired directly by the Russians.'

And Andrew McCarthy, in the 'National Review', picks up one of the most interesting, and puzzling, moments in the fascinating notes by Kathy Kavalec of the conversation she had with Steele when Jonathan Winer brought him to see on her in October 2016. (See https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/oleg-deripaska-fbi-russia-collusion-theory/ )

Commenting on the fact that, in her scribbled notes, beside the names of Vladislav Surkov and Vyacheslav Trubnikov, who are indeed a top Putin adviser and a former SVR chief respectively, Kavalec writes 'source', McCarthy simply concludes that she meant that he had said that these were his – indirect – sources, and that this was accurate. And he goes on to write:

'Deripaska, Surkov, and Trubnikov were not informing on the Kremlin. These are Putin's guys. They were peddling what the Kremlin wanted the world to believe, and what the Kremlin shrewdly calculated would sow division in the American body politic. So, the question is: Did they find the perfect patsy in Christopher Steele?'

If you look at Kavalec's typing up of the notes, among a good deal of what looks to me like pure 'horse manure' – including the claim that 'Manafort has been the go-between with the campaign' – the single reference to Surkov and Trubnikov is that they are said to be 'also involved.'

As it happens, Surkov is a very complex figure indeed. His talents as a 'political technologist' were first identified by Khodorkovsky, before he subsequently played that role for Putin. It would obviously be possible that he and Steele still had common contacts.

The suggestion in Kavalec's notes that Sergei Millian 'may be involved in some way,' and also that, 'Per Steele, Millian is connected Simon Kukes (who took over management of Yukos when Khodorkovsky was arrested)' is interesting, but would seem to suggest that he would not have been cited to Kavalec as an intermediary.

All this is obviously worth putting together with claims made in the 'New York Times' follow-up on 9 July to the Reuters report on the same day breaking the story of the interviews carried out with Steele by the Inspector General's team in early June.

(See https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/us/politics/ig-russia-investigation-steele.html?module=inline .)

According to this:

'Moreover, by January 2017, F.B.I. agents had tracked down and interviewed one of Mr. Steele's main sources, a Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in the West, according to a Justice Department document obtained by The New York Times and three people familiar with the events. After questioning him, F.B.I. officials came to suspect that the man might have added his own interpretations to reports from his own sources that he passed on to Mr. Steele, calling into question the reliability of the information.'

Some observations prompted by all this.

Without wanting to prejudge things, it seems to me quite likely that what Horowitz has been contemplating is a kind of 'limited hangout'. So, the idea could be to suggest that Steele did have sources, that however these were not as reliable as he thought they were, but everything was done in good faith etc etc. In the light of information coming out, including that in the Friedrich ruling, he may however have decided to 'hold his horses.'

In trying to put together the accumulating evidence, it is necessary to realise, as so many people seem to find it difficult to do, that in matters like these people commonly play double games – often for very good reasons.

To say as Carlson does that Fusion and Steele were hired by 'the Russians' implies that these are some kind of collective entity – and then, one is one step away from the assumption that Veselnitskaya and Deripaska, as well as 'Putin's Cook', are simply puppets controlled by the master manipulator in the Kremlin. (The fact that Friedrich applies serious standards for assessing evidence to Mueller's version of this is one of the reasons why her judgement is so important.)

As regards what McCarthy says, to lump Surkov and Deripaska together as 'Putin's guys' is unhelpful. Actually, it seems to me very unlikely, although perhaps not absolutely impossible, that, had he been implicated in any conspiracy to intervene in an American election, Surkov would have been talking candidly about his role to anyone liable to relay the information to Steele.

Likewise, however, the notion of a Machiachiavellian Surkov, feeding disinformation about a non-existent plot through an intermediary to Steele, who swallows it hook, line and sinker, does not seem particularly plausible.

A rather more obvious possibility is that the intermediaries who were supposed to have conveyed a whole lot of 'smoking gun' evidence to Steele were either 1. fabrications, 2. people whom without their knowledge he cast in this role, or 3. co-conspirators. It would, obviously, be possible that Millian, although one can say no more than that at this stage, was involved in either or both of roles 2. and 3.

It is important that the general pattern of assuming that Putin is some kind of omnipotent Sauron-figure, which has clearly left Mueller open to a counter-attack by Concord, was given a classic expression in the testimony which Glenn Simpson gave to the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017.

(See https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/House_Intelligence_Committee_Interview_of_Glenn_Simpson )

Providing his version of what was going on following his move from the Washington office of the 'Wall Street Journal' to its European headquarters in January 2005, Simpson told the Committee:

'And the oligarchs, during this period of consolidation of power by Vladimir Putin, when I was living in Brussels and doing all this work, was about him essentially taking control over both the oligarchs and the mafia groups. And so basically everyone in Russia works for Putin now. And that's true of the diaspora as well. So the Russian mafia in the United States is believed bylaw enforcement criminologists to have – to be under the influence of the Russian security services. And this is convenient for the security services because it gives them a level of deniability.'

A bit less than two years after Simpson's move to Brussels, a similar account featured in what appears to have been the first attempt by Christopher Steele and his confederates to provide a 'narrative' in terms of which could situate the supposed assassination by polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.

This came in a BBC Radio 4 programme, entitled 'The Litvinenko Mystery', in which a veteran presenter with the Corporation, Tom Mangold, produced an account by the former KGB Major Yuri Shvets, supported by the former FBI Agent Robert Levinson, and an 'Unidentified Informer', who is told by Mangold that he cannot be identified 'reasons of your own personal security'.

(A full transcript is on the 'Evidence' archived website of the Litvinenko Inquiry – one needs to search for the reference HMG000513 – at https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence">https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

This figure, whose credentials we have no means of assessing, explains:

'Well it's not well known to Western leaders or Western people but it is pretty well known in Russia. Because essentially it is common knowledge in Russia that by the end of Nineties the so called Russian organised crime had been destroyed by the Government and then the Russian security agencies, primarily the law enforcement and primarily the FSB, essentially assumes the functions and methods of Russian organised crime. And they became one of the most dangerous organised crime group because they are protected by law. They're protected by all power of the State. They have essentially the free hand in the country and this shadow establishment essentially includes the entire structure of the FSB from the very top people in Moscow going down to the low offices.'

The story Mangold told was a pathetic tale of how Litvinenko and Shvets, trying to turn an honest penny from 'due diligence' work, identified damning evidence about the links of a figure close to Putin to organised crime, who in return sent Andrei Lugovoi to poison the former with polonium.

A few problems with this version have, however, subsequently, emerged. Among them is the fact that, at the time, Litvinenko himself, as well as having been a key member of the late Boris Berezovsky's 'information operations team', was an agent, as distinct from an informant, of MI6: accounts differ as to whether Steele was his personal 'handler' (John Sipher), or had never met him (Luke Harding).

Also relevant is the fact that Shvets, a fanatical Ukrainian nationalist, and an important figure in the original 'Orange Revolution', was also a key member of Berezovsky's 'information operations' team.

Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the disappearance of Levinson, on the Iranian island of Kish, the following March, was not as was claimed for years related to his private sector work. His entrapment and imprisonment – from which we now know Deripaska was later involved in attempting to rescue him – related to an undercover mission on behalf of elements in the CIA.

The account of his career by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier in his 2016 study 'Missing Man' is a tissue of sleazy evasions, not least in relation to the role of Levinson in 'investigating' the notorious mobster Semion Mogilevich, a key figure in 'information operations' against both Putin and Trump, and also the opponents of Yulia Tymoshenko.

A large question involved is how co-operation between not simply elements in MI6 and the CIA, but also in the FBI, with the oligarchs who refused to accept Putin's terms goes back a very long way.

And, among other things, that raises a whole range of questions about Mueller.

Dan -> David Habakkuk ... , 12 July 2019 at 04:36 PM

Great info, thanks. I admittedly don't watch the skeptics' comments closely enough, and can be susceptible to twisted observations from guys like Carlson and Solomon.

[Jul 13, 2019] The saddest thing of all is that the Dems' fixation on Russia and Putin is now coming back to bite them in the ass. Trump could not have asked for a better gift.

Notable quotes:
"... You can bet that the likes of Rachel Maddow will never change their tune on the subject of Russiagate. ..."
Jul 13, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Rob , July 12, 2019 at 12:27

You can bet that the likes of Rachel Maddow will never change their tune on the subject of Russiagate.

However, with the election season heating up, it might seem wise for them to start singing a different tune altogether, such as Sanders and Warren are too radical to have any chance of defeating Trump.

The saddest thing of all is that the Dems' fixation on Russia and Putin is now coming back to bite them in the ass. Trump could not have asked for a better gift.

[Jul 13, 2019] The return of Weimar Berlin - Lawlessness, Inequality, Extremism, Divisiveness and Crime

Notable quotes:
"... You hypocrites! You build monuments for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors , we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of His messengers ..."
"... this entire Russian collusion meme seems as though it is an hysterical reaction to the spin put out by the Clinton political faction and their neoliberal enablers after their shocking loss in the 2016 Presidential election. ..."
"... the financial corruption and private pilfering using public power, money laundering and the kind of soft corruption that is rampant amongst our new elite is all there ..."
"... We are reassured and misled by the same kinds of voices that have always served the status quo and the monied interests, the think tanks, the so-called 'institutes,' and the web sites and former con men who offer a constant stream of thinly disguised propaganda and misstatements of principle and history. We are comforted by their lies. ..."
"... We wish to strike a deal with the Lord, and a deal with the Devil -- to serve both God and Mammon as it suits us. It really is that cliché. And it is so finely woven into the fabric of our day that we cannot see it; we cannot see that it is happening to us and around us. ..."
"... It has always been so, especially in times of such vanity and greed as are these. Then is now. There is nothing new under the sun. And certainly nothing exceptional about the likes of us in our indulgent self-destruction. ..."
Feb 13, 2019 | jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com

"He drew near and saw the city, and he wept for it saying, 'If you had only recognized the things that make for peace. But now you are blinded to them. Truly, the days will come when your enemies will set up barriers to surround you, and hem you in on every side. Then they will crush you into the earth, you and your children. And they will not leave one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the way to your salvation.'"

Luke 19:41-44

"You hypocrites! You build monuments for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of His messengers.'"

Matthew 23:29-30

...the results of the Senate GOP finding no evidence of 'collusion' with Russia by the Trump Administration to influence the results of the presidential election..

This last item is not surprising, because this entire Russian collusion meme seems as though it is an hysterical reaction to the spin put out by the Clinton political faction and their neoliberal enablers after their shocking loss in the 2016 Presidential election.

Too bad though, because the financial corruption and private pilfering using public power, money laundering and the kind of soft corruption that is rampant amongst our new elite is all there. And by there we mean on both sides of the fence -- which is why it had to take a back seat to a manufactured boogeyman.

... ... ...

There is a long road ahead before we see anything like a resolution to this troubling period in American political history.

We look back at other troubled periods and places, and either see them as discrete and fictional, a very different world apart, or through some rosy lenses of good old times which were largely benign and peaceful. We fail to see the continuity, the similarity, and the commonality of a dangerous path with ourselves. As they did with their own times gone by. Madness blinds its acolytes, because they wish it so. They embrace it to hide their shame.

We are reassured and misled by the same kinds of voices that have always served the status quo and the monied interests, the think tanks, the so-called 'institutes,' and the web sites and former con men who offer a constant stream of thinly disguised propaganda and misstatements of principle and history. We are comforted by their lies.

People want to hear these reassuring words of comfort and embrace it like a 'religion,' because they do not wish to draw the conclusions that the genuine principles of faith suggest (dare we say command in this day and age) in their daily lives. They blind themselves by adopting a kind of a schizoid approach to life, where 'religion' occupies a discrete, rarefied space, and 'political or economic philosophy' dictates another set of everyday 'practical' observances and behaviors which are more pliable, and pleasing to our hardened and prideful hearts.

We wish to strike a deal with the Lord, and a deal with the Devil -- to serve both God and Mammon as it suits us. It really is that cliché. And it is so finely woven into the fabric of our day that we cannot see it; we cannot see that it is happening to us and around us.

And so we trot on into the abyss, one exception and excuse and rationalization for ourselves at a time. And we blind ourselves with false prophets and their profane theories and philosophies.

As for truth, the truth that brings life, we would interrupt the sermon on the mount itself, saying that this sentiment was all very well and good, but what stocks should we buy for our portfolio, and what horse is going to win the fifth at Belmont? Tell us something useful, practical! Oh, and can you please fix this twinge in my left shoulder? It is ruining my golf game.

"Those among the rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves, after a fashion; they cannot understand destitution. Capable of giving alms, perhaps, but incapable of stripping themselves bare, they will be moved, to the sound of beautiful music, at Jesus's sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them. They want it all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight; pleasant to see, hanging from a woman's beautiful throat."

Léon Bloy

No surprise in this. It has always been so, especially in times of such vanity and greed as are these. Then is now. There is nothing new under the sun. And certainly nothing exceptional about the likes of us in our indulgent self-destruction.

Are you not entertained?

[Jul 13, 2019] Concord Management and the End of Russiagate by Daniel Lazare

Notable quotes:
"... Thus, the IRA played a major role in the vast Kremlin conspiracy to alter the outcome of the 2016 election and install Donald Trump in office. But now Judge Dabney Friedrich has ordered Mueller to stop pushing such stories because they're unfair to Concord Management and Consulting, another Prigozhin company, which astonished the legal world in May 2018 by hiring an expensive Washington law firm and demanding its day in court ..."
"... Without the IRA, the only argument left in Mueller's brief is that Russia stole some 28,000 emails and other electronic documents from Democratic National Committee computers and then passed them along to WikiLeaks , which published them to great fanfare in July 2016. ..."
"... But as Consortium News pointed out the day the Mueller report came out, that's dubious as well. [See " The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report ," April 18.] The reason: it rests on a timeline that doesn't make sense: ..."
"... why would Assange announce the leaked emails on June 12 before hearing from the source on June 22? ..."
"... How could that be enough time to review the contents and ensure they were genuine? "If a single one of those emails had been shown to be maliciously altered," blogger Mark F. McCarty points out , "WikiLeaks's reputation would have been in tatters." Quite right. So if Mueller's chronology doesn't hold up, then Assange's original statement that "our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party" still stands – which it plainly does. ..."
"... Bottom line: Russiagate is going up in smoke. The claim that Russian military intelligence fed thousands of emails to WikiLeaks doesn't stand up to scrutiny while Mueller is not only unable to a prove a connection between the Internet Research Agency and the Kremlin but is barred from even discussing it, according to Friedrich's ruling, without risking a charge of contempt. After 22 months of investigating the ins and outs of Russian interference, Mueller seems to have finally come up dry. ..."
"... "Revenge of the oligarchs" might be a good headline for this story. The IRA indictment initially seemed to be a no-lose proposition for Mueller. He got to look good in the press, the media got to indulge in yet another round of Russia-bashing, while, best of all, no one had to prove a thing. "Mueller's allegations will never be tested in court," noted Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor turned pundit for the rightwing National Review . "That makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument." ..."
"... Then came the unexpected. Concord Management hired Reed Smith, a top-flight law firm with offices around the world, and demanded to be heard. ..."
"... then the firm demanded to exercise its right of discovery, meaning that it wanted access to Mueller's immense investigative file. Blindsided, Mueller's requested a delay "on the astonishing ground," according to McCarthy , "that the defendant has not been properly served – notwithstanding that the defendant has shown up in court and asked to be arraigned." ..."
"... Prigozhin was forcing the special prosecutor to show what he's got, McCarthy went on, at zero risk to himself since he was not on U.S. soil. What was once a no-lose proposition for Mueller was suddenly a no-lose proposition for Putin's unexpectedly clever cook. ..."
"... Now Mueller is in an even worse pickle because he's barred from mentioning a major chunk of his report. What will he discuss if Democrats succeed in getting him to testify before the House intelligence and judiciary committees next week – the weather? ..."
"... If his team goes forward with the Concord prosecution, he'll risk having to turn over sensitive information while involving himself in a legal tangle that could go on for years, all without any conceivable payoff. If he drops it, the upshot will be a public-relations disaster of the first order ..."
"... As skeptics have pointed out, the IRA's social-media campaign was both more modest and more ineffectual then the Mueller report's over-the-top language about a "sweeping and systematic" conspiracy would suggest. Yet after Facebook Vice President Rob Goldman tweeted that "the majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election," he was forced to beg for forgiveness like a defendant in a Moscow show trial for daring to play down the magnitude of the crime. ..."
"... Hard to believe, but it is possible that the dumb Dem leaders still -- to this day -- believe their story-line. How else to account for the incredible denseness of Pelosi and Nadler, both of whom should be down at the southern border rather than fiddling on a rusty Russia-gate Stradivarius -- fiddling while little kids burn. ..."
"... Trump may be vulgar and unorganized but his efforts to maintain our sovereign borders are welcomed and will secure his second term. 6 or 7 years ago, every senior Democrat (Biden, Hillary, Schumer, Pelosi, etc.) were against open borders and illegal immigrants. Their current stance is crass politics not concern for human welfare. ..."
"... The whole Mueller investigation was always "theatre" and not "law." And not just "theatre" by Mueller, but by the media and the Democratic Party as well. ..."
"... Only a few things were proven: Mueller has no credibility, the "Justice Department" is dysfunctional, the mainstream media is a joke and the the DNC was able to rig the primaries and effectively hide that fact using the fog of the Russiagate farce. ..."
"... What do you do now Mr Mueller, now that your bluff has been called? Another one of many nails in the coffin of this ridiculous, American, Hallucination Hoax called Russiagate! ..."
"... Mueller thought he was simply practicing the real government policy on fooling the public with endless iterations of horse hockey which Dubya tried to obscure with his "fool me once, fool me twice " razz-ma-tazz. ..."
"... You can bet that the likes of Rachel Maddow will never change their tune on the subject of Russiagate. However, with the election season heating up, it might seem wise for them to start singing a different tune altogether, such as Sanders and Warren are too radical to have any chance of defeating Trump. The saddest thing of all is that the Dems' fixation on Russia and Putin is now coming back to bite them in the ass. Trump could not have asked for a better gift. ..."
"... These indictments (including the 12 GRU) were all press releases to fuel the "I'm doing something" and "Russia's involved" noise. Not a lawyer but those who are commented that these Russian "indictments" were not only without evidence (which would have come out in a court had such been the intent) but they went way beyond a straightforward indictment to something approximating an OP ED for the WoPo or NYT. ..."
"... I watched the excellent movie "The Big Short" last night, it was my second viewing after seeing it at the theater. It was painful to watch because it's about the abject failure and corruption of Wall Street, but beyond that, it's about the failure of Our System and about how the People always are the essential losers. ..."
"... We here at Consortiumnews have basically known these facts since Robert Parry's death, why?, because Robert was an extraordinary reporter who actually looked into the underlying dynamic of the subject he reported on. And, relying on his honesty, we were brought along on the Real story leading up to this. ..."
"... What's needed to convince Americans that "Russia" did not interfere in the election and did not hack the DNC is not a judge but an exorcist. ..."
"... This profound belief based on DNC, HRC confabulated and paid for evidence is in so many ways, if not totally, akin to the belief in UFOs and little green men (why is it always "men"?). Yet the same people who are "Russia and Putin did it" frenetic are those who denounce as insane nutters those who believe in the existence of UFOs and those grass colored men ..."
"... It should be interesting to see how this plays out, if the judiciary has the fortitude to stand up to the Den of Spooks. ..."
Jul 13, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

CAMPAIGN 2016 , INTELLIGENCE , RUSSIA , RUSSIAGATE , TRUMP ADMINISTRATION , WIKILEAKS Concord Management and the End of Russiagate? July 12, 2019 • 23 Comments

Save

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has just shut down half of Robert Mueller's Russian-interference case, writes Daniel Lazare.

By Daniel Lazare
Special to Consortium News

Don't look now, but a federal judge in Washington, D.C., has just shut down half of Robert Mueller's Russian-interference case.

In February 2018, the special prosecutor indicted a St. Petersburg troll farm called the Internet Research Agency along with two other companies, their owner, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, and 12 employees. The charge: fraud, traveling to the United States under false pretenses, and using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to "sow discord" and "interfere in US political and electoral processes without detection of their Russian affiliation."

The charge was both legally dubious and heavy-handed, a case of using a sledge hammer to swat a fly. But Mueller went even further in his report , an expurgated version of which was made public in April. No longer just a Russian company, the IRA was now an arm of the Russian government. "[T]he Special Counsel's investigation," it declared on page one, "established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election principally through two operations.

First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign and then released stolen documents."

"Prigozhin," the report added, referring to the IRA owner, "is widely reported to have ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin." A few pages later, it said that the IRA's efforts "constituted 'active measures' a term that typically refers to operations conducted by Russian security services aimed at influencing the course of international affairs."

Thus, the IRA played a major role in the vast Kremlin conspiracy to alter the outcome of the 2016 election and install Donald Trump in office. But now Judge Dabney Friedrich has ordered Mueller to stop pushing such stories because they're unfair to Concord Management and Consulting, another Prigozhin company, which astonished the legal world in May 2018 by hiring an expensive Washington law firm and demanding its day in court.

Contrary to internet chatter , Friedrich did not offer an opinion as to whether the IRA-Kremlin connection is true or false. Rather, she told the special prosecutor to keep quiet because such statements go beyond the scope of the original indictment and are therefore prejudicial to the defendant. But it may be a distinction without a difference since the only evidence that Mueller puts forth in the public version of his report is a New York Times article from February 2018 entitled "Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russian Oligarch Indicted by US, Is Known as 'Putin's Cook.'"

It's a case of trial by press clip that should have been laughed out of court – and now, more or less, it is. Without the IRA, the only argument left in Mueller's brief is that Russia stole some 28,000 emails and other electronic documents from Democratic National Committee computers and then passed them along to WikiLeaks , which published them to great fanfare in July 2016.

But as Consortium News pointed out the day the Mueller report came out, that's dubious as well. [See " The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report ," April 18.] The reason: it rests on a timeline that doesn't make sense:

  • June 12, 2016: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announces that "leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton" were on the way.
  • June 15: Guccifer 2.0, allegedly a stand-in for Russian military intelligence, goes on line to claim credit for the hack.
  • June 22: Guccifer and WikiLeaks establish contact.
  • July 14: Guccifer sends WikiLeaks an encrypted file.
  • July 18: WikiLeaks confirms that it's opened it up.
  • July 22: The group releases a giant email cache indicating that the DNC rigged the nominating process in favor of Hillary Clinton and against Bernie Sanders.

But why would Assange announce the leaked emails on June 12 before hearing from the source on June 22? Was he clairvoyant? Why would he release a massive file just eight days after receiving it and as a little as four days after opening it up?

How could that be enough time to review the contents and ensure they were genuine? "If a single one of those emails had been shown to be maliciously altered," blogger Mark F. McCarty points out , "WikiLeaks's reputation would have been in tatters." Quite right. So if Mueller's chronology doesn't hold up, then Assange's original statement that "our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party" still stands – which it plainly does.

Going Up in Smoke

Bottom line: Russiagate is going up in smoke. The claim that Russian military intelligence fed thousands of emails to WikiLeaks doesn't stand up to scrutiny while Mueller is not only unable to a prove a connection between the Internet Research Agency and the Kremlin but is barred from even discussing it, according to Friedrich's ruling, without risking a charge of contempt. After 22 months of investigating the ins and outs of Russian interference, Mueller seems to have finally come up dry.

"Revenge of the oligarchs" might be a good headline for this story. The IRA indictment initially seemed to be a no-lose proposition for Mueller. He got to look good in the press, the media got to indulge in yet another round of Russia-bashing, while, best of all, no one had to prove a thing. "Mueller's allegations will never be tested in court," noted Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor turned pundit for the rightwing National Review . "That makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument."

Then came the unexpected. Concord Management hired Reed Smith, a top-flight law firm with offices around the world, and demanded to be heard. The move was "a real head-scratcher," one Washington attorney told Buzzfeed , because Concord was beyond the reach of U.S. law and therefore had nothing to fear from an indictment and nothing to gain, apparently, from going to court. But then the firm demanded to exercise its right of discovery, meaning that it wanted access to Mueller's immense investigative file. Blindsided, Mueller's requested a delay "on the astonishing ground," according to McCarthy , "that the defendant has not been properly served – notwithstanding that the defendant has shown up in court and asked to be arraigned."

Prigozhin was forcing the special prosecutor to show what he's got, McCarthy went on, at zero risk to himself since he was not on U.S. soil. What was once a no-lose proposition for Mueller was suddenly a no-lose proposition for Putin's unexpectedly clever cook.

Now Mueller is in an even worse pickle because he's barred from mentioning a major chunk of his report. What will he discuss if Democrats succeed in getting him to testify before the House intelligence and judiciary committees next week – the weather?

If his team goes forward with the Concord prosecution, he'll risk having to turn over sensitive information while involving himself in a legal tangle that could go on for years, all without any conceivable payoff. If he drops it, the upshot will be a public-relations disaster of the first order.

As skeptics have pointed out, the IRA's social-media campaign was both more modest and more ineffectual then the Mueller report's over-the-top language about a "sweeping and systematic" conspiracy would suggest. Yet after Facebook Vice President Rob Goldman tweeted that "the majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election," he was forced to beg for forgiveness like a defendant in a Moscow show trial for daring to play down the magnitude of the crime.

But it wasn't Goldman who shaved the truth. Rather, it was Mueller. Thanks to the unexpected appearance of Concord Management, he's now paying the price.

Daniel Lazare is the author of "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy" (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique and blogs about the Constitution and related matters at D aniellazare.com .

If you value this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.

David H , July 12, 2019 at 18:17

Does "prejudicial to the defendant" mean the same thing as prejudiced against the defendant?

Stan W. , July 12, 2019 at 13:55

The myth regarding Russian influence in the 2016 election that enabled Donald Trump to "steal" the presidency from Hillary Clinton would make a good sequel to a movie from 1966. Its title: "THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!"

Jeff Harrison , July 12, 2019 at 12:33

The one thing I'd like to know is: did Mueller ever provide the requested discovery documents or not?

Ray McGovern , July 12, 2019 at 11:20

BRAVO, Dan. AND, as you aware, the "hacking half" of Mueller's magnum opus also cannot bear close scrutiny.

Remember where you heard this first, "Current and former intelligence officials" tell me that Mueller has asked his mother to write a note to be excused from the field trip to Congress next Thursday, the 17th.

In my view, the only sympathy Mueller should be able to elicit at this point is the cruel reality that he chose to perform one last job for the Deep State after he had reached the age of statutory senility. His handlers will try to prop him up to the extent possible, but the die is now cast. The whipping-up of Russia-gate can now be seen -- at least by consortium news readers -- as a "best-defense-is-a-good-offensive" operation to obfuscate the reality of Deep-State-gate.

Hard to believe, but it is possible that the dumb Dem leaders still -- to this day -- believe their story-line. How else to account for the incredible denseness of Pelosi and Nadler, both of whom should be down at the southern border rather than fiddling on a rusty Russia-gate Stradivarius -- fiddling while little kids burn. They ought to do their Constitutional duty to impeach -- not on the basis of evidence-less Russia-gate charges -- but because the President is treading heavily on KIDS, as well as the Constitution.

Let's hear more from Tulsi Gabbard.

Again, great job, Dan. I can almost see Bob Parry smiling.

Ray

Chet Roman , July 12, 2019 at 18:15

You've been right all along Ray. Appreciate all your accurate investigating and reporting.

However, I must disagree with your suggestion of impeachment on two phony issues: kids and the constitution. You should focus your wrath on the Democrats that will not correct our immigration laws. The only reason there is a surge of children and families is because the democrats and their radical liberals have made it clear to the world that if you bring children you are free to illegally cross the border. You may be stopped but the kids you bring with you (your own or rent-a-kiddie) are essentially a get out of jail card. We now have Africans from the Congo crossing over with luggage, the latest group are Haitians, WTF?

As an immigrant I support our immigrants that come here legally but not those that break the law. Diversity is not our strength but just adds to the division and conflict within our society. Trump may be vulgar and unorganized but his efforts to maintain our sovereign borders are welcomed and will secure his second term. 6 or 7 years ago, every senior Democrat (Biden, Hillary, Schumer, Pelosi, etc.) were against open borders and illegal immigrants. Their current stance is crass politics not concern for human welfare.

Mike from Jersey , July 12, 2019 at 10:20

The whole Mueller investigation was always "theatre" and not "law." And not just "theatre" by Mueller, but by the media and the Democratic Party as well. And the Republicans cannot rejoice in the result since – not only did Mueller baselessly refuse to concede "exoneration" – Mueller's report itself is a joke in the first place. This article points that out.

So what are we left with?

Only a few things were proven: Mueller has no credibility, the "Justice Department" is dysfunctional, the mainstream media is a joke and the the DNC was able to rig the primaries and effectively hide that fact using the fog of the Russiagate farce.

In short, America's political system is completely broken.

O Society , July 12, 2019 at 09:20

We have heard the name of Judge Dabney Freidrich before. She is a bit of a wildcard here, as she does not necessarily do what the powers that be expect of her. Here she pulls the rug out from under Mueller when he and the Scooby Doo gang was no doubt expecting never to actually have to go to court against the Russian meddling kids:

https://osociety.org/2018/10/21/judge-orders-mueller-to-prove-russian-company-meddled-in-election/

and here she has Kavanaugh's back during his Supreme Court nomination process as he screams about his entitlement to do whatever he damned well pleases because he's entitled rich folk who went to Yale part of the Club aristocracy:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4946213-Judge-Dabney-Friedrich-s-Letter-to-the-Senate.html

Piotr Berman , July 12, 2019 at 09:19

About Prigozhin the oligarch, Wikipedia: "The Anti-Corruption Foundation accused Prigozhin of corrupt business practices. They estimated his illegal wealth to be worth more than one billion rubles.[11]" So the opposition outfit (and those exist in "dictatorial" Russia) accuses Prigozhin of amassing 16 million dollars of "illegal wealth". Poor Russia. In USA, a single doctor can get more by overbilling Medicare, Workers' Compensation etc.

KiwiAntz , July 12, 2019 at 09:16

Mueller, Mueller, Mueller- Class, anyone, anyone?? Ferris Mueller's Day Off is turning into a nightmare & his Report is crashing & burning, faster than a US Drone, shot down & blasted out of the Sky, by the IRG in the Sea of Homuz? It's all very well accusing people of crimes & slandering reputations knowing or hoping that under normal circumstances the accused wouldn't show up to defend the charges, but these accused Russians are prepared to challenge Mueller's fictitious findings? What do you do now Mr Mueller, now that your bluff has been called? Another one of many nails in the coffin of this ridiculous, American, Hallucination Hoax called Russiagate!

Realist , July 12, 2019 at 16:08

Mueller thought he was simply practicing the real government policy on fooling the public with endless iterations of horse hockey which Dubya tried to obscure with his "fool me once, fool me twice " razz-ma-tazz.

Mr. Mueller will take the "A" train to Davy Jones' locker trying to hoodwink the public on this fiasco, rather than getting religion and uttering the more appropriate "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."

AnneR , July 12, 2019 at 09:07

Nice, Mr Lazare, very, very nice. One can only hope that Mueller and the rest of the conspirators (for what else are they?) get their full comeuppance. However, I doubt that given past history and the ability of all those with and in power to escape full scrutiny and real punishment (a lengthy prison sentence).

Unfortunately and dishearteningly, I also doubt that the true believers, of which there are all too many and among whom all too many are highly and expensively educated, will let any of this alter by one iota their apparently adamantine position on "Russiagate," their anti-Putin Russophobia. Or their equally apparent adoration of HRC.

Rob , July 12, 2019 at 12:27

You can bet that the likes of Rachel Maddow will never change their tune on the subject of Russiagate. However, with the election season heating up, it might seem wise for them to start singing a different tune altogether, such as Sanders and Warren are too radical to have any chance of defeating Trump. The saddest thing of all is that the Dems' fixation on Russia and Putin is now coming back to bite them in the ass. Trump could not have asked for a better gift.

Antonio Costa , July 12, 2019 at 09:01

These indictments (including the 12 GRU) were all press releases to fuel the "I'm doing something" and "Russia's involved" noise. Not a lawyer but those who are commented that these Russian "indictments" were not only without evidence (which would have come out in a court had such been the intent) but they went way beyond a straightforward indictment to something approximating an OP ED for the WoPo or NYT.

The intel report ordered by Obama (2 of them) had no evidence, and the last one went on and on about RT as if RT has conspired to infiltrate the minds of US voters (huge laugh given their reach and those who watch, or listen generally don't need convincing of US government nefarious doings).

I did read both reports and indictments, and as a lay person it was clear there was no substance. In the case of the intel report even Obama concluded there was nothing.

Yet the 2+ year circus went on and on as a media ($$$) frenzy. No one really cared, nor do they to this day.

This is what the unraveling of an empire looks like. Let's hope there's a truly new and better day ahead after the collapse.

OlyaPola , July 12, 2019 at 08:58

When deflating a balloon care is required to ensure it doesn't shoot off in all directions exposing the skill levels of would-be performers.

Bob Van Noy , July 12, 2019 at 08:05

I watched the excellent movie "The Big Short" last night, it was my second viewing after seeing it at the theater. It was painful to watch because it's about the abject failure and corruption of Wall Street, but beyond that, it's about the failure of Our System and about how the People always are the essential losers.

We here at Consortiumnews have basically known these facts since Robert Parry's death, why?, because Robert was an extraordinary reporter who actually looked into the underlying dynamic of the subject he reported on. And, relying on his honesty, we were brought along on the Real story leading up to this.

Now, much like the movie I mentioned, we know we were right to trust CN, but there is little joy in watching the confirmation of a failed fourth estate and failed democratic experiment. Now we are left with the anxiety of how to repair this mess

Oh well, thanks Consortiumnews.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596363/

Alfred di Genis , July 12, 2019 at 04:18

What's needed to convince Americans that "Russia" did not interfere in the election and did not hack the DNC is not a judge but an exorcist.

AnneR , July 12, 2019 at 09:13

Truly. This profound belief based on DNC, HRC confabulated and paid for evidence is in so many ways, if not totally, akin to the belief in UFOs and little green men (why is it always "men"?). Yet the same people who are "Russia and Putin did it" frenetic are those who denounce as insane nutters those who believe in the existence of UFOs and those grass colored men

Realist , July 12, 2019 at 04:17

Maybe Mueller should ask Putin for asylum before he concedes the truth and implicates Brennan, Clapper, Hillary and Obama as masterminds of Intelgate. I don't think he's getting a pardon from Trump.

That Hillary was so clever in her design to fatally slur both the Donald and the "New Hitler" in Moscow with one big lie, while deftly knifing Bernie in the back as attentions were directed at the bigger fish. Not!

It should be interesting to see how this plays out, if the judiciary has the fortitude to stand up to the Den of Spooks.

Ray McGovern , July 12, 2019 at 11:33

Realist,

You have that right, as usual. "If the judiciary ." A very BIG "If." How many judges like Dabney Friedrich, I wonder, are still on the bench? We may be about to see.

Ray

[Jul 11, 2019] Is Epstein's arrest and indictment part of Barr's counter-offensive?

Notable quotes:
"... I'm curious when & how Epstein made his billions. No one that I know in the hedge fund world has ever heard of his trades!! Nor does it seem there is any reporting on that. ..."
"... Only reporting that I've seen is on his partner who was sentenced to 20 years for fraud. He skated then too. ..."
"... I think this may be Barr putting Mueller on notice in advance of congressional testimony, given that is very likely that Mueller is implicated in this whole Epstein affair. ..."
"... Utterly fascinating. Watching the US "nomenklatura" fight it out, gloves off. Us mere mortals never usually get to gawp on their goings on. ..."
"... ¿City on a hill? Caligula an Nero look good compared to that tribe. ..."
"... epsteins arrest had better be merely point of the lance or you can start the count down clock on our political dissolution. ..."
"... If, after interviewing Steele for sixteen hours, anyone professes to find him credible, then in my view they are either fools or knaves – if not both. ..."
"... The cover-up of the circumstances of the life and death of the late Alexander Litvinenko, which Steele was instrumental in orchestrating, is a matter I have discussed on and off here on SST. I now have a 'smoking gun' – it is clear there were honest detectives in Counter Terrorism Command, who got fed up with the lies he was mass producing (as is his wont). ..."
"... A very interesting question however arises as to how the Reuters report by Mark Hosenball which is the source of TTG's claim, originated, and what its implications are. ..."
"... Obviously, my hypotheses reflect my conviction that Steele is a form of pond life – the 'scum', rather than the 'dregs' of society – born in part out of experience with superannuated Cambridge and Oxford student politicians of his kind. ..."
"... As an outside observer, the only explanations that make sense about the absurd plea bargain agreement from 2007-2008 are that it was the result of either bribery, or an order that came down from someone above Alex Acosta in the heirarchy at the Department of Justice, and he followed orders. Or maybe both. ..."
"... Another observation is that Jeffrey Epstein has been and is a front man for an organization or organizations, that could be governmental, private, or both. ..."
"... In my opinion, there should be a RICO charge also against Epstein. ..."
"... From what I can gather, several high levels are getting real nervous, and rumblings that Epstein's time on this planet may be shortened because of it ..."
"... It appears that Epstein is a faux hedge fund manager. So, where does/did the money come from? Robert Willman suggested that the most interesting question about this creep is who or what he really represents. ..."
Jul 11, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

IMO AG Barr is conducting a general counter-offensive against "the resistance." He has his bulldog Durham organizing indictments for the former underground in DoJ and the FBI. He has DoJ IG Horowitz' report on malfeasance coming out soon. He has that fellow out in Utah who must have done something in all this elapsed time. He has various cats and dogs in DoJ running down a variety of blood trails looking for dead men walking.

And then there is Jeffrey Epstein (the man who loved childwomen). The timing is interesting as a part of the putative Barr counter-offensive. Is Trump vulnerable? Probably not unless he was so self-indulgent as to let Epstein ("a great guy") loan him one of these girls in days of yore. On the positive side Trump did ban Epstein from Mar a Lago a while back for an assault on a young woman. No. the vulnerables would seem to be mostly on the other side, especially the Clintons. Bill is a prospective figure of interest no matter what his spokesman said of his innocence and her majesty is toast if it can be shown that she was knowledgeable of adventures in Epsteinland. She doesn't have to have participated in the Epstein child care program. She merely has to have been contemporaneously knowledgeable.

Epstein flew back into the US aboard his private 727 (aka The Lolita Express). He must have thought he had the situation "wired." Apparently the AG did not accept the terms of the old Florida deal. IMO Barr is following his own program in this. Trump is merely a pleased spectator. pl

Jack , 09 July 2019 at 11:17 AM

Sir

What do you make of media reports of Bill Barr's father having hired Epstein as a school teacher? Why do you think they're going after him now considering his "protected" status and do you believe that they'll also go after the other high profile potential child rapists who took advantage of the Lolita Express?

https://www.lawandcrime.com/high-profile/william-barr-reveals-has-recused-himself-from-jeffrey-esptein-case-heres-the-reason-he-gave

Bill Wade -> Jack... , 09 July 2019 at 02:00 PM

Bloomberg today is reporting that AG Barr is not recusing himself from this case, rumors were yesterday that he was going to do that.

Interesting video if you have 30+ minutes to spare:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=Vc-uysS6Tlw

Jack -> Bill Wade... , 10 July 2019 at 03:02 PM

Yup. More than meets the eye here. I'm curious when & how Epstein made his billions. No one that I know in the hedge fund world has ever heard of his trades!! Nor does it seem there is any reporting on that.

Only reporting that I've seen is on his partner who was sentenced to 20 years for fraud. He skated then too.

rho -> Jack... , 10 July 2019 at 04:05 PM

Jack,

Zerohedge linked to the theory of some twitter user which sounds quite plausible to me:

https://twitter.com/quantian1/status/1148303672742469634

In short, Epstein's hedge fund may just have been a front to collect hush money (masked as "management fees", which for hedge funds are usually 2% of the total value of assets under management in any given year) from very rich people that he entrapped in his alleged underage women prostitution scheme.

PRC90 , 09 July 2019 at 12:07 PM

Timing is (just about) everything, including within the art of public swamp draining.

I'm not familiar with the pace of legal proceedings of this nature through the US Court system, however Trump will be in an advantageous position if Barr's processes are timed to result in convictions and penalties being handed out to various well known DNC and IC luminaries immediately before the 2020 election date.

The mistake would be to rely on any convictions of the 2016 players to discredit the DNC candidate of 2020. The Clintons, et al, are current era irrelevancies or indeed parodies, and they and proof of long gone conspiracies would be seen as separate issues to whatever the Democrat candidate, eg., Elizabeth Warren, can credibly promise for 2020-24.

Trump will still have to fight 2020, not re run 2016.

I think the answer to the above question is 'yes' within the context that ever action the WH takes from now on in, be it relating to Epsteins or Iranians, will be with the 2020 outcome as the prime determinant.

Barbara Ann -> PRC90... , 09 July 2019 at 02:44 PM

Timing is indeed everything. Russiagate set the precedent for lawfare to become a normal part of the political process and I'd fully expect Trump to maximize it to his own advantage in the run up to 2020.

Lolitagate may be targeting the Clintons and you are probably right that the Clintons need not drag down someone like Warren simply because of party association. However, I'd bet Barr can be relied upon to do plenty of damage to the Dems which will affect voters next year. It depends how high up the Russiagate blowback goes. I'd not expect any Dem candidate to beat Trump if the guts of the coup plot spill out in public, especially if St. Obama is implicated - that would be a dagger to the heart.

This is why I found it interesting to see the Strzok-Page texts info the Favored Fox News Channel had, referred to in Larry's last post. I'd expect more of the same building to a crescendo at the most opportune time. Trump is a ruthless SOB and I expect his revenge will be sweet.

Bill H , 09 July 2019 at 12:20 PM

This action is being brought by the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, which is/are also bring charges against Trump parallel to the federal charges which fizzled. It looks to me like that is another attempt to bring down an elected president. From Vox News:

"Trump, meanwhile, reportedly attended Epstein-hosted events in New York and Florida, as Epstein patronized the Mar-a-Lago Club. In 2002, Trump even gave a remarkable on-the-record comment about Epstein to a New York magazine journalist, calling him 'terrific' and adding that he 'likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.'"

And, "During the 2016 campaign, Trump was sued by an anonymous woman who claimed he raped her at an Epstein party when she was 13 years old."

I don't regard Vox as a reliable source, but am citing them here as representative of what the "story line" will be.

Johnb -> Bill H ... , 09 July 2019 at 09:19 PM

Yes my first and ongoing question is 'Who's being targeted' given that 2020 is underway. Given the Steele dossier is there any link to the leaking of the Ambassador cables just prior to this announcement. I'm way to far removed to comment further at this stage.

Fred -> Bill H ... , 10 July 2019 at 08:37 AM

Bill,

You are right about the storyline/narrative in the making. Christine Beasley Ford, the sequal. There are other reports out in the press that Trump had Epstein banned from Mar-a-Lago after his conduct there.

Sounds like Walrus' comments on a prior thread about the truly rich having their own folks investigate people before they get involved socially are accurate regarding Trump. He's be active in NYC, charity and entertainment circles for decades. I'm sure he's seen this kind of stuff destroy people many times.

Eric Newhill -> Fred ... , 10 July 2019 at 10:15 AM

Fred,

This article paints a little bit different picture. If the article is accurate, New York high society is apparently more degenerate than the movers and shakers that Walrus apparently knows.

"Why was Epstein so easily rehabilitated? He was smart. Attractive. Rich. And that is a potent combination. As David Patrick Columbia, editor of New York Social Diary, explained it for the Times: "A jail sentence doesn't matter anymore. The only thing that gets you shunned in New York society is poverty."

https://www.salon.com/2019/07/09/i-was-a-friend-of-jeffrey-epstein-heres-what-i-know/

Eric Newhill -> Fred ... , 10 July 2019 at 05:15 PM

Fred,

Yeah. I guess so. I misread what Walrus wrote. It seemed he was disagreeing with me because of how he wrote it and because he bothered to write it at all, yet we were saying the same thing.

The high flying people on Epstein's guest registry knew who they were associating with and chose to go ahead anyhow.

Eric Newhill -> Fred ... , 10 July 2019 at 03:50 PM

Fred,

I think you're missing the point - which is that Epstein was connected to many wealthy movers and shakers in New York society and, indeed, globally.

Walrus says that the movers and shakers he knows would never be so stupid and crass as to associate with the likes of Epstein. I'll take Walrus at his word, but, apparently, he doesn't know the subset of movers and shakers that do associate with the likes of Epstein, to include people that would have access to info such that they would understand Epstein's reputation and predilections. In fact, the article suggests that NY society knew and didn't care, which is contrary to what Walrus asserts.

I don't normally read Salon because it is typically globalist garbage. As I read the article I linked to, it's not a hit on Trump. Rather it is a hit on all of NY high society. They readily accepted Epstein back into their fold after his conviction in Florida. They knew who he was prior to the conviction as well.

Bottom line, NY society as well as global players, that should know better, did not exercise discretion in their association with Epstein. Walrus think that is inconceivable, but there it is and we will learn more names from the upper echelons who were involved in the weeks and months to come.

casey , 09 July 2019 at 12:31 PM

I wonder whether domestic Israeli politics is also involved here, too, in the form of Barak being fingered, so to speak, for his Epstein connections, via Wexner, in order to smear him as election time approaches.

eakens , 09 July 2019 at 12:34 PM

I think this may be Barr putting Mueller on notice in advance of congressional testimony, given that is very likely that Mueller is implicated in this whole Epstein affair.

I also think Les Wexner needs to be stripped of his fortune. I believe he was in cahoots with Epstein in this entrapment operation that was run.

Harry , 09 July 2019 at 12:55 PM

Utterly fascinating. Watching the US "nomenklatura" fight it out, gloves off. Us mere mortals never usually get to gawp on their goings on.

R , 09 July 2019 at 01:24 PM

The argument for Barr's counteroffensive is strengthened by his recusal reversal. Doubt still remains though as to what is really going on.

If the court filings at the below are accurate--graphic reading in some instances--POTUS was enmeshed in the Epstein-Maxwell op:

https://thememoryhole2.org/blog/doe-v-trump

Paco , 09 July 2019 at 01:46 PM

¿City on a hill? Caligula an Nero look good compared to that tribe.

ambrit (ex Britam) , 09 July 2019 at 03:24 PM

Sir;
Which "...her majesty..." do you refer to? There is HRH HRC, ie. Hillary, the Dowager of the White House and there is Elizabeth Rex, the real Queen of England. Both are associated with potential 'co-defendants' of Epstein.

As to the relevance of the Clintons in this election cycle, well, the Clinton Foundation still wields considerable power in internal Democrat Party affairs. Any real damage done to Bill Clinton will be a body blow to the now old guard Democrat 'Nomenklatura.'

It will be interesting to see how fast and how vehement the 'denunciations,' or lack thereof, of Bill Clinton will be. The Democrat insiders might spin this one as a 'litmus test' of Party loyalty.
The organized sexual exploitation of children has absolutely no excuse. Epstein has skated away on thin ice concerning this so far. His 'plea deal' from earlier was an abomination. It included a blanket immunity for anyone who aided and abetted him in the the sexual exploitation of these girls.

I don't care what Barr's motivations are. Here's to his continuing success in the vital democratic process of showing Justice to be carried out.

Lars , 09 July 2019 at 03:26 PM

All the conspiracies withstanding, the Miami Herald was going public with the details and thus forcing the prosecutors to act. There seems to be a "public corruption" angle to this, which will also be revealed in the future.

It would appear that Epstein has deserved all the attention.

Mark Logan , 09 July 2019 at 04:35 PM

If it is an offensive they've thrown one of their own under the bus to conduct it.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/452202-trump-defends-acosta-amid-epstein-scrutiny

Acosta appears to be first up for the whipping post. Even if he blames it on someone else what will be on his resume afterwards would likely prove disqualifying at a Hong Kong rubber dog-poop factory.

turcopolier , 09 July 2019 at 04:47 PM

Acosta is a nobody. He fits nicely under the bus. How much do you think he made on the plea bargain?

Patrick Armstrong , 09 July 2019 at 07:25 PM

Hah Hah! If you guys hadn't revolted against your Lawful King 200+whatnot years ago, your only concerns today would be about socks.
https://footwearnews.com/2018/fashion/celebrity-style/justin-trudeau-sock-sales-impact-stance-halal-517799/

ted richard , 09 July 2019 at 07:27 PM

there is a larger issue going on.

for a not insignificant percentage of Americans the fairness and integrity of the us justice system is now viewed with deep skepticism all the way to out right contempt.

if this nation has any chance of surviving intact and in a manner that engenders respect and belief we have arrived at that moment when heads must roll for all the vile things done and never punished by so called untouchables (political, financial, popular celebrity).

epsteins arrest had better be merely point of the lance or you can start the count down clock on our political dissolution.

Bill Wade -> ted richard... , 10 July 2019 at 10:01 AM

I couldn't agree more, with the presiding judge being a Clinton appointee and one of the prosecutors being Comey's daughter, it's the US Justice Department on trial as much as it is Epstein.

The Twisted Genius , 09 July 2019 at 10:47 PM

I think AG Barr will be looking for ways to quash the Epstein affair. That's why he refused to recuse. Trump has more exposure to this than you think. Trump was already accused of sexual assault of a young girl in the company of Epstein a while back. The girl dropped her complaint out of fear. Perhaps we'll hear from her again now the SDNY is on the case or her photo is contained in the files seized from Epstein's mansion. Trump was also seen frequenting Epstein's NY house by witnesses. I doubt it was for poetry readings. In addition to infamously singing Epstein's praises back in 2002, Trump also admitted during an on air interview with Howard Stern that he was a sexual predator.

I am surprised Trump didn't throw Acosta under the bus already. To the contrary, he's standing by him and claiming Acosta's a great guy. At least he's now claiming he's no longer a fan of Epstein. I'm sure he prudently dropped Epstein like a hot potato once he was first indicted. I'm waiting for Trump to deny ever meeting him or claiming he was just a coffee boy any day now.

On another front, Trump's allies are not happy with the DOJIG interview with Steele. After 16 hours of questioning, the IG investigators found Steele's testimony credible and even surprising. The IG probed Steele's extensive work on Russian interference efforts outside his dossier, his intelligence-collection methods and his findings about Carter Page and came away believing him.

Fred -> The Twisted Genius ... , 10 July 2019 at 10:59 AM

TTG,

"The girl dropped her complaint out of fear."
So the example of Hilary running for office didn't giver her the courage to come forward;
the "grab 'm by the p****y" scandal didn't giver her the courage to come forward;
the pink hats at inauguration didn't giver her the courage to come forward;
the example of Christine Beasley Ford didn't give her the courage to come forward;
the example of Stormy Daniels didn't give her the courage to come forward; but hey, SDNY is on the case! - of just this one girl, not the others that were not of concern to kindly grandmother and FIFA scandal investigator Loretta Lynch or her Fast and Furious predecessor. Or their boss; or his predecessor. Thank goodness for prosecutors from the Empire State!

There is definitely a new sheriff in town, not at all like that Sheriff of Wall Street, Eliot Spitzer.

I wonder if Epstein has a photo of him from back in his good Democrat days?

"After 16 hours of questioning, the IG investigators found Steele's testimony credible and even surprising. "

I believe Ms. Ford was touted as credible too. Has all that testimony leaked out already?

David Habakkuk -> Fred ... , 10 July 2019 at 12:53 PM

Fred,

If, after interviewing Steele for sixteen hours, anyone professes to find him credible, then in my view they are either fools or knaves – if not both.

Having once been involved – successfully I hasten to add – in a protracted libel case in relation to a programme I made, I can easily see many lines of questioning to which he could quite clearly not have provided a satisfactory answer.

The cover-up of the circumstances of the life and death of the late Alexander Litvinenko, which Steele was instrumental in orchestrating, is a matter I have discussed on and off here on SST. I now have a 'smoking gun' – it is clear there were honest detectives in Counter Terrorism Command, who got fed up with the lies he was mass producing (as is his wont).

The maps they produced purporting to show Litvinenko's movements on the day Steele claimed he was poisoned were craftily constructed, so as to pretend to support the cover-up, while actually blowing it apart. It was done very ingeniously, with a sense of humour. More on this, I hope, shortly.

A very interesting question however arises as to how the Reuters report by Mark Hosenball which is the source of TTG's claim, originated, and what its implications are.

(See https://www.businessinsider.com/christophersteele-trump-dossier-author-questioned-by-justice-dept-2019-7?r=US&IR=T .)

According to the report:

'One of the two sources said Horowitz's investigators appear to have found Steele's information sufficiently credible to have to extend the investigation. Its completion date is now unclear.'

In fact, however one interpreted Steele's claims, it would be extremely likely that what he said would have provided good grounds to 'extend the investigation.'

All kinds of interpretations are, rather obviously, possible.

It could turn out that Horowitz is part of what is by now quite clearly a conspiracy to subvert the constitutional order in the United States. How people can continue to defend this, without calling in to question their ability to understand what a 'constitutional republic' means, has come rather to defeat me.

But then, Horowitz could be playing different sides. It might be convenient to disseminate a story which was partly disinformation, in order to gain time to pursue investigations undisturbed. Or, people concerned to put a 'gloss' or 'spin' favourable to Steele might have been those who leaked to the media.

Obviously, my hypotheses reflect my conviction that Steele is a form of pond life – the 'scum', rather than the 'dregs' of society – born in part out of experience with superannuated Cambridge and Oxford student politicians of his kind.

There may be other interpretations, for which a serious case can be made, more favourable to him.

But to take the Hosenball report at face value is really not sensible.

robt willmann , 09 July 2019 at 10:52 PM

The timing of the arrest of Epstein is indeed fascinating. The indictment which was of course unsealed yesterday, 8 July, shows a filing date of 2 July 2019, which was last week Tuesday.

The search warrant on his residence was executed shortly after he was arrested on 6 July. That search warrant had to be supported by an affidavit containing recent information showing that evidence relating to a particular crime should be found there. An affidavit cannot have "stale" or out-of-date information in it; if it does, the warrant is no good and the evidence gathered can be excluded from a trial. So, the search warrant affidavit should be interesting in itself.

As an outside observer, the only explanations that make sense about the absurd plea bargain agreement from 2007-2008 are that it was the result of either bribery, or an order that came down from someone above Alex Acosta in the heirarchy at the Department of Justice, and he followed orders. Or maybe both. The excuse that the federal Justice Department cowed down just because there were some experienced lawyers representing the defendant is not credible.

Another observation is that Jeffrey Epstein has been and is a front man for an organization or organizations, that could be governmental, private, or both.

Morongobill , 10 July 2019 at 10:22 AM

In my opinion, there should be a RICO charge also against Epstein. I'd like to see him get out of prison one day and take an Uber to his singlewide mobile mansion.

J , 10 July 2019 at 11:04 AM

Colonel, TTG,

From what I can gather, several high levels are getting real nervous, and rumblings that Epstein's time on this planet may be shortened because of it.

Nothing more dangerous than scared/nervous power players who have the real deal ability to reach out and touch someone. There are quite a few connect-the-dots to world and state power players that stretch around the globe.

What I find interesting on a side note is Mueller's past association with Epstein.

J

turcopolier , 10 July 2019 at 11:20 AM

All

It appears that Epstein is a faux hedge fund manager. So, where does/did the money come from? Robert Willman suggested that the most interesting question about this creep is who or what he really represents.

R said in reply to turcopolier ... , 10 July 2019 at 02:51 PM

Les Wexner for one; the E 71st street residence in NY is the tip of the iceberg: Wexner purchased the house in the 1980s and it was owned by an Epstein-Wexner joint trust until 2011 when ownership was transferred to Maple Inc, a US Virgin Islands company controlled by Epstein.

JimmyW -> turcopolier ... , 10 July 2019 at 02:54 PM

Sir,

Other people are asking which agency Epstein represents, too.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-10/bombshell-alex-acosta-reportedly-claimed-jeffrey-epstein-belonged-intelligence

Jack -> turcopolier ... , 10 July 2019 at 03:16 PM

Sir

I'm most curious about the question you pose. I know many people in the NYC hedge fund world and no one has heard of any winning trades by him, let alone any trading activity. There's more than meets the eye related to the question of his "wealth:.

The Twisted Genius -> turcopolier ... , 10 July 2019 at 03:29 PM

Epstein was originally funded by Deutsche Bank. I have no idea how much it was and if it was just a one time deal. DB definitely has a shady side. When I was retiring, a couple of friends and I were negotiating for a cybersecurity contract with them. My primary contribution was to assess the people we were dealing with. I told my buddies we should run. I got the feeling we could be left holding the bag if anything went sideways. We never regretted my assessment and recommendation.

turcopolier , 10 July 2019 at 03:11 PM

JimmyW

It doesn't have to be a US government agency. Bill's close association with this t--d raises questions in light of his Marc Rich pardon caper.

Eric Newhill -> turcopolier ... , 10 July 2019 at 04:08 PM

Sir,
Would a foreign govt really utilize someone with Epstein's life style to handle their money?

The guy doesn't exactly fly under the radar. It was only a matter of time before he was busted. Seems highly irresponsible and stupid of whichever government(s).

turcopolier , 10 July 2019 at 03:17 PM

Jack

I suspect that he is an asset of some foreign government and handled their money as Rich did.

Jack -> turcopolier ... , 10 July 2019 at 07:36 PM

Sir

I believe you are on to something. At least Marc Rich was an oil trader. With Epstein there doesn't seem to be any information on his trading activity. Would a foreign government or intelligence agency keep a depraved loose cannon as an asset? I suppose his role was not money management but blackmail or something more nefarious. Could this foreign government be our "staunchest ally" in the ME?

Flavius , 10 July 2019 at 03:32 PM

We haven't seen anything yet of which I'm aware to allow for a determination of what led to Epstein's serial abuses getting revisited. I very much doubt that it was a political appointee new to the system who came into the job while harboring a determination to right a wrong if given the chance. I think it more likely that it's a bottom up initiative, a witness having developed as a result of having gotten jammed up in another case and offering up a bigger fish, a newspaper story, new victims coming to light as a result of civil process, the review process prior to releasing the disclosure materials triggering outrage, something along these orders. Whatever it was, once the case was underway, in the era of #MeToo and with new political appointees in place, there would be no stopping it.
It will be interesting to see who will be the ultimate targets. It was a travesty that in the original case Epstein was the only person charged, unless I missed something. It's obvious that there had been a facilitating organization that he was running and boatloads of cash coming and going. No curiosity about that?
The prediction here is that Epstein will offer to cooperate sooner rather than later. It would not surprise me at all if hasn't already been given the opportunity and wanted to wait to see what cards the government was holding, try to figure out who from his old team had turned and were witnesses against him.
A big question now is that if and when he does cooperate, what kind of corroborative materials he would be able to bring along with him to bolster the victim testimony which will be recollections of abuse from women when they were adolescents that happened quite a while ago.
The indictment forecloses on any opportunity to use Epstein actively; and what kind of deal do you offer to this guy anyway who right now appears to be the principal malefactor in order to get to others, culpable users of his scheme surely, but not integral to his organization per se, largely because they are newsworthy figures of one sort or another. Not an easy call, but I would argue Epstein should take a major hit even if it means risking not getting his cooperation.

ted richard , 10 July 2019 at 03:40 PM

if you ask around the trading desk in nyc epstein and his org is unknown. how is it a billionaire finance guy is unknown on the trading desks?

answer:

because his fortune did not come from trading or investment or anything typically understood to be finance related.

perhaps epstein and his sexual predilections was a way for....say... the mossad........ to aggregate wealthy powerful and political figures into revealing the stuff needed to control them in the future as favors are needed.

whats is a service like that IF epstein was indeed just a pimp for the deviant.........worth?

how many billions to have a file on a who's who of international power would you pay?

Eric Newhill -> ted richard... , 10 July 2019 at 04:17 PM

Nobody knows what Epstein is really worth. The $billions figure comes from a single source; a stipulation in his original trial. He would say what his worth was and the prosecutors asked "$billions?" and E's lawyers said "sure". That's it.

He manages money held in off-shore accounts. Forbes thinks he has a fraction of that.

The guy is a sleazy con artist. He's probably happy to have people think he has way more than he does for various reasons.

Outrage Beyond , 10 July 2019 at 06:47 PM

Pollard was an amateur. Is Epstein the professional?

Some will recall the name "mega" surfacing during and after the Pollard contretemps. An as-yet unidentified Israeli spy operating at a high level.

Now consider the following quote:

"Epstein, who recently loaned his jet to President Clinton, is usually seen in the company of Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of deceased publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell. After Maxwell fell or was pushed off his yacht in 1991, it was revealed that he was working for the Israeli government and the Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence service. While Maxwell's ties to the Mossad are well-documented, Epstein's connections are less well known. The London Sunday Times quoted a New York social observer describing Epstein as follows: "He's Mr. Enigmatic. Nobody knows whether he's a concert pianist, property developer, a CIA agent, a math teacher or a member of Mossad." New York Magazine claims Epstein is the man who moves Wexner's billions around the globe.

Wexner's philanthropic side is more public. In 1998, the Wall Street Journal reported that Wexner was part of the "'Mega Group,' a loosely organized club of 20 of the nation's wealthiest and most influential Jewish businessmen." The Mega Group meets purportedly to discuss "philanthropy," but others have speculated that their charitable interests are often a cover for lobbying activities on behalf of Israel."

Source: https://freepress.org/article/wexner-war

This could be entirely coincidental. Or is Epstein (or Wexner) mega? It sure looks like his operation was all about getting kompromat for Mossad. Whether that comes out with any veracity remains to be seen.

[Jul 10, 2019] RAY MCGOVERN

Notable quotes:
"... As Congress arrives back into town and the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees prepare to question ex-Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on July 17, partisan lines are being drawn even more sharply, as Russias-gate blossoms into Deep-State-gate. On Sunday, a top Republican legislator, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) took the gloves off in an unusually acerbic public attack on former leaders of the FBI and CIA. ..."
"... "The media went along with this – actually, keeping this farcical, ridiculous thought going that the President of the United States was somehow involved in a conspiracy with Russia against his own country." ..."
"... Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. No fan of the current President, Ray has been trained to follow and analyze the facts, wherever they may lead. He spent 27 years as a CIA analyst, and prepared the President's Daily Brief for three presidents. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). ..."
"... Mr. McGovern you are right in your analysis. Obama is in this up to his neck, however there will be a limited investigation at best because the Jews and Israel don't want this. They are involved and a real investigation would show what control they have over the FBI and CIA. ..."
"... The world is controlled by the Corporate Fascist Military-Intelligence Police State in which governments are nothing more than Proxies with Intelligence Agencies who work against the average citizen and for the Corporations. Politicians like Trump are nothing more than figureheads who must "Toe the Line" or else. ..."
Jul 10, 2019 | www.unz.com

JULY 8, 2019 1,500 WORDS 2 COMMENTS REPLY

As Congress arrives back into town and the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees prepare to question ex-Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on July 17, partisan lines are being drawn even more sharply, as Russias-gate blossoms into Deep-State-gate. On Sunday, a top Republican legislator, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) took the gloves off in an unusually acerbic public attack on former leaders of the FBI and CIA.

King told a radio audience:

"There is no doubt to me there was severe, serious abuses that were carried out in the FBI and, I believe, top levels of the CIA against the President of the United States or, at that time, presidential candidate Donald Trump," according to The Hill.

King (image on the right), a senior congressman specializing in national security, twice chaired the House Homeland Security Committee and currently heads its Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. He also served for several years on the House Intelligence Committee.

He asserted:

"There was no legal basis at all for them to begin this investigation of his campaign – and the way they carried it forward, and the way information was leaked. All of this is going to come out. It's going to show the bias. It's going to show the baselessness of the investigation and I would say the same thing if this were done to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders It's just wrong."

The Long Island Republican added a well aimed swipe at what passes for the media today:

"The media went along with this – actually, keeping this farcical, ridiculous thought going that the President of the United States was somehow involved in a conspiracy with Russia against his own country."

According to King, the Justice Department's review, ordered by Attorney General William Barr , would prove that former officials acted improperly. He was alluding to the investigation led by John Durham , U.S. Attorney in Connecticut. Sounds nice. But waiting for Durham to complete his investigation at a typically lawyerly pace would, I fear, be much like the experience of waiting for Mueller to finish his; that is, like waiting for Godot. What about now?

So Where is the IG Report on FISA?

That's the big one. If Horowitz is able to speak freely about what he has learned, his report could lead to indictments of former CIA Director John Brennan , former FBI Director James Comey , former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe , former Deputy Attorneys General Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein , and Dana Boente -- Boente being the only signer of the relevant FISA applications still in office. (No, he has not been demoted to file clerk in the FBI library; at last report, he is FBI General Counsel!).

The DOJ inspector General's investigation, launched in March 2018, has centered on whether the FBI and DOJ filing of four FISA applications and renewals beginning in October 2016 to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page amounted to abuse of the FISA process. (Fortunately for the IG, Obama's top intelligence and law enforcement officials were so sure that Hillary Clinton would win that they did not do much to hide their tracks.)

The Washington Examiner reported last Tuesday, "The Justice Department inspector general's investigation of potential abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is complete, a Republican congressman said, though a report on its findings might not be released for a month." The report continued:

"House Judiciary Committee member John Ratcliffe (R, Texas) said Monday he'd met with DOJ watchdog Michael Horowitz last week about his FISA abuse report. In a media interview, Ratcliffe said they'd discussed the timing, but not the content of his report and Horowitz 'related that his team's investigative work is complete and they're now in the process of drafting that report. Ratcliffe said he was doubtful that Horowitz's report would be made available to the public or the Congress anytime soon. 'He [Horowitz] did relay that as much as 20% of his report is going to include classified information, so that draft report will have to undergo a classification review at the FBI and at the Department of Justice,' Ratcliffe said. 'So, while I'm hopeful that we members of Congress might see it before the August recess, I'm not too certain about that.'"

Earlier, Horowitz had predicted that his report would be ready in May or June but there may, in fact, be good reason for some delay. Fox News reported Friday that "key witnesses sought for questioning by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz (image on the left) early in his investigation into alleged government surveillance abuse have come forward at the 11th hour." According to Fox's sources, at least one witness outside the Justice Department and FBI has started cooperating -- a breakthrough that came after Durham was assigned to lead a separate investigation into the origins of the FBI's 2016 Russia case that led to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe.

"Classification," however, has been one of the Deep State's favorite tactics to stymie investigations -- especially when the material in question yields serious embarrassment or reveals crimes. And the stakes this time are huge.

Judging by past precedent, Deep State intelligence and law enforcement officials will do all they can to use the "but-it's-classified" excuse to avoid putting themselves and their former colleagues in legal jeopardy. (Though this would violate Obama's executive order 13526 , prohibiting classification of embarrassing or criminal information).

It is far from clear that DOJ IG Horowitz and Attorney General Barr will prevail in the end, even though President Trump has given Barr nominal authority to declassify as necessary. Why are the the stakes so extraordinarily high?

What Did Obama Know, and When Did He Know It?

Recall that in a Sept. 2, 2016 text message to the FBI's then-deputy chief of counterintelligence Peter Strzok, his girlfriend and then-top legal adviser to Deputy FBI Director McCabe, Lisa Page , wrote that she was preparing talking points because the president "wants to know everything we're doing." [Emphasis added.] It does not seem likely that the Director of National Intelligence, DOJ, FBI, and CIA all kept President Obama in the dark about their FISA and other machinations -- although it is possible they did so out of a desire to provide him with "plausible denial."

It seems more likely that Obama's closest intelligence confidant, Brennan, told him about the shenanigans with FISA, that Obama gave him approval (perhaps just tacit approval), and that Brennan used that to harness top intelligence and law enforcement officials behind the effort to defeat Trump and, later, to emasculate and, if possible, remove him.

Moreover, one should not rule out seeing in the coming months an "Obama-made-us-do-it" defense -- whether grounded in fact or not -- by Brennan and perhaps the rest of the gang. Brennan may even have a piece of paper recording the President's "approval" for this or that -- or could readily have his former subordinates prepare one that appears authentic.

Reining in Devin Nunes

That the Deep State retains formidable power can be seen in the repeated Lucy-holding-then-withdrawing-the-football-for-Charlie Brown treatment experienced by House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member, Devin Nunes (R-CA, image on the right). On April 5, 2019, in the apparent belief he had a green light to go on the offensive, Nunes wrote that committee Republicans "will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous individuals involved in the abuse of intelligence for political purposes. These people must be held to account to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future."

On April 7, Nunes was even more specific, telling Fox News that he was preparing to send eight criminal referrals to the Department of Justice "this week," concerning alleged misconduct during the Trump-Russia investigation, including leaks of "highly classified material" and conspiracies to lie to Congress and the FISA court. It seemed to be no-holds-barred for Nunes, who had begun to talk publicly about prison time for those who might be brought to trial.

Except for Fox, the corporate media ignored Nunes's explosive comments. The media seemed smugly convinced that Nunes's talk of "referrals" could be safely ignored -- even though a new sheriff, Barr, had come to town. And sure enough, now, three months later, where are the criminal referrals?

There is ample evidence that President Trump is afraid to run afoul of the Deep State functionaries he inherited. And the Deep State almost always wins. But if Attorney General Barr leans hard on the president to unfetter Nunes, IG Horowitz, Durham and like-minded investigators, all hell may break lose, because the evidence against those who took serious liberties with the law is staring them all in the face.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. No fan of the current President, Ray has been trained to follow and analyze the facts, wherever they may lead. He spent 27 years as a CIA analyst, and prepared the President's Daily Brief for three presidents. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

niteranger , says: July 9, 2019 at 11:30 pm GMT

Mr. McGovern you are right in your analysis. Obama is in this up to his neck, however there will be a limited investigation at best because the Jews and Israel don't want this. They are involved and a real investigation would show what control they have over the FBI and CIA.

Trump by now realizes these agencies can make anything up and the Jewish owned and controlled media will do their bidding. I have to assume that Trump has come to the conclusion that he wasn't suppose to win and that the NWO wasn't happy with that because he stands in their way especially on World Trade and Immigration.

The world is controlled by the Corporate Fascist Military-Intelligence Police State in which governments are nothing more than Proxies with Intelligence Agencies who work against the average citizen and for the Corporations. Politicians like Trump are nothing more than figureheads who must "Toe the Line" or else.

I believe Trump knows he could be assassinated at any time. Obama the "God King" did his part for NWO and that's why he gets a King's Ransom for his speeches for reading a teleprompter and banging on his chest and saying, "I did that." What he is really saying is I did that for you -- now where's my check!

Fran Macadam , says: July 10, 2019 at 12:24 am GMT

When they frog-marched you out of that Clinton event, Ray, they had no idea what they were unleashing.

[Jul 09, 2019] Ex-FBI, CIA Officials Draw Withering Fire on Russiagate by Ray McGovern

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "Classification," however, has been one of the Deep State's favorite tactics to stymie investigations -- especially when the material in question yields serious embarrassment or reveals crimes. And the stakes this time are huge. ..."
"... Judging by past precedent, Deep State intelligence and law enforcement officials will do all they can to use the "but-it's-classified" excuse to avoid putting themselves and their former colleagues in legal jeopardy. (Though this would violate Obama's executive order 13526 , prohibiting classification of embarrassing or criminal information). ..."
"... Recall that in a Sept. 2, 2016 text message to the FBI's then-deputy chief of counterintelligence Peter Strzok, his girlfriend and then-top legal adviser to Deputy FBI Director McCabe, Lisa Page, wrote that she was preparing talking points because the president "wants to know everything we're doing." [Emphasis added.] It does not seem likely that the Director of National Intelligence, DOJ, FBI, and CIA all kept President Obama in the dark about their FISA and other machinations -- although it is possible they did so out of a desire to provide him with "plausible denial." ..."
"... It seems more likely that Obama's closest intelligence confidant, Brennan, told him about the shenanigans with FISA, that Obama gave him approval (perhaps just tacit approval), and that Brennan used that to harness top intelligence and law enforcement officials behind the effort to defeat Trump and, later, to emasculate and, if possible, remove him. ..."
"... "That's the big one. If Horowitz is able to speak freely about what he has learned, his report could lead to indictments of former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorneys General Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein, and Dana Boente -- Boente being the only signer of the relevant FISA applications still in office. (No, he has not been demoted to file clerk in the FBI library; at last report, he is FBI General Counsel!)." ..."
"... It will be a very interesting 2020 campaign if the Democratic candidate has to run with the ripe stinking dead albatross of Russiagate around her neck. ..."
"... The only outcome that could be more bizarre than the last go-round would be to see Trump favored by all the smart money and then lose to the latest corporate Democrat to shamelessly sell out the middle class in broad daylight. ..."
"... The Grabber in Chief vs Willie Brown's mistress – wonderful. ..."
"... Forgive my cynicism but the US government is so corrupt, has wielded illegitimate power for so long, and has covered the tracks of countless functionaries who have not upheld the constitution that I doubt this will go anywhere. I have been quoting Ben Franklin for some time "you have a republic, if you can keep it." I don't think we can. A reading of "A History of Venice" by John J. Norris would be appropriate here. The most serene republic lasted for essentially 1,000 years from roughly 800 to not quite 1800, first as a democracy, later as an oligarchy. Much like us, including having the most feared secret service in Europe at the time, Venice kept its power through trade but at least we don't hoist the new president up on a chair so that he can throw golden Ducats to the crowd on Wall Street the way that a new Doge would. ..."
"... I don't suppose anything will happen to anybody important about this. After all, nothing happened to anybody when they were caught mass spying on any and all american citizens, even before they made it legal. ..."
"... Unfortunately Webb and Parry exposed much of these gangster criminal "intel" savages for running guns and drugs to Central American pseudo fascist mercenary sadists throughout much of the late 1970s through the '80s. I say unfortunately b/c nothing much ever came along by way of true justice, by way of the criminal players rotting in maximum security jail cells for years on end, not unlike the crack or heroin addict who steals a $400 television. ..."
"... This has been one long crime against the American people. King should read what he knows into the Congressional Record. I have no sympathy for Trump's fear of the deep state. He has sent people to die knowing full well that his actions were based on lies, lies that would result in the deaths of civilians as well as our own military. If he is going to do that, then he should have the courage to face the deep state. That's partial penance for all the deaths he has caused. ..."
"... I also don't care about Trump's personal issue about being surveilled. He personally supports that against everyone else. That is why I feel this is a crime against our people as a whole. Our constitution has been stripped bare. We don't have the rule of law. Mass surveillance covering the globe is current reality. It is dangerous. It is wrong. It is lawless. It is a disaster. ..."
"... Further, Russiagate was used to keep real opposition away from Trump. His supporters doubled down on "liking" Trump because he appeared to be a victim of these lies. Democrats meanwhile learned to further worship the IC. They ignored Trump's actual unlawful behavior, and, in the case of war crimes, still support Trump on every war/regime change action etc. recommended to them by their IC "resistance" "leaders". ..."
"... This has been one of the most effective propaganda tools I have ever seen against our populace. It has created a divided, unthinking populace who is ripe for the picking by evil men and women. I am truly hoping that once this is exposed people will stop this madness and pull together for a common good. But I'm quite worried that, like most cults, when the leader is shown to be wrong, people cling to them even more. ..."
"... there have always been nefarious agents in one government or another for one gangster interest or another, whether was Milner's roundtable or Dulles's Gladio werewolves, these are nefarious individuals there is no gray area in that, however they may conduct themselves and their personal lives, it is not sloppy journalism, is to call something what it is, a this shadow government working in many instances against the direct interest of the American people ..."
"... It's the propaganda, the United States is one of the most heavily propagandize societies in the world, we make the Soviets look like children. No one wants you to have sympathy for Donald Trump, you do not have to agree or like a person to see that the cartel seeking to damage him is also simultaneously against your interests and they are against your interests whether you're from the left or the right because they do not have an ideology just it will to power. ..."
"... So reminiscent of the darker days of the Cold War. A stark education has just played out to this point. ..."
Jul 08, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

The Deep State almost always wins. But if Attorney General Barr leans hard on Trump to unfetter investigators, all hell may break lose, says Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern
 Special to Consortium News

A s Congress arrives back into town and the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees prepare to question ex-Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller on July 17, partisan lines are being drawn even more sharply, as Russias-gate blossoms into Deep-State-gate. On Sunday, a top Republican legislator, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) took the gloves off in an unusually acerbic public attack on former leaders of the FBI and CIA.

King told a radio audience: "There is no doubt to me there was severe, serious abuses that were carried out in the FBI and, I believe, top levels of the CIA against the President of the United States or, at that time, presidential candidate Donald Trump," according to The Hill.

King, a senior congressman specializing in national security, twice chaired the House Homeland Security Committee and currently heads its Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. He also served for several years on the House Intelligence Committee.

He asserted:

"There was no legal basis at all for them to begin this investigation of his campaign – and the way they carried it forward, and the way information was leaked. All of this is going to come out. It's going to show the bias. It's going to show the baselessness of the investigation and I would say the same thing if this were done to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders It's just wrong."

The Long Island Republican added a well aimed swipe at what passes for the media today: "The media went along with this – actually, keeping this farcical, ridiculous thought going that the President of the United States was somehow involved in a conspiracy with Russia against his own country."

King: Lashes out.

According to King, the Justice Department's review, ordered by Attorney General William Barr, would prove that former officials acted improperly. He was alluding to the investigation led by John Durham, U.S. Attorney in Connecticut. Sounds nice. But waiting for Durham to complete his investigation at a typically lawyerly pace would, I fear, be much like the experience of waiting for Mueller to finish his; that is, like waiting for Godot. What about now?

So Where is the IG Report on FISA?

That's the big one. If Horowitz is able to speak freely about what he has learned, his report could lead to indictments of former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorneys General Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein, and Dana Boente -- Boente being the only signer of the relevant FISA applications still in office. (No, he has not been demoted to file clerk in the FBI library; at last report, he is FBI General Counsel!).

The DOJ inspector General's investigation, launched in March 2018, has centered on whether the FBI and DOJ filing of four FISA applications and renewals beginning in October 2016 to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page amounted to abuse of the FISA process. (Fortunately for the IG, Obama's top intelligence and law enforcement officials were so sure that Hillary Clinton would win that they did not do much to hide their tracks.)

The Washington Examiner reported last Tuesday, "The Justice Department inspector general's investigation of potential abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is complete, a Republican congressman said, though a report on its findings might not be released for a month." The report continued:

"House Judiciary Committee member John Ratcliffe (R, Texas) said Monday he'd met with DOJ watchdog Michael Horowitz last week about his FISA abuse report. In a media interview, Ratcliffe said they'd discussed the timing, but not the content of his report and Horowitz 'related that his team's investigative work is complete and they're now in the process of drafting that report. Ratcliffe said he was doubtful that Horowitz's report would be made available to the public or the Congress anytime soon. 'He [Horowitz] did relay that as much as 20% of his report is going to include classified information, so that draft report will have to undergo a classification review at the FBI and at the Department of Justice,' Ratcliffe said. 'So, while I'm hopeful that we members of Congress might see it before the August recess, I'm not too certain about that.'"

Horowitz: Still waiting for his report

Earlier, Horowitz had predicted that his report would be ready in May or June but there may, in fact, be good reason for some delay. Fox News reported Friday that "key witnesses sought for questioning by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz early in his investigation into alleged government surveillance abuse have come forward at the 11th hour." According to Fox's sources, at least one witness outside the Justice Department and FBI has started cooperating -- a breakthrough that came after Durham was assigned to lead a separate investigation into the origins of the FBI's 2016 Russia case that led to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe.

"Classification," however, has been one of the Deep State's favorite tactics to stymie investigations -- especially when the material in question yields serious embarrassment or reveals crimes. And the stakes this time are huge.

Judging by past precedent, Deep State intelligence and law enforcement officials will do all they can to use the "but-it's-classified" excuse to avoid putting themselves and their former colleagues in legal jeopardy. (Though this would violate Obama's executive order 13526 , prohibiting classification of embarrassing or criminal information).

It is far from clear that DOJ IG Horowitz and Attorney General Barr will prevail in the end, even though President Trump has given Barr nominal authority to declassify as necessary. Why are the the stakes so extraordinarily high?

What Did Obama Know, and When Did He Know It?

Recall that in a Sept. 2, 2016 text message to the FBI's then-deputy chief of counterintelligence Peter Strzok, his girlfriend and then-top legal adviser to Deputy FBI Director McCabe, Lisa Page, wrote that she was preparing talking points because the president "wants to know everything we're doing." [Emphasis added.] It does not seem likely that the Director of National Intelligence, DOJ, FBI, and CIA all kept President Obama in the dark about their FISA and other machinations -- although it is possible they did so out of a desire to provide him with "plausible denial."

It seems more likely that Obama's closest intelligence confidant, Brennan, told him about the shenanigans with FISA, that Obama gave him approval (perhaps just tacit approval), and that Brennan used that to harness top intelligence and law enforcement officials behind the effort to defeat Trump and, later, to emasculate and, if possible, remove him.

Moreover, one should not rule out seeing in the coming months an "Obama-made-us-do-it" defense -- whether grounded in fact or not -- by Brennan and perhaps the rest of the gang. Brennan may even have a piece of paper recording the President's "approval" for this or that -- or could readily have his former subordinates prepare one that appears authentic.

Reining in Devin Nunes

That the Deep State retains formidable power can be seen in the repeated Lucy-holding-then-withdrawing-the-football-for-Charlie Brown treatment experienced by House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member, Devin Nunes (R-CA). On April 5, 2019, in the apparent belief he had a green light to go on the offensive, Nunes wrote that committee Republicans "will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous individuals involved in the abuse of intelligence for political purposes. These people must be held to account to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future."

On April 7, Nunes was even more specific, telling Fox News that he was preparing to send eight criminal referrals to the Department of Justice "this week," concerning alleged misconduct during the Trump-Russia investigation, including leaks of "highly classified material" and conspiracies to lie to Congress and the FISA court. It seemed to be no-holds-barred for Nunes, who had begun to talk publicly about prison time for those who might be brought to trial.

Except for Fox, the corporate media ignored Nunes's explosive comments. The media seemed smugly convinced that Nunes's talk of "referrals" could be safely ignored -- even though a new sheriff, Barr, had come to town. And sure enough, now, three months later, where are the criminal referrals?

There is ample evidence that President Trump is afraid to run afoul of the Deep State functionaries he inherited. And the Deep State almost always wins. But if Attorney General Barr leans hard on the president to unfetter Nunes, IG Horowitz, Durham and like-minded investigators, all hell may break lose, because the evidence against those who took serious liberties with the law is staring them all in the face.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. No fan of the current President, Ray has been trained to follow and analyze the facts, wherever they may lead. He spent 27 years as a CIA analyst, and prepared the President's Daily Brief for three presidents. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

If you enjoyed this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.

Joe T Wallace , July 8, 2019 at 20:24

I'm a great admirer of Ray McGovern's reporting. He exposes much that is never revealed by the mainstream media. That said, I do have one quibble about this article. In the seventh paragraph, just below the heading "So Where is the IG Report on FISA?" he writes:

"That's the big one. If Horowitz is able to speak freely about what he has learned, his report could lead to indictments of former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorneys General Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein, and Dana Boente -- Boente being the only signer of the relevant FISA applications still in office. (No, he has not been demoted to file clerk in the FBI library; at last report, he is FBI General Counsel!)."

My immediate reaction was: Who is Horowitz? It was confusing not to know. Further down in the article, I learned that Ray was referring to Michael Horowitz, a DOJ watchdog who is preparing an IG report about FISA abuse, but readers should have been informed who he was earlier in the article.

John , July 8, 2019 at 17:10

Peter King? Devin Nunes?

At one point the article says little effort was made to cover tracks because of certainty that HRC would win but later that the FBI et al were planting land mines to either defeat Trump or blow up his presidency. Seemed contradictory to me.

Perhaps you have the skinny on these machinations, if indeed there were machinations by one person or group or another for this purpose or that.

But Peter King and Devin Nunes? If either ever was credible, their track record condemns them to be received, if at all, with extreme skepticism.

Realist , July 8, 2019 at 16:59

It will be a very interesting 2020 campaign if the Democratic candidate has to run with the ripe stinking dead albatross of Russiagate around her neck. Or will she be expected to repudiate the Hitlery-run DNC? Where does the money and the ground game originate if the latter?

The only outcome that could be more bizarre than the last go-round would be to see Trump favored by all the smart money and then lose to the latest corporate Democrat to shamelessly sell out the middle class in broad daylight. I won't like it, but I can see Trump Derangement Syndrome pulling out the chestnuts for the Dems, what with all their celebrity spokespeople constantly running and ranting like their hair is on fire underneath those pussy hats. My poor gullible sister from Cali embraces that whole ball of wax as revealed truth holier than the total dry weight of all the Abrahamic scriptures rolled into one big bale for the recycling center. Kamala Harris seems to be emerging as the new messiah anointed to lead this country back to Obamian gridlock and more prestidigitation like mandated insurance to ensure the health of the insurance companies. Again, it will only be the illusion of "free stuff."

The only way such a scenario won't cause four more years of turmoil for this country (rinse and repeat in 2024) is if the victor is Gabbard and she ends all the illegal and unconstitutional wars by edict, telling all the sure-to-be pissing and moaning Deep State functionaries to pick up their severance pay and go pound sand. Then shut the world-wide spider web of military bases and bring home the troops while we can still afford the carfare. That would be "morning in America," and Gabbard would be the most heroic chief exec since Lincoln and FDR made their marks in the history books, though such fantasies never play out in the real world. More likely all the criminal evidence of treason remains classified, most Americans pop the blue pill, the actual rabbit hole continues to grow ever deeper but the masses are contentedly oblivious to it all, satisfied to blame select scapegoats from Russia, China and other "malign" countries for our viewing entertainment.

Deniz , July 8, 2019 at 17:50

The Grabber in Chief vs Willie Brown's mistress – wonderful.

ML , July 8, 2019 at 20:12

You are really something, Realist. I love the way you flourish that pen of yours. Thank you.

Rob Roy , July 8, 2019 at 20:13

Realist, well said, per usual. To add a bit the Dems probably gave Trump the gift of a lifetime the next election. Wasting three years on Russiagate instead of hammering out a decent platform for the party was beyond dumb. That reminds me. the Dems's next dumbest idea choosing Joe Biden as their next candidate. Just like Hillary, he can't beat Trump. The duopoly is dead, they just don't know it.

As for Tulsi, she's got my vote.

John Earls , July 8, 2019 at 16:55

Looks like Barry Eisler's John Rain (expert in "death by natural causes") will have a lot of work in front of him if the investigation builds and a whole lot of "material witnesses" begin to testify.

ricardo2000 , July 8, 2019 at 16:33

I'm supposed to feel sorry for the surveillance of a right-wing creep? OH PLEASE.
No one in government, or the right wing ReThugs, has ever suffered the intrusive, lying, speculative 'investigations' that social justice, environmental, or human rights activists have over the past 70 years.

When these buttheads suffer what MLK and Malcolm X have suffered then I might just wipe away a few tears, after I stop roaring with laughter and get off the floor.

Realist , July 8, 2019 at 17:08

You prefer a race to the bottom of the cesspool?

You never win when you adopt the methods you claim to revile. The opponent who introduced the tactics you condemn wins if you embrace them as your own. You didn't beat him, you joined him.

LibertyBonBon , July 8, 2019 at 18:12

Must be nice to think the justice system should revolve around your particular emotions, rather than equality and objectivity. Safe and easy.

Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 20:41

ricardo2000, nothing personal, I get the revulsion to Trump and entourage not to mention a large portion of the Maga crowd but this right and left thing is really just an illusion, the people doing the persecuting here regardless of how disgusting Trump is are the same ones doing the persecuting to a large degree of everyone else from Assange to the Iranians, that is this government deep state in combination with all of the various American alphabet soup agencies as well as foreign deep states have cornered the market in State power, hate Trump but don't confuse this with a good thing.

O Society , July 8, 2019 at 16:18

Thank you, Ray McGovern. You are a good man, Charlie Brown!

Thing is, all of this was predictable from the beginning. Many of us saw it coming.

No one really wanted an incompetent baboon running things – the song about Monkey and the Engineer comes to mind – so Obama tried to hamstring Trump with this investigation. I mean, Obama couldn't very well have not completed the transfer of power because it is the most valuable thing about democracy. There is no ten year bloody hellified civil war every time the crown changes hands from one inbred to the next.

So Obama did the next best thing on his way out the Oval Office doors, he put Brennan and the boys on it. Seemed like a good idea at the time, I'm sure. But it backfired because he couldn't call the dogs off once he was no longer president. Not Brennan, not anyone could call them off after the snowball really got rolling because the spooks believed their own story and the media made too much money off selling the mythology:

https://osociety.org/2019/07/06/spooks-spooking-themselves/

Only question left to answer now is whether or not Trump the carnival barker can milk his opportunist Armageddon into a second term of fleecing the rubes.

http://osociety.org/2019/07/08/can-donald-trump-delay-an-economic-crash-until-2020

karlof1 , July 8, 2019 at 15:00

This is a very serious Constitutional Law issue and MUST be pursued–and it makes no difference the political party denomination of those breaking the law! The Current Oligarchy–Deep State–is the adversary of the vast majority of US citizens and humanity. With Epstein's arrest and the developments McGovern relates, some progress appears to be happening.

Lydia , July 8, 2019 at 14:51

You summed it up perfectly, Jill.

Pablo Diablo , July 8, 2019 at 14:42

"the effort to defeat Trump and, later, to emasculate and, if possible, remove him." says it all. Trump is a loose cannon. The so called "Deep State" has been "controlling" our Presidents since at least the Dulles Brothers. Truman even admitted giving them power was a BIG mistake. Still question the Kennedy Assassination.
In the 70's, the FBI mailed me a box of drugs, which I refused to take from a very incompetent fake Mail Man, and three minutes later they showed up with a search warrant for my house that listed all the drugs in the failed mailed box signed by a Federal Judge. So much for FISA. The bullshit continues. I could reveal more if necessary.

robert e williamson jr , July 8, 2019 at 14:32

Sam F. whether you realize it or not you got it pretty much on the nose. Except for this.

The judiciary has been compromised by the congresses refusal to hold CIA et. al. accountable for their actions. Why? Those in congress remember what happened to JFK.

The number one reason is because the deep state ensures that if anyone goes after CIA officials or designees that the persons career and life are ruined. Which is something else that needs to be investigated. Something that if explored may very well put a stop to CIA's B.S. of lying about everything and getting away with it.

Currently no deterrent exists. None.

Anytime some one or entity gets close the Deep State ends up with their guy as AG. See the Bill Barr story.

Barr may get his chance to prove me right and at the same time prove "Lady Justice" has little to do with the DOJ! I think he is a cowardly blowhard. Justice would be Trump and Barr going to jail .

Justice in this country for the true scoundrels in government or billionaires is non- existent at this point in time. Putting Epstein in prison for life is called for and if he is threatened with that maybe his jaw will loosen up.

Until DOJ can become a deterrent to bad actors in government, all government the country will be controlled by the Deep State. The SWETS, super wealthy elitists.

Keep your eyes on George Soro and the Kochs.

Paul Merrell , July 8, 2019 at 17:28

@ "Justice would be Trump and Barr going to jail ."

Are you suggesting that *any* of their living predecessors don't deserve the same? If so, which do not and why?

Jay , July 8, 2019 at 14:18

Bif:

I agree something very suspect occurred.

And it's very likely the Obama White House knew that either the NSA or the FBI was tapping into the communications of some of Trump's campaign team BEFORE Hillary lost in Nov. 2016.

However the xenophobic, lying, terrorist (IRA) supporting, Peter King is not a credible messenger. (Right, Rep Steve King of Iowa is even worse than King of Long Island.)

Peter Dyer , July 8, 2019 at 14:09

Thanks, Ray.

DH Fabian , July 8, 2019 at 13:59

Actually, that deep split among the masses, and certainly within the Dem voting base, was achieved in the 1990s -- middle class vs. poor, workers vs. those left jobless, further split by race. The Obama years confirmed that this split is permanent. Russia had nothing to do with the Democrats' 2016 defeat, nor will it be the reason for their 2020 defeat. Democrats maintain their resistance against acknowledging the consequences of dividing and conquering their own voting base.

EuGene Miller , July 9, 2019 at 00:24

DH, that's an interesting assessment. However, I doubt that any House or Senate Democrat sought an advantage by "splitting their base". The elected Dems do not control the narrative. So, who benefits by splitting the masses into rival factions?

Perhaps the narrative of social and political discourse is defined by the owners, boards, and foundations that control the main-stream media and pop-culture.

Robert Reich wrote that an oligarchy divides-and-conquers the rest of us. I suspect that controlling the narrative is not simply a propaganda tool; it is the basis of divide-and-conquer strategy.

https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/57499-there-is-no-right-v-left-it-is-trump-and-the-oligarchs-against-the-rest

robert e williamson jr , July 8, 2019 at 13:56

Is it possible that the DOJ, see the Sec. of Labor's problems developing with the Espstein case, is about to have it's gloriously corrupt underbelly rolled over into the sunlight? (you must roll the snake over to see its belly)

Please Ray tell me this is where we might be heading or instead will we end up with the courts truncating investigation because they say it will be best for the country not to have all this filthy laundry dragged out into the sunlight or someones bull shit sources and methods might be exposed. The DOJ has become a really bad joke!

I'm hoping you know something I don't because Barr's past history pretty much speaks for itself I'd say after be made sure he pardoned all of Bush 41 henchmen!

At this point I certainly do not have much faith in the DOJ doing the right thing. What Acosta did in Florida with Epstein was hardly the right thing to do.

They all need to be locked up.

Eric32 , July 8, 2019 at 13:33

Very little "punishment" will occur, and no deep change cleanup will occur.
The US govt. is controlled by money and blackmail – not "voting" or public outrage.

So many high level people have so much dirt on other high level people that nothing major will be done.
A series of very big events, including the JFK murder and the 9/11 charade went unexposed and undealt with – there is no reason to think that this medium size event will wind up making a big difference.

What will happen is that US "democracy" will continue on its downward course, but maybe with a better facade.

Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 20:59

I personally believe that the empire will crash when it hits maximum overreach it will also simultaneously go broke at the same time, as the money interests at that point Will probably move east, this will partially be due to both the feds tendency to over inflate in order to cover military acquisitions as well as the decline of swift and the ascendancy of China in the rest. I actually think that this is what some American factions desire, it is potentially good for all of us if we can regain a republic but it will mean the end of American hegemony.

Gary Weglarz , July 8, 2019 at 13:22

This is the same "deep state" that assassinated a sitting president, then proceeded to assassinate the next three most important and influential progressive leaders in the country all over a five year period. Problem solved. And just when you thought Allen Dulles didn't know what to do with all those oh so experienced Nazi war criminals he'd recruited to the CIA.

When Congress investigated the CIA in the mid-1970's (before Congress became completely "owned" by the deep state) right on cue witnesses began to "commit suicide" just before they would be scheduled to testify. Problem solved. Hardly a raised eyebrow from the always complicit MSM through all of this. Expecting anything more than a massive coverup of this latest deep state corruption and abuse is beyond my abilities to even effectively fantasize about.

herbert davis , July 8, 2019 at 14:12

Justice in the USA?

John Drake , July 8, 2019 at 13:20

The corporate Democrats strike out again. They run a corrupt, violent(war monger) candidate, who loses to a buffoon-an election which was hers to lose. Meanwhile trying to hedge their bets they play sleazeball with the investigative arm's authority in order to sabotage said buffoon; which as it is revealed gives ammunition and the advantage to their target. i.e. "They were illegally picking on me"
If Trump is smart-a very long stretch, but some advisor might suggest this- he will expose all this slime closer to the election for maximum effect. What a distressing thought. All the more reason to run a progressive Presidential candidate that can disavow the DNC clowns and their corruption.

geeyp , July 8, 2019 at 12:37

It's past time for the Deep State to come up from the deep state of hell in which they reside. At least to purgatory for some fresh air and a wee ray of light. I couldn't let the Schumer warning keep me from giving the go ahead on this. If my coconut is shattered, someone somewhere (not our current media) would have a clue as to what happened to me. Sic 'em, President Trump and A.G. and Devin Nunes!

Sam F , July 8, 2019 at 12:14

The US needs to solve the underlying problem of corruption of secret agencies and judiciary, otherwise the political wrongdoing of one faction will only be matched by that of its opponents, regardless of a few prosecutions. I know from experience the extreme corruption of the Repubs, and little doubt that the Dems do such things at least when desperate.

The solution includes:
1. All secrets meaningfully shared among multiparty committees;
2. All politicians and top officials monitored for corrupt influence;
3. Entire federal judiciary fired, replaced, and monitored like the politicians; and
4. Amendments to protect elections and mass media from control by money power.
Until then all government acts are tribal gangsterism and little more.

Guy , July 8, 2019 at 13:50

You forgot about dual citizenship members of the senate and congress . Elected as a representative for the country of the US should mean just that and not another country . And while we are at it , major reform on monetary contributions to candidates running for re-election . There is something terribly wrong with needing millions if not billions of dollars to run the electoral races.There is much more that needs to be done but this would be a good start .

Sam F , July 8, 2019 at 17:32

Yes, the proposed Amendments would restrict funding of mass media and elections to registered individual contributions (some prefer government funding) limited to the average day's pay annually (for example), with full reporting by candidates and all intermediaries. We all can see the destruction of democracy that was caused by economic power controlling elections, mass media, the judiciary, etc.

But of course we cannot get those amendments because those tools of democracy now belong to the rich, etc. History suggests that we are in for generations of severe decline before the people are hurting enough to turn off the tube and do something, and generations more before they can re-establish democracy.

Herman , July 8, 2019 at 15:20

Ray McGovern writes:"Classification," however, has been one of the Deep State's favorite tactics to stymie investigations -- especially when the material in question yields serious embarrassment or reveals crimes. And the stakes this time are huge"

On the matter of government reform classification there is a great need of public discussion and radical reform. Why? Because the government is playing with an essential right, the right to know. All the red herrings needed to be thrown in the trash and the burden placed on the classifiers to justify why the public does not have a right to know.

Sam F , July 8, 2019 at 17:24

Yes, the facts and their significance (especially about false flags and scandals) need to be publicly debated, as well as policy goals, and the policies derived from facts and goals. We have far too many government secrets to sustain a democracy.

I suggest limiting secrets to ongoing investigations (with a time limit), defensive military plans and operations (not alleged provocations or aggressive war schemes), and personal IDs of those at risk. Beyond that secrets disguise tyranny.

Ida G Millman , July 8, 2019 at 16:02

Another path towards a solution to government corruption could be term limits for all federal representatives. Limiting the number of terms would curtail the opportunities for forming the uninterrupted years of long coalitions between public servants and government officials that result in the abuses of power that have damaged the interests of ordinary less wealthy citizens, in favor of corporate and military interests.

In the matter of the original intentions of the men who wrote our founding documents, we should consider one of the enormous differences that technology has made between us: that our representatives can travel between DC and their homes with enough ease that they can continue reasonably, or nearly reasonably, satisfactory family lives – something that could not be done in the 18th century. The forefathers did not foresee that being a member of government would become a career for a lifetime. They assumed, I believe, that members of government would always be citizens who would give our country a few years of their lives and then return to private life to share their experience and knowledge with their neighbors.

Such a change would not magically reform government corruption. There will always be those who will find a way – but it could slow things down and it would certainly engage an increasing number of citizens who would participate in governing, as well as the circles of people surrounding each of them whose interest in and understanding of government would increase because everyone would know more of their representatives. Got that, kids? L&B&L

Sam F , July 8, 2019 at 17:37

Term limits are useful and we should enact more. There seems to be a sufficient supply of puppets for the rich/WallSt/Mic/zionists to ensure that all new candidates represent only those interests, unless we go further and control funding of mass media and elections, monitoring of politicians and judges for life, etc.

Rob Roy , July 8, 2019 at 20:28

Ida,
Term limits wouldn't be necessary if money were out of elections and all elections were publicly funded. Next, a law should be passed to prevent retired congress people from lobbying for any private company of any kind. Then people wouldn't have to spend all their time in congress lining up money for the next election, nor would they owe favors to anyone.

Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 21:19

Sam F, all of those goals seem very nice but it would probably be better if we just dissolved back into 50 states save for an interstate system and a very small navy for common defense, maybe four nuclear submarines total, the American people will be best off without a government completely working it out for themselves, if some of them work it out in completely different ways without hurting each other so be it. Besides even a libertarians would have to acknowledge democracy best works for smaller populations. We may never be able to curb the will to power of evil men but we can diminish their abilities to fleece the public if we are not subject to them.

Jay , July 8, 2019 at 11:42

Peter King?

Really now.

Not a credible source, no matter how invention filled Russia-gate is. And no matter how clear it is that in 2016 the FBI was poking around campaign Trump and likely telling the White House what it found.

Bif Webster , July 8, 2019 at 13:28

I agree that King isn't the best of messengers, but we can also go to others who are not right-wing to see something fishy went on.

Those text messages convinced me something was going on. And that was before all the other stuff came to light.

I think this will be about who has more dirt on the other side you know, leverage?

Jeff Harrison , July 8, 2019 at 11:41

Thank you, Ray. Forgive my cynicism but the US government is so corrupt, has wielded illegitimate power for so long, and has covered the tracks of countless functionaries who have not upheld the constitution that I doubt this will go anywhere. I have been quoting Ben Franklin for some time "you have a republic, if you can keep it." I don't think we can. A reading of "A History of Venice" by John J. Norris would be appropriate here. The most serene republic lasted for essentially 1,000 years from roughly 800 to not quite 1800, first as a democracy, later as an oligarchy. Much like us, including having the most feared secret service in Europe at the time, Venice kept its power through trade but at least we don't hoist the new president up on a chair so that he can throw golden Ducats to the crowd on Wall Street the way that a new Doge would.

I don't see that as necessarily much of a plus.

Steven Berge , July 8, 2019 at 11:40

I don't suppose anything will happen to anybody important about this. After all, nothing happened to anybody when they were caught mass spying on any and all american citizens, even before they made it legal.

Drew Hunkins , July 8, 2019 at 11:32

Unfortunately Webb and Parry exposed much of these gangster criminal "intel" savages for running guns and drugs to Central American pseudo fascist mercenary sadists throughout much of the late 1970s through the '80s. I say unfortunately b/c nothing much ever came along by way of true justice, by way of the criminal players rotting in maximum security jail cells for years on end, not unlike the crack or heroin addict who steals a $400 television.

Jill , July 8, 2019 at 11:15

This has been one long crime against the American people. King should read what he knows into the Congressional Record. I have no sympathy for Trump's fear of the deep state. He has sent people to die knowing full well that his actions were based on lies, lies that would result in the deaths of civilians as well as our own military. If he is going to do that, then he should have the courage to face the deep state. That's partial penance for all the deaths he has caused.

I also don't care about Trump's personal issue about being surveilled. He personally supports that against everyone else. That is why I feel this is a crime against our people as a whole. Our constitution has been stripped bare. We don't have the rule of law. Mass surveillance covering the globe is current reality. It is dangerous. It is wrong. It is lawless. It is a disaster.

Further, Russiagate was used to keep real opposition away from Trump. His supporters doubled down on "liking" Trump because he appeared to be a victim of these lies. Democrats meanwhile learned to further worship the IC. They ignored Trump's actual unlawful behavior, and, in the case of war crimes, still support Trump on every war/regime change action etc. recommended to them by their IC "resistance" "leaders".

People won't speak to one another because of this division, all based on lies. Democrats want Assange put to death because he exposed truthful information about Clinton. Neighbor has turned against neighbor over this. We have stopped talking and stopped thinking about whether claims make sense or have evidence behind them. Political parties have become cults with cult leaders. Meanwhile, many who think it was wrong to use surveillance against Trump, accept mass surveillance against everyone else, including themselves.

This has been one of the most effective propaganda tools I have ever seen against our populace. It has created a divided, unthinking populace who is ripe for the picking by evil men and women. I am truly hoping that once this is exposed people will stop this madness and pull together for a common good. But I'm quite worried that, like most cults, when the leader is shown to be wrong, people cling to them even more.

I cannot believe what Russiagate has done to our own people. I am terrified at the wars it has/may yet cause and the cruelty against others, both foreign and domestic, which it has wrought.

Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 21:51

What else would you call it, there have always been nefarious agents in one government or another for one gangster interest or another, whether was Milner's roundtable or Dulles's Gladio werewolves, these are nefarious individuals there is no gray area in that, however they may conduct themselves and their personal lives, it is not sloppy journalism, is to call something what it is, a this shadow government working in many instances against the direct interest of the American people, I'm not trying to be you over the head with this but Mr. McGovern was once upon a Time swimming in the same waters and he knows what he is talking about. The deep state maybe several different factions but all of it at least so far is fairly I'm Accountable, this thing must be named.

AnneR , July 8, 2019 at 14:18

First the Disclaimer: I'm not a supporter of either side of the one party two headed monster political machine, not of either HRC or DT, both, and their "parties," making me want to puke.

I am curious about the following: "He [DT] has sent people to die knowing full well that his actions were based on lies, lies that would result in the deaths of civilians as well as our own military. If he is going to do that, then he should have the courage to face the deep state. That's partial penance for all the deaths he has caused."

While I have no doubt that DT has been responsible for civilian deaths (I am far less concerned about military deaths – join the military and you cannot expect not to have to chance it, particularly in a warmongering nation state; if the recruit doesn't recognize this reality, then they need to do some reading), *most* such deaths in those countries we (the US and its vassal states and proxies) have been happily bombing, shelling, destroying one way or another, even since the late 1980s (not therefore including the appalling and illegal warring on Vietnam et al) are down, not to DT, but rather to presidents: BC, GHB, GWB, BO. Pretty evenly divided betwixt the two heads, wouldn't you say?

That's not to excuse DT (and I wouldn't excuse HRC either – think Libya; as bad as MA, if with different forms of warfare; but then they're buddies, like attracting like).

We – the US – need to stop killing other peoples (let's cry for the war-making profiteers), stop destroying other countries (and for our corporate-capitalists who plunder them); need to mind our own "shop" and business. And stop pretending that we're such a wonderful, white-hatted, "good" nation.

Jill , July 8, 2019 at 15:15

AnneR,

We have had war criminal presidents from the legacy parties, period. Barr is a party to war crimes so I share other's doubts that he will do anything about actual justice. He may be in on the current winning side of the IC and they may be purging some enemies at this time. That is the only thing I see Barr being involved in.

Speaking as someone who has done counter-recruitment in schools, I will just give you my experience. Students are tracked from grade school. A file is kept on them with over a thousand data points. These files are taken by recruiters and used to "pitch" the military to young people. I don't know if you were sophisticated at 16. I was a little bit but not much. So here's an example–they told one young woman who had a single mother that if she went in the military she would not be a burden on her mother any longer. They understood the family had few resources and they played on this young woman's "guilt" over being a financial "drain" on her mother. No, recruiters do not tell the truth to those they meet. They lie and they lie very well because they have excellent information to help them tell the correct lies. That girl is dead and I mourn her death.

Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 22:05

AnneR, you have so much anger, I understand, it is terrible what our nation has done and is continuing to do, it has gone on so long that many of the people currently perpetrating the crimes against foreign populations are themselves of descendents of peoples the US has victimized. It's the propaganda, the United States is one of the most heavily propagandize societies in the world, we make the Soviets look like children. No one wants you to have sympathy for Donald Trump, you do not have to agree or like a person to see that the cartel seeking to damage him is also simultaneously against your interests and they are against your interests whether you're from the left or the right because they do not have an ideology just it will to power.

Dunderhead , July 8, 2019 at 22:09

Jill that was an incredibly cogent description of the mess we are currently in, congratulations on such clarity, peace out.

David Otness , July 9, 2019 at 00:18

With you on all that you state, Jill. It's really exposed the U.S. population for what we unfortunately are, if not what we've become. So reminiscent of the darker days of the Cold War. A stark education has just played out to this point. I wonder how many have learned anything at all from it?

[Jul 09, 2019] Halper, such as he could be called a source at all, appears to have been, has to have been, working in the UK with Agency people and almost certainly with MI6 as well.

Notable quotes:
"... Halper, such as he could be called a source at all, appears to have been, has to have been, working in the UK with Agency people and almost certainly with MI6 as well. ..."
"... If John Brennan was not there at the genesis of this fiasco, I will eat my hat; and I cannot see how there weren't high level officials at MI6 engaged as well ..."
"... Similarly, Steele is dredging for Russian dirt wherever he can get it and he's sealed himself off from his former employer? Not likely. ..."
"... The one thing which overwhelms all else is the actual nature of the material that came from the DNC servers and appeared on Wikileaks. A great deal of noise is made about that information's journey, who stole (hacked or copied) it, how it was done, who transmitted it, etc. But no noise whatever is made about the information itself, or at least when an attempt is made it is buried by the "Russia meddled" noise. ..."
"... The information itself is that the DNC is a bad actor, that it rigged the primary election for Hillary Clinton. No one, no one , denies the truth of the information itself. When what the DNC did is mentioned the conversation instantly changes to the Russians having "meddled in our election." ..."
"... Buried in the noise is that the DNC meddled in the electoral process far more destructively and far more directly than the Rusians did, if the Russians did so at all, which I perceive as highly doubtful. ..."
Jul 09, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Flavius -> Turcopolier... ,

I would guess that the Bureau Agents had to be read in on what the Agency people had been doing with Halper and possibly Mifsud,; that, and to bring their purported counter-intelligence expertise to bear. Active investigation in the UK with respect to Papadopolis was in prospect, probably to include tech surveillance, and the Bureau has no authority to conduct active independent investigation overseas.

Halper, such as he could be called a source at all, appears to have been, has to have been, working in the UK with Agency people and almost certainly with MI6 as well.

If NSA was there in the UK, it was with a view to coordinating tech; but with that said, it would be highly irregular for our people to be conducting active investigation, especially if it included physical and technical surveillance, without coordinating at some level with MI6 and 5 as well.

If John Brennan was not there at the genesis of this fiasco, I will eat my hat; and I cannot see how there weren't high level officials at MI6 engaged as well .

Halper is working in the UK with the Agency in re Russia and not working with the Russia obsessed MI6? Similarly, Steele is dredging for Russian dirt wherever he can get it and he's sealed himself off from his former employer? Not likely.

Bill H , 08 July 2019 at 10:08 AM

The one thing which overwhelms all else is the actual nature of the material that came from the DNC servers and appeared on Wikileaks. A great deal of noise is made about that information's journey, who stole (hacked or copied) it, how it was done, who transmitted it, etc. But no noise whatever is made about the information itself, or at least when an attempt is made it is buried by the "Russia meddled" noise.

The information itself is that the DNC is a bad actor, that it rigged the primary election for Hillary Clinton. No one, no one , denies the truth of the information itself. When what the DNC did is mentioned the conversation instantly changes to the Russians having "meddled in our election."

Buried in the noise is that the DNC meddled in the electoral process far more destructively and far more directly than the Rusians did, if the Russians did so at all, which I perceive as highly doubtful.

JamesT -> Bill H ... , 08 July 2019 at 03:05 PM

Bill H - I could not agree with you more.

pretzelattack , 08 July 2019 at 02:00 PM

i'm not familiar with all the intricate details of the "investigation" (i just detect a strong smell of bs coming from mueller), and I found this piece hard to follow on the page-strzok texts and their significance.

Barbara Ann , 08 July 2019 at 02:00 PM

Thanks Larry.

This from the Fox article: "Fox News has learned some of the words and names that were redacted in the string of Strzok-Page messages" prompts a (maybe dumb) question:

Do we know/can we infer how Fox managed to fill in just some of the redacted info? It seems odd to me that only a few of the blanks have been filled in, as if Fox had access to the original FBI phone records they'd have all of it. Also, the new handwritten parts seem to contain information which could not possibly have been gathered from any other source outside of this private 2 way conversation - e.g. "Just you two? Was DCM present for the interview?" and the reply "No, two of them, two of us".

Do Fox have it all and are they then just teasing us, or is perhaps one of the two star-crossed lovers singing?

[Jul 07, 2019] Ship of Fools- Liner Notes

Notable quotes:
"... In 1996, Americans crowed about having meddled in the Russian presidential election. Well, you could argue that they can do stuff too. ..."
Jul 07, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

The signs are always there, it will always seem, in retrospect. Russian meddling in American elections. You double-take as you hear President Obama admonish the Russians, shortly after the 2016 presidential election, "We can do stuff to you." I'm old enough to remember that such 'stuff' has been going on for awhile. In 1996, Americans crowed about having meddled in the Russian presidential election. Well, you could argue that they can do stuff too.

Let's recount. Reagan told Gorbachev to "tear down that wall" in Berlin. He did, along with the Iron Curtain. The neoliberals rushed in like RawdyYates in Rawhide with their bling and sto ho ethos. The oligarchs took over in Russia. Clinton installed the dancing circus bear Boris Yeltsin and laughed so hard at the president's buffoonery that it looked for awhile like America would be friends-for-life with the Russkies. Maybe they could do stuff together.

... ... ...

John Kendall Hawkins is an American ex-pat freelancer based in Australia. He is a former reporter for The New Bedford Standard-Times

[Jul 06, 2019] Mueller Report Gets the Trump Tower Meeting Wrong; Promotes Browder Hoax by Lucy Komisar

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... It wasn't to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton, which the Russian lawyer did not have and never produced. That was a ploy by Robert Goldstone, a British music publicist whose job is to get what his clients want, in this case, a meeting. So, recklessly, he invented the idea of Clinton dirt as a bait-and-switch to get Trump's people to come to it. He got the lawyer the meeting for her to lobby a potentially incoming administration against the Magnitsky Act, which is why she was in the United States in the first place. ..."
"... The lawyer lobbying against the act, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort that Browder's story was fake, a smokescreen to block the Russians from going after him for multi-millions in tax evasion. She argued the Magnitsky Act was built on this fraud. Manafort's notes, included in the Mueller Report, trace what she said. ..."
"... The Mueller investigators appear not to have looked into her charges. The report promotes Browder's fabrications, citing "the Magnitsky Act, which imposed financial sanctions and travel restrictions on Russian officials and which was named for a Russian tax specialist who exposed a fraud and later died in a Russian prison." ..."
"... But instead of his "lawyer" Magnitsky exposing Russian fraud, for which he was jailed and killed in prison, Magnitsky was actually Browder's accountant who was detained under investigation for his part in Browder's tax evasion and died of natural causes in prison, as Magnitsky's own mother admits to filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov in the film "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes." ..."
"... The documents include a deposition where Browder admits that the alleged "lawyer" Magnitsky did not go to law school nor have a law degree. Magnitsky's own testimony file identifies him as an "auditor." ..."
"... I interviewed Veselnitskaya in New York in November 2016. She explained what she later told the Trump group, that Browder's clients the Ziff Brothers had invested in Russian shares in a way that routed the money through loans so that they could evade U.S. taxes. ["Not invest – loans" in Manafort's notes.] ..."
Jul 03, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Consortiumnews Volume 25, Number 186 -- Saturday, July 6, 2019 INTELLIGENCE , RUSSIA , RUSSIAGATE , TRUMP ADMINISTRATION , U.S. Mueller Report Gets the Trump Tower Meeting Wrong; Promotes Browder Hoax July 3, 2019 • 43 Comments

Save

Natalia Veselnitskaya didn't have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton and when the Russian lawyer met with Trump's people her focus was not on the 2016 campaign, writes Lucy Komisar.

By Lucy Komisar
Special to Consortium News

A "key event" described in the Mueller Report is the Trump Tower meeting where a Russian lawyer met with the president's son Donald Trump Jr, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Russiagaters have been obsessed with the meeting saying it was the smoking gun to prove collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to steal the 2016 election. Months after Mueller concluded that there was no collusion at all, the obsession has switched to "obstruction of justice," which is like someone being apprehended for resisting arrest without committing any other crime.

Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump team members in Trump Tower, and her interpreter, in background. (Lucy Komisar)

The Mueller report thus focuses instead on "efforts to prevent disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians and senior campaign officials."

But the report on this topic is deceptive. Ironically, as it attacks Donald Trump and top campaign officials for lying, the report itself lies about the issue the meeting addressed.

It wasn't to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton, which the Russian lawyer did not have and never produced. That was a ploy by Robert Goldstone, a British music publicist whose job is to get what his clients want, in this case, a meeting. So, recklessly, he invented the idea of Clinton dirt as a bait-and-switch to get Trump's people to come to it. He got the lawyer the meeting for her to lobby a potentially incoming administration against the Magnitsky Act, which is why she was in the United States in the first place.

The Magnitsky Act is a 2012 U.S. law that was promoted by William Browder, an American-born British citizen and hedge fund investor, who claimed his "lawyer" Sergei Magnitsky had been imprisoned and murdered because he uncovered a scheme by Russian officials to steal $230 million from the Russian Treasury. It sanctioned Russians he said were involved or benefitted from Magnitsky's death. It has since been used by the U.S. to put sanctions on other Russians and nationals from other countries.

The lawyer lobbying against the act, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort that Browder's story was fake, a smokescreen to block the Russians from going after him for multi-millions in tax evasion. She argued the Magnitsky Act was built on this fraud. Manafort's notes, included in the Mueller Report, trace what she said.

Nothing Illegal

The Trump people did nothing illegal to meet with her. Their problem was the exaggerating communications Goldstone sent them about Veselnitskaya having "dirt" on Clinton. (While U.S. election laws says it's illegal for a campaign to receive "a thing of value" from a foreign source, it's never been established by a court that opposition research fits that description, the Mueller Report admits. ) Veselnitskaya testified to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in November 2017 that Browder's major American client, the Ziff brothers, had cheated on American and Russian taxes and contributed the "dirty money" to the Democrats.

The Mueller investigators appear not to have looked into her charges. The report promotes Browder's fabrications, citing "the Magnitsky Act, which imposed financial sanctions and travel restrictions on Russian officials and which was named for a Russian tax specialist who exposed a fraud and later died in a Russian prison."

But instead of his "lawyer" Magnitsky exposing Russian fraud, for which he was jailed and killed in prison, Magnitsky was actually Browder's accountant who was detained under investigation for his part in Browder's tax evasion and died of natural causes in prison, as Magnitsky's own mother admits to filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov in the film "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes."

Mueller's investigators might have started with documents filed in U.S. federal court in the case of Veselnitskaya's client, Prevezon, a Russian holding company that settled a civil-forfeiture claim by the U.S. government that linked it, without proof, to the tax fraud.

The documents include a deposition where Browder admits that the alleged "lawyer" Magnitsky did not go to law school nor have a law degree. Magnitsky's own testimony file identifies him as an "auditor."

Why does that matter? Because it was Browder's red herring. Magnitsky had worked as Browder's accountant since 1997, fiddling on Browder's taxes on profits from sales of shares held by Russian shell companies run by his Hermitage Fund. He was not an attorney hired in 2007 to investigate and then expose a tax fraud against the Russian Treasury.

That fraud was exposed by Rimma Starova, the Russian nominee director of a British Virgin Islands shell company that held Hermitage's reregistered companies and who gave testimony to Russian police on April 9 and July 10, 2008 . It was reported by The New York Times and Vedomosti on July 24, 2008, months before Magnitsky mentioned it in an Oct. 7 interrogation.

Kremlin-connected?

Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan. (Jorge Láscar, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The Mueller Report says Veselnitskaya promised dirt on Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia and its government support for Trump." Two days before the meeting, Goldstone emailed Trump Jr. and said "the Russian government attorney" was flying in from Moscow. She had not been a government attorney since 2001, 15 years earlier.

I interviewed Veselnitskaya in New York in November 2016. She explained what she later told the Trump group, that Browder's clients the Ziff Brothers had invested in Russian shares in a way that routed the money through loans so that they could evade U.S. taxes. ["Not invest – loans" in Manafort's notes.]

The report says, "Natalia Veselnitskaya had previously worked for the Russian government and maintained a relationship with that government throughout this period of time." Later it says that from 1998 to 2001, she had worked as a prosecutor for the "Central Administrative District" of the Russian Prosecutor's office. "And continued to perform government-related work and maintain ties to the Russian government following her departure." We are meant to presume, with no evidence, as the media does – that means "a Kremlin-connected lawyer."

When Trump Jr asked for evidence, how the payments could be tied to the Clinton campaign, she said she couldn't trace them, according to the Mueller Report.

Then she turned to the Magnitsky Act. The report repeats earlier fakery: "She lobbied and testified about the Magnitsky Act, which imposed financial sanctions and travel restrictions on Russian officials and which was named for a Russian tax specialist who exposed a fraud and later died in a Russian prison." Magnitsky did not expose a fraud. Rimma Starova did.

A footnote in the report said: "Browder hired Magnitsky to investigate tax fraud by Russian officials, and Magnitsky was charged with helping Browder embezzle money." Browder did not hire Magnitsky to investigate the fraud. Magnitsky had been the accountant in charge of Hermitage since 1997, 10 years before the fraud. Embezzlement refers to Browder shifting assets out of Russia without paying taxes.

But the investigation's focus was not on Browder's fakery -- the substance of the Trump Tower meeting -- but on the communications organizing the event. The section on obstruction says Trump became aware of "emails setting up the June 9, 2016 meeting between senior campaign officials and Russians who offered derogatory information on Hillary Clinton as 'part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump.'"

That would have been inflated Goldstone's promises.

The report says "at the meeting the Russian attorney claimed that funds derived from illegal activities in Russia were provided to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats." Trump Jr. told a White House press officer that "they started with some Hillary thing, which was bs and some other nonsense, which we shot down fast."

As Veselnitskaya told me, she knew the Ziffs made contributions to Democrats. She probably started with that. Manafort's notes don't report a "Hillary thing," but are about Browder and the Ziffs.

On the issue of Browder, the Magnitsky story and the essence of the Trump Tower meeting, the Mueller Report is a deception intended to keep the myth of collusion in the air while dismissing that any collusion took place.

Lucy Komisar is an investigative reporter who writes about financial corruption and won a Gerald Loeb award, the most important prize in financial journalism, for breaking the story about how Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford got the Florida Banking Dept to allow him to move money offshore with no regulation. Her stories about William Browder focus on tax evasion. Find out more on The Komisar Scoop and on Twitter, @lucykomisar .

If you enjoyed this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.

Zalamander , July 5, 2019 at 20:00

Joseph Mifsud, Konstanin Kilimnik and now Bill Browder have all been exposed as frauds. The Russiagate dominoes are collapsing one by one.

[Jul 05, 2019] Putin Speaks- Liberalism Has Lost the World -

Jul 05, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

In his interview with the FT' s Lionel Barber, Putin appeared as much an analyst of, as an advocate for, the nationalism and populism that seems to be succeeding the 20th-century liberalism of the West.

Why is liberalism failing? Several causes, said Putin. Among them, its failure to deal with the crisis of the age: mass and unchecked illegal migration. Putin praised Trump's efforts to secure the U.S. border:

"This liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population. This liberal idea presupposes that migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants have to be protected."

Putin deplored Chancellor Angela Merkel's 2015 decision to bring into Germany a million refugees from Syria's civil war.

His comments came as 10 Democratic candidates in the second presidential primary debate were raising their hands in support of the proposition that breaking into the USA should cease to be a crime and those who succeed in breaking in should be given free health care.

Putin also sees the social excesses of multiculturalism and secularism in the West as representing a failure of liberalism.

In a week where huge crowds celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall "uprising" in Greenwich Village, as it is now called, with parties and parades, Putin declared:

"Have we forgotten that all of us live in a world based on biblical values? I am not trying to insult anyone because we have been condemned for our alleged homophobia. But we have no problem with LGBT persons. God forbid, let them live as they wish."

He added, "But some things do appear excessive to us. They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles."

Elton John pronounced himself "deeply upset."

Putin did not back off: "Let everyone be happy But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population."

Putin took power, two decades ago, as this 21st century began. In recent years, he has advanced himself not only as a foe of liberalism but a champion of populism, traditionalism and nationalism.

Nor is he hesitant to declare his views regarding U.S. politics.

Of Trump, Putin says, "He is a talented person (who) knows very well what his voters expect of him. Trump looked into his opponent's attitude toward him and saw changes in American society."

Recalling his own controversial comment that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, Putin said the tragedy was not the death of Communism but the shattering of the Russian Federation into 15 separate nations.

The tragedy was the "dispersal of ethnic Russians" across the newly independent successor states of the Soviet Union: "25 million ethnic Russians found themselves living outside the Russian Federation. Is this not a tragedy? A huge one! And family relations? Jobs? Travel? It was nothing but a disaster."

What may be said of Putin?

He is no Stalin, no Communist ideologue, but rather a Russian nationalist who seeks the return of her lost peoples to the Motherland, and, seeing his country as a great power, wants NATO out of his front yard.

While we have issues with him on arms control, Iran and Venezuela, we have a common interest in avoiding a war with this nuclear-armed nation as we did with the far more menacing Soviet Empire of the Cold War.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.

el_uro • 3 days ago

Regardless of who is Mr Putin, he pointed out the problems created by modern "progressives" and "progressives" do not have any answer.

ebergerud • 3 days ago

No quibbles at all. I hope more Americans see beyond superficial press coverage of the whole Ukraine issue and understand that the US was perceived by Moscow - correctly - as being deeply involved in the Ukraine 2014 debacle. James Brennan even came to call in April - very odd move by a CIA Chief. I'll go one step farther. I think it possible that Trump's association with Manafort was viewed by Brennan as threatening his narrative of Russia as an aggressive villain - and that was one idea Brennan could not allow into the public arena. For more on this line of thought, check some of the recent talks given by "realist" guru John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and his critique of liberal hegemony.

Brooke Smith • 3 days ago

Putin is right. I have been impressed with several of Putin's speeches over the years. Glad to read commentary on his speech here at TAC - this is the first place where I even learned of this speech.

Brady • 3 days ago

Vladimir Putin, leader of the free world...

JeffK from PA • 3 days ago

"The two joked about how both are afflicted with a media that generates constant fake news." - Buchanan. In other words, we prefer the many lies mis-characterized as truth to fool the uninformed and massage the base.

"Negotiations on Kim's nuclear weapons may be back on track." - Buchanan. Who doubts Kim Jong Un is going to play Trump like a fiddle?

"This liberal idea presupposes that migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants have to be protected." - Putin. More right wing propaganda for the clueless.

"Putin declared: "Have we forgotten that all of us live in a world based on biblical values? " Yeah, sure. Putin and Trump. Two devout saints just trying to make the world a better place for all. Kumbaya, praise The Lord, and pass the wafers...

SatirevFlesti • 3 days ago

Wish we could vote for Orban or Putin in 2020.

[email protected] • 3 days ago

I think of Putin as "Catherine the Great" working to make Russia as great and powerful as it can be. I think Pres. Trump probably could have greatly improved US-Russian relations had his first term not been poisoned by this ridiculous collusion scam. Perhaps next term.

John Sobieski • 3 days ago

I am having some difficulty figuring out what is the point of this piece. Buchanan seems to support the cause of populism, nationalism, and traditionalism, while at the same time pointing out that the champions are imprisoning, oppressing, and killing innocents. Yay? Buchanan also seems to take at face value Putin's supposed analysis of the West to a Western journalist. Buchanan might wonder what Putin the Nationalist thinks of Ukrainian nationalism, or Chechen nationalism.

Buchanan might also question Putin the Populist's fraudulent elections, murder of journalists, and propaganda machine. He might also wonder what Putin the Anti-liberal meant when he stated, in his speech at the opening of the largest mosque in Europe, "Right from its creation, Russia has always been a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country. This mutual enrichment of different cultures, traditions and religions has always been our country's distinguishing feature and strength."

For those of you who would like to read Putin's speech, which could have just as easily been delivered by Obama (just change the word "Russia" for "America"), here is the link:
http://en.kremlin.ru/events...

peter mcloughlin • 3 days ago

Patrick J Buchanan is right when he says about Russia: "We have a common interest in avoiding a war with this nuclear-armed nation " But I would respectfully disagree that the Cold War was a "far more menacing" time. The Cold War was the peace, a post-world war environment: we now live in a pre-world war environment. Humanity has experienced long periods of peace (or relative peace) throughout history. The Thirty Years Peace between the two Peloponnesian Wars, Pax Romana, Europe in the 19th century after the Congress of Vienna, to name a few. The Congress System finally collapsed in 1914 with the start of World War One. That conflict was followed by the League of Nations. It did not stop World War Two.

That was followed by the United Nations and other post-war institutions. But all the indications are they will not prevent a third world war.
https://www.ghostsofhistory...

JEinCA • 2 days ago

Of course Vladimir Putin is right on the money as he has been about many other things but he's been vilified and demonized in the Western media to the point that even if an average Westerner (much less a politician) agrees with him they will never admit as such in public.

Nelson • 2 days ago

Conservatives should move to Russia where they can be happy and content.

tweets21 • 2 days ago

The west cannot allow themselves to ever admit, Putin is a very experienced well informed individual.

Luther Perez • 2 days ago

"In the modern world, the decision is up to the woman herself," Russia's president said in his annual marathon press conference on Wednesday, which ran to just shy of four hours. Any attempt to suppress it, he added, would only push the practice underground, causing immense damage to women's health.

Putin also cautioned against tightening the country's historically liberal laws on abortion any further, saying that any decision on future regulation "must be careful, considered and based on the general mood in society and the moral and ethical norms that have developed in society."

[Jul 01, 2019] NYT is totally subservant to MIC and intelligence agencies and it shows

Notable quotes:
"... Somehow, I think Kevin's being too generous saying NY Times is moderate when it comes to political views. IMO, reactionary is more appropriate given its editorial stances and what it's championed over its history. ..."
Jul 01, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Jun 30, 2019 6:33:24 PM | 54

Interesting observation of NY Times attitude after first D-Party debate noted by Kevin Gosztola:

"'Moderates' seems to be the New York Times media company's euphemism for itself. Liberals at the Democratic presidential debate made the Times company 'anxious.'"

Somehow, I think Kevin's being too generous saying NY Times is moderate when it comes to political views. IMO, reactionary is more appropriate given its editorial stances and what it's championed over its history.

[Jul 01, 2019] NYT is totally subservant to MIC and intelligence agencies and it shows

Notable quotes:
"... Somehow, I think Kevin's being too generous saying NY Times is moderate when it comes to political views. IMO, reactionary is more appropriate given its editorial stances and what it's championed over its history. ..."
Jul 01, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Jun 30, 2019 6:33:24 PM | 54

Interesting observation of NY Times attitude after first D-Party debate noted by Kevin Gosztola:

"'Moderates' seems to be the New York Times media company's euphemism for itself. Liberals at the Democratic presidential debate made the Times company 'anxious.'"

Somehow, I think Kevin's being too generous saying NY Times is moderate when it comes to political views. IMO, reactionary is more appropriate given its editorial stances and what it's championed over its history.

[Jul 01, 2019] Putin: I hope that sanity will prevail in the end

Notable quotes:
"... "Question: Mr President, you have given an extensive overview of different topics. A short time after you last met with Donald Trump, the Americans introduced new sanctions against Russia. Could you tell if you received some reassurances from Donald Trump that no new sanctions will follow this time, or do you think sanctions may be imposed again? Or are you confident that there will no more sanctions? ..."
"... "Vladimir Putin: I have no idea. This is not our business; it is up to the United States to think about how they should build relations with Russia. I think we have mutual understanding that we should somehow get out of the situation that has emerged so far. But this is the same as with our colleagues and partners from the UK. It is an abnormal situation, it must be simply rectified; we must somehow find the strength to turn the page, to move on and to look to the future. It is the same in relations with the United States. ..."
"... "Let me reiterate, I meet with US businesspeople, including at the St Petersburg Economic Forum. 550 people went there. They want to work. That means jobs, that means goals the President of the United State is trying to achieve. I actually said in that interview that after the globalisation processes led to such big growth of the world economy, even the middle class in the United States felt they were left behind. While large corporation made huge profits, their management got a lot of advantages as did their partners, the middle class did not, not very much. Wages remained the same, and the standard of living began to grow a little. Jobs are needed and conditions to raise real incomes of US citizens. To achieve that they need to expand cooperation and work with everyone, including Russia. ..."
"... "They restricted the operation of their companies in the Russian market. We made calculations across some European countries, and it really amounts to lost profits. Cutting exports (our imports are their exports) amounts to tens of billions of euros. That means jobs, either job cuts or jobs that were not created. The same applies to the United States. I hope that sanity will prevail in the end." ..."
"... That is a polite way of saying that sanity is not prevailing at the moment. Putin pointing out that there is nothing Russia can do about the current relationship between the US and Russia leaves no illusions as to who the insane party is. It is not within Russia's power to make America sane. There are no magic words they can utter to fix what ails the US. ..."
"... Globalization is simply a neoliberal economic substitute for colonialism. ..."
"... Neoliberals contrary to popular opinion do not believe in self-regulating markets as autonomous entities. They do not see democracy as necessary for capitalism. ..."
"... The neoliberal globalist world is not a borderless market without nations but a doubled world (economic -global and social- national) . The global economic world is kept safe from democratic national demands for social justice and equality, and in return each nation enjoys cultural freedom. ..."
"... Neoliberals see democracy as a real problem. Democracy means the unwashed masses can threaten the so called market economy (in fact manipulated and protected markets) with worker demands for living wages and equality and consumer demands for competitive pricing and safe products. Controlling both parties with money prevents that. ..."
"... In fact, neoliberal thinking is comparable to that of John Maynard Keynes in one respect : "the market does not and cannot take care of itself". ..."
"... Neoliberals insulate the markets by providing safe harbor for capital, free from fear of infringement by policies of progressive taxation or redistribution. They do this by redesigning government, laws, and other institutions to protect the market. ..."
"... For example the stock market is propped up by the Feds purchases of futures, replacing the plunge protection teams intervention at an even more extreme level. Manipulation of economic statistics by the BLS also serve a similar purpose. ..."
"... What you described is precisely a symptom of falling profitability. Financialisation, for example, only increases when the "real economy" is not profiting enough anymore. ..."
"... "If you try to understand how so many jobs have disappeared, the answer that you come up with over and over again in the data is that it's not trade that caused that -- it's primarily technology," Eighty percent of lost jobs were not replaced by workers in China, but by machines and automation. That is the first problem if you slap on tariffs. What you discover is that American companies are likely to replace its more expensive workers with machines." ..."
"... More evidence for Marx's Law: the USA was a victim of its own success, not of its own failures, nor because of alien enemies. ..."
Jul 01, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Jun 30, 2019 4:46:37 PM | 39

In case there are others aside from myself interested in the G-20 outcomes, here are a few links to what IMO's important. Go here to get the links to the three main documents G-20 produced: "G20 Osaka Leaders Declaration," "Osaka declaration on digital economy," and "G20 Osaka leaders' statement on preventing exploitation of the internet for terrorism and violent extremism conductive to terrorism (VECT)." Pepe Escobar's recap . Transcript of Putin's post G20 news conference.

I hoped when I added the presser link to the Putin interview thread and hinted there were connections between them that another line of analysis would develop, but it seems participants were way to immersed/invested in the liberalism debate to bother.

From the press conference, I'd like to point-out one of the Q&As related to the illegal sanctions regime, economic development and how they interact with Trump's 2016 Campaign Pledges as we begin the 2020 election cycle:

"Question: Mr President, you have given an extensive overview of different topics. A short time after you last met with Donald Trump, the Americans introduced new sanctions against Russia. Could you tell if you received some reassurances from Donald Trump that no new sanctions will follow this time, or do you think sanctions may be imposed again? Or are you confident that there will no more sanctions?

"Vladimir Putin: I have no idea. This is not our business; it is up to the United States to think about how they should build relations with Russia. I think we have mutual understanding that we should somehow get out of the situation that has emerged so far. But this is the same as with our colleagues and partners from the UK. It is an abnormal situation, it must be simply rectified; we must somehow find the strength to turn the page, to move on and to look to the future. It is the same in relations with the United States.

"I told you that we reasserted our wish to support the business community's proposal regarding tools for the support of business initiatives. But it shows that the incumbent Administration has intentions to somehow continue with this abnormal situation. I spoke about our trade with the United States and with some other partners. Obviously, $25 billion in trade does not meet our interests and does not reflect our potential.

"That is why I have no idea if they will do anything or not. At any rate, one thing is sure – we are not going to ask for anything. No means no. And if there is interest, we will respond in kind and will do everything we can to turn the situation around.

"Let me reiterate, I meet with US businesspeople, including at the St Petersburg Economic Forum. 550 people went there. They want to work. That means jobs, that means goals the President of the United State is trying to achieve. I actually said in that interview that after the globalisation processes led to such big growth of the world economy, even the middle class in the United States felt they were left behind. While large corporation made huge profits, their management got a lot of advantages as did their partners, the middle class did not, not very much. Wages remained the same, and the standard of living began to grow a little. Jobs are needed and conditions to raise real incomes of US citizens. To achieve that they need to expand cooperation and work with everyone, including Russia.

"They restricted the operation of their companies in the Russian market. We made calculations across some European countries, and it really amounts to lost profits. Cutting exports (our imports are their exports) amounts to tens of billions of euros. That means jobs, either job cuts or jobs that were not created. The same applies to the United States. I hope that sanity will prevail in the end."

It appears that Trump needs to end his Trade and Sanctions Wars (although all the illegal sanctions aren't his doing) in order to bolster his reelection chances. The questions are, Will the sanction hawks like Mnuchin try to impede such a policy change since it seems to be required for domestic politics and How will D-Party candidates treat the issue, particularly as several are hooked on Russiagate Koolaid?

And do please note the question about the interview at the end, Putin's answer and how he put in within the context of the G20!

William Gruff , Jun 30, 2019 5:32:28 PM | 45

Great quote of Putin by karlof1 @39. That final sentence says much, though:

"I hope that sanity will prevail in the end"

That is a polite way of saying that sanity is not prevailing at the moment. Putin pointing out that there is nothing Russia can do about the current relationship between the US and Russia leaves no illusions as to who the insane party is. It is not within Russia's power to make America sane. There are no magic words they can utter to fix what ails the US.

William Gruff , Jun 30, 2019 8:47:27 PM | 82
A minor correction to dh-mtl @59 where it was claimed "[The globalists] lost power from the mid-1930s to 1980."

The globalists were never actually out of power in the US. Instead they were confronted with a massive upsurge in radical organized labor that threatened to remove them from power. The globalists had to make very significant concessions to buy time for that labor uprising to subside. That happened to take almost half a century, but throughout that period the globalists retained power, though in a somewhat weakened form. They are back at full strength now

Other than that dh-mtl's analysis seems accurate.

dh-mtl , Jun 30, 2019 9:13:22 PM | 86
donkeytale | Jun 30, 2019 8:14:48 PM | 79 says:

'But to say any one nation "produced" the current global market economic system is a bit like saying Yahweh created all the heavens and the earth in 6 days.'

I never suggested that 'one nation' produced this global system.

What I was suggesting is that perhaps the financial elites who benefit from, as you describe it, a 'financial system created by and for the wealthiest elites wherever they may call home', and who controlled Reagan and Clinton and W and Obama, Blair and Cameron and Macron and Merkel and Aznar in Spain, etc., etc., and hundreds of MEPs in the European parliament, and who created the U.S. Deep State, control virtually all of western main-stream media, and who place their people in control of institutions such as the World Bank, and IMF, and UN and WTO and BIS, and who decide the fate of the world every year at Davos and the Bilderberg conference, might have had something the do with creating the laws and treaties that created that system.

This sounds like a pretty effective political system to me, though definitely not democratic.

karlof1 , Jul 1 2019 4:06 utc | 104
pretzelattack @100--

Carter agreed to appoint Volker in order to save the bondholders by destroying the domestic economy with interest rates over 20% which is what actually cost him the 1980 election. In 1978, McNamara was sent off to the World Bank to work in tandem with IMF to begin the imposition of the euphemized Structural Adjustment Programs--the globalized version of Neoliberalism.

dh-mtl , Jul 1 2019 4:08 utc | 105
donkeytale | Jun 30, 2019 9:51:00 PM | 90 says:

'the Trump-nationalists and Brexiteers do not offer an effective solution to problem of wealth inequality which is your complaint'.


Wealth inequality is not my complaint. My point is that 'dictatorship', whether it be in the hands of 'wealthy global elites', military or other, cannot achieve acceptable outcomes for a large, complex, modern society, and that excessive wealth inequality is a sure indicator of dictatorship.

The Trump-nationalists and Brexiteers may not have an effective solution. But they are convinced that what has been going on in their societies over the past 30 plus years has definitely not worked for them either. My analysis is that they are trying to return to the conditions in which the outcomes were much better for them.

My own conviction is that acceptable outcomes for a society can only be achieved when the political leaders are working on behalf of the society as a whole, rather than for a narrow privileged group, and especially a group that has little or no allegiance to the nation-state, whose boundaries define the society.

When the political leaders are truly working on behalf of the population as a whole, there is a wide variety of policy options that can work. Trial and error over time will ensure that the policy options that are most appropriate for a particular society and its circumstances will eventually emerge.

Pft , Jul 1 2019 5:38 utc | 114

Globalization is simply a neoliberal economic substitute for colonialism.

Neoliberals contrary to popular opinion do not believe in self-regulating markets as autonomous entities. They do not see democracy as necessary for capitalism.

The neoliberal globalist world is not a borderless market without nations but a doubled world (economic -global and social- national) . The global economic world is kept safe from democratic national demands for social justice and equality, and in return each nation enjoys cultural freedom.

Neoliberals see democracy as a real problem. Democracy means the unwashed masses can threaten the so called market economy (in fact manipulated and protected markets) with worker demands for living wages and equality and consumer demands for competitive pricing and safe products. Controlling both parties with money prevents that.

In fact, neoliberal thinking is comparable to that of John Maynard Keynes in one respect : "the market does not and cannot take care of itself".

The neoliberal project did not liberate markets so much as protect them by protecting capitalism against the threat of democracy and to reorder the world where borders provide a captive market

Neoliberals insulate the markets by providing safe harbor for capital, free from fear of infringement by policies of progressive taxation or redistribution. They do this by redesigning government, laws, and other institutions to protect the market.

For example the stock market is propped up by the Feds purchases of futures, replacing the plunge protection teams intervention at an even more extreme level. Manipulation of economic statistics by the BLS also serve a similar purpose.

Another example is getting government to accept monopoly capitalism over competitive capitalism and have appointed judges who believe illegal collusion is nothing more than understandable and legal "conscious parallelism"

... ... ...

vk , Jul 1 2019 12:54 utc | 132
@ Posted by: Lochearn | Jun 30, 2019 9:33:07 PM | 89

What you described is precisely a symptom of falling profitability. Financialisation, for example, only increases when the "real economy" is not profiting enough anymore.

It's important to highlight that the tendency of the profit rate to fall doesn't necessarily means a company is losing money, but just that the profit rate is secularly decreasing. Since it's a tendency, it also doesn't mean this fall happens linearly: capital still operates in cycles. However, over the long term, profit rates will fall, no matter what.

vk , Jul 1 2019 13:22 utc | 135
About the deindustrialization process in the USA since the 1970s:

The G20 and the cold war in technology

The biggest reason Trump can't bring back home these manufacturing jobs is because they have been lost in large part to the success of 'efficiency' in the US Over the past three-and-a-half decades, manufacturers have shed more than seven million jobs while producing more stuff than ever. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reported in The Manufacturing Footprint and the Importance of U.S. Manufacturing Jobs that

"If you try to understand how so many jobs have disappeared, the answer that you come up with over and over again in the data is that it's not trade that caused that -- it's primarily technology," Eighty percent of lost jobs were not replaced by workers in China, but by machines and automation. That is the first problem if you slap on tariffs. What you discover is that American companies are likely to replace its more expensive workers with machines."

More evidence for Marx's Law: the USA was a victim of its own success, not of its own failures, nor because of alien enemies.

gzon , Jul 1 2019 21:32 utc | 168

Karlof 156 cont.

When we speak of unadulterated capitalism and capital, we start with the most basic capital we have, our hands. If I go and LABOUR by planting a tree and caring for it, the fruit I consider mine. I might give those away at choice, or exchange them for something else of value. That something eventually became known as money, a commonly recognised unit, it's strength being that it could not be replicated, and its worth accepted in a wider market by others. The fruit of a persons labour was transmitted to descendants and family in tradition, in a society that respected that tradition. The whole process is very very personal, including where extended business starts appearing.

Now, you want me to both accept taxation, where to not compete is a losing proposition, and to accept that finance is able to conjure up replica money using that taxation as basis, with which I have to compete with own earnings that are steadily purposefully diluted - I take it very very very personally. What are you going to offer me, subsidy from the pooled value now under your control ? Because it is a social and "fair" management of reality ? Communism and socialism do not work, they remove the most natural good incentives a person can have to actually go out and achieve anything, they dull what are otherwise lively common understandings, they diminish societies that otherwise have open appreciation for the effort of others. They try to own those, and they end up as dictatorships to try to impose an own ideological dream. The same can be said of crony capitalism, which approaches fascism.

That is why I subscribe to minarchic classical liberal notions of organisation, with hard money and transparency of finance, as compromise. You know Iran and Saudi are gold backed, don't you. You can figure out from that part of what is going on, maybe.

[Jun 30, 2019] USG's Bizarre Change of Position in the Roger Stone Case by Larry C Johnson

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Given these facts you would think it would be easy for Robert Mueller to explain how the Russians got their hands on the DNC emails and then passed them on to Wikileaks. But it is not easy because the foundation of the case against the Russians rests on assumptions and beliefs. No solid facts. ..."
"... To reiterate a point I have raised in previous posts, the only entity to have forensic access to the DNC computers, i.e. CrowdStrike, is on the record in the person of the CrowdStrike CEO, Dimitri Alperovitch admitting they don't know how the Russians got access. ..."
"... CrowdStrike is not sure how the hackers got in. The firm suspects they may have targeted DNC employees with "spearphishing" emails. These are communications that appear legitimate -- often made to look like they came from a colleague or someone trusted -- but that contain links or attachments that when clicked on deploy malicious software that enables a hacker to gain access to a computer. " But we don't have hard evidence ," Alperovitch said. ..."
"... If CrowdStrike actually had conducted a legitimate forensic examination of the DNC server/servers then they absolutely would have had "hard evidence." ..."
"... The government produced the CrowdStrike reports because the Indictment in this case referenced, as background, CrowdStrike's statements about the DNC hack. Stone's statement that the government has no other evidence is not only irrelevant to this proceeding but is also mistaken. ..."
"... It is a horrible irony that Stone is being persecuted with prosecution based on an even bigger lie -- i.e., the Russians hacked the DNC. Russia did not hack the DNC. Let's hope that Stone's lawyers get a chance to demand the US Government put up the evidence or shut up. ..."
Jun 30, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

There is zero forensic evidence in the public arena that supports the US Government's assertion that the Russian Government hacked the DNC. In fact, the forensic computer evidence that is available indicates that the emails from the DNC were downloaded onto something like a thumb drive.

There also is zero forensic evidence in the public arena that the Russians passed/delivered the DNC emails to Julian Assange/Wikileaks. There are only two ways to get DNC emails into the hands of Wiki people--an electronic transfer or a physical/human transfer. That's it.

And here is what we know for certain. First, since Edward Snowden absconded with the NSA's family jewels with the help of Wikileaks, U.S. and British intelligence assets have been monitoring every single electronic communication to and from Wikileaks/Julian Assange. They also have been conducting surveillance on all personal contacts with Assange and other key members of the Wikileaks staff.

Given these facts you would think it would be easy for Robert Mueller to explain how the Russians got their hands on the DNC emails and then passed them on to Wikileaks. But it is not easy because the foundation of the case against the Russians rests on assumptions and beliefs. No solid facts.

To reiterate a point I have raised in previous posts, the only entity to have forensic access to the DNC computers, i.e. CrowdStrike, is on the record in the person of the CrowdStrike CEO, Dimitri Alperovitch admitting they don't know how the Russians got access. Alperovitch told Washington Post Reporter Ellen Nakashima on June 14, 2016 the following :

CrowdStrike is not sure how the hackers got in. The firm suspects they may have targeted DNC employees with "spearphishing" emails. These are communications that appear legitimate -- often made to look like they came from a colleague or someone trusted -- but that contain links or attachments that when clicked on deploy malicious software that enables a hacker to gain access to a computer. " But we don't have hard evidence ," Alperovitch said.

If CrowdStrike actually had conducted a legitimate forensic examination of the DNC server/servers then they absolutely would have had "hard evidence."

Then, 13 months later, we have FBI Director Jim Comey admitting that the FBI relied on CrowdStrike for its "evidence." Jim Comey testified to the House Intelligence Committee in March 2017 and stated the following :

"we never got direct access to the machines themselves. The DNC in the spring of 2016 hired a firm that ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system."

Now take a look at a very significant reversal of the US Government's position in the case against Roger Stone. On 20 June 2019, US Attorney Jessie Liu filed a motion attempting to rebut the argument presented by Stone's attorneys that there was no supporting evidence for the claim that Russia hacked the DNC. Here are the key snippets from her filing:

As the government has argued (Doc. 122, at 6, 9, 14), Russia's role in the DNC hack is not material to the eighteen findings of probable cause that Stone appears to be challenging. . . . The government produced the CrowdStrike reports because the Indictment in this case referenced, as background, CrowdStrike's statements about the DNC hack. Stone's statement that the government has no other evidence is not only irrelevant to this proceeding but is also mistaken.

Yet, when you read the original indictment, Roger Stone was put in the cross hairs because he was allegedly communicating with Wikileaks/Julian Assange about the DNC emails. And those emails are identified in the indictment as "stolen." The Government is hoping to nail Stone on the charge of "lying" to Congress. Good luck with that.

It is a horrible irony that Stone is being persecuted with prosecution based on an even bigger lie -- i.e., the Russians hacked the DNC. Russia did not hack the DNC. Let's hope that Stone's lawyers get a chance to demand the US Government put up the evidence or shut up.

[Jun 30, 2019] Adam Schiff -- The Left Wing of the Hawk by John Kiriakou

Probably more accurate would be the left wing of the MICV
Notable quotes:
"... He may be a fake progressive, but he is a genuine Zionist. ..."
"... Schiff's description of Iran is one of the best examples of the cosmically hypocritical US technique of projecting its own (criminally unfavorable) description onto others. ..."
"... " xxxxxx is a thoroughly malign actor, a cause of deep instability in the region, a profound contributor to the violence and misery in Yemen, and one of the most dangerous regimes in the world. . it is also a state sponsor of terror. The threat it poses is real." ..."
"... "No responsibility of government is more fundamental than the responsibility of maintaining the highest standard of ethical behavior for those who conduct the public business." ~ President John F. Kennedy ..."
"... Exactly. That word–like "American Exceptionalism" – has always seemed nothing more than a verbal gimmick meant to slip one past the listener, the way "freedom and democracy" are routinely used to justify any manner of moral atrocities. All these examples are undoubtedly found in the American Newspeak Dictionary, available for perusal only by members of the Inner Party. ..."
"... Schiff represents the left wing of the pro-Israel Lobby in the United States. Schiff's stated positions reflect the "special relationship" between the Israel and the U.S. military-industrial complex. ..."
"... Schiff is every bit as much a pro-Israel "tool" as Bolton, Pompeo, and Trump, not to mention Hilary Rodham Clinton. ..."
"... "The U.S.-Israel special relationship is rooted in preferential arms trade agreements as a way to subsidize the U.S. military industry and reinforce support for Israeli colonialism. This special relationship is locked into an arms trade cycle where both the Israeli and American elite class benefits, at the expense of the indigenous population. ..."
"... Schiff is also a likely Zionist, as opposed to just being an American Jew. The ideology of Zionism is to provide 100% support for any activity, worldwide, that provides support for the State of Israel over that of an individual irrespective of whether it involves human rights, international law or war crimes. ..."
"... Schiff plays the media well because the level of intellectual debate has been brought to the lowest level ..."
"... There is a precedent: Joe McCarthy, who also became an anti-Russian demagogue out of opportunism, was taken seriously by Irving Kristol at the CIA-funded Encounter Magazine. A shame that the media and political classes appear to have learned nothing. ..."
"... I would only add that Schiff – akin to very many in Congress and elsewhere throughout the corridors of power and in both (so-called) parties – is beloved by AIPAC-Israel. Indeed I would suggest that underlying his deep antagonism to Iran lies his pro-Zionist affiliations. I don't doubt that that antagonism also derives from the American sentiments toward 1979 and oil, but his support for Zionism and Israel is at least an equal cause of his hatred of Iran as the former. ..."
"... Being the chairman of the Intelligence Committee Schiff either gets the straight stuff from the spooks and then twists it to deceive the American public, or he is directly fed bushwah by the spooks, believes it and dutifully passes it on to you. But there is no way that his dangerous assertions and demands are accurate or in the best interests of anyone but those entrenched in the Washington power structure. ..."
"... Schiff is projecting: "[The US] is a thoroughly malign actor, a cause of deep instability in the region, a profound contributor to the violence and misery in Yemen, and one of the most dangerous regimes in the world. Through the [Pentagon and CIA] and its proxies, it is also a state sponsor of terror. The threat it poses is real." ..."
"... Let's face it, America's government is run by organized criminals (otherwise known as wealthy businessmen) in it to milk the system for all its worth and they pay goons like Schiff to lie, cheat and steal at their behest. The con should be well understood by just about anyone with an IQ above room temperature. ..."
"... Constantly provoke and demonize the other major powers on our planet, stage a few false flag incidents in which innocent civilians are killed or injured and much property is destroyed, invade and attack their allies either directly with American troops or by proxy and then loudly and incessantly blame the other side for creating the mess. Dominate the American air waves with propaganda supporting the charade and shut off all access to the truth or any other version of actual events because the same organized criminals also hold a monopoly on the media. Finally claim the only remedy is to send out more carrier task forces, to station more missile batteries on Russia's borders and to build billions of dollars worth of new weapons, much of which America strong arms its putative "allies" to purchase. (With friends like us our vassals don't need enemies.) ..."
Jun 30, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, is as big a hawk as any member of the Trump administration, says John Kirikaou.

Neoliberal, fake progressive Rep. Adam Schiff (D-C) showed his true colors yet again last week. He said in response to President Donald Trump's saber-rattling and threats to attack Iran that,

" Iran is a thoroughly malign actor, a cause of deep instability in the region, a profound contributor to the violence and misery in Yemen, and one of the most dangerous regimes in the world. Through the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and its proxies, it is also a state sponsor of terror. The threat it poses is real."

That certainly wasn't the position of the Obama Administration. Schiff instead has decided to jump into the Trump foreign policy with both feet. He's made similar threatening statements about Venezuela and China, too.

Let's look at this one issue at a time. First, Schiff is the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. That's the committee that's supposed to oversee the CIA and other intelligence services, but which acts more as a clubhouse for CIA cheerleaders.

Schiff has watched Trump tear up the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA; he's watched the U.S. send additional troops to the Middle East to step up pressure on Teheran; he's watched war-lovers John Bolton, national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, promise in public to violate international law by attacking Iran. Schiff has also watched a naked U.S. coup attempt in Venezuela.

And what is his response? It's to tell us, "I've read classified documents. If you've seen what I've seen you would want to attack Iran too. You would want to overthrow Venezuela too. Just take my word for it." Thanks, but no thanks. I know from first-hand experience how much the CIA lies. I don't believe a word they say.

Second, Schiff has indeed maintained just as hard a line on Venezuela as he has on Iran. Just two months ago, he called President Nicolas Maduro an "authoritarian" and a " disastrous dictator ," and said he, Schiff, "stands with the opposition in calling for free and fair elections and the restoration of democracy. Maduro must refrain from escalating the situation through violence, which will only further the suffering of the Venezuelan people."

What the esteemed chairman decided to utterly ignore was the fact that Venezuela had free and fair elections that the opposition boycotted in order to try to delegitimize them; Venezuela already is a functioning democracy; and it was actually the Trump Administration and the self-appointed "president," Juan Guaidó, who resorted to violence by initiating a coup attempt against Maduro that failed. Schiff is either dangerously misinformed here or he's a tool of Bolton's foreign policy.

Dangerous China

Third, Schiff is as staunchly anti-China as any Republican hawk. In a recent on-the-record talk before the Council on Foreign Relations , he said,

" China's a very dangerous and influential part of that (antidemocratic) trend. It's certainly true that, you know, Russia has been undermining democracies in Europe and elsewhere. But China has been undermining democracy in a very different way. China's been undermining democracy in a -- in a powerful, technological way, with the promulgation of these so-called safe cities and the safe-city technology where CCTV cameras are ubiquitous. And Chinese citizens now are facially recognized by the software in these cameras. That ties into a database that includes information about their social scores, their credit history, their use of social media. It is big brother come to life. And this is obviously not only a grave threat to the freedom and privacy of the Chinese people and their ability to associate or communicate their freedom, but it also -- to the degree that China is now exporting this technology to other authoritarian countries -- allows them to perpetuate their autocratic rule. And this, under the masquerade of safety and security."

The funny thing is that Schiff never bothered to mention that it is actually the UK that is the most surveilled country in the world, with London having more CCTV cameras than any city, anywhere, in any period of human history. He never brought up the fact that China, in its entire history, has never promoted an imperialist foreign policy, like the U.S. and U.K. It doesn't invade other countries, like the U.S. and U.K. It doesn't interfere in foreign elections, like the U.S., U.K., Russia, and others. But the position does say a lot about Schiff. It says that he doesn't care about facts, relying instead on pseudo-patriotic stereotypes. Remember, this guy is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

If there was any doubt at all that Schiff is in the grip of the military-industrial complex, one doesn't have to rely just on his stated positions on Iran, Venezuela, and China to make the situation any clearer. Just take a look at his donors . The defense contractors love him. Northrop Grumman ($16,217), SAIC ($11,005), Lockheed Martin ($10,298), Boeing ($10,208), Honeywell ($10,025), Raytheon ($7,040), and General Dynamics ($7,038) are all among his major donors.

The sad truth, though, is that we're stuck with him. Schiff represents Hollywood, California in the House. He usually runs unopposed, and when he does have opposition, he wins with more than 75 percent every time. Another sad truth is that this is the Democratic Party of 2019. Its leadership is neoliberal. It's interventionist. It ensures that, come election time, none of us has a real choice.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act -- a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.

If you enjoyed this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.

<img src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/plugins/pdf-print/images/pdf.png" alt="image_pdf" title="View PDF" /> <img src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/plugins/pdf-print/images/print.png" alt="image_print" title="Print Content" /> 10741

Tags: Adam Schiff China Iran John Kiriakou Venezuela

ranney , June 29, 2019 at 17:32

Thanks John, for the heads up. I have never liked Schiff; I always thought he seemed smarmy, but the MSM loves him. Yet try as I would to like him, I just couldn't. So thank you for telling me why my gut feeling was accurate. Your list of military industrial donors is enough to give a thinking person reason enough to start wondering who he is. It also makes one wonder once again about the MSM who so wholeheartedly praise him.

vinnieoh , June 29, 2019 at 15:06

But he's so sweet and cuddwy! Like a caricature of a caricature of a caricature. Who doesn't believe him?! Born to be a liar, er I mean, a politician.

Put that POS in fatigues and an empty parachute on his back and kick him out of the plane! It wasn't lost on me at least that his district is Hollywood, CA. Are there any humans there or just more caricatures? Sorry, couldn't resist that cheap and all-to-easy shot.

SteveK9 , June 29, 2019 at 13:27

He may be a fake progressive, but he is a genuine Zionist.

John Puma , June 29, 2019 at 05:08

Schiff's description of Iran is one of the best examples of the cosmically hypocritical US technique of projecting its own (criminally unfavorable) description onto others.

The quote follows but put sensitive electronics safely out of the way of likely projectile vomiting:

" xxxxxx is a thoroughly malign actor, a cause of deep instability in the region, a profound contributor to the violence and misery in Yemen, and one of the most dangerous regimes in the world. . it is also a state sponsor of terror. The threat it poses is real."

Zhu , June 29, 2019 at 01:07

Ds and Rs are the left and right wings of the hawk. Both have waged constant warfare for the whole of my lifetime

Fran Macadam , June 29, 2019 at 03:14

It's hard to further parody what's already absurd. Schiff himself is a caricature of his type, the leftist warmonger with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Arby , June 28, 2019 at 23:29

"The funny thing is that Schiff never bothered to mention that it is actually the UK that is the most surveilled country in the world, with London having more CCTV cameras than any city, anywhere, in any period of human history." It blows me away that John Kiriakou would brush off China's terrifying social credit system this way. And it has nothing to do with the fact that Londoners are crazily surveilled in public (a bad thing). Does the UK use a social credit system? (Maybe it does things that are tantamount to that, Still ) Only the US empire is rampaging all around the planet, which it acts as though it owns. But that doesn't mean that the Corporatocracy States that the US leads don't do their own imperialism. (Canada certainly does. Read Todd Gordon't "Imperialist Canada.") I don't believe for a minute that Russia and China don't do some limited imperialism. That's because those are not righteous actors. They are just far less powerful than the US and have to step carefully because, although less powerful than the US, the US ruling class sees those (relatively powerful) powers as being rivals, within the globe-straddling Corporatocracy, for dominance.

This dark world's operating principle, or organizing principle (heartily embraced by neoconservatives) is: Riches For The Strongest. That 'strongest', not 'second strongest'.

https://www.corbettreport.com/sesame-credit-chinas-creepy-new-social-engineering-experiment/

Billy Halgat , June 28, 2019 at 23:16

"No responsibility of government is more fundamental than the responsibility of maintaining the highest standard of ethical behavior for those who conduct the public business." ~ President John F. Kennedy

"Let them see what they've done." ~Mrs. Jacqueline B. Kennedy

KiwiAntz , June 28, 2019 at 19:41

Adam Shiff(ty) is just another "Pay for Play" crooked American Politician with his hand out like a Mafia don, waiting for his tribute payment from his Corporate Masters? Be they Republicans or Democrats, this immoral, Corporatised, Privatised Political System masquerading as a Democracy & its corrupt Politicians epitomises Cronyism in its purest form? Public service? What a joke? Its personal enrichment service not Public service by these crooks who claim they serve the People?

LarcoMarco , June 29, 2019 at 00:40

Peace O'Schiff gets his (fake) progressive image the same way as Killery (and many "enlightened" corporate CEOs) do: by using Identity Politics to burnish his image and get the Love from the MIC and MSM.

quantumdrone , June 28, 2019 at 19:11

John Kiriakou is an honorable and insightful professional who knows the ways of the CIA better than almost anyone else. Yet, he is putting Russia on the same list with the US and UK when it comes to interference in other nations' elections. Too much credit!

We know thanks to Snowden's revelations that the CIA can attribute all kinds of malware to any enemy of its choosing, but it didn't even demonstrate any such "finds" to prove Russian interference.

All we were presented with is some obscure Petersburg-based internet farm, which posted some lame political material in 2016-2018 on the world-wide-web. Correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I know nobody volunteered any specific evidence that these postings were done to advance any particular candidate, or that they had any other intentions other than click-baiting, or that they were posted on the orders of Russian government officials.

Randall Clark , June 28, 2019 at 17:25

Adam Schiff is unbelievable, in all ways and is a prime candidate for term limits. Who watchdogs him and his cronies?f

DH Fabian , June 28, 2019 at 19:37

Tragically, he is a standard post-Clinton Democrat.

Piotr Berman , June 28, 2019 at 20:14

Wikipedia: " Schiff had made 227 television appearances from January 2017 to February 2018, totaling over 26 hours of airtime.[62] Schiff logged 111 MSNBC appearances and 87 CNN appearances. In 2017, Schiff spoke on the House floor ten times for about 36 minutes total. "

Apparently, wannabe watchdog can watch Rep. Schiff for days too bad (or a blessing?) he is out of energy when back in the House.

Maria , June 28, 2019 at 16:59

Not only is he a hawk but he is also enamoured of censorship and virtual book burning, wanting the government (via social media– https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/congressman-posey-writes-mark-zuckerberg-weighing-in-on-the-facebook-censorship-debate/ ) to limit what information we are allowed to read, view, share. The man is dangerous in many ways.

Drew Hunkins , June 28, 2019 at 15:06

"He never brought up the fact that China, in its entire history, has never promoted an imperialist foreign policy, like the U.S. and U.K. It doesn't invade other countries, like the U.S. and U.K. It doesn't interfere in foreign elections, like the U.S., U.K., Russia, and others."

In an otherwise fine piece Kir fumbles the ball in succumbing to the group-think on the Kremlin interfering in the U.S. election. Nothing of the sort occurred. It's hardening into such orthodoxy that we now have Jimmy Carter asserting that Russia put Trump in the White House.

DeBlasio gets the biggest cheers of the night from the Maddow deluded audience on Wednesday when he declared that Russia's the biggest threat that America faces.

This is all outrageous madness and claptrap that must stop!

DH Fabian , June 28, 2019 at 19:40

Yes, but who needs facts when we have memes? That is the real tragedy of this era. When Democrats lose 2020, as they are certain to do (for several reasons that party loyalists steadfastly ignore), we're going to go through this all over again.

DW Bartoo , June 28, 2019 at 14:56

When members of Congress say, "If you knew what I know." They should be immediately asked. "Why don't we know? If what you claim to know, is sufficient to take the nation to war, then the people have every right to learn what it is you claim to know. Otherwise, you have to explain, and justify, why it remains "secret".

Now, of course I realize that both "the adults in the room" and the media mesmerized, will say, "It is secret for a reason."

"Okay, then what IS the reason?"

The point is, that for far too long, power has never been "truthed" sufficiently, either by the pitiful, compliant, complicit cheerleading "Fourth Estate" or, even more importantly and critically, BY the people. No wonder the public are treated like children, when they continue to behave as credulous children.

My appreciation, John, for your continuing exposure of idiots, thugs, buffoons, and murderous psychopaths.

DW

Skip Scott , June 28, 2019 at 16:25

Another thing the Oligarchy never explains is what it means by "National Security". They throw the word around endlessly without ever defining it. From their actions it apparently involves the USA being boss of the entire planet. It is another useful propaganda tool to discourage thought and manufacture consent.

LarcoMarco , June 29, 2019 at 00:50

"Pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, I hereby report that I have issued an Executive Order declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela." -- Barack Obomber

Realist , June 29, 2019 at 16:20

Exactly. That word–like "American Exceptionalism" – has always seemed nothing more than a verbal gimmick meant to slip one past the listener, the way "freedom and democracy" are routinely used to justify any manner of moral atrocities. All these examples are undoubtedly found in the American Newspeak Dictionary, available for perusal only by members of the Inner Party.

Mark Redhorse , June 28, 2019 at 14:45

Love how you remove my comments because I called the author a moron, and the article a hack job full of the author's opinion and not fact. Also love how the commentators call the neo leftists in their parties conservatives because they see them for the idiots they are and god forbid they be connected to their out of control party. The real sickness in this country is people who blindly follow a party that thrives on the misery of it's constituents, and propagates open borders and encourages people to enter this country illegally, then when they can use the death of a man and his daughter as fodder for a reason to claim this country needs no borders only to push their "control" agenda is straight bs. Wake the hell up, the democratic party is dead the rise of the socialist party is here. As for you that don't see iran for the enemy it is, I say talk to the families of those held as hostages and murdered back in the70's and 80's and see what they have to say. P.S. ; Jimmy Carter was and still is a moron.

Abe , June 28, 2019 at 14:44

"Why exactly does the US government go to war with so many of Israel's enemies? Why has the US destroyed Iraq and half of Syria? The costs were enormous, the results horrible, the rewards imperceptible. The Iraq war not an outlier; it was the second in a long series of US invasions, bombings and destructions of majority-Muslim states. It's still going on now, with Israel the only obvious beneficiary. How does this happen? Is the Israel lobby that powerful, and even if it is, why has the rest of the US establishment gone along?

"The explanation lies in the MIC and a deeply sinister marriage that has grown between them and Israel. Israel's wars have become major parts of the MIC's business plan. Every bomb Israel drops; every missile the US fires, every Muslim country the US invades makes money for the MIC. Israel receives over $3 billion in military aid from Washington every year. Most of this money immediately returns to US military corporations to buy weapons. They're partners. [ ]

"The alliance is now lying the US into attacking Syria and Iran, along with Venezuela, using the same strategy used in Iraq, demonizing a country's rulers and grossly underestimating the difficulties. After Iran, perhaps Russia? The corporate media present whatever pro-war forces say as facts. No matter how many times their predictions turn out absurdly wrong or their facts are exposed as lies, they keep being hired as commentators, experts, or pundits on corporate media platforms including NPR and PBS. This is true for retired Generals as well as Zionist intellectuals.

"Their linked goals of American world dominance, Israeli regional dominance, and MIC profits are moving ahead. The US military and the IDF hold joint military maneuvers. Each new American administration deepens US connection with and support for Israel and its wars. The neocon playbook for regime change is being applied in Latin America as well. What will it take to stop them?"

A Match Made in Hell: Israel and the Military Industrial Complex
By David Spero Rn
https://medium.com/@davidsperorn/a-match-made-in-hell-israel-and-the-military-industrial-complex-34c9d76b789c

JWalters , June 28, 2019 at 18:20

Excellent points. Here's a fascinating analysis of the financial relationship between Israel and the U.S., by former financial investigator Jake Morphonios. (It's a scam.)
"The Perfect Explanation of How the War Industry Works"
https://www.bitchute.com/video/tYJpzNrSsQY/

Note: Morphonios is such a good investigator that he is being savaged on YouTube in an effort to discredit him.

Abe , June 28, 2019 at 14:35

Schiff represents the left wing of the pro-Israel Lobby in the United States. Schiff's stated positions reflect the "special relationship" between the Israel and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Schiff is every bit as much a pro-Israel "tool" as Bolton, Pompeo, and Trump, not to mention Hilary Rodham Clinton.

The "funny thing" that Kirikaou and all these other veteran intelligence professional never bother to mention:

"The U.S.-Israel special relationship is rooted in preferential arms trade agreements as a way to subsidize the U.S. military industry and reinforce support for Israeli colonialism. This special relationship is locked into an arms trade cycle where both the Israeli and American elite class benefits, at the expense of the indigenous population.

"The U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over occupied territories provides a boost for Israeli colonialism."

https://thedefensepost.com/2019/04/09/us-israel-arms-sales-opinion/

LaFollette , June 28, 2019 at 14:28

While at interesting article, the esteemed Mr. Kirakou failed to provide any evidence for one point. That Schiff is in anyway "left" or "progressive". Of course to me, Hillary and Obama slandered the term "progressive" away from any real meaning. They redefined "progressive" as to be people in the banker's employ who love to kill people and maintain kill list. The word progressive came back into popular use when the Clintons and the DLC slandered the word "liberal" into uselessness by also redefining it as people in the banker's employ who love to kill people.

I do know that in all the times I've ever seen Schiff's name in the news, nothing about him or his positions has ever struck me as anything to do with progressive, and I wouldn't even put him into the general category of "Left-of-Reagan", which these days is of course a minority among Democrats, and exceedingly rare among Democratic leaders.

Skip Scott , June 28, 2019 at 14:47

It is part and parcel of propaganda to hijack the meaning of words. "Progressive" has been hijacked. "Democracy" has been hijacked. It is one of the tricks they use to keep people from thinking.

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

Robert Wortman , June 28, 2019 at 13:50

Schiff is also a likely Zionist, as opposed to just being an American Jew. The ideology of Zionism is to provide 100% support for any activity, worldwide, that provides support for the State of Israel over that of an individual irrespective of whether it involves human rights, international law or war crimes.

Kevin Eubanks , June 28, 2019 at 13:47

I commend you for the clarity, power, and timelines of this piece! In this era of neo-fascism and proto-totalitarianism that we are suffering, it's important, imo, to be reminded what the Democratic party has become in recent decades!

Anne Jaclard , June 28, 2019 at 13:34

Schiff plays the media well because the level of intellectual debate has been brought to the lowest level.

Any praise or concern for the "liberal rules-based international order" or condemnation of "authoritarianism" is seen as Serious Thinking, which is why the New York Review of Books, at one time in its history a journal of serious thought that supported the the New Left and put instructions for a Molotov on its cover, actually had a Daily Beast writer as one of their print contributors praise Schiff. They're so gullible and stupid I almost don't blame him for taking advantage of the grift the way he did. He's not very intelligent, any other person with a similar lack of morality could have done the same thing.

There is a precedent: Joe McCarthy, who also became an anti-Russian demagogue out of opportunism, was taken seriously by Irving Kristol at the CIA-funded Encounter Magazine. A shame that the media and political classes appear to have learned nothing.

O Society , June 28, 2019 at 13:21

There has *not* been a left wing in American politics since Ronald Reagan took office back in '80-something. Bill Clinton and his minions are all right-wing politicians. Yes, Obama and HillBillary and Joe Biden too.

https://osociety.org/2018/10/01/the-left/

We need a left wing party and an anti-war administration in America before the wheels fall off the wagon completely. Duh!

https://osociety.org/2019/01/04/a-candidate-doesnt-deserve-our-trust-unless-they-are-anti-empire/

Alex Marthews , June 28, 2019 at 13:17

Check out Schiff's latest shenanigans over NSA reform https://restorethe4th.com/nsa-reform-blocked-by-schiff-pelosi-again/

Marlitt Arnouville , June 28, 2019 at 13:17

After his performance on the Russian collusion theory, and all the threats with contempt of court, it's hard to believe anything he rattles on about

Richard Burt , June 28, 2019 at 13:05

Thank you very much for writing this illuminating article on Schiff. You have added very forcefully, if sadly, to a history of a time when neoliberals and neoconservatives joined forces with the military industrial corporate media infotainment complex, the only difference being over who was the more hawkish party.

Donald Turner , June 28, 2019 at 12:51

well said, John!

grateful for a sane voice in this bad theater, we call the us government. bad scripted neoliberal theater.

The RNC and DNC, like the corporate state media, equally, mere illusions, projections of force: the force of global generational wealth and power.

The Mont Pelerin Society's (Austria 1940's) favorite "economist" F. v Hayek proposed path of "liberty" and "freedom" [only for the inbred 1% (Neoliberalism)] (Friedman, Buchanan, "Chicago School", were later disciples)

1) Deregulate global financial markets – DONE
2) Deregulate global trade – DONE
3) Create the illusion and urgency of national bankruptcy with fake (fiat) debt (thereby neuter a nation's capability to enforce laws – eliminate the people's ability to defend against being overwhelmed and consumed by the 1%) – DONE

then lastly, the kill shot:
4) Privatize Everything. recreate us ALL as permanent rent payers of even the most basic necessities of life (Air, water, food, shelter). – Almost COMPLETE

#PrivatizationIsTheft – privatization today is STRICTLY about prioritizing money away from the commons and general welfare and giving it to the inbred 1% rent-seeking parasites (Extreme Redistribution of wealth from the people TO the Billionaires, NOTHING for the people)

the use of "liberal" in this context, describes the "liberal" (freely used, as one would "liberally" spread butter on toast) projection of any and all force available to maintain, enhance, and grow, a condition of monopolized wealth and power, in the hands of a small group of generational feudal lords.

Ml , June 28, 2019 at 21:54

Donald Turner, thank you for a concise and cogent comment on the grand scale theft from the common man and woman. You nailed it.

rosemerry , June 28, 2019 at 12:50

It is hard for a foreigner to understand how such a warped, wicked, disastrous liar can be elected by sane citizens and actually get to head any "intelligence" group in a modern country (I cannot pretend to believe the USA is a democracy). Evey word he says is full of venom and hatred, none of it is true.

The only disagreement I have is with John's inclusion of Russia as interfering in others' elections.

Zhu , June 29, 2019 at 01:34

Russiagate is as fictional and stupid as Birthergate or Flat Earth belief.

David Otness , June 28, 2019 at 15:13

Well. rosemerry, any nation worth its salt has at least some stake in hoping to influence other nations in their interests.

The fact the Dems went hog-wild in promoting this conflated Red-Scare scenario to the extent they did does not mean there were not efforts expended by Russia, but relative to Israel and likely (formerly) Great Britain? And how many others? Statecraft such as it is, such as all nations practice it.

The U.S. has been running unipolar wild and so much more egregiously in toppling governments for so long now has bred a haughty and tragically undeserved contempt for Russia, and our "Exceptionalism" so touted incessantly that in our advanced state of *perfection* (as per propagandized perception) and as self-appointed purveyors of democracy er, neoliberal capitalism, it's little wonder the masses fell to the assault of the msm upon our nation's collective 'senses' such as it has proven to be. And of course, shitbirds like Schiff are ever-opportunists and indeed it does deflect attention from Israel, his pet like so many others of his ilk in Congress.

For Clinton Inc and the DNC had to keep their narrative aflame and hysteria propped up as it fit both Hillary's butt-hurt excuse-making and the neoliberal/neocon long range plan of continuing the 100 year ongoing attempt to bring first the USSR and then Russia down for its multiple treasures of resources. Wall Street and British 'lebensraum,' as it were. After all, they started WW II for that purpose by financing and propping up the Nazis in the 30s and into the 40s.

But since Obama and the neocon wing of the Dem party re-invented the Cold War -- following in the footsteps of the previous Presidents going back to GHWBush/James Baker's blatant double-cross as articulated by Bill Clinton's, 'W's', then Obama's NATO-Go-East policy, I fear the American public has slid right back into being so easily fear-mongered and overbrimming with falsely-held notions of self-righteousness that even minor, 'normal' foreign actorship was turned into "This is war! by idiots from Rob Reiner to Gimme a break–Morgan Freeman!

And along with the WaPo, NYT and every other "Putin! Russia!"snot rag came that pompous blowhard Keith Olbermann and Rrrrrrachel being the highly-paid reinforcing embalming fluid for the American mind.

I didn't mean to run off the tracks here, but my point is, John is right, it's how it's played. But only "we" can do it anywhere near as grossly as we have up until now. And I think Trump's little cheap shot to Putin in Japan was essentially meaningless and of course, a political currying of opportunism in itself.
All told, the Dems have done the world a great disservice by their antics, but hey -- like their Republican counterparts, it's mostly about them as long as they keep getting elected. But this time the Dems have gone way out of bounds. Indeed, pushing up against a nuclear nightmare.

David Otness , June 28, 2019 at 17:10

It appears what Trump's comment was as I first heard it was out of context as I first heard it on CBC early this morning:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/450817-trump-flashes-a-grin-tells-putin-not-to-meddle-in-us-election-during?fbclid=IwAR2Ete1LTZx0N2cHGRDvJZfP6bnOts6goJEQsAZM8DYWo524T_WIW2IOBLs

quantumdrone , June 28, 2019 at 19:31

What citizens? John just explained that Schiff runs unopposed, so he is in even only 5 dead cats show up to vote for him. He is elected by MIC and AIPAC.

AnneR , June 28, 2019 at 12:26

Thank you, Mr Kiriakou, for this timely reminder about the realities of the individual members of the ruling elites. While here you focus on the allegiances of single Congressman, he is representative of the majority in his profound neo-liberalism, warmongering – lusting even, MIC comradeship.

I would only add that Schiff – akin to very many in Congress and elsewhere throughout the corridors of power and in both (so-called) parties – is beloved by AIPAC-Israel. Indeed I would suggest that underlying his deep antagonism to Iran lies his pro-Zionist affiliations. I don't doubt that that antagonism also derives from the American sentiments toward 1979 and oil, but his support for Zionism and Israel is at least an equal cause of his hatred of Iran as the former.

And one might posit that the Iran business is not unrelated – at this precise moment in time – to China and its BRI.

JimG , June 28, 2019 at 12:08

Wow! well said, short and too the point. The democratic party and corporate media will never allow the public to choose a non interventionist anti imperialist leader. That is American democracy. As the biosphere collapses the last card of the power structure will be world war. I hope I have the courage to join the group stopping this future.

Earnest , June 28, 2019 at 12:03

Schiff's Military Industrial trash mouth sounds more like John McCain every day with one exception, he Schiff had no credibility at anything!

John Hawk , June 28, 2019 at 12:02

Schiff and his ilk are all owned not only by the MIC, but also by the terrorist state of Israel. Is Schiff a duali?

Glennn , June 28, 2019 at 11:20

Great article about an extremely dangerous man who personifies the degradation of the Democratic Party. Another betrayal from Shiff was encouraging the social networking sites to censor alternative health sites as well as anyone challenging pharma lies about their horrible products. Hopefully someone will mount a powerful challenge against him in the next election.

Realist , June 28, 2019 at 15:58

Being the chairman of the Intelligence Committee Schiff either gets the straight stuff from the spooks and then twists it to deceive the American public, or he is directly fed bushwah by the spooks, believes it and dutifully passes it on to you. But there is no way that his dangerous assertions and demands are accurate or in the best interests of anyone but those entrenched in the Washington power structure.

I want to see his head on a pike, among plenty of others, when the people finally storm the Capitol Building to topple the oligarchy. He seems to take a special glee in shafting the people and usurping their rights. He's in the club with every fascist in DC, whether identifying as a Dem or a GOPer. I vote the full Najibullah treatment for Mr. Schiff. He's earned it.

Skip Scott , June 28, 2019 at 14:35

Rand Paul and Tulsi Gabbard are at least non-interventionist. That's all I can think of. Kucinich when he was around.

vinnieoh , June 29, 2019 at 14:41

Here in Ohio ours was gerrymandered out of office. Dennis Kucinich.

Terry Judge , June 28, 2019 at 09:27

Surveillance I think surveillance is great I wish I had more cameras on my farm to find out where all my belongings have gone to.
America needs more cameras just like the UK If you're doing nothing wrong what are you afraid of

AnneR , June 28, 2019 at 12:34

Ah, the old (mindless) riposte: "if you've nothing to hide, why are you afraid of the government watching you?"

Are you absolutely certain that you have *never* broken even the most minor of laws? (Or minor so far as you are concerned?)

So far as I know I've not broken any laws – however, I have NO interest, wish, desire to have government in *any* of its guises monitoring me and my behavior, actions, life. And my late husband was the same. Nor did we want corporate capitalists doing it either – adblockers, the more the merrier and so on.

In the UK it isn't the farmers (agri-business these days – very few "farmers") with CCTV all over the shop, it's the government and its forces of so-called "law and order." They're the ones watching you.

WHO is watching the watchers?????

vinnieoh , June 29, 2019 at 14:49

Just as importantly AnneR (and you're comments are great) is who is deciding what is "wrong." And when constitutionally protected – nay, guaranteed – rights become wrongs. When will the dictates of the Sultan of Oman become the new normal? The social credit scheme in China is just an intermediate measure.

Skip Scott , June 28, 2019 at 09:10

It is all too believable in this day and age that someone so obviously beholden to the MIC serves on a committee charged with overseeing our "Intelligence" agencies. "Industry capture" strikes again. The FDA allows dangerous drugs into the market, the FAA allows planes to crash due to lack of oversight, the EPA is toothless against continued air and water pollution, and on and on. Corruption has become so rampant it is the norm.

Washington DC is a cesspool. The rest of the country would be better off if it were removed from the map.

Bob Van Noy , June 28, 2019 at 11:08

"Washington DC is a cesspool. The rest of the country would be better off if it were removed from the map."

Sadly, true, Skip Scott And we, as members of a post-Democracy, are left with sorting out the motivation of each member of our new non-democracy's body politic. Adam Shiff is a particularly odious such member, but at least he"s transparent enough to instantly recognize. It is the more practiced members that are truly harmful. It will probably be necessary to break the whole dysfunctional system?

As always thanks to John Kiriakou and Consortiumnews for highlighting Adam Shiff, in the cesspool

Sally Snyder , June 28, 2019 at 08:07

Here is an article that looks at one key incident in Iranian history that the Western media seems to have conveniently forgotten:

https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/06/irans-forgotten-history-why-iran-must.html

Iran knows that it stands alone when it comes to protecting itself from Washington.

Stephen Morrell , June 28, 2019 at 06:08

Schiff is projecting: "[The US] is a thoroughly malign actor, a cause of deep instability in the region, a profound contributor to the violence and misery in Yemen, and one of the most dangerous regimes in the world. Through the [Pentagon and CIA] and its proxies, it is also a state sponsor of terror. The threat it poses is real."

Schiff's from the party of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so it's all OK.

AnneR , June 28, 2019 at 12:41

Absolutely right on Stephen Morrell. I would only add the party also of: the Gulf of Tonkin and deepening the war against Vietnam, destroying Yugoslavia and Libya, the murderous economic sanctions against Iraq, economic warfare against Venezuela, North Korea (they certainly have never done anything to alleviate that, nor to end the Korean War). And I'm sure that one could go on The USA is a rogue terror state – one with far too much global power.

Realist , June 28, 2019 at 04:05

Let's face it, America's government is run by organized criminals (otherwise known as wealthy businessmen) in it to milk the system for all its worth and they pay goons like Schiff to lie, cheat and steal at their behest. The con should be well understood by just about anyone with an IQ above room temperature.

Constantly provoke and demonize the other major powers on our planet, stage a few false flag incidents in which innocent civilians are killed or injured and much property is destroyed, invade and attack their allies either directly with American troops or by proxy and then loudly and incessantly blame the other side for creating the mess. Dominate the American air waves with propaganda supporting the charade and shut off all access to the truth or any other version of actual events because the same organized criminals also hold a monopoly on the media. Finally claim the only remedy is to send out more carrier task forces, to station more missile batteries on Russia's borders and to build billions of dollars worth of new weapons, much of which America strong arms its putative "allies" to purchase. (With friends like us our vassals don't need enemies.)

Schiff is but one cog in a large elaborate mechanism composed of many such goons. If he were run over in traffic tomorrow his replacement would be mouthing the same lies on the House floor within hours. This system is not going to be broken by defeating these assholes individually in "fair" elections. They are going to have to crash and burn as the organized mafia they represent, sort of like La Cosa Nostra did fifty years ago. (Actually, the Scicilian mob probably had more integrity than these guys and gals do.) It will take either a vast scandal that envelopes most of these scoundrels, or they will be forced to take the blame when their catastrophic policies either crash the economy or finally administer the major defeat the military so richly deserves. Is it any wonder that the likes of Hillary Clinton rose to the top of an organization made up of moral wretches like Schiff. That's never to say that the likes of McConnell and McCain were ever paragons of virtue either.

What may make this impossible even if every member of Congress is as dirty as a grazed cow pasture is who is empowered to investigate these guys? Probably only fellow congress critters. Sometimes we would see a single miscreant exposed and excoriated by the group. (Adam Clayton Powell anyone with a memory?) Sometimes we used to see the Dems and GOPers taking pot shots at the other side's pecadilloes without really sanctioning them (Wilbur Mills in the Tidal Basin anyone?) You never see that anymore. Robert Menendez as filthy as sin doesn't even get a cross look from his colleagues. The two parties are so in cahoots they will never investigate one of their own or from the other side of the aisle. The only way this swamp gets drained is pursuant to a failed economy or a military route.

Curious , June 28, 2019 at 02:46

John,

To take a narrow point of your good article around what 'Schiffty' says I might add something which I haven't seen often repeated. Forget the mass news, they are now a version of sheep about to become lemmings, but let me quote something about Venezuela which is often overlooked.
_________________________________________________________
Here I quote our ex-president Carter who spent a lot of time looking at elections in other countries over the years.
Quote: Former US President Jimmy Carter claimed Venezuela's electoral system is "the best in the world" (agencies).

Mérida, 21st September 2012 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Former US President Jimmy Carter has declared that Venezuela's electoral system is the best in the world.

Speaking at an annual event last week in Atlanta for his Carter Centre foundation, the politician-turned philanthropist stated,

"As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world."

Venezuela has developed a fully automated touch-screen voting system, which now uses thumbprint recognition technology and prints off a receipt to confirm voters' choices.
______________________________________________________________________
This is much more of an advanced system than even the US citadel on the hill boasting of "Democracy". I know the CIA lies and Schaffer's is no exception, but how does one take Carters' view of the best system I the world and turn it around to a dictator with nothing to do with democracy except for the person 80% of the country had never heard about declaring himself president, when he wasn't even on the election ballot to begin with. Just because of oil?
Lies I understand, but Bolton and Pompous can get away from hard facts proven since 2012 and no one seems to question them. I continue to be baffled at the arrogance combined with sheer falsehoods in a world where the internet was supposed to educate people rather than narrow their thinking down to garbage beliefs.
Surly the 'enlightenment' of the net has become a myth, especially when the paper editors continue the lies. It's all very troubling.

rosemerry , June 28, 2019 at 13:58

I suppose nobody in the US establishment would consider that the Brazilian election, which also took place last year, deserved any sort of mention, although it was obvious to fair observers that the whole thing was completely corrupt, and the people in Brazil are now rising up in huge numbers against the draconian measures now being taken by the "elected government" which is supported, of course, by Trump and Netanyahu. Venezuela is targeted because the population is generally supporting and supported by the elected government. This will never do for the USA, Dems or Repugs.

[Jun 30, 2019] New York Times exploits Parkland tragedy to escalate anti-Russian campaign by Andre Damon

Feb 21, 2018 | www.wsws.org

Less than four days after the Parkland school shooting, the New York Times has found a way to turn a national tragedy that claimed the lives of 17 high school students into an opportunity to escalate its unrelenting campaign of anti-Russian propaganda, involving the continuous bombardment of the public with reactionary lies and warmongering.

Against the backdrop of a major escalation of military tensions between the two countries, the Times seized upon the Justice Department indictment of Russian nationals over the weekend to claim that Russia is at "war" with the United States. Now, the Times has widened this claim into an argument that Russia somehow bears responsibility for social divisions over the latest mass shooting in America.

Its lead headline Tuesday morning blared: "SHOTS ARE FIRED, AND BOTS SWARM TO SOCIAL DIVIDES - Florida School Shooting Draws an Army Ready to Spread Discord"

According to the Times , Russian "bots," or automated social media accounts, sought "to widen the divide" on issues of gun control and mental illness, in order to "make compromise even more difficult." Russia sought to exploit "the issue of mental illness in the gun control debate," and "propagated the notion that Nikolas Cruz, the suspected gunman" was "mentally ill."

The absurd claim that Russia is responsible for the existence of social divisions in America is belied by the shooting itself, which is a testament to the fact that American society is riven by antagonisms that express themselves, in the absence of a progressive outlet, in outpourings of mass violence.

The aim of this campaign is to target anyone who would criticize the underlying social causes of the shooting -- the violence of American society, the nonexistence of mental health services, or even the social psychology that gives rise to mass shootings -- as a "Russian agent" seeking to "sow divisions" in American society.

The Times lead is based entirely on a "dashboard" called Hamilton 68 created by the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy, whose lead spokesman is Clint Watts, the former US intelligence agent and censorship advocate who declared in November that social media companies must "silence" sources of "rebellion."

Without naming any of the accounts it follows, Hamilton 68 claims to track content tweeted by "Russian bots and trolls." But most of the trends leading the dashboard are news stories, many posted by Russia Today and Sputnik News , that are identical with the trending topics followed by any other news agency. Thus, Hamilton 68 provides an instant New York Times headline generator: Any major news story can be presented as the result of "Russian bots."

The New York Times is making its claims about "Russian meddling" with what is known in the law as "unclean hands." That is, the Times practices the very actions of which it accuses others.

Here is not the place to deal with the long and bloody history of American destabilization campaigns and their horrific consequences in Latin America and the Middle East, or to review the fact that many American journalists serving abroad had dual functions -- as reporters and as agents.

But it is worth noting that, particularly in recent decades, and under the auspices of Editorial Page editor James Bennet, there has been a remarkable integration of the Times with the major operations of the US intelligence agencies.

This is particularly true with regard to Russia, in regard to which the Times acts as an instrument of US foreign policy misinformation, practicing exactly what it accuse the Kremlin of.

Take, for example, the so-called political "dissident" Aleksei Navalny. This proponent of extreme nationalism and xenophobia, with deep ties to Russia's fascistic right, and extensive connections to US intelligence agencies, has been championed by the Times as the voice of social dissent in Russia. Despite his miniscule support within Russia, Navalny's activities generate front-page headlines in the Times , which has mentioned him in over 400 separate articles.

Another example is the Times ' promotion of the "feminist" rock band Pussy Riot, which makes a habit of getting themselves arrested by taking their clothes off in Russian Orthodox churches, and whose fate the Times holds up as a horrific example of Russian oppression. The very name "Pussy Riot," which in typical usage is not even translated into Russian, expresses the fact that this operation aims to influence American, and not Russian, public opinion.

In 2014, the Times met with members of Pussy Riot at their editorial offices, and have since extensively promoted the group, having mentioned it in over 400 articles. The term "anti-Putin opposition" is mentioned in another 600 articles.

The logic of the Times ' campaign was expressed most clearly by its columnist Thomas Friedman, the personification of the pundit as state intelligence mouthpiece whose career was aptly summed up in a biography titled Imperial Messenger . In a column published on February 18 ("Whatever Trump is Hiding is Hurting All of US Now"), Friedman declares a "code red" threat to the integrity of American democracy.

"At a time when the special prosecutor Robert Mueller -- leveraging several years of intelligence gathering by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. -- has brought indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups -- all linked in some way to the Kremlin -- for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections," Friedman writes, "America needs a president who will lead our nation's defense against this attack on the integrity of our electoral democracy."

This "defense," according to Friedman, would include "bring[ing] together our intelligence and military experts to mount an effective offense against Putin -- the best defense of all." In other words, war.

The task of all war propaganda is to divert internal social tensions outwards, and the Times ' campaign is no different. Its aim is to take the anger that millions of people feel at a society riven by social inequality, mass alienation, police violence, and endless war, and pin it on some shady foreign adversary.

The New York Times ' claims of Russian "meddling" in the Parkland shooting set the tone for even more hysterical coverage in the broadcast evening news. NBC News cited Jonathan Morgan, another collaborator on the Hamilton 68 project, who declared that Russia is "really interested in sowing discord amongst Americans. That way we're not focused on putting a unified front out to foreign adversaries."

The goal of the ruling class and its media accomplices is to put on "a unified front" through the suppression of social opposition within the United States. Along these Lines, NBC added, "Researchers tell us it's not just Russia deploying these attacks on social media," adding "many small independent groups are trying to divide Americans and create chaos."

Who are these "small independent groups" seeking to "create chaos"? By this, they no doubt mean any news or political organization that dares question the official line that everything is fine in America, and that argues that the horrendous levels of violence that pervade American society are somehow related to social inequality and the wars supported and justified by the entire US political establishment.

It is worth noting that these claims were made on the same day that Fox News ran a story alleging that Michael Moore, the director of Bowling for Columbine , a film that related the 1999 Columbine High School massacre to US wars abroad, had attended an anti-Trump demonstration allegedly set up by Russia.

As the World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly warned, the targets of this campaign are left-wing, antiwar and progressive web sites, political organizations, and news outlets, and, by extension, the freedom of the press and freedom of expression of the entire American public. In the name of providing a "unified front" to "foreign adversaries," the conditions are being created for the criminalization and banning of political dissent.

Andre Damon

[Jun 30, 2019] Barak and CIA

Jun 30, 2019 | dissidentvoice.org

You have probably seen the bumper sticker that says: "Shit Happens." Some people are just lucky, I suppose, and odd coincidences mark their lives.

When he was just out of Columbia College and working for a reputed CIA front company, Business International Corporation, Barack Obama had a chance encounter with a young woman, Genevieve Cook, with whom he had a 1-2 year relationship.

Like Obama and at about the same time, Cook just happened to have lived in Indonesia with her father, Michael Cook, who just happened to become Australia's top spook, the director-general of the Office of National Assessments, and also the Ambassador to Washington.

Of course, Obama's mother, as is well-known, just happened to be living in Indonesia with Barack and Obama's step-father, Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian military officer, who had been called back to Indonesia by the CIA supported General Suharto three months before the CIA coup against President Sukarno. Suharto subsequently slaughtered over a million Indonesian Communists and Indonesian-Chinese.

As is also well-known, it just so happened that Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, trained in the Russian language, after teaching English in the US Embassy in Jakarta that housed one of the largest CIA stations in Asia, did her "anthropological" work in Indonesia and Southeast Asia financed by the well-known CIA conduits, USAID and the Ford Foundation.

Then there is Cook's stepfather, Philip C. Jessup, who just happened to be in Indonesia at the same time, doing nickel-mining deals with the genocidal Suharto government.

Anyway, "shit happens." You never know whom you might meet along the way of life.

[Jun 30, 2019] Adam Schiff -- The Left Wing of the Hawk by John Kiriakou

Probably more accurate would be the left wing of the MICV
Notable quotes:
"... He may be a fake progressive, but he is a genuine Zionist. ..."
"... Schiff's description of Iran is one of the best examples of the cosmically hypocritical US technique of projecting its own (criminally unfavorable) description onto others. ..."
"... " xxxxxx is a thoroughly malign actor, a cause of deep instability in the region, a profound contributor to the violence and misery in Yemen, and one of the most dangerous regimes in the world. . it is also a state sponsor of terror. The threat it poses is real." ..."
"... "No responsibility of government is more fundamental than the responsibility of maintaining the highest standard of ethical behavior for those who conduct the public business." ~ President John F. Kennedy ..."
"... Exactly. That word–like "American Exceptionalism" – has always seemed nothing more than a verbal gimmick meant to slip one past the listener, the way "freedom and democracy" are routinely used to justify any manner of moral atrocities. All these examples are undoubtedly found in the American Newspeak Dictionary, available for perusal only by members of the Inner Party. ..."
"... Schiff represents the left wing of the pro-Israel Lobby in the United States. Schiff's stated positions reflect the "special relationship" between the Israel and the U.S. military-industrial complex. ..."
"... Schiff is every bit as much a pro-Israel "tool" as Bolton, Pompeo, and Trump, not to mention Hilary Rodham Clinton. ..."
"... "The U.S.-Israel special relationship is rooted in preferential arms trade agreements as a way to subsidize the U.S. military industry and reinforce support for Israeli colonialism. This special relationship is locked into an arms trade cycle where both the Israeli and American elite class benefits, at the expense of the indigenous population. ..."
"... Schiff is also a likely Zionist, as opposed to just being an American Jew. The ideology of Zionism is to provide 100% support for any activity, worldwide, that provides support for the State of Israel over that of an individual irrespective of whether it involves human rights, international law or war crimes. ..."
"... Schiff plays the media well because the level of intellectual debate has been brought to the lowest level ..."
"... There is a precedent: Joe McCarthy, who also became an anti-Russian demagogue out of opportunism, was taken seriously by Irving Kristol at the CIA-funded Encounter Magazine. A shame that the media and political classes appear to have learned nothing. ..."
"... I would only add that Schiff – akin to very many in Congress and elsewhere throughout the corridors of power and in both (so-called) parties – is beloved by AIPAC-Israel. Indeed I would suggest that underlying his deep antagonism to Iran lies his pro-Zionist affiliations. I don't doubt that that antagonism also derives from the American sentiments toward 1979 and oil, but his support for Zionism and Israel is at least an equal cause of his hatred of Iran as the former. ..."
"... Being the chairman of the Intelligence Committee Schiff either gets the straight stuff from the spooks and then twists it to deceive the American public, or he is directly fed bushwah by the spooks, believes it and dutifully passes it on to you. But there is no way that his dangerous assertions and demands are accurate or in the best interests of anyone but those entrenched in the Washington power structure. ..."
"... Schiff is projecting: "[The US] is a thoroughly malign actor, a cause of deep instability in the region, a profound contributor to the violence and misery in Yemen, and one of the most dangerous regimes in the world. Through the [Pentagon and CIA] and its proxies, it is also a state sponsor of terror. The threat it poses is real." ..."
"... Let's face it, America's government is run by organized criminals (otherwise known as wealthy businessmen) in it to milk the system for all its worth and they pay goons like Schiff to lie, cheat and steal at their behest. The con should be well understood by just about anyone with an IQ above room temperature. ..."
"... Constantly provoke and demonize the other major powers on our planet, stage a few false flag incidents in which innocent civilians are killed or injured and much property is destroyed, invade and attack their allies either directly with American troops or by proxy and then loudly and incessantly blame the other side for creating the mess. Dominate the American air waves with propaganda supporting the charade and shut off all access to the truth or any other version of actual events because the same organized criminals also hold a monopoly on the media. Finally claim the only remedy is to send out more carrier task forces, to station more missile batteries on Russia's borders and to build billions of dollars worth of new weapons, much of which America strong arms its putative "allies" to purchase. (With friends like us our vassals don't need enemies.) ..."
Jun 30, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, is as big a hawk as any member of the Trump administration, says John Kirikaou.

Neoliberal, fake progressive Rep. Adam Schiff (D-C) showed his true colors yet again last week. He said in response to President Donald Trump's saber-rattling and threats to attack Iran that,

" Iran is a thoroughly malign actor, a cause of deep instability in the region, a profound contributor to the violence and misery in Yemen, and one of the most dangerous regimes in the world. Through the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and its proxies, it is also a state sponsor of terror. The threat it poses is real."

That certainly wasn't the position of the Obama Administration. Schiff instead has decided to jump into the Trump foreign policy with both feet. He's made similar threatening statements about Venezuela and China, too.

Let's look at this one issue at a time. First, Schiff is the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. That's the committee that's supposed to oversee the CIA and other intelligence services, but which acts more as a clubhouse for CIA cheerleaders.

Schiff has watched Trump tear up the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA; he's watched the U.S. send additional troops to the Middle East to step up pressure on Teheran; he's watched war-lovers John Bolton, national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, promise in public to violate international law by attacking Iran. Schiff has also watched a naked U.S. coup attempt in Venezuela.

And what is his response? It's to tell us, "I've read classified documents. If you've seen what I've seen you would want to attack Iran too. You would want to overthrow Venezuela too. Just take my word for it." Thanks, but no thanks. I know from first-hand experience how much the CIA lies. I don't believe a word they say.

Second, Schiff has indeed maintained just as hard a line on Venezuela as he has on Iran. Just two months ago, he called President Nicolas Maduro an "authoritarian" and a " disastrous dictator ," and said he, Schiff, "stands with the opposition in calling for free and fair elections and the restoration of democracy. Maduro must refrain from escalating the situation through violence, which will only further the suffering of the Venezuelan people."

What the esteemed chairman decided to utterly ignore was the fact that Venezuela had free and fair elections that the opposition boycotted in order to try to delegitimize them; Venezuela already is a functioning democracy; and it was actually the Trump Administration and the self-appointed "president," Juan Guaidó, who resorted to violence by initiating a coup attempt against Maduro that failed. Schiff is either dangerously misinformed here or he's a tool of Bolton's foreign policy.

Dangerous China

Third, Schiff is as staunchly anti-China as any Republican hawk. In a recent on-the-record talk before the Council on Foreign Relations , he said,

" China's a very dangerous and influential part of that (antidemocratic) trend. It's certainly true that, you know, Russia has been undermining democracies in Europe and elsewhere. But China has been undermining democracy in a very different way. China's been undermining democracy in a -- in a powerful, technological way, with the promulgation of these so-called safe cities and the safe-city technology where CCTV cameras are ubiquitous. And Chinese citizens now are facially recognized by the software in these cameras. That ties into a database that includes information about their social scores, their credit history, their use of social media. It is big brother come to life. And this is obviously not only a grave threat to the freedom and privacy of the Chinese people and their ability to associate or communicate their freedom, but it also -- to the degree that China is now exporting this technology to other authoritarian countries -- allows them to perpetuate their autocratic rule. And this, under the masquerade of safety and security."

The funny thing is that Schiff never bothered to mention that it is actually the UK that is the most surveilled country in the world, with London having more CCTV cameras than any city, anywhere, in any period of human history. He never brought up the fact that China, in its entire history, has never promoted an imperialist foreign policy, like the U.S. and U.K. It doesn't invade other countries, like the U.S. and U.K. It doesn't interfere in foreign elections, like the U.S., U.K., Russia, and others. But the position does say a lot about Schiff. It says that he doesn't care about facts, relying instead on pseudo-patriotic stereotypes. Remember, this guy is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

If there was any doubt at all that Schiff is in the grip of the military-industrial complex, one doesn't have to rely just on his stated positions on Iran, Venezuela, and China to make the situation any clearer. Just take a look at his donors . The defense contractors love him. Northrop Grumman ($16,217), SAIC ($11,005), Lockheed Martin ($10,298), Boeing ($10,208), Honeywell ($10,025), Raytheon ($7,040), and General Dynamics ($7,038) are all among his major donors.

The sad truth, though, is that we're stuck with him. Schiff represents Hollywood, California in the House. He usually runs unopposed, and when he does have opposition, he wins with more than 75 percent every time. Another sad truth is that this is the Democratic Party of 2019. Its leadership is neoliberal. It's interventionist. It ensures that, come election time, none of us has a real choice.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act -- a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.

If you enjoyed this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.

<img src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/plugins/pdf-print/images/pdf.png" alt="image_pdf" title="View PDF" /> <img src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/plugins/pdf-print/images/print.png" alt="image_print" title="Print Content" /> 10741

Tags: Adam Schiff China Iran John Kiriakou Venezuela

ranney , June 29, 2019 at 17:32

Thanks John, for the heads up. I have never liked Schiff; I always thought he seemed smarmy, but the MSM loves him. Yet try as I would to like him, I just couldn't. So thank you for telling me why my gut feeling was accurate. Your list of military industrial donors is enough to give a thinking person reason enough to start wondering who he is. It also makes one wonder once again about the MSM who so wholeheartedly praise him.

vinnieoh , June 29, 2019 at 15:06

But he's so sweet and cuddwy! Like a caricature of a caricature of a caricature. Who doesn't believe him?! Born to be a liar, er I mean, a politician.

Put that POS in fatigues and an empty parachute on his back and kick him out of the plane! It wasn't lost on me at least that his district is Hollywood, CA. Are there any humans there or just more caricatures? Sorry, couldn't resist that cheap and all-to-easy shot.

SteveK9 , June 29, 2019 at 13:27

He may be a fake progressive, but he is a genuine Zionist.

John Puma , June 29, 2019 at 05:08

Schiff's description of Iran is one of the best examples of the cosmically hypocritical US technique of projecting its own (criminally unfavorable) description onto others.

The quote follows but put sensitive electronics safely out of the way of likely projectile vomiting:

" xxxxxx is a thoroughly malign actor, a cause of deep instability in the region, a profound contributor to the violence and misery in Yemen, and one of the most dangerous regimes in the world. . it is also a state sponsor of terror. The threat it poses is real."

Zhu , June 29, 2019 at 01:07

Ds and Rs are the left and right wings of the hawk. Both have waged constant warfare for the whole of my lifetime

Fran Macadam , June 29, 2019 at 03:14

It's hard to further parody what's already absurd. Schiff himself is a caricature of his type, the leftist warmonger with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Arby , June 28, 2019 at 23:29

"The funny thing is that Schiff never bothered to mention that it is actually the UK that is the most surveilled country in the world, with London having more CCTV cameras than any city, anywhere, in any period of human history." It blows me away that John Kiriakou would brush off China's terrifying social credit system this way. And it has nothing to do with the fact that Londoners are crazily surveilled in public (a bad thing). Does the UK use a social credit system? (Maybe it does things that are tantamount to that, Still ) Only the US empire is rampaging all around the planet, which it acts as though it owns. But that doesn't mean that the Corporatocracy States that the US leads don't do their own imperialism. (Canada certainly does. Read Todd Gordon't "Imperialist Canada.") I don't believe for a minute that Russia and China don't do some limited imperialism. That's because those are not righteous actors. They are just far less powerful than the US and have to step carefully because, although less powerful than the US, the US ruling class sees those (relatively powerful) powers as being rivals, within the globe-straddling Corporatocracy, for dominance.

This dark world's operating principle, or organizing principle (heartily embraced by neoconservatives) is: Riches For The Strongest. That 'strongest', not 'second strongest'.

https://www.corbettreport.com/sesame-credit-chinas-creepy-new-social-engineering-experiment/

Billy Halgat , June 28, 2019 at 23:16

"No responsibility of government is more fundamental than the responsibility of maintaining the highest standard of ethical behavior for those who conduct the public business." ~ President John F. Kennedy

"Let them see what they've done." ~Mrs. Jacqueline B. Kennedy

KiwiAntz , June 28, 2019 at 19:41

Adam Shiff(ty) is just another "Pay for Play" crooked American Politician with his hand out like a Mafia don, waiting for his tribute payment from his Corporate Masters? Be they Republicans or Democrats, this immoral, Corporatised, Privatised Political System masquerading as a Democracy & its corrupt Politicians epitomises Cronyism in its purest form? Public service? What a joke? Its personal enrichment service not Public service by these crooks who claim they serve the People?

LarcoMarco , June 29, 2019 at 00:40

Peace O'Schiff gets his (fake) progressive image the same way as Killery (and many "enlightened" corporate CEOs) do: by using Identity Politics to burnish his image and get the Love from the MIC and MSM.

quantumdrone , June 28, 2019 at 19:11

John Kiriakou is an honorable and insightful professional who knows the ways of the CIA better than almost anyone else. Yet, he is putting Russia on the same list with the US and UK when it comes to interference in other nations' elections. Too much credit!

We know thanks to Snowden's revelations that the CIA can attribute all kinds of malware to any enemy of its choosing, but it didn't even demonstrate any such "finds" to prove Russian interference.

All we were presented with is some obscure Petersburg-based internet farm, which posted some lame political material in 2016-2018 on the world-wide-web. Correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I know nobody volunteered any specific evidence that these postings were done to advance any particular candidate, or that they had any other intentions other than click-baiting, or that they were posted on the orders of Russian government officials.

Randall Clark , June 28, 2019 at 17:25

Adam Schiff is unbelievable, in all ways and is a prime candidate for term limits. Who watchdogs him and his cronies?f

DH Fabian , June 28, 2019 at 19:37

Tragically, he is a standard post-Clinton Democrat.

Piotr Berman , June 28, 2019 at 20:14

Wikipedia: " Schiff had made 227 television appearances from January 2017 to February 2018, totaling over 26 hours of airtime.[62] Schiff logged 111 MSNBC appearances and 87 CNN appearances. In 2017, Schiff spoke on the House floor ten times for about 36 minutes total. "

Apparently, wannabe watchdog can watch Rep. Schiff for days too bad (or a blessing?) he is out of energy when back in the House.

Maria , June 28, 2019 at 16:59

Not only is he a hawk but he is also enamoured of censorship and virtual book burning, wanting the government (via social media– https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/congressman-posey-writes-mark-zuckerberg-weighing-in-on-the-facebook-censorship-debate/ ) to limit what information we are allowed to read, view, share. The man is dangerous in many ways.

Drew Hunkins , June 28, 2019 at 15:06

"He never brought up the fact that China, in its entire history, has never promoted an imperialist foreign policy, like the U.S. and U.K. It doesn't invade other countries, like the U.S. and U.K. It doesn't interfere in foreign elections, like the U.S., U.K., Russia, and others."

In an otherwise fine piece Kir fumbles the ball in succumbing to the group-think on the Kremlin interfering in the U.S. election. Nothing of the sort occurred. It's hardening into such orthodoxy that we now have Jimmy Carter asserting that Russia put Trump in the White House.

DeBlasio gets the biggest cheers of the night from the Maddow deluded audience on Wednesday when he declared that Russia's the biggest threat that America faces.

This is all outrageous madness and claptrap that must stop!

DH Fabian , June 28, 2019 at 19:40

Yes, but who needs facts when we have memes? That is the real tragedy of this era. When Democrats lose 2020, as they are certain to do (for several reasons that party loyalists steadfastly ignore), we're going to go through this all over again.

DW Bartoo , June 28, 2019 at 14:56

When members of Congress say, "If you knew what I know." They should be immediately asked. "Why don't we know? If what you claim to know, is sufficient to take the nation to war, then the people have every right to learn what it is you claim to know. Otherwise, you have to explain, and justify, why it remains "secret".

Now, of course I realize that both "the adults in the room" and the media mesmerized, will say, "It is secret for a reason."

"Okay, then what IS the reason?"

The point is, that for far too long, power has never been "truthed" sufficiently, either by the pitiful, compliant, complicit cheerleading "Fourth Estate" or, even more importantly and critically, BY the people. No wonder the public are treated like children, when they continue to behave as credulous children.

My appreciation, John, for your continuing exposure of idiots, thugs, buffoons, and murderous psychopaths.

DW

Skip Scott , June 28, 2019 at 16:25

Another thing the Oligarchy never explains is what it means by "National Security". They throw the word around endlessly without ever defining it. From their actions it apparently involves the USA being boss of the entire planet. It is another useful propaganda tool to discourage thought and manufacture consent.

LarcoMarco , June 29, 2019 at 00:50

"Pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, I hereby report that I have issued an Executive Order declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela." -- Barack Obomber

Realist , June 29, 2019 at 16:20

Exactly. That word–like "American Exceptionalism" – has always seemed nothing more than a verbal gimmick meant to slip one past the listener, the way "freedom and democracy" are routinely used to justify any manner of moral atrocities. All these examples are undoubtedly found in the American Newspeak Dictionary, available for perusal only by members of the Inner Party.

Mark Redhorse , June 28, 2019 at 14:45

Love how you remove my comments because I called the author a moron, and the article a hack job full of the author's opinion and not fact. Also love how the commentators call the neo leftists in their parties conservatives because they see them for the idiots they are and god forbid they be connected to their out of control party. The real sickness in this country is people who blindly follow a party that thrives on the misery of it's constituents, and propagates open borders and encourages people to enter this country illegally, then when they can use the death of a man and his daughter as fodder for a reason to claim this country needs no borders only to push their "control" agenda is straight bs. Wake the hell up, the democratic party is dead the rise of the socialist party is here. As for you that don't see iran for the enemy it is, I say talk to the families of those held as hostages and murdered back in the70's and 80's and see what they have to say. P.S. ; Jimmy Carter was and still is a moron.

Abe , June 28, 2019 at 14:44

"Why exactly does the US government go to war with so many of Israel's enemies? Why has the US destroyed Iraq and half of Syria? The costs were enormous, the results horrible, the rewards imperceptible. The Iraq war not an outlier; it was the second in a long series of US invasions, bombings and destructions of majority-Muslim states. It's still going on now, with Israel the only obvious beneficiary. How does this happen? Is the Israel lobby that powerful, and even if it is, why has the rest of the US establishment gone along?

"The explanation lies in the MIC and a deeply sinister marriage that has grown between them and Israel. Israel's wars have become major parts of the MIC's business plan. Every bomb Israel drops; every missile the US fires, every Muslim country the US invades makes money for the MIC. Israel receives over $3 billion in military aid from Washington every year. Most of this money immediately returns to US military corporations to buy weapons. They're partners. [ ]

"The alliance is now lying the US into attacking Syria and Iran, along with Venezuela, using the same strategy used in Iraq, demonizing a country's rulers and grossly underestimating the difficulties. After Iran, perhaps Russia? The corporate media present whatever pro-war forces say as facts. No matter how many times their predictions turn out absurdly wrong or their facts are exposed as lies, they keep being hired as commentators, experts, or pundits on corporate media platforms including NPR and PBS. This is true for retired Generals as well as Zionist intellectuals.

"Their linked goals of American world dominance, Israeli regional dominance, and MIC profits are moving ahead. The US military and the IDF hold joint military maneuvers. Each new American administration deepens US connection with and support for Israel and its wars. The neocon playbook for regime change is being applied in Latin America as well. What will it take to stop them?"

A Match Made in Hell: Israel and the Military Industrial Complex
By David Spero Rn
https://medium.com/@davidsperorn/a-match-made-in-hell-israel-and-the-military-industrial-complex-34c9d76b789c

JWalters , June 28, 2019 at 18:20

Excellent points. Here's a fascinating analysis of the financial relationship between Israel and the U.S., by former financial investigator Jake Morphonios. (It's a scam.)
"The Perfect Explanation of How the War Industry Works"
https://www.bitchute.com/video/tYJpzNrSsQY/

Note: Morphonios is such a good investigator that he is being savaged on YouTube in an effort to discredit him.

Abe , June 28, 2019 at 14:35

Schiff represents the left wing of the pro-Israel Lobby in the United States. Schiff's stated positions reflect the "special relationship" between the Israel and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Schiff is every bit as much a pro-Israel "tool" as Bolton, Pompeo, and Trump, not to mention Hilary Rodham Clinton.

The "funny thing" that Kirikaou and all these other veteran intelligence professional never bother to mention:

"The U.S.-Israel special relationship is rooted in preferential arms trade agreements as a way to subsidize the U.S. military industry and reinforce support for Israeli colonialism. This special relationship is locked into an arms trade cycle where both the Israeli and American elite class benefits, at the expense of the indigenous population.

"The U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over occupied territories provides a boost for Israeli colonialism."

https://thedefensepost.com/2019/04/09/us-israel-arms-sales-opinion/

LaFollette , June 28, 2019 at 14:28

While at interesting article, the esteemed Mr. Kirakou failed to provide any evidence for one point. That Schiff is in anyway "left" or "progressive". Of course to me, Hillary and Obama slandered the term "progressive" away from any real meaning. They redefined "progressive" as to be people in the banker's employ who love to kill people and maintain kill list. The word progressive came back into popular use when the Clintons and the DLC slandered the word "liberal" into uselessness by also redefining it as people in the banker's employ who love to kill people.

I do know that in all the times I've ever seen Schiff's name in the news, nothing about him or his positions has ever struck me as anything to do with progressive, and I wouldn't even put him into the general category of "Left-of-Reagan", which these days is of course a minority among Democrats, and exceedingly rare among Democratic leaders.

Skip Scott , June 28, 2019 at 14:47

It is part and parcel of propaganda to hijack the meaning of words. "Progressive" has been hijacked. "Democracy" has been hijacked. It is one of the tricks they use to keep people from thinking.

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

Robert Wortman , June 28, 2019 at 13:50

Schiff is also a likely Zionist, as opposed to just being an American Jew. The ideology of Zionism is to provide 100% support for any activity, worldwide, that provides support for the State of Israel over that of an individual irrespective of whether it involves human rights, international law or war crimes.

Kevin Eubanks , June 28, 2019 at 13:47

I commend you for the clarity, power, and timelines of this piece! In this era of neo-fascism and proto-totalitarianism that we are suffering, it's important, imo, to be reminded what the Democratic party has become in recent decades!

Anne Jaclard , June 28, 2019 at 13:34

Schiff plays the media well because the level of intellectual debate has been brought to the lowest level.

Any praise or concern for the "liberal rules-based international order" or condemnation of "authoritarianism" is seen as Serious Thinking, which is why the New York Review of Books, at one time in its history a journal of serious thought that supported the the New Left and put instructions for a Molotov on its cover, actually had a Daily Beast writer as one of their print contributors praise Schiff. They're so gullible and stupid I almost don't blame him for taking advantage of the grift the way he did. He's not very intelligent, any other person with a similar lack of morality could have done the same thing.

There is a precedent: Joe McCarthy, who also became an anti-Russian demagogue out of opportunism, was taken seriously by Irving Kristol at the CIA-funded Encounter Magazine. A shame that the media and political classes appear to have learned nothing.

O Society , June 28, 2019 at 13:21

There has *not* been a left wing in American politics since Ronald Reagan took office back in '80-something. Bill Clinton and his minions are all right-wing politicians. Yes, Obama and HillBillary and Joe Biden too.

https://osociety.org/2018/10/01/the-left/

We need a left wing party and an anti-war administration in America before the wheels fall off the wagon completely. Duh!

https://osociety.org/2019/01/04/a-candidate-doesnt-deserve-our-trust-unless-they-are-anti-empire/

Alex Marthews , June 28, 2019 at 13:17

Check out Schiff's latest shenanigans over NSA reform https://restorethe4th.com/nsa-reform-blocked-by-schiff-pelosi-again/

Marlitt Arnouville , June 28, 2019 at 13:17

After his performance on the Russian collusion theory, and all the threats with contempt of court, it's hard to believe anything he rattles on about

Richard Burt , June 28, 2019 at 13:05

Thank you very much for writing this illuminating article on Schiff. You have added very forcefully, if sadly, to a history of a time when neoliberals and neoconservatives joined forces with the military industrial corporate media infotainment complex, the only difference being over who was the more hawkish party.

Donald Turner , June 28, 2019 at 12:51

well said, John!

grateful for a sane voice in this bad theater, we call the us government. bad scripted neoliberal theater.

The RNC and DNC, like the corporate state media, equally, mere illusions, projections of force: the force of global generational wealth and power.

The Mont Pelerin Society's (Austria 1940's) favorite "economist" F. v Hayek proposed path of "liberty" and "freedom" [only for the inbred 1% (Neoliberalism)] (Friedman, Buchanan, "Chicago School", were later disciples)

1) Deregulate global financial markets – DONE
2) Deregulate global trade – DONE
3) Create the illusion and urgency of national bankruptcy with fake (fiat) debt (thereby neuter a nation's capability to enforce laws – eliminate the people's ability to defend against being overwhelmed and consumed by the 1%) – DONE

then lastly, the kill shot:
4) Privatize Everything. recreate us ALL as permanent rent payers of even the most basic necessities of life (Air, water, food, shelter). – Almost COMPLETE

#PrivatizationIsTheft – privatization today is STRICTLY about prioritizing money away from the commons and general welfare and giving it to the inbred 1% rent-seeking parasites (Extreme Redistribution of wealth from the people TO the Billionaires, NOTHING for the people)

the use of "liberal" in this context, describes the "liberal" (freely used, as one would "liberally" spread butter on toast) projection of any and all force available to maintain, enhance, and grow, a condition of monopolized wealth and power, in the hands of a small group of generational feudal lords.

Ml , June 28, 2019 at 21:54

Donald Turner, thank you for a concise and cogent comment on the grand scale theft from the common man and woman. You nailed it.

rosemerry , June 28, 2019 at 12:50

It is hard for a foreigner to understand how such a warped, wicked, disastrous liar can be elected by sane citizens and actually get to head any "intelligence" group in a modern country (I cannot pretend to believe the USA is a democracy). Evey word he says is full of venom and hatred, none of it is true.

The only disagreement I have is with John's inclusion of Russia as interfering in others' elections.

Zhu , June 29, 2019 at 01:34

Russiagate is as fictional and stupid as Birthergate or Flat Earth belief.

David Otness , June 28, 2019 at 15:13

Well. rosemerry, any nation worth its salt has at least some stake in hoping to influence other nations in their interests.

The fact the Dems went hog-wild in promoting this conflated Red-Scare scenario to the extent they did does not mean there were not efforts expended by Russia, but relative to Israel and likely (formerly) Great Britain? And how many others? Statecraft such as it is, such as all nations practice it.

The U.S. has been running unipolar wild and so much more egregiously in toppling governments for so long now has bred a haughty and tragically undeserved contempt for Russia, and our "Exceptionalism" so touted incessantly that in our advanced state of *perfection* (as per propagandized perception) and as self-appointed purveyors of democracy er, neoliberal capitalism, it's little wonder the masses fell to the assault of the msm upon our nation's collective 'senses' such as it has proven to be. And of course, shitbirds like Schiff are ever-opportunists and indeed it does deflect attention from Israel, his pet like so many others of his ilk in Congress.

For Clinton Inc and the DNC had to keep their narrative aflame and hysteria propped up as it fit both Hillary's butt-hurt excuse-making and the neoliberal/neocon long range plan of continuing the 100 year ongoing attempt to bring first the USSR and then Russia down for its multiple treasures of resources. Wall Street and British 'lebensraum,' as it were. After all, they started WW II for that purpose by financing and propping up the Nazis in the 30s and into the 40s.

But since Obama and the neocon wing of the Dem party re-invented the Cold War -- following in the footsteps of the previous Presidents going back to GHWBush/James Baker's blatant double-cross as articulated by Bill Clinton's, 'W's', then Obama's NATO-Go-East policy, I fear the American public has slid right back into being so easily fear-mongered and overbrimming with falsely-held notions of self-righteousness that even minor, 'normal' foreign actorship was turned into "This is war! by idiots from Rob Reiner to Gimme a break–Morgan Freeman!

And along with the WaPo, NYT and every other "Putin! Russia!"snot rag came that pompous blowhard Keith Olbermann and Rrrrrrachel being the highly-paid reinforcing embalming fluid for the American mind.

I didn't mean to run off the tracks here, but my point is, John is right, it's how it's played. But only "we" can do it anywhere near as grossly as we have up until now. And I think Trump's little cheap shot to Putin in Japan was essentially meaningless and of course, a political currying of opportunism in itself.
All told, the Dems have done the world a great disservice by their antics, but hey -- like their Republican counterparts, it's mostly about them as long as they keep getting elected. But this time the Dems have gone way out of bounds. Indeed, pushing up against a nuclear nightmare.

David Otness , June 28, 2019 at 17:10

It appears what Trump's comment was as I first heard it was out of context as I first heard it on CBC early this morning:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/450817-trump-flashes-a-grin-tells-putin-not-to-meddle-in-us-election-during?fbclid=IwAR2Ete1LTZx0N2cHGRDvJZfP6bnOts6goJEQsAZM8DYWo524T_WIW2IOBLs

quantumdrone , June 28, 2019 at 19:31

What citizens? John just explained that Schiff runs unopposed, so he is in even only 5 dead cats show up to vote for him. He is elected by MIC and AIPAC.

AnneR , June 28, 2019 at 12:26

Thank you, Mr Kiriakou, for this timely reminder about the realities of the individual members of the ruling elites. While here you focus on the allegiances of single Congressman, he is representative of the majority in his profound neo-liberalism, warmongering – lusting even, MIC comradeship.

I would only add that Schiff – akin to very many in Congress and elsewhere throughout the corridors of power and in both (so-called) parties – is beloved by AIPAC-Israel. Indeed I would suggest that underlying his deep antagonism to Iran lies his pro-Zionist affiliations. I don't doubt that that antagonism also derives from the American sentiments toward 1979 and oil, but his support for Zionism and Israel is at least an equal cause of his hatred of Iran as the former.

And one might posit that the Iran business is not unrelated – at this precise moment in time – to China and its BRI.

JimG , June 28, 2019 at 12:08

Wow! well said, short and too the point. The democratic party and corporate media will never allow the public to choose a non interventionist anti imperialist leader. That is American democracy. As the biosphere collapses the last card of the power structure will be world war. I hope I have the courage to join the group stopping this future.

Earnest , June 28, 2019 at 12:03

Schiff's Military Industrial trash mouth sounds more like John McCain every day with one exception, he Schiff had no credibility at anything!

John Hawk , June 28, 2019 at 12:02

Schiff and his ilk are all owned not only by the MIC, but also by the terrorist state of Israel. Is Schiff a duali?

Glennn , June 28, 2019 at 11:20

Great article about an extremely dangerous man who personifies the degradation of the Democratic Party. Another betrayal from Shiff was encouraging the social networking sites to censor alternative health sites as well as anyone challenging pharma lies about their horrible products. Hopefully someone will mount a powerful challenge against him in the next election.

Realist , June 28, 2019 at 15:58

Being the chairman of the Intelligence Committee Schiff either gets the straight stuff from the spooks and then twists it to deceive the American public, or he is directly fed bushwah by the spooks, believes it and dutifully passes it on to you. But there is no way that his dangerous assertions and demands are accurate or in the best interests of anyone but those entrenched in the Washington power structure.

I want to see his head on a pike, among plenty of others, when the people finally storm the Capitol Building to topple the oligarchy. He seems to take a special glee in shafting the people and usurping their rights. He's in the club with every fascist in DC, whether identifying as a Dem or a GOPer. I vote the full Najibullah treatment for Mr. Schiff. He's earned it.

Skip Scott , June 28, 2019 at 14:35

Rand Paul and Tulsi Gabbard are at least non-interventionist. That's all I can think of. Kucinich when he was around.

vinnieoh , June 29, 2019 at 14:41

Here in Ohio ours was gerrymandered out of office. Dennis Kucinich.

Terry Judge , June 28, 2019 at 09:27

Surveillance I think surveillance is great I wish I had more cameras on my farm to find out where all my belongings have gone to.
America needs more cameras just like the UK If you're doing nothing wrong what are you afraid of

AnneR , June 28, 2019 at 12:34

Ah, the old (mindless) riposte: "if you've nothing to hide, why are you afraid of the government watching you?"

Are you absolutely certain that you have *never* broken even the most minor of laws? (Or minor so far as you are concerned?)

So far as I know I've not broken any laws – however, I have NO interest, wish, desire to have government in *any* of its guises monitoring me and my behavior, actions, life. And my late husband was the same. Nor did we want corporate capitalists doing it either – adblockers, the more the merrier and so on.

In the UK it isn't the farmers (agri-business these days – very few "farmers") with CCTV all over the shop, it's the government and its forces of so-called "law and order." They're the ones watching you.

WHO is watching the watchers?????

vinnieoh , June 29, 2019 at 14:49

Just as importantly AnneR (and you're comments are great) is who is deciding what is "wrong." And when constitutionally protected – nay, guaranteed – rights become wrongs. When will the dictates of the Sultan of Oman become the new normal? The social credit scheme in China is just an intermediate measure.

Skip Scott , June 28, 2019 at 09:10

It is all too believable in this day and age that someone so obviously beholden to the MIC serves on a committee charged with overseeing our "Intelligence" agencies. "Industry capture" strikes again. The FDA allows dangerous drugs into the market, the FAA allows planes to crash due to lack of oversight, the EPA is toothless against continued air and water pollution, and on and on. Corruption has become so rampant it is the norm.

Washington DC is a cesspool. The rest of the country would be better off if it were removed from the map.

Bob Van Noy , June 28, 2019 at 11:08

"Washington DC is a cesspool. The rest of the country would be better off if it were removed from the map."

Sadly, true, Skip Scott And we, as members of a post-Democracy, are left with sorting out the motivation of each member of our new non-democracy's body politic. Adam Shiff is a particularly odious such member, but at least he"s transparent enough to instantly recognize. It is the more practiced members that are truly harmful. It will probably be necessary to break the whole dysfunctional system?

As always thanks to John Kiriakou and Consortiumnews for highlighting Adam Shiff, in the cesspool

Sally Snyder , June 28, 2019 at 08:07

Here is an article that looks at one key incident in Iranian history that the Western media seems to have conveniently forgotten:

https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/06/irans-forgotten-history-why-iran-must.html

Iran knows that it stands alone when it comes to protecting itself from Washington.

Stephen Morrell , June 28, 2019 at 06:08

Schiff is projecting: "[The US] is a thoroughly malign actor, a cause of deep instability in the region, a profound contributor to the violence and misery in Yemen, and one of the most dangerous regimes in the world. Through the [Pentagon and CIA] and its proxies, it is also a state sponsor of terror. The threat it poses is real."

Schiff's from the party of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so it's all OK.

AnneR , June 28, 2019 at 12:41

Absolutely right on Stephen Morrell. I would only add the party also of: the Gulf of Tonkin and deepening the war against Vietnam, destroying Yugoslavia and Libya, the murderous economic sanctions against Iraq, economic warfare against Venezuela, North Korea (they certainly have never done anything to alleviate that, nor to end the Korean War). And I'm sure that one could go on The USA is a rogue terror state – one with far too much global power.

Realist , June 28, 2019 at 04:05

Let's face it, America's government is run by organized criminals (otherwise known as wealthy businessmen) in it to milk the system for all its worth and they pay goons like Schiff to lie, cheat and steal at their behest. The con should be well understood by just about anyone with an IQ above room temperature.

Constantly provoke and demonize the other major powers on our planet, stage a few false flag incidents in which innocent civilians are killed or injured and much property is destroyed, invade and attack their allies either directly with American troops or by proxy and then loudly and incessantly blame the other side for creating the mess. Dominate the American air waves with propaganda supporting the charade and shut off all access to the truth or any other version of actual events because the same organized criminals also hold a monopoly on the media. Finally claim the only remedy is to send out more carrier task forces, to station more missile batteries on Russia's borders and to build billions of dollars worth of new weapons, much of which America strong arms its putative "allies" to purchase. (With friends like us our vassals don't need enemies.)

Schiff is but one cog in a large elaborate mechanism composed of many such goons. If he were run over in traffic tomorrow his replacement would be mouthing the same lies on the House floor within hours. This system is not going to be broken by defeating these assholes individually in "fair" elections. They are going to have to crash and burn as the organized mafia they represent, sort of like La Cosa Nostra did fifty years ago. (Actually, the Scicilian mob probably had more integrity than these guys and gals do.) It will take either a vast scandal that envelopes most of these scoundrels, or they will be forced to take the blame when their catastrophic policies either crash the economy or finally administer the major defeat the military so richly deserves. Is it any wonder that the likes of Hillary Clinton rose to the top of an organization made up of moral wretches like Schiff. That's never to say that the likes of McConnell and McCain were ever paragons of virtue either.

What may make this impossible even if every member of Congress is as dirty as a grazed cow pasture is who is empowered to investigate these guys? Probably only fellow congress critters. Sometimes we would see a single miscreant exposed and excoriated by the group. (Adam Clayton Powell anyone with a memory?) Sometimes we used to see the Dems and GOPers taking pot shots at the other side's pecadilloes without really sanctioning them (Wilbur Mills in the Tidal Basin anyone?) You never see that anymore. Robert Menendez as filthy as sin doesn't even get a cross look from his colleagues. The two parties are so in cahoots they will never investigate one of their own or from the other side of the aisle. The only way this swamp gets drained is pursuant to a failed economy or a military route.

Curious , June 28, 2019 at 02:46

John,

To take a narrow point of your good article around what 'Schiffty' says I might add something which I haven't seen often repeated. Forget the mass news, they are now a version of sheep about to become lemmings, but let me quote something about Venezuela which is often overlooked.
_________________________________________________________
Here I quote our ex-president Carter who spent a lot of time looking at elections in other countries over the years.
Quote: Former US President Jimmy Carter claimed Venezuela's electoral system is "the best in the world" (agencies).

Mérida, 21st September 2012 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Former US President Jimmy Carter has declared that Venezuela's electoral system is the best in the world.

Speaking at an annual event last week in Atlanta for his Carter Centre foundation, the politician-turned philanthropist stated,

"As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world."

Venezuela has developed a fully automated touch-screen voting system, which now uses thumbprint recognition technology and prints off a receipt to confirm voters' choices.
______________________________________________________________________
This is much more of an advanced system than even the US citadel on the hill boasting of "Democracy". I know the CIA lies and Schaffer's is no exception, but how does one take Carters' view of the best system I the world and turn it around to a dictator with nothing to do with democracy except for the person 80% of the country had never heard about declaring himself president, when he wasn't even on the election ballot to begin with. Just because of oil?
Lies I understand, but Bolton and Pompous can get away from hard facts proven since 2012 and no one seems to question them. I continue to be baffled at the arrogance combined with sheer falsehoods in a world where the internet was supposed to educate people rather than narrow their thinking down to garbage beliefs.
Surly the 'enlightenment' of the net has become a myth, especially when the paper editors continue the lies. It's all very troubling.

rosemerry , June 28, 2019 at 13:58

I suppose nobody in the US establishment would consider that the Brazilian election, which also took place last year, deserved any sort of mention, although it was obvious to fair observers that the whole thing was completely corrupt, and the people in Brazil are now rising up in huge numbers against the draconian measures now being taken by the "elected government" which is supported, of course, by Trump and Netanyahu. Venezuela is targeted because the population is generally supporting and supported by the elected government. This will never do for the USA, Dems or Repugs.

[Jun 29, 2019] Latest Weapon Of US Imperialism Liquified Natural Gas

Highly recommended!
See better discussion at platts.com "But US LNG could face problems of its own – the current low prices are forcing ever growing numbers of US producers into bankruptcy. According to a recent report by Haynes and Boone, 90 gas and oil producers in the US and Canada have filed for bankruptcy between January 2015 and the start of August 2016." So $2 price at Henry Hub should rise to at least $4 for companies to stay in business.
Notable quotes:
"... Less than half of the gas necessary for Europe is produced domestically, the rest being imported from Russia (39%), Norway (30%) and Algeria (13%). In 2017, gas imports from outside of the EU reached 14%. Spain led with imports of 31%, followed by France with 20% and Italy with 15%. ..."
"... The South Stream project, led by Eni, Gazprom, EDF and Wintershall, should have increased the capacity of the Russian Federation to supply Europe with 63 billion cubic meters annually, positively impacting the economy with cheap supplies of gas to Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Slovenia. Due to the restrictions imposed by the European Union on Russian companies like Gazprom, and the continuing pressure from Washington to abandon the project and embrace imports from the US, the construction of the pipeline have slowed down and generated tensions between Europe and the US. Washington is piling on pressure on Germany to derail Nord Stream 2 and stop the construction of this important energy linkage. ..."
"... Further tension has been added since ENI, an Italian company that is a leader in the LNG sector, recently discovered off-shore in Egypt one of the largest gas fields in the world, with an estimated total capacity of 850 billion cubic meters. To put this in perspective, all EU countries demand is about 470 billion cubic meters of gas in 2017. ..."
"... s mentioned, LNG imported to Europe from the US costs about 20% more than gas traditionally received through pipelines. This is without including all the investment necessary to build regasification plants in countries destined to receive this ship-borne gas. Europe currently does not have the necessary facilities on its Atlantic coast to receive LNG from the US, introduce it into its energy networks, and simultaneously decrease demand from traditional sources. ..."
"... This situation could change in the future, with LNG from the US seeing a sharp increase recently. In 2010, American LNG exports to Europe were at 10%; the following year they rose to 11%; and in the first few months of 2019, they jumped to 35%. A significant decrease in LNG exports to Asian countries, which are less profitable, offers an explanation for this corresponding increase in Europe. ..."
"... Washington, with its LNG ships, has no capacity to compete in Asia against Qatar and Australia, who have the lion's share of the market, with Moscow's pipelines taking up the rest. The only large remaining market lies in Europe, so it is therefore not surprising that Donald Trump has decided to weaponize LNG, a bit as he has the US dollar . This has only driven EU countries to seek energy diversification in the interests of security. ..."
"... The European countries do not appear to be dragging their feet at the prospect of swapping to US LNG, even though there is no economic advantage to doing so. As has been evident of late, whenever Washington says, "Jump!", European allies respond, "How high?" ..."
"... The generalized hysteria against the Russian Federation, together with the cutting off of Iranian oil imports at Washington's behest, limit the room for maneuver of European countries, in addition to costing European taxpayers a lot. ..."
Jun 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

One of the most important energy battles of the future will be fought in the field of liquid natural gas (LNG). Suggested as one of the main solutions to pollution , LNG offers the possibility of still managing to meet a country's industrial needs while ameliorating environmental concerns caused by other energy sources. At the same time, a little like the US dollar, LNG is becoming a tool Washington intends to use against Moscow at the expense of Washington's European allies.

To understand the rise of LNG in global strategies, it is wise to look at a graph (page 7) produced by the International Gas Union (IGU) where the following four key indicators are highlighted: global regasification capacities; total volumes of LNG exchanged; exporting countries; and importing countries.

From 1990 to today, the world has grown from 220 million tons per annum (MTPA) to around 850 MTPA of regasification capacity. The volume of trade increased from 20-30 MTPA to around 300 MTPA. Likewise, the number of LNG-importing countries has increased from just over a dozen to almost 40 over the course of 15 years, while the number of producers has remained almost unchanged, except for a few exceptions like the US entering the LNG market in 2016.

There are two methods used to transport gas.

The first is through pipelines, which reduce costs and facilitate interconnection between countries, an important example of this being seen in Europe's importation of gas. The four main pipelines for Europe come from four distinct geographical regions: the Middle East, Africa, Northern Europe and Russia.

The second method of transporting gas is by sea in the form of LNG, which in the short term is more expensive, complex and difficult to implement on a large scale. Gas transported by sea is processed to be cooled so as to reduce its volume, and then liquified again to allow storage and transport by ship. This process adds 20% to costs when compared to gas transported through pipelines.

Less than half of the gas necessary for Europe is produced domestically, the rest being imported from Russia (39%), Norway (30%) and Algeria (13%). In 2017, gas imports from outside of the EU reached 14%. Spain led with imports of 31%, followed by France with 20% and Italy with 15%.

The construction of infrastructure to accommodate LNG ships is ongoing in Europe, and some European countries already have a limited capacity to accommodate LNG and direct it to the national and European network or act as an energy hub to ship LNG to other ports using smaller ships.

According to King & Spalding :

"All of Europe's LNG terminals are import facilities, with the exception of (non-EU) Norway and Russia which export LNG. There are currently 28 large-scale LNG import terminals in Europe (including non-EU Turkey). There are also 8 small-scale LNG facilities in Europe (in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Norway and Gibraltar). Of the 28 large-scale LNG import terminals, 24 are in EU countries (and therefore subject to EU regulation) and 4 are in Turkey, 23 are land-based import terminals, and 4 are floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs), and the one import facility in Malta comprises a Floating Storage Unit (FSU) and onshore regasification facilities."

The countries currently most involved in the export of LNG are Qatar (24.9%), Australia (21.7%), Malaysia (7.7%), the US (6.7%), Nigeria (6.5%) and Russia (6%).

Europe is one of the main markets for gas, given its strong demand for clean energy for domestic and industrial needs. For this reason, Germany has for years been engaged in the Nord Stream 2 project, which aims to double the transport capacity of gas from Russia to Germany. Currently the flow of the Nord Stream is 55 billion cubic meters of gas. With the new Nord Stream 2, the capacity will double to 110 billion cubic meters per year.

The South Stream project, led by Eni, Gazprom, EDF and Wintershall, should have increased the capacity of the Russian Federation to supply Europe with 63 billion cubic meters annually, positively impacting the economy with cheap supplies of gas to Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Slovenia. Due to the restrictions imposed by the European Union on Russian companies like Gazprom, and the continuing pressure from Washington to abandon the project and embrace imports from the US, the construction of the pipeline have slowed down and generated tensions between Europe and the US. Washington is piling on pressure on Germany to derail Nord Stream 2 and stop the construction of this important energy linkage.

Further tension has been added since ENI, an Italian company that is a leader in the LNG sector, recently discovered off-shore in Egypt one of the largest gas fields in the world, with an estimated total capacity of 850 billion cubic meters. To put this in perspective, all EU countries demand is about 470 billion cubic meters of gas in 2017.

ENI's discovery has generated important planning for the future of LNG in Europe and in Italy.

Problems have arisen ever since Donald Trump sought to oblige Europeans to purchase LNG from the US in order to reduce the trade deficit and benefit US companies at the expense of other gas-exporting countries like Algeria, Russia and Norway. As mentioned, LNG imported to Europe from the US costs about 20% more than gas traditionally received through pipelines. This is without including all the investment necessary to build regasification plants in countries destined to receive this ship-borne gas. Europe currently does not have the necessary facilities on its Atlantic coast to receive LNG from the US, introduce it into its energy networks, and simultaneously decrease demand from traditional sources.

This situation could change in the future, with LNG from the US seeing a sharp increase recently. In 2010, American LNG exports to Europe were at 10%; the following year they rose to 11%; and in the first few months of 2019, they jumped to 35%. A significant decrease in LNG exports to Asian countries, which are less profitable, offers an explanation for this corresponding increase in Europe.

But Europe finds itself in a decidedly uncomfortable situation that cannot be easily resolved. The anti-Russia hysteria drummed up by the Euro-Atlantic globalist establishment aides Donald Trump's efforts to economically squeeze as much as possible out of European allies, hurting European citizens in the process who will have to pay more for American LNG, which costs about a fifth more than gas from Russian, Norwegian or Algerian sources.

Projects to build offshore regasifiers in Europe appear to have begun and seem unlikely to be affected by future political vagaries, given the investment committed and planning times involved:

"There are currently in the region of 22 large-scale LNG import terminals considered as planned in Europe, except for the planned terminals in Ukraine (Odessa FSRU LNG), Russia (Kaliningrad LNG), Albania (Eagle LNG) – Albania being a candidate for EU membership – and Turkey (FSRU Iskenderun and FSRU Gulf of Saros).

Many ofthese planned terminals, including Greece (where one additional import terminal is planned – Alexandroupolis), Italy (which is considering or planning two additional terminals – Porto Empedocle in Sicily and Gioia Tauro LNG in Calabria) , Poland (FSRU Polish Baltic Sea Coast), Turkey (two FSRUs) and the UK (which is planning the Port Meridian FSRU LNG project and UK Trafigura Teesside LNG). LNG import terminal for Albania (Eagle LNG), Croatia (Krk Island), Cyprus (Vassiliko FSRU), Estonia (Muuga (Tallinn) LNG and Padalski LNG), Germany ( Brunsbüttel LNG), Ireland (Shannon LNG and Cork LNG), Latvia (Riga LNG), Romania (Constanta LNG), Russia (Kaliningrad LNG) and Ukraine (Odessa).

Nine of the planned terminals are FSRUs: Albania, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and the UK. "In addition, there are numerous plans for expansion of existing terminals, including in Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Turkey and the UK."

Washington, with its LNG ships, has no capacity to compete in Asia against Qatar and Australia, who have the lion's share of the market, with Moscow's pipelines taking up the rest. The only large remaining market lies in Europe, so it is therefore not surprising that Donald Trump has decided to weaponize LNG, a bit as he has the US dollar . This has only driven EU countries to seek energy diversification in the interests of security.

The European countries do not appear to be dragging their feet at the prospect of swapping to US LNG, even though there is no economic advantage to doing so. As has been evident of late, whenever Washington says, "Jump!", European allies respond, "How high?" This, however, is not the case with all allies. Germany is not economically able to interrupt Nord Stream 2. And even though the project has many high-level sponsors, including former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the project constantly seems to be on the verge of being stopped – at least in Washington's delusions.

Even Eni's discovery of the gas field in Egypt has annoyed the US, which wants less competition (even when illegal, as in the case of Huawei) and wants to be able to force its exports onto Europeans while maintaining the price of the LNG in dollars, thereby further supporting the US dollar as the world's reserve currency in the same manner as the petrodollar .

The generalized hysteria against the Russian Federation, together with the cutting off of Iranian oil imports at Washington's behest, limit the room for maneuver of European countries, in addition to costing European taxpayers a lot. The Europeans appear prepared to set whatever course the US has charted them, one away from cheaper gas sources to the more expensive LNG supplied from across the Atlantic. Given the investments already committed to receive this LNG, it seems unlikely that the course set for the Europeans will be changed.

Sputternik , 1 hour ago link

I live in Europe. I can honestly say that the people I know here prefer Russian gas. People are very ticked off about how the US meddled in their gas supply and the structuring of the pipelines. Most feel that even if US LNG WAS competitive with Russian gas price for now, that the US would in some way either increase prices or use it in some other way to control or manipulate the EU. And sentiment towards USA tends toward resentment and distrust. That's not to say they are necessarily pro-Russia, but definitely a wave of anti US is present.

phaedrus1952 , 46 minutes ago link

US LNG pricing is based on Henry Hub which today is under $2.30/mmbtu.

Even adding in liquefaction and shipping costs, the price to the end user is extremely low.

Henry hub is projected to be sub $3 for DECADES!

Combine the low price with spot deliveries (pipe usually demands long term contracting commitments), and US LNG actually has strong rationale for being accepted.

The statement above that US LNG cannot compete against Australia in Asia is preposterously false due to the VERY high buildout costs of the Aussie LNG infrastructure.

Next year, Oz's first LNG IMPORT terminal at Port Kembla may well be supplied with US LNG.

jaxville , 44 minutes ago link

The US has shown itself to be unreliable as a supplier of anything. Political posturing will always take precedence over any international transaction.

Anonymous IX , 2 hours ago link

Oh, for pity's sake, Laugher. Everything...absolutely everything you attribute to Russia in your post can be said of the U.S. I'm not much of a Wiki fan, but for expediency, here's their view on military bases.

The establishment of military bases abroad enables a country to project power , e.g. to conduct expeditionary warfare , and thereby influence events abroad. Depending on their size and infrastructure, they can be used as staging areas or for logistical, communications and intelligence support. Many conflicts throughout modern history have resulted in overseas military bases being established in large numbers by world powers and the existence of bases abroad has served countries having them in achieving political and military goals.

And this link will provide you with countries worldwide and their bases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_overseas_military_bases

Note that Russia, in this particular list, has eight bases all contiguous to Russia. The U.S. has 36 listed here with none of them contiguous to the U.S.' borders.

FormerTurbineGuy , 2 hours ago link

Whilst the left wants to go full throttle towards Wind and Solar, no one knows that the natural gas lobby is behind these sources because both sources need a backup. While everyone talks "carbon footprint" they never discusses plant efficiency ( or in the terms of engines brake specific fuel consumption and turbine specific fuel consumption ) in terms of thermal efficiency. You know the boring stuff that plant operators stress over to make sure when your wife wakes up @ 3 in the morning to feed the baby, the lights do go on, and they are creating that wattage in an cost affective manner. With that said, the king of thermal efficiency i.e. burning a fuel to create electricity, is the Combined Cycle Natural Gas Power Plant. These plants combines a stationary gas turbine buring natural gas to spin a generator and a boiler on the back side capture the waste heat to create steam to spin a turbine to again add an input to the generator for a current state of the art of 61% efficiency . That means only 39% going up the stack or for steam cooling to get your "Delta T" for the steam cycle to work. This 61% is vs maybe in the mid 40's for a coal, oil plant or in the case of Nuclear just waste heat with nothing going out a stack. The greater wattage per fuel burned, and the modularization of these Combined Cycle Plants aka have a series of 100mw turbines and bring them on line as needed, make this a win-win IMHO for a massive refurbishing of our Utility base, with a host of benefits, before Gen 3 & Gen 4 Nuclear truly take off again. These plants could be a great stop gap before Gen 3 & 4 are a reality. All the macinations towards wind and solar and their disavantages aka being bird vegamatics, vistas being spoiled and huge swaths of land being used for panels make no sense vs energy density of efficient plants. We are the Natural Gas King, lets not flare it anymore, and really, really leverage it here, help allies, and use it for bringing bad behaving children of the world to the table ifyou will, if you want the candy, behave....

Anonymous IX , 1 hour ago link

Why do we have to treat other countries like we're the parent? We aren't. They are equal and fully functioning countries quite capable of determining their own political and economic future...which may involve not trading or interacting with the U.S. Particularly if we demand of them conditions we ourselves would never accede.

JeanTrejean , 3 hours ago link

To get cheap energy, is an advantage for the European Industry.

Why should we use expensiver energy ?

And, as I read ZH, the future of the US shale gas is far to be assured.

SoDamnMad , 3 hours ago link

The Lithuanian FSRU "Independence" which was delivered from Hyundai Heavy Industries in 2014 to the port of Klaipeda drove energy costs for heating through the roof and perhaps is one of the reasons the Prime Minister at the time only came in third in the latest presidential elections. You can stay reasonably warm, eat or have money for medicine and other necessities. Pick 2 ONLY. Thank you USSA

tuetenueggel , 3 hours ago link

Brainsick as Pompeo the US Pork without character.

As Long as Russia dlivery theier gas constantly and for a much better price then Us-Shale idiots, the ziocons only can lose. We Europeans are not very impressed.

Arising , 3 hours ago link

The biggest Capitalist economy on the planet needs to use mob tactics to push its over priced wares- seems 'long term' is not part of their hit-and-run operation.

Call me Al , 3 hours ago link

LNG = Liquefied natural gas, not liquid.

Now as for the article; apart from a few Eastern European Countries (The Ukraine, Poland etc.), I have seen no proof whatsoever, that Europe is shifting to US LNG.

As for "As has been evident of late, whenever Washington says, "Jump!", European allies respond, "How high?""; I am sorry, but I think those days are over..... this can be seen in our Iranian stance, the 2 Russian pipelines - 1 being Nordstream II and the other Turk-stream, increased trade with Russia, joining the the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and so on and so on......

Kirk2NCC1701 , 3 hours ago link

Call me AI, both terms are acceptable.

Liquified refers to the processing.

Liquid refers to the state of the gas after processing.

earleflorida , 2 hours ago link

thankyou :)

tuetenueggel , 3 hours ago link

yeah, vasalls are not jumping any longer.

libfrog88 , 3 hours ago link

Slowly but surely the anti-Russia propaganda is dying. You can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some people all of the time (libtards), but you can't fool all the people all of the time. Europeans (the citizens) will question why they should pay 20-30% more for their natural gas just to please America. Politicians better have an answer or change of policy if they want to be reelected.

[Jun 29, 2019] There maybe a process in place in Russia where oligarchs forced to repatriate thier money. But claiming that there are no longer oligarchs in Russia is an alternative universe

Moscow Times is a neoliberal rag with small circulation and zero influence on public opinion and essentially NED controlled/influenced content
Notable quotes:
"... The commitment of the inner circle often goes unquestioned, as the future of their massive business empires requires staying in Putin's good graces. But oligarchs coming from the intelligence services owe no particular allegiance and may be more interested in ensuring that the defense-industrial complex receives special treatment from the state. ..."
Jun 29, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

somebody , Jun 29, 2019 6:10:10 AM | 119

@Jen | Jun 29, 2019 1:29:51 AM | 104

"In any case, it seems that any person who meets with Putin to discuss a possible business venture that might require funding from the Russian government (or the Russian government to assist in financing and building the necessary infrastructure for the venture to go through) automatically becomes a favoured crony of his, in the eyes of Western mainstream news media. "

Yes. You are not supposed to have to TALK to the president about this. It should have to go through the Dóuma, the budget, there should be a process how to apply and guidelines how to grant and if there is a public tender it should be regulated and the best bid get it.

Your Wikipedia link goes to nowhere by the way. You are sure the Rotenberg Law did not pass the Douma? First read seams to have been successful.

This here is Moscow Times from 2017

Understanding how these oligarchs built their wealth goes a long way in predicting their future loyalty to Putin.

The commitment of the inner circle often goes unquestioned, as the future of their massive business empires requires staying in Putin's good graces. But oligarchs coming from the intelligence services owe no particular allegiance and may be more interested in ensuring that the defense-industrial complex receives special treatment from the state.

Same for the holdovers from previous eras, who have suffered some attacks from the Putin government over the years, mainly in the form of expropriation through politically motivated court cases -- the state's main tool against the oligarchs.

They may be tiring of the uncertainty surrounding their property rights and have an incentive to demand different political institutions to protect their assets. Coaxing these groups to remain loyal requires the strategic use of rewards and repression.
...
First, the Russian government has spent incredible resources to directly compensate oligarchs for their financial losses.

Massive infrastructure contracts such as bridges and pipelines find their way into the hands of the connected elite, while import substitution policies in sectors such as agriculture help create enormous profits for investors. Government bailouts to the tune of tens of billions of dollars have stabilized balance sheets, while the state has also taken over toxic assets such as those gone unused after the Sochi Olympics."

There maybe a process in Russia where oligarchs forced to repatriate get more interested in regulations and a court system that protects their assets when they can no longer go to London. But claiming that there are no longer oligarchs in Russia is an alternative universe.

[Jun 28, 2019] Why Vault 7 Tools Used by Private Contractors Shows US Intel Needs a Ground-Up Rebuild Part 2 OffGuardian by GH Eliason

Apr 18, 2017 | off-guardian.org

First, let's look at Bellingcat involvement in Ukraine.

On July 11th 2014 an event happened that shook my world, literally. Bellingcat reported that the Russians attacked Ukrainian armed forces from across the border in Zelenopillya. The Ukrainians suffered traumatic losses. Once again, Eliot Higgins provides the data to determine this. Once again Bellingcat was wrong about the origin of the attack.

This single battle marked the turning point for the entire war. The Donbass militia went on a large offensive for the first time and destroyed a big Ukrainian encampment with a rocket attack.

How can I afford to be so assertive? At 4:30 in the morning on July 11th every house in my town started shaking because of the massive explosions going on at Zelenopillya. I did say it shook my world, didn't I?

I was between the Russian border and the camp. We could see the smoke from the rockets and the sky was lit with the explosions . The explosions were loud enough to wake the dead that morning. There were no rockets flying over my head. For Russia to fire them, that's exactly where they would have been.

At that point we were under Ukrainian occupation for a couple of months. Two days before the attack on Zelenopillya happened, a Ukrainian army officer told the post master to get the children out of town within 2 days. The army was pulling out and a cleansing battalion (Donbas battalion) was coming in to weed out "separatists and supporters." That was when I came face to face with Mark Paslowsky, the American nazi . The article gives his background and tells what was going on.

Bellingcat misidentifies the weapon as artillery. Grad rockets were fired at Zelenopillya by the Rovenki militia that day. I spoke with the militia that fired them about 1 week after the fact. In the linked articles the Ukrainians state plainly that it was militia using Grad rockets.

The Ukrainians took some of their wounded across the border to Russia. It's not quite something you do if Russia was really attacking you. The worst injuries were treated locally. Donbass people ran there after the battle to help the wounded and the Ukrainian soldiers were treated at local hospitals. Ukraine abandoned them.

The story got a lot of play in the west in the west as a Russian attack on Ukraine thanks to this event. It was added to the list of reasons to sanction Russia. If the attack on Zelenopillya didn't happen, I probably wouldn't be here to write this.

For the third time on an important event, Bellingcat shows it cannot identify the origin or firing location of a weapon and misidentifies both the weapon type and the direction of fire in media.

Getting the facts straight about the MH-17 shoot down is the difference between hundreds of families getting justice and closure for those deaths or never seeing it. Convict the wrong party and justice is never served. New victims are made with false or erroneous evidence.

Bellingcat's importance to the JIT (Joint Investigative Team) investigation of MH-17 is apparent through all the media Higgins and Toler are quoted in media as the independent experts.

That last statement should grab your attention. Bellingcat and its founders Elliot Higgins and Aric Toler's credibility rests on the fact that they are independent researchers. If they are working for an interested party in any investigation, Bellingcat's credibility is destroyed and their research means nothing. After all, it's been paid for.

Bellingcat really grabbed the public's attention and imagination after the shoot down of flight MH-17 over Ukraine. Independent researchers Higgins and Toler went to work to find the missile launch site and the responsible parties, or did they?

As early as February 2014, Higgins showed the beginning of a clear pattern regarding Ukraine. In the tweet below this OSINT expert researcher was linking to a 1 month old blog started by Sviatoslav Yurash . What's special about Yurash at this time is that he was Ukrainian ultranationalist Dimitry Yarosh's English language spokesman. If that well known fact wasn't enough to caution Higgins, what was?

In the next article to follow, starting with Yurash as the first example, I'll show you how all these volunteer experts including Higgins get paid. The article will further cement and establish the relationships between Bellingcat, Weisburd, Watts and other intel and news headline providers with each other as well as their employers.

For now, the admission made by the Ukrainian Information Ministry and Aric Toler will have to be enough.

"September 29 and November 19, 2015 in Kharkov Crisis Infocentre Information Policy Advisor to the Minister Dmitry Zolotukhin conducted trainings on the search for information in open sources for journalists and bloggers in Kharkov.

In addition, already 21 November Dmitry Zolotukhin met with his US counterpart, team representative Bellingcat Arik Toler , who conducted a similar training for journalists in Kyiv on the invitation of Media Development Foundation. They also discussed the possibility of holding a conference in Kiev on thematic instruments OSINT-use techniques in the modern media."

One of the Media Development Center's sponsors is NATO . It is a project of the US Embassy in Kiev because of the association with the embassy's diplomatic paper, the Kyiv Post.

If that isn't enough, let's see how close Bellingcat's Aric Toler views the relationship.

According to both Information Policy Advisor Dmitry Zolotukhin and Toler, they are partners. Eric Toler and Eliot Higgins(Bellingcat), along with Aaron Weisburd, Clint Watts, and Joel Harding have been working with the same Ukrainian Information Ministry that started the "Mytorovyets" or Peacekeeper website.

They help the SBU geo-locate people in Ukraine. As shown above, they also train people to geo-locate anyone considered anti-Maidan or anti-nationalist in Ukraine. They didn't disappoint.

The Ministry of Information has been targeting journalists in Ukraine by geo-location for arrest or murder . The first public case was the Ukrainian journalist Oleh Buzina in May 2015. This was one month after my first article about Peacekeeper showed clearly that this was its purpose.

I think this pretty well sums up how independent Bellingcat's investigation has been. To add insult to injury, Higgins and Toler work directly with previously identified Ukrainian Intelligence hackers and Pravy Sektor members (ultra-nationalist Ukrainians) to get Bellingcat "independent research" information.

InformNapalm and its hackers are Ukrainian Intel agents working for the Information Ministry. In their own words – The main activities of the project are collecting and analysing OSINT-information , found in open sources, including social networks. InformNapalm's investigation of 53rd Artillery Brigade commander colonel Sergei Muchkayev, suspected of killing the MH17 passengers, was used in the report of the Bellingcat research team .

Who was the information source for independent researchers at Bellingcat? Dimitry Yarosh's best friend, Valentyn Nalivaychenko was one of them. In the spring of 2014, he replaced SBU(Ukraine's Security Service) personnel with ultra-nationalists because they had the right ideology. Another was Anton Gerashchenko who is responsible for persecuting the press in Ukraine.

In few days and hours after the crash of MH17 Ukrainian officials widely publicly discussed all that data (except the photo of "Paris Match") anonymously downloaded by someone to social nets. For example on July 17 Gerashchenko (The ministry of internal affairs) showed the photo of Buk at Torez; on July 18 Avakov (The ministry of internal affairs) showed the video of Buk at Luhansk; also on July 18 Nalivaychenko (the chief of Ukrainian security service) showed the video of Buk at Snizhne, and on July 19 Vitaliy Naida (Ukrainian security service) showed shot fragment of video frame (not the video itself) from Zugres.

Under the best circumstances Bellingcat's research can only be seen as a Ukrainian Intelligence production. If neither Higgins or Toler were actively engaged with Ukrainian operations on the many levels that they are, their source material is still very tainted. When all your research material comes from a party under investigation, you are no longer a neutral party. You can't pee in a blood sample and call it evidence. Are Higgins and Toler credible? You decide.

Max van der Werff has become a go-to resource for understanding information about MH-17. I have spoken at length with Max and his fellow researchers @bellingmouse. This linked article shows the strength of research these REAL volunteers have brought to the MH-17 investigation . I had to ask Max the great who-dun-it question. His response was after thousands of hours of research, he didn't know. Too many people were withholding information and remaining uncooperative on all sides.

What he was sure of is that Bellingcat's research is shoddy and a lot of the evidence appears fabricated.

Max van der Werf has been interviewed by the JIT investigative team on 4 occasions, given over 6 hours of recorded interviews to them, as well as over 14GB of data.

Examples of this include the fact that all of the images and video are such low quality and resolution, it's impossible to make definite determinations from them.

One of the chase vehicles (jeep) in Bellingcat's BUK convoy is driving with the door open. In another image of the BUK transport supposedly taken by a local resident, the apartment was not occupied in the summer of 2014. There was no one there to take the image. It was again so grainy and low quality that even a military vehicle substitution was not noticeable. None of the neighbors that were there saw a BUK on a trailer.

The route of travel according to Bellingcat would have taken the BUK launcher toward the conflict zone twice while battles were being fought across the region. Anyone familiar with the area or that had a map would take a direct route which would have made it much less noticeable driving through unpopulated areas.

Images taken after the shoot down are just as bad. Some unimportant parts of the image are in focus while it's almost impossible to make out the BUK even though it's right beside the photographer.

The so-called wire-tapped conversation was proven to be a Ukrainian SBU production. How is it still a part of the evidence chain?

What van der Werff and @bellingmouse have proven unequivocally is that another investigation needs to take place that looks for real evidence. The JIT, for their part had the impossible task of investigating a hostile shoot-down of a jetliner with no previous airline disaster investigation experience in a war zone that was active. The problem with it is objectivity was thrown out the window as soon as Ukraine got the right to reject evidence and control what would be made public.

What has looking for Ruskies done? In the eyes of Congress it made you and every publication that strives for neutral information or even writing from their political slant a Ruskie. You work for Vladimir Putin.

It has taken away any hope of justice for people in Syria and the families of MH-17 victims unless real neutral investigations take place.

It's taken away real news from the masses and replaced it with policy pieces from people that get paid to hate you. You are after all, the Russian interference that they talk about.

It's time to stop this bs.

[Jun 28, 2019] The OPCW, Douma The Skripals

Notable quotes:
"... It seems that everyone is lying about the Skripal affair. The UK govt. version is riddled with inconsistencies. But it does seem that 2 GRU officers were wandering around Salisbury. Why? And the Russians are lying about that. ..."
"... The likelihood is that the GRU were there to discuss with Skripal his wishes to return to Russia. There is an alternative likelihood that they were there to quiz him on his contribution to the Dodgy Dossier. Both scenarios could well lead to the British secret services deciding to take Skripal out, even down, and blame it on the Russians. ..."
"... I would suggest that Skripal and his daughter are now either living somewhere else in Natoland under different identities and some money to keep them quiet, or else their existence became too awkward and risky and sadly they have been liquidated. ..."
May 17, 2019 | off-guardian.org

In view of the latest revelations from the leaked report, which seem to prove that at least some elements of the Douma "chemical attack" were entirely staged, we want to take look back at the chaotic events of Spring 2018.

  • What was the agenda behind the Douma false flag?
  • Why was the US response seemingly token and ineffective?
  • Why was the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson fired?
  • What agenda tied the Skripal case to the Douma attack?

The following is an extract from an article by Catte originally published April 14th last year, which takes on a greater weight in light of certain evidence – not only that the Douma attack was faked, but that the OPCW is compromised.

You can read the whole article here .

Primarily UK initiative?

The neocon faction in the US is usually (and reasonably) regarded as the motivator behind much of the western aggression in the Middle East.

Since at least 2001 and the launch of the "War on Terror" the US has led the way in finding or creating facile excuses to fight oil wars and hegemonic wars and proxy wars in the region. But this time the dynamics look a little different.

This time it really looks as if the UK has been setting the pace of the "response".

The fact (as stated above) that Mattis was apparently telegraphing his own private doubts a)about the verifiability of the attacks, and b)about the dangers of a military response suggests he was a far from enthusiastic partaker in this adventure.

Trump's attitude is harder to gauge. His tweets veered wildly between unhinged threats and apparent efforts at conciliation. But he must have known he would lose (and seemingly has lost) a great part of his natural voter base (who elected him on a no-more-war mandate) by an act of open aggression that threatened confrontation with Russia on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Granted the US has been looking for excuses to intervene ever more overtly in Syria since 2013, and in that sense this Douma "initiative" is a continuation of their longterm policy. It's also true Russia was warning just such a false flag would be attempted in early March. But in the intervening month the situation on the ground has changed so radically that such an attempt no longer made any sense.

A false flag in early March, while pockets of the US proxy army were still holding ground in Ghouta would have enabled a possible offensive in their support which would prevent Ghouta falling entirely into government hands and thereby also maintain the pressure on Damascus. A false flag in early April is all but useless because the US proxy army in the region was completely vanquished and nothing would be gained by an offensive in that place at that time.

You can see why Mattis and others in the administration might be reluctant to take part in the false flag/punitive air strike narrative if they saw nothing currently to be gained to repay the risk. They may have preferred to wait for developments and plan for a more productive way of playing the R2P card in the future.

The US media has been similarly, and uncharacteristically divided and apparently unsure. Tucker Carlson railed against the stupidity of attacking Syria. Commentators on MSNBC were also expressing intense scepticism of the US intent and fear about possible escalation.

The UK govt and media on the other hand has been much more homogeneous in advocating for action. No doubts of the type expressed by Mattis have been heard from the lips of an UK government minister. Even May, a cowardly PM, has been (under how much pressure?) voicing sterling certitude in public that action HAD to be taken.

Couple this with the – as yet unverified – claims by Russia of direct UK involvement in arranging the Douma "attack", and the claims by Syria that the perps are in their custody, and a tentative storyline emerges. It's possible this time there were other considerations in the mix beside the usual need to "be seen to do something" and Trump's perpetual requirement to appease the liberal Russiagaters and lunatic warmongers at home. Maybe this time it was also about helping the UK out of a sticky problem.

The Skripal consideration

Probably the only thing we can all broadly agree on about the Skripal narrative is that it manifestly did not go according to plan. However it was intended to play out, it wasn't this way. Since some time in mid to late March it's been clear the entire thing has become little more than an exercise in damage-limitation, leak-plugging and general containment.

The official story is a hot mess of proven falsehoods, contradictions, implausible conspiracy theories, more falsehoods and inexplicable silences were cricket chirps tell us all we need to know.

The UK government has lied and evaded on every key aspect.

1) It lied again and again about the information Porton Down had given it

2) Its lawyers all but lied to Mr Justice Robinson about whether or not the Skripals had relatives in Russia in an unscrupulous attempt to maintain total control of them, or at least of the narrative.

3) It is not publishing the OPCW report on the chemical analyses, and the summary of that report reads like an exercise in allusion and weasel-wording. Even the name of the "toxic substance" found in the Skripals' blood is omitted, and the only thing tying it to the UK government's public claims of "novichok" is association by inference and proximity.

Indeed if current claims by Russian FM Lavrov turn out to be true, a "novichok" (whatever that precisely means in this case) may not have been the only substance found in those samples, and a compound called "BZ", a non-lethal agent developed in Europe and America, has been discovered and suppressed in the OPCW report (more about that later).

None of the alleged victims of this alleged attack has been seen in public even in passing since the event. There is no film or photographs of DS Bailey leaving the hospital, no film or photographs of his wife or family members doing the same. No interviews with Bailey, no interviews with his wife, family, distant relatives, work colleagues.

The Skripals themselves were announced to be alive and out of danger mere days after claims they were all but certain to die. Yulia, soon thereafter, apparently called her cousin Viktoria only to subsequently announce, indirectly through the helpful agency of the Metropolitan Police, that she didn't want to talk to her cousin – or anyone else – at all.

She is now allegedly discharged from hospital and has "specially trained officers helping to take care of" her in an undisclosed location. A form or words so creepily sinister it's hard to imagine how they were ever permitted the light of day.

Very little of this bizarre, self-defeating, embarrassing, hysterical story makes any sense other than as a random narrative, snaking wildly in response to events the narrative-makers can't completely control.

Why? What went wrong? Why has the UK government got itself into this mess? And how much did the Douma "gas attack" and subsequent drive for a concerted western "response" have to do with trying to fix that?

Is this what happened?

If a false flag chemical attack had taken place in Syria at the time Russia predicted, just a week or two after the Skripal poisoning, a lot of the attention that's been paid to the Skripals over the last month would likely have been diverted. Many of the questions being asked by Russia and in the alt media may never have been asked as the focus of the world turned to a possible superpower stand-off in the Middle East.

So, could it be the Skripal event was never intended to last so long in the public eye? Could it be that it was indeed a false flag, or a fake event, as many have alleged, planned as a sketchy prelude to, or warm up act for a bigger chemical attack in Syria, scheduled for a week or so later in mid-March – just around the time Russia was warning of such a possibility?

Could it be this planned event was unexpectedly canceled by the leading players in the drama (the US) when the Russians called them out and the rapid and unexpected fall of Ghouta meant any such intervention became pointless at least for the moment?

Did this cancelation leave the UK swinging in the wind, with a fantastical story that was never intended to withstand close scrutiny, and no second act for distraction?

So, did they push on with the now virtually useless "chemical attack", botch it (again), leaving a clear evidence trail leading back to them? Did they then further insist on an allied "response" to their botched false flag in order to provide yet more distraction and hopefully destroy some of that evidence?

This would explain why the UK may have been pushing for the false flag to happen (as claimed by Russia) even after it could no longer serve much useful purpose on the ground, and why the Douma "attack" seems to have been so sketchily done by a gang on the run. The UK needed the second part to happen in order to distract from the first.

It would explain why the US has been less than enthused by the idea of reprisals. Because while killing Syrians to further geo-strategic interests is not a problem, killing Syrians (and risking escalation with Russia) in order to rescue an embarrassed UK government is less appealing.

And it would explain why the "reprisals" when they came were so half-hearted.

If this is true, Theresa May and her cabinet are currently way out on a limb even by cynical UK standards. Not only have they lied about the Skripal event, but in order to cover up that lie they have promoted a false flag in Syria, and "responded" to it by a flagrant breach of international and domestic law. Worst of all, if the Russians aren't bluffing, they have some evidence to prove some of the most egregious parts of this.

This is very bad.

But even if some or all of our speculation proves false, and even if the Russian claims of UK collusion with terrorists in Syria prove unfounded, May is still guilty of multiple lies and has still waged war without parliamentary approval.

This is a major issue. She and her government should resign. But it's unlikely that will happen.

So what next? There is a sense this is a watershed for many of the parties involved and for the citizens of the countries drawn into this.

Will the usual suspects try to avoid paying for their crimes and misadventures by more rhetoric, more false flags, more "reprisals"? Or will this signal some other change in direction?

We'll all know soon enough.

andyoldlabour

D S Bailey was interviewed by the BBC after leaving the hospital, but that interview simply raised more questions. Why was his family allowed in the hospital without hazmat suits when the hospital staff were wearing them?

We were originally told that Bailey was contaminated whilst wearing police issue gloves, yet the BBC article said he was wearing a hazmat suit.
Nerve toxins kill thousands, yet only three people were initially contaminated and recovered.

Refraktor
It's beyond reasonable doubt that there was no Novichok: assuming that substance even exists. It could be that Sergei and Yulia were stooges loyal to MI5. It could be they were whacked with bz or fentanyl (by MI5) in the restaurant. That's all it would take. Of course army heads of nursing and CID officers would be circulating ready get a handle on developments. Perhaps it later became necessary to kill someone after the complete non-lethality of Novichok was revealed. Perhaps this death was really caused by heroin overdose or else something quite natural. Perhaps not. I concur that the most likely motive for this false flag was an attempt to escalate in Syria. Given the total barking insanity of the Skripal Saga it might be that NATO genuinely contemplated war with Russia at this time. When they lobbed those cruise missiles I thought their dreams were about to come true. Maniacs.
Stonky

Speaking of which, where on Earth IS Sergei Skripal?

Sergei was a double agent who could have had his finger in all sorts of dubious pies. There might easily be logical (if not legitimate) reasons for keeping him under wraps. Surely the more pertinent question is: Where is Yulia?

Because even if you swallow every fragment of the official UK nonsense, you're still left with this oddity:

Yulia Skripal is a young woman who was the completely innocent victim of a dastardly assassination plot masterminded by the evil Vlad. Having survived this attempt on her life, she has responded by deciding that she never again wants to see or speak to anyone at all. Ever.

Nick
It seems that everyone is lying about the Skripal affair. The UK govt. version is riddled with inconsistencies. But it does seem that 2 GRU officers were wandering around Salisbury. Why? And the Russians are lying about that.
Portonchok
Nick,

The likelihood is that the GRU were there to discuss with Skripal his wishes to return to Russia. There is an alternative likelihood that they were there to quiz him on his contribution to the Dodgy Dossier. Both scenarios could well lead to the British secret services deciding to take Skripal out, even down, and blame it on the Russians.

I would suggest that Skripal and his daughter are now either living somewhere else in Natoland under different identities and some money to keep them quiet, or else their existence became too awkward and risky and sadly they have been liquidated.

Stonky

But it does seem that 2 GRU officers were wandering around Salisbury. .. Why?

Nick, even accepting that the two guys were Russian intelligence operatives, there are a million explanations for their presence in Salisbury that day that make more sense than the official UK explanation: They came to assassinate Sergei Skripal by smearing the world's deadliest nerve agent on his door handle in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, while wearing no protective clothing

Jen
There is no proof that the two Russian men Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov were GRU officers. The so-called "proof" for that line of thinking comes from Bellingcat, a known propaganda outfit, who obtained the "proof" in highly suspect ways that suggest it was given cherry-picked information made to fit the narrative.

It is far more likely that out of the many tourists to Salisbury – hundreds perhaps, and many of them from Russia as well – these two men were picked out at random by UK government authorities as targets of suspicion because they happened to be travelling together and must have fit a preconceived template in which secret Russian agents (like Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi before them, when those two fellows were supposed to have poisoned Alexander Litvinenko back in 2006) are believed to travel in pairs.

John2o2o
Two Russians were wandering round Salisbury. That is all we know. Has it never occurred to you that the UK government and/or the people who poisoned the Skripals might be using them as convenient scapegoats? It may even be that they were deliberately lured to Salisbury to be set up in this way and had nothing to do with the poisoning.
OffG
Is there any solid evidence they were GRU? Has that ever been firmed up beyond Bellingcat's 'data dump' of largely unproven documents?
Seamus Padraig
The going theory is that the Russian agents were led into a trap. The GRU may have been made to believe somehow that Skripal intended to re-defect, and that's why they really went to Salisbury–not to assassinate him, but to help him arrange his escape. That's when the MI6 moved in for the kill, hoping to pin the crime on Russia.

To be sure, it's hard to get to the bottom of this cloak-and-dagger stuff when all we have access to is open-source information. But one thing is pretty clear to me: the idea that Russia would have allowed Skripal to defect, then waited all those years and taken crazy risks to kill him after having had him in their direct custody in a Russian prison for over 6 years, where they could have easily killed him at any time, is ridiculous.

John2o2o
They are not proven to be Russian agents.
Reg
John2o2o
No, not proven but is it possible they were low level couriers in a meeting set up by Yulia where information was to be swapped as the price as re-admittance to Russia for Sergei, particularly given Sergei's mothers advancing age.
It would explain the UK's panicked reaction as this was a meeting that must be stopped at all costs. How much would Sergei know of UK security service operations if he was still active? It would also explained why Yulia as also targeted and why there turned off their phones as they sought to shake off their UK handlers. A meeting is more credible in broad daylight than an assassination. An assassination with an escape route involving a train from Salisbury on Sunday is not credible.
It could even be that the UK security services carried out the attack in the hope of blaming Russia if the could convince them it was carried out by Russia. Having kept the OPCW away they could then interfere with the evidence at will with Novachock. They could be filmed propped up in bed blaming Russia (like Litvinenko), but they didn't play ball so have been kept incommunicado ever since apart from a a carefully scripted interview. The attacks on the other two months later could be to add credibility to a narrative that was loosing all credibility even among the general public.
JudyJ

"Having kept the OPCW away "

I always considered it was highly suspicious that the UK was most reluctant to involve the OPCW right from the outset even though that would be the normal internationally accepted practice in the circumstances; and when Russia was imploring them to do so.

Significantly, the UK only brought them into the picture (reluctantly) when they were given legal advice that Russia were entitled to invite the OPCW to investigate, and whoever issued the invitation first would have overall control of the final report (i.e. they could liaise with the OPCW in the drafting, they could redact it, and decide who was to receive copies of the full report as opposed to the summary report).

My suspicion now, knowing what we know about the OPCW Douma scandal, is that the UK were totally in cahoots with the US over the Salisbury events and when the prospect of having no option but to call in the OPCW emerged the US simply said "Don't worry about a thing. Just leave it with us. We'll sort things out".

Kathy
The British seem to me to act, hide and manipulate from behind the USA.
I think that Trump was really not meant to happen. Killery was supposed to take over the reins and continue the waging of wars in the Middle East. Syria being the immediate agenda.
The two above events both link up in an attempt to force Trump into complying. One of the connections is the attempt to try to smear Trump with the dodgy dossier. The chemical false flag was intended to provide the warmongers with enough pressure to force Trump to act and involve America against his better judgement in an all out war in Syria. luckily this became a short term token one off. Much to British annoyance.
It is the connection with the intelligence services that is key. All of these events seem to be designed to push Trump into compliance and conformity. It is the knowledge of /and his probable involvement with Christopher Steele, that suggest poor Sergey knew to much of both events, and so had to be silenced. The Skripal affair was, I think attempting a cherry on the cake demonizing of Russia with the Skripal narrative. A twist of the knife while Trump was under investigation over his supposed puppet status by/ collusion with Russia.
It seems that the latest persecution of Assange is also mostly being pushed by Britain. Assange certainly did play a big part in the narrative not playing out as planned.
crank
Remarkable that despite all that is known, an article (well, two really) like this does not meniton Israel once.
The extract from Catte's piece last year starts with the sentence, 'The neocon faction in the US is usually (and reasonably) regarded as the motivator behind much of the western aggression in the Middle East.'
The 'neocon faction' means what exactly ? Why not just say it ? It means Israel and the international power bloc aligned with Israel.
Perhaps Douma and Salisbury make more sense if they are put into a context of Israel writing and running US (and by extension, UK) foreign policies. And what of Russia's strange and often unmentioned relationship with Israel?
If anyone is serious about unwrapping the onion of lies and misdirection that passes for 'current events', then its time to consider Israel and its networks of supporters as the central focal point.
9/11 only makes sense, I would say, with this in mind. Ditto the Kennedy killings. If you think these events have significance in our present,and you genuinely stand against racist supremicism and crazed plans for world domination, then speak out about Israel before such speech is criminalised everywhere.
Dissidents_unit
Well said Crank. I have always believed Mossad had a hand in the alleged assassination attempt of the Skripals as Israel does have chemical weapons and has refused affiliation with the OPCW in order, I presume, to avoid inspections and having to decommission the chemical weapons they have. If anybody is to be accused of meddling in other nation's elections, politics etc Israel is right up there as the prime suspects – they obviously control Trump, they were caught on Video (at least a non diplomatic representative from the Israeli Embassy in the UK who branded himself as managing 'special projects') offering Joan Ryan – a Labour MP – £1m to run a smear campaign against Corbyn – which she gladly accepted. They have run continuous, spurious, ridiculous anti-Semitism claims against Corbyn and Labour which has only served to turn the public more against them and they are massacring and murdering Palestinians with impunity – all supported by the UK and USA.

I think Mossad were the Government (UK's) agents with respect to the Skripal affair. I am of the firm belief that the Skripals are both dead – after all, the UK Government cannot afford to release them so to speak. I say this because Sergei used to speak to his elderly mother in Russia if not every day, at least several times a week and he has not been in touch with her neither has Yulia. Yulia had a flat, a fiancé, a job and a wedding to arrange back in Russia – I don't believe she just walked away from all that.

Portonchok
And what of Russia's strange and often unmentioned relationship with Israel?
It's not strange at all. By far the largest group of immigrants into Israel are Russians.
John2o2o
Jews under the bed? I don't agree with your analysis. Israel has nothing to do with the Skripal poisoning. I understand your mistrust of Israel, but it is not to blame for all the ills of the world.
crank
How do you know that 'Israel had nothing to do with the Skripal poisoning' ?
You don't.
I know of no connection directly linking the events to agents of the Israeli state, but what does that mean? We don't really know any more than that the UK government story is a transparent fabrication.

If you conclude that Israel effectively runs US foreign policy then the Syrian situation has to be considered in that context. (Likewise Iran).
It's not called the Anglo-zionist empire for nothing.

Catte's article was basically a theorised link between Douma and Salisbury. Douma is in Syria, which is under attack from Israel, according to a plan drawn up in Israel decades ago, with proxy army from Neocon Washington (i.e. Israel)

mark
That's a good point. But I am struck by the leading role currently played by the UK in the recent litany of false flags and smear campaigns. The UK was a prime mover in setting up the "White Helmets" and the various Syrian gas hoaxes. Litvinenko. Skripal. The Steele Dirty Dossier. The Corbyn anti Semitism hoax. Admittedly probably with a large Zionist element.
crank
The Henry Jackson Society would be one obvious hub of neocon organisation within the UK political establishment. There surely are others that we are as yet unaware of (NB the recent Facebook revelations of political interference around the globe.)
In much the same way that the 'special relationship' between the US and Britain basically translates into Britain acting as America's de facto diplomatic poodle, HJS has long seen itself as an outpost to disseminate US neoconservative ideology in the British political establishment, media and civil society.

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/the-american-far-right-s-trojan-horse-in-westminster-6799f442d6ce

http://spinwatch.org/images/Reports/HJS_spinwatch%20report_web_2015.pdf

JudyJ
O/T I know, but on the subject of the esteemed (!) Henry Jackson Society, I had to laugh the other day when I read about the pending departure of Alexander Yakovenko from the Russian Embassy in London.

A Dr Andrew Foxall, who (according to the Daily Mail) is the 'expert' Head of Russian Studies at the HJC, stated that it was clearly a suspicious move because ambassadorial positions are normally held for 5 or 3 years, not for the 8 years that Yakovenko had been there. He even spoon-fed us with the information that "8 is not divisible by 5 or 3" and therefore this has to be a forced move. I suggest that Dr Foxall needs to stop and think just a touch longer if he is ever asked to comment in public in future and not seriously damage whatever reputation he might claim to have. I ask you.

JudyJ
Sorry, should have made better use of my 'edit' time! HJC should of course read HJS. My proof-reading abilities are as questionable as Dr Andrew Foxall's maths!
crank
If anyone has not reviewed Christopher Bollyn's case against Israel for 9/11, I would suggest that now is the time.
Only a widespread revelation of the role of Israel in 9/11 can stop their war on Iran from proceding.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5H9RY1N2ljA

crank
https://www.mintpressnews.com/newly-released-fbi-docs-shed-light-on-apparent-mossad-foreknowledge-of-9-11-attacks/258581/
UreKismet
There are only two viable theories about Skirpal IMO. The first is that his daughter had persuaded the old man to come home and the englanders learned this at short notice.

Sergeant Nick Bailey the thug on call that day, really screwed up the attempt to off Skirpal even poisoning himself in order to 'get' Skirpal before he met with the Russian officers who had been sent to negotiate his return home.

Proximity to English chemical weapons determined the method.

The second is also dependent on the proximity of English chemical weapons manufacturing base at Porton Downs. That is the English were responsible for training Syrian headchoppers in chemical warfare and they taught their terrorists about Novichok to false flag in Syria in a way that would make Russia appear culpable.

One of the trainee terrorists went to lunch and overheard the Skripals talking Russian & became so upset the invasion and war had been lost, he decided to poison em.

The latter doesn't fit the known facts as well as the former, but it is more credible than anything the Englander spies have offered.

Dissidents_unit
URKismet – just a comment – it turns out that the first responder apart from Nick Bailey was, in fact, the Head of Nursing of the British Army! No coincidence there I think. Either she or Nick Bailey or both are surely suspects in the administration of the toxic substance?
Wilmers31
Many people forget that Skripal took (according to wikipedia) approximately 300 other agents down with him when he was busted in Moscow.

That makes about 600 individuals (only 1 relative for each) who must be his enemies. Someone was after revenge? Whether that one was in Britain in exile or in Russia we don't know. People ignore such a large group of potential enemies.

Seamus Padraig
So why did the Russians allow the Skripals to emigrate to the UK in the first place? They had Sergei in prison for 6 years; they could have had him bumped off at any time while he was their prisoner. But for some odd reason they chose not to. Strange
Wilmers31
It was a prisoner exchange before Skripal had completed his sentence. The UK must have had an asset which Moscow really wanted, persons or . don't know. It is now time that these prisoner/spy exchanges no longer happen in secret. Why they let him out earlier is not understandable from what we know at the moment.
Wilmers31
The one thumb down is surprising. If that is for the idea to cease prisoner/spy exchanges that is somewhat silly as these exchanges do not make for happiness, as we have seen. If exchanges are so good, why not exchange Kevin Mallory with the Chinese? People need to cop the complete punishment for their crimes, you do not exchange murderers or fraudsters, either.

If the criticism is about the hundreds of people who are tempted for revenge after their cover was blown through Skripal then this is bizarre. What purpose does it serve to sweep it under the carpet that Skripal was only one person in a system? Maybe wikipedia's figure of 300 was wrong – let's have the correct figure then.

We can read in memoirs like Brian Crozier's "Free Agent" and "Gold Warriors" (Seagraves) what operations there were in Chile, Africa, Philippines etc but the many people who were involved are never mentioned. The individuals like Skripal or Crozier are the visible tips of the icebergs and it is legitimate to ask who else was involved in the operations, covert or open, legal or illegal, and who funded.

davemass
Profumo was jailed for lying to Parliament.
Surely May, and all accomplices should suffer the samne fate??
wardropper
I expect the US secret service just asked our secret service to take the initiative for once, since the US were beginning to look like the bad guys
Paul Harvey
I have privately speculated that the raison d'etre of the Skirpal farce was simply to generate the belief system and memetic narrative that Russia is currently producing chemical weapons/ nerve agents and is willing to openly use them on their perceived 'enemies' abroad (and of course that the origin of these chemical weapons, ie Novichok can 'proved' to be exclusively of Russian providence.

Why is the above important? Because if there is ever a chemical weapons attack in Syria on civilians and hundreds die and the nerve agent is 'proved' by the OPCW to be Novichok then of course Russia would get the blame for supplying the 'Assad regime' with this chemical agent. (Sarin, anthrax etc cannot be exclusively traced back to Russia, only Novichok and it alone can be, if we believe the prior Skirpal narrative).

As a side note – the story that Trump was shown images of dead English ducks and hospitalised English children in relation to the Skirpal incident makes me wonder if this was an attempt by British psychological warfare operatives to pre-program Trump and his team, so when videos eventually emerge of dead animals and hospitalised Syrian children, the link is already fixed in their mind as to what a Novichok 'attack' looks like).

One has to admit the story that surfaced last month of dead ducks/hospitalised kids images shown to Trump in relation to the Skirpal narrative was very strange to say the least.

Just as the Skirpal case 'fixed' the Novichok narrative in the MSM as exclusively of Russian providence, one can also speculate that the Douma 'Barrel Bomb' meme (and the fake OPCW Report) was another key part of the narrative – if a speculative Novichok attack occurs and footage emerges of similar containers as used in the the fake Douma chlorine attack, the OPCW can already point to the providence of the delivery system as being exclusively of Syrian military origin and the Douma events as simply a precursor to a current 'Novichok' attack (just as the Skirpal events would be used as a precursor to Russian culpability and perhaps even the suggestion of active Russian involvement in a mass chemical attack on Syrian women and children using the agent Novichok.)

Maybe this is what the Russians mean by UK involvement in Douma – maybe they worked out that the Skirpal events were a precursor to a wider false flag event to be staged down the line by elements of British military and state intelligence networks in conjunction with elements within NATO and U.S. intelligence structures.

I know this is total speculation and I provide it as food for thought and grounds for further research in reference to this article.

Panopticon
All you need to know about Skripalgate : )

https://syrianobservatoryforhumanwrongs.wordpress.com/2018/07/09/an-idiots-guide-to-the-skripal-affair/

CoryP
This was such a treat. Thanks for sharing!
wardropper
That is a tremendous piece of work. It should go down in history, but people are already forgetting Skripal's name. A truly brilliant summary.
mark
Chemical weapons have been used against the Syrian military, inflicting casualties. They have also been used routinely by the British taxpayer funded head choppers and throat slitters to terrorise civilians indiscriminately for years. As for "scant evidence of jihadists weaponizing chemicals", they have been arrested in Turkey by the Turkish police in possession of canisters of sarin nerve gas. Just one of many documented instances. But maybe this just comes from a "conspiracist mindset." Maybe it's totally irrelevant to the issue when terrorists are arrested in Turkey in possession of nerve gas.
mark
The UK taxpayer funded head choppers and throat slitters routinely seize civilians as hostages, then murder them and blame it on Assad. They have massacred entire villages then called in their chums in the BBC to film the evidence of "Assad's latest atrocity." Like they film the devastation in Gaza and try to pass it off as rocket damage in Israel. All in a day's lying for the folks at the Botty Bangers Club.
John
Isn't it odd that you used opcw findings when it matched what you want but it doesn't fit now so you're having a hissy fit! I hope horrid things happen to you fake socialist
lundiel

isn't it odd that sarin gas or even chlorine has only been used to kill their own women and children rather than the Baathist military?

No. Western media aren't going to get in a frenzy if some of Assad's soldiers are killed.

crank
isn't it odd that sarin gas or even chlorine has only been used to kill their own women and children rather than the Baathist military?

– In a word, no. Anyone with even the slightest comprehension of how psychological warfare works would understand this.

Louis Proyec – 'reader'

Maybe read more widely, or start thinking more deeply, or stop bullshitting so lamely.

Loverat
I came across a similar post Louis made on another topic a while ago.

The political language and terms used in his posts always suggest his political position is his starting point then arranging selective facts to support it. First, the classic line of attack is accusing others of 'conspiracy theorists' – a tactic used by mainstream journalists and Bellingcat and el against the academics and experts of the Syria Working Group. As said below, that does not cut it – especially now the 'conspiracy theorists' have for the umpteenth time been vindicated.

Louis, comes out with stuff like 'Baathist troops' (he uses the word 'Baathist' three times in his post as if it was somehow relevant) whereas someone normal, of genuine intelligence and independent, would use the description 'Syrian Army'. Why would you say 'Baathist troops' or use other pointless labels unless you are trying to distract from the real issues while attempting to give the impression of having some knowledge. His political posturing offers nothing by way of getting to the truth and he appears to be another self-serving armchair commentator.

mark
Maybe we could get him a job with Bellingcat.
OffG
You're embarrassing yourself, Louis. Throwing out stale ad homs like 'conspiracist' isn't enough any more. You need to up your game, deal with the developing reality or retire.
Jen
We need the other anti-Assad troll back but the danger is I might get sick of hitting him again with Yassin al-Haj's article for the New York Times where the Syrian activist admits to having stayed with the White Helmets in Ghouta in mid-2013 before fleeing to Raqqa and leaving his wife Samira Khalil behind.
Ken
Take it easy on poor old Louis; what can one expect from a fellow who probably believes that 9/11 was not a false flag either? And that one is a complete no-brainer to see.
Rhisiart Gwilym
Come on! Let's encourage the poor old fart to go on posting here. He's always good for an incredulous laugh. And he's a warning too to anyone trying to make sense of Western criminal realpolitik, an object lesson in what happens to a supposed 'radical thinker' – hah! – who drinks too deeply of the Western propaganda kool-aid, and holds the stuff down, too, until it comes time to regurgitate it as if it were 'original thinking', the poor sucker. Don't off him. He's useful as light amusement.

PS: in case you think I'm being a bit ad-hominy, I'm a poor broken down old fart myself. But I still have my wits about me, and I can still smell the stench of the West's Permanent Bullshit Blizzard when I meet it. Catch up soon Louis! Till then – thanks for all the laffs! :O)

JudyJ
" isn't it odd that sarin gas or even chlorine has only been used to kill their own women and children rather than the Baathist military?"

No, not at all odd.

1. To be clear, when you say "their own" I presume you mean the Syrian women and children who the (mainly non-Syrian) terrorists hold as captives to ensure their men folk co-operate with them, or to be used in propaganda campaigns including 'false flag' scenarios.

2. In what form would you suggest the Jihadi murderers might be tempted to use chlorine in a way capable of killing opposition soldiers? Chlorine is essentially an unpleasant irritant if misused. To kill, it would have to be administered in an enclosed space where there was no means of escape for the victims.

3. We are constantly being fed the lie that the terrorists don't have sarin so it would be rather foolish of them to deploy it against opposition soldiers. Even they've worked that one out.

4. The terrorists are mercenaries paid by western agencies whose primary function is to carry out acts to discredit the Assad Government, thereby providing an ultimate excuse for military action to overthrow the Assad Government. The most obvious way to do this is to murder, as you so sensitively express it, "a bunch of Syrians" in a way that the West finds appropriate to point the finger at the Assad Government and its Russian allies.

This all makes a lot more sense than the idea that the Syrian Government assisted by the Russians would choose to murder innocent Syrian civilians, not least by using outlawed chemical weapons, and incur the wrath of western powers at the point when they were succeeding in defeating the terrorists with relative ease.

WeatherEye
Fantastic piece. The leaked report confirms what many analysts on the left have been saying, including myself. https://flashpointssite.wordpress.com/2019/05/17/chemical-attack-on-dhouma-foam-lies-and-videotape-weathereye/

[Jun 28, 2019] Joining Some Dots on the Skripal Case: Part 6 – Tying up the Loose Ends

Jun 28, 2019 | off-guardian.org

Over the last five pieces ( Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 ) I have, slowly but surely, advanced a theory of what happened in the Skripal case. I must confess to having done so with a fair amount of unease. I don't want to believe that my Government has been stating a case that is false. I don't want to believe that the public have been lied to. I don't want to have to think that there has been a lot of effort made to present an explanation that hides the truth.

And yet, given the fact that the Government story contains self-evident fallacies, and cannot be made to add up, I don't think that there's much alternative than to be hugely sceptical about their claims. I stated the two main fallacies in Part 1 , which are the claims that three people were poisoned by the nerve agent A-234, which is 5-8 times more toxic than VX, and that because A-234 was developed in the Soviet Union, the Russian State is responsible for what happened. The first claim cannot be true, because the three people are alive and well and have suffered no irreparable damage. The second claim is palpably untrue, because A-234 has been synthesised in a number of countries.

Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg of the absurdities and anomalies. I don't intend to go through all of them, but would simply point anyone who does believe the official story to concentrate on three words: The Door Handle. This was apparently where the poison was poured, so allow me to pose five questions about this claim to those who believe it to be true:

During the "clean-up" operation, there were lots of military chaps wearing HazMat suits, which are designed to protect against exposure to toxic chemicals. How, then, did the assassin apparently manage to pour this same lethal, military grade nerve agent on a door handle, without wearing a HazMat suit? On the other hand, if he or she was wearing a HazMat suit when performing the operation, wouldn't someone in Christie Miller Road have noticed and found it – shall we say – a bit odd? If the poison was administered to the door handle, how exactly did both Sergei and Yulia Skripal manage to touch it (people don't normally both touch the door handle if they go in the house together), and how did they manage to get exactly the right quantities on their skin so that they collapsed at exactly the same time, some four hours later? The door handle theory only reared its head some three weeks after the poisoning, at which point the substance was said to have been still present in a "highly pure" form. During this three weeks, many people went in and out of Mr Skripal's house using the front door. How did they manage to do so without using the door handle, or if they did, how did they manage not to succumb to poisoning? Part of the Government's alleged evidence pointing at the high likelihood of Russian involvement in the case, is an FSB instruction manual showing – amongst other things – how to assassinate someone by pouring Novichok on a door handle. Suspending our disbelief on this claim for a moment (and admittedly that is hard), did the Government have the manual when they made their accusations against the Russian Government on 12th and 14th March, and if so, why did the door handle theory not surface for more than a week after this?

Of course, a few moments consideration about the door handle theory will show that – like the rest of the official story – it is simply wrong. And because it is so plainly wrong, that is why we can safely say that the real explanation lies elsewhere.

Nevertheless, I am aware that in advancing another explanation, there are likely to be many holes in it too. Whilst much of what I have said throughout this series has been based on facts and eyewitness statements, the theory I have advanced from those facts and witness statements remains unproven. And so I would ask that where I have got things wrong, you would forgive me, and where things don't make sense, you would point them out.

Having said that, what I want to do in this final piece it to tie up a few loose ends and – most particularly – attempt to demonstrate how the theory I have advanced explains some of the other anomalies in the case in a far more cogent and rational way than does the official story. So here goes.

The Deafening Silence of Sergei Skripal

One of the least talked about points in the official story, yet one that really is very important, is that if it were a true account, Mr Skripal would almost certainly have no more clue about who poisoned him than the average person in the street. If it were true that an unknown assassin, appointed by the Russian Government, poured military-grade nerve agent onto his front door on 4th March, before fleeing back to the Motherland, Mr Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, would be as much in the dark as to who did it than you or I.

Now, if that were the case, two things would naturally follow. The first is that Mr Skripal would almost certainly be inclined to believe the version of events given to him by the Metropolitan Police. Think about it. He wakes up one morning in a strange hospital bed, and has absolutely no clue why he is there or what happened to him. Then a kindly policeman comes and explains that he was the target of an assassination attempt using a lethal nerve agent, and that the British Government believes that it was ordered by the Russian Government. What is he going to believe? Fairly obvious I would think. At least he would have no reason to disbelieve them.

The second thing that would naturally follow is that, as soon as he was able, he would want to release a statement, either on paper, or in an interview, where he not only pledges his support for the Metropolitan Police and their ongoing investigation, and no doubt hints at involvement of the Russian State, but also – and this is crucial – where he also gives the public some information about what actually happened to him on 4th March: where he went, when he first started to feel ill, and what he last remembers.

Again, think about it. If you were in his shoes, wouldn't you want to catch the people who did it? And wouldn't you assume that the more information you could give to the public, perhaps even clearing up some of the anomalies (such as the reason for the agitation in Zizzis), the more chance there would be that someone's memory might be jogged and vital information given to the police?

Of course you would. And yet so far, Mr Skripal has released no such statement. Why?

It isn't that he is physically or mentally incapacitated. We know from Yulia Skripal's brief call to her cousin on April 5th (which almost certainly wasn't "meant" to happen), that Sergei was by that time fine. In response to Viktoria's question about her father, she said this:

"Everything is ok. He is resting now, having a nap. Everyone's health is fine, there are no irreparable things. I will be discharged soon. Everything is ok."

That was nearly three months ago, and yet the Sergei Skripal who was fine on 5th April, having suffered no irreparable damage from apparently being poisoned by the world's most deadly nerve agent, and who was discharged on 18th May, still has not spoken.

I put it that the theory I have advanced (see Part 5 in particular), suggests an obvious reason for his silence. Were he in the dark about the identity of those who poisoned him, as the official story implies, his silence would be inexplicable. Don't you want to catch the perpetrators of this crime upon you and your daughter, Sergei?

Yet, if we assume that actually he knows exactly who poisoned him and why they poisoned him – as would be the case according to the theory I have advanced – then his silence is very easily explained. He cannot be allowed to be interviewed about what happened, because he would blow the whole wretched business clean out of the water. He cannot be allowed to make an open statement, with the press there to ask free questions, because it would come out that he had been meeting someone at the bench in The Maltings, and that this someone whom he met was the person who poisoned him.

In addition, his (highly likely) authorship of the Trump Dossier would be revealed. And if this were to happen, not only would it be seen that the foundation upon which the whole Trump/Russia collusion hoax was based was made of straw, but it would become clear that the interference in the 2016 US Presidential election was never really about Russian interference to get Trump elected; but rather about British interference to stop Trump getting elected.

The deafening silence of Mr Skripal is therefore strong evidence of a number of things:

That the Government story, in which he was the unsuspecting victim of a Kremlin plot, is without foundation. That he well knows who his poisoners were and why they poisoned him. That he cannot be allowed to speak freely because if he was, a scandal of monumental proportions would be revealed. The Deafening Silence of Yulia Skripal

Deafening silence of Yulia? What am I talking about? She has released a number of statements through the Metropolitan Police, and in the statement (not interview) she made to Reuters. So what do I mean?

Many have pointed out a number of remarkable things about her Reuters statement. For one, she looked remarkably well. For another, the language of the statement she read was highly suggestive that it was first written in English – not by her – and then translated into Russian (statements like "I do not wish to avail myself of their services" don't normally trip off the tongue of native English speakers, let alone those who speak it as a second language).

But for me the most remarkable thing about all of her statements are not what they do say, but rather what they don't say. As with Sergei's silence, Yulia has nothing whatsoever to say about the day of the poisoning. Isn't that odd? She notes that she and her father survived an "attempted assassination". She notes that a nerve agent was used to do it. But she says nothing about her and her father's movements that day. Nothing about what they did and where they went. Nothing about when they first succumbed to the effects of the poisoning. Nothing to suggest that her father's agitation in Zizzis may have been caused by poisoning.

In short, she says nothing whatsoever about the poisoning itself. Zero. Diddly squat. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. Why?

As with Sergei's non-statements, this doesn't compute. If you happened to wake up in a hospital to be told that you had been the victim of a nerve agent poisoning, you would almost certainly want to tell people as much as possible about your movements up to the point of the poisoning. Wouldn't you? Of course. Especially if not only you had been poisoned, but also your dad. You'd at least want to sound a bit more interested in actually catching the perpetrators than Yulia, who didn't so much as mention it, and instead sounded like she just wanted to move on and forget it ever happened.

Once again, this total silence on something so crucial just doesn't fit at all with the official story. That narrative suggests that Sergei and Yulia were innocent victims of a Kremlin-hired assassin. That narrative suggests they don't know who that Kremlin-hired assassin was. But it also suggests that they of all people have a huge interest in giving details of what happened to them that day. And yet there is silence.

Does it fit better with the theory I have proposed? You bet it does. If what I have suggested is anywhere close to the truth, just like Sergei, Yulia cannot be allowed the freedom to give a proper interview where any question is allowed. She cannot be given consular access by the Russian Embassy. Why not? Because she knows what her dad was up to; she knows why he was meeting people at a park bench on Sunday 4th March; and she knows that the two of them were poisoned by the people who they were meeting.

Why did she agree to an interview? No doubt she realises what a difficult and vulnerable position she is in. Despite claims to the contrary, she clearly has no contact with her family back in Russia, or indeed any contact with the outside world. She was almost certainly pressured into making a statement, and yet -- as Tony Kevin convincingly argues here -- it has many signs of being a compromise statement. And so she agreed to making a fairly nebulous statement -- one which is almost inconceivable from the point of view of the official narrative, but which fits perfectly with the narrative I have advanced.

The Deafening Silence of Nick Bailey

One final deafening silence that doesn't exactly do wonders for the official narrative, is the silence of Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey. He has always been a big puzzle in this case, for a number of reasons. It was first said that he was poisoned at The Maltings. However, the problem with this explanation is that there was absolutely no reason for him to have been there. The case was treated by Salisbury District Hospital as a case of Fentanyl poisoning. Why would a member of the Criminal Intelligence Department (CID) be called to a bench to an apparent opioid overdose?

It was then said by none other than Lord Ian Blair that DS Bailey was actually poisoned at Mr Skripal's house. But again, the same question arises. Why would a member of CID be sent to the home of a person in a what looked like a case of opioid poisoning?

The story then swung backwards and forwards a number of times between a poisoning at the Maltings and a poisoning at Mr Skripal's house. These anomalies are very important, but even more important is that they could have been put straight by DS Bailey himself. If the official story was correct, not only would it have been super easy to have verified where DS Bailey was poisoned, but he himself could have testified to it. And yet like the Skripals, there has been nothing!

Given the absurd changes to this particular part of the story – and it is perhaps the easiest of all parts to verify – my assumption is that he was poisoned at neither The Maltings or Mr Skripal's house. Instead, just as I wrote in Part 5 that I believe it likely the Skripals were poisoned by an incapacitating nerve agent in the red bag that was then seen next to the bench, I think it highly likely that DS Bailey was poisoned from the same source.

But where? The red bag was removed from the scene by a police officer and placed in an evidence bag. Why would this have been done? Because the pair on the bench were suspected of overdosing on an opioid, and the bag would naturally be removed by police so that its contents could be examined. And whereas I think it unlikely that someone from CID would be called to the scene of a drug overdose, it seems quite likely that they might receive and handle evidence taken from such a scene. Therefore my guess – and I stress that it is only a guess – is that DS Bailey was the man who received the bag, and whilst looking inside to see its contents, was poisoned by the same incapacitating agent as the Skripals (possibly something like 3-Quinuclidinyl Benzilate (BZ), but definitely not A-234).

Again, if the official story were true, what would prevent DS Bailey from giving a brief statement or interview, confirming exactly what happened to him? But if the red bag theory is close to the mark, then it becomes plainly obvious why this hasn't yet happened.

Smokes and Mirrors

Which actually brings me on to the penultimate point I want to make in this piece, and indeed in this 6-part series. Everything in the official story, no matter how absurd, seems designed to point our attention away from the most probable source, place and type of poisoning: The red bag, at the bench, and an incapacitating nerve agent. And it does so because if our attention is focused on them, then a very different story begins to emerge. Which cannot be allowed to happen.

As stated above, claims about A-234 being used just don't add up. Neither the time delay, nor the symptoms, nor the recovery of the Skripals with no irreparable damage match up to what this deadly, military grade, high purity, lethal nerve agent that is so much more toxic than VX, is meant to do. What the claim does, however, is points our attention away from what is far more likely – an incapacitating agent administered to the Skripals between 3:45 and 4:00pm on 4th March.

As stated above, claims about the door handle just don't add up. Neither the fact that both Sergei and Yulia were poisoned, nor the fact that others went in and out of the house before the door handle theory was put forward and didn't succumb, nor the fact that the substance on it apparently remained of "high purity" weeks later – none of these things make any sense. What the claim does, however, is directs our thoughts away from what is far more likely – that the substance used to poison the Skripals was administered at the bench, and probably via the red bag.

The apparent motive put forward in the official narrative doesn't add up either. There is a general agreement among countries that you do not target spies who have been part of a swap. Why? Because if you do, you can kiss goodbye to ever getting any other spies swapped in the future. It's called shooting yourself in the foot big time! But what this frankly risible explanation for the apparent motive behind the poisoning does, however, is to point our attention away from what Mr Skripal was really up to. And as I set out in Part 4 , this was very likely something to do with authoring the Trump Dossier.

Nothing about the official story makes sense. None of it adds up. It is riddled with holes. But I would submit that the only thing that does make sense about it, is that the parts that go to make up the sum are all desperate attempts to divert attention. They are smokes and mirrors, designed to stop us from considering some of the more obvious aspects of the case, and some of the more startling aspects of the case – Mr Skripal's involvement with MI6; his likely involvement in or authorship of the Trump Dossier; the likelihood that he was due to meet people at the bench in The Maltings; the probability that this is why he was agitated and in a hurry in Zizzis; the likelihood that he knows who poisoned him and why.

And of course the reason that these things are not supposed to be considered is that if – and I acknowledge it is a big if – the alternative explanation I have advanced is true, and if it became generally known, then it would cause just about the biggest political crisis in British political history.

And Finally

Having said that, I have to say that I don't believe it at all likely that the British Government knew about any of this before it occurred. I get the impression that the intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic are a law unto themselves, and I think it likely that some of their number wanted to send Mr Skripal a message, one which would look like an opioid overdose, one which he would recover from reasonably quickly, and one which would be forgotten very soon.

However, I don't think that the poisoning of DS Bailey was meant to happen, but when it did, it set off a series of events that quickly got out of control. I don't think the identity of Sergei Skripal as a Russian involved in a spy swap was ever meant to make it into the press, but it did and very soon what looked like some kind of opioid poisoning quickly became an international spy saga.

The British Government's reckless and extraordinarily quick reaction to the case was, apart from being a travesty of the rule of law, one of the biggest clues that the official narrative was not true. If it were true, they could have took their time, acted calmly, and let the investigation run its course. Instead, what we got was a lawless, irrational and absurd response. It all smacked of a panicked reaction, and whilst it made no sense in terms of the story they sold us, it makes perfect sense if the truth was that they were desperate to prevent news getting out about who Skripal really was, what he had been up to, and how the poisoning might well be connected with that work. And indeed the D-notices they slapped on the reporting of that stuff, and of Mr Skripal's connections to Christopher Steele and Pablo Miller, are further evidence that it is so.

And so they very quickly decided to turn attention away from the big clues of the case, by invoking the scary sounding "Novichok" and pinning the blame – without any evidence – on the Russian State. To this date, they have given us no evidence to back up their claim, much less a suspect, but have unwittingly given us a bunch of absurdities that can be blown out of the water through the use of simple reason and logic.

They should have remembered this:

"Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap" (Galatians 6:7)

But I have a feeling they don't believe it applies to them. I have a feeling that it does.

And so there's my case. As I say, there are bound to be a good many holes and no doubt many errors and inconsistencies in it. Please do forgive me for those. As for the rest of it -- Make of it what you will.

Ross Hendry

' On Friday, Salisbury District Hospital's director of nursing Lorna Wilkinson announced Mr Rowley had been discharged and Public Health England said he posed no risk to the community She said "I would also like to reassure everyone that, despite many people seeking advice following these incidents, there have only ever been a total of five people who have been exposed to this nerve agent and admitted to hospital for treatment"'.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/20/novichok-victim-charlie-rowley-discharged-salisbury-hospital/

This whole Salisbury saga is a complete riddle. The A&E consultant wrote to the Times saying nobody had ever been treated for nerve agent poisoning, yet here we are months later and the director of nursing is totally contradicting him. Don't they talk to each other at Salisbury District Hospital? Or, more likely, was the consultant going off-script?

JudyJ
Ross, Yes, considering Sergei and Yulia were placed in medical comas for several weeks supposedly to aid their recovery, Rowley's treatment and speedy recovery appear to have inexplicably followed a completely different pattern. With regard to Dr Davies' letter to the Times, have a look at 'The Blogmire' website where there has been posted in the past two or three days a brief report on this, followed by interesting reader comments. Rob Slane, who also provides articles for this website, is 'Mr' Blogmire and he managed to contact Dr Davies but really received less than convincing information.
Antonyl
At the Guardian Novichok: police take away 400 potentially contaminated items https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/14/novichok-police-find-more-than-400-potentially-contaminated-items
JudyJ
"400 potentially contaminated items" is absolutely meaningless but sounds good. It is a useful means to imply that the police are on top of things. Even if they found contamination on any of the items, I'm not sure what it would prove. Basically all they mean is they have removed everything that Rowley and Sturgess might have touched since some randomly selected vague date or been told by Rowley was the date he 'acquired' the 'bottle'. It could be all their clothing, everything in the fridge or kitchen cupboards, everything in the bathroom etc etc If history repeats itself they won't even bother to test the items but will just incinerate the lot.
D'Esterre
JudyJ: "400 potentially contaminated items"

I was puzzled at this. I remarked to a family member that it looks as if either somebody at Porton Down has been very careless, or the spooks don't understand subtlety.

Mulga Mumblebrain
The brainwashed morons are impressed by big numbers.
D'Esterre
Jen: " .you have to explain why the UK authorities incinerated the Zizzi's Restaurant table where the Skripals had lunch ."

That's interesting. I hadn't known that. Curious though: if the authorities incinerated the table at which they had lunch, how is it that the front desk – where presumably they paid the bill – wasn't also incinerated? Come to that, what about whatever was on the table: cloth, utensils, plates and so on. Also waitstaff and kitchen staff: surely they'd have been contaminated as well?

Truly, the more we're told about this incident, the more farcical it sounds. Ditto the incident with the unfortunate couple in Amesbury. None of it makes sense.

Mulga Mumblebrain
When the Western kakistocracies and the Evil psychopaths who comprise them, in politics, the 'intelligence' apparatus and the fakestream media brainwashing machine, lie about everything to do with Russia ie about Putin's legitimacy, the nature of Russian society, the 'popularity' of fascist Quislings like Navalny, Russia' role in saving Syria from the takfiri death-squad armies sent against it, about Russia's non-existent role in Western installation of fascists in power in Kiev, Russian 'meddling' in US elections etc, etc, etc, on the balance of probabilities it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that these pathological liars are telling the truth about the Skripals. Particularly when we know that they are lying in asserting that ONLY Russia could make novichoks, only Russia had any motive, that only Russia bumps off inconvenient people and that only Russia had anything to gain from it, on the eve of the FIFA World Cup and with various Sorosian vermin braying that it be cancelled. How utterly galling it must be for these psychopathic Russophobes that it was the greatest World Cup, on and off the field, for decades, perhaps ever.
Jerry Alatalo
Yulia Skripal's agreeing to convey the message concerning her possibly meeting with Russian authorities – "I do not wish to avail myself of their services" -, raises suspicion that she and her father Sergei Skripal were "in on" an engineered false flag chemical event from the start. Perhaps others have already done the investigative research and verified Yulia Skripal did indeed undergo a tracheotomy, the neck scar seemingly over-exposed and the central focus for all who watched her short Reuters "interview". Has this been confirmed by the doctor(s) who performed the surgical procedure, nurses assisting those surgeon(s) in the operating room, medical photos, medical records, etc..

If Ms. Skripal indeed underwent surgical tracheotomy, our thought that the neck scar was the result of a covert conspirator surgeon's making a simple incision and immediately sewing it up – to appear as if Ms. Skripal underwent a lifesaving surgical procedure -, goes out the window.

Can anyone help in clarifying this? Has it been verified Ms. Skripal underwent the procedure and that her neck scar should not be perceived as anything other than from a truly necessary lifesaving action?

Thank you.

vexarb
@thorella: "The uk legal system and uk forensics are second to none."

Dr. John Kelly, RIP. Assassinated by MI6 by order of Prime Miniister TB.Liar of Dodgy Dossier, interred without mandatory Crown Coroners Inquest with Case Sealed for 70 years by order of Lord "Safe Pair of Hands"Hunt of Bloody
Sunday fame, and Dr.Kelly's bodily remains subsequently dug up and incinerated to destroy chemical evidence by order of Prime Minister St Theresa of Porton Down.

"Second to none" in what?

Jen
The Russian Foreign Ministry and the Russian embassy in London are too busy having a laugh at seeing the whole affair collapse under its own inconsistencies and at the British government and security services trying to prop up the whole mess and failing to distract public attention away from the shit-heap that Theresa May has made of Brexit.
Einstein
Why should the Russians bother commenting on it at all, when we can all see it's a false flag without the Russians having to tell us?
This is a domestic UK issue about MI6 being out of control.
BigB
The main corroboration for the Steele Dossier was Christopher Steele: briefing the press at the Tabard Inn, Washington – to set up a collaboration loop. Julian Assange tweeted that one of the journalists was Paul Wood who looks like a spook or an asset himself.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JulianAssange/status/976943588394323973

Another journalists was Michael Isikoff. His planted story war used to collaborate the Dossier as the basis of the FBI's FISA warrant to surveill Carter Page.

The Nunes Memo also states that Steele back-chanelled additional allegations into the DOJ via Bruce Ohr.

Another corroboration was the Trump Tower meeting: ostensibly set up by Trump linked Araz Agalarov could verify the piss taking allegations. It's well worth revisiting the Elizabeth Vos Disobedient Media article for background on this meeting set up Mifsud et al: who are linked to London – not Moscow.

https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/04/all-russiagate-roads-lead-to-london-as-evidence-emerges-of-joseph-mifsuds-links-to-uk-intelligence/

Anyway, all these "experts" – and Wikipedia – seem to have got their information from one source – Steele: who both wrote and then corroborated his own dossier. With a little help from his intel friends

Einstein
"Genuine" in the sense that it was really written by a KGB insider (which Skripal was), NOT in the sense that what he alleged was true.
The point is that the source of the Steele-Clinton dossier would have been revealed and, of course, the source would have been a proven consummate liar and traitor. This would blow Mueller's "investigation" out of the water.
But I'll not engage with you any further on this, since there's none so blind as those who will not see.
Thomas Peterson
why exactly does it seem likely Skripal was one of Steele's sources? did Steele even need any sources to write his ludicrous 'dossier'?
Jen
Paul Roderick Gregory who has followed Soviet and Russian politics professionally for several decades has this to say about the Steele dossier:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2017/01/13/the-trump-dossier-is-false-news-and-heres-why/#5a2c34e06867

The Orbis report makes as if it knows all the ins-and-outs and comings-and-goings within Putin's impenetrable Kremlin. It reports information from anonymous "trusted compatriots," "knowledgeable sources," "former intelligence officers," and "ministry of foreign affairs officials." The report gives a fly-on-the-wall account of just about every conceivable event associated with Donald Trump's Russian connections. It claims to know more than is knowable as it recounts sordid tales of prostitutes, "golden showers," bribes, squabbles in Putin's inner circle, and who controls the dossiers of kompromat (compromising information).

There are two possible explanations for the fly-on-the-wall claims of the Orbis report: Either its author (who is not Mr. Steele) decided to write fiction, or collected enough gossip to fill a 30-page report, or a combination of the two. The author of the Orbis report has one more advantage: He knew that what he was writing was unverifiable. He advertises himself as the only Kremlin outsider with enough "reliable" contacts to explain what is really going within Putin's office.

As someone who has worked for more than a decade with the microfilm collection of Soviet documents in the Hoover Institution Archives, I can say that the dossier itself was compiled by a Russian, whose command of English is far from perfect and who follows the KGB (now FSB) practice of writing intelligence reports, in particular the practice of capitalizing all names for easy reference. The report includes Putin's inner circle – Peskov, Ivanov, Sechin, Lavrov. The anonymous author claims to have "trusted compatriots" who knew the roles that each Kremlin insider, including Putin himself, played in the Trump election saga and were prepared to tell him.

The Orbis report spins the tale of Putin insiders, spurred on by Putin himself, engaging in a five-year courtship of Donald Trump in which they offer him lucrative real estate deals that he rejects but leaves himself open to blackmail as a result of sexual escapades with prostitutes in St. Petersburg and Moscow (the famous "golden shower" incident). Despite his reluctance to enter into lucrative business deals, Trump "and his inner circle have accepted regular intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals," according to the Orbis report.

This story makes no sense. In 2011, when the courtship purportedly begins, Trump was a TV personality and beauty pageant impresario. Neither in the U.S. or Russia would anyone of authority anticipate that Trump would one day become the presidential candidate of a major U.S. political party, making him the target of Russian intelligence.

Sergei Skripal could fit the description of the "Russian" referred to in the third paragraph.

Thomas Peterson
I don't assume it. I see no reason to think Skripal had anything to do with the dossier. More likely in my view the sources, if there were any, were Ukrainians and Americans.

There's a stink of Ukraine about it.

Mulga Mumblebrain
After a history of intelligence lying in the West that includes the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the Warren Commission, 'yellow rain' in Indochina, KAL 007, Lockerbie, Kuwaiti babies thrown from incubators, the USS Liberty, Saddam's WMD, Gaddafi's 'container-loads of Viagra', MH17, the Russian 'invasion of Georgia', the Russian 'invasion of Ukraine', the Tian An Men Square 'massacre' etc (I could go on ALL day), to credit ANYTHING that Western intelligence agencies state is sign either of intractable dementia, or duplicity-or both, probably.
Jen
Yes I suppose a document based mostly on hearsay, rumour and guesswork, and with an accuracy of 60 – 70% (where? in spelling?), ought to be taken seriously – to the kitty litter box.

I mentioned Paul Roderick Gregory and Craig Murray as two people who dismissed the dossier as fraudulent. What "experts" can you put forward, GB, who support the dossier's contents as genuine or accurate? I suppose you think Luke Daniel Harding and Eliot Higgins might qualify as experts supporting the dossier's contents as more or less accurate?

Jen
Gregory says the dossier fails the laugh test and is full of bizarre statements. Murray regards it as equivalent to the Hitler Diaries hoax. Where do they not find anything wrong in the dossier?
bevin
If all that you have to go on for now is a dossier put together by a mercenary for the use of a political party in attack ads, produced at great expense, and totally unsourced and uncorroborated, the world is in a worse way than you fear.
Or perhaps, it's not the world but you?
Mulga Mumblebrain
The utterly fraudulent 'dossier' was also used to gain an illegal FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, as part of the conspiracy to derail Trump's electoral bid, elect the blood-soaked feminazi Gorgon, Clinton, and further the hate campaign against Russia.
vierotchka
Do watch it on YouTube so that you can read the lengthy and informative video description:

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

vierotchka

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

Published on 10 Jul 2018

Three miles from Amesbury, six miles from Salisbury. 'Porton Down is the elephant in the room': former British ambassador who visited Nukus plant where Novichok was tested, Craig Murray dismantles Amesbury poisoning story on BCFMradio,

Porton Down : What is the experimental government facility in Wiltshire at the centre of recent poisonings?

The secretive laboratory has unintentionally become key in political developments and international relations

The major incident in Amesbury saw two people poisoned by the same nerve agent that almost killed the Skripals, government scientists have confirmed. The attack turns attention once more to Porton Down, the mysterious laboratory that has unintentionally become central to the response to the attacks.

The secretive government facility at Porton Down has been used for experiments involving deadly and often undisclosed weapons, and in the wake of the Salisbury attack has become indelibly associated with the nerve agent used in the attack. The Met – whose counter-terror police are now leading the investigation – confirmed that samples had been tested at the facility and that they showed "show the two people have been exposed to the nerve agent Novichok".

Porton Down is often talked about in the singular, but is actually a site located near Porton village that is host to a whole group of different organisations. The two key ones are the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, which is run by the Ministry of Defence and usually referred to as Dstl, as well as Public Health England – both bodies have been involved in the response to the recent poisonings, though it is the former laboratory whose activity is most mysterious.

Bullingdon Boris resigns, feigns matters of principle, limbers up for the top job he was promised at Eton. As 1922 committee cheers for Theresa May ring out to the rafters, British government prepares for controlled demolition.

vierotchka

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

Published on 10 Jul 2018

Three miles from Amesbury, six miles from Salisbury. 'Porton Down is the elephant in the room': former British ambassador who visited #Nukus plant where #novichok was tested, Craig Murray dismantles #Amesbury poisoning story https://youtu.be/LbbxNkPDNrQ on @BCFMradio

Porton Down: What is the experimental government facility in Wiltshire at the centre of recent poisonings?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/porton-down-what-is-explained-experiments-salisbury-wiltshire-novichok-latest-a8431951.html

The secretive laboratory has unintentionally become key in political developments and international relations

The major incident in Amesbury saw two people poisoned by the same nerve agent that almost killed the Skripals, government scientists have confirmed. The attack turns attention once more to Porton Down, the mysterious laboratory that has unintentionally become central to the response to the attacks.

The secretive government facility at Porton Down has been used for experiments involving deadly and often undisclosed weapons, and in the wake of the Salisbury attack has become indelibly associated with the nerve agent used in the attack. The Met – whose counter-terror police are now leading the investigation – confirmed that samples had been tested at the facility and that they showed "show the two people have been exposed to the nerve agent Novichok".

Porton Down is often talked about in the singular, but is actually a site located near Porton village that is host to a whole group of different organisations. The two key ones are the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, which is run by the Ministry of Defence and usually referred to as Dstl, as well as Public Health England – both bodies have been involved in the response to the recent poisonings, though it is the former laboratory whose activity is most mysterious.

Bullingdon Boris resigns, feigns matters of principle, limbers up for the top job he was promised at Eton. As 1922 committee cheers for Theresa May ring out to the rafters, British government prepares for controlled demolition.

Einstein
There's another source of "deadly silence".
A doctor was reported (by the BBC on 8th May) to have given CPR to Julia for 30 minutes without being contaminated by the "novichok". Indeed, the doctor reported to the BBC that she 'felt fine' afterwards.
No-one has seen nor heard from this doctor since, yet a doctor should be easy enough to trace.
mike nagel
Considering the mendacity of the media on this and other matters has anyone considered the possibility that no poisoning of any kind took place in March? The whole story has been a giant load of road apples from day one. What we are expected to swallow by the powers that be cannot possibly be so, perhaps the Skripals never sat on that bench in the first place.
flaxgirl
I certainly have. My favourite part of the fairy tale is the cat and two guinea pigs.
Yonatan
The 'door handle' theory only arose as a means of explaining how the policeman was contaminated. He was allegedly present soon after the Skripals were found, and became contaminated, while others, including a doctor who closely examined the Skripals, did not. Occam's Razor suggests that the Skripals and the policeman were affected at the same time before other witnesses were present. This implies that the policeman was a witness to the attack.
summitflyer
Thank you Rob Slane for this study of the Skripal case.As an outsider from another country I am grateful for your work .Your assumptions are far more likely than what we have heard from the government officials .As ugly as the truth of the matter might be , it would be better if they found a way to fess up .At this point it does not look good for the UK credibility .
Paul X
I'm intrigued by why the White House or the Administrstion hasn't asked why an ex-Senior spy, Steele, was given permission by the British Secret Service to write his dossier at all, based as it was purportedly on his time as Head of the Russia Desk at MI6, let alone pass it over to the Democrats while carefully leaking it to the media all with Steele's stated opinion that he'd do anything to stop Trump getting elected. It's clear why the US Intelligence Services are unconcerned, they also deplored Trump's election but why is there nothing about British interference in the election from Trump himself? Is it a row he's saving up or does it does show that Trump v the Dark State is rubbish, they are all in it together?
thorella
The poisonings were most probably organised by the state within the state. This speech although almost twenty years old gives some idea of the powers of the deep state and how the government relates to them
http://zersetzen.wikispaces.com/file/view/Gerald+Reaveley+James.pdf
Paul X
Who knows whether the British had a motive to incapacitate Sergei and then keep him in custody so it's hard to see how it can be said so categorically. If Sergei was serious about returning to Russia to see his mother before she died (a not unnatural sentiment especially for such a sentimental man) then there may have been very pressing reasons to keep him here, notably what he would say in his inevitable 'de-briefing' by ex-colleagues. It isn't denied that he continued to work with MI6 and may have had a hand in the Steele dossier. Julia's arrival seems to have moved the game forward and 'action' became imperative. The story itself has the hall marks of Eton and Trinity, a good 'wheeze'. Hastily put together it would have unraveled immediately without the D Notice. Now they have to decide whether they can dare let either of them have their freedom; Julia has a long life ahead; is she to be held incommunicado for decades?
john2o2o
I don't know if it has been asked before, but: why poison Yulia Skripal anyway? If this was some sort of professional hit, it was very badly timed, given that Yulia was only visiting her father.

I personally do not believe that any of these 5 people had been poisoned by a nerve agent. And by that I mean an organophosphate compound. BZ is not that class of compound. (I have a degree in chemistry).

Those compounds are exceedingly toxic. If their use (or rather non-use) is military then they must kill enemy troops quickly and with minimal amount. Speed is crucial. Semi conscious enemy soldiers are dangerous.

What I find frustrating is that – because we are being so cynically lied to by our government – we have been seriously misled about the toxicity of these chemicals. You really don't stand any sort of chance if you are poisoned by them.

Paul X
Julia's boyfriend is apparently in the Russian Secret Service and his mother is a senior figure in Russian Intelligence. She may have been passing on Putin's reply to Sergei's request to return home to visit his seriously ill elderly mother? He was irritable because he'd realised he'd have to decide, UK or Russia. And if it was to be Russia then he knew he'd have to spill the beans on Steele; tough decision! I agree it would be odd to target her if she was 'just' his daughter on a brief visit. Julia may have been as much a target as her father?
Paul Carline
If they were poisoned by a 'Novichok' nerve agent they would be dead.
Who 'identified' the supposed Novichok? Porton Down.
Who provided the sample for the OPCW? Porton Down.
Who has stocks of all known nerve agents? Porton Down.
Can the OPCW be trusted? No.
Can Brad Pitte II be trusted? No.
George
"The Western forces conspired to do it" = "conspiracy stuff".

"The Russian forces conspired to do it" = "not conspiracy stuff".

When is a conspiracy not a conspiracy?

bevin
Whether "Russia" had a motive is moot. But there is no evidence that "Russia" had any particular means than any other potential culprit, such as MI6.
As to'precedent' the number of assassinations carried out abroad by Russian intelligence pales in comparison with those carried out by Military Intelligence in the UK, the CIA and Mossad.
You are reduced to citing the very unlikely 'precedent' of Litivenko which every effort of The Establishment has failed to produce anything more than a meaningless finding by a tame High Court judge. No legal proceedings have discovered any connection between the death and the Russian state.
On the other hand 'western' intelligence agencies are notoriously engaged in assassinations and have been on an industrial scale for seventy years. Cf The Committee chaired by Senator Church.
iafantomo
Let's see. An MI6 spy, known to be still actively working on MI6 deception, is involved in an incident in which a claim is made that he's been poisoned with a deadly nerve agent by the Russians, which is disputed by hospital staff and Porton Down people behind the scenes, and can't be checked out by investigative journalists in the mainstream media, because there aren't any investigative journalists in the mainstream media, and immediately the Government knows that Russia did it. Doesn't that suggest to you that Mr Skripal may have been part of the set-up right from the start?

As for his daughter, is that the same Yulia Skripal in the pictures after the event as the one in the restaurant before the event?

Cherrycoke
Of course, Christopher Steele was also involved in the Litvinenko case:

"Steele's already dim view of the Kremlin darkened in November, 2006, when Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian K.G.B. officer and a Putin critic who had been recruited by M.I.6, suffered an agonizing death in a London hospital, after drinking a cup of tea poisoned with radioactive polonium-210. Moscow had evidently sanctioned a brazen murder in his own country. Steele was put in charge of M.I.6's investigation. Authorities initially planned to indict one suspect in the murder, but Steele's investigative work persuaded them to indict a second suspect as well."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier

Mulga Mumblebrain
Did Steele develop a 'dark view' of Thanatopolis DC after the years of rendition and torture, the illegal aggression and genocide in Iraq, or the carnage of the drone missile terrorism, or the death-squad 'night raid' rampage by US Special Forces. If not, why not?
thorella
The UK legal system is utterly corrupt when it comes to cases involving state crime
BigB
Paul Barril named Mario Scaramella as Litvinenko's killer: and I'd put more faith in France's former top cop than our residential troll!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aLI-gXJ7T5E

binra
Circumstances unknown and withheld from public knowledge oblige people in 'power' or positions of influence under such power to act in ways that make no sense to anyone with sense.

News for mass consumption is a sideshow but also a conditioning to remain inside the framing of a narrative identity. The 'Western intelligence' could not do a better job of damaging their credibility by the WAY they operate as well as the what of it.

However "No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance." (Alan Bullock, in Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives).

While the what of it can be tested to some degree for congruency with itself and with all the factors involved, the WAY of it speaks of either desperation of from a conviction that intellectual criticism is powerless in a post truth coup.

My sense is of either the leadership class being captive to powers they do not feel able to challenge or are cornered in some way by their circumstance so as not to have any other recourse than – in this case – stirring up hatred in incitement to violence with Russia. This could all be a brinkmanship of geopolitical 'poker' or it could be that the only 'escape' from such a mess as we inherit and persist in is war.

My sense is that when we cannot or will not embrace change somewhat 'gracefully' or in some willingness – then we give power to whatever external 'crisis' ripens to force it – and seek to 'survive' at the expense of those we abandoned or indeed conscripted or made into targets for WMD.

Dictating terms to a world of 'united states' under broad spectrum dominance of a tyrannous rule is not justified by 'symbols and stories' of freedom.

National and International security rests on honest communication, backed by supporting deeds so as to grow trust in place of treachery. No one has a clean past, but if we persist in re-enacting it, we will forsake the presence of mind by which to choose not to.

The nature of politics has had all its goalposts moved to a rigged system of finance and law that pre-empt any movement of cultural development apart from corporate capture – and allow that corporations have only the power given them by such a systemic 'development'. No one HAS power but for an agenda larger than their own usefulness.

Worldly power has always operated a narrative control at some level – but technology has 'outsourced' our own will and consciousness to systems and machinery of our own attempt and intent to replace Life with our own making. I see a larger 'script' than power struggle – or rather I see an awakening 'script' running beneath the narrative identity conflict.

Whether we have a fated outcome or make our own (under a fatal condition), the framing of the physicalised sense of self is the 'life in the world'. But this framing is not itself physical so much as conditioned association and reflex that is hidden from sight while we engage within its framing as a sense of personal struggle under and driven by 'necessity' of survival in the terms we set or are forcefully and fearfully identified in.

Deceit is simply a weapon in a world of war – including the claiming of a moral high ground whenever it suits an invalidating of the 'other'. Loss of communication, trust and therefore integrity is the state of a lack of substance. However, 'claiming the moral high ground' as a personal right to power is the same old story. The complexities of deceits and entanglements increase with the persistence of identities and investments in them – which of course run as 'self-evident reality' by reactions that embody the beliefs.

[Jun 28, 2019] How Russia's President Putin Explains The End Of The '[neo]liberal' Order

You can read the transcript without firewall at: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60836
From Unz comment: "Tangentially related, but check out this great interview with Putin: https://www.ft.com/content/878d2344-98f0-11e9-9573-ee5cbb98ed36 The man's intelligence and seriousness is always impressive. The contrast with the nauseating rubbish that comes out of Western politicians could not be more striking, no wonder they hate the guy."
Notable quotes:
"... "One of the things we must do in Russia is never to forget that the purpose of the operation and existence of any government is to create a stable, normal, safe and predictable life for the people and to work towards a better future ." ..."
"... Putin has recognized the influence of our "regime change" wars on the immigrant problem in Europe. He addressed it forcefully in his UN General Assembly speech in 2015 where he asks NATO "Do you know what you've done?" with regards to creating the immigration problems in Europe. Watch here https://youtu.be/q13yzl6k6w0. ..."
"... From Putin's 2007 Munich speech to this 2015 UN speech and many interviews along the way, I've learned to pay attention to what Putin says. He seems to have an extremely good handle on world events and where they are leading. ..."
"... The neoliberal economic plan is to suck the wealth out of the working class and funnel it up to the top 10%, especially the 1%. How to keep the working class from noticing the theft? ..."
"... neo-liberalism (aka "crony capitalism") is about compromising the state and the society that it protects in favor of wealthy, powerful interests. Thus, at it's core, it's against the people. ..."
"... Look at the whine ass, crying, warmongering. narcissist psychopathic bullies we get. I am envious of the Russians having a leader they can be proud of. ..."
"... Been about 60 years since I have had a president to be proud of, back when America WAS great,,, and they killed him. ..."
Jun 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

How Russia's President Putin Explains The End Of The '[neo]Liberal' Order

Today the Financial Times published a long and wide ranging interview with the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin.

A full transcript is currently available through this link .

The talk is making some waves:

From the last link:

Putin said in an interview with the Financial Times Friday that the "[neo]liberal idea has become obsolete," and referred to Germany's decision to welcome more than one million refugees -- many fleeing savage urban warfare in Syria -- as a "cardinal mistake."

It is only the last part of the very long interview, where Putin indeed speaks of the 'obsolesce' of the '[neo]liberal idea', that seems to be of interest to the media. Most of the interview is in fact about other issues. The media also do not capture how his 'obsolete' argument is ingrained in the worldview Putin developed, and how it reflects in many of his answers.

Here are excerpts that show that the gist of Putin's 'obsolete' argument is not against the '[neo]liberal idea', but against what may be best called 'international (neo-)[liberalism'.

Putin explains why U.S. President Donald Trump was elected:

Has anyone ever given a thought to who actually benefited and what benefits were gained from globalisation, the development of which we have been observing and participating in over the past 25 years, since the 1990s?

China has made use of globalisation, in particular, to pull millions of Chinese out of poverty.

What happened in the US, and how did it happen? In the US, the leading US companies -- the companies, their managers, shareholders and partners -- made use of these benefits. [..] The middle class in the US has not benefited from globalisation; it was left out when this pie was divided up.

The Trump team sensed this very keenly and clearly, and they used this in the election campaign. It is where you should look for reasons behind Trump's victory, rather than in any alleged foreign interference.

On Syria:

Primarily, this concerns Syria, we have managed to preserve Syrian statehood, no matter what, and we have prevented Libya-style chaos there. And a worst-case scenario would spell out negative consequences for Russia.
...
I believe that the Syrian people should be free to choose their own future.
...
When we discussed this matter only recently with the previous US administration, we said, suppose Assad steps down today, what will happen tomorrow?

Your colleague did well to laugh, because the answer we got was very amusing. You cannot even imagine how funny it was. They said, "We don't know." But when you do not know what happens tomorrow, why shoot from the hip today? This may sound primitive, but this is how it is.

On 'western' interventionism and 'democracy promotion':

Incidentally, the president of France said recently that the American democratic model differs greatly from the European model. So there are no common democratic standards. And do you, well, not you, but our Western partners, want a region such as Libya to have the same democratic standards as Europe and the US? The region has only monarchies or countries with a system similar to the one that existed in Libya.

But I am sure that, as a historian, you will agree with me at heart. I do not know whether you will publicly agree with this or not, but it is impossible to impose current and viable French or Swiss democratic standards on North African residents who have never lived in conditions of French or Swiss democratic institutions. Impossible, isn't it? And they tried to impose something like that on them. Or they tried to impose something that they had never known or even heard of. All this led to conflict and intertribal discord. In fact, a war continues in Libya.

So why should we do the same in Venezuela? ...

Asked about the turn towards nationalism and more rightwing policies in the U.S. and many European countries, Putin names immigration as the primary problem:

What is happening in the West? What is the reason for the Trump phenomenon, as you said, in the US? What is happening in Europe as well? The ruling elites have broken away from the people. The obvious problem is the gap between the interests of the elites and the overwhelming majority of the people .

Of course, we must always bear this in mind. One of the things we must do in Russia is never to forget that the purpose of the operation and existence of any government is to create a stable, normal, safe and predictable life for the people and to work towards a better future.

There is also the so-called [neo]liberal idea, which has outlived its purpose. Our Western partners have admitted that some elements of the [neo]liberal idea, such as multiculturalism, are no longer tenable.

When the migration problem came to a head, many people admitted that the policy of multiculturalism is not effective and that the interests of the core population should be considered. Although those who have run into difficulties because of political problems in their home countries need our assistance as well. That is great, but what about the interests of their own population when the number of migrants heading to Western Europe is not just a handful of people but thousands or hundreds of thousands?
...
What am I driving at? Those who are concerned about this, ordinary Americans, they look at this and say, Good for [Trump], at least he is doing something, suggesting ideas and looking for a solution.

As for the [neo]liberal idea, its proponents are not doing anything. They say that all is well, that everything is as it should be. But is it? They are sitting in their cosy offices, while those who are facing the problem every day in Texas or Florida are not happy, they will soon have problems of their own. Does anyone think about them?

The same is happening in Europe. I discussed this with many of my colleagues, but nobody has the answer. The say they cannot pursue a hardline policy for various reasons. Why exactly? Just because. We have the law, they say. Well, then change the law!

We have quite a few problems of our own in this sphere as well.
...
In other words, the situation is not simple in Russia either, but we have started working to improve it. Whereas the [neo]liberal idea presupposes that nothing needs to be done. The migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants must be protected. What rights are these? Every crime must have its punishment.

So, the [neo]liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population. Or take the traditional values. I am not trying to insult anyone, because we have been condemned for our alleged homophobia as it is. But we have no problems with LGBT persons. God forbid, let them live as they wish. But some things do appear excessive to us.

They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles. I cannot even say exactly what genders these are, I have no notion. Let everyone be happy, we have no problem with that. But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.

While Putin says that [neo]liberalism is 'obsolete' he does not declare it dead. He sees it as part of a spectrum, but says that it should not have a leading role:

You know, it seems to me that purely [neo]liberal or purely traditional ideas have never existed. Probably, they did once exist in the history of humankind, but everything very quickly ends in a deadlock if there is no diversity. Everything starts to become extreme one way or another.

Various ideas and various opinions should have a chance to exist and manifest themselves, but at the same time interests of the general public, those millions of people and their lives, should never be forgotten. This is something that should not be overlooked.

Then, it seems to me, we would be able to avoid major political upheavals and troubles. This applies to the [neo]liberal idea as well. It does not mean (I think, this is ceasing to be a dominating factor) that it must be immediately destroyed. This point of view, this position should also be treated with respect.

They cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do over the recent decades. Diktat can be seen everywhere: both in the media and in real life. It is deemed unbecoming even to mention some topics. But why?

For this reason, I am not a fan of quickly shutting, tying, closing, disbanding everything, arresting everybody or dispersing everybody. Of course, not. The [neo]liberal idea cannot be destroyed either; it has the right to exist and it should even be supported in some things. But you should not think that it has the right to be the absolute dominating factor. That is the point. Please.

There is much more in the interview - about Russia's relations with China, North Korea, the Skripal incident, the Russian economy, orthodoxy and the [neo]liberal attack on the Catholic church, multilateralism, arms control and the G-20 summit happening today.

But most '[neo]liberal' media will only point to the 'obsolete' part and condemn Putin for his rallying against immigration. They will paint him as being in an alt-right corner. But even the Dalai Lama, held up as an icon by many [neo]liberals, says that "Europe is for Europeans" and that immigrants should go back to their own countries.

Moreover, as Leonid Bershidsky points out , Putin himself is, with regards to the economy and immigration, a staunch [neo]liberal:

Putin's cultural conservatism is consistent and sincere.
...
On immigration, however, Putin is, in practice, more [neo]liberal than most European leaders. He has consistently resisted calls to impose visa requirements on Central Asian countries, an important source of migrant labor. Given Russia's shrinking working-age population and shortage of manual workers, Putin isn't about to stem that flow, even though Central Asians are Muslims – the kind of immigrants Merkel's opponents, including Trump, distrust and fear the most.

What Putin is aiming at, says Bershidsky, is the larger picture:

[W]hat Putin believes has outlived its usefulness isn't the [neo]liberal approach to migration or gender, nor is it [neo]liberal economics – even though Russia has, in recent months, seen something of a shift toward central planning. It is the [neo]liberal world order. Putin wants to keep any talk of values out of international politics and forge pragmatic relationships based on specific interests.
...
Putin's drive to put global politics on a more transactional basis isn't easy to defeat; it's a siren song, and the anti-immigrant, culturally conservative rhetoric is merely part of the music.

There is in my view no 'siren-song' there and nothing that has to be defeated. It is just that Putin is more willing to listen to the people than most of the western wannabe 'elite'.

The people's interest is simply not served well by globalization, [neo]liberal internationalism and interventionism. A transactional approach to international policies, with respect for basic human decency, is in almost every case better for them.

Politicians who want the people's votes should listen to them, and to Vladimir Putin.

Posted by b on June 28, 2019 at 01:50 PM | Permalink

pretzelattack , Jun 28, 2019 2:05:48 PM | 1

he makes a lot of sense on neo]liberalism. i guess this makes me a Russian agent.
ROBERT SYKES , Jun 28, 2019 2:15:18 PM | 2
It is hard to exaggerate Putin's accomplishments. He almost single-handedly saved Russia from the chaos of the Yeltsin era and near collapse. He has reestablished Russia as a major power. In the face of the American world rampage, he has helped stabilize MENA. By merging Russia's Eurasian Union with China's OBOR, he has helped to set Eurasia on a road to peaceful economic development. He has even managed to get China, India, and Pakistan talking to one another and cooperating in a variety of Eurasian projects.

I doubt he has more than 10 years left as a Russian leader, and maybe not even that. When he finally passes, he will be remembered as another Churchill or Bismarck.

Barovsky , Jun 28, 2019 2:16:21 PM | 3
Hmmm... Putin says the problem is 'multi-culturalism', 'migrants'? What kind of bullshit is this?

Putin doesn't mention that the migrant crisis was caused by Western resource wars, in Syria, Libya and elsewhere. That neoliberalism's impact on the poor countries has led to the vast exodus into Europe and N. America.

I have a feeling that Putin is playing the 'RT game', targeting those disaffected people, who have, in turn been the target of racist, islamaphobic propaganda by Western states, states that for obvious reasons (self-incrimination) won't state the real reasons for the exodus.

Alexander P , Jun 28, 2019 2:17:47 PM | 4
The page on [neo]liberalism in the classic sense the way it was envisioned in the late 18th and 19th century has long been passed. [neo]liberalism as in nurturing the human soul and intellect and allowing each individual to draw on their qualities and contribute to society with their fullest potential has been supplanted by material and physical liberties alone (Gender, Sexuality, Free Trade, Free Migration aka Free Movement of Slave Labor etc). What today is called [neo]liberalism, which I like to equate with neo-[neo]liberalism and social 'progressivism', are both parts of post-modernism, a societal model that is falling and failing under its own weight of hubris and inconsistencies.

The 'Do as thou wilt' mindset pushed on the people by the elites is deliberate with the only end goal of creating their 'ideal' world. A world not based on morality, spirituality and absolute truths, but relativism, materialism, loss of basic notions such as gender, family, belonging, in short loss of identity and purpose for mankind to obtain ever greater control over the masses. People are beginning to notice it, however, even if only subconsciously and start to push back against it. Putin knows this, and that is what he is laying out in his interview.

robjira , Jun 28, 2019 2:20:55 PM | 5
It is just that Putin is more willing to listen to the people than most of the western wannabe 'elite'.
Right on target, b; many thanks again. I'll be sure to read the entire transcript.
Joe Nobody , Jun 28, 2019 2:23:07 PM | 6
"They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles. I cannot even say exactly what genders these are, I have no notion. Let everyone be happy, we have no problem with that. But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.'

It has become la la land in the West in regards to gender...if a person wants to be gay, be gay, but let's not force everyone else to pretend reality is not reality..nature choose (dichotomy) for you to be male or female, sucks if that doesn't match your preferences but better luck next life...accept the reality you are in and let's not force everyone one else to pander to your delusions..

See also:

'Sex change' is biologically impossible," said McHugh. "People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder."

https://newspunch.com/john-hopkins-transgenderism-mental-illness/

karlof1 , Jun 28, 2019 2:27:19 PM | 7
I'm reading the Kremlin's transcript I linked to at the Gabbard thread where I posted a very short excerpt. I continue to read it but stopped to post another very short excerpt IMO is very important:

"One of the things we must do in Russia is never to forget that the purpose of the operation and existence of any government is to create a stable, normal, safe and predictable life for the people and to work towards a better future ." [My Emphasis]

Back to reading!

pretzelattack , Jun 28, 2019 2:27:47 PM | 8
@ 3--remind me who was fighting the west in syria, again?
vk , Jun 28, 2019 2:30:47 PM | 9
Here are excerpts that show that the gist of Putin's 'obsolete' argument is not against the '[neo]liberal idea', but against what may be best called 'international (neo-)liberalism'.

Just a matter of academic rigour: liberalism is extinct; neoliberalism is literally the "new liberalism", it's successor doctrine. Therefore, when we speak of "liberalism" after 1945, we're automatically referring to neoliberalism.

neoliberalism was created at Mont Pelerin in the 1930s, and its founding narrative states that everything that happened between/since the death of liberalism (1914-1918) and their own hegemony (1974-75) was an abortion of History and should've never happened. Hence the name "neoliberalism": the new liberalism (adapted to the system of fiat currency instead of the gold standard); the revival of liberalism; the return of liberalism (the [neo]liberals).

It's also important to highlight that neoliberalism is not an ideology, but a doctrine (which encompass mainly policies, but may also encompass ideals). It is wrong, for example, to compare socialism with neoliberalism (socialism as anti-neoliberalism): socialism is a scientific theory, and, as a social theory, encompasses a new socioeconomic system, a new set of ideologies, a new set of cultures and a new set of political doctrines.

Neoliberalism, therefore, is just one aspect with which the capitalist elites engage against socialism historically (in the doctrinal "front").

Zachary Smith , Jun 28, 2019 2:40:29 PM | 10
Generic question: How many of the 2020 candidates for US President could hold up their end of an interview with such knowledge and style?

Personally I was impressed by Putin's bluntness in stating Merkel had made a "cardinal mistake" when she opened the borders to the hundreds of thousands of illegals. And also this:

And we set ourselves a goal, a task -- which, I am certain, will be achieved -- to adjust pensions by a percentage that is above the inflation rate.

Compare that to the deliberate US policy if doing the exact opposite.

Alan McLemore , Jun 28, 2019 2:44:48 PM | 11
Can you imagine Trump writing like this? Or Obama, for that matter? Or Bush the Dimmer, or Clinton, or Bush the Spook, or Reagan, or Carter...Hell, you'd have to go back to JFK to find this sort of skill with language and deep analysis. And maybe not then. "They" say you get the leaders you deserve. In that case the Russians have been nice and we Americans have been very, very naughty.
dh , Jun 28, 2019 2:45:31 PM | 12
So now we wait for MSM 'analysts' to accuse Putin of disrupting the status quo and fomenting revolution.
lgfocus , Jun 28, 2019 2:47:56 PM | 13
Barovsky @3

Putin has recognized the influence of our "regime change" wars on the immigrant problem in Europe. He addressed it forcefully in his UN General Assembly speech in 2015 where he asks NATO "Do you know what you've done?" with regards to creating the immigration problems in Europe. Watch here https://youtu.be/q13yzl6k6w0.

From Putin's 2007 Munich speech to this 2015 UN speech and many interviews along the way, I've learned to pay attention to what Putin says. He seems to have an extremely good handle on world events and where they are leading.

Sally Snyder , Jun 28, 2019 2:48:51 PM | 14
If we really want to know who is interfering in the world's politics, particularly in Russia, we need look no further than this:

https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-national-endowment-for-democracy.html

American-style bought-and-paid-for democracy is not what the world needs.

JDL , Jun 28, 2019 2:53:21 PM | 15
In the west our governments call Mr Putin a thug, a gangster. But, I've never seen any of our politicians sit down and frankly and comprehensively lay out there views, goals, thoughts and musings. To be a good leader or politician you have do have vision, but in the west here i just see talking heads and soundbites, no soul.
wagelaborer , Jun 28, 2019 3:00:50 PM | 16
Oh, yeah, the "[neo]liberals" are indignant over his pointing out that mass migration causes social disruption.

He racist!

The neoliberal economic plan is to suck the wealth out of the working class and funnel it up to the top 10%, especially the 1%. How to keep the working class from noticing the theft?

How about divide and conquer? That seems to work. Take the native working class and divide it any way that works in that society. In the US, traditionally, it was race, but they added sex a couple of decades ago, then opened the doors to immigration and threw in national origin, and now, just for kicks and giggles, everybody gets to define their own gender and sexual preferences. Awesome. The US is now divided into 243,000,000 separate categories of specialness. And if you don't accept everything someone else tells you as gospel, you are a bigot of some sort (depending on their self identification. It varies.)

They divided up Yemen and Libya by tribes, Iraq and Yugoslavia by religion, it works the same in every country. When the US blows, it's going to be spectacular.

Norbert Salamon , Jun 28, 2019 3:03:51 PM | 17
You can read the transcript without firewall at: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60836
karlof1 , Jun 28, 2019 3:08:13 PM | 18
I'm always impressed with Putin's grasp and breadth a la Chirac, whom he admires and emulates.

I posted a few excerpts I felt very important to this and the Gabbard threads; and at the latter I now insist this interview be read, not just suggested. That BigLie Media chose to pounce on Putin's critique of the [neo]liberal Idea displays its agenda and its extremely sorry attempt to discredit/smear Putin yet again. IMO, such media smeared itself. The give-and-take was very productive and informative, containing many lessons, a few of which I pointed to.

Putin's now at the G-20 and has already had one bilateral meeting with TrumpCo.

Sputnik offers this recap that includes links to its additional articles published during the day. Much has occurred, and Trump has yet to storm out. Some of the photos are priceless, the May/Putin handshake perhaps being the most telling.

AriusArmenian , Jun 28, 2019 3:10:18 PM | 19
That there is a Putin that today leads a great country like Russia seems like a miracle and he appeared at the very moment that Russia needed him.

Part of the West elite hate of Putin is that compared to them he gives off an aura of honesty and truthfulness that is absent from leaders in the West.

anon , Jun 28, 2019 3:17:57 PM | 20
The "multi-cultural" issue, to the extent that it is an issue, is only an issue as an effect of the actual problem. It is effectively a scapegoat. No one would care about "multiculturalism" if there was a fair economic order in which living standards were increasing.

The problem is that western capitalism wants it both ways, it sees the demographic problem it faces and it wants the labor of migrants but it does not want to improve society, it wants to keep its slice of the pie. Hence things will get economically worse while migrants will be an easy "cause" at which to point for the unthinking person. In that sense it becomes a problem insofar as it contributes to fascism, nothing else changing.

Putin is right about China utilizing globalization to the benefit of society while the west is only interested in globalization insofar as it opens markets and creates profit for those who own social production. But of course Marx predicted this all long ago, so it is not perhaps surprising that the Chinese Communist Party would be more intelligent here. There is nothing more symptomatic or demonstrative here than the fact that, while western countries debate over a few tens of thousands of immigrants being "too many", China is capable of such feats as eradicating poverty and building incredible and modern infrastructure while being a land of over a billion people.

wagelaborer , Jun 28, 2019 3:18:53 PM | 21
Reading over the Gabbard comments, I was reminded of another big divide in the US by party. Americans treat their parties like their tribes and viciously attack heretics of other tribes. The media fans the flames and keeps the "elections" going for years, without a break.

Meanwhile, our ruling overlords pick their next puppet, let us all "vote" on computerized machines, and then the talking heads announce the "winner".
And it all starts over.

Jackrabbit , Jun 28, 2019 3:26:44 PM | 22
neo-liberalism (aka "crony capitalism") is about compromising the state and the society that it protects in favor of wealthy, powerful interests. Thus, at it's core, it's against the people.

To compensate and distract from this corruption, the people are presented with the 'fruits' of a [neo]liberal society: quasi"-freedoms" like gender rights, civil rights, and human rights. I say "quasi-" because these rights are abridged by the powerful elite as they see fit (witness rendition and torture, pervasive surveillance, and Assange).

We fight among ourselves about walls and bathrooms as elites destroy the Commons. In this way, they pick our pockets and kneecap our ability to fight back at the same time.

DM , Jun 28, 2019 3:28:20 PM | 23
Generic question: How many of the 2020 candidates for US President could hold up their end of an interview with such knowledge and style?

You beat me to the punch. And the answer to your rhetorical question is, of course, NONE! Luckily for Americans, Ignorance is Bliss.

ken , Jun 28, 2019 3:31:05 PM | 24
Boy did Russia luck out. Yeltsin was smart picking this man.... Look at the whine ass, crying, warmongering. narcissist psychopathic bullies we get. I am envious of the Russians having a leader they can be proud of.

Been about 60 years since I have had a president to be proud of, back when America WAS great,,, and they killed him.

[Jun 28, 2019] What we should be talking about is not how to make North Korea disarm, but how to ensure the unconditional security of North Korea and how to make any country, including North Korea feel safe and protected by international law that is strictly honoured by all members of the international community

Jun 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Jun 28, 2019 1:50:32 PM | 190

I'm about halfway through Putin's financial Times interview and suggest it be read by all. There is much to be gleaned from it with a view to the 2020 Election Cycle and candidate's positions. Just consider the following very small excerpt and its implications for policy formulation by candidates:

"What we should be talking about is not how to make North Korea disarm, but how to ensure the unconditional security of North Korea and how to make any country, including North Korea feel safe and protected by international law that is strictly honoured by all members of the international community . This is what we should be thinking about." [My Emphasis]

Putin's insights into Trump's 2016 election strategy, IMO, is very enlightening and essential reading as the conditions that contributed to Trump's victory have worsened under his tenure and can be used against him if wisely pursued.

[Jun 27, 2019] Western News Agencies Mistranslate Iran's President Speech - It Is Not The First Time Such 'Error' Happens

Highly recommended!
Jun 27, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Western News Agencies Mistranslate Iran's President Speech - It Is Not The First Time Such 'Error' Happens JOHN CHUCKMAN , Jun 26, 2019 2:10:12 PM | 23

Yesterday the news agencies Associated Press and Reuters mistranslated a speech by Iran's President Hassan Rouhani. They made it sound as if Rouhani insulted U.S. President Donald Trump as 'mentally retarded'. Rouhani never said that.

The agencies previously made a similar 'mistake'.

A 2005 speech by then President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmedinejad was famously misquoted. Israel should be wiped off map, says Iran's president headlined the Guardian at that time. Others used similar headlines. The New York Times wrote :

Iran's conservative new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Wednesday that Israel must be "wiped off the map" and that attacks by Palestinians would destroy it, the ISNA press agency reported.
...
Referring to comments by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution, Ahmadinejad said, "As the imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."

The statement was used by the G.W. Bush administration and others to whip up hostility against Iran :

Ever since he spoke at an anti-Zionism conference in Tehran last October, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has been known for one statement above all. As translated by news agencies at the time, it was that Israel "should be wiped off the map." Iran's nuclear program and sponsorship of militant Muslim groups are rarely mentioned without reference to the infamous map remark.

Here, for example, is R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, recently: "Given the radical nature of Iran under Ahmadinejad and its stated wish to wipe Israel off the map of the world, it is entirely unconvincing that we could or should live with a nuclear Iran."

However Ahmedinejad never used those words :

"Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map because no such idiom exists in Persian," remarked Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan and critic of American policy who has argued that the Iranian president was misquoted. "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse." Since Iran has not "attacked another country aggressively for over a century," he said in an e-mail exchange, "I smell the whiff of war propaganda."

Jonathan Steele, a columnist for the left-leaning Guardian newspaper in London, recently laid out the case this way: "The Iranian president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran's first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, that 'this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,' just as the Shah's regime in Iran had vanished. He was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. The 'page of time' phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon."

Despite the above and other explanations the false "wipe Israel off the map" translation never died. Years later it still reappeared in Guardian pieces which required it to issue multiple corrections and clarifications.

Now, as the Trump administration is pushing for war on Iran, a similar mistranslation miraculously happened. It were again 'western' news agencies who lightened the fire:

The Associated Press @AP - 7:52 utc - 25 Jun 2019

BREAKING: Iran's President Rouhani mocks President Trump, says the White House is "afflicted by mental retardation."

Farsi speakers pointed out that the Rouhani never used the Farsi word for "retarded":

Sina Toossi @SinaToossi - 13:49 utc - 25 Jun 2019

A lot of Western media is reporting that Iranian President Rouhani called Trump "mentally retarded." This is inaccurate.
Regarding Trump, he just said "no wise person would take such an action [the new sanctions imposed]."

Reza H. Akbari @rezahakbari - 15:58 utc - 25 Jun 2019

Absolutely incorrect. There is a word for "retarded" in Persian & Rouhani didn't use it. Prior to him saying "mental disability" he even prefaced his comment by saying "mental weakness." Those who speak Persian can listen & judge for themselves. Here is a video clip of Rouhani's comment: link

But the damage was already done:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump - 14:42 utc - 25 Jun 2019

Iran leadership doesn't understand the words "nice" or "compassion," they never have. Sadly, the thing they do understand is Strength and Power, and the USA is by far the most powerful Military Force in the world, with 1.5 Trillion Dollars invested over the last two years alone..

....The wonderful Iranian people are suffering, and for no reason at all. Their leadership spends all of its money on Terror, and little on anything else. The U.S. has not forgotten Iran's use of IED's & EFP's (bombs), which killed 2000 Americans, and wounded many more...

.... Iran's very ignorant and insulting statement , put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality. Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!

Reuters , which also peddled the mistranslation, gleefully connected the dots :

Cont. reading: Western News Agencies Mistranslate Iran's President Speech - It Is Not The First Time Such 'Error' Happens

Excellent summary of how malevolence works in many subtle ways.

Jonathan Gillispie , Jun 26, 2019 1:11:48 PM | 4

Trump was right more than he realizes that the press is the enemy of the people. They goad nations into unnecessary and bloody war.

Don Wiscacho , Jun 26, 2019 1:32:54 PM | 13
This follows in the footsteps of a rich history of mistranslating and obfuscating which is rarely, if ever, corrected by our Guardians of Truth. I will not hold my breath for AP to pull its tweet out issue any sort of correction. The war machine is revving up, truth be damned.

To add a few obfuscations to the list of mistranslations: the Palestinian intifada. Sounds scary, no? Violence against the benevolent Israelis. Because what does intifada actually mean? Uprising, which by its nature suggests oppression, something which just 'can't' be happening in Palestine, hence the need for intifada.
Or take jihad, 'a pillor' of Islam. Again, very scary, as jihad 'means' suicide bombs and killing infidels. What the Guardians of Truth never mention is that jihad in Islam is a very, very broad term that includes such things as helping the poor or less fortunate, educating oneself, quiet reflection, and prayer. Jihad as meaning 'holy war' was a sense meaning derived much later than the founding of the religion, as a reaction to very real threats to believers of the time, the Crusades and Mongol invasions. That this specific sense meaning was essentially confined to history afterward, only to be revived by Wahhabists and takfiris, and one not believed in by the vast majority of Muslims, is never explained. 'Cause all them crazy Muslims believe in jihad!

In all cases where the boogeyman of the day needs concocting, rest assured the 'mainstream' press, with AP in the lead, will be there to build a gleaming edifice mistruths, omissions, and lies.

Uncle Jon , Jun 26, 2019 1:36:27 PM | 14
Ahmadinejad's true and correct translation reads: "Zionism should be wiped from the pages of history."

Now who can argue with that.

jared , Jun 26, 2019 1:43:18 PM | 17
In approximately 17 months, the american public can make strides to fix this mess.
I guess that is a long time for the iranians, but still maybe best option.
dh , Jun 26, 2019 1:51:03 PM | 18
Just in case there is any doubt in American minds here is the Israeli Ambassador to the UN. He thinks the sanctions are working well. Iran is panicking.

Good job guys. Keep squeezing.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/israeli-ambassador-iran-panicking-increased-us-sanctions

wagelaborer , Jun 26, 2019 2:43:01 PM | 31
They mistranslate Trump all the time, or they spin what he says. It is amazing to watch.

For instance, at the Helsinki meeting, where he met with Putin and they discussed multiple topics, but the press ignored any topic but demanding that Trump denounce Putin and "admit" that Putin helped him steal the election, and that he was therefore not the legitimate president.

Obviously, Trump was not going to say that, so he said that he was the legitimate president, and the mockingbird media spun that into "the president is a traitor to America because he said that 17 national intelligence agencies are lying".

michaelj72 , Jun 26, 2019 4:02:36 PM | 40
.....The ministers lie, the professors lie, the television lies,
the priests lie .
These lies mean that the country wants to die.
Lie after lie starts out into the prairie grass,
like enormous caravans of Conestoga wagons .

And a long desire for death flows out, guiding the
enormous caravans from beneath,
stringing together the vague and foolish words.
It is a desire to eat death,
to gobble it down,
to rush on it like a cobra with mouth open
It's a desire to take death inside,
to feel it burning inside, pushing out velvety hairs,
like a clothes brush in the intestines --
This is the thrill that leads the President on to lie....


Robert Bly, The Teeth Mother Naked at Last, originally published by City Lights books 1970

Virgile , Jun 26, 2019 5:10:59 PM | 48
Maybe the translation is inacurate but the message had the expected reaction from Trump: Tweet furor.
It is good that Trump realizes that he does not have the monopole of insulting leaders.
The USA is a country that since WWII has never won any war. How could it give a lesson to Iran who won a 8 years war against Iraq despite the support that the USA, the Gulf countries and Western countries gave to Iraq.
Loud noise and indecisive actions: The disaster of the USA foreign policy
Abx , Jun 26, 2019 5:20:42 PM | 49
I remember watching CNN translate Khamenei's "Nuclear Power" to "Nuclear Weapons" right on live TV in 2013. This is not new.
/div> Virgile "The USA is a country that since WWII has never won any war". The US won a war against Grenada [population 95,000] I would go so far as to say they whupped ass. True there were only 64 Cuban soldiers there [security guards] All members of the US armed forces were involved and 5,000 medals were given out. Ra Ra USA.

Posted by: Harry Law , Jun 26, 2019 5:29:37 PM | 50

Virgile "The USA is a country that since WWII has never won any war". The US won a war against Grenada [population 95,000] I would go so far as to say they whupped ass. True there were only 64 Cuban soldiers there [security guards] All members of the US armed forces were involved and 5,000 medals were given out. Ra Ra USA.

Posted by: Harry Law | Jun 26, 2019 5:29:37 PM | 50

Kooshy , Jun 26, 2019 5:45:20 PM | 53
b-
I am a Persian speaker and is true that president Rouhani never said Trump is retarded, we now have way passed the point that insults can matte. Nevertheless it was better if President Rouhani would have called Trump and the rest of the ruling US regime like what the whole world has now come to understand, a true and unique collection of retards on a shining hill.
0use4msm , Jun 26, 2019 6:24:08 PM | 57
Reminds me of when Nikita Khruschev attempted to explain in 1956 his view that that capitalism would destroy itself from within by quoting Marx: "What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers." This was notoriously mistranslated into English as "We will bury you", as if the Soviets were out to kill all westerners themselves. Of course this mistranslated was quoted time and time again in western media, fueling Cold War paranoia for years to come.
juandonjuan , Jun 26, 2019 6:31:20 PM | 59
blue @ 19 The news media are wedded to the state which is wedded to the banking system which are all subsidiaries of global capitalism. They don't need to correct themselves. They may have the occasional family feud, but they're all on the same team. They will admit to "mistakes" being made, but only long after it makes no difference.
We have a FREE PRESS in America-Pravda on the Potomac, Izvestia on the Hudson.
Have a look sometime at the Venn Diagrams that portray the overlapping/interlocking memberships of the regulatory/financial/corporate leadership class.
But more than that, whatever the idea of a free press once meant, with the rise of digital corporate networking "platforms", not subject to any accountability, the barriers to entry of any competing narratives to the mainstream discourse are nearly insurmountable. Except maybe through subversion?
What is missing is a true public 'Marketplace of Ideas'
ADKC , Jun 26, 2019 7:00:39 PM | 63
The deliberate mis-translations of non-english speaking "adversaries" of the US is common in the msm. Putin is frequently and deliberately mis-translated to make him appear dictatorial and aggressive.
pj , Jun 26, 2019 7:11:03 PM | 65
I listened to Rohani's speech. He said that if JCPOA is bad, it is bad for all parties; and if it is good, it is good for all parties. They cannot expect for JCPOA to be bad for them and good for us. They withdrew from the JCPOA and expect us to stay with the agreement. This is what he meant when he said: White house has been affected by mental inability and mental disability.
Peter AU 1 , Jun 26, 2019 7:26:38 PM | 72
ADKC
Iran is at war. US and gang are trying to destroy Iran as a nation. The biggest asset in times of war is deception. Used by both the attacker and the attacked.
karlof1 , Jun 26, 2019 7:39:51 PM | 75
Khamenei has Tweeted a series of tweets, and his scribe has posted what he tweeted along with other words at his website in English so there's no mistranslation. Here's one of the series of 6:

"The graceful Iranian nation has been accused & insulted by world's most vicious regime, the U.S., which is a source of wars, conflicts & plunder. Iranian nation won't give up over such insults. Iranians have been wronged by oppressive sanctions but not weakened & remain powerful."

They were made 14+ hours ago, yet I'm the first to post notice of them here?!

goldhoarder , Jun 26, 2019 8:39:33 PM | 80
The USA government excels at propaganda. It always has. Doesn't matter if it babies and incubators, mistranslated leaders of targeted countries, or supposed mass graves. BTW... what ever happened to all those mass graves in Iraq? HRW was going to dig them all up and document them. Hundreds of thousands. Most Americans I talk to still believe in this. Was it true? Saddam himself had claimed it wasn't true. That it was Kurdish propaganda to gain sympathy. He claimed the Anfal campaign was only to push the Kurds off the border so he could control arms smuggling and that casualties were minimal. Looking into the search. They are graves with a few hundred here and there but where are the rest of the bodies? If you google Iraq mass graves there are more articles about ISIS mass graves than the Anfal campaign. There were people killed in the South during the Shia uprising after the first gulf war than there was for the Anfal campaign. Was that a lie too? Nearly every American believes it still.

PM admits graves claim 'untrue'
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor

Sat 17 Jul 2004 19.35 EDT First published on Sat 17 Jul 2004 19.35 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/jul/18/iraq.iraq1

Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.
The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves.

In that publication - Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves produced by USAID, the US government aid distribution agency, Blair is quoted from 20 November last year: 'We've already discovered, just so far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.'

Arata , Jun 26, 2019 10:40:53 PM | 98
Anyone who can undestand Farsi ( Persian language) can litsen Rouhani's speech. He did not name "Trump", he said " White House".
I have been watching CNN news channel who said that Rouhani made a personal attack on Trump! That was not true.

There was no personal attack on Rouhani's speech.
Importantly, the context of the speech and conclusion is diffent from western media reports and western translations.

I would like give few links of some Iranian news agencies, reporting Rouhani's speech for International use, as reference here:

1) FrasNews Agency

Rouhani said:

"These days, we see the White House in confusion and we are witnessing undue and ridiculous words and adoption of a scandalous policy,"

..."The US sanctions are crime against humanity. The US recent measures indicate their ultimate failure. The new US measures are the result of their frustration and confusion over Iran. The White House has mental disability,"


http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13980405000859

2) ISNA English

"They are having mental problems and today, the White House has become mentally paralysed and don't know what to do".
https://en.isna.ir/news/98040402431/Sanctioning-Supreme-leader-of-Iran-ridiculous-President-Rouhani

ISAN French

Le président iranien, affirmant que les États-Unis, malgré de nombreuses tentatives de pression exercées par divers leviers sur l'Iran, ont échoué dans leurs objectifs, a poursuivi : "Une étrange frustration et une grande confusion règnent au sein du Corps dirigeant de la Maison Blanche. Ils se sentent déçus car ils n'ont obtenu aucun résultat, ils s'attendaient à voir l'Iran brisé dans l'espace de quelques mois, mais ils ont fini par constater que les Iraniens agissent de plus en plus fermement, de manière plus créative que jamais ".

https://fr.isna.ir/news/98040402385/Les-actions-américaines-sont-inhumaines-Rohani

3) TasnimNews

The president also decried the new US sanctions against Iran, saying the White House has been thrown into confusion as its officials are making "inappropriate and ridiculous" comments and adopting the policy of disgrace.

https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2019/06/26/2041386/iran-urges-us-europe-to-return-to-jcpoa

Paora , Jun 26, 2019 11:18:41 PM | 101
0use4msm @54

Wow that's amazing! Probably the best known Khrushchev 'quote', presented as evidence of his boorish nature, is an intentional mistranslation. And the Marx quote is not exactly obscure, it's from Chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto for eff sake! At least it makes a change from the 'lets just make things up' cottage industry of Lenin & Stalin 'quotes'.

Hoarsewhisperer , Jun 26, 2019 11:23:51 PM | 102
"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes."
Mark Twain (or some other student of wisdom)
...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/books/famous-misquotations.html
Apr 26, 2017 - Mark Twain is one of many who gets credit for famous quotations he never wrote or said. ... credited with saying "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes" ... Proverbial wisdom, in which a quotation is elevated to the status of a proverb because its source is unknown;.
Circe , Jun 27, 2019 10:19:52 AM | 136 Noirette , Jun 27, 2019 10:50:17 AM | 137
Mistranslations are a classical cheap n easy way to sway opinion.

Interesting that the examples b quotes, and most of those promoted currently by the US-uk-eu, afaik, understand, are intended to project into the voice of Iranians, Russians, Syrians, utterances, declarations, to be labelled insults, slander, threats, impropriety, even rage, coming from these parties, as

there is nothing much else to display!

(Spanish is too comprehensible > does not apply to Mexico, Cuba, S. America.)

Often cultural matters play a role, but are ignored. Ahmadinejad was endlessly vilified and mocked by the W-MSM for saying what was translated as there are no homosexuals in Iran (no idea what the original formulation was) - which 'obviously' can't be 'true.'

Besides homosexuality being unacceptable in conservative rule-books, Iran is, or was (to 2010) above (or with) Thailand the no. 1. practitioner / destination for sex change operations. Iran had super educated docs, great hospitals, etc.

Ahmadinejad was relying on a kind of fundamentalist principle where the 'soul' or the 'essential quality' of a person is what is tantamount, what counts above all. The physical manifestation, here the human body, can be transformed to be in harmony with the deep-felt or 'innately' ascribed orientation or 'spirit.' So, no homosexuals in Iran, or only a few who are in 'transition.' (Not denying real suffering of gays in Iran, other story.)

The W, in first place the US, is doing precisely the same with its 'gender change' promotion, as applied to children and young teens. Here too, 'feelings' and 'identity' override 'nature' : the physical can be overturned, overcome, fixed.

Such cultural issues play a role in mis-translations, deliberate or not. It may appear that I wandered far off topic, I just picked a topical comprehensible ex. Sharia law is more complex..

[Jun 27, 2019] Book review: Dealing with the Russians

Notable quotes:
"... Obviously , Russia is a threat to the US of A -- see the 1992 "Wolfowitz doctrine", where it stated directly. Consequently, Russia is also a threat to the major protectorates of the US, euphemistically described as "Euro-Atlantic community". The rest is propaganda, and demonizing the enemy is a trivial matter. ..."
"... The call to look for the root causes is very laudable, but often more than not is carried out in "7 blind men and an elephant" fashion. "Blind men" are also "biased men", some of whom, using their other senses instead of sight (e.g., olfactory organs) deliberately position themselves at poor elephant's derrière , perform (time and again – to the thunderous applause and approval of the Enlightened Western Public ™) an act of amateur colonoscopy and proclaim: "Behold! That's the essence of the Elephant!". ..."
"... Sometimes, the Elephants becomes annoyed – or enraged and tries to stomp on the irritant. Biased Blind Men promptly call for help from the professionals whose job is to kill all sorts of animals for fun and profit. That's my allegory to the Western Russia analysis. ..."
"... I will not pretend for a second that the Russians are either passive or angelic. However, since as the book you review and others have pointed out a lot of Western concepts are projected onto Russian thinking and actions that don't have much basis in how the Russians actually think, perhaps we also project some of our thinking onto them. In particular with what is happening in Iran and Venezuela, these seem to be actions very much in line with what we accuse the Russians of doing. ..."
"... Finally, I should also note that I think a huge factor in lowering the quality of Russia experts is exemplified by a Soviet joke "What is the difference between western Russia experts and western China experts? The China experts love China!" I myself was motivated to study Russia for what you might loosely call Military Industrial Complex reasons, but I conceived of the Russians less as an enemy to be feared and loathed and rather a country and people to be studied in its own right, and I also was moved by a profound respect for the people and the Army that saved Europe from the night of fascism. ..."
Jun 27, 2019 | irrussianality.wordpress.com

June 25, 2019 PaulR 14 Comments 'How do you deal with a problem like the Russians?' It's a question which seems to dominate public discourse nowadays, with the Russian Federation elevated to the status of Enemy Number One in much of the Western world. Oxford University's Andrew Monaghan has an answer – 'not like we've done so far'. In his last book, The New Politics of Russia , he attacked the mainstream Western view of Russia as 'narrow, simplistic, and repetitive'. Now, in a new book Dealing with the Russians , he lambasts the Euro-Atlantic security community for its approach to the 'Russia challenge'. 'The problem Russia poses is being misdiagnosed and the responses, therefore, poorly framed,' he argues. It is time for the 'retirement of the worn-out and out-of-date repetitions, and the tired clichés and template phrases that currently dominate the public policy lexicon.' What we need, says Monaghan, is 'fresh thinking.'

To make his case, Monaghan frames the book's problem in two parts: first, how to interpret its nature (is Russia a threat? and if so, how big, and of what sort?); and second, how to respond to it (dialogue or deterrence?). He then rounds this off with a discussion of what he thinks needs to be done to improve matters. This last section is directed primarily at a British audience, but most of what Monaghan says could apply equally to other major Western states.

As far as the first of these issues is concerned, Monaghan is clear that, 'Russia poses a major challenge to the Euro-Atlantic community.' He claims, however, that the nature of that challenge is misunderstood – 'The challenge is based, though, not on an expansive, aggressive Russian plan, but instead on a series of contemporary (if long running) policy disagreements that are emphasized by different understandings of today's international environment.'

Clearly, the responses required to combat an 'expansive, aggressive Russian plan' are rather different to those required to resolve 'different understandings of the international environment.' Interpreting the problem correctly is thus a matter of some significance. Unfortunately, says Monaghan, most Western analyses of the 'Russia challenge' get it badly wrong. 'Thinking about Russia is stuck in the twentieth century,' he writes. It is founded on outdated analogies of the Cold War and Munich/Hitler, but these are entirely inappropriate for understanding the contemporary international environment. We need to start thinking about the world today, says Monaghan, not the world of yesterday.

Another problem is that 'Russia is conceptualized through 'buzzwords and abstract labels'. As an example, Monaghan discusses the idea of 'Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD)', an idea which, he says, has 'crossed the buzzword threshold'. A2/AD refers to efforts to 'prevent or constrain the deployment of opposing forces into a given theater of operations and reduce their freedom of maneuver once in a theater,' and it is often claimed that the Russian military has been expanding its A2/AD capabilities in the Baltic region so as to prevent NATO from deploying forces there in case of war. This supposedly seriously threatens European security. The problem with this idea, says Monaghan, is that 'Russia has no new concept or doctrine that would correspond to Western understandings of A2/AD A2/AD is a concept that is foreign to them. Thinking in these terms imposes a Western operational thought process onto the Russian one.'

Similarly, Monaghan denounces the entire industry which has developed in the past five years devoted to hyping the threat of Russia 'hybrid war'. 'Hybrid war' is another baseless buzzword, he says ; it 'does not relate to Russian concepts. [It] is not a Russian construction – there is not a " Russian hybrid war" in the way it is conceived'. Talk of hybrid war produces 'an inaccurate view of Russian defence and security thinking', and 'magnifies Russian capabilities, effectively asserting the omniscience and omnipotence of the Russian leadership' (which, I suspect, is precisely the point!).

All in all, therefore, Monaghan concludes that thinking about the Russian threat 'is in the grip of exhausted metaphorical shorthand introducing shibboleths and myths – not to say fantasies – to the debate. . This shorthand has thus introduced rigidity and dogma'. This is pretty stern stuff. One has to agree with Monaghan that we need some new thinking about the nature of the threat.

The same applies to thinking about how the West should respond to the Russian challenge. Too often this is reduced to a choice of two options – dialogue or deterrence. Both have their limitations. Given the depth of the disagreements between Russia and the West, Monaghan believes that it is very unlikely that dialogue will produce meaningful results. That leaves deterrence. But to deter effectively one has to know what it is one is deterring. That means having a proper understanding of the threat – i.e. of Russian intentions and capabilities. Unfortunately, instead of being analysed realistically, the threat is generally 'framed as Russian foreign policy adventurism, an unprovoked strike from a clear blue sky'. Deterring fantasies isn't of much value, but that's what we seem intent on doing.

Monaghan concludes that 'Neither dialogue nor deterrence is an end in itself.' What is needed is a 'broader strategy'. For that, 'there is a need to develop a better understanding of Russian defence and security thinking.' And that brings us to Monaghan's main point of what we have to do to 'deal with the Russians' – we have to understand them better. And that requires us to open our minds to alternative points of view. He argues that the experience of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 showed the dangers of groupthink and the need for 'real diversity of thought rather than shades of mainstream thinking'. Unfortunately at present,

Thinking about Russia fails to understand the social, economic, political and cultural factors on the ground in Russia. Instead, as we have seen, there is a narrow, abstract and clichéd view of Russia. This has driven a narrative about Russia that has been impervious to reasonable challenge. important sections of established Russia expertise are largely ignored.

From this, Monaghan concludes that the West needs 'a coherent, sustained and thorough reinvigoration of Russia expertise The point is that there is too little sophisticated expertise on Russia and that which does exist is overwhelmed by simplistic and misguided jingoism.'

This is all very true. Monaghan's critiques of Western perceptions of Russia are very apt. He deserves a lot of credit for having the courage to say all this, especially as in the current climate anybody who says this kind of thing is liable to find himself denounced as an 'agent of influence', 'Russian proxy', or ' Kremlin Trojan Horse'. But while Monaghan's attacks on current Western thinking and policy are bang on the nail, his recommendations of what needs to be done instead are a little thin – strategy rather than tactics; and more investment in Russia expertise. The first is valid in any situation; the second, in my view, is somewhat problematic. Monaghan made the same recommendation in his last book. In my review , I cast doubt on it, noting that, 'the problems we have in understanding Russia today appear to have more to do with the quality of analysis than the quantity of experts.' I still think that's a valid criticism. Simply churning out more Russia 'experts' won't necessarily improve the quality of analysis, especially if education in things Russian is driven by demand from the military industrial complex. Furthermore, even if better analysis does result, that won't necessarily produce better policy. There are already plenty of people in academia, business, and so on, who know Russia well and have balanced, sensible views about it, whom governments could consult if they wanted to. They don't want to. Take a look at the list of witnesses to the relevant parliamentary select committees, and you'll understand this soon enough. You can have more and better experts, but if they're saying something politically unwelcome, it probably won't make much difference.

In a sense, therefore, this book would be better titled How not to deal with the Russians since it's stronger as a critique of existing policy than as a set of positive recommendations for a new one. I don't want to make that sound too negative. The critique is excellent, and I'm well aware that this blog is guilty of much the same thing – lots of carping about all the nonsense which people are saying, but not much by way of positive proposals. There's a good reason for that – the prevailing narrative is so strong that until something is done to demolish it, alternative policies are never going to get a hearing. At some point, though, we're going to have go one step further.

To be fair to Monaghan, though, he says upfront at the start of his book that it aims 'not so much to make specific policy recommendations about how to "deal with the Russians" but to step back to make a bigger argument for a broader shift in terms of conceiving the nature of the challenge Russia poses.' He achieves his aim, and for that we must thank him. It's a shift which is long overdue.

Mao Cheng Ji says: June 26, 2019 at 3:26 am
It seems to me, everything is much simpler.

Obviously , Russia is a threat to the US of A -- see the 1992 "Wolfowitz doctrine", where it stated directly. Consequently, Russia is also a threat to the major protectorates of the US, euphemistically described as "Euro-Atlantic community". The rest is propaganda, and demonizing the enemy is a trivial matter.

If he wants a different approach, better understanding, peace, love, harmony and bubble gum, then what he needs to question are the underlying assumptions, the root cause. For the US, it's the basic imperial strategies a-la "Wolfowitz doctrine", and for the "Euro-Atlantic community" it's their acceptance of American domination.

Lyttenburgh says: June 26, 2019 at 1:54 pm
In his final paragraphs Professor approaches dangerously close to the heart of the matter, but then, naturally, rushes back from the precipice of the Abyss, which proximity alone began to sap his ideological resolve and sunny Western liberal disposish. Mao Cheng Ji writes all right and obvious things, but commits a mortal unhandshakable sin of mentioning the Wolfowitz doctrine – meaning that he will be ignored by "proper people".

The call to look for the root causes is very laudable, but often more than not is carried out in "7 blind men and an elephant" fashion. "Blind men" are also "biased men", some of whom, using their other senses instead of sight (e.g., olfactory organs) deliberately position themselves at poor elephant's derrière , perform (time and again – to the thunderous applause and approval of the Enlightened Western Public ™) an act of amateur colonoscopy and proclaim: "Behold! That's the essence of the Elephant!".

Sometimes, the Elephants becomes annoyed – or enraged and tries to stomp on the irritant. Biased Blind Men promptly call for help from the professionals whose job is to kill all sorts of animals for fun and profit. That's my allegory to the Western Russia analysis.

No, instead of biased talk about "root causes" or "how to deal with [Outsiders X/Y/Z]", these authors in their books should finally start asking the ur-question – how to deal with ourselves?

Professor Robinson writes:

"Simply churning out more Russia 'experts' won't necessarily improve the quality of analysis, especially if education in things Russian is driven by demand from the military industrial complex . Furthermore, even if better analysis does result, that won't necessarily produce better policy. There are already plenty of people in academia, business, and so on, who know Russia well and have balanced, sensible views about it, whom governments could consult if they wanted to. They don't want to You can have more and better experts, but if they're saying something politically unwelcome, it probably won't make much difference."

He also wrote in the same blogpost:

"At some point, though, we're going to have go one step further."

^This. You said "A", Professor – how about saying "B" and then the rest of the alphabet? Okay, here's a hint. Try to answer the question – "who are you?". Who is Monaghan? Who are these "experts" and "Russia studying academia?". Here's another hint:

"The evidence suggests that foreign policymakers do not seek insight from scholars, but rather support for what they already want to do . As Desch quotes a World War II U.S. Navy anthropologist, " the administrator uses social science the way the drunk uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination ." Scholars' disinclination to be used in this way helps explain more of the distance.

It also explains the rise of think tanks , which are more pliant than academics but provide similar marketing support. As Benjamin Friedman and I wrote in a 2015 article on the subject, think tanks undertake research with an operational mindset: that is, "the approach of a passenger riding shotgun who studies the map to find the ideal route, adjusts the engine if need be, and always accepts the destination without protest ."

As former senator Olympia Snowe once put it, "you can find a think tank to buttress any view or position, and then you give it the aura of legitimacy and credibility by referring to their report." Or consider the view of Rory Stewart, now a member of parliament in the UK, but once an expert on Afghanistan who was consulted on the Afghan surge but opposed it:

"It's like they're coming in and saying to you, "I'm going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?" And you say, "I don't think you should drive your car off the cliff." And they say, "No, no, that bit's already been decided -- the question is whether to wear a seatbelt." And you say, "Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt." And then they say, "We've consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart, and he says "

Or look at how policymakers themselves define relevance. Stephen Krasner, an academic who became a policymaker, lamented the uselessness of much academic security studies literature because "[e]ven the most convincing empirical findings may be of no practical use because they do not include factors that policy makers can manipulate."

The explicit claim here is that for scholarship to be of any practical use, it must include factors that policymakers can manipulate. This reflects a strong bias toward action, even in relatively restrained presidencies."
– Justin Logan, " Cult of the Irrelevant: National Security Eggheads and Academics "

I remember when you posted your presentation and the following Q&A session on the topic of the history of Russian conservative thought, professor. The questions being asked amounted to

a) Present day hot-button issues (aka "how Russia is baaaaad")

and

b) To what degree these conservative thinkers influence modern Russia (aka "How Russia has always been baaaaad")

None (NO ONE) of them, precious gentle students in the heartland of the West, ever thought that you just did what any scientist have to do – carried out a research to further humanity's collective body of knowledge about us and the universe. No – they, these precious children, want the real life application from the "Russian studies", i.e. it must help them wage the War. You, in this regard, thoroughly failed them – and other, full grown, and even old and senile children that more often than not call all the shots.

Or, screw it, TL;DR version – Professor, why can't you just admit that you as a member of intelligentsia belong to the strata whose function is to serve the ruling class? That, despite all the illusions of the privilege and self-importance, no, you, white-collar Western intellectual mass, are not "the power" – you are hired workers, hired to deliver a preset result. Maybe after developing a certain conscience about yourself and your real status, you might then proceed to talk about how the policymaking really works or how you (general "you") have so little impact on it despite your shiny Ivory Towers and data stuffed brains.

P.S. Btw, case in study. Did Boris answer your letter? Do you plan to write another one to him soon?

dewittbourchier says: June 26, 2019 at 4:35 pm
Thank you for the review professor.

I remember that Roger McDermott wrote that the idea 'hybrid warfare' is alien to Russian defence thinking.

Another thing I think that maybe is missing – a bit adventuresome and without proof from the words of very high ranking policy makers but with some from lower ranking persons – is that perhaps some of our thinking about Russia is us projecting our aggressive and plotting tendencies onto the Russians.

I will not pretend for a second that the Russians are either passive or angelic. However, since as the book you review and others have pointed out a lot of Western concepts are projected onto Russian thinking and actions that don't have much basis in how the Russians actually think, perhaps we also project some of our thinking onto them. In particular with what is happening in Iran and Venezuela, these seem to be actions very much in line with what we accuse the Russians of doing.

Finally, I should also note that I think a huge factor in lowering the quality of Russia experts is exemplified by a Soviet joke "What is the difference between western Russia experts and western China experts? The China experts love China!" I myself was motivated to study Russia for what you might loosely call Military Industrial Complex reasons, but I conceived of the Russians less as an enemy to be feared and loathed and rather a country and people to be studied in its own right, and I also was moved by a profound respect for the people and the Army that saved Europe from the night of fascism.

And as I read people like Herspring and Glantz while comparing them to others such as Anthony Beevor or any number of German officers writing about the Soviet Army, I realized much of the popular history, even taught history – which is what most politicians will be aware of to the extent they are aware of history – was riddled with Patrick Armstrong wrote in THE FIRE BELOW "a series of memes."

To conclude this overly long comment, one example will do. One the one hand the Russians and Russian defense policymakers have a perverse pride in the number of dead of WWII. To both William Odom and Herspring Russian military interviewees said a variation of "the value of human life is not as high in Russia as it is in the West." One the other hand, post-Stalin Soviet Armed Forces doctrine aimed to use firepower and materiel to cut down on casualties as far as possible, and the Soviet Army invested a lot in its medical infrastructure. In the Afghan War the 40th Army was supplied with improved body armour to reduce fatalities. These are not actions consistent with a set of policymakers utterly indifferent or uncaring to human life.

Lyttenburgh says: June 27, 2019 at 2:31 am
"On the one hand the Russians and Russian defense policymakers have a perverse pride in the number of dead of WWII."

We are not. Stop your gratitious Russophobia masquerading as "respect", dewittbourchier.

"On the other hand, post-Stalin Soviet Armed Forces doctrine aimed to use firepower and materiel to cut down on casualties as far as possible, and the Soviet Army invested a lot in its medical infrastructure."

Fucking bullshit in lieu of "Stalin drowned the [racially superior proper European] enemy in [subhuman Asiatic] corpses" narrative. One has just to analyze Red and then Soviet Army battle doctire, after action reports and results of various engagement during the war.

It's just that other countries facing Hitler on their soil (with some rare exceptions) did not have to fight for their survavial as human species, opting for a comfortable civilized occupation instead. Thus idea to sacrifice – continiously – their own people in order for the rest to stay alive had never faced them. E.g. – Soviet Army's Posnan's offensive operation or, even earlier, near complete annihilation of 40-50 "Panthers" taskforce sent to relieve of Ternopol's siege – all with minimal casualties to own side. Or just one phrase – "Kessel von Halbe".

dewittbourchier says: June 27, 2019 at 3:56 pm
My comment as is stands. One of these reasons Khrushchev dismissed Zhukov was that Khrushchev believed Zhukov was too willing to accept casualties in a future war, and Khrushchev wanted a Marshal who would focus more on developing a doctrine designed to minimise casualties as far as possible without compromising the overall operational and strategic effectiveness of the Soviet Armed Forces.

Also I would highly recommend you consider things such as the Ardeatine Massacre and Oradour Sur Glane before you call German occupations civilized. They were anything but, they were deeply traumatic for the occupied countries and in places like France and Italy resistance grew and grew. In both countries rations the Germans gave out were barely above the levels they gave to Poles. This is hardly 'civilised.' It is barbarous.

It just means that what they did in the Soviet Union was so much worse.

[Jun 27, 2019] US sanctions against Iran amount to an act of war

Jun 27, 2019 | www.wsws.org

Scott Randall • 21 hours ago • edited

"...as Stratfor, put it, "Trump, fearing a much bigger escalation, got cold feet."

One is reminded of the scene from Oliver Stone's JFK (1991), a General in the Joint Chiefs comments disparagingly about Kennedy for keeping his finger "on the chicken switch" with regard to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Lyndon Johnson in the White House with Henry Cabot Lodge in 1963 declares: "Gentlemen, I want you to know I'm not going to let Vietnam go the way China did. I'm personally committed. I'm not going to take one soldier out of there 'til they know we mean business in Asia (he pauses) You just get me elected, and I'll give you your damned war ."

animalogic • a day ago
Another question exists: should the US resist the allure of military action against Iran, what can Iran do?
US sanctions against Iran amount to an act of war. Iran can bust sanctions up to some point -- but for how long? Will Iran suffer half a million dead children & elderly people as Iraq did in the 90's ? SHOULD Iran have to suffer such a criminally imposed loss of life?
Where is the way out of this insanity?
Iran won't negotiate with the US for the very good reason that the US clearly wants to sterilize Iranian sovereignty (ie the US won't accept ANY Iranian missiles -- that is, Iran has no right to self defense).
Sad to say, Trump does not need to launch military action against Iran, merely continue to economically terrorise Iran until it has NO choice but to initiate military action against its tormentors.
Ahson • 3 days ago
Trump being a demented fool that he is now says this:

https://www.presstv.com/Det...

This shows the deep divisions within the imperialist elites on what to do about Iran. They don't have a real plan. Just making it up as they go along.

Ahson • 3 days ago
The war on Iran will continue till kingdom come, until it falls. Its clear as day that both Russia and China back their Iranian allies against US provocations. China hasn't flinched under US threats to embargo Iranian crude, and continues to purchase it, and Russia has an oil swap agreement with Iran, where it buys Iranian oil and sells it as Russian on the international market. This must be a severe irritation to the imperialists in Washington and London as it renders their Iran sanctions regime practically toothless.

https://www.tasnimnews.com/...

Nobody should be surprised when the next US provocation unfolds, yet again taking us to the brink of disaster.

Ahson • 3 days ago • edited
Iranian fishermen are finding parts of the CIA drone exposing the lie that the drone was in 'international airspace':

https://www.presstv.com/Det...

Ahson • 3 days ago • edited
The imperialists are not backing down in their quest for subduing Iran. Seems like the idea here is to put as many large ships in harms way as possible....and provoke Iran to attack one of these......This will ensure the probability of miscalculation and/ or accidents becomes almost unavoidable. There must be regime change in Tehran, on the road to Beijing and Moscow:

https://sputniknews.com/mil...

John Upton • 3 days ago
Iran has every right to defend itself from US imperialisms constant violence, as is the case with China and Russia. It is also pleasing to see the almighty war machine get a bloody nose.

But we should never lose sight of the fact that it is always the working class that suffers the most in terms of death, injuries and destitution.
End all wars!
End production for profit and the Nation state upon which it is built!

John Upton • 3 days ago
America's history demonstrates that loss of (foreign) life is of little concern to those in power.
The Manhattan Project was established, and mightily financed because of reasonably well established fears that Nazi Germany was on track to build its own A-bombs.
With the defeat of Germany that fear was gone. Nevertheless, knowing full well that Imperial Japan had no such program, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were vapourised. A clear demonstration that they, atomic weapons, WMD, worked and a warning to the Soviet Union that it too could be annihilated.
Robert Oppenheimer and others refused to take part in building an H-bomb for class and humane reasons. This fell on Truman's deaf ears.
American Imperialism is indifferent to death and destruction of billions.
As WSWS has stated, Trumps announcement that the loss of 150 Iranian lives is the the reason he pulled backs so much bilge.
FireintheHead • 3 days ago • edited
Trump is in a catch 22. When push has come to shove , he simply cannot sell another war to the US working class, and he knows it , and he's been well and truly spooked by the Iranian response.

All the US garbage of itself as ''victim'', all the 'good cop bad cop' routines are wearing thin. Nobody is buying it anymore , especially from a gangster.

Perhaps a predicted massive spike in global temperatures will clear out the collective cobwebs further.

Gracchus • 3 days ago
Good point about the possibility of Iran sinking a carrier. The Chinese have developed advanced anti-ship weapons that, if the results of a RAND corporation war game can be believed, will be able to neutralize carriers. This highlights the fact that, whatever the salesmen of advanced weaponry might say, it will not win wars alone. All of the smart weapons in the world have not ended the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan in the favour of American imperialism.

We can see an historical precedent in the British development of the dreadnought, the modern battleship, in the arms race that preceded WWI. Dreadnoughts were supposed to be the decisive super weapons of the day, but the British and German battle fleets remained in their moorings for most of the war for fear that these expensive ships would fall prey to torpedos. The sinking of the HMS Formidable in 1915 is a case in point. The only major engagement between dreadnoughts was at Jutland and it was inconclusive.

For all of the contemporary bluster about super weapons and the fetishism of smart bombs and cyber weapons, they will not decisively win a war alone. As in the world wars of the last century, the bourgeoisie will be forced to mobilize society for a war. This will mean bringing the working class - against its will - into the maelstrom.

Gracchus • 3 days ago • edited
Yet again the WSWS demonstrates the incredible foresight and clarity of Marxist analysis. I would like to extend my thanks to Comrade Andre and the editors of the WSWS for their indefatigable efforts to impart Marxist consciousness to the masses. For all of the naysayers who have attacked the WSWS as "sectarian" or as not involved in "practical work," need we point to anything other than the WSWSs explanation of the connection between eruption of American imperialism and the decline of the productive forces of that nation state? That analysis has placed the WSWS in the position of being better prepared politically for the consequences of war than the imperialists, as the latest farce in the Middle East demonstrates.

A quote from Trotsky will further emphasize my point:

"We will not concede this banner to the masters of falsehood! If our generation happens to be too weak to establish Socialism over the earth, we will hand the spotless banner down to our children. The struggle which is in the offing transcends by far the importance of individuals, factions and parties. It is the struggle for the future of all mankind."

The spotless banner is in good hands.

Robert Seaborne Gracchus • 3 days ago
thank you Gracchus,
for your inspiring comment, I couldn't agree more with it.
dmorista • 3 days ago • edited
The official story, as usual, is a bunch of hooey. Trump wouldn't bat an eye over the death of 150 Iranians. In addition to the worries about losing an aircraft carrier: the military high command probably let him know that the much vaunted, and outlandishly expensive, force of F-35s, will quickly lose its effectiveness if exposed to probing by the high tech radars the Russians have developed, and that are used in conjunction with at least the S-400 antiaircraft and antimissile defense system. So the question is, if the stealth advantage of the F-35 is only good for a limited time, is this particular geostrategic confrontation worth using up that particular asset??

Then there is the whole question of whether the Iranians would close the Straits of Hormuz in response to a major air raid on their nuclear facilities; this leads to some much more important issues. Despite the blathering about "international waters" and "freedom of navigation" the facts are that the Straits of Hormuz are only 21 miles wide. So all the water in them is either in Iranian territory to the north or Omani to the south. They would be entirely within their rights, as elucidated in the International Law of the Sea, to close the straits after some sort of military strike against them (for what that is worth, which is something at least as far as public opinion outside of the U.S. is concerned). The Iranians have stated that if and when they close the straits they will announce it publicly, no subterfuge or secret operations will be involved.

Since nearly 30% of the World's oil moves through those straits cutting them off will cause an immediate spike in oil prices. Prices of $100 - $300 a barrel would be reached within a few days. If the Straits of Hormuz were closed for a longer period we could easily see prices rise to $1,000 a barrel according to Goldman Sachs projections (see Escobar article cited below). Anything over $150 a barrel would trigger an economic, industrial, and financial crisis of immense proportions around the world. The financial and speculative house of cards, that the ruling classes of the U.S.-led Finance Capital Bloc depends on for their dominance of world capital and markets, would likely come tumbling down. The amount of derivatives that are swirling about the planet and that are traded and created constantly is estimated to be from $1.2 - $2.5 Quadrillion. That's right from $1,200 - $2,500 Trillion or $1,200,000 - $2,500,000 Billion {remember Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, who once said "a billion here and a billion there and first thing you know, You're talking BIG MONEY!!} (See "World Derivatives Market Estimated As Big As $1.2 Quadrillion Notional, as Banks Fight Efforts to Rein It In", March 26, 2013, Yves Smith, "Naked Capitalism", at < https://www.nakedcapitalism... >, and "Iran Goes for 'Maximum Counter-pressure' ", June 21, 2019, Pepe Escobar, "Strategic Culture Foundation", at < https://www.strategic-cultu... >, and "Global Derivatives: $1.5 Quadrillion Time Bomb", Aug 24, 2015, Stephen Lendman, Global Research, at
< https://www.globalresearch.... >). Just like during the 2007 - 2008 crisis the various elements of shadow banking, and speculation would collapse. Remember that total world production of and trade in actual products is only about about $70 - $80 Trillion, or perhaps less than 1/31st the size of the Global Derivatives markets.

All the world's elite capitalists, be they Western or Asian or from elsewhere, maintain homes in numerous places. One reason for this is so they have somewhere to go, if they need to flee from environmental and/or socioeconomic disaster and the resultant chaos in their primary place of residence. As we move ever deeper into this extremely severe and ongoing Crisis of Capitalism, these issues will continue to become more acute.

So we can rest assured that; in addition to the crazed war-mongers Bolton and Pompeo (and their supporters and backers) whispering in Trump's ear to "go ahead and attack the Iranians"; and in addition to the somewhat more sober counsel of General Dunford and other members of the top military command; that titans of finance capital were undoubtedly on the phone warning "Bone-Spur Don" that his digs in Manhattan and Florida might not be entirely safe if the worst were to happen in response to a military strike. The absurd story of Don worrying about 150 Iranians is so ludicrous that it did not even pass the smell test with the corporate controlled media for very long.

Irandle dmorista • 2 days ago
Oil reached $147 a barrel in 2007-08. That caused the so-called Great Recession.

As WSWS has pointed out there are few if any US options left but war.

Charlotte Ruse • 3 days ago
"Thirty years of endless war have created a veritable cult of militarism within the American ruling elite, whose guiding assumption seems to be that wars can be waged without drastic global consequences, including for the United States itself."

The military/security surveillance state is a trillion dollar enterprise that instigates conflicts to expand its profits. Militarism works hand-in-hand with the neoliberal corporatists who deploy the military to secure natural resources, wage slaves, and geostrategic hegemony. It should be noted, that the US imperialist agenda left unhindered after the dissolution of the Soviet Union only intensified.

However, in order for the US ruling class to achieve the "ultimate goal" of unilateral hegemony in the Middle East the military must confront Iran a powerful sizable country with economic and political ties to China and Russia. This is the dilemma confronting the warmongering psychopaths
who are influenced by Israel and Saudi Arabia.

A significant military attack against Iran will NOT go unanswered and if the Iranian Military destroys a US warship and kills hundreds of sailors it would unleash another major war in the Middle East igniting the entire region and possibly leading to a world war.

What should traumatize the US population and awaken them from their hypnotic warmongering stupur created by propaganda proliferated on FOX, MSNBC, and CNN is that the United States came within minutes of launching a war whose military consequences it had NOT seriously examined.

John Hudson • 3 days ago
There's a rumour going around that in preparation for the strike the US launched a massive cyber attack on Iran's air defence - and failed.
Ahson John Hudson • 3 days ago
Its no rumor:

https://sputniknews.com/mid...

Sebouh80 • 3 days ago
In light of these dangerous events it is obvious that a faction of the American ruling class circles including Trump were not prepared to face the consequences of a strike against Iran. That is precisely why Trump aborted the mission last Friday. Just yesterday Trump himself admitted for the first time that if it was up to John Bolton then we would be fighting the whole world. Today Pompeo has been sent to Middle East to broaden his alliance with Gulf Monarchical regimes most notably Saudi Arabia and UAE. It is aimed to prepare the ground for possible confrontation with Iran.
kurumba Sebouh80 • 2 days ago
Trump's comment re Bolton that the US "would fight the whole world" sums up what the US is really about. Take it from me, The US hates virtually every country save one: Israel. Illegal US Sanctions regimes now extend to almost 50% of the world's population. The US does not even like the advanced countries such as Europe and Japan. They tolerate them because of diplomatic support and large investment and trade ties. Outside that they have no affinity or connection. Until we all realise the true nature of The US and its exclusive cultural mindset [NFL, NBA, MLB etc etc], populations will merely continue to enable the US to attack and sanction everybody and anyone of their demented choosing. The tragedy is that if the other countries became united and were committed to ending this US terror by eg dumping the US Dollar as international reserve currency and sanctioning all US corporations, the US would face severe turmoil and its reign of endless terror brought to a sudden end.
Popart 2015 • 3 days ago • edited
"The strikes were called off at the last moment, amid deep divisions at the highest levels of the White House and the Pentagon over the consequences -- military, diplomatic and political -- of what would likely be the single most dangerous and reckless action of the entire Trump presidency."

I believe things simple didn't go as planned as an airplane was threatened to be taken down. Bolton was in Israel after that to most likely assure Netanyahu that a new attack would be conducted, Bolton Warned Iran Not to 'Mistake U.S. Prudence and Discretion for Weakness'...

https://www.nytimes.com/201...

Ahson • 3 days ago • edited
There needs to be a correction in the article on the older Raad system not having been used but instead the newer, 'Third of Khordad' system which brought down the MQ-4C Triton. Pictures/ Info on the Third of Khordad reveals that it is in effect an Iranian version of the Soviet Buk-M2 of the MH-17 downing fame which the western backed Kiev junta used from its hand me down Soviet weapons arsenal, to shoot down the ill fated Malaysian Airliner over the Ukraine. The system also is stark evidence of the close defense relationship between the Russians and the Iranians, confirming the suspicions in the west that whatever weaponry Putin transfers to Syria or Iraq is by default also available to Iran.
Andy Niklaus • 3 days ago
Great Perspective again to build antiwar movement in the global workingclass!
Ahson • 3 days ago • edited
Not to be outdone by his failure to bring Iran to its knees, Trump ordered a massive cyber attack on Iran's missile batteries and its command and control centers after rescinding the military order to physically attack Iran for downing the drone. The Iranians today announced the failure of this desperate US cyber attack:

https://www.presstv.com/Det...

This is in addition to the CIA placing an agent within the Iranian oil ministry for conducting sabotage. She has been arrested and faces the death penalty for espionage:

https://www.tasnimnews.com/...

The deep State in the US will not stop trying to subdue Iran until it capitulates. Iran must fall to Washington in order for the US to effectively counter and sabotage both Putin's Eurasian Integration and president Xi's BRI projects.

imaduwa • 3 days ago
Trump's alterration at this moment can be due to Iran's internal coherence against American imperialism. With santions being reinforced, one can anticipate more and more impovershment and quality of life geting lower unabated to the point that the basis for internal coherence gets eroded substantially. We saw working class uprisings in Iran recently and leadership accused imperialist as rabble-rousers to find a way out.That is why we need building SEP/IYSSE in Iran to hatch revolutionary force in Iran for Iran to join the peer in the rest of the world. Morsi in Egypt was overthrown by Sisi with the backing of US imperialism headed by Obama at that time. So is the imperialism and it will continue to work to weaken Iran as a force successfully confronting imperialism in the middle east currently. Let us therefore empower international working class to empower it to overthrow imperialism on one hand and Stalinism on the other hand. Russia too depend largely on its arms sale to maintain its economy. But human needs, not wepons, but basic needs including clean environment. Long live the socialist revolution in Iran and internationally. Death to imperialism. Thank you comrade Andre Damon.
jet1685 • 3 days ago
"The strikes were called off at the last moment, amid deep divisions at the highest levels of the White House and the Pentagon over the consequences -- military, diplomatic and political -- of what would likely be the single most dangerous and reckless action of the entire Trump presidency."
Economically it would be Armageddon. Although some think America does not rely on Mideast oil, the world economy does and America is a part of that despite what nationalists dream. Bolton is making threats from Israel and clearly some believe they stand to gain from war but militarily too it would be Armageddon. The Pentagon would answer the sinking of a carrier by nuking Iran to preserve American "credibility" i.e. fear. China and Russia would have to react, China at least to keep its oil supplied. India pushed against China could add more mushroom clouds not to mention Pakistan. Israel itself with Tel Aviv bombarded from Lebanon and maybe invaded unable to stop this might nuke Lebanon and maybe Tehran if any of it remains and Damascus besides. Just as ww1 started because military train timetables had to be followed there are nukewar plans in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing that won't take long. So world workers need to start our plan before others begin. Preemptive general strikes, antiwar and socialist revolutionary agitation and propaganda within imperialist rank and files and human blockades of war material networks should happen at an early date like now. Now also WikiLeaks should put out whatever it hasn't while people exist to read it. The rich are determined to kill Assange anyway and full wartime censorship is not far off.
erroll jet1685 • 3 days ago • edited
Some people have speculated that if the U.S. does attack Iran then Iran will launch missiles at Saudi Arabia's oil fields which will then send oil prices skyrocketing to $130 dollars a barrel. The article also notes that:

"While Trump's foreign policy team -- headed by National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo -- 'unanimously' supported the attack, General Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 'cautioned about the possible repercussions of a strike, warning that it could endanger American forces,' the Times wrote."

Apparently the good general cannot get too worked up at the sight of thousands and thousands of Iranian children, women, and old men who would be slaughtered and grievously wounded by U.S. bombs and the water supply which would be contaminated when those bombs would land at a nuclear power plant. But these horrific actions by the United States are of no consequence because, as Madeline Albright observed on a television a few decades ago, the deaths of a half million Iraqi children by the U.S. was worth it. It would appear that the lives of foreigners are of little consequence to those who are in power. Threatening to start a war against another country for the most specious of reasons is simply another reason why a malignant narcissist like Trump needs to be removed from office as quickly as possible. Or perhaps Trump believes that the best way to improve his low poll numbers is to start dropping 500 lb. bombs on a country which does not in any remote way pose a threat to the United States.

"Almost all propaganda is designed to create fear. Heads of governments and their officials know that a frightened people is easier to govern, will forfeit rights it would otherwise defend, is less likely to demand a better life, and will agree to millions and millions being spent on 'Defense'."-John Boynton Priestly [1894-1984], English writer

"Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god."-Jean Rostand [1894-1977], French philosopher and biologist

лидия • 3 days ago
When a FOX-news man is the most sane voice in USA foreign policy (regarding aggression against Iran and Venezuela) - it is the real madness!
лидия • 3 days ago
After Hezballah had booted Zionist colonizers out of Lebanon, Zionist apartheid had lost its image of "invincibility".
Now even ghetto Gaza is fighting back.
Irandle • 3 days ago
Spies? What is that in reference to?
Gerry Murphy Irandle • 3 days ago • edited
The CIA payrolled press whores like CNN's Christiane Amanpour for example a prime warmonger and there are countless others embedded in every western media source.
Ahson Gerry Murphy • 3 days ago
Ironically, Amanpour is Iranian background, an avowed revolution hater and a devoted Iranian Pahlavi monarchist. She's on the record for saying that she wants to see the Shah's exiled son back on the throne in Iran, serving US imperialism for the 'benefit of the Iranian nation'.
The Top-Hatted Commie • 3 days ago
The sinking of an aircraft carrier, especially one as well known as the USS Lincoln, would have been one of the biggest PR disasters for both Trump and the military. It probably would have sparked demands from the people to know how, despite pouring trillions of dollars into the mouths of greedy defense contractors for decades, a supposedly inferior military could so easily take down one of our ships.
piet The Top-Hatted Commie • 3 days ago
Khrushchev once said of the Sverdlov class cruisers built in the early 1950's that their only practical purpose was as targets for anti ship missile training because of how outdated they where considering they where armed with guns.

Maybe the anti-ship missile now stands at the point where it can make carriers obsolete similar to how the battleship was made obsolete by the carrier.

Robert Buell Jr piet • 3 days ago
There are some who argue that surface navies became obsolete in the 1950's with the advent of long range missiles. For many years now, China has been helping to build up Iranian area defences...

https://www.mei.edu/publica...

Ahson The Top-Hatted Commie • 3 days ago • edited
Cold war weapons are unsuitable for countering Iran's asymmetric warfare doctrine. A dozen or two highly advanced US warships are no match for a thousand missile boats and thousands of Iranian anti-ship missiles in the narrow confines of the shallow gulf.
Corwin Haught • 3 days ago • edited
Minutes or hours, or Trump never signed on to them, as the accounts from different US media outlets and Trump have differed at several points. Fog of war indeed.

[Jun 27, 2019] Putin Eviscerates [neo]liberalism, Calling It Obsolete, In Wide-Ranging Interview Ahead Of G-20

Notable quotes:
"... Putin said: "[neo]liberals] cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do over the recent decades." ..."
"... Putin said: "What happened in the US, and how did it happen? In the US, the leading US companies -- the companies, their managers, shareholders and partners -- made use of these benefits. The middle class hardly benefited from globalization. The Trump team sensed this very keenly and clearly, and they used this in the election campaign. It is where you should look for reasons behind Trump's victory, rather than in any alleged foreign interference." ..."
Jun 27, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

In an exclusive interview with FT on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin touted the growth of national populism in Europe and America while saying that [neo]liberalism is "spent" as an ideology. He spoke on numerous issues at length, which we have broken down here by topic.

[neo]liberal Governments

On the eve of the G20 summit, Putin said that the "[neo]liberal idea" had "outlived its purpose" as the public has turned against immigration and multiculturalism. His push back on [neo]liberalism aligns Putin with leaders like US president Donald Trump, Hungary's Viktor Orban, Matteo Salvini in Italy, and the Brexit insurgency in the UK.

Putin said: "[neo]liberals] cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do over the recent decades."

Immigration and Refugees

He said that Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to admit over 1 million refugees to German was a "cardinal mistake" and praised President Trump for trying to stop migrants and drugs from Mexico.

Putin said: "This [neo]liberal idea presupposes that nothing needs to be done. That migrants can kill, plunder and rape with impunity because their rights as migrants have to be protected. Every crime must have its punishment. The [neo]liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population."

On Election Interference

While Putin has been targeted in the U.S., namely for attempting to intervene in the country's elections, Putin denied it and called the idea "mythical interference".

Putin said: "What happened in the US, and how did it happen? In the US, the leading US companies -- the companies, their managers, shareholders and partners -- made use of these benefits. The middle class hardly benefited from globalization. The Trump team sensed this very keenly and clearly, and they used this in the election campaign. It is where you should look for reasons behind Trump's victory, rather than in any alleged foreign interference."

The China/U.S. Trade War

With regard to the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China, Putin called the situation "explosive", blaming the issue on American unilateralism.

"Our relations with China are not motivated by timeserving political or any other considerations. China is showing loyalty and flexibility to both its partners and opponents. Maybe this is related to the historical features of Chinese philosophy, their approach to building relations," Putin said.

A New Nuclear Arms Race

He also expressed concern about a new nuclear arms race.

"The cold war was a bad thing . . . but there were at least some rules that all participants in international communication more or less adhered to or tried to follow. Now, it seems that there are no rules at all," Putin said.

... ... ...

The Russian Economy

Speaking about his own country, Putin said: "Real wages are not in decline in Russia. On the contrary, they are starting to pick up. The macroeconomic situation in the country is stable. As for the central bank, yes, it is engaged in a gradual improvement of our financial system: inefficient and small-capacity companies, as well as semi-criminal financial organizations are leaving the market, and this is large-scale and complicated work."

... ...

[Jun 27, 2019] Something about neoliberal MSM

Jun 27, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Curtis , Jun 26, 2019 6:12:43 PM | 54

michaelj72 #37
I'm the Slime - Frank Zappa

I am gross and perverted
I'm obsessed 'n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little has changed
I'm the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I'm the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I'm the slime oozin' out
From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help . . . no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

[Jun 27, 2019] Russia stands in full solidarity with the friendly people of Iran and its government. The US government should consider where such a reckless course of action might lead. Not only could it destabilise the Middle East, it threatens to undermine the entire system of international security

Jun 27, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Jun 26, 2019 7:16:58 PM | 70

Verbal electronic arrows have increased the amount of overall use of bandwidth but Trump's King's still I check and must be protected, his "no boots on ground" is woefully insufficient. As was discussed toward the end of the "Seeking Coalition" thread, how will Iran respond to what now seems likely as a limited strike? Will it lash out at Trump's King and take hostages beforehand either in Iraq, Kuwait or Afghanistan? Will Trump refrain from acting until or during the G-20. Will Iran wait until the targets cross into its airspace? As you can see the possibilities and their variables are as Pft @44 alludes to--almost infinite.

What was the substance of Bolton's report to Trump from Jerusalem and was it truthful? Does Trump understand what it means for Iran to be considered under the aegis of Russia and China, or does it matter since they remain the ultimate targets?

Sigh... Too many questions and not enough information to even provide an educated WAG. For those that missed it, here's the statement issued yesterday by Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs after the Jerusalem talks with Patrushev ended. It concludes:

"Russia stands in full solidarity with the friendly people of Iran and its government. The US government should consider where such a reckless course of action might lead. Not only could it destabilise the Middle East, it threatens to undermine the entire system of international security."

I note Patrushev's absence from the meeting earlier today of Russia's Security Council . Surely his report from Jerusalem was the primary topic.

[Jun 27, 2019] The Myth of Russian Media Influence by Larry C Johnson

The accusation played important role in unleashing neo-McCartyism campaign in the USA. So "The Moor has done his duty. The Moor can go ...."
Notable quotes:
"... Russian information troll farm the Internet Research Agency spent just 0.05 percent as much on Facebook ads as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's campaigns combined in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, yet still reached a massive audience. While there might have been other Russian disinformation groups, the IRA spent $46,000 on pre-election day Facebook ads compared to $81 million spent by Clinton and Trump together, discluding political action committees who could have spent even more than that on the campaigns' behalf. ..."
"... So, the Lilliputian Russians, spending a pittance compared to the Goliaths of the Clinton and Trump campaigns, was the deciding factor in 2016? Bullshit. ..."
"... The pathetic and laughable U.S. intelligence community (aka IC) did not do a state-by-state breakdown of how these various social media campaigns operated in those states that swung the election to Trump. ..."
"... the IC is completely silent on the efforts of other countries, such as China and Israel. ..."
"... I had my own experience with Russian media influence, or the lack of such influence to be more precise. I was interviewed on Russia Today aka RT on March 4, 2017 to comment on Donald Trump's claim that the FBI had wiretapped Trump Towers. During that interview I noted that the Brits, not the FBI, were ones doing electronic surveillance of Trump. And how did the public and the media react to that bomb shell pronouncement by me? Crickets. No reaction. ..."
"... The crazy insistence that Russia grossly interfered in our 2016 election is a canard. Too bad the vast majority of America has bought into this absurd nonsense. Yes, there were groups linked to the Russian government that were pushing stories on social media. ..."
"... I think Iran/Contra was the watershed moment. The CIA became very politicized and the quality of analysis and spy trade craft declined significantly. John Brennan turned the place into a freak show. When you have "Dykes on Bikes" day at CIA Headquarters you know you have lost your way. ..."
"... Not only is the IC community discredited but so should most of the Democratic media operations and campaign advisors. ..."
Jun 27, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Republicans and Democrats, along with almost all of the media, have accepted the lie that the Russians engaged in unprecedented "interference" in the 2016 Presidential election. It is a ridiculous proposition and is based on a presumption rather than actual evidence. The Intel Community said it is true so, by definition, it must be true.

Let's focus on the actual numbers. How much money did the Russians spend? According to Robert Mueller, $1.25 million per month . If you start that money clock in May of 2016, that means those pesky Rookies spent $8.75 million. But let us be generous and add on the previous four months, essentially starting the clock in January 2016 before the first primary votes. That brings the total to $13 million.

Hillary and Donald, by contrast, spent over $81 million on Facebook alone . According to TechCrunch:

Russian information troll farm the Internet Research Agency spent just 0.05 percent as much on Facebook ads as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's campaigns combined in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, yet still reached a massive audience. While there might have been other Russian disinformation groups, the IRA spent $46,000 on pre-election day Facebook ads compared to $81 million spent by Clinton and Trump together, discluding political action committees who could have spent even more than that on the campaigns' behalf.

Trump and Clinton, when you factor in their various political action committees, spent millions more.

A fuller analysis of the spending on the major social media platforms was provided by Medium.com :

Surprisingly, Clinton's campaign was overall more active on Twitter and on Facebook than Trump's , generating 19 percent more messages (11,475 messages by Clinton to 9,390 by Trump). On Facebook, Clinton generated 500 more messages than Trump. While Trump's tweets seemed to garner more news coverage, Clinton's campaign was actually substantially more active on social media, generating 25 messages a day on average to Trump's 20.

Yet, Trump's social media following was larger than Clinton's . In November 2015, Clinton had 1.7 million followers on Facebook. By Election Day that had grown to 8.4 million, a 394 percent increase. Trump had 4.2 million Followers on Facebook in November 2015. By Election Day, that number jumped to 12.35 million, a 194 percent increase. So, while Clinton saw a greater increase, Trump still had nearly 4 million more followers. . . .

All of this suggests that while Clinton's campaign was overall more active on its social media accounts, it did not receive the same amount of attention and support on social media as compared with Donald Trump. . . .

In the last months of the campaign, generally the focus shifted to voter registration and then get-out-the vote efforts. Social media can be a useful starting place for helping give supporters events and activities to do to be part of the campaign and to help with the effort of winning the election. Although both campaigns, indeed, increased their calls-to-action in the last two months of the campaign, Clinton beat Trump in volume of such messages on Facebook and Twitter, producing a third more call-to-action type messages (See Figure 17). If we only look at Facebook, however, Trump's campaign produced as many call-to-action type message as Clinton in October.

When it came to asking people to vote, the Clinton campaign produced more than twice as many messages asking for people to vote on election day on the two platforms (See Figure 18), but most of that was on Twitter. On Facebook, both campaigns urged people to vote at the same rate, but on Twitter, Clinton's campaign produces three times more appeals for votes than does Trump.

So, the Lilliputian Russians, spending a pittance compared to the Goliaths of the Clinton and Trump campaigns, was the deciding factor in 2016? Bullshit.

The pathetic and laughable U.S. intelligence community (aka IC) did not do a state-by-state breakdown of how these various social media campaigns operated in those states that swung the election to Trump. Nor did the IC look back at the Russian and Soviet Union covert propaganda efforts over the previous 90 years. If you are going to do a comparison you need to have a benchmark. This is what we know for certain--Russia and its predecessor, the USSR, ran comprehensive and continuous information operations in the United States, including computer network operations.

No one can say with any degree of certainty that what Russia did in 2016 was qualitatively and quantitatively different. Also, the IC is completely silent on the efforts of other countries, such as China and Israel. Nope, just accept on faith that the Russians committed an attack worse than Pearl Harbor.

I had my own experience with Russian media influence, or the lack of such influence to be more precise. I was interviewed on Russia Today aka RT on March 4, 2017 to comment on Donald Trump's claim that the FBI had wiretapped Trump Towers. During that interview I noted that the Brits, not the FBI, were ones doing electronic surveillance of Trump. And how did the public and the media react to that bomb shell pronouncement by me? Crickets. No reaction.

The crazy insistence that Russia grossly interfered in our 2016 election is a canard. Too bad the vast majority of America has bought into this absurd nonsense. Yes, there were groups linked to the Russian government that were pushing stories on social media. The Chinese did the same thing. So did the Israelis and the Brits. I am sure there are other countries who were pushing their own agenda as well. But that is a truth American is too damn lazy to grasp.

Posted at 08:04 AM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink

joanna , 27 June 2019 at 08:21 AM

The pathetic and laughable U.S. intelligence community (aka IC)

yes, when exactly did they get laughable? After you left with a solid pension, I would assume, or a long time before?

Larry Johnson , 27 June 2019 at 09:57 AM
Well, you're dead ass wrong. Shocker. I did not "leave" with a solid pension. I stayed four years. No pension. But I did maintain clearances and continued to work with CIA, DIA and NSA over the ensuing 25 years. My criticism is grounded in experience. I think Iran/Contra was the watershed moment. The CIA became very politicized and the quality of analysis and spy trade craft declined significantly. John Brennan turned the place into a freak show. When you have "Dykes on Bikes" day at CIA Headquarters you know you have lost your way.
Fred , 27 June 2019 at 09:57 AM
"...did not do a state-by-state breakdown of how these various social media campaigns operated in those states that swung the election to Trump. "
Hilary's campaign staff didn't do this level of work when directing their own media efforts either. At some point she, being the head of the campaign, should have been able to get answers to the questions "what is the return for each advertising effort" and "what does that do to the electoral vote count." Not only is the IC community discredited but so should most of the Democratic media operations and campaign advisors.

[Jun 26, 2019] Opinion - NY Times admits it sends stories to US government for approval before publication

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Risen detailed how his editors had been "quite willing to cooperate with the government." In fact, a top CIA official even told Risen that his rule of thumb for approving a covert operation was, "How will this look on the front page of the New York Times?" ..."
"... Bernstein obtained CIA documents that revealed that more than 400 American journalists in the previous 25 years had "secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency." ..."
"... Virtually all major US media outlets cooperated with the CIA, Bernstein revealed, including ABC, NBC, the AP, UPI, Reuters, Newsweek, Hearst newspapers, the Miami Herald, the Saturday Evening Post, and the New York Herald‑Tribune. ..."
"... However, he added, "By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc." ..."
"... These layers of state manipulation, censorship, and even direct crafting of the news media show that, as much as they claim to be independent, The New York Times and other outlets effectively serve as de facto spokespeople for the government -- or at least for the US national security state. ..."
Jun 26, 2019 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

The New York Times casually acknowledged that it sends major scoops to the US government before publication, to make sure "national security officials" have "no concerns."

By Ben Norton

June 25, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - The New York Times has publicly acknowledged that it sends some of its stories to the US government for approval from "national security officials" before publication.

This confirms what veteran New York Times correspondents like James Risen have said: The American newspaper of record regularly collaborates with the US government, suppressing reporting that top officials don't want made public.

On June 15, the Times reported that the US government is escalating its cyber attacks on Russia's power grid . According to the article, "the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively," as part of a larger "digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow."

In response to the report, Donald Trump attacked the Times on Twitter, calling the article "a virtual act of Treason."

The New York Times PR office replied to Trump from its official Twitter account, defending the story and noting that it had, in fact, been cleared with the US government before being printed.

"Accusing the press of treason is dangerous," the Times communications team said. "We described the article to the government before publication."

"As our story notes, President Trump's own national security officials said there were no concerns," the Times added.

NY Times editors 'quite willing to cooperate with the government'

The symbiotic relationship between the US corporate media and the government has been known for some time. American intelligence agencies play the press like a musical instrument, using it it to selectively leak information at opportune moments to push US soft power and advance Washington's interests.

But rarely is this symbiotic relationship so casually and publicly acknowledged.

In 2018, former New York Times reporter James Risen published a 15,000-word article in The Intercept providing further insight into how this unspoken alliance operates.

Risen detailed how his editors had been "quite willing to cooperate with the government." In fact, a top CIA official even told Risen that his rule of thumb for approving a covert operation was, "How will this look on the front page of the New York Times?"

There is an "informal arrangement" between the state and the press, Risen explained, where US government officials "regularly engaged in quiet negotiations with the press to try to stop the publication of sensitive national security stories."

"At the time, I usually went along with these negotiations," the former New York Times reported said. He recalled an example of a story he was writing on Afghanistan just prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Then-CIA Director George Tenet called Risen personally and asked him to kill the story.

"He told me the disclosure would threaten the safety of the CIA officers in Afghanistan," Risen said. "I agreed."

Risen said he later questioned whether or not this was the right decision. "If I had reported the story before 9/11, the CIA would have been angry, but it might have led to a public debate about whether the United States was doing enough to capture or kill bin Laden," he wrote. "That public debate might have forced the CIA to take the effort to get bin Laden more seriously."

This dilemma led Risen to reconsider responding to US government requests to censor stories. "And that ultimately set me on a collision course with the editors at the New York Times," he said.

"After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration began asking the press to kill stories more frequently," Risen continued. "They did it so often that I became convinced the administration was invoking national security to quash stories that were merely politically embarrassing." In the lead-up to the Iraq War, Risen frequently "clashed" with Times editors because he raised questions about the US government's lies. But his stories "stories raising questions about the intelligence, particularly the administration's claims of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, were being cut, buried, or held out of the paper altogether."

The Times' executive editor Howell Raines "was believed by many at the paper to prefer stories that supported the case for war," Risen said.

In another anecdote, the former Times journalist recalled a scoop he had uncovered on a botched CIA plot. The Bush administration got wind of it and called him to the White House, where then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice ordered the Times to bury the story.

Risen said Rice told him "to forget about the story, destroy my notes, and never make another phone call to discuss the matter with anyone."

"The Bush administration was successfully convincing the press to hold or kill national security stories," Risen wrote. And the Barack Obama administration subsequently accelerated the "war on the press."

CIA media infiltration and manufacturing consent

In their renowned study of US media, " Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media," Edward S. Herman and Chomsky articulated a "propaganda model," showing how "the media serve, and propagandize on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them," through "the selection of right-thinking personnel and by the editors' and working journalists' internalization of priorities and definitions of newsworthiness that conform to the institution's policy."

But in some cases, the relationship between US intelligence agencies and the corporate media is not just one of mere ideological policing, indirect pressure, or friendship, but rather one of employment.

In the 1950s, the CIA launched a covert operation called Project Mockingbird, in which it surveilled, influenced, and manipulated American journalists and media coverage, explicitly in order to direct public opinion against the Soviet Union, China, and the growing international communist movement.

Legendary journalist Carl Bernstein, a former Washington Post reporter who helped uncover the Watergate scandal, published a major cover story for Rolling Stone in 1977 titled " The CIA and the Media : How America's Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up."

Bernstein obtained CIA documents that revealed that more than 400 American journalists in the previous 25 years had "secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency."

Bernstein wrote:

"Some of these journalists' relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services -- from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America's leading news organizations."

Virtually all major US media outlets cooperated with the CIA, Bernstein revealed, including ABC, NBC, the AP, UPI, Reuters, Newsweek, Hearst newspapers, the Miami Herald, the Saturday Evening Post, and the New York Herald‑Tribune.

However, he added, "By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc."

These layers of state manipulation, censorship, and even direct crafting of the news media show that, as much as they claim to be independent, The New York Times and other outlets effectively serve as de facto spokespeople for the government -- or at least for the US national security state.

Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a reporter for The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com , and he tweets at @ BenjaminNorton .

This article was originally published by " Grayzone "

[Jun 26, 2019] Guardian Working for UK Intel Services MI6 Tool Publishes Black Propaganda

Notable quotes:
"... Harding's avowed contact with Steele may also have contributed to another high profile blunder in April this year. In the immediate wake of the apparent poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, UK, the UK government issued a D(SMA) notice , blocking mention of Pablo Miller -- Skripal's MI6 recruiter -- in the media. ..."
Jun 24, 2018 | sputniknews.com

On September 21, The Guardian ran an absolutely sensational exclusive, based on disclosures made by "multiple" anonymous sources to Luke Harding, one of the paper's leading journalists - in 2017, Russian diplomats allegedly held secret talks in London with associates of Assange, in an attempt to assist in the Wikileaks founder's escape from the UK.

The dastardly conspiracy would've entailed Assange being smuggled out of the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge under cover of Christmas Eve in a diplomatic vehicle and transported to Russia, where he'd be safe from extradition to the US, ending his eight-years of effective arbitrary detention in the process.

In any event, the audacious plot was eventually aborted after being deemed "too risky" -- even for the reckless daredevils of Moscow -- mere days before its planned execution date.

Rommy Vallejo, head of Ecuador's intelligence agency, is said to have travelled to the UK around December 15 to supervise the operation, and left when it was called off.

'Extraordinary, Deliberate Lies'

The Russian Embassy in London was quick to condemn the article on Twitter, calling the claims "another example of disinformation and fake news" in the UK mainstream media, and noting the paper violated national media standards by failing to ask the Russian side for a comment prior to the report's release. "This publication has nothing to do with the reality. The Embassy has never engaged with Ecuadorian colleagues, or with anyone else, in discussions of any kind on Russia's participation in ending Assange's stay within the diplomatic mission of Ecuador.

We're puzzled by the sensational attitude of the authors. As recently as September 18, Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright called for increased efforts to combat media and online disinformation. [The] Guardian piece is a brilliant example of the kind of journalism British reader should be protected from," a spokesperson added in an official statement. In a subsequent statement , the Russian Foreign Ministry slammed the article for containing a "whole series of similar anti-Russia innuendos, and once again made clear Russian diplomats did not contact staff of the Ecuadoran Embassy in London or Assange's associates in order to assist in his escape from the UK.

However, a far more damning indictment of the article's extraordinary, evidence-free claims was provided by Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who denounced the "quite extraordinary set of deliberate lies" in a September 23 blog post. In doing so, he revealed he and Fidel Narvaez -- a close confidant of Assange fingered as the key point of contact between the Ecuadorian embassy and Moscow in the article -- had engaged in discussions with Assange in 2017 regarding a possible departure from the UK capital, and debated possible future destinations for the embattled Wikileaks founder.

As of today -- start of the 73rd UN General Assembly -- 957 days have passed since the UN ruled Julian Assange is unlawfully & arbitrarily detained by the UK authorities and must be released & compensated. https://t.co/zZGUOhNDvH #FreeAssange pic.twitter.com/i08Ji9WF1g -- WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 18, 2018
​"It's not only the case Russia didn't figure in those plans, Julian directly ruled out the possibility of going to Russia. I know 100% for certain the entire story is a complete and utter fabrication. I cannot find words enough to express the depth of my contempt for Harding and [Editor] Katherine Viner, who've betrayed completely the values of journalism. The aim of the piece is evidently to add a further layer to the fake news of Wikileaks' non-existent relationship to Russia as part of the "Hillary didn't really lose" narrative. I am, frankly, rather shocked," Murray wrote .

Friends in Spooky Places

The identities of Harding's alleged anonymous sources aren't even hinted at in the article, but Murray made a striking suggestion -- he "strongly suspect[ed]" that "MI6 tool" Harding's informants were the UK security services. If true, this would make the article "entirely black propaganda" produced by British spies. Whether MI6 agents are the source of the story or not, it's certainly true Harding enjoys a very close relationship indeed with British intelligence services -- a bond he has frequently, openly and proudly advertised in articles and books.

For instance, in his highly controversial 2017 book Collusion, Harding argued Donald Trump had a relationship with the Russian 'deep state' dating back to the 1980s, and colluded with the Kremlin to subvert US democracy. To support this conclusion, he frequently cited claims fed to him directly by Christopher Steele, the ex-MI6 spy turned 'business intelligence' professional, who authored the utterly discredited 'Trump-Russia' dossier for Fusion GPS.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/9Ikf1uZli4g

When challenged to provide any evidence whatsoever for his book's assertions by Aaron Mate of The Real News, Harding was left mumbling and stuttering -- he was also unable to defend his claim that an individual's use of an emoji was proof they were working for Russian intelligence, and terminated the interview prematurely.

Harding's avowed contact with Steele may also have contributed to another high profile blunder in April this year. In the immediate wake of the apparent poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, UK, the UK government issued a D(SMA) notice , blocking mention of Pablo Miller -- Skripal's MI6 recruiter -- in the media. Individuals who conducted internet searches for Miller afterwards quickly found his LinkedIn profile, which identified him as a 'Senior Analyst' at Orbis Intelligence -- Steele's corporate espionage company.-

It is true, or was. As I say, this 2017 forum thread, which links to Pablo Miller's LinkedIn profile, states Orbis is listed on Miller's CV -- https://t.co/Fx0vu1qorJ . Stop regurgitating anonymous claims by your spook pals and do some research, Luke -- Kit Klarenberg (@KitKlarenberg) March 12, 2018
​Miller's page was quickly deleted though, and Harding took to Twitter to issue firm denials of a connection between Miller and the firm, going so far as to suggest "someone" was using search engine optimization techniques to dishonestly associate Miller and Orbis. However, enterprising Sputnik journalist Kit Klarenberg quickly and easily found an online forum thread dating from 2017 clearly identifying Miller as an Orbis employee -- as of September, Harding is yet to respond, or retract his claims.
Related:
Freudian Slip: Did Guardian Urge Two Tech Giants to 'Promote Hate and Division'?
Russian Embassy on The Guardian Article: 'Great Foreign Policy Planning'
The Guardian's Attempt to Save the White Helmets
UK Broadcasters to Be Urged to Face Up to 'Russian Propaganda' - Reports

[Jun 25, 2019] The Trump administration's special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook's Message: Trust Us, We're Unreliable

Jun 25, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

@ jayc 57
US Hook says Iran knew what getting into when struck deal
Yes they did, and now they regret it.
In 2013 Ali Khamenei said: "Certainly, we are pessimistic about the Americans. We do not trust them. We consider the government of the United States of America as an unreliable, arrogant, illogical, and trespassing government,"

The JCPOA was not a unilateral deal between USA and Iran, it was a multilateral deal
That's correct de jure, but not de facto. The US all by itself is leading the current attack on Iran, despite what the other members might think. Iran has not gotten any significant support from other JCPOA participants.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jun 24, 2019 5:10:10 PM | 66

The Trump administration's special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook...
______________________________________

Brian Hook is a "special" envoy in the sense that the "Special Olympics" are special.

Posted by: Ort | Jun 24, 2019 5:16:44 PM | 69
@68 Ort

Good one. Although Brian Hook is an insult to special olympians and humanity in general.

Posted by: Uncle Jon | Jun 24, 2019 5:22:51 PM | 71

[Jun 25, 2019] This Administration's handling of Iran is bellicose and stupid by W. James Antle III

Notable quotes:
"... It is utterly bizarre to hear people who believe Trump is unfit to lead seem disappointed that he isn't taking us to war. ..."
"... This is a crisis of his own making and he should get kudos for not making it any worse, but that's it. ..."
"... The author seems to think this was some kind of well-considered decision, while Trump is quoted as saying he "thought about it for a second". He could, and almost certainly will change his mind after about the same amount of reflection. ..."
"... Yes, Iran dodged a bullet in this instance. So did our country. Maybe if Trump gets enough positive reinforcement from his last-second audible, he'll be less inclined to "cock and load" the American military in the future. For my part, I'm starting to think his "hawk" advisors are getting closer and closer to hitting pay dirt. By the way, who are his "dove" advisors? ..."
"... If anyone believes the reason Trump gave for calling off the strike, I refer them to his 10,000+ lies since he's been in office. My guess is he changed his mind watching Tucker. ..."
"... Trump staggers through his presidency like a pinball bouncing its way through the machine - first this side, then that side, then being flipped back up to the top by a comment he hears on Fox News to start it all over again. ..."
"... "It does not require Nostradamus-like skills to anticipate how the good cop, bad cop routine Trump appears to be trying with Bolton in particular could end in disaster." ..."
"... the entire U.S. foreign policy architecture remains hyper-busted. I.e., An Imperial President, a feckless Congress that has abrogated its constitutional responsibilities, and Pentagon Brass who think that they swore an oath to be mindless automatons obeying the illegal orders of the Imperial President rather than being defenders of the Constitution. ..."
"... And Tucker Carlson aside, the MSM, sycophantic lapdog of the Pentagon, is still all in to the illegal and unconstitutional Warfare State con. ..."
Jun 25, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
It is utterly bizarre to hear people who believe Trump is unfit to lead seem disappointed that he isn't taking us to war.

... ... ...

Adriana Pena • a day ago
No matter how laudable averting war is, the fact is that we would have never been in this situation if Trump had not unilaterally abandoned the Iran deal. This is a crisis of his own making and he should get kudos for not making it any worse, but that's it.
ron_goodman • 2 days ago
The author seems to think this was some kind of well-considered decision, while Trump is quoted as saying he "thought about it for a second". He could, and almost certainly will change his mind after about the same amount of reflection.
Bill In Montgomey • a day ago • edited
I don't know. Maybe a wise president would not have appointed Bolton and Pompeo in the first place. Nor would a wise president have had a $130 million drone flying over Iranian air space (or right on its border).

Yes, Iran dodged a bullet in this instance. So did our country. Maybe if Trump gets enough positive reinforcement from his last-second audible, he'll be less inclined to "cock and load" the American military in the future. For my part, I'm starting to think his "hawk" advisors are getting closer and closer to hitting pay dirt. By the way, who are his "dove" advisors?

=marco01= • 2 days ago • edited
Please, he didn't even know about projected casualties until ten minutes before the attack was to be launched, no doubt because he's too lazy smart to attend planning meetings/briefings.

If anyone believes the reason Trump gave for calling off the strike, I refer them to his 10,000+ lies since he's been in office. My guess is he changed his mind watching Tucker.

Ken T • a day ago
Trump staggers through his presidency like a pinball bouncing its way through the machine - first this side, then that side, then being flipped back up to the top by a comment he hears on Fox News to start it all over again.

But just because on this pass he happened to randomly bounce off of a "good" bumper, we're supposed to congratulate him for finally "becoming President". The only thing bizarre here is the contortions his supporters put themselves through to try to deny what is obvious to everyone else.

Dave Sullivan • 14 hours ago
If I go to my neighbors front yard with a gun, point it at their house, then don't shoot, I am not practicing restraint. I should be arrested for brandishing a firearm. This article is crop.
paradoctor • 18 hours ago
I'm glad that he didn't, but I'm not glad that he almost did.
FL_Cottonmouth • a day ago
Lighten up, folks. Obviously, Antle's headline, "The Night Donald Trump Became President," is a play on the same words that a lot of talking heads (not just unreconstructed neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, but "mainstream" centrists like Fareed Zakaria) used when Trump bombed Syria for the first time.

He's being facetious, not serious. He isn't praising Trump or his "B-Team" for their restraint (on the contrary, they have created a crisis for no good reason and have brought us to the brink of war as a result) so much as he's criticizing the media for its warmongering.

The media is actually trying to bait the President into a unilateral act of war against another country that hasn't attacked us and couldn't threaten us even if it did.

Taras77 • a day ago
"It does not require Nostradamus-like skills to anticipate how the good cop, bad cop routine Trump appears to be trying with Bolton in particular could end in disaster."

At this point, I am almost afraid to check the latest news-with tapeworm Bolton, it is a matter of time before the situation blows up.

SteveM • a day ago
Re: "If Trump continues to break with this pattern, however, it will be less celebrated in Washington than it would deserve to be. Putting the unelected hawks in their proper place would be a truly presidential act."

However, note that Trump refuses to concede any Imperial authority to wage war that illegally violates the Constitution. He just chose not to start a war with Iran - this time. (And also note that the Pentagon is always happy to oblige the Imperial President and kill and destroy without question.)

So the entire U.S. foreign policy architecture remains hyper-busted. I.e., An Imperial President, a feckless Congress that has abrogated its constitutional responsibilities, and Pentagon Brass who think that they swore an oath to be mindless automatons obeying the illegal orders of the Imperial President rather than being defenders of the Constitution.

And Tucker Carlson aside, the MSM, sycophantic lapdog of the Pentagon, is still all in to the illegal and unconstitutional Warfare State con.

[Jun 25, 2019] This Administration's handling of Iran, as compared to the last, is anything but stupid.

Notable quotes:
"... This is a crisis of his own making and he should get kudos for not making it any worse, but that's it. ..."
"... The author seems to think this was some kind of well-considered decision, while Trump is quoted as saying he "thought about it for a second". He could, and almost certainly will change his mind after about the same amount of reflection. ..."
"... "If Trump continues to break with this pattern, however, it will be less celebrated in Washington than it would deserve to be. Putting the unelected hawks in their proper place would be a truly presidential act." ..."
Jun 25, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

UPC Arch Stanton • a day ago

...This Administration's handling of Iran, as compared to the last, is anything but stupid. Unless, of course, you're of the opinion we should be going to war, and you're pissed that this President made the right decision at the right time. Nice try, because thinking the way you are is stupid.
Adriana Pena • a day ago
No matter how laudable averting war is, the fact is that we would have never been in this situation if Trump had not unilaterally abandoned the Iran deal. This is a crisis of his own making and he should get kudos for not making it any worse, but that's it.
ron_goodman • 2 days ago
The author seems to think this was some kind of well-considered decision, while Trump is quoted as saying he "thought about it for a second". He could, and almost certainly will change his mind after about the same amount of reflection.
Bill In Montgomey • a day ago • edited
I don't know. Maybe a wise president would not have appointed Bolton and Pompeo in the first place. Nor would a wise president have had a $130 million drone flying over Iranian air space (or right on its border).

Yes, Iran dodged a bullet in this instance. So did our country. Maybe if Trump gets enough positive reinforcement from his last-second audible, he'll be less inclined to "cock and load" the American military in the future.

For my part, I'm starting to think his "hawk" advisors are getting closer and closer to hitting pay dirt.

By the way, who are his "dove" advisors?

John D. Thullen • a day ago
Well, this article vanquished my very recent admiration for Michael Brendan Dougherty, acquired by way of Mr. Dreher.

"articulates a classical Augustinian just war argument ..."

That's like claiming Mrs O'Leary's cow that kicked over the lantern and burned Chicago to the ground was articulating the finer points of preventing forest fires originated by Smokey the Bear.

Do the writers here do a little physical stretching before contorting yourselves into pretzel shapes trying to justify every lantern Trump kicks over into poles of dry hay as he goes along?

Of course conservative Christians hate pulling back from imminent, and possibly nuclear war. When haven't they in American history?

=marco01= • 2 days ago • edited
Please, he didn't even know about projected casualties until ten minutes before the attack was to be launched, no doubt because he's too lazy smart to attend planning meetings/briefings.

If anyone believes the reason Trump gave for calling off the strike, I refer them to his 10,000+ lies since he's been in office. My guess is he changed his mind watching Tucker.

Ken T • a day ago
Trump staggers through his presidency like a pinball bouncing its way through the machine - first this side, then that side, then being flipped back up to the top by a comment he hears on Fox News to start it all over again. But just because on this pass he happened to randomly bounce off of a "good" bumper, we're supposed to congratulate him for finally "becoming President". The only thing bizarre here is the contortions his supporters put themselves through to try to deny what is obvious to everyone else.
Dave Sullivan • 14 hours ago
If I go to my neighbors front yard with a gun, point it at their house, then don't shoot, I am not practicing restraint. I should be arrested for brandishing a firearm. This article is crop.
paradoctor • 18 hours ago
I'm glad that he didn't, but I'm not glad that he almost did.
FL_Cottonmouth • a day ago
Lighten up, folks. Obviously, Antle's headline, "The Night Donald Trump Became President," is a play on the same words that a lot of talking heads (not just unreconstructed neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, but "mainstream" centrists like Fareed Zakaria) used when Trump bombed Syria for the first time. He's being facetious, not serious. He isn't praising Trump or his "B-Team" for their restraint (on the contrary, they have created a crisis for no good reason and have brought us to the brink of war as a result) so much as he's criticizing the media for its warmongering. The media is actually trying to bait the President into a unilateral act of war against another country that hasn't attacked us and couldn't threaten us even if it did.
Emma Liame • a day ago
thank you!!!
Taras77 • a day ago
"It does not require Nostradamus-like
skills to anticipate how the good cop, bad cop routine Trump appears to
be trying with Bolton in particular could end in disaster."

At this point, I am almost afraid to check the latest news-with tapeworm bolton, it is a matter of time before the situation blows up.

SteveM • a day ago
Re: "If Trump continues to break with this
pattern, however, it will be less celebrated in Washington than it would
deserve to be. Putting the unelected hawks in their proper place would
be a truly presidential act."

However, note that Trump refuses to concede any Imperial authority to wage war that illegally violates the Constitution. He just chose not to start a war with Iran - this time. (And also note that the Pentagon is always happy to oblige the Imperial President and kill and destroy without question.)

So the entire U.S. foreign policy architecture remains hyper-busted. I.e., An Imperial President, a feckless Congress that has abrogated its constitutional responsibilities, and Pentagon Brass who think that they swore an oath to be mindless automatons obeying the illegal orders of the Imperial President rather than being defenders of the Constitution.

And Tucker Carlson aside, the MSM, sycophantic lapdog of the Pentagon, is still all in to the illegal and unconstitutional Warfare State con.

Jessica Ramer • a day ago
This type of article is the reason I read The American Conservative. Thank you for addressing this important issue from a cautious and realistic perspective.

Although Donald Trump and I are on opposite sides of the fence on nearly every issue, I do prefer his restrained foreign policy instincts to the hawkish ones of Hillary Clinton.

Cascade Joe • 2 days ago
One hundred thumbs up for this article.
Apex_Predator • a day ago
"Neocons gonna neocon"

"In other breaking news, water is still wet!"

PeterTx52 • a day ago
lots of anti-Trumper commenters
EliteCommInc. • a day ago
Goodness you people and your Nobel prize obsession. The last guy got one he didn't deserve so I should get one too. Whether the decision was presidential or not is hinged on motive in my view.

If it was an assessment that if our drone did in fly over US airspace, then it represented a legitimate target for Iran - then certainly critical thinking as expressed has some merit to sound management.

If the matter was decided on the messiness of conflict and calculating one's political carreer, the level of sound management is simply not a factor.

MrNIKOLA • 2 days ago
THIS is what white supremacy looks like: Punish Iran because one day in the far off future they may develop an atomic bomb but gift Israel $3 billion a year while it harbors hundreds of nukes. Meanwhile, pat head choppers like Saudi Arabia on the head -- As long as they buys billions in US weapons and force nations to use US dollars to buy oil.
Wardog00 MrNIKOLA • a day ago
Do you realize that Iran is an Aryan nation, which would make them white? Israel is a Jewish nation, which most white supremacists hate. And Saudi Arabia is an Arab country, which would not make it a white country.
So how in the world is this what white supremacy looks like?

[Jun 25, 2019] What Explains the Ferocity of the Attack Against Donald Trump by Robert W. Merry

Notable quotes:
"... Standards of evidence have gone out the window when it comes to attacking President Trump. ..."
"... Asked if Trump was a Russian asset, as former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe had suggested was possible, Clapper said, "I completely agree with the way Andy characterized it." He added a "caveat" that it could have been "witting or unwitting." ..."
"... Here we get to a fundamental element of McCarthyism, which can be illustrated by an exploration of the real McCarthy and his followers back in the early 1950s. These days we often see, in Hollywood movies and intellectual history, a view of the Wisconsin senator as coming out of the blue, roiling a serene nation with utterly false and brutal accusations of communist activity when there was no such threat at all. ..."
Jun 14, 2019 | nationalinterest.org

Standards of evidence have gone out the window when it comes to attacking President Trump.

TO WHAT extent does the two-year political investigation into Donald Trump and his top aides and family members, based on suspicions of treacherous "collusion" with the Russian government, represent a kind of McCarthyism? Most people involved in that investigation no doubt would be aghast at the question. After all, they might say, they were only trying to save the country from an obviously bad man who had both motive and opportunity to scheme with the Russians for his own nefarious purposes. Even after Special Counsel Robert Mueller made clear that his two-year investigation could find no evidence of collusion to justify any legal action, many on the anti-Trump Left continued to insist that it had happened and they would continue the assault.

But Mueller's finding of no collusion does raise questions about the propriety of an inquiry based on suspicions and fragments of evidence that never added up to any serious proof of such cravenness. That was a frequent complaint about McCarthyism back in the days of its greatest menacing influence. And, just as Senator Joseph McCarthy sought to leverage his allegations of communist collusion into partisan political advantage, so too did Trump's accusers seek to bring down a president and curtail his range of executive action.

TO EXPLORE the issue further, it's helpful to explore what is meant by McCarthyism. Webster's defines it as "the use of indiscriminate, often unfounded, accusations, sensationalism, inquisitorial investigative methods, etc., ostensibly in suppression of communism."

The motive of suppressing communism no longer applies, of course, as the primary sources of anticommunist anxiety in McCarthy's day -- the expansionist Soviet empire and its Chinese counterpart -- no longer exist. But today's obsession with Russia as a threat, although it represents hardly a fragment of the old postwar capacity for menace, could be considered a stand-in for the anti-Soviet obsession of old.

What about "indiscriminate, often unfounded, accusations"? The Russia collusion episode certainly qualifies on that count. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee (now chairman), said he had "plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy" -- and, he added, this was "more than circumstantial evidence." Given Mueller's ultimate conclusion on the same question, with all of the investigative resources at his command, one has to wonder what evidence Schiff was talking about. Meanwhile, another California Democrat, Eric Swalwell, accused Trump of being an "agent" of Russia. He added, by way of elaboration, "he certainly acts on Russia's behalf."

These accusations also comport with Webster's definitional element of "sensationalism." But it's even more sensational and damaging when coming from former top-level intelligence officials, such as James Clapper and John Brennan. Brennan said that "Watergate pales really, in my view, compared to what we're confronting now." He described Trump's claim of no collusion as "hogwash," which was a roundabout accusation of treason. He dispensed with the circumlocution when he called Trump's performance in Helsinki, Finland, following a summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin, "nothing short of treasonous."

Clapper, meanwhile, invoked the constitutional definition of treason when he said Trump was "essentially aiding and abetting the Russians" though he later said he used the term "only in a...colloquial sense," whatever that means. Asked if Trump was a Russian asset, as former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe had suggested was possible, Clapper said, "I completely agree with the way Andy characterized it." He added a "caveat" that it could have been "witting or unwitting."

Here we get to a fundamental element of McCarthyism, which can be illustrated by an exploration of the real McCarthy and his followers back in the early 1950s. These days we often see, in Hollywood movies and intellectual history, a view of the Wisconsin senator as coming out of the blue, roiling a serene nation with utterly false and brutal accusations of communist activity when there was no such threat at all.

Not so. A couple weeks before McCarthy's first anticommunism rant, Alger Hiss, accused of passing secret U.S. documents to a Soviet spy when he was a high-level government official, was convicted of perjury. It was a signal victory for the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the communist-hunting panel of Congress, and a great embarrassment for members of the country's Northeastern elite who had testified on behalf of Hiss' integrity and patriotism. Two weeks later, the government reported that Klaus Fuchs, a British physicist who had worked at the Los Alamos atomic-weapons facility during the war, had been arrested as a Soviet spy. This was powerful stuff when most Americans believed, correctly, that the U.S. nuclear monopoly had been the margin of security in saving Western Europe from being overrun by the Soviets.

[Jun 25, 2019] The Trump administration's special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook's Message: Trust Us, We're Unreliable

Jun 25, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

@ jayc 57
US Hook says Iran knew what getting into when struck deal
Yes they did, and now they regret it.
In 2013 Ali Khamenei said: "Certainly, we are pessimistic about the Americans. We do not trust them. We consider the government of the United States of America as an unreliable, arrogant, illogical, and trespassing government,"

The JCPOA was not a unilateral deal between USA and Iran, it was a multilateral deal
That's correct de jure, but not de facto. The US all by itself is leading the current attack on Iran, despite what the other members might think. Iran has not gotten any significant support from other JCPOA participants.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Jun 24, 2019 5:10:10 PM | 66

The Trump administration's special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook...
______________________________________

Brian Hook is a "special" envoy in the sense that the "Special Olympics" are special.

Posted by: Ort | Jun 24, 2019 5:16:44 PM | 69
@68 Ort

Good one. Although Brian Hook is an insult to special olympians and humanity in general.

Posted by: Uncle Jon | Jun 24, 2019 5:22:51 PM | 71

[Jun 25, 2019] 'Wars not diminishing' Putin's iconic 2007 Munich speech (FULL VIDEO)

It is interesting to listen to this speech again in view of Iran crisis, attempt to launch a regime change in Venezuela and trade war with Chins lunched by Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... McCain and some other Western officials could barely contain themselves in there. They never forgive Putin for that speech. This was the decisive moment relations between the US. and Russia started to deteriorate. ..."
"... The Wikileaks cables showed how aggressively NATO was working to bring in Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance despite what was being said in public during that time. ..."
"... Look at the dirty bitch Victoria Nuland smirking at 11:43 . She knew what the US was about to do in Ukraine. ..."
"... this was the best anti NWO speech ever. The moment I saw it back then I knew Russia will have many problems coming for the NWO scum. You know what happened right? ..."
Feb 10, 2017 | www.youtube.com

On February 10, 2007, Vladimir Putin delivered his keynote speech at the Munich Security Conference, challenging the post-Cold War establishment. RT looks back a decade to see how accurate his ideas were.

Gerry Hiles , 2 years ago

Greetings from Australia. Viva Vladimir Vladimirovich, the only World leader I have ever truly admired ... I am not alone in this by any means.

Ryan Synyxh , 2 years ago

McCain and some other Western officials could barely contain themselves in there. They never forgive Putin for that speech. This was the decisive moment relations between the US. and Russia started to deteriorate.

The Wikileaks cables showed how aggressively NATO was working to bring in Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance despite what was being said in public during that time.

Wutang Clan , 2 years ago

Putin is no saint, but he is the only world leader that gets sincere admiration from the people all over the globe including me.

Nettythe1st , 1 year ago

'The Putin Interviews', where Putin is interviewed by Oliver Stone from 2015 - 2017, brought me here. This iconic speech was referred to by Oliver Stone in the interviews. The speech was certainly worth watching and I highly recommend watching 'The Putin Interviews'. You won't regret it.

Coleen StarlightPH , 2 years ago (edited)

I'm not Russian but he is my hero, my President and my dad!!! ^_^ And proud of him. This memorable speech was one of my favorites! He stood for what he believes in and he stayed true to it.

Doggy Dog Doggy , 2 years ago

wow amazing speech. the fact that he said it all right to the nwo satanic minions faces is heroic at its least and legendary at its most.

Zaki Aminu , 1 year ago (edited)

Hahahahahahahahaha! You can see the Western leaders here were in a state of profound SHOCK as they listened to this speech. They thought he was going to kow-tow to the West - and he did the EXACT OPPOSITE! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Stud Baird , 2 years ago div class="com

ment-renderer-text-content expanded"> wow awesome speech. words from a outstanding leader. Acting and standing for true Peace and prosperity. Unlike the UN and NWO whos only goal is to continue to create terrorism. create fear and drain any communities from being independent and free from there False saftey taxes and sanctions. not using the world currency exchange means there unable to falsely influence the world markets

John Schmit , 3 weeks ago

Apartheid Israel and warmongering US political elites are the primary existential threats to all of humanity.🤮😩

Don Sonny , 2 years ago div cl

American people should be highly alarmed at NATO actions , they are inching closer to Russia's borders trying to encircle Russia with military bases and missiles , this is done in preparation of an attack of the country being encircled, nato is lying and misleading its citizens and they dont worry about consequence of such a scenario which surely would trigger the third world war, American people and all nato member citizens should strongly push back against this , we need to consider the outcome of a nuclear power attacking and invading another nuclear power

Russia would surely use nuclear weapons to defend its country if overwhelmed, millions could perish in a day, we have to condemn and protest Nato plans for another world war before its too late, it will be our families suffering and dying not the elite that is pushing this conflict

GERRARD2083 , 2 years ago

Great speech from a great man, a man who truly loves fairness and democracy not the sugar coated type offered by the west. Did anyone notice that by 9:50 into his speech, a good number of them wanted out? McCain at some point couldn't even bring himself to look at Putin, What a pitiful fellow McCain is!!!!!

Sali Mall , 1 month ago
This speech needs to be re-posted . and disseminated .. it is very very current , more than ever... there is a section of world who simply do not know .
ED- Bitcoin SV Channel , 2 years ago div tabindex="0" role="ar

10 years passed and what Putin said back then is exactly what's happened and is still happening. I have great respect for Russia and I have no respect for US and their allies. Whole NATO sucks, is obsolete and is acting exactly like world's terrorists!

I have no respect for the majority of the American people as they are as responsible for the wars their corrupt capitalism controlled US government has done. American people went along with it for all these decades and they fought these wars for them anyway, they did not care if they bully other nations, kill innocent people...

daddymoon666 , 2 years ago

This guy has a better understanding of American history than that of Trump...

M S , 2 years ago

Look at the dirty bitch Victoria Nuland smirking at 11:43 . She knew what the US was about to do in Ukraine.

GANEVMUSIC , 2 years ago

this was the best anti NWO speech ever. The moment I saw it back then I knew Russia will have many problems coming for the NWO scum. You know what happened right?

[Jun 25, 2019] US sanctions violate human rights and international code of conduct, UN expert says

Jun 25, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Don Bacon , Jun 25, 2019 12:26:26 AM | 136

Let's talk human rights.

news report
Bloomberg, Jun 24, 2019
Pompeo is starting a commission on human rights to rethink what they are and how they should fit into U.S. foreign policy. . . here


Office of the high Commissioner
United Nations Human Rights
May 6, 2019
US sanctions violate human rights and international code of conduct, UN expert says

. . .On 17 April the United States banned the Central Bank of Venezuela from conducting transactions in US dollars after 17 May, and will cut off access to US personal remittances and credit cards by March 2020.

"It is hard to figure out how measures which have the effect of destroying Venezuela's economy, and preventing Venezuelans from sending home money, can be aimed at 'helping the Venezuelan people', as claimed by the US Treasury," the expert said.

His statements follow claims in a recent report published by the Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research that 40,000 people may have died in Venezuela since 2017 because of US sanctions .

Jazairy also said he was concerned the US would not renew waivers for international buyers of Iranian oil, despite protests from NATO ally Turkey, among others. Washington has demanded that all remaining States which benefited from waivers stop purchases on May 1, or face sanctions.

"The extraterritorial application of unilateral sanctions is clearly contrary to international law," the expert said. " I am deeply concerned that one State can use its dominant position in international finance to harm not only the Iranian people, who have followed their obligations under the UN-approved nuclear deal to this day, but also everyone in the world who trades with them.

"The international community must come together to challenge what amounts to blockades ignoring a country's sovereignty, the human rights of its people, and the rights of third countries trading with sanctioned States, all while constituting a threat to world peace and security.

"I call on the international community to engage in constructive dialogue with Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and the United States to find a peaceful resolution in compliance with the spirit and letter of the Charter of the United Nations before the arbitrary use of economic starvation becomes the new 'normal'." . . here

[Jun 25, 2019] Trump's one hundred percent pure Pinocchio behaviour

Trump contradicts Pompeo who contradicts Bolton who contradicts Trump
Jun 25, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Christian J Chuba , Jun 24, 2019 3:39:32 PM | 25
Favorite lie Trump willing to meet w/no pre-conditions

100 Pinocchio's. He even says that he wants to negotiate about Iran's so-called nuclear weapons program. If the premise of the talks is that Iran has to abandon the JCPOA then how is this not a precondition?

Nothing left to sanction, what's next?

You will know that war is certain when the U.S. forbids Iranian tankers from leaving port (a blockade) so that they cannot even sell oil to China. Iran will rightly call this an act of war and declare that stopping a single tanker will result in them firing on a U.S. naval ship. The morons in the U.S. MSM will bleat and call this Iranian aggression even though it is the U.S. that is blocking the sacred right of 'international shipping'. The number one excuse we use to send our navy to the shores of China and Iran.

Arta , Jun 24, 2019 4:32:13 PM | 45

American way of diplomacy: impose sanction on Iran Foreign Minister, at the same time requesting negotiation with him

[Jun 25, 2019] By rejecting the JCPOA, the Americans rejected the UN and international law/agreements for the second time in 15 short years

Jun 25, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

jayc , Jun 24, 2019 6:01:16 PM | 85

Don Bacon #65
"The US all by itself is leading the current attack on Iran, despite what the other members might think. Iran has not gotten any significant support from other JCPOA participants."

The American's bluff was called way back in Obama's first term when Turkey and Brazil proposed a plan which would settle concerns over Iran's nuclear centrifuges. Sec State Clinton shut that down quickly, confirming the nuclear concerns were merely a pretext for a regime-change policy. That established, the overriding interest, internationally, became preventing a shooting war involving US and Iran -to which the negotiating of the JCPOA played a strong role. The Russians and Chinese were criticized for supporting this process, including the UNSC directed sanctions. But the process strengthened multilateral cooperation and highlighted the obvious downsides of a self-avowed hegemonic power. By rejecting the JCPOA, the Americans rejected the UN and international law/agreements for the second time in 15 short years. The overriding concern remains to expose the negative consequences of a hegemonic entity while avoiding, to the extent possible, an actual shooting war.

[Jun 24, 2019] It would all be very funny if it weren't so depressing. I can understand Hollywood actors doing this -- after all, these people excel at reading from a script for money. But Stephen King? I thought he was somewhat of an intellectual. Apparently not. Or perhaps he's buddies with CIA shill Reiner. Who knows.

Notable quotes:
"... Rob Reiner (backed by David Frum, Max Boot, James Clapper and their absolutely-not-xenophobic-sounding "Committee to Investigate Russia") continues to use Hollywood celebrities to spread the Trump Derangement Syndrome. First it was Morgan Freeman. Didn't go over too well. Even the "liberals" hated it. Now it's Robert De Niro, Martin Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Stephen King, George Takei, and a few lesser known actors. ..."
"... Woah! Stop right there! The "Trump adviser" is George Papadopoulos -- that is clear from the video sequence. So the "Russian operative" they're talking about is none other than Joseph Mifsud. ..."
"... So how can it be that Joseph Mifsud is now a "Russian operative"? Well, look no further than his Wikipedia page. You see, he visited Valdai Discussion Club annual conference once or twice. Apparently, that's all it takes nowadays to become a Russian-linked Russian operative with close connections to Russia. ..."
Jun 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

S , Jun 23, 2019 10:12:29 PM | 167

Rob Reiner (backed by David Frum, Max Boot, James Clapper and their absolutely-not-xenophobic-sounding "Committee to Investigate Russia") continues to use Hollywood celebrities to spread the Trump Derangement Syndrome. First it was Morgan Freeman. Didn't go over too well. Even the "liberals" hated it. Now it's Robert De Niro, Martin Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Stephen King, George Takei, and a few lesser known actors. Here's an excerpt:
Stephen King: Here are some other specific examples from the Mueller report.

Sophia Bush: One: in the Spring of 2016, a Russian operative told a Trump adviser that the Russian government had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails.

Jonathan Van Ness: The adviser then worked to arrange a meeting between the campaign and the Russian government.

Laurence Fishburne: That's collusion.

Woah! Stop right there! The "Trump adviser" is George Papadopoulos -- that is clear from the video sequence. So the "Russian operative" they're talking about is none other than Joseph Mifsud. Here's Papadopoulos himself talking about Mifsud in an April 16, 2019 interview with Michael Tracey:

George Papadopoulos: He remains an enigma to this day and no one could track him down, but I've been told recently he's not dead, so there's some improvements.

Michael Tracey: Right, we should say I mean, he was rumored to have been deceased at a certain point, right?

George Papadopoulos: That's right.

Michael Tracey: And now it appears he might be living under an assumed name [?] but nobody's heard from him quite a while.

George Papadopoulos: Well, the only in-public statements that he's made were two. One, he gave an interview -- a bizarre interview -- to the Italian media the day my name was released and he said he's never heard of "Putin's niece" and "George is probably talking about some girl that he was trying to have a romantic relationship with" (and we could get into that aspect of my relationship with Joseph Mifsud). And also he his lawyer, this man named Stephan Roh, who's a prominent Swiss attorney, has gone public numerous times and stated that Joseph Mifsud was no Russian asset, but he was a Western intelligence operative, and he was working under the guidance of the FBI when he was interacting with Papadopoulos. He said this on CNN during a one-hour short documentary that CNN had about my life, and he's given interviews subsequently to The Daily Caller , where he suggested the same exact thing.

Now, anybody who's been following my case and who could just simply google Joseph Mifsud can also see that: Joseph Mifsud, of course, was dealing with MI6 figures at the highest level; three months after I notified the FBI that he could be potentially a Russian asset, he was in Saudi Arabia on a panel with Ash Carter, who was the former defense secretary under Obama; and around the time [?] my name was released in October of 2017, he was photographed in The Guardian attending private parties with Boris Johnson, who just happened to be the Secretary of State of the UK. So, unless the Russians, basically, infiltrated the upper echelons of the U.S. and UK security establishment, then Mifsud was no Russian agent, and he's, in my opinion, and what everybody now who is objective believes is that he was actually an operative working on behalf of the West to, basically, entrap me with this unsolicited information regarding Hillary Clinton and her emails, and that's why he's gone underground, and he's living somewhere in Italy, I've been told, and he's actually on the payroll of Italian intelligence -- that's what I've been told recently. So, it's a very bizarre story, but I can try and go step-by-step and explain my entire encounters with him, and what we know now about him.

And he does indeed go step-by-step and describe his encounters with Mifsud in the full two-hour interview (continue from 15:14). And of course after Mifsud told Papadopoulos during their last meeting that "the Russians have Hillary Clinton's emails", no attempt was made by Papadopoulos to "arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and the Russian government". In fact, Papadopoulos was scared and confused as it was right after that meeting that his life went very bizarre.

So how can it be that Joseph Mifsud is now a "Russian operative"? Well, look no further than his Wikipedia page. You see, he visited Valdai Discussion Club annual conference once or twice. Apparently, that's all it takes nowadays to become a Russian-linked Russian operative with close connections to Russia.

It would all be very funny if it weren't so depressing. I can understand Hollywood actors doing this -- after all, these people excel at reading from a script for money. But Stephen King? I thought he was somewhat of an intellectual. Apparently not. Or perhaps he's buddies with CIA shill Reiner. Who knows.

[Jun 23, 2019] Are Starvation Sanctions Worse Than Overt Warfare

Jun 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Starvation sanctions kill people.

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have reportedly already died as a result of this administration's relentless assault on their economy; those human beings are no less dead than they would have been if the US had killed them by dropping cluster bombs on Caracas. Yet these deaths have received virtually no mainstream media coverage, and Americans, while they strongly oppose attacking Iran militarily , have had very little to say about Trump's attacks on the nation's economy. The economy which people use to feed their children, to care for their elderly and their sick.

I'm titling this essay "Starvation Sanctions Are Worse Than Overt Warfare", and I mean it. I am not saying that starvation sanctions are more destructive or deadly than overt military force in and of themselves; what I am saying is that the overall effect is worse, because there's no public accountability for them and because they deliberately target civilians.

If the US were to launch a barrage of Tomahawk missiles into an Iranian suburb with the goal of killing civilians, there'd be international outrage and the cohesion of the US-centralized power alliance would take a major hit. Virtually everyone would recognize this as an unforgivable war crime. Yet America will be able to kill the same number of civilians with the same deliberate intention of inflicting deadly force, and it would suffer essentially no consequences at all. There's no public or international pressure holding that form of violence at bay, because it's invisible and poorly understood.

It reminds me of the way financial abuse gets overlooked and under-appreciated in our society. Financial abuse can be more painful and imprisoning than physical or psychological abuse (and I speak from experience), especially if you have children, yet you don't generally see movies and TV shows getting made about it. In a society where people have been made to depend on money for survival, limiting or cutting off their access to it is the same as any other violent attack upon their personal sovereignty, and can easily be just as destructive. But as a society we haven't yet learned to see and understand this violence, so it doesn't attract interest and attention. That lack of interest and attention enables the empire to launch deadly campaigns targeting civilian populations unnoticed, without any public accountability. It's great that more people are starting to understand the cost of war, to the extent that we're even seeing US presidential candidates make opposing it central to their platforms, but this is happening at a time when overt warfare is becoming more obsolete and replaced with something subtler and more sinister. We must as a society evolve our understanding of what starvation sanctions are and what they do, and stop seeing them as in any way superior or preferable to overt warfare.

The fact that people generally oppose senseless military violence but are unable to see and comprehend a slow, boa constrictor-like act of slaughter via economic strangulation is why these siege warfare tactics have become the weapon of choice for the US-centralized empire. It is a more gradual way of murdering people than overt warfare, but when you control all the resources and have an underlying power structure which maintains itself amid the comings and goings of your officially elected government, you're in no hurry. The absence of any public accountability makes the need for patience a very worthwhile trade-off.

So you see this siege warfare strategy employed everywhere by the US-centralized empire:

The US-centralized power alliance is so powerful in its ability to hurt nations with financial influence that in 1990 when Yemen voted against a UN Security Council Resolution authorizing the attack against Iran, a senior US diplomat was caught on a hot mic telling the Yemeni ambassador, "That will be the most expensive 'no' vote you ever cast." According to German author Thomas Pogge , "The US stopped $70 million in aid to Yemen; other Western countries, the IMF, and World Bank followed suit. Saudi Arabia expelled some 800,000 Yemeni workers, many of whom had lived there for years and were sending urgently needed money to their families."

That's real power. Not the ability to destroy a nation with bombs and missiles, but the ability to destroy it without firing a shot.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/RM0uvgHKZe8

It's no wonder, then, that the drivers of this empire work so hard to continue growing and expanding it. The oligarchs and their allies in opaque government agencies no doubt envision a world where all noncompliant nations like Iran, Russia and China have been absorbed into the blob of empire and war becomes obsolete, not because anyone has become any less violent, but because their economic control will be so complete that they can obliterate entire populations just by cutting them off from the world economy whenever any of them become disobedient.

This is the only reason Iran is being targeted right now. That's why you'll never hear a factually and logically sound argument defending Trump's withdrawal from the nuclear deal; there is none. There was no problem with the JCPOA other than the fact that it barred America from inflicting economic warfare upon Iran, which it needed for the purpose of toppling the nation's government so that it can be absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized empire.

And all the innocent human beings who die of starvation and disease? They don't matter. Imperial violence only matters if there are consequences for it. The price of shoring up the total hegemony of the empire will have been worth it .

[Jun 22, 2019] Putin about the economic war being waged against Russia after the Ukraine Coup in 2014.

Notable quotes:
"... "Let's go back to economic issues. Many people link these difficulties with the Western sanctions. By the way, the European Union again extended them today. Sometimes, there are appeals to make peace with everyone. If Russia complied with the West's demands and agreed to everything, would this benefit our economy in any way?" ..."
"... "Second, what would this give us and what would it not give us, and what would we lose? Look, according to expert analyses, Russia fell short by about $50 billion as a result of these restrictions during these years, starting in 2014. The European Union lost $240 billion, the US $17 billion (we have a small volume of trade with them) and Japan $27 billion. All this affects employment in these countries, including the EU: they are losing our market... ..."
"... "Now, the attack on Huawei: where does it come from and what is its objective? The objective is to hold back the development of China, the country that has become a global rival of another power, the United States. The same is happening with Russia, and will continue to happen , so if we want to occupy a worthy place under the sun, we must become stronger, including, and above all, in the economy." [My Emphasis] ..."
"... Dealing with Putin's bolded remark is a question not just for Russia, China and Iran; it's a question for the entire world and harkens back to the words of George Kennan I cited a few days ago about the USA needing a policy to continue its economic dominance of the planet he uttered in 1947, the policy that became The Anti-Communist Crusade covering for its actual Super Imperialism policy to retain that dominance. ..."
"... What's happening is a titanic struggle to make the Outlaw US Empire cease pursuing that policy. ..."
Jun 22, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Jun 21, 2019 6:34:03 PM | 189

I'd like barflies to ponder the following thought/probability: Radar Saturated Environment--radiation not from just individual, discreet, identifiable points, but from such a vast multitude that no single point can be discerned.

To further my brainstorming de-escalation, I'd like to point out what Putin said in his Direct Line yesterday about the economic war being waged against Russia in accordance with the Ukraine Coup in 2014. Pavel Zarubin asks:

"Let's go back to economic issues. Many people link these difficulties with the Western sanctions. By the way, the European Union again extended them today. Sometimes, there are appeals to make peace with everyone. If Russia complied with the West's demands and agreed to everything, would this benefit our economy in any way?"

I thought this a capital question very similar to Iran's dilemma. Putin's response is quite long, so I won't cite it all. Rather, I'll limit it to his initial reply and conclusion as they both deal with the Big Picture:

"First, what does it mean 'to make peace'? We have not fought with anyone and have no desire to fight with anyone.

"Second, what would this give us and what would it not give us, and what would we lose? Look, according to expert analyses, Russia fell short by about $50 billion as a result of these restrictions during these years, starting in 2014. The European Union lost $240 billion, the US $17 billion (we have a small volume of trade with them) and Japan $27 billion. All this affects employment in these countries, including the EU: they are losing our market....

"Now to the question of whether some things would be different if we give in and abandon our fundamental national interests. We are not talking about reconciliation here. Perhaps there will be some external signals, but no drastic change. Look, the People's Republic of China has nothing to do with Crimea and Donbass, does it? We are accused of occupying Donbass, which is nonsense and a lie.

But China has nothing to do with it, and yet the tariffs for Chinese goods are rising, which is almost the same as sanctions.

"Now, the attack on Huawei: where does it come from and what is its objective? The objective is to hold back the development of China, the country that has become a global rival of another power, the United States. The same is happening with Russia, and will continue to happen , so if we want to occupy a worthy place under the sun, we must become stronger, including, and above all, in the economy." [My Emphasis]

This year's Direct Line was as usual filled with domestic issues some that lead to foreign policy issues. The overall scope and distinctness of the minutia are as vast as Russia. I've followed these over the years and note they reveal Russia's strengths and fragilities. I'm tempted to cite more but will leave it to the reader to pursue, but after 90 minutes you still won't be finished because the transcript isn't yet complete, which while frustrating is also amazing.

Dealing with Putin's bolded remark is a question not just for Russia, China and Iran; it's a question for the entire world and harkens back to the words of George Kennan I cited a few days ago about the USA needing a policy to continue its economic dominance of the planet he uttered in 1947, the policy that became The Anti-Communist Crusade covering for its actual Super Imperialism policy to retain that dominance.

What's happening is a titanic struggle to make the Outlaw US Empire cease pursuing that policy.

[Jun 21, 2019] Putin marathon Q A session

Occasionally, a sharp question found a way through. About three hours in, one young man raised the issue of inflated military spending. "Who are you preparing us for war against?" he asked. The calibrated answer mixed belligerence with fiscal caution. Russian remained committed to nuclear parity, Mr Putin said, but it would do so with falling budgets.
Notable quotes:
"... Mr Putin's other rare forays into foreign policy centered on his traditional adversary, the United States. Washington was at the forefront of disrupting the world order and fanning tensions with Iran, he said. The prospect of armed conflict with Tehran was, he said, a "catastrophe" waiting to happen and risked an unpredictable "spike in violence". ..."
"... "Iran is a Shiite nation ready to defend their country to the hilt," he said. "It's very difficult to assess what will happen if military forces are engaged." ..."
Jun 21, 2019 | independent.co.uk

Wanting peace meant preparing for war, he added, saying: "Whoever doesn't want to feed his own army will end up feeding someone else's."

Mr Putin's other rare forays into foreign policy centered on his traditional adversary, the United States. Washington was at the forefront of disrupting the world order and fanning tensions with Iran, he said. The prospect of armed conflict with Tehran was, he said, a "catastrophe" waiting to happen and risked an unpredictable "spike in violence".

"Iran is a Shiite nation ready to defend their country to the hilt," he said. "It's very difficult to assess what will happen if military forces are engaged."

[Jun 20, 2019] Putin Says US Establishment Stops Trump From Improving Ties With Russia And 'Invents Fake News'

Jun 20, 2019 | www.newsweek.com

Russian president Vladimir Putin blamed the U.S. establishment for preventing an improvement in relations between Moscow and Washington.

During his annual televised question-and-answer session with members of the public, Putin was asked about the prospects for better ties if he met with President Donald Trump.

The Russian energy Ministry's department head Evgeny Grabchak, who faces U.S. sanctions, asked Putin on air if he would "want to meet with Trump."

Putin replied that dialogue with the U.S. was "always good" adding that Russia was "ready for this dialogue as long as our partners were too."

Putin went on: "But even if Trump wants to change anything, there are restrictions imposed by other organs of power. There is a part of the American establishment that continues to invent fake news. We have things to discuss with Trump in all areas, including the economy," Novaya Gazyeta reported.

[Jun 19, 2019] Investigation Nation Mueller, Russiagate, and Fake Politics by Jim Kavanagh

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... You might think the Democratic Party would be horrified at this result, which one conservative analyst calls: "one of the greatest self-defeating acts in history." You might think Democrats would now move quickly and decisively toward a strategy of offering a substantive political alternative, and abandon this awful own-goal Mueller/Russiagate tack that has already helped Trump immensely (and which they are not going to turn their way). That is obviously what would happen if the Democrats' main goal was to defeat Trump. But it isn't. ..."
"... As discussed above, the Democratic establishment's' main goal throughout this was not to "get" Trump, but to channel its own voters' disgust with him into support for some halcyon, liberal, status quo ante-Trump, and away from left demands for a radical change to the social, economic, and political conditions that produced him and his clueless establishment opponent in 2016. The Democrats' goal was, and is, not to defeat Trump, but to stave off the left. ..."
"... The Democrats' main goal in all this is not to impeach, or stop the re-election of, Donald Trump; it's to prevent the nomination and election of Bernie Sanders, or anyone like him. ..."
"... You mean the five million people who voted for Obama in 2012, in the 90% of counties that voted for Obama either in 2008 or 2012, but would not vote for Hillary in 2019, aren’t streaming back into—are indeed still streaming out of—the Democratic Party, despite all the Mueller investigation has done for them? Imagine that. ..."
"... What has Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation wrought? It’s either a shrewd political gambit sure to take down Trump, or it’s ridiculous political theater leading Democrats, and the country, over another cliff. Double-down or leave that table? ..."
Apr 12, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org
So the Mueller investigation is over. The official "Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election" has been written, and is in the hands of Attorney General William Barr, who has issued a summary of its findings. On the core mandate of the investigation, given to Special Counsel Mueller by Rod Rosenstein as Acting Attorney General in May of 2017 -- to investigate "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump" -- the takeaway conclusion stated in the Mueller report, as quoted in the Barr summary, is that "[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.1"

In the footnote indicated at the end of that sentence, Barr further clarifies the comprehensive meaning of that conclusion, again quoting the Report's own words: "In assessing potential conspiracy charges, the Special Counsel also considered whether members of the Trump campaign 'coordinated' with Russian election interference activities. The Special Counsel defined 'coordination' as an 'agreement -- tacit or express -- between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference'."

Barr restates the point of the cited conclusion from the Mueller Report a number of times: "The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election the Special Counsel did not find that any U.S. person or Trump campaign official or associate conspired or knowingly coordinated with the IRA [Internet Research Agency, the indicted Russian clickbait operation] in its efforts."

Thus, the Mueller investigation found no "conspiracy," no "coordination," -- i.e., no "collusion" -- "tacit or express" between the Trump campaign or any U.S. person and the Russian government. The Mueller investigation did not make, seal, or recommend any indictment for any U.S. person for any such crime.

This is as clear and forceful a repudiation as one can get of the "collusion" narrative that has been insistently shoved down our throats by the Democratic Party, its McResistance, its allied media, and its allied intelligence and national security agencies and officials. Whatever one wants to say about any other aspect of this investigation -- campaign finance violations, obstruction of justice, etc. -- they were not the main saga for the past two+ years as spun by the Russiagaters. The core narrative was that Donald Trump was some kind of Russian agent or asset, arguably guilty of treason and taking orders from his handler/blackmailer Vladimir Putin, who conspired with him to steal the 2016 election, and, furthermore, that Saint Mueller and his investigation team of patriotic FBI/CIA agents were going to find the goods that would have the Donald taken out of the White House in handcuffs for that.

Keith Olbermann's spectacular rant in January 2017 defined the core narrative and exemplified the Trump Derangement Syndrome that powered it: an emotional, visceral hatred of Donald Trump wrapped in the fantasy -- insisted upon as "elemental, existential fact" -- that he was "put in power by Vladimir Putin." A projection and deflection, I would say, of liberals' self-hatred for creating the conditions -- eight years of war and wealth transfer capped off by a despised and entitled candidate -- that allowed a vapid clown like Trump to be elected. It couldn't be our fault! It must have been Putin who arranged it!

Here's a highlight of Keith's delusional discourse. But, please watch the whole six-minute video below. They may have been a bit calmer, but this is the fundamental lunacy that was exuding from the rhetorical pores of Rachel, Chris, and Co. day after day for two+ years:

The military apparatus of this country is about to be handed over to scum, who are beholden to scum, Russian scum! As things are today January 20th will not be an inauguration but rather the end of the United States as an independent country. Donald John Trump is not a president; he is a puppet, put in power by Vladimir Putin. Those who ignore these elemental, existential facts -- Democrats or Republicans -- are traitors to this country. [Emphases in original. Really, watch it.]

https://www.youtube.com/embed/IAFxPXGDH4E

This -- Trump's secret, treasonous collusion with Putin, and not hush money or campaign finance violations or "obstruction of justice" or his obvious overall sleaziness -- was Russiagate.

Russiagate is Dead! Long Live Russiagate!

And it still is. Here's the demonstration in New York last Thursday, convened by the MoveOn/Maddow #Resistance, singing from "the hymnal" about how Trump is a "Russian whore" who is "busy blowing Vladimir":

https://www.youtube.com/embed/9YZ9kiJ88LM

This is delusional lunacy.

Here are the three lines of excuse and denial currently being fired off by diehard Russiagaters in their fighting retreat, and my responses to them.

1. The Mueller Report is irrelevant, anyhow. 'Cause either A) Per Congressional blowhard Adam Schiff: There already "is direct evidence" proving Trump-Russia collusion, dating from before the Mueller Investigation, so who cares what that doesn't find; or B) (My personal favorite) Per former prosecutor and CNN legal expert Renato Mariotti: Of course there is no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, and it's "your fault" for letting Trump fool you into thinking Mueller's job was to find it. (The Mueller "collusion" investigation was a red herring orchestrated/promoted by Trump! I cannot make this up.)

Mueller's report will almost certainly disappoint you, and it's not his fault. It's your fault for buying into Trump's false narrative that it is Mueller's' job to prove "collusion," a nearly impossible bar for any prosecutor to clear.

My piece in @TIME : https://t.co/VQ2WhhC996

-- Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) March 1, 2019

This is, of course, the weakest volley. It's absurd, patent bad faith, for Russiagaters to pretend that they knew, thought, or suggested the Mueller investigation was irrelevant. It is they who have been insisting that the integrity and super-sleuthiness of the "revered" Robert Mueller himself was the thing that would nail Donald Trump for Russian collusion. To now deny that any of that was important only acknowledges how thoroughly they have been fooling the American people and/or themselves for two years. Either Adam Schiff had the goods on Trump's traitorous Russian collusion two years ago, in which case he's got a lot of explaining to do about why he's been stringing us along with Mueller, or Schiff is just bluffing. Place your bets.

Russiagaters in 2017: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT MUELLER KNOWS
Russiagaters in 2018: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT MUELLER KNOWS
Russiagaters in 2019: Shut up Mueller, what would you know.

-- Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) March 22, 2019

2. The Mueller Report didn't exonerate Trump entirely. It was agnostic about whether Trump was guilty of "obstruction of justice," and there are probably many nasty things in the report that may not be provably criminal, but nonetheless demonstrate what a slimeball Trump is.

No, Russiagaters will not get away with denying that the core purpose of the Mueller investigation was to prove Trump's traitorous relation to Vladimir Putin and the Russian government, which helped him win the 2016 election. They will not get away with denying that, if the Mueller investigation failed to prove that, it failed in its main purpose, as they constantly defined and reinforced it, with table-pounding, hyperventilating, and -- a few days ago! -- disco-dancing to "the hymnal."

They will not get away with trying to appropriate, as if it were their point all along, what the left critics of Russiagate have been saying for two+ years -- that Donald Trump is a slimeball grifter whose culpability for politically substantive and probably legally actionable crimes and misdemeanors should not be hard to establish, without reverting to the absurd accusation that he's a Russian agent.

These are the left critics of Russiagate and Trump, whom Russiagaters deliberately excluded from all their media platforms, in order to make it seem that only right-wing Trump supporters could be skeptical of Russiagate -- the left critics Russiagaters then excoriated as "Trump enablers" and "Putin apologists" for speaking on the only media platforms that would host them. Among them, Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Maté (who just deservedly won the I.F. Stone prize for his Russiagate coverage) were the most prominent, but many others, including me, made this point week after week (Brian Becker, Dave Lindorff, Dan Kovalik, Daniel Lazare, Ted Rall, to name a few). As I put it in an essay last year: "There are a thousand reasons to criticize Donald Trump That Donald Trump is a Russian agent is not one of them. There are a number of very good justifications for seeking his impeachment That he is a Kremlin agent is not one of them."

So, it's a particularly slimy for Russiagaters to slip into the position that we Russiagate skeptics have been enunciating, and they have been excluding, for two years, without acknowledging that we were right and they were wrong and accounting for their effort to edit us out.

3. But we haven't seen the whole Mueller Report! Barr may be fooling us! Mueller's own team says so! You are now doing what you accused us of doing for two years -- abandoning proper skepticism about Republicans like Barr and even Mueller (Yup. He's a suspicious Republican now!), and assuming a final result we have not yet seen.

This is the one the Russiagaters like the most. Gotcha with your own logic!

Well, let's first of all thank those who are saying this for, again, recognizing that we Russiagate critics had the right attitude toward such an investigation: cautious skepticism as opposed to false certainty. And let's linger for a moment or more on how belated that recognition is and what its delay cost.

But let's also recognize that what's being expressed here is the last-minute hope on the part of the Russiagaters that the Mueller report actually does contain dispositive evidence of Trump's treasonous Russian collusion. Because, again, that is the core accusation that hopeful Russiagaters are still singing about, and nobody ever argued that evidence of other hijinks was unlikely.

Well, that hope can only be realized if one or both of the following are true: 1) Barr's quotes from the report exonerating Trump of collusion are complete fabrications, or 2) Mueller both wrote those words even though they contradict the substance of his own report and declined to indict a single U.S. person for such "collusion" even though he could have.

Sure, in the abstract, one or both of those conditions could be true. But there is no evidence, none, that either is. The New York Times (NYT) report that set everyone aflutter about the "concern" from "some members of Mr. Mueller's team" is anonymous, unspecified, and second-hand. Read it carefully: The NYT did not report what any member of Mueller's team said, but what "government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations" said. Those "officials and others interviewed [not members of the Mueller team itself] declined to flesh out" to the NYT what "some of the special counsel's investigators" were unhappy about. To that empty hearsay, the NYT appends the phrase "although the report is believed to examine Mr. Trump's efforts to thwart the investigation" -- suggesting, but not stating, that obstruction of justice issues are the reasons for the investigators' "vexation." The NYT cannot state, because it does not know, anything. It is reporting empty hearsay that is evidence of nothing, but is meant to keep hope alive.

"[T]he report is believed to examine" is a particularly strange locution. Is the NYT suggesting that the Mueller report might not have examined obstruction of justice possibilities? Or is it just getting tangled up in its attempt to suggest this or that? Hey, it could just as well be true that Barr's characterization of what the Mueller Report says about "obstruction of justice" is a misleading fabrication. Maybe Mueller actually exonerated Trump of that. If you mistrust Barr's version of what the Mueller Report says about collusion, why not equally mistrust what it says about obstruction of justice?

There is no evidence that Barr's summary is radically misleading about the core collusion conclusion of the Mueller Report. The walls are closing in, alright, on that story. The I'm just being as cautious now as you were before! line is the opposite of the reasonable skepticism is claims to be; it's Russiagaters clinging to a wish and a belief that something they want to be true is, despite the determinate lack of any evidence.

It's not just the words; it's the melody, and the desperation in the voices. The core Trump-blowing-Vladimir collusion song that #Resisters are still singing is a fantastical fiction and the people still singing it are the pathetic choir on the Russiagate Titanic. And while they're singing as they sink, Trump is escaping in the lifeboat they have provided him. The single most definite and undeniable effect of the Mueller investigation on American politics has been to hand Donald Trump a potent political weapon for his 2020 re-election campaign. A real bombshell.

It would be funny, if it weren't so funny:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/qjUvfZj-Fm0

But it's worse than that. The falsity of the Trump-as-a-Russian-agent narrative does not depend on any confidence in Mueller and his report or Barr and his summary. The truth is there was no Russiagate investigation, in the sense of a serious attempt to find out whether Donald Trump was taking orders from, or "coordinating" with, Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.

No person in their right mind could believe that. Robert Mueller doesn't believe it. Nancy Pelosi doesn't believe it. Adam Schiff doesn't believe it. John Brennan, James Clapper, and the heads of intelligence agencies do not believe it. Not for a second. No knowledgeable international affairs journalist or academic who thinks about it for two minutes believes it. Sure, some politicians and media pundits did work themselves up into a state where they internalized and projected a belief in the narrative, but few of them really believed it. They were serving the Kool-Aid. Only the most gullible sectors of their target audience drank it.

With some exceptions, to be sure (Donald Trump among them), the people in the highest echelons of the state-media-academic apparatus are just not that stupid. And, most obvious and important, Vladimir Putin is not that stupid, and they know he is not. Vladimir Putin would never rely on Donald Trump to be his operative in a complex operation that required shrewdly playing and evading the US intelligence and media apparatuses. Nobody is that stupid. Thinking about it that way for a second dissipates the entire ridiculous idea. (Not to mention that Trump ended up enacting a number of policies -- many more than Obama! -- contrary to Russian interests.)

The obvious, which many people in the independent media and none in the mainstream media (because it is so obvious, and would have blown their game) have pointed out, is that any real investigation of Russiagate would have sought to talk with the principals who had direct knowledge of who is responsible for leaking the infamous DNC documents: Julian Assange and former British ambassador Craig Murray ("I know who leaked them. I've met the person who leaked them."). They were essentially two undisputed eyewitnesses to the crime Mueller was supposed to be investigating, and he made no effort to talk to either of them. Ipso facto, it was not really an investigation, not a project whole purpose was to find the truth about whatever the thing called "Russiagate" is supposed to be.

The Eternal Witch-hunt

It was a theater of discipline. Its purpose, which it achieved, was to discipline Trump, the Democratic electorate, and the media. Its method was fishing around in the muck of Washington consultants, lobbyists, and influence peddlers to generate indictments and plea bargains for crimes irrelevant to the core mandate. Not hard, in a carceral state where prosecutors can pin three felonies a day on anyone.

The US establishment, especially its national security arm, was genuinely shocked that their anointed candidate, Hillary, who was, as Glen Ford puts it "'all in' with the global military offensive" that Obama had run through Libya, Syria, and the coup in Ukraine, was defeated by a nitwit candidate who was making impermissibly non-aggressive noises about things like Russia and NATO, and who actually wanted to lose. For their part, the Democrats were horrified, and did not want to face the necessary reckoning about the complete failure of their candidate, and the best-of-all-possible-liberaloid-worlds strategy she personified.

So, "within 24 hours of her concession speech" Hillary's campaign team (Robby Mook and John Podesta) created a "script they would pitch to the press and the public" to explain why she lost. "Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument." A few months later, a coalition of congressional Democrats,, establishment Republicans, and intelligence/natsec professionals pressured Trump (who, we can now see clearly, is putty in the hands of the latter) to initiate a Special Counsel investigation. Its ostensible goal was to investigate Russian collusion, but its real goals were:

1) To discipline Trump, preventing any backpedaling on NATO/imperialist war-mongering against Russia or any other target. Frankly, I think this was unnecessary. Trump never had any depth of principle in his remarks about de-escalating with Russia and Syria. He was always a staunch American exceptionalist and Zionist. Nobody has forced him (that's a right-wing fantasy) to attack Syria, appoint John Bolton, recognize Israeli authority over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, or threaten Iran and Venezuela. But the natsec deep state actors did (and do) not trust Trump's impulsiveness. They probably also thought it would be useful to "send a message" to Russia, which, in their arrogance, they think they can, but they cannot, "discipline," as I've discussed in a previous essay.

2) To discipline the media, making "Russian collusion," as Off-Guardian journalist Kit Knightly says, "a concept that keeps everyone in check." Thus, a Russophobia-related McCarthyite hysteria was engendered that defined any strong anti-interventionist or anti-establishment sentiment as Russian-sown "divisiveness" and "Putin apologetics." This discipline was eagerly accepted by the mainstream media, which joined in the related drive to demand new forms of censorship for independent and internet media. The epitome of this is the mainstream media's execrable, tacit and sometimes explicit acceptance of the US government's campaign to prosecute Julian Assange.

3) To discipline and corral the Democratic constituency. Establishment Dems riled up outraged progressives with deceptive implied promises to take Trump down based on the collusion fiction, which excused Hillary and diverted their attention from the real egregious failures and crimes that led their party to political ruin, and culminated in the election of Trump in the first place. This discipline also instituted a #Resistance to Trump that involved the party doing nothing substantively progressive in policy -- indeed, it allowed embracing Trump's most egregious militarism and promoting an alliance with, a positive reverence for, the most deceptive and reactionary institutions of the state.

Finally, incorporating point 2, perhaps the main point of this discipline -- indeed of the whole Mueller enterprise -- was to stigmatize the leftists and socialists in and around the party, who were questioning the collusion fiction and calling critical attention to the party's failures, as crypto-fascist "Trump enablers" or "Putin's useful idiots." It's all about fencing out the left and corralling the base.

Note the point regarding the deceptive implications about taking down Trump. Though they gave the opposite impression to rile up their constituents, Democratic Congressional leaders, for the reasons given above and others I laid out in a previous essay, did not think for a second they were going to impeach Trump. They were never really after impeaching Trump; they were and are after stringing along their dissatisfied progressive-minded voters. They, not Trump, were and are the target of the foolery.

We should recognize that Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation achieved all of these goals, and was therefore a great success. That's the case whatever part of the Mueller Report is summarized and released, and whoever interprets it. The whole report with all of the underlying evidence cannot legally be released to the public, and the Democrats know that. So, even if the House gets it, the public will only ever see portions doled out by various interested parties.

Thus, it will continue to be a great success. There will be endless leaks, and interpretations of leaks, and arguments about the interpretations of leaks based on speculation about what's still hidden. The Mueller Investigation has morphed into the Mueller Report, a hermeneutical exercise that will go on forever.
The Mueller Investigation never happened and will never end.

It wasn't an investigation. It was/is an act of political theater, staged in an ongoing dramatic festival where, increasingly, litigation substitutes for politics. Neither party has anything of real, lasting, positive political substance to offer, and each finds itself in power only because it conned the electorate into thinking it offered something new. That results in every politician being vulnerable, but to a politically vacuous opposition that can only mount its attacks on largely politically irrelevant, often impossible to adjudicate, legalistic or moralistic grounds. Prosecutorial inquiry becomes a substitute for substantive political challenge.

It's the template that was established by the Republicans against Bill Clinton, has been adapted by the Democrats for Trump and Russiagate, and will be ceaselessly repeated. What's coming next, already hinted at in William Barr's congressional testimony, will be an investigation of FISAGate -- an inquiry into whether the FISA warrants for spying on the Trump campaign and administration were obtained legally ("adequately predicated"). And/or UkraineGate, about the evidence "Ukrainian law enforcement officials believe they have of wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from 2016 election interference to obstructing criminal probes," involving Tony Podesta (who worked right alongside Paul Manafort in Ukraine), Hillary Clinton's campaign, Joe Biden and his son, et. al. And/or CampaignGate, the lawsuit claiming that Hillary's national campaign illegally took $84 million of "straw man" contributions made to state Democratic campaigns. And/or CraigGate, involving powerful Democratic fixer and Obama White House Counsel, Gregory Craig, who has already been referred to federal prosecutors by Mueller, and whose law firm has already paid a $4.6 million-dollar fine for making false statement and failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act -- for work he did in Ukraine with -- who else? -- Paul Manafort.

There are Gates galore. If you haven't heard about any of these simmering scandals in the way you've heard incessantly about, you know, Paul Manafort, perhaps that's because they didn't fit into the "get Trump" theme of the Mueller Investigation/Russiagate political theater. Rest assured the Republicans have, and will likely make sure that you do. If you think the Republicans do not have at least as much of a chance to make a serious case with some of these as Mueller did with Trump, you are wrong. If you think the Republicans will pursue any of these investigations because they have the same principled concern as the Democrats about foreign collusion in US elections, or the legality of campaign contributions or surveillance warrants, you are right. They have none. Like the Democrats, they have zero concern for the ostensible issues of principle, and infinite enthusiasm for mounting "gotcha" political theater.

Neither party really wants, or knows how, to engage in a sustained, principled debate on substantive political issues -- things like universal-coverage, single-payer health insurance, a job guarantee, a radical reduction of the military budget, an end to imperialist intervention, increasing taxes on the wealthy and lowering them for working people, a break from the "overwhelming" and destructive influence of Zionism, to name a few of the policies the Democratic congressional leadership could have insisted on "investigating" over the last two years..

Instead, both parties' political campaigns rely on otherizing appeals based on superficial identity politics (white-affirmative on the one hand, POC-affirmative on the other) and, mainly, on bashing the other party for all the problems it ignored or exacerbated, and all the terrible policies it enacted, when it was in power -- and for the version of superficial, otherizing identity politics it supposedly based those policies on (the real determinants of class power remaining invisible). What both parties know how and will continue to do is mount hypocritical legalistic and moralistic "investigations" of illegal campaign contributions, support from foreign governments, teenage make-out sessions, personal-space violations, et. al., that they are just "shocked, shocked" about.

It's Investigation Nation. Fake politics in the simulacrum of a democratic polity. Indeed, someone, of some political perspicuity, might just notice, if only for a flash, that the people who do pretty well politically are often the ones who frankly don't give a crap about all that. Maybe because they're talking to people who don't give a crap about all that. But we wouldn't want to confuse ourselves thinking on that for too long.

Which brings us to the last point about Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation mentioned above. It may not (or may!) have been an intended goal, but it has been its most definite political effect: The Mueller Investigation has been a great political gift to Donald Trump. #Resisters and Russiagaters can wriggle around that all they want. They can insist that, once we get the whole Report, we'll turn the corner, the bombshell will explode, the walls will close in -- for real, this time. Sure.

But even they can't deny that's the case right now. Trump is saying the Mueller investigation was a political counterattack against the result of the election, masquerading as a disinterested judicial investigation; that it was based on a flimsy fiction and designed to dig around in every corner of his closets to find nasty and incriminating things that were entirely irrelevant to the ostensible mandate of the investigation and to any substantive, upfront political critique -- a "witchhunt," a "fishing expedition." And he is right. And too many people in the country know he's right. At this point, even most Russiagaters themselves know it -- though they don't care, and will never admit it.

So now Trump, who could have been attacked for two years politically on substance for betraying most of the promises that got him elected -- more aggressive war, more tax cuts for the wealthy, threatening Medicare and Social Security -- has instead been handed, by the Democrats, the strongest arrow he now has in his political quiver. As Matt Taibbi says: "Trump couldn't have asked for a juicier campaign issue, and an easier way to argue that 'elites' don't respect the democratic choices of flyover voters. It's hard to imagine what could look worse."

You might think the Democratic Party would be horrified at this result, which one conservative analyst calls: "one of the greatest self-defeating acts in history." You might think Democrats would now move quickly and decisively toward a strategy of offering a substantive political alternative, and abandon this awful own-goal Mueller/Russiagate tack that has already helped Trump immensely (and which they are not going to turn their way). That is obviously what would happen if the Democrats' main goal was to defeat Trump. But it isn't.

As discussed above, the Democratic establishment's' main goal throughout this was not to "get" Trump, but to channel its own voters' disgust with him into support for some halcyon, liberal, status quo ante-Trump, and away from left demands for a radical change to the social, economic, and political conditions that produced him and his clueless establishment opponent in 2016. The Democrats' goal was, and is, not to defeat Trump, but to stave off the left.

What they are doing with the Mueller Investigation/Russiagate is what they did in the primaries in 2016: Then, they deliberately promoted Trump as an opponent, while working assiduously to cheat their own leftist candidate; now, they gin up a fictional spy story whose inevitable collapse helps Trump, but on which they will double down, in order to continue branding "divisive" leftists who challenge any return to their version of status-quo normalcy as the Kremlin's "useful idiots."

The Democrats' main goal in all this is not to impeach, or stop the re-election of, Donald Trump; it's to prevent the nomination and election of Bernie Sanders, or anyone like him.

Russiagate Forever

Here's Tim Ryan's presidential campaign kickoff speech in Youngstown, Ohio, a poster city of late American capitalist deindustrialization, explaining to the voters what is causing the destruction of their lives and towns. After complaining that "We have politicians and leaders today that want to divide us. They want to put us in one box or the other. You know, you can't be for business and for labor," he elaborates:

Yup, it’s those Russians, you see, sowing division through certain “politicians and leaders,” who are preventing us from fixing our healthcare, education, economic and government systems. This—doubling down on Russiagate—is the centrist Democrats’ idea of a winning political appeal. I consider it utterly delusional.

I heard last week from a friend in Western Pennsylvania, not too far from Youngstown. She’s a good person who is trying to organize Democrats in the area to beat Trump in 2020, and, pleading for advice, she expressed her exasperation: “They’re leaving the party!”

You mean the five million people who voted for Obama in 2012, in the 90% of counties that voted for Obama either in 2008 or 2012, but would not vote for Hillary in 2019, aren’t streaming back into—are indeed still streaming out of—the Democratic Party, despite all the Mueller investigation has done for them? Imagine that.

What has Russiagate/The Mueller Investigation wrought? It’s either a shrewd political gambit sure to take down Trump, or it’s ridiculous political theater leading Democrats, and the country, over another cliff. Double-down or leave that table?

Place your bets.

[Jun 19, 2019] Mueller and Russiagate story: The Eternal Witch-hunt

Apr 12, 2019 | counterpunch.org

Mueller looks more and more like a man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.

[Jun 19, 2019] Mueller and Russiagate story: The Eternal Witch-hunt

Apr 12, 2019 | counterpunch.org

Mueller looks more and more like a man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.

[Jun 19, 2019] Washington's Dr. Strangeloves by Stephen F. Cohen

Notable quotes:
"... What is the significance of this story, apart from what it tells us about the graver dangers of the new US-Russian Cold War, which now includes, we are informed, a uniquely fraught "digital Cold War"? Not so long ago, mainstream liberal Democrats, and the Times itself, would have been outraged by revelations that defense and intelligence officials were making such existential policy behind the back of a president. No longer, it seems. There have been no liberal, Democratic, or for the most part any other, mainstream protests, but instead a lawyerly apologia justifying the intelligence-defense operation without the president's knowledge. ..."
"... As I have often emphasized, the long historical struggle for American-Russian (Soviet and post-Soviet) détente, or broad cooperation, has featured many acts of attempted sabotage on both sides, though most often by US intelligence and defense agencies. ..."
"... Now the sabotaging of détente appears be happening again. As the Times article makes clear, Washington's war party, or perhaps zealous Cold War party, referred to euphemistically by Sanger and Perlroth as "advocates of the more aggressive strategy," is on the move. ..."
"... Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden policy pursuit, but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and the world. No American president can achieve it without substantial bipartisan support at home, which Trump manifestly lacks. What kind of catastrophe will it take -- in Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on Russia's electric grid -- to shock US Democrats and others out of what has been called, not unreasonably, their Trump Derangement Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national security? Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight. ..."
Jun 19, 2019 | www.thenation.com

Occasionally, a revelatory, and profoundly alarming, article passes almost unnoticed, even when published on the front page of The New York Times . Such was the case with reporting by David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth , bearing the Strangelovian title "U.S. Buries Digital Land Mines to Menace Russia's Power Grid," which appeared in the print edition on June 16. The article contained two revelations.

First, according to Sanger and Perlroth, with my ellipses duly noted, "The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia's electric power grid. Advocates of the more aggressive strategy said it was long overdue " The operation "carries significant risk of escalating the daily digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow." Though under way at least since 2012, "now the American strategy has shifted more toward offense with the placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before." At this point, the Times reporters add an Orwellian touch. The head of the U.S. Cyber Command characterizes the assault on Russia's grid, which affects everything from the country's water supply, medical services, and transportation to control over its nuclear weapons, as "the need to 'defend forward,'" because "they don't fear us."

Nowhere do Sanger and Perlroth seem alarmed by the implicit risks of this "defend forward" attack on the infrastructure of the other nuclear superpower. Indeed, they wonder "whether it would be possible to plunge Russia into darkness." And toward the end, they quote an American lawyer and former Obama official, whose expertise on the matter is unclear, to assure readers sanguinely, "We might have to risk taking some broken bones of our own from a counter response. Sometimes you have to take a bloody nose to not take a bullet in the head down the road." The "broken bones," "bloody nose," and "bullet" are, of course, metaphorical references to the potential consequences of nuclear war.

The second revelation comes midway in the Times story: "[President] Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place 'implants' inside the Russian grid" because "he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials." (Indeed, Trump issued an angry tweet when he saw the Times report, though leaving unclear which part of it most aroused his anger.)

What is the significance of this story, apart from what it tells us about the graver dangers of the new US-Russian Cold War, which now includes, we are informed, a uniquely fraught "digital Cold War"? Not so long ago, mainstream liberal Democrats, and the Times itself, would have been outraged by revelations that defense and intelligence officials were making such existential policy behind the back of a president. No longer, it seems. There have been no liberal, Democratic, or for the most part any other, mainstream protests, but instead a lawyerly apologia justifying the intelligence-defense operation without the president's knowledge.

The political significance, however, seems clear enough. The leak to the Times and the paper's publication of the article come in the run-up to a scheduled meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 meeting in Japan on June 28–29. Both leaders had recently expressed hope for improved US-Russian relations. On May 4, Trump again tweeted his longstanding aspiration for a "good/great relationship with Russia"; and this month Putin lamented that relations " are getting worse and worse " but hoped that he and Trump could move their countries beyond "the games played by intelligence services."

As I have often emphasized, the long historical struggle for American-Russian (Soviet and post-Soviet) détente, or broad cooperation, has featured many acts of attempted sabotage on both sides, though most often by US intelligence and defense agencies. Readers may recall the Eisenhower-Khrushchev summit meeting that was to take place in Paris in 1960, but which was aborted by the Soviet shoot-down of a US spy plane over the Soviet Union, an intrusive flight apparently not authorized by President Eisenhower. And more recently, the 2016 plan by then-President Obama and Putin for US-Russian cooperation in Syria, which was aborted by a Department of Defense attack on Russian-backed Syrian troops.

Now the sabotaging of détente appears be happening again. As the Times article makes clear, Washington's war party, or perhaps zealous Cold War party, referred to euphemistically by Sanger and Perlroth as "advocates of the more aggressive strategy," is on the move. Certainly, Trump has been repeatedly thwarted in his previous détente attempts, primarily by discredited Russiagate allegations that continue to be promoted by the war party even though they still lack any evidential basis. (It may also be recalled that his previous summit meeting with Putin was widely and shamefully assailed as "treason" by influential segments of the US political-media establishment.)

Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden policy pursuit, but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and the world. No American president can achieve it without substantial bipartisan support at home, which Trump manifestly lacks. What kind of catastrophe will it take -- in Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on Russia's electric grid -- to shock US Democrats and others out of what has been called, not unreasonably, their Trump Derangement Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national security? Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight.

This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the host of The John Batchelor Show . Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at TheNation.com . Ad Policy Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his new book War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback and in an ebook edition.

[Jun 19, 2019] The Warm War Russiamania at the Boiling Point by Jim Kavanagh

Notable quotes:
"... Theresa May's immediate conclusion that the Russian government bears certain and sole responsibility for the nerve-agent poisoning of the Skripals is logically, scientifically, and forensically impossible. ..."
"... Teresa May is lying, everyone who seconds her assertion of false certainty is lying, they all know they are lying, and the Russians know that they know they are lying. ..."
"... "War" is what they seem to want it to be. For the past 18 to 24 months, we've also been inundated with Morgan Freeman and Rob Reiner's ominous "We have been attacked. We are at war," video, as well as the bipartisan ( Hillary Clinton , John McCain ) insistence that alleged Russian election meddling should be considered an "act of war" equivalent to Pearl Harbor . Indeed, Trump's new National Security advisor, the warmongering lunatic John Bolton, calls it , explicitly "a casus belli , a true act of war." ..."
"... Even the military is getting in on the act. The nerve-agent accusation has been followed up by General John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, accusing Russia of arming the Taliban! It's noteworthy that this senior American military general casually refers to Russia as "the enemy": "We've had stories written by the Taliban that have appeared in the media about financial support provided by the enemy." ..."
"... The economic war against Russian is being waged through a series of sanctions that seem impossible to reverse, because their expressed goal is to extract confession, repentance, and restitution for crimes ascribed to Russia that Russia has not committed, or has not been proven to have committed, or are entirely fictional and have not been committed by anyone at all. We will only stop taking your bank accounts and consulates and let you play games with us if you confess and repent every crime we accuse you of. No questions permitted. ..."
Apr 02, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org
Is it war yet?

Yes, in too many respects.

It's a relentless economic, diplomatic, and ideological war, spiced with (so far) just a dash of military war, and the strong scent of more to come.

I mean war with Russia, of course, although Russia is the point target for a constellation of emerging adversaries the US is desperate to entame before any one or combination of them becomes too strong to defeat. These include countries like Iran and China, which are developing forces capable of resisting American military aggression against their own territory and on a regional level, and have shown quite too much uppitiness about staying in their previously-assigned geopolitical cages.

But Russia is the only country that has put its military forces in the way of a U.S. program of regime change -- indirectly in Ukraine, where Russia would not get out of the way, and directly in Syria, where Russia actively got in the way. So Russia is the focus of attack, the prime target for an exemplary comeuppance.

Is it, then, a new Cold War, even more dangerous than the old one, as Stephen F. Cohen says ?

That terminology was apt even a few months ago, but the speed, ferocity, and coordination of the West/NATO's reaction to the alleged nerve-agent poisoning of the Skripals, as well as the formation of a War Cabinet in Washington, indicates to me that we've moved to another level of aggression.

It's beyond Cold. Call it the Warm War. And the temperature's rising.

The Nerve of Them

There are two underlying presumptions that, combined, make present situation more dangerous than a Cold War.

One is the presumption of guilt -- or, more precisely, the presumption that the presumption of Russian guilt can always be made, and made to stick in the Western mind.

The confected furor over the alleged nerve-agent poisoning of the Skripals demonstrates this dramatically.

Theresa May's immediate conclusion that the Russian government bears certain and sole responsibility for the nerve-agent poisoning of the Skripals is logically, scientifically, and forensically impossible.

False certainty is the ultimate fake news. It is just not true that, as she says: "There is no alternative conclusion other than the Russian state is culpable." This falsity of this statement has been demonstrated by a slew of sources -- including the developers of the alleged "Novichok" agent themselves, a thorough analysis by a former UN inspector in Iraq who worked on the destruction of chemical weapons, establishment Western scientific outlets like New Scientist (" Other countries could have made 'Russian' nerve agent "), and the British government's own mealy-mouthed, effective-but-unacknowledged disavowal of that conclusion. In its own words, The British government found: "a nerve agent or related compound," " of a type developed by Russia." So, it's absolutely, positively, certainly, without a doubt, Russian-government-produced "Novichok" .or something else.

Teresa May is lying, everyone who seconds her assertion of false certainty is lying, they all know they are lying, and the Russians know that they know they are lying. It's a

https://www.youtube.com/embed/lErlHLCNM_s?autoplay=0list=WL

It boggles the -- or at least, my -- mind how, in the face of all this, anyone could take seriously her ultimatum, ignoring the procedures of the Chemical Weapons Convention , gave Russia 24 hours to "explain" -- i.e., confess and beg forgiveness for -- this alleged crime.

Indeed, it's noteworthy that France initially, and rather sharply, refused to assume Russian guilt, with a government spokesman saying, "We don't do fantasy politics. Once the elements are proven, then the time will come for decisions to be made." But the whip was cracked -- and surely not by the weak hand of Whitehall -- demanding EU/NATO unity in the condemnation of Russia. So, in an extraordinary show of discipline that could only be ordered and orchestrated by the imperial center, France joined the United States and 20 other countries in the largest mass expulsion of Russian diplomats ever.

Western governments and their compliant media have mandated that Russian government guilt for the " first offensive use of a nerve agent " in Europe since World War II is to be taken as flat fact. Anyone -- like Jeremy Corbyn or Craig Murray -- who dares to interrupt the "Sentence first! Verdict afterwards!" chorus to ask for, uh, evidence, is treated to a storm of obloquy .

At this point, Western accusers don't seem to care how blatantly unfounded, if not ludicrous, an accusation is. The presumption of Russian guilt, along with the shaming of anyone who questions it, has become an unquestionable standard of Western/American political and media discourse.

Old Cold War McCarthyism has become new Warm War fantasy politics.

Helled in Contempt

This declaration of diplomatic war over the Skripal incident is the culmination of an ongoing drumbeat of ideological warfare, demonizing Russia and Putin personally in the most predictable and inflammatory terms.

For the past couple of years, we've been told by Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Marco Rubio, and Boris Johnson that Putin is the new Hitler. That's a particularly galling analogy for the Russians. Soviet Russia, after all, was Hitler's main enemy, that defeated the Nazi army at the cost of 20+ million of its people -- while the British Royal Family was not un-smitten with the charms of Hitlerian fascism , and British footballers had a poignant moment in 1938 Berlin saluting the Fuhre.:

"War" is what they seem to want it to be. For the past 18 to 24 months, we've also been inundated with Morgan Freeman and Rob Reiner's ominous "We have been attacked. We are at war," video, as well as the bipartisan ( Hillary Clinton , John McCain ) insistence that alleged Russian election meddling should be considered an "act of war" equivalent to Pearl Harbor . Indeed, Trump's new National Security advisor, the warmongering lunatic John Bolton, calls it , explicitly "a casus belli , a true act of war."

Even the military is getting in on the act. The nerve-agent accusation has been followed up by General John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, accusing Russia of arming the Taliban! It's noteworthy that this senior American military general casually refers to Russia as "the enemy": "We've had stories written by the Taliban that have appeared in the media about financial support provided by the enemy."

Which is strange, because, since the Taliban emerged from the American-jihadi war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, and the Taliban and Russia have "enduring enmity" towards each other, as Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analysts Network puts it . Furthermore, the sixteen-year-long American war against the Taliban has depended on Russia allowing the U.S. to move supplies through its territory, and being "the principal source of fuel for the alliance's needs in Afghanistan."

So the general has to admit that this alleged Russian "destabilising activity" is a new thing: "This activity really picked up in the last 18 to 24 months When you look at the timing it roughly correlates to when things started to heat up in Syria. So it's interesting to note the timing of the whole thing."

Yes, it is.

The economic war against Russian is being waged through a series of sanctions that seem impossible to reverse, because their expressed goal is to extract confession, repentance, and restitution for crimes ascribed to Russia that Russia has not committed, or has not been proven to have committed, or are entirely fictional and have not been committed by anyone at all. We will only stop taking your bank accounts and consulates and let you play games with us if you confess and repent every crime we accuse you of. No questions permitted.

This is not a serious framework for respectful international relations between two sovereign nations. It's downright childish. It paints everyone, including the party trying to impose it, into an impossible corner. Is Russia ever going to abandon Crimea, confess that it shot down the Malaysian jet, tricked us into electing Donald Trump, murdered the Skripals, is secretly arming the Taliban, et. al .? Is the U.S. ever going to say: "Never mind"? What's the next step? It's the predicament of the bully.

This is not, either, an approach that really seeks to address any of the "crimes" charged. As Victoria Nuland (a Clintonite John Bolton) put it on NPR, it's about, "sending a message" to Russia. Well, as Russia's ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov said , with this latest mass expulsion of diplomats, the United States is, "Destroying what little remained of US-Russian ties." He got the message.

All of this looks like a coordinated campaign that began in response to Russia's interruption of American regime-change projects in Ukraine and especially Syria, that was harmonized -- over the last 18 to 24 months -- with various elite and popular motifs of discontent over the 2016 election, and that has reached a crescendo in the last few weeks with ubiquitous and unconstrained " enemization " [1] of Russia. It's hard to describe it as anything other than war propaganda -- manufacturing the citizenry's consent for a military confrontation.

Destroying the possibility of normal, non-conflictual, state-to-state relations and constituting Russia as "the enemy" is exactly what this campaign is about. That is its "message" and its effect -- for the American people as much as for the Russia government. The heightened danger, I think, is that Russia, which has for a long time been reluctant to accept that America wasn't interested in "partnership", has now heard and understood this message, while the American people have only heard but do not understand it.

It's hard to see where this can go that doesn't involve military conflict. This is especially the case with the appointments of Mike Pompeo, Gina Haspel, and John Bolton -- a veritable murderers' row that many see as the core of a Trump War Cabinet. Bolton, who does not need Senate confirmation, is a particularly dangerous fanatic, who tried to get the Israelis to attack Iran before even they wanted to, and has promised regime change in Iran by 2019. As mentioned, he considers that Russia has already given him a " casus belli. " Even the staid New York Times warns that, with these appointments, "the odds of taking military action will rise dramatically."

The second presumption in the American mindset today makes military confrontation more likely than it was during the Cold War: Not only is there a presumption of guilt, there is a presumption of weakness . The presumption of guilt is something the American imperial managers are confident they can induce and maintain in the Western world; the presumption of weakness is one they -- or, I fear, too many of them -- have all-too blithely internalized.

This is an aspect of the American self-image among policymakers whose careers matured in a post-Soviet world. During the Cold War, Americans held themselves in check by the assumption, that, militarily, the Soviet Union was a peer adversary, a country that could and would defend certain territories and interests against direct American military aggression -- "spheres of interest" that should not be attacked. The fundamental antagonism was managed with grudging mutual respect.

There was, after all, a shared recent history of alliance against fascism. And there was an awareness that the Soviet Union, in however distorted a way, both represented the possibility of a post-capitalist future and supported post-colonial national liberation movements, which gave it considerable stature in the world.

American leadership might have hated the Soviet Union, but it was not contemptuous of it. No American leader would have called the Soviet Union, as John McCain called Russia, just "a gas station masquerading as a country." And no senior American or British leader would have told the Soviet Union what British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson told Russia last week: to "go away and shut up."

This is a discourse that assumes its own righteousness, authority, and superior power, even as it betrays its own weakness. It's the discourse of a frustrated child. Or bully. Russia isn't shutting up and going away, and the British are not -- and know they're not -- going to make it. But they may think the Big Daddy backing them up can and will. And daddy may think so himself.

Like all bullies, the people enmeshed in this arrogant discourse don't seem to understand that it is not frightening Russia. It's only insulting the country, and leading it to conclude that there is indeed nothing remaining of productive, non-conflictual, US-Russian "partnership" ties. The post-Skripal worldwide diplomatic expulsions, which seem deliberately and desperately excessive, may have finally convinced Russia that there is no longer any use trying. Those who should be frightened of this are the American people.

The enemy of my enemy is me.

The United States is only succeeding in turning itself into an enemy for Russians. Americans would do well to understand how thoroughly their hypocritical and contemptuous stance has alienated the Russian people and strengthened Vladimir Putin's leadership -- as many of Putin's critics warned them it would. The fantasy of stoking a "liberal" movement in Russia that will install some nouveau-Yeltsin-ish figure is dissipated in the cold light of a 77% election day. Putin is widely and firmly supported in Russia because he represents the resistance to any such scheme.

Americans who want to understand that dynamic, and what America itself has wrought in Russia, should heed the passion, anger, and disappointment in this statement about Putin's election from a self-described "liberal" (using the word, I think, in the intellectual tradition, not the American political, sense), Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT TV (errors in translation by another person):

Essentially, the West should be horrified not because 76% of Russians voted for Putin, but because this elections have demonstrated that 95% of Russia's population supports conservative-patriotic, communist and nationalist ideas. That means that liberal ideas are barely surviving among measly 5% of population.

And that's your fault, my Western friends. It was you who pushed us into "Russians never surrender" mode

[W]ith all your injustice and cruelty, inquisitorial hypocrisy and lies you forced us to stop respecting you. You and your so called "values."

We don't want to live like you live, anymore. For fifty years, secretly and openly, we wanted to live like you, but not any longer.

We have no more respect for you, and for those amongst us that you support, and for all those people who support you.

For that you only have yourself to blame.

In meantime, you've pushed us to rally around your enemy. Immediately, after you declared him an enemy, we united around him .

It was you who imposed an opposition between patriotism and liberalism. Although, they shouldn't be mutually exclusive notions. This false dilemma, created by you, made us to chose patriotism.

Even though, many of us are really liberals, myself included.

Get cleaned up, now. You don't have much time left.

In fact, the whole "uprising"/color revolution strategy throughout the world is over. It's been fatally discredited by its own purported successes. Everybody in the Middle East has seen how that worked out for Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and the Russians have seen how it worked out for Ukraine and for Russia itself . In neither Russia nor Iran (nor anywhere else of importance) are the Americans, with their sanctions and their NGOs and their cookies ,going to stoke a popular uprising that turns a country into a fractured client of the Washington Consensus. More fantasy politics.

The old new world Washington wants won't be born without a military midwife. The U.S. wants a compliant Russia ( and "international community") back, and it thinks it can force it into being.

Fear Knot

Consider this quote from The Saker , a defense analyst who was born in Switzerland to a Russian military family, "studied Russian and Soviet military affairs all [his] life," and lived for 20 years in the United States. He's been one of the sharpest analysts of Russia and Syria over the last few years. This was his take a year ago, after Trump's cruise missile attack on Syria's Al Shayrat airfield -- another instant punishment for an absolutely, positively, proven-in-a day, chemical crime:

For one thing, there is no US policy on anything.

The Russians expressed their total disgust and outrage at this attack and openly began saying that the Americans were "недоговороспособны". What that word means is literally "not-agreement-capable" or unable to make and then abide by an agreement. While polite, this expression is also extremely strong as it implies not so much a deliberate deception as the lack of the very ability to make a deal and abide by it. But to say that a nuclear world superpower is "not-agreement-capable" is a terrible and extreme diagnostic.

This means that the Russians have basically given up on the notion of having an adult, sober and mentally sane partner to have a dialog with.

In all my years of training and work as a military analyst I have always had to assume that everybody involved was what we called a "rational actor". The Soviets sure where. As were the Americans.

Not only do I find the Trump administration "not agreement-capable", I find it completely detached from reality. Delusional in other words.

Alas, just like Obama before him, Trump seems to think that he can win a game of nuclear chicken against Russia. But he can't. Let me be clear here: if pushed into a corner the Russian will fight, even if that means nuclear war.

There is a reason for this American delusion. The present generation of American leadership was spoiled and addled by the blissful post-Soviet decades of American impunity.

The problem is not exactly that the U.S. wants full-on war with Russia, it's that America does not fear it. [2]

Why should it? It hasn't had to for twenty years during which the US assumed it could bully Russia to stay out of its imperial way anywhere it wanted to intervene.

After the Soviet Union broke up (and only because the Soviet Union disappeared) the United States was free to use its military power with impunity. For some time, the U.S. had its drunken stooge, Yeltsin, running Russia and keeping it out of America's military way. There was nary a peep when Bill Clinton effectively conferred on NATO (meaning the U.S. itself) the authority to decide what military interventions were necessary and legitimate. For about twenty years -- from the Yugoslavia through the Libya intervention -- no nation had the military power or politico-diplomatic will to resist this.

But that situation has changed. Even the Pentagon recognizes that the American Empire is in a "post-primacy" phase -- certainly "fraying," and maybe even "collapsing." The world has seen America's social and economic strength dissipate, and its pretense of legitimacy disappear entirely. The world has seen American military overreach everywhere while winning nothing of stable value anywhere. Sixteen years, and the mighty U.S. Army cannot defeat the Taliban. Now, that's Russia's fault!

Meanwhile, a number of countries in key areas have gained the military confidence and political will to refuse the presumptions of American arrogance -- China in the Pacific, Iran in the Middle East, and Russia in Europe and, surprisingly, the Middle East as well. In a familiar pattern, America's resultant anxiety about waning power increases its compensatory aggression. And, as mentioned, since it was Russia that most effectively demonstrated that new military confidence, it's Russia that has to be dealt with first.

The incessant wave of sanctions and expulsions is the bully in the schoolyard clenching his fist to scare the new kid away. OK, everyone's got the message now. Unclench or punch?

Let's be clear about who is the world's bully. As is evident to any half-conscious person, Russia is not going to attack the United States or Europe. Russia doesn't have scores of military bases, combat ships and aircraft up on America's borders. It doesn't have almost a thousand military bases around the world. Russia does not have the military forces to rampage around the world as America does, and it doesn't want or need to. That's not because of Russia's or Vladimir Putin's pacifism, but because Russia, as presently situated in the political economy of the world, has nothing to gain from it.

Nor does Russia need some huge troll-farm offensive to "destabilize" and sow division in Western Europe and the United States. Inequality, austerity, waves of immigrants from regime-change wars, and trigger-happy cops are doing a fine job of that. Russia isn't responsible for American problems with Black Lives Matter or with the Taliban.

All of this is fantasy politics.

It's the United States, with its fraying empire, that has a problem requiring military aggression. What other tools does the U.S. have left to put the upstarts, Russia first, back in their places?

It must be hard for folks who have had their way with country after country for twenty years not to think they can push Russia out of the way with some really, really scary threats, or maybe one or two "bloody nose" punches. Some finite number of discrete little escalations. There's already been some shoving -- that cruise missile attack, Turkey's downing of a Russian jet, American attacks on Russian personnel (ostensibly private mercenaries) in Syria -- and, look, Ma, no big war. But sometimes you learn the hard way the truth of the reverse Mike Tyson rule: "Everyone has a game plan until they smack the other guy in the face."

Consider one concrete risk of escalation that every informed observer is, and every American should be, aware of.

The place where the United States and Russia are literally, geographically, closest to confrontation is Syria. As mentioned, the U.S. and its NATO ally, Turkey, have already attacked and killed Russians in Syria, and the U.S. and its NATO allies have a far larger military force than Russia in Syria and the surrounding area. On the other hand, Russia has made very effective use of its forces, including what Reuters calls "advanced cruise missiles" launched from planes, ships , and submarines that hit ISIS targets with high precision from 1000 kilometers.

Russia is also operating in accordance with international law, while the U.S. is not. Russia is fighting with Syria for the defeat of jihadi forces and the unification of the Syrian state. The United States is fighting with its jihadi clients for the overthrow of the Syrian government and the division of the country. Russia intervened in Syria after Obama announced that the U.S. would attack Syrian army troops, effectively declaring war. If neither side accepts defeat and goes home, it is quite possible there will be some direct confrontation over this. In fact, it's hard to imagine that there won't.

A couple of weeks ago Syria and Russia said the U.S. was planning a major offensive against the Syrian government, including bombing the government quarter in Damascus. Valery Gerasimov, head of Russia's General Staff, warned: "In the event of a threat to the lives of our servicemen, Russia's armed forces will take retaliatory measures against the missiles and launchers used." In this context, "launchers" means American ships in the Mediterranean.

Also a couple of weeks ago, Russia announced a number of new, highly-advanced weapons systems. There's discussion about whether some of the yet-to-be-deployed weapons announced may or may not be a bluff, but one that has already been deployed, called Dagger ( Kinzhal, not the missiles mentioned above), is an air-launched hypersonic cruise missile that files at 5-7,000 miles per hour, with a range of 1200 miles. Analyst Andrei Martyanov claims that: "no modern or perspective air-defense system deployed today by any NATO fleet can intercept even a single missile with such characteristics. A salvo of 5-6 such missiles guarantees the destruction of any Carrier Battle Group or any other surface group, for that matter." Air-launched. From anywhere.

The U.S. attack has not (yet) happened, for whatever reason (Sputnik reporter Suliman Mulhem, citing "a military monitor," claims that's because of the Russian warnings). Great. But given the current state of America's anxiously aggressive "post-primacy" policy -- including the Russiamania, the Zionist-driven need to destroy Syria and Iran, and the War Cabinet -- how unlikely is that the U.S. will, in the near future, make some such attack on some such target that Russia considers crucial to defend?

And Syria is just one theater where, unless one side accepts defeat and goes home, military conflict with Russia is highly likely. Is Russia going to abandon the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass if they're attacked by fascist Kiev forces backed by the U.S.? Is it going to sit back and watch passively if American and Israeli forces attack Iran? Which one is going to give up and accept a loss: John Bolton or Vladimir Putin?

Which brings us to the pointed question: What will the U.S. do if Russia sinks an American ship? How many steps before that goes full-scale, even nuclear? Or maybe American planners (and you, dear reader) are absolutely, positively sure that will never happen, because the U.S. has cool weapons, too, and a lot more of them, and the Russians will probably lose all their ships in the Mediterranean immediately, if not something worse, and they'll put up with anything rather than go one more step. The Russians, like everybody, must know the Americans always win.

Happy with that, are we? Snug in our homeland rug? 'Cause Russians won't fight, but the Taliban will.

This is exactly what is meant by Americans not fearing war with Russia (or war in general for that matter). Nothing but contempt.

The Skripal opera, directed by the United States, with the whole of Europe and the entire Western media apparatus singing in harmony, makes it clear that the American producers have no speaking role for Russia in their staging of the world. And that contempt makes war much more likely. Here's The Saker again, on how dangerous the isolation the U.S. and its European clients are so carelessly imposing on Russia and themselves is for everybody:

Right now they are expelling Russian diplomats en mass e and they are feeling very strong and manly.

The truth is that this is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg. In reality, crucial expert-level consultations, which are so vitally important between nuclear superpowers, have all but stopped a long time ago. We are down to top level telephone calls. That kind of stuff happens when two sides are about to go to war. For many months now Russia and NATO have made preparations for war in Europe. Very rapidly the real action will be left to the USA and Russia. Thus any conflict will go nuclear very fast. And, for the first time in history, the USA will be hit very, very hard, not only in Europe, the Middle-East or Asia, but also on the continental US.

Mass diplomatic expulsions, economic warfare, lockstep propaganda, no interest whatsoever in respectfully addressing or hearing from the other side. What we've been seeing over the past few months is the "kind of stuff that happens when two sides are about to go to war."

The less Americans fear war, the less they respect the possibility of it, the more likely they are to get it.

Ready or Not

The Saker makes a diptych of a point that gets to the heart of the matter. We'd do well to read and think on it carefully:

1/ The Russians are afraid of war. The Americans are not.

2/ The Russians are ready for war. The Americans are not.

Russia is afraid of war. More than twenty million Soviet citizens were killed in WWII, about half of them civilians. That was more than twenty times the number of Americans and British casualties combined. The entire country was devastated. Millions died in the 872-day siege of Leningrad alone, including Vladimir Putin's brother. The city's population was decimated by disease and starvation, with some reduced to cannibalism. Wikileaks calls it "one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history [and] possibly the costliest in casualties." Another million-plus died in the nine-month siege of Stalingrad.

Every Russian knows this history. Millions of Russian families have suffered from it. Of course, there was mythification of the struggle and its heroes, but the Russians, viscerally, know war and know it can happen to them . They do not want to go through it again. They will do almost anything to avoid it. Russians are not flippant about war. They fear it. They respect it.

The Americans are not (afraid of war). Americans have never experienced anything remotely as devastating as this. About 620,000 Americans died in the Civil War, 150 years ago. (And we're still entangled in that!) The American mainland has not been attacked by a significant military force since the War of 1812. Since then, the worst attacks on American territory are two one-off incidents (Pearl Harbor and 9/11), separated by seventy years, totaling about six-thousand casualties. These are the iconic moments of America Under Siege.

For the American populace, wars are "over there," fought by a small group of Americans who go away and either come back or don't. The death, destruction, and aroma of warfare -- which the United States visits on people around the world incessantly -- is unseen and unexperienced at home. Americans do not, cannot, believe, in any but the most abstract intellectual sense, that war can happen here , to them. For the general populace, talk of war is just more political background noise, Morgan Freeman competing for attention with Stormy Daniels and the Kardashians.

Americans are supremely insouciant about war: They threaten countries with it incessantly, the government routinely sells it with lies, and the political parties promote it opportunistically to defeat their opponents -- and nobody cares. For Americans, war is part of a game. They do not fear it. They do not respect it.

The Russians are ready for war. The Nazi onslaught was defeated -- in Soviet Russia, by Soviet Citizens and the Red Army -- because the mass of people stood and fought together for a victory they understood was important. They could not have withstood horrific sieges and defeated the Nazis any other way. Russians understand, in other words, that war is a crisis of death and destruction visited on the whole of society, which can only be won by a massive and difficult effort grounded in social solidarity. If the Russians feel they have to fight, if they feel besieged, they know they will have to stand together, take the hits that come, and fight to the finish. They will not again permit war to be brought to their cities while their attacker stays snug. There will be a world of hurt. They will develop and use any weapon they can. And their toughest weapon is not a hypersonic missile; it's that solidarity, implied by that 77%. (Did you read that Simonyan statement?) They may not be seeking it, but, insofar as anybody can be, they are ready to fight.

Americans are not (ready for war): Americans experience the horror of wars as a series of discrete tragedies visited upon families of fallen soldiers, reported in human-interest vignettes at the end of the nightly news. Individual tragedies, not a social disaster.

It's hard to imagine the social devastation of war in any case, but American culture wants no part of thinking about that concretely. The social imagination of war is deflected into fantastic scenarios of a super-hero universe or a zombie apocalypse. The alien death-ray may blow up the Empire State Building, but the hero and his family (now including his or her gender-ambivalent teenager, and, of course, the dog) will survive and triumph. Cartoon villains, cartoon heroes, and a cartoon society.

One reason for this, we have to recognize, is the victory of the Thatcherite/libertarian-capitalist "no such thing as society" ideology. Congratulations, Ayn Rand, there is no such thing as American society now. It's every incipient entrepreneur for him or herself. This does not a comradely, fighting band of brothers and sisters make.

Furthermore, though America is constantly at war, nobody understands the purpose of it. That's because the real purpose can never be explained, and must be hidden behind some facile abstraction -- "democracy," "our freedoms," etc. This kind of discourse can get some of the people motivated for some of the time, but it loses its charm the minute someone gets smacked in the face.

Once they take a moment, everybody can see that there is nobody with an army threatening to attack and destroy the United States, and if they take a few moments, everybody can see how phony the "democracy and freedom" stuff is and remember how often they've been lied to before. There's just too much information out there. (Which is why the Imperial High Command wants to control the internet.) Why the hell am I fighting? What in hell are we fighting for? These are questions everybody will ask after, and too many people are now asking before, they get smacked in the face.

This lack of social understanding and lack of political support translates into the impossibility of fighting a major, sustained war that requires taking heavy casualties -- even "over there," but certainly in the snug. American culture might be all gung-ho about Seal Team Six kicking ass, but the minute American homes start blowing up and American bodies start falling, Hoo-hah becomes Uh-oh , and it's going to be Outta here .

Americans are ready for Hoo-hah and the Shark Tank and the Zombie Apocalypse. They are not ready for war.

You Get What You Play For

"Russiagate," which started quite banally in the presidential campaign as a Democratic arrow to take down Trump, is now Russiamania -- a battery of weapons wielded by various sectors of the state, aimed at an array of targets deemed even potentially resistant to imperial militarism. Trump himself -- still, and for as long as he's deemed unreliable -- is targeted by a legal prosecution of infinite reach (whose likeliest threat is to take him down for something that has nothing to do with Russia). Russia itself is now targeted in full force by economic, diplomatic, ideological -- and, tentatively, military -- weapons of the state. Perhaps most importantly, American and European people, especially dissidents, are targeted by a unified media barrage that attacks any expression of radical critique, anything that "sows division" -- from Black Lives Matter, to the Sanders campaign, to "But other countries could have made it" -- as Russian treachery.

The stunning success of that last offensive is crucial to making a war more likely, and must be fought. To increase the risk of war with a nuclear power in order to score points against Donald Trump or Jill Stein -- well, only those who neither respect, fear, nor are ready for war would do such a stupid and dangerous thing.

It's impossible to predict with certainty whether, when, or with whom a major hot war will be started. The same chaotic disarray and impulsiveness of the Trump administration that increases the danger of war might also work to prevent it. John Bolton may be fired before he trims his moustache. But it's a pressure-cooker, and the temperature has spiked drastically.

In a previous essay , I said that Venezuela was a likely first target for military attack, precisely because it would make for an easy victory that didn't risk military confrontation with Russia. That's still a good possibility. As we saw with Iraq Wars 1 (which helped to end the "Vietnam Syndrome") and 2 (which somewhat resurrected it), the imperial high command needs to inure the American public with a virtually American-casualty-free victory and in order to lure them into taking on a war that's going to hurt.

But the new War Cabinet may be pumped for the main event -- an attack on Iran. Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton are all rabid proponents of regime-change in Iran. We can be certain that the Iran nuclear deal will be scrapped, and everyone will work hard to implement the secret agreement the Trump administration already has with Israel to "to deal with Iran's nuclear drive, its missile programs and its other threatening activities" -- or, as Trump himself expresses it: "cripple the [Iranian] regime and bring it to collapse." (That agreement, by the way, was negotiated and signed by the previous, supposedly not-so-belligerent National Security Advisor, H. R. McMaster.)

Still, as I also said in the previous essay, an attack on Iran means the Americans must either make sure Russia doesn't get in the way or make clear that they don't care if it does. So, threatening moves -- not excluding probing military moves -- against Russia will increase, whether Russia is the preferred direct target or not.

The siege is on.

Americans who want to continue playing with this fire would do well to pay some respectful attention to the target whose face they want to smack. Russia did not boast or brag or threaten or Hoo-Hah about sending military forces to Syria. When it was deemed necessary -- when the United States declared its intention to attack the Syrian Army -- it just did it. And American10-dimensional-chess players have been squirming around trying to deal with the implications of that ever since. They're working hard on finding the right mix of threats, bluffs, sanctions, expulsions, "Shut up and go away!" insults, military forces on the border, and "bloody nose" attacks to force a capitulation. They should be listening to their target, who has not tired of asking for a "partnership," who has clearly stated what his country would do in reaction to previous moves (e.g., the abrogation of the ABM Treaty and stationing of ABM bases in Eastern Europe), whose country and family have suffered from wartime devastation Americans cannot imagine, who therefore respects, fears, and is ready for war in ways Americans are not, and who is not playing their game:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/9QxWYIAtCMU

Notes.

[1] Ironically, given current drivers of Russiamania, this is a reference to remarks by Janet Napolitano. " The Enemization of Everything or an American Story of Empathy & Healing? "

[2] Though it's ridiculous that it needs to be said: I'm not talking here about the phony fear engendered by the media presentation of the "strongman," "brutal dictator" Vladimir Putin. This is part and parcel of comic-book politics -- conjuring a super-villain, who, we all know, is destined to be defeated. Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Jim Kavanagh

Jim Kavanagh edits The Polemicist .

[Jun 18, 2019] I think i know who killed Jesus

Jun 18, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

TheLastMan , 1 hour ago link

I think i know who killed Jesus

lobro , 1 hour ago link

yes, Pontius Pilates passport was found under the cross.

[Jun 18, 2019] I think i know who killed Jesus

Jun 18, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

TheLastMan , 1 hour ago link

I think i know who killed Jesus

lobro , 1 hour ago link

yes, Pontius Pilates passport was found under the cross.

[Jun 18, 2019] 7 times Putin apparently trounced US at St. Petersburg Forum

Notable quotes:
"... 'US hegemony contradicts aims of humanity's future' ..."
"... 'US dollar used as a pressure tool' ..."
"... 'Arms twisting and intimidation' ..."
"... "Waging first technological war of digital era" ..."
"... The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is also under fire from the US, despite being in line with the national interests of Russia and all participating European nations. "But it doesn't fit the logic and the interests of those, who got used to [their] own exceptionalism and permissiveness; who got used to their bills being paid by others." ..."
"... 'Unjust system will never be stable' ..."
"... Any system based on obvious injustice will never be stable and balanced. ..."
Jun 07, 2019 | www.rt.com

Vladimir Putin had a lot to say about the US at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, warning that Washington's policies may turn global economy into battle royal and suggesting that dollar's role should be revised.

Even though the Russian president didn't always identify the US or the Donald Trump administration by name, he didn't mince words about America's aggressive economic policies either.

  1. 'US hegemony contradicts aims of humanity's future'

    Washington's desperate attempts to maintain its hegemony on the international arena put the current globalist model of the world at risk of "turning into a spoof, a parody of itself," the Russian president pointed out.

    When universal international rules are replaced by laws; administrative and judicial mechanisms of a single country or a group of influential states, like the US is now doing by extending its jurisdiction on the whole world – such model contradicts not only the logic of international communications and the realities of the emerging multipolar world, but more importantly – it doesn't fit the tasks of humanity's future.

  2. 'US dollar used as a pressure tool'

    "Deep changes require adaptation of international financial organizations, reconsidering the role of the US dollar, which after it became international reserve currency, turned into the tool of pressure of the country, which issues it, on the rest of the world today," Putin said.

    The US authorities "are themselves undermining their advantages, created by the Bretton Woods system. The trust in the dollar is declining."

    Another negative outcome of the policy of sanction and pressure pursued by the US could be "the fragmentation of the global economic space; unrestricted economic egoism and attempts to push own interests forward through force."

    This is the way to endless conflicts; to trade wars and maybe not only trade ones. Figuratively speaking, a fight without rules – a battle royal.

  3. 'Arms twisting and intimidation'

    The Americans and their allies got used to being privileged, but "when this comfortable system started shaking, when their competitors grew some muscle, the ambitions and the desire to maintain its dominance at all cost got the better" of the West.

    "States that previously advocated the principles of freedom of trade, fair and open competition, started speaking the language of trade wars and sanctions, blatant economic raiding, arm twisting, intimidation, eliminating competitors by so-called non-market methods."

  4. "Waging first technological war of digital era"

    Putin delved into "the situation around the company Huawei," which saw its products and services banned in the US over unsubstantiated claims of spying for the Chinese government.

    There are attempts being made not just to put it under pressure, but to brazenly force it out of the global market. In some circles, this is even called the first technological war of the coming digital era.

    The rapid digital transformation was seemingly aimed at "opening new horizons for everyone, who is ready for the change," but the moves by Washington show that "barriers are being erected here too" and it's a reason for serious concern.

    The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is also under fire from the US, despite being in line with the national interests of Russia and all participating European nations. "But it doesn't fit the logic and the interests of those, who got used to [their] own exceptionalism and permissiveness; who got used to their bills being paid by others."

  5. 'Unjust system will never be stable'

    The US push for monopoly propels the problem of inequality to "a new level" both on state and individual level. "An attempt is being made to create two worlds, separated from each other by a constantly expanding abyss. When one has access to state-of-the-art systems of education and healthcare as well as modern technologies, while the others have no perspectives, no chance to even get out of poverty and the third – simply left fighting for survival."

  6. Any system based on obvious injustice will never be stable and balanced.

See also:

[Jun 18, 2019] Wikileaks CIA Stole Russian Malware, Uses It to Misdirect Attribution of Cyber Attacks

Notable quotes:
"... So perhaps the DNC was hacked by the CIA and it was blamed on the Russians. ..."
"... How can we trust any investigation when the investigation can be doctored to scapegoat Russia? This is embarrassing. ..."
"... Clapper is a known perjurer. ..."
"... Of course it was the Obama CIA, pros like the Russians or Chinese, never leave behind "fingerprints" they are smart enough to cover their tracks. As a cyber analyst I can tell you that when you see "fingerprints or breadcrumbs" leading to a source, it's usually deceptive and intentional. Let that sink in! ..."
Jun 12, 2019 | russia-insider.com

From the Wikileaks "Year Zero" dump:

The CIA's Remote Devices Branch 's UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques 'stolen' from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.

With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the "fingerprints" of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.

UMBRAGE components cover keyloggers, password collection, webcam capture, data destruction, persistence, privilege escalation, stealth, anti-virus (PSP) avoidance and survey techniques.

Everyone knew it. Now we have proof. "Fingerprints" are meaningless. It's now clear that the CIA is able to "pose" as "Russian hackers" whenever it so chooses. Just something to think about. All allegations of "digital fingerprints" left behind by Russian hackers must now be dismissed as either fake or meaningless

ChasMoDee • 2 years ago ,

So perhaps the DNC was hacked by the CIA and it was blamed on the Russians.

Disco Obama ChasMoDee • 2 years ago ,

How can we trust any investigation when the investigation can be doctored to scapegoat Russia? This is embarrassing.

disqus_ayvQwhvS6h Disco Obama • 2 years ago ,

Since 2002. You sheep have had the wool pulled over since 2002. It's been 15 years. Imagine how much you won't find out til the next 15.

Tom • 2 years ago ,

So the CIA obtained FISA Warrants for the millions of devices hacked? Guess we now know how Trump Tower was wiretapped when DNI Clapper said there was no such order given.

JackBootedThug✓ Tom • 2 years ago ,

Clapper is a known perjurer.

American Freeman • 2 years ago ,

Now we know how Obama's administration got through the FISA Court to tape Trump.

4ever&anon • 2 years ago ,

So! It now becomes clear what Obama and the Democrats were planning for the Trump Administration. They could hack away at anything and everything and leave Russian "fingerprints" to make it appear that the Russians did it. It's really no telling what is already planted. Thst's why some Democrat's seem so supremely confident that Trump will be impeached.

I don't think that it's really sunk in for most people that this was a plan for World Domination by a force more evil than the average person could ever imagine. We're still in grave danger but thank Heaven for Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Not only have they saved America but perhaps the whole world from domination that heretofore couldn't even be imagined except in science fiction.

Our problem will now be how to build enough gallows to accomodate the traitors and seditionists who have participated in this dark plan.

Mike John Elissen • 2 years ago ,

Hysteria in Oceania. The same goons blaming Russia for robbing the local candy store (without producing evidence) are robbing the candy factory 24/7. All of a sudden, the MSM has found issues and terms like `non-verified documents` and `non-verifiable, anonymous sources` to be of the utmost importance, in contrast to when they were copy-pasting the ` information` about Russian hacking. I wonder how much time it takes for the Ministries of Information and their docile press-clowns to (again) turn the story around and blame WikiLeaks for being a `Russian tool` to discard their own obvious crimes.

Elevator2TheTop • 2 years ago ,

This whole Russian hacking thing is sounding more and more like the anti-Muslim video that sparked the Benghazi attacks.

Bad Hombre • 2 years ago ,

They wiretapped the entire Trump team thinking they would come up with an October surprise...and found NOTHING. If they had ANYTHING, it would have been used prior to the election. And, since Hillary was supposed to win, the illegal wire taps would never have been disclosed.

Now Trump has exposed the Obama admin and democrats are hyperventilating over Russia to deflect from the crimes they committed.

ruadh Bad Hombre • 2 years ago ,

We always knew that, were told we were crazy, now we have proof. The MSM has been gas-lighting us. I wonder how many red pills you have to swallow to get to the other side of this Rabbit Hole?

middleclasstaxpayer • 2 years ago ,

It seems our government really is the most corrupt entity on this planet.

lou Guest • 2 years ago ,

Well BO moved to Washington so it will be easy for the Press to shout these questions at him at his home or a restaurant or a ballgame. We need answers BO, and right now. No BS. anymore. Or go back to Indonesia and hide out.

Peter Shoobridge ن ruadh • 2 years ago ,

It's really not fun. The intelligence agencies are unaccountable and cloak their criminality with the secrecy of national security. They're not going to back down. They're ruthless. And they kill people for sport. This will not end well unless the military is called in to round them up, which has huge risks of its own...

TGFD • 2 years ago ,

TGFD here.
As far as I'm concerned. death becomes anyone in the effing CIA. Same goes for their parasitic family members. Death's image would look good on them.
There is NO secret in the CIA that I would not expose if I could.

I never heard of the term, "Deep State" prior to 2 months ago, and I don't like what I hear, either. I pray that somehow, God will enable TRUMP to vanquish all the filth in the deep state.

William Dickerson • 2 years ago ,

I knew it - the documents I looked over, the IP addresses I checked, the supposed "malware" that the US said "was the same as we know Russia had used" and more - and it just did not add up.

Now to be sure the American population is dumb when it comes to technology - and they usually blindly believe what the CIA, and media, tells them. But me - being in IT for some decades and having worked with Russian people for 6 years (in an electronics engineering company founded by a Russian immigrant to the U.S.) and being a network security administrator for a small government agency, something smelled odd.

The IP addresses - hahaha - really? Try again - up until the spring of 2016 American company Verizon routed 1 million stolen IP addresses - used by cyber-criminals in the USA........ so guess where some of those IP addresses REALLY belonged. Further, the "CIA" and other spooks included - honestly? TOR exit node addresses. If you use TOR browser, you will find some of those same addresses in your own logs (unless you are smart and either purge or don't log, etc.)
So try again, U.S. spooks - the malware? HAHA - what a JOKE. Really. I mean older software that John Q. Public can download for FREE? Sorry, Russians are far far smarter and they'd not use OLD software that works on WordPress based on PHP servers when the target isn't based on blogging software.

Sorry, silly Americans - including and especially McCain and others in our congress who are, say what? members of INTELLIGENCE committees? Really?

You help guide the intelligence and security operations of a major country and you fall for the BS that was presented to you? Did you not ask questions? I did - I did my own research and I guess that proves I'm as smart or smarter than any member of and house or Senate intelligence committee. Do these people even know where the power button is on their computer? Smart - they hire unvetted IT people to take care of congressional computers....... and some of the equipment ends up missing, and these people have full free access as admins to computers used by congressional members of armed services committees and more!

That's how smart our U.S. congress is. Hire your brother-in-laws IT geek, give 'em full admin access, let them come and go freely........... and fall for intelligence reports about Russian hacking...... all the while our own CIA is doing MORE and WORSE.

While this topic is still fresh (thanks to the Democrats) - election interference - Election or campaign interference scores according to political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University: Russia - 36 times, U.S.A - 81 times

The USA's score number doesn't include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn't like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. Nor does it include general assistance with the electoral process, such as election monitoring.

So who exactly is it that interferes or "Helps" with elections? Yeah, I thought so.

President Vladimir Putin must go home each night shaking his head in disbelief at how gullible we are here.

By the way - Podesta was NOT HACKED. He fell for a simple phishing scam. Yes, the email wasn't even very well done. It appeared more like it came out of Nigeria than any professional group, it was lame, didn't even look real, didn't sound real and the URL or link was so obvious, geesh, a fool could have seen it was phishing. Oh, wait, we're talking Podesta here. The man gave away his password (which for a while was indeed 'password'. Worse - he used what for his campaign work? Did you say GMAIL? You have to be kidding! A free consumer email, based in the cloud, and not only that, at least 3 others had account access to his Gmail. He kept documents, calendar, task lists and more in it. The phishing scammer got access to his Gmail inbox, sent items, attachments, calendar, Google Drive, Google Docs, you name it! No hacking needed since this is CLOUD BASED. No one had to touch his computer or iPad.

I really laughed when I found in those emails the admin credentials for his Wi-Fi, and even more funny - the admin credentials for his building security system. Yes, all that in his cloud-based Gmail account. As Bugs Bunny would say- what a maroon!

No wonder he's mad and trying to blame everyone else. He has to know he was scammed and he fell for it and it was all HIS FAULT, no one else but him. Using Gmail for such important work is STUPID as it is - but then to fall for phishing. He got what he deserved, and if it was Russians, tell those teenagers congratulations! That's all it took to phish Podesta - the skill set of KIDS in their early teens.

I could go on about the stupidity involved in all of this, but won't (I hear a collective sigh of relief!)

rayg • 2 years ago ,

So, did the Russians hack the election? Or did the Obama CIA hack the election and just did a pizz-poor job of it? Or perhaps Obama really did not want Hillary to win.

This might make those congressional investigations into the alleged hacking of the election by Russians a lot more interesting. That is, of course, assuming that the investigations are really about finding the truth.

Michael K rayg • 2 years ago ,

Obama Hates Hillary but could not openly control her. With Trump elected he could work openly to damage his administration, and with the help of MSM demonize him, and make him look like a tool of the Russians as well as his appointees. Notice, there was no talk of Russian hacking prior to the election. The "intelligence" agencies waited for the election results to come out with their charges.

Use delaying tactics to prevent approval of appointees, attack and possibly remove approved appointees eroding confidence in the current government. With the help of RINOs delay legislation. Pay protestors to protest everything Trump does using labels such as sexist, racist, Nazi, etc.

Obama's and DNC's goal: Prevent any progress till the mid term elections and try and overturn the balance in Congress to get the liberal agenda back on track. Get poised for the 2020 election and run a more palatable candidate than Hillary.

Gonzogal Michael K • 2 years ago ,

"Obama's and DNC's goal: Prevent any progress till the mid term elections and try and overturn the balance in Congress to get the liberal agenda back on track. Get poised for the 2020 election and run a more palatable candidate than Hillary."

Or, according to Obomber's club make it so that Trump "either resigns or is impeached"
http://www.zerohedge.com/ne...
http://www.zerohedge.com/ne...

Geoff Caldwell • 2 years ago ,

Let's unpack this. All those rumors about the Obama's hating the Clinton's? TRUE BUT, he couldn't let DOJ go through with indictment so instead gets Clapper, Brennan and the boys to use Russian fingerprints to hack and then sits back and watches the chaos unfold. When you go back to how he got his start in Chicago its exactly how he operates.

Marsha Moore • 2 years ago ,

I am furious. I read the original re CIA attempting to influence French elections. But this is CLEAR TREASON by Obama Administration. I NEVER trusted Brennen. violation for CIA to operate inside US.

rlqretired • 2 years ago ,

Looks like this is an example of Obama/CIA preparation for Treason?

The thing that really pisses me off is that the factual basis for all of this criminal and treasonous activity by the Obama Administration, that is being exposed today, remains covered-up by everyone in a position of responsibility to expose it. That factual basis is that every identification document Obama has presented to prove he is a citizen of the USA is a forgery. Based upon the totality of his record as president he is an agent of foreign Islamic allegiance and everything he has done in the Middle East always ends up in favor of radical Islam and refuses to even acknowledge radical Islamic terrorism exists. The same goes for his refusal to acknowledge domestic Islamic terrorism exists.

Factual answers for these three questions will clear up why we are having this treasonous activity. (1) Why does Obama have and need a forged birth certificate as he posted on his POTUS website? (2) Why does Obama's first officially issued copy of his Selective Service Registration Card have a forged 2 digit postal stamp? (3) Why is Obama using a SS# that was first issued to someone else? These three questions must be answered by Congress as the researched information verifying forgery is readily available and will expose the basis of this treason.

Play Hide
Spyplane • 2 years ago ,

Let's not forget that logging into an email server because of a weak password and getting a copy of emails does not scream CIA. Also John Podesta's email password was extremely weak. So it did not take a covert CIA hacking program to initiate. We keep hearing Russia hacked our election. Yet have ZERO proof! First the majority of election machines are decentralized and not connected to internet. There was not a single instance where vote the count was effected. This was also immediately stated by Obamas DNI. Claiming they ran a propaganda attack on Hillary Clinton is pathetic. They are claiming the American people did not see who Hillary Clinton truly was. The opposite is true.

Hillary Clinton had made her own propaganda against herself. She is who the American people see. Not what the Russians programmed Us to see. The American people made a choice based on her actions no one else's. The liberals continually attacking someone with false claims without proof is a standard Liberal / Alyinsky strategy. It requires no proof if all liberal extremist continually repeat the same attack which is then amplified by the Liberal propaganda media (CNN, MSNBC, CBS, The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, etc)

The Russian collusion claim is the exact same scenario. Make the claim which we already knew the Trump campaign speaks with Russian diplomats. Most people in politics interact with all countries diplomat and ambassadors. So instantly the claim is impossible to debunk. The Liberal party has become a party willing to use any and all tactics to avoid listening to the American people. This whole Russian drama is created to go against what the American people voted for. The democrat party is as much a threat to The United States as Communism ever was. It has been said if fascism ever comes back to the United States it will come in the form of liberalism. So the American people have a choice.

Use common sense and stop the liberal extremist party from destroying our democracy or deal with the consequences of America becoming ineffective and divided. The majority of the Democrat party and it's supporters have become so ideologically perverted they have lost sight of morality and what America stands for.

The Russians have not hypnotized Americans to vote for Donald Trump. It wasn't possible for the Russians to manipulate voter data and yes the Trump campaign speaks with Russian diplomats.

But it was the same Russian ambassador that Obama left in the country while expelling all others. The same Russian ambassador Obama scheduled meetings with for Jeff sessions. The same rushing ambassador that all Democrat spend time with. Make a claim that's true then find a way to turn it negative.

Typical Saul Alinsky. Everyone needs to remember anything the Liberals attack someone for the opposite is true.

Today Is The Day We Get Trump Spyplane • 2 years ago ,

The point of the Wikileaks is that "proof" is easily manufactured.

DanJR • 2 years ago ,

And now you know that the CIA (via Obama's orders or tacit approval) was the one that created the ruse of Trump emailing a Russian bank as a pretext to persuade FISA judges to sign off on the warrants to keep surveillance on him and his contacts.

If I were Obama I'd be seeking the nearest airport and fly to any country offering asylum... it's good night, good riddance for him and the rest of the Deep State Globalists.

seanster5977 • 2 years ago ,

Kind of funny where this started. Remember Hillary stole a server from the government secure server facility and set it up in her basement without proper security software and monitoring for hacking. Proven. And she had idiots in her staff so stupid they used passwords like "p@ssword". Proven. So any 11 year old computer expert could have hacked that server.

And she lied about the content of the messages being transferred. Top secret and classified info was lost due to her illegal actions. But Comey gave the pig a pass.

LH • 2 years ago ,

Of course it was the Obama CIA, pros like the Russians or Chinese, never leave behind "fingerprints" they are smart enough to cover their tracks. As a cyber analyst I can tell you that when you see "fingerprints or breadcrumbs" leading to a source, it's usually deceptive and intentional. Let that sink in!

[Jun 16, 2019] When false information is specifically political in nature, part of our political identity, it becomes almost impossible to correct lies.

Jun 16, 2019 | www.politico.com

Leda Cosmides at the University of California, Santa Barbara, points to her work with her colleague John Tooby on the use of outrage to mobilize people: "The campaign was more about outrage than about policies," she says. And when a politician can create a sense of moral outrage, truth ceases to matter. People will go along with the emotion, support the cause and retrench into their own core group identities. The actual substance stops being of any relevance.

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth University who studies false beliefs, has found that when false information is specifically political in nature, part of our political identity, it becomes almost impossible to correct lies.

... ... ...

As the 19th-century Scottish philosopher Alexander Bain put it, “The great master fallacy of the human mind is believing too much.” False beliefs, once established, are incredibly tricky to correct. A leader who lies constantly creates a new landscape, and a citizenry whose sense of reality may end up swaying far more than they think possible.

[Jun 16, 2019] The convenient truth media wars by Immanuel Fruhmann

Jun 14, 2019 | www.asiatimes.com
What's new about news that people anticipate? Polarized societies feature politicized media hammering their agenda into people's heads like they are banging on war drums.

"News outlets are supposed to report the facts." Fine. However, if news reports are not about "the new" but about "the facts," why not call "news stations" "fact-stations"? Maybe because facts are old and therefore not sexy?

Media stations "sexify" facts to avoid being seen as arbiters of "old news." If it's about new facts on the news, remember: People anticipate the news. Why include facts on the news then? Is it to educate the public with selected content?

The term "content" is neutral, not sexy, unsuitable for political or media campaigns. Media outlets abandon objectivity when sensationalizing content to entertain, calling convenient content "facts" and "truth" versus "lies" and "fake" (non-opportune content).

It's a media-politics nexus, when media and politics collude: Politicians campaign on social media plus established "old media." Politicized media propagating "facts" sacrifice objectivity on the altar of politics (knowledge sociology describes "sluice gates": information, selection, utilization – watergates of ideology compromising perspective) when tendentiously "the facts" selected tackle "the usual suspects," the political enemy?

Declared "truth," "fact," and "objective content" outsell. Old media expect the people to buy "the facts" propagated as "reality," but "the facts" are a selection of facts ideally. The world is full of facts like science, but perspective, motive, intention are deciding which of the facts are relevant.

"Fact checkers review the facts!" Not so fast, please: Again, what are considered "facts" in the first place depends on selectors, the fact checkers' perspective picking "the facts" from all the facts, let alone those accepting the facts mindlessly, as already approved. Politicized media select convenient facts and comment issues that are ideologically opportune. Scientific findings of knowledge sociology and criticism of ideology potentially disclosing politicized media hardly become news. Why convincing, standardizing people's perspectives to rally behind pushed facts? For political reasons?

"Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it." (Maimonides, Sephardic Jewish philosopher)

Broadcasting "the truth" doesn't make it more true, only multiplied. Politicized old media recruit via propagation (ideologically selected convenient content), red-flagging "fake news" etc to retain the people as customers. Unsurprisingly, the facts on the news spare established media's "fact-selectors." But: "There's a major media station's consensus on the facts!" Right, but media proponents agreeing on "the facts" don't necessarily indicate objectivity, rather a bubble they are marooned by.

After millennia of human civilization, here we are: Old-media proponents fighting for interpretational sovereignty call one another "liars," "fake news" challenged by the new kid on the block: Social media. How anti-democratic of old media, as defaming social media is akin to a crusade against the people.

Old media were stabilizers of societal order as long uncontestedly educating the public at will. Now old media as interpreters-in-chief of politicians communicating directly to the people are dethroned by social media, a game changer in the media world.

Social media appear as mouthpieces of the people, while old media act as mouthpieces of the establishment. Social media give a voice to all the people, unlike politicized old media selecting political interest groups while commenting dissidents negatively ad nauseam.

Do old media really want to educate people thinking for themselves or to create human copies, "useful idiots" backing the pushed "facts"?

"The public has the right to know the truth." Right, but educated people are hard to govern, knowing the truth beyond the noise of politicized media.

Media proponents antagonizing certain politicians they feel extremely annoyed by don't show objectivity but influence. Media proponents fighting extremism with extremism undermine professional journalism.

We, the public, deserve better than journalist market criers pushing the convenient truth (preferred facts), inviting conformist "experts" (experts in conformism) to panels reminding of kangaroo courts, condemning political dissidents and rallying the people behind opportune ideology. The public has the right not to be manipulated but to be taken seriously, to know the different angles neutrally displayed.

How objective are media proponents who advocate for persecuted political dissidents afar while combating domestic dissidents' perspectives?

Objectivity demands: Inviting different opinions equally represented, not highlighting one while discriminating against dissidents. Professional journalism distinguishes between "describing" and "judging." Media proponents lost professionalism by taking the easy way out, calling dissidents they dislike "liars," "fake," "conspiracy theorists" etc.

In an overheating media world, please note: Not every theory you dislike is a conspiracy theory. Not every person who says something you dislike is a liar.

Remember George Orwell's remark, " The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it." We're in the thick of it. Politicized media stoke societal hatred making money by age-old friend-foe schemes combating political foes. Good vs Evil creates winners and losers. Media proponents appearing as "the good guys," "custodians of truth" provoke resistance.

In times of democratization, billions using social media build public pressure against an exclusive old media regime on a crusade to standardize perspectives.

Bygone are the times when people followed leaders blindly. Efforts of persuasion skyrocketed. People strive for self-determination. Yet politicians and politicized media with foam at the mouth consider themselves spearheading a pluralized public, democratized, empowered by social media, which are combated by old media and politicians claiming to represent emancipated people, who want to represent themselves.

The more "20th century" old media appear politicized, one-sided, top-down and detached from the people, the more social media flourish bottom-up. Social media apps on old media cannot sugarcoat old media's archaic structures. The more CNN, Fox etc politicize, the more society falls apart.

Today a paradigm shift is unfolding: Old media seem uber-politicized, driven by the left and the right fighting for message control, "recruiting-mobilizing-rallying" as ever. But this fight has entered the social-media arena: People speak up, voice their opinions. When the media monitor politics and social media, then who monitors old media? Social media – we, the people. Asia Times is not responsible for the opinions, facts or any media content presented by contributors.

Immanuel Fruhmann

Dr. Phil. Immanuel Fruhmann is an Austrian philosopher and educationist specialized in philosophy of science and language, cultural and social philosophy, as well as adult education, with years of experience in analysis of geopolitics and giving philosophical and educational insights to the public. He is psychotherapist in training and works as coach and consultant as well as writer. Fruhmann is a Knight of the Order of St George, a European Order of the Imperial House of Habsburg-Lorraine, as well as member of the board of the Austrian Education Alliance, associated member of the Kinderbüro (political lobby for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child), and the Austrian Economic League.

[Jun 15, 2019] The queen of RussiaGate is going to be asking questions at the debates

MadCow disease of neoliberal MSM is spreading...
Jun 15, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

snoopydawg on Tue, 06/11/2019 - 5:01pm

@skod

So a flaming Russia conspiracist is going to moderate the first Democratic presidential debates. What a joke https://t.co/6QWPrS2cZk

-- Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 11, 2019

Pluto's Republic on Tue, 06/11/2019 - 5:25pm
Scenes we'd like to see:

@snoopydawg

Anyone want to bet that she will ask someone a question about what they will do to keep Russia from interfering with the election again?

I would love to see that. All answers will be the wrong answer.

[Jun 15, 2019] Why Didn't Mueller Investigate Seth Rich

Parteigenosse Mueller mission was to derail Trump. Investigation of real DNC scandal was outside of scope of this tool of the Deep State. From comments: "Mueller was brought in as the Cleaner! It is a massive cover-up for which most of those who are complicit should be behind bars! "
Mueller report was concocted with only goal: to sink Trump. Objective investigation of events was beyond the scope. Moreover it looks like Mueller investigators were instrumental in setting an entrapment for members of Trump team and as such might be criminally liable for this abuse of their status.
Images deleted.
Notable quotes:
"... No one knows who killed Rich in Washington, D.C., on July 10, 2016. All we know is that he was found at 4:19 a.m. in the Bloomingdale neighborhood "with apparent gunshot wound(s) to the back" according to the police report . Conscious and still breathing, he was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead at 5:57. ..."
"... Rich's mother, Mary, told local TV news that her son struggled with his assailants: "His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything . They took his life for literally no reason. They didn't finish robbing him, they just took his life." ..."
"... But cops said shortly after the killing that they had no immediate indication that robbery was a motive. Despite his mother's report of two shots in the back, all the local medical examiner would say is that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the torso. According to Rich's brother, Aaron , Seth "was very aware, very talkative," when police found him lying on the pavement. Yet cops have refused to say if he described his assailant. A month later, they put out a statement that "there is no indication that Seth Rich's death is connected to his employment at the DNC," but refused to elaborate. ..."
"... all the Mueller report did was replace one conspiracy theory with another involving the Kremlin and its minions that is equally unconvincing. ..."
"... there's nothing in the Mueller report indicating that the special counselor independently reviewed the forensic evidence or questioned family members and friends. ..."
"... He certainly didn't interview Assange, the person in the best position to know who supplied the data, even though Craig Murray, the ex-British diplomat who serves as an unofficial WikiLeaks spokesman, says the WikiLeaks founder would have been "very willing to give evidence to Mueller" while holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, "which could have been done by video-link, by interview in the Embassy, or by written communication." ..."
"... This was as close as Assange could come to confirming that Rich was tied up with the leak without actually saying it. Hours later, WikiLeaks tweeted about the $20k reward. ..."
"... Four months after that, Craig Murray told the Libertarian Institute's Scott Horton: "Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that he [Rich] was the source of the leaks. What I'm saying is that it's probably not an unfair indication to draw that WikiLeaks believe[s] that he may have been killed by someone who thought he was the source of the leaks." (Quote begins at 11:20 .) ..."
"... But if speculation refuses to die, it's for a simple reason. If the DNC email disclosure was a hack, then Rich clearly had nothing to do with it, which means his death was no more than a robbery gone awry. But if it was a leak, then – based on broad hints dropped by Assange and Murray – it looks like the story could well be more complicated. This proves nothing in and of itself. But it guarantees that questions will grow as long as the Washington police make zero progress in its investigation and the Mueller report continues to fall apart. ..."
"... And that's just what's happening. Mueller's account of how Russian intelligence supposedly supplied WikiLeaks with stolen data makes no sense because, according to the report's chronology, the transfer left WikiLeaks with just four days to review some 28,000 emails and other electronic documents to make sure that they were genuine and unaltered – a clear impossibility. ..."
"... The FBI assessment that Paul Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik "has ties to Russian intelligence" – which Mueller cites (vol. 1, p. 133) in order to justify holding Manafort in solitary confinement during the Russia-gate investigation – is similarly disintegrating amid reports that Kilimnik actually served as an important State Department intelligence source. ..."
"... "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." Arthur Conan Doyle ..."
"... No need for arrests, extradition requests, or 17 espionage charges. A simple email phone call might just do the trick... It shows once again that Trump is a similar fascist as Hillary and the DNC! ..."
"... Why would an assassin leave him alive on the sidewalk? ..."
"... Today we've learned that the FBI didn't, inexplicably, go and grab the DNC server but also never even saw the report from Crowdstrike that was used as the basis for blaming everything on Russia. ..."
"... Of course, the FBI admitted that it never examined the DNC servers and just revealed in court that it never saw a detailed report from Crowdstrike showing that Russians hacked the server. That's why Mueller never investigated. He knew it was a lie but one the entire 3 years, Obama admin, Hillary, the DNC & corrupt cabal depend on maintaining. ..."
"... If you followed the story, the Rich family was very much doubted this was a random robbery until political operators had a long chat with them. Their stories changed and cooperation with the independent investigation ended. This neighborhood has cameras everywhere. Suddenly, none of them worked. ..."
"... Not only did the FBI never get the DNC server for forensic investigation, it turns out the FBI never even got a finalized report on "DNC hacking" from Crowdstrike. Every conclusion drawn by the various agencies within the Intelligence Community is based on a redacted copy of a draft report from Crowdstrike, and this report was never finalized from its draft form. And even the draft was never unredacted for the FBI. ..."
"... 'Why Didn't Mueller Investigate Seth Rich?' Occam's razor. Why would a paid lackey disobey direct orders by the chief architects of this Criminal Conspiracy and risk his own life in the process? It makes no sense on any level. ..."
Jun 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Daniel Lazare via ConsortiumNews.com,

The idea that the DNC email disclosures were produced by a hack - not a leak - makes less and less sense...

After bungling every last aspect of Russia-gate since the day the pseudo-scandal broke, the corporate press is now seizing on the Mueller report to shut down debate on one of the key questions still outstanding from the 2016 presidential election: the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.

No one knows who killed Rich in Washington, D.C., on July 10, 2016. All we know is that he was found at 4:19 a.m. in the Bloomingdale neighborhood "with apparent gunshot wound(s) to the back" according to the police report . Conscious and still breathing, he was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead at 5:57.

[ Image deleted ]
Slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. (LinkedIn)

Police have added to the confusion by releasing information only in the tiniest dribs and drabs. Rich's mother, Mary, told local TV news that her son struggled with his assailants: "His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything . They took his life for literally no reason. They didn't finish robbing him, they just took his life."

But cops said shortly after the killing that they had no immediate indication that robbery was a motive. Despite his mother's report of two shots in the back, all the local medical examiner would say is that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the torso. According to Rich's brother, Aaron , Seth "was very aware, very talkative," when police found him lying on the pavement. Yet cops have refused to say if he described his assailant. A month later, they put out a statement that "there is no indication that Seth Rich's death is connected to his employment at the DNC," but refused to elaborate.

The result is a scattering of disconnected facts that can be used to support just about any theory from a random killing to a political assassination. Nonetheless, Robert Mueller is dead certain that the murder had nothing to do with the emails -- just as he was dead certain in 2003 that Iraq was bristling with weapons of mass destruction " pos[ing] a clear threat to our national security .

Scene of the crime. (YouTube)

Mueller's Theory About Assange 'Dissembling'

Mueller is equally positive that, merely by expressing concern that the murder may have had something to do with the release of thousands of DNC emails less than two weeks later, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was trying to protect the real source, which of course is Russia.

Here's how the Mueller report puts it:

"Beginning in the summer of 2016, Assange and WikiLeaks made a number of statements about Seth Rich, a former DNC staff member who was killed in July 2016. The statements about Rich implied falsely that he had been the source of the stolen DNC emails. On August 9, 2016, the @WikiLeaks Twitter accounted posted: 'ANNOUNCE: WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US$20k reward for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.'

Likewise, on August 25, 2016, Assange was asked in an interview, 'Why are you so interested in Seth Rich's killer?' and responded, 'We're very interested in anything that might be a threat to alleged WikiLeaks sources.' The interviewer responded to Assange's statement by commenting, 'I know you don't want to reveal your source, but it certainly sounds like you're suggesting a man who leaked information to WikiLeaks was then murdered.'

Assange replied, 'If there's someone who's potentially connected to our publication, and that person has been murdered in suspicious, circumstances, it doesn't necessarily mean that the two are connected. But it is a very serious matter that type of allegation is very serious, as it's taken very seriously by us'" (vol. 1, pp. 48-49).

Mueller: Says Assange's real source was Russia. (All Your Breaking News Here via Flickr)

This is what the Mueller report calls "dissembling." The conclusion caused jubilation in corporate newsrooms where hostility to both Russia and WikiLeaks runs high. "The Seth Rich conspiracy theory needs to end now," declared Vox.com. "The special counsel's report confirmed this week that Seth Rich was not the source," said The New York Times . "The Mueller report might not end the debate over what President Donald Trump did," the Poynter Institute's Politifact added ,"but it has scuttled one conspiracy theory involving a murdered Democratic party staffer and WikiLeaks."

One Conspiracy Theory for Another

But all the Mueller report did was replace one conspiracy theory with another involving the Kremlin and its minions that is equally unconvincing.

Remarkably, there's nothing in the Mueller report indicating that the special counselor independently reviewed the forensic evidence or questioned family members and friends.

He certainly didn't interview Assange, the person in the best position to know who supplied the data, even though Craig Murray, the ex-British diplomat who serves as an unofficial WikiLeaks spokesman, says the WikiLeaks founder would have been "very willing to give evidence to Mueller" while holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, "which could have been done by video-link, by interview in the Embassy, or by written communication."

Bike rack and plaque outside DNC headquarters. (Johanna745, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons)

Murray says Mueller's team made no effort to contact him either even though he has publicly stated that he met clandestinely with an associate of the leaker near the American University campus in Washington.

Why not? Because Mueller didn't want anything that might disturb his a priori assumption that Russia is the guilty party. If he had bucked the intelligence community finding – set forth in a formal assessment in January 2017 – that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign aimed at undermining Hillary Clinton's candidacy -- it would have been front-page news since an anti-Trump press had already accepted the assessment as gospel. ButMueller is far too much of an establishmentarian to do anything so reckless.

So he selected evidence in support of the official theory that "[t]he Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion," as the report states on its very first page. And since Assange had consistently maintained that the data was the result of an inside leak rather than internal hack and that "[o]ur source is not the Russian government," he cherry picked evidence to show that Assange is a liar, not only about Russia but about Seth Rich.

Cryptic Exchange

It's a self-serving myth that corporate media have swallowed whole because it serves their interests too. One problem in exposing it, however, is Assange's pledge – intrinsic to the WikiLeaks mission – to safeguard the identities of whistleblowers who furnish it with information. The upshot has been a good deal of beating around the bush. A month after the murder, the WikiLeaks founder appeared on a Dutch program called "Nieuwsuur" and took part in a cryptic exchange with journalist Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal:

Assange during exchange with Rosenthal. (YouTube)

Assange: Whistle blowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks. There's a 27-year-old – works for the DNC – who was shot in the back, murdered, just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington, so .

Rosenthal: That was just a robbery, I believe, wasn't it?

Assange: No, there's no finding, so –

Rosenthal: What are you suggesting?

Assange: I'm suggesting that our sources take risks, and they become concerned to see things occurring like that.

Rosenthal: But was he one of your sources then? I mean –

Assange: We don't comment about who our sources are.

Rosenthal: But why make the suggestion about a young guy being shot in the streets of Washington?

Assange: Because we have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States and that our sources, you know, face serious risks. That's why they come to us – so we can protect their anonymity.

Rosenthal: But it's quite something to suggest a murder. That's basically what you're doing.

This was as close as Assange could come to confirming that Rich was tied up with the leak without actually saying it. Hours later, WikiLeaks tweeted about the $20k reward.

Four months after that, Craig Murray told the Libertarian Institute's Scott Horton: "Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that he [Rich] was the source of the leaks. What I'm saying is that it's probably not an unfair indication to draw that WikiLeaks believe[s] that he may have been killed by someone who thought he was the source of the leaks." (Quote begins at 11:20 .)

Thanks to such foggy rhetoric, it was all but inevitable that conspiracy theories would ignite. Two months after the killing, an ultra-conservative talk-radio host named Jack Burkman – best known for organizing a protest campaign against the Dallas Cowboys' hiring of an openly gay football player named Michael Sam – approached members of the Rich family and offered to launch an investigation in their behalf.

The family said yes, but then backed off when Burkman grandly announced that the murder was a Kremlin hit. Things turned even more bizarre a year later when Kevin Doherty, an ex-Marine whom Burkman had hired to look into the case, lured his ex-boss to a Marriott hotel in Arlington, Virgina, where he shot him twice in the buttocks and then tried to run him down with a rented SUV. Doherty received a nine-year sentence last December.

The rightwing Washington Times meanwhile reported that WikiLeaks had paid Seth and Aaron Rich an undisclosed sum, a story it was forced to retract , and Fox News named Seth as the source as well. (A sympathetic judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Rich family on technical grounds.) But still the speculation bubbled on, with conservative nuts blaming everyone from ex-DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to acting DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and Bill and Hillary themselves.

All of which plays into the hands of a corporate press happy to write off any and all suspicion as a product of alt-right paranoia.

But if speculation refuses to die, it's for a simple reason. If the DNC email disclosure was a hack, then Rich clearly had nothing to do with it, which means his death was no more than a robbery gone awry. But if it was a leak, then – based on broad hints dropped by Assange and Murray – it looks like the story could well be more complicated. This proves nothing in and of itself. But it guarantees that questions will grow as long as the Washington police make zero progress in its investigation and the Mueller report continues to fall apart.

And that's just what's happening. Mueller's account of how Russian intelligence supposedly supplied WikiLeaks with stolen data makes no sense because, according to the report's chronology, the transfer left WikiLeaks with just four days to review some 28,000 emails and other electronic documents to make sure that they were genuine and unaltered – a clear impossibility. (See " The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report ," April 18.)

The FBI assessment that Paul Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik "has ties to Russian intelligence" – which Mueller cites (vol. 1, p. 133) in order to justify holding Manafort in solitary confinement during the Russia-gate investigation – is similarly disintegrating amid reports that Kilimnik actually served as an important State Department intelligence source.

So the idea of a hack makes less and less sense and an inside leak seems more and more plausible, which is why questions about the Rich case will not go away.

Bottom line: you don't have to be a loony rightist to suspect that there is more to the murder than Robert Mueller would like us to believe.

Reaper , 6 minutes ago link

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." Arthur Conan Doyle

The FBI/Mueller/Comey are the Federal Key Stone Cops.

CanadaGoose , 8 minutes ago link

Mueller was brought in as the Cleaner! It is a massive cover-up for which most of those who are complicit should be behind bars!

Kotzbomber747 , 15 minutes ago link

Question: why is the Trump Administration still actively PERSECUTING Julian Assange?

"...Craig Murray, the ex-British diplomat who serves as an unofficial WikiLeaks spokesman, says the WikiLeaks founder would have been "very willing to give evidence to Mueller" while holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, "which could have been done by video-link, by interview in the Embassy, or by written communication."

No need for arrests, extradition requests, or 17 espionage charges. A simple email phone call might just do the trick... It shows once again that Trump is a similar fascist as Hillary and the DNC!

DaBard51 , 20 minutes ago link

Mueller: "The [Wikileaks] statements about Rich implied falsely that he had been the source of the stolen DNC emails."

For this assertion, what evidence did Mueller find?

<crickets>

When nine hundred years old you become, look this good you will not.

mpcascio , 23 minutes ago link

I'm sure the Kenyan was deep in the mix.

847328_3527 , 16 minutes ago link

The best thing a person can do if anything happens to them is try to document it and send it to a friendly media outlet since the police and FBI may cover it up. Perhaps dump it directly on to the internet so at least some folks hear/see the truth before it all vanishes.

gay troll , 23 minutes ago link

Why would an assassin leave him alive on the sidewalk?

chunga , 22 minutes ago link

Why didn't the red team make him do it, or do it themselves?

Today we've learned that the FBI didn't, inexplicably, go and grab the DNC server but also never even saw the report from Crowdstrike that was used as the basis for blaming everything on Russia.

fackbankz , 19 minutes ago link

Mueller is a lifelong dirty cop and cover up artist. That's why.

fackbankz , 20 minutes ago link

The killers are most likely dead themselves.

neidermeyer , 14 minutes ago link

Guatemalans or MS-13 subcontractors to the CIA who would have been killed after the job.

SummerSausage , 23 minutes ago link

Of course, the FBI admitted that it never examined the DNC servers and just revealed in court that it never saw a detailed report from Crowdstrike showing that Russians hacked the server. That's why Mueller never investigated. He knew it was a lie but one the entire 3 years, Obama admin, Hillary, the DNC & corrupt cabal depend on maintaining.

curbjob , 32 minutes ago link

The author quotes Seth Rich's brother to support his theory.

According to Rich's brother, Aaron , Seth "was very aware, very talkative," when police found him lying on the pavement.

... but then fails to quote his brothers press statement ?

Which is:

The special counsel has now provided hard facts that demonstrate this conspiracy is false. I hope that the people who pushed, fueled, spread, ran headlines, articles, interviews, talk and opinion shows, or in any way used my family's tragedy to advance their political agendas -- despite our pleas that what they were saying was not based on any facts -- will take responsibility for the unimaginable pain they have caused us. We will continue to pursue justice for Seth's murderers, as well as those who used his murder to advance their personal or political agendas by advancing false conspiracy theories

Aaron Rich

SummerSausage , 29 minutes ago link

If you followed the story, the Rich family was very much doubted this was a random robbery until political operators had a long chat with them. Their stories changed and cooperation with the independent investigation ended. This neighborhood has cameras everywhere. Suddenly, none of them worked.

curbjob , 20 minutes ago link

So you're saying the family was coerced into changing their story?

MadelynMarie , 20 minutes ago link

yes, I thought the family spokesperson was from the DNC

pelican , 24 minutes ago link

Where was SA Peter Strzok when he was murdered? Just wondering

RiverDrifter , 4 minutes ago link

Feel like I'm reading a question from the future.....

navy62802 , 28 minutes ago link

Not only did the FBI never get the DNC server for forensic investigation, it turns out the FBI never even got a finalized report on "DNC hacking" from Crowdstrike. Every conclusion drawn by the various agencies within the Intelligence Community is based on a redacted copy of a draft report from Crowdstrike, and this report was never finalized from its draft form. And even the draft was never unredacted for the FBI.

The whole thing was a sham from the start, as many people suspected. The Mueller operation was never seeking to uncover truth; it was an impeachment investigation by any other name. Why Mueller didn't carry it over the goal line will forever remain a mystery to me.

SummerSausage , 22 minutes ago link

Yet that did not stop Mueller from a pre-dawn raid of Stone's house with 27 armed officers & CNN claiming he helped Wikileaks get the DNC emails from Russian hackers. It isn't stopping the corrupt cabal from prosecuting Stone & Assange for that continued lie.

Consuelo , 25 minutes ago link

'Why Didn't Mueller Investigate Seth Rich?' Occam's razor. Why would a paid lackey disobey direct orders by the chief architects of this Criminal Conspiracy and risk his own life in the process? It makes no sense on any level.

DudleyjouWrite , 26 minutes ago link

The many 'Mueller' questions: Whitey Bulger, Cause of death‎: ‎Blunt force trauma

Freddie , 26 minutes ago link

Funny how we hear about all the great whistle blower-leakers in Wastergate and the wonder cub reporters aka CI$$A shills like Woodward, Bernstein and Ben Bradley who were and are CI$$A puppets. Watergate was Deepstate Rockefellers/Rothschilds taking Nixon out for tariffs and ending the gravy train Vietnam war with endless opium and heroin.

But when you have Seth Rich murdered and Wiki Leaks saying he is the guy then "democracy dies in the darkness" with the fake *** USA news media aka Operation Mockingbird Wa Post, NY Times, AP and the rest.

joego1 , 29 minutes ago link

The FBI never saw the forensic report on DNC computer. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/06/15/doj-admits-fbi-never-saw-crowdstrike-report-on-dnc-russian-hacking-claim/ They really really didn't want to know the truth.

chunga , 16 minutes ago link

The significance of that can't be overstated. The investigations that have been going on NON-STOP for three years are all fake and *everybody* in DC knows it.

MartinG , 26 minutes ago link

page 48 of the mueller report does mention seth rich as the source of the hack. As quoted by Julian Assange and Mueller casually mentioned that it's untrue with no further investigation.

[Jun 15, 2019] Fake News does more for real journalism than "real journalism" Zero Hedge

Jun 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Fake News does more for real journalism than "real journalism"

by TDB Fri, 06/14/2019 - 12:35 0 SHARES by Joe Jarvis via The Daily Bell

All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus. Now they don't. They call us to explain to them what's happening in Moscow and Cairo.

Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns.

That's a sea change. They literally know nothing.

-Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications under Obama

"Real journalism" is propaganda from Washington DC.

The news simply quotes the politicians, believes the names of bills will become reality, and buys hook, line, and sinker what the spy-masters in the Pentagon tell them.

And here we are again, being sold a justification for yet another war in the middle east.

The US government claims that Iran attacked a Japanese shipping vessel with mines. Iran claims this is a lie.

I'm not going to pretend I know the truth, even though my initial reaction is always suspicion. Much like the reports that Assad attacked his people with chemical weapons in Syria , it is hard to see what Iran would gain from attacking the vessel.

The events just seem too perfect, justifying what America already wanted: to go to war.

It doesn't even have to be an American-orchestrated false flag. It could simply be a misrepresentation, like the Gulf of Tonkin incidents which escalated the Vietnam War.

The US said that North Vietnam attacked its ship, but the truth was that the American ship fired the first "warning shots." In the end, the American ship sustained one bullet hole and no casualties, while four North Vietnamese soldiers were killed.

But most Americans would never even hear about the Gulf of Tonkin if it wasn't for fake news sites like Babylon Bee. The headline reads : John Bolton: 'When Has The Government Ever Lied About Attacks On Ships In A Gulf Somewhere Just To Provoke War?'

Then it offers a fake quote from Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton:

"When has the government ever lied about ships being attacked, say in a gulf somewhere, for the purpose of getting involved in another foreign conflict?" he asked. "Can you point to a single time a lie about a minor attack resulted in a major unnecessary war? No, I didn't think so," he said.

"These attacks in the Gulf of Tonk -- er, I mean, the Gulf of Oman, excuse me -- were definitely carried out by Iran, and we need to invade immediately before people start doubting the narrative."

Most Americans might not know who notorious warmonger John Bolton is.

Bolton's been creeping around DC since the Nixon administration. He was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal and was instrumental in spreading the lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

In 2002, he gave a speech revealing his war wish list which, surprise surprise , included Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria (as well as North Korea and Cuba).

What else could fake news websites help us learn about John Bolton and the American policies he has contributed to?

Here's one from the Duffelblog : Bolton cites his avoiding war in Vietnam amid criticism that he's pro-war.

"If I like war as much as you all say I do, wouldn't I have jumped at the chance to take part in one, instead of joining the reserves to avoid being deployed?" Bolton challenged reporters during a press conference on Tuesday.

Bolton went on to reference his distinguished record of not going to war, sources said. He presented reporters with a copy of his Yale 25th Reunion Book, in which he wrote that he avoided service in Vietnam because he "had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy."

That last quote from the yearbook, is actually 100% true, by the way.

The classic fake news site The Onion also took the opportunity last month to hint at the truth , in a fake sort of way, with the headline: Bleeding John Bolton Stumbles Into Capitol Building Claiming That Iran Shot Him.

And finally, one more from Babylon Bee :

If you want the truth, you may be better off getting your news from fake news websites.

You don't have to play by the rules of the corrupt politicians, manipulative media, and brainwashed peers.

When you subscribe to The Daily Bell, you also get a free guide:

How to Craft a Two Year Plan to Reclaim 3 Specific Freedoms.

This guide will show you exactly how to plan your next two years to build the free life of your dreams. It's not as hard as you think

Identify. Plan. Execute .

Yes, deliver THE DAILY BELL to my inbox!

[Jun 15, 2019] The queen of RussiaGate is going to be asking questions at the debates

MadCow disease of neoliberal MSM is spreading...
Jun 15, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

snoopydawg on Tue, 06/11/2019 - 5:01pm

@skod

So a flaming Russia conspiracist is going to moderate the first Democratic presidential debates. What a joke https://t.co/6QWPrS2cZk

-- Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 11, 2019

Pluto's Republic on Tue, 06/11/2019 - 5:25pm
Scenes we'd like to see:

@snoopydawg

Anyone want to bet that she will ask someone a question about what they will do to keep Russia from interfering with the election again?

I would love to see that. All answers will be the wrong answer.

[Jun 14, 2019] Comments on Yasha Levin article: With Russiagate, we Soviet immigrants were finally forced to reckon with the bigotry of America's elite

Highly recommended!
Jun 14, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

et Al June 8, 2019 at 1:35 am

More good stuff at the link, inc.

Facebook's new public policy manager for Ukraine is nationalist hawk who volunteered with fascist party during US-backed coup

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/06/04/facebook-public-policy-manager-ukraine-kateryna-kruk/

&

With Russiagate, we Soviet immigrants were finally forced to reckon with the bigotry of America's elite

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/05/28/with-russiagate-we-soviet-immigrants-were-finally-forced-to-reckon-with-the-bigotry-of-americas-elite/

We never knew what it was like to have the country's media and political class brand people like us a possible threat. Until now.

By Yasha Levine

Mark Chapman June 8, 2019 at 10:38 am
You can adopt a lot of things about society as given; people will always defend those they know against those they don't. They will always defend their own even when they suspect or even know they are in the wrong. People will mostly help those who are in trouble if it costs them little or nothing to lend their support. And so on – people are mostly predictable as examples of collective will.

And people will often champion the elevation to positions of power of radicals, so long as that person's radical beliefs and policies further their own aims. Going beyond requires that we examine that society for cynicism and naivete. A naive society assumes that once the radical's aims have been achieved – in this case, the joining of the European Union and NATO by Ukraine – the radical will be satisfied, and will become a peaceful and productive servant of freedom and democracy rather than a fierce adherent to his or her own radical policies, but now within European society, where they might not be so welcome. The cynic assumes the radical will be used as long as he or she is useful to reaching the goals the cynics have set for the country, and then shunted aside or otherwise marginalized if he or she is no longer useful.

Which is it, do you think? I vote for cynicism, and I base that judgment on how smoothly the west transitioned from Nadya Savchenko the heroic martyr to Nadya Savchenko the radical anarchist who wanted to blow up the Rada.

moscowexile June 8, 2019 at 8:49 pm
Wonder if Yasha Levine has ever thought of discussing the points he raises in his above linked article with his erstwhile and also present-day fellow country persons Maria Gessen and Yulia "I-can-pronounce-Шереметьево" Ioffe?

[I absolutely refuse to call Gessen "Masha" (Molly)! She's not my pal!]

yalensis June 9, 2019 at 5:26 am
Yasha should not kvetch so much, the current anti-Russian witch hunt won't reach the likes of him. I know some Jewish Russian émigré families in the U.S., they can still skate by on their former "victimhood": They were required to whine about Soviet anti-Semitism, now all that is needed is a supplementary "I hate Putin, Yankee Doodle Dandy", and they're good to go.

These are the ones I actually despise the most, because they are ungrateful wretches. The Soviet Union saved their collective asses from Hitler, and look how they repayed the debt
I don't begrudge them emigrating to the U.S. if they did so for career reasons, maybe they could find better job opportunities, better conditions to raise their kids, etc. They could do that, but nobody really forced them to slime their former country as viciously as they did. And taught their kids to hate everything Russian. Ingrates!

[Jun 14, 2019] It has been amusing to watch the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets express their dismay over the rise and spread of fake news.

Notable quotes:
"... "The Times has run neck-and-neck with the Washington Post in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and illicit involvement with Trump. The Times now easily conflates fake news with any criticism of established institutions, as in Mark Scott and Melissa Eddy's 'Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News,' February 20, 2017. But what is more extraordinary is the uniformity with which the paper's regular columnists accept as a given the CIA's assessment of the Russian hacking and transmission to WikiLeaks, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and 'non-partisan' investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new war-party line has extended widely in the liberal media. Both the Times and Washington Post have lent tacit support to the idea that this 'fake news' threat needs to be curbed, possibly by some form of voluntary media-organized censorship or government intervention that would at least expose the fakery. ..."
"... "The most remarkable media episode in this anti-influence-campaign was the Post's piece by Craig Timberg, 'Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say,' which featured a report by a group of anonymous "experts" entity called PropOrNot that claimed to have identified two hundred websites that, wittingly or not, were 'routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.' While smearing these websites, many of them independent news outlets whose only shared trait was their critical stance toward U.S. foreign policy, the 'experts' refused to identify themselves, allegedly out of fear of being 'targeted by legions of skilled hackers.' As journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, 'You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won't put your name to your claims? Take a hike.' ..."
"... But the Post welcomed and promoted this McCarthyite effort, which might well be a product of Pentagon or CIA information warfare. (And these entities are themselves well-funded and heavily into the propaganda business.) ..."
"... "The success of the war party's campaign to contain or reverse any tendency to ease tensions with Russia was made dramatically clear in the Trump administration's speedy bombing response to the April 4, 2017, Syrian chemical weapons deaths. The Times and other mainstream media editors and journalists greeted this aggressive move with almost uniform enthusiasm, and once again did not require evidence of Assad's guilt beyond their government's claims. The action was damaging to Assad and Russia, but served the rebels well. ..."
Jun 14, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Abe , June 14, 2019 at 15:15

"It has been amusing to watch the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets express their dismay over the rise and spread of 'fake news.' These publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based reporting. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power.

"An important form of mainstream media fake news is that which is presented while suppressing information that calls the preferred news into question. [ ]

"The Times has run neck-and-neck with the Washington Post in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and illicit involvement with Trump. The Times now easily conflates fake news with any criticism of established institutions, as in Mark Scott and Melissa Eddy's 'Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News,' February 20, 2017. But what is more extraordinary is the uniformity with which the paper's regular columnists accept as a given the CIA's assessment of the Russian hacking and transmission to WikiLeaks, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and 'non-partisan' investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new war-party line has extended widely in the liberal media. Both the Times and Washington Post have lent tacit support to the idea that this 'fake news' threat needs to be curbed, possibly by some form of voluntary media-organized censorship or government intervention that would at least expose the fakery.

"The most remarkable media episode in this anti-influence-campaign was the Post's piece by Craig Timberg, 'Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say,' which featured a report by a group of anonymous "experts" entity called PropOrNot that claimed to have identified two hundred websites that, wittingly or not, were 'routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.' While smearing these websites, many of them independent news outlets whose only shared trait was their critical stance toward U.S. foreign policy, the 'experts' refused to identify themselves, allegedly out of fear of being 'targeted by legions of skilled hackers.' As journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, 'You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won't put your name to your claims? Take a hike.'

But the Post welcomed and promoted this McCarthyite effort, which might well be a product of Pentagon or CIA information warfare. (And these entities are themselves well-funded and heavily into the propaganda business.)

"On December 23, 2016, President Obama signed the Portman-Murphy Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, which will supposedly allow the United States to more effectively combat foreign (namely Russian and Chinese) propaganda and disinformation. It will encourage more government counter-propaganda efforts, and provide funding to non-government entities to help in this enterprise. It is clearly a follow-on to the claims of Russian hacking and propaganda, and shares the spirit of the listing of two hundred tools of Moscow featured in the Washington Post. (Perhaps PropOrNot will qualify for a subsidy and be able to enlarge its list.)

Liberals have been quiet on this new threat to freedom of speech, undoubtedly influenced by their fears of Russian-based fake news and propaganda. But they may yet take notice, even if belatedly, when Trump or one of his successors puts it to work on their own notions of fake news and propaganda.

"The success of the war party's campaign to contain or reverse any tendency to ease tensions with Russia was made dramatically clear in the Trump administration's speedy bombing response to the April 4, 2017, Syrian chemical weapons deaths. The Times and other mainstream media editors and journalists greeted this aggressive move with almost uniform enthusiasm, and once again did not require evidence of Assad's guilt beyond their government's claims. The action was damaging to Assad and Russia, but served the rebels well.

"But the mainstream media never ask cui bono? in cases like this. In 2013, a similar charge against Assad, which brought the United States to the brink of a full-scale bombing war in Syria, turned out to be a false flag operation, and some authorities believe the current case is equally problematic. Nevertheless, Trump moved quickly (and illegally), dealing a blow to any further rapprochement between the United States and Russia. The CIA, the Pentagon, leading Democrats, and the rest of the war party had won an important skirmish in the struggle over permanent war."

Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies: The New York Times, 1917–2017

By Edward S. Herman

https://monthlyreview.org/2017/07/01/fake-news-on-russia-and-other-official-enemies/

[Jun 14, 2019] This is Crystal Clear -- Find the Creator of the Guccifer 2.0 Hoax, and You Find the Murderer of Seth Rich by veganmark

Notable quotes:
"... Let's start with this very reasonable supposition: Guccifer 2.0 is an entity operating within US time zones who has gone out of his way to pose as a Russian hacker who was the source for the Wikileaks DNC/Podesta releases. ..."
"... villain du jour ..."
"... The subsequent mysterious death of Shawn Lucas by a weird drug cocktail might also be related. Shawn had been the process server for the class-action lawsuit against the DNC. According to Sy Hersh's FBI source, Seth indicated that he had allies who were aware of the drop box he was providing Wikileaks. It would have been necessary to eliminate these allies. Was Shawn one of these allies, and did the creator of G2.0 know this? Shawn, who was not known to be a drug user, died suddenly about a month after Seth. ..."
"... So who created G2.0? G2.0 appears to have worked in coordination with Crowdstrike. One day after Crowdstrike announced that the DNC had been hacked (with Russia the chief suspect) and that the hackers had grabbed a file of Trump Opposition Research, G2.0 makes his first public appearance, claiming to be the hacker, posting Trump Opposition Research -- and purposely leaving "Russian fingerprints" on the meta-data of his release. ..."
"... Crowdstrike was also in a position to concoct the "Russian hack" that they claimed to be investigating. Cyberanalysts have determined that two-thirds of the allegedly "Russian malware" which Crowdstrike "found" on the DNC servers had in fact been compiled subsequent to the date that Crowdstrike was brought in to investigate the "hack". In other words, there is reason to believe that Crowdstrike itself concocted this "hack" -- likely because they had been warned that Wikileaks was going to release leaked DNC emails. ..."
"... Also notable is the fact that Shawn Henry, co-founder of Crowdstrike, is a master of cyberfuckery. Prior to founding Crowdstrike, Henry served under Robert Mueller as head of FBI counterintelligence -- in which capacity he engaged in efforts to entrap and discredit Julian Assange. Indeed, others have suspected that Henry was behind G2.0, in light of the fact that G2.0's behavior was reminiscent of that of "Sabu" (Hector Monsignor), a hacker who, after secretly being arrested by the FBI during Henry's tenure there, worked under FBI direction to entrap other hackers. And the G2.0 hoax is clearly another - so far, highly successful - attempt to smear Assange. ..."
"... @The Voice In the Wilderness ..."
"... After the Popodouplous interview by Mark Steyn, there was clarity after following Russiagate since it really started before the election of 2016. The deep state actors were trying to setup some significant figure in the Trump as having ties with the Russian government. ..."
"... The irony is that we have McCarthyism once again and not one Russian is guilty of what they are being accused of. They were set up as the fall guys, and of course in the future nuclear war. ..."
Jun 14, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

Let's start with this very reasonable supposition: Guccifer 2.0 is an entity operating within US time zones who has gone out of his way to pose as a Russian hacker who was the source for the Wikileaks DNC/Podesta releases. The notion that this absurdly preening entity is a GRU hacker is idiotic.

The Mueller report's tale of how G2.0 allegedly transferred the DNC emails to Wikileaks is absurd on its face -- which is to say, Mueller is acting as an accomplice to G2.0 in his fraud.

The evident purpose of the G2.0 fraud was to detract attention from the incriminating content of the DNC/Podesta releases, by blaming those releases on Russian government hackers operating in cahoots with Julian Assange. This accomplishes 3 goals dear to the hearts of the Deep State actors behind G2.0: minimizing the damage to Hillary's campaign inflicted by the released emails; smearing the reputation of Assange, who has made an unparalleled contribution to unmasking the egregious crimes of the Western Deep State; and further defaming "the Russians", the villain du jour which our Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think Tank* complex needs to justify the continuing rape of American taxpayers on behalf of our grotesque overspending on military hardware and our bloated global military empire.

But what was the evident fly-in-the-ointment for this brilliantly diabolic plan? The ACTUAL source of the Wikileaks releases could have blown it sky high. And if G2.0 and the Russian hacking tale had been unmasked prior to the election, the blowback on Hillary's campaign would have been enormous. Which is why the creators of G2.0 needed to eliminate the source.

There are a number of reasons to suspect that Seth Rich was the source, or a confederate of the source:

Hints dropped by Assange;

Award for info on Seth's killer offered by Wikileaks;

Wikileaks re-tweeting essays speculating that Seth was the leaker;

Craig Murray's repeated assurances that DNC/Podesta releases resulted from leaks, not hacks;

Kim Dotcom's claim that he helped Seth with the leak;

Sy Hersh's secretly recorded phone call in which he stated that a trusted source within the FBI claims to have seen an FBI memo describing an FBI analysis of Seth's laptop -- this revealed that Seth had offered to sell DNC emails to Wikileaks, and subsequently conveyed the docs to Wikileaks via drop box;

Claims by Ed Butowsky, Larry Johnson, and Bill Binney indicating that they have sources inside the intel community verifying that Seth was the leaker -- in conjunction with brother Aaron;

Jared Beck's claim that both Seth and Shawn Lucas were planning to testify in the class-action lawsuit against the DNC -- speaks to Seth's possible motive for leaking;

Claim by Rod Wheeler that, according to a source inside the DC police, the police have been ordered to "stand down" on the Seth Rich investigation;

Frenzied reaction of Donna Brazile on learning that Wheeler was investigating the Seth Rich murder - and her overt lie regarding her whereabouts on the morning of the murder.

https://caucus99percent.com/content/why-did-donna-lie-again

Some have speculated that, in line with an email by John Podesta, Seth was murdered "to make an example of him". I reject this explanation. They could have made an example by firing him and suing him. As it stands, no example was made, as the DNC claims that Russians, not Seth, were responsible for the Wikileaks DNC releases.

If the puppetmaster of G2.0 knew or believed that Seth was the leaker, Seth had to be murdered to insure success of the G2.0 hoax.

(The alternative is that G2.0 did not know that, and that Seth was beaten up and murdered in a robbery so "botched" that no valuables were taken. Yeah, right!)

The subsequent mysterious death of Shawn Lucas by a weird drug cocktail might also be related. Shawn had been the process server for the class-action lawsuit against the DNC. According to Sy Hersh's FBI source, Seth indicated that he had allies who were aware of the drop box he was providing Wikileaks. It would have been necessary to eliminate these allies. Was Shawn one of these allies, and did the creator of G2.0 know this? Shawn, who was not known to be a drug user, died suddenly about a month after Seth.

Curiously, the day after Seth died, and again the day after Shawn died, the DNC made payments of about $100K to Crowdstrike. Sheer coincidence? Maybe.

So who created G2.0? G2.0 appears to have worked in coordination with Crowdstrike. One day after Crowdstrike announced that the DNC had been hacked (with Russia the chief suspect) and that the hackers had grabbed a file of Trump Opposition Research, G2.0 makes his first public appearance, claiming to be the hacker, posting Trump Opposition Research -- and purposely leaving "Russian fingerprints" on the meta-data of his release. Unfortunately, this little dog-and-pony show turned out to be a screw-up, as it was subsequently revealed that (by the DNC itself!) that the Opposition Research document had been an attachment in Podesta's emails, and hadn't been hacked from the DNC. It is also notable that releasing Trump Opposition Research would do nothing to damage the chances of Hillary -- the alleged intent of the mythical Russian hackers. Indeed, nothing that G2.0 subsequently released was notably harmful to Hillary.

Crowdstrike was also in a position to concoct the "Russian hack" that they claimed to be investigating. Cyberanalysts have determined that two-thirds of the allegedly "Russian malware" which Crowdstrike "found" on the DNC servers had in fact been compiled subsequent to the date that Crowdstrike was brought in to investigate the "hack". In other words, there is reason to believe that Crowdstrike itself concocted this "hack" -- likely because they had been warned that Wikileaks was going to release leaked DNC emails.

https://caucus99percent.com/content/how-did-crowdstrikeguccifer-20-know-...

It bears repeating that the latest dated DNC email which Wikileaks published was written on April 25th -- several weeks after Crowdstrike had been brought in to investigate the alleged hack. Anti-hacking programs do not stop leaks .

Also notable is the fact that Shawn Henry, co-founder of Crowdstrike, is a master of cyberfuckery. Prior to founding Crowdstrike, Henry served under Robert Mueller as head of FBI counterintelligence -- in which capacity he engaged in efforts to entrap and discredit Julian Assange. Indeed, others have suspected that Henry was behind G2.0, in light of the fact that G2.0's behavior was reminiscent of that of "Sabu" (Hector Monsignor), a hacker who, after secretly being arrested by the FBI during Henry's tenure there, worked under FBI direction to entrap other hackers. And the G2.0 hoax is clearly another - so far, highly successful - attempt to smear Assange.

https://caucus99percent.com/content/shawn-henry-crowdstrike-was-fingered...

Whether or not Crowdstrike concocted G2.0, we need to find out who did -- the answer should be highly pertinent to unraveling Seth's murder.

And let's bear in mind that the creator of G2.0 has also played an integral role in concocting a Second Cold War with Russia - luring an entire generation of "leftists" into hating both Russia and Wikileaks, on completely spurious grounds. The evil of that is HUGE.

*Ray McGovern's brilliant formulation.

Linda Wood on Tue, 06/11/2019 - 2:56pm

I think your assertiveness

about hammering on these points is productive of narrowing in on the truth, whatever it may be. That's my awkward way of saying that you're not just on to something but that your precision, where you're hammering, is getting to the truth. I say that as a person who isn't convinced that Seth Rich was the DNC leaker, but who thinks he may have been murdered because he was a potential witness in a DNC voter suppression lawsuit , which amounts to the same thing really.

The strength of your outlook for me is that you emphasize the stupidity of the G2.0 revelations, the stupidity of Russian cyber-fingerprints, the vapidity of the released Opposition Research, and the timeliness of this junk evidence. It matches in tone and stupidity the evidence used to convince the American people that Saddam gave the anthrax to Mohamed Atta in Prague. Turns out Atta was not in Prague, turns out the anthrax was not Saddam's, but ours, turns out the Vice President of the United States lied about it on camera. Doesn't matter. Once the scene of the transfer to Atta was fixed in the minds of some American people, even if just a few Americans half believed it, the narrative was written.

The other strength of your essay for me is your hammering on Seth Rich's murder as eliminating a possible contradiction of the Russia narrative. The death of his associate Lucas only adds to that possibility. Clearly Seth Rich's murder was timely and important. It could very well have been a random street crime, but why he was out on the street in the middle of the night just before the filing of a lawsuit that could have involved him and the DNC is worth asking. The problem is that the media, and as far as we can tell, our government, are not asking.

I just want to thank you again for focusing on the weak points of the narrative. Each time you do, I think you bring us closer to the truth.

Here is a good report on the false evidence generated on the anthrax attack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP2G-cejYhI

The Voice In th... on Tue, 06/11/2019 - 5:30pm
Murder seems to follow Her Highness around, doesn't it?

up 11 users have voted.

Bob In Portland on Wed, 06/12/2019 - 2:30pm
@The Voice In the Wilderness Yes, but I'd suggest it's

@The Voice In the Wilderness

Yes, but I'd suggest it's because she's lived a career in the Deep State. Hilz never really was a Dem. She was an undercover Republican/CIA when she started out. In 1968 she started the year as a volunteer for Clean Gene McCarthy, the "anti-Vietnam" Dem candidate who went on to endorse Ronald Reagan.

She then went to the the Republican convention in Miami, then spent that summer as an intern for House Republicans, where she wrote a speech about Vietnam for Representative Melvin Laird. Melvin Laird was Nixon's Secretary of Defense, who oversaw a lot of the bludgeoning of Southeast Asia.

So when she was anti-war with McCarthy was she really anti-war (subsequently there have been stories about how infiltrated McCarthy's '68 campaign was riddled with CIA infiltrators), or was she pro-war, writing speeches for Mel Laird? I suggest she never gave a shit about all those napalmed deplorables in Southeast Asia. It was a pose. I'd don't think that Bill was anti-war either. Like a lot of future politicians he didn't want his ass shot there.

She and Bill worked their way up the ladder among CIA-owned politicians. Ultimately, they were in place to deliver the Democratic Party to the Agency.

[comment:body]

MrWebster on Tue, 06/11/2019 - 9:04pm
The unwilling patsy are the Russians

After the Popodouplous interview by Mark Steyn, there was clarity after following Russiagate since it really started before the election of 2016. The deep state actors were trying to setup some significant figure in the Trump as having ties with the Russian government.

This include Flynn, the meeting at Trump Towers, and Popodouplos. So many details now fall in place like the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya meeting with Fusion after the Trump Tower meeting. Say what?

Or just bullshit like US intelligence found out GRU agents were doing the hacking because some GRU master computer jock forgot to login into his VPN. G2 does seem to be an invention.

The irony is that we have McCarthyism once again and not one Russian is guilty of what they are being accused of. They were set up as the fall guys, and of course in the future nuclear war.

As for Seth Rich all I can speculate is that he was involved somehow. And if his murder was not random, he was about to blow apart the entire conspiracy to such a level, action had to be taken against him.

[Jun 14, 2019] It has been amusing to watch the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets express their dismay over the rise and spread of fake news.

Notable quotes:
"... "The Times has run neck-and-neck with the Washington Post in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and illicit involvement with Trump. The Times now easily conflates fake news with any criticism of established institutions, as in Mark Scott and Melissa Eddy's 'Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News,' February 20, 2017. But what is more extraordinary is the uniformity with which the paper's regular columnists accept as a given the CIA's assessment of the Russian hacking and transmission to WikiLeaks, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and 'non-partisan' investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new war-party line has extended widely in the liberal media. Both the Times and Washington Post have lent tacit support to the idea that this 'fake news' threat needs to be curbed, possibly by some form of voluntary media-organized censorship or government intervention that would at least expose the fakery. ..."
"... "The most remarkable media episode in this anti-influence-campaign was the Post's piece by Craig Timberg, 'Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say,' which featured a report by a group of anonymous "experts" entity called PropOrNot that claimed to have identified two hundred websites that, wittingly or not, were 'routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.' While smearing these websites, many of them independent news outlets whose only shared trait was their critical stance toward U.S. foreign policy, the 'experts' refused to identify themselves, allegedly out of fear of being 'targeted by legions of skilled hackers.' As journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, 'You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won't put your name to your claims? Take a hike.' ..."
"... But the Post welcomed and promoted this McCarthyite effort, which might well be a product of Pentagon or CIA information warfare. (And these entities are themselves well-funded and heavily into the propaganda business.) ..."
"... "The success of the war party's campaign to contain or reverse any tendency to ease tensions with Russia was made dramatically clear in the Trump administration's speedy bombing response to the April 4, 2017, Syrian chemical weapons deaths. The Times and other mainstream media editors and journalists greeted this aggressive move with almost uniform enthusiasm, and once again did not require evidence of Assad's guilt beyond their government's claims. The action was damaging to Assad and Russia, but served the rebels well. ..."
Jun 14, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Abe , June 14, 2019 at 15:15

"It has been amusing to watch the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets express their dismay over the rise and spread of 'fake news.' These publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based reporting. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power.

"An important form of mainstream media fake news is that which is presented while suppressing information that calls the preferred news into question. [ ]

"The Times has run neck-and-neck with the Washington Post in stirring up fears of the Russian information war and illicit involvement with Trump. The Times now easily conflates fake news with any criticism of established institutions, as in Mark Scott and Melissa Eddy's 'Europe Combats a New Foe of Political Stability: Fake News,' February 20, 2017. But what is more extraordinary is the uniformity with which the paper's regular columnists accept as a given the CIA's assessment of the Russian hacking and transmission to WikiLeaks, the possibility or likelihood that Trump is a Putin puppet, and the urgent need of a congressional and 'non-partisan' investigation of these claims. This swallowing of a new war-party line has extended widely in the liberal media. Both the Times and Washington Post have lent tacit support to the idea that this 'fake news' threat needs to be curbed, possibly by some form of voluntary media-organized censorship or government intervention that would at least expose the fakery.

"The most remarkable media episode in this anti-influence-campaign was the Post's piece by Craig Timberg, 'Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say,' which featured a report by a group of anonymous "experts" entity called PropOrNot that claimed to have identified two hundred websites that, wittingly or not, were 'routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.' While smearing these websites, many of them independent news outlets whose only shared trait was their critical stance toward U.S. foreign policy, the 'experts' refused to identify themselves, allegedly out of fear of being 'targeted by legions of skilled hackers.' As journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, 'You want to blacklist hundreds of people, but you won't put your name to your claims? Take a hike.'

But the Post welcomed and promoted this McCarthyite effort, which might well be a product of Pentagon or CIA information warfare. (And these entities are themselves well-funded and heavily into the propaganda business.)

"On December 23, 2016, President Obama signed the Portman-Murphy Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, which will supposedly allow the United States to more effectively combat foreign (namely Russian and Chinese) propaganda and disinformation. It will encourage more government counter-propaganda efforts, and provide funding to non-government entities to help in this enterprise. It is clearly a follow-on to the claims of Russian hacking and propaganda, and shares the spirit of the listing of two hundred tools of Moscow featured in the Washington Post. (Perhaps PropOrNot will qualify for a subsidy and be able to enlarge its list.)

Liberals have been quiet on this new threat to freedom of speech, undoubtedly influenced by their fears of Russian-based fake news and propaganda. But they may yet take notice, even if belatedly, when Trump or one of his successors puts it to work on their own notions of fake news and propaganda.

"The success of the war party's campaign to contain or reverse any tendency to ease tensions with Russia was made dramatically clear in the Trump administration's speedy bombing response to the April 4, 2017, Syrian chemical weapons deaths. The Times and other mainstream media editors and journalists greeted this aggressive move with almost uniform enthusiasm, and once again did not require evidence of Assad's guilt beyond their government's claims. The action was damaging to Assad and Russia, but served the rebels well.

"But the mainstream media never ask cui bono? in cases like this. In 2013, a similar charge against Assad, which brought the United States to the brink of a full-scale bombing war in Syria, turned out to be a false flag operation, and some authorities believe the current case is equally problematic. Nevertheless, Trump moved quickly (and illegally), dealing a blow to any further rapprochement between the United States and Russia. The CIA, the Pentagon, leading Democrats, and the rest of the war party had won an important skirmish in the struggle over permanent war."

Fake News on Russia and Other Official Enemies: The New York Times, 1917–2017

By Edward S. Herman

https://monthlyreview.org/2017/07/01/fake-news-on-russia-and-other-official-enemies/

[Jun 14, 2019] 'Make Russia Prostrate Again' Is the Only Thing US Democrats and Republicans Can Agree on

Jun 14, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org

Despite the deep schism that separates America's deranged political duopoly, they do share a common foreign policy pet project, and that is to prevent Russia from ever shining again on the global stage in all fields of endeavor.

One of Donald Trump's main pledges on the 2016 campaign trail was to rekindle the dying embers of US-Russia relations, which had been undergoing a mini Ice Age under Barack Obama, his ballyhooed 'reset' notwithstanding. But before Trump was ever put to the test of romancing Russia, he was sidelined by one of the most malicious political stunts of the modern age.

It is only necessary to recall the 2016 Winter of Our Discontent when the Democratic leader sent 35 Russian diplomats and their families packing just before New Year's Eve in retaliation for Russia's alleged involvement in hacking the Democratic National Committee's computers. Before Trump ascended the throne, those unfounded claims lit the fuse on 'Russiagate,' the debacle which continues to undermine not just US-Russia relations, but the entire US political system.

Yet would things have turned out any differently between Washington and Moscow had the Democrats graciously accepted defeat in 2016 without feeling the need to blame remote Russia? I am not sure.

Today, observers reason that the US Republicans have no choice but to 'get tough' on Russia in an effort to dispel Democrat-generated rumors of excessive coziness with the Kremlin. Last year, for example, Trump bested Obama on the Russia front when he expelled 60 Russian diplomats in response to an alleged assassination attempt on former British spy, Sergey Skripal; an astonishing move on the part of the US conservative, but with so much riding on the line was it really a surprise?

And what was it exactly that was 'riding on the line'? Aside from good relations between the world's two premier nuclear powers, not to mention thwarting nuclear Armageddon as Prime Minister Theresa May very unwisely issued an ultimatum to Russia over the matter, there is the question of hundreds of billions of dollars of business contracts – from gas supplies to military hardware. Tycoon Trump would sooner win over European gas supplies than the plains of Central Asia, for example, the geopolitical lynchpin so dear to the hearts of US policymakers, like the late Zbigniew Brzezinski. This is where so many people misread Donald Trump: His heart and mind is devoted to the business deals, not the military steals. But that doesn't necessarily make his moves are any less dangerous.

From President Trump's perspective, Russia is a 500-pound cigar-chomping guy at the negotiating table with an ego and stature equal to his own that must be vanquished lest The Deal be lost and he – Donald J. Trump, CEO and Founder of The Trump Organization – look like a second-rate negotiator and fraud. Similar to the methods a belligerent globalist, Trump the inveterate businessman will do anything to achieve leverage in the pursuit of profit.

This is where Trump was only too happy to oblige the British with their extremely suspect Skripal story because vilifying the Russians, once again, would give the US an upper hand in stealing business away from Moscow, most notably in the realm of European gas supplies. Presently, the Trump administration is trying hard to halt progress on Nord Stream 2, an ambitious 11 billion euro ($12.4 billion) project to construct a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany.

Speaking from Kiev this week, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Washington, once again endorsing the spirit of free competition and enterprise, was preparing to introduce sanctions on foreign companies involved in the project.

But that's just the beginning.

To show how low the Americans would stoop to get a piece of this lucrative European market, which the Russian's have been dutifully supplying for many decades, they've gone for some dramatic rebranding , calling LNG supplies "freedom gas." You know, the byproduct of 'freedom fries.'

"Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world by giving America's allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy," said US Under Secretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes.

Dmitry Peskov, official spokesman of the Russian president, scoffed at such cynical attempts by Washington to strong-arm nations into accepting its preferred version of the 'free market.'

"Instead of fair competition they prefer to act like in Wild West times," Peskov told RT's Sophie Shevardnadze ahead of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). "They just show the gun and say that no, you guys here in Europe, you are going to buy our natural gas and we don't care that it is at least 30% more expensive than the gas coming from the Russians. This is the case."

Perhaps nowhere else is this effort to 'control the market' more evident than in the realm of military spending, and particularly among NATO states. Currently, European countries spend some $240 billion annually on military weapons and forces, while Russia spends just $66 billion each year. Yet for businessmen like Trump, that is not good enough. Employing the vacuous claim of an 'aggressive Russia,' Trump is passing around the proverbial hat, demanding that NATO members contribute an ever-higher amount of their GDP to military spending. At the same, the eastern border with Russia has become militarized like never before.

Here there is striking convergence on the part of the Democrats and Republicans when it comes to Russia. The Democrats under Barack Obama, accepting the baton passed to them by the Bush administration, dropped a US-made missile defense system in Romania, a stone's throw from the Russian border. Obama's assurances that the Russians would be allowed to participate in the project were casually forgotten. But the Russians, who know a thing or two about military strategy, did not forget. Last year, Vladimir Putin unveiled a number of daunting military breakthroughs, including hypersonic weapons, which the Russian leader explained were developed with the sole purpose of striking a strategic balance between the two nuclear superpowers. And if the world needs more of anything these days, it is certainly balance.

With such ploys in mind, it is easy to see why Moscow has little cause for celebration with either a Democrat or Republican in the White House. Both political parties have long viewed Russia not as a potential partner that could lend tremendous assistance in resolving some of the planet's most intractable problems, but rather as some Cold War foe that needs vilified and vanquished. Of course there is good reason for this decades-long duplicity. The double-pronged attack by the Democrats and Republicans allows Washington to continue to make strategic inroads against Russia, as well as China, while filling the corporate coffers at the same time. It is an age-old strategy – albeit a foolhardy one in an age of nuclear weapons – which is doomed to ultimate failure, if not disaster, if left unchecked. The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation. Tags: NATO Perry Russia Trump US

[Jun 14, 2019] By this stage I wonder if all Skripals neighbours aren't all "ex" spooks

Jun 14, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Cortes June 9, 2019 at 11:24 pm

A real shame that Dr David Kelly took his own life. I'm sure he'd have been able to shed light on the latest news from Wiltshire:

https://www.rt.com/uk/461463-novichok-bb-skripal-house/

By this stage I wonder if all the neighbours aren't all "ex" spooks from hither and yon. Who else would tolerate the nonsense they've been subjected to without reaching out to their learned friends? Good luck with putting a house on the market with that circus going on.

Moscow Exile June 10, 2019 at 3:29 am
Such stringent measures would surely not be taken by HM govt and British security if they had no evidence that those evil Russians had attempted to kill the Skripals with Novichok.

Stands ter reason, don't it?

Mark Chapman June 10, 2019 at 8:15 am
The whole premise just becomes more and more ridiculous – the house is now completely shrouded in tarpaulins, the roof has been removed, it has undergone extensive 'decontamination' – all, all of it obviously for show, for the yokels, because for weeks afterward police personnel guarded the residence while standing just feet away from the door handle which was supposedly the locus of infection. No chemical-warfare protection whatsoever was apparent; they didn't even wear gloves unless it was cold.

They might at least have made up some story that the Deadly Door Handle had been replaced, or even the entire door. Because everyone who went in or out of that house, and there must have been many, touched that door handle, at least some of them with their bare hand. And what ever became of the intrepid detective, Nick what's-his-name? Wasn't the state going to buy his home as well, even though he had scarcely been in it and had gone more or less straight to the hospital after being 'infected'? Only to make a miraculous and complete recovery in days, and then drop off the public radar?

Stupidity abounds. Yet the press just can't let it go, and let it mercifully drop out of sight. It would just be too embarrassing to tacitly admit the British government made it up from start to finish, the entire operation. If the Skripals actually were poisoned with something, and not just acting a role for the British government, then that part must have been HM-government-supplied as well, because nobody who has any experience with police procedure is going to believe they had a culprit and a complete history of the crime in only a couple of hours after its discovery, and a foreign state was responsible.

Murdock June 11, 2019 at 8:14 am
I don't want to be an alarmist but if I had to guess I would say our good friend Officer Nick is probably partying it up with Sergei, Yulia, and their pets in Hades.
Mark Chapman June 11, 2019 at 8:43 am
You never know. He sort of dropped out of the public eye, and of all of them he seemed to be the one whose story would be picked apart first, although all of them were improbable. And I'm sure many, many were interested in interviewing him and questioning him further.

He was released from hospital with no apparent ill effects more than a year ago, on March 23rd, 2018. According to the Telegraph , here,

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/15/police-officer-nick-bailey-returns-active-duty-10-months-salisbury/

he returned to active duty the beginning of 2019, but the story has his Chief confirming this, it is not Bailey himself. That same story remembers that Dawn Sturgess "fell ill in Amesbury months after the incident and died in hospital in July after coming into contact with a perfume bottle believed to have been used in the attack on the Skripals and then discarded." But the perfume bottle described as having been 'used in the attack on the Skripals' was brand-new and still in its store packaging, not to any appearance unusual except for that weird plastic aerator fastened to the bottle. Which, now that I think of it, was supposed to have been not attached to the bottle at all; Charlie Rowley's tale was that he broke the bottle trying to get the applicator on it, which is how he was exposed. But he still gave it to his paramour as a gift, and she was still apparently able to use it to spray herself.

Anyway, so far as I can make out, DS Nick Bailey returned to duty with his former police department last winter, and since then not a peep has been heard from him. The Skripals are still incognito, and Sergei has never been seen again since going into hospital.

Bailey's parents apparently threw a wobbler when the Beeb decided to run a two-part television drama on the attacks, which would doubtless reinforce and reconfirm the government line although it is meant to showcase the quiet courage and resourcefulness of 'ordinary heroes'.

https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/17673661.parents-of-ds-nick-bailey-hit-out-at-bbc-over-novichok-drama/

No statement from Bailey himself. Meanwhile, he is scheduled to lead off a charity walk for the local hospital on July 7th. So we will see.

https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/17697751.detective-sergeant-nick-bailey-to-start-stars-appeal-walk-for-wards/

[Jun 14, 2019] Molly McKew, the information-warfare goddess

Jun 14, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

The Mueller Report, recently released, tried its best to imply that there was collusion even as it stated baldly that the investigation had yielded no evidence of collusion. But what struck me with the most force was the manner in which the Democrats – and the entire crowd which has so much invested in having had an illegitimate president foisted upon them by the Godless Russians – simply shook its head, took a deep breath and went right on blathering the same lunatic narrative. The Russians interfered with our democracy. Nothing is safe. Russia is the enemy of democracy, and will not suffer a democracy to live. Get the kids and pack up enough food for traveling, Mabel; we're headed for the mountains – it's "Red Dawn", babycakes.

Amazing as it will sound, America has learned nothing.

Part of it, of course, is America's belief in its own omnipotence; if something came out differently from the way it was planned to come out, then America was tricked. Hoodwinked, by unscrupulous actors. It cannot be that America is subject to the same vagaries and pressures and caprices as the rest of the world; America decides, and so it shall be. Part of it is the diligent pick-and-shovel work that America's political forces do to preserve that illusion; that America is an unstoppable force, so much more than just a big rich country.

So, the premise endures. Russian trolls, acting on the personal orders of Vladimir Putin, generated a storm of hateful social-media messages on race relations in America, in a coordinated strike which included Russian release of Hillary Clinton's personal emails, and America faltered. It scratched its head in doubt, and Donald Trump slipped past the worthy – and oh, so wronged – Mrs. Clinton to seize the presidency with his soiled hands.

Matt Taibbi did some excellent work on the subject , which I admit grudgingly, as I hoped to get something out on America's inability to learn from its mistakes before the heavyweights. Taibbi's writing will make you wonder whether you should laugh or cry, as you wonder how an influential country could survive the embarrassment of the past couple of years, encapsulated by a journalistic mantra which holds that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Russia is guilty as sin, and you can take that to the bank, so the very fact that Mueller will not leak any proof to us must mean that his findings are so devastating, so jaw-dropping, so "shut up !!" that they would break the media. The one possibility which was not considered a possibility at all was that there was nothing, and that the accusations had been fabrication and desperate damage control from the first.

But the frustrated narrative of Russian collusion is the only component which has been discredited to the point that Democrats and Russophobes of all political persuasions must admit there is no happy ending to the promise that Donald Trump was going to be fired so high he would need to go on oxygen. Mueller – probably deliberately – continued to hint that Russia had 'meddled' in the 2016 election, and that the effect had been important enough that democracy is under attack. No longer listening to anyone outside the party-faithful echo chamber, the Democrats now insist that US Attorney-General William Barr resign , for 'misleading the American people about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia".

"Barr's news conference ultimately did nothing to help Trump, because the public has eyes. Americans could read the damning evidence of obstruction of justice and communications with Russians for themselves and make their own judgements."

Democrats continue to try to make up in volume and intensity for the fact that there is no evidence at all of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, nor of obstruction of justice by Trump. The Republicans shout that the Democrats are on a senseless witch hunt, that the report makes clear there was no collusion between Trump and the Russians but are perfectly happy to agree that Russia meddled in the election. For his part, Mueller is happy to drop hints that both obstruction and collusion probably took place – he just couldn't find any proof.

All are loony. Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election at all, at least no further than Europe did. A lengthy list of European political leaders and former leaders publicly expressed their support for Mrs. Clinton's election to the office of President of the United States. In 2008, just one is recorded as having done so ; Mona Sahlin, leader of Sweden's Social Democrats. Interestingly, in the same list of endorsements of Mrs. Clinton in 2008 – right after "Adult Entertainment Artists" – is this one: under "Well-Known Individuals", "Businessman and television personality, Future Presidential Candidate & Rival for the United States presidential election 2016, future President of the United States Donald Trump" .

There's gratitude for you.

The Presidents of Taiwan, Chile, France and Ukraine, the former Presidents of Mexico, France, Kosovo and Ecuador, the Prime Ministers of the Czech Republic, France, Italy, New Zealand and Sweden and former Prime Ministers of Sweden, the UK, Canada, Australia and France all openly expressed their hope that Mrs. Clinton would be elected President of the United States. None of this was considered meddling. I don't recall any official endorsement from Russia, although the international English-speaking media helpfully informed us that Putin hoped Trump would win, because he felt Trump would be more approachable for concessions and because he disliked Mrs. Clinton. When Trump did win, despite wrong guesses by just about every political analyst on the planet, it was considered 'additional evidence' that meddling had taken place, instigated by you-know-who.

Perhaps, in highlighting just how stupid America is making itself look with this painfully stubborn insistence that Russia rolled it in 2016, it would be useful to take another look at what American partisans claimed to already know, and could prove as easily as demonstrating that if you put your hand on a hot stove, you will burn it.

One of my favourite American partisans is the Duchess of Displacement, the Baroness of Bulk, Molly McKew . We took a look at her work a long time ago , on the old blog – just before Trump commenced his term, in fact – or perhaps I should say his first term, since the barking madness of the political landscape in today's America makes it entirely possible he will serve a second, unbelievable as that may sound. In that article, we closed out like this; "Look, we're getting close to the end of this, and it's time for plain speaking. Americans are confused and don't know fact from fiction because their own government feeds them bullshit with a side of spin day in, day out, and you're part of it. There was no Russian interference in the American elections, and you know it." My take on what happened has not changed a bit.

McKew is still regarded – highly, I should imagine, by her feeble-minded peers – as an 'information-warfare expert'. Hardly amazing that she sees information-warfare attacks everywhere. Here's what she claimed to know about Russian election interference and general friggin' in the riggin', a little over a year ago. She bases her conclusions on Mueller's Grand Jury indictment, which was issued more than a year in advance of his report – an indictment in which Mueller claimed the Defendants (a variety of Russian advertising and research agencies operating both in Russia and the United States) " knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016."

You know the old quote about how easy it is to get a Grand Jury to indict someone or something.

Something McKew claims is now – meaning as of early 2018 – "undeniable" is that Russia had, and has "a broad, sophisticated system that can influence American opinion, which cost tens of millions of dollars spent over several years to build." She must be talking about RT , although I suggest her cost estimate is a little low. RT, which the west considers a 'propaganda network', cost $30 million to set up, in 2005. Its operating costs now are in the hundreds of millions annually, although 80% of the costs are incurred outside Russia, paying for partner networks who distribute its channels.

We kind of have to give her that one, because it is true that RT's coverage is often at odds with the bullshit du jour that CNN and NBC and FOX are spreading. Bullshit, for example, like CNN's non-stop yammering about the collusion that Mueller could find no evidence ever occurred, and said so. Bullshit like NBC News anchor Brian Williams' recollections about his helicopter being shot down in Iraq – echoes of Hillary 'sniper fire' Clinton – , which never happened . Williams is not a nobody; he was the nation's longest-serving and top-rated news anchor.

I submit, however, that the American people are not subjected to RT's 'propaganda and disinformation' about American propaganda and disinformation against their will; there is a button on the remote called "On/Off" that will free the American enslaved from malign Kremlin influence. Alternatively, they can switch to another channel. I would just point out, though, that if they switch to a popular US news channel, they are very likely to be listening to a broadcast which has been curated by its corporate owners, and who " are unlikely to report news that is broadly hostile to corporate capitalism and the American elite ." That's according to a report entitled "Corporate Control of the Media" (in the USA), printed in 2009.

Warming to her subject, McKew goes on to claim "The Russian efforts described in the indictment focused on establishing deep, authenticated, long-term identities for individuals and groups within specific communities. This was underlaid by the establishment of servers and VPNs based in the US to mask the location of the individuals involved. US-based email accounts linked to fake or stolen US identity documents (driver licenses, social security numbers, and more) were used to back the online identities. These identities were also used to launder payments through PayPal and cryptocurrency accounts. All of this deception was designed to make it appear that these activities were being carried out by Americans."

This might be a good point at which to suggest there is every reason to believe 'these activities' were carried out by Americans. Americans working for national intelligence agencies.

In March 2017, The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima had an article published which was entitled "WikiLeaks' latest release of CIA cyber-tools could blow the cover on agency hacking operations." It detailed, among other things, a cyber tool called "Marble Framework" . This could be used, it was claimed, to re-assign attribution of material posted on the internet so that it appeared, for forensic purposes, to have originated from a different source. Test samples, it was reported, were included in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi.

The report which encouraged President Trump to ask his CIA Director – Mike Pompeo, at the time, who is currently the National Security Advisor – what he knew about this was co-authored by Skip Folden, who for 25 years was the IT Program Manager for IBM. I think it is safe to say he has some credibility in the field of cyber-forensics. The authors of the report contended that the 'hack' of the DNC's server was not actually a hack at all, but the at-source copying of data directly from the server using a storage device, probably a thumb drive. The data transfer rate, the authors claimed, was far too rapid to have occurred over the internet.

Since then I have seen a couple of 'rebuttals' which claimed that under certain conditions – like if nobody else was using the internet during that time – such copying from a remote source was possible. I never saw anything like proof. Like someone demonstrating how it could be done. Much like the old 'clean pee swap' the completely-discredited McLaren Report claimed the Russians performed on athletes' urine samples; he claimed to know how it was done, but never demonstrated it, and appeared to be unable to do so, as it would have strongly supported his allegations.

Having taken us such an eye-blurring distance on the blarney rollercoaster, Molly at last falls apart. "So anyone trying to tell you there was little impact on political views from the tools the Russians used doesn't know. Because none of us knows. No one has looked . Social media companies don't want us to know, and they obfuscate and drag their feet rather than disclosing information. The analytical tools to quantify the impact don't readily exist. But we know what we see, and what we heard -- and the narratives pushed by the Russian information operation made it to all of our ears and eyes" , she tells us.

So if you saw advertising by Black Lives Matter, or perhaps some other civil-rights organization, pushing a false narrative that blacks are second-class citizens in their own country, then you were exposed to Kremlin propaganda. And it affected how you voted, if you're an American. How much? Nobody knows. What everybody does know, or should, is that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, although not the determinate vote in the electoral college – quite a trick for the Russians to manage.

Let's summarize. Americans were supposedly pushed into voting for Donald Trump by the misuse of stolen data which was all true. The DNC did conspire to rig the primary so that Clinton was the Democratic candidate rather than Bernie Sanders; the Chair of the DNC resigned in disgrace because of the revelations which came to light. Her replacement, Donna Brazile, admitted to having fed the primary debate questions to Clinton in advance , giving her an advantage over Sanders, who was unaware of them as he should have been. At its very core, the Democratic party is as corrupt as the Nigerian prince who keeps e-mailing me to help him hide his ill-gotten fortune. American intelligence and technical professionals with no discernible benefit in making their country look bad insist that no hacking of the DNC's server took place, and that the stolen information which kicked the Democrats' feet out from under them on the eve of the election was not hacked, but stolen by direct physical transfer from the server using a portable storage device. Wikileaks insisted the information it released did not come from the Russians. The serving American intelligence services at the time of the 2016 election had a secret program which was capable of mimicking the origin of posted information on social media so that forensic investigation would find traces of Russian authorship, or other non-American authorship. The CIA has vigorously denied any involvement whatsoever in various international events at the time they occurred, only to admit much later – when it would be pointless to punish it – that they did in fact play an influential role. Data from 2014 established that at that time, 27% of black Americans lived below the poverty line , compared with 11% of all Americans; 38% of black children lived in poverty compared with 22% of all American children. I have seen no compelling evidence that this situation has improved. According to the perfidious Kremlin mouthpiece RT, citing American sources, American blacks are incarcerated at a rate six times as high as the national average .

Molly McKew, the information-warfare goddess, tells us that it is 'undeniable' that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, by making Americans doubt the integrity of their political candidates. In the case of the Democrats – which is by no means intended to spare the Republicans – they were demonstrated by their own repeatedly-verified and admitted shenanigans to understand 'integrity' about as well as the average crab fisherman understands how to calculate the mass of the sun. Everything they were accused of doing, they did. Candidate Hillary Clinton unambiguously lied – as she has done on other occasions – about the security classification of her 'private' emails and completely fabricated consent of the State Department for her to maintain a private email server for the sending and receiving of official message traffic. America does have an uneven scale of justice, law enforcement and standard of living based on race. There is no proof at all which has so far been made public that any of those situations were reported, compelled, exacerbated or invented by Russia, or by anyone from Russia. According to persistent revelations from Kiev, the American Democratic party energetically sought dirt on candidate Trump from Ukrainian sources , not Russian. McKew closes her soliloquy on election interference by maintaining that while it is undeniable that Russian interference occurred, nobody knows the extent to which it influenced the vote, which resulted in a popular win for the candidate who lost the election.

Let me posit another reality. Russia played no part at all in the outcome of the 2016 election, although it certainly was a surprise to most. There is no proof even offered that there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials of any description, and no proof which could not have been fabricated that any coherent social-media campaign originating with Russian operatives took place, or that any such imaginary social-media campaign had anything to do with Trump's victory. The Democrats, by sticking to their ridiculous and incredible narrative of Russian masterminds warping American democracy, are setting themselves up for having their headlights sucked out again by the passing Trump juggernaut in the next election, when they will be totally out of excuses if they do not wake up and do some serious retrenching.

But we are probably going to have to wait for history to teach that lesson to Americans.

[Jun 13, 2019] Our Famously Free Press and Madcow disease

Jun 13, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Our Famously Free...

"MSNBC and New York Times at odds over reporter appearances on Maddow" [ CNN ]. "New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet and MSNBC president Phil Griffin met last week amid tensions between their two news organizations. But the lengthy lunch did not resolve the issues at hand, according to four sources with knowledge of the sit-down. The executives remain at an impasse. The specific issue is about television appearances by Times reporters on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show .

The dust-up dates back to May 30, when Vanity Fair caused a ruckus by reporting that Times management wants reporters to 'steer clear of any cable-news shows that the masthead perceives as too partisan.' 'The Rachel Maddow Show' is evidently one of those shows [ incroyable! ] -- and Maddow is not happy about it.

The prime time host prides herself on her support for newspaper journalists Complicating matters further: Numerous Times reporters are also paid contributors to MSNBC and CNN. For example, Matthew Rosenberg and Mark Mazzetti of The Times, who are also paid by CNN, have both appeared on 'CNN Tonight' in recent days. CNN declined to comment on the booking relationship with The Times."

• It's impossible for me to understand how the beacons of integrity at the Times could appear in a cesspit like The Rachel Maddow Show. T

These are strange times.

[Jun 13, 2019] A loyal servant of empire -- Crowdstrike CEO -- is well-rewarded for his role in creating Russiagate hysteria by Caitlin Johnstone

Notable quotes:
"... Never mind that to this day the DNC servers have not been examined by the FBI, nor indeed were they examined by the Special Counsel of Robert " Iraq has WMD " Mueller, preferring instead to go with the analyses of this extremely shady outfit with extensive and well-documented ties with the oligarchic leaders of the US-centralized empire. ..."
"... When the Romanian REAL Guccifer got Podesta password (password) by phishing, exposing his pizza and walnut sauce perversions, the US had him jailed. When WikiLeaks made a DNC dump, CrowdStrike concocted Guccifer 2.0, then more leaks Fancy Bear, and more leaks Cozy Bear. All these CrowdStrike fabrications used CIA Vault 7 fingerprints to frame Russia. It is time to execute our ruling demonic warlords. ..."
Jun 13, 2019 | caitlinjohnstone.com

A new article by Forbes reports that the CEO of Crowdstrike, the extremely shady cybersecurity corporation which was foundational in the construction of the official CIA/CNN Russian hacking narrative, is now a billionaire. George Kurtz ascended to the billionaire rankings on the back of soaring stocks immediately after the company went public, carried no doubt on the winds of the international fame it gained from its central protagonistic role in the most well-known hacking news story of all time.

A loyal servant of empire well-rewarded. Never mind that US government insiders like Hillary Clinton had been prepping for escalations against Russia well in advance of the 2016 elections, and that their preexisting agendas to shove a geostrategic obstacle off the world stage benefitted from the hacking narrative as much as George Kurtz did.

Never mind that Crowdstrike is tied to the NATO narrative management firm known as the Atlantic Council, which receives funding from the US government, the EU, NATO, Gulf states and powerful international oligarchs. Never mind either that Crowdstrike was financed with a whopping $100 million from Google , which has had a cozy relationship with US intelligence agencies since its very inception .

Never mind that to this day the DNC servers have not been examined by the FBI, nor indeed were they examined by the Special Counsel of Robert " Iraq has WMD " Mueller, preferring instead to go with the analyses of this extremely shady outfit with extensive and well-documented ties with the oligarchic leaders of the US-centralized empire.

Also never mind that the Crowdstrike analyst who led forensics on those DNC servers had in fact worked for and was promoted by Robert Mueller while the two were in the FBI.

The CEO of the Atlantic Council-tied Crowdstrike, which formed the foundation of the official CIA/CNN Russian hacking narrative, is now a billionaire. I'm telling you, the real underlying currency of this world is narrative and the ability to control it. https://t.co/XsBCvkIDzJ -- Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) June 12, 2019
As I never tire of saying, the real underlying currency in our world is not gold, nor bureaucratic fiat, nor even raw military might.

The real underlying currency of our world is narrative, and the ability to control it.

As soon as you really grok this dynamic, you start noticing it everywhere.

George Kurtz is one clear example today of narrative control's central role in the maintenance and expansion of existing power structures, as well as an illustration of how the empire is wired to reward those who advance pro-empire narratives and punish those who damage them...

... ... ...

Joseph Olson / June 13, 2019
When the Romanian REAL Guccifer got Podesta password (password) by phishing, exposing his pizza and walnut sauce perversions, the US had him jailed. When WikiLeaks made a DNC dump, CrowdStrike concocted Guccifer 2.0, then more leaks Fancy Bear, and more leaks Cozy Bear. All these CrowdStrike fabrications used CIA Vault 7 fingerprints to frame Russia. It is time to execute our ruling demonic warlords.

[Jun 13, 2019] DOJ Investigating CIA Role In Russiagate

Notable quotes:
"... All of these interactions reek of entrapment . Mr. Papadopoulos now says, "I believe Australian and UK intelligence were involved in an active operation to target Trump and his associates." Like Mr. Halper and Mr. Mifsud, Mr. Downer had ties to the CIA , MI6 and (surprise!) the Clintons . ..."
"... Given the deep intelligence backgrounds of these folks, it's difficult to believe that former DOJ/ FBI officials such as Peter Strzok or even James Comey and Andrew McCabe on their own devised the plan to deploy them . ..."
"... Interestingly, Haspel was the CIA's station chief in London during the Russiagate investigation - where the majority of the espionage against the Trump campaign aides took place ..."
"... One of the CIA officers Durham wants to question works at the agency's counterintelligence mission center - one potential conduit between the CIA and the FBI through which the agencies might have passed information during the Trump-Russia investigation. Another senior analyst Durham wants to talk to was involved in the CIA's assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election. ..."
Jun 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

The Department of Justice will interview senior CIA personnel as part of a sweeping investigation into the origins of 'Russiagate,' according to the New York Times , citing anonymous sources briefed on the matter.

The interview plans are the latest sign the Justice Department will take a critical look at the C.I.A.'s work on Russia's election interference . Investigators want to talk with at least one senior counterintelligence official and a senior C.I.A. analyst , the people said. Both officials were involved in the agency's work on understanding the Russian campaign to sabotage the election in 2016. - New York Times

The Times notes that while the DOJ probe is not a criminal inquiry, CIA employees are nervous, according to former officials, while senior agency officials have questioned why the CIA's analytical work should be within the purview of John H. Durham - the US Attorney for Connecticut appointed by Attorney General William Barr to oversee the review.

John H. Durham

Justice Department officials have given only broad clues about the review but did note that it is focused on the period leading up to the 2016 vote . Mr. Barr has been interested in how the C.I.A. drew its conclusions about Russia's election sabotage , particularly the judgment that Mr. Putin ordered that operatives help Mr. Trump by discrediting his opponent, Hillary Clinton, according to current and former American officials.

Mr. Barr wants to know more about the C.I.A. sources who helped inform its understanding of the details of the Russian interference campaign , an official has said. He also wants to better understand the intelligence that flowed from the C.I.A. to the F.B.I. in the summer of 2016 . - New York Times

And why should the CIA be nervous? Fox News commentator Monica Crowley laid it out in an April Op-Ed in the Washington Times :

The Obama Department of Justice and FBI targeting of two low-level Trump aides, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, was carried out in the spring of 2016 because they wanted to spy on the Trump campaign but needed a way in. They enlisted an American academic and shadowy FBI informant named Stefan Halper to repeatedly sidle up to both Mr. Papadopoulos and Mr. Page. But complementing his work for the FBI , Mr. Halper had a side gig as an intelligence operative with longstanding ties to the CIA and British intelligence MI6 .

Another foreign professor, Joseph Mifsud , who played an important early part in targeting Papadopoulos, also had abiding ties to the CIA , MI6 and the British foreign secretary.

A third operative, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, targeted Mr. Papadopoulos in a London bar. It was Mr. Downer's "tip" to the FBI that provided the justification for the start of Russia counterintelligence investigation, complete with fraudulently-obtained FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.

All of these interactions reek of entrapment . Mr. Papadopoulos now says, "I believe Australian and UK intelligence were involved in an active operation to target Trump and his associates." Like Mr. Halper and Mr. Mifsud, Mr. Downer had ties to the CIA , MI6 and (surprise!) the Clintons .

Given the deep intelligence backgrounds of these folks, it's difficult to believe that former DOJ/ FBI officials such as Peter Strzok or even James Comey and Andrew McCabe on their own devised the plan to deploy them .

***

It should also be noted that Papadopoulos has suggested Stefan Halper's fake assistant 'Azra Turk' is CIA, not FBI as widely reported, and that what happened to him " was clearly a CIA operation. "

https://video.foxnews.com/v/video-embed.html?video_id=6036810752001

According to the Times , CIA director Gina Haspel has told senior officials that the agency will cooperate - up to a point, as "critical pieces of intelligence whose disclosure could jeopardize sources, reveal collection methods or disclose information provided by allies" will not be shared.

Interestingly, Haspel was the CIA's station chief in London during the Russiagate investigation - where the majority of the espionage against the Trump campaign aides took place .

The Justice Department has not submitted formal written requests to talk to the C.I.A. officers, but law enforcement officials have told intelligence officials that Mr. Durham will seek the interviews, two of the people said. Communications officers for both the C.I.A. and the Justice Department declined to comment.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has previously interviewed several of the C.I.A. officers the Justice Department is seeking to talk to, according to a person familiar with the matter. The committee found no problems with their work or the origins of the Russia inquiry. - New York Times

One of the CIA officers Durham wants to question works at the agency's counterintelligence mission center - one potential conduit between the CIA and the FBI through which the agencies might have passed information during the Trump-Russia investigation. Another senior analyst Durham wants to talk to was involved in the CIA's assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The ties between the efforts by the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. to examine Russia's election interference are broader. In the summer of 2016, the intelligence community formed a task force housed at the C.I.A. to investigate Russian interference. The group shared intelligence with F.B.I. investigators who opened the bureau's Russia inquiry in an effort to determine whether any Americans were working with the Russians on their interference during the election. - New York Times

Of note - the CIA focuses on foreign intelligence and is not supposed to investigate Americans . Instead, the agency is required to pass domestic issues which arise during investigations to the FBI.

glenlloyd , 2 hours ago link

Yes, we know the CIA is not supposed to investigate US citizens, but we also know that they do a lot of things they're not supposed to, and a lot of that stuff is never found out.

We also know that Obama did a lot of things he wasn't supposed to, but that never seems to alarm any of the Demonrats. Funny think how now that he's gone ACA is all of a sudden unconstitutional.

When I think of the whole Russia thing and where it started and who perpetrated it etc I just feel like how can things get so out of control?

One good thing is that we know no lie lives forever, so at some point in time it will all come out.

Surftown , 3 hours ago link

Haspel worked for the Dept of Fabrication in London, now in charge of Dept of Coverups- w Horowitz.

SmilinJackAbbott , 4 hours ago link

This insubordinate bitch is disobeying a direct order from The President to fully cooperate with AG Barr & Durham including handing over sources & methods. I don't think she gets who the boss is here. Her fingerprints are all over this **** as Brennan's dirty deeds doer in London. Fire her sorry azz yesterday then investigate her.

TheRapture , 3 hours ago link

It wasn't just the Democrats. The plot was undoubtedly created and run by the CIA (likely Brennan) and FBI, with some degree of involved by the NSA, who were communicating with the DNC and Hillary. Most senior leaders of the Democratic must have known at the outset that Russia Gate was a fraud, or more accurately, false flag. Yet almost all the Dem leadership supported Russia Gate at least by giving lip service to "Russian interference in our elections."

Why? Why would the Dems be so stupid? Because they thought the intel establishment was invincible. The CIA and FBI always get what they want, and if you cross them, to quote Chuck Schumer, "they can get you back a hundred ways from Tuesday". And because the DNC, Hillary and Democratic Party leadership stand not for reform but rather the status quo, the Democrats had nothing to officer except idiotic "identity politics", which is really the only thing Hillary ever stood for. The Dems just couldn't admit to themselves or their base that voters could possible prefer a crazy corrupt bullshitter over the politically correct Hillary. The Dems had to look for exculpation-- Russia Gate served that purpose.

chinooky47 , 5 hours ago link

I say if the Brits where involved in this illegal spying then maybe their methods and sources should be exposed...sounds like dirty laundry anyway. This whole mess is beyond belief and it sure looks like espionage against Trump from the highest parts of our government....Treason anybody!

GIG61 , 6 hours ago link

When the head of Veteran Intelligence Professionals For Sanity's Ray McGovern says this story has real teeth in it now I'm paying attention. https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/13/ray-mcgovern-doj-bloodhounds-on-the-scent-of-john-brennan/

He is a Green and thinks Donald Trump is the worst President we've ever had due to his environmental polices. They said the whole Russia Gate narrative was ******** from the start. They urged Trump not to pull out of the Iran deal.

I don't know, but when I see a group of people as large as this who know the way the game is played since they ran it themselves overseas for decades, they strike me as a lot more credible then John Brennan working for CNN or James Clapper appearing on "The View" with those skanky NY women on ABC and talking about spying.

For skeptics, past VIPS Memos to Presidents and the UN dating back to 2003. Staunch anti war there is something for everyone here.

https://consortiumnews.com/vips-memos/

alamac , 4 hours ago link

VIPS also did the analysis (Binney) that showed the metadata proved that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked, because of the transfer speeds. VIPS is a real treasure of an organization.

Thanks for that link, I had not heard of Ray's comment.

GIG61 , 3 hours ago link

Yes I remember seeing that. They've torn the entire Mueller narrative to shreds with lots of other specifics. I think it's also interesting how they were having vigils for Julian Assange regularly posting them and speaking constantly about the screwing he's getting.

I see Consortium News posted this story about Seth Rich yesterday. I find the site unbiased and not everything I want to hear which is good. In my limited travels I find it good Journalism. I'm sure there is more out there.

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/12/why-didnt-mueller-investigate-seth-rich/

fanbeav , 6 hours ago link

So Pompeo was CIA head and then Haspel got appointed. Hopefully Pompeo has all of the details because Haspel is buddies with Brennan and was station chief in London where this originated!

[Jun 13, 2019] Stop Hoping That The Swamp Will Drain The Swamp

Caitlin Johnstone is probably wrong. Such internal struggle actually rarely is bloodless...
There are actually two faction of the the USA ruling elite with different views on where the USA should go next. So this "intra-elite" struggle can well lead to some casualties as Clinton faction launched the color revolution against Trump. A coup d'état, which failed. In old time she (and Mueller, Brennan and Comey) would be beheaded on the main square...
Notable quotes:
"... I don't think Caitlin's "both sides do it" argument holds water. For over TWO YEARS the propaganda arm of the DNC– the mainstream media– has been reinforcing the Deep State/Dem party lie that Trump is a tool/spy for the Russian gov't. Every day, "the walls are closing in on Trump" was their go-to line. Only NOW that the curtains are being pulled back to see the perfidious machinations of the Deep State, Dems and their handmaiden media are SOME conservatives saying a reckoning is around the corner. ..."
"... The conservatives, while maybe premature, has a lot credibility, while the Democrat had exactly ZERO. In fact, it was a treasonous attempt at a coup, engineered by heads of the FBI, DNC, DOJ, CIA, NSA and God know what other intelligence agencies. There is no equivalency as Caitlin assumes. ..."
"... Russiagate (a fabrication made of whole cloth) was an engineered diversion from the fact that Democratic Party leadership had rigged the primaries and convention to steal the nomination from Bernie and Republicans had rigged the general in key swing states to steal the election from Hillary. It worked. ..."
"... According to columnist Paul Street, it was Upton Sinclair who said that Republicans and Democrats were two wings of the same bird of prey. I can't confirm the citation, but I agree with it wholeheartedly. ..."
"... The Orange Wrestling Clown has been drowning in debt since the 1990s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDSDDMi3GUo Comfortable billionaires don't sell steaks or start scam universities to keep their business afloat. This is why he sold his soul to the Khazarian mafia. Sheldon Adelson, Netanyahu have both fist so far up Trump's ass that John Bolton can shake hands with them through Trump's open mouth. ..."
Jun 13, 2019 | caitlinjohnstone.com

If you only tuned into US politics within the last couple of years this will come as a major surprise, but believe it or not there was once a time when both major parties weren't constantly claiming that imminent revelations are about to completely destroy the other party any minute now. Used to be they'd just focus on beating each other in elections and making each other look bad with smears and sex scandals; now in the age of Trump they're both always insisting that some huge, earth-shattering revelation is right around the corner that will see the leaders of the other party dragged off in chains forever.

Enthusiastic Trump supporters have been talking a lot lately about the president's decision to give Attorney General Bill Barr the authority to declassify information regarding the shady origins of the discredited Russiagate hoax, including potentially illicit means used to secure a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign staff. For days online chatter from Trump's base has been amping up for a huge, cataclysmic bombshell in the same language Russiagaters used to use back before Robert Mueller pissed in their Wheaties.

"There is information coming that will curl your hair," Congressman Mark Meadows told Sean Hannity on Fox News. "I can tell you that the reason why it is so visceral -- the response from the Democrats is so visceral right now -- is because they know, they've seen documents. Adam Schiff has seen documents that he knows will actually put the finger pointing back at him and his Democrat colleagues, not the president of the United States."

"There is some information in these transcripts that I think has the potential to be a game changer, if it's ever made public," former Republican congressman Trey Gowdy told Fox News , referring to FBI transcripts of recorded interactions with surveilled individuals.

"Sources tell me there will be bombshells [of] information," tweeted Fox News contributor Sara A Carter of the coming decassifications.

.⁦ @RepMarkMeadows ⁩ Says 'Declassification is right around the corner' I certainly hope so because the American people deserve the truth – all of it. Sources tell me there will be bombshells if information. | https://t.co/0EpNJ2GZfG

-- Sara A. Carter (@SaraCarterDC) May 22, 2019

Democrats and Democrat-aligned media are responding with similarly apocalyptic language, playing right along with the same WWE script.

"While Trump stonewalls the public from learning the truth about his obstruction of justice, Trump and Barr conspire to weaponize law enforcement and classified information against their political enemies," griped congressman, Russiagater and flamboyant drama queen Adam Schiff, adding, "The coverup has entered a new and dangerous phase. This is un-American."

"President Trump's order allowing Attorney General William P. Barr to declassify any intelligence that led to the Russia investigation sets up a potential confrontation with the C.I.A.," the New York Times warns .

"National security veterans fear a declassification order could trigger resignations and threaten the CIA's ability to conduct its core business -- managing secret intelligence and sources," frets Politico .

"William Barr's New Authority to Declassify Anything He Wants Is a Threat to National Security," blares a headline from Slate .

New from me: Trump's declassification order has set up a showdown between DOJ and the intelligence community that could trigger resignations and threaten the CIA's ability to conduct its core business -- managing secret intelligence and sources. https://t.co/iUFVCeWRe0

-- Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) May 25, 2019

Both sides are wrong and ridiculous. Democrats are wrong and ridiculous for claiming a tiny bit of government transparency is dangerous, and Republicans are wrong and ridiculous to claim that game-changing bombshell revelations are going to be brought to the light by these declassifications. Just like with the Mueller report and the " bigger than Watergate " Nunes memo before it, there may be some interesting revelations, but the swamp of DC corruption will march on completely uninterrupted.

Readers keep asking me to weigh in on this whole declassification controversy, but really I have no response to the whole thing apart from boredom and a slight flinch whenever I think about Adam Schiff's bug-eyed stare. There's just not much going to come of it.

This is not to suggest that the intelligence communities of the US and its allies weren't up to some extremely sleazy shenanigans in planting the seeds of the Russiagate insanity which monopolized US political attention for over two years, and it's not to suggest that those shenanigans couldn't be interpreted as crimes. Abuse of government surveillance and inflicting a malignant psyop on public consciousness are extremely egregious offenses and should indeed be punished. And, in a sane world, they would be.

But we do not live in such a world. We live in a world where partisan divides are for show only and the powerful protect each other from ever being held to account. Having the swamp of Trump's Justice Department investigate the swamp of Obama's intelligence community isn't going to lead anywhere. Swamp creature Bill "Iran-Contra coverup" Barr isn't going to be draining the swamp any more than swamp creature Robert "Saddam has WMDs" Mueller. The swamp cannot be used to drain itself.

Dems and allied pundits have been screaming for years that we must know every last detail about "Russian interference" in 2016, and have launched multiple exhaustive investigations pursuant to this. But now they scream that we MUST NOT know about CIA/FBI conduct in 2016. Very odd

-- Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 27, 2019

It is possible that some important information will make its way to public view, like Russiagate's roots in UK intelligence , for example. But no powerful people in the US or its allied governments will suffer any meaningful consequences for any offenses exposed, and no significant changes in government policy or behavior will take place. I fully support declassifying everything Trump wants declassified (as well as the rest of the 99 percent of classified government information which is only hidden from public view out of convenience for the powerful), but the most significant thing that can possibly come of it is a slightly better-informed populace and some political damage to the Democrats in 2020.

The only people who believe these inquiries will help fix America's problems are those who believe there are aspects of the DC power structure which are not immersed in swamp. Trump supporters believe the Trump administration is virtuous, so they believe the Justice Department is preparing to hold powerful manipulators to legal accountability rather than cover for them and treat them with kid gloves. Democrats believed that a former FBI Director and George W Bush crony was going to bring the Executive Branch of the US government to its knees, because they thought that swamp monster was in some way separable from the swamp. It doesn't work that way, cupcake.

If people want to rid their government of the swamp of corruption, they're going to have to do it themselves. No political insider is going to rise to the occasion and do it for you. They can't. You can't drain the swamp when you're made of swamp, any more than you can wash yourself clean with a turd-soaked loofah.

The only upheaval that is worth buying stock in is the kind which moves from the bottom up. If you really want change, it's not going to come from the US president or any longtime government insider. It's going to come from real people looking to each other and agreeing to say that enough is enough, and use the power of their numbers to flush the corrupt power structure down the toilet where it belongs. It will mean ceasing to imbue the fake partisan divide with the power of belief, and it will mean unplugging from official authorized narratives about what's going on in the world and circulating our own narratives instead.

All political analysis which favors either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party is inherently worthless, because both parties are made of swamp and exist in service of the swamp. If you can't see that the entire system is one unified block of corruption and that ordinary people need to come together and unite against it, then you really don't understand what you're looking at.

__________________________

Everyone has my unconditional permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I've written) in any way they like free of charge. My work is entirely reader-supported , so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , purchasing some of my sweet merchandise , buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone , or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I'm trying to do with this platform, click here .

Lloyd / June 5, 2019

"Resistance is futile" and furthermore, "You will be assimilated".

The Borg-like psychic vampire Collective and its hive mind is apparently quite real.

Aardvark-Gnosis / May 31, 2019
Subversive everything ? Like the Mad Hatter, From Wikipedia

"The Hatter's riddle Edit

In the chapter "A Mad Tea Party", the Hatter asks a much-noted riddle "why is a raven like a writing desk?" When Alice gives up trying to figure out why, the Hatter admits "I haven't the slightest idea!". Carroll originally intended the riddle to be without an answer, but after many requests from readers, he and others -- including puzzle expert Sam Loyd -- suggested possible answers; in his preface to the 1896 edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,

Carroll wrote:

Inquiries have been so often addressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatter's riddle can be imagined, that I may as well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate answer, "because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front!" This, however, is merely an afterthought; the riddle as originally invented had no answer at all."

Me;

For all we know the Magic of Kabbalistic Zohar has formed a Golem image of The Trumpian REIGN many years in the past Now that AIPAC controls the "Bankers War Machine" "Through deception we make war" The Massod Credo Deception is the whole game! In fighting, Double speak, the latter, conjured the gods of dystopian rule by the rabbis of the Knesset , Wall Street, is owned by whom? As well, Mainstream media, etc. Maybe by not one individual, but the collective has been operating on the planet for millennia slowly through a design of martyred collective ideological sacrifice, do the fractures in the timeline of history become distorted and manipulated by this Kabbalistic magic.

If anyone mentions the latter, the knee jerk reaction keeps the truth of who runs everything silent, What then is the racist card that separates the masses into the left right dichotomy here the clusterfuck begins the "MADHATTERSINSANITY" bate the hook, fix the gear, cast out the line and real in the guppy's that bite on the bate!

The thousand pound gorilla on the back of time is looking backwards:

White Rabbit
"When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the red queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head, feed your head"

The best kept secret is the on right before everyone's eyes everyday, every Hour of the day!

Remember the USS COLE? swept under the rug of obsecurity, because of a fake ally in sheep's clothing.. and the ignorance of the masses that worship a god they did not create those of the tribe that no longer exist, only in a fake and false ideological sense. Believers that listen to evangelicals taught by the seminaries of structured dogma They should be called Cemeteries, where the dead bury the dead and fill the heads of the latter with zombie mentalities conjures by the rabbis of illusion The priest of confusion rule the planet!

The Trumpian dystopia has been engineered by the very royals that put the abomination of desolation in the middle east in 1948 Now, genocide is excepted by the zombie nation of false freedom and false economic means feeding that gorilla These are the magicians of money for nothing a free lunch slavery incorporated, ideological psychosis and judicial double talk, and a fake we the people document of no effect!

Yet, all are afraid to be demonized by the effects of a desolate nation of egotistical chosen ones that are a minority on planet Rothschild Fear rules the economic viability of all who challenge the real haters of the human spirit. Human spirit )0( Zombies (100)

jared / May 30, 2019
Agreed Caitlin.
Trump should be impeached not for canoodling with Russians but for
– Failure to follow through on his promises (doing the opposite)
– Incompetence

These guys are doing some great work:

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/05/30/washingtons-mighty-warriors-draft-dodgers-and-scoundrels/

cutthecord / May 30, 2019
you're still taking the dominant narratives at their face value .
jared / May 31, 2019
I truly believe that Trump should be impeached. Would also like to see Bush tried as war criminal and assets seized.
Dan / May 30, 2019
I don't think Caitlin's "both sides do it" argument holds water. For over TWO YEARS the propaganda arm of the DNC– the mainstream media– has been reinforcing the Deep State/Dem party lie that Trump is a tool/spy for the Russian gov't. Every day, "the walls are closing in on Trump" was their go-to line. Only NOW that the curtains are being pulled back to see the perfidious machinations of the Deep State, Dems and their handmaiden media are SOME conservatives saying a reckoning is around the corner.

The conservatives, while maybe premature, has a lot credibility, while the Democrat had exactly ZERO. In fact, it was a treasonous attempt at a coup, engineered by heads of the FBI, DNC, DOJ, CIA, NSA and God know what other intelligence agencies. There is no equivalency as Caitlin assumes.

John / June 4, 2019
What better 'defense' against the Swamp Drainer than to propagate that he too is part of their swamp?

You can tell a lot about a person by looking at those who oppose him

richard le sarcophage / May 30, 2019
The best way to get a quick idea of just how raving mad and Evil the ruling US elites are is to watch Fox News, then MSNBC (MSNBC are rather more deranged). The barking insane presstitutes howl and bay at the moon, and accuse the other side of being liars, criminals, morons, thugs etc. And, don't you know, they're both correct.

My favourite lunacy, that both snarl, is that there was 'massive interference' by 'Russia' in the 2016 election sham. A Big Lie that Adolph H. would approve, and hypocrisy so gargantuan, coming from the greatest interferer in the affairs of other societies, ever, by orders of magnitude, that it blows the mind.

John / May 30, 2019
Anybody who refuses to acknowledge that President DJT is being relentlessly, non-stop, 24/7 ATTACKED with HATE and FAKE NEWS is willingly BLIND / looking the other way

Why do you think that is?? Because he colluded with Russia? He's racist? He's sexist? He's a Nazi? He's fascist? And the MSM is just trying to inform and protect the public?

Can you name ANYONE ever, more ubiquitiously & relentlessly targeted by 'the Left,' and their comrade RINOS? Not even Hitler is so detested as DJT.

Why is that?

I have to conclude that the man is a threat – and they're desperately firing all their last ammo before they get DRAINED

He pledged to DRAIN the SWAMP.

Not knock out the MIC, Big Pharma, Chemtrails, 9/11 and JFK conspirators.
Name someone who has a chance of doing any of those

And watch what happens before the 2020 election!

richard le sarcophage / May 30, 2019
Trump is, indeed a monster. But his enemies are even, God Bless 'em, worse. The clear conspiracy to derail his campaign, then Presidency, with utterly fraudulent accusations of 'collusion with Russia', a plot involving the Clintons, Obama, elements of the intelligence services in the USA (led by the fascist Brennan)the UK, Italy and even our own eponymous Alexander Downer, is simply denied by the Democrazies, increasingly frantically, as Barr turns his beady eyes to their machinations. It's like watching two rabid dogs getting stuck into each other. May they rip each other to shreds.
AllWars R. Bankers / May 29, 2019
Aaron Russo's DVD "America, from freedom to fascism" and ingesting: Title 15 USC )[(-17 might help.
cutthecord / May 29, 2019
please check out George Galloway's short column and the video (RT, may 29, 2019) where Steve Bannon and Galloway are discussing the neo-liberal globalist wars for the neo-liberal New World Order, and the peoples' revolt across the borders.
cutthecord / May 29, 2019
alliance between the real left and the real right against the "centrist" globalist elites is the key, what the MSM have desperately been trying to prevent.
Peter in Seattle / May 29, 2019
Russiagate (a fabrication made of whole cloth) was an engineered diversion from the fact that Democratic Party leadership had rigged the primaries and convention to steal the nomination from Bernie and Republicans had rigged the general in key swing states to steal the election from Hillary. It worked.

Even dissident analysts (ahem) now forget to mention Russiagate's original purpose while they crow their "told ya so's." Now that Russiagate is dead, Conspire-Against-Trumpgate (an allegation I believe to be substantially true) pops up to take Russiagate's place as a diversion, but a diversion this time from a constant underlying reality: the fact that both parties are working for the plutocratic corporatocracy, lining their pockets, feeding the war machine, racing us headlong into global environmental collapse, and doing jack squat for the 99% who are doing the paying, suffering, and dying.

I hate to say it, but the war against abortion rights (as important as they are) was relaunched in earnest to serve the same diversionary end. Trust me: the Democratic Party is thrilled that abortion has been revived as a social-wedge issue. They certainly can't point to any other issues that they are substantially better on than Republicans.)

According to columnist Paul Street, it was Upton Sinclair who said that Republicans and Democrats were two wings of the same bird of prey. I can't confirm the citation, but I agree with it wholeheartedly.

Aquila / May 29, 2019
Yellow Vests are cheap, and available at many stores. Just saying.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -
There was a movie back after the near revolution of the 60's called Network. A guy who stumbles into being a popular 'news anchor' gets on the screen one night and starts yelling "I'm Mad as Hell and I'm not going to Take it Anymore." In the movie, people start opening their windows and shouting the same, and as others hear their neighbors, they join in. In real life, there was a revolution in Argentina that began with housewives banging pots and pans in the capital. Their Great Leader was on TV telling everyone that more austerity measures were needed, and the people who'd had enough started making noise just to drown him out.

-- -- -- -- --

Both of which show that standing up and telling the world that you are angry can be a successful start to something. I'm not saying that we need to copy the Yellow Vest idea, but choosing to go out on Saturdays and let everyone know that people are angry both in the capital and across the country is obviously having at least some impact.

-- -- -- -- –

Old lyric from Joel Strummer and The Clash. "Anger can be power, Know that you can use that!" (Working for the Clampdown). Start doing something that shows your anger, but in a peaceful and generally legal way, then see who wants to come join you. There have been successful movements that began with just a handful or even one person going out and letting others know that they are angry, mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore.

Aquila / May 29, 2019
Any real movement towards change will arise from the bottom and go up from there. What we see regularly for decades now is the opposite. Some member of the 1% stands up and says Follow Me! They promise Change and Hope, or otherwise stand portrayed as the member of the 1% who is an Outsider compared to the other 1%ers who they call Insiders. Then we end up with the 99% deciding to back this 1%er, and their drive for power. And of course, every single time it turns out that the 1%er is just another member of the 1% who wants a government of, by and for the 1%, and the 99%ers who followed he/she end up feeling betrayed (if they don't stay permanently deluded which many do).

A real movement for change won't look like this. A real movement for change will see people coming together. Then, once they start meeting and talking, they choose one of their own for a candidate. Such a candidate will look like one of us, will work the sort of jobs we work, will live in our neighborhoods, will complain about the higher prices at the same stores at which we shop. Such a movement can choose someone who will truly represent the movement.

This of course is the opposite of the current situation where some millionaire stands up and says Follow Me and I'll Take You to the Promised Land. We know how that story ends. Neck deep in the Big Muddy.

Robyn / May 29, 2019
Absolutely right that it will never come from the swamp-dwellers, there's no incentive for them to give up their privilege. But for it to come from the dispossessed, disappointed, and the disillusioned, takes two things.

1. all of the people kicked to the bottom of the pile have to be informed and that will never come from the MSM who are part of the swamp. So sharing the work of Caitlin and other analysts of her calibre – chain letter style – to wake up as many people as possible is something we can all do.
2. The awoken people need a rallying point or, dare I say it, a leader who speaks for them and who can get the masses behind her/him. No such person will emerge from the swamp, it will be grassroots.

Meanwhile it's really gratifying to see Caitlin mentioned more and more often on blogs and see her articles published or linked in more and more places.

pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
no, i don't expect either party to fix the system and make it good and just.

i just want them to exterminate each other and i do my very best to help them do so. really, i don't think i'm alone in this game.

one of the most quotable reasons why some voted for Trump was exactly that: "if we the people can't take over the system, we want to blow it up" figuratively speaking of course. Trump wasn't sent to DC to fix anything. he was sent to "blow it up". there are many ways to do so, and his way may just work, especially with a little push from all of us.

pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
now, whether Trump himself sees his own role as such is beside the point. with or without intentions, he's been doing pretty good so far. he just need some "help" from us who want it to be blown to pieces.
Orlando / May 29, 2019
"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."-Emma Goldman

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."-Mark Twain

Aquila / May 29, 2019
On the other hand, "Not Voting" is absolutely, guaranteed to change nothing at all.
Orlando / May 29, 2019
Your circular reasoning is ineffective. How do you know nothing will change?

"Suppose they gave a war and nobody came ?"

pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
not all votings are equal. nobody had any illusion about Trump. he was a well known entity. what makes you think that you are smarter than others?????
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
voting for Trump was a BDS vote, in a sense.
Orlando / May 29, 2019
"voting for Trump was a BDS vote, in a sense."

lol whatever helps you sleep at night.

"They say arguing with an idiot makes two of them so, I'll just leave you alone on this one."

LSJohn / May 29, 2019
A friend of mine who can't stand Trump said, "I'm going to vote for him because trouble is what we need, and no one could cause more."
Palloy / May 29, 2019
"If you really want change, It's going to come from real people looking to each other and agreeing to say that enough is enough, and use the power of their numbers to flush the corrupt power structure down the toilet where it belongs."

Don't expect Democracy to flush the Deep State down the toilet. The Deep State is the part of Government that doesn't have to stand for elections – the CIA, the FBI, National Security Agency, Homeland Security, the Pentagon, the Supreme Court, and all the Armed Forces, National Guard and Police. The heads/Chiefs/Directors are appointed by the President, but all the rest sit safe and secure in their comfortable offices with their pensions and healthcare plans. They are only interested in maintaining the status quo, ensuring that the US is unchallenged in its domination of the world.

They will need to be strung up from lampposts, because they will always want to get back into control, as it is good for the country.

Aquila / May 29, 2019
The story of Fidel and Che can teach us. Both were in Guatemala during a wave of freedom and glasnost there. IIRC, this was sometime around 1954. But the Guatemalan leaders let their opposition remain. Within a couple of years, the CIA and United Fruit (now Chiquita) had overthrown their democracy and put dictators back in charge. Fidel and Che obviously learned from being on the ground during in Guatemala during those times.
mike k / May 29, 2019
The only hopes that need to be discarded are false hopes. Real hope is a precious resource that sustains us in a search for real answers, or at least directions to pursue that have some valid reasons to believe may be fruitful.
Orlando / May 29, 2019
This is how Qtards, Russiagaters, and any other fool who falls for the fake wrestling of red team versus blue team lies of the empire.

https://pics.me.me/the-governmentis-corrupt-on-every-level-but-dont-worry-the-26867623.png

The politicians of the empire engage in kayfabe on a daily basis.

Orlando / May 29, 2019
" playing right along with the same WWE script."

And how is it not obvious that the Orange Clown's role(former WWE player/ reality show actor) in all of this, is to be the heel?

In professional wrestling, a heel (also known as a rudo in lucha libre) is a wrestler who portrays a villain or a "bad guy" and acts as an antagonist[1][2][3] to the faces, who are the heroic protagonist or "good guy" characters. Not everything a heel wrestler does must be villainous: heels need only to be booed or jeered by the audience to be effective characters.

To gain heat (with boos and jeers from the audience), heels are often portrayed as behaving in an immoral manner by breaking rules or otherwise taking advantage of their opponents outside the bounds of the standards of the match. Others do not (or rarely) break rules, but instead exhibit unlikeable, appalling and deliberately offensive and demoralizing personality traits such as arrogance, cowardice or contempt for the audience. Many heels do both, cheating as well as behaving nastily. No matter the type of heel, the most important job is that of the antagonist role, as heels exist to provide a foil to the face wrestlers. If a given heel is cheered over the face, a promoter may opt to turn that heel to face or the other way around, or to make the wrestler do something even more despicable to encourage heel heat.

Note the Heel's latest move; Trump considers pardons for soldiers accused of war crimes

Ron Campbell / May 29, 2019
I still hear the rumblings from the bank bailouts of 2008 that made the public aware that the politicians worked for the criminal bankers and not for the public!! The electorate is still rumbling but they are many miles away from any kind of revolt be it active or passive!!! One thing that always crosses my mind is that anything might happen!!!
Mike Robinson / May 28, 2019
The place where we disagree, Caitlin, is precisely at the place where you seem to give up all hope. You simply choose to believe that law is not really meant to be enforced and that, if you are high-enough up in some infernal food chain, you can expect to live off the fat of the nation any way that you please. I disagree.

A fundamental sea-change began when Donald Trump, a well-established and comfortable real estate billionaire, decided to run for political office. (He didn't need the money.) It continued when the American people elected a President who was unlike every(!) one of his predecessors: neither a career politician nor a retired Army General. It was affirmed when a corrupt "swamp" unleashed its every power against him – fully expecting him to be swiftly driven out of town wearing feathers. It has been further affirmed when this didn't happen.

Caitlin, I very sincerely believe that future historians will write more books about Donald Trump than they wrote about Abraham Lincoln. Is it possible for us to recognize "profound moments in the very-young history of our nation" when we are living in the middle of them? Donald Trump presented the American nation – for the very first time in its history – with a truly unconventional and remarkable choice, and an unprecedented resumé, The American people knowingly seized the day. Then, the man whom they elected did likewise. Other nations around the world are taking similar bold chances – e.g. Ukraine just elected a comic who is no joke. Even the Chinese people, not too many years ago, "gathered on a certain Square "

I fully recognize that crime and corruption are deeply set within the halls of power in Washington, DC and elsewhere, but I do not share your forlorn opinion that our 21st Century is somehow pre-ordained to be just like the past. Instead, I maintain hope. Every "organized crime ring," whether it ruled a city or a county or a state or a nation, "ruled only for a time." Then, finally, the people turned against it – and prevailed.

mike k / May 29, 2019
If you are putting your hope on Trump, you might step back and clean your glasses, then take a look at all the harm this man has already done.
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
harm to whom and what? the system, the status quo, the neo-liberal New World Order?????? well you're missing the bigger picture. the people have nothing more to lose in this swamp monsters fight.
Geo / May 29, 2019
If you are placing your hopes in a "well-established and comfortable real estate billionaire" to change the system I am sorry to tell you that you have given up hope. And if you believe the myth that a guy who did Learning Annex "scaminars" for a paycheck just over a decade ago and made phone calls posing as his own publicist is a real billionaire then you need to work on your critical thinking skills.

He's a gifted conman. Don't feel bad he conned you too. Just don't let him keep conning you.

pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
well, i'm just hoping he cons other cons and go down together. i'm trying to expedite that process.
LSJohn / May 29, 2019
Keep expediting, but don't count on him for help. He'll be talked out of every decent impulse he might have. He's a slow-witted, know-nothing child in a man's game.
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
i think his cluelessness is his only strength. so please stop trying to stop him, because you're not helping anyone.
Orlando / May 29, 2019
"Donald Trump, a well-established and comfortable real estate billionaire, decided to run for political office. (He didn't need the money.)" Looool

The Orange Wrestling Clown has been drowning in debt since the 1990s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDSDDMi3GUo Comfortable billionaires don't sell steaks or start scam universities to keep their business afloat. This is why he sold his soul to the Khazarian mafia. Sheldon Adelson, Netanyahu have both fist so far up Trump's ass that John Bolton can shake hands with them through Trump's open mouth.

As the MSM, Trumptards and parts of the alternative media focused on Russiagate, the real collusion with Israel is blatantly out in the open. That 5000 pound gorilla could take a piss (start WW3) on collective humanity's head and they would say it's raining.

LSJohn / May 29, 2019
Now that is what I call a good post. :>)
Ron Campbell / May 29, 2019
Yes, Orlando!! That is really hitting the nail on the head!!! Israel is running Donald Trump as well as running the United States government!!!
Orlando / May 29, 2019
Furthermore it was Bill Clinton who convinced his good buddy DT to run for office. FYI: Billy Boy C and the Orange Dufus are both good buds with Jeff Epstein.
Ishkabibble / May 29, 2019
Mr. Robinson (btw, I recommend keeping an eye on Mrs. Robinson), .. I agree with much of what you say, especially about how much is going to be written about Agent Orange in the future.
..
ALREADY AO has done something unprecented with North Korea. Look at the abuse he has taken for that.
..
ALREADY AO went to Helsinki to shake hands with Mr. Putin. Look at the abuse he is still being subjected to for that.
..
..
To put it as briefly as possible, AO's "position" within the long line of US POTUSs will IMO be determined by what goes on in the near future in Syria, Iran, Venzuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Palestine and the development of the US's relationships with China and Russia. So far he has not started any new wars. The MIC and MSM and many members of congress are apoplectic because of that. IMO, we will soon know all that is really important to know about Mr. Trump as POTUS.
STEVEN J MACKIE / May 28, 2019
I totally reject your demand that I stop hoping. If I wasn't a patient person and didn't know your intent to be good I would dismiss you with a hearty fuck you! I do what I can to help my fellows extricate themselves from TDS. I'm active with other like minded folks when time permits. I wish the evil could be stopped by me alone,but it can't, so I hope. My thoughts are with you to find answers, because that's what you do so well. Meanwhile don't try to strip the choir of hope. Please It's not all black and white, the higher you get in the deep-state food chain the grayer it gets.
mike k / May 29, 2019
Actually, the higher you get in the deep state food chain, the darker and darker it gets. It's damn near jet black at the top.
mike k / May 29, 2019
Actually, the higher you get in the deep state food chain, the darker it gets. At the top it is like almost jet black.
Geo / May 29, 2019
She's not taking away your hope, she's redirecting it. Putting your hope is Mueller or Barr to change a system they are entrenched in is like placing your hope in Geithner and Summers to fix Wall Street after the crash, or in Bolton to fix our quagmires in the Middle East. It's lunacy.

As Caitlyn said, the hope lies in alternatives to the current system and its swamp creatures. And all this hysteria about the impending collapse of one party or another is wishfulfilment. A system this entrenched will no go quickly or easily. It is a generational struggle of small victories that hopefully build into revolutionary cultural changes over time.

If there is any way Caitlyn's writing withers hope it's in the knowledge that time is not on our side.

STEVEN J MACKIE / May 29, 2019
I never said I put my hope in Mueller or Barr. I don't look to individuals to find hope (Trump included). Hope for the defeat of evil is what I'm talkin about. My belief is in the inherent goodness of most people and I hope we defeat the evil ones.
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
stop him from doing what?
mike k / May 28, 2019
All you say is completely true and on target Caitlin, until the next to last paragraph where you summon the great American Public to flush their entire government, MIC, CIA, Oligarchs etc, down the drain kerflooooosh!!

Ain't going to happen, and you know why. The "Great American Public" consists mostly of brainwashed zombies. Sorry that's how it is, but the great mechanism of human history just does not turn on a dime. "Natura non facit saltum". Turning the Great Ship headed for extinction around takes a lot of time – time we don't have.

Ron Campbell / May 28, 2019
Mike, I believe that the only hope we can have is that " the Washington, D.C. swamp " is on prime time TV as much as possible so the United States public gets completely disgusted with it!! Because if my fellow citizens do not see it on TV than it is not happening!!!
mike k / May 29, 2019
Ron, The trouble is that most Americans don't see how deeply evil the "swamp" actually is. Sure, they bitch about this and that they don't like, but they don't get the terminal depth of corruption that permeates our mafia government. Take for instance most folk's naive belief that voting will eventually produce good government. "Draining" this swamp would require removing almost everyone involved in government in DC and elsewhere. Then one might begin designing a true and just government ..
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
you may be mis-underestimating the unwashed masses. if you're correct about the wisdom of the masses, well then we might as well just commit a collective suicide now.
Ron Campbell / May 28, 2019
Some North Korean official said John Bolton was " defective human product " and I can not think of anything better to describe him!!! Ms Johnstone, I am hoping that our political " swamp " implodes on itself the same way that the Russian " swamp " imploded when the criminals went after one another!!! The best way to get the general public awoke and aware of our rotten government is to show everyone just what these rascals are doing every day and just what they are capable of doing as well as what they have already done over the years!!!
pulltheplug / May 29, 2019
intentionally or not, that's what Trump has been doing: ripping the mask off the polite society, forcing the Deep State to reveal itself.

[Jun 13, 2019] Our Famously Free Press and Madcow disease

Jun 13, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Our Famously Free...

"MSNBC and New York Times at odds over reporter appearances on Maddow" [ CNN ]. "New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet and MSNBC president Phil Griffin met last week amid tensions between their two news organizations. But the lengthy lunch did not resolve the issues at hand, according to four sources with knowledge of the sit-down. The executives remain at an impasse. The specific issue is about television appearances by Times reporters on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show .

The dust-up dates back to May 30, when Vanity Fair caused a ruckus by reporting that Times management wants reporters to 'steer clear of any cable-news shows that the masthead perceives as too partisan.' 'The Rachel Maddow Show' is evidently one of those shows [ incroyable! ] -- and Maddow is not happy about it.

The prime time host prides herself on her support for newspaper journalists Complicating matters further: Numerous Times reporters are also paid contributors to MSNBC and CNN. For example, Matthew Rosenberg and Mark Mazzetti of The Times, who are also paid by CNN, have both appeared on 'CNN Tonight' in recent days. CNN declined to comment on the booking relationship with The Times."

• It's impossible for me to understand how the beacons of integrity at the Times could appear in a cesspit like The Rachel Maddow Show. T

These are strange times.

[Jun 11, 2019] Madcow will one of Democratic debates moderator

that's a real insult. Madcow is probably the worst person to sk any question you can imagine... she is kind of female McCarthy re-incarnation -- crazy Russiagater...
Jun 11, 2019 | www.thecut.com

Daxster 6 hours ago

Why have any moderators? They should have an auctioneer instead. He'll quickly determine who is willing to offer us the biggest bribes with our own money, in exchange for a vote.

And we'll learn how many different ways can one say "FREE! FREE! FREE!" 5 hours ago

XXX:

"The questions will be available for a small fee?"
DJT

Daxster, 5 hours ago

What's Donna Brazile selling over in the corner?

[Jun 11, 2019] Rachel Maddow Is Among the Moderators of the First Democratic Debate

So Russiagater was not fired. Madcow was promoted to more freely spead her "Madcow desease" (Neo-McCarthysim actually) into unsuspecting public ...
Notable quotes:
"... Almost none of the "celebrity" tv journalists have earned one sniff of their regard by having a sufficient amount of smarts, insight, and humility it requires to deliver the news. Especially in trying times like these. ..."
"... She's a borderline conspiracy theorist and more of a star than a newswoman. ..."
"... In what alternate universe does Maddow even have a hint of non-bias? She is not a journalist. ..."
"... maddow is all about opinion, hers, and the one given out to msm by the dem party everyday. aka : the meme of the day. maddow is an partisan idiot. always was, always will be ..."
Jun 11, 2019 | www.thecut.com

On Tuesday, NBC announced that its lineup of moderators will include Rachel Maddow of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show , Lester Holt of NBC Nightly News and Dateline NBC, José Diaz-Balart of Noticias Telemundo and NBC Nightly News Saturday , Savannah Guthrie of Today , and Chuck Todd of Meet the Press .

... ... ...

UltraViolet Action co-founder and executive director Shaunna Thomas praised the moderator decision to the Cut. "NBC's decision to ensure that four out of the five moderators for the first Democratic presidential primary debate are women or people of color is a huge win for representation at the debates and a welcome change from the status quo," Thomas said in a statement. She also stated that she hopes other networks follow suit.

Cags

Almost none of the "celebrity" tv journalists have earned one sniff of their regard by having a sufficient amount of smarts, insight, and humility it requires to deliver the news. Especially in trying times like these.

joaniesausquoi, 3 hours ago

Whattya got against Rachel, Cags?

Cags, 2 hours ago

She's a borderline conspiracy theorist and more of a star than a newswoman.

Daxter , 6 hours ago (Edited)

In what alternate universe does Maddow even have a hint of non-bias? She is not a journalist.

Having Rachel Maddow moderate is like having Sean Hannity moderate.

indigo710, 5 hours ago

maddow is all about opinion, hers, and the one given out to msm by the dem party everyday. aka : the meme of the day. maddow is an partisan idiot. always was, always will be . "lawer" is spelled "lawyer".

[Jun 11, 2019] Madcow will one of Democratic debates moderator

that's a real insult. Madcow is probably the worst person to sk any question you can imagine... she is kind of female McCarthy re-incarnation -- crazy Russiagater...
Jun 11, 2019 | www.thecut.com

Daxster 6 hours ago

Why have any moderators? They should have an auctioneer instead. He'll quickly determine who is willing to offer us the biggest bribes with our own money, in exchange for a vote.

And we'll learn how many different ways can one say "FREE! FREE! FREE!" 5 hours ago

XXX:

"The questions will be available for a small fee?"
DJT

Daxster, 5 hours ago

What's Donna Brazile selling over in the corner?

[Jun 11, 2019] American Exceptionalism and American Innocence A People's History of Fake News_From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror

Jun 11, 2019 | www.amazon.com

Did the U.S. really "save the world" in World War II? Should black athletes stop protesting and show more gratitude for what America has done for them? Are wars fought to spread freedom and democracy? Or is this all fake news?

American Exceptionalism and American Innocence examines the stories we're told that lead us to think that the U.S. is a force for good in the world, regardless of slavery, the genocide of indigenous people, and the more than a century's worth of imperialist war that the U.S. has wrought on the planet.

Sirvent and Haiphong detail just what Captain America's shield tells us about the pretensions of U.S. foreign policy, how Angelina Jolie and Bill Gates engage in humanitarian imperialism, and why the Broadway musical Hamilton is a monument to white supremacy.

====

Like a thunderbolt that penetrates the dark fog of ideological confusion, American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News -- From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror , illuminates the hidden spaces of the official story of the territory that came to be known as the United States of America.

Meticulously researched, American Exceptionalism and American Innocence utilizes a de-colonial lens that debunks the distorted, mythological liberal framework that rationalized the U.S. settler-colonial project. The de-colonized frame allows them to critically root their analysis in the psychosocial history, culture, political economy, and evolving institutions of the United States of America without falling prey to the unrecognized and unacknowledged liberalism and national chauvinism that seeps through so much of what is advanced as radical analysis today.

That is what makes this work so "exceptional" and so valuable at this moment of institutional and ideological crisis in the U.S. This crisis is indeed more severe and potentially more transformative than at any other moment in this nation's history.

With unflinching clarity, Sirvent and Haiphong go right to the heart of the current social, political, economic, and ideological crisis. They strip away the obscurantist nonsense pushed by liberal and state propagandists that the Trump phenomenon represents a fundamental departure from traditional "American values" by demonstrating that "Trumpism" is no departure at all, but only the unfiltered contemporary and particular expression of the core values that the nation was "founded" on.

What Sirvent and Haiphong expose in their work is that American exceptionalism and its corollary American innocence are the interconnected frames that not only explain why the crude white nationalism of a Donald Trump is consistent with the violence and white supremacy of the American experience, but also why that violence has been largely supported by large sections of the U.S. population repeatedly.

As the exceptional nation, the indispensable nation, the term President Obama liked to evoke to give humanitarian cover to the multiple interventions,

destabilization campaigns, and unilateral global policing operations on behalf of U.S. and international capital, it is expected and largely accepted by the citizens of the U.S. that their nation-state has a right and, actually, a moral duty to do whatever it deems appropriate to uphold the international order. It can do that because this cause is noble and righteous. Lest we forget the words of Theodore Roosevelt, considered a great architect of American progressiveness, "If given the choice between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness."

In a succinct and penetrating observation, Sirvent and Haiphong point out:

American exceptionalism has always presumed national innocence despite imposing centuries of war and plunder. The American nation-state has been at war for over ninety percent of its existence. These wars have all been justified as necessary ventures meant to defend or expand America's so-called founding values and beliefs. A consequence of centuries of endless war has been the historical tendency of the U.S. to erase from consciousness the realities that surround American domestic and international policy, not to mention the system of imperialism that governs both.

But the acceptance of state violence in the form of economic sanctions and direct and indirect military interventions is not the only consequence of the cultural conditioning process informed by the arrogance of white privilege, white rights, and the protection of white Western civilization. The racist xenophobia, impunity for killer-cops, mass incarceration, ICE raids and checkpoints, left-right ideological convergence to erase "blackness," are all part of the racial management process that still enjoys majoritarian support in the U.S.

American Exceptionalism and American Innocence 's focus on the insidious and corrosive impact of white supremacy throughout the book is a necessary and valuable corrective to the growing tendency toward marginalizing the issue of race, even among left forces under the guise of being opposed to so-called identity politics.

Centering the role of white supremacist ideologies and its connection to American exceptionalism and innocence, Sirvent and Haiphong argue that "communities and activists will be better positioned to dismantle them." American exceptionalism and notions of U.S. innocence not only provide

ideological rationalizations for colonialism, capitalism, empire, and white supremacy, but also a normalized theoretical framework for how the world is and should be structured that inevitably makes criminals out of the people opposing U.S. dominance, within the nation and abroad.

Paul Krugman, a leading liberal within the context of the U.S. articulates this normalized framework that is shared across the ideological spectrum from liberal to conservative and even among some left forces. I have previously referred to this view of the world as representative of the psychopathology of white supremacy:

"We emerged from World War II with a level of both economic and military dominance not seen since the heyday of ancient Rome. But our role in the world was always about more than money and guns. It was also about ideals: America stood for something larger than itself -- for freedom, human rights and the rule of law as universal principles . . . By the end of World War II, we and our British allies had in effect conquered a large part of the world. We could have become permanent occupiers, and/or installed subservient puppet governments, the way the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe. And yes, we did do that in some developing countries; our history with, say, Iran is not at all pretty. But what we mainly did instead was help defeated enemies get back on their feet, establishing democratic regimes that shared our core values and became allies in protecting those values. The Pax Americana was a sort of empire; certainly America was for a long time very much first among equals. But it was by historical standards a remarkably benign empire, held together by soft power and respect rather than force." 1

American Exceptionalism and American Innocence refutes this pathological view of the U.S. and demonstrates that this view is a luxury that the colonized peoples of the world cannot afford.

The bullet and the bomb -- the American military occupation and the police occupation -- are the bonds that link the condition of Black Americans to oppressed nations around the world. This is the urgency in which the authors approached their task. The physical and ideological war being waged against the victims of the colonial/capitalist white supremacist patriarchy is resulting in real suffering. Authentic solidarity with the oppressed requires a

rejection of obfuscation. The state intends to secure itself and the ruling elite by legal or illegal means, by manipulating or completely jettisoning human freedom and democratic rights. Sirvent and Haiphong know that time is running out. They demonstrate the intricate collaboration between the state and the corporate and financial elite to create the conditions in which ideological and political opposition would be rendered criminal as the state grapples with the legitimacy crisis it finds itself in. They know that Trump's "make America great again" is the Republican version of Obama's heralding of U.S. exceptionalism, and that both are laying the ideological foundation for a cross-class white neofascist solution to the crisis of neoliberal capitalism.

The U.S. is well on its way toward a new form of totalitarianism that is more widespread than the forms of neofascist rule that was the norm in the Southern states of the U.S. from 1878 to 1965. Chris Hedges refers to it as "corporate totalitarianism." And unlike the sheer social terror experienced by the African American population as a result of the corporatist alignment of the new Democratic party and national and regional capital in the South, this "new" form of totalitarianism is more benign but perhaps even more insidious because the control rests on the ability to control thought. And here lies the challenge. Marxist thinker Fredrick Jamison shares a very simple lesson, "The lesson is this, and it is a lesson about system: one cannot change anything without changing everything." This simple theory of system change argues that when you change one part of a system you by necessity must change all parts of the system, because all parts are interrelated.

The failure of the Western left in general and the U.S. left in particular to understand the inextricable, structural connection between empire, colonization, capitalism, and white supremacy -- and that all elements of that oppressive structure must be confronted, dismantled, and defeated -- continues to give lifeblood to a system that is ready to sweep into the dustbins of history. This is why American Exceptionalism and American Innocence is nothing more than an abject subversion. It destabilizes the hegemonic assumptions and imposed conceptual frameworks of bourgeois liberalism and points the reader toward the inevitable conclusion that U.S. society in its present form poses an existential threat to global humanity.

Challenging the reader to rethink the history of the U.S. and to imagine a future, decolonial nation in whatever form it might take, Sirvent and Haiphong include a quote from Indigenous rights supporter Andrea Smith

that captures both the subversive and optimistic character of their book. Smith is quoted saying:

Rather than a pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness that depends on the deaths of others . . . we can imagine new forms of governance based on the principles of mutuality, interdependence, and equality. When we do not presume that the United States should or will continue to exist, we can begin to imagine more than a kinder, gentler settler state founded on genocide and slavery.

American Exceptionalism and American Innocence gives us a weapon to reimagine a transformed U.S. nation, but it also surfaces the ideological minefields that we must avoid if we are to realize a new possibility and a new people.

<img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amazon-avatars-global/default._CR0,0,1024,1024_SX48_.png"> John , May 26, 2019

Great Reading, But Some Omissions

I thought the book was great. However, key events were not discussed. One of the first deployed American expeditionary forces to bless the world was the establishment of treaty ports in China. These new American foreign beachheads in the Middle Kingdom came about as a result of Western ambitions to take them over as new colonial owners and led to one of the most ruinous periods in world history. Europe and the U.S. saturated the country with opium, leaving many Chinese stoned. This resulted in the destabilization of China, invasion of the brutal Japanese and the rise of Mao. Result- millions upon millions of people died because of American exceptionalism. It has taken China the last thirty years to recover from the disasters. Naturally, Trump & Co are not aware of this history or are unconcerned. However, the Chinese have not forgotten and routinely warn Team Trump they will not be bullied by foreigners again. Washington elites are ignorant at everyone's peril who want peace. Footnote - American exceptionalists Roosevelt, Kerry, Forbes, etc., got their wealth the old fashion way - by becoming drug kingpins to China.

The other big omission was World War I and especially its aftermath. Lauded by the French and saving European imperialism, returning African-American soldiers found themselves being singled out for extra harsh Jim Crow treatment -- they were too uppity & refused to follow old social norms. Several Black vets were tortured and hung while in uniform because they were bringing back a new message from European trenches - equal treatment. They were also exemplary in defending other Black citizens from White mob ambushes.

Had the authors covered the WWI aftermath, they would have also had to critique in greater detail the media. What they would have had to expose the media was never a friend to African-Americans, which holds to this day. The media was and is consistent with aligning with white elite interests. When Blacks rose up against bad treatment, the media always presented the white point of view. In fact, every white institution was engaged in this biased practice.

The Espionage Act also put a chill on labor organizing post WWI. Indeed, elites were quick to call any Black unrest as seditious and labelled some leaders such as W.E.B Dubois, Bolshevik inspired and should have been brought up on charges. This was the beginning of the linking of Black activism to the Kremlin, long before McCarthyism, COINTELPRO and Black Identity Extremist government labels.

[Jun 11, 2019] Luke Harding is back with one of his bullshit exclusives in the Guardian.

This is "Integrity Initiative" at work...
Jun 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Ghost Ship , Jun 11, 2019 11:01:51 AM | 134
That arsehole Luke Harding is back with one of his bullshit exclusives in the Guardian .
Leaked documents reveal Russian effort to exert influence in Africa
Exclusive: Kremlin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin leading push to turn continent into strategic hub, documents show
by Luke Harding and Jason Burke
The only thing you really need to know about the exposé:
The leaked documents were obtained by the Dossier Center, an investigative unit based in London. The centre is funded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian businessman and exiled Kremlin critic.
The Guardian obviously has no shame for publishing such an article but then it has never explained the claims of Manafort meeting with Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy. As for the article, my reaction was "so fucking what?".

The British French and Americans have fucked up large parts of Africa while the Soviet Union/Russia was indirectly responsible for eradicating that cancerous growth, the apartheid state of South Africa, a single act that was better than all the good things that the United Kingdom, France and the United States have ever done in Africa

[Jun 10, 2019] John Brennan 'Pathological Deceiver' Trump 'Rankles Me to No End'

Notable quotes:
"... Despite special counsel Robert Mueller clearing Trump of collusion with Russia in 2016, Brennan still maintains the counterintelligence operation against the Republican nominee's campaign was more than justified. ..."
"... "I was there in the summer of '16 and it was very well predicated," the former intelligence official told MSNBC's Deadline host Nicole Wallace last month. "To launch this counterintelligence investigation about what the Russians were doing to interfere in our election and how among American citizens might have been working with them." ..."
"... Eventually 0bama will be asked when he authorized the spying on the 2012 election, and you can bet 0bama will toss Brennan under that proverbial bus. 0bama will have to answer the question, because there is a massive paper trail of evidence. ..."
"... President Trump weathered the Russia-Russia-Russia hoax storm. Those slow-moving wheels of real justice are finally starting to turn. ..."
Jun 10, 2019 | www.breitbart.com

Former CIA Director John Brennan has once against spoken out against President Donald Trump, describing him in a recent interview as a "pathological deceiver" who "rankles" him "to no end."

Speaking to the Irish Times over the weekend, Brennan discussed what he claims is the root of his harsh and repeated criticism of President Trump. The longtime Deep Stater's attacks, he claims, aren't driven as much by president's policy prescriptions but by his character.

"So my beef with Donald Trump is not because he has done some very foolish things – like reneging on the Iran nuclear deal, or how he has handled the North Korea situation – I find that many of his policies are deeply flawed and are purely tactical to give him a political bounce," he told interviewer Suzanne Lynch, the Times' Washington Correspondent.

"But if that was the only problem I had with him, I would be silent. What really just rankles me to no end is his dishonesty, his lack of ethics and principles and character, the way he demeans and degrades and denigrates individuals or institutions of government, what he has done and said about the FBI and CIA and the former leadership, the fact that he wilfully misleads not just the American people but the world," the former Obama spy chief continued .

Brennan concluded his thoughts on Trump by stating : "He is a pathological deceiver and that lack of ethical, principled behaviour is something that I never thought I would see in the president of the United States who is the most powerful person in the world, who should serve as a role model to all Americans.

Brennan's remarks come as his conduct during the U.S. government's Russia investigation is under review by the Department of Justice. Last month, President Trump directed several federal departments and agencies to cooperate with Attorney General William Barr's examination of the Russia probe's origins, as well as the declassification of intelligence related to it.

Despite special counsel Robert Mueller clearing Trump of collusion with Russia in 2016, Brennan still maintains the counterintelligence operation against the Republican nominee's campaign was more than justified.

"I was there in the summer of '16 and it was very well predicated," the former intelligence official told MSNBC's Deadline host Nicole Wallace last month. "To launch this counterintelligence investigation about what the Russians were doing to interfere in our election and how among American citizens might have been working with them."

Skeptical Shazaam • 6 hours ago

Brennan is worried about what President Trump is doing with the metric-tons of #Spygate & #Obamagate evidence.

Eventually 0bama will be asked when he authorized the spying on the 2012 election, and you can bet 0bama will toss Brennan under that proverbial bus. 0bama will have to answer the question, because there is a massive paper trail of evidence.

They never thought Hillary could lose. Mueller's special counsel, was only a temporary cover-up. President Trump weathered the Russia-Russia-Russia hoax storm. Those slow-moving wheels of real justice are finally starting to turn.

[Jun 10, 2019] The Arrival of the Anti-Christ, Delayed by Israel Shamir

Notable quotes:
"... It appears Israelis had tempted the Russians into the ambitious meeting by promising to take the US sanctions off Russian back. It is doubtful Israel can deliver on such a promise to start with. Putin is a very experienced statesman, and he won't accept a US promise in lieu of full delivery. Not after the Hanoi failure of Trump-Kim talks, and not before that, either. Anyway, Putin would like to be un-sanctioned, but not at the price the US asks. ..."
"... "Look, here's what I believe. It becomes obvious when you think about it. Judging by NATO's estimates, there won't be a large European war until about 2025. And by 2025, Ukraine, being a large anti-Russian foothold, will evolve into something that will begin dragging us into trouble, connected with various matters including transfer of power. It's not a coincidence that some of our neighbors are getting rid of the Russian inscriptions on their money in 2024. We see that and we should be ready. From where we get the approximate schedule of our actions." ..."
"... " Undoubtedly, the issue of de-Americanization of Europe is critical. There's no Soviet border anymore. I said that yesterday. And there's no line dividing Germany. We must get rid of it up to the Atlantic Ocean. The elimination of either the American presence or the NATO bloc in general. ..."
Jun 10, 2019 | www.unz.com

Last week, at 'Russian Davos', St Petersburg Economic Forum, President Putin reiterated the main points of his memorable Munich Speech . He voiced seven complaints leaving no doubt he is unhappy with American heavy-handedness, with the US attempts to weaponise the dollar, Google, Facebook and knowhow as in case of Huawei. "States that previously advocated the principles of freedom of trade, fair and open competition, started speaking the language of trade wars and sanctions, blatant economic raiding, arm twisting, intimidation, eliminating competitors by so-called non-market methods," – he said. This is not the language of a man who waits for a cue to join the US entourage.

Still, there are other, less pleasant signs.

The 'Russian Bolton', Mr Eugene Satanovsky, the head of pro-Israeli think tank, a former head of a Zionist Jewish body and a frequent commentator on Russian TV had been appointed an adviser to the Russian Defence Minister Mr Sergey Shoygu. His nomination came directly from Kremlin and surprised the ministry officials. A prominent Russian churchman, Fr Chaplin, expressed his satisfaction with Israeli control of Jerusalem, in a column in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta . At the same time, the Russian S-300 did not respond to Israeli bombing runs in Syria.

It appears Israelis had tempted the Russians into the ambitious meeting by promising to take the US sanctions off Russian back. It is doubtful Israel can deliver on such a promise to start with. Putin is a very experienced statesman, and he won't accept a US promise in lieu of full delivery. Not after the Hanoi failure of Trump-Kim talks, and not before that, either. Anyway, Putin would like to be un-sanctioned, but not at the price the US asks.

Israelis want to neutralise Iran, as the Islamic Republic is the only remaining defender of the al-Aqsa Mosque. Amman, ar-Riyad and other Arab capitals will not fight Israel, if Netanyahu were to destroy the Mosque. The Palestinians will fight, but they have no weapons. The last Jewish victim of a Palestinian attack had been wounded by scissors. Iran has weapons and cares for the Mosque. Can Netanyahu convince Putin to neutralise Iran, or pressure Iran to stay away from Palestine? It would be a major feat worthy of a magician.

And now we come to the important point. Instead of receiving two superpower envoys in splendour as [almost] the King of Jews, Bibi Netanyahu will meet them as the head of a transitional government facing new elections and a possible trial. In such a status, it is hard to convince your banker to give you a loan to buy a new car, let alone convincing Putin to switch alliance and Trump to deny Christ.

In the same time, the baby-faced son-in-law Kushner had planned to execute his (and Trump's) Deal of the Century. Even an impregnable Trump and unassailable Netanyahu would have a great difficulty to make this trick. Trump facing impeachment and Bibi facing elections and police investigation have no chance. Probably it is good, too. Russia and China decided to stay away. Mahmud Abbas, the PNA President, refused it, too, and this fraud's flop will preclude Palestine from being sanctioned.

The intended deal had not been officially disclosed; all we have is a leak in a newspaper close to Bibi Netanyahu and financed by Sheldon Adelson, saying it was leaked from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Bear with me, gentle reader, and suspend your disbelieve! Though this piece of daydreaming looks like a project written by high school kids during summer vacation time, it is not particularly good-natured.

It says the US will kill (that's right, k_i_l_l) Palestinian leaders that won't accept it, but before, it will sanction Palestine to death and forbid all its allies to buy, sell, and donate or anything to Palestinians.

The deal envisages a permanently disarmed Palestinian entity that will pay Israel for its "protection". All Jewish settlements remain inviolable, and are considered a part of Israel. Israel will control every arrival and departure from the entity called "New Palestine". Jerusalem stays Jewish. Gaza will be connected to the West Bank by 30 km long bridge under Israeli control. This bridge will be paid for by China. Desalination plant for Gaza will be paid by Japan. If not for the threat to kill the disobedient Arabs, it would be plainly preposterous. So the demise of this bizarre 'deal' is not to be regretted.

President Trump understood that with Bibi facing trial and re-election there is no chance to advance on this project – or any other project. "Israel is all messed up in their election," Trump told reporters. "They have to get their act together." "Bibi got elected and now they have to go through the process again? We're not happy about that," Trump said .

Thus, the two great plans of Bibi: the trilateral meeting in Jerusalem and Deal of the Century went down when Bibi failed to form a government.

AnonStarter , says: June 9, 2019 at 5:14 am GMT

It says the US will kill (that's right, k_i_l_l) Palestinian leaders that won't accept it, but before, it will sanction Palestine to death and forbid all its allies to buy, sell, and donate or anything to Palestinians.

The deal envisages a permanently disarmed Palestinian entity that will pay Israel for its "protection". All Jewish settlements remain inviolable, and are considered a part of Israel. Israel will control every arrival and departure from the entity called "New Palestine". Jerusalem stays Jewish. Gaza will be connected to the West Bank by 30 km long bridge under Israeli control.

And so we've leaders that we deserve,
dumbed-down goybeans, ready to serve,
boiled in the same old kettle of fish,
cooked to perfection, a vomitous dish.

Colin Wright , says: Website June 9, 2019 at 6:18 am GMT
' They say Lieberman did it following wily Putin's orders. Putin was not keen to be pushed by Netanyahu and Trump to act against Iran; he didn't want to quarrel with these two leaders either. He activated Lieberman and torpedoed the new Netanyahu's government '

There's a theory that Russia has something on Lieberman; that willingly or unwillingly, he's effectively a Russian agent.

Digital Samizdat , says: June 9, 2019 at 6:57 am GMT

The deal envisages a permanently disarmed Palestinian entity that will pay Israel for its "protection". All Jewish settlements remain inviolable, and are considered a part of Israel. Israel will control every arrival and departure from the entity called "New Palestine". Jerusalem stays Jewish. Gaza will be connected to the West Bank by 30 km long bridge under Israeli control. This bridge will be paid for by China. Desalination plant for Gaza will be paid by Japan.

This is just hilarious. Did Kushner and Bolton think this one up with after an all-week meth-binge together?

'Hey, Beavis! Let's get the Palestinians to officially surrender and the Chinese and Japanese to pay for it. Heh, heh, heh!'

swamped , says: June 9, 2019 at 8:17 am GMT
"The 'Russian Bolton', Mr Eugene Satanovsky .... outlined in a media interview a few short weeks ago, where he asserted:

"Look, here's what I believe. It becomes obvious when you think about it. Judging by NATO's estimates, there won't be a large European war until about 2025. And by 2025, Ukraine, being a large anti-Russian foothold, will evolve into something that will begin dragging us into trouble, connected with various matters including transfer of power. It's not a coincidence that some of our neighbors are getting rid of the Russian inscriptions on their money in 2024. We see that and we should be ready. From where we get the approximate schedule of our actions."

" Undoubtedly, the issue of de-Americanization of Europe is critical. There's no Soviet border anymore. I said that yesterday. And there's no line dividing Germany. We must get rid of it up to the Atlantic Ocean. The elimination of either the American presence or the NATO bloc in general.

I'm talking about any forms of elimination, not just peaceful methods and negotiations. The issue remains."

" America will pay with its territory, its military facilities, and it will be lucky if not with its civilian population, for any anti-Russian activities in Europe. If America doesn't realize that, then you should replace the idiots that run your country. They'll bury it. We're talking on the eve of that. Can't you see that? Don't you realize that?"

What delay, the Satanic Anti-Christ has arrived (one of them, anyway).

TimeTraveller , says: June 9, 2019 at 9:03 am GMT

This unprecedented meeting was supposed to become Netanyahu's great achievement, crowning his nth re-election and confirming his international status.

It's really Russia's great achievement. They are supposed to be a failed state.

Alfred Barnes , says: June 9, 2019 at 10:56 am GMT
@sarz It seems he's spent considerable time on Trade and Immigration issues. Russiagate was a hoax from the outset, and considerable resources are being expended in an effort to deal with the criminal conduct of the previous administration. Jared has been given credit for some accomplishments, nothing extraordinary. Most Americans see him and Ivanka for what they are, an indulgement of The Donald, and as long as he keeps delivering for the American People, he will have their forbearance.

To claim Trump is a top Jew, is just a fabrication of what you want to believe. Jews aren't cause of the woes of the world, the Devil is. Swiss templars control the world's finances. The rothies are but one of their client banks, which includes the houses of saxe-coburg and saad, bolsheviks, chicoms, the vatican, and the deep state. Did I leave anything out?

Trump and the nationalist backlash against immigration in the EU and elsewhere are a pause in the banking cabals march to globalism. What is needed is a debt reset. There will be a reset of the global financial system, what remains to be seen is what takes it's place.

joeshittheragman , says: June 9, 2019 at 12:44 pm GMT
The jews are not a religion or a nationality. They are, and always have been a corporation of swindlers – nothing more. They always have a back door escape route for when the Gentiles finally wake up and tire of their constant cheating and overall immoral behavior.
Johnny Walker Read , says: June 9, 2019 at 1:01 pm GMT
What is important here is the what(Bibi and company's evil plans have been sidelined-for now). The who and the how is less important, but thanks to Israel Shamir for informing as it is good to know.

I'll bet John Hagee and his CUFI crowd are wiping their tears on their prayer shawls. LOL

[Jun 10, 2019] What is so rare as a fake news day in June by Frank Scott

Jun 07, 2019 | dissidentvoice.org
While the continued mental assault on what is left of public consciousness still features the idiot fiction of Russiagate, or how the evil Putin arranged to trash our great American democracy and defeat holy mother Hillary on behalf of cursed father Donald, the month of June offered not one but two major fictional treatments of historic reality to further reduce innocent minds to enslaved mentalities. The fables of D-Day, celebrated every year in glorification of a war actually won by the Soviet Union but taught as America's gift to the global marketplace, and the unholy terror alleged by evil China in the infamous Tiananmen uprising treated here as a story worthy of creation by Disney, Spielberg, Mother Goose and Ronald Reagan combined.

While American troops paid a heavy price and contributed mightily to the victory over Germany in WW2 with the attack on the French coast memorialized as D-Day, that beachhead of some 50 miles was dwarfed by the 1500 mile wide eastern front where Russia absorbed more death and destruction than any other nation in that massive bloodbath. D-Day was a much belated response from America and Britain to endless pleas that an attack be conducted in the west to spare some of the terrible toll on Russia. That nation suffered as many as 20 million dead, entire cities and villages reduced to giant cemeteries and rubble while a post war fairy tale was spread of American GIs rescuing Europe, giving candy bars to children, creating fictional democracy and real pregnancy wherever they went.

French brutality towards its women who allegedly fraternized with the German enemy, many doing so to help their families survive, was covered somewhat in newsreels released here. But American troops impregnating hordes of French women, reducing many to prostitution under conditions of wartime poverty and hardship, was hardly mentioned. The entire history of that so-called "great" war is as smothered in propaganda and fiction as any story of American conflict and we still pay a price of belief in alleged glory participating in an orgy of mass murder that may have taken the lives of far more than fifty million and was deemed totally unnecessary by many critics at the time. They, of course, were quickly labeled as fascists, communists or non-sectarian free thinkers and dismissed from any hearing by the public. Critical thinking about ruling propaganda has no place in a democracy. And boiled excrement makes for a nutritious meal.

While that war put America, untouched by any of its horror on our mainland while Europe and the Pacific were nearly destroyed, at the top of the industrial pyramid of capital by its end, its controlling global position has lasted until the present historic moment. This finds the world reeling under a series of political, economic and environmental breakdowns all due to the reduction of humanity to commodity consumers in a vast shopping mall that is reducing the planet to a garbage dump, and an ever growing ghetto of multitudes reduced to poverty while a small group enjoy riches beyond the wildest fantasies of past or present royalty.

That reality has produced many conditions of revolutionary aspirations among people disgusted with the status quo, none of those having succeeded yet but some coming closer to ideals growing more necessary as more of humanity sees the potential horror of continued operation as an anti-human system of alleged democracy passing for a market place in which the rich and poor enjoy supposed equal access to the fruits of life. This political economic religious fanaticism is coming face to face with the political economic science that finds anti-social reality reducing humanity to a future that threatens to be much shorter than its past. The controlling mindset that perpetuates the madness plays a further role in the second June historic moment treated as myth by western mind management. What is called the Tiananmen "massacre" has destroyed more western consciousness than any eastern bodies allegedly taken in that event.

When Chinese seekers of more democracy and less corruption rose in protest against their government much of the organization came from outside China, in the tradition of so-called "color revolutions" of the present promoted by western capital's agents both in and outside the country supposedly experiencing the call for freedom. More recently the events in the Ukraine were similar when an elected government was overthrown with open American involvement in league with some former Ukrainian fascists, but the 1989 demonstrations in China were not only given great coverage then but memorialized with still unsubstantiated death tolls and alleged horrors claimed which rarely if ever mention Chinese troops attacked and beaten to death by mobs of supposedly peaceful demonstrators. While originally claiming thousands killed, more recently the toll has been carefully lowered by some to hundreds, but others still shriek that thousands were murdered by the bloody monsters in China. There is as much evidence for this number of deaths as there is for Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, Israel's great suffering at the hands of murderous Palestinians, and the injustice experienced by American women when Trump leaves the toilet seat up.

Widespread belief in these two summer fantasies of history would not last ten minutes in a nation with a truly free press able to widely distribute the stories of what actually took place, what behind the scenes activities played a role in both, and what the outcomes have actually produced. The duplicity and disinformation of much that passes for reality in the hands of stenographers and paid agents for power has led to some not believing anything they are told about anything, which is understandable but only leads to acceptance in often almost as maniacal and far fetched conclusions reached by far too many of us. But at least doubt may cause many to try to look further and find out more of what has really been kept from us and not simply relying on new fables and follies to explain old ones. A place to begin might be these two giant creations of mass mythology that could help us all learn more about the real world rather than the one presented to us by the owners and operators of our supposed democracy.

* James Russell Lowell, amended by Frank Scott

Frank Scott writes political commentary which appears online at the blog Legalienate . Read other articles by Frank .

This article was posted on Friday, June 7th, 2019 at 8:00pm and is filed under China , Fake News , France , Media , President Vladimir Putin , The Soviet Union , Ukraine , United Kingdom , United States , US Lies , US Media , World War Two .

[Jun 08, 2019] China-Russia Partnership Threatens US Global Hegemony

Treatment of Putin as pariah is closely connected with the attempt to isolate and weaken Russia. It is the part of the same strategy.
Notable quotes:
"... It seems to me the underlying issue here is is the U.S. oligarchy–and that's not monolithic by any means. There's very different interests within the most powerful circles, economic circles in the United States. ..."
"... So I think the Americans are, you might call it, ostrich-like. They don't think this challenge is going to be for real. ..."
"... The richest family in America, the WalMart Waltons, made most of their fortune as agents of communist China. They are allies of thé Chinese in destroying US productive capacity and impoverishing her workers. ..."
"... Richard Nixon must be rolling in his grave! Isn't this precisely why he 'went to China' and then worked out a détente with Russia? In order to prevent the US from having to fight both parties at once? Whose bright idea was this dual-containment strategy? ..."
"... Obama's. The pivot to Asia (which was code for China) combined with pressing Russia in Ukraine and Syria, along with the various sanctions was on his watch. In the end, Obama was a President who put the Libya intervention to a vote of his advisers instead of taking responsibility to make an informed position, right or wrong. ..."
Jun 08, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay.

Big power rivalry is heading into very dangerous waters. The rise of China as an economic and military superpower is threatening the global hegemony of the United States. Russia has been pushed into an increasingly tighter relationship with China to balance the attempts by the West to isolate it. President Trump, representing the most aggressive sections of American capital, is responding with a trade war, and an unparalleled massive peacetime military budget that was justified by his Secretary of Defense Shanahan with three words: China, China, and China. Christine Lagarde, the IMF's managing director, said in a briefing note that taxing all trade between the world's two largest economies would cause some $455 billion in gross domestic product to evaporate. The report said this would be a loss larger than South Africa's entire economy.

In a recent meeting between Russia's President Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, apparently the 29th such meeting in the last few years, it was announced with the two leaders looking on that the Chinese tech company Huawei has struck a deal to build Russia's first 5G wireless network. This is the same company that Trump has banned from developing the 5G network in the United States, and is pushing Europe to do the same.

This is clearly just the early stages of what is already the defining big power contention of the 21st century. When the two countries should be focused on the climate crisis, it's looking more like the years before World War I. Of course, there were no nuclear weapons in 1914.

Now joining us to discuss the Chinese, Russian, and American rivalry is Rob Johnson. Rob is the president of the Institute on New Economic Thinking. He was formerly a banking associate of George Soros, and he's now leading the Commission on Global Economic Transformation, a project of INET, co-chaired by Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Mike Spence. Thanks for joining us, Rob.

ROB JOHNSON: Pleasure.

PAUL JAY: So just how dangerous is this trade war? When you listen to the, sort of the business media, it goes anywhere from, well, they're all going to sort it out at a meeting in June, to this is just the beginning of something that's going to get extremely messy.

ROB JOHNSON: I would say we can't know whether things will be what you might call mended back together, or whether we're opening a very, very big and contentious hole in the design of the world system. I was recently at a conference run by a man named John Mallery at MIT, which was an outstanding collection of people from intellectual property rights, trade representatives, artificial intelligence, machine learning experts, and from the intelligence community.

... ... ...

PAUL JAY: It seems to me the underlying issue here is is the U.S. oligarchy–and that's not monolithic by any means. There's very different interests within the most powerful circles, economic circles in the United States. But are they willing to accept this is going to be a multi-superpower world, certainly at the very least China and the United States? I would say within a few decades it's not out of the question a country like India might even enter those kinds of circles, when you start having populations of a billion and you start having this technological evolution that's taking place in China. But there certainly seems to be circles within United States that do not accept the idea that this will be anything but a single-superpower world, and they're trying to do something about it.

ROB JOHNSON:

...And so this is a hard game. And the Chinese, circa 2001, were supposed to fall into line. They were supposed to become part of our trading system. And that's not–that's not the case. And with the advent of digital commerce, with the announcement of China 2025, they are replacing, what I'll call, as they move up the value chain, the more complex activities. They're not falling into line in a U.S.-led system where they make Nike tennis shoes or assemble iPhones with low-cost labor or low environmental protections. They're not moving into what I'll call changing their comparative advantage, because it's not based on what's buried in the ground. It's based on human capital and evolution and training and R&D.

The other final thing where I think the United States has some real concern is we have been talking about how the government doesn't play a role. We've been cutting government support to things like basic science very drastically over the last 20 years as a percentage of GDP.

The Chinese ultimately will have a population four to five times the size of America's. They continue to develop their science budgets. And what you might call the locus of innovation may shift from the United States in places like Silicon Valley to a place like Shenzhen in China.

So I think the Americans are, you might call it, ostrich-like. They don't think this challenge is going to be for real.

PAUL JAY: The global trading system, as you said, led by the United States, and also in practice, is the various countries, part of it, play to some extent a subordinate role within that system. And China is clearly positioning itself to be a direct competitor in many markets. In Latin America and other places China has actually supplanted the United States as the major trading partner. It's a fact of life. This is–I don't see how this is going to change. But the way Trump's approaching this, the trade war and such, it's all being done in the name of being good for American workers. It's being–it's all about American jobs. Is it?

ROB JOHNSON: Well, this is my biggest concern. You hit the nail on the head, as far as I see. The problems were originally that American-based multinational corporations, and for that matter multinational corporations in Western Europe, moved in with foreign direct investment in China, and then sold things back to the United States, whether through Toys R Us, or Wal-Mart, or other things; consumer products or telephones. And that system imposed a real adjustment on a very large portion of the American workforce. So firms didn't go out of business, they responded by automating. But the pressure on labor intensive activity, the downward pressure on wages, is very real. But what a Chinese leader would tell you, and I go over there two, three times a year to meet with them, yes, those adjustments took place. But the responsibility to alleviate that suffering belongs with the American government. The transfers that–what I'll say, leaving orthodox economists probably said free trade is great, because you can compensate people and nobody's worse off and some people are better off. The problem is we don't have a political economy in America that's set up to make those transfers. So the losers lose bad and the winners lobby to get their own taxes cut and keep their money offshore.

... ... ...

PAUL JAY: And one of the sort of not real secrets, but sort of a dirty secret, because people don't talk about it very much, is one of the things that in fact has been subsidizing American workers as their jobs flee, both through going to China and such, and also through automation, has been such incredibly cheap products coming from China. I mean, you go to Wal-Mart and you can buy, you know, a dozen socks for, like, $3. That's a kind of subsidy from cheap Asian labor for American workers which, one, the tariffs are going to eliminate, and two, in the long term, American workers are going to be replaced by automation and they're going to lose the cheap products from China.

ROB JOHNSON: Yes. Well, what I would say is cheap products from China are fine as long as you have a trust fund. If you don't have a trust fund they can be as cheap as whatever; making zero income you still can't buy them. And I think in the United States what I've talked about transfers was income support and retraining support for people to evolve as, you might all it, the shock of the development of China reoriented the pattern of trade.

... ... ...

ObjectiveFunction , June 8, 2019 at 5:06 am

Good thoughtful points raised in the discussion here, but they largely center around the decline of the US-centered unipolar system. On the other hand, the conversation pretty much completely begs the question re the headline topic: "China-Russia-partnership-threatens-US-global-hegemony". That pretty much drops off the agenda after the first few paragraphs.

So Huawei is building a 5G network in Russia. So what? Does that arrest Russia's resource curse? aging population? underemployment and brain drain? public health and ecological crises? Or merely bind China closer to the resource-rich Siberian lands it missed the chance to claim and settle due to Western interference, starting in the 18th century? (part of that 'deep wounding' that's supposed to excuse all Chinese behaviour today, I suppose)

Also:

I would say we can't know whether things will be what you might call mended back together, or whether we're opening a very, very big and contentious hole in the design of the world system.

I find myself asking: should such a 'hole' be 'mended' at all? Should there still be a 'hegemon that provides global public goods'?

(huge Kindleberger fanboi since uni, btw)

Ignacio , June 8, 2019 at 6:08 am

Competition, threaten, hegemony, military. Stupidity comes back if it ever was gone

Divadab , June 8, 2019 at 6:14 am

The richest family in America, the WalMart Waltons, made most of their fortune as agents of communist China. They are allies of thé Chinese in destroying US productive capacity and impoverishing her workers.

With a traitorous ruling class such as this it is no wonder the US is in decline. And note Hillary Clinton was on the WalMart board for many years, aiding and abetting the sellout of American workers in favor of foreigners. The party of American workers has been utterly corrupted by these lying scum.

Seamus Padraig , June 8, 2019 at 7:19 am

Richard Nixon must be rolling in his grave! Isn't this precisely why he 'went to China' and then worked out a détente with Russia? In order to prevent the US from having to fight both parties at once? Whose bright idea was this dual-containment strategy?

NotTimothyGeithner , June 8, 2019 at 8:40 am

Obama's. The pivot to Asia (which was code for China) combined with pressing Russia in Ukraine and Syria, along with the various sanctions was on his watch. In the end, Obama was a President who put the Libya intervention to a vote of his advisers instead of taking responsibility to make an informed position, right or wrong.

The Rev Kev , June 8, 2019 at 8:44 am

You know, it was not all that long ago that there was talk among some elites about the US going into partnership with China in running the world. No, seriously.

This was back during the Bush era and was referred to as the G-2 or Chimerica. Washington would provide the all the strategic planning and China would provide the financial resources and maybe their military manpower as well where needed. Between the two of them nobody would be able to resist their power.

Not Russia, not the EU – nobody. Zbigniew Brzezinski was all for it but that was just because he was evil. The historian Niall Ferguson was also all for it which shows just how good a historian he is. And now look where we are-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_Two

[Jun 08, 2019] I reality think that the RICO (racketeer influenced corrupt organization act) law fits them perfectly

Jun 08, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

David Egan , 31 Jul 2014 20:23

These people should all be in prison. The preposterous theory that government officials have immunity from prosecution is absolute B.S. How do they get away with these treasonous acts!!?? When "commoners" (average Americans) break the law we go to prison. This "too big to fail" and individuals "too important" to prosecute mentality of Erich Holder just proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that "the United States Government has become an entity by itself, for itself and of itself and could care less about the American people"
(the quotations are mine).

The USG spends close to a TRILLOIN DOLLAS A YEAR on the so called "Black Budget" so they can fund private armies that act outside the law to go around the globe and kill anyone that disagrees. This is an ongoing criminal enterprise, and the taxpaying citizens are footing the bill.

I reality think that the RICO. (racketeer influenced corrupt organization act) law fits them perfectly: 1) they are organized in subverting the Constitution, committing crimes around the world breaking international law, 2) they are definitely corrupt, 3) they just happen to run the country and think they are "immune" to prosecution. If they do get caught they spend a couple years in a "club-fed" prison, then go on the talk show circuit and make millions of dollars like Ollie North.

How do "We the people" prevail against this rampant evil? Where are we to go to get justice when the ones entrusted to be the champions of the people, are the perpetrators of the problem?

[Jun 07, 2019] How can you have any faith or trust in a government when CIA is completely out of control?

Notable quotes:
"... Other than it is against the law for CIA to spy in the US. It is FBI's job. And Brennan lied to Congress under oath, a crime for which Clinton was impeached. And the fact that if they are coneding this crime, they must've been caught on something even bigger. ..."
"... They are way out of control. They need to take a step back and reevaluate their reason for being and their goals. You can't protect the people if you see them as the enemy. ..."
"... The intelligence agencies are civil servants who need to be reigned in whenever they exceed the instructions given to them by their civilian bosses. ..."
"... And the CIA torture? ..."
"... Who ever was over the hacking of the Senator's computer and the Senator's staffers computers should be invited to leave. If that extends all the way up to Brennan, so be it. ..."
"... Unfortunately, that corrective action has to come from those who are perpetrating these crimes in order for it to be legal. It's the classic Catch-22 of political corruption. ..."
"... "They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretences, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace." ― Tacitus (AD56 to after AD117) The Agricola and the Germania ..."
"... The problem with political power is that it proves to be a magnet to those with sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies and they are easily corrupted. ..."
"... Back in the day, the people of Russia knew that what they were being fed was propaganda, in the US and the UK we thought it was news. ..."
"... Intelligence Agencies have their own Agenda. The CIA spy on everyone including the Senate it seems. Meanwhile the Israeli Intelligence Agencies spy on many people Including the USA,the very people who give them the money... ..."
"... If the CIA are Spying on the Senate you have to ask the Question who are they working for ? ..."
Jun 07, 2019 | www.theguardian.com

panamadave , 1 Aug 2014 10:54

There should be no discussion about this! However just like Mockingbird, National Students Ass., Tailwind, PBSUCCESS,and so many others, they will stall until they get it dropped from the media and we will forget again.

Get Smart Amarica

williamdonovan , 1 Aug 2014 10:45
John Brennan's next job should be in a orange jump suit earning pennies and hour. But we all know that this will never happen. Brennan is the right hand of the commander and chief of death, destruction and torture. and has been for a long time. This is the work of evil, plain and simple.
Timelooper , 1 Aug 2014 10:41
How can you have any faith or trust in a government like this? It's one damn thing after another. The Executive branch, the Congress, the high courts, the Justice Dept. are all corrupt. Laws are broken, constitutional protections are laughed at, we are constantly being spied on. No charges are brought. Nobody goes to jail.

But Snowden is a traitor for revealing the truth.

The1eyedman , 1 Aug 2014 10:11
A minor detail? The CIA and security services have every right to know who is who on all and every politician and their staff. That's why we are safe. :-)
freeandfair -> Woodby69 , 1 Aug 2014 10:04
And the brave.

They are so brave, they are patologically afraid of everyone. And want to be "protected".

freeandfair -> whatdidyouexpect , 1 Aug 2014 10:03
Other than it is against the law for CIA to spy in the US. It is FBI's job. And Brennan lied to Congress under oath, a crime for which Clinton was impeached. And the fact that if they are coneding this crime, they must've been caught on something even bigger.

Sure, everything else is just fine. As far as we know, that is.

J. Alberto Perez Zacarias , 1 Aug 2014 09:40
They are way out of control. They need to take a step back and reevaluate their reason for being and their goals. You can't protect the people if you see them as the enemy.
rickmcq , 1 Aug 2014 09:38
So it appears that some in Congress will get upset if a Executive agency misuses its powers? Are these the same folks who seem to be okay with the IRS focus on Conservative 501(c)(3) applicants?
rickmcq -> Trevor Alfred , 1 Aug 2014 09:35
Um, no, Trevor Alfred, "the REAL terrorists" are still the folks who deliberately bomb civilians in areas where peace is supposed to exist.

The intelligence agencies are civil servants who need to be reigned in whenever they exceed the instructions given to them by their civilian bosses.

altoclef , 1 Aug 2014 09:28
And the CIA torture?
hhhobbit , 1 Aug 2014 09:03
Who ever was over the hacking of the Senator's computer and the Senator's staffers computers should be invited to leave. If that extends all the way up to Brennan, so be it.
MuppetPilferR -> PJKatz , 1 Aug 2014 08:38
Unfortunately, that corrective action has to come from those who are perpetrating these crimes in order for it to be legal. It's the classic Catch-22 of political corruption.
DaoTe , 1 Aug 2014 08:28
Don't fire Brennan. Arrest him and charge him violating the prohibition against domestic surveillance, lying under oath and, arguably, treason. Maybe there is space in Guantanamo for him to reflect upon the meaning of the Constitution and the rule of law.
DhammaRider -> Texascelt , 1 Aug 2014 08:10
And the reason that we never hear of these supposed 'facts' is what? That we're all too dumb to know? Dumbing down America is getting mighty costly of late, n'est-pas?
DhammaRider , 1 Aug 2014 08:06
Just because they say you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Remember: America is not a democracy. That's a sideshow. It's an oligarchy and don't you forget it.
magzie01950 , 1 Aug 2014 08:05
We need less government with less power. They are parasites sucking off there host, us!
heleninc , 1 Aug 2014 07:40
You can always trust some govts/agencies/people to always take the wrong path/back door. It would simply never occur to them to take the right one. This is who they are.
Nad Gough -> TomG , 1 Aug 2014 07:32
"What might a government of the people that does not trust the people it governs be properly called?"

scared sh&#less?

Nad Gough , 1 Aug 2014 07:30
Don't worry it wasn't official, just "staff". lol

Staffs carry out directives. I'm not buying that staff had cause to go looking otherwise.

Feinstein has problems with being spied on, yet heads the Intelligence Committee who for several years has been authorizing spying on - well, everybody.

Feinstein shouldn't worry about spying, unless she's doing something wrong. Isn't that the proposition?

Markenstein -> Piet Van Der Riet , 1 Aug 2014 07:28
They certainly are most transparent to the 'Company'!
TomG , 1 Aug 2014 07:08
So why is it scandalous for public officials in our supposed western liberal democracies to spy on officials in other agencies, and deserving of an apology, but it's Okay for officials to spy on fellow citizens?

What might a government of the people that does not trust the people it governs be properly called?

Perhaps we all need to stop making sense.

Texascelt , 1 Aug 2014 06:54
I would like to point out that beyond what is touted in the press as "the story" the nature of these sorts of things can remain hidden for many years. Recent events in Germany and in Washington, if viewed from a different perspective may be connected. In the past when such revelations come to light it is resultant from security issues that are of such magnitude that those tasked with intelligence responsibilities remain in power because they are simply doing their job and are doing so at the command of elected officials, who when made aware of covert matters go all quiet and allow the chips to fall as they may. Seldom does the public ever hear of the actual facts in a timely way, and by the time that does happens they have long since moved on to more pressing matters.
diddoit , 1 Aug 2014 06:50
Has any politician asked them to explain why they spied, in terms of their motivations ? It seems the 'why' is surely more damaging than the act of spying itself?
Trevor Alfred -> Hottentot , 1 Aug 2014 06:38
What else is new!...Corruption / deceit / fraud / theft, at the highest level of tax payers money is being conducted..War criminals being sponsored by their own corrupt government ministers / agencies, to create carnage, by divide & rule tactics...Its a fatal backfiring failure / disaster which is causing their downfall.
Trevor Alfred , 1 Aug 2014 06:19
Not surprising...All these out of control "rogue agencies" I.E. CIA / NSA / MI5 / MI6 / GCHG / MOSAD, must be brought to book for their corrupt / deceitful / fraudulent workings...Their most senior officers are involved in a worldwide cover up into illegal involvement of creating criminal wars around the world, by using spying techniques upon government institutions & citizens...The recent scandal of phone tapping / voice mail / email interception, goes to show the lengths they are prepared to conduct / cover up their own war criminality acts. They are the REAL terrorists !!
NhaNghi , 1 Aug 2014 06:14
I'm American but I live in a communist country. I hate these security thugs no matter what country they live in. They're all the same.
BarrieJ -> worldperspective , 1 Aug 2014 05:48
"They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretences, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace." ― Tacitus (AD56 to after AD117) The Agricola and the Germania

He could have been writing today.
David Garrison , 1 Aug 2014 05:41
I kid you not, In the start menu, I typed "bullshit" , pressed enter and got Milton Friedman.
Bardamux -> CornsilkSW , 1 Aug 2014 05:37
Which US-President was any better ?
padatharasuresh , 1 Aug 2014 05:36
Wow! It will be easier for them to say who they did not spy on.
donkiddick , 1 Aug 2014 05:36
They'll even eat their own... How this behaviour doesn't equate to criminal actions is part of the disgrace. The US government have morphed in to a dystopian movement.
BarrieJ -> freeandfair , 1 Aug 2014 05:34
So true. At least the people of Russia knew they were under a yoke, American citizens were led to believe they lived in the land of the free.
BarrieJ -> Darius Las , 1 Aug 2014 05:26
At least the Chinese know what they've got and know that it's dangerous to discuss it.
NhaNghi , 1 Aug 2014 05:22
But they're such kind, gentle people . . .
BarrieJ -> pa2013 , 1 Aug 2014 05:21
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA by Webster Griffin Tarpley (ISBN: 9780930852375) another good read and makes a plausible case for a coup carried out on America.
BarrieJ -> orwellrollsinhisgrav , 1 Aug 2014 05:17
Less than 10%?
BarrieJ -> fringe_perception , 1 Aug 2014 05:16
Us Brits have led the field for centuries.

In the reign of Elizabeth 1st a blacksmith was executed for treason because he was overhead saying that he believed the uncrowned King Edward V was still alive.

A quick search on Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's Secretary of State will reveal for just how long and how sophisticated state spying on state has been.

BarrieJ -> eldudeabides , 1 Aug 2014 05:03
Yes, they don't like others to be in a position to know of their venality, their sexual deviances and assorted other human failings. Else that knowledge be used to control them...............
BarrieJ -> consciouslyinformed , 1 Aug 2014 04:58
The problem of how the rest of the world views the actions of the US is exacerbated by the seeming inability or disinterest of its citizens in doing anything about it. Admittedly, a frustration shared by many citizens/subjects in Western countries, that pretend to be functioning democracies but are in fact anything but.

The problem with political power is that it proves to be a magnet to those with sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies and they are easily corrupted.

We are politically and economically very poorly educated and are daily fed propaganda and mind filling mush by media that are 'on message'.

The media ownership needs to be broken up but politicians, corporations and the media are one self serving body and would resist that and have the power to do so.

Back in the day, the people of Russia knew that what they were being fed was propaganda, in the US and the UK we thought it was news.

fireangel , 1 Aug 2014 04:51
Intelligence Agencies have their own Agenda. The CIA spy on everyone including the Senate it seems. Meanwhile the Israeli Intelligence Agencies spy on many people Including the USA,the very people who give them the money...
(Out of Control is the thought that springs to mind)
SteveBiko187 -> EndersShadow , 1 Aug 2014 04:27
Whereas in reality it's only the whistleblowers who lose their job and pension.
spartacute , 1 Aug 2014 04:26
If the CIA are Spying on the Senate you have to ask the Question who are they working for ? Is it the American Government ? Is it the American Military? Is it The American Citizen ? Or are we seeing the henchmen of the illuminati in action here !
Their fingers seem to be in every pie and no one seems to be able to control them .
BarrieJ -> David Egan , 1 Aug 2014 04:24
You've just about hit the nail on the head but what to do about it?
DaniJV , 1 Aug 2014 04:22
US democracy is simply a joke.

[Jun 07, 2019] Brennan: I'm Still Waiting For Republican Rats To Realize The Trump Ship Is Sinking

I think now Brennan sings a different song...
May 01, 2019 | www.realclearpolitics.com

Former CIA Director John Brennan warned Republicans who support President Trump that they are on a sinking ship, in an appearance Wednesday morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

"I'm waiting for the Republicans to realize that the Trump ship is a sinking one," he said.

"There are still rats on that ship, and there are individuals who are not going to separate themselves from Trump. They do so at their own peril. They need to fulfill their obligations, irrespective of their political affiliations. This is now the presidency and institutions of government we rely on to keep us safe and secure."

MIKE BARNICLE: Last week, there was another continued swipe ordered by the president of the United States, who whatever he says is a megaphone and resonates throughout the country because of the way it is carried, in which he basically said that people like you and several other people in the intelligence community were responsible for trying to participate in a coup, to undermine the presidency of the United States and to remove the president of the United States. What does it do -- nevermind to you personally -- what does it do to institutions like the NSA, the CIA, the FBI.

JOHN BRENNAN: It continues to show Mr. Trump's disdain for the intelligence and law enforcement communities, who are trying to do their jobs irrespective of political winds that might be blowing in Washington. It really is demoralizing for Mr. Trump to continue to say there is this "deep state" that tried to launch a coup, and that he is trying to "clean the swamp," while in fact, it is those professionals within the intelligence community, law enforcement community, who are trying to carry out their duties and responsibilities to the American people. Mr. Trump just continues to go down this road. I think it is having a very damaging impact.

WILLIE GEIST: What do you think, Director Brennan, happens from here? I think people watching want to know. They say, okay, Mueller didn't like how the report was characterized by the attorney general. Fine, on the issue of obstruction of justice. Now, what? Is it Mueller sitting before the Senate and answering specific questions about what is inside the report? What is the outcome of this?

JOHN BRENNAN: Barr has to be interrogated.

WILLIE GEIST: That starts this morning at 10:00.

JOHN BRENNAN: And then Bob Mueller has to get in front of Congress, then Congress has to do its job.

And I'm still waiting for the Republicans to realize that the Trump ship is a sinking one. There are still rats on that ship, and there are individuals who are not going to separate themselves from Trump. But they do so at their own peril. And they need to fulfill their obligations, irrespective of their political affiliations. And to do it now rather than to allow this continued sinking of not just the presidency, but of these institutions of government that we rely on to keep us safe and secure.

[Jun 07, 2019] Plutocracy needs Neo-McCarthysim to survive

Jun 07, 2019 | dissidentvoice.org

Demonizing Workers and the Left

Capitalists, with media in tow, demonized communists and anarchists. The Alien Registration Act of 1940 aimed to preserve the status quo. Japanese-Americans were interred. Communists were targeted.

The FBI was involved. Edgar Hoover had leftists monitored and surveilled by tactics including wiretaps and break-ins. The anti-leftism was so extreme that a section of corporate America supported fascism. The fascists supported Nazi Germany in WWII. 1

Post-WWII the top income tax rate was 91% until 1964. One-third of workers belonged to a union. From 1940 to 1967 real wages doubled. Living standards doubled.

However, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 would attack workers, banning many types of strikes, closed union shops, union political contributions, communists and radicals in union leadership, and the compelled payment of union dues. The Supreme Court upheld Taft-Hartley, and it remains in force today.

The film also examines McCarthyism, a witch hunt against communists or communist-leaning types, as a psychological attack against Americans. No one was safe. Blacklisting was in vogue and among the first blacklisted were the so-called Hollywood 10 for either communist sympathies or refusal to aid Congress' House Un-American Activities Committee investigations into the Communist party or having fought for the rights of Blacks and workers. The list expanded much past 10. One celebrity given in-depth prominence in Subterranean Fire was singer Paul Robeson who refused to back down before Congress, stated he was for Negro and worker rights, and accused Congress of neo-fascism.

McCarthyism hit hysterical heights as exemplified by Texas proposing the death penalty for communist membership and Indiana calling for the banning of Robin Hood.

McCarthyism was foiled when it bit off more than it could chew. When McCarthyism took on the establishment, in particular the military, its impetus ground to an inglorious halt. The Alien Registration Act was ruled unconstitutional, and the First Amendment right to political beliefs was upheld.

Subterranean Fire notes that the damage to the labor movement was already done. A permanent war economy was established: overtly through the military and covertly through the CIA. Come 2001, union membership had dropped to 13.5%. Radicals were disconnected from their communities; union democracy was subverted by a top-down leadership which avoided the tactic of striking for collective bargaining; the court system was heavily backlogged with labor-management issues, which usually were ruled in favor of management.

Some outcomes noted in the film,

In the early 21st century, Americans took on the dubious distinction of working more hours than any other country .

There is no single county in America where a minimum wage earner can support a family.

The Rise

Grotesque income and wealth disparity signifies the current state of neoliberalism. Yet Subterranean Fire finds glimmers of change for working men and women.

Despite relating the historical trampling of the working class, the film concludes on a sanguine note. Union strength appears to be on the rebound with solidarity being a linchpin. Labor strikes were on the upswing in the US, with teachers leading the way. Fast-food workers are fighting for a decent wage. Labor, which has seen real wages stagnate in the age of neoliberalism, is fighting back worldwide. Autoworkers in Matamoros, Mexico are striking and colleagues in Detroit, Michigan have expressed support for their sisters and brothers. The Gilet Jaunes in France have been joined by labor. A huge general strike took place in India. The uptick of resistance was not just pro-labor but anti-global warming in Manchester, UK; Tokyo, Japan; Cape Town, South Africa; Helsinki, Finland; Genoa, Italy; and, Nelson, Aotearoa (New Zealand).

All this, however, must be considered through the lens of the current political context. A virulent anti-socialist president and his hawkish administration occupy the White House in Washington. Despite the nationwide strike actions, the right-wing BJP and prime minister Narendra Modi won a recent huge re-election in India. The purportedly centrist Liberal Party in Canada, rhetoric aside, has been, in large part, in virtual lockstep with the US administration. 2

The Importance of Metanoia Films

Today, people with access to the internet have little excuse for continuing to depend on state-corporate media sources. Why would anyone willingly subject himself to disinformation and propaganda? Not too mention paying for access to such unreliable information and the soul-sapping advertisements that accompany it.

It is important that we be cognizant of the search engine manipulations of Google, the biased opinions parlayed by moneyed corporate media, and the censorship of social media data-mining sites. The corporate-state media nexus wants to limit and shape what we know. The current war on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange is proof positive of this. Assange and WikiLeaks exposed horrific war crimes. It is a no-brainer that a person should be congratulated for bringing such evil perpetrated by the state to the public awareness. Instead the establishment seeks to destroy WikiLeaks, the publisher Assange, and Chelsea Manning who is accused of providing the information to WikiLeaks.

Given the corporate-state power structure's ideological opposition to WikiLeaks and freedom on information as well as the preponderance of disinformation that emanates from monopoly media, it seems eminently responsible that people seek out credible independent sources of information. Metanoia Films stands out as a credible source.

There are plenty of independent news and information sites that provide analysis that treat the reader/viewer with respect by substantiating information provided in reports and articles with evidence, logic, and even morality. The reader/viewer who seeks veracity has an obligation to consider the facts, sources, and reasoning offered and arrive at her own conclusions.

Metanoia documentaries lay out a historical context that helps us understand how we arrived at the state of affairs we find ourselves in today. It is an understanding that is crucial to come up with solutions for a world in which far too many languish in poverty, suffer in war zones, and are degraded by the cruelties of inequality. It is an understanding that is crucial for communicating, planning, and organizing the establishment of new societies in which all may flourish and of which all may be proud.

Independent media is meant for independent thinkers and those who aspire to a better world. Watch Plutocracy V: Subterranean Fire and the first four parts in the Plutocracy series and become informed. Kim Petersen is a former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be reached at: [email protected] . Twitter: @kimpetersen . Read other articles by Kim .

This article was posted on Tuesday, June 4th, 2019 at 9:41pm and is filed under Anarchism , Communism/Marxism/Maoism , Film , Film Review , Labor , Poverty , Racism , Unions .

[Jun 07, 2019] Tucker It wasn't 'spying,' it was 'investigating'

If Barr represent different faction of CIA then Brennan, Brannan might pay with his head for his artistic inventions in fomenting Russiagate color revolution and Steele dossier. Not very likely, though...
Jun 07, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Rob Crz , 1 week ago

Geez!!! Obama is awfully quiet lately🤔🤔🤔🤔....."?????

sion7111 , 1 week ago

Tucker is the best journo in cable television news rigth now

P Pumpkin , 1 week ago

When the FBI was "investigating" thousands of individuals in the 60's the press called it spying.

Monkeywrench542 , 1 week ago

declassify it all. anyone in the federal government shown to be breaking the law should be charged and vigorously prosecuted.

Liddy G , 1 week ago

They spied on Trump because they thought it was a guaranteed win and Hillary could cover it up. They started the witch hunt to make it look like it was a legit investigation.

TominBach , 1 week ago (edited)

"Surveillance". Would you buy a used car from Jim Comey?. Time for issuing a number of orange jumpsuits and for the ones at the top?. A sharp drop and a sudden stop.

Maryland Bass Hunter , 1 week ago

James Comey is basically screaming I'M GUILTY! You can tell this man is scared about whats to come. The rats are not sleeping well at night.

Shade Tree Solar , 1 week ago

All Security Clearances for all bureaucrats should be immediately revoked up termination of service

Edson Silva , 1 week ago

Who is loving Trump's Presidency like 👇🏻

Mezmerized4Life Jay , 1 week ago (edited)

My fav part is watching the globalists turn on each other 😂

David Sanders , 1 week ago

Time for sunlight to cleanse these dark agencies political partisanship!

Tom Korte , 1 week ago

Please keep the MSNBC clips a bit shorter. They're painful to watch and I almost didn't make it through that one.

bahamabrz , 1 week ago

I wasn't robbing that bank. I was just having a discussion with the bank teller with a gun in my hand.

Rob Crz , 1 week ago

Geez!!! Obama is awfully quiet lately🤔🤔🤔🤔....."?????

sion7111 , 1 week ago

Tucker is the best journo in cable television news rigth now

P Pumpkin , 1 week ago

When the FBI was "investigating" thousands of individuals in the 60's the press called it spying.

Monkeywrench542 , 1 week ago

declassify it all. anyone in the federal government shown to be breaking the law should be charged and vigorously prosecuted.

Daniel Cunningham , 1 week ago

Tucker, you are a MINORITY in the news these days. Keep on telling the TRUTH.

Liddy G , 1 week ago

They spied on Trump because they thought it was a guaranteed win and Hillary could cover it up. They started the witch hunt to make it look like it was a legit investigation.

TominBach , 1 week ago (edited)

"Surveillance". Would you buy a used car from Jim Comey?. Time for issuing a number of orange jumpsuits and for the ones at the top?. A sharp drop and a sudden stop.

James Mana , 1 week ago

Spying Work for a government or other organization by secretly collecting information about enemies or competitors. investigating Carry out a systematic or formal inquiry to discover and examine the facts of (an incident, allegation, etc.) so as to establish the truth. What a bunch of idiots

In CogNito , 1 week ago

If you have to make up reasons to investigate, it becomes spying. With this logic, we can investigate anyone! As long as we make sure to cover our tracks in lies! Perfect!

Markus Rodriguez , 1 week ago

How dare they! How dare they! How dare our "government" turn tail like this They at this point are nothing more then dirty DIRTY smear merchant's!

monkeygraborange , 1 week ago

Of course it was spying! Weasel Comey is just clutching at whatever straws he can to try to avoid prison.

Maria Farfan , 1 week ago

Prayers,prayers, Venezuela,and AMERICA 🌹 🌹🌹 🌹🙌 🙌🏼 Prayers

Chuck Haney , 1 week ago

"Finding out about me is irresponsible." - Brennan

bill fupps , 1 week ago

Keep pushing Trump. These demons are screaming louder. What you're doing is working

R. Mercado , 1 week ago

Another outstanding commentary. Bravo Zulu. Semper Fi

Maryland Bass Hunter , 1 week ago

James Comey is basically screaming I'M GUILTY! You can tell this man is scared about whats to come. The rats are not sleeping well at night.

Kohoko , 1 week ago

I will check with Guy Smiley of Sesame Street News before I go to MSNBC....Guy Smiley's got way more street cred!

Leesa Gomez , 1 week ago

And those EVIL DARK SECRETS, Will soon be Revealed. It's different when those things come to light

MsDebbiepolak , 1 week ago

Thank you Tucker for all your truth!!! You and Tom. Fitton rock!!

leslie franssen , 1 week ago

Dirty birds Dems get Wright with the people. Just tell the truth it will set you free🤢🐍🕸🕸🦎🐸Swamp things

LEILE S , 1 week ago

So he admits they spied, I mean investigated Trumps campaign? 🤔

BlueFox94 , 1 week ago

Tucker's "okay" has been a legendary put-down for some time now. ^_^

Gmonkey , 1 week ago

shine the light on the roaches Trumpy. God Bless USA from UK.

Shade Tree Solar , 1 week ago

All Security Clearances for all bureaucrats should be immediately revoked up termination of service

Cid Sapient , 1 week ago

this is my fave part lol 1:20 i laughed out loud towards the end

Rick Care , 1 week ago

If you take away I.C.E . : then You'll have Globle Warming!!••¿¿□●°°!!!

knowTRUTH2013 , 1 week ago

the deep state kabal is covering themselves, including 99% of all politicans and 100% of all the lib media.

Phil Bingham , 1 week ago

THE BUCK STOPS WITH BARR - THAT'S THE BEST SOLUTION

sullyz girl89 , 1 week ago

Investigating a non crime. Show me the man and I'll find a crime

Cooter Campbell , 1 week ago

Chris Hayes, and Rachel Maddow are the same person.

kyle wolfe , 1 week ago

"aiding the Enemy" should come to your mind.... And your Right, It IS Treason.

beo wulf , 1 week ago

YA KNOW ... IF THESE POLITICOS WERE IN THE WORK PLACE THEY WOULD BE BROKE! MORONS EVERY ONE!

Bella Biesel , 1 week ago

This should be mandatory viewing by EVERY U.S. citizen.

Just Me , 1 week ago

It's to protect, and shield the multiple treason committing Obama. PERIOD.

Happy Tripper , 1 week ago (edited)

When you make up lies to trick a judge into letting you watch your political opponents, that is SPYING. You cannot talk your way out of this Comey.

TotPYsera , 1 week ago

Why does John Brennan look like every Bond villain's henchman?

Jonathan Sterling , 1 week ago

That's Judicial Watch's definition of the Deep State! It's not just a few politicians and judges, it's almost all of Washington and many in government around the country. The Deep State will just take its time, put it off, forget about it, make mistakes implementing it, and so on and so forth.

[Jun 06, 2019] Odd NYT 'Correction' Exculpates British Government And CIA From Manipulating Trump Over Skripal Novichok Incident

Notable quotes:
"... Julian E. Barnes is obviously a long-term intelligence asset and his stories are not based on independent research but are just a repetition of the yarn that the CIA want to spin. Julian E. Barnes and the CIA obviously think Americans and other westerners are DAF. ..."
"... And should we be surprised that such false information about Gina Haspel and Donald Trump puts Trump in a bad light and somehow humanises a CIA director with a reputation for torturing prisoners? ..."
"... A week or 3 ago, a Barnes co-reported "article" flat out stated that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. This was done by pretending to quote someone in the the US Defense establishment as saying "we believe Iran will redouble its work on nuclear weapons". ..."
"... Julian Barnes is a well established liar. Sort of akin to Judith Miller and Michael Gordon. ..."
"... Now the Washington post's narrative is quite colorful too. So Trump really was concerned how many Russians Germany or France expelled? Why was he angry? The vassals did not follow his example as they should have? ..."
"... The CIA and MI6 boys must have blanked out to let this one slip through the cracks. We pay them billions to run false flag and cover-up operations. This makes those of us that believe their lying narratives look stupid. I guess we need to add more billions to their annual budgets. ..."
"... More believable that Julian Barnes performs no cross-referencing and zero research. Investigative reporting (or asking questions) is not the job of the modern MSM stenographer. His job - pushing the war machine agenda. He simply writes that which he is instructed to write. Probably emails all of his articles to his CIA liason for approval prior to publication. ..."
"... In the Skripnal psyop one can readily assess that the only truly "dead ducks" are the MSM journalists and the Western politicians who peddled this incredible slapstick nonsense story in order to further the "demonization of Russia" narrative of Western oligarchy. That these same media "dead ducks" appear to have not even the very slightest interest whatsoever in the current whereabouts or safety of said Skripnals speaks volumes about the true nature of this intelligence operation. ..."
"... both versions of the story expose Gina as a untrustworthy ratfucker ..."
"... At the moment the UK is run by MI6 which sees itself as the real political directorate of the CIA and the Deep State in the US. It seriously believes that it is on the verge of establishing global hegemony. ..."
"... Please note, everyone, that not all of these sad excuses for "journalists" are on the CIA payroll. In fact, very few of them are. Most work with the CIA out of warped senses of patriotism and duty to the empire. Most would never think of themselves as intelligence agency assets, and no small number of them probably think their relationships with the CIA are unique. They think that they are special and that their contacts on the inside at the CIA are unusual. Few would guess that they are just another propaganda mule in the CIA's stable, and that friendly guy who "leaks" to them is actually their handler; their "operator" in spook-speak. ..."
"... CIA did not control many of the Vietnam era journalists that had their pieces printed in mainstream media of the day. Not many left now and perhaps since the nineties they could no longer get their articles published. Regan brought in perception management which eventually brought all MSM 100% under US -CIA control. ..."
"... If you're a CIA guy, you get the editor and the ombudsman on the payroll and he will make certain that the desired propaganda gets published. If he's a Zionist, he's on the same page from the start, anyway. ..."
"... What a strange construction. Doesn't the CIA have PR staff? A decent PR team would review every item referencing their boss and issue clarifications and/or demand corrections immediately. There should have been no need for Julian E. Barnes to figure anything out as the CIA should have pointed out his mistake very quickly. This explanation/exculpation is utter bullshit! ..."
"... I doubt that Trump asked questions about how those ducks and kids were doing. More likely that MI5 was annoyed that they were exposed as the providers of the duck snuff pictures, and put pressure on the NY Times. ..."
"... Those who advocated the strong response to Russia are the intellectual authors of "Russia Gate" to thwart detente with Russia. ..."
Jun 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

A piece in the New York Times showed how in March 2018 Trump was manipulated by the CIA and MI6 into expelling 60 Russian diplomats. Eight weeks after it was published the New York Times 'corrects' that narrative and exculpates the CIA and MI6 of that manipulation. Its explanation for the correction makes little sense.

On April 16 the New York Times published a report by Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman about the relation between CIA Director Gina Haspal and President Donald Trump.

Gina Haspel Relies on Spy Skills to Connect With Trump. He Doesn't Always Listen.

The piece described a scene in the White House shortly after the contentious Skripal/Novichok incident in Britain. It originally said (emphasis added):

During the discussion, Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director, turned toward Mr. Trump. She outlined possible responses in a quiet but firm voice, then leaned forward and told the president that the "strong option" was to expel 60 diplomats.

To persuade Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the conversation, officials including Ms. Haspel also tried to show him that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were not the only victims of Russia's attack.

Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives.

The 60 Russian diplomats were expelled on March 26 2018. Other countries only expelled a handful of diplomats over the Skripal incident. On April 15 2018 the Washington Post reported that Trump was furious about this:

The next day, when the expulsions were announced publicly, Trump erupted, officials said. To his shock and dismay, France and Germany were each expelling only four Russian officials -- far fewer than the 60 his administration had decided on. The President, who seemed to believe that other individual countries would largely equal the United States, was furious that his administration was being portrayed in the media as taking by far the toughest stance on Russia.
...
Growing angrier, Trump insisted that his aides had misled him about the magnitude of the expulsions. 'There were curse words,' the official said, 'a lot of curse words.

In that context the 2019 NYT report about Haspel showing Trump dead duck pictures provided by the Brits made sense. Trump was, as he himself claimed, manipulated into the large expulsion.

The NYT report created some waves. On April 18 2019 the Guardian headlined:

No children or ducks harmed by novichok, say health officials
Wiltshire council clarification follows claims Donald Trump was shown images to contrary

The report of the dead duck pictures in the New York Times was a problem for the CIA and the British government. Not only did it say that they manipulated Trump by providing him with false pictures, but the non-dead ducks also demonstrated that the official narrative of the allegedly poisoning of the Skripals has some huge holes. As Rob Slane of the BlogMire noted :

In addition to the extraordinary nature of this revelation, there is also a huge irony here. Along with many others, I have long felt that the duck feed is one of the many achilles heels of the whole story we've been presented with about what happened in Salisbury on 4th March 2018. And the reason for this is precisely because if it were true, there would indeed have been dead ducks and sick children .

According to the official story, Mr Skripal and his daughter became contaminated with "Novichok" by touching the handle of his front door at some point between 13:00 and 13:30 that afternoon. A few minutes later (13:45), they were filmed on CCTV camera feeding ducks, and handing bread to three local boys, one of whom ate a piece . After this they went to Zizzis, where they apparently so contaminated the table they sat at, that it had to be incinerated.

You see the problem? According to the official story, ducks should have died. According to the official story children should have become contaminated and ended up in hospital. Yet as it happens, no ducks died, and no boys got sick (all that happened was that the boys' parents were contacted two weeks later by police, the boys were sent for tests, and they were given the all clear).

After the NYT story was published the CIA and the British government had to remove the problematic narrative from the record. Yesterday they finally succeeded. Nearly eight weeks after the original publishing of the White House scene the NYT recanted and issued a correction (emphasis. added):

Correction: June 5, 2019

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the photos that Gina Haspel showed to President Trump during a discussion about responding to the nerve agent attack in Britain on a former Russian intelligence officer. Ms. Haspel displayed pictures illustrating the consequences of nerve agent attacks, not images specific to the chemical attack in Britain. This correction was delayed because of the time needed for research.

The original paragraphs quoted above were changed into this:

During the discussion, Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director, turned toward Mr. Trump. She outlined possible responses in a quiet but firm voice, then leaned forward and told the president that the "strong option" was to expel 60 diplomats.

To persuade Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the conversation, officials including Ms. Haspel tried to demonstrate the dangers of using a nerve agent like Novichok in a populated area. Ms. Haspel showed pictures from other nerve agent attacks that showed their effects on people.

The British government had told Trump administration officials about early intelligence reports that said children were sickened and ducks were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives.

The information was based on early reporting, and Trump administration officials had requested more details about the children and ducks, a person familiar with the intelligence said, though Ms. Haspel did not present that information to the president. After this article was published, local health officials in Britain said that no children were harmed.

So instead of pictures of dead ducks in Salisbury the CIA director showed pictures of some random dead ducks or hospitalized children or whatever to illustrate the effects consequences of nerve agent incidents?

That the children were taken to hospital but unharmed was already reported in British media on March 24 2018, before the Russian diplomats were expelled, not only after the NYT piece was published in April 2019.

Yesterday the author of the NYT piece, Julian E. Barnes, turned to Twitter to issue a lengthy 'apology':

Julian E. Barnes @julianbarnes - 14:52 utc - 5 Jun 2019

I made a significant error in my April 16 profile of Gina Haspel. It took a while to figure out where I went wrong. Here is the correction: 1/9

[...]

The intelligence about the ducks and children were based on an early intelligence report, according to people familiar with the matter. The intelligence was presented to the US in an effort to share all that was known, not to deceive the Trump administration. 7/9

This correction was delayed because conducting the research to figure out what I got wrong, how I got it wrong and what was the correct information took time. 8/9

I regret the error and offer my apology. I strive to get information right the first time. That is what subscribers pay for. But when I get something wrong, I fix it. 9/9

Barnes covers national security and intelligence issues for the Times Washington bureau. His job depends on good access to 'sources' in those circles.

It is remarkable that the CIA spokesperson never came out to deny the original NYT report. There was zero visible push back against its narrative. It is also remarkable that the correction comes just as Trump is on a state visit in Britain.

The original report was sourced on 'people briefed on the conversation'. The corrected version is also based on 'people briefed on the conversation' but adds 'a person familiar with the intelligence'. Do the originally cited 'people' now tell a different story? Are we to trust a single 'person familiar with the intelligence' more than those multiple 'people'? What kind of 'research' did the reporter do to correct what he then and now claims was told to him by 'people'? Why did this 'research' take eight weeks?

That the 'paper of the record' now corrects said 'record' solves a big problem for Gina Haspel, the CIA/MI6 and the British government. They can no longer be accused of manipulating Trump (even as we can be quite sure that such manipulations happen all the time).

In the end it is for the reader to decide if the original report makes more sense than the corrected one.

---
This is a Moon of Alabama fundraising week. Please consider to support our work .

Posted by b on June 6, 2019 at 06:12 AM | Permalink

ADKC , Jun 6, 2019 7:14:50 AM | 2
Julian E. Barnes is obviously a long-term intelligence asset and his stories are not based on independent research but are just a repetition of the yarn that the CIA want to spin. Julian E. Barnes and the CIA obviously think Americans and other westerners are DAF.
John Doe , Jun 6, 2019 7:26:00 AM | 3
Rob Slane, June 5, 2019: The New York Times Tries to Get Itself Out of the Duckgate Hole Using a Spade
Jen , Jun 6, 2019 7:32:17 AM | 4
Surely the time and effort Julian Barnes needed to check what information he had got wrong and how he got it wrong should not have been as major as he makes out. Animals dying and children falling sick to a toxin that could have killed them are incidents that should have stuck out like sore thumbs and warranted careful checks with different and independent sources before reporting that Gina Haspel apparently showed the US President pictures of dead ducks and sick boys in Salisbury.

No wonder Barnes got such a roasting on Twitter after making his abject apology.

And should we be surprised that such false information about Gina Haspel and Donald Trump puts Trump in a bad light and somehow humanises a CIA director with a reputation for torturing prisoners?

John Smith , Jun 6, 2019 7:48:46 AM | 6
J'Accuse News @NewsAccuse:

During years I researched articles published in @nytimes we fact-checked BEFORE publication. Here it comes AFTER bloggers, officials et al point out fatal flaws. That no children were poisoned, and no ducks killed, by #novichok in #Salisbury + was known in Spring 2018. #propaganda

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D8WfKNPUwAAGGWT.jpg

Jay , Jun 6, 2019 8:37:49 AM | 8
A week or 3 ago, a Barnes co-reported "article" flat out stated that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. This was done by pretending to quote someone in the the US Defense establishment as saying "we believe Iran will redouble its work on nuclear weapons".

Except in the Barnes construction it wasn't a quotation, or anything like a phrasing that made clear that the Pentagon source was guessing, not stating, that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.

This was NOT corrected.

Eric Schmitt was the other NY Times "reporter" who signed the article.

Here's the article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/world/middleeast/us-military-plans-iran.html

And here's what the two liars reported, pretending that an Iranian nuclear weapons program is a real thing, first paragraph:

"Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated
military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the
Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on
nuclear weapons, administration officials said."

So Julian Barnes is a well established liar. Sort of akin to Judith Miller and Michael Gordon.

ger , Jun 6, 2019 8:44:10 AM | 9
Barnes provides the truth then provides a lie about the truth....par for the course at NYT. (Remember Judith Miller?) A fake news organization spreading fake news with revised fake news.
joanna , Jun 6, 2019 9:01:26 AM | 10
can't really get excited by the fact that not everything in this type of creative writing is taken serious. Did anyone expect otherwise?

During the discussion, Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director, turned toward Mr. Trump. She outlined possible responses in a quiet but firm voice, then leaned forward and told the president that the "strong option" was to expel 60 diplomats.

To persuade Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the conversation, officials including Ms. Haspel also tried to show him that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were not the only victims of Russia's attack.

It's pretty obvious that his/their narrative necessarily must be cobbled together by a lot of sources. Some by phone. Those may not even share the same idea what image of the president or Haspel they should convey. I always wonder with this type of newspaper reporting. Maybe both writers should write novels.

Now the Washington post's narrative is quite colorful too. So Trump really was concerned how many Russians Germany or France expelled? Why was he angry? The vassals did not follow his example as they should have?

SharonM , Jun 6, 2019 9:08:20 AM | 11
Superb analysis! Been coming here for 11 years now, and I just have to say that "b" is the best propaganda analyst in the English language. He is the sturdiest anchor in these stormy seas:)
AriusArmenian , Jun 6, 2019 9:42:07 AM | 12
The CIA and MI6 boys must have blanked out to let this one slip through the cracks. We pay them billions to run false flag and cover-up operations. This makes those of us that believe their lying narratives look stupid. I guess we need to add more billions to their annual budgets.

Sarcasm is just about the last pleasure one can get from watching the horrific antics of these morons.

fastfreddy , Jun 6, 2019 10:07:19 AM | 13
More believable that Julian Barnes performs no cross-referencing and zero research. Investigative reporting (or asking questions) is not the job of the modern MSM stenographer. His job - pushing the war machine agenda. He simply writes that which he is instructed to write. Probably emails all of his articles to his CIA liason for approval prior to publication.

Perhaps, the liason can see what this fool types in real time. Who knows?

As the story of the dead ducks and sick children unraveled and fell apart, a sloppy patch up had to be made. Now its fixed. Like a Boeing 737 MAX.

librul , Jun 6, 2019 10:09:17 AM | 14
BoTh vErSioNs of the story (I checked with the "Wayback Machine") still include this paragraph (6th paragraph of story):

Unusually for a president, Mr. Trump has publicly rejected not
only intelligence agencies' analysis, but also the facts they have gathered.
And that has created a perilous situation for the C.I.A.

As usual for the NYT, they did not publicly reject the intelligence agencies' analysis, but also the facts they had gathered. That, of course, would have created a perilous situation for the NYT.

Gary Weglarz , Jun 6, 2019 10:30:32 AM | 16
As the saying goes: "if it looks like a false-flag, walks like a false-flag, and talks like a false-flag, it just might be a "duck."

In the Skripnal psyop one can readily assess that the only truly "dead ducks" are the MSM journalists and the Western politicians who peddled this incredible slapstick nonsense story in order to further the "demonization of Russia" narrative of Western oligarchy. That these same media "dead ducks" appear to have not even the very slightest interest whatsoever in the current whereabouts or safety of said Skripnals speaks volumes about the true nature of this intelligence operation.

Harry Law , Jun 6, 2019 10:36:53 AM | 17
"I made a significant error in my April 16 profile of Gina Haspel. It took a while to figure out where I went wrong". It was only when I found the horses head next to me in bed when I woke up, that I realized what a stupid mistake I had made.
aspnaz , Jun 6, 2019 11:04:23 AM | 20
Gina Haspel has to be as dumb and incompetent as I suspected: someone is paying good money to make her look like an ordinary sociopath, not a depraved tart who sucked cock to climb to the head of the organisation.
Noirette , Jun 6, 2019 11:31:31 AM | 22
Slane is ++ on the Skirpals. One 'fact' that emerged early on, made public by Slane, is that the proposed 'official' time-line ( > press, Gvmt between the lines) of the Skripal movements - trivial as in a town, drinkies, lunch, feeding ducks, etc. -- was never reported correctly, obfuscated.

Idk the reasons, but it is a vital point.
___________________________________

Trump, we see, is treated like the zombie public, flashed random photos, sold tearful narratives about babies, children, recall incubator babies, horrific bio-weapons threats...

The PTB loathes him, Pres. are supposed to be complicit like Obama - or at least keep their resistance toned down, be ready to compromise. .. Obama objected to, and refused to act on, at least two engineered / fake Syria chem. 'attacks.' (Just looked on Goog and can't find links to support.)

The only EU figure who stated there is no evidence that the Russkies novichoked Sergei and Yulia was Macron, afaik. He didn't get the memo in time (the Elysée is inefficient, lots of screw-ups there) but soon caught up! and expelled the minimum. -- I have heard, hush hush, one in F was a receptionist - gofer (an excellent + extremely highly paid position) who is now at the Emb. in Washington! Most likely merely emblematic story (see telephone game) .. but telling.

Hoarsewhisperer , Jun 6, 2019 11:52:33 AM | 24
I like this story. It makes Trump look like a naif which wouldn't bother President Teflon in the least. On the other hand, both versions of the story expose Gina as a untrustworthy ratfucker. I'm hoping she said "cross my heart and hope to die" when he queried her advice...
Zachary Smith , Jun 6, 2019 12:01:15 PM | 25
@ Jay | Jun 6, 2019 8:37:49 AM @8
So Julian Barnes is a well established liar.

I'm glad I checked to see if anyone had mentioned this hack's article about Russia restarting nuclear testing. Using his name as one search item I tried a number of current issues. Like the fellows at local intersections holding up signs "will work for money", Barnes might as well have a tattoo saying "I'll write anything if the price is right. That it took so long to come up with a half-assed "explanation" shows he's not the brightest bulb in the lamp. I suppose people whose jobs consist of slightly re-writing Deep State dictation don't have to be especially clever.

PrairieBear , Jun 6, 2019 12:25:01 PM | 26
That "apology" by Barnes is completely nonsensical. How would you know that there was something wrong with your story, that there was an error in it, without knowing what it was? If the CIA, various bloggers, commenters, etc., alerted him to the errors, it's unlikely they would say, "There's something wrong in this story but I'm not going to say what it is. You'll have to re-research they whole thing to figure it out." I don't think that's how people usually point out errors.
bevin , Jun 6, 2019 12:34:34 PM | 27
"Which narrative is unraveling and which is gathering momentum?"psychohistorian@19

One thing that seems to be unravelling is the tight political cartel that controls Foreign Policy in the UK.

If it does unravel and Labour turns to an independent foreign policy while it reverses the disaster of 'austerity' and neo-liberalism, cases such as that of Assange and the Skripal affair, both products of extremists within the Establishment who regard themselves as privileged members of the DC Beltway, are going to be re-opened.

At the moment the UK is run by MI6 which sees itself as the real political directorate of the CIA and the Deep State in the US. It seriously believes that it is on the verge of establishing global hegemony. And this at a time when the UK is falling apart and its population teeters on the brink of economic disaster. It has fallen into this delusion over the years as it has been able to offer the CIA services which it is afraid to initiate itself. Hence, most recently, the entire Russiagate nonsense which has British fingerprints all over it. Hence too the new aggressiveness in DC towards Assange. Hence the disappearance, without explanation, of the Skripals.
goldhoarder , Jun 6, 2019 12:44:22 PM | 28
Julian Barnes is like Winston Smith without the intellectual curiosity. He quote happily goes about his work. lol. What is the matter with you people? You are supposed to embrace the new narrative!

From wikidpeida... A memory hole is any mechanism for the alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that something never happened.[1][2] The concept was first popularized by George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the Party's Ministry of Truth systematically re-created all potentially embarrassing historical documents, in effect, re-writing all of history to match the often-changing state propaganda. These changes were complete and undetectable.

frances , Jun 6, 2019 12:48:13 PM | 30
I think the"Why now?" answer was Trump is in the UK and asking questions, lots of questions, can't have that.
james , Jun 6, 2019 12:49:34 PM | 31
@37 bevin... maybe they will do with assange what they have done with the skripals... the uk is more then pathetic at this point in time.. craig murray had more to say on the assange case yesterday - A Swedish Court Injects Some Sense
bjd , Jun 6, 2019 1:32:38 PM | 32
Julian E. Barnes' humble confession (a self-incrimination) sounds like one made in a Gulag.
failure of imaginati , Jun 6, 2019 2:23:10 PM | 35
Further down the memory hole is the side tale of the daughter of Brutish Army Chief Nurse helping Skirpals and getting an award without contaminating the news. Was the girl's father Pablo Miller,(of Orbis Dossier MFG) and a pal of Skirpal? There's debunk in their poor narrative. The public has a photogenic memory.
lysias , Jun 6, 2019 2:28:23 PM | 36
Speaking of MI6, Julian Barnes is a very English-looking name. Do we know anything about his biography?
tuyzentfloot , Jun 6, 2019 2:56:36 PM | 37
There are 2 Julian Barneses (at the very least!), one is an English writer, the other has mostly been writing for the WSJ ( https://www.wsj.com/news/author/julian-e.-barnes) but since recently again for the NYTimes .
fastfreddy , Jun 6, 2019 3:10:32 PM | 38
30

Trump is a drug-addled, brain-damaged, hollowed-out shell of the dull con man he once was.

But, he perceives himself to be a brilliant mastermind - a stable genius. So, he might indeed, be prone to making inquiries (generally these would induce the toadies around him to stifle their laughter).

It makes sense that he might ask, while in GB, about the Skirpal incident, since he pulled 60 people from their posts and he remembered the fantasy he was lead to believe about sick children and dead ducks.

The fact that he overreacted without sufficient evidence, may have inspired a tiny amount of self-reflection simply because it may have embarrassed him to have been caught on his back foot. He was lead to believe that his contemporaries intended to react in equal measure. They did not. Therefore - he was "fooled" or tricked.

This is the only way to embarrass the buffoon. That is to have someone fool him personally. And to make him look stupid.

He doesn't mind that he is a fat oaf, a greed head and a pig, but that is the stuff of his own doing. He is comfortable in this. Money is the end-all, etc.

He bought Mar A Lago, making it his own club, because the Palm Beach Club and its elite snobs would not let him join.

Trump was betrayed by Gina Haskell, the CIA and the NYT.

What is he gonna do about it?

joebattista , Jun 6, 2019 3:22:02 PM | 40
All of Western media has been compromised by the CIA and friends since at least the 50s. Remember what late CIA director William Casey said in 1981; "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the US public believes is false".
They 'CIA' controls every talking head you can name. Believe no one. Sad isn't it.
William Gruff , Jun 6, 2019 3:56:52 PM | 41
Please note, everyone, that not all of these sad excuses for "journalists" are on the CIA payroll. In fact, very few of them are. Most work with the CIA out of warped senses of patriotism and duty to the empire. Most would never think of themselves as intelligence agency assets, and no small number of them probably think their relationships with the CIA are unique. They think that they are special and that their contacts on the inside at the CIA are unusual. Few would guess that they are just another propaganda mule in the CIA's stable, and that friendly guy who "leaks" to them is actually their handler; their "operator" in spook-speak.

Of course, there is also the incentive provided by just having to take the story their CIA "friend" gives them, edit it a little to fit their employer's style guidelines, and then submit it as their own. A whole day's worth of work and they can have it finished in half an hour. What's not to like about that?

Peter AU 1 , Jun 6, 2019 4:11:22 PM | 42
40

CIA did not control many of the Vietnam era journalists that had their pieces printed in mainstream media of the day. Not many left now and perhaps since the nineties they could no longer get their articles published. Regan brought in perception management which eventually brought all MSM 100% under US -CIA control.

fastfreddy , Jun 6, 2019 4:45:29 PM | 43
41

If you're a CIA guy, you get the editor and the ombudsman on the payroll and he will make certain that the desired propaganda gets published. If he's a Zionist, he's on the same page from the start, anyway.

The self-important "journalists" are controlled and in fact, they are flattered by their special relationships with informants and the owner/managers. After one has sucked his or her way to the upper level, kissing up and kicking down... Laziness is a bonus.

Jay , Jun 6, 2019 4:47:28 PM | 44
@Zachary Smith:

Barnes' CV has US News and World Report on it. That's big spewer of lies, especially over the last 25 years.

Ghost Ship , Jun 6, 2019 5:35:07 PM | 46
I made a significant error in my April 16 profile of Gina Haspel. It took a while to figure out where I went wrong.

What a strange construction. Doesn't the CIA have PR staff? A decent PR team would review every item referencing their boss and issue clarifications and/or demand corrections immediately. There should have been no need for Julian E. Barnes to figure anything out as the CIA should have pointed out his mistake very quickly. This explanation/exculpation is utter bullshit!

wagelaborer , Jun 6, 2019 5:40:19 PM | 47
Every day when I turn on my computer, I am enticed with offers to "see how the Brady Bunch kids look today" or "what do the stars of the 80s look like today?". Apparently, there is quite a demand for updates on celebrities and their current well being. So why would Julian Barnes do an article about the Skirpals without showing us how they look today? And just where are they living? Enquiring minds want to know!

I doubt that Trump asked questions about how those ducks and kids were doing. More likely that MI5 was annoyed that they were exposed as the providers of the duck snuff pictures, and put pressure on the NY Times.

Featherless , Jun 6, 2019 5:49:29 PM | 48
Whatever happened with the Skripals since ? It's like they fell off the face of the planet.
John Sanguinetti , Jun 6, 2019 6:37:46 PM | 50
Could this be referred to as a good old fashioned SNAFU ?
Jen , Jun 6, 2019 6:44:26 PM | 51
SteveK9 @ 49:

Using ducks is easier. Gina Haspel could always ask one of the bottom-feeding subordinates to nip down the road to one of those Chinese BBQ shops and photograph the display of roast ducks hanging in the shop window . The photos can be uploaded and altered to remove the background of the chef and the cashier and then the actual ducks can be altered or colored appropriately before the pictures are sent to Haspel. Anyone looking at the altered pictures would never guess their actual provenance.

:-)

I'm not sure where Haspel can find hippos or any other large animals that might topple on top of someone (with dire consequences) were s/he to apply a whiff of nerve agent.

Jen , Jun 6, 2019 6:49:22 PM | 52
SteveK9 @ 49:

Oops the link @ 51 isn't working so I'd better link to this instead.

El Cid , Jun 6, 2019 8:10:06 PM | 53
Those who advocated the strong response to Russia are the intellectual authors of "Russia Gate" to thwart detente with Russia.
uncle tungsten , Jun 6, 2019 8:12:21 PM | 54
Thanks b for a good laugh at Barnes and Goldman's expense. I note Goldman is silent and I guess that is because he would likely get his apology wrong and contradict Barnes BS.
  • Here's my profile of Gina Haspal: war criminal
  • Here's my profile of Julian Barnes: Fwit and BShitter
  • Here's my profile of Adam Goldman: Fwit and BShitter.

[Jun 05, 2019] Do Spies Run the World by Israel Shamir

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Within America, the alphabet agencies from NSA to CIA to FBI had betrayed their country as obviously as Figuera did, though they didn't run away, yet. Our colleagues Mike Whitney and Philip Giraldi described the conspiracy organised by John Brennan of CIA with active participation of FBI's James Comey, to regime-change the US. ..."
"... The CIA spies in England and passes the results to the British Intelligence. MI6 spies in the US and passes the results to CIA. They became integrated to unbelievable extent in the worldwide network of spies. ..."
"... It is not the Deep State anymore; it is world spooks who had united against their legitimate masters. Instead of staying loyal to their country, the spooks betrayed their countries. They are not only strictly-for-cash – they think they know better what is good for you. In a way, they are a new incarnation of the Cecil Rhodes Society . Democratically-elected politicians and statesmen have to obey them or meet their displeasure, as Corbyn and Trump did. ..."
"... Everywhere, in the US, the UK, and Russia, the spooks became too powerful to handle. The CIA stood behind assassination of JFK and tried to take down Trump. The British Intelligence undermined Jeremy Corbyn, after assisting the CIA in pushing for the Iraq war. They created the Steele Dossier, invented the Skripal hoax and had brought Russia and the West to the brink of nuclear war. ..."
"... In the Ukraine, the heads of their state security, SBU had plotted against the last legitimate president Mr Victor Yanukovych. They helped to organise and run the Maidan 2014 manifestations and misled their President, until he was forced to escape abroad. The Maidan manifestations could be compared with the Yellow Vests movement; however, Macron, an appointee of the Network, had support of his spies, and stayed in power, while Yanukovych had been betrayed and overthrown. ..."
"... You'd ask me, were they so stupid that they believed their own propaganda of inevitable Clinton's victory? Yes, they were and are stupid. They are no sages, evil or benevolent. My main objection to the conspiracy theorists is that they usually view the plotters as omniscient and all-powerful. They are too greedy to be all-powerful, and they are too silly to be omniscient. ..."
"... Now, however, the secret services' cohesion and integration increased to the next level, making it difficult to deal with them. ..."
"... People are fickle and not always know what is good for them; there are many demagogues to mislead the crowd. And still, elected legitimate officials should have precedence in governing, while non-elected ones should obey – and it means the Network spooks and media men should know their place. ..."
"... How did John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Steele and other Spygate principals manage to rise to the top of the intelligence bureaucracy? ..."
"... These characters have indulged in an orgy of highly conspicuous partisan political meddling and ranting that has created the strong public impression that they engaged in an attempted coup to overthrow a sitting American president on the basis of a frame-up that was largely fueled by Russian disinformation. ..."
"... Brennan in particular: can you imagine any previous CIA director comporting himself in this manner? Throwing all caution to the winds? Inconceivable. Brennan, Comey and Clapper have inflicted serious damage on the reputation of the CIA, FBI and ODNI. ..."
"... It's not just illegal surveillance and blackmail that gives the spies power, it's impunity for even the gravest crimes. If you don't get the message of blackmail you can be tortured or shot, with a bullet like JFK and RFK and Reagan, or with illegal biological weapons like Daschel and Leahy. Institutionalized impunity stares us in the face from US state papers. ..."
"... It's not that CIA and other neo-Gestapos escaped control. They were designed from inception for totalitarian control. The one poor bastard in Congress who pointed that out, Tydings, had McCarthy sicced on him for his cheek. CIA is not out of control; it's firmly IN control. ..."
"... It was funny during the Cold war (the original one) – whenever each side unveiled that a spy from the other side has defected to them – they would say it was because of ideology – i.e. the spy defected to them because he "believed" in "democracy" or socialism – depending on the case. ..."
"... And in order to discredit their own spies when they defected to the other side – they would say that they did it for money, because they were greedy and that they betrayed "democracy" or socialism ..."
"... The other crucial role that spies usually play is that they allow the adversaries to keep technological balance via industrial espionage. By transferring top military secrets, they don't allow any side to gain crucial strategic advantage that might encourage them to do something foolish – like start a nuclear war. Prime example of this were probably the Rosenbergs – who helped USSR close the nuclear weapons gap with US and kept the world in a shaky nuclear arms balance. ..."
"... Profound analysis by Mr. Shamir. It confirms that one of the important reasons for the decline of freemasonry is the monopolization of political conspiracy by the intelligence services. Who needs the lodge when you have the CIA. ..."
"... Spooks are everywhere, from secretaries "losing" important communications to CNN news anchors roleplaying with crisis actors, but they are at their most powerful when they are appointed to powerful positions. President Trump's National Security Advisor is a spook and he does what he wants. ..."
"... John le Carre described it perfectly in "A Perfect Spy". The spooks form their own country. They are only loyal to themselves. ..."
"... A global supra-powerful, organized and united, privately directed, publicly backed society of high technology robin hood_mercenary_spooks who conduct sub-legal "scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-your-back [in the nation of the other] routines"; who ignore duty to country, its constitutions, its laws and human rights. The are evil, global acting, high technology nomads with a monopoly on extortion and terror. ..."
"... Your statement "spooks and ex-spooks feel more proximity to their enemies and colleagues in other countries than to their fellow citizens" fails makes clear the importance of containment-of-citizen access to information. Nation states are armed, rule making structures that invent propaganda and control access to information. Information containment and filtering is the essence of the political and economic power of a national leader and it is more import to the evil your article addresses. ..."
"... Control of the media is 50 times more important than control of the government? Nearly all actions of consequence are intended to drain the governed masses and such efforts can only be successful if the lobbying, false-misleading mind controlling privately owned (92% own by just 6 entities) centrally directed media can effectively control the all information environments. ..."
"... While understanding the mechanics is helpful don't neglect the purpose. Why is more important than how. The why is control. They don't care what you believe, but only what you do. You can be on the left, right, mainstream, or fringe and they won't care as long as you eat what they serve. Take a minute to think about what they want you to do and strongly consider not doing it. ..."
May 22, 2019 | www.unz.com

... ... ...

Conspiratorially-minded writers envisaged the Shadow World Government as a board of evil sages surrounded by the financiers and cinema moguls. That would be bad enough; in infinitely worse reality, our world is run by the Junior Ganymede that went berserk. It is not a government, but a network, like freemasonry of old, and it consists chiefly of treacherous spies and pens-for-hire, two kinds of service personnel, that collected a lot of data and tools of influence, and instead of serving their masters loyally, had decided to lead the world in the direction they prefer.

German Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the last head of the Abwehr, Hitler's Military Intelligence, had been such a spy with political ambitions. He supported Hitler as the mighty enemy of Communism; on a certain stage he came to conclusion that the US will do the job better and switched to the Anglo-American side. He was uncovered and executed for treason. His colleague General Reinhard Gehlen also betrayed his Führer and had switched to the American side. After the war, he continued his war against Soviet Russia, this time for CIA instead of Abwehr.

The spies are treacherous by their nature. They contact people who betrayed their countries; they work under cover, pretending to be somebody else; for them the switch of loyalty is as usual and normal as the gender change operation for a Moroccan doctor who is doing that 8 to 5 every day. They mix with foreign spies, they kill people with impunity; they break every law, human or divine. They are extremely dangerous if they do it for their own country. They are infinitely more dangerous if they work for themselves and still keep their institutional capabilities and international network.

Recently we had a painful reminding of their treacherous nature. Venezuela's top spy, the former director of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin), Manuel Cristopher Figuera , had switched sides during the last coup attempt and escaped abroad as the coup failed. He discovered that his membership on the Junior Ganymede of the spooks is more important for him than his duty to his country and its constitution.

Within America, the alphabet agencies from NSA to CIA to FBI had betrayed their country as obviously as Figuera did, though they didn't run away, yet. Our colleagues Mike Whitney and Philip Giraldi described the conspiracy organised by John Brennan of CIA with active participation of FBI's James Comey, to regime-change the US. In the conspiracy, foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, played an important role. As by law, these spies aren't allowed to operate on their home ground, they go into you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-your-back routine. The CIA spies in England and passes the results to the British Intelligence. MI6 spies in the US and passes the results to CIA. They became integrated to unbelievable extent in the worldwide network of spies.

It is not the Deep State anymore; it is world spooks who had united against their legitimate masters. Instead of staying loyal to their country, the spooks betrayed their countries. They are not only strictly-for-cash – they think they know better what is good for you. In a way, they are a new incarnation of the Cecil Rhodes Society . Democratically-elected politicians and statesmen have to obey them or meet their displeasure, as Corbyn and Trump did.

Everywhere, in the US, the UK, and Russia, the spooks became too powerful to handle. The CIA stood behind assassination of JFK and tried to take down Trump. The British Intelligence undermined Jeremy Corbyn, after assisting the CIA in pushing for the Iraq war. They created the Steele Dossier, invented the Skripal hoax and had brought Russia and the West to the brink of nuclear war.

Russian spooks are in a special relations mode with the global network – for many years. In Russia, persistent rumours claim the perilous Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev had been designed and initiated by the KGB chief (1967 – 1982) Yuri Andropov . He and his appointees dismantled the socialist state and prepared the takeover of 1991 in the interests of the One World project.

Andropov (who had stepped into Brezhnev's shoes in 1982 and died in 1984) had advanced Gorbachev and his architect of glasnost, Alexander Yakovlev . Andropov also promoted the arch-traitor KGB General Oleg Kalugin to head its counter-intelligence. Later, Kalugin betrayed his country, escaped to the US and delivered all Russian spies he knew of to the FBI hands.

In late 1980s-early 1990s, the KGB, originally the guarding dog of the Russian working class, had betrayed its Communist masters and switched to work for the Network. But for their betrayal, Gorbachev would not be able to destroy his country so fast: the KGB neutralised or misinformed the Communist leadership.

They allowed Chernobyl to explode; they permitted a German pilot to land on the Red Square – this was used by Gorbachev as an excuse to sack the whole lot of patriotic generals. The KGB people were active in subverting other socialist states, too. They executed the Romanian leader Ceausescu and his wife; they brought down the GDR, the socialist Germany; they plotted with Yeltsin against Gorbachev and with Gorbachev against Romanov. As the result of their plotting, the USSR fell apart.

The KGB plotters of 1991 had thought that post-Communist Russia would be treated by the West like the prodigal son, with a fattened calf being slaughtered for the welcome feast. To their disappointment, the stupid bastards discovered that their country was to play the part of the fattened calf at the feast, and they were turned from unseen rulers into billionaires' bodyguards. Years later, Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia with the blessing of the world spooks and bankers, but being too independent a man to submit, he took his country into its present nationalist course, trying to regain some lost ground. The dissatisfied spooks supported him.

Only recently Putin began to trim the wild growth of his own intelligence service, the FSB. It is possible the cautious president had been alerted by the surprising insistence of the Western media that the alleged attempt on Skripal and other visible cases had been attributed to the GRU, the relatively small Russian Military Intelligence, while the much bigger FSB had been forgotten. The head of FSB cybercrime department had been arrested and sentenced for lengthy term of imprisonment, and two FSB colonels had been arrested as the search of their premises revealed immense amounts of cash , both Russian and foreign currency. Such piles of roubles and dollars could be assembled only for an attempt to change the regime, as it was demanded by the Network.

In the Ukraine, the heads of their state security, SBU had plotted against the last legitimate president Mr Victor Yanukovych. They helped to organise and run the Maidan 2014 manifestations and misled their President, until he was forced to escape abroad. The Maidan manifestations could be compared with the Yellow Vests movement; however, Macron, an appointee of the Network, had support of his spies, and stayed in power, while Yanukovych had been betrayed and overthrown.

In the US, the spooks allowed Donald Trump to become the leading Republican candidate, for they thought he would certainly lose to Mme Clinton. Surprisingly, he had won, and since then, this man who was advanced as an easy prey, as a buffoon, had been hunted by the spooks-and-scribes freemasonry.

You'd ask me, were they so stupid that they believed their own propaganda of inevitable Clinton's victory? Yes, they were and are stupid. They are no sages, evil or benevolent. My main objection to the conspiracy theorists is that they usually view the plotters as omniscient and all-powerful. They are too greedy to be all-powerful, and they are too silly to be omniscient.

Their knowledge of official leaders' faults gives them their feeling of power, but this knowledge can be translated into actual control only for weak-minded men. Strong leaders do not submit easily. Putin has had his quota of imprudent or outright criminal acts in his past, but he never allowed the blackmailers to dictate him their agenda. Netanyahu, another strong man of modern politics, also had managed to survive blackmail. Meanwhile, Trump defeated all attempts to unseat him, though his enemies had used his alleged lack of delicacy in relation to women, blacks and Jews to its utmost. He waded through the deep pond of Russiagate like Gulliver. But he has to purge the alphabet agencies to reach safety.

In Russia, the problem is acute. Many Russian spooks and ex-spooks feel more proximity to their enemies and colleagues in other countries than to their fellow citizens. There is a freemasonic quality in their camaraderie. Such a quality could be commendable in soldiers after the war is over, but here the war is going on. Russian spooks are particularly besotted with their declared enemies; apparently it is the Christian quality of the Russian soul, but a very annoying one.

When Snowden reached Moscow after his daring escape from Hong Kong, the Russian TV screened a discussion that I participated in, among journalists, members of parliament and ex-spies. The Russian spooks said that Snowden is a traitor; a person who betrayed his agency can't be trusted and should be sent to the US in shackles. They felt they belong to the Spy World, with its inner bond, while their loyalty to Russia was a distant second.

During recent visit of Mike Pompeo to Sochi, the head of SVR, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Mr Sergey Naryshkin proposed the State Secretary Mike Pompeo, the ex-CIA director, to expand contacts between Russian and US special services at a higher level. He clarified that he actively interacted with Pompeo during the period when he was the head of the CIA. Why would he need contacts with his adversary? It would be much better to avoid contacts altogether.

Even president Putin, who is first of all a Russian nationalist (or a patriot, as they say), who has granted Snowden asylum in Moscow at a high price of seriously worsening relations with Obama's administration, even Putin has told Stone that Snowden shouldn't have leaked the documents the way he did. "If he didn't like anything at his work he should have simply resigned, but he went further", a response proving he didn't completely freed himself from the spooks' freemasonry.

While the spooks plot, the scribes justify their plots. Media is also a weapon, and a mighty one. In Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin , the protagonist is defeated by the smear campaign in the media. Despite his miraculous arrival, despite his glorious victory, the evil witch succeeds to poison minds of the hero's wife and of the court. The pen can counter the sword. When the two are integrated, as in the union of spooks and scribes, it is too dangerous tool to leave intact.

In many countries of Europe, editorial international policies had been outsourced to the spooky Atlantic Council, the Washington-based think tank. The Atlantic Council is strongly connected with NATO alliance and with Brussels bureaucracy, the tools of control over Europe. Another tool is The Integrity Initiative , where the difference between spies and journalists is blurred . And so is the difference between the left and the right. The left and the right-wing media use different arguments, surprisingly leading to the same bottom line, because both are tools of warfare for the same Network.

In 1930s, they were divided. The German and the British agents pulled and pushed in the opposite directions. The Russian military became so friendly with the Germans, that at a certain time, Hitler believed the Russian generals would side with him against their own leader. The Russian spooks were befriended by the Brits, and had tried to push Russia to confront Hitler. The cautious Marshal Stalin had purged the Red Army's pro-German Generals, and the NKVD's pro-British spooks, and delayed the outbreak of hostilities as much as he could. Now, however, the secret services' cohesion and integration increased to the next level, making it difficult to deal with them.

If they are so powerful, integrated and united, shouldn't we throw a towel in the ring and surrender? Hell, no! Their success is their undoing. They plot, but Allah is the best plotter, – our Muslim friends say. Indeed, when they succeed to suborn a party, the people vote with their feet. The Brexit is the case to consider. The Network wanted to undermine the Brexit; so they neutralised Corbyn by the antisemitism pursuit while May had made all she could to sabotage the Brexit while calling for it in public. Awfully clever of them – but the British voter responded with dropping both established parties. So their clever plot misfired.

People are fickle and not always know what is good for them; there are many demagogues to mislead the crowd. And still, elected legitimate officials should have precedence in governing, while non-elected ones should obey – and it means the Network spooks and media men should know their place.

Sean McBride , says: May 21, 2019 at 3:18 pm GMT

Side note:

How did John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Steele and other Spygate principals manage to rise to the top of the intelligence bureaucracy?

Spymasters are usually renowned for their inscrutability and for playing their cards close to their vests.

These characters have indulged in an orgy of highly conspicuous partisan political meddling and ranting that has created the strong public impression that they engaged in an attempted coup to overthrow a sitting American president on the basis of a frame-up that was largely fueled by Russian disinformation.

Brennan in particular: can you imagine any previous CIA director comporting himself in this manner? Throwing all caution to the winds? Inconceivable. Brennan, Comey and Clapper have inflicted serious damage on the reputation of the CIA, FBI and ODNI.

Forthcoming books will no doubt get into all the remarkable and bizarre details.

Donald Trump has demonstrated the ability to troll and goad many of his opponents into a state of imbecility. It's a negotiating tactic -- knock them off balance, provoke them to lose control. No matter how smart they are, some people take the bait.

Ding ding ding , says: May 21, 2019 at 4:04 pm GMT
I am sitting here pointing to my nose. Spies run the world – contemporary history in a nutshell. A few provisos:

– It's not just illegal surveillance and blackmail that gives the spies power, it's impunity for even the gravest crimes. If you don't get the message of blackmail you can be tortured or shot, with a bullet like JFK and RFK and Reagan, or with illegal biological weapons like Daschel and Leahy. Institutionalized impunity stares us in the face from US state papers.

– It's not that CIA and other neo-Gestapos escaped control. They were designed from inception for totalitarian control. The one poor bastard in Congress who pointed that out, Tydings, had McCarthy sicced on him for his cheek. CIA is not out of control; it's firmly IN control.

– There is a crucial difference between US and Russian spies. Russians can go over the head of their government to the world. That's the only effective check on state criminal enterprise like CIA. Article 17 of the Russian Constitution says "in the Russian Federation rights and freedoms of person and citizen are recognized and guaranteed pursuant to the generally recognized principles and norms of international law and in accordance with this Constitution." Article 18 states that rights and freedoms of the person and citizen are directly applicable, which prevents the kind of bad-faith tricks the USA pulls, like declaring "non-self executing" treaties, or making legally void reservations, declarations, understandings, and provisos to screw you out of your rights. Article 46(3) guarantees citizens a constitutional right to appeal to inter-State bodies for the protection of human rights and freedoms if internal legal redress has been exhausted. Ratified international treaties including the ICCPR supersede any domestic legislation stipulating otherwise.

Endgame Napoleon , says: May 21, 2019 at 6:14 pm GMT
Isn't it just collusion that holds certain elite groups together, including in some businesses where a lot of chicanery goes on. The most important thing is to be in on it as one of them, not as a person who can be trusted not to say anything, but as one of the gang. It's exactly how absenteeism-friendly offices full of crony parents with crony-parent managers work.

The only problem for the guy at the tippy top is what would happen if such a tight group turned on him / her? Maybe, some leaders see the value in protecting a few brave individuals, like Snowden, letting any coup-stirring spooks know that some people are watching the Establishment's rights violators, too. Those with technical knowledge have more capacity than most to do it or, at least, to understand how it works.

In a country founded on individual liberties, including Fourth Amendment privacy rights that were protected by less greedy generations, the US should have elected leaders that put the US Constitution first, but that is too much to ask in an era when the top dogs in business & government are all colluding for money.

Digital Samizdat , says: May 21, 2019 at 6:40 pm GMT

In Russia, persistent rumours claim the perilous Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev had been designed and initiated by the KGB chief (1967 – 1982) Yuri Andropov.

FWIW, I have heard the exact same thing from Russian commenters myself. Some have insisted that, if Andropov had lived long enough, he would have carried glasnost and perestroika himself.

Cyrano , says: May 21, 2019 at 7:09 pm GMT
Spies are loathsome bunch, with questionable loyalties and personal integrity. But I believe that overall they play a positive role. They play a positive role because they help adversaries gain insight into their adversary's activities.

If it wasn't for the spies, paranoia about what the other side is doing can get out of hand and cause wrong actions to take place. The problem with the spies is also that no one knows how much they can be trusted and on whose side they are really on.

It was funny during the Cold war (the original one) – whenever each side unveiled that a spy from the other side has defected to them – they would say it was because of ideology – i.e. the spy defected to them because he "believed" in "democracy" or socialism – depending on the case.

And in order to discredit their own spies when they defected to the other side – they would say that they did it for money, because they were greedy and that they betrayed "democracy" or socialism.

The other crucial role that spies usually play is that they allow the adversaries to keep technological balance via industrial espionage. By transferring top military secrets, they don't allow any side to gain crucial strategic advantage that might encourage them to do something foolish – like start a nuclear war. Prime example of this were probably the Rosenbergs – who helped USSR close the nuclear weapons gap with US and kept the world in a shaky nuclear arms balance.

Kirt , says: May 21, 2019 at 10:01 pm GMT
Profound analysis by Mr. Shamir. It confirms that one of the important reasons for the decline of freemasonry is the monopolization of political conspiracy by the intelligence services. Who needs the lodge when you have the CIA.

An aspect of the rule of spies that Mr. Shamir does not touch on is the legitimization of this rule through popular culture. This started with the James Bond novels and movies and by now has become ubiquitous. Spies and assassins are the heroes of the masses. While secrecy is still needed for tactical reasons in the case of specific operations, overall secrecy is not needed nor even desirable. So you have thugs like Pompeo actually boasting of their villainy before audiences of college students at Texas A&M and you have the Mossad supporting the publication of the book Rise and Kill First which is an extensive account of their world-wide assassination policy. They have the power; now they want the perks that go with it, including being treated like rock stars.

israel shamir , says: May 22, 2019 at 4:06 am GMT
@Kirt

Who needs the lodge when you have the CIA

Good explanation of freemasonry's decline, Kirt! As for popular culture – almost all latest cinema characters are spies – like Avengers))

anno nimus , says: May 22, 2019 at 4:44 am GMT
dear mr Shamir, the criminals are not only stupid but also utterly wicked. they will be stricken down in the twinkling of the eye and will cry out why God? all the righteous will shout for joy and give thanks to the Almighty for judging Babylon. woe unto them! they will have no place to hide or run to.

Ezekiel 9 (NKJV)
The Wicked Are Slain
9 Then He called out in my hearing with a loud voice, saying, "Let those who have charge over the city draw near, each with a deadly weapon in his hand." 2 And suddenly six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his battle-ax in his hand. One man among them was clothed with linen and had a writer's inkhorn at his side. They went in and stood beside the bronze altar.

3 Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub, where it had been, to the threshold of the temple. And He called to the man clothed with linen, who had the writer's inkhorn at his side; 4 and the Lord said to him, "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within it."

5 To the others He said in my hearing, "Go after him through the city and kill; do not let your eye spare, nor have any pity. 6 Utterly slay old and young men, maidens and little children and women; but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary." So they began with the elders who were before the temple. 7 Then He said to them, "Defile the temple, and fill the courts with the slain. Go out!" And they went out and killed in the city.

8 So it was, that while they were killing them, I was left alone; and I fell on my face and cried out, and said, "Ah, Lord God! Will You destroy all the remnant of Israel in pouring out Your fury on Jerusalem?"

9 Then He said to me, "The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of bloodshed, and the city full of perversity; for they say, 'The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does not see!' 10 And as for Me also, My eye will neither spare, nor will I have pity, but I will recompense their deeds on their own head."

11 Just then, the man clothed with linen, who had the inkhorn at his side, reported back and said, "I have done as You commanded me."

Antares , says: May 22, 2019 at 5:01 am GMT
Espionage depends on contra-espionage. We will never get that hold on Jewish spies as they can have on our spies.
Paul Bennett , says: May 22, 2019 at 5:38 am GMT
Great article.

E Michael Jones was just warning President Trump about the possibility of this in the Straits of Hormuz. https://youtu.be/iIm3WuJAVEE?t=272

Spooks are everywhere, from secretaries "losing" important communications to CNN news anchors roleplaying with crisis actors, but they are at their most powerful when they are appointed to powerful positions. President Trump's National Security Advisor is a spook and he does what he wants.

John le Carre described it perfectly in "A Perfect Spy". The spooks form their own country. They are only loyal to themselves.

Yarkob , says: May 22, 2019 at 7:52 am GMT
@Antares that's because the Mossad isn't like "our" spy agencies. it's closer to the old paradigm of the hashishim or true assassins. Mossad "agents" don't gad around wearing dark glasses and tapping phones; they run proper deep cover operations. "sleepers" is a term used in the USA. they have jobs. they look "normal". They integrate
MarkU , says: May 22, 2019 at 8:45 am GMT
Do spies run the world? No not really, bankers run the world.

Bankers constitute most of the deep state in the US/UK in particular and most of Europe. It is the bankers/deep state which control the intelligence agencies. The ethnicity of a hefty proportion of said bankers is plain to see for anyone with functioning critical faculties. How else can a tiny country in the middle east have such influence in the US? How else do we explain why 2/3 of the UK parliament are "friends of Israel" How come financial institutions can commit felonies and no one does jail time? why is Israel allowed to commit war crimes and break international law with total impunity? who got bailed out of their gambling debts at the expense of inflicting "austerity" on most of the western world?

I am open to any sensible alternative hypothesis.

Realist , says: May 22, 2019 at 8:48 am GMT
@Sean McBride

How did John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Steele and other Spygate principals manage to rise to the top of the intelligence bureaucracy?

Shit floats.

Sally , says: May 22, 2019 at 9:06 am GMT
A global supra-powerful, organized and united, privately directed, publicly backed society of high technology robin hood_mercenary_spooks who conduct sub-legal "scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-your-back [in the nation of the other] routines"; who ignore duty to country, its constitutions, its laws and human rights. The are evil, global acting, high technology nomads with a monopoly on extortion and terror.

Since winning, Trump has been hunted by the spooks-and-scribes freemasonry. <fallacy is that Trump could have gained the assistence of every American, had Trump just used his powers to declassify all secret information and make it available to the public, instead he chases Assange, and continues to conduct the affairs of his office in secret.

Propaganda preys on belief.. it is more powerful than an atomic weapon.. when the facts are hidden or when the facts are changed, distorted or destroyed.

Your statement "spooks and ex-spooks feel more proximity to their enemies and colleagues in other countries than to their fellow citizens" fails makes clear the importance of containment-of-citizen access to information. Nation states are armed, rule making structures that invent propaganda and control access to information. Information containment and filtering is the essence of the political and economic power of a national leader and it is more import to the evil your article addresses.

https://theintercept.com/2019/05/08/josh-gottheimer-democrats-yemen/ <i wrote IRT to the article, that contents appearing in private media supported monopoly powered corporations and distributed to the public, direct the use of military and the willingness of soldiers of 22 different countries.

Control of the media is 50 times more important than control of the government? Nearly all actions of consequence are intended to drain the governed masses and such efforts can only be successful if the lobbying, false-misleading mind controlling privately owned (92% own by just 6 entities) centrally directed media can effectively control the all information environments.

I am bothered by you article because it looks to be Trumped weighted and failes to make clear it is these secret apolitical, human rights abusers, that direct the contents of the media distributed articles that appear in the privately owmed, media distributed to the public. Also not explained is how the cost of advertising is shared by the monopoly powered corporations, and it is that advertising that is the source of support that keeps the fake news in business, the nation state propaganda in line, and the support of robin -hood terror.

Monopoly powered global corporation advertising funds the fake and misleading private media, that is why the open internet has been shut in tight. In order for the evil, global acting, high technology nomads to continue their extortion and terror activities they need the media, its their only real weapon. I have never meet a member of any of the twenty two agencies that was not a trained, certified mental case terrorist.

Anon [295] Disclaimer , says: May 22, 2019 at 9:08 am GMT
I think the interplay between the spooks and scribes warrants a deeper explanation. Covert action refers to anything in which the author can disclaim his responsibility, ie it looks like someone else or something else. The handler in a political operation cannot abuse his agent because the agent is the actor. The handler in an intelligence gathering operation can abuse his agent because the agent merely enables action.

The political operations in this case are propaganda. The Congress of Cultural Freedom is the most clearly described one to date. Propaganda is necessary in any mass society to ensure that voters care about the right issues, the right way, at the right time. Propaganda can be true, false, or a mix of the two. Black propaganda deals in falsehoods, ie the Steele Dossier. Black propaganda works best when it enables a pre-planned operation, but it pollutes the intelligence gathering process with disinformation.

Intelligence gathering is colloquially called investigative reporting. If anyone knows about Gary Webb, Alan Frankovich, or Michael Hastings they know you can't really do that job well for very long. So how do the old timers last so long? It's a back and forth. The reporter brings all of his information on a subject to his intelligence source (handler). The source then says, "print this, print that, sit on that, and since you've been a good boy here's a little something you didn't know." The true role of the investigative reporter is to conduct counterintelligence and package it as a limited hangout.

While understanding the mechanics is helpful don't neglect the purpose. Why is more important than how. The why is control. They don't care what you believe, but only what you do. You can be on the left, right, mainstream, or fringe and they won't care as long as you eat what they serve. Take a minute to think about what they want you to do and strongly consider not doing it.

https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/26/archives/worldwide-propaganda-network-built-by-the-cia-a-worldwide-network.html

http://danwismar.com/uploads/Bernstein%20-%20CIA%20and%20Media.htm

joeshittheragman , says: May 22, 2019 at 9:29 am GMT
Do Spies Run the World?
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
If they're Jewish spies – then yes.
Vojkan , says: May 22, 2019 at 9:45 am GMT
Not usually a big fan of Israel Shamir's pieces but this one on spooks is truly excellent. The article is spot on.
9/11 Inside job , says: May 22, 2019 at 10:37 am GMT
Spies do not run the world , they are merely agents of the "families" who use them to retain and increase their control ,power and wealth .
cowherd , says: May 22, 2019 at 10:46 am GMT
@Sean McBride And now Trump should have then all rounded up and hung from the trees in the front of the Whitehouse. Anything less should be seen as encouragement.
atlantis_dweller , says: May 22, 2019 at 11:26 am GMT
Don't agree.

[Should don't agree, agree, troll, and lol "buttons" for columns be added? I think it would be a nice extra].

mike k , says: May 22, 2019 at 11:49 am GMT
The worst among us rule over the rest of us. As Plato said, this needs to change. How to do that? We don't know, but we desperately need to find out ..
Anon [421] Disclaimer , says: May 22, 2019 at 12:41 pm GMT
@Sean McBride

Obama was a very effective promoter of what might be called the "globalist" agenda. He of course didn't invent it but did appoint those three.

Wayne Madsen gave a convincing account in his speculation that both Obama's parent's were CIA operatives. So it's "all the family" and in the details one might conclude with the author that indeed "spies run the world."

[Jun 05, 2019] Neoliberal MSM trashing Sanders

Jun 05, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Anonymous Coward , June 5, 2019 at 3:11 pm

Here's a great example of hackish media framing of Bernie:
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/05/bernie-sanders-walmart-starvation-wages-1354268

The lede

Bernie Sanders showed up uninvited to a Walmart shareholders meeting Wednesday, blasting what he called the retail giant's "starvation wages" and imploring it to pay people at least $15 an hour.

But if you read further down

Sanders was invited to speak as a proxy for Walmart worker Cat Davis, a leader of the pro-worker group United for Respect. It was Davis' proposal that Sanders pitched.

So was he invited or uninvited? Why is the lede contradicted by the 5th paragraph in? Surely intentional, designed to make him look like a butt-in-ski rather than a proxy for a WMT employee.

WheresOurTeddy , June 5, 2019 at 3:59 pm

One of the most obvious and pervasive symptoms of our Empire's rapid decline and the crapification of literally everything is the absolute dearth of copy editors worth a damn.

Lambert Strether , June 5, 2019 at 4:14 pm

Obviously, if you're not invited by management, you're not invited.

zagonostra , June 5, 2019 at 5:27 pm

Everyday when I do my Google News view I see at least one or sometimes two pure propaganda hit pieces from the MSM trashing Sanders.

The one at below link is especially egregious in sandwiching a photo of Sanders with the Russian flag on one side and Venezuela on the other. This is just a day or two after a story showing a photo of him with a picture of two houses and a bag of money.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bernie-sanders-soviet-union-venezuela-not-examples-failed-socialism

Another Scott

The Politico article about unions and the Green New Deal discusses the disconnect between unions and elected Democrats while glossing over earlier policies that contributed to it. Unstated in the article is the years and decades that Democrats, once elected, enact policies (NAFTA, allowing China in the WTO, etc.) that hurt unions. Democrats occasionally pass legislation that tempers the decline of unions, but are always weak and less central than the party’s attempts to align with business and Wall Street. The unions have justifiable fear that Democrats won’t help them when the time comes. And I don’t think environmentalists are doing themselves any favors when using phrases like “just transition,” or emphasizing investments in new technologies. These sound similar to what unions heard about the impact of the trade deals, which haven’t worked out for union members.

Proponents of the Green New Deal should differentiate themselves from the Democratic proponents of free trade and similar policies if they are to gain the support of unions. One aspect that I keep getting to is mandating that the construction and operation of facilities must be done by unionized workers if it is to get government funding (including tax credits) or be used to meet any mandates. I’m not sold on this idea, but at the very least it is something tangible for unions.

[Jun 04, 2019] According to Breitbart s John Nolte, CNN s primetime ratings suffered a 16% collapse in May MSNBC s top conspiracy theorist Rachel Maddow has lost 500,000 viewers who realized life is too short for her bullshit

Notable quotes:
"... And as Nolte concludes, " Maddow is damaged goods, damaged beyond repair, a fool and a liar exposed beyond redemption. " ..."
Jun 04, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

CNN, Maddow Ratings In Absolute Freefall After Russia Narrative Collapses

by Tyler Durden Tue, 06/04/2019 - 18:25 0 SHARES Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print Ratings for the anti-Trump media have taken an absolute nosedive ever since the Mueller report dispelled their multi-year narrative that President Trump is a Kremlin agent.

According to Breitbart 's John Nolte, CNN's primetime ratings suffered a 16% collapse in May - luring just 761,000 members of the resistance and captive airport audiences alike. Overall, the network's total day viewers dropped to just 559,000.

As Nolte points out, "Fox News earned three times as many primetime viewers (2.34 million) and more than twice as many total day viewers (1.34 million). What's more, when compared to this same month last year, Fox lost none of its primetime viewers and only four percent of its total day viewers."

Do you have any idea just how low 761,000 primetime viewers is ?

How does a nationally known brand like CNN, a brand that is decades old, only manage to attract 761,000 viewers throughout a gonzo news month in a country of over 300 million?

But his is just how far over the cliff CNN has gone CNN has lost almost all of its viewers, all of its moral authority, and every bit of trust it once had . Over the past six years, as soon as Jeff Zucker took over, CNN got every major national story exactly wrong, including

  • Hispanic George Zimmerman: The White Racist Killer
  • Hands Up, Don't Shoot
  • Trump Can't Win
  • Brett Kavanaugh: Serial Rapist
  • The KKKids from KKKovington High School
  • Trump Colluded with Russia

And in every one of those cases, CNN got it deliberately wrong because CNN is nothing less than a hysterical propaganda outlet, a fire hose of hate , violence , and lies - Breitbart

In a separate Tuesday article , Nolte notes that MSNBC' s top conspiracy theorist Rachel Maddow has lost 500,000 viewers who realized life is too short for her bullshit .

During the first quarter of 2019, prior to the release of the Mueller Report (which debunked the media's Russia Collusion Hoax and proved Trump did not obstruct justice), Maddow averaged 3.1 million nightly viewers. Last month, after the release of the Mueller Report (which debunked the media's Russia Collusion Hoax and proved Trump did not obstruct justice), she averaged only 2.6 million viewers. - Breitbart

In other words, networks which bet the farm on the Mueller report finding collusion have lost all credibility and are now suffering financially. Those such as Fox News 's Sean Hannity - who has consistently been right about the Russia hoax , are experiencing a surge in viewership .

And as Nolte concludes, " Maddow is damaged goods, damaged beyond repair, a fool and a liar exposed beyond redemption. "

[Jun 03, 2019] More Evidence of the Russian Meddling Lie by Larry C Johnson

Notable quotes:
"... So there was about a year between the FBI's first notification of some potential problems with the DNC network and then that information getting on -- getting on Wikileaks. . ..."
"... Ten months? So the FBI notified the DNC of the hack and it was not until 10 months later that you had any details about what was actually going on forensically on their network? ..."
"... Whoa!!! How did the FBI know that the DNC was "hacked" in August 2015? The FBI does not have a "Hacking Monitor" team that sits around identifying attempted hacks within the United States. There are only a few possibilities that would account for the FBI's knowledge of this alleged event: ..."
"... The FBI had an informant who was connected to the hacker. ..."
"... The FBI had an informant inside the DNC that alerted them to the hack. ..."
"... The FBI had an active counter intelligence investigation of the person/group that was conducting this hack. ..."
"... Regardless of how the FBI learned of the August 2015 hack, the natural and unanswered question is why did the FBI not act to warn the DNC and to pursue the person or entity responsible for the hack? ..."
"... Given that Comey admitted that the FBI did not have forensic access to any of the DNC computers or network, how could Comey know that the same person/entity was responsible for the unspecified activities in August 2015? ..."
Jun 03, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

The American public, with the enthusiastic support of most of the media, have been sold a big lie about Russian meddling in the 2016 Presidential election. As I have noted in previous pieces, there was nothing new nor special nor unique about Russian espionage activities inside the United States, including information and computer network operations, in 2016. Russian espionage and covert action against the United States has been a matter of fact since 1919. And the United States has been similarly engaged in such activities inside Russia.

What made 2016 unique and dangerous is that US law enforcement and intelligence agencies decide to use the ruse of Russia as a weapon to attack the candidacy and then the Presidency of Donald Trump. This attack entailed creating evidence that Trump was soliciting Russian assistance and the creation of the myth that Russia hacked the DNC. Anyone who challenges this lie is branded immediately as a Russian stooge and puppet of Putin.

We have very specific evidence regarding the fraud perpetrated about the so-called "hacking" of the DNC. Bill Binney and I have posted two pieces--one showing that the forensic evidence in the metadata of the DNC documents posted at Wikileaks could not have transferred over the internet and one showing that Guccifer 2.0 was the creation of some person or entity other than Russia.

There is another piece of public evidence that provides circumstantial evidence that the intelligence community case against Russia with respect to the allegation of extraordinary meddling is a fabrication. I am referring to the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment-- Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections .

I want to focus on one of the more important Key Judgements:

We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks.

It is natural and understandable to assume that this judgment is based on real intelligence held in classified channels. But it is not. Bill Binney and I have shown that Guccifer 2.0 was a fabrication. But we also have the testimony of NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers and FBI Director Jim Comey on the "evidence" underlying the so-called hack. This key judgment was based on unverified and uncorroborated information provided by CrowdStrike.

Three months after the ICA was published, Rogers and Comey testified before the House Intelligence Committee. They were asked specifically about the proof that the DNC was hacked by the Russians. Here is the key part of that testimony:

HURD: So there was about a year between the FBI's first notification of some potential problems with the DNC network and then that information getting on -- getting on Wikileaks.

COMEY: Yes, sir.

HURD: Have you been able to -- when did the DNC provide access for -- to the FBI for your technical folks to review what happened?

COMEY: Well we never got direct access to the machines themselves. The DNC in the spring of 2016 hired a firm that ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system.

HURD: Director Rogers, did the NSA ever get access to the DNC hardware?

ROGERS: The NSA didn't ask for access. That's not in our job...

HURD: Good copy. So director FBI notified the DNC early, before any information was put on Wikileaks and when -- you have still been -- never been given access to any of the technical or the physical machines that were -- that were hacked by the Russians.

COMEY: That's correct although we got the forensics from the pros that they hired which -- again, best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves, but this -- my folks tell me was an appropriate substitute.

HURD: The -- at what point did the company and the DNC use -- share that forensic information to you?

COMEY: I don't remember for sure. I think June. I could be wrong about that. . . .

HURD: So -- so that was -- how long after the first notification of -- that the FBI did of the DNC?

COMEY: Ten months.

HURD: Ten months? So the FBI notified the DNC of the hack and it was not until 10 months later that you had any details about what was actually going on forensically on their network?

COMEY: That's correct, assuming I have the dates about right. But it was -- it was some months later.

Neither the FBI nor the NSA got "direct access to the machines". Their words, not mine.

And where did the forensic data come from? CrowdStrike.

So much for the intelligence community relying on real intelligence. They were given information from a cyber security firm that waited at least 5 weeks before allegedly taking steps to disconnect the DNC computers from the infected network.

Even in an unclassified setting, Admiral Rogers and Director Comey could have stated that they had other information from intelligence sources that corroborated the CrowdStrike findings. They did not testify to this. This is more than curious, it is a tacit admission that they were relying on information from a firm hired by the Democrats and the law firm working for Hillary Clinton. This is not an independent, reliable source of information.

This fact alone does not prove the lie. But when considered as part of the entire evidence available, including the metadata from the documents posted at Wikileaks, the case for fabrication grows.

UPDATE--Thanks to "H" for spotting the obvious. I missed this completely but "H" is quite correct that this statement by Comey raises more disturbing questions. Let's go to the transcript:

HURD: Copy, I apologize. Director Comey, when was the first time the FBI notified the DNC of the hack? Roughly.

COMEY: I think august of 2015.

HURD: And was that prior to information being leaked to -- being sent on -- put on WikiLeaks?

COMEY: Yes the -- the first Russian directed releases where middle of June of the next year by D.C. leaks and this Guccifer 2.0 persona and then that was followed by Wikileaks. So about a year. A little less than a year really.

HURD: So there was about a year between the FBI's first notification of some potential problems with the DNC network and then that information getting on -- getting on Wikileaks. . . .

HURD: So -- so that was -- how long after the first notification of -- that the FBI did of the DNC?

COMEY: Ten months.

HURD: Ten months? So the FBI notified the DNC of the hack and it was not until 10 months later that you had any details about what was actually going on forensically on their network?

COMEY: That's correct, assuming I have the dates about right. But it was -- it was some months later.

HURD: Knowing what we know now, would the FBI have done anything different in trying to notify the DNC of what happened?

COMEY: Oh Sure.

HURD: What -- what -- what measures would you have done differently?

COMEY: We'd have set up a much larger flare. Yeah we'd have just kept banging and banging on the door, knowing what I know now. We made extensive efforts to notify, we'd have -- I might have walked over there myself, knowing what I know now. But I think the efforts we made, that are agents made were reasonable at the time.

Whoa!!! How did the FBI know that the DNC was "hacked" in August 2015? The FBI does not have a "Hacking Monitor" team that sits around identifying attempted hacks within the United States. There are only a few possibilities that would account for the FBI's knowledge of this alleged event:

  1. The FBI had an informant who was connected to the hacker.
  2. The FBI had an informant inside the DNC that alerted them to the hack.

  3. The FBI had an active counter intelligence investigation of the person/group that was conducting this hack.

Regardless of how the FBI learned of the August 2015 hack, the natural and unanswered question is why did the FBI not act to warn the DNC and to pursue the person or entity responsible for the hack? Moreover, how did the FBI know that the person/entity doing the hack of the DNC in August 2015 was the same one responsible for the May 2016 "theft" of emails? Given that Comey admitted that the FBI did not have forensic access to any of the DNC computers or network, how could Comey know that the same person/entity was responsible for the unspecified activities in August 2015?

Ligurio , 03 June 2019 at 08:03 AM

I am wondering what Larry Johnson and others make of this recent analysis by b at Moon of Alabama: to wit, that there is an existing log of communications between Obama administration and Putin government the publication of which would clearly exculpate Russia from these accusations?

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/05/trump-administration-withholds-information-that-could-debunk-russian-interference-claims.html

This information would seem to corroborate and help explain the utterly ridiculous chain-of-evidence collapse and timeline at the basis of Comey's "investigation" of the DNC leak.

JJackson , 03 June 2019 at 10:03 AM

I read some of the McCabe testimony and recall an interchange in which he said the FBI was determined to get hold of two laptops (which had been used to sort the emails into those deemed relevant to the investigation, and those not) and that the FBI would not close the investigation until they had. It came up as an example of FBI/DoJ differences - FBI wanting to subpoena the Doj preferring to negotiate for access - in the end they did get the units by negotiation. What I did not see (I did not read all of it) was any mention of efforts to get the servers.
My question to all is has anyone else seen anything on attempts to get the servers or, if none, why the same effort had not been made?

h , 03 June 2019 at 11:10 AM

Here's a question that seemingly goes unanswered when anyone writes about the hack of the DNC servers - How did the FBI even know the DNC servers had been compromised in the first place? How did they know to warn them?

The DNC is a private corporation NOT a government entity. Are all registered political corporations tethered to a governmental system by law or by contract that the FBI is monitoring? If so, what is that system and why?

If not, then how did the FBI even know their system was compromised?

The reading public is left to assume a lot in how the FBI even knew to warn them a full 10 months before the FBI's vendor, Crowdstrike, released its hack report.

Larry, can you or Bill answer this question? If they have a contract of some sort for monitoring the corporate political parties great. It'd be nice to know. But if they don't, then how in the world did they know to warn them?

Larry Johnson -> h ... , 03 June 2019 at 12:03 PM

I'm not sure I have an answer. You ask an excellent question. Let me give it some thought. I think you are on to another part of the lie.

joanna -> Larry Johnson ... , 03 June 2019 at 01:07 PM

Larry, would you along the lines give some thought to the argument, considering time frames between FBI alert as published and discovery. Ideally what additional "IT intelligence" may have resulted from cutting servers and whatever connected periphery, at, at what point in time?, off and analyze it.

JJ may want to know.

h , 03 June 2019 at 12:36 PM

Funny that! I can't imagine the DNC, let alone any other private entity, permitting the FBI to monitor their systems daily activity 365 days out of the year. If they do, well, how stupid of them. If they don't then indeed St Comey may have told the biggest lie of them all. Crazy.

I sincerely look forward to reading what you learn.

You're doing great work here and I thank the good Colonel for hosting you.

akaPatience , 03 June 2019 at 12:36 PM

At this point I wonder if it's even true that the DNC was hacked in August, 2015. Could a false accusation have been planted to serve as a component of the plan to subvert Trump's candidacy/presidency?

The DNC/Clinton campaign's "Pied Piper" strategy to promote Trump, Cruz and Carson (thinking either of them would be the easiest for her to defeat) was launched in April, 2015 . Cruz announced in March, 2015. Carson in May, 2015. Trump announced in June 2015. How did the DNC/Clinton camp even know Carson would be a candidate a month before his announcement, or that Trump would be a candidate 2 months before he announced?

I hope AG Barr and US Att'y. Durham are digging deeply.

[Jun 03, 2019] MH17 attribution to Russia now looks like a classic false flag operation by Western intelligence services

Jun 03, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

I'd have to go with Zuesse's conclusion.

Have brought up Gabbard's sticking with the lies and false narratives regarding Russia and Ukraine, clearly one of her blind spots in her "antiwar" political campaign, that along with the massive and unrelenting war OF terror. That letter is a rather disgusting display of imperialist obfuscation by the duopoly political parties, fully supporting the lies about Maduro and what's happening in VS and in effect providing cover for future actions. You can't claim to be against military action while also lying about the reasons. Of course they can, that's how they prep the public for imperial advances. up 4 users have voted.

wendy davis on Sun, 06/02/2019 - 4:10pm

i'm not positive that

@Big Al

i totally endorse zuesse's theory, but oh my, he'd brought in a lot of moving parts at the time. paranoid conspiracy theory or 'coincidence theory', as some brilliant mofo used to ask. (i'l think of his name later.) the russian defense ministry's contentions are in conflict with zuesse's (buk missiles v. another jet with missiles), but i sure as hell know that the dutch report decision in advance was bullshit. i'd think that one would have to be willfully blind to accept it at face value, esp. if any of them like gabbard were on the defense and intel committees at the time. same with madurro's venezuela, to pretend that it's not mainly the egregious sanctions and blockades that are responsible for the estimated 40,000 citizens who've died for lack of medicines and food. and now their CLAP food delivery system is under attack...again.

i get that the intel they're fed is rubbish, but they all have the duty to look further than what lies they're spoon fed. CEPR has been incredibly valuable a resource for one, and it's pretty mainstream.

but he's right about one thing: yanukovitch was overthrown due to his refusal to sign the EU association memo, and when Imperialists speak of how 'russia stole crimea', or refuse to see why the separatists in the donbass formed their own independent nation-states, it's utter hypocrisy.

thanks for reading and commenting, big al.

oh, and do you know if tulsi's FP is still at her house.gov site? i looked at all her press releases that were dated after that offensive letter, but i'd found nothing new.

Big Al on Sun, 06/02/2019 - 4:55pm
Ya, I never got into it much.

@wendy davis I mean, there's the establishment/government narrative and there's the truth, that's about all I need to know. It's like that saying "trust, but verify". I say fuck that, "don't trust, and verify that".
I don't know about Gabbard's FP, she's done some housecleaning and avoided certain things since becoming the CFR's choice for 2024. Again, I've already done enough research, what, for over 3 years now?, to see what she's all about, something I failed to do in 2007/8 regarding Obama. Lo and behold, all the clues were there just waiting to be uncovered, but I wasn't in the same place as now.

Pluto's Republic on Sun, 06/02/2019 - 10:43pm
I believe the answer was best documented

@wendy davis

...by the Russians, who were not allowed to participate in the Dutch investigation. The information and data was presented to the Dutch and to the Western media in September 2018. Everything one could hope to see in physical evidence is here. There is additional evidence not in this article that adds to the details and forensics presented here.

https://www.rt.com/news/438596-mh17-downing-russian-briefing/

This information was not published in the West or in the Vassal State of Netherlands. The US possesses satellite photos of the incident. But it has classified those photos and refuses to release them.

As for means, motive and opportunity:

• MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, not over Russia.
• It was shot down with a missile owned by Ukraine, not by Russia.
• It had propaganda value for Ukraine and its CIA masters, none for
• The missile was fired from territory controlled by the neo nazi Kiev regime.

But the best evidence of what took place, as far as I'm concerned, is right here:

Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, falling in the rebel-held part of the country. The crash claimed the lives of 283 passengers and 15 crew members, most of them Dutch nationals. Russia was blamed by Western media in the first days after the tragedy, even before any evidence had been collected on the ground.

wendy davis on Mon, 06/03/2019 - 8:57am
excellent,

@Pluto's Republic

and thank you. your memory is prodigious, and having the 2018 RT news is srsly helpful, as is your M,M, & O formula. blame first, then fail to allow russia (and malaysia) to be able to run investigations. good to know as well that the malaysian minister knew of the serial numbers and that ukraine owned the missiles.

eric zuesse had said that even dutch journalists were raising havoc with the JIT back in the day. but just think what this false blame resulting in mega-sanctions began, then onto the skripals, russia-gate in many guises, and tra la la.

mr. wd laughed this mornin' and said he wishes he had a choice to vote for sergei lavrov for prez; i second that!

dunno if the EU still wants a compact with ukraine, but NATO sure wants the neo-nazi nation as a member. ping: if i have the energy and time, i'll try to find in zuesse's tome admissions by snipers in 2014, as well.

Lookout on Sun, 06/02/2019 - 5:03pm
Tulsi's issue page....

...is here -
https://www.tulsigabbard.org/

Must admit I didn't hunt down her Ukraine position, but my personal take is Obummer and the CIA set out to foment problems and managed to get a fascists regime elected in order to oppose Russia. The new Ukrainian president may take things in a more pro-Russia direction?

wendy davis on Sun, 06/02/2019 - 6:01pm
ach; not at her house.gov

@Lookout

site, at her election site. well, check out Russia , for now. and i do thank you; i was lookin' in all the wrong places. ; )i'll check out more soon as i have time, but zounds: russia: crimea, the nation's interference in our election, wooof. of course jill stein raised boatloads of bucks for recounts in three states on the basis of russian interference, later 'foreign interference' against the wishes of the green party board and her own running mate, so...there's that, but it was just a dodge against trump winning, not hillary. sorry, tulsi.

wendy davis on Mon, 06/03/2019 - 9:09am
my apologies

@Lookout

for being in such a hurry i hadn't even registered your speculation about zelenskiy, but nah, he wants crimea and the donbass self-declared republics that Putin stole from him...back. he's being lauded and applauded for 'standing up to KGB Putin'. ; )

and the IMF's bailin' em out again so they have enough to pay their NATO dues and join the EU. (just saw that tryin' to remember how to sorta spell the comic's name.)

jim p on Sun, 06/02/2019 - 7:32pm
The pilot's body, iirc,

maybe it was passengers', was returned to Malaysia ... but in a sealed coffin, that even family members were refused to open.

At the time an OSCE member was the first to arrive at the crash site. Some 20 minutes after the downing. The photos taken by him, or so it was attributed, showed round holes (not shrapnel) shot in the pilot area. Sorry I don't have any links handy on either of these, but I'm pretty sure this is correct.

wendy davis on Sun, 06/02/2019 - 8:29pm
thank you;

@jim p

as i understand it, the hole size was not in contention. but weather it had been the pilot or a passenger: '...but in a sealed coffin, that even family members were refused to open.'

is that perhaps a malaysian custom? is the truth out there somewhere?

jim p on Mon, 06/03/2019 - 12:17pm
The family was furious

@wendy davis and the government protested. The holes in the photo were in the cockpit and looked perfectly round.

wendy davis on Mon, 06/03/2019 - 12:31pm
as pluto &

@jim p

eric zuesse remind us, the holes in the cockpit were likely from machine guns on the ukrainian fighter jet sent to make sure the ukie buk missiles had (omg) killed the plane, which if i'm getting it right (a big IF) was changing direction as it went down. my apologies for not getting all the moving parts and claims right on this thread.

but the 21st century wire shows charts and evidence that the flight crew was ordered to change course by the air traffic control tower (as per the later censored bbc plus recordings).

Pluto's Republic on Sun, 06/02/2019 - 11:20pm
Many believed that a Ukraine fighter jet

@jim p

...was involved in the downing of MH17, which was the opinion of many aviation experts and others, who found bullet holes in the cockpit, wings, and fuselage. This in addition to Buk damage.

Recordings were captured by multiple sources of a frightened and stressed Ukrainian pilot, who radioed, "I shot the wrong plane!" He sounded as if he was commanded to shoot down a military target plane and was misled into shooting a passenger jet. That pilot, named Voloshyn, later committed suicide.

The typical recollection of the incident is:

A fighter was also sent up to 'make sure' the target plane was shot down. If I remember rightly, the plane was hit, but was still flying and it began to turn back. If the plane story (which I tend to believe) is true, it's at that point that the fighter jet opened fire on the cockpit and wings.

That would also account for Buk damage to the Boeing, as well as fighter machine gun damage to the cockpit.

You can find many references to this incident along with transcripts of the conversation between the fighter pilot and the ground base.

wendy davis on Mon, 06/03/2019 - 8:54am
that theory

@Pluto's Republic

certainly covers all the bases, doesn't it? good on ya, again, upside-down pluto.

wendy davis on Mon, 06/03/2019 - 12:40pm
i never found zuesse's

video confessions from the snipers at maidan (i assume ukrainians firing on protestors in front of the trades union building that was eventually...burned to the ground.

but this?

"For instance, Moscow said a theory was never tested that the airliner could have been downed by a fighter jet spotted by Russian radar stations near flight MH17. The theory was later proven false by the discovery of debris from the Buk rocket.

Though Russia doesn't possess those black boxes ( which, by chance, were handed by the pro-Russian separatists to the Malaysian Government's representative, and yet that Government handed them to Netherland's Government instead of to Russia's -- apparently trusting Netherlands more than trusting Russia or even themselves), Russia does possess, and publicly reveals, evidence that's conclusive on its own; and it is 100% consistent with Haisenko's reconstruction of the event, regardless whether a Buk was involved or not."

one of his links went to ' MH17 Verdict: Real Evidence Points to US-Kiev Cover-up of Failed False Flag ' July 25, 2014 , 21stcenturywire.com

"As MH17 moved into Ukrainian air space, it was moved by ATC Kiev approximately 200 miles north – putting it on a new course, heading directly into a war zone, a well-known dangerous area by now – one that's hosted a number of downed military craft over the previous 3 weeks. Robert Mark, a commercial pilot and editor of Aviation International News Safety magazine, confirmed that most Malaysia Airlines flights from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur would normally travel along a route significantly further south than the route MH17 was diverted onto.

Data on all airline flight records can be found here. The BBC reported on July 17th: " Ukraine's SBU security service has confiscated recordings of conversations between Ukrainian air traffic control officers and the crew of the doomed airliner, a source in Kiev has told Interfax news agency."

a great (and lengthy) collaborative investigation by 21st century wire. thanks, obomba, thanks, tulsi, thanks Pierre and vickie nuland. and even the new guy can't control his neo-nazis. but then again, at least yulia tymoshenko didn't win.

but NATO will add them to the roster soon, which is one of the reasons that the atlantic council had recommended him: to root out poroshenko's oligarchs' corruption.

wendy davis on Mon, 06/03/2019 - 5:20pm
no date given, but:
wendy davis on Mon, 06/03/2019 - 5:13pm
i found it,

but i almost wish i hadn't it's sooooo long and full of twists and turns, news reports, videos, but in general the theme is that mikhail saakashvilli hired them, then stiffed them.

' The "Snipers' Massacre" in Kiev -- Another False Flag? ', January 13, 2015 , granvillepost.com, eric zuesse

you may remember him best john Mccains buddy: 'today we are all georgians'? like ahmed chalabi, he's the proverbial bad penny who keeps returning in whatever guise needed (after expulsions), and the big news this week is that zelenskiy's reinstated his ukrainian citizenship after promising to give up his former ambitions and work with the new prez.

good gawd all-friday.

[Jun 02, 2019] GOP Targets Comey And Brennan As Investigations Heat Up -

Jun 02, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Volga German , 24 minutes ago

How do I volunteer to be a member of the firing squad...anyone????

whatafmess , 23 minutes ago

firing squad is too civilized for those two, should go medieval on them...

Volga German , 18 minutes ago

But I'm too old to wield a headsman's axe!

[Jun 02, 2019] Prospects for the emergence of a real opposition in Russia by The Saker

Notable quotes:
"... Second, it is equally obvious that the pension reform is profoundly unpopular and that Putin's personal credibility has never recovered from this political fiasco. ..."
May 30, 2019 | www.unz.com

As predicted, Putin's popularity takes a nosedive.

This fact is not often discussed in the West, but the popularity of Vladimir Putin is in decline and has been so ever since, following his reelection, he kept more or less the same (already unpopular) government while that government very clumsily attempted to "sneak by" undetected a pension reform. Now the latest numbers are in , and they are not good: only 31.7% of Russians trust Vladimir Putin, that is his worst score in 13 years! His score last year was 47.4% (by the way, Shoigu got only 14.8%, Lavrov got 13%, and Medvedev got 7.6%. These are terrible scores by any measure!)

I have been warning about this for a while now (see here , here , here , here , here , here and here ), and we now can try to understand what happened.

These are the faces most Russians are fed-up with

First, it is obvious that millions of Russians (including yours truly) were deeply disappointed that Putin did not substantially reorganize the Russian government following his triumphant reelection last year. Putin himself is on record saying two things about that: first, that he is generally happy with the performance of the government and, second, that he needs an experienced team to implement his very ambitious reform program (more about that in a moment).

Second, it is equally obvious that the pension reform is profoundly unpopular and that Putin's personal credibility has never recovered from this political fiasco.

Third, and this is the most overlooked and yet most interesting development – there is a real opposition gradually emerging in Russia. What do I mean by "real"? First, I mean not a "pretend opposition" as we see in the Russian Duma (which is a glorified rubber-stamping parliament). Second, I mean a patriotic opposition which is neither financed nor controlled by Mr. Soros nor the CIA nor any of their innumerable offshoots. The problem is that this opposition has many severe problems and that it completely fails to present an alternative to the current "Putinocracy."

Here we need to state something significant: Putin is indeed a "liberal," at least in terms of economic policies. When he says that he is happy ("on the whole") with the performance of the Medvedev government, it is because he probably is. Furthermore, while Putin apparently likes to listen to folks like Glaziev, he is clearly wary of implementing the more "social" (or even "socialist") measures advocated by Glaziev and his supporters.

But if Putin is a liberal, is there really a 5 th column acting behind the scenes?

This being said, it would be wrong to jump to the primitive conclusion that there is no 5th column (or no "Atlantic Integrationists") in the Kremlin or in the Staraya Square . In fact, it would be impossible for such a 5th column not to exist. How do we know that? For three very basic reasons

    The AngloZionist leaders of the Empire absolutely hate Putin. Those pretending to deny that are either terminally dishonest or fantastically stupid. Either way, they are wrong. Simply put: by the late 1990s Russia as a country was quasi-dead, finished, something like the Ukronazi occupied Ukraine today. Not only has Putin single-handedly saved Russia from collapse, he turned Russia into a power capable of defeating the plans of the Empire not only in Syria but also in the rest of the Middle-East. Yes, all the accusations of "collusion" and "hacking" are verbal prolefeed for TV-watching intellectual midgets, but that does not mean that the leaders don't have real, factual and logical reasons to fear Putin and Russia. They do. And they are doing everything in their power to weaken Russia and overthrow Putin. Most of the Russian elites achieved their elite status in the 1990s (some even in the 1980s!), and many of them hate Putin for putting a stop to the total robbery bonanza which made it possible for these people to not only come to power but also make a killing financially. As for the so-called "economic block" of the Russian government, it is entirely made up of what I loosely call the "WTO/IMF/WB/etc." -Types: folks who sincerely endorse the so-called " Washington Consensus ." The very least one could say about these folks is that their worldview and ideology are not only totally alien to traditional Russian values, they are in fact profoundly anti-Russian . For these folks to become the 5 th column is the most natural development. The system which Putin inherited was one deeply integrated with the AngloZionist sphere of financial, economic, political, and social influence. While western sanctions (and general political shortsightedness) severed many of these ties (thank you to the Neocons for their life-saving sanctions and, especially, hysterically Russophobic propaganda!), there are very few cases (if any) of Russians severing such ties. Some believe that Putin sincerely wanted Russia to join NATO or/and the EU. I don't agree with that, but whether he was sincere or not, the fact is that Putin did initially try to court the West. The fact that the West was too stupid to see the fantastic opportunity this situation was offering is yet another powerful testimony of how incompetent western "area specialists" have become.

Putin's 2007 " Munich speech " should have acted like an urgent wake-up call to the leaders of the West, but they lacked the brains and courage to listen to what Putin was saying. The same thing happened during Putin's 2015 speech at the UNGA . To his internal Russian audience, Putin bluntly said, when asked if the West was trying to "humiliate" Russia: " They do not want to humiliate us, they want to subdue us, solve their problems at our expense ." Personally, I believe that Putin, as any other officer of the First Main Directorate (foreign intelligence) of the KGB always understood that the West was a mortal enemy of Russia and that this has been true for at least 1000 years. Thus I think that it would be naive to believe that Putin ever "trusted" the West. But did he deliberately give that impression for as long as it could serve his purposes? Yes, absolutely. Now, this period is clearly over.

The one thing which the Russian 5th column cannot really be is any type of "opposition." First, the 5th column is internal to the Kremlin, to the Presidential Administration, to the "United Russia" party and to all the other centers of power in Russia. This forces the opposition to pretend loyalty to Putin while sabotaging every effort at re-sovereignizing Russia (admittedly a tough task since Russia has been ruled by foreign elites since at least the times of Peter I).

I am often asked why Russia Today and Sputnik publish what can only be called "trash" or even anti-religious propaganda on their websites. The answer is simple: there are plenty of folks at RT and Sputnik (especially in the teams operating their websites as opposed to the actual broadcasts) who are pure products of the AngloZionist worldview and who love some sleazy sex story almost as much as they love to bash or ridicule the Orthodox church. While there are plenty of terrific people in both of these media, there are also plenty who secretly would love Russia to return to the 1990s or become a kind of "Poland" east of the Ukraine. This is also why these outlets make a strenuous effort not to discuss the Israel lobby in the West (not only the USA), but they also stay away from any discussion of 9/11. I know for a fact that any mention of the real events of 9/11 is strictly forbidden by some "bigshot" editors in Moscow as my own interviews were censored that way.

One word of caution here: there are millions of Russians abroad, and many of them are what are now called " вырусь " (vy-roos') in Russia: folks who might speak Russian, and even visit Russia from time to time, but who have completely lost their "Russian-ness" and whose worldview does not extend beyond wishing that Russia was more like the US or Germany. They think of Russia as "rashka," and they absolutely hate any genuine manifestation of Russian culture, spirituality, traditions or religion. Some of them will join the Alt-Right movement and pretend that the racist categories and ideology used by this movement have some traction in Russia (they don't). Some will try to impersonate Orthodox Christians. In truth – they are still a pure product of the AngloZionst Empire. Some of them have clearly found gainful employment in the Russian media where they keep a vigilant watch for any signs that the ideological dogma of the West (we all know what they are) are being debunked by Russian patriots. These "vyroos" are yet another manifestation of the Russian 5 th column.

What about the official opposition to Putin?

Ukie Defense Minister Poltorak photoshops himself before an exploding Kremlin Tower. This is the kind of nonsense that gets even Duma members angry.

Then there is the "official" Duma opposition, which is more or less a joke. Some Russian MPs are better than others, but even the comparatively better ones are entirely unable to present a real challenge to the Russian government (we saw that painfully illustrated by the Duma vote on the pension reform).

As for the ordinary people, most of them probably still trust Putin in foreign policy issues, but many are also getting genuinely fed-up with an arrogant and condescending ruling elite which couldn't care less about the plight of regular people and who live in an ivory tower of wealth, arrogance and power.

There is also a gradual realization that Putin in generally being "too soft" on the Empire and not proactive enough in defense of Novorussia against the Ukronazi junta in Kiev. Sadly, I have to agree with them. Yes, there has been some progress: the Russian ban on exporting energy to the Ukraine and the deliverance of Russian passports to the people of Novorussia. Furthermore, the Kremlin has expressed precisely zero approval of Zelenskii's election and, apparently, this was the correct move since even though the policies of Poroshenko were categorically rejected by an absolute majority of the Ukrainian people, all the signs are that Zelenskii has already wholly caved to the demands of the "collective West". Unless this trend towards "more of the same, only worse" is reversed, it is likely that the popular pressure in Russia to be far more proactive against the regime in Kiev will only increase. In recent months the Duma has been under pressure from the public to take a more forceful reaction to the events in the Ukraine, and this has had some, albeit limited, effect: the totally lame Duma has now become a little bit less lame, but not by much.

So what is this new opposition to Putin?

How our power structure is organized: This is the Kremlin. Putin is there. He issues decrees and ensures that the Constitution is upheld; This is the Government building. Medvedev is there and he loots the budget of our country; This is the Duma, Volodin is there and he adopts anti-popular laws; This is the Federation Council, Matvienko and she approves anti-popular laws..

The distinguishing characteristic of this new opposition to Putin is that it sees itself as the truly patriotic segment of Russian society. These are folks who blame Putin for being weak, indecisive and corrupt (including personally). They believe that Putin sits on the top of an oligarchic pyramid which only pays lip service to Russian national interests, but which in reality is interested only in wealth, power and influence. Frankly, much of their argumentation about Putin's alleged corruption is based on a mix of disinformation and personal hatred for Putin himself. In contrast, however, their arguments that Putin is too weak or indecisive are based on a completely rational and fact based analysis of the events which have marked Putin's presidency. After all, the man has been in power for 20 years or so, he has enjoyed tremendous bureaucratic power and the full support of the vast majority of the population. How then can he (or his supporters) blame it all on a "bad system" or the power of a 5 th column whose existence some don't believe in in the first place?

On the right is a typical opposition "Internet poster".

While I personally don't agree with this point of view, I have to recognize that it is not self-evidently absurd or solely based on propaganda. In other words, they do have a point, and much of their criticism is valid.

Alas, much of it is not, and that mix loses a lot in credibility when 50% of it is fact-based and logical, and 50% is not.

What is even worse is that these patriots regularly find themselves in the same camp as the Soros/CIA -funded folks whom the patriots claim to hate, but whose arguments they often recycle (about the personal corruption of Putin, for example).

The other major weakness of this new opposition is that it lacks any kind of leader. This is why I did not bother listing the names of the main representatives of this opposition: for most of those who will read this article, these names will mean nothing.

Finally, this new patriotic opposition seems to lack an original worldview: much of their argumentation boils down to "it was better in the Soviet era" (they typically tend to overlook how bad things indeed were, at least since the 1980s!).

So where do we go from here? Will Russia ever have a real, vibrant, opposition?

My short personal answer is, yes, Russia will have such an opposition. Here is why:

    The official Duma opposition is both useless and hopeless. The Soros/CIA financed opposition is discredited beyond rescue. The 5 th column is fundamentally a fraud, and most Russians hate it. The current "patriotic" opposition will grow due to the policies of the Russian government, and they will probably learn from their mistakes. Crises often (almost always) generate the appearance of new leaders

I hope that the newly emerging "patriotic" opposition will focus its wrath not on Putin as a person, but on the mistakes of the Russian government wherever they happen: President, Prime Minister, Minister or below – it should not matter. If the opposition succeeds in focusing on issues rather than venting its rage against specific individuals, then real changes become possible, including personnel changes.

The latest opinion polls show that all the members of the government are suffering from falling ratings, not just the Atlantic Integrationists. If this trend maintains itself, the Eurasian Sovereignists will have a powerful incentive to cut their ties with the Atlantic Integrationists. Who knows, maybe Medvedev and the so-called "economic block of the government" will be shown to the door? If not, then the plunge in the polls will most likely continue, and social unrest becomes a real possibility.

JOHN CHUCKMAN , says: Website May 30, 2019 at 7:13 am GMT

Talk about trash, this article is it.

Just full of unsupported assertions and with an overall lack of understanding about how countries, especially big ones, really work.

Citing some polling on individual figures is meaningless without context and without any details about the nature of the poll. Faked and/or incompetent polling happens regularly in the West."Push"polls are a constant gimmick used in the Western press to give authority to assertions.

Any poll which shows Shoigu getting only 14.8%, Lavrov getting 13%, is highly suspect on its face. These are genuinely super-capable individuals in their jobs, quite beyond any norms for performance.

When something smells as bad as this article, sharp reader knows something is going on beyond the mere speculations of an amateur affairs analyst.

Andrei Martyanov , says: Website May 30, 2019 at 2:12 pm GMT

A non-event, same ol', same ol'. Here is an original with Putin's approval rating–65.8%:

https://wciom.ru/index.php?id=236&uid=9707

Показатель одобрения деятельности Президента стабилен и находится в рамках сформировавшегося коридора: по среднему значению с 13 по 19 мая он составил 65,8%.

1. I wrote about this once:

https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2019/03/south-front-say-what-ii.html .

2. Svobodnaya Pressa (SP) is not exactly unbiased (or competent) source. Enough to take a look at such odious figures as Boldyrev hanging out there as a "columnist";

3. Russia's so called opposition (mainly left) committed suicide when went with Grudinin. In general, they don't have anyone of required scale and competence to even approach a vicinity of Putin.

In many respects, SP's commentaries are merely a tempest in the cup.

Rob435 , says: May 30, 2019 at 2:55 pm GMT

I suspect if they distrust Putin the diabolical skripal RT interview with the "Russian Tourists" may have something to do with it.

Tens of Millions of Russians were ready to believe the false flag CIA / M16 setup explanation, then suddenly two idiots popup, on national tv who just scream military / security looking men to say they were there just to check out the cathedral spire of course!

I mean what a shot in the foot who authorised that interview to happen?

Digital Samizdat , says: May 30, 2019 at 3:00 pm GMT

Some believe that Putin sincerely wanted Russia to join NATO or/and the EU. I don't agree with that, but whether he was sincere or not, the fact is that Putin did initially try to court the West. The fact that the West was too stupid to see the fantastic opportunity this situation was offering is yet another powerful testimony of how incompetent western "area specialists" have become.

Washington would never allow Russia to join EU/NATO. Russia's too big for them to control, and might even end up partly or entirely co-opting these organizations. No, their original plan was to break Russia up into bite-sized pieces first, then induct those little statelets into NATO (or some other Washington-dominated 'alliance'), then use them to surround and harass China–all very similar to the way they're using Ukraine and the Caucasus to surround and harass Russia now.

FB , says: Website May 30, 2019 at 5:43 pm GMT
@JOHN CHUCKMAN finance infrastructure and vital technology that's what sovereign countries do but Russia is still acting like a banana republic

Neither Putin nor anyone in government has actual control of the central bank which 'independence' [read absolute dependence on the global finance cabal] is enshrined in the US-written Yeltsin era 'Constitution'

Now there are some that argue that Putin has done very well just to fend off the ongoing financial, economic and informational war on Russia and perhaps Russia cannot simply make a clean break with the western financial octopus with which it's entangled

I don't know there may be some truth to that a gradual weaning off may be the more prudent course and Putin is nothing if not that

Cyrano , says: May 30, 2019 at 6:04 pm GMT

When Putin gets too old to govern, the next leader will not come from some "vibrant" opposition. The next leader will be hand-picked by Putin, same way he was hand-picked by that fool Yeltsin – the best move he ever made.

There are people in Russia who still believe that trying to emulate the western "democratic practices" will win them approval and love from the west.

Leave the winning of love and approval by the west to the lesser Slavs like the Polaks and the Ukrainians.

The only time west "approved" of Russia was when they were doing self-harm to themselves – like in 1980's and 90's.

Listen carefully, my dear Russians – west will never love you, and it's not your fault. So don't worry about it. Choose your own path and forget about "democracy". The whole thing is a sham anyway.

macilrae , says: May 31, 2019 at 1:33 pm GMT

I am often asked why Russia Today and Sputnik publish what can only be called "trash"

Some of it is unbearable

these outlets make a strenuous effort not to discuss the Israel lobby in the West (not only the USA), but they also stay away from any discussion of 9/11.

Ordinance fired in that direction is likely to ricochet – they do a pretty good job of demolishing the Ukraine narrative; the "White Helmets" the Venezuelan coup etc as presented by MSM and they have taken a lot of punishment for that already. And, yes

there are plenty of folks at RT and Sputnik (especially in the teams operating their websites as opposed to the actual broadcasts) who are pure products of the AngloZionist worldview

Andrei Martyanov , says: Website May 31, 2019 at 1:33 pm GMT
@Cyrano

There are people in Russia who still believe that trying to emulate the western "democratic practices" will win them approval and love from the west.

Let's put it this way–the strata of these people is extremely narrow (thin) and consists mostly of human freaks such as kreakls and some parts of large urban centers office plankton. Majority of Russians have no illusions about the West anymore. The talk about new Iron Curtain (this time erected by Russia) is not just idle talk–Western degeneracy is an issue which needs to be dealt with.

The Scalpel , says: Website May 31, 2019 at 4:08 pm GMT
@JOHN CHUCKMAN

I agree. The "evidence" Saker bases this essay upon is extremely weak. He would have been better off just leaving it out and writing the article as an opinion piece. But then, he would have been subject to evidence based rebuttals . I generally look forward to his articles. This was disappointing

War for Blair Mountain , says: June 2, 2019 at 8:34 am GMT

Why does Putin go along with neo-liberal economic policies in Russia? Does Putin really believe in this bullshit? I don't believe Jeffrey Sachs with a very guilty conscience .. believes in this bullshit anymore.

Китайский дурак , says: June 2, 2019 at 12:04 pm GMT
@Yuritarasovych iet ( or maybe sarcastic Soviet nostalgic) opposition, are sanguine about the profound danger posed by China. As if not ironic enough, the right-wing Republicans in DC after two years jostling with Trump, also came to the same conclusion.

5) The traditionalist "racist" "white guard" "monarchist" "Russian soul" type of right wing romanticist patriotic opposition seems to suffer collective cognizance retardation when it comes to China. Saker has the same blindness. This is also interesting. They are more stupid than their ancestors back in 1916-1918. The White Guards were as responsible for Tsar's downfall as Miliukov or Kerensky. The cultural gene pool of Russia today will not permit the growing up of people such as Lenin and Trotsky, with corresponding political genius, resoluteness, or maniacal cruelty, whatever. Woe, tragedy of Russia.

padre , says: June 2, 2019 at 12:06 pm GMT

If the oposition is like the author, it is no wonder, why it is not "real"!

Mike P , says: June 2, 2019 at 12:18 pm GMT
@FB

Xi has been more effective than Putin

Difficult to say how much of that difference is due to the sort of human resources they have to work with though. Xi certainly had a much more functional country to start with. Overall, both of them are clearly among the most impressive leaders currently on the world stage.

DESERT FOX , says: June 2, 2019 at 1:21 pm GMT

The Russian people should thank God for Putin and as an American I thank God that Putin has checkmated the unholy trinity ie the US and Israel and Britain and their terrorists ie the CIA and the Mossad and MI6 the creators of AL CIADA aka ISIS and all the offshoots thereof.

Putin is the only zane head of state on the world stage and has saved Syria from the Christian killing terrorists created and supplied and supported by the unholy trinity.

God bless Putin and the Russian people.

MLK , says: June 2, 2019 at 1:52 pm GMT

The decline in Putin's approval rating/popularity is an emphatically positive indicator for Russia that the existential or at least catastrophic geopolitical threats to Russia have greatly lessened.

Putin has been The Indispensable Man since he came to power. He is (very) roughly akin to FDR. While Putin is a vigorous man, he strikes me as understanding that effecting the peaceful transition of power Russia-style, will seal his legacy as among the greatest Russian rulers.

Get ready, because you and your readers' heads are about to pop . . . . .

Israel and Netanyahu were and remain in a similar position. The Obama Administration attempted to regime change Netanyahu out. That's why Israelis engaged in a similar Better Safe Than Sorry the election previous to this most recent one. Netanyahu barely won last time because the external threat had passed with the passing of the Obama Administration. The only reason he got as close as he did to winning and being able to form a government is because of POTUS Trump.

The Saker lost his way due to what some call Trump Derangement Syndrome. I've never like that catchall term because the more intelligent suffering from it are really blinded by resentment toward the man.

Whether any of you wish to get your minds around it or not, he has become the most powerful POTUS in modern memory. He represents a sharp break from the increasingly Figurehead/Pitchman POTUSs of the post-Cold War period.

It's long past the time for you and many of your readers to knock it off with the folding table in front of the student union wackiness. What with all the shouting about "AngloZionists" and such.

The Post-Cold War quarter century is effectively over. China won it, hands down. Now POTUS Trump is sufficiently able to exercise his Article II powers for even those blinded by resentment toward him to see the US Sovereign is once again coherently pursuing its geopolitical and geo-economic objectives.

For Russia/Putin this is altogether positive. The US Sovereign is now "Deal Capable/Ready."

Agent76 , says: June 2, 2019 at 2:45 pm GMT

Apr 24, 2019 Rand Corporation: How to Destroy Russia

Force the adversary to expand recklessly in order to unbalance him, and then destroy him. This is not the description of a judo hold, but a plan against Russia elaborated by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank in the USA. With a staff of thousands of experts, Rand presents itself as the world's most reliable source for Intelligence and political analysis for the leaders of the United States and their allies.

Overextending and Unbalancing Russia

Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html

https://www.globalresearch.ca/rand-corp-how-destroy-russia/5678456

March 31, 2019 Russia is dumping US dollars and hoarding gold

Vladimir Putin's quest to break Russia's reliance on the U.S. dollar has set off a literal gold rush.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-29/russia-is-stocking-up-on-gold-as-putin-ditches-u-s-dollars

Nov 29, 2016 The Map That Shows Why Russia Fears War With US

https://www.youtube.com/embed/L6hIlfHWaGU?feature=oembed

Ole C G Olesen , says: June 2, 2019 at 5:20 pm GMT

In TASS BULLETIN dated 31.5.2019 the Approval Rating of President Putin

as Tested by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center is measured to 64.7 %

.. quite DIFFERENT from the 31-7 % stated in above Article .

So WHOM shall I believe ?

The difference is so big that it hardly can be explained away by Statistical Error !

APilgrim , says: June 2, 2019 at 5:30 pm GMT

This is a particularly well written paragraph:

I hope that the newly emerging "patriotic" opposition will focus its wrath not on Putin as a person, but on the mistakes of the Russian government wherever they happen: President, Prime Minister, Minister or below – it should not matter. If the opposition succeeds in focusing on issues rather than venting its rage against specific individuals, then real changes become possible , including personnel changes.

Constructive political processes & loyal opposition are also entirely missing in the USA.

APilgrim , says: June 2, 2019 at 5:37 pm GMT
@DESERT FOX

Mostly agree.

Vladimir Putin is the de facto head of Christendom.

US Sanctions against Putin & Russia are entirely without justification.

AnonFromTN , says: June 2, 2019 at 5:57 pm GMT

Putin did not save Russia single-handedly. He was and is just a front man for the forces that did. Even in the 1990s, when the traitors ruled the roost in Russia, a lot of people sabotaged traitorous actions of Yeltsin and associated oligarchs. Many ballistic missiles that were supposed to be destroyed were actually kept intact, as well as many production facilities. That's the only reason Russia came back from what appeared to be the ashes so quickly. It is very likely that Putin's rise to power was organized by those same forces. The most plausible scenario is that patriotic forces in the military, KGB, and police, seeing wholesale treason of Yeltsin and his cronies, presented Yeltsin with an ultimatum: either he resigns, promotes Putin, and gets off the hook, or he gets overthrown and prosecuted for his crimes. Remember, the first act of Putin as president was a wholesale pardon to Yeltsin and his family.

As to real opposition, Russia does need it. Not the traitorous scum like Navalny, Khodorkovsky, or late unlamented Nemtsov, but people with integrity, whose prime goal is to advance the interests of Russia, rather than just steal as much as possible. What the Saker ignores is the fact that many Russian oligarchs (I have no illusions about them: they are all mega-thieves, many are murderers, like Khodorkovsky) learned the lesson of Ukrainian oligarchs: unless you have a strong state behind you, other equally unscrupulous thieves will gladly steal your loot.

Realistically, serious patriotic opposition in Russia will emerge when smarter oligarchs join forces with those fighting for social justice. At that point leaders with savvy and charisma that makes them competitive with Putin have a chance of emerging. The opposition won't be knights in shining armor, but it will be a force capable of ruling the country, not just criticizing the rulers. The first task is really hard, whereas any moron can criticize any government making valid points. The policies of the opposition must be mostly middle-of-the-road: limit (but not eliminate) the opportunities for oligarchs' thievery, and use un-stolen resources to improve the life of ordinary people. In foreign policy, it must keep a strong stance against the crumbling Empire, joining tactical alliances with all other anti-imperial countries and forces.

Avery , says: June 2, 2019 at 6:07 pm GMT
@FB nd the loot ending up in England, Israel, and who knows where else.

The fundamental strength of Chinese is that the country is being run by some kind of patriotic committee, that is highly fault-tolerant and immune to Western interference. Xi, like his predecessors, is just a colorless bureaucrat: the Long March continues, no matter who the front man is. It is unthinkable that the Committee would allow someone like Yeltsin to run the country into the ground.

Putin & Co need to solve this fundamental weakness of Russia, while he is in power and can change things. Otherwise, another Yeltsin might come along and wreck everything.

AnonFromTN , says: June 2, 2019 at 6:23 pm GMT
@Avery

Russian people won't accept another traitor like Yeltsin. But things can be wrecked in more ways than one. Dumb patriot would be just as destructive.

DESERT FOX , says: June 2, 2019 at 6:27 pm GMT
@APilgrim

Russia under Putin is the largest grain exporter in the world and has been for the last 3 years and if anyone doubts how Russian farming has entered the modern world just go to youtube and watch the videos on Russian agriculture.

AnonFromTN , says: June 2, 2019 at 6:29 pm GMT
@Anatoly Karlin

Seeing how Ukies managed to turn Ukraine into a pile of shit, the only way to profit by their advice is this: listen to what they have to say and do exactly opposite.

FB , says: Website June 2, 2019 at 6:36 pm GMT
@Avery iullina just for a start then a number of banks and large private corporations need to be nationalized after 20 years of playing the capitalist game, it's clear that this is a losing game

Russia needs to make domestic capital available for things like massive infrastructure projects and big science and technology PCR, probably the most astute Russia 'hand', certainly on the subject of economics, has stated the obvious fact that these kinds of state investments [and printing the money to do that] are NOT inflationary I keep waiting for that to happen, but it never does I think Putin is just too cautious for big moves like that

The question is whether anyone else will do it ?

Russia needs an Uncle Joe but they just don't build them like that anymore

SeekerofthePresence , says: June 2, 2019 at 10:37 pm GMT

'Murka wants regime change in Russia,
CIA at play.
Russians are turning to God and Church,
Christ her King to stay.

Китайский дурак , says: June 2, 2019 at 11:27 pm GMT

None of the commentators seem to show the minimum awareness of the following, except for the gent from Tennessee: 1) the acute psychological and practical importance of social justice for basic Russian people; and 2) harder to define to basically totalitarian capitalistic essence of the Chinese model. This shows that A) you all live in the West, B) with good justification are obsessed with a burning hatred against Globalist empire and you throw out the baby of basic values of freedom and democracy with the dirty water western propaganda bubble, C) you guys don't realize how many Russians live on 30,000 rubles a month, and you project this rosy hope on them ( saving the west with "conservative Christian values and brave fight against globalism" ) 4) you guys have not the remotest ideas of how the petty Chinese traders and their large state corporations behave, when the other party happens to be not some tall Anglo-saxon / Jew whose white asses the Chinese want to lick. Many Russians on the other hand, have such first hand experience.

APilgrim , says: June 2, 2019 at 11:47 pm GMT
@DESERT FOX nt-text">

USA total grain exports are roughly twice that of Russia, and 3 times that of Brazil.

USA: https://www.statista.com/statistics/190348/total-us-grain-exports-from-2001/
Brazil: https://www.world-grain.com/articles/11371-focus-on-brazil
Russia: https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/russia-grain-and-feed-annual-2

Nevertheless, Russia is a large grain exporting nation.

AnonFromTN , says: June 3, 2019 at 1:09 am GMT
@APilgrim

Yeltsin was legitimate until 1993. Dismissing vice president and shooting, and then dismissing parliament was unconstitutional. He became even less legitimate when his goons falsified two rounds of the presidential elections in 1996, making him a winner of the vote he lost badly. In addition, he was an alcoholic, traitor, and mega-thief. End of story.

[Jun 02, 2019] US Color revolution: 'He who digs a pit for others will fall into that same pit

Jun 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Christian Chuba , Jun 2, 2019 1:34:39 PM | 2

US Color revolution: Chickens coming home to roost

We have spent decades developing a playbook identifying overseas threats and tactics on how to overthrow rogue regimes and an internal infrastructure on how to do it. So why wouldn't this infrastructure look to internal U.S. politicians and use the same playbook on them?

So I disagree with MoA, an impeachment against Trump will not just be ruinous against Democrats but against the U.S. in general. In fact, we will eventually disintegrate into the same mess that we impose on other countries.

One of the ironic points of the playbook is to find a scapegoat when things go badly for the regime that we overthrow (which is the usual outcome), we always find someone to blame such as Russia or Iran. In the Trump impeachment charade, they are pinning it on Russia again :-)

I have basically said what has been stated much more succinctly, 'He who digs a pit for others will fall into that same pit'

ADKC , Jun 2, 2019 1:58:10 PM | 5

The following article, from the Fort Russ News website, puts forward a very plausible theory of what the calls for impeachment of Donald Trump may actually be leading to the US being at war with Russia in Europe:

How Mueller + Barr = Trump's Reelection

(I also posted this link on the "Mueller Punts On Obstruction Charges - Impeachment Would Hurt The Democrats" thread of 29th May; sorry for repeating myself but I really think the author of the article, Ronald Thomas West, is on to something.)

psychohistorian , Jun 2, 2019 3:41:14 PM | 7

Another week and the empire carrousel is still spinning madly keeping all the plates of obfuscation from falling.

I look at all the headlines and the trajectory they represent and keep looking for the seminal event that brings it all to a halt. It is interesting to note that all the hooting and hollering is happening in the MSM and not at the UN.

When is someone going to call BS on all the code words like "normal" and "rules based" and cut to the chase of the public/private financial control war we are in?

I vote for some group from Haiti, that has and continues to be screwed by the West, to acquire the tools necessary to disable an empire warship........ which might bring the crazies to the table.

Hey empire, they don't hate you for your freedoms, the rest of the world hates you for your fealty to the global private finance god.

[Jun 02, 2019] Russiagate Is The #1 Threat To US National Security, Cohen

Jun 01, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

The systemwide US Russophobia that reached its nadir with Russiagate has created a "catastrophe" for both domestic politics and foreign relations that threatens the future of the American system, professor Stephen Cohen tells RT.

War with Russia could easily break out if the US insists on pursuing the policy of " demonization " that birthed Russiagate instead of returning to detente and cooperation, New York University professor emeritus of Russian history Stephen Cohen argues on Chris Hedges' On Contact. While NATO deliberately antagonized post-Soviet Russia by expanding up to its borders, the US deployed missile defense systems along those borders after scrapping an arms treaty, leaving President Vladimir Putin devoid of " illusions " about the goodwill of the West – but armed with " nuclear missiles that can evade and elude any missile defense system ."

" Now is the time for a serious, new arms control agreement. What do we get? Russiagate instead ."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/-wc94DRFCik

Cohen believes the conspiracy theory – which remains front-page news in US media despite being thoroughly discredited, both by independent investigators and last month by special counsel Robert Mueller's report – is the work of the CIA and its former director, John Brennan, who are dead set against any kind of cooperation with Russia. Attorney General William Barr, who is investigating the FBI over how the 2016 counterintelligence probe began, should take a look at Brennan and his agency, Cohen says.

" If our intelligence services are off the reservation to the point that they can first try to destroy a presidential candidate and then a president we need to know it ," Cohen says.

" This is the worst scandal in American history. It's the worst, at least, since the Civil War ."

And the damage wrought by this " catastrophe " hasn't stopped at the US border.

The idea that Trump is a Russian agent has been devastating to " our own institutions, to the presidency, to our electoral system, to Congress, to the American mainstream media, not to mention the damage it's done to American-Russian relations, the damage it has done to the way Russians, both elite Russians and young Russians, look at America today , " Cohen declares.

"Russiagate is one of the greatest new threats to national security. I have five listed in the book. Russia and China aren't on there. Russiagate is number one."

And the potential damage it could still cause is enormous.

Source:RT

Im4truth4all , 48 minutes ago link

Amazing, 30 million dollars spent for an investigation that produced nothing and some believe that Russiagate is still reality. This paranoia is unbelievable except for a psychotic public - pathetic.

Dickweed Wang , 2 hours ago link

If the neo-con/Nazi assholes embedded in the M.I.C. and the US government continue down this road of demonizing and antagonizing Russia it is not going to end well for the people of the US. Putin and the rest of the Russian leadership have made it crystal clear that they are only going to be pushed so far. The problem is when Russia snaps they are going to do their damdest to try to cut the head of the snake off in one shot. There's a good chance they could actually pull that off.

Snout the First , 2 hours ago link

Just exactly what did Russia do to "meddle" in our election?

- Did Russia hack the voting machines and change votes?

- Did Russia make illegal campaign contributions to Republicans?

- Did Russia facilitate people voting who weren't eligible to vote?

What exactly did Russia do?

[Jun 01, 2019] Mueller silver bullet failed. So they will find another cause and go with the impeachment with all the media hysteria accompanying it fully realizing that they don t have the votes in the Senate convict.

Jun 01, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Jack , 31 May 2019 at 11:13 AM

The Democrat establishment are bereft of any new policy ideas or the ability to advance any policy framework through the House let alone bring along the Senate. Egged on by the TDS afflicted "fake news" media all they've got is politicization. Their Mueller silver bullet failed. So they'll go with an impeachment with all the media hysteria accompanying it fully realizing that they don't have the votes in the Senate convict.

I'm not certain how this will play out in the mid-west where the next election will be decided. OTOH, an impeachment would possibly force Trump to get aggressive about releasing all the incriminating documents and communications about the attempted coup by the Obama administration law enforcement and intelligence leadership. Of course they would claim that what Trump is doing is purely political and that they were only doing their patriotic duty. We're going to be in for more TDS media frenzy. The last time they lost an election with sure thing Hillary. Do they expect to win with the same tactics with Sleepy Joe and his long track record of being in the pocket of the financial industry?

blue peacock -> Jack... , 01 June 2019 at 03:24 AM

Jack

It looks like Barr may mean business. He seems to be pushing ahead trying to get to the bottom of how the Russia collusion investigation began in the first place.

Listen to this interview of Barr. Very interesting. As someone who has always opposed the growth in the unfettered powers of the national security surveillance state, the fact that a sitting attorney general is using words like "praetorian guard" in an interview is of great interest. Let's see how this is going to shake out. There is a possibility that the tide is turning and the investigators may actually be investigated.

https://soundcloud.com/cbsthismorning/exclusive-ag-william-barr-on-special-counsel-mueller-and-the-russia-probe

turcopolier , 31 May 2019 at 03:00 PM

joanna

"The American Dream" as well as the American "Middle Class" have always bee a puzzle to me. The Dream seems to mean owning a house to a lot of people. The Middle Class is what, a European style bourgeoisie?

Patrick Armstrong -> turcopolier ... , 31 May 2019 at 03:00 PM

As an outsider, it has always seemed to be that a succinct definition of the "American Dream" is that your kids will be better off (you define "better") than you were.

Not unique to the USA, of course, but the inspiration for many many immigrants.

jdledell , 31 May 2019 at 03:00 PM

I think Trump is a buffoon who should not be President but that is not an impeachable offense. I think the Democrats would be stupid to try to impeach, it would fail miserably in the Senate and probably lead to a trump victory in 2020. Compared with Bush and Cheney, Trump is a minor sinner. Bush and Cheney should have been impeached for putting together a false case for going to war in Iraq. That is the kind of mistake that cost thousands of lives a couple trillion dollars. If ever there was a case for impeachment - that was the big one we missed.

Patrick Armstrong , 01 June 2019 at 10:05 AM

Dick Morris agrees that impeachment will destroy the Dems "what will destroy them is that they apparently have nothing else to say"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnI64DKD6o0

Hallabina , 01 June 2019 at 11:39 AM

Main reassons to impeach Trump are related to its behavior on foreign policy,... if in that he would not be fully supported by the Democrat apparatus...
The harm he has done to the US word and image throughout the world is of epic proportions, one wonders if it would be recoverable any time....

-Storming of foreign embassies, starting with the Russian ones amd following with Venezuela´s
-Appropiating of foreign assests on basis of not liking the sign of the countryés governments.
-Naming presidents in charge of foreign countries whose government he does not like.
-Giving away foreign cities which do not belong to him to alleged allies tied to his close family.
-Illegal presence of US troops in foreign countries even after calls by legitimate authorities of those counries to go.
-Threatening every country whose government he does not like through his Twitter account and officials, even with war.
-Going against every principle of free market, which the US economy is supposedly based on, by ordering fully protectionist measures on Us products and to private companies to comply with his overextended sanctions on everybody who could compete in anything with the US or do not submit to US designs...

Then it is his continuous refusal to show his tax return.....There is something there, for sure...

Congratulations!
This year your birthday coincided with Al Quds Day...May be a sign...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYKnQ9814T8

DH -> Hallabina... , 01 June 2019 at 11:39 AM

On the other hand, he exemplifies the principle that jaw jaw is better than war war.

[Jun 01, 2019] Grenfell, Windrush Skripal -- Theresa May's Tainted Legacy by Johanna Ross

Notable quotes:
"... However, Williamson was not alone in his anti-Russian stance. It was under May's leadership that the controversial government-funded Integrity Initiative program really began to flourish. Designed to "counteract Russian propaganda" it instead deceptively engaged in spreading disinformation about Russia and even the UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, by hiring journalists, academics and commentators who would all sing from the same hymn sheet when it came to discourse about Russia in the press. ..."
"... What was most chilling about the revelations in the Integrity Initiative hacked documents was the extent to which policy makers within the inner workings of the establishment are apparently obsessed about an imminent "Russian threat" and are prepared to go to considerable lengths to persuade the British population of this. ..."
"... Even more unnerving was the discussion that there was need for some event to be staged in order to heighten the U.K. population's awareness of a Russian threat. The timing was uncanny: this was not long before the poisoning took place of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, which has, along with multiple discrepancies in the British narrative, led some analysts to ask whether the whole incident was indeed orchestrated by British secret services. ..."
"... Staged or not, May's handling of the Skripal incident left much to be desired. Even her experience of handling the Litvinenko affair as home secretary hadn't taught her a great deal. Before any concrete evidence was produced to implicate the Russian government in the poisoning, May was already issuing ultimatums to the Russian president. Her infamous phrase that the government concluded it was "highly likely" Russia was responsible for the poisoning even entered itself into the Russian vocabulary and became something of a household joke in Russia. ..."
"... So what can we expect from the next prime minister of the not-so-Great Britain? Whoever it is has their work cut out not only to unite the Conservative party, but the country. In terms of improving relations with Russia -- as long as the Tories remain in power, and the "deep state" or civil service continues to push its aggressive anti-Russian agenda -- , we are unlikely to see any significant change in policy. ..."
"... The UK under May has continued to serve as a “coalition partner” in the US-Saudi-Israeli Axis engineered and perpetuated dirty war against the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies. Let’s not forget Theresa May’s well practiced phrase, “like the United States, we believe”: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39591476 . May has consistently believed US claims about the April 2017 Khan Shaykhoun incident, the April 2018 Douma incident, and other alleged chemical “attacks” in Syria. ..."
"... The UK under May also has remained the base for two leading disinformation operations supporting the the assault against Syrian government: Rami Abdulrahman’s Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Eliot Higgins’ Bellingcat. ..."
"... As of 31 March 2018, the British government had provided £38.4m in funding to the Al Qaeda allied White Helmets propaganda organization. In April 2018 the Trump administration suspended funding of the White Helmets. The US had provided more than $33 million to support the group since 2013. ..."
"... The British government remains a primary funder of the White Helmets propaganda organization. Posing as an impartial rescue force, the White Helmets work exclusively side-by-side armed militants including US State Department, UN, and EU designated foreign terrorist organizations. Their primary function is not “rescuing” anyone, but to manage a public relations campaign aimed at swaying public and political opinion, leveraging “humanitarian” sympathy worldwide ..."
"... In November 2016, video showed two White Helmets members staging a rescue operation for the Mannequin Challenge meme. In May 2017, video showed White Helmets members removing a man’s body following his execution by armed militants in Daraa. In June 2017, a member of the White Helmets was suspended indefinitely for assisting armed militants in the burial of mutilated corpses of Syrian government soldiers. ..."
"... Apropos, the last two paras about the Civil Service in Britain; Up until the last 2 decades or so, some of the brightest and best talents entered the Civil Service, good pay, good career prospects and good pension. Then this was hollowed out, everything ‘public sector’ was vilified and privatized and starved of funding. ..."
"... The race to the bottom is keenly contested. ..."
"... Without Russian money they are certainly not the world’s 6th largest economy and it appears that unless they want to side with China against the USA which is improbable, no impossible, they will lose Chinese Capital as well after Brexit. ..."
"... And again, a Mr. Jim Mellon a for real billionaire, several times over I should think, the same guy who carpetbagged Russia after the collapse of the CCCP. His gleanings were called “privatization”… of poor mother Russia. ..."
"... The US has it’s own deep state problem of civil servants, especially alphabet soup agencies who are accustomed to operating in the dark and think that they, not the political appointees make policy ..."
Jun 01, 2019 | consortiumnews.com


InfoRos

UK Prime Minister Theresa May's political career officially ended in tears last Friday, as the woman who declared that she would provide "strong and stable" leadership when she came to power three years ago, but who proved in the end to be not quite so strong or stable as she broke down in front of the press outside 10 Downing Street.

She had in fact, arguably one of the most disastrous records of a UK prime minister to date. A total of 50 cabinet resignations since she took office , far more than any of her recent predecessors; together with scandals such as the Grenfell Tower disaster , Windrush scandal , hostile environment policy and record levels of homelessness and poverty. And that's not to mention her inability to deliver Brexit, which effectively led to her demise.

Indeed however tempting it may be to feel sorry for May -- she has been surrounded by political vultures all vying for her position for months now -- one is minded of the words of British political commentator Owen Jones who, when asked recently if he felt sorry for the prime minister, noted that May's tears were simply those of self-pity and were absent at times when they would have been appropriate, such as in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, which claimed 72 lives.

'Permanent Crisis'

One may be inclined to think that if she was so unsuccessful on the domestic front, then perhaps in the area of foreign policy May could have had a better record. No such luck. We only have to look at the considerable deterioration in relations with Russia to understand that under her leadership, Britain's standing in the world has diminished. Prominent British journalist Patrick Cockburn has even gone as far to say that Britain is now "entering a period of permanent crisis not seen since the 17th century."

But arguably back in the 17th century the U.K. was more competent in the art of diplomacy than it is now. May's defense minister, Gavin Williamson, with his comment that Russia should "go away and shut up" epitomized the extraordinary lack of finesse and savoir-faire the May government had when dealing with Russia.

His bellicose tone unfortunately went hand-in-hand with a completely misplaced notion of Russia presenting to the UK some kind of genuine threat, as he argued earlier this year that the UK had to "enhance its lethality" against such well-resourced states, as opposed to concentrating its energies on Islamic terror groups. He was then accused by fellow politicians of "sabre-rattling" in what were widely seen as misguided and provocative statements.

However, Williamson was not alone in his anti-Russian stance. It was under May's leadership that the controversial government-funded Integrity Initiative program really began to flourish. Designed to "counteract Russian propaganda" it instead deceptively engaged in spreading disinformation about Russia and even the UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, by hiring journalists, academics and commentators who would all sing from the same hymn sheet when it came to discourse about Russia in the press.

What was most chilling about the revelations in the Integrity Initiative hacked documents was the extent to which policy makers within the inner workings of the establishment are apparently obsessed about an imminent "Russian threat" and are prepared to go to considerable lengths to persuade the British population of this.

May with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hangzhou, China, 2016. (Wikimedia Commons)

Uncanny Timing

Even more unnerving was the discussion that there was need for some event to be staged in order to heighten the U.K. population's awareness of a Russian threat. The timing was uncanny: this was not long before the poisoning took place of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, which has, along with multiple discrepancies in the British narrative, led some analysts to ask whether the whole incident was indeed orchestrated by British secret services.

Staged or not, May's handling of the Skripal incident left much to be desired. Even her experience of handling the Litvinenko affair as home secretary hadn't taught her a great deal. Before any concrete evidence was produced to implicate the Russian government in the poisoning, May was already issuing ultimatums to the Russian president. Her infamous phrase that the government concluded it was "highly likely" Russia was responsible for the poisoning even entered itself into the Russian vocabulary and became something of a household joke in Russia.

The decision to publicly accuse another state of attempting murder on British soil with evidence that only amounted to "a nerve agent of a type produced by Russia," was utterly reckless, not only deeply harming relations with Russia, but undermining the credibility of the U.K. as a whole. And despite it being an attempt to bolster the PM's position at a time when desperately needed to generate support for her upcoming Brexit white paper – this itself, given a delayed Brexit and divided country, proved fruitless.

So what can we expect from the next prime minister of the not-so-Great Britain? Whoever it is has their work cut out not only to unite the Conservative party, but the country. In terms of improving relations with Russia -- as long as the Tories remain in power, and the "deep state" or civil service continues to push its aggressive anti-Russian agenda -- , we are unlikely to see any significant change in policy.

One could hope that a certain Boris Johnson, himself named after a Russian émigré, and the leading candidate to replace May, could seek to build bridges in this regard, but his record on the Skripal case leaves room for doubt. The PM is after all a figurehead, and the UK civil service remains a driving force of policy-making.

As former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair once said: "You cannot underestimate how much they [the civil service] believe it's their job to actually run the country and to resist the changes put forward by people they dismiss as 'here today, gone tomorrow' politicians. They genuinely see themselves as the true guardians of the national interest, and think that their job is simply to wear you down and wait you out." Says it all really .

This article originally appeared on InfoRos .

Johanna Ross is a freelance journalist based in the United Kingdom.

Tags: Brexit Johanna Ross Russia Russia-gate Sergei Skripal Theresa May Tony Blair

one , May 31, 2019 at 15:41

As one reads this article it is primarily remarkably how closely it resembles America’s past, present and future. Of course, England has long been known as Washington’s lap dog. Unsurprisingly, what we seem to be best at is sales and PR. The UK is far from the only “ally” we have that has followed us off the cliff.

And as the various publics look down and see the snake pit into which our style of “democracy” and Winners Take All capitalism actually means they want out. Unfortunately, the winners and our leaders have taken all already, including not only the money, but the power. The shameful scams of NATO and politicizing the EU turned out to be new ways to suck the lifeblood out of the earths “Others,” both in our countries and in the “Others” in Africa, Asia, and everything above and below our borders.

So how do we get out of this? We don’t. Every empire from Cyrus To Babylon, Alexander’s to The Pharaohs’ and Heraclius, the Spanish, Portuguese, and British have collapsed in the dust and led to long periods of darkness, inhabited by The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse.

If you look around us, still mostly living in luxury unknown to the ancient non-winners, all of the signs are there. In the multiple-party system in most of “free” Europe or our Two-party system there’s but decline. Boris won’t save England and none of the truly potentially electable quacks in our Democrats list are going to get us out of this. Clinton didn’t, Obama didn’t and what’s up won’t. No one but Tulsi Gabbard even talks about or has a foreign policy beyond being for peace and plenty for all. Sure. Dumb.

I hate to sound gloomy-doomy, because I’m not. I’m a writer and a writer is an observer. Watching all of this, including my own 2008 economic demise, is fascinating. Gabbard isn’t going to be elected. We’ll get our own Mrs. May maybe, or more Trump, Bolt-on or the fat guy who will initiate some wars that we’ll win like we did with Vietnam and Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. ad nauseum. I’m not saying be dumb; I’m saying be realistic, analytical, interested, and vocal, but come the collapse, be physically and psychologically prepared (everything that Hillary wasn’t, for example.)

Abe , May 31, 2019 at 12:51

The UK under May has continued to serve as a “coalition partner” in the US-Saudi-Israeli Axis engineered and perpetuated dirty war against the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies. Let’s not forget Theresa May’s well practiced phrase, “like the United States, we believe”: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39591476 . May has consistently believed US claims about the April 2017 Khan Shaykhoun incident, the April 2018 Douma incident, and other alleged chemical “attacks” in Syria.

The UK under May also has remained the base for two leading disinformation operations supporting the the assault against Syrian government: Rami Abdulrahman’s Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Eliot Higgins’ Bellingcat.

As of 31 March 2018, the British government had provided £38.4m in funding to the Al Qaeda allied White Helmets propaganda organization. In April 2018 the Trump administration suspended funding of the White Helmets. The US had provided more than $33 million to support the group since 2013.

The British government remains a primary funder of the White Helmets propaganda organization. Posing as an impartial rescue force, the White Helmets work exclusively side-by-side armed militants including US State Department, UN, and EU designated foreign terrorist organizations. Their primary function is not “rescuing” anyone, but to manage a public relations campaign aimed at swaying public and political opinion, leveraging “humanitarian” sympathy worldwide.

As of 31 March 2018, the British government had provided £38.4m in funding to the White Helmets. In April 2018 the Trump administration suspended funding of the White Helmets. The US had provided more than $33 million to support the group since 2013.

In November 2016, video showed two White Helmets members staging a rescue operation for the Mannequin Challenge meme. In May 2017, video showed White Helmets members removing a man’s body following his execution by armed militants in Daraa. In June 2017, a member of the White Helmets was suspended indefinitely for assisting armed militants in the burial of mutilated corpses of Syrian government soldiers.

On the night of 21 July 2018, Israel allowed 422 people – 98 White Helmet volunteers and their family members – to cross the Israeli annexed Syrian Golan Heights and into Jordan. A Syrian government official condemned the evacuation of White Helmets as a “criminal operation” that had revealed “the terrorist nature” of the group. In September 2018, the UK granted asylum to about 100 White Helmet staff and relatives that had been evacuated to Jordan.

AnneR , May 31, 2019 at 09:22

Good Riddance to very Bad Rubbish (mind you that also applies to the whole of the Tory lot plus the Blairites).

Yes May’s government has much to make amends for – and not just for and to the survivors of Grenfell Towers, the Windrush Generation families, but also to: the Yemenis, the Chagossians, the Syrians. It would have behooved her to have a smaller wardrobe and a larger, effective compassion for those the (imperialist) British have done over numerous times up to and including today. Even small gestures of real compassion, of real recognition of the ugliness of Britian’s imperial past wrongdoings by way of simple apology are apparently beyond her and her government (including the Civil Service).

As for Britain’s “standing” – it is about bloody time that this small island off the western Eurasian coast put up and shut up and retired. Why on earth should it have any *standing*? What *good* has it ever done? (And I ask this as someone born there, whose father was in the army helping to maintain the Raj – much to my much later disgust, though, disgracefully, not his.)

Bob of Bonsall , May 31, 2019 at 05:11

To be fair, and as much as it pains me to do so, I must point out that the Grenfell tragedy and Windrush fiasco were as much due to Labour decisions as they were to Tory incompetence.

John A , May 31, 2019 at 03:01

Apropos, the last two paras about the Civil Service in Britain; Up until the last 2 decades or so, some of the brightest and best talents entered the Civil Service, good pay, good career prospects and good pension. Then this was hollowed out, everything ‘public sector’ was vilified and privatized and starved of funding.

For these reasons, most of the ‘brightest and best’ now shun the Civil Service for a career in casino banking and similar avenues instead. The calibre of Civil Service advice has nose-dived accordingly.

As with everything else in Britain post Thatcher, everything is for sale, get rich quick, plod along with little or no pay increases and less and less job security, or starve homeless on the streets are the options available these days.

Zhu , May 31, 2019 at 04:51

Sounds like the USA!

Douglas Turnbull , May 30, 2019 at 22:20

The continuing barbaric capitalist nightmare and its sad psychopathic 1% and the destructive antics of its sycophants...

Tom Kath , May 30, 2019 at 20:13

“Something rotten” is not restricted to the state of Denmark, Britain, or USA. It is not even restricted to the “West”, so we must seek more fundamentally for the source of this world’s abject immoral disgustingness. The race to the bottom is keenly contested.

KiwiAntz , May 30, 2019 at 20:09

At last, for the long suffering Brits? The Maybot has finally danced her “Robotic Dance” off the World scene to the cheers & high fives of most of the British people, who have thoroughly had a gutsful of her duplicitous behaviour & disastrous mishandling of Brexit!

And the article lists her shameful record during the period she was Prime Minister, especially the Glenfell Tower tragedy & her pathetic response along with the criminal culpability of the disgusting Conservative Tory Party & its role in this travesty?

Their murderous Policies & austerity directly led to this disgrace? So its good riddance to a contemptible woman, a abject failure & a loser who was good for absolutely nothing except walking on stages & doing really bad dance moves!

LJ , May 30, 2019 at 18:39

She was all the Tories could come up with to keep Corbyn out of the office of Prime Minister. There should certainly have been a General Election after David Cameron crashed the ship of state with Brexit.

Boris Johnson would certainly complete that job so someone else will have to play dartboard until the next election. Despite what the Guardian and BBC and the rest say. And in spite of the Zionist attack on Corbyn he will be Prime Minister. Long Overdue. Britain is Great no more.

Without Russian money they are certainly not the world’s 6th largest economy and it appears that unless they want to side with China against the USA which is improbable, no impossible, they will lose Chinese Capital as well after Brexit.

Good. I hope Scotland votes for Independence. Wales should as well. Britain deserves to go to hell after their history as an Empire. London is 41% foreign born. Just who are they anyway? The British? We here in the USA, or rather younger people here in the USA should take a good look at what happens over the next 5 years there and put it your memory banks.

elmerfudzie , May 30, 2019 at 17:37

Tainted tenure indeed! No one asks the right questions anymore. For example, where did all that Brexit cash come from? As I commented previously at CONSORTIUMNEWS and it is redacted here; “The Panama Papers signaled a need for radical change(s) in the EU banking laws. Hiding money, legit or not from, fair and open taxation, has become increasingly difficult for the upper crust….”

The BREXIT cash originated, no surprise folks, from a Gibraltar based firm, where a Mr Arron Banks (big bucks Banks) a guy with money to burn, with corporate holdings in the Isle of Man and too, one of his buddies, an Alan Kentish of the STM group specializing in, oh you’ll love this, offshore wealth preservation! LOL

And again, a Mr. Jim Mellon a for real billionaire, several times over I should think, the same guy who carpetbagged Russia after the collapse of the CCCP. His gleanings were called “privatization”… of poor mother Russia. Well, to make a long story short, Mr Kentish, the original pro-BREXITeer was arrested in Gibraltar under the UK’s Crime Act for such suspicious money funneling(s). My oh my Ms May, what strange political bedfellows you seem to have!

Jeff Harrison , May 30, 2019 at 17:37

Here today, gone to lunch as the late Douglas Adams put it. The US has it’s own deep state problem of civil servants, especially alphabet soup agencies who are accustomed to operating in the dark and think that they, not the political appointees make policy. Their thinking is bolstered by Congresses who stonewall and delay approving personnel for leadership positions in the civil service.

[May 31, 2019] Satire is no longer possible with the US neoliberal MSM constantly moving uyp the upper limits of stupidity

May 31, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

NUGGETS FROM THE STUPIDITY MINE.

A Beluga whale that hangs around people ; exactly the behaviour you'd expect from one of Putin's spy whales ! The NYT, welded to the lie, opines that Barr's inquiry might expose a "person close to Mr. Putin" . Oops!

NYT, you just did (shows that they don't even read the handouts they re-type). English needs a new vocabulary for the concept of "stupid".

[May 31, 2019] Comments on Official Response by OPCW to the Engineering Assessment on Douma

OPSW proved to be a gang of a despicable, completely bought by the USA bottomfeeders. Looks like they are now a part of "Intergity Initiative"
At this point credibility of the USA and UK experts on the topic is not zero, it is negative: they systematically generate false flags.
Truth be told after Skripals affair the level of credibility of the UK government and expects is far below zero in any case. This is just a gang of despicable warmongers.
Notable quotes:
"... If SST readers are confused by OPCW's constantly shifting explanations for why the Final Report on the Douma incident excluded the Engineering Assessment, they're not the only ones. ..."
"... Unfortunately for whoever thought up this defence, it is explicitly contradicted by both the Interim Report (published last July) and the Final Report, which state that the objective of the engineering studies was to evaluate how the cylinders arrived in position. ..."
May 29, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Comments on official response to the release of the Engineering Assessment of the Douma cylinders Paul McKeigue, David Miller, Jake Mason, Piers Robinson

Members of Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media 1 Introduction

This post comments on the response to our release of the Executive Summary of the Engineering Assessment of the Douma cylinders on 13 May 2018. All emphases in quoted passages are added by us. After OPCW had confirmed the document to be genuine, the story was covered extensively by Russian media.

An informed commentary by Professor Hiroyuki Aoyama in Tokyo has been published on Yahoo News's Japanese site. The only coverage in western corporate media has been by Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday , Robert Fisk in the Independent and Tucker Carlson on Fox .

Other journalists who have been in touch with us have told us that their stories were spiked by editors. As expected, the story has reached much larger numbers through websites and videos that have disseminated it.

2 OPCW's response to the release of the document

2.1 Official response

In an email dated 11 May and shown to us, Deepti Choubey, the head of OPCW Public Affairs, wrote:

Thank you for reaching out to us. It is exclusively through the Fact-Finding Mission, set up in 2014, that the OPCW establishes facts surrounding allegations of use of toxic chemicals for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic. On 1 March 2019, the OPCW has issued its final and only valid official report, signed by the Director-General, regarding the incident that took place in Douma, Syrian Arab Republic, on 7 April 2018. The document you shared with us is not part of any of the material produced by the FFM. The individual mentioned in the document has never been a member of the FFM .

A subsequent email on 16 May stated:

The OPCW establishes facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic through the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM), which was set up in 2014. The OPCW Technical Secretariat reaffirms that the FFM complies with established methodologies and practices to ensure the integrity of its findings. The FFM takes into account all available, relevant, and reliable information and analysis within the scope of its mandate to determine its findings. Per standard practice, the FFM draws expertise from different divisions across the Technical Secretariat as needed. All information was taken into account, deliberated, and weighed when formulating the final report regarding the incident in Douma, Syrian Arab Republic, on 7 April 2018. On 1 March 2019, the OPCW issued its final report on this incident, signed by the Director-General.

Per OPCW rules and regulations, and in order to ensure the privacy, safety, and security of personnel, the OPCW does not provide information about individual staff members of the Technical Secretariat. Pursuant to its established policies and practices, the OPCW Technical Secretariat is conducting an internal investigation about the unauthorised release of the document in question. At this time, there is no further public information on this matter and the OPCW is unable to accommodate requests for interviews.

This was taken as confirmation that the document was genuine.

2.2 Unofficial briefings

Following OPCW's confirmation on 16 May that the document we had released was genuine, two individuals in the UK whose communications have supported UK government policy on Syria favoring regime change – Professor Scott Lucas of Birmingham University, and the former Guardian journalist Brian Whitaker – began reporting that they had inside information on how the Engineering Assessment had been excluded from the Final Report.

2.2.1 Lucas

On 16 May Lucas reported that:

Henderson was writing what was, in effect, a dissenting assessment from that of most of the OPCW's team and consultant experts. His findings were considered but were a minority opinion as final report was written.

He followed this with a remarkably indiscreet tweet asserting that "I know how OPCW review process was conducted and what place Henderson's assessment had in it." When challenged to explain his connection to OPCW, Lucas did not answer. Hitchens reported on 24 May that OPCW Public Affairs had refused to comment on whether Lucas was receiving authorised briefings from OPCW.

2.2.2 Whitaker

Whitaker was at first more circumspect about his sources, reporting on 16 May that:

One story circulating in the chemical weapons community (though not confirmed) is that Henderson had wanted to join the FFM and got rebuffed but was then given permission to do some investigating on the sidelines of the FFM.

Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat extended Whitaker's version with:

This reporting by @Brian_Whit on the leaked Douma report that the conspiracy theorists and chemical weapon denialists are so excited about is consistent with what I'm hearing . Looks like they all got played by a disgruntled OPCW employee.

In an article posted on 24 May, Whitaker was more explicit in reporting the spin of "an informed source" on the Engineering Assessment.

an informed source has now shed some light on it. The key point here is the FFM's terms of reference. Its basic role was to establish facts about the alleged attack, and it was not allowed to apportion blame -- that is the job of the OPCW's newly-created Investigation and Identification Team (IIT). Although the FFM determined that the cylinders were probably dropped from the air, the published report (in line with its mandate) omitted any mention of the obvious implication that they had been dropped by regime aircraft. According to the informed source, when Henderson's assessment was reviewed there were concerns that it came too close to attributing responsibility, and thus fell outside the scope of the FFM's mandate. Whether or not that was the right decision, there was no doubt that Henderson's assessment did fall within the mandate of the new Investigation and Identification Team. For that reason, according to the source, he was advised to pass it to the IIT instead -- and he did so.

Unless this account was entirely fabricated, it could only have come from someone with close knowledge of how the Final Report had been prepared. A subsequent tweet from Whitaker on 25 May, presumably channelling the same source, confirmed that "Henderson and others" had been in Douma:

Henderson and others did go to Douma to provide temporary support to the FFM, but they were not official members of the FFM.

2.3 What the channelling of off-the-record briefings tells us

It is likely that (at least on this occasion) Lucas and Whitaker are telling the truth, and that they have been briefed by someone with close knowledge of how the FFM Final Report was prepared. If these briefings had not been authorised, OPCW Public Affairs could easily have responded to Hitchens's question with a standard statement reiterating that "there is no further public information on this matter" and that this extended to off-the-record briefings. We would expect OPCW press officers to be reluctant to issue further statements that could subsequently be shown to be false.

Like cellular biologists who perturb a complex system and measure its outputs, we can infer from these observations the existence of a pathway. This pathway connects the production of OPCW reports on alleged chemical attacks in Syria with a network of communicators in the UK who in different ways have promoted the cause of regime change in Syria since 2012. It is evident that Lucas and Whitaker are output nodes of this pathway. From August 2012, Whitaker as the Guardian's Middle East editor promoted Higgins from obscure beginnings as a blogger to become a widely-cited source on the Syrian conflict. Whitaker was the first journalist to devote an article to attacking the Working Group, in February 2018 when its only collective output had been a brief blog post.

It is of course possible that OPCW management for some procedural reason was unable to provide further information on the record, and sought to disseminate an accurate version of events via off-the-record briefings. But the choice of such highly partisan commentators as Lucas and Whitaker as channels inevitably calls into question the good faith of whoever provided these briefings, and undermines any remaining pretence to impartiality on the part of OPCW management.

2.4 Discrepancies between versions of OPCW's response

An established method in investigative journalism is to compare official versions and to infer from discrepancies what they are trying to hide. On 11 May OPCW Public Affairs stated that "The document you shared with us is not part of any of the material produced by the FFM. The individual mentioned in the document has never been a member of the FFM". After we pointed out that these two statements were provably false – the external collaboration on the engineering assessment of the Douma cylinders must have been authorised by OPCW, and Henderson could hardly have been in Damascus on a tourist visa – they were not repeated on the record. By 16 May OPCW Public Affairs had formulated a new policy: "Per OPCW rules and regulations the OPCW does not provide information about individual staff members of the Technical Secretariat." A more subtle version of Henderson's role was then channelled through Lucas and Whitaker: "minority opinion", "on the sidelines" and elaborated by Higgins as "disgruntled OPCW employee"'. Between 16 May and 25 May the story channelled through Whitaker changed from "Henderson had wanted to join the FFM and got rebuffed but was then given permission to do some investigating on the sidelines of the FFM." to admitting that "Henderson and others" were in Douma "to provide temporary support to the FFM".

On 24 May Whitaker's informed source admits that "Henderson's assessment was reviewed" for the Final Report, no longer attempting to maintain that the Engineering Assessment was not part of the FFM's process. If we strip away the flannel from this latest story, it appears to be accurate. The "informed source" tells us that the Engineering Assessment was excluded from the Final Report not because its technical analysis had been rebutted, but because the conclusion that the cylinders had been placed in position rather than dropped from the air would necessarily have attributed responsibility for the incident to the opposition .

The argument that the mandate of the FFM prevented it from endorsing the Engineering Assessment's conclusion is easily refuted as a matter of logic. Announcing the release of the Final Report, OPCW stated that "The FFM's mandate is to determine whether chemical weapons or toxic chemicals as weapons have been used in Syria." In Douma this could be reduced to deciding between two alternatives: (1) the gas cylinders were dropped from the air, implying that they were used as chemical weapons; (2) the cylinders were placed in position, implying that the incident was staged and that no chemical attack had occurred. Although to conclude that alternative (2) was correct would implicate the opposition, this would not be attribution of blame for a chemical attack but rather a determination that chemical weapons had not been used.

Clearly a verdict that the alleged chemical attack had been staged would have been unacceptable to the French government, which had joined in the US-led missile attack on 14 April 2018. We can surmise that the Chief of Cabinet of OPCW, Sébastien Braha, who (according to his Linkedin profile ) is still in post as a French diplomat, would have been in a difficult position if he had allowed the FFM to release a report that reached this conclusion. He would be in an even more difficult position if he were to allow the newly-established Investigation and Identification Team (IIT), which also reports to him, to overturn the conclusions of the Final Report and report that the alleged chemical attack was staged. Even if Braha's failure to update his online profile with the date of leaving his diplomatic post is an oversight, this would still be a conflict of interest based on the OECD definition of what "a reasonable person, knowing the relevant facts, would conclude". As we have noted, OPCW appears to have no arrangements for managing conflicts of interest. Until the governance and working practices of OPCW are radically reformed, it is hard to see how neutral observers can have confidence in the impartiality of the FFM or the IIT.

3 Government responses to an alleged chlorine attack on 19 May 3.1 Reports of the alleged attack

Possible allusions to the release of the Engineering Assessment on 13 May can be discerned in government responses to a report of an alleged chlorine attack in Idlib on 19 May. The earliest report , mentioning three missiles or shells loaded with chlorine was from an Arabic-language website named ebaa.news at 11.01 am Syrian time. The location was given as Kubina Hill in Kabbana village, on the border with Lattakia. At 12.46 am Syrian time Hamish de Bretton-Gordon (HdBG) tweeted

Appears to be a chlorine attack from Regime artillery shells in Jose Al Shugour village - 4 casualties being evacuated for treatment

"Jose Al Shugour village" is presumably the town of Jisr Al-Shughour. Rami Abdulrahman's Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on 22 May that four fighters were treated in hospital after they "suffocated in the intense and violent shelling by the regime forces, within caves and trenches" but did not endorse the claims of a chlorine attack, noting that the source of this story was "the Media platform of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham". The story was elaborated in a Fox News report on 23 May that quoted a "Dr Ahmad" from Idlib, who reported that he had treated the casualties. Fox News also quoted Nidal Shikhani of the Chemical Violations Documentation Centre Syria (CVDCS).

A possible match for the identity of "Dr Ahmad" is Dr Ahmad al-Dbis, quoted by Reuters on 4 May 2019 as Safety and Security Manager for the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations (UOSSM), describing airstrikes on Idlib and northern Hama. Since 2016 both HdBG and the CBRN Task Force that he set up in 2013 have been affiliated to UOSSM. A report from 2014 quotes a "Dr Ahmad" described as a medic trained by HdBG for the CBRN Task Force. CVDCS is an NGO that has worked closely with the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission since 2015 to provide purported eyewitnesses for interview in Syria, originally established in 2012 as the Office of Documentation of the Chemical File in Syria , and later registered in Brussels as a non-profit company named Same Justice. This company never complied with the legal requirement to file accounts, and went into liquidation on 27 February 2019.

The ebaa.news site appears to be closely linked to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), frequently quoting HTS spokesmen and sometimes reporting exclusive stories obtained from HTS. On 31 May 2018 HTS was designated by the US Department of State as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. The Coordinator for Counterterrorism noted that this designation "serves notice that the United States is not fooled by this al-Qa'ida affiliate's attempt to rebrand itself." In conclusion, the provenance of this story of a chemical attack on 19 May is dubious, and the extent to which the sources are independent of one another is not clear.

3.2 UK response

On 22 May John Woodcock MP asked at Prime Minister's Questions :

British experts are this morning investigating a suspected chlorine attack by al-Assad in Idlib. If it is proved, will she lead the international response against the return of this indiscriminate evil?

As expected, the Prime Minister gave a bellicose answer, but made no reference to OPCW.

We of course acted in Syria, with France and the United States, when we saw chemical weapons being used there. We are in close contact with the United States and are monitoring the situation closely, and if any use of chemical weapons is confirmed, we will respond appropriately.

Woodcock's "British experts" appear to have included HdBG, who had suggested in a tweet the day before that Woodcock should ask the Prime Minister about Idlib, though not about a chemical attack. In a subsequent tweet Woodcock stated that his experts were "on the ground in Syria".

3.3 French response

The daily press from the French foreign ministry on 22 May responded to a question on the alleged chemical attack on 19 May with:

We have noted with concern these allegations which must be investigated. We have full confidence in the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons .

3.4 US response

A press statement from State Department Spokesperson Morgan Ortagus on 21 May dealt with the alleged chemical attack two days earlier:

Unfortunately, we continue to see signs that the Assad regime may be renewing its use of chemical weapons, including an alleged chlorine attack in northwest Syria on the morning of May 19, 2019. We are still gathering information on this incident, but we repeat our warning that if the Assad regime uses chemical weapons, the United States and our allies will respond quickly and appropriately.

She mentioned a " continuing disinformation campaign " to "create the false narrative that others are to blame for chemical weapons attacks that the Assad regime itself is conducting". The following day Mr James Jeffrey, the State Department's special representative to Syria, testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee that "So far we cannot confirm [the reports of chemical weapons use] but we're watching it". The New York Times reported this to be a "carefully worded recalibration" of the announcement by Morgan Ortagus the day before, and that American military officials had "expressed surprise over the State Department's strong statement". 4 Comparison of the Engineering Assessment with the published Final Report

A comparison of the Engineering Assessment and the Final Report have been reported in outline form by McIntyre . As Larson has noted , there are indications in the Final Report that whoever drafted it had access to an earlier version of the Engineering Assessment (the released version dated 27 February 2019 is marked Rev 1) and was attempting to rebut it without overtly mentioning it. For instance the Engineering Assessment lists five points supporting the opinion of experts that the crater at location 2 had been created by a the explosion of a mortar round or artillery rocket rather than an impact from a falling object. These points included:

"an (unusually elevated, but possible) fragmentation pattern on upper walls"

"(whilst it was observed that a fire had been created in the corner of the room) black scorching on the crater underside and ceiling."

The Final Report states falsely that a fragmentation pattern, visible in open-source images, was absent:

The FFM analysed the damage on the rooftop terrace and below the crater in order to determine if it had been created by an explosive device. However, this hypothesis is unlikely given the absence of primary and secondary fragmentation characteristic of an explosion that may have created the crater and the damage surrounding it.

This is followed by a paragraph that notes the blackening of the ceiling and attributes it to the fire set in the room. The Final Report's allusion to the possibility of an explosive device, with mention of fragmentation pattern and the setting of a fire in the room appears to be an attempt to explain away the argument made in the Engineering Assessment.

We note that several of the key findings of the Engineering Assessment are based only on examination of the cylinders. For instance the Engineering Assessment reports that the cylinder at Location 2 bears no markings that would be consistent with the frame with fins (lying on the balcony) ever having been attached to it, let alone the markings that would be expected if the frame had been stripped off by impact. The Final Report records that the Syrian government insisted on retaining custody of the cylinders for criminal investigation purposes. Accordingly:

On 4 June, FFM team members tagged and sealed the cylinders from Locations 2 and 4, and documented the procedure.

A useful way to take forward the investigation of the Douma incident would now be for the Syrian government to invite an international team of neutral experts to examine the cylinders, to assess whether the observations support the findings of the Engineering Assessment or the conclusions of the published FFM Final Report, and to publish their findings in a form that allows peer review and reproducibility of results from data. The next step would be a criminal investigation of this incident, focusing on where, how and by whom were the 35 victims seen in images at Location 2 killed.

Posted at 02:37 AM in government , History , Syria , The Military Art , weapons | Permalink

Castellio , 29 May 2019 at 12:05 PM

Thank you for pursuing this issue in depth and with rigour.

Paul McKeigue , 29 May 2019 at 12:05 PM

If SST readers are confused by OPCW's constantly shifting explanations for why the Final Report on the Douma incident excluded the Engineering Assessment, they're not the only ones.

Yesterday OPCW released its official response (dated 21 May) to Russian criticisms (dated 26 April) of the Final Report of the Fact-Finding Mission on the Douma incident. In this response OPCW made, officially and on the record, the same argument as that made by Whitaker's "informed source: that to assess how the cylinders arrived in their positions was outside the mandate of the FFM.

Unfortunately for whoever thought up this defence, it is explicitly contradicted by both the Interim Report (published last July) and the Final Report, which state that the objective of the engineering studies was to evaluate how the cylinders arrived in position.

Peter Hitchens is on the case, and has listed these contradictions and requested an explanation from OPCW.

https://t.co/siF2D4yita

[May 31, 2019] Satire is no longer possible with the US neoliberal MSM constantly moving uyp the upper limits of stupidity

May 31, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

NUGGETS FROM THE STUPIDITY MINE.

A Beluga whale that hangs around people ; exactly the behaviour you'd expect from one of Putin's spy whales ! The NYT, welded to the lie, opines that Barr's inquiry might expose a "person close to Mr. Putin" . Oops!

NYT, you just did (shows that they don't even read the handouts they re-type). English needs a new vocabulary for the concept of "stupid".

[May 31, 2019] One Man's Quest To Expose A Fake BBC Video About Syria

Notable quotes:
"... If you support Robert Stuart's efforts, go to this crowdfunding website. There you can learn more and contribute to this important effort to reveal whether the BBC video 'Saving Syria's Children' showed true or staged events. Was the alleged "napalm" attack real or was it staged propaganda? The project needs a large number of small donors and a few substantial ones to meet the June 7 deadline ..."
"... By the way, I recommend watching the 3 minute video at the crowd funding site: ..."
May 31, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

librul , May 30, 2019 1:31:34 PM | 3

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-29/one-mans-quest-expose-fake-bbc-video-about-syria


It's a David vs Goliath story. A former local newspaper reporter, Robert Stuart, is taking on the British Broadcasting Corporation. Stuart believes that a sensational video story about an alleged atrocity in Syria "was largely, if not entirely, staged." The BBC would like it all to just go away. But like David, Stuart will not back down or let it go. It has been proposed that the BBC could settle the issue by releasing the raw footage from the event, but they refuse to do this. Why?

...


Robert Stuart is not quitting. He hopes the next step will be a documentary film dramatically showing what he has discovered and further investigating important yet unexplored angles.

The highly experienced film producer Victor Lewis-Smith, who tore up his BBC contract, has stepped forward to help make this happen.

But to produce a high quality documentary including some travel takes funding. After devoting almost six years to this effort, Robert Stuart's resources are exhausted. The project needs support from concerned members of the public.

If you support Robert Stuart's efforts, go to this crowdfunding website. There you can learn more and contribute to this important effort to reveal whether the BBC video 'Saving Syria's Children' showed true or staged events. Was the alleged "napalm" attack real or was it staged propaganda? The project needs a large number of small donors and a few substantial ones to meet the June 7 deadline.

My main point of posting

They are looking for crowd funding to produce a documentary. I have not contributed thru crowd funding before.
1) is it safe and secure? input please
2) will my contribution be a matter of public record?
3) anything else you want to say, thx

By the way, I recommend watching the 3 minute video at the crowd funding site:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/saving-syria-s-children-did-the-bbc-lie#/

[May 29, 2019] With Russiagate, we Soviet immigrants were finally forced to reckon with the bigotry of America's elite by Yasha Levine

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Immigrant life was tough -- especially for the adults. People struggled to make ends meet and to fit into a totally new society ..."
"... Life was hard and integration was difficult. ..."
"... We were mostly Jewish and mostly seen as white. And we had a special, glorified place in American political culture: We were victims of Soviet repression and antisemitism, saved by an altruistic America. We were paraded around as a living example of American superiority and a symbol a Soviet barbarism. ..."
"... For nearly four years now, Soviet and Russian immigrants have watched America's liberal political elite shift the blame for their country's domestic political problems away from themselves and onto a fictitious, inscrutable foreign enemy: a xenophobic campaign that put people like us -- "the Russians" -- at the center of everything that's gone wrong in America. We've watched as this panic grew from a fear of the Russian government to an all-encompassing, irrational racist conspiracy theory that put a cloud over not just Russian nationals or Russian government officials, but anyone from the lands of the former Soviet union. ..."
"... Immigrants turned on the TV to see top American security officials, politicians, respected journalists, analysts, and pundits tell national viewers that they were right to be afraid of us: Russians are devious, untrustworthy, wired to hate democracy , and genetically driven to lie and cheat. People like us pose a threat. We are a possible fifth column -- whether we know it it or not, and that includes Russian pensioners and infants. In the words of Keith Olbermann, we were "Russian scum." ..."
"... In all of this, "Russian" has been a mutable category, flexible enough rope in Russian-Jews, Ukrainian-Jews, ethnic Russians, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians and all sorts of other ethnicities. Any one of those could fit, depending on the need of the constantly evolving conspiracy theory. In America, this added up to something like three million people. ..."
"... This bigoted campaign has gone on non-stop for nearly four years -- and it's come from the very top: primed by American security services and pumped out by respectable liberal media institutions. To Soviet immigrants, it's been disorienting and confusing. It's the first time since coming to America that we have found ourselves targeted this way. ..."
"... And that's the funny thing about this Russia panic. For years, a huge chunk of America's political class has been screeching that "the Russians" are undermining trust in American institutions. But to many Soviet immigrants here in America, it's precisely this xenophobic panic that's been doing the undermining. ..."
"... Soviet immigrants have always had an implicit belief in the superiority of American institutions. It's been a religious thing for them. But seeing themselves get swept up and demonized in this way has bred disillusionment and revulsion with American politics on a level I have never seen. In that sense, Russiagate has been a coming of age moment: it has undermined their naive fresh-off-the-boat faith and gave them a personal glimpse into an America that's paranoid, venal, and unapologetically xenophobic. ..."
May 28, 2019 | thegrayzone.com

This article was originally published at Yasha Levine's Influence Ops . Subscribe to Yasha's work here .

I was talking recently to a Russian acquaintance of mine who lives in the New York area. Years ago, he had studied engineering in Moscow and later transferred to a university here in the states. He told me that not long after moved, he got an unexpected visit from a couple of FBI agents who tried to recruit him. They came right to his apartment and seemed to know everything about him. They had a detailed file which, among other things, included every application he had submitted to American universities. They also had a dossier on his old academic advisor back in Moscow containing intel about the research the professor was doing and the contracts he had with the Russian military. They wanted to know what he knew about this military work and then asked him to identify photographs of various equipment and instruments. He was stunned by their sudden appearance and spooked by their efficiency and competence. He was also smitten with the female agent. "She was gorgeous. I would have told her anything," he told me. But he didn't have anything to tell. Back in Moscow he had been a nerdy kid studying engineering. He had no idea about any of the stuff they were asking. After a while, the FBI agents left. They never contacted him again. But the message was clear: they were watching, and they could pop in at any time again. His story is not unique. The FBI does this kind of stuff on a regular basis. By some estimates, at least a third of all international students get a similar visit from a friendly pair of agents.

And given the national security panic about China and Russia being whipped up right now, I wouldn't be surprised if that number is a helluva lot higher. Just the other week, the New York Times reported that the FBI has ramped up its surveillance, intimidation and deportation of Chinese academics in America. As FBI director Christopher Wray explained, America's security apparatus isn't just worried about the Chinese government. To them, all Chinese are suspect -- they pose a "whole-of-society threat." Even progressive political strategists believe China is an existential threat to America and are helping fan a bipartisan sinophobic campaign that's ensnared people I know .

With Russia and China convulsing our body politic, my buddy's "unremarkable" story got me thinking about how easily and naturally xenophobic panics fit into American political culture -- and how, until fairly recently, Russian and Soviet immigrants like me had never really felt the brunt of these campaigns. From my earliest days as Soviet immigrant kid in America, I've been primed to see this country as a unique beacon of tolerance -- a place where bigotry and racism, if they exist at all, are banished to the far dark edges of society. It was a truism to us that unlike the Soviet Union -- which was "closed," "bigoted," "paranoid," and "repressive" -- America was "open," "tolerant" and "accepting." Later as an adult, I came to understand just much how bigotry and systemic racism and exclusion are engrained in the politics and culture of modern America. Working as a journalist and reporting on the darkest recesses of America, it was impossible not to.

But growing up in an insular, fresh-off-the-boat immigrant community in sleepy San Francisco, it was easy to believe in an idealized, whitewashed vision of the country that took us in. Immigrant life was tough -- especially for the adults. People struggled to make ends meet and to fit into a totally new society. There was the usual petty crime and a bit of violence. People hustled to make money -- some succeeded, others failed and suffered. Life was hard and integration was difficult. But compared to other immigrant and minority groups, we were a relatively privileged bunch.

We were mostly Jewish and mostly seen as white. And we had a special, glorified place in American political culture: We were victims of Soviet repression and antisemitism, saved by an altruistic America. We were paraded around as a living example of American superiority and a symbol a Soviet barbarism. For most the 20th century, American lawmakers had crafted laws to specifically keep Jews out. We were "rats," according to Wisconsin Senator Alexander Wiley, who helped craft a 1948 law to prevent victims of the Holocaust from immigrating to America. But with us it was different. Americans protested outside Soviet embassies on our behalf. Lobbyists and lawmakers from Washington DC championed our cause and put together sanctions to secure our release. We were a bipartisan project -- supported by the might of the American empire.

Yasha Levine, Judeo-Bolshevik infiltrator. San Francisco, 1999

My immigrant community was privileged in that way. And because of that, we never really worried about mass immigration raids. We weren't punitively targeted by cops just because of the color of our skin. We weren't seen as a terrorist threat and targeted for infiltration and entrapment by the FBI. We never turned on the TV to see ourselves dehumanized or branded as a threat from within -- as enemies of the American way of life. Looking back on all the petty -- and not so petty -- crime we got into as kids, I'm amazed by how leniently the cops dealt with us.

We occupied a special spot in the immigrant pyramid. And because of it, we had never been in the crosshairs of a good ol' traditional American xenophobic panic. The anti-Russian hysteria of the early 20th century and the Red Scare of the Cold War was a distant past that few us even were even aware existed. We never knew what it was like to have the country's media and political class brand people like you a possible threat. In fact, watching other minority and immigrant groups get demonized only reinforced my community's feeling of superiority. My fellow Soviet immigrants have never been known for their progressive racial politics -- well, when you get down to it, quite a few are generic, down-the-line bigots. And so the general sense was, "We're not like them. We're different. And anyway, if some ethnic groups are being targeted, there must a good reason for it. America is a nation of laws, after all. People here aren't hounded for bigoted political reasons like they are in repressive authoritarian countries."

But this belief in the infallibility of American institutions started taking a big nose dive right around Donald Trump won the election.

For nearly four years now, Soviet and Russian immigrants have watched America's liberal political elite shift the blame for their country's domestic political problems away from themselves and onto a fictitious, inscrutable foreign enemy: a xenophobic campaign that put people like us -- "the Russians" -- at the center of everything that's gone wrong in America. We've watched as this panic grew from a fear of the Russian government to an all-encompassing, irrational racist conspiracy theory that put a cloud over not just Russian nationals or Russian government officials, but anyone from the lands of the former Soviet union.

Immigrants turned on the TV to see top American security officials, politicians, respected journalists, analysts, and pundits tell national viewers that they were right to be afraid of us: Russians are devious, untrustworthy, wired to hate democracy , and genetically driven to lie and cheat. People like us pose a threat. We are a possible fifth column -- whether we know it it or not, and that includes Russian pensioners and infants. In the words of Keith Olbermann, we were "Russian scum."

In all of this, "Russian" has been a mutable category, flexible enough rope in Russian-Jews, Ukrainian-Jews, ethnic Russians, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians and all sorts of other ethnicities. Any one of those could fit, depending on the need of the constantly evolving conspiracy theory. In America, this added up to something like three million people.

Putin's anchor babies, a ticking demographic time bomb that will blow up American democracy.

This bigoted campaign has gone on non-stop for nearly four years -- and it's come from the very top: primed by American security services and pumped out by respectable liberal media institutions. To Soviet immigrants, it's been disorienting and confusing. It's the first time since coming to America that we have found ourselves targeted this way.

At first it seemed like a joke. People laughed at it and mocked it. We were sure that this weird bigoted panic would pass. But when it didn't, when it continued to grow and seep into ever corner of our liberal media, we stopped being sure of what to do. We cycled through various modes: from dismissive to angry to depressed, to repressing it altogether. But talking to people about this, I get the sense that for many of us one feeling has stayed pretty much constant: a growing contempt for America's hallowed institutions: its press, its politicians, its national security elite.

And that's the funny thing about this Russia panic. For years, a huge chunk of America's political class has been screeching that "the Russians" are undermining trust in American institutions. But to many Soviet immigrants here in America, it's precisely this xenophobic panic that's been doing the undermining.

Soviet immigrants have always had an implicit belief in the superiority of American institutions. It's been a religious thing for them. But seeing themselves get swept up and demonized in this way has bred disillusionment and revulsion with American politics on a level I have never seen. In that sense, Russiagate has been a coming of age moment: it has undermined their naive fresh-off-the-boat faith and gave them a personal glimpse into an America that's paranoid, venal, and unapologetically xenophobic.

Is this coming of age a good thing? Well, I guess it had to happen at some point. But the way this disenchantment has unfolded -- driven by America's liberal ruling class -- has pretty much ensured that most Soviet immigrants will come out the other end even more reactionary than they were before. And who knew that was even possible?

Yasha Levine is an investigative journalist and a founding editor of The eXiled Online. His latest book is "Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet." https://surveillancevalley.com/

[May 28, 2019] Any time you read an article (or a comment) on Russia, substitute the word Jew for Russian and International Jewry for Russia and re-read.

Highly recommended!
May 28, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Sid Finster says: May 23, 2019 at 11:06 am

Any time you read an article (or a comment) on Russia, substitute the word "Jew" for "Russian" and "International Jewry" for "Russia" and re-read.

If the revised article would not look out of place in Der Stuermer, that should tell you something.

[May 28, 2019] New York Times Supports False Trump Claims About An Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program That Does Not Exist

May 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

During a press conference in Japan U.S. President Donald Trump today said ( video ):

And I'm not looking to hurt Iran at all. I'm looking to have Iran say, "No nuclear weapons." We have enough problems in this world right now with nuclear weapons. No nuclear weapons for Iran.

And I think we'll make a deal.

Iran said: "No nuclear weapons." It said that several times. It continues to say that.

Iran does not have the intent to make nuclear weapons. It has no nuclear weapons program.

But Trump may be confused because the U.S. 'paper of the record', the New York Times, recently again began to falsely assert that Iran has such a program.

A May 4 editorial in the Times claimed that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps was running such a nuclear weapons program. After a loud public outrage the Times corrected the editorial. Iran's UN office wrote a letter to the Times which was published on May 6:

In an early version of "Trump Dials Up the Pressure on Iran" (editorial, nytimes.com, May 4), now corrected, you referred to a nuclear weapons program in describing the reach of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
...
The editorial is correct in criticizing the punishing aspects of the Trump administration policy toward Iran -- one that has brought only suffering to the Iranian people and one that will not result in any change in Iran's policies. But it was wrong to refer to a weapons program -- a dangerous assertion that could lead to a great misunderstanding among the public .

Unfortunately that did not help. The NYT continues with the "dangerous assertion".

On May 13 the NYT reporters Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes wrote in White House Reviews Military Plans Against Iran, in Echoes of Iraq War :

At a meeting of President Trump's top national security aides last Thursday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons , administration officials said.

One can not accelerate one's car, if one does not have one. The phrase "accelerate work on nuclear weapons" implies that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. It may that the White House falsely claimed that but the authors use the phrase and never debunk it.

A May 14 NYT piece by Helene Cooper and Edward Wong repeats the false claim without pointing out that it is wrong:

The Trump administration is looking at plans to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons , The New York Times reported.

Also on May 14 the NYT 's editorial cartoon was published under the caption Will Iran Revive Its Nuclear Program? The caption of the orientalist cartoon falsely asserted that Iran had enriched Uranium to weapons grade. And no, Iran does not have a nuclear weapon or a nuclear weapons program in its freezer.


bigger

On May 16, after another public outcry, a correction was added to the cartoon:

An earlier version of a caption with this cartoon erroneously attributed a distinction to Iran's nuclear program. Iran has not produced highly enriched uranium.

After this onslaught of false New York Times claims about Iran NYT critic Belen Fernandez asked: Has the New York Times declared war on Iran? She lists other claims made by the Times about Iran that are far from the truth.

Three days later, on May 25, Palko Karasz reported in the New York Times on Iran's reaction to Trump's tiny troop buildup in the Persian Gulf region. Again the obviously false "accelerate" phrase was used:

Under White House plans revised after pressure from hard-liners led by John R. Bolton, the president's national security adviser, if Iran were to accelerate work on nuclear weapons , defense officials envision sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East.

Iran does not have a nuclear program. It can not "accelerate" one. The U.S. claims that Iran once had such a program but also says that it was ended in 2003. The standard formulation that Reuters uses in its Iran reporting is thereby appropriate:

The United States and the U.N. nuclear watchdog believe Iran had a nuclear weapons program that it abandoned. Tehran denies ever having had one.


On July 1 1968 Iran signed and later ratified the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear-weapon party. Article II of the treaty says:

Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transfer or whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices; and not to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

With that Iran said "No nuclear weapons". Iran also accepted the nuclear safeguards demand in Article III of the treaty in form of routine inspections by the treaty's nuclear watchdog organization IAEA.

Article IV of the NPT gives all non-nuclear-weapon state parties like Iran the "inalienable right" to "develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination." After signing the NPT Iran launched several civil nuclear projects. These started under the Shah in 1970s and continued after the 1979 revolution in Iran.


bigger

Ever since the Iranian revolution the U.S. expressed explicit hostility to the Islamic Republic of Iran. It instigated the President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to launch a war against the Islamic Republic and actively supported him throughout. It attempted and continues to attempt to hobble Iran's development, nuclear and non-nuclear, by all possible means.

Under U.S. President George W. Bush the U.S. government claimed that Iran had a nuclear weapons program. The Islamic Republic Iran rejected that claim and in 2004 signed the Additional Protocol to the NPT which allows the IAEA to do more rigorous, short-notice inspections at declared and undeclared nuclear facilities to look for secret nuclear activities.

With that the Islamic Republic of Iran said: "No nuclear weapons".

In a 2006 New York Times op-ed Javid Zarif, then the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations, wrote :

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, has issued a decree against the development, production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons.

With that Iran's highest political and religious leader said: "No nuclear weapons".

Not only did Iran sign the NPT and its Additional Protocol but its political leadership outright rejects the development and ownership of nuclear weapons.

Zarif also pointed out that the IAEA found that Iran had missed to declare some nuclear activities but also confirmed that it never had the nuclear weapons program the Bush administration claimed it had:

In November 2003, for example, the agency confirmed that "to date, there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities were related to a nuclear weapons program."

During the "previously undeclared nuclear material and activities" which the IAEA investigated, some Iranian scientists worked on a 'plan for a plan' towards nuclear weapons. They seem to have discussed what steps Iran would have to take, what materials, and what kind of organization it would need to launch a nuclear weapons program. The work was not officially sanctioned and no actual nuclear weapons program was ever launched. It is believed that the Iranian scientists worked on a 'plan for a plan' because they were concerned that Iran's then arch enemy Saddam Hussein, who had bombarded Iranian cities with chemical weapons, was working towards nuclear weapons. In 2003, after the U.S. invaded Iraq, that concern proved to be unfounded and the 'plan for a plan' project was shut down.

In December 2007 all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed the shut down:

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.
...
[T]he new [National Intelligence Estimate] declares with "high confidence" that a military-run Iranian program intended to transform that raw material into a nuclear weapon has been shut down since 2003, and also says with high confidence that the halt "was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure."

The National Intelligence Estimate ended efforts by the Bush administration to threaten Iran with war. But the U.S. government, under Bush and then under President Obama, continued its effort to deny Iran its "inalienable right" to civil nuclear programs.

Obama waged a campaign of ever increasing sanctions on Iran. But the country did not give in. It countered by accelerating its civil nuclear programs. It enriched more Uranium to civil use levels and developed more efficiant enrichment centrifuges. It was the Obama administration that finally gave up on its escalatory course. It conceded that Iran has the "inalienable right" to run its civil nuclear programs including Uranium enrichment. It was this concession, not the sanctions, that brought Iran to the table for talks about its nuclear programs.

The result of those talks was the The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, adopted on July 20, 2015.

The JCPOA gives the IAEA additional tools to inspect facilities in Iran. It restricts Iran's civil nuclear program to certain limits which will terminate in October 2025. The JCPOA also reaffirms that Iran has full rights under the NPT. The IAEA since regularly inspects facilities in Iran and consistently reaffirms in its reports that Iran has no nuclear weapons program.


The Trump administrations hostility to Iran has nothing to do with anything nuclear. The U.S. wants hegemony over the Persian Gulf region. Iran rejects such imperial desires. The U.S. wants to control the flow of hydrocarbon resources to its competitors, primarily China. Iran does not allow such controls over its exports. The U.S. wants that all hydrocarbon sales are made in U.S. dollars. Iran demands payments in other currencies. Israel, which has significant influence within the Trump administration, uses claims of a non existing Iranian nuclear weapons program to manipulate the U.S. public and to divert from its racist apartheid policies in Palestine.

Trump's talk - "I'm looking to have Iran say, "No nuclear weapons."" - is simply bullshit. Iran said so several times and continues to say so. But Trump obviously believes that he can get away with making such idiotic claims.

The New York Times proves him right. It is again slipping into the role that it played during the propaganda run-up to the war on Iraq in 2002/2003. False claims made by members of the Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were reported by the Times as true, even while diligent reporters at other outlets debunked those claims again and again. The Times later apologized and fired Judith Miller, one of its reporters who wrote several of the pieces that supported the false claims.

But it was never a problem of one reporter who channeled false claims by anonymous administration officials into her reports. It was the editorial decision by the Times , taken long before the war on Iraq began, to use its power to support such a war. That editorial decision made it possible that those false claims appeared in the paper.

This month alone one NYT editorial, one editorial cartoon and at least five reporters in three pieces published in the New York Times made false claims about an Iranian nuclear weapons program that, as all the relevant official institutions confirm, does not exist. This does not happen by chance.

It it is now obvious that the Times again decided to support false claims by an administration that is pushing the U.S. towards another war in the Middle East.

[May 28, 2019] Putin is not only fluent in German but is known to be something of a Germanophile

Notable quotes:
"... Merkel we shouldn't forget, grew up on the east side of Germany. She must have quite a understanding of her Russian counterparts. Putin on the other hand spent a portion of his KGB career in East Germany and both speak each other language. Both have little use for America. ..."
"... It’s good however to see it spelt out this clearly what’s the proper role for European countries in the world view of many Americans: obedient vassals. The mask keeps slipping. ..."
"... What if all political forces support pro-Russian sentiments, especially with regard to Ukraine? ..."
May 28, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

Dan Green , says: May 23, 2019 at 8:50 am

Often wondered, aside from what folks are told about Russians and Germans, Merkel we shouldn't forget, grew up on the east side of Germany. She must have quite a understanding of her Russian counterparts. Putin on the other hand spent a portion of his KGB career in East Germany and both speak each other language. Both have little use for America.

Connecticut Farmer , says: May 23, 2019 at 9:07 am

The indirect link between Thomas Mann and "nationalism" is at variance with the historical fact that Mann left Germany in the early thirties in PROTEST to the virulent nationalism exhibited by the National Socialist regime.

And in reading this piece one can't help but chuckle at the notion that Putin is not only fluent in German but is known to be something of a Germanophile.

German_reader, May 23, 2019 at 2:05 pm

“Europe, if it knows what’s good for itself, will continue to do well following the American lead.”

This self-righteousness and complete lack of self-awareness is absolutely bizarre given the American foreign policy record of the last 30 years.

It’s good however to see it spelt out this clearly what’s the proper role for European countries in the world view of many Americans: obedient vassals. The mask keeps slipping.

romegas, May 23, 2019 at 2:52 pm

MarkVA

what a poorly informed typically American centric view. One could easily pass you for a troll. sorry but I have no other word. Please note that Russia (and the Soviet Union) was the VICTIM of repetitive invasions – Polish, French, German etc – You would be hard pressed to find episodes where Russia ever threatened the West. After WWII in which the soviet union for with which I have no ideological sympathy whatsoever, it was to expected after the USSR suffered 29,0000,000 deaths and total devastation that they would enforced a buffer area – everyone would have done the same- it was the USSR that defeated Hitler irrespective of the myths you choose to believe – but that is history.

The Russians have been allied with the French, the British, the Austrians and indeed the Prussians – Alliances shifted – it was the consequence of a geopolitics called the balance of power. Indeed perhaps the Russians were the most naive of the lot – being screwed by the British and the Austrians against the Ottomans, the Czar lost his crown and an empire to honour his treaty with Britain and France in WWI when logic stated that he should have sued for a separate peace etc etc etc and why after all should not Germans and Russians not feel greater affinity to each other (when not slaughtering one another) than to the Americans – who are the Americans anyhow?

We in Europe associate Russia with Doestoevsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, Chekov – with Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Rubinstein – with Bruleau, Treyakov and Aivazovsky – with Khomyakov, Kantemir, Merezhkovsky and so on and so forth – in other words of great contributors to European civilisation.

What have you Americans given us? Hollywood? Disneyland? Stay out of Europe and the rest of the world for that matter – we have nothing in common – and if we choose to slaughter each other – let us – we do not need your ‘altruism’ and ‘exceptionalism’.

Bannerman, May 23, 2019 at 5:12 pm

Given that one has a hard enough time comprehending American politics, it would be sheer presumption to attempt to analyze the minds of Germans and Russians. Their lengthy and complicated history are quite bloody enough without Yankee saber rattling. To accuse the Germans of “Russophilia” is at least, an absurd stretch, if not downright loony. But being absurd and lunatic has never stopped a neocon in his tracks. I had a college acquaintanceship with Trotskyites in the Sixties, and their legitimate children the Neocons are no less weird than the source material.

But regarding the taint of a stain of authoritarianism in Russia and Germany… hello, the XXth Century on Line One.

Adeline Tornton, May 27, 2019 at 6:47 am

The author is worried that pro-Russian sentiments are still heard in Europe. According to his russophobic ideology, it happens due to the large-scale propaganda of the Russian media abroad.

In addition, the Germans, in his opinion, also have some kind of historically “irresistible craving for Russia.”

What if all political forces support pro-Russian sentiments, especially with regard to Ukraine?

[May 28, 2019] Fake Dossier -Creator Steele Refuses To Cooperate With AG Barr s Probe

May 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Having been practically a recluse since since the 'fake dossier' alleging links between Donald Trump and Russia that he produced was published by BuzzFeed in January 2017, Christophe Steele has reportedly refused to cooperate with AG Barr's probes

Reuters reports that , according to a source with knowledge of the situation, Steele, a former Russia expert for the British spy agency MI6, will not answer questions from prosecutor John Durham , named by Barr to examine the origins of the investigations into Trump and his campaign team.

However, buried deep in Reuters story is the same source claiming that Steele might cooperate with a parallel inquiry by the Justice Department's Inspector General into how U.S. law enforcement agencies handled pre-election investigations into both Trump and Clinton.

me width=

In the past Steele has cooperated, willingly being interviewed twice in the special counsel's investigation, and submitting answers in writing to the Senate Intelligence Committee, but apparently this time he is not willing.

With Steel refusing to cooperate, Joe DiGenova, former U.S. Attorney warned Monday on WMAL radio's Mornings on the Mall radio show,

"this is full scale war," adding that "we are heading toward a gigantic, gigantic fight...

The intelligence community, which includes the FBI, is in full resistance to disclosing what they did during the presidential campaign ."

Sara Carter reports that DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is expected to release his report on the FBI's handling of the investigation into Trump within weeks.

These investigation will hold those in the intelligence and law enforcement community accountable, depending on what evidence is discovered. This reporter is hearing from sources that it will be scathing. Those who abused their power and weaponized the tools meant to target America's enemies against a political opponents should be held accountable . Tags Politics Law Crime

Joiningupthedots , just now link

It seems reasonable to demand Steele's extradition to America to explain his part in the conspiracy.

I mean is being a party to the conspiracy, attempted treason and sedition of the attempted overthrow of an elected President not at least as important as Julian Assange who only made public some documents that someone else removed?

Whats the phrase again.........SLAM DUNK?

ufos8mycow , 2 minutes ago link

Steele might cooperate with a parallel inquiry by the Justice Department's Inspector General

Because the IG doesn't have prosecutorial power.

takeaction , 4 minutes ago link

Oh these fuckers are scared to death. Comey lashing out at Trump...on and on. This is going to be great...and Trump will play it perfect right into the election. And BIDEN was part of all of it. What a great next 6 years.

...never forget SETH.

Finally...is Ruth Ginsburg still alive?

Meat Hammer , 4 minutes ago link

If you haz nussing to hide you haz nussing to feah.

LordMaster , 7 minutes ago link

Funny, I was recently de-platformed on Twitter for tweeting to GCHQ (British Intelligence) that the UK's sordid involvement in spying on the Trump campaign would be exposed and "no amount of British bluster could refute it...".

JCW Industries , 7 minutes ago link

He'll talk to (((Horowitz))), but not Barr. Another reason not to trust the IG whitewash. Sure seems like Obstruction of Justice to me.

Fedaykinx , 7 minutes ago link

Wait, wasn't he willing to cooperate with a different investigation? I wonder what's changed, Mr. Steele?

Cman5000 , 9 minutes ago link

Poster boy for rendition!

DarkPurpleHaze , 5 minutes ago link

He's lucky to still be walking around given his extensive knowledge of how this went down.

Maybe he'll cooperate and go into a witness protection program of sorts or simply just disappear.

[May 28, 2019] New York Times Supports False Trump Claims About An Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program That Does Not Exist

May 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

During a press conference in Japan U.S. President Donald Trump today said ( video ):

And I'm not looking to hurt Iran at all. I'm looking to have Iran say, "No nuclear weapons." We have enough problems in this world right now with nuclear weapons. No nuclear weapons for Iran.

And I think we'll make a deal.

Iran said: "No nuclear weapons." It said that several times. It continues to say that.

Iran does not have the intent to make nuclear weapons. It has no nuclear weapons program.

But Trump may be confused because the U.S. 'paper of the record', the New York Times, recently again began to falsely assert that Iran has such a program.

A May 4 editorial in the Times claimed that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps was running such a nuclear weapons program. After a loud public outrage the Times corrected the editorial. Iran's UN office wrote a letter to the Times which was published on May 6:

In an early version of "Trump Dials Up the Pressure on Iran" (editorial, nytimes.com, May 4), now corrected, you referred to a nuclear weapons program in describing the reach of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
...
The editorial is correct in criticizing the punishing aspects of the Trump administration policy toward Iran -- one that has brought only suffering to the Iranian people and one that will not result in any change in Iran's policies. But it was wrong to refer to a weapons program -- a dangerous assertion that could lead to a great misunderstanding among the public .

Unfortunately that did not help. The NYT continues with the "dangerous assertion".

On May 13 the NYT reporters Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes wrote in White House Reviews Military Plans Against Iran, in Echoes of Iraq War :

At a meeting of President Trump's top national security aides last Thursday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons , administration officials said.

One can not accelerate one's car, if one does not have one. The phrase "accelerate work on nuclear weapons" implies that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. It may that the White House falsely claimed that but the authors use the phrase and never debunk it.

A May 14 NYT piece by Helene Cooper and Edward Wong repeats the false claim without pointing out that it is wrong:

The Trump administration is looking at plans to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons , The New York Times reported.

Also on May 14 the NYT 's editorial cartoon was published under the caption Will Iran Revive Its Nuclear Program? The caption of the orientalist cartoon falsely asserted that Iran had enriched Uranium to weapons grade. And no, Iran does not have a nuclear weapon or a nuclear weapons program in its freezer.


bigger

On May 16, after another public outcry, a correction was added to the cartoon:

An earlier version of a caption with this cartoon erroneously attributed a distinction to Iran's nuclear program. Iran has not produced highly enriched uranium.

After this onslaught of false New York Times claims about Iran NYT critic Belen Fernandez asked: Has the New York Times declared war on Iran? She lists other claims made by the Times about Iran that are far from the truth.

Three days later, on May 25, Palko Karasz reported in the New York Times on Iran's reaction to Trump's tiny troop buildup in the Persian Gulf region. Again the obviously false "accelerate" phrase was used:

Under White House plans revised after pressure from hard-liners led by John R. Bolton, the president's national security adviser, if Iran were to accelerate work on nuclear weapons , defense officials envision sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East.

Iran does not have a nuclear program. It can not "accelerate" one. The U.S. claims that Iran once had such a program but also says that it was ended in 2003. The standard formulation that Reuters uses in its Iran reporting is thereby appropriate:

The United States and the U.N. nuclear watchdog believe Iran had a nuclear weapons program that it abandoned. Tehran denies ever having had one.


On July 1 1968 Iran signed and later ratified the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear-weapon party. Article II of the treaty says:

Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transfer or whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices; and not to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

With that Iran said "No nuclear weapons". Iran also accepted the nuclear safeguards demand in Article III of the treaty in form of routine inspections by the treaty's nuclear watchdog organization IAEA.

Article IV of the NPT gives all non-nuclear-weapon state parties like Iran the "inalienable right" to "develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination." After signing the NPT Iran launched several civil nuclear projects. These started under the Shah in 1970s and continued after the 1979 revolution in Iran.


bigger

Ever since the Iranian revolution the U.S. expressed explicit hostility to the Islamic Republic of Iran. It instigated the President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to launch a war against the Islamic Republic and actively supported him throughout. It attempted and continues to attempt to hobble Iran's development, nuclear and non-nuclear, by all possible means.

Under U.S. President George W. Bush the U.S. government claimed that Iran had a nuclear weapons program. The Islamic Republic Iran rejected that claim and in 2004 signed the Additional Protocol to the NPT which allows the IAEA to do more rigorous, short-notice inspections at declared and undeclared nuclear facilities to look for secret nuclear activities.

With that the Islamic Republic of Iran said: "No nuclear weapons".

In a 2006 New York Times op-ed Javid Zarif, then the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations, wrote :

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, has issued a decree against the development, production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons.

With that Iran's highest political and religious leader said: "No nuclear weapons".

Not only did Iran sign the NPT and its Additional Protocol but its political leadership outright rejects the development and ownership of nuclear weapons.

Zarif also pointed out that the IAEA found that Iran had missed to declare some nuclear activities but also confirmed that it never had the nuclear weapons program the Bush administration claimed it had:

In November 2003, for example, the agency confirmed that "to date, there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities were related to a nuclear weapons program."

During the "previously undeclared nuclear material and activities" which the IAEA investigated, some Iranian scientists worked on a 'plan for a plan' towards nuclear weapons. They seem to have discussed what steps Iran would have to take, what materials, and what kind of organization it would need to launch a nuclear weapons program. The work was not officially sanctioned and no actual nuclear weapons program was ever launched. It is believed that the Iranian scientists worked on a 'plan for a plan' because they were concerned that Iran's then arch enemy Saddam Hussein, who had bombarded Iranian cities with chemical weapons, was working towards nuclear weapons. In 2003, after the U.S. invaded Iraq, that concern proved to be unfounded and the 'plan for a plan' project was shut down.

In December 2007 all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed the shut down:

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.
...
[T]he new [National Intelligence Estimate] declares with "high confidence" that a military-run Iranian program intended to transform that raw material into a nuclear weapon has been shut down since 2003, and also says with high confidence that the halt "was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure."

The National Intelligence Estimate ended efforts by the Bush administration to threaten Iran with war. But the U.S. government, under Bush and then under President Obama, continued its effort to deny Iran its "inalienable right" to civil nuclear programs.

Obama waged a campaign of ever increasing sanctions on Iran. But the country did not give in. It countered by accelerating its civil nuclear programs. It enriched more Uranium to civil use levels and developed more efficiant enrichment centrifuges. It was the Obama administration that finally gave up on its escalatory course. It conceded that Iran has the "inalienable right" to run its civil nuclear programs including Uranium enrichment. It was this concession, not the sanctions, that brought Iran to the table for talks about its nuclear programs.

The result of those talks was the The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, adopted on July 20, 2015.

The JCPOA gives the IAEA additional tools to inspect facilities in Iran. It restricts Iran's civil nuclear program to certain limits which will terminate in October 2025. The JCPOA also reaffirms that Iran has full rights under the NPT. The IAEA since regularly inspects facilities in Iran and consistently reaffirms in its reports that Iran has no nuclear weapons program.


The Trump administrations hostility to Iran has nothing to do with anything nuclear. The U.S. wants hegemony over the Persian Gulf region. Iran rejects such imperial desires. The U.S. wants to control the flow of hydrocarbon resources to its competitors, primarily China. Iran does not allow such controls over its exports. The U.S. wants that all hydrocarbon sales are made in U.S. dollars. Iran demands payments in other currencies. Israel, which has significant influence within the Trump administration, uses claims of a non existing Iranian nuclear weapons program to manipulate the U.S. public and to divert from its racist apartheid policies in Palestine.

Trump's talk - "I'm looking to have Iran say, "No nuclear weapons."" - is simply bullshit. Iran said so several times and continues to say so. But Trump obviously believes that he can get away with making such idiotic claims.

The New York Times proves him right. It is again slipping into the role that it played during the propaganda run-up to the war on Iraq in 2002/2003. False claims made by members of the Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were reported by the Times as true, even while diligent reporters at other outlets debunked those claims again and again. The Times later apologized and fired Judith Miller, one of its reporters who wrote several of the pieces that supported the false claims.

But it was never a problem of one reporter who channeled false claims by anonymous administration officials into her reports. It was the editorial decision by the Times , taken long before the war on Iraq began, to use its power to support such a war. That editorial decision made it possible that those false claims appeared in the paper.

This month alone one NYT editorial, one editorial cartoon and at least five reporters in three pieces published in the New York Times made false claims about an Iranian nuclear weapons program that, as all the relevant official institutions confirm, does not exist. This does not happen by chance.

It it is now obvious that the Times again decided to support false claims by an administration that is pushing the U.S. towards another war in the Middle East.

[May 26, 2019] Theresa May must answer for Novichok false flag operation

May 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Call me Al , 2 hours ago link

Good, Good and Good.

Whilst you are at it, prove that the Skripal poison / Novichok case was a fascicle fake and blame Theresa May categorically, show proof, throw her in prison and throw away the key.

[May 26, 2019] Taibbi Avenatti, Wohl, The Krassensteins prove that neoliberal MSM are a hucksters' paradise

May 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

The Krassensteins and Wohl are just two sides of the same coin, just as Avenatti is a more transparently pathetic version of the man he claimed to oppose, Donald Trump.

The Trump era has seen the rapid proliferation of a new type of political grifter. He or she often builds huge Twitter followings with hyper-partisan content, dishing out relentless aggression in the form of dunks and hot takes while promising big, Kaboom-y revelations that may or (more often) may not be factual. They often amplify presences using vast networks of sock-puppet accounts.

Avenatti had 254 cable appearances last year, including 147 on MSNBC and CNN alone in a 10-week period. Cable news bookers fell so madly in love they nearly propelled him into the presidential race, during a time when, among other things, he was allegedly bilking $1.6 million from a paraplegic.

Waytago, cable! Congratulations for giving air time to any slimeball who throws enough coal on your ratings furnace, beginning of course with the president.

...

Trump understood the modern press is not only weighted toward the outrageous, but discouraging of moderation in any form . In the WWE-ized landscape, people like Jeb Bush and John Kasich appeared as tomato cans for Trump to knock over, using shareable insults, extravagant policy promises and ratings-stimulating antics.

...

From Charles Ponzi to Mike Milken to L. Ron Hubbard to Bernie Madoff to Jack Abramoff, Americans have a long history of embracing snake-oilers and schemers, showering them not just with money but social approval . In America, even after exposure, the huckster is often still worshipped for being enterprising. In a weird way, we tend to admire the effort.

It's one thing to give these clowns our money and time. But do we have to give them our respect, too? Make them political heroes? Are we really that stupid?

Read more here...

[May 26, 2019] Global Elites Started The Russia Nonsense by Thomas Farnan

Russiagate is definitely connected to military industrial complex. But it is also connect to the attempt of neoliberal elite to cements cracks in the neoliberal facade of the US global empire by using external scapegoat. British elite was traditionally Russophobic as they competed for influence with Russia and tried to prevent alliance of Germany and Russia.
Notable quotes:
"... The British aristocracy has a condescending view of the hoi polloi who voted for Brexit, regarding them as easily manipulated Pygmalion-like by smarter people. They assumed Vladimir Putin was somehow playing Professor Henry Higgins to the flower girls who voted to reject the EU, because that's how they see the world. Among the Cambridge class, this simple prejudice renders Russian collusion a first principle with no need for supporting evidence". ..."
"... Unconventional candidate Donald Trump " rattled Washington " to its core in March 2016 when he wondered about NATO's continued relevance and questioned America's foreign policy in Ukraine. ..."
"... That's when this "Putin's candidate" stuff started among both Republicans and Democrats " egged on by Ukrainians " who almost certainly fed Steele the fake kompromat " in the dossier. ..."
"... Russia may be a convenient boogeyman that serves as a necessary foil to both sides in the Washington establishment. But, for once, let's fight the real enemy: the global elites who started this nonsense. ..."
May 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Thomas Farnan via Human Events,

Attorney General William Barr has turned the attention of the Russia probe to its origin. Who started this and why? The answer, as in all the best crime dramas, is probably hiding in plain sight.

On August 11, 2018" I wrote :

The British aristocracy has a condescending view of the hoi polloi who voted for Brexit, regarding them as easily manipulated Pygmalion-like by smarter people. They assumed Vladimir Putin was somehow playing Professor Henry Higgins to the flower girls who voted to reject the EU, because that's how they see the world. Among the Cambridge class, this simple prejudice renders Russian collusion a first principle with no need for supporting evidence".

Without supporting evidence to prove their fantastical worldview, the global elite set out to manufacture some.

...

President Eisenhower " the furthest thing from a conspiracy theorist America has ever produced " famously warned in his farewell address to beware "the military industrial complex"

The great funding pipeline that makes Washington D.C. the wealthiest region in America feeds mostly on military spending which still, nearly thirty years removed from the Cold War, requires a Russian enemy.

Unconventional candidate Donald Trump " rattled Washington " to its core in March 2016 when he wondered about NATO's continued relevance and questioned America's foreign policy in Ukraine.

That's when this "Putin's candidate" stuff started among both Republicans and Democrats " egged on by Ukrainians " who almost certainly fed Steele the fake kompromat " in the dossier.

Russia may be a convenient boogeyman that serves as a necessary foil to both sides in the Washington establishment. But, for once, let's fight the real enemy: the global elites who started this nonsense.

novictim , 41 minutes ago link

Why all the fuss about Russia? Liberal elites – who tended to love the Soviet Union – hate present day Russia, which dares to assert nationality and culture against the pieties of the one-world-order crowd.

I can confirm. This is what American Leftist Operatives who travel to Russia to organize coops, etc have told me.

novictim , 50 minutes ago link

Also note that, while Russia is the designated Villain, the real threat since the 1980s onward has actually been the Chinese. But the up until now had managed to co-opt both Parties via the doctrine of constructive engagement and NeoLiberal Free Trade.

"Make China prosperous and the factory of the world and then it will adopt Republican Democracy!", they said.

Ya. Not so much.

Russia was the excuse to build the high tech fighters but no one dared to name China for fear of losing financial support coming from industries now dependent on the good graces of the Chinese Communist Party.

Thank your lucky stars that someone had the ability and ego to step in and expose this mess for what it was.

novictim , 57 minutes ago link

military - industrial - congressional complex (MICC)

Do not leave out the USA House and Senate. We know that many of these dirt bags are just as slimy as those in the Labour or Tory parties.

King Friday the 13th , 3 hours ago link

The word "hysteria" isn't used nearly enough in analyses like these. Hysteria is almost defined by the complete absence of thought or rationality, which characterizes the useful idiots who are the target of this propaganda.

mendigo , 4 hours ago link

Our government is too easily manipulated to serve narrow interest groups (with money) rather than the interest of the nation (as constuted) or of the people (who generally dont have money). Also the legal system does not seem to be serving the law - has dispensed with the concept of intent.

Those who strive to serve and benefit from interests of industry or foreign governments should be investigated and tried for treason (where warranted)

The Bushes and Cheney and Hitlary should be tried for war crimes.

Boing, Microsoft, Google should be broken up.

[May 26, 2019] May Ends In June by W Stephen Gilbert

It is unclear whether May really wanted to implement Brexit deal but at least she negotiated several EU offers. It was UK Parliament that rejects the offers.
I think May claim to fame might be not her failure in Brexit negotiation, but orchestration of infamous Skripals poisoning false flag and the bout of Russophobia, as well as her attempt to interfere with the 2016 elections in the USA.
Notable quotes:
"... History will not be kind to Theresa May. By the standards she forthrightly set herself at the outset of her premiership, she has been a dismal failure. ..."
"... she became, in George Osborne's devastating phrase, "a dead woman walking". ..."
"... a political nonentity of such crushing mediocrity and insignificance that even when standing in direct sunlight she casts no shadow. A third-rate office manager elevated light years beyond her intellectual capacity, professional capabilities and pay grade. A national embarrassment and global laughing stock ..."
"... When May was elected Tory leader and hence prime minister, the field of choice was notable for its lightweight uniformity. ..."
"... the quality of leadership of the party has been modest at best for years. Among Tory leaders since the war, only Margaret Thatcher has managed to catch the climate of her time and impose her personality on a discernible period, however much one may deplore that climate and that period. ..."
"... What is striking about Conservative politics is that those who wish to hold onto power and wealth for their own class and who have the ambition and talent and imagination to make a difference do not go into politics. They become entrepreneurs, traders, speculators. There is too much regulation and self-abnegation in politics for such people. Look back over the leadership of the Tory party and you get to Harold Macmillan before you encounter anyone who came from a (brief) career in business. ..."
"... We are now told that she is "a patriot" – the last refuge of a political scoundrel – and that she has "tried her best", which was clearly grossly inadequate to the task ..."
"... The wars are over for Britain. Become a global reliable trading nation that honors contracts and business ties, the very elements that made Britain Great. It sure has not been the Wars especially the poodle wars. You laugh at May's tears and under performance but you may as well be looking at yourselves. ..."
"... Why should Britain be holding Venezuela Gold on behalf of Donald Trump? There is no yield in this, there is no value but a soiled reputation as an unreliable trader. Banks in Britain should be honest dealers not playing politics with contracts. ..."
"... It's not clear that all MI5/MI6 operatives are remainers. I suspect they are as divided as everyone else. The gang who attacked Trump simply did it because it was business and not personal. They even outsourced to Steele because they thought it might be cheaper. Outsourcing is perceived as cool in government circles and makes people feel good about themselves. It's the deep state offering value for money. ..."
"... May has done precisely what she was tasked to do by the Establishment: First to "negotiate" a Withdrawal deal that "Only the loser of a major war would agree to" after wasting two years, then do everything else possible to delay Brexit as long as possible and water it down to the point that the UK would even with a "delivered Brexit" still essentially be bound to the EU indefinitely. ..."
"... The final irony here is that it is ultimately only Parliament's duplicity and treachery, in spite of the fact that Parliament desperately wanted to ensure the UK "Remain", which has prevented her and the Globalists from achieving their goals through what they believed to be a process of "subtle subterfuge". ..."
"... She will indeed go down in history as a footnote of no significance or perhaps as the PM who showed the greatest betrayal of the British people on behalf of the Establishment ..."
May 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by W Stephen Gilbert via Off-Guardian.org,

History will not be kind to Theresa May. By the standards she forthrightly set herself at the outset of her premiership, she has been a dismal failure. She proposed that, contrary to most impartial expectation, she would be a socially liberal prime minister who would strive to relieve the economic pressure on the poorest members of British society (the briefly famous "just about managing"), but the only small concessions towards the relief of poverty that have been wrung from her government have done nothing to reduce the incidence of homelessness, food banks and wage rates that undershoot the demands made by private landlords, services starved of funds and price rises.

And that's without even mentioning Brexit.

Following the self-inflicted disaster of the 2017 general election, in which May utterly failed to project herself with any conviction as "strong and stable", she became, in George Osborne's devastating phrase, "a dead woman walking".

That campaign was the most complacent, least effective ever fought by a major political party in Britain, and the only explanation for the media's astonishment at the result can be that editors and columnists had so convinced themselves that they had rendered Jeremy Corbyn, in their description of choice, "unelectable" that they could see no outcome other than a thumping Tory victory. What they could not see was that Corbyn is an inspired and inspiring campaigner, while May is as dull as ditchwater.

The social media commentator Aidan Daley summed her up admirably: "Mayvis: a political nonentity of such crushing mediocrity and insignificance that even when standing in direct sunlight she casts no shadow. A third-rate office manager elevated light years beyond her intellectual capacity, professional capabilities and pay grade. A national embarrassment and global laughing stock ".

This unsparing but unarguable buttonholing raises a historical problem for the Conservative Party that shows no sign of quick resolution. When May was elected Tory leader and hence prime minister, the field of choice was notable for its lightweight uniformity. Given the length of her cabinet experience, May clearly outshone her rivals, if not in charisma (a quality conspicuously lacking from the field). But the quality of leadership of the party has been modest at best for years. Among Tory leaders since the war, only Margaret Thatcher has managed to catch the climate of her time and impose her personality on a discernible period, however much one may deplore that climate and that period.

What is striking about Conservative politics is that those who wish to hold onto power and wealth for their own class and who have the ambition and talent and imagination to make a difference do not go into politics. They become entrepreneurs, traders, speculators. There is too much regulation and self-abnegation in politics for such people. Look back over the leadership of the Tory party and you get to Harold Macmillan before you encounter anyone who came from a (brief) career in business.

Comparing May with Thatcher and Macmillan is instructive.

May has failed to create any sort of arresting public persona for herself. Aside from the tiresome bromide "Brexit means Brexit", she has turned no phrase that immediately summons her to mind. Who could essay her political philosophy, other than hanging on grimly against insuperable odds and paying heed to no advice?

She has no imagination, no resourcefulness, no wit and no management skills. When pressed, she retreats to prepared responses, regardless of their irrelevance to the question in hand. We are now told that she is "a patriot" – the last refuge of a political scoundrel – and that she has "tried her best", which was clearly grossly inadequate to the task .

The mainstream media will be eternally grateful to her for betraying emotion at the end of her resignation statement, thereby providing the "human interest" angle that cements the moment in history and will be trotted out in every story about the May premiership for ever after, much like Thatcher's tear-stained face in the back of the limo as it pulled away from Downing Street for the last time. Whether this emotion sits appropriately with the "dignity" that her admirers are rushing to credit to her is a question for others to ponder.

Attention now turns to her successor. Vast though the field is, it is again notable for its lightweight nature. Smart money will be on Rory Stewart, already a media darling and a politician unusually capable of sounding thoughtful and candid. He also has the advantage of having led a colourful pre-politics life, thereby bringing instincts to his politics from beyond the confines of career consultants and spads. But most speculation centres on Boris Johnson, despite the high level of suspicion that he generates among Tory MPs. He is said to be enthusiastically supported at the grassroots.

In this as in other aspects, he brings to mind Donald Trump. If Rory Stewart would offer a safe pair of hands, Johnson would suggest a Trump-like level of gaffes and embarrassments, thrills and spills.

CashMcCall , 5 hours ago link

Britain's Chief problem is that it has become a US poodle for nothing. Essentially insolvent and small Britain indulges in middle East Wars and US Sanctions and Boycotts. What do they get in return? Nothing at all.

This is a giant hangover from WWII. It wasn't enough that WWII destroyed Britain, the US had to take advantage of it in the Anglo American loan and Bretton Woods.

Anyone that has studied WWII knows it was the Russians that killed Germany, not the US and most certainly not Britain, though cracking the Enigma was certainly useful. But it was Brute force of the Russians a KURSK that laid waste to Germany.

The US came out of the War essentially unscathed. Britain was bombed out rubble. The US took full advantage with hard terms in their Anglo American Loan.

The relationship of the US to Britain is more like Abusive parent to abused child. It is anything but equals. The US only calls on Britain for British Intelligence, or military support to do something stupid like engage in the Iraq war. The poodle does as told.

ARM was founded in Britain. Now sold to Softbank in Japan. It was the INTEL giant killer. Had Britain not been a poodle to the US, this one company would have been a driving force in 5G. But the Abusive parent, essentially told the Brits who could and could not associate with ARM. Now in an even more abused poodle Japan, the world's most emasculated nation. Brits take their marching order from Donald Trump a bloody moron.

The Tide is out on the British Empire. It is irrelevant at this point what happens with Brexit. Stall long enough and nobody will care. Instead of branching out and leading in 5G, they are following their abused parent into the dark ages.

Britain should be making its own deals with China while the US is foundering under Turmp. Some businesses are such as Rolls Royce that is offering a Rolls Royce jet engine plant to forward China's local and narrowbody jets. Britain can come in and be a reliable partner with Huawei and get access to the largest markets in global history China and Asia. Instead the Gov. wants the UK to be just a US poodle lucky to get a few scraps.

Protectionism can NEVER work in Britain. The Isles NEED TRADE. They cannot survive without out it. Yet here they are with their brilliant engineering taking orders from Donald Trump the idiots idiot.

May was just a symptom of the Poodle problem. Do as told, show no spine and live in the shadow of the USA abuser parent. That is why NO PM in the UK casts a shadow. They are under the oppressive shadow of the US. Taking orders, Killing off British soldiers for nothing.

The wars are over for Britain. Become a global reliable trading nation that honors contracts and business ties, the very elements that made Britain Great. It sure has not been the Wars especially the poodle wars. You laugh at May's tears and under performance but you may as well be looking at yourselves.

Brexit under the shadow of the USA just strengthens the choke chain in Trump's insane hand. You become dependent on an unreliable country with the most unreliable administration in US History. As they do now, they dictate where you may trade and to whom you may sell your products... and you go along with it like an obedient abused child seeking approval of the Parent Abuser.

Get some spine and break ties with the USA that are carrying you into the abyss. Why should Britain be holding Venezuela Gold on behalf of Donald Trump? There is no yield in this, there is no value but a soiled reputation as an unreliable trader. Banks in Britain should be honest dealers not playing politics with contracts. Every country in the world is looking at this British poodle conduct. No country wants to deal with a poodle that refuses to return assets or that weaponizes Trade. You are cutting your throats for any future global investment FOR NOTHING!

caesium , 5 hours ago link

It's not clear that all MI5/MI6 operatives are remainers. I suspect they are as divided as everyone else. The gang who attacked Trump simply did it because it was business and not personal. They even outsourced to Steele because they thought it might be cheaper. Outsourcing is perceived as cool in government circles and makes people feel good about themselves. It's the deep state offering value for money.

GreatUncle , 6 hours ago link

May achieved what she set out to do being a BREMAINER from the outset.

To block, stall and prevent at all costs BREXIT.

As a BREXIT supporter thank you May because you created a new party in the process as an alternative to the fake" Conservative BREXIT party" and the EU Labour Custom Union slaves". I swear Labour = Democrats in the US and their belief in social slavery to them.

When can we get them EU election figures ... as this is going to be such fun if the BREXIT party manages to achieve an overwhelming vote it is like a 2nd referendum on the previous referendum. ... Fingers crossed here though because you just know MI5 / MI6 and all the other mercenaries are going to be ballot stuffing like **** and with no exit polls to prevent the electoral fraud they will be carrying out on the orders of their paymasters.

philipat , 7 hours ago link

Spare the tears, **** you got exactly what you deserved for your betrayal of British democracy whilst constantly lying and pretending to support both UK AND US values.

May has done precisely what she was tasked to do by the Establishment: First to "negotiate" a Withdrawal deal that "Only the loser of a major war would agree to" after wasting two years, then do everything else possible to delay Brexit as long as possible and water it down to the point that the UK would even with a "delivered Brexit" still essentially be bound to the EU indefinitely.

The final irony here is that it is ultimately only Parliament's duplicity and treachery, in spite of the fact that Parliament desperately wanted to ensure the UK "Remain", which has prevented her and the Globalists from achieving their goals through what they believed to be a process of "subtle subterfuge".

The ONLY way forward now is a "Hard" Brexit because Parliament has rejected everything else, it is still the legal default position which does NOT legally require approval by Parliament and it restores the negotiating position with the EU that May deliberately pissed away over two years. And the lesson here to other countries wanting to get out of the clutches of Brussels is this; If you want to leave the EU, JUST LEAVE. Let the Bureaucrats work out the details later; they aren't that important.

She will indeed go down in history as a footnote of no significance or perhaps as the PM who showed the greatest betrayal of the British people on behalf of the Establishment

**** off and go away to enjoy the corrupt benefits of your service to the Globalists until you RIP.

Dr. Acula , 8 hours ago link

May fits in with the other Prime Ministers of the Paedoph Isles:

"Rules which bar sex offenders from working with children are 'unfair' and even convicted paedophiles should have the right to adopt, a leading legal academic has said."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/8201521/Sex-offenders-including-paedophiles-should-be-allowed-to-adopt-Theresa-May-told.html

"UK Government Under Gordon Brown Urged Police not to Investigate Muslim Child Rape Gangs"

https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/3239461

[May 24, 2019] Paul R. Grenier On Natasha Bertrand's McCarthyite Hit Piece

Despicable neocons like Natasha Bertrand are cowards and attack people only because then feel the power on MIC and intelligence agencies behind their backs
In normal circumstances and normal society she would be the history the next day. But politico is a slimy rag, so what to expect of them
Notable quotes:
"... Politico's "Mueller report reveals Kushner's contacts with a 'pro-Kremlin' campaign adviser" (Politico, April 29, 2019), is dishonest, destructive, and should never have appeared in print. ..."
"... The author of the piece, Natasha Bertrand, initially refers to Dimitri Simes, CEO of the Center for the National Interest, not as an American citizen, although of course he is and has been for many years, nor as a leading representative of realist foreign policy thinking in the United States, which would have also been true. ..."
"... Instead, she initially frames him (in every sense of the word 'frame') as "a Russian willing to assist" the Trump campaign. This word choice rings, and is intended to ring, the Pavlovian bells of the Russia-gate narrative. Aside from being dishonest, her word choice smacks of racism -- a habit, to be sure, which is now widespread, as long as the object of that racism is Russia. ..."
"... 'Maybe Simes is a traitor -- although there are those who think he may not be.' If you accuse some Mr. X of being a rapist, and then add another opinion saying, 'Gosh, I don't think he is a rapist,' what is the impact on the reader? ..."
May 22, 2019 | eastwestaccord.com

Politico's "Mueller report reveals Kushner's contacts with a 'pro-Kremlin' campaign adviser" (Politico, April 29, 2019), is dishonest, destructive, and should never have appeared in print.

The author of the piece, Natasha Bertrand, initially refers to Dimitri Simes, CEO of the Center for the National Interest, not as an American citizen, although of course he is and has been for many years, nor as a leading representative of realist foreign policy thinking in the United States, which would have also been true.

Instead, she initially frames him (in every sense of the word 'frame') as "a Russian willing to assist" the Trump campaign. This word choice rings, and is intended to ring, the Pavlovian bells of the Russia-gate narrative. Aside from being dishonest, her word choice smacks of racism -- a habit, to be sure, which is now widespread, as long as the object of that racism is Russia.

If Ms. Bertrand has regularly watched the program The Great Game (Bol'shaia igra), and understands it, and if she is familiar with Simes' writings and conferences and the publications that appear in The National Interest, then she has no excuse for writing this piece in the first place. The genre to which this piece belongs is clear.

It is called a hit piece.

Bertrand deploys, of course, a few fig leaves of pretend objectivity, which may have helped assuage her conscience, but that is all that these fig leaves can do. What we have here is a list of scurrilous attacks ("he [Simes] is completely pro-Kremlin and always has been"). These attacks are then countered by opinions to the contrary, but without any suggestion as to where the preponderance of evidence lies. There is insufficient detail.

And that is the whole point, isn't it? 'Maybe Simes is a traitor -- although there are those who think he may not be.' If you accuse some Mr. X of being a rapist, and then add another opinion saying, 'Gosh, I don't think he is a rapist,' what is the impact on the reader? In the present context, the impact is this: if you take into consideration a Russian perspective in any way, shape, or form, even for the purposes of avoiding war -- and this is precisely what Simes is constantly doing, and with considerable intelligence and courage -- then you are going to get a nasty hit piece written about you by the likes of Politico and Ms. Bertrand.

I regularly watch The Great Game, which Mr. Simes co-hosts on Channel 1 with Vyacheslav Nikonov, and I have seen how he not just once, but in virtually every single program defends US interests, and disagrees when Russian colleagues try to make a one-sided case against the U.S. Simes regularly invites Atlantic Council spokespersons, or their policy equivalent, to the program, and there they have the freedom to make their case in great detail and without interruption, and inevitably they make statements that are sharply critical of the Russian government and its policies. It is Mr. Simes who sees to it that these voices from the Atlantic Council are heard by the Russian side.

As a result, Simes is carrying out vitally important work of diplomacy that allows for a two-way communication between policy elites on both sides, and he very adeptly is doing so in a way that allows both sides to actually listen and hear what is being said. If he simply screamed politically correct slogans, it would either shut this channel of communications down or turn it into another pointless circus where no one really listens.

I find it baffling that Politico wants to undermine this virtually unique remaining channel of diplomacy. For the sake of what? Would Politico prefer that there be no conversation whatsoever between the US and Russia? Why? Isn't it obviously preferable that we make an effort to understand a potential adversary's perspective, particularly when that potential adversary is the other nuclear superpower? It is astonishing -- and foolish -- that no program anything like The Great Game can be found anywhere in US media. In the US, we hear only variations on our own perspective on our big news programs. Where do we allow voices from the other side to make their case?

Simes should be thanked for his work. Instead what he gets is this hit piece. It is not only disgusting and disheartening, it is frightening.

Paul R. Grenier is a co-founder of the Simone Weil Center for Political Philosophy. He worked for many years as a simultaneous interpreter for the U.S. Defense and State Departments, interpreting for Gen. Tommy Franks and serving as lead interpreter for US Central Command's peacekeeping exercises with post-Soviet states.

[May 24, 2019] Theresa May Cries As She Announces June 7 Resignation

Scripals's poisoning connected Prime Minister soon will be gone for good.
Novichok has lasting effects on British PM ;-) Now it will be much easier to investigate her role in spying on Trump, British government role in creation of Steele dossier, and in launching neo-McCarthyism campaign against Russia (aka Russiagate).
Notable quotes:
"... During her tumultuous tenure as PM, May survived two no-confidence votes. ..."
"... Crying May. What a Loser. Plus, she may have well co-conspired against Trump. ..."
May 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

May, the second - but certainly not the last - female prime minister in the UK, will abandon her supremely unpopular withdrawal agreement instead of trying to force it through the Commons for the fourth time. May's decision to call for a fourth vote on the withdrawal agreement, this time packaging it in a bill that could have opened to door to a second confirmatory referendum, was more than her fellow conservatives could tolerate. One of her top cabinet ministers resigned and Graham Brady, the leader of the Tory backbenchers, effectively forced May out by rounding up the votes for a rule change that would have allowed MPs to oust her.

During her tumultuous tenure as PM, May survived two no-confidence votes.

Though May will stay on as caretaker until a new leader can be chosen, the race to succeed May begins now...odds are that a 'Brexiteer' will fill the role. Whatever happens, the contest should take a few weeks, and afterwards May will be on her way back to Maidenhead.

"It is and will always remain a deep regret for me that I was not able to deliver Brexit...I was not able to reach a consensus...that job will now fall to my successor," May said.

Between now and May's resignation, May still has work to do: President Trump will travel to the UK for a state visit, while Europe will also celebrate the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

It's fitting that May touted the virtues of her moderate approach to governance during her resignation speech, considering that her attempts to chart a middle path through Brexit ended up alienating hard-core Brexiteers and remainers alike. Her fate was effectively sealed nearly two years ago, after she called for a general election that cost the Tories their majority in Parliament and emboldened Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The pound's reaction was relatively muted, as May's decision to step down had been telegraphed well in advance.

CheapBastard , 18 minutes ago link

Crying May. What a Loser. Plus, she may have well co-conspired against Trump.

They should lock her up in the Tower.

keep the bastards honest , 39 minutes ago link

She didn't cry for syrians when she declared bombing Syria and using the firm her husband is involved in,. They made billion, and she didn't cry over her makeover afterwards new hair clothes and big jewels and cuddles with her husband in the media.

bluecollartrader , 45 minutes ago link

She and John Boehner should start a therapy group.

There's no crying in politics.

HRClinton , 27 minutes ago link

The plan was Merkel, May and Hillary.

That's a hell of a bullet we just dodged.

Riiiight. Instead, 10,000 Pentagram "Monitors" will be dodging bullets and bombs in the ME.

"(Bibi,) you'll be so tired of winning" - Candidate Trump

Why, you didn't think that he was talking about America's Main Street, did you? Sucker !

HRClinton , 16 minutes ago link

Many women in esteemed positions are just affirmative action or window dressing to placate the masses with supposed maternal love but they end up being wicked as heck.

Perhaps, but it's worse than that:

They are part of the Divide & Conquer strategy, while (((Global-lusts))) are plundering the Wealth Of Nations and taking over the real reigns of power.

Americants are easily distracted or fooled.

ps. "...wicked as heck." Wicked? Heck? What's up with the careful avoidance of "cuss words"? It's ok, you're safe... No "ladies or preachers" (bitches or scammers) nearby. And the Tylers or NSA won't rat you out.

[May 23, 2019] Guccifer 2.0 Was Not a Russian Creation by Larry C Johnson

Notable quotes:
"... The Word documents published in June 2016 by Guccifer 2 also show a "last saved as" user id written in Cyrillic. The Anglicized name is " Felix Edmundovich ", aka "Iron Felix" (the infamous director of an early Soviet spy agency). If you are a Russian cyber spy trying to conduct a covert operation, why do you sign your document with the name of one of the most infamous leaders of Russian intelligence? Robert Mueller wants you to believe that this was just Russian audacity. ..."
"... The phrase "personal beliefs about the competence or incompetence of the Russians" catches something important. Whether it was the Russians or somebody else that did this, whoever did it was pretty sloppy. What this report describes is almost as pathetic when considered a false flag operation as it is as a sabotage operation. So any theory of who stole and published the documents has to explain a capability to access the data combined with blissful obliviousness about handling them. I know of no reason to think the Russian, US, Israeli, or other intelligence communities incapable of such a combination. All of them have brilliant dedicated people but also seemingly endless supplies of mediocre time-servers. ..."
"... Scenario? Shutdown, closing of words with documents being automatically saved? Ok, otherwise there is apparently no precise saving time stamp on Winwords latest version. How much changed since 2016? ..."
"... The Vault7 leak of CIA tools also contained information on how to select any language environment. It's really a standard practice, even for normal criminals. ..."
May 23, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Russia did not hack the DNC. This is not an opinion. It is a conclusion that flows from one very specific claim made by the Special Counsel -- i.e., Guccifer 2.0 was a fictional identity created by Russian Military Intelligence, the GRU. If Guccifer was in fact a creation or creature of the GRU, then the forensic evidence should show that this entity was operating from Russia or under the direct control of the GRU. The forensic evidence shows something quite different -- the meta data in the Guccifer 2.0 documents were manipulated deliberately to plant Russian fignerprints. This was not an accident nor an oversight due to carelessness.

What is meta data? This is the information recorded when a document is created. This data includes things such as the date and time the document was created or modified. It tells you who created the document. It is like the Wizard of Oz, it is the information behind the curtain.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's is correct in stating that Guccifer 2.0 was a "fictious online persona. " He is wrong in attributing that action to Russian Military Intelligence. While Guccifer 2.0 was a "fictious" entity, the information recorded about when, how and who created the document show that deliberate choices were made to present the info as if it was created by someone Russian.

Let us first stipulate and agree that Russia and the United States engage in cyber espionage and covert action against each other. This has been the case since computers and the internet came into existence. Within the U.S. Intelligence Community these activities generally are labeled with the acronym, CNO -- Computer Network Operations. The Russians and the United States have cadres of cyber "warriors" who sit at computer terminals and engage in operations commonly known as hacking. Other countries, such as China, Iran and Ukraine do this as well.

CNOs are classified at the highest level in the United States and normally are handled within special restricted categories commonly known as SAPs (i.e, Special Access Programs). A critical element of these kinds of operations is to avoid leaving any fingerprints or clues that would enable the activity to be traced back to the United States. But this is not unique to the United States. All professional intelligence services around the world understand and practice this principle -- leave no evidence behind that proves you were there.

The case implicating Russia in the hack of the DNC and Clinton emails, including those of her campaign Manager, John Podesta, rests on suspect forensic computer evidence -- is present in the meta data in the documents posted on line by Guccifer 2.0. According to Disobedient Media , "the files that Guccifer 2.0 initially pushed to reporters contain Russian metadata, a Russian stylesheet entry and in some cases embedded Russian error messages."

Why would the Russians make such a mistake, especially in such a high stake operation (targeting a national election with covert action most certainly is a high stake operation). Mueller and the U.S. intelligence community want you to believe that the Russians are just sloppy and careless buffoons. Those ideologically opposed to the Russians readily embrace this nonsenses. But for those who actually have dealt with Russian civilian and military intelligence operatives and operations, the Russians are sophisticated and cautious.

But we do not have to rely on our personal beliefs about the competence or incompetence of the Russians. We simply need to look at the forensic evidence contained in the documents posted by Guccifer 2.0. We will take Robert Mueller and his investigators at their word:

  • Beginning in or around June 2016, the Conspirators staged and released tens of thousands of the stolen emails and documents. They did so using fictitious online personas, including "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0." (p. 2-3)
  • The Conspirators also used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release additional stolen documents through a website maintained by an organization ("Organization 1") [aka WIKILEAKS], that had previously posted documents stolen from U.S. persons, entities, and the U.S. government. (p. 3)
  • Between in or around June 2016 and October 2016, the Conspirators used Guccifer 2.0 to release documents through WordPress that they had stolen from the DCCC and DNC. The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, also shared stolen documents with certain individuals. (p. 15)

An examination of those documents tells a very different story. While it does not reveal who or what was Guccifer 2.0, it does undermine Mueller's claim that it was the Russians who did these dastardly deeds.

One independent forensic computer investigator, who uses the name, "The Forensicator," examined the meta data in some of the documents posted by Guccifer 2.0 and discovered the following :

Guccifer 2.0 published a file on 13 September 2016 that was originally copied on 5 July 2016 at approximately 6:45 PM Eastern time. It was copied and appeared as the "NGP VAN" 7zip file.

The estimated speed of transfer was 23 MB/s. This means that this initial data transfer could have been done remotely over the Internet. Instead, it was likely done from a computer system that had direct access to the data. "By "direct access" we mean that the individual who was collecting the data either had physical access to the computer where the data was stored, or the data was copied over a local high-speed network (LAN)."

This initial copying activity was done on a system that used Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) settings and was likely initially copied to a computer running Linux, because the file last modified times all reflect the apparent time of the copy, which is a characteristic of the Linux 'cp' command (using default options).

On September 1, 2016, a subset of the initial large collection of DNC related content (the so-called NGP/VAN data), was transferred to working directories on a system running Windows. The .rar files included in the final 7zip file were built from those working directories.

The alleged Russian fingerprints appeared in the first document "leaked" by Guccifer 2.0-- 1.doc -- which was a report on Donald Trump . A forensic examination of the documents shows thatgiven the word processor program used to create the Donald Trump Document released by Guccifer 2.0, the author consciously and purposefully used formats that deliberately inserted "Russian fingerprints" into the document. In other words, the meta-data was purposely altered, and documents were pasted into a 'Russianified' word document with Russian language settings and style headings.

Here are the key facts:

The meta data shows that Slate_-_Domestic_-_USDA_-_2008-12-20.doc was the template for creating 1.doc , 2.doc and 3.doc . This template injected "Warren Flood" as the author value and "GSA" as the company value in those first three Word documents. This template also injected the title , the watermark and header/footer fields found in the final documents (with slight modifications).

The Word documents published in June 2016 by Guccifer 2 also show a "last saved as" user id written in Cyrillic. The Anglicized name is " Felix Edmundovich ", aka "Iron Felix" (the infamous director of an early Soviet spy agency). If you are a Russian cyber spy trying to conduct a covert operation, why do you sign your document with the name of one of the most infamous leaders of Russian intelligence? Robert Mueller wants you to believe that this was just Russian audacity.

But the meta data tells a different story. When we examine The Revision Session Identifiers aka 'RSID's, in the Guccifer document, we see the same Russian style-headings in 1.doc, 2.doc and 3.doc. The document creation timestamps on docs 1, 2 and 3 also are all identical.

Given that MS word assigns a new random 'RSID' with each save when an element is added or edited (this function allows one to track changes made to a Word document), the only way to obtain identical creation timestamps means that someone either directly edited the source document or that there was one empty document open and that individual documents were copy-pasted and saved-as (1.doc), then contents deleted and new doc pasted and saved-as (2.doc), etc. This process also explains identical style-sheet RSIDs .

joanna , 22 May 2019 at 08:54 AM

The document creation timestamps on docs 1, 2 and 3 also are all identical.

Curious, no doubt. But who of us did not consider Guccifer 2 curious. Put another way, what experts considered him solid proof for Russian involvement?

Are you suggesting Winword templates were used for the metadata?

As IT nitwit, how can I save three *doc files or their 2016 word equivalent at the same time? Any way to do that? Windows doesn't seem to have a solution to that.

Again: This is a nitwit user asking a question.

*******
I admittedly am not overly motivated to read the Mueller report. I'll read your contribution again to figure out what you may suggest in or between the lines.

fredw , 22 May 2019 at 09:26 AM
The phrase "personal beliefs about the competence or incompetence of the Russians" catches something important. Whether it was the Russians or somebody else that did this, whoever did it was pretty sloppy. What this report describes is almost as pathetic when considered a false flag operation as it is as a sabotage operation. So any theory of who stole and published the documents has to explain a capability to access the data combined with blissful obliviousness about handling them. I know of no reason to think the Russian, US, Israeli, or other intelligence communities incapable of such a combination. All of them have brilliant dedicated people but also seemingly endless supplies of mediocre time-servers.

Equally interesting is the fact that this analysis has come from such a private source. Surely all the major intelligence agencies have the skill to find the same indicators. And all have comparatively endless resources to apply to the analysis. But they all seem to not want to talk about it. For me the most suspicious thing about the handling of the theft was the FBI's near complete lack of interest in examining the server. I have always assumed that such indifference reflected that they already had all they needed in order to understand what happened. Maybe even watched the theft in real time. But this report demonstrates that you didn't need any special access to blow up the official story. (Note that the official story may be "true". It is just not proven by the cited evidence.)

Yet, whatever actually happened, nobody seems interested in challenging the narrative that Russians stole data and routed it through useful idiots to influence the 2016 elections. This report indicates that a persuasive challenge would not have been hard to produce.

Perhaps the false flag was intentionally clumsy, intended to be detected. Bait for a trap that no one wants to fall into. But I don't see where that thought leads.

joanna , 22 May 2019 at 09:58 AM
https://archive.fo/2dMfC#selection-683.213-687.434

This can be discovered by looking at things called 'rsid's or Revision Session Identifiers in Guccifer's document. In order to track changes, MS word assigns a new random 'rsid' with each save upon each element added or edited. The rsids for the Russian style-headings in 1.doc, 2.doc and 3.doc are all the same (styrsid11758497 in the raw source).

Moreover, the document creation timestamps on 1,2, and 3.docs are all identical too. This might imply there was one empty document open, with individual documents being copy-pasted and saved-as (1.doc), then contents deleted and new doc pasted and saved-as (2.doc), etc. This is the only way to go about obtaining identical creation timestamps short of direct editing of the source, and would also explain identical style-sheet RSIDs.

Scenario? Shutdown, closing of words with documents being automatically saved? Ok, otherwise there is apparently no precise saving time stamp on Winwords latest version. How much changed since 2016?

Empty doc open? What would that change?

But good to see that Winword now integrated some type of automatic saving option, didn't have it when I gave it up and shifted to Open Office. On the other hand, can I trust it to not confront me with an earlier revision version? I admittedly asked myself lately. In a 200 page file, mind you.

Karen Eliot , 22 May 2019 at 10:34 AM
As someone with a little bit of experience in that area I can assure you that language metadata artifacts are practically worthless for attribution. You would mention it in a report, but from it you can only conclude that
  • either the creator was an amateur and used his own language environment
  • or actually selected this particular language environment, either by running a - in this case - Russian copy of Office, or by changing the metadata manually.
  • or he used his own language environment because he doesn't care, and because he knows that this information is worthless for any forensics expert.

The Vault7 leak of CIA tools also contained information on how to select any language environment. It's really a standard practice, even for normal criminals.

Attribution is really hard and usually amounts to a lot of guessing who might be interested in the target of an attack, correlating information from other campaigns, and is only rarely based on hard evidence. Big state actors probably can do a little bit better when they have access to enough network taps. But in the end one bit looks like any other, and properties of static documents can always be forged and made to look real. Or simply buy a copy of MS Office in .

joanna said in reply to Karen Eliot... , 23 May 2019 at 09:51 AM
The document creation timestamps on docs 1, 2 and 3 also are all identical.

Ok doc creation times. Could one create a WinWord Macro? That does exactly that. ok, why would one do this? True. Minor detail, I know. But I see we have experts around now.

*******
More generally. Guccifer 2.0 was a bit of an odd occurrence, not least due to US intelligence considering Guccifer one or zero, if you like.

Fred , 23 May 2019 at 11:24 AM
fredw,

"..nobody seems interested in challenging the narrative that Russians..."

That's precisely what Larry has been doing for some time.

"Equally interesting is the fact that this analysis has come from such a private source."

How dare a private citizen challenge the narrative!

"Perhaps the false flag was intentionally clumsy..."

False flag, let's discuss that idea, brought up solely by you, and not discuss Larry's analysis.

[May 23, 2019] Why Trump s Huawei Ban Is Unlikely To Persist

Notable quotes:
"... However, nothing in the actual piece talks about security concerns. (I point this out because I perceive a trend towards such misleading summaries and headlines which contradict what the actual reporting says.) ..."
"... These companies do not have security concerns over Huawei. But the casual reader, who does not dive down into the actual piece, is left with a false impression that such concerns are valid and shared. ..."
"... South China Morning Post ..."
"... This move by Google-USG is mostly a propaganda warfare move. Huawei doesn't depend on smartphone sales to survive. It's American market was already small, while China's domestic market is huge. China is not Japan. ..."
"... Trump's heavy handed move against Huawei will backfire. The optic is unsettling; the US looks to be destroying a foreign competitor because it is winning. ..."
"... Until the reserve currency issue favoring the "exceptional" nation changes, the economic terrorism will continue.. ..."
"... What is funny in all these stories, is that there is little to no Huawei equipment (not the end-user smart phone, home router and stuff, but backbone routers, access equipment,..) anywhere in the US -- they are forbidden to compete. Most telcos are quite happy to sell in the US, as the absence of these Chinese competitors allows for healthy margins, which is no longer true in other markets. ..."
"... The US is trying desperately to quash tech success / innovation introduced by others who are not controlled by (or in partnership with) the US, via economic war, for now just politely called a trade war - China no 1 adversary. ..."
"... Attacking / dissing / scotching trade between one Co. (e.g. Huawei) and the world is disruptive of the usual, conventional, accepted, exchange functioning, and throws a pesky spanner in the works of the system. Revanchard motives, petty targetting, random pot-shots, lead to what? ..."
"... The war against Huawei is only one small aspect within the overall Trade War, which is based on the false premise of US economic strength. Most of the world wants to purchase material things, not financial services which is the Outlaw US Empire's forte and most of the world can easily forego. Trump's Trade War isn't going as planned which will cause him to double-down in a move that will destroy his 2020 hopes. ..."
May 23, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

However, nothing in the actual piece talks about security concerns. (I point this out because I perceive a trend towards such misleading summaries and headlines which contradict what the actual reporting says.)

The British processor company ARM, which licenses its design to Huawei, cites U.S. export controls as the reason to stop cooperation with Huawei:

The conflict is putting companies and governments around the world in a tough spot, forcing them to choose between alienating the United States or China .

Arm Holdings issued its statement after the BBC reported the firm had told staff to suspend dealings with Huawei.

An Arm spokesman said some of the company's intellectual property is designed in the United States and is therefore " subject to U.S. export controls ."

Additionally two British telecom providers quote U.S. restrictions as reason for no longer buying Huawei smartphones:

BT Group's EE division, which is preparing to launch 5G service in six British cities later this month, said Wednesday it would no longer offer a new Huawei smartphone as part of that service. Vodafone also said it would drop a Huawei smartphone from its lineup. Both companies appeared to tie that decision to Google's move to withhold licenses for its Android operating software from future Huawei phones.

These companies do not have security concerns over Huawei. But the casual reader, who does not dive down into the actual piece, is left with a false impression that such concerns are valid and shared.

That the Trump administration says it has security reasons for its Huawei ban does not mean that the claim is true. Huawei equipment is as good or bad as any other telecommunication equipment, be it from Cisco or Apple. The National Security Agency and other secret services will try to infiltrate all types of such equipment.

After the sudden ban on U.S. entities to export to Huawei, chipmakers like Qualcomm temporarily stopped their relations with Huawei. Google said that it would no longer allow access to the Google Play store for new Huawei smartphones. That will diminish their utility for many users.

The public reaction in China to this move was quite negative. There were many calls for counter boycotts of Apple's i-phones on social media and a general anti-American sentiment.

The founder and CEO of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei, tried to counter that. He gave a two hour interview (vid, 3 min excerpt with subtitles) directed at the Chinese public. Ren sounds very conciliatory and relaxed. The Global Times and the South China Morning Post only have short excerpts of what he said. They empathize that Huawei is well prepared and can master the challenge:

Andreas , May 23, 2019 10:00:52 AM | 1

It's really huge, that Huawei may no longer use ARM processors.

Huawei is thus forced to develop it's own processor design and push it into the market.

p , May 23, 2019 10:04:34 AM | 2

@1

I do not believe this is precisely what will happen. Huawei already has its licenses purchased. In addition they could decide to disrespect the IP if this was the case.

Arioch , May 23, 2019 10:05:39 AM | 3
Huaweis's suppliers in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan (ROC), and Britain are examining if they can continue to make business with Huawei, while some have already declared a suspension in cooperation.

The issue is that these non-American companies nonetheless use some American components of technology, and if they proceed they will be sanctioned by the US themselves.

It is the same reason why Russia's Sukhoi did not in the end sell its SSJ-100 airliners to Iran -- East Asian tech companies can hardly be expected to be more gung-ho on defying the US than Russia's leading defense plant......

http://www.checkpointasia.net/big-blow-for-huawei-as-japanese-korean-british-firms-reconsider-or-suspend-cooperation-as-well/

Arioch , May 23, 2019 10:10:32 AM | 4
> the Trump administration has created discord where unity is urgently needed

IOW Trump keeps sabotaging USA global integration and keeps steering it into isolation as he long said it should be

Arioch , May 23, 2019 10:14:28 AM | 5
@p #2 - Huawei surely has their processors *as of now*.

That - if USA would not ban Huawei (HiSilicon) processors, because of using that ARM technology. Thing is, Huawei would be isolated from next-generation ARM processors. They are locked now in their current generation.

Even Qualcomm today, for what I know, bases their processors on ARM's "default" schemes, instead of doing their development "from scratch", in a totally independent way. It would push for slow but steady decline as "top" smartphone vendor into "el cheapo" niche.

Arioch , May 23, 2019 10:16:54 AM | 6
At the same time Qualcomm would probably be forced to slash prices down for their non-Huawei customers. https://www.zdnet.com/article/qualcomms-licensing-practices-violated-us-antitrust-laws-judge-rules/
Red Ryder , May 23, 2019 10:17:21 AM | 7
Boeing is the counter-part in the contest to destroy Huawei. China has great leverage over Boeing's future. It is the nation with the biggest market now and downstream for 10-20 years. China need planes, thousands of them.

As for Huawei's chief doubting the prowess of the Chinese students, he only needs to look at the rapidity of the conversion of his nations' economy to a 98% digital economy. All that conversion was done by local, entrepreneurial innovators in the software and hardware tech sector. It happened only in China and completely by Chinese young people who had phones and saw the future and made it happen.

It has been Chinese minds building Chinese AI on Chinese Big Data.

Yes, they need Russian technologists and scientists. Those Russian minds in Russia, in Israel, in South Korea are proven difference makers.

The need China now has will meet the solution rapidly. For five years, the Double Helix of Russia-China has been coming closer in education and R&D institutes in both nations. China investors and Chinese sci-tech personnel are in the sci-tech parks of Russia, and Russians are in similar facilities in China. More will happen now that the Economic War against China threatens.

Huawei will have solutions to replace all US components by the end of the year. It will lose some markets. but it will gain hugely in the BRI markets yet to be developed.

In the long run, the US makers will rue the day Trump and his gang of Sinophobes and hegemonists took aim at Huawei and China's tech sector.

oglalla , May 23, 2019 10:40:03 AM | 8
Let's all boycott Most Violent, Biggest Brother tech. Don't buy shit.
vk , May 23, 2019 10:46:37 AM | 9
This move by Google-USG is mostly a propaganda warfare move. Huawei doesn't depend on smartphone sales to survive. It's American market was already small, while China's domestic market is huge. China is not Japan.

Besides, it's not like Europe is prospering either. Those post-war days are long gone.

And there's no contradiction between what the CEO said and the Government line: both are approaching the same problem from different points of view, attacking it from different fronts at the same time. "Patriotism" is needed insofar as the Chinese people must be prepared to suffer some hardships without giving up long term prosperity. "Nationalism" ("politics") is toxic insofar as, as a teleological tool, it is a dead end (see Bannon's insane antics): the Chinese, after all, are communists, and communists, by nature, are internationalists and think beyond the artificial division of humanity in Nation-States.

Ptb , May 23, 2019 11:09:35 AM | 0

Ren Zhengfei's attitude is remarkable, considering his daughter ia currently held hostage.
ken , May 23, 2019 11:15:25 AM | 1
Talking Digital and security in the same sentence is laughable.... NOTHING Digital is 'secure',,, never has,,, never will.

Digital destroys everything it touches. At present, excepting for now the low wage States, it is destroying economies ever so slowly one sector at a time. This has nothing to do with security and everything to do with the dying West, especially the USA which is trying desperately to save what's left of its production whether it be 5G, Steel plants or Nord Stream. The West created China when it happily allowed and assisted Western corporations to move the production there in order to hide the inflation that was being created for wars and welfare and now has to deal with the fallout which eventually will be their undoing.

Jackrabbit , May 23, 2019 11:22:20 AM | 2
A full-blown trade war was probably inevitable, driven by geopolitical concerns as much or more than economics.

One wonders what each of China and US has been doing to prepare. It seems like the answer is "very little" but since it's USA that is driving this bus, I would think that USA would've done more to prepare (than China has).

PS It's not just Boeing. China also supplies the vast majority of rare earth minerals.

Red Ryder , May 23, 2019 11:24:39 AM | 3
@10,

Her captivity and probable imprisonment in the US explain his attitude. She is a high profile pawn. The US must convict her in order to justify what they have done to her so far. She may not serve time, in the US prisons, but she will be branded a guilty person, guilty of violating the Empire's rules (laws).

Imagine Ivanka in the same situation. Her daughter singing in Mandarin would be little help. The Trump Family will be a number one target for equal treatment long after "45" leaves office.

The US Empire is wild with Power. All of that Power is destructive. And all the globe is the battlefield, except USA. But History teaches that this in-equilibrium will not last long.

Jackrabbit , May 23, 2019 11:26:33 AM | 4
We've seen how Europe caved to US pressure to stop trading with Iran. Now Japan and others are caving to pressure to stop trading with China. There is already pressure and negotiation to stop Nordstream. And all of the above leads to questions about Erdogan's resolve.
alaric , May 23, 2019 11:38:11 AM | 5
Trump's heavy handed move against Huawei will backfire. The optic is unsettling; the US looks to be destroying a foreign competitor because it is winning.

The ramifications of trade war with China (where the supply and manufacturing chain of most consumer electronics is these days) is disruptive. Trump has created uncertainty for many manufacturers since there is Chinese part content is just about everything these days. Some manufacturers might relocate production to the US but most will try to simply decouple from the US entirely.

Exposure to the US is really the problem not exposure to China.

Jackrabbit , May 23, 2019 11:53:44 AM | 8
b: Why Trump's Huawei Ban Is Unlikely To Persist

The trade war with Iran was also unlikely to persist. But it has persisted, and deepened as European poodles pretended to resist and then pretended not to notice that they didn't.

A new Bloomberg opinion piece agrees with that view

No, it doesn't b. You say USA trade war will fail because it lacks international support. Bloomberg says USA should get international support to make it more effective. The difference is that it is highly likely that USA will get international support. It already has support from Japan.

USA has proven that it can effectively manipulate it's poodle allies. Another example is Venezuela where more than two dozen countries recognized Guido only because USA wanted them to.

<> <> <> <> <> <> <>

It's not Trump but the US Deep State that causes US allies to fall in line. Any analysis that relies on Trump as President is bound to fail as his public persona is manipulated to keep Deep State adversaries (including the US public) off-balance.

Like President's before him, Trump will take the blame (and the credit) until another team member is chosen to replace him in what we call "free and fair elections".

ben , May 23, 2019 11:54:24 AM | 9
Until the reserve currency issue favoring the "exceptional" nation changes, the economic terrorism will continue..
Jeff , May 23, 2019 12:00:34 PM | 0
What is funny in all these stories, is that there is little to no Huawei equipment (not the end-user smart phone, home router and stuff, but backbone routers, access equipment,..) anywhere in the US -- they are forbidden to compete. Most telcos are quite happy to sell in the US, as the absence of these Chinese competitors allows for healthy margins, which is no longer true in other markets.

So the Huawei ban hits first and foremost the US' partners.

bjd , May 23, 2019 12:00:38 PM | 1
@ben (19)

China can only undo the US-exceptionalsim if and when it can visibly project military power. The only way to achieve that is tt has to make great haste in building a few fleets of aircraft carriers, fregats and destroyers, etc. It must build a grand, visibly magnificent Chinese Navy.

ben , May 23, 2019 12:02:59 PM | 2
big time OT alert;

Modi wins in India, another victory for the world oligarchs. Exactly mimicking conditions in the U$A. Media and governmental capture by the uber wealthy...

Noirette , May 23, 2019 12:04:16 PM | 3
(Ignorant of tech aspects.)

The US is trying desperately to quash tech success / innovation introduced by others who are not controlled by (or in partnership with) the US, via economic war, for now just politely called a trade war - China no 1 adversary.

Afaik, the entire smart-phone industry is 'integrated' and 'regulated' by FTAs, the WTO, the patent circuit, the Corps. and Gvmts. who collaborate amongst themselves.

Corps. can't afford to compete viciously because infrastructure, aka more encompassing systems or networks (sic) are a pre-requisite for biz, thus, Gvmts. cooperate with the Corps, and sign various 'partnerships,' etc.

sidebar. Not to mention the essential metals / components provenance, other topic. see

https://bit.ly/2K1pj3d - PDF about minerals in smarphones

Attacking / dissing / scotching trade between one Co. (e.g. Huawei) and the world is disruptive of the usual, conventional, accepted, exchange functioning, and throws a pesky spanner in the works of the system. Revanchard motives, petty targetting, random pot-shots, lead to what?

karlof1 , May 23, 2019 12:05:01 PM | 4
As I wrote in the Venezuela thread, major US corps are already belt tightening by permanently laying off managers, not already cut-to-the-bone production staff, and another major clothing retailer is closing its 650+ stores. And the full impact of Trump's Trade War has yet to be felt by consumers. As Wolff, Hudson and other like-minded economists note, there never was a genuine recovery from 2008, while statistical manipulation hides the real state of the US economy. One thing that cannot be hidden is the waning of revenues collected via taxes which drives the budget deficit--and the shortfall isn't just due to the GOP Congress's tax cuts.

The war against Huawei is only one small aspect within the overall Trade War, which is based on the false premise of US economic strength. Most of the world wants to purchase material things, not financial services which is the Outlaw US Empire's forte and most of the world can easily forego. Trump's Trade War isn't going as planned which will cause him to double-down in a move that will destroy his 2020 hopes.

Arioch , May 23, 2019 12:05:34 PM | 5
@vk #9

> Huawei's phones American market was already small, while China's domestic market is huge

Here is that data, for 2017, outside the paywall: https://imgur.com/a/8bvvX9B

Data for 2019 is probably slightly different, but the trends should keep on. That data also does not separate Android-based phones from non-Android phones. So, segmenting Android into Google and China infrastructures would mean

1) Huawei retains a $152B market - China
2) Huawei retains an unknown share in $87B market - APAC
3) Huawei loses a $163,9B market - all non-China world.

At best Huawei looses 40,7% of world market. That if all APAC population would voluntarily and uniformly drop out of Google services into Huawei/China services (which they would not). At worst Huawei retains 37,7% of the marker (if APAC population would uniformly follow Google, which they would not either).

[May 22, 2019] NATO has pushed eastward right up to its borders and threatened to incorporate regions that have been part of Russia's sphere of influence -- and its defense perimeter -- for centuries

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The Economist and Stephens are correct. The trade dispute is merely a small part of a much larger and even more intense geopolitical rivalry that could ignite what Stephens describes as "an altogether hotter war." ..."
"... From the mid-1940s onward, the primacy of the United States was assumed as a given. History had rendered a verdict: we -- not the Brits and certainly not the Germans, French, or Russians -- were number one, and, more importantly, were meant to be. That history's verdict might be subject to revision was literally unimaginable, especially to anyone making a living in or near Washington, D.C. ..."
"... Choose your own favorite post-Cold War paean to American power and privilege. Mine remains Madeleine Albright's justification for some now-forgotten episode of armed intervention, uttered 20 years ago when American wars were merely occasional (and therefore required some nominal justification) rather then perpetual (and therefore requiring no justification whatsoever). ..."
"... Like some idiot savant, Donald Trump understood this. He grasped that the establishment's formula for militarized global leadership applied to actually existing post-Cold War circumstances was spurring American decline. Certainly other observers, including contributors to this publication, had for years been making the same argument, but in the halls of power their dissent counted for nothing. ..."
"... Yet in 2016, Trump's critique of U.S. policy resonated with many ordinary Americans and formed the basis of his successful run for the presidency. Unfortunately, once Trump assumed office, that critique did not translate into anything even remotely approximating a coherent strategy. President Trump's half-baked formula for Making America Great Again -- building "the wall," provoking trade wars, and elevating Iran to the status of existential threat -- is, to put it mildly, flawed, if not altogether irrelevant. His own manifest incompetence and limited attention span don't help ..."
"... There is no countervailing force within the USA that is able to tame MIC appetites, which are constantly growing. In a sense the nation is taken hostage with no root for escape via internal political mechanisms (for all practical purposes I would consider neocons that dominate the USA foreign policy to be highly paid lobbyists of MIC.) ..."
"... In this sense the alliance of China, Iran, Russia and Turkey might serve as an external countervailing force which allows some level of return to sanity, like was the case when the USSR existed. ..."
"... I agree with Bacevich that the dissolution of the USSR corrupted the US elite to the extent that it became reckless and somewhat suicidal in seeking "Full Spectrum Dominance" (which is an illusive goal in any case taking into account existing arsenals in China and Russia and the growing distance between EU and the USA) ..."
May 21, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

The Great Power Game is On and China is Winning If America wants to maintain any influence in Asia, it needs to wake up. By Robert W. Merry • May 22, 2019

President Donald J. Trump participates in a bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People, Thursday, November 9, 2017, in Beijing, People's Republic of China. ( Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead) From across the pond come two geopolitical analyses in two top-quality British publications that lay out in stark terms the looming struggle between the United States and China. It isn't just a trade war, says The Economist in a major cover package. "Trade is not the half of it," declares the magazine. "The United States and China are contesting every domain, from semiconductors to submarines and from blockbuster films to lunar exploration." The days when the two superpowers sought a win-win world are gone.

For its own cover, The Financial Times ' Philip Stephens produced a piece entitled, "Trade is just an opening shot in a wider US-China conflict." The subhead: "The current standoff is part of a struggle for global pre-eminence." Writes Stephens: "The trade narrative is now being subsumed into a much more alarming one. Economics has merged with geopolitics. China, you can hear on almost every corner in sight of the White House and Congress, is not just a dangerous economic competitor but a looming existential threat."

Stephens quotes from the so-called National Defense Strategy, entitled "Sharpening the American Military's Competitive Edge," released last year by President Donald Trump's Pentagon. In the South China Sea, for example, says the strategic paper, "China has mounted a rapid military modernization campaign designed to limit U.S. access to the region and provide China a freer hand there." The broader Chinese goal, warns the Pentagon, is "Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global pre-eminence in the future."

The Economist and Stephens are correct. The trade dispute is merely a small part of a much larger and even more intense geopolitical rivalry that could ignite what Stephens describes as "an altogether hotter war."

... ... ..

Russia: Of all the developments percolating in the world today, none is more ominous than the growing prospect of an anti-American alliance involving Russia, China, Turkey, and Iran. Yet such an alliance is in the works, largely as a result of America's inability to forge a foreign policy that recognizes the legitimate geopolitical interests of other nations. If the United States is to maintain its position in Asia, this trend must be reversed.

The key is Russia, largely by dint of its geopolitical position in the Eurasian heartland. If China's global rise is to be thwarted, it must be prevented from gaining dominance over Eurasia. Only Russia can do that. But Russia has no incentive to act because it feels threatened by the West. NATO has pushed eastward right up to its borders and threatened to incorporate regions that have been part of Russia's sphere of influence -- and its defense perimeter -- for centuries.

Given the trends that are plainly discernible in the Far East, the West must normalize relations with Russia. That means providing assurances that NATO expansion is over for good. It means the West recognizing that Georgia, Belarus, and, yes, Ukraine are within Russia's natural zone of influence. They will never be invited into NATO, and any solution to the Ukraine conundrum will have to accommodate Russian interests. Further, the West must get over Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula. It is a fait accompli -- and one that any other nation, including America, would have executed in similar circumstances.

Would Russian President Vladimir Putin spurn these overtures and maintain a posture of bellicosity toward the West? We can't be sure, but that certainly wouldn't be in his interest. And how will we ever know when it's never been tried? We now understand that allegations of Trump's campaign colluding with Russia were meritless, so it's time to determine the true nature and extent of Putin's strategic aims. That's impossible so long as America maintains its sanctions and general bellicosity.

NATO: Trump was right during the 2016 presidential campaign when he said that NATO was obsolete. He later dialed back on that, but any neutral observer can see that the circumstances that spawned NATO as an imperative of Western survival no longer exist. The Soviet Union is gone, and the 1.3 million Russian and client state troops it placed on Western Europe's doorstep are gone as well.

So what kind of threat could Russia pose to Europe and the West? The European Union's GDP is more than 12 times that of Russia's, while Russia's per capita GDP is only a fourth of Europe's. The Russian population is 144.5 million to Europe's 512 million. Does anyone seriously think that Russia poses a serious threat to Europe or that Europe needs the American big brother for survival, as in the immediate postwar years? Of course not. This is just a ruse for the maintenance of the status quo -- Europe as subservient to America, the Russian bear as menacing grizzly, America as protective slayer in the event of an attack.

This is all ridiculous. NATO shouldn't be abolished. It should be reconfigured for the realities of today. It should be European-led, not American-led. It should pay for its own defense entirely, whatever that might be (and Europe's calculation of that will inform us as to its true assessment of the Russian threat). America should be its primary ally, but not committed to intervene whenever a tiny European nation feels threatened. NATO's Article 5, committing all alliance nations to the defense of any other when attacked, should be scrapped in favor of language that calls for U.S. intervention only in the event of a true threat to Western Civilization itself.

And while a European-led NATO would find it difficult to pull back from its forward eastern positions after adding so many nations in the post-Cold War era, it should extend assurances to Russia that it has no intention of acting provocatively -- absent, of course, any Russian provocations.

... ... ...

Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington journalist and publishing executive, is the author most recently of President McKinley: Architect of the American Century .

likbez, May 22, 2019

Great article. Thank you very much!

Pragmatic isolationalism is a better deal then the current neocon foreign policy. Which Trump is pursuing with the zeal similar to Obama (who continued all Bush II wars and started two new in Libya and Syria.) Probably this partially can be explained by his dependence of Adelson and pro-Israeli lobby.

But the problem is deeper then Trump: it is the power of MIC and American exeptionalism ( which can be viewed as a form of far right nationalism ) about which Andrew Bacevich have written a lot:

From the mid-1940s onward, the primacy of the United States was assumed as a given. History had rendered a verdict: we -- not the Brits and certainly not the Germans, French, or Russians -- were number one, and, more importantly, were meant to be. That history's verdict might be subject to revision was literally unimaginable, especially to anyone making a living in or near Washington, D.C.

If doubts remained on that score, the end of the Cold War removed them. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, politicians, journalists, and policy intellectuals threw themselves headlong into a competition over who could explain best just how unprecedented, how complete, and how wondrous was the global preeminence of the United States.

Choose your own favorite post-Cold War paean to American power and privilege. Mine remains Madeleine Albright's justification for some now-forgotten episode of armed intervention, uttered 20 years ago when American wars were merely occasional (and therefore required some nominal justification) rather then perpetual (and therefore requiring no justification whatsoever).

"If we have to use force," Secretary of State Albright announced on morning television in February 1998, "it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future."

Back then, it was Albright's claim to American indispensability that stuck in my craw. Yet as a testimony to ruling class hubris, the assertion of indispensability pales in comparison to Albright's insistence that "we see further into the future."

In fact, from February 1998 down to the present, events have time and again caught Albright's "we" napping. The 9/11 terrorist attacks and the several unsuccessful wars of choice that followed offer prime examples. But so too did Washington's belated and inadequate recognition of the developments that actually endanger the wellbeing of 21st-century Americans, namely climate change, cyber threats, and the ongoing reallocation of global power prompted by the rise of China. Rather than seeing far into the future, American elites have struggled to discern what might happen next week. More often than not, they get even that wrong.

Like some idiot savant, Donald Trump understood this. He grasped that the establishment's formula for militarized global leadership applied to actually existing post-Cold War circumstances was spurring American decline. Certainly other observers, including contributors to this publication, had for years been making the same argument, but in the halls of power their dissent counted for nothing.

Yet in 2016, Trump's critique of U.S. policy resonated with many ordinary Americans and formed the basis of his successful run for the presidency. Unfortunately, once Trump assumed office, that critique did not translate into anything even remotely approximating a coherent strategy. President Trump's half-baked formula for Making America Great Again -- building "the wall," provoking trade wars, and elevating Iran to the status of existential threat -- is, to put it mildly, flawed, if not altogether irrelevant. His own manifest incompetence and limited attention span don't help.

There is no countervailing force within the USA that is able to tame MIC appetites, which are constantly growing. In a sense the nation is taken hostage with no root for escape via internal political mechanisms (for all practical purposes I would consider neocons that dominate the USA foreign policy to be highly paid lobbyists of MIC.)

In this sense the alliance of China, Iran, Russia and Turkey might serve as an external countervailing force which allows some level of return to sanity, like was the case when the USSR existed.

I agree with Bacevich that the dissolution of the USSR corrupted the US elite to the extent that it became reckless and somewhat suicidal in seeking "Full Spectrum Dominance" (which is an illusive goal in any case taking into account existing arsenals in China and Russia and the growing distance between EU and the USA)

[May 22, 2019] Israel hacking the world

May 22, 2019 | www.unz.com

Republic , says: Next New Comment May 22, 2019 at 3:40 pm GMT

@Sean McBride

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5VGpWl56ZF0?feature=oembed

Israel hacking the world

[May 22, 2019] Daniel Larison

Notable quotes:
"... Before and during the nuclear negotiations that led to the JCPOA, American opponents of the talks kept insisting that Iran couldn't be trusted to keep their word and they would cheat on any agreement they made. ..."
"... It is fitting that they have been the ones to urge the U.S. to break its word and betray our negotiating partners, and in so doing guarantee that the U.S. is seen as the unreliable deal-breakers that Iran's government was supposed to be. In the future, other governments may want to have some "snap-back" mechanisms of their own to ensure that the U.S. will be penalized if it breaches its obligations. ..."
"... Iran isn't interested in photo-op summits ..."
"... A real negotiation would involve making a compromise and offering concessions to Iran. Iran would have to believe that it has something to gain from the exchange, and right now it has no reason to believe anything of the kind. Trump has no desire to make concessions, only to receive them, and he won't compromise because he can't conceive of a mutually beneficial agreement. Because he sees everything as a zero-sum contest, Trump perceives anything less than the other side's capitulation as a "loss" for the U.S. In the absence of a real "win," Trump is willing to settle for the made-up kind that he claims after every unsuccessful summit. ..."
"... The next administration will have their work cut out for them. A future president won't only have to repair the damage to America's reputation, but will have to rebuild tattered relationships with allies and other major economic powers that have been frayed by years of senseless economic warfare. Over the longer term, the U.S. will face the growing problem that our commitments will be called into question every time there is a change in party control. The seesaw between increasingly hard-line unilateralists that want to tear up one agreement after another regardless of the merits and the rest of us will make it so that no one will be able to trust the U.S. to commit to anything for more than four or eight years. That will give presidents strong incentives not to burn political capital on securing agreements that they know their successors will just throw away, and it will eventually mean that U.S. diplomacy continues to atrophy from lack of use. ..."
May 22, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

• May 22, 2019, 1:16 PM

    https://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?app_id=347697165243043&channel=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter.php%3Fversion%3D44%23cb%3Df3b4a8dca4463aa%26domain%3Dwww.theamericanconservative.com%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.theamericanconservative.com%252Fff3973cf8121ed%26relation%3Dparent.parent&container_width=0&font=lucida%20grande&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theamericanconservative.com%2Flarison%2Famerica-the-untrustworthy%2F&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&send=true&show_faces=false&width=125

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.fb066ff7f5f4afee7716887031da2ea8.en.html#dnt=false&id=twitter-widget-1&lang=en&original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theamericanconservative.com%2Flarison%2Famerica-the-untrustworthy%2F&related=amconmag&size=m&text=America%20the%20Untrustworthy%20%7C%20The%20American%20Conservative&time=1558572640049&type=share&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theamericanconservative.com%2Flarison%2Famerica-the-untrustworthy%2F&via=amconmag

    https://apis.google.com/se/0/_/+1/fastbutton?usegapi=1&size=medium&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theamericanconservative.com&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theamericanconservative.com%2Flarison%2Famerica-the-untrustworthy%2F&gsrc=3p&ic=1&jsh=m%3B%2F_%2Fscs%2Fapps-static%2F_%2Fjs%2Fk%3Doz.gapi.en_US.nqtsqxdAo1k.O%2Fam%3DwQE%2Fd%3D1%2Frs%3DAGLTcCOZ3e1TaL1LYlU9IN-px8iwh1MaLQ%2Fm%3D__features__#_methods=onPlusOne%2C_ready%2C_close%2C_open%2C_resizeMe%2C_renderstart%2Concircled%2Cdrefresh%2Cerefresh&id=I0_1558572639633&_gfid=I0_1558572639633&parent=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theamericanconservative.com&pfname=&rpctoken=23034324

J.Bicking/Shutterstock One of the obvious consequences of violating the JCPOA is that the U.S. can't be trusted to negotiate anything else with Iran:

Zarif told CNN this week Iran had "acted in good faith" in negotiating the deal that Washington abandoned. "We are not willing to talk to people who have broken their promises.".

Before and during the nuclear negotiations that led to the JCPOA, American opponents of the talks kept insisting that Iran couldn't be trusted to keep their word and they would cheat on any agreement they made.

It is fitting that they have been the ones to urge the U.S. to break its word and betray our negotiating partners, and in so doing guarantee that the U.S. is seen as the unreliable deal-breakers that Iran's government was supposed to be. In the future, other governments may want to have some "snap-back" mechanisms of their own to ensure that the U.S. will be penalized if it breaches its obligations.

Iran hawks are always complaining about the "fatally flawed" nuclear deal, but they are the ones that exploited what was perhaps its only true flaw, namely the built-in assumption that our government would observe the terms of the agreement in good faith as long as Iran did what it promised to do. Other major powers and Iran now know they shouldn't expect the U.S. to be a reliable partner in future talks, and they will reasonably conclude that offers to "talk" from the administration that seeks to destroy the JCPOA are just so much hot air.

As I was saying yesterday, Iran isn't interested in photo-op summits:

Trump has said Washington is not trying to set up talks but expects Tehran to call when it is ready. A U.S. official said last week Americans "were sitting by the phone", but had received no call from Iran yet

Foad Izadi, a political science professor at Tehran University, told Reuters that phone call is not coming.

"Iranian officials have come to this conclusion that Trump does not seek negotiations. He would like a phone call with Rouhani, even a meeting and a photo session, but that's not a real negotiation," Izadi said.

A real negotiation would involve making a compromise and offering concessions to Iran. Iran would have to believe that it has something to gain from the exchange, and right now it has no reason to believe anything of the kind. Trump has no desire to make concessions, only to receive them, and he won't compromise because he can't conceive of a mutually beneficial agreement. Because he sees everything as a zero-sum contest, Trump perceives anything less than the other side's capitulation as a "loss" for the U.S. In the absence of a real "win," Trump is willing to settle for the made-up kind that he claims after every unsuccessful summit.

The next administration will have their work cut out for them. A future president won't only have to repair the damage to America's reputation, but will have to rebuild tattered relationships with allies and other major economic powers that have been frayed by years of senseless economic warfare. Over the longer term, the U.S. will face the growing problem that our commitments will be called into question every time there is a change in party control. The seesaw between increasingly hard-line unilateralists that want to tear up one agreement after another regardless of the merits and the rest of us will make it so that no one will be able to trust the U.S. to commit to anything for more than four or eight years. That will give presidents strong incentives not to burn political capital on securing agreements that they know their successors will just throw away, and it will eventually mean that U.S. diplomacy continues to atrophy from lack of use.

MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR

SteveM May 22, 2019 at 2:47 pm

Related to "America the Untrustworthy" is the economic total war that the U.S. has declared on the rest of the planet. Very complex business relationships and supply chains are being destroyed. The Trump administration's objectives are to economically strangle China and Russia and do economic beat-downs on any country that gets in the way. No company or country wants to do business with that kind of political volatility. And what can't go on forever – won't.

What the idiots in Washington don't realize is that the Chinese and the Russians have suffered 100x mores deprivation than Americans. They will suck it up now and then do whatever it takes to decouple themselves economically from the United States. (See what happens in the U.S. when the Chinese tell Apple to pound sand.)

And to think that the Chinese don't have the organic capability to technically compete with the U.S. now is nuts. China has the resources and intellectual horsepower to compete with the U.S. regardless of what the arrogant "City on a Hill" exceptionalists in Washington think. And given that China has 5X the number of STEM grads, it's easy to do the math.

America the Untrustworthy on the economic front is telling the rest of the planet to find other partners because doing business with an erratic Gorilla is more trouble than its worth.

Scott , says: May 22, 2019 at 3:44 pm
At some point, Americans are going to be outraged when they realize that most of the world doesn't view us as someone to admire but rather a rogue nation.

We have lost so much standing under Trump

BD , says: May 22, 2019 at 3:53 pm
I wonder if it ever occurred to Trump–or any of his advisers–that pulling out of a deal for no other reason than "we didn't like the terms that everyone agreed to" (rather than noncompliance by Iran) only makes it impossible for anyone to trust a new deal he wants to make later. But I guess this is why it's unwise to govern based on what Fox and Friends tells you each morning.
Barry , says: May 22, 2019 at 5:20 pm
"A future president won't only have to repair the damage to America's reputation, but will have to rebuild tattered relationships with allies and other major economic powers that have been frayed by years of senseless economic warfare. "

I don't think that any future president will be able to do this. Dubya was a shock to the rest of the world, in that they realized that there was indeed 'no there there'. Congress isn't helping.

Obama was a relief, but then along came Trump. At this point, all other countries know that (a) any competent Democratic President will be followed by a destructive and reckless GOP president, and (b) that the GOP Congress will aid and abet this.

A reputation for reliability has to be maintained.

Christian J Chuba , says: May 22, 2019 at 6:37 pm
And there is a 90 / 10 chance that we will break the agreement. This is not a Trump'ism, we never keep our word regardless of the Administration.
  1. Libya/Gaddafi GWB made the promise, Obama killed him.
  2. Saddam Hussein – Bush Sr. made the promise, get rid of WMD and live, GWB killed him.
  3. JCPOA – Obama made the agreement, Trump broke it.
  4. Russia – Bush Sr. promised not to expand NATO, Clinton expanded NATO like mad.

When have we ever kept an agreement?

[May 20, 2019] "Us" Versus "Them"

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... There are differences between the parties, but they are mainly centered around social issues and disputes with little or no consequence to the long-term path of the country. The real ruling oligarchs essentially allow controlled opposition within each party to make it appear you have a legitimate choice at the ballot box. Nothing could be further from the truth. ..."
"... There has been an unwritten agreement between the parties for decades where the Democrats pretend to be against war and the Republicans pretend to be against welfare. Meanwhile, spending on war and welfare relentlessly grows into the trillions, with no effort whatsoever from either party to even slow the rate of growth, let alone cut spending. The proliferation of the military industrial complex like a poisonous weed has been inexorable, as the corporate arms dealers place their facilities of death in the congressional districts of Democrats and Republicans. In addition, these corporate manufacturers of murder dole out "legal" payoffs to corrupt politicians of both parties in the form of political contributions. The Deep State knows bribes and well-paying jobs ensure no spineless congressman will ever vote against a defense spending increase. ..."
"... Of course, the warfare/welfare state couldn't grow to its immense size without financing from the Wall Street cabal and their feckless academic puppets at the Federal Reserve. The Too Big to Trust Wall Street banks, whose willful control fraud nearly wrecked the global economy in 2008, were rewarded by their Deep State patrons by getting bigger and more powerful as people on Main Street and senior citizen savers were thrown under the bus. ..."
"... When these criminal bankers have their reckless bets blow up in their faces they are bailed out by the American taxpayers, but when the Fed rigs the system so they are guaranteed billions in risk free profits, they reward themselves with massive bonuses and lobby for a huge tax cut used to buy back their stock. With bank branches in every congressional district in every state, and bankers spreading protection money to greedy politicians across the land, no legislation damaging to the banking cartel is ever passed. ..."
"... I voted for Trump because he wasn't Hillary. ..."
"... If the Chinese refuse to yield for fear of losing face, and the tariff war accelerates, a global recession is a certainty. ..."
"... These sociopaths are not liberal or conservative. They are not Democrats or Republicans. They are not beholden to a country or community. They care not for their fellow man. They don't care about future generations. They care about their own power, wealth and control over others. They have no conscience. They have no empathy. Right and wrong are meaningless in their unquenchable thirst for more. They will lie, steal and kill to achieve their goal of controlling everything and everyone in this world. This precisely describes virtually every politician in Washington DC, Wall Street banker, mega-corporation CEO, government agency head, MSM talking head, church leader, billionaire activist, and blood sucking advisor to the president. ..."
"... The problem is we have gone too far. The "American Dream" has become a grotesque nightmare because people by the millions sit around and dream about being a Kardashian. Makes me want to puke. ..."
May 20, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. "I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs." "I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking." "Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!"" – Bill Hicks

Anyone who frequents Twitter, Facebook, political blogs, economic blogs, or fake-news mainstream media channels knows our world is driven by the "Us versus Them" narrative. It's almost as if "they" are forcing us to choose sides and believe the other side is evil. Bill Hicks died in 1994, but his above quote is truer today then it was then. As the American Empire continues its long-term decline, the proles are manipulated through Bernaysian propaganda techniques, honed over the course of decades by the ruling oligarchs, to root for their assigned puppets.

Most people can't discern they are being manipulated and duped by the Deep State controllers. The most terrifying outcome for these Deep State controllers would be for the masses to realize it is us versus them. But they don't believe there is a chance in hell of this happening. Their arrogance is palatable.

Their hubris has reached astronomical levels as they blew up the world economy in 2008 and successfully managed to have the innocent victims bail them out to the tune of $700 billion, pillaged the wealth of the nation through their capture of the Federal Reserve (QE, ZIRP), rigged the financial markets in their favor through collusion, used the hundreds of billions in corporate tax cuts to buy back their stock and further pump the stock market, all while their corporate media mouthpieces mislead and misinform the proles.

There are differences between the parties, but they are mainly centered around social issues and disputes with little or no consequence to the long-term path of the country. The real ruling oligarchs essentially allow controlled opposition within each party to make it appear you have a legitimate choice at the ballot box. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There has been an unwritten agreement between the parties for decades where the Democrats pretend to be against war and the Republicans pretend to be against welfare. Meanwhile, spending on war and welfare relentlessly grows into the trillions, with no effort whatsoever from either party to even slow the rate of growth, let alone cut spending. The proliferation of the military industrial complex like a poisonous weed has been inexorable, as the corporate arms dealers place their facilities of death in the congressional districts of Democrats and Republicans. In addition, these corporate manufacturers of murder dole out "legal" payoffs to corrupt politicians of both parties in the form of political contributions. The Deep State knows bribes and well-paying jobs ensure no spineless congressman will ever vote against a defense spending increase.

Of course, the warfare/welfare state couldn't grow to its immense size without financing from the Wall Street cabal and their feckless academic puppets at the Federal Reserve. The Too Big to Trust Wall Street banks, whose willful control fraud nearly wrecked the global economy in 2008, were rewarded by their Deep State patrons by getting bigger and more powerful as people on Main Street and senior citizen savers were thrown under the bus.

When these criminal bankers have their reckless bets blow up in their faces they are bailed out by the American taxpayers, but when the Fed rigs the system so they are guaranteed billions in risk free profits, they reward themselves with massive bonuses and lobby for a huge tax cut used to buy back their stock. With bank branches in every congressional district in every state, and bankers spreading protection money to greedy politicians across the land, no legislation damaging to the banking cartel is ever passed.

I've never been big on joining a group. I tend to believe Groucho Marx and his cynical line, "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member". The "Us vs. Them" narrative doesn't connect with my view of the world. As a realistic libertarian I know libertarian ideals will never proliferate in a society of government dependency, willful ignorance of the masses, thousands of laws, and a weak-kneed populace afraid of freedom and liberty. The only true libertarian politician, Ron Paul, was only able to connect with about 5% of the voting public. There is no chance a candidate with a libertarian platform will ever win a national election. This country cannot be fixed through the ballot box. Bill Hicks somewhat foreshadowed the last election by referencing another famous cynic.

"I ascribe to Mark Twain's theory that the last person who should be President is the one who wants it the most. The one who should be picked is the one who should be dragged kicking and screaming into the White House." ― Bill Hicks

Hillary Clinton wanted to be president so badly, she colluded with Barack Obama, Jim Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, Loretta Lynch and numerous other Deep State sycophants to ensure her victory, by attempting to entrap Donald Trump in a concocted Russian collusion plot and subsequent post-election coup to cover for their traitorous plot. I wouldn't say Donald Trump was dragged kicking and screaming into the White House, but when he ascended on the escalator at Trump Tower in June of 2015, I'm not convinced he believed he could win the presidency.

As the greatest self-promoter of our time, I think he believed a presidential run would be good for his brand, more revenue for his properties and more interest in his reality TV ventures. He was despised by the establishment within the Republican and Democrat parties. The vested interests controlling the media and levers of power in society scorned and ridiculed this brash uncouth outsider. In an upset for the ages, Trump tapped into a vein of rage and disgruntlement in flyover country and pockets within swing states, to win the presidency over Crooked Hillary and her Deep State backers.

I voted for Trump because he wasn't Hillary. I hadn't voted for a Republican since 2000, casting protest votes for Libertarian and Constitutional Party candidates along the way. I despise the establishment, so their hatred of Trump made me vote for him. His campaign stances against foreign wars and Federal Reserve reckless bubble blowing appealed to me. I don't worship at the altar of the cult of personality. I judge men by their actions and not their words.

Trump's first two years have been endlessly entertaining as he waged war against fake news CNN, establishment Republicans, the Deep State coup attempt, and Obama loving globalists. The Twitter in Chief has bypassed the fake news media and tweets relentlessly to his followers. He provokes outrage in his enemies and enthralls his worshipers. With millions in each camp it is difficult to find an unbiased assessment of narrative versus real accomplishments.

I'm happy he has been able to stop the relentless leftward progression of our Federal judiciary. Cutting regulations and rolling back environmental mandates has been a positive. Exiting the Paris Climate Agreement and TPP, forcing NATO members to pay their fair share, and renegotiating NAFTA were all needed. Ending the war on coal and approving pipelines will keep energy costs lower. His attempts to vet Muslims entering the country have been the right thing to do. Building a wall on our southern border is the right thing to do, but he should have gotten it done when he controlled both houses.

The use of tariffs to force China to renegotiate one sided trade deals as a negotiating tactic is a high-risk, high reward gamble. If his game of chicken is successful and he gets better terms from the Chicoms, while reversing the tariffs, it would be a huge win. If the Chinese refuse to yield for fear of losing face, and the tariff war accelerates, a global recession is a certainty. Who has the upper hand? Xi is essentially a dictator for life and doesn't have to worry about elections or popularity polls. Dissent is crushed. A global recession and stock market crash would make Trump's re-election in 2020 problematic.

I'm a big supporter of lower taxes. The Trump tax cuts were sold as beneficial to the middle class. That is a false narrative. The vast majority of the tax cut benefits went to mega-corporations and rich people. Middle class home owning families with children received little or no tax relief, as exemptions were eliminated and tax deductions capped. In many cases, taxes rose for working class Americans.

With corporate profits at all time highs, massive tax cuts put billions more into their coffers. They didn't repatriate their overseas profits to a great extent. They didn't go on a massive hiring spree. They didn't invest in new facilities. They did buy back their own stock to help drive the stock market to stratospheric heights. So corporate executives gave themselves billions in bonuses, which were taxed at a much lower rate. This is considered winning in present day America.

The "Us vs. Them" issue rears its ugly head whenever Trump is held accountable for promises unkept, blatant failures, and his own version of fake news. Holding Trump to the same standards as Obama is considered traitorous by those who only root for their home team. Their standard response is that you are a Hillary sycophant or a turncoat to the home team. If you agree with a particular viewpoint or position of a liberal then you are a bad person and accused of being a lefty by Trump fanboys. Facts don't matter to cheerleaders. Competing narratives rule the day. Truthfulness not required.

The refusal to distinguish between positive actions and negative actions when assessing the performance of what passes for our political leadership by the masses is why cynicism has become my standard response to everything I see, hear or he read. The incessant level of lies permeating our society and its acceptance as the norm has led to moral decay and rampant criminality from the White House, to the halls of Congress, to corporate boardrooms, to corporate newsrooms, to government run classrooms, to the Vatican, and to households across the land. It's interesting that one of our founding fathers reflected upon this detestable human trait over two hundred years ago.

"It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime." – Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine's description of how moral mischief can ruin a society was written when less than 3 million people inhabited America. Consider his accurate assessment of humanity when over 300 million occupy these lands. The staggering number of corrupt prostituted sociopaths occupying positions of power within the government, corporations, media, military, churches, and academia has created a morally bankrupt empire of debt.

These sociopaths are not liberal or conservative. They are not Democrats or Republicans. They are not beholden to a country or community. They care not for their fellow man. They don't care about future generations. They care about their own power, wealth and control over others. They have no conscience. They have no empathy. Right and wrong are meaningless in their unquenchable thirst for more. They will lie, steal and kill to achieve their goal of controlling everything and everyone in this world. This precisely describes virtually every politician in Washington DC, Wall Street banker, mega-corporation CEO, government agency head, MSM talking head, church leader, billionaire activist, and blood sucking advisor to the president.

The question pondered every day on blogs, social media, news channels, and in households around the country is whether Trump is one of Us or one of Them. The answer to that question will strongly impact the direction and intensity of the climactic years of this Fourth Turning. What I've noticed is the shunning of those who don't take an all or nothing position regarding Trump. If you disagree with a decision, policy, or hiring decision by the man, you are accused by the pro-Trump team of being one of them (aka liberals, lefties, Hillary lovers).

If you don't agree with everything Trump does or says, you are dead to the Trumpeteers. I don't want to be Us or Them. I just want to be me. I will judge everyone by their actions and their results. I can agree with Trump on many issues, while also agreeing with Tulsi Gabbard, Rand Paul, Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi on other issues. I don't prescribe to the cult of personality school of thought. I didn't believe the false narratives during the Bush or Obama years, and I won't worship at the altar of the Trump narrative now.

In Part II of this article I'll assess Trump's progress thus far and try to determine whether he can defeat the Deep State.

TerryThomas , 32 minutes ago link

"The scientific and industrial revolution of modern times represents the next giant step in the mastery over nature; and here, too, an enormous increase in man's power over nature is followed by an apocalyptic drive to subjugate man and reduce human nature to the status of nature. Even where enslavement is employed in a mighty effort to tame nature, one has the feeling that the effort is but a tactic to legitimize total subjugation. Thus, despite its spectacular achievements in science and technology, the twentieth century will probably be seen in retrospect as a century mainly preoccupied with the mastery and manipulation of men. Nationalism, socialism, communism, fascism, and militarism, cartelization and unionization, propaganda and advertising are all aspects of a general relentless drive to manipulate men and neutralize the unpredictability of human nature. Here, too, the atmosphere is heavy-laden with coercion and magic." --Eric Hoffer

666D Chess , 11 minutes ago link

Divide and conquer, not a very novel idea... but very effective.

Kafir Goyim , 32 minutes ago link

If you don't agree with everything Trump does or says, you are dead to the Trumpeteers

That's not true. When Trump kisses Israeli ***, most "Trumpeteers" are outraged. That does not mean they're going to vote for Joe "I'm a Zionist" Biden, or Honest Hillary because of it, but they're still pissed.

Rich Monk , 33 minutes ago link

These predators (((them))) need to fear the Victims, us! That is what the 2ND Amendment is for. It's coming, slowly for now, but eventually it speeds up.

yellowsub , 42 minutes ago link

Ya'll a dumb fool if you think gov't as your best interests first.

legalize , 46 minutes ago link

Citation needed.

Any piece like this better be littered with footnotes and cited sources before I'm swallowing it.

I'll say it again: this is the internet, people. There's no "shortage of column space" to include links back to primary sources for your assertions. Otherwise, how am I supposed to distinguish you from another "psy op" or "paid opposition hit piece"?

bshirley1968 , 51 minutes ago link

"The question pondered every day on blogs, social media, news channels, and in households around the country is whether Trump is one of Us or one of Them."

If you still ponder this question, then you are pretty frickin' thick. It is obvious at this point, that he betrayed everything he campaigned on. You don't do that and call yourself one of "us".......damn sure aren't one of "me".

If I couldn't keep my word and wouldn't do what it takes to do what is right.....then I would resign. But I would not go on playing politics in a world that needs some real leadership and not another political hack.

The real battle is between Truth and Lie. No matter the name of your "team" or the "side" you support. Truth is truth and lies are lies. We don't stand for political parties, we stand for truth. We don't stand for national pride, we take pride in a nation that is truthful and trustworthy. The minute a "side" or "team" starts lying.....and justifying it.....that is the minute they become them and not one of us.

Any thinking person in this country today knows we are being lied to by the entire complex. Until someone starts telling the truth.....we are on our own. But I be damned before I am going to support any of these lying sons of bitches......and that includes Trump.

Fish Gone Bad , 37 minutes ago link

Dark comedy. All the elections have been **** choices until the last one. Take a look at Arkancide.com and start counting the bodies.

Anyone remember the news telling us how North Korea promised to turn the US into a sea of fire?? Trump absolutely went to bat for every single American to de-escalate that situation.

bshirley1968 , 31 minutes ago link

Don't tell me about Arkancide or the Clintons. I grew up in Arkansas with that sack of **** as my governor for 12 years.

NK was never a real threat to anyone. Trump didn't do ****. NK is back to building and shooting off missiles and will be teaming up with the Russians and Chinese. You are a duped bafoon.

Kafir Goyim , 28 minutes ago link

I don't think anybody thought NK was an existential threat to the US. It has still been nice making progress on bringing them back into the world and making them less of a threat to Japan and S. Korea. Trump did that.

Giant Meteor , 9 minutes ago link

Dennis Rodman did that, or that is to say, Trump an extension thereof ..

Great theater..

Look, i thought it was great that Trump went Kim Unning. I mean after all, i had talked with a few elderly folks that get their news directly from the mainstream of mainstream, vanilla news reportage. Propaganda central casting. I remember them being extremely concerned, outright petrified about that evil menace, kim gonna launch nukes any minute now. If the news would have been announced a major troop mobilization, bombing campaigns, to begin immediately they would have been completely onboard, waving the flag.

Frankly, it is only a matter of time, and folks can speculate on the country of interest, but it is coming soon to a theater near you. So many being in the crosshairs. Iran i suspect .. that's the big prize, that makes these sociopaths cream in their panties.

Probably. In the second term .. and so far, if ones honestly evaluates the "brain trust" / current crop of dimwit opposition, and in light of their past 2 plus years of moronic posturing with their hair on fire, trump will get his second term ..

666D Chess , 15 minutes ago link

Until the last one? You are retarded, the last election was a masterpiece of Rothschilds Productions. The Illuminati was watching you at their private cinema when you were voting for Trump and they were laughing their asses off.

HoodRatKing , 55 minutes ago link

The author does not realize that everyone in America, except Native American Indians, were immigrants drawn towards the false promise of hope that is the American Dream, turned nightmare..

Owning your own home, car, & raising a family in this country is so damn expensive & risky, that you'd have be on drugs or an idiot to even fall for the lies.

I don't see an us vs them, I see the #FakeMoney printers monetized every facet of life, own everything, & it truly is RENT-A-LIFE USSA, complete with bills galore, taxes galore, laws galore, jails & prisons galore, & the worst fkn country anyone would want to live in poverty & homelessness in.

At least in many 3rd world nations there is land to live off of & joblessness does not = a financial death sentence.

bshirley1968 , 39 minutes ago link

Sure. Lets all go back to living in huts.....off the land....no cars.....no electricity.....no running water......no roads....

There is a price to pay for things and it is not always in the form of money. We have given up some of our freedom for the ease and conveniences we want.

The problem is we have gone too far. The "American Dream" has become a grotesque nightmare because people by the millions sit around and dream about being a Kardashian. Makes me want to puke.

There is a balance. Don't take the other extreme or we never find balance.

911bodysnatchers322 , 56 minutes ago link

This article is moronic. One can easily prove that Trump is not like all the others in the poster. Has this author been living under a rock for the last 2.5 yrs? The past 5 presidents represent a group that has been literally trying to assassinate Trump, ruin his family, his reputation, his buisness and his future, for the audacity to be an ousider to the power network and steal (win) the presidency from under their noses. He's kept us OUT of war. He's dissolved the treachery that was keeping us in the middle east through gaslighitng and a proxy fake war that is ISIS, the globalists' / nato / fiveys / uk's fake mercenary army

Giant Meteor , 25 minutes ago link

And yet, I'll never forget all the smiling faces at the gala wedding affair.

Happier times ..

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/us/politics/ex-ally-donald-trump-now-heaps-scorn-on-bill-clinton.html

And yes, thanks in advance for noting the link is from New York slime, but i believe the picture in this case anyway, was not photo shopped.

She is, (hillary) after all, good people, a real fighter ..

**** .. mission accomplished ..

ExPat2018 , 1 hour ago link

The greatest threat to the USA is its own dumbed down drugged up citizens who cannot compete with anyone. America is a big military powerhouse but that doens't make successful countries

You must have intelligent people

America doesn't have that anymore.

JuliaS , 1 hour ago link

Notice how modern narrative is getting manipulated. What is being reported and referenced is completely different from how things are. And knowing that we can assume that the entire history is a fabricated lie, written by the ruling class to support its status in the minds of obedient citizens.

911bodysnatchers322 , 54 minutes ago link

This article is garbage propaganda that proves that they think we aren't keeping score or paying attention. The gaslighting won't work when it relies on so much counterthink, willful ignorance, counterfacts and weaponized omissions

istt , 1 hour ago link

The reality is the de-escalation of wars, the stability of our currency and our economy, and the moral re-grounding of our culture does not occur until we do what over 100 countries have done over the centuries, beginning in Carthage in 250AD.

fersur , 1 hour ago link

There's an old saying; "Congress does 2 things well Nothing and Protest" said by Pence Live-Streamed 4 hours ago at USMCA America First speech !

Good, Bad and Ugly

The Good is President Trump works extreme daily hours trying his best !

The Bad is Haters miss every bit of whatever their President Trump does that is good !

The Ugly is Hater Reporters ignoring World events, scared of possibly shining President Trump fairly !

SHsparx , 1 hour ago link

You really are making it a bit too obvious, bro.

911bodysnatchers322 , 52 minutes ago link

The congress are statusquotarians. If they solved the problems they say they would,they'd be out of a job. and that job is sitting there acting like a naddler or toxic post turtle leprechaun with a charisma and skill level of zero. Their staff do all the work, half of them barely read, though they probably can

SHsparx , 1 hour ago link

I still think 1st and 2nd ammedment is predicated on which party rules the house. If a Dem gets into the WH, we're fucked. Kiss those Iast two dying amendments goodbye for good.

Zeusky Babarusky , 1 hour ago link

If we rely on any party to preserve the 1st or 2nd Amendments, we are already fucked. What should preserve the 1st and 2nd Amendments is the absolute fear of anyone in government even mentioning suppressing or removing them. When the very thought of doing anything to lessen the rights advocated in these two amendments, causes a politician to piss in their pants, liberty will be preserved. As it is now citizens fear the government, and as a result tyranny continues to grow and fester as a cancer.

Zoomorph , 1 hour ago link

In other words, those amendments are already lost... we're just waiting for the final dictate to come down.

Zeusky Babarusky , 1 hour ago link

You may very well be right. I still hold out hope, but upon seeing what our society is quickly morphing into, that hope seems to fade more each and every day.

SHsparx , 49 minutes ago link

@ Zeusky Babarusky

I couldn't agree with you more.

Unfortunately, it is what it is, which is why I used the word "dying."

Those two amendments are on their deathbed, and if a Dem gets in the house, that'll be the nail in the coffin.

bshirley1968 , 1 hour ago link

If you think the 1st and 2nd amendments are reliant on who is in office, then you are already done. Why don't you try growing a pair and being an American for once in your life.

I will always have a 1st and 2nd "amendment" for as long as I live. Life is meaningless without them.....as far as I am concerned. Good thing the founders didn't wait for king George to give them what they "felt" was theirs.....by the laws of Nature and Nature's God.

I hope the democrats get the power......and I hope they come for the guns......maybe then pussies like you will finally have to **** or get off the pot......for once in your life. There are worse things than dying.

Nephilim , 1 hour ago link

THEHAZELFLOCKOFCRANES

BRINDLED FOOT,

AUSTRALIAN.

caveofgoldcaveofold

Zoomorph , 1 hour ago link

"Why do we have wars?"

"Because life is war: fighting for survival, resources, and what is best in the world."

"Why do people say war is bad?"

"Because they are useful idiots who have been tricked by religion and/or weak degenerates who are too weary to participate."

delta0ne , 1 hour ago link

This country cannot be fixed through the ballot box. Unless we get rid of *** influencing from abroad and domestically. Getting rid of English King few hundred years ago was a joke! this would be a challenge because dual-citizens masquerading as locals.

blind_understanding , 1 hour ago link

Last revolution (1776) we targeted the WRONG ENEMY.

We targeted King George III instead of the private bankers who owned of the Bank of England and the issued of the British-pound currency.

George III was himself up to his ears in debt to them by 1776, when the bankers installed George Washington to replace George III as their middleman in the American colonies, by way of the phony revolution.

Phony because ownership of the central bank and currency (Federal-Reserve Banks, Federal-Reserve notes) we use, remains in the same banking families' hands to this day. The same parasite remains within our government.

djrichard , 1 hour ago link

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/05/16/the-gervais-principle-vi-children-of-an-absent-god/

It is this strangely incomplete calculus that creates the shifting Loser world of rifts and alliances. By operating with a more complete calculus, Sociopaths are able to manipulate this world through the divide-and-conquer mechanisms. The result is that the Losers end up blaming each other for their losses, seek collective emotional resolution, and fail to adequately address the balance sheet of material rewards and losses.

To succeed, this strategy requires that Losers not look too closely at the non-emotional books. This is why, as we saw last time, divide-and-conquer is the most effective means for dealing with them, since it naturally creates emotional drama that keeps them busy while they are being manipulated.

[May 20, 2019] f you believe the US media if they just removed Putin, Russia would go back to being a good little puppet state just like under Yeltins.

May 20, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Kadath , May 19, 2019 4:21:27 PM | 0

That was an interesting article on psychological vs sociological storytelling and it makes a good companion piece when thinking about how the US media personalizes US geo-political conflicts with the heads of rival state (Putin, Xi, Castro, Kim Jong-un, Khomeini, Gaddafi). If you believe the US media if they just removed Putin, Russia would go back to being a good little puppet state just like under Yeltins.

Which is a shockingly naïve way to look at international relations. States have permanent interests and any competent head of State will always represent those interests to the best of their ability. True, you could overthrow the government and replace every senior government figure with a compliant puppet (which the US always tries to do), but the permanent interests that arise from the inhabitants of the State will always rise up and (re)assert themselves. When the State leadership is bribed or threatened into ignoring or acting against these needs it ultimately creates a failed State.

Even the US media seems to subconsciously understand this, when they talk of "overly ambitious US goals of remaking societies", however, they never make the logical next step of investigating why these States do not wish to be remade as per the US imagined ideal, what the interests of these actually are and how diplomacy can resolve conflicts. According to the US media everything boils down to the US = good, anyone who disagrees with our policies = bad and diplomacy is just a measure of how vulgar our threats are during talks. I'm specifically thinking of the US Ambassador to Russia, John Huntsman's boast of a US aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean as being 100,000 tons of diplomacy to Russia - of all the ridiculous and stupid things to says to Russia when supposedly trying to "ease" tensions (I still can't believe Huntsmen, former Ambassador to China under Obama, is regarded a "serious" professional ambassador within the State departments when compared to all the celebrity ambassadorships the US President for fundraiser).

[May 20, 2019] What Putin and Pompeo Did Not Talk About -- Strategic Culture

May 20, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org

Strategic Culture

Search Editor's Сhoice What Putin and Pompeo Did Not Talk About Editor's Choice May 16, 2019 © Photo: kremlin.ru Russia is uneasy over the destabilization of Tehran, and on other hotspots the powers' positions are clear

Pepe ESCOBAR Even veiled by thick layers of diplomatic fog, the overlapping meetings in Sochi between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov still offer tantalizing geopolitical nuggets.

Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov did his best to smooth the utterly intractable, admitting there was "no breakthrough yet" during the talks but at least the US "demonstrated a constructive approach."

Putin told Pompeo that after his 90-minute phone call with Trump, initiated by the White House, and described by Ushakov as "very good," the Russian president "got the impression that the [US] president was inclined to re-establish Russian-American relations and contacts to resolve together the issues that are of mutual interest to us."

That would imply a Russiagate closure. Putin told Pompeo, in no uncertain terms, that Moscow never interfered in the US elections, and that the Mueller report proved that there was no connection between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

This adds to the fact Russiagate has been consistently debunked by the best independent American investigators such as the VIPS group.

'Interesting' talk on Iran

Let's briefly review what became public of the discussions on multiple (hot and cold) conflict fronts – Venezuela, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran.

Venezuela – Ushakov reiterated the Kremlin's position: "Any steps that may provoke a civil war in the country are inadmissible." The future of President Maduro was apparently not part of the discussion.

That brings to mind the recent Arctic Council summit. Both Lavrov and Pompeo were there. Here's a significant exchange:

Lavrov: I believe you don't represent the South American region, do you?

Pompeo: We represent the entire hemisphere.

Lavrov: Oh, the hemisphere. Then what's the US doing in the Eastern Hemisphere, in Ukraine, for instance?

There was no response from Pompeo.

North Korea – Even acknowledging that the Trump administration is "generally ready to continue working [with Pyongyang] despite the stalemate at the last meeting, Ushakov again reiterated the Kremlin's position: Pyongyang will not give in to "any type of pressure," and North Korea wants "a respectful approach" and international security guarantees.

Afghanistan – Ushakov noted Moscow is very much aware that the Taliban are getting stronger. So the only way out is to find a "balance of power." There was a crucial trilateral in Moscow on April 25 featuring Russia, China and the US, where they all called on the Taliban to start talking with Kabul as soon as possible.

Iran – Ushakov said the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, was "briefly discussed.".He would only say the discussion was "interesting."

Talk about a larger than life euphemism. Moscow is extremely uneasy over the possibility of a destabilization of Iran that allows a free transit of jihadis from the Caspian to the Caucasus.

Which brings us to the heart of the matter. Diplomatic sources – from Russia and Iran – confirm, off the record, there have been secret talks among the three pillars of Eurasian integration – Russia, China and Iran – about Chinese and Russian guarantees in the event the Trump administration's drive to strangle Tehran to death takes an ominous turn.

This is being discussed at the highest levels in Moscow and Beijing. The bottom line: Russia-China won't allow Iran to be destroyed.

But it's quite understandable that Ushakov wouldn't let that information slip through a mere press briefing.

Wang Yi and other deals

On multiple fronts, what was not disclosed by Ushakov is way more fascinating than what's now on the record. There's absolutely no way Russian hypersonic weapons were not also discussed, as well as China's intermediate-range missiles capable of reaching any US military base encircling or containing China.

The real deal was, in fact, not Putin-Pompeo or Pompeo-Lavrov in Sochi. It was actually Lavrov-Wang Yi (the Chinese Foreign Minister), the day before in Moscow.

A US investment banker doing business in Russia told me: " Note how Pompeo ran like mad to Sochi. We are frightened and overstretched."

Diplomats later remarked: "Pompeo looked solemn afterwards. Lavrov sounded very diplomatic and calm." It's no secret in Moscow's top diplomatic circles that the Chinese Politburo overruled President Xi Jinping's effort to find an accommodation to Trump's tariff offensive. The tension was visible in Pompeo's demeanor.

In terms of substance, it's remarkable how Lavrov and Wang Yi talked about, literally, everything: Syria, Iran, Venezuela, the Caspian, the Caucasus, New Silk Roads (BRI), Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), missiles, nuclear proliferation.

Or as Lavrov diplomatically put it: "In general, Russia-China cooperation is one of the key factors in maintaining the international security and stability, establishing a multipolar world order. . . . Our states cooperate closely in various multilateral organizations, including the UN, G20, SCO, BRICS and RIC [Russia, India, China trilateral forum], we are working on aligning the integration potential of the EAEU and the Belt and Road Initiative, with potentially establishing [a] larger Eurasian partnership."

The strategic partnership is in sync on Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan – they want a solution brokered by the SCO. And on North Korea, the message could not have been more forceful.

After talking to Wang Yi, Lavrov stressed that contacts between Washington and North Korea "proceeded in conformity with the road map that we had drafted together with China, from confidence restoration measures to further direct contacts."

This is a frank admission that Pyongyang gets top advice from the Russia-China strategic partnership. And there's more: "We hope that at a certain point a comprehensive agreement will be achieved on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and on the creation of a system of peace and security in general in Northeast Asia, including concrete firm guarantees of North Korea's security."

Translation: Russia and China won't back down on guaranteeing North Korea's security. Lavrov said: "Such guarantees will be not easy to provide, but this is an absolutely mandatory part of a future agreement. Russia and China are prepared to work on such guarantees."

Reset, maybe?

The indomitable Maria Zakharova, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, may have summed it all up . A US-Russia reset may even, eventually, happen. Certainly, it won't be of the Hillary Clinton kind, especially when current CIA director Gina Haspel is shifting most of the agency's resources towards Iran and Russia.

Top Russian military analyst Andrei Martyanov was way more scathing . Russia won't break with China, because the US " doesn't have any more a geopolitical currency to 'buy' Russia – she is out of [the] price range for the US."

That left Ushakov with his brave face, confirming there may be a Trump-Putin meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka next month.

"We can organize a meeting 'on the go' with President Trump. Alternatively, we can sit down for a more comprehensive discussion."

Under the current geopolitical incandescence, that's the best rational minds can hope for.

asiatimes.com The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation. Tags: Lavrov Pompeo Putin Russia US Print this article Editor's Choice May 16, 2019 | Editor's Сhoice What Putin and Pompeo Did Not Talk About Russia is uneasy over the destabilization of Tehran, and on other hotspots the powers' positions are clear

Pepe ESCOBAR Even veiled by thick layers of diplomatic fog, the overlapping meetings in Sochi between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov still offer tantalizing geopolitical nuggets.

Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov did his best to smooth the utterly intractable, admitting there was "no breakthrough yet" during the talks but at least the US "demonstrated a constructive approach."

Putin told Pompeo that after his 90-minute phone call with Trump, initiated by the White House, and described by Ushakov as "very good," the Russian president "got the impression that the [US] president was inclined to re-establish Russian-American relations and contacts to resolve together the issues that are of mutual interest to us."

That would imply a Russiagate closure. Putin told Pompeo, in no uncertain terms, that Moscow never interfered in the US elections, and that the Mueller report proved that there was no connection between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

This adds to the fact Russiagate has been consistently debunked by the best independent American investigators such as the VIPS group.

'Interesting' talk on Iran

Let's briefly review what became public of the discussions on multiple (hot and cold) conflict fronts – Venezuela, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran.

Venezuela – Ushakov reiterated the Kremlin's position: "Any steps that may provoke a civil war in the country are inadmissible." The future of President Maduro was apparently not part of the discussion.

That brings to mind the recent Arctic Council summit. Both Lavrov and Pompeo were there. Here's a significant exchange:

Lavrov: I believe you don't represent the South American region, do you?

Pompeo: We represent the entire hemisphere.

Lavrov: Oh, the hemisphere. Then what's the US doing in the Eastern Hemisphere, in Ukraine, for instance?

There was no response from Pompeo.

North Korea – Even acknowledging that the Trump administration is "generally ready to continue working [with Pyongyang] despite the stalemate at the last meeting, Ushakov again reiterated the Kremlin's position: Pyongyang will not give in to "any type of pressure," and North Korea wants "a respectful approach" and international security guarantees.

Afghanistan – Ushakov noted Moscow is very much aware that the Taliban are getting stronger. So the only way out is to find a "balance of power." There was a crucial trilateral in Moscow on April 25 featuring Russia, China and the US, where they all called on the Taliban to start talking with Kabul as soon as possible.

Iran – Ushakov said the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal, was "briefly discussed.".He would only say the discussion was "interesting."

Talk about a larger than life euphemism. Moscow is extremely uneasy over the possibility of a destabilization of Iran that allows a free transit of jihadis from the Caspian to the Caucasus.

Which brings us to the heart of the matter. Diplomatic sources – from Russia and Iran – confirm, off the record, there have been secret talks among the three pillars of Eurasian integration – Russia, China and Iran – about Chinese and Russian guarantees in the event the Trump administration's drive to strangle Tehran to death takes an ominous turn.

This is being discussed at the highest levels in Moscow and Beijing. The bottom line: Russia-China won't allow Iran to be destroyed.

But it's quite understandable that Ushakov wouldn't let that information slip through a mere press briefing.

Wang Yi and other deals

On multiple fronts, what was not disclosed by Ushakov is way more fascinating than what's now on the record. There's absolutely no way Russian hypersonic weapons were not also discussed, as well as China's intermediate-range missiles capable of reaching any US military base encircling or containing China.

The real deal was, in fact, not Putin-Pompeo or Pompeo-Lavrov in Sochi. It was actually Lavrov-Wang Yi (the Chinese Foreign Minister), the day before in Moscow.

A US investment banker doing business in Russia told me: " Note how Pompeo ran like mad to Sochi. We are frightened and overstretched."

Diplomats later remarked: "Pompeo looked solemn afterwards. Lavrov sounded very diplomatic and calm." It's no secret in Moscow's top diplomatic circles that the Chinese Politburo overruled President Xi Jinping's effort to find an accommodation to Trump's tariff offensive. The tension was visible in Pompeo's demeanor.

In terms of substance, it's remarkable how Lavrov and Wang Yi talked about, literally, everything: Syria, Iran, Venezuela, the Caspian, the Caucasus, New Silk Roads (BRI), Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), missiles, nuclear proliferation.

Or as Lavrov diplomatically put it: "In general, Russia-China cooperation is one of the key factors in maintaining the international security and stability, establishing a multipolar world order. . . . Our states cooperate closely in various multilateral organizations, including the UN, G20, SCO, BRICS and RIC [Russia, India, China trilateral forum], we are working on aligning the integration potential of the EAEU and the Belt and Road Initiative, with potentially establishing [a] larger Eurasian partnership."

The strategic partnership is in sync on Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan – they want a solution brokered by the SCO. And on North Korea, the message could not have been more forceful.

After talking to Wang Yi, Lavrov stressed that contacts between Washington and North Korea "proceeded in conformity with the road map that we had drafted together with China, from confidence restoration measures to further direct contacts."

This is a frank admission that Pyongyang gets top advice from the Russia-China strategic partnership. And there's more: "We hope that at a certain point a comprehensive agreement will be achieved on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and on the creation of a system of peace and security in general in Northeast Asia, including concrete firm guarantees of North Korea's security."

Translation: Russia and China won't back down on guaranteeing North Korea's security. Lavrov said: "Such guarantees will be not easy to provide, but this is an absolutely mandatory part of a future agreement. Russia and China are prepared to work on such guarantees."

Reset, maybe?

The indomitable Maria Zakharova, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, may have summed it all up . A US-Russia reset may even, eventually, happen. Certainly, it won't be of the Hillary Clinton kind, especially when current CIA director Gina Haspel is shifting most of the agency's resources towards Iran and Russia.

Top Russian military analyst Andrei Martyanov was way more scathing . Russia won't break with China, because the US " doesn't have any more a geopolitical currency to 'buy' Russia – she is out of [the] price range for the US."

That left Ushakov with his brave face, confirming there may be a Trump-Putin meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka next month.

"We can organize a meeting 'on the go' with President Trump. Alternatively, we can sit down for a more comprehensive discussion."

Under the current geopolitical incandescence, that's the best rational minds can hope for.

asiatimes.com © 2010 - 2019 | Strategic Culture Foundation | Republishing is welcomed with reference to Strategic Culture online journal www.strategic-culture.org . The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation. Also by this author Editor's Choice Propaganda Intensifies Trade War With China Fire the Nutcases Leading Us to War The Struggle Is the Meaning CONFIRMED: Chemical Weapons Assessment Contradicting Official Syria Narrative Is Authentic Who's Behind the Pro-Guaidó Crowd Besieging Venezuela's D.C. Embassy? Sign up for the Strategic Culture Foundation Newsletter Subscribe

To the top
© 2010 - 2019 | Strategic Culture Foundation | Republishing is welcomed with reference to Strategic Culture online journal www.strategic-culture.org . The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation. <div><img src="https://mc.yandex.ru/watch/10970266" alt=""/></div>

[May 20, 2019] The Democrats just led the country on a three year-long wild goose chase. Will they apologize by Mike Whitney

This was a color revolution run by consortium of intelligence agencies and the leadership of the Democratic Party, not "wild goose chase". The key participants perfectly undersood that this is "regime change" operation.
And Russiagate was not about Trump but about profits of military industrial complex and control over US foreign policy. BTW Trump folded just in three months after inauguration.
This is a very weak article, but some comments are excellent.
Notable quotes:
"... The damage the Democrats (and their allies in the FBI and media) have done to the country is incalculable, but even worse, is the damage they've done to their own party. ..."
"... the Democrats have betrayed the trust of the people who supported their respective campaigns with the implicit understanding that they would work for the progressive reforms that improve the lives of ordinary working people and not behave like hectoring, obstructionist crybabies who refuse to respect the outcome of elections if the winner is not to their liking ..."
"... What we've seen in the last few years is not only unacceptable, it's also degraded our politics and divided the country into rival camps ..."
"... Russiagate has shed light on the cozy relationship between the Democratic party, the Intelligence Agencies, the FBI and the media. ..."
"... Their relentless, but coordinated attacks on the president strongly suggest that there may be an alliance between the various groups of which the American people are completely unaware. This suspicion seems at least partially substantiated by an article that appeared in the World Socialist Web Site titled "The CIA Democrats". ..."
"... CIA ran this whole show. Not Brennan, CIA the institution. Gina Haspel was in London marshaling the foreign intelligence cutouts, and now she's DCI. ..."
"... In this day and age nobody swallows the CIA propaganda "CIA works for the president." Don Gregg stuck that into the Pike Report after he threatened the committees with martial law. So let's stop pretending that CIA rule is man bites dog. Your government is CIA. ..."
"... Far from mourning its failure to depose Trump, the Deep State is celebrating its own prowess in leading him by the nose. The Deep State has learned to stop worrying and love the bombastic orange clown. ..."
"... Lets not pretend Russia-phobia isn't bipartisan. Even Trump went along with it by placing sanctions on Russia for imaginary "meddling". Making RT register as foreign agent. ..."
"... Lets not forget that Trump admin also expelled Russian diplomats and closed their consulate in Seattle over the bogus Skripal attack in Britain. ..."
"... Trump also launched missiles on Syria over the false flag chemical attack staged by the White Helmets (ISIS), that Trump admin. is still funding. Further poking at Russia. ..."
"... The Trump-Russia collusion scandal was the Deep State's attempt at a coup. The Mueller investigation failed to deliver so they now move on to their next coup attempt. ..."
"... In the 2018 mid-terms some 70 percent of Democratic voters, along with a high number of Independents and even Republicans believed that Trump had colluded with Russia. Yet with so many voters basing their voting decisions on fake news and misinformation, once again, the Left doesn't seemed concerned at all. ..."
"... The "Democrats" – one half of the corrupt set of American bootlicking politicians – spent three years screaming and howling and wearing Trump down until now he is governing just like Hillary Clinton would have. Endless pointless winless wars that serve only to spread chaos and enrich defense contractors, continuing subsidies of Wall Street, tax cuts for big time-plutocrats and coming soon nice juicey regressive taxes for you and me! – and of course, more legal immigration and a government-enabled invasion of our southern border by central America because the rich like cheap labor. ..."
"... That Müeller found nothing to corroborate collusion is likely the result of NSA intercepts that would disprove anything his team and the other agencies might fabricate as proof of the charge. There are a couple serious dividing lines in the national security state that have made it difficult for the coup conspirators to succeed; what will be interesting is if they do in fact get away with trying. ..."
"... Bill Clinton's telecommunication act of 1996 did a lot of damage. Clinton was a CFR agent for the parasite. ..."
"... The fourth estate centralized and came under corporate control after 1996. Those who are remotely aware know that the press organs are owned by our favorite in-group which has messianic goals. This in-group, while small in number, has goals amplified by money power. ..."
"... The neoCONs won and have Trump under control and he's hiring Bush-men as fast as he can ..."
"... it looks like Trump will run in 2020 as a WAR President, in Venezuela and/or Iran. The Bush/Trump Crime Family has been born from the ashes of the Bush/Clinton Crime Family. ..."
"... A crime of obstruction would be something like the destruction subpoenaed evidence; such as taking Bleachbit to your e-mails, or smashing your smartphones with hammers ..."
"... They just go from one lie they're more than happy to believe to another – this time its "obstruction" and the media will push that lie too ..."
"... You can legally hire or fire your maid but if your motivation -- intention in either of those acts is to bribe her or threaten her because she knows something about you that could get you in legal trouble. Then it is obstruction. ..."
May 20, 2019 | www.unz.com

For the last two and a half years, the Democrats have led the country on a wild goose chase that has been a complete waste of time and achieved absolutely nothing. The absurd conspiracy theory that the President of the United States was an agent of the Kremlin has been thoroughly debunked by the Mueller Report which states that there was neither "coordination" nor "conspiracy with the Trump campaign and Russia." Even so, congressional Democrats– still determined to destroy Trump by whatever means possible– have switched from the "collusion" allegations to vicious attacks on Attorney General William Barr and demands for Trump's tax returns.

The ease with which the Dems have shifted from their ridiculous claims that Trump was "Putin's stooge" to this new round of vitriolic accusations and mud-slinging, shows that party leaders have not only lost touch with reality, but also, that they have no interest in governing the country. The Democratic party in its current form, is less a political organization than it is a permanent inquisition led by duplicitous vipers (Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Jerry Nadler) who feel entitled to use the Justice System to pursue their own petty political vendetta against a Beltway outsider who had the audacity to win the 2016 presidential election and whose views on foreign policy do not jibe with those of their elite paymasters.

The damage the Democrats (and their allies in the FBI and media) have done to the country is incalculable, but even worse, is the damage they've done to their own party. By focusing exclusively on Donald Trump and the fictitious Russian boogieman, the Democrats have betrayed the trust of the people who supported their respective campaigns with the implicit understanding that they would work for the progressive reforms that improve the lives of ordinary working people and not behave like hectoring, obstructionist crybabies who refuse to respect the outcome of elections if the winner is not to their liking.

These are the people who have been hurt most by the Russiagate fiasco, the people who thought their Democratic candidates actually wanted to run the country, but soon discovered that those same representatives would rather spend all of their time chasing Russian ghosts down a rabbit hole.

Here's an excerpt from an article by Andrew McCarthy that helps to explain what the Russia probe was really all about:

"Russiagate has always been a political narrative masquerading as a federal investigation. Its objective, plain and simple, has been twofold: first, to hamstring Donald Trump's capacity to press the agenda on which he ran .and ultimately, to render him unelectable come autumn 2020 .

The Russia counterintelligence probe, based on the fraudulent projection of a Trump-Putin conspiracy, was always a pretext to conduct a criminal investigation despite the absence of a predicate crime. The criminal investigation, in turn, was always a pretext for congressional impeachment chatter. And the congressional impeachment chatter is a pretext for the real agenda: Making Trump an ineffective president now, and an un-reelectable president 18 months from now.

They try to make it look like law. It has always been politics." ( "Russiagate: Law in the Service of Partisan Politics" , Andrew McCarthy, National Review)

Indeed, Russiagate "has always been politics", but the quality of our politics has deteriorated significantly in the last few years, a point that's worth mulling over for a minute or two. For nearly three years we've seen one party rip up the rulebook and engage in a full-blown, scorched earth, no-holds-barred blitzkrieg on the president of the United States. At no time has there been any effort to discuss issues, ideals, policies, or competing visions of the future. Instead, every ounce of energy has been devoted to inflicting maximum damage on the man who, many Democrats think, is deserving of whatever horrendous reprisal they direct at him.

The Democrats have made no secret of their hatred for Trump or their desire to drive him from office. They have openly supported the dirty tricks, the hyper-ventilating headlines, and the relentless smear campaigns that have been aimed at him from Day 1. Through Russiagate, the Dems have tried to frame Trump as a backstabbing traitor who sold out his country to a foreign power, but now that Mueller has proved that Trump was falsely accused, the Dems have deftly switched to another line of attack altogether. This isn't how sincere liberals fight to implement a plan for progressive change. This is how unprincipled mercenaries pursue the politics of personal destruction. There's a big difference.

This isn't about Trump. Trump could be the worst president in history, and it still wouldn't excuse the contemptible way he's been treated. Is it ever acceptable to spy on a presidential campaign, to insert confidential informants who try to entrap campaign assistants to gather information that can be used to intimidate, blackmail or impeach the president? Is it ever acceptable to leak classified information to the media as part of a malignant scheme to destroy a candidate's reputation? Is it ever acceptable to enlist senior-level officials at the FBI, CIA and NSA to prevent a candidate from being elected or to engage in a stealth campaign of slanders, smears and innuendo that cast a shadow over the legitimacy of the government?

No, it's not acceptable. Never.

What we've seen in the last few years is not only unacceptable, it's also degraded our politics and divided the country into rival camps. We've come to expect that every morning will bring some new crisis centered on Trump's latest tweet followed by hours of incendiary coverage on the cable news channels, all aimed at throwing more gas on the raging fire that's engulfed the country. And, of course, no one scandal has consumed more time or been more inflammatory than the Russia probe. Here's how The Nation's Stephen Cohen sums it up in a recent article:

"Now in its third year, Russiagate is the worst, most corrosive, and most fraudulent political scandal in modern American history. these Russiagate allegations continue to inflict grave damage on fundamental institutions of American democracy. They impugn the integrity of the presidency and now the office of the attorney general. They degrade the many Democratic members of Congress who persist in clinging to the allegations and thus the Democratic Party and Congress. And they have enticed mainstream media into one of the worst episodes of journalistic malpractice in modern times.

Russiagate's unproven allegations are an aggressive malignancy spreading through America's politics to the most vital areas of national security policy." ( "Russiagate Zealotry Continues To Endanger Western National Security" , Stephen Cohen, The Nation)

Cohen's piece cuts to the heart of the matter. Russiagate has not only undermined our "fundamental institutions", it has also impacted our "national security." But I would argue that the damage caused by the Trump-Russia investigation is even greater than Cohen describes, mainly because Russiagate has shed light on the cozy relationship between the Democratic party, the Intelligence Agencies, the FBI and the media. These are the institutions that have waged war on Trump from the very beginning. Their relentless, but coordinated attacks on the president strongly suggest that there may be an alliance between the various groups of which the American people are completely unaware. This suspicion seems at least partially substantiated by an article that appeared in the World Socialist Web Site titled "The CIA Democrats". Here's an excerpt:

"An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political history.

If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in the lower chamber of Congress." ( "The CIA Democrats" , Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web Site)

Would anyone be surprised to find out that the CIA was taking a more activist role in domestic politics; that it's actually grooming its own candidates for elections, that it's strengthening its influence in the media and its ties with one of the main political parties, all in an effort to better control electoral outcomes and tighten its grip on power?

No, no one would be surprised at all. And although we don't yet know all the details, there are signs that the Intel agencies, the FBI, the media and high-ranking Democrats may have been working secretively for the same objectives, to either sabotage the 2016 presidential election or gather incriminating information on Trump that could be used at some later date. All of this coordinated activity hints at the emergence of a one-party political system that is guided by agents and elites who the American people don't know and never voted for.

In any event, we're going to find out alot more about these illicit connections as the Justice Department's three separate probes gain pace and reveal how "the FBI used one party's 'opposition research' as the basis to get a warrant from a secret court to spy on the other party's campaign." That is the crux of the matter. That's the question that will throw open the curtains and shed light on the suspicious ties between the DNC, the CIA, the FBI and the media, all of who may have been directly involved in the dodgy plan to depose the president of the United States.

Rational , says: May 15, 2019 at 7:15 pm GMT

THE DEMOGANGSTERS ARE THE REAL CRIMINALS; MUELLER WAS AN AGENT OF THE DEEP STATE, BUT STILL FOUND NO EVIDENCE.

Thanks, Sir. You are so right -- Russiagate is a manufactured scam to get an elected President out of office, to carry out a coup by using our criminal justice system as a criminal enterprise. And to cover up the real crimes of the real criminals, the Demogangsters like Hillary, etc.

Mueller was a member of the Deep State. If there was ANY collusion (whatever statute there is that outlaws talking to somebody in a foreign country), Mueller would have found it or invented it.

The fact that he could not shows that the the Demogangsters had no grounds whatsoever to manufacture this fake "Russiagate" scandal.

In reality, this scandal should be called Demogangstergate.

The DOJ should now investigate the real criminals, the Demogansters. Hillary and Soros are America's biggest criminals and they belongs in prison for life.

dearieme , says: May 15, 2019 at 7:28 pm GMT
Two minutes – that would let you easily quantify how tired someone is, how badly they are suffering from the flu, whether they are showing unusual intellectual decline with age,

If I were an employer I might like to learn how my staff's performance declined with longer working days, with a view to telling them not to work excessive hours. Or with a view to finding how best to intersperse the working day with breaks – for food, chat, exercise, or whatever.

I've long wondered why corporations pay large sums to, for instance, management consultants or lawyers, when much of the work will be done by novices, sobbing from exhaustion at their desks.

Digital Samizdat , says: May 15, 2019 at 11:41 pm GMT

Is it ever acceptable to spy on a presidential campaign ? Is it ever acceptable to leak classified information to the media as part of a malignant scheme to destroy a candidate's reputation? Is it ever acceptable to enlist senior-level officials at the FBI, CIA and NSA to prevent a candidate from being elected ?

No, it's not acceptable. Never.

Sure it is! If you're Anastacio Somoza, and you're running a banana republic which is, sadly, what we now are.

Reg Cæsar , says: May 16, 2019 at 1:30 am GMT

their ridiculous claims that Trump was "Putin's stooge"

If they want to pivot to portraying Netanyahu as his seeing-eye dog, there's already a Portuguese cartoon for that.

anonymous [340] Disclaimer , says: May 16, 2019 at 8:04 am GMT
@dearieme I believe that you meant to post this under Mr. Thompson's article.
ABC 123 , says: May 16, 2019 at 2:14 pm GMT
There's an odd relapse into statist indoctrination in this generally sound argument. The idea that a rigidly-controlled centralized state party can "enlist senior-level officials at the FBI, CIA and NSA" is bassackwards. CIA ran this whole show. Not Brennan, CIA the institution. Gina Haspel was in London marshaling the foreign intelligence cutouts, and now she's DCI. As for the litany of political interference in the paragraphs, CIA's been doing that for seven decades now. In this day and age nobody swallows the CIA propaganda "CIA works for the president." Don Gregg stuck that into the Pike Report after he threatened the committees with martial law. So let's stop pretending that CIA rule is man bites dog. Your government is CIA.

And outrage over casting a shadow over the 'legitimacy' of government? Pul-leeease. Legitimacy is a squishy term. Let's stick to the term of art, sovereignty. Sovereignty is responsibility. One agency, CIA, is chartered with impunity. They do anything they they want and get away with it. CIA's freedom from responsibility means the USA is not a sovereign state but a criminal enterprise. Perhaps you want to defend the legitimacy of the criminal enterprise that's got its hooks in you. Knock yourself out.

This is not to impugn your good faith. We all have to fight our way out of decades of CIA brainwashing. It's simple. CIA has multiple redundant get-out-of-jail-free cards and secret books for untrammeled power of the purse. That's the definition of arbitrary rule. The crux of the matter is CIA runs your country.

fenestol , says: May 16, 2019 at 5:49 pm GMT
Far from mourning its failure to depose Trump, the Deep State is celebrating its own prowess in leading him by the nose. The Deep State has learned to stop worrying and love the bombastic orange clown.

A worthy article.

Endgame Napoleon , says: May 16, 2019 at 9:58 pm GMT
If they apologize, it will remove their Russian Trolls decoy, the one placed carefully in the water to keep the corporate-owned media focused on just this one cluster of minor global shenanigans, not all of the others, like the Biden's involvement in Ukraine or most of the US Congress getting rich off of something It's not by building businesses than employ underemployed US citizens. In addition to their multi six-figure salaries, they're all getting rich off of placing bets on the rigged stock casino and the global-offshoring / outsourcing / welfare-rigged-mass-immigration economy.
redmudhooch , says: May 17, 2019 at 1:51 am GMT
Lets not pretend Russia-phobia isn't bipartisan. Even Trump went along with it by placing sanctions on Russia for imaginary "meddling". Making RT register as foreign agent. Its all a distraction. Might have to actually do some real work if we weren't having this replay of the red scare. People might start talking about Trumps, as well as most of DC's real owners if they stop screaming about Putin.

Not everyone went along with it, Tulsi didn't, she even introduced legislation to require paper ballots in future elections to prevent imaginary "meddling" or hacking, no one in DC is interested, which either means there is no election meddling, or they don't actually care, they just wanted to poke at Russia.

Lets not forget that Trump admin also expelled Russian diplomats and closed their consulate in Seattle over the bogus Skripal attack in Britain.

Trump expels Russians, closes consulate in response to poison attack in Great Britain
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/03/26/trump-expels-russians-closes-consulate-response-poison-attack/457930002/

Donald Trump's team says it is ready to block Russian election meddling this year
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/08/02/election-security-donald-trumps-team-warns-against-midterms-meddling/889539002/

The Trump administration announced sweeping new sanctions on Russians in its biggest response yet to election meddling
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-new-russia-sanctions-election-meddling-cyber-attacks-2018-3/

Trump also launched missiles on Syria over the false flag chemical attack staged by the White Helmets (ISIS), that Trump admin. is still funding. Further poking at Russia.

Mike from Jersey , says: May 17, 2019 at 11:30 pm GMT
Whitney's comment:

But I would argue that the damage caused by the Trump-Russia investigation is even greater than Cohen describes, mainly because Russiagate has shed light on the cozy relationship between the Democratic party, the Intelligence Agencies, the FBI and the media.

nails it. You cannot call this a democracy when a political party, the federal police, the intelligence agencies and the media all collude to invalidate an election. You can call it a lot of things, but you can't call it democracy.

animalogic , says: May 19, 2019 at 12:52 pm GMT
"You can call it a lot of things, but you can't call it democracy."

Correct. I'll call it a snowballing blob of degeneracy -- from A to Z. We, the world, are in so much trouble.

tanabear , says: May 20, 2019 at 4:27 am GMT
The Trump-Russia collusion scandal was the Deep State's attempt at a coup. The Mueller investigation failed to deliver so they now move on to their next coup attempt.

We know that the Left and the Democrats are insincere when they say they are outraged by Trump colluding with Russia. They aren't. If it is treason to get "dirt" on your political opponent from Russia then why isn't the Left and Democrats outraged by the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and Fusion GPS. The Steele dossier which was used to get a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page and the Trump campaign came in part from Russian sources. So paid for political opposition, with Russian sub-sources, was used to go after Trump and interfere in an election. Yet they aren't the slightest bit bothered by any of this. In the 2018 mid-terms some 70 percent of Democratic voters, along with a high number of Independents and even Republicans believed that Trump had colluded with Russia. Yet with so many voters basing their voting decisions on fake news and misinformation, once again, the Left doesn't seemed concerned at all.

The Trump-Russia collusion narrative was just a pretext to start an investigation to hamstring the Trump Presidency. It is the same story all over again. Why did we invade Iraq in 2003? Was it because of Weapons of Mass Destruction(WMD) and links to Al-Qaeda? No, that was just the pretext to start the war. The real reasons for the Iraq war and the Russian Collusion conspiracy can never be stated publically.

renfro , says: May 20, 2019 at 5:04 am GMT
Oh barf good repubs, bad dems ! Grow up little Mikey ..they are both sheep herders and you are their sheep
TG , says: May 20, 2019 at 5:23 am GMT
Completely missing the point.

The "Democrats" – one half of the corrupt set of American bootlicking politicians – spent three years screaming and howling and wearing Trump down until now he is governing just like Hillary Clinton would have. Endless pointless winless wars that serve only to spread chaos and enrich defense contractors, continuing subsidies of Wall Street, tax cuts for big time-plutocrats and coming soon nice juicey regressive taxes for you and me! – and of course, more legal immigration and a government-enabled invasion of our southern border by central America because the rich like cheap labor.

The "Democrats" do not exist as a coherent ideology, they are a collection of whores who will do whatever they are paid to do. They have served their purpose in whipping up mindless hysteria – really, wanting to save trillions by not fighting pointless foreign wars and spending that on ourselves, that's racism and fascism and Literally Hitler? Really?

So I would say that, operationally, mission accomplished.

Anonymous [151] Disclaimer , says: May 20, 2019 at 5:25 am GMT
CIA ran this whole show. maybe, but I think it was all of the intelligence agencies.. British M-16, Israeli Mossad, and the Saudi Arabian groups..French, and even the Egyptian.. .. Turkey too.. they operate the functional parts of government everywhere.

... ... ...

The Alarmist , says: May 20, 2019 at 8:38 am GMT
That Müeller found nothing to corroborate collusion is likely the result of NSA intercepts that would disprove anything his team and the other agencies might fabricate as proof of the charge. There are a couple serious dividing lines in the national security state that have made it difficult for the coup conspirators to succeed; what will be interesting is if they do in fact get away with trying.
SafeNow , says: May 20, 2019 at 9:01 am GMT
The essay's ending – we will: "find out a lot more" "reveal" "throw open the curtain" "shed light". That's it??? Maybe this a deliberately subtle way of saying: there will be no real consequences; and so all is lost; banana Republic, soft dictatorship. In fact, if it's merely an opened-up curtain, the result in the MSM will be plaudits for the actors' patriotism.
Squarebeard , says: May 20, 2019 at 9:17 am GMT
@TG

The "Democrats" do not exist as a coherent ideology, they are a collection of whores who will do whatever they are paid to do. They have served their purpose in whipping up mindless hysteria – really, wanting to save trillions by not fighting pointless foreign wars and spending that on ourselves, that's racism and fascism and Literally Hitler? Really?

They think as a group and take their "lifestyle" cues from the likes of Rachel MadCow, HRC, the Obamas and "their" opinion on foreign policy comes from 3 letter agency people who "warn" them about treasonous Trump and foreign super villains. They wring their hands and clutch their pearls over the laws of the land being enforced at the southern border and the "Muslim ban" but nothing brings out the preemptive smelling salts quicker than Trump's refusal to adhere to liberal speech codes and middle class fake politeness.

When Trump and his neocon attack dogs threaten war on multiple fronts, drone Muslim wedding parties and goat herders, aid and abet the KSA and UAE war against Yemen, use sanctions as a weapon of war against countries that present no threat to America and prioritize Israel's interests over our own, the liberals breathe a secret sigh of relief and commend "literally Hitler" for finally acting presidential. All the righteous "concern" about POC, transfags and other "traditionally" oppressed groups is fake and a way for them to soothe the cognitive dissonance between their own self-image as "caring" and fair minded people and the reality that they don't care how many foreigners get killed by DC's foreign policy or how many of their own countrymen are left to suffer in despair from the fallout of their livelihoods being offshored.

What they do care about is their own material comfort and the illusion/delusion that they are good, morally upright people who deserve all the good things life has to offer because they work hard and are on the "right side of history." They have discovered that letting Democrat propagandists and liberal celebrities do their thinking for them is a good way for them to maintain their delusional world view and avoid thinking about the mind-boggling hypocrisies and double-standards they unquestioningly accept.

Don't get me wrong, there are lots of people on the political right who are just as crazy (e.g. the dedicated race warriors who take the 'war' part literally) but everyone knows this and few people take them seriously. It is old news that mainstream Republicans and Democrats are pretty much in lockstep when it comes to terrible foreign policy the ideological space between neocons like Bolton and Pompeo and neoliberal Democrats like Clinton and Biden is slim and right now there is more pushback against them coming from the conservatives side.

The disconcerting thing about deluded libtards is their unmatched ability to believe their own bullshit and the global reach this bullshit has via the mainstream media. It is ironic that the same people who made their "self-identities" as morally pure humanitarians and protectors of the weak and downtrodden a status marker have turned out to be some of the most arrogant, vapid and destructive hypocrites around, but it shouldn't be that surprising. In my experience people who go out of their way to highlight their own do-goodery and moral superiority sooner or later out themselves as virtue signalling bullshitters and hypocrites who are just following a trend. If these people had no real influence they would be a minor annoyance unfortunately they have quite a bit of influence. Not as much as they used to, hence their panic, but still enough to cause all kinds of trouble.

DESERT FOX , says: May 20, 2019 at 12:29 pm GMT
This Russia collusion scam proved that ... the CIA and the FBI and the Justice dept. are all corrupt as hell and all of these and more are under zionist control and there is no justice in America, justice is gone with the wind!

... ... ...

RVBlake , says: May 20, 2019 at 12:34 pm GMT
Regarding Cohen's assertion that the MSM was "enticed" into one of the worst journalistic malpractices of modern times, I am heartily skeptical of the portrayal of the MSM as being seduced into acting like the whores they are.
C3H8NO5P , says: May 20, 2019 at 1:22 pm GMT
You have to love the imaginations of these hoax writers. The CIA doesn't have time on their various networks and news websites to post any truth. They have so many lies scripted for so many years in advance the producers would lose it if someone tried to slip in a couple of minutes of truth.
DESERT FOX , says: May 20, 2019 at 1:34 pm GMT
@C3H8NO5P Agree, see the book The Secret Team, the CIA and its allies in control of America and the world, by Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, this is the most accurate book ever written about the chain dogs who guard the world for their zionist masters!
Johnny Walker Read , says: May 20, 2019 at 1:36 pm GMT
Funny how neither wing of the same bird will dare name the real controllers of America.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ad7EYjIWK0U?feature=oembed

MEFOBILLS , says: May 20, 2019 at 1:43 pm GMT
Bill Clinton's telecommunication act of 1996 did a lot of damage. Clinton was a CFR agent for the parasite.

The fourth estate centralized and came under corporate control after 1996. Those who are remotely aware know that the press organs are owned by our favorite in-group which has messianic goals. This in-group, while small in number, has goals amplified by money power.

The parasite operates on multiple fronts. 1) Own the power to create bank credit as money 2) Collect interest on credit issued 3) Use debt slavery (expanding claims of debts) to make populations servile 4) Buy out and own the press (see #2) 5) Push a narrative good for your in-group. (see#4) 6) Messianic religion, where the people become their own god. An Oligarchy is then sanctioned because after all – we are our own gods.

Meanwhile, false narrative and twisted scripture has created Zionist Christians, who do the bidding of their masters.

The parasite is an evolutionary construct, with methods honed through the ages. His weakness is the falsity of his claims, which require a tower of lies to maintain. The other weakness is money power, which also relies on deception. The founders gave Congress the money power, hence it was to be under control of the law (and the people), but through deception the money power transferred to a private money trust in 1913.

A parasite needs fuel from the host, and this fuel is derived as usury from money power. Funding then allows issuance of narrative and hypnosis (including towering lies) to control the host.

The construct of secret services being part of control matrix goes back to Bank of England in 1694 becoming first debt spreading bank, which soon put its population into debts, and gained control over parliament. British East Indies company had its own mercenary soldiers and was fore-runner to MI6. In other words, MI6 was patterned on East Indies Company, and MI6 was grandfather to CIA.

It should be no surprise at all that Zionist World Government emanates from London, Wall Street, and Tel Aviv.

Returning the money power to law, is a simple law change. But, since Congress and Parliaments are owned, it is an uphill battle.

http://www.sovereignmoney.eu

Patrikios Stetsonis , says: May 20, 2019 at 2:08 pm GMT
@Rational I agree 'Rational', but one question.

Say, the Russians and Putin DID mess with our elections. So, what is the big deal?

We get involved messing with other Nations interior affairs, since the 18th century, if not earlier. So, why these "ethical" bastards (dems and some republicans) are crying about?

Plus, WHO holds the license to determine WHO is our friend and WHO is our enemy? CNN? CNBC? ABC? FOX?

I guess, I 'll come back to the phrase: It's ALL about Benjamins, baby.

P.S.
And NO: Hillary and Soros, ARE criminals but The REAL CRIMINALS and TRAITORS of the USA, are Israel and it supporters.

Sunshine , says: May 20, 2019 at 2:09 pm GMT
@Squarebeard Yeah there's totally no race war going on, at all. Only crazy people would think such a thing. It's not like the entire ruling class is in lockstep regarding laws and policies that cripple and destroy whites.

They don't allow non whites to attack whites, with little to no accountability, they don't bring them in by the millions, to swamp whites and "breed us out". They don't churn out endless anti white propaganda, showing whites as weak, submissive, old, and needing strong and vibrant non whites to "save" them from their own evil racism. They certainly don't shout it from their official positions and gloat about how whites are soon to be minorities in their own lands. They don't push endless race mixing propaganda, that somehow only shows "white + non white", and rarely ever something like "black + Asian". They don't mock and belittle whites every chance they get. They don't use "white" as a slur and a synonym for "uncool, hopeless, nerdy, weak". They don't refuse to allow whites to have racially based groups and institutions, while actively encouraging non whites to do just that. They don't give preferential treatment in every walk of life, to non whites at the expense of the better qualified and more intelligent whites.

They don't institute draconian and repressive "hate crime" laws designed to harshly punish whites for any "wrong thought" or imagined transgression against a holy and sainted oppressed non white. They certainly don't let non whites get away with racially targeted attacks (Rotherham, etc), and force the police to ignore it and prosecute the victims and their families when they seek justice.

If you don't think there's a race war happening, I can see that. Because really, only one side is fighting. The other side is too busy pretending it isn't happening, or enthusiastically groveling at the feet of the non whites, hoping to expiate their evil sin of whiteness.

Ignoring reality isn't going to spare you from the consequences of ignoring reality. All you have to do is look around whatever white country you're living in. It's not a secret.

TellTheTruth-2 , says: May 20, 2019 at 2:22 pm GMT
Major Mueller Report Omissions Suggest Incompetence Or A Coverup (right click) https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-06/major-mueller-report-omissions-suggest-hes-incompetent-or-covering-major-crimes

.. and .. Robert Mueller Is in Serious Legal Trouble – Here's Why (right click) https://russia-insider.com/en/robert-mueller-serious-legal-trouble-heres-why/ri27002

.. and .. The Real Muellergate Scandal (right click) https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/05/the-real-muellergate-scandal/

.. and .. Major Report Omission Shows Mueller Was Either Incompetent Or A Political Hack .. (right click) https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/06/major-report-omission-shows-mueller-either-incompetent-political-hack/

Will Julian Assange 'Team up' With Trump to Bury Russiagate – and Just Maybe the Deep State – Once and for All? (right click) https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/24/will-julian-assange-team-up-with-trump-to-bury-russiagate-and-just-maybe-the-deep-state-once-and-for-all/

mike k , says: May 20, 2019 at 3:02 pm GMT
@ABC 123 You got that dead right ABC 123. The evil group in the shadows that really runs the government is called "the intelligence community." Some community! More like a giant Mafia.
Anon [405] Disclaimer , says: May 20, 2019 at 3:08 pm GMT
Mike Whitney,

The CIA needs reform and oversight. It should be divided into pieces that cannot communicate with each other, but only through oversight that is legally forbidden to ever become part of or get paid by CIA. I would suggest a section for each continent, or maybe even each country. Is have these sections in different buildings in different cities in America.

They should be allowed zero media infiltration in the United States.

If that reform failed, Id build a rival CIA and slowly give it the CIAs current workload, forcing the current brass into retirement. The new intel agency could be restricted from hiring any current CIA management, only hiring active spooks.

TellTheTruth-2 , says: May 20, 2019 at 3:36 pm GMT
@mike k The neoCONs won and have Trump under control and he's hiring Bush-men as fast as he can. NOTE: Both the new Attorney General and the newly announced Assistant Attorney General are both Bush-men, and even worse, they're Bush Sr. Bush-men. So it looks like Trump will run in 2020 as a WAR President, in Venezuela and/or Iran. The Bush/Trump Crime Family has been born from the ashes of the Bush/Clinton Crime Family.
Robert Dolan , says: May 20, 2019 at 4:18 pm GMT
@TellTheTruth-2 The President's name is Jeb Kushner.
DESERT FOX , says: May 20, 2019 at 4:42 pm GMT
@TellTheTruth-2 The zio/cons have always won since the zionists had JFK shot!
One Tribe , says: May 20, 2019 at 5:07 pm GMT
Thank you for bringing these facts, and the artful assembly of them, to public scrutiny.

The damage the Democrats (and their allies in the FBI and media) have done to the country is incalculable, but even worse, is the damage they've done to their own party.

We're still discussing these things, and others, on the overall degradation of social infrastructures, almost as if they are unrelated, but, these breakdowns have startling similarities, and even superficial inspection suggests a pattern and affiliation between the key controlling interests.

Is it " The FBI ", or an elite controlling faction, having hijacked the FBI?
Is it " The Democratic Party ", or an elite controlling faction, having hijacked the Democratic Party?

Regardless, it will be the reputation/credibility of the entire FBI and Democratic Party, which takes the hit, not the specific agent-provokateurs , in fact, " The Media ", will never get around to figuring it out, and airing them out, let alone, drawing similarities between these agent-provokateurs and those agent-provokateurs

Oh and BTW, just who, precisely, is " The Media "?

And while the discussion about the " The Democrats " is liberal, the discussion about " The Republicans Party ", is a bit on the conservative side.

But ultimately, what's the difference? Both these parties are dedicated to the 0.1% socio-economic elite , and their traditional hanger-ons/henchmen.

In fact, much of the artificial delineations of people, are controlled by the same people! They are effectively different " brandings " of bullshit-artistry , to baffle the minds of the 99%, and the first grift is that there is actually choice between two meaningfully different options.

... ... ...

Royce Orville , says: May 20, 2019 at 5:23 pm GMT
Trumps biggest achievements in the past 30 days:
  • Ruined farmers
  • Made US tech a liability for everyone outside the US
  • Failed coup in Venezuela

Moron Whitney seems to think political parties matter. Why do the lower classes think any difference exists between the scum that rules over them? Only the slow minded see a difference between the republicans and the democrats. Trump supporters openly want a police state with a giant military and more and more cops, so the Russian thing was a great diversion. Obama supporters pretended they don't want the same, but voted for it anyway also promoting fear, obedience and the Russian thing.

Simon Tugmutton , says: May 20, 2019 at 5:43 pm GMT
This is a classic case of Betteridge's Law of Headlines: "an adage that states: 'Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.'"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

Alden , says: May 20, 2019 at 7:22 pm GMT
@Peter Akuleyev It's obvious you haven't read the report Peter. Exactly what crimes did Trump commit.? And don't repeat what every ignorant liberal moron has been chanting for the last 3 years, "obstruction of justice"

Please note, a crime must be committed before any suspect, victim, witness anyone obstructs justice also known as obstruction of the investigation of the alleged crime that may or may not have been committed. The FBI investigated and investigated and investigated Trump and found nothing to investigate.

Since he was plotting away in New York and the District of Columbia, you might want to read the pertinent laws regarding obstruction of justice. No crime, no obstruction.

mcohen , says: May 20, 2019 at 9:12 pm GMT
The demo's need to chill like you know man.not going to make 2020 because the carpet is ready for a woman.madam president erect ek se.soft power.in like a banana out like a pineapple.
Anon [332] Disclaimer , says: May 20, 2019 at 10:29 pm GMT
They don't need to apologize.

They need to go to prison for attempting to undemocratically overturn an election using an invented narrative.

The press as well as the individuals associated with the special interest groups and government who were involved in this effort must face severe consequences. We'll be waiting until that happens, and we will not forget.

That's what they've created with this. A simmering nation awaiting justice.

Curmudgeon , says: May 20, 2019 at 10:40 pm GMT
@renfro So what's your point? The prosecutor "ultimately concludes one isn't guilty of crime X" actually proves Alden's point: a prosecutor would have to identify "crime X". Since "crime X" was fabricated, there was nothing to be guilty of, and since Trump knew that, there could be no obstruction.

As for Mueller's report, it was a political document. All of the hearsay about what Trump was thinking about means jackshit. Thinking about doing something isn't a crime – yet. All of the bogus "conspiracy to commit " trials, when no illegal action was taken, are Stalinist show trials – just like the Democrats and never Trumpers were hoping Mueller could produce for them.

tanabear , says: May 20, 2019 at 10:48 pm GMT
@renfro

You can obstruct justice even if a prosecutor ultimately finds you were not guilty of committing the crime that was the focus of the underlying investigation

Yes, but you still must commit a crime of obstruction. A crime of obstruction would be something like the destruction subpoenaed evidence; such as taking Bleachbit to your e-mails, or smashing your smartphones with hammers. However, the firing James Comey is completely legal and allowed by the Executive. A prosecutor cannot event a crime of obstruction when the action was perfectly legal. This is in effect what the Democrats and the Left are arguing for, the invention of new crimes to impeach Trump.

Carolyn Yeager , says: Website May 20, 2019 at 11:31 pm GMT
Excellent article. I'm glad I read it. Secret intelligence gathering agencies with huge budgets "to keep us safe" are a problem. Always have been, always will be. Trump should be given credit for causing all this to be brought to light.
anon [273] Disclaimer , says: May 21, 2019 at 2:34 am GMT

The Democrats Just Led the Country on a Three Year-Long Wild Goose Chase. Will They Apologize?

Of course not. They just go from one lie they're more than happy to believe to another – this time its "obstruction" and the media will push that lie too

renfro , says: May 21, 2019 at 2:51 am GMT
@tanabear

However, the firing James Comey is completely legal and allowed by the Executive. A prosecutor cannot event a crime of obstruction when the action was perfectly legal

Wrong again ..its obvious none of you know how to find the legal cites on the elements of obstruction. Whether Trump can 'legally' fire someone or not is immaterial .the court (and the law) looks at the INTENT behind the act. Period.

You can legally hire or fire your maid but if your motivation -- intention in either of those acts is to bribe her or threaten her because she knows something about you that could get you in legal trouble. Then it is obstruction.

[May 19, 2019] How Russiagate replaced Analysis of the 2016 Election by Rick Sterling

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... What he said is, 'I Donald Trump am going to be a champion of the working class I know you are working longer hours for lower wages, seeing your jobs going to China, can't afford childcare, can't afford to send your kids to college. I Donald Trump alone can solve these problems.' What you have is a guy who utilized the media, manipulated the media very well. He is an entertainer, he is a professional at that. But I will tell you that I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business. It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white working class and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from." ..."
"... when the Clinton team first learned that Wikileaks was going to release damaging Democratic National Party emails in June 2016, they "brought in outside consultants to plot a PR strategy for handling the news of the hack the story would advance a narrative that benefited the Clinton campaign and the Democrats: The Russians were interfering in the US election, presumably to assist Trump." ..."
"... After losing the election, Team Clinton doubled down on this PR strategy. As described in the book Shattered (p. 395) the day after the election campaign managers assembled the communication team "to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up and up . they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument." ..."
"... A progressive team produced a very different analysis titled Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis . They did this because "the (Democratic) party's national leadership has shown scant interest in addressing many of the key factors that led to electoral disaster." The report analyzes why the party turnout was less than expected and why traditional Democratic Party supporters are declining. ..."
"... Since the 2016 election there has been little public discussion of the process whereby Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee. It's apparent she was pre-ordained by the Democratic Party elite. As exposed in the DNC emails, there was bias and violations of the party obligations at the highest levels. On top of that, it should now be clear that the pundits, pollsters and election experts were out of touch, made poor predictions and decisions. ..."
"... The 2016 election is highly relevant today. Already we see the same pattern of establishment bias and "horse race" journalism which focuses on fund-raising, polls and elite-biased "electability" instead of dealing with real issues, who has solutions, who has appeal to which groups. ..."
"... The establishment bias for Biden is matched by the bias against Democratic Party candidates who directly challenge Wall Street and US foreign policy. On Wall Street, that would be Bernie Sanders. On foreign policy, that is Tulsi Gabbard. With a military background Tulsi Gabbard has broad appeal, an inclusive message and a uniquely sharp critique of US "regime change" foreign policy. ..."
"... Blaming an outside power is a good way to prevent self analysis and positive change. It's gone on far too long. ..."
May 19, 2019 | dissidentvoice.org
An honest and accurate analysis of the 2016 election is not just an academic exercise. It is very relevant to the current election campaign. Yet over the past two years, Russiagate has dominated media and political debate and largely replaced a serious analysis of the factors leading to Trump's victory. The public has been flooded with the various elements of the story that Russia intervened and Trump colluded with them. The latter accusation was negated by the Mueller Report but elements of the Democratic Party and media refuse to move on. Now it's the lofty but vague accusations of "obstruction of justice" along with renewed dirt digging. To some it is a "constitutional crisis", but to many it looks like more partisan fighting.

Russiagate has distracted from pressing issues

Russiagate has distracted attention and energy away from crucial and pressing issues such as income inequality, the housing and homeless crisis, inadequate healthcare, militarized police, over-priced college education, impossible student loans and deteriorating infrastructure. The tax structure was changed to benefit wealthy individuals and corporations with little opposition. The Trump administration has undermined environmental laws, civil rights, national parks and women's equality while directing ever more money to military contractors. Working class Americans are struggling with rising living costs, low wages, student debt, and racism. They constitute the bulk of the military which is spread all over the world, sustaining continuing occupations in war zones including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and parts of Africa. While all this has been going on, the Democratic establishment and much of the media have been focused on Russiagate, the Mueller Report, and related issues.

Immediately after the 2016 Election

In the immediate wake of the 2016 election there was some forthright analysis. Bernie Sanders said , "What Trump did very effectively is tap the angst and the anger and the hurt and pain that millions of working class people are feeling. What he said is, 'I Donald Trump am going to be a champion of the working class I know you are working longer hours for lower wages, seeing your jobs going to China, can't afford childcare, can't afford to send your kids to college. I Donald Trump alone can solve these problems.' What you have is a guy who utilized the media, manipulated the media very well. He is an entertainer, he is a professional at that. But I will tell you that I think there needs to be a profound change in the way the Democratic Party does business. It is not good enough to have a liberal elite. I come from the white working class and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from."

Days after the election, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled " Hillary Clinton Lost. Bernie Sanders could have won. We chose the wrong candidate ." The author analyzed the results saying , "Donald Trump's stunning victory is less surprising when we remember a simple fact: Hillary Clinton is a deeply unpopular politician." The writer analyzed why Sanders would have prevailed against Trump and predicted "there will be years of recriminations."

Russiagate replaced Recrimination

But instead of analysis, the media and Democrats have emphasized foreign interference. There is an element of self-interest in this narrative. As reported in "Russian Roulette" (p127), when the Clinton team first learned that Wikileaks was going to release damaging Democratic National Party emails in June 2016, they "brought in outside consultants to plot a PR strategy for handling the news of the hack the story would advance a narrative that benefited the Clinton campaign and the Democrats: The Russians were interfering in the US election, presumably to assist Trump."

After losing the election, Team Clinton doubled down on this PR strategy. As described in the book Shattered (p. 395) the day after the election campaign managers assembled the communication team "to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up and up . they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument."

This narrative has been remarkably effective in supplanting critical review of the election.

One Year After the Election

The Center for American Progress (CAP) was founded by John Podesta and is closely aligned with the Democratic Party. In November 2017 they produced an analysis titled " Voter Trends in 2016: A Final Examination ". Interestingly, there is not a single reference to Russia. Key conclusions are that "it is critical for Democrats to attract more support from the white non-college-educated voting bloc" and "Democrats must go beyond the 'identity politics' versus 'economic populism' debate to create a genuine cross-racial, cross-class coalition " It suggests that Wall Street has the same interests as Main Street and the working class.

A progressive team produced a very different analysis titled Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis . They did this because "the (Democratic) party's national leadership has shown scant interest in addressing many of the key factors that led to electoral disaster." The report analyzes why the party turnout was less than expected and why traditional Democratic Party supporters are declining. It includes recommendations to end the party's undemocratic practices, expand voting rights and counter voter suppression. The report contains details and specific recommendations lacking in the CAP report. It includes an overall analysis which says "The Democratic Party should disentangle itself – ideologically and financially – from Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and other corporate interests that put profits ahead of public needs."

Two Years After the Election

In October 2018, the progressive team produced a follow-up report titled " Autopsy: One Year Later ". It says, "The Democratic Party has implemented modest reforms, but corporate power continues to dominate the party."

In a recent phone interview, the editor of that report, Norman Solomon, said it appears some in the Democratic Party establishment would rather lose the next election to Republicans than give up control of the party.

What really happened in 2016?

Beyond the initial critiques and "Autopsy" research, there has been little discussion, debate or lessons learned about the 2016 election. Politics has been dominated by Russiagate.

Why did so many working class voters switch from Obama to Trump? A major reason is because Hillary Clinton is associated with Wall Street and the economic policies of her husband President Bill Clinton. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), promoted by Bill Clinton, resulted in huge decline in manufacturing jobs in swing states such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Of course, this would influence their thinking and votes. Hillary Clinton's support for the Trans Pacific Partnership was another indication of her policies.

What about the low turnout from the African American community? Again, the lack of enthusiasm is rooted in objective reality. Hillary Clinton is associated with "welfare reform" promoted by her husband. According to this study from the University of Michigan, "As of the beginning of 2011, about 1.46 million U.S. households with about 2.8 million children were surviving on $2 or less in income per person per day in a given month The prevalence of extreme poverty rose sharply between 1996 and 2011. This growth has been concentrated among those groups that were most affected by the 1996 welfare reform. "

Over the past several decades there has been a huge increase in prison incarceration due to increasingly strict punishments and mandatory prison sentences. Since the poor and working class have been the primary victims of welfare and criminal justice "reforms" initiated or sustained through the Clinton presidency, it's understandable why they were not keen on Hillary Clinton. The notion that low turnout was due to African Americans being unduly influenced by Russian Facebook posts is seen as "bigoted paternalism" by blogger Teodrose Fikremanian who says, "The corporate recorders at the NY Times would have us believe that the reason African-Americans did not uniformly vote for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats is because they were too dimwitted to think for themselves and were subsequently manipulated by foreign agents. This yellow press drivel is nothing more than propaganda that could have been written by George Wallace."

How Clinton became the Nominee

Since the 2016 election there has been little public discussion of the process whereby Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee. It's apparent she was pre-ordained by the Democratic Party elite. As exposed in the DNC emails, there was bias and violations of the party obligations at the highest levels. On top of that, it should now be clear that the pundits, pollsters and election experts were out of touch, made poor predictions and decisions.

Bernie Sanders would have been a much stronger candidate. He would have won the same party loyalists who voted for Clinton. His message attacking Wall Street would have resonated with significant sections of the working class and poor who were unenthusiastic (to say the least) about Clinton. An indication is that in critical swing states such as Wisconsin and Michigan Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race.

Clinton had no response for Trump's attacks on multinational trade agreements and his false promises of serving the working class. Sanders would have had vastly more appeal to working class and minorities. His primary campaign showed his huge appeal to youth and third party voters. In short, it's likely that Sanders would have trounced Trump. Where is the accountability for how Clinton ended up as the Democratic Party candidate?

The Relevance of 2016 to 2020

The 2016 election is highly relevant today. Already we see the same pattern of establishment bias and "horse race" journalism which focuses on fund-raising, polls and elite-biased "electability" instead of dealing with real issues, who has solutions, who has appeal to which groups.

Mainstream media and pundits are already promoting Joe Biden. Syndicated columnist EJ Dionne, a Democratic establishment favorite, is indicative. In his article " Can Biden be the helmsman who gets us past the storm? " Dionne speaks of the "strength he (Biden) brings" and the "comfort he creates". In the same vein, Andrew Sullivan pushes Biden in his article " Why Joe Biden Might be the Best to Beat Trump ". Sullivan thinks that Biden has appeal in the working class because he joked about claims he is too 'hands on'. But while Biden may be tight with AFL-CIO leadership, he is closely associated with highly unpopular neoliberal trade deals which have resulted in manufacturing decline.

The establishment bias for Biden is matched by the bias against Democratic Party candidates who directly challenge Wall Street and US foreign policy. On Wall Street, that would be Bernie Sanders. On foreign policy, that is Tulsi Gabbard. With a military background Tulsi Gabbard has broad appeal, an inclusive message and a uniquely sharp critique of US "regime change" foreign policy. She calls out media pundits like Fareed Zakaria for goading Trump to invade Venezuela. In contrast with Rachel Maddow taunting John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to be MORE aggressive, Tulsi Gabbard has been denouncing Trump's collusion with Saudi Arabia and Israel's Netanyahu, saying it's not in US interests. Gabbard's anti-interventionist anti-occupation perspective has significant support from US troops. A recent poll indicates that military families want complete withdrawal from Afghanistan and Syria. It seems conservatives have become more anti-war than liberals.

This points to another important yet under-discussed lesson from 2016: a factor in Trump's victory was that he campaigned as an anti-war candidate against the hawkish Hillary Clinton. As pointed out here , "Donald Trump won more votes from communities with high military casualties than from similar communities which suffered fewer casualties."

Instead of pointing out that Trump has betrayed his anti-war campaign promises, corporate media (and some Democratic Party outlets) seem to be undermining the candidate with the strongest anti-war message. An article at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) says, " Corporate media target Gabbard for her Anti-Interventionism, a word they can barely pronounce ."

Russiagate has distracted most Democrats from analyzing how they lost in 2016. It has given them the dubious belief that it was because of foreign interference. They have failed to analyze or take stock of the consequences of DNC bias, the preference for Wall Street over working class concerns, and the failure to challenge the military industrial complex and foreign policy based on 'regime change' interventions.

There needs to be more analysis and lessons learned from the 2016 election to avoid a repeat of that disaster. As indicated in the Autopsy , there needs to be a transparent and fair campaign for nominee based on more than establishment and Wall Street favoritism. There also needs to be consideration of which candidates reach beyond the partisan divide and can energize and advance the interests of the majority of Americans rather than the elite. The most crucial issues and especially US military and foreign policy need to be seriously debated.

Blaming an outside power is a good way to prevent self analysis and positive change. It's gone on far too long.

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist who grew up in Canada but currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. He can be reached at [email protected] . Read other articles by Rick .

[May 19, 2019] Intel agencies of the UK and US are guilty of fabricating evidence, breaking the laws (certainly of the targeted countries, but also of the UK and US), providing fake analysis and operating as evil actors on the dark side of humanity

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... what is true is that May was judge, jury and executioner in convicting Russia of the poisoning and refused to follow an evidence based discovery process that lies at the heart of the UK justice system - by hiding behind those powers that the UK intelligence community "needs" in order to protect british (not russian, british) citizens from the sinister influences of foreign powers. ..."
"... the criminal activities of howler monkeys, like Strzok, Page, Brennan, McCabe, SUSAN RICE, Comey, Ohr, BIDEN, OBAMA, etc in the USA are bad enough (whilst hardly impacting civilian life in the US - BUT - the tactics used have been deployed to starve, cause disease, "dumb down", reduce life chances all over the middle east and elsewhere for countless millions of people. ..."
May 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Couple of factors not mentioned. one is Israel and the other is more sinister still and tied to the conclusions to be drawn from the Mueller report.

it may be true that Skripal helped Steele with some elements of the dossier compiled by Steele, via SKripals handler Pablo Miller. It may be true that Skripal went "stir crazy" and an attempt was made to silence him and his daughter - permanently, because they simply cold not be trusted. a similar motivation could be drawn up against Russia - with the two Russians visiting Salisbury used as diversionary "stool pigeons". It may be true that the "poisoning" was self inflicted and was in fact a murder/suicide attempt as a result of depression along the ines "what's the point of it all".

what is true is that May was judge, jury and executioner in convicting Russia of the poisoning and refused to follow an evidence based discovery process that lies at the heart of the UK justice system - by hiding behind those powers that the UK intelligence community "needs" in order to protect british (not russian, british) citizens from the sinister influences of foreign powers.

what ought to be apparent is

- the same tactics used by the special prosecutor to investigate the "Russia collusion" smoke screen erected by the howler monkeys in the US intel agencies (aided and abetter by howler monkeys in UK intel agencies) to stymie the US executive branch (Trump) are likely to be used by the the UK government and some more as well - in true Le Carre fashion, but with much dumber and less principled actors than Smiley's people.

these tactics prevented (and continue to prevent) investigation and prosecution of heinous corruption within the obama administration of the previous 8 years - these howler monkey intelligence agency tactics include(d) entrapment, honeypots, racketeering, blackmail, de facto kidnapping (in the case of Skripals), bribery, wire fraud, unauthorized wire-tapping, breach of authorized intel agency activities (like the FBI operating overseas and the CIA operating domestically in the US, false and unverified claims in FISA warrants, NSA providing unauthorized information to the CIA and FBI etc)

- given the howler monkey activities of the alphabet soup, it is not beyond the imagination to draw parallels with the CIA's reporting and analysis of situations on the ground wherever they operate to provide intel ahead of military activity. the DOD has already proved complicit by hiring Halper (for hundreds of thousands of dollars) to assist with the entrapment of Trump operative Papadopoulos. Mifsud is likely a CIA, not a Russian, asset.

- given that we have ample evidence of the howler monkeys in the alphabet soup seeking to facilitate a coup against a sitting US president, it is certainly plausible that - as with the US goverment sponsoring the mujaheedin, isis and al qaeda in afghanistan to fight the russians in late 80's early 90's, Iraq yellow cake and WMD - that the howler monkeys paid the white helmets to ovethrow assad and foment civil war in Syria - thus causing the migration of some 5 million syrians into europe, iraq, turkey, jordan, turkey and lebanon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Helmets_(Syrian_Civil_War)

so , the case is that howler monkey activity in intel agencies of the UK and US (add (F)rance to get FUKUS) are guilty of the manufacture of human conflict by fabricating evidence, breaking the laws (certainly of the targeted countries, but also of the UK and US), providing shitty analysis (howler monkeys are only good at swinging in trees and flinging ****) and generally operating as evil actors on the dark side of humanity.

this can only be brought into sharp relief if howler monkey activities were instead shown to be powers for good rather than the geo-political risks that persist in Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Yemen, Libya and so on and so forth.

Never mind how much past conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and so on relied on evidence and analysis thrown at us by the howler monkeys in the tree tops, how much of what we we are doing now is a fabrication causing needless suffering by civilian (not politicians or military engaged in conflict) populations?

the criminal activities of howler monkeys, like Strzok, Page, Brennan, McCabe, SUSAN RICE, Comey, Ohr, BIDEN, OBAMA, etc in the USA are bad enough (whilst hardly impacting civilian life in the US - BUT - the tactics used have been deployed to starve, cause disease, "dumb down", reduce life chances all over the middle east and elsewhere for countless millions of people.

there are equivalents of strzok, page, ohr right throughout the US and UK government "machines" operating overseas. think about that. crimes exposed by Barr et al in the US - against a sitting president - are replicated wherever howler monkeys operate overseas as well.

[May 19, 2019] Why The Takedown Of Heinz-Christian Strache Will Strengthen The Right

Notable quotes:
"... In July 2017 Strache and his right hand man Johann Gudenus, who is also the big number in the FPOe, get invited for dinner to a rented villa on Ibiza, the Spanish tourist island in the Mediterranean. They are told that the daughter of a Russian billionaire plans large investments in Austria. It was said that she would like to help his party. The alleged daughter of the Russian billionaire, who is actually also Austrian, and her "friend" serve an expensive dinner. Alcohol flows freely. The pair offers a large party donation but asks for returns in form of mark ups on public contracts. ..."
"... Unknown to Strache the villa is professionally bugged with many hidden cameras and microphones. ..."
"... The right-wing parties will use the case to boost their legitimacy. ..."
"... Strache was obviously set up by some intelligence services, probably a German one with a British assist. The original aim was likely to blackmail him. But during the meeting on Ibiza Strache promised and did nothing illegal. Looking for potential support for his party is not a sin. Neither is discussing investments in Austria with a "daughter of a Russian oligarch." Some boosting while drunk is hardly a reason to go to jail. When the incident provided too little material to claim that Strache is corrupt, the video was held back until the right moment to politically assassinate him with the largest potential damage to his party. That moment was thought to be now. ..."
"... The massive economic shock following the banking collapse of 2007–8 is the direct cause of the crisis of confidence which is affecting almost all the institutions of western representative democracy. The banking collapse was not a natural event, like a tsunami. It was a direct result of man-made systems and artifices which permitted wealth to be generated and hoarded primarily through multiple financial transactions rather than by the actual production and sale of concrete goods, and which then disproportionately funnelled wealth to those engaged in the mechanics of the transactions. ..."
"... The political assassination of Christian Strache is unjust. What was done during the 2007-8 banking crisis was utterly corrupt and also unjust. Instead of going to jail the bankers were rewarded with extreme amounts of money for their assault on the well being of the people. The public was then told that it must starve through austerity to make up for the loss of money. ..."
May 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

During the last days a right wing politician in Austria was taken down by using an elaborate sting. Until Friday Heinz-Christian Strache was leader of the far right (but not fascist) Freedom Party of Austria (FPOe) and the Vice Chancellor of the country. On Friday morning two German papers, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Der Spiegel published (German) reports (English) about an old video that was made to take Strache down.

The FPOe has good connections with United Russia, the party of the Russian President Putin, and to other right-wing parties in east Europe. It's pro-Russian position has led to verbal attacks on and defamation of the party from NATO supporting and neoliberal circles.

In July 2017 Strache and his right hand man Johann Gudenus, who is also the big number in the FPOe, get invited for dinner to a rented villa on Ibiza, the Spanish tourist island in the Mediterranean. They are told that the daughter of a Russian billionaire plans large investments in Austria. It was said that she would like to help his party. The alleged daughter of the Russian billionaire, who is actually also Austrian, and her "friend" serve an expensive dinner. Alcohol flows freely. The pair offers a large party donation but asks for returns in form of mark ups on public contracts.

Unknown to Strache the villa is professionally bugged with many hidden cameras and microphones.


A scene from the video. Source: Der Falter (vid, German)

During the six hour long party several schemes get proposed by the "Russian" and are discussed. Strache rejects most of them. He insists several times that everything they plan or do must be legal and conform to the law. He says that a large donation could probably be funneled through an endowment that would then support his party. It is a gray area under Austrian party financing laws. They also discuss if the "Russian" could buy the Kronen Zeitung , Austria's powerful tabloid, and use it to prop up his party.

The evening goes on with several bottles of vodka on the table. Starche gets a bit drunk and boosts in front of the "oligarch daughter" about all his connections to rich and powerful people. He does not actually have these.

Strache says that, in exchange for help for his party, the "Russian" could get public contracts for highway building and repair. Currently most of such contracts in Austria go to the large Austrian company, STRABAG, that is owned by a neoliberal billionaire who opposes the FPOe. At that time Strache was not yet in the government and had no way to decide about such contracts.

At one point Strache seems to understand that the whole thing is a setup. But his right hand man calms him down and vouches for the "Russian". The sting ends with Strache and his companion leaving the place. The never again see the "Russian" and her co-plotter. Nothing they talked about will ever come to fruition.

Three month later Strache and his party win more than 20% in the Austrian election and form a coalition government with the conservative party OeVP led by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. Even while the FPOe controls several ministries, it does not achieve much politically. It lacks a real program and the government's policies are mostly run by the conservatives.

Nearly two years after the evening on Ibiza, ten days before the European parliament election in which Strache's party is predicted to achieve good results, a video of the evening on Ibiza is handed to two German papers which are known to be have strong transatlanticist leanings and have previously been used for other shady 'leaks'. The papers do not hesitate to take part in the plot and publish extensive reports about the video.

After the reports appeared Strache immediately stepped down and the conservatives ended the coalition with his party. Austria will now have new elections.

On Bloomberg Leonid Bershidsky opines on the case:

Strache's discussion with the Russian oligarch's fake niece shows a propensity for dirty dealing that has nothing to do with idealistic nationalism. Nationalist populists often agitate against entrenched, corrupt elites and pledge to drain various swamps. In the videos, however, Strache and Gudenus behave like true swamp creatures, savoring rumors of drug and sex scandals in Austrian politics and discussing how to create an authoritarian media machine like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's.

I do not believe that the people who voted for the FPOe (and similar parties in other countries) will subscribe to that view. The politics of the main stream parties in Austria have for decades been notoriously corrupt. Compared to them Strache and his party are astonishingly clean. In the video he insists several times that everything must stay within the legal realm. Whenever the "Russian" puts forward a likely illegal scheme, Starche emphatically rejects it.

Bershidsky continues:

Strache, as one of the few nationalist populists in government in the European Union's wealthier member states, was an important member of the movement Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has been trying to cobble together ahead of the European Parliament election that will take place next week. On Saturday, he was supposed to attend a Salvini-led rally in Milan with other like-minded politicians from across Europe. Instead, he was in Vienna apologizing to his wife and to Kurz and protesting pitifully that he'd been the victim of a "political assassination" -- a poisonous rain on the Italian right-winger's parade.
...
This leaves the European far right in disarray and plays into the hands of centrist and leftist forces ahead of next week's election. Salvini's unifying effort has been thoroughly undermined, ...

This is also a misreading of the case. The right-wing parties will use the case to boost their legitimacy.

Strache was obviously set up by some intelligence services, probably a German one with a British assist. The original aim was likely to blackmail him. But during the meeting on Ibiza Strache promised and did nothing illegal. Looking for potential support for his party is not a sin. Neither is discussing investments in Austria with a "daughter of a Russian oligarch." Some boosting while drunk is hardly a reason to go to jail. When the incident provided too little material to claim that Strache is corrupt, the video was held back until the right moment to politically assassinate him with the largest potential damage to his party. That moment was thought to be now.

But that Strache stepped down after the sudden media assault only makes him more convincing. The right-wing all over Europe will see him as a martyr who was politically assassinated because he worked for their cause. The issue will increase the right-wingers hate against the 'liberal' establishment. It will further motivate them: "They attack us because we are right and winning." The new far-right block Natteo Salvini will setup in the European Parliament will likely receive a record share of votes.

Establishment writers notoriously misinterpret the new right wing parties and their followers. This stand-offish sentence in the Spiegel story about Strache's party demonstrates the problem:

In the last election, the party drew significant support from the working class, in part because of his ability to simplify even the most complicated of issues and play the common man, even in his role as vice chancellor.

The implicit thesis, that the working class is too dumb to understand the "most complicated of issues", is not only incredibly snobbish but utterly false. The working class understands very well what the establishment parties have done to it and continue to do. The increasing vote share of the far-right is a direct consequence of the behavior of the neoliberal center and of the lack of real left alternatives.

Last week, before the Strache video appeared, Craig Murray put his finger on the wound:

The massive economic shock following the banking collapse of 2007–8 is the direct cause of the crisis of confidence which is affecting almost all the institutions of western representative democracy. The banking collapse was not a natural event, like a tsunami. It was a direct result of man-made systems and artifices which permitted wealth to be generated and hoarded primarily through multiple financial transactions rather than by the actual production and sale of concrete goods, and which then disproportionately funnelled wealth to those engaged in the mechanics of the transactions.

...

The rejection of the political class manifests itself in different ways and has been diverted down a number of entirely blind alleys giving unfulfilled promise of a fresh start – Brexit, Trump, Macron. As the vote share of the established political parties – and public engagement with established political institutions – falls everywhere, the chattering classes deride the political symptoms of status quo rejection by the people as "populism". It is not populism to make sophisticated arguments that undermine the received political wisdom and take on the entire weight of established media opinion.

If one wants to take down the far right one has to do so with arguments and good politics for the working class. Most people, especially working class people, have a strong sense for justice. The political assassination of Christian Strache is unjust. What was done during the 2007-8 banking crisis was utterly corrupt and also unjust. Instead of going to jail the bankers were rewarded with extreme amounts of money for their assault on the well being of the people. The public was then told that it must starve through austerity to make up for the loss of money.

While I consider myself to be a strong leftist who opposes the right wherever possible, I believe to understand why people vote for Strache's FBOe and similar parties. When one talks to these people issues of injustice and inequality always come up. The new 'populist' parties at least claim to fight against the injustice done to the common men. Unlike most of the establishment parties they seem to be still mostly clean and not yet corrupted.

In the early 1990s Strache actually flirted with violent fascists but he rejected their way. While he has far-right opinions, he and his like are no danger to our societies. If we can not accept that Strache and his followers have some legitimate causes, we will soon find us confronted with way more extreme people. The neoliberal establishment seems to do its best to achieve that.

Posted by b on May 19, 2019 at 01:10 PM | Permalink

[May 19, 2019] Teresa May has been the common denominator in many of the sick things happening in the UK

Notable quotes:
"... Things have indeed moved on since the Skripal affair, not at least in terms of the prime minister Teresa May. It must now be clear to even the most dimwitted that she is a lunatic of note. This is obviously not something that has only come as a response to Brexit. However Brexit has shown her up as an utter idiot. ..."
"... Only a person of this caliper might be able to make any sense of the Skripal affair, and even if it makes perfect sense in her diseased mind, ..."
"... Teresa May has been the common denominator in many of the sick things happening in the UK, ..."
"... "And, according to Bustani, Bolton didn't mince words. "Cheney wants you out," Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president of the United States. "We can't accept your management style." ..."
"... Bolton continued, according to Bustani's recollections: "You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don't comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you." ..."
"... There was a pause. "We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York."" ..."
"... The Brits have gone nuts. Maybe it is Karma for all the centuries of bad actions towards the rest of the world. Now that their DS manipulation is being exposed, what else are they going to do? Try to influence Putin? ..."
"... I don't think they've gone nuts. I think the UK is the center of the globalist cabal, and the cabal is on the back foot and getting desperate. 6 hours ago And the more desperate they are the more dangerous they become. And the Satanic head of this globalist cabal are the Rothschilds, who belong to the powerful Chabad Lubavitch cult, and who "made the modern banking system and the Fed that made Zionism, the world wars, the European Union, and so on." ..."
"... Between 2003 and 2013 "the Jared Khushner family foundation donated a total of $342,500 to various institutions and projects associated with the movement... in addition the Donald J Trump Foundation has donated $11,550 to three Chabad institutions." -- Kushners Belong to Jewish Supremacist Doomsday Group (that prophesies WWIII after which the Jews will rule). ..."
"... what is true is that May was judge, jury and executioner in convicting Russia of the poisoning and refused to follow an evidence based discovery process that lies at the heart of the UK justice system - by hiding behind those powers that the UK intelligence community "needs" in order to protect british (not russian, british) citizens from the sinister influences of foreign powers. ..."
"... the criminal activities of howler monkeys, like Strzok, Page, Brennan, McCabe, SUSAN RICE, Comey, Ohr, BIDEN, OBAMA, etc in the USA are bad enough (whilst hardly impacting civilian life in the US - BUT - the tactics used have been deployed to starve, cause disease, "dumb down", reduce life chances all over the middle east and elsewhere for countless millions of people. ..."
May 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
  • ===
    all of this is entirely irrelevant .... the World and his mother know that the us is a rat infested terrorist regime that NOBODY else in the World REALLY trusts or believes .... "that is all ye know on Earth ... and all ye need to know" (Keats - if you are American you will need to do a search -NOT the Goggle NSA one - on that )
  • ===
    Looks like everyone in the DS did not get their dead ducks in a row....... get it. Skipals were feeding ducks after they were poisioned but the ducks did not die.
  • ===
    The starting assumption is false: "The neocon faction in the US is usually (and reasonably) regarded as the motivator behind much of the western aggression in the Middle East."

    BOTH parties have meddled incessantly in the middle east, so the idea of meddling being unique to neocons of provably false. Clinton and Obama did not reduce our footprint in the middle east, Hillary's behavior under Obama was particularly meddlesome and irrational. Worse than the Republicans based on results.

  • ===
    Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Labour. What`s the difference ?; NONE. They are all part of the Establishment owned Western Political Cartel. 31 minutes ago You presume that there are no neocons among Democrats, an erroneous presumption. However, the neocons among the Democrats don't call themselves "neocons" and toe the line on domestic Democrat insanity, just as the neocons infesting the Republican party toe the line on Republican domestic insanity. Why not? The purpose of neocons (Republican or Democrat) is to create chaos and disaster to further Israel's monstrous agenda.

    If you pay attention to what they do and not to what they call themselves , life becomes much simpler.

  • ===

    ...The UK Government is up to its neck in the Trump collusion plot, and on its dealings with Syria. It is all going to come out very soon. It is also more likely than not that MI6 were involved in the Litvinenko assassination -as suggested by his father.

  • ===
    Things have indeed moved on since the Skripal affair, not at least in terms of the prime minister Teresa May. It must now be clear to even the most dimwitted that she is a lunatic of note. This is obviously not something that has only come as a response to Brexit. However Brexit has shown her up as an utter idiot.

    Only a person of this caliper might be able to make any sense of the Skripal affair, and even if it makes perfect sense in her diseased mind, it does not by implication make sense to anyone else.

    Teresa May has been the common denominator in many of the sick things happening in the UK,

    In the interest of any sane person in that Kingdom, get her removed!

    Granted that May is the poster girl for idiotic behavior but David Cameron and Tony Blair didn't do too bad at giving blow jobs to Uncle Shmuel. Shmuel should have told May, "Suck, dammit! Blow is just a figure of speech."

  • ===
    Who was complicate in the Lie ... Nicky Haley, the US White House, the US Media, the US Military, the UK Government, the UK Media and possibly Saudia Arabia and Israel. That's a Youge conspiracy for just ONE Lie. And NOBODY is going to be held accountable.
  • ===
    If Theresa May ever taught us anything, it's that if you suspect a building is a chemical weapons facility, bomb it
  • ===
    It's a very simple lesson really...

    NEVER TRUST a single word uttered by these corrupt nations EVER... Works for me... and has been 100% right for years now

  • ===
    The OPCW is indeed compromised.

    In 2002, John Bolton directly threatened then director Jose Bustani for negotiating with Saddam Hussein to allow OPCW inspectors to conduct unannounced visits to Iraq, which would undermine the US plans to attack.

    ...

    "And, according to Bustani, Bolton didn't mince words. "Cheney wants you out," Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president of the United States. "We can't accept your management style."

    Bolton continued, according to Bustani's recollections: "You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don't comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you."

    There was a pause. "We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York.""

    https://theintercept.com/2018/03/29/john-bolton-trump-bush-bustani-kids-opcw/

  • ===
    Why did Trump select Bolton, anyway? I no longer buy the 3D chess nor the genius of Trump theories. Yes, I will still support him but he needs to look alive.
  • ===
    Trump didn't select Bolton... the Boss did

  • ===
    Very good and correct points apart from :

    "This time they might even receive greater support from France this time around – since Macron is facing a revolution at home and would kill (possibly literally) for a nice international distraction."

    The beginning of the paragraph is probably right. The media in France followed the lead of Macron concerning both Douma, & The Skripals and they would probably defend their positions by defending also the next false flag event in Syria or in Britain.

    However the nonsense that "Macron is facing a revolution at home and would kill (possibly literally) for a nice international distraction" is pure hyperbole worthy of a false news site like Breitbart or, in this case, Russia Today. Nothing like a revolution is happening in France. Macron has the same support as he has had since the last election and the Yellow Vest have to a large degree gone home. Some 18.500 participated throughout France in the last demonstration and anyway, very few of them want a "revolution". They want more social welfare and better pensions.

  • ===

    The yellow vests indeed do want more social welfare and better pensions, but they also want lower taxes - ON PETROL.

    Breitbart has been known to push false narratives (just like CNN or MSNBC or Fox News) but can you point out any fake stories from RT? I ask because they've been a reliable factual counterweight to the Western media lies over the past 3 years at least.

    Your comment reads like standard issue NATO ********.

  • ===
    Same reason the deep state is worried about the nano thermite found in the ashes of 9/11. With a widespread catastrophe there is always an outsider doing their own research on the remnants of the disaster. You can bet your bottom dollar, assuming this story is even close to being accurate, that someone would have done an analysis on the isotopes, especially if the war drums against Russia were beating.
  • ===
    The Brits have gone nuts. Maybe it is Karma for all the centuries of bad actions towards the rest of the world. Now that their DS manipulation is being exposed, what else are they going to do? Try to influence Putin?
  • ===
    I don't think they've gone nuts. I think the UK is the center of the globalist cabal, and the cabal is on the back foot and getting desperate. 6 hours ago And the more desperate they are the more dangerous they become. And the Satanic head of this globalist cabal are the Rothschilds, who belong to the powerful Chabad Lubavitch cult, and who "made the modern banking system and the Fed that made Zionism, the world wars, the European Union, and so on."

    Between 2003 and 2013 "the Jared Khushner family foundation donated a total of $342,500 to various institutions and projects associated with the movement... in addition the Donald J Trump Foundation has donated $11,550 to three Chabad institutions." -- Kushners Belong to Jewish Supremacist Doomsday Group (that prophesies WWIII after which the Jews will rule).

  • ===
    Britain is a police state.
  • ===
    (Edited)

    Putin shot down MH17!!!!

    Remember that gem? They really have to stretch the truth with this one.

    Assad using chemical weapons right before he cleaned out Damascus from the cockroaches. Ah ha, yeap. Makes perfect sense if you have **** for brains. Which are the sort of people the empire relies on these days.

    Joos and Zios running things is working out real well. This is the kind of work you'd expect from an office clerk with a bad attitude, certainly not from god's chosen. 7

  • ===
    Yes, and wasn't it the same ******** fake news source, Bellingcat, pushing that lie that also pushed some of the false flag Syria chemical attack lies?


  • ===

    Couple of factors not mentioned. one is Israel and the other is more sinister still and tied to the conclusions to be drawn from the Mueller report.

    it may be true that Skripal helped Steele with some elements of the dossier compiled by Steele, via SKripals handler Pablo Miller. It may be true that Skripal went "stir crazy" and an attempt was made to silence him and his daughter - permanently, because they simply cold not be trusted. a similar motivation could be drawn up against Russia - with the two Russians visiting Salisbury used as diversionary "stool pigeons". It may be true that the "poisoning" was self inflicted and was in fact a murder/suicide attempt as a result of depression along the ines "what's the point of it all".

    what is true is that May was judge, jury and executioner in convicting Russia of the poisoning and refused to follow an evidence based discovery process that lies at the heart of the UK justice system - by hiding behind those powers that the UK intelligence community "needs" in order to protect british (not russian, british) citizens from the sinister influences of foreign powers.

    what ought to be apparent is

    - the same tactics used by the special prosecutor to investigate the "Russia collusion" smoke screen erected by the howler monkeys in the US intel agencies (aided and abetter by howler monkeys in UK intel agencies) to stymie the US executive branch (Trump) are likely to be used by the the UK government and some more as well - in true Le Carre fashion, but with much dumber and less principled actors than Smiley's people.

    these tactics prevented (and continue to prevent) investigation and prosecution of heinous corruption within the obama administration of the previous 8 years - these howler monkey intelligence agency tactics include(d) entrapment, honeypots, racketeering, blackmail, de facto kidnapping (in the case of Skripals), bribery, wire fraud, unauthorized wire-tapping, breach of authorized intel agency activities (like the FBI operating overseas and the CIA operating domestically in the US, false and unverified claims in FISA warrants, NSA providing unauthorized information to the CIA and FBI etc)

    - given the howler monkey activities of the alphabet soup, it is not beyond the imagination to draw parallels with the CIA's reporting and analysis of situations on the ground wherever they operate to provide intel ahead of military activity. the DOD has already proved complicit by hiring Halper (for hundreds of thousands of dollars) to assist with the entrapment of Trump operative Papadopoulos. Mifsud is likely a CIA, not a Russian, asset.

    - given that we have ample evidence of the howler monkeys in the alphabet soup seeking to facilitate a coup against a sitting US president, it is certainly plausible that - as with the US goverment sponsoring the mujaheedin, isis and al qaeda in afghanistan to fight the russians in late 80's early 90's, Iraq yellow cake and WMD - that the howler monkeys paid the white helmets to ovethrow assad and foment civil war in Syria - thus causing the migration of some 5 million syrians into europe, iraq, turkey, jordan, turkey and lebanon.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Helmets_(Syrian_Civil_War)

    so , the case is that howler monkey activity in intel agencies of the UK and US (add (F)rance to get FUKUS) are guilty of the manufacture of human conflict by fabricating evidence, breaking the laws (certainly of the targeted countries, but also of the UK and US), providing shitty analysis (howler monkeys are only good at swinging in trees and flinging ****) and generally operating as evil actors on the dark side of humanity.

    this can only be brought into sharp relief if howler monkey activities were instead shown to be powers for good rather than the geo-political risks that persist in Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Yemen, Libya and so on and so forth.

    Never mind how much past conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and so on relied on evidence and analysis thrown at us by the howler monkeys in the tree tops, how much of what we we are doing now is a fabrication causing needless suffering by civilian (not politicians or military engaged in conflict) populations?

    the criminal activities of howler monkeys, like Strzok, Page, Brennan, McCabe, SUSAN RICE, Comey, Ohr, BIDEN, OBAMA, etc in the USA are bad enough (whilst hardly impacting civilian life in the US - BUT - the tactics used have been deployed to starve, cause disease, "dumb down", reduce life chances all over the middle east and elsewhere for countless millions of people.

    there are equivalents of strzok, page, ohr right throughout the US and UK government "machines" operating overseas. think about that. crimes exposed by Barr et al in the US - against a sitting president - are replicated wherever howler monkeys operate overseas as well.

  • ===
    Excellent post! And my brain keeps wobbling around the recent revelation that the former heads of the CIA and FBI are both avowed COMMUNISTS, Brennan and Comey, TRUMP, OFF YOUR ***!!!!
  • ===
    exactly.

    the liars, cheaters and stealers (aka howler monkeys) ALWAYS project their own crimes onto any opposition - meaning that when they accuse Trump of collusion with Russia, it is in fact the howler monkeys doing the collusion.

    they should be investigated to the same degree that Trump and his assocaites have been - plus China collusion and Ukrainian collusion. All I can say is " watch your back "..

  • ===
    The 'Keystone Cops' outcome of these two events show the utter desperation of the Deep State to continue on with their one world agenda. Hopefully that is a good sign of weakening. Someone in total control wouldn't make so many amateur mistakes. This proves that Putin is putting the west in a sort of Jujitsu 'choke hold' where you slowly cut off their oxygen until they tap out. In the meantime, the opponent flails about throwing useless, wild punches trying to escape the inevitable outcome. That's how I'm reading it and I hope I'm right.
  • ===
    I hope you're right too - but I also fear the other case - they've simply rid themselves of so many perceived challenges that they no longer bother to be as cautious as before. Along with the new guard just not being as competent and organized, coming from the "everyone gets a trophy" crowd.
  • ===
    (Edited) These false flags would be readily accepted by the public if not for the internet. Which, I believe, is the primary factor behind the growing government push to censor those who question the "official" narratives.
  • ===
    The biggest false flag of all is 9/11. You have to be a moron not to have noticed the controlled explosion of the twin towers on videos available on youtube and the downing of tower no 7 that was hit by nothing.
  • ===
    (Edited) 99.99% false flag inside job done by government/intel agency collaboration - US/Israel/Saudi to lead the US into the Middle East.

    The beastly trid of evil willing to murder 3000 innocent Americans for this sick agenda. And then millions more in the Middle East. 8

  • ===
    I have a very good friend who watched as two sons went off to Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 to "fight terrorism". I have presented all the evidence of 9/.11 being a false flag, who did it and how it was done. He refuses to believe it. I assume a large part of society clings to the notion, as he, that "our people" wouldn't do such a thing. They make the classic error of assuming that the psychopaths amongst us think and reason as they do.

    Here's a great article on the nature of psychopathy. It's a long read but good insight into the minds (I'd say hearts .... but they have none) of these 6% who 'lead" us.

    https://www.winterwatch.net/2019/05/political-ponerology-a-psychological-anatomy-of-evil-politics-and-public-trauma/

  • ===
    There is a long history of Jewish terrorism - including on the western benefactors of Israel - precluding 9/11, which was an Israeli job.

    http://www.theinfounderground.com/smf/index.php?topic=5367.0

    http://www.unz.com/article/911-was-an-israeli-job/

  • ===
    I've had some run-ins with real psychopaths--I worked for one for a few years. The reason they are so effective is that they blindside people. Because they are such a minority, we don't run into them very often and even if we do, we don't "get it." We have internal models of what people are. Those models comprise our "normalcy bias" and we shape our experience to fit. So, for the psycho/sociopaths, it's like clubbing baby seals. Maybe that's why they get arrogant and sloppy.
  • ===

    Psychopaths have low impulse control. That said, Reality is there are powers beyond psychopath.

  • ===
    The Skripal event was fabricated ( two months before the start of the WC) to try and get public support and outrage - enough - so that the 'people' would support a boycott of Russia's World Cup !!

    It ******* failed !! - Like everything else they attempt !!! Try keeping the Brits away from their soccer - the chaos would make the 'yellow vests' ******* blush !!!

  • ===
    Their Jihadi buttboys eventually escaped through the Golan and off to Canada, the UK and the rest of the ""Assad Must Go" world for residency, in exchange for thier services to the (((criminal enterprise))).
  • ===
    The obvious fact that the Owners are choosing political frontmen of undaunted stupidity, unable to plan more than 2 steps ahead is a very hopeful sign. Now they have to shut down the internet through their buttboys false frontmen of social media like Fuckerturd and Dorsey.
  • ===
    Back to today...

    ...and while things have moved on, we're still puzzling over all the same issues.

    • What was the purpose of the Skripal attack? TO CLOSE DOWN THE UK END OF THE STEELE REPORT
    • What was the original plan of the Douma attack? TO COW RUSSIA INTO LEAVING SYRIA
    • Is there, as it appears, an internal power struggle in the Trump administration? NO...TRUMP HSS NO REAL POWER
    • Has that resolved? Who is running the United States? THE HIGHEST ECHELONS OF THE OCCULT GROUPS HAVE ALWAYS RUN AMERICA
    • Seeing as the OPCW has been shown to cover-up evidence in Douma, can we trust them on Skripal? Or anything else? THE OPCW ARE A POLITICALLY, SCIENTIFICALLY, ETHICALLY AND MORALLY COMPROMISED ORGANISATION.......SO NO IS THE ANSWER!
    • Speaking of which, where on Earth IS Sergei Skripal? IMO..... SERGI SKRIPAL IS DEAD AND HIS DAUGHTER YULIA iS HELD UNDER DRUG INDUCED HOUSE ARREST IN THE UK TO AID AND INDUCE "STOCKHOLM SYNDROME" IN HER BEFORE RELEASE CAN BE CONSIDERED
  • ===
    skripal was to be the conduit for funneling Novichok, conveniently produced at porton down and the white helmets for the next false flag event...

  • ===
    Everything you need is here......

    http://www.theblogmire.com/from-the-folks-who-lie-cheat-and-steal-for-a-living-project-fake-duck/

    Rob Slane and all the forum contributors have flogged and dissected SKRIPAL to death.

    Sensible and informed people understand what actually happened.

  • ===
    The fun really starts when the deep state decides that it no longer needs public approval.
  • ===
    Or indeed 90% of it's subjects.

  • ===
    i know, i totally agree. the official story is complete bunkum. not one fact to back it up. in fact, it's contradicting itself every time new "facts" are belched out by HMG


  • ===
    It used to be that we had to "read between the lines" to find the truth. Now, we have to "read between the lies".

    The OPCW is obviously compromised and is not an independent organisation.

    The 'clowns' really are stupid - they keep showing us how they do it!

  • ===
    (Edited) They've bragged and played their hand one too many times, exposing the deception for all the world to see.

    Problem (false-flag) - Reaction (provoke an emotional response) - Solution (violate civil liberties/privacy, consolidate power, sanctions, war, etc.)

    The emperor has no clothes and is running around naked.

  • ===
    (Edited) The fact that the term "false flag" has entered the every day lexicon of the English language is a tremendous setback for our Owners.

    I suspect the Yulia Skripal is occupying the cell next to Julian Assange.

  • ===
    "The UK government has lied and evaded on every key aspect"

    Lies & evasion are TM's specialties, along with distraction politics.

  • ===
    (Edited) And the extortion empire moves on to new victims to prey on.

    It was quite a spectacle watching $100 million burn up on firing missiles on empty runways though. Boy that was a great use of US tax payers money.

  • ===
    (Edited) This is a long long piece about not much of anything without a single introduction of new information or proof? It is entirely without substance and is entirely speculative opinion as it stands without evidence.

    That is NOT to say that the narrative is not entirely correct, I believe that it is, just that speculation doesn't really prove what we may all believe to be the truth. There is a need for facts, probably supported by leaks, in the Skripal case as has been the case with OPCW and Douma.

  • ===
    We'll do yourself a favor then and read the linked articles as well as the source docs. If you haven't, then expressing skepticism here is a disservice to the hard and thankless work these brave journalists have been doing, to put it mildly.

[May 19, 2019] The OPCW, Douma, The Skripals

Notable quotes:
"... The neocon faction in the US is usually (and reasonably) regarded as the motivator behind much of the western aggression in the Middle East. ..."
"... Granted the US has been looking for excuses to intervene ever more overtly in Syria since 2013, and in that sense this Douma "initiative" is a continuation of their longterm policy. It's also true Russia was warning just such a false flag would be attempted in early March. But in the intervening month the situation on the ground has changed so radically that such an attempt no longer made any sense. ..."
"... A false flag in early March, while pockets of the US proxy army were still holding ground in Ghouta would have enabled a possible offensive in their support which would prevent Ghouta falling entirely into government hands and thereby also maintain the pressure on Damascus. A false flag in early April is all but useless because the US proxy army in the region was completely vanquished and nothing would be gained by an offensive in that place at that time. ..."
"... The US media has been similarly, and uncharacteristically divided and apparently unsure. Tucker Carlson railed against the stupidity of attacking Syria. Commentators on MSNBC were also expressing intense scepticism of the US intent and fear about possible escalation. ..."
"... The official story is a hot mess of proven falsehoods, contradictions, implausible conspiracy theories, more falsehoods and inexplicable silences were cricket chirps tell us all we need to know. ..."
"... The UK government has lied and evaded on every key aspect. ..."
"... Indeed if current claims by Russian FM Lavrov turn out to be true, a "novichok" (whatever that precisely means in this case) may not have been the only substance found in those samples, and a compound called "BZ", a non-lethal agent developed in Europe and America, has been discovered and suppressed in the OPCW report (more about that later). ..."
"... The Skripals themselves were announced to be alive and out of danger mere days after claims they were all but certain to die. Yulia, soon thereafter, apparently called her cousin Viktoria only to subsequently announce, indirectly through the helpful agency of the Metropolitan Police, that she didn't want to talk to her cousin – or anyone else – at all. ..."
"... She is now allegedly discharged from hospital and has "specially trained officers helping to take care of" her in an undisclosed location. A form or words so creepily sinister it's hard to imagine how they were ever permitted the light of day. ..."
"... If a false flag chemical attack had taken place in Syria at the time Russia predicted, just a week or two after the Skripal poisoning, a lot of the attention that's been paid to the Skripals over the last month would likely have been diverted. Many of the questions being asked by Russia and in the alt media may never have been asked as the focus of the world turned to a possible superpower stand-off in the Middle East. ..."
"... So, could it be the Skripal event was never intended to last so long in the public eye? Could it be that it was indeed a false flag, or a fake event, as many have alleged, planned as a sketchy prelude to, or warm up act for a bigger chemical attack in Syria, scheduled for a week or so later in mid-March – just around the time Russia was warning of such a possibility? ..."
"... This would explain why the UK may have been pushing for the false flag to happen (as claimed by Russia) even after it could no longer serve much useful purpose on the ground, and why the Douma "attack" seems to have been so sketchily done by a gang on the run. The UK needed the second part to happen in order to distract from the first. ..."
"... If this is true, Theresa May and her cabinet are currently way out on a limb even by cynical UK standards. Not only have they lied about the Skripal event, but in order to cover up that lie they have promoted a false flag in Syria, and "responded" to it by a flagrant breach of international and domestic law. Worst of all, if the Russians aren't bluffing, they have some evidence to prove some of the most egregious parts of this. ..."
"... But even if some or all of our speculation proves false, and even if the Russian claims of UK collusion with terrorists in Syria prove unfounded, May is still guilty of multiple lies and has still waged war without parliamentary approval. ..."
"... The UK were the most vocal about Syria, and desperately tried to drum up support over Skripal, but it all came to nothing much in the end. ..."
"... Theresa May's political career still hangs by a thread, and her "Falklands moment", at best, staved off the inevitable for a few months. A washout in the EU elections, a very real threat from Farage's Brexit party, and rumblings inside her own party, make her position as unstable as ever. ..."
"... In the US, generally speaking, it seems that the Trump admin – or at least whichever interested parties currently have control of the wheels of government – have called time on war in Syria. Instead, they've moved on to projects in Venezuela and North Korea, and even war with Iran. ..."
"... The failure of the Douma false flag to cause the war it was meant to cause, and the vast collection of evidence that suggests it was a false flag, should be spread far and wide. Not just because it's a truth which vindicates the smeared minority in the alternate media. ..."
May 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Via Off-Guardian.org,

In view of the latest revelations from the leaked report, which seem to prove that at least some elements of the Douma "chemical attack" were entirely staged, we want to take look back at the chaotic events of Spring 2018.

  • What was the agenda behind the Douma false flag?
  • Why was the US response seemingly token and ineffective?
  • Why was the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson fired?
  • What agenda tied the Skripal case to the Douma attack?

The following is an extract from an article by Catte originally published April 14th last year, which takes on a greater weight in light of certain evidence – not only that the Douma attack was faked, but that the OPCW is compromised.

You can read the whole article here .

* * *

PRIMARILY UK INITIATIVE?

The neocon faction in the US is usually (and reasonably) regarded as the motivator behind much of the western aggression in the Middle East.

Since at least 2001 and the launch of the "War on Terror" the US has led the way in finding or creating facile excuses to fight oil wars and hegemonic wars and proxy wars in the region. But this time the dynamics look a little different.

This time it really looks as if the UK has been setting the pace of the "response".

The fact (as stated above) that Mattis was apparently telegraphing his own private doubts a)about the verifiability of the attacks, and b)about the dangers of a military response suggests he was a far from enthusiastic partaker in this adventure.

Trump's attitude is harder to gauge. His tweets veered wildly between unhinged threats and apparent efforts at conciliation. But he must have known he would lose (and seemingly has lost) a great part of his natural voter base (who elected him on a no-more-war mandate) by an act of open aggression that threatened confrontation with Russia on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Granted the US has been looking for excuses to intervene ever more overtly in Syria since 2013, and in that sense this Douma "initiative" is a continuation of their longterm policy. It's also true Russia was warning just such a false flag would be attempted in early March. But in the intervening month the situation on the ground has changed so radically that such an attempt no longer made any sense.

A false flag in early March, while pockets of the US proxy army were still holding ground in Ghouta would have enabled a possible offensive in their support which would prevent Ghouta falling entirely into government hands and thereby also maintain the pressure on Damascus. A false flag in early April is all but useless because the US proxy army in the region was completely vanquished and nothing would be gained by an offensive in that place at that time.

You can see why Mattis and others in the administration might be reluctant to take part in the false flag/punitive air strike narrative if they saw nothing currently to be gained to repay the risk. They may have preferred to wait for developments and plan for a more productive way of playing the R2P card in the future.

The US media has been similarly, and uncharacteristically divided and apparently unsure. Tucker Carlson railed against the stupidity of attacking Syria. Commentators on MSNBC were also expressing intense scepticism of the US intent and fear about possible escalation.

The UK govt and media on the other hand has been much more homogeneous in advocating for action. No doubts of the type expressed by Mattis have been heard from the lips of an UK government minister. Even May, a cowardly PM, has been (under how much pressure?) voicing sterling certitude in public that action HAD to be taken.

Couple this with the – as yet unverified – claims by Russia of direct UK involvement in arranging the Douma "attack", and the claims by Syria that the perps are in their custody, and a tentative storyline emerges. It's possible this time there were other considerations in the mix beside the usual need to "be seen to do something" and Trump's perpetual requirement to appease the liberal Russiagaters and lunatic warmongers at home. Maybe this time it was also about helping the UK out of a sticky problem.

THE SKRIPAL CONSIDERATION

Probably the only thing we can all broadly agree on about the Skripal narrative is that it manifestly did not go according to plan. However it was intended to play out, it wasn't this way. Since some time in mid to late March it's been clear the entire thing has become little more than an exercise in damage-limitation, leak-plugging and general containment.

The official story is a hot mess of proven falsehoods, contradictions, implausible conspiracy theories, more falsehoods and inexplicable silences were cricket chirps tell us all we need to know.

The UK government has lied and evaded on every key aspect.

  1. It lied again and again about the information Porton Down had given it
  2. Its lawyers all but lied to Mr Justice Robinson about whether or not the Skripals had relatives in Russia in an unscrupulous attempt to maintain total control of them, or at least of the narrative.
  3. It is not publishing the OPCW report on the chemical analyses, and the summary of that report reads like an exercise in allusion and weasel-wording. Even the name of the "toxic substance" found in the Skripals' blood is omitted, and the only thing tying it to the UK government's public claims of "novichok" is association by inference and proximity.

Indeed if current claims by Russian FM Lavrov turn out to be true, a "novichok" (whatever that precisely means in this case) may not have been the only substance found in those samples, and a compound called "BZ", a non-lethal agent developed in Europe and America, has been discovered and suppressed in the OPCW report (more about that later).

None of the alleged victims of this alleged attack has been seen in public even in passing since the event. There is no film or photographs of DS Bailey leaving the hospital, no film or photographs of his wife or family members doing the same. No interviews with Bailey, no interviews with his wife, family, distant relatives, work colleagues.

The Skripals themselves were announced to be alive and out of danger mere days after claims they were all but certain to die. Yulia, soon thereafter, apparently called her cousin Viktoria only to subsequently announce, indirectly through the helpful agency of the Metropolitan Police, that she didn't want to talk to her cousin – or anyone else – at all.

She is now allegedly discharged from hospital and has "specially trained officers helping to take care of" her in an undisclosed location. A form or words so creepily sinister it's hard to imagine how they were ever permitted the light of day.

Very little of this bizarre, self-defeating, embarrassing, hysterical story makes any sense other than as a random narrative, snaking wildly in response to events the narrative-makers can't completely control.

Why? What went wrong? Why has the UK government got itself into this mess? And how much did the Douma "gas attack" and subsequent drive for a concerted western "response" have to do with trying to fix that?

IS THIS WHAT HAPPENED?

If a false flag chemical attack had taken place in Syria at the time Russia predicted, just a week or two after the Skripal poisoning, a lot of the attention that's been paid to the Skripals over the last month would likely have been diverted. Many of the questions being asked by Russia and in the alt media may never have been asked as the focus of the world turned to a possible superpower stand-off in the Middle East.

So, could it be the Skripal event was never intended to last so long in the public eye? Could it be that it was indeed a false flag, or a fake event, as many have alleged, planned as a sketchy prelude to, or warm up act for a bigger chemical attack in Syria, scheduled for a week or so later in mid-March – just around the time Russia was warning of such a possibility?

Could it be this planned event was unexpectedly canceled by the leading players in the drama (the US) when the Russians called them out and the rapid and unexpected fall of Ghouta meant any such intervention became pointless at least for the moment?

Did this cancelation leave the UK swinging in the wind, with a fantastical story that was never intended to withstand close scrutiny, and no second act for distraction?

So, did they push on with the now virtually useless "chemical attack", botch it (again), leaving a clear evidence trail leading back to them? Did they then further insist on an allied "response" to their botched false flag in order to provide yet more distraction and hopefully destroy some of that evidence?

This would explain why the UK may have been pushing for the false flag to happen (as claimed by Russia) even after it could no longer serve much useful purpose on the ground, and why the Douma "attack" seems to have been so sketchily done by a gang on the run. The UK needed the second part to happen in order to distract from the first.

It would explain why the US has been less than enthused by the idea of reprisals. Because while killing Syrians to further geo-strategic interests is not a problem, killing Syrians (and risking escalation with Russia) in order to rescue an embarrassed UK government is less appealing.

And it would explain why the "reprisals" when they came were so half-hearted.

If this is true, Theresa May and her cabinet are currently way out on a limb even by cynical UK standards. Not only have they lied about the Skripal event, but in order to cover up that lie they have promoted a false flag in Syria, and "responded" to it by a flagrant breach of international and domestic law. Worst of all, if the Russians aren't bluffing, they have some evidence to prove some of the most egregious parts of this.

This is very bad.

But even if some or all of our speculation proves false, and even if the Russian claims of UK collusion with terrorists in Syria prove unfounded, May is still guilty of multiple lies and has still waged war without parliamentary approval.

This is a major issue. She and her government should resign. But it's unlikely that will happen.

So what next? There is a sense this is a watershed for many of the parties involved and for the citizens of the countries drawn into this.

Will the usual suspects try to avoid paying for their crimes and misadventures by more rhetoric, more false flags, more "reprisals"? Or will this signal some other change in direction?

We'll all know soon enough.

* * *

Back to today...

...and while things have moved on, we're still puzzling over all the same issues.

  • What was the purpose of the Skripal attack?
  • What was the original plan of the Douma attack?
  • Is there, as it appears, an internal power struggle in the Trump administration?
  • Has that resolved? Who is running the United States?
  • Seeing as the OPCW has been shown to cover-up evidence in Douma, can we trust them on Skripal? Or anything else?
  • Speaking of which, where on Earth IS Sergei Skripal?

All these questions stand, and are important, but more important than all of that is the lesson: They tried it before, and just because it didn't work doesn't mean they won't try it again.

Last spring, the Western powers showed they will deploy a false flag if they need too, for domestic or international motives. And they have the motives right now.

The UK were the most vocal about Syria, and desperately tried to drum up support over Skripal, but it all came to nothing much in the end.

Theresa May's political career still hangs by a thread, and her "Falklands moment", at best, staved off the inevitable for a few months. A washout in the EU elections, a very real threat from Farage's Brexit party, and rumblings inside her own party, make her position as unstable as ever.

Britain had the most to gain, of all NATO countries, and that is still true. We don't know what they might do.

This time they might even receive greater support from France this time around – since Macron is facing a revolution at home and would kill (possibly literally) for a nice international distraction.

In the US, generally speaking, it seems that the Trump admin – or at least whichever interested parties currently have control of the wheels of government – have called time on war in Syria. Instead, they've moved on to projects in Venezuela and North Korea, and even war with Iran.

That's not to say Syria is safe, far from it. They are always just one carefully place false-flag away from all-out war. Last year, Mattis (or whoever) decided war with Syria was not an option – that it was too risky or complicated. That might not happen next time.

Clearly, the US hasn't totally seen sense in terms of stoking conflict with Russia – as seen by the decision to pull out of the INF Treaty late last year. And further demonstrated by their attempts to overthrow Russia's ally Nicolas Maduro. Another ripe candidate for a false flag.

The failure of the Douma false flag to cause the war it was meant to cause, and the vast collection of evidence that suggests it was a false flag, should be spread far and wide. Not just because it's a truth which vindicates the smeared minority in the alternate media.

But because recognising what they were trying to do last time , is the best defense when they try it again next time .

[May 18, 2019] Daniel Lazare's recent work on Assange indicated via chronological sequencing it's much more likely Guccifer 2.0 was the phony he was suspected to be at the time

May 18, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

hetro , May 15, 2019 at 15:08

I found the first of these statements as "chilling" as the second:

"Schumer thus greeted Assange's April 11 arrest by tweeting his "hope [that] he will soon be held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government," while, in a truly chilling statement, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia declared that "[i]t will be really good to get him back on United States soil [so] we can get the facts and the truth from him."

Daniel Lazare's recent work on Assange indicated via chronological sequencing it's much more likely Guccifer 2.0 was the phony he was suspected to be at the time, let alone Assange's denial it was not the Russians, nor any State operation, plus as we have discussed pointing toward Seth Rich (an insider-as-leak interpretation subsequently buttressed by William Binney et al.)

In short, there is and has been ample information to suspend leaping to the hysterical tar and feather him approach mouthed by Schumer, spittle presumably flying out of his mouth at the time.

It is disgusting to see supposed leaders in the government advocating guilty until proved innocent in this lynch-mob manner in a country with supposedly an advanced system of justice. It reminds me of the Rosenberg case and the McCarthy era and the Salem witch trials before that.

"Monstrous offspring" indeed.

[May 18, 2019] Is Trump a double dealer. Why Trump Administration Withholds Information That Could Debunk Russian Interference Claims

May 16, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

tom , May 16, 2019 at 15:23

Trump Administration Withholds Information That Could Debunk Russian Interference Claims

Lavrov responded first to the question. He said that there is no evidence that shows any Russian interference in the U.S. elections. He continued:

Speaking about the most recent US presidential campaign in particular, we have had in place an information exchange channel about potential unintended risks arising in cyberspace since 2013. From October 2016 (when the US Democratic Administration first raised this issue) until January 2017 (before Donald Trump's inauguration), this channel was used to handle requests and responses. Not so long ago, when the attacks on Russia in connection with the alleged interference in the elections reached their high point, we proposed publishing this exchange of messages between these two entities, which engage in staving off cyberspace incidents. I reminded Mr Pompeo about this today. The administration, now led by President Trump, refused to do so. I'm not sure who was behind this decision, but the idea to publish this data was blocked by the United States. However, we believe that publishing it would remove many currently circulating fabrications. Of course, we will not unilaterally make these exchanges public, but I would still like to make this fact known.

The communication channel about cyber issues did indeed exist. In June 2013 the Presidents of the United States and Russia issued a Joint Statement about "Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs)". The parties agreed to establishing communication channels between each other computer emergency response teams, to use the direct communication link of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers for cyber issue exchanges, and to have direct communication links between high-level officials in the White House and Kremlin for such matter. A Fact Sheet published by the Obama White House detailed the implementation of these three channels.

One inference from Lavrov's statement is that the "fundamental understanding on this matter" between the two presidents that has "not been fully implemented" is the release of the communications about cyberspace incidents. The Russians clearly think that a release of the communications with the Obama administration would exculpate them. That would also exculpate Trump from any further collusion allegations. Why then does the Trump administration reject the release? Who is blocking it?

Cont. reading: Trump Administration Withholds Information That Could Debunk Russian Interference Claims

https://www.moonofalabama.org/

[May 17, 2019] Lavrov to Pompeo: And what's the US doing in the Eastern Hemisphere

May 17, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

That brings to mind the recent Arctic Council summit. Both Lavrov and Pompeo were there. Here's a significant exchange:

Lavrov: I believe you don't represent the South American region, do you?

Pompeo: We represent the entire hemisphere.

Lavrov: Oh, the hemisphere. Then what's the US doing in the Eastern Hemisphere, in Ukraine, for instance?

There was no response from Pompeo.

[May 17, 2019] Bob Goldstone letter

Looks like a clear attempt to entrup Trump Jr
May 17, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:36 AM, Rob Goldstone wrote:

Good morning

Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.

The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.

This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin.

What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?

I can also send this info to your father via Rhona, but it is ultra sensitive so wanted to send to you first.

Best

Rob Goldstone

On Jun 3, 2016, at 10:53, Donald Trump Jr. wrote:

Thanks Rob I appreciate that. I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we have some time and if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer. Could we do a call first thing next week when I am back?

Best,

Don

[May 17, 2019] Texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page AG Lynch knew how the Clinton email case would end

Jan 21, 2018 | hotair.com
The Associated Press is reporting that the Department of Justice has given congressional investigators additional text messages between FBI investigator Peter Strzok and his girlfriend Lisa Page. The FBI also told investigators that five months worth of text messages, between December 2016 and May 2017, are unavailable because of a technical glitch .

See Also: Gillibrand: We need to "take action" against Gorsuch and Kavanaugh if they go back on their word and strike down Roe

New text messages highlighted in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray by Sen. Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, are from the spring and summer of 2016 and involve discussion of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. They reference Attorney General Loretta Lynch's decision to accept the FBI's conclusion in that case and a draft statement that former FBI Director James Comey had prepared in anticipation of closing out the Clinton investigation without criminal charges

In addition to the communications already made public, the Justice Department on Friday provided Johnson's committee with 384 pages of text messages, according to a letter from the Wisconsin lawmaker that was obtained by The Associated Press.

But, according to the letter, the FBI told the department that its system for retaining text messages sent and received on bureau phones had failed to preserve communications between Strzok and Page over a five-month period between Dec. 14, 2016, and May 7, 2017. The explanation for the gap was "misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI's collection capabilities."

Technical glitches obviously do happen but I can't help getting a bit of a Lois Lerner flashback upon hearing that five months of messages are missing from the time right after Trump was elected until 10 days before Robert Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel. So if you were hoping for any follow up on that comment about an insurance policy, it looks like you can forget it. That's a well-timed glitch.

Gillibrand: We need to "take action" against Gorsuch and Kavanaugh if they go back on their word and strike down Roe

But it seems the DOJ did turn over some additional texts that are worth considering. One involves an early draft of the Comey memo clearing Hillary Clinton. Originally the draft pointed out that Clinton had exchanged emails with President Obama while she was "on the territory" of a hostile power. Eventually, Obama's name was scrubbed from the document and finally all reference to the incident was removed. So that's one more example of the statement being watered down over time. And finally there is this :

In another exchange, the two express displeasure about the timing of Lynch's announcement that she would defer to the FBI's judgment on the Clinton investigation. That announcement came days after it was revealed that the attorney general and former President Bill Clinton had an impromptu meeting aboard her plane in Phoenix, though both sides said the email investigation was never discussed.

Strzok said in a July 1 text message that the timing of Lynch's announcement "looks like hell." And Page appears to mockingly refer to Lynch's decision to accept the FBI's conclusion in the case as a "real profile in courag(e) since she knows no charges will be brought."

Lynch never did recuse herself from the investigation, but because of the tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton, she did announce on July 1st that she would accept the decision of the FBI. Comey would make his statement clearing Hillary of any criminal wrongdoing on July 5th. But based on this text, it sounds as if Lynch was already aware what the FBI Director's conclusion was going to be. Comey himself had suggested Lynch appeared biased in the email probe and that he felt the need to act independently from her. From the NY Times :

"The Clinton campaign, at the time, was using all kind of euphemisms -- security review, matters, things like that, for what was going on," Mr. Comey said on Thursday. "We were getting to a place where the attorney general and I were both going to have to testify and talk publicly about. And I wanted to know, was she going to authorize us to confirm we had an investigation?

"And she said, 'Yes, but don't call it that, call it a matter,'" Mr. Comey continued. "And I said, 'Why would I do that?' And she said, 'Just call it a matter.'"

Mr. Comey said the "conclusive" episode that persuaded him to make his own announcement in the Clinton investigation rather than leave it to Ms. Lynch came last June, when former President Bill Clinton spontaneously boarded her plane on a tarmac and sat down to talk with her.

"That was the thing that capped it for me, that I had to do something separately to protect the credibility of the investigation, which meant both the F.B.I. and the Justice Department," Mr. Comey said.

So the story was that Lynch was biased (she was) but that Comey acted to protect the independence of the investigation. In fact, Lynch knew what Comey was going to say days before he said it. So what was the point of her offer to respect his decision, an offer that seems designed to make it appear she had no idea what he might decide? There might be some innocent explanation of all this but the whole story features a lot of die-hard Clinton cronies who seem to be doing their best to protect Hillary beneath a thin veneer of impartiality. In fact, what happened at the FBI looks more and more like what happened at the DNC.

Paul F Jordan technical glitch? the lying never stops Like · Reply ·

33 · 1y

Kent Walker Webb This is rather damning stuff. Its too bad the media is so focused on the shut down and DACA and whatever weekly crisis of the century that they will never get around to covering it until they can claim its "old news".. Like · Reply ·

3 · 1y

Kathy Ozanne Psst....the codeword for the sham Hillary Clinton investigation was MYE, or mid year exam. Was referred to in the texts. Finishing the MYE meant get Hillary cleared before the elections. Text sent right around the time Cruz dropped out.

You can see the text here:
https://twitter.com/DaveNYviii/status/955194797991563264 Like · Reply ·

14 · 1y · Edited

Kevin Burke Technical glitch? Really?

One question: Why, at this point, should we believe ANYTHING at all that these people say?

Given everything that we know so far, it appears entirely possible that not only did these people - at DOJ and FBI - attempted to influence a US election (far more than the Russians could ever hope to), but that they also attempted to implement a "Plan B" post-election in order to overturn the results. And all we're getting from them is lies, stonewalling, and half-baked excuses when asked to supply information that should be readily available.

These people have flushed the credibility of their Department and agency down the toiled - credibility which took decades to carefully craft, and one election cycle to destroy.

If these people don't end up fired and in handcuffs at the end of this then they need to rename their Department. Like · Reply ·

32 · 1y · Edited

Michael Woiwood Because AP will accuse you of attacking the FBI and DOJ if you say anything about Strzok, Page, Ohr, Baker, McCabe, Comey...... Like · Reply ·

8 · 1y

Jerry Wright AP has made it perfectly clear where his loyalties lie. He will not forgive President Trump and a great many others for making him look like a fool. Like · Reply ·

7 · 1y

James Myers Jerry Wright The other fools are the people like me that defended the POS Allahpundit when everyone else already was what a traitor he was. There's a ton of people with every right to tell me I told you so.

But once you see the idiot for what he is, it makes you wonder why anyone ever thought he was a conservative. Like · Reply ·

3 · 1y Show 1 more reply in this thread

Scott Phillips No honest investigation has a determination of guilt or innocence prior to it's completion.
This was all Comey/Lynch kabuki from day one.

[May 17, 2019] Andrew Weissmann, Top Mueller Prosecutor Who Built Paul Manafort Case, to Step Down

Mar 16, 2019 | www.thedailybeast.com

Andrew Weissmann -- who built the case against Paul Manafort and one of the most prominent members of Robert Mueller's team -- is reportedly stepping down from the special counsel investigation. It's the latest indication that Mueller's work is nearly complete. NPR reports that Weissmann will also leave the Justice Department and now plans to study and teach at New York University while working on preventing wrongful convictions. Manafort was sentenced to about 7 1/2 years in federal prison following two cases that stemmed from Mueller's investigation.

However, neither case involved alleged collusion with Russia.

One source told NPR that Weissmann's departure is a clear sign that Mueller's work is finally winding up -- it follows the departure of the most senior FBI agent working on the Mueller probe, Special Agent in Charge David Archey, who has started a new job as head of the FBI's office in Richmond, Virginia.

[May 17, 2019] What Putin And Pompeo Did Not Talk About

May 17, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 44 minutes ago link

US foreign policy under President Trump is remarkably similar to what it would have been under Hillary...

except even she wouldnt have put a Chabad Orthodox *** in charge of a mideast 'peace' plan, let alone a 'solution' for the illegal immigration crisis which Trump did nothing about when the GOP controlled both House and Senate

haruspicio , 1 hour ago link

I do not think Putin is an idiot...he has consistently made good decisions and judgements and outsmarted both Obama and Trump on every occasion. For some reason I am worried that he is palling up to the wrong guy. Trump and the US cannot be trusted to observe any agreement or treaty and have displayed this over and over again.

Putin should be aligning with China who can be trusted to honour deals made. A military alliance between Russia and China with mutual aid of attacked by a third party would make the best strategic sense. If Putin doesn't;t do this he will get weakened economically and then when he is weak, the US will invade.

admin user , 1 hour ago link

there have been secret talks among the three pillars of Eurasian integration – Russia, China and Iran – about Chinese and Russian guarantees

" We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia ." - Nineteen Eighty-Four

not dead yet , 2 hours ago link

As quoted by the Moon Of Alabama Lavrov claimed there were back channels between the US and Russia from 2013 to Trumps taking office. Lavov claims these communications would shed lots of light on the Russians not interfering in the election and other stuff the Russians have been falsely accused of. Russia wants to release these communications and will only do so if the US agrees which they have not. Pompeo was silent.

chunga , 2 hours ago link

Quite a contrast to what their DC counterparts would do; that's smear it all over fake news in a dishonest, sensational effort to malign.

[May 17, 2019] Trump Administration Withholds Information That Could Debunk Russian Interference Claims

Notable quotes:
"... That is an interesting transcript to read. Much of what it says dovetails with the conversation Peter AU 1 and Karlof1 were having in the comments forum attached to B's previous post (comments 85 - 87) and my addition @ 96 with regard to psychological projection and the phenomenon of shared psychosis, the latter which is now well known in Australia due to a case involving five members of a family in Victoria in 2016. ..."
"... Maybe there is also a class warfare aspect to Russiagate as well, just as there was to the mass hysteria directed at Communism: both phenomena focus on particular scapegoats made to represent the manifestation of the fears of a ruling class that knows it does not deserve its position in society. ..."
"... Because it would constitute a great moral error for Russia and a blow to its rapidly rising credibility and trustworthiness. Here are several maxims: First and foremost--The Golden Rule; Second--you don't stoop to the level of your opponent; rather, expose the difference as much as possible. Third, and almost as important as #1--Honor & Dignity. ..."
"... the information is simply deemed too damaging to the USA soft power, to the point even Trump doesn't want to release it to the public; and/or the deep state is essentially blocking it from going public for the same reason. ..."
"... this Russophobe situation is not all that bad to the political faction in Russia who wants it to remain sovereign relative to the USA (i.e. the Eurasianists). Trade between the two countries was already almost null before the sanctions (less than 5% of each country's total trade), so they aren't really affecting their economies. Besides, Russia gains the rationale to stifle its neoliberals at home (Yeltsin and the liberals) and maintain United Russia in power. It also gives Putin a legitimate excuse to dump US Treasury bonds, build its own internet servers, increase its relations with China and drive a wedge between Europe and the US. ..."
"... What happened with the "US is rapidly collapsing" , "The breathtaking weakness of the Empire", "No one takes the US seriously" "World to US - you are fired" and so on alt media retardations? ..."
May 17, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Trump Administration Withholds Information That Could Debunk Russian Interference Claims karlof1 , May 16, 2019 3:44:02 PM | link

On Tuesday Russia's President Putin again rejected U.S. claims that his country interfered in the 2016 elections in the United States. Additional statements by Foreign Minister Lavrov provide that there is more information available about alleged Russian cyber issue during the election. He pointed to exchanges between the Russian and U.S. governments that Russia wants published but which the U.S. is withholding.

On Tuesday May 14 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew to Sochi to meet with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov and with the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin. It was Pompeo's first official visit to Russia. Pompeo's meeting with Lavrov was followed by a joined news conference . The statements from both sides touched on the election issue.

The State Department published a full transcript and video of the press conference in English language. The Russian Foreign Ministry provided an official English translation of only Lavrov's part. Both translations differ only slightly.

Here are the relevant excerpts from the opening statements with regard to cyber issues.

Lavrov:

We agreed on the importance of restoring communications channels that have been suspended lately, which was due in no small part to the groundless accusations against Russia of trying to meddle in the US election. These allegations went as far as to suggest that we colluded in some way with high-ranking officials from the current US administration. It is clear that allegations of this kind are completely false. [...] I think that there is a fundamental understanding on this matter as discussed by our presidents during their meeting last year in Helsinki, as well as during a number of telephone conversations. So far these understandings have not been fully implemented .

Pompeo:

[W]e spoke, too, about the question of interference in our domestic affairs. I conveyed that there are things that Russia can do to demonstrate that these types of activities are a thing of the past and I hope that Russia will take advantage of those opportunities.

During the Q & A Shaun Tanron of AFP asked Pompeo about the election issue:

[I]f I could follow up on your statement about the election, you said that there are things that Russia could do to show that election interference is a thing of the past. What are those things? What do – what would you like Russia to do? Thank you very much.

Lavrov responded first to the question. He said that there is no evidence that shows any Russian interference in the U.S. elections. He continued:

Speaking about the most recent US presidential campaign in particular, we have had in place an information exchange channel about potential unintended risks arising in cyberspace since 2013. From October 2016 (when the US Democratic Administration first raised this issue) until January 2017 (before Donald Trump's inauguration), this channel was used to handle requests and responses. Not so long ago, when the attacks on Russia in connection with the alleged interference in the elections reached their high point, we proposed publishing this exchange of messages between these two entities, which engage in staving off cyberspace incidents. I reminded Mr Pompeo about this today. The administration, now led by President Trump, refused to do so. I'm not sure who was behind this decision, but the idea to publish this data was blocked by the United States. However, we believe that publishing it would remove many currently circulating fabrications. Of course, we will not unilaterally make these exchanges public, but I would still like to make this fact known.

The communication channel about cyber issues did indeed exist. In June 2013 the Presidents of the United States and Russia issued a Joint Statement about "Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs)". The parties agreed to establishing communication channels between each other computer emergency response teams, to use the direct communication link of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers for cyber issue exchanges, and to have direct communication links between high-level officials in the White House and Kremlin for such matter. A Fact Sheet published by the Obama White House detailed the implementation of these three channels.

One inference from Lavrov's statement is that the "fundamental understanding on this matter" between the two presidents that has "not been fully implemented" is the release of the communications about cyberspace incidents. The Russians clearly think that a release of the communications with the Obama administration would exculpate them. That would also exculpate Trump from any further collusion allegations. Why then does the Trump administration reject the release? Who is blocking it?

Pompeo did not respond to Lavrov's points. His next meeting that day was with President Putin.

Putin let him wait for three hours. Both sides issued short opening statements. The English translations of what Putin said differ. In the version provided by Russia Putin explicitely denies the alleged election interference:

For our part, we have said many times that we would also like to restore relations on a full scale. I hope that the necessary conditions for this are being created now since, despite the exotic character of Mr Mueller's work, he should be given credit for conducting what is generally an objective inquiry. He reaffirmed the lack of any trace or collusion between Russia and the current administration , which we described as sheer nonsense from the very start. There was no, nor could there be any interference on our part in the US election at the government level. Nevertheless, regrettably, these allegations have served as a reason for the deterioration of our interstate ties.

The State Department version does not include the Russian denial of election interference but doubles the rejection of the collusion claim:

On our behalf, we have said it multiple times that we also would like to rebuild fully fledged relations, and I hope that right now a conducive environment is being built for that, because, though, however exotic the work of Special Counsel Mueller was, I have to say that on the whole he had a very objective investigation and he confirmed that there are no traces whatsoever of collusion between Russia and the incumbent administration , which we've said was absolutely fake. As we've said before, there was no collusion from our government officials and it could not be there. Still, that was – that was one of the reasons certainly breaking our (inaudible) ties.

An English language live translation of that paragraph (vid) by the Russian sponsored Ruptly does not include the word 'election' in the highlighted sentence, nor does a live translation (vid) by PBS.

It seem that the Kremlin later inserted the explicit denial of election interference into Putin's statement. It is quite possible that Putin, who did not read from a prepared paper, mangled the talking point that Lavrov had already made.

After the meeting Putin, Pompeo held a short press availability with the U.S. journalists accompanying him. There is no mentioning of Lavrov's point.

There were secret communications between the Obama administration and the Russian government about the alleged election interference and 'hacks' of the DNC and of Clinton's campaign manager Podesta. They are not mentioned in the Mueller report nor in any other open source. As Russia wants these communications released it might be possible to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to press for their publication. The Trump administration response to such a FOIA request could at least reveal the reasons why it is withholding them.

The allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 elections are partly based on the fact that a commercial Russian enterprise used fake characters on Facebook to sell advertisement . A review of the themes and ideological positions those fake characters provided demonstrates that they were not designed to influence the U.S. elections.

In contrast to those Russian fakes other fake characters on Facebook, provided by an Israeli company and revealed today, were clearly designed to influence elections :

Facebook said Thursday it banned an Israeli company that ran an influence campaign aimed at disrupting elections in various countries and has canceled dozens of accounts engaged in spreading disinformation.
...
Many were linked to the Archimedes Group, a Tel Aviv-based political consulting and lobbying firm that boasts of its social media skills and ability to "change reality."
...
On its website, Archimedes presents itself as a consulting firm involved in campaigns for presidential elections.

Little information is available beyond its slogan, which is "winning campaigns worldwide," and a vague blurb about the group's "mass social media management" software, which it said enabled the operation of an "unlimited" number of online accounts.

Don't expect any protest from Washington DC about such obvious election interference in other countries.

---
Hat tip to Aaron Maté for pointing out Lavrov's statement

"... a release of the communications with the Obama administration would " be the logical, necessary first step in removing all the anti-Russian sanctions, theft of diplomatic property, and so forth--except--that isn't what the actual policy is toward Russia: Russia's the declared "existential threat" #1 of 2 to Outlaw US Empire National Security; so, any actual accommodation--"normalization of relations/communications--with Russia remains off the table.

Why?

The Controlling Oligarchy still believes it can overcome what's becoming an Eurasian Alliance to its Zero-sum plan for the planet. Such a conclusion clearly isn't determined by facts or logic but by the long entrenched metaphysical dogma in the Controlling Oligarchy's exceptionalism and that its God of Mammon is on its side. Fantastical delusion, certainly, that only operates within the alternative reality the Controlling Oligarchy's constructed for itself and its slaves/disciples. That construct has its roots in the ongoing denial of historical reality over the past 2,000+ years, whose true reality was recovered by Michael Hudson's Peabody Museum Team.

Symen Danziger , May 16, 2019 3:47:51 PM | link

The Trump administration probably wants to stretch this nothingburger well into 2020 to give Democrats a little taste of their own medicine.

The toxic cocktail of Ukrainian oligarchs/operatives and the Obama/Clinton/Kerry/Biden mafia is best served around election time.

Taffyboy , May 16, 2019 4:28:34 PM | link
Again, this is WWE kayfabe by Trump. He is such a bull shitter. If you can stand to watch without upchucking...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkghtyxZ6rc

... There you have it, one glorious president, same guy different year. But Lavrov, again shows grace under fire. This guy is amazing. He is more than a match for Trump, or any low brow now representing the USA.

Jackrabbit , May 16, 2019 4:45:14 PM | link
Taffyboy @15: kayfabe by Trump

Trump does engage in a lot of kayfabe - like his "fake news" conflict with our controlled press.

But the new McCarthyism is much more. This is a serious Deep State-approved policy to weaken Russia, kettle Europe, and stifle dissent.

lysias , May 16, 2019 4:46:00 PM | link Really? , May 16, 2019 4:46:10 PM | link
"And i know all the points made that Russia could not have hacked them, but all the opposing evidence is much stronger IMHO, "

This statement is quite worrisome.
It is akin to the Mueller investigation itself: evidence-free, or evidence bending and distorting.
IMO any hypothesis/theory of the crime has to account for all available physical evidence and forensics. If it doesn't either there is something wrong with the hypothesis, or with the evidence. Unless you can provide counter-evidence to Binney's assessment and evidence that there was a leak, not a hack, then I don't think your conclusion has much value--becomes a garbage in, garbage out situation.

WJ , May 16, 2019 4:57:38 PM | link
The problem with Jackrabbit's @3 account is that it takes seriously the notion that Trump is a "nationalist," which he's not. His rhetoric is nationalist, as is arguably his "trade war" with China, but every major foreign policy action he's undertaken could have been undertaken by any of the last four Presidents and most would have been undertaken by Clinton. I agree with Jackrabbit that the correct inference to draw from the Trump administration's failure to publish the exonerating correspondence is that the new McCarthyism is policy, on some level. The only difference between Trump and Clinton is that she knew this was the new policy going into the election and even had a hand in creating its pretext, while Trump was informed only later.

Why is this policy? Not because Henry Kissinger says so. It is because the last years of the Obama presidency leading into the 2016 election witnessed a noticeable rise of social and political disaffection among Americans due to rapidly increasing inequality post the 2008-09 bailout and this was perceived as threatening the viability (ie propagandistic utility) of the two major parties and corporate media narratives, these being the two institutions most captured by and useful for the oligarchic elites. The Russia-meddling narrative would have been put forward even if Clinton had won, though probably under a different guise. Its main function was to recapture domestic politics and party stability by creating a foreign enemy that could be presented to the masses as the cause of American social unrest. The masses, being stupid and gullible, would soon fall into line, and yearn for a "return" to the "normalcy"--ie the status quo iniquities--of the political order. This, in fact, is the very premise of Biden's--the favored restorationist's-- presidential campaign.

If there is a "reason" that Trump was allowed to be elected, it is probably that the collapse of the Democratic Party poses a bigger threat to the elite than the collapse of the Republican Party does, because the Democratic Party is meant to absorb and neuter social democratic movements coming from the Left. Hence there needed to be a mechanism whereby Democratic Party allegiance was strengthened. Russia-meddling narrative did exactly this. It successfully present social democratic critiques of Party leadership as suspicious and illegitimate and presented the Party itself as the victim of nefarious influence, thereby reinspiring the allegiance of its
members.

The whole theater surrounding the 2020 election is to prevent the populist upsurge of the 2016 election from taking hold. It is largely working. I suspect Biden will be nominated as Democratic nominee during the second ballot of the election, and he will narrowly beat it narrowly lose to Trump. Of course there are multiple parties that benefit from the Russia-meddling narrative. But I think that reestablishing narrative control over domestic politics was the chief purpose of the narrative, not Kissinger's foreign policy op ed.

I think that events subsequent to 2016 support this narrative.

somebody , May 16, 2019 5:06:44 PM | link
The problem is with the artificial construct of "election interference" which lots of countries do in the US by funding certain politicians. The Clinton Foundation is a big elephant.

Cambridge Analytica which has been closely connected to the British establishment pitched to all countries including Russia . As they deal in psychological warfare everybody must have been asleep - or not.
This is a Scottish take on Cambridge Analytica

Board members include an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors. This is scandal that cuts to the heart of the British establishment.' A freedom of information request from August 2016, shows that the MOD has twice bought services from Strategic Communication Laboratories in recent years.

In 2010/11, the MOD paid £40,000 to SCL for the "provision of external training". Meanwhile, in 2014/2015, it paid SCL £150,000 for the "procurement of target audience analysis".

In addition, SCL also carries a secret clearance as a 'list X' contractor for the MOD. A List X site is a commercial site on British soil that is approved to hold UK government information marked as 'confidential' and above. Essentially, SCL got the green light to hold British government secrets on its premises.

Meanwhile, the US State Department has a contract for $500,000 with SLC. According to an official, this was to provide "research and analytical support in connection with our mission to counter terrorist propaganda and disinformation overseas." This was not the only work that SCL has been contracted for with the US government, the source added...

So Britain interfered in the US elections in two ways - as a psychological warfare company laying a trail to Russia and as a "private" secret service company - Orbis - claiming that there was a Russian conspiracy.

wagelaborer , May 16, 2019 5:08:37 PM | link
In order to believe that Russia tried to influence the US election by releasing information to American voters, you would have to believe that
1) Russia preferred one candidate over the others, (although Putin has pointed out that US policy marches on, unencumbered by any particular front man in the White House)
2) That Russia believes that American voters carefully research the candidates and base their votes on facts and reason. Why would Russia believe this? I certainly don't. And the reaction of the Dems to the Mueller Report makes it particularly obvious that facts don't penetrate into the minds of Dems. (It should go without saying that Reps are equally resistant to facts.)
3) That Russia knew that the DNC had emails which showed that the Clinton campaign rigged the primaries against Sanders. Why would Russia know that? And did Russia also shoot down Seth Rich, in order to make it look like Clinton racked up another body? As Jackrabbit points out, above, we are told that Clinton actually got 3 million more votes than Trump, so clearly, the leaks, the information and the dead body meant very little to American voters.

I also agree with Jackrabbit that this hysteria against Russia started before the 2016 election. Does no one remember the coup in Ukraine? The propaganda started then.

And the purposes of this propaganda push are obvious, and are playing out now.

A big part is the attempt of our owners to regain access to the wealth of Russia, as they had under their drunken puppet Yeltsin, in the 90s. The sanctions, the NATO expansion, the military "exercises" on the border...all justified (in their propaganda) by the "Russian threat".

Also to push for censorship and control over social media. Listen to their speeches, watch their actions, and it is very clear that they intend to shut down the horizontal flow of information between humans around the world that social media made possible, for a few, brief years.

And the ramping up of the divisions in the US population, by calling anyone who voted for Trump a "racist", which annoys the hell out of people, leading to anger and increased hostility, which is then blamed on the Russians, in a transparent (to normal people) case of psychological projection. They are pushing for civil war, in order to divide and conquer the people, and they are blaming the obvious increase of tensions on the Russians.

Kevin , May 16, 2019 5:09:57 PM | link
The "Russian interference" theory is useful for diverting attention away from the Israeli interference FACT. Trump is a willing stooge of the Israelis and therefore will do nothing substantial to bury the Russian interference theory.
Peter AU 1 , May 16, 2019 5:17:48 PM | link
@jackrabbit
Do you know of any links to the full Kissinger piece that are not hidden behind the WSJ paywall
Peter AU 1 , May 16, 2019 5:39:18 PM | link
NBTS

Sic Semper Tyrannis
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/

karlof1 , May 16, 2019 5:59:29 PM | link
WJ @21--

You raise some good points. Russiagate is very much about Narrative Control and thus about Masses Control since that's Narrative Control's purpose. However, enough insurgents were elected who are quite savvy and fearless, and who are getting media exposure to advance their issues. Furthermore, reality is crushing Narrative Control, and the insurgents are very good to link real life context to the issues they champion--that FOX in some respects is no longer a member of BigLie Media (Tucker Carlson, Sanders Town Hall, and others) is very important. Toss in the 737-MAX scandal and its immediate connections to 2008, and the Controlling Oligarchy has more than one big problem. As for Biden, IMO his association with Obama and Clinton along with his own gaffs will sink him well before the Convention.

karlof1 , May 16, 2019 6:48:28 PM | link
Peter AU 1, et al--

Like many, I hadn't read Kissinger's "Henry Kissinger on the Assembly of a New World Order" since it resided behind the WSJ's paywall. And it's hidden there for a very good reason--it's premised on a totally false version of the post-WW2 world and the actions of the Outlaw US Empire. Indeed, it's an excellent example of the alternative reality believed by the Controlling Oligarchy, which is the essay's intended audience. Here's a whopper from paragraph 2:

"The prevalent American view considered people inherently reasonable and inclined toward peaceful compromise and common sense; the spread of democracy was therefore the overarching goal for international order. Free markets would uplift individuals, enrich societies and substitute economic interdependence for traditional international rivalries."

Please compare that with the actual events--covert and overt--immediately following WW2 and the implementation of the UN Charter and Organization. The Cold War was already ongoing policy; the fundamental tenets of the UN Charter were already being undermined, and unilateral action was seen as required to control peoples deemed unreasonable--because they didn't want to follow the diktats of their former colonial masters. And that's just the beginning of a complete, utter fabrication of history.

Here's the paragraph that introduces the notion of a Rules-based Order:

"A world order of states affirming individual dignity and participatory governance, and cooperating internationally in accordance with agreed-upon rules, can be our hope and should be our inspiration. But progress toward it will need to be sustained through a series of intermediary stages."

Of course, such an order already exists--the UN and its and additional codices of International Law. Is Kissinger trying to remind his audience of the #1 policy goal of the Outlaw US Empire--Full Spectrum Domination--since enthusiasm for it was waning thanks to the Ukraine Crisis (which was deemed a crisis because Crimea wasn't taken)?

What pathology is Kissinger displaying? He's clearly lying deliberately, but how many in his intended audience know he's lying? Chomsky famously noted that delusional ideas can still be rational. I'm sure others will comment now that Kissinger's essay's no longer hidden.

Jen , May 16, 2019 7:03:55 PM | link
James @ 35:

That is an interesting transcript to read. Much of what it says dovetails with the conversation Peter AU 1 and Karlof1 were having in the comments forum attached to B's previous post (comments 85 - 87) and my addition @ 96 with regard to psychological projection and the phenomenon of shared psychosis, the latter which is now well known in Australia due to a case involving five members of a family in Victoria in 2016.

It's possible that what we have been seeing in Washington DC for decades (and what we are still seeing in one form or another) is a form of shared psychosis or mass hysteria. The hysteria over Communism during the 1950s never really went away; it has transformed into the Russiagate scandal of today with its focus on the Trump government.

Maybe there is also a class warfare aspect to Russiagate as well, just as there was to the mass hysteria directed at Communism: both phenomena focus on particular scapegoats made to represent the manifestation of the fears of a ruling class that knows it does not deserve its position in society.

karlof1 , May 16, 2019 7:16:04 PM | link
DontBelieveEitherPropaganda @34--

"Why would it be so bad if Russia finally did hit back the same way it has been treated?"

Because it would constitute a great moral error for Russia and a blow to its rapidly rising credibility and trustworthiness. Here are several maxims: First and foremost--The Golden Rule; Second--you don't stoop to the level of your opponent; rather, expose the difference as much as possible. Third, and almost as important as #1--Honor & Dignity.

In the eyes of the genuine International Community, Russia and China have striven extremely hard to differentiate themselves and their goals from that of the Outlaw US Empire and can now count @2/3s of the world's nations behind them, and that number grows daily while the reputation of the West sinks. Even stalwarts of the West admit this as Merkel did earlier today, which I linked on the previous thread. Thirty years ago, the USSR was coming apart at its seams because for decades it tried to continue a fantasy, a non-reality. Putin and his cadre demand honesty, reality, and accountability. Today Putin took part in the plenary session of The Truth and Justice Regional and Local Media Forum, which is part of an ongoing series aimed at the uplifting of Russia and Russians, and to try and attain the desired results, Putin must have unimpeachable credibility. And he does.

vk , May 16, 2019 7:40:12 PM | link
Assuming this theory is right (and I doubt it), then there's two main possibilities as to 1) why the USA is witholding it and 2) why Russia is in no hurry to release it. My guess is a combination of:

a) the information is simply deemed too damaging to the USA soft power, to the point even Trump doesn't want to release it to the public; and/or the deep state is essentially blocking it from going public for the same reason.

b) this Russophobe situation is not all that bad to the political faction in Russia who wants it to remain sovereign relative to the USA (i.e. the Eurasianists). Trade between the two countries was already almost null before the sanctions (less than 5% of each country's total trade), so they aren't really affecting their economies. Besides, Russia gains the rationale to stifle its neoliberals at home (Yeltsin and the liberals) and maintain United Russia in power. It also gives Putin a legitimate excuse to dump US Treasury bonds, build its own internet servers, increase its relations with China and drive a wedge between Europe and the US.

c) if Russia released unilaterally, it would be born lifeless, since the Western MSM would accuse this info was fake news fabricated by the "Russian propaganda machine", thus defeating its own purpose.

d) it would hurt Trump's own base, since his doctrine is that of the "Clash of Civilizations", i.e. that the world is defined at a macro level by a cultural war, whose ultimate antagonism lies between the Caucasian "Western Civilization" (Christian and white plus their honorable whites: the Japanese and South Korean) and the "Yellows" (Chinese). If the info released could paint a picture of cooperation between those "LGBT-loving" Democrats and the "Strong, Orthodox" Russians, then this fantasy world would shatter to pieces.

vk , May 16, 2019 7:40:12 PM | link Curtis , May 16, 2019 7:43:27 PM | link
The MSM portrayed this NOT as Russian denial of interference but Russia using US interference as an excuse for their own. It's the usual spin.

Haaretz. Isn't it amazing what they can print but our own media won't touch? That's why the alt-media in the US does so well and why the MSM and tech giants fight it.

ДжММ , May 16, 2019 7:45:21 PM | link
Piotr @7:
The Russian transcript which matches the Russian words Putin is shown speaking on video) does indeed speak specifically of elections [выборы]. That seems an important difference, and it is possible that Putin included that comment off-script. In which case, the english-language media, rather than actually translating what was said, simply transcribed a pre-conference script document prepared for them in advance.
Given the way the English-speaking media behaves, such behavior seems like it would be true-to-form.
Passer by , May 16, 2019 7:53:20 PM | link
OT

India joined the US and betrayed Iran. MK Bhadrakumar (who is not a fan of the US) himself admits it. India's betrayal of Iran is only the beginning - https://indianpunchline.com/indias-betrayal-of-iran-is-only-the-beginning/

What happened with the "US is rapidly collapsing" , "The breathtaking weakness of the Empire", "No one takes the US seriously" "World to US - you are fired" and so on alt media retardations?

You underestimate your opponents. Which makes a lot of your analyses garbage. And i don't like reading garbage. Improve the quality of your analyses, please.

Jackrabbit , May 16, 2019 7:53:50 PM | link
WJ @21

You're right, Trump is not actually a nationalist. I've often written that he's a faux populist . Trump was the only MAGA candidate and the ONLY populist on the right. His hiring of Manafort furthered the 'Russian collusion' narrative as well as his very public requests that Russia deliver Clinton emails and his praise of Putin. Trump said he wouldn't prosecute Hillary within days of winning, saying "they've been through a lot" and has strangely brought friends and has associates of his Deep State enemies into his Administration:

  • VP Pence was close to McCain;
  • CIA Director Gina Haspel is associated with Brennan;
  • AG Wm Barr is a long-time friend of Mueller (and Mueller is Comey's mentor);
  • Bolton is a neocon - neocons were "Never Trump".
Billosky , May 16, 2019 7:56:13 PM | link
"And i know all the points made that Russia could not have hacked them, but all the opposing evidence is much stronger IMHO, including analysis and inside knowlegde from current intelligence personal at SST."

Hmm, you sound just like all of the many clowns who have have been peddling the risible Russiagate hoax for the last 2 & 1/2 years! Always chirping about big fat masses of "evidence" that somehow they just can't reveal to the sorry unwashed masses of us, you know, "for reasons of national security," although they, just like you, evidently, will generously deign to provide us with "analysis and knowlegde [sic] from current intelligence personal [sic] at SST," -- whatever the Hell that silly esoteric acronymn is supposed to denominate, -- who are, of course, to be believed implicitly even though they have a very well-documented, seventy year record of spouting the most egregious lies in their quest to maximize their own increasingly mafia-like power. No thanks, "Don't believe either propaganda" I personally don't find your non-evidentiary propaganda nearly so compelling as the meticulous VIPS' refutation of the whole nonsense about "Russian hacking" of the DNC, a refutation which, by the way, has also been repeatedly corroborated by Julian Assange, whose record of veracity, I dare say, would put to shame any comparable record that could possibly be produced by you, or even any of the other self-appointed "analysts" at your so trusted "SST," -- if indeed that acronym refers to anything at all!!

ДжММ , May 16, 2019 7:59:19 PM | link
... also, per what Putin actually said, "Mueller confirmed the absence of any kind of traces and any kind of arrangements between Russia and the current administration, which [russia] has characterized since the beginning as total nonsense."

I am constantly dissatisfied with the quality of Russian-to-English translation from such official sources. It's no 'overload' button, but still , precision in words and grammar matters....

roza shanina , May 16, 2019 8:18:17 PM | link
Mr. Lavrov said, "we believe that publishing it (emails between the two entities communicating about cyberspace issues) would remove many currently circulating fabrications. Of course, we will not unilaterally make these exchanges public..."
I haven't seen the fabrications to which he is referring. Has anyone seen the fabrications of the messages he is speaking about?
Jackrabbit , May 16, 2019 8:21:35 PM | link
karlof1 @36

This is the part that's relevant to Trump as the MAGA candidate:

Even as the lessons of challenging decades are examined, the affirmation of America's exceptional nature must be sustained. History offers no respite to countries that set aside their sense of identity in favor of a seemingly less arduous course.

This is his prescription given after listing all the problems facing his cherished international order.

<> <> <> <> <> <> <>

This was my reaction when I first read it in 2014 :

I was skeptical of Kissinger's Op-ed of March 5th, saying (on April 28th): "Kissinger penned a "lets be reasonable" Op-ed in an attempt to head off Russian action and maintain the gains made via "facts on the ground".

Kissinger again feels the need to join the public conversation but I see his contribution very differently than Banger. My reading is that Kissinger is asserting that the US can and should do whatever it takes to keep the US preeminent – even if that means ignoring allies and/or the post-war international structure (UN, UNSC). That exceptional! message comes through loud and clear despite his 'triage' formalism. And it is a message that is comforting to the elite who read the WSJ (before a holiday weekend), though it should give Joe Sixpack nightmares if fully understood.

There is a lot more there which would take much longer to unpack. But I'll point to one more thing: Note how he forms an equivalence between all the troubles that the 'West' now face, and ignores US/Western actions that have contributed to these conflicts by conflating them. NC readers understand this via Merschemer's (in today's links) work on Ukraine and many links regarding ISIS (like this one).

This comforting message is needed because the Ukraine gambit has failed miserably – as many independent oberservers [sic] predicted– and a deeper conflict with Russia (possibly extending to others) is now in the cards. Like the true neocon that he is, Kissinger has doubled down on Nuland's obnoxious and misguided "f*ck the EU" with an exceptional! "f*ck the World".

God help us.

Don Bacon , May 16, 2019 8:24:54 PM | link
@ Passer 44
India joined the US and betrayed Iran. MK Bhadrakumar (who is not a fan of the US) himself admits it. . . i don't like reading garbage. Improve the quality of your analyses, please.

MKB didn't "admit it," he rued it. You left that part out.

Delhi falls in line with the US diktat on Iran sanctions, which of course will hit the Indian economy very badly, while the US is also at the same time aggressively demanding that India should open up its market for American exports. Why can't the Modi government prioritise India's economic concerns?. . . here

And MKB chastised India as cowards:
The running theme in all this is that India's strategic ties with Iran, Russia and China are coming under challenge from Washington. But the big question is how come Washington regards the "muscular" Modi government with a 56″ chest to be made of such cowardly stuff? Are the ruling elites so thoroughly compromised with the Americans? There are no easy answers.

I don't like reading garbage. Improve the quality of your analysis, please.
karlof1 , May 16, 2019 8:26:07 PM | link
Passer by @44--

Modi, if he gets reelected and given this decision that's a huge IF, India's economy will crash as Iranian oil was being bought at a discount. Also, this will greatly damage future BRI prospects and a host of other matters. IOW, Modi did NOT act in his or India's fundamental interest. Of course, it's even more likely now that he'll lose and the flow of Iranian oil will resume in order to keep India's economy alive. A more apt title for that item would be Modi's suicide.

Jen , May 16, 2019 8:26:52 PM | link
DBEP @ 8, 34:

Aside from the burden of proof you need to provide to back up your belief that the DNC emails were hacked by Russians - which others here have pointed out is not supported by available evidence - you need to say why you believe the moral and right thing for Russia to do is to get involved in a tit-4-tat cycle of revenge for wrongs both real and perceived.

The other problem with your argument is that it appears to be based on a narrow range of sources, and quite dubious sources at that, which happen to agree with one another. Intel agencies are as likely to rely on rumour, innuendo and fake news, to the extent of shaping reports of real events into something completely different, if they believe that will advance their aims.

This is why the CIA was mightily upset when in 2017 Wikileaks revealed the infamous hacking tools known as Vault 7 that the agency uses to hack information and then attach fake metadata to its hacking efforts to cover them and implicate foreign agencies.

Don Bacon , May 16, 2019 8:31:39 PM | link
I suppose that we can all agree that Kissinger is a terrible person, a demonstrated fact with no further proof required.
ДжММ , May 16, 2019 8:33:36 PM | link
roza @49

A HREF="http://www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/3646994">MFA transcript
The word Lavrov used, "измышления", means more literally, "things that have been made up". You are reading nuances into a word that was poorly-chosen as a translation.

ДжММ , May 16, 2019 8:35:59 PM | link
Dagnabbit. Sorry about the broken tags...
Don Bacon , May 16, 2019 8:39:31 PM | link
@ karlof1 52
As MKB pointed out, it's also in India's fundamental interest to retain its interests in Iran regarding the Chabahar port entrance into central Asia, in competition with China & Pakistan's Gwadar port. Modi is basically an anti-Muslim loser, keeping in mind that India has about as many Muslims as Pakistan has. I suppose he thinks it will help him in the election.
karlof1 , May 16, 2019 8:44:15 PM | link
Jackrabbit @50--

As I wrote, Kissinger was knowingly lying. If he actually believed those myths, he's more delusional than I imagined.

I highly suggest reading the transcript james linked @35. Kissinger can be lumped in with all the other deniers.

As I wrote above, the USSR crashed into an impenetrable wall called Reality. The USA is in the process of doing the same although the results will differ. Trump isn't MAGA; he's MAW--Make America Worse as that's the reality.

karlof1 , May 16, 2019 8:54:29 PM | link
Don Bacon @57--

Thanks for adding that. Our assessments of Modi are quite similar. I hope he's replaced. India has so much potential, but it's rarely had a leader to match.

Don Bacon , May 16, 2019 9:04:27 PM | link
@ karlof1 59
Yes India has potential, but meanwhile is quite backward especially compared to China in terms of transport and infrastructure. It's too bad, the people are wonderful, Hindus, Muslims and Christians getting along with no help from Modi.
Passer by , May 16, 2019 9:05:27 PM | link
Don Bacon | May 16, 2019 8:24:54 PM | 51

Did i say that they are not cowards? Does it matter? Does it matter if MK did not like it?

Are you an idiot? What kind of low quality thinking is that?

The point (at least for me) is not whether MK likes what happened or not. Or whether i like it. Sometimes in life bad things happen, no matter what your side is.

The point is already mentioned in the second part of my first comment.

karlof1 | May 16, 2019 8:26:07 PM | 52

Yes, India already has plenty of issues with BRI, especially CPEC. They refused to participate recently in one of the forums if i remember correctly. Yes, there is no doubt that there is a price to pay for India. Yet you can see what is happening with India and Brazil. The US is working towards the weakening of BRICS and multipolarity in general.

So: how do you explain the US gaining power in India and Brazil if the US is collapsing? Unless they are stronger than some people think.

james , May 16, 2019 9:13:59 PM | link
@37 jen.. yes - a bit like the previous conversation, but of relevance here too... i don't know how much of it is intentional, or a result of all drinking the same kooaid for so long, they become immune to an alternative viewpoint.. lots of room for speculation..
Indrid Cold , May 16, 2019 9:14:03 PM | link
This does not show the strength of the dying US empire, it shows the weakness of India's ruling class.
karlof1 , May 16, 2019 9:17:13 PM | link
Passer by @61--

In a word--Corruption. I'll leave it to you to explain to the hundreds of homeless I just finished walking amongst in Portland, Oregon, and the additional million+ nationwide that the USA isn't "collapsing."

In continuation of our discussion on the psychological issues at play within the Outlaw US Empire, I offer this assessment just published by The Saker which is filled with links to prove his assertions:

"[Sidebar: this issue is crucial to the understanding of the United States. The US is an extremely developed country, but not a civilized one. Oscar Wilde (and George Clemanceau) had it right: "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between". There are signs of that everywhere in the USA: from the feudal labor laws, to the lack of universal healthcare, to absolutely ridiculous mandatory criminal sentences (the Soviet Penal Code under Stalin was MUCH more reasonable and civilized than the current US laws!), to the death penalty, to the socially accepted torture in GITMO and elsewhere, to racial tensions, the disgusting "food" constituting the typical "SAD" diet, to the completely barbaric "war on drugs", to the world record of incarcerations, to an immense epidemic of sexual assaults and rapes (1/5 of all women in the USA!), homosexuality accepted as a "normal and positive variation of human sexuality", 98 percent of men reported internet porn use in the last six months, – you can continue that list ad nauseam. Please don't misunderstand me – there are as many kind, intelligent, decent, honorable, educated, compassionate people in the USA as anywhere else. This is not about the people living in the USA: it is about the kind of society these people are living in. In fact, I would argue the truism that US Americans are the first victims of the lack of civilization of their own society! Finally, a lack of civilization is not always a bad thing, and sometimes it can make a society much more dynamic, more flexible, more innovative too. But yeah, mostly it sucks ]"

Passer by , May 16, 2019 9:19:11 PM | link
Indrid Cold | May 16, 2019 9:14:03 PM | 63

Sounds good. So India is retarded, Brazil is retarded, Europe is retarded, etc. You are smarter than them. (It is possible though :).

Well, if there are so many retards around in this world, no wonder the US has been ruling it for some time.

uncle tungsten , May 16, 2019 9:22:19 PM | link

Posted by: Jackrabbit | May 16, 2019 7:55:46 PM | 46

I have a copy but I don't know if it's legal to post it.

Try sending it offshore. You could send it to b with a request. I am mystified at you obedience to law.

Indrid Cold , May 16, 2019 9:24:00 PM | link
Passer by, are you alright? It is just...I don't know...you sound a bit disturbed. Who said retarded other than you? Are you retarded? Hmmmm...

Now if you asked whether there are corrupt and worthless "leaders" in India and other places who are either too frightened or too greedy to stand up to murican demands.... oh wait, never mind....

The short bus is coming for you.....

Don Bacon , May 16, 2019 9:25:45 PM | link
On the other hand, the US has many secular and religious groups doing what they can alleviate the suffering that surely exists, a very civilized behavior. Community groups in action, the kind of society we live in, in areas where the government has failed. . .But I do feel left out, 98 percent of US men reported internet porn use in the last six months and I didn't get any. . . Had to do it myself!
hands gruber , May 16, 2019 9:27:11 PM | link
In his book, The Dönmeh Jews, D. Mustafa Turan writes that Wahhab's grandfather, Tjen Sulayman, was actually Tjen Shulman, a member of the Jewish community of Basra, Iraq. The Iraqi intelligence report also states that in his book, The Dönmeh Jews and the Origin of the Saudi Wahhabis, Rifat Salim Kabar reveals that Shulman eventually settled in the Hejaz, in the village of al-Ayniyah what is now Saudi Arabia, where his grandson founded the Wahhabi sect of Islam. The Iraqi intelligence report states that Shulman had been banished from Damascus, Cairo, and Mecca for his "quackery." In the village, Shulman sired Abdul Wahhab. Abdel Wahhab's son, Muhammad, founded modern Wahhabism.
the house of saud is kosher chabad stamp seal approved
Zachary Smith , May 16, 2019 9:27:45 PM | link
@ Peter AU 1 #25

Try this:

https://archive.org/details/pdfy-prJNYRBDTfomv6BU

Passer by , May 16, 2019 9:30:08 PM | link
karlof1 | May 16, 2019 9:17:13 PM | 64

Thanks for the comment. Tommorrow i may answer something.

Indrid Cold | May 16, 2019 9:24:00 PM | 67

Ok then. You can reread the same comment using your word "worthless" instead of my word "retarded". What i said in it still stands.

james , May 16, 2019 9:34:09 PM | link
@44 passer by.. have you always been such a simpleton? jesus.. i took you seriously in the previous threads, but not anymore!
Indrid Cold , May 16, 2019 9:37:52 PM | link
And it is still meaningless. You deliberately confuse the people of a nation with their leaders. What I said is on firmer ground and you know it's true. There will always be men who favor lining their own pockets in the short run rather than sticking to a course that pays off better in the long.
roza shanina , May 16, 2019 9:47:43 PM | link
@49 ДжММ - Spacibo for the link! Mr. Lavrov is my hero. Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko 2.0 for ColdWar 2.0 ®.
Passer by , May 16, 2019 9:49:26 PM | link
james | May 16, 2019 9:34:09 PM | 72

I see a problem with rose colored articles or over optimistic assessments. That's it.

Indrid Cold | May 16, 2019 9:37:52 PM | 73

I do see leaders as some kind of representation of their people. Did't they say that people get the leaders they deserve? What you said is that their elites are corrupt or worthless.

Well, what i say is that if there are so many worhless elites on this world, in the various parts of it, it is no wonder the US has been ruling it for some time.

james , May 16, 2019 9:49:27 PM | link
karlof1 shared the link peter au was looking for.. i know it is some effort to read others comments, and i am as guilty as the next, but if you want to read the link see @29 karlof1 where he shares what kissinger says in the wsj...
james , May 16, 2019 9:52:23 PM | link
@ 75 passer by...i think most folks here do too!

india is in the middle of an election.. it happens this weekend... politicians at election times have a habit of saying things that they don't necessarily keep... i think you overlook important details like this here... i think it makes your commentary that much weaker.

Passer by , May 16, 2019 10:01:32 PM | link
james | May 16, 2019 9:52:23 PM | 77

It is not me who says this is "only the beginning". But ok, let's wait for the elections.

Indrid Cold , May 16, 2019 10:01:50 PM | link
No, sadly, a people get the leaders they get...that is all. The choices are just not there. I mean, we got a choice between an orange freak of a reality show host and a gangland matriarch. Wonderful times! American leadership is the most corrupt in the world, no wonder their kindred souls in other lands gravitate towards them.
Jackrabbit , May 16, 2019 10:03:15 PM | link
Zachary Smith @70

Yeah, that's it.

The context is important.

Russia was instrumental in causing US to back down from their planned bombing of Syria in September 2013.

In February 2014 forces friendly to the West seized control of Ukraine. Nuland was recorded planning for the new Ukrainian government and saying "fuck the EU!". But Russia acted to support pro-Russian elements in Ukraine. Kissinger attempted to intervene as a 'voice of reason' saying that Russia and US should seek the least worst outcome for the two of them. But Russia didn't back down and accept the "facts on the ground". Crimea voted to be part of Russia in May and the Donbas rebels beat back Ukraine's army for the last time in August.

This was very different behavior that what the West had come to expect from Russia. It became clear that Russia had outsmarted the West (the parts of Ukraine the West got was a basket case) and was willing to act decisively when their interest were threatened. The Russia-China alliance was suddenly realized to be a real threat to Western NWO hegemony.

Jackrabbit , May 16, 2019 10:11:07 PM | link
Passer by

Passer by is right in this regard: the US Deep State are attempting to beat back the challenge from Russia and China.

It's not clear which side will win. Each side has a set of advantages and disadvantages that should not be overlooked or underestimated.

Don Bacon , May 16, 2019 10:21:37 PM | link
American leadership is the most corrupt in the world.

A big part of the "leader" problem is that we really don't need them, especially in a claimed (not actual) democracy. The president is constitutionally supposed to be an executive, one who executes laws.
Edward Abbey: "No man is wise enough to be another man's master. Each man's as good as the next -- if not a damn sight better."

Grieved , May 16, 2019 10:27:03 PM | link
@72 james

I have always regarded Passer by as a troll. Usually he is ignored. He scored a lot of engagement tonight. Who could have guessed that such an obviously confrontational and insulting approach would cause others to waste their time on him. It's a trick straight out of the manual.

I never understand why confrontational language prompts a response. One would think that in a world of courteous discourse, it would prompt complete disregard.

Passer by , May 16, 2019 10:44:00 PM | link
Posted by: Grieved | May 16, 2019 10:27:03 PM | 83

Then you are lucky because i won't bother you for the rest of the day like i'm supposed to. I will just say that i get called names in various places, even in places i'm supportive of. I'm pretty critical person and do not easily agree with others. This is how i'm. From time to time, not very often, i'm may come here, when i feel disturbed by something in geopolitics, to see what intelligent people think. That's it.

Don Bacon , May 16, 2019 10:46:30 PM | link
@ Grieved
I understand not responding to confrontation; I was responding to misstated facts. They shouldn't be allowed to stand. I didn't touch "Are you an idiot." . . .How would I know? :)
Grieved , May 16, 2019 11:00:36 PM | link
@35 james

Thank you for that link to the transcript of the Aaron Maté interview with Gabor, his father. I had downloaded the interview but not found time to watch it. Wonderful perspective from Gabor.

I think I've now read the first true diagnosis of US society and polity and they grapple with the appalling fact of Trump. All the terms he uses to describe the nation are terms we are very familiar with in describing individuals, but not quite with nations.

If this were an individual we were describing - an individual deeply traumatized and seeking to blame the external rather than to own the internal - them we would say the recommendation is for emotional intelligence. This is what we're seeing the US needs in its societal and institutional life: emotional intelligence. And the obvious lack of it describes the current time of the US perfectly.

Immense sanity from that interview. Thanks again for the link, and let me offer my own recommendation also to others to read it: America in denial: Gabor Maté on the psychology of Russiagate (Interview transcript)

Don Bacon , May 16, 2019 11:08:25 PM | link
@ Grieved
The "appalling fact of Trump" was entirely due to the appalling facts that caused Americans to vote for him, including professional politicians who entirely disregarded the populace in deference to themselves, especially starting wars and exporting jobs.
Zachary Smith , May 16, 2019 11:12:24 PM | link
@ Grieved #83

Troll? Probably. Previous samples:

2018 - Guys, Russia is in deep trouble. No wonder Putin is so silent, there will never be S-300 for Syria, Israel can bomb whatever it wants and russian officials are begging for a meeting with Trump. [...]

2018 - Is Putin capitulating? Pro US Alexei Kudrin could join new government to negotiate "end of sanctions" with the West.

Regular themes of incredibly weak Russia vs amazingly strong US

2018 - Do you know what the way for weakening the US is? Israel and the Zionists. You should tacitly support them...
Russia should actually covertly support AIPAC in the US.

Somebody in the pissant apartheid state believes this is a clever approach. Obama-style eleven dimensional chess?

Joost , May 16, 2019 11:57:57 PM | link
The Kissinger piece is also available at hoover.org.
dltravers , May 17, 2019 12:37:47 AM | link
karlof1 @ 61
Oscar Wilde (and George Clemanceau) had it right: "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between"

What a great line.

I move from Trump losing the next election to Trump winning the next election each time another Democrat steps in the ring. The whole phony Russia interference story has left many around me disappointing and disillusioned. Shell shocked may be a better description. It was impossible to reason with them and talk things out. I made many enemies to the point of losing work just trying to discuss the silliness of the allegations from day 1.

I have long ago put the whole thing behind me but I see the Turd is turning the other way with the investigations on the investigators. He has two years to strategically trickle information out while the harebrained media makes martyrs out the purveyors of this trash to cover their own asses.

The average US voter literally has no clue as to how these type of operations work historically. They are driven by emotion and hysteria but many are seen thru the BS. More than I have ever seen in my lifetime.

WJ , May 17, 2019 1:21:16 AM | link
In defense of Passer By#84

I read Passer by as reminding us that the US continues to hold continents in its thrall while carrying out world-scale crimes and injustices with impunity. For all the talk of the "weakening" of the Anglo-Zionist empire--talk that is to some extent objectively rooted in fact but that also, if we are being honest with ourselves, is driven by our desire that it be true -- it still remains the most coordinated networked aggressive juggernaut of destruction on the planet. Delays and setbacks on one or two fronts here or there have not stopped its ongoing machinations and have not led other countries to withstand or counter its coercion. (The European and Indian capitulation on Iran being a case in point.) I take it that Passer by is angered at all this and means to counter what he/she takes to be somewhat rosy-eyed prognoses of the empire's imminent internal collapse. Maybe such anger leads Passer by to launch the occasional ad hominem, which I don't seek to justify but can certainly understand--having had a few intemperate internet exchanges of my own over the years. I don't think Passer by is a troll. I think Passer by is a pessimist. There is a place for honest pessimism in any ongoing dialectic that seeks understanding in my view. I sometimes don't like to read what Passer by writes because I would prefer that what he/she writes not be true. Maybe my fear that it *is* true--or is just as true as what I hold--is what irks me.

Just throwing some thoughts out there....

Soft Asylum , May 17, 2019 1:33:01 AM | link
"I conveyed that there are things that Russia can do to demonstrate that these types of activities are a thing of the past"

What is this fallacy called, is it Begging the Question? The same as "Have you stopped beating your wife?"?

In any event it strongly reminds me of a similar rhetorical trick used by US politicos and pundits from all across the ideological spectrum, concerning those still (and ever at any time) held in Gitmo. Things such as " the danger if we release them without trial, to willing countries, is that they'll return to the battlefield ". That's what the trial would be! To find out whether they were ever actually ON "the battlefield" in the first place! Instead of pointed to for a $50 reward by desperate or spiteful locals.

Their guilt, the prior assumption, that all of them were "on the battlefield" is simply assumed, even in the very same context that laments that the US has no actual evidence to convict them on that assumption. This kind of BS is infuriating, and even moreso since I can't recall it ever being questioned by the "most left" Democrat or pundit, to the "most libertarian" etc. A website I found a couple years ago that's been around much longer than my being ignorant, FAIR, does a good job paying attention to these little rhetorical and diction choices. "Regime" vs. "government, and so on. And there are probably books on this I haven't read so maybe this is redundant.

Ike , May 17, 2019 1:58:15 AM | link
@88
Nice detective work Zachary :)
blues , May 17, 2019 2:18:08 AM | link
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ //
What happened with the "US is rapidly collapsing" , "The breathtaking weakness of the Empire", "No one takes the US seriously" "World to US - you are fired" and so on alt media retardations?

You underestimate your opponents. Which makes a lot of your analyses garbage. And i don't like reading garbage. Improve the quality of your analyses, please.

Posted by: Passer by | May 16, 2019 7:53:20 PM | 44
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Consider:
=/ You underestimate your opponents. /=

Probably most of the individuals commenting here are USans, or are friends of the USans. So you are implying that we are somehow our own opponents. Such is not the case. We are opponents of the CIA Mafia that has taken control of our governments.

If we had real elections with strategic hedge simple score voting we might be able to cast away these parasitic usurpers. So until we get real democracy (and defeat the ranked choice voting (RCV/IRV) conspiracy) we will continue to object to the monstrous policies being foisted upon us by the CIA Mafia.

[May 17, 2019] Lavrov to Pompeo: And what's the US doing in the Eastern Hemisphere

May 17, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

That brings to mind the recent Arctic Council summit. Both Lavrov and Pompeo were there. Here's a significant exchange:

Lavrov: I believe you don't represent the South American region, do you?

Pompeo: We represent the entire hemisphere.

Lavrov: Oh, the hemisphere. Then what's the US doing in the Eastern Hemisphere, in Ukraine, for instance?

There was no response from Pompeo.

[May 16, 2019] The Disinformationists by C.J. Hopkins

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... I don' know what are the revenues of NYT or The Guardian, but I know that the US government spends 750 million a year on the Agency for Global Media (formerly Broadcasting Board of Governors). If you think US or France is under attack by warmongers, you can't imagine how many propagandists are these 750 million hiring in low-COL places like Serbia, Burma, Venezuela. ..."
"... The situation is even worse today as the CIA and Pentagon have massive propaganda budgets and have infiltrated the media at every level , the public is unaware that each day they are brainwashed by the MSM to support the agenda of the "deep State' and the MIC. ..."
"... No mention of the journalists as CIA assets who publish planted stories? Isn't Dr Udo Ulfkotte one who did that, repented, told all in his best-seller Bought Journalists, and as a warning to others unselfishly dropped dead of a heart attack within a couple of years? ..."
"... The best sentence was the one expressing the Establishment's collective faux shock that anything other than Russian spybots could be responsible for the serfs' rejection of the "two centrist parties" that have sponged up lobbyist money for 3 decades, cashing in on the globalist-Neoliberal economy, as rents rose and wages fell. ..."
"... Not too sure about the US even remaining important as a continent wide farm.. The aquifers in the West and Midwest are being inexorably drawn down to sustain the current rate of farming, so it's possible North America's value would primarily be as a source of pockets of human talent in the sciences and technologies. ..."
May 16, 2019 | www.unz.com

paraglider , says: May 15, 2019 at 3:39 pm GMT

the hysteria emanating from the nyt, cnn and the rest of the msm is the result of a conscious or subconscious grasp that socialism dying worldwide. the great ponzi scam of forcing future generations to pay for the cookies and ice cream of the present generation has hit the math of the complete dearth of unencumbered assets from which to emit more unpayable debt, insufficient economic growth upon which to pretend the debt can be serviced forget about repayment and the simple fact demographichs throughout the west are so negative the government and public pension scheme blowup in the several years

the more intelligent members of the establishment know in their bones the jig is up. hence the great and urgent need to turn up .lets over throw sovereign nations so the plunder model ..venezuela, syria, russia, china et al.can find more unencumbered assets to be brought into the nyc, london orbit of banks from which new debt can be emitted.

the west is staring at its last decade of global rule, a rule that began 500 years ago. by the 2030's finance, manufacturing and all the global power and prestige that goes with it moves from ny, london to shanghai and moscow.

if the united states is lucky and remains intact, a giant IF, we may wind up as continent size farm with a smidgen of non competitive industry here and there.

the west has only disinformation with which to go to war against the rising east. the weapons of the west are powerful ONLY in their quantity. Russian weapons already are many years beyond anything the pentagon has in the field and the gap is only increasing, ergo the us treasury is forced to fight the battle using sanctions and other forms of restrictions, a long term losing strategy irrespective of any short terms gains.

so, cj worry not, the disinformation campaign is backed by nothing but hot air and the rage from being thwarted by china and russia as well as brave pipsqueakes like iran and venezuela.

see it for what it is, transparent sound and fury signifying nothing

Anon [232] Disclaimer , says: May 15, 2019 at 5:59 pm GMT
I don' know what are the revenues of NYT or The Guardian, but I know that the US government spends 750 million a year on the Agency for Global Media (formerly Broadcasting Board of Governors). If you think US or France is under attack by warmongers, you can't imagine how many propagandists are these 750 million hiring in low-COL places like Serbia, Burma, Venezuela.
Gordo , says: May 15, 2019 at 9:16 pm GMT
@Anon

I don' know what are the revenues of NYT or The Guardian, but I know that the US government spends 750 million a year on the Agency for Global Media (formerly Broadcasting Board of Governors). If you think US or France is under attack by warmongers, you can't imagine how many propagandists are these 750 million hiring in low-COL places like Serbia, Burma, Venezuela.

The UK gov't covertly subsidizes the Guardian.

9/11 Inside job , says: May 16, 2019 at 1:11 am GMT
In 1917 US Congressman Calloway informed Congress that J.P. Morgan interests had purchased 25 of the nations leading newspapers and replaced their editors in order to control the mass media for the benefit of the plutocrats/money interests who ran the country and who still do . The situation is even worse today as the CIA and Pentagon have massive propaganda budgets and have infiltrated the media at every level , the public is unaware that each day they are brainwashed by the MSM to support the agenda of the "deep State' and the MIC.
obwandiyag , says: May 16, 2019 at 3:18 am GMT
See, half a century after McCarthy, wingers got their noses into some (not all) Soviet files, and got to scream, nonstop and to this day, "See!@@#$% McCarthy was RIGHT!"

Betya in a half century, if we're still around, the same type people are going to get nosing in some files somewhere and find incontrovertible evidence that: "See!@#%$%^^ The New York Times was RIGHT!"

Same kind of people. They never change.

OEMIKITLOB , says: May 16, 2019 at 4:13 am GMT
@9/11 Inside job There is a virus-free link to a declassified CIA memo at the end of the article. It's interesting.

https://www.spyculture.com/cia-memos-on-task-force-on-greater-openness/

Nicolás Palacios Navarro , says: Website May 16, 2019 at 4:37 am GMT

And then there's the evil Russian spywhale, which the disinformationists want us to believe is just a harmless "therapy Beluga" for kids, but which has clearly been strapped with some sort of monstrous, mind-controlling apparatus that enables the Kremlin to remotely implant a host of dangerous "populist" ideas in the brains of defenseless Norwegian fishermen, weaponizing them into a horde of neo-Odinist Viking berserkers who will scream down out of Scandinavia and storm the EU Parliament in Brussels smelling of akvavit and fermented shark.

You had me doing a cartoon spit-take with this beaut!

Giuseppe , says: May 16, 2019 at 4:42 am GMT

these enormous corporate media conglomerates, and the transnational corporations that own them, and these intelligence agencies, and their fronts and cutouts, and corporate lobbyists and PR firms, and councils, and think tanks, and research institutes, to disinform the Western masses, or to manufacture an official narrative

No mention of the journalists as CIA assets who publish planted stories? Isn't Dr Udo Ulfkotte one who did that, repented, told all in his best-seller Bought Journalists, and as a warning to others unselfishly dropped dead of a heart attack within a couple of years?

" that enables the Kremlin to remotely implant a host of dangerous "populist" ideas in the brains of defenseless Norwegian fishermen, weaponizing them into a horde of neo-Odinist Viking berserkers who will scream down out of Scandinavia and storm the EU Parliament in Brussels smelling of akvavit and fermented shark "

It isn't the akvavit that does it, but you can't do it without the akvavit.

Biff , says: May 16, 2019 at 4:45 am GMT

And then there's the evil Russian spywhale, which the disinformationists want us to believe is just a harmless "therapy Beluga" for kids, but which has clearly been strapped with some sort of monstrous, mind-controlling apparatus that enables the Kremlin to remotely implant a host of dangerous "populist" ideas in the brains of defenseless Norwegian fishermen, weaponizing them into a horde of neo-Odinist Viking berserkers who will scream down out of Scandinavia and storm the EU Parliament in Brussels smelling of akvavit and fermented shark.

I had a good laugh at the Spy Whale schtick. One look at the thing, and you get the idea it should've been in a Pink Panther movie.

Made up shit that only a mind of a child could believe.

Endgame Napoleon , says: May 16, 2019 at 4:56 am GMT
The best sentence was the one expressing the Establishment's collective faux shock that anything other than Russian spybots could be responsible for the serfs' rejection of the "two centrist parties" that have sponged up lobbyist money for 3 decades, cashing in on the globalist-Neoliberal economy, as rents rose and wages fell.

The serfs have to love that. How could they not embrace it? Only spybots beaming up doom-and-gloom messages from halfway around the globe could persuade the thick-headed serfs that the part-time / churn / gig economy is anything but nirvana.

Alfa158 , says: May 16, 2019 at 5:18 am GMT
@paraglider I think you're probably right about the inevitable collapse of the West as the dominant global power.

Not too sure about the US even remaining important as a continent wide farm.. The aquifers in the West and Midwest are being inexorably drawn down to sustain the current rate of farming, so it's possible North America's value would primarily be as a source of pockets of human talent in the sciences and technologies.

Also Russia has been making some progress, but unless that continues it may not reach the level of competitiveness in science, industry and domestic product to be any more than a junior partner to China.

Whatever happens, a sea change in history seems unavoidable and it won't be what our present rulers think it will. I don't pretend to think I can reliably predict what is coming.

unit472 , says: May 16, 2019 at 5:19 am GMT
I used to know Russian disinformation when I saw it because it was obvious when it came from the USSR. Then the MSM peddled it as authentic as when, in response to Soviet deployment of IRBM in Europe, pinkos magically appeared to protest the American deployment of similar weapons. It was well funded too as Brezhnev had serious oil revenues to finance both his military and his disinformation campaigns and the USSR had 125% of America's population and a satellite Eastern Europe to boot.

Now I am to believe a motheaten "Russia' with less than half the US population, a hostile Ukraine and no Eastern European satrapies is able to exert more 'influence' in the West than the mighty USSR. Yet those same 'pinkos' would have me believe a castrated Russia is an existential threat. Come on!

[May 16, 2019] What motive would they possibly have, these enormous corporate media conglomerates to disinform the Western masses, or to manufacture an official narrative that allows them to systematically eliminate any type of speech they deem to be Russian disinformation, or extremist content, or a conspiracy theory, or simply too dangerous, divisive, or confusing to circulate among the general public?

May 16, 2019 | www.unz.com

The Disinformationists, by C.J. Hopkins - The Unz Review

...what motive would they possibly have, these enormous corporate media conglomerates, and the transnational corporations that own them, and these intelligence agencies, and their fronts and cutouts, and corporate lobbyists and PR firms, and councils, and think tanks, and research institutes, to disinform the Western masses, or to manufacture an official narrative that allows them to systematically stigmatize, marginalize, criminalize, deplatform, demonetize, and otherwise eliminate any type of speech they deem to be "Russian disinformation," or "extremist content," or a "conspiracy theory," or simply too "dangerous," "divisive," or "confusing" to circulate among the general public?

No see? That makes no sense. That's just an example of the type of fascist disinformation these Putin-Nazi disinformationists are trying to spread to confuse us to the point where we can't even concentrate long enough to think anymore, or parse the meaningless jargon-laden nonsense they're trying to deceive us with, and just devolve into these Pavlovian imbeciles conditioned to respond to specific trigger words, like "extremist," "terrorist," "fascist," "populist," "anti-Semitic," "Russians," "hackers," and whatever other emotional stimuli we are being trained to instantly recognize and robotically react to like circus animals.

Or I don't know, maybe it isn't. I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say. Probably they've already got to me. I'd better get back down into my anti-disinformation bunker, pull up The Guardian , or The Washington Post , or Der Spiegel on my child-proof computer, and immerse myself in some objective journalism, before the Putin-Nazi spywhale makes its way up the Landwehrkanal, takes control of what's left of my mind, and forces me into going out and trying to vote for Hitler or something.

I recommend you do the same, and I'll see you when this nightmare over.

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .

[May 16, 2019] FBI-CIA Dispute Erupts Over Whether Comey Or Brennan Pushed Steele Dossier

Notable quotes:
"... BREAKING: A high-level source tells me it was Brennan who insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier be included in the Intelligence Report... Brennan should be asked to testify under oath in Congress ASAP. ..."
"... As one example, in its FISA application, the bureau repeatedly and incorrectly assured the court in a footnote that it "does not believe" British ex-spy Christopher Steele was the direct source for a Yahoo News article implicating Page in Russian collusion, and instead asserted that the Yahoo article provided an independent basis to believe Steele. - Fox News ..."
"... Graham noted a report by The Hill 's John Solomon that the FBI was specifically told that Steele was "keen" to leak his salacious dossier for the purpose of influencing the 2016 US election . The agency also knew that the document's claims were either unverified or disproven , yet it was used anyway against Trump and his campaign. ..."
"... Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are now blaming Loretta Lynch for the botched Hillary/email investigation. ..."
May 16, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

FBI-CIA Dispute Erupts Over Whether Comey Or Brennan Pushed Steele Dossier

by Tyler Durden Thu, 05/16/2019 - 10:25 0 SHARES Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print A dispute has erupted over whether former FBI Director James Comey or his CIA counterpart, John Brennan, promoted the unverified Steele dossier as the Obama-era intelligence community targeted the Trump campaign.

According to Fox News , an email chain exists which indicates that Comey told bureau subordinates that Brennan insisted on the dossier's inclusion in the intelligence community assessment (ICA) on Russian interference . Also interesting is that the dossier was referred to as "crown material" in the emails - a possible reference to the fact that Steele is a former British spy.

In a statement to Fox, however, a former CIA official "put the blame squarely on Comey ."

"Former Director Brennan, along with former [Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, are the ones who opposed James Comey's recommendation that the Steele Dossier be included in the intelligence report," said the official.

"They opposed this because the dossier was in no way used to develop the ICA," the official continued. "The intelligence analysts didn't include it when they were doing their work because it wasn't corroborated intelligence, therefore it wasn't used and it wasn't included. Brennan and Clapper prevented it from being added into the official assessment. James Comey then decided on his own to brief Trump about the document. "

James Comey, James Clapper, and John Brennan are starting to publicly argue who was pushing the dossier that ended up in the intelligence community assessment on Russian interference. The RATS are beginning to turn on each other.

I'm sure AG Barr is taking notes!

-- thebradfordfile™ (@thebradfordfile) May 15, 2019

Former GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy - a longtime defender of the FBI - told Fox News ' Martha MacCallum on Tuesday night that "Comey has a better argument than Brennan, based on what I've seen."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/A9lI-lUyjlc

In March, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) suggested over Twitter that Brennan had "insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier" be included in the January 2017 ICA .

BREAKING: A high-level source tells me it was Brennan who insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier be included in the Intelligence Report... Brennan should be asked to testify under oath in Congress ASAP.

-- Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 27, 2019

The dossier was ultimately not included in the ICA according to previous testimony by Clapper. Meanwhile, word that Comey had briefed President Trump personally on the dossier - "because he understood reporters already had that information and it could become public soon if journalists had a "news hook," according to the Associated Press . And as it so happens - the fact that Comey briefed Trump is what CNN and Buzzfeed caim legitimized their decision to publicly release the salacious and unverified dossier.

Whether the FBI acted appropriately in obtaining the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to Trump campaign aide Carter Page is now the subject not only of U.S. Attorney John Durham's new probe, but also the ongoing review by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber has been conducting his own investigation separately, although details of his progress were unclear.

As one example, in its FISA application, the bureau repeatedly and incorrectly assured the court in a footnote that it "does not believe" British ex-spy Christopher Steele was the direct source for a Yahoo News article implicating Page in Russian collusion, and instead asserted that the Yahoo article provided an independent basis to believe Steele. - Fox News

On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News that he was pushing to declassify documents which would expose the FBI's dismal efforts to verify the claims within the dossier.

"There's a document that's classified that I'm gonna try to get unclassified that takes the dossier -- all the pages of it -- and it has verification to one side," said Graham. "There really is no verification, other than media reports that were generated by reporters that received the dossier."

Graham noted a report by The Hill 's John Solomon that the FBI was specifically told that Steele was "keen" to leak his salacious dossier for the purpose of influencing the 2016 US election . The agency also knew that the document's claims were either unverified or disproven , yet it was used anyway against Trump and his campaign.

LEEPERMAX , 26 seconds ago link

Whoa Nellie!!!

"I'm deleting these emails now"

https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-nellie-ohr-deleted-emails-exchanged-with-doj-husband-bruce-ohr/

LEEPERMAX , 8 minutes ago link

"SPYGATE" FALLOUT? – ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER GIUSEPPE CONTÉ REQUESTS RESIGNATION OF INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS

https://aim4truth.org/2019/05/16/cat-report-32/

847328_3527 , 11 minutes ago link

Ben Shapiro tears a new one for far left BBC's leftie Andrew Neil - BBC News

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VixqvOcK8E

Ben makes a fool of the BBC and their pawn.

LEEPERMAX , 13 minutes ago link

As Rosenstein Departs, the Battlefield Is Now Ready: https://youtu.be/rhQhfmXLrl4

Teamtc321 , 21 minutes ago link

Italy has flipped on Brennan, turning over Joseph Mifsud

George Papadopoulos@GeorgePapa19

The Italian prime minister has suddenly requested resignations from 6 deputy directors of Italian intelligence agencies: DIS, AISI and AISE. This was all after I outed Mifsud in Rome and the president called the Italian prime minister. Italy has flipped and are giving up Brennan.

2:03 PM - May 16, 2019

The Italian prime minister has suddenly requested resignations from 6 deputy directors of Italian intelligence agencies: DIS, AISI and AISE. This was all after I outed Mifsud in Rome and the president called the Italian prime minister. Italy has flipped and are giving up Brennan.

https://www.citizenfreepress.com/breaking/italy-has-flipped-on-brennan-turning-over-joseph-mifsusd/

deus ex machina , 22 minutes ago link

Hang. Then draw and quarter all three POFS. Problem solved.

LEEPERMAX , 30 minutes ago link

What Was Obama's Roll in the Attempted Coup Of Donald Trump ???

https://youtu.be/yUT9Vb6Hc8c

Baron von Bud , 33 minutes ago link

These agency heads are all underlings. The directive came from above. This dossier job was approved by Obama and Hillary ran the plan. It's obvious.

Giant Meteor , 26 minutes ago link

But they are always insulated, protected, no? They know, and we know, that they know .. Everybody knows .,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8IfmiKnZi3E

Koba the Dread , 43 minutes ago link

U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber has been on the job for some months yet narry a peep out of him. There's not even any indication that he gets out of bed in the morning.

He's a member of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, I imagine that should he ever get out of bed, he will whitewash whichever agency has the most Mormons who might be affected by this scandal.

Back in the sixties, Jack Anderson, a serious investigative journalist and Mormon, noted that to Mormons the US Constitution is a sacred document given to the founding fathers by God himself. Let's hope Huber honors this Mormon tradition.

I love your wife , 57 minutes ago link

Comey was going to blackmail Trump and be the white knight he thinks he is. Even if it were true (which it isn't) Trump didn't give a ****. Especially after all the lies after lies of trash the Dems have sunk to (like with Kavanaugh). Never be ashamed of **** you do, and you will be blackmail proof....except for the pedophiles in DC. We know they are there, and when we find out who they are we will kill them. Comey's a douche.

Koba the Dread , 12 minutes ago link

If you kill all the pedophile in and associated with Washington, the streets will run with blood.

Imagine you or me. If we have a little sexual kink--even a little one--there is little we can do about it but fantasize or find an occasional person/animal/or vegetable to accommodate us. But if you hold great power or are super-rich, you don't need to fantasize. You can act out your little kink with impunity. If you hold great power or are super-rich and you have a very, very evil kink, you can exercise it with impunity. I often thought of that looking at **** Cheney's eyes. They're the eyes of a madman. He could have sliced and diced a man, woman, child or beast a day and gotten away with it. President Trump can grab them by the ***** (adult women) and why not. It's just a very personal way of shaking hands. But I see no insanity in his eyes at all. Hillary's eyes remind me of Norman Bates on a bad day. And Biden. . . . Wow! A pervert of the first water but also a complete coward. Thank God! One less sex monster in action.

Ban KKiller , 1 hour ago link

Sly **** show! Spy vs. Spy! Who done it?

Everyone knows that FBI, CIA, NSA etc., are all in the business of being in business. Helps that insider trading is not illegal for Congress. Corporate America directs intelligence outfits. My opinion...well, ok, my chickens told me.

I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 1 hour ago link

Trump is NOT Putin's Puppet

https://seriousguy.donclasen.com/trump-is-not-putins-puppet/

JBLight , 1 hour ago link

The hits just keep coming. It's not just Comey vs. Brennan. Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are now blaming Loretta Lynch for the botched Hillary/email investigation. Bruce Ohr is blaming DOJ and FBI officials for ignoring his "warnings" about Christopher Steele and the dossier.

Comey is bashing Strzok, Page, and now Rosenstein. Rosenstein is firing back at Comey. Andrew McCabe is attacking anyone pretty much with a pulse.

Popcorn is sold out!

JBLight , 1 hour ago link

She's trying to protect herself. She already testified and spilled the beans about herself and her husband. And they threw a criminal referral at her anyway. MARK MEADOWS REFERS NELLIE OHR TO DOJ FOR INVESTIGATION

https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/02/mark-meadows-nellie-ohr-doj/

On top of all that, this came out today:

Nellie Ohr deleted emails sent from husband's DOJ account

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nellie-ohr-deleted-emails-sent-from-husbands-doj-account

JBLight , 1 hour ago link

This just gets juicier and juicier. Adm. Rogers of the NSA had found that FBI contractors were overusing the NSA database to run searches/spying so he shut them down. In April 2016! Friends, Fusion GPS wasn't hired just to fabricate dirt on Trump, they were hired to create cover for the spying that was already happening when they knew they got caught by Rogers. They were terrified of what Rogers would do. Enter Fusion/Steele/dossier/European & Australian intelligence. The cover-up will be the death of them. Wait until we find out who else they were spying on during this time.

Admiral Michael S. Rogers is a hero. He has everything. He knows exactly who was being spied on and when.

EDIT: So who the hell approved the original spying? We know Brennan pushed the dossier but who pushed Brennan? I smell Barry.

[May 16, 2019] What motive would they possibly have, these enormous corporate media conglomerates to disinform the Western masses, or to manufacture an official narrative that allows them to systematically eliminate any type of speech they deem to be Russian disinformation, or extremist content, or a conspiracy theory, or simply too dangerous, divisive, or confusing to circulate among the general public?

May 16, 2019 | www.unz.com

The Disinformationists, by C.J. Hopkins - The Unz Review

...what motive would they possibly have, these enormous corporate media conglomerates, and the transnational corporations that own them, and these intelligence agencies, and their fronts and cutouts, and corporate lobbyists and PR firms, and councils, and think tanks, and research institutes, to disinform the Western masses, or to manufacture an official narrative that allows them to systematically stigmatize, marginalize, criminalize, deplatform, demonetize, and otherwise eliminate any type of speech they deem to be "Russian disinformation," or "extremist content," or a "conspiracy theory," or simply too "dangerous," "divisive," or "confusing" to circulate among the general public?

No see? That makes no sense. That's just an example of the type of fascist disinformation these Putin-Nazi disinformationists are trying to spread to confuse us to the point where we can't even concentrate long enough to think anymore, or parse the meaningless jargon-laden nonsense they're trying to deceive us with, and just devolve into these Pavlovian imbeciles conditioned to respond to specific trigger words, like "extremist," "terrorist," "fascist," "populist," "anti-Semitic," "Russians," "hackers," and whatever other emotional stimuli we are being trained to instantly recognize and robotically react to like circus animals.

Or I don't know, maybe it isn't. I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say. Probably they've already got to me. I'd better get back down into my anti-disinformation bunker, pull up The Guardian , or The Washington Post , or Der Spiegel on my child-proof computer, and immerse myself in some objective journalism, before the Putin-Nazi spywhale makes its way up the Landwehrkanal, takes control of what's left of my mind, and forces me into going out and trying to vote for Hitler or something.

I recommend you do the same, and I'll see you when this nightmare over.

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .

[May 15, 2019] Russia-gate s Monstrous Offspring

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "Instead," McConnell went on, "the previous administration sent the Kremlin a signal they could get away with almost anything, almost anything. So is it surprising that we got the brazen interference detailed in special counsel Mueller's report?" ..."
"... Yes, Russia kicked most US NGOs out of the country. With good reason. Most of them were deliberately undermining the host country (this is not limited to Russia, they do that in most of their host countries, especially those we want to mess with). The National Endowment for Democracy is a classic case in point. The counter point here isn't RT. It's a news outlet that has proven to be far more reliable than the US corporate media. Does Russia send NGOs around the world to infest other countries with their vision of government? ..."
"... It is exactly as Mr. Lazare says, Americans think that their country can do no wrong. ..."
"... Several of my late husband's FB friends fall well into these categories and they really believe, wholeheartedly, the propaganda against Russia (and to some extent against China – Huawei, 5G, and so on), almost to the point of paranoia. The Demrat politicos and their corporate-capitalist-imperialist funders together with the despicable, groupthinking Orwellian media have done a real number on these people – usually the ones who *vote.* ..."
"... Most are Democrats who embrace the 'neoliberal groupthink' you referred to. There was a time I believed one of the conclusions of a famous study on authoritarian personalities that claimed the vast majority of authoritarians (active and passive) were Republicans. Just as the Democratic Party has morphed into the 80's Republican Party, so too have these liberals. Their cognitive dissonance is more powerful than any I have encountered in my lifetime. Their core belief system now includes incrementalism, lesser-evilism and an overwhelming sense of goodness that at least they are 'doing something positive' by supporting all Democrats at all costs. ..."
"... I don't get why, supposedly intelligent, informed people are wondering why Russia is being blamed for so much. Let me remind you that the extremely powerful Israel Lobby is VERY BUSY supporting the agenda of the right wing Likud government in Israel. ..."
"... One of the goals of Likud is the Zionist agenda that includes Greater Israel which requires Israel to acquire more water and land in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, Iran is a very strong supporter of the Palestinians and Syrian President Assad and Iraqi independence from US domination. ..."
"... Why, on this good earth, does anyone pay any attention to Schumer and Schiff and McConnell? Shills, do nothing crackpots and traitors to this nation; when you see that's what they are, you have to ignore them. ..."
May 14, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Russia-gate has shed any premise of being about Russian interference, writes Daniel Lazare, but the idea that America may in anyway be responsible for its own fate is of course unthinkable.

By Daniel Lazare
Special to Consortium News

Americans used to think that Russia-gate was about a plot to hack the 2016 election. They were wrong. Russia-gate is really about an immense conspiracy to do four things:

  • No. 1: Ratchet up tensions with Russia to ever more dangerous levels;
  • No. 2: Show that Democrats are even more useless than people imagined;
  • No. 3: Persecute Julian Assange;
  • No. 4: Re-elect Donald Trump as president.

This was the takeaway from Mitch McConnell's devastating " case closed " speech last week in which the Senate majority leader jeered at President Barack Obama for mocking Mitt Romney's claim (seven years ago now) that Russia was America's "number one geopolitical foe ." As Obama famously replied during that presidential debate: "The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War's been over for 20 years."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/N0IWe11RWOM?feature=oembed

But that was so 2012. Now, says McConnell, it looks like Romney was right:

"We'd have been better off if the administration hadn't swept [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's invasion and occupation of Georgia under the rug or looked away as Russia forced out western NGO's and cracked down on civil society. If President Obama hadn't let Assad trample his red line in Syria or embraced Putin's fake deal on chemical weapons, if the Obama administration had responded firmly to Putin's invasion and occupation of Ukraine in 2014, to the assassination of Boris Nemtsov in 2015, and to Russia intervention in Syria -- maybe stronger leadership would have left the Kremlin less emboldened, maybe tampering with our democracy wouldn't have seemed so very tempting.

"Instead," McConnell went on, "the previous administration sent the Kremlin a signal they could get away with almost anything, almost anything. So is it surprising that we got the brazen interference detailed in special counsel Mueller's report?"

Lies and Distortions

Like so much out of Congress these days, this was a farrago of lies and distortions. It wasn't Moscow that started the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, but Tbilisi . While Russia has indeed cracked down on U.S.-backed NGO's, Washington has done the same by forcing Russia's highly successful news agency RT to register as a foreign agent and by sentencing Maria Butina, a Russian national studying at American University, to 18 months in prison for the crime of hobnobbing with members of the National Rifle Association. The charge that Syrian President Bashar al Assad "trampled" Obama's red line by using chemical weapons is hardly as clear-cut as imperial propagandists like to believe – to say the least – while the agreement between Putin and former Secretary of State John Kerry to rid Syria of chemical weapons was not fake at all, but an example, increasingly rare unfortunately, of diplomacy being used to prevent an international crisis from getting out of hand.

And so on ad nauseum . But what could Democrats say in response given that they've spent the last three years trying to out-hawk the GOP? Answer: nothing. All they could do was try to turn tables on McConnell by charging him with not being anti-Russian enough. Thus, New York's Sen. Chuck Schumer accused him of " aiding and abetting " Moscow while Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin accused him of running interference for Putin because he "feels the Russians were on the side of the Republicans in 2016 and just might be again in 2020."

Democrats Feed the Super Hawks

The result: a Democratic consensus that Russia can't be trusted and that America must put itself on a war footing to prevent Putin from "toppl[ing] the mighty oak that has been our republic for two hundred years," as Schumer put it. It's an across-the-board agreement that the long-awaited Mueller report has only strengthened by regurgitating the intelligence-community line that "[t]he Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion" and then cherry-picking the facts to fit its preconceived thesis. (See " Top Ten Questions About the Mueller Report ," May 6.)

Democrats claim to oppose National Security Advisor John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence, but the anti-Russian hysteria they promote strengthens the hand of such super-hawks. It makes military conflict more likely, if not with Russia then with perceived Russian surrogates such as Venezuela or Iran.

Schiff increasingly unhinged.

Simultaneously, it backfires on Democrats by making them look weak and foolish as they argue that even though the Mueller report says "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government," somehow "significant evidence of collusion" still exists, as an increasingly unhinged Rep. Adam Schiff maintains . In the Alice-in-Wonderland world of congressional Democrats, no evidence does not mean no evidence. In fact, it means the opposite.

Voters are unmoved. Ten times more Americans – 80 versus 8 percent – care about healthcare than about Russia according to a recent survey . When CNN pollsters asked a thousand people in mid-March to name the issues that matter most, not one mentioned Russia or the Mueller probe . If they didn't care when collusion was still an open question, they care even less now that the only issue is obstruction plus a phony constitutional crisis that desperate Democrats have conjured up out of thin air.

Trump the Chief Beneficiary

Besides Fox News – whose ratings have soared while Russia-obsessed CNN's have plummeted – the chief beneficiary is Trump. Post-Mueller, the man has the wind in his sails. Come 2020, Sen. Bernie Sanders could cut through his phony populism with ease. But if Jeff Bezos's Washington Post succeeds in tarring him with Russia the same way it tried to tar Trump, then the Democratic nominee will be a bland centrist whom the incumbent will happily bludgeon. Former Vice President Joe Biden – the John McCain-loving , speech-slurring , child-fondler who was for a wall along the Mexican border before he was against it – will end up as a bug splat on the Orange One's windshield.

Trump ready to take on challengers. (Caricature/DonkeyHotey via Flickr)

Beto O'Rourke, the rich-kid airhead who declared shortly before the Mueller report was released that Trump, "beyond the shadow of a doubt, sought to collude with the Russian government," will not fare much better. Sen. Elizabeth Warren meanwhile seems to be tripping over her own two feet as she predicts one moment that Trump is heading to jail , declares the next that voters don't care about the Mueller report because they're too concerned with bread-and-butter issues, and then calls for dragging Congress into the impeachment morass regardless.

Such "logic" is lost on voters, so it seems to be a safe bet that enough will stay home next Election Day to allow the rough beast to slouch towards Bethlehem yet again.

Assange Convicted in Eyes of Press

Then there's Julian Assange, currently serving a 50-week sentence in a supermax prison outside of London after being ejected from the Ecuadorian Embassy. By claiming that the WikiLeaks founder was "dissembling" by denying that Russia was the source of the mammoth Democratic National Committee leak in July 2016, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has effectively convicted him in the eyes of Congress and the press.

The New York Times thus reports that Mueller has " revealed " that Russian intelligence was the source while, in a venomous piece by Middlebury College professor Allison Stanger, The Washington Post declared that Assange "is neither whistleblower nor journalist," but someone who helped Russian intelligence interfere in "the American electoral process."

Schumer thus greeted Assange's April 11 arrest by tweeting his "hope [that] he will soon be held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government," while, in a truly chilling statement , Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia declared that "[i]t will be really good to get him back on United States soil [so] we can get the facts and the truth from him."

Now that Julian Assange has been arrested, I hope he will soon be held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government.

-- Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) April 11, 2019

Assange is guiltier than ever. If Washington gets its hands on him, he'll no doubt be hauled before some sort of Star Chamber and then clapped in a dungeon somewhere until he confesses that Russian intelligence made him do it, even though a careful reading of the Mueller report strongly suggests the opposite. (See " The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report ," April 18.)

Assange languishing behind bars, war breaking out in Latin America or the Persian Gulf, Trump in the Oval Office for four years more – it's the worst of all possible worlds, and the Democratic Party's bizarre fixation with Vladimir Putin is what's pushing it.

Ultimately, Russia-gate is yet a variation on the tired old theme of American innocence. If something goes wrong, it can't be the fault of decent Americans who, as we all know, are too good for our deeply flawed world. Rather, it must be the fault of dastardly foreigners trying to hack our democracy. It's a deep-rooted form of xenophobia that has fueled everything from the criminalization of marijuana (smuggled in by evil Mexicans) to the 1950s Red Scare (a reaction to Communism smuggled in by evil Russians), and the war on terrorism (the work of evil Muslims). The idea that America may in anyway be responsible for its own fate is of course unthinkable.

But Russia-gate may be the greatest delusion of all. After decades of celebrating Donald Trump as the essence of American flash and hustle, the corporate media have decided that the only way he could have gotten into the White House is if Putin put him there. The upshot is a giant conspiracy to force Americans to turn their back on reality, an effort that can only end in disaster for all concerned, Democrats first and foremost.

Daniel Lazare is the author of "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy" (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique and blogs about the Constitution and related matters at D aniellazare.com .

Tick Tock , May 15, 2019 at 11:30

Sorry Folks but both Mr Lazare's text and the majority of the comments here clearly illustrate that the major problem for America and its Citizens is that they are way too full of themselves and easily manipulated because of that. Seriously, the vast majority of the Worlds population Could Not Give a Rat's Ass about America except when they are being attacked either with Real Bombs or Economically.

No normal Human Being wants to be Israel's Stooge. You have to think you are are really important for someone in another Country to want to select your leaders. Oh yes that is what the US Deep State does and now it's been clearly exposed it does the same thing at home.. Of course if your motto is that "You are god's chosen people!", it could get you into trouble now and then with the rest of God's People. Like Bob Dylan wrote a few years ago, "I used to care!" Only a fool would care now.

Jeff Harrison , May 15, 2019 at 11:23

This is where we learn the importance of an objective press and one that can bring all the threads of a story together. And it's also most likely to be a disaster.

Yes, Russia kicked most US NGOs out of the country. With good reason. Most of them were deliberately undermining the host country (this is not limited to Russia, they do that in most of their host countries, especially those we want to mess with). The National Endowment for Democracy is a classic case in point. The counter point here isn't RT. It's a news outlet that has proven to be far more reliable than the US corporate media. Does Russia send NGOs around the world to infest other countries with their vision of government?

The US/EU fomented the coup in Ukraine that resulted in Crimea deciding they didn't want to be associated with Ukraine any longer. Did the US press tell the truth here? No. They made it sound as if Crimea was a part of Ukraine when, in fact, the Turkic Muslims of Crimea were never a part of the Christian Slavs of Ukraine. They also didn't explain the terms by which Khrushchev administratively slapped the two together in 1957 which give the Crimeans the ability to opt out.

It is exactly as Mr. Lazare says, Americans think that their country can do no wrong. We don't see the coups we foist on other countries. We don't see the lies and fake news we spread in other countries we wish to undermine. They don't see the consequences of our abuse of our economic power. The myopia is powerful in this one as my representatives tried to tell me that Venezuela was a prosperous and happy country before Chavez and that their current travails are as a result of the socialism and not two coup attempts and a long string of sanctions from the US. We are remarkably good at blaming the victim.

There's a good chance that this will rise up and bite us in the ass and the American people will have no idea why ..

AnneR , May 15, 2019 at 08:52

Mr Lazare, while I would certainly agree with much you have written, on one point at least I am much less certain: that most Americans care less about Russia than about health care.

While this might be true for the majority of the population who are in the lower middle, working classes and poor, I am much less certain about the "well" educated, comfortably off, well health insured, middling and upper bourgeoisie. The sort who, even when on Medicare, are on the upper rungs of it (paying extra for better and more expansive treatment; and I do mean Medicare here). The sort who frequently have been privately educated.

Several of my late husband's FB friends fall well into these categories and they really believe, wholeheartedly, the propaganda against Russia (and to some extent against China – Huawei, 5G, and so on), almost to the point of paranoia. The Demrat politicos and their corporate-capitalist-imperialist funders together with the despicable, groupthinking Orwellian media have done a real number on these people – usually the ones who *vote.*

These same people evince absolutely, and I mean absolutely, NO concern or interest in the constant war-making and warmongering, the illegal invasions, electoral meddling/coups/"regime" changes, destruction of peoples that this country (and its allies) engage in. Not happening here, therefore not anything to do with "us."

I know that my late husband would be utterly devastated knowing that some of his students, with whom he worked assiduously to develop real critical thinking (via much difficult reading in historiography, sociology and philosophy, discussion and writing), have fallen hook, line and sinker for the neoliberal groupthink supporting the corporate-capitalist-imperialist (and of course, orientalist) line. One can only imagine that they were already well primed for this mindset.

MattZ , May 15, 2019 at 11:43

Anne -- your post resonates deeply with me. I would guess you and I are of similar ages and have similar friends and acquaintances. We certainly share the exact same experiences with these people. They are proud 'liberals' (lately donning the 'progressive' robe with equal exuberance). None are members of the elite one-percenters, but all belong to what Nader refers to as the 'contented class', that 9% buffer zone between the elite and the increasingly miserable lower 90%-ers.

Most are Democrats who embrace the 'neoliberal groupthink' you referred to. There was a time I believed one of the conclusions of a famous study on authoritarian personalities that claimed the vast majority of authoritarians (active and passive) were Republicans. Just as the Democratic Party has morphed into the 80's Republican Party, so too have these liberals. Their cognitive dissonance is more powerful than any I have encountered in my lifetime. Their core belief system now includes incrementalism, lesser-evilism and an overwhelming sense of goodness that at least they are 'doing something positive' by supporting all Democrats at all costs.

Appallingly, their new heroes are historically-proven liars, psychopaths and Deep State organizations like the CIA and FBI. Their Trump Derangement Syndrome has destroyed all ability to think critically or accept transparent and obvious truths. They accept no criticism of their actions and attack those who question them. To them, the 'end' of removing Trump justifies any evil.
Gaia help us all.

Skip Scott , May 15, 2019 at 08:04

The root of the Democrats problem is they feed from the same trough as the GOP. They can't do anything substantial about health care or the declining middle class because they'd piss off their donors. Since they can't stand for "the working man" any longer, they are trying to cobble together "Identity Politics" and "Political Correctness" to eke out a majority. Good luck with that! They can give us non gender specific restrooms with our Forever War! Why aren't we feeling the love?

I think the time has never been more ripe for a serious third party challenge than 2020.

Realist , May 15, 2019 at 10:42

Perfect thumbnail obituary for the Democratic Party, Skip. It got hijacked by corporatists who saw an opportunity to push the GOP agenda from both directions. Maybe that's what Hillary meant by "stronger together."

Herrman , May 15, 2019 at 07:56

If you want to be entertained and titillated turn on the national evening news shows. The 2020 election circus has already begun. Don't watch that, switch channels and watch the obstruction of justice infotainment. Want news, read between the lines of the major newspapers. Go to PBS to be rescued, good luck.

Has it always been thus. Maybe, but it's a much better show today.

Shock and awe. Can't wait for the next one.

O Society , May 15, 2019 at 04:52

https://opensociet.org/2018/10/20/the-real-danger-of-russiagate-always-has-been-the-martyrdom-of-trump/

If I could figure out long ago Russia-gate was going to lead to Trump's reelection (see above link), you would think Brennan/ Clinton/ Pelosi could figure it out too. Which begs the questions:

Is Trump good for business for the Democratic party financial patrons? Do they really want him impeached? Did the Pied Piper strategy ever end? Does Bernie Sanders scare them so much they'd rather promote Trump than have Sanders in the Oval Office?

Realist , May 15, 2019 at 10:35

Your last explanation is the one that Jimmy Dore seems to favor. The party string pullers are obviously desperate when they back one near-octogenarian (Crazy Joe Biden) for the nomination against another near-octogenarian (Sanders). Counter move by the GOPers may be to run Tricky Dick Nixon's head-in-a-bottle for the office, like in Futurama.

Realist , May 15, 2019 at 02:05

Wow, gotta hand it to McConnell. That man can shamelessly pack multiple whoppers into every single sentence uttered in his public speaking. Quite a tour de force of pure undiluted bullshit by the turtle. With his rhetorical skills to deliver talking points at a newly realised zenith, there's sure to be a job for him on Madison Avenue when he's finally kicked to the curb as happens to every politician when a better snake oil salesman inevitably comes along.

John Sanguinetti , May 15, 2019 at 00:05

I don't get why, supposedly intelligent, informed people are wondering why Russia is being blamed for so much. Let me remind you that the extremely powerful Israel Lobby is VERY BUSY supporting the agenda of the right wing Likud government in Israel.

One of the goals of Likud is the Zionist agenda that includes Greater Israel which requires Israel to acquire more water and land in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, Iran is a very strong supporter of the Palestinians and Syrian President Assad and Iraqi independence from US domination.

Russia, with it's very effective support for Assad and collaboration with Iran is blocking progress on the Zionist agenda. So, putting pressure on Russia is a way of trying to force them to back off from their support for Syria and Iran or at least to scare them with the power of our military and a crazy unpredictable leader who might do anything. Israel has besides it's VERY STRONG and active lobbies in the US and UK a large and VERY Active 5th column that spends a LOT of money and effort influencing the people who run our government.

CitizenOne , May 14, 2019 at 23:43

I believe it but with some editing of the authors original four things. I have deleted the case against Assange as a sideshow that does nor resonate with Americans any more than the nightly rumor mill about celebrities. Here goes.

Americans used to think that Russia-gate was about a plot to hack the 2016 election. They were wrong. Russia-gate is really about an immense conspiracy to do four things:

No. 1: Ratchet up tensions with Russia to ever more dangerous levels;

No. 2: Show that Democrats are even more useless than people imagined;

No. 3: Win the 2020 elections and reelect Trump and preserve the republican majority in the Senate and win back the democrat controlled House

No. 4: Wage wars in oil rich nations being Iran and Venezuela to fulfill the agenda of the energy companies via military action.

While McConnell rails against Obama for his weaknesses we have the historical record that Obama declared Venezuela as a national security threat, levied massive sanctions against Russia for their presumed invasion of Ukraine, launched a war against the Syrian government, preserved and supported our wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

We see today that Chuck Schumer is still committed to the theory that Russia is the single reason that the democrats lost the last election which is absurd and is rejected by not only a significant number of liberal journalists but also by a majority of Americans. Why do the democrats continue to promote conspiracy theories that the majority of Americans reject as nonsense?

The republicans have the democrats over a barrel and will push it over and watch the democrats wallow in the mud with much amusement.

This could not have have happened to the democrats without a complete lack of foresight or even a slightest attempt to rely on the truth to guide them.

From day one after the election, the democrats swallowed the bait hook line and sinker and now the hook is buried deep in their gullets and they still insist that they are free swimming fish on a mission to prove Russia was responsible for the last election. With every gulp they swallow the hook deeper apparently unaware that they are about to be reeled in and captured by their unfounded beliefs that the bait is is a real meal they can sustain themselves on. Just like a fooled fish they are on the hook.

The announcement that the AG is launching an investigation led by republicans to investigate the Russia Gate investigation will most certainly tarnish democrats and stain their efforts that will be seen as even more dull as the tarnish they try to put on Trump. Even uninformed citizens will ask what is up with the democrats who are trying to bring down Trump even though their reliable news sources tell them that Russia Gate is all a lie.

Meanwhile the democrats who have declared come up not only short on ideas but appear to be suicidal.

Elisabeth Warren has declared war on monopolies in an era where unlimited spending by corporations is legally protected as free speech. How can she hope to win by pledging to breakup monopolies that are well equipped to outspend her in their bid for survival?

The democrats have failed to do the math and their strategies for appealing to the masses will be shot down by the right wing controlled "free press". It is not a liberal press. It is the enemy of liberals controlled by wealthy liberal hating, libertarian loving billionaires. Public vows by democrats who pledge to destroy it will be met with the full force of their arsenal which includes complete control over the microphone that steers debate and is the chief influence of elections. As Mark Twain put it, " It is unwise to wage a war of words against men who buy ink by the barrel".

Howard Dean met his end when the major media outlets conspired to elevate "The Dean Scream" to levels questioning his sanity. The nearly constant barrage of over 4,000 replays of the Dean Scream leading up to the democratic primaries effectively put an end to his bid for nomination.

But why did all of the the major media outlets conspire to conduct a character assassination of the Howard Dean movement? Just two weeks before the Dean Scream was endlessly broadcasted by the media with news commentators chiming in that he was likely an insane man who must be exposed and stopped in his tracks he made a fatal flaw. He made a campaign speech where he said that if he was elected he would impose regulations on the media. Boom Boom out went the lights.

How can any democrat win when they oppose corporations that include the media corporations in America? How can Elisabeth Warren wither the name calling that she will suffer as Trump claims she has a Pocahontas syndrome while also alienating the largest campaign contributors with her pledge to destroy them? How will her insistence that she has Indian blood possibly win her fans when the majority of Americans will mock her. They have been honed on the strop of right wing money into believing that everything they hear and see is factual even though it is not factual or real. Such is the suicidal gamble of the soon to be defeated democratic party.

Why they continue to go down the path toward blind alleys where they will be trapped and defeated baffles me.

geeyp , May 15, 2019 at 11:32

Why, on this good earth, does anyone pay any attention to Schumer and Schiff and McConnell? Shills, do nothing crackpots and traitors to this nation; when you see that's what they are, you have to ignore them.

jmg , May 14, 2019 at 19:57

Daniel Lazare: "( ) it must be the fault of dastardly foreigners trying to hack our democracy. It's a deep-rooted form of xenophobia that has fueled everything ( ) The idea that America may in anyway be responsible for its own fate is of course unthinkable."

Yes, that's the way it is. About WikiLeaks, as they have repeated many times:

"Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims 'bullshit', adding: 'They are absolutely making it up.'

"'I know who leaked them,' Murray said. 'I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.'"

-- The Guardian, 2016-12-10
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/10/cia-concludes-russia-interfered-to-help-trump-win-election-report

[May 15, 2019] They hate us for our freedom 2.0

Neocons and neolibs control the USA foreign policy. That's given. NYT just reflects foreign policy establishment talking points.
Links between Daniel Jones and Steele are really interesting and new information
Notable quotes:
"... "The goal here is bigger than any one election," said Daniel Jones, a former F.B.I. analyst and Senate investigator whose nonprofit group, Advance Democracy, recently flagged a number of suspicious websites and social media accounts to law enforcement authorities. ..."
"... According to a report published this morning, he notes that the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which has received "significant funding" from technology billionaires, funneled $500,000 to the non-profit group Advance Democracy. That organization shares a street address with The Democracy Integrity Project. ..."
"... That's because both organizations were founded by former Senate Intel staffer Daniel Jones, who at that time worked for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who hails from just down the road from Silicon Valley in San Francisco. As TruNews has previously reported, those connections to the Senate Intel Committee have played a significant role in the ongoing "Russia Narrative" drama in Washington, D.C. ..."
"... Jones has been previously identified as a central figure in the investigation who served as potential go-between with the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, and former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. ..."
"... The NYT is very much invested in the post Cold War status quo. ..."
"... That would be the Clintons and the Bushes. Both political parties and every POTUS since 1968. In fact, I believe this is the main reason why the Dems created and are pushing Russiagate so hard. They don't want us looking at what really gave us Trump: the neoliberal neoconservative fiasco of the past 40+ years. ..."
"... told about Russia and that they interfered with not only our elections, but in so many other countries too. I remember a time when people would insist on seeing the evidence on stuff the intelligence agencies tell them, but ever since Her lost the election they lost their minds. I'll see references to articles that say something, but offer no evidence. Like the one this essay is about. ..."
"... Plus they tried to kill the Skripals. And the GOP are also under Vlad's thumb. This is why Russia Gate has to be debunked. ..."
"... So, yes, it's going to take too long. Short of a miracle, I'm starting to think we're all going to be radioactive ash before Cold War II ends. There was a modicum of restraint with Cold War I; some people had enough sense to realize the end result was nuclear war. That type of sense seems nowhere to be found in Washington, D.C., these days. ..."
"... Dick Cheney is as evil as any human being I've ever heard of. I doubt whether he's done everything some folks believe he's done -- but not because he isn't evil enough, only because he lacked either the guts or the necessity. I believe he would have fit in perfectly well with Himmler and Goebbels, and he would enthusiastically embraced their approach to getting and wielding power. ..."
"... A few months ago, I made a comment to someone that it's like we're supposed to hate them (Russia) for their freedoms. ..."
May 15, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

"They hate us for our freedom" 2.0

gjohnsit on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 5:32pm The NY Times just posted one of the most atrocious pieces of journalistic malpractice I have ever read.

Less than two weeks before pivotal elections for the European Parliament, a constellation of websites and social media accounts linked to Russia or far-right groups is spreading disinformation, encouraging discord and amplifying distrust in the centrist parties that have governed for decades.

European Union investigators, academics and advocacy groups say the new disinformation efforts share many of the same digital fingerprints or tactics used in previous Russian attacks, including the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

That's a powerful statement. There's just one problem: the article doesn't present a single bit of proof. Just anecdotes. In fact, it doesn't even quote anyone to back up these claims, but for one single exception.

"The goal here is bigger than any one election," said Daniel Jones, a former F.B.I. analyst and Senate investigator whose nonprofit group, Advance Democracy, recently flagged a number of suspicious websites and social media accounts to law enforcement authorities.

"It is to constantly divide, increase distrust and undermine our faith in institutions and democracy itself. They're working to destroy everything that was built post-World War II."

Russia is why people are losing faith in our government institutions. Not because they are owned by oligarchs. If you listen closely you can hear President Bush.
So who is Daniel Jones and Advance Democracy? That's an interesting story .

According to a report published this morning, he notes that the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which has received "significant funding" from technology billionaires, funneled $500,000 to the non-profit group Advance Democracy. That organization shares a street address with The Democracy Integrity Project.

That's because both organizations were founded by former Senate Intel staffer Daniel Jones, who at that time worked for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who hails from just down the road from Silicon Valley in San Francisco. As TruNews has previously reported, those connections to the Senate Intel Committee have played a significant role in the ongoing "Russia Narrative" drama in Washington, D.C.

Jones has been previously identified as a central figure in the investigation who served as potential go-between with the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, and former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. That's because TDIP, which receives significant funding from George Soros, funneled some of that money toward Steele's research for Fusion GPS that led to the infamous dossier on President Donald Trump.

However, as Ross reports today: "Mystery surrounds both of Jones's operations. The identities of both groups' donors have largely been kept secret, as Jones has avoided revealing his backers.

Nothing to see here. Just two sketchy political organizations sharing the same street address. Perfectly normal.

"The election has yet to come, and we are already suspected of doing something wrong?" the Russian prime minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said in March. "Suspecting someone of an event that has not yet happened is a bunch of paranoid nonsense."

It's not nonsense. It's scapegoating. There's a difference.

gjohnsit on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 5:46pm

The Hill forgot Tulsi again

It's #IgnoreTulsiTime again. @thehill pic.twitter.com/rVe306gXxx

-- K. Rosef (@kayrosef) May 10, 2019

they can't even say it

CBS News (2/4/19) briefly interviewed Honolulu Civil Beats reporter Nick Grube regarding Gabbard's campaign announcement. The anchors had clearly never encountered the term anti-interventionism before, struggling to even pronounce the word, then laughing and saying it "doesn't roll off the tongue."
UntimelyRippd on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 5:59pm
If you have trouble pronouncing "anti-interventionism",

@gjohnsit @gjohnsit
you lack one of perhaps three must-have skills for being a TV reporter.

Centaurea on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 6:49pm
The other skills being

@UntimelyRippd a perky voice and a lack of critical thinking ability? And for women, blonde hair.

Bollox Ref on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 6:14pm
I assume that the meteoric rise of Farage's Brexit party

over the last couple of weeks, is all down to Putin/bots/funding. The NYT is very much invested in the post Cold War status quo.

Centaurea on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 6:44pm
Once again, NYT gets the facts wrong

They're [the Kremlin] working to destroy everything that was built post-World War II.

That would be the Clintons and the Bushes. Both political parties and every POTUS since 1968. In fact, I believe this is the main reason why the Dems created and are pushing Russiagate so hard. They don't want us looking at what really gave us Trump: the neoliberal neoconservative fiasco of the past 40+ years.

It's also why so many people of my generation (over 60) are having trouble understanding and accepting what's going on. To do so will require letting go of everything they thought was true. That kind of change does not come easy to many people.

I heard someone recently say "We have to elect a Dem or else our post-War advantages will disappear."

Got to wonder where he's been for the past 40 years. That horse left the barn a long time ago.

snoopydawg on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 7:12pm
Unfortunately people really believe everything they have been

@Centaurea

told about Russia and that they interfered with not only our elections, but in so many other countries too. I remember a time when people would insist on seeing the evidence on stuff the intelligence agencies tell them, but ever since Her lost the election they lost their minds. I'll see references to articles that say something, but offer no evidence. Like the one this essay is about.

Plus they tried to kill the Skripals. And the GOP are also under Vlad's thumb. This is why Russia Gate has to be debunked.

People say that Mueller has put to rest the fact that Russia indeed interfered with the election, but all he showed was the FBIs "belief' that they did and that some Russians will ties to Vlad hacked the DNC computers. He didn't interview anyone involved with that as laid out in my recent essay.

I've even seen people who were once against our invasions being okay with them and repeating the party line. Unfuckingbelievable!

TheOtherMaven on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 7:28pm
I wonder how much of this is residual Millennial Mania

@snoopydawg

The Year 2000 was not that long ago, and we were bombarded for two decades beforehand with talk of all the dreadful things that might happen, could happen, and some people firmly believed would happen - and then didn't happen. (As it turned out, the most obvious sign of "Y2K" was the "19100" bug that plagued Web pages for months afterward. It was cosmetic and harmless, but annoying.)

I expected it to take about ten years for sanity to return - but it looks like being more like fifty. And there will probably be some cultists who construct their own "reality" around what didn't happen, like the 1840s Millerites (who spun off the still-extant Seventh Day Adventists).

snoopydawg on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 1:33am
It might be longer

@TheOtherMaven

The NYT and WaPoo have new articles out about how bad the dastardly Russians are still interfering with the whole dang country now. And WaPoo had some university do a study on how Russia tried to get people to vote for Bernie and blah, blah,...

I read an article last year saying that Bernie needs to knock off being with the Russia Gaters because he is going to be accused of being in Vlad's pockets anyway. But he's still saying that Trump is under Russia's thumb and that Russia is doing all kinds of bad stuff.

Then there's all the websites like DK, emptyhead, democratic underground and others saying that Mueller confirmed Russia did bad things and maybe if the democrats work harder on their investigations they will find stuff that Mueller missed. I think 10 years is optimistic, but however long it's going to take its going to be too long.

travelerxxx on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 3:10am
A lit fuse with nothing to stop it

@snoopydawg

I think 10 years is optimistic, but however long it's going to take it's going to be too long.

Consider how long it took for Cold War I to finally start to ebb. It took at least a decade, and that was with the memory of a horrendous world war fresh on most minds. Now, we're so insulated from the reality of war, not even allowed reports from the battlefields, much less accurate information and numbers, that we have lost touch with the horror. Evil men such as Bolton spend every minute of every day trying to embroil us in deadly excursions and foreign entanglements. Our "intelligence" agencies are no more than modern versions of the NAZI era Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

So, yes, it's going to take too long. Short of a miracle, I'm starting to think we're all going to be radioactive ash before Cold War II ends. There was a modicum of restraint with Cold War I; some people had enough sense to realize the end result was nuclear war. That type of sense seems nowhere to be found in Washington, D.C., these days.

thanatokephaloides on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 8:12pm
the Russians

@travelerxxx

So, yes, it's going to take too long. Short of a miracle, I'm starting to think we're all going to be radioactive ash before Cold War II ends. There was a modicum of restraint with Cold War I; some people had enough sense to realize the end result was nuclear war. That type of sense seems nowhere to be found in Washington, D.C., these days.

Fortunately for us ordinary Americans, the Russians really do love their children too.....

//www.youtube.com/embed/wHylQRVN2Qs?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

Jen on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 9:02am
If Bernie is the nominee

@snoopydawg Are they going to say they're both (Bernie and Trump) working with Russia? That would be amusing. I wonder if it would cause any of them to vote third party or not vote at all.

Hawkfish on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 7:14pm
As someone in the industry...

@TheOtherMaven

...who was a software development consultant at the time, the reason nothing much happened was that's lot of people worked their butts off for several years. COBOL programmers were dragged out of retirement and all kinds of goofy OS and library hacks were implemented to reduce the amount of work and risk.

Sometimes freaking out gets the job done!

SnappleBC on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 10:03pm
It did not come easy for me anyway

@Centaurea

It's also why so many people of my generation (over 60) are having trouble understanding and accepting what's going on. To do so will require letting go of everything they thought was true. That kind of change does not come easy to many people.

I spent several years grappling with my fall down the rabbit hole. I started freeing myself from the matrix during #Occupy and towards the end of Obama's first term I was starting to really get it... at least get it enough to know I wasn't voting for him a second time. Then Bernie arrived on the scene and it was music to my ears. That pretty much completed the process for me but it STILL took time and I STILL have places where I "don't believe they are that evil" (twin towers anyone) yet I suspect that in the fullness of time I may yet find that they are in fact that evil.

I have a lot of sympathy for those still caught in the matrix. It's a really good trap. That doesn't change the fact that I see them as my enemy and the enemy of all mankind but I at least understand.

UntimelyRippd on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 10:50pm
I've always been clear on one thing:

@SnappleBC
Dick Cheney is as evil as any human being I've ever heard of. I doubt whether he's done everything some folks believe he's done -- but not because he isn't evil enough, only because he lacked either the guts or the necessity. I believe he would have fit in perfectly well with Himmler and Goebbels, and he would enthusiastically embraced their approach to getting and wielding power.

travelerxxx on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 10:58pm
I need to focus better

@UntimelyRippd

I believe he would have fit in perfectly well with Himmler and Goebbels ...

I had to go back and re-read your comment, as I had subconsciously read President Security Advisor John Bolton rather than what you wrote -- Cheney .

I mean, you were talking about evil men ...

snoopydawg on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 1:44am
They really are that evil

@SnappleBC

Just this century this country has killed a million Iraqis and who knows how many people in the other countries we've invaded? 40,000 Venezuelans died last year because of our sanctions and no matter how many people in Yemen die every day because of the Saudis we will continue supporting them.

Then there's Hiroshima and Nagasaki as aliasalias stated. Oh hell yes they are that evil.

Not Henry Kissinger on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 3:01am
After all the millions of people...

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg

killed and displaced around the Globe by the Empire in just this century alone, so many still can't believe this same government could murder 3000 on 9/11.

Cognitive dissidence doesn't even start to explain it.

Pluto's Republic on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 7:41pm
Well, the key issue here

...is the intense access that these privatized propagandists have to the New York Times . And certainly the Times should explain why it freely publishes radical divisive stories that cannot be verified from compromised sources that have previously been exposed as disreputable. This is what Russia is accused of doing, sewing confusion and fear in the US, based on misinformation. Now the New York Times is doing it for them. The fact that a US media outlet is deliberately sabotaging the domestic tranquility with alarming lies is exactly what congress should be investigating. But any congressperson that did so would see their careers destroyed. Congress surrendered to the media monopolies a long time ago.

What we can do is confirm for Americans that they must never trust anything they read in the New York Times and the Washington Post . Remind them of the tragic facts in recent history. The lies that endangers people's lives and disables their intelligence are written between the lines.

snoopydawg on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 1:46am
Ayup

@Pluto's Republic

The NYT and WaPoo and other media are continuing to come up with new stories every day telling us something new that Russia is doing. This is not going away any time soon. Unfortunately.

aliasalias on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 10:36pm
I can't forget those commercials nor the school drills

@Lookout @Lookout with us all getting under our desks or along the walls if we are in the hallway and I don't think any one of us didn't treat this as something critical for us to learn in order to survive.
As a kid that loved riding a bicycle one Public Service announcement I paid careful attention to was the instruction to do if I saw that bright flash which was to throw the bike down and curl up along the curb, I even thought about that problem on unpaved streets.

I remember bomb shelters were advertised a lot and I remember some tv dramas were about people fleeing to their bomb shelter and the dilemma of being only fit to hold a small group but had neighbors, friends and strangers pleading to be let in.

The 'Twilight Zone' series even had one episode where a very wealthy man with a shelter picked certain important people in his life, his school teacher, Priest and others were offered shelter only if they will apologize for things he'd caught criticism for his behavior in his past. Trivial stuff, but he had a screen for them to watch the destruction live.

Long story short, they'd rather die than spend the rest of their lives with him. Especially with all their friends and family gone, so he is alone, goes crazy, runs outside and is found by a policemen to be crying and babbling at a city fountain, in a city that had not been bombed, but for him it had happened and all he could see was destruction around him.

All that aside considering we'd already dropped 'the' bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki those behind all the public warnings and information that was needed in order for people to know how to survive couldn't really believe that nonsense.

Unless they could believe all those dead Japanese would've likely survived if they had ducked under their desks or curled up along a curb, and if that were true they were as loony as the 'Twilight Zone' character.
Yeah if only all those schoolchildren had jumped under their desk before the building and everything around it was obliterated.

...if you see a light brighter than the sun. (1 min)

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==

aliasalias on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 10:51pm
Today I'm watching the NY Yankees vs Tampa Bay and

in the top of the ninth the screen goes black, the live stream has stopped because the electrical grid the Tropicana had shut down and the stadium was without power for the lights, scoreboard, broadcast, etc. were down.

It took about forty-five minutes for power to be restored but right when it happened I thought it was the stream I was watching so I clicked on other streaming sites and it was on a couple of them I read why all broadcasts were off.

But in the chat box I really couldn't tell if a few were joking or not when they blamed it on the Russians. One in particular didn't look like they were joking as that person repeated the claim a few times. No kidding, and one lamented that (paraphrasing) 'now the Russians are messing with our National sport'.

THIS is what mainstream media has wrought.

travelerxxx on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 11:02pm
Worse yet

@aliasalias

THIS is what mainstream media has wrought.

I'd offer that this is what a mainstream media controlled by handful of corporations, reading from a script, has wrought.

snoopydawg on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 1:41am
Bingo

@aliasalias

Any time something happens now people will willingly accept that Russia did something that caused it. See the tweet I posted above. Secret service agents and police are doing nothing as the Guaido goons keeps people from delivering food and stuff to the embassy sitters. One goon tried taking the bag out of a guy's hands and they just watched. One person tried to throw a cucumber and the cops pounced on him, pushed him to the ground and bloodied him up. But Russia is the one who put the embassy sitters into the embassy and is supporting them. SMDH!

Not Henry Kissinger on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 2:57am
Love the projection...

Advance Democracy, recently flagged a number of suspicious websites and social media accounts to law enforcement authorities."It is to constantly divide, increase distrust and undermine our faith in institutions and democracy itself.

An organization that reports undesirable speech to law enforcement is worried about the undermining of democracy. Got it.

Jen on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 9:09am
It's the other way around this time

A few months ago, I made a comment to someone that it's like we're supposed to hate them (Russia) for their freedoms.

[May 15, 2019] CNN MSNBC Caught Meddling in US Democracy by Joe Giambrone

Images deleted
Notable quotes:
"... How could it not? Comcast owns NBC. ..."
"... MSNBC is also that bastion of journalistic integrity that hired an exposed CIA mole, Ken Dilanian, to feed its viewers propaganda about "national security ..."
"... Now, the parties truly "meddling in America's democracy" should be very clear, although I can only scratch the surface here concerning the long history of media corruption and outright lies broadcast all the time. ..."
"... The criminal behaviour continues unabated. Lies and fraud abound. American behaviour worldwide is an embarrassment to any free thinking individual. They are a danger to all of us. ..."
"... Organisations like the BBC and all the rest of the corporate media are a greater threat to democracy than any foreign army or terrorist organisation. ..."
"... As Trump might say, 'Fake News!' ..."
May 15, 2019 | off-guardian.org

CNN rigged a poll to censor out nearly everyone under 45 years of age. Based on this nonsensical false sampling they claim Biden is now in the lead.

MSNBC was caught making up false numbers to report, increasing Biden from an actual 25% approval to a magical 28%, just enough to edge out Bernie Sanders. But this is a fraud, deliberate journalistic malfeasance at the highest levels. How could such a thing happen?

How could it not? Comcast owns NBC.

Comcast executive to host Joe Biden fundraiser"
CBS News 24/04/19

MSNBC is also that bastion of journalistic integrity that hired an exposed CIA mole, Ken Dilanian, to feed its viewers propaganda about "national security."

MSNBC also made hysterical, highly dangerous, and false claims about the Russians' ability and intention to shut down America's electrical grid, a completely false story that was retracted as soon as it went out by the Washington Post. This kind of unhinged war propaganda could lead the world straight to Armageddon.

Now, the parties truly "meddling in America's democracy" should be very clear, although I can only scratch the surface here concerning the long history of media corruption and outright lies broadcast all the time.

Grafter

The criminal behaviour continues unabated. Lies and fraud abound. American behaviour worldwide is an embarrassment to any free thinking individual. They are a danger to all of us. We can start by removing them from Europe along with their so called "allies". Here in the disunited UK T.May and her little gang of Tory millionaires should be top priority for political oblivion. People worldwide urgently need to wake up to the sick joke that goes under the name of "American democracy".

mark

Organisations like the BBC and all the rest of the corporate media are a greater threat to democracy than any foreign army or terrorist organisation.

They need to be constantly exposed for what they are rather than actually suppressed or controlled. They can be safely left to wither on the vine and decline into irrelevance. Social media and sites like this are a powerful antidote.

Seamus Padraig

As Trump might say, 'Fake News!'

[May 15, 2019] Graham reads Strzok f-bomb text in intense Barr hearing opener

Joe Biden was a part of this Obama mafia who was trying to take down Trump ...
Graham still buying Russiagate nonsense, so it is only half-right.
Notable quotes:
"... Who are the idiots now? Will, since this report has been revealed, like the Democrats screamed about, saying it that would expose Trump. It actually exposes Hillary and several others....and now is heading Obama's way. Put them behind Barrs! ..."
May 15, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Ann Cochenour , 2 weeks ago

I'm ashamed that once upon a time I was a Democrat. Never again. What lying crooks

EA B, 2 weeks ago

Who are the idiots now? Will, since this report has been revealed, like the Democrats screamed about, saying it that would expose Trump. It actually exposes Hillary and several others....and now is heading Obama's way. Put them behind Barrs!

Patricia Oakes, 2 weeks ago

Now ask that Feinstein witch about her traitorous dealings with China!

Dewey Self, 2 weeks ago

Have you ever noticed strzok,s eyes.he looks possesed..

The Goat, 2 weeks ago

Peter Strzoks text messages describe exactly what Hillary's presidency would turn out to be lol

Truthfan7 Tetelestai, 2 weeks ago

No Senator Graham, you're not going to find out that Russia provided the dossier. You are going to find out that Nellie Ohr (who is a CIA agent, one of Brennan's corrupt crew), and Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, constructed the dossier.

They then took it and washed it through the Ohr's buddy Christopher Steele. That was to give it a cache of foreign provenance. And then they got other willing participants like John McCain, and the lying media to do their part in forwarding the pretense that the dossier had some sort of legitimacy and the corrupt FBI leadership put it in front of a FISA judge to deceive them into granting the FISA warrant which allowed the FBI to spy all through the entire Trump campaign, and even to keep spying on Trump when he was seated in the Oval Office.

They participated in sedition and treason. ALL OF THEM should be hanged for this crime against the American people.

Anthony Emrick, 2 weeks ago

Bob Mueller is an Establishment STOOGE who, Along with James Comey, have been covering up for the Deep State and Shadow Government (SES) Cronies for over 20 years!!!

Joann Tague, 2 weeks ago

The man that bleached the computers and the lady that physically destroyed 2 computers with a hammier needed to be arrested......That is a start! Hillary Clinton is guilty of all the charges Trump was investigated for. President Trump is totally innocent.

So it's back to the Clinton Emails to start. Lets see how the news media reports that. The democrats are truly evil and dishonest.

darlingUSA, 12 weeks ago

Strzok and Page - those two people are your typical Clinton and Obama supporters. What does that say about her supporters. Only those two knew that as POTUS, Trump was going to do what was best for the People, not pay for play and not cover tracks of corrupt politicians. That's what they hated. That and the People of the U.S.A.

Jen X, 2 weeks ago

Dems want Barr to resign because he didn't give them the results they wanted. If Mueller and Barr found collusion, the Dems would say they did their job, and they did a fine job, and would say that we should accept it and move on.

kens 616, 1 week ago (edited)

Obama their coming after you.. This Russian hoax did not start at the bottom...it came from the top. You OBAMA..

[May 15, 2019] Op-Ed-O-Matic Write Doomsday Screeds Like the Pros by Peter Van Buren

Notable quotes:
"... You know the ones: articles predicting whatever the news of the day will be The End of Democracy. Alongside The New York Times and The Washington Post , whose op-ed pages are pretty much a daily End of Days, practitioners include Chicken Little regulars Rachel Maddow , Lawrence Tribe, Malcolm Nance, David Corn, Benjamin Wittes, Charles Pierce, Bob Cesca, and Marcy Wheeler. ..."
"... We've gone from thinking the president is literally a Russian agent (since 1987, the last year your mom and dad dated!) to worrying the attorney general is trying to obstruct a House committee from investigating a completed investigation into obstruction by writing a summary not everyone liked of a report already released. But the actual content is irrelevant. What matters is there is another crisis to write about! The op-ed industry can't keep up with all the Republic-ending stuff Trump and his henchworld are up to. ..."
"... All persons with Russian-sounding names are Kremlin Agents(tm) *except* the alleged sources for The Dossier(tm). Those anonymous Russians can be trusted implicitly. ..."
"... Matt Tiabbi has a book out on hate, Hate Inc, and has done an excellent interview with Chris Hedges on RT. ..."
"... Rep. Eric Swalwell (D, California), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, before Mueller finished his investigation, on Hardball on MSNBC, Jan. 2019: ..."
"... Matthews: "Do you believe the president, right now, has been an agent of the Russians?" Swalwell: "Yes, I think there's more evidence that he is-" Matthews: "Agent?" Swalwell: "Yes. and I think all the arrows point in that direction, and I haven't seen a single piece of evidence that he's not." Matthews: "An agent like in the 1940s where you had people who were 'reds,' to use an old term, like that? In other words, working for a foreign power?" Swalwell: "He's working on behalf of the Russians, yes." ..."
"... One of the best things to come from Trump's election has been the lengths some of his opponents will go to discredit themselves in the court of public opinion: Brennan, Clapper, Clinton, Comey, McCabe, the list goes on and on, often merely to make a buck. Even Watergate figures like Carl Bernstein and John Dean have demolished their own reputations, or what was left of them to begin with. If they only knew, or cared, how badly they look in hindsight. ..."
"... @MM: >>One of the best things to come from Trump's election has been the lengths some of his opponents will go to discredit themselves in the court of public opinion << ..."
"... These people don't care about "public opinion." They operate inside a circle-jerk echo chamber whose membership includes the powers dominating the culture, the media (both mainstream and social), the government, and, increasingly, the major corporations. In short, the bulk of what some call the Ruling Class. ..."
"... Facts, evidence, and truth have nothing to do with it. So an investigation, rigged though it was, nonetheless clears Trump of conspiring with Moscow, but the story becomes how Trump is guilty anyway. Orwell, a man well ahead of his time, had the whole thing figured out long ago. ..."
"... "Now tell me again it's all 'sound and fury, signifying nothing.'" On the issue of Trump/Russia collusion, it is, and always was, because we now know it started with the Clinton campaign and a now-discredited dossier. ..."
"... These are the people who we elect to "govern" us. If one looks back upon the 230 years or so during which this thing of ours has been in existence, the overwhelming majority of our elected officials (federal, state and local) have probably been, to one degree or another, narcissistic, mendacious and just generally dishonest incompetents. ..."
"... Lynch, Holder, Obama as silent as church mice. i:e who gave Comey his marching orders ? ..."
"... What "illegal things" were revealed in the Mueller report? Trump was trying to obstruct an INJUSTICE, i.e. the "soft coup" done by the anti-American, lawless leftist Dems. ..."
"... On the Big Ugly Lie*, what's their excuse? * Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election, an attack on par with Pearl Harbor and 9/11. ..."
May 13, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

You know the ones: articles predicting whatever the news of the day will be The End of Democracy. Alongside The New York Times and The Washington Post , whose op-ed pages are pretty much a daily End of Days, practitioners include Chicken Little regulars Rachel Maddow , Lawrence Tribe, Malcolm Nance, David Corn, Benjamin Wittes, Charles Pierce, Bob Cesca, and Marcy Wheeler.

You'd have thought after almost three years of wrong predictions (no new wars, no economic collapse, no Russiagate) this industry would have slam shut faster than a Rust Belt union hall. You would have especially thought these kinds of articles would have tapered off with the release of the Mueller Report. It turned out to be the opposite -- while Mueller found no conspiracy and charged no obstruction, the dang report turns out to be chock-a-block with hidden messages, secret road maps, and voices speaking in tongues (albeit only to Democrats) about obstruction.

We've gone from thinking the president is literally a Russian agent (since 1987, the last year your mom and dad dated!) to worrying the attorney general is trying to obstruct a House committee from investigating a completed investigation into obstruction by writing a summary not everyone liked of a report already released. But the actual content is irrelevant. What matters is there is another crisis to write about! The op-ed industry can't keep up with all the Republic-ending stuff Trump and his henchworld are up to.

Help has arrived. Now anyone can write their own fear-mongering article, using this handy tool, the op-ed-o-Matic. The GoFundMe for the AI-driven app version will be up soon, but for now, simply follow these simple steps to punditry!

Start with a terrifying cliche. Here are some to choose from: There is a clear and present danger; Dark clouds gather, the center cannot hold; It is unclear the Republic will survive; Democracy itself is under attack; We face a profound/unique/existential threat/crisis/turning point/test. Also, that "First they came for " poem is good. Be creative; The Washington Post calls the present state of things "constitutional nihilism." Snappy!

Be philosophical and slightly weary in tone, such as "I am in despair as I have never been before about the future of our experiment in self-rule." Say you're sad for the state of the nation. Claim time is short, but there just may be a chance to stop this. Add " by any means necessary."

Then choose a follow-on quote to reinforce the danger, maybe from: The Federalist Papers, especially Madison on tyranny; Lincoln, pretty much anything about "the people, government, test for our great nation, blah blah;" the Jack Nicholson character about not being able to handle the truth; something from the neocons like Bill Kristol or Max Boot who now hate Trump. Start with "even" as in " even arch conservative Jennifer Rubin now says "

After all that to get the blood up, explain the current bad thing Trump did. Label it "a high crime or misdemeanor if there ever was one." Use some legalese, such as proffer, colorable argument, inter alia, sinecure, duly-authorized, perjurious, and that little law book squiggly thingy (18 USC § 1513.) Be sure to say "no one is above the law," then a dramatic hyphen, then "even the president." Law school is overrated; you and Google know as much as anyone about emoluments, perjury, campaign finance regulations, contempt, tax law, subpoenas, obstruction, or whatever the day's thing is, and it changes a lot. But whatever, the bastard is obviously guilty. Your standard is tabloid-level , so just make it too good to be true.

Next, find an old Trump tweet where he criticized someone for doing just what he is doing. That never gets old! Reference burning the Reichstag. If the crisis you're writing about deals with immigration or white supremacy (meh, basically the same thing, right?), refer to Kristallnacht.

Include every bad thing Trump ever did as examples of why whatever you're talking about must be true. Swing for the fence with lines like "seeks to destroy decades of LGBTQIXYZ progress" or "built concentration camps to murder children." Cite Trump accepting Putin's word over the findings of "our" intelligence community, his "very fine people" support for Nazi cosplayers, the magic list of 10,000 lies, how Trump has blood on his hands for endangering the press as the enemy of the people, and how Trump caused the hurricane in Puerto Rico.

And Nixon. Always bring up Nixon. The context or details don't matter. In case Wikipedia is down, he was one of the presidents before Trump your grandpa liked for awhile and then didn't like after Robert Redford showed he was a clear and present danger to Saturday Night Live, or the Saturday Night Massacre, it doesn't matter, we all agree Nixon.

Focus on the villain, who must be unhinged, off the rails, over the edge, diseased, out of control, a danger to himself and others, straight-up diagnosed mentally ill , or under Trump/Putin's spell. Barr is currently the Vader-du-jour. The New York Times characterized him as "The transformation of William Barr from respected establishment lawyer to evil genius outplaying and undermining his old friend Robert Mueller is a Grand Guignol spectacle." James Comey went as far as describing Trump people as having had their souls eaten by the president. That's not hyperbole, it's journalism!

But also hold out for a hero, the Neo one inside Trumpworld who will rise, flip, or leak to save us. Forget past nominees like the pee tape, Comey, Clapper, Flynn, Page, Papadopoulos, Manafort, Cohen, Mattis, Kelly, Barr, Linda Sarsour (replace with Ilhan Omar,) Avenatti, and Omarosa to focus on McGahn. He's gonna be the one!

Then call for everyone else bad to resign, be impeached, go to jail, have their old statues torn down, delete their accounts, be referred to the SDNY, be smited by the 25th Amendment, or have their last election delegitimized by the Night King. Draw your rationale from either the most obscure corner of the Founding Founders' work ("the rough draft, subsection IIXX of the Articles of Confederation addendum, Spanish language edition, makes clear Trump is unfit for office") or go broad as in "his oath requires him to uphold the Constitution, which he clearly is not doing." Like Nancy Pelosi, mention how Trump seems unlikely to voluntarily cede power if he loses in 2020.

Cultural references are important. Out of fashion: Godfather memes especially about who is going to be Fredo, 'bots, weaponize, Pussy Hats, the Parkland Kids, Putin homophobe themes, incest "jokes" about Ivanka, the phrases the walls are closing in, tick tock, take to the streets, adult in the room, just wait for Mueller Time, and let that sink in.

Things you can still use: abyss, grifter, crime family, not who we are, follow the money. Also you may make breaking news out of Twitter typos. Stylistically anyone with a Russian-sounding name must be either an oligarch, friend of Putin, or have ties to the Kremlin. Same for anyone who has done business with Trump or used the ATM in the Deutsche Bank lobby in New York. Mention Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez somewhere because every article has to mention AOC somewhere now.

Finally, your op-ed should end either with this House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler faux Kennedy-esque quote, "The choice is simple: We can stand up to this president in defense of the country and the Constitution and the liberty we love, or we can let the moment pass us by. History will judge us for how we face this challenge" or, if you want to go old school, this one from Hillary Clinton saying, "I really believe that we are in a crisis, a constitutional crisis. We are in a crisis of confidence and a crisis over the rule of law and the institutions that have weathered a lot of problems over so many years. And it is something that, regardless of where you stand in the political spectrum, should give real heartburn to everybody. Because this is a test for our country."

Crisis. Test. Judgment of history. Readers love that stuff, because it equates Trump's dumb tweets with Lincoln pulling the Union together after a literal civil war that killed millions of Americans in brother-to-brother conflict. As long as the rubes believe the world is coming to an end, you might as well make a buck writing about it.

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People , Hooper's War : A Novel of WWII Japan , and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99% .

See also

Fran Macadam , says: May 13, 2019 at 2:48 am

Good rules for your wayward commenters Peter, themselves nattering nabobs of negativism. (Oops, there I go again.)

Can I mention how Hilarious still seems unlikely to voluntarily cede power since she lost in 2016?

Uncle Billy , says: May 13, 2019 at 6:41 am
Liberal journalists seem to think that Trump is either an ignorant oaf or an evil genius. These views are oppositional, but many liberal journalists seem to hold both of them.
mrscracker , says: May 13, 2019 at 6:58 am
I pretty much lost all respect for the Washington Post during the last election. Each WaPo anti-Trump op ed became increasingly apocalyptic until you imagined that the universe would implode should he be elected. It was that silly.

But other media promote "end of the world as we know it "scenarios also. TAC included.

Seriously, if I read one more article about how flyover America is a drug infested, impoverished wasteland inhabited by those not intelligent or ambitious enough to move to the coasts. Drama draws readers and online traffic. I guess it's up to the reader to sift through the competing narratives for the truth.

Gerard , says: May 13, 2019 at 10:11 am
On the one hand, I agree that it's laughable and ridiculous -- this flood of apocalyptic predictions and articles, wherein Trump, a juvenile buffoon who in fact does not even control the government he nominally heads, is depicted as some kind of unprecedented threat to democracy and Everything We Hold Dear.

I mean, OK, the judgment of the libs and neocons writing this stuff is clearly addled by their irrational and rabid hatred for Trump. Still, are they really that stupid or is it just that they are hopelessly dishonest? I lean toward the latter explanation.

That said, the abiding irony is that there is in fact a deepening crisis in this country. It's about an increasingly dysfunctional democracy, a bitterly alienated and divided citizenry, a set of ruling elites who despise a large percentage of their countrymen and have contrived an economic and political system that enriches themselves while consigning the despised percentage to permanent struggling status, a cultural establishment that rejects the traditional Judeo-Christian values that built Western civilization and, Jacobin-style, is busily overturning and replacing those values with their own would-be New Moral Order.

And so forth.

So yeah, there most definitely is a crisis and it might even be apocalyptic in dimension and character. (Heck, it put Trump in the White House.) But the actual crisis is not the one the fools are writing about. In fact, not only are they not writing about it -- they're in large part responsible for it.

Like I said: an abiding irony. One for the history books.

Scott in MD , says: May 13, 2019 at 10:13 am
Astroturf campaigns have been around since at least the 90's, surely you aren't just discovering them now
Sid Finster , says: May 13, 2019 at 10:18 am
All persons with Russian-sounding names are Kremlin Agents(tm) *except* the alleged sources for The Dossier(tm). Those anonymous Russians can be trusted implicitly.
Taras 77 , says: May 13, 2019 at 11:08 am
FWIW:

Matt Tiabbi has a book out on hate, Hate Inc, and has done an excellent interview with Chris Hedges on RT.

Jhawk , says: May 13, 2019 at 1:16 pm
Van Buren has apparently chosen to forget the apocalyptic rants from the right during the Obama administration. As for today's alarmists, as I write this the Dow is down over 700 points due to Trump's foolish trade war, his administration is ignoring two centuries of tradition by stonewalling Congress' legitimate oversight authority and John Bolton is trying to provoke a war with Iran. Now tell me again it's all "sound and fury, signifying nothing."
MM , says: May 13, 2019 at 1:42 pm
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D, California), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, before Mueller finished his investigation, on Hardball on MSNBC, Jan. 2019:

Matthews: "Do you believe the president, right now, has been an agent of the Russians?"
Swalwell: "Yes, I think there's more evidence that he is-"
Matthews: "Agent?"
Swalwell: "Yes. and I think all the arrows point in that direction, and I haven't seen a single piece of evidence that he's not."
Matthews: "An agent like in the 1940s where you had people who were 'reds,' to use an old term, like that? In other words, working for a foreign power?"
Swalwell: "He's working on behalf of the Russians, yes."

The same congressman, who makes Joseph McCarthy look moderate, after Mueller completed his investigation, on Fox News, Mar. 2019:

Cavuto: "Would you say the president is not a Russian agent?"
Swalwell: "The president acts on Russia's behalf, I don't need to see the Mueller report for that."

And this month, after he had annouced his presidential bid, on Face the Nation:

Brennan: "But I know you have been talking because you are also in an intelligence role on that House committee saying a number of things that I want to quote back to you. Up until this point you said when you were asked in January, 'do you believe the president right now has been an agent of the Russians?' You said, 'yes,' you were asked again at the end of that month by a questioner, 'I'm still not hearing any evidence that he's an agent of Russia.' And you said, 'Yeah I think it's pretty clear it's almost hiding in plain sight.' The Mueller report did not substantiate any conspiracy or coordination with Russia. Do you regret prejudging the outcome?"

Swalwell: "No, actually I- I- I think I should have been louder."

And people say Denin Nunes politicized the House Intelligence Committee?

One of the best things to come from Trump's election has been the lengths some of his opponents will go to discredit themselves in the court of public opinion: Brennan, Clapper, Clinton, Comey, McCabe, the list goes on and on, often merely to make a buck. Even Watergate figures like Carl Bernstein and John Dean have demolished their own reputations, or what was left of them to begin with. If they only knew, or cared, how badly they look in hindsight.

Gene Smolko , says: May 13, 2019 at 1:54 pm
Uncle Billy

"Liberal journalists seem to think that Trump is either an ignorant oaf or an evil genius."

You're missing the point, it's Trump's ignorance, his extreme sense of entitlement and limitless ego that are a danger to our democracy. He doesn't understand the norms of democracy, otherwise known as American principles. All he understands is what he wants and his notion of American greatness, which has nothing to do with true American principles.

Gerard , says: May 13, 2019 at 2:16 pm
@MM: >>One of the best things to come from Trump's election has been the lengths some of his opponents will go to discredit themselves in the court of public opinion <<

These people don't care about "public opinion." They operate inside a circle-jerk echo chamber whose membership includes the powers dominating the culture, the media (both mainstream and social), the government, and, increasingly, the major corporations. In short, the bulk of what some call the Ruling Class.

In their minds, public opinion can be suppressed or at least controlled by their near monopoly on major media. The stories they want told will get told. The stories they don't want told will not get told. Except at more or less isolated right-wing websites and such whose audience and reach are limited.

Facts, evidence, and truth have nothing to do with it. So an investigation, rigged though it was, nonetheless clears Trump of conspiring with Moscow, but the story becomes how Trump is guilty anyway. Orwell, a man well ahead of his time, had the whole thing figured out long ago.

MM , says: May 13, 2019 at 2:51 pm
jhawk: "As I write this the Dow is down over 700 points."

This is the same Dow Jones that, even with today's drop is still 40% higher than it was right before the 2016 election, correct?

"Now tell me again it's all 'sound and fury, signifying nothing.'" On the issue of Trump/Russia collusion, it is, and always was, because we now know it started with the Clinton campaign and a now-discredited dossier.

Connecticut Farmer , says: May 13, 2019 at 3:36 pm
@MM

These are the people who we elect to "govern" us. If one looks back upon the 230 years or so during which this thing of ours has been in existence, the overwhelming majority of our elected officials (federal, state and local) have probably been, to one degree or another, narcissistic, mendacious and just generally dishonest incompetents. It seems that it's only when we hit rock bottom and the country's very survival is at stake that the cream rises to the top and the very best step to the plate, so given what we have in Washington now, maybe we haven't reached that point–at least not yet.

Dan Green , says: May 13, 2019 at 5:58 pm
Lynch, Holder, Obama as silent as church mice. i:e who gave Comey his marching orders ?
JohnT , says: May 13, 2019 at 8:16 pm
This is a hoot. Little Pettie strikes again! Projecting his own myopia as always! His Greater Leader, The Trumpster, and the sycophants who worship him daily (for a fee, of course) daily tweets or shouts from a podium the impending doom of our nations due to hoards of the "other" spreading disease and violence nationwide while supported by the great love of Evangelical "Christians" who faith not merely predicts but yearns for the end of the world!!!
Can't quite tell. It is hypocrisy or grand delusions blooming brightly at TAC!
MM , says: May 13, 2019 at 11:08 pm
CT Farmer: "If one looks back upon the 230 years or so during which this thing of ours has been in existence, the overwhelming majority of our elected officials have probably been, to one degree or another, narcissistic, mendacious and just generally dishonest incompetents."

No doubt, I only picked on him because he represents the crappiest district in the Bay Area, which I have personal experience on, and he's running for president on the "Trump is a Russian agent" platform, which even Joseph McCarthy was too timid to attempt.

That's either saying something, or it's nothing. I could've quoted another presidential candidate who's claimed that law enforcement and criminal justice in America is racist from top to bottom and front to back. Or I could've quoted a different presidential candidate who's stated unequivocally that every human being, not just American citizen, is entitled to free education and health care, without regard to cost or need.

Pick your poison

Cat , says: May 14, 2019 at 3:21 am
Just a few thoughts about comments above: Who "yearns for the end of the world"?? Give names please, stop slandering. What "illegal things" were revealed in the Mueller report? Trump was trying to obstruct an INJUSTICE, i.e. the "soft coup" done by the anti-American, lawless leftist Dems. The fact is that we are a nation of laws and illegals (no matter where they are from, Mars, Supitor; whether they are green, purple, whatever color) are a threat to our country. I heard report that about a third of the crimes in the USA are done by illegals, at a cost of billions. Well, more crap from brain washed boobs above, but I'm done trying to point them out ..
mrscracker , says: May 14, 2019 at 9:55 am
Rick Steven D.:

"Uh, have you met Rod-sky-is-falling-Dreher?"

***************
Yes, I met him at a very nice crawfish boil last year.
It's good to read your comments, too. I hope you've been well!

mrscracker , says: May 14, 2019 at 10:03 am
James from Durham:

" you know, we're all at it, breathing apocalyptic fire and brimstone, left and right. No point throwing stones at each other on this subject."

**************
My thoughts, too. It's difficult to sift through the hype on all sides & find anything solid. Outrage generates traffic, thoughtful discussion-not so much. So we end up with clickbait & tabloids.

David Smith , says: May 14, 2019 at 10:28 am
Maybe the Dems and their supporters should spend more time trying to understand why they lost and less time complaining about it. But then that's not nearly as much fun.
Patricus , says: May 14, 2019 at 11:17 am
Thanks for the voice of reason. A couple of complaints on Trump: he hasn't accomplished much on the border; budgets continue to bleed red ink. He at least could have vetoed the budgets.
Sean Nuttall , says: May 14, 2019 at 3:07 pm
Isn't it a bit rich to suggest that the outrage media started in 2016? How long have Limbaugh, Coulter, Ingraham, Levin, Hannity, .. been milking the Republican multiverse.
MM , says: May 14, 2019 at 5:38 pm
Sean: "Isn't it a bit rich to suggest that the outrage media started in 2016?"

That's a bit like saying because my neighbor ran over my dog, I'll then bulldoze his house. Besides, the left and the press are supposed to be superior to the right and the unwashed masses. They always fact-based, logical, reasonable, non-ideological, and consistent.

On the Big Ugly Lie*, what's their excuse?
* Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election, an attack on par with Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

[May 15, 2019] They hate us for our freedom 2.0

Neocons and neolibs control the USA foreign policy. That's given. NYT just reflects foreign policy establishment talking points.
Links between Daniel Jones and Steele are really interesting and new information
Notable quotes:
"... "The goal here is bigger than any one election," said Daniel Jones, a former F.B.I. analyst and Senate investigator whose nonprofit group, Advance Democracy, recently flagged a number of suspicious websites and social media accounts to law enforcement authorities. ..."
"... According to a report published this morning, he notes that the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which has received "significant funding" from technology billionaires, funneled $500,000 to the non-profit group Advance Democracy. That organization shares a street address with The Democracy Integrity Project. ..."
"... That's because both organizations were founded by former Senate Intel staffer Daniel Jones, who at that time worked for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who hails from just down the road from Silicon Valley in San Francisco. As TruNews has previously reported, those connections to the Senate Intel Committee have played a significant role in the ongoing "Russia Narrative" drama in Washington, D.C. ..."
"... Jones has been previously identified as a central figure in the investigation who served as potential go-between with the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, and former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. ..."
"... The NYT is very much invested in the post Cold War status quo. ..."
"... That would be the Clintons and the Bushes. Both political parties and every POTUS since 1968. In fact, I believe this is the main reason why the Dems created and are pushing Russiagate so hard. They don't want us looking at what really gave us Trump: the neoliberal neoconservative fiasco of the past 40+ years. ..."
"... told about Russia and that they interfered with not only our elections, but in so many other countries too. I remember a time when people would insist on seeing the evidence on stuff the intelligence agencies tell them, but ever since Her lost the election they lost their minds. I'll see references to articles that say something, but offer no evidence. Like the one this essay is about. ..."
"... Plus they tried to kill the Skripals. And the GOP are also under Vlad's thumb. This is why Russia Gate has to be debunked. ..."
"... So, yes, it's going to take too long. Short of a miracle, I'm starting to think we're all going to be radioactive ash before Cold War II ends. There was a modicum of restraint with Cold War I; some people had enough sense to realize the end result was nuclear war. That type of sense seems nowhere to be found in Washington, D.C., these days. ..."
"... Dick Cheney is as evil as any human being I've ever heard of. I doubt whether he's done everything some folks believe he's done -- but not because he isn't evil enough, only because he lacked either the guts or the necessity. I believe he would have fit in perfectly well with Himmler and Goebbels, and he would enthusiastically embraced their approach to getting and wielding power. ..."
"... A few months ago, I made a comment to someone that it's like we're supposed to hate them (Russia) for their freedoms. ..."
May 15, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

"They hate us for our freedom" 2.0

gjohnsit on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 5:32pm The NY Times just posted one of the most atrocious pieces of journalistic malpractice I have ever read.

Less than two weeks before pivotal elections for the European Parliament, a constellation of websites and social media accounts linked to Russia or far-right groups is spreading disinformation, encouraging discord and amplifying distrust in the centrist parties that have governed for decades.

European Union investigators, academics and advocacy groups say the new disinformation efforts share many of the same digital fingerprints or tactics used in previous Russian attacks, including the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

That's a powerful statement. There's just one problem: the article doesn't present a single bit of proof. Just anecdotes. In fact, it doesn't even quote anyone to back up these claims, but for one single exception.

"The goal here is bigger than any one election," said Daniel Jones, a former F.B.I. analyst and Senate investigator whose nonprofit group, Advance Democracy, recently flagged a number of suspicious websites and social media accounts to law enforcement authorities.

"It is to constantly divide, increase distrust and undermine our faith in institutions and democracy itself. They're working to destroy everything that was built post-World War II."

Russia is why people are losing faith in our government institutions. Not because they are owned by oligarchs. If you listen closely you can hear President Bush.
So who is Daniel Jones and Advance Democracy? That's an interesting story .

According to a report published this morning, he notes that the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which has received "significant funding" from technology billionaires, funneled $500,000 to the non-profit group Advance Democracy. That organization shares a street address with The Democracy Integrity Project.

That's because both organizations were founded by former Senate Intel staffer Daniel Jones, who at that time worked for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who hails from just down the road from Silicon Valley in San Francisco. As TruNews has previously reported, those connections to the Senate Intel Committee have played a significant role in the ongoing "Russia Narrative" drama in Washington, D.C.

Jones has been previously identified as a central figure in the investigation who served as potential go-between with the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, and former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. That's because TDIP, which receives significant funding from George Soros, funneled some of that money toward Steele's research for Fusion GPS that led to the infamous dossier on President Donald Trump.

However, as Ross reports today: "Mystery surrounds both of Jones's operations. The identities of both groups' donors have largely been kept secret, as Jones has avoided revealing his backers.

Nothing to see here. Just two sketchy political organizations sharing the same street address. Perfectly normal.

"The election has yet to come, and we are already suspected of doing something wrong?" the Russian prime minister, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said in March. "Suspecting someone of an event that has not yet happened is a bunch of paranoid nonsense."

It's not nonsense. It's scapegoating. There's a difference.

gjohnsit on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 5:46pm

The Hill forgot Tulsi again

It's #IgnoreTulsiTime again. @thehill pic.twitter.com/rVe306gXxx

-- K. Rosef (@kayrosef) May 10, 2019

they can't even say it

CBS News (2/4/19) briefly interviewed Honolulu Civil Beats reporter Nick Grube regarding Gabbard's campaign announcement. The anchors had clearly never encountered the term anti-interventionism before, struggling to even pronounce the word, then laughing and saying it "doesn't roll off the tongue."
UntimelyRippd on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 5:59pm
If you have trouble pronouncing "anti-interventionism",

@gjohnsit @gjohnsit
you lack one of perhaps three must-have skills for being a TV reporter.

Centaurea on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 6:49pm
The other skills being

@UntimelyRippd a perky voice and a lack of critical thinking ability? And for women, blonde hair.

Bollox Ref on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 6:14pm
I assume that the meteoric rise of Farage's Brexit party

over the last couple of weeks, is all down to Putin/bots/funding. The NYT is very much invested in the post Cold War status quo.

Centaurea on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 6:44pm
Once again, NYT gets the facts wrong

They're [the Kremlin] working to destroy everything that was built post-World War II.

That would be the Clintons and the Bushes. Both political parties and every POTUS since 1968. In fact, I believe this is the main reason why the Dems created and are pushing Russiagate so hard. They don't want us looking at what really gave us Trump: the neoliberal neoconservative fiasco of the past 40+ years.

It's also why so many people of my generation (over 60) are having trouble understanding and accepting what's going on. To do so will require letting go of everything they thought was true. That kind of change does not come easy to many people.

I heard someone recently say "We have to elect a Dem or else our post-War advantages will disappear."

Got to wonder where he's been for the past 40 years. That horse left the barn a long time ago.

snoopydawg on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 7:12pm
Unfortunately people really believe everything they have been

@Centaurea

told about Russia and that they interfered with not only our elections, but in so many other countries too. I remember a time when people would insist on seeing the evidence on stuff the intelligence agencies tell them, but ever since Her lost the election they lost their minds. I'll see references to articles that say something, but offer no evidence. Like the one this essay is about.

Plus they tried to kill the Skripals. And the GOP are also under Vlad's thumb. This is why Russia Gate has to be debunked.

People say that Mueller has put to rest the fact that Russia indeed interfered with the election, but all he showed was the FBIs "belief' that they did and that some Russians will ties to Vlad hacked the DNC computers. He didn't interview anyone involved with that as laid out in my recent essay.

I've even seen people who were once against our invasions being okay with them and repeating the party line. Unfuckingbelievable!

TheOtherMaven on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 7:28pm
I wonder how much of this is residual Millennial Mania

@snoopydawg

The Year 2000 was not that long ago, and we were bombarded for two decades beforehand with talk of all the dreadful things that might happen, could happen, and some people firmly believed would happen - and then didn't happen. (As it turned out, the most obvious sign of "Y2K" was the "19100" bug that plagued Web pages for months afterward. It was cosmetic and harmless, but annoying.)

I expected it to take about ten years for sanity to return - but it looks like being more like fifty. And there will probably be some cultists who construct their own "reality" around what didn't happen, like the 1840s Millerites (who spun off the still-extant Seventh Day Adventists).

snoopydawg on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 1:33am
It might be longer

@TheOtherMaven

The NYT and WaPoo have new articles out about how bad the dastardly Russians are still interfering with the whole dang country now. And WaPoo had some university do a study on how Russia tried to get people to vote for Bernie and blah, blah,...

I read an article last year saying that Bernie needs to knock off being with the Russia Gaters because he is going to be accused of being in Vlad's pockets anyway. But he's still saying that Trump is under Russia's thumb and that Russia is doing all kinds of bad stuff.

Then there's all the websites like DK, emptyhead, democratic underground and others saying that Mueller confirmed Russia did bad things and maybe if the democrats work harder on their investigations they will find stuff that Mueller missed. I think 10 years is optimistic, but however long it's going to take its going to be too long.

travelerxxx on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 3:10am
A lit fuse with nothing to stop it

@snoopydawg

I think 10 years is optimistic, but however long it's going to take it's going to be too long.

Consider how long it took for Cold War I to finally start to ebb. It took at least a decade, and that was with the memory of a horrendous world war fresh on most minds. Now, we're so insulated from the reality of war, not even allowed reports from the battlefields, much less accurate information and numbers, that we have lost touch with the horror. Evil men such as Bolton spend every minute of every day trying to embroil us in deadly excursions and foreign entanglements. Our "intelligence" agencies are no more than modern versions of the NAZI era Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

So, yes, it's going to take too long. Short of a miracle, I'm starting to think we're all going to be radioactive ash before Cold War II ends. There was a modicum of restraint with Cold War I; some people had enough sense to realize the end result was nuclear war. That type of sense seems nowhere to be found in Washington, D.C., these days.

thanatokephaloides on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 8:12pm
the Russians

@travelerxxx

So, yes, it's going to take too long. Short of a miracle, I'm starting to think we're all going to be radioactive ash before Cold War II ends. There was a modicum of restraint with Cold War I; some people had enough sense to realize the end result was nuclear war. That type of sense seems nowhere to be found in Washington, D.C., these days.

Fortunately for us ordinary Americans, the Russians really do love their children too.....

//www.youtube.com/embed/wHylQRVN2Qs?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

Jen on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 9:02am
If Bernie is the nominee

@snoopydawg Are they going to say they're both (Bernie and Trump) working with Russia? That would be amusing. I wonder if it would cause any of them to vote third party or not vote at all.

Hawkfish on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 7:14pm
As someone in the industry...

@TheOtherMaven

...who was a software development consultant at the time, the reason nothing much happened was that's lot of people worked their butts off for several years. COBOL programmers were dragged out of retirement and all kinds of goofy OS and library hacks were implemented to reduce the amount of work and risk.

Sometimes freaking out gets the job done!

SnappleBC on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 10:03pm
It did not come easy for me anyway

@Centaurea

It's also why so many people of my generation (over 60) are having trouble understanding and accepting what's going on. To do so will require letting go of everything they thought was true. That kind of change does not come easy to many people.

I spent several years grappling with my fall down the rabbit hole. I started freeing myself from the matrix during #Occupy and towards the end of Obama's first term I was starting to really get it... at least get it enough to know I wasn't voting for him a second time. Then Bernie arrived on the scene and it was music to my ears. That pretty much completed the process for me but it STILL took time and I STILL have places where I "don't believe they are that evil" (twin towers anyone) yet I suspect that in the fullness of time I may yet find that they are in fact that evil.

I have a lot of sympathy for those still caught in the matrix. It's a really good trap. That doesn't change the fact that I see them as my enemy and the enemy of all mankind but I at least understand.

UntimelyRippd on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 10:50pm
I've always been clear on one thing:

@SnappleBC
Dick Cheney is as evil as any human being I've ever heard of. I doubt whether he's done everything some folks believe he's done -- but not because he isn't evil enough, only because he lacked either the guts or the necessity. I believe he would have fit in perfectly well with Himmler and Goebbels, and he would enthusiastically embraced their approach to getting and wielding power.

travelerxxx on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 10:58pm
I need to focus better

@UntimelyRippd

I believe he would have fit in perfectly well with Himmler and Goebbels ...

I had to go back and re-read your comment, as I had subconsciously read President Security Advisor John Bolton rather than what you wrote -- Cheney .

I mean, you were talking about evil men ...

snoopydawg on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 1:44am
They really are that evil

@SnappleBC

Just this century this country has killed a million Iraqis and who knows how many people in the other countries we've invaded? 40,000 Venezuelans died last year because of our sanctions and no matter how many people in Yemen die every day because of the Saudis we will continue supporting them.

Then there's Hiroshima and Nagasaki as aliasalias stated. Oh hell yes they are that evil.

Not Henry Kissinger on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 3:01am
After all the millions of people...

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg

killed and displaced around the Globe by the Empire in just this century alone, so many still can't believe this same government could murder 3000 on 9/11.

Cognitive dissidence doesn't even start to explain it.

Pluto's Republic on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 7:41pm
Well, the key issue here

...is the intense access that these privatized propagandists have to the New York Times . And certainly the Times should explain why it freely publishes radical divisive stories that cannot be verified from compromised sources that have previously been exposed as disreputable. This is what Russia is accused of doing, sewing confusion and fear in the US, based on misinformation. Now the New York Times is doing it for them. The fact that a US media outlet is deliberately sabotaging the domestic tranquility with alarming lies is exactly what congress should be investigating. But any congressperson that did so would see their careers destroyed. Congress surrendered to the media monopolies a long time ago.

What we can do is confirm for Americans that they must never trust anything they read in the New York Times and the Washington Post . Remind them of the tragic facts in recent history. The lies that endangers people's lives and disables their intelligence are written between the lines.

snoopydawg on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 1:46am
Ayup

@Pluto's Republic

The NYT and WaPoo and other media are continuing to come up with new stories every day telling us something new that Russia is doing. This is not going away any time soon. Unfortunately.

aliasalias on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 10:36pm
I can't forget those commercials nor the school drills

@Lookout @Lookout with us all getting under our desks or along the walls if we are in the hallway and I don't think any one of us didn't treat this as something critical for us to learn in order to survive.
As a kid that loved riding a bicycle one Public Service announcement I paid careful attention to was the instruction to do if I saw that bright flash which was to throw the bike down and curl up along the curb, I even thought about that problem on unpaved streets.

I remember bomb shelters were advertised a lot and I remember some tv dramas were about people fleeing to their bomb shelter and the dilemma of being only fit to hold a small group but had neighbors, friends and strangers pleading to be let in.

The 'Twilight Zone' series even had one episode where a very wealthy man with a shelter picked certain important people in his life, his school teacher, Priest and others were offered shelter only if they will apologize for things he'd caught criticism for his behavior in his past. Trivial stuff, but he had a screen for them to watch the destruction live.

Long story short, they'd rather die than spend the rest of their lives with him. Especially with all their friends and family gone, so he is alone, goes crazy, runs outside and is found by a policemen to be crying and babbling at a city fountain, in a city that had not been bombed, but for him it had happened and all he could see was destruction around him.

All that aside considering we'd already dropped 'the' bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki those behind all the public warnings and information that was needed in order for people to know how to survive couldn't really believe that nonsense.

Unless they could believe all those dead Japanese would've likely survived if they had ducked under their desks or curled up along a curb, and if that were true they were as loony as the 'Twilight Zone' character.
Yeah if only all those schoolchildren had jumped under their desk before the building and everything around it was obliterated.

...if you see a light brighter than the sun. (1 min)

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==

aliasalias on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 10:51pm
Today I'm watching the NY Yankees vs Tampa Bay and

in the top of the ninth the screen goes black, the live stream has stopped because the electrical grid the Tropicana had shut down and the stadium was without power for the lights, scoreboard, broadcast, etc. were down.

It took about forty-five minutes for power to be restored but right when it happened I thought it was the stream I was watching so I clicked on other streaming sites and it was on a couple of them I read why all broadcasts were off.

But in the chat box I really couldn't tell if a few were joking or not when they blamed it on the Russians. One in particular didn't look like they were joking as that person repeated the claim a few times. No kidding, and one lamented that (paraphrasing) 'now the Russians are messing with our National sport'.

THIS is what mainstream media has wrought.

travelerxxx on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 11:02pm
Worse yet

@aliasalias

THIS is what mainstream media has wrought.

I'd offer that this is what a mainstream media controlled by handful of corporations, reading from a script, has wrought.

snoopydawg on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 1:41am
Bingo

@aliasalias

Any time something happens now people will willingly accept that Russia did something that caused it. See the tweet I posted above. Secret service agents and police are doing nothing as the Guaido goons keeps people from delivering food and stuff to the embassy sitters. One goon tried taking the bag out of a guy's hands and they just watched. One person tried to throw a cucumber and the cops pounced on him, pushed him to the ground and bloodied him up. But Russia is the one who put the embassy sitters into the embassy and is supporting them. SMDH!

Not Henry Kissinger on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 2:57am
Love the projection...

Advance Democracy, recently flagged a number of suspicious websites and social media accounts to law enforcement authorities."It is to constantly divide, increase distrust and undermine our faith in institutions and democracy itself.

An organization that reports undesirable speech to law enforcement is worried about the undermining of democracy. Got it.

Jen on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 9:09am
It's the other way around this time

A few months ago, I made a comment to someone that it's like we're supposed to hate them (Russia) for their freedoms.

[May 14, 2019] The Propaganda Multiplier How Global News Agencies and Western Media Report on Geopolitics

Highly recommended!
Images omitted.
Important article that shed some light on the methods of disinformation in foreign events used by neoliberal MSM
Notable quotes:
"... However, there is a simple reason why the global agencies, despite their importance, are virtually unknown to the general public. To quote a Swiss media professor: "Radio and television usually do not name their sources, and only specialists can decipher references in magazines." (Blum 1995, P. 9) The motive for this discretion, however, should be clear: news outlets are not particularly keen to let readers know that they haven't researched most of their contributions themselves. ..."
"... Much of our media does not have own foreign correspondents, so they have no choice but to rely completely on global agencies for foreign news. But what about the big daily newspapers and TV stations that have their own international correspondents? In German-speaking countries, for example, these include newspapers such NZZ, FAZ, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Welt, and public broadcasters. ..."
"... Moreover, in war zones, correspondents rarely venture out. On the Syria war, for example, many journalists "reported" from cities such as Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo or even from Cyprus. In addition, many journalists lack the language skills to understand local people and media. ..."
"... How do correspondents under such circumstances know what the "news" is in their region of the world? The main answer is once again: from global agencies. The Dutch Middle East correspondent Joris Luyendijk has impressively described how correspondents work and how they depend on the world agencies in his book "People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East" : ..."
"... The central role of news agencies also explains why, in geopolitical conflicts, most media use the same original sources. In the Syrian war, for example, the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" – a dubious one-man organization based in London – featured prominently. The media rarely inquired directly at this "Observatory", as its operator was in fact difficult to reach, even for journalists. ..."
"... Ulrich Tilgner, a veteran Middle East correspondent for German and Swiss television, warned in 2003, shortly after the Iraq war, of acts of deception by the military and the role played by the media: ..."
"... What is known to the US military, would not be foreign to US intelligence services. In a remarkable report by British Channel 4, former CIA officials and a Reuters correspondent spoke candidly about the systematic dissemination of propaganda and misinformation in reporting on geopolitical conflicts: ..."
"... "In all press systems, the news media are instruments of those who exercise political and economic power. Newspapers, periodicals, radio and television stations do not act independently, although they have the possibility of independent exercise of power." (Altschull 1984/1995, p. 298) ..."
Jun 01, 2016 | www.globalresearch.ca

By Swiss Propaganda Research Global Research, May 14, 2019 Swiss Propaganda Research Region: Europe , USA Theme: Media Disinformation

This study was originally published in 2016.

Introduction: "Something strange"

"How does the newspaper know what it knows?" The answer to this question is likely to surprise some newspaper readers: "The main source of information is stories from news agencies. The almost anonymously operating news agencies are in a way the key to world events. So what are the names of these agencies, how do they work and who finances them? To judge how well one is informed about events in East and West, one should know the answers to these questions." (Höhne 1977, p. 11)

A Swiss media researcher points out:

"The news agencies are the most important suppliers of material to mass media. No daily media outlet can manage without them. () So the news agencies influence our image of the world; above all, we get to know what they have selected." (Blum 1995, p. 9)

In view of their essential importance, it is all the more astonishing that these agencies are hardly known to the public:

"A large part of society is unaware that news agencies exist at all In fact, they play an enormously important role in the media market. But despite this great importance, little attention has been paid to them in the past." (Schulten-Jaspers 2013, p. 13)

Even the head of a news agency noted:

"There is something strange about news agencies. They are little known to the public. Unlike a newspaper, their activity is not so much in the spotlight, yet they can always be found at the source of the story." (Segbers 2007, p. 9)

"The Invisible Nerve Center of the Media System"

So what are the names of these agencies that are "always at the source of the story"? There are now only three global agencies left:

  1. The American Associated Press ( AP ) with over 4000 employees worldwide. The AP belongs to US media companies and has its main editorial office in New York. AP news is used by around 12,000 international media outlets, reaching more than half of the world's population every day.
  2. The quasi-governmental French Agence France-Presse ( AFP ) based in Paris and with around 4000 employees. The AFP sends over 3000 stories and photos every day to media all over the world.
  3. The British agency Reuters in London, which is privately owned and employs just over 3000 people. Reuters was acquired in 2008 by Canadian media entrepreneur Thomson – one of the 25 richest people in the world – and merged into Thomson Reuters , headquartered in New York.

In addition, many countries run their own news agencies. However, when it comes to international news, these usually rely on the three global agencies and simply copy and translate their reports.

The three global news agencies Reuters, AFP and AP, and the three national agencies of the German-speaking countries of Austria (APA), Germany (DPA) and Switzerland (SDA).

Wolfgang Vyslozil, former managing director of the Austrian APA, described the key role of news agencies with these words:

"News agencies are rarely in the public eye. Yet they are one of the most influential and at the same time one of the least known media types. They are key institutions of substantial importance to any media system. They are the invisible nerve center that connects all parts of this system." (Segbers 2007, p.10)

Small abbreviation, great effect

However, there is a simple reason why the global agencies, despite their importance, are virtually unknown to the general public. To quote a Swiss media professor: "Radio and television usually do not name their sources, and only specialists can decipher references in magazines." (Blum 1995, P. 9) The motive for this discretion, however, should be clear: news outlets are not particularly keen to let readers know that they haven't researched most of their contributions themselves.

The following figure shows some examples of source tagging in popular German-language newspapers. Next to the agency abbreviations we find the initials of editors who have edited the respective agency report.

News agencies as sources in newspaper articles

Occasionally, newspapers use agency material but do not label it at all. A study in 2011 from the Swiss Research Institute for the Public Sphere and Society at the University of Zurich came to the following conclusions (FOEG 2011):

"Agency contributions are exploited integrally without labeling them, or they are partially rewritten to make them appear as an editorial contribution. In addition, there is a practice of 'spicing up' agency reports with little effort; for example, visualization techniques are used: unpublished agency reports are enriched with images and graphics and presented as comprehensive reports."

The agencies play a prominent role not only in the press, but also in private and public broadcasting. This is confirmed by Volker Braeutigam, who worked for the German state broadcaster ARD for ten years and views the dominance of these agencies critically:

"One fundamental problem is that the newsroom at ARD sources its information mainly from three sources: the news agencies DPA/AP, Reuters and AFP: one German/American, one British and one French. () The editor working on a news topic only needs to select a few text passages on the screen that he considers essential, rearrange them and glue them together with a few flourishes."

Swiss Radio and Television (SRF), too, largely bases itself on reports from these agencies. Asked by viewers why a peace march in Ukraine was not reported, the editors said : "To date, we have not received a single report of this march from the independent agencies Reuters, AP and AFP."

In fact, not only the text, but also the images, sound and video recordings that we encounter in our media every day, are mostly from the very same agencies. What the uninitiated audience might think of as contributions from their local newspaper or TV station, are actually copied reports from New York, London and Paris.

Some media have even gone a step further and have, for lack of resources, outsourced their entire foreign editorial office to an agency. Moreover, it is well known that many news portals on the internet mostly publish agency reports (see e.g., Paterson 2007, Johnston 2011, MacGregor 2013).

In the end, this dependency on the global agencies creates a striking similarity in international reporting: from Vienna to Washington, our media often report the same topics, using many of the same phrases – a phenomenon that would otherwise rather be associated with "controlled media" in authoritarian states.

The following graphic shows some examples from German and international publications. As you can see, despite the claimed objectivity, a slight (geo-)political bias sometimes creeps in.

"Putin threatens", "Iran provokes", "NATO concerned", "Assad stronghold": Similarities in content and wording due to reports by global news agencies.

The role of correspondents

Much of our media does not have own foreign correspondents, so they have no choice but to rely completely on global agencies for foreign news. But what about the big daily newspapers and TV stations that have their own international correspondents? In German-speaking countries, for example, these include newspapers such NZZ, FAZ, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Welt, and public broadcasters.

First of all, the size ratios should be kept in mind: while the global agencies have several thousand employees worldwide, even the Swiss newspaper NZZ, known for its international reporting, maintains only 35 foreign correspondents (including their business correspondents). In huge countries such as China or India, only one correspondent is stationed; all of South America is covered by only two journalists, while in even larger Africa no-one is on the ground permanently.

Moreover, in war zones, correspondents rarely venture out. On the Syria war, for example, many journalists "reported" from cities such as Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo or even from Cyprus. In addition, many journalists lack the language skills to understand local people and media.

How do correspondents under such circumstances know what the "news" is in their region of the world? The main answer is once again: from global agencies. The Dutch Middle East correspondent Joris Luyendijk has impressively described how correspondents work and how they depend on the world agencies in his book "People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East" :

"I'd imagined correspondents to be historians-of-the-moment. When something important happened, they'd go after it, find out what was going on, and report on it. But I didn't go off to find out what was going on; that had been done long before. I went along to present an on-the-spot report. ()

The editors in the Netherlands called when something happened, they faxed or emailed the press releases, and I'd retell them in my own words on the radio, or rework them into an article for the newspaper. This was the reason my editors found it more important that I could be reached in the place itself than that I knew what was going on. The news agencies provided enough information for you to be able to write or talk you way through any crisis or summit meeting.

That's why you often come across the same images and stories if you leaf through a few different newspapers or click the news channels.

Our men and women in London, Paris, Berlin and Washington bureaus – all thought that wrong topics were dominating the news and that we were following the standards of the news agencies too slavishly. ()

The common idea about correspondents is that they 'have the story', () but the reality is that the news is a conveyor belt in a bread factory. The correspondents stand at the end of the conveyor belt, pretending we've baked that white loaf ourselves, while in fact all we've done is put it in its wrapping. ()

Afterwards, a friend asked me how I'd managed to answer all the questions during those cross-talks, every hour and without hesitation. When I told him that, like on the TV-news, you knew all the questions in advance, his e-mailed response came packed with expletives. My friend had relalized that, for decades, what he'd been watching and listening to on the news was pure theatre." (Luyendjik 2009, p. 20-22, 76, 189)

In other words, the typical correspondent is in general not able to do independent research, but rather deals with and reinforces those topics that are already prescribed by the news agencies – the notorious "mainstream effect".

In addition, for cost-saving reasons many media outlets nowadays have to share their few foreign correspondents, and within individual media groups, foreign reports are often used by several publications – none of which contributes to diversity in reporting.

"What the agency does not report, does not take place"

The central role of news agencies also explains why, in geopolitical conflicts, most media use the same original sources. In the Syrian war, for example, the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" – a dubious one-man organization based in London – featured prominently. The media rarely inquired directly at this "Observatory", as its operator was in fact difficult to reach, even for journalists.

Rather, the "Observatory" delivered its stories to global agencies, which then forwarded them to thousands of media outlets, which in turn "informed" hundreds of millions of readers and viewers worldwide. The reason why the agencies, of all places, referred to this strange "Observatory" in their reporting – and who really financed it – is a question that was rarely asked.

The former chief editor of the German news agency DPA, Manfred Steffens, therefore states in his book "The Business of News":

"A news story does not become more correct simply because one is able to provide a source for it. It is indeed rather questionable to trust a news story more just because a source is cited. () Behind the protective shield such a 'source' means for a news story, some people are quite inclined to spread rather adventurous things, even if they themselves have legitimate doubts about their correctness; the responsibility, at least morally, can always be attributed to the cited source." (Steffens 1969, p. 106)

Dependence on global agencies is also a major reason why media coverage of geopolitical conflicts is often superficial and erratic, while historic relationships and background are fragmented or altogether absent. As put by Steffens:

"News agencies receive their impulses almost exclusively from current events and are therefore by their very nature ahistoric. They are reluctant to add any more context than is strictly required." (Steffens 1969, p. 32)

Finally, the dominance of global agencies explains why certain geopolitical issues and events – which often do not fit very well into the US/NATO narrative or are too "unimportant" – are not mentioned in our media at all: if the agencies do not report on something, then most Western media will not be aware of it. As pointed out on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the German DPA: "What the agency does not report, does not take place." (Wilke 2000, p. 1)

America's "Righteous" Russia-gate Censorship. "Russia Bashing All the Time"

"Adding questionable stories"

While some topics do not appear at all in our media, other topics are very prominent – even though they shouldn't actually be: "Often the mass media do not report on reality, but on a constructed or staged reality. () Several studies have shown that the mass media are predominantly determined by PR activities and that passive, receptive attitudes outweigh active-researching ones." (Blum 1995, p. 16)

In fact, due to the rather low journalistic performance of our media and their high dependence on a few news agencies, it is easy for interested parties to spread propaganda and disinformation in a supposedly respectable format to a worldwide audience. DPA editor Steffens warned of this danger:

"The critical sense gets more lulled the more respected the news agency or newspaper is. Someone who wants to introduce a questionable story into the world press only needs to try to put his story in a reasonably reputable agency, to be sure that it then appears a little later in the others. Sometimes it happens that a hoax passes from agency to agency and becomes ever more credible." (Steffens 1969, p. 234)

Among the most active actors in "injecting" questionable geopolitical news are the military and defense ministries. For example, in 2009, the head of the American news agency AP, Tom Curley, made public that the Pentagon employs more than 27,000 PR specialists who, with a budget of nearly $ 5 billion a year, are working the media and circulating targeted manipulations. In addition, high-ranking US generals had threatened that they would "ruin" the AP and him if the journalists reported too critically on the US military.

Despite – or because of? – such threats our media regularly publish dubious stories sourced to some unnamed "informants" from "US defense circles".

Ulrich Tilgner, a veteran Middle East correspondent for German and Swiss television, warned in 2003, shortly after the Iraq war, of acts of deception by the military and the role played by the media:

"With the help of the media, the military determine the public perception and use it for their plans. They manage to stir expectations and spread scenarios and deceptions. In this new kind of war, the PR strategists of the US administration fulfill a similar function as the bomber pilots. The special departments for public relations in the Pentagon and in the secret services have become combatants in the information war. () The US military specifically uses the lack of transparency in media coverage for their deception maneuvers. The way they spread information, which is then picked up and distributed by newspapers and broadcasters, makes it impossible for readers, listeners or viewers to trace the original source. Thus, the audience will fail to recognize the actual intention of the military." (Tilgner 2003, p. 132)

What is known to the US military, would not be foreign to US intelligence services. In a remarkable report by British Channel 4, former CIA officials and a Reuters correspondent spoke candidly about the systematic dissemination of propaganda and misinformation in reporting on geopolitical conflicts:

Former CIA officer and whistleblower John Stockwell said of his work in the Angolan war,

"The basic theme was to make it look like an [enemy] aggression in Angola. So any kind of story that you could write and get into the media anywhere in the world, that pushed that line, we did. One third of my staff in this task force were covert action, were propagandists, whose professional career job was to make up stories and finding ways of getting them into the press. () The editors in most Western newspapers are not too skeptical of messages that conform to general views and prejudices. () So we came up with another story, and it was kept going for weeks. () [But] it was all fiction."

Fred Bridgland looked back on his work as a war correspondent for the Reuters agency: "We based our reports on official communications. It was not until years later that I learned a little CIA disinformation expert had sat in the US embassy, in Lusaka and composed that communiqué, and it bore no relation at all to truth. () Basically, and to put it very crudely, you can publish any old crap and it will get newspaper room."

And former CIA analyst David MacMichael described his work in the Contra War in Nicaragua with these words:

"They said our intelligence of Nicaragua was so good that we could even register when someone flushed a toilet. But I had the feeling that the stories we were giving to the press came straight out of the toilet." (Hird 1985)

Of course, the intelligence services also have a large number of direct contacts in our media, which can be "leaked" information to if necessary. But without the central role of the global news agencies, the worldwide synchronization of propaganda and disinformation would never be so efficient.

Through this "propaganda multiplier", dubious stories from PR experts working for governments, military and intelligence services reach the general public more or less unchecked and unfiltered. The journalists refer to the news agencies and the news agencies refer to their sources. Although they often attempt to point out uncertainties with terms such as "apparent", "alleged" and the like – by then the rumor has long been spread to the world and its effect taken place.

The Propaganda Multiplier: Governments, military and intelligence services using global news agencies to disseminate their messages to a worldwide audience.

As the New York Times reported

In addition to global news agencies, there is another source that is often used by media outlets around the world to report on geopolitical conflicts, namely the major publications in Great Britain and the US.

For example, news outlets like the New York Times or BBC have up to 100 foreign correspondents and other external employees. However, Middle East correspondent Luyendijk points out:

"Dutch news teams, me included, fed on the selection of news made by quality media like CNN, the BBC, and the New York Times . We did that on the assumption that their correspondents understood the Arab world and commanded a view of it – but many of them turned out not to speak Arabic, or at least not enough to be able to have a conversation in it or to follow the local media. Many of the top dogs at CNN, the BBC, the Independent, the Guardian, the New Yorker, and the NYT were more often than not dependent on assistants and translators." (Luyendijk p. 47)

In addition, the sources of these media outlets are often not easy to verify ("military circles", "anonymous government officials", "intelligence officials" and the like) and can therefore also be used for the dissemination of propaganda. In any case, the widespread orientation towards the Anglo-Saxon publications leads to a further convergence in the geopolitical coverage in our media.

The following figure shows some examples of such citation based on the Syria coverage of the largest daily newspaper in Switzerland, Tages-Anzeiger. The articles are all from the first days of October 2015, when Russia for the first time intervened directly in the Syrian war (US/UK sources are highlighted):

Frequent citation of British and US media, exemplified by the Syria war coverage of Swiss daily newspaper Tages-Anzeiger in October 2015.

The desired narrative

But why do journalists in our media not simply try to research and report independently of the global agencies and the Anglo-Saxon media? Middle East correspondent Luyendijk describes his experiences:

"You might suggest that I should have looked for sources I could trust. I did try, but whenever I wanted to write a story without using news agencies, the main Anglo-Saxon media, or talking heads, it fell apart. () Obviously I, as a correspondent, could tell very different stories about one and the same situation. But the media could only present one of them, and often enough, that was exactly the story that confirmed the prevailing image." (Luyendijk p.54ff)

Media researcher Noam Chomsky has described this effect in his essay "What makes the mainstream media mainstream" as follows: "If you leave the official line, if you produce dissenting reports, then you will soon feel this. () There are many ways to get you back in line quickly. If you don't follow the guidelines, you will not keep your job long. This system works pretty well, and it reflects established power structures." (Chomsky 1997)

Nevertheless, some of the leading journalists continue to believe that nobody can tell them what to write. How does this add up? Media researcher Chomsky clarifies the apparent contradiction:

"[T]he point is that they wouldn't be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing. If they had started off at the Metro desk, or something, and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they never would have made it to the positions where they can now say anything they like. () They have been through the socialization system." (Chomsky 1997)

Ultimately, this "socialization process" leads to a journalism that generally no longer independently researches and critically reports on geopolitical conflicts (and some other topics), but seeks to consolidate the desired narrative through appropriate editorials, commentary, and interviewees.

Conclusion: The "First Law of Journalism"

Former AP journalist Herbert Altschull called it the First Law of Journalism:

"In all press systems, the news media are instruments of those who exercise political and economic power. Newspapers, periodicals, radio and television stations do not act independently, although they have the possibility of independent exercise of power." (Altschull 1984/1995, p. 298)

In that sense, it is logical that our traditional media – which are predominantly financed by advertising or the state – represent the geopolitical interests of the transatlantic alliance, given that both the advertising corporations as well as the states themselves are dependent on the US dominated transatlantic economic and security architecture.

In addition, our leading media and their key people are – in the spirit of Chomsky's "socialization" – often themselves part of the networks of the transatlantic elite. Some of the most important institutions in this regard include the US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission (see in-depth study of these networks ).

Indeed, most well-known publications basically may be seen as "establishment media". This is because, in the past, the freedom of the press was rather theoretical, given significant entry barriers such as broadcasting licenses, frequency slots, requirements for financing and technical infrastructure, limited sales channels, dependence on advertising, and other restrictions.

It was only due to the Internet that Altschull's First Law has been broken to some extent. Thus, in recent years a high-quality, reader-funded journalism has emerged, often outperforming traditional media in terms of critical reporting. Some of these "alternative" publications already reach a very large audience, showing that the „mass" does not have to be a problem for the quality of a media outlet.

Nevertheless, up to now the traditional media has been able to attract a solid majority of online visitors, too. This, in turn, is closely linked to the hidden role of news agencies, whose up-to-the-minute reports form the backbone of most news portals.

Will "political and economic power", according to Altschull's Law, retain control over the news, or will "uncontrolled" news change the political and economic power structure? The coming years will show.

Case study: Syria war coverage

As part of a case study, the Syria war coverage of nine leading daily newspapers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland were examined for plurality of viewpoints and reliance on news agencies. The following newspapers were selected:

  • For Germany: Die Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)
  • For Switzerland: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Tagesanzeiger (TA), and Basler Zeitung (BaZ)
  • For Austria: Standard, Kurier, and Die Presse

The investigation period was defined as October 1 to 15, 2015, i.e. the first two weeks after Russia's direct intervention in the Syrian conflict. The entire print and online coverage of these newspapers was taken into account. Any Sunday editions were not taken into account, as not all of the newspapers examined have such. In total, 381 newspaper articles met the stated criteria.

In a first step, the articles were classified according to their properties into the following groups:

  1. Agencies : Reports from news agencies (with agency code)
  2. Mixed : Simple reports (with author names) that are based in whole or in part on agency reports
  3. Reports : Editorial background reports and analyzes
  4. Opinions/Comments : Opinions and guest comments
  5. Interviews : interviews with experts, politicians etc.
  6. Investigative : Investigative research that reveals new information or context

The following Figure 1 shows the composition of the articles for the nine newspapers analyzed in total. As can be seen, 55% of articles were news agency reports; 23% editorial reports based on agency material; 9% background reports; 10% opinions and guest comments; 2% interviews; and 0% based on investigative research.

Figure 1: Types of articles (total; n=381)

The pure agency texts – from short notices to the detailed reports – were mostly on the Internet pages of the daily newspapers: on the one hand, the pressure for breaking news is higher than in the printed edition, on the other hand, there are no space restrictions. Most other types of articles were found in both the online and printed editions; some exclusive interviews and background reports were found only in the printed editions. All items were collected only once for the investigation.

The following Figure 2 shows the same classification on a per newspaper basis. During the observation period (two weeks), most newspapers published between 40 and 50 articles on the Syrian conflict (print and online). In the German newspaper Die Welt there were more (58), in the Basler Zeitung and the Austrian Kurier , however, significantly less (29 or 33).

Depending on which newspaper, the share of agency reports is almost 50% (Welt, Süddeutsche, NZZ, Basler Zeitung), just under 60% (FAZ, Tagesanzeiger), and 60 to 70% (Presse, Standard, Kurier). Together with the agency-based reports, the proportion in most newspapers is between approx. 70% and 80%. These proportions are consistent with previous media studies (e.g., Blum 1995, Johnston 2011, MacGregor 2013, Paterson 2007).

In the background reports, the Swiss newspapers were leading (five to six pieces), followed by Welt , Süddeutsche and Standard (four each) and the other newspapers (one to three). The background reports and analyzes were in particular devoted to the situation and development in the Middle East, as well as to the motives and interests of individual actors (for example Russia, Turkey, the Islamic State).

However, most of the commentaries were to be found in the German newspapers (seven comments each), followed by Standard (five), NZZ and Tagesanzeiger (four each). Basler Zeitung did not publish any commentaries during the observation period, but two interviews. Other interviews were conducted by Standard (three) and Kurier and Presse (one each). Investigative research, however, could not be found in any of the newspapers.

In particular, in the case of the three German newspapers, a journalistically problematic blending of opinion pieces and reports was noted. Reports contained strong expressions of opinion even though they were not marked as commentary. The present study was in any case based on the article labeling by the newspaper.

Figure 2: Types of articles per newspaper

The following Figure 3 shows the breakdown of agency stories (by agency abbreviation) for each news agency, in total and per country. The 211 agency reports carried a total of 277 agency codes (a story may consist of material from more than one agency). In total, 24% of agency reports came from the AFP; about 20% each by the DPA, APA and Reuters; 9% of the SDA; 6% of the AP; and 11% were unknown (no labeling or blanket term "agencies").

In Germany, the DPA, AFP and Reuters each have a share of about one third of the news stories. In Switzerland, the SDA and the AFP are in the lead, and in Austria, the APA and Reuters.

In fact, the shares of the global agencies AFP, AP and Reuters are likely to be even higher, as the Swiss SDA and the Austrian APA obtain their international reports mainly from the global agencies and the German DPA cooperates closely with the American AP.

It should also be noted that, for historical reasons, the global agencies are represented differently in different regions of the world. For events in Asia, Ukraine or Africa, the share of each agency will therefore be different than from events in the Middle East.

Figure 3: Share of news agencies, total (n=277) and per country

In the next step, central statements were used to rate the orientation of editorial opinions (28), guest comments (10) and interview partners (7) (a total of 45 articles). As Figure 4 shows, 82% of the contributions were generally US/NATO friendly, 16% neutral or balanced, and 2% predominantly US/NATO critical.

The only predominantly US/NATO-critical contribution was an op-ed in the Austrian Standard on October 2, 2015, titled: "The strategy of regime change has failed. A distinction between ‚good' and ‚bad' terrorist groups in Syria makes the Western policy untrustworthy."

Figure 4: Orientation of editorial opinions, guest comments, and interviewees (total; n=45).

The following Figure 5 shows the orientation of the contributions, guest comments and interviewees, in turn broken down by individual newspapers. As can be seen, Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung, NZZ, Zürcher Tagesanzeiger and the Austrian newspaper Kurier presented exclusively US/NATO-friendly opinion and guest contributions; this goes for FAZ too, with the exception of one neutral/balanced contribution. The Standard brought four US/NATO friendly, three balanced/neutral, as well as the already mentioned US/NATO critical opinion contributions.

Presse was the only one of the examined newspapers to predominantly publish neutral/balanced opinions and guest contributions. The Basler Zeitung published one US/NATO-friendly and one balanced contribution. Shortly after the observation period (October 16, 2015), Basler Zeitung also published an interview with the President of the Russian Parliament. This would of course have been counted as a contribution critical of the US/NATO.

Figure 5: Basic orientation of opinion pieces and interviewees per newspaper

In a further analysis, a full-text keyword search for "propaganda" (and word combinations thereof) was used to investigate in which cases the newspapers themselves identified propaganda in one of the two geopolitical conflict sides, USA/NATO or Russia (the participant "IS/ISIS" was not considered). In total, twenty such cases were identified. Figure 6 shows the result: in 85% of the cases, propaganda was identified on the Russian side of the conflict, in 15% the identification was neutral or unstated, and in 0% of the cases propaganda was identified on the USA/NATO side of the conflict.

It should be noted that about half of the cases (nine) were in the Swiss NZZ , which spoke of Russian propaganda quite frequently ("Kremlin propaganda", "Moscow propaganda machine", "propaganda stories", "Russian propaganda apparatus" etc.), followed by German FAZ (three), Welt and Süddeutsche Zeitung (two each) and the Austrian newspaper Kurier (one). The other newspapers did not mention propaganda, or only in a neutral context (or in the context of IS).

Figure 6: Attribution of propaganda to conflict parties (total; n=20).

Conclusion

In this case study, the geopolitical coverage in nine leading daily newspapers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland was examined for diversity and journalistic performance using the example of the Syrian war.

The results confirm the high dependence on the global news agencies (63 to 90%, excluding commentaries and interviews) and the lack of own investigative research, as well as the rather biased commenting on events in favor of the US/NATO side (82% positive; 2% negative), whose stories were not checked by the newspapers for any propaganda.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

English translation provided by Terje Maloy.

[May 14, 2019] Well, Well, Well, Look Who Adam Schiff Has Family Ties To

Notable quotes:
"... I discovered just today that Adam Schiffs sister, Melissa Schiff SOROS, is married to George Soros' son! Hes a globalist pig! pic.twitter.com/icjzMYCnXM ..."
"... Last month, Schiff delivered the opening statements at a Congressional hearing where he laid out the case for alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. This reporter previously documented serious problems with Schiff's charges, which include wild conspiracy theories and heavy reliance on a questionable source. ..."
"... In largely forgotten history, Schiff's 2000 Congressional campaign against Republican incumbent Jim Rogan was openly aided by MoveOn.org. ..."
Mar 29, 2019 | truthfeednews.com

I discovered just today that Adam Schiffs sister, Melissa Schiff SOROS, is married to George Soros' son! Hes a globalist pig! pic.twitter.com/icjzMYCnXM

-- patriotwoman19 (@patriotwoman19) February 6, 2018

Per Breitbart, those family ties helped Adam Schiff score big bucks from Soros org MoveOn, to boost his political career.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was previously financially aided by the George Soros-financed MoveOn.org to win his Congressional seat.

Schiff was also awarded the Toll Fellowship, which is sponsored by the Council of State Governments, a nonprofit that monitors federal government activities and is heavily financed by Soros's Open Society Foundations.

The Open Society and Soros-funded groups have additionally supported a number of Schiff's legislative efforts.

Schiff has been helping to lead the Democrats' unsubstantiated charges of alleged collusion between President Donald Trump and Moscow.

Last month, Schiff delivered the opening statements at a Congressional hearing where he laid out the case for alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. This reporter previously documented serious problems with Schiff's charges, which include wild conspiracy theories and heavy reliance on a questionable source.

In largely forgotten history, Schiff's 2000 Congressional campaign against Republican incumbent Jim Rogan was openly aided by MoveOn.org.

On January 1, 2000, the Wall Street Journal reported on the radical group's fundraising efforts for Schiff. The Congressional seat was particularly important since Rogan had gained fame after he was selected to be one of thirteen House Managers in the 1998 impeachment case of Bill Clinton. Rogan was supportive of Clinton's impeachment and became a hero in the Republican Party.

The divorce between Adam Schiff's sister and George Soros' brother was a messy one.

From Observer (7/2015)

With this property transfer, I thee divorce. Melissa Schiff Soros , the soon-to-be ex-wife of scion Robert Soros , has paid her estranged husband $10 million for the privilege of taking possession of the townhouse they once shared at 263 West 11th Street , city records show.

The couple, who are in the midst of a messy divorce, have provided the tabloids with some delightful fodder of late, including reports that Mr. Soros, the eldest son of George and president of his father's $28 billion firm, canoodled with his 29-year-old girlfriend in front of his wife on a eight-hour-plus flight from Italy.

The marriage foundered after Mr. Soros allegedly had an affair with model/"naked artist" Meredith Ostrom (who paints by rolling around a canvas naked in covered in paint), which sparked a lengthy court battle over how to divide up the very serious marital assets the Soroses had built up over the course of the their 22-year marriage. Ms. Schiff Soros' lawyer has argued that the prenup is ambiguous. And we're guessing the transfer of funds from Schiff to Soros is merely a perfunctory lob in what is likely to be an avalanche of assets flowing Ms. Schiff's way. (When your husband of more than two decades cheats on you with a "naked artist" ).

The couple also owns a country house in Rhinebeck, N.Y., and a $9 million waterfront "cottage" in Martha's Vineyard.

Ms. Schiff Soros, a filmmaker and photographer, apparently had a strong desire to hang onto their charming West Village townhome, broken or not. The house is notable for being where Thomas Wolfe wrote the first draft of his novel Look, Homeward Angel. The couple bought the house in 1993, a year after their marriage, according to city records, though the price they paid was not recorded; the Soroses have two college-aged children who might presumably wish to return to their old bedrooms.

  1. Herb Greene Just a note: A certain "lady" from CA (I think) also was/is "good friends" with George Sr. Remember the person who was raped by the latest Supreme Court nominee? Yeah, thats THE ONE! Reply March 1, 2019
  2. Camille Gilliam All I know is what i have figured out about anyone who takes money from Soros sells his soul to the Devil..The man is Evil. What he did to his own people during WW11, is unthinkable, and now he is trying to take down the world. Reply February 18, 2018
  3. Robin Last month, Schiff delivered the opening statements at a Congressional hearing where he laid out the case for alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. This reporter previously documented serious problems with Schiff's charges, which include wild conspiracy theories and heavy reliance on a questionable source. In largely forgotten history, Schiff's 2000 Congressional campaign against Republican incumbent Jim Rogan was openly aided by MoveOn. Reply February 14, 2018
  4. Jim Phillips Whether or not the reported Soros/Schiff relationship is factual, George Soros has used his money to undermine the United States Government by buying, thus controlling, the Clinton's, Obama, and other political whores. He and those who enriched themselves from his largess should be shot with shit and hung for stinking – after spending a decade in jail. Reply February 12, 2018
  5. whoopie Political inbreeding. Give Soros a call and let him know what you think: 212-262-6300 Reply February 7, 2018
  6. BruceClapiet Time to turn Soros over to Isreal Reply February 6, 2018
    • SOCAL LADY TURN THE POS SOROS TO RUSSIA. HE IS WANTED THERE TOO. I THINK ISREAL SHOULD HAVE FIRST DIBS THOUGH. Reply August 30, 2018
  7. RL You know this isn't true right? They aren't even related.
    interesting that a website call "truthfeed" posts something so easily proven fake. Reply February 6, 2018
    • Bruce Clapiet Ok prove it last week Obama was responsible for dow a couple of short days ok pretty short and its Trump. Your leaders are a bunch of Lying Hypocrites. You folks dont know whats up or down lots in lies and filth lucre. Not to mention the greed and outright stealing from whomever they can Reply February 7, 2018
      • Jorge Why don't you Russkies mind you own damned business? Reply February 12, 2018
  8. Mark Why does the MSM fail at every turn to provide accurate information on the Democrats and their financial despotic pals around the world? For somewhat who always worked for the government how dose this guy have assets in the millions? Reply February 6, 2018
  9. JD Evans Different Melissa Schiff. The former Ms. Soros has different parents and was raised in a different town than Adam Shiff. Not related.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Schiff#Personal_life
    http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/24/style/weddings-melissa-schiff-robert-d-soros.html Reply February 6, 2018
    • Sandra Kathryn Now, you want to talk about your 1 in a million coincidences! This "different" woman has the same identical name as Schiff's sister, isn't his sister but is coincidentally married to Soros' son. WOW! Also, the 1st link to Wiki gives the hometown of the Congressman Schiff, not his sister. And the 2nd link, a wedding announcement, doesn't mention anything about her hometown. Neither one disputes the claim of this article nor substantiates your claim that they are different women. Reply February 9, 2018
  10. sam truthfeednews.com video-rnc-trolls-democrats-with-this-incredible-new-ad/ Reply February 6, 2018
  11. sam fullofshiff Reply February 6, 2018
  12. Anne Braun Well, They may all be tied together, and I don't doubt that, but for what it's worth, there's a lot more big money involved with all these filthy blood-sucking rich corrupt democrats and a few rhino republicans than just Soros money. Old Soros would run broke pretty quick if that were the case. There wouldn't be enough money for any one person involved with these big payola schemes to keep them all up in their non-ending lavish lifestyles and bulging net worth. Common sense will tell you be warned, there's more than just Soros dishing out the big bucks to these bottom dweller scum suckers! Reply February 6, 2018
    • Jorge Oh, like the Koch bros have America's best interest in their hearts? Reply February 12, 2018
  13. Trilby And yet Wikipedia lists Adam Schiff's parents as Edward and Sherrill Ann (Glovsky) Schiff and the 1992 NYT wedding announcement for Melissa Schiff lists her parents as Marlene S. Schiff of New York and the late Dr. Haskel Schiff. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/24/style/weddings-melissa-schiff-robert-d-soros.html
    Something is strange here with the schiff family. Or am I missing something? I don't doubt this article, I would doubt Wikipedia first as trying to hide something. Reply February 6, 2018

[May 14, 2019] Trump may provoke impeachment by obstructing investigations, says Russiagater Schiff

Notable quotes:
"... Adam Schiff, chair of the House intelligence committee, told ABC's This Week impeachment by the Democratic-run House would be divisive and unlikely to succeed in the Republican-run Senate. ..."
"... Trump's stonewalling of congressional oversight does add weight to calls for impeachment, Schiff said, adding: "But you know, part of our reluctance is we are already a bitterly divided country and an impeachment process will divide us further." ..."
May 14, 2019 | www.theguardian.com

Democrats are reluctant to impeach Donald Trump but he may provoke such a move by continuing to obstruct congressional efforts to oversee his administration, a senior lawmaker said on Sunday.

Adam Schiff, chair of the House intelligence committee, told ABC's This Week impeachment by the Democratic-run House would be divisive and unlikely to succeed in the Republican-run Senate.

"But [Trump] may get us there," Schiff said. "He certainly seems to be trying and maybe this is his perverse way of dividing us more he thinks that's to his political advantage, but it's certainly not to the country's advantage."

Trump's stonewalling of congressional oversight does add weight to calls for impeachment, Schiff said, adding: "But you know, part of our reluctance is we are already a bitterly divided country and an impeachment process will divide us further."

[May 14, 2019] Pat Buchanan Reflects On A Nation At War With Itself

Notable quotes:
"... We're fighting all the subpoenas," Trump said Wednesday. "These aren't, like, impartial people. The Democrats are out to win in 2020 ..."
"... the Justice Department is withholding from the Oversight Committee subpoenaed documents dealing with the decision to include a question on the 2020 Census about citizenship status. ..."
"... These House investigations constitute a massive political assault, in collusion with a hostile media, to destroy my presidency. ..."
"... We do not intend to cooperate in our own destruction. We are not going to play our assigned role in this scripted farce. We will resist their subpoenas all the way to November 2020. Let the people then decide the fate and future of the Trump presidency -- and that of Nancy Pelosi's House. ..."
Apr 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

President Donald Trump has decided to cease cooperating with what he sees, not incorrectly, as a Beltway conspiracy that is out to destroy him.

"We're fighting all the subpoenas," Trump said Wednesday. "These aren't, like, impartial people. The Democrats are out to win in 2020."

Thus the Treasury Department just breezed by a deadline from the House Ways and Means Committee to deliver Trump's tax returns. Thus the White House will invoke executive privilege to deny the House Judiciary Committee access to ex-White House counsel Don McGahn, who spent 30 hours being interrogated by Robert Mueller's team. Thus the Justice Department is withholding from the Oversight Committee subpoenaed documents dealing with the decision to include a question on the 2020 Census about citizenship status.

Across the capital, the barricades are going up figuratively as they did physically in the 1960s and '70s. Once more, it's us against them. Cognizant of the new reality, Trump seems to be saying:

These House investigations constitute a massive political assault, in collusion with a hostile media, to destroy my presidency.

We do not intend to cooperate in our own destruction. We are not going to play our assigned role in this scripted farce. We will resist their subpoenas all the way to November 2020. Let the people then decide the fate and future of the Trump presidency -- and that of Nancy Pelosi's House.

In response to Trump's resort to massive resistance, Rep. Gerald Connolly said:

"A respect for the limits of your branch of government, a respect for the role of other branches of government, is sort of the oil that makes the machinery work. Absent that this breaks down. And I think we're definitely seeing that."

[May 14, 2019] House Dems Issue Friendly Subpoena To Multiple Banks, Probing Different Form Of Trump-Russia Collusion

This is an easier way to prove Trump collision with Russians (real Israel-Russians oligarchs ;-). But they forgot to ask a permission from Netanyahu...
Notable quotes:
"... " The potential use of the US financial system for illicit purposes is a very serious concern. The Financial Services Committee is exploring these matters, including as they may involve the president and his associates, as thoroughly as possible." ..."
"... Mad Maxine: " The potential use of the U.S. financial system for illicit purposes is a very serious concern." The biggest level of projection I've seen in my life. Especially coming from her, the multi-millionaire. Don't they understand every attack can then be used against them? Full insanity. ..."
"... So, Nana Pelosi has a net worth of 26.4 million dollars (now wait, this is the best part)... on a government salary ...lol. When is Adam Shits-Himself gonna call for Pelosi's tax records to be produced? I know for a fact there are some Samoan fishermen who can't wait to pour through them ;-) ..."
Apr 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

With just three days until the full (redacted) Mueller Report is released, shattering his entire raison d'etre, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff refuses to give up on his search for Trump-Russia collusion.

Bloomberg reports that Congressional Democrats issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank AG and other banks to obtain long-sought documents related to whether foreign nations tried to influence U.S. politics, signaling an escalation of their probes into President Donald Trump's finances and any dealings with Russians.

Schiff said in a statement the subpoenas issued included a "friendly subpoena to Deutsche Bank." The Financial Services Committee chair, Maxine Waters, said in a statement:

" The potential use of the US financial system for illicit purposes is a very serious concern. The Financial Services Committee is exploring these matters, including as they may involve the president and his associates, as thoroughly as possible."

Deutsche Bank spokeswoman Kerrie McHugh said Monday:

"Deutsche Bank is engaged in a productive dialogue with the House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees.

We remain committed to providing appropriate information to all authorized investigations in a manner consistent with our legal obligations. If you have questions concerning the investigative activities of the committees, we would refer you to the committees themselves."

Deutsche Bank had been Trump's go-to lender for decades, even as other commercial banks stopped doing business with him because of multiple bankruptcies.

Additionally, CNN reports that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has subpoenaed Trump financial information from Mazars, an accounting firm that once prepared several years' worth of President Donald Trump's financial statements, according to a Monday memo to committee members from Chairman Elijah Cummings.

Cummings had said he intended to issue a "friendly subpoena" because Mazars USA had requested it from the committee before providing records.

Cummings is requesting financial information dating back 10 years after Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen accused Trump of inflating his net worth in an attempt to buy the Buffalo Bills football team.

In the memo, Cummings said the subpoena is also based on "corroborating documents" that "raise grave questions about whether the President has been accurate in his financial reporting."

While possible financial leverage wasn't mentioned in Attorney General William Barr's four-page summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's findings from his 22-month probe of Russian election interference, Schiff remains unable to face his own cognitive dissonance, frequently noting that billionaire real-estate-developer Trump was pursuing a Trump Tower (real estate) project in Moscow during the presidential campaign...

"That's a different form of collusion, but it is equally compromising to the countr y because it means the president of the United States is looking out for his bank account and not for the United States of America," Schiff said in an interview on NBC in February.

JCW Industries , 1 minute ago link

The polls said Hillary had a 93% chance of winning. Why wouldn't Trump keep his business running and looking for more opportunities? That's what businessmen do. I do it every day, even on vacation. It's getting ******* old their little skunkworks strategy. Declassification needs to come now. Hang these fuckers. Schiff first.

Dragon HAwk , 2 minutes ago link

Don't stop there, lets check all of Congress's Bank Dealings. Hang em all.

Dr Anon , 3 minutes ago link

Just imagine what our country would be if these traitors spent half as much time, creativity and tenacity improving our country. Instead they cling to an imagined Russian collusion and are frantically searching for an investigation to fit that outcome.

If I wasn't paying taxes to watch this story unfold it would be ******* hilarious.

CHoward , 5 minutes ago link

Schiff, Cummings, Waters, et al wouldn't last 1 day under the same amount of scruitny they've put our president through these last 2 years. I pray one of these fuckers is on Nunes list for criminal referral to the DOJ.

steverino999 , 7 minutes ago link

How Trump has avoided catastrophe so far during his 25 months as President is more impressive than anything Houdini ever did. But he's got every finger and nine toes in the dike and his good fortune is nearing its inevitable conclusion. Thursday can't come fast enough.

chubbar , 20 minutes ago link

Anyone else sick of these ******* retarded assholes? At what point do they do the job they were hired to do instead of continually trying to dirty up Trump? Who gives a **** what they guy did 10 ******* years ago? He wasn't president. Everyone of these assholes needs to go, this is complete ********.

Johnny_Fing_Utah , 5 minutes ago link

They're like ******* mosquitoes.

HideTheWeenie , 4 minutes ago link

Callin' like it is ... Yeah, who isn't ... Plus, they have absolutely no viable interpretive skills with which to evaluate the information. And forget the tax returns. Unless you're very informed about the matters at hand you won't get it close, much less right. Totally stupid. And I'm a former forensic accountant at Ernst & Young.

JBLight , 21 minutes ago link

Mad Maxine: " The potential use of the U.S. financial system for illicit purposes is a very serious concern." The biggest level of projection I've seen in my life. Especially coming from her, the multi-millionaire. Don't they understand every attack can then be used against them? Full insanity.

navy62802 , 23 minutes ago link

They're scared of what is coming. This is their last-ditch effort to save the party, and it will fail miserably.

TruthAbsolute , 23 minutes ago link

So what has the democratic house actually done since wining majority? Like what do they get paid for? Maybe they need to investigate Trumps Barber after all isn't that where all those private conversation could lead to something, anything!

nmewn , 11 minutes ago link

So, Nana Pelosi has a net worth of 26.4 million dollars (now wait, this is the best part)... on a government salary ...lol. When is Adam Shits-Himself gonna call for Pelosi's tax records to be produced? I know for a fact there are some Samoan fishermen who can't wait to pour through them ;-)

[May 14, 2019] Only a rabid Israel-firster and Clinton loyalist like Schiff could ignore the excellent report of the patriotic Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); the report explains why Clinton/DNC emails were never hacked but "leaked."

Schiff is yet another witch hunter. He has a goal and this goal has nothing to do with justice.
Apr 24, 2019 | www.unz.com

annamaria , says: April 24, 2019 at 1:50 am GMT

@dale ruff "As for Adam,Schiff, he is a very smart guy "
-- If you say so.

Actually, proclaiming the enormity of Adam Schiff intelligence is so funny that here is a take on the "intelligence" that is the basis for A. Schiff' well-publicized vitriols: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-24/making-shit-us-intelligence-community-collapse-driver "Making Shit Up" – The US Intelligence Community As 'Collapse Driver'

On a serious note, only a rabid Israel-firster and loyalist to Clintons could ignore the excellent report of the patriotic Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); the report explains why Clinton/DNC emails were never hacked but "leaked."
True to the spirit of the DNC activists, the "progressives" and "liberals" are indifferent to the death of the young DNC operative Seth Rich.

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/13/vips-muellers-forensics-free-findings/
https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/

The centerpiece accusation of Kremlin "interference" in the 2016 presidential election was the charge that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee emails and gave them to WikiLeaks to embarrass Secretary Hillary Clinton and help Mr. Trump win.

In 2017, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair asked Comey whether he ever had "access to the actual hardware that was hacked." Comey answered, "In the case of the DNC we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party "

we [VIPS] know for sure that the person had to have direct access to the DNC computers or servers in order to copy the emails. The apparent lack of evidence from the most likely source, NSA, regarding a hack may help explain the FBI's curious preference for forensic data from CrowdStrike.

Why the allegedly intelligent A. Schiff has never questioned the conclusions of a private CrowdStrike led by a Russophobic Jewish emigre from Moscow? For an honest person with a degree in law, Schiff should have been demanding an FBI investigation of the server in question. Instead, Adam has been at the forefront of the putsch against POTUS . So much for the "J.D. from Harvard Law School."

By the way, your attempts to impress the readers with your admiration for Harvard are funny.

[May 14, 2019] FOIA Docs Mueller Top Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann Hand-Picked Team of Angry Democrats

May 14, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

When Trump called the Mueller investigators " 18 angry Democrats ," he wasn't kidding.

According to 73 pages of records obtained by Judicial Watch , Mueller special counsel prosecutor Andrew Weissmann led the hiring effort for the team that investigated the Trump campaign .

Notably, Weissman attended Hillary Clinton's election night party in 2016, and wrote a positive email to former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates when she refused to defend the Trump administration's travel ban. And as you will see below, he was on a mission to recruit a politically biased fleet of lawyers for the Mueller probe .

"These documents show Andrew Weissmann, an anti-Trump activist, had a hand in hiring key members of Mueller's team – who also happened to be political opponents of President Trump," said Judicial Watch President, Tom Fitton. "These documents show that Mueller outsourced his hiring decisions to Andrew Weissmann. No wonder it took well over a year to get this basic information and, yet, the Deep State DOJ is still stonewalling on other Weissmann documents!"

Weissman's calendar shows that he began interviewing people for investigator jobs on the Mueller operation almost immediately after it was announced that he had joined the team in early June .

On June 5, 2017, he interviewed former Chief of the Public Corruption Unit of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York Andrew Goldstein . Goldstein was a Time magazine reporter. Goldstein contributed a combined $3,300 to Obama's campaigns in 2008 and 2012. His wife, Julie Rawe, was a reporter and editor for Time for 13 years, until 2013. He became a lead prosecutor for Mueller.

The next day, on June 6, 2017 Weissmann had a meeting with "FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] counsel."

Weissmann interviewed another prosecutor, Kyle Freeny , from the DOJ Money Laundering Section for the team on June 7, 2017. She contributed a total of $500 to Obama's presidential campaigns and $250 to Hillary Clinton's. She was later detailed to the Mueller investigation.

He interviewed a trial attorney who worked with him in the Criminal Fraud Section, Rush Atkinson , on June 9, 2017. Records show that Atkinson donated $200 to Clinton's campaign in 2016. He is a registered Democrat and contributed $200 to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign . Atkinson also became part of the Mueller team.

Weissmann interviewed DOJ Deputy Assistant Attorney General Greg Andres for the team on June 13, 2017. Andres donated $2,700 to the campaign for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in 2018 and $1,000 to the campaign for David Hoffman (D) in 2009. Andres is a registered Democrat. His wife, Ronnie Abrams , a U.S. district judge in Manhattan, was nominated to the bench in 2011 by Obama. He joined the Mueller team in August 2017. - Judicial Watch

"Judicial Watch previously released documents showing strong support by Weissmann for former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates' refusal to enforce President Trump's Middle East travel ban executive order. Weissmann reportedly also attended Hillary Clinton's Election Night party in New York," the report concludes.

  • Comments
Sign in to comment filter_list Viewing Options arrow_drop_down
  • All Comments 137


The Persistent Vegetable , 11 minutes ago link

This is such a risky approach. When the next dem comes in and gets investigated no republicans can do it? This **** gonna backfire down the road

warsev , 16 minutes ago link

Consider, who better to find the President not guilty of collusion and obstruction than "18 Angry Democrats"? It's damn near perfect. The Dems can't find fault with any of the investigators who found the President did not violate the law.

Tachyon5321 , 44 minutes ago link

Tump should have Andrew Weissmann fired for looking like Anthony Weiner

Biblicism, Deep State, Impressionism, Israhell Apartheid, Holohaust, warning graphic disturbing images etc usw...

Jackprong , 58 minutes ago link

When can the investigation of the investigators begin with Mueller's team of DNC hacks?

Stainless Steel Rat , 1 hour ago link

I Want To Believe

Justice will be done.

But I have my doubts...

GUS100CORRINA , 1 hour ago link

FOIA Docs: Mueller Top Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann Hand-Picked Team of "Angry Democrats"

My response; These people are evil & corrupt to the core!! They were responsible for the BIGGEST SCANDAL in US HISTORY and NEED TO GO TO JAIL!!!

2019 will be the YEAR of JUSTICE!! I wonder how AG BARR is going to handle this entire scandal as more information is revealed?

Treavor , 6 minutes ago link

Barr could go down in history as great AG but he has to hang some people Brennen and Comey and CLapper first.

American2 , 1 hour ago link

Now the legal system needs to treat Andrew Weissmann like he tried to treat Donald Trump. **** Weissmann big time.

newstarmist , 1 hour ago link

Weissman, Goldstein, et alia, all jews in a fabricated jewish drama to further demoralize us and to separate us from what was our Republic form of government. What we need is an immediate ubiquitous epiphany regarding these sleazy, slimy kikes and in the words of Andrew Jackson... "You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out."

[May 14, 2019] Do Russia probe attorneys' donations to Democrats threaten their independence? by Glenn Kessler

Jan 04, 2018 | www.stamfordadvocate.com

Originally from WaPo, January 4, 2018 "The people that have been hired are all Hillary Clinton supporters. Some of them worked for Hillary Clinton. I mean the whole thing is ridiculous, if you want to know the truth, from that standpoint."- President Donald Trump, interview with "Fox & Friends," June 23, 2017 Recommended Video

In June, The Fact Checker examined claims by President Trump and his surrogates that the special counsel team headed by former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III was tainted by the fact that several of the prosecutors were supporters of Clinton or even worked for her. We dug into the political contributions of eight team members and found that four had made political contributions and four had no record of making such contributions. We ended up giving Trump Three Pinocchios because not all of the people hired had a record of supporting Clinton and it was false to claim that some had worked directly for Hillary Clinton.

A reader asked us to provide an update, given that many more of the team members had been identified. We now have a list of 15 team members; one of the people whose background we had previously checked (FBI lawyer Lisa Page) has since left the team. So that's an additional eight names.

(Another former team member, FBI official Peter Strzok, was removed by Mueller after the discovery of politically charged texts exchanged with Page, with whom he was romantically involved. But Strzok was not part of our original list.)

Let's take a look, breaking the team up into three categories.

The Facts

As we have noted before, federal regulations prohibit the Justice Department from considering the political affiliation or political contributions of career appointees, including those appointed to the Special Counsel's Office. So Mueller is legally prohibited from considering the political affiliations of the people he has hired. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, also has told Congress that it is not a disqualification for a lawyer in the Special Counsel's Office to have made a political donation.

Mueller, meanwhile, was a registered Republican when he was nominated to be FBI director in 2001, but is also considered apolitical. "A Justice Department senior staff meeting went quiet this year when Mueller ran through a list of people he considered qualified for top temporary jobs, most of them Democrats," The Washington Post reported at the time. "It had never occurred to him that Democrats and the new Republican administration might not mesh."

Mueller made two donations totaling $450 to then-Massachusetts Gov. William Weld's Senate campaign in 1996; Weld at the time was a Republican but he was the vice presidential nominee on the Libertarian Party ticket in 2016.

---

WilmerHale colleagues

Three members of the team came with Mueller from the law firm WilmerHale: James Quarles III, Jeannie Rhee and Aaron Zebley.

Zebley, a former counterterrorism FBI agent and assistant U.S. attorney, appears to have no record of donations, but he once represented Clinton aide Justin Cooper. But Quarles and Rhee have been noteworthy political donors.

Quarles, who was an assistant prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, donated to the last four Democratic presidential nominees: $2,700 to Hillary Clinton in 2016, $4,600 to Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008, $1,500 to John F. Kerry in 2003 and 2004 and $500 to Al Gore in 1999. He donated at least $15,000 to various other Democratic campaigns, but also gave $2,500 in 2015 to then Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and $250 to then-Sen. George Allen, R-Va., in 2005.

Meanwhile, Rhee, who had a top post in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under Obama, was an early donor to the Clinton and Obama campaigns and even maxxed out on her Clinton contributions. Rhee donated a total of $5,400 to Clinton's campaign in 2015 and 2016, and a total of $4,800 to a joint Obama-Democratic National Committee fund (Obama Victory Fund) in 2008 and 2011. She also made smaller donations to various Democrats and the DNC totaling $1,750. Rhee is part of the team listed as working on the George Papadopoulos case.

At WilmerHale, Rhee was a partner on the defense team representing the Clinton Foundation in a lawsuit over Clinton's use of her private email server.

(WilmerHale has also represented Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort, son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump.)

---

Prosecutors

Andrew Weissmann, described as Mueller's "legal pit bull" by the New York Times, served previously with Mueller, when he was general counsel of the FBI. He has also donated to Democrats - $2,300 to the Obama Victory Fund in 2008, $2,000 to the DNC in 2006 and $2,300 to the Clinton campaign in 2007.

Weissmann, who is involved in the case against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, has come under sustained attacks by Republicans after an email of his to then-acting attorney general Sally Yates was discovered. "I am so proud and in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects," he wrote on Jan. 30, 2017, after she instructed the Justice Department not to defend the travel ban in the courts. Trump fired Yates, but the version she refused to defend was blocked in court.

Andrew D. Goldstein was the public corruption chief in New York under U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was fired by Trump. He donated $3,300 to Obama's campaigns in 2008 and 2012. He is listed as working on the Papadopoulos case.

Greg Andres, a former mob prosecutor who was a white-collar criminal defense attorney at the Davis Polk & Wardwell firm, is another veteran of the Obama Justice Department, where he headed the fraud unit from 2010 to 2012. He donated $2,700 to the campaign for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., in 2017 and $1,000 to the unsuccessful Senate campaign of David Hoffman, D, in 2009. He is also part of the team on the Manafort case.

Other prosecutors made minor or no contributions, federal records show.

Brandon Van Grack, a veteran national security prosecutor listed as involved in the guilty plea of Michael Flynn, donated $287 to Obama's campaign in 2008.

Kyle Freeny, a Justice Department trial attorney since 2007, most recently specializing in money laundering, made political contributions to Democratic presidential candidates after they clinched the nomination: $250 to both of Obama's presidential campaigns and $250 to Clinton's campaign in 2016. She is part of the team on the Manafort case.

Lawrence "Rush" Atkinson, a trial attorney in the Justice Department's fraud section, donated $200 to Clinton's campaign in 2016.

Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland, is working on the Papadopoulos case. Federal records show he has made no political donations.

Zainab Ahmad, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York with a stellar record in counterterrorism cases, is part of the team working on the Flynn case. Federal records show she has made no political donations.

---

Appellate attorneys

The appellate attorneys are probably not on the front lines of prosecuting cases but provide legal advice and help evaluate whether federal laws have been broken. Only one of these lawyers have made political donations.

Elizabeth Prelogar, an assistant solicitor general, donated $250 each to Clinton's campaign and the Obama Victory Fund 2016 and 2012.

Michael Dreeben, a deputy solicitor general who has argued more than 100 cases before the Supreme Court, is essentially Mueller's legal counsel. He has made no political donations, though federal records list a man in Chicago with the same name.

Adam Jed, an appellate lawyer from the Justice Department's civil division, and Scott Meisler, an appellate attorney with the Justice Department's criminal division, round out the team. Federal records show neither have made political donations.

The Pinocchio Test

It now turns out that nine members of Mueller's team have made political donations to Democrats, compared to six with no record of such donations. Five of the 15 known members - Rhee, Quarles, Freeny, Prelogar and Atkinson - contributed to Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign.

So this leaves the team more unbalanced than the 4-4 split we found last June. But we are going to reaffirm the Three-Pinocchio rating. Trump asserted that the people who had been hired were "all Hillary Clinton supporters" and that obviously is not the case.

Moreover, Trump said "some of them worked for Hillary Clinton." But that is clearly wrong. Rhee, who donated the maximum amount to Clinton's campaign, represented the Clinton Foundation in a 2015 lawsuit. Zebley, who made no political donations, represented a Clinton aide at one point. That's not the same as working for Clinton.

In any case, the DOJ is legally barred from discriminating career appointees based on political affiliation. Mueller took action against Strzok when texts expressing anti-Trump sentiments were discovered. But he can't inquire about political leanings before hiring.

Three Pinocchios

[May 14, 2019] Putin Says Time To Restore Ties After Pompeo, Lavrov Spar On Election Meddling, Venezuela Iran

May 14, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed a broad number of security related issues in Sochi on Tuesday ranging from nuclear arms control to ratcheting US tensions with Iran to Venezuela to Ukraine. Importantly, the two top diplomats traded warnings against election meddling and interference in their respective countries -- though we might add that Lavrov's message was packed with more sarcasm following the Mueller report clearing Trump of "collusion".

In response to Pompeo's reportedly warning Russia to never interfere in what he described as America's "sacred" elections, specifically warning against any 2020 presidential election interference, Lavrov shot back with: "We can discuss this topic forever, but until we have cold hard facts on the table, we cannot have a grown-up discussion about it," according to Russia's RT .

Speaking to reporters afterward, Lavrov said proudly that he had handed Pompeo a "memorandum" on US interference in Russia but didn't reveal its precise contents, only saying, "we're prepared to talk on this topic."

Though both expressed hope for improved ties between Washington and Moscow, Reuters characterized it as a testy and impatient exchange :

Visiting Russia for the first time as secretary of state, Pompeo publicly clashed with Lavrov on issues from Ukraine to Venezuela. After their meeting, both men said they had been far apart on many issues .

"I made clear to Foreign Minister Lavrov... that interference in American elections is unacceptable. If the Russians were engaged in that in 2020 it would put our relationship in an even worse place than it has been ," he said.

"I'd encourage them not to do that. We would not tolerate that."

However, soon after the summit, Russian President Putin in public statements indicated his belief that "Trump is in the mood to restore ties with Russia."

He also indicated it's his own desire to "fully restore" Russia-US ties, according to the AP, and interestingly also praised the "quite objective" Mueller report in statements to reporters .

"As you know, just a few days ago, I had the pleasure of talking with the US president on the phone," Putin told Pompeo during the Tuesday summit in Sochi. "I got the impression that the [US] president was inclined to re-establish Russian-American relations and contacts to resolve together the issues that are of mutual interest to us."

Pompeo, for his part, appeared to say as much following the meeting, saying, "The United States stands ready to find common ground with Russia as long as the two of us can engage seriously on those issues."

Pompeo said further :

President Trump has made clear that his expectation is that we will have an improved relationship between our two countries. This will benefit each of our peoples. And I think that our talks here today were a good step in that direction.

However, Pompeo still went through a litany of disagreements he had with Russia, especially centering on multiple hot spots around the globe where the Trump administration has exercised a big stick approach.

At Lavrov-Pompeo presser, around 28:30, Lavrov says something significant: Russia recently offered to publish info from a US-Russia channel on cyberspace that he claims would address the allegations of Russian election meddling. He says the US declined: https://t.co/o4MbqQlwCy

-- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) May 14, 2019

* * *

Below is a brief run-down of key points to the two briefed reporters on afterwards.

Nuclear treaty

At the top of the agenda, Lavrov signaled Russia could be open to a new arms control treaty after the recent US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, countered by Russia suspending its obligations under the Reagan-era pact which crucially served to keep missile build-up out of Europe.

Pompeo stressed China had to be part of any future sweeping deal, also considering rapid advances in defense technology. Lavrov expressed hope that any future agreements will be "positively received by both nations."

The New START nuclear arms reduction treaty will expire in February of 2021, giving greater impetus for both sides to work through the current impasse.

No common ground on Venezuela

Predictably the Venezuela hawk Pompeo slammed Russia's "interfering" in the Latin American country's internal affairs, adding also to that list China, Cuba and Iran.

"Maduro has brought nothing but misery to the Venezuelan people," Pompeo stated. "We hope that Russian support for Maduro will end." Lavrov defended the right of Venezuelans to choose their own president and refused to recognize US-declared "Interim President" Juan Guaido.

"Democracy cannot be done by force," Lavrov told reporters. "The threats that we hear against the Maduro government, threats that come from the mouths of US officials this has nothing in common with democracy."

* * *

No desire for war with Iran

"We fundamentally do not see a war with Iran," Secretary of State Pompeo said, but added: "We've made it clear to the Iranians that if American interests are attacked, we will certainly respond in an appropriate fashion."

On Tuesday President Trump denied a prior New York Times report which alleged the White House was planning to send up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East should conflict erupt between Iran and the United States. The president called the report "fake news" but still added that should war actually break out he would send "a hell of a lot more," according to Reuters.

Lavrov stated that Russia hopes "reason will gain the upper hand," and added that Moscow opposed the US pullout of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), and further that Europe is right in attempting to stick to the deal.

Ukraine standoff

Pompeo informed Lavrov that the US hadn't budged in its position regarding Moscow's "illegal" annexation of the Crimea in 2014, saying economic sanctions would remain in place until Russia reverses course.

Following the Ukrainian election of comedian turned unlikely politician Volodymyr Zelensky, Pompeo said Russia should now "work with Ukraine's new president-elect to bring peace to eastern Ukraine," according to a paraphrase of Pompeo's words by Reuters, and further that Russian authorities should release Ukrainian sailors captured in last year's dangerous Kerch Strait incident .

[May 14, 2019] Pat Buchanan Reflects On A Nation At War With Itself

Notable quotes:
"... We're fighting all the subpoenas," Trump said Wednesday. "These aren't, like, impartial people. The Democrats are out to win in 2020 ..."
"... the Justice Department is withholding from the Oversight Committee subpoenaed documents dealing with the decision to include a question on the 2020 Census about citizenship status. ..."
"... These House investigations constitute a massive political assault, in collusion with a hostile media, to destroy my presidency. ..."
"... We do not intend to cooperate in our own destruction. We are not going to play our assigned role in this scripted farce. We will resist their subpoenas all the way to November 2020. Let the people then decide the fate and future of the Trump presidency -- and that of Nancy Pelosi's House. ..."
Apr 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

President Donald Trump has decided to cease cooperating with what he sees, not incorrectly, as a Beltway conspiracy that is out to destroy him.

"We're fighting all the subpoenas," Trump said Wednesday. "These aren't, like, impartial people. The Democrats are out to win in 2020."

Thus the Treasury Department just breezed by a deadline from the House Ways and Means Committee to deliver Trump's tax returns. Thus the White House will invoke executive privilege to deny the House Judiciary Committee access to ex-White House counsel Don McGahn, who spent 30 hours being interrogated by Robert Mueller's team. Thus the Justice Department is withholding from the Oversight Committee subpoenaed documents dealing with the decision to include a question on the 2020 Census about citizenship status.

Across the capital, the barricades are going up figuratively as they did physically in the 1960s and '70s. Once more, it's us against them. Cognizant of the new reality, Trump seems to be saying:

These House investigations constitute a massive political assault, in collusion with a hostile media, to destroy my presidency.

We do not intend to cooperate in our own destruction. We are not going to play our assigned role in this scripted farce. We will resist their subpoenas all the way to November 2020. Let the people then decide the fate and future of the Trump presidency -- and that of Nancy Pelosi's House.

In response to Trump's resort to massive resistance, Rep. Gerald Connolly said:

"A respect for the limits of your branch of government, a respect for the role of other branches of government, is sort of the oil that makes the machinery work. Absent that this breaks down. And I think we're definitely seeing that."

[May 14, 2019] Trump may provoke impeachment by obstructing investigations, says Russiagater Schiff

Notable quotes:
"... Adam Schiff, chair of the House intelligence committee, told ABC's This Week impeachment by the Democratic-run House would be divisive and unlikely to succeed in the Republican-run Senate. ..."
"... Trump's stonewalling of congressional oversight does add weight to calls for impeachment, Schiff said, adding: "But you know, part of our reluctance is we are already a bitterly divided country and an impeachment process will divide us further." ..."
May 14, 2019 | www.theguardian.com

Democrats are reluctant to impeach Donald Trump but he may provoke such a move by continuing to obstruct congressional efforts to oversee his administration, a senior lawmaker said on Sunday.

Adam Schiff, chair of the House intelligence committee, told ABC's This Week impeachment by the Democratic-run House would be divisive and unlikely to succeed in the Republican-run Senate.

"But [Trump] may get us there," Schiff said. "He certainly seems to be trying and maybe this is his perverse way of dividing us more he thinks that's to his political advantage, but it's certainly not to the country's advantage."

Trump's stonewalling of congressional oversight does add weight to calls for impeachment, Schiff said, adding: "But you know, part of our reluctance is we are already a bitterly divided country and an impeachment process will divide us further."

[May 14, 2019] Only a rabid Israel-firster and Clinton loyalist like Schiff could ignore the excellent report of the patriotic Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); the report explains why Clinton/DNC emails were never hacked but "leaked."

Schiff is yet another witch hunter. He has a goal and this goal has nothing to do with justice.
Apr 24, 2019 | www.unz.com

annamaria , says: April 24, 2019 at 1:50 am GMT

@dale ruff "As for Adam,Schiff, he is a very smart guy "
-- If you say so.

Actually, proclaiming the enormity of Adam Schiff intelligence is so funny that here is a take on the "intelligence" that is the basis for A. Schiff' well-publicized vitriols: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-24/making-shit-us-intelligence-community-collapse-driver "Making Shit Up" – The US Intelligence Community As 'Collapse Driver'

On a serious note, only a rabid Israel-firster and loyalist to Clintons could ignore the excellent report of the patriotic Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); the report explains why Clinton/DNC emails were never hacked but "leaked."
True to the spirit of the DNC activists, the "progressives" and "liberals" are indifferent to the death of the young DNC operative Seth Rich.

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/13/vips-muellers-forensics-free-findings/
https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/

The centerpiece accusation of Kremlin "interference" in the 2016 presidential election was the charge that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee emails and gave them to WikiLeaks to embarrass Secretary Hillary Clinton and help Mr. Trump win.

In 2017, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair asked Comey whether he ever had "access to the actual hardware that was hacked." Comey answered, "In the case of the DNC we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party "

we [VIPS] know for sure that the person had to have direct access to the DNC computers or servers in order to copy the emails. The apparent lack of evidence from the most likely source, NSA, regarding a hack may help explain the FBI's curious preference for forensic data from CrowdStrike.

Why the allegedly intelligent A. Schiff has never questioned the conclusions of a private CrowdStrike led by a Russophobic Jewish emigre from Moscow? For an honest person with a degree in law, Schiff should have been demanding an FBI investigation of the server in question. Instead, Adam has been at the forefront of the putsch against POTUS . So much for the "J.D. from Harvard Law School."

By the way, your attempts to impress the readers with your admiration for Harvard are funny.

[May 14, 2019] House Dems Issue Friendly Subpoena To Multiple Banks, Probing Different Form Of Trump-Russia Collusion

This is an easier way to prove Trump collision with Russians (real Israel-Russians oligarchs ;-). But they forgot to ask a permission from Netanyahu...
Notable quotes:
"... " The potential use of the US financial system for illicit purposes is a very serious concern. The Financial Services Committee is exploring these matters, including as they may involve the president and his associates, as thoroughly as possible." ..."
"... Mad Maxine: " The potential use of the U.S. financial system for illicit purposes is a very serious concern." The biggest level of projection I've seen in my life. Especially coming from her, the multi-millionaire. Don't they understand every attack can then be used against them? Full insanity. ..."
"... So, Nana Pelosi has a net worth of 26.4 million dollars (now wait, this is the best part)... on a government salary ...lol. When is Adam Shits-Himself gonna call for Pelosi's tax records to be produced? I know for a fact there are some Samoan fishermen who can't wait to pour through them ;-) ..."
Apr 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

With just three days until the full (redacted) Mueller Report is released, shattering his entire raison d'etre, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff refuses to give up on his search for Trump-Russia collusion.

Bloomberg reports that Congressional Democrats issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank AG and other banks to obtain long-sought documents related to whether foreign nations tried to influence U.S. politics, signaling an escalation of their probes into President Donald Trump's finances and any dealings with Russians.

Schiff said in a statement the subpoenas issued included a "friendly subpoena to Deutsche Bank." The Financial Services Committee chair, Maxine Waters, said in a statement:

" The potential use of the US financial system for illicit purposes is a very serious concern. The Financial Services Committee is exploring these matters, including as they may involve the president and his associates, as thoroughly as possible."

Deutsche Bank spokeswoman Kerrie McHugh said Monday:

"Deutsche Bank is engaged in a productive dialogue with the House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees.

We remain committed to providing appropriate information to all authorized investigations in a manner consistent with our legal obligations. If you have questions concerning the investigative activities of the committees, we would refer you to the committees themselves."

Deutsche Bank had been Trump's go-to lender for decades, even as other commercial banks stopped doing business with him because of multiple bankruptcies.

Additionally, CNN reports that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has subpoenaed Trump financial information from Mazars, an accounting firm that once prepared several years' worth of President Donald Trump's financial statements, according to a Monday memo to committee members from Chairman Elijah Cummings.

Cummings had said he intended to issue a "friendly subpoena" because Mazars USA had requested it from the committee before providing records.

Cummings is requesting financial information dating back 10 years after Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen accused Trump of inflating his net worth in an attempt to buy the Buffalo Bills football team.

In the memo, Cummings said the subpoena is also based on "corroborating documents" that "raise grave questions about whether the President has been accurate in his financial reporting."

While possible financial leverage wasn't mentioned in Attorney General William Barr's four-page summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's findings from his 22-month probe of Russian election interference, Schiff remains unable to face his own cognitive dissonance, frequently noting that billionaire real-estate-developer Trump was pursuing a Trump Tower (real estate) project in Moscow during the presidential campaign...

"That's a different form of collusion, but it is equally compromising to the countr y because it means the president of the United States is looking out for his bank account and not for the United States of America," Schiff said in an interview on NBC in February.

JCW Industries , 1 minute ago link

The polls said Hillary had a 93% chance of winning. Why wouldn't Trump keep his business running and looking for more opportunities? That's what businessmen do. I do it every day, even on vacation. It's getting ******* old their little skunkworks strategy. Declassification needs to come now. Hang these fuckers. Schiff first.

Dragon HAwk , 2 minutes ago link

Don't stop there, lets check all of Congress's Bank Dealings. Hang em all.

Dr Anon , 3 minutes ago link

Just imagine what our country would be if these traitors spent half as much time, creativity and tenacity improving our country. Instead they cling to an imagined Russian collusion and are frantically searching for an investigation to fit that outcome.

If I wasn't paying taxes to watch this story unfold it would be ******* hilarious.

CHoward , 5 minutes ago link

Schiff, Cummings, Waters, et al wouldn't last 1 day under the same amount of scruitny they've put our president through these last 2 years. I pray one of these fuckers is on Nunes list for criminal referral to the DOJ.

steverino999 , 7 minutes ago link

How Trump has avoided catastrophe so far during his 25 months as President is more impressive than anything Houdini ever did. But he's got every finger and nine toes in the dike and his good fortune is nearing its inevitable conclusion. Thursday can't come fast enough.

chubbar , 20 minutes ago link

Anyone else sick of these ******* retarded assholes? At what point do they do the job they were hired to do instead of continually trying to dirty up Trump? Who gives a **** what they guy did 10 ******* years ago? He wasn't president. Everyone of these assholes needs to go, this is complete ********.

Johnny_Fing_Utah , 5 minutes ago link

They're like ******* mosquitoes.

HideTheWeenie , 4 minutes ago link

Callin' like it is ... Yeah, who isn't ... Plus, they have absolutely no viable interpretive skills with which to evaluate the information. And forget the tax returns. Unless you're very informed about the matters at hand you won't get it close, much less right. Totally stupid. And I'm a former forensic accountant at Ernst & Young.

JBLight , 21 minutes ago link

Mad Maxine: " The potential use of the U.S. financial system for illicit purposes is a very serious concern." The biggest level of projection I've seen in my life. Especially coming from her, the multi-millionaire. Don't they understand every attack can then be used against them? Full insanity.

navy62802 , 23 minutes ago link

They're scared of what is coming. This is their last-ditch effort to save the party, and it will fail miserably.

TruthAbsolute , 23 minutes ago link

So what has the democratic house actually done since wining majority? Like what do they get paid for? Maybe they need to investigate Trumps Barber after all isn't that where all those private conversation could lead to something, anything!

nmewn , 11 minutes ago link

So, Nana Pelosi has a net worth of 26.4 million dollars (now wait, this is the best part)... on a government salary ...lol. When is Adam Shits-Himself gonna call for Pelosi's tax records to be produced? I know for a fact there are some Samoan fishermen who can't wait to pour through them ;-)

[May 14, 2019] Well, Well, Well, Look Who Adam Schiff Has Family Ties To

Notable quotes:
"... I discovered just today that Adam Schiffs sister, Melissa Schiff SOROS, is married to George Soros' son! Hes a globalist pig! pic.twitter.com/icjzMYCnXM ..."
"... Last month, Schiff delivered the opening statements at a Congressional hearing where he laid out the case for alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. This reporter previously documented serious problems with Schiff's charges, which include wild conspiracy theories and heavy reliance on a questionable source. ..."
"... In largely forgotten history, Schiff's 2000 Congressional campaign against Republican incumbent Jim Rogan was openly aided by MoveOn.org. ..."
Mar 29, 2019 | truthfeednews.com

I discovered just today that Adam Schiffs sister, Melissa Schiff SOROS, is married to George Soros' son! Hes a globalist pig! pic.twitter.com/icjzMYCnXM

-- patriotwoman19 (@patriotwoman19) February 6, 2018

Per Breitbart, those family ties helped Adam Schiff score big bucks from Soros org MoveOn, to boost his political career.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was previously financially aided by the George Soros-financed MoveOn.org to win his Congressional seat.

Schiff was also awarded the Toll Fellowship, which is sponsored by the Council of State Governments, a nonprofit that monitors federal government activities and is heavily financed by Soros's Open Society Foundations.

The Open Society and Soros-funded groups have additionally supported a number of Schiff's legislative efforts.

Schiff has been helping to lead the Democrats' unsubstantiated charges of alleged collusion between President Donald Trump and Moscow.

Last month, Schiff delivered the opening statements at a Congressional hearing where he laid out the case for alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. This reporter previously documented serious problems with Schiff's charges, which include wild conspiracy theories and heavy reliance on a questionable source.

In largely forgotten history, Schiff's 2000 Congressional campaign against Republican incumbent Jim Rogan was openly aided by MoveOn.org.

On January 1, 2000, the Wall Street Journal reported on the radical group's fundraising efforts for Schiff. The Congressional seat was particularly important since Rogan had gained fame after he was selected to be one of thirteen House Managers in the 1998 impeachment case of Bill Clinton. Rogan was supportive of Clinton's impeachment and became a hero in the Republican Party.

The divorce between Adam Schiff's sister and George Soros' brother was a messy one.

From Observer (7/2015)

With this property transfer, I thee divorce. Melissa Schiff Soros , the soon-to-be ex-wife of scion Robert Soros , has paid her estranged husband $10 million for the privilege of taking possession of the townhouse they once shared at 263 West 11th Street , city records show.

The couple, who are in the midst of a messy divorce, have provided the tabloids with some delightful fodder of late, including reports that Mr. Soros, the eldest son of George and president of his father's $28 billion firm, canoodled with his 29-year-old girlfriend in front of his wife on a eight-hour-plus flight from Italy.

The marriage foundered after Mr. Soros allegedly had an affair with model/"naked artist" Meredith Ostrom (who paints by rolling around a canvas naked in covered in paint), which sparked a lengthy court battle over how to divide up the very serious marital assets the Soroses had built up over the course of the their 22-year marriage. Ms. Schiff Soros' lawyer has argued that the prenup is ambiguous. And we're guessing the transfer of funds from Schiff to Soros is merely a perfunctory lob in what is likely to be an avalanche of assets flowing Ms. Schiff's way. (When your husband of more than two decades cheats on you with a "naked artist" ).

The couple also owns a country house in Rhinebeck, N.Y., and a $9 million waterfront "cottage" in Martha's Vineyard.

Ms. Schiff Soros, a filmmaker and photographer, apparently had a strong desire to hang onto their charming West Village townhome, broken or not. The house is notable for being where Thomas Wolfe wrote the first draft of his novel Look, Homeward Angel. The couple bought the house in 1993, a year after their marriage, according to city records, though the price they paid was not recorded; the Soroses have two college-aged children who might presumably wish to return to their old bedrooms.

  1. Herb Greene Just a note: A certain "lady" from CA (I think) also was/is "good friends" with George Sr. Remember the person who was raped by the latest Supreme Court nominee? Yeah, thats THE ONE! Reply March 1, 2019
  2. Camille Gilliam All I know is what i have figured out about anyone who takes money from Soros sells his soul to the Devil..The man is Evil. What he did to his own people during WW11, is unthinkable, and now he is trying to take down the world. Reply February 18, 2018
  3. Robin Last month, Schiff delivered the opening statements at a Congressional hearing where he laid out the case for alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. This reporter previously documented serious problems with Schiff's charges, which include wild conspiracy theories and heavy reliance on a questionable source. In largely forgotten history, Schiff's 2000 Congressional campaign against Republican incumbent Jim Rogan was openly aided by MoveOn. Reply February 14, 2018
  4. Jim Phillips Whether or not the reported Soros/Schiff relationship is factual, George Soros has used his money to undermine the United States Government by buying, thus controlling, the Clinton's, Obama, and other political whores. He and those who enriched themselves from his largess should be shot with shit and hung for stinking – after spending a decade in jail. Reply February 12, 2018
  5. whoopie Political inbreeding. Give Soros a call and let him know what you think: 212-262-6300 Reply February 7, 2018
  6. BruceClapiet Time to turn Soros over to Isreal Reply February 6, 2018
    • SOCAL LADY TURN THE POS SOROS TO RUSSIA. HE IS WANTED THERE TOO. I THINK ISREAL SHOULD HAVE FIRST DIBS THOUGH. Reply August 30, 2018
  7. RL You know this isn't true right? They aren't even related.
    interesting that a website call "truthfeed" posts something so easily proven fake. Reply February 6, 2018
    • Bruce Clapiet Ok prove it last week Obama was responsible for dow a couple of short days ok pretty short and its Trump. Your leaders are a bunch of Lying Hypocrites. You folks dont know whats up or down lots in lies and filth lucre. Not to mention the greed and outright stealing from whomever they can Reply February 7, 2018
      • Jorge Why don't you Russkies mind you own damned business? Reply February 12, 2018
  8. Mark Why does the MSM fail at every turn to provide accurate information on the Democrats and their financial despotic pals around the world? For somewhat who always worked for the government how dose this guy have assets in the millions? Reply February 6, 2018
  9. JD Evans Different Melissa Schiff. The former Ms. Soros has different parents and was raised in a different town than Adam Shiff. Not related.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Schiff#Personal_life
    http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/24/style/weddings-melissa-schiff-robert-d-soros.html Reply February 6, 2018
    • Sandra Kathryn Now, you want to talk about your 1 in a million coincidences! This "different" woman has the same identical name as Schiff's sister, isn't his sister but is coincidentally married to Soros' son. WOW! Also, the 1st link to Wiki gives the hometown of the Congressman Schiff, not his sister. And the 2nd link, a wedding announcement, doesn't mention anything about her hometown. Neither one disputes the claim of this article nor substantiates your claim that they are different women. Reply February 9, 2018
  10. sam truthfeednews.com video-rnc-trolls-democrats-with-this-incredible-new-ad/ Reply February 6, 2018
  11. sam fullofshiff Reply February 6, 2018
  12. Anne Braun Well, They may all be tied together, and I don't doubt that, but for what it's worth, there's a lot more big money involved with all these filthy blood-sucking rich corrupt democrats and a few rhino republicans than just Soros money. Old Soros would run broke pretty quick if that were the case. There wouldn't be enough money for any one person involved with these big payola schemes to keep them all up in their non-ending lavish lifestyles and bulging net worth. Common sense will tell you be warned, there's more than just Soros dishing out the big bucks to these bottom dweller scum suckers! Reply February 6, 2018
    • Jorge Oh, like the Koch bros have America's best interest in their hearts? Reply February 12, 2018
  13. Trilby And yet Wikipedia lists Adam Schiff's parents as Edward and Sherrill Ann (Glovsky) Schiff and the 1992 NYT wedding announcement for Melissa Schiff lists her parents as Marlene S. Schiff of New York and the late Dr. Haskel Schiff. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/24/style/weddings-melissa-schiff-robert-d-soros.html
    Something is strange here with the schiff family. Or am I missing something? I don't doubt this article, I would doubt Wikipedia first as trying to hide something. Reply February 6, 2018

[May 13, 2019] Angry Bear Senate Democratic Jackasses and Elmer Fudd

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Looks like Robert Mueller was a dirty cop hired to confirm fairy tales of Russian collusion peddled by a Clinton wing of Dems (DemoRats) sing Trump. And he enjoyed the full support of several intelligence agencies brass (especially FBI brass; initially Stzkok was one of his investigators) ..."
"... Before that Mueller was in charge of 9/11 and Anthrax scare investigations. So he is a card caring member of the neoliberal elite which converted the USA into what can be called the "National Security State" ..."
"... In order for a person to obstruct justice, there must be some justice to obstruct. Hence, if the alleged obstructer did not commit the underlying crime being investigated, then his so-called obstruction did not impair justice; it just impaired a fruitless investigation ..."
"... the USA squabble over Parteigenosse Mueller Final Report between two factions of neoliberal elite makes the USA a joke in the eyes of the whole world ..."
"... Hopefully, a more sound part of the USA elite, which Barr represents, will put some sand into those wheels. His decision to investigate the origin of Russiagate produced almost a heart attack for Pelosi. And the fact that he decided to skip his auto-da-fé at the House adds insult to injury. Poor Pelosi almost lost her mind. ..."
"... Out of democratic challengers IMHO only Tulsi Gabbard can probably attract a sizable faction of former Trump supporters and she is the most reviled, ignored, and slandered by DNC liberals and neocons alike candidate. ..."
"... The truth is that the color revolution against Donald Trump (a soft coup if you wish) failed. Now he badly needs to win in 2020 to avoid an indictment in NY State when he leaves the Presidency. It is just a matter of survival for him. ..."
"... Neoliberal Democrats will help him by putting their weakest pro-war candidate like the aged, apparently slightly demented neocon Joe Biden. With his rabid neoliberal past, neocon foreign policy past, Ukrainian skeletons in the closet and probably participation in the Obama administration dirty and criminal attempt to derail Trump using intelligence agencies as the leverage. ..."
"... Just like is the case with Boeing the situation for neoliberal democrats does not look promising. The world is starting to crash all around them. ..."
May 04, 2019 | angrybearblog.com

likbez, May 4, 2019 8:24 pm

The F.B.I. surveillance didn't come out until after the election. Therefore it couldn't impact the election. McConnell threatened to shriek "partisan politics!" if Obama said anything publicly about the Russian issue. Obama didn't. Claims of partisan behavior? Bullshit.

What about proven attempts of entrapments and inserting spies into Trump campaign?

Mifsud and Halper's stories come to mind (Halper's story has an interesting "seduction" subplot with undercover FBI informant Azra Turk). FBI and Justice Department brass acted as dirty mafia style politicians. McCabe and Brennan are two shining examples here. Probably guided personally by Obama, who being grown in a family of CIA operatives probably know this color revolutions "kitchen" all too well.

BTW Hillary did destroy evidence from her "bathroom server" while under subpoena.

Looks like Robert Mueller was a dirty cop hired to confirm fairy tales of Russian collusion peddled by a Clinton wing of Dems (DemoRats) sing Trump. And he enjoyed the full support of several intelligence agencies brass (especially FBI brass; initially Stzkok was one of his investigators)

Before that Mueller was in charge of 9/11 and Anthrax scare investigations. So he is a card caring member of the neoliberal elite which converted the USA into what can be called the "National Security State"

Which looks like classic Mussolini Italy with two guiding principles of jurisprudence applied to political enemies:

(1) To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law (originated in 1933) .
(2) Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime (that actually comes from Stalinism period of the USSR, but the spirit is the same) .

It was actually Barr who saved Trump from obstruction of justice charge. He based his defense on the interpretation of the statuses the following (actually very elegant) way:

In order for a person to obstruct justice, there must be some justice to obstruct. Hence, if the alleged obstructer did not commit the underlying crime being investigated, then his so-called obstruction did not impair justice; it just impaired a fruitless investigation

Of course, that upset DemoRats who want President Pence to speed up the destruction of the USA and adding a couple of new wars to list the USA is involved.

Mueller was extremely sloppy and one-sided in writing his final report. Which is given taking into account his real task: to sink Trump. As Nunes aptly observed about his treatment of Mifsud as a Russian agent :

"If he is, in fact, a Russian agent, it would be one of the biggest intelligence scandals for not only the United States, but also our allies like the Italians and the Brits and others. Because if Mifsud is a Russian agent, he would know all kinds of our intelligence agents throughout the globe

likbez , May 4, 2019 10:11 pm

run75441,

Yes, of course, in the current neo-McCarthyism atmosphere merely passing the salt to a Russian guest at a dinner party makes you "an unregistered foreign agent" of Russia bent on implementing Putin's evil plans and colliding with Russian government ;-).

It looks like you are unable/unwilling to understand the logic behind my post. With all due respect, the situation is very dangerous -- when the neoliberal elite relies on lies almost exclusively as a matter of policy (look at Kamala Harris questioning Barr -- she is not stupid, she is an evil, almost taken from Orwell 1984, character), IMHO the neoliberal society is doomed. Sooner or later.

Currently, the USA squabble over Parteigenosse Mueller Final Report between two factions of neoliberal elite makes the USA a joke in the eyes of the whole world and Democrats look like Italian Fascists in 30th: a party hell-bent of dominance which does not care about laws or legitimacy one bit and can use entrapment and other dirty methods to achieve its goals.

Hopefully, a more sound part of the USA elite, which Barr represents, will put some sand into those wheels. His decision to investigate the origin of Russiagate produced almost a heart attack for Pelosi. And the fact that he decided to skip his auto-da-fé at the House adds insult to injury. Poor Pelosi almost lost her mind.

Neoliberals and neoconservatives joined ranks behind Russiagate and continue to push it because otherwise they need to be held accountable for all the related neoliberal disasters in the USA since 1980th including sliding standard of living, disappearance of "good" jobs, sky-high cost of university education and medical insurance, and the last but not least, Hillary fiasco.

Trump ran to the left of Clinton in foreign policy and used disillusionment of working close with neoliberal Democratic Party to his advantage promising jobs, end of outsourcing, end of uncontrolled immigration, and increased standard of living. He betrayed all those promises, but, still, that's why he won.

And that why the neoliberal establishment must present his election as de facto illegitimate, because otherwise they would be forced to admit that the bipartisan consensus around both financialization driven economics (casino capitalism) and imperial, war on terror based interventionism that are the foundation of the USA neoliberal elite politics since Clinton has been a disaster for most ordinary Americans -- of all political persuasions.

Out of democratic challengers IMHO only Tulsi Gabbard can probably attract a sizable faction of former Trump supporters and she is the most reviled, ignored, and slandered by DNC liberals and neocons alike candidate.

The truth is that the color revolution against Donald Trump (a soft coup if you wish) failed. Now he badly needs to win in 2020 to avoid an indictment in NY State when he leaves the Presidency. It is just a matter of survival for him.

Neoliberal Democrats will help him by putting their weakest pro-war candidate like the aged, apparently slightly demented neocon Joe Biden. With his rabid neoliberal past, neocon foreign policy past, Ukrainian skeletons in the closet and probably participation in the Obama administration dirty and criminal attempt to derail Trump using intelligence agencies as the leverage.

Just like is the case with Boeing the situation for neoliberal democrats does not look promising. The world is starting to crash all around them.

[May 13, 2019] In defense of Maria Butina Spectator USA by Michael Tracey

Highly recommended!
This is probably the best article available on the Web that describes the case objectively.
Notable quotes:
"... It's true that Butina attended conferences, met prominent political figures, and hashed out plans to exert influence in service of pursuing a policy agenda. But in a different context, all these activities might instead be viewed as 'networking' – a practice so commonplace in Washington that you're considered an oddball if you don't engage in it. ..."
"... Absent the Russian aspect, Butina's type is wholly recognizable: an overly-ambitious young person galavanting around the Capitol with dreams of establishing some quasi-ideological enterprise, hoping it could eventually yield comfortable sinecures at think tanks, lobbying firms, advocacy organizations, or some combination thereof – possibly with a brief detour in government service if things pan out. Her particular niche, trying to link up gun rights activism in the United States and Russia (where the issue is practically non-existent), was especially ripe for someone who styles herself a political 'entrepreneur,' or whatever. ..."
"... She did appear to have some connections to Russian state officials, or rather, one specific official: the former deputy director at the Russian central bank. But then again, innumerable people in Washington have all sorts of contacts with various foreign officials. ..."
"... In her 2015 ' proposal ' unearthed by law enforcement, Butina correctly observed that the Republican party is 'traditionally associated with negative and aggressive foreign policy, particularly with regards to Russia,' and indicated her belief that opening informal channels of communication between the US conservative movement and sympathetic Russian figures could mitigate the harms of a potential incoming GOP administration. ..."
"... After all, the previous GOP nominee at that point, Mitt Romney, was well-known for declaring Russia to be America's 'number one geopolitical foe,' and anti-Russia hawkishness was still considered the default position in the party. In another world, the kind of amateur, self-starting diplomacy she envisioned would be lauded as a respectable, if haphazard, means of achieving small-scale détente. ..."
"... Like most Russia stories of recent vintage, the Butina one followed a familiar trajectory. An initial torrent of screaming, salacious headlines, which at first glance seem to portend an earth-shattering 'bombshell,' but upon closer inspection need to be downplayed, heavily qualified, or even retracted. 'Maria Butina, Suspected Secret Agent, Used Sex in Covert Plan, Prosecutors Say,' proclaimed the initial New York Times ..."
"... And to top it all off, her admission of guilt was acquired under the duress of solitary confinement , which Butina has now been subjected to for several months. Solitary confinement is widely denounced as torture, but few seem troubled by that anymore, now that the depravity of the tactic has assisted in extracting a guilty plea from this suspicious foreign woman. It's all exceptionally egregious, not least for Butina herself, who has been tarred irreparably by yet another unscrupulous media and prosecutorial campaign – the kind of thing that has seemed all too common throughout this wider Russian 'interference' frenzy. ..."
Dec 21, 2018 | spectator.us

It seems entirely plausible that her biggest crime was networking

To much fanfare and glee last week, federal prosecutors announced a plea deal had been secured for Maria Butina, the mystery woman who populated DC conservative circles for a short period around the 2016 election. The popular interpretation of her travails, circulated with gusto in the press since her arrest in July, was that Butina – an attractive young woman, and, most damningly, a Russian national – had used her sexual prowess to trick gullible middle-aged Republican men into granting her access. She did this, or so the story went, at the behest of her menacing benefactors as part of the sprawling Kremlin campaign to 'interfere' in American politics.

It's true that Butina attended conferences, met prominent political figures, and hashed out plans to exert influence in service of pursuing a policy agenda. But in a different context, all these activities might instead be viewed as 'networking' – a practice so commonplace in Washington that you're considered an oddball if you don't engage in it.

Absent the Russian aspect, Butina's type is wholly recognizable: an overly-ambitious young person galavanting around the Capitol with dreams of establishing some quasi-ideological enterprise, hoping it could eventually yield comfortable sinecures at think tanks, lobbying firms, advocacy organizations, or some combination thereof – possibly with a brief detour in government service if things pan out. Her particular niche, trying to link up gun rights activism in the United States and Russia (where the issue is practically non-existent), was especially ripe for someone who styles herself a political 'entrepreneur,' or whatever.

She did appear to have some connections to Russian state officials, or rather, one specific official: the former deputy director at the Russian central bank. But then again, innumerable people in Washington have all sorts of contacts with various foreign officials. They often use these connections (or the appearance thereof) to establish leverage with whoever it is they're trying to regale on a given evening. And strictures governing when it's required to formally register their activities are so hazy and infrequently enforced that it wouldn't be surprising if Butina, a slightly oblivious graduate student, was legitimately unaware that what she was doing could have been construed as violating federal law. Never mind whether it may have been perceived after the fact to be part of some mammoth conspiracy to infiltrate the US political system. Notably, her great plan to forge connections within the GOP, uncovered by diligent prosecutors suddenly interested in such matters, was hatched all the way back in March 2015 – well before Trump announced his presidential campaign, and long before having 'Russian contacts' was seen as inherently sinister.

In her 2015 ' proposal ' unearthed by law enforcement, Butina correctly observed that the Republican party is 'traditionally associated with negative and aggressive foreign policy, particularly with regards to Russia,' and indicated her belief that opening informal channels of communication between the US conservative movement and sympathetic Russian figures could mitigate the harms of a potential incoming GOP administration.

After all, the previous GOP nominee at that point, Mitt Romney, was well-known for declaring Russia to be America's 'number one geopolitical foe,' and anti-Russia hawkishness was still considered the default position in the party. In another world, the kind of amateur, self-starting diplomacy she envisioned would be lauded as a respectable, if haphazard, means of achieving small-scale détente. Instead today it's cast in the most ominous possible light, as evidence of some grand 'influence operation,' with no mind paid to the actual purpose of the supposed 'influence' – reducing tensions between two nuclear-armed powers, who in the past have brought each other to the brink of existential annihilation.

None of this is to say that Butina was operating from a place of altruistic purity, or even that the manner in which she pursued her goals was particularly sanguine. It's simply to say that her opportunistic careerism is fully within the mainstream in Washington, and in fact encouraged at the various 'leadership' seminars, internship how-to sessions, and similar functions that are so trivially common it's easy to imagine her having attended several. All that's really notable about Butina is that she happened to be Russian, and being Russian in the current political atmosphere is automatically viewed as interchangeable with surreptitious, conspiratorial spycraft, especially when woven into the larger narrative about 'interference' that has dominated American politics for more than two years.

Though the initial explosion of media frenzy around her case over the summer had Butina depicted as a ' spy ,' in fact nothing that Butina is alleged to have done at all resembles 'spycraft' in the sense that term is popularly understood. There was nothing remotely clandestine about her activities, considering she documented them all comprehensively on social media (often to the point of cringe-inducing excess). She took part in public events, apparently without appearing in disguise, and even made her presence known by posing a question to Donald Trump himself at a conference in Las Vegas. If she was trying to fly below the radar in a bid to establish stealth influence channels, she went about it in a curiously above-board fashion. And as the monotonous Instagram chronicling demonstrates, she followed all the established protocols insofar as contemporary 'brand-building' exercises go. Seeking out selfie photos with notable Republican politicians, including Scott Walker and Rick Santorum , would not have been a wise way to conceal her identity in pursuit of espionage. But thanks to resurgent Trump-era prosecutorial zeal, this now makes her some sort of subterfuge practitioner operating under the sinister auspices of the Russian federation. If you know enough political hangers-on, you know the type who make it their life mission to take photos with as many prominent politicians as possible. It's banal and annoying, but again: not abnormal.

Prosecutors ultimately charged her not as a spy as an unregistered 'agent,' which was a bit of a downer for those banking on her to be the pivotal figure in a wider criminal scheme. Michael Isikoff, co-author of the book Russian Roulette , bemoaned in a recent interview that 'the government doesn't have the evidence to back up what a lot of us expected' regarding Butina's presumed centrality in some larger plot. In their book, Isikoff and co-author David Corn speculate that Butina could have been the facilitator of a giant money laundering operation to funnel Russian money through the National Rifle Association and help elect Trump. But sadly for them, it didn't pan out. Prosecutors 'would not have let her plead to a relatively minor charge' if the operation he and Corn prophesied was real, Isikoff conceded.

Like most Russia stories of recent vintage, the Butina one followed a familiar trajectory. An initial torrent of screaming, salacious headlines, which at first glance seem to portend an earth-shattering 'bombshell,' but upon closer inspection need to be downplayed, heavily qualified, or even retracted. 'Maria Butina, Suspected Secret Agent, Used Sex in Covert Plan, Prosecutors Say,' proclaimed the initial New York Times news-blast after her arrest. 'Prosecutors Say' would be the key clause there, because prosecutors later admitted they had no basis for alleging that Butina 'used sex' in any such manner.

And that, ultimately, is the most sordid and gross aspect of all this: the way she was depicted as a scurrilous, transactional seductress. Though prosecutors later withdrew the charge, it still litters the internet, and probably will for the rest of time – permanently sullying her reputation. The depiction drew on sleazy stereotypes of young Russian women, or in other words, her ethnic heritage, and there's absolutely no doubt that in any other context the smear-job would have been (rightly) denounced as the pathetic sexist tripe it so clearly was. Think of it: this ambitious young woman, seeking to further her influence and connections in Washington through a variety of tactics that would be otherwise known as 'networking' – was depicted as a succubus, on the basis of nothing but journalists' and prosecutors' creepy fantasies.

Scanning social media in the wake of the guilty plea, you would think the worst assumptions about her prostitute-like activities had been confirmed, and she had indeed admitted 'using sex' to seduce older men into giving her political favors. But in fact, the plea agreement contains no such admission. There is still absolutely no evidence that she 'used' her boyfriend Paul Erickson in any scandalous transactional sense, unless we're operating on the crude assumption that a good-looking young woman could have no authentic attraction to this person who, on her own agency, she had taken as a romantic partner. Lots of people feel entitled to opine on the nature of her relationship, but once again they're just stereotyping in ways they would certainly condemn in different contexts. Regardless, even if part of her 'attraction' to Erickson was for his professional connections so what? That's hardly unusual, and as a consenting adult she's allowed to make whatever decisions she wishes in this area. Instead, the morality police rendered swift judgment on her, without knowing a thing about her interior mental state. It's the kind of gross, demeaning finger-wagging that would be (rightly) denounced in almost any other circumstance. But because she is a nefarious Russian, media scolds felt free to rain down opprobrium that is, in a very classical sense, sexist. No rousing feminist defenses of her have seemed to be forthcoming.

And to top it all off, her admission of guilt was acquired under the duress of solitary confinement , which Butina has now been subjected to for several months. Solitary confinement is widely denounced as torture, but few seem troubled by that anymore, now that the depravity of the tactic has assisted in extracting a guilty plea from this suspicious foreign woman. It's all exceptionally egregious, not least for Butina herself, who has been tarred irreparably by yet another unscrupulous media and prosecutorial campaign – the kind of thing that has seemed all too common throughout this wider Russian 'interference' frenzy.

[May 13, 2019] US Foreign Policy as Bellicose as Ever by Serge Halimi

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Historians will study this period when there was a convergence in the objectives of the US intelligence agencies, the leaders of the Hillary Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, the majority of Republican politicians and the anti-Trump media. That common objective was stopping any entente between Moscow and Washington. ..."
"... Each group had its own motive. The intelligence community and elements in the Pentagon feared a rapprochement between Trump and Putin would deprive them of a 'presentable' enemy once ISIS's military power was destroyed. The Clinton camp was keen to ascribe an unexpected defeat to a cause other than the candidate and her inept campaign; Moscow's alleged hacking of Democratic Party emails fitted the bill. And the neocons, who 'promoted the Iraq war, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable' ( 8 ), hated Trump's neo-isolationist instincts. ..."
"... This is why the Democratic Party data hack, which the US intelligence services allege is the work of the Russians, obsesses the party, and the press. It strikes two targets: delegitimising Trump's election and stopping his promotion of a thaw with Russia. Has Washington's aggrieved reaction to a foreign power's interference in a state's domestic affairs, and its elections, struck no one as odd? Why do just a handful of people point out that, not long ago, Angela Merkel's phone was tapped not by the Kremlin but by the Obama administration? ..."
"... Now the Times is in the vanguard of those preparing psychologically for conflict with Russia. There is almost no remaining resistance to its line. On the right, as the Wall Street Journal called for the US to arm Ukraine on 3 August, Vice-President Mike Pence spoke on a visit to Estonia about 'the spectre of [Russian] aggression', encouraged Georgia to join NATO, and paid tribute to Montenegro, NATO's newest member. ..."
"... At this stage, it doesn't matter any more what Trump thinks. He is no longer able to get his way on the issue. Moscow has noted this and is drawing its own conclusions. ..."
May 10, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

... ... ...

Trump was after a good deal from Russia. A new partnership would have reversed deteriorating relations between the powers by encouraging their alliance against ISIS and recognising the importance of Ukraine to Russia's security. Current US paranoia about everything Kremlin-related has encouraged amnesia about what President Barack Obama said in 2016, after the annexation of the Crimea and Russia's direct intervention in Syria. He too put the danger posed by President Vladimir Putin into perspective: the interventions in Ukraine and the Middle East were, Obama said, improvised 'in response to a client state that was about to slip out of his grasp' ( 5 ).

Obama went on: 'The Russians can't change us or significantly weaken us. They are a smaller country, they are a weaker country, their economy doesn't produce anything that anybody wants to buy, except oil and gas and arms.' What he feared most about Putin was the sympathy he inspired in Trump and his supporters: '37% of Republican voters approve of Putin, the former head of the KGB. Ronald Reagan would roll over in his grave' ( 6 ).

By January 2017, Reagan's eternal rest was no longer threatened. 'Presidents come and go but the policy never changes,' Putin concluded ( 7 ). Historians will study this period when there was a convergence in the objectives of the US intelligence agencies, the leaders of the Hillary Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, the majority of Republican politicians and the anti-Trump media. That common objective was stopping any entente between Moscow and Washington.

Each group had its own motive. The intelligence community and elements in the Pentagon feared a rapprochement between Trump and Putin would deprive them of a 'presentable' enemy once ISIS's military power was destroyed. The Clinton camp was keen to ascribe an unexpected defeat to a cause other than the candidate and her inept campaign; Moscow's alleged hacking of Democratic Party emails fitted the bill. And the neocons, who 'promoted the Iraq war, detest Putin and consider Israel's security non-negotiable' ( 8 ), hated Trump's neo-isolationist instincts.

The media, especially the New York Times and Washington Post, eagerly sought a new Watergate scandal and knew their middle-class, urban, educated readers loathe Trump for his vulgarity, affection for the far right, violence and lack of culture ( 9 ). So they were searching for any information or rumour that could cause his removal or force a resignation. As in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, everyone had his particular motive for striking the same victim.

The intrigue developed quickly as these four areas have fairly porous boundaries. The understanding between Republican hawks such as John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the military-industrial complex was a given. The architects of recent US imperial adventures, especially Iraq, had not enjoyed the 2016 campaign or Trump's jibes about their expertise. During the campaign, some 50 intellectuals and officials announced that, despite being Republicans, they would not support Trump because he 'would put at risk our country's national security and wellbeing.' Some went so far as to vote for Clinton ( 10 ).

Ambitions of a 'deep state'?

The press feared that Trump's incompetence would threaten the US-dominated international order. It had no problem with military crusades, especially when emblazoned with grand humanitarian, internationalist or progressive principles. According to the press criteria, Putin and his predilection for rightwing nationalists were obvious culprits. But so were Saudi Arabia or Israel, though that did not prevent the Saudis being able to count on the ferociously anti-Russian Wall Street Journal, or Israel enjoying the support of almost all US media, despite having a far-right element in its government.

Just over a week before Trump took office, journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Edward Snowden story that revealed the mass surveillance programmes run by the National Security Agency, warned of the direction of travel. He observed that the US media had become the intelligence services' 'most valuable instrument, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials.' This at a time when 'Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing -- eager -- to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviours might be' ( 11 ).

The anti-Russian coalition hadn't then achieved all its objectives, but Greenwald already discerned the ambitions of a 'deep state'. 'There really is, at this point,' he said 'obvious open warfare between this unelected but very powerful faction that resides in Washington and sees presidents come and go, on the one hand, and the person that the American democracy elected to be the president on the other.' One suspicion, fed by the intelligence services, galvanised all Trump's enemies: Moscow had compromising secrets about Trump -- financial, electoral, sexual -- capable of paralysing him should a crisis between the two countries occur ( 12 ).

Covert opposition to Trump

The suspicion of such a murky understanding, summed up by the pro-Clinton economist Paul Krugman as a 'Trump-Putin ticket', has transformed the anti-Russian activity into a domestic political weapon against a president increasingly hated outside the ultraconservative bloc. It is no longer unusual to hear leftwing activists turn FBI or CIA apologists, since these agencies became a home for a covert opposition to Trump and the source of many leaks.

This is why the Democratic Party data hack, which the US intelligence services allege is the work of the Russians, obsesses the party, and the press. It strikes two targets: delegitimising Trump's election and stopping his promotion of a thaw with Russia. Has Washington's aggrieved reaction to a foreign power's interference in a state's domestic affairs, and its elections, struck no one as odd? Why do just a handful of people point out that, not long ago, Angela Merkel's phone was tapped not by the Kremlin but by the Obama administration?

The silence was once broken when the Republican representative for North Carolina, Tom Tillis, questioned former CIA director James Clapper in January: 'The United States has been involved in one way or another in 81 different elections since World War II. That doesn't include coups or the regime changes, some tangible evidence where we have tried to affect an outcome to our purpose. Russia has done it some 36 times.' This perspective rarely disturbs the New York Times 's fulminations against Moscow's trickery.

The Times also failed to inform younger readers that Russia's president Boris Yeltsin, who picked Putin as his successor in 1999, had been re-elected in 1996, though seriously ill and often drunk, in a fraudulent election conducted with the assistance of US advisers and the overt support of President Bill Clinton. The Times hailed the result as 'a victory for Russian democracy' and declared that 'the forces of democracy and reform won a vital but not definitive victory in Russia yesterday For the first time in history, a free Russia has freely chosen its leader.'

Now the Times is in the vanguard of those preparing psychologically for conflict with Russia. There is almost no remaining resistance to its line. On the right, as the Wall Street Journal called for the US to arm Ukraine on 3 August, Vice-President Mike Pence spoke on a visit to Estonia about 'the spectre of [Russian] aggression', encouraged Georgia to join NATO, and paid tribute to Montenegro, NATO's newest member.

No longer getting his way

But the Times, far from worrying about these provocative gestures coinciding with heightened tensions between great powers (trade sanctions against Russia, Moscow's expulsion of US diplomats), poured oil on the fire. On 2 August it praised the reaffirmation of 'America's commitment to defend democratic nations against those countries that would undermine them' and regretted that Mike Pence's views 'aren't as eagerly embraced and celebrated by the man he works for back in the White House.'

At this stage, it doesn't matter any more what Trump thinks. He is no longer able to get his way on the issue. Moscow has noted this and is drawing its own conclusions.

... ... ...

[May 13, 2019] Barr Appoints Durham To Investigate FBI-DOJ Spying On Trump

May 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

847328_3527 , 27 minutes ago link

Feinstein is looking for Durham's high school yearbook as we speak....

SenatorBlutarsky , 10 minutes ago link

+1!

[May 13, 2019] Would it be Angelina Jolie or someone more like Jennifer Lawrence playing Maria Butina when it s made into a Hollywood movie?

May 13, 2019 | dakotafreepress.com
jerry 2018-07-19 at 12:13

Old Soviet proves that Americans are dumber than an box of rocks and the block headed Russians know that all to well. Thank God for immigrants or we would still be bleeding to death without plasma.

Here ya go Comrade Old Soviet on who dismissed the law suit. "

A federal judge in Washington has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that Hillary Clinton's lax security surrounding her emails led to the deaths of two of the Americans killed in the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

In a ruling Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson tossed out the wrongful death claims as well as allegations that Clinton essentially slandered the parents of the deceased by contradicting accounts the parents gave of events related to their children's deaths."

See, there are other magistrates and they rule on different cases, not so weird.

Jenny 2018-07-19 at 12:32
Let's see, Would it be Angelina Jolie or someone more like Jennifer Lawrence playing Maria Butina when it's made into a Hollywood movie?
Cory Allen Heidelberger 2018-07-19 at 13:04
As Jerry says, there's nothing strange about judges in the DC District hearing cases brought in the DC district.

But don't worry, OS. The case is being moved from Judge Robinson to Judge Tanya Chutkan's courtroom for next week's hearing. Judge Chutkan and her husband are both Obama appointees . Chutkan is the judge who has ruled in favor of undocumented immigrants' abortion rights .

I know, mean of me to trigger OS like that.

Cory Allen Heidelberger 2018-07-19 at 13:10
Jenny, I cast Jennifer Lawrence or maybe Sophie Turner or Danielle Panabaker or Dakota Fanning .

If Paul Erickson cops a plea and stays out of prison, we can cast him in a cameo as McCarthy.

Roger Cornelius 2018-07-19 at 13:17
Just as Joe McCarthy was filled with conspiracy theories and paranoia Sarge continues Joe's scare tactics.
It is not that unusual for the DOJ to keep the same judge in high profile cases. The DOJ does like to keep similar cases grouped and to have judges that are familiar with cases. Remember that the republican DOJ apparently supported the current judge when they could have dismissed her.
mike from iowa 2018-07-19 at 13:35
Can treasonous wingnuts get any more Russian or pathetic- https://www.rawstory.com/2018/07/adam-schiff-dems-wanted-russian-agent-maria-butina-testify-gopers-refused-tarnish-nra/
OldSarg 2018-07-19 at 14:46
Cory, I'm not triggered so it's all ok. The girl was a "spy". The whole thing about spies is you aren't supposed to know they are spies. They do it in secret. Kind of like the spies Obama placed in the RNC to spy on Trump but those spies were working for our government to spy on political opposition. Everyone wants to act all offended that the ruskies spied on us but want to ignore it when our government is weaponized and used to spy on our own citizens.

We call those people hypocrites. Hypocrites are people who pretend to have virtues, moral or principles that they do not actually have. Kind of like people that get all upset because a foreign country spies on us yet we accept our own country spying on us or someone to says they are fighting for racial equality but in fact work to divide people on race by promoting difference between races.. I guess those are the folks that really trigger me, kind of like most of your lemmings.

OldSarg 2018-07-19 at 16:01
Roger, do you think I am wrong and "if" you honestly do look these things up and then tell me I am lying. . .

1) In the National News: The FBI was 'Granted FISA Warrant' to spy on the Trump Camp.
2) The New York Times reported Obama during his final days expanded the power of the NSA to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government's 16 other intelligence agencies BEFORE applying privacy protections.
3) The New York Times reported "Wiretapped Data Used In Inquiry of Trump Aides"
4) The Washington Post reported that the month prior to Trump taking office the Obama administration listened to Flynn's phone calls.
5) The FBI told us they had a spy within the Trump Campaign to "protect Trump" but they never told Trump?
6) Clapper said the FBI spying on Trump was a "good thing".

Now before you go make this about dems vs repubs I think this is a government vs the people. We have given our spy agencies too much power. Remember when they told you they were only gathering meta-data from your calls? Buddy, they are getting it all and keeping it until they feel they need it. Yes, even the comments here are being digitally recorded by our government every day, every hour, minute and second, where they came from and who they are going to and who is reading them. They have it all. . . and you trust them. . .

mike from iowa 2018-07-19 at 16:32
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/obama-expanding-nsa-powers/513041/

Read this article to find out why Obama did this. He didn't trust the incoming bogus potus and he was right on.

foul tip

mike from iowa 2018-07-19 at 16:57
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/may/23/donald-trump/did-ex-intelligence-chief-clapper-say-fbi-spied-tr/

Strike 2, Sport

bearcreekbat 2018-07-19 at 17:28
OS hyperventilates about alleged USA officials misconduct, yet says absolutely nothing negative or critical about the alleged Russian misconduct.

Assuming arguendo USA officials have acted unlawfully in the past (although OS has not identied which US laws he thinks USA officials have violated), does OS assert that such hypothetical misbehavior gives license to Russian operatives to commit violations of US law without consequences? In my experience, bad conduct by a third party, USA government official or anyone else, has never provided a legal defense for any defendant to engage in bad conduct.

What would be the legal rational to use the misbehavior of others to insulate Russian defendants from prosecution for their crimes OS?

Roger Cornelius 2018-07-19 at 17:49
First of all, OS says the Russian meddling isn't a Dem/Rep thing when clearly it is, isn't partisan we should be hearing more republicans speaking out about the Russian spying and meddling.

Since the Russian meddling story first broke and republicans constantly doing their Hillary song and dance to defend Trump and Russian actions, OS and others still think all the issues he listed is going to somehow exonerate Trump from charges of treason, etc.
Forget about Hillary, if she is mentioned in Trump's impeachment it'll only be a footnote.

[May 13, 2019] Barr Appoints Durham To Investigate FBI-DOJ Spying On Trump

May 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

847328_3527 , 27 minutes ago link

Feinstein is looking for Durham's high school yearbook as we speak....

SenatorBlutarsky , 10 minutes ago link

+1!

[May 13, 2019] Neo-McCarthyism Engulfs America by Philip Giraldi

Aug 10, 2018 | www.lewrockwell.com
The United States Department of Justice would apparently have you believe that the Kremlin sought to subvert the five-million-member strong National Rifle Association (NRA) by having two Russian citizens take out life memberships in the organization with the intention of corrupting it and turning it into a mouthpiece for President Vladimir Putin. Both of the Russians – Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin – have, by the way, long well documented histories as advocates for gun ownership and were founders of Right to Bear Arms, which is not an intelligence front organization of some kind and is rather a genuine lobbying group with an active membership and agenda. Contrary to what has been reported in the mainstream media, Russians can own guns but the licensing and registration procedures are long and complicated, which Right to Bear Arms, modeling itself on the NRA, is seeking to change.

Maria Butina, a graduate student at American University, is now in solitary confinement in a federal prison, having been charged with collusion with Torshin and failure to register as an agent of the Russian Federation. It is unusual to arrest and confine someone who has failed to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, but she has not been granted bail because, as a Russian citizen, she is considered to be a "flight risk," likely to try to flee the US and return home. It is to be presumed that she is being pressured to identify others involved in her alleged scheme to overthrow American democracy through NRA membership.

The Law Frederic Bastiat Best Price: $3.00 Buy New $2.10 (as of 02:15 EDT - Details )

Indeed, in any event, it would be difficult to imagine why anyone would consider the NRA to be a legitimate intelligence target. It only flexes its admitted powerful legislative muscles over issues relating to gun ownership, not regarding policy on Russia. In short, Butina and by extension Torshin appear to have done nothing wrong. Both are energetic advocates for their country and guns rights, which they appear to believe in, and Butina's aggressive networking has broken no law except not registering, which in itself assumes that she is a Russian government agent, something that has not been demonstrated. To put the shoe on the other foot, will every American who now travels to Russia and engages in political conversations with local people be suspected of acting as an agent of the US government? Once you open the door, it swings both ways.

One might dismiss the entire Affair Butina as little more than a reflection of the anti-Russia hysteria that has been sweeping the United States since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election, but that would be unfair to those remaining honest FBI agents who may have investigated Butina and Torshin and come up with what they believed to be a plausible case for an indictment. There were possibly suspicious money transfers as well as email intercepts that might be interpreted as incriminating.

But two important elements are clearly missing. The first is motive. Did the Kremlin seriously believe that it could get anything substantial out of having a gun totin' attractive young Russian woman as a life member in the NRA? What did the presumed puppet masters in Moscow expect to obtain apart from the sorts of group photos including Butina that one gets while posing with politicians at the annual NRA convention? Sure, the photo might even evolve into a cup of coffee together, but what is the end game?

Human Action: The Scho... Ludwig von Mises Best Price: $4.81 Buy New $8.75 (as of 10:40 EDT - Details ) Second is the lack of any of the hallmarks of an intelligence operation, which is referred to in the business as tradecraft. Spies meet secretly or at least outside the public eye with prospective agents whereas Maria operated completely in the open and she made no effort to conceal her love for her country and her desire that Washington and Moscow normalize relations. Spies also communicate securely, which means that they use encrypted systems or various cut-outs, i.e. mis-directions, when maintaining contact with those who are running them. Again, Maria did none of that, which is why the FBI has her emails. Also spies work under what is referred to as an "operating directive" in CIA-speak where they have very specific information that they seek to obtain from their contacts. There is no indication that Maria Butina in any way sought classified information or intelligence that would relate either to the security of the United States or to America's political system. And finally, Maria made no attempt to recruit anyone and turn them into an actual controlled Russian agent, which is what spies eventually seek to do.

It has come down to this: if you are a Russian and you are caught talking to anyone in any way influential, there is potentially hell to pay because the FBI will be watching you. You are automatically assumed to be part of a conspiracy. Once "evidence" is collected, you will be indicted and sent to prison, mostly to send a message to Moscow. It is the ultimate irony that how the old Soviet Union's judiciary used to function is now becoming standing operating procedure in the United States.

[May 13, 2019] Russian Maria Butina gets 18 months for being Kremlin agent by ASHRAF KHALIL and CHAD DAY

Apr 26, 2019 | apnews.com
In a quivering voice, Maria Butina begged for leniency Friday as she awaited sentencing on charges of being a secret agent for Russia. She cast herself as an innocent caught up in a massive geopolitical power game.

But a federal judge sentenced her to 18 months in prison followed by deportation. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan sided with prosecutors, who said the 30-year-old Russian deliberately obscured her true purposes while developing backdoor contacts inside the American conservative movement to advance the interests of Russia.

The sentence can be appealed and Butina will get credit for her time in jail since her high-profile arrest in July 2018. The case garnered intense media coverage amid speculation over the extent of Russian interference in American politics.

Butina admitted last year to covertly gathering intelligence on the National Rifle Association and other groups at the direction of a former Russian lawmaker. Her guilty plea to a single charge of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent came as part of a deal with prosecutors.

At Friday's sentencing hearing, Butina appealed to Chutkan to release her with nine months of time served.

"My reputation is ruined, both here in the United States and abroad," she said, asking for "a chance to go home and restart my life."

Chutkan, however, fully followed the government's recommendation and sentenced Butina to an additional nine months, before being deported. The judge said the sentence was meant "to reflect the seriousness of (Butina's actions) and to promote deterrence."

Butina's lawyers decried the judgment as overly harsh; they had characterized Butina as a naive but ambitious international affairs student who didn't realize her actions required her to register as an agent of a foreign government.

"I feel terrible for Maria's family...I wish we could have done more to get her out sooner," said attorney Robert Driscoll. "I do not believe an additional nine months in jail serves any purpose."

A Russian Foreign Ministry statement claimed that Butina was being punished, "just for being a Russian citizen. She became a victim of tough rivalry between various US political forces and an unbridled anti-Russian campaign in the spirit of McCarthyism."

Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, said the case was "political and fabricated from air poisoned with Russophobia."

"It is necessary to continue the fight, to file an appeal and to do everything in our power for Maria Butina to return to Russia as soon as possible," Slutsky was quoted as saying by state news agency Tass.

According to her plea agreement, Butina worked with former Russian lawmaker Alexander Torshin to use their contacts in the NRA to pursue back channels to American conservatives during the 2016 presidential campaign. She did not report her activities to the U.S. government as required by law .

[May 13, 2019] 'Politically motivated' Butina verdict a 'shameful stain' on US justice Russian Foreign Ministry -- RT World News

May 13, 2019 | www.rt.com

The Russian Foreign Ministry called the 18-month prison sentence for student Maria Butina a "politically motivated" decision "in the spirit of McCarthyism," adding that her only crime was being a Russian citizen in the US. "From the moment of her arrest we have pointed out that the accusations against her of attempting to influence internal American political processes were completely contrived and fabricated, " the ministry said in a statement on Friday. " Her confession, which was coerced through harsh imprisonment conditions and threats of a lengthy sentence, changes nothing."

Butina was sentenced on Friday to 18 months in prison and deportation from the US by a federal judge in Washington, DC. She was arrested by the FBI in June last year and charged with being an unregistered foreign agent. The nine months she has already spent in jail – much of it in solitary confinement – will count towards her sentence.

Also on rt.com 'Politically motivated' Butina verdict a 'shameful stain' on US justice – Russian Foreign Ministry

The American University graduate who sought to make connections with the National Rifle Association ended up pleading guilty in December to failing to register as an agent of the Russian government. Moscow has repeatedly said it had nothing to do with Butina, who prior to her studies in the US campaigned for American-style gun laws in Russia.

" Our compatriot's only crime was being a citizen of Russia. She became a victim of a bitter battle between political forces inside the US, and an unbridled anti-Russian campaign in the spirit of McCarthyism," the Foreign Ministry said on Friday, describing Butina's sentence as a "shameful stain on the American judicial system " that put itself in the service of a blatantly political agenda.

Butina's arrest came at the height of 'Russiagate' hysteria, as special counsel Robert Mueller investigated claims by Democrats that President Donald Trump and his campaign "colluded" with Russia during the 2016 US presidential election. Mueller's report, made public last week, found no collusion, but claimed – without evidence – that Russia did interfere in the election. Butina was not mentioned anywhere in its 448 pages .

Breathless media reports about Butina's indictment smeared her as a spy who traded sex for influence in order to embed herself into the US political establishment. That allegation persisted in the media even after prosecutors quietly dropped it and apologized for misreading one of her text messages.

[May 13, 2019] How US and Foreign Intel Agencies Interfered in a US Election by Larry C. Johnson

Notable quotes:
"... The entire Mueller investigation is a smoke screen for the crimes of a cabal of people (of which Clinton, Biden and even possibly Obama by association are a part) that engaged in "pay to play" over many, many years. The Mueller report could have been completed in 6 months, instead it took 22 months and was released, after Barr's appointment and AFTER the mid-terms, when its conclusions would have supported the Republican vote. This is not a coincidence, the report is a political document that walked the tightrope between DNC interests and those of "fair play" to the POTUS. ..."
May 07, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Deniz, May 10, 2019 at 09:13

I highly recommend this interview by former Intel Officer Tony Shaffer

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

Bob Van Noy, May 10, 2019 at 08:11

This discussion wouldn't be complete without a Craig Murray link and his commentary is as excellent as it is here.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/05/the-real-muellergate-scandal/

Anon, May 10, 2019 at 05:52

Papadopoulos was first targeted when he worked for the Carson campaign. The spying was obviously much broader. Bongino is killing it on his podcast.

Paul Surovell, May 10, 2019 at 01:08

Two corrections:

Carter Page in his testimony before the House Intelligence committee said he had never met Igor Sechin. He said that he saw Dmitry Peskov in an RT studio and "nodded" at him, but never spoke or otherwise interacted with him.

Regula, May 9, 2019 at 21:09

Great reporting, thank you.

There is one facet in this entire dirty scheme that gets overlooked: a number of the actions by the Dems and the FBI served for the exclusive purpose to force Trump to fire his best campaign managers and secretary of defense and other persons in his campaign and presidency:

The Dems were afraid Trump would win with Manafort as his campaign manager, and acted to force Trump to fire him just as earlier, one of his managers who turned out to be effective, was besmeared by a reporter of having forced her to fall when she clearly didn't, just to besmear Trump as being a mysogenist.

The same was done to Flynn, who was in favor of good relations with Russia. Flynn really didn't do anything wrong other than to endanger the Dem's agenda to topple Putin. In the same vein, Bannon and two other of the more populist advisors who wanted a more peaceful conduct for the US, got eliminated by the earlier chief of staff Kelly until he got fired himself.

The same repeated with AG Barr, who is clearly a threat to the entire Dem cabal, but hasn't been successfully far despite shameful congressional inquiries during Barr's testimony.

Looked at in tandem with the Russiagate accusations and Mueller's investigations, it is obvious that this entire web of lies and repeated attempts at entrapment of Trump employees was constructed by Clinton in complicity with not just the FBI and CIA, but with the DNC and the entire deep state, to either oust, impeach or incarcerate Trump and, if that didn't work, to force him and corner him into continuing Obama/Bush's agenda against Russia.

Sadly, Trump fell for it and the US policies which he pursues are the same now as always: hegemony with regime change wars to keep the MIC in control of the entire US economy.

O Society, May 8, 2019 at 18:48

Excellent interview here with Aaron Mate and his father Gabor on the psychology of the mass hallucination we call Russiagate. Same as Consortium News, Aaron was out in front of the propaganda snow machine calling the hoax like it is from its inception.

http://opensociet.org/2019/05/08/america-in-denial-aaron-and-gabor-mate-on-the-psychology-of-russiagate/

Eileen Kuch, May 8, 2019 at 15:47

The truth about American and foreign Intelligence agencies did, indeed, interfere in both the 2016 Presidential election and the Mid-term Congressional elections just last November. Russia's Intelligence agencies never interfered, but Britain's did.

Fortunately, MI5 and MI6 failed to get Hillary Clinton into the White House in the 2016 elections. Had Hillary won, the world would've been totally destroyed in a 3rd World War with China, Russia, and Iran.

Both of these British Intelligence agencies are hostile to POTUS Donald J. Trump, and they don't hide it. They can't control him like they could his predecessors going back to LBJ.

Peter Halligan, May 8, 2019 at 15:06

The entire Mueller investigation is a smoke screen for the crimes of a cabal of people (of which Clinton, Biden and even possibly Obama by association are a part) that engaged in "pay to play" over many, many years. The Mueller report could have been completed in 6 months, instead it took 22 months and was released, after Barr's appointment and AFTER the mid-terms, when its conclusions would have supported the Republican vote. This is not a coincidence, the report is a political document that walked the tightrope between DNC interests and those of "fair play" to the POTUS.

The "smoke screen" has diverted attention from the criminality of the cabal that engaged in all sorts of nefarious activity during the DNC infiltration of important federal agencies, from State, through Justice and housing etc. You need only to think about why Clinton instructed Bleachbit to violate a subpoena instructing the the persevration of all State emails by using "a cloth", to now that soemthing is seriously wrong. Factor in the activities of Wasserman-Schuz and the Awan brothers ad then factor in ACTUAL collusion with Russia by Obama and Clinton and the DNC cabal is guilty of collusion and obstruction of justice (remember also how Bill got half a million for a short speect in an event in Moscow sponsored by a Kremlin owned bank and, of course, his tarmac antics). The smoke screen consisted of the classic tactic of "projection" of a criminals crimes onto his rival. Hopefully, those guilty of starting the smoke screen are not the last to face the consequences of breaing the law and the activities of the crime cabal over the prior 10-15 years are also investigated, before we all get bored with the confirmation of political criminality. Just because a poltical party has control of the DoJ and DoS, does not mean that these agencies become the tools for organized crime.

Pablo Diablo, May 8, 2019 at 15:03

Trump is a "loose cannon". This whole Mueller investigation was an attempt to "control" him. It worked. Got the Neocons back in power and fed The War Machine very well.

[May 13, 2019] EXPLOSIVE FOIA Documents Show Evidence of Weissmann/Mueller Entrapment Scheme

Notable quotes:
"... Before digging into the details it is important to note this is a DOJ/FBI entrapment operation being conducted in 2017 by the special counsel ; this is not prior to the 2016 election. The detail surrounds a series of events previously discussed { Go Deep } where George Papadopoulos was approached by a known CIA operative named Charles Tawil. ..."
"... In interviews Papadopoulos said he was uncomfortable with the way the encounters had taken place. He became suspect of Tawil's motives; something didn't feel right. Instead of keeping the cash, Papadopoulos gave the money to an attorney in Greece before traveling back to the U.S. on July 27th, 2017. ..."
"... Upon arrival at Dulles airport on July 27th, 2017, Robert Mueller had FBI agents waiting. Papadopoulos was stopped and his bags were searched; however, he did not have the cash because he smartly left it in Greece with his lawyer. Papadopoulos was detained overnight by FBI agents, and questioned. ..."
"... [W]hen he was arrested [detained] at Dulles Airport on July 27 after coming off a flight from Munich, prosecutors had no warrant for him and no indictment or criminal complaint . The complaint would be filed the following morning and approved by Howell in Washington. ..."
"... All of it suggests something of a scramble, rather than a carefully prepared plan to take Papadopoulos into custody. ( more ) ..."
"... Papadopoulos has stated the special counsel threatened him with charges of acting as a unregistered agent for Israel. There's a clear picture here . ..."
"... #1) Papadopoulos was lured to Israel and paid in Israel to give the outline of a FARA premise (ie. Papadopoulos is an agent of Israel). #2) Bringing $10,000 (or more) in cash into the U.S., without reporting, is a violation of U.S. treasury laws. Add into that aspect the FARA violation and the money can be compounded into #3) laundering charges. ..."
"... Andrew Weissmann was conducting an entrapment scheme that would have ended up with three violations of law: (1) Treasury violation; (2) FARA violation; (3) Money laundering . All it needed was Papadopoulos to carry the undeclared cash into the U.S. ..."
"... Lastly, to repeat, this entire scenario was constructed by the DOJ/FBI team operation in 2017. The members of the Special Counsel were running the entrapment operation; the FBI agents were participating in the operation. This is not *investigating* criminal conduct; this is manufacturing criminal conduct. ..."
"... Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was in charge of the Mueller Special Counsel. ..."
"... The only way DAG Rosenstein and Robert Mueller didn't know about the operation is if they both claim that Andrew Weissmann was completely rogue and in control over the FBI agents. ..."
May 11, 2019 | theconservativetreehouse.com

Recently release FOIA documents into the special counsel team of Robert Mueller reveal the remarkable trail of a 2017 entrapment scheme conducted by Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann to target George Papadopoulos.

[Hat Tip to Undercover Huber and Rosie Memos who have been reviewing documents .]

Before digging into the details it is important to note this is a DOJ/FBI entrapment operation being conducted in 2017 by the special counsel ; this is not prior to the 2016 election. The detail surrounds a series of events previously discussed { Go Deep } where George Papadopoulos was approached by a known CIA operative named Charles Tawil.

In 2017 George Papadopoulos and his wife Simona were approached in Greece by a known CIA/FBI operative , Charles Tawil. Mr. Tawil enlisted George as a business consultant, under the auspices of energy development interests, and invited him to Israel.

On June 8th, 2017, in Israel under very suspicious circumstances, where Papadopoulos felt very unnerved, Mr. Tawil hands him $10,000 in cash for future consultancy based on a $10k/month retainer .

On June 9th, 2017, according to his book, Papadopoulos and Tawil fly back to Cyprus.

... ... ...

In interviews Papadopoulos said he was uncomfortable with the way the encounters had taken place. He became suspect of Tawil's motives; something didn't feel right. Instead of keeping the cash, Papadopoulos gave the money to an attorney in Greece before traveling back to the U.S. on July 27th, 2017.

Upon arrival at Dulles airport on July 27th, 2017, Robert Mueller had FBI agents waiting. Papadopoulos was stopped and his bags were searched; however, he did not have the cash because he smartly left it in Greece with his lawyer. Papadopoulos was detained overnight by FBI agents, and questioned.

[ ] Stanley said Papadopoulos arrived on a Lufthansa flight from Munich that touched down at about 7 p.m . on July 27, and the FBI intercepted him as soon as he got off the plane.

"He was arrested [detained] before he got to Customs and he was then held at the airport before being brought to a law enforcement office," Stanley recalled. ( link )

According to Politico :

[W]hen he was arrested [detained] at Dulles Airport on July 27 after coming off a flight from Munich, prosecutors had no warrant for him and no indictment or criminal complaint . The complaint would be filed the following morning and approved by Howell in Washington.

And when prosecutors filed the complaint the next day they got a spoken order from Howell to seal it, but followed up with a written request that they could take to the magistrate in Alexandria, where they showed up almost an hour later than she expected.

All of it suggests something of a scramble, rather than a carefully prepared plan to take Papadopoulos into custody. ( more )

Here's where the recent revelations come in. According to Andrew Weissmann's schedule on June 13th, 2017, he was in conversations surrounding the basis of a Cyprus Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT):

(Page #5 of FOIA pdf)

So overlaying the timeline:

6/8/17 US intelligence asset Charles Tawil gives George $10K cash in Israel 6/9/17 George Papadopoulos flies to Cyprus w $10K 6/13/17 Andrew Weissmann starts series of "Cyprus MLAT" meetings with FBI 6/13/17 Andrew Weissmann phone call w/ FBI Money Laundering and Asset Recovery "MLARS" section of FBI.

It would appear Weissmann was well aware of the Cyprus "Tawil operation" and engaged in communication regarding Cyprus. Additionally, he was discussing "Money Laundering and Asset Recovery" w/ FBI. [MLARS Link ]

Taken in combination with hindsight of the search for the cash, and lack of a pre-existing warrant at the airport, this is clear evidence of a coordinated operation to entrap Papadopoulos.

Remember, the preferred approach toward targeting Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn and George Papadopoulos surrounded FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act) lobbying violations. Papadopoulos has stated the special counsel threatened him with charges of acting as a unregistered agent for Israel. There's a clear picture here .

#1) Papadopoulos was lured to Israel and paid in Israel to give the outline of a FARA premise (ie. Papadopoulos is an agent of Israel). #2) Bringing $10,000 (or more) in cash into the U.S., without reporting, is a violation of U.S. treasury laws. Add into that aspect the FARA violation and the money can be compounded into #3) laundering charges.

[A "laundering" charge applies if the money is illegally obtained. The FARA violation would be the *illegal* aspect making the treasury charges heavier. Note: the use of the airport baggage-check avoids the need for a search warrant.]

Andrew Weissmann was conducting an entrapment scheme that would have ended up with three violations of law: (1) Treasury violation; (2) FARA violation; (3) Money laundering . All it needed was Papadopoulos to carry the undeclared cash into the U.S.

However, because Papadopoulos suspected something, and left the money in Greece with his lawyers, upon arrival at the airport the operation collapsed in reverse . No money means no treasury violation, no laundering and no evidence of the consultancy agreement (which would have been repurposed in the DOJ filing to mean lobbying for Israel via Mr. Tawil who would have become a confidential informant and witness).

That operational collapse is why the FBI agents were "scrambling" at the airport and why they had no pre-existing criminal complaint. The entrapment's success was contingent upon the cash.

Lastly, to repeat, this entire scenario was constructed by the DOJ/FBI team operation in 2017. The members of the Special Counsel were running the entrapment operation; the FBI agents were participating in the operation. This is not *investigating* criminal conduct; this is manufacturing criminal conduct.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was in charge of the Mueller Special Counsel.

The only way DAG Rosenstein and Robert Mueller didn't know about the operation is if they both claim that Andrew Weissmann was completely rogue and in control over the FBI agents.

Oh, wait, what does the Mueller report say about the FBI agents and their chain-of-legal guidance and command?

... ... ...

With events happening in June/July 2017 Rod Rosenstein, Robert Mueller, former FBI legal counsel Jim Baker, former Deputy FBI Director McCabe, together with current FBI legal counsel Dana Boente and current FBI Director Wray were what? Hoodwinked?

Yeah, ok. Sure.

I digress.

[May 13, 2019] Did Mueller Tap Fusion GPS And Steele To Assist His Anti-Trump Probe by Paul Sperry

Notable quotes:
"... They suspect the dossier creators may have been involved in Mueller's operation, and even had a hand in his final report, because the special counsel sent his team to London to meet with Steele within a few months of taking over the Russia collusion investigation in 2017. Also, Mueller's lead prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, had shared information he received from Fusion with the media. ..."
"... Mueller's reliance on the Steele dossier is raising questions because it occurred long after FBI Director James B. Comey described the dossier as "salacious and unverified." U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the report should be renamed "The Mueller Dossier," because he says it contains a lot of similar innuendo. ..."
"... Steele's 17-memo dossier alleged that the Trump campaign was involved in "a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation" with the Russian government to rig the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favor. It claimed this conspiracy "was managed on the Trump side by Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, who was using foreign policy adviser Carter Page and others as intermediaries." ..."
"... Specifically, the dossier accused Page of secretly meeting with Kremlin officials in July 2016 to hatch a plot to release dirt on Hillary Clinton. And it accused Manafort of being corrupted by Russian President Vladimir Putin through his puppets in the Ukraine. ..."
May 09, 2019 | thefederalist.com
Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent more than $732,000 on outside contractors, including private investigators and researchers, records show, but his office refuses to say who they were. While it's not unusual for special government offices to outsource for services such as computer support, Mueller also hired contractors to compile "investigative reports" and other "information."

The arrangement has led congressional investigators, government watchdog groups and others to speculate that the private investigators and researchers who worked for the special counsel's office might have included Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, the private research firm that hired Steele to produce the Russia collusion dossier for the Clinton campaign.

They suspect the dossier creators may have been involved in Mueller's operation, and even had a hand in his final report, because the special counsel sent his team to London to meet with Steele within a few months of taking over the Russia collusion investigation in 2017. Also, Mueller's lead prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, had shared information he received from Fusion with the media.

Raising additional suspicions, Mueller's report recycles the general allegations leveled in the dossier. And taking a page from earlier surveillance-warrant applications in the Russia investigation, it cites as supporting evidence several articles -- including one by Yahoo! News -- that used Steele and Fusion as sources.

Mueller even kept alive one of the dossier's most obscene accusations -- that Moscow had "compromising tapes" of Trump with Russian hookers -- by slipping into a footnote an October 2016 text Trump lawyer Michael Cohen received from a "Russian businessman," who cryptically intimated, "Stopped flow of tapes from Russia."

Lawyers for the businessman, Giorgi Rtskhiladze (who is actually a Georgian American), are demanding a retraction of the footnote, arguing Mueller omitted the part of his text where he said he did not believe the rumor about the tapes, for which no evidence has ever surfaced.

Mueller's reliance on the Steele dossier is raising questions because it occurred long after FBI Director James B. Comey described the dossier as "salacious and unverified." U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the report should be renamed "The Mueller Dossier," because he says it contains a lot of similar innuendo.

Even though Mueller failed to corroborate key allegations leveled in the dossier, Nunes said his report twists key facts to put a collusion gloss on events. He also asserted that it selectively quotes from Trump campaign emails and omits exculpatory information in ways that cast the campaign's activities in the most sinister light.

Steele's 17-memo dossier alleged that the Trump campaign was involved in "a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation" with the Russian government to rig the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favor. It claimed this conspiracy "was managed on the Trump side by Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, who was using foreign policy adviser Carter Page and others as intermediaries."

Specifically, the dossier accused Page of secretly meeting with Kremlin officials in July 2016 to hatch a plot to release dirt on Hillary Clinton. And it accused Manafort of being corrupted by Russian President Vladimir Putin through his puppets in the Ukraine.

Likewise, Mueller's report focuses on Manafort and Page and whether they "committed crimes by colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government's efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election." Though the investigation did not establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government, the Mueller report implies there may be a kernel of truth to the dossier's charges.

"In July 2016, Campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page traveled in his personal capacity to Moscow and gave the keynote address at the New Economic School," according to the section on him. "Page had lived and worked in Russia between 2003 and 2007. After returning to the United States, Page became acquainted with at least two Russian intelligence officers, one of whom was later charged in 2015 with conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of Russia."

"Page's July 2016 trip to Moscow and his advocacy for pro-Russian foreign policy drew media attention," Mueller's narrative continued. "July 2016 was also the month WikiLeaks first released emails stolen by the GRU [Russian intelligence] from the DNC." "Page acknowledged that he understood that the individuals he has associated with were members of the Russian intelligence services," the report added, implying that Page in the 2015 case (referenced above) knowingly cavorted with Russian spies, which echoes charges Steele made in his dossier.

But federal court records make it clear that Page did not know that those men were Russian agents. Mueller also left out of his report a detail RealClearInvestigations has previously reported: that Page was a cooperating witness in the case in question, helping the FBI eventually put a Russian agent behind bars in 2016.

Nor did Mueller see fit to include in his report another exculpatory detail revealed in agent Gregory Mohaghan's complaint and reported earlier by RCI -- namely, that the Russians privately referred to Page as "an idiot" who was unworthy of recruitment. Excluding such details is curious, given that the Mueller report quotes from the same FBI complaint and cites it in its footnotes. Similarly, in its section dealing with Manafort, the Mueller report echoes the dossier's claims that the Trump campaign chairman was in cahoots with the Kremlin, even though Mueller never charged him with conspiring to collude with Russia

The special prosecutor's report indicated that one of Manafort's Kremlin handlers was Konstantin Kilimnik. "Manafort briefed Kilimnik on the state of the Trump Campaign and Manafort's plan to win the election," it said. "That briefing encompassed the Campaign's messaging and its internal polling data. It also included discussion of 'battleground' states, which Manafort identified as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota."

Except that this wouldn't have been an unusual conversation: Kilimnik was a longtime Manafort employee who ran the Ukraine office of his lobbying firm. Footnotes in Mueller's report show that Manafort shared campaign information to impress a former business partner, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was suing him over financial losses. Mueller failed to tie the information exchange to Russian espionage. He also failed to mention that Deripaska is an FBI informant.

Mueller's team worked closely with dossier author Steele, a long-retired British intelligence officer who worked for the Clinton campaign. Mueller's investigators went to London to consult with Steele for at least two days in September 2017 while apparently using his dossier as an investigative road map and central theory to his collusion case. Steele now runs a private research and consulting firm in London, Orbis Business Intelligence.

It's not clear if Mueller's office paid Steele, but recently released FBI records show the bureau previously made a number of payments to him, and at one point during the 2016 campaign offered him $50,000 to continue his dossier research. Steele was also paid through the Clinton campaign, earning $168,000 for his work on the dossier.

Expenditure statements show that the Special Counsel's Office outsourced "investigative reports" and "information" to third-party contractors during Mueller's investigation into alleged Russian "collusion" during the 2016 presidential election. Over the past few months, Mueller's office has rejected several formal requests from RealClearInvestigations for contract details, including who was hired and how much they were paid.

Washington-based Judicial Watch suspects Mueller's office may have farmed out work to the private Washington research firm Fusion GPS or its subcontractor Steele, both of whom were paid by the Clinton camp during the 2016 presidential election. Several law enforcement and Hill sources who spoke with RCI also believe Steele and Fusion GPS were deputized in the investigation.

The government watchdog group has requested that the Justice Department turn over the contracting records, along with all budget requests Mueller submitted to the attorney general during his nearly two-year investigation. It's also requested all communications between the Special Counsel's Office and the private contractors it used. A Judicial Watch spokesman said its Freedom of Information Act request is pending.

Special counsel spokesman Peter Carr declined comment when asked specifically if Mueller's team hired or collaborated with Fusion GPS or any of its subcontractors. Mueller took over the FBI's Russia probe in May 2017, whereupon he hired many of the agents who handled Steele and pored over his dossier.

For the first reporting period ending Sept. 30, 2017, and covering just four months, the Special Counsel's Office reported paying $867 to unnamed contractors for "investigative reports/information," along with $3,554 in "miscellaneous" payments to contractors. In the next reporting period ending March 31, 2018, the office stopped breaking out investigative reports and information as a separate line item, lumping such contractual services under the category "Other," which accounted for a total of $10,812, or more than 4% of the total spending on outside contracts.

For the six months ending Sept. 30, 2018 -- the latest reporting period for which there is data -- Mueller's office showed a total of $310,732 in payments to outside contractors. For the first time, it did not break out such expenses into subcategories, though it noted that the lion's share of the $310,000 was spent on "IT services."

Mueller concluded his investigation and delivered his final report in March. The next expenditure report, for the period October 2018-March 2019, will cover contract work directly tied to compiling the report. Asked if the contracting details were classified, Carr demurred. If the information is not deemed classified, it must be made public, Judicial Watch maintains.

Republican critics on the Hill say Mueller's written narrative was slanted to give the impression there still might be something to the dossier's most salacious allegations, even though Mueller found no evidence corroborating them or establishing that Trump or his campaign coordinated or cooperated with Russian meddling in the election.

"Whoever wrote the report leaves you with the idea there's still something to all the allegations of collusion that were first promoted by the dossier," said a witness who was interviewed by Mueller's investigators late in the probe and is referenced in the report.

In a section on Donald Trump Jr., moreover, the report gives the misimpression that the president's oldest son was collaborating with WikiLeaks on the release of the Clinton campaign emails. "Donald Trump Jr. had direct electronic communications with WikiLeaks during the campaign period," it stated.

In fact, Trump got an unsolicited message through his Twitter account from WikiLeaks. He described the outreach as "weird" in an email to senior Trump campaign staff at the time. Other contemporaneous messages make it clear he had no advance knowledge about any Clinton emails released by WikiLeaks.

The FBI first began receiving memos from Steele's dossier in early July 2016 and used the documents as the foundation for its October 2016 application for a warrant to wiretap the private communications of Page. These milestones are missing from the Mueller report's chronology of events. In fact, neither Steele nor his dossier is mentioned by name anywhere in the first half of the report dealing with collusion, though their allegations are hashed out.

Some Mueller critics are focused on the role played by his top prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter with longstanding ties to Steele and Fusion GPS.

"Weissman had a lot to do with the way the report was written," said author Jerome Corsi, who, as a friend of Trump confidant Roger Stone, was targeted by Mueller. "That's why it's basically a political document." Corsi said he spent more than 40 hours with Mueller's prosecutors and investigators, who grilled him about possible ties to WikiLeaks but never charged him with a crime.

Formerly a top Justice Department official under Obama, Weissmann not only donated to Clinton's presidential campaign but also attended her election-night party in New York City in November 2016. Three months earlier, he was briefed on Steele's dossier and other dirt provided by the Clinton contractor and paid FBI informant.

In early 2017, Weissmann helped advance the Russia collusion narrative by personally sharing Steele's and Fusion's dirt on Trump and his advisers with Washington reporters. In an April 2017 meeting he arranged at his office, Weissmann gave guidance to four Associated Press reporters who were investigating Manafort, according to internal FBI documents.

Among other things, they discussed rumors that Manafort used "some of the money from shell companies to buy expensive suits." A month later, Weissmann became the lead prosecutor handling the Manafort case for Mueller. His February 2018 indictment of Manafort highlights, among other things, the Trump adviser's taste for expensive suits. Attempts to reach Weissmann for comment were unsuccessful.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said there are signs Mueller may have hired "researchers" like Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who worked with Steele on the dossier, along with Edward Baumgartner and Nellie Ohr, who have worked for Fusion GPS, which originally hired Steele in June 2016 after contracting with the Clinton campaign.

"I ran into Glenn at the 2017 Aspen Security [Forum], and I distinctly remember him leaning in and claiming he was working for the government," said one associate, who wished to remain anonymous. Congressional investigators say Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, has been feeding Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate investigative tips regarding Trump and his associates, including Manafort. In 2017, for instance, he urged Democrats specifically to look into the bank records of Deutsche Bank, which has financed some of Trump's businesses, because he suspected some of the funding may have been laundered through Russia.

Around the time Simpson began coordinating with Democratic investigators looking into Trump's bank records, Mueller subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for financial records for Manafort and other individuals affiliated with Trump. Simpson did not return calls and emails seeking comment.

Founded by the journalist-turned-opposition researcher, Fusion has rehired Steele to continue his anti-Trump work with millions of dollars in left-wing funding from The Democracy Integrity Project, a Washington-based nonprofit started in 2017 by former FBI analyst Daniel Jones, who also worked for Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

In March 2017, Jones met with FBI agents to provide them data he collected from IT specialists he hired to analyze web traffic between servers maintained by the Trump Organization and a Russian bank mentioned in the dossier. The traffic turned out to be innocuous marketing emails, or spam.

This article originally appeared on RealClearInvestigations , and is reprinted with permission.

Investigative journalist Paul Sperry is a regular contributor to RealClearInvestigations and has written news or op-ed pieces for the New York Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. His books include 'The Great American Bank Robbery' (2011), and 'Crude Politics: How Bush's Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism' (2003).

[May 13, 2019] Brennan has no vision or compass or pronciples. Like a dog, he will hunt and maul anything that is approved by the Power

It might well be that Trump treatment of 9/11 as unsolved investigation was one of the red flag for establishment (and personally Brennan) which led to launching of Russiagate.
Notable quotes:
"... But why was Brennan so anti-Syria and anti-Ukraine? What personal motives did he have? ..."
"... Can someone please explain what it was about Donald Trump at the time that this all began, that Brennan would set all of this in motion? ..."
"... For one thing, Trump, early in his campaign stated that he had suspicions regarding official explanations of 9/11. ..."
May 13, 2019 | www.unz.com

Priss Factor , says: Website May 11, 2019 at 2:12 pm GMT

But why was Brennan so anti-Syria and anti-Ukraine? What personal motives did he have? Why target two regimes esp hated by Jews?

It seems he's like McCain. A mean nasty son of a bitch who likes to play world politics. It's his bullying nature. But he has no vision or compass. Like a dog, he will hunt and maul anything that is approved by the Power. And that Power is Jewish.

Dogs love to hunt but only get to hunt what the master orders it to. If the master orders the dog to love rabbits and hunt raccoon, it will do just that. If the master orders it to love raccoon and hunt rabbits, it will do that. In the end, the dog doesn't care what it hunts as long as it's given a chance to hunt something.

Same with these goy cuck dogs. Their lives feel fulfilled only in Big Power bully mode. They need to beat up on something. But they have no vision or compass, no agency. They look over their shoulders to the Power to tell them what to love(Israel and Saudis) and what to hate(Iran and Syria and Russia).

Dogs growl at dogs, not at their masters. When Trump came around, Brennan didn't see him as the new master but as a bad dog(or even wolf) displeasing his master, the Jews. Like McCain, a very loyal dog. Also, a dog feels jealousy that the master may take to a new dog over him.

Alas, Trump has been neutered and tamed by Jews.

R Boyd , says: May 11, 2019 at 4:45 pm GMT
Can someone please explain what it was about Donald Trump at the time that this all began, that Brennan would set all of this in motion?
Carroll Price , says: May 12, 2019 at 12:26 pm GMT
@R Boyd For one thing, Trump, early in his campaign stated that he had suspicions regarding official explanations of 9/11.
Digital Samizdat , says: May 11, 2019 at 9:40 pm GMT
@R Boyd Why? Because of Trump's stated desire to pull out of Syria and to work for a détente with Russia, for openers.
Cassander , says: May 11, 2019 at 10:58 pm GMT
"The real architect of the Trump-Russia treachery was the boss-man at the nation's premier intelligence agency, the CIA."

–Which begs the question whether the 'real architect' was authorized by his superior in the WH. How could he not have been?

FB , says: Website May 12, 2019 at 4:44 am GMT
Excellent hard nosed article by Mike

I have to think that the pyramid goes higher still Brennan working for Hillary and Hillary working for the combined plutocratic imperialist elite that make up the core of the Clinton Foundation's billions these scumbags will never be touched for buying Killary, but maybe Killary will end up in an orange jumpsuit, right beside her gopher Brennan

And maybe Trump finally has his hands untied to start doing the things he promised time will tell

anon [354] Disclaimer , says: May 12, 2019 at 4:55 am GMT

Mike Whitney:

But evidence of wrongdoing is not proof that Comey was the ringleader, he was just the hapless sad sack who was left holding the bag. The truth is, Comey was just a reluctant follower. The real architect of the Trump-Russia treachery was the boss-man at the nation's premier intelligence agency, the CIA.

suspect you are correct

Brennan seems like the real evil, Comey just a doofus

The Scalpel , says: Website May 12, 2019 at 5:33 am GMT
@R Boyd "Can someone please explain what it was about Donald Trump at the time that this all began, that Brennan would set all of this in motion?"

He was not truly compromised thus controlled by the spooks. So they were trying to achieve that, and it appears based on Trump's behavior, that they did achieve that

[May 13, 2019] Still voting for Big Brother You might be a low-information voter

Great video. https://www.youtube.com/embed/0vvvPZd6_D8 If it does not remind you something I can't help
May 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Still voting for Big Brother? You might be a low-information voter.

by hedgeless_horseman Fri, 05/10/2019 - 12:31 1 SHARES

In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Two Minutes' Hate is a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting the Party's enemies (notably Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers) and express their hatred for them.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/0vvvPZd6_D8

In case anyone is interested, here is what Goldstein actually says in that scene (you can't make it out, cause the crowd is shouting over it, but that's what he says according to the subtitles)

"Nothing the Party says is true. Nothing the Party does is good. Even the war itself isn't real. The Party wants you to believe we are at war so as to channel your aggression away from their rightful target: the Party. Big Brother is not real. He is pure fiction, created by the Party. The real rulers of the State are unknown, faceless manipulators who, because they are not known are able to wield power without let or hindrance. People of Oceania, you are being duped. The Party doesn't serve the people -- it serves itself. We are not at war with Eurasia. You are being made into obedient, stupid slaves of the Party. Open your eyes. See the evil that is happening to you. The Party drops bombs on its own citizens. It is the Party, not the Eurasians, who are our enemies."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vvvPZd6_D8

... ... ...

samuraitrader , 1 day ago link

a good watch, Oliver Stone's Untold History of the USA

http://www.untoldhistory.com/

great article HH

Oldwood , 1 day ago link

Don't underestimate the power of progressive self hate indoctrination reinforced by decades of corruption.

There are no "good guys" but those professing our allegiance to empathy are voting for suicide.

Yes it is important to understand the motivations of those who would do us harm, but empathy suggests that we substitute the interests of others over our own.

If we are to understand anything, it is that humanity has been studied longer than anything else on the planet, and as such, there are no alternatives not anticipated and planned for.

From off the grid prepper to the head of Goldman Sachs, each plays a role.

This is a Matrix, but not by AI but by multigenerational planning, and a thorough understanding of human behavior, as they would with every variety of plant and animal on the planet.

Scipio Africanuz , 1 day ago link

Conservatives were accomplices too, cheers...

STONEHILLADY , 1 day ago link

CIA chief from the 80s William Casey said, "We know our job is complete when all the information the American people get is 100% lies."

The only truth in this world comes from the Bible, which tells right from the get go how the Earth was made, it's a special FIXED place, no where does it say we are a spinning ball, everything spins around us. There is water above the firmament which are the heavens where god lives and there are waters under the firmament on the Earth where man lives. The Antarctic surrounds the flat plane and it is approx. 67,000 miles all the way around and the north pole and Polaris are the center. In the 50s they tried to blast thru the firmament and failed, with their rockets and all this NASA stuff is just another way to drain money from you and you can never go to the moon, what you saw was made in a Hollywood basement. The evil in this world wants to take you away from God because Lucifer was jealous God made you in his imagine and he wants to prove you are no good and will take down as many of us as he can just prove his point.

[May 12, 2019] Charting a Progressive Foreign Policy for the Trump Era and Beyond

Highly recommended!
A really interesting discussion. the problem with discussion on new direction of the USA foreign policy is that forces that control the current forign policy will not allow any changes. Russiagate was in part a paranoid reaction of the Deep State to the possibility of detente with Russia and also questioning "neoliberal sacred truth" like who did 9/11 (to suggest that Bush is guilty was a clear "Red Flag") and critical attribute to forrign wars which feed so many Imperial servants.
BTW Trump completely disappointed his supporters in the foreign policy is continuing to accelerate that direction
May 10, 2019 | www.youtube.com

darren alevi 2 months ago

Here is how you chart a Progressive foreign policy stop treating the US intelligence agencies of the CIA and FBI as orgs of integrity. Ban all foreign lobbying so no foreign government can influence foreign policy.

Disband the Veto powers that the US holds over the UN security council. Prosecute former Presidents and Government officials for the illegal regime change wars.

Connect with other progressive politicians around the world such as Jeremy Corbyn, Jean Luc Melenchon and Moon Jae In. End the arms race and begin a peaceful space race to colonize the moon diverting funds from the military industrial complex into something fulfilling.

Peter Knopfler 2 months ago

What BULL while world under the fog of Berlin wall down, USA VP Bush attacks Panama 8000 Marines kills 3500 panamanians , gives the banks to CIA, therefore Panama papers. Another coup in Latin America. When V.P. Bush "we had to get over the Vietnam Syndrome". So Killing 3500 people , to get over the loser spirit, suicidal influence from Vietnam. SHAME USA more hate for Americans. And Now Venezuela, more Shame and Hate for Americans. Yankee go home, Gringo stay home is chanted once more.

Ron Widelec 2 months ago

We need an Anti-imperialist league like 100 ago. And an anti-war caucus in congress!

Michael 26CD 2 months ago

The audio is a little off especially for a couple speakers but this discussion is great. Trump ran on a non-interventionist platform, but in his typical dishonest fashion, he appointed people who are developing usable nukes like characters out of Dr. Strangelove. Nuclear weapons and climate change are both existential threats that all the world needs to act together to address.

asbeautifulasasunset 2 months ago

17 plus years later some people are finally starting to talk about the $6 trillion wars and the $750 billion annual Defense Department Budget.... Please consider giving Tulsi Gabbard at least a $1 contribution so she can be part of the debate between Democratic presidential candidates. She has made ending the wars on terrorism and regime change the primary issue of her candidacy. She is an Iraq vet and currently in the National Guard. Her rank is Colonel. She needs $62,500 and contributions from 200 people in each of 20 states. Thanks for anything you can do.

Jim R2 months ago

President Eisenhower's farewell address warned us of the very thing that is happening today with the industrial military complex and the power and influence that that entity weilds.

chickendinner2012, 2 months ago

End the wars, no more imperialism, instead have fair trade prioritizing countries that have a living wage and aren't waging war etc. No more supporting massive human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE etc. and we need to get three of the most aggressive countries the F UK US coalition that constantly invades and bombs everyone they want to steal from to stop doing war, stop coups, stop covert sabotage, stop sanctions.

asbeautifulasasunset, 2 months ago

17 plus years later some people are finally starting to talk about the $6 trillion wars and the $750 billion annual Defense Department Budget.... Please consider giving Tulsi Gabbard at least a $1 contribution so she can be part of the debate between Democratic presidential candidates. She has made ending the wars on terrorism and regime change the primary issue of her candidacy. She is an Iraq vet and currently in the National Guard. Her rank is Colonel. She needs $62,500 and contributions from 200 people in each of 20 states. Thanks for anything you can do.

carol wagner sudol2 months ago

Israel today has become a nazi like state. period. That says it all. This is heart-breaking. Gaza is simply a concentration camp.

Tom Hall, 2 months ago

All our post WWII foreign policy has been about securing maintaining and enhancing corporate commercial interests. What would seem to progressives as catastrophic failures are in fact monumental achievements of wealth creation and concentration. The billions spent on think tanks to develop policy are mostly about how to develop grand narratives that conceal the true beneficiaries of US foreign policy and create fear, uncertainty and insecurity at home and abroad.

[May 12, 2019] A week in the life of the Empire by The Saker

May 12, 2019 | www.unz.com

... ... ...

Putin trolls the Empire

It is all really simple: if the Ukrainians will give passports to Russian citizens, and we in Russia will be handing out passports to the Ukrainians, then sooner or later will will reach the expected result: everybody will have the same citizenship. This is something which we have to welcome.

Vladimir Putin

It appears that the Kremlin is very slowly changing its approach to the Ukrainian issue and is now relying more on unilateral actions. The first two measures taken by the Russians are maybe not "too little too late", but certainly "just the bare minimum and at that, rather late". Still, I can only salute the Kremlin's newly found determination. Specifically, the Kremlin has banned the export of energy products to the Ukraine (special exemptions can still be granted on a case by case basis) and the Russians have decided to distribute Russian passports to the people of Novorussia. Good.

Zelenskii's reaction to this decision came as the first clear sign that the poor man has no idea what he is doing and no plan as to how to deal with the Russians. He decided to crack a joke, (which he is reportedly good at), and declare that the Ukrainian passport was much better than the Russian one and that the Ukraine will start delivering Ukrainian passports to Russian citizens. Putin immediately replied with one of his typical comebacks declaring that he supports Zelenskii and that he looks forward to the day when Russians and Ukrainians will have the same citizenship again. Zelenskii had nothing to say to that :-)

Zelenskii finally finds something common to Russia and the Ukraine

I have been thinking long about this "a lot in common" between Ukraine and Russia. The reality is that today, after the annexation of the Crimea and the aggression in the Donbas, of the "common" things we have only one thing left – this is the state border. And control of every inch on the Ukrainian side, must be returned by Russia. Only then will we be able to continue the search for [things in] "common"

Vladimir Zelenskii

Well, almost. He did eventually make a Facebook post in which he declared that all that Russia and the Ukraine had in common was a border. This instantly made him the object of jokes and memes, since all Russians or Ukrainians know that Russia and the Ukraine have many old bonds which even 5 years of a vicious civil war and 5 years of hysterically anti-Russian propaganda could not sever. They range from having close relatives in the other country, to numerous trade and commercial transactions, to a common language. The closest thing to a real Ukrainian language would be the Surzhik which is roughly 50/50 in terms of vocabulary and whose pronunciation is closer to the south Russian one than to the Zapadenskii regional dialect spoken in the western Ukraine and which is used (and currently imposed) by the Ukronazi junta in Kiev.

[May 12, 2019] The Trans-Pacific Partnership, stopping Brexit, and abandoning an Atlanticist foreign policy were opposed by a CIA and corporate political establishment, who created the fake Steele dossier to bring down Trump

Apr 18, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

George Papadopoulos's story on why he thinks that the RussiaGate probe was started is something out of The Parallax View but, alas, rings true: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, stopping Brexit, and abandoning an Atlanticist foreign policy were opposed by a CIA and corporate political establishment, who created the fake Steele dossier to bring down Trump (the TPP, and also Brexit, I believe, were in the dossier as reasons why "Putin" wanted Trump to win)

Anne Jaclard | Apr 18, 2019 4:33:48 PM | link

Michael Tracey has a long interview with George Papadopoulos at Patreon .

Don't like Papadopoulos but it's worth listening to.

[May 12, 2019] Judgment Day For John Brennan by Mike Whitney

Notable quotes:
"... "The evidence is plain–there was a broad, coordinated effort by the Obama Administration, with the help of foreign governments, to target Donald Trump and paint him as a stooge of Russia. The Mueller Report provides irrefutable evidence that the so-called Russian collusion case against Donald Trump was a deliberate fabrication by intelligence and law enforcement organizations in the US and UK and organizations aligned with the Clinton Campaign." ( "How US and Foreign Intel Agencies Interfered in a US Election" , Larry C. Johnson, Consortium News) ..."
"... "Brennan was the key to the operation because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court refused to approve several requests by the FBI to initiate taps on Trump associates and Trump Tower as there was no probable cause to do so but the British and other European intelligence services were legally able to intercept communications linked to American sources. Brennan was able to use his connections with those foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, to make it look like the concerns about Trump were coming from friendly and allied countries and therefore had to be responded to as part of routine intelligence sharing. As a result, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Gen. Michael Flynn were all wiretapped. And likely there were others. This all happened during the primaries and after Trump became the GOP nominee." ( "The Conspiracy Against Trump" , Philip Giraldi) ..."
"... According to a report in The Guardian (where the story first appeared.): "GCHQ (British Government Communications Headquarters) played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, which began in late July 2016. One source called the British eavesdropping agency the "principal whistleblower". ("British spies were first to spot Trump team's links with Russia ", The Guardian) ..."
"... Okay, so Brennan twisted a few arms and got his foreign Intel buddies to make uncorroborated claims that got the investigative ball rolling, but then what? If there was any meat to Brennan's foreign intel, then Mueller would have dug it up and used it in his report, right? But he didn't. Why? ..."
"... Because there was nothing there, the whole thing was a sham from the get go. Brennan probably "sexed up" the intelligence so it would sound like something it really wasn't. (Think: WMD) Again, if there was even a scintilla of hard evidence that Trump's campaign assistants were in bed with Russia, Mueller would have shrieked it from every mountaintop across America. But he didn't, because there wasn't any. There was no cooperation, no conspiracy and no collusion. Trump was falsely accused. End of story. ..."
May 10, 2019 | www.unz.com

Sometime in the next 4 weeks, the Justice Department's inspector general will release an internal review that will reveal the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Among other matters, the IG's report is expected to determine "whether there was sufficient justification under existing guidelines for the FBI to have started an investigation in the first place." Critics of the Trump-collusion probe believe that there was never probable cause that a crime had been committed, therefore, there was no legal basis for launching the investigation. The findings of the Mueller report– that there was no cooperation or collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign– seem to underscore this broader point and suggest that the fictitious Trump-Russia connection was merely a pretext for spying on the campaign of a Beltway outsider whose political views clashed with those of the foreign policy establishment. In any event, the upcoming release of the Horowitz report will formally end the the first phase of the long-running Russiagate scandal and mark the beginning of Phase 2, in which high-profile officials from the previous administration face criminal prosecution for their role in what looks to be a botched attempt at a coup d'etat.

Here's a brief summary from political analyst, Larry C. Johnson, who previously worked at the CIA and U.S. State Department:

"The evidence is plain–there was a broad, coordinated effort by the Obama Administration, with the help of foreign governments, to target Donald Trump and paint him as a stooge of Russia. The Mueller Report provides irrefutable evidence that the so-called Russian collusion case against Donald Trump was a deliberate fabrication by intelligence and law enforcement organizations in the US and UK and organizations aligned with the Clinton Campaign." ( "How US and Foreign Intel Agencies Interfered in a US Election" , Larry C. Johnson, Consortium News)

Bingo. Attorney General William Barr has already stated his belief that spying on the Trump campaign "did occur" and that, in his mind, it is "a big deal". He also reiterated his commitment to thoroughly investigate the matter in order to find out whether the spying was adequately "predicated", that is, whether the FBI followed the required protocols for such spying, or not. Barr already knows the answer to this question as he is fully aware of the fact that the FBI used information that they knew was false to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Having no hard evidence of cooperation with the Kremlin, senior-level FBI officials and their counterparts at the Obama Justice Department used parts of an "opposition research" document (The Trump Dossier) that they knew was unreliable to procure warrants that allowed them to treat a presidential campaign the same way the intelligence agencies treat foreign enemies; using electronic surveillance, wiretapping, confidential informants and "honey trap" schemes designed to gather embarrassing or incriminating information on their target. Barr knows all of this already which is why the Democrats are doing everything in their power to discredit him and have him removed from office. His determination to "get to the bottom of this" is not just a threat to the FBI, it's a threat to multiple agencies that may have had a hand in this expansive domestic espionage operation including the CIA, the NSA, the DOJ, the State Department and, perhaps, even the Obama White House. No one knows yet how far up the political food-chain the skulduggery actually goes, but Barr appears to be serious about finding out.

Here's Barr again: "Many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single confidential informant .I would like to find out whether that is in fact true. It strikes me as a fairly anemic effort if that was the counterintelligence effort designed to stop the threat as it's being represented."

In other words, Barr knows that the Trump campaign was riddled with spies and he is going to do his damnedest to find out what happened. He also knows that the FISA warrants were improperly obtained using the shabby disinformation from an opposition research "hit piece" (The Steele Dossier) that was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, just like he knows that government agents had concocted a strategy for leaking classified information to the media to fuel the public hysteria. Barr knows most of what happened already. It's just a matter of compiling the research in the proper format and delivering it in a way that helps to emphasize how trusted government agents abused their power by pursuing a vicious partisan plot to either destroy the president's reputation or force him from office. Like Barr said, that's a "big deal".

The name that seems to feature larger than all others in the ongoing Trump-Russia saga, is James Comey, the former FBI Director who oversaw the spying operations that are now under investigation at the DOJ. But was Comey really the central figure in these felonious hi-jinks or was he a mere lieutenant following directives from someone more powerful than himself? While the preponderance of new evidence suggests that the FBI was deeply involved, it does not answer this crucial question. For example, just this week, a report by veteran journalist John Solomon, showed that former British spy Christopher Steele admitted to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec that his "Trump Dossier" was "political research", implying that the contents couldn't be trusted because they were shaped by Steele's political bias. Kavalec passed along this information to the FBI which shrugged it off and then, just days later, used the dossier to obtain warrants to spy on members of the Trump campaign. Think about that for a minute. The FBI had "written proof . that Steele had a political motive", but went ahead and used the dossier to procure the warrants anyway. That's what I'd call a premeditated felony.

But evidence of wrongdoing is not proof that Comey was the ringleader, he was just the hapless sad sack who was left holding the bag. The truth is, Comey was just a reluctant follower. The real architect of the Trump-Russia treachery was the boss-man at the nation's premier intelligence agency, the CIA. That's where the headwaters of this shameful burlesque are located, in Langley. More on that in a minute, but first check out this excerpt from an article at The Hill which sums up Comey's role fairly well:

(There) "will be an examination of whether Comey was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director and attorney general. This, above all, is what's causing the 360-degree head spin.

"There are early indicators that troubling behaviors may have occurred in all three scenarios. Barr will want to zero in on a particular area of concern: the use by the FBI of confidential human sources, whether its own or those offered up by the then-CIA director.

In addition, the cast of characters leveraged by the FBI against the Trump campaign all appear to have their genesis as CIA sources ("assets," in agency vernacular) shared at times with the FBI. From Stefan Halper and possibly Joseph Mifsud, to Christopher Steele, to Carter Page himself, and now a mysterious "government investigator" posing as Halper's assistant and cited in The New York Times article, legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more than an FBI counterintelligence case." ( "James Comey is in trouble and he knows it" , The Hill)

Why is the Inspector General so curious as to whether Comey "was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director? And why did Comey draw from "a cast of characters " . that "all appear to have their genesis as CIA sources"??

Could it be that Comey was just an unwitting pawn in a domestic regime change operation launched by former CIA Director John Brennan, the one public figure who has expressed greater personal animus towards Trump than all the others combined? Could Trump's promise to normalize relations with Russia have intensified Brennan's visceral hatred of him given the fact that Russia had frustrated Brennan's strategic plans in Ukraine and Syria? Keep in mind, the CIA had been arming, training and providing logistical support to the Sunni militants who were trying to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al Assad. Putin's intervention crushed the jihadist militias delivering a humiliating defeat to Generalissimo Brennan who, soon after, left office in disgrace. Isn't this at least part of the reason why Brennan hates Trump?

Regular readers of this column know that I have always thought that Brennan was the central figure in the Trump-Russia charade. It was Brennan who first referred the case to Comey, just as it was Brennan who "hand-picked" the analysts who stitched together the dodgy Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) (which said that "Putin and the Russian government aspired to help Trump's election chances.") It was also Brennan who persuaded Harry Reid to petition Comey to open an investigation in the first place. Brennan was chief instigator of the Trump-Russia fiasco, the omniscient puppet-master who persuaded Clapper and Comey to do his bidding while still-unidentified agents strategically leaked stories to the media to inflame passions and sow social unrest. At every turn, Brennan was there guiding the perfidious project along. According to journalist Philip Giraldi, the CIA may have even assisted in the obtaining of FISA warrants on Trump campaign aids as this excerpt from an article at The Unz Review indicates:

"Brennan was the key to the operation because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court refused to approve several requests by the FBI to initiate taps on Trump associates and Trump Tower as there was no probable cause to do so but the British and other European intelligence services were legally able to intercept communications linked to American sources. Brennan was able to use his connections with those foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, to make it look like the concerns about Trump were coming from friendly and allied countries and therefore had to be responded to as part of routine intelligence sharing. As a result, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Gen. Michael Flynn were all wiretapped. And likely there were others. This all happened during the primaries and after Trump became the GOP nominee." ( "The Conspiracy Against Trump" , Philip Giraldi)

Can you see how important this is? The FBI was having trouble getting warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, so Brennan helped them out by persuading his foreign intelligence allies (the British and other European intelligence services) to come up with bogus "intercepted communications linked to American sources," which helped to secure the FISA warrants. We have no idea of what these foreign agents heard on these alleged intercepted communications, all we know is that they were effectively used to achieve Brennan's ultimate objective, which was to acquire the means of taking down Trump via a relentless and expansive surveillance campaign.

According to a report in The Guardian (where the story first appeared.): "GCHQ (British Government Communications Headquarters) played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, which began in late July 2016. One source called the British eavesdropping agency the "principal whistleblower". ("British spies were first to spot Trump team's links with Russia ", The Guardian)

Okay, so Brennan twisted a few arms and got his foreign Intel buddies to make uncorroborated claims that got the investigative ball rolling, but then what? If there was any meat to Brennan's foreign intel, then Mueller would have dug it up and used it in his report, right? But he didn't. Why?

Because there was nothing there, the whole thing was a sham from the get go. Brennan probably "sexed up" the intelligence so it would sound like something it really wasn't. (Think: WMD) Again, if there was even a scintilla of hard evidence that Trump's campaign assistants were in bed with Russia, Mueller would have shrieked it from every mountaintop across America. But he didn't, because there wasn't any. There was no cooperation, no conspiracy and no collusion. Trump was falsely accused. End of story.

Here's more from the same article:

"The Guardian has been told the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team and Moscow ahead of the US election." (Guardian)

"The extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team and Moscow"???

Really? This is precisely the type of hyperventilating journalism that fueled the absurd conspiracy theory that the president of the United States was a Russian agent. It's hard to believe that we're even discussing the matter at this point.

There was an interesting aside in John Solomon's article that suggests that he might be thinking along the same lines. He says: "One legal justification cited for redacting the Oct. 13, 2016, email is the National Security Act of 1947, which can be used to shield communications involving the CIA or the White House National Security Council."

Why would Solomon draw attention to "to shielding communications involving the CIA or the White House", after all, the bulk of his article focused on the State Department and the FBI? Is he suggesting that the CIA and Obama White House may have been involved in these spying shenanigans, is that why Kavalec's damning notes (which stated that Steele's dossier could not be trusted.) have been retroactively classified?

Take a look at this email from the FBI's chief investigator in the Russia collusion probe, Peter Strzok, to his fellow agents in April 2017.

"I'm beginning to think the agency (CIA) got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn't shared it completely with us. Might explain all those weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as source of some leaks." -Peter Strzok.

Ha! So even the FBI's chief investigator was in the dark about the CIA's shadowy machinations behind the scenes. Clearly, Brennan wanted to prevent the other junta leaders from fully knowing what he was up to.

All of this is bound to come out in the inspector general's report sometime in the next month or so. Both Attorney General William Barr and IG Horowitz appear to be fully committed to revealing the criminal leaks, the illegal electronic surveillance, the improperly obtained FISA warrants, and the multiple confidential human sources (spies) that were placed in the Trump campaign. They are going to face withering criticism for their efforts, but they are resolutely moving forward all the same. Bravo, for that.

Bottom line: The agents and officials who conducted this seditious attack on the presidency never thought they'd be held accountable for their crimes. But they were wrong, and now their day of reckoning is fast approaching. The main players in this palace coup are about to be exposed, criminally charged and prosecuted. Some of them will probably wind up in jail.

"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine."

[May 12, 2019] The Brainwashing Of A Nation

May 12, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Unlike Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate, brainwashing does not turn people into hypnotized zombies who would be ready to kill a presidential candidate at a command. Instead, it transforms them into the sort of people who would be willing to kill someone for political reasons.

The distinction is why so few people understand the sources of political radicalism and violence.

Brainwashing isn't magic, but it can look like magic. The sleight of hand that causes us to think so is our firm belief in our reason and free will. It's easier to believe in changing minds through hypnotism and drugs, than to understand, what the successful practitioners of brainwashing do, that the human mind is more malleable than we like to think, and that the subconscious is more powerful than the conscious.

The art and science of brainwashing is well known. We don't know it because we choose not to.

Brainwashing happens every day. It doesn't have to mean a complete transformation of identity. On the simplest level, it means compelling someone to believe something that isn't true.

It's as simple as two cops browbeating an innocent suspect into believing that he's guilty. The officers and the suspect won't see their interaction as brainwashing. The officers can honestly believe in his guilt. And, at the end of the process, the suspect will also believe that he committed the crime. He will even be able to describe in great detail how he committed it. That's common, everyday brainwashing.

The key elements of brainwashing are present in that cold room with the peeling paint on the walls. Those three elements are control, crisis and emotional resonance. To successfully brainwash someone, you have to control their environment, force a crisis on them, and then tap into core emotions, fear, love, guilt, hate, shame, and guide them through the crisis by accepting and internalizing a new belief.

The belief can be anything, but the pseudo-religious ritual taps into an emotional core requiring them to believe that they were bad people, and that by accepting this new belief, they are now good people.

This false conversion is the essence of brainwashing and of leftist political awakening narratives.

The human mind, like the human body, adapts to a crisis with a fight-or-flight response. Brainwashing forces the mind into a flight response. Once in flight mode, the mind can rationalize a new belief as a protective behavior that will keep it safe. Even when, as in the case of the suspect, the new belief will actually destroy his life. Fight or flight mode inhibits long term thinking. In panic mode, destructive and suicidal behaviors seem like solutions because they offer an escape from unbearable chemical stresses.

There's a good biological reason for that. Our minds stop us from thinking too much in a crisis so that we can take urgent action, like running into a fire or at a gunman, that our rational minds might not allow us to do. But that same function can be 'hacked' by artificially putting people into fight-or-flight mode to break them down and shortcut their higher reasoning functions. Decisions reached subconsciously in fight-or-flight mode will then be rationalized and internalized after the initial crisis has passed.

When that internalization happens, then the brainwashing is real.

Almost anyone can be compelled to say anything under enough stress. Many can be forced to believe it. The acid test of brainwashing is whether they will retain that belief once fight-or-flight mode passes.

Cults, abusive relationships and totalitarian movements maintain 'total crisis', shutting down higher reasoning, creating a permanent state of stress by triggering fight-or-flight responses unpredictably. This leads to Stockholm Syndrome, where the captive tries to control their fate through total emotional identification with their captor, pack behavior, loss of identity and will, and eventually suicide or death.

Total crisis leads to burnout, emotional exhaustion, detachment from friends and family, and violence.

How do you brainwash a nation?

Control the national environment, force a crisis on the country, and tap into their fear and guilt...

... ... ...

The panic over Trump is a micro-crisis of the sort that leftists detonate in the political opposition, but the fear, anger, terror, stress and violence on display are typical of the crisis mode of fight-or-flight.

The "Resistance" isn't a political movement. It's a political cult whose crisis was the 2016 election. Its irrational belief that Trump is a Russian agent is typical of the conspiratorial mindset of cults. Its inability to understand that its convictions are completely irrational show how brainwashing works.

The 2016 election inflicted on its members a loss of control. Trump became the crisis embodying their loss of control. Their fear, guilt and anger induced stress that altered their behavior and beliefs.

And, within the very recent past, millions came to believe that Trump was really working for Moscow.

This is brainwashing on a timescale so immediate that we can easily recall it. Yet most of us have trouble understanding how it works and why it works. And that lack of understanding is holding us back.

How can smart people fall for minor variations of the same lie in generation after generation?

Smart people make the best brainwashing targets. Cults recruit bright students on college campuses, they target aspiring executives looking for leadership training, and dissatisfied professionals searching for meaning. Cults are rarely made up of stupid people. They're made up of smart, vulnerable people.

Human beings don't behave rationally. We rationalize our behavior.

The more people rationalize, the more they can be brainwashed. Your old Casio digital watch can't be hacked. Even if it were hacked, there's not much it could be made to do. Your smartphone can be hacked and made to do more. Your desktop can be hacked and made to do even more. Intelligence doesn't make us less vulnerable to being manipulated, it leaves us much more vulnerable.

The political brainwashing campaign in this country targets the upper class and the middle class. The best subjects for brainwashing are intelligent and emotionally vulnerable. They're easier to manipulate by using the gap between their emotions and their reason, and their emotional instability makes it easier to force them into crisis mode. The ideal subjects are in their teens and their early twenties. In modern times, that's a period in which identity is still developing, and can be fractured and remade.

... ... ...

The techniques aren't new. They're as evil and old as time itself.

... ... ...

A Sentinel , 1 hour ago link

Why leave out facts?

project mockingbird is real. Started by Dulles or another Frankfurt school communist type, they had many goals, none good.

Zh commenters have picked up on the neocon agenda it promulgated. It did that and worse.

Peter Smithhhh , 2 hours ago link

Great Article.

The targets do have things in common, even curiosity, but I believe the brainwashed have some social needs that are handily exploited and money could be one of them. The mode for communist brainwashing is rage for the enemies, acceptance into a new just group, small operations at first that guarantee success, then the big sell that usually gets the activist committing a felony and if unlucky in prison. Then once in prison, you have a soldier that works for no other cause. What do you think is playing over those expensive headphones we see every day, nursery rhymes?

OAW , 2 hours ago link

It appears to my simple mind that, left could be replace by right and nothing else would be different!

Peter Smithhhh , 2 hours ago link

Yep, it doesn't matter what side of the fence a person is on, in fact, there are going to be people that let us down. We just get back up and keep on going.

beemasters , 2 hours ago link

TV combines audio and visual components to render a very effective method of brainwashing. It also doesn't provide the audience much time to analyze a message before they are bombarded with the next series of information. The presenters' personas are usually appealing for target messages to be absorbed and accepted by the masses.

medium giraffe , 2 hours ago link

'The left!' 'The left!'

And yet representatives from both sides agree that the Pentagon should receive plenty of funding, do plenty of murdering, and undergo no audits (despite a $20T 'accounting error').

Brainwashing is not confined to the left it seems.

A Sentinel , 2 hours ago link

Corruption is not related to either side but one side is ruled far more by emotion, right? They're the ones who are most easily sent into spasms of negative emotion that a "savior" like Obama is to fix.

they called him that, remember?

VideoEng_NC , 3 hours ago link

Pretty lengthy article to explain that even though "fly over" country may have their "hold my beer" moments, large swaths of urban America are dumb Schiffs.

TAALR Swift , 3 hours ago link

For those who missed it, this dovetails nicely yesterday's article by Hedgeless Horseman:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-10/voting-big-brother-you-might-be-low-information-voter

Another classic from HH, worth adding to one's archives.

CatInTheHat , 3 hours ago link

That works both ways, as both parties are systems of brainwashing that manifests itself into the divisions and cult like behavior in the country that we see now.

That there are two distinct parties is an illusion, the greatest sleight of hand and the elite know it and that's why they exploit both 2 party cult followers in the way that they do with racism, bigotry, xenophobia, identity politics, etc, that keep followers at each other's throats.

The 2016 election was traumatic for many people. The Democratic party fooled millions in exploiting their hope that change was at hand through Bernie Sanders. His betrayal of millions who followed him gave him million of dollars to be their voice, turned out to be a complete fake and fraud. A shepherd for the very candidate they HATED and would otherwise never vote for. Blaming Russia was too convenient. Those millions of US who knew that the primary had been rigged by Clinton & the DNC who had the GALL to cast blame on a foreign power for the outright rejection of the DNC anointed one, DemExited in the millions and refused to be brainwashed into believing the blatant absurdity that in order to buy this ******** Russiagate narrative you had to believe that Russia influenced our vote, MY VOTE. Think about that a minute. Did Russia influence the idiots who voted for Clinton? Even I didn't believe that. But that is indeed what you had to swallow if you remained within the confines of the party of cult persuasion. Russiagate itself IS a cult.

Those of us that knew Clinton/DNC rigged the primary against Sanders yet who suspected Sanders was also in on it when he threw voters under the bus for Clinton at the Convention in the most malicious way, could not be brainwashed. We understood the source of the trauma, keeping our heads clear through crisis.

I see the same in Trump followers. His ability to exploit racism and bigotry keeps Trumptards enthralled. But Trump has broken ever promise and is a SWINDLER. This Zionist stooge betrayal of his base in such a profound way has them all clinging to him MORE hoping that this round of 64735D chess is going to be the one where he is the DC outsider he pretended to be. Just like Bernie but in a different way.

To be clear means seeing you've been swindled. Admitting you're vulnerable to exploitation is hard, especially when that vulnerability lies in hate, through racism and bigotry or when it simply stands to make you feel a damned fool.

Personally I tend to admire people who can admit they were taken. The same happened to me with Prez Hopey Changey and again in believing in Bernie.

Brainwashing can't work when you admit you were taken by a psychopath or two. Doing so just leads to more growth I think. 100 million did not vote in 2016, the majority vote. They didn't much care for the lesser of two evils level of brainwashing that keeps people subservient to the 2 party cult like system

I take comfort in that.

King Friday the 13th , 3 hours ago link

Good article however there is no connection between IQ and susceptibility to propaganda. The idea that smarter people are more susceptible is absurd. In college the radical leftists always tended to be the stupidest. While highly intelligent people are indeed brainwashed every day, the idea that being stupid protects you is contrary to my entire life experience and to basic common sense. For example, if only those with IQ's above 140 were allowed to vote, the result would be a much freer republic because no amount of propaganda can convince smart people that they are better off being government slaves. It's the brainwashed dummies that crave big brother ****.

[May 12, 2019] Jimmy Dore The US is a MAFIA STATE! - YouTube

Red baiting is very profitable. That's why it now imprinted in most common US citizens brains and that's why we have on trillion (if counted from all sources)
May 12, 2019 | www.youtube.com
sneezer 1 month ago Jimmy is great, hopefully they dont suicide him. Narratives of Old 1 month ago (edited) mafia state...?? ridiculous.. in a 1000 years the mafia could not kill as many people the US killed in Iraq in few years .. we are beyond redemption.....

45 46

View 3 replies Hide replies Gypsy Jiver 1 week ago As George Carlin said the US is a oil company with a army. Ruly Tores 1 week ago You are right. The USA is a Criminal State, War Dependent Economy Carl Hopkinson 5 days ago Wow!! George Carlin would be proud of you, Jimmy Dore !!!! Premed1981 1 month ago HOLY SHIT Ive never seen jimmy spitting so much fire and truth even on his own show world peace 1 week ago Jimmy Dore is the greatest. God bless this man for his honesty and bravery. Chloe Lin 1 week ago (edited) Jimmy Dore a great and patriotic American who wants to save the nation! 👍👍👍 globalman 1 week ago Afshins becomes a bit uncomfortable when Jimmy includes former Prime Minister Tony Blair in his list of war criminals. I salute Dore for the light shed on Obama. He was just another tool of the Shadow government and I lament how so many were duped into believing that Obama was a new hope. They played the black man card and the usamericans fell for it wanting to show themselves as beyond racism. Another fallacy as racism is alive and well in the usa. There have been NO legitimate presidential leaders since Eisenhower and JFK. They were the last .... all the rest have been pawns and then to puppets. Just wish Jimmy was not quite so shrill and hysterical because that tends to turn off those who would otherwise be in total agreement. I understand his personality and character but too many people judge the superficial first leaving them deaf to important content. The reference to the Mafia is very accurate. The USA secret agencies learned most of what they know to carry out their clandestine and criminal activities from two main sources. The Nazis and the 3 Mafia branches in the USA. That is, the Mafia was the Italian families, Murder Inc. were the Jewish version and the Irish Mob. The very close contact and raids, interrogations, torture of these men taught the government agencies all they needed to know. The CIA has been training terrorists to overthrow governments since many, many decades for the USA's own self serving desires. They never change their game plan even when those very CIA trained terrorists turn around and bite the hands that fed them and become enemies of the USA as we see around the globe. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and numerous other places. Googazon Twitterberg 5 days ago Jimmy's the only remotely sane progressive. Anne Wood 2 days ago (edited) Absolute truth spoken by Jimmy Dore and most people of the US and UK are in total agreement. I can tell you as a Brit Tony Blair is known as a war criminal by the people in the UK. multiplexed 2 days ago Corporatism at it's best... even the democrats don't realize they're corporatists. Pasha Pasovski 1 week ago Mafia used to have honor, US never did!

2 3 ArdaSu2008 1 month ago (edited) I totally agree with Jimmy on his critics about corrupt US and European governments, intelligence services and MSM. They all, both right and social democrats, have been serving to the military industrial complex and big corporations and headed to a total destruction of economy and the environment globally. Their failure is also the main reason to those uprising ultra right wing populistic parties all over the Europe. Fucking bastards, liers and disgusting puppets are all of them! Politis aziminas alétheia 1 week ago Jimmy Dore at his best! The arrogant and criminal U.S.-empire-rulers and their corporate-news-media are in a process of disintegration! And Jimmy is right, "it's also the European Union"! CandC68 1 month ago (edited) So, Jimmy, how do you really feel? Our country has gone insane. Politics is a beauty pageant. Business is organized crime. News (MSM) is disinformation. Comedians are the best source for information. Our leaders want education to be eliminated so we are incapable of thinking. What's not to like. Mrs Miggins 2 days ago Jimmy mentioned some very good journalists who are on his progressive wavelength, but he didn't mention some of the serious conservative investigative reporters like John Solomon, Sara Carter, Kimberly Strassel, Chuck Ross, Paul Sperry, Judicial Watch and Dan Bongino, all of whom have done the hard work necessary to piece together names, places, dates, documentation that exposes the RussiaRussiaRussia hoax. We owe all of these people respect for putting themselves on the line to try and inform the public. AniishAu 1 month ago That's the best Jimmy Dore I've heard! He needs an extra to breath for him.

1 2 Mark El 1 month ago Oligarchs used us veterans & continue to use service members as their "mafia muscle."

47 48

View reply Hide replies Rossboe1 1 month ago (edited) Jeremy Scahill , Mehdi Hassan and Matt Taibbi also great journalists.

[May 12, 2019] Violence, subversion of democracy, media complicity – hard not to get a terrible sense of deja vu when it comes to US foreign policy

Notable quotes:
"... Their existence within the bubble enables them a to complete an unbridgeable detachment from the real world and an unflinching acceptance of belief in their own palpable absurdities. Madeleine Albright, John Bolton, Rachel Maddow are perhaps the archetypes. How can anyone who is not clinically insane think that the destruction of 500,000 deaths of Iraqi children due to the US embargo which took place between the two gulf wars, was "worth it." Well Madeleine Albright was okay with it, and she said as much. ..."
"... Maddow half-opportunist and half lunatic, along with Bolton a proven imbecile-lunatic were also a sub-species of the same pathology. ..."
"... The ruling institutions in the United States (not forgetting Saudi Arabia and Israel) have begun to take on the characteristics of a mafia state, and this to a slightly less degree in the rest of the empire. Ostensibly NATO – the capo – exists to protect the world from Russian/Chinese/Iranian "aggression" – whereas in fact NATO is a protection racket, which goes looking for trouble anywhere but the north Atlantic looking for hapless states to be 'whacked'. Libya and Yugoslavia come to mind. ..."
May 12, 2019 | off-guardian.org

On Fox News Channel's May 2nd edition of "The Story with Martha MacCallum" was alleged, by the program host (at 2:45 in this video), that one reason we must invade Venezuela (if we will) is that "People have lost 24 pounds" there. So (her point was), if we invade, that's not evil, it's no coup, but instead it's humanitarian (presumably like it was in Iraq in 2003, when we invaded that country, which likewise had never invaded nor threatened to invade the United States - it was raw international aggression, by our country, against Iraq).

Individuals who fall for a liar once, will typically fall for that liar again and again, without limit, because they are (for whatever reason) prejudiced to trust him. But is this attempt, at "regime change" in Venezuela, yet another example of that, or might it instead really be the case (this time) that (as this Fox host implies) to invade Venezuela will help the people there (gain back that lost weight, etc.), not kill many of them and destroy their nation even worse than it already was?

Francis Lee, May 11, 2019 7:44 PM

I think it would be true to say that the people who wish for, power, status and money, should be the last to be given it. They appear afflicted by a virulent form of grotesque self-aggrandisement comparable to bulimia – they simply can't get enough; and anyone who gets in their way will simply be swept aside. Such is the worldview and ideological disposition of the ruling elites ensconsed in the command posts of the media, political and business institutions.

Their existence within the bubble enables them a to complete an unbridgeable detachment from the real world and an unflinching acceptance of belief in their own palpable absurdities. Madeleine Albright, John Bolton, Rachel Maddow are perhaps the archetypes. How can anyone who is not clinically insane think that the destruction of 500,000 deaths of Iraqi children due to the US embargo which took place between the two gulf wars, was "worth it." Well Madeleine Albright was okay with it, and she said as much.

Maddow half-opportunist and half lunatic, along with Bolton a proven imbecile-lunatic were also a sub-species of the same pathology. Listening in particular to Albright I wonder if she is really 'human' in the generally understood meaning of the term. I am even beginning to believe the theory of David Icke that she and the rest of them may be some form of alien taken reptilian life which has assumed human form.

The ruling institutions in the United States (not forgetting Saudi Arabia and Israel) have begun to take on the characteristics of a mafia state, and this to a slightly less degree in the rest of the empire. Ostensibly NATO – the capo – exists to protect the world from Russian/Chinese/Iranian "aggression" – whereas in fact NATO is a protection racket, which goes looking for trouble anywhere but the north Atlantic looking for hapless states to be 'whacked'. Libya and Yugoslavia come to mind.

How this plays out is anyone's guess. History provides any number of instances of the self-righteousnes, stupidity and hubris of ruling elites and the destruction which they imposed upon the world. But the difference between then and now is that the stakes are now so much higher. The fall of the Roman empire did not result into the extinction of all life on earth; the fall of the Anglo-Zionist empire may well do.

[May 11, 2019] Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia

Highly recommended!
Looks like Chalupa was an important player in Steele dossier. That suggests Ukrainian diaspora, and possibly Ukrainian SBU links.
Notable quotes:
"... Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia. ..."
"... That would tend to work against theories that involve Skripal in a significant role in generating the dossier; though it would not rule him out in a more peripheral role ..."
"... We can also conclude neither bruce ohr, or the expat russian living in the us are neutral players in any of this too.. Was someone paid a fee to say something?? ..."
"... Steele is a stranger to the truth in any event so I wouldn't set much store by it – though if the dossier is third hand material at best it certainly explains why it is such rubbish. Steele's ability to get cash by selling steaming nonsense to the gullible is amazing. ..."
"... "A Ukrainian political consultant has revealed to Sputnik that former MI6 agent Christopher Steele sought and paid for researchers in Ukraine to concoct fake stories about Donald Trump prior his election as US president to use in the now-infamous dossier that supposedly contained damning evidence of Russia-Trump collusion. ..."
"... Radio Sputnik's Lee Stranahan spoke previously with Ukrainian political consultant and former diplomat Andrii Telizhenko about his connections to a Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative named Alexandra Chalupa who also worked for clients in Ukrainian politics. Chalupa told Politico in January 2017 that beginning in 2015, she pulled on a network of sources she'd established in Kiev and Washington to try and turn up dirt on Trump, once his star began to rise in the Republican primary campaign." ..."
Aug 30, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

Ed Snack , August 27, 2018 at 21:21

Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia.

That would tend to work against theories that involve Skripal in a significant role in generating the dossier; though it would not rule him out in a more peripheral role.

Edward , August 27, 2018 at 22:43

Such faith.

james , August 27, 2018 at 23:34

We can also conclude neither bruce ohr, or the expat russian living in the us are neutral players in any of this too.. Was someone paid a fee to say something?? your last comment-conclusion is very shaky at best..

craig Post author , August 28, 2018 at 07:08

Ed,

Could you give a link to the source of that info? Steele is a stranger to the truth in any event so I wouldn't set much store by it – though if the dossier is third hand material at best it certainly explains why it is such rubbish. Steele's ability to get cash by selling steaming nonsense to the gullible is amazing.

Ed Snack , August 28, 2018 at 09:54

The Hill has an article, can't post a link from my phone, but google Ohr hand written notes. Apparently reliable and sounds very interesting.

I wonder what will get out from his testimony tomorrow.

Ort , August 28, 2018 at 18:52

Craig, FYI I believe that this is the article Ed cites: "The handwritten notes exposing what Fusion GPS told DOJ about Trump"

Jo , August 29, 2018 at 12:03

5103

"A Ukrainian political consultant has revealed to Sputnik that former MI6 agent Christopher Steele sought and paid for researchers in Ukraine to concoct fake stories about Donald Trump prior his election as US president to use in the now-infamous dossier that supposedly contained damning evidence of Russia-Trump collusion.

Radio Sputnik's Lee Stranahan spoke previously with Ukrainian political consultant and former diplomat Andrii Telizhenko about his connections to a Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative named Alexandra Chalupa who also worked for clients in Ukrainian politics. Chalupa told Politico in January 2017 that beginning in 2015, she pulled on a network of sources she'd established in Kiev and Washington to try and turn up dirt on Trump, once his star began to rise in the Republican primary campaign."

[May 11, 2019] Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they discovered later discovered and attributed to Russians later

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Also note: Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they "discovered" later - https://disobedientmedia.com/2017/12/fancy-frauds-bogus-bears-malware-m ..."
"... And look who else sits on the Atlantic Council - http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/experts/list/irene-chalupa why it's the sister of Andrea Chalupa, unregistered foreign agent employed by the DNC as a "Consultant", whose entire family is tied to Ukraine Intelligence. ..."
"... Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel Stopfake.org She is a Ukrainian Diaspora leader. The Chalupas are the first family of Ukrainian propaganda. She works with and for Ukrainian Intelligence through the Atlantic Council, Stopfake.org, and her sisters Andrea (EuromaidanPR) and Alexandra. ..."
Mar 03, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

mc888 Fri, 03/02/2018 - 20:06 Permalink

Thanks Tyler.

Also note: Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they "discovered" later - https://disobedientmedia.com/2017/12/fancy-frauds-bogus-bears-malware-m

(if that's too 'in the weeds' for you, ask your tech guys to read and verify)

And look who else sits on the Atlantic Council - http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/experts/list/irene-chalupa why it's the sister of Andrea Chalupa, unregistered foreign agent employed by the DNC as a "Consultant", whose entire family is tied to Ukraine Intelligence.

http://theantimedia.org/propornot-2017-biggest-fake-news-story/

Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel Stopfake.org She is a Ukrainian Diaspora leader. The Chalupas are the first family of Ukrainian propaganda. She works with and for Ukrainian Intelligence through the Atlantic Council, Stopfake.org, and her sisters Andrea (EuromaidanPR) and Alexandra.

and lest we forget crazy eyes #1

http://theduran.com/adam-schiffs-collusion-with-oligarch-ukrainian-arms

[May 11, 2019] Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart -- Say Hello to Fancy Bear

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Ukraine has been screaming for the US to start a war with Russia for the past 2 1/2 years. ..."
"... Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a reason for the US to take a hard-line stance against Russia? Are they using Crowdstrike to carry this out? ..."
"... Meet the real Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, part of the groups that are targeting Ukrainian positions for the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. These people were so tech savvy they didn't know the Ukrainian SBU (Ukrainian CIA/internal security) records every phone call and most internet use in Ukraine and Donbass. Donbass still uses Ukrainian phone and internet services. ..."
"... This is a civil war and people supporting either side are on both sides of the contact line. The SBU is awestruck because there are hundreds if not thousands of people helping to target the private volunteer armies supported by Ukrainian-Americans. ..."
"... If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the work done by Alexandra Chalupa? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection. These words mirror Dimitri Alperovitch's identification process in his interview with PBS Judy Woodruff. ..."
"... How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election in a new direction. ..."
"... According to Esquire.com , Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said the measures taken were directly because of his work. ..."
"... Still, this is not enough to show a conflict of interest. Alperovitch's relationships with the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state supported hackers do. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016. ..."
"... According to Robert Parry's article At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council. Their main goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. ..."
"... The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support throughout the campaign. ..."
"... What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland Security? ..."
"... Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers. ..."
"... When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm and its hackers individually . There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government. ..."
"... Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other? ..."
"... Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network ..."
"... In an interview with Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA. They consider the CIA amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance is a quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity, Falcon Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the Myrotvorets site, Informnapalm analytical agency." ..."
"... Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence. The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could be on the list. ..."
"... This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared. If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves and not draw unwanted attention. ..."
"... Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike? ..."
"... What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US intel efforts. ..."
"... The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst. Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he and these hackers need to be investigated. ..."
"... According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have, the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I have." ..."
"... While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests. He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine. ..."
Dec 29, 2017 | www.washingtonsblog.com

In the wake of the JAR-16-20296 dated December 29, 2016 about hacking and influencing the 2016 election, the need for real evidence is clear. The joint report adds nothing substantial to the October 7th report. It relies on proofs provided by the cyber security firm Crowdstrike that is clearly not on par with intelligence findings or evidence. At the top of the report is an "as is" statement showing this.

The difference between Dmitri Alperovitch's claims which are reflected in JAR-1620296 and this article is that enough evidence is provided to warrant an investigation of specific parties for the DNC hacks. The real story involves specific anti-American actors that need to be investigated for real crimes.

For instance, the malware used was an out-dated version just waiting to be found. The one other interesting point is that the Russian malware called Grizzly Steppe is from Ukraine . How did Crowdstrike miss this when it is their business to know?

Later in this article you'll meet and know a little more about the real "Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear." The bar for identification set by Crowdstrike has never been able to get beyond words like probably, maybe, could be, or should be, in their attribution.

The article is lengthy because the facts need to be in one place. The bar Dimitri Alperovitch set for identifying the hackers involved is that low. Other than asking America to trust them, how many solid facts has Alperovitch provided to back his claim of Russian involvement?

The December 29th JAR adds a flowchart that shows how a basic phishing hack is performed. It doesn't add anything significant beyond that. Noticeably, they use both their designation APT 28 and APT 29 as well as the Crowdstrike labels of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear separately.

This is important because information from outside intelligence agencies has the value of rumor or unsubstantiated information at best according to policy. Usable intelligence needs to be free from partisan politics and verifiable. Intel agencies noted back in the early 90's that every private actor in the information game was radically political.

The Hill.com article about Russia hacking the electric grid is a perfect example of why this intelligence is political and not taken seriously. If any proof of Russian involvement existed, the US would be at war. Under current laws of war, there would be no difference between an attack on the power grid or a missile strike.

According to the Hill "Private security firms provided more detailed forensic analysis, which the FBI and DHS said Thursday correlated with the IC's findings.

"The Joint Analysis Report recognizes the excellent work undertaken by
security companies and private sector network owners and operators, and provides new indicators of compromise and malicious infrastructure
identified during the course of investigations and incident response," read a statement. The report identities two Russian intelligence groups already named by CrowdStrike and other private security firms."

In an interview with Washingtonsblog , William Binney, the creator of the NSA global surveillance system said "I expected to see the IP's or other signatures of APT's 28/29 [the entities which the U.S. claims hacked the Democratic emails] and where they were located and how/when the data got transferred to them from DNC/HRC [i.e. Hillary Rodham Clinton]/etc. They seem to have been following APT 28/29 since at least 2015, so, where are they?"

According to the latest Washington Post story, Crowdstrike's CEO tied a group his company dubbed "Fancy Bear" to targeting Ukrainian artillery positions in Debaltsevo as well as across the Ukrainian civil war front for the past 2 years.

Alperovitch states in many articles the Ukrainians were using an Android app to target the self-proclaimed Republics positions and that hacking this app was what gave targeting data to the armies in Donbass instead.

Alperovitch first gained notice when he was the VP in charge of threat research with McAfee. Asked to comment on Alperovitch's discovery of Russian hacks on Larry King, John McAfee had this to say. "Based on all of his experience, McAfee does not believe that Russians were behind the hacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), John Podesta's emails, and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. As he told RT, "if it looks like the Russians did it, then I can guarantee you it was not the Russians."

How does Crowdstrike's story part with reality? First is the admission that it is probably, maybe, could be Russia hacking the DNC. " Intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin 'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to Wiki Leaks."

The public evidence never goes beyond the word possibility. While never going beyond that or using facts, Crowdstrike insists that it's Russia behind both Clinton's and the Ukrainian losses. NBC carried the story because one of the partners in Crowdstrike is also a consultant for NBC.

According to NBC the story reads like this." The company, Crowdstrike, was hired by the DNC to investigate the hack and issued a report publicly attributing it to Russian intelligence. One of Crowdstrike's senior executives is Shawn Henry, a former senior FBI official who consults for NBC News.

"But the Russians used the app to turn the tables on their foes, Crowdstrike says. Once a Ukrainian soldier downloaded it on his Android phone, the Russians were able to eavesdrop on his communications and determine his position through geo-location.

In June, Crowdstrike went public with its findings that two separate Russian intelligence agencies had hacked the DNC. One, which Crowdstrike and other researchers call Cozy Bear, is believed to be linked to Russia's CIA, known as the FSB. The other, known as Fancy Bear, is believed to be tied to the military intelligence agency, called the GRU."

The information is so certain the level of proof never rises above "believed to be." According to the December 12th Intercept article "Most importantly, the Post adds that "intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin 'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks."

Because Ukrainian soldiers are using a smartphone app they activate their geolocation to use it. Targeting is from location to location. The app would need the current user location to make it work.

In 2015 I wrote an article that showed many of the available open source tools that geolocate, and track people. They even show street view. This means that using simple means, someone with freeware or an online website, and not a military budget can look at what you are seeing at any given moment.

Where Crowdstrike fails is insisting people believe that the code they see is (a) an advanced way to geolocate and (b) it was how a state with large resources would do it. Would you leave a calling card where you would get caught and fined through sanctions or worse? If you use an anonymous online resource at least Crowdstrike won't believe you are Russian and possibly up to something.

" Using open source tools this has been going on for years in the private sector. For geolocation purposes, your smartphone is one of the greatest tools to use. Finding and following you has never been easier . Let's face it if you are going to stalk someone, "street view" on a map is the next best thing to being there. In the following video, the software hacks your modem. It's only one step from your phone or computer."

If you read that article and watch the video you'll see that using "geo-stalker" is a better choice if you are on a low budget or no budget. Should someone tell the Russians they overpaid?

According to Alperovitch, the smartphone app plotted targets in about 15 seconds . This means that there is only a small window to get information this way.

Using the open source tools I wrote about previously, you could track your targets all-day. In 2014, most Ukrainian forces were using social media regularly. It would be easy to maintain a map of their locations and track them individually.

From my research into those tools, someone using Python scripts would find it easy to take photos, listen to conversations, turn on GPS, or even turn the phone on when they chose to. Going a step further than Alperovitch, without the help of the Russian government, GRU, or FSB, anyone could take control of the drones Ukraine is fond of flying and land them. Or they could download the footage the drones are taking. It's copy and paste at that point. Would you bother the FSB, GRU, or Vladimir Putin with the details or just do it?

In the WaPo article Alperovitch states "The Fancy Bear crew evidently hacked the app, allowing the GRU to use the phone's GPS coordinates to track the Ukrainian troops' position.

In that way, the Russian military could then target the Ukrainian army with artillery and other weaponry. Ukrainian brigades operating in eastern Ukraine were on the front lines of the conflict with Russian-backed separatist forces during the early stages of the conflict in late 2014, CrowdStrike noted. By late 2014, Russian forces in the region numbered about 10,000. The Android app was useful in helping the Russian troops locate Ukrainian artillery positions."

In late 2014, I personally did the only invasive passport and weapons checks that I know of during the Ukrainian civil war. I spent days looking for the Russian army every major publication said were attacking Ukraine. The keyword Cyber Security industry leader Alperovitch used is "evidently." Crowdstrike noted that in late 2014, there were 10,000 Russian forces in the region.

When I did the passport and weapons check, it was under the condition there would be no telephone calls. We went where I wanted to go. We stopped when I said to stop. I checked the documents and the weapons with no obstacles. The weapons check was important because Ukraine was stating that Russia was giving Donbass modern weapons at the time. Each weapon is stamped with a manufacture date. The results are in the articles above.

The government in Kiev agreed with my findings throughout 2014 and 2015. There were and are no Russian troops fighting in Donbass regardless of what Mr. Alperovitch asserts. There are some Russian volunteers which I have covered in detail.

Based on my findings which the CIA would call hard evidence, almost all the fighters had Ukrainian passports. There are volunteers from other countries. In Debaltsevo today, I would question Alperovitch's assertion of Russian troops based on the fact the passports will be Ukrainian and reflect my earlier findings. There is no possibly, could be, might be, about it.

The SBU, Olexander Turchinov, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense all agree that Crowdstrike is dead wrong in this assessment . Although subtitles aren't on it, the former Commandant of Ukrainian Army Headquarters thanks God Russia never invaded or Ukraine would have been in deep trouble.

How could Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike be this wrong on easily checked detail and still get this much media attention? Could the investment made by Google and some very large players have anything to do with the media Crowdstrike is causing?

In an interview with PBS newshour on December 22nd 2016, Dmitri Alperovitch finally produced the hard evidence he has for Russian involvement clearly. To be fair, he did state it several times before. It just didn't resonate or the media and US intelligence agencies weren't listening.

According to Alperovitch, the CEO of a $150 million dollar cyber security company "And when you think about, well, who would be interested in targeting Ukraine artillerymen in eastern Ukraine who has interest in hacking the Democratic Party, Russia government comes to mind, but specifically, Russian military that would have operational over forces in the Ukraine and would target these artillerymen."

That statement is most of the proof of Russian involvement he has. That's it, that's all the CIA, FBI have to go on. It's why they can't certify the intelligence. It's why they can't get beyond the threshold of maybe.

Woodruff then asked two important questions. She asked if Crowdstrike was still working for the DNC. Alperovitch responded "We're protecting them going forward. The investigation is closed in terms of what happened there. But certainly, we've seen the campaigns, political organizations are continued to be targeted, and they continue to hire us and use our technology to protect themselves."

Based on the evidence he presented Woodruff, there is no need to investigate further? Obviously, there is no need, the money is rolling in.

Second and most important Judy Woodruff asked if there were any questions about conflicts of interest, how he would answer? This is where Dmitri Alperovitch's story starts to unwind.

His response was "Well, this report was not about the DNC. This report was about information we uncovered about what these Russian actors were doing in eastern Ukraine in terms of locating these artillery units of the Ukrainian army and then targeting them. So, what we just did is said that it looks exactly as the same to the evidence we've already uncovered from the DNC, linking the two together."

Why is this reasonable statement going to take his story off the rails? First, let's look at the facts surrounding his evidence and then look at the real conflicts of interest involved. While carefully evading the question, he neglects to state his conflicts of interest are worthy of a DOJ investigation. Can you mislead the federal government about national security issues and not get investigated yourself?

If Alperovitch's evidence is all there is, then the US government owes some large apologies to Russia.

After showing who is targeting Ukrainian artillerymen, we'll look at what might be a criminal conspiracy.

Crowdstrike CEO Dmitri Alperovitch story about Russian hacks that cost Hillary Clinton the election was broadsided by the SBU (Ukrainian Intelligence and Security) in Ukraine. If Dimitri Alperovitch is working for Ukrainian Intelligence and is providing intelligence to 17 US Intelligence Agencies is it a conflict of interest?

Ukraine has been screaming for the US to start a war with Russia for the past 2 1/2 years. Using facts accepted by leaders on both sides of the conflict, the main proof Crowdstrike shows for evidence doesn't just unravel, it falls apart. Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a reason for the US to take a hard-line stance against Russia? Are they using Crowdstrike to carry this out?

Real Fancy Bear?

Real Fancy Bear?

Meet the real Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, part of the groups that are targeting Ukrainian positions for the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. These people were so tech savvy they didn't know the Ukrainian SBU (Ukrainian CIA/internal security) records every phone call and most internet use in Ukraine and Donbass. Donbass still uses Ukrainian phone and internet services.

These are normal people fighting back against private volunteer armies that target their homes, schools, and hospitals. The private volunteer armies like Pravy Sektor, Donbas Battalion, Azov, and Aidar have been cited for atrocities like child rape, torture, murder, and kidnapping. That just gets the ball rolling. These are a large swath of the Ukrainian servicemen Crowdstrike hopes to protect.

This story which just aired on Ukrainian news channel TCN shows the SBU questioning and arresting some of what they call an army of people in the Ukrainian-controlled areas. This news video shows people in Toretsk that provided targeting information to Donbass and people probably caught up in the net accidentally.

This is a civil war and people supporting either side are on both sides of the contact line. The SBU is awestruck because there are hundreds if not thousands of people helping to target the private volunteer armies supported by Ukrainian-Americans.

The first person they show on the video is a woman named Olga Lubochka. On the video her voice is heard from a recorded call saying " In the field, on the left about 130 degrees. Aim and you'll get it." and then " Oh, you hit it so hard you leveled it to the ground.""Am I going to get a medal for this?"

Other people caught up in the raid claim and probably were only calling friends they know. It's common for people to call and tell their family about what is going on around them. This has been a staple in the war especially in outlying villages for people aligned with both sides of the conflict. A neighbor calls his friend and says "you won't believe what I just saw."

Another "fancy bear," Alexander Schevchenko was caught calling friends and telling them that armored personnel carriers had just driven by.

Anatoli Prima, father of a DNR(Donetsk People's Republic) soldier was asked to find out what unit was there and how many artillery pieces.

One woman providing information about fuel and incoming equipment has a husband fighting on the opposite side in Gorlovka. Gorlovka is a major city that's been under artillery attack since 2014. For the past 2 1/2 years, she has remained in their home in Toretsk. According to the video, he's vowed to take no prisoners when they rescue the area.

When asked why they hate Ukraine so much, one responded that they just wanted things to go back to what they were like before the coup in February 2014.

Another said they were born in the Soviet Union and didn't like what was going on in Kiev. At the heart of this statement is the anti- OUN, antinationalist sentiment that most people living in Ukraine feel. The OUNb Bandera killed millions of people in Ukraine, including starving 3 million Soviet soldiers to death. The new Ukraine was founded in 1991 by OUN nationalists outside the fledgling country.

Is giving misleading or false information to 17 US Intelligence Agencies a crime? If it's done by a cyber security industry leader like Crowdstrike should that be investigated? If unwinding the story from the "targeting of Ukrainian volunteers" side isn't enough, we should look at this from the American perspective. How did the Russia influencing the election and DNC hack story evolve? Who's involved? Does this pose conflicts of interest for Dmitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? And let's face it, a hacking story isn't complete until real hackers with the skills, motivation, and reason are exposed.

In the last article exploring the DNC hacks the focus was on the Chalupas . The article focused on Alexandra, Andrea, and Irene Chalupa. Their participation in the DNC hack story is what brought it to international attention in the first place.

According to journalist and DNC activist Andrea Chalupa on her Facebook page " After Chalupa sent the email to Miranda (which mentions that she had invited this reporter to a meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Washington), it triggered high-level concerns within the DNC, given the sensitive nature of her work. "That's when we knew it was the Russians," said a Democratic Party source who has been directly involved in the internal probe into the hacked emails. In order to stem the damage, the source said, "we told her to stop her research."" July 25, 2016

If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the work done by Alexandra Chalupa? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection. These words mirror Dimitri Alperovitch's identification process in his interview with PBS Judy Woodruff.

How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election in a new direction.

According to Esquire.com , Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said the measures taken were directly because of his work.

Still, this is not enough to show a conflict of interest. Alperovitch's relationships with the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state supported hackers do. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016.

In my previous article I showed in detail how the Chalupas fit into this. A brief bullet point review looks like this.

  • The Chalupas are not Democrat or Republican. They are OUNb. The OUNb worked hard to start a war between the USA and Russia for the last 50 years. According to the Ukrainian Weekly in a rare open statement of their existence in 2011, "Other statements were issued in the Ukrainian language by the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (B) and the International Conference in Support of Ukraine. The OUN (Bandera wing) called for" What is OUNb Bandera? They follow the same political policy and platform that was developed in the 1930's by Stepan Bandera. When these people go to a Holocaust memorial they are celebrating both the dead and the OUNb SS that killed There is no getting around this fact. The OUNb have no concept of democratic values and want an authoritarian fascism.
  • Alexandra Chalupa- According to the Ukrainian Weekly , "The effort, known as Digital Miadan, gained momentum following the initial Twitter storms. Leading the effort were: Lara Chelak, Andrea Chalupa, Alexandra Chalupa, Constatin Kostenko and others." The Digital Maidan was also how they raised money for the coup. This was how the Ukrainian emigres bought the bullets that were used on Euromaidan. Ukraine's chubby nazi, Dima Yarosh stated openly he was taking money from the Ukrainian emigres during Euromaidan and Pravy Sektor still fundraises openly in North America. The "Sniper Massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine by Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, University of Ottowa shows clearly detailed evidence how the massacre happened. It has Pravy Sektor confessions that show who created the "heavenly hundred. Their admitted involvement as leaders of Digital Maidan by both Chalupas is a clear violation of the Neutrality Act and has up to a 25 year prison sentence attached to it because it ended in a coup.
  • Andrea Chalupa-2014, in a Huff Post article Sept. 1 2016, Andrea Chalupa described Sviatoslav Yurash as one of Ukraine's important "dreamers." He is a young activist that founded Euromaidan Press . Beyond the gushing glow what she doesn't say is who he actually is. Sviatoslav Yurash was Dmitri Yarosh's spokesman just after Maidan. He is a hardcore Ukrainian nationalist and was rewarded with the Deputy Director position for the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) in Kiev .

In January, 2014 when he showed up at the Maidan protests he was 17 years old. He became the foreign language media representative for Vitali Klitschko, Arseni Yatsenyuk, and Oleh Tyahnybok. All press enquiries went through Yurash. To meet Dimitri Yurash you had to go through Sviatoslav Yurash as a Macleans reporter found out.

At 18 years old, Sviatoslav Yurash became the spokesman for Ministry of Defense of Ukraine under Andrei Paruby. He was Dimitri Yarosh's spokesman and can be seen either behind Yarosh on videos at press conferences or speaking ahead of him to reporters. From January 2014 onward, to speak to Dimitri Yarosh, you set up an appointment with Yurash.

Andrea Chalupa has worked with Yurash's Euromaidan Press which is associated with Informnapalm.org and supplies the state level hackers for Ukraine.

  • Irene Chalupa- Another involved Chalupa we need to cover to do the story justice is Irene Chalupa. From her bio – Irena Chalupa is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center. She is also a senior correspondent at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where she has worked for more than twenty years. Ms. Chalupa previously served as an editor for the Atlantic Council, where she covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel org She is also a Ukrainian emigre leader.

According to Robert Parry's article At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council. Their main goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.

The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support throughout the campaign.

What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland Security?

When you put someone that has so much to gain in charge of an investigation that could change an election, that is a conflict of interest. If the think tank is linked heavily to groups that want war with Russia like the Atlantic Council and the CEEC, it opens up criminal conspiracy.

If the person in charge of the investigation is a fellow at the think tank that wants a major conflict with Russia it is a definite conflict of interest. Both the Atlantic Council and clients stood to gain Cabinet and Policy positions based on how the result of his work affects the election. It clouds the results of the investigation. In Dmitri Alperovitch's case, he found the perpetrator before he was positive there was a crime.

Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers.

When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm and its hackers individually . There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government.

Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other?

Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other?

Crowdstrike is also following their hack of a Russian government official after the DNC hack. It closely resembles the same method used with the DNC because it was an email hack.

ff-twitter-com-2016-12-30-02-24-54

Crowdstrike's product line includes Falcon Host, Falcon Intelligence, Falcon Overwatch and Falcon DNS. Is it possible the hackers in Falcons Flame are another service Crowdstrike offers? Although this profile says Virginia, tweets are from the Sofia, Bulgaria time zone and he writes in Russian. Another curiosity considering the Fancy Bear source code is in Russian. This image shows Crowdstrike in their network.

Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network

In an interview with Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA. They consider the CIA amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance is a quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity, Falcon Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the Myrotvorets site, Informnapalm analytical agency."

In the image it shows a network diagram of Crowdstrike following the Surkov leaks. The network communication goes through a secondary source. This is something you do when you don't want to be too obvious. Here is another example of that.

Ukrainian Intelligence and the real Fancy Bear?

Ukrainian Intelligence and the real Fancy Bear?

Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence. The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could be on the list.

Should someone tell Dimitri Alperovitch that Gerashchenko, who is now in charge of Peacekeeper recently threatened president-elect Donald Trump that he would put him on his "Peacemaker" site as a target? The same has been done with Silvio Berscaloni in the past.

Trying not to be obvious, the Head of Ukraine's Information Ministry (UA Intelligence) tweeted something interesting that ties Alperovitch and Crowdstrike to the Ukrainian Intelligence hackers and the Information Ministry even tighter.

Trying to keep it hush hush?

Trying to keep it hush hush?

This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared. If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves and not draw unwanted attention.

These same hackers are associated with Alexandra, Andrea, and Irene Chalupa through the portals and organizations they work with through their OUNb. The hackers are funded and directed by or through the same OUNb channels that Alperovitch is working for and with to promote the story of Russian hacking.

Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike?

Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike?

When you look at the image for the hacking group in the euromaidanpress article, one of the hackers identifies themselves as one of Dimitri Yarosh's Pravy Sektor members by the Pravy Sektor sweatshirt they have on. Noted above, Pravy Sektor admitted to killing the people at the Maidan protest and sparked the coup.

Going further with the linked Euromaidanpress article the hackers say" Let's understand that Ukrainian hackers and Russian hackers once constituted a single very powerful group. Ukrainian hackers have a rather high level of work. So the help of the USA I don't know, why would we need it? We have all the talent and special means for this. And I don't think that the USA or any NATO country would make such sharp movements in international politics."

What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US intel efforts.

The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst. Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he and these hackers need to be investigated.

According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have, the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I have."

While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests. He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine.

The evidence presented deserves investigation because it looks like the case for conflict of interest is the least Dimitri Alperovitch should look forward to. If these hackers are the real Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, they really did make sharp movements in international politics.

By pawning it off on Russia, they made a worldwide embarrassment of an outgoing President of the United States and made the President Elect the suspect of rumor.

From the Observer.com , " Andrea Chalupa -- the sister of DNC research staffer Alexandra Chalupa -- claimed on social media, without any evidence, that despite Clinton conceding the election to Trump, the voting results need to be audited to because Clinton couldn't have lost -- it must have been Russia. Chalupa hysterically tweeted to every politician on Twitter to audit the vote because of Russia and claimed the TV show The Americans , about two KGB spies living in America, is real."

Quite possibly now the former UK Ambassador Craig Murry's admission of being the involved party to "leaks" should be looked at. " Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia . Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling."

[May 11, 2019] Whitney Judgment Day Looms For John Brennan

Highly recommended!
May 11, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Whitney: Judgment Day Looms For John Brennan

by Tyler Durden Sat, 05/11/2019 - 11:05 48 SHARES Authored by Mike Whitney via The Unz Review,

Sometime in the next 4 weeks, the Justice Department's inspector general will release an internal review that will reveal the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Among other matters, the IG's report is expected to determine "whether there was sufficient justification under existing guidelines for the FBI to have started an investigation in the first place." Critics of the Trump-collusion probe believe that there was never probable cause that a crime had been committed, therefore, there was no legal basis for launching the investigation.

The findings of the Mueller report– that there was no cooperation or collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign– seem to underscore this broader point and suggest that the fictitious Trump-Russia connection was merely a pretext for spying on the campaign of a Beltway outsider whose political views clashed with those of the foreign policy establishment.

In any event, the upcoming release of the Horowitz report will formally end the the first phase of the long-running Russiagate scandal and mark the beginning of Phase 2, in which high-profile officials from the previous administration face criminal prosecution for their role in what looks to be a botched attempt at a coup d'etat.

me width=

Here's a brief summary from political analyst, Larry C. Johnson, who previously worked at the CIA and U.S. State Department:

" The evidence is plain–there was a broad, coordinated effort by the Obama Administration, with the help of foreign governments, to target Donald Trump and paint him as a stooge of Russia. The Mueller Report provides irrefutable evidence that the so-called Russian collusion case against Donald Trump was a deliberate fabrication by intelligence and law enforcement organizations in the US and UK and organizations aligned with the Clinton Campaign." ( "How US and Foreign Intel Agencies Interfered in a US Election" , Larry C. Johnson, Consortium News)

Bingo. Attorney General William Barr has already stated his belief that spying on the Trump campaign "did occur" and that, in his mind, it is "a big deal". He also reiterated his commitment to thoroughly investigate the matter in order to find out whether the spying was adequately "predicated", that is, whether the FBI followed the required protocols for such spying, or not. Barr already knows the answer to this question as he is fully aware of the fact that the FBI used information that they knew was false to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Having no hard evidence of cooperation with the Kremlin, senior-level FBI officials and their counterparts at the Obama Justice Department used parts of an "opposition research" document (The Trump Dossier) that they knew was unreliable to procure warrants that allowed them to treat a presidential campaign the same way the intelligence agencies treat foreign enemies; using electronic surveillance, wiretapping, confidential informants and "honey trap" schemes designed to gather embarrassing or incriminating information on their target. Barr knows all of this already which is why the Democrats are doing everything in their power to discredit him and have him removed from office.

https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4855

His determination to "get to the bottom of this" is not just a threat to the FBI, it's a threat to multiple agencies that may have had a hand in this expansive domestic espionage operation including the CIA, the NSA, the DOJ, the State Department and, perhaps, even the Obama White House. No one knows yet how far up the political food-chain the skulduggery actually goes, but Barr appears to be serious about finding out.

Here's Barr again:

"Many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single confidential informant .I would like to find out whether that is in fact true. It strikes me as a fairly anemic effort if that was the counterintelligence effort designed to stop the threat as it's being represented."

In other words, Barr knows that the Trump campaign was riddled with spies and he is going to do his damnedest to find out what happened. He also knows that the FISA warrants were improperly obtained using the shabby disinformation from an opposition research "hit piece" (The Steele Dossier) that was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, just like he knows that government agents had concocted a strategy for leaking classified information to the media to fuel the public hysteria. Barr knows most of what happened already. It's just a matter of compiling the research in the proper format and delivering it in a way that helps to emphasize how trusted government agents abused their power by pursuing a vicious partisan plot to either destroy the president's reputation or force him from office. Like Barr said, that's a "big deal".

The name that seems to feature larger than all others in the ongoing Trump-Russia saga, is James Comey, the former FBI Director who oversaw the spying operations that are now under investigation at the DOJ. But was Comey really the central figure in these felonious hi-jinks or was he a mere lieutenant following directives from someone more powerful than himself? While the preponderance of new evidence suggests that the FBI was deeply involved, it does not answer this crucial question. For example, just this week, a report by veteran journalist John Solomon, showed that former British spy Christopher Steele admitted to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec that his "Trump Dossier" was "political research", implying that the contents couldn't be trusted because they were shaped by Steele's political bias. Kavalec passed along this information to the FBI which shrugged it off and then, just days later, used the dossier to obtain warrants to spy on members of the Trump campaign. Think about that for a minute. The FBI had "written proof . that Steele had a political motive", but went ahead and used the dossier to procure the warrants anyway. That's what I'd call a premeditated felony.

But evidence of wrongdoing is not proof that Comey was the ringleader, he was just the hapless sad sack who was left holding the bag. The truth is, Comey was just a reluctant follower. The real architect of the Trump-Russia treachery was the boss-man at the nation's premier intelligence agency, the CIA. That's where the headwaters of this shameful burlesque are located, in Langley. More on that in a minute, but first check out this excerpt from an article at The Hill which sums up Comey's role fairly well:

(There) "will be an examination of whether Comey was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director and attorney general. This, above all, is what's causing the 360-degree head spin.

"There are early indicators that troubling behaviors may have occurred in all three scenarios. Barr will want to zero in on a particular area of concern: the use by the FBI of confidential human sources, whether its own or those offered up by the then-CIA director.

In addition, the cast of characters leveraged by the FBI against the Trump campaign all appear to have their genesis as CIA sources ("assets," in agency vernacular) shared at times with the FBI. From Stefan Halper and possibly Joseph Mifsud, to Christopher Steele, to Carter Page himself, and now a mysterious "government investigator" posing as Halper's assistant and cited in The New York Times article, legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more than an FBI counterintelligence case." ( "James Comey is in trouble and he knows it" , The Hill)

Why is the Inspector General so curious as to whether Comey "was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director? And why did Comey draw from "a cast of characters " . that "all appear to have their genesis as CIA sources"??

Could it be that Comey was just an unwitting pawn in a domestic regime change operation launched by former CIA Director John Brennan, the one public figure who has expressed greater personal animus towards Trump than all the others combined? Could Trump's promise to normalize relations with Russia have intensified Brennan's visceral hatred of him given the fact that Russia had frustrated Brennan's strategic plans in Ukraine and Syria? Keep in mind, the CIA had been arming, training and providing logistical support to the Sunni militants who were trying to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al Assad. Putin's intervention crushed the jihadist militias delivering a humiliating defeat to Generalissimo Brennan who, soon after, left office in disgrace. Isn't this at least part of the reason why Brennan hates Trump?

Regular readers of this column know that I have always thought that Brennan was the central figure in the Trump-Russia charade. It was Brennan who first referred the case to Comey, just as it was Brennan who "hand-picked" the analysts who stitched together the dodgy Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) (which said that "Putin and the Russian government aspired to help Trump's election chances.") It was also Brennan who persuaded Harry Reid to petition Comey to open an investigation in the first place. Brennan was chief instigator of the Trump-Russia fiasco, the omniscient puppet-master who persuaded Clapper and Comey to do his bidding while still-unidentified agents strategically leaked stories to the media to inflame passions and sow social unrest. At every turn, Brennan was there guiding the perfidious project along. According to journalist Philip Giraldi, the CIA may have even assisted in the obtaining of FISA warrants on Trump campaign aids as this excerpt from an article at The Unz Review indicates:

"Brennan was the key to the operation because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court refused to approve several requests by the FBI to initiate taps on Trump associates and Trump Tower as there was no probable cause to do so but the British and other European intelligence services were legally able to intercept communications linked to American sources. Brennan was able to use his connections with those foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, to make it look like the concerns about Trump were coming from friendly and allied countries and therefore had to be responded to as part of routine intelligence sharing. As a result, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Gen. Michael Flynn were all wiretapped. And likely there were others. This all happened during the primaries and after Trump became the GOP nominee." ( "The Conspiracy Against Trump" , Philip Giraldi)

Can you see how important this is? The FBI was having trouble getting warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, so Brennan helped them out by persuading his foreign intelligence allies (the British and other European intelligence services) to come up with bogus "intercepted communications linked to American sources," which helped to secure the FISA warrants. We have no idea of what these foreign agents heard on these alleged intercepted communications, all we know is that they were effectively used to achieve Brennan's ultimate objective, which was to acquire the means of taking down Trump via a relentless and expansive surveillance campaign.

According to a report in The Guardian (where the story first appeared.):

"GCHQ (British Government Communications Headquarters) played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, which began in late July 2016. One source called the British eavesdropping agency the "principal whistleblower". ("British spies were first to spot Trump team's links with Russia ", The Guardian)

Okay, so Brennan twisted a few arms and got his foreign Intel buddies to make uncorroborated claims that got the investigative ball rolling, but then what? If there was any meat to Brennan's foreign intel, then Mueller would have dug it up and used it in his report, right? But he didn't. Why?

Because there was nothing there, the whole thing was a sham from the get go. Brennan probably "sexed up" the intelligence so it would sound like something it really wasn't. (Think: WMD) Again, if there was even a scintilla of hard evidence that Trump's campaign assistants were in bed with Russia, Mueller would have shrieked it from every mountaintop across America. But he didn't, because there wasn't any. There was no cooperation, no conspiracy and no collusion. Trump was falsely accused. End of story.

Here's more from the same article:

"The Guardian has been told the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team and Moscow ahead of the US election." (Guardian)

"The extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team and Moscow"???

Really? This is precisely the type of hyperventilating journalism that fueled the absurd conspiracy theory that the president of the United States was a Russian agent. It's hard to believe that we're even discussing the matter at this point.

There was an interesting aside in John Solomon's article that suggests that he might be thinking along the same lines. He says: "One legal justification cited for redacting the Oct. 13, 2016, email is the National Security Act of 1947, which can be used to shield communications involving the CIA or the White House National Security Council."

Why would Solomon draw attention to "to shielding communications involving the CIA or the White House", after all, the bulk of his article focused on the State Department and the FBI? Is he suggesting that the CIA and Obama White House may have been involved in these spying shenanigans, is that why Kavalec's damning notes (which stated that Steele's dossier could not be trusted.) have been retroactively classified?

Take a look at this email from the FBI's chief investigator in the Russia collusion probe, Peter Strzok, to his fellow agents in April 2017.

"I'm beginning to think the agency (CIA) got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn't shared it completely with us. Might explain all those weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as source of some leaks." -Peter Strzok.

Ha! So even the FBI's chief investigator was in the dark about the CIA's shadowy machinations behind the scenes. Clearly, Brennan wanted to prevent the other junta leaders from fully knowing what he was up to.

All of this is bound to come out in the inspector general's report sometime in the next month or so. Both Attorney General William Barr and IG Horowitz appear to be fully committed to revealing the criminal leaks, the illegal electronic surveillance, the improperly obtained FISA warrants, and the multiple confidential human sources (spies) that were placed in the Trump campaign. They are going to face withering criticism for their efforts, but they are resolutely moving forward all the same. Bravo, for that.

Bottom line : The agents and officials who conducted this seditious attack on the presidency never thought they'd be held accountable for their crimes. But they were wrong, and now their day of reckoning is fast approaching. The main players in this palace coup are about to be exposed, criminally charged and prosecuted. Some of them will probably wind up in jail.

"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine."

DocBerg , just now link

Please wake me up from my hibernation if any of these cretins are actually prosecuted effectively, much less punished, as they richly deserve.

JCW Industries , 3 minutes ago link

Nothing will happen. IG report will show nothing. Look who's doing it. (((Horowitz))).....the DS protects its own

notfeelinthebern , 18 minutes ago link

So we should probably be sanctioning GB, instead of Russia? It would be the right thing to do? No?

Gonzogal , 6 minutes ago link

There is ZERO evidence that Russia played ANY role in the 2016 USSA election and yet are sanctioned to the max, threatened with war etc. HOWEVER there IS proof of the UK/GCHQ involvement.

I am waiting to see if Trump still goes to the UK in June or if he tells them he is "busy with more important things at home" aka F...off.

Amy G. Dala , 2 minutes ago link

Remember when Gowdy asked Brennan for evidence, and Brennan does reply with a straight face:

"We don't deal in evidence."

Mister Brennan, thou has dost protest too loudly, for too long . . .

Idaho potato head , 19 minutes ago link

Apocalypse, I would say that word describes it pretty well.

Middle English Apocalipse "Revelation (the New Testament book)," borrowed from Anglo-French, borrowed from Late Latin apocalypsis "revelation, the Book of Revelation," borrowed from Greek apokálypsis "uncovering, disclosure, revelation," from apokalyp-, stem of apokalưptein "to uncover, disclose, reveal" (from apo- APO- + kalưptein "to cover, protect, conceal," of uncertain origin) + -sis -SIS

Joebloinvestor , 24 minutes ago link

Anyone notice NO ******* COMMENT from UK intelligence about their ex-spies being involved in a US election?

I kind of expected one "throwaway" to be found with a hole behind his ear.

Idaho potato head , 13 minutes ago link

'highly likely'. would be typical english understatement.

bh2 , 30 minutes ago link

"No one knows yet how far up the political food-chain the skulduggery actually goes"

Too kind. We all know it is impossible that Susan Rice did not know -- she would have to authorize the FBI to conduct any foreign spying operations.

And if Susan Rice knew, it is impossible that Barack Obama didn't know. And approved of it, if only by not putting a stop to it.

The string that hasn't been pulled yet is the role of British intelligence. Brennan is obviously not a very bright man. He's a post-turtle, so how a dull-witted former communist ended up as head of the CIA is yet another story that needs looking into.

Was he actually a British mole?

The intersection of British establishment political goals and donated assets in the operation of this plot is nakedly obvious. It will be for Barr to expose that "angle", with the distinct possibility the ultimate origin of this scheme was the Blairite UK civil service who wished to eliminate a potentially powerful political actor who repeatedly and strongly indicated his unreserved support for Brexit.

Philthy_Stacker , 45 minutes ago link

All the things you mentioned were obfuscated by Clinton, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr., Cheney, several Generals, heads of state, foreign intelligence. Do you think someone just snaps a finger and the MIC disappears?

You conflate 'past' leadership with the current. The deep state is crumbling. We need to keep digging and indicting until Rothschild takes a one way rocket off planet Earth.

It will only end when treasonous traitor hang by their necks. I'm still hoping and informing others.

joego1 , 36 minutes ago link

Only the wheels that grind the sheeple work right now.

wadalt , 50 minutes ago link

"I've talked to the members of the Israeli government at the highest levels. I know who they want elected here. It's not Hillary Clinton." – Former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani

The TRUMP Collusion wasn't with the Russians , but with APARTHEID Israhell.

But NO ONE will investigate that.

M.A.G.A. is out

K.A.K.A. is in (Keep America Kabalah Again)

http://cufpa.wordpress.com/2018/01/07/trumps-jewish-agenda/

KJWqonfo7 , 34 minutes ago link

It's difficult to look at him with that repugnant grin on his rat face.

boring_man , 54 minutes ago link

"Some of them will probably wind up in jail."

"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine."

"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all."

Henry Wadsworth Longellow

Patience is an integral part of of those interested in true "justice"

man will fail, and at times shirk his duty to God and each other,,,,,,,,,,,,,our Great Judge misses no thing,,,,,,,

- now there's yer dinner -

boring

Dumpster Elite , 1 hour ago link

I know what occurred...it was a coup attempt.

I won't believe that ANYTHING will be done about it. Prove me wrong, Barr. I remain a non-believer that anything bad happens to the Deep State.

Pa Kettle , 1 hour ago link

The definitive exposé:

"CIA Crimes: How John Brennan Weaponized the CIA and FBI, and Conspired with Russia and Harry Reid to Frame Trump"

PART A
https://chaletbooks.com/chaletreports/?p=1362

PART B
https://chaletbooks.com/chaletreports/?p=1443

PART C
https://chaletbooks.com/chaletreports/?p=1525

PART D
https://chaletbooks.com/chaletreports/?p=2241

PART E
https://chaletbooks.com/chaletreports/?p=2423

PART F
https://chaletbooks.com/chaletreports/?p=2463

Philthy_Stacker , 52 minutes ago link

Sorry Ashton, Dan Bongino figured it out 2 years ago. Your book is weak.
https://www.amazon.com/Spygate-Attempted-Sabotage-Donald-Trump/dp/1642930989
Ashton is a day late and a dollar short. Hats off to Dan Bongino, the real 'exposer'.
Investigative reporting by:
John Solomon and Sara Carter.

[May 11, 2019] Intel and Law Enforcement Tried to Entrap Trump by Larry C Johnson

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Breaking news today, courtesy of the New York Times , is that a man with a long history of working with the CIA and a female FBI Informant, traveled to London in September of 2016 and tried unsuccessfully to entrap George Papadopolous. The biggest curiosity is that US intelligence or law enforcement officials fully briefed British intelligence on what they were up to. ..."
"... The FBI disingenuously claims they ran Azra Turk at Papadopolous because they were alarmed ostensibly by Russia's attempts to disrupt the 2016 election. But Papadopolous was not seeking out Russian contacts. He was being baited. It was Mifsud and others tied to British and US intelligence who were bringing up the "opportunity" to work with the Russians. ..."
"... The boomerang from the Democratic Party's failed attempt to connect Donald Trump to Russia's 2016 election meddling is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow's pesky neighbor, Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases tried, to help Hillary Clinton . ..."
"... In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort 's dealings inside the country, in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress. ..."
"... It's not just the left. I listened to Michael Tracey's interview with George Papadopoulos and was stunned to learn about the web of Deep State actors and how our Five Eyes allies were intimately involved in subverting our Presidential election. Papadopoulos even talks about U.S. military attachés, DIA guys, in on this coup. Listen to this Michael Tracey* interview and you will be shaken: https://youtu.be/ZjGLCCP_lPg ..."
"... Neoliberals and neoconservatives (ie zionists) were behind it and continue to push it. Trump ran to the left of Clinton on both domestic and foreign policy. That's why he won, and why the establishment must present his election as de facto illegitimate, because otherwise they would be forced to admit that the bipartisan convergence around both finance driven economic policy and war on terror interventionism that has described elite politics since Clinton has been a disaster for most ordinary Americans -- of all types and political persuasions -- and needs to be destroyed root and branch. ..."
"... What's the likelihood that Carter Page was a plant in the Trump campaign? After all, he had a history with the US IC and was used as bait in an FBI case to prove Russian operatives' recruiting efforts. It's thought he's the Under Cover Employee alluded to in this case, which resulted in the successful prosecution of Russian spies: ..."
"... Here's a National Review exclusive report in which a transcript of FBI's Deputy Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa's testimony reveals several Confidential Human Sources (including Christopher Steele), and more interestingly foreign "liasons" (Mifsud?) were employed by the bureau in this operation: ..."
May 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Intel and Law Enforcement Tried to Entrap Trump by Larry C Johnson

The preponderance of evidence makes this very simple--there was a broad, coordinated effort by the Obama Administration, with the help of foreign governments, to target Donald Trump and paint him as a stooge of Russia.

The Mueller Report provides irrefutable evidence that the so-called Russian collusion case against Donald Trump was a deliberate fabrication by intelligence and law enforcement organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom and organizations aligned with the Clinton Campaign.

Breaking news today, courtesy of the New York Times, is that a man with a long history of working with the CIA and a female FBI Informant, traveled to London in September of 2016 and tried unsuccessfully to entrap George Papadopolous. The biggest curiosity is that US intelligence or law enforcement officials fully briefed British intelligence on what they were up to. Quite understandable given what we now know about British spying on the Trump Campaign.

The Mueller investigation of Trump "collusion" with Russia prior to the 2016 Presidential election focused on eight cases:

  1. Proposed Trump Tower Project in Moscow
  2. George Papadopolous --
  3. Carter Page --
  4. Dimitri Simes --
  5. Veselnetskya Meeting at Trump Tower (June 16, 2016)
  6. Events at Republican Convention
  7. Post-Convention Contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak
  8. Paul Manafort

One simple fact emerges--of the eight cases or incidents of alleged Trump Campaign interaction with the Russians investigated by the Mueller team, the proposals to interact with the Russian Government or Putin originated with FBI informants, MI-6 assets or people paid by Fusion GPS, not Trump or his people. There is not a single instance where Donald Trump or any member of his campaign team initiated contact with the Russians for the purpose of gaining derogatory information on Hillary or obtaining support to boost the Trump campaign. Not one.

Simply put, Trump and his campaign were the target of an elaborate, wide ranging covert action designed to entrap him and members of his team as an agent of Russia.

Let's look in detail at each of the cases.

THE PROPOSED TRUMP TOWER PROJECT IN MOSCOW, according to Mueller's report, originated with an FBI Informant--Felix Sater.

Here's what the Mueller Report states:

In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately September 2015, Felix Sater . . . contacted Cohen (i.e., Michael Cohen) on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert), a Russian real-estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov.

Sater had known Rozov since approximately 2007 and, in 2014, had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City. Sater later contacted Rozov and proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would license the name and brand from the Trump Organization but construct the building on its own. Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee of I.C. Expert. (see page 69 of the Mueller Report).

Mueller, as I have noted previously , is downright dishonest in failing to identify Sater as an FBI informant. Sater was not just a private entrepreneur looking to make some coin. He was a fully signed up FBI informant. Sater's status as an FBI snitch was first exposed in 2012. Sater also was a boyhood chum of Michael Cohen, the target being baited in this operation. Another inconvenient fact excluded from the Mueller report is that one of Mueller's Chief Prosecutors, Andrew Weissman, signed the deal with Felix Sater in December 1998 that put Sater into the FBI Informant business .

All suggestions for meeting with the Russian Government, including Putin, originated with Felix Sater. The use of Sater on this particular project started in September 2015.

[For more on Sater please see my previous posts, Felix Sater--The Rosetta Stone for the FBI/CIA Conspiracy Against Trump? , Felix Sater and the Steele Dossier .]

GEORGE PAPADOPOLOUS

Papadopolous was targeted by British and U.S. intelligence starting in late December 2015, when he is offered out of the blue a job with the London Centre of International Law and Practice Limited (LCILP) . The LCILP has all of the hallmarks of an intelligence front company. LCILP began as an offshoot from another company  --  EN Education Group Limited  --  which describes itself as "a global education consultancy, facilitating links between students, education providers and organisations with an interest in education worldwide".

EN Education and LCILP are owned and run by Nagi Khalid Idris, a 48-year-old British citizen of Sudanese origin. For no apparent reason Idris offers Papadopolous a job as the Director of the LCILP's International Energy and Natural Resources Division. Then in March of 2016, Idris and Arvinder Sambei (who acted as an attorney for the FBI on a 9-11 extradition case in the UK), insist on introducing Joseph Mifsud to Papadopolous.

It is Joseph Mifsud who introduces the idea of meeting Putin following a lunch in London:

"The lunch is booked for March 24 at the Grange Holborn Hotel,. . . . "When I get there, Mifsud is waiting for me in the lobby with an attractive, fashionably dressed young woman with dirty blonde hair at his side. He introduces her as Olga Vinogradova." (p. 76)

"Mifsud sells her hard. "Olga is going to be your inside woman to Moscow. She knows everyone." He tells me she was a former official at the Russian Ministry of Trade. Then he waxes on about introducing me to the Russian ambassador in London." (p. 77)

"On April 12, "Olga" writes: "I have already alerted my personal links to our conversation and your request. The embassy in London is very much aware of this. As mentioned, we are all very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump. The Russian Federation would love to welcome him once his candidature would be officially announced."

And it is Mifsud who raises the possibility of getting dirt on Hillary:

"Then Mifsud returns from the Valdai conference. On April 26 we meet for breakfast at the Andaz Hotel, near Liverpool Street Station, one of the busiest train stations in London. He's in an excellent mood and claims he met with high-level Russian government officials. But once again, he's very short on specifics. This is becoming a real pattern with Mifsud. He hasn't offered any names besides Timofeev. Then, he leans across the table in a conspiratorial manner. The Russians have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, he tells me. "Emails of Clinton," he says. "They have thousands of emails."

Here again we encounter the lying and obfuscation of the Mueller team. They falsely characterize Mifsud as an agent of Russia. In fact, he has close and longstanding ties to both British and US intelligence ( Disobedient Media lays out the Mifsud mystery in detail ).

Mifsud was not alone. The FBI and the CIA also were in the game of trying to entrap Papadopolous. In September of 2016, Papadopolous was being wined and dined by Halper (who has longstanding ties to the US intelligence community) and Azra Turk, an FBI Informant/researcher ( see NY Times ).

The FBI disingenuously claims they ran Azra Turk at Papadopolous because they were alarmed ostensibly by Russia's attempts to disrupt the 2016 election. But Papadopolous was not seeking out Russian contacts. He was being baited. It was Mifsud and others tied to British and US intelligence who were bringing up the "opportunity" to work with the Russians.

CARTER PAGE

The section of the Mueller report that deals with Carter Page is a total travesty. Mueller and his team, for example, initially misrepresent Page's status with the Trump campaign--he is described as "working" for the campaign, which implies a paid position, when he was in fact only a volunteer foreign policy advisor. Mueller also paints Page's prior experience and work in Russia as evidence that Page was being used by Russian intelligence, but says nothing about the fact that Page was being regularly debriefed by the CIA and the FBI during the same period. In other words, Page was cooperating with US intelligence and law enforcement. But this fact is omitted in the Mueller report.

Mueller eventually accurately describes Page's role in the Trump campaign as follows:

In January 2016, Page began volunteering on an informal, unpaid basis for the Trump Campaign after Ed Cox, a state Republican Party official, introduced Page to Trump Campaign officials. Page told the Office that his goal in working on the Campaign was to help candidate Trump improve relations with Russia. To that end, Page emailed Campaign officials offering his thoughts on U.S.-Russia relations, prepared talking points and briefing memos on Russia, and proposed that candidate Trump meet with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

In communications with Campaign officials, Page also repeatedly touted his high-level contacts in Russia and his ability to forge connections between candidate Trump and senior Russian governmental officials. For example, on January 30, 2016, Page sent an email to senior Campaign officials stating that he had "spent the past week in Europe and had been in discussions with some individuals with close ties to the Kremlin" who recognized that Trump could have a "game-changing effect . .. in bringing the end of the new Cold War. The email stated that " [t]hrough [his] discussions with these high level contacts," Page believed that "a direct meeting in Moscow between Mr. Trump and Putin could be arranged.

The Mueller presentation portrays Carter Page in a nefarious, negative light. His contacts with Russia are characterized as inappropriate and unjustified. Longstanding business experience in a particular country is not proof of wrong doing. No consideration is given at all to Page's legitimate concerns raising about the dismal state of US/Russia relations following the US backed coup in the Ukraine and the subsequent annexation of Crimea by Russia.

Page's association with the Trump campaign was quite brief--he lasted seven months, being removed as a foreign policy advisor on 24 September. Page was not identified publicly as a Trump foreign policy advisor until March of 2016, but the evidence presented in the Mueller report clearly indicates that Page was already a target of intelligence agencies, in the US and abroad, long before the FISA warrant of October 2016.

While serving on the foreign policy team Page continued his business and social contacts in Russia, but was never tasked by the Trump team to pursue or promote contacts with Putin and his team. In fact, Page's proposals, suggestions and recommendations were either ignored or directly rebuffed.

The timeline reported in the Mueller report regarding Page's trip to Russia in early July raises questions about the intel collected on that trip and the so-called "intel" revealed in the Steele Dossier with respect to Page. Carter admits to meeting with individuals, such as Dmitry Peskov and Igor Sechin, who appear in the Steele Dossier. Page's meetings in Moscow turned out to be innocuous and uneventful. Nothing he did resembled clandestine activity. Yet, the Steele report on that visit suggested just the opposite and used the tactic of guilt by association to imply that Page was up to something dirty.

The bottomline for Mueller is that Page did not do anything wrong and no one in the Trump Campaign embraced his proposals for closer ties with Russia.

DMITRI SIMES

The targeting and investigation of Dmitri Simes is disgusting and an abuse of law enforcement authority. Full disclosure. I know Dmitri. For awhile, in the 2002-2003 time period, I was a regular participant at Nixon Center events. For example, I was at a round table in December 2002 on the imminent invasion of Iraq. Colonel Pat Lang sat on one side of me and Ambassador Joe Wilson on the other. Directly across the table was Charles Krauthammer. Dmitri ran an honest seminar.

The entire section on Dmitri Simes, under other circumstances, could be viewed as something bizarre and amusing. But the mere idea that Simes was somehow an agent of Putin and a vehicle for helping Trump work with the Russians to steal the 2016 election is crazy and idiotic. Those in the FBI who were so stupid as to buy into this nonsense should have their badges and guns taken away. They are too dumb to work in law enforcement.

Dmitri's only sin was to speak calmly, intelligently and rationally about foreign policy dealings with Russia. We now know that in this new hysteria of the 21st Century Russian scare that qualities such as reason and rationality are proof of one's willingness to act as a puppet of Vladimir Putin.

TRUMP TOWER MEETING (JUNE 9, 2016)

This is the clearest example of a plant designed to entrap the Trump team. Mueller, once again, presents a very disingenuous account:

On June 9, 2016, senior representatives of the Trump Campaign met in Trump Tower with a Russian attorney expecting to receive derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. The meeting was proposed to Donald Trump Jr. in an email from Robert Goldstone, at the request of his then-client Emin Agalarov, the son of Russian real-estate developer Aras Agalarov. Goldstone relayed to Trump Jr. that the "Crown prosecutor of Russia ... offered to provide the Trump Campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia" as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." Trump Jr. immediately responded that "if it's what you say I love it," and arranged the meeting through a series of emails and telephone calls.

The meeting was with a Russian attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya.

The Russian attorney who spoke at the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, had previously worked for the Russian government and maintained a relationship with that government throughout this period oftime. She claimed that funds derived from illegal activities in Russia were provided to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats. Trump Jr. requested evidence to support those claims, but Veselnitskaya did not provide such information.

Ignore for a moment that no information on Hillary was passed or provided (and doing such a thing is not illegal). The real problem is with what Mueller does not say and did not investigate. Mueller conveniently declines to mention the fact that Veselnitskaya was working closely with the firm Hillary Clinton hired to produce the Steele Dossier. NBC News reported on Veselnitskaya:

The information that a Russian lawyer brought with her when she met Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016 stemmed from research conducted by Fusion GPS, the same firm that compiled the infamous Trump dossier, according to the lawyer and a source familiar with the matter.

In an interview with NBC News, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya says she first received the supposedly incriminating information she brought to Trump Tower -- describing alleged tax evasion and donations to Democrats -- from Glenn Simpson , the Fusion GPS owner, who had been hired to conduct research in a New York federal court case.

Even a mediocre investigator would recognize the problem of the relationship between the lawyer claiming to have dirty, damning info on Hillary with the firm Hillary hired to dig up dirt on Donald Trump. This was another botched set up and the Trump folks did not take the bait.

EVENTS AT THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

This portion of the Mueller report is complete farce. Foreign Ambassdors, including the Russian (and the Chinese) attend Republican and Democrat Conventions. Presidential candidates and their advisors speak to those Ambassadors. So, where is the beef? Answer. There isn't any. That this "event" was considered something worthy of a counter intelligence investigation is just one more piece of evidence that law enforcement and intelligence were weaponized against the Trump campaign.

POST-CONVENTION CONTACTS WITH RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR KISLYAK

Ditto. As noted in the previous paragraph, trying to criminalize normal diplomatic contacts, especially with a country where we share important, vital national security interests, is but further evidence of the crazy anti-Russian hysteria that has infected the anti-Trumpers. Pathetic.

MANAFORT

If Paul Manafort had rebuffed Trump's offer to run his campaign, he would be walking free today and still buying expensive suits and evading taxes along with his Clinton buddy, Greg Craig. Instead, he became another target for DOJ and intel community and the DNC, which were desperate to portray Trump as a tool of the Kremlin. Thanks to John Solomon of The Hill, we now know the impetus to target Manafort came from the DNC :

The boomerang from the Democratic Party's failed attempt to connect Donald Trump to Russia's 2016 election meddling is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow's pesky neighbor, Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases tried, to help Hillary Clinton .

In its most detailed account yet, Ukraine's embassy in Washington says a Democratic National Committee insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump's campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country's president to help.

In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort 's dealings inside the country, in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.

Manafort was not colluding, but the Clinton campaign and the Obama Administration most certainly were.

Take these eight events as a whole a very clear picture emerges--US and foreign intelligence (especially the UK) and US law enforcement collaborated in a broad effort to bait the Trump team with ostensible Russian entreaties in order to paint Trump as a tool of the Kremlin. That effort is now being exposed and those culpable will hopefully face justice. This should sicken and alarm every American regardless of political party. Will justice be served?

notlurking , 03 May 2019 at 08:16 AM

we're not in Kansas anymore.....
Joe100 , 03 May 2019 at 08:43 AM
Great work!

I just read the following about special visas approved for some of the FBI "operatives" (from SD at CTH): "It wasn't just the CIA that was using spies to "dirty up" Trump associates. The FBI was doing it too. There was the infamous Natalia Veselnitskaya who is known for her part in the Trump Tower meeting. She had been banned from the country but got a special visa signed off by Preet Bahara of the FBI, Southern District of New York. Henry Greenburg, the known FBI informant who tried to entrap Roger Stone, also got a special visa. And I'm sure there are many more "

Gerard M , 03 May 2019 at 09:06 AM
IMO, there is no coming back from this. Apart from this Deep State coup attempt, we have seen that democracy is a shame, it's all theater. The Establishment (which includes GOP) is constantly working to undermine Trump and thwart his plans to do what the American people want and elected him for. What I've found quite disturbing is that the controlling puppet masters have not let up in trying to remove or neutralize Trump. As if they can't wait even 4 years to again fully stack the deck and regain total control. They are not willing to concede that 2016 was a political black swan event involving a celebrity billionaire American icon. And conceding and allowing this fluke to be rectified I'm 4 short years is worse than their pushback exposing the political system as a rigged game.

The events of the last 2.5 years have radically altered my views. I no longer have any faith in democracy (voting), the government, the federal courts, law enforcement, et al. And I can't see me regaining any faith in them. What I have seen in the past 2.5 years is kind of like finding out my wife of decades, whom I idolized, has been cheating with my friend from childhood, whom I would've laid down my life for. And all the other people close to me not telling me.

I now only have faith in only God and beagles.

Fred -> Gerard M... , 03 May 2019 at 10:40 AM
It's not the black swan event that concerns the guilty but the fear of just retribution by those who see just how black hearted the left has become.
Gerard M said in reply to Fred ... , 03 May 2019 at 12:25 PM
It's not just the left. I listened to Michael Tracey's interview with George Papadopoulos and was stunned to learn about the web of Deep State actors and how our Five Eyes allies were intimately involved in subverting our Presidential election. Papadopoulos even talks about U.S. military attachés, DIA guys, in on this coup. Listen to this Michael Tracey* interview and you will be shaken: https://youtu.be/ZjGLCCP_lPg

*Tracey, btw, is on the left. But like Glenn Greenwald and others on the left he is an honest journalist interested in the truth.

Ligurio said in reply to Fred ... , 03 May 2019 at 02:16 PM
The "left" was not behind and does not buy into this Russia psyop. Neoliberals and neoconservatives (ie zionists) were behind it and continue to push it. Trump ran to the left of Clinton on both domestic and foreign policy. That's why he won, and why the establishment must present his election as de facto illegitimate, because otherwise they would be forced to admit that the bipartisan convergence around both finance driven economic policy and war on terror interventionism that has described elite politics since Clinton has been a disaster for most ordinary Americans -- of all types and political persuasions -- and needs to be destroyed root and branch.

To see how and why the "left" differs from corporate identity-politicking liberals in the above regard consider how it is that Tulsi Gabbard is both the Dem candidate most respected by principled Trump supporters on this site and others and the Dem candidate most reviled, ignored, and slandered by DNC liberals and neocons alike.

The enemy to principled conservatives and the left in this country is the bipartisan establishment corporate neoliberalism of the RNC and DNC alike.

Fred -> Ligurio... , 03 May 2019 at 08:53 PM
That's as convenient a lie as any other.
akaPatience , 03 May 2019 at 11:56 AM
What's the likelihood that Carter Page was a plant in the Trump campaign? After all, he had a history with the US IC and was used as bait in an FBI case to prove Russian operatives' recruiting efforts. It's thought he's the Under Cover Employee alluded to in this case, which resulted in the successful prosecution of Russian spies:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/evgeny-buryakov-pleads-guilty-manhattan-federal-court-connection-conspiracy-work

Anonymous said in reply to akaPatience ... , 03 May 2019 at 04:05 PM
Page is just a goofball grifter. He's not a plant. That is silly. When they saw names like Page and Manafort the Democrats pounced because they knew the could cast aspersions.

I'm not sure about Mifsud. I think it would be hard for Mueller to knowingly indict Papadop if Mifsud were an asset of the US (or even known to be an asset of allies). I think it is more likely Mifsud was a free agent.

All these guys Mifsud, Page, Papadop were grifters, not doing real work. Just running around trying to make a buck by claiming to facilitate meetings. It's a shame it bit them and not a crime to do what they did. At the same time, I can't help but see some kharmic justice. GET A JOB, you poly sci lightweights!

walrus said in reply to Anonymous... , 03 May 2019 at 06:11 PM
This anonymous commentator has never spent time in senior levels of business or government. There is a whole class of people who do not see themselves as Grifters but more as "ideas men".

The best offer valuable perspectives on the world, can really open doors and otherwise add value. At the other end of the spectrum are con men. Political campaigns and large corporations of any sort attract these people in droves. The skill in management is to sort the wheat from the chaff. Trump is good at that.

akaPatience -> Anonymous... , 03 May 2019 at 06:56 PM
Yes, Page often comes off as a bit crazy and incoherent. But he may be crazy like a fox. In the end he was never charged with ANYTHING and it's my understanding he represented himself legally throughout the investigation, opting not to hire counsel. I find it odd that others were prosecuted for process crimes but he escaped even THAT fate.

His participation in the Trump campaign, limited as it was, was nevertheless KEY in finally obtaining a FISA warrant after other attempts failed.

Consider it silly if you want. I view him at least worthy of suspicion. His hapless demeanor could be his schtick , when his education, experience and IC connections are taken into consideration.

Anonymous said in reply to akaPatience ... , 04 May 2019 at 06:09 PM
Page represents himself poorly even when he knows a lot is on the line. Look at how frustrated Gowdy got with him. Clearly Page didn't learn much from plebe year in terms of 5 basic responses. Compare the difference with Barr for instance.

While the Trident program is a big deal, every now and then USNA has mids that are diligent about getting good grades but not very smart. I knew one my year. Page is clearly in that vein. Don't miss that he didn't get into any elite program after graduation (SWO is the default). And that he was a poly sci major. The saying is "poly sci, QPR high" (QPR is quality point rating or GPA). Of course this is not to say there aren't some good SWOs or poly sci majors. But there's a definite correlation I'm noting. It fits with what his reputation is.

Furthermore, the guy has had an uneventful career, bouncing around. He went to a lower bulge bracket (not Goldman) and didn't seem to stick. And his Russian colleagues said he was an idiot and a boaster. We're not talking i-banker smart. Wouldn't trust him to do an NPV or other economic analysis. And then after that we have the grifting and the shmoozing.

Kid is a lightweight. A slightly less coffee-boy coffee boy.

catherine said in reply to Bill H ... , 03 May 2019 at 07:02 PM
''They cannot convict based on a law that was passed after the act was committed''

Money laundering has always been against the law of course....the NY law just firmed up the due diligence that is suppose to be done in transactions. I don't think there is a statute of limitations on things like fraud, tax evasion and money laundering but I will check it out to see

walrus said in reply to catherine... , 03 May 2019 at 04:37 PM
Catherine, in current PC thinking, merely passing the salt to a Russian guest at a dinner party makes you "an unregistered foreign agent" of Russia bent on implementing Putin's evil plans.

As for certifying real estate deals, the same crowd would view buying someone a MacDonalds hamburger as attempted bribery.

catherine said in reply to walrus ... , 03 May 2019 at 07:34 PM
''As for certifying real estate deals, the same crowd would view buying someone a MacDonalds hamburger as attempted bribery.''

Hardly. 7 million dollar cash deals for a condo thru a shell company is a red flag however..as is buying property for 1 million and selling it unimproved the next year for 2 million...or buying a house in LA 11 million and selling it 9 months later for 8 million. That 'in between money" is someone's pay off....that's how it works.

Money laundering is epidemic in the US and Europe....Israeli mafia, Russian oligarchs, African dictators looting their country's treasury and running it through a real estate washing machine deal. Far be from me to sweep the fairy dust out of Trump supporters eyes but, as I said, Trump's troubles are far from over. We will see what comes out in the future.

VietnamVet , 03 May 2019 at 05:40 PM
The soft coup against Donald Trump failed. He has to run hard and sure to win in 2020 to avoid an indictment in NY State when he leaves the Presidency. Corporate Democrats will do their damnedst again to put forth their weakest pro war candidate like the aged, apparently demented, Joe Biden. This fiasco and the recent coup attempt in Venezuela make the Keystone Cops appear competent.

I put this all down to Washington DC being completely isolated inside their credentialed bubble. It is just like corporate CEOs, who think they know exactly what they are doing. But, in reality, they are destroying the stabilizing middle class by extracting and hording wealth and turning mid-America into their colony. Globalist and nationalist oligarchs are after each other's throat over who controls the flow of money.

We live on a very finite world dependent on one sun in an expanding universe. Just like Boeing, Bayer or Volkswagen, the splintering world is starting to crash all around them. Even as they deny it, this is a multi-polar world now. It is not going back without a world war which would destroy civilization and could make the world uninhabitable for humans.

Bill H -> VietnamVet... , 04 May 2019 at 01:26 AM
And the best that our government can do is warn us not to wash our chicken before cooking it because washing merely spreads the salmonella that our food industry is unable to prevent from infecting it.
English Outsider -> VietnamVet... , 04 May 2019 at 01:15 PM
The trouble is that those CEO's do know exactly what they are doing. Making money the only way possible in a business environment in which outsourcing can sometimes be the only thing that pays.

The idea was that Trump was going to change that environment. Bannon calls its "economic nationalism" but in truth it's now just economic survival. Survival for those whose jobs are outsourced. Survival for the country as a whole, ultimately. That was Trump's core programme. It was the programme that made him different from all other Western politicians, "populist" or status quo. Do you see any sign that it's being implemented, or has that programme too got bogged down in the swamp?

Mad Max_22 , 03 May 2019 at 06:44 PM
Will justice be served? A good question.

If we are speaking about criminal justice, there is some chance that we will see persons such as Jim Comey, who persists in his smug higher calling act, prosecuted for what was a clear cut violation in divulging classified material through a lawyer intermediary to the NYT. I suspect the higher calling bit has been prompted in part because he knows that he screwed up both on the facts and in law and he is justifying his screw up to himself, and possibly also rehearsing his defense, with the rationale that he was only trying to do the right thing. Yeah, he may have had the facts all wrong, the Russians, etc, etc, but the worst that can be said is that he had been competent, there was no intent. That defense doesn't do much for the FBI's once held reputation for competence, but that appears to be gone anyway.

With regard to what will be turned up concerning the actual roots of the travesty, the heavily politicized faux investigation into the Clinton e mails and targeting of the Trump campaign on a predicate that is somewhere between nebulous and non existant, I think a criminal prosecution arising from that investigation, even if it is serious, is unlikely for two main reasons. First, what will be the charged violations? As best I can see right now, they will have to entail some imaginative application of fraud statutes, defrauding the FISC, defrauding the US, informants and assets lying to their handlers, or process crimes like Bob Mueller's partisan posse relied upon (ugly); and second, something like the Comey defense will interpenetrate all the individuals and entities involved: we may have been incredible bunglers, but that is the worst of it. We really believed these charlatans who conned us into this debacle. Sorry, but we thought we were doing the right thing.

Now if we are talking about seeing some kind of political or moral justice, I'm not too optimistic we will get much satisfaction there either and we will probably have to wait for history. The reason is that Barr will conduct this investigation by the rule book. That means that what we see developed through the process, indictment, prosecution, etc, is likely all,that we will ever see. Barr is very unlikely to produce a politcized manifesto to be employed as a smear weapon like the once reputable Mueller did.

Anyway, until we see a special FGJ empanelled, some search warrants executed, some tactical immunities offered, everything is on the come.

Jack , 03 May 2019 at 08:26 PM
All,

What probability do you assign that any top official will be indicted and prosecuted? I mean Brennan, Clapper, Comey & Lynch.

Second, what probability do you assign that Trump will declassify the relevant documents and communications like the FISA application,the originating EC, the tasking orders for FBI/CIA spying, etc.

blue peacock said in reply to Jack... , 04 May 2019 at 12:27 PM
Jack,

The question really comes down to Trump. Does he really want to expose the Swamp and pay the price or just use it for rhetorical & political purposes? When considering probabilities and looking at his track record in office on foreign policy relative to his campaign stance, I would say the probability is less than 30% that Brennan & Clapper will be indicted.

David Habakkuk -> blue peacock... , 04 May 2019 at 03:07 PM
bp,

The question is only very partly what Trump wants, in some abstract sense. Situations like this commonly have a strong escalatory logic. So one needs to ask whether or not he has rational reason to believe that unless he can destroy those who have shown themselves prepared to stop at nothing to destroy him, they will eventually succeed.

If the answer is yes - and while I think it may very well be, I am not prejudging the issue - then a key question becomes whether Trump will conclude that his most promising loption is to go after the conspirators by every means possible.

Involved here are questions about who he is listening to, and how competent they are.

But the escalatory processes are not simply to do with what Trump decides. In particular, a whole range of legal proceedings are involved. The referral in relation to Nellie Ohr is likely to be the fist of a good few. In addition, Ed Butowsky's lawsuits, and those against Steele, have unpredictable potentialities.

blue peacock said in reply to David Habakkuk ... , 04 May 2019 at 07:11 PM
David

The intelligence & law enforcement apparatus in collusion with the media and the establishment of both parties went after him hard. As Larry notes here, they went to considerable effort to entrap those related to his campaign to impugn him. Mueller spent $35 million trying to find an angle. Even after the Mueller report stated there was no collusion they're sill after him. So that's not going to end any time soon.

Trump may have good instincts but his judgment of people so far to staff his administration is not very inspiring. He had Jeff Sessions as his AG and he let him hang in there for nearly two years while Mueller ran riot. He's surrounded himself with neocons on foreign policy. It seems his only real advisor is Jared. Everyone else he's got around him are from the same establishment that's going after him. He hasn't taken advise from Devin Nunes, who has done more to uncover the sedition than anyone else. If he had he would have by now declassified all the documents & communications. The impression I have is his primary motivation is building his brand & less about governance and wielding power. Take for example his order to withdraw from Syria. Bolton & the Pentagon are thumbing their noses at him.

Well, there have been several criminal referrals prior to the recent one on Nellie Ohr. There's the McCabe referral and the 8 referrals by Devin Nunes. I've not read any report of the empaneling of a grand jury yet. I agree with you that these law suits have the potential for great embarrassment, however to hold those responsible for the sedition accountable will require iron will & intense focus on the part of Trump to get his AG to assign prosecutors who don't have the axe to "protect" the "institution" and to create an opportunity for public awareness of the extent that law enforcement & intelligence became a 4th branch of government. My opinion is that his skill is in his instinctual understanding of the current political zeitgeist and his ability to manipulate the media including social media to project his brand. He's not an operational leader making sure his team executes his vision & strategy.

akaPatience , 04 May 2019 at 07:11 PM
Here's a National Review exclusive report in which a transcript of FBI's Deputy Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa's testimony reveals several Confidential Human Sources (including Christopher Steele), and more interestingly foreign "liasons" (Mifsud?) were employed by the bureau in this operation:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/fbi-official-testimony-surveillance-trump-campaign/

[May 11, 2019] Doug Ross @ Journal A TIMELINE OF TREASON How the DNC and FBI Leadership Tried to Fix a Presidential Election [Updated]

Highly recommended!
This was clearly an attempt to entrap Trump in connections to Russia and fuel anti-Russian hysteria and defense spending. Both goals were accomplished under Trump without much resistance. Still Russiagate persists. Why?
Notable quotes:
"... 05/03/16 Email from DNC contractor Ali Chalupa states she connected Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News "to the Ukrainians" DNC https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/3962 ..."
"... 05/15/16 Crowdstrike claims it investigated DNC hacking and that Russians were responsible; FBI still denied access to server to confirm Crowdstrike https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ ..."
Jan 04, 2018 | directorblue.blogspot.com
  1. Date Description Source Link
  2. 07/23/14 House Select Committee on Benghazi reaches agreement with State Dept. to produce Clinton emails relevant to their investigation USNews https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-19/paul-combetta-computer-specialist-who-deleted-hillary-clinton-emails-may-have-asked-reddit-for-tips
  3. 07/24/14 Clinton IT aide Paul Combetta, using the alias "stonetear", requests assistance on Reddit for deleting VIP email addresses USNews https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-19/paul-combetta-computer-specialist-who-deleted-hillary-clinton-emails-may-have-asked-reddit-for-tips
  4. 10/15/14 Clinton team instructs Datto to begin purging emails from their backup storage devices, which they apparently failed to do Exam http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clintons-tech-firm-worried-about-involvement-in-cover-up/article/2573526
  5. 03/02/15 News that Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email server for official State Dept. business is disclosed in the New York Times NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/hillary-clintons-use-of-private-email-at-state-department-raises-flags.html
  6. 03/03/15 Clinton aides call Platte River Networks, which operated her email server, to confirm all emails were deleted per their 2014 order NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-emails-investigation.html?_r=1&mtrref=undefined
  7. 03/09/15 Clinton associate Terry McCauliffe meets with Andrew McCabe's wife Jill to encourage her to run for office JW https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-new-fbi-records-show-fbi-leaderships-conflicts-interest-discussions-clinton-email-investigation/
  8. 03/12/15 Jill McCabe announces her candidacy for the state senate in Virginia JW https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-new-fbi-records-show-fbi-leaderships-conflicts-interest-discussions-clinton-email-investigation/
  9. 03/31/15 Clinton IT specialist Paul Combetta realizes he had not deleted all of Clinton's emails, uses BleachBit software to do so Politico https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/best-of-clinton-fbi-report-227692
  10. 05/19/15 DOJ official Peter Kadzik, writing from personal email account, emails John Podesta to warn of House probe into Clinton's emails Wikileaks https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/43150
  11. 06/24/15 Discovery of classified information on Clinton's private email server announced; the matter is referred to the FBI Time http://time.com/4774278/james-comey-fired-timeline/
  12. 07/15/15 FBI opens criminal investigation into Clinton's email server and mishandling of classified data led by Andrew McCabe in DC office FBI https://vault.fbi.gov/october-2016-application-affidavit-and-search-warrant-related-to-email-server-investigation/October%202016%20Application%20Affidavit%20and%20Search%20Warrant%20Related%20to%20Email%20Server%20Investigation%20Part%2001%20of%2001
  13. 07/20/15 DOJ DAG Sally Yates writes to Inspector General, saying the National Security Division of DOJ is not subject to IG review DOJ https://www.ignet.gov/sites/default/files/files/OLC%20IG%20Act%20Opinion%20-%207-20-15%20.pdf
  14. 07/24/15 State Dept. and other officials make security referral related to classified information possessed by Clinton and associates WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/20/timeline-james-comeys-decision-making-on-the-clinton-probe/?utm_term=.0cead386f5ef
  15. 07/24/15 After complaints from Clinton camp, New York Times edits story about email probe, removing "criminal" references TheWrap https://www.thewrap.com/new-york-times-alters-hillary-clinton-story-in-response-to-complaints-we-received-from-the-clinton-camp/
  16. 08/15/15 McCabe uses his official FBI email to promote his wife's candidacy for the State Senate in Virginia JW https://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/jw-v-doj-mccabe-2-production-01494-pg-24-25/
  17. 10/01/15 FBI official Andrew McCabe's wife Jill starts receiving bulk of $700,000 from Clinton associate Gov. Terry McCauliffe's political entities Ballotopedia https://ballotpedia.org/Jill_McCabe https://truepundit.com/fbi-director-lobbied-against-criminal-charges-for-hillary-after-clinton-insider-paid-his-wife-700k/
  18. 10/03/15 FBI seizes the Platte River Networks server as well as the "Pagliano" server, which were used to host Clinton email services Thompson http://www.thompsontimeline.com/tag/david-kendall/
  19. 10/05/15 FBI's Strzok sends letter to Datto, Inc. demanding the newly discovered backup server be turned over DOJ https://twitter.com/TruthinGov2016/status/945115416736796673
  20. 10/06/15 FBI receives backup of Clinton emails held by Datto, Inc. (possibly claimed by Agent Strzok) McClatchy http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article37968711.html
  21. 10/15/15 On or around this date, McCabe emails investigators that Clinton will get an "HQ Special" (special or lenient treatment) Fox https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/944439946416340992
  22. 10/11/15 On 60 Minutes , President Obama absolves Hillary Clinton of blame for her private email server: did not pose "a national security problem" CNN http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/11/politics/barack-obama-60-minutes-hillary-clinton/index.html
  23. 01/15/16 John Giacalone, head of FBI's National Security Division, retires after reportedly seeing Clinton probe go "sideways" TruePundit https://truepundit.com/fbi-director-lobbied-against-criminal-charges-for-hillary-after-clinton-insider-paid-his-wife-700k/
  24. 01/19/16 Intelligence Community Inspector General reports Clinton's private email server had SAP (highest classification level) data on it Fox http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/01/19/inspector-general-clinton-emails-had-intel-from-most-secretive-classified-programs.html
  25. 01/29/16 FBI director James Comey names Andrew McCabe deputy director, with responsibility for oversight of Clinton investigation FBI https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/andrew-mccabe-named-deputy-director-of-the-fbi
  26. 02/15/16 State Dept. finds that 2,115 of the 30,490 emails produced by Clinton were classified and therefore grossly mishandled FBI https://vault.fbi.gov/october-2016-application-affidavit-and-search-warrant-related-to-email-server-investigation/October%202016%20Application%20Affidavit%20and%20Search%20Warrant%20Related%20to%20Email%20Server%20Investigation%20Part%2001%20of%2001
  27. 03/04/16 FBI's Peter Strzok texts his mistress Lisa Page, an FBI attorney, calling Trump "an idiot", whose nomination would be "good for Hillary" DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/14/strzoks-texts-and-the-clinton-trump-investigations-a-definitive-timeline/
  28. 03/06/16 Former Hillary State Dept. representative George Papadopoulos learns he will join Trump campaign as a low-level foreign policy adviser DOJ https://www.justice.gov/file/1007346/download
  29. 03/15/16 Between this date and 9/15/16, Papadopoulos tries 6 times to arrange meetings between Trump campaign and Russians, all are rejected ABC http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-russian-businessman-source-key-trump-dossier-claims/story?id=45019603
  30. 03/19/16 Hackers gain access to emails of Democrat operative John Podesta CNN http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/14/politics/donald-trump-jr-wikileaks-timeline/index.html
  31. 03/28/16 Paul Manafort hired as Trump campaign manager (Fusion GPS's Simpson and wife had reported on Manafort's Russian ties in 2008) Tablet http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/251897/obama-steele-dossier-russiagate
  32. 04/05/16 FBI's Strzok interviews Clinton aide Huma Abedin DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/14/strzoks-texts-and-the-clinton-trump-investigations-a-definitive-timeline/
  33. 04/09/16 FBI's Strzok interviews Clinton aide Cheryl Mills DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/14/strzoks-texts-and-the-clinton-trump-investigations-a-definitive-timeline/
  34. 04/12/16 Law firm Perkins Coie, using money from the Clinton campaign and DNC, hires Fusion GPS to find incriminating data on Trump FEC http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/28/finally-a-definitive-timeline-showing-when-clinton-dnc-started-the-russian-dossier/
  35. 04/19/16 Wife of Fusion GPS founder Simpson, Mary Jacoby, visits White House and meets with Obama and/or Obama aides CTH https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/12/21/oh-dear-trail-of-russian-dossier-origination-now-directly-leads-to-the-obama-white-house/
  36. 04/25/16 Obama campaign organization makes first of its payments to Perkins Coie (OFA payments to firm would total $972,000) FEC http://thefederalist.com/2017/10/29/obamas-campaign-gave-972000-law-firm-funneled-money-fusion-gps/#.WjwY4L_iThg.twitter
  37. 04/25/16 FBI's James Baker and DOJ's FISA attorneys visit White House for two back-to-back meetings White House https://twitter.com/ckadoodldooUS/status/944982488497172482
  38. 04/26/16 Low-level Trump staffer George Papadopoulos meets with Russian contact in London and is reportedly offered "dirt" on Clinton NRO http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453264/donald-trump-george-papadopoulos-indictment-exculpatory-trump
  39. 04/30/16 DNC IT staff reports suspected hacking on its server(s) to FBI, but fails to turn over the server to the agency, instead hires Crowdstrike Politico https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/russian-government-hackers-broke-into-dnc-servers-stole-trump-oppo-224315
  40. 05/02/16 FBI director Comey drafts statement exonerating Clinton before interviewing her or other key witnesses WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/20/timeline-james-comeys-decision-making-on-the-clinton-probe/?utm_term=.0cead386f5ef
  41. 05/03/16 Trump becomes the presumptive Republican nominee for the office of president Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93Russia_dossier
  42. 05/03/16 Clinton IT specialist Paul Combetta admits lying to the FBI about erasing emails using BleachBit but is not charged for the crime WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/20/timeline-james-comeys-decision-making-on-the-clinton-probe/?utm_term=.0cead386f5ef
  43. 05/03/16 Email from DNC contractor Ali Chalupa states she connected Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News "to the Ukrainians" DNC https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/3962
  44. 05/05/16 FBI's Lisa Page and James Baker meet with Obama deputy at White House, likely topic is forthcoming FISA request White House https://twitter.com/ckadoodldooUS/status/944982488497172482
  45. 05/05/16 Washington Post reports there is "scant evidence" of a crime committed by Clinton through her use of a private email server WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/20/timeline-james-comeys-decision-making-on-the-clinton-probe/?utm_term=.0cead386f5ef
  46. 05/15/16 Crowdstrike claims it investigated DNC hacking and that Russians were responsible; FBI still denied access to server to confirm Crowdstrike https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/
  47. 05/16/16 Draft statement by FBI directory Comey exonerating Clinton, before key interviews, is circulated to FBI leadership WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/20/timeline-james-comeys-decision-making-on-the-clinton-probe/?utm_term=.0cead386f5ef
  48. 05/15/16 Nellie Ohr, wife of DOJ executive Bruce Ohr, is secretly hired by Fusion GPS, presumably to work on Russian "Dossier" Fox http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/11/wife-demoted-doj-official-worked-for-firm-behind-anti-trump-dossier.html
  49. 05/21/16 According to Mueller investigation, Trump campaign official refuses Papadopoulos offer to broker meetings with Russian officials NRO http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453264/donald-trump-george-papadopoulos-indictment-exculpatory-trump
  50. 05/23/16 Nellie Ohr applies for HAM radio license, presumably to create covert communication channel and avoid government surveillance FCC http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/LicArchive/license.jsp?archive=Y&licKey=12382876
  51. 06/04/16 Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post reports, via anonymous sources, that Russians hacked the DNC WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-government-hackers-penetrated-dnc-stole-opposition-research-on-trump/2016/06/14/cf006cb4-316e-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_no-name:page/breaking-news-bar&tid=a_breakingnews&utm_term=.94b04ef12773
  52. 06/09/16 Donald Trump Jr. meets with Russian attorney after being lured by the promise of opposition research NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/08/us/politics/trump-russia-kushner-manafort.html
  53. 06/09/16 After meeting with Bernie Sanders in White House, President Obama endorses Hillary Clinton USA Today https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2016/06/09/barack-obama-bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-democratic-party/85639104/
  54. 06/12/16 Wikileaks' Assange warns that Clinton emails will be leaked ITV http://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-06-12/assange-on-peston-on-sunday-more-clinton-leaks-to-come/
  55. 06/15/16 Ex-MI-6 agent Christopher Steele is hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign through Fusion GPS, according to UK court filings UK https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzgzy2KXyxqtVUxEb2pwRmphOXM/view?usp=sharing
  56. 06/15/16 Romanian hacker "Guccifer" claims to have hacked DNC; analysis indicates faux "Russian" fingerprints were inserted into some files The Nation https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/guccifer-20-claims-credit-for-dnc-hack/2016/06/15/abdcdf48-3366-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html?utm_term=.b2fbd3eadc9c
  57. 06/15/16 FBI agent Peter Strzok changes wording of Clinton charges from criminal designation "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless" Fox http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/04/fbi-agent-fired-from-russia-probe-oversaw-flynn-interviews-changed-comey-memos-on-clinton-charges.html
  58. 06/20/16 Fusion GPS contractor Christopher Steele releases first memo related to Russian "Dossier" DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/28/finally-a-definitive-timeline-showing-when-clinton-dnc-started-the-russian-dossier/
  59. 06/27/16 A.G. Loretta Lynch secretly meets with Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac; they later deny discussing the investigation Time http://time.com/4774278/james-comey-fired-timeline/
  60. 07/02/16 Clinton interviewed by FBI and Peter Strzok for 3.5 hours; she is not placed under oath nor recorded WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/20/timeline-james-comeys-decision-making-on-the-clinton-probe/?utm_term=.0cead386f5ef
  61. 07/05/16 FISA Court denies FBI request for surveillance of Trump campaign NRO http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443768/obama-fisa-trump-wiretap
  62. 07/05/16 Fusion GPS contractor Christopher Steele shares Russian "Dossier" with the FBI DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/28/finally-a-definitive-timeline-showing-when-clinton-dnc-started-the-russian-dossier/
  63. 07/05/16 FBI director Comey announces he does not recommend charges against Hillary Clinton for use of her email server Time http://time.com/4774278/james-comey-fired-timeline/
  64. 07/05/16 Romanian hacker "Guccifer" claims to have hacked DNC again The Nation https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/guccifer-20-claims-credit-for-dnc-hack/2016/06/15/abdcdf48-3366-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html?utm_term=.b2fbd3eadc9c
  65. 07/05/16 Date that forensics indicate that DNC emails were copied by an insider via USB and not hacked via external actors The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/
  66. 07/06/16 A.G. Loretta Lynch accepts Comey's recommendation not to charge Clinton for mishandling classified information USA Today https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/06/07/james-comey-testimony-a-timeline-fbi/102581874/
  67. 07/10/16 DNC staffer Seth Rich murdered in as yet unsolved case Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich
  68. 07/22/16 Wikileaks releases archive of emails stolen from Democrat National Committee (DNC) that show undermining of Sanders campaign Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Committee_email_leak
  69. 07/24/16 Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigns as Chair of DNC due to Wikileaks revelations about Sanders WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hacked-emails-cast-doubt-on-hopes-for-party-unity-at-democratic-convention/2016/07/24/a446c260-51a9-11e6-b7de-dfe509430c39_story.html?utm_term=.d6ba79f39f23
  70. 07/24/16 Clinton aide Robbie Mook claims Russians hacked DNC and Clinton campaign to aid Trump Politico https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/robby-mook-russians-emails-trump-226084
  71. 07/25/16 Wikileaks' Assange says he timed release of DNC emails to impact convention; says "no one" knows who provided emails NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/assange-timed-wikileaks-release-of-democratic-emails-to-harm-hillary-clinton.html
  72. 07/25/16 FBI announces it will investigate the DNC hack revealed by Wikileaks, Peter Strzok handpicked to lead investigation Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Committee_email_leak
  73. 07/30/16 FBI opens counterintelligence investigation into possible Russian "collusion" with Trump campaign led bt Peter Strzok DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/28/finally-a-definitive-timeline-showing-when-clinton-dnc-started-the-russian-dossier/
  74. 08/06/16 FBI investigator Strzok texts mistress about a "menace", presumably meaning Trump DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/14/strzoks-texts-and-the-clinton-trump-investigations-a-definitive-timeline/
  75. 08/10/16 Bernie Sanders reported to have purchased a $575,000 lakeside home WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/reliable-source/wp/2016/08/10/bernie-sanders-buys-a-half-million-dollar-vacation-home-and-the-internet-cries-hypocrisy/?utm_term=.63d263792364
  76. 08/10/16 Washington Post implies John Brennan may have shared "Dossier" with President Obama around this date WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/obama-putin-election-hacking/?utm_term=.fcda779022f5
  77. 08/15/16 FBI investigator Strzok texts mistress about needing an "insurance policy" against Trump CNN https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/12/12/politics/peter-strzok-texts-released/index.html?__twitter_impression=true
  78. 08/16/16 FBI writes Congress defending decision not to prosecute Clinton, stating it was 'extreme carelessness' and not 'gross negligence' WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/09/comey-timeline-everything-that-led-up-to-his-firing/?utm_term=.1d521047582b
  79. 08/17/16 On this day, NBC's Dilanian, Windrem, Arkin report claim M. Flynn clashed with intel officials during initial briefing with Trump team NBC https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/u-s-official-donald-trump-s-body-language-claim-doesn-n644856
  80. 08/25/16 CIA director James Brennan informs Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid about possible Russian "collusion" with Trump campaign DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/28/finally-a-definitive-timeline-showing-when-clinton-dnc-started-the-russian-dossier/
  81. 08/27/16 Reid sends a letter to Comey referencing allegations made about Carter Page in the dossier DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/14/strzoks-texts-and-the-clinton-trump-investigations-a-definitive-timeline/
  82. 09/05/16 Hillary Clinton accuses Russia of interfering with U.S. election NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/06/us/politics/hillary-clinton-russia.html
  83. 09/08/16 NYT reports that Paul Combetta, Clinton's IT specialist, mass-deleted emails from her server in spite of records preservation request NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-emails-investigation.html?_r=1&mtrref=undefined
  84. 09/15/16 Papadoulos emails Russian contact Boris Epshteyn trying to connect him with Sergei Millian, author of much of the Fusion GPS "Dossier" WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-low-level-volunteer-papadopoulos-sought-high-profile-as-trump-adviser/2017/10/31/dc737a42-be5f-11e7-8444-a0d4f04b89eb_story.html?utm_term=.19bfd4df75f5
  85. 09/15/16 FISA Court approves FBI request for surveillance of Trump campaign based upon Russian "Dossier" DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/03/report-trump-campaign-adviser-was-under-secret-surveillance-much-earlier-than-previously-thought/
  86. 09/21/16 New York Times, Washington Post, and Yahoo News verbally briefed by Steele on Russian "Dossier" according to court filings UK https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzgzy2KXyxqtVUxEb2pwRmphOXM/view?usp=sharing
  87. 09/23/16 Yahoo News publishes report based upon Russian "Dossier" and possible Russian collusion with Trump campaign Yahoo http://redirect.viglink.com/?format=go&jsonp=vglnk_151322062469013&key=e7609c039c08d3ae00aebd97e6f0bffd&libId=jb5p32l3010110e3000DAbwwoz62t&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2017%2F10%2F28%2Ffinally-a-definitive-timeline-showing-when-clinton-dnc-started-the-russian-dossier%2F&v=1&out=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.yahoo.com%2Fnews%2Fu-s-intel-officials-probe-ties-between-trump-adviser-and-kremlin-175046002.html&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&title=Timeline%20Showing%20When%20Clinton%2C%20DNC%20Started%20Th%20%7C%20The%20Daily%20Caller&txt=an%20article
  88. 09/26/16 DOJ National Security Divison (NSD) admits to FISC that surveillance included Obama's political opponents FISC https://www.ignet.gov/sites/default/files/files/OLC%20IG%20Act%20Opinion%20-%207-20-15%20.pdf
  89. 09/27/16 John Carlin, head of DOJ National Security Division and involved with FISA requests, announces he is resigning WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/head-of-justice-departments-national-security-division-to-step-down/2016/09/27/59cb95c4-84e6-11e6-ac72-a29979381495_story.html?utm_term=.5b0c867c3a69
  90. 09/28/16 Comey claims his decision to exonerate Clinton was not made until after her interview with FBI agents WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/20/timeline-james-comeys-decision-making-on-the-clinton-probe/?utm_term=.0cead386f5ef
  91. 10/03/16 FBI agents seize computer of Anthony Weiner during investigation of his communications with underage females Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-fbi-emails-investigation-20161102-story.html
  92. 10/07/16 Access Hollywood releases graphic audiotape of Donald Trump bragging about hitting on women CNN http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/07/politics/one-year-access-hollywood-russia-podesta-email/index.html
  93. 10/07/16 Wikileaks releases archive of emails stolen from Clinton operative John Podesta CNN http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/07/politics/one-year-access-hollywood-russia-podesta-email/index.html
  94. 10/07/16 Obama administration officially accuses Russia of meddling in 2016 presidential election WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/09/comey-timeline-everything-that-led-up-to-his-firing/?utm_term=.1d521047582b
  95. 10/12/16 FBI agents tell McCabe and Strzok it's discovers 650,000 emails on Weiner's laptop, many of which were Huma Abedin's WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/laptop-may-include-thousands-of-emails-linked-to-hillary-clintons-private-server-1477854957
  96. 10/13/16 McCabe organizes FBI response to WSJ revelations that his wife's campaign was funded by Clinton associates JWS https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-new-fbi-records-show-fbi-leaderships-conflicts-interest-discussions-clinton-email-investigation/
  97. 10/14/16 Strzok's wife Melissa Hodgman given a major promotion to deputy director of SEC's Enforcement Division TP https://truepundit.com/insurance-policy-fbis-mccabe-and-strzok-concealed-damaging-hillary-clinton-evidence-for-weeks-just-before-the-election/
  98. 10/15/16 FBI meets with Fusion GPS contractor Steele and offers to pay him for more Russian "Dossier" material DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/28/finally-a-definitive-timeline-showing-when-clinton-dnc-started-the-russian-dossier/
  99. 10/24/16 NSA director Rogers apprises FISA Court (FISC) of numerous cases where U.S. persons were improperly/illegally surveilled FISC http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Top-Secret-FISA-Court-Order.pdf
  100. 10/24/16 CBS reveals McCabe's wife received $700K in campaign donations from Clinton associate Gov. Terry McCauliffe CBS https://www.cbsnews.com/news/terry-mcauliffes-pac-donated-to-campaign-of-fbi-officials-wife/
  101. 10/27/16 During Comey staff meeting, McCabe and Strzok are asked why they're sitting on the Huma/Weiner email disclosure Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-fbi-emails-investigation-20161102-story.html
  102. 10/28/16 Comey announces he is reopening investigation into Clinton's email server due to information found on Anthony Weiner's computer Time http://time.com/4774278/james-comey-fired-timeline/
  103. 10/30/16 Judge Kevin Fox grants a search and seizure warrant to the FBI for Clinton emails on Huma Abedin's laptop FBI https://vault.fbi.gov/october-2016-application-affidavit-and-search-warrant-related-to-email-server-investigation/October%202016%20Application%20Affidavit%20and%20Search%20Warrant%20Related%20to%20Email%20Server%20Investigation%20Part%2001%20of%2001
  104. 10/30/16 Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's writes to James Comey asking him to release "explosive" information on Russian "collusion" TPM http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/trump-dossier-timeline-whats-known
  105. 10/31/16 FBI lead counsel James Baker leaks "Dossier" information to David Corn of Mother Jones that ties Trump to Russian "collusion" Mother Jones https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/22/trump-dossier-fbi-james-baker-david-corn-mother-jones-316157
  106. 10/31/16 Clinton campaign issues statement, citing Slate, about server in Trump Tower that secretly communicated with Russia Clinton https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/793250312119263233
  107. 11/01/16 In spite of numerous conflicts of interest, Andrew McCabe waits until this date before recusing himself from Clinton email probe JW https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-new-documents-show-fbi-deputy-director-mccabe-not-recuse-clinton-email-scandal-investigation-week-presidential-election/
  108. 11/06/16 Comey exonerates Clinton again after Weiner documents are reviewed "around the clock" WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/09/comey-timeline-everything-that-led-up-to-his-firing/?utm_term=.1d521047582b
  109. 11/08/16 Donald Trump is elected President of the United States Time http://time.com/4774278/james-comey-fired-timeline/
  110. 11/15/16 DOJ official Bruce Ohr meets in secret with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele regarding Russian "Dossier" Fox http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/07/top-doj-official-demoted-amid-probe-contacts-with-trump-dossier-firm.html
  111. 11/15/16 FBI agrees to continue funding Steele and his "Dossier" TPM http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/trump-dossier-timeline-whats-known
  112. 11/17/16 NSA Head Mike Rogers travels to Trump Tower (likely warning of illegal surveillance); Trump transition team immediate moves to NJ CTH https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/03/03/occams-razor-did-nsa-admiral-mike-rogers-warn-trump-on-november-17th-2016/
  113. 11/18/16 WaPo reports that James Clapper and other officials want Rogers removed from his post WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-and-intelligence-community-chiefs-have-urged-obama-to-remove-the-head-of-the-nsa/2016/11/19/44de6ea6-adff-11e6-977a-1030f822fc35_story.html?utm_term=.b82f16d866de
  114. 11/18/16 Sen. John McCain told of the Russian "Dossier"; a copy is sent to McCain and key aides DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/28/finally-a-definitive-timeline-showing-when-clinton-dnc-started-the-russian-dossier/
  115. 12/09/16 CIA tells Congress that they believe the Russians hacked the DNC to help defeat Hillary Clinton's campaign WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-orders-review-of-russian-hacking-during-presidential-campaign/2016/12/09/31d6b300-be2a-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html
  116. 12/09/16 McCain provides a copy of Russian "Dossier" to FBI director James Comey DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/28/finally-a-definitive-timeline-showing-when-clinton-dnc-started-the-russian-dossier/
  117. 12/09/16 President Obama orders intelligence community to investigate Russian influence on U.S. election Time http://time.com/4774278/james-comey-fired-timeline/
  118. 01/02/17 Wikileaks' Assange says he guarantees emails did not come from Russia; that Obama administration is trying to undermine Trump Time http://time.com/4620806/julian-assange-russia-hack-fox-hannity/
  119. 01/05/17 FBI says DNC refused to turn over server to determine nature of leaks CNN http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/05/politics/fbi-russia-hacking-dnc-crowdstrike/index.html
  120. 01/06/17 Comey briefs President-Elect Trump on existence of "salacious and unverified" Russian "Dossier" CNS https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/comey-even-though-it-was-salacious-and-unverified-we-knew-media-was-about
  121. 01/06/17 Within hours of Comey's meeting with Trump, existence of "Dossier" leaked by CNN (James Clapper named as possible leaker) FNC https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/12/31/ron-desantis-nyt-papadopoulos-russia-probe-claim-not-what-fbi-and-doj-told-congressional-investigators/
  122. 01/10/17 U.S. intelligence chiefs Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Rogers brief Obama on Russian "Dossier" and attempts to "influence" Trump CNN http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/donald-trump-intelligence-report-russia/index.html
  123. 01/10/17 BuzzFeed releases full Fusion GPS "Dossier" BuzzFeed https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia?utm_term=.wao5vgDE6#.io8bXPQ9V
  124. 01/11/17 WSJ identifies author of Russian "Dossier" as Christopher Steele WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/christopher-steele-ex-british-intelligence-officer-said-to-have-prepared-dossier-on-trump-1484162553
  125. 01/12/17 DOJ IG Michael Horowitz announces probe into actions of FBI including McCabe's role in Clinton email scandal DOJ https://oig.justice.gov/press/2017/2017-01-12.pdf
  126. 01/19/17 NYT reports law enforcement officials "intercepted" communications of Trump officials, including Paul Manafort NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/trump-russia-associates-investigation.html?
  127. 01/22/17 Michael Flynn sworn in as National Security Adviser Moyer http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-russia-timeline/
  128. 01/24/17 Michael Flynn gives voluntary interview to FBI regarding Russian "collusion"; interviewer is Peter Strzok NPR https://www.npr.org/2017/12/05/568319589/the-10-events-you-need-to-know-to-understand-the-michael-flynn-story
  129. 01/26/17 Acting A.G. Sally Yates and Bill Priestap inform White House counsel that Flynn was "compromised" by Russian actors NPR https://www.npr.org/2017/12/05/568319589/the-10-events-you-need-to-know-to-understand-the-michael-flynn-story
  130. 01/27/17 Former Clinton State Dept. representative George Papadopoulos interviewed by FBI, which results in his eventual indictment DOJ https://www.justice.gov/file/1007346/download
  131. 01/30/17 Russian operative Sergei Millian named as source of information for "Dossier" fed to Steele and Fusion GPS ABC http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-russian-businessman-source-key-trump-dossier-claims/story?id=45019603
  132. 01/30/17 Acting A.G. Sally Yates fired by President Trump for refusing to enforce his travel ban orders NPR https://www.npr.org/2017/12/05/568319589/the-10-events-you-need-to-know-to-understand-the-michael-flynn-story
  133. 02/08/17 Jeff Sessions confirmed as Attorney General WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/18/10-things-to-know-about-sen-jeff-sessions-donald-trumps-pick-for-attorney-general/
  134. 02/13/17 Flynn fired by President after leaks claim that the aide has discussed sanctions with Russian actors, which Flynn denies NPR https://www.npr.org/2017/12/05/568319589/the-10-events-you-need-to-know-to-understand-the-michael-flynn-story
  135. 02/14/17 In meeting with Trump, Comey says he was asked by President if he could see fit to "letting Flynn go" NPR https://www.npr.org/2017/12/05/568319589/the-10-events-you-need-to-know-to-understand-the-michael-flynn-story
  136. 03/02/17 A.G. Jeff Sessions recuses himself from Russia "collusion" investigation, citing prior contacts with the Russian Ambassador NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/us/politics/jeff-sessions-russia-trump-investigation-democrats.html
  137. 03/20/17 Comey testifies before Congress that FBI secretly investigated potential Trump "collusion" and hid that fact from Congress Time http://time.com/4774278/james-comey-fired-timeline/
  138. 03/20/17 Vanity Fair publishes puff piece on Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS and their work to create the "Dossier" Vanity Fair https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/how-the-explosive-russian-dossier-was-compiled-christopher-steele
  139. 03/20/17 Comey denies accusations that the Trump campaign had been wiretapped by the U.S. government WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/09/comey-timeline-everything-that-led-up-to-his-firing/?utm_term=.1d521047582b
  140. 03/20/17 Press Secretary Sean Spicer strongly denounces surveillance and unmasking of Trump aides by Obama officials Exam http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/spicer-blasts-unmasking-of-flynn/article/2617884
  141. 03/27/17 Former Obama official Evelyn Farkas admits Obama administration spied on Trump to find Russian "collusion" ties MSNBC https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=gapRNpEjXUo
  142. 03/28/17 Sen. Chuck Grassley writes to Comey over concern that McCabe's investigation of Clinton was tainted by campaign donations SJC https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-examines-potential-conflicts-top-fbi-official%E2%80%99s-role-russia-collusion
  143. 05/09/17 Trump fires FBI director James Comey Time http://time.com/4774278/james-comey-fired-timeline/
  144. 05/10/17 Washington Post asserts Comey had requested additional funding and resources for Russia investigation before his firing WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/09/comey-timeline-everything-that-led-up-to-his-firing/?utm_term=.1d521047582b
  145. 05/10/17 Huma Abedin husband Anthony Weiner signs plea agreement for crime of transmitting obscene material to a minor Hill http://thehill.com/homenews/news/334255-anthony-weiner-pleads-guilty-i-have-a-sickness
  146. 05/12/17 Trump tweets that Comey better hope there are no tapes of their conversations "before he starts leaking to the press" Hill http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/333081-trump-warns-comey-better-hope-there-are-no-tapes-of-our-meeting
  147. 05/17/17 DOJ names Robert Mueller special counsel to investigate Russian influence on election NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/us/politics/robert-mueller-special-counsel-russia-investigation.html
  148. 06/08/17 Comey admits he leaked records of his conversation in order to spur the naming of a special counsel CNN http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/08/politics/james-comey-testimony-donald-trump/index.html
  149. 06/15/17 Former DHS head Jeh Johnson tells Congress that the DNC refused to turn over its server so it could throughly investigate "hack" Times https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jul/5/dnc-email-server-most-wanted-evidence-for-russia-i/
  150. 06/24/17 Wife of Fusion GPS founder Simpson, Mary Jacoby, writes on Facebook that her husband deserves the credit for "Russia-gate" Tablet http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/251897/obama-steele-dossier-russiagate
  151. 07/07/17 Comey asserts "Dossier" was "salacious and unverified", but was important because media was prepared to report it CNS https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/comey-even-though-it-was-salacious-and-unverified-we-knew-media-was-about
  152. 07/13/17 CNN reports Strzok is working for Mueller's special counsel investgiation CNN http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/13/politics/peter-strzok-special-counsel-russia-fbi/index.html
  153. 07/14/17 DNC contractor Ali Chalupa denies working with Ukrainians to undermine Trump in spite of her leaked email from 5/3/16 CNN http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/14/politics/dnc-contractor-ukraine-alexandra-chalupa-trump/index.html
  154. 07/20/17 DOJ Inspector General receives compromising texts of Mueller investigator Peter Strzok from FBI DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/13/new-details-emerge-about-discovery-of-fbi-agents-anti-trump-texts/
  155. 07/24/17 Consortium of Intelligence Professionals (VIPS) reports that there is no evidence that Russians hacked DNC (see 7/5/16) VIPS https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/
  156. 07/27/17 DOJ Inspector General meets with Mueller and Rosenstein to inform them of Strzok's text messages DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/13/new-details-emerge-about-discovery-of-fbi-agents-anti-trump-texts/
  157. 08/09/17 The Nation reports evidence that DNC insiders, not Russian hackers, compromised Democrat IT systems The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/
  158. 08/10/17 DOJ Inspector General requests all communications between Strzok and Page DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/13/new-details-emerge-about-discovery-of-fbi-agents-anti-trump-texts/
  159. 08/22/17 Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson meets with Senate committee for 10 hours, but refuses to divulge who funded "Dossier" DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/28/finally-a-definitive-timeline-showing-when-clinton-dnc-started-the-russian-dossier/
  160. 08/24/17 House Intel Chair Nunes subpoenas DOJ and FBI for documents related to "Dossier", which Strzok is believed to be behind DC http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/13/politics/peter-strzok-special-counsel-russia-fbi/index.html
  161. 09/01/17 NBC's Dilanian, believed to be a Fusion GPS flack, misreports on Trump Jr.'s 6/9 meeting with Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya Federalist http://thefederalist.com/2017/12/04/fusion-gps-scandal-implicates-media-possible-pay-publish-scheme/
  162. 09/14/17 Susan Rice admits she surveilled Trump administration after the election and later unmasked the identities of key aides Times https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/14/susan-rice-reveals-why-she-unmasked-trump-campaign/
  163. 10/18/17 Two Fusion GPS officials plead the Fifth Amendment during House Intelligence Committee interviews DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/18/fusion-gps-partners-plead-the-fifth-during-house-intel-appearance/
  164. 10/24/17 Washington Post reveals Clinton campaign and DNC funded Fusion GPS and Russian "Dossier" TPM http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/trump-dossier-timeline-whats-known
  165. 10/29/17 NBC's Delanian reports upon an illegal leak from the Mueller investigation that the first indictment will be issued Monday NBC https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/grand-jury-approves-first-charges-mueller-s-russia-probe-report-n815246
  166. 10/30/17 Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos indicted as part of Mueller's investigation NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/us/politics/special-counsel-indictments.html
  167. 10/31/17 FBI refuses House Intel Committee (chaired by Nunez) request to interview Strzok DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/14/strzoks-texts-and-the-clinton-trump-investigations-a-definitive-timeline/
  168. 11/30/17 Flynn signs please agreeement with special counsel, admitting he lied about sanctions conversations NPR https://www.npr.org/2017/12/05/568319589/the-10-events-you-need-to-know-to-understand-the-michael-flynn-story
  169. 12/02/17 Washington Post reveals existence of incriminating messages between Peter Strzok revealing anti-Trump biases WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/two-senior-fbi-officials-on-clinton-trump-probes-exchanged-politically-charged-texts-disparaging-trump/2017/12/02/9846421c-d707-11e7-a986-d0a9770d9a3e_story.html?utm_term=.2fa2cb13cf0c
  170. 12/04/17 CNN reveals Strzok changed wording of Clinton investigation to avoid criminal charges CNN http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/politics/peter-strzok-james-comey/index.html?sr=twCNNp120417peter-strzok-james-comey0420PMStory&CNNPolitics=Tw
  171. 12/06/17 DOJ executive Bruce Ohr demoted after revelations he secretly met with Fusion GPS, which had secretly employed his wife Nellie Fox http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/07/top-doj-official-demoted-amid-probe-contacts-with-trump-dossier-firm.html
  172. 12/06/17 Rep. Adam Schiff accused of leaking privileged notes of meeting between Trump. Jr and House Intelligence Committee to CNN Hill http://thehill.com/homenews/house/365470-republicans-call-for-an-inquiry-into-house-intel-panel-russia-investigation
  173. 12/07/17 Fox News reveals Ohr was in contact with Fusion GPS at the same time the FISA application was submitted and granted Fox http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/07/top-doj-official-demoted-amid-probe-contacts-with-trump-dossier-firm.html
  174. 12/07/17 Rep. Jim Jordan grills FBI director Wray: was Dossier used to secure FISA warrant? Wray refuses to answer RCP https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/12/07/rep_jim_jordan_grills_fbi_director_wray_about_peter_strzok.html
  175. 12/07/17 Judge presiding over Michael Flynn criminal case, Rudolph Contreras, is recused, according to court statement for reasons unknown Reuters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-flynn/judge-presiding-over-michael-flynn-criminal-case-is-recused-court-idUSKBN1E202V
  176. 12/11/17 Fox News reveals Ohr's wife was hired by Fusion GPS to create opposition research against Trump Fox http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/11/wife-demoted-doj-official-worked-for-firm-behind-anti-trump-dossier.html
  177. 12/12/17 375 text messages between Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page are released CNN https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/12/12/politics/peter-strzok-texts-released/index.html?__twitter_impression=true
  178. 12/12/17 Deputy FBI director Anrew McCabe cancels testimony before Congress after revelations about Nellie and Bruce Ohr's ties to Fusion GPS Breitbart http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/12/12/deputy-fbi-director-delays-testimony-after-report-reveals-fusion-gps-paid-officials-wife/
  179. 12/13/17 Deputy A.G. Rosenstein refuses to tell Congress whether the FBI paid for the Fusion GPS "Dossier" DC http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/13/deputy-ag-wont-say-whether-the-fbi-paid-for-dossier/
  180. 12/14/17 Rep. Jim Jordan states DOJ/FBI leadership attempted to fix the presidential election by inventing a "Russian Collusion" narrative Fox http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/12/boom-gop-rep-jim-jordan-proof-fbi-worked-republican-party-election-video/
  181. 12/18/17 Demoted DOJ official Bruce Ohr fails to appear before Congress FoxBiz http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/12/just-incredible-tom-fitton-stunned-bruce-ohr-ditches-senate-intel-committee-hearing-video/
  182. 12/18/17 GOP lawmakers call for investigation into leaks of privileged interview between Trump Jr. and House Intelligence Committee Hill http://thehill.com/homenews/house/365470-republicans-call-for-an-inquiry-into-house-intel-panel-russia-investigation
  183. 12/18/17 Senate Judiciary Chair Grassley calls for the firing of FBI's McCabe Fox http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/19/fbi-s-mccabe-faces-gop-calls-for-ouster-ahead-closed-door-testimony.html
  184. 12/19/17 FBI's McCabe testifies in private to House Intel Commitee a day after and is unable to answer questions about the "Dossier" Exam http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-frustrated-lawmakers-pressed-fbis-mccabe-for-answers-on-trump-dossier-they-got-nothing/article/2644225
  185. 12/21/17 FBI's top General Counsel -- James A. Baker -- said to have leaked "Dossier" to Mother Jones, is reassigned by FBI Director Wray WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbis-top-lawyer-said-to-be-reassigned/2017/12/21/2ac76640-e6b5-11e7-833f-155031558ff4_story.html?utm_term=.418ee85e094c
  186. 12/29/17 State Dept. releases cache of emails found on Weiner-Abedin laptop, several of which contained classified information CNN https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/12/29/politics/huma-abedin-state-department-email-release/index.html
  187. 12/30/17 Sen. Lindsey Graham cites major concern over how "Dossier" was used by the DOJ, implying it was disguised and presented to FISC Fox http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/12/lindsey-graham-doj-used-anti-trump-dossier-in-court.php?
  188. 12/30/17 DNC-linked NYT's Haberman markets narrative that FBI opened Trump investigation due to George Papadopoulos, not "Dossier" NYT https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/947185141306101760.html
  189. 12/31/17 NY Times reports Clinton associates offered up to $500,000 to females to report sexual harrassment by Trump NYT http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/31/hillary-clinton-backer-paid-500g-to-fund-women-accusing-trump-sexual-misconduct-before-election-day-report-says.html
  190. 01/02/18 Fusion GPS founders write NYT op-ed asserting "Dossier" claims; fail to address funding sources, Nellie Ohr involvement, etc. NYT http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/02/fusion-gps-partners-make-first-public-comments-about-the-dossier/
  191. 01/03/18 Senate Judiciary Chair Grassley writes DAG Rosenstein: did Comey leak classified info to Columbia Professor Daniel Richman? SJC https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-presses-justice-department-about-classification-comey-memos
  192. 01/15/18 Date that DOJ Inspector General expected to turn over 1.2 million documents related to DOJ/FBI handling of Clinton probe CTH https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/12/28/intelligence-committee-chairman-devin-nunes-gives-doj-until-january-3rd-to-produce-documents/

[May 11, 2019] Christopher Steele, FBI s Confidential Human Source by Publius Tacitus

Highly recommended!
A foreign intelligence asset was used to justify surveillance of Trump[ and some of his associates
Notable quotes:
"... What is clear from the new records is that Christopher Steele, a foreign intelligence officer, had frequent and extensive contacts with the FBI. Who was his FBI Case Agent? ..."
"... The main thing I want to know is WHEN was the decision made to tar Trump with Russia - both at the FBI (and likely CIA) and at the DNC (over the leak) - and WHO was the deciding entity - Comey, Brennan, Clinton, Obama or someone else? And perhaps who came up with the idea in the first place (at the DNC, it was very likely Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukrainian-American DNC "consultant"). ..."
"... The bad thing is that our MSM is so reverent of our Intel agencies that I see them encouraged to increasingly put their hand on the scale. ..."
"... Recently, I saw arm flailing by a Congressman, Dan Coats, and Mueller about how the Russians are still at it. They are trying to disrupt or influence the 2018. Really, then I demand to get a list of the pro-Kremlin candidates. How long before the mere threat of being outed as a Kremlin agent is used to punish elected officials if they are not sufficiently hawkish or don't support certain programs. Unchallenged claims by Intel agencies gives them a lot of political power. ..."
"... I am skeptical. Russia has a lot of fish to fry, why would they expend resources on midterm elections. Now everyone in the U.S. hates them, both traditional hawk Republicans and born again uber-hawk Democrats. There is a tiger behind both doors. ..."
"... if Steele had been a CHS since at least February of 2016, what was the purpose of passing the Dossier to the FBI through Fusion GPS? Why not just going to his FBI handler? Was Steele collaboration with Fusion even in compliance with FBI regulations? Did the FBI know? ..."
"... Because part of the plan was to leak the information in order to damage Trump. FBI could not do that. Would have exposed them to some real legal jeopardy. This was a dual track strategy. Diabolical almost. ..."
"... Don't forget the Nellie Ohr (Fusion GPS) -> Bruce Ohr (DOJ) back channel. The husband & wife tag team. Yes, the same Nellie that was investigating using ham radio to communicate to avoid NSA mass surveillance. ..."
"... From the very beginning that information about all this was slowly leaking from the Congressional investigation, this whole thing smelled very fishy. Then add intense effort at DOJ & FBI to obstruct and obfuscate. And the unhinged tweets and interviews by Brennan, Clapper & Comey. ..."
"... He was working with FBI and GPS at the same time. GPS was in the dark supposedly about his work with the FBI and Steele got their approval to hand over what he had delivered to GPS to the FBI as a cover for his work with the FBI. ..."
"... its also likely FBI had some input into the content of what was delivered to GPS, and more importantly what was not delivered. ..."
"... Re the 'standing agreement to not recruit each other's intelligence personnel for clandestine activities.' As Steele was not by this time a current employee of MI6, was the FBI in technical violation of this? ..."
"... A central question in regard to Steele, as with quite a number of former intelligence/law enforcement/military people who have started at least ostensibly private sector operations, is how far these are being used as 'cover' for activities conducted on behalf of either the state agencies for which they used to work, or other state agencies. ..."
"... It is at least possible that one advantage of such arrangements may be that they make it possible to evade the letter of agreements between intelligence agencies in different countries ..."
"... If, as seems likely, both current and former top FBI and DOJ people – very likely Mueller as well as Comey, Strzok and many others – were intimately involved in the conspiracy to subvert the constitution, then a means of making it possible for Steele to combine feeding information to the FBI while also engaging in 'StratCom' via the MSM could have been necessary. ..."
"... An obvious means of 'squaring the circle' would have been to issue a formal 'termination' to Steele, while creating 'back channels' to those who were officially supposed not to be talking to him ..."
"... A report yesterday by John Solomon in 'The Hill' quotes from messages exchanged between Steele and Bruce Ohr after the supposed termination ..."
"... 'In all, Ohr's notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence probes in American history.' ..."
"... I have just finished taking a fresh look at Sir Robert Owen's travesty of a report into the death of Litvinenko. In large measure, this develops claims originally made in Christopher Steele's first attempt to provide a convincing account of why figures close to Putin might have thought it made sense to assassinate that figure, and to do so with polonium. The sheer volume of fabrication which has been deployed in an attempt to defend the patently indefensible almost beggars belief. ..."
"... Just as a question arises as to whether Steele is essentially acting on behalf of MI6, a question also arises as to whether the FBI leadership were knowledgeable about, and possibly involved with, the various shenanigans in which Shvets and Levinson were involved. Given that claims about Mogilevich have turned out to be central to 'Russiagate', that seems a rather important issue, and I am curious as to whether Ohr's communications with Steele may cast any light on it. ..."
"... Apparently the FBI got Deripaksa to fund the rescue of Levinson from Iran. Furthermore apparently FBI personnel maybe including McCabe visited with Deripaksa and showed him the Steele dossier. He supposedly had a nice guffaw and dismissed it as nonsense. So on the one hand while they make Russia out to be the most evil they play footsie with Russian oligarchs. ..."
"... Thinking about "Christopher Steele was terminated as a Confidential Human Source for cause.", something that doesn't seem to have gotten as much attention is that Peter Strzok failed his poly: ..."
"... Steele's relationship with the FBI extends far further back than February 2016. Shortly after he left MI6, he contracted with the Football Association to investigate possible FIFA corruption. Once he realized the massiveness of this corruption he contacted his old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crimes Task Force in 2011. Thus began his association with the FBI as a CHS. That investigation culminated in the 2015 FIFA corruption indictments and convictions. ..."
"... One thing I don't understand...we have the anti-Trumpers saying that Donald Junior meeting with a Russian national to get 'dirt' on Hillary is illegal...due to some law about candidates collaborating with foreigners or something like that...[obviously I'm foggy on the technical details]... Yet we know that the Hillary campaign worked with a foreign national, Steele, to get dirt on Trump...how is this not the same...? ..."
"... What role did Stefan Halper and Mifsud play as Confidential Human Sources in all this? ..."
"... Why was British Intelligence allegedly collecting and passing along info about Donald Trump in the first place? Or could this have been a pretext created to give cover and/or support to the agenda here in the US to insure his defeat? Could a foreign intelligence source such as this trigger/facilitate/justify the US counterintelligence investigation of Trump, or give cover to a covert investigation that may have already begun? ..."
"... British intelligence was collecting / passing on info about Trump because of his campaign stance on NATO (he said it was obsolete), his desire to end regime change wars (he castigated the fiasco in Iraq, took Bush to task over it etc.), and his often stated desire to get along with Russia (and China). Trump also talked of ending certain economic policies (NAFTA, TPP, etc.) and reenacting others (Glass-Steagall, the American System of Economics i.e. Hamilton, Carey, Clay), If Trump had acted on those, which he has not so far, he would changed the entire world system, a system in place since the end of WW II, or earlier. That was a risk too big to take without some kind of insurance policy - I believe Christopher Steele was that insurance policy. ..."
"... British Intelligence is verifiably the foreign source with the most extensive and effective meddling in the 2016 election. Perfidious Albion. ..."
"... Or, GSHQ was hovering up signint on Trump campaign early-on (using domestics US resources and databases via their 5-Eyes "sharing agreement" with NSA) cuz Brennan asked them to do it? ..."
"... Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, ..."
"... Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, ..."
"... I've heard that the Echelon system is used by the Five Eyes IC to do something similar. The Brits spy on US, and give the NSA the data so the NSA can evade US laws prohibiting spying on us, and we return the favor to help them evade what (few) laws they have that prohibits spying on their people. ..."
"... still wonder why the US would need to rely so much on British intelligence sources ..."
"... I've read that Steele's cover was blown 20 years ago and he hasn't even been to Russia since, so I wonder why he was considered such a reliable source by both the US and UK? In my opinion as an absolute naif about such things, Steele seems like he may be a has-been when it comes to Russia. ..."
"... Here is a simple explanation from someone who knows almost nothing about how any of the people in power work: Most of them are not as clever and smart as they think they are. And most of the regular people who are just citizens are smarter than these people think they are. ..."
"... It's simply that their arrogant assessment of their own superiority caused them to do really stupid things ..."
Aug 08, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

The revelations from US Government records about the FBI/Intel Community plot to take out Donald Trump continue to flow thanks to the dogged efforts of Judicial Watch. The latest nugget came last Friday with the release of FBI records detailing their recruitment and management of Britain's ostensibly retired Intelligence Officer, Christopher Steele. He was an officially recruited FBI source and received at least 11 payments during the 9 month period that he was signed up as a Confidential Human Source.

You may find it strange that we can glean so much information from a document dump that is almost entirely redacted . The key is to look at the report forms; there are three types--FD-1023 (Source Reports), FD-209a (Contact Reports) and FD-794b (Payment Requests). There are 15 different 1023s, 13 209a reports and 11 794b payment requests covering the period from 2 February 2016 thru 1 November 2016. That is a total of nine months.

These reports totally destroy the existing meme that Steele only came into contact with the FBI sometime in July 2016. It is important for you to understand that a 1023 Source Report is filled out each time that the FBI source handler has contact with the source. This can be an in person meeting or a phone call. Each report lists the name of the Case Agent; the date, time and location of the meeting; any other people attending the meeting; and a summary of what was discussed.

What is clear from the new records is that Christopher Steele, a foreign intelligence officer, had frequent and extensive contacts with the FBI. Who was his FBI Case Agent?

richardstevenhack , a day ago

Indeed we do need more information.

The main thing I want to know is WHEN was the decision made to tar Trump with Russia - both at the FBI (and likely CIA) and at the DNC (over the leak) - and WHO was the deciding entity - Comey, Brennan, Clinton, Obama or someone else? And perhaps who came up with the idea in the first place (at the DNC, it was very likely Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukrainian-American DNC "consultant").

We can be pretty sure this predates any alleged Russian "hacking" (unless it occurred as a result of alleged Russian hacking of the DNC in 2015).

This needs to be pinned down if anyone is to be successfully prosecuted for creating this treasonous hoax.

chris chuba , 5 hours ago
A very closely related topic, Victor Davis Hanson is onto something but it is darker than he suggests, https://www.nationalreview.... Paraphrasing, he gives the typical, rally around the flag we must stop the Russians intro but then documents how govt flaks abused their power to influence our elections and then makes the point, 'this is why the public is skeptical of their claims'.

The bad thing is that our MSM is so reverent of our Intel agencies that I see them encouraged to increasingly put their hand on the scale.

Recently, I saw arm flailing by a Congressman, Dan Coats, and Mueller about how the Russians are still at it. They are trying to disrupt or influence the 2018. Really, then I demand to get a list of the pro-Kremlin candidates. How long before the mere threat of being outed as a Kremlin agent is used to punish elected officials if they are not sufficiently hawkish or don't support certain programs. Unchallenged claims by Intel agencies gives them a lot of political power.

I am skeptical. Russia has a lot of fish to fry, why would they expend resources on midterm elections. Now everyone in the U.S. hates them, both traditional hawk Republicans and born again uber-hawk Democrats. There is a tiger behind both doors.

Leonardo Facchin , 20 hours ago
Thanks for the explanation.

What I can't figure out is: if Steele had been a CHS since at least February of 2016, what was the purpose of passing the Dossier to the FBI through Fusion GPS? Why not just going to his FBI handler? Was Steele collaboration with Fusion even in compliance with FBI regulations? Did the FBI know?

Publius Tacitus -> Leonardo Facchin , 17 hours ago
Because part of the plan was to leak the information in order to damage Trump. FBI could not do that. Would have exposed them to some real legal jeopardy. This was a dual track strategy. Diabolical almost.
blue peacock -> Leonardo Facchin , 13 hours ago
Don't forget the Nellie Ohr (Fusion GPS) -> Bruce Ohr (DOJ) back channel. The husband & wife tag team. Yes, the same Nellie that was investigating using ham radio to communicate to avoid NSA mass surveillance.

From the very beginning that information about all this was slowly leaking from the Congressional investigation, this whole thing smelled very fishy. Then add intense effort at DOJ & FBI to obstruct and obfuscate. And the unhinged tweets and interviews by Brennan, Clapper & Comey. And of course the media narrative that Rep. Nunes, Goodlatte and others were endangering "national security" by casting aspersions on the "patriotic" law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Paul M -> Leonardo Facchin , 16 hours ago
He was working with FBI and GPS at the same time. GPS was in the dark supposedly about his work with the FBI and Steele got their approval to hand over what he had delivered to GPS to the FBI as a cover for his work with the FBI.

Of course, he had most likely already done so and its also likely FBI had some input into the content of what was delivered to GPS, and more importantly what was not delivered.

David Habakkuk , 4 hours ago
PT,

Fascinating.

Re the 'standing agreement to not recruit each other's intelligence personnel for clandestine activities.' As Steele was not by this time a current employee of MI6, was the FBI in technical violation of this?

The point is not merely a quibble. A central question in regard to Steele, as with quite a number of former intelligence/law enforcement/military people who have started at least ostensibly private sector operations, is how far these are being used as 'cover' for activities conducted on behalf of either the state agencies for which they used to work, or other state agencies.

It is at least possible that one advantage of such arrangements may be that they make it possible to evade the letter of agreements between intelligence agencies in different countries.

Another related matter has to do with the termination of Steele as a 'Confidential Human Source.'

It has long seemed to me that it was more than possible that this was not to be taken at face value. If, as seems likely, both current and former top FBI and DOJ people – very likely Mueller as well as Comey, Strzok and many others – were intimately involved in the conspiracy to subvert the constitution, then a means of making it possible for Steele to combine feeding information to the FBI while also engaging in 'StratCom' via the MSM could have been necessary.

An obvious means of 'squaring the circle' would have been to issue a formal 'termination' to Steele, while creating 'back channels' to those who were officially supposed not to be talking to him.

A report yesterday by John Solomon in 'The Hill' quotes from messages exchanged between Steele and Bruce Ohr after the supposed termination.

(See http://thehill.com/person/d... .)

When on 31 January 2017 – well after the publication of the dossier by BuzzFeed – Ohr provided reassurance that he could continue to help feed information to the FBI, Steele texted back:

"If you end up out though, I really need another (bureau?) contact point/number who is briefed. We can't allow our guy to be forced to go back home. It would be disastrous."

At that point, Solomon tells us that 'Investigators are trying to determine who Steele was referring to.' This seems to me a rather important question. It would seem likely, although not certain, that he is talking about another Brit. If he is, would it have been someone else employed by Orbis? Or someone currently working for British intelligence? What is the precise significance of 'forced to go back home', and why would this have been 'disastrous'?

Another crucial paragraph:

'In all, Ohr's notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence probes in American history.'

The earlier contacts may be of little interest, but there again they may not be.

As it happens, it was following Berezovsky's arrival in London in October 2001 that the 'information operations' network he created began to move into high gear. It is moreover clear that this was always a transatlantic operation, and also fragments of evidence suggest that the FBI may have had some involvement from early on.

I have just finished taking a fresh look at Sir Robert Owen's travesty of a report into the death of Litvinenko. In large measure, this develops claims originally made in Christopher Steele's first attempt to provide a convincing account of why figures close to Putin might have thought it made sense to assassinate that figure, and to do so with polonium. The sheer volume of fabrication which has been deployed in an attempt to defend the patently indefensible almost beggars belief.

The original attempt came in a radio programme broadcast by the BBC – which was to become known to some of us as the 'Berezovsky Broadcasting Corporation' – on 16 December 2006, presented by Tom Mangold, a familiar 'trusty' for the intelligence services.

(A transcript sent out from the Cabinet Office at the time is available on the archived 'Evidence' page for the Inquiry, at http://webarchive.nationala... , as HMG000513. There is an interesting and rather important question as to whether those who sent it out, and those who received it, knew that it was more or less BS from start to finish.)

The programme was wholly devoted to claims made by the former KGB operative Yuri Shvets, who was presented as an independent 'due diligence' expert, without any mention of the rather major role he had played in the original 'Orange Revolution.'

Back-up was provided by his supposed collaborator in 'due diligence', the former FBI operative Robert 'Bobby' Levinson. No mention was made of the fact that he had been, in the 'Nineties, a, if not the lead FBI investigator into the notorious Ukrainian Jewish mobster Semyon Mogilevich.

The following March Levinson would disappear on the Iranian island of Kish, on what we now know was a covert mission on behalf of elements in the CIA.

Just as a question arises as to whether Steele is essentially acting on behalf of MI6, a question also arises as to whether the FBI leadership were knowledgeable about, and possibly involved with, the various shenanigans in which Shvets and Levinson were involved. Given that claims about Mogilevich have turned out to be central to 'Russiagate', that seems a rather important issue, and I am curious as to whether Ohr's communications with Steele may cast any light on it.

Jack -> David Habakkuk , 2 hours ago
David

Apparently the FBI got Deripaksa to fund the rescue of Levinson from Iran. Furthermore apparently FBI personnel maybe including McCabe visited with Deripaksa and showed him the Steele dossier. He supposedly had a nice guffaw and dismissed it as nonsense. So on the one hand while they make Russia out to be the most evil they play footsie with Russian oligarchs.

Keith Harbaugh , 19 hours ago
Thanks for this informative article.

Thinking about "Christopher Steele was terminated as a Confidential Human Source for cause.", something that doesn't seem to have gotten as much attention is that Peter Strzok failed his poly:

Seems rather surprising to me. Anyone have any comment on this?

TTG , an hour ago
Steele's relationship with the FBI extends far further back than February 2016. Shortly after he left MI6, he contracted with the Football Association to investigate possible FIFA corruption. Once he realized the massiveness of this corruption he contacted his old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crimes Task Force in 2011. Thus began his association with the FBI as a CHS. That investigation culminated in the 2015 FIFA corruption indictments and convictions. His initial contact with old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crime Task Force is awfully similar to his contacting these same friends in 2016 after deciding his initial Trump research was potentially bigger than mere opposition research.
FB , 3 hours ago
One thing I don't understand...we have the anti-Trumpers saying that Donald Junior meeting with a Russian national to get 'dirt' on Hillary is illegal...due to some law about candidates collaborating with foreigners or something like that...[obviously I'm foggy on the technical details]... Yet we know that the Hillary campaign worked with a foreign national, Steele, to get dirt on Trump...how is this not the same...?

Even worse is that the FBI was using this same foreign agent that a presidential candidate had hired to get dirt on an opponent... Even knowing nothing about legalities this just doesn't look very good...

Wally Courie , 4 hours ago
Stupid question? As the Col. has explained, the President can declassify any document he pleases. So, why doesn't Donaldo unredact the redacted portions of these bullcrap docs? What is he afraid of? That the Intel community will get mad and be out to get him? Isn't time for him to show some cojones?
blue peacock , 16 hours ago
What role did Stefan Halper and Mifsud play as Confidential Human Sources in all this?
akaPatience , 19 hours ago
Why was British Intelligence allegedly collecting and passing along info about Donald Trump in the first place? Or could this have been a pretext created to give cover and/or support to the agenda here in the US to insure his defeat? Could a foreign intelligence source such as this trigger/facilitate/justify the US counterintelligence investigation of Trump, or give cover to a covert investigation that may have already begun?
Navstéva يزور 🐐 -> akaPatience , 17 hours ago
British intelligence was collecting / passing on info about Trump because of his campaign stance on NATO (he said it was obsolete), his desire to end regime change wars (he castigated the fiasco in Iraq, took Bush to task over it etc.), and his often stated desire to get along with Russia (and China). Trump also talked of ending certain economic policies (NAFTA, TPP, etc.) and reenacting others (Glass-Steagall, the American System of Economics i.e. Hamilton, Carey, Clay), If Trump had acted on those, which he has not so far, he would changed the entire world system, a system in place since the end of WW II, or earlier. That was a risk too big to take without some kind of insurance policy - I believe Christopher Steele was that insurance policy.
unmitigatedaudacity -> Navstéva يزور 🐐 , 16 hours ago
British Intelligence is verifiably the foreign source with the most extensive and effective meddling in the 2016 election. Perfidious Albion.
Bryn Nykrson -> Navstéva يزور 🐐 , 14 hours ago
Or, GSHQ was hovering up signint on Trump campaign early-on (using domestics US resources and databases via their 5-Eyes "sharing agreement" with NSA) cuz Brennan asked them to do it? And therefore without having to mess about with any formal FISA warrant thingy's ... But, then use what might be found (or plausibly alleged) to try to get a proper FISA warrant later on (July 2016)? 'Parallel Discovery' of sorts; with Fusion GPS also a leaky cut-out: channelling media reports to be used as confirmation of Steele's "raw intelligence" in the formal FISA application(s)?
Biggee Mikeee -> akaPatience , 17 hours ago
Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates,

" Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, "

That's a good question, could it legally enable an end run around the FISC until enough evidence was gathered for a FISC surveillance authorization?.

richardstevenhack -> Biggee Mikeee , 13 hours ago
I've heard that the Echelon system is used by the Five Eyes IC to do something similar. The Brits spy on US, and give the NSA the data so the NSA can evade US laws prohibiting spying on us, and we return the favor to help them evade what (few) laws they have that prohibits spying on their people.

Only a matter of time until someone figured out the same method could be used to "meddle" in national affairs.

akaPatience -> Biggee Mikeee , 15 hours ago
I understand, but still wonder why the US would need to rely so much on British intelligence sources such as Steele about a very high profile American citizen and businessman -- aren't our intelligence services competent enough to have known and discovered as much if not more about Trump than other countries' intelligence services? I've read that Steele's cover was blown 20 years ago and he hasn't even been to Russia since, so I wonder why he was considered such a reliable source by both the US and UK? In my opinion as an absolute naif about such things, Steele seems like he may be a has-been when it comes to Russia.
DianaLC -> akaPatience , 4 hours ago
Here is a simple explanation from someone who knows almost nothing about how any of the people in power work: Most of them are not as clever and smart as they think they are. And most of the regular people who are just citizens are smarter than these people think they are.

It's simply that their arrogant assessment of their own superiority caused them to do really stupid things.

[May 11, 2019] Nunes Memo Details Weaponization of FISA Court for Political Advantage by Elizabeth Lea Vos

Highly recommended!
The public's tax dollars were spent on creating fake "evidence" to tie Trump with Russia, a false narrative that put the planet at heightened risk for nuclear war, for the sake of the Clinton's hurt feelings.
Notable quotes:
"... In other words, the public's tax dollars were spent on creating fake "evidence" to tie Trump with Russia, a false narrative that put the planet at heightened risk for nuclear war, for the sake of the Clinton's hurt feelings. ..."
"... Even more interesting is the close relationship Isikoff had with the DNC during the 2016 Presidential election. According to an email from the DNC released by Wikileaks , Isikoff attended the "Open World Society's forum" as the guest of DNC official Ali Chalupa. In the email, Chalupa states that she was invited to the forum to speak specifically about Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump. Chalupa goes on to state that she has been working with Isikoff for the past few weeks and that at the event, she was able to get him "connected him to the Ukrainians." She adds: ..."
"... "I invited Michael Isikoff whom I've been working with for the past few weeks and connected him to the Ukrainians. More offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I'm working on you should be aware of." ..."
Feb 05, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Via Disobedient Media

On Friday, the much anticipated "Nunes Memo" was finally released to the general public. Disobedient Media previously reported on the push to prevent the memo from being released. While there is much contained in the four pages, the most glaring issue contained in the memo is the FBI's willful concealment of pertinent details of which they were required by law to turn over to the FISA court when seeking the initial surveillance warrant on Carter Page , a former volunteer foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign.

According to the memo, former director James Comey signed three FISA applications on behalf of the FBI. Additionally, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente, and acting Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, each signed one or more applications on behalf of the DOJ.

Under 50 U.S.C. § 1805(d)(1) , a FISA order on an American citizen must be renewed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) every 90 days. In order to protect the rights of Americans, each subsequent renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause. This means that the in order to be granted a renewal, the government is required to produce all material and relevant facts to the court, including any information which may be potentially favorable to the target of the FISA application.

On four separate occasions the Obama administration essentially claimed before the FISA court that Page had betrayed his country by working for a hostile foreign nation, and therefore it was necessary that the government violate his Fourth Amendment rights. However, in this case, the government purposely withheld relevant information from the government not once, but four separate times.

According to the memo, at no time during the initial application process for the warrant to surveil Page, or in any of the three renewals of that application, did the government disclose to the FISA Court the nature of their relationship with Christopher Steele, his relationship with the Democratic National Committee (DNC), or his relationship with the Clinton campaign. Instead, the memo simply, yet vaguely states that, "Steele was working for a named U.S. person."

Instead, the government purposefully withheld information from the court that the "dossier" compiled by Steele was done so on behalf of the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. It was further withheld from the court that the DNC had paid Steele over $160,000 for his work in compiling this "dossier", and that the money was funneled to Steele through the law firm Perkins Coie, which represents both the Hillary Clinton campaign as well as the DNC in legal matters. According to the National Review , the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid at least $9.1 million to Perkins Coie from mid-2015 to late 2016.

The government further held from the court the fact that the FBI had authorized payments to Steele. According to the New York Post , in October 2016 the FBI contracted to pay Steele $50,000 to "help corroborate the dirt on Trump."

In March of 2017, CNN also reported that the FBI had entered into an arrangement with Steele, whereby they agreed to cover all of his expenses.

While it is extremely disconcerting that the government willfully concealed the existence of their financial relationship with Steele, a foreign national, what is more troubling is the fact that the government used tax payer dollars to do so. In other words, every single American who did not vote for Hillary Clinton, whether they voted for Trump or a third party candidate or did not vote at all – were forced to finance the Clinton campaign-funded opposition research.

In other words, the public's tax dollars were spent on creating fake "evidence" to tie Trump with Russia, a false narrative that put the planet at heightened risk for nuclear war, for the sake of the Clinton's hurt feelings.

Why the media refuses to mention or cover this fact, this author does not know. But this is an extremely important fact that every American, whether left, right, up, down, should remember, as it is the perfect example of the corruption which exists within our tax payer-funded institutions, which we are told to have nothing but the utmost respect for.

According to the memo, in an effort to corroborate Steele's dossier, the FBI extensively cited a September 23, 2016, Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff, titled " U.S. intel officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin ", which focuses on Page's July 2016 trip to Moscow. However, when presenting this article to the court the FBI falsely assessed that Steele did not provide this information directly to Isikoff. Meaning that the FBI was aware that the article they presented to the court was not corroborating evidence from a separate source, because the information in the article was provided to Isikoff by Steele himself. In fact, as the memo points out, Steele himself has stated in British court filings that in September 2016 he met with Yahoo News , as well as several other outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker.

What's more, in an article published on January 12, 2017, Isikoff reports on a story by the Wall Street Journal in which Christopher Steele is identified as the author of the infamous dossier, and even notes that Steele was an " FBI asset ". However, what is most striking about this article is the fact that despite receiving the underline information which served as the basis for his own article in September, Isikoff pretends have not known that Steele was the source of the dossier.

Even more interesting is the close relationship Isikoff had with the DNC during the 2016 Presidential election. According to an email from the DNC released by Wikileaks , Isikoff attended the "Open World Society's forum" as the guest of DNC official Ali Chalupa. In the email, Chalupa states that she was invited to the forum to speak specifically about Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump. Chalupa goes on to state that she has been working with Isikoff for the past few weeks and that at the event, she was able to get him "connected him to the Ukrainians." She adds:

"I invited Michael Isikoff whom I've been working with for the past few weeks and connected him to the Ukrainians. More offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I'm working on you should be aware of."

According to the memo, Steele's relationship with the FBI as a source continued until late October 2016, when he was terminated for what the FBI defines as the most serious violations, "an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI". This unauthorized disclosure occurred in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones article by David Corn, the reporter who broke the infamous Mitt Romney "47 Percent" story.

Again, the FBI did not notify the court that Steele was leaking information to media outlets, or that he was terminated by the FBI after doing so for the second time.

Before and after his termination, Steele maintained contact with then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, whose wife, Nellie Ohr, was employed by Fusion GPS. Ohr would later tell the FBI in an interview in September 2016, that Steele had stated that he, "was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president."

Lastly, the memo also reveals that the Steele dossier was so crucial to the investigation, that Deputy Director McCabe testified in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information. This admission by the former Deputy Director is damning, as it proves that, if it were not for the Clinton campaign and DNC funded dossier created by a foreign national, there would have been no surveillance of Page, and ultimately there would have never been a special counsel appointed.

At the end of the day, every American, regardless of their position on the political spectrum, should be worried about the fact that the FBI and DOJ sought and were granted a warrant to spy on an opposing political campaign based on a document that the FBI itself had neither verified or corroborated. If the FISA court does in fact employ strict "safeguards" and procedures in order to ensure that the rights of American citizens are not being systematically violated, how is it that the FBI and DOJ were able to obtain a surveillance warrant based on unverified allegations? And why did Congress overwhelmingly vote to reauthorize Section 702? Vote up! 15 Vote down! 0

VWAndy Feb 4, 2018 4:18 PM Permalink

This whole ball of wax should be in the public hands. Straight up clear cut case for a real civilian grand jury. As far removed from the government control as possible. Its a corruption issue. Nobody in government has clean hands.

IvannaHumpalot Feb 4, 2018 6:36 PM Permalink

This is a problem because across the 5-eyes intel agencies are being given extra-judicial powers to do basically whatever they want without oversight and without legal boundaries. This assumes the agencies will never become politicised, and that no individual within the agencies will ever have an axe to grind against an ex, or a petty hatred to pursue, or political agendas of their own. What FISA-gate shows is that this is clearly not the case. We need the reimposition of free speech, transparency and of civilian rule of government.

Only an informed public can really be in charge of its elected government. We need to be in charge again because civilians are fast being kettled into a snare where we have no say in the decisions that our governments take. It's being decided by the deep state bureaucracy

Rex Andrus Feb 4, 2018 6:39 PM Permalink

Start thinking about how, at the grass roots level, to catch them red handed stealing this election.

Joebloinvestor Feb 4, 2018 6:55 PM Permalink

No action(s) from the FISA court about being deceived shows we are all fucked.

Rex Andrus Feb 4, 2018 7:04 PM Permalink

https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/7v7avg/i_find_you_guilty_o

Bondo Feb 4, 2018 7:17 PM Permalink

trump needs to appoint a special prosecutor outside of the swamp to investigate the fbi/doj. at this point, I trust Judge Judy more than anyone in dc

Reaper Feb 4, 2018 8:07 PM Permalink

Who protects us from our FBI protectors? The power to lie in court with impunity makes Kangaroo courts our system

Northern Flicker Feb 4, 2018 8:28 PM Permalink

It's a joke the FBI didn't want the memo released to protect their methods and sources.. no wonder, they just make things up.

Arctic Frost Feb 4, 2018 9:23 PM Permalink

WHY DID CONGRESS OVERWHELMINGLY VOTE TO REAUTHORIZE SECTION 702?

bh2 Feb 5, 2018 12:21 AM Permalink

The word "assess" is a spook term of art which means they are either "guessing" or "lying", depending on context.

cwsuisse Feb 5, 2018 1:36 AM Permalink

The FBI can't be considered to be a trustworthy institution.

[May 11, 2019] CIA Paid $100,000 To Shadowy Russian For Dirt on Trump, Including Sex Video by Chuck Ross

Highly recommended!
This "shadowy Russian" might well be Sergey Skripal. This suggests that Steele dossier was CIA operation with British MI6 as transfer mechanism and Steele as a cover. And implicates Brennan. So this is next level of leaks after "Stormy Daniel"...
Another NYT leak out of a set of well coordinated leans from anonymous intelligence officials ;-) Poor Melania...
Notable quotes:
"... But U.S. intelligence officials have reason to doubt the veracity of the video and other information about Trump associates provided by the Russian, according to a fascinating report from The New York Times. ..."
"... If there was ANYTHING on Trump, it would have oversaturated the airwaves 24/7 during his candidacy, and he would have never made it out of the primaries. ..."
"... More than you know, whenever Russian is stated, replace with Ukrainian. TPTB cannot help themselves but push forward on another agenda as the current one falls apart. The Russophobia is still being stoked no matter what. ..."
"... Steele was a double agent, maybe triple. British,Ukrainian and probably American. Does that start to make a little more sense ? Those huuuge donations to the CF from Ukraine, McStains involvement, Steele's early retirement from MI6, Brennan's frequent trips to Ukraine, State Dept.s role. Investigate the Chalupa sisters to find out who the rest of the rats are.Lee Stranahan started before he was shut down. ..."
"... the CIA has to turn America into a criminal totalitarian regime in order to make the world safe for democracy ..."
"... How much you wanna bet that Brennan, Obama's CIA Director, was behind ..."
"... You mean the same Brennan who is the godfather of ISIS? ..."
"... "U.S. intelligence officials told The Times" Sounds like the Donald is finally learning to cooperate better with his masters. They can call off the hounds. ..."
"... Ok - so we have yet another (likely factual) story here of overt, in-your-face abuse of power and agency aimed directly at American citizens for political gain. And tomorrow? Probably another. And then another. Until: 'Bimbo Fatigue' Remember that phrase. If real justice isn't thrown down soon, you can forget it. Looks to me like (possibly) Trump imploring for public support - i.e., he can't do this himself, or it's too dangerous and he knows it... ..."
"... Why is the CIA trying to purchase dirt on a sitting President in 2017! Because they have nothing on him! And they are desperate to not all hang by the neck. The times are trying to portray this as Russian intelligence sowing discord between the US intelligence agencies and Trump...Wrong! The US Intel agencies are sowing that discord all on their fucking own. They weren't fooled at all, they created this fucking mess for their own treasonous reasons and now want us to believe that hey...if we fucked up its because the big bad russkies tricked us. ..."
"... 'The Russian, who has ties to organized criminals and money launderers' wtf! So far the Russians are playing our CIA like a bunch of amateurs. And the deep state/dem's bought it hook, line and sinker. Trump was right again. Dem's and Russia are colluding against a duly elected Presidential candidate. I guess it's safe to say we need another order for more Rope. Dem's and deepshit state just can't get enough of hanging themselves. This ain't over by a long shot. ..."
"... i call bullshit. you dont 'buy back' a software program that can be copied in 30 seconds. this whole story is a fabrication just like the dossier. made up to inflect bad info on to trump. ..."
"... Yeah, I loved that one. "Here. I'm giving you back that software I ripped off from you. I copied it to this CD and then deleted it from my computer... You know: wiped it with a cloth." ..."
"... And I love that the CIA thinks they can get away with a tale like that when everyone but my 90-year-old mother-in-law knows how a digital file works ..."
"... So were these "patriotic" CIA superheroes interested in Bill Clinton's rapes, rapes and more rapes? Were they concerned that he was snorting coke and using Arkansas state troopers for procurers of hosebags for him to screw? ..."
Feb 10, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

by Chuck Ross of Daily Caller

When they said "Russian collusion", few expected it to be between the CIA and a "shadowy Russian operative." And yet, according to a blockbuster NYT report, that's precisely what happened.

* * *

The CIA paid $100,000 last year to a Russian operative who claimed to have derogatory information about President Trump, including a video tape of the Republican engaged with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room. If the video showed Trump, it would support claims made in the infamous Steele dossier, the salacious opposition research report financed by the Clinton campaign and DNC.

But U.S. intelligence officials have reason to doubt the veracity of the video and other information about Trump associates provided by the Russian, according to a fascinating report from The New York Times.

American spies made contact with the Russia early in 2017 after he offered to sell the Trump material along with cyber hacking tools that were stolen from the NSA that year, according to The Times. U.S. intelligence officials told The Times they were so desperate to retrieve those tools that they negotiated with the operative for months despite several red flags, including indications that he was working in concert with Russian intelligence.

Another red flag was the Russian's financial request. He initially sought $10 million for the information but dropped the asking price to $1 million.

After months of negotiations, American spies handed over $100,000 in cash in a brief case to the Russian during a meeting in Berlin in September.

The operative also offered documents and emails that purported to implicate other Trump associates, including former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. But The Times viewed the documents and reported that they were mostly information that is already in the public domain.

The Russian, who has ties to organized criminals and money launderers, showed the video purported to be Trump to a Berlin-based American businessman who served as his intermediary to the CIA. But according to the Times, the footage and the location of the viewing raised questions about its authenticity.

The 15-second clip showed two women speaking with a man. It is not clear if the man was Trump, and there was no audio. The Russian also showed the video to his American partner at the Russian embassy in Berlin, a sign that the operative had ties to Russian intelligence.

The Russian stonewalled the production of the cyber tools, and U.S. officials eventually cut ties, according to The Times. After the payout in Berlin, the man provided information about Trump and his associates of questionable veracity.

The Americans gave him an ultimatum earlier in 2018 to either play ball, leave Western Europe, or face criminal charges. He left, according to The Times, which interviewed U.S. officials, the American intermediary and the Russian for its article.

The Times' U.S. sources -- who appear to paint the American side in a positive light -- said that they were reluctant to purchase information because they did not want to be seen buying dirt on the president.

The officials also expressed concern that the Russian operative was planting disinformation on behalf of the Russian government. U.S. officials were worried that the Russian government has sought to sow discord between U.S. intelligence agencies and Trump. The revelation that the CIA purchased dirt on him would likely do the trick.

The Times report also has other new details.

Four other Russians with ties to the spy world have surfaced over the past year offering to sell dirt on Trump that closely mirrors allegations made in the dossier, according to the article. But officials have reason to believe that some of sellers have ties to Russian intelligence agencies.

The Times also provides new details on Cody Shearer, a notorious operative close to the Clintons. Shearer was recently revealed to have shopped around a so-called "second dossier" prior to the campaign which mirrored the sex allegations of the Steele report.

According to The Times, he has criss-crossed Europe over the past six months in an attempt to find video footage of Trump from the Moscow hotel room. Shearer claimed to have information from the FSB, Russia's spy service, that a video existed of Trump with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room.

He shared a memo making the allegations with his friend and fellow Clinton fixer, Sidney Blumenthal. Blumenthal in turn passed the memo to his friend, Jonathan Winer, a Department of State official. Winer then gave the information to Steele who provided it to the FBI in October 2016.

Steele also provided information to Winer, who wrote up a two-page memo that was circulated within the State Department.

Trump has denied allegations that he used prostitutes in Moscow. He has called the dossier a "hoax" and "crap."

* * *

On Saturday morning, Trump tweeted that "according to the @nytimes, a Russian sold phony secrets on "Trump" to the U.S. Asking price was $10 million, brought down to $1 million to be paid over time. I hope people are now seeing & understanding what is going on here. It is all now starting to come out - DRAIN THE SWAMP!

Of course, if Trump really wants to "drain the swamp", any such decision would have originate with him. Tags Politics Commercial Banks

InjectTheVenom -> Global Hunter Feb 10, 2018 11:47 AM Permalink

DRAIN. THE. SWAMP.

Billy the Poet -> InjectTheVenom Feb 10, 2018 12:04 PM Permalink

Release the pee pee video now! No one pee peed in the $100,000 video in question. The 15-second clip showed two women speaking with a man. It is not clear if the man was Trump, and there was no audio. And how can anyone be more fascinated by the prospect of pee pee than by the fact that US intelligence agencies were buying bad information from extremely shady foreigners in an attempt to overthrow the President of the United States?

caconhma -> Billy the Poet Feb 10, 2018 12:42 PM Permalink

Trump is the swamp. If zio-Banking Mafia did not have enough dirt of Trump, he would not be elected.

gatorengineer -> caconhma Feb 10, 2018 1:05 PM Permalink

Trump is starting to assume that the people are dumber than Obowel did. Earth to Don, you sir have the drain pump, you sir have surrounded yourself with Swamp creatures.... You sir are.............

Arrowflinger -> InjectTheVenom Feb 10, 2018 12:18 PM Permalink

According to this, the Russians stole the hacking tools needed to cut through the Swamp levee, which were developed by the NSA, and now the CIA cannot buy them back. Now, since the USA wanted its Swamp, the Russians are more than happy to let the USA drown in its swamp.

What a country!

gatorengineer -> Arrowflinger Feb 10, 2018 1:06 PM Permalink

Anyone have a link for the Qanon posts. I haven't seen them in a couple of weeks since he left 8chan where he was posting. I don't want the Youtube BS, I just want the link... anyone got one. Its strangely not googleable... LOLZ.

El Oregonian -> Global Hunter Feb 10, 2018 11:53 AM Permalink

If you think that the CIA is a U.S. intelligence agency working on the best interests of the United States, you better wake up and smell the treason. They only work for the best interests of themselves.

Bula_Vinaka -> El Oregonian Feb 10, 2018 12:10 PM Permalink

They are parasites and nothing more.

BurningFuld -> Bula_Vinaka Feb 10, 2018 12:40 PM Permalink

Here is a question. Why does the CIA not come out and clear the air re: Trump?

I mean they were even paying people to come up with dirt. He is now your president and the country is a fucking mess. Should the CIA not come out and say we tried but we got nothing? They do have the ability to fix all this Trump shit and yet crickets.

Ahmeexnal -> caconhma Feb 10, 2018 1:03 PM Permalink

CIA is the covert dirty dealing arm of the VATICAN.

MarshalJimDuncan -> El Oregonian Feb 10, 2018 12:12 PM Permalink

ooohh... they release this questionable information for all to hear and paid a lot of money for it too. this fucking government is a joke

Posa -> El Oregonian Feb 10, 2018 12:56 PM Permalink

And the best interests of clients. The CIA started out is the muscle for the Dulles Brothers clients who were being booted out of various countries they were super-exploiting. The Agency hasn't looked back since.

Alfred -> El Oregonian Feb 10, 2018 12:59 PM Permalink

Seems wrong to call them 'intelligence' agencies. There must be a more descriptive name we can use... Anyone?

Guitarilla -> Global Hunter Feb 10, 2018 12:35 PM Permalink

Nobody got whizzed on. That lurid fantasy came soley out of the head of Hillary Clinton, given to Blumenthal, passed around and made to look like it came from Russia.

DownWithYogaPants -> Dr. Acula Feb 10, 2018 11:47 AM Permalink

CIA killed Kennedy. This pretty much removes all doubt. They are willing to do anything.

Killtruck -> shimmy Feb 10, 2018 12:51 PM Permalink

"Oswald killed Kennedy. That's it."

It IS remarkable the stuff people believe when all logic goes against it. Like Oswald firing magic bullets from an old Italian Carcano...and jet fuel melting steel beams...and a building collapsing through the path of greatest resistance into its own footprint after NOT being hit by an airplane...and Kennedy being shot from behind, but his head snapping backwards from the impact...and Oswald picking the worst possible shooting location, but in front of Kennedy were two intersecting highways going in any direction...and terrorist passports floating gently down from the sky.

It sure is remarkable.
#letsroll

possible band name
OswaldandtheMagicBullets

Able Ape -> shimmy Feb 10, 2018 12:57 PM Permalink

What was Oswald's reason to kill JFK? And yeah, he picked the very building he worked at to commit the crime. He wasn't THAT stupid!...

Posa -> shimmy Feb 10, 2018 1:05 PM Permalink

RFK and Nixon knew immediately the assassination of JFK was a CIA hit job because they had CHAIRED those hit squad operations themselves for Cuban Operations. They saw the CIA- Cuban hit squad fingerprints all over the kill. RFK had personally fired Wm Harvey, Dulles' chief of assassinations. However, RFK was silenced because he and Jack had been tag-teaming Marilyn Monroe.

The reason JFK was killed was a) his openly stated determination to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces so they could no longer operate as a dangerous, renegade private army; and b) in the Spring of '63 JFK delivered his famous American U address calling for the end of the Cold War...

Oswald was always a patsie... the WC documents how his rifle was inoperable... scope needed parts just to be be sited and take aim... even after parts installed the rifle attributed to Oswald remained highly inaccurate... Military sharpshooters couldn't even hit stationary targets reliably.

mobius8curve -> Dr. Acula Feb 10, 2018 11:49 AM Permalink

If there is a video you can be sure it was manufactured using these tools:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Nx404VLzw

Lawlessness is arising exponentially:

https://sumofthyword.com/2017/01/18/the-mystery-of-lawlessness/

oDumbo -> Dr. Acula Feb 10, 2018 12:19 PM Permalink

Drain the swamp! Townsquare justice for Odumbo and Hitlery! George Soros to bathe in the Amazon River with 1 million Piranha Fish until it completely disappears. Drain the evil Dumorat swamp. Drain the banana republic CIA and FBI. Our tax dollars and constitution did not pay for this shit.

Kelley -> Dr. Acula Feb 10, 2018 12:34 PM Permalink

With today's technology, the CIA is most likely working on a fake video for you right now. They might release it on Vimeo or Netflix to cover the costs and give themselves plausible deniability. To add a finishing touch they will make a fake video of Julian Assange claiming he is releasing it. You'll be in hog heaven. Which is where folks like you go just before being slaughtered by your owners and turned into spam.

shovelhead -> Dr. Acula Feb 10, 2018 12:55 PM Permalink

10 Million...

1 million...

Ok, How about $9.99

algol_dog Feb 10, 2018 11:38 AM Permalink

Move along. Nothing to see here ...

DosZap -> algol_dog Feb 10, 2018 11:40 AM Permalink

What a load of camel dung, if there was a sex tape of Trump w/Russian hookers, it would have been out while he was RUNNING for the job, FAKE NEWS.

SRV -> DosZap Feb 10, 2018 11:54 AM Permalink

Of course the story is a plant to introduce the hacking tools to cover the payment to Russians for dirt on a sitting POTUS by his own Intel Agency...

And CNN, MSNBC, etc are still wall to wall Trump impeachment... they no longer even pretend. Brain dead Erin Burnett opened with "the Republicans are at it again" to night (in my regular 30 secs of checking in for a laugh)!

vulcanraven -> DosZap Feb 10, 2018 12:08 PM Permalink

No shit, this is what I tell every Libtard when they cry the tired "Trump is corrupt and evil" meme. If there was ANYTHING on Trump, it would have oversaturated the airwaves 24/7 during his candidacy, and he would have never made it out of the primaries.

So which is it? Is he the world's greatest evil retard idiot, or a 9000+ IQ genius that is so slick and underhanded that he was able to collude with Putin, hide all evidence, and pull off the biggest caper in the history of the United States by sneaking into the Presidency? You can't have it both ways.

We must also give credit to the army of Russian bots that tell us how to think and act all day, where would we be without them?

silvermail -> algol_dog Feb 10, 2018 11:55 AM Permalink

I propose impeachment to any US president for eating, drinking and visiting toilets!

TheWholeYearInn Feb 10, 2018 11:38 AM Permalink

What's the difference between prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room, or prostitutes in the FBI/DOJ?

Global Hunter -> DosZap Feb 10, 2018 11:47 AM Permalink

I can't confirm price, so I will go with hotter (can't really confirm that either but Slavic chicks usually seem hot to me).

SRV -> DosZap Feb 10, 2018 11:54 AM Permalink

Of course the story is a plant to introduce the hacking tools to cover the payment to Russians for dirt on a sitting POTUS by his own Intel Agency...

And CNN, MSNBC, etc are still wall to wall Trump impeachment... they no longer even pretend. Brain dead Erin Burnett opened with "the Republicans are at it again" to night (in my regular 30 secs of checking in for a laugh)!

turkey george palmer -> SRV Feb 10, 2018 1:09 PM Permalink

Fuckin eh right. That's probably the closest thing .

A Sentinel -> SRV Feb 10, 2018 1:21 PM Permalink

Damn good point. And the dates are off too. A 6+/- month zh article about the dark web had the nsa software downloadable long before 2017.

Gee. Why would someone date that hack into 2017? What was different between 2016 and 2017?

SMH Trying to figure that out.

vulcanraven -> DosZap Feb 10, 2018 12:08 PM Permalink

No shit, this is what I tell every Libtard when they cry the tired "Trump is corrupt and evil" meme. If there was ANYTHING on Trump, it would have oversaturated the airwaves 24/7 during his candidacy, and he would have never made it out of the primaries.

So which is it? Is he the world's greatest evil retard idiot, or a 9000+ IQ genius that is so slick and underhanded that he was able to collude with Putin, hide all evidence, and pull off the biggest caper in the history of the United States by sneaking into the Presidency? You can't have it both ways.

We must also give credit to the army of Russian bots that tell us how to think and act all day, where would we be without them?

Winston Churchill -> buzzsaw99 Feb 10, 2018 12:02 PM Permalink

More than you know, whenever Russian is stated, replace with Ukrainian. TPTB cannot help themselves but push forward on another agenda as the current one falls apart. The Russophobia is still being stoked no matter what.

Steele was a double agent, maybe triple. British,Ukrainian and probably American. Does that start to make a little more sense ? Those huuuge donations to the CF from Ukraine, McStains involvement, Steele's early retirement from MI6, Brennan's frequent trips to Ukraine, State Dept.s role. Investigate the Chalupa sisters to find out who the rest of the rats are.Lee Stranahan started before he was shut down.

H-O-W Feb 10, 2018 11:46 AM Permalink

The more we learn,

The more it looks like the Russians set this up perfectly.

  • Set Hillary up.
  • Set Obama up.
  • Set the DNC up.
  • Set the media up.

They know these scumbags better than we do!

buzzsaw99 Feb 10, 2018 11:48 AM Permalink

the CIA has to turn America into a criminal totalitarian regime in order to make the world safe for democracy.

Give Me Some Truth Feb 10, 2018 11:49 AM Permalink

Good point in the last sentence. If someone is going to "drain the swamp" it is going to have to be the president of the United States. I think I'm correct that he can fire anyone that works in the executive department for cause. He can also order investigations or hire people who will launch real investigations.

Mr. President, if you want to "drain the swamp," drain it.

P.S. You can start with an audit of The Fed.

desertboy -> Give Me Some Truth Feb 10, 2018 12:16 PM Permalink

That last sentence assumes a rather critical fantasy.

Anunnaki -> Thordoom Feb 10, 2018 12:24 PM Permalink

The Tripod of Evil

  1. Deep State
  2. Presstitutes
  3. Corporate Democrats
Dre4dwolf Feb 10, 2018 12:11 PM Permalink

If there was a video it would of been leaked during the election, they have nothing that sticks on the guy.

All the evidence thus far states

Obama Hillary the FBI, DNC, CIA all spied on Trump and colluded with foreign governments (U.K. , Ukraine , Russia) to try and dig up dirt to use against Trump (and they more or less failed).

They turned over every rock they could, look at that stupid hot-mic video in the bus, how many hours of video did they have to go through to dig up that crumb? they went back searching through 30+ years of content and thats all they could come up with.... some locker room talk lol

People have to just face it.

Your government was and still is corrupt and its a weaponized system of control, Your government colluded with the enemy in a desperate attempt to stop Trump from becoming president. Your government started a sham "Russia investigation" to cover up its own crimes. Your government applied a different standard of justice to the clintons than it would have to you or anyone else.

To date ZERO evidence has been brought forward that Trump or anyone in his campaign did anything wrong, and the only people that have done anything wrong so far were picked by "the swamp" to fill positions..... all the others fell into petty perjury Traps on meaningless topics and insignificant factoids.

Lord Raglan Feb 10, 2018 12:12 PM Permalink

How much you wanna bet that Brennan, Obama's CIA Director, was behind buying this and thus, Obama and Hillary?

navy62802 -> Lord Raglan Feb 10, 2018 12:16 PM Permalink

You mean the same Brennan who is the godfather of ISIS?

Kelley Feb 10, 2018 12:16 PM Permalink

Isn't it lovely to find out that your money and mine is being used by government agents to give us the government they want?

It's sort of like a thug robbing you and using part of your money to pay another thug to rough you up from time time to time if you ask any questions with the thugs believing it's for our own good.

Thanks, Hillary, for looking out for us. You and your best buds are the best. Such bighearted givers! Meanwhile, give our regards to your partner in slime Obama, although it must pain you to have been bested by 'Beavis' who thinks so much of himself to balance out how little he impresses anyone who knows him.

desertboy Feb 10, 2018 12:20 PM Permalink

"U.S. intelligence officials told The Times" Sounds like the Donald is finally learning to cooperate better with his masters. They can call off the hounds.

Consuelo Feb 10, 2018 12:22 PM Permalink

Ok - so we have yet another (likely factual) story here of overt, in-your-face abuse of power and agency aimed directly at American citizens for political gain. And tomorrow? Probably another. And then another. Until: 'Bimbo Fatigue' Remember that phrase. If real justice isn't thrown down soon, you can forget it. Looks to me like (possibly) Trump imploring for public support - i.e., he can't do this himself, or it's too dangerous and he knows it...

Kelley Feb 10, 2018 1:05 PM Permalink

As taxpayers can we sue the CIA for misusing our funds? Pretty sure that buying sex videos for commercial release isn't part of the CIA's lawful mandate even at bargain prices.

indaknow Feb 10, 2018 1:13 PM Permalink

Why is the CIA trying to purchase dirt on a sitting President in 2017! Because they have nothing on him! And they are desperate to not all hang by the neck. The times are trying to portray this as Russian intelligence sowing discord between the US intelligence agencies and Trump...Wrong! The US Intel agencies are sowing that discord all on their fucking own. They weren't fooled at all, they created this fucking mess for their own treasonous reasons and now want us to believe that hey...if we fucked up its because the big bad russkies tricked us.

It's not going to work.

hooligan2009 Feb 10, 2018 11:49 AM Permalink

my sauces tell me that pink pussyhat wearing hollywood types have been called in because they have a doppelganger for trump and access to 30,000 sexually abused victims that can act as Russian prostitutes for just ten bucks each. snapchat has a trump emoji that can be transplanted onto any porn video star - male or female - thus confirming that trump is a serial (serious?) user of ladies of the night

my sauces also tell me that the CIA offers a reward of 100,000 bucks (or 10 BTC) for every photo-shopped (snap-shopped or porn-shopped) material.

of course, the CIA already owns many many porn movie studios and films, but it would prefer third "party" movies - not from epstein's island where its operatives choose to rela with a pizza.

the CIA "pink" budget for such movies is limited to just 5,000 clips or 5 billion of taxpayers funds, whichever is the higher.

awesome sauce hey?

MusicIsYou Feb 10, 2018 1:14 PM Permalink

For only $100,000 that's all? Now I know it's probably not true.

Robert A. Heinlein Feb 10, 2018 1:17 PM Permalink

'The Russian, who has ties to organized criminals and money launderers' wtf! So far the Russians are playing our CIA like a bunch of amateurs. And the deep state/dem's bought it hook, line and sinker. Trump was right again. Dem's and Russia are colluding against a duly elected Presidential candidate. I guess it's safe to say we need another order for more Rope. Dem's and deepshit state just can't get enough of hanging themselves. This ain't over by a long shot.

hannah Feb 10, 2018 1:33 PM Permalink

i call bullshit. you dont 'buy back' a software program that can be copied in 30 seconds. this whole story is a fabrication just like the dossier. made up to inflect bad info on to trump.

i call bullshit.

RKae -> hannah Feb 10, 2018 1:47 PM Permalink

Yeah, I loved that one. "Here. I'm giving you back that software I ripped off from you. I copied it to this CD and then deleted it from my computer... You know: wiped it with a cloth."

And I love that the CIA thinks they can get away with a tale like that when everyone but my 90-year-old mother-in-law knows how a digital file works.

Quantify Feb 10, 2018 1:38 PM Permalink

The CIA is at the head of the shadow government.

RKae Feb 10, 2018 1:39 PM Permalink

So were these "patriotic" CIA superheroes interested in Bill Clinton's rapes, rapes and more rapes? Were they concerned that he was snorting coke and using Arkansas state troopers for procurers of hosebags for him to screw?

I mean if they're so concerned about Trump and a couple of hookers... Better put some ice on that, CIA.

vofreason Feb 10, 2018 1:39 PM Permalink

You all are so ridiculous and fooled with your "drain the swamp" bs. It's a great idea but Trump doing it is a joke, I mean just look at who he has hired, what's wrong with you all are you blind?!!

He can't even fill 1/3 of the government positions he's supposed to and the ones he has have no business holding the positions given to them and are so incompetent, downright criminal or just personally horrendous humans that they can't stay in office more than a few months. All their blatant and moronically concocted lies are backing them into corners every day that they just try and lie out of again. America is over if we really have gotten to the point that a group like Trump's has support, it's just astonishing.

[May 11, 2019] Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire by KENNETH P. VOGEL and DAVID STERN

Notable quotes:
"... In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities -- including Ukrainian-Americans -- she said that, when Trump's unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump's ties to Russia, as well. ..."
"... Both Shulyar and Chalupa said the purpose of their initial meeting was to organize a June reception at the embassy to promote Ukraine. According to the embassy's website, the event highlighted female Ukrainian leaders, featuring speeches by Ukrainian parliamentarian Hanna Hopko, who discussed "Ukraine's fight against the Russian aggression in Donbas," and longtime Hillary Clinton confidante Melanne Verveer, who worked for Clinton in the State Department and was a vocal surrogate during the presidential campaign. ..."
"... Almost as quickly as Chalupa's efforts attracted the attention of the Ukrainian Embassy and Democrats, she also found herself the subject of some unwanted attention from overseas. ..."
"... Chalupa, though, indicated in an email that was later hacked and released by WikiLeaks that the Open World Leadership Center "put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort." ..."
"... In the email, which was sent in early May to then-DNC communications director Luis Miranda, Chalupa noted that she had extended an invitation to the Library of Congress forum to veteran Washington investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Two days before the event, he had published a story for Yahoo News revealing the unraveling of a $26 million deal between Manafort and a Russian oligarch related to a telecommunications venture in Ukraine. And Chalupa wrote in the email she'd been "working with for the past few weeks" with Isikoff "and connected him to the Ukrainians" at the event. ..."
"... A DNC official stressed that Chalupa was a consultant paid to do outreach for the party's political department, not a researcher. She undertook her investigations into Trump, Manafort and Russia on her own, and the party did not incorporate her findings in its dossiers on the subjects, the official said, stressing that the DNC had been building robust research books on Trump and his ties to Russia long before Chalupa began sounding alarms. ..."
"... Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a Ukrainian former diplomat who served as the country's head of security under Poroshenko but is now affiliated with a leading opponent of Poroshenko, said it was fishy that "only one part of the black ledger appeared." He asked, "Where is the handwriting analysis?" and said it was "crazy" to announce an investigation based on the ledgers. He met last month in Washington with Trump allies, and said, "of course they all recognize that our [anti-corruption bureau] intervened in the presidential campaign." ..."
"... Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, Arsen Avakov, piled on, trashing Trump on Twitter in July as a "clown" and asserting that Trump is "an even bigger danger to the US than terrorism." ..."
"... Avakov, in a Facebook post, lashed out at Trump for his confusing Crimea comments, calling the assessment the "diagnosis of a dangerous misfit," according to a translated screenshot featured in one media report, though he later deleted the post. He called Trump "dangerous for Ukraine and the US" and noted that Manafort worked with Yanukovych when the former Ukrainian leader "fled to Russia through Crimea. Where would Manafort lead Trump?" ..."
Jan 11, 2017 | www.politico.com

Manafort's work for Yanukovych caught the attention of a veteran Democratic operative named Alexandra Chalupa, who had worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton administration. Chalupa went on to work as a staffer, then as a consultant, for Democratic National Committee. The DNC paid her $412,000 from 2004 to June 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records, though she also was paid by other clients during that time, including Democratic campaigns and the DNC's arm for engaging expatriate Democrats around the world.

A daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who maintains strong ties to the Ukrainian-American diaspora and the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, Chalupa, a lawyer by training, in 2014 was doing pro bono work for another client interested in the Ukrainian crisis and began researching Manafort's role in Yanukovych's rise, as well as his ties to the pro-Russian oligarchs who funded Yanukovych's political party.

In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities -- including Ukrainian-Americans -- she said that, when Trump's unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump's ties to Russia, as well.

She occasionally shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clinton's campaign, Chalupa said. In January 2016 -- months before Manafort had taken any role in Trump's campaign -- Chalupa told a senior DNC official that, when it came to Trump's campaign, "I felt there was a Russia connection," Chalupa recalled. "And that, if there was, that we can expect Paul Manafort to be involved in this election," said Chalupa, who at the time also was warning leaders in the Ukrainian-American community that Manafort was "Putin's political brain for manipulating U.S. foreign policy and elections."

he said she shared her concern with Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S., Valeriy Chaly, and one of his top aides, Oksana Shulyar, during a March 2016 meeting at the Ukrainian Embassy. According to someone briefed on the meeting, Chaly said that Manafort was very much on his radar, but that he wasn't particularly concerned about the operative's ties to Trump since he didn't believe Trump stood much of a chance of winning the GOP nomination, let alone the presidency.

That was not an uncommon view at the time, and, perhaps as a result, Trump's ties to Russia -- let alone Manafort's -- were not the subject of much attention.
That all started to change just four days after Chalupa's meeting at the embassy, when it was reported that Trump had in fact hired Manafort, suggesting that Chalupa may have been on to something. She quickly found herself in high demand. The day after Manafort's hiring was revealed, she briefed the DNC's communications staff on Manafort, Trump and their ties to Russia, according to an operative familiar with the situation.

A former DNC staffer described the exchange as an "informal conversation," saying "'briefing' makes it sound way too formal," and adding, "We were not directing or driving her work on this." Yet, the former DNC staffer and the operative familiar with the situation agreed that with the DNC's encouragement, Chalupa asked embassy staff to try to arrange an interview in which Poroshenko might discuss Manafort's ties to Yanukovych.

While the embassy declined that request, officials there became "helpful" in Chalupa's efforts, she said, explaining that she traded information and leads with them. "If I asked a question, they would provide guidance, or if there was someone I needed to follow up with." But she stressed, "There were no documents given, nothing like that."

Chalupa said the embassy also worked directly with reporters researching Trump, Manafort and Russia to point them in the right directions. She added, though, "they were being very protective and not speaking to the press as much as they should have. I think they were being careful because their situation was that they had to be very, very careful because they could not pick sides. It's a political issue, and they didn't want to get involved politically because they couldn't."

Shulyar vehemently denied working with reporters or with Chalupa on anything related to Trump or Manafort, explaining "we were stormed by many reporters to comment on this subject, but our clear and adamant position was not to give any comment [and] not to interfere into the campaign affairs."

Both Shulyar and Chalupa said the purpose of their initial meeting was to organize a June reception at the embassy to promote Ukraine. According to the embassy's website, the event highlighted female Ukrainian leaders, featuring speeches by Ukrainian parliamentarian Hanna Hopko, who discussed "Ukraine's fight against the Russian aggression in Donbas," and longtime Hillary Clinton confidante Melanne Verveer, who worked for Clinton in the State Department and was a vocal surrogate during the presidential campaign.

Shulyar said her work with Chalupa "didn't involve the campaign," and she specifically stressed that "We have never worked to research and disseminate damaging information about Donald Trump and Paul Manafort."

But Andrii Telizhenko, who worked as a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy under Shulyar, said she instructed him to help Chalupa research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia. "Oksana said that if I had any information, or knew other people who did, then I should contact Chalupa," recalled Telizhenko, who is now a political consultant in Kiev. "They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa," he said, adding "Oksana was keeping it all quiet," but "the embassy worked very closely with" Chalupa.

In fact, sources familiar with the effort say that Shulyar specifically called Telizhenko into a meeting with Chalupa to provide an update on an American media outlet's ongoing investigation into Manafort.

Telizhenko recalled that Chalupa told him and Shulyar that, "If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump's involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September."

Chalupa confirmed that, a week after Manafort's hiring was announced, she discussed the possibility of a congressional investigation with a foreign policy legislative assistant in the office of Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who co-chairs the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus. But, Chalupa said, "It didn't go anywhere."

Asked about the effort, the Kaptur legislative assistant called it a "touchy subject" in an internal email to colleagues that was accidentally forwarded to Politico.

Kaptur's office later emailed an official statement explaining that the lawmaker is backing a bill to create an independent commission to investigate "possible outside interference in our elections." The office added "at this time, the evidence related to this matter points to Russia, but Congresswoman Kaptur is concerned with any evidence of foreign entities interfering in our elections."

•••

Almost as quickly as Chalupa's efforts attracted the attention of the Ukrainian Embassy and Democrats, she also found herself the subject of some unwanted attention from overseas.

Within a few weeks of her initial meeting at the embassy with Shulyar and Chaly, Chalupa on April 20 received the first of what became a series of messages from the administrators of her private Yahoo email account, warning her that "state-sponsored actors" were trying to hack into her emails.

She kept up her crusade, appearing on a panel a week after the initial hacking message to discuss her research on Manafort with a group of Ukrainian investigative journalists gathered at the Library of Congress for a program sponsored by a U.S. congressional agency called the Open World Leadership Center.

Center spokeswoman Maura Shelden stressed that her group is nonpartisan and ensures "that our delegations hear from both sides of the aisle, receiving bipartisan information." She said the Ukrainian journalists in subsequent days met with Republican officials in North Carolina and elsewhere. And she said that, before the Library of Congress event, "Open World's program manager for Ukraine did contact Chalupa to advise her that Open World is a nonpartisan agency of the Congress."

Chalupa, though, indicated in an email that was later hacked and released by WikiLeaks that the Open World Leadership Center "put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort."

In the email, which was sent in early May to then-DNC communications director Luis Miranda, Chalupa noted that she had extended an invitation to the Library of Congress forum to veteran Washington investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Two days before the event, he had published a story for Yahoo News revealing the unraveling of a $26 million deal between Manafort and a Russian oligarch related to a telecommunications venture in Ukraine. And Chalupa wrote in the email she'd been "working with for the past few weeks" with Isikoff "and connected him to the Ukrainians" at the event.

Isikoff, who accompanied Chalupa to a reception at the Ukrainian Embassy immediately after the Library of Congress event, declined to comment.

Chalupa further indicated in her hacked May email to the DNC that she had additional sensitive information about Manafort that she intended to share "offline" with Miranda and DNC research director Lauren Dillon, including "a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I'm working on you should be aware of." Explaining that she didn't feel comfortable sharing the intel over email, Chalupa attached a screenshot of a warning from Yahoo administrators about "state-sponsored" hacking on her account, explaining, "Since I started digging into Manafort these messages have been a daily occurrence on my yahoo account despite changing my password often."

Dillon and Miranda declined to comment.

A DNC official stressed that Chalupa was a consultant paid to do outreach for the party's political department, not a researcher. She undertook her investigations into Trump, Manafort and Russia on her own, and the party did not incorporate her findings in its dossiers on the subjects, the official said, stressing that the DNC had been building robust research books on Trump and his ties to Russia long before Chalupa began sounding alarms.

Nonetheless, Chalupa's hacked email reportedly escalated concerns among top party officials, hardening their conclusion that Russia likely was behind the cyber intrusions with which the party was only then beginning to grapple.

Chalupa left the DNC after the Democratic convention in late July to focus fulltime on her research into Manafort, Trump and Russia . She said she provided off-the-record information and guidance to "a lot of journalists" working on stories related to Manafort and Trump's Russia connections, despite what she described as escalating harassment.

... ... ...

•••

While it's not uncommon for outside operatives to serve as intermediaries between governments and reporters, one of the more damaging Russia-related stories for the Trump campaign -- and certainly for Manafort -- can be traced more directly to the Ukrainian government.

Documents released by an independent Ukrainian government agency -- and publicized by a parliamentarian -- appeared to show $12.7 million in cash payments that were earmarked for Manafort by the Russia-aligned party of the deposed former president, Yanukovych.

The New York Times, in the August story revealing the ledgers' existence, reported that the payments earmarked for Manafort were "a focus" of an investigation by Ukrainian anti-corruption officials, while CNN reported days later that the FBI was pursuing an overlapping inquiry.

Clinton's campaign seized on the story to advance Democrats' argument that Trump's campaign was closely linked to Russia. The ledger represented "more troubling connections between Donald Trump's team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine," Robby Mook, Clinton's campaign manager, said in a statement. He demanded that Trump "disclose campaign chair Paul Manafort's and all other campaign employees' and advisers' ties to Russian or pro-Kremlin entities, including whether any of Trump's employees or advisers are currently representing and or being paid by them."

A former Ukrainian investigative journalist and current parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, who was elected in 2014 as part of Poroshenko's party, held a news conference to highlight the ledgers, and to urge Ukrainian and American law enforcement to aggressively investigate Manafort.

"I believe and understand the basis of these payments are totally against the law -- we have the proof from these books," Leshchenko said during the news conference, which attracted international media coverage. "If Mr. Manafort denies any allegations, I think he has to be interrogated into this case and prove his position that he was not involved in any misconduct on the territory of Ukraine," Leshchenko added.

Manafort denied receiving any off-books cash from Yanukovych's Party of Regions, and said that he had never been contacted about the ledger by Ukrainian or American investigators, later telling POLITICO "I was just caught in the crossfire."

According to a series of memos reportedly compiled for Trump's opponents by a former British intelligence agent, Yanukovych, in a secret meeting with Putin on the day after the Times published its report, admitted that he had authorized "substantial kickback payments to Manafort." But according to the report, which was published Tuesday by BuzzFeed but remains unverified. Yanukovych assured Putin "that there was no documentary trail left behind which could provide clear evidence of this" -- an alleged statement that seemed to implicitly question the authenticity of the ledger.

The scrutiny around the ledgers -- combined with that from other stories about his Ukraine work -- proved too much, and he stepped down from the Trump campaign less than a week after the Times story.

At the time, Leshchenko suggested that his motivation was partly to undermine Trump. "For me, it was important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world," Leshchenko told the Financial Times about two weeks after his news conference. The newspaper noted that Trump's candidacy had spurred "Kiev's wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a U.S. election," and the story quoted Leshchenko asserting that the majority of Ukraine's politicians are "on Hillary Clinton's side."

But by this month, Leshchenko was seeking to recast his motivation, telling Politico, "I didn't care who won the U.S. elections. This was a decision for the American voters to decide." His goal in highlighting the ledgers, he said was "to raise these issues on a political level and emphasize the importance of the investigation."

In a series of answers provided to Politico, a spokesman for Poroshenko distanced his administration from both Leshchenko's efforts and those of the agency that reLeshchenko Leshchenko leased the ledgers, The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. It was created in 2014 as a condition for Ukraine to receive aid from the U.S. and the European Union, and it signed an evidence-sharing agreement with the FBI in late June -- less than a month and a half before it released the ledgers.

The bureau is "fully independent," the Poroshenko spokesman said, adding that when it came to the presidential administration there was "no targeted action against Manafort." He added "as to Serhiy Leshchenko, he positions himself as a representative of internal opposition in the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko's faction, despite [the fact that] he belongs to the faction," the spokesman said, adding, "it was about him personally who pushed [the anti-corruption bureau] to proceed with investigation on Manafort."

But an operative who has worked extensively in Ukraine, including as an adviser to Poroshenko, said it was highly unlikely that either Leshchenko or the anti-corruption bureau would have pushed the issue without at least tacit approval from Poroshenko or his closest allies.

"It was something that Poroshenko was probably aware of and could have stopped if he wanted to," said the operative.

And, almost immediately after Trump's stunning victory over Clinton, questions began mounting about the investigations into the ledgers -- and the ledgers themselves.

An official with the anti-corruption bureau told a Ukrainian newspaper, "Mr. Manafort does not have a role in this case."

And, while the anti-corruption bureau told Politico late last month that a "general investigation [is] still ongoing" of the ledger, it said Manafort is not a target of the investigation. "As he is not the Ukrainian citizen, [the anti-corruption bureau] by the law couldn't investigate him personally," the bureau said in a statement.

Some Poroshenko critics have gone further, suggesting that the bureau is backing away from investigating because the ledgers might have been doctored or even forged.

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a Ukrainian former diplomat who served as the country's head of security under Poroshenko but is now affiliated with a leading opponent of Poroshenko, said it was fishy that "only one part of the black ledger appeared." He asked, "Where is the handwriting analysis?" and said it was "crazy" to announce an investigation based on the ledgers. He met last month in Washington with Trump allies, and said, "of course they all recognize that our [anti-corruption bureau] intervened in the presidential campaign."

And in an interview this week, Manafort, who re-emerged as an informal advisor to Trump after Election Day, suggested that the ledgers were inauthentic and called their publication "a politically motivated false attack on me. My role as a paid consultant was public. There was nothing off the books, but the way that this was presented tried to make it look shady."

He added that he felt particularly wronged by efforts to cast his work in Ukraine as pro-Russian, arguing "all my efforts were focused on helping Ukraine move into Europe and the West." He specifically cited his work on denuclearizing the country and on the European Union trade and political pact that Yanukovych spurned before fleeing to Russia. "In no case was I ever involved in anything that would be contrary to U.S. interests," Manafort said.

Yet Russia seemed to come to the defense of Manafort and Trump last month, when a spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry charged that the Ukrainian government used the ledgers as a political weapon.

"Ukraine seriously complicated the work of Trump's election campaign headquarters by planting information according to which Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign chairman, allegedly accepted money from Ukrainian oligarchs," Maria Zakharova said at a news briefing, according to a transcript of her remarks posted on the Foreign Ministry's website. "All of you have heard this remarkable story," she told assembled reporters.

•••

Beyond any efforts to sabotage Trump, Ukrainian officials didn't exactly extend a hand of friendship to the GOP nominee during the campaign.

The ambassador, Chaly, penned an op-ed for The Hill, in which he chastised Trump for a confusing series of statements in which the GOP candidate at one point expressed a willingness to consider recognizing Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea as legitimate. The op-ed made some in the embassy uneasy, sources said.

"That was like too close for comfort, even for them," said Chalupa. "That was something that was as risky as they were going to be."

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk warned on Facebook that Trump had "challenged the very values of the free world."

Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, Arsen Avakov, piled on, trashing Trump on Twitter in July as a "clown" and asserting that Trump is "an even bigger danger to the US than terrorism."

Avakov, in a Facebook post, lashed out at Trump for his confusing Crimea comments, calling the assessment the "diagnosis of a dangerous misfit," according to a translated screenshot featured in one media report, though he later deleted the post. He called Trump "dangerous for Ukraine and the US" and noted that Manafort worked with Yanukovych when the former Ukrainian leader "fled to Russia through Crimea. Where would Manafort lead Trump?"

The Trump-Ukraine relationship grew even more fraught in September with reports that the GOP nominee had snubbed Poroshenko on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where the Ukrainian president tried to meet both major party candidates, but scored only a meeting with Clinton.

Telizhenko, the former embassy staffer, said that, during the primaries, Chaly, the country's ambassador in Washington, had actually instructed the embassy not to reach out to Trump's campaign, even as it was engaging with those of Clinton and Trump's leading GOP rival, Ted Cruz.

"We had an order not to talk to the Trump team, because he was critical of Ukraine and the government and his critical position on Crimea and the conflict," said Telizhenko. "I was yelled at when I proposed to talk to Trump," he said, adding, "The ambassador said not to get involved -- Hillary is going to win."

This account was confirmed by Nalyvaichenko, the former diplomat and security chief now affiliated with a Poroshenko opponent, who said, "The Ukrainian authorities closed all doors and windows -- this is from the Ukrainian side." He called the strategy "bad and short-sighted."

Andriy Artemenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian associated with a conservative opposition party, did meet with Trump's team during the campaign and said he personally offered to set up similar meetings for Chaly but was rebuffed.

"It was clear that they were supporting Hillary Clinton's candidacy," Artemenko said. "They did everything from organizing meetings with the Clinton team, to publicly supporting her, to criticizing Trump. I think that they simply didn't meet because they thought that Hillary would win."

Shulyar rejected the characterizations that the embassy had a ban on interacting with Trump, instead explaining that it "had different diplomats assigned for dealing with different teams tailoring the content and messaging. So it was not an instruction to abstain from the engagement but rather an internal discipline for diplomats not to get involved into a field she or he was not assigned to, but where another colleague was involved."

And she pointed out that Chaly traveled to the GOP convention in Cleveland in late July and met with members of Trump's foreign policy team "to highlight the importance of Ukraine and the support of it by the U.S."

Despite the outreach, Trump's campaign in Cleveland gutted a proposed amendment to the Republican Party platform that called for the U.S. to provide "lethal defensive weapons" for Ukraine to defend itself against Russian incursion, backers of the measure charged.

The outreach ramped up after Trump's victory. Shulyar pointed out that Poroshenko was among the first foreign leaders to call to congratulate Trump. And she said that, since Election Day, Chaly has met with close Trump allies, including Sens. Jeff Sessions, Trump's nominee for attorney general, and Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while the ambassador accompanied Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Ukraine's vice prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, to a round of Washington meetings with Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), an early Trump backer, and Jim DeMint, president of The Heritage Foundation, which played a prominent role in Trump's transition.

•••

Many Ukrainian officials and operatives and their American allies see Trump's inauguration this month as an existential threat to the country, made worse, they admit, by the dissemination of the secret ledger, the antagonistic social media posts and the perception that the embassy meddled against -- or at least shut out -- Trump.

"It's really bad. The [Poroshenko] administration right now is trying to re-coordinate communications," said Telizhenko, adding, "The Trump organization doesn't want to talk to our administration at all."

During Nalyvaichenko's trip to Washington last month, he detected lingering ill will toward Ukraine from some, and lack of interest from others, he recalled. "Ukraine is not on the top of the list, not even the middle," he said.

Poroshenko's allies are scrambling to figure out how to build a relationship with Trump, who is known for harboring and prosecuting grudges for years.

A delegation of Ukrainian parliamentarians allied with Poroshenko last month traveled to Washington partly to try to make inroads with the Trump transition team, but they were unable to secure a meeting, according to a Washington foreign policy operative familiar with the trip. And operatives in Washington and Kiev say that after the election, Poroshenko met in Kiev with top executives from the Washington lobbying firm BGR -- including Ed Rogers and Lester Munson -- about how to navigate the Trump regime.

Weeks later, BGR reported to the Department of Justice that the government of Ukraine would pay the firm $50,000 a month to "provide strategic public relations and government affairs counsel," including "outreach to U.S. government officials, non-government organizations, members of the media and other individuals."

Firm spokesman Jeffrey Birnbaum suggested that "pro-Putin oligarchs" were already trying to sow doubts about BGR's work with Poroshenko. While the firm maintains close relationships with GOP congressional leaders, several of its principals were dismissive or sharply critical of Trump during the GOP primary, which could limit their effectiveness lobbying the new administration.

The Poroshenko regime's standing with Trump is considered so dire that the president's allies after the election actually reached out to make amends with -- and even seek assistance from -- Manafort, according to two operatives familiar with Ukraine's efforts to make inroads with Trump.

Meanwhile, Poroshenko's rivals are seeking to capitalize on his dicey relationship with Trump's team. Some are pressuring him to replace Chaly, a close ally of Poroshenko's who is being blamed by critics in Kiev and Washington for implementing -- if not engineering -- the country's anti-Trump efforts, according to Ukrainian and U.S. politicians and operatives interviewed for this story. They say that several potential Poroshenko opponents have been through Washington since the election seeking audiences of their own with Trump allies, though most have failed to do do so.

"None of the Ukrainians have any access to Trump -- they are all desperate to get it, and are willing to pay big for it," said one American consultant whose company recently met in Washington with Yuriy Boyko, a former vice prime minister under Yanukovych. Boyko, who like Yanukovych has a pro-Russian worldview, is considering a presidential campaign of his own, and his representatives offered "to pay a shit-ton of money" to get access to Trump and his inaugural events, according to the consultant.

The consultant turned down the work, explaining, "It sounded shady, and we don't want to get in the middle of that kind of stuff."

[May 11, 2019] Schiff's presence is interesting: UkraineGate. SaudiGate. UAEGate .

May 11, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Realignment and Legitmacy

"Foreign agents introduced Ukranian politician to US political figures in secretive lobbying arrangement" [ OpenSecrets ]. "Foreign agents and lobbyists accused of orchestrating a disinformation campaign attacking former Ukrainian Prime Minister and 2019 presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko actually introduced her to key U.S. political players last year, an investigation by the Center for Responsive Responsive Politics has found. New FARA records reveal foreign agents and lobbyists on the payroll of Livingston Group, a lobbying firm run by former Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), played a previously unreported role in Tymoshenko's meetings with lawmakers during a December 2018 trip to Washington, D.C., including House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)." • Mostly Republicans, to be sure, but Schiff's presence is interesting. UkraineGate. SaudiGate. UAEGate .

[May 11, 2019] Schiff's presence is interesting: UkraineGate. SaudiGate. UAEGate .

May 11, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Realignment and Legitmacy

"Foreign agents introduced Ukranian politician to US political figures in secretive lobbying arrangement" [ OpenSecrets ]. "Foreign agents and lobbyists accused of orchestrating a disinformation campaign attacking former Ukrainian Prime Minister and 2019 presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko actually introduced her to key U.S. political players last year, an investigation by the Center for Responsive Responsive Politics has found. New FARA records reveal foreign agents and lobbyists on the payroll of Livingston Group, a lobbying firm run by former Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), played a previously unreported role in Tymoshenko's meetings with lawmakers during a December 2018 trip to Washington, D.C., including House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)." • Mostly Republicans, to be sure, but Schiff's presence is interesting. UkraineGate. SaudiGate. UAEGate .

[May 11, 2019] Russiagaters now represent an interesting new supported by intelligence agencies "for profit" sect. That's why Mueller report can't shake their convictions, it just increase their zeal

If prophecy does not happen, Russiagaters like typical members of "Doomsday cults" just became more bound to their sect as admitting this means destroying self-respect.
Notable quotes:
"... What does it say about American society that so many people are actually enrolled in believing that this man could be any kind of a savior? What does that say about the divisions and the conflicts and the contradictions and the genuine problems in this culture? And how do we address those issues? ..."
"... I mean there was a massive denial of the actual dynamics in American society that led to the election of this traumatized and traumatizing individual as President, number one. ..."
"... Now, you may think that's a good thing to do. I'm not arguing about that. I'm not arguing politics. All I'm saying is projection is when we project onto somebody else the things that we do ourselves, and we refuse to deal with the implications of it. So there's denial and then there's projection. ..."
"... And I think there was this huge element of victimhood in this Russiagate process. ..."
"... ("The Resistance With Keith Olbermann", GQ, December 2016) ..."
"... ("The Rachel Maddow Show", MSNBC, March 2017) ..."
"... ("All In With Chris Hayes", MSNBC, February 2018) ..."
"... ("AM Joy", MSNBC, February 2018) ..."
"... GABOR MATÉ : And the assumption, that even if you take all the things that Russia was charged with in this whole Russiagate narrative over the last two and a half years, and if you multiply it by a hundred times, even then, you could not have possibly destroyed the United States. Even then, what is our self image if we think we're that weak, that that kind of external interference could undermine everything that you believed this country has built over the last few centuries?' ..."
"... (FBI Director Robert Mueller, Congressional Testimony, February 2003) ..."
"... ROBERT MUELLER : As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction and willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material. ..."
"... GABOR MATÉ : So given the line supported by Mueller led to the deaths of several hundred thousand Iraqi people and thousands of Americans, and has incurred costs that we all are fully aware of in terms of rise in terrorism and embroilment in multiple wars and situations, it takes an act of powerful historical amnesia for people to believe that this man is going to be our savior. That's the first point. Just incredible historical amnesia number one. ..."
"... ooking at how under the Bushes and under Obama, there was this massive transfer of wealth upwards. Instead of asking why Barack Obama gets $400,000 for an hour speech to Wall Street, which means that maybe our faith in how our system operates needs to be shaken a bit so we can actually look at what's really going on, let's just put our attention on some foreign devil again. ..."
"... How did the Democratic elite deliberately try to marginalize the progressive candidate? ..."
"... Like if he lacks discretion, let's assume that Russia did leak those Democratic e mails. Let's assume that. We don't know that they did. But we don't know that they didn't either. Let's assume that they did. Which is the greater assault on American democracy? The fact that the Russians leaked the document? Or that the American national Democratic leadership deliberately tried to marginalize one of their own candidates? ..."
"... We screwed up. We actually tried to undemocratically interfere with the Democratic nomination. We didn't pay attention to the people that were really hurting in the society because of our policies. We as the press gave this man all kinds of attention that he never deserved and never merited because he was interesting news and sold copies. ..."
"... AARON MATÉ: And there's a material incentive to do it. Because as you've talked about, if you're the Democrats and you look at the lessons of the election, you saw that people rejected your neoliberal economic legacy, that means you have to start challenging the powerful corporate sectors that you've been representing for a long time, actually posing real alternative policies to Donald Trump. ..."
"... If you do that, though, you risk losing your privileged status within the power structure. And the same thing if you're in the media and you identify with that faction of the power structure. ..."
May 08, 2019 | opensociet.org
AARON MATÉ : So we've just been through this two-year ordeal with Russiagate. It's in a new phase now with Robert Mueller rejecting the outcome that so many were expecting, that there would be a Trump-Russia conspiracy. Your sense of how this whole thing has gone?

GABOR MATÉ : What's interesting is that in the aftermath of the Mueller thunderbolt of no proof of collusion, there were articles about how people are disappointed about this finding.

Now, disappointment means that you're expecting something and you wanted something to happen, and it didn't happen. So that means that some people wanted Mueller to find evidence of collusion, which means that emotionally they were invested in it. It wasn't just that they wanted to know the truth. They actually wanted the truth to look a certain way. And wherever we want the truth to look a certain way, there's some reason that has to do with their own emotional needs and not just with the concern for reality.

And in politics in general, we think that people make decisions on intellectual grounds based on facts and beliefs. Very often, actually, people's dynamics are driven by emotional forces that they're not even aware of in themselves. And I, really, as I observed this whole Russiagate phenomenon from the beginning, it really seemed to me that there was a lot of emotionality in it that had little to do with the actual facts of the case.

... ... ...

What does it say about American society that so many people are actually enrolled in believing that this man could be any kind of a savior? What does that say about the divisions and the conflicts and the contradictions and the genuine problems in this culture? And how do we address those issues?

... ... ...

I mean there was a massive denial of the actual dynamics in American society that led to the election of this traumatized and traumatizing individual as President, number one.

... ... ...

GABOR MATÉ : So even if it's true what the Russians have even if it's the worst thing that's alleged about the Russians is true, it's not even on miniscule proportion of what America has publicly acknowledged it has done all around the world. And so this rage that we project, then, and this bad guy image that we project onto the Russians, it's simply a mirror a very inadequate mirror of what America publicly and openly and repeatedly does all around the world.

Now, you may think that's a good thing to do. I'm not arguing about that. I'm not arguing politics. All I'm saying is projection is when we project onto somebody else the things that we do ourselves, and we refuse to deal with the implications of it. So there's denial and then there's projection.

And then, there's just something in people. I can tell you well, your mother can tell you this that in relationships it's always easier to see ourselves as the victims than as the perpetrators. So there's something comforting about seeing oneself as the victim of somebody else. Nobody likes to be a victim. But people like to see themselves as victims because it means they don't have to take responsibility for what we do ourselves.

AARON MATÉ : I can relate to that, too.

GABOR MATÉ : Yeah. I'm just saying the effect of somebody else. So this functions beautifully in politics. And populist politicians and xenophobic politicians around the world use this dynamic all the time. That whether it's Great Britain, or whether it's France with their vast colonial empires, they're always the victims of everybody else. The United States is always the victim of everybody else. All these enemies that are threatening us. It's the most powerful nation on earth, a nation that could single handedly destroy the earth a billion times over with the weapons that are at its disposal, and it's always the victim.

So this victimhood, there is something comforting about it because, again, it allows us not to look at ourselves. And I think there was this huge element of victimhood in this Russiagate process.

VIDEO CLIPS

https://www.youtube.com/embed/x6qk01yq-dY

Noam Chomsky on Mass Media Obsession with Russia & the Stories Not Being Covered in the Trump Era

("The Resistance With Keith Olbermann", GQ, December 2016)

KEITH OLBERMANN : The nation and all of our freedoms hang by a thread. And the military apparatus of this country is about to be handed over to scum who are beholden to scum, Russian scum. As things are today, January 20th will not be an inauguration but rather the end of the United States as an independent country

("The Rachel Maddow Show", MSNBC, March 2017)

RACHEL MADDOW : But the important thing here is that that Bernie Sanders lovers page run out of Albania, it's still there. Still running. Still operating. Still churning this stuff out. Now. This is not part of American politics. This is not, you know, partisan warfare between Republicans and Democrats. This is international warfare against our country.

("All In With Chris Hayes", MSNBC, February 2018)

JERROLD NADLER : Imagine if FDR had denied that the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor and didn't react, that's the equivalent.

CHRIS HAYES : Well, it's a bit of a different thing. I mean --

JERROLD NADLER : No, it's not.

CHRIS HAYES : They didn't kill anyone.

JERROLD NADLER : They didn't kill anyone, but they're destroying our country, our democratic process.

CHRIS HAYES : Do you really think it's on par?

JERROLD NADLER : Not in the amount of violence, but I think in the seriousness it is very much on par. This country exists to have a democratic system with a small D, that's what the country's all about, and this is an attempt to destroy that.

("AM Joy", MSNBC, February 2018)

ROB REINER : We have been invaded in such a subtle way because we don't see planes hitting the buildings. We don't see bombs dropping in Pearl Harbor. But we have been invaded as Malcolm [Nance] points out. We are under attack, but we don't feel it. But it's like walking around with high blood pressure and then all of a sudden you're not aware of it and you drop dead.

So it's insidious, and it has affected our blood stream. And if we don't do something about it – and that's why, guys like John Brennan and James Clapper are running around with their hair on fire because they're trying to wake people up to tell them: We have to do something about it. We have to protect ourselves and if we don't, our 241 years of democracy and self-governance will start to collapse.

GABOR MATÉ : And the assumption, that even if you take all the things that Russia was charged with in this whole Russiagate narrative over the last two and a half years, and if you multiply it by a hundred times, even then, you could not have possibly destroyed the United States. Even then, what is our self image if we think we're that weak, that that kind of external interference could undermine everything that you believed this country has built over the last few centuries?'

So it shows to me a real shock reaction. And what has been shocked here is our beliefs in what this country is about.

And again, as I said before, it's in a sense more comforting. It's frightening, but at the same time more comforting to see the problem as coming from the outside than to search for it with amongst ourselves and within ourselves.

AARON MATÉ : How about then the aspect of this that puts so much hope into Robert Mueller? Because Robert Mueller was supposed to be our savior.

GABOR MATÉ : First of all, if we actually look at who Mueller is, who is he?

He's a man who, amongst many others, was 100 percent convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass discussion.

VIDEO CLIP

(FBI Director Robert Mueller, Congressional Testimony, February 2003)

ROBERT MUELLER : As Director Tenet has pointed out, Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction and willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam Hussein may supply terrorists with biological, chemical or radiological material.

GABOR MATÉ : So given the line supported by Mueller led to the deaths of several hundred thousand Iraqi people and thousands of Americans, and has incurred costs that we all are fully aware of in terms of rise in terrorism and embroilment in multiple wars and situations, it takes an act of powerful historical amnesia for people to believe that this man is going to be our savior. That's the first point. Just incredible historical amnesia number one.

Number two, America, if you can judge by its TV shows, is very much addicted to the good guy/bad guy scenario. So that reality is not complex. And it's not subtle. And it's not a build up of multiple dynamics, internal and external. But, basically, there's evil and there's good. And evil is going to be cut out by the good and destroyed by it. And that's really how the American narrative very often is presented.

Now, the same thing is projected into politics. So now if there's a bad guy called Putin and his puppet called Trump, then there has to be a good guy that is going to save us from it. Some guy on a white charger that's going to move in here, and is silver haired, patrician looking man who's going to find the truth and rescue us all, which again is a projection of people's hopes for truth outside of themselves onto some kind of a benevolent savior figure.

Needless to say, when that savior figure doesn't deliver, then we have to argue that maybe he was bought off or corrupt or stupid himself or insufficient himself. Or that there's something secret that has yet to be uncovered that some day will come to the surface that Mueller himself was unable to discover for himself.

But, again, this projection of hope onto some savior figure. Rather than saying, okay, there's a big problem here. We've elected a highly traumatized grandiose, intellectually unstable, emotionally unstable, misogynist, self aggrandizer to power. Something in our society made that happen. And let's look at what that was. And let's clear up those issues if we can. And let's look at the people on the liberal side who, instead of challenging all those issues, put all their energies into this foreign conspiracy explanation. Because to have challenged those issues would have meant looking at their own policies, which tended in the same direction.

Rather than looking at how under the Clinton, they've jailed hundreds of thousands of people who should never have been in jail. L ooking at how under the Bushes and under Obama, there was this massive transfer of wealth upwards. Instead of asking why Barack Obama gets $400,000 for an hour speech to Wall Street, which means that maybe our faith in how our system operates needs to be shaken a bit so we can actually look at what's really going on, let's just put our attention on some foreign devil again.

... ... ...

GABOR MATÉ : .... How did the Democratic elite deliberately try to marginalize the progressive candidate?

Like if he lacks discretion, let's assume that Russia did leak those Democratic e mails. Let's assume that. We don't know that they did. But we don't know that they didn't either. Let's assume that they did. Which is the greater assault on American democracy? The fact that the Russians leaked the document? Or that the American national Democratic leadership deliberately tried to marginalize one of their own candidates?

... ... ...

GABOR MATÉ : Let me just interrupt to say that if I were those people, then, then quite apart from the shock defense that we've already talked about, it'd be so much more convenient for me to go to the Russia narrative than to say publicly, you know what? We screwed up. We actually tried to undemocratically interfere with the Democratic nomination. We didn't pay attention to the people that were really hurting in the society because of our policies. We as the press gave this man all kinds of attention that he never deserved and never merited because he was interesting news and sold copies.

... ... ...

AARON MATÉ: And there's a material incentive to do it. Because as you've talked about, if you're the Democrats and you look at the lessons of the election, you saw that people rejected your neoliberal economic legacy, that means you have to start challenging the powerful corporate sectors that you've been representing for a long time, actually posing real alternative policies to Donald Trump.

If you do that, though, you risk losing your privileged status within the power structure. And the same thing if you're in the media and you identify with that faction of the power structure.

... ... ...

[May 11, 2019] Russiagate is Dead, Long Live Russiagate.

Notable quotes:
"... What is Russiagate? Is it when a foreign country interferes in our elections? Or is it Really Hillarygate? a Clinton campaign ploy to deflect from her own shortcomings (emails revelations, her own collusion, her loss to Donald Trump). ..."
"... Russiagate and it's associated delusional bullshit is a way for the establishment to avoid dealing with actual issues ..."
"... It's just another form of the xenophobia behind the cold war and the war on terrorism, used to distract the public and destroy those who would attempt to inform the public of what is really going on (you know, the endless looting of the Treasury and the poisoning of people and planets in the name of shareholder returns). ..."
"... It's antisemitism for 'enlightened' people. ..."
"... Darn it, I forgot the big kahuna in my list of disasters caused by Russiagate: Trump's possible re-election. My sense is that once Mueller files his report sans collusion charges, the Republicans are going to come after the "fake news" press, the Never-Trumpers, and the Dem conspiracy theorists with far more force than they are now. ..."
"... When that happens, all of Trump's endless stream of lies and stupidity will become nothing but confetti in his ticker-tape parade. He and his allies can crow loudly, and rightly, about the press being 100% biased against him, and being given to ridiculous conspiracy theories, which neutralizes the MSM's very accurate assessment of his endless lying (on matters other than Russiagate). ..."
"... Russiagate may have been the most successful dirty trick in American history for 2-1/2 years, but it may well explode into the biggest backfire in U.S. history, too. ..."
"... Mind you, the MSM will never concede they were absurdly, grossly, disgustingly wrong about the whole thing. They will vainly cling to their fantasy. Too big to fail. But I think the Trump people will gain a lot of leverage over swing voters when everyone realizes Russiagate was bullshit from the word go. ..."
"... Russiagate: Democrat's own version of Birthergate. ..."
"... Except that the Birthers had less FISA abuse. Although, funny story, it was started by Clinton toady, Sidney Blumenthal, as a dirty trick to hurt Obama in South Carolina. ..."
"... And RussiaRussiaRussiagate started by... Clinton ops to deflect from her own scandals and shortcomings. Jeez, it’s almost like Hillary Clinton is an incredibly poisonous and corrosive influrnce on American politics. ..."
"... So what if there are now more oligarchs than Communists in Russia these days? The name Russia still conjures up "enemy?" writ large. And then, there are all those US fellow travelers, meaning anyone to the right of Senator Graham--and sometimes even he is a little too left for my taste. ..."
"... Need to assess the massive damage of what was likely the biggest and most successful dirty political trick in U.S. history. (1) turned Democrats into shills for the CIA and FBI; (2) created a new Cold War; (3) pushed Trump into the arms of Bolton and Pompeo, partly because he had to prove he wasn't a Russian agent or dupe; (4) triggered a vast and largely unreported censorship campaign that is aimed mostly at progressive outlets and progressive social media, though purporting to be primarily against things like Infowars; (5) encouraged Trump to send lethal arms to Ukraine (again, to prove himself a patriot); (6) encouraged Trump to abandon the INF; (7) encouraged Trump to discuss abandoning SALT; (8) turned Dems into a pro-Syrian occupation party (any talk of leaving is dismissed as serving Putin); helped turn Dems into a pro-Venezuela putsch party (again, because not overthrowing Maduro would ostensibly be serving Putin); turned a huge chunk of the party more dramatically against anti-war Dems like Sanders and Gabbard, who are "Putin dupes"; made progressive news outlets hawkish, e.g., Democracy Now, which picked Marcy Wheeler from all the other kooks and grifters to be their expert on Russiagate; and of course turned MSNBC, NBC, CNN, the WaPo, the NYT, and other legacy media into conspiracy theory cesspools that made HUGE HUGE HUGE money on Russiagate grifting. ..."
"... as if Russiagate was a Shadow Hillary Clinton Government. ..."
May 11, 2019 | www.reddit.com

That phrase has been swirling around my head all morning after watching MSNBC admit that there was no evidence of collusion as they hedged and tried to keep the question of collusion open a little longer. I won't expect Rachel-RussiaRussia-Maddow to retreat anytime time soon either.

I'm a bit confused as to what the statement above really means because I'm not quite sure what Russiagate means for everyone else. If you search DuckDuckGo, you come up with different result and meanings.

What is Russiagate? Is it when a foreign country interferes in our elections? Or is it Really Hillarygate? a Clinton campaign ploy to deflect from her own shortcomings (emails revelations, her own collusion, her loss to Donald Trump).

People seem to define Russiagate differently. In it's simplest form, -gate denotes scandal, so which one? What would the statement above mean?

So if I said Russiagate is Dead, Long Live Russiagate would mean...

A: Collusion with Russia has been debunked, Long live the real collusion with Israel

B: One Clinton campaign ploy fizzles, and yet another on comes in 2020

C: MSNBC has admitted they were wrong, but will keep on it anyway.

D: Russia is going to keep colluding in our 2020 elections

What does the statement above mean for you? See where I'm going here?

jbbrwcky 5 points 6 points 7 points 2 months ago (0 children)

Russiagate is a Potemkin village where Democrats are victims of a dastardly enemy because they're better, or even somehow different, from Republicans.
HillaryBrokeTheLaw Long live dead poets 6 points 7 points 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)
Russiagate and it's associated delusional bullshit is a way for the establishment to avoid dealing with actual issues, like the death of the natural world, for starters. It's just another form of the xenophobia behind the cold war and the war on terrorism, used to distract the public and destroy those who would attempt to inform the public of what is really going on (you know, the endless looting of the Treasury and the poisoning of people and planets in the name of shareholder returns).

Anybody with any notion of equality before the law know that Clinton and Trump are guilty of multiple crimes that any of us lesser mortals would be doing hard time for. The delusion we are supposed to buy into is that neither is or was a criminal or guilty of criminal acts and/or misconduct when the opposite is patently true. Furthermore we are supposed to believe that the criminality on display is due solely to Russian malfeasance. One of the key elements of brainwashing (ala 1984) is making you believe that the lie is truth. Things like "billionaires EARNED their billions" is the same kind brainwashing. And fucking advertising.

FThumb Bernie or Bust isn't a demand, it's a prophecy 5 points 6 points 7 points 2 months ago (0 children)

It's just another form of the xenophobia behind the cold war and the war on terrorism

It's antisemitism for 'enlightened' people.

NirnaethArnodiad 9 points 10 points 11 points 2 months ago (0 children)
And the death of Seth Rich...
jobu3 3 points 4 points 5 points 2 months ago (0 children)
There is no RussiaGate.... ​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAXtO5dMqEI

docdurango Lapidarian 13 points 14 points 15 points 2 months ago (0 children)
Darn it, I forgot the big kahuna in my list of disasters caused by Russiagate: Trump's possible re-election. My sense is that once Mueller files his report sans collusion charges, the Republicans are going to come after the "fake news" press, the Never-Trumpers, and the Dem conspiracy theorists with far more force than they are now.

To some extent, Trump's allies have held their fire hitherto, in part because a lot of them weren't completely sure whether there was something to the charges. But also, I think, they've held their fire (to an extent) because nothing they say will have traction until after Mueller reports.

When that happens, all of Trump's endless stream of lies and stupidity will become nothing but confetti in his ticker-tape parade. He and his allies can crow loudly, and rightly, about the press being 100% biased against him, and being given to ridiculous conspiracy theories, which neutralizes the MSM's very accurate assessment of his endless lying (on matters other than Russiagate).

The press comes out the loser here. So does the Democratic Party. So do Never-Trump Republicans. So do progressives, for the reasons I gave in my previous comment.

And who comes out the possible winner is Donald Trump, who, after Mueller files, will be in a much stronger position to get re-elected. Republicans, moreover, may well recover much of the ground lost in the 2018 "blue wave."

Russiagate may have been the most successful dirty trick in American history for 2-1/2 years, but it may well explode into the biggest backfire in U.S. history, too.

Mind you, the MSM will never concede they were absurdly, grossly, disgustingly wrong about the whole thing. They will vainly cling to their fantasy. Too big to fail. But I think the Trump people will gain a lot of leverage over swing voters when everyone realizes Russiagate was bullshit from the word go.

gamer_jacksman 10 points 11 points 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)
Russiagate: Democrat's own version of Birthergate.
Blackhalo Purity pony: Российский бот 14 points 15 points 16 points 2 months ago (1 child)
Except that the Birthers had less FISA abuse. Although, funny story, it was started by Clinton toady, Sidney Blumenthal, as a dirty trick to hurt Obama in South Carolina.
suboptiml 5 points 6 points 7 points 2 months ago (0 children)
And RussiaRussiaRussiagate started by... Clinton ops to deflect from her own scandals and shortcomings. Jeez, it’s almost like Hillary Clinton is an incredibly poisonous and corrosive influrnce on American politics.
redditrisi 4 points 5 points 6 points 2 months ago (0 children)
Listen up, Citizen.

This country's fight against socialism began in the later 1800s and pivoted to this country's fight against Communism/RUSSIA as soon as the American Communist Party formed, if not sooner. That's almost 150 years and untold trillions of dollars, plus a cold war and several hot ones invested in fighting the socialist/Communist/Russian/red menace. You cannot expect America to waste all that investment.

So what if there are now more oligarchs than Communists in Russia these days? The name Russia still conjures up "enemy?" writ large. And then, there are all those US fellow travelers, meaning anyone to the right of Senator Graham--and sometimes even he is a little too left for my taste.

/s

docdurango Lapidarian 16 points 17 points 18 points 2 months ago (7 children)
Need to assess the massive damage of what was likely the biggest and most successful dirty political trick in U.S. history. (1) turned Democrats into shills for the CIA and FBI; (2) created a new Cold War; (3) pushed Trump into the arms of Bolton and Pompeo, partly because he had to prove he wasn't a Russian agent or dupe; (4) triggered a vast and largely unreported censorship campaign that is aimed mostly at progressive outlets and progressive social media, though purporting to be primarily against things like Infowars; (5) encouraged Trump to send lethal arms to Ukraine (again, to prove himself a patriot); (6) encouraged Trump to abandon the INF; (7) encouraged Trump to discuss abandoning SALT; (8) turned Dems into a pro-Syrian occupation party (any talk of leaving is dismissed as serving Putin); helped turn Dems into a pro-Venezuela putsch party (again, because not overthrowing Maduro would ostensibly be serving Putin); turned a huge chunk of the party more dramatically against anti-war Dems like Sanders and Gabbard, who are "Putin dupes"; made progressive news outlets hawkish, e.g., Democracy Now, which picked Marcy Wheeler from all the other kooks and grifters to be their expert on Russiagate; and of course turned MSNBC, NBC, CNN, the WaPo, the NYT, and other legacy media into conspiracy theory cesspools that made HUGE HUGE HUGE money on Russiagate grifting.

What else? I'm sure there's more.

rommelo [ S ] 6 points 7 points 8 points 2 months ago (0 children)
as if Russiagate was a Shadow Hillary Clinton Government.
Blackhalo Purity pony: Российский бот 11 points 12 points 13 points 2 months ago (4 children)
Hey @Bloomingdales, this isn’t funny or fashionable. It further delegitimizes hard working journalists who bring REAL news to their communties.

The Press Needs More Than A Super Bowl Ad To Fix Its Plunging Credibility

Pushing An Agenda

The poll found that more than two-thirds of the public (69%) think the news media "is more concerned with advancing its points of view rather than reporting all the facts." Only 29% of the public disagrees with that statement.

"Russia!"

No way should Rachel Maddow have a job after this plays out.

JoshuaKevinPerry 4 points 5 points 6 points 2 months ago (0 children)
You can literally call for the murder of white people(Al Sharpton, multiple times) in sermons, demand gays get killed or hispanic-Americans tossed out(Joy Reid)on a blog and keep your job at MSNBC.
docdurango Lapidarian 8 points 9 points 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)
Yeah, that WaPo ad stands at the dizzying height of arrogance and hypocrisy. Democracy dies in darkness, and the Post has helped created it.

And yes, Maddow should be forever banned from reporting, but she has too many admirers for that to happen. She has made mountains of money for MSNBC; they love her. She'll just cling to the fantasy of collusion no matter how much evidence comes out, and millions will stand by her.

JoshuaKevinPerry 4 points 5 points 6 points 2 months ago (1 child)
It's not that a few million stand by her, it's that a few million believe her.
docdurango Lapidarian 0 points 1 point 2 points 2 months ago (0 children)
True, that.
Sandernista2 Red Pill Supply Store 8 points 9 points 10 points 2 months ago (0 children)
Nice list.....
Blackhalo Purity pony: Российский бот 11 points 12 points 13 points 2 months ago (1 child)
Let the roasting commence!

Did you know that Russia has one of the highest literacy rates in the world? Scary stuff. Tune in tonight and I'll connect the dots.

I hear they have 100% healthcare coverage too!

redditrisi 5 points 6 points 7 points 2 months ago (0 children)
And Arkansas, under Bill Clinton, had one of the lowest literacy rates in the US.

altneoliberalcons lose again.

thatguy4243 2 points 3 points 4 points 2 months ago (8 children)
They really need to move on to something new, like blaming San Marino for all of our problems.
redditrisi 6 points 7 points 8 points 2 months ago (7 children)
Figures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared_(film)

3andfro 5 points 6 points 7 points 2 months ago (5 children)
Exactly what I was thinking. :)
redditrisi 6 points 7 points 8 points 2 months ago (4 children)
Peter Sellers was so genius.
3andfro 4 points 5 points 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)
Dr. Strangelove: https://www.theguardian.com/film/video/2016/jul/26/dr-strangelove-peter-sellers-stanley-kubrick-masterpiece-video
redditrisi 4 points 5 points 6 points 2 months ago (1 child)
Sellers in a wheelchair was exactly the mental image I had when I made my prior post.
3andfro 4 points 5 points 6 points 2 months ago (0 children)
"great minds think alike" ;D
Blackhalo Purity pony: Российский бот 4 points 5 points 6 points 2 months ago (0 children)
My precious purity of essence!
WikiTextBot 3 points 4 points 5 points 2 months ago (0 children)
The Mouse That Roared (film)

The Mouse That Roared is a 1959 British satirical Eastman Color comedy film based on Leonard Wibberley's novel The Mouse That Roared (1955). It stars Peter Sellers in three roles: Duchess Gloriana XII; Count Rupert Mountjoy, the Prime Minister; and Tully Bascomb, the military leader; and co-stars Jean Seberg. The film was directed by Jack Arnold, and the screenplay was written by Roger MacDougall and Stanley Mann.

[ PM | Exclude me | Exclude from subreddit | FAQ / Information | Source ] Downvote to remove | v0.28

probably_pointless 21 points 22 points 23 points 2 months ago * (7 children)
When I say Russiagate I mean the conspiracy theory that Russia meddled in the 2016 election in a meaningful way. It has varying levels of craziness, as the goal post has moved:
  1. It started as "Russia hacked the DNC server and you should distrust the emails because the messenger is a bad actor", followed closely by "you should distrust the emails because they may have been tampered with", or even "we won't say if the emails are real and we'll let the media imply that they may be fiction."
  2. It progressed to Russia colluded with Trump to swing the election. This is apparently the holy grail. Find evidence of this and Trump is finished. Or something. Apparently, Trump is a mastermind and if Russia wanted to meddle they'd need his permission or his help or something.
  3. It progressed to Russia swung the election in close states by manipulating social media. In fact, they did manipulate social media. What's missing from this narrative is the scope ($100K on facebook ads, only half of it before the election, and $4700 in google ads) and motive (the indictment itself says the purpose of the effort seems to have been to gain viewership for ads, to earn money) and even the truth of the premise (by money spent, they didn't target swing states at all).

In its current state, Russiagate is all and it is none of the above. None of it has gone anywhere, so now the plan is to simply mention Russia or call people Putin puppets or bots, and let the viewer conclude any of the above. It has been reduced to lying by implication. Let the well-trained viewer lie to themselves when they are triggered by the right words.

​

JoshuaKevinPerry 2 points 3 points 4 points 2 months ago (0 children)
You forgot, if you read the e-mails you are breaking the law, Chris Cuomo, CNN.
3andfro 9 points 10 points 11 points 2 months ago (0 children)
"Russia" has become like an implanted word to cue posthypnotic suggestion behaviors.
FThumb Bernie or Bust isn't a demand, it's a prophecy 10 points 11 points 12 points 2 months ago (4 children)
It's the very definition of a MacGuffin.
3andfro 2 points 3 points 4 points 2 months ago (0 children)
So glad you tossed that in here so more people will look it up and get the reference. Keep at it.
probably_pointless 6 points 7 points 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

MacGuffin

Had to look that up.

3andfro 4 points 5 points 6 points 2 months ago (0 children)
And now you see how perfectly it fits.
Inuma I take the headspace of idiots 4 points 5 points 6 points 2 months ago (0 children)
You have never had to go through TV Tropes have you?
expletivdeleted will shill for rubles. Also, Bernie would have won 10 points 11 points 12 points 2 months ago (1 child)
Russiagate is really a cross between a shell game and Kabuki theatre. The real Russiagate is U1 and CF.
redditrisi 7 points 8 points 9 points 2 months ago (0 children)
The real Russiagate is USgate.

"We have met the enemy and, as usual, they is us."

Grizzly_Madams 14 points 15 points 16 points 2 months ago (15 children)
Very close. We should have the final written report by late 2019. But based on zero indictments/convictions related to collusion, zero evidence of collusion and the Senate investigation finding no collusion we can safely say this whole thing was a witch-hunt. I strongly dislike Trump as a person and the terrible direction he's taken this country in but Russiagate was 100% a political witch-hunt. But just because Trump/Russia collusion is dead doesn't mean the tactic is. It'll just be used against the left now.
redditrisi 5 points 6 points 7 points 2 months ago (1 child)
now? The US government has been witch hunting the left since the Civil War ended, if not before. (I need to brush up on US history from 1790 to 1860.)
Grizzly_Madams 3 points 4 points 5 points 2 months ago (0 children)
You're not wrong!
Blackhalo Purity pony: Российский бот 5 points 6 points 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

late 2019

It's going to take six moths to write a report that contains absolutely zero related to the initial premise of the Russia investigation?

jbbrwcky 1 point 2 points 3 points 2 months ago (0 children)
We've had experts in the field exploring different and less transparent ways to say zero, but the best we've been able to come up with is just producing a report that's so long and boring and obtuse that nobody will ever read it. Then people can insinuate that it contains whatever they want it to contain.
Grizzly_Madams 3 points 4 points 5 points 2 months ago (1 child)
Apparently. At least that's the number I've heard being thrown around.
redditrisi 5 points 6 points 7 points 2 months ago (0 children)
I would not be a bit surprised if the date did not slip until after the 2020 election.
sophie-cat 0 points 1 point 2 points 2 months ago (8 children)
what about all the blokes they arrested in relation and charged?
Roy_Blakeley 6 points 7 points 8 points 2 months ago (1 child)
You can indict anyone. As the saying goes, you can indict a turnip. The Internet Research Agency indictments, which Mueller trotted out, were not actually the result of the FBI investigation. The information was publicly available and was published by a Russian investigative news team. The IRA was the company responsible for the Google and Facebook buys. What is not usually mentioned is that the IRA is a clickbait factory that makes money by getting people to click on links that show news, etc. and adds. Clinton and Trump are clickbait. The posts were not all pro-Trump and, as mentioned, many were well after the election. It is an open question to me as to whether there was small and lame attempt to influence the election, or just an attempt to make a few rubles (or both) by getting people to click on anti-Trump or anti-Clinton items (or pro-Trump or pro-Clinton for that matter). I read one of the indictments the other day and it was ridiculous. There was a lot of preamble, trying to make the IRA effort seem sinister, but if one continued to read, it was obvious that she was essentially being accused of being an accountant that might have been involved in money transfers that were used for add buys. The FBI has depended on the fact that these people will not come to the US to stand trial and, therefore, the FBI will not have to produce any real evidence.
jbbrwcky 1 point 2 points 3 points 2 months ago (0 children)
Also, these indictments against Russians, with whom we have no extradition treaty were 'safe', in that nobody would actually face charges, so they'd never have to make their pathetic case. When some US lawyers showed up on behalf of one group of defendents demanding discovery, Meuller panicked, tried to claim national security, delayed and finally handed the case off to some lower profile lawyers who will suffocate the whole case quietly with a pillow as soon as the 18 month American memory has lapsed.
Blackhalo Purity pony: Российский бот 6 points 7 points 8 points 2 months ago (1 child)
The only arrests and pleas were for lying to the FBI on unrelated matters, acting as an unregistered lobbyist for Ukraine and the troll farm where the charges will be quickly dropped as the "evidence" won't stand up in court.
Inuma I take the headspace of idiots 8 points 9 points 10 points 2 months ago (0 children)
Even lying to the FBI is a stretch when they lost the paperwork and manipulated and deleted evidence to collude with their narrative...
Grizzly_Madams 7 points 8 points 9 points 2 months ago (1 child)
So um... nobody has been arrested for colluding with Russia... What are you referencing?
sophie-cat -2 points -1 points 0 points 2 months ago (0 children)
the lawyers, the guy the fbi raided a few weeks ago
FThumb Bernie or Bust isn't a demand, it's a prophecy 11 points 12 points 13 points 2 months ago (0 children)

“Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”

~ Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, head of Stalin’s secret police

Irony dies.

probably_pointless 15 points 16 points 17 points 2 months ago (0 children)
Process crimes, financial crimes. So far, no collusion.
astitious2 8 points 9 points 10 points 2 months ago (3 children)
I think that Dem morons are now rabidly anti-Russia. It is time to flip the script and get the Rep morons to hate Russia because of collusion between Putin and the Clinton campaign. Russia will continue to offer western critics of empire a platform, and war-loving westerners will continue their tantrums over getting facts from outside of the propaganda bubble.
Blackhalo Purity pony: Российский бот 10 points 11 points 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

collusion between Putin and the Clinton campaign.

Podesta was literally acting as a foreign lobbyist for Russian toady Yanukovych

Yanukovych: PR firms and nice suits hide authoritarian intentions

An example of this is the Podesta Group’s $200,000 contract with an entity called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. Podesta Group is an American lobbying firm run by Tony Podesta. And the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine? That just happens to be an operation controlled by Yanukovych, according to Ukrainska Pravda.

astitious2 11 points 12 points 13 points 2 months ago (1 child)
Yeah the case for Clinton/Russia collusion around Uranium One and the election is a million times stronger than trying to claim Trump colluded because he wanted oppo research. We at least have the Steele Dossier which was provided mostly by Russia to Trump's opponents.

Nobody has ever shown any credible evidence Russia did any of the hacking, or that Saddam killed babies or had WMD, or that we were attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin.

rommelo [ S ] 7 points 8 points 9 points 2 months ago (0 children)
or the Douma chemical attacks and the whole idea that Guaido is legitimate.

​

E46_M3 26 points 27 points 28 points 2 months ago (14 children)
Russiagate is a psyop and there never was any evidence to begin with or even an alleged crime. So us not finding evidence doesn’t end it because these guys are desperate for this to be real. They have become fully propagandized and useful idiots of the permanent state.
Inuma I take the headspace of idiots 7 points 8 points 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)
How many times have the walls been closing in?
Rev_Fred_Ghurkin Troll Shredder, Emeritus. 5 points 6 points 7 points 2 months ago (1 child)
It's a bombshell!
Blackhalo Purity pony: Российский бот 4 points 5 points 6 points 2 months ago (0 children)
Big, if true!
NirnaethArnodiad 9 points 10 points 11 points 2 months ago (0 children)
Mueller is a career hit man lawyer with insider ties to the FBI/CIA as well as the Bush Administration.

Ya gotta ask yourself, Who does Russiagate benefit? From every possible angle it benefits the establishment in both parties. It checks off every box on the wishlist, distracts from their bought off immorality, election rigging, and fraud, while propping up aggressive war and military spending.

E46_M3 12 points 13 points 14 points 2 months ago (0 children)
Here you go doofus guy since you think there is evidence. Even the SENATE doesn’t have any. You’ve been propagandized by the media lmao

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-has-uncovered-no-direct-evidence-conspiracy-between-trump-campaign-n970536

astitious2 7 points 8 points 9 points 2 months ago * (7 children)
I didn't think echo chambers worse than The_Donald/politics could exist until I looked in that subreddit ( /r/the_mueller ) of brainwashed idiots.
unagisongs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJtrLKGZZFg 2 points 3 points 4 points 2 months ago (0 children)
When the MSM has turned on you. It's time to give it up.
redditrisi -2 points -1 points 0 points 2 months ago (4 children)
Thank God Almighty you never have to subject yourself to this sub again. Come to think of it, you never had to subject yourself to it at all, did you, troll?
astitious2 4 points 5 points 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)
I am not knocking wotb. I am commenting on the_mueller. I only troll Clintonistas and other capitalists subverting the left.
FThumb Bernie or Bust isn't a demand, it's a prophecy 1 point 2 points 3 points 2 months ago (0 children)

I am commenting on the_mueller.

I got it.

redditrisi 4 points 5 points 6 points 2 months ago (1 child)
Sincere apologies. I am too accustomed to people posting here to complain about this sub; and I skimmed too quickly. Mea maxima culpa.
astitious2 2 points 3 points 4 points 2 months ago (0 children)
No worries.
probably_pointless 7 points 8 points 9 points 2 months ago (0 children)
I don't think ratings or money have anything to do with it anymore. I leave as evidence that Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post without researching its market or its financials, and he spent just 1/400th of his wealth to acquire it.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos signed the $250 million Washington Post deal with no due diligence

Do you think that with so little money at stake (to him), and without even knowing if there was money to be earned, that he bought it to make money with it?

News media is no longer about making money. Not directly, anyway. It's now about control.

It's handy that Trump is earning them money, but that's not what's going on. Trump wasn't supposed to win. It was a mistake. They are trying to eject him. They are exercising their control to rid the system of an untrusted president. They are exercising their control to make sure a progressive doesn't replace him. The financials are secondary.

j3utton 28 points 29 points 30 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Or is it Really Hillarygate? a Clinton campaign ploy to deflect from her own shortcomings (emails revelations, her own collusion, her loss to Donald Trump).

Its been this since the morning after the election, and it's only been this.

docdurango Lapidarian 10 points 11 points 12 points 2 months ago (1 child)
It was that long before the morning after the election. They cooked it up probably in like March 2016, even before the DNC announced they were hacked. The Clinton campaign thought its greatest weakness was her coziness with Russia (one of the Podesta emails released by Wikileaks put this as their #1 weakness). Knowing that Trump also had tons of connections with Russians, they hired Cody Shearer and Sid Blumenthal to put together dossiers charging Trump with being a Russian agent. They later got Fusion GPS to hire Steele to give the final product more heft and authenticity, since he was an actual retired MI6 spook. Then then they made the rounds with media outlets and Deep State agencies, trying to get them to open an investigation, and to report on it. The effort wasn't hugely successful at first, but they did get Brennan and Clapper to buy it, then Comey, and also David Corn of Mother Jones, and Michael Isikoff.

Biggest and most successful dirty political trick in all U.S. history.

Except it may backfire in the end, since Trump now can credibly charge the media with "fake news" and bias against him. I think the Republicans are just waiting for Mueller to file his report before making a huge stink about the whole thing, as they should.

A huge disaster for the American people and for progressives especially, even though it worked as a political trick, at least for 2-1/2 years.

Roy_Blakeley 7 points 8 points 9 points 2 months ago (0 children)
Don't forget the Veselnitskaya meeting with Trump Jr. It was set up by Fusion GPS and the co-founder of Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, met with her before and after the Trump tower meeting. She was suddenly granted a special visa to allow her to enter the country. The meeting was useless to Trump because Veselnitskaya only wanted to talk about the Magnitsky act. It was a total set up to provide ammunition so that security agencies could go to the FISA court and get permission to spy on the Trump campaign.
EvilPhd666 "The Spoiler" Führer Twinkle Gypsy / межразмерная контрразведка 37 points 38 points 39 points 2 months ago (2 children)
The next phase of Russiagate is to go directly after the anti war movement. Leftist, progressives, non interventionist conservatives are going to get painted as "influenced by Russia" or agents of the Kremlin.
era--vulgaris Remember Kids, Dissent = Russian Propaganda! 16 points 17 points 18 points 2 months ago (0 children)
Bingo. Tulsi's experience is the canary in the coal mine.

Trump is irrelevant. What matters is that through Russiagate, we now have a huge swath of "progressive" liberals, including many public intellectuals, celebrities, and others with good reputations in society- who are completely inoculated with cold war era propaganda and paranoia, and most critically the authoritarian mindset (listen to authority, questioning is treason, consensus is truth, etc).

Conservatives are already susceptible to that mindset, so there's plenty of them (the anti-trump and/or pro-war factions) that are ready to swallow whatever they're told as well.

To put it simply, we have a giant cross-section of the populace that cuts across ideological lines and is completely prepped for authoritarianism.

Naturally, the people who gravitate towards this will be the more comfortable among us, because they aren't faced with social decay every day. Less fortunate people have a harder time maintaining the contradiction of a perfect society ruined by foreign interference, but the petty bourgeois and above have no such issue.

We're seeing open declarations that any attempt to reduce American empire, or head off further expansion- even when it's solely about helping Americans rather than justice for victims of imperialism- must be a foreign plot. Why?

Well (X foreign rival) clearly would rather we don't run the whole world, so obviously, any attempt to prevent us from doing so- even if it's just so we don't bankrupt ourselves and fall apart from within- is a plot by the Kremlin or Beijing or (insert foreign rival here).

j3utton 20 points 21 points 22 points 2 months ago (0 children)

All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

rommelo [ S ] 20 points 21 points 22 points 2 months ago (0 children)
In light of these revelations, I've become more active in calling out and engaging facebook friends for posting russiagate bs - like stupid memes about russian collusion, telling them it is a dangerous game and we in Europe don't want to be the next Cuban Missile Crisis.

[May 11, 2019] From Russiagate to Gunboat Diplomacy by Branko Marcetic

Notable quotes:
"... Particularly shameless was Florida Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, who went on Tucker Carlson's show to peddle half-baked innuendo as brazen as anything claimed in the lead up to the Iraq War. If Maduro's government survived, he claimed, it would be "a green light, an open door for the Russians and for the Chinese and for others to increase their activity against our national security interest right here in our hemisphere." ..."
May 11, 2019 | jacobinmag.com

Russiagate hysteria is already being used to push Trump into an act of armed aggression against Venezuela. It's a disastrous result of a pointless delusion.

One of the things Russiagate skeptics found unsettling about the frenzy over supposed "collusion" was that it made war more likely. Not only did the now-debunked conspiracy theories and resulting political climate push officials into a more aggressive posture toward Russia, but once the Kremlin was returned to its status as the foreign policy elite's Big Bad, it was easy to imagine a situation where the threat of a Russian bogeyman could be used to justify any number of unrelated foreign adventures. This appears to be exactly what's happening with Venezuela right now.

First there was Fareed Zakaria, who two months ago tried to goad Trump into attacking Venezuela by pointing to Russia's support for Maduro. "Putin's efforts seem designed to taunt the United States," he said (it might also have something to do with the billions of dollars Russia sank into the country), making reference to the Monroe Doctrine. He asked if Washington would "allow Moscow to make a mockery of another American red line," warning that "if Washington does not back its words with deeds" the country could become another Syria. Zakaria concluded: "will Venezuela finally be the moment when Trump finally ends his appeasement?"

More recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo charged that Russia had "invaded" Venezuela before claiming the Kremlin had dissuaded Maduro from fleeing the country at the last moment, something Pompeo has provided no evidence for but much of the media has treated as fact since.

National Security Advisor John Bolton has said that "this is our hemisphere" and "not where the Russians ought to be interfering." Democratic Sen. Doug Jones echoed this sentiment on CNN, praising the Trump administration for saying "all options are on the table" to deal with Venezuela, something he suggested may have to be acted on "if there is some more intervention [by] Russia."

The national press, taking a break from warning about Trump being a dangerous authoritarian, has been demanding to know why he hasn't been more aggressive toward the country over this.

Particularly shameless was Florida Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, who went on Tucker Carlson's show to peddle half-baked innuendo as brazen as anything claimed in the lead up to the Iraq War. If Maduro's government survived, he claimed, it would be "a green light, an open door for the Russians and for the Chinese and for others to increase their activity against our national security interest right here in our hemisphere."

He went on to claim that Russia had already placed nuclear missiles in the country, and that it could lead to a Cuban missile crisis-like conflict. There is no evidence this is true, and Díaz-Balart didn't provide any.

Of course, no coverage of the Trump administration's relations with Russia would be complete without a trip into Rachel Maddow's fractured psyche. After Trump repeated Putin's personal assurances that he wasn't interested in getting involved in Venezuela -- contradicting Pompeo and Bolton -- Maddow addressed the two officials :

Hey John Bolton, hey Mike Pompeo, are you guys enjoying your jobs right now? You each thought your job this week was to name and shame and threaten and counter Russian government involvement in Venezuela while saber-rattling about how everybody else better get out of the way because the US is really mad about it. Guys, turns out your actual job is figuring out how and why you work for a president who says whatever Vladimir Putin tells him.

Maddow went on to express her sympathy for one of the most unhinged warmongers in a city teeming with them ("I mean, John Bolton, God bless you"), and again seemed to suggest that Bolton's "job" of "push[ing] Russia back because of what they're doing in Venezuela" was the correct course of action.

It's now clear there is nothing -- not Trump's years-long belligerence toward Russia's Venezuelan ally, not his near-constant bellicosity toward Russia since taking office, not Robert Mueller's failure to indict a single person for conspiring with Russia, not even his report's explicit and implicit denial that any such conspiracy existed -- that will make these people give up the talking point that Trump is secretly in bed with Putin. If Mueller himself denied it, they would claim he was a Russian in disguise. It's simply too convenient an attack line, and too professionally embarrassing to admit otherwise.

There is also an Orwellian level of doublethink going on here. Russia, a Venezuelan ally, has sent personnel and equipment to the country with the consent of its government at a time when it's being threatened by multiple hostile regional powers. Meanwhile the US, one of those hostile powers, has for years been laying siege to the country and killing its people, trying to destabilize and oust its leadership, and even threatening to invade it.

Yet according to the media and political class, it's Russia's actions that are an unacceptable intrusion into another country's affairs -- an "invasion," even. They are holding up four fingers to your face and telling you you're seeing five.

Meanwhile, these same quarters, after spending close to three years hyperventilating about Russia's meddling in domestic US affairs -- an "act of war," in some minds -- have now seamlessly pivoted to cheering Trump as he attempts to engineer a change of Venezuela's government, even calling for him to possibly attack the country. This is glaringly hypocritical, but the Russiagate frenzy was never about principled outrage or any sort of moral consistency.

Lastly and most significantly, the rhetoric around Venezuela is now taking on an explicitly imperialistic character, in the most literal sense of that word. Zakaria invoked the Monroe Doctrine to urge Trump to intervene in Venezuela; National Security Advisor John Bolton "proudly proclaim[ed]" upon launching a fresh round of sanctions that "the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well," and one MSNBC guest insisted the Trump administration was "right in being completely flabbergasted" at Russia's presence in the country because "this is our hemisphere," echoing Bolton .

When these figures talk about "our hemisphere," they don't mean the hemisphere in which the US happens to be located; they mean this is literally their hemisphere. The US is the imperial power with dominion over this part of the world, and only it has the right to interfere in the countries that populate it.

Their objection is not that an outside power is involving itself in a Latin American country's business, but that this outside power isn't the one in Washington. The fact that the US has been doing this very thing for years in Russia's part of the world -- expanding NATO right up to its border, sending weapons to Ukraine -- goes conveniently unmentioned.

Russiagate skeptics were criticized for being hyperbolic in comparing that scandal to the bogus WMD tale that led to the Iraq War; the latter, after all, killed hundreds of thousands and destabilized an entire region. But the full consequences of Russiagate will not be felt immediately; they will unfold over time. And while floating the specter of Russia might not work this time, expect it to be used over and over in the coming years to justify all manner of military aggression .

[May 11, 2019] Rachel Maddow s Craziest Russia Video Ever!

Rachel's the MSM poster child for aggressive and dedicated stupidity.
Notable quotes:
"... Funny how these people push Russiagate and then support regime change everywhere and most recently Venezuela. ..."
"... Rachel Maddow is an establishment "TOADIE." Is that right? ..."
"... As George Carlin said, "bipartisanship means a larger than usual deception is going on." ..."
"... What would happen if Zionists took the control of US Government? ... O, wait... ..."
"... Rachel's the MSM poster child for aggressive and dedicated stupidity. ..."
"... Maddow, like every other MSM propaganda bullhorn, is "manufacturing consent" for the neocon wars to come. ..."
"... Should Madame Walking Corruption decide to run again, Rachel is the perfect choice for VP. ..."
"... She's the neo lib version of Glen Beck ..."
"... Rachel Maddow is the Alex Jones of the left - Nothing but a controlled CIA tool. ..."
"... "The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five." ― Carl Sagan ..."
"... This Maddow segment will be referenced by future historians as "end-stage Russia-gate." ..."
"... Madcow disease is contagious. ..."
"... Maddow has lost her ever loving mind. She's the neolib answer to Alex Jones. ..."
"... If I was American, i would take any of these Russian scare stories as an assault of my intellect. These MSM clowns are basically saying their audience are a dumb as planks. ..."
Feb 04, 2019 | www.youtube.com

The Jimmy Dore Show

James , 3 months ago

Funny how these people push Russiagate and then support regime change everywhere and most recently Venezuela.

btf , 3 months ago

"what would you do if you lost heat, indefinitely, as the act of a foreign power" - i don't know , let's ask Iraqi's what they did

radiofriendly , 3 months ago

Humor is the only response to Rachel's insanity!

Richard Couch , 3 months ago

Rachel Maddow is an establishment "TOADIE." Is that right?

Robert Cox , 3 months ago

As George Carlin said, "bipartisanship means a larger than usual deception is going on."

Matt Chew , 3 months ago

What if Russia turned off all of our corporate "news"? We would actually find out what's going on in the world.

Mike Wilson , 3 months ago

Thank you for exposing Maddow's mind control show.

mochawitch , 3 months ago

The power grid in this country is more likely to be jeopardized because it's out of date and woefully neglected by the scare-mongering, Russia-baiting idiots in charge; more concerned with dominating the planet than keeping our infrastructure maintained. Maddow could mention that, but I guess then she'd piss her bosses(the fuel industry &MIC) off.

Dj Dorcol , 3 months ago

What would happen if Zionists took the control of US Government? ... O, wait...

Amy , 3 months ago

There actually was a story about there being a fire at a prison in NY and the inmates going without heat during the polar vortex. Needless to say, it wasn't Russia but good ol' American disregard for people who see as worthless and so they are dragging their feet in fixing the problem, plus they are pepper spraying the families of the inmates who are protesting the conditions inside the prison. We don't need to make out Russia to be the boogey man when we are better at being that for our own citizens.

IMAX Andy , 3 months ago

I LOVE Russia THEY NEVER DID ANYTHING TO USA THATS TRUTH

B T , 3 months ago

Rachel, all these "what if" questions are a sign of generalized anxiety. Get a psychologist.

PHILMKD1995 , 3 months ago

So Vladimir Putin is Mr Freeze? lol XD

Jocko Adams , 3 months ago

Hey Rachael, Mitt Romney called and he wants his 1980's foreign policy back.

Hoohoosistik , 3 months ago (edited)

Rachel's the MSM poster child for aggressive and dedicated stupidity.

impossiblemission4ce , 3 months ago

My phone is almost out of battery right now. What if Russia took my charging cable!?

PapaMagnum , 3 months ago

Rachel Maddow is the biggest disappointment at MSNBC over the last 4 years

Ben L , 2 months ago

Ya know, I do remember when Maddow wasn't complete trash. Thought I was getting in on something great. What a spectacularly disgusting switch

Andrew Cowan , 3 months ago

Damn it Jimmy, run for congress already! :D

Michael Pilz , 3 months ago

If Rachel keeps this up Jimmy will have a stroke on stage.

slickbricknick123 , 3 months ago

I remember what George Carlin told me to do when I can't allow this shit to drive me crazy anymore, I became a spectator.

Scrabble Eddie , 3 months ago (edited)

Maddow, like every other MSM propaganda bullhorn, is "manufacturing consent" for the neocon wars to come.

Alex Silver , 3 months ago

Omg so funny! You guys made my night. People like you give me hope that we can avoid the catastrophe. As a Russian, I want to say, let's not kill each other.

Mark Wazowski , 3 months ago

NBC/Universal owns GE which is one of the largest defence contractors. Of course the want war.

Michael , 3 months ago (edited)

She being a Rhodes Scholar, I often wonder if she wasn't recruited early on by the CIA. That's an investigation about collusion between US corporate media and the deep state to influence US elections I'd like to see.

MegaDont , 3 months ago

Maddow: "This is clearly a Siberian invasion."

Lisa Pierra , 3 months ago

What if the Lucky Charm leprechaun breaks into my house and eats my magically delicious stars and moons and leaves just the cereal? What will happen then?

inesxenia , 3 months ago

"Putin despises the West and US..." Seriously, who doesn't? Kinda hard not to after what you have been doing all these years and are doing still.

seha alturk , 3 months ago

Should Madame Walking Corruption decide to run again, Rachel is the perfect choice for VP.

JR 14 , 3 months ago

You know What else Russia has? The country of crony capitalist oligarchs? Universal healthcare, that's what they have.

B T , 3 months ago

How is she what she saying any different than conspiracies? She sounds like a flat eather who spent too much time clocking hours in the crazy part of YouTube.

Angel Gd , 2 days ago

You hear less about Russia on Russia Today, frankly you get better news.

red dwarf , 3 months ago

Seriously who watches that dude from msnbc? Makes for some great comic relief material. Cheers to all.

Syncopator , 3 months ago (edited)

So who was it that said, "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over"? Some guy named "Joseph"?

hashbrown77 , 3 months ago

"Russia-gate has officially jumped the shark" rofl

4TH WORLD WILDERNESS , 3 months ago (edited)

If it's hot outside, blame cowfarts If it's cold outside, blame cowfarts and russia

TurdFurgeson571 , 3 months ago

Master plan was we will make American have cold soapy eyes. Damn you Rachel. Always spoiling plan. ~ The Russians

monkee5th , 3 months ago (edited)

Americans have become more xenophobic.... because Russia. Xenophobia Warrior Princess Starring Rachel Maddcow

clifford maxwell , 3 months ago

Rachel Maddow is a perfect example of what happens when you entrench yourself on the wrong side of the issues snuggling up to those big corporate advertisers like big oil or Boeing before you know it you have painted yourself into a corner just like fox news hosts as you make a complete fool of yourself sounding like a blithering idiot totally devoid of any shred of journalistic integrity she is the old washed up sorcerer that has lost her power all she has left is a few old pieces of magic corn. she may well indeed have the highest ratings but I don't believe the people are buying what she is trying to sell them!

Mat S , 3 months ago

someone should send Rachel a Russian flag.. her head will explode

unab84 , 2 months ago

Amaaaazing vid Jimmy! Best thing since George Carlin

Eric Erickson , 2 days ago

She's the neo lib version of Glen Beck

Harry Kiralfy Broe , 3 months ago

Rachel Maddow is the Alex Jones of the left - Nothing but a controlled CIA tool.

Osama Number5 , 3 months ago

"The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five." ― Carl Sagan

Greg Shane , 3 months ago

This Maddow segment will be referenced by future historians as "end-stage Russia-gate."

Erik S , 2 months ago (edited)

"RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!" It's the DemCorp version of "Thanks Obama!" If the Russians cut our power, we'd cut theirs...

American_Warrior , 2 weeks ago

8:23 Mueller is a WMD guy too.. look it up.. he was fbi director at the time🖕

Fats Hernandez , 3 months ago (edited)

How long until Jimmy Dore gets deplatformed? Anyone who rooted against Alex Jones is short-sighted. He was against the iraq and afghan wars. He was the 1st to report the false flag in syria. He cried when Trump dropped that MOAB. Support Alex Jones!

MySpartapictures kitty , 2 months ago

Russian want global warming they said it would be good for them.🙄 They did.

D. Martin , 3 months ago (edited)

Putin's sides are aching. She could tour Russia billed as a comic and just read from her nightly manuscript. It would keep them in stitches.

Richard Sanders , 1 week ago

New drinking game...everytime she says Russia, putin, soviet, or communist...you gotta take a shot! ;-)

James Burns , 2 days ago

Please get rid of that Graham dude he's just annoying

nywvblue , 3 months ago

AND YET we share the ISS and all related research and technology with...the Russians! hahaha what a ruse!

abbreviation of time , 3 months ago

It's only a matter of time before she blames 9/11 on Russia

CB B , 3 months ago

This is great. Good to see Lee Camp there with Jimmy. Good comedy chemistry with this group.

It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan. , 3 months ago

She doesn't have anything else prepared because Russians ate her homework.

Jocko Adams , 3 months ago (edited)

"What if I just reported what we knew to be true and nothing else?" --Rachel Maddow, Never.

realoldschoooollover , 3 months ago

It's not like the people in the "Flyover Country" wouldn't know how to help themselves 😂. Folks, they aren't cityslickers 😂

Short Cipher , 3 months ago

Madcow disease is contagious.

flashfloodarea3 , 3 months ago

Reminds me of Monty Python's "Brezhnev and Kosygin are in my wife's jam!". Nothing has changed. We are still at war with Eurasia.

Roy Grimaldi , 1 week ago

We have homeless situation in our city. Dam Russians!!!!!!!

peter wright , 1 week ago

I'm from the UK and I haven't laughed so much in ages. Thank you.

I Dream Memes , 3 months ago

Jimmy: Brilliant on Russiagate. Dim on AOC. Confuses me, but hilarious all the same.

Panzer Faust , 3 months ago

Hence her nickname "Rachel Madcow".

Pete McJames , 3 months ago (edited)

"Can cut sections of the power grid at will". Head's up- they're telling you what they are going to do and then blame Russia for.

Okolele Ekelolo , 3 months ago

This msnbc news is just how much American mainstream media are pure joke with zero credit😂. In the end, these "journalists" owe their job to Russia, what would they do without it since they always talk about it😂😂😂😂😂

Mr K , 2 months ago

13:27 That's Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, 'Jay' Rockefeller. The Rockefeller family owns the world's biggest oil companies, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhilips, the Amoco in BP-Amoco all came from the companies created after the breakup of John D. Rockefellers' Standard Oil Trust.

Dire Straitz , 2 months ago

I just figured out who/how they got to her: "Her paternal grandfather was from a family of Eastern European Jews (the original family surname being "Medwedof")" Amazing how much that sounds like "Madoff", isn't it?

J.P.M. , 3 months ago

Fear Russian fear mongering goes "Off Rails!". It would shocking though if Russia were paying Jimmy Dore!!! /watch?v=Fw_9qCZP9-4

Dronestar1 , 3 months ago

One of the funniest ones I seen yet.. #russia lololol 🤦🏿‍♂️🤦🏿‍♂️🤦🏿‍♂️

mailill , 2 months ago

Stef hade some good ones here! LOL!

cjhwngtkt 63 , 3 months ago

Julien Assange is a hero.

J. Vonhögen , 3 months ago

The huge elephant in the room is of course global weather engineering. None of our efforts to cut emissions will stop the current climate collapse, until all weather-/geo-engineering programs have been terminated worldwide. We need to stop weather warfare now.

Sunder Sidhai , 1 month ago

This is one insane American. There are many, many more.

TX Rider , 3 months ago

What would happen? An army of privileged entitled white men would go out in the 50 below weather and work 24/7 in deadly conditions to fix it and have the power back up in hours, like they do every winter.. Just like the white men who put on wetsuits and dive into literal lakes of shit and piss to clear the tampons and pads out of the grates and pumps in the sewer treatment plants so the toilets of people like Maddow continue to function.. The people who are completely invisible to morons like Maddow.

Tony 1 , 1 month ago

Jimmy I love you, Trump shot you forward.

LadyYvaJ , 3 months ago

Maddow has lost her ever loving mind. She's the neolib answer to Alex Jones.

Peter Wilson , 3 months ago

Way to go, your honorable, passionate delivery is reminiscent of Bill Hicks.

Ernesto Ybarra , 3 months ago

Our little boy Rachel Maddow still Russia-ing it! World's still waiting for Trump's taxes from our little boy! Maybe we could ask her man Susan Mikula LAUD HAM MERCY 😲

Anotherthez , 3 months ago

Yeah, Rachel Madcow is Alex Jones... Doing well, Muricaca... Your "news people" are great..... Have you seen A. Cooper with AOC?? Ridiculous..!

Gary Parris , 3 months ago

damn i hope Trump doesnt watch maddow. i hope trump doesnt watch the movies "wargames" or "die hard 4.0" those russions ;O)

desterflan , 3 months ago

They're putting chemicals in the air that turns the weather gay!!

Gerald Parker , 3 months ago

Ottawa is the second coldest national capital city in the world (after first place coldes Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia). Moscow is NOT so cold as Ottawa is, guys!

T.M. Warren , 3 months ago

European tour 'Jimmy,Steff & Co...Get your arses over to *London*!! You'll sell out a number of dates up & down the UK !💯 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Patrick McCormack , 3 months ago

Did Rachel Maddow say Russia or RUSH?

DaveLH , 3 months ago

How can Maddow let that guy continue to call it "The Soviet Empire" when the USSR collapsed almost 30 years ago!?

Braden E Nelson , 3 months ago

Keep calm, blame Russia. 😉

DJ Fermi , 3 months ago

Im a conservative but i really like jimmy dore. Keep it up.

A S , 3 months ago

Jimmy adore, is awesome, I love it when he kicks off!

Connor Kost , 1 month ago

"What if Russia cut the power while you were watching porn right before you came, and then you had blue balls forever?" That line was the funniest in this whole video. Another one that had me laughing so hard was this: "So what's the purple area?"

william willie , 3 months ago

If we are worried about the electrical grid. We should prepare it for a Carrington type event

WhatistheMatrix? , 3 months ago

What if you had a salad and you needed dressing but Putin took all of them away except Russian?😟 Can you imagine that?

GenerationXT , 1 month ago

Quote ("These are all jokes") So's Rachael Moscow .

Aquatic Borealis , 3 months ago

Jimmy Dore: "I try to discredit Russian aggression at every opportunity!"

Mr Egusi , 3 months ago (edited)

If I was American, i would take any of these Russian scare stories as an assault of my intellect. These MSM clowns are basically saying their audience are a dumb as planks.

Jason Collins , 3 months ago (edited)

Jimmy, I love your show and, even though I'm essentially conservative and think Trump is exactly the wrench needed to throw into the works of the globalists who I believe almost took complete control of everything in 2016, I agree with you quite often and share many of your videos with both far-leftist and right-wing nuts. That said, the fact of the matter is that a single international ballistic missle loaded with a "nuclear" EMP device, exploded a couple hundred miles over the middle of our country, would totally destroy the power infrastructure across our country and quite literally leave us in the dark ages for months. If this happened, our country would be thrown total chaos and takeover by invasion would be very easy for any semi-powerful country who could get here: Russia and China are basically it. I can't stand Rachel Maddow, but I have a feeling she may have been referring to this extremely serious problem which, by the way, would cost very little to fix. Why we haven't fixed it, but continue to spend more than what the fix would cost to stay Afghanistan every single month is beyond anything even resembling rational thought.

Rocky Hart , 3 months ago

Hey MSNBC? We are not that stupid. Period

Gerald Trudeau , 2 months ago

Jimmy, we need you.Please don't have a stroke.

alex west , 3 months ago (edited)

did you know north pole moving into Russian territory ? privet from Russia!!!!!!!

Tom Pappalardo , 3 months ago (edited)

Lee Camp and Jimmy Dore on the same stage e is like having Babe Ruth and Lou Gehirg batting 3rd and 4th in your favorite baseball team's lineup.

audi presley , 2 months ago

I wouldn't be surprised if Rachel Maddow were exposing a pre-programming agenda that OUR government is plotting -- not the goddamn Russians. Remember: The Freemasons believe in "Order Out Of Chaos."

mailill , 2 months ago

What a rant, Jimmy! Keep'em coming! (But careful with your heart )

Kevin Parsley , 2 months ago

1 flaw in your discourse.. the power grid is taken out just before a nuclear strike...

Seth Marks , 3 months ago

Jimmy, you should start each show with that mashup, it's gold!

G Kuljian , 3 months ago

What would happen if Rachel Maddow had integrity?

TheJustina102085 , 2 months ago

Jimmy Dore = hilarious. Peanut Gallery = not funny.

Patrick Schaefer , 3 months ago

This was glorious. Come to Minneapolis some day!

passdasalt , 3 months ago

What if we decentralized the power grid by implimenting solar power and batteries on homes? Maddow - The Russians would go house to house with wire cutters.

Vincent Rivera , 3 months ago

I'm gonna live my life within the parameters of my control. Act accordingly. Charity comes from the individual, not from the state. Atlas Shrugged.

Newscruiser Spearhead , 3 months ago

Killer rant Jimmy D!!!

Porco Rosso , 1 week ago

THE SLAVS ARE RUNNING THE WORLD!

Randy Potter , 3 months ago

Northam/racism = the new face of the democrat party.

Krymz , 3 months ago

8:30 to 10:30 You should do public speeches, with a lutrin and all, like old school union leaders.

14zer0zer0 , 2 months ago (edited)

I'm from MN, you wouldn't believe how often I'm accused of being a Russian bot by coastal idiots. Note: Not everyone on the coast is an idiot obviously but the idiots who say this always seem to live in CA or NY.

toketeeman1016 , 3 months ago (edited)

Luv your live-show excerpts. They're the best.

future1983 , 2 months ago

> mccarthyite smears McCarthy was right BTW.

Bobby Digital , 3 months ago

Is Jimmy really poking steph?

yeah , 3 months ago

Holy crap this was savage

rippingtons60 , 3 months ago

This is really same woman who made the awesome documentary "Hubris: selling the Iraq War", and "Why We Did IT", she has fallen so far.

Porco Rosso , 1 week ago

THE SLAVS ARE CONTROLING THE WORLD!

J P , 2 months ago

THIS IS RUSSIAN WEATHER!!! Damn you Putin!

324cmac , 3 months ago

Rachel probably accidentally calls her partner, Russia.

Driver X , 3 months ago

Are they SCREAMING to seem funny or is that the only way #MAGA know how to communicate? This is like that Guntfeld show on Fox but without a budget. Are we sure @jimmy_dore isn't actually @maddow in drag?

David George , 3 months ago

Lee camp!

Big Brother , 3 months ago

Oh hey, it's great to have Lee on the show!

Paul Zozak , 3 months ago (edited)

Goddamned Jimmy Dore. Cant say enough good about him 👍🏾😉

jaysper , 6 days ago

Holy cow this woman is insane.

NewtonDynamics , 3 months ago

Is this funny? Or are these rehersing a tape for a Fox News interview?

TCt83067695 , 3 months ago

No one is commenting on Stef's perfect timing on that joke

themardybum08 , 3 months ago

My favourite lefty. Even though he's a spitter. Spitting is not acceptable, even for Alex Jones.

Nicholas Mwangangi , 3 months ago

Lee from Redacted Tonight was here. Wow I missed out

tym 2016 , 2 months ago

Hang on, is the miserable Liberal actually Jimmy Dore's wife?

Elle Pepper , 3 months ago

Come to Columbus Ohio please, me +3 at any show you do here! We love you and Stef 💜

Dizzi Mor , 3 months ago (edited)

When was she ever on the rails?? hahaa - Thank you for pointing out just how insane the propaganda is, Jimmy!

Rod Glad , 3 months ago

Rachel Maddow is the left's Glenn Beck. That's gotta hurt!

Kevin Parsley , 2 months ago

this would be a lot better if that guy w the long hair and goatee said about 1/3 of everything he said..

Dr. Dingle Dorff , 3 months ago

Jimmy on fire! (worried Russia will actually set Jimmy on fire tho)

Peace Dove , 3 months ago

Why can't everyone pay attention to JIMMY ....Thanks JIMMY much love✌💖

HeresyTalk , 3 months ago

Glenn Maddow Vs Rachel Beck

ProNorden Agrarian-Nationalism , 2 months ago (edited)

#JimmyDore and #LeeCamp are now maybe the best at topical/satirical humor. Better even than #BarryCrimmins used to be.

Paul Walpole , 1 week ago

That WP article is still up. Has a caveat saying the computer hacked wasn't connected to the grid, article goes on to mention Russia 20 times.

pishi me , 3 months ago

LOVE YOU SHOW YOUR THE BEST JOURNALIST ! YOU RE DOING COMIC BUT YOU DO A JURNALISTIC JOB WHO WE DONT HEAR IT ANYMORE THANK YOU SIR

Henry Soto , 2 months ago

After Mueller shoots down the Russia collusion theory and Trump, MSNBC has taken steps to put Maddow on a suicide watch.

[May 11, 2019] Aaron Mat on Twitter 1- If YouTube were to recommend your show, it d be recommending the leading purveyor of now debunked Tr

Apr 28, 2019 |

Rachel Maddow MSNBC ‏ 12:35 PM - 27 Apr 2019

Death by algorithm. "YouTube recommended Russia Today for understanding Mueller report."

https://www. washingtonpost.com/technology/201 9/04/26/youtube-recommended-russian-media-site-above-all-others-analysis-mueller-report-watchdog-group-says/

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:23 AM - 28 Apr 2019

1/ If YouTube were to recommend your show, it'd be recommending the leading purveyor of now debunked Trump-Russia conspiracy theories, falsehoods & innuendo of the last 2+ years. Here's a sample:

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:27 AM - 28 Apr 2019

2/ Just recently you were caught in real-time lying to your audience. You claimed Barr was handling the redactions by himself. But the chyron -- on screen right below -- told viewers the truth, that Mueller was in fact "assisting" w/ the redactions: pic.twitter.com/rTSAABngp2

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:29 AM - 28 Apr 2019

3/ There was that time in Jan 2017 when you speculated that Putin may use the pee tape & other kompromat to force Trump into withdrawing US troops near Russia. How did that one turn out? pic.twitter.com/XuXXagyCNb

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:35 AM - 28 Apr 2019

4/ BTW, just last week you falsely said that "the one thing I refused to let myself think about" was that Putin had tapes of Trump -- the very prospect you had previously floated to posit that Putin may blackmail Trump into withdrawing troops. pic.twitter.com/xMC4uPrjSK

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:37 AM - 28 Apr 2019

5/ Who could forget that time this past winter when you seized on life-threatening cold temperatures to fear-monger that Russia could kill Americans by knocking out their heat? pic.twitter.com/deo2H4SBBQ

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:40 AM - 28 Apr 2019

6/ There was that time when you explored the scenario under which Putin "gives orders" to his puppet Trump at an upcoming meeting. Do you think Putin ordered Trump to stage a coup in Venezuela/try to kill the German-Russia gas pipeline/nix the INF treaty? pic.twitter.com/cbSrGt2xR3

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:42 AM - 28 Apr 2019

7/ How about that time when you speculated -- citing the Steele dossier -- that Cohen billed Trump $50k for "tech services" to pay off Russian hackers? It was actually to pay a US firm ( https://www. wsj.com/articles/poll- rigging-for-trump-and-creating-womenforcohen-one-it-firms-work-order-11547722801?mod=e2tw&via=newsletter&source=CSAMedition ). pic.twitter.com/TcqdN8mC4z

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:44 AM - 28 Apr 2019

8/ How about when you suggested that Putin has gotten Trump to "bleed out" the FBI? If Mueller and the FBI found proof of that, I missed that part of their report. pic.twitter.com/hFT0ByWzlQ

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:45 AM - 28 Apr 2019

9/ How about the time when you speculated that Putin installed Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State? pic.twitter.com/YiUYWdxpZ5

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:47 AM - 28 Apr 2019

10/ How about when you claimed that the White House edited out a key question from the Trump-Putin presser? The WP showed that to be false, and the result of live video/audio switching issue ( https://www. washingtonpost.com/news/politics/ wp/2018/07/25/no-the-white-house-didnt-intentionally-edit-a-question-to-putin-out-of-a-video/?utm_term=.9f090d1c8eeb ). Yet you never corrected it: pic.twitter.com/LrnPyMcTMQ

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:48 AM - 28 Apr 2019

11/ Then there was that time when you lamented the suspension of US war games in Korea, and speculated that it was the fault of Putin: pic.twitter.com/cuDgHyDQPs

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:50 AM - 28 Apr 2019

12/ Have we ever gotten to the bottom of your "New Scrutiny on Russians at Trump's Inauguration" in Jan 2017 -- aka a Russian couple who posted video of their attendance? pic.twitter.com/HAieukFsWI

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:51 AM - 28 Apr 2019

13/ Based on this sample alone, dare I say that your coverage of Trump-Russia very much amounts to the "deliberate trafficking in unreality": pic.twitter.com/2OXbHhUDHa

Aaron Maté ‏ 10:56 AM - 28 Apr 2019

14/ Looking back, do you think maybe that declaring that a fake Bernie Sanders fan page run out of Albania amounted to "international warfare against our country" was perhaps a little hyperbolic? pic.twitter.com/5Meg0xLNqg

Aaron Maté ‏ 11:03 AM - 28 Apr 2019

15/ How about when you speculated that Maria Butina may have played a role in a secret Russian government plot to funnel money to the NRA in order to influence the 2016 election? How did that one pan out? pic.twitter.com/eaRgZdauty

Aaron Maté ‏ 1:46 PM - 28 Apr 2019

16/ How about when you said in 3/2017 that "if the American presidency right now is the product of collusion between the Russian intelligence services & an American campaign... we need to start preparing for what the consequences are going to be if it proves to be true." Did it? pic.twitter.com/RO71MGdICd

Aaron Maté ‏ 4:27 PM - 28 Apr 2019

17/ or when you falsely insinuated that activity in a Wikileaks grand jury was related to the Russian probe, even though the WP article you briefly flashed on screen accurately noted it "is based on [Assange's] pre-2016 conduct, not the election hacks": pic.twitter.com/0NyHxzfzmt

Aaron Maté ‏ 4:36 PM - 28 Apr 2019

18/ or when you recently claimed that the hashtag # Kids4Trump was part of a Russian effort "to destroy American democracy." How much contempt do you have for American democracy to suggest that Russian trolls could "destroy" it? pic.twitter.com/WcuG1RibkB

Aaron Maté ‏ 6:35 PM - 28 Apr 2019

19/ Remember earlier where we saw you suggest that Russia chose Tillerson as Sec of State? How about also when you pondered the same about Paul Manafort? "I mean, take the view from Moscow. If you know a guy who needs a presidential campaign manager, how about our friend Paul?": pic.twitter.com/5xcFarXakV

Duped by Russians. apparently. 10:57 AM - 28 Apr 2019

This thread is magic, Aaron!

gatesoption ‏ 11:49 AM - 28 Apr 2019

indeed

[May 11, 2019] Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they discovered later discovered and attributed to Russians later

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Also note: Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they "discovered" later - https://disobedientmedia.com/2017/12/fancy-frauds-bogus-bears-malware-m ..."
"... And look who else sits on the Atlantic Council - http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/experts/list/irene-chalupa why it's the sister of Andrea Chalupa, unregistered foreign agent employed by the DNC as a "Consultant", whose entire family is tied to Ukraine Intelligence. ..."
"... Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel Stopfake.org She is a Ukrainian Diaspora leader. The Chalupas are the first family of Ukrainian propaganda. She works with and for Ukrainian Intelligence through the Atlantic Council, Stopfake.org, and her sisters Andrea (EuromaidanPR) and Alexandra. ..."
Mar 03, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

mc888 Fri, 03/02/2018 - 20:06 Permalink

Thanks Tyler.

Also note: Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they "discovered" later - https://disobedientmedia.com/2017/12/fancy-frauds-bogus-bears-malware-m

(if that's too 'in the weeds' for you, ask your tech guys to read and verify)

And look who else sits on the Atlantic Council - http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/experts/list/irene-chalupa why it's the sister of Andrea Chalupa, unregistered foreign agent employed by the DNC as a "Consultant", whose entire family is tied to Ukraine Intelligence.

http://theantimedia.org/propornot-2017-biggest-fake-news-story/

Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel Stopfake.org She is a Ukrainian Diaspora leader. The Chalupas are the first family of Ukrainian propaganda. She works with and for Ukrainian Intelligence through the Atlantic Council, Stopfake.org, and her sisters Andrea (EuromaidanPR) and Alexandra.

and lest we forget crazy eyes #1

http://theduran.com/adam-schiffs-collusion-with-oligarch-ukrainian-arms

[May 11, 2019] Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart -- Say Hello to Fancy Bear

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Ukraine has been screaming for the US to start a war with Russia for the past 2 1/2 years. ..."
"... Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a reason for the US to take a hard-line stance against Russia? Are they using Crowdstrike to carry this out? ..."
"... Meet the real Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, part of the groups that are targeting Ukrainian positions for the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. These people were so tech savvy they didn't know the Ukrainian SBU (Ukrainian CIA/internal security) records every phone call and most internet use in Ukraine and Donbass. Donbass still uses Ukrainian phone and internet services. ..."
"... This is a civil war and people supporting either side are on both sides of the contact line. The SBU is awestruck because there are hundreds if not thousands of people helping to target the private volunteer armies supported by Ukrainian-Americans. ..."
"... If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the work done by Alexandra Chalupa? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection. These words mirror Dimitri Alperovitch's identification process in his interview with PBS Judy Woodruff. ..."
"... How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election in a new direction. ..."
"... According to Esquire.com , Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said the measures taken were directly because of his work. ..."
"... Still, this is not enough to show a conflict of interest. Alperovitch's relationships with the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state supported hackers do. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016. ..."
"... According to Robert Parry's article At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council. Their main goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. ..."
"... The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support throughout the campaign. ..."
"... What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland Security? ..."
"... Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers. ..."
"... When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm and its hackers individually . There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government. ..."
"... Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other? ..."
"... Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network ..."
"... In an interview with Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA. They consider the CIA amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance is a quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity, Falcon Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the Myrotvorets site, Informnapalm analytical agency." ..."
"... Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence. The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could be on the list. ..."
"... This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared. If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves and not draw unwanted attention. ..."
"... Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike? ..."
"... What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US intel efforts. ..."
"... The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst. Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he and these hackers need to be investigated. ..."
"... According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have, the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I have." ..."
"... While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests. He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine. ..."
Dec 29, 2017 | www.washingtonsblog.com

In the wake of the JAR-16-20296 dated December 29, 2016 about hacking and influencing the 2016 election, the need for real evidence is clear. The joint report adds nothing substantial to the October 7th report. It relies on proofs provided by the cyber security firm Crowdstrike that is clearly not on par with intelligence findings or evidence. At the top of the report is an "as is" statement showing this.

The difference between Dmitri Alperovitch's claims which are reflected in JAR-1620296 and this article is that enough evidence is provided to warrant an investigation of specific parties for the DNC hacks. The real story involves specific anti-American actors that need to be investigated for real crimes.

For instance, the malware used was an out-dated version just waiting to be found. The one other interesting point is that the Russian malware called Grizzly Steppe is from Ukraine . How did Crowdstrike miss this when it is their business to know?

Later in this article you'll meet and know a little more about the real "Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear." The bar for identification set by Crowdstrike has never been able to get beyond words like probably, maybe, could be, or should be, in their attribution.

The article is lengthy because the facts need to be in one place. The bar Dimitri Alperovitch set for identifying the hackers involved is that low. Other than asking America to trust them, how many solid facts has Alperovitch provided to back his claim of Russian involvement?

The December 29th JAR adds a flowchart that shows how a basic phishing hack is performed. It doesn't add anything significant beyond that. Noticeably, they use both their designation APT 28 and APT 29 as well as the Crowdstrike labels of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear separately.

This is important because information from outside intelligence agencies has the value of rumor or unsubstantiated information at best according to policy. Usable intelligence needs to be free from partisan politics and verifiable. Intel agencies noted back in the early 90's that every private actor in the information game was radically political.

The Hill.com article about Russia hacking the electric grid is a perfect example of why this intelligence is political and not taken seriously. If any proof of Russian involvement existed, the US would be at war. Under current laws of war, there would be no difference between an attack on the power grid or a missile strike.

According to the Hill "Private security firms provided more detailed forensic analysis, which the FBI and DHS said Thursday correlated with the IC's findings.

"The Joint Analysis Report recognizes the excellent work undertaken by
security companies and private sector network owners and operators, and provides new indicators of compromise and malicious infrastructure
identified during the course of investigations and incident response," read a statement. The report identities two Russian intelligence groups already named by CrowdStrike and other private security firms."

In an interview with Washingtonsblog , William Binney, the creator of the NSA global surveillance system said "I expected to see the IP's or other signatures of APT's 28/29 [the entities which the U.S. claims hacked the Democratic emails] and where they were located and how/when the data got transferred to them from DNC/HRC [i.e. Hillary Rodham Clinton]/etc. They seem to have been following APT 28/29 since at least 2015, so, where are they?"

According to the latest Washington Post story, Crowdstrike's CEO tied a group his company dubbed "Fancy Bear" to targeting Ukrainian artillery positions in Debaltsevo as well as across the Ukrainian civil war front for the past 2 years.

Alperovitch states in many articles the Ukrainians were using an Android app to target the self-proclaimed Republics positions and that hacking this app was what gave targeting data to the armies in Donbass instead.

Alperovitch first gained notice when he was the VP in charge of threat research with McAfee. Asked to comment on Alperovitch's discovery of Russian hacks on Larry King, John McAfee had this to say. "Based on all of his experience, McAfee does not believe that Russians were behind the hacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), John Podesta's emails, and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. As he told RT, "if it looks like the Russians did it, then I can guarantee you it was not the Russians."

How does Crowdstrike's story part with reality? First is the admission that it is probably, maybe, could be Russia hacking the DNC. " Intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin 'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to Wiki Leaks."

The public evidence never goes beyond the word possibility. While never going beyond that or using facts, Crowdstrike insists that it's Russia behind both Clinton's and the Ukrainian losses. NBC carried the story because one of the partners in Crowdstrike is also a consultant for NBC.

According to NBC the story reads like this." The company, Crowdstrike, was hired by the DNC to investigate the hack and issued a report publicly attributing it to Russian intelligence. One of Crowdstrike's senior executives is Shawn Henry, a former senior FBI official who consults for NBC News.

"But the Russians used the app to turn the tables on their foes, Crowdstrike says. Once a Ukrainian soldier downloaded it on his Android phone, the Russians were able to eavesdrop on his communications and determine his position through geo-location.

In June, Crowdstrike went public with its findings that two separate Russian intelligence agencies had hacked the DNC. One, which Crowdstrike and other researchers call Cozy Bear, is believed to be linked to Russia's CIA, known as the FSB. The other, known as Fancy Bear, is believed to be tied to the military intelligence agency, called the GRU."

The information is so certain the level of proof never rises above "believed to be." According to the December 12th Intercept article "Most importantly, the Post adds that "intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin 'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks."

Because Ukrainian soldiers are using a smartphone app they activate their geolocation to use it. Targeting is from location to location. The app would need the current user location to make it work.

In 2015 I wrote an article that showed many of the available open source tools that geolocate, and track people. They even show street view. This means that using simple means, someone with freeware or an online website, and not a military budget can look at what you are seeing at any given moment.

Where Crowdstrike fails is insisting people believe that the code they see is (a) an advanced way to geolocate and (b) it was how a state with large resources would do it. Would you leave a calling card where you would get caught and fined through sanctions or worse? If you use an anonymous online resource at least Crowdstrike won't believe you are Russian and possibly up to something.

" Using open source tools this has been going on for years in the private sector. For geolocation purposes, your smartphone is one of the greatest tools to use. Finding and following you has never been easier . Let's face it if you are going to stalk someone, "street view" on a map is the next best thing to being there. In the following video, the software hacks your modem. It's only one step from your phone or computer."

If you read that article and watch the video you'll see that using "geo-stalker" is a better choice if you are on a low budget or no budget. Should someone tell the Russians they overpaid?

According to Alperovitch, the smartphone app plotted targets in about 15 seconds . This means that there is only a small window to get information this way.

Using the open source tools I wrote about previously, you could track your targets all-day. In 2014, most Ukrainian forces were using social media regularly. It would be easy to maintain a map of their locations and track them individually.

From my research into those tools, someone using Python scripts would find it easy to take photos, listen to conversations, turn on GPS, or even turn the phone on when they chose to. Going a step further than Alperovitch, without the help of the Russian government, GRU, or FSB, anyone could take control of the drones Ukraine is fond of flying and land them. Or they could download the footage the drones are taking. It's copy and paste at that point. Would you bother the FSB, GRU, or Vladimir Putin with the details or just do it?

In the WaPo article Alperovitch states "The Fancy Bear crew evidently hacked the app, allowing the GRU to use the phone's GPS coordinates to track the Ukrainian troops' position.

In that way, the Russian military could then target the Ukrainian army with artillery and other weaponry. Ukrainian brigades operating in eastern Ukraine were on the front lines of the conflict with Russian-backed separatist forces during the early stages of the conflict in late 2014, CrowdStrike noted. By late 2014, Russian forces in the region numbered about 10,000. The Android app was useful in helping the Russian troops locate Ukrainian artillery positions."

In late 2014, I personally did the only invasive passport and weapons checks that I know of during the Ukrainian civil war. I spent days looking for the Russian army every major publication said were attacking Ukraine. The keyword Cyber Security industry leader Alperovitch used is "evidently." Crowdstrike noted that in late 2014, there were 10,000 Russian forces in the region.

When I did the passport and weapons check, it was under the condition there would be no telephone calls. We went where I wanted to go. We stopped when I said to stop. I checked the documents and the weapons with no obstacles. The weapons check was important because Ukraine was stating that Russia was giving Donbass modern weapons at the time. Each weapon is stamped with a manufacture date. The results are in the articles above.

The government in Kiev agreed with my findings throughout 2014 and 2015. There were and are no Russian troops fighting in Donbass regardless of what Mr. Alperovitch asserts. There are some Russian volunteers which I have covered in detail.

Based on my findings which the CIA would call hard evidence, almost all the fighters had Ukrainian passports. There are volunteers from other countries. In Debaltsevo today, I would question Alperovitch's assertion of Russian troops based on the fact the passports will be Ukrainian and reflect my earlier findings. There is no possibly, could be, might be, about it.

The SBU, Olexander Turchinov, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense all agree that Crowdstrike is dead wrong in this assessment . Although subtitles aren't on it, the former Commandant of Ukrainian Army Headquarters thanks God Russia never invaded or Ukraine would have been in deep trouble.

How could Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike be this wrong on easily checked detail and still get this much media attention? Could the investment made by Google and some very large players have anything to do with the media Crowdstrike is causing?

In an interview with PBS newshour on December 22nd 2016, Dmitri Alperovitch finally produced the hard evidence he has for Russian involvement clearly. To be fair, he did state it several times before. It just didn't resonate or the media and US intelligence agencies weren't listening.

According to Alperovitch, the CEO of a $150 million dollar cyber security company "And when you think about, well, who would be interested in targeting Ukraine artillerymen in eastern Ukraine who has interest in hacking the Democratic Party, Russia government comes to mind, but specifically, Russian military that would have operational over forces in the Ukraine and would target these artillerymen."

That statement is most of the proof of Russian involvement he has. That's it, that's all the CIA, FBI have to go on. It's why they can't certify the intelligence. It's why they can't get beyond the threshold of maybe.

Woodruff then asked two important questions. She asked if Crowdstrike was still working for the DNC. Alperovitch responded "We're protecting them going forward. The investigation is closed in terms of what happened there. But certainly, we've seen the campaigns, political organizations are continued to be targeted, and they continue to hire us and use our technology to protect themselves."

Based on the evidence he presented Woodruff, there is no need to investigate further? Obviously, there is no need, the money is rolling in.

Second and most important Judy Woodruff asked if there were any questions about conflicts of interest, how he would answer? This is where Dmitri Alperovitch's story starts to unwind.

His response was "Well, this report was not about the DNC. This report was about information we uncovered about what these Russian actors were doing in eastern Ukraine in terms of locating these artillery units of the Ukrainian army and then targeting them. So, what we just did is said that it looks exactly as the same to the evidence we've already uncovered from the DNC, linking the two together."

Why is this reasonable statement going to take his story off the rails? First, let's look at the facts surrounding his evidence and then look at the real conflicts of interest involved. While carefully evading the question, he neglects to state his conflicts of interest are worthy of a DOJ investigation. Can you mislead the federal government about national security issues and not get investigated yourself?

If Alperovitch's evidence is all there is, then the US government owes some large apologies to Russia.

After showing who is targeting Ukrainian artillerymen, we'll look at what might be a criminal conspiracy.

Crowdstrike CEO Dmitri Alperovitch story about Russian hacks that cost Hillary Clinton the election was broadsided by the SBU (Ukrainian Intelligence and Security) in Ukraine. If Dimitri Alperovitch is working for Ukrainian Intelligence and is providing intelligence to 17 US Intelligence Agencies is it a conflict of interest?

Ukraine has been screaming for the US to start a war with Russia for the past 2 1/2 years. Using facts accepted by leaders on both sides of the conflict, the main proof Crowdstrike shows for evidence doesn't just unravel, it falls apart. Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a reason for the US to take a hard-line stance against Russia? Are they using Crowdstrike to carry this out?

Real Fancy Bear?

Real Fancy Bear?

Meet the real Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, part of the groups that are targeting Ukrainian positions for the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. These people were so tech savvy they didn't know the Ukrainian SBU (Ukrainian CIA/internal security) records every phone call and most internet use in Ukraine and Donbass. Donbass still uses Ukrainian phone and internet services.

These are normal people fighting back against private volunteer armies that target their homes, schools, and hospitals. The private volunteer armies like Pravy Sektor, Donbas Battalion, Azov, and Aidar have been cited for atrocities like child rape, torture, murder, and kidnapping. That just gets the ball rolling. These are a large swath of the Ukrainian servicemen Crowdstrike hopes to protect.

This story which just aired on Ukrainian news channel TCN shows the SBU questioning and arresting some of what they call an army of people in the Ukrainian-controlled areas. This news video shows people in Toretsk that provided targeting information to Donbass and people probably caught up in the net accidentally.

This is a civil war and people supporting either side are on both sides of the contact line. The SBU is awestruck because there are hundreds if not thousands of people helping to target the private volunteer armies supported by Ukrainian-Americans.

The first person they show on the video is a woman named Olga Lubochka. On the video her voice is heard from a recorded call saying " In the field, on the left about 130 degrees. Aim and you'll get it." and then " Oh, you hit it so hard you leveled it to the ground.""Am I going to get a medal for this?"

Other people caught up in the raid claim and probably were only calling friends they know. It's common for people to call and tell their family about what is going on around them. This has been a staple in the war especially in outlying villages for people aligned with both sides of the conflict. A neighbor calls his friend and says "you won't believe what I just saw."

Another "fancy bear," Alexander Schevchenko was caught calling friends and telling them that armored personnel carriers had just driven by.

Anatoli Prima, father of a DNR(Donetsk People's Republic) soldier was asked to find out what unit was there and how many artillery pieces.

One woman providing information about fuel and incoming equipment has a husband fighting on the opposite side in Gorlovka. Gorlovka is a major city that's been under artillery attack since 2014. For the past 2 1/2 years, she has remained in their home in Toretsk. According to the video, he's vowed to take no prisoners when they rescue the area.

When asked why they hate Ukraine so much, one responded that they just wanted things to go back to what they were like before the coup in February 2014.

Another said they were born in the Soviet Union and didn't like what was going on in Kiev. At the heart of this statement is the anti- OUN, antinationalist sentiment that most people living in Ukraine feel. The OUNb Bandera killed millions of people in Ukraine, including starving 3 million Soviet soldiers to death. The new Ukraine was founded in 1991 by OUN nationalists outside the fledgling country.

Is giving misleading or false information to 17 US Intelligence Agencies a crime? If it's done by a cyber security industry leader like Crowdstrike should that be investigated? If unwinding the story from the "targeting of Ukrainian volunteers" side isn't enough, we should look at this from the American perspective. How did the Russia influencing the election and DNC hack story evolve? Who's involved? Does this pose conflicts of interest for Dmitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? And let's face it, a hacking story isn't complete until real hackers with the skills, motivation, and reason are exposed.

In the last article exploring the DNC hacks the focus was on the Chalupas . The article focused on Alexandra, Andrea, and Irene Chalupa. Their participation in the DNC hack story is what brought it to international attention in the first place.

According to journalist and DNC activist Andrea Chalupa on her Facebook page " After Chalupa sent the email to Miranda (which mentions that she had invited this reporter to a meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Washington), it triggered high-level concerns within the DNC, given the sensitive nature of her work. "That's when we knew it was the Russians," said a Democratic Party source who has been directly involved in the internal probe into the hacked emails. In order to stem the damage, the source said, "we told her to stop her research."" July 25, 2016

If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the work done by Alexandra Chalupa? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection. These words mirror Dimitri Alperovitch's identification process in his interview with PBS Judy Woodruff.

How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election in a new direction.

According to Esquire.com , Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said the measures taken were directly because of his work.

Still, this is not enough to show a conflict of interest. Alperovitch's relationships with the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state supported hackers do. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016.

In my previous article I showed in detail how the Chalupas fit into this. A brief bullet point review looks like this.

  • The Chalupas are not Democrat or Republican. They are OUNb. The OUNb worked hard to start a war between the USA and Russia for the last 50 years. According to the Ukrainian Weekly in a rare open statement of their existence in 2011, "Other statements were issued in the Ukrainian language by the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (B) and the International Conference in Support of Ukraine. The OUN (Bandera wing) called for" What is OUNb Bandera? They follow the same political policy and platform that was developed in the 1930's by Stepan Bandera. When these people go to a Holocaust memorial they are celebrating both the dead and the OUNb SS that killed There is no getting around this fact. The OUNb have no concept of democratic values and want an authoritarian fascism.
  • Alexandra Chalupa- According to the Ukrainian Weekly , "The effort, known as Digital Miadan, gained momentum following the initial Twitter storms. Leading the effort were: Lara Chelak, Andrea Chalupa, Alexandra Chalupa, Constatin Kostenko and others." The Digital Maidan was also how they raised money for the coup. This was how the Ukrainian emigres bought the bullets that were used on Euromaidan. Ukraine's chubby nazi, Dima Yarosh stated openly he was taking money from the Ukrainian emigres during Euromaidan and Pravy Sektor still fundraises openly in North America. The "Sniper Massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine by Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, University of Ottowa shows clearly detailed evidence how the massacre happened. It has Pravy Sektor confessions that show who created the "heavenly hundred. Their admitted involvement as leaders of Digital Maidan by both Chalupas is a clear violation of the Neutrality Act and has up to a 25 year prison sentence attached to it because it ended in a coup.
  • Andrea Chalupa-2014, in a Huff Post article Sept. 1 2016, Andrea Chalupa described Sviatoslav Yurash as one of Ukraine's important "dreamers." He is a young activist that founded Euromaidan Press . Beyond the gushing glow what she doesn't say is who he actually is. Sviatoslav Yurash was Dmitri Yarosh's spokesman just after Maidan. He is a hardcore Ukrainian nationalist and was rewarded with the Deputy Director position for the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) in Kiev .

In January, 2014 when he showed up at the Maidan protests he was 17 years old. He became the foreign language media representative for Vitali Klitschko, Arseni Yatsenyuk, and Oleh Tyahnybok. All press enquiries went through Yurash. To meet Dimitri Yurash you had to go through Sviatoslav Yurash as a Macleans reporter found out.

At 18 years old, Sviatoslav Yurash became the spokesman for Ministry of Defense of Ukraine under Andrei Paruby. He was Dimitri Yarosh's spokesman and can be seen either behind Yarosh on videos at press conferences or speaking ahead of him to reporters. From January 2014 onward, to speak to Dimitri Yarosh, you set up an appointment with Yurash.

Andrea Chalupa has worked with Yurash's Euromaidan Press which is associated with Informnapalm.org and supplies the state level hackers for Ukraine.

  • Irene Chalupa- Another involved Chalupa we need to cover to do the story justice is Irene Chalupa. From her bio – Irena Chalupa is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center. She is also a senior correspondent at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where she has worked for more than twenty years. Ms. Chalupa previously served as an editor for the Atlantic Council, where she covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Irena Chalupa is also the news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel org She is also a Ukrainian emigre leader.

According to Robert Parry's article At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council. Their main goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.

The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support throughout the campaign.

What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland Security?

When you put someone that has so much to gain in charge of an investigation that could change an election, that is a conflict of interest. If the think tank is linked heavily to groups that want war with Russia like the Atlantic Council and the CEEC, it opens up criminal conspiracy.

If the person in charge of the investigation is a fellow at the think tank that wants a major conflict with Russia it is a definite conflict of interest. Both the Atlantic Council and clients stood to gain Cabinet and Policy positions based on how the result of his work affects the election. It clouds the results of the investigation. In Dmitri Alperovitch's case, he found the perpetrator before he was positive there was a crime.

Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers.

When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm and its hackers individually . There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government.

Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other?

Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other?

Crowdstrike is also following their hack of a Russian government official after the DNC hack. It closely resembles the same method used with the DNC because it was an email hack.

ff-twitter-com-2016-12-30-02-24-54

Crowdstrike's product line includes Falcon Host, Falcon Intelligence, Falcon Overwatch and Falcon DNS. Is it possible the hackers in Falcons Flame are another service Crowdstrike offers? Although this profile says Virginia, tweets are from the Sofia, Bulgaria time zone and he writes in Russian. Another curiosity considering the Fancy Bear source code is in Russian. This image shows Crowdstrike in their network.

Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network

In an interview with Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA. They consider the CIA amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance is a quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity, Falcon Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the Myrotvorets site, Informnapalm analytical agency."

In the image it shows a network diagram of Crowdstrike following the Surkov leaks. The network communication goes through a secondary source. This is something you do when you don't want to be too obvious. Here is another example of that.

Ukrainian Intelligence and the real Fancy Bear?

Ukrainian Intelligence and the real Fancy Bear?

Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence. The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could be on the list.

Should someone tell Dimitri Alperovitch that Gerashchenko, who is now in charge of Peacekeeper recently threatened president-elect Donald Trump that he would put him on his "Peacemaker" site as a target? The same has been done with Silvio Berscaloni in the past.

Trying not to be obvious, the Head of Ukraine's Information Ministry (UA Intelligence) tweeted something interesting that ties Alperovitch and Crowdstrike to the Ukrainian Intelligence hackers and the Information Ministry even tighter.

Trying to keep it hush hush?

Trying to keep it hush hush?

This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared. If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves and not draw unwanted attention.

These same hackers are associated with Alexandra, Andrea, and Irene Chalupa through the portals and organizations they work with through their OUNb. The hackers are funded and directed by or through the same OUNb channels that Alperovitch is working for and with to promote the story of Russian hacking.

Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike?

Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike?

When you look at the image for the hacking group in the euromaidanpress article, one of the hackers identifies themselves as one of Dimitri Yarosh's Pravy Sektor members by the Pravy Sektor sweatshirt they have on. Noted above, Pravy Sektor admitted to killing the people at the Maidan protest and sparked the coup.

Going further with the linked Euromaidanpress article the hackers say" Let's understand that Ukrainian hackers and Russian hackers once constituted a single very powerful group. Ukrainian hackers have a rather high level of work. So the help of the USA I don't know, why would we need it? We have all the talent and special means for this. And I don't think that the USA or any NATO country would make such sharp movements in international politics."

What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US intel efforts.

The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst. Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he and these hackers need to be investigated.

According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have, the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I have."

While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests. He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine.

The evidence presented deserves investigation because it looks like the case for conflict of interest is the least Dimitri Alperovitch should look forward to. If these hackers are the real Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, they really did make sharp movements in international politics.

By pawning it off on Russia, they made a worldwide embarrassment of an outgoing President of the United States and made the President Elect the suspect of rumor.

From the Observer.com , " Andrea Chalupa -- the sister of DNC research staffer Alexandra Chalupa -- claimed on social media, without any evidence, that despite Clinton conceding the election to Trump, the voting results need to be audited to because Clinton couldn't have lost -- it must have been Russia. Chalupa hysterically tweeted to every politician on Twitter to audit the vote because of Russia and claimed the TV show The Americans , about two KGB spies living in America, is real."

Quite possibly now the former UK Ambassador Craig Murry's admission of being the involved party to "leaks" should be looked at. " Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia . Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling."

[May 11, 2019] Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia

Highly recommended!
Looks like Chalupa was an important player in Steele dossier. That suggests Ukrainian diaspora, and possibly Ukrainian SBU links.
Notable quotes:
"... Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia. ..."
"... That would tend to work against theories that involve Skripal in a significant role in generating the dossier; though it would not rule him out in a more peripheral role ..."
"... We can also conclude neither bruce ohr, or the expat russian living in the us are neutral players in any of this too.. Was someone paid a fee to say something?? ..."
"... Steele is a stranger to the truth in any event so I wouldn't set much store by it – though if the dossier is third hand material at best it certainly explains why it is such rubbish. Steele's ability to get cash by selling steaming nonsense to the gullible is amazing. ..."
"... "A Ukrainian political consultant has revealed to Sputnik that former MI6 agent Christopher Steele sought and paid for researchers in Ukraine to concoct fake stories about Donald Trump prior his election as US president to use in the now-infamous dossier that supposedly contained damning evidence of Russia-Trump collusion. ..."
"... Radio Sputnik's Lee Stranahan spoke previously with Ukrainian political consultant and former diplomat Andrii Telizhenko about his connections to a Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative named Alexandra Chalupa who also worked for clients in Ukrainian politics. Chalupa told Politico in January 2017 that beginning in 2015, she pulled on a network of sources she'd established in Kiev and Washington to try and turn up dirt on Trump, once his star began to rise in the Republican primary campaign." ..."
Aug 30, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

Ed Snack , August 27, 2018 at 21:21

Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia.

That would tend to work against theories that involve Skripal in a significant role in generating the dossier; though it would not rule him out in a more peripheral role.

Edward , August 27, 2018 at 22:43

Such faith.

james , August 27, 2018 at 23:34

We can also conclude neither bruce ohr, or the expat russian living in the us are neutral players in any of this too.. Was someone paid a fee to say something?? your last comment-conclusion is very shaky at best..

craig Post author , August 28, 2018 at 07:08

Ed,

Could you give a link to the source of that info? Steele is a stranger to the truth in any event so I wouldn't set much store by it – though if the dossier is third hand material at best it certainly explains why it is such rubbish. Steele's ability to get cash by selling steaming nonsense to the gullible is amazing.

Ed Snack , August 28, 2018 at 09:54

The Hill has an article, can't post a link from my phone, but google Ohr hand written notes. Apparently reliable and sounds very interesting.

I wonder what will get out from his testimony tomorrow.

Ort , August 28, 2018 at 18:52

Craig, FYI I believe that this is the article Ed cites: "The handwritten notes exposing what Fusion GPS told DOJ about Trump"

Jo , August 29, 2018 at 12:03

5103

"A Ukrainian political consultant has revealed to Sputnik that former MI6 agent Christopher Steele sought and paid for researchers in Ukraine to concoct fake stories about Donald Trump prior his election as US president to use in the now-infamous dossier that supposedly contained damning evidence of Russia-Trump collusion.

Radio Sputnik's Lee Stranahan spoke previously with Ukrainian political consultant and former diplomat Andrii Telizhenko about his connections to a Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative named Alexandra Chalupa who also worked for clients in Ukrainian politics. Chalupa told Politico in January 2017 that beginning in 2015, she pulled on a network of sources she'd established in Kiev and Washington to try and turn up dirt on Trump, once his star began to rise in the Republican primary campaign."

[May 11, 2019] Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire by KENNETH P. VOGEL and DAVID STERN

Notable quotes:
"... In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities -- including Ukrainian-Americans -- she said that, when Trump's unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump's ties to Russia, as well. ..."
"... Both Shulyar and Chalupa said the purpose of their initial meeting was to organize a June reception at the embassy to promote Ukraine. According to the embassy's website, the event highlighted female Ukrainian leaders, featuring speeches by Ukrainian parliamentarian Hanna Hopko, who discussed "Ukraine's fight against the Russian aggression in Donbas," and longtime Hillary Clinton confidante Melanne Verveer, who worked for Clinton in the State Department and was a vocal surrogate during the presidential campaign. ..."
"... Almost as quickly as Chalupa's efforts attracted the attention of the Ukrainian Embassy and Democrats, she also found herself the subject of some unwanted attention from overseas. ..."
"... Chalupa, though, indicated in an email that was later hacked and released by WikiLeaks that the Open World Leadership Center "put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort." ..."
"... In the email, which was sent in early May to then-DNC communications director Luis Miranda, Chalupa noted that she had extended an invitation to the Library of Congress forum to veteran Washington investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Two days before the event, he had published a story for Yahoo News revealing the unraveling of a $26 million deal between Manafort and a Russian oligarch related to a telecommunications venture in Ukraine. And Chalupa wrote in the email she'd been "working with for the past few weeks" with Isikoff "and connected him to the Ukrainians" at the event. ..."
"... A DNC official stressed that Chalupa was a consultant paid to do outreach for the party's political department, not a researcher. She undertook her investigations into Trump, Manafort and Russia on her own, and the party did not incorporate her findings in its dossiers on the subjects, the official said, stressing that the DNC had been building robust research books on Trump and his ties to Russia long before Chalupa began sounding alarms. ..."
"... Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a Ukrainian former diplomat who served as the country's head of security under Poroshenko but is now affiliated with a leading opponent of Poroshenko, said it was fishy that "only one part of the black ledger appeared." He asked, "Where is the handwriting analysis?" and said it was "crazy" to announce an investigation based on the ledgers. He met last month in Washington with Trump allies, and said, "of course they all recognize that our [anti-corruption bureau] intervened in the presidential campaign." ..."
"... Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, Arsen Avakov, piled on, trashing Trump on Twitter in July as a "clown" and asserting that Trump is "an even bigger danger to the US than terrorism." ..."
"... Avakov, in a Facebook post, lashed out at Trump for his confusing Crimea comments, calling the assessment the "diagnosis of a dangerous misfit," according to a translated screenshot featured in one media report, though he later deleted the post. He called Trump "dangerous for Ukraine and the US" and noted that Manafort worked with Yanukovych when the former Ukrainian leader "fled to Russia through Crimea. Where would Manafort lead Trump?" ..."
Jan 11, 2017 | www.politico.com

Manafort's work for Yanukovych caught the attention of a veteran Democratic operative named Alexandra Chalupa, who had worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton administration. Chalupa went on to work as a staffer, then as a consultant, for Democratic National Committee. The DNC paid her $412,000 from 2004 to June 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records, though she also was paid by other clients during that time, including Democratic campaigns and the DNC's arm for engaging expatriate Democrats around the world.

A daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who maintains strong ties to the Ukrainian-American diaspora and the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, Chalupa, a lawyer by training, in 2014 was doing pro bono work for another client interested in the Ukrainian crisis and began researching Manafort's role in Yanukovych's rise, as well as his ties to the pro-Russian oligarchs who funded Yanukovych's political party.

In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities -- including Ukrainian-Americans -- she said that, when Trump's unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump's ties to Russia, as well.

She occasionally shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clinton's campaign, Chalupa said. In January 2016 -- months before Manafort had taken any role in Trump's campaign -- Chalupa told a senior DNC official that, when it came to Trump's campaign, "I felt there was a Russia connection," Chalupa recalled. "And that, if there was, that we can expect Paul Manafort to be involved in this election," said Chalupa, who at the time also was warning leaders in the Ukrainian-American community that Manafort was "Putin's political brain for manipulating U.S. foreign policy and elections."

he said she shared her concern with Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S., Valeriy Chaly, and one of his top aides, Oksana Shulyar, during a March 2016 meeting at the Ukrainian Embassy. According to someone briefed on the meeting, Chaly said that Manafort was very much on his radar, but that he wasn't particularly concerned about the operative's ties to Trump since he didn't believe Trump stood much of a chance of winning the GOP nomination, let alone the presidency.

That was not an uncommon view at the time, and, perhaps as a result, Trump's ties to Russia -- let alone Manafort's -- were not the subject of much attention.
That all started to change just four days after Chalupa's meeting at the embassy, when it was reported that Trump had in fact hired Manafort, suggesting that Chalupa may have been on to something. She quickly found herself in high demand. The day after Manafort's hiring was revealed, she briefed the DNC's communications staff on Manafort, Trump and their ties to Russia, according to an operative familiar with the situation.

A former DNC staffer described the exchange as an "informal conversation," saying "'briefing' makes it sound way too formal," and adding, "We were not directing or driving her work on this." Yet, the former DNC staffer and the operative familiar with the situation agreed that with the DNC's encouragement, Chalupa asked embassy staff to try to arrange an interview in which Poroshenko might discuss Manafort's ties to Yanukovych.

While the embassy declined that request, officials there became "helpful" in Chalupa's efforts, she said, explaining that she traded information and leads with them. "If I asked a question, they would provide guidance, or if there was someone I needed to follow up with." But she stressed, "There were no documents given, nothing like that."

Chalupa said the embassy also worked directly with reporters researching Trump, Manafort and Russia to point them in the right directions. She added, though, "they were being very protective and not speaking to the press as much as they should have. I think they were being careful because their situation was that they had to be very, very careful because they could not pick sides. It's a political issue, and they didn't want to get involved politically because they couldn't."

Shulyar vehemently denied working with reporters or with Chalupa on anything related to Trump or Manafort, explaining "we were stormed by many reporters to comment on this subject, but our clear and adamant position was not to give any comment [and] not to interfere into the campaign affairs."

Both Shulyar and Chalupa said the purpose of their initial meeting was to organize a June reception at the embassy to promote Ukraine. According to the embassy's website, the event highlighted female Ukrainian leaders, featuring speeches by Ukrainian parliamentarian Hanna Hopko, who discussed "Ukraine's fight against the Russian aggression in Donbas," and longtime Hillary Clinton confidante Melanne Verveer, who worked for Clinton in the State Department and was a vocal surrogate during the presidential campaign.

Shulyar said her work with Chalupa "didn't involve the campaign," and she specifically stressed that "We have never worked to research and disseminate damaging information about Donald Trump and Paul Manafort."

But Andrii Telizhenko, who worked as a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy under Shulyar, said she instructed him to help Chalupa research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia. "Oksana said that if I had any information, or knew other people who did, then I should contact Chalupa," recalled Telizhenko, who is now a political consultant in Kiev. "They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa," he said, adding "Oksana was keeping it all quiet," but "the embassy worked very closely with" Chalupa.

In fact, sources familiar with the effort say that Shulyar specifically called Telizhenko into a meeting with Chalupa to provide an update on an American media outlet's ongoing investigation into Manafort.

Telizhenko recalled that Chalupa told him and Shulyar that, "If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump's involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September."

Chalupa confirmed that, a week after Manafort's hiring was announced, she discussed the possibility of a congressional investigation with a foreign policy legislative assistant in the office of Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who co-chairs the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus. But, Chalupa said, "It didn't go anywhere."

Asked about the effort, the Kaptur legislative assistant called it a "touchy subject" in an internal email to colleagues that was accidentally forwarded to Politico.

Kaptur's office later emailed an official statement explaining that the lawmaker is backing a bill to create an independent commission to investigate "possible outside interference in our elections." The office added "at this time, the evidence related to this matter points to Russia, but Congresswoman Kaptur is concerned with any evidence of foreign entities interfering in our elections."

•••

Almost as quickly as Chalupa's efforts attracted the attention of the Ukrainian Embassy and Democrats, she also found herself the subject of some unwanted attention from overseas.

Within a few weeks of her initial meeting at the embassy with Shulyar and Chaly, Chalupa on April 20 received the first of what became a series of messages from the administrators of her private Yahoo email account, warning her that "state-sponsored actors" were trying to hack into her emails.

She kept up her crusade, appearing on a panel a week after the initial hacking message to discuss her research on Manafort with a group of Ukrainian investigative journalists gathered at the Library of Congress for a program sponsored by a U.S. congressional agency called the Open World Leadership Center.

Center spokeswoman Maura Shelden stressed that her group is nonpartisan and ensures "that our delegations hear from both sides of the aisle, receiving bipartisan information." She said the Ukrainian journalists in subsequent days met with Republican officials in North Carolina and elsewhere. And she said that, before the Library of Congress event, "Open World's program manager for Ukraine did contact Chalupa to advise her that Open World is a nonpartisan agency of the Congress."

Chalupa, though, indicated in an email that was later hacked and released by WikiLeaks that the Open World Leadership Center "put me on the program to speak specifically about Paul Manafort."

In the email, which was sent in early May to then-DNC communications director Luis Miranda, Chalupa noted that she had extended an invitation to the Library of Congress forum to veteran Washington investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Two days before the event, he had published a story for Yahoo News revealing the unraveling of a $26 million deal between Manafort and a Russian oligarch related to a telecommunications venture in Ukraine. And Chalupa wrote in the email she'd been "working with for the past few weeks" with Isikoff "and connected him to the Ukrainians" at the event.

Isikoff, who accompanied Chalupa to a reception at the Ukrainian Embassy immediately after the Library of Congress event, declined to comment.

Chalupa further indicated in her hacked May email to the DNC that she had additional sensitive information about Manafort that she intended to share "offline" with Miranda and DNC research director Lauren Dillon, including "a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I'm working on you should be aware of." Explaining that she didn't feel comfortable sharing the intel over email, Chalupa attached a screenshot of a warning from Yahoo administrators about "state-sponsored" hacking on her account, explaining, "Since I started digging into Manafort these messages have been a daily occurrence on my yahoo account despite changing my password often."

Dillon and Miranda declined to comment.

A DNC official stressed that Chalupa was a consultant paid to do outreach for the party's political department, not a researcher. She undertook her investigations into Trump, Manafort and Russia on her own, and the party did not incorporate her findings in its dossiers on the subjects, the official said, stressing that the DNC had been building robust research books on Trump and his ties to Russia long before Chalupa began sounding alarms.

Nonetheless, Chalupa's hacked email reportedly escalated concerns among top party officials, hardening their conclusion that Russia likely was behind the cyber intrusions with which the party was only then beginning to grapple.

Chalupa left the DNC after the Democratic convention in late July to focus fulltime on her research into Manafort, Trump and Russia . She said she provided off-the-record information and guidance to "a lot of journalists" working on stories related to Manafort and Trump's Russia connections, despite what she described as escalating harassment.

... ... ...

•••

While it's not uncommon for outside operatives to serve as intermediaries between governments and reporters, one of the more damaging Russia-related stories for the Trump campaign -- and certainly for Manafort -- can be traced more directly to the Ukrainian government.

Documents released by an independent Ukrainian government agency -- and publicized by a parliamentarian -- appeared to show $12.7 million in cash payments that were earmarked for Manafort by the Russia-aligned party of the deposed former president, Yanukovych.

The New York Times, in the August story revealing the ledgers' existence, reported that the payments earmarked for Manafort were "a focus" of an investigation by Ukrainian anti-corruption officials, while CNN reported days later that the FBI was pursuing an overlapping inquiry.

Clinton's campaign seized on the story to advance Democrats' argument that Trump's campaign was closely linked to Russia. The ledger represented "more troubling connections between Donald Trump's team and pro-Kremlin elements in Ukraine," Robby Mook, Clinton's campaign manager, said in a statement. He demanded that Trump "disclose campaign chair Paul Manafort's and all other campaign employees' and advisers' ties to Russian or pro-Kremlin entities, including whether any of Trump's employees or advisers are currently representing and or being paid by them."

A former Ukrainian investigative journalist and current parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, who was elected in 2014 as part of Poroshenko's party, held a news conference to highlight the ledgers, and to urge Ukrainian and American law enforcement to aggressively investigate Manafort.

"I believe and understand the basis of these payments are totally against the law -- we have the proof from these books," Leshchenko said during the news conference, which attracted international media coverage. "If Mr. Manafort denies any allegations, I think he has to be interrogated into this case and prove his position that he was not involved in any misconduct on the territory of Ukraine," Leshchenko added.

Manafort denied receiving any off-books cash from Yanukovych's Party of Regions, and said that he had never been contacted about the ledger by Ukrainian or American investigators, later telling POLITICO "I was just caught in the crossfire."

According to a series of memos reportedly compiled for Trump's opponents by a former British intelligence agent, Yanukovych, in a secret meeting with Putin on the day after the Times published its report, admitted that he had authorized "substantial kickback payments to Manafort." But according to the report, which was published Tuesday by BuzzFeed but remains unverified. Yanukovych assured Putin "that there was no documentary trail left behind which could provide clear evidence of this" -- an alleged statement that seemed to implicitly question the authenticity of the ledger.

The scrutiny around the ledgers -- combined with that from other stories about his Ukraine work -- proved too much, and he stepped down from the Trump campaign less than a week after the Times story.

At the time, Leshchenko suggested that his motivation was partly to undermine Trump. "For me, it was important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world," Leshchenko told the Financial Times about two weeks after his news conference. The newspaper noted that Trump's candidacy had spurred "Kiev's wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a U.S. election," and the story quoted Leshchenko asserting that the majority of Ukraine's politicians are "on Hillary Clinton's side."

But by this month, Leshchenko was seeking to recast his motivation, telling Politico, "I didn't care who won the U.S. elections. This was a decision for the American voters to decide." His goal in highlighting the ledgers, he said was "to raise these issues on a political level and emphasize the importance of the investigation."

In a series of answers provided to Politico, a spokesman for Poroshenko distanced his administration from both Leshchenko's efforts and those of the agency that reLeshchenko Leshchenko leased the ledgers, The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. It was created in 2014 as a condition for Ukraine to receive aid from the U.S. and the European Union, and it signed an evidence-sharing agreement with the FBI in late June -- less than a month and a half before it released the ledgers.

The bureau is "fully independent," the Poroshenko spokesman said, adding that when it came to the presidential administration there was "no targeted action against Manafort." He added "as to Serhiy Leshchenko, he positions himself as a representative of internal opposition in the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko's faction, despite [the fact that] he belongs to the faction," the spokesman said, adding, "it was about him personally who pushed [the anti-corruption bureau] to proceed with investigation on Manafort."

But an operative who has worked extensively in Ukraine, including as an adviser to Poroshenko, said it was highly unlikely that either Leshchenko or the anti-corruption bureau would have pushed the issue without at least tacit approval from Poroshenko or his closest allies.

"It was something that Poroshenko was probably aware of and could have stopped if he wanted to," said the operative.

And, almost immediately after Trump's stunning victory over Clinton, questions began mounting about the investigations into the ledgers -- and the ledgers themselves.

An official with the anti-corruption bureau told a Ukrainian newspaper, "Mr. Manafort does not have a role in this case."

And, while the anti-corruption bureau told Politico late last month that a "general investigation [is] still ongoing" of the ledger, it said Manafort is not a target of the investigation. "As he is not the Ukrainian citizen, [the anti-corruption bureau] by the law couldn't investigate him personally," the bureau said in a statement.

Some Poroshenko critics have gone further, suggesting that the bureau is backing away from investigating because the ledgers might have been doctored or even forged.

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a Ukrainian former diplomat who served as the country's head of security under Poroshenko but is now affiliated with a leading opponent of Poroshenko, said it was fishy that "only one part of the black ledger appeared." He asked, "Where is the handwriting analysis?" and said it was "crazy" to announce an investigation based on the ledgers. He met last month in Washington with Trump allies, and said, "of course they all recognize that our [anti-corruption bureau] intervened in the presidential campaign."

And in an interview this week, Manafort, who re-emerged as an informal advisor to Trump after Election Day, suggested that the ledgers were inauthentic and called their publication "a politically motivated false attack on me. My role as a paid consultant was public. There was nothing off the books, but the way that this was presented tried to make it look shady."

He added that he felt particularly wronged by efforts to cast his work in Ukraine as pro-Russian, arguing "all my efforts were focused on helping Ukraine move into Europe and the West." He specifically cited his work on denuclearizing the country and on the European Union trade and political pact that Yanukovych spurned before fleeing to Russia. "In no case was I ever involved in anything that would be contrary to U.S. interests," Manafort said.

Yet Russia seemed to come to the defense of Manafort and Trump last month, when a spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry charged that the Ukrainian government used the ledgers as a political weapon.

"Ukraine seriously complicated the work of Trump's election campaign headquarters by planting information according to which Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign chairman, allegedly accepted money from Ukrainian oligarchs," Maria Zakharova said at a news briefing, according to a transcript of her remarks posted on the Foreign Ministry's website. "All of you have heard this remarkable story," she told assembled reporters.

•••

Beyond any efforts to sabotage Trump, Ukrainian officials didn't exactly extend a hand of friendship to the GOP nominee during the campaign.

The ambassador, Chaly, penned an op-ed for The Hill, in which he chastised Trump for a confusing series of statements in which the GOP candidate at one point expressed a willingness to consider recognizing Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea as legitimate. The op-ed made some in the embassy uneasy, sources said.

"That was like too close for comfort, even for them," said Chalupa. "That was something that was as risky as they were going to be."

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk warned on Facebook that Trump had "challenged the very values of the free world."

Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, Arsen Avakov, piled on, trashing Trump on Twitter in July as a "clown" and asserting that Trump is "an even bigger danger to the US than terrorism."

Avakov, in a Facebook post, lashed out at Trump for his confusing Crimea comments, calling the assessment the "diagnosis of a dangerous misfit," according to a translated screenshot featured in one media report, though he later deleted the post. He called Trump "dangerous for Ukraine and the US" and noted that Manafort worked with Yanukovych when the former Ukrainian leader "fled to Russia through Crimea. Where would Manafort lead Trump?"

The Trump-Ukraine relationship grew even more fraught in September with reports that the GOP nominee had snubbed Poroshenko on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where the Ukrainian president tried to meet both major party candidates, but scored only a meeting with Clinton.

Telizhenko, the former embassy staffer, said that, during the primaries, Chaly, the country's ambassador in Washington, had actually instructed the embassy not to reach out to Trump's campaign, even as it was engaging with those of Clinton and Trump's leading GOP rival, Ted Cruz.

"We had an order not to talk to the Trump team, because he was critical of Ukraine and the government and his critical position on Crimea and the conflict," said Telizhenko. "I was yelled at when I proposed to talk to Trump," he said, adding, "The ambassador said not to get involved -- Hillary is going to win."

This account was confirmed by Nalyvaichenko, the former diplomat and security chief now affiliated with a Poroshenko opponent, who said, "The Ukrainian authorities closed all doors and windows -- this is from the Ukrainian side." He called the strategy "bad and short-sighted."

Andriy Artemenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian associated with a conservative opposition party, did meet with Trump's team during the campaign and said he personally offered to set up similar meetings for Chaly but was rebuffed.

"It was clear that they were supporting Hillary Clinton's candidacy," Artemenko said. "They did everything from organizing meetings with the Clinton team, to publicly supporting her, to criticizing Trump. I think that they simply didn't meet because they thought that Hillary would win."

Shulyar rejected the characterizations that the embassy had a ban on interacting with Trump, instead explaining that it "had different diplomats assigned for dealing with different teams tailoring the content and messaging. So it was not an instruction to abstain from the engagement but rather an internal discipline for diplomats not to get involved into a field she or he was not assigned to, but where another colleague was involved."

And she pointed out that Chaly traveled to the GOP convention in Cleveland in late July and met with members of Trump's foreign policy team "to highlight the importance of Ukraine and the support of it by the U.S."

Despite the outreach, Trump's campaign in Cleveland gutted a proposed amendment to the Republican Party platform that called for the U.S. to provide "lethal defensive weapons" for Ukraine to defend itself against Russian incursion, backers of the measure charged.

The outreach ramped up after Trump's victory. Shulyar pointed out that Poroshenko was among the first foreign leaders to call to congratulate Trump. And she said that, since Election Day, Chaly has met with close Trump allies, including Sens. Jeff Sessions, Trump's nominee for attorney general, and Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while the ambassador accompanied Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Ukraine's vice prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, to a round of Washington meetings with Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), an early Trump backer, and Jim DeMint, president of The Heritage Foundation, which played a prominent role in Trump's transition.

•••

Many Ukrainian officials and operatives and their American allies see Trump's inauguration this month as an existential threat to the country, made worse, they admit, by the dissemination of the secret ledger, the antagonistic social media posts and the perception that the embassy meddled against -- or at least shut out -- Trump.

"It's really bad. The [Poroshenko] administration right now is trying to re-coordinate communications," said Telizhenko, adding, "The Trump organization doesn't want to talk to our administration at all."

During Nalyvaichenko's trip to Washington last month, he detected lingering ill will toward Ukraine from some, and lack of interest from others, he recalled. "Ukraine is not on the top of the list, not even the middle," he said.

Poroshenko's allies are scrambling to figure out how to build a relationship with Trump, who is known for harboring and prosecuting grudges for years.

A delegation of Ukrainian parliamentarians allied with Poroshenko last month traveled to Washington partly to try to make inroads with the Trump transition team, but they were unable to secure a meeting, according to a Washington foreign policy operative familiar with the trip. And operatives in Washington and Kiev say that after the election, Poroshenko met in Kiev with top executives from the Washington lobbying firm BGR -- including Ed Rogers and Lester Munson -- about how to navigate the Trump regime.

Weeks later, BGR reported to the Department of Justice that the government of Ukraine would pay the firm $50,000 a month to "provide strategic public relations and government affairs counsel," including "outreach to U.S. government officials, non-government organizations, members of the media and other individuals."

Firm spokesman Jeffrey Birnbaum suggested that "pro-Putin oligarchs" were already trying to sow doubts about BGR's work with Poroshenko. While the firm maintains close relationships with GOP congressional leaders, several of its principals were dismissive or sharply critical of Trump during the GOP primary, which could limit their effectiveness lobbying the new administration.

The Poroshenko regime's standing with Trump is considered so dire that the president's allies after the election actually reached out to make amends with -- and even seek assistance from -- Manafort, according to two operatives familiar with Ukraine's efforts to make inroads with Trump.

Meanwhile, Poroshenko's rivals are seeking to capitalize on his dicey relationship with Trump's team. Some are pressuring him to replace Chaly, a close ally of Poroshenko's who is being blamed by critics in Kiev and Washington for implementing -- if not engineering -- the country's anti-Trump efforts, according to Ukrainian and U.S. politicians and operatives interviewed for this story. They say that several potential Poroshenko opponents have been through Washington since the election seeking audiences of their own with Trump allies, though most have failed to do do so.

"None of the Ukrainians have any access to Trump -- they are all desperate to get it, and are willing to pay big for it," said one American consultant whose company recently met in Washington with Yuriy Boyko, a former vice prime minister under Yanukovych. Boyko, who like Yanukovych has a pro-Russian worldview, is considering a presidential campaign of his own, and his representatives offered "to pay a shit-ton of money" to get access to Trump and his inaugural events, according to the consultant.

The consultant turned down the work, explaining, "It sounded shady, and we don't want to get in the middle of that kind of stuff."

[May 11, 2019] Report How Fusion GPS and the Obama Administration Weaponized the Trump Dossier by Kristina Wong

Brennan role in weaponizing dossier now became more clear.
Notable quotes:
"... Indeed, Fusion GPS hiring of Nellie Ohr -- the wife of senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr -- also shows that Steele's role in producing the dossier may be exaggerated. Ohr is a Stanford Ph.D. whose expertise is Russia and she appears to be fluent in Russian. She may have conducted interviews or written parts of the dossier. ..."
"... The dossier, however, only has Steele's name on it -- helping to credential the research as an "intelligence product." ..."
"... A Democratic consultant and Ukrainian-American activist named Alexandra Chalupa, told the Clinton campaign about Manafort's work for Yanukovich. "I flagged for the DNC the significance of his hire," Chalupa told CNN in July of this year. ..."
"... Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS in April, shortly after Trump hired Manafort. Manafort's role now allowed Simpson to highlight corruption that he already knew to exist, from his reporting. A line from the dossier states: ..."
"... Steele -- it notes -- had not lived or worked in Russia for nearly 25 years, but his name "at a minimum" would be useful in marketing whatever his firm pulled together. Plus, Steele had a good relationship with the FBI and could "spill secrets" to journalists. ..."
"... it is likely that Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook cited Fusion GPS's work in a July 22 interview after embarrassing leaks of Democratic National Committee emails. He told ABC News's George Stephanopoulos that "some experts are now telling us that this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump." ..."
"... The FBI did launch an investigation into possible collusion, however, known by "only a dozen or so people at the FBI," including then-director James Comey and Peter Strzok, who was chosen to supervise the investigation. ..."
"... She said by August 2016, the CIA had "verified the key finding of the dossier" to the point that it was having "eyes only" top secret meetings with President Obama about it. ..."
"... CIA Director John Brennan had also briefed top lawmakers on Russian efforts to help Trump last summer and had said the CIA had limited legal ability to investigate Russian connections to Trump, prompting Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to write a public letter to the FBI -- which collects domestic intelligence -- about the threat of Russian interference. ..."
"... It appears that Brennan was briefing Reid on the Steele dossier. ..."
"... Brennan apparently sent the dossier to the White House, prompting the "eyes only" meetings. ..."
"... The Post also writes that the "material was so sensitive that CIA Director John O. Brennan kept it out of the president's daily brief, concerned that even that restricted report's distribution was too broad." ..."
"... But as Tablet asks, "if the material was so sensitive that it had to be kept out of the PDB and withheld from the Senate majority leader, why was someone telling The Washington Post about it?" ..."
Dec 24, 2017 | www.breitbart.com

Did the Obama administration launch an investigation into the Trump campaign based solely off of unverified political opposition research? And was that "research" dressed up and given more credibility than it should have? It appears that way based on an investigation of open-source information by Tablet.

The outlet's investigation begins with a June 24, 2017, Facebook post by Mary Jacoby, the wife of Glenn Simpson, the former Wall Street Journal reporter who started Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier.

Jacoby, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who once shared bylines with Simpson, bragged how her husband was not getting the credit he deserved for the dossier.

"It's come to my attention that some people still don't realize what Glenn's role was in exposing Putin's control of Donald Trump," she wrote on Facebook. "Let's be clear. Glenn conducted the investigation. Glenn hired Chris Steele. Chris Steele worked for Glenn."

Until this day, the dossier is often referred to as the "Steele dossier," named after the former British spy Christopher Steele who is believed to have authored the document.

Steele's background has been used by collusion-believers to argue that the document is credible. But Jacoby's post suggests that Steele might not have played as big of a role in the dossier as he is given credit.

Indeed, Fusion GPS hiring of Nellie Ohr -- the wife of senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr -- also shows that Steele's role in producing the dossier may be exaggerated. Ohr is a Stanford Ph.D. whose expertise is Russia and she appears to be fluent in Russian. She may have conducted interviews or written parts of the dossier.

The dossier, however, only has Steele's name on it -- helping to credential the research as an "intelligence product."

Tablet also took a look at Simpson and Jacoby's work for the WSJ . In April 2007 -- in the lead-up to the 2008 election -- they co-wrote a story about Republican links to Russians.

In that story, titled "How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington," they detail how prominent Republicans helped open doors for "Kremlin-affiliated oligarchs and other friends of Vladimir Putin."

They reported on Viktor Yanukovich, who had paid political fixer Paul Manafort to introduce Yanukovich to powerful Washington, DC, figures. They later reported on May 14, 2008, that Manafort's lobbying firm was escorting Yanukovich around Washington. Yanukovich would later become president of Ukraine in 2010.

Tablet explains how their reporting may have been the origins of the Trump dossier:

So when the Trump campaign named Paul Manafort as its campaign convention manager on March 28, 2016, you can bet that Simpson and Jacoby's eyes lit up. And as it happened, at the exact same time that Trump hired Manafort, Fusion GPS was in negotiations with Perkins Coie, the law firm representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, to see if there was interest in the firm continuing the opposition research on the Trump campaign they had started for the Washington Free Beacon. In addition to whatever sales pitch Simpson might have offered about Manafort, the Clinton campaign had independent reason to believe that research into Manafort's connections might pay some real political dividends: A Democratic consultant and Ukrainian-American activist named Alexandra Chalupa, told the Clinton campaign about Manafort's work for Yanukovich. "I flagged for the DNC the significance of his hire," Chalupa told CNN in July of this year.

Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS in April, shortly after Trump hired Manafort. Manafort's role now allowed Simpson to highlight corruption that he already knew to exist, from his reporting. A line from the dossier states:

Ex-Ukrainian President YANUKOVYCH confides directly to PUTIN that he authorised (sic) kick-back payments to MANAFORT, as alleged in western media Assures Russian President however there is no documentary evidence/trail.

Tablet notes that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would later find corruption by Manafort related to money laundering (before he joined the Trump campaign). It also points out that Tony Podesta -- Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's brother -- worked for Manafort at the time he represented Yanukovich. (The Podesta Group disbanded this year after those connections were made public, and the special counsel is reportedly investigating Podesta too.)

Tablet notes that while Simpson had begun working on the dossier on Trump collusion with Russia, he was also working for a Russian lawyer to undermine an American law called the Magnitsky Act and that Steele may have been hired to disguise that contradiction.

Steele -- it notes -- had not lived or worked in Russia for nearly 25 years, but his name "at a minimum" would be useful in marketing whatever his firm pulled together. Plus, Steele had a good relationship with the FBI and could "spill secrets" to journalists.

Ohr -- Simpson's next hire -- also hadn't lived in Russia for decades and was "not a spy, or even a journalist." "In this world, she was definitely an amateur," Tablet writes.

"Presumably, as a result of all the above, much of the reporting in the dossier is recognizably the kind of patter that locals in closed or semi-closed societies engage in to impress expats -- the kind of thing you hear in a bar, or on the cab ride from the airport to the hotel," it says.

Tablet then goes into the bad shape of U.S. intelligence on Russia -- likely making officials less skeptical of the dossier even though, to date, they have not been able to confirm any of its allegations on collusion.

And Tablet notes that it is likely that Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook cited Fusion GPS's work in a July 22 interview after embarrassing leaks of Democratic National Committee emails. He told ABC News's George Stephanopoulos that "some experts are now telling us that this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump."

At that point, a tech firm had attributed the leaks to Russia but was not able to explain why. The FBI was looking at the leak but had not yet publicly determined political motivation.

"But the DNC and Clinton campaign did have an oppo-research firm under contract that was in the middle of putting together a file that would claim that the Russians were trying to get Trump elected," Tablet notes.

The FBI did launch an investigation into possible collusion, however, known by "only a dozen or so people at the FBI," including then-director James Comey and Peter Strzok, who was chosen to supervise the investigation.

But by late October, they had not yet found any evidence that showed Russia was working to elect Trump. So, ten days before the election, angry Clinton supporters and unnamed intelligence officials spoke to the New York Times in an October 31, 2016, story about what the investigation had found so far.

Jacoby would post that story in her June 24 Facebook post, slamming the FBI and accusing it of "ineptitude," while the CIA "hopped to and immediately worked to verify" the dossier.

She said by August 2016, the CIA had "verified the key finding of the dossier" to the point that it was having "eyes only" top secret meetings with President Obama about it.

Thus, while the document could not be verified and was not used in any intelligence assessment because of its inability to be verified, it was now the topic of meetings with the president.

CIA Director John Brennan had also briefed top lawmakers on Russian efforts to help Trump last summer and had said the CIA had limited legal ability to investigate Russian connections to Trump, prompting Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to write a public letter to the FBI -- which collects domestic intelligence -- about the threat of Russian interference.

Reid then wrote another letter to Comey after he reopened the investigation into Clinton's emails -- accusing him of letting Trump slide.

"It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government -- a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity," he wrote.

"I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public and yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information."

That "information" Reid was referring to was the dossier, according to Tablet:

According to David Corn's Oct. 31, 2016, article in Mother Jones , the Nevada lawmaker was referencing the findings of "a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence."

Corn now explains that the "former Western intelligence officer -- who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a U.S. firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients" is Christopher Steele. According to Corn, Steele said that "in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump."

It appears that Brennan was briefing Reid on the Steele dossier.

Brennan apparently sent the dossier to the White House, prompting the "eyes only" meetings.

"An envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried 'eyes only' instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides," the Washington Post reported on June 23, 2017.

"So was the Steele dossier in the envelope?" Tablet asks.

The Post writes that inside that envelope "was an intelligence bombshell" -- a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detained Putin's direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the presidential race, defeat or at least damage Hillary Clinton, and help elect Donald Trump.

The Post also writes that the "material was so sensitive that CIA Director John O. Brennan kept it out of the president's daily brief, concerned that even that restricted report's distribution was too broad."

But as Tablet asks, "if the material was so sensitive that it had to be kept out of the PDB and withheld from the Senate majority leader, why was someone telling The Washington Post about it?"

Tablet writes:

Sources and methods are the crown jewels of the American intelligence community. And yet someone has just told a major American newspaper about a "report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that captured Putin's specific instructions." If the CIA had a human intelligence source that close to Putin, publication of the Post article could have exposed that source -- doing incalculable damage to American national security. He and many of his loved ones would then have presumably died horrible deaths.

Or, as Mary Jacoby surmised, it was her husband's handiwork that landed on the president's desk.

[May 11, 2019] FBI's Steele story falls apart: False intel and media contacts were flagged before FISA

May 11, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

"FBI's Steele story falls apart: False intel and media contacts were flagged before FISA" [ The Hill ]. "[Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec's] observations were recorded exactly 10 days before the FBI used Steele and his infamous dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the campaign's contacts with Russia in search of a now debunked collusion theory

[T]he FBI swore on Oct. 21, 2016, to the FISA judges that Steele's 'reporting has been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings' and the FBI has determined him to be 'reliable' and was 'unaware of any derogatory information pertaining' to their informant, who simultaneously worked for Fusion GPS, the firm paid by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign to find Russian dirt on Trump . She quoted Steele as saying, "Payments to those recruited are made out of the Russian Consulate in Miami," according to a copy of her summary memo obtained under open records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United.

Kavalec bluntly debunked that assertion in a bracketed comment: "It is important to note that there is no Russian consulate in Miami." Kavalec, two days later and well before the FISA warrant was issued, forwarded her typed summary to other government officials. The State Department has redacted the names and agencies of everyone she alerted. It is unlikely that her concerns failed to reach the FBI." •

"It is unlikely" is doing a lot of work there; surely we can find out of the FBI was on the distribution list of Kavalec's memo? That said, wowsers, does Steele look sketchy.

[May 10, 2019] Biden is up to neck in Spygate dirt by Jeff Carlson

Highly recommended!
May 02, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com
Biden, Obama Officials Stood to Gain From Ukraine Influence By Jeff Carlson ( April 26, 2019 Updated: May 2, 2019 )

Newly released evidence suggests Ukraine played key role in creating Trump–Russia collusion narrative at behest of Obama officials

As Ukraine underwent dramatic changes in 2014, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden played a critical role in the Obama administration's involvement in the revolution that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Following the revolution, Biden would use his influence to help force the creation of the troubled National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). Notably, during the 2016 election campaign, information leaked from NABU about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort that helped to create the false narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to win the election.

Biden also would use the threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to pressure Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire the prosecutor general. At the time, the prosecutor had been investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas giant that had appointed Biden's son, Hunter, as a board member.

President Donald Trump 's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, recently said, "Keep your eye on Ukraine." In his comments to the Washington Examiner , Giuliani highlighted the "plot to create an investigation of President Trump, based on a false charge of conspiracy with the Russians to affect the 2016 elections."

Obama Administration's 2014 Involvement

On or shortly before Feb. 4, 2014, Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs in the Obama State Department, had a conversation with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, which was intercepted and leaked .

In the call, Nuland and Pyatt appeared to be discussing the ouster of Yanukovych and the installation of opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk as prime minister.

Nuland favored opposition leader Yatsenyuk over his main rivals Vitali Klitschko and Oleh Tyahnybok, telling Pyatt: "I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the what he needs is Klitschko and Tyahnybok on the outside."

Toward the end of the conversation , then-Vice President Biden was discussed as being willing to help cement the changeover in Ukraine:

Geoffrey Pyatt: "We want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing. The other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych, but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place."

Victoria Nuland: "So, on that piece Geoff, when I wrote the note [Biden's national security adviser Jake] Sullivan's come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need Biden, and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick. So Biden's willing."

Nuland and Pyatt met with Ukrainian opposition leaders Klitschko and Yatsenyuk, along with then-President Yanukovych, just days later on Feb. 7, 2014.

Events then moved swiftly. On Feb. 22, 2014, Yanukovych was removed as president of Ukraine and fled to Russia. On Feb. 27, 2014, Yatsenyuk, the candidate favored by Nuland, was installed as prime minister of Ukraine. Klitschko was left out. Notably, Yatsenyuk would later resign in April 2016 amid corruption accusations.

Biden's Involvement in Ukraine

In April, Biden would get personally involved, as would his son, Hunter. On April 18, 2014, Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of directors for Burisma–one of the largest natural gas companies in Ukraine.

Four days later, on April 22, 2014, Vice President Biden traveled to Ukraine , offering his political support and $50 million in aid for Yatsenyuk's shaky new government. Poroshenko, a billionaire politician, was elected as president of Ukraine on May 25, 2014.

Biden became close to both men and helped Ukraine obtain a four-year, $17.5 billion IMF package in March 2015.

In October 2016, Foreign Policy wrote a lengthy article, " What Will Ukraine Do Without Uncle Joe ," which described Biden's role in the removal of Ukraine's general prosecutor, Victor Shokin. Shokin, the choice of Poroshenko, was portrayed as fumbling a major corruption case and "hindering an investigation into two high-ranking state prosecutors arrested on corruption charges."

The United States pushed for Shokin's removal, and Biden led the effort by personally threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees. In an interview with The Atlantic, Biden recalled telling Poroshenko: "Petro, you're not getting your billion dollars. It's OK, you can keep the [prosecutor] general. Just understand -- we're not paying if you do." Shokin was removed by Poroshenko shortly thereafter, in early 2016.

But according to reporting by The Hill, at the time of his firing, Shokin had been investigating Burisma. Shokin's investigation into Burisma had previously been disclosed in June 2017, by Front News International.

Burisma is owned by Nikolai Zlochevsky (also known as Mykola Zlochevsky), the former minister of ecology for Ukraine. According to Front News , Zlochevsky issued a "special permit for the extraction of a third of the gas produced in Ukraine" to his own company, Burisma.

According to the Ukrainian nonprofit Anti Corruption Action Center, Zlochevsky owns 38 permits held by 14 different companies -- with Burisma accounting for the majority with 33 of the permits. Zlochevsky left Ukraine after Yanukovych fled to Russia during the Ukrainian Revolution known as Euromaidan.

Investigation Into Burisma

In the spring of 2014, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office opened an investigation at the behest of the UK prosecutors office, which was investigating money laundering allegations against Zlochevsky and had just frozen $23.5 million in assets allegedly belonging to him in early April 2014. Shokin, who wasn't appointed as general prosecutor until February 2015, wasn't yet involved in the case.

Ukrainian prosecutors refused to provide the UK with needed documents, and in January 2015, a British court ordered the assets unfrozen. This action was pointedly called out in a speech by Pyatt, who stated, "In the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the UK authorities had seized $23 million in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people."

Instead of receiving cooperation from Ukrainian prosecutors, they "sent letters to Zlochevsky's attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result, the money was freed by the UK court, and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus."

On Feb. 10, 2015, Shokin was appointed prosecutor general of Ukraine, and he picked up the investigation into Burisma, which reportedly continued until his formal resignation in February 2016.

Around the same time that Zlochevsky's assets were being frozen in the UK, Burisma appointed Hunter Biden to its board on April 18, 2014. Hunter's compensation had never been disclosed by Burisma, which is a private company, but Ryan Toohey, a Burisma spokesman, told The New York Times that Biden's compensation was "not out of the ordinary" for similar board positions.

However, according to The Hill's reporting , Hunter Biden's firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners, was receiving regular payments -- "usually more than $166,000 a month" -- from Burisma. The payments ran from the spring of 2014 through the fall of 2015 and reportedly totaled more than $3 million.

The Hill article included a written answer from Shokin, who told Solomon that his investigation into Burisma had included plans for "interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden."

According to Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, following Shokin's forced dismissal, the Burisma investigation was transferred to Sytnyk's NABU, which then reportedly closed the investigation sometime in 2016.

The Kyiv Post on March 27 published an editorial written by three members of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Kyiv that disputed Lutsenko's interview with The Hill. They claim that two cases relating to Burisma are still being investigated by NABU:

"Two cases regarding the extraction of licenses by Zlochevsky's companies and embezzlement of public funds at the ministry's procurements during Zlochevsky's Ministerial tenure remain active and are investigated by NABU."

They also claim that "none of the criminal proceedings against Burisma were closed by NABU." They acknowledged that the case concerning illegal issuance of licenses to extract natural resources were transferred to NABU in December 2015, but claim that SAP missed procedural deadlines for a lawsuit on canceling those licenses.

The politics within Ukraine are extremely complicated, and corruption is endemic, often leading to conflicting accounts of events.

US Pressure to Investigate Manafort

In January 2016, top Ukrainian corruption prosecutors and officials from Obama's National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ) met in Washington, according to an April 26 article by The Hill.

The meeting, which was reportedly billed as "training," apparently also touched on two other matters -- the revival of a closed investigation into payments to U.S. figures from Ukraine's Russia-backed Party of Regions and the closure of an ongoing Ukrainian investigation into Burisma.

According to The Hill's reporting, the Ukrainian Embassy confirmed that meetings were held, but said it "had no record that the Party of Regions or Burisma cases came up in the meetings."

A Jan. 22, 2016, NABU press release confirmed that NABU Director Artem Sytnyk was in Washington from Jan. 19 to 21.

At the same time as the NABU meeting with Obama officials, Vice President Biden also met with senior Ukrainian officials. On Jan. 21, 2016, Biden met with Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine. According to the White House release , the two leaders agreed "to continue to move forward on Ukraine's anti-corruption agenda."

Just six days earlier, on Jan 15, 2016, Biden had met with Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, promising to commit $220 million in new assistance to Ukraine that year.

Notably, several months later, Sytnyk and Ukrainian Member of Parliament Serhiy Leshchenko would publicly disclose the contents of the Ukrainian "black ledger" to the media, which implicated Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort. The revelation would force Manafort from the campaign.

Leshchenko also served as a source for various individuals, including journalist Michael Isikoff and Democratic National Committee (DNC) operative Alexandra Chalupa. In addition, Leshchenko served as a direct source of information for Fusion GPS -- and its researcher, former CIA contractor Nellie Ohr.

Another Ukrainian-related meeting also took place in January 2016 when Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American, informed an unknown senior DNC official that she believed there was a Russian connection with the Trump campaign. Notably, this theme would be picked up by the Clinton campaign in the summer of 2016. Chalupa also told the official to expect Manafort's involvement in the Trump campaign.

How Chalupa knew to expect Manafort's involvement with the Trump campaign in January remains unknown, but her forecast proved prescient, as Manafort reached out to the Trump campaign shortly after, on Feb. 29, 2016, through a mutual acquaintance, Thomas J. Barrack Jr. According to Manafort, he and Trump hadn't been in communication for years until the Trump campaign responded to Manafort's offer.

As The Epoch Times previously reported , on May 30, 2016, Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr sent an email to her husband, high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr, and three other DOJ officials to alert them of the discovery of the "Reported Trove of Documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions' 'Black Cashbox.'" It was this discovery that led to Manafort's resignation from the Trump campaign in August 2016.

On Aug. 14, 2016, The New York Times published an article alleging that payments to Manafort had been uncovered from the Party of Regents' "black box" -- the 400-page handwritten ledger released by Leshchenko. The article proved to be a fatal blow for Manafort, who resigned from the Trump campaign just days later.

NABU Ties to FBI

Following the successful overthrow of Yanukovych, Joe Biden had a direct hand in the formation of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), as he personally "pushed for the creation of an independent anti-corruption bureau to combat graft," according to an Oct. 30, 2016, article by Foreign Policy .

NABU was formally established in October 2014 in response to pressure from not only the U.S. State Department and Biden, but also by the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission.

Despite the international push, the fledgling anti-corruption unit took more than a year to actually become a functioning unit. During this time, NABU officials began establishing a relationship with the FBI. In early 2016, NABU Director Sytnyk announced that his bureau was very close to signing a memorandum of cooperation with the FBI and by February 2016 , the FBI had had a permanent representative onsite at the NABU offices.

On June 5, 2016, Sytnyk met with U.S. Ambassador Pyatt to discuss a more formalized relationship with the FBI and, on June 30, 2016, NABU and the FBI entered into a memorandum of understanding that allowed for an FBI office onsite at NABU offices to focus on international money laundering cases. The relationship was renewed for an additional two years in June 2017.

NABU has repeatedly refused to make the memorandum of understanding with the FBI public and went to court in 2018 to prevent its release. After receiving an unfavorable opinion from the Kyiv District Administrative Court, NABU appealed the ruling, which was overturned in its favor by the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal.

Sytnyk, along with parliamentarian Leshchenko, became the subject of an investigation in Ukraine and in December 2018, a Kyiv court ruled that both men "acted illegally when they revealed that Manafort's surname and signature were found in the so-called black ledger of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions," the Kyiv Post reported on Dec. 12, 2018.

The court noted the material was part of a pre-trial investigation and its release "led to interference in the electoral processes of the United States in 2016 and harmed the interests of Ukraine as a state."

Leshchenko had publicly adopted a strong anti-Trump stance, telling the Financial Times in August 2016 that "a Trump presidency would change the pro-Ukrainian agenda in American foreign policy" and that it was "important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world." Leschenko noted that the majority of Ukrainian politicians were "on Hillary Clinton's side."

In December 2017, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Lutsenko accused Sytnyk of allowing the FBI to conduct illegal operations in Ukraine, claiming that the "U.S. law enforcers were allegedly invited without the permission required and in breach of the necessary procedures." Lutsenko continued by asking, "Who actually let the foreign special service act in Ukraine?"

Taras Chornovil, a Ukrainian political analyst, also questioned the FBI's activities, writing that "some kind of undercover operations are being conducted in Ukraine with direct participation (or even under control) of the FBI. This means the FBI operatives could have access to classified data or confidential information."

Lutsenko called for an audit of NABU, claiming to "possess information of interest to the auditors" and was pushing for Sytnyk's resignation, along with that of Nazar Kholodnitskiy, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP). According to reporting by Euromaidan Press, Lutsenko's efforts failed "thanks to the reaction from Ukraine's American partners."

Michael Carpenter, an adviser to Joe Biden, personally issued a public warning to Lutsenko and others pushing for Sytnyk's removal, stating, "If the Rada votes to dismiss the head of the Anticorruption Committee and the head of the NABU, I will recommend cutting all U.S. government assistance to #Ukraine , including security assistance."

Sytnyk remains in his position as NABU's director.

Pinchuk's Ties to Leshchenko, Clintons

On April 11, 2019, Greg Craig, Obama's former White House counsel and a partner at law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, was indicted for lying about and concealing his work in Ukraine. Craig, who reportedly worked closely with Manafort, was paid more than $4 million to produce an "independent" report justifying Ukraine's trial and conviction of the former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko. Notably, Craig's name was not included in the "Black Ledger" leak from Leshchenko and Sytnyk.

The indictment notes that "a wealthy private Ukrainian" was fully funding the report. In a recent YouTube video , Craig publicly stated that "it was Doug Schoen who brought this project to me, and he told me he was acting on behalf of Victor Pinchuk, who was a pro-western, Ukrainian businessman who helped to fund the project."

"The Firm understood that its work was to be largely funded by Victor Pinchuk," Skadden wrote in recent FARA filings .

Pinchuk put out a statement on Jan. 21, denying any financial involvement:

"Mr. Pinchuk was not the source of any funds used to pay fees of Skadden in producing their report into the trial and conviction of Yulia Tymoshenko. He was in no way responsible for those costs. Neither Mr. Pinchuk nor companies affiliated with him have ever been a client of Skadden. Mr. Pinchuk and his team had no role in the work done by Skadden, including in the preparation or dissemination of the Skadden report."

Pinchuk is the founder of Interpipe, a steel pipe manufacturer. He owns Credit Dnipro Bank, several ferroalloy plants and a media empire. He is married to Elena Pinchuk, the daughter of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.

Pinchuk has been accused of profiting immensely from the purchase of state-owned assets at severely below-market prices through political favoritism.

Between April 4 and April 12, 2016, Ukrainian parliamentarian Olga Bielkova had four meetings , with Samuel Charap (International Institute for Strategic Studies), Liz Zentos (National Security Council), Michael Kimmage (State Department), and David Kramer (McCain Institute).

FARA documents filed by Schoen showed that he was paid $40,000 a month by Pinchuk (page 5) -- in part to arrange these meetings.

Schoen attempted to arrange another 72 meetings with congressmen and media (page 10). It's unknown how many of these meetings, if any, took place.

Schoen also helped Pinchuk establish ties with the Clinton Foundation. The Wall Street Journal reported on March 19, 2015, how Schoen connected Pinchuk with senior Clinton State Department staffers in order to pressure former Ukrainian President Yanukovych to release Tymoshenko–a political rival of Yanukovych–from jail. And the relationship between Pinchuk and the Clintons continued. According to the Kyiv Post :

"Clinton and her husband Bill, the 42nd U.S. president, have been paid speakers at the annual YES and other Pinchuk events. They describe themselves as friends of Pinchuk, who is known internationally as a businessman and philanthropist."

Although exact numbers aren't clear, reports filed by the Clinton Foundation indicate that as much as $25 million of Pinchuk's donations went to the Clinton organization.

Pinchuk also has ties to Leshchenko, the Ukrainian MP who leaked the information on Manafort. Leshchenko had been a frequent speaker at the Ukrainian Breakfast , a traditional private event held at Davos, Switzerland, and hosted by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and has also been pictured with Pinchuk at multiple other events.

[May 10, 2019] Obama administration raced to obtain FICA warrant on Carter Page before Rogers investigation closes on them and that was definitely an obstruction of justice and interference with the ongoing investigation

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin filed the government's proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016, report by the Office of the Inspector General and associated FISA abuse to the FISA Court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose Rogers's ongoing Section 702 compliance review. ..."
"... The following day, on Sept. 27, 2016, Carlin announced his resignation, effective Oct. 15, 2016. ..."
"... After receiving a briefing by the NSA compliance officer on Oct. 20, 2016, detailing numerous "about query" violations from the 702 NSA compliance audit, Rogers shut down all "about query" activity the next day and reported his findings to the DOJ. "About queries" are searches based on communications containing a reference "about" a surveillance target but that are not "to" or "from" the target. ..."
"... On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally informed the FISA Court of his findings. On Oct. 26, 2016, Rogers appeared formally before the FISA Court and presented the written findings of his audit. ..."
"... Carlin didn't disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications in order to avoid raising suspicions at the FISA Court ahead of receiving the Page FISA warrant. ..."
"... The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers's investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page. ..."
"... While all this was transpiring, DNI James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ash Carter submitted a recommendation that Rogers be removed from his post as NSA director. ..."
May 03, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

Originally from: Spygate The True Story of Collusion [Infographic] by Jeff Carlson ( October 12, 2018 Updated: May 3, 2019 )

FISA Abuse

Admiral Mike Rogers, while director of the NSA, was personally responsible for uncovering an unprecedented level of FISA abuse that would later be documented in a 99-page unsealed FISA court ruling . As the FISA court noted in the April 26, 2017, ruling, the abuses had been occurring since at least November 2015:

"The FBI had disclosed raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information, to private contractors.

"Private contractors had access to raw FISA information on FBI storage systems.

"Contractors had access to raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to the FBI's requests."

The FISA Court report is particularly focused on the FBI:

"The Court is concerned about the FBI's apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in similar disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported."

The FISA Court disclosed that illegal NSA database searches were endemic. Private contractors, employed by the FBI, were given full access to the NSA database. Once in the contractors' possession, the data couldn't be traced.

In April 2016, after Rogers became aware of improper contractor access to raw FISA data on March 9, 2016, he directed the NSA's Office of Compliance to conduct a "fundamental baseline review of compliance associated with 702."

On April 18, 2016, Rogers shut down all outside contractor access to raw FISA information -- specifically outside contractors working for the FBI.

DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin filed the government's proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016, report by the Office of the Inspector General and associated FISA abuse to the FISA Court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose Rogers's ongoing Section 702 compliance review.

The following day, on Sept. 27, 2016, Carlin announced his resignation, effective Oct. 15, 2016.

After receiving a briefing by the NSA compliance officer on Oct. 20, 2016, detailing numerous "about query" violations from the 702 NSA compliance audit, Rogers shut down all "about query" activity the next day and reported his findings to the DOJ. "About queries" are searches based on communications containing a reference "about" a surveillance target but that are not "to" or "from" the target.

On Oct. 21, 2016, the DOJ and the FBI sought and received a Title I FISA probable-cause order authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISA Court.

At this point, the FISA Court was still unaware of the Section 702 violations.

On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally informed the FISA Court of his findings. On Oct. 26, 2016, Rogers appeared formally before the FISA Court and presented the written findings of his audit.

The FISA Court had been unaware of the query violations until they were presented to the court by Rogers.

Carlin didn't disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications in order to avoid raising suspicions at the FISA Court ahead of receiving the Page FISA warrant.

The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers's investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page.

While all this was transpiring, DNI James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ash Carter submitted a recommendation that Rogers be removed from his post as NSA director.

The move to fire Rogers, which ultimately failed, originated sometime in mid-October 2016 -- exactly when Rogers was preparing to present his findings to the FISA Court.

Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed on Twitter @themarketswork.

[May 10, 2019] What was the meaning of the term "insurance policy" in Stzok messages to Lisa Page

Highly recommended!
The insurance policy was the false flag operation directed at establishing the Trump–Russia collusion narrative. The key part was the appointment of Special Prosecutor in which McCabe played an important if not the decisive role.
Notable quotes:
"... The insurance policy was the actual process of establishing the Trump–Russia collusion narrative. It encompassed actions undertaken in late 2016 and early 2017, including the leaking of the Steele dossier and James Clapper's leaks of James Comey's briefing to President Trump. The intent behind these actions was simple. The legitimization of the investigation into the Trump campaign. ..."
"... The strategy involved the recusal of Trump officials with the intent that Andrew McCabe would end up running the investigation. ..."
May 03, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

Originally from: Spygate The True Story of Collusion [Infographic] by Jeff Carlson ( October 12, 2018 Updated: May 3, 2019 )

The Insurance Policy

Ever since the release of FBI text messages revealing the existence of an "insurance policy," the term has been the subject of wide speculation.

Some observers have suggested that the insurance policy was the FISA spy warrant used to monitor Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and, by extension, other members of the Trump campaign. This interpretation is too narrow and fails to capture the underlying meaning of the text.

The insurance policy was the actual process of establishing the Trump–Russia collusion narrative. It encompassed actions undertaken in late 2016 and early 2017, including the leaking of the Steele dossier and James Clapper's leaks of James Comey's briefing to President Trump. The intent behind these actions was simple. The legitimization of the investigation into the Trump campaign.

The strategy involved the recusal of Trump officials with the intent that Andrew McCabe would end up running the investigation.

The Steele dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, served as the foundation for the Russia narrative.

The intelligence community, led by CIA Director John Brennan and DNI James Clapper, used the dossier as a launching pad for creating their Intelligence Community assessment.

This report, which was presented to Obama in December 2016, despite NSA Director Mike Rogers having only moderate confidence in its assessment, became one of the core pieces of the narrative that Russia interfered with the 2016 elections.

Through intelligence community leaks, and in collusion with willing media outlets, the narrative that Russia helped Trump win the elections was aggressively pushed throughout 2017.

Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed on Twitter @themarketswork.

[May 10, 2019] The Battle Between Rosenstein and McCabe

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... On July 28, 2017, McCabe lied to Inspector General Michael Horowitz while under oath regarding authorization of the leaking to The Wall Street Journal. At this point, Horowitz knew McCabe was lying, but did not yet know of the May 9 INSD interview with McCabe. ..."
May 03, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

Originally from: Spygate The True Story of Collusion [Infographic] by Jeff Carlson ( October 12, 2018 Updated: May 3, 2019 )

Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe held a pivotal role in what has become known as "Spygate." He directed the activities of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and was involved in all aspects of the Russia investigation. He was also mentioned in the infamous "insurance policy" text message.

McCabe was a major component of the insurance policy.

On April 26, 2017, Rosenstein found himself appointed as the new deputy attorney general. He was placed into a somewhat chaotic situation, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recluses himself from the ongoing Russia investigation a little less than two months earlier, on March 2, 2017. This effectively meant that no one in the Trump administration had any oversight of the ongoing investigation being conducted by the FBI and the DOJ.

Additionally, the leadership of then-FBI Director James Comey was coming under increased scrutiny as the result of actions taken leading up to and following the election, particularly Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation.

On May 9, 2017, Rosenstein wrote a memorandum recommending that Comey be fired. The subject of the memo was "Restoring Public Confidence in the FBI." Comey was fired that day.

McCabe was now the acting director of the FBI and was immediately under consideration for the permanent position.

On the same day Comey was fired, McCabe would lie during an interview with agents from the FBI's Inspection Division (INSD) regarding apparent leaks that were used in an Oct. 30, 2016, Wall Street Journal article, "FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe" by Devlin Barrett. This would later be disclosed in the inspector general report, "A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe."

At the time, nobody, including the INSD agents, knew that McCabe had lied, nor were the darker aspects of McCabe's role in Spygate fully known.

In late April or early May 2016, McCabe opened a federal criminal investigation on Sessions, regarding potential lack of candor before Congress in relation to Sessions's contacts with Russians. Sessions was unaware of the investigation.

Sessions would later be cleared of any wrongdoing by special counsel Robert Mueller.

On the morning of May 16, 2017, Rosenstein reportedly suggested to McCabe that he secretly record President Trump. This remark was reported in a New York Times article that was sourced from memos from the now-fired McCabe, along with testimony taken from former FBI general counsel James Baker, who relayed a conversation he had with McCabe about the occurrence. Rosenstein issued a statement denying the accusations.

The alleged comments by Rosenstein occurred at a meeting where McCabe was "pushing for the Justice Department to open an investigation into the president."

An unnamed participant at the meeting, in comments to The Washington Post, framed the conversation somewhat differently, noting Rosenstein responded sarcastically to McCabe, saying, "What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?"

Later, on the same day that Rosenstein had his meetings with McCabe, President Trump met with Mueller, reportedly as an interview for the FBI director job.

On May 17, 2017, the day after President Trump's meeting with Mueller -- and the day after Rosenstein's encounters with McCabe -- Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel.

The May 17 appointment of Mueller in effect shifted control of the Russia investigation from the FBI and McCabe to Mueller. Rosenstein would retain ultimate authority for the probe and any expansion of Mueller's investigation required authorization from Rosenstein.

Interestingly, without Comey's memo leaks, a special counsel might not have been appointed -- the FBI, and possibly McCabe, would have remained in charge of the Russia investigation. McCabe was probably not going to become the permanent FBI director, but he was reportedly under consideration. Regardless, without Comey's leak, McCabe would have retained direct involvement and the FBI would have retained control.

On July 28, 2017, McCabe lied to Inspector General Michael Horowitz while under oath regarding authorization of the leaking to The Wall Street Journal. At this point, Horowitz knew McCabe was lying, but did not yet know of the May 9 INSD interview with McCabe.

On Aug. 2, 2017, Rosenstein secretly issued Mueller a revised memo on "the scope of investigation and definition of authority" that remains heavily redacted. The full purpose of this memo remains unknown. On this same day, Christopher Wray was named as the new FBI director.

Two days later, on Aug. 4, 2017, Sessions announced that the FBI had created a new leaks investigation unit. Rosenstein and Wray were tasked with overseeing all leak investigations.

That Aug. 2 memo from Rosenstein to Mueller may have been specifically designed to remove any residual FBI influence -- specifically that of McCabe -- from the Russia investigation. The appointment of Wray as FBI director helped cement this. McCabe was finally completely neutralized.

On March 16, 2018, McCabe was fired for lying under oath at least three different times and is currently the subject of a grand jury investigation.

[May 10, 2019] #Guccifer2 hashtag on Twitter

Notable quotes:
"... In both cases # Assange had announced the release before allegedly getting material from # Guccifer2 (aka GRU). There might be other sources other than # G2 . # MuellerReport pic.twitter.com/bPN7NHpM9N ..."
"... Good Lord, @ Birgittaj , not you as well? That timeline is rubbish. Ask yourself, how could # Assange tell UK TV on 12 June # WikiLeaks already had possession of # DNCLeaks if # Mueller says "source" # Guccifer2 didn't send anything to WL until 14 July? http://www. itv.com/news/update/20 16-06-12/assange-on-peston-on-sunday-more-clinton-leaks-to-come/ # SaySorry pic.twitter.com/B0WRAjv15G ..."
"... LINDSEY GRAHAM FORGOT TO MENTION THAT SPEAKER PAUL RYAN SHUT DOWN # HouseIntelInvestigations into # Awan # Guccifer2 and # ClintonEmails . ..."
"... Always assumed that # Guccifer2 was either a DNC construction (as it was so badly done) or a NSA construction ..."
"... Says VIPs analyzed the @ wikileaks docs; via metadata discovered it had to be a thumb drive download. 2 years ago VIPs said # Guccifer2 docs had that character. ? Mr. President -- Listen to Bill Binney. Russiagate is a Worse Hoax than You Thought https:// youtu.be/-9TyASfZV0c # RussiaGate ..."
May 10, 2019 | twitter.com

PamelaDrew ‏ 28 Dec 2018

Fab recap of the hoax behind # Guccifer2 with forensics to identify changes made to support false attribution for # Russia but trust the corp news who sold WMD lies because # CIA wouldn't use # Vault7 tools or deceive the public, right? https:// disobedientmedia.com/2018/12/guccif er-2-0-game-over-year-end-review/

Robbin Young ‏ 7:51 PM - 18 Apr 2019

# MuellerReport # Guccifer2 # SethRich # JulianAssange # Wikileaks # Russia # Russians 8/25/16 DMs: "his name is seth, he was my whistleblower" - Guccifer 2.0 "Can't you trust Julian?" - Robbin Young "he may be connected to russians, i don't like it though he's my hero" - Guccifer 2.0 pic.twitter.com/LlBo413q2h

4:27 PM - 4 May 2019

In April 2016, the # GRU hacked into the computers of the @ DCCC & @ DNC & stole 100s of 1000s of docs. In mid-June 2016 the GRU began disseminating stolen materials through the fictitious online personas " # DCLeaks " and " # Guccifer2 .0." and then through @ WikiLeaks . - # MuellerReport

Ferez Nallaseth ‏ 10:26 AM - 26 Jan 2019

# SpecialCounselMueller # Guccifer2 # 2016Elections # Law # Constitution # Justice # CompromisingDemocracyGlobally # Cybersecurity "The clear implication is that any truly incriminating communications would have been conducted in encrypted https:// lnkd.in/e4zvKYX https:// lnkd.in/eh-WJ-k

Emma Best (U//FOUO) ‏ 3:54 PM - 30 Jan 2019

This is an interesting thread. Also note that Mueller has already released portions of logs of communications between # WikiLeaks and # Guccifer2 , a contact first reported by @ KevinCollier using logs I provided. pic.twitter.com/lVjeq9nTA2

4:04 PM - 4 May 2019

The @ DNC , etc docs that # Guccifer2 .0 provided to @ wikileaks prove that Hillary promoted Trump because she thought she could beat him (mistake) and the @ DNC rigged the primary so Hillary would win the nomination (mistake). All of this is talked about in the # MuellerReport .

craig slingsby ‏ 2:53 AM - 29 Apr 2019

The Transaction for a year of VPN from the same Netyksho et al. Wallet indictment but not the guccifer 2.0 alleged VPN https://www. blockchain.com/en/btc/tx/e33a 3951183d86eb7e6c214fe1c320e6322774663a17b5bea3c74785f23477ad # RussiaInvestigation # bitcoin # Guccifer2

Cristiano Arienti ‏ 9:05 AM - 18 Apr 2019

# Mueller does not t offer clear cronology (how and when) @ wikileaks got the # DNCleak and the # Podestaemails .

In both cases # Assange had announced the release before allegedly getting material from # Guccifer2 (aka GRU). There might be other sources other than # G2 . # MuellerReport pic.twitter.com/bPN7NHpM9N

Augury IT ‏ 7:24 PM - 23 Apr 2019

"Among those who clicked on a bogus link in an email was Podesta, Clinton campaign chairman, along with several other junior campaign volunteers, informal campaign advisers and one DNC employee." https:// freebeacon.com/national-secur ity/gru-spearphishing-emails-fooled-democrats-clinton-campaign-in-2016/ # malware # Democrats # GRU # Guccifer2 # WikiLeaks # ITsecurity

Sharry Wilson ‏ 8:42 PM - 15 Feb 2019

Special counsel prosecutors say they have communications of Stone with WikiLeaks # RogerStone # WikiLeaks # JulianAssange # Guccifer2 .0 # RobertMueller # Russia # DNC # HillaryClinton # RussiaInvestigation # US https:// cnn.it/2SUSdXM

Bella Magnani 5:46 AM - 26 Apr 2019

Good Lord, @ Birgittaj , not you as well? That timeline is rubbish. Ask yourself, how could # Assange tell UK TV on 12 June # WikiLeaks already had possession of # DNCLeaks if # Mueller says "source" # Guccifer2 didn't send anything to WL until 14 July? http://www. itv.com/news/update/20 16-06-12/assange-on-peston-on-sunday-more-clinton-leaks-to-come/ # SaySorry pic.twitter.com/B0WRAjv15G

Oeishik M.G. C. JD ‏ 1:41 AM - 1 May 2019

# LessonsfromtheMuellerReport # Guccifer2 is a problem child. In other news, did they get the name by combining @ Gucci & # Lucifer ?? - If so, both parties have cause of action against @ KremlinRussia_E @ realDonaldTrump & all their poisonous branches.

#BlackWomenForBernie2020 ‏ 1:24 PM - 14 Mar 2019

LINDSEY GRAHAM FORGOT TO MENTION THAT SPEAKER PAUL RYAN SHUT DOWN # HouseIntelInvestigations into # Awan # Guccifer2 and # ClintonEmails .

THEN # ChristopherWray final FBI recommendation is to RETRAIN THE FBI TO NOT EMBARRASS THEMSELVES "cough" GOP for # WealthClass # COMEY ! # BERNITDOWN https:// twitter.com/thedailybeast/ status/1106286631173148673

Michael Holloway - Schroedinger's Cyclist ‏ 12:25 PM - 13 Mar 2019

Always assumed that # Guccifer2 was either a DNC construction (as it was so badly done) or a NSA construction (or 2 working together); in both cases designed to implicate Russia in a DNC 'hack' ...while @ CraigMurrayOrg has stated he received the DNC files in Wash DC from a leaker.

Are You Cardigan? ‏ 10 Dec 2018

# HisNameWasSethRich # itallbeginshere ... # Guccifer2 .0 # Wikileaks # Podesta # Clinton >>> JAIL >>> https://www. youtube.com/edit?o=U&video _id=VYdch94KC9E pic.twitter.com/PmecvFXxdX

Donny Deplorable ‏ 8:36 AM - 3 Dec 2018

# RogerStone admitted (bragged) that he was in contact with # Guccifer2 .0. His goose is already cooked @ realDonaldTrump https:// twitter.com/realDonaldTrum p/status/1069619316319035392

Michael Holloway - Schroedinger's Cyclist ‏ 12:17 PM - 13 Mar 2019

Says VIPs analyzed the @ wikileaks docs; via metadata discovered it had to be a thumb drive download. 2 years ago VIPs said # Guccifer2 docs had that character. ? Mr. President -- Listen to Bill Binney. Russiagate is a Worse Hoax than You Thought https:// youtu.be/-9TyASfZV0c # RussiaGate

Bella Magnani 6:18 AM - 26 Apr 2019

Ah, bad link. Try this one: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=x7UvbE TwpwU # Assange announcing # WikiLeaks possession of # DNCLeaks on 12 June, which # Mueller says "source" # Guccifer2 didn't send until 14 July. Relevant now: see his comments on UK trying to foist his US extradition onto # EU (ie # Sweden )

5:07 PM - 4 May 2019

Did you read any of the dos that were leaked by # Guccifer2 .0, # DCLeaks , or @ Wikeleaks ? If not, let me hip you to something. Corrupt Dems in the @ DCCC and the @ DNC , as well as crooked @ HillaryClinton , are the main reasons Trump is in the White House. Dems blew it. Face the truth.

#BlackWomenForBernie2020 ‏ 3:17 PM - 14 Mar 2019

*cough* Former Speaker Paul Ryan closed down HOUSE INTEL INVESTIGATIONS. Including # AWAN and # GUCCIFER2

Bella Magnani 4:36 PM - 26 Apr 2019

LoL. You've really got that "classic hindsight bias" nailed there, @ KPoulsen . And tsk! you're supposed to be a 'tech editor' & you say "you've lost me there" when I link you the digital forensic evidence # WikiLeaks didn't get # DNCLeaks from # Guccifer2 ? https:// theforensicator.wordpress.com/sorting-the-wi kileaks-dnc-emails/

ᴘᴀᴛᴛɪᴇ ɢᴀʀᴅɴᴇʀ 2:32 PM - 30 Dec 2018

How did # Guccifer2 .0 get "I-T's" @ DNC "Leaks" from "we suspect" @ JohnBrennan & James Clapper [•] Reporting on # Unity4J @ Unity4J is @ raymcgovern in -plainspeak- To @ wikileaks ? "Thumb drive to @ AssangeDefence " https:// youtu.be/2moVxa2oGJI "break it into a thousand pieces..." # QAnon

Baba Yaga ‏ 8:54 PM - 18 Apr 2019

The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report via @ Consortiumnews Mueller indictments of GRU for # Guccifer2 & 13 # Russians with dank means lack evidence https:// consortiumnews.com/2019/04/18/the -guccifer-2-0-gaps-in-muellers-full-report/ @ mtracey @ mtaibbi @ aaronjmate # MuellerReport # MuellerGoofs

Thread Reader App ‏ 4:11 PM - 6 May 2019

Hello, the unroll you asked for: Thread by @ with_integrity : "The Mueller Report - Expensive Estimations And Elusive Evidence http:// g-2.space/muellerreport/ [ ]" # Guccifer2 # RussiaGate https:// threadreaderapp.com/thread/1125435 714563452929.html Talk to you soon.

̼ ̼̼̼̼̼̼̼ ̼̼̼̼̼̼̼ 1:49 AM - 27 Dec 2018

"the # Guccifer2 .0 # persona was operated by # someone that # fabricated # evidence & # falsified # claims in support of statements made by @ CrowdStrike executives. They # wanted to be perceived as # Russian & wanted to be attributed to @ WikiLeaks from the day they emerged" # RussiaGate ? pic.twitter.com/EIfiO9NuZ2

Baba Yaga ‏ 10:07 AM - 29 Apr 2019

Crowdstrike had to abandon claims about the same Russian hackers in Ukraine https:// theforensicator.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/mor e-evidence-that-guccifer-2-planted-his-russian-breadcrumbs/amp/?__twitter_impression=true # Guccifer2 # RussiaGate @ ggreenwald @ mtracey @ aaronjmate @ mtaibbi

watchful one ‏ 9:48 AM - 29 Apr 2019

will anything in Mueller's report stand the test of time? https:// theforensicator.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/mor e-evidence-that-guccifer-2-planted-his-russian-breadcrumbs/ (via @ with_integrity ) # Guccifer2

Adam Carter ‏ 9:40 AM - 29 Apr 2019

More Evidence That Guccifer 2 Planted His Russian Breadcrumbs https:// theforensicator.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/mor e-evidence-that-guccifer-2-planted-his-russian-breadcrumbs/ # Guccifer2 # Forensicator # MuellerReport # Russiagate

Adam Carter ‏ 1:13 PM - 28 Apr 2019

It has been 800 days since the first cracks really started to emerge in the # Guccifer2 facade: https:// archive.fo/2dMfC We now have more evidence pointing to the persona operating from within US timezones than elsewhere: http:// g-2.space/ustimezones Let's see what this week brings. pic.twitter.com/ZtEObd9hmk

Ophelia PGlasser #Bernie2020 ‏ 7:16 AM - 26 Apr 2019

On this discussion, here's Bill Binney & @ jimmy_dore on # MuellerReport & DNC lies & cover-ups by # Guccifer2 https:// twitter.com/opheliapg/stat us/1121778691032223746?s=21

[May 10, 2019] The key role of British intelligence in Spydate (aka Russiagate)

Notable quotes:
"... Hannigan's meeting was noteworthy because Brennan wasn't Hannigan's counterpart. That position belonged to NSA Director Mike Rogers. In the following year, Hannigan abruptly announced his retirement on Jan. 23, 2017 -- three days after Trump's inauguration. ..."
"... Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier on Trump, was an MI6 agent while the agency was headed by Sir Richard Dearlove. Steele retains close ties with Dearlove. ..."
"... Dearlove has ties to most of the parties mentioned. It was he who advised Steele and his business partner, Chris Burrows, to work with a top British government official to pass along information to the FBI in the fall of 2016. He also was a speaker at the July 2016 Cambridge symposium that Halper invited Carter Page to attend. ..."
"... Dearlove knows Halper through their mutual association at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Dearlove also knows Sir Iain Lobban, a former head of GCHQ, who is an advisory board member at British strategic intelligence and advisory firm Hakluyt , which was founded by former MI6 members and retains close ties to UK intelligence services. ..."
"... Halper has historical connections to Hakluyt through Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has co-authored two books. ..."
"... Downer, who met Papadopoulos in a May 2016 meeting established through a chain of two intermediaries, served on the advisory board of Hakluyt from 2008 to 2014. He reportedly still maintains contact with Hakluyt officials. Information from his meeting with Papadopoulos was later used by the FBI to establish the bureau's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. Downer has changed his version of events multiple times. ..."
"... Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations -- including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application -- received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, "Please, can we talk." Those "allies" were almost certainly the UK and Australia. ..."
"... Stefan Halper met with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page's July 2016 Moscow trip. As noted previously, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove was a speaker at the symposium. Halper and Dearlove have known each other for years and maintain several mutual associations. ..."
"... Page was already known to the FBI. The Page FISA warrant application references the Buryakov spy case and an FBI interview with Page. Current information suggests there was only one meeting between Page and the FBI in 2016. It happened on March 2, 2016. It was in relation to Victor Podobnyy, who was named in the Buryakov case. ..."
"... Page, who cooperated with the FBI on the case, almost certainly was providing testimony or details against Podobnyy. Page had been contacted by Podobnyy in 2013 and had previously provided information to the FBI. Buryakov pleaded guilty on March 11, 2016 -- nine days after Page met with the FBI on the case -- and was sentenced to 30 months in prison on May 25, 2016. On April 5, 2017, Buryakov was granted early release and was deported to Russia. ..."
"... House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said in August that exculpatory evidence on Page exists that wasn't included by the DOJ and the FBI in the FISA application and subsequent renewals. The exculpatory evidence likely relates specifically to Page's role in the Buryakov case. ..."
"... If the FBI failed to disclose Page's cooperation with the bureau or materially misrepresented his involvement in its application to the FISA Court, it means that the FBI's Woods procedures, which govern FISA applications, were violated. ..."
May 03, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

Originally from: Spygate The True Story of Collusion [Infographic] by Jeff Carlson ( October 12, 2018 Updated: May 3, 2019 )

Intelligence

UK and Australian intelligence agencies also played meaningful roles during the 2016 presidential election.

Britain's GCHQ was involved in collecting information regarding then-candidate Trump and transmitting it to the United States. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, the head of GCHQ, flew from London to meet personally with then-CIA Director John Brennan, The Guardian reported.

Hannigan's meeting was noteworthy because Brennan wasn't Hannigan's counterpart. That position belonged to NSA Director Mike Rogers. In the following year, Hannigan abruptly announced his retirement on Jan. 23, 2017 -- three days after Trump's inauguration.

As GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been targeted after a series of highly coincidental meetings. Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, FBI informant Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos -- some repeatedly so.

Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier on Trump, was an MI6 agent while the agency was headed by Sir Richard Dearlove. Steele retains close ties with Dearlove.

Dearlove has ties to most of the parties mentioned. It was he who advised Steele and his business partner, Chris Burrows, to work with a top British government official to pass along information to the FBI in the fall of 2016. He also was a speaker at the July 2016 Cambridge symposium that Halper invited Carter Page to attend.

Dearlove knows Halper through their mutual association at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Dearlove also knows Sir Iain Lobban, a former head of GCHQ, who is an advisory board member at British strategic intelligence and advisory firm Hakluyt , which was founded by former MI6 members and retains close ties to UK intelligence services.

Halper has historical connections to Hakluyt through Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has co-authored two books.

Downer, who met Papadopoulos in a May 2016 meeting established through a chain of two intermediaries, served on the advisory board of Hakluyt from 2008 to 2014. He reportedly still maintains contact with Hakluyt officials. Information from his meeting with Papadopoulos was later used by the FBI to establish the bureau's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. Downer has changed his version of events multiple times.

The Steele dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several different sources. One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the former British ambassador to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood later relayed information regarding the dossier to Sen. John McCain, who dispatched David Kramer, a fellow at the McCain Institute, to London to meet with Steele in November 2016. McCain would later admit in a Jan. 11, 2017, statement that he had personally passed on the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey.

Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations -- including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application -- received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, "Please, can we talk." Those "allies" were almost certainly the UK and Australia.

In a Twitter post , Trump wrote that the "key Allies called to ask not to release" the documents.

Questions to be asked are why is it that two of our allies would find themselves so opposed to the release of these classified documents that a coordinated plea would be made directly to the president? And why would these same allies have even the slightest idea of what was contained in these classified U.S. documents?

Britain and Australia appear to know full well what those documents contain, and their attempt to prevent their public release appears to be because they don't want their role in events surrounding the 2016 presidential election to be made public.

Fusion GPS/Orbis/Christopher Steele

Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is co-founder of Fusion GPS, along with Peter Fritsch and Tom Catan. Fusion was hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign through law firm Perkins Coie to produce and disseminate the Steele dossier used against Trump. The dossier would later be the primary evidence used to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page on Oct. 21, 2016.

<img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/10/10/Glenn-Simpson.jpg" alt="" width="185" height="220" /> Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS. The company was hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC–through law firm Perkins Coie–to produce the dossier on Trump.

Christopher Steele, who retains close ties to UK intelligence, worked for MI6 from 1987 until his retirement in 2009, when he and his partner, Chris Burrows, founded Orbis Intelligence. Steele maintains contact with British intelligence, Sir Richard Dearlove , and UK intelligence firm Hakluyt.

Steele appears to have been represented by lawyer Adam Waldman, who also represented Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. We know this from texts sent by Waldman. On April 10, 2017, Waldman sent this to Sen. Mark Warner:

"Hi. Steele: would like to get a bi partisan letter from the committee; Assange: I convinced him to make serious and important concessions and am discussing those w DOJ; Deripaska: willing to testify to congress but interested in state of play w Manafort. I will be with him next tuesday for a week."

Steele also appears to have lobbied on behalf of Deripaska, who was discussed in emails between Bruce Ohr and Steele that were recently disclosed by the Washington Examiner:

"Steele said he was 'circulating some recent sensitive Orbis reporting' on Deripaska that suggested Deripaska was not a 'tool' of the Kremlin. Steele said he would send the reporting to a name that is redacted in the email."

Fusion GPS was also employed by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in a previous case. Veselnitskaya was involved in litigation pitting Russian firm Prevezon Holdings against British-American financier William Browder. Veselnitskaya hired U.S. law firm BakerHostetler, who, in turn, hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Browder. Veselnitskaya was one of the participants at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, at which she discussed the Magnitsky Act .

Fox News reported on Nov. 9, 2017, that Simpson met with Veselnitskaya immediately before and after the Trump Tower meeting.

A declassified top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court report released on April 26, 2017, revealed that government agencies, including the FBI, CIA, and NSA, had improperly accessed Americans' communications. The FBI specifically provided outside contractors with access to raw surveillance data on American citizens without proper oversight.

Communications and other data of members of the Trump campaign may have been accessed in this way.

Nellie Ohr
<img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/10/10/Nellie-Ohr-.jpg" alt="Nellie Ohr" width="185" height="252" />
Nellie Ohr, the wife of high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr, was hired by Fusion GPS to work on the dossier on Trump.

Bruce and Nellie Ohr have known Simpson since at least 2010 and have known Steele since at least 2006. The Ohrs and Simpson worked together on a DOJ report in 2010 . In that report, Nellie Ohr's biography lists her as working for Open Source Works, which is part of the CIA. Simpson met with Bruce Ohr before and after the 2016 election.

Bruce Ohr had been in contact repeatedly with Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign -- while Steele was constructing his dossier. Ohr later actively shared information he received from Steele with the FBI, after the agency had terminated Steele as a source. Interactions between Ohr and Steele stretched for months into the first year of Trump's presidency and were documented in a number of FD-302s -- memos that summarize interviews with him by the FBI.

Spy Traps

In an effort to put forth evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, it appears that several different spy traps were set, with varying degrees of success. Many of these efforts appear to center around Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and involve London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, who has ties to Western intelligence, particularly in the UK.

Papadopoulos and Mifsud both worked at the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP). Mifsud appears to have joined LCILP around November 2015 . Papadopoulos reportedly joined LCILP sometime in late February 2016 after leaving Ben Carson's presidential campaign. However, some reports indicate Papadopoulos joined LCILP in November or December of 2015. Mifsud and Papadopoulos reportedly never crossed paths until March 14, 2016, in Italy.

Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to several Russians, including Olga Polonskaya, whom Mifsud introduced as "Putin's niece," and Ivan Timofeev, an official at a state-sponsored think tank called the Russian International Affairs Council. Both Papadopoulos and Mifsud were interviewed by the FBI. Papadopoulos was ultimately charged with a process crime and was recently sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI. Mifsud was never charged by the FBI.

Throughout this period, Papadopoulos continuously pushed for meetings between Trump campaign officials and Russian contacts but was ultimately unsuccessful in establishing any meetings.

Papadopoulos met with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer on May 10, 2016. The Papadopoulos–Downer meeting has been portrayed as a chance encounter in a bar. That does not appear to be the case.

Papadopoulos was introduced to Downer through a chain of two intermediaries who said Downer wanted to meet with Papadopoulos. Another individual happened to be in London at exactly the same time: the FBI's head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap. The purpose of Priestap's visit remains unknown.

The Papadopoulos–Downer meeting was later used to establish the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. It was repeatedly reported that Papadopoulos told Downer that Russia had Hillary Clinton's emails. This is incorrect.

George Papadopoulos
<img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/10/10/George-Papadopoulos-1028769226-1200x1497.jpg" alt="George Papadopoulos" width="187" height="234" /> Foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign was approached by several individuals with ties to UK and U.S. intelligence agencies. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

According to Downer, Papadopoulos at some point mentioned the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

"During that conversation, he [Papadopoulos] mentioned the Russians might use material that they have on Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the election, which may be damaging,'' Downer told The Australian about the Papadopoulos meeting in an April 2018 article. "He didn't say dirt, he said material that could be damaging to her. No, he said it would be damaging. He didn't say what it was."

Downer, while serving as Australia's foreign minister, was responsible for one of the largest foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation: $25 million from the Australian government.

Unconfirmed media reports, including a Jan. 12, 2017, BBC article , have suggested that the FBI attempted to obtain two FISA warrants in June and July 2016 that were denied by the FISA court. It's likely that Papadopoulos was an intended target of these failed FISAs.

Interestingly, there is no mention of Papadopoulos in the Steele dossier. Paul Manafort, Carter Page, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, Gen. Michael Flynn, and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski are all listed in the Steele dossier.

Papadopoulos may have started out assisting the FBI or CIA and later discovered that he was being set up for surveillance himself.

After failing to obtain a spy warrant on the Trump campaign using Papadopoulos, the FBI set its sights on campaign volunteer Carter Page. By this time, the counterintelligence investigation was in the process of being established, and we know now that it was formalized with no official intelligence. The FBI needed some sort of legal cover. They needed a retroactive warrant. And they got one on Oct. 21, 2016. The Page FISA warrant would be renewed three times and remain in force until September 2017.

Stefan Halper met with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page's July 2016 Moscow trip. As noted previously, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove was a speaker at the symposium. Halper and Dearlove have known each other for years and maintain several mutual associations.

Page was already known to the FBI. The Page FISA warrant application references the Buryakov spy case and an FBI interview with Page. Current information suggests there was only one meeting between Page and the FBI in 2016. It happened on March 2, 2016. It was in relation to Victor Podobnyy, who was named in the Buryakov case.

Page, who cooperated with the FBI on the case, almost certainly was providing testimony or details against Podobnyy. Page had been contacted by Podobnyy in 2013 and had previously provided information to the FBI. Buryakov pleaded guilty on March 11, 2016 -- nine days after Page met with the FBI on the case -- and was sentenced to 30 months in prison on May 25, 2016. On April 5, 2017, Buryakov was granted early release and was deported to Russia.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said in August that exculpatory evidence on Page exists that wasn't included by the DOJ and the FBI in the FISA application and subsequent renewals. The exculpatory evidence likely relates specifically to Page's role in the Buryakov case.

If the FBI failed to disclose Page's cooperation with the bureau or materially misrepresented his involvement in its application to the FISA Court, it means that the FBI's Woods procedures, which govern FISA applications, were violated.

Page has not been arrested or charged with any crime related to the investigation.

Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed on Twitter @themarketswork.

[May 10, 2019] Bruce Ohr was a significant DOJ official who played a key role in Spygate

May 03, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

Originally from: Spygate The True Story of Collusion [Infographic] by Jeff Carlson ( October 12, 2018 Updated: May 3, 2019 )

Department of Justice

The Department of Justice, which comprises 60 agencies , was transformed during the Obama years. The department is forbidden by federal law from hiring employees based on political affiliation.

However, a series of investigative articles by PJ Media published during Eric Holder's tenure as attorney general revealed an unsettling pattern of ideological conformity among new hires at the DOJ: Only lawyers from the progressive left were hired. Not one single moderate or conservative lawyer made the cut. This is significant as the DOJ enjoys significant latitude in determining who will be subject to prosecution.

The DOJ's job in Spygate was to facilitate the legal side of surveillance while providing a protective layer of cover for all those involved. The department became a repository of information and provided a protective wall between the investigative efforts of the FBI and the legislative branch. Importantly, it also served as the firewall within the executive branch, serving as the insulating barrier between the FBI and Obama officials. The department had become legendary for its stonewalling tactics with Congress.

The DOJ, which was fully aware of the actions being taken by James Comey and the FBI, also became an active element acting against members of the Trump campaign. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, along with Mary McCord, the head of the DOJ's National Security Division, was actively involved in efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn from his position as national security adviser to President Trump.

To this day, it remains unknown which individual was responsible for making public Flynn's call with the Russian ambassador. Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to a process crime: lying to the FBI. There have been questions raised in Congress regarding the possible alteration of FD-302s, the written notes of Flynn's FBI interviews. Special counsel Robert Mueller has repeatedly deferred Flynn's sentencing hearing.

David Laufman, deputy assistant attorney general in charge of counterintelligence at the DOJ's National Security Division, played a key role in both the Clinton email server and Russia hacking investigations. Laufman is currently the attorney for Monica McLean, the long-time friend of Christine Blasey Ford, who recently accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her while in high school. McLean was also employed by the FBI for 24 years.

Bruce Ohr was a significant DOJ official who played a key role in Spygate. Ohr held two important positions at the DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. As associate deputy attorney general, Ohr was just four offices away from then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and he reported directly to her. As director of the task force, he was in charge of a program described as "the centerpiece of the attorney general's drug strategy."

Ohr, one of the highest-ranking officials in the DOJ, was communicating on an ongoing basis with Steele, whom he had known since at least 2006 , well into mid-2017. He is also married to Nellie Ohr, an expert on Russia and Eurasia who began working for Fusion GPS sometime in late 2015 . Nellie Ohr likely played a significant role in the construction of the dossier.

According to testimony from FBI agent Peter Strzok, he and Ohr met at least five times during 2016 and 2017. Strzok was working directly with then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

Additionally, Ohr met with the FBI at least 12 times between late November 2016 and May 2017 for a series of interviews. These meetings could have been used to transmit information from Steele to the FBI. This came after the FBI had formally severed contact with Steele in late October or early November 2016.

John Carlin is another notable figure with the DOJ. Carlin was an assistant attorney general and the head of the DOJ's National Security Division until October 2016. His role will be discussed below in the section on FISA abuse.

Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed on Twitter @themarketswork.

[May 10, 2019] Stefan Halper was instrumental in entrapment of Carter Page

Notable quotes:
"... After being in contact with Page for 14 months, Halper stopped contact exactly as the final FISA warrant on Page expired. Page, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, was never charged with any crime by the FBI. Efforts for the declassification of the Page FISA application are currently ongoing through the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General. ..."
May 03, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

Originally from: Spygate The True Story of Collusion [Infographic] by Jeff Carlson ( October 12, 2018 Updated: May 3, 2019 )

FBI's formal involvement with the Steele dossier began on July 5, 2016, when Mike Gaeta, an FBI agent and assistant legal attaché at the US Embassy in Rome, was dispatched to visit former MI6 spy Christopher Steele in London. Gaeta would return from this meeting with a copy of Steele's first memo. This memo was given to Victoria Nuland at the State Department, who passed it along to the FBI.

Gaeta, who also headed the FBI's Eurasian Organized Crime unit, had known Steele since at least 2010, when Steele had provided assistance to the FBI's investigation into the FIFA corruption scandal .

Prior to the London meeting, Gaeta may also have met on a less formal basis with Steele several weeks earlier. "In June, Steele flew to Rome to brief the FBI contact with whom he had cooperated over FIFA," The Guardian reported. "His information started to reach the bureau in Washington."

It's worth noting that there was no "dossier" until it was fully compiled in December 2016. There was only a sequence of documents from Steele -- documents that were passed on individually -- as they were created. Therefore, from the FBI's legal perspective, they didn't use the dossier. They used individual documents.

For the next month and a half, there appeared to be little contact between Steele and the FBI. However, the FBI's interest in the dossier suddenly accelerated in late August 2016, when the bureau asked Steele "for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources."

In September 2016, Steele traveled back to Rome to meet with the FBI's Eurasian squad once again. It's likely that the meeting included several other FBI officials as well. According to a House Intelligence Committee minority memo , Steele's reporting reached the FBI counterintelligence team in mid-September 2016 -- the same time as Steele's September trip to Rome.

The reason for the FBI's renewed interest had to do with an adviser to the Trump campaign -- Carter Page -- who had been in contact with Stefan Halper, a CIA and FBI source, since July 2016. Halper arranged to meet with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page took a trip to Moscow. Speakers at the symposium included Madeleine Albright, Vin Webber, and Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6.

Page was now the FBI's chosen target for a FISA warrant that would be obtained on Oct. 21, 2016. The Steele dossier would be the primary evidence used in obtaining the FISA warrant, which would be renewed three separate times, including after Trump took office, finally expiring in September 2017.

The FBI obtained a retroactive FISA spy warrant on Page

After being in contact with Page for 14 months, Halper stopped contact exactly as the final FISA warrant on Page expired. Page, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, was never charged with any crime by the FBI. Efforts for the declassification of the Page FISA application are currently ongoing through the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General.

Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed on Twitter @themarketswork.

[May 10, 2019] The Three Purposes of Russiagate by Paul Craig Roberts

Notable quotes:
"... As Kunstler puts it, "The Special Prosecutor's main bit of mischief, of course, was his refusal to reach a conclusion on the obstruction of justice charge. What the media refuses to accept and make clear is that a prosecutor's failure to reach a conclusion is exactly the same thing as an inability to make a case, and it was a breach of Mr. Mueller's duty to dishonestly present that failure as anything but that in his report -- and possibly an act of criminal prosecutorial misconduct" on Mueller's part. ..."
"... But this is not the only dishonesty in Mueller's report. Although Mueller's report clearly obliterates the Russiagate conspiracy theory peddled by the military/security complex, the Democrats, and the presstitutes, Mueller's report takes for granted that Russia interfered in the election but not in collusion with Trump or Trump officials. Mueller states this interference as if it were a fact without providing one drop of evidence. Indeed, nowhere in the report, or anywhere else, is there any evidence of Russian interference. ..."
"... Mueller simply takes Russian interference for granted as if endless repeating by a bunch of presstitutes makes it so. For example, the Mueller report says that the Russians hacked the DNC emails, a claim for which no evidence exists. Moreover, it is a claim that is contradicted by the known evidence. William Binney and other experts have demonstrated that the DNC emails were, according to their time stamps, downloaded much more quickly than is possible over the Internet. This fact has been carefully ignored by Mueller, the Democrats and the presstitutes ..."
"... Indictments do not require evidence, and Mueller had none. Moreover, Mueller could not possibly know the identities of the Russian intelligence agents who allegedly did the hacking. This was of no concern to Mueller. He knew he needed no evidence, because he knew there would be no trial. The indictment was political propaganda, not real. ..."
"... The myth of Russian interference is so well established that even Glenn Greenwald in his otherwise careful and correct exposition of the Russiagate hoax buys into Russian interference as if it were a fact. Indeed, many if not most of Trump's supporters are ready to blame Russia for trying, but failing, to ensnare their man Trump. ..."
"... The falsity of Russiagate and the political purposes of the hoax are completely obvious, but even Trump supporters tip their hats to the falsehood of Russian interference so that they do not look guilty of excessive support for Trump. In other words, Russiagate has succeeded in constraining how far Trump's supporters can go in defending him, especially if he has any remaining intent to reduce tensions with Russia. ..."
"... Russiagate has succeeded in criminalizing in the American mind any contact with Russia. Thus has the military/security complex guaranteed that its budget and power will not be threatened by any move toward peace between nuclear powers. ..."
"... Just as Mueller indicted Russian intelligence agents without evidence, he could have indicted Trump without evidence, but a case against a president that is without evidence is not one a prosecutor wants to take to court as it is obviously an act of sedition. ..."
"... That the Democrats and the presstitutes want Trump indicted for obstructing a crime that did not occur shows how insane they have been driven by their hatred of Trump. What is operating in the Democratic Party and in the American media is insanity and hatred. Nothing else. ..."
"... Journalists who lie for the Establishment have no need of the First Amendment. Perhaps this is why they have no concern that Washington's attack on Julian Assange will destroy the First Amendment. They are helping Washington destroy Assange so that their self-esteem will no longer be threatened by the fact that there is a real journalist out there doing real journalism. Mueller Report ..."
Apr 01, 2023 | ahtribune.com

Russiagate has three purposes.

  1. One is to prevent President Trump from endangering the vast budget and power of the military/security complex by normalizing relations with Russia.
  2. Another, in the words of James Howard Kunstler, is "to conceal the criminal conduct of US government officials meddling in the 2016 election in collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign," by focusing all public and political attention on a hoax distraction.
  3. The third is to obstruct Trump's campaign and distract him from his agenda when he won the election.

Despite the inability of Mueller to find any evidence that Trump or Trump officials colluded with Russia to steal the US presidential election, and the inability of Mueller to find evidence with which to accuse Trump of obstruction of justice, Russiagate has achieved all of its purposes.

Trump has been locked into a hostile relationship with Russia. Neoconservatives have succeeded in worsening this hostile relationship by manipulating Trump into a blatant criminal attempt to overthrow in broad daylight the Venezuelan government.

Hillary's criminal conduct and the criminal conduct of the CIA, FBI, and Obama Justice (sic) Department that resulted in a variety of felonies, including the FBI obtaining spy warrants for partisan political purposes on false pretexts from the FISA court, were swept out of sight by the Russiagate hoax.

The Mueller report was written in such a way that despite the absence of any evidence supporting any indictment of Trump, the report refused to clear Trump of obstruction and passed the buck to the Attorney General. In other words, Mueller in the absence of any evidence kept the controversy going by setting up Attorney General Barr for cover-up charges.

It is evidence of Mueller's corruption that he does not explain just how it is possible for Trump to possibly have obstructed justice when Mueller states in his report that the crime he was empowered to investigate could not be found. How does one obstruct the investigation of a crime that did not occur?

As Kunstler puts it, "The Special Prosecutor's main bit of mischief, of course, was his refusal to reach a conclusion on the obstruction of justice charge. What the media refuses to accept and make clear is that a prosecutor's failure to reach a conclusion is exactly the same thing as an inability to make a case, and it was a breach of Mr. Mueller's duty to dishonestly present that failure as anything but that in his report -- and possibly an act of criminal prosecutorial misconduct" on Mueller's part.

But this is not the only dishonesty in Mueller's report. Although Mueller's report clearly obliterates the Russiagate conspiracy theory peddled by the military/security complex, the Democrats, and the presstitutes, Mueller's report takes for granted that Russia interfered in the election but not in collusion with Trump or Trump officials. Mueller states this interference as if it were a fact without providing one drop of evidence. Indeed, nowhere in the report, or anywhere else, is there any evidence of Russian interference.

Mueller simply takes Russian interference for granted as if endless repeating by a bunch of presstitutes makes it so. For example, the Mueller report says that the Russians hacked the DNC emails, a claim for which no evidence exists. Moreover, it is a claim that is contradicted by the known evidence. William Binney and other experts have demonstrated that the DNC emails were, according to their time stamps, downloaded much more quickly than is possible over the Internet. This fact has been carefully ignored by Mueller, the Democrats and the presstitutes.

One reason for ignoring this undisputed fact is that they all want to get Julian Assange, and the public case concocted against Assange is that Assange is in cahoots with the Russians who allegedly gave him the hacked emails. As there is no evidence that Russia hacked the emails and as Assange has said Russia is not the source, what is Mueller's evidence? Apparently, Mueller's evidence is his own political indictment of Russian individuals who Mueller alleged hacked the DNC computers. This false indictment for which there is no evidence was designed by Mueller to poison the Helsinki meeting between Trump and Putin and announced on the eve of the meeting.

Indictments do not require evidence, and Mueller had none. Moreover, Mueller could not possibly know the identities of the Russian intelligence agents who allegedly did the hacking. This was of no concern to Mueller. He knew he needed no evidence, because he knew there would be no trial. The indictment was political propaganda, not real.

The myth of Russian interference is so well established that even Glenn Greenwald in his otherwise careful and correct exposition of the Russiagate hoax buys into Russian interference as if it were a fact. Indeed, many if not most of Trump's supporters are ready to blame Russia for trying, but failing, to ensnare their man Trump.

The falsity of Russiagate and the political purposes of the hoax are completely obvious, but even Trump supporters tip their hats to the falsehood of Russian interference so that they do not look guilty of excessive support for Trump. In other words, Russiagate has succeeded in constraining how far Trump's supporters can go in defending him, especially if he has any remaining intent to reduce tensions with Russia.

Russiagate has succeeded in criminalizing in the American mind any contact with Russia. Thus has the military/security complex guaranteed that its budget and power will not be threatened by any move toward peace between nuclear powers.

The Democratic Party and the presstitutes cannot be bothered by facts. They are committed to getting Trump regardless of the facts. And so is Mueller, and Brennan, and Comey, and a slew of other corrupt public officials.

A good example of journalistic misconduct is James Risen writing in Glenn Greenwald's Intercept of all places, "WILLIAM BARR MISLED EVERYONE ABOUT THE MUELLER REPORT. NOW DEMOCRATS ARE CALLING FOR HIS RESIGNATION." Quoting the same posse of "hang Trump high" Democrats, Risen, without questioning their disproven lies, lets the Democrats build a case that Mueller's report proves Trump's guilt. Then Risen himself misrepresents the report in support of the Democrats. He says there is a huge difference between Barr's memo on the report and the report itself as if Barr would misrepresent a report that he is about to release.

Length is the only difference between the memo and the report. This doesn't stop Risen from writing: "In fact, the Mueller report makes it clear that a key reason Mueller did not seek to prosecute Trump for obstruction was a longstanding Justice Department legal opinion saying that the Justice Department can't indict a sitting president." This is something Mueller threw in after saying he didn't have the evidence to indict Trump. It is yet another reason for not indicting, not the reason. Risen then backs up his misreport with that of a partisan Democrat, Renato Mariotti who claims that Mueller could have indicted Trump except it is against US Justice Department policy. Again, there is no explanation from Risen, Mariotti, or anyone else how Mueller could have indicted Trump for obstructing what Mueller concludes was a crime that did not happen.

Just as Mueller indicted Russian intelligence agents without evidence, he could have indicted Trump without evidence, but a case against a president that is without evidence is not one a prosecutor wants to take to court as it is obviously an act of sedition.

That the Democrats and the presstitutes want Trump indicted for obstructing a crime that did not occur shows how insane they have been driven by their hatred of Trump. What is operating in the Democratic Party and in the American media is insanity and hatred. Nothing else.

Risen also alleges that the unproven Russian hacks were passed over by Barr in his memo on the report. Not only is this incorrect, but also Risen apparently has forgot that the investigation was about Trump's collusion with Russia to do something illegal and the investigation found that no such thing occurred. Risen, like the rest of the presstitutes and even Greenwald himself, takes for granted that the unproven Russian hacks happened. Again we see that the longer a lie is repeated the more it becomes true. Not even Greenwald can detect that he has been bamboozled.

At one time James Risen was an honest reporter. He won a Pulitzer prize, and he was threatened with prison by the Department of Justice when he refused to reveal his source for his reporting on illegal actions of the CIA. But Risen discovered that in the new world of journalism, telling the truth is punished while lying is rewarded. Risen, like all the others, decided that his income was more important than the truth.

Journalists who lie for the Establishment have no need of the First Amendment. Perhaps this is why they have no concern that Washington's attack on Julian Assange will destroy the First Amendment. They are helping Washington destroy Assange so that their self-esteem will no longer be threatened by the fact that there is a real journalist out there doing real journalism. Mueller Report

MORE...

Paul Craig Roberts has had careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service, and business. He is chairman of The Institute for Political Economy.

[May 10, 2019] In some respects, the neoliberal MSMs has played the most disingenuous of roles is Spygate (aka Russiagate)

May 03, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

Originally from: Spygate The True Story of Collusion [Infographic] by Jeff Carlson ( October 12, 2018 Updated: May 3, 2019 )

Media

In some respects, the media has played the most disingenuous of roles. Areas of investigation that historically would have proven irresistible to reporters of the past have been steadfastly ignored. False narratives have been all-too-willingly promoted and facts ignored. Fusion GPS personally made a series of payments to several as-of-yet- unnamed reporters .

The majority of the mainstream media has represented positions of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

Steele met with members of certain media with relative frequency. In September 2016 , he met with a number of U.S. journalists for "The New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, the New Yorker and CNN," according to The Guardian. It was during this period that Steele met with Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News.

In mid-October 2016, Steele returned to New York and met with reporters again. Toward the end of October, Steele spoke via Skype with Mother Jones reporter David Corn.

Leaking, including felony leaking of classified information, has been widespread. The Carter Page FISA warrant -- likely the unredacted version -- has been in the possession of The Washington Post and The New York Times since March 2017. Traditionally, the intelligence community leaked to The Washington Post while the DOJ leaked to sources within The New York Times. This was a historical pattern that stood until this election. The leaking became so widespread, even this tradition was broken.

On April 3, 2017, BuzzFeed reporter Ali Watkins wrote the article " A Former Trump Adviser Met With a Russian Spy ." In the article, she identified "Male-1," referred to in court documents relating to the case of Russian spy Evgeny Buryakov, as Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who had provided the FBI with assistance in the case. Just over a week later, on April 11, 2017, a Washington Post article, " FBI Obtained FISA Warrant to Monitor Former Trump Adviser Carter Page ," confirmed the existence of the October 2016 Page FISA warrant.

The information contained within both articles likely came via felony leaks from James Wolfe, former director of security for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who was arrested on June 7, 2018, and charged with one count of lying to the FBI. Wolfe's indictment alleges that he was leaking classified information to multiple reporters over an extended period of time.

Reporter Ali Watkins likely received the undredacted FISA application on Carter Page from James Wolfe.

It appears probable that Wolfe leaked unredacted copies of the Page FISA application.

According to the indictment , Wolfe exchanged 82 text messages with Watkins on March 17, 2017. That same evening they engaged in a 28-minute phone call.

The original Page FISA application is 83 pages long, including one final signatory page.

In the public version of the application, there are 37 fully redacted pages. In addition to that, several other pages have redactions for all but the header. There are only two pages in the entire document that contain no redactions.

Why would Wolfe bother to send 37 pages of complete redactions? It seems more than plausible that Wolfe took pictures of the original unredacted FISA application and sent them by text to Watkins.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has repeatedly stated that evidence within the FISA application shows the counterintelligence agencies were abused by the Obama administration. Most of the mainstream media has known this.

Despite this, most major news organizations for over two years have promoted the Russia-collusion narrative. Despite ample evidence having come out to the contrary, they have not admitted they were wrong, likely because doing so would mean they would have to admit their complicity.

Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed on Twitter @themarketswork.

[May 10, 2019] The role of Obama administration in spygate (aka Russiagate)

May 03, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

Originally from: Spygate The True Story of Collusion [Infographic] by Jeff Carlson ( October 12, 2018 Updated: May 3, 2019 )

Obama Administration

The Obama administration provided a simultaneous layer of protection and facilitation for the entire effort. One example is provided by Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333 , also known as Obama's data-sharing order . With the passage of the order, agencies and individuals were able to ask the NSA for access to specific surveillance simply by claiming the intercepts contained relevant information that was useful to a particular mission.

Section 2.3 had been expected to be finalized by early to mid-2016. Instead, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn't sign off on Section 2.3 until Dec. 15, 2016. The order was finalized when Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed it on Jan. 3, 2017.

The reason for the delay could relate to the fact that while the executive order made it easier to share intelligence between agencies, it also limited certain types of information from going to the White House.

An example of this was provided by Evelyn Farkas during a March 2, 2017, MSNBC interview , where she detailed how the Obama administration gathered and disseminated intelligence on the Trump team:

"I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill 'Get as much information as you can. Get as much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.'

"The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff's dealing with Russians, [they] would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. That's why you have the leaking."

Many of the Obama administration's efforts appear to have been structural in nature, such as establishing new procedures or creating impediments to oversight that enabled much of the surveillance abuse to occur.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz was appointed by Obama in 2011. From the very start, he found his duties throttled by the attorney general's office. According to congressional testimony by Horowitz:

"We got access to information up to 2010 in all of these categories. No law changed in 2010. No policy changed. It was simply a decision by the General Counsel's Office in 2010 that they viewed, now, the law differently. And as a result, they weren't going to give us that information."

These new restrictions were put in place by Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

On Aug. 5, 2014, Horowitz and other inspectors general sent a letter to Congress asking for unimpeded access to all records. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates responded on July 20, 2015, with a 58-page memorandum . The memo specifically denied the inspector general access to any information collected under Title III -- including intercepted communications and national security letters.

The New York Times recently disclosed that national security letters were used in the surveillance of the Trump campaign.

At other times, the Obama administration's efforts were more direct. The Intelligence Community assessment was released internally on Jan. 5, 2017. On this same day, Obama held an undisclosed White House meeting to discuss the dossier with national security adviser Susan Rice, FBI Director James Comey, and Yates. Rice would later send herself an email documenting the meeting.

The following day, Brennan, Clapper, and Comey attached a written summary of the Steele dossier to the classified briefing they gave Obama. Comey then met with President-elect Trump to inform him of the dossier. This meeting took place just hours after Comey, Brennan, and Clapper formally briefed Obama on both the Intelligence Community assessment and the Steele dossier.

Comey would only inform Trump of the "salacious" details contained within the dossier. He later explained on CNN in an April 2018 interview why:

"Because that was the part that the leaders of the Intelligence Community agreed he needed to be told about."

Shortly after Comey's meeting with Trump, both the Trump–Comey meeting and the existence of the dossier were leaked to CNN. The significance of the meeting was material, as Comey noted in a Jan. 7 memo he wrote:

"Media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material."

The media had widely dismissed the dossier as unsubstantiated and, therefore, unreportable. It was only after learning that Comey briefed Trump that CNN reported on the dossier. It was later revealed that DNI James Clapper personally leaked Comey's meeting with Trump to CNN.

The Obama administration also directly participated in a series of intelligence unmaskings , the process whereby a U.S. citizen's identity is revealed from collected surveillance. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power reportedly engaged in hundreds of unmasking requests. Rice has admitted to doing the same.

The Obama administration engaged in the ultimately successful effort to oust Trump's newly appointed national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn. Yates, along with Mary McCord, head of the DOJ's National Security Division, led that effort .

Executive Order 13762

President Barack Obama issued a last-minute executive order on Jan. 13, 2017, that altered the line of succession within the DOJ. The action was not done in consultation with the incoming Trump administration.

Acting Attorney General Sally Yates was fired on Jan. 30, 2017, by a newly inaugurated President Trump for refusing to uphold the president's executive order limiting travel from certain terror-prone countries. Yates was initially supposed to serve in her position until Jeff Sessions was confirmed as attorney general.

Obama's executive order placed the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia next in line behind the department's senior leadership. The attorney at the time was Channing Phillips.

Phillips was first hired by former Attorney General Eric Holder in 1994 for a position in the D.C. U.S. attorney's office. Phillips, after serving as a senior adviser to Holder, stayed on after he was replaced by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

It appears the Obama administration was hoping the Russia investigation would default to Channing in the event Sessions was forced to recuse himself from the investigation. Sessions, whose confirmation hearings began three days before the order, was already coming under intense scrutiny.

The implementation of the order may also tie into Yates's efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn over his call with the Russian ambassador.

Trump ignored the succession order, as he is legally allowed to do, and instead appointed Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, as acting attorney general on Jan. 30, 2017, the same day Yates was fired.

Trump issued a new executive order on Feb. 9, 2017, the same day Sessions was sworn in, reversing Obama's prior order.

On March 10, 2017, Trump fired 46 Obama-era U.S. attorneys, including Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. These firings appear to have been unexpected.

Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed on Twitter @themarketswork.

[May 10, 2019] #Guccifer2 hashtag on Twitter

Notable quotes:
"... In both cases # Assange had announced the release before allegedly getting material from # Guccifer2 (aka GRU). There might be other sources other than # G2 . # MuellerReport pic.twitter.com/bPN7NHpM9N ..."
"... Good Lord, @ Birgittaj , not you as well? That timeline is rubbish. Ask yourself, how could # Assange tell UK TV on 12 June # WikiLeaks already had possession of # DNCLeaks if # Mueller says "source" # Guccifer2 didn't send anything to WL until 14 July? http://www. itv.com/news/update/20 16-06-12/assange-on-peston-on-sunday-more-clinton-leaks-to-come/ # SaySorry pic.twitter.com/B0WRAjv15G ..."
"... LINDSEY GRAHAM FORGOT TO MENTION THAT SPEAKER PAUL RYAN SHUT DOWN # HouseIntelInvestigations into # Awan # Guccifer2 and # ClintonEmails . ..."
"... Always assumed that # Guccifer2 was either a DNC construction (as it was so badly done) or a NSA construction ..."
"... Says VIPs analyzed the @ wikileaks docs; via metadata discovered it had to be a thumb drive download. 2 years ago VIPs said # Guccifer2 docs had that character. ? Mr. President -- Listen to Bill Binney. Russiagate is a Worse Hoax than You Thought https:// youtu.be/-9TyASfZV0c # RussiaGate ..."
May 10, 2019 | twitter.com

PamelaDrew ‏ 28 Dec 2018

Fab recap of the hoax behind # Guccifer2 with forensics to identify changes made to support false attribution for # Russia but trust the corp news who sold WMD lies because # CIA wouldn't use # Vault7 tools or deceive the public, right? https:// disobedientmedia.com/2018/12/guccif er-2-0-game-over-year-end-review/

Robbin Young ‏ 7:51 PM - 18 Apr 2019

# MuellerReport # Guccifer2 # SethRich # JulianAssange # Wikileaks # Russia # Russians 8/25/16 DMs: "his name is seth, he was my whistleblower" - Guccifer 2.0 "Can't you trust Julian?" - Robbin Young "he may be connected to russians, i don't like it though he's my hero" - Guccifer 2.0 pic.twitter.com/LlBo413q2h

4:27 PM - 4 May 2019

In April 2016, the # GRU hacked into the computers of the @ DCCC & @ DNC & stole 100s of 1000s of docs. In mid-June 2016 the GRU began disseminating stolen materials through the fictitious online personas " # DCLeaks " and " # Guccifer2 .0." and then through @ WikiLeaks . - # MuellerReport

Ferez Nallaseth ‏ 10:26 AM - 26 Jan 2019

# SpecialCounselMueller # Guccifer2 # 2016Elections # Law # Constitution # Justice # CompromisingDemocracyGlobally # Cybersecurity "The clear implication is that any truly incriminating communications would have been conducted in encrypted https:// lnkd.in/e4zvKYX https:// lnkd.in/eh-WJ-k

Emma Best (U//FOUO) ‏ 3:54 PM - 30 Jan 2019

This is an interesting thread. Also note that Mueller has already released portions of logs of communications between # WikiLeaks and # Guccifer2 , a contact first reported by @ KevinCollier using logs I provided. pic.twitter.com/lVjeq9nTA2

4:04 PM - 4 May 2019

The @ DNC , etc docs that # Guccifer2 .0 provided to @ wikileaks prove that Hillary promoted Trump because she thought she could beat him (mistake) and the @ DNC rigged the primary so Hillary would win the nomination (mistake). All of this is talked about in the # MuellerReport .

craig slingsby ‏ 2:53 AM - 29 Apr 2019

The Transaction for a year of VPN from the same Netyksho et al. Wallet indictment but not the guccifer 2.0 alleged VPN https://www. blockchain.com/en/btc/tx/e33a 3951183d86eb7e6c214fe1c320e6322774663a17b5bea3c74785f23477ad # RussiaInvestigation # bitcoin # Guccifer2

Cristiano Arienti ‏ 9:05 AM - 18 Apr 2019

# Mueller does not t offer clear cronology (how and when) @ wikileaks got the # DNCleak and the # Podestaemails .

In both cases # Assange had announced the release before allegedly getting material from # Guccifer2 (aka GRU). There might be other sources other than # G2 . # MuellerReport pic.twitter.com/bPN7NHpM9N

Augury IT ‏ 7:24 PM - 23 Apr 2019

"Among those who clicked on a bogus link in an email was Podesta, Clinton campaign chairman, along with several other junior campaign volunteers, informal campaign advisers and one DNC employee." https:// freebeacon.com/national-secur ity/gru-spearphishing-emails-fooled-democrats-clinton-campaign-in-2016/ # malware # Democrats # GRU # Guccifer2 # WikiLeaks # ITsecurity

Sharry Wilson ‏ 8:42 PM - 15 Feb 2019

Special counsel prosecutors say they have communications of Stone with WikiLeaks # RogerStone # WikiLeaks # JulianAssange # Guccifer2 .0 # RobertMueller # Russia # DNC # HillaryClinton # RussiaInvestigation # US https:// cnn.it/2SUSdXM

Bella Magnani 5:46 AM - 26 Apr 2019

Good Lord, @ Birgittaj , not you as well? That timeline is rubbish. Ask yourself, how could # Assange tell UK TV on 12 June # WikiLeaks already had possession of # DNCLeaks if # Mueller says "source" # Guccifer2 didn't send anything to WL until 14 July? http://www. itv.com/news/update/20 16-06-12/assange-on-peston-on-sunday-more-clinton-leaks-to-come/ # SaySorry pic.twitter.com/B0WRAjv15G

Oeishik M.G. C. JD ‏ 1:41 AM - 1 May 2019

# LessonsfromtheMuellerReport # Guccifer2 is a problem child. In other news, did they get the name by combining @ Gucci & # Lucifer ?? - If so, both parties have cause of action against @ KremlinRussia_E @ realDonaldTrump & all their poisonous branches.

#BlackWomenForBernie2020 ‏ 1:24 PM - 14 Mar 2019

LINDSEY GRAHAM FORGOT TO MENTION THAT SPEAKER PAUL RYAN SHUT DOWN # HouseIntelInvestigations into # Awan # Guccifer2 and # ClintonEmails .

THEN # ChristopherWray final FBI recommendation is to RETRAIN THE FBI TO NOT EMBARRASS THEMSELVES "cough" GOP for # WealthClass # COMEY ! # BERNITDOWN https:// twitter.com/thedailybeast/ status/1106286631173148673

Michael Holloway - Schroedinger's Cyclist ‏ 12:25 PM - 13 Mar 2019

Always assumed that # Guccifer2 was either a DNC construction (as it was so badly done) or a NSA construction (or 2 working together); in both cases designed to implicate Russia in a DNC 'hack' ...while @ CraigMurrayOrg has stated he received the DNC files in Wash DC from a leaker.

Are You Cardigan? ‏ 10 Dec 2018

# HisNameWasSethRich # itallbeginshere ... # Guccifer2 .0 # Wikileaks # Podesta # Clinton >>> JAIL >>> https://www. youtube.com/edit?o=U&video _id=VYdch94KC9E pic.twitter.com/PmecvFXxdX

Donny Deplorable ‏ 8:36 AM - 3 Dec 2018

# RogerStone admitted (bragged) that he was in contact with # Guccifer2 .0. His goose is already cooked @ realDonaldTrump https:// twitter.com/realDonaldTrum p/status/1069619316319035392

Michael Holloway - Schroedinger's Cyclist ‏ 12:17 PM - 13 Mar 2019

Says VIPs analyzed the @ wikileaks docs; via metadata discovered it had to be a thumb drive download. 2 years ago VIPs said # Guccifer2 docs had that character. ? Mr. President -- Listen to Bill Binney. Russiagate is a Worse Hoax than You Thought https:// youtu.be/-9TyASfZV0c # RussiaGate

Bella Magnani 6:18 AM - 26 Apr 2019

Ah, bad link. Try this one: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=x7UvbE TwpwU # Assange announcing # WikiLeaks possession of # DNCLeaks on 12 June, which # Mueller says "source" # Guccifer2 didn't send until 14 July. Relevant now: see his comments on UK trying to foist his US extradition onto # EU (ie # Sweden )

5:07 PM - 4 May 2019

Did you read any of the dos that were leaked by # Guccifer2 .0, # DCLeaks , or @ Wikeleaks ? If not, let me hip you to something. Corrupt Dems in the @ DCCC and the @ DNC , as well as crooked @ HillaryClinton , are the main reasons Trump is in the White House. Dems blew it. Face the truth.

#BlackWomenForBernie2020 ‏ 3:17 PM - 14 Mar 2019

*cough* Former Speaker Paul Ryan closed down HOUSE INTEL INVESTIGATIONS. Including # AWAN and # GUCCIFER2

Bella Magnani 4:36 PM - 26 Apr 2019

LoL. You've really got that "classic hindsight bias" nailed there, @ KPoulsen . And tsk! you're supposed to be a 'tech editor' & you say "you've lost me there" when I link you the digital forensic evidence # WikiLeaks didn't get # DNCLeaks from # Guccifer2 ? https:// theforensicator.wordpress.com/sorting-the-wi kileaks-dnc-emails/

ᴘᴀᴛᴛɪᴇ ɢᴀʀᴅɴᴇʀ 2:32 PM - 30 Dec 2018

How did # Guccifer2 .0 get "I-T's" @ DNC "Leaks" from "we suspect" @ JohnBrennan & James Clapper [•] Reporting on # Unity4J @ Unity4J is @ raymcgovern in -plainspeak- To @ wikileaks ? "Thumb drive to @ AssangeDefence " https:// youtu.be/2moVxa2oGJI "break it into a thousand pieces..." # QAnon

Baba Yaga ‏ 8:54 PM - 18 Apr 2019

The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report via @ Consortiumnews Mueller indictments of GRU for # Guccifer2 & 13 # Russians with dank means lack evidence https:// consortiumnews.com/2019/04/18/the -guccifer-2-0-gaps-in-muellers-full-report/ @ mtracey @ mtaibbi @ aaronjmate # MuellerReport # MuellerGoofs

Thread Reader App ‏ 4:11 PM - 6 May 2019

Hello, the unroll you asked for: Thread by @ with_integrity : "The Mueller Report - Expensive Estimations And Elusive Evidence http:// g-2.space/muellerreport/ [ ]" # Guccifer2 # RussiaGate https:// threadreaderapp.com/thread/1125435 714563452929.html Talk to you soon.

̼ ̼̼̼̼̼̼̼ ̼̼̼̼̼̼̼ 1:49 AM - 27 Dec 2018

"the # Guccifer2 .0 # persona was operated by # someone that # fabricated # evidence & # falsified # claims in support of statements made by @ CrowdStrike executives. They # wanted to be perceived as # Russian & wanted to be attributed to @ WikiLeaks from the day they emerged" # RussiaGate ? pic.twitter.com/EIfiO9NuZ2

Baba Yaga ‏ 10:07 AM - 29 Apr 2019

Crowdstrike had to abandon claims about the same Russian hackers in Ukraine https:// theforensicator.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/mor e-evidence-that-guccifer-2-planted-his-russian-breadcrumbs/amp/?__twitter_impression=true # Guccifer2 # RussiaGate @ ggreenwald @ mtracey @ aaronjmate @ mtaibbi

watchful one ‏ 9:48 AM - 29 Apr 2019

will anything in Mueller's report stand the test of time? https:// theforensicator.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/mor e-evidence-that-guccifer-2-planted-his-russian-breadcrumbs/ (via @ with_integrity ) # Guccifer2

Adam Carter ‏ 9:40 AM - 29 Apr 2019

More Evidence That Guccifer 2 Planted His Russian Breadcrumbs https:// theforensicator.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/mor e-evidence-that-guccifer-2-planted-his-russian-breadcrumbs/ # Guccifer2 # Forensicator # MuellerReport # Russiagate

Adam Carter ‏ 1:13 PM - 28 Apr 2019

It has been 800 days since the first cracks really started to emerge in the # Guccifer2 facade: https:// archive.fo/2dMfC We now have more evidence pointing to the persona operating from within US timezones than elsewhere: http:// g-2.space/ustimezones Let's see what this week brings. pic.twitter.com/ZtEObd9hmk

Ophelia PGlasser #Bernie2020 ‏ 7:16 AM - 26 Apr 2019

On this discussion, here's Bill Binney & @ jimmy_dore on # MuellerReport & DNC lies & cover-ups by # Guccifer2 https:// twitter.com/opheliapg/stat us/1121778691032223746?s=21

[May 10, 2019] Muellergate and the Discreet Lies of the Bourgeoisie by Craig Murray

Apr 06, 2019 | ahtribune.com

This cartoon seems to me very apposite. The capacity of the mainstream media repeatedly to promote the myth that Russia caused Clinton's defeat, while never mentioning what the information was that had been so damaging to Hillary, should be alarming to anybody under the illusion that we have a working "free media". There are literally hundreds of thousands of mainstream media articles and broadcasts, from every single one of the very biggest names in the Western media, which were predicated on the complete nonsense that Russia had conspired to install Donald Trump as President of the United States.

I genuinely have never quite understood whether the journalists who wrote this guff believed it, whether they were cynically pumping out propaganda and taking their pay cheque, or whether they just did their "job" and chose to avoid asking themselves whether they were producing truth or lies.

I suspect the answer varies from journalist to journalist. At the Guardian, for example, I get the impression that Carole Cadwalladr is sufficiently divorced from reality to believe all that she writes. Having done a very good job in investigating the nasty right wing British Establishment tool that was Cambridge Analytica, Cadwalladr became deluded by her own fame and self-importance and decided that her discovery was the key to understanding all of world politics. In her head it explained all the disappointments of Clintonites and Blairites everywhere. She is not so high-minded however as to have refused the blandishments of the Integrity Initiative.

Luke Harding is in a different category. Harding has become so malleable a tool of the security services it is impossible to believe he is not willingly being used. It would be embarrassing to have written a bestseller called "Collusion", the entire premiss for which has now been disproven, had Harding not made so much money out of it.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/zvwcPOn5Iws

Harding's interview with Aaron Mate of The Real News was a truly enlightening moment. The August elite of the mainstream media virtually never meet anybody who subjects their narrative to critical intellectual scrutiny. Harding's utter inability to deal with unanticipated scepticism descends from hilarious to toe-curlingly embarrassing.

In general, since the Mueller report confirmed that $50 million worth of investigation had been unable to uncover any evidence of Russiagate collusion, the media has been astonishingly unrepentant about the absolute rubbish they have been churning out for years.

Harding and the Guardian's story about Manafort repeatedly calling on Assange in the Ecuador Embassy is one of the most blatant and malicious fabrications in modern media history. It has been widely ridiculed, no evidence of any kind has ever been produced to substantiate it, and the story has been repeatedly edited on the Guardian website to introduce further qualifications and acknowledgments of dubious attribution, not present as originally published. But still neither Editor Katherine Viner nor author Luke Harding has either retracted or apologised, something which calls the fundamental honesty of both into question.

Manafort is now in prison, because as with many others interviewed, the Mueller investigation found he had been involved in several incidences of wrongdoing. Right up until Mueller finalised his report, media articles and broadcasts repeatedly, again and again and again every single day, presented these convictions as proving that there had been collusion with Russia. The media very seldom pointed out that none of the convictions related to collusion. In fact for the most part they related to totally extraneous events, like unrelated tax frauds or Trump's hush-money to (very All-American) prostitutes. The "Russians" that Manafort was convicted of lobbying for without declaration, were Ukrainian and the offences occurred ten years ago and had no connection to Trump of any kind. Rather similarly the lies of which Roger Stone stands accused relate to his invention, for personal gain, of a non-existent relationship with Wikileaks.

The truth is that, if proper and detailed investigation were done into any group of wealthy politicos in Washington, numerous crimes would be uncovered, especially in the fields of tax and lobbying. Rich political operatives are very sleazy. This is hardly news, and if those around Clinton had been investigated there would be just as many convictions and of similar kinds. it is a pity there is not more of this type of work, all the time. But the Russophobic motive behind the Mueller Inquiry was not forwarded by any of the evidence obtained.

My analysis of the Steele dossier, written before I was aware that Sergei Skripal probably had a hand in it, has stood the test of time very well. It is a confection of fantasy concocted for money by a charlatan.

We should not forget at this stage to mention the unfortunate political prisoner Maria Butina, whose offence is to be Russian and very marginally involved in American politics at the moment when there was a massive witchhunt for Russian spies in progress, that makes The Crucible look like a study in calm rationality. Ms Butina was attempting to make her way in the US political world, no doubt, and she had at least one patron in Moscow who was assisting her with a view to increasing their own political influence. But nothing Butina did was covert or sinister. Her efforts to win favour within the NRA were notable chiefly because of the irony that the NRA has been historically responsible for many more American deaths than Russia.

Any narrative of which the Establishment does not approve is decried as conspiracy theory. Yet the "Russiagate" conspiracy theory – which truly is Fake News – has been promoted massively by the entire weight of western corporate and state media. "Russiagate", a breathtaking plot in which Russia and a high profile US TV personality collude together to take control of the most militarily powerful country in the world, knocks "The Manchurian Candidate" into a cocked hat. A Google "news search" restricts results to mainstream media outlets. Such a search for the term "Russiagate" brings 230,000 results. That is almost a quarter of a million incidents of the mainstream media not only reporting the fake "Russiagate" story, but specifically using that term to describe it.

Compare that with a story which is not an outlandish fake conspiracy theory, but a very real conspiracy.

If, by contrast, you do a Google "news search" for the term "Integrity Initiative", the UK government's covert multi million pound programme to pay senior mainstream media journalists to pump out anti-Russian propaganda worldwide, you only get one eighth of the results you get for "Russiagate". Because the mainstream media have been enthusiastically promoting the fake conspiracy story, and deliberately suppressing the very real conspiracy in which many of their own luminaries are personally implicated.

... ... ...

Furthermore – and this is a truly tremendous irony, which relates back to the cartoon at the start – only two of the top ten news results for "Integrity Initiative" come from the Western corporate media.

And this next fact comes nearly into the "too good to be true" category for my argument. Those two MSM mentions, from Sky News and the Guardian, do not complain of the covert anti-Russian propaganda campaign that is the Integrity Initiative. They rather complain that it was an alleged "Russian hack" that made the wrongdoing public!! You could not make it up, you really could not.

According to the mainstream media, it is not Hillary Clinton's fault for conspiring with the DNC to cheat Bernie out of the nomination, it is Russia's fault for allegedly helping to reveal it. It is not the British government's, or their media collaborators', fault for running a covert propaganda scheme to dupe the public of the UK and many other countries, it is the Russians' fault for allegedly helping to reveal it!

Which brings us full circle to the DNC leak that sparked Muellergate and the claims that it was the Russians who lost Hillary the election. Robert Mueller repeats the assertion from the US security services that it was Russian hackers who obtained the DNC emails and passed them on to Wikileaks. I am telling you from my personal knowledge that this is not true.

Neither Mueller's team, not the FBI, nor the NSA, nor any US Intelligence agency, has ever carried out any forensic analysis on the DNC's servers. The DNC consistently refused to make them available. The allegation against Russia is based purely on information from the DNC's own consultants, Crowdstrike.

William Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA (America's US$40 billion a year communications intercept organisation), has proven beyond argument that it is a technical impossibility for the DNC emails to have been transmitted by an external hack – they were rather downloaded locally, probably on to a memory stick. Binney's analysis is fully endorsed by former NSA systems expert Ed Loomis. There simply are no two people on the planet more technically qualified to make this judgement. Yet, astonishingly, Mueller refused to call Binney or Loomis (or me) to testify. Compare this, for example, with his calling to testify my friend Randy Credico, who had no involvement whatsoever in the matter, but Mueller's team hoped to finger as a Trump/Assange link.

The DNC servers have never been examined by intelligence agencies, law enforcement or by Mueller's team. Binney and Loomis have written that it is impossible this was an external hack. Wikileaks have consistently stressed no state actor was involved. No evidence whatsoever has been produced of the transfer of the material from the "Russians" to Wikileaks. Wikileaks Vault 7 release of CIA documents shows that the planting of false Russian hacking "fingerprints" is an established CIA practice . Yet none of this is reflected at all by Mueller nor by the mainstream media.

"Collusion" may be dead, but the "Russiagate" false narrative limps on.

I should add it seems to me very probable Russia did make some efforts to influence the US election. I worked a a British diplomat for 20 years and spent a lot of time trying to influence political outcomes in the country in which I was posted, in Eastern Europe and in Africa. It is part of the geopolitical game. The United States is of course the world leader by a long way in attempting to influence elections abroad, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to that effect in countries including Ukraine, Georgia, Ecuador and Venezuela recently, and pretty well everywhere in Africa. It is a part of normal diplomatic life.

Mueller uncovered some high level influence-broking meetings. This is what states do. He uncovered some sleazy deals. This is what rich people do. He uncovered some US $110,000 of Facebook ad spending from Russia targeted on the USA, some of which promoted sex toys, some of which was post-election, but some of which was apparently trying to assist Trump against Clinton. Compared to the amount the USA pumps into similar arms length assistance to Putin opponents in Russia alone, it was negligible. That this tiny bit of Facebook advertising crucially impacted the US $13,000,000,000 PR campaigns of the candidates is a ludicrous proposition.

That every country stay out of every other country's politics is arguably desirable. It is not however the status quo, and the United States is in the worst position of all to complain.

MORE...
*This article was originally published on craigmurray blog.

[May 10, 2019] Neoliberal pressititutes can not scream "Mexican scum" or "Chinese scum" or "Indian scum." Russian bigotry is, is the only "politially correct" bigotry among the neoliberal media

May 10, 2019 | ahtribune.com

Stop fear-mongering and engaging in "acceptable" bigotry. -- Jimmy Dore , comedian, host of the Jimmy Dore Show

When Keith Olbermann pounded his fist on his table, screaming, "SCUM! RUSSIAN SCUM!!!" I couldn't help but thinking, that's the only nationality he could insert there and get away with it. He couldn't scream "Mexican scum" or "Chinese scum" or "Indian scum." Russian bigotry is, I think, the only acceptable bigotry among the liberal media. Totally acceptable to the liberal media.

Rachel Maddow telling her audience in the middle of a polar vortex that Russia controls their power grid and could freeze them all to death at a moment's notice was by far the most egregious example of fear-mongering. But that's not the only bad thing the media's done. They're currently pushing regime-change wars in Syria and Venezuela.

The corporate news will never regain my trust or redeem itself, because they are owned and funded by the people they're supposed to be investigating and exposing, like the richest man in the world, for instance, Jeff Bezos. He controls 51 percent of all the internet sales in the United States, sits on a Pentagon board and has a $600 million deal with the CIA. That's the guy running the news!

[May 10, 2019] The Russian Menace has been a very lucrative racket for the caste of Imperial Servants and MIC -- paying the mortgages, car loans, kids' college tuitions, for thousands of think-tankers, military contractors, academics and journalists

May 10, 2019 | ahtribune.com

Stop spreading Russophobic paranoia. -- Yasha Levine , journalist, S.H.A.M.E. Project

The thing is that America's media obsession with the Russian menace -- this idea that Russia is the greatest threat to liberal civilization -- predates the Mueller investigation. It predates the 2016 election, and it predates Trump. So this wasn't a sudden mistake about a single investigation, but something that America's been moving towards for over a decade. The Russian Menace has been a lucrative racket -- paying the mortgages, car loans, kids' college tuitions, for thousands of think-tankers, military contractors, academics and journalists.

After Trump, the Russia hysteria hit a new level of paranoia and bigotry. There was a need to blame America's domestic political turmoil, and the failure of its political establishment, on someone or something -- to deflect responsibility for what happened. So suddenly liberal media began to see "the Russians" everywhere -- part of a shadowy foreign conspiracy to undermine America from within.

They weren't just threatening Europe and NATO. They were in the White House, in American voting machines, in American electrical grids, in American children's cartoons. They were hacking people's minds. They were controlling both the international left and the international right -- against the respectable political center. That's how sneaky and devious and cynical they are. That's how much they want to destroy America's liberal democracy.

The Mueller report may provide us some much-needed respite from this insanity for a few weeks or months, but this focus on the Russian menace isn't going away any time soon. You can already see Joe Biden's creepy behavior with women being blamed on a devious Russian plot to help elect Bernie. So as we get closer to the election, this kind of stuff is gonna fire up again big time.

To treat this issue as a media problem that we "can solve" and "get right" in the future is a bit too optimistic, in my opinion. It assumes that our political and media establishment wants to actually "get it right." What does getting it right mean, when they are the problem that needs to be corrected? To "get it right," they'd have to admit that they've been wrong -- not just about Mueller, but about the decades of bankrupt neoliberal politics they've been complicit in pushing on America and around the world. To get it right, our political and media elite would have to voluntarily deplatform itself. And I don't see that happening anytime soon.

4. Talk to people with an actual understanding of history and Russia, not fake experts and uninformed pundits.
-- Carl Beijer , writer

It's remarkable how often the problems of Russiagate coverage came down to simple ignorance. From references to Russia as a "Communist" nation to basic translation errors, we've seen prominent pundits make mistakes that would embarrass a grade-school Muscovite.

This was in part a problem of people exaggerating their own credentials, but it was also a problem of the media deciding that no real expertise was needed. I don't want to call for academic entry exams, but I think it's clear that the media needs to move in the direction of treating Russian studies as a field of knowledge like any other. Do you speak the language? Have you spent more than a few weeks in the country? What and where have you published? Do you have a directly relevant professional background?

There are so many people who could give extraordinary answers to all of these questions, so it says everything about Russiagate when you look at who we heard from instead. From overt operatives to media hacks, corporate news is now overrun by pundits who function as PR professionals for the major parties. All of their professional and social incentives compel them to carry water for their party; if they happen to be right about a given issue, it's purely by accident.

And with Russiagate, we saw the worst-case scenario play out: Republicans, who will defend Trump over anything, ended up being right -- while Democrats, desperate to believe they had caught him in an impeachable crime, got it wrong. The only way around this problem, as far as I can tell, is to talk to pundits who are acting against their own political interests.

In this case, there were plenty of people in liberal-left media who clearly want to see Trump fail, but who were nevertheless Russiagate skeptics. Some of those voices were just being contrarians, of course, but some of them were acting from a place of conviction.

5. Don't manipulate the truth to justify war. -- Rania Khalek , journalist, host of In the Now

From the start, we were warning people that pushing this evidence-free conspiracy theory was ultimately going to empower Trump. But even worse, it actually made the world a more dangerous place. In order to prove he wasn't in bed with the Russians, the Trump administration pushed some of the most anti-Russia policies in the post Cold War-era, moving us closer to nuclear war and increasing the likelihood of more violence in places like Syria, Venezuela and Ukraine, all to prove that Trump isn't Putin's puppet.

This entire affair has also resurrected the careers of the neocons, who, until Trump came along, were largely disgraced for the horrors they inflicted on Iraq. Now they've been embraced by liberals for being anti-Trump, and they have more influence than ever. Not to mention the new McCarthyism that frames everything, from the NRA to white nationalism to even progressive advocacy groups that challenge the Democratic Party, as agents of the Kremlin, distorting everyone's understanding of what's going on today.

The Russiagate narrative has been a disaster, and it's going to continue to be a disaster, because, despite being proven to be a sham, the corporate media and the corporate Democrats are still pushing it, distracting everyone from the real reasons for our miserable status quo.

[May 09, 2019] Russiagate should be viewed as an attempt of entrapment of Trump associates and Trump himslelf by Clinton Mafia (Wasserman-Schuz, the Awan brothers, etc ) and four government agancies: Department of Justice, FBI, CIA and State Deparment in close cooperation with MI6 and UK government

Notable quotes:
"... The truth about American and foreign Intelligence agencies did, indeed, interfere in both the 2016 Presidential election and the Mid-term Congressional elections just last November. Russia's Intelligence agencies never interfered, but Britain's did. Fortunately, MI5 and MI6 failed to get Hillary Clinton into the White House in the 2016 elections. Had Hillary won, the world would've been totally destroyed in a 3rd World War with China, Russia, and Iran. ..."
"... Both of these British Intelligence agencies are hostile to POTUS Donald J. Trump, and they don't hide it. They can't control him like they could his predecessors going back to LBJ. ..."
"... The entire Mueller investigation is a smoke screen for the crimes of a cabal of people (of which Clinton, Biden and even possibly Obama by association are a part) that engaged in "pay to play" over many, many years. The Mueller report could have been completed in 6 months, insteadt it took 22 months and was released, after Barr's appointment and AFTER the mid-terms, when its conclusions would have supported the Republican vote. This is not a coincidence, the report is a political document that walked the tightrope between DNC interests and those of "fair play" to the POTUS. ..."
"... The "smoke screen" has diverted attention from the criminality of the cabal that engaged in all sorts of nefarious activity during the DNC infiltration of important federal agencies, from State, through Justice and housing etc. You need only to think about why Clinton instructed Bleachbit to violate a subpoena instructing the the persevration of all State emails by using "a cloth", to now that soemthing is seriously wrong. Factor in the activities of Wasserman-Schuz and the Awan brothers ad then factor in ACTUAL collusion with Russia by Obama and Clinton and the DNC cabal is guilty of collusion and obstruction of justice (remember also how Bill got half a million for a short speect in an event in Moscow sponsored by a Kremlin owned bank and, of course, his tarmac antics). ..."
"... The smoke screen consisted of the classic tactic of "projection" of a criminals crimes onto his rival. Hopefully, those guilty of starting the smoke screen are not the last to face the consequences of breaing the law and the activities of the crime cabal over the prior 10-15 years are also investigated, before we all get bored with the confirmation of political criminality. Just because a poltical party has control of the DoJ and DoS, does not mean that these agencies become the tools for organized crime. ..."
"... I am unable to determine the truth concerning Mr. Johnson's individual clams but I do take from it the determined efforts to stop détente between Russia and the US. If people die because of their sabotage, their deaths are on their heads. Certainly the major media is part of this effort by making any effort by the Trump Administration to engage with Russia appear to be a crime. ..."
"... The US government was "sold to the highest bidder" gradually after the War of 1812 as the founders died out, economic entities grew in the 19th century, and the ebulliently rising middle class declined to regulate economic influence upon elections, mass media, and the judiciary. Thus the people lost those tools of democracy, and with the consolidation of the MIC/Intel/WallSt/Israel/KSA powers after WWII democracy was lost forever. ..."
"... Thank you for this piece of work exposing the corruption of significant elements of the Democratic Party ("Clinton wing") which used intelligence agencies and other government elements to x-out a sitting president. It is important to add that this writer was vehemently opposed to the candidacy of Donald Trump and is disappointed by his his incumbency as the Chief Executive of the United States of America. It distresses that good people, usually solid thinkers flinch, look away, and deny when the name Hillary Clinton emerges. ..."
"... "Mueller, as noted previously, is downright dishonest in failing to identify Sater as an FBI informant." Sater was also a mobster. This isn't altogether surprising since Mueller was arguably in bed for much of his career with New England's Irish organized crime family, the ultra violent Winter Hill Gang. ..."
"... 2015, 2016, We introduce Donald Trump the "wild card" who just might disturb the flow of profit and market share away from the den of thieves that enjoyed 8 years of Obama. ..."
May 09, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Regula , May 9, 2019 at 21:09

Great reporting, thank you.

There is one facet in this entire dirty scheme that gets overlooked: a number of the actions by the Dems and the FBI served for the exclusive purpose to force Trump to fire his best campaign managers and secretary of defense and other persons in his campaign and presidency:

The Dems were afraid Trump would win with Manafort as his campaign manager, and acted to force Trump to fire him just as earlier, one of his managers who turned out to be effective, was besmeared by a reporter of having forced her to fall when she clearly didn't, just to besmear Trump as being a mysogenist.

The same was done to Flynn, who was in favor of good relations with Russia. Flynn really didn't do anything wrong other than to endanger the Dem's agenda to topple Putin. In the same vein, Bannon and two other of the more populist advisors who wanted a more peaceful conduct for the US, got eliminated by the earlier chief of staff Kelly until he got fired himself.

The same repeated with AG Barr, who is clearly a threat to the entire Dem cabal, but hasn't been successfully far despite shameful congressional inquiries during Barr's testimony.

Looked at in tandem with the Russiagate accusations and Mueller's investigations, it is obvious that this entire web of lies and repeated attempts at entrapment of Trump employees was constructed by Clinton in complicity with not just the FBI and CIA, but with the DNC and the entire deep state, to either oust, impeach or incarcerate Trump and, if that didn't work, to force him and corner him into continuing Obama/Bush's agenda against Russia.

Sadly, Trump fell for it and the US policies which he pursues are the same now as always: hegemony with regime change wars to keep the MIC in control of the entire US economy.

O Society , May 8, 2019 at 18:48

Excellent interview here with Aaron Mate and his father Gabor on the psychology of the mass hallucination we call Russiagate. Same as Consortium News, Aaron was out in front of the propaganda snow machine calling the hoax like it is from its inception.

http://opensociet.org/2019/05/08/america-in-denial-aaron-and-gabor-mate-on-the-psychology-of-russiagate/

ML , May 8, 2019 at 22:02

Thanks, O. Great interview on the psychological underpinnings of Russiagate and its consequences with two lovely human beings, father and son Mate'.

Eileen Kuch , May 8, 2019 at 15:47

The truth about American and foreign Intelligence agencies did, indeed, interfere in both the 2016 Presidential election and the Mid-term Congressional elections just last November. Russia's Intelligence agencies never interfered, but Britain's did. Fortunately, MI5 and MI6 failed to get Hillary Clinton into the White House in the 2016 elections. Had Hillary won, the world would've been totally destroyed in a 3rd World War with China, Russia, and Iran.

Both of these British Intelligence agencies are hostile to POTUS Donald J. Trump, and they don't hide it. They can't control him like they could his predecessors going back to LBJ.

Peter Halligan , May 8, 2019 at 15:06

The entire Mueller investigation is a smoke screen for the crimes of a cabal of people (of which Clinton, Biden and even possibly Obama by association are a part) that engaged in "pay to play" over many, many years. The Mueller report could have been completed in 6 months, insteadt it took 22 months and was released, after Barr's appointment and AFTER the mid-terms, when its conclusions would have supported the Republican vote. This is not a coincidence, the report is a political document that walked the tightrope between DNC interests and those of "fair play" to the POTUS.

The "smoke screen" has diverted attention from the criminality of the cabal that engaged in all sorts of nefarious activity during the DNC infiltration of important federal agencies, from State, through Justice and housing etc. You need only to think about why Clinton instructed Bleachbit to violate a subpoena instructing the the persevration of all State emails by using "a cloth", to now that soemthing is seriously wrong. Factor in the activities of Wasserman-Schuz and the Awan brothers ad then factor in ACTUAL collusion with Russia by Obama and Clinton and the DNC cabal is guilty of collusion and obstruction of justice (remember also how Bill got half a million for a short speect in an event in Moscow sponsored by a Kremlin owned bank and, of course, his tarmac antics).

The smoke screen consisted of the classic tactic of "projection" of a criminals crimes onto his rival. Hopefully, those guilty of starting the smoke screen are not the last to face the consequences of breaing the law and the activities of the crime cabal over the prior 10-15 years are also investigated, before we all get bored with the confirmation of political criminality. Just because a poltical party has control of the DoJ and DoS, does not mean that these agencies become the tools for organized crime.

Pablo Diablo , May 8, 2019 at 15:03

Trump is a "loose cannon". This whole Mueller investigation was an attempt to "control" him. It worked. Got the Neocons back in power and fed The War Machine very well.

Herman , May 8, 2019 at 14:19

I am unable to determine the truth concerning Mr. Johnson's individual clams but I do take from it the determined efforts to stop détente between Russia and the US. If people die because of their sabotage, their deaths are on their heads. Certainly the major media is part of this effort by making any effort by the Trump Administration to engage with Russia appear to be a crime.

Starting with Flynn, he was nailed not on talking to the Russia but the fact that he was caught lying to the FBI. But it was clear that the real crime was not misleading the FBI but talking to Russia. Always thought Trump's failure to defend Flynn was weakness or bad advice or both.

Obstruction of justice, the major hook by law enforcement when there is no proof of a crime. If in fact Trump knew he was not guilty he might well turn to looking to stop a politically damaging vendetta. Might call it obstruction of injustice. That seems to be what the Democrats are about.

DW Bartoo , May 8, 2019 at 12:13

It is comment threads such as this which continue to convince me that the community of interest that congregate at Consortium News, is among the most well informed, most well read, and most diligently committed to critical thought and analysis, along with most articulate, with both wit and wisdom as us to be found anywhere.

The combination of a site totally committed to exposing truth and an attendant community of individuals equally committed to seeking (and sharing) that truth, and the implications of what such truth must reveal, usually of great consequence, results in a space quite unique in this time of unresolved and,too often, unexamined existential crisis, well on the way toward calamity or catastrophe for the entire human species.

As we watch, have watched, for decades, U$ policy, foreign and domestic, choose domination, bullying, and destruction of the rule of law, of civil rights generally, and of any pretense of democracy all devolve into a Klepto Dismal ideology, it is islands of sanity, and the occasional oasis of reason, that make this life journey feel like a bit more than an increasingly bad trip down Machiavellian Lanes, where other humans seem to be living in realms Socrates would have considered most worthy of examination.

Those who struggle merely to survivethey are not the sleepwalking servants of empire, it is the "educated" who prefer the manufactured lies, such as "Russia did it", who see nothing wrong with military empire, which they often deny even exists, nor with destroying the capacity of the web if life to support their existence, so long as their vanity and consumerist hungers are fed, they are not bothered that "education" turns the young into serfs, for their own "meritorious" offspring will, with full "legacy" advantage be propelled ever upward, to heights where failure and deceit are rewarded with further honor, acclaim, and wealth. The "too big to jail", the "nice guys" who sit down on Tuesday to decide who will be killed on Wednesday, those who devise "sophisticated psychological" torture programs that will, inevitably, be blamed on a few bad apples, while those who oversaw such programs and destroyed evidence OF the programs now run intelligence agencies. War criminals are pardoned, some to rise again in positions to destroy nations and human beings with cavalier indifference and a fine reception at Big Bank receptions, often with huge "appreciation" fees for services rendered.

Then, of course, there are the "opinion-shapers" those well-paid mouthpieces of corporate media.

On the subject of money, look how much goes to murder and mayhem? And still they jockey for more.

The public is told, "Everyone hates us for our freedoms!": Duct tape and plastic. A cashless society. Facial recognition at every toll booth.

Tell me, when did the people become the enemy of the government? Tell me, when was the government sold to the highest bidder? And what "branch" of government approved the sale? What "branch" dispensed with the law and simply appointed the next president who had the good fortune to become a "wartime president!", when a certain "event" "changed everything"?

Changed everything and was claimed as the "exceptional moment" that ended any pretense of the rule of law, which has been replaced with an empty "form" of "law", which acknowledges no bounds or limits, no process or need of evidence or even motive, but requires only empty assertion and a media most happy to amplify, for money, any and every idiotic assertion that the owners, the PTB, wish broadcast.

My appreciation to all who dare stand against the madness, the mayhem, the murder, and the myths. (This has been a test, merely to see if new comments have been posted since last I looked. ; -)

Sam F , May 8, 2019 at 12:24

The US government was "sold to the highest bidder" gradually after the War of 1812 as the founders died out, economic entities grew in the 19th century, and the ebulliently rising middle class declined to regulate economic influence upon elections, mass media, and the judiciary. Thus the people lost those tools of democracy, and with the consolidation of the MIC/Intel/WallSt/Israel/KSA powers after WWII democracy was lost forever.

Indeed with our new Democracy™ we have only "an empty "form" of "law", which acknowledges no bounds or limits, no process or need of evidence or even motive, but requires only empty assertion." Same for mass media and elections. We must await national disaster as a precondition of the restoration of democracy.

David Otness , May 8, 2019 at 14:58

...Sociopaths feeding on power projections from psychopaths. Such is our contemporary leadership defined. And perhaps our terminal flaw as a species as technology continues to be within our reach, but as ever, not within our grasp

E Wright , May 8, 2019 at 22:31

Ah, but you see, the Founding Fathers were exactly the people you describe.They wanted to take power from the British for the People. People like themselves. Labor was a commodity to be bought and sold. What better way to ensure their legacy than to fix in place a constitution that would remain frozen in time.

Tuyzentfloot , May 8, 2019 at 04:33

The Iranians in the 2009 elections had a period where the losers of the election challenged the legitimacy of the election which was potentially very dangerous. But it was cut short when Khamenei decided Moussavi et al had to put up or shut up. Either they had to show the proof that the elections had been stolen or they had to shut up. That was a healthy decision.

In the US the whole electoral process is being corrupted and the debate about the legitimacy of the presidency is allowed to drag on till the next election. That's not even about the truth of the claims or whether that would be a reason for worry (Putin has an evil plan to reduce tensions between the US and Russia).

You need a very high threshold before starting such commissions of inquiry.

J. Edward Tipre , May 8, 2019 at 02:56

Thank you for this piece of work exposing the corruption of significant elements of the Democratic Party ("Clinton wing") which used intelligence agencies and other government elements to x-out a sitting president. It is important to add that this writer was vehemently opposed to the candidacy of Donald Trump and is disappointed by his his incumbency as the Chief Executive of the United States of America. It distresses that good people, usually solid thinkers flinch, look away, and deny when the name Hillary Clinton emerges.

Zhu , May 8, 2019 at 01:42

"Every country gets the government it deserves." – Joseph de Maistre

David Otness , May 8, 2019 at 15:03

Omidyar dumped $500,000 into Hillary/Nuland-Kagan's Maidan Massacre.

Risen is risible.

The Intercept's "crack source-protection team" got Realty Winner imprisoned.

TheMerryO , May 8, 2019 at 00:19

One of the better articles on this American mystery story.

Trump Tower: Akmetshin was listed on the log visiting the Obama White House in Jan 2016. He then shows up as Russian atty Natalia's escort to the Tower meeting in June 2016. He and Natalia speak English yet the Obama State Dept interpreter joined them. Several sources report Natalia met with Hillary's agent Fusion GPS before and after the meeting. Natalia was given a special Visa by Mueller SC team member Preet Bharara against a State Dept Jan on Natalia, making Preet a witness on the Tower meeting he is "investigating".

Papadopoulos on Twitter states Mueller falsified the date of the key meeting in the London hotel on May 10, 2016 with Aussie Downer. The Mueller false date inserted was May 6; by giving a false date Mueller obscures the fact that FBI spy chief Priestap was in London on May 9 the day before the hotel meeting. Priestap's London sojourn is deduced from the combo of his testimony to Congress and from Strzok / Page emails "Bill (Priestap) is in London".
Both Carter Page and PapaD would probably be willing to be interviewed and would help clarify some of the data you attempt to write about of their story.

DH Fabian , May 7, 2019 at 23:34

One clue was overlooked early on. Not long after the 2016 election, the Clinton team shouted, "Russia stole the election!" The initial public response was a collective rolling of the eyes. After all, after each election, the side that loses blames someone/something other than themselves for the outcome. But media grabbed hold of the notion, and began creating their the Russian Tale. There was little effort to root out the truth -- only to exploit the notion.

KiwiAntz , May 7, 2019 at 20:55

Didn't you get the Memo Larry? Despite the underwhelming nothingburger Mueller Report & the overwhelming evidence that the US Intelligence Agencies, in cahoots with the MSM, Obama, HRC & the DNC, all interfered in the US Election, none of this really matters? The blame must be centred on RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA that did it! Who needs facts & evidence? We are America & can create our own reality, based on fabricated lies? I've never seen a Country such as the US of A that has such a victim mentality? Its always everyone else's fault that America is a shambolic basketcase on the precipice of Imperial collapse? Its always either another Countries fault such as Russia or China, or the Syrians, Iranian's or Venezuelan 's fault? Or Socialism or any other "ism" you can come up with? Thats a real cowardly, delusional attitude to have, blaming everyone else for your own incompetence & without self examination by looking in the mirror & owning your own stuffups & mistakes? Trump is another sorry example of blaming others for America's corrupt practices? Although its patently obvious that massive attempts have been & continue to be made to sabotage Trump's Presidency & remove this bipolar clown from office, judging by World events, it needs to happen because this POTUS is a dangerous idiot that must be stopped? Trump, with the troika of tyranny of Pompouspeo, Revolton Bolton & Crazy Abrams are heading America into to either a new Cold War or WW3 in which they would not win!

Skip Scott , May 8, 2019 at 07:08

By pretending that RussiaGate was not an Intelligence Agency psy-op, you are helping the Deep State, and it will never make any difference who is president. Your TDS has you in a brain fog.

Deniz , May 8, 2019 at 09:45

Why is "Russia, if you are listening, find Hillarys 30,000 emails." a crime and not a just a cynical joke? It is no different than what late night comedians say everyday. Should comedians be thrown in jail for their thought crimes?

As far as I am aware, the first amendment is still the law of the land.

Eddie S , May 8, 2019 at 20:40

I agree! Trump is a consummate example of the stereotype 'joi-zee' rich-kid scammer, with NO refined tastes and a crass casino pit-boss personality, a true ugly-American boor, but using some flippant remark he made on the campaign trail as supposed support for collusion with Russia is just a ridiculous stretch. I have WAY less of a problem with that than with (for instance) 'St Ronnie's' open-mike 'humor' about 'In ten minutes we start bombing Russia' (I don't recall the exact words that idiot said) -- talk about a possible misunderstanding possibly creating a tragedy of biblical proportions.

hetro , May 8, 2019 at 11:10

Seems to me the confusion lies in conflating Trump doing business deals (and problems thereby, including his lying about it) with Trump working hand in glove with an evil Putin to "fix' the 2016 election. This vast and supid oversimplification has been going on (and fostered) for years in terms of ANY contact with Russia means automatically there is dirty dealing from the Kremlin to twist into US politics. No, we need to resist this oversimplification.

The Mueller thing devolved from Clinton's loss as a diversion, more and more obvious, for various corruptions problems with Clinton's affairs, including the campaign, which are still being largely ignored. There was no Evil Vlad at Trump's elbow. But then any attempt to point out this distinction lands on: "you're helping Trump." No, the focus is on the propaganda smearing of Trump as a distraction from other matters. This does NOT mean anyone seeking to clarify on this distinction is in favor of Trump and his continued ineptitude. It means for once we'd like some truth to come out of government instead of all the manipulation, equally being shared at this time by BOTH wings of our sorry and broken-down System.

ML , May 8, 2019 at 16:48

I agree with you, hetro. I am just tired of hearing these investigations drone on and on and on. I have been in agreement that Russiagate was a sham from the beginning. Trying to convince most so-called liberals of this has been a fruitless endeavor. I am not conflating Trump's sly business deals with anything but what they are- sly, often illegal deals in violation of the emoluments clause. I think the man is seriously despicable. So was his nemesis, the snake-headed Hillary. But I am sick of never-ending discussions of all of this in our press and as well as on many decent sites like the stellar CN. I'd like to focus on urgent matters at hand like war, ecocide, and improving our lives as Americans. But that is too much to ask in this highly partisan environment. Peace to all the great commenters here.

hetro , May 8, 2019 at 20:16

Yes, we absolutely, badly, need to move on–this point directly relates to how Russia-gate has been a monstrous distraction from what we need to concentrate on. But we have a struggle still to continue to challenge the official bullshit which continues on and on masking the reality of a government in thrall to a plutocratic governance. The problem also lies in trying to understand how materialism + propaganda can pretty much neutralize the critical thinking skills of too many of us. We are after all a primitive species. We have been overlain with BS for so long now the question is whether we can ever dig out from under the mountain of it.

Sam F , May 8, 2019 at 12:37

But the worst assaults on US democracy are certainly not all "domestic in nature by right-wing forces & Corporate Democrats" as one cannot ignore the fact that the top ten HRC "donors" were zionists (and the majority of their "donors" over 500K) as well as the largest "donors" to their "foundation" along with KSA. While the economic powers that supplanted our former democracy are diverse, it is plain that Russiagate was invented to conceal IsraelKSAgate, as well as the influence of MIC/WallSt that usually "donate" more to the Repubs.

tom , May 8, 2019 at 14:37

Its not illegal to do business in Russia and everyone knew Trump wanted a Trump Tower in Moscow and what not?

The Stelle dossier was compiled from top Russian government officials so while Trump was "talking" Hillary was working with Russia

Literally

The Emails proved Hillary was a criminal and stole the nomination from Sanders those are just facts

Not only that they used the bogus unsubstantiated dossier to illegally spy on the trump campaign and lied to the FISA court to do it.

Thats sedition and far worse than any crime Trump committed

Hillary is why we have Trump .No other reason.

michael , May 8, 2019 at 19:11

Howard Schultz has over 100 Starbucks in Moscow alone, but I'm sure Mueller and his army of Lawyers and FBI agents and admins (~100 total) vetted this, just as he would have vetted Greg Craig and the Podesta Group who worked in the slime of Ukrainian corruption with Manafort. Otherwise this becomes just partisan political theatre and another Act is coming (Republicans are vindictive!)

If the Kremlin was involved at all with the disinformation of the fake dossier which initially, briefly gave credence to Russiagate, Hillary and her minions have helped Russia "sow discord" and deliberately interfere with the Federal government. That is Sedition.

I don't think the Russians were 'really' involved (no more than usual background noise of which I'm sure the NSA is aware.) The destruction of the DNC computers (classic Hillary– "no evidence = no crime"), the dependence on Crowdstrike and Dmitri Alperovitch, a Russian working with ? the Awan brothers? Fusion GPS? My guess is New Knowledge; seems very likely after pretending to be Russians and interfering with the Alabama Senate race (did anyone go to jail for that), New Knowledge may have pretended before complicit with the DNC (indeed that seems their business model to get government grants). VIPS' data and Seth Rich are worth re-examining in detail. Of course DC is about nepotism and pay-to-play and no one connected will pay a price. They are all above the Law. Braying ass Trump is an Outsider; that is his sole failure in the Establishment's eyes and he has to be removed.

Nothing really new in this article although of course ignored by the CIA-controlled MSM, but some good details in the comments.

sierra7 , May 9, 2019 at 17:15

Michael:
" .. ass Trump is an Outsider; that is his sole failure in the Establishment's eyes and he has to be removed."
That is the eye of the needle! Going further I personally believe that DT didn't ever expect to be elected president! He was so angry with his embarrassment by the President Obama at the Washington DC annual "media party" that he vowed to run then and there but was totally gob-smacked when he actually won. Of course he won because the Dems proferred a most despicable candidate that believed the world owed her the presidency. There is a reason that DT was elected: too many Americans were/are sick and tired of the "Washington Two-Step" .and will try the system before the pitchforks.

Drew Hunkins , May 7, 2019 at 18:38

"Mueller, as noted previously, is downright dishonest in failing to identify Sater as an FBI informant." Sater was also a mobster. This isn't altogether surprising since Mueller was arguably in bed for much of his career with New England's Irish organized crime family, the ultra violent Winter Hill Gang.

The older I get the more I start to wonder if the only honest section of a bookstore is the "True Crime" section.

hetro , May 7, 2019 at 18:25

Somewhat off topic, a valuable addition to the discussion can be found at:

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/05/07/gabor-mate-russiagate-interview-transcript/#more-8099

Here Aaron Mate discusses with his father Gabor Mate psychological implications of the collusion fiasco. (There is a transcript.) It's an interesting discussion related to how fear and paranoia feed over-reaction, although I would also have liked to see promptings to that very paranoid type of response as a propaganda tool to prepare a nation for military events and further war.

elmerfudzie , May 7, 2019 at 17:52

Let's examine the network of interwoven Intel agencies throughout the world today, a brief summary:

  • The Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes was hanged. He threatened to eliminate the contraband trails meandering through Turkey (controlled and organized by the CIA and Turkish Mafia)
  • Olof Palme, sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and confrontational with many U.S. policies and tried in vain to stop the Iran-Iraq war, further he was an avid Cuba-supporter, -assassinated.
  • In 2003, Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was stabbed while shopping She was widely seen as a credible candidate to Olof Plame's office.
  • The Baader-Meinhof gang, formally known as the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction, In 1977 abducted,and eventually murdered, Hanns Martin Schleyer, a representative of the West German upper middle class, an operation done by Gladio (CIA) operators. Ditto, Italy's Aldo Moro abduction and assassination
  • Brabant Supermarket Massacres Belgium (Gladio-CIA) motivated by a "commie" threat in Europe
  • Lyndon B. Johnson, that "senator from the Pentagon" sheds additional light on Gladio, when told the Greek ambassador in the U.S. that the ongoing civil war in Cyprus required the partition of Cyprus. I quote him here (it's on the record):

"Then listen to me Mr. Ambassador. Fuck your parliament and your constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea ASIDE: ask the Goldman Sachs clique! If those two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant's trunk, whacked good. We pay a lot of good dollars to the Greeks Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about democracy, parliament and constitution, he, his parliament and his constitution may not last very long. . . . Don't forget to tell old Papa – what's his name – what I told you. Mind you tell him, you hear. " Does this sound familiar to you, CONSORTIUMNEWS readers? an echo perhaps of many, equivalently arrogant, statements made subsequent to LBJ's pronouncements?

  • As a CIA front Aginter Press of Lisbon Portugal, made it their task to indulge in murderous activities wherever it was necessary, ANYWHERE in the world. Again I paraphrase it here, from the expert on CIA activities, Ganser; Therefore Aginter operatives, including American Jay Sablonsky, together with the CIA and US Green Berets Special Forces participated in the notorious Gautemalan counter-terror of 1968-1971. Ditto, operatives were present in Chile in 1973 and were involved when CIA ousted Allende and replaced him with right wing dictator Augusto Pinochet.
  • Prime Minister Adnan Menderes of Turkey, circa 1960 a CIA directed coup using the Gladio network, followed by a show trial and then hanging, in effect his murder
  • CIA, Counter-Guerilla, the Grey Wolves, and their link to an Assassination Attempt on Pope Paul II. A strong connection exists between the CIA controlled Grey Wolves and members of Counter-Guerilla with this assassination attempt on May 13, 1981
  • These examples are but a sliver of the many, many, many direct "interference's" by one of our U.S. official government agencies into the politics and government and consequently those elections held in western Occident and southern hemisphere countries.

DH Fabian , May 8, 2019 at 00:01

Think of this fiasco in more basic terms. The purpose of the Mueller investigation was to determine if there was evidence that Russia somehow manipulated the 2016 election. There wasn't. What did come out of the investigation was a long list of indictments, several convictions to date, for perjury/financial crimes. Not political crimes. Nevertheless, party loyalists are compelle3d to continue spinning the tale.

The bottom line to the 2016 election: Most votes come down to eco0nomic issues. Democrats split apart their own voting base in the '90s, middle class vs. poor, and the Obama years confirmed that this split is permanent. How did people think that would turn out?

Joe Lauria , May 8, 2019 at 01:49

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FtpcXXgOEM

Yahweh , May 7, 2019 at 15:50

Connect the dots to form a very clear picture .Remember it's always about "profit & market share"

Obama's legacy

Obama's rush to push the ultra secret TPPA

Multinational Corporations big winners of agreement

Big Pharma and MSM share the same bed on Wall St/City of London

MIC and MSM multinational investors at the profit roundtable

The goons (Multinational Intel Agencies) that clear the way for the continued profits for the den of thieves

2015, 2016, We introduce Donald Trump the "wild card" who just might disturb the flow of profit and market share away from the den of thieves that enjoyed 8 years of Obama.

Which brings us all the way back to "The Obama Legacy"

Which brings

tom , May 7, 2019 at 15:08

Major Mueller Report Omissions Suggest Incompetence Or A Coverup

"false claims that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia would qualify as a "principal way" in which Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

Mueller's second major oversight – which we have touched on repeatedly – is the special counsel's portrayal of Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud as a Russian agent – when available evidence suggests he may have been a Western agent.

Weeks after returning from Moscow, Mifsud – a self-described Clinton Foundation member – 'seeded' the rumor that Russia had 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos on April 26, 2016, according to the Mueller report."

So we have -at least- 4 major omissions in the Mueller investigation and report:

1) the Mueller report failed to consider whether the dossier authored by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele was Russian disinformation (and Steele was not charged with lying to the FBI).

2) Mueller's portrayal of Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud as a Russian agent – when available evidence suggests he may have been a Western agent.

3) Mueller declined to talk to the VIPS, who offered evidence that the DNC servers were not hacked but content was copied onto a disk at the server's location

4) Mueller refused to hear Julian Assange, who offered evidence that it was not the Russians that had provided WikiLeaks with the emails.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-07/ilargi-mueller-never-wanted-truth

Tom , May 7, 2019 at 14:49

And it went all the way to the Top

FBI texts: Obama 'wants to know everything we're doing'

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna845531

They were spying on Trump before the election and found nothing

Lisa Page bombshell: FBI couldn't prove Trump-Russia collusion before Mueller appointment

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/hilltv/rising/406881-lisa-page-bombshell-fbi-couldnt-prove-trump-russia-collusion-before-mueller%3famp

And it was Fusion GPS that worked with the Russians not Trump

That's sedition

DH Fabian , May 8, 2019 at 00:29

To my knowledge, Russia wasn't involved at all. Consider something: The US had achieved supremacy/domination in the Western world from the end of WWll until the Reagan/Clinton era. We've been recognized internationally as a declining world power for some years now. In short, we just aren't that important anymore. Remember that the Soviet government and economy had collapsed a short time ago, in the 1990s. Russia has remained solidly focused on rebuilding their country/economic system, while protecting its borders and international interests -- not on petty US party politics.

I remember a televised interview with Putin during the 2016 campaigns, when he was asked if he "supported" Clinton or Trump. In diplomatic terms, he pointed out that either one indicated heightened international tensions, but hoped for the best. He was right. It appears that the more the US deteriorates economically and socially, the more those in power (both parties) seek a Glorious War, WWlll, with visions of emerging from it victoriously -- parades, confetti, and all.

tom , May 8, 2019 at 14:45

Russian government officials were involved in the Steele dossier .that's the only Russia collusion that can be proved. Putin had no part .

The FBI had informants like Sater and Halper infiltrating the Trump campaign and set up Popodopulus and Cohen etc .and why?Because Trump wanted to work with Russia and get out of wars as Gen Flynn did.The deep state wasnt having any f it.

Clark M Shanahan , May 7, 2019 at 13:44

Contrary to others, I'm quite confident Obama was a willing/knowing partner. He always revered our intelligence apparatus and the spin of Empire. His ill-advised placing of the missile shield in Romania (2016)illustrates well his fealty to our StrangeLoves as well as did his massive build-up of arms in the ex-Soviet Satellites. I am very concerned with this sad chapter of deep-state normalization and the blowback that shall ensue.

Yes, his JCPOA was a great step. Yet, his lip-service to climate change, while shepherding the pipelines and helping the US become 2013's World's Foremost Exporter of Fossil Fuels was a sad event. Ditto with the TPP taking peoples rights to protect the environment in courts (disgusting)..
Sold twice the arms and had military ops in twice the countries as did Dubya.

He certainly doesn't deserve a pedestal. I contend that he helped pave the way for Trump.

David Otness , May 8, 2019 at 12:08

...An utterly consummate duplicitous fraud in Empire's service.

David Otness , May 8, 2019 at 13:19

Re: my acronymic ignorance in the above comment:
Whoops! Busted! I decided to go to comments first as I felt a lively and informative conversation would be underway. I was right about that.
I had started to read this from Ray's posting of it and saw it elsewhere too, but figured as I was already having some info-overload I'd give it a couple of days before diving in.
The charges-countercharges resonating in the monkey house are increasingly cacophonous and in the meantime (these mean and stupidity-laden times) Trump's Troika of Twisted Twits are continuing to sword-rattle all over the world even as U.S. citizens are under violent but not yet lethal siege defending the elected popular Maduro government's VZA's U.S.embassy in D.C.; even as malicious and murderous mischief continues to be perpetrated by U.S. Intel / Goldman Sachs goon squads unhindered by Congressional oversight all over the world. and now the IDF makes its grand entrance into the western-southern hemisphere with 1000 troops to take advantage of the Mossad's groundwork.
Hey, folks, this is significant. A paradigm shift while we are "busy" elsewhere.

I hesitate to engage in too much U.S. internal navel gazing at this time while Pompeo and Bolton in particular are free to roam about the world leaving old brushfires smoldering while lighting off new ones wherever they "touch down."

Ash , May 8, 2019 at 14:52

Now now, without the JCPOA it might have been really difficult for them to curtail Iran's nonexistent nuclear weapons program.

Rob Roy , May 8, 2019 at 15:20

Yes, Obama gave us Trump (signed the Patriot Act and the AUMF, for starters.) People say well, he did one great thing the JCPOA. What they haven't read is the Brookings institute's detailed plan, "What Path to Persia," wherein it follows a diabolical plan to first make the nuclear deal with Iran (making the US look wonderful), then when the Iranians break the deal, the US (egged on by Israel) can attack Iran, having established a perfect false flag. Problem is, Iran never broke the agreement. The US did. Now that Iran has realized the JCPOA was a farce to begin with, they are free to do what they wish (which by the way does not include nuclear weapons they decided against that in 2003, but with John Bolton, Israel, etc. screaming in Trump's ear, the US will again attack an innocent,sovereign country. The US, unlike Russia, Cuba and Venezuela, has no moral compass whatsoever.

ML , May 8, 2019 at 17:09

Absolutely true, Clark. Trump is indeed Obama's legacy and his "gift" to beleaguered Americans. So sorry I fell for his line in 2008. But lesson learned. Now I won't ever again trust anyone who runs from either party. Sorry state of affairs, but enjoy the spring sunshine. Though a Green at heart, that has been beyond disappointing as well, with all their infighting. Sigh. Probably will not vote in the next presidential election- especially if they trot out Biden, I certainly won't bother re-registering to vote in our closed primary. Like Carlin said, "If you vote for any of those cocksuckers, it's YOUR fault- don't blame me, I didn't elect them; I stayed home!"

Zhu , May 8, 2019 at 03:59

Don't forget the Strategic Pivot to Asia, meant to punish the Chinese people for being prosperous and not being submissive.

ML , May 8, 2019 at 10:33

Yes, tom, HRC is vile. But you are happy about the mess that is Trump? Both need to be flushed into the sewers where they belong. Sigh. He isn't great and he isn't making American great, either. America lost her cachet, her patina, her pizzaz, and most importantly, her honor, a long, long time ago. Trump has accelerated America's decline.

tom , May 8, 2019 at 14:51

Trump is a symptom Hillary was the disease. So you miss the wars and coups and genocides of Hillary? Russia gate started another cold war with Russia based on lies and propaganda and they ignored real problems for 3 years. Trump is a symptom and whatever you want to think about him he did want peace with Russia and N Korea and to get the USA out of the wars in Afghanistan and Syria ..and democrats Russia gate forced him into the arms of the neo cons.

Democrats are already pushing Biden ie Hillary 2.0 and you think Trump is the problem?

You think Trump would be in Venezuela if he was working with Putin?And why Venuzuala? ..so Bolton can get his war with Iran .You think any of that happens if not for Russia gate?

ML , May 8, 2019 at 17:16

What did I just say, tom? I've already said she was a sociopathic liar. Can't stand either one of them. Do you love watching Trump skewer Venezuela, a sovereign nation that has a right to govern themselves as they see fit without coups, sanctions, and us stealing their resources? Or is it just bad when a Democrat does it? To hell with the lot of them! And you are letting him off the hook with your Bolton comment. He didn't have to hire the likes of Pompeo and Bolton, tom. Trump is in it evil and deep; don't kid yourself. No difference in governance between the two parties that I can see.

oldog1951 , May 7, 2019 at 12:28

I believe that several names in this article were changed to protect the guilty. Rather than Obama admin. it was demo entrenched Clinton leadership Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Hillary who hoped to distract attention from emails exposing their efforts to deny progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders a fair chance at being nominated. I expect most "foreign" influence was purchased by good old American sources. I don't deny your evidence so much as I doubt your conclusions as to its meaning.

Roy A Booher , May 7, 2019 at 22:52

Rest assured that good ol' Bernie was just as much a part of that dog and pony show as Hillary and the rest of them; what they didn't count on was that the youth vote wouldn't along with the bait and switch scam as they had hoped. Bernie knew that funds intended for him were being redirected, he also knew that there was strong evidence linking environmental enthusiast Hillary with the murders of two prominent environmental activists in South America, who knew better; yet Bernie choose to remain silent.

DH Fabian , May 8, 2019 at 00:53

That issue gets complicated, in some ways that many today don't even recognize. The Clinton right wing effectively took over the Dem Party in the 1990s, and they continue to own it. Over the past quarter-century, much of the liberal media served to promote their (neoliberal) ideology and agenda. The B. Clinton administration split apart the Dem voting base, middle class vs. poor, and the Obama administration confirmed that this agenda is permanent. We continue to disregard the consequences.

By definition, there are no progressive Dem candidates. Political progressivism goes way back. It's about building a better nation progressively, from the bottom up -- legitimate relief for the poor at one end, firm restraints on corporate and financial entities. Some Democrats just use that word for marketing purposes today. Today's Sen. Sanders is pragmatic. He used to claim support for democratic socialism, and as such, advocated for legitimate poverty relief programs. This doesn't sell to post-Clinton Democrats, so Sanders dropped the issue by 2016. He campaigns to and for the more fortunate alone, the currently employed. This, of course, takes us back to the deep split in the Dem voting base.

ToivoS , May 7, 2019 at 20:29

Actually Larry Johnson is a member of VIPS.

Ray McGovern , May 8, 2019 at 00:41

Dear DW Bartoo,

Larry Johnson is one of the more experienced and active members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. His meticulous analysis/striking conclusion in this Russia-gate-related article speaks for itself. And VIPS stands by it. Needless to say, his findings are unpopular, so it is hardly a surprise that he would come under immediate ad hominem attack. We all encounter that from time to time; we are used to it; it is part of the woodwork. We do not see ourselves as involved in some kind of popularity contest.

Larry's findings are evidence based, and he has done his homework. In a perfect world, they would merit banner-headline treatment in Establishment media but, typically, they will be ignored because they undermine key parts of the "only acceptable narrative" on Russia-gate.

I found Larry's fearless analysis so fact-based and relevant that I decided also to post it on my own website, raymcgovern.com, together with a few brief comments to provide more context, in order to give his article still more visibility. [[ See:
https://raymcgovern.com/2019/05/06/intel-and-law-enforcement-tried-to-entrap-trump/ ]]

In the past, Larry has been principal author of a umber of VIPS memos, notably this one on Iran [[ See:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/21/intel-vets-tell-trump-iran-is-not-top-terror-sponsor/ ]] ,
As is typical of Larry's "old-fashioned" approach to analysis, this VIPS Memo is also extremely well documented and relates to what Fanatics Fat and Skinny are still trying to adduce as a casus belli to "justify" attacking Iran.

Larry's VIPS Memo on Iran takes strong issue with a key part of the evidence-free Zionist-cum-U.S. government narrative on Iran being the world's foremost sponsor of terrorism. While this issue continues to be of very high current interest, we expect Larry's and VIPS' views to find neither ink nor air, since they are based on empirical data to which our the Zionist-influenced Establishment media is allergic.

Ray McGovern

The issue he addressed here remains of high interest

David Otness , May 8, 2019 at 12:24

And Craig Murray just got booted from FarceBook....

vinnieoh , May 7, 2019 at 11:05

I reluctantly forced myself to try to read this, yet another breathless deconstruction of the complete collapse of any semblance of a "republic" or enlightened governance. All the while the "injured party" and the sub-human creatures he's surrounded himself with push humanity closer to the point of no return.

Sorry Mr. Johnson, I didn't make it past the first few paragraphs. I'm under no illusions that what passes for "government" is merely the vicious struggle between partisan factions to determine who is first at the hog-slopping trough. At no previous time have Frank Zappa's words seemed so true: "Scab of a nation, driven insane."

I will defend the tenure of Obama only in this: the JCPOA was a good thing, about the only good thing this god-awful shitty mess of a nation has accomplished in decades. Since Trump made no bones about his intent to scrap it, I wouldn't fault Obama for efforts to try to defeat him, if that was his motivation. Of course HRC would probably have done the same thing, as she actively tried to derail it throughout the negotiations. And again, Frank the Prophet Zappa, echoes in my brain.

erichwwk , May 7, 2019 at 12:42

Agreed, as a stand alone, JCPOA was a (very) good thing. However, it was more than offset by the nuclear "modernization" program, which threw previous nuclear weapons agreements with Russia under the bus, making the net effect of the two (very) negative.

Puzzled why you had trouble with the first few paragraphs. While Johnson is all over the page, sometimes correct, sometimes a loose cannon (IMHO) in this case he gets it pretty much right. Any look into the characters involved showed some minor idots connected to the Trump campaign where not up to the caliper of the CIA/FBI agents attempting to set up Trump. There is NO hard evidence that this was NOT a Clinton/Obama admin driven sting attempt.

Had the attempt to get to the source of the leak/insider theft, the DNC woulf have allowed (and NSA insisted) on access to the DNC servers, and released the info (the seem to collect and archive 100% of all such communications). That issue, also generally circulating for some time (see the Symnamtec) in my FB link to the story NTY "finally published (by none other that a team which includes David Sanger). perhaps beacause of the Wired story? I have stopped updating my web page (after Oct 2002), briefly went to a blog, but now, much as I abhor FB, find it a fast convenient why to archive news.
(One needs to collect on "previous comments" to read the story line).

One of the older links goes to the NYT obit on Philip Agee (who LJ is on record as despising), where his fiend is quoted"

""He [Philip Agee] really, truly did not want to see anyone hurt," said Mr. Wolf, the friend and co-author who carried on Mr. Agee's work of exposing agents. "He wanted to neutralize what they were doing -- the whole gamut, from fixing elections and hiring local journalists to plant stories all the way up to creating foreign intelligence services that became agencies of oppression." https://nyti.ms/2vHeoDL

So I VERY much welcome this article.

Was it mentioned by Trump (or covered much by the MSM so that the public knows) that, eg

"From 1984 to 1990 Halper was chairman and majority shareholder of the Palmer National Bank of Washington, D.C., the National Bank of Northern Virginia and the George Washington National Bank. Palmer National Bank was used to transfer money to Swiss Bank Accounts controlled by White House aid Oliver North."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Halper#Business_(1984%E2%80%931990)

I also agree w/ Daniel Lazare that the Mueller report is reasonable, but spun every bit as much by Democrats (if not more?) than by Republicans.

erichwwk , May 7, 2019 at 13:44

Also :

Halper was once caught up in a scandal over allegations that he led an operation within the Reagan campaign to dig up information on Jimmy Carter. In 1983, The New York Times reported that Halper was in charge of "an operation to collect inside information on Carter Administration foreign policy" that was "run in Ronald Reagan's campaign headquarters in the 1980 presidential campaign."

https://heavy.com/news/2018/05/stefan-halper/

DW Bartoo , May 7, 2019 at 12:47

It would very much depend upon what Obama did, had he made efforts to defeat Trump, as you just realize, vinnieoh.

Had Obama made use of intelligence agencies, had he been party to attempts to influence FISA with bogus evidence, or had he suggested that the FBI, for example, not bother with examine the DNC computers to defeat Trump well, as you can imagine, vinnieoh, that would constitute very serious and very possibly "high" crimes against the nation.

... ... ...

Abby , May 7, 2019 at 19:17

If you didn't read past the first paragraph then your comment has no value. This essay isn't about who Trump is surrounding himself with now, but how the Obama administration made up everything about Russia Gate and is responsible for this two year bogus investigation. The real tragedy is that our generation has committed a massive psyops on the American public and used it to keep us distracted from what congress is doing behind the scenes. And the reason why congress can lie to us and spread propaganda is because Obama rolled back the rule against doing it. Defend Obama all you want. IMO he was a worse president than Bush was and that is saying something. Trump is Obama's legacy.

Zhu , May 8, 2019 at 04:17

There is no Left in America, certainly not the Democratic party.

Litchfield , May 8, 2019 at 14:00

You are right. Obama was/is a fraud. That was clear weeks after the election, when he started to name his cabinet. Ouch! Ouch! And Ouch! Same old same old.

And it was kind of clinched for me in a way that was purely from the gut: When I watched the inauguration, the camera followed BO as he walked through the hallways of the Capitol. I looked at his face, and I thought: There is something wrong here. Something wrong with this man. His face during that walk gave me the creeps. I wish someonen would unearth the footage. It was nationally broadcast as millions gathered in hotel lobbies etc. to view the whole Inauguration on large screens.

As the Bushes' helicopter took off I thought: OK, they are gone. I am going to be happy for a day.
But I knew any honeymoon would be short-lived. The Dems had a trifecta of the House, the Senate, and the WH. If they had been serious -- if Obama had been serious -- about genuine change, they could have done what they wanted, and what the American people really and clearly wanted -- right then and there. They could have fixed American health care for starters. Instead Obama's opening shot was shooting down universal health care. It was downhill from there, I think both houses were lost in the midterms, or just one?

And, yes, the failure and disgust with Obama, his failure as leader of the party to control Hillary Clinton (among other things) brought us Trump. I have no doubt that having groomed Clinton by naming her SecState and then pushing her for the presidency -- for whatever reasons -- he then took the next logical step of actively and illegally undermining Trump's candidacy to ensure her ascent to power. The magnitude of the shock suggests the magnitude of the loss (really Shock and Awe in DC, not Iraq). Why was it *so* crucial for Hillary to win that her failure to do so pushed Obama and others to go so far off the reservation? What is really behind it? I think maybe more than just partisan politics. There is a secret there in the Clinton-Obama political relationship. Do they have something on each other? The response to Trump's win was simply too extreme.

By being the first black president and turning out to be a fraud, Obama did huge harm to the Dem Party.

US , May 7, 2019 at 09:09

Trump lost all his spirit . Now is proof in the pudding. Puffed up idiot. Stooge for zionists / globalists

[May 09, 2019] Russiagate Zealotry Continues to Endanger American National Security by Stephen F. Cohen

Notable quotes:
"... Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his new book War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback and in an ebook edition. ..."
"... What we are witnessing now is the almost complete ignorance in the MSM and among people like Clapper about the extraordinary damage done to the Russian economy under Clinton in the 1990s, a story well told by Mr. Cohen in the book "Failed Crusade." The immense hypocrisy of accusing Russia of interference in 2016 leaves me breathless. The US has been interfering in the affairs of every major country on earth, beginning with War of 1812 ..."
"... I recall an interesting comment by Mao Zedong about the Cuban Missile Crisis in which Mao said that Nikita Khrushchev was stupid to put missiles in Cuba and he was a coward to take them out. ..."
"... Based on the recent conversations between Stephen Cohen and John Batchelor, I'll paraphrase Mao's comment to say that the intelligence agencies were stupid to originate Russiagate and the Democrats and their media allies are cowards not to stop it. ..."
"... Pompous comes out and says the US is back and we're a force for good. This in the face of widespread destruction all over the Middle East, hundreds of thousands of dead, the creation of numerous groups of crazy zealots that we created, cultivated, and supported to be our proxies in the overthrow of elected governments. All of that death and destruction, including that perpetrated by our proxies is 100% the fault and responsibility of the United States. But Pompous and the American people in general are so myopic that they don't see all that. Thank you, worthless press. If the press actually told the American people what was being done in their name, I think most of us would be disgusted but they don't. They cheer lead for the beltway and their imperial pretensions. ..."
"... If Clapper and Brennan actually created a sting operation against the Trump Campaign, would you denounce that act? If Obama had approved such an operation, would you believe he was ethically entitled to do such? ..."
May 09, 2019 | www.thenation.com
N ow in its third year, Russiagate is the worst, most corrosive, and most fraudulent political scandal in modern American history. It rests on two related core allegations: that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an "attack on American democracy" during the 2016 presidential campaign in order to put Donald Trump in the White House, and that Trump and his associates willfully colluded, or conspired, in this Kremlin "attack." As I have argued from the outset -- see my regular commentaries posted at TheNation.com and my recent book War With Russia? -- and as recently confirmed, explicitly and tacitly, by special prosecutor Robert Mueller's report, there is no factual evidence for either allegation.

Nonetheless, these Russiagate allegations, not "Putin's Russia," continue to inflict grave damage on fundamental institutions of American democracy. They impugn the integrity of the presidency and now the office of the attorney general. They degrade the many Democratic members of Congress who persist in clinging to the allegations and thus the Democratic Party and Congress. And they have enticed mainstream media into one of the worst episodes of journalistic malpractice in modern times .

But equally alarming, Russiagate continues to endanger American national security by depriving a US president, for the first time in the nuclear age, of the diplomatic flexibility to deal with a Kremlin leader in times of crisis. We were given a vivid example in July 2018, when Trump held a summit with the current Kremlin occupant, as every president had done since Dwight Eisenhower. For that conventional, even necessary, act of diplomacy, Trump was widely accused of treasonous behavior, a charge that persists. Now we have another alarming example of this reckless disregard for US national security on the part of Russiagate zealots.

On May 3, Trump called Putin. They discussed various issues, including the Mueller report. (As before, Putin had to know if Trump was free to implement any acts of security cooperation they might agree on. Indeed, the Russian policy elite openly debates this question, many of its members having decided that Trump cannot cooperate with Russia no matter his intentions.) A major subject of the conversation was unavoidably the growing conflict over Venezuela, where Washington and Moscow have long-standing economic and political interests. Trump administration spokespeople have warned Moscow against interfering in America's neighborhood, ignoring, of course, Washington's deep involvement for years in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia. Kremlin representatives, on the other hand, have warned Washington against violating Venezuela's sovereignty. Increasingly, there is talk, at least in Moscow policy circles, of a Cuban Missile–like crisis, the closest the United States and Russia (then Soviet Russia) ever came to nuclear war.

To the extent, however remote, that Venezuela might grow into a Cuba-like US-Russian military confrontation, would Trump be sufficiently free of Russiagate allegations to resolve it peacefully, as President John Kennedy did in 1962? Judging by mainstream media commentary on the May 3 phone conversation, the answer seems to be no. Considering the mounting confrontation in Venezuela, Trump was right, even obligated, to call Putin, but he got no applause, only condemnation. To take some random examples:

§ Democratic Representative David Cicilline asked CNN's Chris Cuomo rhetorically on May 3, "Why does the president give the benefit of doubt to a person who attacked our democracy?" while assailing Trump for not confronting Putin with the Mueller report.

§ The same evening, CNN's Don Lemon editorialized on the phone call: "The president of the United States had just a normal old call with his pal Vladimir Putin. Didn't tell him not to interfere in the election. Like he did in 2016, like he did in 2018, like we know he is planning to do again in 2020 . You just don't seem to want us to know exactly what was said . Nothing to see when the president talks for more than an hour with the leader of an enemy nation. One that has repeatedly attacked our democracy and will do so again." (Lemon did not say on what he based the expanded, serial charges against Putin and thus against Trump or his allegation about the 2018 elections, which congressional Democrats mostly won, or his foreknowledge about 2020 or generally and with major ramifications why he branded Russia an "enemy nation.")

§ We might expect something more exalted from James Risen , once a critical-minded investigative reporter, who found it suspicious that "Trump and Putin were both eager to put the Mueller report behind them," even for the sake of needed diplomacy.

§ Senator Amy Klobuchar and Representative Eric Swalwell, both candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, also expressed deep suspicion regarding the Trump-Putin phone talk. Swalwell was sure it meant that Trump "acts on their behalf," that he "is putting the Russians' interests ahead of the United States' interests." (Voters may wonder if these candidates and quite a few others who continue to promote extremist Russiagate allegations are emerging American statesmen.)

§ Not surprisingly, a Washington Post opinion writer argued that the phone call meant "Trump is counting on Russian help to get reelected."

None of these "opinion leaders" mentioned the danger of a US-Russian military confrontation over Venezuela or elsewhere on the several fraught fronts of the new Cold War. Indeed, retired admiral James Stavridis, once supreme allied commander of NATO forces and formerly associated with Hillary Clinton's campaign, all but proposed war on Russia in retaliation for its "attack on our democracy," including "unprecedented measures" such as cyberattacks.

Russiagate's unproven allegations are an aggressive malignancy spreading through America's politics to the most vital areas of national security policy. A full nonpartisan investigation into their origins is urgently needed, but US intelligence agencies were almost certainly present at their creation, which is why I have long argued that Russiagate is actually Intelgate . If so, James Comey, then FBI director, was present at the creation, though initially in a lesser role than were President Barack Obama's CIA Director John Brennan and intelligence overlord James Clapper.

Comey recently deplored Attorney General William Barr's declaration that US intelligence agencies resorted to "spying" on the Trump campaign. (In fact, Barr mischaracterized what happened: The agencies, first and foremost Brennan's CIA, it seems, ran an entrapment operation against members of the campaign.) Comey warned Barr that he will discover that Trump "has eaten your soul."

It would be more accurate to say -- and certainly more important -- that baseless Russiagate allegations are eating America's national security.

This commentary is based on Stephen F. Cohen's most recent weekly discussion with the host of The John Batchelor Show. Now in their sixth year, previous installments are at TheNation.com .

Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his new book War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate is available in paperback and in an ebook edition.

Phillip Sawicki says: May 9, 2019 at 7:52 pm

What we are witnessing now is the almost complete ignorance in the MSM and among people like Clapper about the extraordinary damage done to the Russian economy under Clinton in the 1990s, a story well told by Mr. Cohen in the book "Failed Crusade." The immense hypocrisy of accusing Russia of interference in 2016 leaves me breathless. The US has been interfering in the affairs of every major country on earth, beginning with War of 1812.

In case people have forgotten, The US sought to annex Canada. The Canadians resisted, and so then the US set up a false flag attack in 1845 to start the Mexican-American War. Hundreds of interventions in other countries, but if someone is alleged to have done so to us, it's a capital crime. What arrogance!

Victor Sciamarelli says: May 9, 2019 at 4:17 pm

I recall an interesting comment by Mao Zedong about the Cuban Missile Crisis in which Mao said that Nikita Khrushchev was stupid to put missiles in Cuba and he was a coward to take them out.

Based on the recent conversations between Stephen Cohen and John Batchelor, I'll paraphrase Mao's comment to say that the intelligence agencies were stupid to originate Russiagate and the Democrats and their media allies are cowards not to stop it.

Another point is that the downside of the policy elites' belief in "American exceptionalism" is that it is also a trap. They claim our "indispensable nation" rests upon values and principles such as the rule of law, respect for human rights, and freedom of speech, even though reality often tells us something different.

Thus, if Putin is a thug, if not a murderer, who attacked the US, undermined our democracy, and is an autocrat who cares nothing about our values and principles, then what place is there for diplomacy because you can't negotiate or compromise our immutable principles and values.
Another observation is we often hear the statement that, "All options are on the table." This sounds tough to an American mind because it includes nuclear weapons. All options means all options. Nonetheless, someone else might interpret this to mean you are not confident or certain that your conventional forces are capable of doing the mission and you are more likely or willing to resort to a nuclear weapon. This can make any confrontation whether in Venezuela, Ukraine, Syria, or Iran more dangerous that it needs to be.

In addition, Trump has sent an aircraft carrier group to the Middle East. The Guardian on May 6, 2019, stated that according to one report, information passed on by Israeli intelligence contributed to the US threat assessment.

If we are now approaching war based on Israeli intelligence then I think we are also approaching our Dr. Strangelove moment.

Jeffrey Harrison says: May 9, 2019 at 11:55 am

Arrogance, myopia. Those two words define the US today.

Pompous comes out and says the US is back and we're a force for good. This in the face of widespread destruction all over the Middle East, hundreds of thousands of dead, the creation of numerous groups of crazy zealots that we created, cultivated, and supported to be our proxies in the overthrow of elected governments. All of that death and destruction, including that perpetrated by our proxies is 100% the fault and responsibility of the United States. But Pompous and the American people in general are so myopic that they don't see all that. Thank you, worthless press. If the press actually told the American people what was being done in their name, I think most of us would be disgusted but they don't. They cheer lead for the beltway and their imperial pretensions.

This Stavridis bozo is a prime example. "all but proposed war on Russia in retaliation for its "attack on our democracy," including "unprecedented measures" such as cyber attacks." I realize that we are in a post proof world where any claim, no matter how inane, is automatically taken as proven. No actual proof required. The "attack on our democracy" is based on this totally bogus claim (never proven) that Russia hacked into the DNC's e-mails (on a server that no law enforcement agency ever inspected to prove the claim of hacking) that undermined our democracy by revealing how corrupt and slimy the DNC actually is. All the while we're so myopic that we don't see the Republican party destroying our democracy from within with voter ID requirements for a non-existent problem, gerrymandering themselves into a permanent majority of a minority, voter suppression schemes such as purging voter rolls, closing polling places, and generally making it difficult for people to vote.

But this Stavridis bozo wasn't done yet. The Russians he claims perpetrated unprecedented measures such as cyber attacks. Really? The only cyber attacks that I'm actually aware of in the US were actually perpetrated by the Department of Homeland Security who was playing bureaucratic turf games. The admiral's ignorance is in full display when he forgets the STUXTNET worm that absolutely was a cyber attack on Iran by the US and Israel, and that the NSA hacked the personal cell phone of Angela Merkel, the Prime Minister of Germany, and the trick revealed by Ed Snowden that the NSA would open computer boxes destined for certain countries and install chips that would allow us to control the server, or that the only known backdoor in a piece of Hauwei equipment was installed there by the NSA.

I'm suspecting that we need to clean up our act a lot more that most of the rest of the world.

J McCormick says: May 8, 2019 at 11:57 pm

So much scorn heaped on members of the opposition party and the media and what I hear here is a call for respect for and deference to the office of the presidency.

If there is cause for concern and worry , and I fervently believe that there is , I leave it to others to offer up what they believe that cause might be.

History records that that the Congress relinquished powers that were properly theirs (trade, war powers) and now they so far appear impotent in the face of executive overreach when an effective check on the executive branch is critically needed.

Even if your opinion runs counter to mine I am reasonably certain we agree that dysfunction and chaos rule the day in Washington and beyond.

Clark Shanahan says: May 9, 2019 at 6:26 pm

"So much scorn heaped on members of the opposition party and the media"
Tell me, J., do you believe Russia is our adversary?
If so, when did they become such?

If Clapper and Brennan actually created a sting operation against the Trump Campaign, would you denounce that act? If Obama had approved such an operation, would you believe he was ethically entitled to do such?

[May 08, 2019] Obama Spied on Other Republicans and Democrats As Well by Larry C Johnson

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The CIA, with the knowledge of the Director of National Intelligence, worked with British counterparts starting in the summer of 2015 to collect intelligence on Republican and at least one Democrat candidate. John Brennan was probably hoping that his proactive steps to help the Hillary Clinton campaign would ensure him taking over as DNI in the new Clinton Administration. Regardless of motives, the CIA enlisted the British intelligence community to start gathering intelligence on most major Republican candidates and on Bernie Sanders. This initial phase of intelligence gathering goes beyond opposition research. The information being gathered identified the key personnel in each campaign and identified the people outside the United States receiving their calls, texts and emails. This information was turned into intelligence reports that then were passed back to the United States intel community as "liaison reporting." This was not put into normal classified channels. This intelligence was put into a SAP, i.e. a Special Access Program. ..."
"... One person who needs to be called on the carpet and asked some hard questions is current CIA Director Gina Haspel. She was CIA Chief of Station in London at the time and was a regular attendee at the meeting of the Brit's Joint Intelligence Committee aka the JIC. I suppose it is possible she was cut out of the process, but I believe that is unlikely. ..."
"... I am confident that a survey of NSA and CIA liaison reporting will show that George Papadopoulos was identified as a possible target by the fall of 2015. Initially, his name was "masked." But we now know that many people on the Trump campaign had their names "unmasked." You cannot unmask someone unless their name is in an intelligence report. ..."
"... Sater's communication with Rozov were intercepted by western intelligence agencies -- GCHQ and NSA. I do not know which agency put it into an intel report, but it was put into the system. The Sater FD-1023 will tell us whether or not Sater did this at the direction of the FBI or acted on his own initiative. The key point is that the "bait" to do something with the Russians came from a registered FBI informant. ..."
"... That's good, sooner it's clarified the better, and the stronger the better, ..."
"... Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin , but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria ..."
"... Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's Henry Williams as " one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world " and as "a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking " ..."
"... I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, was the one credited by the FBI for launching the investigation into George Papadopolous : It was Downer who told the FBI of Papodopoulos' comments, which became one of the "driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia's attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump's associates conspired," The Times reported. ..."
"... Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt's advisory board since 2008. Officially, he had to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network reported in a January 2016 exclusive: ..."
"... I'm curious why they went after minor characters in the Trump campaign and not Jared or one of Trump's sons? From what I've read of Hoover, it seems he was constantly building "dossiers" of the powerful and those he considered "subversives" so that he would remain preeminent. Then there was the Church Committee investigation. Is this qualitatively different? Can we ever expect that law enforcement & intelligence with so much secretive power are not the 4th branch of government? ..."
"... Also involved - and I think Judge Ellis was very well aware of this - is a fundamental distinction relating to what law enforcement authorities are trying to achieve. If Mueller was honestly - even of perhaps misguidedly - trying to get witnesses to 'sing', that is hardly a mortal sin. If he was trying to get them to 'compose', then the question becomes whether he should be under indictment for subversion of the Constitution. ..."
"... Why aren't the MSM having a hissy fit about the real, documented election interference by the British Commonwealth/5 Eyes spooks in the 2016 campaign (and before)? The hoax of projecting onto Putin what they themselves have done must be exposed before the country move forward on any front. ..."
"... So, was Skripal one of Steele's so-called Kremlin insiders? I see Pablo Miller is connected to both Porton Down and Steele via the ironically titled II's media pods. And Miller is certainly connected to Skripal. ..."
May 08, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Do not focus on July 2016 as the so-called start of the counter intelligence investigation of Donald Trump. That is a lie. We know, thanks to the work of Judicial Watch, that the FBI had signed up Christopher Steele as a Confidential Human Source (aka CHS) by February of 2016. It is incumbent on Attorney General Barr to examine the contact reports filed by Steele's FBI handler (those reports are known as FD-1023s). He also, as I have noted in a previous post, needs to look at the FD-1023s for Felix Sater and Henry Greenberg. But these will only tell a small part of the story. There is a massive intelligence side to this story.

The CIA, with the knowledge of the Director of National Intelligence, worked with British counterparts starting in the summer of 2015 to collect intelligence on Republican and at least one Democrat candidate. John Brennan was probably hoping that his proactive steps to help the Hillary Clinton campaign would ensure him taking over as DNI in the new Clinton Administration. Regardless of motives, the CIA enlisted the British intelligence community to start gathering intelligence on most major Republican candidates and on Bernie Sanders. This initial phase of intelligence gathering goes beyond opposition research. The information being gathered identified the key personnel in each campaign and identified the people outside the United States receiving their calls, texts and emails. This information was turned into intelligence reports that then were passed back to the United States intel community as "liaison reporting." This was not put into normal classified channels. This intelligence was put into a SAP, i.e. a Special Access Program.

One person who needs to be called on the carpet and asked some hard questions is current CIA Director Gina Haspel. She was CIA Chief of Station in London at the time and was a regular attendee at the meeting of the Brit's Joint Intelligence Committee aka the JIC. I suppose it is possible she was cut out of the process, but I believe that is unlikely.

This initial phase of intelligence collection produced a great volume of intelligence that allowed analysts to identify key personnel and the people they were communicating with overseas. You don't have to have access to intelligence information to understand this. For example, you simply have to ask the question, "how did George Papadopoulos get on the radar." I am confident that a survey of NSA and CIA liaison reporting will show that George Papadopoulos was identified as a possible target by the fall of 2015. Initially, his name was "masked." But we now know that many people on the Trump campaign had their names "unmasked." You cannot unmask someone unless their name is in an intelligence report. We also know that Felix Sater, a longtime business associate of Donald Trump and an FBI informant since December 1998 (he was signed up by Andrew Weismann), initiated the proposal to do a Trump Tower in Moscow. Don't take my word for it, that's what Robert Mueller reported:

In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately September 2015, Felix Sater . . . contacted Cohen (i.e., Michael Cohen) on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert), a Russian real-estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov. Sater had known Rozov since approximately 2007 and, in 2014, had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City. Sater later contacted Rozov and proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would license the name and brand from the Trump Organization but construct the building on its own. Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee of I.C. Expert. (see page 69 of the Mueller Report).

Sater's communication with Rozov were intercepted by western intelligence agencies -- GCHQ and NSA. I do not know which agency put it into an intel report, but it was put into the system. The Sater FD-1023 will tell us whether or not Sater did this at the direction of the FBI or acted on his own initiative. The key point is that the "bait" to do something with the Russians came from a registered FBI informant.

By December of 2015, the Hillary Campaign decided to use the Russian angle on Donald Trump. Thanks to Wikileaks we have Campaign Manager John Podesta's email exchange in December 2015 with Democratic operative Brent Budowsky:

" That's good, sooner it's clarified the better, and the stronger the better, " Budowski replies, later adding: " Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin , but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria ."

The program to slaughter Donald Trump using Russia as the hatchet was already underway. This was more the opposition research. This was the weaponization of law enforcement and intelligence assets to attack political opponents. Hillary had covered the opposition research angle in London by hiring a firm comprised of former MI6 assets-- Hakluyt: there was a second, even more powerful and mysterious opposition research and intelligence firm lurking about with significant political and financial links to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign for president against Donald Trump.

Meet London-based Hakluyt & Co. , founded by three former British intelligence operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations pay huge sums. . . .

Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's Henry Williams as " one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world " and as "a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking "

I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, was the one credited by the FBI for launching the investigation into George Papadopolous : It was Downer who told the FBI of Papodopoulos' comments, which became one of the "driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia's attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump's associates conspired," The Times reported.

Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt's advisory board since 2008. Officially, he had to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network reported in a January 2016 exclusive:

But it can be revealed Mr. Downer has still been attending client conferences and gatherings of the group, including a client cocktail soirée at the Orangery at Kensington Palace a few months ago.

His attendance at that event is understood to have come days after he also attended a two-day country retreat at the invitation of the group, which has been involved in a number of corporate spy scandals in recent times.

Much remains to be uncovered in this plot. But this much is certain--there is an extensive documentary record, including TOP SECRET intelligence reports (SIGINT and HUMINT) and emails and phone calls that will show there was a concerted covert action operation mounted against Donald Trump and his campaign. Those documents will tell the story. This cannot be allowed to happen again.

Posted at 05:33 AM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink | Comments (9)

turcopolier , 07 May 2019 at 09:53 AM

Having watched interviews of Papadopoulos on TeeVee I would say that this creature would be easy to manipulate. His ego is so enormous that a minimal effort would be required.
blue peacock said in reply to turcopolier ... , 07 May 2019 at 11:19 AM
Col. Lang

I'm curious why they went after minor characters in the Trump campaign and not Jared or one of Trump's sons? From what I've read of Hoover, it seems he was constantly building "dossiers" of the powerful and those he considered "subversives" so that he would remain preeminent. Then there was the Church Committee investigation. Is this qualitatively different? Can we ever expect that law enforcement & intelligence with so much secretive power are not the 4th branch of government?

David Habakkuk -> blue peacock... , 07 May 2019 at 01:31 PM
bp,

The guts of the matter was well expressed by Judge T.S. Ellis when he made the distinction between different results which can be expected from exerting pressures on witnesses: they may 'sing' - which is, commonly, in the interests of justice - but, there again, they may 'compose', which is not.

Also involved - and I think Judge Ellis was very well aware of this - is a fundamental distinction relating to what law enforcement authorities are trying to achieve. If Mueller was honestly - even of perhaps misguidedly - trying to get witnesses to 'sing', that is hardly a mortal sin. If he was trying to get them to 'compose', then the question becomes whether he should be under indictment for subversion of the Constitution.

Alcatraz, perhaps?

blue peacock said in reply to David Habakkuk ... , 08 May 2019 at 12:17 AM
David,

Yes, indeed, many a composition have been elicited by prosecutors in criminal cases. The issue is there is no penalty for prosecutorial misconduct while the advancement points ratchet up with each conviction. The incentives are aligned perfectly for the "institution" to run rough shod on ordinary Americans. Only those wealthy enough to fight the unlimited funds of the government have a chance. But of course in matters relating to national security there is the added twist of state secrets that protects government malfeasance.

I don't know how the national security state we continue to build ever gets rolled back. A small victory would be for Trump to declassify all documents and communications relating to the multifaceted spying on his campaign and as Larry so eloquently writes to frame him as a Manchurian Candidate. At least the public will learn about what their grandchildren are paying for. But it seems that Trump prefers tweeting to taking any kind of action. Not that it would matter much as half the country will still believe that Trump deserves it until the tables are turned on their team. While most Americans will say to use Ben Hunt's phrasing Yay! Constitution. Yay! Liberty. they sure don't care as the state oligarchy tighten their chokehold.

https://www.epsilontheory.com/things-fall-apart-pt-1/

akaPatience -> turcopolier ... , 07 May 2019 at 05:27 PM
Yes, he seems young and ambitious enough to be easy (and willing) prey. Having been involved in some local political campaigns though, I've observed that more and more than before, young people like him are hyper-concerned with networking. Papadopoulos' ego aside, of course he and many people who sign on hope to make self-serving connections. Not only that, it's also been my observation that casual sexual hook-ups go with the territory, and not only among young, single guys like him. I have to say I've been shocked a few times by how risky and cavalier some liaisons have been that've come to my attention, considering "public figures" are involved. No doubt that's why a "honeypot" was dispatched to try to help entrap Papadopoulos.
Rick Merlotti , 07 May 2019 at 12:14 PM
Why aren't the MSM having a hissy fit about the real, documented election interference by the British Commonwealth/5 Eyes spooks in the 2016 campaign (and before)? The hoax of projecting onto Putin what they themselves have done must be exposed before the country move forward on any front.
O'Shawnessey , 07 May 2019 at 02:44 PM
So, was Skripal one of Steele's so-called Kremlin insiders? I see Pablo Miller is connected to both Porton Down and Steele via the ironically titled II's media pods. And Miller is certainly connected to Skripal.
sandra adie , 07 May 2019 at 03:01 PM
Papadopolos was very young hence the nativity getting sucked in. The ego helped for sure. Probably exciting to be part of something important probably for the first time since he started working for Trump campaign
akaPatience , 07 May 2019 at 03:01 PM
One thing that's always concerned me about Larry's informative and insightful essays on these matters is how can we be assured that the IC documentation mentioned has been filled out honestly and accurately -- or that the forms even still exist and haven't been conveniently "lost" or surreptitiously destroyed?

[May 08, 2019] Butina case is Judge Chutkan s third D.C. scandal cover-up in a year -brassballs.blog

Notable quotes:
"... Is this how Judge Chutkan got steered the Awan and Fusion GPS cases too? ..."
"... Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-FL, has a brother, Steven, who works as a U.S. Attorney in the Prosecutors' Office in the District of Columbia. She is former campaign chairman for the DNC and the Hillary Clinton Campaign for President. Wasserman Schultz is also the one who gave her passwords to Imran Awan. ..."
"... Is that how the Butina, Awan, and Fusion GPS cases got "assigned" to Judge Chutkan? ..."
"... Mariia worked for Susan Rice at American University (AU). Their offices were next to each other. Ambassador Rice was President Barack Obama's National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2017. Rice's job at American University was to review NSA and FBI surveillance data, then organize it, for the benefit of the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign. ..."
"... Butina is jailed in the William Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria, Virginia. ..."
"... At her Judicial Nomination hearing, Chutkan was asked about her lack of experience in criminal law. She had none. Nor did Chutkan have trial experience. ..."
"... According to the federal court's system of records, Judge Chutkan has never tried a criminal case. Or any case? ..."
"... Fusion GPS: Judge Chutkan's second cover-up. ..."
Feb 05, 2019 | brassballs.blog
Feb 5 Butina case is Judge Chutkan's third D.C. scandal cover-up in a year Harry the Greek

Judge Tanya Chutkan (above)

Tanya Chutkan is one of 13 judges on the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia. An additional eight work part-time as Senior Judges.

https://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/district-judges

According to U.S. Court records, there have been 12,620 cases filed in the District of Columbia since Chutkan has been Judge.

https://www.uscourts.gov/statistics-reports/federal-judicial-caseload-statistics-2018

Then how did Judge Chutkan get assigned the Mariia Butina, Fusion GPS, and Imran Awan cases?

July 14th, 2018 was a Saturday.

https://www.scribd.com/document/399179394/Mariia-Butina-s-Criminal-Complaint-one-page-dated-Satuday-July-14th-2018

That was when the Justice Department filed its first criminal action against Butina.

It is linked here:

https://www.scribd.com/document/399179082/Mariia-Butina-17-page-Affadavit-in-Support-of-Criminal-Complaint-dated-July-14th-2018-by-Kevin-Helson

How can paperwork be timestamped when the court is closed? <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c5d6731f9619a074c095377/1549625145085/Butina+case+filed+on+a+Saturday+.png" alt="Butina case filed on a Saturday .png" />

Court-shopping is rigging the system to get one's legal case steered to the judge most likely to rule in one's favor.

It is only illegal if caught.

And if the opposing party objects to it.

Is this how Judge Chutkan got steered the Awan and Fusion GPS cases too?

Is that cause for a reversal?

How does the Justice Department keep on getting away with it?

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-FL, has a brother, Steven, who works as a U.S. Attorney in the Prosecutors' Office in the District of Columbia. She is former campaign chairman for the DNC and the Hillary Clinton Campaign for President. Wasserman Schultz is also the one who gave her passwords to Imran Awan.

Is that how the Butina, Awan, and Fusion GPS cases got "assigned" to Judge Chutkan?

What does this say about the rest of the D.C. District Court?

What are they doing to rein in Judge Chutkan's judicial misconduct?

Supporting it?

The First Cover-up <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c596674ec212d81d6ba512e/1549362810444/Butina+black+silouette+GQ.jpg" alt="Butina black silouette GQ.jpg" />

Mariia Butina (above), the Russian spy?

Judge Chutkan can extend Mariia Butina's solitary confinement and gag order with a five-year sentence Tuesday.

With good behavior, Mariia is eligible for a sentence reduction of up to 54 days a year. Miss Butina plead guilty to being a Russian spy at a court hearing on Dec. 13th. The 56-page transcript of this hearing which including her guilt plea is linked here:

https://www.scribd.com/document/397081041/Transcript-of-plea-bargain-hearing-of-Maria-Butina-dated-Dec-13th-2018 <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c596b8df4e1fc454223fc19/1549364119020/Butina+really+best+face+three.png" alt="Butina really best face three.png" />

Mariia Butina (above)

Unless the gag order is extended, Mariia the has the opportunity to tell her story. Will the Judge deny that opportunity for five years? The court is waiting for new evidence less than a week before Butina's sentencing. It is the names and pictures of Mariia's former classmates at American University (AU).

How many other student spies are in those pictures and names?

https://brassballs.blog/home/mariia-butinas-plea-hearing-forces-american-university-to-reveal-72-classmates-who-are-spies

Judge Chutkan has to allow the defense an opportunity to view all available evidence. To deny it would nullify the plea agreement. The Judge has no obligation, however, to disclose the new evidence to the public. The Judge can claim "national security", blowing the cover for CIA operatives, as the reason for "sealing" it.

Will that new evidence uncover the identities of other Butina student co-conspirators? Will Butina's attorney, Robert Driscoll, have time to prepare a proper defense before Tuesday? He has yet to ask for an extention of time in order to review the pending new evidence. The court is still waiting for it.

The public may never know it. <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c58f73653450a06427aaa79/1549334336013/Butina+two+guns+photo+black+over+shoulder.png" alt="Butina two guns photo black over shoulder.png" />

Mariia Butina (above)

Miss Butina was arrested on July 15th, a Sunday.

Two days after the arrest, Presidents Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin of Russia, were to meet in Helsinki, Finland. Was the arrest timed to disrupt the agenda of this meeting? The FBI served its second warrant at Mariia's apartment on July 15th. They left with a hard drive with two terabytes of data, according to Prosecutor Erik M. Kenerson. Two terabytes is equal to:

  • 34,000 hours of music or

  • 80 days or videos or

  • 620,000 photos or

  • 1,000 hours of movies

In April, according to Bob Driscoll, Butina's defense attorney:

  • 15 FBI agents searched Mariia's apartment for evidence

  • The FBI left with a hard drive containing over 7,000 pages of documents and unspecified personal items

  • Later in the day, Butina testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee

<img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c596f04f4e1fc454224142a/1549365004326/Butina+best+black+in+four.png" alt="Butina best black in four.png" />

Mariia Butina

Mariia worked for Susan Rice at American University (AU). Their offices were next to each other. Ambassador Rice was President Barack Obama's National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2017. Rice's job at American University was to review NSA and FBI surveillance data, then organize it, for the benefit of the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=komLUfJYZ4M

As Dean, Professor James Goldgeier was in charge of selecting 70 other students to help analyze the data with Butina as their student leader.

https://brassballs.blog/home/bruce-ohr-uses-student-spies-his-clinton-cronies-at-american-university-to-replace-president-donald-j-trump-with-hillary-clinton-susan-rice-sylvia-mathews-burwell-professor-james-goldgeier  <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c58f2e4e79c70b18f36b5d8/1549333225519/Rice%2Band%2Bstudents.jpg" alt=" National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice greets young LGBT activists from nearly 30 countries outside of the West Wing Lobby of the White House, March 29, 2016. Their trip was sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign. (Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon) " />

Ambassador Susan Rice (far right) talking to a new recruits for American University

Butina is jailed in the William Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria, Virginia.

https://www.alexandriava.gov/sheriff/info/default.aspx?id=8460

A Russian Orthodox Priest and Valery Butina, Mariia's father, are approved visitors. <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c597e43c830252ca2c30a7c/1549368907334/Butina+Fathe+Valery+South+Dakota.png" alt="Butina Fathe Valery South Dakota.png" />

Father and daughter, Valery and Mariia Butina (above)

Butina complained about her cell being cold. It took five months for the prison to turn up the heat. And Mariia's parents and sister live in Siberia.

Neither the Judge nor the Prosecutor can find guidelines on which to base Butina's sentence. No one has ever plead guilty to the crime Mariia is pleading guilty to. In fact, never the Judge nor the Prosecutor have a copy of last year's federal sentencing guidelines.

Details are in the plea agreement, Page 44, imaged here: <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c59856d24a694b928af4f2d/1549370741218/Butina+Judge+says+no+sentencing+guidelines+exist.png" alt="Butina Judge says no sentencing guidelines exist.png" />

The Judge asked her the correct spelling of her first name. It is Mariia with two "i's". <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c58f7cc7817f72a8e7eacee/1549334482363/Butina+spelling+of+Mariia+with+two+I%27s+page+12.png" alt="Butina spelling of Mariia with two I's page 12.png" /> <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c5972108165f5a37e3fa095/1549365785501/Butina+orange+hunting+cap.png" alt="Butina orange hunting cap.png" />

Mariia Butina (above)

Chutkan has been a U.S. Federal District Judge in the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. since June 5th, 2014. To get her appointed, President Barack Obama created or "packed" the D.C. Court with a "new position". At her Judicial Nomination hearing, Chutkan was asked about her lack of experience in criminal law. She had none. Nor did Chutkan have trial experience.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Tanya-Chutkan-Senate-Questionnaire-Final.pdf

She was approved by the Senate by a voice vote. It avoids having one's vote go into the Congressional Record.

According to the federal court's system of records, Judge Chutkan has never tried a criminal case. Or any case?

Butina's lawyer, Robert Driscoll, has no criminal law experience either. Neither does anyone in his law firm.

https://www.mcglinchey.com/robert-driscoll/ <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c5977a671c10b30f3889b1f/1549367217044/Driscoll+Roberrt+photo+on+Fox.png" alt="Driscoll Roberrt photo on Fox.png" />

Robert Driscoll (above)

Yet, Judge Chutkan has ruled that Driscoll has provided "competent" legal defense for Mariia. After all, Mariia said so herself at her pre-sentencing hearing on Dec. 13th. Chutkan issued a "gag order" on Butina's case because of Driscoll's repeated appearances for a national cable network, Fox. Driscoll caused it. Butina was punished for it. Chutkan even assigned an "Advisory Attorney", Mr. A.J. Williams, to monitor whether or not Butina has been violating the gag order since Dec. 13th.

Williams is a Federal Public Defender assigned to the District of Columbia since 1990. According to Valery Butina, Mariia's father, Driscoll's fees reached $463,000 in July. "But the lawyer did not abandon the case . . . and has been actually working for free since then", said Mariia's father.

"It is indeed a huge debt. "The case is politicized, this is why the fees are that high", said Valery Butina. https://themoscowtimes.com/news/putin-says-his-spy-chiefs-know-nothing-about-alleged-agent-butina-in-us-63786

Butina's hometown in Siberia raised $14,500 for legal fees. http://tass.com/world/1038115 

Butina's father said that Driscoll "helped the family" set up a fund to pay legal fees. None of it goes to the Butina family. Who monitors an attorney's escrow account anyway? How was Driscoll assigned the case? The same scheduler who assigned Judge Chutkan the Fusion GPS and Imran Awan cases too?

Fusion GPS: Judge Chutkan's second cover-up. Judge Tanya Chutkan was also assigned the case involving Fusion GPS. Fusion was paid to write the Russian dossier. Two of them.

Paid by the Russians through a Cleveland law firm.

Admitted to in sworn testimony before Congress. The details are linked here:

https://brassballs.blog/home/fusion-gps-ceo-testifies-that-cleveland-law-firm-hired-him-through-russians-to-write-two-dossiers-baker-hostetler-natalia-veselnitzkaya-mark-cymrot-prevezon-oil-ralph-blasey-cia-christopher-steele-peter-fritsch-baumgartner-edward-bean-llc

What happened to the checks that came and went from Fusion GPS? Who did they pay to produce false narratives for the media?

https://www.sott.net/article/366063-Obama-appointed-judge-seals-Fusion-GPS-bank-records-insulating-Obama-Clinton-FBI

Chutkan ruled that the checks be "sealed", never to be made public.

Chutkan's Third Cover-up

Judge Chutkan was also assigned the case of Imran Awan, another D.C. scandal. He was the "Pakistani mystery man". For 14 years, he headed the Spy Ring in Congress for 40 members of Congress. Who knew?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/lqvwOFJVkRw?wmode=opaque&enablejsapi=1

In 14 years, how much intellectual property, patents, weapons, and pay-for-play deals were rinsed through Pakistan and sold to N. Korea, Iran, China, and Russia?

https://brassballs.blog/home/patents-remain-unprotected-says-inspector-general

Awan plead guilty to bank fraud. His six-month sentence was reduced to three months of "supervised" probation by Judge Chutkan. "He suffered enough", said the Judge. Awan lives in Pakistan nine months out of the year. Awan received immunity from prosecution without having to testify against anyone.

https://brassballs.blog/home/imran-awan-receives-immunity-for-allegedly-operating-a-spy-ring-in-congress-for-14-years-selling-state-secrets-to-pakistan-and-stealing-2-million-of-equipment 

Exactly how did Awan suffer? He was paid $160,000 working three months out of the year to manage Congresses' computer systems.

Judges with lifetime appointments never have to explain anything. <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c5983274192024193ecfeb3/1549370162865/Chutkan+grumpy+self.png" alt="Chutkan grumpy self.png" />

Judge Tanya Chutkan

Updated Feb. 8th, 2019 8:41 a.m. <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c5d73cf9b747a56e071cd67/1549628372556/Butina+BOP+inmate+locator.png" alt="Butina BOP inmate locator.png" />

https://www.bop.gov/inmateloc/

According to Pacer, the official record of the federal courts, nothing on Butina's release and plea agreement was filed yesterday. <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c5d87bbec212d5e97169fbd/1549633474179/Butina+docket+8+a.m.+Feb.+8th.png" alt="Butina docket 8 a.m. Feb. 8th.png" /> <img src="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a66006b8f5b013edc46c1/t/5c5d730771c10bfe031cc1f5/1549628173885/Butina+case+update+Feb+8th.png" alt="Butina case update Feb 8th.png" />

https://www.youtube.com/embed/VpM6AfZAqng?wmode=opaque&enablejsapi=1

Bob Driscoll, Butina's attorney, said yesterday that she should be home in Russia in six weeks.

The plea hearing remains on schedule for Tuesday.

The gag order has been lifted.

Mariia remains in prison at the William Truesdale Detention Center in Alexandria, Virginia, according to the Russian Orthodox Church. She is no longer in an isolation cell.

The prison is named after Special Prosecutor's Robert Mueller's grandfather. Harry the Greek Facebook 0 Twitter LinkedIn 0 StumbleUpon Reddit Tumblr Pinterest 2 0 Likes Harry the Greek Comments (1

[May 08, 2019] It is the ultimate irony that how the old Soviet Union's judiciary used to function is now becoming standing operating procedure in the United States

Notable quotes:
"... Why are Chalupa and Podesta not in prison? ..."
"... Our courts are totally corrupt. There's a prosecutor/FBI/judge cabal which convicts 98+% of its victims at trials. ..."
"... They lie to be promoted. ..."
"... "the FBI will be watching you." 'In America, FBI watch everyone.' ..."
May 08, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

gcjohns1971 , 8 months ago link

"It is the ultimate irony that how the old Soviet Union's judiciary used to function is now becoming standing operating procedure in the United States."

When you consider how many of today's Democrat luminaries were self described as dedicated Communists in the 60's, 70's, and 80's it is not surprising at all.

mc888 , 8 months ago link

Why are Chalupa and Podesta not in prison?

SergeA.Storms , 8 months ago link

If, the information in this article is true, I feel bad for this young lady getting hemmed up in international shenanigans.

If a person loves her country (her home), wants the opportunity for fellow citizens to be free with a right to bare arms, and seeks out the assistance of the USA both as a model for having the 2nd Amendment, and an organization that leads in advocating for personal firearms ownership, the NRA, how is she committing any crime? She should not be locked up for pursuing God given, inalienable rights for her fellow countrymen. She should be encouraged and sponsored by Pro2A groups and manufacturers. Again, if the information as presented is true.

dday1944 , 8 months ago link

Thank you DOJ. There's no need for guns in Russia. These people intoxicated by the alcohol and hard drugs will kill one another by the thousands. I feel for Masha Butina, but as far away she is from Russia, as better for this poor country. Luckily she is in US and even better in prison. Thank you Russophobes, warmongers and sheep that neocons will send to the slaughterhouse, you can not do any better.

Reaper , 8 months ago link

Our courts are totally corrupt. There's a prosecutor/FBI/judge cabal which convicts 98+% of its victims at trials. The excessive long sentences are used to convince the large majority unable to afford a slightly possible defense to bargain a plea. The Exceptional morons selected for juries think, why would the FBI lie. They lie to be promoted. What do you think happens to an agent whose testimony aids the defense?

Kangaroo courts would be more honest in their convictions.

ToSoft4Truth , 8 months ago link

"the FBI will be watching you." 'In America, FBI watch everyone.'

Herdee , 8 months ago link

The Russians are coming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bReGtDxF1Oo

WW_II , 8 months ago link

"Why is Maria Butina in prison?"

https://garygindler.com/2018/08/05/why-is-maria-butina-in-prison

bh2 , 8 months ago link

"a plausible case for an indictment"

If a case is merely "plausible", that's not enough to indict.

Based on that thread-bare criterion, the FBI could probably come up with "plausible" cause to indict half the US population for something or other. Never mind Russians, all of whom might "plausibly" be suspected as secret agents for the Kremlin because they know other Russians.

This is absurd.

navy62802 , 8 months ago link

The true criminals are attempting to cover their tracks through diversion. The magnitude of the scheme they are executing now is commensurate with the magnitude of their own crimes against the United States.

IridiumRebel , 8 months ago link

I swear these stories are pushed for social media consumption so my faggy lib "friends" can bitch.

SergeA.Storms , 8 months ago link

I agree, it was much more scary in the 80's hiding under our desks at school and learning each week how many times one country could blow up the world, multiple times over. Now, so many people around the world call ********, not because MAD doesn't exist, but everyone realized no matter the quality of your bunker and fortitude of cement, those things only mean you die slower than those outside near the big flash. Hypersonic weapons seem like a step backwards in the whole 'my missile is bigger than your missile' game of Coldwar 2.0.

tmosley , 8 months ago link

Extremely important information there.

McCarthy did nothing wrong.

Yog Soggoth , 8 months ago link

Exactly, he was anti Bolshevik. There was an active campaign against a strong America.

MozartIII , 8 months ago link

McCarthy was right! I do my homework!! The fuckers are still in our government!!!

[May 08, 2019] CNN Looks Humiliated On Russiagate While Backpedaling

Notable quotes:
"... The Jimi Dore show is what the Daily Show used to be. ..."
"... NYTimes and Washington Post won the Pulitzer prizes for "thorough coverage" of 2016 Russia collusion  ..."
"... The xenophobia towards Russia is higher than during the cold war. It's embarrassing imo. ..."
"... 14:52 Russian Troll farm: spends 15k on adds America: We lost the war we are no longer a sovereign nation ..."
"... Russiagate distracts from the very real Israelgate. #BDS ..."
"... so alex jones got banned from all platforms for being a conspiracy theorist while the MSM were pushing one for two years?! wow ..."
"... Pretty sure psychopaths will not feel embarrassment or humiliation, only rage and vengeance. ..."
"... CNN is actually a cult and It has a following. ..."
"... The funny thing about Dems claiming Trump wouldn't accept the result of the election - Cohen testified to Congress that Trump actually expected to lose and was running as a PR stunt. ..."
"... Keith Olbermann is Grandpa Maddow ..."
"... If somebody in power is after you, the feds will indict a ham sandwich... ..."
"... I kinda figured out myself that this Russia Gate was a load of lies and/or wishful thinking. Jimmy and his guests showed me that i wasn't wrong of nuts even. Thanks Jimmy, for hooking me up. ..."
"... We've known all along this has been a coup. This is not news to the informed. ..."
"... The Soviet Union moved from Russia, to the ruling class of DC and NYC. ..."
May 08, 2019 | www.youtube.com

Doctor Detroit , 1 month ago (edited)

CNN had Avanetti on 200 times last year. Let that sink in.

lordjohnson48 , 1 month ago

The Jimi Dore show is what the Daily Show used to be.

Vladimir Surkov , 1 month ago

MSM digging their own grave, thinking they're digging Trump's. All I have to say is DIG DEEPER!

Maros Bruno , 1 month ago (edited)

NYTimes and Washington Post won the Pulitzer prizes for "thorough coverage" of 2016 Russia collusion 

Mark Carlson , 1 month ago (edited)

The xenophobia towards Russia is higher than during the cold war. It's embarrassing imo.

William King , 1 month ago

Jimmy and Aaron, two great guys who had the integrity to tell the truth. Thanks for those of us who want more justice, equality and peace.

Andrew Wright , 1 month ago

Didn't AIPAC long ago end USA's sovereignty?

Oh! Mama! , 1 month ago

Just bought my Pencil neck Schiff T shirt~ thanks for exposing all the left wing globalist lies Jimmy! TRUMP 2020~

Christopher Bradley , 1 month ago

That Olberman clip is astounding. They're right, it needs to be enshrined (and also played in classrooms) as yellow journalism and propaganda.

John Moran , 1 month ago

Glenn Greenwald absolutely destroyed Russia'gater David Cay Johnston on Democracy Now today. It was brutal.

Mr Nice , 1 month ago

14:52 Russian Troll farm: spends 15k on adds America: We lost the war we are no longer a sovereign nation

Herr Kartoffelkopf , 1 month ago (edited)

I can't stand Jimmys political views but respect his honesty and delivery. Fukface!😂😁😀😂😆🎯🖒

John E , 1 month ago

I urge Aaron Mate to write the definitive book on ' 'The Russiagate Conspiracy' ' – he has been an outstanding journalist.

skyson b pei , 1 month ago

Russiagate distracts from the very real Israelgate. #BDS

Larry K , 1 month ago

Hey Keith Olbermann could go on Saturday Night Live and play a great Chuck Schumer

James James , 1 month ago

The saddest/greatest part. They are ALL complicit in handing their most hated person the 2020 election. Lulz.

Dwayne Coy , 1 month ago

Jimmy Dore, always on top of the story and has been right for over two years.

Tim Martineau , 1 day ago

Hyperbole on American media? When did this start, Jimmy?

ROXEY , 1 month ago

Flynn plead Guilty because they threatened his son and he was going bankrupt and had to sell his house.

Cambodia Joe , 1 month ago

Aaron Matte and Tulsi Gabbard should give "How to be calm" workshops.

Miles Curtin , 1 month ago

"Grown up people on news shows who sound dumber than I do drunk and high!" Can't make that stuff up.....keep up the great work Jimmy!!!! 👍

Jonathan Hill , 1 month ago

Don't be surprised if the establishment tries to blame progressives for their failure

OG Johnson , 1 month ago

But Jimmy CNN Stands for Clinton News NETWORK so that means they're honest right? LoL 😂

Mikevdog , 3 days ago

But they WANTED it to be true so they have to believe it into existence.

Jeremiah Aspy , 1 month ago

Jimmy is the most rational Democrat in the media. I don't agree on alot of his views but at least I can understand where he's coming from.

Major Major , 3 days ago

CNN really should be dismantled, and those who intentionally betrayed the American people charged as traitors.

Alexander Aronov , 1 month ago

so alex jones got banned from all platforms for being a conspiracy theorist while the MSM were pushing one for two years?! wow

Rau Kenneth , 1 month ago

Pretty sure psychopaths will not feel embarrassment or humiliation, only rage and vengeance.

jason adcock , 1 week ago

I'm a republican, but I'll be honest and say that Jimmy Dore is one of the few honest liberals that I can watch and learn the left. Great job Jimmy

Ruben Soto , 1 month ago

Fbi can charge anyone of lying just by even a wrong day or time.

Cymoon RBACpro , 1 month ago (edited)

CNN is actually a cult and It has a following.

Karl Haynes , 1 month ago

Now that Trump has agreed to go along with the war with Russia, they will back off on Trump and let him continue provoking Russia in Syria, Venezuela and by flying US planes into Russian air space. Mueller helped Bush lie America into destroying Iraq. US Empire wants military bases in more and more nations.

dogleg 1957 , 1 month ago (edited)

Mueller has just handed trump a 2nd term. CNN making sure it's a landslide

Rex Russell , 1 month ago

MSM wants to practice Kamikazi journalism......but without any real danger. Chickenshits, all of them.

Jurgen K , 1 month ago

DONATE TO TULSI 2020 NOW

Edgy Guy , 1 month ago

The funny thing about Dems claiming Trump wouldn't accept the result of the election - Cohen testified to Congress that Trump actually expected to lose and was running as a PR stunt. LOL. Can't make this stuff up. The danger here is that the what really happened was a deep state effort with mainstream media to overthrow a lawfully elected president of country. That's scarier than any thing Trump may ever do.

Rich Lester , 1 month ago

Keith Olbermann is Grandpa Maddow

dipojones , 1 month ago

The Russiagaters are unhinged lunatics who should all be sent to to an insane asylum.

James DePass , 1 month ago

Easy to "hack" emails when your password is "password". Russia sure has those hacking skills.

Pasha Pasovski , 1 month ago

But the Red background hahahaha, he sounds and looks like he came straight out of Dr. Strangelove!

Andrew Qs , 1 month ago

Poor Olberman. Now he's screaming like a deranged pastor in what looks like a cardboard box, very lonely. RUSSSIA!!

Nikhilesh Surve , 1 month ago (edited)

😂😂😂 I love the media meltdown. 13:24 😂 You've lost the war, start speaking Russian now, start with learning Cyrillic, I it starts with"A" too.

Jay Dee , 2 weeks ago

I'm a conservative and have tremendous amount of respect for Jimmy Dore and Aaron Mate'. I may not agree with them on specific policies but I know these two guys come from a sincere, honest place. I usually just blow off liberal rhetoric but I listen to what Jimmy has to say. God bless them

davidrig , 1 month ago

There is ZERO evidence, but the manipulation of the minds of the masses continues anyway!!!

Wyoming Horseman , 1 month ago

FLYNN The FBI has concluded that Michael Flynn did not have any secret relationship with Russia and has cleared the retired Lt. General of any wrongdoing. According to a U.S. intelligence official speaking with NPR, after reviewing the transcripts, FBI agents found that Michael Flynn's forced resignation could only have been orchestrated from Obama insiders operating within the White House.

Libertywritersnews.com reports: After reviewing the transcripts, the FBI found NO WRONG DOING!!

"The FBI reviewed intercepts of communications between the Russian ambassador to the United States and retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn -- national security adviser to then-President-elect Trump -- but has not found any evidence of wrongdoing or illicit ties to the Russian government, U.S. officials said."

Another current U.S Intelligence official agreed with the FBI and told NPR , "there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the transcripts of of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, The official also said there was "absolutely nothing" in the transcripts that suggests Flynn was acting under instructions "or that the trail leads higher." "I don't think [Flynn] knew he was doing anything wrong," the official said. "Flynn talked about sanctions, but no specific promises were made. Flynn was speaking more in general 'maybe we'll take a look at this going forward' terms."

So why aren't we listening to the officials who actually HEARD the calls? Don't be fooled, this isn't about Flynn discussing sanctions or anything else with Russia for that matter. This is about delegitimizing a president. There is a reason why Democrats are still determined to investigate Flynn even though he has already resigned. They are using this as a way to prove that Trump was "in with Russia" and therefore an illegitimate president. Democrats will stop at nothing to get Trump out of the White House. They don't care how many lives they have to ruin.

Carol Cohen , 1 month ago

Until we fix our rigged voting system where votes are blocked, changed, thrown out we will continue with corrupt government.

Eleven : Eleven , 1 week ago

Communists on the Left colluded with Soviet Russia for decades and infiltrated politics, academia, education, media. Now that Russia doesn't represent a threat and is now a growing Christian democracy...they hate it.

MrJoecool7890 , 1 week ago

Jimmy: they (the globalist elite) want to defeat all of us. We all (Progressives, Christians, Conservatives, people who love their country ) are on the same boat. The globalists want to destroy all of us. They are against the nation state, against people having their own culture and defending it, they are against Christians (look at the way Obama referred to Catholics who were attacked in Sri Lanka (Easter worshippers)), they are against true democracy meaning against a government that has the true interest of their citizens in mind not the interest of the elite that controls all branches of the government. I might disagree with your socialist policies and particularly what you said about Venezuela (I am from Colombia and saw the disastrous policies of Chavez and Maduro destroying that nation) but we all have a common enemy and the Right and the true Left should come together in this fight.

Lekestue , 1 month ago

Robert Mueller should be investigated for lying about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction

Cambodia Joe , 1 month ago

So happy for you Jimmy and your team. You are the BILL HICKS of now. In fact, probably gone beyond him now with respect to the man.

infinity34 , 1 month ago

0:06 - CNN finally labels someone accurately...

Patricia Branigan , 1 month ago

"Resist Peace" seems to be the motto of the warmongering Democratic Party

Nebelbalito , 1 month ago

I'm afraid Olberman may not be joking ... dude has lost his marbles all politics aside

Somerled, Islay , 2 weeks ago (edited)

Doctor Strangelove, Sterling Hayden eat your heart out ,he even sounds like him ,really.

Tony 1 , 1 month ago

Even though you spat in Alex Jones' face I still love what you got to say.

Z3R0 , 1 month ago

Because (CIA agent) Anderson "Cooper" Vanderbilt is the most trusted "NAME™" in News. Yeah, right. We already know the truth about this porky mofo. His time is coming.

Jean Navet-Envie , 4 weeks ago

It ain't funny. These zio liers will destroy america

K Mat , 1 month ago

Anderson Cooper drinks a big cup of stupidity every morning before he goes to work. The guy is a total empty shell with no common sense.

chateucaddy , 1 month ago

Remember this is the Special Counsel Investigation, the "Ultimate" Investigation. Which is also the 3rd Investigation. We already had the House & then the Senate Investigate Russia Collusion & both came up with NO Evidence. So they started as Special Counsel Investigation which has now come up with the same Conclusion as they did🤔

Vir Quisque Vir , 4 weeks ago

2:08 - "That it's hard to prove proves that it is true!!!"

Percy Plath , 1 month ago

Jimmy, you're so mean making poor Aaron listen to all that Keith Olbermann.

Sharon Flynn , 1 month ago

Network comparison is spot on and freaking SCARY!!!!!!!

John Froelich , 1 month ago

If somebody in power is after you, the feds will indict a ham sandwich...

martin austin , 1 month ago

I always believed in you when it came to Russia Jimmy. I don't agree with you on everything, but you and Kyle are definitely one of the new progressives that didn't go off the deep end with this conspiracy.

Janet DeLahr , 5 days ago

And these idiots are still wondering how Trump got elected 🙄

watchingponies , 1 month ago

And yes, exactly what Aaron says. I kinda figured out myself that this Russia Gate was a load of lies and/or wishful thinking. Jimmy and his guests showed me that i wasn't wrong of nuts even. Thanks Jimmy, for hooking me up.

Michael Rapson , 1 month ago

OK so Russia-gate was a fizzer. So now can we get back to attacking Trump's trickle-down capitalism and military pandering?

Phillip Evans , 1 month ago

It's only fair that "news journalists" start doing stand-up routines - it's your fault Jimmy for taking over the role of serious news journalism from them, was probably inevitable, LOL.

semiloaf , 4 days ago

We've known all along this has been a coup. This is not news to the informed.

Pensive , 1 month ago (edited)

"It's too hard to convict people of a crime. I know they are guilty and that's all that matters." - every authoritarian ever

Jason Sabino , 1 month ago

I love the needtoimpeach ad that plays before the clip. These asshats on the left just don't give up.

MeanGreen , 1 month ago

SCUM! We're being conquered by SCUUUUUM!

w5winston , 1 month ago

Hey, Jimmy, don't forget about SETH RICH, Mr. Conspiracy-BUSTER....??????????????????????????????? (You were really onto sumpin', bruh!)

fuzzywzhe , 1 month ago

I used to respect Keith Olberman (and Rachael Maddow as well!) when they were criticizing Bush for lying us into a war over a non existent weapons of mass destruction program. I think these living colostomy bags are promoted to their positions to undermine legitimate criticism of the criminal dirtbags that run this nation. They were right about Bush Jr, wrong about Obozo - and of course, other...

Burnya Bro , 1 month ago

The two of you are both great! I think so highly of Aaron, and the fact that he seems to have chosen Jimmy's show for his first lengthy take on the "end of Russiagate" is telling! Both of you deserve our props and thanks for helping keep us ALL sane over the past couple of years.

David Harrell , 1 month ago

The Soviet Union moved from Russia, to the ruling class of DC and NYC.

Elephant Man , 1 month ago

Jimmy, I don't agree with your political views. But DON'T stop, you're my counter balance.

C L , 1 month ago

MSM is expired and irrelevant. 😰 SAD

AndTheCorrectAnswerIs , 1 month ago

I'm sure they all still believe Trump will be indicted or impeached "any day now". These people are mentally unstable, they are the textbook example of delusional.

[May 08, 2019] On Contact: Russiagate Mueller Report w/ Aaron Mate

Apr 20, 2019 | www.youtube.com
RT America Published on

Chris Hedges discusses with Nation reporter Aaron Mate how despite the categorical statement in Robert Mueller's report that Donald Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia, the conspiracy theories by the nation's mainstream media show little sign of diminishing.

Tenzin Nordron , 2 weeks ago

Trump's no embarrassment. He's the accurate representative of the ruthless, con-artistry of the Empire of Chaos.

Brooks Rogers , 2 weeks ago

Been a long time fan of Hedges and recent fan of Mate. Great conversation between these two critical thinkers so scarce these troubled days.

Boris Tabare Ag , 2 weeks ago

Aaron Maté: the man who killed Luke Harding!!!

Lee Vanderheiden , 2 weeks ago

Thanks, Chris. What a great interview. Aaron Mate' is an up and coming star journalist!

Laurie MtnGalPal , 2 weeks ago

Go Aaron!!! You won an Izzy award!!! Good on you brother!! 💪❤😎

Jesse Birkett , 2 weeks ago

This is one the best episodes On Contact has ever done.

mistor Whiskers , 2 weeks ago

I've been calling it vodkagate since day one and just watching these propagandists getting drunk on it.

John Harrison , 2 weeks ago

I honestly am beginning to believe the Democratic leadership actually likes having Donald Trump as President

[May 07, 2019] Look! A whale!

Highly recommended!
May 07, 2019 | amp.theguardian.com

Hannah Ellis-Petersen

Mon 29 Apr 2019 01.55 EDT Marine experts in Norway believe they have stumbled upon a white whale that was trained by the Russian navy as part of a programme to use underwater mammals as a special ops force.

1 week ago

The whale was the secret intermediary between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. The messages were transmitted during weekly 'Whales-R-Us' peer support sessions. It's ironic it turns up now, after Mr. Mueller's report has already been issued.

1 week ago (Edited)

I'm pretty sure "Nessie" is a mobile underwater propoganda base used by the Russians since the time of the Bolshevic revolution. Originally, it was merely a base to hide the Reds operating on the outskirts of the Capitalist capitol of London. Scotland was the perfect hiding place.

Now however, it's outfitted with the most sophisticated internet hacking equipment, AI technology so advanced it can alter your political ideology just by selling you a mailorder slavic blow-up doll.

[May 07, 2019] Chris Hedges: The Demonization of Russia is Driven by Defense Contractors

Highly recommended!
Apr 05, 2019 | dandelionsalad.wordpress.com

RT America on Apr 3, 2019

Chris Hedges, host of "On Contact," joins Rick Sanchez to discuss the role of the Democratic establishment in the "Russiagate" media frenzy. He argues that it was an unsustainable narrative given the actions of the White House but that the Democratic elite are unable to face their own role in the economic and social crises for which they are in large part to blame. They also discuss NATO's expansionary tendencies and how profitable it is for US defense contractors.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/VkoH3l7c5cI

From the archives:

Barbara Mullin | April 7, 2019 at 10:29 AM

Years ago I kept hearing from the newsmedia that Russia was the "enemy".

Frontline had a show about "Putin's Brain". Even Free Speech TV shows like Bill Press and "The Nation" authors like Eric Alterman push the Hillary style warmongering and do nothing to expose the outright lies out there.

These are supposed to be thought outside of the corporate mainstream newsmedia. The emphasis only on Trump and Fox News is totally hypocritical.

[May 07, 2019] Look! A whale!

Highly recommended!
May 07, 2019 | amp.theguardian.com

Hannah Ellis-Petersen

Mon 29 Apr 2019 01.55 EDT Marine experts in Norway believe they have stumbled upon a white whale that was trained by the Russian navy as part of a programme to use underwater mammals as a special ops force.

1 week ago

The whale was the secret intermediary between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. The messages were transmitted during weekly 'Whales-R-Us' peer support sessions. It's ironic it turns up now, after Mr. Mueller's report has already been issued.

1 week ago (Edited)

I'm pretty sure "Nessie" is a mobile underwater propoganda base used by the Russians since the time of the Bolshevic revolution. Originally, it was merely a base to hide the Reds operating on the outskirts of the Capitalist capitol of London. Scotland was the perfect hiding place.

Now however, it's outfitted with the most sophisticated internet hacking equipment, AI technology so advanced it can alter your political ideology just by selling you a mailorder slavic blow-up doll.

[May 07, 2019] James Comey is in trouble and he knows it

Notable quotes:
"... This is problematic for Comey in light of Mueller's findings. There are strict guidelines governing when the FBI can task a confidential source or a government undercover operative to collect against a U.S. citizen. Normally this is restricted to a full investigation, and normally restricted to the United States, not overseas. ..."
"... There is a sense that Comey's team was not checking the boxes, did not have adequate predication, and may have tasked sources before an investigation was even officially opened. Barr should pull case files and dig in on this. ..."
"... In addition, the cast of characters leveraged by the FBI against the Trump campaign all appear to have their genesis as CIA sources ("assets," in agency vernacular) shared at times with the FBI. From Stefan Halper and possibly Joseph Mifsud, to Christopher Steele, to Carter Page himself, and now a mysterious "government investigator" posing as Halper's assistant and cited in The New York Times article, legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more than an FBI counterintelligence case ..."
"... James Comey is right to be apprehensive. He himself ate away at the soul of the FBI, not in small bites but in dangerously large ones. ..."
May 07, 2019 | thehill.com

Comey adjudged the president as "amoral." He declared the attorney general to be "formidable" but "lacking inner strength" unlike -- the inference is clear -- Comey himself. A strategy of insulting the executioner right before he swings his ax is an odd one but, then, Comey has a long record of odd decisions and questionable judgment.

"Amoral leaders [referring to the president] have a way of revealing the character of those around them," wrote Comey without a hint of irony or self-awareness. Those whom the former FBI director assembled around him probably rue the day they ever met the man. Most are now fired or disgraced for appalling behaviors that Comey found easy to manipulate to advance his decisions.

ADVERTISEMENT

Then, just to make sure his op-ed was odd-salted to the max, Comey mused that the president "eats your soul in small bites." OK, let's step back for a moment: James Comey appears to be in trouble. His strange, desperate statements and behaviors betray his nervousness and apprehension. In a way, it's hard to watch.

Comey will claim that everything he did in the FBI was by the book. But after the investigations by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and U.S. Attorney John Huber , along with Barr's promised examination, are completed, Comey's mishandling of the FBI and legal processes likely will be fully exposed.

Ideally, Barr's examination will aggregate information that addresses three primary streams.

The first will be whether the investigations into both presidential nominees and the Trump campaign were adequately, in Barr's words, "predicated." This means he will examine whether there was sufficient justification under existing guidelines for the FBI to have started an investigation in the first place.

The Mueller report's conclusions make this a fair question for the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign. Comey's own pronouncement, that the Clinton email case was unprosecutable, makes it a fair question for that investigation.

The second will be whether Comey's team obeyed long-established investigative guidelines while conducting the investigations and, specifically, if there was sufficient, truthful justification to lawfully conduct electronic surveillance of an American citizen.

The third will be an examination of whether Comey was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director and attorney general. This, above all, is what's causing the 360-degree head spins.

There are early indicators that troubling behaviors may have occurred in all three scenarios. Barr will want to zero in on a particular area of concern: the use by the FBI of confidential human sources, whether its own or those offered up by the then-CIA director.

Without diving into the weeds, it's important to understand that FBI counterintelligence investigations generally proceed sequentially from what is called a preliminary investigation or inquiry (PI) to a full investigation (FI). To move from a PI to an FI requires substantial information -- predication -- indicating investigative targets acted as agents of a foreign power.

This is problematic for Comey in light of Mueller's findings. There are strict guidelines governing when the FBI can task a confidential source or a government undercover operative to collect against a U.S. citizen. Normally this is restricted to a full investigation, and normally restricted to the United States, not overseas.

There is a sense that Comey's team was not checking the boxes, did not have adequate predication, and may have tasked sources before an investigation was even officially opened. Barr should pull case files and dig in on this.

In addition, the cast of characters leveraged by the FBI against the Trump campaign all appear to have their genesis as CIA sources ("assets," in agency vernacular) shared at times with the FBI. From Stefan Halper and possibly Joseph Mifsud, to Christopher Steele, to Carter Page himself, and now a mysterious "government investigator" posing as Halper's assistant and cited in The New York Times article, legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more than an FBI counterintelligence case.

Some in the media have suggested that the Times article was an attempt by the FBI to justify its early confidential source actions. But current FBI Director Christopher Wray has shown that he would like to excise the cancerous tumor that grew during Comey's time and not just keep smoking. It's hard to imagine current FBI executives trying to justify past malfeasance.

James Comey is right to be apprehensive. He himself ate away at the soul of the FBI, not in small bites but in dangerously large ones. It was a dinner for one, though: His actions are not indicative of the real FBI. The attorney general's comprehensive examination is welcome and, if done honestly and dispassionately, it will protect future presidential candidates of both parties and redeem the valuable soul of the FBI.

Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He is a founder and principal of NewStreet Global Solutions , which consults with private companies and public-safety agencies on strategic mission technologies.

Bryan Hinnen Guest 6 hours ago

Peter Strzok, his little girlfriend Lisa Page, Andy McCabe, John Brennan, Sally Yates & Bruce Ohr immediately come to mind. Horowitz is investigating those FISA warrant applications & Barr is investigating the origins of the Russia collusion delusion.

Investigate them, arrest them the same way Roger Stone was arrested & interrogate them the same way Michael Flynn was interrogated. Then offer them a deal.

If they flip on their lords & masters at the DNC, they get one weekend in a country club prison. If they don't flip, they get 20 years in a real prison.

The next 18 months are going to be fascinating.

  • Neal Stephen an hour ago

    This report reads, in fact, as if Trump was supposed to cooperate in his own obstruction. And because he didn’t, he’s guilty of obstruction. ‘Donald Trump attempted to obstruct our coup,’ is how this should read. ‘Donald Trump attempted to obstruct our effort to throw him out of office,’ is how this report should read.
    It’s made to order for people who want to continue running this operation to get rid of Trump. … The report itself says there was no collusion.
    We have a representative republic, and the popular vote doesn’t matter and it never has, by design. So all these are just exercises in mathematics.
    Hillary winning the popular vote by three million doesn’t mean anything, period.
    If you want to have fun and if you’ve got some time, go to YouTube or wherever you go to find videos and find election night coverage and start at 6 or 7 p.m. Eastern, any network, and watch it for a couple hours. And as you get close to 9 o’clock, you will see a 180 degree shift from an attitude of jocularity and confidence and happiness.” Because this was it, this was the glass ceiling being shattered or cracked, however you look at it, the first female president, Hillary Clinton, walking away with it in a landslide.
    But then as they get close to 9 o’clock, panic begins to settle in, and they shortly thereafter realize that it ain’t falling out the way they thought it was going to. And as they start fearing and realizing that Hillary is gonna lose, it’s one of the greatest things you can watch. Go back and relive that.
    Liberals must be defeated not convinced

    • [May 07, 2019] Steele's stunning pre-FISA confession Informant needed to air Trump dirt before election TheHill

    Notable quotes:
    "... The encounter, and Kavalec's memos, were forced into public view through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation by Citizens United. Yet, all but a few lines have been redacted after the fact. Officials are citing as the reason national security, in the name of the FBI and a half-century-old intelligence law. ..."
    "... the documents suggest there was an illegal effort to "frame" the future president with bogus Russia collusion allegations. "This new information proves why the attorney general must conduct a thorough investigation of the investigators," he said. ..."
    "... we have written proof the U.S. government knew well before the FBI secured the FISA warrant that Steele had a political motive and Election Day deadline to make his dossier public. ..."
    "... Documents and testimony from Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie worked for Fusion GPS , show he told the FBI in August 2016 that Steele was "desperate" to defeat Trump and his work had something to do with Clinton's campaign. ..."
    "... Kavalec's notes make clear the DNC was a likely client and the election was Steele's deadline to smear Trump. ..."
    "... That makes the FBI's failure to disclose to the FISA judges the information about Steele's political bias and motive all the more stunning. And it makes the agents' use of his unverified dossier to support the warrant all the more shameful. ..."
    May 07, 2019 | thehill.com

    If ever there were an admission that taints the FBI's secret warrant to surveil Donald Trump 's campaign, it sat buried for more than two-and-a-half years in the files of a high-ranking State Department official.

    Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec's written account of her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele shows the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence operative admitted that his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline.

    State officials acknowledged a year ago they received a copy of the Steele dossier in July 2016, and got a more detailed briefing in October 2016 and referred the information to the FBI.

    But what was discussed was not revealed. Sources told me more than a year ago that Kavalec had the most important (and memorialized) interaction with Steele before the FISA warrant was issued, but FBI and State officials refused to discuss it, or even confirm it.

    The encounter, and Kavalec's memos, were forced into public view through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation by Citizens United. Yet, all but a few lines have been redacted after the fact. Officials are citing as the reason national security, in the name of the FBI and a half-century-old intelligence law.

    David Bossie, head of Citizens United and an informal Trump adviser, said the documents suggest there was an illegal effort to "frame" the future president with bogus Russia collusion allegations. "This new information proves why the attorney general must conduct a thorough investigation of the investigators," he said.

    Sources tell me there also are handwritten notes from the meeting, with information about Steele's political ties, that have not been given to Congress. "There's a connection to Hillary Clinton in the notes," said one source who has seen them.

    Perhaps those will come to light soon.

    The mere four sentences that the FBI allowed State to release, unredacted, show that Kavalec sent an email two days after her encounter with Steele, alerting others.

    "You may already have this information but wanted to pass it on just in case," Kavalec wrote in the lone sentence the FBI and State released from that email . The names of the recipients, the subject line and the attachments are blacked out.

    Interestingly, one legal justification cited for redacting the Oct. 13, 2016, email is the National Security Act of 1947 , which can be used to shield communications involving the CIA or the White House National Security Council.

    The three other sentences visible in her memo show that U.S. officials had good reason to suspect Steele's client and motive in alleging Trump-Russia collusion because they were election-related and facilitated by the Clinton-funded Fusion GPS founder, Glenn Simpson.

    "Orbis undertook the investigation into the Russia/Trump connection at the behest of an institution he declined to identify that had been hacked," Kavalec wrote.

    At the time, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was the highest-profile victim of election-year hacking .

    "The institution approached them based on the recommendation of Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch (specialists in economic crime, formerly of the WSJ) and is keen to see this information come to light prior to November 8," Kavalec wrote. "Orbis undertook the investigation in June of 2016." Steele's firm Orbis was a subcontractor to Fusion GPS, and WSJ refers to the Wall Street Journal.

    Everything else in the memo was blacked out. The FOIA notes contain this explanation for the redactions: "Classified by FBI on 4/25/2019 -- Class: SECRET."

    In other words, the FBI under Director Christopher Wray classified the document as "secret" just a few days ago. To add injury to insult, the FBI added this hopeful note: "Declassify on 12/31/2041." That would be 25 years after the 2016 election.

    Despite the heavy redactions, Kavalec's notes have momentous consequence.

    For the first time, we have written proof the U.S. government knew well before the FBI secured the FISA warrant that Steele had a political motive and Election Day deadline to make his dossier public.

    And we know that information was transmitted before the Carter Page FISA warrant to one or more people whose job is so sensitive that their identity had to be protected. That means there is little chance the FBI didn't know about Steele's political client, or the Election Day deadline, before requesting the FISA warrant.

    Documents and testimony from Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie worked for Fusion GPS , show he told the FBI in August 2016 that Steele was "desperate" to defeat Trump and his work had something to do with Clinton's campaign.

    Kavalec's notes make clear the DNC was a likely client and the election was Steele's deadline to smear Trump.

    Likewise, there is little chance the FBI didn't know that Steele, then a bureau informant, had broken protocol and gone to the State Department in an effort to make the Trump dirt public.

    That makes the FBI's failure to disclose to the FISA judges the information about Steele's political bias and motive all the more stunning. And it makes the agents' use of his unverified dossier to support the warrant all the more shameful.

    Kavalec's notes shed light on another mystery from the text messages between the FBI's Pete Strzok and Lisa Page, which first revealed the politically-biased nature of the Trump collusion probe.

    Strzok, the lead FBI agent on the case, and Page, a lawyer working for the FBI deputy director, repeatedly messaged each other in October 2016 about efforts to pressure and speed the review of the FISA warrant.

    For instance, on Oct. 11, 2016, Strzok texted Page that he was "fighting with Stu for this FISA," an apparent reference to then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stu Evans in DOJ's national security division.

    A few days later, on Oct. 14, Strzok emailed Page he needed some "hurry the F up pressure" to get the FISA approved.

    If the evidence is good and the FISA request solid, why did the FBI need to apply pressure?

    The real reason may be the FBI was trying to keep a lid on the political origins, motives and Election Day deadline of its star informant Steele.

    And that would be the ultimate abuse of the FBI's FISA powers.

    John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists' misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports .

    [May 07, 2019] Ukrainian Embassy confirms DNC contractor solicited Trump dirt in 2016 TheHill

    Notable quotes:
    "... The fresh statement comes several months after a Ukrainian court ruled that the country's National Anti-Corruption Bureau, closely aligned with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, and a parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko wrongly interfered in the 2016 American election by releasing documents related to Manafort. ..."
    "... Federal Election Commission records show Chalupa's firm, Chalupa & Associates, was paid $71,918 by the DNC during the 2016 election cycle. ..."
    "... Chalupa, meanwhile, continued to build a case that Manafort and Trump were tied to Russia. In April 2016, she attended an international symposium where she reported back to the DNC that she had met with 68 Ukrainian investigative journalists to talk about Manafort. She also wrote that she invited American reporter Michael Isikoff to speak with her. Isikoff wrote some of the seminal stories tying Manafort to Ukraine and Trump to Russia; he later wrote a book making a case for Russian collusion ..."
    "... Less than a month later, the " black ledger " identifying payments to Manafort was announced in Ukraine, forcing Manafort to resign as Trump's campaign chairman and eventually to face criminal prosecution for improper foreign lobbying. ..."
    "... Though Chaly and Telizhenko disagree on what Ukraine did after it got Chalupa's request, they confirm that a paid contractor of the DNC solicited their government's help to find dirt on Trump that could sway the 2016 election. ..."
    "... For a Democratic Party that spent more than two years building the now disproven theory that Trump colluded with Russia to hijack the 2016 election, the tale of the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington feels just like a speeding political boomerang. ..."
    May 07, 2019 | thehill.com

    The boomerang from the Democratic Party's failed attempt to connect Donald Trump to Russia's 2016 election meddling is picking up speed, and its flight path crosses right through Moscow's pesky neighbor, Ukraine. That is where there is growing evidence a foreign power was asked, and in some cases tried, to help Hillary Clinton.

    In its most detailed account yet, the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington says a Democratic National Committee (DNC) insider during the 2016 election solicited dirt on Donald Trump's campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country's president to help.

    In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort's dealings inside the country in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.

    In that story, the embassy was broadly quoted as denying interference in the election and suggested Chalupa's main reason for contacting the ambassador's office was to organize an event celebrating female leaders.

    The fresh statement comes several months after a Ukrainian court ruled that the country's National Anti-Corruption Bureau, closely aligned with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, and a parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko wrongly interfered in the 2016 American election by releasing documents related to Manafort.

    The acknowledgement by Kiev's embassy, plus newly released testimony, suggests the Ukrainian efforts to influence the U.S. election had some intersections in Washington as well.

    Nellie Ohr, wife of senior U.S. Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, acknowledged in congressional testimony that, while working for the Clinton-hired research firm Fusion GPS, she researched Trump's and Manafort's ties to Russia and learned that Leshchenko, the Ukrainian lawmaker, was providing dirt to Fusion.

    Fusion also paid British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, whose anti-Trump dossier the FBI used as primary evidence to support its request to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

    In addition, I wrote last month that the Obama White House invited Ukrainian law enforcement officials to a meeting in January 2016 as Trump rose in the polls on his improbable path to the presidency. The meeting led to U.S. requests to the Ukrainians to help investigate Manafort, setting in motion a series of events that led to the Ukrainians leaking the documents about Manafort in May 2016.

    The DNC's embassy contacts add a new dimension, though. Chalupa discussed in the 2017 Politico article about her efforts to dig up dirt on Trump and Manafort, including at the Ukrainian Embassy.

    Federal Election Commission records show Chalupa's firm, Chalupa & Associates, was paid $71,918 by the DNC during the 2016 election cycle.

    Exactly how the Ukrainian Embassy responded to Chalupa's inquiries remains in dispute.

    Chaly's statement says the embassy rebuffed her requests for information: "No documents related to Trump campaign or any individuals involved in the campaign have been passed to Ms. Chalupa or the DNC neither from the Embassy nor via the Embassy. No documents exchange was even discussed."

    But Andrii Telizhenko, a former political officer who worked under Chaly from December 2015 through June 2016, told me he was instructed by the ambassador and his top deputy to meet with Chalupa in March 2016 and to gather whatever dirt Ukraine had in its government files about Trump and Manafort.

    Telizhenko said that when he was told by the embassy to arrange the meeting, both Chaly and the ambassador's top deputy identified Chalupa "as someone working for the DNC and trying to get Clinton elected."

    Over lunch at a Washington restaurant, Chalupa told Telizhenko in stark terms what she hoped the Ukrainians could provide the DNC and the Clinton campaign, according to his account.

    "She said the DNC wanted to collect evidence that Trump, his organization and Manafort were Russian assets, working to hurt the U.S. and working with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin against the U.S. interests. She indicated if we could find the evidence they would introduce it in Congress in September and try to build a case that Trump should be removed from the ballot, from the election," he recalled.

    After the meeting, Telizhenko said he became concerned about the legality of using his country's assets to help an American political party win a U.S. election. But he proceeded with his assignment.

    Telizhenko said that as he began his research, he discovered that Fusion GPS was nosing around Ukraine, seeking similar information, and he believed they, too, worked for the Democrats.

    As a former aide inside the general prosecutor's office in Kiev, Telizhenko used contacts with intelligence, police and prosecutors across the country to secure information connecting Russian figures to assistance on some of the Trump organization's real estate deals overseas, including a tower in Toronto.

    Telizhenko said he did not want to provide the intelligence he collected directly to Chalupa and instead handed the materials to Chaly: "I told him what we were doing was illegal, that it was unethical doing this as diplomats." He said the ambassador told him he would handle the matter and had opened a second channel back in Ukraine to continue finding dirt on Trump.

    Telizhenko said he also was instructed by his bosses to meet with an American journalist researching Manafort's ties to Ukraine.

    About a month later, he said his relationship with the ambassador soured and, by June 2016, he was ordered to return to Ukraine. There, he reported his concerns about the embassy's contacts with the Democrats to the former prosecutor general's office and officials in the Poroshenko administration: "Everybody already knew what was going on and told me it had been approved at the highest levels."

    Telizhenko said he never was able to confirm whether the information he collected for Chalupa was delivered to her, the DNC or the Clinton campaign.

    Chalupa, meanwhile, continued to build a case that Manafort and Trump were tied to Russia. In April 2016, she attended an international symposium where she reported back to the DNC that she had met with 68 Ukrainian investigative journalists to talk about Manafort. She also wrote that she invited American reporter Michael Isikoff to speak with her. Isikoff wrote some of the seminal stories tying Manafort to Ukraine and Trump to Russia; he later wrote a book making a case for Russian collusion.

    "A lot more coming down the pipe," Chalupa wrote a top DNC official on May 3, 2016 , recounting her effort to educate Ukrainian journalists and Isikoff about Manafort. Then she added, "More offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I'm working on you should be aware of."

    Less than a month later, the " black ledger " identifying payments to Manafort was announced in Ukraine, forcing Manafort to resign as Trump's campaign chairman and eventually to face criminal prosecution for improper foreign lobbying.

    DNC officials have suggested in the past that Chalupa's efforts were personal, not officially on behalf of the DNC. But Chalupa's May 2016 email clearly informed a senior DNC official that she was "digging into Manafort" and she suspected someone was trying to hack into her email account.

    Chaly over the years has tried to portray his role as Ukraine's ambassador in Washington as one of neutrality during the 2016 election. But in August 2016 he raised eyebrows in some diplomatic circles when he wrote an op-ed for The Hill skewering Trump for some of his comments on Russia. "Trump's comments send wrong message to world," Chaly's article blared in the headline.

    In his statement to me, Chaly said he wrote the op-ed because he had been solicited for his views by The Hill's opinion team.

    Chaly's office also acknowledged that a month after the op-ed, President Poroshenko met with then-candidate Clinton during a stop in New York. The office said the ambassador requested a similar meeting with Trump but it didn't get organized.

    Though Chaly and Telizhenko disagree on what Ukraine did after it got Chalupa's request, they confirm that a paid contractor of the DNC solicited their government's help to find dirt on Trump that could sway the 2016 election. For a Democratic Party that spent more than two years building the now disproven theory that Trump colluded with Russia to hijack the 2016 election, the tale of the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington feels just like a speeding political boomerang.

    John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists' misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports . Tags Hillary Clinton Paul Manafort Donald Trump Trump–Russia dossier DNC Hillary Clinton campaign

    [May 07, 2019] Blowback on Russiagate for 2020

    May 07, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Those of you who followed the 2016 campaign may remember a pattern where Trump would create a debacle, the polls would drop, a cry of " This time we've got him!" would arise, whereupon Trump would rebound and the polls would rise, sine wave-style fashion ( see charts from my post here ). And as election day, 2016, neared, the sine wave was heading upward . It's possible that, following the release of the Mueller report, Trump is about to repeat the same pattern, on a much larger scale. Polls down, 2016-2018; polls up 2019-2020. Perhaps.

    I got to thinking of this when I read the following mildly titled article by Jack Goldsmith: " Thoughts on Barr and the Mueller Report ." Here's Goldsmith's biography , in its entirety:

    Jack Goldsmith is Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard University. He is the author, most recently, of The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside The Bush Administration (W.W. Norton 2007), as well as of other books and articles on many topics related to terrorism, national security, international law, conflicts of law, and internet law. Before coming to Harvard, Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, from October 2003 through July 2004, and Special Counsel to the General Counsel to the Department of Defense from September 2002 through June 2003. Goldsmith taught at the University of Chicago Law School from 1997-2002, and at the University of Virginia Law School from 1994-1997. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford University, and a B.A. from Washington & Lee University. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, and Judge George Aldrich on the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal.

    I quote this to point out that whatever else he may be, Goldsmith isn't a swivel-eyed loon. (We can postpone discussion of whether all conservatives and/or all liberals and/or the political class are swivel-eyed loons for another day; personally, I think that in our enormous country, there are gradations.)

    Goldsmith's piece, which in essence is a defense of Barr's release process for the Mueller report, is worth reading in full, especially if you don't read a lot of conservative fare (I don't), but here are the paragraphs that caught my eye:

    Finally, a few words about Barr's statements that the executive branch was "spying" on the Trump campaign. Barr explained himself on May 1 in response to a question from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse:

    I'm not going to abjure the use of the word spying. I think, you know, my first job was in CIA and I don't think the word spying has any pejorative convert connotation at all. [T]o me the question is always whether or not it's authorized and adequately predicated, spying. I think spying is a good English word that in fact doesn't have synonyms because it is the broadest word incorporating really all forms of covert intelligence collections. So I'm not going to back off the word "spying" to -- except I will say I'm not suggesting any pejorative.

    Barr also added that his original remark was "off the cuff" but that he "commonly" uses the term "spying" in this way. (For what it's worth, Senator Whitehouse, among many others, has used the term "spying" in this way too -- see here and here.)

    I have no idea if Barr is being candid here or winding people up -- or both. But he has signaled, especially in his original "spying" pronouncement, that he has concerns about the origins and operation of the investigation of the Trump campaign. And he says he plans to investigate it.

    This is in theory an appropriate thing for the Justice Department to do, for two reasons. First, while there is plenty of prima facie evidence of potentially untoward Trump campaign-Russia contacts, there is also plenty of prima facie evidence of potentially untoward intelligence agency activity in connection with its investigation of the Trump campaign and presidency . For example: the horrible animus displayed in texts by Peter Strzok toward the president and his supporters while investigating his campaign; the truly unprecedented and terribly damaging leaks of U.S. person information collected via FISA or E.O. 12,333; and the at least questionable FBI decision, after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, to investigate the President as a counterintelligence threat premised on the judgment that he was a "threat to national security."

    Second, the FBI and intelligence community more broadly need better internal guidance and procedures when they confront possible evidence of improper foreign contacts or counterintelligence threats by a presidential campaign. These institutions faced what was probably an unprecedented situation. It would have been entirely irresponsible for senior leadership in this agencies to not follow up and investigate the extraordinary Russia contacts by the Trump campaign. But they would have been much better situated to avoid controversy later if there were express guidance, process, and accountability mechanisms in place for the decisions they made in this most delicate of contexts.

    The country needs a full accounting of what the intelligence community did in the 2016 presidential campaign and in other presidential campaigns, as a basis for needed reform in this area. I just hope that Barr conducts this review in a way that is and appears to be scrupulously fair to all involved, so that it does not seem like political payback that would weaken the important Justice Department norm against politicized retaliatory investigations. That argues, I think, for inspector general review, not attorney general review. I am not sure Barr agrees, however. We will see.

    While I agree with Goldsmith on the need for a "full accounting," I think Goldsmith is being pretty naive if he thinks any review by Barr will be seen as anything other than "political payback," especially by Trump, who has a knack for saying the quiet part very loudly indeed. As for example in this letter to Barr -- not crude, to be sure, but loud -- from the President's Special Counsel, Emmet T. Flood , who "most notably represented Clinton during the impeachment proceedings brought against the former president by the House of Representatives and tried before the Senate" (!). This too is worth reading in full, just because it's always fun seeing an attack dog doing its thing, but I think this is the key paragraph. From Flood's letter :

    Flood (and Goldsmith) and, for that matter, Barr, are serious people; they're not going to run a flaky operation like Benghazi, for example. If they say they're going to look into this, and if Trump can manage to maintain a modicum of self-control, the "accounting" they think should take place, will take place.

    * * *

    To the "prima facie evidence" listed by Goldsmith, I would add some random bits I've picked up in my travels on the Twitter; this should not be taken to suggest I'm "in the weeds" on this material, because I'm not. Goldsmith doesn't mention how oppo (the Steele Report) was laundered into a FISA warrant. Nor does he mention what looks to a LeCarré fan like an FBI coat-trailing operation, complete with honeypot, directed against low-level Trump operative George Papadopoulos. He also doesn't mention the presence of a mole -- oh, I'm sorry, an "FBI informant" -- in the Trump campaign. ( British intelligence seems to have inserted what looks rather like a mole in the Sanders campaign ; and given the lack of "express guidance, process, and accountability mechanisms" to which Goldsmith alludes, it would certainly be interesting to know if the FBI has moles planted in 2020 campaigns and if so, which.) Nor does Goldsmith mention the media campaigns conducted by former intelligence officials (if there is such a thing) Clapper, Brennan, and Comey that helped create the "frenzied atmosphere" to which Flood alludes and with which we are all familiar, and which was extremely profitable for them personally, as well as for the media venues on which they appeared. Really, has cashing in on one's tenure as a high official in the intelligence community given a whole new meaning to " trade craft"? It does seem so.

    From the 30,000-foot level of the Constitutional order, we have ended up with the intelligence community having potential veto power over who gets on the Presidential ballot (I mean, will either party want an unvetted candidate after the object lesson of what happened to Trump?), we have the intelligence community having potential authority over the results of counting those ballots (if DHS delegitimizes a count based on a claim that cyberwarfare interfered), and we have the intelligence community having inserted moles in not one but two Presidential campaigns (on the assumption that there was some sort of intelligence sharing arrangement for the UK mole in the Sanders campaign). That's rather a lot of power for an unelected body with enormous operational and disinformation skills that works in secret using a black budget to have. These are strange times, but on the merits I tend to agree with Goldsmith and Flood. Of course, in 2020, "the merits" will be the last thing on anybody's mind, so let me know how that turns out

    * * *

    Readers : Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So do feel free to make a contribution today or any day. Here is why: Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I'm on the right track with coverage . When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of small donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals. So if you see something you especially appreciate, do feel free to click this donate button:

    [May 06, 2019] President Trump promised to drain the swamp, and he flooded his national security team with that exact swamp

    May 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    KC , May 5, 2019 5:59:15 PM | link

    Re: my above link (you're welcome those of you who have problems with long URLs!):

    Contrast Maddow's "Trump is making John Bolton act too nice" monologue with a recent segment on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight, conducted in the aftermath of last week's attempt at a military coup by opposition leader Juan Guaido. Journalist Anya Parampil appeared on the show and delivered a scathing criticism of the Trump administration's heinous actions in Venezuela based on her findings during her recent visit to that country. She was allowed to speak uninhibited and without attack, even bringing up the Center for Economic and Policy Research study which found Trump administration sanctions responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 Venezuelans, a story that has gone completely ignored by western mainstream media.

    Carlson introduced the interview with a clip from an earlier talk he'd had with Florida Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, who supports direct military action to overthrow Maduro and whose arguments Carlson had attacked on the basis that it would cost American lives and cause a refugee crisis. Parampil said the media is lying about what's happening in Venezuela and compared Guaido's coup attempt to a scenario in which Hillary Clinton had refused to cede the election, banded together 24 US soldiers and attempted to take the White House by force.

    "I was there for a month earlier this year," Parampil said. "The opposition has no popular support. Juan Guaido proved today, once again, that he will only ride in to power on the back of a US tank. And what's more, we hear about a humanitarian crisis there, Tucker, but what we never hear is that is the intended result of US sanctions that have targeted Venezuelans since 2015, sanctions which according to a report that was released just last week by the Center for Economic and Policy Research has led to the deaths of 40,000 Venezuelans, and will lead to the death of thousands more if these sanctions aren't overturned. President Trump, if he truly cared for the Venezuelan people, and the American people for that matter, he would end this disastrous policy. He would end the sanctions, and he would look into John Bolton's eyes, into Elliott Abrams' eyes, into Mike Pompeo's eyes, and say you are fired. You are leading me down a disastrous path, another war for oil. Something the president said–he was celebrated by the American people when he said Iraq was a mistake, and now he's willing to do it again."

    "I believe in an open debate," Carlson responded. "And I'm not sure I agree with everything you've said, but I'm glad that you could say it here. And you were just there, and I don't think you'd be allowed on any other show to say that."

    "No I certainly don't," Parampil replied. "And I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity, because

    President Trump promised to drain the swamp, and he flooded his national security team with that exact swamp

    Desolation Row , May 5, 2019 5:53:56 PM | link

    @karlof1 | May 5, 2019 5:12:19 PM | 21

    speaking of Maddow...
    https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1124515176194150401

    KC , May 5, 2019 5:57:28 PM | link
    Good Caitlyn Johnstone piece on the difference between Maddow and Carlson's approach...

    HERE

    Kristan hinton , May 5, 2019 6:07:57 PM | link
    Maddow is the MSM version of a liberal. She's a DNC warmonger's warmonger - the blue flavor warmonger to counter the red flavor warmonger. This became apparent 10 years ago. She is the MSM version of a lefty. Not leftist really, just a 1969 Nixon to put up against all the late model Bush Clinton Obama Trump lunatics.
    Zachary Smith , May 5, 2019 7:18:32 PM | link
    @ KC #25

    I get paranoid real fast when unexpected URL difficulties arise. I cut/pasted your first link, then one I found myself into a word processor, and both of them had a string of numbers at the end. Different numbers! Finally learned those numbers were unnecessary and I had something which worked.

    On Venezuela, Tucker Airs Anti-Trump Ideas While Maddow Wants John Bolton To Be More Hawkish

    I can sometimes navigate the internet, but I'm aware there are people out there who can tie it in knots. Corporate meddling is becoming an issue as well. Yesterday or day before my Firefox browser suddenly had all the addons disabled. The Mozilla company must have gotten an earful, so they've half-fixed it. Now the addons are working again, but have a big warning label on each and every one of them.

    Back to Maddow. There are people who adore her, and I believe I've mentioned being taken to task by one of them. Seems I hang out at "weird" sites like this one when I could be getting ALL my news from Maddow - just as this person bragged about doing.

    KC , May 6, 2019 12:18:24 AM | link
    @Zachary:

    Here's the URL contained in my link: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/05/05/on-venezuela-tucker-airs-anti-trump-ideas-while-maddow-wants-john-bolton-to-be-more-hawkish/%3Cbr%20/%3E

    That's all there is to it. No corporate trackers (such as FB or IG adding crap onto the end). That's as simple as they get, unfortunately, but still long enough to prompt me to shorten it for Circe and those who apparently have major issues with links.

    [May 06, 2019] Just A Human Being Rachel Maddow's Latest Resistance Hero

    Notable quotes:
    "... And now, months into 2019, we get to hear Maddow waxing eloquent about the innocent "human side" of none other than John Bolton. Of course, Maddow should first consider whether Bolton or his neocon ilk ever once paused to consider whether those they advocate dropping bombs on -- from Iraq to Syria to Libya to Yemen to Gaza to Venezuela -- are themselves actually human beings who simply wish to live out their daily lives in peace. ..."
    May 05, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    "Just A Human Being": Rachel Maddow's Latest Resistance Hero

    This is were three years of failed Russiagate conspiracy theorizing and fixation leads you -- into the arms of fanatical endless war proponent John Bolton: "John Bolton God bless you, good luck.." one can now hear on "resistance" network MSNBC prime time.

    MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is now championing neocon national security adviser John Bolton's "humanity" given he apparently went loose cannon this past week, vowing to confront Russia over Venezuela even as his boss President Trump downplayed Moscow's role in the crisis after a Friday phone call with Putin.

    "This is what John Bolton, human being, thought his job was this week," Maddow said on her show Friday night. Both Pompeo and Bolton had clearly gone a bit rogue with their overly bellicose Venezuela comments, while Trump appeared to be more restrained -- and for Maddow this was of course cause for championing the neocon interventionist line: "Hey, John Bolton, hey, Mike Pompeo, are you guys enjoying your jobs right now?" she questioned.

    Max Blumenthal ✔ @MaxBlumenthal

    Liberal militarist Rachel @ maddow wants war with Venezuela to "stop Russia," expresses solidarity with John Bolton and Mike Pompeo https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=vmq0xm 8V1gI

    On Friday Trump had said following the phone call, Putin is "not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela other than he'd like to see something positive happen in Venezuela, and I feel the same way ."

    Maddow, who once prided herself on slamming and deconstructing Bush-era regime change wars, now finds Trump not jingoistic enough. She stridently questioned:

    "How do you come to work anymore if you're John Bolton? Right, regardless of what you thought about John Bolton before this, his whole career and his track record, I mean, just think of John Bolton as a human being. This is what John Bolton, human being, thought his job was this week."

    She further cut to a clip of Bolton criticizing Russia's alleged military involvement in Venezuela to prop up Maduro, because apparently uber-hawk Bolton is now a "fearless truth-teller" in Maddow's world.

    "You thought that was your job," Maddow said. "But it turns out not at all, not after Vladimir Putin gets done with President Trump today."

    It bears repeating that among the loudest right-leaning voices who joined the chorus of leading establishment Democrat Russiagaters included previously forgotten about neocons who were quickly rehabilitated by the "Resistance" -- David Frum, Max Boot, Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol among them.

    And then there was the nauseating phenomenon of watching liberals lionizing Trump-skeptical Republican Congressional leaders like Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, and the late Sen. McCain.

    Because it's awful, just awful! - that Trump might actually prefer peace to waging war in multiple places... Restraint vs. war in multiple places? Maddow apparently advances the humanity of those advocating the latter.

    It amounted to, at times, a picture of a President at odds with the officials who this week have called vociferously for a change in power in Caracas and have consistently declined to rule out a US military intervention.

    Trump has become frustrated this week as national security adviser John Bolton and others openly teased military options and has told friends that if Bolton had his way he'd already be at war in multiple places . -- CNN

    And now, months into 2019, we get to hear Maddow waxing eloquent about the innocent "human side" of none other than John Bolton. Of course, Maddow should first consider whether Bolton or his neocon ilk ever once paused to consider whether those they advocate dropping bombs on -- from Iraq to Syria to Libya to Yemen to Gaza to Venezuela -- are themselves actually human beings who simply wish to live out their daily lives in peace.

    Klassenfeind , 5 minutes ago link

    So now Maddow likes Bolton and Pompeo...

    Just let that sink in for a while, and then realise what a complete idiot Trump has been for hiring those two neocon warmongers...

    PigMan , 28 minutes ago link

    If Hillary won, is there any doubt in anyone's mind that we would be at war with Russia?

    Democrats create war and poverty, so they can protest it. They are a cult of misery.

    JoeBattista , 17 minutes ago link

    How does MadCow remain employed. I'll hazard an answer. She's Jewish, a true jewess, therefore untouchable, and she does a fine job dividing the dim witted public. Her head reminds me of an hatchet. MadCow aka Hatchethead. She blows everybody.

    [May 05, 2019] Did Mueller substituted Russia for Israel in his report

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... "What if you substituted 'Israel' for 'Russia'?" (The moderator, who apparently knows me, had to look right at me with my hand raised whenever he called on someone but never called on me). ..."
    "... "Has there ever been an investigation on the scale of the Mueller investigation into possible collusion with Israel?" ..."
    "... The surprising thing about the Mueller report is that he found nothing. That’s impossible because when the government wants to find something, they find it. Why Mueller pulled the plug, I can’t say. ..."
    May 05, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Second hour: Journalist and TV host Ken Meyercord (also based in Washington, DC) writes:

    "I attended an event at the Brookings Institution yesterday on the Mueller Report. As is sadly customary at DC think tanks, the panelists and the moderator were all of one mind. Nevertheless, one panelist, a former US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (a court notorious for rubber-stamping any charge the government brings against those who disrupt the smooth functioning of our foreign policy apparatus), made a curious analogy, arguing that the contacts Trump and his associates had with Russians would be culpable even if the contacts were with some other, less hostile country:

    https://youtu.be/E96084YuYyE?t=812 .

    His remark got me to thinking, so in the Q & A I sought to ask him "What if you substituted 'Israel' for 'Russia'?" (The moderator, who apparently knows me, had to look right at me with my hand raised whenever he called on someone but never called on me).

    I don't know what his response would have been; but if he said it would still apply, I would have followed up with "Has there ever been an investigation on the scale of the Mueller investigation into possible collusion with Israel?"

    "The more I think about it, the more intriguing I find Mr. Rosenberg's remark. He seemed to think the sheer number of contacts by Trump folks with Russians proved culpability. It might be interesting to compare Trump's contacts with the Russians during the campaign with his contacts with Israelis. I suspect the latter were more numerous and of greater significance. Certainly, Trump's acts as President would seem to indicate he's more Netanyahu's puppet than Putin's: moving the embassy to Jerusalem, cutting off aid to the Palestinians, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Imagine if Putin proposed naming a village in Russia after Trump in appreciation, as Netanyahu has proposed doing in the Golan Heights!

    "P.S. Ueli Maurer is the President of the Swiss Confederation."

    Rational , says: May 1, 2019 at 5:02 pm GMT

    THE WHOLE MUELLER INVESTIGATION WAS A SCAM.

    The entire Western media is the enemy of the people. The Demogangsters and the mediocrats, Public Enemy #1, were angry that Trump won the election, so they fabricated a scam called contacts with Russians.

    They are saying that Trump and his people talked to the Russians as private citizens before the election, so it is illegal.

    What? Talking to Russians is illegal? Really? Says who?

    They will not tell you the law that was allegedly broken, because the law that was allegedly broken itself is illegal.

    It is the Logan Act which “criminalizes negotiations by unauthorized persons with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act

    This law is a joke, because Trump never “negotiated” with any foreign govt. on behalf of the USA, and Russia is not having a dispute with the USA.

    Most importantly, the Logan Act is unconstitutional.

    That is why nobody has been prosecuted under it–for decades!

    So any American who posts on rt.com or on an Iranian website suggesting peace is technically violating the Logan Act.

    Any newspapers that publishes articles about Iran or Russia or Syria and suggesting peace or war is technically violating the Logan Act.

    So why are all they not in jail?

    Because the Logan Act is unconstitutional and it violates the first amendment.

    Go, say, “I will talk to the Russian govt. all I want and promote world peace.”

    Only in America—the criminal Democrats have investigated an innocent man for a non-existent crime of violating an unconstitutional law.

    Rational , says: May 1, 2019 at 8:51 pm GMT
    ADDENDUM: NOBODY HAS EVER BEEN CONVICTED UNDER THE LOGAN ACT.

    This is stated in the wikipedia article I put the link for above.

    In fact, the wikipedia article also talks about its unconstitutionality.

    Sin City Milla , says: May 2, 2019 at 5:11 am GMT
    @Rational

    Only in America—the criminal Democrats have investigated an innocent man for a non-existent crime of violating an unconstitutional law.

    While I would not say this happens only in America, this sort of thing is actually long-standing policy in the US. As long ago as 1944 in Wickard vs. Filburn, the Democrat Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man for not merely raising food on his own land, but for failing to offer the food for sale, on the rationale that the non-sale affected Interstate Commerce as much as if he had offered it for sale. Since then it has been ‘constitutional’ to find federal jurisdiction over even private vegetable gardens grown exclusively for domestic consumption. Under this theory, even breathing oxygen places one under federal jurisdiction because it is followed by exhaling CO2.

    One of the most surprising things I discovered when I began to practice law was the fact that no one is ‘innocent’. I.e, there is always some law somewhere that is being ‘broken’ no matter what one does, which means that if the government wants someone, they can always convict him because the government can always find some law he has broken. I’m speaking ironically, of course. Many of these laws should be unconstitutional. Just don’t bet that SCOTUS will ever rule that way because, as Gorsuch recently pronounced, “that’s all been settled.”

    The surprising thing about the Mueller report is that he found nothing. That’s impossible because when the government wants to find something, they find it. Why Mueller pulled the plug, I can’t say.

    [May 05, 2019] Here is my take on this entire Russiagate running in Washington DC for the last two years

    Notable quotes:
    "... Then the Russians leaked the COLLUSION story to the CIA controlled MSM such as New York Time, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, etc . . ., so they would predictably kicked a storm of controversy over the COLLUSION, and demand the DOJ to appoint a Special Prosecutor to initial an investigation. ..."
    May 05, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Asoka_The_Great , 2 hours ago link

    Rational explanations, can not explain, the absurdity of the SH*TSHOW, that is going on in Washington DC. Here is my take, on this entire Sh*tshow, running in Washington DC, for the last two years.

    1. All the evidences are pointing the most likely scenario that Donald Trump is a Manchurian Candidate ordered by the Kremelin to run for Office, in 2016.

    2. Then, Donald Trump COLLUDED with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service to win the Presidency of United States, with shocking easy.

    3. This was because Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden, was bribed by Putin, through the Ukrainians, with hundred of millions of dollars, so she would purposely lose the "sure win" race, to a political nobody, Donald Trump.

    4. Then, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, produced the Steele Dossier, a political disinformation tool, in collaboration with Britain's Mi6 and CIA.

    5. Then the Russians leaked the COLLUSION story to the CIA controlled MSM such as New York Time, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, etc . . ., so they would predictably kicked a storm of controversy over the COLLUSION, and demand the DOJ to appoint a Special Prosecutor to initial an investigation.

    6. This diabolically devilish Special PsyOps by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has succeeded in tying up Washington DC, in a Sh*tshow, for the last two years, and divided the Country in bitter controversy.

    7. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and Chinese Communists' Intelligence Service have thoroughly infiltrated America's Department of Justice, FBI, and CIA, and NSA, and use their high levels agents, such as O'bomer, Hitlery, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Page, and Rosenstein to stirred up this COLLUSION storm, to paralyze America's political system for as long as possible.

    In Summary, the entire sh*tshow is a production of a Special PsyOps by the Russkies and ChiComs' Intelligence Services. It has nothing to do with America's dysfunctional government...

    [May 05, 2019] The US is going to sanction itself into obscurity

    As soon as nations learn to avoid dollar transactions that will dramatically weaken the USA neoliberal empire. Bulling using technology transfer prohibitions is not effective as Germany and Japan are now fully recovered from WWII destruction and post immediate threat to the USA technological hegemony.
    May 05, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    Joe Tedesky , April 29, 2019 at 22:01

    We the people needn't worry about our vote for president in as much as we the people should investigate the people who surround our president's. Trump has been overtaken from his campaigns foreign policy rhetoric by the same cabal of those who have captured the other previous presidents from they're living up to their promises, whether by choice or by compromise. I wish that a presidential campaign requirement were that each presidential candidate would divulge the cabinet choices they would make as secretary's of our national agencies. I wish for a lot of things that never will happen but still it would be nice to know such substantial appointments as opposed to knowing about their personality disorders wish are always disclosed for further review and constant discussion.

    I've said it before that the US is going to sanction itself into obscurity. These sanctioned nations are many and still growing if you include our allies. It's all sticks and no carrots. When it all collapses the collapse may be blamed on US arrogance and profit.

    [May 05, 2019] James Petras

    Notable quotes:
    "... US global power is built on several significant facts. These include: the US victory in World War II, its subsequent advanced economy and dominant military position throughout five continents. ..."
    "... The US advanced its dominance through a series of alliances in Europe via NATO; Asia via its hegemonic relationship with Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Taiwan as well as Australia and New Zealand in Oceana; Latin America via traditional client regimes; Africa via neo-colonial rulers imposed following independence. ..."
    "... The most significant advance of US global power took place with the demise and disintegration of the USSR, the client states in Eastern Europe, as well as the transformation of China and Indo-China to capitalism during the 1980's. ..."
    Apr 29, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Introduction

    US global power in the Trump period reflects the continuities and changes which are unfolding rapidly and deeply throughout the world and which are affecting the position of Washington.

    Assessing the dynamics of US global power is a complex problem which requires examining multiple dimensions.

    We will proceed by:

    Conceptualizing the principles which dictate empire building, specifically the power bases and the dynamic changes in relations and structures which shape the present and future position of the US. Identifying the spheres of influence and power and their growth and decline. Examining the regions of conflict and contestation. The major and secondary rivalries. The stable and shifting relations between existing and rising power centers. The internal dynamics shaping the relative strength of competing centers of global power. The instability of the regimes and states seeking to retain and expand global power.

    Conceptualization of Global Power

    US global power is built on several significant facts. These include: the US victory in World War II, its subsequent advanced economy and dominant military position throughout five continents.

    The US advanced its dominance through a series of alliances in Europe via NATO; Asia via its hegemonic relationship with Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Taiwan as well as Australia and New Zealand in Oceana; Latin America via traditional client regimes; Africa via neo-colonial rulers imposed following independence.

    US global power was built around encircling the USSR and China, undermining their economies and defeating their allies militarily via regional wars.

    Post WWII global economic and military superiority created subordinated allies and established US global power, but it created the bases for gradual shifts in relations of dominance.

    US global power was formidable but subject to economic and military changes over time and in space.

    US Spheres of Power: Then and Now

    US global power exploited opportunities but also suffered military setbacks early on, particularly in Korea, Indo-China and Cuba. The US spheres of power were clearly in place in Western Europe and Latin America but was contested in Eastern Europe and Asia.

    The most significant advance of US global power took place with the demise and disintegration of the USSR, the client states in Eastern Europe, as well as the transformation of China and Indo-China to capitalism during the 1980's.

    US ideologues declared the coming of a unipolar empire free of restraints and challenges to its global and regional power. The US turned to conquering peripheral adversaries. Washington destroyed Yugoslavia and then Iraq – fragmenting them into mini-states. Wall Street promoted a multitude of multi-national corporations to invade China and Indo-China who reaped billions of profits exploiting cheap labor.

    The believers of the enduring rule of US global power envisioned a century of US imperial rule.

    In reality this was a short-sighted vision of a brief interlude.

    The End of Unipolarity: New Rivalries and Global and Regional Centers of Power: An Overview

    US global power led Washington into 'overreach', in several crucial areas: it launched a series of costly prolonged wars, specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan, which had three negative consequences: the destruction of the Iraq armed forces and economy led to the rise of the Islamic State which overtook most of the country; the occupation in Afghanistan which led to the emergence of the Taliban and an ongoing twenty year war which cost hundreds of billions of dollars and several thousand wounded and dead US soldiers; as a result the majority of the US public turned negative toward wars and empire building

    The US pillage and dominance of Russia ended, when President Putin replaced Yeltsin's vassal state. Russia rebuilt its industry, science, technology and military power. Russia's population recovered its living standards.

    With Russian independence and advanced military weaponry, the US lost its unipolar military power. Nevertheless, Washington financed a coup which virtually annexed two thirds of the Ukraine. The US incorporated the fragmented Yugoslavian 'statelets' into NATO. Russia countered by annexing the Crimea and secured a mini-state adjacent Georgia.

    China converted the economic invasion of US multi-national corporations into learning experiences for building its national economy and export platforms which contributed which led to its becoming an economic competitor and rival to the US.

    US global empire building suffered important setbacks in Latin America resulting

    from the the so-called Washington Consensus. The imposition of neo-liberal policies privatized and plundered their economies, impoverished the working and middle class, and provoked a series of popular uprising and the rise of radical social movements and center-left governments.

    The US empire lost spheres of influence in some regions (China, Russia, Latin America, Middle East) though it retained influence among elites in contested regions and even launched new imperial wars in contested terrain. Most notably the US attacked independent regimes in Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Somalia and Sudan via armed proxies.

    The change from a unipolar to a multi polar world and the gradual emergence of regional rivals led US global strategists to rethink their strategy. The Trump regime's aggressive policies set the stage for political division within the regime and among allies.

    The Obama – Trump Convergence and Differences on Empire Building

    By the second decade of the 21 st century several new global power alignments emerged: China had become the main economic competitor for world power and Russia was the major military challenger to US military supremacy at the regional level. The US replaced the former European colonial empire in Africa. Washington's sphere of influence extended especially in North and Sub Sahara Africa: Kenya, Libya, Somalia and Ethiopia. Trump gained leverage in the Middle East namely in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Jordan.

    Israel retained its peculiar role, converting the US as its sphere of influence.

    But the US faced regional rivals for sphere of influence in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Algeria.

    In South Asia US faced competition for spheres of influence from China, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    In Latin America sharp and abrupt shifts in spheres of influence were the norm. US influence declined between 2000 – 2015 and recovered from 2015 to the present.

    Imperial Power Alignments Under President Trump

    President Trump faced complex global, regional and local political and economic challenges.

    Trump followed and deepened many of the policies launched by the Obama- Hillary Clinton policies with regard to other countries and regions . However Trump also radicalized and/or reversed policies of his predecessors. He combined flattery and aggression at the same time.

    At no time did Trump recognize the limits of US global power. Like the previous three presidents he persisted in the belief that the transitory period of a unipolar global empire could be re-imposed.

    Toward Russia, a global competitor, Trump adopted a policy of 'rollback'. Trump imposed economic sanctions, with the strategic 'hope' that by impoverishing Russia, degrading its financial and industrial sectors that he could force a regime change which would convert Moscow into a vassal state.

    At the beginning of his Presidential campaign Trump flirted with the notion of a business accommodation with Putin. However, Trump's ultra-belligerent appointments and domestic opposition soon turned him toward a highly militarized strategy, rejecting military – including nuclear – agreements, in favor of military escalation.

    Toward China, Trump faced a dynamic and advancing technological competitor. Trump resorted to a 'trade war' that went far beyond 'trade' to encompass a war against Beijing's economic structure and social relations. The Trump regime-imposed sanctions and threatened a total boycott of Chinese exports.

    ORDER IT NOW

    Trump and his economic team demanded China privatize and denationalize its entire state backed industry. They demanded the power to unilaterally decide when violations of US rules occurred and to be able to re-introduce sanctions without consultations. Trump demanded all Chinese technological agreements, economic sectors and innovations were subject and open to US business interests. In other words, Trump demanded the end of Chinese sovereignty and the reversal of the structural base for its global power. The US was not interested in mere 'trade' – it wanted a return to imperial rule over a colonized China.

    The Trump regime rejected negotiations and recognition of a shared power relation: it viewed its global rivals as potential clients.

    Inevitably the Trump regime's strategy would never reach any enduring agreements on any substantial issues under negotiations. China has a successful strategy for global power built on a 6 trillion-dollar world-wide Road and Belt (R and B) development policy, which links 60 countries and several regions. R and B is building seaports, rail and air systems linking industries financed by development banks.

    In contrast, the US banks exploits industry, speculates and operates within closed financial circuits. The US spends trillions on wars, coups, sanctions and other parasitical activities which have nothing to do with economic competitiveness.

    The Trump regime's 'allies' in the Middle East namely Saudi Arabia and Israel, are parasitic allies who buy protection and provoke costly wars.

    Europe complains about China's increase in industrial exports and overlook imports of consumer goods. Yet the EU plans to resist Trump's sanctions which lead to a blind alley of stagnation!

    Conclusion

    The most recent period of the peak of US global power, the decade between 1989-99 contained the seeds of its decline and the current resort to trade wars, sanctions and nuclear threats.

    The structure of US global power changed over the past seven decades. The US global empire building began with the US command over the rebuilding of Western European economies and the displacement of England, France, Portugal and Belgium from Asia and Africa.

    The Empire spread and penetrated South America via US multi-national corporations. However, US empire building was not a linear process as witness its unsuccessful confrontation with national liberation movements in Korea, Indo China, Southern Africa (Angola, Congo, etc.) and the Caribbean (Cuba). By the early 1960's the US had displaced its European rivals and successfully incorporated them as subordinate allies.

    Washington's main rivals for spheres of influence was Communist China and the USSR with their allies among client state and overseas revolutionaries.

    The US empire builders' successes led to the transformation of their Communist and nationalist rivals into emergent capitalist competitors.

    In a word US dominance led to the construction of capitalist rivals, especially China and Russia.

    Subsequently, following US military defeats and prolonged wars, regional powers proliferated in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Regional blocs competed with US clients for power.

    The diversification of power centers led to new and costly wars. Washington lost exclusive control of markets, resources and alliances. Competition reduced the spheres of US power.

    In the face of these constraints on US global power the Trump regime envisioned a strategy to recover US dominance – ignoring the limited capacity and structure of US political , economic and class relations.

    China absorbed US technology and went on to create new advances without following each previous stage.

    Russia's recovered from its losses and sanctions and secured alternative trade relations to counter the new challenges to the US global empire. Trump's regime launched a 'permanent trade war' without stable allies. Moreover, he failed to undermine China's global infrastructure network; Europe demanded and secured autonomy to enter into trade deals with China, Iran and Russia.

    Trump has pressured many regional powers who have ignored his threats.

    The US still remains a global power. But unlike the past, the US lacks the industrial base to 'make America strong'. Industry is subordinated to finance; technological innovations are not linked to skilled labor to increase productivity.

    Trump relies on sanctions and they have failed to undermine regional influentials. Sanctions may temporarily reduce access to US markets' but we have observed that new trade partners take their place.

    Trump has gained client regimes in Latin America, but the gains are precarious and subject to reversal.

    Under the Trump regime, big business and bankers have increased prices in the stock market and even the rate of growth of the GDP, but he confronts severe domestic political instability, and high levels of turmoil among the branches of government. In pursuit of loyalty over competence, Trump's appointments have led to the ascendancy of cabinet officials who seek to wield unilateral power which the US no longer possesses.

    Elliot Abrams can massacre a quarter-million Central Americans with impunity, but he has failed to impose US power over Venezuela and Cuba. Pompeo can threaten North Kore, Iran and China but these countries fortify alliances with US rivals and competitors. Bolton can advance the interests of Israel but their conversations take place in a telephone booth – it lacks resonance with any major powers.

    Trump has won a presidential election, he has secured concessions from some countries but he has alienated regional and diplomatic allies. Trump claims he is making America strong, but he has undermined lucrative strategic multi-lateral trade agreements.

    US 'Global Power' does not prosper with bully-tactics. Projections of power alone, have failed – they require recognition of realistic economic limitations and the losses from regional wars.

    alexander , says: May 5, 2019 at 1:41 pm GMT

    This is a fine synopsis but it leaves out the most fundamental of issues.

    The American People don't want to be an Empire, .never asked to be an Empire and despise, to the core, our ruling elites who defrauded us into becoming one.

    We do live in an Empire now, to our chagrin, but it is (in truth) a malevolent empire .an Empire of Fraud, Belligerence .. and Heinous
    F#cking Debt .

    Show me one American, anywhere, who is happy about it .

    Our ruling elites have "lied" us into multiple wars of "never ending" criminal aggression ..wars which have all but exterminated the solvency of the nation and reaped untold carnage and misery on tens of millions of people who never attacked us (and never intended to).

    This "War Fraud", foisted upon us , has been a catastrophic disaster for our country and the world.

    A "mind -bending, catastrophic, . disaster".

    Every single belligerent "oligarch" , "plutocrat" and "establishment elite", who conspired to defraud us into these "illegal wars", should be rounded up and thrown in federal prison Every single penny of their assets should be seized to pay down the cost of wars they lied us into.

    This is , hands down, the most meaningful step we could take, as a nation.

    Not only would it change the direction of the world, almost overnight, but it would lay the groundwork for the United States to rebuild itself.

    Once we make "Accountability for War Fraud" our nations highest priority, we can repair and rebuild.

    If we don't, we won't and(tragically) might never be able to.

    [May 05, 2019] So we have a lying media, directly opposed to the interests of the American people. Aside from whining about it, what is to be done?

    May 05, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Joseph G , May 5, 2019 11:44:02 AM | link

    < So we have a lying media, directly opposed to the interests of the American people. Aside from whining about it, what is to be done?>

    First, learn the method:

    "The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid. If all this didn't help, they pretended not to understand, or, if challenged, they changed the subject in a hurry, quoted platitudes which, if you accepted them, they immediately related to entirely different matters, and then, if again attacked, gave ground and pretended not to know exactly what you were talking about. Whenever you tried to attack one of these apostles, your hand closed on a jelly-like slime which divided up and poured through your fingers, but in the next moment collected again. But if you really struck one of these fellows so telling a blow that, observed by the audience, he couldn't help but agree, and if you believed that this had taken you at least one step forward, your amazement was great the next day. The J_w had not the slightest recollection of the day before, he rattled off his same old nonsense as though nothing at all had happened, and, if indignantly challenged, affected amazement; he couldn't remember a thing, except that he had proved the correctness of his assertions the previous day.
    Sometimes I stood there thunderstruck. I didn't know what to be more amazed at: the agility of their tongues or their virtuosity at lying. Gradually I began to hate them."

    [May 05, 2019] The Establishment clowns Bolton, Pence and Pompeo will keep Trump on track in proving the the USA is lawless brutal empire

    May 05, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    Michael , April 30, 2019 at 18:40

    America's word has never been taken seriously. Ever heard of our treaties with the Native Americans? Clinton abrogated the accords between Gorbachev and Reagan, that NATO would not move one inch to the East. Clinton set up the drunken Yeltsin as his puppet, interfering with Russia's elections and raping their economy.

    Bush II desperately wanted to finish his father's Gulf War, ignoring the UN weapons inspectors. He also unilaterally pulled the US out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty.

    America promised Ghaddafi that if he did not pursue nuclear weapons and supporting terrorists (like Saudi Arabia and Israel), he would be left alone. Soon he was dead from bayonet rape with a gleeful chortling Hillary impressing American spooks with her "Libya Model", touted by Bolton, Pence and Pompeo to Kim's face.

    Obama's deal with Iran was hated even more by Hillary (and most members of Congress) than by Trump, and was doomed when Obama left office (one of his few achievements, however fleeting).

    The Establishment clowns Bolton, Pence and Pompeo will keep Trump on track.

    [May 05, 2019] Hide Out Now MUELLER GETS CAUGHT! Devin Nunes Just Caught Dirty Cop Mueller Lying to American Public about Joseph Misfud (VIDE

    May 04, 2019 | www.hideoutnow.com

    Devin Nunes Just Caught Dirty Cop Mueller Lying to American Public about Joseph Misfud (VIDEO) Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) requested information on Friday from the State Department, CIA, FBI and NSA on operative Joseph Mifsud.

    THIS IS DEVASTATING NEWS FOR ROBERT MUELLER AND THE DEMOCRATS ON THE SPECIAL COUNSEL -- who lied in their report on their operative Joseph Mifsud who was NOT a Russian operative as the Mueller report claimed he was.

    On Friday Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) joined Sean Hannity to discuss his letter to the State Department, FBI and CIA. Nunes caught dirty cop Robert Mueller in a complete lie. Mueller and his gang of angry Democrats reported in their report that Joseph Mifsud was a Russian operative.

    It has been widely reported that Mifsud was a deep state operative who trains CIA and FBI agents in Italy. And Devin Nunes knows this. Robert Mueller could be in serious trouble for withholding this information from the American Public.

    [May 05, 2019] Here is my take on this entire Russiagate running in Washington DC for the last two years

    Notable quotes:
    "... Then the Russians leaked the COLLUSION story to the CIA controlled MSM such as New York Time, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, etc . . ., so they would predictably kicked a storm of controversy over the COLLUSION, and demand the DOJ to appoint a Special Prosecutor to initial an investigation. ..."
    May 05, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Asoka_The_Great , 2 hours ago link

    Rational explanations, can not explain, the absurdity of the SH*TSHOW, that is going on in Washington DC. Here is my take, on this entire Sh*tshow, running in Washington DC, for the last two years.

    1. All the evidences are pointing the most likely scenario that Donald Trump is a Manchurian Candidate ordered by the Kremelin to run for Office, in 2016.

    2. Then, Donald Trump COLLUDED with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service to win the Presidency of United States, with shocking easy.

    3. This was because Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden, was bribed by Putin, through the Ukrainians, with hundred of millions of dollars, so she would purposely lose the "sure win" race, to a political nobody, Donald Trump.

    4. Then, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, produced the Steele Dossier, a political disinformation tool, in collaboration with Britain's Mi6 and CIA.

    5. Then the Russians leaked the COLLUSION story to the CIA controlled MSM such as New York Time, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, etc . . ., so they would predictably kicked a storm of controversy over the COLLUSION, and demand the DOJ to appoint a Special Prosecutor to initial an investigation.

    6. This diabolically devilish Special PsyOps by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has succeeded in tying up Washington DC, in a Sh*tshow, for the last two years, and divided the Country in bitter controversy.

    7. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and Chinese Communists' Intelligence Service have thoroughly infiltrated America's Department of Justice, FBI, and CIA, and NSA, and use their high levels agents, such as O'bomer, Hitlery, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Page, and Rosenstein to stirred up this COLLUSION storm, to paralyze America's political system for as long as possible.

    In Summary, the entire sh*tshow is a production of a Special PsyOps by the Russkies and ChiComs' Intelligence Services. It has nothing to do with America's dysfunctional government...

    [May 04, 2019] "Trump Was Not Just Spied Upon, It Was Entrapment"

    Notable quotes:
    "... The Senate minority leader–Deep Stater par excellence –knew whereof he spoke. But Trump somehow survived the storm, although sometimes it seemed as if he wouldn't. Now, some of the obvious parties –John K. Brennan and James Clapper with their apparatchik miens -- have suddenly found themselves in the crosshairs, as the Washington Times notes: ..."
    "... Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also leveled up highly publicized comments that President Trump could even be an "asset" of Russian President Vladimir Putin , part of a slew of remarks that critics say went far beyond the usual partisan sniping that can accompany a change of administrations. ..."
    "... More's afoot here, however, considerably more because the entire American intelligence system and the unique power referred to by Schumer are also now in those same crosshairs, as they should be. But many of the men and women involved are less overtly Stalinist in their style than Mssrs. Brennan and Clapper and slip more easily under the radar. ..."
    "... A top FBI official admitted to Congressional investigators last year that the agency had contacts within the Trump campaign as part of operation "Crossfire Hurricane," which sounds a lot like FBI "informant" Stefan Halper – a former Oxford University professor who was paid over $1 million by the Obama Department of Defense between 2012 and 2018, with nearly half of it surrounding the 2016 US election. ..."
    "... "Crossfire Hurricane," as most know, is the codename the wannabe hipsters at the FBI gave the Trump-Russia investigation. But more important is the word "before" in Ms. Cleveland's title. ..."
    "... Papadopoulos and Page are the two naifs of the most obvious sort (sorry, guys) we have all seen on television who spent the last couple of years having to defend themselves against absurd charges. Considering the timing, it's pretty obvious they were being set up (i. e. entrapped) on some level well back during the Obama administration. ..."
    "... I suggest that an attempt was being made to implant Halper in the Trump campaign, one way or another, not just for spying purposes but actually to help create this collusion of the campaign with Russia–that is, to help manufacture it. ..."
    "... Four decades ago, Halper was responsible for a long-forgotten spying scandal involving the 1980 election , in which the Reagan campaign – using CIA officials managed by Halper, reportedly under the direction of former CIA Director and then-Vice-Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush – got caught running a spying operation from inside the Carter administration. The plot involved CIA operatives passing classified information about Carter's foreign policy to Reagan campaign officials in order to ensure the Reagan campaign knew of any foreign policy decisions that Carter was considering. ..."
    "... We need Halper, under oath and unredacted. Whether that's possible is another question. ..."
    www.youtube.com
    Apr 02, 2019 | rawconservativeopinions.com

    Authored by Roger Simon via PJMedia.com,

    It's bad enough, as has been evident for some time, that Donald Trump and his campaign were being spied upon by our own government, but it's highly likely they were also subject to literal entrapment–at least a serious attempt was made.

    I don't mean the entrapment of promulgating the salacious Steele dossier both to the public and the FISA court as if it were the truth. That was more of a smear to justify a phony investigation. I mean something more subtle and LeCarré-like coming from the depths of our intelligence communities. It raises once more the question of the power of such agencies in a free society, a conundrum with no easy answers but of great significance to our lives.

    For all his New York rough-and-tumble, Trump was an innocent abroad when he arrived in Washington. Way back in January 2017, he was warned by old-timer Chuck Schumer that "intel officials have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you."

    The Senate minority leader–Deep Stater par excellence –knew whereof he spoke. But Trump somehow survived the storm, although sometimes it seemed as if he wouldn't. Now, some of the obvious parties –John K. Brennan and James Clapper with their apparatchik miens -- have suddenly found themselves in the crosshairs, as the Washington Times notes:

    Special counsel Robert Mueller's finding that there was no Trump campaign conspiracy with Russia to steal the 2016 election has unleashed a tsunami of outrage toward Obama-era intelligence chiefs, particularly former CIA Director John O. Brennan and former FBI Director James B. Comey, who are accused of pushing the allegation during congressional hearings, in social media posts and in highly charged interviews on television over the past two years.

    Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also leveled up highly publicized comments that President Trump could even be an "asset" of Russian President Vladimir Putin , part of a slew of remarks that critics say went far beyond the usual partisan sniping that can accompany a change of administrations.

    More's afoot here, however, considerably more because the entire American intelligence system and the unique power referred to by Schumer are also now in those same crosshairs, as they should be. But many of the men and women involved are less overtly Stalinist in their style than Mssrs. Brennan and Clapper and slip more easily under the radar.

    Notable among these, and perhaps able to reveal much of the McGuffin to the mystery of where this all started and how, is Stefan Halper. Mr. Halper is "an American foreign policy scholar and Senior Fellow at the University of Cambridge where he is a Life Fellow at Magdalene College and directs the Department of Politics and International Studies ." He is also a spook who worked for Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, no less, and was a principle American connection to the UK's MI-6.

    Mr. Halper has (ahem) other connections :

    A top FBI official admitted to Congressional investigators last year that the agency had contacts within the Trump campaign as part of operation "Crossfire Hurricane," which sounds a lot like FBI "informant" Stefan Halper – a former Oxford University professor who was paid over $1 million by the Obama Department of Defense between 2012 and 2018, with nearly half of it surrounding the 2016 US election.

    Hmm . The perspicacious Margot Cleveland had more to say the other day at The Federalist in " Who Launched An Investigation Into Trump's Campaign Before Crossfire Hurricane. "

    "Crossfire Hurricane," as most know, is the codename the wannabe hipsters at the FBI gave the Trump-Russia investigation. But more important is the word "before" in Ms. Cleveland's title.

    The Post further noted that the academic, since identified as Stefan Halper, first met with Trump campaign advisor Carter Page "a few weeks before the opening of the investigation," and then after Crossfire Hurricane's July 31, 2016, start, he met again with Carter Page and "with Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis," offering the latter his "foreign-policy expertise" for the Trump team. Then in September, Halper "reached out to George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign-policy adviser for the campaign, inviting him to London to work on a research paper."

    Papadopoulos and Page are the two naifs of the most obvious sort (sorry, guys) we have all seen on television who spent the last couple of years having to defend themselves against absurd charges. Considering the timing, it's pretty obvious they were being set up (i. e. entrapped) on some level well back during the Obama administration.

    Who ordered it is the obvious question, but I'm not going to leave it there.

    I suggest that an attempt was being made to implant Halper in the Trump campaign, one way or another, not just for spying purposes but actually to help create this collusion of the campaign with Russia–that is, to help manufacture it.

    Putting it another way, someone or some group wanted to create -- or, more subtly, to encourage the creation -- of Trump-Russia collusion from the inside in order to destroy Trump before, or failing that, after he was elected.

    How's that for a nefarious plot? Worthy of LeCarré or maybe even Graham Greene. But is it true? I wouldn't bet against it. Something close anyway.

    By the way, if I am right, this won't be the first time for Halper. And unfortunately for Republicans, the shoe was then on the proverbial other foot. As Glenn Greenwald wrote last year:

    Four decades ago, Halper was responsible for a long-forgotten spying scandal involving the 1980 election , in which the Reagan campaign – using CIA officials managed by Halper, reportedly under the direction of former CIA Director and then-Vice-Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush – got caught running a spying operation from inside the Carter administration. The plot involved CIA operatives passing classified information about Carter's foreign policy to Reagan campaign officials in order to ensure the Reagan campaign knew of any foreign policy decisions that Carter was considering.

    Republicans can console themselves that their malfeasance was more benign, relatively. This new one was outright sedition involving a foreign power. It is a blow to the heart of our democratic republic. We need Halper, under oath and unredacted. Whether that's possible is another question.

    [May 04, 2019] Putin said the Mueller investigation started off as a mountain and it ended up being a mouse

    May 04, 2019 | www.wsj.com

    The conversation is the first known interaction between the two leaders since the Justice Department released special counsel Robert Mueller's report , which detailed more than nearly 200 pages of Russia's elaborate efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election on Mr. Trump's behalf.

    "He said something to the effect that it started off as a mountain and it ended up being a mouse," Mr. Trump said when asked whether the two had discussed Mr. Mueller's account. "But he knew that because he knew there was no collusion whatsoever."

    Asked whether he had sought assurances from Mr. Putin that Moscow wouldn't try to influence future elections, the president said: "We didn't discuss that."

    ... ... ...

    In its own statement about the call, the Kremlin said Mr. Putin warned Mr. Trump against military intervention in Venezuela.

    Earlier this week, Mr. Pompeo said that Mr. Maduro had planned to leave Venezuela in the midst of protests on Tuesday but that Russia asked him to remain in the country.

    At the time, Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman dismissed Mr. Pompeo's statement as "informational warfare." Mr. Trump in a Fox Business Network interview on Wednesday said assertions that Russia had asked Mr. Maduro to stay in Venezuela were "rumors."

    Mr. Pompeo and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke earlier in the week about Venezuela. After that call, Mr. Lavrov denied that Moscow was interfering in Venezuela and called Washington's accusations "surreal."

    [May 03, 2019] The Wheels Of Real Justice Are In Motion Now Kunstler Fears The Desperate Resistance Next Move...

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Mr. Barr's stolid demeanor during the Wednesday session was a refreshing reminder of what it means to be not insane in the long-running lunatic degeneration of national politics. ..."
    "... In short and in effect, the Democratic Party itself is headed to trial on a vector that takes it straight into November next year. How do you imagine it will look to voters when Mr. Obama's CIA chief, John Brennan, his NSA Director James Clapper, a baker's dozen of former Obama top FBI and DOJ officials, including former AG Loretta Lynch, and sundry additional players in the great game of RussiaGate Gotcha end up 'splainin' their guts out to a whole different cast of federal prosecutors? It's hardly out of the question that Barack Obama himself and Mrs. Clinton may face charges in all this mischief and depravity. ..."
    "... It's a further irony of the moment that the suddenly leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, is neck-deep in that spilled garbage, the story unspooling even as I write that then-Veep Uncle Joe strong-armed the Ukraine government to fire its equivalent of Attorney General to quash an investigation of his son, Hunter, who received large sums of money from the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, which had mystifyingly appointed the young American to its board of directors after the US-sponsored overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych. ..."
    May 03, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    "Impeachment is too good for him," Nancy Pelosi declared of the president on Thursday after "his lapdog" - as she styled Attorney General William Barr - refused to be whipped by grandstanding Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. What did Madam Speaker have in mind then? Dragging Mr. Trump behind a Chevy Tahoe over four miles of broken light bulbs? Staking him onto a nest of fire ants? How about a beheading at the capable hands of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)?

    Mr. Barr's stolid demeanor during the Wednesday session was a refreshing reminder of what it means to be not insane in the long-running lunatic degeneration of national politics.

    Of course, the reason for the continued hysteria among Democrats is that the two-year solemn inquiry by the august former FBI Director, Mr. Mueller, is being revealed daily as a mendacious fraud with criminal overtones running clear through Democratic ranks beyond even the wicked Hillary Clinton to the sainted former president Obama, who may have supervised his party's collusion with foreign officials to interfere in the 2016 election.

    Mr. Barr's hints that he intends to tip this dumpster of political subterfuge, to find out what was at the bottom of it, is being taken as a death threat to the Democratic Party, as well it should be. A lot of familiar names and faces will be rolling out of that dumpster into the grand juries and federal courtrooms just as the big pack of White House aspirants jets around the primary states as though 2020 might be anything like a normal election.

    In short and in effect, the Democratic Party itself is headed to trial on a vector that takes it straight into November next year. How do you imagine it will look to voters when Mr. Obama's CIA chief, John Brennan, his NSA Director James Clapper, a baker's dozen of former Obama top FBI and DOJ officials, including former AG Loretta Lynch, and sundry additional players in the great game of RussiaGate Gotcha end up 'splainin' their guts out to a whole different cast of federal prosecutors? It's hardly out of the question that Barack Obama himself and Mrs. Clinton may face charges in all this mischief and depravity.

    It's surely true that the public is sick of the RussiaGate spectacle. (I know readers of this blog complain about it.) But it's no exaggeration to say that this is the worst and most tangled scandal that the US government has ever seen, and that failing to resolve it successfully really is an existential threat to the project of being a republic. I was a young newspaper reporter during Watergate and that was like a game of animal lotto compared to this garbage barge of malfeasance.

    It's a further irony of the moment that the suddenly leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, is neck-deep in that spilled garbage, the story unspooling even as I write that then-Veep Uncle Joe strong-armed the Ukraine government to fire its equivalent of Attorney General to quash an investigation of his son, Hunter, who received large sums of money from the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma, which had mystifyingly appointed the young American to its board of directors after the US-sponsored overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych.

    That nasty bit of business comes immediately on top of information that the Hillary campaign was using its connections in Ukraine -- from her years at the State Department -- to traffic in political dirt on Mr. Trump, plus an additional intrigue that included payments to the Clinton Foundation of $25 million by Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk. That was on top of contributions of $150 million that the Clinton Foundation had received earlier from Russian oligarchs around 2012.

    Did they suppose that no one would ever notice? Or is it just a symptom of the desperation that has gripped the Democratic Party since the stunning election loss of 2016 made it impossible to suppress this titanic, bubbling vessel of fermented misdeeds? It seems more than merely possible that the entire Mueller Investigation was a ruse from the start to conceal all this nefarious activity. It is even more astounding to see exactly what a lame document the Mueller Report turned out to be. It was such a dud that even the Democratic senators and congresspersons who are complaining the loudest have not bothered to visit the special parlor set up at the Department of Justice for their convenience to read a much more lightly redacted edition of the report.

    The mills of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. The wheels are in motion now and it's unlikely they will be stopped by mere tantrums. But the next move by the desperate Resistance may be to create so much political disorder in the system that they manage to delegitimize the 2020 election before it is even held, and plunge the nation deeper into unnecessary crisis just to try and save their asses.

    [May 03, 2019] Sanctions are just a tool in preparation for the war

    May 03, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Randy , says: May 3, 2019 at 9:32 pm GMT

    @Digital Samizdat

    Sanctions are the foreign policy equivalent of obstruction of justice traps. Sanctions are initiated in the hope the sanctioned country then commits some actionable trepidation, a Casus belli. They say the first casualty of war is the truth but that casualty comes way before war starts and continues long after war ends.

    [May 03, 2019] Trump lost anti-war right. Forever.

    Notable quotes:
    "... Trump *escalated* US-Iran and US-Venezuela conflicts and intensified the sabre rattling towards both countries, according to all analysts. For the first time a POTUS openly said direct US invasion to Venezuela "is on the table" and his Adelson bought appointment for USNSA Bolton publicly showed in a notebook the writing "5000 troops to Colombia" openly suggesting a direct invasion was imminent. For the first time the White House asked the Pentagon to draw up options for military strikes against Iran. ..."
    "... Trump's administration declared a whole branch of the Iran armed forces (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation. This is an escalation and according to most analysts, considered an act of war. ..."
    "... Trump administration heavily increased sanctions to Iran, Russia and Venezuela and in the latter case even instigated a failed uprising and coup d'etat, going as far as to declare a virtual political Venezuelan nobody the "official" president of the country, which is in itself unbelievable and has no historic precedent. Another act of war actually. ..."
    "... Trump administration also escalated the tensions with China, ordered the arrest and de facto kidnapping of Chinese corporate executives and openly used the US legal apparatus to attack and hinder a foreign corporation. ..."
    "... Trump has been, objectively, the most neocon Israel-firster POTUS in US history. ..."
    "... Friendly reminder that voting for Republicans and expecting US Jewish lobby/Corporate America promoted policies such as open borders and US imperialist interventions to stop is moronic beyond belief. Republicans are the most pro corporate pro US Jewish lobby of the two parties by far. At least there is talk and critique about how the Israel Lobby owns the USG in the Dem party. Nothing of the sort going on in the GOP. ..."
    May 03, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Scalper , says: May 3, 2019 at 9:45 am GMT

    @A123 You Trump shills are chutzpah personified:

    The U.S. missile strike on Shayrat Airbase on 7 April 2017 was the first time the U.S. became a deliberate, direct combatant against the Syrian government and marked the start of a series of deliberate direct military actions by U.S. forces against the Syrian government and its allies in May -- June 2017 and February 2018.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/06/trump-syria-missiles-assad-chemical-weapons

    Trump *escalated* the war from covert support to insurgents to direct intervention and official *invasion* in Syria. This is the equivalent of going from financing and supporting a faction in a so called proxy war in say Vietnam to leading the US to go full Iraq WMD and become a warring and invading faction in the conflict. Again, this is an escalation.

    The number of boots on the ground vs Obama's is data you just took out of your bottom. Sources for your cheap PR shilling? You don't have any because this statement of yours is a blatant lie.

    Trump *escalated* US-Iran and US-Venezuela conflicts and intensified the sabre rattling towards both countries, according to all analysts. For the first time a POTUS openly said direct US invasion to Venezuela "is on the table" and his Adelson bought appointment for USNSA Bolton publicly showed in a notebook the writing "5000 troops to Colombia" openly suggesting a direct invasion was imminent. For the first time the White House asked the Pentagon to draw up options for military strikes against Iran.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/white-house-asked-pentagon-plans-strike-iran

    Trump's administration declared a whole branch of the Iran armed forces (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation. This is an escalation and according to most analysts, considered an act of war.

    Trump's administration ended the Iran deal without any objective reasons, ie Obama's effort to deescalate the Israel firsters driven Iran-US conflict

    Trump administration heavily increased sanctions to Iran, Russia and Venezuela and in the latter case even instigated a failed uprising and coup d'etat, going as far as to declare a virtual political Venezuelan nobody the "official" president of the country, which is in itself unbelievable and has no historic precedent. Another act of war actually.

    Trump administration declared Golan Heights part of Israel brought US embassy to Jerusalem, increasing the tensions and animosity towards the US in the ME.

    Trump administration will declare Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation, increasing the animosity from Arab countries in the ME to unbelievable levels. This includes non Arab country Turkey also, a traditional ally until neocon Trump took power.

    Trump administration also escalated the tensions with China, ordered the arrest and de facto kidnapping of Chinese corporate executives and openly used the US legal apparatus to attack and hinder a foreign corporation.

    Trump has been, objectively, the most neocon Israel-firster POTUS in US history.

    Friendly reminder that voting for Republicans and expecting US Jewish lobby/Corporate America promoted policies such as open borders and US imperialist interventions to stop is moronic beyond belief. Republicans are the most pro corporate pro US Jewish lobby of the two parties by far. At least there is talk and critique about how the Israel Lobby owns the USG in the Dem party. Nothing of the sort going on in the GOP.

    Immigration restrictionism is a traditional pro working class, leftist policy.

    Non intervention and "pacifist" policies the same. How many GOP supporters were against the Vietnam and Iraq war? Not many yeah.

    Johnny Walker Read , says: May 3, 2019 at 1:20 pm GMT
    @A123 Here's your numbers TROLL.

    Trump has dropped more bombs and missiles on Middle Eastern countries in a comparable period of time than any modern U.S. President. Presidents Bush, Obama and now [2017] Trump have dropped nearly 200,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Trump's rate of bombing eclipses both Bush and Obama; and Trump is on a pace to drop over 100,000 [180,000 to be precise] bombs and missiles on Middle Eastern countries during his first term of office -- which would equal the number of bombs and missiles dropped by Obama during his entire eight-year presidency.

    Here's more perspective:

    The United States Government, under the Trump administration, reportedly drops a bomb every 12 minutes, which means that 121 bombs are dropped in a day, and 44,096 bombs per year. The Pentagon's data show that during George W. Bush's eight years he averaged 24 bombs dropped per day, that is, 8,750 per year. Over the course of Obama's time in office, his military dropped 34 bombs per day, 12,500 per year. This shows that even though American presidents are all war criminals, Trump is the most vicious of them all.

    Yes, Trump is dropping almost FOUR TIMES MORE BOMBS than Barack Obama and over FIVE TIMES MORE BOMBS than G.W. Bush -- which included military invasions of two countries.

    We also know that Trump expanded America's wars in Afghanistan and Syria (and, no, he is NOT bringing U.S. troops home from Syria) and is ramping up America's war machine against Venezuela, Iran, China and Russia. And this does not even take into account the way Trump has given Benjamin Netanyahu's raunchy racist regime the green light to expand its wars against the Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria and Iran or the U.S./Israeli proxy war (with Saudi Arabia taking the lead) in Yemen.

    Then there is Somalia:

    In the age of Donald Trump, wasn't that [the Battle of Mogadishu -- Black Hawk Down] a million presidencies ago? Honestly, can you even tell me anymore what in the world it was all about? I couldn't have, not without looking it up again. A warlord, starvation, U.S. intervention, 18 dead American soldiers (and hundreds of dead Somalis, but that hardly mattered) in a country that was shattering. President Clinton did, however, pull out those troops and end the disastrous mission -- and that was that, right? I mean, lessons learned. Somalia? Africa? What in the world did it all have to do with us? So Washington washed its hands of the whole thing.

    And now, on a planet of outrageous tweets and murderously angry white men, you probably didn't even notice, but more than two years into the era of Donald Trump, a quarter-century after that incident, American airstrikes in yep, Somalia, are precipitously on the rise.

    Last year's 47 strikes, aimed at the leaders and fighters of al-Shabaab, an Islamist terror outfit, more than tripled the ones carried out by the Obama administration in 2016 (themselves a modest increase from previous years). And in 2019, they're already on pace to double again, while Somali civilians -- not that anyone (other than Somali civilians) notices or cares -- are dying in significant and rising numbers.

    And with 500 troops back on the ground there and Pentagon estimates that they will remain for at least another seven years, the U.S. military is increasingly Somalia-bound, Congress hasn't uttered a peep on the subject, and few in this country are paying the slightest attention.

    So consider this a simple fact of the never-ending Global War on Terror (as it was once called): the U.S. military just can't get enough of Somalia. And if that isn't off the charts, what is? Maybe it's even worth a future book (with a very small print run) called not Black Hawk Down II but U.S. Down Forever and a Day.

    And now that I've started on the subject (if you still happen to be reading), when it comes to the U.S. military, it's not faintly just Somalia. It's all of Africa.

    After all, this country's military uniquely has a continent-wide Africa Command (aka AFRICOM), founded in 2007. As Nick Turse has often written for TomDispatch, that command now has its troops, thousands of them, its planes, and other equipment spread across the continent, north to south, east to west -- air bases, drone bases, garrisons, outposts, staging areas, you name it. Meanwhile, AFRICOM's outgoing commanding general, Thomas Waldhauser, only recently told Congress why it's bound to be a forever outfit -- because, shades of the Cold War, the Ruskies are coming! ("Russia is also a growing challenge and has taken a more militaristic approach in Africa.")

    And honestly, 600-odd words in, this wasn't meant to be a piece about either Somalia or Africa. It was meant to be about those U.S. wars being off the charts, about how the Pentagon now feeds eternally at the terror trough, al-Shabaab being only a tiny part of the slop it regularly digests.

    And, while America's wars are way up, according to Gallup, church attendance in America is way down:

    As Christian and Jewish Americans prepare to celebrate Easter and Passover, respectively, Gallup finds the percentage of Americans who report belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque at an all-time low, averaging 50% in 2018.

    U.S. church membership was 70% or higher from 1937 through 1976, falling modestly to an average of 68% in the 1970s through the 1990s. The past 20 years have seen an acceleration in the drop-off, with a 20-percentage-point decline since 1999 and more than half of that change occurring since the start of the current decade.

    Most interesting is this Gallup observation:

    Although the United States is one of the more religious countries, particularly among Western nations, it is far less religious than it used to be. Barely three-quarters of Americans now identify with a religion and only about half claim membership in a church, synagogue or mosque.

    The rate of U.S. church membership has declined sharply in the past two decades after being relatively stable in the six decades before that. A sharp increase in the proportion of the population with no religious affiliation, a decline in church membership among those who do have a religious preference, and low levels of church membership among millennials are all contributing to the accelerating trend.

    Obviously, America's Jewish and Muslim populations pale compared to its Christian population. The vast decline of attendance to religious services, therefore, primarily means church attendance. Notice, also, that this steep decline commenced at the beginning of this century (2000) -- when G.W. Bush became President of the United States.

    I tried to warn readers -- and listeners to my nationwide radio talk show -- that due to his insatiable war fever, G.W. Bush was going to forever warp the perception in people's minds of Christianity. And, sadly, I was absolutely right. After eight years of the warmongering G.W. Bush in the White House, millions of Americans came to associate Christianity with wars of aggression. As a result, the exodus out of America's churches began in earnest.

    Enter Donald Trump.

    As noted above, Trump has expanded Bush's war fever exponentially. But Trump has done more than that: He has aggressively put the United States smack dab in the middle of Israel's wars. It could even be argued that Donald Trump has turned the U.S. military into a proxy army for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

    Don't get me wrong: I am very cognizant of the fact that G.W. Bush's "war on terror" was nothing more than a proxy war for Israel. But the Israeli connection was covert and completely covered up. Not anymore. Donald Trump is unabashedly and explicitly partnering the mission of the U.S. military with that of the IDF. No wonder Benjamin Netanyahu promises to name a community in the Israel-seized, Israel-occupied Golan Heights after Donald Trump. (Trumplinka would fit Netanyahu's concentration-style occupation nicely.)

    So, not only are millions of Americans now associating Christianity with G.W. Bush's wars of aggression, they are associating Christianity with Donald Trump's wars of aggression for the racist apartheid State of Israel. The result: the steepest decline in church attendance and church affiliation in U.S. history.

    The longer evangelical Christians continue to support Donald Trump's radical pro-Israel, pro-war agenda, the deeper America will plunge into an anti-Christian country.

    The good news is that all over America, people are waking up to the Israel deception. Support for the erroneous doctrine of dispensational eschatology is in a giant free fall; the myth of Zionist Israel being a resurrected Old Testament Israel is being repeatedly exposed; the attempts by Israel's toadies to characterize people whose eyes are open to the truth of Zionism as being "anti-Semitic" is losing more and more credibility by the day; and more and more people are becoming aware of the utter wickedness of the Zionist government in Israel. Plus, more and more people are beginning to understand the plight of the persecuted people (including Christian people) in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine.

    Ron, maybe your shipmates on the USS LIBERTY didn't die in vain after all.

    From an historical perspective, overextended wars are the downfall of any empire; from a financial perspective, warfarism is the precursor to an economically depressed middle class; and from a Scriptural/spiritual perspective, God cannot and will not bless a warmongering nation.

    Let's be clear: God is not building a "Greater Israel." God is not building a third Jewish temple. God is not speaking through phony prophets who are attributing some sort of divine calling to Trump's pro-Israel warmongering. God is not blessing America because we are blessing Zionist Israel. Just the opposite: The more America aligns itself with Israel's belligerence, bullying and bombing of innocent people, the more God will deliver us over to becoming an antichrist country. After all, one cannot idolize and partner with antichrists without becoming one himself.

    After Trump finishes this term in office, two-thirds of this young century will have seen a "Christian" warmonger in the White House. It is no coincidence that during this same period of time, wars are way up and church attendance is way down.
    https://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Articles/tabid/109/ID/3866/Americas-Wars-Are-Way-Up-Church-Attendance-Is-Way-Down.aspx

    Anonymous [102] Disclaimer , says: May 3, 2019 at 1:23 pm GMT
    Burning down the house. Driving like a madman on the road to nowhere has put the nation on a path to its own demise. Our foreign policy is a disaster that does nothing to promote democracy anywhere in the world. Our military has provided nothing but instability in the world since the end of world war 2. Ask yourself, why are we involved in so many useless wars that don't make the world a better place?
    Don't you feel like we are being used by war hawks who see every skirmish as a threat to our national security? Why can't we cut out all the military BS and just trade with with nations that want to trade, and ignore those who want to kill each other. Let them figure it out on their own. Social Capitalism is the only policy we should be supporting.
    Johnny Walker Read , says: May 3, 2019 at 1:36 pm GMT
    America's foreign policy since the end of WWII. End of story.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/O66UKjCwmTw?feature=oembed

    EliteCommInc. , says: May 3, 2019 at 2:50 pm GMT
    "All statements of Trump do not count. All Trump statements are results from stress of torture by Democrats, and deep state."

    When this president stated during the campaign,

    that christians don't have to forgive their enemies, I rolled my eyes stated he wrong, and understood well he doesn't know what christianity means and supported him anyway

    that he supported same sex marriage, I rolled my eyes, rebuffed the the silliness of his comments and understood, he is not a conservative and beyond that he doesn't know what christianity means

    when it was uncovered that he had in fact had relations outside of marriage, I rolled my eyes, and understood that alone could be a disqualifying factor in light of the competition and supported him anyway

    when some of the most respected departments of government leaders said he colluded with Russians, based on the evidence, I said "poppycock" and supported him anyway

    when media swirled with tales of Russian bath houses and carousings abounded, I thought nonsense and supported hum anyway

    when the rumors of underage girls and same sex parties and orgies seped into the main, I rolled my eyes and supported him anyway . . .

    when he spouted off about Charlottesville prematurely, I supported him anyway . . .

    when became clear he actually advocated torture, I choked, spat and supported him anyway, afterall he's not schooled in international relations and the consequences for our service personnel, much less apparently the basics of tortures effectiveness, especially in large scale strategies such as the US is engaged in

    when it came to light he was completely ignorant of how our criminal justice system gets it wrong as exampled by the Cen 5 case, I supported him anyway . . .

    I supported him in spite of his comments about the poor and people like me who supported him

    There's a long list of tolerance is support of this president based on his advocacy regarding turning the attention to the US welfare . . .

    And when he actually agreed that the Russians had sabotaged the US elections and even engaged in murder in the states of our European allies -- I knew, that in all liklihood the turn inward was dead.

    Here' a man who beat all the odds because of stalwart support of people like me, who repeatedly bit the sides of our cheeks in the understanding that the returns would exceed the price only to discover that the man who beat the odds doesn't seem to have a spine to stand on ideologically which were the foundations of my advocacy: national security, less reckless spending, holding business and financial organizations accountable for misbehavior, investing in the US citizen, restructuring our trade deals to benefit the US, not merely shooting up tarrifs that would in turn be priced to the citizens the supposed tarrifs were intended to protect, tax cuts that actually gave middle americans less, no evidence of a draw down in our careless ME behaviors, i even gave him some room to deal with israel as perhaps a new way forward -- it's a new way alright – no pretense of acting as honest brokers – that's new, Immigration is worse and by worse he might as well be serving tea and crumpets at the border welcoming illegals . . .

    If the man you elected to turn the corner actually becomes the vehicle for of what you elected him to reject and change, eventually one has to acknowledge that fact. he beat the deep state, he just either had not the courage, the integrity, or the ability, perhaps all three to withstand the victory and do the work. Of course he had opposition and not much of it very fair and nearly all of it damaging to the country. But he had support to stand against it -- he chose an easier path.

    And while I support him still, I have no intention of pretending that he is fulfilling the mandate for which he was elected. I would be lying to myself and doing a disservice to him.

    I have not changed, I knew he was a situational leader, I knew what that meant, but I voted for a particular agenda, he left the reservation on his own accord and the "deep state", the establishment", the democrats, the liberals, the libertarians, can only be held to blame for so much --

    But several weeks ago, on top of a complete failure to ensure US order security, the armed forces paid homage to Mexicans on US territory by relinquishing their weapons and surrendering -- and given the tenure thus far -- - it devastatingly fitting that this occurred under this admin.

    And in the midst of all this, he is pandering to those engaged in same sex behavior -- – deep state my eye . . .

    the path of least resistance. I cling to the belief that having voting for any of the other candidates -- matters would have been far worse.

    I make no apologies for being a conservative and Christian and holding a loyalty to the US.

    I reject your whine, it had legs and even some salience still, but at this stage, very little.

    Now he is bed with Sen. Rubio, Sen. Cruz and others on mucking around in SA -- I can only consider your comments as an attempt at humor.

    [May 03, 2019] Trish Regan Obama's intel ops may have been weaponized

    May 03, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    FBN's Trish Regan and Trump 2020 Strategic Communications Director Marc Lotter discuss a new report that the Obama administration sent spies to gather dirt on the Trump campaign in 2016.

    FOX Business Network (FBN) is a financial news channel delivering real-time information across all platforms that impact both Main Street and Wall Street. Headquartered in New York -- the business capital of the world -- FBN launched in October 2007 and is the leading business network on television, topping CNBC in Business Day viewers for the second consecutive year. The network is available in more than 80 million homes in all markets across the United States. Owned by FOX, FBN has bureaus in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and London.

    Jan Blackman , 2 hours ago

    I hope Biden doesn't get away with his and his sons actions and all the illegal things they did in the Ukraine

    TheCladi8or , 2 hours ago

    When is that cockroach Obama gonna be squashed ? Really???? WHEN?

    Rowdy , 2 hours ago (edited)

    Barack Hussein O gave the order to Spy on the Trump Campaign and on President Trump. BHO is up to his Ears with all this Spying, Russia Gate, and making dirty deals with Ukraine.

    jpm5243 , 2 hours ago

    We already know Obama weaponized the IRS, the CIA and the DOJ... the Obamanation is corrupt to the core, so why would it be a surprise that he also weaponized the FBI?

    MEDiAgamer , 2 hours ago (edited)

    This is truly bigger than Watergate. Planned and order by the Clinton's. And for that I am sure!

    Rowdy , 2 hours ago

    Pencil Neck Adam Schiff is cleaning up all the CRAP left over from Barack Hussein O. This weasel is running interference and making all the noise he can against A.G. William Barr who is a good and decent man. God Bless A.G. Barr and his Family.

    William D Smith , 2 hours ago (edited)

    Obama weaponized just about all departments during his term. He used the EPA against farmers and land-owners. He used the IRS against conservative groups. He used the Intelligence groups against the American people, and the FBI and DOJ against anyone else that annoyed him. Obama and his people need to be investigated and if warranted, charged. But, this is what the left does.

    Samuel I , 1 hour ago

    Good Lord!! Obama.. Hillary.. Biden.. The FBI.. Then we have Omar, and Tlaib, and AOC getting all of the new praise. The media CONTINUES to cover it up. Amazing that the NYT ran it.

    Joe Friday 2 hours ago

    "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."

    DEM's think, 'Obama anti-Trump crimes in Ukraine STAY IN UKRAINE'.

    [May 03, 2019] Nunes on origins of Russia probe, his request for docs on Misfud

    Professor Misfud worked for Italian intelligence and all major western intelligence agencies. .
    Notable quotes:
    "... Mueller tried his best in his coercion efforts unfortunately to his situation he was under a bright scope and could not falsely represent the report to the extent he wanted ..."
    May 03, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    Tinky Nine , 59 minutes ago (edited)

    How come nobody is asking Hussein what he knew, and when he knew it?.....oh pardon me, that'd be actual journalism, can't have that.

    Henry Wong , 52 minutes ago (edited)

    Nunes is a true Patriot and a truly honest Public Official that looks after the interest of the country and its people unlike the Democratic Party of Crooks!

    Ryan Derek , 58 minutes ago

    Mueller tried his best in his coercion efforts unfortunately to his situation he was under a bright scope and could not falsely represent the report to the extent he wanted

    Casper Pursifull , 13 minutes ago

    Mifsud is working on behalf of Israel and this is yet another glaring example of attempted entrapment and clear cut Israeli/UK meddling....

    Angela Bullard , 8 minutes ago

    Hey, Fox News, its Mifsud, not Misfud and he may, or may not be a "Russian Agent". The question is, who was he working for when he lured Papadopoulos to that meeting? Sources hint that he was working for what some might call the "Deep State". Think Brennan and/or Clapper. What are you guys doing over there, inspecting you navels?

    Harry Mills , 39 minutes ago

    Nunes has been a straight shooter from the jump. I think you've got to look at Rosenstein's scope statement to Mueller. It pretty much excluded anything not related to Trump Team Collusion with Russia. I'm sure there were lots of threads that didn't get followed. Independent reporters have pulled on some of those threads.

    Classical music 74 , 9 minutes ago (edited)

    Devin Nunes is our hero and has been actively trying to save this country far more than John McCain could have ever done. This is one great example of being a military and serve this country is not the only hero and patriot that we should celebrate it. This is why he has become the enemy of Nancy Pelosi and all Dems.

    Jesse Aaron , 6 minutes ago

    The differences between Nunes and Shiff for brains are night and day. You can tell that Nunes is a goodly soul and child of God, and that truth and uprightness pour out of him. To be the kind of person who sees Nunes as a liar and shiff as truthful, you have to be a child of darkness to be sooo blind.

    Alexis Wilmot Porter , 40 minutes ago

    Wake up, Fox! There was never any "Russia" in this scam - it was just hot air and spooks from the US-Five Eyes-Tel Aviv world-wide spying machine. Mifsud was a flaky CIA asset who vanished as soon as his name came out in the press. As long as the Republicans and Fox keep this "Russia" bullsh*t alive by repeating it, this crap will keep going. Listen to Papadopoulos - there was no Russian involvement. It was all a lie. Russia does not want to harm the USA, they want to be respected as an independent and sovereign country. Clinton keeps cackling away every night watching Hannity and Nunes chasing ghosts and putting more wood on the "Russia" fantasy fire.

    [May 03, 2019] The Russiagate Hoax -- Cutting to the Chase caucus99percent

    Notable quotes:
    "... On June 14th, the DNC, in conjunction with the Crowdstrike cybersecurity firm that they had hired, announced that its servers had been hacked, and that a file on Trump opposition research had been taken. An entity dubbed "Guccifer 2.0" popped up online a day later, claiming to be the source for the soon-to-be-released Wikileaks DNC material, and obligingly posting a file on Trump opposition research, as well as several other files. Forensic analyses have indicated that the posted documents had had their metadata intentionally altered to leave "Russian fingerprints". ..."
    "... We need to determine who created the Guccifer 2.0 hoax, and prosecute them to the full extent of the law. The "intelligence agents" who concluded "with high confidence" that Guccifer 2.0 was a Wikileaks source need to be fired or demoted. If the FBI has known all along that Seth was a Wikileaks source, those who shielded the public from this crucial information need to be unmasked. The "journalists" who have been credulously spreading the "Russia interfered" narrative 24/7 for most of a year, without making the least effort to question the veracity of these assertions, should be recognized by the public as the willing tools of lying warmongers that they are, and their future work studiously ignored. The sanctions recently implemented on Russia should be lifted, and the politicians who played the most egregious role in hyping the Russian interference narrative and pushing the sanctions should be repudiated at the polls when they come up for re-election. (I confess, however, that I will not hold my breath waiting for any of these things to happen.) ..."
    "... Why do you not see this as our intelligence agencies working with the DNC and providing them with bogus clues to work with? Doesn't the record now show that the CIA provided the premise for starting the FBI counterintelligence investigation into collusion? And doesn't the record now show that the premise was based on the activities of CIA and FBI informant actors infiltrated into the Trump campaign? ..."
    "... With new information about the "U.K. operation" using Stefan Halper (CIA asset and FBI informant); and the details of the contacts by U.S. intelligence operative Azra Turk; we can overlay the timeline and see a clear picture ..."
    May 03, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

    The Russiagate Hoax  --  Cutting to the Chase

    veganmark on Fri, 05/03/2019 - 8:00am Originally published Aug 11, 2017

    I have written a rather comprehensive debunking of the "Russia interfered in our election" narrative that has obsessed the MSM for most of a year. Since its first posting, I have been updating it; its expanded form is available here:

    https://caucus99percent.com/content/what%E2%80%99s-left-russiagate%E2%80...

    I don't pretend to be an investigative journalist  --  rather, what I have done is to assemble the findings of respected journalists, intelligence experts, and cyberanalysts who have examined the interference narrative with a critical eye. The links are the best part of my essay, and I refer you to them if you want verification for the views I express below.

    What I would like to do here is present, in summary form, my own best guess as to what actually happened, in light of the evidence and analyses I cite. Other interpretations are possible, but most of these have a Rube Goldberg-type complexity and illogic that render them quite dubious. Whereas this interpretation fits the known evidence rather straightforwardly:

    Seth Rich was the source for the DNC emails which Wikileaks published; Assange has been silently screaming this for months, both through statements and tweets, while strenuously denying that the Russian government played any role in this regard. How Seth obtained these emails, and how he conveyed them to Wikileaks, remain to be determined. If the FBI inside source which Sy Hersh discussed in his taped conversation with Ed Butowski is accurate, Seth provided them by drop box, giving Wikileaks the password. There is a recent claim that Seth had had a raucous argument with Donna Brazile regarding DNC unfairness to Bernie; this concern may have motivated Seth's leaking, though he may also have sought payment for his risky efforts.

    On June 12th of last year, Wikileaks announced that it would soon be releasing material pertinent to Hillary's campaign. Whether the DNC knew at this time that Seth was the source is unclear. What is clear is that DNC officials, who had previously been informed that their server had been hacked, quickly decided to convince our intelligence agencies, the press, and the public that Russian hackers, acting at the behest of the Russian government, were the source of the damaging material to be released  --  in that way, focusing attention on the evil machinations of the Russians, slamming Wikileaks, and detracting attention from the content of the released material.

    On June 14th, the DNC, in conjunction with the Crowdstrike cybersecurity firm that they had hired, announced that its servers had been hacked, and that a file on Trump opposition research had been taken. An entity dubbed "Guccifer 2.0" popped up online a day later, claiming to be the source for the soon-to-be-released Wikileaks DNC material, and obligingly posting a file on Trump opposition research, as well as several other files. Forensic analyses have indicated that the posted documents had had their metadata intentionally altered to leave "Russian fingerprints".

    On July 5th, Guccifer 2.0 downloaded from the DNC server a number of additional documents, some of which  --  all of them relatively innocuous  --  he subsequently posted on his own website. Forensic analysis of this download indicated that it occurred locally, most likely via USB port, and that it took place on the East Coast.

    An overview suggests that the Guccifer 2.0 persona was created by people with inside connections to the DNC. The evident intent of this charade was to trick our intelligence agencies into concluding that Guccifer 2.0 was the Wikileaks source and was acting at the behest of the Russian government. The fact that he released Trump opposition material a day after the DNC proclaimed that it had been taken by hackers strongly suggests collusion between top people in the DNC and the people concocting Guccifer 2.0. As Adam Carter notes, it is not at all clear how the DNC/Crowdstrike could have known that this particular file had been taken. Carter suspects that principals at Crowdstrike played a key role in creating Guccifer 2.0, as they would have had the expertise required to pull off such a scam. (Whether Imran Awan possesses such skill is not clear.)

    Five days later (July 10th), Seth Rich was murdered, most likely by hitmen. The DNC might have known by this point that Seth was the leaker to Wikileaks  --  and that he therefore would have been in a position to completely destroy the Russian interference hoax if he had chosen to do so.

    Crowdstrike, whose founders are known to despise the Russian government, rapidly concluded that the DNC server had been hacked by Russians affiliated with Russian intelligence. According to experts who have examined this claim, the logic behind this conclusion is unconvincing and puerile. Moreover, Crowdstrike's previous effort to implicate Russian intelligence in a hack had been shown to be bogus. Nonetheless, the FBI chose to accept the Crowdstrike conclusions, even though they had never been able to examine the DNC servers themselves because the DNC had refused to turn them over, and the FBI had failed to subpoena them.

    If Hersh's source inside the FBI is to be believed, the FBI has known for over a year that Seth Rich was a Wikileaks source, and has kept this knowledge secret. The FBI states that they have not participated in the investigation of Seth's murder  --  thereby tacitly implying, without saying so directly, that they have not examined his computer. Given that Assange, who presumably has direct knowledge on the issue, has hinted as strongly as possible that Seth was one of his sources, the FBI would be severely derelict if indeed it has not examined Seth computer(s).

    The Obama administration was soon fully on board with the "Russia interfered" narrative, which initially shielded Hillary from the full import of the Wikileaks revelations, and, after the election, provided Hillary's campaign with an excuse for its failure while enabling an ancillary "Trump colluded in the interference" narrative that could be employed to disable the Trump presidency. Despite Hillary's concocted claim about "17 intelligence agencies" verifying the Russian interference story, the Obama administration made sure that the standard appropriate process for our intelligence agencies to provide a balanced evaluation  --  a National Intelligence Assessment, entailing participation by a number of agencies and including any dissenting judgements  --  was NOT FOLLOWED. Rather, the histrionic Russophobes James Clapper and John Brennan were allowed to hand-pick a group of a couple dozen intelligence personnel from just 3 agencies. The declassified version of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which they drafted, free of any dissents, accused the Russian government of a conscious campaign to support the candidacy of Trump by hacking several key political websites and providing their contents to Wikileaks and other outlets. Guccifer 2.0 was specifically cited as a Wikileaks source.

    Critics immediately noted that the declassified ICA provided no hard evidence whatever to document its claims, and that over half its length was devoted to a criticism of the RT television network as a supposed propaganda outlet. In particular, no insight was provided as to how the authors of the report had concluded that the hacked documents had been transferred to Wikileaks. The conclusions of this report evidently fit seamlessly into a broader strategy of demonizing Russia, the intent being to insure that our military-industrial complex and NATO continue to receive an outrageous level of funding, and that the warped policy agendas of the neo-cons are satisfied.

    Our MSM immediately embraced the conclusions of the ICA as Gospel truth, frequently referring to "our 17 intelligence agencies" as the source for this report. They completely ignored the fact that the "assessments" of this report are in effect just "best guesses", that the preamble of the report pointed out that "assessments" should not necessarily be equated to "facts", and that the NSA  --  which, as William Binney notes, should have been able to obtain definitive proof for any actual hacking that had occurred  --  expressed only "moderate confidence" in the conclusions. This sycophantic credulity is particularly inexcusable in the context of the previous "Saddam's WMDs" hoax which they likewise had swallowed uncritically, resulting in an illegal war with utterly catastrophic consequences.

    The initial claims of Russian interference were soon embellished by media reports claiming that, according to anonymous intelligence sources, the Russian government had attempted to hack into the voter registration files of 21 states, had conducted hacking operations intended to interfere in German and French elections, and had hacked into the Qatari state news agency to plant a fake news story. The veracity of each of these unsourced claims has been called into question, and in some cases disproved, by cyberanalysts, intelligence experts, and journalists. The conclusions of the NSA document leaked by Reality Winner have likewise been shown to be purely speculative. Claims that Russian bots and paid trolls assaulted our social media in the months prior to the election are poorly documented, and, in any case, rather comical.

    Following the election, the Russian interference narrative was echoed unceasingly by the Democratic establishment, as this was the necessary concomitant of the "Trump collusion" claims that they were using to slam and cripple Trump  --  in the hopes of eventually impeaching him. (It presumably would have been hard for Trump to collude in Russian election interference if in fact there had been no Russian interference.) Hysterical attacks on Russia accelerated to the point that some pols referred to the "Russian interference" as "an act of war". This New McCarthyism ultimately led to our Congress placing severe new sanctions on Russia which also harm our European allies, and which these allies decry as illegal. In other words, we are punishing Russia for a crime they almost certainly did not commit, alienating key allies in the process, and amping up a Second Cold War, with all the expense and severe danger which this may entail.

    All because the DNC and its associates concocted an overt fraud to protect and excuse Hillary, and to use as a cudgel over Trump  --  a fraud that was readily lapped up and sold to the public by hand-picked Russophobes in our intelligence community, and by a MSM that cares far less about truth than about access and ratings.

    We need to determine who created the Guccifer 2.0 hoax, and prosecute them to the full extent of the law. The "intelligence agents" who concluded "with high confidence" that Guccifer 2.0 was a Wikileaks source need to be fired or demoted. If the FBI has known all along that Seth was a Wikileaks source, those who shielded the public from this crucial information need to be unmasked. The "journalists" who have been credulously spreading the "Russia interfered" narrative 24/7 for most of a year, without making the least effort to question the veracity of these assertions, should be recognized by the public as the willing tools of lying warmongers that they are, and their future work studiously ignored. The sanctions recently implemented on Russia should be lifted, and the politicians who played the most egregious role in hyping the Russian interference narrative and pushing the sanctions should be repudiated at the polls when they come up for re-election. (I confess, however, that I will not hold my breath waiting for any of these things to happen.)

    And let's do our best to find out who murdered Seth Rich, and why. The DNC and its media acolytes have been heaping hysterical abuse on anyone who entertains the possibility that Seth may have been a Wikileaks source, or who undertakes to investigate his murder. Donna Brazile and Seth's brother Aaron have done their best to impede the investigative efforts of Rod Wheeler. There is reason to suspect that the DC police have backed off the investigation of the murder, accepting the very dubious view that Seth's murder was just a "botched robbery". And why did Democratic operatives feel it necessary to supply the Rich family with a "crisis consultant" after Assange mentioned Seth  --  when they couldn't be bothered to offer an award for apprehension of Seth's murderer? This behavior is highly suspicious  --  if Seth was indeed the victim of random street violence, what would the DNC have to fear from further investigation? Let's get to the bottom of this!

    Linda Wood on Fri, 05/03/2019 - 10:44am
    Hello again, veganmark.

    I appreciate your presenting and thoroughly examining the facets of this issue, and I think the more we look at it the better equipped we'll be to deal with whatever happens when the Attorney General or the Republicans begin to address what happened, if they do.

    The part of your essay I question is this:

    The evident intent of this charade was to trick our intelligence agencies into concluding that Guccifer 2.0 was the Wikileaks source and was acting at the behest of the Russian government.

    Why do you not see this as our intelligence agencies working with the DNC and providing them with bogus clues to work with? Doesn't the record now show that the CIA provided the premise for starting the FBI counterintelligence investigation into collusion? And doesn't the record now show that the premise was based on the activities of CIA and FBI informant actors infiltrated into the Trump campaign?

    Linda Wood on Fri, 05/03/2019 - 11:28am
    Here are some recent

    sources of good investigative journalism on the subject, which I think you've probably read, but just to have them here:

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/spygate-the-inside-story-behind-the-allege...

    Spygate: The Inside Story Behind the Alleged Plot to Take Down Trump
    BY JEFF CARLSON
    March 28, 2019 Updated: April 11, 2019

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/05/02/big-puzzle-pieces-connec...

    Big Puzzle Pieces Connecting – The CIA, FBI, and 2016 Political Surveillance is Merging
    Posted on May 2, 2019 by sundance

    The admissions within the New York Times story today -outlining how President Obama's intelligence apparatus ran simultaneous intelligence operations against the Trump campaign- are starting to merge the FBI and CIA operations. CTH anticipated this.

    With new information about the "U.K. operation" using Stefan Halper (CIA asset and FBI informant); and the details of the contacts by U.S. intelligence operative Azra Turk; we can overlay the timeline and see a clear picture

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/05/02/papadopoulos-responds-to...

    Papadopoulos Responds to Admissions the FBI/CIA Ran "Operations" Against Him .
    Posted on May 2, 2019 by sundance

    Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos appears on Fox with Tucker Carlson to discuss the revelations of the FBI/CIA running spy operations against him during the 2016 election. Papadopoulos says the FBI spy wanted him to slip up and say something; however, he had no information...

    HenryAWallace on Fri, 05/03/2019 - 12:57pm
    Thank you so much for collecting and assembling all that info.

    I have not followed this as closely as others, so I greatly appreciate this review. I think Linda may have a point about our "seventeen" intelligence agencies working with the guilty. Everyone from Hillary to Morning Joe has mentioned so many times what our intelligence agencies have said about Russia. The universal repetition makes it smell coordinated and therefore fishy.

    And all America, if not the world, knows that Clapper had no compunction about lying to Congress about an unrelated subject. Nor did he need to have any compunction about it. At the very least, he should have been fired for it, if not prosecuted. Neither happened, even though he served "at the pleasure of the President."

    chuckutzman on Fri, 05/03/2019 - 2:00pm
    This was preceeded by the Obama WH illegally SPYING on

    Trump and leaking to the press. Barr says he's digging into it and the D's are in full freak-out.

    [May 03, 2019] WaPo, CNN Virtually Silent After NYT Reveals 2nd FBI Spy Sent To Infiltrate Trump Campaign

    I don't want to say # AGBarr is positively engaged on the Dem(on)rats. His mere level headed and professionalism exposed the Dem(on)rats' circus act.
    Notable quotes:
    "... You might remember that McCabe picked Goldman of all people to interview him about the use of 'Confidential Human Sources' in Operation Crossfire Hurricane - funny that! ..."
    "... Goldman's (McCabe's) argument is that the President was a national security risk because he fired Comey. "Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president's own actions constituted a possible threat to national security." ..."
    "... 3 years and at least 33 million have been wasted in attempt to link Trump campaign to Russian intelligence ..."
    "... Brennan used any Russian talking to a U.S. person as a reason to surveillance the U.S. person. Red scare...the century old excuse used by the FBI to illegally spy on Americans. The history books won't describe his actions as honorable ..."
    "... What was it that prompted Goldman (ie McCabe) to publish his latest article on the FBI Russia investigation? Answer: Barr's criticism's of the FBI. ..."
    "... CIA/FBI helping each other out. Informally of course. Standard off the books quid pro quo. ..."
    "... The F.B.I. received the information from the Australian government on July 26, 2016, the special counsel's report said, and the bureau code-named its investigation Crossfire Hurricane . ..."
    May 03, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Both the Washington Post and CNN - which breathlessly reported on their peers' anonymously-sourced anti-Trump propaganda for two years - have somehow failed to write a single article mentioning Azra Turk . As the Times revealed on Thursday, the FBI operative who went by the name Azra Turk repeatedly flirted with Trump aide George Papadopoulos during their encounters as well as in email exchanges according to an October, 2018 Daily Caller report, confirmed by the Times.

    While in London in 2016, Ms. Turk exchanged emails with Mr. Papadopoulos, saying meeting him had been the " highlight of my trip ," according to messages provided by Mr. Papadopoulos.

    " I am excited about what the future holds for us :), " she wrote. - New York Times

    And as the Times makes clear, "the FBI sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer" to investigate the Trump campaign. Verified account @ ByronYork May 2 Follow Follow @ ByronYork Following Following @ ByronYork Unfollow Unfollow @ ByronYork Blocked Blocked @ ByronYork Unblock Unblock @ ByronYork Pending Pending follow request from @ ByronYork Cancel Cancel your follow request to @ ByronYork More

    In his House testimony, George Papadopoulos described undercover FBI informant Stefan Halper introducing him to undercover FBI informant 'Azra Turk.' pic.twitter.com/8jO4lK6Ldt

    So I get there. I get to London. And he introduces -- or he does not introduce me to, but I can't remember exactly how I came into contact with his assistant, this young lady named Azra Turk, which I think is a fake name, by the way. My --

    Mr. Meadows. Why do you believe it's a fake name?

    Mr. Papadopoulos. Reading -- reading Twitter and people saying that Azra in Turkish means pure and then Turk. So unless she has the name of pure Turk. I don't know. Maybe that's -- those are common names in Turkey. I don't know. But it just seems that it was probably a fake alias.

    Another beautiful young lady -- you know, I had many young beautiful ladies coming into my life with Joseph Mifsud and now another professor. The professors liked to introduce me to young beautiful women.

    And we're sitting there, and she didn't strike me as a Cambridge associate at all. So right away, I was suspicious that there was something not right here. She -- her English was very bad. She spoke with -- I think she was a Turkish national, but she also might have been a dual American citizen. I'm not sure. And she took me to -- out for drinks in London and was probing me a lot.

    Meanwhile, a Russian-born academic falsely accused of being a Kremlin 'honeypot' operative against Mike Flynn, Svetlana Lokhova, has an interesting theory as to why the Times published the '2nd spy' revelation in the first place.

    Svetlana Lokhova ‏ @ RealSLokhova 8h 8 hours ago More

    I am a 'veteran' of reading Adam Goldman (NYT) articles about Halper's role with the FBI so here are pointers. You always have to ask: 1) Why did he write the article? 2) When did he write the article? 3) What is the narrative he is placing? 4) What has he left out? THREAD

    Svetlana Lokhova @RealSLokhova

    Follow ) v

    2/ You might remember that McCabe picked Goldman of all people to interview him about the use of 'Confidential Human Sources' in
    Operation Crossfire Hurricane - funny that!

    Andrew McCabe intervied by NYT's Adam Goldma...

    Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe discussed his career, the FBI, and his firing from the Bureau. He was interviewed by New York Times reporter Adam Go...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPYUWZ9AF0M

    4/ Goldman's (McCabe's) argument is that the President was a national security risk because he fired Comey. "Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president's own actions constituted a possible threat to national security."

    3 years and at least 33 million have been wasted in attempt to link Trump campaign to Russian intelligence. As I stated 2 years ago, I am not A Russian honeytrap for Gen Flynn.

    RG ‏ @ rgreader 15h 15 hours ago More

    Replying to @ RealSLokhova

    Brennan used any Russian talking to a U.S. person as a reason to surveillance the U.S. person. Red scare...the century old excuse used by the FBI to illegally spy on Americans. The history books won't describe his actions as honorable

    Svetlana Lokhova @RealSLokhova • 7h v

    7/ This is Goldman's implausible explanation for spying. The President is portrayed as nuts, nytimes.com/2018/05/18/us/...

    President Trump accused the without evidence, of planting a mole inside his campaign to undermine his presidential run. But the F.B.I. in fact dispatched a confidential informant to meet with Trump campaign advisers as it began its investigation into possible links between his campaign and Russia.

    8/ What was it that prompted Goldman (ie McCabe) to publish his latest article on the FBI Russia investigation? Answer: Barr's criticism's of the FBI.

    Barr: One of the things I want to look -- there are people -- many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single confidential informant and a FISA warrant. I would like to find out whether that is, in fact, true. It strikes me as a fairly anemic effort if that was the counterintelligence effort designed to stop the threat as it's being represented.

    9/ The message by NYT (McCabe) is that the FBI threw their best guys at this, hence sudden reference to Operation 'Ghost Stories'.

    10/ The main message is that the Russia investigation was legally predicated,

    CNN law enforcement analyst and retired FBI agent James A. Gagliano opined on Twitter that perhaps the Times was helping the intelligence community get out in front of the upcoming Inspector General report on the FBI's conduct during the 2016 election.

    James A. Gagliano @JamesAGagliano

    Must caveat with -- would have had to have been a "CERTIFIED" FBI Undercover Agent (UCA), who had passed the UCA course, been pre-screened (psychologicals) and been handpicked by FBI HQ for a high-profile overseas assignment. Also, Legat London would've assuredly coordinated w/MI5.

    James A. Gagliano @JamesAGagliano

    Unless it was foreign intelligence service supplying the "honey trap.'' Papadopoulos argued *Azra Turk* had thick accent -- which wouldn't preclude her from FBI service, if US citizen. Some argue Agency employee. Surmise, absent heavy redaction, pending IG report lays this bare.

    James A. Gagliano @JamesAGagliano

    MAYBE this is why @nytimes helped get out in front of the news cycle that will roil following IG report that may be released this month or next.

    Yog Soggoth , 1 hour ago link

    Papadapoulos was smart enough to get pictures of her with his phone ... Right?

    malek , 1 hour ago link

    Who is Azra Turk?

    RightLineBacker , 4 minutes ago link

    An FBI spy.

    Thought Processor , 1 hour ago link

    CIA/FBI helping each other out. Informally of course. Standard off the books quid pro quo.

    11b40 , 2 hours ago link

    As I understand it, the CIA is not supposed to be involved with spying on American citizens, but the FBI has wide ranging latitude. This article says she was presumed to be FBI, but Papadoploulos says he thinks she was CIA. So, it would be a graver offense if she was CIA and busy performing illegal spying activities on an American citizen.

    If I am fuzzy on this, maybe someone can clarify who knows the rules a little better.

    surf@jm , 2 hours ago link

    New York Slimes in collusion with the CIA and FBI deepstate.......

    No **** Sherlock...........

    my new username , 2 hours ago link

    Will she disappear like Mifsud...

    C.J. , 2 hours ago link

    MSM burying the truth? Well imagine my shock. I'm surprised the likes of CNN and Facebook are still trying to hide their ban on truth and just openly claim truth is hate speech.

    HideTheWeenie , 2 hours ago link

    If you work at the CIA, do you get "honeypot" privileges ?

    They must have a lot of downtime.

    Wonder if "honeypot" is a line item in the CIA budget and how they forecast that. Do their rates decline over time, maybe with an associated depletion account set up like for petroleum reserves. Lots of questions here.

    Northbridge , 4 hours ago link

    Here's a link to the actual article.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/us/politics/fbi-government-investigator-trump.html?searchResultPosition=1

    [quote]

    "Mr. Barr reignited the controversy last month when he told Congress , "I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal." He backed off the charged declaration later in the same hearing, saying: "I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated. And I'm not suggesting that it wasn't adequately predicated. But I need to explore that." "

    ......

    Mr. Barr again defended his use of the term "spying" at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, saying he wanted to know more about the F.B.I.'s investigative efforts during 2016 and explained that the early inquiry most likely went beyond the use of an informant and a court-authorized wiretap of a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, who had interacted with a Russian intelligence officer.

    .....

    Weeks before Mr. Papadopoulos met with Ms. Turk and Mr. Halper, the F.B.I. had opened its investigation into the Russia effort -- based largely on information that Mr. Papadopoulos had relayed to an Australian diplomat about a Russian offer to help the Trump campaign by releasing thousands of hacked Democratic emails.

    The F.B.I. received the information from the Australian government on July 26, 2016, the special counsel's report said, and the bureau code-named its investigation Crossfire Hurricane .

    Investigators scrambled to determine whether Mr. Papadopoulos had any Russian contacts while deciding to scrutinize three additional Trump campaign aides who had concerning ties to Russia: Paul Manafort, its chairman; Michael T. Flynn, who went on to be the president's first national security adviser; and Mr. Page.

    [/quote]

    AntiLeMaire , 4 hours ago link

    His response: "I'm just going to leave it right now as a 'government investigator.' I use that wording for a reason, and I'm going to leave it at that."

    Priceless!

    Not FBI, just a 'government investigator.' and "I use that wording for a reason," and people on Twitter all trying to solve that complicated puzzle ! LOL.

    [May 03, 2019] Halper introduced her as his "assistant", he should have no problem telling everybody where this lady who tried to seduce Papadopoulos is now

    May 03, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Cheap Chinese Crap , 16 minutes ago link

    There's a very easy way to pin this down. Since Halper introduced her as his "assistant", he should have no problem telling everybody where she is now.

    If he is unable to produce her or show any proof that she was his own assistant-- he's a spy. period.

    Real Estate Guru , 18 minutes ago link

    UPDATE:

    X-22 Report just out

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

    Rod Rosenstein is toast!! .....another one bites the dust!

    Rosenstein resigns yesterday...

    ... ... ..

    TRUMP confirms all of this on Hannity right here...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2-r0Y9bLwQ

    Q said tonight that this is the order of the tsunami of documents/testimony coming out in the next few days/weeks:

    1. AG BARR testifies in front of Congress on MAY 1,2
    2. The Comey Investigation is coming out in less than 14 days...indictments are coming
    3. The FISA declass comes out after that in May. This will take down Obama and everyone else
    4. The Horrowitz IG Report comes out right after that....it will be devastating to all the players in this mess

    ... ... ...

    Here is the lineup of what happened by the traitors in the coup

    • - Obama led everything from the White House. He spied on everyone
    • - Hillary Clinton was the financier through her fake foundation
    • - Brennan was the instigator
    • - Clapper and Comey were the leakers
    • - Christopher Steele and Glen Simpson were facilitators who created it all and fabricated the document with the Russians
    • - Comey and McCabe and Strozk and Page were driving the engine of this attempted coup on Trump

    ... ... ...

    -The democrats were involved in all of this...from Schiff to the rest of them in Congress.

    The FISA declass coming out Monday?...

    Hannity, Tucker, and Laura Ingrahm were all out on Friday. Something BIG is up, folks!!!

    Stay tuned...!!!

    Obama, Biden, and Hillary are TOAST!! OBAMA RAN THE WHOLE SHOW FROM THE WHITE HOUSE!!!!

    "IT'S HANGIN' TIME!!"

    " New Spygate Revelation: The Corruption Is Leading Right Back To The 'Scandal-Free' Obama White House!!"

    ObamaGate: No Misdemeanors, Only High Crimes

    Sens. Charles Grassley & Ron Johnson Release Letter to Attorney General William Barr, Demand Details About Investigation Into Obama's Illegal Spying on Trump Campaign [FULL LETTER]

    "Those that yell the loudest are the ones going down" -Q

    : Schiff, Waters, BRENNAN , Comey, Hillery, etc!!

    Here it is folks, for those who have not seen it...the full interview of Trump last night where Trump himself lays it all out. "When do birds sing? Springtime!" - Q

    That means right now!!

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/04/26/full_video_sean_hannity_interviews_trump_on_biden_russia_probe_fisa_abuse_comey.html

    These people are going to hang. The coup has been stopped. The deep state is surrounded. OUR BORDER IS BEING MANNED WITH OUR MILITARY EVEN AS YOU READ THIS! Trump is building the Wall! The entire thing is going to be seen on public TV this summer. Trump said you will see:

    The FISA declass...which will take down the House! That means Obama, Hillary, Comey, Lynch, Rosenstein, Biden, all of the perps who you already know in the FBI, Brennan , Clapper, McCabe, Mueller, the democrats, Waters, Schiff, Nadler, Swalowswell, Nadler, Pelosi, the lousy lying MSM...all of them! And lots more!

    Trump said he is going to declass everything! The FISA, AND A WHOLE LOT MORE!!!

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/04/26/full_video_sean_hannity_interviews_trump_on_biden_russia_probe_fisa_abuse_comey.html

    Everything! Trump is going after them, and they are surrounded. No place to hide, Hillary! No place to hide, Obama and all of your creeps. You are going to jail, or the hanging tree. One way or another, you are done!

    FISA declass.

    OIG Report Horrowitz.

    302's

    *HUGE COMEY REPORT COMING OUT IN TWO WEEKS! INDICTMENTS COMING!!- Prosecutor Joe Digenova! Leaking classified information to the press, lying to the FISA COURT!!

    Gang of 8 documents

    Documents and testimony from 53 closed door investigations.

    Senate Intel investigations

    House Intel investigations

    The AG Barr report

    Huber's leaking report and the 90,000 sealed indictments

    3 large prison barges are going back and forth from New York to Gitmo... WHY?

    Barr's testimony on March 1, 2 that will be a bombshell

    Q was right all along!

    The FISA court Judges have just turned over the documents showing that they were lied to by Comey, Rosenstein, etc.

    New Spygate Revelation: The Corruption Is Leading Right Back To The 'Scandal-Free' Obama White House

    Trump is closing every avenue of escape, money laundering, pedo stuff, criminal CEO's, politicians, etc.

    Trump has ALL of Hillary's emails, including those that Obama had

    Trump will declass 911, JFK, aliens, who Obama really is, his citizenship status of the country he was born in, everything!

    Trump has Wikileaks sources....; )) ...soon he will have Assange

    Trump has all of their communications....; )) ALL OF THEM!

    Obama had thousand of Hillary's emails (49,000) and ran the entire op from his office in the White House

    Hillary-"if Trump gets in we will all hang!", as she screamed at everybody on election night!

    Trump has the NSA and the other 17 intel orgs that nobody knows about that have everything.... ; )))

    Trump has it all! Trump also has clawed back $Trillions of stolen funds they took

    The dems will be retiring en masse soon...Trump will take back the House in 2020

    Court TV is coming back this summer. Hillary wanted that. Now you will be watching HER being indicted!

    The libtard morons are going to go berserk folks! The show is beginning officially as of last night. There is no place to hide for them. The MSM is in full meltdown and the perps are panicking all over the planet!

    *Bill Maher just turned on Adam Schiff....says "he is stalking Trump!"...

    *Washington Times reporter Bob Woodward says "the Steele Dossier is a bunch of garbage!"

    ... ... ...

    Proud-Christian-White-American-Man , 1 minute ago link

    Real Estate Guru: Great compilation of really bad news for the globalist traitors who sold the US out to the Chicoms and really good news for the Patriots!

    But beware cornered and desperate enemies

    They are the most vicious and unpredictable

    Great segment today on Infowars about being ready for war https://www.infowars.com/watch/?video=5ccb7b6ef9b2ae001264aedb

    The war on Zero Hedge against the Chicom trolls will soon go to the next level On a gut level the Steverino999's , his other screen names and the reset of the trolls know that when Patriots fully regain control of the US government it won't be pretty for them

    Yes, Real Estate Guru and other fellow Patriots it is wonderful to see the battle turning for liberty and against globalist chicom tyranny ( and their henchmen) but Please do not be complacent there is much yet to be done before these sewer rats are flushed away from body politic of the US

    Stand up for liberty!

    LEEPERMAX , 21 minutes ago link

    JOHN BRENNAN'S CIA WAS BEHIND EVERY MOVE IN THIS ATTEMPTED COUP

    (and everyone will soon know it)

    [May 03, 2019] The Obama administration for more than four years before the 2016 election allowed four contractors working for the FBI to illegally surveil American citizens

    Notable quotes:
    "... That report is going to be a bombshell. It is going to open up the investigation on a very high note, and there are going to be criminal referrals in it. ..."
    "... The FISA court abuse is the center of this entire abuse of governmental power, and the chief judge in that court has already ruled that the FBI broke the law and that the people at the head of the justice department, Sally Yates, John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security all knew about it and lied to the FISA court about it... ..."
    "... He [Rogers] discovered the illegal spying. He went personally to the FISA court and briefed the Chief Judge and worked with her for months to uncover the people who did it. The FISA court has already told the Justice Department who lied to that court and that has been given to [Attorney General] Bill Barr already. ..."
    May 01, 2019 | www.realclearpolitics.com

    It is about the rule of law and privacy. The Obama administration for more than four years before the 2016 election allowed four contractors working for the FBI to illegally surveil American citizens -- illegally. The FISA court has already found that. There is the Horowitz report coming out in May or possibly early June. There's another report that everyone has forgotten about involving James Comey alone. That will be out in two weeks. That report is going to be a bombshell. It is going to open up the investigation on a very high note, and there are going to be criminal referrals in it.

    The FISA court abuse is the center of this entire abuse of governmental power, and the chief judge in that court has already ruled that the FBI broke the law and that the people at the head of the justice department, Sally Yates, John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security all knew about it and lied to the FISA court about it...

    There's a hero in this story and it is not a lawyer. There is a hero. His name is Admiral Mike Rogers. He was the head of the National Security Agency.

    He [Rogers] discovered the illegal spying. He went personally to the FISA court and briefed the Chief Judge and worked with her for months to uncover the people who did it. The FISA court has already told the Justice Department who lied to that court and that has been given to [Attorney General] Bill Barr already.

    [May 03, 2019] These reporters and networks have been named in the WikiLeaks to have colluded with the DNC or Hillary campaign during the 2016 election cycle

    May 03, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    GUS100CORRINA , 23 minutes ago link

    There Was Spying: NYT Admits Obama Admin Used 'Honeypot' To Spy Against Trump Campaign In 2016

    My response: Why would the MSM want to get out in front of what is coming by issuing this news story? May be they are implicated as well! Below is the list of MSM career criminals who are facing the real possibility of jail time.

    === List of MSM Career Criminals Guilty of TREASON, SEDITION and/or SUBVERSIVE activities!! ===

    These reporters and networks have been named in the WikiLeaks to have colluded with the DNC or Hillary campaign during the 2016 election cycle:

    ABC – Cecilia Vega
    ABC - David Muir
    ABC – Diane Sawyer
    ABC – George Stephanoplous
    ABC – Jon Karl
    ABC – Liz Kreutz
    AP – Julie Pace
    AP – Ken Thomas
    AP – Lisa Lerer
    AURN – April Ryan
    Bloomberg – Jennifer Epstein
    Bloomberg – John Heillman
    Bloomberg/MSNBC – Jonathan Alter
    Bloomberg – Mark Halperin
    Buzzfeed – Ben Smith
    Buzzfeed – Ruby Cramer
    CBS – Gayle King
    CBS – John Dickerson
    CBS – Norah O'Donnell
    CBS – Steve Chagaris
    CBS – Vicki Gordon
    CNBC – John Harwood
    CNN – Brianna Keilar
    CNN – Dan Merica
    CNN – David Chailan
    CNN – Erin Burnett
    CNN – Gloria Borger
    CNN – Jake Tapper
    CNN – Jeff Zeleny
    CNN - Jeff Zucker
    CNN – John Berman
    CNN – Kate Bouldan
    CNN – Maria Cardona
    CNN – Mark Preston
    CNN – Sam Feist
    Daily Beast – Jackie Kucinich
    GPG – Mike Feldman
    HuffPo – Amanda Terkel
    HuffPo – Arianna Huffington
    HuffPo – Sam Stein
    HuffPo – Whitney Snyder
    LAT – Evan Handler
    LAT – Mike Memoli
    McClatchy – Anita Kumar
    MORE – Betsy Fisher Martin
    MSNBC – Alex Seitz-Wald
    MSNBC – Alex Wagner
    MSNBC – Andrea Mitchell
    MSNBC - Beth Fouhy
    MSNBC – Ed Schultz
    MSNBC – Joe Scarborough
    MSNBC – Mika Brzezinski
    MSNBC – Phil Griffin
    MSNBC – Rachel Maddow
    MSNBC – Rachel Racusen
    MSNBC – Thomas Roberts
    National Journal – Emily Schultheis
    NBC – Chuck Todd
    NBC – Mark Murray
    NBC – Savannah Gutherie
    New Yorker – David Remnick
    New Yorker – Ryan Liza
    NPR – Mike Oreskes
    NPR – Tamara Keith
    NY Post – Geofe Earl
    NYT – Amy Chozik
    NYT – Carolyn Ryan
    NYT – Gail Collins
    NYT – John Harwoodje
    NYT – Jonathan Martin
    NYT – Maggie Haberman
    NYT – Pat Healey
    PBS – Charlie Rose
    People – Sandra Sobieraj Westfall
    Politico – Annie Karni
    Politico – Gabe Debenedetti
    Politico – Glenn Thrush
    Politico – Kenneth Vogel
    Politico – Mike Allen
    Reuters – Amanda Becker
    Tina Brown – Tina Brown
    The Hill – Amie Parnes
    Univision – Maria-Elena Salinas
    Vice – Alyssa Mastramonoco
    Vox – Jon Allen
    WaPo – Anne Gearan
    WaPo – Greg Sargent
    WSJ – Laura Meckler
    WSJ – Peter Nicholas
    WSJ – Colleen McCain Nelson
    Yahoo – Matt Bai

    [May 02, 2019] Neoliberalism and the Globalization of War. America s Hegemonic Project by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Neoliberalism is an integral part of this foreign policy agenda. It constitutes an all encompassing mechanism of economic destabilization. Since the 1997 Asian crisis, the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment program (SAP) has evolved towards a broader framework which consists in ultimately undermining national governments' ability to formulate and implement national economic and social policies. ..."
    Jun 16, 2016 | www.globalresearch.ca

    Originally appeared at Globalresearch

    The world is at a dangerous crossroads. The United States and its allies have launched a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The US-NATO military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

    America's hegemonic project is to destabilize and destroy countries through acts of war, covert operations in support of terrorist organizations, regime change and economic warfare. The latter includes the imposition of deadly macro-economic reforms on indebted countries as well the manipulation of financial markets, the engineered collapse of national currencies, the privatization of State property, the imposition of economic sanctions, the triggering of inflation and black markets.

    The economic dimensions of this military agenda must be clearly understood. War and Globalization are intimately related. These military and intelligence operations are implemented alongside a process of economic and political destabilization targeting specific countries in all major regions of World.

    Neoliberalism is an integral part of this foreign policy agenda. It constitutes an all encompassing mechanism of economic destabilization. Since the 1997 Asian crisis, the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment program (SAP) has evolved towards a broader framework which consists in ultimately undermining national governments' ability to formulate and implement national economic and social policies.

    In turn, the demise of national sovereignty was also facilitated by the instatement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, evolving towards the global trading agreements (TTIP and TPP) which (if adopted) would essentially transfer state policy entirely into the hands of corporations. In recent years, neoliberalism has extend its grip from the so-called developing countries to the developed countries of both Eastern and Western Europe. Bankruptcy programs have been set in motion. Island, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, etc, have been the target of sweeping austerity measures coupled with the privatization of key sectors of the national economy.

    The global economic crisis is intimately related to America's hegemonic agenda. In the US and the EU, a spiralling defense budget backlashes on the civilian sectors of economic activity. "War is Good for Business": the powerful financial groups which routinely manipulate stock markets, currency and commodity markets, are also promoting the continuation and escalation of the Middle East war. A worldwide process of impoverishment is an integral part of the New World Order agenda.

    Beyond the Globalization of Poverty

    Historically, impoverishment of large sectors of the World population has been engineered through the imposition of IMF-style macro-economic reforms. Yet, in the course of the last 15 years, a new destructive phase has been set in motion. The World has moved beyond the "globalization of poverty": countries are transformed in open territories,

    State institutions collapse, schools and hospitals are closed down, the legal system disintegrates, borders are redefined, broad sectors of economic activity including agriculture and manufacturing are precipitated into bankruptcy, all of which ultimately leads to a process of social collapse, exclusion and destruction of human life including the outbreak of famines, the displacement of entire populations (refugee crisis).

    This "second stage" goes beyond the process of impoverishment instigated in the early 1980s by creditors and international financial institutions. In this regard, mass poverty resulting from macro-economic reform sets the stage of a process of outright destruction of human life.

    In turn, under conditions of widespread unemployment, the costs of labor in developing countries has plummeted. The driving force of the global economy is luxury consumption and the weapons industry.

    The New World Order

    Broadly speaking, the main corporate actors of the New World Order are

    • Wall Street and the Western banking conglomerates including its offshore money laundering facilities, tax havens, hedge funds and secret accounts,
    • the Military Industrial Complex regrouping major "defense contractors", security and mercenary companies, intelligence outfits, on contract to the Pentagon;
    • the Anglo-American Oil and Energy Giants,
    • The Biotech Conglomerates, which increasingly control agriculture and the food chain;
    • Big Pharma,
    • The Communication Giants and Media conglomerates, which constitute the propaganda arm of the New World Order.

    There is of course overlap, between Big Pharma and the Weapons industry, the oil conglomerates and Wall Street, etc.

    These various corporate entities interact with government bodies, international financial institutions, US intelligence. The state structure has evolved towards what Peter Dale Scott calls the "Deep State", integrated by covert intelligence bodies, think tanks, secret councils and consultative bodies, where important New World Order decisions are ultimately reached on behalf of powerful corporate interests.

    In turn, intelligence operatives increasingly permeate the United Nations including its specialized agencies, nongovernmental organizations, trade unions, political parties.

    What this means is that the executive and legislature constitute a smokescreen, a mechanism for providing political legitimacy to decisions taken by the corporate establishment behind closed doors.

    Media Propaganda

    The corporate media, which constitutes the propaganda arm of the New World Order, has a long history whereby intelligence ops oversee the news chain. In turn, the corporate media serves the useful purpose of obfuscating war crimes, of presenting a humanitarian narrative which upholds the legitimacy of politicians in high office.

    Acts of war and economic destabilization are granted legitimacy. War is presented as a peace-keeping undertaking.

    Both the global economy as well as the political fabric of Western capitalism have become criminalized. The judicial apparatus at a national level as well the various international human rights tribunals and criminal courts serve the useful function of upholding the legitimacy of US-NATO led wars and human rights violations.

    Destabilizing Competing Poles of Capitalist Development

    There are of course significant divisions and capitalist rivalry within the corporate establishment. In the post Cold War era, the US hegemonic project consists in destabilizing competing poles of capitalist development including China, Russia and Iran as well as countries such as India, Brazil and Argentina.

    In recent developments, the US has also exerted pressure on the capitalist structures of the member states of the European Union. Washington exerts influence in the election of heads of State including Germany and France, which are increasingly aligned with Washington.

    The monetary dimensions are crucial. The international financial system established under Bretton Woods prevails. The global financial apparatus is dollarized. The powers of money creation are used as a mechanism to appropriate real economy assets. Speculative financial trade has become an instrument of enrichment at the expense of the real economy. Excess corporate profits and multibillion dollar speculative earnings (deposited in tax free corporate charities) are also recycled towards the corporate control of politicians, civil society organizations, not to mention scientists and intellectuals. It's called corruption, co-optation, fraud.

    Latin America: The Transition towards a "Democratic Dictatorship"

    In Latin America, the military dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s have in large part been replaced by US proxy regimes, i.e. a democratic dictatorship has been installed which ensures continuity. At the same time the ruling elites in Latin America have remoulded. They have become increasingly integrated into the logic of global capitalism, requiring an acceptance of the US hegemonic project.

    Macro-economic reform has been conducive to the impoverishment of the entire Latin America region.

    In the course of the last 40 years, impoverishment has been triggered by hyperinflation, starting with the 1973 military coup in Chile and the devastating reforms of the 1980s and early 1990s.

    The implementation of these deadly economic reforms including sweeping privatization, trade deregulation, etc. is coordinated in liaison with US intelligence ops, including the "Dirty war" and Operation Condor, the Contra insurrection in Nicaragua, etc.

    The development of a new and privileged elite integrated into the structures of Western investment and consumerism has emerged. Regime change has been launched against a number of Latin American countries.

    Any attempt to introduce reforms which departs from the neoliberal consensus is the object of "dirty tricks" including acts of infiltration, smear campaigns, political assassinations, interference in national elections and covert operations to foment social divisions. This process inevitably requires corruption and cooptation at the highest levels of government as well as within the corporate and financial establishment. In some countries of the region it hinges on the criminalization of the state, the legitimacy of money laundering and the protection of the drug trade.

    The above text is an English summary of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky's Presentation, National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, May 17, 2016. This presentation took place following the granting of a Doctor Honoris Causa in Humanities to Professor Chossudovsky by the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN)

    [May 02, 2019] Checkmate - How President Trump s Legal Team Outfoxed Mueller by Will Chamberlain

    Highly recommended!
    May 02, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Will Chamberlain via HumanEvents.com,

    In June 2018, Bill Barr, then in private practice at Kirkland & Ellis, wrote a detailed legal memorandum to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. This memo came to light in December, when Barr was nominated for Attorney General.

    Reading Barr's June 2018 memo alongside the last twenty pages of the Mueller Report is a curious experience.

    Together, they read like dueling legal briefs on the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) ; the type of material one would expect to see from adversarial appellate litigators.

    So-why did Robert Mueller dedicate 20 pages of his report to a seemingly obscure question of statutory interpretation? Why did Bill Barr write a detailed legal memorandum to Rod Rosenstein about that very same statute?

    And how, exactly, did Bill Barr know that that § 1512(c)(2) was central to Mueller's obstruction theory – in June 2018, when he was still in private practice at Kirkland?

    After some consideration, I arrived at a theory that I believe answers these three questions, and others as well. For example – why was AG Jeff Sessions asked for his resignation the day after the midterms? Why was Bill Barr the only name ever seriously floated for AG? And is it merely a coincidence that six weeks after Barr's confirmation, the Mueller probe came to an end?

    ...

    This is a story about a legal chess match played for the highest stakes imaginable: Trump's Presidency – and whether it would be under the cloud of an endless special counsel investigation – hinged on the result.

    John Dowd, Ty Cobb, Jay Sekulow, and the rest of President Trump's personal legal team were on one side. Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, and the Special Counsel's office were on the other.

    The dispute was a year-long struggle over the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2).

    No judge ever ruled on who was right about the meaning of this obstruction statute. No formal decision was ever rendered.

    All the same, Trump's legal team prevailed on February 14, 2019.

    That's the day William Pelham Barr was confirmed as United States Attorney General.

    So why, exactly, was the interpretation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) so contested?

    Let's start by looking the statute, excerpted here:

    (c) Whoever corruptly --

    (1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or

    (2) otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so [is guilty of the crime of obstruction]. (Emphasis added).

    Why was this so important to Mueller?

    ...

    In hindsight, however, it's clear that Barr was the assassin Democrats feared.

    Within six weeks of his confirmation, the Mueller probe was over...

    Read the full story here...

    [May 01, 2019] Russians, Russians, Russians. Now under each bed

    May 01, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Asoka_The_Great , 4 minutes ago link

    Here is my take, on this entire Sh*tshow, running in Washington DC, for the last two years.

    1. All the evidences are pointing the most likely scenario that Donald Trump is a Manchurian Candidate ordered by the Kremelin to run for Office, in 2016.

    2. Then, Donald Trump COLLUDED with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service to win the Presidency of United States, with shocking easy.

    3. This was because Hitlery Clinton and Joe Biden , was bribed by Putin, through the Ukrainians, with hundred of millions of dollars, so she would purposely lose the "sure win" race, to a political nobody, Donald Trump.

    4. Then, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, produced the Steele Dossier, a political disinformation tool, in collaboration with Britain's Mi6 and CIA.

    5. Then the Russians leaked the COLLUSION story to the CIA controlled MSM such as New York Time, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, etc . . ., so they would predictably kicked a storm of controversy over the COLLUSION, and demand the DOJ to appoint a Special Prosecutor to initial an investigation.

    6. This diabolically devilish Special PsyOps by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has succeeded in tying up Washington DC, in a Sh*tshow, for the last two years, and divided the Country in bitter controversy.

    7. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and Chinese Communists' Intelligence Service have thoroughly infiltrated America's Department of Justice, FBI, and CIA, and NSA, and use their high levels agents, such as O'bomer, Hitlery, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Page, and rosenstein to stirred up this COLLUSION storm, to paralyze America's political system for as long as possible.

    In Summary, the entire sh*tshow is a production of a Special PsyOps by the Russkies and ChiComs' Intelligence Services. It has nothing to do with America's dysfunctional government, called DemoCrazy .

    [May 01, 2019] It is not amazing. That's about intelligence agencies control, nothing else.

    Notable quotes:
    "... Zero Percent of Elite Commentators Oppose Regime Change in Venezuela ..."
    "... It's so frustrating to see the current lunacy in the mainstream media, and the idiotocracy at work in Washington DC, regardless of political party or who's fat ass sits in the oval office. Tulsi Gabbard is about the only sane person in DC right now on foreign affairs - forget Sanders, Warren and 'regular guy' Joe Biden ..."
    May 01, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
    michaelj72 , Apr 30, 2019 5:51:12 PM | link

    michaelj72 , Apr 30, 2019 5:41:44 PM | link

    < somewhat surprising to me at first glance, but with a little further thought, as to be expected - the US media is corporate controlled, pro-militarism, pro-interventionism, pro-armaments sales, and totally pro-regime change - anywhere in the world. All editorialists are neo-colonialists and imperialists at heart, regardless of who occupies the white house>

    https://fair.org/home/zero-percent-of-elite-commentators-oppose-regime-change-in-venezuela/

    Zero Percent of Elite Commentators Oppose Regime Change in Venezuela

    A FAIR survey of US opinion journalism on Venezuela found no voices in elite corporate media that opposed regime change in that country. Over a three-month period (1/15/19 -- 4/15/19), zero opinion pieces in the New York Times and Washington Post took an anti -- regime change or pro-Maduro/Chavista position.

    Not a single commentator on the big three Sunday morning talkshows or PBS NewsHour came out against President Nicolás Maduro stepping down from the Venezuelan government.....

    Let's make a mess of Venezuela, you know, like the US has done across the middle east/north Africa since.... well since almost forever....

    It's so frustrating to see the current lunacy in the mainstream media, and the idiotocracy at work in Washington DC, regardless of political party or who's fat ass sits in the oval office. Tulsi Gabbard is about the only sane person in DC right now on foreign affairs - forget Sanders, Warren and 'regular guy' Joe Biden


    and as Lebanese geo-political commentator Sarah Abdallah at twitter https://twitter.com/sahouraxo
    correctly notes:


    US interventions in:

    #Iraq -> Millions killed and displaced + the rise of ISIS.

    #Libya -> Thousands killed, millions displaced + slave markets.

    #Syria -> Death and destruction + millions displaced.

    But sure, US intervention in #Venezuela sounds like a totally wonderful idea.

    Barovsky , Apr 30, 2019 5:57:04 PM | link

    There's a link to this doc in the libya360 link I posted earlier but here it is. It was written in May of 2018:

    https://libya360.wordpress.com/2018/05/13/masterstroke-the-us-plan-to-overthrow-the-venezuelan-government/

    Masterstroke: The US Plan to Overthrow the Venezuelan Government
    Posted by Internationalist 360° on May 13, 2018

    By Stella Calloni

    [May 01, 2019] India and Europe stopped buying iranian oil. 1 billion $ of iranian oil stays blocked in China, no one wants to touch it. Even Khamenei admitted that Europe left the JCPOA in practise.

    Notable quotes:
    "... The Empire is not weak, this is poor analysis. India and Europe stopped buying Iranian oil. 1 billion $ of Iranian oil stays blocked in China, no one wants to touch it. Even Khamenei admitted that Europe left the JCPOA in practice. ..."
    "... Iran is in deep recession. Venezuela is in deep recession and is surrounded. ..."
    "... Iraq? US troops are staying there. Syria? US troops are staying there long term. 1 third of the country containing the biggest oil fields is under US control. There is fuel shortage crisis due to sanctions. Europe is not stopping its sanctions either. ..."
    May 01, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Passer by , May 1, 2019 8:19:31 PM | link

    "The Empire only appears to be strong. In reality it is weak, confused, clueless"

    The Empire is not weak, this is poor analysis. India and Europe stopped buying Iranian oil. 1 billion $ of Iranian oil stays blocked in China, no one wants to touch it. Even Khamenei admitted that Europe left the JCPOA in practice.

    Iran is in deep recession. Venezuela is in deep recession and is surrounded. Almost all of Latin America now has pro-US governments. CIA linked Bolsonaro took over in Brazil. Turkey is in deep recession and Erdogan lost the big cities.

    India is moving closer to the US. Europe remains a vassal. Russian economic growth is weak. The US won the trade war against China as Andrei Martyanov himself admitted.

    Iraq? US troops are staying there. Syria? US troops are staying there long term. 1 third of the country containing the biggest oil fields is under US control. There is fuel shortage crisis due to sanctions. Europe is not stopping its sanctions either.

    There is no doubt that they will be weaker in the future, but they will fight hard to stop this and gain time.

    [May 01, 2019] Russians, Russians, Russians. Now under each bed

    May 01, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Asoka_The_Great , 4 minutes ago link

    Here is my take, on this entire Sh*tshow, running in Washington DC, for the last two years.

    1. All the evidences are pointing the most likely scenario that Donald Trump is a Manchurian Candidate ordered by the Kremelin to run for Office, in 2016.

    2. Then, Donald Trump COLLUDED with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service to win the Presidency of United States, with shocking easy.

    3. This was because Hitlery Clinton and Joe Biden , was bribed by Putin, through the Ukrainians, with hundred of millions of dollars, so she would purposely lose the "sure win" race, to a political nobody, Donald Trump.

    4. Then, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, produced the Steele Dossier, a political disinformation tool, in collaboration with Britain's Mi6 and CIA.

    5. Then the Russians leaked the COLLUSION story to the CIA controlled MSM such as New York Time, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, etc . . ., so they would predictably kicked a storm of controversy over the COLLUSION, and demand the DOJ to appoint a Special Prosecutor to initial an investigation.

    6. This diabolically devilish Special PsyOps by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has succeeded in tying up Washington DC, in a Sh*tshow, for the last two years, and divided the Country in bitter controversy.

    7. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and Chinese Communists' Intelligence Service have thoroughly infiltrated America's Department of Justice, FBI, and CIA, and NSA, and use their high levels agents, such as O'bomer, Hitlery, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Page, and rosenstein to stirred up this COLLUSION storm, to paralyze America's political system for as long as possible.

    In Summary, the entire sh*tshow is a production of a Special PsyOps by the Russkies and ChiComs' Intelligence Services. It has nothing to do with America's dysfunctional government, called DemoCrazy .

    [Apr 30, 2019] Fake News Media Suffers Body Blow on Case Linked to Seth Rich by Larry Johnson

    Notable quotes:
    "... Does anybody know where the video of Malia Zimmerman interviewing Rod Wheeler can be found. My memory is that Zimmerman said her own independent source confirmed that the FBI knew Seth Rich had contacted WikiLeaks. But after the controversy exploded the video disappeared from YouTube and the Internet. ..."
    "... Particularly as it seems likely that Rich wanted money, it would seem quite possible that negotiations with Assange started some time prior to the exfiltration of the material, which looks as though it happened in late May 2016; ..."
    "... It would also be possible that Rich was not identified until very late in the day – indeed, his identification could even have followed the calling in of the laptops on June 10. ..."
    "... Since Craig Murray received in person the DNC and Podesta files from an "intermediary" in the woods adjoining American University in Washington D.C., establishing the date or dates of Murray's trip could help establish the timeframe proposed above. ..."
    "... I personally find it very hard to believe the Arkancide theory. But very easy to believe that the DNC leaks were from an annoyed Bernie supporter like Rich. After all, the content of the leaks showed that there really was a lot of finky poo going on at the DNC with the Clinton campaign to be unfair to Bernie. ..."
    Apr 30, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    ... ... ...

    The Judge then proceeds to give Folkenflik and NPR an ass whooping:

    Evaluating the August 1 Report as a whole, the Court finds because of material additions and misleading juxtapositions, an objectively reasonable reader could conclude the report mischaracterized Plaintiff's role in the Seth Rich investigation and "thereby cast more suspicion on [Plaintiff's] actions than an accurate account would have warranted."24 Turner, 38 S.W. 3d at 119 ("But by omitting key facts and falsely juxtaposing others, the broadcast's misleading account cast more suspicion on Turner's conduct than a substantially true account would have done. Thus, it was both false and defamatory."). The August 1 Report as a whole is reasonably capable of a defamatory meaning because it goes "beyond merely reporting materially true facts." White, 909 F.2d at 521. . . .

    Folkenflik implied Plaintiff fabricated the story about Seth Rich and WikiLeaks. The Court agrees, especially when read in context with the rest of the statements contained in the August 1 Report. . . .

    The Court finds the August 1 Report, as a whole, can be reasonably understood as stating the meaning Plaintiff proposes and is capable of defamatory meaning. . . .

    The Court finds Folkenflik's statements in the Mediaite Interview, as a whole, can be reasonably understood as stating the meaning Plaintiff proposes and are capable of defamatory meaning.

    The August 7 Report contains three alleged defamatory statements: (1) Fox News had a "role" in "concocting a baseless story" on the death of Seth Rich; (2) Fox was involved in a "journalistic scandal" over the story; and (3) Fox "concocted" the story "in order to help President Trump." Unlike the other reports discussed above, Plaintiff is not mentioned in the August 7 Report. According to the Complaint, the August 7 Report, "[r]ead together with the [August 1 Report], the overall tenor and context of Folkenlik's messages was that Butowsky lied, was dishonest, and aided, abetted and actively participated in a fraudulent journalistic scandal." Docket Entry # 1 at 36, n. 12.

    According to Plaintiff, the overall "gist" is that Fox News and Plaintiff worked together, each playing a "role," to "concoct" a "baseless story" that resulted in a journalistic "scandal." Docket Entry # 32 at 24. At this stage of the proceedings, accepting the allegations in the Complaint as true, the Court finds the August 7 Report can be reasonably understood as stating the meaning Plaintiff proposes.

    . . . .According to Plaintiff, Folkenflik's statement, explicitly or by implication, accuses him of engaging in "activities" that caused harm to the Rich Family and that Plaintiff lacked empathy and understanding that his actions "affected" the Riches. The Court finds the August 16 Report, considered as a whole, can be reasonably understood as stating the meaning Plaintiff proposes and is capable of defamatory meaning .

    . . . . Plaintiff asserts the word "player" carries a very heavy negative connotation and "highlights Folkenflik's malicious agenda and extreme bias." Docket Entry # 32 at 26. The Court finds the September 15 Report, as a whole, can be reasonably understood as stating the meaning Plaintiff proposes and is capable of defamatory meaning.

    In sum, the Court finds Plaintiff has alleged the gist of the reports can be reasonably understood as stating the meaning Plaintiff proposes. Because the reports are "reasonably capable" of communicating the meaning Plaintiff proposes, the next question is whether that meaning is "reasonably capable" of defaming Plaintiff. Tatum, 554 S.W.3d at 637. The Court concludes it is, as discussed further below on actual malice.28

    Boys and girls, this is a Shaquille O'Neal equivalent of a slam dunk. I am sure that the NPR lawyers will continue to try to escape this judgment. Odds are they will fail. When that happens, they will be ready to sit down and negotiate a settlement to make this case go away.

    Folkenflick is a hack. A partisan hack. Karma is a bitch and Folkenflik is likely to get bitch slapped in a big way. Instead of reporting the story straight up, he opted for a propaganda hit job. He is unworthy of the title, journalist.

    akaPatience , 30 April 2019 at 12:02 AM

    Seth Rich's parents sued FOX over Zimmerman's report (which was later retracted) but the suit was dismissed in its entirety. Wheeler's suit against FOX, Butowsky and Zimmerman (who he claimed misquoted him about the Rich-Wikileaks link) was also dismissed mainly because of the other interview he gave to local FOX5 DC in which he also claimed a Rich-Wikileaks link.

    I wonder what evidence Wheeler gathered on his own to make him initially suggest a link between Seth Rich and Wikileaks - and a DC coverup of his murder - only to eventually backpedal? Does anyone know? Zimmerman's [retracted] report said "multiple sources" linked Rich to Wikileaks.

    Ken , 30 April 2019 at 12:18 AM
    Does anybody know where the video of Malia Zimmerman interviewing Rod Wheeler can be found. My memory is that Zimmerman said her own independent source confirmed that the FBI knew Seth Rich had contacted WikiLeaks. But after the controversy exploded the video disappeared from YouTube and the Internet.
    Larry Johnson -> Ken... , 30 April 2019 at 12:22 AM
    I know who Malia talked to. She was right. The FBI knew Seth contacted Assange.
    Ken said in reply to Larry Johnson ... , 30 April 2019 at 12:59 AM
    Larry,

    Are the actual court documents online? If so please provide a link. Also if you come across the video of the interview with Wheeler, please share it. By the way, you got a shoutout in NJ's largest newspaper from Star Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine recently.

    https://www.nj.com/opinion/2019/04/they-cant-always-get-what-they-want-democrats-reaction-to-the-crossfire-hurricane-probe-could-drown-their-chances-in-2020-mulshine.html

    I enjoy your work. Thanks

    Larry Johnson , 30 April 2019 at 01:32 AM
    The doc is on Pacer. It requires a subscription.
    Ken said in reply to Larry Johnson ... , 30 April 2019 at 03:00 AM
    Thank you. I didn't mean to make you do so much work. I really appreciate it.
    English Outsider -> Larry Johnson ... , 30 April 2019 at 06:25 AM
    Thank you for this and your previous work. So lucid that even an outsider can follow it.

    What with this and a few other bits and pieces seems the swamp went a bit mad in 2016. Or is it always like this and the 2016 upheaval just left a few more loose threads hanging than normal?

    Christian J Chuba , 30 April 2019 at 07:34 AM
    Regarding Sean Hannity, can't stand watching him because he has a knack for memorizing talking points and then robotically repeat them word for word. For example, he always refers to the Steele dossier as the 'dirty fake Russian dossier from Vladimir Putin'.

    He's trying to make Trump sound like the victim of Russia which is clever but not honest. The only link to Russia is that one of Steele's alleged sources was Russian while others were likely Ukrainian. If he wants to attribute a conspiracy to it, definitely the DNC, elements in the U.K. govt HRC, and definitely Ukraine had a preference for HRC.

    David Habakkuk , 30 April 2019 at 10:10 AM
    Larry,

    That is fascinating, and heartening. I was aware of the case that Butowsky had brought against CNN, the NYT and the lawyers for the Rich family, not of that he bought against David Folkenflik and his NPR colleagues.

    If indeed as many of us suspected the FBI knew that Rich had contacted Assange, this leads one back naturally to some matters concerned with the timeline of the identification of the DNC leaks, and Rich's role in them, which have been puzzling me.

    In affairs like this, it is very easy to connect dots and form a pattern which looks plausible but turns out completely wrong. With the proviso that I may be doing precisely that, let me set out some dots and ways they might be fitted together.

    1. It has long seemed to me that it would have been very much easier to identify materials coming in to Assange and WikiLeaks rather than materials coming out of the DNC. If in fact this was how the exfiltration was originally identified, then it would be quite likely that GCHQ and/or MI6 would have been centrally involved. (This of course does not mean that the NSA and employees of the CIA or indeed FBI were not also involved: a lot of people would have had strong reasons to collude, and indeed increasingly indeed have come to seem to have been living more or less in each other's pockets);

    2. Particularly as it seems likely that Rich wanted money, it would seem quite possible that negotiations with Assange started some time prior to the exfiltration of the material, which looks as though it happened in late May 2016;

    3. If one assumes that Rich was aware of the intense surveillance on WikiLeaks, one would think it likely that he would have contacted Assange in a manner designed to ensure that his identity was protected, in so far as this was feasible. This could possibly have involved not making it known, at the outset, to Assange, although presumably it would have had to be revealed at some relatively early point. One would further tend to assume that it would have been a priority to set up channels of communication which, as far as could be managed, were secure. Doing so could have involved the use of intermediaries, and measures to disguise the identity of Rich.

    4. Quite clearly, if indeed there was a serious effort to maintain secrecy, it was penetrated. But it would be possible that the penetration was gradual and piecemeal. At the outset, it might not even have been clear whether what was at issue was a leak or a hack. It would not be surprising if intense effort had gone into identifying past hacking attempts, unsuccessful and successful. And indeed, it would seem eminently possible that attempts were identified that could have been instigated by Russian intelligence agencies. These, however, would also have involved elaborate measures to conceal responsibility – not crude fabrications that would only take in 'retards', like the 'Guccifer 2.0' materials.

    5. It would also be possible that Rich was not identified until very late in the day – indeed, his identification could even have followed the calling in of the laptops on June 10.

    Such a reconstruction could account for the fact that both the claims by Alperovitch and the former GCHQ person Matt Tait, and the 'Guccifer 2.0' farrago, show every sign of having been concocted in panic haste, as also do the early memoranda in the dossier attributed to Steele. If those involved had not known what was actually going on until late in the day, that might have added to the difficulties of planning stories to cover it up. It might also help explain the bizarre inconsistencies and improbabilities in the claims about the investigation carried out by Alperovitch and CrowdStrike.

    6. Of course, an alternative possibility is that Rich was either too naive to anticipate that he would be identified, or did not think it would matter. It would hardly have been so very surprising if he had not contemplated the possibility that the result of his involvement would be his murder, and part of the point of the negotiations about money could have been to ensure that he could afford to disregard any employment consequences.

    Be all that may, it does seem to me that it would be helpful, in relation to fitting other events into a coherent timeline, to have some idea as to the earliest and latest dates at which the exfiltration could have been identified, and the earliest and latest dates at which Rich could have been identified as the figure responsible.

    Ligurio said in reply to David Habakkuk ... , 30 April 2019 at 12:08 PM
    Since Craig Murray received in person the DNC and Podesta files from an "intermediary" in the woods adjoining American University in Washington D.C., establishing the date or dates of Murray's trip could help establish the timeframe proposed above.

    "Murray said he retrieved the package from a source during a clandestine meeting in a wooded area near American University, in northwest D.C. He said the individual he met with was not the original person who obtained the information but an intermediary.'"

    http://theduran.com/clinton-leaks-given-craig-murray-washington-insider-clandestine-meeting-former-british-ambassador-claims/

    Anonymous , 30 April 2019 at 12:08 PM
    If Rich did the leak, that doesn't mean he was killed for it. They are separate events, each with their own possibilities.

    I personally find it very hard to believe the Arkancide theory. But very easy to believe that the DNC leaks were from an annoyed Bernie supporter like Rich. After all, the content of the leaks showed that there really was a lot of finky poo going on at the DNC with the Clinton campaign to be unfair to Bernie.

    [Apr 29, 2019] The Mueller Report Indicts the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theory by Aaron Maté

    Highly recommended!
    "Russiagate without Russia" actually means "Isrealgate". This individual points that he mentions below does not matter. Russiagate was a carefully planned and brilliantly executed false flag operation run by intelligences agencies (with GB agencies playing an important in some episodes decisive role) and headed probably by Obama himself via Brennan. There were two goals: (1) to exclude any possibility of detente with Russia and (2) to block any Trump attempts to change the USA foreign policy including running foreign war that enrich Pentagon contractors and justify supersized budget for intelligence agencies. As such is was a great success.
    The fact that no American was indicted and that Mueller attempt to prosecute Russian marketing agneces failed does not matter. The atmosphere is now posoned for a generation. Americans are brainwashed and residue of Russiagate will stay for a long, long time. Neocons Bolton and Pompeo now run Trump administration foreign policy with Trump performing most ceremonial role in foreign policy domain.
    In this sense Skripals poisoning was another false flag operation, which was the logical continuation of Russiagate. And Magnitsky killing (with Browder now a primary suspect) was a precursor to it. Both were run from Great Britain.
    It is actually interesting how Mueller report swiped under the carpet the role of Great Britain in unleashing the Russiagate hysteria.
    Two important foreign forces in the 2016 US Presidential elections was the Israel lobby and Great Britain. Trump proved to be a marionette not of Russia but of Israeli lobby. so sad...
    Notable quotes:
    "... Mueller's report does answer that question: There were effectively no "Kremlin intermediaries." The report contains no evidence that anyone from the Trump campaign spoke to a Kremlin representative during the election, aside from conversations with the Russian ambassador and a press-office assistant, both of whom were ruled out as having participated in a conspiracy (more on them later). ..."
    Mar 26, 2019 | outline.com

    For more than two years, leading US political and media voices promoted a narrative that Donald Trump conspired with or was compromised by the Kremlin, and that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would prove it. In the process, they overlooked countervailing evidence and diverted anti-Trump energies into fervent speculation and prolonged anticipation. So long as Mueller was on the case, it was possible to believe that " The Walls Are Closing In " on the traitor / puppet / asset in the White House .

    The long-awaited completion of Mueller's probe, and the release of his redacted report, reveals this narrative -- and the expectations it fueled -- to be unfounded. No American was indicted for conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Mueller's report does lay out extensive evidence that Trump sought to impede the investigation, but it declines to issue a verdict on obstruction. It presents no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with an alleged effort by the Russian government to defeat Hillary Clinton, and instead renders this conclusion: "Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the [Trump] Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities." As a result, Mueller's report provides the opposite of what Russiagate promoters led their audiences to expect: Rather than detailing a sinister collusion plot with Russia, it presents what amounts to an extended indictment of the conspiracy theory itself.

    1. Russiagate Without Russia

    The most fundamental element of a conspiracy is contact between the two parties doing the conspiring. Hence, on the eve of the report's release, The New York Times noted that among the "outstanding questions" that Mueller would answer were the nature of "contacts between Kremlin intermediaries and the Trump campaign."

    Mueller's report does answer that question: There were effectively no "Kremlin intermediaries." The report contains no evidence that anyone from the Trump campaign spoke to a Kremlin representative during the election, aside from conversations with the Russian ambassador and a press-office assistant, both of whom were ruled out as having participated in a conspiracy (more on them later).

    It should be no surprise, then, to learn from Mueller that, when "Russian government officials and prominent Russian businessmen began trying to make inroads into the new administration" after Trump's election victory, they did not know whom to call. These powerful Russians, Mueller noted, "appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect." If top Russians did not have "preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with" the people that they supposedly conspired with, perhaps that is because they did not actually conspire.

    To borrow a phrase from Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen, when it comes to the core question of contacts between Trump and the Russian government, we are left with a "Russiagate without Russia." Instead we have a series of interactions where Trump associates speak with Russian nationals, people with ties to Russian nationals, or people who claim to have ties to the Russian government. But none of these "links," "ties," or associations ever entail a member of the Trump campaign interacting with a Kremlin intermediary. Russiagate promoters have nonetheless fueled a dogged media effort to track every known instance in which someone in Trump's orbit interacted with " the Russians ," or someone who can be linked to them . There is nothing illegal or inherently suspect about speaking to a Russian national -- but there is something xenophobic about implying as much.

    2. Russiagate's Predicate Led Nowhere

    The most glaring absence of a Kremlin intermediary comes in the case that ostensibly prompted the entire Trump-Russia investigation. During an April 2016 meeting in Rome, a London-based professor named Joseph Mifsud reportedly informed Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos that "the Russians" had obtained "thousands of emails" containing "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. That information made its way to the FBI, which used it as a pretext to open the "Crossfire Hurricane" probe on July 31, 2016. Papadopoulos was later indicted for lying to FBI agents about the timing of his contacts with Mifsud. The case stoked speculation that Papadopoulos acted as an intermediary between Trump and Russia .

    But Papadopoulos played no such role. And while the Mueller report says that Papadopoulos "understood Mifsud to have substantial connections to high-level Russian government officials," it never asserts that Mifsud actuall y had those connections. Since Mifsud's suspected Russian connections were the purported predicate for the FBI's initial Trump-Russia investigation, that is a conspicuous non-call. Another is the revelation from Mueller that Mifsud made false statements to FBI investigators when they interviewed him in February 2017 -- but yet, unlike Papadopoulos, Mifsud was not indicted. Thus, even the interaction that sparked the Russia-collusion probe did not reveal collusion.

    3. Sergey Kislyak Had "Brief and Non-Substantive" Interactions With the Trump Camp

    Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak's conversations with Trump campaign officials and associates during and after the 2016 election were the focus of intense controversy and speculation, leading to the recusal of Jeff Sessions, then attorney general, and to the indictment of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

    After an exhaustive review, Mueller concluded that Kislyak's interactions with Trump campaign officials at public events "were brief, public, and non-substantive." As for Kislyak's much – ballyhooed meeting which Sessions in September 2016, Mueller saw no reason to dispute that it "included any more than a passing mention of the presidential campaign." When Kislyak spoke with other Trump aides after the August 2016 Republican National Convention, Mueller "did not identify evidence in those interactions of coordination between the Campaign and the Russian government."

    The same goes for Kislyak's post-election conversations with Flynn. Mueller indicted Flynn for making "false statements and omissions" in an interview with the FBI about his contacts with Kislyak during the transition in December 2016. The prevailing supposition was that Flynn lied in order to hide from the FBI an election-related payoff or " quid pro quo " with the Kremlin. The report punctures that thesis by reaffirming the facts in Flynn's indictment: What Flynn hid from agents was that he had "called Kislyak to request Russian restraint" in response to sanctions imposed by the outgoing Obama administration, and that Kislyak had agreed. Mueller ruled out the possibility that Flynn could have implicated Trump in anything criminal by noting the absence of evidence that Flynn "possessed information damaging to the President that would give the President a personal incentive to end the FBI's inquiry into Flynn's conduct."

    4. Trump Tower Moscow Had No Help From Moscow

    The November 2018 indictment of Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was widely seen as damning, possibly impeachment-worthy, for Trump. Cohen admitted to giving false written answers to Congress in a bid to downplay Trump's personal knowledge of his company's failed effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. To proponents of the collusion theory, Cohen's admitted lies were proof that " Trump is compromised by Russia ," " full stop ."

    But the Mueller report does not show any such compromise, and, in fact, shows there to be no Trump-Kremlin relationship. Cohen, the report notes, "requested [Kremlin] assistance in moving the project forward, both in securing land to build the project and with financing." The request was evidently rejected. Elena Poliakova, the personal assistant to Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, spoke with Cohen by phone after he e-mailed her office for help. After their 20-minute call, the report says, "Cohen could not recall any direct follow-up from Poliakova or from any other representative of the Russian government, nor did the [Special Counsel's] Office identify any evidence of direct follow-up."

    5. and Trump Didn't Ask Cohen to Lie About It

    The Mueller report not only dispels the notion that Trump had secret dealings with the Kremlin over Trump Tower Moscow; it also rejects a related impeachment-level "bombshell." In January, BuzzFeed News reported that Mueller had evidence that Trump "directed" Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow project. But according to Mueller, "the evidence available to us does not establish that the President directed or aided Cohen's false testimony," and that Cohen himself testified "that he and the President did not explicitly discuss whether Cohen's testimony about the Trump Tower Moscow project would be or was false." In a de-facto retraction, BuzzFeed updated its story with an acknowledgment of Mueller's conclusion .

    6. The Trump Tower Meeting Really Was Just a "Waste of Time"

    The June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower was widely dubbed the " Smoking Gun ." An e-mail chain showed that Donald Trump Jr. welcomed an offer to accept compromising information about Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." But the pitch did not come from the meeting's Russian participants, but instead from Rob Goldstone, a British music publicist acting on their behalf. Goldstone said that he invented "publicist puff" to secure the meeting, because in reality, as he told NPR , "I had no idea what I was talking about."

    Mueller noted that Trump Jr.'s response "showed that the Campaign anticipated receiving information from Russia that could assist candidate Trump's electoral prospects, but the Russian lawyer's presentation did not provide such information [emphasis mine]." The report further recounts that during the meeting Jared Kushner texted then-Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort that it was a "waste of time," and requested that his assistants "call him to give him an excuse to leave." Accordingly, when "Veselnitskaya made additional efforts to follow up on the meeting," after the election, "the Trump Transition Team did not engage."

    7. Manafort Did Not Share Polling Data to Meddle in the US Election

    In January, Mueller accused Manafort of lying to investigators about several matters, including sharing Trump polling data and discussing a Ukraine peace plan with a Ukrainian-Russian colleague, Konstantin Kilimnik, during the 2016 campaign. According to Mueller, the FBI "assesses" that Kilimnik has unspecified "ties to Russian intelligence." To collusion proponents, the revelation was dubbed " the closest we've seen yet to real, live, actual collusion " and even the " Russian collusion smoking gun ."

    Mueller, of course, reached a different conclusion: He "did not identify evidence of a connection between Manafort's sharing polling data and Russia's interference in the election," and, moreover, "did not establish that Manafort otherwise coordinated with the Russian government on its election-interference efforts." Mueller noted that he "could not reliably determine Manafort's purpose in sharing" the polling data, but also acknowledged (and bolstered) the explanation of his star witness, Rick Gates, that Manafort was motivated by proving his financial value to former and future clients.

    Mueller also gave us new reasons to doubt the assertions that Kilimnik himself is a Russian intelligence asset or spy. First, Mueller did not join media pundits in asserting such about Kilimnik. Second, to support his vague contention that Kilimnik has, according to the FBI, "ties to Russian intelligence," Mueller offered up a list of " pieces of the Office's Evidence" that contains no direct evidence. For his part, Kilimnik has repeatedly stated that he has no such ties, and recently told The Washington Post that Mueller never attempted to interview him.

    8. The Steele Dossier Was Fiction

    The Steele dossier -- a collection of Democratic National Committee-funded opposition research alleging a high-level Trump-Russia criminal relationship -- played a critical role in the Russiagate saga. The FBI relied on it for leads and evidentiary material in its investigation of the Trump campaign ties to Russia, and prominent politicians , pundits , and media outlets promoted it as credible .

    The Mueller report, The New York Times noted last week , has "underscored what had grown clearer for months some of the most sensational claims in the dossier appeared to be false, and others were impossible to prove." Steele reported that low-level Trump aide Carter Page was offered a 19 percent stake in the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft if he could get Trump to lift Western sanctions. In October 2016 the FBI, citing the Steele dossier, told the FISA court that it "believes that [Russia's] efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with" the Trump campaign. The Mueller report, however, could "not establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election."

    The Steele dossier claimed that Michael Cohen visited Prague to meet Russian agents in the summer of 2016. In April 2018, McClatchy reported to much fanfare that Mueller's team "has evidence" that placed Cohen in Prague during the period in question. Cohen later denied the claim under oath, and Mueller agreed, noting that Cohen "never traveled to Prague."

    After reports emerged in August 2016 that the Trump campaign had rejected an amendment to the Republican National Committee platform that called for arming Ukraine, Steele claimed that it was the result of a quid pro quo. The Mueller report "did not establish that" the rejection of the Ukraine amendment was "undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia."

    9. The Trump Campaign Had No Secret Channel to WikiLeaks

    In January, veteran Republican operative and conspiracy theorist Roger Stone caused a stir when he was indicted for lying to Congress about his efforts to make contact with WikiLeaks. But Mueller's indictment actually showed that Stone had no communications with WikiLeaks before the election and no privileged information about its releases . Most significantly, it revealed that Trump officials were trying to learn about the WikiLeaks releases through Stone -- a fact that underscored that the Trump campaign neither worked with WikiLeaks nor had advance knowledge of its e-mail dumps.

    Mueller's final report does nothing to alter that picture. Its sections on Stone are heavily redacted, owing to Stone's pending trial. But they do make clear that Mueller conducted an extensive search to establish a tie between WikiLeaks, the Trump campaign, and Stone -- and came up empty. New reporting from The Washington Post underscores just how far their farcical efforts went. The Mueller team devoted time and energy to determine whether far-right conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, best known for promoting the false claim that Barack Obama was born outside the United States, served as a link between Stone and WikiLeaks. Mueller's prosecutors "spent weeks coaxing, cajoling and admonishing the conspiracy theorist, as they pressed him to stick to facts and not reconstruct stories," the Post reports. "At times, they had debated the nature of memory itself." It is unsurprising that this led Mueller's prosecutors to ultimately declare, according to Corsi's attorney, "We can't use any of this."

    10. There Was No Cover-Up

    The Mueller report does not just dispel the conspiracy theories that have engulfed political and media circles for two years; it puts to rest the most popular, recent one: that Attorney General William Barr engaged in a cover-up . According to the dominant narrative, Barr was somehow concealing Mueller's damning evidence , while Mueller, even more improbably, stayed silent.

    One could argue that Barr's summary downplays the obstruction findings, though it accurately relays that Mueller's report does "not exonerate" Trump. It was Mueller's decision to leave the verdict on obstruction to Barr and make clear that if Congress disagrees, it has the power to indict Trump on its own. Mueller's office assisted with Barr's redactions, which proved to be, as Barr had pledged, extremely limited. Despite containing numerous embarrassing details about Trump, no executive privilege was invoked to censor the report's contents.

    In the end, Mueller's report shows that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative embraced and evangelized by the US political and media establishments to be a work of fiction . The American public was presented with a far different picture from what was expected, because leading pundits, outlets, and politicians ignored the countervailing facts and promoted maximalist interpretations of others. Anonymous officials also leaked explosive yet uncorroborated claims, leaving behind many stories that were subsequently discredited, retracted, or remain unconfirmed to this day.

    It is too early to assess the damage that influential Russiagate promoters have done to their own reputations; to public confidence in our democratic system and media; and to the prospects of defeating Trump, who always stood to benefit if the all-consuming conspiracy theory ultimately collapsed. The scale of the wreckage, confirmed by Mueller's report, may prove to be the ultimate Russiagate scandal.

    [Apr 29, 2019] DiGenova Destroys Media's Reckless Promotion Of Trump Tower Meeting As Crime

    Apr 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Leading up to the Mueller report, one of the long-promised "gotchas" peddled by the anti-Trump media is that that Donald Trump Jr. would be indicted over a June 9, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with Russian representatives who promised negative information on Hillary Clinton.

    Keep in mind, the Russian attorney who sought the discussion - Natalia Veselnitskaya - met with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson before and after the Trump Tower meeting. Fusion was hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to produce the now-infamous "Steele Dossier."

    Also keep in mind that Trump Jr. reportedly shut down the meeting when it was obviously not going to bear fruit.

    Obvious setups aside, former US Attorney Joe diGenova has penned an Op-Ed for Fox News excoriating the media for 'recklessly' promoting an untested falsehood; that the meeting was illegal in the first place.

    Joseph diGenova via Fox News

    Don Jr. and the Trump Tower meeting -- What happens when fake news collides with zero intent. The reporting on Donald Trump, Jr.'s treatment in the Mueller report has been woefully inaccurate.

    The president's eldest son, an outspoken and unapologetic conservative, is a favorite punching bag of the left. For more than two years, liberal journalists and shrieking "#resistance" activists have salivated over the thought of seeing Don Jr. carted off in handcuffs.

    To their dismay, there is only one crucial takeaway from the Mueller report's conclusions about the utterly inconsequential "Trump Tower meeting" between Don Jr., several Russians, and others: neither Don Jr. nor anyone else involved in the meeting was charged with any crime.

    The reasons are clear. The entire theory about what was potentially illegal about the meeting was speculative and untested. What's more, even if it were illegal, the report concluded that Don Jr. didn't have the "willful" intent to break the law that would be necessary to make it a crime.

    In their disappointment, Don Jr.'s detractors have latched on to a new theory: that he was simply "too stupid" to be charged with a crime because he didn't know that his conduct was illegal.

    They hang this blatant misconstruction on these words from the report: "the Office did not obtain admissible evidence likely to meet the government's burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these individuals acted 'willfully,' i.e. with general knowledge of the illegality of their conduct."

    That's not just some minor technicality, absent which Robert Mueller's prosecutors would have had Don Jr. in shackles while revelers in cat-eared pink hats danced in the streets. It's a central element of the offense they were investigating, and they decided to clear Don Jr. because without it there is no crime.

    One often-used definition of "willful" intent states that it "requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knew his or her conduct was unlawful and intended to do something that the law forbids; that the defendant acted with a purpose to disobey or disregard the law."

    In essence, in order to be charged with conspiring to cheat, you have to have been actually meaning to cheat. That's the law. Without intent, there is no crime. And Mueller's team, even his hand-picked Democrat attack dog Andrew Weissmann, knew they didn't have evidence to convince a jury that Don Jr. meant to circumvent election laws when he typed "I love it" in response to a tangentially-related British publicist's suggestion the Russian government might have "information that would incriminate Hillary." Don Jr. even voluntarily released his email correspondence related to that meeting.

    But even if there were the requisite intent, the Mueller report still exonerates Don Jr., stating that "the government would likely encounter difficulty proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the value of the promised information exceeded the threshold for a criminal violation."

    Did you catch that?

    For the English speakers among you, let me translate that from Weissmann-speak: "This 'crime' we thought up as a way to nail Don Jr. is so speculative and unprecedented, we don't think there's a court in the land that would let this fly."

    The entire notion of a criminal conspiracy is predicated on the idea that the federal election law's ban on campaigns taking "contributions" or "things of value" from foreign nationals also applies to "dirt" on opposing candidates.

    That's hardly an established interpretation of the law. In fact, no one has ever been convicted of something similar. If "dirt" is a "thing of value" for campaign finance purposes, that is a dangerously radical innovation with huge potential First Amendment implications.

    Personally, I think it's a completely untenable interpretation, but don't take my word it. Mueller and his team considered it, as well -- and then rejected it as too "difficult to prove" in their report.

    I wonder how many of the journalists calling Don Jr. stupid were so certain about this far-fetched legal theory. I further wonder how many of them felt the same way when foreign national Christopher Steele handed the Hillary Clinton campaign a whole dossier of "dirt" on President Trump -- at a hefty, agreed-upon price, no less.

    The whole thing is pure "#resistance" fantasy.

    It was reckless for the media to promote the Trump Tower meeting as a crime, and it was irresponsible for Mueller's report to discuss the matter using language that allows people who hate Don Jr. to continue in that delusion.

    CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM JOE DIGENOVA

    [Apr 29, 2019] This is why Russia Gate is never going away

    Apr 29, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

    span y snoopydawg on Mon, 04/29/2019 - 4:20pm

    You haven't heard that?

    @MrWebster

    This is why Russia Gate is never going away. People who bought into from the start will probably buy anything else that gets thrown at them. I think this smear about Russia helping him came from some of the Facebook ads. Russia was very busy during the last election and since it worked so well they're going to do it again.

    But did you notice that up to a few weeks before the midterms we heard that Russia was busy doing hanky panky, but then for some reason they stopped and let democrats take back the house. You'd think that they would want the GOP to stay in control because of reasons.... like it would have been better for Trump? But hey I guess Putin threw democrat a bone. I think.

    Seriously though you would be surprised that so many people believe that.

    #4 What in the hell does that mean? I think the Great One was just trying to associate Russians with Bernie. A harbinger of things to come.

    [Apr 29, 2019] Angry Bear " Panetta and Trump Who are You Calling Chumps

    Apr 29, 2019 | angrybearblog.com

    https://acdn.adnxs.com/ib/static/usersync/v3/async_usersync.html

    https://eus.rubiconproject.com/usync.html

    https://c.deployads.com/sync?f=html&s=2297&u=https%3A%2F%2Fangrybearblog.com%2F2019%2F04%2Fpanetta-and-trump-who-are-you-calling-chumps.html%23comments Panetta and Trump: Who are You Calling Chumps?

    ProGrowthLiberal | April 28, 2019 9:05 am

    Politics Panetta and Trump: Who are You Calling Chumps? Leon Panetta :

    Trump treats Americans like we're chumps

    Check out the entire interview as it was excellent. But I had to look up this old fashion word :

    a person who is easily tricked : a stupid or foolish person

    OK – Trump supporters are easily tricked. But Trump wants to pretend he is a young vigorous man! Chris Matthews did talk about young people who are more likely to check out Urban Dictionary than the old fashion Merriam-Webster dictionary:

    Someone who does not understand the basics of life on earth. Confused easily.

    Actually this is the perfect description for Trump supporters. There are more definitions at Urban Dictionary that I would submit also apply!

    ilsm , April 28, 2019 9:18 am

    Who does Panetta think is "easily tricked"?

    Those who believe that Russia had a impact on dumping Clinton are very easily tricked.

    Sad that Krugman, among the media blizzard against the presidency, is one selling the .00000001 chance that Russia effected the election as if it were truth.

    "Easily tricked" is buying Mueller's top cover for the Russia gate operation.

    https://acdn.adnxs.com/ib/static/usersync/v3/async_usersync.html

    https://eus.rubiconproject.com/usync.html

    https://c.deployads.com/sync?f=html&s=2297&u=https%3A%2F%2Fangrybearblog.com%2F2019%2F04%2Fpanetta-and-trump-who-are-you-calling-chumps.html%23comments Panetta and Trump: Who are You Calling Chumps?

    ProGrowthLiberal | April 28, 2019 9:05 am

    Politics Panetta and Trump: Who are You Calling Chumps? Leon Panetta :

    Trump treats Americans like we're chumps

    Check out the entire interview as it was excellent. But I had to look up this old fashion word :

    a person who is easily tricked : a stupid or foolish person

    OK – Trump supporters are easily tricked. But Trump wants to pretend he is a young vigorous man! Chris Matthews did talk about young people who are more likely to check out Urban Dictionary than the old fashion Merriam-Webster dictionary:

    Someone who does not understand the basics of life on earth. Confused easily.

    Actually this is the perfect description for Trump supporters. There are more definitions at Urban Dictionary that I would submit also apply!

    Comments (7) | Digg Facebook Twitter | Comments (7)

    ilsm , April 28, 2019 9:18 am

    Who does Panetta think is "easily tricked"?

    Those who believe that Russia had a impact on dumping Clinton are very easily tricked.

    Sad that Krugman, among the media blizzard against the presidency, is one selling the .00000001 chance that Russia effected the election as if it were truth.

    "Easily tricked" is buying Mueller's top cover for the Russia gate operation.

    [Apr 29, 2019] Russiagate vs Watergate

    Notable quotes:
    "... In the case of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser, acting Attorney General Sally Yates used the archaic Logan Act of 1799 to create a predicate for the FBI to interrogate Flynn about a Dec. 29, 2016 conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, i.e., after Trump's election but before the Inauguration. ..."
    "... Yates also concocted a bizarre argument that the discrepancies between Flynn's account of the call and the transcript left him open to Russian blackmail although how that would work – since the Russians surely assumed that Kislyak's calls would be monitored by U.S. intelligence and thus offered them no leverage with Flynn – was never explained. ..."
    "... So, perhaps the biggest similarity between Russia-gate and Watergate is that Richard Nixon and Donald Trump were both highly unpopular with the Washington establishment and thus had few influential defenders, while an important contrast with Iran-Contra was that Reagan and Bush were very well liked, especially among news executives such as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham who, by all accounts, did not care for the uncouth Nixon. Today, the senior executives of The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major news outlets have made no secret of their disdain for the buffoonish Trump and their hostility toward Russian President Vladimir Putin. ..."
    "... In other words, what is driving Russia-gate – for both the mainstream news media and the Democrats – appears to be a political agenda, i.e., the desire to remove Trump from office while also ratcheting up a New Cold War with Russia, a priority for Washington's neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks. ..."
    "... If this political drama were playing out in some other country, we would be talking about a "soft coup" in which the "oligarchy" or some other "deep state" force was using semi-constitutional means to engineer a disfavored leader's removal. ..."
    Apr 29, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    Originally from: Consortium News’ Record on Russiagate—How CN Covered the ‘Scandal’ No. 7 ‘Russiagate Is No Watergate or Iran-Contra’

    ... ... ...

    Railroading Flynn

    In the case of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser, acting Attorney General Sally Yates used the archaic Logan Act of 1799 to create a predicate for the FBI to interrogate Flynn about a Dec. 29, 2016 conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, i.e., after Trump's election but before the Inauguration.

    The Logan Act, which has never resulted in a prosecution in 218 years, was enacted during the period of the Alien and Sedition Acts to bar private citizens from negotiating on their own with foreign governments. It was never intended to apply to a national security adviser of an elected President, albeit before he was sworn in.

    But it became the predicate for the FBI interrogation -- and the FBI agents were armed with a transcript of the intercepted Kislyak-Flynn phone call so they could catch Flynn on any gaps in his recollection, which might have been made even hazier because he was on vacation in the Dominican Republic when Kislyak called.

    Yates also concocted a bizarre argument that the discrepancies between Flynn's account of the call and the transcript left him open to Russian blackmail although how that would work – since the Russians surely assumed that Kislyak's calls would be monitored by U.S. intelligence and thus offered them no leverage with Flynn – was never explained.

    Still, Flynn's failure to recount the phone call precisely and the controversy stirred up around it became the basis for an obstruction of justice investigation of Flynn and led to President Trump's firing Flynn on Feb. 13.

    Trump may have thought that tossing Flynn overboard to the circling sharks would calm down the sharks but the blood in the water only excited them more. According to then-FBI Director James Comey, Trump talked to him one-on-one the next day, Feb. 14, and said, "'I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go."

    Trump's "hope" and the fact that he later fired Comey have reportedly led special prosecutor Mueller to look at a possible obstruction of justice case against Trump. In other words, Trump could be accused of obstructing what appears to have been a trumped-up case against Flynn.

    Of course, there remains the possibility that evidence might surface of Trump or his campaign colluding with the Russians, but such evidence has so far not been presented. Or Mueller's investigation might turn over some rock and reveal some unrelated crime, possibly financial wrongdoing by Trump or an associate.

    (Something similar happened in the Republican investigation of the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attack, a largely fruitless inquiry except that it revealed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent and received official emails over a private server, which Comey decried during last year's campaign as "extremely careless" but not criminal.)

    Curb the Enthusiasm

    Another contrast between the earlier scandals (Watergate and Iran-Contra) and Russia-gate is the degree of enthusiasm and excitement that the U.S. mainstream media and congressional Democrats have shown today as opposed to 1972 and 1986.

    The Washington Post's Watergate team, including from left to right, publisher Katharine Graham, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, Howard Simons, and executive editor Ben Bradlee.

    Though The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein aggressively pursued the Watergate scandal, there was much less interest elsewhere in major news outlets until Nixon's criminality became obvious in 1973. Many national Democrats, including DNC Chairman Bob Strauss , were extremely hesitant to pursue the scandal if not outright against it.

    Similarly, although Brian Barger and I at The Associated Press were pursuing aspects of Iran-Contra since early 1985, the big newspapers and networks consistently gave the Reagan administration the benefit of the doubt – at least before the scandal finally burst into view in fall 1986 (when a Contra-supply plane crashed inside Nicaragua and a Lebanese newspaper revealed U.S. arms shipments to Iran).

    For several months, there was a flurry of attention to the complex Iran-Contra scandal, but the big media still ignored evidence of a White House cover-up and soon lost interest in the difficult work of unraveling the convoluted networks for arms smuggling, money laundering and cocaine trafficking.

    Congressional Democrats also shied away from a constitutional confrontation with the popular Reagan and his well-connected Vice President George H.W. Bush.

    After moving from AP to Newsweek in early 1987, I learned that the senior executives at Newsweek, then part of The Washington Post Company, didn't want "another Watergate"; they felt another such scandal was not "good for the country" and wanted Iran-Contra to go away as soon as possible. I was even told not to read the congressional Iran-Contra report when it was published in October 1987 (although I ignored that order and kept trying to keep my own investigation going in defiance of the wishes of the Newsweek brass until those repeated clashes led to my departure in June 1990).

    So, perhaps the biggest similarity between Russia-gate and Watergate is that Richard Nixon and Donald Trump were both highly unpopular with the Washington establishment and thus had few influential defenders, while an important contrast with Iran-Contra was that Reagan and Bush were very well liked, especially among news executives such as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham who, by all accounts, did not care for the uncouth Nixon. Today, the senior executives of The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major news outlets have made no secret of their disdain for the buffoonish Trump and their hostility toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    In other words, what is driving Russia-gate – for both the mainstream news media and the Democrats – appears to be a political agenda, i.e., the desire to remove Trump from office while also ratcheting up a New Cold War with Russia, a priority for Washington's neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks.

    If this political drama were playing out in some other country, we would be talking about a "soft coup" in which the "oligarchy" or some other "deep state" force was using semi-constitutional means to engineer a disfavored leader's removal.

    Of course, since the ongoing campaign to remove Trump is happening in the United States, it must be presented as a principled pursuit of truth and a righteous application of the rule of law. But the comparisons to Watergate and Iran-Contra are a stretch.

    The late investigative reporter Robert Parry, the founder of Consortium News, broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.

    [Apr 29, 2019] It is more probable that some patriots at NSA seeing what was going on hacked and leaked emails not wanting corrupt Hillary and criminal empire taking hold of US gov rather than Russians doing such

    Notable quotes:
    "... Americans - stop whining, that you will not help. You have a main problem with lobbyists and officials who are well able to promote the interests of lobbyists at the expense of national interests. Replace the word Russian with the word Israeli and get the exact name of the problem. ..."
    "... The Russians did not interfere more or less than any other country in U.S. elections. What interferes in the all election in the world is "Money", the great un-equalizer. Lobbyists the evil that keeps giving. F them all. ..."
    "... The whole narrative was made up propaganda by Clinton spin doctors and Obama admin to change discussion from content of emails and cover up crimes using domestic intell to illegally spy on Trump. Joke, no examination of DNC or Podesta servers, just take word of Crowdstrike hired by Perkins Coie, same people who hired and paid Fusion GPS to write dossier. ..."
    "... Better yet let's just let Israel interfere......oh wait. ..."
    "... Mueller wasn't running an investigation . . . It was a "Coverup Operation" and one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on the American people. "A complete and total fraud" ..."
    "... Except [neo]liberal f-wits that don't want to know. Might upset their fragile grip on reality. ..."
    "... I don't see (in the immortal words of G Dubya) how this sucker doesn't go down. This **** is bad, very bad .. ..."
    "... I mean, this doesn't even come as a controlled demolition anymore. It is merely shredding any and all vestige of hope of ever ( at least n my lifetime) righting the ship of state, proper. There ain't no winners in this, none .. ..."
    "... If they did, it was a blessing in disguise. Maybe the Russians didn't relish the idea of going to war with the US. I'm convinced to the marrow of my bones that Hitlery would have poked the Bear. It would not have been pretty. ..."
    "... Election interference? You wanna see some interference, watch Obama, Hillary and Merkel laser bomb Gaddafi after putting him on a "most loved dictator" list just prior. Election interference, this is some stupid **** for stupid people. Some Russians on Facebook may have...gimme a break. ..."
    "... Then...there's Kiev in 2014... ..."
    "... Somewhat related to the media's lies. They dripped/leaked damaging information for 2 years but not a word on when Mueller knew the investigation was over, what, 18 months ago? Not a single leak or drip saying Trump was innocent nor any leaked evidence. Completely complicit. ..."
    "... Given the history of lies by Blo's administration against Putin's Russia... and without hard, corroborated evidence to the contrary...it didn't happen. On the other hand, we read recently about heavy outside (western) money trying to influence the outcome of the recent Ukraine election.. ..."
    "... In court a befuddled prosecution team (who never dreamed anyone would step up to face the charges) listed the date of the supposed crimes a Russian company had committed... at the time, the company did not exist! ..."
    "... How I would love to see THIS honest headline... "Did The Israelis (AIPAC) Interfere In U.S. Elections?" The answer is as obvious as the 600-pound gorilla in the room. ..."
    "... The 600-pound gorilla headline would be killed by the third-rail, and then trampled by an elephant. If it somehow survived, it would be convicted of a hate crime for attacking the gorilla, charged with animal abuse for hurting the elephant's foot, and convicted of rape for touching the third-rail. ..."
    "... A much bigger question is, Did/does Israel interfere in U.S. elections? ..."
    Apr 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Nelbev , 36 minutes ago link

    It is more probable that some patriots at NSA seeing what was going on hacked and leaked emails not wanting corrupt Hillary and criminal empire taking hold of US gov rather than Russians doing such.

    Helg Saracen , 36 minutes ago link

    Americans - stop whining, that you will not help. You have a main problem with lobbyists and officials who are well able to promote the interests of lobbyists at the expense of national interests. Replace the word Russian with the word Israeli and get the exact name of the problem.

    AKKadian , 41 minutes ago link

    The Russians did not interfere more or less than any other country in U.S. elections. What interferes in the all election in the world is "Money", the great un-equalizer. Lobbyists the evil that keeps giving. F them all.

    Nelbev , 47 minutes ago link

    If Hillary was elected, she would have been owned. Clintons met with Putin right before Uranium 1 deal went through and Bill got his half million dollar one night speaking fee and millions to the Clinton Foundation. Hillary used unsecured communications while Secratary of State. She is the most corrupt person ever to run for POTUS. Plenty more dirt under her ***, bribery, corruption. Hey, what about husband's phone sex tape with Lewinski Russians supposedly had which is more beleiveable than made up Russian prostitute pissing on bed.

    The whole narrative was made up propaganda by Clinton spin doctors and Obama admin to change discussion from content of emails and cover up crimes using domestic intell to illegally spy on Trump. Joke, no examination of DNC or Podesta servers, just take word of Crowdstrike hired by Perkins Coie, same people who hired and paid Fusion GPS to write dossier.

    Helg Saracen , 41 minutes ago link

    Then why don't you jail this "holy family"? Here is the answer - not everyone is equal before the Law...

    Giant Meteor , 50 minutes ago link

    With all this flap, hell, let't just let the Russians vote in the next one. Then, in time, we could vote in their elections, kinda like a collusion cultural exchange program.

    I mean, stuff like this just begs the question, why not just go right to jumping the shark, and call it a day .,

    Idaho potato head , 38 minutes ago link

    Better yet let's just let Israel interfere......oh wait.

    Md4 , 1 hour ago link

    There's much more reason to believe the prog left deliberately fucked with the midterm vote in Florida last year...than there is actual evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election...

    LEEPERMAX , 1 hour ago link

    Mueller wasn't running an investigation . . . It was a "Coverup Operation" and one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on the American people. "A complete and total fraud"

    And everyone knows it

    Mouldy , 30 minutes ago link

    Except [neo]liberal f-wits that don't want to know. Might upset their fragile grip on reality.

    Hulk , 1 hour ago link

    We have been an evidence free idiocracy for 20 years now. I am hopeful that we are witnessing the end of that now. "The Trump campaign was spied upon" represented a critical turning point...

    Giant Meteor , 27 minutes ago link

    Or maybe a critical implosion point. I do not believe it is clear, meaning who will be left standing, either way. Someone, or a whole lot of someone's need's to pay for these sins, and as is painfully obvious, the ******** slinging and screeching rhetoric meter, is red lining. I don't see (in the immortal words of G Dubya) how this sucker doesn't go down. This **** is bad, very bad ..

    I mean, this doesn't even come as a controlled demolition anymore. It is merely shredding any and all vestige of hope of ever ( at least n my lifetime) righting the ship of state, proper. There ain't no winners in this, none ..

    Mairzy Doats , 1 hour ago link

    If they did, it was a blessing in disguise. Maybe the Russians didn't relish the idea of going to war with the US. I'm convinced to the marrow of my bones that Hitlery would have poked the Bear. It would not have been pretty.

    TahoeBilly2012 , 1 hour ago link

    Election interference? You wanna see some interference, watch Obama, Hillary and Merkel laser bomb Gaddafi after putting him on a "most loved dictator" list just prior. Election interference, this is some stupid **** for stupid people. Some Russians on Facebook may have...gimme a break.

    Md4 , 1 hour ago link

    Then...there's Kiev in 2014...

    JBLight , 1 hour ago link

    Somewhat related to the media's lies. They dripped/leaked damaging information for 2 years but not a word on when Mueller knew the investigation was over, what, 18 months ago? Not a single leak or drip saying Trump was innocent nor any leaked evidence. Completely complicit.

    Md4 , 1 hour ago link

    " But that assertion - is it truly backed up factually? Where is the evidence, other than largely questionable information sourced from our largely discredited intelligence agencies which, as we know, had a determined goal of overthrowing the president by any means possible?"

    Precisely.

    Given the history of lies by Blo's administration against Putin's Russia... and without hard, corroborated evidence to the contrary...it didn't happen. On the other hand, we read recently about heavy outside (western) money trying to influence the outcome of the recent Ukraine election..

    But that wouldn't be interfering...would it...

    SRV , 1 hour ago link

    In court a befuddled prosecution team (who never dreamed anyone would step up to face the charges) listed the date of the supposed crimes a Russian company had committed... at the time, the company did not exist!

    Some kind of catering business (not sure of the connection to the hacking team but the lawyer commented in court it appeared the Mueller had indeed indicted the proverbial "Ham Sandwich!"

    What a **** show...

    J S Bach , 1 hour ago link

    How I would love to see THIS honest headline... "Did The Israelis (AIPAC) Interfere In U.S. Elections?" The answer is as obvious as the 600-pound gorilla in the room.

    LetThemEatRand , 1 hour ago link

    The 600-pound gorilla headline would be killed by the third-rail, and then trampled by an elephant. If it somehow survived, it would be convicted of a hate crime for attacking the gorilla, charged with animal abuse for hurting the elephant's foot, and convicted of rape for touching the third-rail.

    Arrow4Truth , 1 hour ago link

    A much bigger question is, Did/does Israel interfere in U.S. elections?

    [Apr 28, 2019] The British Role in Russiagate Is About to Be Fully Exposed

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The truth is, that a foreign government did indeed meddle in the American Presidential election, in a failed attempt to fix the outcome, but it was not Russia. It was the City of London, and the Five Eyes imperial intelligence services of the British Commonwealth, along with treasonous, "Tory" American elements. If that admission is forced to the surface, through the vigorous actions of all that oppose the presently dominant Big Lie tyranny, that revelation will shock and liberate people all over the world. The mental stranglehold of "fake news" media outlets can be permanently broken. That is the task of the next days and weeks. ..."
    "... Apart from documenting the presence of "former" British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove, and former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan at the center of the Russiagate campaign against President Trump for the past several years, we must, in order to expose this successfully, identify not only what was actually done and who was doing it, but the deeper policy motivation: why it was done. ..."
    "... President Donald Trump has no vested interest in protecting the British "special relationship." From his second day in office, Trump declared that he would clean out the intelligence agencies. If Trump were to do that, however, the real, tragic history of America's last 50 years would be exhumed from that swamp. Shining a light into that darkness would illuminate the world. The American people would stop playing Othello to the City of London's Iago. They would denounce the British "special relationship," never again to fight imperial wars for the greater glory of the British Empire. They would learn the true story of Vietnam, of Iraq 1991 and Iraq 2003, of Libya 2011, and many other conflicts, special operations, and assassinations. The American people would know the truth, and the truth would set them free. ..."
    "... The current insurrection against the United States Presidency is part of a global strategic battle: will a conspiracy of republican forces overcome the modern day British imperial system, centered in the hot money centers of the City of London and Wall Street, or will the oligarchical system once again triumph, immiserating all but the very wealthy? That is the real issue of the insurrection against the maverick American president being conducted by the London and NATO-centered enforcers of the old world. To paraphrase the American Declaration of Independence, ..."
    "... According to CIA Director John Brennan's Congressional testimony, the British began complaining loudly about candidate Trump and Russia in late 2015. Brennan's statements were echoed in articles in The Guardian . According to Brennan, intelligence leads about Trump and Russia had been forwarded to Brennan from both British intelligence and from Estonia. ..."
    "... This task force targeted Trump campaign volunteers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in entrapment operations on British soil, using British agents, during the spring and summer of 2016. ..."
    "... Hannigan abruptly resigned from GCHQ shortly after the election, sparking widespread speculation that the British were making an attempt at damage control. ..."
    "... In 2016, the Manafort investigation migrated to the Democratic National Committee with direct assistance provided by Ukrainian state intelligence. This effort was led by Alexandra Chalupa, an admirer of Stepan Bandera and other heroes of Nazi history in Ukraine. Chalupa also had deep connections to British-oriented networks at the U.S. State Department. ..."
    "... The final nail in this case has been provided by The Hill 's John Solomon. He says that Steele told former Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr about the sources for the dirty dossier. According to Solomon, Ohr's notes reveal one main source, a former senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States. But, as anyone familiar with the territory would know, there is no such retired senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States whose entire life is not controlled by the CIA. ..."
    "... As a result of Congressional investigations of Russiagate, it has become abundantly clear that the British operation against Trump was aided and abetted by the Obama White House, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, and personalities associated with the National Endowment for Democracy. ..."
    "... Out of the Ukraine coup, an entire military-centered propaganda apparatus arose, first through NATO, and then out from there to military units and diplomatic centers in the U.S., Europe, and Britain, to run low intensity operations, and black propaganda, against Russia. ..."
    "... The British end of the operation includes the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, and NATO's Strategic Communications Center. In the United States, the Integrity Initiative has been integrated into the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. State Department. Most certainly, this operation is poised again to intervene in the U.S. elections; the British House of Lords have stated explicitly, in their December 2018 report, British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order, that Donald Trump must not be re-elected. ..."
    "... This is why the British are yelping that under no circumstances can the classified documents concerning their role in the attempted coup against Donald Trump be declassified. It would end their leverage over the United States and much of Europe. That is why these documents must indeed be declassified, and parallel investigations by citizens and government officials concerned with ending the imperial system, otherwise known as the current "war party," must begin in earnest. ..."
    "... Why did the DNC not allow the FBI to investigate the so-called" Russian hacked" emails? Rather, they hire CrowdStrike did you know: ..."
    "... War with Afghanistan was Obama's payoff to the MIC, just as Russia is now Trump's payoff. ..."
    "... The important truth about the emails is in their authenticity and in the contents. No one has even attempted to claim that they are not authentic or that the contents we've seen are other than the actual contents of the authentic messages. ..."
    "... That is what i think. People should not concentrate on how, who and where. This is just a smokescreen to avoid talking about the content of the emails and Hillary Clinton's disgusting actions. She is a criminal and a murderess just like Obama and Tony Blair are lyers and mass murderers. ..."
    Apr 22, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    The British Role in 'Russiagate' Is About to Be Fully Exposed April 8, 2019 20190408-russiagate-exposed-brits.pdf The "fake news" media has now dropped its pretense of having ever had any intention of allowing the truth -- as documented in U.S. Attorney General Barr's summary of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's report, exonerating President Donald Trump of having "conspired or coordinated with the Russian government" -- to thoroughly refute the Russiagate "Big Lie." Soon, however, it is certain that the deliberate, British Intelligence-originated, military-grade disinformation campaign carried out against the United States, including to this day, will be exposed.

    The truth is, that a foreign government did indeed meddle in the American Presidential election, in a failed attempt to fix the outcome, but it was not Russia. It was the City of London, and the Five Eyes imperial intelligence services of the British Commonwealth, along with treasonous, "Tory" American elements. If that admission is forced to the surface, through the vigorous actions of all that oppose the presently dominant Big Lie tyranny, that revelation will shock and liberate people all over the world. The mental stranglehold of "fake news" media outlets can be permanently broken. That is the task of the next days and weeks.

    "It's hard to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat," says the Chinese proverb. Yet, although the Mueller report was called a "nothing burger," it was not: it still presented the potentially lethal lie that twelve Russian gremlins, code-named Guccifer 2.0, hacked the DNC. Sundry media meatheads thus continue to blog and broadcast about "what else is really there."

    The false Russian hack story, still being repeated, marches on, undeterred, like the emperor without any clothes. One lame-brained variation, promoted in order to cover up the British role, states that Hillary Clinton, rather than Trump, colluded with the Russians. It is being repeated by Republicans and Democrats alike, some of them malicious, some of them confused, and all of them completely wrong. The media, such as the failed New York Times and various electronic media, must be forced to either admit the truth, or be even more thoroughly discredited than they already have been. They must stop their constant repetition of this Joseph Goebbels-like Big Lie. There must be a vigorous dissemination of the truth by all those journalists, politicians, activists and citizens that love truth more than their own assumptions, including about President Trump, or other dearly-held systems of false belief.

    Apart from documenting the presence of "former" British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove, and former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan at the center of the Russiagate campaign against President Trump for the past several years, we must, in order to expose this successfully, identify not only what was actually done and who was doing it, but the deeper policy motivation: why it was done.

    A New Cultural Paradigm

    The world is actually on the verge of ending the military conflicts among the major world powers, such as Russia, China, the United States, and India. These four powers, and not the City of London, are the key fulcrum around which a new era in humanity's future will be decided. A new monetary and credit system brought into being through these four powers would foster the greatest physical economic growth in the history of humanity. In addition, discussions involving Italy working with China on the industrialization of the African continent (discussions which could soon also involve the United States) show that sections of Europe want to join China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and leave the dying trans-Atlantic financial empire behind.

    The recent announcement of a United States commitment to return to the Moon by 2024 can, in particular, become the basis for a proposal to other nations -- for example, China, Russia, and India, all of whom are space powers of demonstrated capability -- to resolve their differences on Earth in a higher, joint mission. As Russia's Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin said in a recent interview:

    "I am a fierce proponent of international cooperation, including with Americans, because their country is big and technologically advanced, and they can make good partners Especially since personal and professional relations between Roscosmos and NASA at the working level are great."

    There is also the possibility of ending the danger of thermonuclear war. President Trump, speaking on April 4 of the prospects for world peace, stated:

    "Between Russia, China, and us, we're all making hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons, including nuclear, which is ridiculous. I think it's much better if we all got together and didn't make these weapons those three countries I think can come together and stop the spending and spend on things that are more productive toward long-term peace."

    This is a statement of real importance. Such an outlook is a rejection of the "perpetual crisis/perpetual war" outlook of the Bush-Obama Administration, a four-term "war presidency" which was abruptly, unexpectedly ended in 2016. The British were not amused.

    It is to stop this new cultural paradigm, pivoted on the Pacific and the potential Four Powers alliance, that British imperial forces have deployed. The 2016 election of President Trump, and his personal friendship with President Xi Jinping and desire to work with President Putin, are an intolerable strategic threat to the eighteenth-century geopolitics of the British empire. They have repeatedly used Russiagate to disrupt the process of deliberation among Presidents Xi, Trump, and Putin, thus increasing the danger of war. Russiagate, in the interest of international security, must be ended by exposing it for the utter fraud that it is.

    The Truth Set Free

    President Donald Trump has no vested interest in protecting the British "special relationship." From his second day in office, Trump declared that he would clean out the intelligence agencies. If Trump were to do that, however, the real, tragic history of America's last 50 years would be exhumed from that swamp. Shining a light into that darkness would illuminate the world. The American people would stop playing Othello to the City of London's Iago. They would denounce the British "special relationship," never again to fight imperial wars for the greater glory of the British Empire. They would learn the true story of Vietnam, of Iraq 1991 and Iraq 2003, of Libya 2011, and many other conflicts, special operations, and assassinations. The American people would know the truth, and the truth would set them free.

    The current insurrection against the United States Presidency is part of a global strategic battle: will a conspiracy of republican forces overcome the modern day British imperial system, centered in the hot money centers of the City of London and Wall Street, or will the oligarchical system once again triumph, immiserating all but the very wealthy? That is the real issue of the insurrection against the maverick American president being conducted by the London and NATO-centered enforcers of the old world. To paraphrase the American Declaration of Independence,

    "The history of the present Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the undermining of the United States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."

    DOCUMENTATION

    While Robert Mueller found that there was "no collusion" between Donald Trump or the Trump Campaign and Russia, he also filed two indictments regarding alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. The first alleges that 12 members of Russian Military Intelligence hacked the DNC and John Podesta and delivered the purloined files to WikiLeaks for strategic publication before the July 2016 Democratic National Convention and in October 2016, one month before the election. The second indictment charges the Internet Research Agency, a Russian internet merchandising and marketing firm, with running social media campaigns in the U.S. in 2016 designed to impact the election. When the fuller version of the Mueller report becomes public, it is certain to recharge the claims of Russian interference based on the so-called background "evidence" supporting these indictments.

    The good news, however, is that investigations in the United States and Britain, have unearthed significant contrary evidence exposing British Intelligence, NATO, and, to a lesser extent, Ukraine, as the actual foreign actors in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We provide a short summary of the main aspects of that evidence to spark further investigations of the British intelligence networks, entities, and methods at issue, internationally. More detailed accounts concerning specific aspects of what we recite here can be found on our website.

    The Russian Hack That Wasn't

    The Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, an association of former U.S. intelligence officials, have demonstrated that the Russian hack of the DNC alleged by Robert Mueller, was more likely an internal leak, rather than a hack conducted over the internet. William Binney, who conducted the main investigations for the VIPS, spent 30 years at the National Security Agency, becoming Technical Director. He designed the sorts of NSA programs that would detect a Russian hack if one occurred. Binney conducted an actual forensic examination of the DNC files released by WikiLeaks, and the related files circulated by the persona Guccifer 2.0, who Robert Mueller claims is a GRU creation. Binney has demonstrated that the calculated transfer speeds and metadata characteristics of these files are consistent with downloading to a thumb drive or storage device rather than an internet-based hack. This supports the account by WikiLeaks of how it obtained the files. According to WikiLeaks and former Ambassador Craig Murray, they were obtained from a person who was not a Russian state actor of any kind, in Washington, D.C. WikiLeaks offered to tell the Justice Department all about this, and actual negotiations to this effect were proceeding in early 2017, when Senator Mark Warner and FBI Director James Comey acted to sabotage and end the negotiations.

    Further, as opposed to the hyperbole in the media and in Robert Mueller's indictment, analysis of the Internet Research Agency's alleged "weaponization" of Facebook in 2016 involved a paltry total of $46,000 in Facebook ads and $4,700 spent on Google platforms . In an election in which the major campaigns spend tens of thousands of dollars every day on these platforms, whatever the IRA thought it was doing in its amateurish and juvenile memes and tropes was like throwing a stone in the ocean. Most of these activities occurred after the election and never mentioned either candidate. The interpretation that these ads were designed to draw clicks and website traffic, rather than influence the election, must be considered.

    The "evidence" for Mueller's GRU hacking indictment was provided, in part, by CrowdStrike, the DNC vendor that originated the claims that the Russians had hacked that entity. CrowdStrike is closely associated with the Atlantic Council's Digital Research Lab (DRL), an operation jointly funded by NATO's Strategic Communications Center and the U.S. State Department, to counter Russian "hybrid warfare." CrowdStrike has been caught more than once falsely attributing hacks to the Russians and the Atlantic Council's DRL is a font of anti-Russian intelligence operations.

    The British Target Trump

    According to CIA Director John Brennan's Congressional testimony, the British began complaining loudly about candidate Trump and Russia in late 2015. Brennan's statements were echoed in articles in The Guardian . According to Brennan, intelligence leads about Trump and Russia had been forwarded to Brennan from both British intelligence and from Estonia. The former head of the Russia Desk for MI6 and protégé of Sir Richard Dearlove, Christopher Steele, fresh from working for British Intelligence, the FBI, and U.S. State Department in the 2014 Ukraine coup, assembled in 2016 a phony dossier called Operation Charlemagne, claiming widespread Russian interference in European elections, including in the Brexit vote. By the spring of 2016, Steele was contributing to a British/U.S. intelligence task force on the Trump Campaign which had been convened at CIA headquarters under John Brennan's direction.

    This task force targeted Trump campaign volunteers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in entrapment operations on British soil, using British agents, during the spring and summer of 2016. The personnel employed in these operations all had multiple connections to the British firm Hakluyt, to Steele's firm Orbis, and to the British military's Integrity Initiative. Sometime in the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, then head of GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief John Brennan personally. Hannigan abruptly resigned from GCHQ shortly after the election, sparking widespread speculation that the British were making an attempt at damage control.

    Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort were already on the radar and under investigation by the same British, Dearlove-centered intelligence network and by Christopher Steele specifically. Flynn had been defamed by Dearlove and Stefan Halper, as a possible Russian agent way back in 2014 because he spoke to Russian researcher Svetlana Lokhova at a dinner sponsored by Dearlove's Cambridge Security Forum. Or, at least that was the pretext for the targeting of Flynn, who otherwise defied British intelligence by exposing Western support for terrorist operations in Syria and sought a collaborative relationship with Russia to counter ISIS. Manafort was under FBI investigation throughout 2014 and 2015, largely in retaliation for his role in steering the Party of the Regions to political power in Ukraine.

    In 2016, the Manafort investigation migrated to the Democratic National Committee with direct assistance provided by Ukrainian state intelligence. This effort was led by Alexandra Chalupa, an admirer of Stepan Bandera and other heroes of Nazi history in Ukraine. Chalupa also had deep connections to British-oriented networks at the U.S. State Department.

    In or around June 2016, Christopher Steele began writing his dirty and bogus dossier about Trump and Russia. This is the dossier which claimed that Trump was compromised by Putin and that Putin was coordinating with Trump in the 2016 election. The main "legend" of this full-spectrum information warfare operation run from Britain, was that Donald Trump was receiving "dirt" on Hillary Clinton from Russia. The operations targeting Page and Papadopoulos consisted of multiple attempts to plant fabricated evidence on them which would reflect what Steele himself was fabricating in the dirty dossier. At the very same time, the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower was being set up. That meeting involved the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who, it was alleged in a series of bizarre emails written by British publicist Ron Goldstone to set up the meeting, could deliver "dirt" on Hillary Clinton direct from the Russian government. Veselnitskaya didn't deliver any such dirt. But the entire operation was being monitored by State Department intelligence agent Kyle Parker, an expert on Russia. Parker's emails reveal deep ties to the highest levels of British intelligence and much chatter between them about Trump and Russia.

    A now-changed version of the website for Christopher Steele's firm, Orbis, trumpeted an expertise in information warfare operations, and the networks in which Steele runs are deeply integrated into the British military's Integrity Initiative. The Integrity Initiative is a rapid response propaganda operation using major journalists in the United States and Europe to carry out targeted defamation campaigns. Its central charge, according to documents posted by the hacking group Anonymous, is selling the United States and Western Europe on the immediate need for regime change in Russia, even if that involves war.

    Much has been made by Republicans and other lunkheads in the U.S. Congress of Steele's contacts with Russians for his dossier. They claim that such contacts resulted in a Russian disinformation operation being run through the duped Christopher Steele. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    MI6's Dirty Dossier on Donald Trump: Full-Spectrum Information Warfare

    On its face, Steele's dossier would immediately be recognized as a complete fabrication by any competent intelligence analyst. He cites some 32 sources inside the Russian government for his fabricated claims about Trump. What they allegedly told him is specific enough in time and content to identify them. To believe that the dossier is true or that actual Russians contributed to it, you must also believe that that the British government was willing to roll up this entire network, exposing them, since the intention was for the dossier's wild claims to be published as widely as possible. By all accounts, Britain and the United States together do not have 32 highly placed sources inside the Russian government, nor would they ever make them public in this way or with this very sloppy tradecraft. Steele's fabrication also uses aspects of readily available public information, such as the sale of 19% of the energy company Rosneft, (the alleged bribe offered to Carter Page for lifting sanctions) to concoct a fictional narrative of high crimes and misdemeanors.

    Other claims in the dossier were published, publicly, in various Ukrainian publications. The famous claim that Trump directed prostitutes to urinate on a bed once slept upon by Barack Obama seems to be plagiarized from similarly fake 2009 British propaganda stories about Silvio Berlusconi spending the night with a prostitute in a hotel room in Rome, "defiling" Putin's bed. According to various sources in the United States, this outrageous claim was made by Sergei Millian. George Papadopoulos has stated that he believes Millian is an FBI informant, recounting in his book how a friend of Millian's blurted this out when Millian, Papadopoulos and the friend were having coffee.

    The final nail in this case has been provided by The Hill 's John Solomon. He says that Steele told former Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr about the sources for the dirty dossier. According to Solomon, Ohr's notes reveal one main source, a former senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States. But, as anyone familiar with the territory would know, there is no such retired senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States whose entire life is not controlled by the CIA.

    Despite its obvious fake pedigree, Steele's dossier was laundered into the Justice Department repeatedly, by the CIA and State Department and the Obama White House. It was used to obtain FISA surveillance warrants turning key members of the Trump Campaign into walking microphones. It was circulated endlessly by the Clinton Campaign to a network of reporters in the U.S. known to serve as scribes for the intelligence community. John Brennan used it to conduct a special emergency briefing of the leading members of the U.S. Congress charged with intelligence responsibilities in August of 2016 and to brief Harry Reid, who was Senate Majority Leader at the time. All of this activity meant that the salacious accusation that Trump was a Putin pawn and the FBI was investigating the matter, leaked out and was used by the Clinton Campaign to defame Trump for its electoral advantage. When Trump won, Steele's nonsense received the stamp of the U.S. intelligence community and official currency in the campaign to take out the President.

    As a result of Congressional investigations of Russiagate, it has become abundantly clear that the British operation against Trump was aided and abetted by the Obama White House, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, and personalities associated with the National Endowment for Democracy. The individuals involved might be named Veterans of the 2014 Ukrainian Coup, since all of them also worked on this operation. It is no accident that Victoria Nuland, the case agent for the Ukraine coup, played a major role in bolstering Steele's credentials for the purpose of selling his dirty dossier to the media and to the Justice Department. This went so far as Steele giving a full scale briefing on his fabricated dossier at the State Department in October 2016.

    Out of the Ukraine coup, an entire military-centered propaganda apparatus arose, first through NATO, and then out from there to military units and diplomatic centers in the U.S., Europe, and Britain, to run low intensity operations, and black propaganda, against Russia.

    The British end of the operation includes the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, and NATO's Strategic Communications Center. In the United States, the Integrity Initiative has been integrated into the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. State Department. Most certainly, this operation is poised again to intervene in the U.S. elections; the British House of Lords have stated explicitly, in their December 2018 report, British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order, that Donald Trump must not be re-elected.

    This is why the British are yelping that under no circumstances can the classified documents concerning their role in the attempted coup against Donald Trump be declassified. It would end their leverage over the United States and much of Europe. That is why these documents must indeed be declassified, and parallel investigations by citizens and government officials concerned with ending the imperial system, otherwise known as the current "war party," must begin in earnest.

    Sign the Petition: President Trump, Declassify the Docs on the British Role in Russiagate

    Robert , April 24, 2019 at 14:35

    "in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe"

    Perhaps add mainstream media to the list of such sincere believers, they will fire their own real journalists.

    David Walters , April 24, 2019 at 13:14

    "This doesn't mean that Russia would never use hackers to interfere in world political affairs or that Vladimir Putin is some sort of virtuous girl scout, it just means that in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe the unsubstantiated assertions of opaque and unaccountable government agencies about governments who are oppositional to those same agencies."

    Absolutely correct.

    Anyone who still believes what the IC says if a moron. As Pompeo recently said to the student body of Texas A&M University, my alma matta, the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and steel. He went on the explain that the CIA has courses to teach their agent that dark "art".

    Eileen Kuch , April 24, 2019 at 18:13

    Right, David Walters, and see Pompous Pompeo now. The only truths he's told was to a student body of Texas A&M University – his own alma mater – the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and steal.
    Even though he's left his post as CIA Director and assumed his current post of Secretary of State. Pompous Pompeo continues his CIA traits of lying, cheating, and stealing. It's in a way similar to a phrase, "A leopard never changes its spots". This is why the DPRK govt issued a Persona Non Grata on Pompous Pompeo – that he isn't a bona fide diplomat, but a CIA official.

    CWG , April 22, 2019 at 17:15

    Here's my take on the 'Russian Collusion Deep State LIE.

    There was NO Russian Collusion at all to get Trump in the White House. Most probably, Putin would have favored Clinton, since she could be bought. Trump can't.

    What did happen was illegal spying on the Trump campaign. That started late 2015, WITHOUT a FISA warrant. They only obtained that in 2016, through lying to the FISA Court. The basis for that first warrant was the Fusion GPS Steele Dossier.

    Ever since Trump won the election, they real conspirators knew they had a problem. That was apparent ever after Devin Nunes did the right thing by informing Trump they were spying on him.

    Since they obtained those FISA warrant through lying to the FISA Court (which is treason) they needed to cover that up as quickly as possible.

    So what did they do? Instead of admitting they lied to the FISA Court they kept on lying till this very day. The same lie through which they obtained the FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign was being pushed openly.

    The lie is and was 'Trump colluded with the Russians in order to win the Presidential Election'.

    They knew from day one Trump didn't do anything wrong. They did know they spied on Trump through lying to the FISA Court, which again, is treason. According to the Constitution, lying to the FISA court= Treason.

    In order to avoid being indicted and prosecuted, they somehow needed to 'take down' the Attorney General. At all costs, they needed to try and hide what really happened.

    So there they went. 'Trump colluded with the Russians. Not just Trump, but the entire Trump campaign!'.

    'Sessions should recuse himself', the propaganda MSM said in unison. 'Recuse, recuse'.

    Sessions, naively recused himself. Back then, even he probably didn't know the entire story. It was only later on that Sarah Carter and Jon Solomon found out it had been Hillary who ordered and paid the Steele Dossier.

    The real conspirators hoped that through the Special Counsel rat Mueller they might be able to achieve three main objectives.

    1: Convince the American people Russia indeed was meddling in the Presidential Election.

    2: Find any sort of dirt on Trump and/or people who helped him win the Election in order to 'take them down'.

    Many people were indicted, some were prosecuted. Yet NONE of them were convicted for a crime that had ANYTHING to with with the elections. NONE.

    They stretched it out as long as possible. 'The longer you repeat a lie, the more people are willing to believe the lie'.

    So that is what they did. They still do it. Mueller took TWO years to brainwash as many people as possible. 'Russian Collusion, Russian Collusion. Russia. Russia. Russia. Russia. Rusiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh ..

    Why did they want to make sure they could keep telling that lie as long as possible?

    Because they FEAR people will learn the truth. There was NEVER any Russian Collusion with the Trump campaign.

    There was spying on the Trump campaign by Obama in order to try and make Hillary win the Presidential Election.

    That is the actual COLLUSION between the Clinton Campaign and a weaponized Obama regime!!

    So what did 'Herr Mueller' do?

    He took YEARS to come up with the conclusion that the Trump campaign did NOT collude with Russia.

    The MSM tried to make us all believe it was about that. Yet it was NOT.

    His conclusive report is all about the question 'did or didn't the Trump campaign collude with the Russians'.

    Trump exonerated, and the MSM only talks about that. Trump, Trump, Trump.

    They still want us all to believe that was what the Mueller 'investigation' was all about. Yet it was not.

    The most important objective of the Mueller 'investigation' was not to 'investigate'.

    It was to 'instigate' that HUGE lie.

    The same lie which they used to obtain the FISA warrant on the Trump campaign.

    "Russia'.

    So what has 'Herr Mueller' done?

    A: He finds ZERO evidence at all which proves the Trump campaign colluded with ANY Russians.

    And now the huge lie, which after all was the main objective right from the get go. (A was only a distraction)

    B: Russians hacked the DNC.

    That is what they wants us all to believe. That Russia somehow did bad stuff.

    Now it was not Russia who did bad stuff.

    It was Obama working together with the Clinton campaign. Obama weaponized his entire regime in order to let Clinton win the Presidency.

    That is the REAL collusion. The real CRIME. Treason!

    In order to create a 'cover up' Mueller NEEDED to instigate that Russia somehow did bad things.

    That's what the Mueller Dossier is ALL about. They now have 'black on white' 'evidence' that Russia somehow did bad things.

    Because if Russia didn't do anything like that, it would make us all ask the fair question 'why did Obama spy on the Trump Campaign'.

    Let's go a bit deeper still.

    Here's a trap Mueller created. What if Trump would openly doubt the LIE they still push? The HUGE lie that Russia did bad things?

    After all, they NEED that LIE in order to COVER UP their own crime.

    If Trump would say 'I do not believe Russia did anything to influence the elections, I think Mueller wrote that to COVER UP the real crime', what would happen?

    They would say 'GOTCHA now, see Trump is colluding with Russia? He even refuses to accept Russia hacked the DNC, this ultimately proofs Trump indeed is a Russian asset'.

    They believe that trap will work. They needed that trap, since if Russia wasn't doing anything wrong, it would show us all THEY were the criminals.

    They NEED that lie, in order to COVER UP.

    That is the 'Insurance Policy' Stzrok and Page texted about. Even Sarah Carter and Jon Solomon still don't seem to see all that.

    They should have attacked the HUGE lie that Russia was somehow hacking the DNC. That is simply not true. It's a Mueller created LIE.

    That LIE = the Insurance Policy.

    What did they need an Insurance Policy for? They want us all to believe that was about preventing Trump from being elected.

    Although true, that is only A.

    They NEEDED an Insurance Policy in the unlikely case Trump would become President and would find out they were illegally spying on him!

    The REAL crime is Obama weaponized the American Government to spy on even a duly elected President.

    What's the punishment for Treason?

    About Assange and Seth Rich.

    Days after Mueller finishes his 'mission' (Establish the LIE Russia did bad things) which seems to be succesfull, the Deep State arrest the ONLY source who could undermine that lie.

    Assange Since he knows who is (Seth Rich?) and who isn't (Russia) the source.

    If Assange could testify under oath the emails did not come from Russia, the LIE would be exposed.

    No coincidences here. I fear Assange will never testify under oath. I actually fear for his life.

    Deniz , April 23, 2019 at 13:48

    While I wholeheartedly agree with you that Obama and Clinton are criminals, the far less convincing part of your argument is that Trump is not now beholden to the same MIC interests. Bolton, Abrahams, Pompeo, Pence his relationship with Netanyahu, the overthrow of Madura are all glaring examples that contradict the Rights narrative that he is some type of hero. Trump may not have colluded with Russia, but he does seem to be colluding with Saudia Arabia, Israel, Big Oil and the MIC.

    Whether one is on the Right or Left, the house is still made of glass.

    boxerwars , April 22, 2019 at 17:13

    RE: "A Russian Agent Smear"
    :::

    Was Pat Tillman Murdered?
    JUL 30, 2007

    I don't know, but it seems increasingly conceivable. Just absorb these facts:

    O'Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat [expletive] Tillman, damn it!" again and again when he was killed, O'Neal said

    In the same testimony, medical examiners said the bullet holes in Tillman's head were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.
    The motive? I don't know. It's still likeliest it was an accident. But there's some mysterious testimony in the SI report about nameless snipers. A reader suggests the following interpretation:

    News this weekend said that there were "snipers" present and the witnesses didn't remember their names. I believe that's code in the Army–these guys were Delta. In the Tillman incident, these snipers weren't part of the unit and they were never mentioned publicly before. That's a key indicator that they weren't supposed to be acknowledged.

    If you've ever read Blackhawk Down, Mark Bowden explains how he grew frustrated because interviewed Rangers kept referring to "soldiers from another unit" while claiming they didn't know the unit ID or the soldiers' names. It took him months to crack the unit ID and find people from Delta who were present at the fight.

    Randy Shugart and Gary Gordon, the Delta operators who earned Medals of Honor in Mogadishu, have always been identified as snipers, too.

    If my theory is correct, the Delta guys could have fired the shots – a three-round burst to the forehead from 50 yards is impossible for normal soldiers and Rangers, but is probably an easy shot for those guys. But because Delta doesn't officially exist and Tillman was a hero, nobody in the Army would want to have to explain exactly how the event went down. Easier just to claim hostile fire until the family forced them to do otherwise.
    This makes some sense to me, although we shouldn't dismiss the chance he was murdered. Tillman was a star and might have aroused jealousy or resentment. He also opposed the Iraq war and was a proud atheist. In Bush's increasingly sectarian military, that might have stirred hostility. I don't know. But I know enough to want a deeper investigation. My atheist readers will no doubt admire the way Tillman left this world, according to the man who was with him:

    As bullets flew above their heads, the young soldier at Pat Tillman's side started praying. "I thought I was praying to myself, but I guess he heard me," Sgt. Bryan O'Neal recalled in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press. "He said something like, 'Hey, O'Neal, why are you praying? God can't help us now."'

    (Maybe the Congress can )

    ////// The USA is aghast with "smears" and "internal investigations" and promised but never produced "White Papers" 'as the world turns' and circles continents Dominated by American Military Power / Predominantly Barbarous / Uncivilized Use of Force / and Arrogantly Effective in it's use of Dominating Military Power.

    \\\\ The Poorer Peoples of the World accept their lots-in-life with some acceptance of reality vis-a-vis the "lot-in-life" they've been alleged/assigned.

    /// But How Do We Accept The Fact that our Self-Sacrificiing Hero,Pat Tillman, was slaughtered in Afghanistan,
    (WITH POSITIVE PROOF) – by his own Fellow American soldiers – ???

    !!!! What i'm say'n is, if Tillman represents the Life Surrendering "American Hero"
    WHY DID HIS FELLOW "AMERICAN SOLDIERS" ASSASSINATE & MURDER HIM ???????

    AND WHY IS THIS STORY BURIED ALONG WITH MANY OTHER SMEAR Stories
    that provide prophylactic protection for all the Trump pianist prophylaxis cover

    Up for the Right Wing theft of American Democracy under FDR
    In favor of Ayn Rand's prevalent OBJECTIVISM under Trump.

    "Capitalism and Altruism
    are incompatible
    capitalism and altruism
    cannot coexist in man,
    or in the same society".

    President Trump represents
    Stark & Total Capitalism
    Just as "Conservative Party"
    Core is in The Confederacy
    AKA; The RIGHT WING

    The Right Wing of US Gov't
    Is All About PRESERVING
    Confederate States' Laws
    Written by Thomas Jefferson

    Prior to The Constitution, which
    became the Received/Judicial
    Constitutional Law of the Land in
    The Republic of the "United States"

    Elizabeth K. Burton , April 23, 2019 at 12:50

    It's not enough that Trump is clearly a classic narcissist whose behavior will continue to deteriorate the more his actions and statements are attacked and countered? You know what happens when narcissists are driven into a corner by people tearing them down? They get weapons and start killing people.

    There is already more than ample evidence to remove Donald Trump from office, not the least being he's clearly mentally unfit. Yet the Democrats, some of whom ran for office on a promise to impeach, are suddenly reticent to act without "more investigation". Nancy Pelosi stated on the record prior to release of the Mueller report impeachment wasn't on the agenda "for now". She's now making noises in the opposite direction, but that's all they are: noise.

    The bottom line is the Clintonite New Democrats currently running the party have only one issue to run on next year: getting rid of Donald Trump. They still operate under the delusion they will be able to use him to draw off moderate Republican voters, the same ones they were positive would come out for Hillary Clinton in '16. Their multitude of candidates pay lip service to progressive policy then carefully walk back to the standard centrist positions once the donations start coming, but the common underlying theme was and continues to be "Donald Trump is evil, and we need to elect a Democrat."

    In short, without Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the Democrat Party has no platform. They need him there as a target, because Mike Pence would be impossible for them to beat. They are under orders, according to various writers who've addressed the Clinton campaign, to block Bernie Sanders and his platform at all costs; and they will allow the country to crash and burn before they disobey those orders. That means keeping Donald Trump right where he is through next November.

    Eddie S , April 24, 2019 at 21:14

    Exactly right, EKB -- - you can't ballroom dance without a partner! Also reminds me of the couples you occasionally run into where one partner repeatedly runs-down the other, and you get the feeling that the critical partner doesn't have much going on in his/her life so they deflect that by focusing on the other partner

    Johnny Ryan S , April 22, 2019 at 13:38

    Why did the DNC not allow the FBI to investigate the so-called" Russian hacked" emails? Rather, they hire CrowdStrike did you know:
    1)Obama Appoints CrowdStrike Officer To Admin Post Two Months Before June 2016 Report On Russia Hacking DNC
    2) CrowdStrike Co-Founder Is Fellow On Russia Hawk Group, Has Connections To George Soros, Ukrainian Billionaire
    3) DNC stayed that the FBI never asked to investigate the servers – that is a lie.
    4) CrowdStrike received $100 million in investments led by Google Capital (since re-branded as CapitalG) in 2015. CapitalG is owned by Alphabet, and Eric Schmidt, Alphabet's chairman, was a supporter of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. More than just supporting Clinton, leaked emails from Wikileaks in November 2016 showed that in 2014 he wanted to have an active role in the campaign.

    -daily caller and dan bongino have been bringing these points up since 2016.

    Deniz , April 22, 2019 at 12:36

    The Right is currently salivating over the tough law enforcement rhetoric coming out of Barr and Trump.

    It reminds me of when Obama was running for office in 2008 when everyone, including myself, was in awe of him. What kept slipping into his soaring anti-intervention speeches, was a commitment to the good war in Afghanistan, which seemed totally out of place with the rest of his rhetoric. The fine print was far more reflective of his administration actions as the rest of it his communications turned out to be just telling people what they wanted to hear.

    War with Afghanistan was Obama's payoff to the MIC, just as Russia is now Trump's payoff.

    Herman , April 22, 2019 at 11:09

    The argument about not inserting Rich and the download is a good one as a defense strategy but doesn't help with finding the truth about the emails. We can only hope that pursuing the truth and producing it will have a cumulative effect and the illusory truth effect will include this truth.

    Red Douglas , April 22, 2019 at 16:00

    >>> ". . . doesn't help with finding the truth about the emails."

    The important truth about the emails is in their authenticity and in the contents. No one has even attempted to claim that they are not authentic or that the contents we've seen are other than the actual contents of the authentic messages.

    Why should we much care how they were acquired and provided to the publisher?

    Lily , April 22, 2019 at 17:55

    That is what i think. People should not concentrate on how, who and where. This is just a smokescreen to avoid talking about the content of the emails and Hillary Clinton's disgusting actions. She is a criminal and a murderess just like Obama and Tony Blair are lyers and mass murderers.

    All three of them are free, earning millions with their publicity whereas two brave persons who were telling the truth have been tortured and are still in jail. Reality has become like the most horrible nightmare. Everything simply seems to have turned upside down. No writer would invent such a primitive plot. And yet it is the unbelievable reality.

    Dump Pelousy , April 23, 2019 at 13:21

    I totally agree with you, and in fact believe that this whole 22month expensive and mind numbing circus has been played out JUST to keep the public from knowing what the emails actually said. Can you imagine Madcow focusing with such ferocity on John Pedesta as she has on Putin, by discussing what he wrote during a presidential campaign to "influence the election" ? We'd be a different country now, not fighting our way thru the McCarthite Swamp she helped create.

    [Apr 28, 2019] Breath of fresh air--real journalism again! Have so much respect for Chris Hedges and Aaron Mate, great work!

    Highly recommended!
    Apr 28, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    Tenzin Nordron , 1 week ago

    Trump's no embarrassment. He's the accurate representative of the ruthless, con-artistry of the Empire of Chaos.

    Lois Odea , 1 week ago

    Two great men. Thank you both for bringing truth.

    mistor Whiskers , 1 week ago

    I've been calling it vodkagate since day one and just watching these propagandists getting drunk on it.

    JoanneLG1960 , 1 week ago

    What a treat!

    IAM REAL , 1 week ago

    Aaron Mate and Greenwald are the best of the best.

    Larkinchance , 1 week ago

    In case after case, Maddow and others in corporate media used crafted language that was speculation designed to appear as cold hard facts to the the viewer. This was no only bad reporting, It was a conspiracy of sorts. Maddow regularly would say, "If Russia did this, it would be an attack on the US..." Leaving the viewer with the impression that "Russia did this!". Then she would go to stir the cauldron for war.. This rises to the level of a crime.

    Dan Harris , 1 week ago

    Aaron Mate is the absolute perfect foil to Jimmy when he is on the Jimmy Dore show. It is hilarious.

    real eyes realize real lies , 1 week ago

    EXCELLENT!!!!!!!

    Sandra Ellis , 1 week ago

    Perfect!!! So glad you had Aaron on.

    Larkinchance , 1 week ago

    Since when is Hilary Clinton on the left? Since when are the are e-mails of the democratic party protected government secrets? Are the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs important? Is it strange that after 18 long years of war there is no anti-war movement? Are the people reporting on Cable News real journalists? Well done Aaron and Chris!

    The One and 0nly , 1 week ago

    Israel gate

    John Harrison , 1 week ago

    I honestly am beginning to believe the Democratic leadership actually likes having Donald Trump as President

    Sandor Daroci , 1 week ago

    wow, go Aaron.

    Dan Campbell , 1 week ago

    I will try to resist the temptation to look in the comments section, while listening. If any interview warrants full attention, it's Aaron and Chris.

    ewa wyso , 1 week ago

    Yay! Aaron MatÉ !!!

    Sean , 1 week ago

    2 of my favorite journalists join to talk facts. Love it!

    Wretch Gunk , 1 week ago

    democrats would rather Turmp be president than Bernie, they will throw the election before they let Bernie create change... but then even if he is elected, it wont do much good with corporate shills in congress in senate

    robb , 1 week ago

    I enjoy listening to Aaron, a person of integrity and also a down to earth, interesting journalist who has worked hard to uncover the truth on this subject and knows it backwards and forwards. I like when he can't help but laugh at certain absurdities in mainstream media coverage of Russiagate.

    Pas Oli , 1 week ago

    Collusion? More like ConFusion GPS

    Ivette Correa , 1 week ago

    Breath of fresh air--real journalism again! Have so much respect for Chris Hedges and Aaron Mate, great work!

    [Apr 28, 2019] On Contact Russiagate Mueller Report w- Aaron Mate

    Highly recommended!
    Apr 28, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    Shannon Sun/Moon Virgo , 1 week ago

    Fabulous interview! Thank you both for your extraordinary integrity & courage ❤ Free Julian Assange ✊❤

    B. Greene , 1 week ago

    More honest journalism in 28 minutes than in 3 years of MSNBC or Fox.

    MrB1923 , 1 week ago

    THIS is journalism. EVERYTHING else is propaganda.

    Steven William Bayless Parks , 1 week ago

    It 's incredible that we have to watch Russian TV to find out what's going on in the USA.

    S Douglas , 1 week ago

    It's great to see some non-propagandist journalism.

    Winston Smith in Oceania , 1 week ago

    Big fan of Aaron Maté here!

    Mike2020able , 1 week ago

    Chomsky : ' Israel, not Russia, interferes With US Election '

    J.L. Goodman , 1 week ago

    I've got to admit,I get a massive dopamine rush hearing these two sane, intelligent, critical thinkers, skillfully dissect this convoluted quadrafuck that has wasted some much of our precious time. I literally feel washed clean for a moment.

    Amy Marie , 1 week ago

    Keep up the awesome work Aaron n RT😉

    Tertiary Adjunct , 1 week ago (edited)

    RT, give Aaron a show.

    Steven Yourke , 1 week ago

    You can count the number of real journalists left in the US on two hands. Here are two of the best and the bravest. Thank you, RT, for providing us with a platform for real journalists.

    Scott Turner , 1 week ago (edited)

    Thanks for this. Aaron Maté and Chris Hedges keep many people somewhat sane in an insane media world. Depressed, but at least somewhat sane. lol

    Joy Mazumdar , 1 week ago

    as an outsider.....i view the whole thing as a smokescreen...........keeping people occupied while planning & carrying out worse things that are being done in the dark..........

    Lee Vanderheiden , 1 week ago

    Thanks, Chris. What a great interview. Aaron Mate' is an up and coming star journalist!

    Matthew Iverson , 1 week ago

    Omg I love you guys! Omg I could cry!

    Ilia Pagan , 1 week ago

    Aaron Mate's courageous stance regarding Palestinians deserves all my respect and support. His analysts of Rusiagate and all the fanfare associated with the so called investigations seems most accurate.

    Boris Tabare Ag , 1 week ago

    Aaron Maté: the man who killed Luke Harding!!!

    TheJohnswa , 1 week ago

    Maddow has zero integrity left

    Brooks Rogers , 1 week ago

    Been a long time fan of Hedges and recent fan of Mate. Great conversation between these two critical thinkers so scarce these troubled days.

    Jesse Birkett , 1 week ago

    This is one the best episodes On Contact has ever done.

    [Apr 28, 2019] Mueller's Report Was a Media Rorschach Test

    theatlantic.com

    [Apr 28, 2019] SBS broadcast a 4 part doco called The Fourth Estate in June last year. It s about the NYT unhealthy obsession with Trump

    Apr 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Hoarsewhisperer , Apr 28, 2019 5:20:25 PM | link

    SBS broadcast a 4 part doco called The Fourth Estate in June last year. It's about the NYT unhealthy obsession with Trump. Episode 1 begins with his swearing in and cuts to stunned(?) NYT staffers watching the speech in which he says "For too long, our politicians have prospered while (blah blah blah) and this stops, right here, and right now."
    From then on it consists of an endless stream of huddles as various groups of staffers ponder the best way to spin various 'angles' and approaches, or solo senior staffers pontificating on all manner of hypotheticals. There are lots of opinionated people working at the NYT and none of them is 'stupid'.
    I recorded Episode 1 and my conclusion from watching it is that NOTHING the NYT publishes is accidental. I began recording Episode 2 but aborted the mission after 30 minutes or so because the repetitive self-worship and drivel was eerily similar to Episode 1.

    Wikipedia has an entry devoted to the series and it's freely available on the www. I recommend watching the first few minutes of Episode 1 just to get a feeling for the tone.

    The cartoon in question was published in an International Edition as a gloat or a public (private) joke, imo. I remain unconvinced that the Editorial Staff at the Jew York Times was blissfully unaware that the cartoon 'might' create an opportunity for the "Anti-Semitism!!?" crowd to stir up, and capitalise upon, the ensuing indignation and outrage.

    [Apr 28, 2019] Rand think tank study suggest that the USA should flood the world with oil in order to overextend and unbalance Russia

    Some pretty strange ideas if we are taking about oil. What they are smiling at RAND?
    Notable quotes:
    "... That evaluation is quite strange. The U.S. government does not produce oil. Private companies do so but only if they can make a profit. Increasing production beyond the global demand will decrease the oil price for all producers. All recent new U.S. production comes from shale oil. Optimistic estimates put the break even point for good shale oil fields at around $50 per barrel. Few fields can produce at lower costs. Most shale oil fields have a higher break even point. There is also a danger in suppressing oil prices. Many oil producing countries have U.S. friendly regimes. They need high oil prices to survive. Ruining them will not come cheap for the U.S. in geopolitical terms. ..."
    "... of the 8 most promising suggestions - 6 of them are military... it seems to me these think tanks are great pr tools for the military industrial complex... who cares if the usa continues to move into 3rd world status as a nation, so long as more money for weapons can be acquired?? that is what these think tanks - rand and etc seem to want to foist on the public... it is all so very sad.. ..."
    "... No, I think most US weapons procurement gives weapons that don't work as advertised, and wouldn't win wars anyway. I think it's one reason why the US military is largely only capable of spoiler wars, not actually conquering any place. (The other is the general unreliability of mercenary forces, which the US army basically is, however much they try to cultivate a militant Christian ethos.) ..."
    "... I also do not believe spoiler wars help the country as a whole (as opposed to some of the owners) I think pretty much all a burden, immoral to boot and should be massively reduced. ..."
    "... Even if you’re sure those companies are entirely private, if you print the current global reserve currency, can you not give “free” money to frackers and thereby make them more competitive than global peers? Sure, that’s flooding the market with an illegal subsidy. But, who can conduct proper accounting in opaque markets? ..."
    Apr 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
    According to RAND the best option to overextend and unbalance is to produce more oil:
    Expanding U.S. energy production would stress Russia's economy, potentially constraining its government budget and, by extension, its defense spending. By adopting policies that expand world supply and depress global prices, the United States can limit Russian revenue. Doing so entails little cost or risk, produces second-order benefits for the U.S. economy, and does not need multilateral endorsement.

    That evaluation is quite strange. The U.S. government does not produce oil. Private companies do so but only if they can make a profit. Increasing production beyond the global demand will decrease the oil price for all producers. All recent new U.S. production comes from shale oil. Optimistic estimates put the break even point for good shale oil fields at around $50 per barrel. Few fields can produce at lower costs. Most shale oil fields have a higher break even point. There is also a danger in suppressing oil prices. Many oil producing countries have U.S. friendly regimes. They need high oil prices to survive. Ruining them will not come cheap for the U.S. in geopolitical terms.

    The second best option says RAND is to increase sanctions of Russia. This also doesn't make much sense. Russia can produce everything it needs and it has free access to the world's largest markets, China and India.

    The best military options listed by RAND are all useless. All the new weapon systems Russia has revealed over the last two years are way more capable than anything the U.S. is able to field. If the U.S., as RAND advocates, invest more in certain fields, it will only be to catch up. That does not impose any new costs on Russia.

    ... ... ...

    In all I find it a bit impertinent to publicly argue for "overextending and unbalancing Russia". Where is the need to do such?

    The study demonstrates again that strategic analysis by U.S. think tanks is woefully shallow-minded. The "experts" writing these have no deep understanding of Russia, or even of the economic-political complexity of the real world.

    Four of the eight best options the RAND study found start with the words "Invest more in ...". It is a sign that the foremost motive its writers had in mind is to grab more taxpayer money. Fine. Give it to them already. Overextending and unbalancing the U.S. by more abstruse expenditure for weapon systems that do not work will neither hurt me nor Russia.

    james | Apr 27, 2019 2:34:51 PM | 2

    thanks b.. of the 8 most promising suggestions - 6 of them are military... it seems to me these think tanks are great pr tools for the military industrial complex... who cares if the usa continues to move into 3rd world status as a nation, so long as more money for weapons can be acquired?? that is what these think tanks - rand and etc seem to want to foist on the public... it is all so very sad..

    @1 steven.. well, as i read you, you are essentially supporting a continuation of the usa pouring endless money into the military then, regardless the accuracy of the accounts on the new Russian weapons.. do i have that right?

    psychohistorian | Apr 27, 2019 2:42:19 PM | 3

    @ b who wrote

    "In all I find it a bit impertinent to publicly argue for "overextending and unbalancing Russia". Where is the need to do such?"

    Russia is not beholden to the God of Mammon/global private finance world and the need to do such is to affect that position

    The West is ruled by those that own private finance and all major conflict is predicated on the forceful, if necessary, maintenance of that control.

    Steven T Johnson | Apr 27, 2019 2:47:15 PM | 4

    james@2

    No, I think most US weapons procurement gives weapons that don't work as advertised, and wouldn't win wars anyway. I think it's one reason why the US military is largely only capable of spoiler wars, not actually conquering any place. (The other is the general unreliability of mercenary forces, which the US army basically is, however much they try to cultivate a militant Christian ethos.)

    However, since I also do not believe spoiler wars help the country as a whole (as opposed to some of the owners) I think pretty much all a burden, immoral to boot and should be massively reduced.

    ... ... ...

    oglalla | Apr 27, 2019 5:34:07 PM | 18

    >> The U.S. government does not produce oil. Private companies do so but only if they can make a profit. Increasing production beyond the global demand will decrease the oil price for all producers.

    Even if you’re sure those companies are entirely private, if you print the current global reserve currency, can you not give “free” money to frackers and thereby make them more competitive than global peers? Sure, that’s flooding the market with an illegal subsidy. But, who can conduct proper accounting in opaque markets?

    Of course, the money is not “free”. Depreciating the currency, an inflation tax, shows up in lower-quality goods (like frankenfood— we cannot afford healthy food any more) and higher prices in everything. But, again, who’s counting? The BLS and the media? Yep.

    [Apr 28, 2019] As a Russian, I feel disgust at our leaders who squandered all of Russia's historic influence on the Ukraine and gave up

    That completely wrong. You can't prevent the "march of history" even if you understand that it is directed against you. The collapse of the USSR put in motion forces for the revolution of the results of WWII. And EuroMaydan like previously Baltic states "Maidans" were the direct result of this dissolution and changed balance of power in Europe with EU now being the dominant force and the USA dominant geopolitical force.
    Still it is true that Ukraine EuroMaydan was the major Putin's defeat and the major victory of the US neocons in general and Obama as the President in particular. It might well be that this was inevitable as the trajectory of post-soviet republic is reliable move toward anti-Russian stance as a side effect of obtaining the independence, but still this was a defeat. It was actually Yanukovich who encouraged and helped to organized and finance far right forces and the Party in Ukraine. such a pro-Russian President as fame news media in the USA and GB like to describe him
    Poroshenko was the USA SOB. The USA allowed Zelensky to run for office, and allowed him to win. Zelensky is most probably another USA SOB, although only time will tell. Comedians are usually are people with very high IQ who see the absurdity of the current life in Ukraine and Poroshenko regime more clearly then others. The question is whether he will be allowed to do something about it by the USA and EU, who control Ukraine both politically and financially. Biden story of dismissal of the General Prosecutor of Ukraine (who tried to procedure the firm Biden son got money from ) with ease tells us something about the nature of the current governance of Ukraine: is is not even a vassal state -- it is a colony.
    Nuland success in pushing Ukrainian nationalists to arm uprising against Yanukovich (pissing EU which signed a treaty with Yanukovich about holding elections, which he would certanly lose, a day before) also can be explained that at this point the USA controlled vital centers of Ukrainian political power including intelligence agencies, several oligarchs (Poroshenko is one; Timoshenko is another) and, especially, media. In Ukraine Western NGO have the status of diplomatic missions (with corresponding immunity), so in no way such a country can be independent in any meaningful sense of this word.
    But craziness, aggressiveness and recklessness of the US neocons, who now practice old imperial "might makes right" mode of operation, gives the world some hope. They most probably will burn the USA geological power it acquired after the dissolution of the USSR sooner then many expect. Like look at Bolton and Pompeo recent actions.
    Notable quotes:
    "... "For better or for worse, Putin has put an end to oligarch rule in Russia. Members of Putin's inner circle may be immensely rich, but they know to whom they owe their wealth. By imprisoning Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Putin sent a clear message to the all-powerful oligarchs that controlled Russia during former president Boris Yeltsin's time: stay out of politics." ..."
    Apr 28, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Felix Keverich , says: April 25, 2019 at 7:27 am GMT

    The main feeling about the entire topic of the Ukraine is one of total disgust, a gradual and painful realization of the fact that our so-called "brothers" are brothers only in the sense of the biblical Cain and the acceptance that there is nobody to talk to in Kiev.

    Russia likes to fashion itself as a "great power". A real great power should have been able to insert itself in Ukrainian politics, regardless of any brotherly feelings – you know, like US did.

    As a Russian, I feel disgust at our leaders who squandered all of Russia's historic influence on the Ukraine and gave up – poor neo-Soviet dinosaurs got completely outmaneuvered.

    aleksandar , says: April 28, 2019 at 7:49 am GMT
    @Kiza Read
    Try to understand
    Read it again
    Try to understand
    Read it again
    Try to understand
    "For better or for worse, Putin has put an end to oligarch rule in Russia. Members of Putin's inner circle may be immensely rich, but they know to whom they owe their wealth. By imprisoning Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Putin sent a clear message to the all-powerful oligarchs that controlled Russia during former president Boris Yeltsin's time: stay out of politics."

    Vladimir Golstein, professor of Slavic studies at Brown University. He was born in Moscow and emigrated to the United States in 1979.

    [Apr 28, 2019] Sounds like Brennan's CIA laundered information to EX-CIA Nellie Ohr when she was working for Fusion GPS who then laundered this info to Steele

    Apr 28, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    Sam , 28 April 2019 at 04:31 PM

    While I knew about Nellie Ohr and her DOJ husband , what I didn't know was that while she worked for Fusion GPS , fusion was a FBI contractor that had access to NSA database until Admiral Rogers shut it down .

    Sounds Like Brennan's CIA laundered information to EX-CIA Nellie Ohr when she was working for Fusion GPS who then laundered this info to Steele , another person employed by Fusion who then gave this back to Bruce Ohr of DOJ who then gave it to the FBI . And they all got paid for their " research " . This then was used to deceive the FISA court . But Admiral Rogers went to this court and warned Trump of the spying and violations of constitutional rights . Shortly after Obama fired admiral Rogers . Sounds fishy to me ? what do you think ?

    [Apr 28, 2019] NYC subway system as a sign of deterioration of the USA as economic power

    Parachuting Harvard mafia on Russia was a more powerful weapon and led to more destruction of Russian economy then direct bombardment would
    Notable quotes:
    "... Concerning the capability of wrecking finances of other states, USA is not a slouch, the most powerful weapon is economic advise. If I interpret news correctly, it were experts of Goldman Sachs that help Greek government to borrow about twice as much as they could handle in the long run. The wreckage in Russia was as impressive, but, alas, hard to repeat, so now it remains to carp about their "bad behavior". ..."
    Apr 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Piotr Berman , Apr 27, 2019 3:26:43 PM | link

    I think that at least some weapon systems that USA makes or develops can be indeed superior. The most acute loss from the approach of "invest in over-extending and un-balancing the opponent" is that USA, while powerful, cannot do everything in the same time.

    My favorite comparison chart is timeliness of subway systems in major metropolitan areas. Honestly, I cannot find it, because the search is swamped with the tales of woe of subway commuters in NYC. As befits the greatest financial center, cultural metropolis etc. etc., NYC has a transportation system that is comparable in its extend to other metropolitan areas like Tokyo, Paris or London. However, the performance is uninspiring. On the chart in NYT that I can't find out at the moment, only Mexico City had a lower percentage of train rides delayed by less than 10 minutes. I checked Moscow that has a larger subway system (compared to NY) and which was not on the chart. They pride themselves with frequency of delays that is 5 times smaller than in Paris (50 times smaller than in NYC?). Moscovites can actually plan their daily lives assuming that their commutes will arrive on time.

    This is the most glaring example of a lost opportunity to take care of domestic needs, but the quality of education, healthcare etc. is mediocre compared with the rest of OECD, although there is always the southern neighbor that saves USA from being dead last.

    Incidentally, NYC subway is not exactly underfunded, instead, it may have the most irrational management among major metropolitan areas which accurately reflects deficiencies of American political system. Bloated costs are pervasive across many areas, surely in military, healthcare and broadly meant policing, and their originate in lobbo-cracy, a plethora of lobbies grabbing chunks of monies either directly spent or (mis)regulated by the government. The activity of these lobbies is tightly regulated by elaborate rules, but the end effect is as if USA were pathetically corrupted (say, half as corrupted as Nigeria).

    Piotr Berman , Apr 27, 2019 3:46:11 PM | link

    Concerning the capability of wrecking finances of other states, USA is not a slouch, the most powerful weapon is economic advise. If I interpret news correctly, it were experts of Goldman Sachs that help Greek government to borrow about twice as much as they could handle in the long run. The wreckage in Russia was as impressive, but, alas, hard to repeat, so now it remains to carp about their "bad behavior".

    Sanctions are also powerful when directed at small/medium size economies. Russia, although disparaged as "a smaller economy than Italy", but in actuality, Italy has "GDP per capity PPP" that is 40% larger than Russia, and Russia has 2.4 times larger population, so quite a bit larger economy in terms of "purchasing parity", and the most glaring domestic production deficiency are fruit and vegetables that, according to latest news, have a number of potential suppliers that are most glad when they can sell their produce.

    [Apr 28, 2019] Fake news takedown Journalist shreds Rachel Maddow's Russiagate conspiracies -- RT USA News

    Apr 28, 2019 | www.rt.com

    Journalist Aaron Mate has eviscerated MSNBC's Rachel Maddow for peddling "Trump-Russia conspiracy theories, falsehoods & innuendo," after Maddow threw a tantrum when YouTube dared to recommend an RT video. Mate, a longtime skeptic of the mainstream media's beloved 'Russiagate' narrative, was the subject of a recent interview with RT. When MSNBC's Russiagater-in-chief Rachel Maddow found out that YouTube's algorithm had actually suggested the interview to viewers, she saw more Russian meddling and proclaimed the recommendation "death by algorithm."

    Death by algorithm. "YouTube recommended Russia Today for understanding Mueller report." https://t.co/q6McajcNo3

    -- Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) April 27, 2019

    Mate unloaded on Maddow on Sunday, systematically destroying the MSNBC host for her two years as "the leading purveyor of now debunked Trump-Russia conspiracy theories, falsehoods & innuendo." Buckle up.

    1/ If YouTube were to recommend your show, it'd be recommending the leading purveyor of now debunked Trump-Russia conspiracy theories, falsehoods & innuendo of the last 2+ years. Here's a sample:

    -- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 28, 2019

    "Just recently you were caught in real-time lying to your audience," he began. "You claimed Barr was handling the redactions by himself. But the chyron -- on screen right below -- told viewers the truth, that Mueller was in fact 'assisting' w/ the redactions."

    2/ Just recently you were caught in real-time lying to your audience. You claimed Barr was handling the redactions by himself. But the chyron -- on screen right below -- told viewers the truth, that Mueller was in fact "assisting" w/ the redactions: pic.twitter.com/rTSAABngp2

    -- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 28, 2019

    With Maddow seemingly content to lie on live television, it fell upon her show's producers to flash the truth on viewers' screens.

    Mate then recalled the time Maddow suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin would use the 'pee tape' (the most far-fetched allegation in the Democrat-commissioned, internet-sourced Steele dossier) to force Trump into withdrawing US troops stationed near Russia. Of course, this never happened, and Trump recently announced plans to ramp up deployments to Poland. A swing and a miss for Maddow.

    3/ There was that time in Jan 2017 when you speculated that Putin may use the pee tape & other kompromat to force Trump into withdrawing US troops near Russia. How did that one turn out? pic.twitter.com/XuXXagyCNb

    -- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 28, 2019

    Maddow contradicted herself on the 'pee tape' only last week, telling viewers she "refused" to let herself "think about" the possibility of these tapes existing.

    4/ BTW, just last week you falsely said that "the one thing I refused to let myself think about" was that Putin had tapes of Trump -- the very prospect you had previously floated to posit that Putin may blackmail Trump into withdrawing troops. pic.twitter.com/xMC4uPrjSK

    -- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 28, 2019

    "Who could forget that time this past winter when you seized on life-threatening cold temperatures to fear-monger that Russia could kill Americans by knocking out their heat?" Mate continued, mocking Maddow's claim that the Kremlin could "kill the power" and freeze Americans to death.

    5/ Who could forget that time this past winter when you seized on life-threatening cold temperatures to fear-monger that Russia could kill Americans by knocking out their heat? pic.twitter.com/deo2H4SBBQ

    -- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 28, 2019

    "There was that time when you explored the scenario under which Putin 'gives orders' to his puppet Trump at an upcoming meeting," Mate continued. "Do you think Putin ordered Trump to stage a coup in Venezuela/try to kill the German-Russia gas pipeline/nix the INF treaty?"

    6/ There was that time when you explored the scenario under which Putin "gives orders" to his puppet Trump at an upcoming meeting. Do you think Putin ordered Trump to stage a coup in Venezuela/try to kill the German-Russia gas pipeline/nix the INF treaty? pic.twitter.com/cbSrGt2xR3

    -- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 28, 2019

    Mate ridiculed Maddow for suggesting that the Trump campaign set aside funds to pay for the services of "Russian hackers."

    7/ How about that time when you speculated -- citing the Steele dossier -- that Cohen billed Trump $50k for "tech services" to pay off Russian hackers? It was actually to pay a US firm ( https://t.co/GGK6FQLvRJ ). pic.twitter.com/TcqdN8mC4z

    -- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 28, 2019

    That Vladimir Putin installed Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State (a job Tillerson was fired from after a year).

    9/ How about the time when you speculated that Putin installed Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State? pic.twitter.com/YiUYWdxpZ5

    -- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 28, 2019

    And that the existence of an Albanian Bernie Sanders fan page on Facebook was an act of "international warfare against our country."

    14/ Looking back, do you think maybe that declaring that a fake Bernie Sanders fan page run out of Albania amounted to "international warfare against our country" was perhaps a little hyperbolic? pic.twitter.com/5Meg0xLNqg

    -- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 28, 2019

    Despite peddling baseless conspiracies and flagrant Russophobia every night, Maddow remains one of the US' most popular news anchors, and one of the best paid. The MSNBC host regularly vies with Fox News' Sean Hannity for the top spot on the cable news ratings, and earns a cool $7 million per year for her work.

    Although Maddow has been perhaps the most fervent promoter of Russiagate hysteria on television, her ratings have clumped after Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report put most of her theories to bed last month. Maddow's show slipped from its number one position after the report dropped, and lost half a million viewers in the space of a week.

    Mate, although reporting to a far smaller audience, has received an Izzy Award for his "meticulous reporting" that "challenged the way the public was being informed about the Mueller investigation."

    [Apr 28, 2019] Rachel Maddow's Tin-Foil Hysteria Laid Bare In Devastating Twitter Takedown

    Apr 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
    While the MSM peddled tin-foil Trump-Russia collusion conspiracies for more than two years, one pundit in particular stands head-and-shoulders above the rest; MSNBC' s Rachel Maddow.

    Night after night Maddow told lie after lie - promising her viewers Trump was finally, actually, definitely finished for one reason or another.

    Maddow's propaganda rants are too numerous to count - however The Nation 's Aaron Maté is currently in the middle of a devastating Twitter takedown highlighting some of the MSNBC anchor's most pathetic attempts to delegitimize the sitting president of the United States - after Maddow tweeted a Washington Post article about YouTube recommending an RT interview with Maté .

    [Apr 28, 2019] Death by algorithm Maddow inconsolable after YouTube recommends RT interview on Mueller report

    Notable quotes:
    "... "Death by algorithm," a despondent Maddow commented. The video in question – an episode of On Contact, which is hosted by Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist Chris Hedges – features an interview with Canadian journalist Aaron Mate. A fierce critic of the Trump-Russia collusion theory promoted by mainstream media, Mate recently received an Izzy Award for his contrarian reporting on Russiagate. ..."
    "... While Maddow was apparently horrified by the thought of impressionable Americans watching a video of two acclaimed journalists discussing current events, others were more perturbed by the MSNBC host's melodramatic tweeting. ..."
    "... Actually, the entire premise of Maddow's outrage is highly suspect. The Washington Post report quietly notes that the RT video in question has accumulated "only about 55,000 views," and that the interview was by far from the most recommended Mueller-related video. "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" was recommended more than five million times, WaPo reported, while other channels, such as Fox and PBS NewsHour, received hundreds of thousands of recommendations for their Russiagate videos. ..."
    "... In fact, the Washington Post story was so shaky that it had to issue a clickbait-deflating correction: An earlier version of their report had erroneously claimed that YouTube had recommended RT's take on the Mueller report more often than other networks' programming. ..."
    Apr 28, 2019 | www.rt.com

    Russiagate guru Rachel Maddow has caught wind of the latest Kremlin-linked outrage: YouTube recommended an RT video about the Mueller report! And now social media users have lined up to laugh at her.

    The MSNBC host ascended her Twitter pulpit to share a shocking Washington Post article detailing how YouTube allegedly recommended an RT video "hundreds of thousands of times" to users seeking information about the recently released report by special counsel Robert Mueller.

    Death by algorithm. "YouTube recommended Russia Today for understanding Mueller report." https://t.co/q6McajcNo3

    -- Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) April 27, 2019

    "Death by algorithm," a despondent Maddow commented. The video in question – an episode of On Contact, which is hosted by Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist Chris Hedges – features an interview with Canadian journalist Aaron Mate. A fierce critic of the Trump-Russia collusion theory promoted by mainstream media, Mate recently received an Izzy Award for his contrarian reporting on Russiagate.

    www.youtube.com/embed/odEnNBlOJdk

    While Maddow was apparently horrified by the thought of impressionable Americans watching a video of two acclaimed journalists discussing current events, others were more perturbed by the MSNBC host's melodramatic tweeting.

    "This YouTube [video] is so much better than the war mongering conspiracy lunacy that comes from you. You should be ashamed to smear good people & good content in such a base & McCarthyite way," replied one disappointed Twitter user.

    Chris Hedges won a Pulitzer prize, Aaron Maté just won an Izzy. This YouTube is so much better than the war mongering conspiracy lunacy that comes from you. You should be ashamed to smear good people & good content in such a base & McCarthyite way.

    -- patricia dowling (@ketchmeifucan) April 27, 2019

    Others took issue with Maddow's bizarre suggestion that YouTube's algorithm could somehow bring about "death."

    "'Death?' No one's lives were threatened by a conversation between two award winning journalists about the massive disinformation campaign you're waged on the minds of suggestible Democrats. But they are endangered by the Cold War you've helped to stir up," Max Blumenthal, editor of the Grayzone Project, noted.

    "Death?" No one's lives were threatened by a conversation between two award winning journalists about the massive disinformation campaign you're waged on the minds of suggestible Democrats. But they are endangered by the Cold War you've helped to stir up. https://t.co/Z0lQlGjHQS

    -- Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) April 28, 2019

    Mate himself joined the chorus of criticism directed at Maddow.

    "I was interviewed on RT by the Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges about Russiagate. YouTube recommended it. How fitting then that the leading Russiagate conspiracy theorist calls this 'death by algorithm' – to a propagandist, dissent from orthodoxy is 'death' indeed," he wrote.

    I was interviewed on RT by the Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges about Russiagate. YouTube recommended it. How fitting then that the leading Russiagate conspiracy theorist calls this "Death by algorithm" -- to a propagandist, dissent from orthodoxy is "Death" indeed: https://t.co/dFa8B815js

    -- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 27, 2019

    Actually, the entire premise of Maddow's outrage is highly suspect. The Washington Post report quietly notes that the RT video in question has accumulated "only about 55,000 views," and that the interview was by far from the most recommended Mueller-related video. "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" was recommended more than five million times, WaPo reported, while other channels, such as Fox and PBS NewsHour, received hundreds of thousands of recommendations for their Russiagate videos.

    To make matters even less scary, YouTube disputed the article's core claims, which were originally made by media watchdog group AlgoTransparency. YouTube said it could not reproduce the group's data allegedly showing that the RT video had been recommended hundreds of thousands of times by the site's algorithm.

    In fact, the Washington Post story was so shaky that it had to issue a clickbait-deflating correction: An earlier version of their report had erroneously claimed that YouTube had recommended RT's take on the Mueller report more often than other networks' programming.

    WaPo runs with this fabricated imperial xenophobia -- all while contradicting and correcting its own claims!

    Clearly WaPo's only problem here is that this RT broadcast -- between two American journalists -- simply exists and can be viewed on YouTube. https://t.co/BcvFjZge5b pic.twitter.com/yyG3ok5BPn

    -- Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) April 26, 2019

    As Blumenthal observed, the WaPo story appears to be yet another tired attempt to shame anyone who doesn't regurgitate narratives promoted by US corporate media.

    The real problems with the @aaronjmate interview are identified in the body of the article:

    1. It contains content that offends professional Cold Warriors and Russiagate hustlers

    2. It was not published by a "verified" (read: US-approved corporate or mainstream) news source pic.twitter.com/Sn87ZUUvkZ

    -- Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) April 26, 2019

    If you like this story, share it with a friend!

    [Apr 28, 2019] Julian Assange is a vilified human being.

    Notable quotes:
    "... Now, conflating any individual with Russia, will always immediately result in that person becoming, in the US, in the U.K. and in other US-kept vassal nations totally tarred with all sorts of nefarious and always unexamined assumptions. ..."
    "... Mark Twain once suggested that the deity created war that USians might learn geography. Clearly, it is a laborious process and has failed to create much global geographical awareness among the millions, most of whom are content to think whatever nation is correctly being ministered to or in the sights of "everything is on the table" as simply being, vaguely, "over there". ..."
    "... Thanks to the intelligence community, the political elite, notably in the Democratic "wing" of the War Party, but with the support of the Republican wing of that party, and certain individual players aligned with the US policy "Full Spectrum Dominance" which, of course, is compassionate goodness and not to be confused with the vile aims of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and a whole host of other "bad guy" nations or amorphous groups known as "terrorists. ..."
    "... Clearly, the consensus opinion is shaped, not inside the minds of millions of people, all projecting their very worst fears or even their own worst proclivities on individuals like Putin or whoever is the "Hitler" of the convenient moment, but rather on the efforts of, let us call them "entities" who plan to benefit from a populous aroused to anxiety or even fear itself. ..."
    "... The list of beneficiaries includes the financial elites who always profit from war and "confusion", the political elites who serve those monied interests, the media, academia, the military, intelligence, weapons manufacturers, energy producers, military contractors and so on. ..."
    Apr 28, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    DW Bartoo , April 22, 2019 at 08:16

    Julian Assange is a vilified human being.

    When vilification occurs a very necessary question that critical thought must ponder is who benefits from such scapegoating?

    However, for the moment, let us ponder, again in service to actual critical thought, why aligning Assange with Russia is expected by those who will and intend to benefit from that association. Why is suggesting that Assange is "a Russian agent" expected to convince millions of USians that Assange is "a bad person"?

    Why would millions accept that assertion without questioning it at all?

    Caitlin suggest that those millions are "herd animals", implying that they are led into believing two things. The first is that Russia and the Russian people are "bad", we have even recently had a much trusted official suggest that Russians are "genetically" predisposed to badness with a malignant tendency to single out the innocent, and one indispensable nation, the United States for the most nefarious of Russian "interventions", amounting, according to a famous Hollywood actor, who occasionally portrays a certain deity in the movies, to "an attack".

    In the meager interest of context and history, stretching back a bit more than a century, some USians who are aware of that history, recognize that the US, under President Woodrow Wilson sent US military troops into Russia in order to end the rise of the Bolshevik rebellion/revolution.

    Thus began the official demonization of Russia. A demonization very convenient to the necessity of having an implacable enemy always ready to pounce on the good, moral, humanitarian, and freely enterprising United States.

    Now, conflating any individual with Russia, will always immediately result in that person becoming, in the US, in the U.K. and in other US-kept vassal nations totally tarred with all sorts of nefarious and always unexamined assumptions.

    Mark Twain once suggested that the deity created war that USians might learn geography. Clearly, it is a laborious process and has failed to create much global geographical awareness among the millions, most of whom are content to think whatever nation is correctly being ministered to or in the sights of "everything is on the table" as simply being, vaguely, "over there".

    That is why the US must strike "them" "over there" so as to avoid the frightening thought of having "them" have to be dealt with "here" in the "Homeland" of "the free and the brave".

    This suggests that the "herd" has to be led to certain conclusions.

    Unlike horses, the herd HAS to drink.

    If the herd does not consume the elixir, then it may not be willing to joyfully send the "flower of its youth" off to become cannon fodder should the Table of Everything so demand.

    I grew up in the nineteen fifties when the first Cold War was in full blossom. We school students were told and taught that Russia hated us, wanted to attack and kill us all, intended to rule the world with an iron hand and ruthless godlessness.

    Thanks to the intelligence community, the political elite, notably in the Democratic "wing" of the War Party, but with the support of the Republican wing of that party, and certain individual players aligned with the US policy "Full Spectrum Dominance" which, of course, is compassionate goodness and not to be confused with the vile aims of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and a whole host of other "bad guy" nations or amorphous groups known as "terrorists.

    Now, by tying Assange to that hodge-podge of baddies, the many may rest assured that he has been put in his proper place.

    Clearly, the consensus opinion is shaped, not inside the minds of millions of people, all projecting their very worst fears or even their own worst proclivities on individuals like Putin or whoever is the "Hitler" of the convenient moment, but rather on the efforts of, let us call them "entities" who plan to benefit from a populous aroused to anxiety or even fear itself.

    The list of beneficiaries includes the financial elites who always profit from war and "confusion", the political elites who serve those monied interests, the media, academia, the military, intelligence, weapons manufacturers, energy producers, military contractors and so on.

    Assange, to his great and everlasting credit, exposed a very large amount of this including, with the invaluable efforts
    of Chelsea Manning, actual war crimes perpetrated by the US, even beyond beginning wars based on lies.

    Fortunately, the media, having overplayed it hand in the manipulation has exposed itself to many as being but a propaganda industry.

    A very real question for those concerned with engaging critical thought processes is just how many humans are still being led, rather easily, around by the fallacious and very dangerous concoctions of the opinion "shapers" in think tanks, media echo chambers, corporate boardrooms, and academic snake pits?

    Perhaps there comes a time for humanity, if it is not to trot along in the footsteps of the dodo bird to look not where the fingers of deceit are pointing, but at those to whom the fingers are attached?

    AnneR , April 22, 2019 at 09:33

    DWB – as a USian of English birth (of about the same age, I would imagine) I am amazed at the fear the US had of the USSR back in the 1950s. When my husband told me, in the 1980s, about how he and his schoolmates had had nuclear air raid attack drills (sheltering under desks and so on!) I'm sure that I gawped, fly-catchingly. What??? Nowt remotely similar occurred in the UK during the 1950s in schools or elsewhere.

    It was only since I began studying history (late in life) that I learnt that the British ruling elites have hated the Russians for well over a hundred years. Still not quite sure why, nor yet why whatever the Russians did (Crimean War in the 1850s?) that pissed them off so royally should have any bearing on Russia-UK relations nowadays. But that could be because I'm dim. And because I've no hatred, dislike, fear of Russians (or Chinese or Iranians) at all. My fears revolve around the hubris-arrogance and determination to retain economic and more general world domination by the US and its poodles in the UK-FR-NATO and Israel (though their status as dog or leash is debatable). These are the countries to be afraid of.

    Sam F , April 22, 2019 at 20:34

    Yes, the remarkably unprovoked hatred of Russia among the UK aristocracy, regardless of era or government there, is a great wonder. They did not even have eras of invasion threats, colonial competition, or competing navies, as with France, Spain, and Portugal. Britain's 19th century invasions of Afghanistan were apparently provoked by nothing but fear, and their several lost wars there apparently did not even engage Russians. Even complete transitions of Russian government from monarchy to communism to capitalism failed to affect UK's fears. If the cause were mere cultural difference, they would have feared the orient.

    Perhaps their aristocracy was not polite enough, or those backwards Ns, upside down Rs, and Pi symbols terrified the British.

    geeyp , April 22, 2019 at 23:49

    Anne R. – For more on your second paragraph, visit Larouchepac.org The late Lyndon Larouche's site has a lot of info on this.

    Zhu , April 23, 2019 at 00:50

    Britain & Russia were rivals for empire. Both were expanding in Asia – The Great Game. Russia got Turkestan, Britain got India, both wanted China. Hence the elite's hatred, although now it's probably traditional and automatic.

    Keep studying history – it's ales ts enlightening!

    AnneR , April 23, 2019 at 09:22

    Yes Zhu – I do continue with history, although of course no historian and thus history is ever free (as with all scholars) of their personal worldview. And yes I realize that the UK, when an imperial power, viewed the world pretty much as the US does now: its domain. So obviously any and all contenders were up for vitriolic loathing and war. But it still doesn't explain the particularly vicious attitude toward Russia on the part of the British ruling elites. After all the Brits also had France, Holland and Germany (earlier Spain and Portugal) as competitors, admittedly at different time periods, and no they weren't "liked" and were often at war with each other. But there was never the same bitterness toward western European rivals as there was and continues to be toward Russia.

    That the USSR provoked deep, undying hatred among the aristos and their hangers' on does not surprise: can't have anything remotely similar happening in our cushy backyard, can't have the unwashed, ignorant, prole herd actually learning any lessons from the Soviets.

    Yet even so – no nuclear air raid drills in schools or anywhere during red-baiting season. Nothing kindred.

    O Society , April 22, 2019 at 08:07

    The truth is Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, Rachel Maddow, and the rest if the Scooby Doo gang handed Agent Orange the victimhood script he needs to feed his Trumpets to win the 2020 election.

    They've also guaranteed no matter what heinous gangster scam shit he has done in the past or will do in the future, none of it will stick because he'll play the falsely accused card.

    For the idiot Americans watching White House reality TV at home, this means celebrity Trump now has immunity and can't be voted off the island this season or next.

    https://opensociet.org/2019/04/20/chomsky-by-focusing-on-russia-democrats-handed-trump-a-huge-gift-possibly-the-2020-election/

    Jay Barney , April 22, 2019 at 08:04

    You are kidding, right?

    Assange publishes hacks from Snowden, Manning, and Russia. Do they publish anything on Russia?

    Nope.

    Assange and you are tools of Russia. Obvious to anyone

    Skip Scott , April 22, 2019 at 12:01

    Ah yes, the evil Rooskies.

    From the article you obviously didn't read:

    In fact, WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of documents pertaining to Russia, has made critical comments about the Russian government and defended dissident Russian activists, and in 2017 published an entire trove called the Spy Files Russia exposing Russian surveillance practices.

    wikileaks russia files:
    https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/

    I think we can tell who the "tool" is.

    OlyaPola , April 22, 2019 at 03:23

    "The only people claiming that Assange is a Russian agent are those who are unhappy with the things that WikiLeaks publications have exposed, whether that be U.S. war crimes or the corrupt manipulations of Democratic Party leaders."

    Perhaps fuller understanding would be gained by considering the following pathway.

    People who who think that "Assange is a Russian agent" is a plausible belief are the audience encouraged in the view that "Assange is a Russian agent".

    Much of this notion of plausible belief is founded on the creation of holograms consisting in large part of projections of the believer's expectations/experiences of the evaluation criteria used in choosing agents to recruit (for the public largely projected from their experience of creating resumes and attending job interviews) , what motivates an agent to be recruited, how such motivation can facilitate the purpose of the recruiter of the agent, what are the potential dangers of recruiting the agent, and most importantly what is the purpose of and reasons why the recruiter considers recruiting an agent to achieve her/his purpose.

    On projection catalysing plausible belief you will be aware that some encourage the belief that Mr. Putin is the richest man on the planet since in all societies there are assumptions/expectations on motivations.

    However in the presently self-designated "The United States of America" as functions of "exceptionalism", "we the people hold these truths to be self-evident" and lack of direct experience of foreign cultures by many, the population are particulrly prone to projection giving rise to the paradox of "exceptionalists" engaging in the them/us conflation.

    [Apr 28, 2019] SBS broadcast a 4 part doco called The Fourth Estate in June last year. It s about the NYT unhealthy obsession with Trump

    Apr 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Hoarsewhisperer , Apr 28, 2019 5:20:25 PM | link

    SBS broadcast a 4 part doco called The Fourth Estate in June last year. It's about the NYT unhealthy obsession with Trump. Episode 1 begins with his swearing in and cuts to stunned(?) NYT staffers watching the speech in which he says "For too long, our politicians have prospered while (blah blah blah) and this stops, right here, and right now."
    From then on it consists of an endless stream of huddles as various groups of staffers ponder the best way to spin various 'angles' and approaches, or solo senior staffers pontificating on all manner of hypotheticals. There are lots of opinionated people working at the NYT and none of them is 'stupid'.
    I recorded Episode 1 and my conclusion from watching it is that NOTHING the NYT publishes is accidental. I began recording Episode 2 but aborted the mission after 30 minutes or so because the repetitive self-worship and drivel was eerily similar to Episode 1.

    Wikipedia has an entry devoted to the series and it's freely available on the www. I recommend watching the first few minutes of Episode 1 just to get a feeling for the tone.

    The cartoon in question was published in an International Edition as a gloat or a public (private) joke, imo. I remain unconvinced that the Editorial Staff at the Jew York Times was blissfully unaware that the cartoon 'might' create an opportunity for the "Anti-Semitism!!?" crowd to stir up, and capitalise upon, the ensuing indignation and outrage.

    [Apr 28, 2019] Did The Russians Really Interfere In US Elections

    Notable quotes:
    "... Significantly, Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing on December 11th, 2018 that "ad accounts linked to Russia" spent about $4,700 in advertising" to politically influence Americans during the 2016 presidential election season. ..."
    Apr 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Boyd Cathey via The Unz Review,

    The Mueller Report is now public, and our Mainstream Media have filled the airways with all sorts of commentaries and interpretations. We know that - despite the very best efforts of the dedicated Leftist attorneys on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's staff - there was absolutely no coordination between members of the Trump campaign, or any of his staffers, with Russians. No additional charges have come as a result, other than accusations made earlier of "process crimes" (e.g. failure to report earnings on tax forms, failure to report lobbying work, or not telling investigators what they demanded to hear -- "crimes" that practically every politician in Washington has been guilty of at one time or another and would normally not cause much of a stir). None of these involved Russia.

    Of course, that finding has not satisfied many Democrats or the unhinged Leftist crazies in the media, who continue to have visions of "collusion" -- a kind of communications Alzheimers that has poisoned our media now for years. Thus, Representative Eric Swalwell (who is one of nearly two dozen Democrats running for president) continues to assert that there was "collusion," as does the irrepressible (and irresponsible) Adam Schiff: "it's there in plain sight," they insist, "if you just look hard enough, and maybe squint just a bit -- or maybe have those specialized 3-D Russia glasses!"

    Such political leaders -- along with those further out in the Leftist loonysphere like Representatives Maxine Waters and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortes -- continue down their Primrose path of post-Marxist madness.

    But beyond the collusion/coordination issue, the past couple of weeks have been filled with a swirling controversy concerning what is called "obstruction of justice." And once again, the fundamental issues have been incredibly politicized. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had an obligation, if he and his minions discovered "obstruction of justice," that is, concerted and illegal attempts to obstruct the investigations by the president or his staff, to present charges to the Department of Justice. Yet, all he was able to do was assemble a farrago of "he said/she said" instances, none of which rose to the level of criminal activity. Apparently President Trump told a subaltern "I wish would you fire Mueller," or he wished in a speech in his joking style that "if the Russians had Hillary's emails, they would release them," or he had a private conversation with Vladimir Putin when they met (as all national leaders do!), or his son met with a Russian attorney who supposedly had some "dirt" on the Hillary Clinton campaign (which did not turn out to be the reason for the Trump Tower meeting at all).

    None of the ten or eleven cited instances came anywhere close to being actionable or criminal under settled law. In each instance cited, the president's actions (or desires) fell within his purview and authority under Article II of the Constitution. And regarding Trump's desire to fire Mueller, he was on solid legal ground; the Supreme Court in its 1997 decision, Edmonds vs. the United States , declared that "inferior" officials, including an independent counsel, could be removed by presidential action as part of his delegated powers . And, in any case, Mueller was not dismissed.

    Mueller had an obligation after examining these situations to make a finding; he did not. By so doing, by avoiding decisions and stringing out such instances in an obviously political sense, he abdicated his responsibility and did his best to impugn Donald Trump and his administration and thus offer grist for continued Democrat attacks on the president all the way through the 2020 election.

    Mueller left it up to the Attorney General William Barr and Congress to decide how to proceed. And that is where we are today.

    The one issue that both Democrats and most Republicans seem to agree on, the issue which both say is "proven conclusively" by Mueller is that the Russians "attempted to interfere and did interfere" in our 2016 election.

    Interesting, is it not, that the Republicans who zealously defend the president and attack the obviously political nature of the Mueller Report would accept, as if on faith and without question, the accusations of Russian interference, also contained in the report?

    Turn on Fox and watch, say, Martha MacCallum (e.g., "The Story," April 24, 2019) declare "we all know now without doubt that the Russians tried to interfere" in our elections, or listen to most any GOP congressman repeat that same narrative with unquestioning certitude.

    But that assertion - is it truly backed up factually? Where is the evidence, other than largely questionable information sourced from our largely discredited intelligence agencies which, as we know, had a determined goal of overthrowing the president by any means possible?

    Almost three years have passed from the first fake news that appeared in the media on the subject of "Russian collusion," a concerted effort launched to discredit at first the Donald Trump candidacy and then sabotage his presidency, including his efforts to stabilize Russian-American relations.

    As proof of Russian actions, the Mueller Report cites the indictments against twenty-five Russian citizens who were indicted for attempted "interference" (those Russians are, let us add, quite conveniently out of the country and thus not prosecutable). When those indictments were issued, Russia pointed out the flimsy, unsupported and transparently made-up nature of the charges, and demanded that American authorities provide conclusive proof. Such requests were rebuffed.

    In order to evaluate the evidence, the Russian government proposed reestablishing the bilateral expert group on information security that the Obama Administration had terminated, which could have served as a platform for conversation on these matters. The American side was also invited to send Justice Department officials to Russia to attend the proposed public questioning of the Russian citizens named by Mueller. Additionally, Russia offered to publicize the exchanges between the two countries following the publication of the accusations of cyberattacks, exchanges which were conducted through existing channels between October 2016 and January 2017.

    Our government refused every offer.

    A careful analysis, in fact, fails to show any substantial evidence of Russian cyberattacks and attempts to "subvert democracy." By some estimates, possibly $160,000 -- a paltry sum -- was spent by the Russians during 2016 on social media activities in the United States. Does anyone wish to discover and compare the amount the Chinese Communists or the Saudis would have expended during the same period, for their continued influence and power in Washington and inside-the-Beltway?

    It is helpful to examine the charges that have been made, some included in the Mueller Report and accepted blindly by most pundits and politicians, both on the Left and by establishment conservatives.

    The Russian government, via their embassy in Washington, has published a 120 page "white paper," The Russiagate Hysteria: A Case of Severe Russiaphobia , responding to the accusations made against them since 2016. Obviously, the Russian document has a particular viewpoint and very specific goal, but that should not deter us from examining it and evaluating its arguments. (I have written on Russia and its relations with the United States on a number of occasions since 2015 and had pieces published by The Unz Review , Communities Digital News , and elsewhere. On my blog , "MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey," I have authored a dozen columns addressing this question).

    Here following I list twenty-one claims made regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election and in American domestic affairs. I follow each claim with the Russian response and how others, as noted, have also responded. In most cases I retain the original text, at times with my editing, but, in every case, with all the referenced sources.

    These twenty-one claims should be examined more closely and more calmly, and the "Russophobic" hysteria we have experienced during the past several years needs to be put aside for the sake of rational investigative inquiry -- and discovering how the Managerial State and global elites have attempted a "silent coup" against what's left of our republic.

    These claims and the responses deserve respectful consideration and detailed responses:

    1. CLAIM: Russia "meddled" in the U.S. elections by conducting influence operations, including through social media.

      FACT

      All of the claims of Russian trolls that surfaced over the last few years (such as Russians using the Pokémon Go mobile game and sex toy ads to meddle in the elections – ) are so preposterous and contradictory that they virtually disprove themselves.

      Not to mention the absurdity of the whole notion of 13 persons and 3 organizations (whichever country they might represent) charged on February 16, 2018, by Robert Mueller with criminally interfering with the elections, affecting in any way electoral processes in a country of more than 300 million people.

      It is telling that when pressed about the scope of the alleged influence campaign, representatives of American social media companies give numbers, that even if they were valid (and there's no evidence of a connection to the Russian government), are so minuscule as to be basically non-existent. For example, Facebook has identified 3,000 Russia-linked ads costing a total of about $100,000. That's a miniscule number of ads and a fraction of Facebook's revenues, which totaled $28 billion. Facebook estimates that 126 million people might – the emphasis is on the word "might" – have seen this content. But this number represents just 0.004% of the content those people saw on the Facebook platform.

      Significantly, Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing on December 11th, 2018 that "ad accounts linked to Russia" spent about $4,700 in advertising" to politically influence Americans during the 2016 presidential election season.

      To further cast doubt on the allegations, an American watchdog group "Campaign for Accountability" ("CFA") admitted on September 4th, 2018, that it deliberately posted propaganda materials on Google disguised as "Russian hackers from the Internet Research Agency" to check how they would be filtered for "foreign interference". Google officials then accused the CFA as having ties to a rival tech company "Oracle". In other words, corporate intrigues disguised as "Russian interference".

      As American media has admitted, out of several dozen pre-election rallies supposedly organized by Russians, Special Counsel Mueller mentions in his indictment that only a couple actually appear to have successfully attracted anyone, and those that did were sparsely attended and, almost without exception, in deep-red enclaves that would have voted for Trump anyway .

      Amidst all the hysteria about the alleged Russian meddling it is worth reading various research studies which show, quoting "The Washington Post", that it is Americans, in particular our intelligence service, that peddle disinformation and hate speech.

      According to Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, the scale and scope of domestic disinformation is much larger than any foreign influence operation. And academics from the Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy document in their study that there had been major spikes in outright fabrication and misleading information proliferating online before the 2018 U.S. election. A "significant portion" of the disinformation appeared to come from Americans, not foreigners, the Harvard researchers said.

    2. CLAIM:Russian hackers accessed computer servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and leaked materials through Wikileaks and other intermediaries

      FACT

      As President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin noted in his interview with NBC on June 5, 2017, when flatly denying any allegations of Russia interfering in internal affairs of the U.S., that today's technology is such that the final internet address can be masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one will be able to understand the origin of that address. It is possible to set up any entity that may indicate one source when, in fact, the source is completely different .

      No evidence has been presented linking Russia to leaked emails. In fact, there are credible studies arguing that DNC servers are much more likely to have been breached by someone with immediate and physical access. In 2017 a group of former officers of the U.S. intelligence community, members of the "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" (VIPS), met with then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo to present their findings.

      Those findings demonstrated using forensic analysis that the DNC data was copied at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack ( , , ), thus suggesting that it was more likely a removable storage device used.

      Another counterargument to the "Russian hackers" claim is that the DNC files published by Wikileaks were initially stored under the FAT (File Allocation System) method which is not related to internet transfers and can only be forwarded to an external device such as a thumb drive.

      It is also suspicious that the DNC prohibited the FBI from examining the servers. Instead, a third-party tech firm was hired, "Crowd Strike", which is known for peddling the "Russian interference" claims. And soon enough it, indeed, announced that "Russian malware" has been found, but again no solid evidence was produced.

      According to the respected former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, the indictment by the Mueller team on July 13, 2018 of the 12 supposed Russian operatives was a politically motivated fraud . As Ritter explains, Mueller seems to have borrowed his list from an organizational chart of a supposed Russian military intelligence unit, contained in a classified document from the NSA titled "Spear-Phishing Campaign TTPs Used Against U.S. And Foreign Government Political Entities", which was published by The Intercept online. As stated in that document, this is just a subjective judgement, not a known fact. Ritter concludes, that this is a far cry from the kind of incontrovertible proof that Mueller's team suggests as existing to support its indictment.

      Moreover, it is telling that the indictment was released just before the meeting between President Putin and Trump in Helsinki on July 16, 2018, seemingly as if the aim was to intentionally derail the bilateral summit.

    3. CLAIM: Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.

      FACT

      As concluded in the summary of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, the investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia

      If the Mueller team, having all the resources of the U.S. government, after 22 months of work, many millions of dollars spent , more than 2800 subpoenas issued, nearly 500 search warrants and 500 witness interviews, didn't find any evidence of "collusion", it is simply because there was never any. The whole claim of collusion was launched and peddled by the same group of Democrats, liberal-leaning media and the so-called "Never Trump Republicans", as it became clear that Donald Trump had real chances of winning the election. And later it morphed into a campaign to derail the newly-elected President agenda, including his efforts to mitigate the damage done to U.S.-Russian relations.

    4. CLAIM: Hacking of American political institutions was personally ordered by the Russian President Vladimir Putin.

      FACT

      This claim is based on nothing else but the infamous fraudulent "Steele Dossier" , paid for by political opponents [i.e., the Hilary Clinton campaign] of Donald Trump, and wild conjectures that "nothing in Russia happens without Putin's approval" .

      Needless to say, zero proof is presented. By the same logic, nothing in the U.S. happens without the President's approval. For example, is he also responsible for Edward Snowden? After all, Mr. Snowden was doing work for the U.S. intelligence services. Or the deaths of all the civilians killed abroad by U.S. drone strikes? Every minute detail approved by the President?

    5. CLAIM: Russia did not cooperate with the U.S. in tracing the source of the alleged hacking.

      FACT

      Russia has repeatedly offered to set up a professional and de-politicized dialogue on international information security only to be rebuffed by the U.S. State Department. For instance, following the discussion between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Hamburg on July 7, 2017, Russia forwarded to the U.S. a proposal to reestablish a bilateral working group on cyber threats which would have been a perfect medium to discuss American concerns. Moreover, during his meeting with Donald Trump in Helsinki on July 17, 2018, Vladimir Putin offered to allow U.S. representatives to be present at an interrogation of the Russian citizens who were previously accused by the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller of being guilty of electoral interference. Furthermore, in February 2019 the Russian government suggested publishing bilateral correspondence on the subject of unsanctioned access to U.S. electronic networks, which was conducted between Washington and Moscow through the Nuclear Threat Reduction Centers in the period from October 2016 to the end of January 2017.

      Needless to say, all Russian offers were rejected. A conclusion is naturally reached that American State Department officials have little interest in hearing anything that contradicts their own narrative or the discredited version of the CIA.

    6. CLAIM: Russia is interfering in elections all over the world

      FACT

      No credible evidence has been produced not only of Russia's supposed meddling in the U.S. political processes, but to support similar allegations made by the U.S. in respect to other countries. For example, former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster insinuated that Russia was interfering in the Mexican presidential elections of 2018. However, Mexican officials, including the president of the Mexican Senate Ernesto Cordero Arroyo, and Ambassador to Russia Norma Pensado during a press conference in Moscow in February, 2018, debunked this baseless claim.

      Another example of fake news were reports saying that U.S. was increasingly convinced that Russia hacked French election on May 9, 2017. However, on June 1, 2017, the head of the French government's cyber security agency said no trace was found of the claimed Russian hacking group behind the attack. On the other hand, the history of U.S. interfering in other countries' elections is well documented by American sources (see: ).

      For example, a Carnegie Mellon scholar, Dov H. Levin, has scoured the historical record and found 81 examples of U.S. election influence operations from 1946- to 2000. Often cited examples include Chile in 1964, Guyana in 1968, Nicaragua in 1990, Yugoslavia in 2000, Afghanistan in 2009, Ukraine in 2014, not to mention Russia in 1996! And how else could the current situation in Ukraine and Venezuela be described, with U.S. representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker openly pressuring Ukrainian voters to support the incumbent , and Washington possibly plotting a coup in Caracas?

    7. CLAIM: The lawsuit of the Democratic National Committee against the Russian Federation related to "interference in the election" has a legal standing.

      FACT

      The DNC filed a civil lawsuit on April 20, 2018 against the Russian Federation and other entities and individuals. Named as defendants in the lawsuit are the Russian Federation; the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU); the GRU operative using the pseudonym "Guccifer 2.0"; Aras Iskenerovich Agalarov; Emin Araz Agalarov; Joseph Mifsud; WikiLeaks; Julian Assange; the Trump campaign (formally "Donald J. Trump for President, Inc."); Donald Trump, Jr.; Paul Manafort; Roger Stone; Jared Kushner; George Papadopoulos; Richard W. Gates; and unnamed defendants sued as John Does 1–10. The DNC's complaint accuses the Trump campaign of engaging in a racketeering enterprise in conjunction with Russia and WikiLeaks.

      Even irrespective of the fact that there was no "interference" in the first place, the case has no legal standing. Exercise of U.S. jurisdiction over the pending case with respect to the Russian Federation is a violation of the international law, specifically, violation of jurisdictional immunities of the Russian Federation arising from the principle of the sovereign equality of states.

    8. CLAIM: Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak was a spy.

      FACT

      In March of 2017 U.S. media began libeling Sergey Kislyak a "top spy and spy-recruiter" This preposterous claim was based on nothing but his contacts with Trump confidant Senator Jeff Sessions – carrying out work any ambassador would do. Per the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, among core diplomatic functions is ascertaining by all lawful means conditions and developments in the receiving state, and that certainly includes openly meeting leaders of Congress on Capitol Hill. Even former CIA Director John McLaughlin noted that Mr. Kislyak is an experienced diplomat, not a spy.

    9. CLAIM: Russian Embassy retreat in Maryland was an intelligence base

      FACT.

      Among the unlawful acts that U.S. administrations undertook was the expropriation of a legal Russian property in Maryland, a summer retreat near the Chesapeake Bay under the pretext it was used for intelligence gathering. But where is the supposed-treasure trove of alleged spy equipment that U.S. authorities reportedly found there? Why not show them publicly to back up the claim? After the expropriation and the claims, not a word – silence.

      The retreat, "dacha" as Russians would call it, was bought by the former Soviet Union in 1972. Since then, it was used for recreation, including hosting a children's summer camp and regularly entertaining American visitors. One of the more popular events was the stop-over during the annual Chesapeake Regatta, completed with an expansive tour of the property. Presumably U.S. intelligence services could have used this for years to inspect the property. Why was nothing ever mentioned before the Obama Administration action?

    10. CLAIM: The meeting in Trump Tower in New York on June 9, 2016 between Trump campaign officials and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was to discuss compromising materials that Russian had on Hillary Clinton.

      FACT

      According to testimony provided to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Ms. Veselnitskaya focused on explaining the illicit activities of U.S.-British investor Bill Browder, wanted in Russia for crimes, and brought attention to the adverse effects of the so-called "Magnitskiy Act", adopted by U.S. Congress in 2012 and lobbied for by Browder.

    11. CLAIM: Donald Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, met with Russians in Prague to "collude".

      FACT

      It was reported in American media that the Justice Department special counsel had evidence that Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, secretly made a trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign to meet with Russian representatives, a fact also mentioned in the discredited "Steele Dossier". This was given as further evidence of "collusion". But Cohen vehemently denied this – under oath. Passport records indicate that he never was in Prague. He was actually on vacation with his son at the supposed time. Given that he publicly turned on his former boss and still denied the fact of ever going to Prague disproves this claim further.

    12. CLAIM: Former member of the Trump campaign team Carter Page was a Russian intelligence asset.

      FACT

      According to members of Congress and journalistic investigations, the redacted declassified documents of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, also called the FISA Court) show that the main source used by U.S. counterintelligence to justify spying on Mr. Page was the fraudulent so-called "Steele Dossier".

      Thus, Mr. Page for obvious reasons was not accused by the team of Robert Mueller of being involved in a "Russian conspiracy".

    13. CLAIM: On August 22, 2018, The Democratic National Committee filed a claim with the FBI, accusing the "Russian hackers" of infiltrating its electoral database.

      FACT

      Several days later members of the Democratic Party admitted that it was a "false alarm", as it was simply a security check-up performed at the initiative of the Democratic Party's affiliate in Michigan.

    14. CLAIM: On August 8, 2018 U.S. Senator Bill Nelson accused Russia of breaching the infrastructure of the voter registration systems in several local election offices of Florida.

      FACT

      Florida's Department of State spokesperson, Sarah Revell, stated on August 9, 2018, that Florida's government had not received any evidence from competent authorities that Florida's voting systems or election records had been compromised. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI also could not confirm in any manner the accusations.

    15. CLAIM: In September, 2017 the U.S. media, referring to the Department of Homeland Security, accused Russia of "cyberattacks" on electoral infrastructure in 21 states during the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.

      FACT

      On September 27, 2017, Wisconsin and California authorities stated that their electoral systems were not targeted by cyberattacks. On November 12, 2017, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said in a CBS interview that the "hackers' activity" had no significant consequences and did not influence the outcome of the elections. And, indeed, the source of those attacks was not clear.

    16. CLAIM: Russia meddled in the Alabama 2017 Senate elections to help the Republican candidate.

      FACT

      Despite the initial claims , it turned out that a group of Democratic tech experts decided to imitate so-called "Russian tactics" in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate racе. Even more jarring is the fact that one participant in the "Alabama project", Jonathon Morgan, is chief executive of "New Knowledge", a cyber security firm that wrote a scathing account of Russia's social media operations in the 2016 election that was released in 2018 by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Once again, we have one of the main private sector players in hyping the Russian threat caught red-handed.

    17. CLAIM: Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's presidential campaign chairman, was a secret link to Russian intelligence.

      FACT

      Trump's former campaign chairman was hit with two indictments from Mueller's office. However, even as American media notes, both cases have nothing to do with Russia and stemmed from his years as a political consultant for the Ukrainian government and his failure to pay taxes on the millions he earned, his failure to report the foreign bank accounts he used to stash that money, and his failure to report his work to the US government. In his second case in Virginia, he was also charged with committing bank fraud to boost his assets when the Ukraine work dried up.

      In fact, serious concerns have been raised in the U.S. that it was Ukrainian officials who tried to influence the 2016 elections by leaking compromising materials on Mr. Manafort.

      The Ukrainian connection is also prevalent in the case of money transferred to accounts of American politicians. For instance, according to a "New York Times" article, Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk donated over 10 million dollars to the "Clinton Foundation while just 150 thousand dollars to the "Trump Foundation".

    18. CLAIM: Russia compromised the Vermont power grid.

      FACT

      On December 31, 2016, "The Washington Post", accused "Russian hackers" of compromising the Vermont power grid. The local company, "Burlington Electric", allegedly traced a malware code in a laptop of one of its employees. It was stated that the same "code" was used to hack the Democratic Party servers in 2016. However, the "Wordfence" cybersecurity firm checked "Burlington Electric" for hacking, and said that the malware code was openly available, for instance, on a web-site of Ukrainian hackers . The attackers were using IP-addresses from across the world. "The Washington Post" later admitted that conclusions on Russia's involvement were false.

    19. CLAIM: Russian Alfa Bank was used as a secret communication link with the Trump campaign .

      FACT

      In October 2016 a new "accusation" appeared, alleging that a message exchange between the Alfa Bank server and Trump organizations indicated a "secret" Trump – Russia communication channel.

      However, the FBI concluded the supposed messaging was marketing newsletters and/or spam .

    20. CLAIM: Russia cracked voter registration systems during the 2016 U.S. elections.

      FACT

      In July 2016 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security accused Russia of gaining unauthorized access to electronic voter registration systems in Arizona. But on April 8, 2018, "Reuters", referring to a high-ranking U.S. administration official, wrote there was no proof Russia had anything to do with the mentioned cyberattack.

    21. CLAIM: Russian Embassy bank transactions were linked to "election interference".

      FACT

      American publication "Buzzfeed" repeatedly claimed that U.S. authorities flagged Russian Embassy financial transfers as suspicious, many of them dated around the 2016 election. In reality, the media outlet, by twisting the facts and placing them out of context, made routine banking transactions – salary transfers, payments to contractors – look nefarious.

      It is not uncommon for embassy personnel to receive larger payouts, transfer or withdraw larger sums of money at the end of their work. Furthermore, leaking of confidential banking information of persons and organizations protected by diplomatic immunity raised concerns about the likely involvement of security services.

      The arrest in October 2018 of a U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network official, charged with leaking information both about the Russian Embassy accounts and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, provides further proof to the theory of political skullduggery.

    * * *

    Most of these responses have not been fully examined or addressed by major media, nor, for that matter, by Fox News, dominated as it is by an almost instinctive Neoconservative Russophobia (the one possible exception being Tucker Carlson).

    For the American Left, since the collapse of Communism and the growth of a traditionalist nationalism (under Vladimir Putin), Russia has become a convenient target. When the Soviets were in power prior to 1991, the USSR was seen as a "progressive" presence in the world, even if by the requirements of American politics the Left was forced to make ritualistic condemnations of the more extreme elements of Soviet statecraft. Now that post-Communist Russia bans same sex marriage, glorifies the traditional family, and the conservative Russian Orthodox Church occupies a special position of esteem and prominence, that admiration has turned to fear and loathing. And that Russia and its president have been viewed as favorable to the hated Donald Trump doubly confirms that hostility and targeting.

    For the dominant Neoconservatives and many Republicans, contemporary Russia is seen as "anti-democratic," "reactionary," and a threat to American world hegemony (and the refusal to bow to that hegemony, whether economically, politically, or culturally). Indeed, as a major intellectual force, Neoconservatism owes much of its origins to Eastern European and Russia Jews, many of whose ancestors were at direct odds with the old pre-1917 Tsarist state. That animus, those nightmares of pogroms and oppression, have never completely subsided. A modern traditionalist, Orthodox Russia is viewed as antithetical to their more liberal, even Leftwing ideas (e.g., increasing "conservative" acceptance of same sex marriage, "moderate" feminism, and a whole panoply of "forward looking" views on civil rights issues -- all of which are present on Fox News.)

    Memory of "the bad old days" has never disappeared.

    None of this history should prevent a close examination of the current accusations against Russia, nor our search for the truth. Much -- perhaps the future of Western civilization itself -- depends on it.

    [Apr 28, 2019] Russiagate post-mortem by Andrew Korybko

    Notable quotes:
    "... Russia, and specifically President Putin, were presented as the ultimate global bogeyman after Crimea's 2014 reunification and Moscow's 2015 anti-terrorist military intervention in Syria changed the balance of power around the world and unquestionably ushered in the multipolar era after two and a half decades of American unipolarity. ..."
    "... It was therefore thought by the ruling anti-Trump faction of the US' permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies ("deep state") at the time that they could easily convince the electorate to vote against the seemingly "anti-systemic" political insurgent by implying that he's a "Russian puppet" and then later, after that didn't work, manufacturing so-called "evidence" purporting to prove this through unverified fake news claims designed to defame him. ..."
    Apr 28, 2019 | inforos.ru

    Mueller report proved that Russiagate was one long series of hoaxes designed to discredit Trump and pave the way for his impeachment

    It's finally official -- Trump and his team didn't "collude" with Russia like the Democrats and their supporters incessantly claimed for nearly the past three years. Positive coverage of candidate Trump's promising foreign policy platform by Russian international media and truthful reporting about Clinton's aggressive one don't amount to "hacking" an election, nor do some internet researchers from Russia supposedly sharing some political memes on Facebook. It's now been revealed that Russiagate was one long series of hoaxes designed to discredit Trump and pave the way for his impeachment after it first failed to stop him from winning the presidency. Like the American leader himself has said on several occasions already, Russiagate was an unconstitutional coup attempt against the country's democratically elected leadership, which deserves to be analyzed more in depth.

    Russia, and specifically President Putin, were presented as the ultimate global bogeyman after Crimea's 2014 reunification and Moscow's 2015 anti-terrorist military intervention in Syria changed the balance of power around the world and unquestionably ushered in the multipolar era after two and a half decades of American unipolarity.

    It was therefore thought by the ruling anti-Trump faction of the US' permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies ("deep state") at the time that they could easily convince the electorate to vote against the seemingly "anti-systemic" political insurgent by implying that he's a "Russian puppet" and then later, after that didn't work, manufacturing so-called "evidence" purporting to prove this through unverified fake news claims designed to defame him.

    [Apr 28, 2019] Mueller's Report Was a Media Rorschach Test

    theatlantic.com

    [Apr 27, 2019] Mueller s $35 Million Gaslighting of the American People

    Notable quotes:
    "... As Attorney General Barr has pointed out, including in his testimony on Capitol Hill, investigating an American presidential candidate is "a very big deal" and the Mifsud/Papadopoulos/Australian Ambassador hearsay hardly serves as adequate justification or predication. This is particularly egregious since the FBI knew that Papadopoulos never repeated to anyone in the Trump Campaign what Mifsud told him. And Mifsud is also a British intelligence asset, not a Russian intelligence asset, as suggested by Mueller's rambling legal partisans. ..."
    "... Mueller, of course, never references the fact that Russiagate actually started way back in late 2015 when the British government started demanding Donald Trump's head because of his sane view of Russia, a fact acknowledged by Obama CIA chief John Brennan in his Congressional testimony ..."
    "... MI6's Christopher Steele's dirty dossier was the driver of Russiagate and that Steele was a joint MI6, U.S. State Department, and FBI asset dating back to collaboration on the 2014 Ukraine coup conducted jointly by the Obama State Department, CIA, and British intelligence ..."
    "... the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, were transparent British/State Department operations designed to plant and fabricate evidence, namely, Russian generated "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. ..."
    "... Mueller completely avoided the real story, despite its public availability, in order to concoct his hit job. Each of these operations involved British intelligence personnel collaborating with Obama White House, the CIA and State Department. These entrapment efforts were designed as the pretext for creating and maintaining an FBI investigation. The FBI investigation in turn made the preposterous claims in Christopher Steele's dirty dossier, that Donald Trump had been compromised by the Russians, palatable to the journalists who repeated Steele's claims both before and after the election ..."
    "... The Moscow Trump Tower project also consumes hundreds of words in Mueller's screed. It was created by long-time FBI and CIA informant Felix Sater and his childhood friend, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and was presented in emails by Sater in September of 2015 as a Russian project which would help elect Donald Trump President with Putin's assistance. ..."
    "... Instead, Mueller's argument is essentially this: "if you take all of this together, maybe it amounts to something, but I can't decide, so Congress should just stick the knife in already." There is not sufficient evidence to charge a crime, Mueller says, but Trump has also not proved his innocence. ..."
    "... Here's the CliffsNotes summary of the entire 448 pages: The President was under constant attack, including from within his own White House, in an obvious attempt to frame him up while claiming he was committing treason. He got angry and didn't sit silently by while Mueller and his minions tried to frame him up. He complained loudly. Sometimes he even asked his staff to figure out how to proclaim his innocence. Under no conceivable construction is that obstruction of justice. ..."
    "... When Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia in the waning days of his Administration, in retaliation for what his intelligence chiefs claimed was Russian "interference" in the 2016 election, the sanctions included implantation of a Stuxnet type worm in Russian state infrastructure. This might be considered by the Russians as a very hot potential act of war. ..."
    "... First, someone from a tight circle who had viewed these transcripts, leaked the classified transcripts to the Washington Post's David Ignatius who wrote a loud column about Flynn colluding with the Russians to undermine Obama. That leak was a felony. McCabe then called Flynn as the article hit, saying that he was sending over two agents to talk to him about what this was about and telling him that involving any lawyers would be an encumbrance to a relaxed conversation. ..."
    "... each time Comey met with the President he returned to compose contemporaneous memos of his conversations and to plan future encounters with a close group of associates who he characterized as a "murder board." Such activities clearly indicate that Comey was engaged in attempting to set the President up. ..."
    "... Furthermore, the firestorm following Comey's firing illuminated the level of plotting against the President at the top levels of the Department of Justice -- Rod Rosenstein seriously offered to wear a wire to record the President and participated in discussions centered on organizing the cabinet to orchestrate the President's removal. ..."
    "... Trump called White House Counsel Don McGahn and told him to raise Mueller's conflicts of interest with the Department of Justice and -- according to McGahn -- that Mueller could not be Special Counsel. ..."
    Apr 22, 2019 | larouchepac.com

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller has written a 448-page fictional novel, grounded in treason, about the British/Obama Administration intelligence hoax known as Russiagate. It is intended to preoccupy your mind for the next two years, at least through the 2020 elections. It is intended to stir your passions to support your absolutely mad Representative or Senator in enacting further sanctions and supporting the British drive to overthrow Putin's government in Russia based on fictional events which, for the most part, never happened.

    The British sponsored and oriented intelligence services that sponsored this hoax have also started a campaign to ensure that the same mad passions will destroy Donald Trump's quest for new and peaceful relationships with China. Congressional investigations based on the "road map" provided by Robert Mueller are supposed to provide, on your taxpayer dollar, possible impeachment and, at the very least, opposition research for the 2020 Presidential campaign. This would fulfill the British vow, openly set forth in the December 2018 House of Lords Report, "British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order," that Donald Trump must not have a second term.

    But, most of all, it is intended to get you to doubt what is coming next. The President's allies have promised an investigation of the investigators and a full accounting of how this sordid affair came to be. As Conrad Black explains in the National Interest , what is now known is that

    "senior intelligence and FBI and Justice Department officials lied under oath to Congress, or lied to federal officials in order to influence the result, and then reverse the result, of a presidential election. In terms of subversion of the highest constitutional process, the selection of the president and vice president of the United States, this sort of activity, that Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, former attorney general Loretta Lynch and others appear to have engaged in, is the last stop before there are tanks on the White House lawn and military control of the media outlets. Mueller, having failed to do anything to address the real crisis that threatened the country, failed altogether, and compounded his failure by his sadistic entrapment of General Michael Flynn, and hounding of Paul Manafort and others, far beyond what was necessary or excusable, in an effort to extort a false inculpation of the president."

    As most know by now, the first part of the Mueller report concludes that there was no collusion between the Russian government and Donald Trump's campaign to swing the election to Donald Trump. This conclusion occurred despite thousands upon thousands of hours of fake media claims, fed by British and American intelligence leaks, which made it an article of fanatical religious faith to many, that Donald Trump was a Putin dupe. According to Mueller's report, while the Russians tried endlessly to infiltrate and steer the Trump Campaign, they didn't succeed. Undaunted, Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appeared on television on April 18 to claim that Mueller found "passive collusion." That is not an unfair characterization of the McCarthyite premises of Mueller's report. According to Mueller, investigation of an American Presidential campaign was justified because Trump refused to toe the British line on Putin and Russia.

    Here is how Mueller blithely reports it:

    "On June 16, 2015 Donald J. Trump declared his intent to seek nomination as the Republican candidate for President. By early 2016, he distinguished himself among Republican candidates by speaking of closer ties with Russia, saying he would get along well with Russian President Vladimir Putin, questioning whether the NATO alliance was obsolete, and praising Putin as a 'strong leader.' The press reported that Russian political analysts and commentators perceived Trump as favorable to Russia."

    Beginning in February 2016, the Report continues, the "press" began to report the connections of various campaign figures with Russia, namely, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Carter Page. According to Mueller's report, Trump pursued WikiLeaks during the campaign regarding the timing of further releases of Clinton Campaign and State Department documents, he said that he doubted that the Russians hacked the DNC and John Podesta, he falsely claimed that he had no business dealings in Russia, and the Campaign was involved in changing a plank in the Republican Party platform about providing lethal assistance to Ukraine. Contrary to this lying account by Saint Mueller, we know that the "press" were being steered by a British intelligence originated propaganda campaign aimed at preventing any U.S. accommodation with Russia.

    See Barbara Boyd's 3-Part Series on the British Role in Russiagate

    Now that we know that the President is not a traitor, can we move on to address the thousands of opioid deaths, adolescent and other suicides, flooded farmlands, and crumbling infrastructure which have been pushed aside as we were trapped within the walls of this British created delusion? Well, no, according to Mueller and his Congressional toadies, Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff. Nadler, who looks and acts like a venomous toad, stuffing himself into over-sized suits which have that oh so subtle Manhattan mafia cut, vows to spend from now until 2020 redoing the Russiagate investigation. Schiff, who has constantly propounded the most fictitious crap possible about Russiagate, is just too invested to ever be sane, if he ever was. Thus, the second part of Mueller's report attempts to seamlessly switch the anti-Trump political narrative by presenting an entirely novel theory of obstruction of justice in which the President knew he was innocent, while those investigating him, knowing he was innocent, sought to exploit Trump's emotions as they rolled a full scale coup right over him, hoping he would cross the line into illegal acts. He did not, according to both Attorney General Barr and Mueller's boss throughout this escapade, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Mueller also acknowledges this by saying he can't charge Trump with obstruction of justice. But Mueller also takes a cheap shot, designed to inflame the Congress and the public, saying he cannot "exonerate" the President either. In doing so, he impermissibly shifts the burden of proof, under our Constitution, to imply that Trump must now prove his innocence. This is, of course, reminiscent of the Star Chamber.

    When Donald Trump was informed by Jeff Sessions that a Special Counsel was being appointed, he said, according to Mueller,

    "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I'm fucked. Everyone tells me if you get one of these independent counsels it ruins your presidency. It takes years and years and I won't be able to do anything. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me."

    Perversely, this absolutely true statement by the President, borne out by months of an insane inquisition which crippled his ability to act, is cited by Robert Mueller's crew of biased prosecutors for the proposition that the President repeatedly skirted obstructing justice. On April 17, Attorney General Barr said that Donald Trump confronted an unprecedented situation at the beginning of his presidency. The President was attempting to form an administration, while his own intelligence community was investigating him as an agent of a foreign power. Barr might have added that Trump knew -- and everyone else knew -- that "collusion" nonsense was just that. They knew it all along. In such circumstances, there was never any ability, in reality, to charge obstruction of justice, which requires a corrupt intent or motive. There can be no corrupt intent or motive where a President believes, rightly, that he is innocent, that he is being framed up, and that a coup is underway. He fights back, to preserve both the Presidency and the Constitution itself, breaking the rules of what Saint Robert Mueller considers to be appropriate conduct by those he targets – don't say or do anything, just let us slice you up. All the while, the Mueller report makes clear, Trump's emotions about the coup are being recorded and/or falsely portrayed, minute by minute by those who would sell him out -- some as traitors within, others, if only to save themselves. That is the reality. It was never obstruction of justice. It was a psyop against the President attempting to drive him mad.

    The British, Not the Russians, Tried to Swing the 2016 Election

    Mueller makes three significant claims about Russian interference in the 2016 election. First, page after page of his report attempts to paint an amateurish and small bore social media campaign conducted by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian internet marketing and click bait operation, as exercising a hugely powerful lure on the American mind. Despite Mueller's indictment of the IRA, which is pending now in Washington, D.C., and despite British intelligence's five year fixation on the IRA as the essence of newfound Russian powers in hybrid warfare, this is a hoax. Aaron Maté , Gareth Porter and others have demonstrated, conclusively, that the IRA spent minimal amounts of money on Facebook and Google in 2016, for a campaign which barely mentioned either candidate. Only 11% of the IRA activity even occurred during the election period.

    The IRA effort spent a grand total of $46,000 on Facebook Ads, compared to $81 million by the Trump and Clinton campaigns combined, and $4,700 on Google platforms. Its most liked Facebook post was a gun-toting image of Yosemite Sam; its most shared Instagram post said, "Click here if you like Jesus." Another favored meme featured Jesus counseling a young man how to stop masturbating. Otherwise, the IRA's campaign was dedicated to creating revenue from themed t-shirts and LGBT positive sex toys. Mueller never explains how this ad content impacted the election in any way, nor could he.

    Mueller next focuses on the alleged Russian military intelligence hacks of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, for which he has indicted 12 Russian GRU officers, secure in the knowledge that they will never appear in a U.S. courtroom to contest the charges. The first fact lost in the sauce here is the fact that the files the Russians allegedly sent to WikiLeaks for publication demonstrated, truthfully, that Hillary Clinton was a craven tool of Wall Street and that her campaign was illegally rigging the Democratic primaries against Bernie Sanders's insurgent campaign. Further, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, led by former NSA Technical Director William Binney and former NSA cryptologist Ed Loomis, have exploded Mueller's entire theory that the Russians hacked the DNC. They conducted forensic studies demonstrating that what Mueller says about Guccifer 2.0 is fraudulent and that the claim that a GRU hack of the DNC computers resulted in the WikiLeaks releases does not square with any science known currently to man. The download speeds and file metadata point to a thumb drive or similar storage device and a human source, rather than a Russian cyber attack conducted over the internet.

    You might also ask why Julian Assange and/or WikiLeaks were not indicted in Mueller's grand GRU conspiracy indictment . Instead, Assange was indicted on a highly dubious charge involving the 2010 Chelsea Manning leaks which may not even survive a challenge under the statute of limitations. Obviously, Mueller's proof of his indicted Russiagate conspiracy falls short. Indicting Assange for the claimed DNC and Podesta hack conspiracy would necessarily allow Assange to prove that the Russian hack never happened, as he has long contended. It would expose how James Comey and Senator Mark Warner intervened in Assange's early 2017 negotiations with the Justice Department, to ensure that the truth would never come out. It was Comey, after all, who never secured the DNC servers for FBI forensic analysis, relying instead on the forensics provided to him by Atlantic Council's Russia-hating CrowdStrike, the unreliable vendor to the DNC and the Clinton Campaign. And it was Comey, it is reliably claimed, who relentlessly pushed the Russiagate narrative even after his lead case agent told him after months of investigation, "there is no there, there." If Mueller pursued the logic of his own indictment and included Assange in his fabricated GRU conspiracy, it would also have exposed exactly what happened after Bill Binney met with then CIA Director Mike Pompeo at Donald Trump's direction on October 24, 2017, explaining exactly how the intelligence community was lying to the American President. Binney's offer to collaborate in demonstrating what actually happened with the DNC and John Podesta has been successfully blocked to date.

    The last prong of Mueller's Russiagate plot involves all sorts of contacts with Russians who allegedly unsuccessfully reached out to the Trump campaign, in order to seduce them. Here the report just lies egregiously. We are told that Russiagate started as the result of a July 2016 report by the Australian Ambassador to London, Alexander Downer, to the FBI about a conversation he had with a 28 year old Trump campaign volunteer, George Papadopoulos, in London. According to Mueller, Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor with "connections to Russia" told Papadopoulos that the Russians had thousands of Hillary Clinton's State Department emails, and Papadopoulos repeated this information in a meeting initiated by Downer. According to Mueller, when the DNC's computers were hacked, the former Australian Ambassador to London remembered his early 2016 meeting with Papadopoulos in which Papadopoulos recounted Mifsud's claim about Clinton's emails. This tidbit, according to Mueller, launched a full scale FBI counterintelligence investigation of a U.S. presidential nominee. As Attorney General Barr has pointed out, including in his testimony on Capitol Hill, investigating an American presidential candidate is "a very big deal" and the Mifsud/Papadopoulos/Australian Ambassador hearsay hardly serves as adequate justification or predication. This is particularly egregious since the FBI knew that Papadopoulos never repeated to anyone in the Trump Campaign what Mifsud told him. And Mifsud is also a British intelligence asset, not a Russian intelligence asset, as suggested by Mueller's rambling legal partisans.

    Mueller, of course, never references the fact that Russiagate actually started way back in late 2015 when the British government started demanding Donald Trump's head because of his sane view of Russia, a fact acknowledged by Obama CIA chief John Brennan in his Congressional testimony.

    Nor does Mueller reference the fact that MI6's Christopher Steele's dirty dossier was the driver of Russiagate and that Steele was a joint MI6, U.S. State Department, and FBI asset dating back to collaboration on the 2014 Ukraine coup conducted jointly by the Obama State Department, CIA, and British intelligence. The Ukraine coup began a British march toward regime change in Russia, risking nuclear war, a march which was rudely interrupted by the Brexit vote in Britain and by the candidacy and election of Donald Trump.

    The real story, the one now being promised by Trump's allies and others, is that many of the alleged Russian outreach efforts cited in Mueller's report, such as multiple entrapment efforts conducted against Papadopoulos and Carter Page, as well as the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, were transparent British/State Department operations designed to plant and fabricate evidence, namely, Russian generated "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

    Mueller completely avoided the real story, despite its public availability, in order to concoct his hit job. Each of these operations involved British intelligence personnel collaborating with Obama White House, the CIA and State Department. These entrapment efforts were designed as the pretext for creating and maintaining an FBI investigation. The FBI investigation in turn made the preposterous claims in Christopher Steele's dirty dossier, that Donald Trump had been compromised by the Russians, palatable to the journalists who repeated Steele's claims both before and after the election.

    Like the Steele dossier itself, the dirt and allegedly Russian-sourced information about Putin and Trump did not originate with actual Russian "dirt" or with actual Russian sources. According to well-placed Congressional sources, Christopher Steele's main source for his dodgy dossier is a former Russian intelligence officer living in the United States. But, no former Russian intelligence officer lives in the United States without reporting to the CIA. That is just a simple fact. There is also evidence that the Trump Campaign was being flooded with FBI informants acting as "pretend" Russian agents as early as May. Mike Caputo has documented just such as approach by FBI informant and Russian criminal Henry Greenberg to himself and Roger Stone offering "dirt on Hillary Clinton." Papadopoulos claims that Sergei Millian, the alleged source of the infamous Ritz Hotel prostitute claim in Steele's dirty dossier, sat silently as Millian's friend told Papadopoulos that Millian was working for the FBI.

    The Moscow Trump Tower project also consumes hundreds of words in Mueller's screed. It was created by long-time FBI and CIA informant Felix Sater and his childhood friend, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, and was presented in emails by Sater in September of 2015 as a Russian project which would help elect Donald Trump President with Putin's assistance. It was pushed, and pushed, and pushed by Sater, whose agreement to become an informant, was signed by none other than Andrew Weissman, Mueller's chief henchman. Former CIA and State Department analyst Larry Johnson has fully demonstrated this chain of fabrications .

    As for the last portion of Part I of Mueller's Report, portraying efforts to secure peace with Russia and in Ukraine during the transition as some sort of diabolical plot -- wow, just think about that. Can you seriously join Grand Inquisitor Robert Mueller in treating efforts to establish the foundations for peace with Russia, as some form of criminal act? Or, as crazy former DNI Jim Clapper calls it, "passive collusion"? This is, of course, the same Jim Clapper who claims that Russians are genetically predisposed to attack the United States. As Professor Stephen Cohen, of NYU and Princeton, continues to reiterate, there are immense nuclear dangers in stoking hatred of Russia rather than seeking a just accommodation. Professor Cohen noted recently that in the history of election interventions by the United States into Russia, even if you accept all of Mueller's preposterous claims, what the Russians are accused of doing here is equivalent to jay-walking. Compare the publication of truthful information about Hillary Clinton rigging the Democratic primaries, a juvenile and largely ineffective social media campaign, and numerous attempts to improve U.S. Russian relations, with the $10 billion the Clinton Administration provided to re-elect Boris Yeltsin, in 1996, for example.

    Obstruction of Justice

    Mueller's 250 page plus screed about obstruction of justice focuses on 10 "episodes" where he says the President almost crossed the line into what he considers to be obstructive conduct. Mind you, he admits that as opposed to most obstruction cases, there was no underlying crime which the President was trying to cover up. There were also never ever any acts like those Hillary Clinton's crew committed, such as smashing cell phones with hammers and BleachBitting computers. In fact, the White House gave the Special Counsel everything he asked for, including notes of President Trump's discussions with White House Counsel Don McGahn, over which Executive Privilege could rightly have been claimed -- and many lawyers believe such privilege should have been exercised. Mueller interviewed just about everyone in the White House and on the Trump Campaign, with the President's blessing and his urging them to "cooperate." From this cooperation, Mueller's minions concocted a hit job, designed to portray the President as unstable and irrational and out solely to protect himself, concealing derogatory facts from the American people in statements on his Twitter account and to the press. Nowhere, however, even in this entire rabid prosecutor's screed is there any act which the courts have recognized as obstruction of justice.

    Instead, Mueller's argument is essentially this: "if you take all of this together, maybe it amounts to something, but I can't decide, so Congress should just stick the knife in already." There is not sufficient evidence to charge a crime, Mueller says, but Trump has also not proved his innocence.

    Here's the CliffsNotes summary of the entire 448 pages: The President was under constant attack, including from within his own White House, in an obvious attempt to frame him up while claiming he was committing treason. He got angry and didn't sit silently by while Mueller and his minions tried to frame him up. He complained loudly. Sometimes he even asked his staff to figure out how to proclaim his innocence. Under no conceivable construction is that obstruction of justice.

    Three incidents make the fraud in Mueller's tedious novel very clear. First, Mueller babbles on about the President's conduct concerning Michael Flynn's firing, but he never references that Michael Flynn had been targeted by the British authors of the Russiagate hoax, the circles of Sir Richard Dearlove and his friend Stefan Halper, way back in 2014. They falsely accused Flynn of a dalliance with Russian historian Svetlana Lokhova at a Cambridge event both attended. What really flipped the British out about Flynn, however, was his exposure of support for Al Qaeda and similar groups in Syria by both the U.S. and British governments. Flynn had been a target of FBI investigation and surveillance based on British demands for his head since early 2016, if not much earlier.

    When Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia in the waning days of his Administration, in retaliation for what his intelligence chiefs claimed was Russian "interference" in the 2016 election, the sanctions included implantation of a Stuxnet type worm in Russian state infrastructure. This might be considered by the Russians as a very hot potential act of war. Flynn, the incoming National Security Adviser, had conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak to the effect that the Russians should not overreact to Obama's sanctions, among other things. These conversations were intercepted, and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and Mary McCord of the National Security Division at DOJ, along with Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, plotted how to set Flynn up for undermining Obama's dangerous threats and actions.

    First, someone from a tight circle who had viewed these transcripts, leaked the classified transcripts to the Washington Post's David Ignatius who wrote a loud column about Flynn colluding with the Russians to undermine Obama. That leak was a felony. McCabe then called Flynn as the article hit, saying that he was sending over two agents to talk to him about what this was about and telling him that involving any lawyers would be an encumbrance to a relaxed conversation. Flynn couldn't remember certain things the agents asked him about. They had the transcript of Flynn's conversation and never showed it to him. In the course of the interview, Flynn made statements at variance with what he was known to have said in the transcripts. Nonetheless, the agents themselves said that Flynn had not deliberately lied to them when they reported back to the FBI.

    After Flynn was fired for lying to Vice President Pence and others about the Kisylak conversations, FBI Director James Comey claims that President Trump pulled him aside and said he "hoped" Comey would let the Flynn thing go because Flynn was a good guy. The maniacal Comey insists that the President's "hope" was an "order." Comey, the fabricator, had previously insisted that the President's alleged request for "loyalty," at a point where all of Washington was talking about RESIST members covertly acting against the President from within his Administration, was somehow equivalent to a mafia induction ceremony. Michael Flynn was subsequently convicted by Mueller of lying to the FBI in his White House interview despite the fact that the original agents concluded that no such lying even occurred. This was part of a coerced plea deal resulting from the fact that Flynn was bankrupted by the legal fees necessary to defend himself against Mueller's inquisition, and threats by Mueller to indict Flynn's son.

    Then there is the Comey firing itself. Comey's Congressional testimony, which Mueller never mentions, lays out that each time Comey met with the President he returned to compose contemporaneous memos of his conversations and to plan future encounters with a close group of associates who he characterized as a "murder board." Such activities clearly indicate that Comey was engaged in attempting to set the President up. Comey told Congress and Trump that he was not under investigation in Russiagate but refused to tell the public that, knowing full well that the President felt it was completely hindering his ability to act, particularly with respect to Russia.

    Mueller does disclose that, from the beginning, Trump railed against Comey because he was blocking what Trump he wanted to do with Russia on trade and ISIS. In fact, Trump dictated a letter to Steven Miller firing Comey because he would not tell the public the truth about Russiagate and because it was hindering his ability to deal with Russia. Trump's letter was rejected by White House staff, including White House Counsel Don McGahn, who came up with the idea of firing Comey based on Comey's misconduct in the Clinton investigation. The President repeated the real reasons he was firing Comey publicly and almost immediately after Rod Rosenstein's letter detailing Comey's misconduct in the Clinton investigation was released, and did so again, in an oval office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak. This is hardly the concealment associated with obstruction of justice.

    Furthermore, the firestorm following Comey's firing illuminated the level of plotting against the President at the top levels of the Department of Justice -- Rod Rosenstein seriously offered to wear a wire to record the President and participated in discussions centered on organizing the cabinet to orchestrate the President's removal. Mueller never mentions any of this in his report. Instead he adopts, wholesale, James Comey's claim that Trump fired him to hinder the Russia investigation, despite the fact that the investigation was never hindered. Mueller also never references Comey's leaks of classified materials to a friend for media publication, in order to trigger Mueller's own appointment as Special Counsel, or that everyone already knew, at that point, that there was "no there, there" with respect to collusion with Russia.

    Instead, the game was on to frame the President, to build the case Comey had not been able to make about obstruction of justice. This proceeded through a series of calculated provocations and media leaks all designed to provoke the President into overreaction.

    One of these is found in the episode involving the so-called attempt to "fire Mueller" which the media and Congress are salivating about. According to Mueller's report, Trump called White House Counsel Don McGahn and told him to raise Mueller's conflicts of interest with the Department of Justice and -- according to McGahn -- that Mueller could not be Special Counsel.

    This call occurred soon after the Washington Post published a leak that the President himself was under investigation by Mueller for obstruction of justice. McGahn construed Trump's words as an order to fire Mueller, even though, by his own account, no such order to fire Mueller was stated. McGahn claims that he immediately decided to resign, although he never informed the President of this. No call was ever placed to the Justice Department, Mueller was not fired, and Trump never repeated what he allegedly said on one heated occasion to Don McGahn. Based on his drama queen account of this alleged aborted attempt at some undetermined act of obstruction, however, McGahn is being hailed by the anti-Trump media as a modern Sir Thomas More.

    The President denies ever saying anything like this and there is considerable evidence in the Mueller report itself demonstrating that Trump's repeatedly pronounced distrust of McGahn was fully justified. The kicker here is that even if Trump had followed through and fired Mueller, he would have been within his Constitutional powers to do so. There would have been plenty of political heat, but no obstruction of justice, despite McGahn's ridiculous fantasy that he was being asked to re-enact Nixon's Saturday night massacre. Mueller's report otherwise shows White House Counsel McGahn, a total creature of the Washington Republican establishment who attached himself to Trump early in the campaign, keeping book on the President and taking notes on everything the President allegedly said -- hardly something typical of normal lawyering.

    So, despite this weekend's huffing and puffing of the Democrats and the media about the Mueller Report, it is important to remember, first and foremost, that they suffered a bone-crushing defeat when Saint Robert Mueller's magical curtain was pulled back, revealing a tale, full of sound and fury, but signifying absolutely nothing. Attorney General Barr will conduct a seminar for the children in Congress when he testifies about the actual law shortly.

    The real story, the one about the attempted coup and treason against this President and its perpetrators is coming, and it will come fast. A big opportunity is presenting itself to crush the British apparatus which has haunted this country since the end of World War II.

    Act now, don't get confused by the heat of battle, and we can take the country back.

    This kind of reporting is only possible with support from YOU. Make a donation to LaRouchePAC today so we can fully defeat this coup against the President!

    [Apr 27, 2019] Butina case was "political and fabricated from air poisoned with Russophobia".

    Apr 27, 2019 | www.theguardian.com

    She had cast herself as a comparative innocent caught up in a massive geopolitical power game and at Friday's sentencing hearing, Butina appealed to Judge Tanya Chutkan to release her with nine months of time served.

    "My reputation is ruined, both here in the United States and abroad," she said, asking for "a chance to go home and restart my life".

    Chutkan, however, fully complied with the government's recommendation and sentenced Butina to spend an additional nine months behind bars, before being deported. The judge said the sentence was meant "to reflect the seriousness of [Butina's actions] and to promote deterrence".

    Butina's lawyers decried the judgment as overly harsh; they had characterized Butina as a naive but ambitious international affairs student who simply didn't realize her actions required her to register as an agent of a foreign government.

    The Russian embassy in Washington responded to the sentence in a Facebook post that Butina "is a political prisoner, a victim of provocations by special services and the arbitrary use of repressive US legislation. We insist on the innocence of our compatriot. We demand her immediate release. We will continue to provide her with comprehensive consular and legal assistance."

    Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, said the case was "political and fabricated from air poisoned with Russophobia".

    "It is necessary to continue the fight, to file an appeal and to do everything in our power for Maria Butina to return to Russia as soon as possible," Slutsky was quoted as saying by the state news agency Tass.

    [Apr 27, 2019] Top German Journalist Admits Mainstream Media Is Completely Fake We All Lie For The CIA

    Apr 27, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    03/28/2016 With the increasing propaganda wars, we thought a reminder of just how naive many Westerners are when it comes to their news-feed. As Arjun Walia, of GlobalResearch.ca, notes, Dr. Ulfkotte went on public television stating that he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, also adding that noncompliance with these orders would result in him losing his job.

    He recently made an appearance on RT news to share these facts:

    I've been a journalist for about 25 years, and I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public.

    But seeing right now within the last months how the German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia -- this is a point of no return and I'm going to stand up and say it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do and have done in the past because they are bribed to betray the people, not only in Germany, all over Europe.

    [Apr 26, 2019] Jared Kushner, Not Maria Butina, Is America's Real Foreign Agent by Philip Giraldi

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... FARA requires all individuals and organizations acting on behalf of foreign governments to registered with the Department of Justice and to report their sources of income and contacts. Federal prosecutors have claimed that Butina was reporting back to a Russian official while deliberating cultivating influential figures in the United States as potential resources to advance Russian interests, a process that is described in intelligence circles as "spotting and assessing." ..."
    "... Selective enforcement of FARA was, ironically, revealed through evidence collected and included in the Mueller Report relating to the only foreign country that actually sought to obtain favors from the incoming Trump Administration. That country was Israel and the individual who drove the process and should have been fined and required to register with FARA was President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. As Kushner also had considerable "flight risk" to Israel, which has no extradition treaty with the United States, he should also have been imprisoned. ..."
    "... Kushner reportedly aggressively pressured members of the Trump transition team to contact foreign ambassadors at the United Nations to convince them to vote against or abstain from voting on the December 2016 United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements. The resolution passed when the US, acting under direction of President Barack Obama, abstained, but incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn did indeed contact the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice and asked for Moscow's cooperation, which was refused. Kushner, who is so close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the latter has slept at the Kushner apartment in New York City, was clearly acting in response to direction coming from the Israeli government. ..."
    "... Another interesting tidbit revealed by Mueller relates to Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos's ties to Israel over an oil development scheme. Mueller "ultimately determined that the evidence was not sufficient to obtain or sustain a conviction" that Papadopoulos "committed a crime or crimes by acting as an unregistered agent of the Israeli government." Mueller went looking for a Russian connection but found only Israel and decided to do nothing about it. ..."
    Apr 25, 2019 | ronpaulinstitute.org
    The Mueller Special Counsel inquiry is far from over even though a final report on its findings has been issued. Although the investigation had a mandate to explore all aspects of the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election, from the start the focus was on the possibility that some members of the Trump campaign had colluded with the Kremlin to influence the outcome of the election to favor the GOP candidate. Even though that could not be demonstrated, many prominent Trump critics, to include Laurence Tribe of the Harvard Law School, are demanding that the investigation continue until Congress has discovered "the full facts of Russia's interference [to include] the ways in which that interference is continuing in anticipation of 2020, and the full story of how the president and his team welcomed, benefited from, repaid, and obstructed lawful investigation into that interference and the president's cooperation with it."

    Tribe should perhaps read the report more carefully. While it does indeed confirm some Russian meddling, it does not demonstrate that anyone in the Trump circle benefited from it or cooperated with it. The objective currently being promoted by dedicated Trump critics like Tribe is to make a case to impeach the president based on the alleged enormity of the Russian activity, which is not borne out by the facts: the Russian role was intermittent, small scale and basically ineffective.

    One interesting aspect of the Mueller inquiry and the ongoing Russophobia that it has generated is the essential hypocrisy of the Washington Establishment. It is generally agreed that whatever Russia actually did, it did not affect the outcome of the election. That the Kremlin was using intelligence resources to act against Hillary Clinton should surprise no one as she described Russian President Vladimir Putin as Hitler and also made clear that she would be taking a very hard line against Moscow.

    The anti-Russia frenzy in Washington generated by the vengeful Democrats and an Establishment fearful of a loss of privilege and entitlement claimed a number of victims. Among them was Russian citizen Maria Butina, who has a court date and will very likely be sentenced tomorrow .

    Regarding Butina, the United States Department of Justice would apparently have you believe that the Kremlin sought to subvert the five-million-member strong National Rifle Association (NRA) by having a Russian citizen take out a life membership in the organization with the intention of corrupting it and turning it into an instrument for subverting American democracy. Maria Butina has, by the way, a long and well documented history as an advocate for gun ownership and was a co-founder in Russia of Right to Bear Arms, which is not an intelligence front organization of some kind. It is rather a genuine lobbying group with an active membership and agenda. Contrary to what has been reported in the mainstream media, Russians can own guns but the licensing and registration procedures are long and complicated, which Right to Bear Arms, modeling itself on the NRA, is seeking to change.

    Butina, a graduate student at American University, is now in a federal prison, having been charged with collusion and failure to register as an agent of the Russian Federation. She was arrested on July 15, 2018. It is decidedly unusual to arrest and confine someone who has failed to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) , but she has not been granted bail because, as a Russian citizen, she is considered to be a "flight risk," likely to try to flee the US and return home.

    FARA requires all individuals and organizations acting on behalf of foreign governments to registered with the Department of Justice and to report their sources of income and contacts. Federal prosecutors have claimed that Butina was reporting back to a Russian official while deliberating cultivating influential figures in the United States as potential resources to advance Russian interests, a process that is described in intelligence circles as "spotting and assessing."

    Maria eventually pleaded guilty of not registering under FARA to mitigate any punishment, hoping that she would be allowed to return to Russia after a few months in prison on top of the nine months she has already served. She has reportedly fully cooperated the US authorities, turning over documents, answering questions and undergoing hours of interrogation by federal investigators before and after her guilty plea.

    Maria Butina basically did nothing that damaged US security and it is difficult to see where her behavior was even criminal, but the prosecution is asking for 18 months in prison for her in addition to the time served. She would be, in fact, one of only a handful of individuals ever to be imprisoned over FARA, and they all come from countries that Washington considers to be unfriendly, to include Cuba, Saddam's Iraq and Russia. Normally the failure to comply with FARA is handled with a fine and compulsory registration.

    Butina was essentially convicted of the crime of being Russian at the wrong time and in the wrong place and she is paying for it with prison. Selective enforcement of FARA was, ironically, revealed through evidence collected and included in the Mueller Report relating to the only foreign country that actually sought to obtain favors from the incoming Trump Administration. That country was Israel and the individual who drove the process and should have been fined and required to register with FARA was President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. As Kushner also had considerable "flight risk" to Israel, which has no extradition treaty with the United States, he should also have been imprisoned.

    Kushner reportedly aggressively pressured members of the Trump transition team to contact foreign ambassadors at the United Nations to convince them to vote against or abstain from voting on the December 2016 United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements. The resolution passed when the US, acting under direction of President Barack Obama, abstained, but incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn did indeed contact the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice and asked for Moscow's cooperation, which was refused. Kushner, who is so close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the latter has slept at the Kushner apartment in New York City, was clearly acting in response to direction coming from the Israeli government.

    Another interesting tidbit revealed by Mueller relates to Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos's ties to Israel over an oil development scheme. Mueller "ultimately determined that the evidence was not sufficient to obtain or sustain a conviction" that Papadopoulos "committed a crime or crimes by acting as an unregistered agent of the Israeli government." Mueller went looking for a Russian connection but found only Israel and decided to do nothing about it.

    As so often is the case, inquiries that begin by looking for foreign interference in American politics start by focusing on Washington's adversaries but then comes up with Israel. Noam Chomsky described it best "First of all, if you're interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Netanyahu goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president's policies -- what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to -- calling on them to reverse US policy, without even informing the president? And that's just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence."

    Maria Butina is in jail for doing nothing while Jared Kushner, who needed a godfathered security clearance due to his close Israeli ties, struts through the White House as senior advisor to the president in spite of the fact that he used his nepotistically obtained access to openly promote the interests of a foreign government. Mueller knows all about it but recommended nothing, as if it didn't happen. The media is silent. Congress will do nothing. As Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi put it "We in Congress stand by Israel. In Congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel." Indeed.

    Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation .

    [Apr 26, 2019] Intelligence agencies meddling in elections

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... How is it that the Deep State made it possible for Trump to win when it did almost everything it could to derail his chances, including the use of Obama, FBI, CIA, MI6, NSA, etc? ..."
    "... Regardless one's feelings about Trump, what was done as Whitney points out is a massive danger to the fundamental aspects of the democratic process, and that's not being shown the light-of-day by BigLie Media. ..."
    Apr 26, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    karlof1 , Apr 26, 2019 11:21:26 AM | link

    Mike Whitney writes about one aspect of Russiagate that several of us have noted--the use of the FBI and CIA to meddle in the 2016 campaign in an attempt to aid Clinton--an aspect that blows up some of the hypotheses floated here. He begins thusly:

    1. "Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign?-- Yes
    2. "Did the FBI place spies in the Trump campaign?-- Yes
    3. "Do we know the names of the spies and how they operated?-- Yes
    4. "Were the spies trying to entrap Trump campaign assistants in order to gather information on Trump?-- Yes
    5. "Did the spies try to elicit information from Trump campaign assistants in order to justify a wider investigation and more extensive surveillance?-- Yes
    6. "Were the spies placed in the Trump campaign based on improperly obtained FISA warrants?-- Yes
    7. "Did the FBI agents procure these warrants based on false or misleading information?-- Yes
    8. "Could the FBI establish 'probable cause' that Trump had committed a crime or 'colluded' with Russia?-- No
    9. "So the 'spying' was illegal?-- Yes
    10. "Have many of the people who authorized the spying, already been identified in criminal referrals presented to the Department of Justice?-- Yes
    11. "Have the media explained the importance of these criminal referrals or the impact that spying has on free elections?-- No
    12. "Is the DOJ's Inspector General currently investigating whether senior-level agents in the FBI committed crimes by improperly obtaining warrants to spy on members of the Trump team?-- Yes
    13. "Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign to give Hillary Clinton an unfair advantage in the presidential race?-- Yes
    14. "Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign to gather incriminating information on Trump that could be used to blackmail, intimidate or impeach him in the future?-- Yes
    15. "Does spying pose a threat to our elections and to our democracy?-- Yes
    16. "Do many people know that there were spies placed in the Trump campaign?-- Yes
    17. "Have these people effectively used that information to their advantage?-- No
    18. "Have they launched any type of public relations offensive that would draw more attention to the critical issue of spying on a political campaign?-- No
    19. "Have they saturated the airwaves with the truth about 'spying' the same way their rivals have spread their disinformation about 'collusion'?-- No" [Emphasis in Original]

    That's a little more than half of what Whitney lists that's quite damning as we must admit. That it's not being discussed anywhere outside of a few social media accounts means Trump could use the "precedent" set by Obama to do the same in 2020. Shouldn't we be concerned about that possibility? How is it that the Deep State made it possible for Trump to win when it did almost everything it could to derail his chances, including the use of Obama, FBI, CIA, MI6, NSA, etc?

    Regardless one's feelings about Trump, what was done as Whitney points out is a massive danger to the fundamental aspects of the democratic process, and that's not being shown the light-of-day by BigLie Media. And we can also see why Pelosi and Clinton don't want Impeachment proceedings to occur as the above information would finally become far more overt/public than it is currently.

    [Apr 26, 2019] How the Obama White House engaged Ukraine to give Russia collusion narrative an early boost by John Solomon

    Notable quotes:
    "... Nazar Kholodnytskyy, Ukraine's chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me he attended some but not all of the January 2016 Washington meetings and couldn't remember the specific cases, if any, that were discussed. ..."
    "... But he said he soon saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election . Kholodnytskyy said the key evidence against Manafort -- a ledger showing payments from the Party of Regions -- was known to Ukrainian authorities since 2014 but was suddenly released in May 2016 by the U.S.-friendly NABU, after Manafort was named Trump's campaign chairman: "Somebody kept this black ledger secret for two years and then showed it to the public and the U.S. media. It was extremely suspicious." ..."
    "... "I ordered the detectives to give nothing to the mass media considering this case. Instead, they had broken my order and published themselves these one or two pages of this black ledger regarding Paul Manafort." ..."
    "... Kulyk said Ukrainian authorities had evidence that other Western figures , such as former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig, also received money from Yanukovych's party. But the Americans weren't interested: "They just discussed Manafort. This was all and only what they wanted. Nobody else." ..."
    "... According to Telizhenko, U.S. officials told the Ukrainians they would prefer that Kiev drop the Burisma probe and allow the FBI to take it over. The Ukrainians did not agree. But then Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Ukraine's chief prosecutor in March 2016, as I previously reported. The Burisma case was transferred to NABU, then shut down. ..."
    "... The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington on Thursday confirmed the Obama administration requested the meetings in January 2016, but embassy representatives attended only some of the sessions. ..."
    "... But Telizhenko's claim that the DOJ reopened its Manafort probe as the 2016 election ramped up is supported by the DOJ's own documents, including communications involving Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr, his wife, Nellie, and ex-British spy Christopher Steele. ..."
    "... DOJ emails show Nellie Ohr on May 30, 2016, directly alerted her husband and two DOJ prosecutors specializing in international crimes to the discovery of the "black ledger" documents that led to Manafort's prosecution. ..."
    "... The efforts eventually led to a September 2016 meeting in which the FBI asked Deripaska if he could help prove Manafort was helping Trump collude with Russia. Deripaska laughed off the notion as preposterous. ..."
    "... Now we have more concrete evidence that the larger Ukrainian government also was being pressed by the Obama administration to help build the Russia collusion narrative. And that onion is only beginning to be peeled. ..."
    "... But what is already confirmed by Ukrainians looks a lot more like assertive collusion with a foreign power than anything detailed in the Mueller report . ..."
    Apr 26, 2019 | thehill.com

    As Donald Trump began his meteoric rise to the presidency, the Obama White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington to coordinate ongoing anti-corruption efforts inside Russia's most critical neighbor.

    The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine's top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama's National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ).

    That makes the January 2016 meeting one of the earliest documented efforts to build the now-debunked Trump-Russia collusion narrative and one of the first to involve the Obama administration's intervention.

    Spokespeople for the NSC, DOJ and FBI declined to comment. A representative for former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice did not return emails seeking comment.

    Nazar Kholodnytskyy, Ukraine's chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me he attended some but not all of the January 2016 Washington meetings and couldn't remember the specific cases, if any, that were discussed.

    But he said he soon saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election . Kholodnytskyy said the key evidence against Manafort -- a ledger showing payments from the Party of Regions -- was known to Ukrainian authorities since 2014 but was suddenly released in May 2016 by the U.S.-friendly NABU, after Manafort was named Trump's campaign chairman: "Somebody kept this black ledger secret for two years and then showed it to the public and the U.S. media. It was extremely suspicious."

    Kholodnytskyy said he explicitly instructed NABU investigators who were working with American authorities not to share the ledger with the media. "Look, Manafort's case is one of the cases that hurt me a lot," he said.

    "I ordered the detectives to give nothing to the mass media considering this case. Instead, they had broken my order and published themselves these one or two pages of this black ledger regarding Paul Manafort."

    "For me it was the first call that something was going wrong and that there is some external influence in this case. And there is some other interests in this case not in the interest of the investigation and a fair trial," he added.

    Kostiantyn Kulyk, deputy head of the Ukraine prosecutor general's international affairs office, said that, shortly after Ukrainian authorities returned from the Washington meeting, there was a clear message about helping the Americans with the Party of the Regions case.

    "Yes, there was a lot of talking about needing help and then the ledger just appeared in public," he recalled.

    Kulyk said Ukrainian authorities had evidence that other Western figures , such as former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig, also received money from Yanukovych's party. But the Americans weren't interested: "They just discussed Manafort. This was all and only what they wanted. Nobody else."

    Manafort joined Trump's campaign on March 29, 2016, and then was promoted to campaign chairman on May 19, 2016.

    NABU leaked the existence of the ledgers on May 29, 2016. Later that summer, it told U.S. media the ledgers showed payments to Manafort, a revelation that forced him to resign from the campaign in August 2016.

    A Ukrainian court in December concluded NABU's release of the ledger was an illegal attempt to influence the U.S. election. And a member of Ukraine's parliament has released a recording of a NABU official saying the agency released the ledger to help Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign.

    The other case raised at the January 2016 meeting, Telizhenko said, involved Burisma Holdings , a Ukrainian energy company under investigation in Ukraine for improper foreign transfers of money. At the time, Burisma allegedly was paying then-Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter as both a board member and a consultant. More than $3 million flowed from Ukraine to an American firm tied to Hunter Biden in 2014-15, bank records show .

    According to Telizhenko, U.S. officials told the Ukrainians they would prefer that Kiev drop the Burisma probe and allow the FBI to take it over. The Ukrainians did not agree. But then Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Ukraine's chief prosecutor in March 2016, as I previously reported. The Burisma case was transferred to NABU, then shut down.

    The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington on Thursday confirmed the Obama administration requested the meetings in January 2016, but embassy representatives attended only some of the sessions.

    "Unfortunately, the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington, D.C., was not invited to join the DOJ and other law enforcement-sector meetings," it said. It said it had no record that the Party of Regions or Burisma cases came up in the meetings it did attend.

    Ukraine is riddled with corruption, Russian meddling and intense political conflicts, so one must carefully consider any Ukrainian accounts.

    But Telizhenko's claim that the DOJ reopened its Manafort probe as the 2016 election ramped up is supported by the DOJ's own documents, including communications involving Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr, his wife, Nellie, and ex-British spy Christopher Steele.

    Nellie Ohr and Steele worked in 2016 for the research firm, Fusion GPS, that was hired by Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to find Russia dirt on Trump. Steele wrote the famous dossier for Fusion that the FBI used to gain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. Nellie Ohr admitted to Congress that she routed Russia dirt on Trump from Fusion to the DOJ through her husband during the election.

    DOJ emails show Nellie Ohr on May 30, 2016, directly alerted her husband and two DOJ prosecutors specializing in international crimes to the discovery of the "black ledger" documents that led to Manafort's prosecution.

    "Reported Trove of documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions' Black Cashbox," Nellie Ohr wrote to her husband and federal prosecutors Lisa Holtyn and Joseph Wheatley, attaching a news article on the announcement of NABU's release of the documents.

    Bruce Ohr and Steele worked on their own effort to get dirt on Manafort from a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, who had a soured business relationship with him. Deripaska was "almost ready to talk" to U.S. government officials regarding the money that "Manafort stole," Bruce Ohr wrote in notes from his conversations with Steele.

    The efforts eventually led to a September 2016 meeting in which the FBI asked Deripaska if he could help prove Manafort was helping Trump collude with Russia. Deripaska laughed off the notion as preposterous.

    Previously, Politico reported that the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington assisted Clinton's campaign through a DNC contractor. The Ukrainian Embassy acknowledges it got requests for assistance from the DNC staffer to find dirt on Manafort but denies it provided any improper assistance.

    Now we have more concrete evidence that the larger Ukrainian government also was being pressed by the Obama administration to help build the Russia collusion narrative. And that onion is only beginning to be peeled.

    But what is already confirmed by Ukrainians looks a lot more like assertive collusion with a foreign power than anything detailed in the Mueller report .

    John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists' misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports

    [Apr 26, 2019] Impeachment would get the "democrats had the FBI spying on GOP campaign" and as such represent huge dqnger to Obama, Clintons and neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party

    Apr 26, 2019 | angrybearblog.com

    ilsm, April 25, 2019 6:59 pm

    Fivethirtyeight author on the opposing line ups for the democrats' Mueller post game show aka impeachment.

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-major-democratic-and-republican-blocs-are-responding-to-the-mueller-report/

    From a 'decisions under uncertainty' point of view if I were the democrats I would let this go. They should minimize their maximum regret, however they define it.

    An impeachment debate in the House plays to Trump, how can you prosecute Trump his campaign was the target of a Watergate style spy operation. While a 60 democrat senate is unlikely in the next 30 years.

    Impeachment would get the "democrats had the FBI spying on GOP campaign" out from the right wing shock jocks onto C-SPAN.

    It could convince the public that the Mueller report is a red herring of phony, non evidence of treason factoids for the crime of disagreeing with the neocons and not being into a new cold war; that is Trump was not hard enough on Russia.

    [Apr 25, 2019] It goes without saying that Trump would covet an opportunity to settle scores with the Democratic Party over that witch hunt, which, in cahoots with the mainstream media, stalked the US leader and his administration for two painstaking years.

    Apr 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    There is also the question of Russiagate. It goes without saying that Trump would covet an opportunity to settle scores with the Democratic Party over that witch hunt, which, in cahoots with the mainstream media, stalked the US leader and his administration for two painstaking years. And even now, after the release of the Mueller Report, the Democrats refuse to throw in the towel and are plotting to interrogate the interrogator himself, Robert Mueller. This is where Julian Assange might help halt the madness, although that is not to suggest, of course, that he is necessarily predisposed to such an opportunity. Yet he may find himself with no choice in the matter. Before continuing with that line of discussion, there are some rather strange things about the Assange case that need mentioning.

    For those who may have forgotten, and it seems that many have, Rich, 27, was the Director of Voter Expansion Data at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) at the time of his death. In other words, he would have been in the loop to view emails showing foul play inside of the DNC. What kind of foul play? Well, for starters, deliberate efforts to marginalize Bernie Sanders in favor of Hillary Clinton, who responded to the arrest of Julian Assange with her trademark cackle before remarking, "The bottom line is that he has to answer for what he has done, at least as it has been charged." For Hillary Clinton that means wrecking her chances at the White House.

    Incidentally, it was at this time in history, in July 2016 during the release of the incriminating DNC emails, when the perennial bogeyman Russia was wheeled out as not only the source of the emails, but the kingmaker in the US election as well.

    At this point, it is important to emphasize that there is no proof to suggest that Rich had anything to with leaking the DNC emails to WikiLeaks. In fact, to merely suggest such a thing has been given the 'conspiracy theory' stamp of disapproval by the establishment. Yet that has not stopped the flow of mysteries. For example, Rod Wheeler, a private investigator hired by the Rich family to investigate the death of their son, said he had sources at the FBI who "absolutely" confirmed that there was evidence on Rich's laptop that indicates he was communicating with WikiLeaks prior to his death. However, just days after divulging this explosive information, Wheeler backtracked on his statement, calling his on-air comments a "miscommunication."

    For what it is worth, Snopes has called the claims that Rich leaked the emails as "false."

    Yet, there remains the circumstantial evidence, namely Rich's untimely death, as well as its uncanny timing. There also remains the question of his supervisory position inside of the DNC, and the assertion that the DNC emails were not discovered by hackers, but rather a leaker. In other words, an internal source at the DNC. Whether or not Mr. Rich was that source remains questionable, however, Julian Assange not only referred to Seth Rich during an interview, he offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of his killer or killers.

    "Whistle-blowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks," Assange said in an interview with a Dutch television station. "There's a 27-year-old who works for the DNC, who was shot in the back, murdered, just two weeks ago, for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington."

    When pressed for more information, he said, "I'm suggesting that our sources take risks and they become concerned to see things occurring like that."

    On the basis of that comment, Assange could potentially be called to testify as a witness should the authorities decide to reopen the case of Seth Rich's murder.

    This leads us to the million-dollar question: were the DNC computers hacked by the Russians or was the data leaked by an internal source at the organization and forwarded to WikiLeaks? The answer to that question would not only settle the 'Russian meddling' mystery once and for all, it would determine how the DNC/Clinton emails were compromised.

    me title=

    Many people are of the opinion it was not the Russians.

    William Binney, a former National Security Agency official-turned-whistleblower and member of Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), co-authored a report (entitled, "Why the DNC was not hacked by the Russians") that says the WikiLeaks dump was the result of a leak by "a person with physical access to the DNC's computer system."

    "The NSA had an opportunity to make it clear that there was irrefutable proof of Russian meddling, particularly with regard to the DNC hack, when it signed on to the January 2017 'Intelligence Community Assessment,'" Binney wrote.

    Instead, the NSA could only say it has "moderate confidence," which means, in intelligence speak, "we have no hard evidence," the pair concluded.

    Meanwhile, there remains the question as to how any conclusion could have been made when the DNC refused to hand over the compromised computer servers to the FBI.

    "We'd always prefer to have access hands-on ourselves if that's possible," former FBI head James Comey told lawmakers in October 2017. He added that he didn't know why the DNC refused the FBI, which was forced to rely on data provided by CrowdStrike, a private security firm hired by the DNC.

    Following the release of the Mueller Report, which failed to find any proof that Trump colluded with the Russians, there remains a glaring yet unproven accusation that needs addressed: that is the allegation that the Russians somehow fixed the election in Trump's favor.

    Although the mainstream media may be ignoring Binney's findings, that doesn't mean everyone is. In October 2017, Binney paid a visit to CIA headquarters, at the invitation of Donald Trump, where he met with then agency director Mike Pompeo, as cited by The Intercept.

    Any guesses whose name was brought up in the course of the meeting between Binney and Pompeo? Yes, that of Seth Rich. Again, whether or not that proves to be significant remains an open question.

    But make no mistake. Donald Trump would like nothing more than to remove the ugly footnote that the Democrats have tacked to his presidency that says the Russians "succeeded beyond their wildest dreams," to quote former intelligence chief James Clapper, by stealing the White House from Hillary Clinton. In other words, Trump does not deserve to be president, the Democrats continue to chant mindlessly. And even after the Mueller Report talk of impeachment continues to hang in the air. The only way to confront the insanity is to have Mr. Assange testify in the United States, possibly as the result of a plea bargain, about his knowledge of Russiagate.

    In fact, such an arrangement had been made before. In January 2017, Assange's lawyer Adam Waldman "negotiated with the Justice Department on a possible deal to get the WikiLeaks founder limited immunity and safe passage out of a London embassy to talk with U.S. officials," according to a report by The Hill.

    me title=

    Among other things, Assange would have been expected to "provide technical information to the U.S. ruling out certain suspects in the release of hacked DNC emails key to the Russia case "

    But the negotiations hit a snag and – according to a source cited by John Solomon of The Hill – James Comey told Assange's lawyer to "stand down" on the offer.

    Now, considering that many of the 'old Obama guard' – like James Comey, the fired FBI director, and Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr – are no longer steering the investigation, there remains the possibility that the Trump administration will be willing to hear what WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has to say about the greatest witch hunt in the history of US politics . Assange's testimony, should it happen, may even help solve the mystery of the Seth Rich murder.

    In other words, don't believe that Russiagate has concluded. Indeed, it may have only just begun.

    tonye , 2 minutes ago link

    Or, if the British keep holding onto him, it might be the Deep Estate and the Obola/Clinton cabals want to keep Assange on ice so that he won't put the kabosh on the Russia Gate narrative.

    Right Wing-Nut , 7 minutes ago link

    The real Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy right within the bowels of the US Government.

    And we have this from August 2017:

    Republican California Representative Dana Rohrabacher met with WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London this week.

    According to Rohrabacher, Assange "reaffirmed his aggressive denial that the Russians had anything to do with the hacking of the DNC during the election," in the meeting, adding, "He has given us a lot of information. He said there's more to come. We don't have the entire picture yet."

    Rohrabacher further claimed that the information he received would have "an earth-shattering political impact."

    https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/17/report-gop-rep-dana-rohrbracher-meets-julian-assange/

    archie bird , 22 minutes ago link

    I believe its been determined that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked by Russians. According to different reports the emails were downloaded to a thumbdrive as a fantastic speed, much to fast for it to be a hack.

    PeaceForWorld , 27 minutes ago link

    I was running one of the largest Bernie Groups and I was Bernie or Bust. I really believe that Seth Reich did leak the info to Julian Assange and he was killed as a hero. DWS who is a criminal was definitely involved and I wouldn't doubt about Mossad's involvement. Mossad is very sneaky and professional in killing. All we need is DNC Fraud Lawsuit. But even Becks were threatened and the case didn't go anywhere.

    Trump is just extremely selfish and he used Wikileaks in his campaign by defending him. But he doesn't give a damn about Julian Assange.

    I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 50 minutes ago link

    Unless the Republican leader's declared intention along the campaign trail to 'drain the swamp' was mere rhetorical bombast...

    Jesus ******* Christ. 😣

    look there are people, who if Trump appointed Bill Kristol chief of staff, would still insist Trump is draining the swamp.

    these people are incorrigible morons, and should be disallowed sharp objects and plastic bags.

    Bolton, Haley, Pompeo, Abramson.... helloooo!! McFuckingFlyyyyyy!!!

    Dr. Acula , 48 minutes ago link

    The stupid... It burns

    shortingurass , 36 minutes ago link

    I agree. I'm ******* tired of dumbasses trying to paint Trump as a swamp-drainer when he has already proven he's a swamp creature himself, surrounded by zios and neocons.

    Keter , 7 minutes ago link

    The neocons are bad, but it is the failure on the border, with hundreds of thousands of visa overstays, and legal immigration increases of third world refugees, h1bs, and h2bs that most egregious of the Trump administration.

    CatInTheHat , 50 minutes ago link

    "This leads us to the million-dollar question: were the DNC computers hacked by the Russians or was the data leaked by an internal source at the organization and forwarded to WikiLeaks? The answer to that question would not only settle the 'Russian meddling' mystery once and for all, it would determine how the DNC/Clinton emails were compromised."

    This author is off his nut

    This is exactly why Julian is being shut down. Unable to see even his lawyers, being denied medical treatment and likely being tortured.

    This is why Comey sabotaged the deal..

    Russia hack = IRAQI WMD. The elite are determined to manufacture public consent for war on Russia.

    They know Julian would not only destroy this narrative but that he would create a mass back lash for all of US who knew Russiagate was ******** in the first place.

    Trump is a Zionist stooge is arming and funding the NEONAZI THUGS in Ukraine right along with Israhsll.

    He has ZERO intention of doing what the author suggest. This is pure fantasy with absolutely ZERO to back it up.

    [Apr 24, 2019] The HUGE lie that Russia was somehow hacking the DNC was the Insurance Policy

    Notable quotes:
    "... While I wholeheartedly agree with you that Obama and Clinton are criminals, the far less convincing part of your argument is that Trump is not now beholden to the same MIC interests. Bolton, Abrahams, Pompeo, Pence his relationship with Netanyahu, the overthrow of Madura are all glaring examples that contradict the Rights narrative that he is some type of hero. Trump may not have colluded with Russia, but he does seem to be colluding with Saudia Arabia, Israel, Big Oil and the MIC. ..."
    "... In short, without Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the Democrat Party has no platform. They need him there as a target, because Mike Pence would be impossible for them to beat. They are under orders, according to various writers who've addressed the Clinton campaign, to block Bernie Sanders and his platform at all costs; and they will allow the country to crash and burn before they disobey those orders. That means keeping Donald Trump right where he is through next November. ..."
    "... I totally agree with you, and in fact believe that this whole 22month expensive and mind numbing circus has been played out JUST to keep the public from knowing what the emails actually said. Can you imagine Madcow focusing with such ferocity on John Pedesta as she has on Putin, by discussing what he wrote during a presidential campaign to "influence the election" ? We'd be a different country now, not fighting our way thru the McCarthite Swamp she helped create. ..."
    "... Thus began the official demonization of Russia. A demonization very convenient to the necessity of having an implacable enemy always ready to pounce on the good, moral, humanitarian, and freely enterprising United States. ..."
    "... Now, conflating any individual with Russia, will always immediately result in that person becoming, in the US, in the U.K. and in other US-kept vassal nations totally tarred with all sorts of nefarious and always unexamined assumptions. ..."
    "... Thanks to the intelligence community, the political elite, notably in the Democratic "wing" of the War Party, but with the support of the Republican wing of that party, and certain individual players aligned with the US policy "Full Spectrum Dominance" which, of course, is compassionate goodness and not to be confused with the vile aims of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and a whole host of other "bad guy" nations or amorphous groups known as "terrorists. ..."
    "... Clearly, the consensus opinion is shaped, not inside the minds of millions of people, all projecting their very worst fears or even their own worst proclivities on individuals like Putin or whoever is the "Hitler" of the convenient moment, but rather on the efforts of, let us call them "entities" who plan to benefit from a populous aroused to anxiety or even fear itself. ..."
    "... the British ruling elites have hated the Russians for well over a hundred years. ..."
    "... The truth is Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, Rachel Maddow, and the rest if the Scooby Doo gang handed Agent Orange the victimhood script he needs to feed his Trumpets to win the 2020 election. ..."
    "... They've also guaranteed no matter what heinous gangster scam shit he has done in the past or will do in the future, none of it will stick because he'll play the falsely accused card. ..."
    "... There is an inability to accept the fact that people in DC and NYC and Boston and San Francisco and other Financial/ MIC-driven areas were doing well relative to the bulk of Americans and life was wonderful until the 2016 Election. For these people "America Has Never Stopped Being Great!" (Similar to the "I've got mine, Jack! " attitude of Great Britain, as their labor unions lost unity with rest of the working class.) ..."
    Apr 24, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    CWG , April 22, 2019 at 17:15

    Here's my take on the 'Russian Collusion Deep State LIE.

    There was NO Russian Collusion at all to get Trump in the White House. Most probably, Putin would have favored Clinton, since she could be bought. Trump can't.

    What did happen was illegal spying on the Trump campaign. That started late 2015, WITHOUT a FISA warrant. They only obtained that in 2016, through lying to the FISA Court. The basis for that first warrant was the Fusion GPS Steele Dossier.

    Ever since Trump won the election, they real conspirators knew they had a problem. That was apparent ever after Devin Nunes did the right thing by informing Trump they were spying on him.

    Since they obtained those FISA warrant through lying to the FISA Court (which is treason) they needed to cover that up as quickly as possible.

    So what did they do? Instead of admitting they lied to the FISA Court they kept on lying till this very day. The same lie through which they obtained the FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign was being pushed openly.

    The lie is and was 'Trump colluded with the Russians in order to win the Presidential Election'.

    They knew from day one Trump didn't do anything wrong. They did know they spied on Trump through lying to the FISA Court, which again, is treason. According to the Constitution, lying to the FISA court= Treason.

    In order to avoid being indicted and prosecuted, they somehow needed to 'take down' the Attorney General. At all costs, they needed to try and hide what really happened.

    So there they went. 'Trump colluded with the Russians. Not just Trump, but the entire Trump campaign!'.

    'Sessions should recuse himself', the propaganda MSM said in unison. 'Recuse, recuse'.

    Sessions, naively recused himself. Back then, even he probably didn't know the entire story. It was only later on that Sarah Carter and Jon Solomon found out it had been Hillary who ordered and paid the Steele Dossier.

    The real conspirators hoped that through the Special Counsel rat Mueller they might be able to achieve three main objectives.

    1: Convince the American people Russia indeed was meddling in the Presidential Election.

    2: Find any sort of dirt on Trump and/or people who helped him win the Election in order to 'take them down'.

    Many people were indicted, some were prosecuted. Yet NONE of them were convicted for a crime that had ANYTHING to with with the elections. NONE.

    They stretched it out as long as possible. 'The longer you repeat a lie, the more people are willing to believe the lie'.

    So that is what they did. They still do it. Mueller took TWO years to brainwash as many people as possible. 'Russian Collusion, Russian Collusion. Russia. Russia. Russia. Russia. Rusiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh ..

    Why did they want to make sure they could keep telling that lie as long as possible?

    Because they FEAR people will learn the truth. There was NEVER any Russian Collusion with the Trump campaign.

    There was spying on the Trump campaign by Obama in order to try and make Hillary win the Presidential Election.

    That is the actual COLLUSION between the Clinton Campaign and a weaponized Obama regime!!

    So what did 'Herr Mueller' do?

    He took YEARS to come up with the conclusion that the Trump campaign did NOT collude with Russia.

    The MSM tried to make us all believe it was about that. Yet it was NOT.

    His conclusive report is all about the question 'did or didn't the Trump campaign collude with the Russians'.

    Trump exonerated, and the MSM only talks about that. Trump, Trump, Trump.

    They still want us all to believe that was what the Mueller 'investigation' was all about. Yet it was not.

    The most important objective of the Mueller 'investigation' was not to 'investigate'.

    It was to 'instigate' that HUGE lie.

    The same lie which they used to obtain the FISA warrant on the Trump campaign.

    "Russia'.

    So what has 'Herr Mueller' done?

    A: He finds ZERO evidence at all which proves the Trump campaign colluded with ANY Russians.

    And now the huge lie, which after all was the main objective right from the get go. (A was only a distraction)

    B: Russians hacked the DNC.

    That is what they wants us all to believe. That Russia somehow did bad stuff.

    Now it was not Russia who did bad stuff.

    It was Obama working together with the Clinton campaign. Obama weaponized his entire regime in order to let Clinton win the Presidency.

    That is the REAL collusion. The real CRIME. Treason!

    In order to create a 'cover up' Mueller NEEDED to instigate that Russia somehow did bad things.

    That's what the Mueller Dossier is ALL about. They now have 'black on white' 'evidence' that Russia somehow did bad things.

    Because if Russia didn't do anything like that, it would make us all ask the fair question 'why did Obama spy on the Trump Campaign'.

    Let's go a bit deeper still.

    Here's a trap Mueller created. What if Trump would openly doubt the LIE they still push? The HUGE lie that Russia did bad things?

    After all, they NEED that LIE in order to COVER UP their own crime.

    If Trump would say 'I do not believe Russia did anything to influence the elections, I think Mueller wrote that to COVER UP the real crime', what would happen?

    They would say 'GOTCHA now, see Trump is colluding with Russia? He even refuses to accept Russia hacked the DNC, this ultimately proofs Trump indeed is a Russian asset'.

    They believe that trap will work. They needed that trap, since if Russia wasn't doing anything wrong, it would show us all THEY were the criminals.

    They NEED that lie, in order to COVER UP.

    That is the 'Insurance Policy' Stzrok and Page texted about. Even Sarah Carter and Jon Solomon still don't seem to see all that.

    They should have attacked the HUGE lie that Russia was somehow hacking the DNC. That is simply not true. It's a Mueller created LIE. That LIE = the Insurance Policy.

    What did they need an Insurance Policy for? They want us all to believe that was about preventing Trump from being elected.

    Although true, that is only A.

    They NEEDED an Insurance Policy in the unlikely case Trump would become President and would find out they were illegally spying on him!

    The REAL crime is Obama weaponized the American Government to spy on even a duly elected President.

    What's the punishment for Treason?

    About Assange and Seth Rich.

    Days after Mueller finishes his 'mission' (Establish the LIE Russia did bad things) which seems to be succesfull, the Deep State arrest the ONLY source who could undermine that lie.

    Assange Since he knows who is (Seth Rich?) and who isn't (Russia) the source.

    If Assange could testify under oath the emails did not come from Russia, the LIE would be exposed.

    No coincidences here. I fear Assange will never testify under oath. I actually fear for his life.

    Deniz , April 23, 2019 at 13:48

    While I wholeheartedly agree with you that Obama and Clinton are criminals, the far less convincing part of your argument is that Trump is not now beholden to the same MIC interests. Bolton, Abrahams, Pompeo, Pence his relationship with Netanyahu, the overthrow of Madura are all glaring examples that contradict the Rights narrative that he is some type of hero. Trump may not have colluded with Russia, but he does seem to be colluding with Saudia Arabia, Israel, Big Oil and the MIC.

    Whether one is on the Right or Left, the house is still made of glass.

    Elizabeth K. Burton , April 23, 2019 at 12:50

    It's not enough that Trump is clearly a classic narcissist whose behavior will continue to deteriorate the more his actions and statements are attacked and countered? You know what happens when narcissists are driven into a corner by people tearing them down? They get weapons and start killing people.

    There is already more than ample evidence to remove Donald Trump from office, not the least being he's clearly mentally unfit. Yet the Democrats, some of whom ran for office on a promise to impeach, are suddenly reticent to act without "more investigation". Nancy Pelosi stated on the record prior to release of the Mueller report impeachment wasn't on the agenda "for now". She's now making noises in the opposite direction, but that's all they are: noise.

    The bottom line is the Clintonite New Democrats currently running the party have only one issue to run on next year: getting rid of Donald Trump. They still operate under the delusion they will be able to use him to draw off moderate Republican voters, the same ones they were positive would come out for Hillary Clinton in '16. Their multitude of candidates pay lip service to progressive policy then carefully walk back to the standard centrist positions once the donations start coming, but the common underlying theme was and continues to be "Donald Trump is evil, and we need to elect a Democrat."

    In short, without Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the Democrat Party has no platform. They need him there as a target, because Mike Pence would be impossible for them to beat. They are under orders, according to various writers who've addressed the Clinton campaign, to block Bernie Sanders and his platform at all costs; and they will allow the country to crash and burn before they disobey those orders. That means keeping Donald Trump right where he is through next November.

    Dump Pelousy , April 23, 2019 at 13:21

    I totally agree with you, and in fact believe that this whole 22month expensive and mind numbing circus has been played out JUST to keep the public from knowing what the emails actually said. Can you imagine Madcow focusing with such ferocity on John Pedesta as she has on Putin, by discussing what he wrote during a presidential campaign to "influence the election" ? We'd be a different country now, not fighting our way thru the McCarthite Swamp she helped create.

    Jeff Harrison , April 22, 2019 at 10:50

    Thank you, Three Names. The so-called "most qualified presidential candidate ever" who's only actual qualifications are the destruction of what had formerly been a peaceful, secular state into a failed state riven with religious rivalry and racking up a billion frequent flyer miles has left us with a Gordian knot of misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies that will bedevil the country and our relations with other countries for some time to come.

    There's a special place in hell for people like you.

    Charron , April 22, 2019 at 10:04

    I see that the very liberal Noam Chomsky has recently stated that he was sure the Russians did not to do the hacking of the DNC emails and that accusing Trump of being a party to this was only going to help him in the 2020 elations because it wasn't true.

    AnneR , April 22, 2019 at 09:20

    Thank you Caitlin for providing a most necessary corrective to the incessant drone that I – unwillingly but have no other radio station available (and it is, however nauseating and rant inducing, necessary to know what propaganda the corporate-capitalist-imperialist state media are disseminating) – hear on both the BBC World Service and NPR. (We refused to pay to watch television and I have continued that partnership tradition since my husband died. So thankfully I've not seen the Maddow money raking insanity.)

    And thank you for suggesting some clear ways to counter the Kool Aid infected codswallop. It amazes just how much even the highly educated have completely accepted the corporate-capitalist-imperialist propaganda, just as I am amazed that the same people (friends of my husband, though what he'd think about their swallowing it all ) really seem to be completely unconcerned about what the US has done and is doing to other peoples in other countries (you know, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine – ah yes that coup – Yemen and so on and on). And they clearly are more afraid of Russia than of their (our) own military-deep state-police

    DW Bartoo , April 22, 2019 at 08:16

    Julian Assange is a vilified human being.

    When vilification occurs a very necessary question that critical thought must ponder is who benefits from such scapegoating?

    However, for the moment, let us ponder, again in service to actual critical thought, why aligning Assange with Russia is expected by those who will and intend to benefit from that association. Why is suggesting that Assange is "a Russian agent" expected to convince millions of USians that Assange is "a bad person"?

    Why would millions accept that assertion without questioning it at all?

    Caitlin suggest that those millions are "herd animals", implying that they are led into believing two things. The first is that Russia and the Russian people are "bad", we have even recently had a much trusted official suggest that Russians are "genetically" predisposed to badness with a malignant tendency to single out the innocent, and one indispensable nation, the United States for the most nefarious of Russian "interventions", amounting, according to a famous Hollywood actor, who occasionally portrays a certain deity in the movies, to "an attack".

    In the meager interest of context and history, stretching back a bit more than a century, some USians who are aware of that history, recognize that the US, under President Woodrow Wilson sent US military troops into Russia in order to end the rise of the Bolshevik rebellion/revolution.

    Thus began the official demonization of Russia. A demonization very convenient to the necessity of having an implacable enemy always ready to pounce on the good, moral, humanitarian, and freely enterprising United States.

    Now, conflating any individual with Russia, will always immediately result in that person becoming, in the US, in the U.K. and in other US-kept vassal nations totally tarred with all sorts of nefarious and always unexamined assumptions.

    Mark Twain once suggested that the deity created war that USians might learn geography. Clearly, it is a laborious process and has failed to create much global geographical awareness among the millions, most of whom are content to think whatever nation is correctly being ministered to or in the sights of "everything is on the table" as simply being, vaguely, "over there".

    That is why the US must strike "them" "over there" so as to avoid the frightening thought of having "them" have to be dealt with "here" in the "Homeland" of "the free and the brave".

    This suggests that the "herd" has to be led to certain conclusions.

    Unlike horses, the herd HAS to drink.

    If the herd does not consume the elixir, then it may not be willing to joyfully send the "flower of its youth" off to become cannon fodder should the Table of Everything so demand.

    I grew up in the nineteen fifties when the first Cold War was in full blossom. We school students were told and taught that Russia hated us, wanted to attack and kill us all, intended to rule the world with an iron hand and ruthless godlessness.

    Thanks to the intelligence community, the political elite, notably in the Democratic "wing" of the War Party, but with the support of the Republican wing of that party, and certain individual players aligned with the US policy "Full Spectrum Dominance" which, of course, is compassionate goodness and not to be confused with the vile aims of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and a whole host of other "bad guy" nations or amorphous groups known as "terrorists.

    Now, by tying Assange to that hodge-podge of baddies, the many may rest assured that he has been put in his proper place.

    Clearly, the consensus opinion is shaped, not inside the minds of millions of people, all projecting their very worst fears or even their own worst proclivities on individuals like Putin or whoever is the "Hitler" of the convenient moment, but rather on the efforts of, let us call them "entities" who plan to benefit from a populous aroused to anxiety or even fear itself.

    The list of beneficiaries includes the financial elites who always profit from war and "confusion", the political elites who serve those monied interests, the media, academia, the military, intelligence, weapons manufacturers, energy producers, military contractors and so on.

    Assange, to his great and everlasting credit, exposed a very large amount of this including, with the invaluable efforts
    of Chelsea Manning, actual war crimes perpetrated by the US, even beyond beginning wars based on lies.

    Fortunately, the media, having overplayed it hand in the manipulation has exposed itself to many as being but a propaganda industry.

    A very real question for those concerned with engaging critical thought processes is just how many humans are still being led, rather easily, around by the fallacious and very dangerous concoctions of the opinion "shapers" in think tanks, media echo chambers, corporate boardrooms, and academic snake pits?

    Perhaps there comes a time for humanity, if it is not to trot along in the footsteps of the dodo bird to look not where the fingers of deceit are pointing, but at those to whom the fingers are attached?

    AnneR , April 22, 2019 at 09:33

    DWB – as a USian of English birth (of about the same age, I would imagine) I am amazed at the fear the US had of the USSR back in the 1950s. When my husband told me, in the 1980s, about how he and his schoolmates had had nuclear air raid attack drills (sheltering under desks and so on!) I'm sure that I gawped, fly-catchingly. What??? Nowt remotely similar occurred in the UK during the 1950s in schools or elsewhere.

    It was only since I began studying history (late in life) that I learnt that the British ruling elites have hated the Russians for well over a hundred years. Still not quite sure why, nor yet why whatever the Russians did (Crimean War in the 1850s?) that pissed them off so royally should have any bearing on Russia-UK relations nowadays. But that could be because I'm dim. And because I've no hatred, dislike, fear of Russians (or Chinese or Iranians) at all. My fears revolve around the hubris-arrogance and determination to retain economic and more general world domination by the US and its poodles in the UK-FR-NATO and Israel (though their status as dog or leash is debatable). These are the countries to be afraid of.

    Sam F , April 22, 2019 at 20:34

    Yes, the remarkably unprovoked hatred of Russia among the UK aristocracy, regardless of era or government there, is a great wonder. They did not even have eras of invasion threats, colonial competition, or competing navies, as with France, Spain, and Portugal. Britain's 19th century invasions of Afghanistan were apparently provoked by nothing but fear, and their several lost wars there apparently did not even engage Russians. Even complete transitions of Russian government from monarchy to communism to capitalism failed to affect UK's fears. If the cause were mere cultural difference, they would have feared the orient.

    Perhaps their aristocracy was not polite enough, or those backwards Ns, upside down Rs, and Pi symbols terrified the British.

    geeyp , April 22, 2019 at 23:49

    Anne R. – For more on your second paragraph, visit Larouchepac.org The late Lyndon Larouche's site has a lot of info on this.

    Zhu , April 23, 2019 at 00:50

    Britain & Russia were rivals for empire. Both were expanding in Asia – The Great Game. Russia got Turkestan, Britain got India, both wanted China. Hence the elite's hatred, although now it's probably traditional and automatic.

    Keep studying history – it's ales ts enlightening!

    AnneR , April 23, 2019 at 09:22

    Yes Zhu – I do continue with history, although of course no historian and thus history is ever free (as with all scholars) of their personal worldview. And yes I realize that the UK, when an imperial power, viewed the world pretty much as the US does now: its domain. So obviously any and all contenders were up for vitriolic loathing and war. But it still doesn't explain the particularly vicious attitude toward Russia on the part of the British ruling elites. After all the Brits also had France, Holland and Germany (earlier Spain and Portugal) as competitors, admittedly at different time periods, and no they weren't "liked" and were often at war with each other. But there was never the same bitterness toward western European rivals as there was and continues to be toward Russia.

    That the USSR provoked deep, undying hatred among the aristos and their hangers' on does not surprise: can't have anything remotely similar happening in our cushy backyard, can't have the unwashed, ignorant, prole herd actually learning any lessons from the Soviets.

    Yet even so – no nuclear air raid drills in schools or anywhere during red-baiting season. Nothing kindred.

    O Society , April 22, 2019 at 08:07

    The truth is Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, Rachel Maddow, and the rest if the Scooby Doo gang handed Agent Orange the victimhood script he needs to feed his Trumpets to win the 2020 election.

    They've also guaranteed no matter what heinous gangster scam shit he has done in the past or will do in the future, none of it will stick because he'll play the falsely accused card.

    For the idiot Americans watching White House reality TV at home, this means celebrity Trump now has immunity and can't be voted off the island this season or next.

    https://opensociet.org/2019/04/20/chomsky-by-focusing-on-russia-democrats-handed-trump-a-huge-gift-possibly-the-2020-election/

    Skip Scott , April 22, 2019 at 12:01

    Ah yes, the evil Rooskies. From the article you obviously didn't read: In fact, WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of documents pertaining to Russia, has made critical comments about the Russian government and defended dissident Russian activists, and in 2017 published an entire trove called the Spy Files Russia exposing Russian surveillance practices. wikileaks russia files: https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/

    I think we can tell who the "tool" is.

    AnneR , April 22, 2019 at 12:30

    Did you not actually read Caitlin's article? And other similar ones? YES Wikileaks has published thousands of documents regarding Russian secret activities – and the Russian government has not been at all happy about it. However, unlike the USian government it hasn't trampled all over people's rights under international law to persecute Assange.

    Frankly – if the USian government and its "comrades" in the UK don't like their filthy linen being revealed for what it is – perhaps they should stop creating it in the first place.

    Red Douglas , April 22, 2019 at 16:08

    >>> " Do they publish anything on Russia?"

    Yes, as you and all of the many, many others who ignorantly and endlessly repeat this question would know, if you had ever bothered to review WikiLeaks' work. In this case, you would know if you had even bothered to read the article above your comment.

    WikiLeaks: The Spy Files Russia
    https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/

    Zhu , April 23, 2019 at 00:57

    Likewise, the sky is green, the grass is blue and the sun rises in the West

    michael , April 22, 2019 at 07:06

    "People take this repetition as a substitute for proof due to a glitch in human psychology known as the illusory truth effect, a phenomenon which causes our brains to tend to interpret things we've heard before as known truths." I think it is a deeper phenomenon than repetition of lies (which have been legal since 2014 with the 'modernization' of Smith-Mundt, our anti-propaganda law).

    The #resistence seems to fulfill people who have never accepted any religions whole-heartedly; there is something in the human psyche which demands an intuitive evidence-free, faith-based acceptance of beliefs which go beyond facts and evidence. This is a powerful dream world where their illusions are more powerful than reality.

    There is an inability to accept the fact that people in DC and NYC and Boston and San Francisco and other Financial/ MIC-driven areas were doing well relative to the bulk of Americans and life was wonderful until the 2016 Election. For these people "America Has Never Stopped Being Great!" (Similar to the "I've got mine, Jack! " attitude of Great Britain, as their labor unions lost unity with rest of the working class.)

    Their comments have moved away from ad hominem "You are a Putin stooge!" arguments to appeals to Authority fallacies: "All our Intelligence Agencies Know that Assange worked with Russians to embarrass Hillary and cost her the Election". Religiosity is largely Authority-driven, and avoids the angst of critical thinking and putting facts together that (thanks to our Intelligence Agencies!) don't fit together.

    OlyaPola , April 22, 2019 at 03:23

    "The only people claiming that Assange is a Russian agent are those who are unhappy with the things that WikiLeaks publications have exposed, whether that be U.S. war crimes or the corrupt manipulations of Democratic Party leaders."

    Perhaps fuller understanding would be gained by considering the following pathway.

    People who who think that "Assange is a Russian agent" is a plausible belief are the audience encouraged in the view that "Assange is a Russian agent".

    Much of this notion of plausible belief is founded on the creation of holograms consisting in large part of projections of the believer's expectations/experiences of the evaluation criteria used in choosing agents to recruit (for the public largely projected from their experience of creating resumes and attending job interviews) , what motivates an agent to be recruited, how such motivation can facilitate the purpose of the recruiter of the agent, what are the potential dangers of recruiting the agent, and most importantly what is the purpose of and reasons why the recruiter considers recruiting an agent to achieve her/his purpose.

    On projection catalysing plausible belief you will be aware that some encourage the belief that Mr. Putin is the richest man on the planet since in all societies there are assumptions/expectations on motivations.

    However in the presently self-designated "The United States of America" as functions of "exceptionalism", "we the people hold these truths to be self-evident" and lack of direct experience of foreign cultures by many, the population are particulrly prone to projection giving rise to the paradox of "exceptionalists" engaging in the them/us conflation.

    [Apr 24, 2019] Economic Sanctions - How Washington Attempts to Control the World

    Jan 07, 2019 | viableopposition.blogspot.com
    For decades, Washington's favourite means of punishing nations that do not subscribe to its narrative has been through the imposition of economic sanctions. This has become particularly apparent with the ongoing and increasing sanctions against Iran, Russia and North Korea. While sanctions against these governments have garnered headlines for the past few years, in fact, there are far more sanctions that we rarely hear about.
    In 1950, the Office of Foreign Assets Control was formed as part of the United States Department of the Treasury. OFAC administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions that are based on U.S. foreign policy and national security goals. Sanctions have been imposed for the following reasons:
    1.) terrorism
    2.) international narcotics trade
    3.) proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
    4.) threats to national security, foreign policy and/or economy of the United States
    Economic sanctions, in their most basic form, are defined as the withdrawal of trade and financial relations with a targeted nation for foreign and security policy purposes. Economic sanctions can take many forms including freezing of assets, arms embargoes, trade restrictions and bans, capital restraints, foreign aid reductions and travel bans. According to the Council on Foreign Relations , the United States uses economic and financial sanctions more than any other nation.
    In the United States, sanctions can originate in either the Executive or Legislative branches of government. Presidents begin the process by issuing an Executive Order or EO which affords the president social powers to regulate commerce with a given entity. Under the EO, the president declares that there is a national emergency in response to "unusual and extraordinary" foreign threats, for instance, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States. In addition to Executive actions, Congress can also pass legislation to both modify and impose sanctions. Most sanctions programs are administered by the previously mentioned OFAC, however, other government departments may be involved including Homeland Security, Justice, State and Commerce.
    On the OFAC website interested parties can search for information on federally mandated sanctions programs. Under each sanctions program there is an exhaustive listing of changes to the programs, guidelines that must be followed under penalty of law. There is also a listing of "General Licences" which are issued in order to authorize activities that would otherwise be prohibited under law. Here is a list from OFAC showing active sanctions programs and the date of their last update:

    OFAC also tracks " Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) and Blocked Individuals ". This list contains the names of individuals and companies that are owned, controlled by or acting on behalf of targeted nations as well as the names of terrorists and narcotics traffickers that are not affiliated with any nation. The assets of these SDNs are blocked and American citizens and permanent residents are prohibited from doing business with them. Here is a very small sampling of SDNs from the PDF version of the complete listing:


    In total, there are 1157 pages listing the names of over 6000 SDNs and blocked individuals.
    Here is a specific person showing how difficult it is to ensure that you are not dealing with a SDN with an unknown number of aliases:

    In this case, the SDGT following his name indicates that he is sanctioned under the Global Terrorism Sanctions Regulations.
    OFAC can impose civil penalties on individuals and organizations that act in contradiction to the imposed sanctions. So far in 2018, there have been two penalties imposed as shown here for doing business with Iran:


    ...and here for doing business with Sudan:



    During 2017 , 16 OFAC Enforcement Actions resulted in penalties of $119,527,845, up substantially from penalties totalling $21,609,315 in 2016.
    Let's now look at the sanctions programs that are currently in place from the Council on Foreign Relations. Here is a graphic showing the current U.S. sanctions programs and their year of inception:

    With this background on Washington's use of sanctions, let's look at what the World Economic Forum (WEF) has to say about the effectiveness of sanctions . The key factor in the effectiveness of sanctions is the size and capacity of the nation being sanctioned and the power of the sanctioning nation or coalition. Applying sanctions is a double-edged sword; for instance, in the case of Iran, China and Russia have stepped in to develop Iran's massive natural gas reserves whereas American oil companies are banned from investing and profiting from their potential investments in Iran. There are also longer term impacts of sanctions as show in this quote from the WEF:
    " The consequences of this trend are evolving, but they potentially include companies' "de-globalization". That is, as companies are increasingly forced to think of themselves as tied to their home governments, they will think twice before investing in certain markets abroad. Other consequences include changes in traditional foreign trade patterns in line with new geopolitical alignments. Faced in 2006 with the Russian wine embargo, Georgia had to look for new markets in the West, where it was headed politically. When in 2014 Russia faced Western sanctions, it accelerated its rapprochement with China, the one major power that refused to condemn its actions and shared Moscow's opposition to US global dominance.
    The outcome of these geo-economic campaigns is not a zero-sum game. The stronger economy backed by other forms of power can incur more damage on the target country than it will sustain in return, but it does not always alter the political behaviour of the government to be "punished". Sometimes sanctions can make that behaviour even more problematic. Ironically, the true winner may be a third party that jumps into the opening: European countries in the initial phases of US-Iran sanctions; China in the case of current Western sanctions against Russia; Russia in the case of the post-Tiananmen Western weapons ban on China; Turkey in the situation when EU pressure made Russia abandon its South Stream gas pipeline project. " (my bolds)
    In many cases (i.e. Iran, Syria and North Korea), the ultimate desired impact of sanctions is to create an atmosphere where the targeted government is subjected to "regime change". As well, sanctions are generally less effective against nations that are adversaries since the sanctions may create a political climate where there is a stiffening of resolve of the people being punished by an outside power. We need look no further than the example of Vladimir Putin who, despite nearly five years of sanctions, still retains the backing of the majority of Russians as shown here :

    One would think that Washington would have concluded that economic sanctions have not necessarily proven to be an effective means of getting its way in the world and, in fact, may have punished domestic businesses more than they punished foreign adversaries. The lessons taught by nearly 70 years of American economic isolation against Cuba are a prime example; while the sanctions have been painful, they resulted in a nation that has maintained its resolve in the face of economic difficulties and a leader that outlived and out ruled the reigns of U.S. Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II.

    [Apr 24, 2019] Viable Opposition

    Apr 24, 2019 | viableopposition.blogspot.com

    Tuesday, April 23, 2019 US Power Wielding - Unconventional Warfare and Financial Power Back in December 2008, WikiLeaks released a relatively little-noted document " US Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare ". This 248-page, nine chapter publication was the September 2008 revision of the U.S. Army Field Manual 3-05.130, the keystone doctrine for Army special operations forces operations in unconventional warfare.
    This document defines unconventional warfare as:
    " Operations conducted by, with or through irregular forces against a variety of state and no-state opponents. "
    These operations are conducted:
    " ...in support of a resistance movement, an insurgency, and ongoing or pending conventional military operations "
    Such operations have the following common conceptual core:
    ". ..working by, with, or through irregular surrogates in a clandestine and/or covert manner against opposing actors. "
    In Chapter 2, the document outlines the instruments of United States national power which help the United States to achieve its national strategic objectives. These instruments of national power include diplomacy, information, intelligence, economic, financial, law enforcement and military. For the purposes of this posting, let's focus on one of these instruments as follows, the Financial Instrument of National Power . Here's how the document describes this instrument:
    " The financial instrument of national power promotes the conditions for prosperity and stability in the United States and encourages prosperity and stability in the rest of the world. The Department of the Treasury (Treasury) is the primary federal agency responsible for the economic and financial prosperity and security of the United States and as such is responsible for a wide range of activities, including advising the President on economic and financial issues, promoting the President's growth agenda, and enhancing corporate governance in financial institutions. In the international arena, the Treasury works with other federal agencies, the governments of other nations, and the international financial institutions to encourage economic growth; raise standards of living; and predict and prevent, to the extent possible, economic and financial crises."
    I like that " encourages prosperity and stability in the rest of the world ". That is true, unless you happen to live in a nation which doesn't share Washington's viewpoint. Just ask people living in one of many nations who are currently subject to one or another of Washington's long list of sanctions as shown here (current to mid-2017):

    The document proceeds to note the following:
    " T he application of economic or financial incentives is among the most powerful ideas in the U.S. arsenal of power. Although some U.S. adversaries are irreconcilable to accommodation with U.S. interests and must be engaged in other ways, many declared or potential adversaries can be persuaded or dissuaded by economic or financial means to become declared or potential allies (or at least neutralized) the ability of the United States government to affect the economic environment is enormous, and it has economic weapons at its disposal. Unconventional warfare planners must carefully coordinate the introduction and withholding of economic and financial assets into the Unconventional Warfare Operational Area (UWOA) with their interagency partners. For example, direct application of USAID grants to specific human groups can alter negative behaviors or cement positive affiliations. At the highest levels of diplomatic and financial interaction, the United States Government's ability to influence international financial institutions -- with corresponding effects to exchange rates, interest rates, credit availability, and money supplies -- can cement multinational coalitions for unconventional warfare campaigns or dissuade adversary nation-state governments from supporting specific actors in the UWOA. " (my bolds)
    As you can see, the United States is willing to use financial blackmail including exchange and interest rate manipulation, credit availability and the supply of money to either persuade certain nations to join its unconventional warfare campaign or to dissuade adversarial nations from supporting the "other side" of an unconventional warfare strategy.
    Here is a screen capture of page 2-8 of the document outlining how the United States can use financial incentives to manipulate other nations (ARSOF = Army Special Operations Forces and UW = Unconventional Warfare, DOS = Department of State, IC = Intelligence Community):

    Note this sentence:
    " Government can apply unilateral and indirect financial power through persuasive influence to international and domestic financial institutions regarding availability and terms of loans, grants, or other financial assistance to foreign state and nonstate actors ."
    It is also interesting to note that the document clearly states that the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and Bank for International Settlements are basically functioning as organizations that Washington can use to drive its global agenda and as yet another tool in America's quest for global hegemony. This isn't terribly surprising in the case of the World Bank since we find the following on its website:

    In addition, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control whose sole responsibility is as follows:
    ". ..to administer and enforce economic and trade sanctions based on U.S. foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries and regimes, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other threats the national security... "
    ...has a " long history of conducting economic warfare valuation to any Army Special Operations Forces unconventional warfare. ".
    This Army manual, leaked over a decade ago by WikiLeaks, gives us a very clear view of how Washington uses financial manipulation through its influence on the World Bank, IMF, OECD and other "global" groups to wage unconventional warfare on any nation that doesn't share its view of how the world should function and that threatens America's control of the globe. The use of financial blackmail to bend countries to America's narrative and overthrow nations who do not succumb to America's wishes is not terribly surprising, however, it is interesting to actually see one key aspect of Washington's unconventional warfare methodology in print.

    [Apr 24, 2019] Impeached or not impeached all Trump dirty laundry is going to be exposed

    Apr 24, 2019 | www.unz.com

    renfro , says: Next New Comment April 23, 2019 at 4:53 am GMT

    Trump biggest regret is going to be that he ever ran for President. Impeached or not impeached all his dirty laundry is going to be exposed. Even if he secured a second term there is no statute of limitations on what he could be prosecuted for .so the minute he steps down from the WH he's going to have to spend everything he's got on lawyers fighting the charges the SDNY is going to bring against him.

    David Cay Johnston: What Is Trump Hiding in His Tax Returns?

    The Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter explains what's likely in Trump's returns.

    By Jon WienerTwitter

    David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter who previously worked at The New York Times. He's the founder and editor of DCReport.org.

    Jon Wiener: The chair of the House Ways and Means Committee formally requested six years of Trump's personal and business tax returns earlier this month. Trump, of course, refused to comply, and said the law is "100 percent" on his side. Does the IRS have to hand over Trump's tax returns to the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee?

    David Cay Johnston: If they follow the law, they absolutely have to hand them over. Under a 1924 anti-corruption law that was passed because of Teapot Dome, a Harding-administration scandal, Congress can look at anybody's tax return at any time. In the 85-year history of this law, the IRS has always responded appropriately to the request and turned over everything that was requested.

    [Apr 24, 2019] How does Trump tax return look on a balance with the treasonous, anti-Constitutional behavior of Brennan, Comey, Clinton, Obama, Clapper and the presstituting chorus of "liberal" media?

    Apr 24, 2019 | www.unz.com

    annamaria , says: April 23, 2019 at 10:47 pm GMT

    @renfro How does Trump tax return look on a balance with the treasonous, anti-Constitutional behavior of Brennan, Comey, Clinton, Obama, Clapper and the presstituting chorus of "liberal" media?

    Since the tsardom of Dick Cheney, the US Constitution had become quaint. Moreover, the "democracy on the march" and other "humanitarian interventions" initiated by the ultimate coward Bush the lesser and by the ultimate hypocrite and narcissist Obama, have destroyed completely the value of diplomacy and international law with regard to the ZUSA foreign policy.

    Your obsession with the petty problem of Trump's taxes does not allow you to take a notice of Brennan's great achievements in Ukraine: the successful regime-change in Kiev and initiation of the civil war with the pro-federalists in eastern Ukraine. Currently, the US Congress and the US citizenry at large have been tasting the unpalatable medicine developed by the CIA during the decades of smothering the weaker countries with "appropriate" regime changes.

    The treasonous Russiagate -- up to Comey's willful inactivity towards Clinton's server (and Comey's rejection of Assange' plea that the DoJ wanted at that time) -- is a direct consequence of the perfidious autocratic rule established years ago by the five-deferment Cheney.
    The rot has got deep into the system.

    [Apr 24, 2019] Trump has done exactly what I hoped he would do; he has shown that our entire election system is rigged by the CIA (obviously not very thoroughly rigged). Like or hate Trump, only a traitor would not be concerned that the CIA is giving marching order to the media and colluding to derail candidates it does not approve of.

    Apr 24, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

    Jay 04.22.19 at 11:43 pm 63

    or maybe they weren't eager for World War 3 with Russia over Syria or the Ukraine?

    I voted for Trump after previously voting for Ralph Nader. And Obama proved beyond a doubt that Nader was right. Meanwhile Trump has done exactly what I hoped he would do; he has shown that our entire election system is rigged by the CIA (obviously not very thoroughly rigged). Like or hate Trump, only a traitor would not be concerned that the CIA is giving marching order to the media and colluding to derail candidates it does not approve of.

    Unless a "democrat" stands up who is willing to talk about unconstitutional wars, unconstitutional bailouts, unconstitutional surveillance and unconstitutional rigging of the two major parties, Trump is far better because he is forcing the public to see how corrupt DC is. We have been in a constitutional crisis since at least the 1990's. Of course if you are too weak and stupid to handle any of that discussion, just bury your head and pretend that "racism" is the only reason Trump won.

    [Apr 24, 2019] Only herd-minded human livestock believe the unsubstantiated assertions of opaque and unaccountable government agencies about governments who are oppositional to those same agencies

    Looks like the USA loses the "battle of ideas". Neoliberal globalization does not sell in 2019. So of course Russia is guilty. So easy...
    Apr 24, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    David Walters, April 24, 2019 at 13:14

    "This doesn't mean that Russia would never use hackers to interfere in world political affairs or that Vladimir Putin is some sort of virtuous girl scout, it just means that in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe the unsubstantiated assertions of opaque and unaccountable government agencies about governments who are oppositional to those same agencies."

    Absolutely correct.

    Anyone who still believes what the IC says if a moron. As Pompeo recently said to the student body of Texas A&M University, my alma matta, the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and steel. He went on the explain that the CIA has courses to teach their agent that dark "art".

    [Apr 24, 2019] Integrity Initiative - Driving A Wedge Between Russia and the West

    Images deleted.
    Notable quotes:
    "... RT has been able to capitalise on growing mistrust of western media among westerners. During the breaking of the coverage of many political scandals, RT articles aggressively raised issues that many felt were not being pursued by the western media, which is frequently seen as covering up non-PC stories. Many users believe that RT is willing to talk about incidents that western media will not, a belief that RT actively encourages. As such, many users of a both far-right and far-left disposition are willing to listen to RT, even being aware of RT's control by the government, rather than western media. ..."
    "... On page four of this this interesting sentence we find the following sentence: " Driving a wedge between Russians and government is key. " ..."
    "... It is interesting to see that Integrity Initiative was ahead of the game when it came to punishing Russia for its involvement in Crimea's move to independence from Ukraine to the point that their greatest hope was that there would be regime change in Russia. ..."
    "... As you can see from these documents, Integrity Initiative, a government-funded, not-for-profit charity has a mandate to ensure that the West is immune to Russia's ongoing propaganda campaign by providing propaganda of its own. ..."
    Jan 21, 2019 | viableopposition.blogspot.com
    While it received relatively little coverage from the Western mainstream media establishment, a recent 42 megabyte upload on an Anonymous server provides us with an inside glimpse into the genesis of the Western anti-Russia narrative.
    According to the documents, an organization (rather ironically) named Integrity Initiative with the moniker "Defending Democracy Against Disinformation" was organized to mobilize global public opinion against Russia and its agenda as you can see on the organization's "About" webpage:

    The non-for-profit charity was set up in 2015 as a partnership of several independent organizations led by The Institute for Statecraft. It claims that it is dedicated to " education in good governance and to enabling societies to adapt to a rapidly changing world. ", a rather benign mission statement. In its first two years, it was funded by private individuals, however, funding for 2017 and 2018 was largely provided by governments, particularly the United Kingdom, reflecting the U.K.'s appreciation of the " importance of the threat, and a wish to support civil society programmes seeking to rebuild the ability of democratic societies to resist large scale, malicious disinformation and influence campaigns."
    According to the documents a number of organizations including the United States Department of State, the U.K.'s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), NATO, Facebook and the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense were looking to fund the Integrity Initiative as you can see here:

    Integrity Initiative states the following about its services:
    " It is inevitable that a programme tackling disinformation in Europe finds itself spending much of its time addressing the activities of the Russian State, including those carried out through its intelligence services. The Kremlin has invested more operational thought, intent and resource in disinformation, in Europe and elsewhere in the democratic world, than any other single player. "

    Not surprisingly, Integrity Initiative has comments on the leaking of its own documents by Anonymous:

    " We note both the attempts by Russian state propaganda outlets to amplify the volume of this leak; and the suggestion by a major Anonymous-linked Twitter account that the Kremlin subverted the banner of Anonymous to disguise their responsibility for it...


    It is of course a matter of deep regret that Integrity Initiative documents have been stolen and posted on line, still more so that, in breach of any defensible practice, Russian state propaganda outlets have published or re-published a large number of names and contact details. We have not yet had the chance to analyse all of the documents, so cannot say with confidence whether they are all genuine or whether they include doctored or false material.


    Although it is clear that much of the material was indeed on the Integrity Initiative or Institute systems, much of it is dated and was never used. In particular, many of the names published were on an internal list of experts in this field who had been considered as potential invitees to future cooperation. In the event, many were never contacted by the Integrity Initiative and did not contribute to it. Nor were these documents therefore included in any funding proposals. Not only did these individuals have nothing to do with the programme – they may not even have heard of us. We are of course trying to contact all named individuals for whom we have contact details to ensure that they are aware of what has happened. "

    With that background, let's look at four of the documents that were posted.

    1.) A undated document discussing Russia's use of social media as a proxy for propaganda:

    Note the following comments regarding Russia Today aka RT:

    " RT has been able to capitalise on growing mistrust of western media among westerners. During the breaking of the coverage of many political scandals, RT articles aggressively raised issues that many felt were not being pursued by the western media, which is frequently seen as covering up non-PC stories. Many users believe that RT is willing to talk about incidents that western media will not, a belief that RT actively encourages. As such, many users of a both far-right and far-left disposition are willing to listen to RT, even being aware of RT's control by the government, rather than western media. "

    Here is a page from the document which discusses the target audiences for Russian social media propaganda:

    Note that the memo clearly states that Russian media outlets like RT and Sputnik are targeting an audience that is "distrusting of statecraft and major media groups.". I wonder why Westerners would be distrusting of their own media?

    2.) A 2017 document outlining plans for developing an American arm of Integrity Initiative:

    Note that the writer of the memo states that the West is badly in need of a reassertion of U.S. leadership and that America needs to rebuild its understanding of Russia and how to deal with it. It also notes that the international community needs to rebuild its understanding of Russia to ensure that Western governments get the popular support that democracies require (i.e. a strongly anti-populist movement).

    3.) An undated document showing how Integrity Initiative is planning to expand "expert clusters" to other nations including Austria, Canada, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland among others:

    4.) A January 2015 document showing Integrity Initiative's views on setting up anti-Russia sanctions with the goal of changing Russia's behaviour, peace in Ukraine, a return of Crimea and, most importantly, possible regime change in Russia:

    On page four of this this interesting sentence we find the following sentence: " Driving a wedge between Russians and government is key. "

    It is interesting to see that Integrity Initiative was ahead of the game when it came to punishing Russia for its involvement in Crimea's move to independence from Ukraine to the point that their greatest hope was that there would be regime change in Russia.

    As you can see from these documents, Integrity Initiative, a government-funded, not-for-profit charity has a mandate to ensure that the West is immune to Russia's ongoing propaganda campaign by providing propaganda of its own. It's certainly a good thing that Integrity Initiative has the "real truth" and is willing to pressure us into seeing the global geopolitical quagmire with its 20/20 vision. Apparently, integrity in this post-truth era is in the eye of the beholder/purveyor.

    [Apr 24, 2019] Mueller Raises More Questions Than Answers -- About the Democrats by Patrick J. Buchanan

    Apr 23, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
    The release of the Mueller report has left Democrats in a dilemma. Consider what Robert Mueller concluded after two years of investigation.

    Candidate Donald Trump did not conspire or collude with the Russians to hack the emails of the DNC or John Podesta. Trump did not distribute the fruits of those crimes nor did anyone on his campaign. On collusion and conspiracy, said Mueller, Trump is innocent.

    Mueller did not say that Trump did not consider interfering with his investigation. But that investigation nonetheless went on unimpeded. Mueller's document demands were all met. And Mueller did not conclude that Trump obstructed justice.

    On obstruction, then, not guilty, by reason of no indictment.

    We are told that Trump ranted to subordinates about firing Mueller. Yet as Attorney General Bill Barr pointed out, Trump had excellent reasons to be enraged. He was pilloried for two and a half years over a crime he not only did not commit but that never took place.

    From the fall of 2016 to the spring of 2019, Trump was subjected to scurrilous attacks. It was alleged that his victory had been stolen for him by the Russians, that he was an illegitimate president guilty of treason and an agent of the Kremlin, that he was being blackmailed, and that he rewrote the Republican platform on Vladimir Putin's instructions.

    All bull hockey, and Mueller all but said so.

    Yet the false charges did serious damage to his presidency and the nation.

    Mueller Time is Finally Over CNN Disgraces Itself as the Mueller Report Shatters Media Dreams

    Answering them has consumed much of Trump's tenure and ruined his plans to repair our dangerously damaged relations with the world's other great nuclear power.

    Yet it is the Trump haters who are now in something of a box.

    Their goal had been to use "Russiagate" to bring down their detested antagonist, overturn his election, and put him in the history books as a stooge of Putin who, had the truth be known, would never have won the White House.

    Mueller failed to sustain their indictment. Indeed, he all but threw it out.

    Yet Trump's enemies will not quit now. To do so would be to concede that Trump's defenders had been right all along, and that they had not only done a grave injustice to Trump but damaged their country with their manic pursuit.

    And admitting they were wrong would instantly raise follow-up questions.

    If two years of investigation by Mueller, his lawyers, and his FBI agents could not unearth hard evidence to prove that Trump and his campaign conspired with the Russians, what was the original evidence that justified launching this historic and massive assault on a presidential campaign and the presidency of the United States?

    If there was no collusion, when did Mueller learn this? Did it take two and a half years to discover there was no conspiracy?

    The names tossed out as justifying the original investigation are George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. The latter was subjected to four consecutive secret FISA court surveillance warrants.

    Yet neither man was ever charged with conspiring with Russia.

    Was "Russiagate" a nothingburger to begin with, a concocted excuse for "deep state" agencies to rampage through Trump's campaign and personal history to destroy him and his presidency?

    Senator Elizabeth Warren, a presidential candidate, has called for impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee. But her call seems less tied to evidence of high crimes in the Mueller report than to her own anemic poll ratings and fundraising performance in the first quarter.

    It is difficult to see how those Democrats and their media allies, who have invested so much prestige and so many hopes in the Mueller report, can now pack it in and concede that they were wrong. Their interests will not permit it; their reputations could not sustain it.

    So where are we headed?

    The anti-Trump media and second-tier candidates for the Democratic nomination will press the frontrunners to join their call for impeachment. Some will capitulate to the clamor.

    But can Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, or Kamala Harris, each of whom has an agenda to advance, accept becoming just another voice crying out for Trump's impeachment?

    The credibility of the Democratic Party is now at issue.

    If Mueller could not find collusion, what reason is there to believe that Congressman Jerry Nadler's Judiciary Committee will find it? And then convince the country they have discovered what ex-FBI director Mueller could not?

    With conspiracy and collusion off the table, and Mueller saying the case for obstruction is unproven, the renewed attack on Trump takes on the aspect of a naked and desperate "deep state"-media coup against a president they fear they cannot defeat at the ballot box.

    Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

    Ken Zaretzke April 23, 2019 at 1:31 pm

    Why did Mueller hire only Democrats for his team–an unusually large team, at that? Was it because he thought nailing Trump on collusion a surefire thing? And as a surefire thing, there was no need to placate Republicans or provide balance? Who advised or pressured him to do that? Maybe the deep state

    An investigation of the FBI's Trump-spying caper, with James Comey at the helm, should look into those matters. To some as yet undetermined extent, Mueller and Comey are joined at the hip. Or if they aren't, let the government prove it. If DOJ's Inspector General doesn't do it, we may need another special counsel to conduct a more thorough investigation. And this time, by someone from outside the Beltway, with no professional or social allegiances to individuals within it.

    John S , says: April 23, 2019 at 1:46 pm
    " not guilty, by reason of no indictment."

    The report itself states that, per OLC, the Special Counsel determined not to make a prosecutorial judgment. It also states that the President is not exonerated of the crime of obstruction.

    Stuart Ferguson , says: April 23, 2019 at 4:46 pm
    Mr. Buchanan is right: President Trump has been found to be not guilty of working with Russia, but neither the media, nor the neo-cons can possible admit it, or their cause is lost. And one need not personally admire Donald Trump to note the haughty condescension of his opponents, most of whom have been wrong about almost everything for decades.

    [Apr 24, 2019] Why then Mueller backed off (in panic) from the indicted' readiness to show up in court?

    Apr 24, 2019 | www.unz.com

    annamaria , says: April 23, 2019 at 11:19 pm GMT

    @Sean "Trump owes the Russians nothing, he was their way to stop Clinton."

    -- Sean, you seem as taking really seriously the $4.700 spent by Russians on the Google ads as well as the indictment of Russian "hackers and trolls" (the alleged army of Kremlin) in absentia. Why then Mueller backed off (in panic) from the indicted' readiness to show up in court?

    Your thinking is not original: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democratic-operatives-created-fake-russian-bots-in-alabama-race-designed-to-link-kremlin-to-republican-roy-moore

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-13/google-ceo-exposes-shocking-full-extent-russian-meddling-2016

    https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/04/mueller-russia-interference-election-case-delay-570627

    You may have some special grievances against Russia and Russians, but why such obvious depreciation of your intelligence by repeating after Adam Schiff?

    [Apr 24, 2019] Gaping holes in CrowdStrike's conclusions

    Apr 24, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Saoirse , says: April 24, 2019 at 2:30 am GMT

    MEMORANDUM FOR : The President

    FROM : Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

    VIPS Fault Mueller Probe, Criticize Refusal to Interview Assange

    " In that Memorandum we described the results of our own independent, agenda-free forensic investigation led by two former Technical Directors of the NSA, who avoid squishy "assessments," preferring to base their findings on fundamental principles of science and the scientific method . Our findings remain unchallenged; they reveal gaping holes in CrowdStrike's conclusions."

    [ ]

    "We recall that you were apprised of that Memorandum's key findings because you ordered then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo to talk to William Binney, one of our two former NSA Technical Directors and one of the principal authors of that Memorandum . On October 24, 2017, Pompeo began an hour-long meeting with Binney by explaining the genesis of the odd invitation to CIA Headquarters: " You are here because the president told me that if I really wanted to know about Russian hacking I needed to talk to you ."

    "On the chance Pompeo has given you no report on his meeting with Binney, we can tell you that Binney, a plain-spoken, widely respected scientist, began by telling Pompeo that his (CIA) people were lying to him about Russian hacking and that he (Binney) could prove it . Pompeo reacted with disbelief, but then talked of following up with the FBI and NSA. We have no sign, though, that he followed through. And there is good reason to believe that Pompeo himself may have been reluctant to follow up with his subordinates in the Directorate of Digital Innovation created by CIA Director John Brennan in 2015. CIA malware and hacking tools are built by the Engineering Development Group, part of that relatively new Directorate. "

    [ ]

    William Binney , former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)

    Bogdan Dzakovic , former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security (ret.) (associate VIPS)

    Philip Giraldi , CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)

    Mike Gravel , former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator

    James George Jatras , former U.S. diplomat and former foreign policy adviser to Senate leadership (Associate VIPS)

    Larry Johnson , former CIA Intelligence Officer & former State Department Counter-Terrorism Official, (ret.)

    Michael S. Kearns , Captain, USAF (ret.); ex-Master SERE Instructor for Strategic Reconnaissance Operations (NSA/DIA) and Special Mission Units (JSOC)

    John Kiriakou , former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former Senior Investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

    Karen Kwiatkowski , former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003

    Clement J. Laniewski , LTC, U.S. Army (ret.)

    Linda Lewis , WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.)

    Edward Loomis , NSA Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)

    David MacMichael , former Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

    Ray McGovern , former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA presidential briefer (ret.)

    Elizabeth Murray , former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East & CIA political analyst (ret.)

    Todd E. Pierce , MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)

    Peter Van Buren ,U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)

    Robert Wing , U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (former) (associate VIPS)

    Ann Wright , U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War

    https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/16/vips-fault-mueller-probe-criticize-refusal-to-interview-assange/

    {excerpt, emphasis added}

    Skeptikal , says: April 24, 2019 at 2:32 am GMT
    @Adrian E. Very interesting post.
    tulsilookinggood , says: April 24, 2019 at 2:33 am GMT
    Phil is on my wall of heroes
    Saoirse , says: April 24, 2019 at 2:43 am GMT
    @annamaria MEMORANDUM FOR: The Attorney General

    FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

    "Recent forensic examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23, 25 and 26 May 2016. (On June 12, Julian Assange announced he had them; WikiLeaks published them on July 22.) We recently discovered that the files reveal a FAT (File Allocation Table) system property. This shows that the data had been transferred to an external storage device, such as a thumb drive, before WikiLeaks posted them ."

    "FAT is a simple file system named for its method of organization, the File Allocation Table. It is used for storage only and is not related to internet transfers like hacking. Were WikiLeaks to have received the DNC files via a hack, the last modified times on the files would be a random mixture of odd-and even-ending numbe rs."

    "Why is that important? The evidence lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the Wikileaks files. When a file is stored under the FAT file system the software rounds the time to the nearest even-numbered second. Every single one of the time stamps in the DNC files on WikiLeaks' site ends in an even number. "

    "We have examined 500 DNC email files stored on the Wikileaks site. All 500 files end in an even number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0 . If those files had been hacked over the Internet, there would be an equal probability of the time stamp ending in an odd number . The random probability that FAT was not used is 1 chance in 2 to the 500th power . Thus, these data show that the DNC emails posted by WikiLeaks went through a storage device, like a thumb drive, and were physically moved before Wikileaks posted the emails on the World Wide Web ."

    "This finding alone is enough to raise reasonable doubts, for example, about Mueller's indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking the DNC emails given to WikiLeaks. A defense attorney could easily use the forensics to argue that someone copied the DNC files to a storage device like a USB thumb drive and got them physically to WikiLeaks -- not electronically via a hack."

    Role of NSA

    "For more than two years, we strongly suspected that the DNC emails were copied/leaked in that way, not hacked."

    [ ]

    For the steering group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity:

    William Binney, former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA's Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center (ret.)

    Richard H. Black, Senator of Virginia, 13th District; Colonel US Army (ret.); Former Chief, Criminal Law Division, Office of the Judge Advocate General, the Pentagon (associate VIPS)

    Bogdan Dzakovic, former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security (ret.) (associate VIPS)

    Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)

    Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator

    James George Jatras, former U.S. diplomat and former foreign policy adviser to Senate leadership (Associate VIPS)

    Larry C. Johnson, former CIA and State Department Counter Terrorism officer

    John Kiriakou, former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

    Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003

    Edward Loomis, Cryptologic Computer Scientist, former Technical Director at NSA (ret.)

    David MacMichael, Ph.D., former senior estimates officer, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

    Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst; CIA Presidential briefer (ret.)

    Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council & CIA political analyst (ret.)

    Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)

    Peter Van Buren, US Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)

    Sarah G. Wilton, CDR, USNR, (ret.); Defense Intelligence Agency (ret.)

    Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA

    Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army reserve colonel and former U.S. diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War

    Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is made up of former intelligence officers, diplomats, military officers and congressional staffers. The organization, founded in 2002, was among the first critics of Washington's justifications for launching a war against Iraq. VIPS advocates a US foreign and national security policy based on genuine national interests rather than contrived threats promoted for largely political reasons. An archive of VIPS memoranda is available at Consortiumnews.com.

    VIPS: Mueller's Forensics-Free Findings

    https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/13/vips-muellers-forensics-free-findings/

    [Apr 23, 2019] Crowdstrike and the reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco

    Notable quotes:
    "... In May, the company, Crowdstrike, determined that the hack was the work of the Russians. As one unnamed intelligence official told BuzzFeed, "CrowdStrike is pretty good. There's no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate ..."
    "... Perhaps not. Yet Crowdstrike is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to Russia. Crowdstrike's founder and chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch , is also a senior fellow at the Washington think tank, The Atlantic Council, which has been at the forefront of escalating tensions with Russia. ..."
    "... As I reported in The Nation in early January , the connection between Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council is highly relevant given that the Atlantic Council is funded in part by the State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. In recent years, it has emerged as a leading voice calling for a new Cold War with Russia. ..."
    "... But meanwhile the steady drumbeat of "blame Russia" is having an effect. According to a recent you.gov/Economist poll, 58 percent of Americans view Russia as "unfriendly/enemy" while also finding that 52 percent of Democrats believed Russia "tampered with vote tallies." ..."
    Feb 03, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

    Originally from: A Reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco -- Consortiumnews

    ... ... ...

    A Dangerous Replay?

    Today something eerily similar to the pre-war debate over Iraq is taking place regarding the allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. Assurances from the intelligence community and from anonymous Obama administration "senior officials" about the existence of evidence is being treated as, well, actual evidence.

    State Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN that he is "100% certain" of the role that Russia played in U.S. election. The administration's expressions of certainty are then uncritically echoed by the mainstream media. Skeptics are likewise written off, slandered as " Kremlin cheerleaders " or worse.

    Unsurprisingly, The Washington Post is reviving its Bush-era role as principal publicist for the government's case. Yet in its haste to do the government's bidding, the Post has published two widely debunked stories relating to Russia (one on the scourge of Russian inspired "fake news", the other on a non-existent Russian hack of a Vermont electric utility) onto which the paper has had to append "editor's notes" to correct the original stories.

    Yet, those misguided stories have not deterred the Post's opinion page from being equally aggressive in its depiction of Russian malfeasance. In late December, the Post published an op-ed by Rep. Adam Schiff and former Rep. Jane Harmon claiming "Russia's theft and strategic leaking of emails and documents from the Democratic Party and other officials present a challenge to the U.S. political system unlike anything we've experienced."

    On Dec. 30, the Post editorial board chastised President-elect Trump for seeming to dismiss "a brazen and unprecedented attempt by a hostile power to covertly sway the outcome of a U.S. presidential election." The Post described Russia's actions as a "cyber-Pearl Harbor."

    On Jan. 1, the neoconservative columnist Josh Rogin told readers that the recent announcement of sanctions against Russia "brought home a shocking realization that Russia is using hybrid warfare in an aggressive attempt to disrupt and undermine our democracy."

    Meanwhile, many of the same voices who were among the loudest cheerleaders for the war in Iraq have also been reprising their Bush-era roles in vouching for the solidity of the government's case.

    Jonathan Chait, now a columnist for New York magazine, is clearly convinced by what the government has thus far provided. "That Russia wanted Trump to win has been obvious for months," writes Chait.

    "Of course it all came from the Russians, I'm sure it's all there in the intel," Charles Krauthammer told Fox News on Jan. 2. Krauthammer is certain.

    And Andrew Sullivan is certain as to the motive. "Trump and Putin's bromance," Sullivan told MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Jan. 2, "has one goal this year: to destroy the European Union and to undermine democracy in Western Europe."

    David Frum, writing in The Atlantic , believes Trump "owes his office in considerable part to illegal clandestine activities in his favor conducted by a hostile, foreign spy service."

    Jacob Weisberg agrees, tweeting: "Russian covert action threw the election to Donald Trump. It's that simple." Back in 2008, Weisberg wrote that "the first thing I hope I've learned from this experience of being wrong about Iraq is to be less trusting of expert opinion and received wisdom." So much for that.

    Foreign Special Interests

    Another, equally remarkable similarity to the period of 2002-3 is the role foreign lobbyists have played in helping to whip up a war fever. As readers will no doubt recall, Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which served, in effect as an Iraqi government-in-exile, worked hand in hand with the Washington lobbying firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey (BKSH) to sell Bush's war on television and on the op-ed pages of major American newspapers.

    Chalabi was also a trusted source of Judy Miller of the Times, which, in an apology to its readers on May 26, 2004, wrote : "The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles." The pro-war lobbying of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has also been exhaustively documented .

    Though we do not know how widespread the practice has been as of yet, something similar is taking place today. Articles calling for confrontation with Russia over its alleged "hybrid war" with the West are appearing with increasing regularity . Perhaps the most egregious example of this newly popular genre appeared on Jan. 1 in Politico magazine. That essay, which claims, among many other things, that "we're in a war" with Russia comes courtesy of one Molly McKew.

    McKew is seemingly qualified to make such a pronouncement because she, according to her bio on the Politico website, served as an "adviser to Georgian President Saakashvili's government from 2009-2013, and to former Moldovan Prime Minister Filat in 2014-2015." Seems reasonable enough. That is until one discovers that McKew is actually registered with the Department of Justice as a lobbyist for two anti-Russian political parties, Georgia's UMN and Moldova's PLDM.

    Records show her work for the consulting firm Fianna Strategies frequently takes her to Capitol Hill to lobby U.S. Senate and Congressional staffers, as well as prominent U.S. journalists at The Washington Post and The New York Times, on behalf of her Georgian and Moldovan clients.

    "The truth," writes McKew, "is that fighting a new Cold War would be in America's interest. Russia teaches us a very important lesson: losing an ideological war without a fight will ruin you as a nation. The fight is the American way." Or, put another way: the truth is that fighting a new Cold War would be in McKew's interest -- but perhaps not America's.

    While you wouldn't know it from the media coverage (or from reading deeply disingenuous pieces like McKew's) as things now stand, the case against Russia is far from certain. New developments are emerging almost daily. One of the latest is a report from the cyber-engineering company Wordfence, which concluded that "The IP addresses that DHS [Department of Homeland Security] provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with Russia."

    Indeed, according to Wordfence, "The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website."

    On Jan. 4, BuzzFeed reported that, according to the DNC, the FBI never carried out a forensic examination on the email servers that were allegedly hacked by the Russian government. "The FBI," said DNC spokesman Eric Walker, "never requested access to the DNC's computer servers."

    What the agency did do was rely on the findings of a private-sector, third-party vendor that was brought in by the DNC after the initial hack was discovered. In May, the company, Crowdstrike, determined that the hack was the work of the Russians. As one unnamed intelligence official told BuzzFeed, "CrowdStrike is pretty good. There's no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate . "

    Perhaps not. Yet Crowdstrike is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to Russia. Crowdstrike's founder and chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch , is also a senior fellow at the Washington think tank, The Atlantic Council, which has been at the forefront of escalating tensions with Russia.

    As I reported in The Nation in early January , the connection between Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council is highly relevant given that the Atlantic Council is funded in part by the State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. In recent years, it has emerged as a leading voice calling for a new Cold War with Russia.

    Time to Rethink the 'Group Think'

    And given the rather thin nature of the declassified evidence provided by the Obama administration, might it be time to consider an alternative theory of the case? William Binney, a 36-year veteran of the National Security Agency and the man responsible for creating many of its collection systems, thinks so. Binney believes that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked, writing that "it is puzzling why NSA cannot produce hard evidence implicating the Russian government and WikiLeaks. Unless we are dealing with a leak from an insider, not a hack."

    None of this is to say, of course, that Russia did not and could not have attempted to influence the U.S. presidential election. The intelligence community may have intercepted damning evidence of the Russian government's culpability. The government's hesitation to provide the public with more convincing evidence may stem from an understandable and wholly appropriate desire to protect the intelligence community's sources and methods. But as it now stands the publicly available evidence is open to question.

    But meanwhile the steady drumbeat of "blame Russia" is having an effect. According to a recent you.gov/Economist poll, 58 percent of Americans view Russia as "unfriendly/enemy" while also finding that 52 percent of Democrats believed Russia "tampered with vote tallies."

    With Congress back in session, Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain is set to hold a series of hearings focusing on Russian malfeasance, and the steady drip-drip-drip of allegations regarding Trump and Putin is only serving to box in the new President when it comes to pursuing a much-needed detente with Russia.

    It also does not appear that a congressional inquiry will start from scratch and critically examine the evidence. On Friday, two senators -- Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse -- announced a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigation into Russian interference in elections in the U.S. and elsewhere. But they already seemed to have made up their minds about the conclusion: "Our goal is simple," the senators said in a joint statement "To the fullest extent possible we want to shine a light on Russian activities to undermine democracy."

    So, before the next round of Cold War posturing commences, now might be the time to stop, take a deep breath and ask: Could the rush into a new Cold War with Russia be as disastrous and consequential -- if not more so -- as was the rush to war with Iraq nearly 15 years ago? We may, unfortunately, find out.

    James W Carden is a contributing writer for The Nation and editor of The American Committee for East-West Accord's eastwestaccord.com. He previously served as an advisor on Russia to the Special Representative for Global Inter-governmental Affairs at the US State Department.

    Don G. , February 5, 2017 at 14:29

    Questioning whether the Russians hacked or didn’t hack is playing into the US narrative to demonize Russia. (Putin)
    It simple doesn’t matter as all nations hack as much as possible to enhance and protect their national interests. Surely Russia has hacked against the US no more than a tenth of what the US had done against Russia.

    The narrative is nothing but a propaganda lie but it’s been accepted by the American people and mostly because of the fight that goes on due to domestic politics, one major party against the other.

    There’s a very good reason to stop promoting the narrative because it only helps to bring Americans onside with more efforts to demonize Putin and to keep all sides in the US promoting their aggression worldwide. Americans are likely easily 90% prowar now and will show little or no resistance to the coming war on Iran. <img alt='' src='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f05d2bb98b641e9e9ab8f3dc738e31a0?s=60&#038;d=identicon&#038;r=pg' srcset='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f05d2bb98b641e9e9ab8f3dc738e31a0?s=120&#038;d=identicon&#038;r=pg 2x' class='avatar avatar-60 photo' height='60' width='60' />

    yugo , February 4, 2017 at 13:54

    Hysteria has reached fever pitch. Russia’s fake news is apparently so beguiling that it even threatens western democratic discourse. Combine this with its cyber weaponry and Moscow, so we are told, may interfere in this year’s German elections to benefit the hard-right. Such incessant fear mongering has already prompted calls for the censorship of Russian propaganda. It won’t be long before a witch-hunt emerges, directed against ‘fellow travellers’, those who dare to doubt the Russian threat.

    They insist the west made matters worse in Ukraine by not acknowledging that it was a classic example of a young state that didn’t naturally command the allegiance of all its peoples. Other examples are Georgia’s Abkhazians and South Ossetians, Moldova’s Trans-Dniester Slavs and Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians.

    They also doubt the Russian threat to the Baltic states. What is amazing is Moscow’s temperate response to Estonia and Latvia’s gross violation of international norms in denying citizenship to those of its Russian minority who are not conversant in Estonian and Latvian respectively. Nato and the EU turned a blind eye when membership was granted to these two states.

    Fellow travellers furthermore claim the west will keep on floundering in the Middle East as long as it persists in treating Saudi Arabia as a valued ally, while viewing Iran as a permanent enemy. We have for far too long ignored Saudi Arabia’s promotion of Wahhabism and its playing of the destructive sectarian card against ‘apostate’ Shiites. Take the merciless attacks on Shiite worshippers by Sunni jihadis of a Wahhabist persuasion. It occurs with sickening regularity throughout the Middle East. The terrorists attacking westerners are invariably Sunni jihadis, not Shiites. Worse still, Saudi Arabia together with Nato member Turkey facilitated the emergence of Isis. We bizarrely gave priority to toppling Syria’s secular regime.

    The first loyalty of these fellow travellers is to their nation state rather than unfettered globalism. No wonder the western elite disparage their national patriotism, calling it populism. It was, after all, the Achilles Heel of Homo Sovieticus. The elite fear the same fate awaits Homo Europaeus and globalist Homo Economicus.

    Michael K Rohde , February 3, 2017 at 15:12

    This is beginning to look exactly like Iraq 2 and why the same players that led us into that fake war which is still not paid for because the initiators made sure and get themselves a tax cut before they launched it are still being listened to makes it clear. Even with a change in administrations and party our government continues in the same wrong headed direction, to war with the enemies of Israel. When will it stop? When will we take back control of our foreign policy and destiny. <img alt='' src='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/cc900a84653501242923790946494dbc?s=60&#038;d=identicon&#038;r=pg' srcset='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/cc900a84653501242923790946494dbc?s=120&#038;d=identicon&#038;r=pg 2x' class='avatar avatar-60 photo' height='60' width='60' />

    Michael Hoefler , February 3, 2017 at 23:29

    As Ray McGovern said several times (not quoting): that Israel is the elephant in the room. Netayahu will not rest until he has all of the Arab states fighting among themselves. IMO he thinks that that will guarantee Israel protection.
    IMO – all that does is put Israel into a continuing worse situation. There will always be someone stronger to come along to overcome them – someday – sometime. If they made peace with those nations and worked with them, traded with them – they would be much safer in the long run.

    Banger , February 3, 2017 at 14:22

    The mainstream media in th USA and, increasingly in the rest of the West are vehicles for propaganda from various factions within the Imperial Deep State. All these outlets are good for is to map the power relations between these factions at least this the case in the major issues of the day.

    This misbehavior going on right now. One factions close to Trump wants to go to war with Iran because, of course there has to be war or the Deep State as a whole stuffers and the people will begin to look at their shakles. The other faction wishes to go to a brinksmanship sort of Cold War situation. The Trumpists believe that making friends with Russia and then destroying Iranian power is the best approach to controlling the MENA region by creating a loose alliance of KSA, Israel, Turkey and Russia in which a weak Iran would be forced to enter the Empire and Russia in return would be given more control of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. I suspect Trump may also want to undercut NATO and the EU. That is my guess. To put it another way, Russia is strong and well led and Iran is not.

    stan , February 3, 2017 at 14:17

    You can read chapter 6 of Mein Kampf if you want to see how this war propaganda stuff works. It is not group think or mistaken ideas. It is deliberate lies to scare you and a carefully crafted false narrative to make it all seem reasonable. People cannot believe that their leaders would tell such a big lie, and that’s why it works. The goal is murder and conquest to get territory, natural resources, and control of business and commerce. Controlling markets for drugs, gambling, and prostitution is for nickel and dime crooks. Controlling markets for natural resources, banking, and consumer and industrial goods is where the real money is. Think of governments as criminal business syndicates and you aren’t far off. Remember, President Obama had a hit list, flew around plane loads of secret cash to make illegal payoffs, and bragged about offing his opponent in the head and dumping his body in the river.

    Jeremy , February 4, 2017 at 11:33

    Yes, Stan,well put! you will never see this sort of talk in the articles here, as the consipiracy theorist label is always one to avoid, but I agree that when we think in terms of a group of people trying to attain “security” the same way any other gangster does, it becomes much less far fetched. George Carlin said, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it!” Men and women of power and wealth will always do what they have to in order to preserve that power and wealth for their children. There is really no conspiracy needed, just a bunch of people at the top looking after themselves and their families.

    Tania Messina , February 3, 2017 at 14:13

    Ah, yes, we’ve always needed a boogeyman to keep us all crazed with fear and the neocons busy with their destruction of society. If there is a crazy out there today, it is those neocons and their puppets who were so intent on destroying “seven countries in five years” and not being able to achieve that diabolical end as so neatly planned. And, now, they’re throwing temper tantrums, because, surprise of surprises! a non career politician comes along who uses common sense for a change and dares to say, “Why can’t we be friends with Russia?” With that comment many exhausted Americans perked up and listened while the Dulles boys turned somersaults in their graves!

    The arrogance and superiority of those who constantly blame Russia for their alleged expansionist ambitions seem blinded to our own aggressions. Fifteen years in Iraq? We finally have a president who talks of peace and we demonize him as the warmonger ready to press the button, while I seem to remember that it was the other candidate who arrogantly referred to Putin as Hitler!

    It is articles like this one by James Carden that we should be teaching in our schools, researching the facts and discussing in our classrooms so that hopefully a new generation might grow up with intelligent exchange rather than the brainwash that has been strangling our society for too many years.

    Mark Thomason , February 3, 2017 at 13:04

    This controversy is driven by Democratic denial of defeat, and infighting in which those defeated seek to hang on to power inside the Democratic Party. It is the Hillary crowd. It can be evidence free because it is driven by political calculation of private power needs, not truth.

    And the WMD fiasco is a perfect comparison, because the same people drove the same sort of fact-free theme for private reasons, as Wolfowitz put it, the story around which varying separate interests could be rallied.

    [Apr 23, 2019] US Hoped Putin Would be a 'Sober Yeltsin' - RAI with Stephen Cohen (3-5)

    We've discarded real historical and political analysis for a kind of Russophobia that I actually never experienced in my lifetime before. But this is the second stage. The first stage was demonization of Putin.
    Apr 23, 2019 | therealnews.com

    PAUL JAY Welcome back to Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. And we're continuing our discussions with Stephen Cohen about Russia and the United States, Trump and Putin. Thanks for joining us again.

    STEPHEN COHEN Thank you. For Steven's bio, just look under the video player. Watch the earlier segments. But I'll plug your book. People should read this book. It's important. It's called War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate. And let me say, while in the last segment I am arguing with you about how to characterize Trump–and I don't know, maybe we'll argue again–I think your contribution on this issue is extremely important. I know you've been under incredible pressure and getting isolated on this point. And I think it's brave of you to take the stance you do.

    OK, let's just move on. In the early years of Putin's presidency the West quite liked him. I guess they thought he would be a continuation of Yeltsin. I think they had expectations that he would help facilitate an American–I don't know what the word–'takeover' is too strong–but allowing American mining companies and energy companies and finance to come in. And instead what emerged was a state with real laws. And an oligarchy emerged, which I think at some point the Russian people will have to deal with, because I don't think it's good for them, but it's up to them. That being said, America didn't get a free-for-all.

    But as this relationship with the West became more and more tense–and I think to a large extent for these reasons. The Americans didn't get everything they wanted out of Russia. I don't understand why Putin didn't take more of the Chinese stance, which is avoid direct confrontation as much as you can and build up your strength. And I don't get Crimea. Crimea was–and you suggest in your book–wasn't there an alternative to the annexation? There wasn't, like, an immediate threat. I know there was a right-wing takeover, a far-right takeover of Ukraine. The Americans certainly facilitated and helped engineer it. It is a kind of strategic threat. I mean, I think that's clear, and you've made the case very eloquently. But still, why poke Europe and the United States in the eye and kind of make the case of the anti-detente forces? Oh, look, you know, Russia's on the move. It starts with Crimea, and Georgia will be next, and then it will be the whole of Ukraine.

    STEPHEN COHEN Of course they didn't with Crimea, and that's just the argument that people who don't wish to understand the Russian point of view make. It didn't start with Crimea. It began with the expansion of NATO to Russia's borders.

    PAUL JAY No doubt.

    STEPHEN COHEN Well, not only no doubt, but for Putin and for the Russian political class that was the context and the prism through which they viewed Western–and particularly American–policy toward Russia. So when the Ukrainian crisis began in 2013, let's remember what happened, because it does lead to the annexation of Crimea.

    In 2013 the European Union told the then-president of Ukraine, Yanukovych–and he may have been a rotter, but he was constitutionally and legally elected. It would have been a clean election. He was the president–that he needed to sign a economic partnership with the European Union. It meant, in effect, losing his preferred trade status with Russia, which constituted about 40 percent of Ukrainian trade. Not to mention about 3 to 4 million Ukrainians who worked in Russia to support their families were allowed to do so, and allowed to send their salaries back to Ukraine to support their families.

    So Ukraine was heavily dependent on Russia economically, and along comes the European Union that wants to exclude Russia from this new arrangement. So Putin says, Putin and his Foreign Minister Lavrov say, look, guys, why not a tripartite arrangement? It would be good for everybody. We'll have an economic preferred agreement with Russia, Ukraine, and the European Union. And Washington and Brussels said no. Russia can't participate. Yanukovych for that reason declined to sign the agreement, and that led to the Maidan uprising. And Yanukovych flees from office to Russia.

    So Putin now is sitting in Moscow, and Crimea comes to the fore, because you've got a very right-wing, and I would say crazy, government in power, saying outlandish things. Including, you know, Crimea is ours, and we're going to expel the Russian naval base there, which was there by treaty. They had a lease, I think, 25 years on the base. There were 22,000, by law, Russian soldiers on the Crimean base. They were already there. All right.

    So Putin's sitting here. He sees some kind of threat–maybe it's rhetorical. But bad things are happening. This was a very violent uprising. You remember the burning buildings in Kiev and Maidan. If you watched this on TV, this was violence. It was very serious. Snipers killed, I think, 85 to 100 people in Maidan just before Yanukovych fled. They said that the snipers were sent by Yanukovych, but we now know they weren't. They were sent by neofascists, Ukrainian neofascists, on Maidan. But remember, Putin is operating in a context that's moving very fast, very dangerous. Intelligence is sparse, not clear. But there is clearly a new government in Kiev that's laying claim not only to Crimea forever, but to expelling the Russian naval base there. So Putin has to decide.

    The back history is Putin never showed any interest in Crimea until that moment. However, it had been an issue in Russian politics when Putin ran for president in 2000. There was a party headed by two very influential men, the former mayor of Moscow, Luzhkov, and the former foreign minister Primakov, who had advocated reuniting Crimea with Russia, because Crimea had traditionally been a Russian province, I think somewhere like–don't speak of ethnicity, speak of language. Something like 85 percent of the population speaks Russian as a native language. I mean, enormous number. It's a Russian province. And it was only an act of accident under Khrushchev that had been assigned administratively when the Soviet Union existed to Ukraine, because Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.

    So what was Putin supposed to do? To the extent that we know how he made the decision, he was told by his intelligence people–all leaders in crisis depend on intelligence people–take Crimea today through a referendum, and peacefully. And by the way, they were polling like crazy. They knew they'd get 85-plus. They knew this. If they had it–and the referendum was completely open. All this crap about 'at gunpoint' is nonsense. I mean, it was a fair referendum. And Gallup has been going back to Crimea and polling. They get the same number; 85 percent want to be with Russia.

    Putin is told do it by the ballot, the box, today, or fight a war there tomorrow. That's what he was told. What would you have done in his place? See, it's easy for you, Paul, and me, Steve, to sit here and debate what leaders–Trump, any leader–Kennedy, Putin, should do in a crisis situation without knowing the circumstances, or what we would do in that situation. I mean, they have to act and they have to act fast. And they're dependent on this intelligence.

    PAUL JAY OK, but in the book you suggest there might have been an alternative.

    STEPHEN COHEN Well, I can just simply tell you what Putin was told as an alternative. One group said "You have to take Crimea now. The polls show Crimeans will vote to join Russia. There is an international law that referendums are binding and legal. We'll have a referendum, we'll get the result, and they'll vote to join Russia and we'll take them in. Do that.".

    The other view was "Hold the referendum, but don't welcome them into Russia. Use it as a bargaining card with the West and Kiev when we see how the Maidan so-called revolution–it wasn't a revolution, but the Maidan coup, it was a coup against Yanukovych–let's see what comes next. But that'll be a diplomatic card we could play. Go ahead and have the referendum. They will vote to join Russia, but that doesn't mean because they've requested to join Russia we have to say OK. Just take that and say to the West, look, the Crimean people want to join Russia. We understand that that may be, you know, difficult for you. Can we find a way to solve this problem short of annexation?" In other words, can we get guarantees for Crimea?

    So Putin was told that was an option, and he didn't choose it. And I try to put myself in his shoes and see what would I have done? And the problem is I don't know the intelligence. For example, there is a report, I don't believe or disbelieve it, that NATO commandos were found on Crimea, on the peninsula. I don't know if that's true. Maybe it was scuttlebutt. Did Putin know it to be true? I don't know. But we have yet to be told the whole story of what happened between the coup in Kiev–because it was a coup. It overthrew the president–and the decision, Russians don't say 'annex,' they say 'rejoined with,' or 'welcomed Crimea home,' to make that decision. One day we'll know more, and then we'll be able to decide if Putin really had a choice.

    PAUL JAY Do you–and I don't, one, have any–I don't have any detailed knowledge about the situation.

    STEPHEN COHEN I don't have enough.

    PAUL JAY Never mind not knowing the intelligence.

    STEPHEN COHEN You understand that's a question mark by what I say. We don't know for sure.

    PAUL JAY Yeah. But was–Do you think there might have been an option to have a referendum that took a little–there was more time, maybe get the United Nations involved? Something that gives a little more recognition to it?

    STEPHEN COHEN Without naming names-

    PAUL JAY And I'm not talking the morality, here. I'm talking tactically.

    STEPHEN COHEN Practical politics. The point is that Putin was told–now, mind you, this is–I mean, it's a good thing that he's a former KGB officer, by the way. Henry Kissinger, when he first met Putin, and he learned–this was when Putin was working as deputy mayor in St. Petersburg, and Kissinger met him. And Putin said to Kissinger, "You know, I began in intelligence." And Kissinger said, "That's the best way to start a political career." Kissinger had started in intelligence during the war, right. Because these guys think, and maybe they're right, that if you're trained in intelligence, or you're able to evaluate intelligence–that is, you aren't going to be fooled by your own intelligence people–that you can sort out false intelligence from legitimate intelligence. Putin was in a position, I think, to evaluate the intelligence. So the question that you raise is true. Why didn't they wait? And he was told we can't wait; events are moving too fast.

    PAUL JAY In the earlier–last segment–you talked about the pressure on him that he's not proactive enough. Is this partly responding to that kind of pressure?

    STEPHEN COHEN Yes. And that's why I want to return to this issue that only once before had Crimea been an issue in Russian politics, when a political party ran against Putin on a platform that we should somehow get Crimea back. They got, I think, two percent of the vote. There was no popular support for this. Putin was disdainful of the idea. In other words, this was something–this was not aggression. This is ridiculous. This was a decision imposed upon him by circumstances that he did not create, but to which he now had to react. And I don't know whether he knew it or not, but that was probably his most historic decision. And I mean–it's not his most historic, but it is part of what will forever define his role for Russians in Russian history forever.

    PAUL JAY So let's get to the big underlying question here-

    STEPHEN COHEN You can go to Moscow and buy a poster in a shop. At the top is a map of Crimea, a very distinctive peninsula, right? On one side is Krushchev, who signed Crimea over to Ukraine, right, when–in 1954-'55, when the Soviet Union existed. On the other side is a picture of Putin. And it simply says "He gave away. He took back." You can see these in the shops. These were–Khrushchev frivolously, on some anniversary, said OK, Crimea is part of Ukraine. And Putin [got it back].

    PAUL JAY In your book [crosstalk] Kissinger saying he might have been drunk that night when he did it.

    STEPHEN COHEN Who?

    PAUL JAY I think in your book you say that, don't you?

    STEPHEN COHEN That's not me.

    PAUL JAY Somebody said that Khrushchev might have been drunk the night that he gave Crimea [crosstalk].

    STEPHEN COHEN No, I didn't say that. I don't know. But-

    PAUL JAY Somebody quotes Kissinger.

    STEPHEN COHEN Possibly. But you know, these are–if you're a student of history, and particularly of political leadership, as I like to think I am, this is a Graham Allison practically made a career of writing about the Cuban missile crisis and how the Kennedy team–right? He's famous for studying that. It's a case study in crisis leadership. And Kennedy comes out looking pretty good. By the way, I would say Khrushchev comes out looking pretty good, too, because the Russian reaction could have been different. But now we have Putin in Crimea. He had to make a decision that was imposed upon him. Now, we don't have all the information. But we should be fascinated to study and understand this rather than demonize Putin for doing it.

    PAUL JAY OK. Let me–this sort of big, underlying question. Because I mean, Kissinger said that what Putin did in Crimea was an anomaly; that you can't extend anything from that. That does not prove that Russia is on the march and they're going to start threatening other Baltic states, and all this. The Crimea is a very particular situation. Clearly that was not the predominant attitude of the West towards Crimea. So why–it began under Yeltsin, but with Putin–and Putin seemed ready for it. Why didn't the West assimilate Russia into Western capitalism?

    ... ... ...

    STEPHEN COHEN Yeah. Clinton unwisely–not only Clinton. Bill Clinton, not Hillary. And Bill Clinton was president then in the '90s–believed that he was assimilating Russia with his policy toward Yeltsin. That's what he thought. And he was so advised by people such as Strobe Talbott, all of whom should have known better. In fact, Russia descended in the 1990s into the worst and most corrosive economic depression ever in peacetime. Men were dying at 57. I think the collapse of industrial production was greater than it was during our own Great Depression. People were not receiving their wages or their social benefits. The middle class was being vaporized. Gangs were controlling large parts of the economy. Some people even think it was what people call state capture, that private oligarchs had captured the state. Russia was on the verge, if not of actually breaking up, of collapsing.

    Now, flash back to that moment, 1999. Russia, the largest territorial country in the world, even after the end of the Soviet Union, laden, laden, stockpiled with every conceivable weapon of mass destruction, from germ, bacterial, chemical, nuclear. What if Russia had broken up? What if? We're talking Apocalypse Now. I would think that people would give Putin a little credit for holding Russia together, reestablishing control over the regions that had these weapons. But he's never given any any, any credit. Russians themselves do. But in the West–Imagine what would have happened. It wasn't just Putin alone. He put together a team, a komanda, as it's called in Russia. No one man can do this. But he chose advisers who understood the situation.

    At the time–at the time–this was semi-welcomed in Washington. You remember that Putin came to see the second President Bush, and they went to the ranch. And Bush said "I looked into his eyes and I saw a good soul." And other things like that. And I think you, Paul, are right when you say that they, meaning the people who control our foreign policy, thought that this would be the continuation of the 1990s, except that Putin would be a healthy and sober Yeltsin; that Yeltsin had become dysfunctional, unable to govern the country that the West wanted to assimilate. And when it turned out that Putin wasn't Yeltsin, even though Yeltsin put him in power–indeed, historically speaking Putin could not have been Yeltsin, though he's never given his anti-Yeltsin speech the way Khrushchev gave his anti-Stalin speech. This is interesting. He's been urged to give this speech, by the way; the de-Yeltsinization speech, analogous to Khruschev's de-Stalinization speech. He's never done that. People say he's too loyal, to a fault. Too loyal. Putin. Some trait he's got. They criticize him for it.

    But nonetheless, very soon American disillusion in Putin set in. And we can date it. There is there was, and even remains today a New York Times columnist, Nick Kristof. Nicholas Kristof. Who wrote–I think it was 2003. Maybe I'm off a year, year and a half–that he was greatly disillusioned, he, Kristof, that Putin had not turned out to be a sober Yeltsin. Imagine this. In other words, they, to the extent that columnists speak for these great powers, wanted Yeltsin, a person who by then had positive ratings in Russia of about 3 percent, who was hated in Russia for what had happened to the country. But the only grievance in Washington was he wasn't sober and healthy enough to continue the policy. And Putin, they thought at the beginning was a sober healthy Yeltsin. Look at him. And Yeltsin–on what Yeltsin is. They say he's from Yeltsin. He's got to be. But it was clear. If you'd been paying attention it would have been clear it was impossible.

    And when it dawned on them they were bitter. And I'm not sure that they started hating on Putin because they personally had been so wrong, their analysis had been wrong, or because they couldn't stand the thought of a non-Yeltsin to this day. Because even today you could read in the New York Times and other analyses, so-called, how great it was under Yeltsin. It wasn't great. It was a country in agony. And it was dangerous to us, with all those weapons.

    So you know, we've discarded history. We've discarded real historical and political analysis for a kind of Russophobia that I actually never experienced in my lifetime before. It's much worse now. And remember one thing, as we all go forward and think about Russiagate, which I think is going to be with us in one way or another for decades. But the Putin-phobia, the hating on Putin, began long before Trump was a presidential candidate. Long before. The two got fused together in Russiagate. The loathing for Putin and the loathing for Trump was fused into this thing called Russiagate. Now, who did the initial fusing? In my book I argued it was our intelligence services, and particularly the CIA. We will see. I think we're going to have some investigations now. I may be wrong. I don't think it was the FBI, as people think. I think was Brennan and Obama's CIA that got all this started.

    But these–this didn't come out of nowhere. This had been developing, this demonizing of Putin had been going on for years before Trump appeared on the scene. And then bingo, it came together. And we're stuck with it. And it ain't going to go away. And I think it's the worst threat to our national security. I've said Russiagate is the great number one threat to our national security. In the book I do the five greatest threats for our national security. The book is all short pieces. And Russia–Russia and China don't make the top five. Russiagate's number one. Unfortunately you're younger than I am so we can't share these moments together. But there was the Cuban missile crisis, correct?

    PAUL JAY Well, I–you know, I was alive. I was very aware of it.

    STEPHEN COHEN All right. But it is said that in the history books, in the textbooks, that it's the closest we ever came to nuclear war with Russia, Soviet Russia. Correct?

    PAUL JAY If you listen Ellsberg we were seconds from it.

    STEPHEN COHEN OK. And yet because of the leadership of Kennedy, and I would add Khrushchev, because it takes two to tango, as Reagan said, these two guys averted Armageddon. Correct? And that's the lesson we've taught our kids and we teach in our textbooks. OK. Imagine today–and it doesn't take a lot of imagining–that we have a Cuban missile crisis-like confrontation. Could be in Venezuela. Could be in Syria. Could be in former Soviet Georgia. Could be in Ukraine. Lots of places. It happens, suddenly. The two nuclear superpowers are eyeball to eyeball like the Cuban missile crisis. Everybody credits Kennedy and Khrushchev for averting the crisis.

    This happens tomorrow, do you think the American political class and its media are going to invest Trump with the authority to negotiate a way out of nuclear war? The guy they called the Kremlin puppet? And are they going to credit Putin, the guy they've so demonized, as a partner to avert nuclear war? They will not. And what happens then? The answer is nuclear war. That's why I say we're walking on a razor's edge with this Russiagate demonizing Putin nonsense. We need these two guys, whether we like them or not, to avoid nuclear war. And we are–we have too many situations fraught with war with Russia which could become nuclear war, more than we've ever had before. And the people who've contributed to these situations refuse to acknowledge what they've done. Above all, the mainstream media. What you and I are discussing today should be discussed in the major newspapers and television talk shows in this country nightly. And I guarantee you decades ago it would have been. We've lost our way. And the new way is exceedingly dangerous.

    [Apr 23, 2019] Groupthink at the CIA by Philip Giraldi

    Looks like tail wags the dog -- CIA controls the US foreign policy and in the last elections also played active role in promoting Hillary. A the level of top brass we have several people mentioned by Giraldi who are probably as dangerous as Allen Dulles was. Brennan is one example.
    The parade of rogues that Philip describes is really alarming. Each with agenda that directly harms the USA as a country promoting the interest of military-industrial complex and neocon faction within the government...
    Notable quotes:
    "... Indeed, one can start with Tenet if one wants to create a roster of recent CIA Directors who have lied to permit the White House to engage in a war crime. Tenet and his staff knew better than anyone that the case against Saddam did not hold water, but President George W. Bush wanted his war and, by gum, he was going to get it if the CIA had any say in the matter. ..."
    "... Back then as now, international Islamic terrorism was the name of the game. It kept the money flowing to the national security establishment in the false belief that America was somehow being made "safe." But today the terror narrative has been somewhat supplanted by Russia, which is headed by a contemporary Saddam Hussein in the form of Vladimir Putin. If one believes the media and a majority of congressmen, evil manifest lurks in the gilded halls of the Kremlin. Russia has recently been sanctioned (again) for crimes that are more alleged than demonstrated and President Putin has been selected by the Establishment as the wedge issue that will be used to end President Donald Trump's defiance of the Deep State and all that pertains to it. The intelligence community at its top level would appear to be fully on board with that effort. ..."
    "... Remarkably, he also said that there is only "minimal evidence" that Russia is even fighting ISIS. The statement is astonishing as Moscow has most definitely been seriously and directly engaged in support of the Syrian Arab Army. Is it possible that the head of the CIA is unaware of that? It just might be that Pompeo is disparaging the effort because the Russians and Syrians have also been fighting against the U.S. backed "moderate rebels." That the moderate rebels are hardly moderate has been known for years and they are also renowned for their ineffectiveness combined with a tendency to defect to more radical groups taking their U.S. provided weapons with them, a combination of factors which led to their being denied any further American support by a presidential decision that was revealed in the press two weeks ago. ..."
    "... Pompeo's predecessor John Brennan is, however, my favorite Agency leader in the category of totally bereft of his senses. ..."
    "... Brennan is certainly loyal to his cause, whatever that might be. At the same Aspen meeting attended by Pompeo, he told Wolf Blitzer that if Trump were to fire special counsel Robert Mueller government officials should "refuse to carry out" his orders. In other words, they should begin a coup, admittedly non-violent (one presumes), but nevertheless including federal employees uniting to shut the government down. ..."
    "... And finally, there is Michael Morell, also a former Acting Director, who was closely tied to the Hillary Clinton campaign, apparently driven by ambition to become Director in her administration. Morell currently provides commentary for CBS television and is a frequent guest on the Charlie Rose show. Morell considerably raised the ante on Brennan's pre-electoral speculation that there had been some Russian recruitment of Trump people. He observed in August that Putin, a wily ex-career intelligence officer, "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them [did exactly that] early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation." ..."
    "... Nothing new. In the '50s CIA was making foreign wars and cultivating chaos at home, and blaming all of it on Russia. In the '80s CIA was cultivating anti-nuke groups to undermine Reagan, and blaming it on Russia. CIA has been the primary wellspring of evil for a long time. ..."
    "... Yes you read that right and they are going to the rotten core of this coup against the United States by presenting a report stating that the DNC was "Leaked" not hacked. The real hacking came from President Obama's weaponizing of our intelligence agencies against Russia. ..."
    "... The CIA is the USA's secret army, it is not comparable to a real intelligence organization like the British MI5. The CIA is more like WWII SOE, designed to set fire to Europe, Churchill's words. ..."
    "... As has been the case for decades the Deep State allows Presidents and legislators to make minor decisions in our government as long as those decisions do not in any way interfere with the Deep State's goals of total world hegemony and increase in overwhelming power and wealth. Those who make the important decisions in this country are not elected. The elected 'officials' are sycophants of the Deep State. ..."
    "... The term is appropriated from the use to describe the mutually loyal corps of Ataturkians in the Turkish military and intelligence services who were united in service to uphold the ideal of Ataturkian secular modernisation. The term implies no public accountability or publicity unnecessary to its purposes. ..."
    "... The CIA's source, its birth, is from British secret service. Brit spying. And Brit secret service, long before the official founding of MI5, did exactly the kinds of things you note the CIA has done. ..."
    "... The Mossad is another direct fruit of Brit secret service, as is the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency. ..."
    "... While there can be no doubt about the crackpots in high positions of the most powerful bureaucracies, it seems to me that the CIA loonies are merely shock troops for an even worse bunch of evil psychos, the bankster mafiosi. ..."
    "... I am a retired CIA operations officer (something none of the men mentioned by Giraldi are – Brennan was a failed wanna be, couldn't cut it as an ops officer). He is spot on in his comments. The majority of people in the CIA, the ones who do the heavy lifting, are patriotic Americans who are proud of serving their country. I am sure that most voted for Trump as they all know too well the truth about the Clintons and Obama. ..."
    "... Giraldi is not the only one to notice the upward progress of the most incompetent yes-men in the Agency. A close look at most of them reveals a track record of little or no operational success balanced by excellent sucking up skills. These characters quickly figured out how to get ahead and doing your job in the field is not it. Of course, most are ego maniacs so they are totally oblivious to their own uselessness. ..."
    "... How "Russiagate" began: After the primaries, both Hillary and Donald faced divided political parties even though they had won the nomination. These divisions were worse than the normal situation after contested primaries. On the Democratic side, Hillay had just subverted the will of the voters of her party, who seemed to favor Bernie Sanders over her. Hillay had won with corrupt collusion and rigging amongst the DNC, the higher ranks of the Democratic Party, and major media such as the NYT and CNN. ..."
    "... Then, a leak of emails from the DNC HQ publicized her interference in the democratic processes of the Democratic Party. This threatened to ene the Hillary for President campaign right then and there. If the majority of Democrats who'd favored Bernie refused to support Hillary because of her corruption and collusion in denying democracy within the party, she was a sure loser in the fall election. The Hillary camp then immediately started blaming Russia for the exposure of her corruption and rigging of the Democratic process. And that's how "Russiagate" began. ..."
    "... Take that bunch of mediocre thinkers, and then make most of them obsessed with their own career advancement above all else. The most dangerous place for a career-obsessed individual is outside the group consensus. ..."
    "... So, for instance, Trump should veto the act of war known as the recent sanctions bill. Who cares if it gets overridden? Then he goes back to the voters, who are clearly sick of endless war and who for obvious reasons don't want a nuclear war, and he says this is where I stand. Support me by electing Fill-In-The-Blank to Congress. With the nuclear Doomsday Clock pushing ever closer to midnight, he might just win that fight over the big money and media opposition he's sure to face. ..."
    "... Not only has Trump failed to even try to fight the Deep State, but he's also failing to set himself up for success in the next elections. ..."
    "... What we are seeing now is The Donald's role in the serial Zionist THEATER. Think deeper about the motive behind Mr. Giraldi's choice to use the Orwellian word "Groupthink" in characterizing the CIA zeitgeist? In the classic work "1984," one observes Big Brother as the catalyst in control of the proles' thought pattern & subsequent action. ..."
    "... To rise & FALL as a POTUS is a matter of theater and the American proles are entertained by the political for either 4 or 8 years and the Zionists get their next Chosen actor/actress dramatically sworn in on a bible. ..."
    Aug 01, 2017 | www.unz.com

    Long ago, when I was a spear carrying middle ranker at CIA, a colleague took me aside and said that he had something to tell me "as a friend," that was very important. He told me that his wife had worked for years in the Agency's Administrative Directorate, as it was then called, where she had noticed that some new officers coming out of the Career Trainee program had red tags on their personnel files. She eventually learned from her boss that the tags represented assessments that those officers had exceptional potential as senior managers. He added, however, that the reverse appeared to be true in practice as they were generally speaking serial failures as they ascended the bureaucratic ladder, even though their careers continued to be onward and upward on paper. My friend's wife concluded, not unreasonably, that only genuine a-holes had what it took to get promoted to the most senior ranks.

    I was admittedly skeptical but some recent activity by former and current Directors and Acting Directors of CIA has me wondering if something like my friend's wife's observation about senior management might indeed be true. But it would have to be something other than tagging files, as many of the directors and their deputies did not come up through the ranks and there seems to be a similar strain of lunacy at other U.S. government intelligence agencies. It might be time to check the water supply in the Washington area as there is very definitely something in the kool-aid that is producing odd behavior.

    Now I should pause for a moment and accept that the role of intelligence services is to identify potential threats before they become active, so a certain level of acute paranoia goes with the job. But at the same time, one would expect a level of professionalism which would mandate accuracy rather than emotion in assessments coupled with an eschewing of any involvement in the politics of foreign and national security policy formulation. The enthusiasm with which a number of senior CIA personnel have waded into the Trump swamp and have staked out positions that contradict genuine national interests suggests that little has been learned since CIA Director George Tenet sat behind Secretary of State Colin Powell in the UN and nodded sagaciously as Saddam Hussein's high crimes and misdemeanors were falsely enumerated.

    Indeed, one can start with Tenet if one wants to create a roster of recent CIA Directors who have lied to permit the White House to engage in a war crime. Tenet and his staff knew better than anyone that the case against Saddam did not hold water, but President George W. Bush wanted his war and, by gum, he was going to get it if the CIA had any say in the matter.

    Back then as now, international Islamic terrorism was the name of the game. It kept the money flowing to the national security establishment in the false belief that America was somehow being made "safe." But today the terror narrative has been somewhat supplanted by Russia, which is headed by a contemporary Saddam Hussein in the form of Vladimir Putin. If one believes the media and a majority of congressmen, evil manifest lurks in the gilded halls of the Kremlin. Russia has recently been sanctioned (again) for crimes that are more alleged than demonstrated and President Putin has been selected by the Establishment as the wedge issue that will be used to end President Donald Trump's defiance of the Deep State and all that pertains to it. The intelligence community at its top level would appear to be fully on board with that effort.

    The most recent inexplicable comments come from the current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, speaking at the Aspen Institute Security Forum. He began by asserting that Russia had interfered in the U.S. election before saying that the logic behind Russia's Middle Eastern strategy is to stay in place in Syria so Moscow can "stick it to America." He didn't define the "it" so one must assume that "it" stands for any utensil available, ranging from cruise missiles to dinner forks. He then elaborated, somewhat obscurely, that "I think they find anyplace that they can make our lives more difficult, I think they find that something that's useful."

    Remarkably, he also said that there is only "minimal evidence" that Russia is even fighting ISIS. The statement is astonishing as Moscow has most definitely been seriously and directly engaged in support of the Syrian Arab Army. Is it possible that the head of the CIA is unaware of that? It just might be that Pompeo is disparaging the effort because the Russians and Syrians have also been fighting against the U.S. backed "moderate rebels." That the moderate rebels are hardly moderate has been known for years and they are also renowned for their ineffectiveness combined with a tendency to defect to more radical groups taking their U.S. provided weapons with them, a combination of factors which led to their being denied any further American support by a presidential decision that was revealed in the press two weeks ago.

    Pompeo's predecessor John Brennan is, however, my favorite Agency leader in the category of totally bereft of his senses. In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee back in May, he suggested that some Trump associates might have been recruited by the Russian intelligence service. He testified that "I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals."

    In his testimony, Brennan apparently forgot to mention that the CIA is not supposed to keep tabs on American citizens. Nor did he explain how he had come upon the information in the first place as it had been handed over by foreign intelligence services, including the British, Dutch and Estonians, and at least some of it had been sought or possibly inspired by Brennan unofficially in the first place. Brennan then used that information to request an FBI investigation into a possible Russian operation directed against potential key advisers if Trump were to somehow get nominated and elected, which admittedly was a longshot at the time. That is how Russiagate started.

    Brennan is certainly loyal to his cause, whatever that might be. At the same Aspen meeting attended by Pompeo, he told Wolf Blitzer that if Trump were to fire special counsel Robert Mueller government officials should "refuse to carry out" his orders. In other words, they should begin a coup, admittedly non-violent (one presumes), but nevertheless including federal employees uniting to shut the government down.

    A lesser known former CIA senior official is John McLaughlin, who briefly served as acting Director in 2004. McLaughlin was particularly outraged by Trump's recent speech to the Boy Scouts, which he described as having the feel "of a third world authoritarian's youth rally." He added that "It gave me the creeps it was like watching the late Venezuelan [President Hugo] Chavez."

    And finally, there is Michael Morell, also a former Acting Director, who was closely tied to the Hillary Clinton campaign, apparently driven by ambition to become Director in her administration. Morell currently provides commentary for CBS television and is a frequent guest on the Charlie Rose show. Morell considerably raised the ante on Brennan's pre-electoral speculation that there had been some Russian recruitment of Trump people. He observed in August that Putin, a wily ex-career intelligence officer, "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them [did exactly that] early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

    I and others noted at the time that Putin and Trump had never met, not even through proxies, while we also wondered how one could be both unwitting and a recruited agent as intelligence recruitment implies control and taking direction. Morell was non-plussed, unflinching and just a tad sanctimonious in affirming that his own intelligence training (as an analyst who never recruited a spy in his life) meant that "[I] call it as I see it."

    One could also cite Michael Hayden and James Clapper, though the latter was not CIA They all basically hew to the same line about Russia, often in more-or-less the same words, even though no actual evidence has been produced to support their claims. That unanimity of thinking is what is peculiar while academics like Stephen Cohen, Stephen Walt, Andrew Bacevich, and John Mearsheimer, who have studied Russia in some depth and understand the country and its leadership far better than a senior CIA officer, detect considerable nuance in what is taking place. They all believe that the hardline policies current in Washington are based on an eagerness to go with the flow on the comforting inside-the- beltway narrative that paints Russia as a threat to vital interests. That unanimity of viewpoint should surprise no one as this is more of less the same government with many of the same people that led the U.S. into Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. They all have a vested interested in the health and well-being of a fully funded national security state.

    And the other groupthink that seems to prevail among the senior managers except Pompeo is that they all hate Donald Trump and have done so since long before he won the election. That is somewhat odd, but it perhaps reflects a fear that Trump would interfere with the richly rewarding establishment politics that had enabled their careers. But it does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of CIA employees. Though it is admittedly unscientific analysis on my part, I know a lot of former and some current CIA employees but do not know a single one who voted for Hillary Clinton. Nearly all voted for Trump.

    Beyond that exhibition of tunnel vision and sheer ignorance, the involvement of former senior intelligence officials in politics is itself deplorable and is perhaps symptomatic of the breakdown in the comfortable bipartisan national security consensus that has characterized the past fifty years. Once upon time former CIA officers would retire to the Blue Ridge mountains and raise Labradors, but we are now into something much more dangerous if the intelligence community, which has been responsible for most of the recent leaks, begins to feel free to assert itself from behind the scenes. As Senator Chuck Schumer recently warned "Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community -- they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you."

    exiled off mainstreet, August 1, 2017 at 5:06 am GMT

    In jumping this fascist nihilist shark, the groupthinkers have closed themselves off from the logical conclusion to their viewpoint, which is final annihilation.

    Dan Hayes, August 1, 2017 at 5:47 am GMT

    Schumer's statement is true (and probably the only such one in his political career!).

    annamaria, August 1, 2017 at 6:03 am GMT

    Brennan, Morell, and Pompeo should better find ways to justify their salaries: the U.S. has suffered the greatest breach in cybersecurity on their watch:

    " an enormous breach of the United States Security Apparatus by as many as 80 Democrat members of Congress (past and present). We rail on about the Russians and Trump, but t he media avoids providing nightly updates about these 5 spies that have compromised Congress ."

    http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-awan-brothers-compromised-at-least-80-congregational-computers-and-got-paid-5-million-to-do-it-we-may-never-know-the-extent-of-the-breach/

    "In total, Imran's firm was employed by 31 Democrats in Congress, some of whom held extremely sensitive positions on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affair s."

    polistra, August 1, 2017 at 6:17 am GMT

    Nothing new. In the '50s CIA was making foreign wars and cultivating chaos at home, and blaming all of it on Russia. In the '80s CIA was cultivating anti-nuke groups to undermine Reagan, and blaming it on Russia. CIA has been the primary wellspring of evil for a long time.

    Bruce Marshall, August 1, 2017 at 6:39 am GMT

    And back to reality we have VIPS Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

    Yes you read that right and they are going to the rotten core of this coup against the United States by presenting a report stating that the DNC was "Leaked" not hacked. The real hacking came from President Obama's weaponizing of our intelligence agencies against Russia.

    That is war, World War Three and it would seem now that Congress is marching that way, but the report below hold the key to fighting back.

    http://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2017/2017_30-39/2017-30/pdf/37-41_4430.pdf

    One of the VIPS is William Binney fomer NSA Technical Director, an important expert. leading the group is Ray McGovern with some whit and grace, well yes how about some sanity, to which humor is important to the insight and to stay in the sights of what is clever thievery and worse. Much worse, and there is a twinkle in the eye when realize that it is straight forward.

    And Congress could stop it tout sweet, but well old habits but they have taken an Oath of Office, so, so what, yeah they did go after Bernie, so will you challenge your elected officials, either do their sworn duty or resign, for what this sanctions bill against Russia and Iran is a declaration of war, not only against Russia and Iran, but a declaration of war against the United States. for there is no reason to do this against Russia when indeed there are great opportunities to get along, but war is the insanity as it is sedition and treason. Tell them that,

    https://larouchepac.com/20170731/breaking-lyndon-larouche-crush-british-coup-against-president

    Priss Factor, • Website August 1, 2017 at 7:01 am GMT

    Moderate Rebels = Toothfairy Rebels

    jilles dykstra, August 1, 2017 at 7:21 am GMT

    I wonder if groupthink exists. In any organisation people know quite well why the organisation exists, what the threats are to its existence. If they think about this, I wonder.

    The CIA is the USA's secret army, it is not comparable to a real intelligence organization like the British MI5. The CIA is more like WWII SOE, designed to set fire to Europe, Churchill's words. If indeed Trump changes USA foreign policy, no longer trying to control the world, the CIA is obsolete, as obsolete as NATO.

    animalogic, August 1, 2017 at 7:44 am GMT

    " but President George W. Bush wanted his war and, by gum, he was going to get it if the CIA had any say in the matter."

    Not to defend the CIA, but didn't Rumsfeld, doubt the enthusiasm of the CIA for providing the slanted, bogus, "sexed up" intelligence the Executive required to make its "destroy Iraq now" case ? So Rumsfeld therefore set up an independent intelligence agency within the Defence Dept to provide/create the required "intelligence" ?

    The Alarmist, August 1, 2017 at 7:45 am GMT

    I think they find anyplace that they can make our lives more difficult, I think they find that something that's useful."

    Yeah, because that's what resource-constrained countries with limited ability to tap the global capital markets do. Methinks Mr. Pompeo is projecting his and the neocons' fantasies on the Russians.

    Realist, August 1, 2017 at 10:14 am GMT

    As has been the case for decades the Deep State allows Presidents and legislators to make minor decisions in our government as long as those decisions do not in any way interfere with the Deep State's goals of total world hegemony and increase in overwhelming power and wealth. Those who make the important decisions in this country are not elected. The elected 'officials' are sycophants of the Deep State.

    CalDre, August 1, 2017 at 10:43 am GMT

    If only Trump would really clean the swamp – particularly the neo-cons and other traitors and globalists. One can dream .

    Wizard of Oz, August 1, 2017 at 11:04 am GMT

    Being resistant to jargon and catch phrases it is only slowly that I have accepted that "Deep State" is not entirely pretentious waffle when used to describe aspects of the US. However I may not be your only reader PG who would appreciate a clear explanatory description of the American Deep State and how it works.

    Here are some suggested parameters.

    The term is appropriated from the use to describe the mutually loyal corps of Ataturkians in the Turkish military and intelligence services who were united in service to uphold the ideal of Ataturkian secular modernisation. The term implies no public accountability or publicity unnecessary to its purposes.
    And its origins imply that it is not just one in a number of major influences ln government or those who vote for it.

    So one has to acknowledge that in the US the Deep State has to be different in the important respect that levers of power are observably wielded by lobbies for the aged, gun owners and sellers, Israel, Wall Street, bio fuels, sugar and other ag, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, the arms industry, Disney and other Hollywood and media, health insurers and the medical profession, and I could go on.

    These are all relevant to legal events like votes on impeachment or to hold up appointments. The CIA and FBI together completely united (and note how disunited 9/11 showed them to be) wouldn't remotely approach the old Turkish Deep State's ability to stage a coup. Are all of the putative elements of the Deep State together today as powerful as J.Edgar Hoover with his dirt files on everyone? (A contrast and compare exercise of today's presumed Deep State configuration and modus operandi with the simpler Hoover days might shine some light on who does what and how today. And how effectively).

    To avoid lack of focus can a convincing account of the US Deep State be best given in terms of a plausible scenario for

    1. getting rid of Trump as President and/or
    2. maintaining the lunacy and hubris which has the US wasting its substance on totally unnecessary antagonistic relations with China and Russia and interference in the ME?

    I would read such accounts with great interest. (Handwavers need not apply).

    Jake, August 1, 2017 at 11:26 am GMT

    Of course the US Deep State must hate Russia. First, Jews have a very long history of hating Russia and Russians. That never changed. The USSR was not Russia; the USSR was Marxism replacing Russia. Jews tended to love that. Rich Jews from across the world, from the US and the UK of most interest to us, sent money to support the Bolshevik Revolution.

    Russia managed to survive the USSR and is slowly coming back around to Russian common sense from the Christian perspective. Neither Jews nor their WASP BFFs can ever forgive that. They want Russia to act now to commit cultural and genetic suicide, like Western Europe and the entire Anglosphere are doing.

    Jake, August 1, 2017 at 11:32 am GMT

    @polistra The CIA's source, its birth, is from British secret service. Brit spying. And Brit secret service, long before the official founding of MI5, did exactly the kinds of things you note the CIA has done.

    The Mossad is another direct fruit of Brit secret service, as is the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency.

    jacques sheete, August 1, 2017 at 11:36 am GMT

    While there can be no doubt about the crackpots in high positions of the most powerful bureaucracies, it seems to me that the CIA loonies are merely shock troops for an even worse bunch of evil psychos, the bankster mafiosi.

    We should always keep that in mind.

    Jake, August 1, 2017 at 11:37 am GMT

    @CalDre If only

    But doing so would mean a voluntary end to playing the role of Sauron, determined to find and wear the One Ring to Rule Them All. The average Elite WASP, and his Jewish BFF, definitely would prefer to destroy the world, at least outside their gated compounds of endless luxury, than to step down from that level of global domination.

    Philip Giraldi, August 1, 2017 at 12:02 pm GMT

    @Wizard of Oz Wiz – Here is an article I did on the Deep State two years ago. It was one of the first in the US media looking at the issue. It would have to be updated now in light of Trump, but much of what it states is still more-or-less correct.

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/deep-state-america/

    Jake, August 1, 2017 at 12:09 pm GMT

    @jacques sheete Yes, indeed.

    But we need to make certain that your use of the word 'mafiosi' does not lead anyone to assume that group has more than a handful of Italians. Jews, WASPs, and continental Germanics each will outnumber Italians by at least 30 to 1.

    Chris Bridges, August 1, 2017 at 12:46 pm GMT

    I am a retired CIA operations officer (something none of the men mentioned by Giraldi are – Brennan was a failed wanna be, couldn't cut it as an ops officer). He is spot on in his comments. The majority of people in the CIA, the ones who do the heavy lifting, are patriotic Americans who are proud of serving their country. I am sure that most voted for Trump as they all know too well the truth about the Clintons and Obama.

    Giraldi is not the only one to notice the upward progress of the most incompetent yes-men in the Agency. A close look at most of them reveals a track record of little or no operational success balanced by excellent sucking up skills. These characters quickly figured out how to get ahead and doing your job in the field is not it. Of course, most are ego maniacs so they are totally oblivious to their own uselessness.

    Well before he was elected I had a letter delivered to President Trump in which I outlined in detail what would happen to him if he did not immediately purge the CIA of these assholes. I know that at least some people on his staff read it but, of course, my advice was ignored. Trump has paid dearly for not listening to an ordinary CIA guy who wanted to give him a reality brief on those vicious snakes.

    Proud_Srbin, August 1, 2017 at 1:00 pm GMT

    Historical facts teach humanity that Anglo-Saxon group of Nations was built on slavery, thuggery and theft of other peace loving Civilizations. We Slavs are the New "niggers", hate is the glue that holds you "toGether".
    People of color have been successfully conditioned and practice it as well.
    Time will tell how well it holds when balloon bursts and 99% gets called to serve as cannon fodder.
    Terrorizing UNARMED and WEAKER is not true test of "superiority" and "exceptionalism".
    Tiny, extremely tiny minority of Anglo-Saxons and Satraps understand this.

    Bernie voter, August 1, 2017 at 1:20 pm GMT

    How "Russiagate" began: After the primaries, both Hillary and Donald faced divided political parties even though they had won the nomination. These divisions were worse than the normal situation after contested primaries. On the Democratic side, Hillay had just subverted the will of the voters of her party, who seemed to favor Bernie Sanders over her. Hillay had won with corrupt collusion and rigging amongst the DNC, the higher ranks of the Democratic Party, and major media such as the NYT and CNN.

    Then, a leak of emails from the DNC HQ publicized her interference in the democratic processes of the Democratic Party. This threatened to ene the Hillary for President campaign right then and there. If the majority of Democrats who'd favored Bernie refused to support Hillary because of her corruption and collusion in denying democracy within the party, she was a sure loser in the fall election. The Hillary camp then immediately started blaming Russia for the exposure of her corruption and rigging of the Democratic process. And that's how "Russiagate" began.

    Beauracratic Mind, August 1, 2017 at 1:42 pm GMT

    @jacques sheete

    I wonder if groupthink exists.

    It probably does as do group psychoses and group fantasies.. Anyone who's ever served in a beuaracracy knows that groupthink exists.

    Take a bunch of mediocre minds. And, they do exist, as Garrison Keiler once famously made a joke out of with his line Welcome to Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average.

    Take that bunch of mediocre thinkers, and then make most of them obsessed with their own career advancement above all else. The most dangerous place for a career-obsessed individual is outside the group consensus. If everyone is wrong, then there is safety in the group. After all, if they are wrong, so was everyone else in the organization. Thus they are immune to attack and censure for being wrong. But if someone takes a position outside of the group consensus, that can be a career-ending move if they are wrong, as now everyone else will be in the I-told-U-So camp. And even if they are correct, they will still be hated and shunned just for being the person who pointed out to the group that they are wrong.

    So, you take your typical average mind, and not only do they not have any great insights of their own, but they tend to stick to the group out of sheer survival and then when you take a mass of these mediocre minds you have 'groupthink'.

    Eticon, August 1, 2017 at 2:00 pm GMT

    @CalDre

    If only Trump would really clean the swamp - particularly the neo-cons and other traitors and globalists. One can dream ....

    What we've learned from Trump is that 'Draining the Swamp' will take more than an individual. It will take a political movement.

    One sees this on the fringes of politics. Someone gets the idea of running for President, and they point out all that is wrong. But, they focus only on their own campaign, their own goal, and they thus gloss over the fact that they'll be outnumbered and powerless even if they win.

    Seen this often on the Left. The most recent example is Bernie Sanders. Likewise, had Bernie been elected President, he too would face an entrenched establishment and media with only a small fraction of the Congress supporting him.

    Change has to be built from the bottom up. There are no shortcuts. Electing a Trump, or a Nader or a Bernie does not lead to real change. Step one is to build the political movement such that it has real voting block power and which has already won voting majorities in the legislature before the movement achieves the election of a President.

    What Trump has needed to be doing for this first two years is to form clear divisions that he could then take to his voters in the mid-term elections. He's needed to lay out his own agenda. So what if he loses votes in Congress? He then takes that agenda back to the voters in 2018 with a nationwide slate of Congressional candidates who support that agenda and runs a midterm campaign asking the voters to help him drain that swamp.

    So, for instance, Trump should veto the act of war known as the recent sanctions bill. Who cares if it gets overridden? Then he goes back to the voters, who are clearly sick of endless war and who for obvious reasons don't want a nuclear war, and he says this is where I stand. Support me by electing Fill-In-The-Blank to Congress. With the nuclear Doomsday Clock pushing ever closer to midnight, he might just win that fight over the big money and media opposition he's sure to face.

    Not only has Trump failed to even try to fight the Deep State, but he's also failing to set himself up for success in the next elections.

    ChuckOrloski, August 1, 2017 at 2:19 pm GMT

    @Jake Hey Jake,

    It is a serious error to consider President Trump "naive."

    What we are seeing now is The Donald's role in the serial Zionist THEATER. Think deeper about the motive behind Mr. Giraldi's choice to use the Orwellian word "Groupthink" in characterizing the CIA zeitgeist? In the classic work "1984," one observes Big Brother as the catalyst in control of the proles' thought pattern & subsequent action.

    To rise & FALL as a POTUS is a matter of theater and the American proles are entertained by the political for either 4 or 8 years and the Zionists get their next Chosen actor/actress dramatically sworn in on a bible.

    Mr. Trump is neither naive nor stupid. Sheldon Adelson would not donate $millioms to any POTUS wannabe who could not effectively lead the American Groupthink tradition. Subsequently, the political horror show is brought to you in the understandable form of the perpetually elusive Deep State which gets annual Academy Award.

    Beware the fake, Jake!,

    [Apr 23, 2019] Crowdstrike and the reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco

    Notable quotes:
    "... In May, the company, Crowdstrike, determined that the hack was the work of the Russians. As one unnamed intelligence official told BuzzFeed, "CrowdStrike is pretty good. There's no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate ..."
    "... Perhaps not. Yet Crowdstrike is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to Russia. Crowdstrike's founder and chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch , is also a senior fellow at the Washington think tank, The Atlantic Council, which has been at the forefront of escalating tensions with Russia. ..."
    "... As I reported in The Nation in early January , the connection between Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council is highly relevant given that the Atlantic Council is funded in part by the State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. In recent years, it has emerged as a leading voice calling for a new Cold War with Russia. ..."
    "... But meanwhile the steady drumbeat of "blame Russia" is having an effect. According to a recent you.gov/Economist poll, 58 percent of Americans view Russia as "unfriendly/enemy" while also finding that 52 percent of Democrats believed Russia "tampered with vote tallies." ..."
    Feb 03, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

    Originally from: A Reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco -- Consortiumnews

    ... ... ...

    A Dangerous Replay?

    Today something eerily similar to the pre-war debate over Iraq is taking place regarding the allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. Assurances from the intelligence community and from anonymous Obama administration "senior officials" about the existence of evidence is being treated as, well, actual evidence.

    State Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN that he is "100% certain" of the role that Russia played in U.S. election. The administration's expressions of certainty are then uncritically echoed by the mainstream media. Skeptics are likewise written off, slandered as " Kremlin cheerleaders " or worse.

    Unsurprisingly, The Washington Post is reviving its Bush-era role as principal publicist for the government's case. Yet in its haste to do the government's bidding, the Post has published two widely debunked stories relating to Russia (one on the scourge of Russian inspired "fake news", the other on a non-existent Russian hack of a Vermont electric utility) onto which the paper has had to append "editor's notes" to correct the original stories.

    Yet, those misguided stories have not deterred the Post's opinion page from being equally aggressive in its depiction of Russian malfeasance. In late December, the Post published an op-ed by Rep. Adam Schiff and former Rep. Jane Harmon claiming "Russia's theft and strategic leaking of emails and documents from the Democratic Party and other officials present a challenge to the U.S. political system unlike anything we've experienced."

    On Dec. 30, the Post editorial board chastised President-elect Trump for seeming to dismiss "a brazen and unprecedented attempt by a hostile power to covertly sway the outcome of a U.S. presidential election." The Post described Russia's actions as a "cyber-Pearl Harbor."

    On Jan. 1, the neoconservative columnist Josh Rogin told readers that the recent announcement of sanctions against Russia "brought home a shocking realization that Russia is using hybrid warfare in an aggressive attempt to disrupt and undermine our democracy."

    Meanwhile, many of the same voices who were among the loudest cheerleaders for the war in Iraq have also been reprising their Bush-era roles in vouching for the solidity of the government's case.

    Jonathan Chait, now a columnist for New York magazine, is clearly convinced by what the government has thus far provided. "That Russia wanted Trump to win has been obvious for months," writes Chait.

    "Of course it all came from the Russians, I'm sure it's all there in the intel," Charles Krauthammer told Fox News on Jan. 2. Krauthammer is certain.

    And Andrew Sullivan is certain as to the motive. "Trump and Putin's bromance," Sullivan told MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Jan. 2, "has one goal this year: to destroy the European Union and to undermine democracy in Western Europe."

    David Frum, writing in The Atlantic , believes Trump "owes his office in considerable part to illegal clandestine activities in his favor conducted by a hostile, foreign spy service."

    Jacob Weisberg agrees, tweeting: "Russian covert action threw the election to Donald Trump. It's that simple." Back in 2008, Weisberg wrote that "the first thing I hope I've learned from this experience of being wrong about Iraq is to be less trusting of expert opinion and received wisdom." So much for that.

    Foreign Special Interests

    Another, equally remarkable similarity to the period of 2002-3 is the role foreign lobbyists have played in helping to whip up a war fever. As readers will no doubt recall, Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which served, in effect as an Iraqi government-in-exile, worked hand in hand with the Washington lobbying firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey (BKSH) to sell Bush's war on television and on the op-ed pages of major American newspapers.

    Chalabi was also a trusted source of Judy Miller of the Times, which, in an apology to its readers on May 26, 2004, wrote : "The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles." The pro-war lobbying of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has also been exhaustively documented .

    Though we do not know how widespread the practice has been as of yet, something similar is taking place today. Articles calling for confrontation with Russia over its alleged "hybrid war" with the West are appearing with increasing regularity . Perhaps the most egregious example of this newly popular genre appeared on Jan. 1 in Politico magazine. That essay, which claims, among many other things, that "we're in a war" with Russia comes courtesy of one Molly McKew.

    McKew is seemingly qualified to make such a pronouncement because she, according to her bio on the Politico website, served as an "adviser to Georgian President Saakashvili's government from 2009-2013, and to former Moldovan Prime Minister Filat in 2014-2015." Seems reasonable enough. That is until one discovers that McKew is actually registered with the Department of Justice as a lobbyist for two anti-Russian political parties, Georgia's UMN and Moldova's PLDM.

    Records show her work for the consulting firm Fianna Strategies frequently takes her to Capitol Hill to lobby U.S. Senate and Congressional staffers, as well as prominent U.S. journalists at The Washington Post and The New York Times, on behalf of her Georgian and Moldovan clients.

    "The truth," writes McKew, "is that fighting a new Cold War would be in America's interest. Russia teaches us a very important lesson: losing an ideological war without a fight will ruin you as a nation. The fight is the American way." Or, put another way: the truth is that fighting a new Cold War would be in McKew's interest -- but perhaps not America's.

    While you wouldn't know it from the media coverage (or from reading deeply disingenuous pieces like McKew's) as things now stand, the case against Russia is far from certain. New developments are emerging almost daily. One of the latest is a report from the cyber-engineering company Wordfence, which concluded that "The IP addresses that DHS [Department of Homeland Security] provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with Russia."

    Indeed, according to Wordfence, "The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website."

    On Jan. 4, BuzzFeed reported that, according to the DNC, the FBI never carried out a forensic examination on the email servers that were allegedly hacked by the Russian government. "The FBI," said DNC spokesman Eric Walker, "never requested access to the DNC's computer servers."

    What the agency did do was rely on the findings of a private-sector, third-party vendor that was brought in by the DNC after the initial hack was discovered. In May, the company, Crowdstrike, determined that the hack was the work of the Russians. As one unnamed intelligence official told BuzzFeed, "CrowdStrike is pretty good. There's no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate . "

    Perhaps not. Yet Crowdstrike is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to Russia. Crowdstrike's founder and chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch , is also a senior fellow at the Washington think tank, The Atlantic Council, which has been at the forefront of escalating tensions with Russia.

    As I reported in The Nation in early January , the connection between Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council is highly relevant given that the Atlantic Council is funded in part by the State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. In recent years, it has emerged as a leading voice calling for a new Cold War with Russia.

    Time to Rethink the 'Group Think'

    And given the rather thin nature of the declassified evidence provided by the Obama administration, might it be time to consider an alternative theory of the case? William Binney, a 36-year veteran of the National Security Agency and the man responsible for creating many of its collection systems, thinks so. Binney believes that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked, writing that "it is puzzling why NSA cannot produce hard evidence implicating the Russian government and WikiLeaks. Unless we are dealing with a leak from an insider, not a hack."

    None of this is to say, of course, that Russia did not and could not have attempted to influence the U.S. presidential election. The intelligence community may have intercepted damning evidence of the Russian government's culpability. The government's hesitation to provide the public with more convincing evidence may stem from an understandable and wholly appropriate desire to protect the intelligence community's sources and methods. But as it now stands the publicly available evidence is open to question.

    But meanwhile the steady drumbeat of "blame Russia" is having an effect. According to a recent you.gov/Economist poll, 58 percent of Americans view Russia as "unfriendly/enemy" while also finding that 52 percent of Democrats believed Russia "tampered with vote tallies."

    With Congress back in session, Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain is set to hold a series of hearings focusing on Russian malfeasance, and the steady drip-drip-drip of allegations regarding Trump and Putin is only serving to box in the new President when it comes to pursuing a much-needed detente with Russia.

    It also does not appear that a congressional inquiry will start from scratch and critically examine the evidence. On Friday, two senators -- Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse -- announced a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigation into Russian interference in elections in the U.S. and elsewhere. But they already seemed to have made up their minds about the conclusion: "Our goal is simple," the senators said in a joint statement "To the fullest extent possible we want to shine a light on Russian activities to undermine democracy."

    So, before the next round of Cold War posturing commences, now might be the time to stop, take a deep breath and ask: Could the rush into a new Cold War with Russia be as disastrous and consequential -- if not more so -- as was the rush to war with Iraq nearly 15 years ago? We may, unfortunately, find out.

    James W Carden is a contributing writer for The Nation and editor of The American Committee for East-West Accord's eastwestaccord.com. He previously served as an advisor on Russia to the Special Representative for Global Inter-governmental Affairs at the US State Department.

    Don G. , February 5, 2017 at 14:29

    Questioning whether the Russians hacked or didn’t hack is playing into the US narrative to demonize Russia. (Putin)
    It simple doesn’t matter as all nations hack as much as possible to enhance and protect their national interests. Surely Russia has hacked against the US no more than a tenth of what the US had done against Russia.

    The narrative is nothing but a propaganda lie but it’s been accepted by the American people and mostly because of the fight that goes on due to domestic politics, one major party against the other.

    There’s a very good reason to stop promoting the narrative because it only helps to bring Americans onside with more efforts to demonize Putin and to keep all sides in the US promoting their aggression worldwide. Americans are likely easily 90% prowar now and will show little or no resistance to the coming war on Iran. <img alt='' src='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f05d2bb98b641e9e9ab8f3dc738e31a0?s=60&#038;d=identicon&#038;r=pg' srcset='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/f05d2bb98b641e9e9ab8f3dc738e31a0?s=120&#038;d=identicon&#038;r=pg 2x' class='avatar avatar-60 photo' height='60' width='60' />

    yugo , February 4, 2017 at 13:54

    Hysteria has reached fever pitch. Russia’s fake news is apparently so beguiling that it even threatens western democratic discourse. Combine this with its cyber weaponry and Moscow, so we are told, may interfere in this year’s German elections to benefit the hard-right. Such incessant fear mongering has already prompted calls for the censorship of Russian propaganda. It won’t be long before a witch-hunt emerges, directed against ‘fellow travellers’, those who dare to doubt the Russian threat.

    They insist the west made matters worse in Ukraine by not acknowledging that it was a classic example of a young state that didn’t naturally command the allegiance of all its peoples. Other examples are Georgia’s Abkhazians and South Ossetians, Moldova’s Trans-Dniester Slavs and Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians.

    They also doubt the Russian threat to the Baltic states. What is amazing is Moscow’s temperate response to Estonia and Latvia’s gross violation of international norms in denying citizenship to those of its Russian minority who are not conversant in Estonian and Latvian respectively. Nato and the EU turned a blind eye when membership was granted to these two states.

    Fellow travellers furthermore claim the west will keep on floundering in the Middle East as long as it persists in treating Saudi Arabia as a valued ally, while viewing Iran as a permanent enemy. We have for far too long ignored Saudi Arabia’s promotion of Wahhabism and its playing of the destructive sectarian card against ‘apostate’ Shiites. Take the merciless attacks on Shiite worshippers by Sunni jihadis of a Wahhabist persuasion. It occurs with sickening regularity throughout the Middle East. The terrorists attacking westerners are invariably Sunni jihadis, not Shiites. Worse still, Saudi Arabia together with Nato member Turkey facilitated the emergence of Isis. We bizarrely gave priority to toppling Syria’s secular regime.

    The first loyalty of these fellow travellers is to their nation state rather than unfettered globalism. No wonder the western elite disparage their national patriotism, calling it populism. It was, after all, the Achilles Heel of Homo Sovieticus. The elite fear the same fate awaits Homo Europaeus and globalist Homo Economicus.

    Michael K Rohde , February 3, 2017 at 15:12

    This is beginning to look exactly like Iraq 2 and why the same players that led us into that fake war which is still not paid for because the initiators made sure and get themselves a tax cut before they launched it are still being listened to makes it clear. Even with a change in administrations and party our government continues in the same wrong headed direction, to war with the enemies of Israel. When will it stop? When will we take back control of our foreign policy and destiny. <img alt='' src='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/cc900a84653501242923790946494dbc?s=60&#038;d=identicon&#038;r=pg' srcset='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/cc900a84653501242923790946494dbc?s=120&#038;d=identicon&#038;r=pg 2x' class='avatar avatar-60 photo' height='60' width='60' />

    Michael Hoefler , February 3, 2017 at 23:29

    As Ray McGovern said several times (not quoting): that Israel is the elephant in the room. Netayahu will not rest until he has all of the Arab states fighting among themselves. IMO he thinks that that will guarantee Israel protection.
    IMO – all that does is put Israel into a continuing worse situation. There will always be someone stronger to come along to overcome them – someday – sometime. If they made peace with those nations and worked with them, traded with them – they would be much safer in the long run.

    Banger , February 3, 2017 at 14:22

    The mainstream media in th USA and, increasingly in the rest of the West are vehicles for propaganda from various factions within the Imperial Deep State. All these outlets are good for is to map the power relations between these factions at least this the case in the major issues of the day.

    This misbehavior going on right now. One factions close to Trump wants to go to war with Iran because, of course there has to be war or the Deep State as a whole stuffers and the people will begin to look at their shakles. The other faction wishes to go to a brinksmanship sort of Cold War situation. The Trumpists believe that making friends with Russia and then destroying Iranian power is the best approach to controlling the MENA region by creating a loose alliance of KSA, Israel, Turkey and Russia in which a weak Iran would be forced to enter the Empire and Russia in return would be given more control of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. I suspect Trump may also want to undercut NATO and the EU. That is my guess. To put it another way, Russia is strong and well led and Iran is not.

    stan , February 3, 2017 at 14:17

    You can read chapter 6 of Mein Kampf if you want to see how this war propaganda stuff works. It is not group think or mistaken ideas. It is deliberate lies to scare you and a carefully crafted false narrative to make it all seem reasonable. People cannot believe that their leaders would tell such a big lie, and that’s why it works. The goal is murder and conquest to get territory, natural resources, and control of business and commerce. Controlling markets for drugs, gambling, and prostitution is for nickel and dime crooks. Controlling markets for natural resources, banking, and consumer and industrial goods is where the real money is. Think of governments as criminal business syndicates and you aren’t far off. Remember, President Obama had a hit list, flew around plane loads of secret cash to make illegal payoffs, and bragged about offing his opponent in the head and dumping his body in the river.

    Jeremy , February 4, 2017 at 11:33

    Yes, Stan,well put! you will never see this sort of talk in the articles here, as the consipiracy theorist label is always one to avoid, but I agree that when we think in terms of a group of people trying to attain “security” the same way any other gangster does, it becomes much less far fetched. George Carlin said, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it!” Men and women of power and wealth will always do what they have to in order to preserve that power and wealth for their children. There is really no conspiracy needed, just a bunch of people at the top looking after themselves and their families.

    Tania Messina , February 3, 2017 at 14:13

    Ah, yes, we’ve always needed a boogeyman to keep us all crazed with fear and the neocons busy with their destruction of society. If there is a crazy out there today, it is those neocons and their puppets who were so intent on destroying “seven countries in five years” and not being able to achieve that diabolical end as so neatly planned. And, now, they’re throwing temper tantrums, because, surprise of surprises! a non career politician comes along who uses common sense for a change and dares to say, “Why can’t we be friends with Russia?” With that comment many exhausted Americans perked up and listened while the Dulles boys turned somersaults in their graves!

    The arrogance and superiority of those who constantly blame Russia for their alleged expansionist ambitions seem blinded to our own aggressions. Fifteen years in Iraq? We finally have a president who talks of peace and we demonize him as the warmonger ready to press the button, while I seem to remember that it was the other candidate who arrogantly referred to Putin as Hitler!

    It is articles like this one by James Carden that we should be teaching in our schools, researching the facts and discussing in our classrooms so that hopefully a new generation might grow up with intelligent exchange rather than the brainwash that has been strangling our society for too many years.

    Mark Thomason , February 3, 2017 at 13:04

    This controversy is driven by Democratic denial of defeat, and infighting in which those defeated seek to hang on to power inside the Democratic Party. It is the Hillary crowd. It can be evidence free because it is driven by political calculation of private power needs, not truth.

    And the WMD fiasco is a perfect comparison, because the same people drove the same sort of fact-free theme for private reasons, as Wolfowitz put it, the story around which varying separate interests could be rallied.

    [Apr 23, 2019] The Conspiracy Against Trump by Philip Giraldi

    Lightly edited for clarity...
    Notable quotes:
    "... One might reasonably ask if America in its seemingly enduring role as the world's most feared bully will ever cease and desist, but the more practical question might be "When will the psychopathic trio of John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Elliott Abrams be fired so the United States can begin to behave like a normal nation?" ..."
    "... This hatred of all things Trump has been manifested in the neoconservative "Nevertrump" forces led by Bill Kristol and by the "Trump Derangement Syndrome" prominent on the political left, regularly exhibited by Rachel Maddow. ..."
    "... Whether the Mueller report is definitive very much depends on the people they chose to interview and the questions they chose to ask, which is something that will no doubt be discussed for the next year if not longer. Beyond declaring that the Trump team did not collude with Russia, it cast little light on the possible Deep State role in attempting to vilify Trump and his associates. ..."
    "... The media has scarcely reported how Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (DOJ), has been looking into the activities of the principal promoters of the Russiagate fraud. Horowitz, whose report is expected in about a month, has already revealed that he intends to make criminal referrals as a result of his investigation. ..."
    "... The first phase of the illegal investigation of the Trump associates involved initiating wiretaps without any probable cause. This eventually involved six government intelligence and law enforcement agencies that formed a de facto task force headed by the CIA's Director John Brennan. Also reportedly involved were the FBI's James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Department of Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson, and Admiral Michael Rogers who headed the National Security Agency. ..."
    "... The British support of the operation was coordinated by the then-director of GCHQ Robert Hannigan who has since been forced to resign. Brennan is, unfortunately still around and has not been charged with perjury and other crimes. In May 2017, after he departed government, he testified before Congress with what sounds a lot like a final unsourced, uncorroborated attempt to smear the new administration ..."
    "... The Deep State wants a constant state of tension with 'hostile' countries (Iran, Russia, Venezuela, China, Syria and others). This scares the crap out of ignorant Americans and allows unjustifiable spending on war matériel. ..."
    "... The Deep State wants a steady supply of cheap foreign labor to provide wealth to the supporters of the Deep State. ..."
    "... You know damn well Adelson sent Bolton and you should also know damn well why the Orange Boy staffed his adm with Zionists. No one in NY except Zionists would associate with Trump. ..."
    Apr 23, 2019 | www.unz.com

    The real "deplorable" in today's United States is the continuation of a foreign policy based on endless aggression to maintain Washington's military dominance in parts of the world where Americans have no conceivable interest. Many voters backed Donald J. Trump because he committed himself to changing all that, but, unfortunately, he has reneged on his promise, instead heightening tension with major powers Russia and China while also threatening Iran and Venezuela on an almost daily basis. Now Cuba is in the crosshairs because it is allegedly assisting Venezuela. One might reasonably ask if America in its seemingly enduring role as the world's most feared bully will ever cease and desist, but the more practical question might be "When will the psychopathic trio of John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Elliott Abrams be fired so the United States can begin to behave like a normal nation?"

    Trump, to be sure, is the heart of the problem as he has consistently made bad, overly belligerent decisions when better and less abrasive options were available, something that should not necessarily always be blamed on his poor choice of advisers. But one also should not discount the likelihood that the dysfunction in Trump is in part comprehensible, stemming from his belief that he has numerous powerful enemies who have been out do destroy him since before he was nominated as the GOP's presidential candidate. This hatred of all things Trump has been manifested in the neoconservative "Nevertrump" forces led by Bill Kristol and by the "Trump Derangement Syndrome" prominent on the political left, regularly exhibited by Rachel Maddow.

    And then there is the Deep State, which also worked with the Democratic Party and President Barack Obama to destroy the Trump presidency even before it began. One can define Deep State in a number of ways, ranging from a "soft" version which accepts that there is an Establishment that has certain self-serving objectives that it works collectively to promote to something harder, an actual infrastructure that meets together and connives to remove individuals and sabotage policies that it objects to. The Deep State in either version includes senior government officials, business leaders and, perhaps most importantly, the managed media, which promotes a corrupted version of "good governance" that in turn influences the public.

    Whether the Mueller report is definitive very much depends on the people they chose to interview and the questions they chose to ask, which is something that will no doubt be discussed for the next year if not longer. Beyond declaring that the Trump team did not collude with Russia, it cast little light on the possible Deep State role in attempting to vilify Trump and his associates. The investigation of that aspect of the 2016 campaign and the possible prosecutions of former senior government officials that might be a consequence of the investigation will likely be entertaining conspiracy theorists well into 2020. Since Russiagate has already been used and discarded the new inquiry might well be dubbed Trumpgate.

    The media has scarcely reported how Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (DOJ), has been looking into the activities of the principal promoters of the Russiagate fraud. Horowitz, whose report is expected in about a month, has already revealed that he intends to make criminal referrals as a result of his investigation. While the report will only cover malfeasance in the Department of Justice, which includes the FBI, the names of intelligence officers involved will no doubt also surface. It is expected that there will be charges leading to many prosecutions and one can hope for jail time for those individuals who corruptly betrayed their oath to the United States Constitution to pursue a political vendetta.

    A review of what is already known about the plot against Trump is revealing and no doubt much more will be learned if and when investigators go through emails and phone records. The first phase of the illegal investigation of the Trump associates involved initiating wiretaps without any probable cause. This eventually involved six government intelligence and law enforcement agencies that formed a de facto task force headed by the CIA's Director John Brennan. Also reportedly involved were the FBI's James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Department of Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson, and Admiral Michael Rogers who headed the National Security Agency.

    Brennan was the key to the operation because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court refused to approve several requests by the FBI to initiate taps on Trump associates and Trump Tower as there was no probable cause to do so but the British and other European intelligence services were legally able to intercept communications linked to American sources. Brennan was able to use his connections with those foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, to make it look like the concerns about Trump were coming from friendly and allied countries and therefore had to be responded to as part of routine intelligence sharing. As a result, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Gen. Michael Flynn were all wiretapped. And likely there were others. This all happened during the primaries and after Trump became the GOP nominee.

    In other words, to make the wiretaps appear to be legitimate, GCHQ and others were quietly and off-the-record approached by Brennan and associates over their fears of what a Trump presidency might mean. The British responded by initiating wiretaps that were then used by Brennan to justify further investigation of Trump's associates. It was all neatly done and constituted completely illegal spying on American citizens by the U.S. government.

    The British support of the operation was coordinated by the then-director of GCHQ Robert Hannigan who has since been forced to resign. Brennan is, unfortunately still around and has not been charged with perjury and other crimes. In May 2017, after he departed government, he testified before Congress with what sounds a lot like a final unsourced, uncorroborated attempt to smear the new administration :

    "I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals."

    Brennan's claimed "concerns" turned out to be incorrect. Meanwhile, other interested parties were involved in the so-called Steele Dossier on Trump himself. The dossier, paid for initially by Republicans trying to stop Trump, was later funded by $12 million from the Hillary campaign. It was commissioned by the law firm Perkins Coie, which was working for the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The objective was to assess any possible Trump involvement with Russia. The work itself was sub-contracted to Fusion GPS, which in turn sub-contracted the actual investigation to British spy Christopher Steele who headed a business intelligence firm called Orbis.

    Steele left MI-6 in 2009 and had not visited Russia since 1993. The report, intended to dig up dirt on Trump, was largely prepared using impossible to corroborate second-hand information and would have never surfaced but for the surprise result of the 2016 election. Christopher Steele gave a copy to a retired of British Diplomat Sir Andrew Wood who in turn handed it to Trump critic Senator John McCain who then passed it on to the FBI. President Barack Obama presumably also saw it and, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, "If it weren't for President Obama, we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set off a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today, notably, special counsel Mueller's investigation."

    The report was leaked to the media in January 2017 to coincide with Trump's inauguration. Hilary Clinton denied any prior knowledge despite the fact that her campaign had paid for it. Pressure from the Democrats and other constituencies devastated by the Trump victory used the Steele report to provide leverage for what became the Mueller investigation.

    So, was there a broad ranging conspiracy against Donald Trump orchestrated by many of the most senior officials and politicians in Washington? Undeniably yes. What Trump has amounted to as a leader and role model is beside the point as what evolved was undeniably a bureaucratic coup directed against a legally elected president of the United States and to a certain extent it was successful as Trump was likely forced to turn his back on his better angels and subsequently hired Pompeo, Bolton and Abrams. One can only hope that investigators dig deep into what is Washington insiders have been up to so Trumpgate will prove more interesting and informative than was Russiagate. And one also has to hope that enough highest-level heads will roll to make any interference by the Deep State in future elections unthinkable. One hopes.

    Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected] .

    Realist , says: April 22, 2019 at 11:28 pm GMT

    The Deep State plot to undermine the president

    The President is part of the Deep State. To understand what the Deep State will and will not tolerate answer these questions.

    What do both parties agree on? If they appear to disagree, look to see if anything changes when one party has the power to cause change or does the party in power make excuses to avoid change? Those things that the populus is against but never change or get worse are what the Deep State wants

    1. The Deep State wants a constant state of tension with 'hostile' countries (Iran, Russia, Venezuela, China, Syria and others). This scares the crap out of ignorant Americans and allows unjustifiable spending on war matériel.
    2. The Deep State wants a steady supply of cheap foreign labor to provide wealth to the supporters of the Deep State.
    3. The Deep State wants our financial institutions to never fail (FED 2009) even at the expense of 90% of Americans. The Deep State wants financial institutions to provide financial products to the wealthy which cripples the vast majority of Americans.
    4. The silly internecine squabbles within the Deep State are a ruse to misdirect the public from important issues like constant war, legal and illegal immigrants taking jobs from Americans and the increased transfer of wealth for the 90% to the supper weathy.

    There will never be a wall and illegal immigration will continue to be a problem. All the investigations into Trump, the DNC, Hillary and all the rest will never come to justice. The wealth transfer will not stop

    Until Americans realize these diversions for what they are and put an end to it through what ever means necessary

    renfro , says: April 23, 2019 at 4:28 am GMT

    it was successful as Trump was likely forced to turn his back on his better angels and subsequently hired Pompeo, Bolton and Abrams.

    Oh plezzze .you sound like you've been drugged. Trump never had any better angels as any reporter and journalist whoever interviewed or investigated him would tell you.

    And come on! .You know damn well Adelson sent Bolton and you should also know damn well why the Orange Boy staffed his adm with Zionists. No one in NY except Zionists would associate with Trump.

    .

    notanon , says: April 23, 2019 at 4:35 am GMT
    i think some of the conspiracy was about controlling Trump's foreign policy going forward but i also think some of it was people like Brennan worried CIA collusion with Saudi funded jihadist groups since 9/11 (and possibly before) might come out.
    Hiram of Tyre , says: April 23, 2019 at 4:41 am GMT
    Right.

    A plot to undermine another POTUS who does exactly what the previous ones did: bend over to Israel, continues wars, etc.

    Trump is only controlled opposition.

    [Apr 22, 2019] FBI top brass have been colluding with top brass of CIA and MI6 to pursue ambitious anti-Russian agenda

    Highly recommended!
    "Carnage needs to destroyed" mentality is dominant among the USA neoliberal elite and drives the policy toward Russia.
    They all supported neoconservative extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda directed on weakening Russian and establishing of world dominance. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this
    Notable quotes:
    "... There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this. ..."
    "... This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya. ..."
    "... And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. ..."
    "... Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky. ..."
    "... it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep.. ..."
    "... I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence". ..."
    "... It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate. ..."
    "... And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that. ..."
    "... Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ..."
    "... They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040 ..."
    "... In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. ..."
    "... State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union ..."
    "... About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS ..."
    "... No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming. ..."
    "... Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons. ..."
    "... Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing. ..."
    "... Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program. ..."
    "... IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war. ..."
    "... The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. ..."
    "... A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella. ..."
    "... Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear. ..."
    Mar 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    Steele, Shvets, Levinson, Litvinenko and the 'Billion Dollar Don.'

    In the light of the suggestion in the Nunes memo that Steele was 'a longtime FBI source' it seems worth sketching out some background, which may also make it easier to see some possible reasons why he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.'

    There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this.

    This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya.

    And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area.

    Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky.

    The question of what links these had, or did not have, with elements in U.S. intelligence agencies is thus a critical one.

    In making some sense of it, the fact that one key figure we know to have been involved in this network was missing at the Inquiry – the former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared on the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 – is important.

    Unfortunately, I only recently came across a book on Levinson published in 2016 by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier, which is now hopefully winging its way across the Atlantic. From the accounts of the book I have seen, such as one by Jeff Stein in 'Newsweek', it seems likely that its author did not look at any of the evidence presented at Owen's Inquiry.

    (See http://www.newsweek.com/2016/05/20/what-really-happened-robert-levinson-cia-iran-454803.html .)

    Had he done so, Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko's death. A Radio 4 programme on 16 December 2006, presented by the veteran BBC presenter Tom Mangold, had been wholly devoted to an account by Shvets, backed up by Levinson. Both of these were, like Litvinenko, supposed to be impartial 'due diligence' operatives.

    The notion that any of them might have connections with Western intelligence agencies was not considered. The – publicly available – evidence of the involvement of Shvets, whose surname means 'cobbler' or 'shoemaker' in Ukrainian, in the processing of the tapes of conversations involving the former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma supposedly recorded by Major Melnychenko, which had played a crucial role in the 2004-5 'Orange Revolution' was not mentioned.

    Still less was it mentioned that claims that the – very dangerous – late Soviet Kolchuga system, which made it possible the kind of identification of incoming aircraft which radar had traditionally done, without sending out signals which made the destruction of the facilities doing it possible, had been sold by Kuchma to Iraq had proven spurious.

    What Shvets had done had been to take – genuine – audio in which Kuchma had discussed a possible sale, and edit it to suggest a sale had been completed.

    (See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

    As a former television current affairs producer, I can talk to you of the marvels which London audio editors can produce, very happily. Unfortunately, the days when not all BBC and 'Guardian' journalists were corrupt stenographers for corrupt and incompetent spooks, as Mangold and his like have been for Steele and Levinson, are long gone.

    All this has become particularly relevant now, given that Simpson has placed the notorious Jewish Ukrainian mobster Semyon Mogilevich and the 'Solntsevskaya Bratva' mafia group centre stage in his accounts not simply of Trump and Manafort, but also of William Browder. For most of the 'Nineties, Levinson had been a, if not the, lead FBI investigator on Mogilevich.

    (On this, see the 1999 BBC 'Panorama' programme 'The Billion Dollar Don', also presented by Tom Mangold, which has extensive interviews both with Mogilevich and Levinson at

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/panorama/transcripts/transcript_06_12_99.txt )

    In the months leading up to Levinson's disappearance, a key priority for the advocates of the strategy I have described was to prevent it being totally derailed by the patently catastrophic outcome of the Iraqi adventure.

    Compounding the problem was the fact that this had created the 'Shia Crescent', which in turn exacerbated the potential 'existential threat' to Israel posed by the steadily increasing range, accuracy and numbers of missiles available to Hizbullah in hardened positions north of the Litani.

    These, obviously, provided both a 'deterrent' for that organisation and Iran, and also a radical threat to the whole notion that somehow Israel could ever be a 'safe haven' for Jews, against the supposedly ineradicable disposition of the 'goyim' sooner or later to, as it were, revert to type. The dreadful thought that Israel might not be necessary had to be resisted at all costs.

    What followed from the disaster unleashed by the – Anglo-American – 'own goal' in toppling Saddam was, ironically, a need on the part of key players to 'double down.' Above all, it was necessary for many of those involved to counter suggestions from the Russian side that going around smashing up 'régimes' that one might not like sometimes blew up in one's face.

    Even more threatening were suggestions from the Russian side that it was foolish to think one could use jihadists without risking 'blowback', and that there might be an overwhelming common interest in combating Islamic extremism.

    Another priority was to counter the pushback in the American 'intelligence community' and military, which was to produce the drastic downgrading of the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear programme in the November 2007 NIE and then the resignation of Admiral William Fallon as head of 'Centcom' the following March.

    So in 2005 Shvets came to London. He and his audio editors had another 'bite at the cherry' of the Melnychenko tapes, so that material that did in fact establish that both the SBU and FSB had collaborated with Mogilevich could be employed to make it seem that Putin had a close personal relationship with the mobster.

    All kinds of supposedly respectable American and British academics, like Professors Karen Dawisha and Robert Service, have fallen for this, hook, line and sinker. It gives a new meaning to the term 'useful idiot.'

    (See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

    In a letter sent in December that year by Litvinenko to the 'Mitrokhin Commission', for which his Italian associate Mario Scaramella was a consultant, this was used in an attempt to demonstrate that Mogilevich, while acting as an agent for the FSB and under Putin's personal 'krysha', had attempted to supply a 'mini atomic bomb' – aka 'suitcase nuke' – to Al Qaeda. Shortly after the letter was sent Scaramella departed on a trip to Washington, where he appears to have got access to Aldrich Ames.

    (See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

    At precisely this time, as Meier explains, Levinson was in the process of being recruited by a lady called Anne Jablonski who then worked as a CIA analyst. It appears that she was furious at the failure of the operational side at the Agency to produce evidence which would have established that Iran did indeed have an ongoing nuclear programme, and she may well have hoped would implicate Russia in supplying materials.

    There are grounds to suspect that one of the things that Berezovsky and Shvets were doing was fabricating such 'evidence.' Whether Levinson was involved in such attempts, or genuinely looking for evidence he was convinced must be there, I cannot say. It appears that he fell for a rather elementary entrapment operation – which could well have been organised with the collaboration of Russian intelligence. (People do get fed up with being framed, particular if 'régime change' is the goal.)

    It also seems likely that, quite possibly in a different but related entrapment operation, related to propaganda wars in which claims and counter claims about a polonium-beryllium 'initiator' as the crucial missing part which might make a 'suitcase nuke' functional, Litvinenko accidentally ingested fatal quantities of polonium. A good deal of evidence suggests that this may have been at Berezovsky's offices on the night before he was supposedly assassinated.

    It was, obviously, important for Steele et al to ensure that nobody looked at the 'StratCom' wars about 'suitcase nukes.' Here, a figure who has played a key role in such wars in relation to Syria plays an interesting minor one in the story.

    Some time following the destruction of the case for an immediate war by the November 2007 NIE, a chemical weapons specialist called Dan Kaszeta, who had worked in the White House for twelve years, moved to London.

    In 2011, in addition to founding a consultancy called 'Strongpoint Security', he began a writing career with articles in 'CBRNe World.' Later, he would become the conduit through which the notorious 'hexamine hypothesis', supposedly clinching proof that the Syrian government was responsible for the sarin incidents at Khan Sheikhoun, Ghouta, Saraqeb, and Khan Al-Asal, was disseminated.

    Having been forced by the threat of a case being opened against them under human rights law into resuming the inquest into Litvinenko's death, in August 2012 the British authorities appointed Sir Robert Owen to conduct it. (There are many honest judges in Britain, but obviously, if one sets out to find someone who will 'cover up' for the incompetence and corruption of people like Steele, as Lord Hutton did before him, you can find them.)

    That same month, a piece appeared in 'CBRNe World' with the the strapline: 'Dan Kaszeta looks into the ultimate press story: Suitcase nukes', and the main title 'Carry on or checked bags?' Among the grounds he gives for playing down the scare:

    'Some components rely on materials with shelf life. Tritium, for example, is used in many nuclear weapon designs and has a twelve year half-life. Polonium, used in neutron initiators in some earlier types of weapon designs, has a very short halflife. US documents state that every nuclear weapon has "limited life components" that require periodic replacement (do an internet search for nuclear limited life components and you can read for weeks).'

    (For this and other articles by Kaszeta, as also his bio, see http://strongpointsecurity.co.uk ')

    What Kaszeta has actually described are the reasons why polonium is a perfect 'StratCom' instrument. In terms of scientific plausibility, in fact there were no 'suitcase nukes', and in any case 'initiators' using polonium had been abandoned very early on, in favour of ones which lasted longer.

    For 'StratCom' scenarios, as experience with the 'hexamine hypothesis' has proved, scientific plausibility can be irrelevant.

    What polonium provides is a means of suggesting that Al Qaeda have in fact got hold of a nuclear device which they could easily smuggle into, say, Rome or New York, or indeed Moscow, but there is a crucial missing component which the FSB is trying to provide to them. By the same token, of course, that missing component could be depicted as one that Berezovsky and Litvinenko are conspiring to suppl to the Chechen insurgents.

    In addition, the sole known source of global supply is the Avangard plant at Sarov in Russia, so the substance is naturally suited for 'StratCom' directed against that country, which its intelligence services would – rather naturally – try to make 'boomerang.'

    According to Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele is a 'boy scout.' This seems to me quite wrong – but, even if it were true, would you want to unleash a 'boy scout' into these kinds of intrigue?

    As it is not clear why Kaszeta introduced his – accurate but irrelevant – point about polonium into an article which was concerned with scientific plausibility, one is left with an interesting question as to whether he cut his teeth on 'StratCom' attempting to ensure that nobody seriously interested in CBRN science followed an obvious lead.

    In relation to the question of whether current FBI personnel had been involved in the kind of 'StratCom' exercises, I have been describing, a critical issue is the involvement of Shvets and Levinson in the Alexander Khonanykhine affair back in the 'Nineties, and the latter's use of claims about the Solntsevskaya to prevent the key figure's extradition. But that is a matter for another day.

    A corollary of all this is that we cannot – yet at least – be absolutely confident that the account in the Nunes memo, according to which Steele was suspended and then dismissed as an FBI source for what the organisation is reported to define as 'the most serious of violations' – the unauthorised disclosure of a relationship with the organisation – is necessarily wholly accurate.

    Who did and did not authorise which disclosures to the media, up to and including the extraordinary decision to have the full dossier, including claims about Aleksej Gubarev and the Alfa oligarchs, in flagrant disregard of the obvious risks of defamation suits, and who may be trying to pass the buck to others, remains I think less than totally clear.

    Posted at 03:42 PM in As The Borg Turns , Habakkuk , Russia , Russiagate | Permalink

    james , 03 February 2018 at 04:33 PM

    thanks david... fascinating overview and conjecture..

    it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep..

    JohnB , 03 February 2018 at 05:17 PM
    David,

    Thank you very. As ever you have illuminated a few more things for me. Kaszeta's involvement is interesting. He is someone I am in the middle of researching in relation to Higgins and Bellingcat.

    turcopolier , 03 February 2018 at 06:02 PM
    james

    It is the closest of all international intelligence relationships. It started in WW2. Before that the Brits were though of as a potential enemy. pl

    Babak Makkinejad -> turcopolier ... , 03 February 2018 at 06:10 PM
    I think the English are using you, they are unsentimental empirical people that only do these that benefit the Number One.
    The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
    catherine , 03 February 2018 at 06:22 PM
    That Newsweek piece about Levinson is very superficial to me.

    Re: Levinson

    # Who suggested to who 'first' the Iran caper...Anne Jablonski to Levinson or Levinson to Jablonski? It was reported earlier by Meier that in December 2005, when Levinson was pitching Jablonski on projects he might take on when his CIA contract was approved he sent her a lengthy memo about Dawud's potential as an informant.

    # Ira Silverman, the Iran hating NBC guy, pitched a Iraq caper to Levinson with Dawud Salahuddin, as his Iran contact and Levinson went to Jablonski with it.

    # And what was with Boris Birshstein, a Russian organized crime figure who had fled to Israel and Oleg Deripaska, the "aluminum czar" of Russia whose organized crime contacts have kept him from entering the United States jumping in to help find Levinson? The FBI allowed Deripaska in for two visits in 2009 in exchange for his alleged help in locating Levinson but obviously nothing came of it.

    I think there were more little agents/agendas in this than Levinson and Jablonski and US CIA.

    Ishmael Zechariah , 03 February 2018 at 06:54 PM
    DH,

    As usual a wonderful analysis. I admire your insight, integrity and courage. I wish you could write more on why the Borg is so much against Trump, even though they have Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference for them.

    I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence".

    Be safe.

    Ishmael Zechariah

    Rd , 03 February 2018 at 07:31 PM
    Babak Makkinejad said in reply to turcopolier...

    The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
    ..and US is the one who has been paying for it since 1979!!!

    kooshy said in reply to Ishmael Zechariah... , 03 February 2018 at 08:21 PM
    IZ
    My guess is, that he is unpredictable, instantaneous and therefore can't be consistent and reliable, useful idiot needs to be predictable.
    kooshy , 03 February 2018 at 08:43 PM
    "There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. "

    David as usual fascinating work connecting the dots. One question that comes to my mind is about the above point you are making. Is it your understanding or believe that these IC individuals on both side of Atlantic, are pursuing/forcing their (on behalf of the Borg) foreign policy agenda outside of their respected seating governments? If not, why is it that incoming administration cannot stop them? So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.

    different clue , 03 February 2018 at 08:49 PM
    Ishmael Zechariah,

    ( reply to comment 6),

    I am not David Habakkuk, obviously. But I will venture a little opinion anyway. It is not enough that the Borgists get their policy preferences. If it were, then Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference would be enough for them.

    It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate.

    And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that.

    So that is why the Borg cares so much. They view the Trump election as an insurgency, and they view themselves as waging a counterinsurgency, which they dare not lose.

    Jack , 03 February 2018 at 08:54 PM
    David,

    Thanks for your analysis. I always enjoy and learn from your posts. I wish you would post more often.

    In my non-expert opinion, the Borg and the media were all in for Hillary. They were convinced that she was gonna win. To curry favor with the Empress who would be certainly crowned after the election they were eager and convinced that their lawlessness would become a badge for promotion and plum positions in her administration. In their conceit, they believed they could kill two birds with one stroke. They could vilify Putin and create the mass hysteria to checkmate him, while at the same time disparage and frame Trump as The Manchurian Candidate to seal their certain electoral victory.

    Unfortunately for them voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't buy their sales pitch despite the overwhelming media barrage from all corners. Even news publications who have only endorsed Republican candidates for President for over a century endorsed her.

    Trump's election win caused panic among the political establishment, the media and the Deep State. They were already all-in. Their only choice was to double down and get Trump impeached. Now their conspiracy is beginning to unravel. They are doing everything possible to forestall their Armageddon. Of course they have many allies. This battle is gonna be interesting to watch. Trump is clearly getting many Congressional Republicans on side as his base of Deplorables remains solidly behind him. That is what's befuddling the Borg pundits.

    SmoothieX12 -> kooshy... , 03 February 2018 at 09:51 PM
    So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.

    Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. This swamp (Borg, deep state, etc.) still thinks that it can use Cold War 1.0 Playbook and address very real and dangerous American economic issues. They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with.

    Babak Makkinejad -> SmoothieX12 ... , 03 February 2018 at 10:10 PM
    They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040.
    kooshy said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 03 February 2018 at 10:24 PM
    You are right CWII is very much desired and on agenda, but i am not sure of setup, the setup/board has been changed tremendously and IMO benefits the Asian side of Bosphorus, for one thing technology is no longer exclusive, and financial burden is heavier on atlantic side.
    catherine said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 12:21 AM
    ''Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ''

    The locust keep trying and trying, destruction is their life's work.

    '1977-1981: Nationalities Working Group Advocates Using Militant Islam Against Soviet Union'

    In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will "explode into genocidal fury" against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski favored a "de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran." [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 241, 251 - 256]

    'November 1978-February 1979: Some US Officials Want to Support Radical Muslims to Contain Soviet Union'

    State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union

    aleksandar , 04 February 2018 at 04:41 AM
    David,

    About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS.

    Fred said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 04 February 2018 at 08:40 AM
    Babak,

    "they got US to bail them out during WWII" And how would things have worked out had we not done so?

    Fred , 04 February 2018 at 08:46 AM
    David,

    "There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time."

    Yes, that is what appears to be just what is coming to light. I wonder just what position Trey Gowdy is going to have since he won't be running for re-election. The rage from the left is palpable. I'm sure the next outraged guy on the left will know how to shoot straighter than the ones who shot up Congressman Scalise or the concert goers at Mandalay Bay.

    Anna said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 08:48 AM
    "They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with."
    -- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders." Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
    turcopolier , 04 February 2018 at 08:54 AM
    Anna

    The powerful are often remarkably ignorant. pl

    Babak Makkinejad -> Fred... , 04 February 2018 at 10:08 AM
    England preferred NAZI Germany to USSR, this is well known. As to what would have happened, the outcome of the war, in my opinion, did not depend on US participation in the European Theatre. All of Europe would have become USSR satellite or joined USSR.
    jonst said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 04 February 2018 at 11:53 AM
    "unsentimental empirical people"? Absolutely disagree with you. Now the Iranians, they strike me as a singularity unsentimental people. Just general impressions, mind you.
    Kooshy said in reply to catherine... , 04 February 2018 at 12:06 PM
    Yes, US was the first country to proudly deliver Manpads to be used by "rebels" (Mojahadin later Taleban) against USSR in Afghanistan back in 80s. And, as per the architect of support for the rebels (Zbigniew Brzezinski) very proud of it with no regret. With that in mind, I don't see how western politicians, the western governments and their related proxy war planers, will be regretting, even sadden, once god forbid we see passenger planes with loved ones are shot down taking off or landing at various western airports and other places around the word. Just like how superficialy with crocodile tears in their eyes they acted in aftermath of the terrorist events in various western cities in this past 16 years. Gods knows what will happens to us if the opposite side start to supply his own proxies with lethal anti air weapons. "Proudly", I don't think anybody in west cares or will regret of such an escalation.
    Phodges said in reply to turcopolier ... , 04 February 2018 at 12:23 PM
    Sir

    It seems we are being defeated by Cicero's enemy within. Zion is achieving what no one could hope to achieve by force of arms.

    David Habakkuk -> catherine... , 04 February 2018 at 01:17 PM
    catherine,

    In response to comment 5.

    I think it likely that what Meier produces is only a 'limited hangout', and am hoping that when the book arrives it will contain more pointers.

    It is important to be clear that one is often dealing with people playing very complicated double games.

    An interesting document is the 'Petition for Writ of Habeus Corpus' made on behalf of Khodorkovsky's close associate Alexander Konanykhin back in 1997,when the Immigration and Naturalization Service were – apparently at least – cooperating with Russian attempts to get hold of him. An extract:

    'During the immigration hearing FBI SA Robert Levinson, an INS witness, confirmed that in 1992 Petitioner was kidnapped and afterwards pursued by assassins of the Solntsevskaya organized criminal group. This organized criminal group is reportedly the largest and the most influential organized criminal group in Russia, and operates internationally.'

    (See http://defiancethebook.com/legal/habeas/petition.htm .)

    Note the similarities between the 'StratCom' that Khonanykin and his associates were producing in the 'Nineties, and that which Simpson and his associates have been producing two decades later.

    Another useful example is provided by a 2004 item in the 'New American Magazine', reproduced on Konanykhin's website:

    'One of those who testified on behalf of Konanykhine was KGB defector Yuri Shvets, who declared: "I have a firsthand knowledge on similar operations conducted by the KGB." Konanykhine had brought trouble on himself, Shvets continued, when he "started bringing charges against people who were involved with him in setting up and running commercial enterprises. They were KGB people secretly smuggling from Russia hundreds of millions of dollars . This is [a] serious case, and I know that KGB ... desperately wants to win this case, and everybody who won't step to their side would face problems."'

    (See http://konanykhin.com/news/the-konanykhine-case.html .)

    So – 'first hand knowledge', from a Ukrainian nationalist – look at what the Chalupas have been doing, it seems not much has changed.

    For a rather different perspective on what Konanykhin had actually been up to, from someone in whose honesty – if not always judgement – I have complete confidence, see the testimony of Karon von Gerhke-Thompson to the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services hearings on Russian Money Laundering. In this, she described how she had been approached by him in 1993:

    '"Konanykhine alleged that Menatep Bank controlled $1.7bn [£1bn] in assets and investment portfolios of Russia's most prominent political and social elite," she recalled. She said he wanted to move the bank's assets off shore and asked her to help buy foreign passports for its "very, very special clients".

    'In her testimony to the committee Ms Von Gerhke-Thompson said she informed the CIA of the deal, and the agency told her that it believed Mr Konanykhine and Mr Khodorkovsky "were engaged in an elaborate money laundering scheme to launder billions of dollars stolen by members of the KGB and high-level government officials".

    (For a 'Guardian report, see https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/sep/23/julianborger ; for the actual testimony, see http://archives-financialservices.house.gov/banking/92299ger.pdf .)

    Coming back to Steele's 'StratCom', in July 2008, an item appeared on the 'Newnight' programme of the BBC – which some of us think should by then have been rechristened the 'Berezovsky Broadcasting Corporation' – in which the introduction by the presenter, Jeremy Paxman, read as follows:

    'Good evening. The New Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, was all smiles and warm words when he met Gordon Brown today. He said he was keen to resolve all outstanding difficulties between the two countries. Yada yada yada. Gordon Brown smiled, but he must know what Newsnight can now reveal: that MI5 believes the Russian state was involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko by radioactive poisoning. They also believe that without their intervention another London-based Russian, Boris Berezovsky, would have been murdered. Our diplomatic editor, Mark Urban, has this exclusive report.'

    (For the transcript presented in evidence to Owen's Inquiry, see http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/ ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/">http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/ )

    When Urban repeated the claims on his blog, there was a positive eruption from someone using the name 'timelythoughts', about the activities of someone she referred to as 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist' – when I came across this later, it was immediately clear to me that she was Karon von Gerhke, and he was Shvets.

    (For the first part of the exchanges of comments, the second apparently having become unavailable, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/markurban/2008/07/litvinenko_killing_had_state_i.html )

    She then described a visit by Scaramella to Washington, details of which had already been unearthed by my Italian collaborator, David Loepp. Her claim to have e-mails from Shvets, from the time immediately prior to Litvinenko's death, directly contradicting the testimony he had given, fitted with other evidence I had already unearthed.

    Later, we exchanged e-mails over a quite protracted period, and a large amount of material that came into my possession as a result was submitted by me to the Inquest team, with some of it being used in posts on the 'European Tribune' site.

    What I never used publicly, because I could only partially corroborate it from the material she provided, was an extraordinary claim about Shvets:

    'He was responsible for bringing in a Kremlin initiative that was walked Vice President Cheney's office on a US government quid pro quo with the Kremlin FSB SVR involving the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky – a cease and desist on allegations of a politically motivated arrest of Khodorkovsky, violations of rules of law and calls from Russia's expulsion from the G 8 in exchange for favorable posturing of U.S. oil companies on Gazprom's Shtokman project and intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria, all documented in reports I submitted to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and MI6.

    'Berezovsky's DS could not be on both sides on that isle. His Kremlin FSB SVR sources had been vetted by the CIA and by the National Security Council. They proved to be as represented. As we would later learn, however, he was on Berezovsky's payroll at same time. The FSB SVR general he was coordinating the Kremlin initiative through was S. R. Subbotin, the same FSB SVR general who was investigating Berezovsky's money laundering operations in Switzerland during the same timeframe. His FSB SVR sources surrounding Putin were higher than any Lugovoy could have ever hoped to affiliate with.

    'R. James Woolsey (former CIA DCI), Marshall Miller (former law partner of the late CIA DCI William Colby), who I coordinated the Kremlin initiative through that Berezovsky's DS had brought in were shocked to learn that he was affiliated with Berezovsky and Litvinenko. He was in Berezovsky's inner circle and engaged in vetting Russian business with Litvinenko. He operated Berezovsky's Ukraine website, editing and dubbing the now infamous Kuchma tapes throughout the lead up to the elections in the Ukraine. Berezovsky contributed $41 million to Viktor Yushchenko's campaign, which he used in an attempt to force Yushchenko to reunite with Julia Tymoschenko. It failed but would succeed later after Berezovsky orchestrated a public relations initiative through Alan Goldfarb in the U.S. on behalf of Tymoschenko.'

    Having got to know Karon von Gerhke quite well, and also been able to corroborate a great deal of what she told me about many things, and discussed these matters with her, it is absolutely clear to me that she was neither fabricating nor fantasising. What later became apparent, both to her and to me, was that in the 'double game' that Shvets was playing, he had succeeded in fooling her as to the side for which he was working.

    It seems likely however that the reason Shvets could do what he did was that quite precisely that many high-up people in the Kremlin and elsewhere were playing a 'double game.' In this, Karon von Gerhke's propensity for indiscretion – of which I, like others, was both beneficiary and victim – could be useful.

    An exercise in 'positioning', which could be used to disguise the fact that Shvets was indeed 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist', could be used to make it appear that 'intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria' was actually credible.

    This could have been used to try to rescue Cheney, Bush and their associates from the mess they had got into as a result of the failure of the invasion to provide any evidence whatsoever supporting the case which had been made for it. It could also have been used to provide the kind of materials justifying military action against Iran for which Levinson and Jablonski were looking, and for similar action against Syria.

    Among reasons for bringing this up now is that we need to make sense of the paradox that Simpson – clearly in collusion with Steele – was using Mogilevich and the 'Solnsetskaya Bratva' both against Manafort and Trump and against Browder.

    There are various possible explanations for this. I do not want to succumb to my instinctive prejudice that this may have been another piece of 'positioning', similar to what I think was being done with Shvets, but the hypothesis needs to be considered.

    A more general point is that people in Washington and London need to 'wise up' to the kind of world with which they are dealing. This could be done quite enjoyably: reading some of Dashiell Hammett's fictions of the United States in the Prohibition era, or indeed buying DVDs of some of the classics of 'film noir', like 'Out of the Past' (in its British release, 'Build My Gallows High') might be a start.

    Very much of the coverage of affairs in the post-Soviet space since 1991 has read rather as though a Dashiell Hammett story had been rewritten by someone specialising in sentimental children's, or romantic, fiction (although, come to think of it, that is really what Brigid O'Shaughnessy does in 'The Maltese Falcon.')

    The testimony of Glenn Simpson seems a case in point. The sickly sentimentality of these people does, rather often, make one feel as though one wanted to throw up.

    Thomas , 04 February 2018 at 01:24 PM
    "They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040.}

    No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming.

    SmoothieX12 -> Anna... , 04 February 2018 at 01:39 PM
    - If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders." Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.

    My coming book is precisely about that. Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons.

    Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing.

    Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program.

    james said in reply to David Habakkuk ... , 04 February 2018 at 03:01 PM
    there seems to be no shortage of money for these blatant propaganda exercises..
    Babak Makkinejad -> SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 04:14 PM
    I think the failure of Deciders is nothing new - Fath Ali Shah attacking Russia, or the abject failure of the Deciders in 1914. Europe is still not where she was in 1890.
    begob , 04 February 2018 at 05:20 PM
    I read the post and responses early on, so forgive me if this point has been addressed in the meantime. If the memo information on non-disclosure of material evidence to the warrant issuing court is accurate, as soon as that information came to the attention of the authorities (clearly some time ago) there was a duty on them (including the judge(s) who issued the warrants) to have the matter brought back before the court toot sweet. If that had happened it would surely be in the public domain, so on the assumption the prosecutors and maybe even the judge didn't see the need to review the matter, even purely on a contempt/ethics basis, the memo information only seems convincing if the FISA system is a total sham. I really doubt that.
    kooshy said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 06:20 PM
    IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war.

    The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. As I remember that wasn't the case at the end of VN war when i first landed here. At that time even though the war was on the other side of the planet and away from homeland, still people, especially young ones in colleges were paying more attention to the cost of war.

    spy killer , 04 February 2018 at 06:55 PM
    Diana West has uncovered some interesting "Red Threads" (6 part article at dianawest-dot-net) on all the Fusion GPS folks. Seems ole Russian speaking Nellie Ohr got herself a ham radio license recently. Wonder why she would suddenly need one of those? They are all Marxists with potential connections back to Russia.
    English Outsider -> Fatima Manoubia... , 05 February 2018 at 07:23 AM
    Been there. I am also a latecomer to SST. You have to read the back numbers. How? My IT expertise dates from the dawn of the internet and was lamentable then but I find Wayback sometimes allows easier searches than the SST search engine. A straight search on google also allows searches with more than one term. This link -

    https://twitter.com/pat_lang

    - gets you to a chronological list and for recent material is sometimes quicker than fiddling around with search engines. "Categories" on the RH side is useful but then you don't get some very informative comments that cross-refer.

    If those sadly elementary procedures fail resort to the nearest infant. There's a blur of fingers on the keyboard and what you want then usually appears. Never ask them how they did it. They get so fed up when you ask them to explain it again.

    "Who is David Habakkuk?" That's a quantum computer sited, from internal evidence you pick up from time to time, somewhere in the Greater London area. Cross references like you wouldn't believe and over several fields, so maybe he's two quantum computers.

    The "Borg"?. Try Wittgenstein. Likely a prog but you can't be choosy these days. Early on in "Philosophical Investigations" (hope I get this right) he discusses the problem of how you can view as an entity something that has ill-defined or overlapping boundaries. The "Borg" is that "you know it when you see it" sort of thing. A great merit of this site is that the owner and many of the contributors know it from inside.

    In general you may regard your new found site as a microcosm of the great battle that is raging in the West. It's a battle between the (probably apocryphal but adequately stated) Roveian view of reality that regards truth as an adjunct to or as a by-product of ideology and Realpolitik and the objective view of reality as something that is damned difficult to get at, and sometimes impossible, but that has a truth in it somewhere that is independent of the views and convictions of the observer. It's a battle that's never going to be won but unless it tilts back closer to common sense it can certainly be lost and the West with it.

    jonst said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 05 February 2018 at 08:11 AM
    Clearly the Labor Party in the UK preferred the USSR to Nazi Germany. (cepting that short interlude where the Soviets signed the Agreement with Hitler, and the Left Organized Leadership all across Europe, for the most part, lined up with Hitler). But for the most part, Labor was Left.
    Elements (the ones that won out in the end) of the Conservative Party loathed both Hitler and Stalin. An element of the Conservative Party was sympathetic, but only up to a certain point, with the Nazis. This ended in 1939, sept.

    So I don't think it fair, or accurate, to say 'England prefered the Nazis....and even if it not those things, it certainly not "well known", except to the people who have used the false premise to butter their wounds from supporting Stalin in his Pact with Hitler. Or are inclined to bash the British in general.

    Babak Makkinejad -> jonst... , 05 February 2018 at 08:29 AM
    All right, perhaps I should have said "The English Government". Google "Litvinov", you may discover how the English Government pushed Stalin to make a deal with Hitler to buy USSR time.
    Sid Finster said in reply to Jack... , 05 February 2018 at 10:26 AM
    Witness the infamous State Department protest memo calling for more war on Syria.

    The State Department employees that signed that memo were sure that HRC would win and that their diligent work in pushing the Deep State agenda would sure be rewarded.

    Since entering office, Trump appears to have taken the line that if he gives the Deep State everything it demands, he will be allowed to remain in office, even if he is not allowed to remain in power.

    Sid Finster said in reply to David Habakkuk ... , 05 February 2018 at 10:31 AM
    Explain Marshall Miller's role in this, please. He is someone I know quite well. I also know one of the Chalupas.
    begob said in reply to jonst... , 05 February 2018 at 10:56 AM
    jonst That's broadly accurate, but specifically Attlee brought the motion of no confidence in Chamberlain, which the conservative appeasers won but which led to Churchill's opportunity. Attlee was essential in cabinet to Churchill's resistance after the retreat of the BEF.
    turcopolier , 05 February 2018 at 11:18 AM
    FM
    What are you doing here? You said you dislike the military. Are you really in the Spanish Basque country? Bilbao maybe? break - David Habakkuk is a private scholar of the Litvinenko murder and Soviet/Russian politics and intelligence affairs. His surname comes from Wales where in the 18th (?) Century the ancestral village were all "chapel" and changed their surnames to Old Testament names. His father was master of one of the Cambridge colleges and David is himself a graduate of Cambridge. pl
    Babak Makkinejad -> Fatima Manoubia... , 05 February 2018 at 11:19 AM
    Yes, I am Iranian. All "Babak"s are Iranians - except some obscure ones that are Rus - Babakov.
    Anna , 05 February 2018 at 02:07 PM
    The hard, blinding truth: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/05/will-conspiracy-trump-american-democracy-go-unpunished/
    "In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
    Thomas said in reply to turcopolier ... , 05 February 2018 at 02:08 PM
    Colonel,

    This troll showed up recently at b's place doing the same accusations. There is group that is running sacred and pulling out all the stops in "info ops" side of the spectrum. The damn fools don't or, most probably, won't get thru their thick heads and even thicker hearts that it is a failed strategy that turns bystanders into their opponents.

    Richardstevenhack , 05 February 2018 at 02:36 PM
    Here for your edification is the definitive analysis of the GOP memo by Alexander Mercouris over at The Duran.

    And it is a masterpriece - and quite long, possibly his longest analysis of anything so far. He buries the counterarguments being passed around by the Democratic opposition and the anti-Trump media.

    Mercouris writes on legal affairs alongside his foreign policy stuff and he writes with a lawyer's precision. And in this article he points out that the GOP memo is writter as a legal document - probably by Trey Gowdy - with additional political insertions by Nunes. So it should properly be referred to as the "GOP memo" or the "Gowdy memo", not the Nunes memo."

    Why this is important is that the GOP memo is basically written as a defense lawyer would in contesting a case -- this case being the FISA warrant application. Which means its orientation is proving failure to disclose relevant and material information to the FISA court and in some cases rising to the point of contempt of court.

    Seriously, read this! The whole thing!

    Rampant abuse and possible contempt of Court: what you need to know about the GOP memo
    http://theduran.com/rampant-abuse-contempt-court-analysis-gop-memorandum/

    blue peacock , 05 February 2018 at 03:25 PM
    Sen Grassley releases memo heavily redacted by DOJ/FBI.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-05/grassley-graham-blast-fbi-censoring-memo-calling-criminal-probe-trump-dossier

    "Seeking transparency and cooperation should not be this challenging," Grassley said in a statement after posting a heavily redacted version of the criminal referral that he and GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sent to the Justice Department last month. " The government should not be blotting out information that it admits isn't secret. "

    I suppose DOJ/FBI believe that by obstructing, stalling and obfuscating they can buy time and that the Republicans in Congress will get tired of the games and go home. This seems like a pretty straightforward memo, highlighting the discrepancy between Steele's court filings and the FBI's version of Steele's discussions with them. Grassley is pointing out that either Steele or the FBI is lying.

    What is interesting is the difference in process and ability between the House & Senate. The House can release their memos on its own, even if not declassified by the Executive, whereas the Senate requires the Executive to declassify it's memos that are based on classified documents.

    turcopolier , 05 February 2018 at 04:38 PM
    FM

    We have not had a self declared communist on SST before although LeaNder in her youth may have come close to that exalted status. You might want to read the wiki on me and the CV I have posted on the blog to avoid tedious accusations of this or that. I am thought by some to have some knowledge of the ME so please do not try to lecture me about how much you love the Arabs. I speak their language and have lived with them for a long time. There are people who write to SST who are pro-Trump and some who are anti-Trump. I seek a mixture of views so long as personal insult and invective are eschewed. Personally, I do not belong to a political party and would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.

    Trump is the constitutionally and legally elected president of the United States. Your descriptors with regard to him are, in my opinion, only plausible if seen from the point of view of various kinds of leftist including Marxist-Leninists like you. You sound very smug and self-satisfied but we will see if you can have an open mind at all. pl

    Kooshy said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 05 February 2018 at 04:46 PM
    Found him, Ali Babacan XVPM, XFM and M of finance. Yes god forbid, if he is a decendent of Ardisher Babakan and another claimant to Iranian throne, which CIA and Soros can jump on.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Babacan MBA from Northeestern
    blue peacock , 05 February 2018 at 04:55 PM
    ...would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.

    Aye. Aye. Sir!

    +1

    That is why some of us believe the Patriot Act and FISA are both unpatriotic and unconstitutional. SCOTUS disagrees with the few of us.

    Babak Makkinejad -> Fatima Manoubia... , 05 February 2018 at 05:03 PM
    I do not believe Trump is a misogynists - he stated publicly that he likes beautiful women. I also do not think he is a racist. I think he is the first US leader in many decades who has been willing to publicly talk about US problems. For most other US politicians - they largely live in "the best of all possible worlds".
    English Outsider , 05 February 2018 at 06:31 PM
    Colonel - sincere apologies if my comment above disrupted the discussion on a fascinating article.

    David Habakkuk - I should say that "Quantum Computer" referred solely to the ability to gather and collate great amounts of material. It's an ability I admire. On Steele, you are among other things setting out something that is unfamiliar to me though not to most others here, I imagine, and that is the milieu in which he is or was working as a UK Intelligence operative. That you have also done in previous articles; it doesn't seem to be a particularly savoury milieu. As far as Steele's US activities are concerned, from you I'm not getting the picture of a lone operative, all ties with MI6 neatly severed, working solo in the States on some chance assignment in 2016. I'm getting the picture of someone still very much in the swim and selected because of that.

    The only problem with that second picture is the dossier, or the 30% or so of it - what Comey, I think it was, described as "salacious and unverified". Surely that's got to be amateur night. Not something that a practised professional working with other professionals would put his hand to. Does that not support the picture of an ex-operative who's gone off the rails and is fumbling around unsupervised?

    The Steele affair touched a nerve. One is always I suppose aware that IC professionals are getting up to all sorts and it doesn't seem improbable that "all sorts" includes political stuff and smear campaigns. But it's not heaps of corpses in Syria or farm boys being sent to certain death in the Ukraine. And even within the UK Intelligence Community and their contractors or whatever they're called, compared with what our IC people have done in the ME or compared with what one fears Hamish de Bretton Gordon might have got himself involved in, Christopher Steele's just a choirboy. Nevertheless there's something deeply repellent about what he did. Whatever your view of Trump there he was, newly elected, obviously wanting to make a go of it, and already faced with difficulties. Then some chancer throws "Golden Showers" in his face and makes his position, not maybe for the insiders but for the general public, that bit more untenable.

    So from a UK perspective the question of whether Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK becomes important. If he was truly working solo then that from a UK point of view is regrettable but one of those things. In that case MI6 would just have to tighten up its controls on what ex-operatives get up to, put out the appropriate disclaimers, and that's the end of it as far as the UK is concerned. But if Golden Showers and the rest of it was a "Welcome Mr President" from UK IC professionals as a group then those professionals should be hung drawn and quartered together with whoever set them on.

    I've read your article several times now and apart from the fact that much of what you pull together isn't material I'm up on, it doesn't seem to me that you're definitely coming to one conclusion or the other. There are many more facts to come out so perhaps this question is premature, but do you think Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK or was he, at least as far as the UK is concerned, working solo?

    kooshy , 05 February 2018 at 07:49 PM
    Most Iranian females Named Fatima/ Fatimah after prophet' daughter, call themselves Fati, and if they are of aristocrat type, they are called Bibi Fati Khanam, which is honorable lady Fati and if they are westernized they become Fay or Fifi.
    turcopolier , 05 February 2018 at 07:59 PM
    EO

    Much of your commentary seems directed to David Habakkuk and PT rather than I. I don't think the FBI would have started to pay him until he left UK service. pl

    English Outsider , 06 February 2018 at 05:10 AM
    Colonel - Further apologies - I should have submitted comment 79 as two items.

    Yes, the question about Steele was in response to DH's article. The UK side of the affair is I suppose only a small part of the question you and your Committee are examining but it's a dubious part however one looks at it. Although it's early days yet I was hoping DH, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the UK intelligence scene, might feel able to cast more light on that UK side.

    English Outsider -> Cortes... , 06 February 2018 at 05:53 AM
    Cortes - " ... where, exactly, do you expect the great public to look beyond the initial scabrously defamatory storytelling about the "golden showers"? "

    I don't think one can expect the public, at least in the UK, to look very far beyond the initial scandal. The investigations and enquiries presently under way in the US are complex and are taking place in a different system. This member of the UK public wouldn't be able to give you a coherent account of those enquiries and I doubt many of my fellows could.

    So we have to take on trust, most of us, what we're told. As far as I can tell the underlying theme from the BBC and the media is generally that Trump is subverting the American Justice system in order to ensure his own misdemeanours aren't investigated.

    Some of us take that as gospel. Others of us assume that the politicians and the media are untrustworthy and ignore them. I doubt many of us go into much more detail than that. Therefore the original story will stick in our minds.

    But for some in the UK there are questions in there as well. How come the UK got mixed up in all this? How much did the UK get mixed up in it?

    David Habakkuk -> Sid Finster... , 06 February 2018 at 06:19 AM
    Sid Finster,

    In response to comment 53.

    When I belatedly started looking at the Litvinenko mystery, as a result of a strange email provoked by comments of mine on SST which arrived in my inbox in March 2007 from someone who turned out to be a key protagonist, it was rather obvious that improvised and chaotic 'StratCom' operations had been put into place on both the Russian and British sides to cover up what had happened.

    A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella.

    When I started delving, I came across some very interesting pieces on Scaramella and related matters posted on the 'European Tribune' website by a Rome-based blogger using the name 'de Gondi' in the period after the story broke.

    His actual name is David Loepp, by profession he is an artisan jeweller specialising in ancient and traditional goldsmith techniques, and I already knew and respected his work from his contributions to the transnational internet investigation into the Niger uranium forgeries – an earlier MI6 clusterf**ck.

    So in May 2008 I posted a longish piece on that site, setting out the problems with the evidence about the Litvinenko case as I saw them, in the hope of reactivating his interest. This paid off in spades, when he linked to, and translated a key extract from, the request from Italian prosecutors to use wiretaps of conversations with Senator Paolo Guzzanti in connection with their prosecution of Scaramella for 'aggravated calumny.'

    The request, which up to not so long ago was freely available on the website of the Italian Senate, was denied, but the extensive summaries of the transcripts provided a lot of material.

    (This initial post by me, and later posts by me on that site, are at http://www.eurotrib.com/user/uid:1857/diary. Three posts David Loepp and I produced jointly in December 2012, which have a lot on Scaramella and Shvets, are on his page there, at http://www.eurotrib.com/user/de%20Gondi/diary .)

    The extract from the wiretap request which David Loepp posted, which like Litvinenko's letter containing the claims he and Yuri Shvets had concocted about Putin using Mogilevich to attempt to supply Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb' is dated 1 December 2005, contains key pointers to the conspiracy. It concludes:

    'A passage on Simon Moghilevic and an agreement between the camorra to search for nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War to be consigned to Bin Laden, a revelation made by the Israeli. According to Scaramella the circle closes: camorra, Moghilevic- Russian mafia- services- nuclear bombs in Naples.'

    Subsequent conversations make clear that Scaramella left on 6 December 2005 for Washington, on a trip where he was to meet Shvets. The summary of a report on this to Guzzanti reads:

    '12) conversation that took place on number [omissis] on December 18, 2005, at 9:41:51 n. 1426, containing explicit references to the authenticity of the declarations of Alexander Litvinenko acquired by Scaramella, to the trustworthiness of the affirmations made by Scaramella in his reports to the commission and to the meetings Scaramella had with Talik after having denounced them [presumably Talik and his alleged accomplices]. (They can talk with HEIMS thanks to the help of MILLER. SHVEZ says that he had been a companion of CARLOS at the academy; SHVEZ has already made declarations and is willing to continue collaboration. Guzzanti warns that a document in Russian arrived in commission in which the name of SCARAMELLA appears several times, these [sic] say that directives to the contrary had been given to Litvinenko. Scaramella says that he went to the meeting with TALIK in the company of two treasury [police] and a cop, Talik spoke of a person from the Ukrainian GRU who would be willing to talk and a strange Chechen ring in Naples. Assassination attempt against the pope, CASAROLI was a Soviet agent.)'

    The summary of a later conversation also refers to 'MILLER':

    'conversation that took place on number [omissis] on January 13, 2006, at 11:22:11 n. 2287, containing references to Scaramella's sources in relation to facts referred in the Commission, the means by which they were obtained by Scaramella from declarations made abroad, the role of Litvinenko, also on the occasion of declarations made by third parties and the credibility of the news and theses given by Scaramella to the commission (Scaramella reads a text in English on the relation between the KGB and PRODI. Guzzanti asks if its credibility can be confirmed and if the taped declarations can be backed up; Scaramella answers that there were two testimonies, Lou Palumbo and Alexander (Litvinenko), and that the registration made in London at the beginning of the assignment [Scaramella's?] had been authenticated by a certain BAKER of the FBI. As he translates the text from English, Scaramella notes that the person testifying does not say he knows Prodi but only that he thinks that Prodi ...; all those who worked for the person testifying in Scandinavia said that Prodi was "theirs." The affair in Rimini, Bielli is preparing the battle in Rimini. Meetings with MILLER for the three things that are needed. Polemic about Pollari over the pressure exerted on Gordievski.)'

    In the exchanges on my May 2008 post, I mentioned and linked to some extraordinary comments on a crucial article by Edward Jay Epstein, in which Karon von Gerhke claimed that his sceptical account fitted with what her contacts in the British investigation had told her. When that July I came across her equally extraordinary claims in response to the BBC's Mark Urban piece of stenography – which Steele may also have had a hand in organising – I found she was referring to precisely that visit to Washington by Scaramella which had been described in the wiretap request.

    As you can perhaps imagine, the fact that 'Miller' had featured in the conversations with Guzzanti both as a key contact, who could introduce Scaramella to Aldrich Ames (which is who 'Heims' clearly is), and with whom there had been meetings about 'the three things that are needed' made me inclined to take seriously what Karon von Gerhke said about his role.

    In December 2008, I put up another post on 'European Tribune', putting together the material from David Loepp and that from Karon von Gerhke – but not discussing the references to 'Miller.' As I had hoped, this led to her getting in touch.

    Among the material with which she supplied me, which I in turn supplied to the Solicitor to the Inquest, were covers of faxes to John Rizzo, then Acting General Counsel of the CIA. From a fax dated 23 October 2005.

    'John: See attached email to Chuck Patrizia. Berezovsky alleges he is in possession of a copy of a classified file given to the CIA by Russia's FSB, which he further alleges the CIA disseminated to British, French, Italian and Israeli intelligence agencies implicating him in business associations with the Mafia and to ties with terrorist organizations. Yuri Shvets was authorised/directed by Berezovsky to raise the issue with Bud McFarlane scheduled for Thursday. McFarlane is unaware the issue will be raised with him.'

    From a fax dated 7 November 2005:

    'John: I am attaching an email exchange between Yuri Shvets and me re: 1) article he published on his Ukraine website on alleged sale of nuclear choke to Iran, which I reproached him on as having been planted by Berezovsky and 2 the alleged FSB/CIA document file that Berezovsky obtained from Scaramella, which Yuri acknowledges in his e-mail to me. Like extracting wisdom teeth to get him to put anything on paper, especially in an e-mail! [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is the source McFarlane referred Yuri to re: Berezovsky's visa issue. She proposed meeting Berezovsky in London. Alleged it would take a year to clear up USG issues and even then could not guarantee him a visa. She too has access to USG intelligence on Berezovsky. Open book.'

    From a fax dated 5 December 2005:

    'John. From Mario Scaramella to Yuri Shvets to my ears, the DOJ has authorised Mario Scaramella to interview Aldrich Ames with regard to members of the Italian Intelligence Service agent recruited by Ames for the KGB. Scaramella, as you may recall, is who gave Boris Berezovsky's aide, a former FSB Colonel [LITVINENKO – DH], that alleged document number to the FSB file that the CIA disseminated on Berezovsky – a file that Bud McFarlane's "Madam Visa" [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is alleged is totting off to London for a meeting with Berezovsky, who has agreed to retain her re: his visa issue. Quid pro quo's with Berezovsky and Scaramella on the CIA agent currently facing kidnapping charges for the rendition of the Muslim cleric? Scott Armstrong has a most telling file on Scaramella. Not a single redeeming quality.'

    In the course of very extensive exchanges with Karon von Gerhke subsequently, we had some rather acute disagreements. It was unfortunate that her filing was a shambles – a crucial hard disk failed without a backup, and the 'hard copies' appeared to be in a chaotic state.

    However, the only occasion when I can recall having reason to believe that was deliberately lying to me was when David Loepp unearthed a cache of documentation including the full Italian text of the letter from Litvinenko containing the 'StratCom' designed to suggest that Putin had attempted to supply a 'mini nuclear bomb' to Al Qaeda. Having been asked to keep this between ourselves for the time being, Karon insisted on immediately sending it to her contacts in Counter Terrorism Command, and then produced bogus justifications.

    Time and again, moreover, I found that I could confirm statements that she made – see for example the two posts I put up on the legal battles following the death in February 2008 of Berezovsky's long-term partner Arkadi 'Badri' Patarkatsishvili in June and July 2009, which were based on careful corroboration of what she told me.

    (I should also say that I acquired the greatest respect for her courage.)

    And while Owen and his team suppressed all the evidence from her, and almost all of that from David Loepp, which I had I provided to them, the dossier about Berezovsky is described in a statement made by Litvinenko in Tel Aviv in April 2006, presented in evidence in the Inquiry.

    (See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence">http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

    Other evidence, moreover, strongly inclines me to believe that there were overtures for a 'quid pro quo', purporting to come from Putin, but that this was a ruse orchestrated by Berezovsky.

    Part of the purpose of this would almost certainly have been to supply probably bogus 'evidence' about arms sales in the Yeltsin years to Iraq, Iran and Syria. Moreover, I think there was an article on the second 'Fifth Element' site run by Shvets about the supposed sale of a nuclear 'choke' – whatever that is – to Iran.

    The likelihood of the involvement of elements in the FBI in these shenanigans seems to quite high, given what has already emerged about the activities of Levinson. Also relevant may be the fact that the 'declaration' which was part of the attempt to frame Romano Prodi was authenticated, in London, by 'a certain BAKER of the FBI.')

    Babak Makkinejad -> David Habakkuk ... , 06 February 2018 at 09:40 AM
    Thank you David Habakkuk. Truly sordid and deplorable. WWIII to be initiated on basis of lies.
    Jack , 06 February 2018 at 12:06 PM
    David

    You may already know this but Steele was a no show in a UK court for a deposition on the libel suit.

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/05/christopher-steele-is-no-show-in-london-court-in-civil-case-over-dossier.amp.html

    Babak Makkinejad -> David Habakkuk ... , 06 February 2018 at 01:18 PM
    I know something of spectroscopy. The critical issue here is the provenance of the samples and not the sophistication of the techniques used in the analysis itself or its instrumentation. The paragraph that you have quoted:

    "To figure out signatures based on various synthetic routes and conditions, Chipuk says that the synthetic chemists on his team will make the same chemical threat agent as many as 2,000 times in an ..." reeks of intellectual intimidation - trying to brow-beat any skeptic by the size of one's instrument - as it were."

    And then there is a little matter of confidence level in any of the analysis - such things are normally based on prior statistics - which did not and could not exist in this situation.

    LeaNder , 07 February 2018 at 09:16 AM
    David, it's no doubt interesting to watch how attention on Victor Ivanov in another deficient inquiry on the British Isles, was managed in that inquiry. If I may, since he pops up again in the Steele dossier. You take what's available? Is that all there is to know?

    I know its hard to communicate basics if you are deeply into matters. Usually people prefer to opt out. It's getting way too complicated for them to follow. You made me understand this experience. But isn't this (fake) intelligence continuity "via" Yuri Svets what connects your, no harm meant I do understand your obsession with the case, with what we deal with now in the Steele Dossier? Again, one of the most central figures is Ivanov.

    Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear.

    By the way, babbling mode, I found your Tom Mangold transcription. It felt it wasn't there on the link you gave. I used the date, and other search terms. Maybe I am wrong. Haven't looked at what the judge ruled out of the collection. Yes, cozy session/setting.

    According to Google search there are no other links then your articles here:
    http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613093555/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/04/HMG000513wb.pdf ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/04/HMG000513wb.pdf">http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613093555/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/04/HMG000513wb.pdf

    **********

    JAN RICHARD BÆRUG
    The Collapsing Wall. Hybrid Journalism. A Comparative Study of Newspapers and Magazines in Eight Countries in Europe

    Available online. Haven't read it yet, but journalism as hidden public relations transfer belt would be one of my minor obsessions. ...

    Babak Makkinejad -> turcopolier ... , 07 February 2018 at 11:23 AM
    I wonder too; their command of the English idiom is very au currant - noticed "opt in/opt out" reference? Too American.

    They clearly are not native speakers of German.

    LeaNder said in reply to kooshy... , 07 February 2018 at 12:30 PM
    why California, Kooshy #18? California among other things left this verbal trace, since I once upon time thought a luggage storage in SF might be free/available now: this is my home, lady.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish_Island#Economy

    Tourists from many -- but not all -- foreign nations wishing to enter Kish Free Zone from legal ports are not required to obtain any visa prior to travel. For those travelers, upon-arrival travel permits are stamped valid for 14 days by Kish officials.

    Who are the not all? Can we assume Britain is not one of those? The German link is different. How about the Iranian? or isn't this the Kish we are talking about?

    LeaNder said in reply to LeaNder... , 07 February 2018 at 01:14 PM
    correcting myself #94:

    another Ivanov. I struggled with names (...) in Russian crime novels, admittedly. But that's long ago from times Russian crime and Russian money flows and rogues getting hold of its nuclear material surfaced more often in Europe. 90s

    I see Sergei seems to share my interest in the literary genre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Ivanov#Personal

    [Apr 22, 2019] Current Neo-McCarthyism hysteria as a smoke screen of the UK and the USA intent to dominate European geopolitics and weaken Russia and Germany

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... North Stream is a problem as the goal is to economically weaken Russia, tie the EU to the USA via energy supplies and support our new client state -- Ukraine. ..."
    "... But this is also related to attempts to prevent/weaken the alliance of Russia and China. As geopolitical consequences of this alliance for the USA-led neoliberal empire are very bad ..."
    Jul 24, 2018 | angrybearblog.com

    likbez , July 24, 2018 12:23 am

    @run75441 July 23, 2018 2:02 pm

    Best bet is for Russia to want to trade with the US and Europe. The gas pipeline will not be enough leverage on Germany as it provides 9% of their needs.

    Yes. And that's against the USA interests (or more correctly the US-led neoliberal empire interests). North Stream is a problem as the goal is to economically weaken Russia, tie the EU to the USA via energy supplies and support our new client state -- Ukraine.

    As you know, nothing was proven yet in Russiagate (and DNC hacks looks more and more like a false flag operation, especially this Guccifer 2.0 personality ), but sanctions were already imposed. And when the US government speaks "Russia" in most cases they mean "China+Russia" ;-). Russia is just a weaker link in this alliance and, as such, it is attacked first. Russiagate is just yet another pretext after MH17, Magnitsky and such.

    To me the current Anti-Russian hysteria is mainly a smokescreen to hide attempt to cement cracks in the façade of the USA neoliberal society that Trump election revealed (including apparent legitimization of ruling neoliberal elite represented by Hillary).

    And a desperate attempt to unite the society using (false) war propaganda which requires demonization of the "enemy of the people" and neo-McCarthyism.

    But this is also related to attempts to prevent/weaken the alliance of Russia and China. As geopolitical consequences of this alliance for the USA-led neoliberal empire are very bad (for example, military alliance means the end of the USA global military domination; energy alliance means that is now impossible to impose a blockade on China energy supplies from Middle East even if Iran is occupied)

    In this sense the recent descent into a prolonged fit of vintage Cold War jingoistic paranoia is quite understandable. While, at the same time, totally abhorrent. My feeling is that unless Russia folds, which is unlikely, the side effects/externalities of this posture can be very bad for the USA. In any case, the alliance of Russia and China which Obama administration policies forged spells troubles to the global neoliberal empire dominated by the USA.

    Trump rejection of existing forms of neoliberal globalization is one sign that this process already started and some politicians already are trying to catch the wind and adapt to a "new brave world" by using preemptive adjustments.

    Which is why all this Trump-Putin summit hysteria is about.

    Neither hard, nor soft neoliberals want any adjustments. They are ready to fight for the US-led neoliberal empire till the last American (excluding, of course, themselves and their families)

    [Apr 22, 2019] On Contact: Russiagate Mueller Report with Aaron Mate

    That's a great interview that summarizes Russiagate in a very assessable way. This is exactly repetition of Iraq WDM and subsequent cover up. The consequence is a new higher level of discreditation of neoliberal MSM, at least by Trump supporters They will just ignore those bottomfeeders like Clapper and Brennan.
    Endemic of Russophobia is the biggest net result of Russiagate. This is also a big election gift to Trump.
    The Deep State did not view Trump as a reliable steward of neoliberal empire and that's why Russiagate was unleashed. And Trump is an embarrassment to the empire, no questions about it.
    MadCow spend two year rabidly promoting Russiagate nonsense and she still has her job. That's suggest whom she serves. In other cased she would be discarded like used condom.
    Apr 20, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    Chris Hedges discusses with Nation reporter Aaron Mate how despite the categorical statement in Robert Mueller's report that Donald Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia, the conspiracy theories by the nation's mainstream media show little sign of diminishing.

    Find RT America in your area: http://rt.com/where-to-watch/
    Or watch us online: http://rt.com/on-air/rt-america-air/

    Like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/RTAmerica
    Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/RT_America Category News & Politics

    Amy Marie , 1 day ago

    Keep up the awesome work Aaron on RT

    S Douglas , 1 day ago

    It's great to see some non-propagandist journalism.

    Tertiary Adjunct , 1 day ago (edited)

    RT, give Aaron a show.

    Dan Harris , 1 day ago

    Aaron Mate is the absolute perfect foil to Jimmy when he is on the Jimmy Dore show. It is hilarious.

    NPC Junk Ogre, TYT Head NPC , 1 day ago

    We're all still waiting for MSDNC to bring on Aaron, Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Michael Tracey and others on any of their programs. MSDNC has not had on one single lefty who got this fraudulent and disgraceful Stalinesque political investigation right from day one since December of 2016. Not one.

    MrB1923 , 1 day ago

    THIS is journalism. EVERYTHING else is propaganda.

    Eric Disegno , 1 day ago (edited)

    Two of the greatest journalists in Real News! Thank You RT!!!

    J.L. Goodman , 1 day ago

    I've got to admit, I get a massive dopamine rush hearing these two sane, intelligent,critical thinkers, skillfully dissect this convoluted quadrafuck that has wasted some much of our precious time. I literally feel washed clean for a moment.

    Scott Turner , 1 day ago (edited)

    Thanks for this. Aaron Maté and Chris Hedges keep many people somewhat sane in an insane media world. Depressed, but at least somewhat sane. lol

    Mike2020able , 1 day ago

    Chomsky : ' Israel ,not Russia, interferes With US Election '

    [Apr 22, 2019] Mueller Report Brings Into Focus Obama s Attempted Coup Against Trump

    Notable quotes:
    "... Americans should be marching in the streets at this attempted coup but we are so doped with mindless entertainment that we no longer care. We are becoming a system where as long as you don't challenge the 2 party system you are allowed your freedom to make money and to say whatever you want so long as it doesn't have consequences. ..."
    Apr 10, 2019 | community.oilprice.com

    shadowkin , 04/10/2019 01:49 AM

    The irony of the Mueller investigation that was demanded by Democrats because they thought it would show Trump colluded with Russia to win the Presidency is that it has blown up in their faces by exposing in greater detail how Obama and the Deep State attempted first, to throw an election in favor of one candidate, Hillary Clinton, and second, attempted a coup once Trump was elected via investigations and false claims.

    Once Trump won the election, the Deep State used their accomplices in the msm to convince the American public that Donald J Trump stole the election with the collaboration of the Russians. In this way they sought to remove him by impeachment.

    It turns out the Deep State were the ones who were acting as agents of Russia seeking to tear America apart.

    Consider:

    • John Brennan, Obama's CIA director, by his own admission, played a key role in instigating the investigation of Trump before the election. In the aftermath of the election Brennan has repeatedly called Trump a traitor on social media and old media.
    • We now know in August 2016 Brennan gave a private briefing to Sen. Harry Reid. Subsequently, Reid sent a letter to the FBI which included info that clearly came from the now infamous dossier, manufactured by ex-British spy Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS contractor. This dossier would later be included in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application that was used to justify investigations into Trump, his campaign, and his family. It now appears very likely Brennan later lied under oath that he did not know who commissioned the dossier.
    • This dossier was originally funded by none other than Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.
    • Since the conclusion of the Mueller report has come out Brennan, probably fearing an investigation into his actions pre/post election, now says he had "bad information". A more accurate description might be that he was willfully spreading disinformation to bring down a President.
    • James Comey himself described this dossier as "salacious" and "unverified" yet he did not bother to have the FBI attempt to verify the contents of the dossier.
    • This didn't stop Comey from lying 4 times to the FISA court that ex-British spy Steele was the source of an article by "journalist" Isikoff, which was used to corroborate claims in his own dossier. So Comey, in essence, told the FISA court that the Steele dossier had been corroborated by Steele.
    • Some background: Steele also worked for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. So the only person who had any verifiable evidence of working with the Russians in any capacity is an ex-British spy, contracted to manufacture a false dossier on behalf of Hillary Clinton to smear Trump and later weaponized to impeach Trump after he won the election.
    • Comey lied to the FISA court so he could obtain, as he did, a warrant to spy on Carter Page (Trump staffer) and the Trump family during the election. Moreover, in addition to Comey, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe, and former Attorney General Sally Yates were required to sign off on the FISA warrant application. They are either incompetent or were engaged in a conspiracy but regardless, this was a fraud on the FISA court.
    • Bruce Ohr, a senior official at the time at the Justice Department, acted as a middleman between the FBI and Steele. He passed along information from his wife Nellie Ohr, also a Fusion GPS contractor like Steele , with, presumably, unverified and false info regarding Trump and his campaign.
    • The FBI later terminated Steele's relationship as a confidential informant with them after he revealed this relationship to the press. However, for up to 1.5 years after, Bruce Ohr continued to act as middleman between Steele and the FBI, even after Mueller took over the investigation .

    Americans should be marching in the streets at this attempted coup but we are so doped with mindless entertainment that we no longer care. We are becoming a system where as long as you don't challenge the 2 party system you are allowed your freedom to make money and to say whatever you want so long as it doesn't have consequences.

    Any more details of Mueller's report due to be released by AG Barr are likely to reveal more of the rotted core of the Deep State and their machinations and not, as Democrats think, damaging info about Trump.

    [Apr 22, 2019] Decades long image of MI6. Apparently MI6 it is not populated with the high IQ, highly educated professionals any more. They average intelligence careerists who cannot play on international stage. In case of Skripals poisoning the script is poor, directing mediocre, inconsistencies and deep holes in story negate logics

    Apr 22, 2019 | www.youtube.com
    Darko Fius, 1 month ago

    Decades long "image" of London's spy school fall spectacularly apart, apparently it is not populated with the high IQ, highly educated brass any more, average intelligence however cannot play on international stage, script is poor, directing mediocre, inconsistencies and deep holes in story negate logics...

    it is time that London joins Washington, hand in hand, like lowers to seek fortunes elsewhere, the prey is still to be found in oligarchs of Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Romania and the like places with spineless political caricatures.

    Go London go...there is no fortune for you in EU...and by now you stench of your morals and ethics reaches shores of smallest island on GMT+12 time scale.

    [Apr 22, 2019] Zacharova On the "Dead Cat" Strategy West Now Relies on Absurdist Bait and Switch Tactics!

    Mar 08, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    Subscribe to Vesti News https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa8M...

    It's been a year since the Salisbury incident. We still don't have the investigative conclusion. We don't know who's responsible and how exactly the Skripals were poisoned or if they were even poisoned at all. But international relations sure were poisoned. It appears that our ambassador to Britain, the esteemed Alexander Yakovenko is a spy decorated with military medals.

    Leon Allan Davis , 1 month ago

    Why don't the Russians just lay out the facts of the story as told by the British? The Brits story is so stupid it makes zero sense... According to the British media Skripal and his daughter came into contact with "military grade" Novichok nerve agent and both survived... Even though they said a tiny drop can be fatal... The poor woman who did die was a homeless drug addict. Supposedly, her boyfriend found a bottle of "perfume" in a "perfume box" that was in a trash receptacle. The boyfriend retrieved it from the waste bin and gave it to to the unfortunate woman. She died. According to the British government, Russian spies put the Novichok in the perfume bottle and planted the bottle in the trash bin so the boyfriend would find it... Personally, I blame the death of the homeless woman on a "false flag" operation run by British intelligence. Someone had to die. Why not an "expendable"? Meanwhile, the Skripals remain under house arrest, cut off from the outside world... And no one in the British media has asked to talk to them. No one.

    08x840234 , 1 month ago

    The British story about the Skripals is falling apart. First we were told an off duty police officer found them. Then we are told that an off duty nurse helped the police officer. Then it was the off duty nurse that found them and was helped by the police officer. Then it was the daughter of the off duty nurse that found them. Then the off duty nurse turned out to be Britain's highest ranking female military medic. Then we are told the police officer never attended them and had been sent to their house the following day. This week the local TV news channel (BBC Points West) interviewed a woman that said SHE was the first one to find the Skripals who were alone on the bench frothing at the mouth. She claims she walked over and was going to phone an ambulance when a female police officer arrived. Then the female police officer was interviewed and stated she was driving her police van and was the first on scene after someone had phoned them for help. She also stated that although she didn't know what was wrong with the Skripals, she thought the vomit on the ground was suspicious and requested a Hazmat team in full protective gear to remove the vomit.

    anirudh mathur , 1 month ago

    Happy women day Mrs zakharhova

    Kostas K , 1 month ago

    Maria is an intelligent in a very high level, fiery and articulate. The British political system would trade at least half of their politicians for one of her.

    KnightInShiningASMR , 1 month ago

    Vladimir,can you find out if England has just set up Ireland by sending someone there and having them post flammable packages back to England? The addresses were so vague that they should have alerted someone in the postal service,especially since England is on high alert for terror attacks.That says to me that the government knew they were coming.ISIS would claim responsibility for a silent fart in a packed room.No-one in Ireland has claimed responsibility for the packages,probably because it's "highly likely" that England has set up Ireland.If the Brits are found to be behind it,like black people and Israeli's have been caught out spraying racist graffiti against themselves,Salisbury will be even more questionable.Elliot Abrams shipped arms in "aid" convoys,so now no-one believes the aid to Venezuela isn't hiding weapons.What have the filthy Brits been caught doing in recent years that would make them look guilty like Elliot Abrams?

    Terry Bromley , 1 month ago

    Terry F Bromley, Brilliant, Maria Zacharova just smashing we look after her

    johnrb88 , 1 month ago

    Maria Zacharova may be simply too decent a human being to realise that the west is run by a mafia-like cabal that cares not a jot for their own peoples, let alone those in foreign realms. She looks for logical explanations that might account for actions, but needs to face the reality that monumental greed and corruption have hollowed out all corridors of power in western governments. Any semblance of an unbiased independent media went extinct a long time ago, replaced by well placed operatives from the intelligence agencies, who manage a vast array of pseudo "journalists". The western puppet regimes are simply useful idiots who obey instructions, they sell themselves for money and privilege. In other words, traitors to the people who put them in office. Those public officials and politicians who perhaps had a shred of integrity get eliminated, or compromised by indiscretions that are held over them, or by simple intimidation tactics -- the classic "carrot and stick" method. Russians lifted themselves from the disastrous days of "perestroika" and have restored their nation to near normalcy. The west may at some point do the same, but it will take a complete collapse of their present totalitarian regimes to start the healing, if it is to happen. With each passing day, the zombification of the masses continues, let us hope it has not already got to the stage where a return to a better world becomes unattainable.

    István Vicze , 1 month ago (edited)

    Mrs Spokeswoman really nailed it: US & UK resort to this Dead Cat tactics everyday now. That was the Case with Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Syria & now Venezuela. However, they only manage to bait in their "Allies" (better said Vassals)- and then they fail to deliver since Syria. Russian Intervention & People waking up to their Lies makes their Case less and less credible. The paralel Universe they are creating inside their brainwashing Media is fading away. And that makes them the more dangerous...

    twaters57 , 1 month ago

    It's sad when the only real news people in the US can get is from the Russian media. The west is financially and morally bankrupt. Thank you Zacharova and Russia for telling the truth about the evil deeds of the west. Median approval of U.S. leadership across 134 countries and areas stands at a new low of 30%, according to a new Gallup report. Maybe the tide is finally turning and the evil deeds of the west will be exposed.

    Bob Mitchell , 1 month ago

    I think the underlying cause of all the UK anti-Russia carry ons goes right back to the damage you did to them during the Crimean War...you bloodied their nose and they have never forgiven you...silly buggers! 💥💥💥🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺

    Robin Wood , 1 month ago (edited)

    The Roman-Israeli Brits are born liars, but liars will always fall apart because their stories never add up. I suspect that the Skripals were never even poisoned but paid by the British to confirm the lie. The Western politicians have become so corrupt that you cannot believe a word coming from their lying mouths. Over the decades they have become so confident that everybody would swallow their reckless lies that they don't even care what they say and what they do without thinking or caring about the consequences of their actions.

    Nico Montinola , 1 month ago

    Amazing how slick & classy the Russians are nowadays. I think US and US industrial standards are still higher but Russia has improved a lot!

    kee yong loh , 1 month ago

    To UK & US: Please show some respect for world ordinary people. We are not stupid. We are intelligent & also kind compassionate human beings. U're insulting our intelligence!

    Robert Tony , 1 month ago

    I think they have completely lost the plot, relying on stupidity and arrogance to achieve the least amount possible in the messiest most insane way possible. Seriously, the publicly state the reality, conduct regime change operations, to get US troops into and country and then charge 150% of cost of that occupation, protection, straight out of a Mafioso playback, only their blind arrogance and ignorance, make that kind of public stance possible. Any government that signs onto it, traitors to their own people, selling out to an foreign occupation, using Americans forces to sustain autocratic control of that country, those citizens paying for the bullets Americans will use to kill them, should they try to end the occupation. The more forces required to quell the public, the more they bill the occupied country and the MORE PROFITABLE IT BECOMES, utter insanity. Only utterly blind stupidity could make that public statement possible, beyond something you would expect from a backward third world country and some despot drunk on power, nope, this from the USA, the not home of freedom, the not home of justice and clearly the not home of democracy, the best people killers on the planet, ready to back militarily any despot it puts in charge, at the expense of their victims. Any sane country would hide this embarrassment, nope the US proud.

    · doubleplusgood · ʞɐǝdsʞɔnp · , 1 month ago

    Imagine a parallel universe where Maria is the British Prime Minister. The British politicians are not in her league. She is notionally just a spokeswoman, in Britain we don't have such free speaking spokesmen. It seems everything said in Britain has to be a lie. So refreshing and much more intellectually engaging to have the truth. There is the small matter of appearance, nobody in British politics now or ever is dressed as well as Maria. Or this show's host. I also like it how Maria has her notes on her phone.

    [Apr 22, 2019] Congress members and top talking heads as foot soldiers of neo-McCarthyism campaign unleashed by intelligence agencies

    Apr 22, 2019 | theduran.com

    Originally from: Russian collusion was no more than "conspiracy porn" created by Clinton and Obama

    But, for the past three years, elite Democratic Party partisans, along with their media partners, force-fed thousands of "Bombshell" headlines to millions of Americans, without ever providing a lick of evidence. The absence of evidence supporting their outrageous lies coupled with the results of Mueller's investigation and Barr's conclusions establishes collusion – not between Russia and the Trump family to influence the 2016 presidential election, but amongst the Democrats and mass media to delegitimize the
    Trump presidency.

    The Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, "We saw cold, hard evidence of the Trump campaign, and indeed the Trump family, eagerly intending to collude with Russia." Pelosi has never presented any evidence to support this claim or any of the many other suspect claims the speaker has made.

    The Chairman of House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff said, "I have evidence of collusion with Russia and kompromat. It's all in plain sight." Schiff regularly repeated this claim to the public yet never provided any evidence. He appeared on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and ABC over 150 times and was never called out for repeating these lies over and over again.

    Congressman Eric Swalwell on MSNBC said, "Donald Trump is a Russian agent; we have evidence Trump and his family colluded with Russia." Swalwell has parroted this and many other claims since 2016. Evidence provided: none.

    Congresswoman Maxine Waters stated, "Trump and his buddies are scumbags who are all Putin's puppets; we will Impeach 45." Waters has been shrieking "Impeach 45" since election day in 2016. Water's reason: she hates Trump and the entire Grand Old Party "GOP."

    Many other Democratic members of Washington DC's swamp echoed similar propaganda that mobilized the Trump "resistance." Their hit list of frequent salacious claims included "Trump in handcuffs;" "The entire Trump family, frog-marched, and jailed forever;" "Treason, much worse than Watergate, we have evidence;" "Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987;" "Trump is a racist, sexist, misogynist, Islamophobic, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, white-national, white-supremacist;"
    and let's not forget "He's the next Hitler." This "hit list" has become the Democratic party mantra since Donald trump announced his candidacy in 2015.

    Ex-Central Intelligence Agency "CIA" director John Brennan, who just so happens to be on MSNBC's payroll, also weighed in on Trump. "Trump's behavior is treasonous. He committed high crimes and misdemeanors. There is evidence that proves many people in Trump's orbit are guilty of serious crimes and indictments are coming, and soon. Trump committed Treason" The penalty for committing "treason" in America, death. Brennan never provided any evidence. Brennan's lies have destroyed the CIA's reputation and credibility.

    Viewers of CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and ABC were inundated with purposeful misrepresentations that continuously promised faithful audiences that Mueller and his team had "mountains" of evidence of Trump's collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice. Day after day, these media outlets repeated how Mueller would deliver an indictment of President Trump, who had committed "treason and high crimes and misdemeanors" that would lead to his impeachment and jail time. The corrupt media represented that Trump's family members, who were also guilty of similar crimes, would be sent to prison. All the above were outrageous lies.

    In fact, the only convictions that arose through the Mueller investigation were low-level process crimes which had NOTHING to do with Trump. $25 million wasted, bravo! These salacious accusations proved to be part of an elaborate scheme to delegitimize the sitting president and his administration in order to remove him from office. However, the Democrats and mass media could not have done it without FBI Director James Comey's exploitation of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
    We know the whole coup d'état was facilitated by FBI Director James Comey's October 20, 2016 submission of a 66-page application to the FISA court.

    Comey and Sally Quillian Yates, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, signed this application. Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, the presiding judge of the secret FISA court, granted an order that led to our intelligence agencies spying on the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump. The FBI ran a counter-intelligence investigation named "Crossfire Hurricane" on Trump's campaign.

    Comey's FISA application was largely based on information contained in the Steele dossier, a dossier written by a disgraced MI6 agent named Christopher Steele. The dossier made wild, unsubstantiated claims and was financed by the campaign of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee via Clinton's law firm Perkins Coie through a company named Fusion GPS.

    In a meeting with President Trump in early January 2017, James Comey told President Trump about the existence of the Steele dossier and told him not to worry about it. Comey stated that the dossier's contents were salacious, unverified, and untrue. Apparently, James Comey knew, yet never disclosed to Judge Collyer, that the Steele dossier was garbage prepared by political partisans that did not want Trump to be
    elected and financed by Hillary Clinton's campaign. Three days after Comey's meeting with Trump the entire Steele dossier was "leaked" to numerous media sources and published in it's entirety on Buzzfeed with no mention that none of the claims in the Steele dossier had been verified.

    Comey signed and submitted two more FISA applications, one in Jan 2017, and another in April 2017 which relied upon the Steele dossier. FISA Judge Michael W. Mosman signed the January renewal, and Judge Anne C. Conway signed the April renewal.

    Apparently, Comey never disclosed, to any of the FISA judges, that the Steele dossier was: paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, and the DNC, or that the Department of Justice's Bruce Ohr had warned on the credibility of the unverified Steele Dossier, or that Bruce Ohr's wife worked for Fusion GPS and helped back door the Steele dossier into the FBI, or that the dossier was filled with baseless allegations, lies, and
    propaganda. It appears that four secret court, FISA, judges were lied to in order to kick- off the biggest scandal in history.

    FBI's Deputy Director Andrew McCabe recently stated during Congressional testimony that "without the Steele dossier, the FISA warrants would have never been granted." Recent reports suggest that it was ex-CIA director John Brennan who insisted that the Steele dossier be included in the intelligence report used to request the FISA warrants. Senator Rand Paul has issued a call that Brennan be called to testify under oath in Congress.

    The entire Mueller investigation would have never been possible without this fake dossier being used to illegally obtain FISA warrants by the omission of material facts within the original FISA application and the three subsequent renewal applications.

    Why is Judge Collyer not looking into these and other material misrepresentations used in the FISA application to obtain search warrants to spy on Americans and on a presidential campaign by its opposition and enabled by a weaponized Obama Department of Justice? The silence of secret FISA court Judges Mosman, Conway, and Dearie is frightening. America's secret courts should be abolished.

    [Apr 22, 2019] Current Neo-McCarthyism hysteria as a smoke screen of the UK and the USA intent to dominate European geopolitics and weaken Russia and Germany

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... North Stream is a problem as the goal is to economically weaken Russia, tie the EU to the USA via energy supplies and support our new client state -- Ukraine. ..."
    "... But this is also related to attempts to prevent/weaken the alliance of Russia and China. As geopolitical consequences of this alliance for the USA-led neoliberal empire are very bad ..."
    Jul 24, 2018 | angrybearblog.com

    likbez , July 24, 2018 12:23 am

    @run75441 July 23, 2018 2:02 pm

    Best bet is for Russia to want to trade with the US and Europe. The gas pipeline will not be enough leverage on Germany as it provides 9% of their needs.

    Yes. And that's against the USA interests (or more correctly the US-led neoliberal empire interests). North Stream is a problem as the goal is to economically weaken Russia, tie the EU to the USA via energy supplies and support our new client state -- Ukraine.

    As you know, nothing was proven yet in Russiagate (and DNC hacks looks more and more like a false flag operation, especially this Guccifer 2.0 personality ), but sanctions were already imposed. And when the US government speaks "Russia" in most cases they mean "China+Russia" ;-). Russia is just a weaker link in this alliance and, as such, it is attacked first. Russiagate is just yet another pretext after MH17, Magnitsky and such.

    To me the current Anti-Russian hysteria is mainly a smokescreen to hide attempt to cement cracks in the façade of the USA neoliberal society that Trump election revealed (including apparent legitimization of ruling neoliberal elite represented by Hillary).

    And a desperate attempt to unite the society using (false) war propaganda which requires demonization of the "enemy of the people" and neo-McCarthyism.

    But this is also related to attempts to prevent/weaken the alliance of Russia and China. As geopolitical consequences of this alliance for the USA-led neoliberal empire are very bad (for example, military alliance means the end of the USA global military domination; energy alliance means that is now impossible to impose a blockade on China energy supplies from Middle East even if Iran is occupied)

    In this sense the recent descent into a prolonged fit of vintage Cold War jingoistic paranoia is quite understandable. While, at the same time, totally abhorrent. My feeling is that unless Russia folds, which is unlikely, the side effects/externalities of this posture can be very bad for the USA. In any case, the alliance of Russia and China which Obama administration policies forged spells troubles to the global neoliberal empire dominated by the USA.

    Trump rejection of existing forms of neoliberal globalization is one sign that this process already started and some politicians already are trying to catch the wind and adapt to a "new brave world" by using preemptive adjustments.

    Which is why all this Trump-Putin summit hysteria is about.

    Neither hard, nor soft neoliberals want any adjustments. They are ready to fight for the US-led neoliberal empire till the last American (excluding, of course, themselves and their families)

    [Apr 22, 2019] Brzezinski s Warning to America by Mike Whitney

    Notable quotes:
    "... What most people don't realize about Brzezinski, is that he dramatically changed his views on global hegemony a few years after he published his 1997 masterpiece The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperative. In his 2012 book, Strategic Vision, Brzezinski recommended a more thoughtful and cooperative approach that would ease America's unavoidable transition (decline?) without creating a power vacuum that could lead to global chaos. ..."
    "... Haass's critique illustrates the level of denial among elites who are now gripped by fear of an uncertain future. ..."
    "... Confrontation will only accelerate the pace of US decline and the final collapse of the liberal world order. ..."
    "... "The liberal world order, which lasted from the end of World War 2 until today" Thanks for the laugh. It was over with the passing of the 1947 National Security Act. ..."
    "... It is not a coincidence that this anti-Russian climate of hatred started back when Putin showed up the left's president, Barack Obama, over Libya. ..."
    "... political globalists who wanted a liberal world order but didn't think about the economic side of things much and so let their economic policy be decided by the central banking mafia ..."
    "... You should think more about US being aced. Syria was a masterstroke, but so was Ukraine, and not for Russia. Russia lost an extremely valuable ally and a trully brother nation, maybe forever. Ukraine, in the grand scheme of things, is a huge defeat for Russia. ..."
    "... You definitely missed last 25 years of Russian-Ukrainian relations. You also, evidently, have very vague understanding of the Ukrainian inner dynamics. I am not sure we can speak of "brother nation" because Ukraine as political nation (and she did form as such by early 2000s) can not be "brother nation" to Russia by definition. In fact, being anti-Russia is the only natural state of Ukrainian political nation ..."
    "... As it turned out, Russia is doing just fine without Ukraine. In a long run, if what is called Ukraine today decides to commit suicide by the cop, she sure can try to place US military bases East of Dniepr and we will observe a rather peculiar case of fireworks. ..."
    "... It would have been a total catastrophe for Russia had she lost Sebastopol; but so long as Crimea is safely in Moscow's hands, Ukraine is not make-or-break. Russia's global position now, in fact, is even stronger than it was in 2014. ..."
    "... Western corporations have been competing with each other (for decades now) to offshore everything to reduce costs /increase profits. The idea is to sell at Western prices and produce at Eastern prices, and this arbitrage has reached crazy proportions. ..."
    "... Jews also hate nationalism since it threatens their (minority) power and highlights dual loyalty (or no loyalty) so the Zio-Glob are on one side, and the public on the other, with little common ground between them. ..."
    "... At least Brzezinski became well aware of this shift. So many of America's neo-conservatives have largely failed in expressing this defeat. Between Brzezinski and Boot, & the Others, they've all turned out to be fanatic ideologues. ..."
    Apr 22, 2019 | www.unz.com

    The liberal world order, which lasted from the end of World War 2 until today, is rapidly collapsing. The center of gravity is shifting from west to east where China and India are experiencing explosive growth and where a revitalized Russia has restored its former stature as a credible global superpower. These developments, coupled with America's imperial overreach and chronic economic stagnation, have severely hampered US ability to shape events or to successfully pursue its own strategic objectives. As Washington's grip on global affairs continues to loosen and more countries reject the western development model, the current order will progressively weaken clearing the way for a multipolar world badly in need of a new security architecture. Western elites, who are unable to accept this new dynamic, continue to issue frenzied statements expressing their fear of a future in which the United States no longer dictates global policy.

    At the 2019 Munich Security Conference, Chairman Wolfgang Ischinger, underscored many of these same themes. Here's an excerpt from his presentation:

    "The whole liberal world order appears to be falling apart – nothing is as it once was Not only do war and violence play a more prominent role again: a new great power confrontation looms at the horizon. In contrast to the early 1990s, liberal democracy and the principle of open markets are no longer uncontested .

    In this international environment, the risk of an inter-state war between great and middle powers has clearly increased .What we had been observing in many places around the world was a dramatic increase in brinkmanship, that is, highly risky actions on the abyss – the abyss of war .

    No matter where you look, there are countless conflicts and crises the core pieces of the international order are breaking apart, without it being clear whether anyone can pick them up – or even wants to. ("Who will pick up the pieces?", Munich Security Conference )

    Ischinger is not alone in his desperation nor are his feelings limited to elites and intellectuals. By now, most people are familiar with the demonstrations that have rocked Paris, the political cage-match that is tearing apart England (Brexit), the rise of anti-immigrant right-wing groups that have sprung up across Europe, and the surprising rejection of the front-runner candidate in the 2016 presidential elections in the US. Everywhere the establishment and their neoliberal policies are being rejected by the masses of working people who have only recently begun to wreak havoc on a system that has ignored them for more than 30 years. Trump's public approval ratings have improved, not because he has "drained the swamp" as he promised, but because he is still seen as a Washington outsider despised by the political class, the foreign policy establishment and the media. His credibility rests on the fact that he is hated by the coalition of elites who working people now regard as their sworn enemy.

    The president of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, summed up his views on the "weakening of the liberal world order" in an article that appeared on the CFR's website. Here's what he said:

    "Attempts to build global frameworks are failing. Protectionism is on the rise; the latest round of global trade talks never came to fruition. .At the same time, great power rivalry is returning

    There are several reasons why all this is happening, and why now. The rise of populism is in part a response to stagnating incomes and job loss, owing mostly to new technologies but widely attributed to imports and immigrants. Nationalism is a tool increasingly used by leaders to bolster their authority, especially amid difficult economic and political conditions .

    But the weakening of the liberal world order is due, more than anything else, to the changed attitude of the U.S. Under President Donald Trump, the US decided against joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. It has threatened to leave the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. It has unilaterally introduced steel and aluminum tariffs, relying on a justification (national security) that others could use, in the process placing the world at risk of a trade war .America First" and the liberal world order seem incompatible." ("Liberal World Order, R.I.P.", Richard Haass, CFR )

    What Haass is saying is that the cure for globalisation is more globalization, that the greatest threat to the liberal world order is preventing the behemoth corporations from getting more of what they want; more self-aggrandizing trade agreements, more offshoring of businesses, more outsourcing of jobs, more labor arbitrage, and more privatization of public assets and critical resources. Trade liberalization is not liberalization, it does not strengthen democracy or create an environment where human rights, civil liberties and the rule of law are respected. It's a policy that focuses almost-exclusively on the free movement of capital in order to enrich wealthy shareholders and fatten the bottom line. The sporadic uprisings around the world– Brexit, yellow vests, emergent right wing groups– can all trace their roots back to these one-sided, corporate-friendly trade deals that have precipitated the steady slide in living standards, the shrinking of incomes, and the curtailing of crucial benefits for the great mass of working people across the US and Europe. President Trump is not responsible for the outbreak of populism and social unrest, he is merely an expression of the peoples rage. Trump's presidential triumph was a clear rejection of the thoroughly-rigged elitist system that continues to transfer the bulk of the nation's wealth to tiniest layer of people at the top.

    Haass's critique illustrates the level of denial among elites who are now gripped by fear of an uncertain future.

    As we noted earlier, the center of gravity has shifted from west to east, which is the one incontrovertible fact that cannot be denied. Washington's brief unipolar moment –following the breakup of the Soviet Union in December, 1991 -- has already passed and new centers of industrial and financial power are gaining pace and gradually overtaking the US in areas that are vital to America's primacy. This rapidly changing economic environment is accompanied by widespread social discontent, seething class-based resentment, and ever-more radical forms of political expression. The liberal order is collapsing, not because the values espoused in the 60s and 70s have lost their appeal, but because inequality is widening, the political system has become unresponsive to the demands of the people, and because US can no longer arbitrarily impose its will on the world.

    Globalization has fueled the rise of populism, it has helped to exacerbate ethnic and racial tensions, and it is largely responsible for the hollowing out of America's industrial core. Haass's antidote would only throw more gas on the fire and hasten the day when liberals and conservatives form into rival camps and join in a bloody battle to the end. Someone has to stop the madness before the country descends into a second Civil War.

    What Haass fails to discuss, is Washington's perverse reliance on force to preserve the liberal world order, after all, it's not like the US assumed its current dominant role by merely competing more effectively in global markets. Oh, no. Behind the silk glove lies the iron fist, which has been used in over 50 regime change operations since the end of WW2. The US has over 800 military bases scattered across the planet and has laid to waste one country after the other in successive interventions, invasions and occupations for as long as anyone can remember. This penchant for violence has been sharply criticized by other members of the United Nations, but only Russia has had the courage to openly oppose Washington where it really counts, on the battlefield.

    Russia is presently engaged in military operations that have either prevented Washington from achieving its strategic objectives (like Ukraine) or rolled back Washington's proxy-war in Syria. Naturally, liberal elites like Haass feel threatened by these developments since they are accustomed to a situation in which 'the world is their oyster'. But, alas, oysters have been removed from the menu, and the United States is going to have to make the adjustment or risk a third world war.

    What Russian President Vladimir Putin objects to, is Washington's unilateralism, the cavalier breaking of international law to pursue its own imperial ambitions. Ironically, Putin has become the greatest defender of the international system and, in particular, the United Nations which is a point he drove home in his presentation at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly in New York on September 28, 2015, just two days before Russian warplanes began their bombing missions in Syria. Here's part of what he said:

    "The United Nations is unique in terms of legitimacy, representation and universality .We consider any attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the United Nations as extremely dangerous. It may result in the collapse of the entire architecture of international relations, leaving no rules except the rule of force. The world will be dominated by selfishness rather than collective effort, by dictate rather than equality and liberty, and instead of truly sovereign nations we will have colonies controlled from outside."(Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly )

    Putin's speech, followed by the launching of the Russian operation in Syria, was a clear warning to the foreign policy establishment that they would no longer be allowed to topple governments and destroy countries with impunity. Just as Putin was willing to put Russian military personnel at risk in Syria, so too, he will probably put them at risk in Venezuela, Lebanon, Ukraine and other locations where they might be needed. And while Russia does not have anywhere near the raw power of the US military, Putin seems to be saying that he will put his troops in the line of fire to defend international law and the sovereignty of nations. Here's Putin again:

    "We all know that after the end of the Cold War the world was left with one center of dominance, and those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think that, since they are so powerful and exceptional, they know best what needs to be done and thus they don't need to reckon with the UN, which, instead of rubber-stamping the decisions they need, often stands in their way .

    We should all remember the lessons of the past. For example, we remember examples from our Soviet past, when the Soviet Union exported social experiments, pushing for changes in other countries for ideological reasons, and this often led to tragic consequences and caused degradation instead of progress.

    It seems, however, that instead of learning from other people's mistakes, some prefer to repeat them and continue to export revolutions, only now these are "democratic" revolutions. Just look at the situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa already mentioned by the previous speaker. Instead of bringing about reforms, aggressive intervention indiscriminately destroyed government institutions and the local way of life. Instead of democracy and progress, there is now violence, poverty, social disasters and total disregard for human rights, including even the right to life.

    I'm urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what you've done?" (Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly)

    Here Putin openly challenges the concept of a 'liberal world order' which in fact is a sobriquet used to conceal Washington's relentless plundering of the planet. There's nothing liberal about toppling regimes and plunging millions of people into anarchy, poverty and desperation. Putin is simply trying to communicate to US leaders that the world is changing, that nations in Asia are gaining strength and momentum, and that Washington will have to abandon the idea that any constraint on its behavior is a threat to its national security interests.

    Former national security advisor to Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, appears to agree on this point and suggests that the US begin to rethink its approach to foreign policy now that the world has fundamentally changed and other countries are demanding a bigger place at the table.

    What most people don't realize about Brzezinski, is that he dramatically changed his views on global hegemony a few years after he published his 1997 masterpiece The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperative. In his 2012 book, Strategic Vision, Brzezinski recommended a more thoughtful and cooperative approach that would ease America's unavoidable transition (decline?) without creating a power vacuum that could lead to global chaos. Here's a short excerpt from an article

    he wrote in 2016 for the American Interest titled "Toward a Global Realignment":

    "The fact is that there has never been a truly "dominant" global power until the emergence of America on the world scene .That era is now ending .As its era of global dominance ends, the United States needs to take the lead in realigning the global power architecture .The United States is still the world's politically, economically, and militarily most powerful entity but, given complex geopolitical shifts in regional balances, it is no longer the globally imperial power.

    America can only be effective in dealing with the current Middle Eastern violence if it forges a coalition that involves, in varying degrees, also Russia and China .

    A constructive U.S. policy must be patiently guided by a long-range vision. It must seek outcomes that promote the gradual realization in Russia that its only place as an influential world power is ultimately within Europe. China's increasing role in the Middle East should reflect the reciprocal American and Chinese realization that a growing U.S.-PRC partnership in coping with the Middle Eastern crisis is an historically significant test of their ability to shape and enhance together wider global stability.

    The alternative to a constructive vision, and especially the quest for a one-sided militarily and ideologically imposed outcome, can only result in prolonged and self-destructive futility.

    Since the next twenty years may well be the last phase of the more traditional and familiar political alignments with which we have grown comfortable, the response needs to be shaped now . And that accommodation has to be based on a strategic vision that recognizes the urgent need for a new geopolitical framework." ("Toward a Global Realignment", Zbigniew Brzezinski, The American Interest )

    This strikes me as a particularly well-reasoned and insightful article. It shows that Brzezinski understood that the world had changed, that power had shifted eastward, and that the only path forward for America was cooperation, accommodation, integration and partnership. Tragically, there is no base of support for these ideas on Capital Hill, the White House or among the U.S. foreign policy establishment. The entire political class and their allies in the media unanimously support a policy of belligerence, confrontation and war. The United States will not prevail in a confrontation with Russia and China any more than it will be able to turn back the clock to the post war era when America, the Superpower, reigned supreme. Confrontation will only accelerate the pace of US decline and the final collapse of the liberal world order.

    Walt , says: April 13, 2019 at 11:22 pm GMT

    Zbig has fially admitted that America needs to become friends with Russia. We can not handle the world alone,but with Russia we would have 90% of the worlds nuclear weapons and vast geopolitical ifluence. Americans do hot have anything against Russia. It is the neocon cabal that is fostering conflict . Thet just can not get over the fact that they tried and failed to take control of Russia. They are trying to do so to the u.S.A.
    Walt , says: April 13, 2019 at 11:24 pm GMT
    Zbig is right. We need to be friends with Russia , not enemies.
    China girl , says: April 14, 2019 at 2:30 am GMT
    "2. Russia should become the real leader of the new process. (It has already become it but not yet aware of the fact.) The West and Israel need a strategic alliance with the Muslim world more than anything else, and this alliance is possible only through Russia. Only Russia in an alliance with the Muslim world can keep China in check without conflicts, helping it find its new place in the world as another super-power.

    3. Leaders of Russia, America, Israel, Europe, Iran, India, and international financial capitals must initiate a dialogue over leaving this crisis behind and preventing events like those which swept America on September 11.

    A time of change is upon us, and it's futile to wish we were living in some other era. We have to change ourselves and change the world "

    Novaya Gazeta
    No. 75
    October 2001
    THE THIRD FORCE OF WORLD WAR III

    [MORE]

    "THE AMERICANS DON'T REALIZE IT YET, BUT CHINA HAS WRITTEN ITS OWN SCRIPT FOR SQUEEZING THE UNITED STATES OFF THE WORLD STAGE. CHINA SUPPORTS ACTIONS OF THE WEST AIMED AT MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION OF RUSSIA AND THE MUSLIM WORLD. THE WEST, RUSSIA, ISRAEL, AND THE MUSLIM WORLD MUST WORK TOGETHER.

    THE WESTERN SCRIPT

    [ ]

    "Using techniques of manipulating public opinion, the West is trying to establish the illusion of a global forces with the fascist- like ideology of Wahhabi fundamentalism. As far as the West is concerned, Wahhabi and Islam are the same thing. It is because of this that the essential terrorism of Wahhabi ideas is being formulated so simply for public consumption: all Muslims are terrorists by nature.

    The preliminary objective of brainwashing (Islam is the basis of terrorism) is thus achieved. "

    "This script becomes possible when we assume that some Western elites and secret services made a kind of covert pact with this still-unknown Player."

    THE CHINESE SCRIPT

    [ ]

    " Throw a great deal of dollars into the market all at once, and the dollar will crash. A conflict with Taiwan may follow. It will be a conflict waged with American money, with American weapons, investment, and high technology. Add the nuclear factor here. Suffice it to recall the recent scandal when Chinese intelligence obtained all major nuclear secrets of the United States. "

    Author: Viktor Minin
    [from WPS Monitoring Agency, http://www.wps.ru/e_index.html%5D

    http://www.russialist.org/archives/5497-14.php

    MarkinLA , says: April 14, 2019 at 3:24 am GMT
    What most people don't realize about Brzezinski, is that he dramatically changed his views on global hegemony a few years after he published his 1997 masterpiece The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperative. In his 2012 book, Strategic Vision, Brzezinski recommended a more thoughtful and cooperative approach that would ease America's unavoidable transition (decline?) without creating a power vacuum that could lead to global chaos.

    So somebody put forth a deluded crack-pot idea that got great traction and made a lot of people very rich and powerful who want to stay that way, but the originator now says he was wrong and we should change. Yeah, those rich and powerful people just have to agree to give up some of that. How likely is that without a major catastrophe forcing them, given what we know about human nature?

    Maybe the lesson is to have realistic ideas about foreign policy and relations in the future. Did anybody seriously believe countries with long histories like Russia and China were always going to be happy playing second fiddle to the US?

    Andrei Martyanov , says: Website April 14, 2019 at 6:08 am GMT

    Haass's critique illustrates the level of denial among elites who are now gripped by fear of an uncertain future.

    True, but their problem is compounded with their fear which is anchored in the past, whose real history blows all current, being discredited as I type this, narratives out of the water. This, plus most of them, Haas and CFR included, do not operate with actual facts and data.

    anon [423] Disclaimer , says: April 14, 2019 at 12:45 pm GMT
    "The West and Israel need a strategic alliance with the Muslim world"

    Unfortunately, this is probably not entirely feasible considering the United States's inappropriately close relationship to Israel and the American government's radical stance of forcing LGBTQ issues; as San Jose proves, these people aren't simply going to leave you alone, but rather they will make you conform under threat. Probably what will happen in the future is a Japan-EU-Russia alliance that makes peace with the Middle East and contains the Chinese military as much as possible.

    The US could very well find itself cut out at some point. It has already proved itself both reckless and incompetent with its handling of Iran, Israel, and Venezuela. Also, I suspect that neither ordinary EU citizens nor Asians will want to be ruled over by a group of POC racists who discriminate against Europeans, Asian males, and traditional families.

    I think the rest of the world should begin considering alternate defense arrangements. The US cannot afford to defend their interests forever with an aging, shrinking white Caucasian population and a growing, less capable and less conscientious replacement population less willing to die in imperial wars. Increasingly, the US will be less capable of defending others in the Pacific from China as it Affirmative Actions its air force; Obama was trying to do that throughout the whole of the American military and accomplished his objective by lowering standards. I think this process should continue in the future with disastrous results.

    In the future, Asia will try to make peace with China before they get too strong and China will reciprocate with generous territorial concessions in exchange for neutrality. For example, the Chinese may relinquish territorial claims in the Philippines in exchange for a treaty stating that the Philippines will not base the American military or buy weapons from them, but they would be allowed to buy weapons from third parties such as the Russians. A series of moves like this might dramatically weaken the American position in the region, allowing China to jumpskip to Africa and the Middle East more effectively. Perhaps a similar deal will be worked out with Taiwan: autonomy and a peace treaty in exchange for no weapon purchases or defense arrangements with the US, but Taiwan could still buy Russian weapons.

    "Zbig has fially admitted that America needs to become friends with Russia."

    As Karlin has noted, I don't see this happening in the near future, not with the insane levels of anti-Russian hate coming from the American left, some of which is just pure racial hatred of whites projected onto Russians.

    bro3886 , says: April 14, 2019 at 1:08 pm GMT
    All this is irrelevant in the long run. America will be a third-world country in 50 years or less. Imagine a government filled with AOCs, Omars, and Bookers, with a constituency that matches. Brazil of the North isn't going to be a superpower. We can look on that as a silver lining.
    Republic , says: April 14, 2019 at 1:35 pm GMT

    The United States will not prevail in a confrontation with Russia and China any more than it will be able to turn back the clock to the post war era when America, the Superpower, reigned supreme. Confrontation will only accelerate the pace of US decline and the final collapse of the liberal world order.

    Very dangerous times are ahead. A declining superpower in late empire mode may make risky decisions. I wonder if America will have a Suez event in the upcoming decade? The 1956 Suez crisis heralded the rise of a new superpower and the eclipse of another one.

    dearieme , says: April 14, 2019 at 1:37 pm GMT
    @anon some of which is just pure racial hatred of whites projected onto Russians

    That hadn't occurred to me. But can it be true?

    Bill Jones , says: April 14, 2019 at 1:53 pm GMT
    "The liberal world order, which lasted from the end of World War 2 until today" Thanks for the laugh. It was over with the passing of the 1947 National Security Act.
    Bill Jones , says: April 14, 2019 at 1:57 pm GMT
    @Walt I don't know how fucked up you have to be to use "We" to refer to the murderous US State but you should seek competent professional psychiatric assistance, Soon.
    anon [275] Disclaimer , says: April 14, 2019 at 3:42 pm GMT
    "That hadn't occurred to me. But can it be true?"

    The attitudes and political beliefs of your average Russian are very similar to many Red State conservatives, as has been noted on this webzine at least once in recent memory (and with an accompanying political map with similarities noted between American Blue and Red States compared with Russia). The American left projects its racist hate onto the Russians in response to those similarities.

    It is not a coincidence that this anti-Russian climate of hatred started back when Putin showed up the left's president, Barack Obama, over Libya.

    That also explains the left's hypocrisy on war: their tribe's racial leader, Obama, wanted war in Libya, so war is now good; Russia opposed it and later prevented war in Syria (which Obama wanted), so the Russians are now the bad guys. It's purely a matter of tribal affiliation and racial hate on the part of the American left.

    Andrei Martyanov , says: Website April 14, 2019 at 4:21 pm GMT
    @Republic

    I wonder if America will have a Suez event in the upcoming decade?

    She already had it and one is unfolding right this moment. For an empire of this size and influence, granted declining dramatically, it takes a sequence of events. "Suez Moment" for Britain happened during WW II, the actual Suez crisis was merely a nominal conclusion to British Empire dying in WW II.

    Anon [332] Disclaimer , says: April 14, 2019 at 4:51 pm GMT
    ""Suez Moment" for Britain happened during WW II, the actual Suez crisis was merely a nominal conclusion to British Empire dying in WW II."

    True. Syria might have been the American Suez Moment. We'll see in the coming years if we get a crisis that lays it all bare.

    Andrei Martyanov , says: Website April 14, 2019 at 5:22 pm GMT
    @Anon

    We'll see in the coming years if we get a crisis that lays it all bare.

    Ongoing real Revolution in Military Affairs and US losing conventional (and nuclear) arms race is what unfolds right now. Realistically, Putin's March 1, 2018 Speech to Federal Assembly was also one of these moments -- as I said, the process is protracted and at each of its phases US geopolitical cards have been aced and trumped, NO pun intended.

    notanon , says: April 14, 2019 at 6:04 pm GMT
    when i read these people i get the impression there are two camps:

    1) political globalists who wanted a liberal world order but didn't think about the economic side of things much and so let their economic policy be decided by the central banking mafia

    and

    2) The central banking mafia who understood globalization was simply their criminal looting of the West backed up by a big military who could be rented out from a corrupted political class.

    it seems the first group still don't understand that it was the banking mafia's neoliberal economics
    – currency debasement
    – usury
    – cheap labor
    that destroyed their dream.

    the same three things have been destroying civilizations for 3000 years.

    notanon , says: April 14, 2019 at 6:12 pm GMT

    The West and Israel need a strategic alliance with the Muslim world more than anything else, and this alliance is possible only through Russia.

    i think this is short-sighted. The global north needs to combine to contain the global south or the central banking mafia will eventually use them to destroy the north's genetic advantages and all our descendants will end up as 85 IQ slave-cattle.

    Priss Factor , [AKA "Asagirian"] says: Website April 14, 2019 at 8:37 pm GMT
    The liberal world order, which lasted from the end of World War 2 until today, is rapidly collapsing.

    Really? Where? US is still in Middle East and now threatens war with Iran. Venezuela is on the brink. Japan and EU are the ever loyal dogs of the US. If they've been upset with Trump, it's not because he wants to exert more influence but less.

    Republic , says: April 14, 2019 at 10:48 pm GMT
    @Andrei Martyanov

    the actual Suez crisis was merely a nominal conclusion to British Empire dying in WW II

    The Atlantic charter signed aboard the HMS Prince of Wales, in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland on August 14, 1941 by FDR and Churchill was probably the moment when the old British empire traded places with the new global power, the United States. So you are correct in your analysis.

    hgw , says: April 14, 2019 at 10:50 pm GMT
    @MarkinLA This is not really about history, it is about power. Many of the US allies have much longer histories, but that does not help them in the power department. China and Russia have enough power to stand only on their own two feet.
    hgw , says: April 14, 2019 at 10:54 pm GMT
    @Andrei Martyanov You should think more about US being aced. Syria was a masterstroke, but so was Ukraine, and not for Russia. Russia lost an extremely valuable ally and a trully brother nation, maybe forever. Ukraine, in the grand scheme of things, is a huge defeat for Russia.
    Anon [341] Disclaimer , says: April 14, 2019 at 11:13 pm GMT

    The West and Israel need a strategic alliance with the Muslim world more than anything else, and this alliance is possible only through Russia.

    Sberbank calls on UAE businesses to invest in Russia, offers help

    "According to the statement, the Gulf countries' total capital available for investment is estimated at more than $3.2 trillion but only "a small part" of capital earmarked for investing in Russia has actually gone into Russia-based projects."

    "The Russian visitors set out Sberbank's technology strategy and described achievements by the Moscow-based lender in artificial intelligence development.

    They also "pointed out interest in Islamic finance", the statement said."

    http://emergingmarkets.me/sberbank-calls-on-uae-businesses-to-invest-in-russia-offers-help/

    Andrei Martyanov , says: Website April 15, 2019 at 12:00 am GMT
    @hgw

    Ukraine, in the grand scheme of things, is a huge defeat for Russia.

    You definitely missed last 25 years of Russian-Ukrainian relations. You also, evidently, have very vague understanding of the Ukrainian inner dynamics. I am not sure we can speak of "brother nation" because Ukraine as political nation (and she did form as such by early 2000s) can not be "brother nation" to Russia by definition. In fact, being anti-Russia is the only natural state of Ukrainian political nation.

    There is another twist to all this–these are Russians now, who do not want to deal with Ukraine in any of her manifestations and, to rub the salt into the wound, Zbig was delusional when thought that denying Ukraine to Russia would spell the end of Russian "imperialism". As it turned out, Russia is doing just fine without Ukraine. In a long run, if what is called Ukraine today decides to commit suicide by the cop, she sure can try to place US military bases East of Dniepr and we will observe a rather peculiar case of fireworks.

    Andrei Martyanov , says: Website April 15, 2019 at 12:11 am GMT
    @Republic

    The Atlantic charter signed aboard the HMS Prince of Wales,in Placentia Bay,Newfoundland on August 14, 1941 by FDR and Churchill was probably the moment when the old British empire traded places with the new global power, the United States.

    This happened in 1941 at secret ABC (America-Britain-Canada) consultations where Lord Halifax was trying to recruit American resources for defense of Britain's imperial interests. US "politely" declined. Big Three became Big Two and a Half at 1943 Tehran Conference at which Stalin was very specific that USSR wanted American as a head of Overlord.

    All this pursuant to a strategic scandal between US and British Empire at Casablanca where General Stanley Embick of Marshall's OPD accused Britain in his memorandum of avoiding fighting main Nazi forces due to Britain's imperial interests. Churchill knew the significance of Tehran and suffered non-stop bouts of jealousy and suspicion towards FDR and Stalin.

    I am sure Sir Winston knew that FDR wanted to meet Stalin without him. Stalin refused to do so without Churchill. As per "global power"–sure, except for one teeny-weeny fact (or rather facts), since WW II "global power" didn't win a single war against even more-or-less determined enemy.

    Digital Samizdat , says: April 15, 2019 at 11:16 am GMT
    @hgw

    Ukraine, in the grand scheme of things, is a huge defeat for Russia.

    It would have been a total catastrophe for Russia had she lost Sebastopol; but so long as Crimea is safely in Moscow's hands, Ukraine is not make-or-break. Russia's global position now, in fact, is even stronger than it was in 2014.

    neutral , says: April 15, 2019 at 12:22 pm GMT
    @bro3886

    Brazil of the North

    It will be much worse than Brazil, Brazil managed to cover up the reality that whites dominate politics and the economy (although there is a new push to copy the American affirmative action ideology). In America whites will not be able to do what is happening in Brazil, all politics will be non white dominated, likewise the woke corporate blue haired brigade will ensure that non whites dominate all companies, no exceptions allowed. The end result of this is predictable, Americans will be wishing they were like Brazil.

    neutral , says: April 15, 2019 at 1:31 pm GMT
    @Republic No it was earlier, it was when it decided to declare war on the Third Reich. It decided that Poland was more important than keeping its empire.
    Miro23 , says: April 15, 2019 at 2:07 pm GMT

    Globalization has fueled the rise of populism, it has helped to exacerbate ethnic and racial tensions, and it is largely responsible for the hollowing out of America's industrial core.

    Western corporations have been competing with each other (for decades now) to offshore everything to reduce costs /increase profits. The idea is to sell at Western prices and produce at Eastern prices, and this arbitrage has reached crazy proportions.

    The US has in fact exported whole industrial sectors (with the jobs and innovation). Same in Europe with a company such as Decathlon (Europe's Nº1 sport goods supplier) entirely sourcing its products outside Europe.

    Conclusion that if globalization fails, then so do these companies, and they have a massive incentive buy political protection from Western governments – which they are doing. Nationalism and America First are anathema to them and they have (amazingly) managed to built globalization and open frontiers into the ethos of the EU and US – with all the self-serving multicultural Save the World blah.

    Jews also hate nationalism since it threatens their (minority) power and highlights dual loyalty (or no loyalty) so the Zio-Glob are on one side, and the public on the other, with little common ground between them.

    This doesn't mean that it's impossible to stop outsourcing. If it happened, then Decathlon would either go bankrupt or have to switch production to Rumania or Portugal = higher prices, but at least the money would stay in Europe. Same with the other industries, and the first step has to be to cut down the power of the EU bureaucracy and Washington.

    notanon , says: April 15, 2019 at 6:39 pm GMT
    @neutral the banking mafia wanted war cos Hitler closed down the German branch of the central bank.

    the rest was puppetry.

    Willie , says: Website April 18, 2019 at 12:22 am GMT
    Just prepare fort the impending surge in Totalitarian methods to halt the inevitable in the USA.
    The rest of the world is not our playground.
    Good luck.
    Alfred , says: April 20, 2019 at 5:42 am GMT
    @Andrei Martyanov Haas and CFR included, do not operate with actual facts and data.

    Absolutely correct. Without an honest media, it is impossible to make good decisions.

    Those Zionists who control the media in the West are deluding themselves. They will be the biggest losers when ordinary people finally wake up to the fact that they have been lied to for over 100 years – WW1, WW2, Palestine, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Russia, Crimea, MH-17, Skripals, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, 9/11 and many other instances.

    Oristayne , says: April 20, 2019 at 6:36 am GMT
    This is a phenomenal article. What an incredibly written piece; much respect to you Mike Whitney.
    Ma Laoshi , says: April 20, 2019 at 7:20 am GMT
    Not so fast. OK, so maybe Zbig had some second thoughts about the whole project in 2012. But didn't the same Zbig opine in 2015, at the start of Russia's Syria intervention, that the US should strike hard and fast before the Russkies managed to complete their buildup there? To me that sounded rather much like an unprovoked attack on Russian troops, who were legally in Syria at the invitation of its internationally recognized government.

    Bottom line, for all of his far-too-long career Mr. Brzezinski has been exactly what one would expect from the spiritual father of al-Qaeda: a vile and reckless individual. Anyone looking that way for salvation needs some time out for reflection.

    Iris , says: April 20, 2019 at 10:58 am GMT

    This strikes me as a particularly well-reasoned and insightful article. It shows that Brzezinski understood that the world had changed, that power had shifted eastward,

    This is an excellent article, which addresses the key historic driver of our time. By 2015, world GDP had already passed the threshold where the GDP share of the West had become lesser than the share of the Rest.

    The major share of global wealth shifting towards Asia is an ineluctable historic re-alignment; it is a natural return to the long-term historic balance pre-Industrial Revolution.

    Western politicians ' problem is that they don't want to "break the news" to their people that Western standards of living are going to degrade ineluctably over the coming years , because that would expose their incompetence, as well as highlight the need to address wealth inequality in the West .

    It is easier instead to the blame the disenfranchised, pauperised citizens voting for Trump, Brexit, and other "extreme" political parties.

    Ahuehuete , says: April 20, 2019 at 4:37 pm GMT
    @bro3886 When you think about it, the USA is going to become the next South Africa.
    Zbig , says: April 20, 2019 at 10:48 pm GMT
    Zbig was, and still is, even tho' he is dead now. He was the original zio-neocon illuminist satantic globalist elite.
    Rubby2 , says: April 21, 2019 at 3:24 am GMT
    @Walt

    At least Brzezinski became well aware of this shift. So many of America's neo-conservatives have largely failed in expressing this defeat. Between Brzezinski and Boot, & the Others, they've all turned out to be fanatic ideologues.

    Endgame Napoleon , says: April 21, 2019 at 11:48 pm GMT
    @notanon Ralph Nader used to say the big issue is money in politics -- the money that "Congress Critters" use to get their government jobs at $174k. To get one of those government jobs, you don't have to understand something as complex as the banking system, which is made more opaque by the globalist neoliberals who want to maintain the Cheap Labor Lobby's beloved status quo.

    You don't have to be Nomi Prins, someone who actually worked on Wall Street and knows its nooks and crannies, to get a Congress Critter job. You just have to be the right kind of pander bear with the right kind of faux outrage at selective moments.

    The other problem is that -- like most of us in the general public -- Congress Critters have to rely on people in the financial system to navigate the terrain. It's a math-heavy field. Politicians have apparently always done this. They have created more than one era with too-big-to-fail institutions. That is what one of Prins' books describes.

    But it does not matter whether it's bankers or the manufacturers, employing welfare-assisted illegal aliens or foreign nationals on foreign soil. And it does not matter that Congress Critters occasionally put the bigwigs on the hot seat as a PR stunt. They aren't going to do anything to actually change policy unless the corporate masters who fund their campaigns give them the go ahead. And they don't really even understand why.

    [MORE]

    If you think Congress Critters understand the global banking system, you should watch the banking committee hearing on C-SPAN, where they grilled the Treasury Secretary, dressing him down like he was a $10-per-hour call center worker. It makes for good theater.

    Just like at a call center, the humiliation parade had nothing to do with the details of the work or getting anything done other than convincing voters that a bunch of fabulously wealthy legislators (every one) with a 212-day work year really care, especially about predatory factors in the financial system that supposedly affect only oppressed skin-pigmentation factions, located in their districts.

    You vicariously enjoy rebellious facial expressions that you could never exhibit during a frequently absentee mom manager's tirades for fear of being fired from a churn job that does not cover the cost of rent that has risen by 72% over 25 years, even when you add any paltry commission for taking the trouble to always meeting your numbers. But that will be the extent of it. It is for show.

    My favorite part was Empire-related; it involved the Rep. from Guam, a Congress Critter from one of US's far-flung territories. His mild and precise disposition made a strong contrast with the Chairwoman's fiery ambiguity. Since his questions were math-related and about specific budgetary matters, the Treasury Secretary seemed more frazzled than when he was receiving the emotional Sermon from the gavel-happy chairwoman.

    Guam Rep asked the Treasury Secretary about a massive transference of funds from the budget, affecting things like the territory's education budget, trying to clarify whether the Earned Income Tax Credit was actually a "liability."

    The language of most of our legislators reflects how bought off they are by the Cheap Labor Lobby. Which is why this Rep from Guam's straight-forward language was so refreshing.

    By design, the "Child" "Tax" "Credit" and the Earned Income Tax Credit sound like things that would not subtract from the overall budget to me, too, but this is not money going to people who paid too much income tax. This is money that is credited back to people who make too little to pay income tax.

    The moms often call it their "taxes," when explaining to you what they plan to spend it on. It is not education, Rep. from Guam. It is stuff like trips to the beach with a boyfriend and tattoos. That's doable for many low-wage mom workers since their major monthly bills are covered by government.

    I enjoyed the Treasury Secretary's facial expressions at this point as well. It appeared to be two math types who didn't really thrive on the process of figuring out how to spin this fiscal irresponsibility, squirming in their chairs and / or looking kind of aghast at the absurdity of the situation.

    It would have been nice if the Rep from Guam had been honest enough to narrow that down even more, explaining that the small amount of EITC money going to non-womb-productive, non-welfare-eligible citizens who mostly don't bother to claim such a paltry sum is the not the big issue.

    It is the Refundable Child Tax Credit up to $6,431, not so much the smaller maximum EITC of up to $451. It is the big check, given as an additional reward to single-breadwinner, womb-productive households that also often receive free EBT food, reduced-cost rent, monthly cash assistance and free electricity when the single breadwinner works part-time, keeping her income under the earned-income limits for the programs.

    He mentioned that Guam has a lot of poor workers like that, but so does the mainland. It is one of the big reasons for the impending collapse: undremployment of prime-aged citizens.

    If it is due to technology, it is just because employers of office workers now mostly need data entry people since advanced software does most of the mid-level analytical work. And employers love to hire a near-100% womb-productive "diversity"of childbearing-aged moms with spousal income, rent-covering child support or welfare and refundable child tax credit cash who do not need decent pay or full-time hours. "It would mess them up with the government," as one all-mom employer put it.

    Employers benefit from a welfare-fueled workforce that does not need higher pay. The Cheap Labor Lobby benefits. Congress Critters at $174k benefit via fat campaign war chests, but the many welfare-ineligible job seekers who need for pay alone to cover all household bills are screwed royally in this rigged system.

    It is also screwing the SS Trust Fund that is no longer running surpluses and a lot of other things.

    Guam Rep asked the Treasury Secretary if he was responsible and, specifically, what could he done to help restore fiscal order. Of course, the Treasury Secretary isn't responsible for the mid-allocation of funds. Pandering Congress Critters are. They have the "power of the purse" per US Constitution. The Treasury Sec. just tries to balance the books.

    But it was nice that at least one of them showed some non-theatrical concern for finding out which of the six-figure Critters is responsible. He sounded like he wanted constructive action to stop the Neoliberal House of Cards from just putting more structurally unsound cards on the deck.

    Good luck with that

    [Apr 21, 2019] John Brennan's Police State USA

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Sadly, Brennan's propaganda coup only works on what the Bell Curve crowd up there would call the dumbest and most technologically helpless 1.2σ. Here is how people with half a brain interpret the latest CIA whoppers. ..."
    "... Convincing Americans in Russia's influence or Russia collusion with Trump was only a tool that would create pressure on Trump that together with the fear of paralysis of his administration and impeachment would push Trump into the corner from which the only thing he could do was to worsen relations with Russia. What American people believe or not is really secondary. With firing of Gen. Flynn Trump acted exactly as they wanted him to act. This was the beginning of downward slope. ..."
    "... Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration. Trump can concentrate on Iran in which he will be supported by all sides and factions including the media. Even Larry David will approve not only the zionist harpies like Pam Geller, Rita Katz and Ilana Mercer. ..."
    "... The only part that is absurd is that Russia posed a bona fide threat to the US. I'm fine with the idea that he ruined Brennen's plans in Syria. But thats just ego we shouldn't have been there anyway. ..."
    "... No one really cares about Ukraine. And the European/Russian trade zone? No one cares. The Eurozone has its hands full with Greece and the rest of the old EU. I have a feeling they have already gone way too far and are more likely to shrink than expand in any meaningful way ..."
    "... " ..factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people." ..."
    "... All the more powerfully put because of its recognisably comical. understatement. Thank you Mr Whitney. Brilliant article that would be all over the mainstream media were the US MSM an instrument of American rather than globalist interests. ..."
    "... A sad story, how the USA always was a police state, where the two percent rich manipulated the 98% poor, to stay rich. When there were insurrections federal troops restored order. Also FDR put down strikes with troops. ..."
    "... The elephant in the room is Israel and the neocons , this is the force that controls America and Americas foreign policy , Brennan and the 17 intel agencies are puppets of the mossad and Israel, that is the brutal fact of the matter. ..."
    "... "The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story after another would achieve the desired result " ..."
    "... But it DID achieve the desired result! Trump folded under the pressure, and went full out neoliberal. Starting with his missile attack on Syria, he is now OK with spending trillions fighting pointless endless foreign wars on the other side of the world. ..."
    "... I think maybe half the US population does believe the Russian hacking thing, but that's not really the issue. I think that the pre-Syrian attack media blitz was more a statement of brute power to Trump: WE are in charge here, and WE can take you down and impeach you, and facts don't matter! ..."
    "... Sometimes propaganda is about persuading people. And sometimes, I think, it is about intimidating them. ..."
    "... The Brit secret service, in effect, created and trained not merely the CIA but also the Mossad and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency. All four are defined by endless lies, endless acts of utterly amoral savagery. All 4 are at least as bad as the KGB ever was, and that means as bad as Hell itself. ..."
    "... Traditional triumphalist American narrative history, as taught in schools up through the 60s or so, portrayed America as "wart-free." Since then, with Zinn's book playing a major role, it has increasingly been portrayed as "warts-only," which is of course at least equally flawed. I would say more so. ..."
    "... Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration. ..."
    "... That pre-9/11 "cooperation" nearly destroyed Russia. Nobody in Russia (except, perhaps, for Pussy Riot) wants a return to the Yeltsin era. ..."
    "... The CIA is the world largest criminal and terrorist organization. With Brennan the worst has come to the worst. The whole Russian meddling affair was initiated by the Obama/Clinton gang in cooperation with 95 percent of the media. Nothing will come out of it. ..."
    "... [The key figures who had primary influence on both Trump's and Bush's Iran policies held views close to those of Israel's right-wing Likud Party. The main conduit for the Likudist line in the Trump White House is Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, primary foreign policy advisor, and longtime friend and supporter of Netanyahu. Kushner's parents are also long-time supporters of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank. ..."
    "... Another figure to whom the Trump White House has turned is John Bolton, undersecretary of state and a key policymaker on Iran in the Bush administration. Although Bolton was not appointed Trump's secretary of state, as he'd hoped, he suddenly reemerged as a player on Iran policy thanks to his relationship with Kushner. Politico reports that Bolton met with Kushner a few days before the final policy statement was released and urged a complete withdrawal from the deal in favor of his own plan for containing Iran. ..."
    "... Putin's dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will steadily lose its grip on power. That's why it is imperative for the US prevail in Ukraine– a critical land bridge connecting the two continents– and to topple Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam's path to success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington. ..."
    "... Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who dictates what they can and can't say. ..."
    "... Such a truthful portrait of reality ! The ruling elite is indeed massively corrupt, compromised, and controlled by dark forces. And the police state is already here. For most people, so far, in the form of massive collection of personal data and increasing number of mandatory regulations. But just one or two big false-flags away from progressing into something much worse. ..."
    "... Clearly the CIA was making war on Syria. Is secret coercive covert action against sovereign nations Ok? Is it legal? When was the CIA designated a war making entity – what part of the constitution OK's that? Isn't the congress obliged by constitutional law to declare war? (These are NOT six month actions – they go on and on.) ..."
    "... Syria is only one of many nations that the CIA is attacking – how many countries are we attacking with drones? Where is congress? ..."
    "... Close the CIA – give the spying to the 16 other agencies. ..."
    Oct 22, 2017 | www.unz.com

    Fran Macadam , October 20, 2017 at 3:08 pm GMT

    A credible reading of the diverse facts, Mike.
    Kirk Elarbee , October 20, 2017 at 8:27 pm GMT
    Sadly, Brennan's propaganda coup only works on what the Bell Curve crowd up there would call the dumbest and most technologically helpless 1.2σ. Here is how people with half a brain interpret the latest CIA whoppers.

    http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/10/everyone-hacked-everyone-hacked-everyone-spy-spin-fuels-anti-kaspersky-campaign.html

    utu , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:18 am GMT
    Again Mike Whitney does not get it. Though in the first part of the article I thought he would. He was almost getting there. The objective was to push new administration into the corner from which it could not improve relations with Russia as Trump indicated that he wanted to during the campaign.

    Convincing Americans in Russia's influence or Russia collusion with Trump was only a tool that would create pressure on Trump that together with the fear of paralysis of his administration and impeachment would push Trump into the corner from which the only thing he could do was to worsen relations with Russia. What American people believe or not is really secondary. With firing of Gen. Flynn Trump acted exactly as they wanted him to act. This was the beginning of downward slope.

    Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration. Trump can concentrate on Iran in which he will be supported by all sides and factions including the media. Even Larry David will approve not only the zionist harpies like Pam Geller, Rita Katz and Ilana Mercer.

    Pamela Geller: Thank You, Larry David

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2017/10/19/pamela-geller-thank-larry-david/

    anon , Disclaimer Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:54 am GMT
    OK.

    The only part that is absurd is that Russia posed a bona fide threat to the US. I'm fine with the idea that he ruined Brennen's plans in Syria. But thats just ego we shouldn't have been there anyway.

    No one really cares about Ukraine. And the European/Russian trade zone? No one cares. The Eurozone has its hands full with Greece and the rest of the old EU. I have a feeling they have already gone way too far and are more likely to shrink than expand in any meaningful way

    The one thing I am not positive about. If the elite really believe that Russia is a threat, then Americans have done psych ops on themselves.

    The US was only interested in Ukraine because it was there. Next in line on a map. The rather shocking disinterest in investing money -- on both sides -- is inexplicable if it was really important. Most of it would be a waste -- but still. The US stupidly spent $5 billion on something -- getting duped by politicians and got theoretical regime change, but it was hell to pry even $1 billion for real economic aid.

    ThereisaGod , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 6:37 am GMT
    " ..factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people."

    All the more powerfully put because of its recognisably comical. understatement. Thank you Mr Whitney. Brilliant article that would be all over the mainstream media were the US MSM an instrument of American rather than globalist interests.

    jilles dykstra , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 6:46 am GMT
    I am reading Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the USA, 1492 to the Present. A sad story, how the USA always was a police state, where the two percent rich manipulated the 98% poor, to stay rich. When there were insurrections federal troops restored order. Also FDR put down strikes with troops.
    Logan , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 11:16 am GMT
    @jilles dykstra

    You should be aware that Zinn's book is not, IMO, an honest attempt at writing history. It is conscious propaganda intended to make Americans believe exactly what you are taking from it.

    DESERT FOX , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 1:30 pm GMT
    The elephant in the room is Israel and the neocons , this is the force that controls America and Americas foreign policy , Brennan and the 17 intel agencies are puppets of the mossad and Israel, that is the brutal fact of the matter.

    Until that fact changes Americans will continue to fight and die for Israel.

    TG , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 2:03 pm GMT
    "The absence of evidence suggests that Russia hacking narrative is a sloppy and unprofessional disinformation campaign that was hastily slapped together by over confident Intelligence officials who believed that saturating the public airwaves with one absurd story after another would achieve the desired result "

    But it DID achieve the desired result! Trump folded under the pressure, and went full out neoliberal. Starting with his missile attack on Syria, he is now OK with spending trillions fighting pointless endless foreign wars on the other side of the world.

    I think maybe half the US population does believe the Russian hacking thing, but that's not really the issue. I think that the pre-Syrian attack media blitz was more a statement of brute power to Trump: WE are in charge here, and WE can take you down and impeach you, and facts don't matter!

    Sometimes propaganda is about persuading people. And sometimes, I think, it is about intimidating them.

    Anonymous , Disclaimer Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 2:05 pm GMT
    Whitney is another author who declares the "Russians did it" narrative a psyop. He then devotes entire columns to the psyop, "naww Russia didn't do it". There could be plenty to write about – recent laws that do undercut liberty, but no, the Washington Post needs fake opposition to its fake news so you have guys like Whitney in the less-mainstream fake news media.

    So Brennan wanted revenge? Well that's simple enough to understand, without being too stupid. But Whitney's whopper of a lie is what you're supposed to unquestionably believe. The US has "rival political parties". Did you miss it?

    Jake , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 2:32 pm GMT
    The US is doing nothing more than acting as the British Empire 2.0. WASP culture was born of a Judaizing heresy: Anglo-Saxon Puritanism. That meant that the WASP Elites of every are pro-Jewish, especially in order to wage war, physical and/or cultural, against the vast majority of white Christians they rule.

    By the early 19th century, The Brit Empire's Elites also had a strong, and growing, dose of pro-Arabic/pro-Islamic philoSemitism. Most of that group became ardently pro-Sunni, and most of the pro-Sunni ones eventually coalescing around promotion of the House of Saud, which means being pro-Wahhabi and permanently desirous of killing or enslaving virtually all Shiite Mohammedans.

    So, by the time of Victoria's high reign, the Brit WASP Elites were a strange brew of hardcoree pro-Jewish and hardcore pro-Arabic/islamic. The US foreign policy of today is an attempt to put those two together and force it on everyone and make it work.

    The Brit secret service, in effect, created and trained not merely the CIA but also the Mossad and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Presidency. All four are defined by endless lies, endless acts of utterly amoral savagery. All 4 are at least as bad as the KGB ever was, and that means as bad as Hell itself.

    Logan , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:04 pm GMT
    @Grandpa Charlie

    Fair enough. I didn't know that about the foreword. If accurate, that's a reasonable approach for a book.

    Here's the problem.

    Back when O. Cromwell was the dictator of England, he retained an artist to paint him. The custom of the time was for artists to "clean up" their subjects, in a primitive form of photoshopping.

    OC being a religious fanatic, he informed the artist he wished to be portrayed as God had made him, "warts and all." (Ollie had a bunch of unattractive facial warts.) Or the artist wouldn't be paid.

    https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/08/cromwell-portraitist-samuel-cooper-exhibition

    Traditional triumphalist American narrative history, as taught in schools up through the 60s or so, portrayed America as "wart-free." Since then, with Zinn's book playing a major role, it has increasingly been portrayed as "warts-only," which is of course at least equally flawed. I would say more so.

    All I am asking is that American (and other) history be written "warts and all." The triumphalist version is true, largely, and so is the Zinn version. Gone With the Wind and Roots both portray certain aspects of the pre-war south fairly accurately..

    America has been, and is, both evil and good. As is/was true of every human institution and government in history. Personally, I believe America, net/net, has been one of the greatest forces for human good ever. But nobody will realize that if only the negative side of American history is taught.

    Wally , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:16 pm GMT
    @Michael Kenny

    Hasbarist 'Kenny', you said:

    "There must be something really dirty in Russigate that hasn't yet come out to generate this level of panic."

    You continue to claim what you cannot prove.

    But then you are a Jews First Zionist.

    Russia-Gate Jumps the Shark
    Russia-gate has jumped the shark with laughable new claims about a tiny number of "Russia-linked" social media ads, but the US mainstream media is determined to keep a straight face

    https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/10/robert-parry/jumping-the-shark/

    Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet?

    https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia-story-falls-apart-is-skepticism-permissible-yet/

    + review of other frauds

    Logan , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:20 pm GMT
    @Jake

    Most of that group became ardently pro-Sunni, and most of the pro-Sunni ones eventually coalescing around promotion of the House of Saud, which means being pro-Wahhabi and permanently desirous of killing or enslaving virtually all Shiite Mohammedans.

    Thanks for the laugh. During the 19th century, the Sauds were toothless, dirt-poor hicks from the deep desert of zero importance on the world stage.

    The Brits were not Saudi proponents, in fact promoting the Husseins of Hejaz, the guys Lawrence of Arabia worked with. The Husseins, the Sharifs of Mecca and rulers of Hejaz, were the hereditary enemies of the Sauds of Nejd.

    After WWI, the Brits installed Husseins as rulers of both Transjordan and Iraq, which with the Hejaz meant the Sauds were pretty much surrounded. The Sauds conquered the Hejaz in 1924, despite lukewarm British support for the Hejaz.

    Nobody in the world cared much about the Saudis one way or another until massive oil fields were discovered, by Americans not Brits, starting in 1938. There was no reason they should. Prior to that Saudi prominence in world affairs was about equal to that of Chad today, and for much the same reason. Chad (and Saudi Arabia) had nothing anybody else wanted.

    Grandpa Charlie , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:25 pm GMT
    @Michael Kenny

    'Putin stopped talking about the "Lisbon to Vladivostok" free trade area long ago" -- Michael Kenney

    Putin was simply trying to sell Russia's application for EU membership with the catch-phrase "Lisbon to Vladivostok". He continued that until the issue was triply mooted (1) by implosion of EU growth and boosterism, (2) by NATO's aggressive stance, in effect taken by NATO in Ukraine events and in the Baltics, and, (3) Russia's alliance with China.

    It is surely still true that Russians think of themselves, categorically, as Europeans. OTOH, we can easily imagine that Russians in Vladivostok look at things differently than do Russians in St. Petersburg. Then again, Vladivostok only goes back about a century and a half.

    Seamus Padraig , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:39 pm GMT
    @utu

    Anyway, the mission was accomplished and the relations with Russia are worse now than during Obama administration.

    I generally agree with your comment, but that part strikes me as a bit of an exaggeration. While relations with Russia certainly haven't improved, how have they really worsened? The second round of sanctions that Trump reluctantly approved have yet to be implemented by Europe, which was the goal. And apart from that, what of substance has changed?

    Seamus Padraig , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:45 pm GMT
    @Grandpa Charlie

    That pre-9/11 "cooperation" nearly destroyed Russia. Nobody in Russia (except, perhaps, for Pussy Riot) wants a return to the Yeltsin era.

    Ludwig Watzal , Website Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:46 pm GMT
    It's not surprising that 57 percent of the American people believe in Russian meddling. Didn't two-thirds of the same crowd believe that Saddam was behind 9/11, too? The American public is being brainwashed 24 hours a day all year long.

    The CIA is the world largest criminal and terrorist organization. With Brennan the worst has come to the worst. The whole Russian meddling affair was initiated by the Obama/Clinton gang in cooperation with 95 percent of the media. Nothing will come out of it.

    This disinformation campaign might be the prelude to an upcoming war.
    Right now, the US is run by jerks and idiots. Watch the video.

    anonymous , Disclaimer Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 3:50 pm GMT
    Only dumb people does not know that TRUMP IS NETANYAHU'S PUPPET.

    The fifth column zionist jews are running the albino stooge and foreign policy in the Middle East to expand Israel's interest against American interest that is TREASON. One of these FIFTH COLUMNISTS is Jared Kushner. He should be arrested.

    https://www.globalresearch.ca/donald-trumps-likudist-campaign-against-iran/5614264

    [The key figures who had primary influence on both Trump's and Bush's Iran policies held views close to those of Israel's right-wing Likud Party. The main conduit for the Likudist line in the Trump White House is Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, primary foreign policy advisor, and longtime friend and supporter of Netanyahu. Kushner's parents are also long-time supporters of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank.

    Another figure to whom the Trump White House has turned is John Bolton, undersecretary of state and a key policymaker on Iran in the Bush administration. Although Bolton was not appointed Trump's secretary of state, as he'd hoped, he suddenly reemerged as a player on Iran policy thanks to his relationship with Kushner. Politico reports that Bolton met with Kushner a few days before the final policy statement was released and urged a complete withdrawal from the deal in favor of his own plan for containing Iran.

    Bolton spoke with Trump by phone on Thursday about the paragraph in the deal that vowed it would be "terminated" if there was any renegotiation, according to Politico. He was calling Trump from Las Vegas, where he'd been meeting with casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the third major figure behind Trump's shift towards Israeli issues. Adelson is a Likud supporter who has long been a close friend of Netanyahu's and has used his Israeli tabloid newspaper Israel Hayomto support Netanyahu's campaigns. He was Trump's main campaign contributor in 2016, donating $100 million. Adelson's real interest has been in supporting Israel's interests in Washington -- especially with regard to Iran.]

    Miro23 , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 4:56 pm GMT
    A great article with some excellent points:

    Putin's dream of Greater Europe is the death knell for the unipolar world order. It means the economic center of the world will shift to Central Asia where abundant resources and cheap labor of the east will be linked to the technological advances and the Capital the of the west eliminating the need to trade in dollars or recycle profits into US debt. The US economy will slip into irreversible decline, and the global hegemon will steadily lose its grip on power. That's why it is imperative for the US prevail in Ukraine– a critical land bridge connecting the two continents– and to topple Assad in Syria in order to control vital resources and pipeline corridors. Washington must be in a position where it can continue to force its trading partners to denominate their resources in dollars and recycle the proceeds into US Treasuries if it is to maintain its global primacy. The main problem is that Russia is blocking Uncle Sam's path to success which is roiling the political establishment in Washington.

    American dominance is very much tied to the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency, and the rest of the world no longer want to fund this bankrupt, warlike state – particularly the Chinese.

    First, it confirms that the US did not want to see the jihadist extremists defeated by Russia. These mainly-Sunni militias served as Washington's proxy-army conducting an ambitious regime change operation which coincided with US strategic ambitions.

    The CIA run US/Israeli/ISIS alliance.

    Second, Zakharova confirms that the western media is not an independent news gathering organization, but a propaganda organ for the foreign policy establishment who dictates what they can and can't say.

    They are given the political line and they broadcast it.

    The loosening of rules governing the dissemination of domestic propaganda coupled with the extraordinary advances in surveillance technology, create the perfect conditions for the full implementation of an American police state. But what is more concerning, is that the primary levers of state power are no longer controlled by elected officials but by factions within the state whose interests do not coincide with those of the American people. That can only lead to trouble.

    At some point Americans are going to get a "War on Domestic Terror" cheered along by the media. More or less the arrest and incarceration of any opposition following the Soviet Bolshevik model.

    CanSpeccy , Website Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:11 pm GMT
    @utu

    On the plus side, everyone now knows that the Anglo-US media from the NY Times to the Economist, from WaPo to the Gruniard, and from the BBC to CNN, the CBC and Weinstein's Hollywood are a worthless bunch of depraved lying bastards.

    Thales the Milesian , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:53 pm GMT
    Brennan did this, CIA did that .

    So what are you going to do about all this?

    Continue to whine?

    Continue to keep your head stuck in your ass?

    So then continue with your blah, blah, blah, and eat sh*t.

    You, disgusting self-elected democratic people/institutions!!!

    AB_Anonymous , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 5:59 pm GMT
    Such a truthful portrait of reality ! The ruling elite is indeed massively corrupt, compromised, and controlled by dark forces. And the police state is already here. For most people, so far, in the form of massive collection of personal data and increasing number of mandatory regulations. But just one or two big false-flags away from progressing into something much worse.

    The thing is, no matter how thick the mental cages are, and how carefully they are maintained by the daily massive injections of "certified" truth (via MSM), along with neutralizing or compromising of "troublemakers", the presence of multiple alternative sources in the age of Internet makes people to slip out of these cages one by one, and as the last events show – with acceleration.

    It means that there's a fast approaching tipping point after which it'd be impossible for those in power both to keep a nice "civilized" face and to control the "cage-free" population. So, no matter how the next war will be called, it will be the war against the free Internet and free people. That's probably why N. Korean leader has no fear to start one.

    Art , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 6:18 pm GMT
    An aside:

    All government secrecy is a curse on mankind. Trump is releasing the JFK murder files to the public. Kudos! Let us hope he will follow up with a full 9/11 investigation.

    Think Peace -- Art

    Mr. Anon , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 7:07 pm GMT
    @utu

    The objective was to push new administration into the corner from which it could not improve relations with Russia as Trump indicated that he wanted to during the campaign.

    Good point. That was probably one of the objectives (and from the point of view of the deep-state, perhaps the most important objective) of the "Russia hacked our democracy" narrative, in addition to the general deligitimization of the Trump administration.

    Art , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 7:11 pm GMT
    And, keep in mind, Washington's Sunni proxies were not a division of the Pentagon; they were entirely a CIA confection: CIA recruited, CIA-armed, CIA-funded and CIA-trained.

    Clearly the CIA was making war on Syria. Is secret coercive covert action against sovereign nations Ok? Is it legal? When was the CIA designated a war making entity – what part of the constitution OK's that? Isn't the congress obliged by constitutional law to declare war? (These are NOT six month actions – they go on and on.)

    Are committees of six congressman and six senators, who meet in secret, just avoiding the grave constitutional questions of war? We the People cannot even interrogate these politicians. (These politicians make big money in the secrecy swamp when they leave office.)

    Syria is only one of many nations that the CIA is attacking – how many countries are we attacking with drones? Where is congress?

    Spying is one thing – covert action is another – covert is wrong – it goes against world order. Every year after 9/11 they say things are worse – give them more money more power and they will make things safe. That is BS!

    9/11 has opened the flood gates to the US government attacking at will, the various peoples of this Earth. That is NOT our prerogative.

    We are being exceptionally arrogant.

    Close the CIA – give the spying to the 16 other agencies.

    Think Peace -- Art

    Rurik , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 7:12 pm GMT
    @Ben10

    right at 1:47

    when he says 'we can't move on as a country'

    his butt hurt is so ruefully obvious, that I couldn't help notice a wry smile on my face

    that bitch spent millions on the war sow, and now all that mullah won't even wipe his butt hurt

    when I see ((guys)) like this raging their inner crybaby angst, I feel really, really good about President Trump

    MAGA bitches!

    Mr. Anon , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 7:15 pm GMT
    @jilles dykstra

    I am reading Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the USA

    A Peoples History of the USA? Which Peoples?

    Tradecraft46 , Next New Comment October 21, 2017 at 8:04 pm GMT
    I am SAIS 70 so know the drill and the article is on point.

    Here is the dealio. Most reporters are dim and have no experience, and it is real easy to lead them by the nose with promises of better in the future.

    [Apr 21, 2019] Whenever someone inconveniences the neoliberal oligarchy, the entire neoliberal MSM mafia tells us 24 x7 how evil and disgusting that person is. It's true of the leader of every nation which rejects neoliberal globalization as well as for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

    Highly recommended!
    Apr 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Have you ever noticed how whenever someone inconveniences the dominant western power structure, the entire political/media class rapidly becomes very, very interested in letting us know how evil and disgusting that person is? It's true of the leader of every nation which refuses to allow itself to be absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized power alliance, it's true of anti-establishment political candidates, and it's true of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

    Corrupt and unaccountable power uses its political and media influence to smear Assange because, as far as the interests of corrupt and unaccountable power are concerned, killing his reputation is as good as killing him. If everyone can be paced into viewing him with hatred and revulsion, they'll be far less likely to take WikiLeaks publications seriously, and they'll be far more likely to consent to Assange's imprisonment, thereby establishing a precedent for the future prosecution of leak-publishing journalists around the world. Someone can be speaking 100 percent truth to you, but if you're suspicious of him you won't believe anything he's saying. If they can manufacture that suspicion with total or near-total credence, then as far as our rulers are concerned it's as good as putting a bullet in his head.

    Those of us who value truth and light need to fight this smear campaign in order to keep our fellow man from signing off on a major leap in the direction of Orwellian dystopia, and a big part of that means being able to argue against those smears and disinformation wherever they appear. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any kind of centralized source of information which comprehensively debunks all the smears in a thorough and engaging way, so with the help of hundreds of tips from my readers and social media followers I'm going to attempt to make one here. What follows is my attempt at creating a tool kit people can use to fight against Assange smears wherever they encounter them, by refuting the disinformation with truth and solid argumentation.

    This article is an ongoing project which will be updated regularly where it appears on Medium and caitlinjohnstone.com as new information comes in and new smears spring up in need of refutation.

    [Apr 21, 2019] The remarkable susceptibility of the American people to propaganda has to do with the philosophical tradition of pragmatism: What is true is that what is useful in our lives

    Notable quotes:
    "... Alex Carey explains is his excellent book "Taking the Risk out of Democracy" that the remarkable susceptibility of the American people to propaganda has to do with the philosophical tradition of pragmatism. Famous scholars like William James and John Dewey said things like: "What is true is that what is useful in our lives" and "Believing something helps to make that thing become true". So you want to believe because you think it serves your purposes. ..."
    "... This whole Russiagate is a sort of orgy of pragmatism. This could not happen in any other country, I'm sure. The only bright lining is that apparently large parts of the US population do not care one whit about Russiagate. The thing only has traction among the educated classes. But still! Amazing to see how so many evidently smart people mislead themselves into believing this shoddy story or at least taking it way too serious. ..."
    Apr 20, 2019 | therealnews.com

    Paul Janssen • 11 hours ago ,

    My God you Americans are so strange! (I'm from the Netherlands)

    Alex Carey explains is his excellent book "Taking the Risk out of Democracy" that the remarkable susceptibility of the American people to propaganda has to do with the philosophical tradition of pragmatism. Famous scholars like William James and John Dewey said things like: "What is true is that what is useful in our lives" and "Believing something helps to make that thing become true". So you want to believe because you think it serves your purposes.

    Betrand Russell considered this attitude to represent a kind of madness. Truth is the objective correspondence to the facts, was his position.

    This whole Russiagate is a sort of orgy of pragmatism. This could not happen in any other country, I'm sure. The only bright lining is that apparently large parts of the US population do not care one whit about Russiagate. The thing only has traction among the educated classes. But still! Amazing to see how so many evidently smart people mislead themselves into believing this shoddy story or at least taking it way too serious.

    As to the title you gave these two items: "Will the Mueller Report Help Defeat Trump in 2020?" Of course not ! TO THE CONTRARY!

    Sad that the Real News also has gone under in this intellectual morass. You really should have kept on Aaron Maté.

    [Apr 21, 2019] the current situation is "USSR reversed", in that the US now feels the need to "mute" Russia but Russia does not feel the need to "mute" the US.

    Apr 21, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
    JamesT , 21 April 2019 at 11:14 AM
    The most intelligent discussion of Russiagate that I have seen is Chris Hedges interviewing Aaron Mate on RT:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odEnNBlOJdk

    The fact that one has to go to RT for such professional journalism is telling. A pundit on Vesti is arguing that the current situation is "USSR reversed", in that the US now feels the need to "mute" Russia but Russia does not feel the need to "mute" the US. Because Russia is the country whose leadership is being more truthful, this results in Russia being more open to foreign media and dissident opinion. He says "openness is beneficial for us", "openness makes us the winning side", and "there is nothing they can tell us about us that we don't already know". I have been thinking along the same lines. From the 3:00 mark onwards here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JkAKYLklYI

    [Apr 21, 2019] NYT The Tables Have Turned -- Time To Investigate The FBI, Steele And The Rest Of The Witch Hunters

    The country was divided before Mueller Report. Now it is even more divided.
    Notable quotes:
    "... We wouldn't know that a Clinton-linked operative, Joseph Mifsud, seeded Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos with the rumor that Russia had 'Dirt' on Hillary Clinton - which would later be coaxed out of Papadopoulos by a Clinton-linked Australian ambassador, Alexander Downer, and that this apparent 'setup' would be the genesis of the FBI's " operation crossfire hurricane " operation against the Trump campaign. ..."
    "... We wouldn't know about the role of Fusion GPS - the opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign to commission the Steele dossier. Fusion is also linked to the infamous Trump Tower meeting , and hired Nellie Ohr - the CIA-linked wife of the DOJ's then-#4 employee, Bruce Ohr. Nellie fed her husband Bruce intelligence she had gathered against Trump while working for Fusion , according to transcripts of her closed-door Congressional testimony. ..."
    "... Now the dossier -- financed by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee , and compiled by the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele -- is likely to face new, possibly harsh scrutiny from multiple inquiries . - NYT ..."
    "... The report was debunked after internet sleuths traced the IP address to a marketing server located outside Philadelphia, leading Alfa Bank executives to file a lawsuit against Fusion GPS in October 2017, claiming their reputations were harmed by the Steele Dossier. ..."
    "... And who placed the Trump-Alfa theory with various media outlets? None other than former FBI counterintelligence officer and Dianne Feinstein aide Dan Jones - who is currently working with Fusion GPS and Steele to continue their Trump-Russia investigation funded in part by George Soros . ..."
    "... Of course, when one stops painting with broad brush strokes, it's clear that the dossier was fabricated bullshit. ..."
    "... after a nearly two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and roughly 40 FBI agents and other specialists, no evidence was found to support the dossier's wild claims of "DNC moles, Romanian hackers, Russian pensioners, or years of Trump-Putin intelligence trading ," as the Times puts it. ..."
    "... As there was spying, there must necessarily also have been channels to get the information thus gathered back to its original buyer - the Clinton campaign. Who passed the information back to Clinton, and what got passed? ..."
    "... the NYTt prints all the news a scumbag would. remember Judith Miller, the Zionazi reporter the NYT ..."
    "... There was no 'hack.' That is the big, anti-Russia, pro-MIC lie which all the other lies serve. ..."
    "... Seth Rich had the means and the motive. So did Imran Awan, but it would make no sense for Awan to turn anything over to wikileaks . . .he would have kept them as insurance. ..."
    "... Until the real criminals are processed and the media can be restored you don't have a United States. This corruption is beyond comprehension. You had the (((media)) providing kickbacks to the FBI for leaked information. These bribes are how CNN was on site during Roger Stones invasion. ..."
    "... So now the narrative is, "We were wrong about Russian collusion, and that's Russia's fault"?! ..."
    Apr 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    As we now shift from the "witch hunt" against Trump to 'investigating the investigators' who spied on him - remember this; Donald Trump was supposed to lose the 2016 election by almost all accounts. And had Hillary won, as expected, none of this would have seen the light of day .

    We wouldn't know that a hyper-partisan FBI had spied on the Trump campaign , as Attorney General William Barr put it during his April 10 Congressional testimony .

    We wouldn't know that a Clinton-linked operative, Joseph Mifsud, seeded Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos with the rumor that Russia had 'Dirt' on Hillary Clinton - which would later be coaxed out of Papadopoulos by a Clinton-linked Australian ambassador, Alexander Downer, and that this apparent 'setup' would be the genesis of the FBI's " operation crossfire hurricane " operation against the Trump campaign.

    We wouldn't know about the role of Fusion GPS - the opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign to commission the Steele dossier. Fusion is also linked to the infamous Trump Tower meeting , and hired Nellie Ohr - the CIA-linked wife of the DOJ's then-#4 employee, Bruce Ohr. Nellie fed her husband Bruce intelligence she had gathered against Trump while working for Fusion , according to transcripts of her closed-door Congressional testimony.

    And if not for reporting by the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross and others, we wouldn't know that the FBI sent a longtime spook, Stefan Halper, to infiltrate and spy on the Trump campaign - after the Obama DOJ paid him over $400,000 right before the 2016 US election (out of more than $1 million he received while Obama was president).

    According to the New York Times , the tables are turning, starting with the Steele Dossier.

    [T]he release on Thursday of the report by the special counsel , Robert S. Mueller III, underscored what had grown clearer for months -- that while many Trump aides had welcomed contacts with the Russians, some of the most sensational claims in the dossier appeared to be false, and others were impossible to prove . Mr. Mueller's report contained over a dozen passing references to the document's claims but no overall assessment of why so much did not check out.

    Now the dossier -- financed by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee , and compiled by the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele -- is likely to face new, possibly harsh scrutiny from multiple inquiries . - NYT

    While Congressional Republicans have vowed to investigate, the DOJ's Inspector General is considering whether the FBI improperly relied on the dossier when they used it to apply for a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The IG also wants to know about Steele's sources and whether the FBI disclosed any doubts as to the veracity of the dossier .

    Attorney General Barr, meanwhile, said he will review the FBI's conduct in the Russia investigation after saying the agency spied on the Trump campaign .

    Doubts over the dossier

    The FBI's scramble to vet the dossier's claims are well known. According to an April, 2017 NYT report , the FBI agreed to pay Steele $50,000 for "solid corroboration" of his claims . Steele was apparently unable to produce satisfactory evidence - and was ultimately not paid for his efforts:

    Mr. Steele met his F.B.I. contact in Rome in early October, bringing a stack of new intelligence reports. One, dated Sept. 14, said that Mr. Putin was facing "fallout" over his apparent involvement in the D.N.C. hack and was receiving "conflicting advice" on what to do.

    The agent said that if Mr. Steele could get solid corroboration of his reports, the F.B.I. would pay him $50,000 for his efforts, according to two people familiar with the offer. Ultimately, he was not paid . - NYT

    Still, the FBI used the dossier to obtain the FISA warrant on Page - while the document itself was heavily shopped around to various media outlets . The late Sen. John McCain provided a copy to Former FBI Director James Comey, who already had a version, and briefed President Trump on the salacious document. Comey's briefing to Trump was then used by CNN and BuzzFeed to justify reporting on and publishing the dossier following the election.

    Let's not forget that in October, 2016, both Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman John Podesta promoted the conspiracy theory that a secret Russian server was communicating with Trump Tower.

    The report was debunked after internet sleuths traced the IP address to a marketing server located outside Philadelphia, leading Alfa Bank executives to file a lawsuit against Fusion GPS in October 2017, claiming their reputations were harmed by the Steele Dossier.

    And who placed the Trump-Alfa theory with various media outlets? None other than former FBI counterintelligence officer and Dianne Feinstein aide Dan Jones - who is currently working with Fusion GPS and Steele to continue their Trump-Russia investigation funded in part by George Soros .

    Dan Jones, George Soros, Glenn Simpson

    Russian tricks? The Times notes that Steele "has not ruled out" that he may have been fed Russian disinformation while assembling his dossier.

    That would mean that in addition to carrying out an effective attack on the Clinton campaign, Russian spymasters hedged their bets and placed a few land mines under Mr. Trump's presidency as well.

    Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who now lives outside Washington, saw that as plausible. "Russia has huge experience in spreading false information," he said. - NYT

    In short, Steele is being given an 'out' with this admission.

    A lawyer for Fusion GPS, Joshua Levy, says that the Mueller report substantiated the "core reporting" in the Steele memos - namely that "Trump campaign figures were secretly meeting Kremlin figures," and that Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, had directed "a covert operation to elect Donald J. Trump."

    Of course, when one stops painting with broad brush strokes, it's clear that the dossier was fabricated bullshit.

    The dossier tantalized Mr. Trump's opponents with a worst-case account of the president's conduct. And for those trying to make sense of the Trump-Russia saga, the dossier infused the quest for understanding with urgency.

    In blunt prose, it suggested that a foreign power had fully compromised the man who would become the next president of the United States.

    The Russians, it asserted, had tried winning over Mr. Trump with real estate deals in Moscow -- which he had not taken up -- and set him up with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013, filming the proceedings for future exploitation. A handful of aides were described as conspiring with the Russians at every turn.

    Mr. Trump, it said, had moles inside the D.N.C. The memos claimed that he and the Kremlin had been exchanging intelligence for eight years and were using Romanian hackers against the Democrats , and that Russian pensioners in the United States were running a covert communications network . - NYT

    And after a nearly two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and roughly 40 FBI agents and other specialists, no evidence was found to support the dossier's wild claims of "DNC moles, Romanian hackers, Russian pensioners, or years of Trump-Putin intelligence trading ," as the Times puts it.

    Now that the shoe is on the other foot, and key Democrats backing away from talks of impeachment, let's see if lady justice will follow the rest of us down the rabbit hole.

    Yippie21 , 2 minutes ago link

    This is why the whole FISA court is a joke. What is their remedy if their power is abused? What happens. Well,... the FISA courts was lied to and found out about it in the early 2000's. Mueller was FBI chief. So they got a strongly worded dressing-down, a mark in their permanent record from high school, and NO ONE was fired... no one was sanctioned, no agent was transferred to Alaska.

    Fast forward 10 or 12 years and the FBI is doing this **** again. Lying to the court... you know the court where there are no Democrat judges or Republican judges.. they are all super awesome.... and what is the remedy when the FISA court is told they've been lied to by the FBI and used in a intel operation with MI6, inserting assets, into a freaking domestic Presidential campaign!!! and then they WON. Good god.

    And what do we hear from our court? Nadda. Do we hear of some Federal Judges hauling FBI and DOJ folks in front of them and throwing them in jail? Nope. It appears from here... that our Federal Justices are corrupt and have no problem letting illegal police-state actions go on with ZERO accountability or recourse. They could care less evidently. It's all secret you know... trust us they say.. Why aren't these judges publicly making loud noises about how the judiciary is complicit , with the press, in wholesale spying and leaking for political reasons AND a coup attempt when the wrong guy won.???

    Where is awesome Justice Roberts? Why isn't he throwing down some truth on just how compromised the rule of law in his courts clearly are in the last 10 years? The FISA court is his baby. It does no good for them to assure us they are concerned too, and they've taken action and sent strongly worded letters. Pisses me off. ? Right? heck of rant...

    San Pedro , 2 minutes ago link

    When did Russians interfere in our elections?? 2016. Who was president when Russians interfered with elections?? oobama. Who was head of the CIA?? Brennan. Who was National Intelligence director?? Clapper. Who was head of the FBI when the Russians interfered in our elections?? Comey. The pattern is obvious. When Trump was a private citizen the oobama and all his cabinet appointees and Intel Managers had their hands on all the levers and instruments of Government..and did nothing . Your oobama is guilty of treason and failing his Oath Of Office...everybody knows this.

    Scipio Africanuz , 4 minutes ago link

    This article is still a roundabout gambit to blame Russia.

    Fair enough, where's Bill Browder? In England. Browder's allegations were utilized to try and damage Russia, even though Russia (not the USSR), is about the most reliable friend America has.

    Russia helped Lincoln, and were it not for that crucial help, there'd be no America to sanction Russia today. The Tsar paid for that help with his dynasty, when Nicholas II was murdered, and dethroned.

    Americans are truly ungrateful brutes..

    Now, sanctions, opprobrium, and hatred are heaped on Russia, most cogently by chauvinistic racists, who look down their noses at Rus (Russ) and yet, cannot sacrifice 25 millions of their own people, for the sake of others.

    Russians are considered subhuman, and yet, the divine spark of humanity resides solely in their breasts. The zionists claim a false figure of 6 million for a faux holocaust, and yet, nobody pays attention to the true holocaust of 25 millions, or the many millions before that disastrous instigated war.

    That the Russians are childlike, believing others to be like them, loyal, self sacrificing, and generous, has now brought the world to the brink of armageddon, and still, they bear the burden of proof, though their accusers, who ought provide the evidence, are bereft of any..

    Thomas Jefferson it was, who observing whatever he observed, exclaimed in cogent agitation, that "I fear for my countrymen, when I remember that God is Just, and His Justice does not repose forever".

    Investigate Jared and Ivanka Kushner, along with Charles Kushner, and much ought be clear, no cheers...

    King of Ruperts Land , 5 minutes ago link

    I don't buy that "Few bad apples at the top", "Good rank and file" Argument. I have never seen one. We should assume everyone from the top to the bottom of FBI, DOJ, and State, just to get started, probably every other three better agency is bad. At least incompotent, at worst treasonous.

    Sanity Bear , 15 minutes ago link

    As there was spying, there must necessarily also have been channels to get the information thus gathered back to its original buyer - the Clinton campaign. Who passed the information back to Clinton, and what got passed?

    besnook , 20 minutes ago link

    the NYTt prints all the news a scumbag would. remember Judith Miller, the Zionazi reporter the NYT used to push the Iraq war with all sorts of ********? after the war was determined to be started under a false premise and became common knowledge there were no wmds in iraq the nyt came forward and reported the war was ******** as if they were reporting breaking news.

    they have done the same thing here. they pushed the russiagate story with both barrels even though the informed populace knew it was ******** before trump was sworn in as potus. now that the all the holes in the story are readily apparent the nyt comes forward with breaking revelation that something is wrong with the story.

    ClickNLook , 23 minutes ago link

    Now we will have another 2 years of investigation and another expensive and meaningless report. WWE Soup Opera continues. Plot sickens.

    I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 30 minutes ago link

    There was no 'hack.' That is the big, anti-Russia, pro-MIC lie which all the other lies serve.

    I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 30 minutes ago link

    There was no 'hack.' That is the big, anti-Russia, pro-MIC lie which all the other lies serve.

    His name is Seth Rich.

    DaBard51 , 24 minutes ago link

    The Seth Rich investigation; where is it now? Murder of a campaign staffer; tampering with or influencing an election, is it not? Hmmm... When nine hundred years old you become, look this good you will not.

    ClickNLook , 19 minutes ago link

    Once upon a time there was a Bernie supporter. And his name was Seth Rich. Then there was a "botched robbery", which evidence that was concluded on, I have no idea. Do you? Anyhow, The End.

    Amy G. Dala , 22 minutes ago link

    Seth Rich had the means and the motive. So did Imran Awan, but it would make no sense for Awan to turn anything over to wikileaks . . .he would have kept them as insurance.

    Why wouldn't Assange name the source for the DNC emails? Is this a future bargaining chip? And what if he did name Seth Rich? He would have to prove it. Could he?

    ComeAndTakeIt , 10 minutes ago link

    They've got Assange now...Maybe they should ask him if it was Seth Rich who gave him the emails?

    Maybe even do it under oath and on national television. I don't think it's still considered "burning a source" if your source has already been murdered....

    Bricker , 32 minutes ago link

    Until the real criminals are processed and the media can be restored you don't have a United States. This corruption is beyond comprehension. You had the (((media)) providing kickbacks to the FBI for leaked information. These bribes are how CNN was on site during Roger Stones invasion.

    Treason and Sedition is rampant in America and all SPY roads lead to Clapper, Brennan and Obama...This needs attention.

    The media is abusive and narrating attacks on a dully elected president

    Mike Rotsch , 35 minutes ago link

    Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who now lives outside Washington, saw that as plausible. "Russia has huge experience in spreading false information," he said. - NYT

    You have got to be ******* kidding me. So now the narrative is, "We were wrong about Russian collusion, and that's Russia's fault"?!

    [Apr 21, 2019] Buzzfeed, Question Time the purpose of Fake News by Kit Knightly

    Notable quotes:
    "... This is one of the biggest problems with mainstream media these days. They just give out fake stories or tailor-made stories out there and people on social media latch on to the stories without actually trying to find out what really happened. ..."
    "... I've never thought of there being an antisemitism crisis in the Labour party but rather think of it as part of a concerted attack on anyone opposing Israeli policy towards Palestinians, occupied territories and so on. ..."
    Jan 19, 2019 | off-guardian.org
    Two days ago BuzzFeed published a front page story, under a "BREAKING" banner, headlined: President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project

    In the article, Buzzfeed reporters Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier claim to have been told, by two anonymous sources, that Robert Mueller's "Russiagate" investigation had evidence Donald Trump had instructed his lawyer to lie to Congress. That would be a felony, and obviously an impeachable offence.

    The reaction of the news media and associated twitterati was as quick as it was predictable. MSNCBC, CNN, the BBC, The Guardian the usual suspects. They were all over it within hours.

    But then, less than a day later, Robert Mueller's spokesperson Peter Carr issued this statement :

    BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the special counsel's office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's congressional testimony are not accurate,"

    Despite this, BuzzFeed is sticking to its guns. Insisting that Mueller's statement is vague, and therefore does not undercut the heart of their story.

    The rest of the mainstream media are sensing the tone though and jumping ship. The Washington Post – not known for their pro-Trump slant – ran an editorial pointing out the scarcity of Mueller's public comment (this the first statement Mueller has ever issued concerning evidence or claims in the press), and arguing that the rush to refute the BuzzFeed article means it is probably completely false.

    Nevertheless, BuzzFeed has not retracted or altered their story in any way – except for putting in one small paragraph reporting that Mueller's office disputes their story. There is no note of the update, and the rest of the story remains unchanged .

    There is a striking parallel here, with a story Luke Harding contributed to The Guardian in late November last year: "Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy"

    The article claimed Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort had met with Julian Assange at least three times prior to the 2016 Presidential Election. No evidence was produced, save the word of "unnamed intelligence officials", "secret Ecuadorian documents" and the like. While the predictable news outlets picked up the story and ran with it with the eagerness of a 6-month-old Golden Retriever, we in the alternative media were quick to point out the logical and factual deficiencies in the story.

    Within hours, The Guardian had edited its language to be rather more circumspect , and include the denials made by both accused parties. The edits made to the article were not noted or highlighted in any way, we only know they exist because of internet archives. The next day The Guardian released a brief, terse, defensive statement. That statement was itself refuted by both Manafort and WikiLeaks. As of today, WikiLeaks is actively pursuing legal action in this case.

    Later, it was revealed that a key contributor to the story had been previously been convicted of forgery .

    No apology has been made, and no retraction issued, no explanation given. Both the editor, Katherine Viner, and Luke Harding have been totally silent on the topic.

    So, in the last 2 months both Buzzfeed and The Guardian have issued "BREAKING NEWS" stories that made bold claims, but were not backed up with any evidence. Both these stories were shown to be untrue in less than 24 hours.

    Anonymous sources are a common area here – both stories rely exclusively on the word of "unnamed sources" from either "the intelligence services" or "government agencies". Anonymous sources are the batarangs on the propagandist's utility belt. Flexible, simple, timeless.

    Anonymity allows government agencies to leak misinformation on purpose, without hurting their credibility. It allows newspapers to control public opinion without having any actual facts on hand. It allows intelligence agencies to plant narratives they may want to revisit, or to give targets of blackmail operations a warning. And, most obviously, it allows journalists to simply make stuff up.

    I don't know which specific class these two stories fall into – but I do know it's one or all of them.

    So we come to the question of motive: BuzzFeed and The Guardian must have known there was no evidence to back up their assertions (yet, anyway). They must know the "significant minority" of the population who believe "conspiracy theories about their own government" will research and refute these claims.

    So why publish them?

    Well, in the Guardian's case, every story demonising Assange discredits WikiLeaks' future output, whilst also softening public sympathy for Assange in preparation for potential extradition of to the US. All the mainstream press have turned on WikiLeaks, but The Guardian – for some reason – has a particularly strong institutional axe to grind with WikiLeaks, and specifically Julian Assange.

    Similarly, every "Russia bad!" story primes the public to accept increased defence spending, increased control of the internet by the government and increased social media censorship. It is very much the gift that keeps on giving in that regard.

    In BuzzFeed's case, it has been apparent for a while now that the Mueller investigation is likely to fizzle. Articles and interviews from various media sources have been prepping the public for a "let down" for a few weeks. At this point, there is no case for impeaching Trump. But the Deep State still needs to keep him over a barrel.

    Trump has been a disappointment to his base and is yet to implement half the policies he discussed on the campaign trail, but he's not fully and totally being controlled by the warhawking Deep State yet, either. His policy of peace with North Korea and decisions to pull out of Syria and Afghanistan show that there is a tug-of-war ongoing inside the administration. It's probably no coincidence that this latest of many "bombshells" comes so quickly on the heels of Trump's announcement of the Syria withdrawal.

    Careful "leaks", planted stories and social media witch-hunts remind Trump how precarious his position is, whilst simultaneously distracting the public – both pro-Trump and anti-Trump – from real issues.

    The case-specific "why?" doesn't matter so much as the general aim of this type of manipulation. The important question is: Why does the media tell lies if they know they will be revealed as such?

    Clearly, the lies serve a purpose, regardless of their retraction or qualification.

    Telling a lie loudly and then taking it back quietly is an old propaganda trick – it allows the paper to maintain a facade of "accountability". The point of this practice is to propagate lies into the public consciousness. It's a method that can be used to distract and disseminate and divide.

    The accuracy of the statement is immaterial. The point is, once it has been said it cannot be unsaid. There are countless examples: "Assange was working for Russia", "Trump ordered Cohen to lie to Congress", "Russia hacked the US election", "Donald Trump worked for the KGB", "Assad gassed his own people", "Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite".

    The list goes on and on and on. None these have been proven. All were asserted without evidence, fiercely defended as facts, and then discretely qualified.

    That is the purpose of "fake news", to forge the Empire's "created reality" , and force us all to live in it. These are world-shaping, policy-informing, news-dominating narratives and are nothing but feathers in the wind .

    A perfect examplar of this occurred just two days ago on the BBC's flagship Political debate show Question Time :

    me title=

    The (notionally impartial) host not only sided with right-wing author Isabel Oakeshott in criticising Labour's polling, but then joined in mocking the Labour MP Diane Abbott for attempting to correct the record.

    Both Oakeshott and Fiona Bruce, the host, were factually incorrect – as shown a hundred times over since. But that doesn't matter. The lie was told, the audience laughed, the reality was created. "Labour are behind in the polls, anybody who says otherwise is a laughingstock" .

    The lie goes around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on.

    That's why fake news is so important to them, and so dangerous us.

    Kit Knightly is co-editor of OffGuardian. The Guardian banned him from commenting. Twice. He used to write for fun, but now he's forced to out of a near-permanent sense of outrage.

    Anirudh says Mar, 1, 2019

    This is one of the biggest problems with mainstream media these days. They just give out fake stories or tailor-made stories out there and people on social media latch on to the stories without actually trying to find out what really happened.

    This is not the first time BuzzFeed it issuing an article like this one by now it has developed a reputation for propagating facts that are untrue. It is said to see what our media houses have come down too, gone are the days when news reports were based on facts.

    Chris Friel says Jan, 26, 2019
    Here's a short piece on Muralgate as part of Israeli information warfare: Was the antisemitism crisis in the UK Labour Party designed as a distraction from Gaza? Very early on some complained that Jeremy Corbyn was a victim of a smear campaign, but might it be more accurate to say that UK politics witnessed a deliberate smokescreen? As controversial as this narrative is, I think that all the evidence points in that direction. https://www.academia.edu/38226258/MuralGate_as_a_Distraction_from_Gaza_Smear_and_Smokescreen
    Martin Usher says Jan, 28, 2019
    I've never thought of there being an antisemitism crisis in the Labour party but rather think of it as part of a concerted attack on anyone opposing Israeli policy towards Palestinians, occupied territories and so on. There's two reasons for this; one being that the intellectual base of left wing politics has historically has always included a lot of Jewish thinkers. The other is that we don't have a Labour party here in the US but any organization that's critical of these policies gets tarred in exactly the same way. Its a lazy 'fill in the blanks' approach that obviously does the job (because the media just takes up the banner and runs with it, it doesn't hang around to ask questions) but at the same time its really easy to see through if you know what to look for.
    axisofoil says Jan, 23, 2019
    This is very interesting https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/04/all-russiagate-roads-lead-to-london-as-evidence-emerges-of-joseph-mifsuds-links-to-uk-intelligence/
    David Eire says Jan, 22, 2019
    Buzzfeed is a complete scam. I remember the night of the Presidential election their running vote tallies were completely false – they had Hillary Clinton leading the whole time. They know exactly what they are doing. It's not like they are making mistakes.
    Lloyd says Jan, 21, 2019
    BuzzFeed is a useful outlet for fake news because no intelligent person takes the zine seriously. But CNN/MSNBC/etc. consumers only see hear the manic assertions and miss where the 'news' came from then later miss the corrections. If Brian Stelter is later pressed he can say "Well, it's BuzzFeed, I mean, come on. CNN had nothing to do with it." BuzzFeed says a couple of prostitutes peed on a bed to amuse Trump, the story is discredited, but a lot of people still believe it. And on and on.

    Now the story that Trump hat wearing high school kids were harassing black people who were quoting the Bible – and then laughed at an old Native American who stepped in to prevent the kids from assaulting the blacks – is falling apart. Seems odd that Anderson Cooper or Don Lemon haven't invited the Black Israelites on to talk about civil rights in 2019 – especially LGBT rights and anti-antisemitism..

    Martin Usher says Jan, 22, 2019
    This is the classic way to insert stories in the main stream media. You use postings on Internet sites which reverberate -- they get reposted (which you may do a bit of as well) so they build up a veneer of credibility. They are then quoted as "authoritative" by more established media.

    The technique isn't new and its not confined to politics. This is how product marketing works, using a combination of press releases, 'leaks', 'exclusive access' and so on to get 'buzz' about the product. As with politics it often finds itself in a gray area where it might be marketing a product that doesn't exist (yet), often to forestall a competitor's advantage. (Disclaimer -- I've never worked in marketing but I have spent my working life developing products and technologies. Sometimes what gets published about what you and your colleagues have developed is a bit of a surprise ..but that's just how business works!)

    axisofoil says Jan, 21, 2019

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/FTeJWQMpX0E?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

    Josh says Jan, 21, 2019
    Good article Kit, just please correct the few times where I thought you missed a word. "All were asserted without evidence, fiercely defended as facts, and then discretely qualified." Did you not mean disqualified? Similarly at the very end.
    Mike Thornbury says Jan, 21, 2019
    No, his sentence makes perfect sense, and is constructed well.

    "Qualified", in this context, means to frame a set of boundaries: 'he qualified his off-the-cuff remarks by asserting it was what he heard'

    Admin says Jan, 21, 2019
    Qualified was the intended word
    Badger Down says Jan, 22, 2019
    But why "discretely qualified"?
    Were they qualified separately?
    Shouldn't it be "discreetly qualified"?
    Badger Down says Jan, 20, 2019
    Then there's fake news and no-news about the "israeli" invasion of Palestine:
    https://ifamericaknew.org/media/clues.html
    wardropper says Jan, 20, 2019
    The creation of chaos appears to be the aim.
    And it's working just fine.
    When it gets bad enough, the engineers of the chaos just move in and reorganize things the way they have always wanted them.
    It's what I would do if I were a soulless, incompetent fathead.
    rtj1211 says Jan, 20, 2019
    There is of course another possibility: click bait.

    The public click thru absolutely outrageous headlines more than measured ones. They are like junkies neding a fix.

    James Delingpole gets huge click thru metrics using a pre-adolescent puerile in-your-face rudeness. He has a captive audience of very right people, mostly on Breitbart.

    There is similar behaviour on the left, equally calculated.

    You want this sort of thing to stop, the general populace must turn away in huge droves from the click bait.

    DunGroanin says Jan, 20, 2019
    Any idea what Cadwalladr is on about in her latest tweet?
    A girlfriend of an oligarch manhandled at a Moscow airport?

    Still no mention of II/IoS and Caroles links with them and their anti Russian disinformation.

    She mentions the usual bogeymen , trump, mannafort, farage, but not Murdoch, Mandy, Blair or Tory MP's.

    Meanwhile the plot of a coup to by-pass parliamentry democracy reaches a denoument this week – all the neocon/lib forces are to be marshalled under the patrician Grieve and Cooper along with all the right-thinking forces of the land in the final fight between to regain the land for Mordor. A unholy alliance of the Willing to stop the Corbynite Hobbits ridding the land of the ancient powers!

    DunGroanin says Jan, 20, 2019
    Latest bit of fake news by the Groaniad
    'May's move comes as fresh polling evidence suggests the public are sanguine about the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.
    A poll by ICM conducted in the wake of last week's historic government defeat and seen by the Guardian asked voters what should happen next.'

    "seen by the Guardian" "the public are sangunie"

    Look into my mystical crystal bowl eyes, you are sanguine, sanguine !

    Do they even know what 'sanguine' means?

    Dear Off-G you could do with a perma link to the ticker tape of all the twaddle the Obssesive Groaniad prints, we could all contribute.

    bevin says Jan, 20, 2019
    "Dear Off-G you could do with a perma link to the ticker tape of all the twaddle the Obssesive Groaniad prints, we could all contribute "
    Yes. The obvious course is for OG to take on the task of exposing Hte Garuniad's lies and manipulations, in real time.
    Not that this is a criticism of the excellent work currently being done.
    Andyoldlabour says Jan, 20, 2019
    "The lie goes around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on."

    This is one of the most pertinant phrases today, particularly with the speed of modern communications. The lies which led to the invasion of Iraq, the lies around so called chemical weapons attacks, the lies about the White Helmets, the media lies which lead to the demonisation of Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott
    If the media keeps on propagating lies and misinformation, then we could find ourselves on the brink of a final catastrophic war.

    binra says Jan, 20, 2019
    Illusions operate in place of true for that is their function, given them by those who hold them dear.
    Belief you are separate (from life – each other and world) is the belief that truth is different for each one and that there is a hierarchy of illusions – where some are held as more true than others. Each must establish this for themself by attack on others to make their own true.
    The errors seen in others are thus always a call for attack and not for undoing, healing or correction.
    The mind is thus set at war with itself by war of self-reinforcing self-illusion with obviously distressing results to the willingness to those who give reality to its dictate.

    If you see the underlying principles of a mind at war with (in active denial of) living truth, are recognisably insane but normal premise to human confusion, then you are no longer altogether listening to confusion.

    That there is fear of truth in us would be more evident if we were not so active in the engagement within illusions as if some illusions can be victorious over other illusions.
    The mind of deceit seems to be the saviour from confusion, while actually protecting and persisting it as the sin seen or flagged onto others. This protects 'sin' or irrevocable guilt that calls for punishment, as the framework of perception by the attempt to put it out on another and MAKE it true.

    But then an underlying fear of truth is magnified by the fear that what we thought to get rid of, will come back to us and damn us. Which will SEEM true while we persist in seeing errors as uncorrectable AND as the means to protect and maintain defences for a false sense of possession and control.

    Insane defences protect insanity against healing.

    There is a work I companion with over many years as a daily inspiration that I associate with synchronicity of recognition or resonance of what is apparently going on, with emerging perspective of desire to see – rather than persistence in habits and patterns of thought that are brought to light by choosing not to automatically react as if true.

    https://acourseinmiraclesnow.com/course-miracles-chapter-23-ii-laws-chaos/

    Illusions cannot 'save themselves' by struggle or assertion. But any awakening point of recognition of false as false is an opportunity to simply call on truth instead of trying to make true.

    "Survival' within a battle of illusions is seeking a 'better' illusion within a self-damnation that can only arrive at its starting place. Releasing this as the point from which to receive identity is through the willingness or choice NOT to use it by opening to another in desire for a peace of being that is prior to – or beneath – the coverings of a buzz feed of fake news.
    Questioning what we are, made a questionable mind and gave it the time of day to rob us of the joy in the day thereof. Another way to say this – is the interjecting of the mind of thought and control upon the flow of communication and relation that life already is the being and sharing of – as a 'self-consciousness' of inhibition and division.

    This curious capacity to become both subject and object – and as if separate from fearful life – is associated with lack of power and lack of love by the drive to then regain it or protect the little we hath from a sense of total loss.

    axisofoil says Jan, 21, 2019
    Does this mean that it is safe to eat cheerios?
    Badger Down says Jan, 22, 2019
    only if you wanna say cheerio to gut health
    milosevic says Jan, 27, 2019
    see discussion of similar issues here:

    http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

    Gezzah Potts says Jan, 20, 2019
    Edward Bernays, Walter Lippmann, Joseph Goebbels, Luke Harding (and his many vile clones in the Western media) Manufacturing Consent . You nail it Kit in one single article. The phrase 'created reality' says it all. Sort of a bit like the 2 minutes of hate thing from that famous book. And of course, now the slime have NewsGuard ready to roll out as well as many having their Facebook and Twitter accounts suspended or terminated. Incidentally, my Facebook account has been suspended 5-6 times now for 'breaching community standards'.
    milosevic says Jan, 27, 2019
    my Facebook account has been suspended 5-6 times now for 'breaching community standards'.

    It's almost like people who are capable of independent thought aren't wanted there.

    Maybe there's a lesson in that.

    Martin Usher says Jan, 20, 2019
    Another good bit of recent news misinformation was the story about the Chinese 'spy chip' that was embedded into server motherboards made in China. This story was well debunked by the technical community -- the general response was a combination of "If it was in the SKU we'd have noticed it" and "this is one fantastic part, where can I buy some?" but the story will still come up if you do a search on "Chinese spy chip" rather than the (numerous) rebuttals.

    More sinister, and more important, is the global campaign against Huewei. You'll find numerous instances of countries banning their equipment because of fears that its spying for China, something the company has been at pains to prove false. There's two levels to this, though. One is the normal Cold War/Chinese intellectual property theft stuff, the other is commercial. Huawei is currently in a position to supply what's called '5G' wireless equipment, not just the phones but the entire infrastructure that's needed to make them work. US companies are somewhat behind in their ability to deploy this technology so it has become necessary to slow or eliminate the competition by political rather than technical means. There's a lot of money at stake, and as we know from the so-called energy sector threatening the hegemony has already caused several wars, coups and what-have-you so its not inconceivable that a similar measures might have to be taken with this technology. (There's more than money at stake as well -- control of the technology is vital if you want to use it for spying. Spying? Everyone does, in fact its gone commercial with the personalization of advertising, its just a question of who gets to reap the rewards.)

    Michael Leigh says Jan, 20, 2019
    Aside from the aforementioned warnings about HUAWEI' s ability to competively and profitably manufacture and markert so-called fifth generation wireless telephony systems and products, which are surely based upon simply; jealous commercial slander by Huawei's competitors.

    More important is the strange fact that this " fifth generation wireless technology " has not been to be a safe, or even a practical technology, by any of the necessary and acceptable ITU approved standards organisations.

    This is more than a source of health and safety concerns all of the population most widely, and is still without he necessary approvals which are still absent, and thus it is an urgent matter for official precautions with health and safety, given the wide scope of this high-speed and wide-band emmission radio wave technology?

    Martin Usher says Jan, 22, 2019
    So called "5G" encompasses a whole basket of technologies, some established and some still being tested. The role of the ITU is to set overall parameters for the technology with other industry groups dealing with the details. The process is well established, its used by all complex technologies that have to interoperate globally, and it invariably ends up with some kind of patent basket where participants share technologies (and spoils). (I've been involved peripherally in similar sorts of activities in the past so I've seen how these groups work.)

    Since this technology is evolutionary rather than revolutionary its likely that equipment manufacturers will deliver it in phases so the race is to get your equipment placed because it can always be upgraded later (typically this will be firmware updates for the infrastructure kit). Here you notice that two of the big players in this are Chinese, they just happen to be ZTE and Huawei. One of the other players is Qualcomm, a company that you may not be familiar with but essentially had a stranglehold on previous generation wireless technology through its IP portfolio (it derives most of its income from licensing rather than manufacturing). Anyone who works in this business and figure out two plus two knows exactly what's going on when the US government goes after Chinese manufacturers and spying, health and safety and what-have-you are definitely not the real reasons. (the H&S angle I've not heard of but since 5G will mostly use existing frequencies there's no change -- anyway the whole electromagnetic radiation thing is one of those voodoo things put out by people who never studied physics at school or beyond)(we can put this into another thread, it doesn't belong here).

    In many aspects of mobile technology the Chinese are, unfortunately, light years of us. (So are the Koreans, BTW.) Its a hard truth but one we must face if we're to do anything about being competitive.

    Baron says Jan, 22, 2019
    Years ago, a British company called Sportingbet was cornering the market for bets placed over the internet, punters could use credit cards, the Americans were caught unprepared, hastily put together a statute that got attached to another one (which was debated certain to pass) only hours before voting.

    At a stroke, the new law cut off the US punters, the share price of Sporting plummeted, eventually remnants of the company got sold. Within months, an American company emerged, no problem with using credit card placing bets. (The story's more complex, arrests of Sportingbet execs are a part of it, but the substance of it that matters is as Baron says).

    That's what the American business does, it's ruthless beyond one's imagination.

    Einstein says Jan, 20, 2019
    I see they've discovered the 'doc' who gave Julia Skripal CPR on the park bench.
    It turns out the 'doc' was Colonel Alison McCourt, Chief Nursing Officer of the Army!
    What a coincidence!
    bevin says Jan, 20, 2019
    See Moon of Alabama for more.
    balkydj says Jan, 21, 2019
    or, alternatively check Colonel McCourt's award winning daughter , as nominated by mum

    Where would the Skripals be today, were it not for the astounding 'Lifesaver' military instincts instilled by mother ?

    Maybe someone can get an interview with the daughter, now , as first responder . . . given the monetary value in bread & butter espionage fiction; even, she could write a book titled

    Mother's Pride & Joy , (as 'Lifesaver') >>> itsa' miracle of modern medicine & Star Wars & all penned with a trick Bic tracheotomy in mind

    mark says Jan, 19, 2019
    These smears are all small change by US standards They are the daily fare of what passes for a political system.
    Some recent far more entertaining smears:-

    Barack Obomber is a Muslim illegal alien.
    His wife, Michelle, is really a man.
    Clinton is dead. Her place has been taken by a body double.
    Trump is having an incestuous relationship with his daughter.
    Melania is a hooker.

    One Presidential candidate in the 1800s put it about that his opponent had just died. You can't vote for him, he's dead. Vote for me instead.

    Britain clearly falls way behind in the smear stakes.
    The best they can come up with is Steele's Golden Showers and Jezza is an anti Semite. How pathetic is that?

    axisofoil says Jan, 20, 2019
    Saturday Night Live is looking like the more grounded reality. Never loose your sense of humor.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/x8CBF4aWwps?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

    Martin Usher says Jan, 19, 2019
    The BBC / Diane Abbott story is more interesting when you read reports that the host wound up the audience pre-show to get them to have a go at Ms Abbottt. One person described it as a 'roast'. The BBC has some serious credibility issues these days (John Reith must be spinning in his grave something rotten -- he established the idea that the BBC should be impartial, establishing a reputation that's been ruthlessly exploited and totally sullied in recent years).

    Planting stories in credulous or complicit media relies on journalists who might know how to write but know nothing about what they're writing about. They'll turn out copy on anything without asking questions. There are some, though, that seem to want to understand the story, that will ask questions and so on. We have to seek them out and -- most important -- find a way of paying them because while media is entirely dependent on eyeballs and clicks for income its essentially compromised. (See the articles in the current edition of "Time" magazine about digital media -- they're an important read.)

    Toby Russell says Jan, 20, 2019
    "We have to seek them out and -- most important -- find a way of paying them"

    Via Off-Guardian and similar platforms?

    As you say, it is indeed up to us. We have to put our money where our mouth is and develop an alternative, as-incorruptible-as-possible media platform that serious journalists can join. Thousands of people contributing a pound a month is a start, tens and hundreds of thousands would make a real difference.

    So disinherit Auntie, stop paying the licence fee, and redirect you monies to where the truth get told.

    Philip Nash says Jan, 19, 2019
    Thank you for a very nicely articulated article.
    vexarb says Jan, 19, 2019
    Quoted tweet: Ollie Richardson 7h
    "The funniest thing about GiletsJaunes: At no point in the Syrian war did the Syrian people march on the streets and chant "Assad is a dictator". But today the French people are on French streets calling Macron & Co dictators"

    [Vexarb adds: The Yellow Jerkins shout, "Macron Must Go" -- facing tear gas, truncheons, armoured cars and lethal weapons deployed by the Rothschild Regime.]

    Yarkob says Jan, 20, 2019
    i see also that quite a few twitter commentators are calling the gov the Macron regime. delicious.
    tubularsock says Jan, 19, 2019
    Tubularsock has noticed that EVERY time the MSM produces clear information it is always misinformation.

    It is just the way it's done.

    Funny how that works.

    intergenerationaltrauma says Jan, 19, 2019
    "That is the purpose of "fake news", to forge the Empire's "created reality", and force us all to live in it." – author

    Precisely.

    Here in the U.S. the deep state is working hard with "business" to limit access to any progressive media that might challenge the "Empire's created reality." Offering software to public libraries that facilitate suppressing the truth in favor of the empire's lie. Capitalism and the military state at work, joined at the hip. I believe that fits Benito's definition of "fascism" quite nicely.

    https://consortiumnews.com/2019/01/18/narrative-control-firm-targeting-alternative-media/

    vexarb says Jan, 19, 2019
    "A moderate House of Cards the greatest wit / Though he can start it cannot finish it." -- Wolfgang von Goethe, German scientist.

    I am re-posting the following extract from previous thread, "Curious Bedfellows", because it is relevant to the present thread on Brassy, Barefaced Lying by criminal regimes.

    "andrew belshaw Jan, 17, 2019

    USA and Israel planned and carried out the FALSE FLAG 9/11 Attacks–
    then blamed Afghananistan, Iraq, etc

    FBI named their 9/11 investigation PENTTBOM
    for PENtagon Twin Towers BOMbing

    So where are the FBI explosive tests???
    .
    WHERE ARE THE FBI TESTS FOR EXPLOSIVES???

    Reply

    vexarb Jan, 18, 2019

    Andrew, do you imply that the FBI actually tested for explosives -- and their report has been suppressed?

    Or do you mean the FBI, like the committee which issued the Official Report, avoided the usual test for explosives in cases where modern buildings fall down?

    I ask for clarification because I read at the time that the FBI said, they had no evidence against Osama Ben Laden or Saddam Hussein.

    Reply

    axisofoil Jan, 19, 2019

    The FBI did extensive and thorough forensics and sample testing from the crime scene of 9/11 with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The molecular examination of the remains and dust was conducted to the nano level. An admirable undertaking. The thoroughly documented results were printed up at a cost of over 8 Million tax payer dollars. _The documents were unfortunately misplaced._ the cost to duplicate the tests was deemed too much of a financial burden on the American public by law makers."

    [Apr 21, 2019] Escobar The Deep State Vs. WikiLeaks by Pepe Escobar

    Notable quotes:
    "... John Pilger, among few others, has already stressed how a plan to destroy WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was laid out as far back as 2008 – at the tail end of the Cheney regime – concocted by the Pentagon's shady Cyber Counter-Intelligence Assessments Branch. ..."
    "... But it was only in 2017, in the Trump era, that the Deep State went totally ballistic; that's when WikiLeaks published the Vault 7 files – detailing the CIA's vast hacking/cyber espionage repertoire. ..."
    "... This was the CIA as a Naked Emperor like never before – including the dodgy overseeing ops of the Center for Cyber Intelligence, an ultra-secret NSA counterpart. ..."
    "... The monolithic narrative by the Deep State faction aligned with the Clinton machine was that "the Russians" hacked the DNC servers. Assange was always adamant; that was not the work of a state actor – and he could prove it technically. ..."
    "... The DoJ wanted a deal – and they did make an offer to WikiLeaks. But then FBI director James Comey killed it. The question is why. ..."
    "... Some theoretically sound reconstructions of Comey's move are available. But the key fact is Comey already knew – via his close connections to the top of the DNC – that this was not a hack; it was a leak. ..."
    "... Ambassador Craig Murray has stressed, over and over again (see here ) how the DNC/Podesta files published by WikiLeaks came from two different US sources; one from within the DNC and the other from within US intel. ..."
    "... he release by WikiLeaks in April 2017 of the malware mechanisms inbuilt in "Grasshopper" and the "Marble Framework" were indeed a bombshell. This is how the CIA inserts foreign language strings in source code to disguise them as originating from Russia, from Iran, or from China. The inestimable Ray McGovern, a VIPS member, stressed how Marble Framework "destroys this story about Russian hacking." ..."
    "... No wonder then CIA director Mike Pompeo accused WikiLeaks of being a "non-state hostile intelligence agency" ..."
    "... Joshua Schulte, the alleged leaker of Vault 7, has not faced a US court yet. There's no question he will be offered a deal by the USG if he aggress to testify against Julian Assange. ..."
    "... George Galloway has a guest who explains it all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VvPFMyPvHM&t=8s ..."
    "... Escobar is brain dead if he can't figure out that Trumpenstein is totally on board with destroying Assange. As if bringing on pukes like PompAss, BoltON, and Abrams doesn't scream it. ..."
    Apr 20, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The Made-by-FBI indictment of Julian Assange does look like a dead man walking. No evidence. No documents. No surefire testimony. Just a crossfire of conditionals...

    But never underestimate the legalese contortionism of US government (USG) functionaries. As much as Assange may not be characterized as a journalist and publisher, the thrust of the affidavit is to accuse him of conspiring to commit espionage.

    In fact the charge is not even that Assange hacked a USG computer and obtained classified information; it's that he may have discussed it with Chelsea Manning and may have had the intention to go for a hack. Orwellian-style thought crime charges don't get any better than that. Now the only thing missing is an AI software to detect them.

    https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/456414-assange-wkileaks-asylum-london/video/5cb1c797dda4c822558b463f

    Assange legal adviser Geoffrey Robertson – who also happens to represent another stellar political prisoner, Brazil's Lula – cut straight to the chase (at 19:22 minutes);

    "The justice he is facing is justice, or injustice, in America I would hope the British judges would have enough belief in freedom of information to throw out the extradition request."

    That's far from a done deal. Thus the inevitable consequence; Assange's legal team is getting ready to prove, no holds barred, in a British court, that this USG indictment for conspiracy to commit computer hacking is just an hors d'oeuvre for subsequent espionage charges, in case Assange is extradited to US soil.

    All about Vault 7

    John Pilger, among few others, has already stressed how a plan to destroy WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was laid out as far back as 2008 – at the tail end of the Cheney regime – concocted by the Pentagon's shady Cyber Counter-Intelligence Assessments Branch.

    It was all about criminalizing WikiLeaks and personally smearing Assange, using "shock troops enlisted in the media -- those who are meant to keep the record straight and tell us the truth."

    This plan remains more than active – considering how Assange's arrest has been covered by the bulk of US/UK mainstream media.

    By 2012, already in the Obama era, WikiLeaks detailed the astonishing "scale of the US Grand Jury Investigation" of itself. The USG always denied such a grand jury existed.

    "The US Government has stood up and coordinated a joint interagency criminal investigation of Wikileaks comprised of a partnership between the Department of Defense (DOD) including: CENTCOM; SOUTHCOM; the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA); Headquarters Department of the Army (HQDA); US Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) for USFI (US Forces Iraq) and 1st Armored Division (AD); US Army Computer Crimes Investigative Unit (CCIU); 2nd Army (US Army Cyber Command); Within that or in addition, three military intelligence investigations were conducted. Department of Justice (DOJ) Grand Jury and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of State (DOS) and Diplomatic Security Service (DSS). In addition, Wikileaks has been investigated by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Office of the National CounterIntelligence Executive (ONCIX), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); the House Oversight Committee; the National Security Staff Interagency Committee, and the PIAB (President's Intelligence Advisory Board)."

    But it was only in 2017, in the Trump era, that the Deep State went totally ballistic; that's when WikiLeaks published the Vault 7 files – detailing the CIA's vast hacking/cyber espionage repertoire.

    This was the CIA as a Naked Emperor like never before – including the dodgy overseeing ops of the Center for Cyber Intelligence, an ultra-secret NSA counterpart.

    WikiLeaks got Vault 7 in early 2017. At the time WikiLeaks had already published the DNC files – which the unimpeachable Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) systematically proved was a leak, not a hack.

    The monolithic narrative by the Deep State faction aligned with the Clinton machine was that "the Russians" hacked the DNC servers. Assange was always adamant; that was not the work of a state actor – and he could prove it technically.

    There was some movement towards a deal, brokered by one of Assange's lawyers; WikiLeaks would not publish the most damning Vault 7 information in exchange for Assange's safe passage to be interviewed by the US Department of Justice (DoJ).

    The DoJ wanted a deal – and they did make an offer to WikiLeaks. But then FBI director James Comey killed it. The question is why.

    It's a leak, not a hack

    Some theoretically sound reconstructions of Comey's move are available. But the key fact is Comey already knew – via his close connections to the top of the DNC – that this was not a hack; it was a leak.

    Ambassador Craig Murray has stressed, over and over again (see here ) how the DNC/Podesta files published by WikiLeaks came from two different US sources; one from within the DNC and the other from within US intel.

    There was nothing for Comey to "investigate". Or there would have, if Comey had ordered the FBI to examine the DNC servers. So why talk to Julian Assange?

    T he release by WikiLeaks in April 2017 of the malware mechanisms inbuilt in "Grasshopper" and the "Marble Framework" were indeed a bombshell. This is how the CIA inserts foreign language strings in source code to disguise them as originating from Russia, from Iran, or from China. The inestimable Ray McGovern, a VIPS member, stressed how Marble Framework "destroys this story about Russian hacking."

    No wonder then CIA director Mike Pompeo accused WikiLeaks of being a "non-state hostile intelligence agency", usually manipulated by Russia.

    Joshua Schulte, the alleged leaker of Vault 7, has not faced a US court yet. There's no question he will be offered a deal by the USG if he aggress to testify against Julian Assange.

    It's a long and winding road, to be traversed in at least two years, if Julian Assange is ever to be extradited to the US. Two things for the moment are already crystal clear. The USG is obsessed to shut down WikiLeaks once and for all. And because of that, Julian Assange will never get a fair trial in the "so-called 'Espionage Court'" of the Eastern District of Virginia, as detailed by former CIA counterterrorism officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou.

    Meanwhile, the non-stop demonization of Julian Assange will proceed unabated, faithful to guidelines established over a decade ago. Assange is even accused of being a US intel op, and WikiLeaks a splinter Deep State deep cover op.

    Maybe President Trump will maneuver the hegemonic Deep State into having Assange testify against the corruption of the DNC; or maybe Trump caved in completely to "hostile intelligence agency" Pompeo and his CIA gang baying for blood. It's all ultra-high-stakes shadow play – and the show has not even begun.

    JailBanksters , 40 minutes ago link

    Not to mention the Pentagram has silenced 100,000 whistleblower complaints by Intimidation, threats, money or accidents over 5 years . A Whistleblower only does this when know there is something seriously wrong. Just Imagine how many knew something was wrong but looked the other way.

    ExPat2018 , 47 minutes ago link

    George Galloway has a guest who explains it all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VvPFMyPvHM&t=8s

    Betrayed , 2 hours ago link

    Maybe President Trump will maneuver the hegemonic Deep State into having Assange testify against the corruption of the DNC; or maybe Trump caved in completely to "hostile intelligence agency" Pompeo and his CIA gang baying for blood.

    Escobar is brain dead if he can't figure out that Trumpenstein is totally on board with destroying Assange. As if bringing on pukes like PompAss, BoltON, and Abrams doesn't scream it.

    besnook , 2 hours ago link

    assange and wikileaks are the real criminals despite being crimeless. the **** is a sanctioned criminal, allowed to be criminal with the system because the rest of the sanctioned criminals would be exposed if she was investigated.

    this is not the rule of laws. this is the law of rulers.

    _triplesix_ , 2 hours ago link

    Anyone seen Imran Awan lately?

    Four chan , 34 minutes ago link

    yeah those ***** go free because they got everything on the stupid dems and they are muslim.

    assange exposes the podesta dws and clinton fraud against bernie voters+++ and hes the bad guy. yeah right

    hillary clinton murdered seth rich sure as **** too.

    [Apr 21, 2019] The Internet Research Agency only spent, according to the report itself, only spent $100,000, actually, on their activity in terms of buying advertising in Facebook and Twitter

    Apr 20, 2019 | therealnews.com

    GREG WILPERT: Yeah. I mean, I think it's also important to note that the Internet Research Agency only spent, according to the report itself, only spent $100,000, actually, on their activity in terms of buying advertising in Facebook and Twitter.

    And that's really absolutely nothing compared to what the campaigns more generally spend in those areas in terms of advertising.

    And so the idea that they somehow influence the election just based on social media seems mind boggling to believe...

    [Apr 20, 2019] Trump has certainly made the world safer

    Highly recommended!
    Apr 20, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    False Solace , April 19, 2019 at 12:36 pm

    Yet another delusional remark at odds with reality. Haven't these people learned anything from the implosion of their pathetic Russiagate hysteria? The Russophobes won't be happy until we're at war with a nuclear power and the nukes are about to land.

    Here are things Trump has actually done, as opposed to red-limned fantasies drawn from the fever-dreams of Putin haters:

    1. Unilaterally abandoned 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty
    2. Expelled 60 diplomats and closed 3 Russian diplomatic annexes
    3. Bombed Syria, a Russian ally, with Russian troops in country
    4. Sold arms to Ukraine, which is actively at war with Russia
    5. Threatened Germany to cancel a new Russian pipeline through the Baltic (effort failed)
    6. Even more sanctions against Russia and Russian nationals
    7. Stationed missile defense systems on the Russian border in violation of arms treaties
    8. Massive military exercises in Europe on the Russian border
    9. Stationed troops in Poland
    10. Negotiating with Poland to build a permanent US military base in Poland

    All this has certainly made the world safer. /s

    [Apr 20, 2019] Sure, blame those guys over there for Hillary fiasco and hire Mueller to get the goods . That s the ultimate the dog ate my homework excuse.

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... It is quite distressing that in may so called “progessive” or “left liberal” – self designated of course – circles in the USA and the UK such a statement will lead to your being labelled a Russian Troll or the suggestion you are being on Putin’s payrol ..."
    "... “…In the era of weapons of mass destruction, not only nuclear, but primarily nuclear, ever more sophisticated, the Russians now have a new generation of nuclear weapons -- Putin announced them on March 1, they were dismissed here, but they’re real -- that can elude any missile defense. .. ..."
    "... Russia has now thwarted us; they now have missile defense-evading nuclear weapons from submarines, to aircraft, to missiles. And Putin has said, ‘It’s time to negotiate an end to this new arms race,’ and he’s 100 percent right. ..."
    "... So when I heard Trump say, in 2016, we have to cooperate with Russia, I had already become convinced… ..."
    "... When I see the right-of-center DNC supporters saying, “Our democracy has been attacked,” I an reminded of the interview Hermann Goering gave while he was waiting to be executed. ..."
    "... Perhaps the assumption of Russia meddling in our election is a simple case of projection. As has been documented, the USA has frequently meddled in other countries’ elections or election outcomes (Iran, Russia, Chile, Central America). ..."
    "... To paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley, “Democracy is for little people”, not for the meddling-in-foreign-democracies policymakers of the Boston-Washington corridor. ..."
    "... We live in a multi-polar world and if Washington can’t get used to it, we are the ones who may pay for their willful stubborn blindness, their inability to come to terms with a perfectly obvious developing reality. ..."
    "... The neocons have not had a new idea in 30 years. I continue to be baffled by their obsession with Iran. Iran is a fact; the enmity goes back to our support for the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 and only made worse by our support of the Shah as our-guy-in-Tehran. ..."
    "... The USA is in disarray internally and in its approach to the rest of the world. ..."
    Apr 20, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    flora , , April 19, 2019 at 10:38 am

    The DNC had the biggest influence on the 2016 outcome; they insisted on running a disliked candidate who was a terrible campaigner so disliked the DNC cleared the field for her ahead of time (got Biden and others to not declare in 2016) and had to club dissenters in their own party to make sure she got the nomination. imo. But sure, blame "those guys over there". That's the ultimate "the dog ate my homework" excuse. meh.

    Susan the other` , April 19, 2019 at 10:43 am

    Good analysis. This even makes the insanity of “Russiagate” seem strategic. (But as overwrought as saying ‘give us liberty or give us death’. The solution to everything is somewhere in the middle.) We know that such dedicated souls as the very fatuous Mr. Brennan cooked it all up and pretended it was because Trump was “treasonous”.

    Brennan in his dotage might actually be thinking that.

    I’ve always thought that Putin, like Yeltsin, was pro West. Possibly an atlanticist. Tho’ being as chauvinistic as an atlanticist today is a little offensive to the rest of the world. Cohen’s statement that Putin is pro Russian-anti communism might be a simplification. Russia is certainly positioning itself to be safe from our aggression. I think there are remnants of good social management that the commies learned over the years that Russia/Putin still employs.

    It’s too simplistic to say Putin is anti-communist. He’s just a realist. And he’s a nationalist. Being a nationalist-protectionist is the worst sin against neoliberal advancement. That’s another propaganda bullet point – you never hear a rational discussion of nationalism – it’s all trash, “Marine LePen is a fascist” exaggeration.

    Peter , April 19, 2019 at 11:04 am

    It is quite distressing to see the Mueller report take up as if it were settled fact the idea that Russia influenced the 2016 Presidential election, particularly since his investigation didn’t provide any information that supported this theory.

    It is quite distressing that in may so called “progessive” or “left liberal” – self designated of course – circles in the USA and the UK such a statement will lead to your being labelled a Russian Troll or the suggestion you are being on Putin’s payroll. That is the level of rational discussion in many those circles today when it comes to the discussion about the west's relationship to Russia.

    This of course led in Russia to the conclusion that to engage with the west at present in an attempt to ease the tensions is futile and rather counterproductive.

    juliania , April 19, 2019 at 11:15 am

    I think Professor Cohen has a real point in the following statements:

    “…In the era of weapons of mass destruction, not only nuclear, but primarily nuclear, ever more sophisticated, the Russians now have a new generation of nuclear weapons -- Putin announced them on March 1, they were dismissed here, but they’re real -- that can elude any missile defense. ..

    Russia has now thwarted us; they now have missile defense-evading nuclear weapons from submarines, to aircraft, to missiles. And Putin has said, ‘It’s time to negotiate an end to this new arms race,’ and he’s 100 percent right.

    So when I heard Trump say, in 2016, we have to cooperate with Russia, I had already become convinced…

    So I began to speak positively about Trump at that moment–that would have been probably around the summer of 2016–just on this one point, because none of the other candidates were advocating cooperation with Russia…”

    Then, when he goes on to elaborate on China’s weaponry and posit including them in the next round of draw-down negotiations, as far off as that may look – that to me is what Trump can use for his re-election. I do believe his attitude towards Russia won him his first term.

    Those Russia-gate kooks need to focus on the American people, not on Trump. Well, maybe they did, and still do. It’s really about us, not him.

    Procopius , April 19, 2019 at 7:56 pm

    When I see the right-of-center DNC supporters saying, “Our democracy has been attacked,” I an reminded of the interview Hermann Goering gave while he was waiting to be executed.

    Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

    John Wright , April 19, 2019 at 11:20 am

    Perhaps the assumption of Russia meddling in our election is a simple case of projection. As has been documented, the USA has frequently meddled in other countries’ elections or election outcomes (Iran, Russia, Chile, Central America).

    One recent Democratic presidential candidate was taped asserting “we should not have held the election unless we could determine the outcome” in another foreign country.

    If Russia did not meddle significantly in the US election, the political class may have had to ponder that possibly the Russians believed that the decline of the US in the world stage did not merit the effort.

    To paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley, “Democracy is for little people”, not for the meddling-in-foreign-democracies policymakers of the Boston-Washington corridor.

    John , April 19, 2019 at 11:45 am

    The thrust of Cohen’s position is correct. Quibble all you wish with the details. We live in a multi-polar world and if Washington can’t get used to it, we are the ones who may pay for their willful stubborn blindness, their inability to come to terms with a perfectly obvious developing reality.

    The neocons have not had a new idea in 30 years. I continue to be baffled by their obsession with Iran. Iran is a fact; the enmity goes back to our support for the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 and only made worse by our support of the Shah as our-guy-in-Tehran.

    The Russians really do have a new generation of weapons. The Chinese are re-assuming a leading position in the world that has been theirs most of the time for two thousand years.

    Europe is not a rising power.

    The USA is in disarray internally and in its approach to the rest of the world. I do not consider these to be opinions but objective statements. I am not prepared to suffer for illusions and vanity among the “elite.”

    [Apr 20, 2019] Did Assange lied about Seth Rich?

    Assange actually undermined the key pre-condition of the Deep state existence -- secrecy.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Robert Mueller, who helped the Bush administration deceive the world about WMD in Iraq, has claimed that the GRU was the source of WikiLeaks' 2016 drops, and claimed in his report that WikiLeaks deceived its audience by implying that its source was the murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich. ..."
    "... The smear is that Assange knew his source was actually the Russian government, and he implied it was Seth Rich to throw people off the scent. Mueller asserted that something happened, and it's interpreted as hard fact instead of assertion. There's no evidence for any of this, and there's no reason to go believing the WMD guy on faith about a narrative which incriminates yet another government which refuses to obey the dictates of the US empire. ..."
    "... HItchen's Razor: "what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." ..."
    Apr 20, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    I'm just going to toss this one here at the end because I'm seeing it go around a lot in the wake of the Mueller report.

    Robert Mueller, who helped the Bush administration deceive the world about WMD in Iraq, has claimed that the GRU was the source of WikiLeaks' 2016 drops, and claimed in his report that WikiLeaks deceived its audience by implying that its source was the murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich.

    This claim is unsubstantiated because, as we discussed in Smear 4, the public has not seen a shred of evidence proving who was or was not WikiLeaks' source, so there's no way to know there was any deception happening there. We've never seen any hard proof, nor indeed anything besides official narrative, connecting the Russian government to Guccifer 2.0 and Guccifer 2.0 to WikiLeaks, and Daniel Lazare for Consortium News documents that there are in fact some major plot holes in Mueller's timeline. Longtime Assange friend and WikiLeaks ally Craig Murray maintains that he knows the source of the DNC Leaks and Podesta Emails were two different Americans, not Russians, and hints that one of them was a DNC insider. There is exactly as much publicly available evidence for Murray's claim as there is for Mueller's.

    Mainstream media has been blaring day after day for years that it is an absolute known fact that the Russian government was WikiLeaks' source, and the only reason people scoff and roll their eyes at anyone who makes the indisputably factual claim that we've seen no evidence for this is because the illusory truth effect causes the human brain to mistake repetition for fact.

    The smear is that Assange knew his source was actually the Russian government, and he implied it was Seth Rich to throw people off the scent. Mueller asserted that something happened, and it's interpreted as hard fact instead of assertion. There's no evidence for any of this, and there's no reason to go believing the WMD guy on faith about a narrative which incriminates yet another government which refuses to obey the dictates of the US empire.

    And I guess that's it for now. Again, this article is an ongoing project, so I'll be updating it and adding to it regularly as new information comes in and new smears need refutation. If I missed something or got something wrong, or even if you spotted a typo, please email me at [email protected] and let me know. I'm trying to create the best possible tool for people to refute Assange smears, so I'll keep sharpening this baby to make sure it cuts like a razor. Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who helped! Phew! That was long.

    motherjones , 52 minutes ago link

    We don't have to like Julian Assange, but the release of the "Collateral Damage" video alone is enough to justify defending Assange and the freedom of the press.

    Ozymandiasssss , 1 hour ago link

    She really didn't debunk the thing about Seth Rich very well. Basically just said that whatever Mueller said wasn't true, which doesn't go very far for me. He definitely did imply that he got at least some of his info from Rich so if there is some sort of proof of that, it needs to be supplied; otherwise Mueller's story is the only one.

    bh2 , 1 hour ago link

    HItchen's Razor: "what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

    beemasters , 2 hours ago link

    I have recently seen a political cartoon with Dotard then saying: "I love Wikileaks" + " I will throw her in jail" and now saying: "I know nothing about Wikileaks" + "I will throw him in jail"

    It summed up perfectly that swine's lack of integrity.

    Downtoolong , 2 hours ago link

    It's so simple. Assange and Wikileaks exposed Hillary, Podesta, and the entire DNC to be lying, deceiving, hypocritical, disingenuous, elitist bastards. His crimes are miniscule compared to that, and all who attempt to condemn Assange only show us that they are members of that foul group.

    beemasters , 1 hour ago link

    Yet Dotard didn't push hard at all to get Killary, Podesta & friends charged...not even tweets calling for it since he got elected.

    TotalMachineFail , 3 hours ago link

    Excellent thorough content. And Kim Schmitz pointed out they'll drag things on for as long as possible and try to add additional things as they go. Such a bunch of sad, pathetic control freaks. Covering up their own failures, crimes and short comings with a highly publicized distraction putting the screws to a single journalist.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBs1dgYL-7w

    When the next world leader is Kashoggied nobody is going to care.

    freedommusic , 3 hours ago link

    “ Ty Clevenger has FOIAed information from NSA asking for any data that involved both Seth Rich and also Julian Assange .

    And they responded by saying we’ve got 15 files , 32 pages , but they’re all classified in accordance with executive order 13526 covering classification, and therefore you can’t have them.

    That says that NSA has records of communications between Seth Rich and Julian Assange. I mean, that’s the only business that NSA is in — copying communications between people and devices.”

    —Bill Binney (NSA 30 year vet)

    ( source )

    RussianSniper , 3 hours ago link

    Long story!

    Important topic!!

    Assange and Snowden are freedom fighters, exposing the duplicitous, corrupt, and criminals to the entire world.

    The hundreds of millions of mindless zombies are so brainwashed by the fake news industry, that if Assange and Snowden are not spies, they are criminal in some capacity.

    I have liberal, conservative, and libertarian leaning friends, and virtually every one of them believe Assange and Snowden are traitors to America, got innocent people killed, are rapists, or too cowardly to stand trial in the USA.

    What has happened to common sense and some necessary cynicism?

    Dugald , 2 hours ago link

    The trouble with Common Sense is it's not all that common.....

    LetThemEatRand , 3 hours ago link

    Why even bother arguing with these people. Assange gave up his liberty to reveal the truth, and the American public said in essence "so what." No one except the leakers and whistle-blowers faced any punishment, and I can't think of a single national politician who even talks about doing anything about the misconduct that was revealed. Yeah, a small percentage of the population is outraged at what was revealed, but the vast majority literally don't give a ****.

    fezline , 3 hours ago link

    Hehe... I guess you will find out how wrong you are in 2020 :-) His release of Hillary's emails gave Trump 2016... and him turning his back on Assange took away his chances in 2020

    chunga , 3 hours ago link

    Most regular readers on ZH know but this is an echo chamber for "Always Trumpers" so there won't be many commenters on this article. Rather than defend his DOJ's extradition attempts with implausible theories they'll be chattering back and forth about the Mueller Report.

    /winning

    LetThemEatRand , 2 hours ago link

    Agreed. It's amazing to me that people who claim to be believers of the MAGA message don't see the harm associated with the arrest of Assange, and all of the other uniparty **** Trump is perpetuating. A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.

    ZENDOG , 3 hours ago link

    Whole lot of yadda yadda yadda about someone 99.9% of Americans don't know.

    And even less who give a ****.

    Hillary dead yet?

    fezline , 3 hours ago link

    Yeah and yet.... everyone seemed to credit Hillary's loss to the release of her emails on wikileaks... Hmm that narrative that seems to be trying to minimize the impact on Trumps chances in 2020 really breaks down in the face of that fact doesn't it?? Trump has no hope... just stop... get behind a republican that has a chance... Trump doesn't... he lost half of his base... get over it...

    [Apr 20, 2019] So when Putin came to power, he was very much in the tradition of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He wanted a strategic alliance with the United States

    Apr 20, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    STEPHEN COHEN: Well, if so, it's a fool's folly. Russia is leaving the West. I mean, it can't leave the West geopolitically, because Russia is so big, it's half in the West and a half in the un-West geographically. But American foreign policy, NATO expansion, the unwise policies made in Brussels and Washington, are driving Russia from the West.

    STEPHEN COHEN: And not only China, where else? All major powers that are not members of NATO, including Iran. So when Putin came to power, he was very much in the tradition of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He wanted a strategic alliance with the United States. Who was the first person to call up Bush after 9/11? Putin. And he said, "George, anything." And if you go back and look at what the Russians did to help the American ground war in Afghanistan against the Taliban, whether you think it was a good idea or not, that ground war, Russia did more to save American lives -- Russian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan -- than any NATO country did.

    PAUL JAY: No, Iran did more than any NATO country to help America.

    STEPHEN COHEN: But Russia had assets, unbelievable assets, and corridors for transportation, and even an army, the Northern Alliance, that it kept in Afghanistan. It gave it all to the United States. Putin wanted a strategic alliance with the United States, and what did he get in return? He got from Bush, the second Bush, more NATO expansion right to Russia's borders, and as I mentioned before, American withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which had been the bedrock of Russian nuclear security for 30 or 40 years. He got betrayed, and they use that word, "We were betrayed by Washington." This is serious stuff.

    The pivot away from the West begins there and continues with these crazy policies that Washington has pursued toward Russia. It doesn't mean that Russia is gone forever from the West, but if you look at the billions of dollars of investment, you look at which way the pipelines flow, you look at Russia -- Putin meets like six times a year, maybe more, with the leader of China. They've each called each other their best friend in politics. Trump meets with Putin and we think, "Oh my god, how can he meet with him." I mean, it's normal.

    PAUL JAY: Netanyahu just met with Putin; nobody said a word.

    STEPHEN COHEN: But the point here is that Russia has been torn between East and the West forever. Its best policy, in its own best interest, is to straddle East and West, not to be of the East or the West, but it's impossible in this world today. And U.S.-led Western policy since the end of the Soviet Union, and particularly since Putin came to power in 2000, has persuaded the Russian ruling elite that Russia can not count any longer, economically, politically, militarily, on being part of the West. It has to go elsewhere. So all this talk about wanting to win Russia to an American position that's anti-Iranian and anti-Chinese is conceived in disaster and will end in disaster. They should think of some other foreign policy.

    PAUL JAY: I agree, but I think that's what Trump's -- the people around Trump that wanted the detente --

    STEPHEN COHEN: We should get new people.

    PAUL JAY: Well

    STEPHEN COHEN: I'll tell you truthfully, if Trump really wants to cooperate with Russia for the sake of American national security, if we forget all this Russiagate stuff and we say, "The guy is a little dim, but his ideas are right, you've got to cooperate with Russia," he has to get some new advisors. Because the people around him don't have a clue how to do it.

    PAUL JAY: I don't think that is the intent, the intent is make money. I don't think there's any other intent. Make money for arms manufacturers, fossil fuel --

    STEPHEN COHEN: Well, hope dies with us. I just don't see that constant bashing of Trump demeaning him, though it's so easy to do, helps us think clearly about American national interests.

    PAUL JAY: I don't think bashing Trump by dredging up the demons of the Cold War is anything but war mongering. On the other hand, I don't think we should create any illusions about who Trump is.

    STEPHEN COHEN: So let me give you the part with a paradox. We shouldn't have any illusions about who Trump is, that seems like --

    PAUL JAY: Or who the system is, really.

    STEPHEN COHEN: OK. So let's say -- I mean, that seems a sensible point of view. But let me ask you a question. Why was it that American presidents since Eisenhower could do detente with Soviet communist leaders, and they weren't demonized after Stalin, but we're not permitted -- and certainly Trump is not permitted -- to do detente with a Russian Kremlin anti-communist leader, which Putin is? Did we like the communists better than the anti-communists in the Kremlin?

    PAUL JAY: No. I'll give you what I think, it's just a layman's opinion. I think the foreign policy establishment, the elite, they were absolutely furious that after all these decades of trying to overthrow the Soviet Union, and they finally accomplish -- although I think it was mostly an internal phenomenon, but still -- and then they get Yeltsin and they have open Wild West, grabbing all these resources. I think they were really pissed that a state emerged, led by Putin, that said, "Hold on, it may be oligarchs, but they're going to be Russian, and you Americans aren't going to have a free-for -- all, taking up the resources and owning the finance. We're not going to be a third world country to your empire."

    https://c.deployads.com/sync?f=html&s=2343&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2019%2F04%2Fis-trump-for-detente-or-militarism-a-talk-with-stephen-cohen.html

    https://eus.rubiconproject.com/usync.html

    https://acdn.adnxs.com/ib/static/usersync/v3/async_usersync.html <img src="http://b.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&c2=16807273&cv=2.0&cj=1" /> STEPHEN COHEN: I've got more hair. You've distracted me. What we share, despite the age difference, is that we grew up at a time when we were told -- whether you or I believed it or not, but our generations, two generations, were told we are against Russia because it's communist. We were told that for decade after decade after decade. Now, Russia, the Kremlin, is not communist, it's anti-communist, and we're still against Russia. How do Russian intellectuals and policy-makers interpret that turnabout, that it was never about communism, it was about Russia? There's a saying in Russia formulated by a philosopher, his name was Zinoviev, he passed on but he was very influential, they were shooting -- meaning the West -- they were shooting at communism, but they were aiming at Russia.

    And the view, very widespread among the Russian policy intellectual class today, is that Washington, in particular, will never accept Russia as an equal great power in world affairs, regardless of whether Russia is communist or anti-communist. And if that is so, Russia has to entirely reconceive its place in the world and its thinking about the West. And that point of view is ascending in Russia today due to Western policy. But just remember the view that all during the previous Cold War, they claim they were shooting at communism, but it was really Russia. And they still are today.

    PAUL JAY: Yeah, I agree with that. I just --

    STEPHEN COHEN: But we don't -- you and I may agree, but we don't want Russians to think that way.

    PAUL JAY: But I think the view coming out of World War II about being the global hegemon, the superpower, what that also means is you can't have any adversarial regional powers. And whether it's Russia or Iran, if you're not in the smaller American sphere of influence, the umbrella, you can't be there.

    STEPHEN COHEN: It's funny you say that. I mean, I'm not a Putin apologist or a Trump apologist, but I do like intellectual puzzles. If you're saying that we have to give up our thinking about a multipolar world, so to speak, that there'll be other regional superpowers or great powers, then isn't Trump the first American president who seems to be OK with that? I don't see in Trump much a demand that we be number one.

    PAUL JAY: Oh, I think Make America Great Again?

    STEPHEN COHEN: But he didn't say Make American Number One Again. Maybe that's what he means, but you don't have Trump --

    PAUL JAY: I don't think it kind of matters what the hell Trump thinks or says. And I think --

    STEPHEN COHEN: Have you heard Trump say this thing that Obama and Madeleine Albright ran around saying for years, that American is "the indispensable nation?" Do you know how aggravated that made other states in the world? I mean, stop and think about it. Who runs around saying "we're indispensable?" I haven't heard Trump say that, maybe he has.

    PAUL JAY: I just don't think we should put too much weight into whatever Trump says. I think he's a vehicle, he's a vessel.

    STEPHEN COHEN: You take what you can get these days.

    PAUL JAY: He's a vessel, first and foremost, for the arms manufacturers, for the fossil fuel industry. He's a vessel for right-wing evangelical politics. He's not a philosopher king. He's not a peacenik.

    STEPHEN COHEN: You have to have priorities.

    PAUL JAY: I think he's rather banal.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Yeah, probably, but you have to have priorities. My priority in international affairs is to avoid a military conflict with Russia. In my book, my new book, War with Russia?, when I start writing that book in 2013, I never intended to give it that title. But as I worked and watched events unfold since 2013 to 2019, for the first time in my long career, I thought war with Russia was possible. I didn't even think there was going to be a war -- as I remember it, I don't remember it vividly -- during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, I assure you, the new Cold War is fraught with multiple Cuban Missile Crises. Take your pick; in the Baltic area where NATO is building up, in Ukraine where we've got ourselves involved in a proxy war, in Georgia where NATO is trespassing again as we talk, in Syria where American and Russian forces are flying and fighting on the ground in close proximity. By the way, Trump was absolutely right in withdrawing those -- what were they -- 3000 Americans in Syria because whatever, Russia had killed just one of them.

    With Trump in the White House, the trip wires, a war between nuclear Russia and nuclear America, are far greater and more multiple than they have ever been. That's the danger. Therefore, at this moment, if Trump says it's necessary to cooperate with Russia, on that one issue we must support him. It's existential at this moment. And believe me, and believe me, people love to hate on Putin in this country; "Putin's evil, Putin's bad." It's nonsense. Putin is a recognizable leader in Russia's tradition. Putin, as you said I think before, came to power wanting an alliance with the United States. He's spoken of his own illusions publicly. Leaders very rarely admit they ever had an illusion, rights, it's not something they do. He is reproached in Russia, reproached in Russia, for still having illusions about the West. You know what they say about him in high places in Russia? "He's not proactive, he just reacts, he waits for the West to do something abysmal to Russia, and then he acts. Why doesn't he first see what's coming?" What do they cite? They cite Ukraine.

    PAUL JAY: Well, that's the next segment, because my question to you is going to be, "Did Putin make a mistake in Crimea?" So please join us for the continuation of our series of interviews with Stephen Cohen on Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network.

    Donald , April 19, 2019 at 10:26 am

    So when Trump opposes a pipeline from Russia to Germany or when he contemplates a US military base in Poland he is making Vlad happy?

    False Solace , April 19, 2019 at 12:36 pm

    Yet another delusional remark at odds with reality. Haven’t these people learned anything from the implosion of their pathetic Russiagate hysteria? The Russophobes won’t be happy until we’re at war with a nuclear power and the nukes are about to land.

    Here are things Trump has actually done, as opposed to red-limned fantasies drawn from the fever-dreams of Putin haters:

    1. Unilaterally abandoned 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty
    2. Expelled 60 diplomats and closed 3 Russian diplomatic annexes
    3. Bombed Syria, a Russian ally, with Russian troops in country
    4. Sold arms to Ukraine, which is actively at war with Russia
    5. Threatened Germany to cancel a new Russian pipeline through the Baltic (effort failed)
    6. Even more sanctions against Russia and Russian nationals
    7. Stationed missile defense systems on the Russian border in violation of arms treaties
    8. Massive military exercises in Europe on the Russian border
    9. Stationed troops in Poland
    10. Negotiating with Poland to build a permanent US military base in Poland

    All this has certainly made the world safer. /s

    [Apr 20, 2019] Is Trump for Detente or Militarism - RAI with Stephen Cohen (2-5)

    Notable quotes:
    "... Great points, Mr. Cohen....this protracted attack on Russia via the phoney "Russiagate" investigation has set back relations with Russia for years to come. ..."
    "... That Trump represents a thinking that the post Soviet reality is not of a uni-superpower world, but one of a multi-polar world dominated by US economic empire. ..."
    "... After reading "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century" in 2005, I came to the idea that the most dangerous section of the American elite were those that posited this uni-superpower world order idea; ..."
    "... The problem is the incorrigible Big C (Capital) that wanted to eat away Russian minerals that Putin stopped in national interest. Any subsequent cooperation from the Russian side was probably was only for strategic cooperation with the U.S. to have world peace. ..."
    "... Not a word in Cohen's appraisal about US criminality. Jay was pushing in that direction. I hope they get around to the criminality of the Deep State Mafia. ..."
    "... Despite all the chaos and the moral panics that keep rocking the White House, Trump's three National Security Advisors - Flynn, McMaster, Bolton - had one core commonality: they want war with Iran. Watching the sinister neo-con Jim Woolsey betray the frothing neo-con Flynn to Joe Biden was a comedy of neo-con infighting. A major part of Russiagate was the older 'Atlanticist' neo-cons boxing in the boorish 'Trumpist' neo-cons. Whether Atlantic Council or US-homegrown both flavors of neo-conservatism want war with Iran. ..."
    Apr 20, 2019 | therealnews.com

    PAUL JAY: Welcome back to Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay.

    And we're continuing our series of discussions with Stephen Cohen. And his biography is down below the video player, and you really should watch the first few segments anyway and you'll get where we are. Thanks for joining us again.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Thank you.

    PAUL JAY: So I've watched several of your interviews. You've done Larry King and others, and you've been positive about Trump's attitude towards sort of a detente, lowering tensions with Russia. And in terms of my personal view, I think you're right. I think anything that lowers tensions between two nuclear powers is a good thing, and I think this self-righteous American attitude towards Putin and Russia– when you look at the scale of crimes committed by countries internationally, there is nothing that Russia has done that compares to the Iraq war, and go on and on with the United States has done, and to have some self-righteous attitude Two, it's clear it's so hypocritical to worry about political rights in Russia, because it's clear in terms of U.S. foreign policy if you can ally with Saudi Arabia, the Israeli occupation, and you name it how many dictators the United States has supported over the years, it's not about democracy.

    So whatever Trump's intent is, I think I agree that this is a good thing. I actually think Trump framed it quite well himself, where he said, "Russia is not our adversary, they're our competitor, the way other big capitalist countries are our competitors." I think all that makes sense. Where I push back is I think you need to add that one of the prime reasons Trump wants to diminish tensions with Russia–assuming he really does, because some of the people that work for him, Nikki Haley in the UN and others, have said as outrageous stuff about Russia as any Democrat has said.

    All that being said, I think the Trump presidency is one of the most dangerous presidencies ever, and he is planning and his whole foreign policy agenda has been regime change in Iran. And I think that if they don't accomplish that through economic warfare against Iran, with John Bolton there, the possibility of some kind of at least bombing attack on Iran before 2020 is very possible. One of the reasons I think he wants to lower tensions with Russia is so he can go after China. His acting defense secretary justified this new military expenditure, the new budget, the 765 billion dollar budget, with three words, "China, China, China." Their strategic vision–and you can see this in Steve Bannon's interviews and language–is diminish the tensions with Russia, go after Iran and go after China. And I think one needs to say this, otherwise it kind of looks like Trump is some kind of peacenik. And far from it, I think they're militarists.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Not sure what the question is, though. Is it about–

    PAUL JAY: Well, my question is, I think when you are saying positive things about Trump diminishing tensions with Russia, which I think is correct, but I think you need to add this guy does not have peaceful intentions, he's very dangerous.

    STEPHEN COHEN: I live in a social realm–to the extent that I have any social life at all anymore– where people get very angry if I say, or anybody says, anything positive about Donald Trump. When Trump was campaigning in 2016, he said, "I think it would be great to cooperate with Russia." All of my adult life, my advocacy in American foreign policy–I've known presidents, the first George Bush invited me to Camp David to consult with him before he went to the Malta Summit. I've known presidential candidates, Senators and the rest, and I've always said the same thing. American national security runs through Moscow, period. Nothing's changed.

    In the era of weapons of mass destruction, not only nuclear, but primarily nuclear, ever more sophisticated, the Russians now have a new generation of nuclear weapons–Putin announced them on March 1, they were dismissed here, but they're real–that can elude any missile defense. We spent trillions on missile defense to acquire a first strike capability against Russia. We said it was against or Iran, but nobody believed it. Russia has now thwarted us; they now have missile defense-evading nuclear weapons from submarines, to aircraft, to missiles. And Putin has said, "It's time to negotiate an end to this new arms race," and he's 100 percent right. So when I heard Trump say, in 2016, we have to cooperate with Russia, I had already become convinced–and I spell this out in my new book, War with Russia?–that we were in a new cold war, but a new cold war more dangerous than the preceding one for reasons I gave in the book, one of them being these new nuclear weapons.

    So I began to speak positively about Trump at that moment–that would have been probably around the summer of 2016–just on this one point, because none of the other candidates were advocating cooperation with Russia. And as I told you before, Paul, all my life I've been a detente guy. Detente means cooperate with Russia. I saw in Trump the one candidate who said this is necessary, in his own funny language. Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, was very much a hawk. When she said publicly that Vladimir Putin has no soul, you could not commit or utter a more supreme statement of anti-diplomacy, and particularly addressing the Russians, who put a lot of stock in soul. To say somebody has no soul and then go on to equate him with Hitler, I found that so irresponsible. I didn't vote for Trump, but I did begin to write and broadcast that this was of vital importance that we have this discussion, that we needed a new detente because of the new and more dangerous Cold War.

    Since he's been president, I think he's been ineffective in regard to pursuing detente with Russia for a couple of reasons. I think that the people who invented Russiagate were the enemies of detente, and they piled on. So they've now demonized Russia, they've crippled Trump. Anything he does diplomatically with Putin is called collusion. No matter what Mueller says, it's collusion. This is anti-democracy, and detente is pursued through democracy. So whatever he really wants to do–it's hard to say–he's been thwarted. I think it's also one of the reasons why he put anti-detente people around him.

    PAUL JAY: Why didn't he pull out of the arms treaty?

    STEPHEN COHEN: So this is a separate issue now, and a complicated one. We have been in violation–let's be clear for folks which treaty we're talking about. We're talking about the so-called Intermediate-Range Treaty. This band of deployment of missiles that could fly roughly from 500, I think, to 3000 miles, they were exceedingly dangerous. The American ones have been based in Europe. They were very dangerous because they tested high-alert systems. They flew low, fast, they could elude radar. They were dangerous. Reagan and Gorbachev abolished them in 1987, correct? Now, stop and think for a minute, Paul. What Reagan and Gorbachev did in 1987 was the first ever, ever in history, act of nuclear abolitionism. They abolished an entire category of nuclear weapons. That was a sacred act. It needed to be cherished and preserved forever, no matter what difficulties emerged.

    But then comes the history, and we need to remember the history. In 2002, the second President Bush withdrew the United States unilaterally from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, correct? Now, this treaty was related, because it forbid the deployment of so-called missile defense in a way that either side, American or Russian, could think that it had such great missile defense, it had a first strike capability. And everybody agreed nobody should think that. Mutually assured destruction had kept us safe in the nuclear age. But if Russia or the United States gets a first strike capability, then you don't have assured mutual destruction, and some crazy person might be tempted to risk it. So how did the Russians react to that? They began to develop–as I said before, when we began to deploy missile defense–a new generation of weapons. In other words, you're getting this classic action, reaction, action, reaction that drove the previous nuclear arms race, and now it's happening again.

    So that brings us to Trump's decision. We don't know yet where it's going to lead, because Trump has said we're withdrawing. He said the Russians have been in violation. But in fact, we've been in violation since we deployed the missile defense systems. Just for the record, by the way–and professor Theodore Postol at MIT has been very good about this–these missile defense installations that we've installed around Russia, land, air, and sea, can actually fire cruise missiles. They are in violation of that Intermediate-Range Treaty, so we've been in systematic violation. Pushes come to shove, we withdrew, the Russians have now withdrawn. But Trump has said two things that are interesting and maybe correct, that technically the treaty was out of date because of the new weaponry. And secondly, who has the most cruise missiles? China. 30 years ago in 1987, it was only the United States and Russia, the Soviet Union. But now China, because of its vast regional presence, has all these intermediate range missiles.

    So Trump says offhandedly, maybe in a Tweet, "Have you ever looked at the military budget of Russia, China, and the United States? It's obscene. We should cut it." What does that mean? What does that mean? It's a good idea, right? Then he said, "We can't have such a treaty without China." The Russians know this too, so let us hope that what they're stumbling toward is a new, modernized intermediate-range ban that would include China. China, however, will never sign it. But if they begin the negotiations and China doesn't deploy any more during the negotiations, and the negotiations go on indefinitely, we are safer than we now are. Now, do I think that Trump is cunning and thought this up? I'm not sure, but he's got China on the mind, and I don't quite agree with you that–he's got a kind of dualistic attitude toward China. It's a threat, but every time he makes a new trade deal with China, he brags on it that it's great for us.

    You would agree with that, right? He's always talking about, "We're going to have this wonderful trade agreement with China, it's going to be so good for us." So in his mind, Trump's mind, China is kind of potentially–in his businessman mind–this big economic plus that he alone is going to get right. Let him try.

    PAUL JAY: I don't know how much of this policy at all is Trump or not Trump. I think the brains behind a lot of this policy now is Bolton and some of the other neocon crazies around him.

    STEPHEN COHEN: But Trump has been saying the same thing about cooperating with Russia long before he took on Bolton. There's two ways to look at this.

    PAUL JAY: But his attitude towards China–

    STEPHEN COHEN: Well, just stay for one minute on Russia, because the China thing is worth talking about too. But he says, almost alone, for the first time–how long has it been since we had a president really pursue detente? It's been a very long time. Obama called it a reset, but it was fraudulent. It was basically saying to the Russians, "Give us everything, and we aren't going to give you anything." It was doomed from the beginning. Plus, they wagered that Putin wouldn't return to the presidency. Do you know, by the way, speaking of meddling, that Biden went to Moscow and told Putin not to return to the presidency in 2012?

    PAUL JAY: No.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Wrap your head around that a minute. The vice president of the United States goes to Moscow and tells Putin, who's now prime minister because he termed out, but he could return, "We don't think you should return to the presidency." So you know what I'm wondering, I'm wondering whether Biden's calling up Putin today and asking Putin whether Biden should get into the presidential race here. I mean, what the hell? What the hell? And we talk about meddling? So the point about Trump, to finish this, is for the first time in many, many years, a presidential candidate, one that I didn't vote for and didn't care for, had said it's necessary to cooperate with Russia.

    PAUL JAY: OK, but I've got to contextualize it. Because it's not enough–because first of all, Trump's a big liar, and everyone, from beginning to end, for real.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Politicians lie, Paul. Welcome to the world,

    PAUL JAY: No, but I think he lied on Russia.

    STEPHEN COHEN: About what?

    PAUL JAY: Well, on two things. I think number one–I think two things drove his Russia–

    STEPHEN COHEN: Let me get my word in. Then I'll give it to you, I promise I'll pass it right to you, because this is going to set you up beautifully. When he said, Trump, 2016, "It's necessary to cooperate with Russia," there are two ways to interpret that. He was wise and smart, or the Kremlin had something on him.

    PAUL JAY: No, I don't think either of those are true.

    STEPHEN COHEN: And then we go straight to Russia.

    PAUL JAY: Neither of those are true.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Well, I'm not saying you say that, but that's the way it was taken.

    PAUL JAY: No, I think there's two things drove the Russia thing. Number one, they wanted sanctions lifted because Tillerson and the American oil companies, especially Exxon, wanted a big energy play in Russia, and they needed to lift the sanctions to do it, and Tillerson was all positioned for it. And if it hadn't been for this whole Russiagate stuff, they would have sailed along, had a detente, lifted the sanctions, and had a whole realm of new energy.

    STEPHEN COHEN: You mean under Trump.

    PAUL JAY: Under Trump. And I think that would have been a good thing. I'm not critiquing that in the sense that anything that reduces tensions between the United States and Russia is a good, thing normalizing, even if it's exploitive and ripping off the Russian people in their oil, I don't care. The nuclear threat is so paramount, anything that reduces those tensions are good. But these are not peacenik intentions.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Where do we disagree? You've lost me.

    PAUL JAY: I'm not saying we necessarily disagree on this. The second part of it is–and this is where I think is the dangerous part. Because I think sometimes when Trump and Putin get together and talk quietly, part of that conversation could well be about Iran. Because when they had the first big round of sanctions on Iran, Russia supported them, Russia came in on it. And if your foreign policy objective–and clearly it is, between whether it was Flynn, or whether it was Mattis, or whether it was Bolton, all of them are "regime change in Iran is the prime objective." And if you want to do that, wouldn't you want Russia to at the very least step back a little bit?

    STEPHEN COHEN: I got you now, I see where you're going.

    PAUL JAY: Number one. And number two, the big strategic guns are focused on China. So if you want to focus on China, wouldn't it be nice to have a strategic normalization with Russia, try to split Russia from China? Because in their minds, the real enemy is not Russia, the real enemy is a superpower economy–

    STEPHEN COHEN: In whose mind?

    PAUL JAY: Much of the American foreign policy establishment, both Democrat and Republican.

    STEPHEN COHEN: The real enemy is ?

    PAUL JAY: China. Because that's the global economy, that's going to be the competing superpower.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Let's say you're right.

    PAUL JAY: And that doesn't in any way say it's still, in the final analysis, a good thing if Trump can diminish these tensions. But let's give it the whole context.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Well, but it doesn't–I'm not sure what the whole context is. It seems to me you just said to me that Trump or these people were playing for Russia's support against Iran in China.

    PAUL JAY: As one piece of this, yeah.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Well, if so, it's a fool's folly. Russia is leaving the West. I mean, it can't leave the West geopolitically, because Russia is so big, it's half in the West and a half in the un-West geographically. But American foreign policy, NATO expansion, the unwise policies made in Brussels and Washington, are driving Russia from the West.

    PAUL JAY: No doubt.

    STEPHEN COHEN: And when you leave the West, where do you end up, Paul?

    PAUL JAY: They are pushing exactly the kind of a line–

    STEPHEN COHEN: Where do you go?

    PAUL JAY: Well, with China, of course.

    STEPHEN COHEN: And not only China, where else? All major powers that are not members of NATO, including Iran. So when Putin came to power, he was very much in the tradition of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He wanted a strategic alliance with the United States. Who was the first person to call up Bush after 9/11? Putin. And he said, "George, anything." And if you go back and look at what the Russians did to help the American ground war in Afghanistan against the Taliban, whether you think it was a good idea or not, that ground war, Russia did more to save American lives–Russian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan–than any NATO country did.

    PAUL JAY: No, Iran did more than any NATO country to help America.

    STEPHEN COHEN: But Russia had assets, unbelievable assets, and corridors for transportation, and even an army, the Northern Alliance, that it kept in Afghanistan. It gave it all to the United States. Putin wanted a strategic alliance with the United States, and what did he get in return? He got from Bush, the second Bush, more NATO expansion right to Russia's borders, and as I mentioned before, American withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which had been the bedrock of Russian nuclear security for 30 or 40 years. He got betrayed, and they use that word, "We were betrayed by Washington." This is serious stuff.

    The pivot away from the West begins there and continues with these crazy policies that Washington has pursued toward Russia. It doesn't mean that Russia is gone forever from the West, but if you look at the billions of dollars of investment, you look at which way the pipelines flow, you look at Russia–Putin meets like six times a year, maybe more, with the leader of China. They've each called each other their best friend in politics. Trump meets with Putin and we think, "Oh my god, how can he meet with him." I mean, it's normal.

    PAUL JAY: Netanyahu just met with Putin; nobody said a word.

    STEPHEN COHEN: But the point here is that Russia has been torn between East and the West forever. Its best policy, in its own best interest, is to straddle East and West, not to be of the East or the West, but it's impossible in this world today. And U.S.-led Western policy since the end of the Soviet Union, and particularly since Putin came to power in 2000, has persuaded the Russian ruling elite that Russia can not count any longer, economically, politically, militarily, on being part of the West. It has to go elsewhere. So all this talk about wanting to win Russia to an American position that's anti-Iranian and anti-Chinese is conceived in disaster and will end in disaster. They should think of some other foreign policy.

    PAUL JAY: I agree, but I think that's what Trump's–the people around Trump that wanted the detente–

    STEPHEN COHEN: We should get new people.

    PAUL JAY: Well

    STEPHEN COHEN: I'll tell you truthfully, if Trump really wants to cooperate with Russia for the sake of American national security, if we forget all this Russiagate stuff and we say, "The guy is a little dim, but his ideas are right, you've got to cooperate with Russia," he has to get some new advisors. Because the people around him don't have a clue how to do it.

    PAUL JAY: I don't think that is the intent, the intent is make money. I don't think there's any other intent. Make money for arms manufacturers, fossil fuel–

    STEPHEN COHEN: Well, hope dies with us. I just don't see that constant bashing of Trump demeaning him, though it's so easy to do, helps us think clearly about American national interests.

    PAUL JAY: I don't think bashing Trump by dredging up the demons of the Cold War is anything but war mongering. On the other hand, I don't think we should create any illusions about who Trump is.

    STEPHEN COHEN: So let me give you the part with a paradox. We shouldn't have any illusions about who Trump is, that seems like–

    PAUL JAY: Or who the system is, really.

    STEPHEN COHEN: OK. So let's say–I mean, that seems a sensible point of view. But let me ask you a question. Why was it that American presidents since Eisenhower could do detente with Soviet communist leaders, and they weren't demonized after Stalin, but we're not permitted–and certainly Trump is not permitted–to do detente with a Russian Kremlin anti-communist leader, which Putin is? Did we like the communists better than the anti-communists in the Kremlin?

    PAUL JAY: No. I'll give you what I think, it's just a layman's opinion. I think the foreign policy establishment, the elite, they were absolutely furious that after all these decades of trying to overthrow the Soviet Union, and they finally accomplish–although I think it was mostly an internal phenomenon, but still–and then they get Yeltsin and they have open Wild West, grabbing all these resources. I think they were really pissed that a state emerged, led by Putin, that said, "Hold on, it may be oligarchs, but they're going to be Russian, and you Americans aren't going to have a free-for–all, taking up the resources and owning the finance. We're not going to be a third world country to your empire."

    STEPHEN COHEN: That's correct.

    PAUL JAY: And they're pissed off at that.

    STEPHEN COHEN: They, meaning ?

    PAUL JAY: The Americans.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Our people.

    PAUL JAY: Our people. Well, I don't want to even take ownership for it.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Don't run away. I don't know your age–

    PAUL JAY: I'm 67.

    STEPHEN COHEN: So we've established that I'm older than you.

    PAUL JAY: No doubt. But you look younger, and I'm pissed at that.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Well, that's a separate subject.

    PAUL JAY: You've got more hair.

    STEPHEN COHEN: I've got more hair. You've distracted me. What we share, despite the age difference, is that we grew up at a time when we were told–whether you or I believed it or not, but our generations, two generations, were told we are against Russia because it's communist. We were told that for decade after decade after decade. Now, Russia, the Kremlin, is not communist, it's anti-communist, and we're still against Russia. How do Russian intellectuals and policy-makers interpret that turnabout, that it was never about communism, it was about Russia? There's a saying in Russia formulated by a philosopher, his name was Zinoviev, he passed on but he was very influential, they were shooting–meaning the West–they were shooting at communism, but they were aiming at Russia.

    And the view, very widespread among the Russian policy intellectual class today, is that Washington, in particular, will never accept Russia as an equal great power in world affairs, regardless of whether Russia is communist or anti-communist. And if that is so, Russia has to entirely reconceive its place in the world and its thinking about the West. And that point of view is ascending in Russia today due to Western policy. But just remember the view that all during the previous Cold War, they claim they were shooting at communism, but it was really Russia. And they still are today.

    PAUL JAY: Yeah, I agree with that. I just–

    STEPHEN COHEN: But we don't–you and I may agree, but we don't want Russians to think that way.

    PAUL JAY: But I think the view coming out of World War II about being the global hegemon, the superpower, what that also means is you can't have any adversarial regional powers. And whether it's Russia or Iran, if you're not in the smaller American sphere of influence, the umbrella, you can't be there.

    STEPHEN COHEN: It's funny you say that. I mean, I'm not a Putin apologist or a Trump apologist, but I do like intellectual puzzles. If you're saying that we have to give up our thinking about a multipolar world, so to speak, that there'll be other regional superpowers or great powers, then isn't Trump the first American president who seems to be OK with that? I don't see in Trump much a demand that we be number one.

    PAUL JAY: Oh, I think Make America Great Again?

    STEPHEN COHEN: But he didn't say Make American Number One Again. Maybe that's what he means, but you don't have Trump–

    PAUL JAY: I don't think it kind of matters what the hell Trump thinks or says. And I think–

    STEPHEN COHEN: Have you heard Trump say this thing that Obama and Madeleine Albright ran around saying for years, that American is "the indispensable nation?" Do you know how aggravated that made other states in the world? I mean, stop and think about it. Who runs around saying "we're indispensable?" I haven't heard Trump say that, maybe he has.

    PAUL JAY: I just don't think we should put too much weight into whatever Trump says. I think he's a vehicle, he's a vessel.

    STEPHEN COHEN: You take what you can get these days.

    PAUL JAY: He's a vessel, first and foremost, for the arms manufacturers, for the fossil fuel industry. He's a vessel for right-wing evangelical politics. He's not a philosopher king. He's not a peacenik.

    STEPHEN COHEN: You have to have priorities.

    PAUL JAY: I think he's rather banal.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Yeah, probably, but you have to have priorities. My priority in international affairs is to avoid a military conflict with Russia. In my book, my new book, War with Russia?, when I start writing that book in 2013, I never intended to give it that title. But as I worked and watched events unfold since 2013 to 2019, for the first time in my long career, I thought war with Russia was possible. I didn't even think there was going to be a war–as I remember it, I don't remember it vividly–during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, I assure you, the new Cold War is fraught with multiple Cuban Missile Crises. Take your pick; in the Baltic area where NATO is building up, in Ukraine where we've got ourselves involved in a proxy war, in Georgia where NATO is trespassing again as we talk, in Syria where American and Russian forces are flying and fighting on the ground in close proximity. By the way, Trump was absolutely right in withdrawing those–what were they–3000 Americans in Syria because whatever, Russia had killed just one of them.

    With Trump in the White House, the trip wires, a war between nuclear Russia and nuclear America, are far greater and more multiple than they have ever been. That's the danger. Therefore, at this moment, if Trump says it's necessary to cooperate with Russia, on that one issue we must support him. It's existential at this moment. And believe me, and believe me, people love to hate on Putin in this country; "Putin's evil, Putin's bad." It's nonsense. Putin is a recognizable leader in Russia's tradition. Putin, as you said I think before, came to power wanting an alliance with the United States. He's spoken of his own illusions publicly. Leaders very rarely admit they ever had an illusion, rights, it's not something they do. He is reproached in Russia, reproached in Russia, for still having illusions about the West. You know what they say about him in high places in Russia? "He's not proactive, he just reacts, he waits for the West to do something abysmal to Russia, and then he acts. Why doesn't he first see what's coming?" What do they cite? They cite Ukraine.

    PAUL JAY: Well, that's the next segment, because my question to you is going to be, "Did Putin make a mistake in Crimea?" So please join us for the continuation of our series of interviews with Stephen Cohen on Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network.

    Pax et Bonum • 2 days ago ,

    In a country where the media runs the lives of gullible citizens, it is easy to believe that all the moves are being made for the peace and well being of all. Behind the curtains, a narcissistic and egotistic machine is hard at work trying to sell war for peace. This business only benefits a few and causes great suffering on others ... but who am I kidding, no one cares, as long money is being made ... no one really cares!

    0040 Pax et Bonum • 2 days ago ,

    The US Constitution and other supporting documents have long stymied attempts at direct democracy in the US. Beware of anyone claiming to be a strict Constitutionalist ! They hate democracy and embrace slavery in all its disguises.

    Marilynne L. Mellander • 19 hours ago ,

    Great points, Mr. Cohen....this protracted attack on Russia via the phoney "Russiagate" investigation has set back relations with Russia for years to come....of course, even here in Bezerkeley, there were signs posted everywhere before the 2016 election: "Hillary=WWIII (just sayin')".....even the libs around here knew the Clinton cabal wanted a war with Russia ASAP

    Michael Holloway • 18 hours ago ,

    That Trump represents a thinking that the post Soviet reality is not of a uni-superpower world, but one of a multi-polar world dominated by US economic empire.

    I think that's true.

    After reading "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century" in 2005, I came to the idea that the most dangerous section of the American elite were those that posited this uni-superpower world order idea; an impossibility in this age of technology (one in which even small economies like Canada could lead the world in nuclear physics understandings and implementation, and one where our collective wealth of scientific understanding and method, plus systems management, can 'leap' a large agrarian/industrial economy (China) to a 2nd generation industrial world power in 50 years, proves that understanding).

    gchakko • 20 hours ago ,

    I haven't read the first part. But what the second part reveals is not that unravelling. American power is despotic. No principles. Money gain only. Russia turned democratic after enlightened brains like Yuri Andropov (Jewish-born ex-KGB Chief), old fox Andrei Gromyko, Gorbachev plus- plus, decided to change the system. In other words, Russia was willing for openness. But American oligarchs wanted to usurp Russian wealth with a hand stroke after Soviet State implosion.

    Second, why did Rothschild-Rockefeller Banker vassals like Henry Kissinger, Schultz under Edward Teller influence, sabotage the Reagan-Gorbachev understanding to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely in Reykjavik, insisting unilateral Star Wars capability for the U.S. to remain as sole Superpower.

    The problem is the incorrigible Big C (Capital) that wanted to eat away Russian minerals that Putin stopped in national interest. Any subsequent cooperation from the Russian side was probably was only for strategic cooperation with the U.S. to have world peace.

    Steve belongs to that lone group of handful, distinguished U.S. intellectuals who see problems as they are in eventual meaningfulness for objective U.S. politics. I admire his talent and courage and support him.

    George Chakko, former U.N. correspondent, now retiree in Vienna, Austria.
    Vienna, 20/04/2019 06:05 am CET

    Fat • 18 hours ago ,

    Not a word in Cohen's appraisal about US criminality. Jay was pushing in that direction. I hope they get around to the criminality of the Deep State Mafia.

    That is the narrative that will get the most results. Trump is greedy and the neocons have already attacked him on two fronts: Russiagate and his need for money. He will likely do what the New World Order folks want him to do. Russiagate will turn out to be a benefit as long as he sticks with the program that the Neocons want. Who has pushed the US hard to get into war with Russia? Hilary, Obama, Cheney, now Bolton --all New World Order soldiers who will commit any crime to rule the world. This is what we are facing.

    Jack Lomax • a day ago ,

    Trump like every POTUS since JFK does the bidding of the Zionist masters. Every POTUS except Nixon and Carter that is, and they were demonised and side tracked respectively. Nixon for his feral decision to recognise China and Jimmy Carter for being a dangerous liberal. But Trump is a normal run of the mill POTUS minus the PR masking tape. Perhaps the system has decided that the nice respectable masking tape is now an unnecessary add-on and every future president (if there are any or many) will do the will of Wall St and Tel Aviv as openly as does Trump and the msm will assure us that this is good and necessary. Good fo the economy and necessary to protect the poor suffering Jewish nation from the anti Semitic hatred of the deluded Palestinian lovers

    nina sakun • a day ago ,

    and finally i think Putin is for Russian greatness, trump is for money for himself and his family, but also for a white America if that can fit in with his money making schemes.

    mikjall • a day ago ,

    I'm sorry, but Paul Jay, whom I sincerely admire, though with some reservations, sounds in this--very important--interview as if he were suffering from attention deficit syndrome. You see it most of all in the transcript. Stephen Cohen attempted to keep the discussion coherent and focused, and Paul injected irrelevancies. Paul, please keep your eye on the ball. Stephen Cohen is presenting an important message. It's OK to disagree with it, if you have coherent reasons, but it's important even if it's wrong.

    michael nola • a day ago ,

    I think it's a mistake to take Trump at his word on anything that doesn't directly benefit himself. He is two things; an economic animal and a con man, and his motives are no more complicated than those of a cat. Unlike HRC, Bolton, Cheney Bush etc. he's no ideologue for war, however, I don't think he has any deep seated dislike of it either, so taking him at his word, either for or against any military action is foolish; basically, he's running a con and seeing where it goes, especially if there's any money in it for him or his family, a very obvious characteristic of his relationship with the Saudis and his continuing support of their genocidal war in Yemen, a gift he inherited from our Nobel Peace Prize president.

    In the long run, there will be no stopping an alliance between the PRC and Russia, especially given our political elites' inability to see we are living in a world they can no longer dominate through an institution, the military, that few have ever been in, and those of Vietnam war draft eligibility, avoided at all costs, and they will continue that losing effort until the combined economic might of those nations and their geographic location on the world's most important land mass, Eurasia, and its proximity to resource rich Africa, eventually bring about the downfall of the American Empire.

    antiparasites • 2 days ago ,

    1) Trump personally doesn"t want wars, never mind a war with Russia, though he's no philosopher or angel.

    2) the neolibs, who almost had Russia in the bag before Putin came to power, have been pissed off at Putin and want regime change in Russia.

    3) the same neolibs also want to pit russia, iran, and china against each other, in order to complete and maintain their New World Order.

    4) the same neolibs panicked at Trump's election victory but has reined him in since with Russiagate. so whatever Trump wants matters not at the moment.

    5) the same neolibs have miserably failed in their pursuit of 2) and 3) because of the alliance of the three, russia, china, and iran. now the entire arab world has declared independence from the US of Israel, because they now see an alternative bloc of russia, china, and iran to work with.

    all the above are true. more and more people see the truth and reject the neolibs that the DNC leadership represents.

    Trump will be reelected in 2020, if he fires bolton / pompeo / mnuchin / abrams etc. so far, he's been all bark but no bite, which is a good sign.

    Yo • 2 days ago ,

    Ever noticed how contradictory people you know can be? Ever noticed how contradictory in yourself, in your own attitudes and deeds you can be? So why be surprised that Trump can be Stephen Cohen's Trump as much as Paul Jay's Trump? No problem really :-)

    Luther Blissett • 2 days ago ,

    There is no contraction between Cohen's observation that Trump is a voice of sanity on Russia (it just shows how bad US discourse on Russia is) and Jay's concern that detente with Russia is part of larger plan for war (economic, kinetic or hybrid) against Iran and China.

    Real or fake, Trump's isolationism has produced no more peace than Obama's tepid liberalism did and Trump's veto of a bipartisan resolution to forced an end to American military involvement in Yemen has shown any arguments for an 'anti-war' Trump were pure self-delusion.

    Despite all the chaos and the moral panics that keep rocking the White House, Trump's three National Security Advisors - Flynn, McMaster, Bolton - had one core commonality: they want war with Iran. Watching the sinister neo-con Jim Woolsey betray the frothing neo-con Flynn to Joe Biden was a comedy of neo-con infighting. A major part of Russiagate was the older 'Atlanticist' neo-cons boxing in the boorish 'Trumpist' neo-cons. Whether Atlantic Council or US-homegrown both flavors of neo-conservatism want war with Iran.

    0040 • 2 days ago ,

    Wonderful article with Mr Jay playing the role of village idiot ? Mr Cohen speaks with extreme clarity on Russia, which is totally unacceptable in for profit America by all sides, where arms sales are us. In regards to Crimea , I'd ask Mr Jay, did Bush 1 make a mistake in Panama where we killed 4 thousand civilians in keeping China from acquiring an interest in the Panama canal?

    Doug Latimer • 2 days ago ,

    There are so many contradictions under the tent of Killer Clown's circus that it really isn't possible to make clear sense of them, is there?

    I'll just say that he absolutely pimps "Amerika über alles", as it's the putrid patriotic red white and blue meat he throws his base.

    Does he buy his own sales pitch? He does whatever his tiny but tricky little mind tells him is to his benefit. He'd be perfectly happy as a Russian oligarch or Saudi prince (as long as Putin or MBS let him bloviate to his heart's content).

    His only allegiance is to the state of his ego and bank account.

    [Apr 20, 2019] Is Russian 'Meddling' an Attack on America - RAI with Stephen Cohen

    Notable quotes:
    "... Sanctions are road rage. When you don't have a real policy, you do sanctions. But what's the logic of the sanctions? The sanction is we put this punishment on you. But when you change your behavior we will remove the punishment. Isn't that what we say with sanctions? Therefore sanctions have to be discussed if you're going to have diplomacy. So I would expect an American president to say to the Kremlin we need to have a lot of discussions, including the discussion of sanctions. The ones we've imposed. ..."
    "... Actually, by now, depending on what comes next, I don't think the Kremlin cares very much. They've coped very nicely with the sanctions. Though it's hurting their ability to roll over their loans with Western banks, it's true. But generally speaking, they've managed. And Europe wants the sanctions ended, because it's hurt European manufacturers, I think there's 9,000 German firms that were or are making a profit in Russia. It's hurt European -- we have almost no trade with Russia, the United States. Sanctions is -- hurting Europe. ..."
    "... Flynn was a professional intelligence officer. Let's repeat that. A professional intelligence officer. He knew everybody was listened to. It didn't bother him. The president had told him to have conversations with the Russian ambassador. There was a tradition of doing this. He had nothing to hide. ..."
    "... The psychopaths in the Clinton campaign had no concern that the Russiagate meme would cause enormous consequences in the US relationships with important governments around the globe. Hillary Clinton attempted to damage Trump, the candidate that she wished for the Republicans to nominate, by alleging he was "Putin's puppet." More importantly, Clinton wanted to change the subject from her corruption that was evidenced in her leaked emails (likely by the murdered Seth Rich to Assange). The emails, among other things, proved that she and her toady Debbie Wasserman Schultz et al schemed to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders. ..."
    "... It's about Russian interference alright, but not in the election, rather with Washington's hegemonic ambitions in Eastern Europe (Ukraine), then in the Middle East (Syria) and now in South America (Venezuela). Charles Krauthammer's "unipolar moment" is over, the Bear is back. ..."
    Apr 20, 2019 | therealnews.com

    PAUL JAY: Welcome to Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network. And I'm Paul Jay.

    People that follow this show know I particularly like to interview people that stick their neck out and stick to their guns for what they believe in, what they're fighting for. And our next guest is someone who's done both of those things under a lot of pressure. So this is the story, to begin with, of Stephen Cohen. Stephen is emeritus professor of politics at Princeton University, professor emeritus of Russian studies and history at New York University, and his most recent book: War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russia. Thanks for joining us again.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Thanks, Paul.

    PAUL JAY: So a lot of people were rather happy with Barr's summary of the Mueller report. And as we sit here talking today we haven't seen the Mueller report, it hasn't been given to Congress yet, and it may even happen tomorrow. We don't know. And it may change what we think of what I'm about to ask, but I don't think it's going to change too much about what I'm going to ask.

    Obviously President Trump's pretty happy so far with the no collusion argument. And that was pretty clear from what Mueller said; what Barr says Mueller said. There's a quote from Mueller in Barr's summary. But I thought some people who've been critical of Russiagate were a little bit too happy about this, because the more important, I thought, substance of what Mueller says is that, in fact, Russia did interfere in the elections. And he takes it very seriously. And the more important part of Russiagate narrative, I don't think, was ever the collusion part. In fact, we all knew Mueller was not heading down any big collusion road anyway, because as you pointed out in one of your interviews, I don't know if it was Larry King, you know, you could see from how other people were being charged, Manafort and others, there was no breadcrumb leading you to a collusion argument with Trump. The real problem is the underlying idea is that this is an existential threat to American democracy, and Mueller more or less confirms that.

    And I thought people shouldn't be so happy about that part of it, because the substantial argument -- and I'll quote you again -- is that whatever they did it was low-level stuff. It happens all the time between these countries. They all interfere in each other's elections. And then it gets raised to the existential level. That's the problem. And Mueller more or less confirms that.

    STEPHEN COHEN: You are absolutely right, only not right enough. This expression, which has become a truth in the media and for too many politicians that "Russia attacked America during the 2016 presidential election" is both exceedingly dangerous and a complete falsehood. Why is it dangerous? Because if a great power is attacked, that great power has to eventually attack back, counterattack. This is a ticking time bomb in relations with Russia. No attack on America occurred in 2016. I was awake, present, and observant. I saw no missiles descending on our country. No Russian paratroopers. No Russian submarines. No Russian combat planes. Nothing. It's a complete fiction.

    It's a form, I guess, of hyperbole. Did the Russians meddle? Some Russians? I don't know. I'm not even sure the Kremlin knew anything about it. But the Russiagate story is that Putin decided he wanted Trump to be in the White House. So he attacked American elections and rigged it. So Trump is now in the White House. I don't know how many people actually believe this. But too many continue to say it, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC. Too many influential news outlets are putting out an exceedingly dangerous fiction which is a form of warmongering. It didn't happen, but they won't let go of it.

    So I agree with you. There was no attack on America. But they're keeping this up. Was there meddling? As you say, sure. So let's do the -- briefly -- the history of Russian-American meddling in each other's politics. Where would you like to begin? Should we begin with the American intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1918? I mean, Wilson sent about 8,000 American troops to try to help overthrow the new red Communist government. Was that meddling? Really, is it meddling? You tell me. Sounds like meddling to me.

    PAUL JAY: It's armed intervention.

    STEPHEN COHEN: It's armed intervention. All right. What about, to leap forward, 1996? I was in Moscow, I observed it. Then-president of post-Soviet Russia Boris Yeltsin stood no chance of being reelected. No chance whatsoever. He was like 3 percent in the polls. But the Clinton administration desperately needed to keep him in power. So they meddled, big time. They sent electoral experts -- not unlike, by the way, Paul Manafort. Guys who make a living advising other countries about how to rig elections. We've got lots of them who do this for big money. So they set up in the presidential hotel. You could see them. Clinton arranged, I think, it was $10 billion, I may be wrong there, IMF loan to Yeltsin so Yeltsin could pay pensions and salaries he hadn't paid for five years. I mean, we did the whole -- I mean this was a massive intervention into Russia's election. And basically we kept Russia, Yeltsin, in the presidency. Is that meddling? Is that meddling?

    PAUL JAY: Yeah, of course.

    STEPHEN COHEN: What happened with Russian meddling in 2016, compared to the kind of meddling both sides have done, was jaywalking. The only reason it became one of the worst scandals, and I think most damaging in American history, because of the loathing for Trump and because the Clinton people couldn't accept that she was defeated fair and square. So they made up a story. You know, there's this book Shattered which tells about how they sat around and said we'll blame it on the Russians. However, it's exceedingly unpatriotic. It's warmongering. It's damaging our institutions of the presidency.

    I mean, if it's true -- for example, let's say it's true that the Kremlin can put Trump in the White House. Then evidently our electoral system in this country is not reliable. And why not a governor, or a senator, or a member of the Congress that Putin likes? And what about the next one? I think it's going to erode confidence in our electoral system on the part of American voters. And what about the presidency itself? I mean, people actually say that a Kremlin puppet sits in the presidency. Do they think that the damage done to the institution of the presidency is going to end when Trump leaves? And do they think Republicans aren't going to do something similar to the next Democratic president?

    And the media's scandalous coverage of this, abandoning their own standards. I mean, you don't get your virginity back quite that easily. I mean, they've got a lot to atone for, but at the moment they're not even prepared to say they did anything wrong. Just the other day the heads of these -- CNN, the executive editor of the New York Times and the Washington Post -- all said they thought their coverage of Russiagate had been great. I mean, really? Really? I mean, that's like a brain surgeon missing cancer, and then saying he thought he did a good job. I mean, it's preposterous.

    So we have a major problem here. And the myth -- there was no Russian attack. The Russians meddled. Mainly what made the meddling different from the kind of meddling that went on, for example, when there were Russian-backed American communist parties, for example, in this country, is social media. It was a social media thing.

    And a final point. Let's say that the Russians -- they didn't -- launched a major social media attack to distort the thinking of American voters, and were successful. Because that's one of the premises, right? People are saying that, right?

    PAUL JAY: Yeah.

    STEPHEN COHEN: What does that say for American voters? What contempt people have for American voters. So-called American Democrats have contempt for American voters. And now what are they doing? They're out busy censoring social media so that we won't get any information that might disorient an American voter. You can't -- if you don't believe that the electorate will reach a rational decision in voting by whatever interests individual voters have, you're not a democrat. I don't mean a member of the Democratic Party. You're not a democratic person. If you don't believe in voters you can't be a democratic person. Then you're an authoritarian.

    PAUL JAY: The story that got completely lost as they focused on low-level meddling that was mostly -- that I think anyone can determine rather ineffective -- was the Cambridge Analytica story, and Bannon, and the use of troll farms, American-controlled troll farms, to do this targeted social media manipulation. And that's out there, including an arm of Cambridge Analytica which helped shape the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. And the role of Robert Mercer, who funded Bannon and Kellyanne Conway and originally backed Cruz, and then helped create Trump as president, I mean, that's the real story of the Trump presidency. Not this low-level meddling. And they've never really told that story in mainstream media. We did a whole documentary on it on The Real News. This whole thing's been lost about the real kind of sinister dark side to the 2016 elections.

    STEPHEN COHEN: What worries me more, though, is the way Russiagate, Russiagaters, the zealots of Russiagate, have criminalized contacts with Russia. I think that this Clinton organization -- what's it called, Center for American Progress, or something, CAP, which has a website called Thought Progress or something -- has some posted 150 Trump-related contacts with Russia. I mean, I've had most of those contacts with Russia. I mean, I've had contacts with Russian intelligence agents. One was a good friend of mine. Five or six of them I worked with in a historical archive, and we did smoking breaks and lunch breaks together, and we talked. I mean, I've had all sorts of contacts in my nearly 50 years of dealing with Russia. There was a time when contacts were supposed to be good because it was a way of understanding and avoiding conflict. Part of detente. Part of diplomacy. But Russiagate, the allegations -- and I don't believe any of them, by the way -- the allegations have criminalized contacts.

    Incidentally, as we talk, this young Russian woman, Marina Butina -- sometimes pronounced here BuTIna, but it's BUtina, B-U-T-I-N-A -- has been sitting in an American prison for more than six months, most of it in solitary, for doing nothing other than what many Americans do in Russia, and that is go around talking about how good the American political system is to Russia, Russians. She went around bragging on Putin and the Russian political system here. For that she's been kept in prison, and was, as Russians say, finally broken. Literally. That's how Russians break people. They lock you away to you confess. We call confession a plea. So she -- and she's still in prison, even though she pled.

    What did she plead guilty to? Coming here and advocating Russian perspectives without registering as a foreign agent. This is a Soviet practice, Paul. One of the things that worries me is that Russiagate has generated too many Soviet-style practices by American authorities. The use of informers. People who were sent to inform on members of Trump's team, like Papadopoulos, for example. Holding people's families hostage. I mean, Mueller held General Flynn's son hostage, essentially, until Flynn pled. And Flynn never should have pled guilty. Never. In fact, he said the other day he regretted it.

    Let's talk about Flynn, for example, to see how bogus this is. Flynn was taped, as he knew he would be, making contact after Trump was elected, before Trump came President, with the Russian ambassador, correct? That was how the story began.

    PAUL JAY: And they had to know they were being listened to.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Of course they [inaudible].

    PAUL JAY: Or he should have.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Well, so you would say if he knew he was being listened to, why would he go forward and have this meeting, or discussions, with the Russian ambassador? Because Trump had told him to do it. And the reason is very simple to anyone who knows even a little history. At least since Nixon -- maybe since Eisenhower and Kennedy -- but at least since Nixon, every American president-elect has made a so-called back channel connection with the Russians, with the Kremlin, before taking office. End of story. And we know -- I mean, Kissinger did it for Nixon.

    PAUL JAY: But Nixon did it with the North Vietnamese, and Johnson called it treason.

    STEPHEN COHEN: I don't care. The point of it is it's become traditional standard practice for the president-elect to reach out to the Russians to say basically chill out, we're going to discuss everything. I mean, you got to remember what happened. I mean, this was dangerous. Obama, to his eternal disgrace, threatened the Russians with a cyberattack. He threatened them. He said we've implanted in your infrastructure some kind of cyber thing.

    PAUL JAY: And passed sanctions.

    STEPHEN COHEN: But forget the sanctions. Forget the sanctions. He threatened them with a secret attack on their infrastructure. Did it mean their medical system? Did it mean their banking system? Did it mean their nuclear control system? And then the nitwit Vice President -- Obama's -- goes out and tells jokes about it on late night TV. Yeah, hey, we got him. What kind of behavior is this?

    So I think Trump did absolutely the right thing. He told General Flynn, after Obama had made this reckless statement, but after Trump was elected, but not yet president, told Flynn, go tell the Russians not to overreact to what Obama said. Don't do anything crazy. We'll sort this out when I take office. I personally am grateful he did that, because there were people in Moscow arguing to Putin that they had to wage some kind of counterattack first. I mean, this was a very dangerous moment that Obama created, unnoticed in this country. Unreported on.

    But not only was it the tradition that the president-elect made contact with the Russians. Backdoor. Everyone had done it. But in this case it was essential, because the crazies in Moscow were urging Putin to do something based on what Obama had said. By the way, who's vanished. On the question of Russiagate, Obama has disappeared himself. I mean Russiagate began on Obama's watch as president. You'd think he'd have something to say. He hadn't said a word.

    PAUL JAY: But let me counter. I mean, I think the sanctions Obama put on Russia for Russia's meddling in the U.S. elections was uncalled for; aggressive, and so on. And a continuation of a bunch of aggressive policy. But their argument is Obama was the president, and the sanctions had been implemented. And Trump was saying to Putin, don't worry, we're going to get rid of them.

    STEPHEN COHEN: No there's no record. This is-

    PAUL JAY: I thought that was Flynn's conversation.

    STEPHEN COHEN: No. No. What Flynn told Kislyak, so far as we know, I haven't heard the tape, was do not overreact to this statement by Obama that your infrastructure is going to be attacked, and we will discuss everything, maybe he said including sanctions, when Trump takes the White House.

    Now, let's back up a minute. Why shouldn't we discuss sanctions? The logic -- I don't believe in sanctions. They're road rage. I mean, as we talk, a few nitwit senators are up on the Hill trying to think up some new sanctions. And if you ask them what they're sanctioning Russia for today, they couldn't tell you. Everything. In fact, they do tell you. It's called for Putin's malign behavior in the world. It's not about Crimea anymore. It's not about voter interference. It's just basically he's a malign character, and you can't have too many sanctions.

    Sanctions are road rage. When you don't have a real policy, you do sanctions. But what's the logic of the sanctions? The sanction is we put this punishment on you. But when you change your behavior we will remove the punishment. Isn't that what we say with sanctions? Therefore sanctions have to be discussed if you're going to have diplomacy. So I would expect an American president to say to the Kremlin we need to have a lot of discussions, including the discussion of sanctions. The ones we've imposed.

    Actually, by now, depending on what comes next, I don't think the Kremlin cares very much. They've coped very nicely with the sanctions. Though it's hurting their ability to roll over their loans with Western banks, it's true. But generally speaking, they've managed. And Europe wants the sanctions ended, because it's hurt European manufacturers, I think there's 9,000 German firms that were or are making a profit in Russia. It's hurt European -- we have almost no trade with Russia, the United States. Sanctions is -- hurting Europe.

    PAUL JAY: Well, let's get back to Flynn. How could he not know that's being listened to? And I guess they assume that this was not abnormal for an incoming president to have a conversation like this.

    STEPHEN COHEN: Flynn was a professional intelligence officer. Let's repeat that. A professional intelligence officer. He knew everybody was listened to. It didn't bother him. The president had told him to have conversations with the Russian ambassador. There was a tradition of doing this. He had nothing to hide.

    PAUL JAY: OK. There's a part of this that I don't think we're going to agree on, and we're going to talk about that in the next-

    STEPHEN COHEN: I don't even know you were disagreeing with me. Those are just facts I gave you.

    PAUL JAY: I didn't disagree up until this point. We might agree on something and then disagree in the next segment. So please join us for the next segment of our series of interviews with Stephen Cohen.

    Infarction • 4 days ago ,

    Stephen Cohen: "... [B]ecause of the loathing for Trump and because the Clinton people couldn’t accept that she was defeated fair and square. So they made up a story. You know, there’s this book Shattered which tells about how they sat around and said we’ll blame it on the Russians."

    The psychopaths in the Clinton campaign had no concern that the Russiagate meme would cause enormous consequences in the US relationships with important governments around the globe. Hillary Clinton attempted to damage Trump, the candidate that she wished for the Republicans to nominate, by alleging he was "Putin's puppet." More importantly, Clinton wanted to change the subject from her corruption that was evidenced in her leaked emails (likely by the murdered Seth Rich to Assange). The emails, among other things, proved that she and her toady Debbie Wasserman Schultz et al schemed to steal the nomination from Bernie Sanders.

    0040 Infarction • 3 days ago ,

    In fact Billary won the "election" by 3 million votes. But since we are not a democracy it did not matter. Trump was appointed by America's elites, claiming otherwise just serves the status quo. I'm sure Mr Cohen knows that?

    Putin Apologist • 4 days ago ,

    It's about Russian interference alright, but not in the election, rather with Washington's hegemonic ambitions in Eastern Europe (Ukraine), then in the Middle East (Syria) and now in South America (Venezuela). Charles Krauthammer's "unipolar moment" is over, the Bear is back.

    antiparasites • 4 days ago ,

    right on point, Mr. cohen, right on the money. looking forward to the next installment.

    RandyM • 4 days ago ,

    Just a question Paul. Who is "too happy" that no collusion was found? Can you name names? Russiagate debunkers like Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Mate may feel vindicated, but I don't see happiness in the fact that the whole episode probably helps Trump.

    antiparasites RandyM • 4 days ago ,

    truth should set good people free and thus make them very happy. you're not too happy? well then you know what you are.

    Marko • 4 days ago ,

    "But I thought some people who’ve been critical of Russiagate were a little bit too happy about this, because the more important, I thought, substance of what Mueller says is that, in fact, Russia did interfere in the elections..."

    If there was interference , it was , as Cohen says , on the level of jaywalking in its seriousness. What would really constitute "an existential threat to American democracy" is if this whole affair began and continued as a fabricated-from-whole-cloth stitch-up of a candidate and then sitting President , orchestrated and implemented at the highest levels of the CIA , FBI , Justice and State Depts. , etc., and possibly all the way up to ex-Pres. Obama. If the origin of this whole mess is ever investigated properly , as it should be , I hope TRNN will cover it and the ramifications of its findings at least as thoroughly as it has the hoax itself , and will invite Stephen Cohen back to contribute to that analysis. You certainly won't hear from him on the MSM , where such honesty and clarity of thought are effectively banned.

    EarthView • 4 days ago ,

    Where is part 2? What is it that Paul Jay disagrees with Cohen? Sanctions are utterly stupid. ALL sanctions against all countries should be removed, including those on Russia, Iran, Venezuela, China and even North Korea. No self-respecting counties will submit to the ridiculous demands of the terrorist empire because of sanctions.

    0040 EarthView • 3 days ago ,

    Sanctions, embargoes, and tariffs, are a forms of taxation that harm the masses in the state that applies them, while their rulers blame others for the resulting shortages and higher prices.

    antiparasites EarthView • 4 days ago ,

    fewer and fewer parties are concerning themselves about the US sanctions. not "even" north korea, according to their latest communique. maybe that's why cohen says "forget the sanctions."

    Mark Swanson • 3 days ago ,

    Okay, Mr. Cohen spends a lot of time trashing the Clintons but is almost an apologist for the Trump administration. He states correctly that the U.S. has meddled in Russian politics in the past, notably in the 1920s and 1990s, which we probably shouldn't have done but that does not make it okay for the Russians to do the same to us. His position seems to be, tit-for-tat, eye-for-an-eye, so what, forget it. He dismisses, with contempt, the idea that Russia meddled at all, but no one knows how much they meddled or what the effects were because no one has looked into it.

    Mr. Cohen states that Russia did not attack the U.S. by which he means militarily with troops and missles. Obviously, that is true but so what. Is cyberassault not something the U.S. should worry about? Also Mr. Cohen seems to imply that Vladimir Putin is not that bad as leaders go, despite the poisonings, the assassinations, the imprisonment of critics and banning of political opponents, and most egregious, the invasion of the Ukraine and occupation of Crimea. He seems to think invading other countries is okay and that the Europeans don't care because sanctions against Russia cause them economic hardship. I suspect that many Europeans care very much about European countries invading each other. He criticizes President Obama for placing sanctions on Russia and states that Obama did so because the U.S. doesn't have a strategy regarding Russia. How does he think the U.S. should respond? What does he think U.S. policy should be towards Russia?

    Mr. Cohen defends Michael Flynn stating all new administrations contact Russia to reassure them. Maybe so but that doesn't explain why Mr. Flynn failed to register as a lobbyist for Turkey. Mr. Mueller would not have been able to hold Mr. Flynn's son "hostage" if neither Flynn or his son had not done something illegal. Cohen also defends Ms. Butina even though she was in contact with the National Rifle Association.

    Altogether I don't find Mr. Cohen persuasive because of his dismissive arrogance of everything supporting the Russiagate scandal. At this point no on is in a position to accurately critique Russiagate until the report by Mr. Mueller is released.

    It would have helped his case if he had expressed as much contempt for the Trump Administration as he did of the Clinton and the Democrats such as some acknowledgement that Trump is a dispicable, cruel, vicious and pathological narcissist. It also did not help that Mr. Jay seemed embarrassed to question or critique Mr. Cohen's assertions. Unfortunately in making his points Mr. Cohen takes too much information out of context and leaves out far too many details of the Russiagate scandal.

    Paul McArthur Mark Swanson • 3 days ago ,

    I think if you listen more to professor Cohen (try Stephen Cohen John Batchelor show) , you find acknowledgement of all of Trumps faults as well that you accurately described and realize his "dismissive arrogance" relates to his informed knowledge of the Russiagate scandal.

    Oracle Mark Swanson • 3 days ago ,

    I couldn’t have put it any more coherently. I don’t find Mr. Cohen persuasive at all, particularly after watching the Russian intelligence and counter intelligence cohort at the House Intelligence Committee hearing. (They were extremely knowledgeable.) After hearing them, this guy seems unbelievable to me. But! Paul got his anti-Mueller report guy. At this point, this country is like a boulder ready to roll down a cliff and finish democracy for good. Two of the issues I found ironic was that Mr. Cohen 1) feels that Democrats must not think voters are very smart if they are swayed by the Social Networks (ha!) and 2) he really believes (straight face) that our voting system and elections in this country are solid and uncorrupted. Where has he been? Thank you, Mark Swanson, for your eloquent analysis.

    Marilynne L. Mellander • 19 hours ago ,

    Finally - an interview with someone who doesn't suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome - great stuff!!

    TomG • 3 days ago ,

    So simple yet so true, "Sanctions are road rage. When you don't have effective policy, you implement sanctions."

    Maricata • 4 days ago ,

    The NYT or WAPO, both, are CIA outlets that ALWAYS lied to the world

    miomyo • 4 days ago ,

    I say, now is the time to invest in tinfoil.

    0040 • 4 days ago ,

    An historically factual and informative article once again based based on a false premise. Trump was not elected. Billary won the election by 3 million votes. Trump was appointed POTUS by the Electoral College, as Bush2 was appointed by the SCOTUS and then employed a government official in Ohio to stuff electronic ballot boxes to secure himself a second term, and the US media forced fed to desperate but credulous Americans the empty suit Obomber turned out to be to. The US is not and has never been a Democracy, more a police state run by Plutocrats . Mr Cohen simply trumpets the corporate approved narrative offering incrementalism for obedience. Kissinger and friends, investment advisers to most of the worlds tyrants, continues to facilitate Putin's end run around US sanctions helping him invest his enormous fortune.

    antiparasites 0040 • 4 days ago ,

    you don't like the rules? then change the rules first. Trump won the election fair and square, following the rules. if the rules had been different, voters and candidates would have behaved totally differently as well in terms of campaign strategies and voting. Trump could have won the popular vote by a landslide. ever thought about that? no.

    0040 antiparasites • 3 days ago ,

    The rules are , there are no longer any rules just the cloying greed of our rulers, whose minions will promote/support any lie in their service.

    [Apr 20, 2019] Here is an interesting interpretation of Trumps selection of cabinet and advisor positions

    Notable quotes:
    "... Trump's main problem in this respect is that the diversity of viewpoints within the military, the NSA or other government agencies might already be too narrow and he needs a Republican version of Stephen Cohen who has always advocated for engagement with Russia, along with other people from outside Washington DC but with experience in state legislatures for the various departments. ..."
    "... I agree and I suspect Trump regards Putin as a fellow CEO and perhaps the best one on the planet. ..."
    "... A more fundamental problem is that the US has not yet reached rock bottom. So, its delusions remain strong. Trump, as said before, may be a false dawn unless the bottom is closer than suspected and he has new allies (perhaps foreign allies). ..."
    Nov 20, 2016 | marknesop.wordpress.com

    Patient Observer , November 19, 2016 at 8:41 am

    Here is an interesting interpretation of Trump's selection of cabinet and advisor positions:

    https://sputniknews.com/politics/201611191047623363-trump-administration-analysis/

    It is not about politics, but Trump's peculiar management style, Timofey Bordachev, Director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at Russia's High School of Economics, told RIA Novosti.

    "Those who have been studying the business biography of the newly elected president have noted that he has always played off his high-ranking employees against each other. While doing so he remained above the fight," he said.

    And

    Gevorg Mirzayan, an assistant professor of the Political Science department at the Financial University in Moscow pointed out two purposes for the nominations.

    "Trump needs to consolidate the Republican Party, hence he should nominate representatives of different party groups to key positions in his administration to win the support of the whole party," he told RIA Novosti. Surveillance © Photo: Pixabay Trump National Security Team Reportedly Wants to Dismantle Top US Spy Agency The second purpose is to form an administration that doesn't look too "dovish" or too "hawkish" to be able to avoid further accusations of excessive loyalty towards Moscow, he suggested. Thus without an image of a 'dove" who neglects the national interests, he will be able to normalize Russian-American relations, the expert said.

    The above brings rationality to the diverse selections made by Trump.

    However, the black swan event will be an economic collapse (fast or protracted over several years). That will be the defining event in the Trump presidency. I have no inkling how he or those who may replace him would respond.

    Jen , November 19, 2016 at 12:18 pm
    I had guessed myself that Trump was going to run the government as a business corporation. Surrounding himself with people of competing viewpoints, and hiring on the basis of experience and skills (and not on the basis of loyalty, as Hillary Clinton might have done) would be two ways Trump can change the government and its culture. Trump's main problem in this respect is that the diversity of viewpoints within the military, the NSA or other government agencies might already be too narrow and he needs a Republican version of Stephen Cohen who has always advocated for engagement with Russia, along with other people from outside Washington DC but with experience in state legislatures for the various departments.

    If running the US government as a large mock business enterprise brings a change in its culture so it becomes more open and accountable to the public, less directed by ideology and identity politics, and gets rid of people engaged in building up their own little empires within the different departments, then Trump might just be the President the US needs at this moment in time.

    Interesting that Russian academics have noted the outlines of Trump's likely cabinet and what they suggest he plans to do, and no-one else has. Does this imply that Americans and others in the West have lost sight of how large business corporations could be run, or should be run, and everyone is fixated on fake "entrepreneurship" or "self-entrepreneur" (whatever that means) models of running a business where it's every man, woman, child and dog for itself?

    Patient Observer , November 19, 2016 at 5:21 pm Patient Observer , November 19, 2016 at 5:21 pm
    I agree and I suspect Trump regards Putin as a fellow CEO and perhaps the best one on the planet. Trump may have noted how Putin did an incredible turnaround of Russia and it all started with three objectives: restore the integrity of the borders, rebuild the industrial base and run off the globalists/liberals/kreakles. I am certainly not the first one to say this and I think that there is a lot of basis for that analysis. However, Trump will have a far more difficult challenge and frankly I don't think he has enough allies or smarts to pull it off.

    A more fundamental problem is that the US has not yet reached rock bottom. So, its delusions remain strong. Trump, as said before, may be a false dawn unless the bottom is closer than suspected and he has new allies (perhaps foreign allies).

    [Apr 20, 2019] The Guccifer 2.0 Gaps in Mueller s Full Report undermine the validity of findings

    Apr 10, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    Originally from: The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report April 18, 2019 • 12 Commentsave

    Like Team Mueller's indictment last July of Russian agents, the full report reveals questions about Wikileaks' role that much of the media has been ignoring, writes Daniel Lazare.

    By Daniel Lazare
    Special to Consortium News

    <img src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Daniel-Lazare-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="100" /> A s official Washington pores over the Gospel According to Saint Robert, an all-important fact about the Mueller report has gotten lost in the shuffle. Just as the Christian gospels were filled with holes , the latest version is too – particularly with regard to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

    The five pages that the special prosecutor's report devotes to WikiLeaks are essentially lifted from Mueller's indictment last July of 12 members of the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU. It charges that after hacking the Democratic National Committee, the GRU used a specially-created online persona known as Guccifer 2.0 to transfer a gigabyte's worth of stolen emails to WikiLeaks just as the 2016 Democratic National Convention was approaching. Four days after opening the encrypted file, the indictment says, "Organization 1 [i.e. WikiLeaks] released over 20,000 emails and other documents stolen from the DNC network by the Conspirators [i.e. the GRU]."

    <img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35305" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-18-at-5.00.53-PM.png" alt="Barr holding press conference on full Mueller report, April 18, 2019. (YouTube)" width="1248" height="612" srcset="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-18-at-5.00.53-PM.png 848w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-18-at-5.00.53-PM-400x196.png 400w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-18-at-5.00.53-PM-768x377.png 768w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-18-at-5.00.53-PM-700x343.png 700w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-18-at-5.00.53-PM-160x78.png 160w" sizes="(max-width: 1248px) 100vw, 1248px" />

    Attorney General William Barr holding press conference on full Mueller report, April 18, 2019. (YouTube)

    Mueller's report says the same thing, but with the added twist that Assange then tried to cover up the GRU's role by suggesting that murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich may have been the source and by telling a congressman that the DNC email heist was an "inside job" and that he had "physical proof" that the material was not from Russian.

    All of which is manna from heaven for corporate news outlets eager to pile on Assange, now behind bars in London. An April 11, 2019, New York Times news analysis , for instance, declared that "[c]ourt documents have revealed that it was Russian intelligence – using the Guccifer persona – that provided Mr. Assange thousands of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee," while another Times article published shortly after his arrest accuses the WikiLeaks founder of "promoting a false cover story about the source of the leaks."

    But there's a problem: it ain't necessarily so. The official story that the GRU is the source doesn't hold water, as a timeline from mid-2016 shows. Here are the key events based on the GRU indictment and the Mueller report:

    June 12: Assange tells Britain's ITV that another round of Democratic Party disclosures is on the way: "We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton, which is great. WikiLeaks is having a very big year." June 14: The Democratic National Committee accuses Russia of hacking its computers. June 15: Guccifer 2.0 claims credit for the hack. "The main part of the papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to WikiLeaks ," he brags . "They will publish them soon." June 22: WikiLeaks tells Guccifer via email: "Send any new material here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing." July 6: WikiLeaks sends Guccifer another email: "if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [ sic ] days prefable [ sic ] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after."Replies Guccifer: "ok . . . i " July 14: Guccifer sends WikiLeaks an encrypted file titled "wk dnc link1.txt.gpg." July 18: WikiLeaks confirms it has opened "the 1Gb or so archive" and will release documents "this week." July 22: WikiLeaks releases more than 20,000 DNC emails and 8,000 other attachments.

    According to Mueller and obsequious news outlets like the Times , the sequence is clear: Guccifer sends archive, WikiLeaks receives archive, WikiLeaks accesses archive, WikiLeaks publishes archive. Donald Trump may not have colluded with Russia, but Julian Assange plainly did. [Attorney General Will Barr, significantly calling WikiLeaks a publisher, said at his Thursday press conference: " Under applicable law, publication of these types of materials would not be criminal unless the publisher also participated in the underlying hacking conspiracy."]

    <img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35300" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-18-at-4.24.13-PM.png" alt="Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announcing in 2018 a grand jury indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking offenses related to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. (Wikimedia Commons) " width="1236" height="611" srcset="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-18-at-4.24.13-PM.png 973w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-18-at-4.24.13-PM-400x198.png 400w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-18-at-4.24.13-PM-768x380.png 768w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-18-at-4.24.13-PM-700x346.png 700w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-18-at-4.24.13-PM-160x79.png 160w" sizes="(max-width: 1236px) 100vw, 1236px" />

    Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announcing in 2018 the grand jury indictment of 12 GRU agents. (Wikimedia Commons)

    Avoiding Questions

    The narrative raises questions that the press studiously avoids. Why, for instance, would Assange announce on June 12 that a big disclosure is on the way before hearing from the supposed source? Was there a prior communication that Mueller has not disclosed? What about the reference to "new material" on June 22 – does that mean Assange already had other material in hand? After opening the Guccifer file on July 18, why would he publish it just four days later? Would that give WikiLeaks enough time to review some 28,000 documents to insure they're genuine?

    Honor Bob Parry's legacy by donating to our Spring Fund Drive.

    "If a single one of those emails had been shown to be maliciously altered," blogger Mark F. McCarty observes , "Wikileaks' reputation would have been in tatters." There's also the question that an investigator known as Adam Carter poses in Disobedient Media : why would Guccifer brag about giving WikiLeaks "thousands of files" that he wouldn't send for another month?

    The narrative doesn't make sense – a fact that is crucially important now that Assange is fighting for his freedom in the U.K. New Yorker staff writer Raffi Khatchadourian sounded a rare note of caution last summer when he warned that little about Guccifer 2.0 adds up. While claiming to be the source for some of WikiLeaks ' most explosive emails, the material he released on his own had proved mostly worthless – 20 documents that he "said were from the DNC but which were almost surely not," as Khatchadourian puts it, a purported Hillary Clinton dossier that "was nothing of the sort," screenshots of emails so blurry as to be "unreadable," and so forth.

    <img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35303" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/John_Podesta_at_2nd_debate_full_image.jpg" alt="John Podesta at the spin room of the second presidential debate of 2016. (Voice of America via Wikimedia Commons)" width="500" height="341" srcset="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/John_Podesta_at_2nd_debate_full_image.jpg 650w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/John_Podesta_at_2nd_debate_full_image-400x273.jpg 400w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/John_Podesta_at_2nd_debate_full_image-160x109.jpg 160w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" />

    John Podesta: Target of a phishing expedition. (Voice of America via Wikimedia Commons)

    While insisting that "our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party, Assange told Khatchadourian that the source was not Guccifer either. "We received quite a lot of submissions of material that was already published in the rest of the press, and people seemingly submitted the Guccifer archives," he said somewhat cryptically. "We didn't publish them. They were already published." When Khatchadourian asked why he didn't put the material out regardless, he replied that "the material from Guccifer 2.0 – or on WordPress – we didn't have the resources to independently verify."

    No Time for Vetting

    So four days was indeed too short a time to subject the Guccifer file to proper vetting. Of course, Mueller no doubt regards this as more "dissembling," as his report describes it. Yet WikiLeaks has never been caught in a lie for the simple reason that honesty and credibility are all-important for a group that promises to protect anonymous leakers who supply it with official secrets. (See "Inside WikiLeaks : Working with the Publisher that Changed the World," Consortium News , July 19, 2018.) Mueller, by contrast, has a rich history of mendacity going back to his days as FBI director when he sought to cover up the Saudi role in 9/11 and assured Congress on the eve of the 2003 invasion that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction pose "a clear threat to our national security."

    <img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35301" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/MuellerBushImage.jpg" alt="Mueller with President George W. Bush on July 5, 2001, as he is being appointed FBI director. (White House)" width="501" height="373" srcset="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/MuellerBushImage.jpg 600w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/MuellerBushImage-400x298.jpg 400w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/MuellerBushImage-160x119.jpg 160w" sizes="(max-width: 501px) 100vw, 501px" />

    Mueller with President George W. Bush on July 5, 2001, as he is being appointed FBI director. (White House)

    So if the Mueller narrative doesn't hold up, the charge of dissembling doesn't either. Indeed , as ex-federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy observes in The National Review , the fact that the feds have charged Assange with unauthorized access to a government computer rather than conspiring with the Kremlin could be a sign that Team Mueller is less than confident it can prove collusion beyond a reasonable doubt. As he puts it, the GRU indictment "was more like a press release than a charging instrument" because the special prosecutor knew that the chances were zero that Russian intelligence agents would surrender to a U.S. court.

    Indeed, when Mueller charged 13 employees and three companies owned by Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin with interfering in the 2016 election, he clearly didn't expect them to surrender either. Thus , his team seemed taken aback when one of the alleged " troll farms " showed up in Washington asking to be heard. The prosecution's initial response, as McCarthy put it , was to seek a delay "on the astonishing ground that the defendant has not been properly served – notwithstanding that the defendant has shown up in court and asked to be arraigned." When that didn't work, prosecutors tried to limit Concord's access to some 3.2 million pieces of evidence on the grounds that the documents are too " sensitive " for Russian eyes to see. If they are again unsuccessful, they may have no choice but to drop the charges entirely, resulting in yet another " public relations disaster " for the Russia-gate investigation.

    None of which bodes well for Mueller or the news organizations that worship at his shrine. After blowing the Russia-gate story all these years, why does the Times continue to slander the one news organization that tells the truth?

    Daniel Lazare is the author of "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy" (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique and blogs about the Constitution and related matters at D aniellazare.com .

    [Apr 19, 2019] The USSR was a kind of guarantor of sanity of the USA elite, supressing built-in suisidal tendences. With it gove they went off the rail

    For Western world, especially people of the USA, the collapse of the USSR was really geopolitical catastrophe, as Putin once put it. It unleaseshed cannibalistic instincts of neoliberal elite.
    Apr 19, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    Drew Hunkins , April 18, 2019 at 12:39

    " "Can you imagine what the world would be like today if there was still a Soviet Union?" remarked Zbigniew Bzezinski "

    Yeah, I can.

    There never would have been a war on Iraq in 1991 nor an obliteration of Iraq in 2003, which has lasted until the present day. The destruction of Yugoslavia never would have taken place and the wars and proxy wars on Syria and Libya would have only existed in the twisted and depraved imaginations of the Zionist and militarist psychos in our midst.

    TINA never would have been an imperative and the working people of the Western world (primarily the U.S.) wouldn't be in a race to the bottom as it comes to wages, healthcare insurance, poverty levels, infant mortality, life-expectancy, union power in the workplace, secure retirements, and outlandish housing costs. With the demise of the USSR the millionaire capitalist-investor class really took the gloves off and saw no reason to provide the working masses with certain life-affirming policies, it was time to really sock it to the bottom 90%.

    Despite some its faults, the world's people have been paying dearly for the demise of the USSR.

    For further reading on what I've outlined above:
    "Blood Lies" by Grover Furr
    "Blackshirts and Reds" by Michael Parenti
    "Fool's Crusade" by Diana Johnstone
    "Against Empire" by Michael Parenti
    essays and articles by Paul Craig Roberts
    essays and articles by Andre Vltchek

    Al Pinto , April 18, 2019 at 13:31

    In short, without an antidote, the US does what the neocons and Israel decide to do. Welcome to the world of "my way, or the highway" cowboy mentality

    Rob Roy , April 18, 2019 at 20:26

    Actually, people in the USSR lived lives of constant fear (they call it the “Time of Terror”) that their friends, relatives, neighbors, strangers, even their children, would “tattle” on them and they would wind up in the torture chambers. They lived in stark, nearly unbearable poverty; the only comfort was that they all were in the same godforsaken boat. Communism might be a good idea on paper, but in reality, because of the ignorance of the bureaucratic leadership, it was a dismal failure.

    The demise of the USSR would have no effect whatsoever on the hegemonic madness of the US which, under the guiding light of the Monroe Doctrine (established way before the USSR), carries on destroying one country after another. I would ask, “What would the world do without the USA?” Live in a much more peaceful world for sure. As for Omar, I wish her the fortitude to continue telling the truth. Again, Max Blumenthal proves himself one of the world’s best reporters.

    OlyaPola , April 19, 2019 at 05:33

    “constant fear”

    The years of 1928 to 1953 were not constant since there were the years 1954 and subsequent.

    Drew Hunkins , April 19, 2019 at 10:22

    That’s not true Rob Roy. You’re parroting Western capitalist talking points. A whole host of brand new scholarly literature has hit the shelves in just the last few years proving the USSR was nowhere near as horrible as the Washington imperialist media made it out to be. In fact, under Stalin the Soviet Union made substantial gains in women’s rights, literacy, healthcare and industrial wages. Also, had it not been for Stalin’s agrarian plan there would have been more famines and more severe famines.

    And as everyone knows, if Stalin never crash course industrialized the country they never would have defeated Nazi Germany.

    Far from the USSR being a police-state it was often seen as a giant trough in which, for example, rent wouldn’t be paid and no one would come around to collect it.

    Please see the following books for a truth trip: “Blood Lies” by Grover Furr and “Stalin, Waiting for the Truth” by Grover Furr. Also, Michael Parenti’s “Blackshirts and Reds is excellent.

    Dump Pelousy , April 18, 2019 at 20:52

    Micheal Perenti is the best. He was the Truth To Power voice before 9/11, before all the yuppie reporters sold their souls for “access” and a talking heads show. I watched it happen in slow motion with great dismay.

    mp66 , April 18, 2019 at 22:23

    Spot on. The western owner class was forced to share at least one plate with the rest of the population to make the west appear superior in material terms, and with that incentive or threat gone, there is no more need for a plate, few crumbs under the table should be sufficient. But as usual, greed goes along with stupidity, they forgot that doing so for decades undermines the stability of the system. Trump, Brexit, trade wars, abrogations of treaties, blatant disregard for bare basics of international law etc. are just symptoms of deeper discontent across the globe.

    [Apr 19, 2019] Why Russiagate Will Never Go Away by Rob Urie

    With 240,000 people employed by DHS to find terrorists, terrorists will be found
    Apr 19, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

    Given that Russia's economy today is smaller than Italy's and its military budget wouldn't buy a toilet seat or hammer in the U.S. military procurement system, the question of why Russia would seem a great mystery outside of history. And left unstated is that the U.S. defense industry needs enemies to survive. 'Radical Islam,' an invention of oil and gas industry flacks that turned out to be serviceable for marketing Tomahawk missiles and stealth fighter jets as well, lost some of its luster when ISIS and Al Qaeda came over to 'our side.' And humanitarian intervention ain't what it used to be with Libya reduced to rubble and open-air slave markets now dotting the landscape.

    From 1948 through the early 1990s Russia was Pennywise the evil clown, helping to sell bananas, nuclear weapons and cut-rate underwear around the globe wherever American empire alighted. Costumed 'communists,' locals paid a day-rate to dress up and shout whatever slogans conveyed evil most effectively, were a staple of CIA interventions from Iran to Guatemala to the streets of New York, Boston and Los Angeles. Never mind that the slayer of monsters is more monstrous than an army of evil clowns, as the Koreans, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Nicaraguans, El Salvadorans, Chileans, Iraqis, Afghanis, Yemenis and on and on, were to learn.

    The big why (?) here would suggest an eternal mystery were it not for the arithmetic we learned as tykes. The U.S. has an annual military budget that is larger than the next seven evil empires combined. Killing people and blowing shit up is what America does. Stated reverse-wise, what is the point of being able to end all human life on earth more than once? Yet the U.S. can do it 3X -- 5X or 30X -- 50X, depending on which analysis is chosen. And while it would be anti-historical to remove mal-intent as motive, an alternative explanation of the militarization of the police is 'overstock,' that there is nothing else to do with the stuff that the Pentagon produces.

    This would seem a tremendous waste of resources under any reasonable theory of their efficient use (e.g. capitalism). The explanation of 'national defense' reads as legitimate until history is brought back in. For a few thousand years, the argument against maintaining a standing army was that standing armies tend to get used. Preparations for armed conflict facilitate armed conflict. The mobilizations for WWI and WWII were mobilizations, not drawdowns from existing military inventory. There is something to be said for wars requiring large expenditures of time, effort and resources from everyone for whom they are undertaken. Otherwise, they are likely to be started lightly.

    The U.S. has long been the most militaristic nation in the world. This probably doesn't read right to most Americans. 'We' are a peace-loving nation that only sends in the military as a last resort, goes the myth. And 'we' changed the name from the Department of War to the Department of Defense. It was early in the twentieth century that U.S. General Smedley Butler proclaimed that 'war is a racket' (racket = organized crime) as he described his military career as a ' gangster for capitalism .' The business of war in support of capitalism had long been a business in its own right, just ask Wall Street.

    When the George W. Bush administration created the Department of Homeland Security following 9/11, the obvious question from people who thought about such things was: what are these people going to do all day? With daily briefings presented to Mr. Bush entitled ' Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S. 'before 9/11, the only intelligence failure, if that is what it was, occurred in the White House. Mr. Bush's entourage had been rumbling about going back to Iraq to 'finish the job' since the end of his father's war. How much of a leap was it then to assume that Mr. Bush's WMD scam was a pretext for re-invading Iraq?

    But the question isn't rhetorical. With 240,000 people employed by DHS to find terrorists, terrorists will be found. The basic insight is that justifying one's employment is crucial to keeping it. In this light, the FBI counter-terrorism unit spent its time since 2001 enticing poor and desperate people to claim each other as terrorists. The first person to point out that there are no terrorists would be the first to receive a pink slip. And the same is true of government contracting. Brave entrepreneurs who feed at the trough of military largesse need to justify their existences. If they don't, some other proud patriot will step forward and do so. A logic of necessity becomes a legitimating belief system More broadly, one could argue that manufacturing terrorists has been the strategic goal of U.S. military operations for much of the last century. If you bomb enough villages and wedding parties, people will fight back. Wasn't this the implied storyline of anti-communist agitprop like Red Dawn and anti-Muslim agitprop like Zero Dark Thirty -- if you invade 'our' country and / or bomb 'our' villages and wedding parties, we will fight back. As a business proposition, the more people that are killed, the more legitimate the operation is made to appear. Make the weapons, then employ hundreds of thousands of people to explain why 'we' need to bomb villages. Then make more weapons. page1image256

    Graphic: Time Magazine was the voice of post-War liberalism in the 1970s -- it reflected the opinions emanating from American officialdom through a faux-critical lens. This cover featuring Muammar Gaddafi presaged the Obama administration's destruction of Libya by 35 years. The main difference then was relative honesty about U.S. motives -- 'Oil' was the lede in 1973, where 'humanitarian' concerns drove the American propaganda effort in 2011. Note: 'Arab' was replaced by 'Muslim extremist' following the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Source: Time, Inc.

    Propaganda theory is relevant here because of the ease with which the Russiagate story was sold -- all evidence, no matter how contradictory, was claimed to point in only one direction. Contrariwise, Russia isn't the Soviet Union. America's political leaders have long supported strongmen and dictators. The biggest threat to free and fair elections in the U.S. is American oligarchs followed by Israel. The Democrat running in the 2016 presidential election openly manipulated the 1996 Russian presidential election. Russia today is a neoliberal petrostate. Vladimir Putin is admired in Russia because he booted out corrupt American 'advisors' who were looting the country. In other words, Russia today isn't Russia!

    With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and ostensible end of the first Cold War, a ' peace dividend ' of reduced military spending was expected to fund increased domestic spending, the classic 'guns versus butter' formulation shifted in favor of butter. A drop to pre-WWII levels of military spending would have meant 95%+ of the military-industrial complex went away. Following a very brief drop in the rate of growth of military spending in the early 1990s, a recession caused by the looting of Savings & Loans and its aftermath led to the argument that 'the economy' couldn't withstand a reduced military. September 11 th , 2001 was the best day ever for U.S. military contractors. America was back in the business of industrial-scale slaughter.

    Early on, the American defense industry tried a few new enemies on for size. The George W. Bush administration's WMD scam targeted an audience that had been primed by several decades of anti-Muslim propaganda (see Time cover above) tied to oil geopolitics. The only WMDs found in Iraq had come from the Reagan administration in its effort to keep Iraq warring with Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. Current American amnesia over the genesis of Islamophobia is quaint. The New York Times has been demonizing Muslims since the 1970s . It was hardly incidental that 'reporting' on the Iraq war contained breathless descriptions of newly created instruments of mass slaughter.

    However, there were two tacks that propelled the Iraq War forward. Humanitarian intervention had been the liberal formulation for selling the carpet bombing of civilian populations as in the interest of those being bombed. The term was used for the aerial bombardment of civilian populations in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the mid-1990s. And it was the back-up explanation for the American war against Iraq -- to remove an evil dictator in order to liberate the people of Iraq. It was also used to justify the U.S. / NATO bombing of Libya in 2011. To the certain dismay of the defense industry, none of those interventions retained the patina of good intentions once it became known that the target nations had been functionally destroyed.

    Russiagate has been a godsend for those who profit from destruction. As the story goes, the wily Russian bear, led by an evil dictator and newly trained in the technologies of modernity, set loose a witch's brew of inter-continental ballistic internet messages to sow dissent amongst the brothers and sisters of die Vaterland united by their common bond of loving America. For younger readers, the claim that foreign 'agitation' motivated the Civil Rights and anti-War movements, and more broadly, the American Left, has been a mainstay of CIA and FBI propaganda since these agencies were created. Old playbooks are good playbooks?

    Those with a sense of humor, if humor includes installing a drunken buffoon to head a nuclear armed foreign power, might offer that 'Trump' is the English translation of 'Yeltsin.' In 1996 the American President colluded with people inside the Russian government to overturn the democratic will of the Russian people to install Boris Yeltsin as President of Russia. Yuk, yuk -- an unstable jackass was installed to head a foreign government. The 'payback' narrative no-doubt motivated true belief amongst some American officials after 2016. But alas, as with bombed villages and wedding parties, unless you just will not stop fucking with other people, they generally have other things to do than plot revenge.

    None of the propagators of the phony WMD stories suffered from passing off state propaganda as news. The New York Times and Washington Post found themselves on the winning side of the 'fake news' scam to shut down the opposition press. Even Judith Miller, brief heroine of the free press for being 'stove-piped' by Dick Cheney, went on to a well-paid gig at Fox News, wrote an autobiography that more than just her immediate family read and now lives as a 'celebrity.' Heroes of the #Resistance like David Corn, Rachel Maddow and Michael Isikoff have the proceeds from book sales and television appearances to sustain them until their services are needed to sell the next scam-with-a-purpose.

    The economic role of American defense spending will lead to endless iterations of WMD and Russiagate scams until the Pentagon is shut down. And that's the good part. The wars that these scams support are the bane of humanity. Their true costs, in terms of lives destroyed, appear to be meaningless to people living in twenty-room houses who want to live in thirty room houses. Winding down the warfare state would be less politically fraught if people had non-murderous ways of paying their bills. But how was this not understood as the warfare state was being built?

    Finally, apologists for Russiagate claim that it has been nowhere near as dangerous as WMD lies. Let's see: a cadre of national security officials spent two-and-one-half years claiming that it has secret evidence that the President of the U.S. colluded with the leader of a foreign government to assume power and then use his office for the benefit of that foreign leader. Following, the domestic press claimed that the U.S. 'was under attack' and 'was at war' with this foreign power. Meanwhile, the U.S. went about arming anti-Russian militias on Russia's border while unilaterally abrogating a short-and-intermediate range nuclear weapons treaty after publicly announcing that it was 'modernizing' its stockpile of short-and-intermediate-range nuclear weapons.

    Respectfully, this has all been a tad less than constructive.

    Join the debate on Facebook

    Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book Zen Economics is published by CounterPunch Books. More articles by: Rob Urie

    [Apr 19, 2019] Some nuances of Chief nurse story

    Apr 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    librul , Apr 19, 2019 9:01:53 AM | link

    @5

    @5 I had listed some curious incidences of "training exercises" including a bioterrorism training exercise that happened in New York three
    days before 9/11.

    I am adding to my own personal notes another bioterrorism training exercise that happened just prior to the highly suspicious Skripal poisoning.

    -------

    Add to the list, "Toxic Dagger", a biological/chemical training exercise held
    just prior to the Skripal poisoning. Toxic Dagger is the largest annual British army
    biological/chemical training exercise.

    "Completing the training and exercising against these scenarios provides
    a challenging programme for the Royal Marines to demonstrate their proficiency in
    the methods to detect, assess and mitigate a CBRN threat."

    http://www.defenddemocracy.press/a-very-strange-coincidence-exercise-toxic-dagger-on-the-eve-of-skripal-poisoning/

    https://www.greanvillepost.com/2019/01/20/coincidence-chief-nurse-of-british-army-was-first-to-arrive-at-novichoked-skripal-scene/

    The first person to discover the Skripals was the Chief Nursing Officer of the British Army (whose experience includes deployment to Sierre Leone to help fight Ebola).

    "An experienced officer, highly connected, who is also known for handling highly infectious patients?"

    The nurse claimed later that it was actually her daughter that was with her that detected and assessed the Skripal scenario.

    The daughter was 16 at the time and we presume the Lifesaver Award she received would be a feather in her cap useful for her imminent application for admission to a university. Wonder if Lori Loughlin had thought of using such an angle?

    Sunny Runny Burger , Apr 19, 2019 10:57:38 AM | link

    Btw on the Skripal thing does that nurse also run over to every "spice" zombie she sees in public? Anyone in a puddle of their own partly digested booze? Does she go hunting under bridges for heroin addicts and glue sniffers? Does she check on everyone sleeping on a bench or in some doorway? It is England after all.

    Weird hobby she's got and with her kid in tow too :P

    (Yes I'm being facetious about a bullshit narrative straight out of the 1950ies).

    [Apr 19, 2019] The USSR was a kind of garantor of sanity of the USA elite, suppressing built-in suicidal tendences. With it gone they went off the rail

    For Western world, especially people of the USA, the collapse of the USSR was really geopolitical catastrophe, as Putin once put it. It unleashed cannibalistic instincts of neoliberal elite.
    Apr 19, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    Drew Hunkins , April 18, 2019 at 12:39

    " "Can you imagine what the world would be like today if there was still a Soviet Union?" remarked Zbigniew Bzezinski "

    Yeah, I can.

    There never would have been a war on Iraq in 1991 nor an obliteration of Iraq in 2003, which has lasted until the present day. The destruction of Yugoslavia never would have taken place and the wars and proxy wars on Syria and Libya would have only existed in the twisted and depraved imaginations of the Zionist and militarist psychos in our midst.

    TINA never would have been an imperative and the working people of the Western world (primarily the U.S.) wouldn't be in a race to the bottom as it comes to wages, healthcare insurance, poverty levels, infant mortality, life-expectancy, union power in the workplace, secure retirements, and outlandish housing costs. With the demise of the USSR the millionaire capitalist-investor class really took the gloves off and saw no reason to provide the working masses with certain life-affirming policies, it was time to really sock it to the bottom 90%.

    Despite some its faults, the world's people have been paying dearly for the demise of the USSR.

    For further reading on what I've outlined above:
    "Blood Lies" by Grover Furr
    "Blackshirts and Reds" by Michael Parenti
    "Fool's Crusade" by Diana Johnstone
    "Against Empire" by Michael Parenti
    essays and articles by Paul Craig Roberts
    essays and articles by Andre Vltchek

    Al Pinto , April 18, 2019 at 13:31

    In short, without an antidote, the US does what the neocons and Israel decide to do. Welcome to the world of "my way, or the highway" cowboy mentality

    Rob Roy , April 18, 2019 at 20:26

    Actually, people in the USSR lived lives of constant fear (they call it the “Time of Terror”) that their friends, relatives, neighbors, strangers, even their children, would “tattle” on them and they would wind up in the torture chambers. They lived in stark, nearly unbearable poverty; the only comfort was that they all were in the same godforsaken boat. Communism might be a good idea on paper, but in reality, because of the ignorance of the bureaucratic leadership, it was a dismal failure.

    The demise of the USSR would have no effect whatsoever on the hegemonic madness of the US which, under the guiding light of the Monroe Doctrine (established way before the USSR), carries on destroying one country after another. I would ask, “What would the world do without the USA?” Live in a much more peaceful world for sure. As for Omar, I wish her the fortitude to continue telling the truth. Again, Max Blumenthal proves himself one of the world’s best reporters.

    OlyaPola , April 19, 2019 at 05:33

    “constant fear”

    The years of 1928 to 1953 were not constant since there were the years 1954 and subsequent.

    Drew Hunkins , April 19, 2019 at 10:22

    That’s not true Rob Roy. You’re parroting Western capitalist talking points. A whole host of brand new scholarly literature has hit the shelves in just the last few years proving the USSR was nowhere near as horrible as the Washington imperialist media made it out to be. In fact, under Stalin the Soviet Union made substantial gains in women’s rights, literacy, healthcare and industrial wages. Also, had it not been for Stalin’s agrarian plan there would have been more famines and more severe famines.

    And as everyone knows, if Stalin never crash course industrialized the country they never would have defeated Nazi Germany.

    Far from the USSR being a police-state it was often seen as a giant trough in which, for example, rent wouldn’t be paid and no one would come around to collect it.

    Please see the following books for a truth trip: “Blood Lies” by Grover Furr and “Stalin, Waiting for the Truth” by Grover Furr. Also, Michael Parenti’s “Blackshirts and Reds is excellent.

    Dump Pelousy , April 18, 2019 at 20:52

    Micheal Perenti is the best. He was the Truth To Power voice before 9/11, before all the yuppie reporters sold their souls for “access” and a talking heads show. I watched it happen in slow motion with great dismay.

    mp66 , April 18, 2019 at 22:23

    Spot on. The western owner class was forced to share at least one plate with the rest of the population to make the west appear superior in material terms, and with that incentive or threat gone, there is no more need for a plate, few crumbs under the table should be sufficient. But as usual, greed goes along with stupidity, they forgot that doing so for decades undermines the stability of the system. Trump, Brexit, trade wars, abrogations of treaties, blatant disregard for bare basics of international law etc. are just symptoms of deeper discontent across the globe.

    [Apr 19, 2019] The UK government and the media, had lost all moral authority

    Not only they lost all moral authority. UK MSM became openly neofascist in some areas exceeeding the press of Third Riech and the USSR in distortions and falsifications. .
    Notable quotes:
    "... Corruption of government and media, is also exceedingly dangerous, for everyone's mental health. People begin to subconsciously know that they are being lied to, but they cannot accept it, because the lies conflict with their worldview, which quite naturally is based on trust for authority, and that nice man reading the news on TV. ..."
    "... In 2004, Karl Rove in The Bush Government " Guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [ ] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do' ..."
    Apr 17, 2019 | craigmurray.org.uk
    Charles Bostock , April 17, 2019 at 11:40

    Even if the Skripal affair WAS staged, you shouldn't get too excited about it. In fact, you should be rather pleased because it would demonstrate that the tired, incompetent old UK is still capable of mounting an operation of which young, vigorous, competent Russia would be proud.

    The UK can fake events with the best of them! I would find that reassuring rather than deplorable because it's a nasty world out there.

    John2o2o , April 17, 2019 at 19:07

    I shouldn't be anything. The whole thing shames the UK and is an insult to Russia and it's people.

    Tony_0pmoc , April 17, 2019 at 11:44

    The Government and the media, have not been telling the whole truth for a long time. Sometimes they blatantly lie. Most people still believe most of what they say, as there is an in-built trust of authority, for some very good historical reasons. The Skripal story, made it obvious to a large number of people, that some of it could not be true. Most still believe it or din't take much notice. The arrest of Julian Assange made it clearer, to an even larger number of people, that the government and the media, had lost all moral authority. Still many people didn't take much notice, or were convinced by the lies in the media, that he was a rapist and should be in jail.

    The lies and corruption from government, is now increasingly out in the open. I believe that this is deliberate. I also think that it is exceedingly dangerous for society for multiple reasons. We are conditioned to accept authority as our moral guide. They act as an example of acceptable behaviour. If society as a whole, behaved like government, all trust would break down. Virtually all functions of society are based on trust. Without such trust, nothing will work.

    Corruption of government and media, is also exceedingly dangerous, for everyone's mental health. People begin to subconsciously know that they are being lied to, but they cannot accept it, because the lies conflict with their worldview, which quite naturally is based on trust for authority, and that nice man reading the news on TV.

    I believe this has all been pre-planned, and it will result in a disastrous effect on all society, unless something happens to bring the governments and media back to truth and sanity. I have no idea what that might be, but I expect it will not be pleasant.

    The following was an early warning of the mass insanity affecting The US Government. It has spread like a highly infectious disease.

    In 2004, Karl Rove in The Bush Government " Guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [ ] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'

    [Apr 19, 2019] RussiaGate Is Dead! Long Live Russiagate!

    Apr 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Gerald Sussman via Counterpunch.org,

    Now that Mueller's $40 million Humpty Trumpty investigation is over and found wanting of its original purpose (to retire Trump), perhaps the ruling class can return without interruption to the business of destroying the world with ordnance, greenhouse gases, and regime changes. A few more CIA-organized blackouts in Venezuela (it's a simple trick if one follows the Agency's " Freedom Fighter's Manual "), and the US will come to the rescue, Grenada style, and set up yet another neoliberal regime. There is a small solace that with Trump, Pompeo, and Bolton, there is at least a semblance of transparency in their reckless interventions. The assessed value of Guaido and Salman, they forthrightly admit, is in their countries' oil reserves. And Russians better respect the Monroe Doctrine and manifest destiny if they know what's good for them. Crude as they may be, Trump's men tell it like it is. And when Bolton speaks of "the Western Hemisphere's shared goals of democracy, security, and the rule of law," he is of course referring to US-backed coups, military juntas, debt bondage, invasions, embargoes, assassinations, and other forms of gunboat diplomacy.

    That the US is not already formally at war with Russia (even with NATO forces all along its borders) has only to do with the latter's nuclear arsenal deterrent. Since World War II, a period some describe as a " a period of unprecedented peace, " the US war machine has wiped out some 20 million people, including more than 1 million in Iraq since 2003, engaged in regime change of at least 36 governments, intervened in at least 82 foreign elections, including Russia (1996), planned more than 50 assassinations of foreign leaders, and bombed over 30 countries. This is documented here and here .

    Despite unending US and US-supported assaults on Africa and western and central Asia, the authors who see postwar unprecedented peace argue that it's Russia and China, not the US, that represent the real threats to peace and deserve to be treated as "outcasts." That NATO has warships plying the Black Sea and making port calls at the ethnically Russian Ukraine city of Odessa and is conducting war games from Latvia to Bulgaria and Ukraine represents unprecedented peace? While NATO, which together has 20 times the military spending of Russia and includes member states along virtually the entire perimeter of Russia, in Western propaganda Russia is the aggressor.

    Although the US corporate media may have missed the news, the rest of the world gets the fact that the greatest threat to peace on the planet is Uncle Sam. In 2013, a WIN/Gallup International poll of 66,000 people in 65 countries found that the US was considered by far the most dangerous state on earth (24% of respondents), while Russia didn't even register statistically on that poll. In 2017, a Pew poll found the same perception of US power and that such a view had increased to 38% and had grown in 21 of 30 countries compared to 2013. Even America's neighbors, Canada and Mexico, see the US as a major threat to their countries, worse than either China or Russia. The mainstream media (MSM) stenographers' myopia in failing to cover this story is not an oversight. Carl Bernstein, of Watergate exposé fame, documented in 1977 the fact that from the early 1950s to the late 1970s, the MSM ( New York Times , Washington Post , NBC, ABC, CBS, and the rest) had regularly served as overseas informers for the CIA. It would be hard to believe that those ties are not still intact given the level of collaboration among the CIA, the MSM, and the Democratic Party in the Russiagate conspiracy drama.

    Context is everything.

    In blaming others for the instability of the Middle East, it is important to bear in mind that for 36 years since Reagan launched air attacks on Beirut and parts of Syria, the US, and its ally Israel, has been using the greater Middle East region as a testing ground for its weapons systems. This has meant repeated bombing and droning of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Iran, Yemen, Kuwait, and Sudan, and increased weapons sales to the region to assure continuous instability and profits. The US has "special forces" operating in two-thirds of the world's countries and non-special forces stationed in three-quarters of them, altogether over 800 military bases and installations in as many as 130 countries (the Pentagon refuses to give the exact number). By comparison, apart from several bases in some of the former Soviet republics, Russia has a naval resupply facility in Vietnam and small temporary leased naval and airport stations in Syria. China opened a combined naval and army base in Djibouti in 2017 and an "unofficial military presence" in Tajikistan. There is nothing remotely close to equivalence.

    We can expect a continuing outcasting of Russia, either under a second Trump presidency or, if the long dark shadow of the Clintons prevails, a Joe Biden White House. Biden claims without the benefit of evidence that currently " the Russian government is brazenly assaulting the foundations of Western democracy around the world ," as if the huge imbalance of military forces and the long history of US interventions against liberal democracies and socialist states were unknown or irrelevant. In his (and the establishment's) heavy-handed uses of propaganda, Biden has learned well the tactics of Goebbels – repeat the lies often enough to make the imperial state appear as the victim.

    With regard to a brazen assault on democracy, Biden might take a cue from Clinton, who knew how to capitalize on her power position by signing off on huge arms sales to the Saudis (e.g., a $29 billion sale of fighter jets to that country to be used against Yemen) and other Gulf States while securing tens of millions of dollars in donations from the sheikhs ($25 million from Saudi Arabia alone) to her private foundation, run by her husband. This is all the more contemptuous given that she acknowledged in 2013: "The Saudis and others are shipping large amounts of weapons clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region and pretty indiscriminately – not at all targeted toward the people that we think would be the more moderate, least likely, to cause problems in the future."

    In other words, she knew the Saudis and other Gulf dictators were arming ISIS (ISIL) and other caliphate actors but continued to keep them as allies and patrons. She also took $800 thousand for her 2016 campaign (almost double what Trump received) and some $3 million for her private foundation from oil and gas companies after approving lucrative gas pipeline in the Canadian tar sands. Part of the foundation staff's business was to arrange meetings of top donors meetings with the then secretary of state. Following Clinton and Obama's lead and without a second thought, Trump has authorized US energy companies to sell the Saudi monarchy nuclear power technology and assistance.

    In foreign policy, indeed, it's hard to see any meaningful difference between Republican and Democratic administrations. Obama and John Kerry sent Undersecretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Victoria Nuland to Kiev's Maidan to cheer on the 2014 coup, hand out sandwiches to protesters, and give marching orders to her ambassador there to arrange for Yatsenyuk to be prime minister and to "fuck the EU." Poroshenko, a regular informer at the US embassy, as WikiLeaks revealed, was already in the bag for president. Biden was brought in to "midwife" and "help glue this thing" by pressuring the still-ruling Yanukovych to step down in favor of the US-designated coup leaders. Along the same lines, Trump's then ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, joined Venezuelan protesters outside UN headquarters in New York, using a megaphone to publicly call for a coup against Maduro. "I will tell you," she told the group, "the U.S. voice is going to be loud."

    Both the Ukraine and Venezuela interventions are in part a grand strategy to isolate Russia. However, the orchestration of a new Cold War against Russia and to implicate Trump as a Kremlin puppet has failed, and the problem for Russiagate propagandists is how to keep the conspiracy theory alive now that Mueller's unsuccessful hunt for 5thcolumnists is in the dustbin . The leading Russia scholar, Stephen Cohen , who has been professionally marginalized because of his skepticism toward the CIA narrative, sees the impact of a larger scandal – the corruption of the Democratic Party and its minions in the media that formed an alliance with the spooks. He asks: "what about the legions of high-ranking intelligence officials, politicians, editorial writers, television producers, and other opinion-makers, and their eager media outlets that perpetuated, inflated, and prolonged this unprecedented political scandal in American history ?"

    Another question is, how would the mainstream media financially survive an ending of Russiagate, if indeed the media moguls allow it to end? This spectacular failure of the "fourth estate" in covering the Clinton and Democrats' defeat in 2016 greatly weakened their trust status, which has been in quite steady decline since the 1970s, especially among Republicans. Democrats tend to look more favorably on the largely partisan liberal MSM for obvious reasons. However, as of December 2018, according to an IPSOS/Reuters poll , only 44% of Americans has much (16%) or some (28%) confidence in the MSM, compared to hardly any (48%). On whether MSM news organizations are more interested in making money than telling the truth, 59% agreed with the former assessment. No known organization has published findings on MSM trust since the completion of the Mueller debacle.

    What is to be made politically of the Russia obsession? Russiagate, which Matt Taibbi calls "this generation's WMD," can be seen as serving three broad major purposes.

    It has given the Democratic Party leadership and its partners in the CIA and MSM a cause célèbre inorder to salvage the status and image of the party and distract from its disastrous electoral defeats from 2008 to 2016. It thereby serves as an alternative reality to the widespread recognition that the ruling forces in the party have no genuine popular agenda and represent corporate, banking, neoliberal, and neoconservative militarist projects designed under Bill Clinton's New Democrat agenda.

    On foreign policy, Russiagate puts the Democrats to the right of the Republicans, similar to the way that John Kennedy in the 1960 campaign accused the Eisenhower (and VP Nixon) administration of weakening America's defenses, which presently enables the energy and defense industries and their lobbyists to unduly influence the perception of international threats and flashpoints. Democrats in the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly for the 2019 $716 billion defense budget, over and above what even Trump requested. In 2018, five military contractors – Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon – provided key political leaders in both parties with $14.4 million in addition to $94 million spent on lobbying efforts that year. Oil & gas spent $89 million on the election campaign and $125 million on lobbying.

    And, third, it serves to stifle the political left in and outside the party and the demands for progressive legislative changes activated by Bernie Sanders in 2016 and by newer members like Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Tulsi Gabbard.

    Where is the center of public political confidence these days? Certainly not with the mainstream media, which is even lower than that for Trump. Even in terms of its vaunted claims of press freedom, the US fares quite badly. Reporters Without Borders ranked the US number 45th worldwide (of 180 countries cited) in press freedom in its 2018 report. Tory-led Britain slid from 33rd in 2014 to 40th– only Italy and Greece were behind the UK among western European countries. And although Trump hasn't helped with his attacks on the media (and more than reciprocated by the media's extraordinarily hostile coverage of the president), the situation wasn't much better under Obama, who threatened whistle blowers in the press with enforcing the 1917 Espionage Act. This is law that may be pressed against the journalist Julian Assange. There still exists no "shield law" guaranteeing journalists the right to protect their sources' identities. Journalism students should be concerned for another reason as well:Newspaper employment between 2001 and 2016 has been cut by more than half, from 412,000 to 174,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    William Arkin, who quit NBC News as a political commentator last January, accused the station of peddling "ho-hum reporting" that "essentially condones" an endless US war presence in the Middle East and Africa. He also took the network to task for not reporting "the failures of the generals and national security leaders," and essentially becoming "a defender of the government against Trump" and a "cheerleader for open and subtle threat mongering."

    In his parting comments, he wrote: "I'm alarmed at how quick NBC is to mechanically be in favor of policies that just spell more conflict and more war. Even on Russia, though we should be concerned about the brittleness of our democracy that it is so vulnerable to manipulation, do we really yearn for the Cold War?"

    It may be whistling in the wind, but there are more important things to worry about than whether "the Russians" exposed the DNC's perfidious behavior in 2016. It would be more worthwhile for Democrats to demand programs that eliminate child poverty, which is at 20% in the US, compared to an OECD average of 13%. It might also be useful to concentrate a bit more on the white working class and working poor that went to Trump in 2016, whose kids make up 31% of the child poverty bracket (black children are 24%, and Latino children are 36%).

    And while they're at it, they might try to change the fact that the US ranks 25thout of 29 industrialized countries in investments in early childhood education or the fact that the disgraceful American infant mortality rate at 5.8 deaths per 1,000 live births is 50% higher than the OECD average (3.9%) . Many of the parents of these less privileged children are serving long sentences in prison for non-violent crimes, the discarded citizens who form the highest incarceration rate in the world. Overall, the Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty ranked the US 18th out of 21 wealthy countries on measures of labor markets, poverty rates, safety nets, wealth inequality, and economic mobility. On the other hand, the US has more than 25% of the world's 2,208 billionaires. This is American exceptionalism at its worst.

    The corporate-run market system and the calamities it is bringing to the world depends on such distractions. As the New York Times journalist and defender of US global supremacy, Thomas Friedman, has noted, "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." In his view, the system needs protecting, for which his "journalism" and most of the MSM are certainly doing their part.

    Unless the rather soft left within the Democratic Party can somehow capture the public imagination, the Democrats' political agenda, the MSM and their cohorts in the deep state will likely continue to report fake Russian conspiracies around the world.

    Russiagate is a propaganda industry that keeps on giving. In the longue durée of American elections, the question is what discourse will dominate the next campaign – social justice and a rational foreign policy or more aggressive polemics about Russia aimed at a steady pathway to nuclear war?

    J S Bach , 12 minutes ago link

    In truth, "Russiagate" is "Obfusgate".

    There is so much obvious obfuscation and deflection taking place by the (((MSM))) as to real issues and guilty parties in world and domestic affairs.

    People... PLEASE... use the internet... with all of its remaining free and accessible qualities to glean truth. Yes... you will come across countless contradictions, but if you have half a brain to use in the processing of data, you won't find it hard to ascertain what is really going on. It is up to YOU to figure it out... not Tucker Carlson, not Laura Ingraham, not Rachel Maddow. No. YOU.

    Do it. Be confident in your conclusions. Pass along to those you know and love those conclusions. If you do this, the tentacles of truth will spread within this body of jewish lies and serve as our leukocytes.

    [Apr 18, 2019] Advice to Haspel as for brazen manipulation of her boss, who happens to be a commander in chief of a nuclear power. She was waterboarding Trump with the stream of lies

    Apr 18, 2019 | craigmurray.org.uk

    SA , April 18, 2019 at 01:45

    maybe Haspel should have added this disclaimer to her video or whatever evidence she presented to the POT ASS:

    " This video was produced for propaganda purposes. We wish to stress that no actual children or ducks were harmed during the filming".

    [Apr 18, 2019] Were FBI honchos on drugs when they went to such an extent to entrap Trump and smear him as Putin's bitch?

    Apr 18, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    He's turned out to be a ziocon and Bibi's bitch instead. He's surrounded himself with neocons. And he's also Wall St's bitch as his primary concern is stock prices. He wants the Fed to lower already low rates and grow its multi-trillion dollar "emergency" balance sheet even more. The federal government will add a trillion dollars to the national debt each year of his term. Isn't this exactly what the establishment of both parties want?

    In any case, the hammer needs to come down hard on the putschists, so that law enforcement & the intelligence agencies don't become an extra-constitutional 4th branch of government accountable only to themselves. We'll see how far the Trump administration will go in holding these seditionists to account?

    [Apr 18, 2019] This Deep State stooge Mueller now looks like a compete idiot

    Apr 18, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    somebody , Apr 18, 2019 1:18:58 PM | link

    Barr says that the Mueller report insists that Russia attempted to interfere in U.S. elections:
    First, the report details efforts by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company with close ties to the Russian government, to sow social discord among American voters through disinformation and social media operations.

    How exactly was it established that the IRA intended to "sow social discord". Is there any IRA witness that said so? Any documents? No. It is a made up reasoning. The IRA activities were driven by commercial interests. To get as many page-views as possible IRA personnel posted memes on both sides of the political spectrum simply because that is where the viewership is. Just ask Foxnews or CNN. There was no political intent in the IRA's activity. To claim that it intended to "sow social discord" is baseless nonsense.

    The claims by social networks that "Russians" did this or that are dubious. Twitter for example recently revised its count of "Russian trolls":

    On Feb. 8, Twitter removed 228 accounts from the Russian IRA dataset because the social-media company now believes these accounts were operated by a different trolling network located in Venezuela. "We initially misidentified 228 accounts as connected to Russia," Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of site integrity, wrote in an online post. "As our investigations into their activity continued, we uncovered additional information allowing us to more confidently associate them with Venezuela."
    ...
    Twitter's change to its data undercuts all of these analyses of the troll farm's 2017 activity , Clemson researchers said. There was no surge in IRA Twitter activity in mid-2017, and the high-volume accounts that churned out links to ReportSecret were, in fact, being operated by a different, unknown group operating out of Venezuela, according to the updated data.

    Twitter is reluctant to discuss how it connects accounts to trolling networks.

    Twitter "is reluctant" because the company has simply no way to find that some real person driven account is a "troll". It is a completely subjective judgement.

    How exactly was it established that the IRA intended to "sow social discord". Is there any IRA witness that said so? Any documents? No. It is a made up reasoning. The IRA activities were driven by commercial interests. To get as many page-views as possible IRA personnel posted memes on both sides of the political spectrum simply because that is where the viewership is. Just ask Foxnews or CNN. There was no political intent in the IRA's activity. To claim that it intended to "sow social discord" is baseless nonsense

    That does not answer who paid for the clicks, and what was the information the clicks led to. Basically a foreign power is not supposed to run election adverts.

    Memes on both sides of the political spectrum could very well have been anti-Hillary ads for Republicans, DNC leaks for Democrats, and pro Hillary/anti Sanders stuff for Sanders supporters, the idea being to motivate Republicans to vote and disgust Democrats to keep them from voting.

    Facebook is THE tool you would use to create confusion and cause a break up of social relations, simply by its psychological user profiles and the ability to spread news to some groups but not to others unchecked from the outside.

    Any professional in psychological warfare would have a go just for testing.
    Cambridge Analytics was a British psychological warfare company - and they cooperated with Russia .

    Either business is global or it is not, and if you privatise secret service it is global business :-))

    james , Apr 18, 2019 1:21:25 PM | link

    thanks b... i look forward to your comments after reading the full report...

    "the IRA intended to "sow social discord""... it could be argued social networks - facebook, twitter, instagram and etc. etc. "sow social discord"... is that russias fault too?

    obviously there is way too much subjectivity in all of this.. the fact they cia/fbi are unwilling, or unable to define how the clinton e mails came out is another way to add to the subjectivity here.. nothing concrete - just specualation.. russia released them and etc. etc. speculation... where is the proof as b asks? there is none, but there is plenty of subjective speculation and innuendo - all abusing a foreign country... how ethnocentric and convenient that is!

    here is a subjective thought.. this is just what the usa deep state wants and just what the western msm is happy to fulfill..

    Tobin Paz , Apr 18, 2019 1:31:51 PM | link
    @1 Anunnaki

    Judge rejects Mueller's request for delay in Russian troll farm case

    A federal judge has rejected special counsel Robert Mueller's request to delay the first court hearing in a criminal case charging three Russian companies and 13 Russian citizens with using social media and other means to foment strife among Americans in advance of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

    WHAT A DISGRACE! Special Counsel Mueller Charged Russian Company Not in Existence at Time of Charge!

    What was not yet available until last night was the transcript of the hearing. The reason the Concord Management attorneys called the case a 'proverbial ham sandwich' was because one of the entities indicted by the Mueller team, Concord Catering, was not in existence at the time the crimes were alleged to have taken place.
    chet380 , Apr 18, 2019 2:14:44 PM | link
    One of the Russian companies charged by Mueller, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, hired American lawyers to defend it an American court -- the US prosecutors are fighting tooth and nail to to prevent the obtaining o pre-trial discovery of documents ... 3 million documents have been declared by the prosecutors as being "sensitive" and non-discoverable ... the battle continues.

    [Apr 18, 2019] It seems highly reasonable to conclude the NY Times item has blown away any remaining truthfulness to the Skripal Saga and the entire Saga

    British propaganda is clearly as close to neofascist propaganda as one can get... British neocons are even closer to neofascists then the US neocons. And British security services are closer to the Third Reich security services then any other.
    Skripals is a such a grandiose false flag operation that Gellen (of operation Gladio fame) probably would be amazed and humbled.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The official narrative of the Salisbury incident is ever-fluctuating. Seemingly each and every article, news segment, official statement or documentary about any element of the case contains new information, requiring the established account to be at least partially rewritten and/or contradicting established elements of the story.... ..."
    "... If nothing else, that Haynes was willing to transmit an apparently obvious fiction speaks volumes about the willingness of mainstream journalists to parrot each and every fresh claim in the Skripal case, even if it wildly conflicts with what they themselves have written previously. ..."
    "... Oh dear oh dear.. It appears the UK may be denying there were any poor ducks involved... https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1118409471754153984 ..."
    Apr 18, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    karlof1 , Apr 17, 2019 2:19:31 PM | link

    It seems highly reasonable to conclude the NY Times item has blown away any remaining truthfulness to the Skripal Saga and the entire Saga--like Russiagate--can be concluded to be a very serious hoax, and that there's no reason whatsoever to trust anything said by UK's Tory government.

    Undaunted, Kit Klarenberg provides further Skripal update in an extensively detailed article that moves him to conclude:

    "The official narrative of the Salisbury incident is ever-fluctuating. Seemingly each and every article, news segment, official statement or documentary about any element of the case contains new information, requiring the established account to be at least partially rewritten and/or contradicting established elements of the story....

    "If nothing else, that Haynes was willing to transmit an apparently obvious fiction speaks volumes about the willingness of mainstream journalists to parrot each and every fresh claim in the Skripal case, even if it wildly conflicts with what they themselves have written previously."

    Klarenberg's tweet response to Haynes is devastating:

    "Difficult to verify your version of events given it involves nameless officials. Knowing you're often used by security services to peddle propaganda seemed a reasonable assumption they'd urged you to backtrack your earlier advocacy as story detonates official #Skripal narrative."

    It seems highly reasonable to conclude the NY Times item has blown away any remaining truthfulness to the Skripal Saga and the entire Saga--like Russiagate--can be concluded to be a very serious hoax, and that there's no reason whatsoever to trust anything said by UK's Tory government.

    S.O. , Apr 17, 2019 3:34:15 PM | link

    Oh dear oh dear.. It appears the UK may be denying there were any poor ducks involved...https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1118409471754153984

    [Apr 18, 2019] A bill 'Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act (DASKA) of 2019,' has been introduced in the Senate which will ' require the Secretary of State to determine whether the Russian Federation should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism

    Apr 18, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    karlof1 , Apr 18, 2019 3:29:11 PM | link

    Regarding the likely continuance of anti-Russian rhetoric, this Philip Giraldi item informs us of the following:

    "A current bill originally entitled the 'Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act (DASKA) of 2019,' is numbered S-1189 [linked to within item]. It has been introduced in the Senate which will ' require the Secretary of State to determine whether the Russian Federation should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism and whether Russian-sponsored armed entities in Ukraine should be designated as foreign terrorist organizations.' The bill is sponsored by Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado and is co-sponsored by Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey.

    "The current version of the bill was introduced on April 11th and it is by no means clear what kind of support it might actually have, but the fact that it actually has surfaced at all should be disturbing to anyone who believes it is in the world's best interest to avoid direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia."

    Giraldi generally concludes the sponsoring Senators are insane--"The Senatorial commentary is, of course, greatly exaggerated and sometimes completely false regarding what is going on in the world, but it is revealing of how ignorant American legislators can be and often are"--but we just finished a witch hunt fueled by such insanity. Some anti-Projection medication is drastically needed for all too many people wielding power in The Swamp.

    [Apr 18, 2019] Halper, Dearlove, and Haspel propbaly run a join operation to initiate a new McCarthyism compaign. With the cornerstone step of Brannan-sponsored US IC "findings" (17 intelligence agencies agree!! Except not - that was a lie)

    Apr 18, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Jackrabbit , Apr 18, 2019 12:59:03 PM | link

    This is important and speaks to the real manipulation of the 2016 Presidential election: How Has Former MI6 Spymaster Richard Dearlove Dodged Scrutiny Despite Links To Russiagate?

    One wonders if Halper, Dearlove, and Haspel ran the 'op' to initiate a new McCarthyism. Reinforced by US IC "findings" (17 intelligence agencies agree!! Except not - that was a lie) pushed by Brennan and Clapper.

    Then consider what appears to be a cover-up by Mueller, Comey, and Barr (Note: Mueller is Comey's mentor and Barr is close friends with Mueller) as outlined here: New VIPS Memo :

    So, if it wasn't the Russians, [then] who left the "Russian" bread-crumb "fingerprints?" We do not know for sure; on this question we cannot draw a conclusion based on the principles of science -- at least not yet. We suspect, however, that cyber warriors closer to home were responsible for inserting the "tell-tale signs" necessary to attribute "hacks" to Russia....

    Binney, a plain-spoken, widely respected scientist, began by telling Pompeo that his (CIA) people were lying to him about Russian hacking and that he (Binney) could prove it. Pompeo reacted with disbelief, but then talked of following up with the FBI and NSA. We have no sign, though, that he followed through.... [Furthermore[ we told Attorney General Barr five weeks ago, [that] we consider Mueller's findings fundamentally flawed on the forensics side and ipso facto incomplete. We also criticized Mueller for failing to interview willing witnesses with direct knowledge, like WikiLeaks' Julian Assange.

    If, as we strongly suspect, Mueller is relying for forensics solely on CrowdStrike, the discredited firm hired by the DNC in the spring of 2016, he is acting more in the mold of Inspector Clouseau than the crackerjack investigator he is reputed to be....

    You [addressing Pres. Trump] may be unaware that in March 2017 lawyers for Assange and the Justice Department (acting on behalf of the CIA) reportedly were very close to an agreement under which Assange would agree to discuss "technical evidence ruling out certain parties" in the leak of the DNC emails" and agree to redact some classified CIA information, in exchange for limited immunity. According to the investigative reporter John Solomon of The Hill, Sen. Mark Warner, D,VA, Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, learned of the incipient deal and told then-FBI Director Comey, who ordered an abrupt "stand down"and an end to the discussions with Assange.

    Lastly, given the above, isn't it curious that Trump himself happened to further Russiagate suspicions and the Wikileaks sting by: hiring Manafort, appealing to Wikileaks and Russia to release emails, frequently praising Putin?

    <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

    IMO the Deep State had two main objectives in the 2016 Presidential election: elect a nationalist President and initiate a new McCarthism. Discrediting Wikileaks ran a close third. And settling scores with Flynn was also important to them (Flynn had told the world that the Obama Administration made a "willful decision" to support ISIS).

    [Apr 18, 2019] The result of Yeltsin neoliberal mafia rule was the largest after 1941-1945 kill off of Russians in modern history: Yeltsin plus Harvard Business School being responsible for many more deaths than even the intoxicated propagandist Robert Conquest ever dreamed of.

    Notable quotes:
    "... Skripal was just one more effort to tighten sanctions against Putin's allies in the Russian oligarchy and isolate Trump from foreign policy initiatives not approved by the Deep State. ..."
    "... The significance of the NY Times story, then, is that, inadvertently it reinforces the reality that in the matter of Russiagate and Trump all roads lead to London, the Tory Establishment, which has been living off US-Russian tensions for seventy years and security agencies doing what the CIA cannot do for itself. ..."
    Apr 18, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    bevin , Apr 17, 2019 9:13:07 AM | link

    Craig Murray has a piece on this today. There is nothing very new in what he writes but he sees the significance of this story, which is not about ducks or children or Donald Trump's personality but a concerted and thorough campaign, carried out largely by British state actors, to deepen the 'west's' isolation of Russia.

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

    The real story of both the Cold War and the continually recurring propaganda stories about the "millions" of "victims of communism" is that the Soviet Union was manipulated throughout its history by capitalist control over the international economy. Like a demonic organist capitalist governments pulled out all the stops to control the moods and the policies of a state that the Bolsheviks never did get to rule.

    In the end the Politburo gave in and did what the 'west' had always been wanted which is to hand over the country, lock, stock and population to the cannibals of capital.

    The result being what was probably, after the 1930-45 war, the largest kill off of Russians in modern history: Yeltsin plus Harvard Business School being responsible for many more deaths than even the intoxicated propagandist Robert Conquest ever dreamed of.

    It is that total control over Russia, through the manipulation of its economy, and the direction of its capitalists, that is behind the long series of sanctions, which are being added to every day: their purpose is to re-invent Yeltsinism, re-empower the Fifth Column in the Kremlin, and, in a stroke, re-establish the inevitable and eternal hegemony of the Washington centered Empire.

    In this work the assistance of the 'cousins'in MI6 and GCHQ, plus the entire British military establishment has been crucial in a period in which the subservience of POTUS to the Deep State was, thanks to the underestimation of his electoral chances, very much in question. During a period in which Trump had to be tamed and brought under control the UK Establishment's assistance in coming up with a series of highly publicised interventions was crucia l.

    Lysias points out that Haspel had acted as the CIA's Head of Station in London in 2016. It was in London that the entire "Russiagate" nonsense was put together, with British based actors continually prodding Congress, the media and the Democrats to act on revelations regarding Papadopolous, Mifsud, Stefan Halper.

    Skripal was just one more effort to tighten sanctions against Putin's allies in the Russian oligarchy and isolate Trump from foreign policy initiatives not approved by the Deep State. The significance of the NY Times story, then, is that, inadvertently it reinforces the reality that in the matter of Russiagate and Trump all roads lead to London, the Tory Establishment, which has been living off US-Russian tensions for seventy years and security agencies doing what the CIA cannot do for itself.

    [Apr 18, 2019] It might well be that Trump might was deliberately misinformed/duped by the American and British security services

    Apr 18, 2019 | craigmurray.org.uk

    Peter , April 17, 2019 at 21:15

    I'm wondering what the purpose of the Guardian article is.

    On the face of it it looks like just another Guardian attempt to besmirch Trump over his putative commitment and connections to Russia and Putin, but equally, it could be read as an, almost surreptitious, attempt to point up that Trump only responded as he did because he was deliberately (?) misinformed/duped by the American (and British?) security services, thereby questioning the aims, motives, methods and narrative of those security services.

    You decide.

    Ian , April 17, 2019 at 21:49

    If you read any of the books about behind the scenes at Trump's WhiteHouse you will find a familiar scenario which corroborates this account, where Trump is easily manipulable by his aides, who know very well how to push his buttons. Bolton, AIPAC, Bannon have all employed this strategy successfully and of course Fox News have a mainstream connection to his brain. So it sounds par for the course. As well as suggesting that Trump wouldn't have been inclined to agree to the UK's request without the nonsense pictures, which also rings true to form.
    As for his general conduct, Simon Tisdall's excoriating account of his preference for his Saudi friend, overriding the American people's request to get out of the Yemen massacres, is on the ball, and sums up what a clear and present danger he is.

    giyane , April 17, 2019 at 22:17

    Ian

    Somehow I don't think Donald Trump is going to ignore every story in the papers and TV and listen to a professional manipulator from the CIA. More likely he saw an opportunity to talk fake tough on Russia in order to take some of the heat out of Mueller's investigations, buying time.

    He must know Bolton's a neo-con nut-case and that the re-launching of dirty wars on South America on the pretext of Russian and Chinese interference is as much of a fatuous waste of time as the MacCarthyian idiocy.

    Russia enters an era in which Western leadership is as unscrutable and bonkers as Stalin's.
    China enters an era in which having spied on everything western, it now dreads itself being spied on by Western spies.

    Politics is surely not so crude as village one-upmanship, where the loudest and most bombastic talkers get all the admiration from the community, just because they are too lazy or too busy to run the village themselves? Whatever outrageous claim lifts the town's skirts up ends up with the big gold chain.

    Ian , April 17, 2019 at 22:40

    There's a lot of assumptions and projections of your own there, as well as mischaracterising what is being said about him. there is ample evidence of his manchild attitude – arrogance, bullying, narcissism, naivety, inability to concentrate, laziness and a fundamental lack of intelligence.

    giyane , April 17, 2019 at 22:58

    Ian

    I don't think Trump's reversing of Obama's creation and funding Islamic State shows a lack of intelligence or narcissism. He came into office and instead of veni vidi vici as per madame bloodsucker Clinton, he deployed Iran and Syrian Kurds to round them up and disperse them.
    At last someone in the White House grew some nuts and nouse, for a change.
    This report today in the Guardian appears to be not so much about the Scrotals, more about trying to portray Trump as a gullible idiot.

    Just saying.

    Scottish Intelligence Service , April 17, 2019 at 22:09

    Yet another piece of evidence to confirm what I wrote in the comments sections on here months ago. That the Skripal event was a total Psyop, carried out by the corrupt government. Same as the fabricated terror Psyops at Westminster, London Bridge and Manchester.

    Paul Barbara , April 17, 2019 at 23:21

    @ Ian April 17, 2019 at 22:42
    Ever hear of Operation Gladio? I suggest you read up on it, as you are very naive if you believe the PTB won't sacrifice innocents if it suits their plans. False Flag ops (and bald-faced lies) are the favoured way to spark off wars, or to introduce stricter limitations on the people's freedoms (Patriot Act, stuff like that).

    Paul Barbara , April 18, 2019 at 01:45

    @ Ian April 18, 2019 at 00:11
    Do you accept that the Operation Gladio attacks were False Flag operations, murdering innocent European citizens in order to place the blame on the Reds? 'I have heard of so-called Operation Gladio ' sounds very much like you are dismissive of the attacks.
    '..which has nothing to do with these allegations ' It has to do with the fact that False Flag ops killing one's own citizens is not an unknown phenomena, whilst you appear to have believed it was, by your response.
    I am not claiming Manchester was a False Flag, though I may well suspect it was.
    You would be surprised how much evidence many 'conspiracy theorists' have to back up their dismissal of government and MSM 'narratives'.

    SA , April 18, 2019 at 01:38

    So we have a new contributor here by the name of Villanelle. This name has nothing to do with villains but is a French term meaning:
    "a pastoral or lyrical poem of nineteen lines, with only two rhymes throughout, and some lines repeated."

    -- –
    [ Mod: "Villanelle" is merely the latest incarnation of a serial sockpuppeteer who comments under different names in nearly every thread. Craig has been kept informed. ]
    -- –

    So there are recurring rhymes or themes. An apparently simple but very open question based on a very non- specific enquiry: what evidence would convince you of a certain occurrence? I can imagine this as a famous punchline in a legal drama or the like.

    A famous barrister just winding up the case of a convicted triple murderer with the line to the judge: " Your honour, you seem to have made many assumptions in this case, but please tell me what evidence would you require to prove that my client is innocent?"

    Of course in real life the judge would tell the barrister to go where the sun does not shine. How can you ask such a question, repeatedly, then followed by next, when the case and all the evidence have already been discussed?

    I think Alexander is on the right track. Villanelle is an agent provocateur. (S)he dominated this thread by also meticulously at least initially answering almost every single comment by deflection. But contrary to what Alexander says I think he is not CB but is more like our Wikipedia prolific commentator previously featuring here. Who knows whether this is not some form of fishing or phishing by something like the II?

    [Apr 18, 2019] The Official Skripal Story is a Dead Duck by Craig Murray

    Apr 17, 2019 | craigmurray.org.uk

    Paul Barbara , April 18, 2019 at 02:27

    'A police officer stands guard outside of the home of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury, BritainNew York Times Accidentally Unravels UK Government's Official Skripal Narrative':

    https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201904171074227109-skripal-ducks-children-nyt-usa-britain/

    Latest from Sputnik: includes pic and reference to Craig's present blog post. ' There could be several explanations for this seeming anomaly. To name just some of the most unsettling:

    Several children were hospitalised, and several ducks did die, and for reasons unclear the British government didn't inform the public and prevented the children and their parents from revealing they'd been affected, while secretly communicating the fact to other governments in literally graphic detail.

    Counterfeit and/or misleading images may have been produced by persons unknown to bolster Britain's case for concerted international action, and further been relayed to Haspel (if not other overseas officials), conning her and Trump into backing its mass-expulsion policy.

    Alternatively of course, perhaps the stirring tale of Haspel converting the reticent President with impactful images is mere gossip, or spin -- after all, the article's authors didn't discuss the episode with the CIA chief herself, but based their article on interviews "with more than a dozen current and former intelligence officials who have briefed or worked alongside her" .'

    Spells it all out nicely, unlike our MSM.

    Villanelle , April 17, 2019 at 13:27

    Is someone willing to explain what evidence would convince them that the Russian security services attempted, and failed to kill Sergei Skripal?

    Paul Barbara , April 17, 2019 at 13:34

    @ Villanelle April 17, 2019 at 13:27
    A hell of a lot more than the load of BS narrative served up by HMG in lieu of any evidence.
    But I'll give you a question, as you appear to have swallowed HMG hogwash hook, line and sinker: Can you explain why neither Sergei nor Yulia have contacted their nonagenarian respective mother/grandmother for months, though she has begged HMG to allow contact?
    Given that Sergei used to phone her every week or two, and that Yulia was her loving carer?

    Northern , April 17, 2019 at 13:42

    Is this not somewhat putting the cart before the horse? Last I was aware it was up to those making the accusation to prove their case. If you read the articles relating to the Skirpal case on here, you would see that most of the evidence put forward for this being a Russian assassination attempt has been widely discredited and comes from sources with dubious links to British security services. So something beyond speculation would be a start.

    If I was to indulge in such speculation, I'd say it looks most likely to me on the back of what I've read that Sergei was attempting to return to Russia with some kind of information or material, and this whole affair was an ill planned and on the fly attempt to stop Sergei, and pin the blame on the Ruskies as a nice bonus.

    David , April 17, 2019 at 13:46

    yes, good question.

    howsabout, say , a widely respected and trusted Foreign Minister, standing up in the mother of all parliaments and saying "I, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, will immediately instigate a full and integral inquiry upon my own initiative and once all the facts are established, following institutional statecraft, we will then make a considered response to whichever agency bounced the UK into this mess"

    see references:

    "Serial liar Boris Johnson caught lying again?" Kevin Maguire, an editor at Daily Mirror,

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/04/britains-boris-johnson-accused-of-misleading-public-over-skripal-poisoning-evidence/

    https://www.theblogmire.com/boris-johnsons-statements-analysed-by-experts-and-found-to-contain-traces-of-the-ministry-grade-swerve-agent-govichock/

    David , April 17, 2019 at 13:46

    yes, good question.

    howsabout, say , a widely respected and trusted Foreign Minister, standing up in the mother of all parliaments and saying "I, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, will immediately instigate a full and integral inquiry upon my own initiative and once all the facts are established, following institutional statecraft, we will then make a considered response to whichever agency bounced the UK into this mess"

    see references:

    "Serial liar Boris Johnson caught lying again?" Kevin Maguire, an editor at Daily Mirror,

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/04/britains-boris-johnson-accused-of-misleading-public-over-skripal-poisoning-evidence/

    https://www.theblogmire.com/boris-johnsons-statements-analysed-by-experts-and-found-to-contain-traces-of-the-ministry-grade-swerve-agent-govichock/

    Andyoldlabour , April 17, 2019 at 14:16

    Villanelle

    We have had so many contradictory stories from the media and government, that there is definitely something very wrong.
    The Guardian has made no attempt to contradict the concocted story that ducks died and "sickened" children had to be hospitalised – it just didn't happen, it was "fake news" spread by the muderous gina Haspel.
    Johnson told us that only Russia could have produced Novichok, which was a complete lie.
    The policeman who was contaminated, was originally supposed to be one of the first on the scene, then he visited the Skripal's house, supposedly wearing police isswue gloves, which later turned out to be a full Hazchem suit.
    He was put in isolation in hospital, with doctors and nurses wearing Hazchem suits, yet his wife and daughter were not required to wear them.
    The two boys feeding the ducks in the park were not hurt, no ducks died from the Skripal contaminated bread fed to them.
    When did the Skripals get poisoned?
    Was it when they left the house – how did they manage to walk around for hours before collapsing? That is definitely not how military grade nerve agents work.
    Where are the Skripals now?

    Andyoldlabour , April 17, 2019 at 14:30

    Villanelle

    Here is the back up.

    ""One moment you'd have a nurse coming in with a sandwich for you dressed top to bottom in protective gear," he said,

    However, they might be "closely followed" by his wife and children, who were "allowed to just walk in".

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46290989

    Villanelle, you have just come on here spouting pro government rubbish, and yet you seem to have no idea how much this case has been researched by Craig and the posters on here.

    Paul Barbara , April 17, 2019 at 15:04

    @ Villanelle April 17, 2019 at 13:57
    If as many contend it is a UK False Flag set-up, no evidence on earth would convince me that the Russians were responsible, because they weren't.
    But the real question should be: what evidence is there for the government narratives (plural because they change with the weather)? To portray some one or group as guilty of a crime, it is normal to provide evidence. Maybe old fashioned, but things work better that way.
    But of course, the UK has form: it went to war in Afghanistan without proof, just on Uncle Sam's say-so.
    It bombed Syria over Chemical Weapon 'allegations', with no proof.
    It attacked Iraq over alleged Chemical Weapons.
    And it bombed Libya over false allegations.
    So, yep, HMG has 'form' at fomenting false 'casus belli'.

    James2 , April 17, 2019 at 13:49

    The first question is why would the Russians attempt to kill this man – and his daughter?

    I have not heard a convincing reason for this.

    -He was let go years ago from prison – so he was of no concern to them. In fact no one knew who this guy was on the Russian side.

    – the daughter was living in Russia and visiting regularly her father / why attack her in the UK?

    The whole story is built on stereotypes of malevolent Russians attacking someone because that's what they do. It's actually a very racist idea.

    The Russians were accused within 24hours – this in itself was suspect

    Goose , April 17, 2019 at 14:00

    Craig's listed various inconsistencies

    ·When did the Skripals return home to actually touch the door? Earliest door could've been coated around 12 noon. No cctv of their car returning and timeline is off.
    · Why did they both fall ill later that afternoon at precisely same moment despite different body compositions?
    ·The fact the potential assassins walked up the street in broad daylight unconcerned about any CCTV, why did Sergei's house have no CCTV.
    ·The method – insanely risky given Skripal wasn't hiding, living at that address under his real name with no CCTV.
    ·The fact that for days after these events police stood outside, right next to the door in question with no protective clothing, this despite an officer apparently falling ill after 'forcing entry' – no sign of forced entry on that door.
    · Why did Charlie Rowley and his brother insist in TV interviews he broke the bottle spilled a quantity on his hands and then wash it off? He even talked of its 'oily' consistency and its smell. A google search shows all the MSM reported the bottled 'splintered' into pieces. It's reported the sample handed to the OPCW was 98.3% pure.
    · Ţhe fact both Skripals have all but vanished despite Yulia feeling the need to phone her cousin during her 'situation'.

    There are many other inconsistencies.

    If these are answered satisfactorily, I guess Craig and all other querying folk will be convinced.

    Paul Barbara , April 17, 2019 at 15:19

    @ Villanelle April 17, 2019 at 14:09
    The following should teach you all you need to know about the OPCW – it is afraid to deal honestly in cases which go against the Western (US) narrative:
    'Was UK paying White Helmets to produce Syria 'chemical weapon' PR as cover for Jaish Al Islam?':
    https://www.rt.com/op-ed/454205-uk-paying-white-helmets-syria-jaish/ ?
    And in my estimation, Syria was what was behind the Salisbury Saga. The UK wanted to get across to the public the idea Russia used Chemical Weapons, in time for the next 'False Flag' CW ops (real or hoax) that the British founded and funded 'White Helmets' mercenary head-choppers' PR outfit organised in Syria.

    Tatyana , April 17, 2019 at 14:02

    I am, Villanelle.
    If only Sergey Skripal suddenly and unexplainably died in first year or two after he was swapped. You know, that type of death, like heart attack during your usual morning fitness, or falling out of the window, or perhaps you remember the guy who was found dead in his travel bag and somehow it was attributes to his sexual play with his gay partner. Something of this kind.
    Gosh, even simple death of rat poison would do.
    Not the absurd story about FSB trying to kill an ex-spy with secret warfare in rural England, near the fence of Porton Down, with the most experienced Army Nurse rushing to help and brave British doctors successfully treating Novichok poisoning. So successfully, that Yulia was able to read and write two languages, using complex grammar constructions She even didn't stumble on foreign words, reciting long text in front of cameras and her facial expressions are all relevant, healthy and telling of good self-possession.
    So NO, I'm not convinced.

    Mammoth , April 17, 2019 at 17:57

    Villanelle has asked a silly question but provided no evidence for his/her/its belief in some "official" version of events which somehow involves Russian guilt. The simple fact is that there is no evidence for any Russian state involvement in the disappearance of the Skripals. As for their alleged poisoning – all samples went through Porton Down, a UK government agency – so there is no independent chain of custody. Just as with the OPCW "investigation" of the alleged Khan Sheykhoun CW "attack" in Syria where all samples were supplied through terrorists and their White Helmets associates. And OPCW itself refused to visit the Syrian airbase even when invited and guaranteed security for such a visit.
    Russian visitors Petrov and Boshirov (there is no evidence that these are false identities) were in Salisbury on 3 and 4 March 2018 either as tourists or for some other purpose, but the police have been unable to link them in any way with the Skripals.
    Craig Murray and others have pointed out innumerable logical impossibilities – not just inconsistencies – in official and media reports.
    There is no case for Russia to answer. Russia needs no defence. The simple answer to Villanelle is that after all the official obfuscation by UK government and intelligence agencies, there is NOTHING that would now convince me of Russian guilt.

    Grhm , April 17, 2019 at 20:20

    The way honest people proceed is as follows:
    Firstly, we assemble the known facts, and then secondly we invent an explanation that's consistent with those facts.
    Villanelle evidently goes about things differently.
    The question asked, in paraphrase, is:
    "The explanation is that the KGB tried and failed to kill Skripal. What facts can we invent that would be consistent with that explanation?"
    This is revealing, I feel.

    Republicofscotland , April 17, 2019 at 13:39

    The whole Skripal affair is a British dead duck.

    Charlie Rowley has even met with a Russian ambassador, asking him for help as the British government have kept him in the dark over the death of Dawn Sturgess, and the matter as a whole.

    https://www.rt.com/uk/455757-novichok-rowley-meets-ambassador/

    It amounts to a web of lies and deceit, a Gordian knot that even Alexander couldn't cut through.

    Northern , April 17, 2019 at 13:45

    Even Charlie's meeting with the ambassador was spun though. I saw several information light reports on that in UK media, attempting to portray the meeting as a result of Russian stonewalling, not British.

    Conall Boyle , April 17, 2019 at 17:45

    As a 'Murrayista' I must say I do roll around with mirth every time Craig posts. I have no theories, banal geopolitics, only total incredulity at the official narrative. It is so hilarious, and yet they go on straight-faced putting it out. You Bostock, seem to be happy to accept the bizarre facts and somehow feel they prove something. Vilanelle just keeps popping up squeaking at some minor point or other.

    There is a gigantic smell over the Salisbury incident, but it is not true that ALL the media just suck it up. One or two brave souls like Mary Djevsky ask simple basic journalistic questions and gets a pile of ordure poured over her for her trouble. The rest seem cowed into silence. Why does the establishment fear such questions?

    [Apr 18, 2019] Ducks story is another British establishment brazen lie

    Notable quotes:
    "... The security services seem to have free rein so politicians can claim plausible deniability. ..."
    Apr 18, 2019 | craigmurray.org.uk

    Robyn , April 17, 2019 at 14:13

    Rob Slane (blogmire.com) and his intrepid band of commenters are also poring over this dead duck story today. Somewhere on Rob's page is reference to the parents of the duck-feeding boys being told, two weeks after the event, to burn the children's clothes. To save myself time, I'm paste in here my comment on that aspect of the official script which I pasted under Rob's article.

    So, two weeks after the duck feed, the parents were instructed to burn the boys' clothes. It seems like an extreme measure given that everyone else in Salisbury was advised just to launder any clothes under suspicion of contamination. Luckily for the boys and their family and community (if not the nation), the parents remembered exactly which clothes the boys had been wearing. Even more luckily, neither the boys nor their duck-feeding clothes had come into contact with anyone or anything in the intervening fortnight. It's a miracle.

    Andyoldlabour , April 17, 2019 at 14:24

    Robyn

    This from 12th March 2018. Salisbury residents told to wash their clothes and use antiseptic wipes – you couldn't make it up!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/11/salisbury-public-warned-wash-clothes-nerve-agent-attack/

    Andyoldlabour , April 17, 2019 at 15:13

    Villanelle

    We have been told by many/various sources, that the Novichok was applied in gel form to the Skripal's door furniture.
    Gel does not evaporate.
    If the Novichock had in fact been applied by an atomiser spray, then there would have been no need to wear protective clothing and cordon off large areas of Salisbury because it would have evaporated.
    Your serve Villanelle.

    Northern , April 17, 2019 at 16:26

    Your own link provides the answer to that question, if you were actually processing it rather than selectively picking out the bits which support the government narrative.

    The whole point of chemical weapons is to cause as much death, injury and incapacity as possible amongst the enemy, with the added bonus of it severely limiting or reducing their ability to operate in the affected area. So given what we know from the government's narrative of alleged Russian application to the doorknob – why would you chose an agent which burns off at atmospheric temperatures if it's known that there could be several hours between application and contact with the intended victim?

    None of which adequately explains all of the other inconsistencies in the properties of this agent, either?

    How were the samples tested by the OPCW of such high purity so long after the event? How do you tie this up with agent failing to kill the apparent targets? According to chemists, a minute dosage of this substance is enough to kill at such high purity?

    John2o2o , April 17, 2019 at 18:11

    What, the Fentanyl?

    andygringo , April 17, 2019 at 17:30

    Perhaps it would be better, Villanelle, if you could let everyone else know which parts of the "UK Govt. version", you find most compelling. Which pieces of evidence supplied by the UK Govt. do you find the most convincing?
    Bearing in mind that this evidence is brought to you by Intelligence agencies and politicians with a track record of lying and dissembling, it is surely incumbent on any seeker of truth to treat with scepticism anything put out by known liars.
    Do you believe that Saddam had WMD?
    How about Syria? Have these same intelligence agencies and government officials, who you believe without question now, been truthful and consistent throughout the aggression against Syria?
    I suspect, based on your half arsed attempts on this thread to whitewash the UK government, that you would literally believe anything you're told as long as it came from official sources.
    It was pointed out to you earlier in the thread that you are way out of your depth on this forum. I second that.
    If you really want to know more about the holes in the official version, which I doubt, then the archives on here as well as Moon of Alabama and the excellent Blogmire would help to fill in the obvious gaps in your knowledge. It would also stop you asking stupid questions and looking foolish.

    Conall Boyle , April 17, 2019 at 17:56

    What would convince me? Even the slightest effort by HMG to produce credible explanations for the many lacunae that have been spotted in their narrative. Of course their point-blank refusal to do so doesn't prove they have something to hide. I often feel that with devious cunning they deliberately let dodgy narratives out into the public domain, then sit back and watch 'the usual suspects' run around in frustration. Thank goodness we have RT to point out the truth.

    King of Welsh Noir , April 17, 2019 at 14:55

    A lot of people take the piss out of the 'How to poison door knobs' manual, but through my connections in the security services I have managed to get hold of a copy.

    I translated it using Google translate.

    Here is a section on the special protective Hazmat suits that the two agents would obviously have worn to perform the job.

    It's quite a long and complicated procedure because it is very hard to doff the suit afterwards without contaminating yourself.

    First, you need a buddy to help you, and a mirror, a tent and and chlorine solution.

    No doubt they carried these in the small knapsack one of them was wearing.

    It takes half an hour and this is a small fraction of the necessary procedure:

    Engage the trained observer.
    Disinfect outer gloves.
    Remove outer apron.
    Disinfect outer gloves
    Remove and discard outer gloves
    Inspect and disinfect inner gloves
    Remove face shield
    Disinfect inner gloves
    Remove surgical hood
    Disinfect inner gloves
    Remove the coverall
    Disinfect inner gloves
    Remove boot covers
    Change inner gloves
    Remove the N95 respirator
    Disinfect the new inner gloves
    Disinfect your shoes
    Disinfect inner gloves
    Remove and discard inner gloves
    Perform hand hygiene
    Examine body for contaminants
    Exit the doffing area
    Take a shower.
    Go and feed ducks

    For videos showing the procedure can be found here:

    https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/hcp/ppe-training/n95respirator_coveralls/doffing_12.html

    After reading the manual I have tremendous respect for the assassins: to do all that in broad daylight on a Sunday morning in Salisbury without being spotted.

    Clearly they were real pros. So no more laughing please.

    Andyoldlabour , April 17, 2019 at 15:15

    King of Welsh Noir

    I see no reason why they couldn't have performed those tasks without being spotted, causing alarm.

    Sarcasm alert.

    Tatyana , April 17, 2019 at 18:34

    Ah, King of Welsh Noir, don't you know these are all unnecessary procedures with our New Enhanced Premium Baby Wipes!

    John Goss , April 17, 2019 at 15:28

    "Possibly the Guardian and New York Times are inventing utter drivel, as in the Manafort meeting Assange story. That would in itself be worrying. "

    To my mind they have been doing it for years. It is getting worse. Rusbridger, although he admitted to being controlled, was a real editor in comparison to Katherine Viner. There is no moral compass anymore. Yet there are still readers who have been reading it for years who think it is the same radical organ it was when known as the Manchester Guardian.

    John Goss , April 17, 2019 at 15:55

    Perhaps more important than the Stephen Davies letter is the diagnosis that fentanyl was the poison involved – quite a strong opoid. But it was quite clear from the start – as far as the medical profession is concerned – that there was no evidence of a nerve agent. Novichok is a word circulated by the west to point the finger at Russia. It means newcomer. This morning I joined a Russian website. Under my name it said Novichok.

    https://johnplatinumgoss.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/fentanyl-poisoned-the-skripals-back-to-basics/

    WJ , April 17, 2019 at 17:18

    Too bad there's not an established legal process in the Western world for adjudicating these claims. I am thinking of a venue where each side could openly present its case on the basis of whatever evidence each is able to supply, could ask questions of the other side, etc., and would agree to abide by whatever decision the citizens appointed by lot to administer this venue would decide.

    No idea how something like this hypothetical structure or institution might be brought about, but it would seem helpful to have in cases like these, no?

    Tony_0pmoc , April 17, 2019 at 17:00

    I take this discussion back to my original point, which to my amazement was published (unfortunately the joke wasn't) Tony_0pmoc
    April 17, 2019 at 11:44 which starts

    "The Government and the media, have not been telling the whole truth for a long time. Sometimes they blatantly lie."

    Many people posting here, quite obviously still believe most of what is published in the mainstream media. Most people I know, rarely lie, and when they do, its pretty obvious. yet some people I know, are quite obviously compulsive liars. they are addicted to it, but unfortunately do not have exceedingly good memories, to remember all their lies. I never trust a word such people say any more, unless I know they are telling the truth, which sometimes they do.

    Same girl?

    Just Believe – The Magic of Novichok – Before Novichok – After Novichok

    https://www.moonofalabama.org/images6/novichokbeforeafter2.jpg

    Goose , April 17, 2019 at 17:13

    But they don't need good memories when the media don't raise inconsistencies that arise some time later.

    'We are the United States of Amnesia, which is encouraged by a media that has no desire to tell us the truth about anything, serving their corporate masters who have other plans to dominate us.' – Gore Vidal

    Some ask, why the obsession with the MSM, but they are all we've got holding power to account. Especially here in the UK with no written constitution. The reason powerful people give for being against the codified rules of a written constitution, is it'd restrict their room to act . But in fact, you really do need a set of 'codified' rules – a line that EVERYONE is afraid of crossing.

    Goose , April 17, 2019 at 18:44

    The reason why we need a written constitution is because it's not clear where power and responsibility reside in the UK.

    The security services seem to have free rein so politicians can claim plausible deniability.

    Look at the to and froing over historical accusations of UK involvement in torture, with Straw and Blair basically accusing Mi6 of going rogue. Both insist they never authorised torture in TV interviews last year (Straw on radio , Blair on Newsnight); they claim they never signed the documents, despite their signatures being on said documents. The whole situation is a mess and many MPs have called for a judge-led inquiry , both Blair and Straw have stated they are happy to cooperate. And yet

    Theresa May however, has other ideas; the govt missed its own deadline \to respond last year and the whole thing seems to have been forgotten.

    Jones , April 17, 2019 at 17:56

    more drivel from sycophant puppets that proves the US and UK is run by imbeciles who take the public for gullible idiots, anyone who believes a word they say is just that. Wishing Julian Assange well in his upcoming court appearance, it's a sick world that allows crooks to lock up brave and courageous lamplighters like Assange and Manning, their integrity shines brightly over the dung heap trying to silence them.

    John2o2o , April 17, 2019 at 18:07

    My understanding is that they were Norwegian Blue ducks.

    Staged? I would think so. Wonder what the CIA called this operation?

    Tatyana , April 17, 2019 at 18:47

    I think " Operation Bollywood" or "Indian Cinema"
    * enjoy this .gif video
    https://m.pikabu.ru/story/besposhchadnoe_indiyskoe_kino_6646578

    John2o2o , April 17, 2019 at 19:39

    Tatyana, thank you, my joke was a reference to a famous piece of humorous drama from UK television called the "Dead Parrot Sketch".

    It's very silly – just like the whole idea of poisoned ducks! You may be able to watch it here:

    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xoh8j

    Rob , April 17, 2019 at 18:25

    That the official Skripal story is bogus should be clear to anyone with eyes, ears and the barest minimum of intellectual honesty. What is needed to send the story to its final resting place and raise a more interesting story is information on the whereabouts of the Skripals to this day. Their disappearance smells like month-old fish, and the best bet is that some highly placed people in the British Foreign Office and intelligence community have something very embarrassing to hide. Frankly, I am surprised that nothing has been leaked on this score.

    michael norton , April 17, 2019 at 19:39

    When the person who was home secretary for six years, then prime minister for a couple of years, steps down from her current role towards oblivion, new people can take up the baton.
    New people will be able to ask new questions.
    1) where are the Skripals?
    2) why was all this fabricated?
    3) who put all this twaddle in place?

    Goose , April 17, 2019 at 20:15

    I doubt very much any harm has come to them, they are either innocent victims or went along with 'spy games ' as Trump called it. But clearly someone doesn't want them giving any unscripted or unsupervised interviews were all the variables can't be controlled.

    Most likely probably resettled somewhere now with new identities: US, Canada, NZ , Australia. Could be anywhere, take yer pick.

    The unquestioning MSM, pretending as if they never existed, makes you feel like the country has gone to all hell.

    Alexander , April 17, 2019 at 18:31

    Villanelle? Villanelle?

    I'm stuck here waiting for your answer to my earlier post. What's holding you up?

    Whilst you are about it, could you kindly enlighten us as to the main aim of the Skripal "narrative" (Ugh – that word reminds me of A.Campbell).
    Was it
    A) To take Skripal out of circulation before the Steele dossier s**t hit the fan
    B) To connect Russia to "chemical weapons" as part of the Syria deal
    C) To further drive in the wedge between Trump and Russia
    D) To Divert the Attention of the Dopey UK electorate from the Brexit mess
    E) Other

    Please put in correct order of importance.

    It's just occurred to me that you probably knock off at 1730. You are probably down on the river now the trout season has kicked off. What's the fishing like around Hermitage?
    Do get back to us tomorrow!

    Dom C , April 17, 2019 at 22:14

    Agreed.
    'The incident is cited as an example of the then deputy CIA director (now director). Gina Haspel.'

    'She is said to have '

    Both these quotes from the Guardian article imply (to me) there is no reliable source. It may not have happened.
    Its an office rumour to big up the Director and piss off the boss. One would assume to piss of the boss you'd actually have to show him a picture of someone pissing on him and that's opening up a whole other can of worms.

    Ken Kenn , April 17, 2019 at 22:48

    I'll give you points for trying but nowhere does any report from the OPCWsay that the tests showed Novichok.

    Their references are ' toxic chemical ' and even Porton Down's wording ( in the MSM you'll hate to know ) was similar to – It's what the government says it is.

    Despite the waffle the above is not a very specific – is it?

    Being as you know a few things answer a few questions please:

    How many doors were at the front of the Skripal house and how many handles ( the MSM keep saying doorknobs) were tested in total?

    Why was Charlies flat only given a cursory clean up with say Cilit Bang and the Skripal house dismantled being as Charlie and Dawn got a massive dose of alleged Novichok?

    What was the actual cause of Dawn's death, bearing in mind her relatives said the first inquest showed no damage to her internal organs?

    What colour was Yulia's hair in the Duck feeding ultra clear video(s) and what was Sergei wearing?

    What colour hair did the young woman found on the bench have and what colour hair did the Salisbury Hospital staff notice?

    If the ' Toxic Chemical ' was extremely deadly Russian Novichok , how is it that no-one else has died or been contaminated ( even slightly ) save three people from the alleged original attack and two later after opening a ' shrink wrapped sealed ' bottle of what the Authorities say was the same as that ' smeared ?' – ' sprayed ' on only one door handle.

    If the above is true why didn't the Zizzis staff suffer from some contamination to or the pub staff who handled the Skripal's cutlery plates and drinks glasses as well as those who touched the handles of the doors the Skripl's touched with no bad effects?

    How come the sprayers/sealers didn't die or fall ill themselves? Hazmat suits in a cul de sac on a Sunday?

    That's just a few questions for an expert to be going on with.

    [Apr 18, 2019] Advice to Haspel as for brazen manipulation of her boss, who happens to be a commander in chief of a nuclear power. She was waterboarding Trump with the stream of lies

    Apr 18, 2019 | craigmurray.org.uk

    SA , April 18, 2019 at 01:45

    maybe Haspel should have added this disclaimer to her video or whatever evidence she presented to the POT ASS:

    " This video was produced for propaganda purposes. We wish to stress that no actual children or ducks were harmed during the filming".

    [Apr 18, 2019] NYT reported on children and ducks not merely as a quote of CIA director, but as a straight fact.

    Apr 17, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Piotr Berman , Apr 17, 2019 1:53:14 PM | link

    I am not sure if it is clear for folks on the far side of NYT paywall that NYT reported on "children and ducks" not merely as a quote of CIA director, but as a straight fact. This is the caption of one of the photos illustrating the article: "A former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter were poisoned last year in Britain in a slipshod attack that also sickened children, killed ducks and required careful cleanup.CreditWill Oliver/EPA, via Shutterstock"

    Zachary Smith , Apr 17, 2019 1:59:53 PM | link

    @ Grieved #74

    I'm willing to believe a lot of things about the Brits and Haspel, but "stupid" isn't one of them. That they tried the Skripal stunt demonstrates they had great confidence in their control of the UK and US press, and I'll concede that confidence was justified.

    karlof1 , Apr 17, 2019 5:44:31 PM | link

    KC @107--

    Note Haspel hasn't denied any aspect of the news item.

    Why perpetrate a hoax like the Skripal Saga, which was all too real for the one confirmed dead.

    Taregt: Russia

    Why? Previous sanctions not performing as anticipated--indeed, they are actually backfiring.

    But if that policy line's already a proven failure, why double-down?
    When faced with failure, Neocons always double-down.

    Meanwhile, sanctions employed for almost 4 years when Skripal Act 1 begins clearly aren't working, which brings up the question of how Russia is actually perceived by the genuine International Community--did the provocations and sanctions diminish Russia's standing in the world prior to March 2018?

    Given ever growing attendance to Russian sponsored and located symposiums, Russia's reputation seems to be growing at the expense of the smearing nations.

    Motive for Skripal Hoax: To do what sanctions couldn't.

    Outcome of Skripal Hoax: Russian reputation higher than ever. Indeed, the two hoaxes have had the opposite affect on Russia's international standing and the entire sanctions regime helped to make Russia stronger than it otherwise would be without their imposition.

    [Apr 17, 2019] The media's interest in the well-being of a foreign population is directly proportional to the West's interest in toppling its government, while editorial standards are inversely proportional to its enemy status

    Highly recommended!
    Apr 17, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    karlof1 , Apr 16, 2019 7:26:23 PM | link

    Ah yes, Prescient observation regarding Venezuela:

    "The media's interest in the well-being of a foreign population is directly proportional to the West's interest in toppling its government, while editorial standards are inversely proportional to its enemy status."--John McEvoy

    So, lets employ this maxim to Russiagate and the Skripal Saga and the respective national media. In the first case, the Russian public's completely ignored unless it's a member of the so-called opposition while Putin and Russia get slandered constantly. The same treatment goes for the UK media and a case could be made that the two act in tandem, implying innerconnectivity between their spy agencies as suspected.

    [Apr 17, 2019] Six US Agencies Conspired ...

    Highly recommended!
    Apr 17, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    "Here is what we now know, per intelligence gleaned form federal law enforcement sources with insider knowledge of what amounts to a plot by U.S. intelligence agencies to secure back door and illegal wiretaps of President Trump's associates:

    Six U.S. agencies created a stealth task force, spearhead by CIA’s Brennan, to run domestic surveillance on Trump associates and possibly Trump himself. To feign ignorance and to seemingly operate within U.S. laws, the agencies freelanced the wiretapping of Trump associates to the British spy agency GCHQ. The decision to insert GCHQ as a back door to eavesdrop was sparked by the denial of two FISA Court warrant applications filed by the FBI to seek wiretaps of Trump associates. GCHQ did not work from London or the UK. In fact the spy agency worked from NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, MD with direct NSA supervision and guidance to conduct sweeping surveillance on Trump associates. The illegal wiretaps were initiated months before the controversial Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. The Justice Department and FBI set up the meeting at Trump Tower between Trump Jr., Manafort and Kushner with controversial Russian officials to make Trump’s associates appear compromised. Following the Trump Tower sit down, GCHQ began digitally wiretapping Manafort, Trump Jr., and Kushner. After the concocted meeting by the Deep State, the British spy agency could officially justify wiretapping Trump associates as an intelligence front for NSA because the Russian lawyer at the meeting Natalia Veselnitskaya was considered an international security risk and prior to the June sit down was not even allowed entry into the United States or the UK, federal sources said. By using GCHQ, the NSA and its intelligence partners had carved out a loophole to wiretap Trump without a warrant. While it is illegal for U.S. agencies to monitor phones and emails of U.S. citizens inside the United States absent a warrant, it is not illegal for British intelligence to do so. Even if the GCHQ was tapping Trump on U.S. soil at Fort Meade. The wiretaps, secured through illicit scheming, have been used by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election, even though the evidence is considered “poisoned fruit.”

    -----------.

    Someone left this link in a comment to LJ, but as ringmaster of this circus, I choose to publish this as the best summary of all the threads of the supposed conspiracy that I have seen thus far. pl

    https://truepundit.com/exclusive-six-u-s-agencies-conspired-to-illegally-wiretap-trump-british-intel-used-as-front-to-spy-on-campaign-for-nsa/

    Chris Fahlman said...

    Wikipedia page on Paul Manafort says that the FBI began a criminal investigation into him in 2014, associated with his previous dealings in Ukraine. He could have been a target of surveillance and wiretapping since then.

    I therefore think Manafort was the key the intelligence agencies used to get to into Trump's organisation. It may have been initially incidental to their ongoing, and much earlier surveillance of Manafort.

    Robert Poling said...

    Thank-you for this summary. If confirmed, Brennan (and others in the group he formed to spy on Trump and Trump's campaign) should go to jail. Congress specifically forbid American spy agencies spying on American citizens in the U.S. Since that Congressional action, the CIA and NSA have gotten around it by having foreign partners among the 'five eyes' do the collecting and then passing the information back to us.

    The spying on Trump was done at the behest of Obama and his minions. I'm reminded of an American president who was hounded from office by the mainstream press for sending minions to spy and collect dirt at the opposition's political headquarters. He had to resign and leave office. Several involved in the burglary went to jail and lost their livelihoods. Why is this situation today any different and why is there a delay in prosecuting them? It's because the major media is bought out and controlled by Trump's political opponents and not demanding justice, indeed is providing cover and excuses for them

    [Apr 17, 2019] Ecuador sells off Assange to US Ron Paul

    It is unclear what danger WikiLeaks represents naw, as it probably was infiltrated. But publishing of Podesta emails and DNC files was really damaging to the Dems during 2016 elections.
    Notable quotes:
    "... "We have two foreign policies. We tell people what to do. And if they do it, we reward them. We give them a lot of money. If they don't, they're in for big trouble, they're liable to get bombed; we invade them, and there will be a coup," Dr. Paul said. ..."
    "... "We find that Moreno, the president of Ecuador, did not do badly. He's been playing footsies with us, and gaining some money and he delivered, you know, after he became president – it's shame because the previous president the one that allowed or at least would at least Assange could be 'protected' to some degree," he stated. ..."
    "... "The IMF has already delivered $4.2 billion to [Ecuador], and there's another six billion dollars in the pipeline for that," he said. ..."
    Apr 17, 2019 | www.presstv.com

    Dr. Paul, the founder of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, made the remarks on Monday while discussing the violent arrest of Assange by UK Metropolitan Police last week at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, after the Moreno government cancelled his asylum.

    The Australian whistleblower was arrested on behalf of the US on Thursday at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he had been granted asylum since 2012.

    Assange, 47, is wanted by the US government for publishing classified documents related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that were leaked by American whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Assange spent seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy before his arrest.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/HqPAwI4EmsU?rel=0

    "We have two foreign policies. We tell people what to do. And if they do it, we reward them. We give them a lot of money. If they don't, they're in for big trouble, they're liable to get bombed; we invade them, and there will be a coup," Dr. Paul said.

    "We find that Moreno, the president of Ecuador, did not do badly. He's been playing footsies with us, and gaining some money and he delivered, you know, after he became president – it's shame because the previous president the one that allowed or at least would at least Assange could be 'protected' to some degree," he stated.

    "But he (Moreno) evidently is out form and now of course he has delivered him. And this might not be even all of that. This probably is official tool of ours to provide these funds," the analyst noted.

    "The IMF has already delivered $4.2 billion to [Ecuador], and there's another six billion dollars in the pipeline for that," he said.

    PressTV-Moreno: Assange used Ecuador's London Embassy for spying President Moreno claims the WikiLeaks founder tried to use Ecuador's Embassy in London for spying activities during his almost seven-year stay.

    Moreno on Sunday accused Assange of trying to use Ecuador's embassy in London as a "center for spying," and said that the decision to strip the whistleblower of his political asylum followed "violations" of that status.

    In an interview with The Guardian , Moreno defended his decision on the Assange case.

    "It is unfortunate that, from our territory and with the permission of authorities of the previous government, facilities have been provided within the Ecuadoran Embassy in London to interfere in processes of other states," the president said.

    [Apr 17, 2019] Gina Haspel the CIA torturer extraordinaire

    Notable quotes:
    "... The idea that Trump was kidded along in this way with photos of suffering children is similar to that which allegedly persuaded him to bomb Syria (along with the UK and France) after the more recent also alleged Douma chemical weapons attacks. So who actually was telling him porkies and why or is this just another myth to prove Trump's crassness – in which case there is no need to make anything up. ..."
    "... Trump doesn't give a toss about suffering children or suffering anyone else, so it's not likely that he was persuaded by the kind of argument that runs from injured children to the need for US diplomatic action. ..."
    "... Trump forgets he lies in minutes. He'd not heard about Julian Assange? If I was reporter I would have played him his words from my laptop and ask: Mr President is this you or a fake President? ..."
    "... Actually he is a fake President as most US Presidents are. The man's a dunce. I thought after George W Bush US Presidents couldn't get any worse but know history hits us up the backside with a banjo yet again. ..."
    Apr 17, 2019 | craigmurray.org.uk

    Sharp Ears , April 17, 2019 at 12:06

    Gina Haspel the CIA torturer extraordinaire.

    Q. Where are the Skripals?

    Crispa , April 17, 2019 at 12:07

    I took note when I read that on the Guardian website late last night. What struck me was the treatment of the statement as if it could be true, but in more than one way.

    The idea that Trump was kidded along in this way with photos of suffering children is similar to that which allegedly persuaded him to bomb Syria (along with the UK and France) after the more recent also alleged Douma chemical weapons attacks. So who actually was telling him porkies and why or is this just another myth to prove Trump's crassness – in which case there is no need to make anything up.

    Even if the story is true, the article accepts it as fact and in no way qualifies it, which is just plain misrepresentation as Craig points out.

    The reference to the two Russian operatives at that time is certainly a give away one way and another – but nothing in the article to highlight that inconsistency.

    Strange timing too for the appearance of the article too. No doubt there will be a response from the Russian Embassy.

    N_ , April 17, 2019 at 12:34

    Trump brings together stupidity, narcissistic mental illness and obnoxiousness such that when an official has to deal with him their attitude must surely be to tell the moron whatever gets him to do what they want as soon as possible, so they don't have to spend any more time than necessary in a room with him.

    He lies all the time – the guy can't stop lying – nobody wants to spend time with a person like that – even his wife can't stand the sight of him – and it doesn't matter what it is that you tell him or show him.

    Trump doesn't give a toss about suffering children or suffering anyone else, so it's not likely that he was persuaded by the kind of argument that runs from injured children to the need for US diplomatic action.

    The question is who was behind the anti-Russian side of the Skripal story and why. Not much progress will be made without looking at the British defence review and the huge increase in military spending that warfare interests have moved Gavin Williamson's lips to call for.

    N_ , April 17, 2019 at 12:23

    "(E)xtremely clear CCTV footage of the duck feeding"? So there are fixed cameras watching where the ducks swim in Queen Elizabeth's Park in Salisbury, are there? Because I haven't been able to find even some lamp posts they might be secured to. ( Some images .) Which is not to say the Skripals weren't photographed. And how's the Nikolai Glushkov inquest going?

    Ken Kenn , April 17, 2019 at 13:40

    Trump forgets he lies in minutes. He'd not heard about Julian Assange? If I was reporter I would have played him his words from my laptop and ask: Mr President is this you or a fake President?

    Actually he is a fake President as most US Presidents are. The man's a dunce. I thought after George W Bush US Presidents couldn't get any worse but know history hits us up the backside with a banjo yet again.

    Simple really: Show the video of the Skripal actively feeding the ducks – blank the kids faces and we'll be able to see them in all of their pre poisoned glory.

    All this has been done before by the MS – The London Bridge attackers – 7/7 and so on.

    So why not show the video? Because it shows something(s) which they want to hide. I have my views as to why, as do others but once you start lying you have to develop a good memory and ' British Intelligence ' is a misnomer.

    It's quackery.

    Phil , April 17, 2019 at 15:01

    Rob Slane from the Blogmire interviewed the mother of the children who fed the ducks and she said she was shown "extremely clear CCTV footage".

    Nicholas Kollerstrom , April 17, 2019 at 12:26

    Let us not for one moment forget: Yulia musty be alive somewhere. I reckon they did in Sergei – serve him right for being a double (or triple) agent – but Yulia must still be around. She TOLD US in her video she was fine and getting better.

    Thank god for Craig Murray and the Off-Guardian, they have preserved our sanity over this mad story, this maddest of British Intel cockups.

    N_ , April 17, 2019 at 12:37

    @Nicholas – I'd advise delaying the conclusion that it was a cockup, except in the sense that in most military and intelligence operations something cocks up – until we hear what happens with British military spending plans.

    Gerard Hobley , April 17, 2019 at 12:27

    Someone said to me on Twitter that confirmation of Novichock was from a Mass Spec of the nerve agent bound to some enzyme (probably acetyl cholinesterase). Is this really the official line? If so it's rubbish. Whoever made such a claim was clearly no chemist. Acetyl Cholinesterase weighs about 66700 Daltons and the nerve agent weighed, say between 200 and 400 daltons. Firstly a mass spectrum of the protein would be that of the protein plus or minus anything upto about 300 water molecules Which makes the mass (69400 +/- 2700) and a multitude of other possible ions or other factors bound to it. The error in the mass of the protein clearly exceeds the mass of the nerve agent. Given that, because of the blinding uncertainties as to what species are actually hitting the detector in the mass spectrometer, no-one anywhere attempts to study ligands bound to proteins by mass spec and certainly not one of this size, why would they do it in this case?

    John2o2o , April 17, 2019 at 19:21

    They make it up Gerard.

    Unfortunately most people are not chemists and therefore lack the required knowledge to be skeptical about such claims.

    Casual Observer , April 17, 2019 at 12:45

    Apply the smell test ?

    The CIA Director tells outright lies to her boss, who as a result approves a stern national rebuke.

    In a cartoon version of life where Dick Dastardly gets to be an intelligence supremo, and a total dummy gets to be President, this would be highly likely. Needless to say, to believe such a scenario would exist in the real world requires a massive suspension of logic.

    More likely there's something coming down the track that requires Haspel, and or the CIA, to be discredited prior to its becoming visible to the public ?

    Northern , April 17, 2019 at 13:29

    What could possibly be coming down the track that isn't comparable to what we already know about Haspel and the CIA though?

    If you can straight faced maintain support for an admitted and documented human rights abuser who heads a non accountable government spy agency that has been extra judicially torturing, assassinating and over throwing any who stands in its way for 70 years; what on earth could be about to come out that's suddenly going to convince our bought and paid for media, and by extension the general public, that these monsters have been discredited?

    Brendan , April 17, 2019 at 13:04

    UK spooks are switching to damage limitation mode, with the help of the Deborah Haynes of Sky and II:

    "Update: UK security sources say they're unaware of children hospitalised because of #novichok or wildlife killed in #Skripal attack. May have been a photo of a dead swan though not evidence swan was killed by #Novichok. If that's true, I wonder what these images used by CIA were! "

    https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1118409471754153984

    John2o2o , April 17, 2019 at 19:22

    lies?

    Goose , April 17, 2019 at 13:12

    I'm not a conspiracy theorist –
    I'm a conspiracy analyst.

    Gore Vidal

    [Apr 17, 2019] There is a lot of money in those ducks.

    Apr 17, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    john , Apr 17, 2019 7:10:14 AM | link

    Kiza says:

    Therefore, where is a Western Solzhenitsyn to document artistically what transpires in a society deeply in debt and in social & moral decline

    well, Dmitry Orlov, for one, is doing yeoman service. from his latest :

    Then society breaks down. And only then, after all that, do people finally realize that the problem was inside their heads all along (cultural collapse). Quickly adopting a better, more right-thinking culture is, of course, a good idea. An alternative is to go through a Dark Age followed by an extended period of mindless slaughter

    somebody , Apr 17, 2019 8:28:38 AM | link

    Posted by: Piotr Berman | Apr 16, 2019 1:11:24 PM | 25

    The New York Times article is too tongue in cheek for carelessness (of course the CIA director is NOT manipulating Trump ...). They had sent two reporters to Salisbury and indeed Russia to get impressions on the ground - that means money. And somehow their interest was very much if the British government story sticks or not .

    "Others fret about the ducks that used to gather on the Avon River near where the Skripals collapsed, saying they must have been quietly culled. (Mr. Dean, the City Council head, says they simply migrated downstream.) Others wonder why some places the Skripals went on the day of the poisoning, but not others, were cordoned off for safety reasons."

    So somehow ducks are a running feature in the New York Times reporting.

    It might be simply connected to this though

    Tycoon Deripaska Sues U.S. Over Sanctions

    When Deripaska was hit with sanctions in April, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) alleged that he and other rich and influential Russian oligarchs were profiting off their ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and from the state's "malign activity" around the world.

    The lawsuit questions whether Treasury can really back up those claims. It asks the court to order OFAC to hand over evidence and other records and remove Deripaska from the sanctions list.

    and this here

    US said to have prepared new Russia sanctions for UK attack

    The White House has received a long-awaited package of new sanctions on Russia, intended to punish the Kremlin for a 2018 nerve-agent attack on a former Russian spy in the U.K.

    U.S. officials at the State and Treasury departments have vetted the sanctions and are awaiting approval from the White House to issue them, according to two people familiar with the matter who discussed the internal deliberations on condition of anonymity.

    There is a lot of money in those ducks.

    [Apr 17, 2019] Don't forget the UK government minister told us (with a straight face!) that we've captured a special, secret Russian manual, which details just how to apply poison to door handles

    Apr 17, 2019 | craigmurray.org.uk

    glenn_nl , April 17, 2019 at 10:43

    Don't forget – a government minister told us (with a straight face!) that we've captured a special, secret Russian manual, which details just how to apply poison to door handles. Doubtless these spies had their own copy to refer to, in order to get the job done right.

    [Apr 17, 2019] Coincidentally there was the joint Sky/US drama series 'Strike Back' broadcast in November 2017 featuring an attack by a Russian with 'Novichok'. But which came first? Fiction or 'reality'? Think about it.

    Apr 17, 2019 | craigmurray.org.uk

    Stubbs , April 17, 2019 at 10:29

    It was a dead duck from the moment they said the poison was on the door handle, which is just stupid. The official narrative has been a catalogue of stupidities aimed at political goals. Those who've taken it up are invested in the goals.
    If anyone cared what had happened, the first point of enquiry would've been the guinea pigs, the clue is in the name.

    OBTW Who was responsible for the clean up of Salisbury, after which Dawn Sturgess met her end ??

    Villanelle , April 17, 2019 at 10:40

    I would recommend to watch a drama series called "Killing Eve". It was written, produced and released before the Skripal saga. There is a scene where a deadly poison is administered on a door handle. Clearly it isn't as far fetched as you suggest.

    Borncynical , April 17, 2019 at 11:22

    Villanelle

    Coincidentally (?) there was also the joint Sky/US drama series 'Strike Back' broadcast in November 2017 featuring an attack by a Russian with 'Novichok'. But which came first? Fiction or 'reality'? Think about it.

    https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201804111063448533-tv-spy-fiction-helped-sell-salisbury-poisoning

    [Apr 17, 2019] If you had watched Skripal's saga you might have noticed something: The UK s propaganda machine rivals and even surpasses Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.

    Notable quotes:
    "... The Steele dossier is British, Orbis intelligence = British, Institute for statecraft / Integrity Initiative = British, Skripal defection. Location, evidence, statements = British, the list goes on and on. ..."
    "... The UK's propaganda machine rivals and even surpasses Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. ..."
    Apr 17, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    S.O. , Apr 17, 2019 9:48:02 AM | link

    @75

    The Steele dossier is British, Orbis intelligence = British, Institute for statecraft / Integrity Initiative = British, Skripal defection. Location, evidence, statements = British, the list goes on and on.

    You'd think someone might have noticed something of a trend by now.

    Gravatomic , Apr 17, 2019 10:07:57 AM | link

    They just don't bother anymore, the level of double black psy-ops and gaslighting is a mine field of disinformation. That's what you get when Washington - Obama, gives the green light to propagandizing their people. It's escalated, like we haven't noticed, under Trump despite his pathetic attempts at assuring folks it's fake news.
    Gravatomic , Apr 17, 2019 10:20:02 AM | link
    The UK's propaganda machine rivals and even surpasses Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. I watched about 10 minutes of a documentary about Easter Island, as an example, and it was revisionist to the nth degree. Just absolute rubbish insinuating that white European travelers destroyed the Island. This is what British kids are now being marinated in, "He who controls the past"

    [Apr 17, 2019] Never underestimate the CIA by Nancy O'Brien Simpson

    "Many in the USA have come to realize this stealth organization does not work on the behalf of the USA but rather to its own ends."
    CIA probably was involved in Skripals false flag operation as well. Because the behaviour of Theresa May suggest that she from the very beginning was sure about the USA full and unconditional support and putting pressure on EU allies. Then now we know that Gina Haspel, who was also involved in Steele dossier and handled most oversees assets involved in entrapment of Trump, misled Trump and pervaded him to expel 80 Russian diplomats.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Then there is 9/11. This one also has a USA government narrative that defies logic. This time it is so blatant and egregious that an organization called "Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth" was founded by Richard Gage, an architect with vast experience in steel structured buildings and fire. The organization demands on official investigation by Congress into exactly how the buildings came down. ..."
    "... According to a statement reported by the BBC , Loose Change film producer Dylan Avery thinks the destruction of the building was suspicious because it housed some unusual tenants, including a clandestine CIA office on the 25th floor, an outpost of the U.S. Secret Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and New York City's emergency command center." Wikipedia ..."
    "... So now we have Prime Minister, Teresa May, accusing Putin and Russia of the May 4 nerve agent attack of Sergei V. Skripal (66) and his daughter, Yulia (33), in Salibury, England. Both are in critical condition after being found unconscious on a bench outside The Maltings Shopping Center in Salibury. As we all know Russia is the new Antichrist. The harbinger of all evil. The enemy we all must view with the utmost fear and loathing. Daily, the MSM in USA recoils as they report story after story of Russia meddling in our elections, shaking the very foundations of our democracy. ..."
    "... Let's get this straight. Mr. Skripal was convicted of high treason in Russia in 2004. He was not tortured, killed or murdered, rather he was allowed to settle in Britain after a spy swap in 2010. Sounds pretty friendly to me, considering that Putin is portrayed as a sadistic monster out to settle scores with those who cross him, by the Western media. ..."
    "... So, why now? Why this attempted assassination now? This is the question, dear reader. Why attempt to assassinate Mr. Skripal now? He was convicted of high treason 14 years ago. He has been in England for eight years. Russia knew at this point he was no threat to them with no new secrets to betray. What would be gained at this point by assassinating the man? ..."
    "... None. However, if the CIA took him out, or paid unscrupulous foreign mercenaries to take him out, much could be gained. The narrative of big bad Putin, in his big bad Russia, would be reinforced. Now, not only is he meddling in elections, getting the dastardly Trump elected, he is using nerve gas to take out enemies on foreign soil. My god, what will be next? ..."
    "... "If we don't take immediate concrete measures to address this now, Salisbury will not be the last place we see chemical weapons used," said Haley. "They could be used here in New York or in cities of any country that sits on this council." CNN Politics ..."
    Mar 18, 2018 | www.veteranstoday.com

    Many in the USA have come to realize this stealth organization does not work on the behalf of the USA but rather to its own ends. And, in this realization, comes a jaded view of both the CIA and the government it represents.

    This realization may have begun with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The Warren Commission, a congressional investigation was convened. The commission concluded there was a single lone shooter, a fringe outcast, Lee Harvey Oswald who acted alone in the assassination of the president. Many felt, in light of the facts, that the Warren Commission was a cover up of what really went down on November 22, 1963, in Houston, Texas.

    In 1976, the Congress reopened the Kennedy investigation. They created The United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy (and Martin Luther King Jr.).

    The HSCA completed its investigation in 1978 and determined the Warren Commission was faulty and there was more than one shooter and there was indeed a conspiracy to kill the president. So much for the official narrative of the Warren Commission.

    Why the Warren Commission cover up back then that even the Congress in 1976 (HSCA) reported was bogus? One theory April 25, 1966, The New York Times wrote, "And, President Kennedy, as the enormity of the Bay of Pigs disaster came home to him, said to one of the highest officials of his Administration, that he wanted to splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds."

    Kennedy was no fan of the Director of the C.I.A. Allen Dulles or his agency, and in the autumn of 1961 he purged the C.I.A. of Dulles and his entourage. This included Deputy Director for Plans Richard M. Bissell Jr. and and Deputy Director Charles Cabell. You do not mess with Allen Dulles and the C.I A. Let's leave it at that. Kennedy was dead within two years.

    Then there is 9/11. This one also has a USA government narrative that defies logic. This time it is so blatant and egregious that an organization called "Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth" was founded by Richard Gage, an architect with vast experience in steel structured buildings and fire. The organization demands on official investigation by Congress into exactly how the buildings came down.

    By December 2014, over 2,300 architectural and engineering professionals had signed a petition for this investigation. If one looks at controlled demolitions and how the buildings actually came down it is obvious the collapse was not due to an airplane flying into the buildings, but rather a controlled demolition. 2,300 architects and engineers with verified credentials all testify that the narrative of the government is patently false and scientifically implausible if not impossible.

    At about nine a.m. the Twin Towers are crashed into and collapse. At about five twenty p.m. that same day, Building Seven collapses. No planes fly into Building 7, it just collapses. Again, the videos show a controlled demolition.

    There are various theories as to why 7 WTC was taken down. Theories range from 7 WTC being the operation center for the demolition of the Twin Towers to more nefarious motives. "

    According to a statement reported by the BBC , Loose Change film producer Dylan Avery thinks the destruction of the building was suspicious because it housed some unusual tenants, including a clandestine CIA office on the 25th floor, an outpost of the U.S. Secret Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and New York City's emergency command center." Wikipedia

    What is important to remember is that NO STEEL FRAME HIGH RISE HAS EVER TOTALLY COLLAPSED DUE TO FIRE.

    These are but two examples of hundreds where we have been mislead by the official narrative of the government and its MSM news. Remember the Trump Dossier that was leaked and printed as fact? Or, the death of Seth Rich, a "botched" robbery? Or, the list of 200 news outlets in the USA that were Russian Propaganda fronts? All reported as fact by the New York Times and Washington Post. All fake news by the MSM fed to an unsuspecting American people.

    So now we have Prime Minister, Teresa May, accusing Putin and Russia of the May 4 nerve agent attack of Sergei V. Skripal (66) and his daughter, Yulia (33), in Salibury, England. Both are in critical condition after being found unconscious on a bench outside The Maltings Shopping Center in Salibury. As we all know Russia is the new Antichrist. The harbinger of all evil. The enemy we all must view with the utmost fear and loathing. Daily, the MSM in USA recoils as they report story after story of Russia meddling in our elections, shaking the very foundations of our democracy.

    Let's get this straight. Mr. Skripal was convicted of high treason in Russia in 2004. He was not tortured, killed or murdered, rather he was allowed to settle in Britain after a spy swap in 2010. Sounds pretty friendly to me, considering that Putin is portrayed as a sadistic monster out to settle scores with those who cross him, by the Western media.

    Teresa May called the act "reckless" and "indiscriminate", and basically said Putin put innocent English bystanders at risk. She upped the ante by dismissing 23 Russian diplomats, the largest such expulsion in thirty years.

    On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused May of grandstanding in her response to the incident. Russian news agency Interfax reported that The Kremlin denies involvement in the nerve agent poisoning, insisting one motive was to complicate Russia's hosting of the World Cup this summer. Ah, dear Kremin, the motive was much deeper than the World Cup games, which were only a bonus to the attack.

    So, why now? Why this attempted assassination now? This is the question, dear reader. Why attempt to assassinate Mr. Skripal now? He was convicted of high treason 14 years ago. He has been in England for eight years. Russia knew at this point he was no threat to them with no new secrets to betray. What would be gained at this point by assassinating the man?

    None. However, if the CIA took him out, or paid unscrupulous foreign mercenaries to take him out, much could be gained. The narrative of big bad Putin, in his big bad Russia, would be reinforced. Now, not only is he meddling in elections, getting the dastardly Trump elected, he is using nerve gas to take out enemies on foreign soil. My god, what will be next?

    Nikki Haley, Ambassador to the UN tells us, "The United States of America believes that Russia is responsible for the attack on two people in the United Kingdom using a military-grade nerve agent," Haley said in her remarks at a UN Security Council emergency session, blasting the Russian government for flouting international law.

    "If we don't take immediate concrete measures to address this now, Salisbury will not be the last place we see chemical weapons used," said Haley. "They could be used here in New York or in cities of any country that sits on this council." CNN Politics

    The USA needs an enemy to foment fear to justify it's astronomical defense budget. It just loves a good cold war. However, now that Russia is no longer a pinko commie nation to be demonized, and is indeed a capitalist democracy, we have to resurrect a new straw man to hate.

    It is remarkable the degree to which the liberal left has bought into this industrial-military-complex narrative. The USA always has to be bombing someone, droning someone or napalming someone to keep the monies flowing into the defense budget. Take a look at our spending compared to Russia or other nations.

    Alas, it is certainly not out of the question that the CIA was behind the attack. After this amount of time Mr. Putin had nothing to gain in assassinating Mr. Skripal and his daughter. In fact, he had a lot to lose. The CIA? They had a lot to gain, and nothing to lose. Never underestimate the CIA and its brilliance in setting the narrative for its agenda. And, never underestimate Mr. Putin in his resolve not to become their lapdog.

    Ms. Simpson was a radio personality in New York. She was a staff writer for The Liberty Report. A PBS documentary was done on her activism for human rights. She is a psychotherapist and political commentator.

    [Apr 17, 2019] A bridge from fiction to reality

    Apr 17, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Koen , Apr 16, 2019 6:13:59 PM | link

    B, here's a remarkable fact: The Skripal Novichok perfume bottle assassination story is is eerily similar to episode 2 of BBC show 'Killing Eve' where an assassin uses a perfume bottle to kill her target and where later an innocent person accidentally dies after coming into contact with said perfume bottle.

    The episode aired around a month after the Skripal attack but well before the other 2 people fell ill and the perfume bottle theory emerged.

    [Apr 16, 2019] CIA Director Used Fake Skripal Incident Photos To Manipulate Trump

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The U.S. alone expelled 60 Russian officials. Trump was furious when he learned that EU countries expelled less than 60 in total. A year ago the Washington Post described the scene: ..."
    "... Today the New York Times portraits Gina Haspel's relation with Trump. The writers seem sympathetic to her and the CIA's position. They include an anecdote of the Skripal expulsion decision that is supposed to let her shine in a good light. But it only proves that the CIA manipulated the president for its own purpose: ..."
    "... Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives. ..."
    "... Ms Haspel was not the first to use emotional images to appeal to the president, but pairing it with her hard-nosed realism proved effective: Mr. Trump fixated on the pictures of the sickened children and the dead ducks. At the end of the briefing, he embraced the strong option. ..."
    "... If the NYT piece is correct, the CIA director, in cooperation with the British government, lied to Trump about the incident. Their aim was to sabotage Trump's announced policy of better relations with Russia. The ruse worked. ..."
    "... The NYT piece does not mention that the pictures Gina Haspel showed Trump were fake. It pretends that her lies were "new information" and that she was not out to manipulate him: ..."
    "... The job of the CIA director is to serve the president, not to protect the agencies own policies. ..."
    "... The 1970s movie 3 Days of The Condor is about the evils of the See Eye A. Also they create trial balloon in the movie about taking middle east oil. This later happens in real life with NeoCon See Eye A stooges - Poppy Bush then later GW Bush-Cheney, Clintons and Oboma all agency owned men. ..."
    "... The head of the See Eye A is to serve the elites-Central banksters not the President. They did not serve JFK. Any President who crosses the central bankers aka roth-schilds ends up dead. ..."
    "... It is interesting to see that nations that have traditionally been pro-American feel that the threat posed by American power is growing. ..."
    "... Haspel was CIA station chief in London in 2016, when U.S. and Brit intel agencies conspired to stop Trump's candidacy. In her position, Haspel had to know about the plotting, more likely she participated in it. That Brennan supported her argues for the latter. ..."
    "... Photos of fake dead ducks and fake sickened children confirm the Skripal story is, in turn, completely fake. It says a lot that the NY Times either does not know this or that its contempt for its readership matches the contempt by which the intelligence agencies hold for their putative boss. ..."
    "... Thanks for bringing this Skripal segment to light, b, as most of us don't read the NY Times in any form. Haspel likely had a hand in the planning of the overall scheme of which the Skripal saga and Russiagate are interconnected episodes. Clearly, the Money Power sees the challenge raised by Russia/China/Eurasia as existential and is trying to counter hybridly as it knows its wealth won't save it from Nuclear War. ..."
    "... after integrity initiative, we know the uk is full of shite on most everything... thus, the msm will not be talking about integrity initiative.. ..."
    "... once Teresa May has spoken in Parliament, and Trump committed to expelling embassy staff, there is no way any alternative version of the truth is possible. ..."
    "... Skripal of course was a colleague of Steele, and possibly the only person he asked to get info for the dossier beyond what Nellie Ohr had already given him. His evidence might have been crucial. The CIA and others have a strong motive to kill Skripal and a stronger one to blame the Russians. ..."
    "... The fact that the 'Dirty Dossier' and the 'Skripal "story"' both originate in one and the same small town in the UK, tells you all you need to know about both. ..."
    "... Haspel will not be fired. ..."
    "... It is clear the USA, France, Israel and UK are fasting approaching ungovernable .. no one in government can keep the lies of the other hidden, and none of the governed believes anyone in government, the MSM, the MIC or the AIG (ATT, Intel and Google). .. ..."
    "... The actors in government, their lawyers, playmates and corporations have become the laughing stock of the rest of the world. ..."
    Apr 16, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    An ass kissing portrait of Gina Haspel, torture queen and director of the CIA, reveals that she lied to Trump to push for more aggression against Russia.

    In March 2018 the British government asserted, without providing any evidence, that the alleged 'Novichok' poisoning of Sergej and Yulia Skripal was the fault of Russia. It urged its allies to expel Russian officials from their countries.

    The U.S. alone expelled 60 Russian officials. Trump was furious when he learned that EU countries expelled less than 60 in total. A year ago the Washington Post described the scene:
    President Trump seemed distracted in March as his aides briefed him at his Mar-a-Lago resort on the administration's plan to expel 60 Russian diplomats and suspected spies.

    The United States, they explained, would be ousting roughly the same number of Russians as its European allies -- part of a coordinated move to punish Moscow for the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter on British soil.

    "We'll match their numbers," Trump instructed, according to a senior administration official. "We're not taking the lead. We're matching."

    The next day, when the expulsions were announced publicly, Trump erupted, officials said. To his shock and dismay, France and Germany were each expelling only four Russian officials -- far fewer than the 60 his administration had decided on.

    The president, who seemed to believe that other individual countries would largely equal the United States, was furious that his administration was being portrayed in the media as taking by far the toughest stance on Russia.

    The expulsion marked a turn in the Trump administration's relation with Russia:

    The incident reflects a tension at the core of the Trump administration's increasingly hard-nosed stance on Russia: The president instinctually opposes many of the punitive measures pushed by his Cabinet that have crippled his ability to forge a close relationship with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin.

    The past month, in particular, has marked a major turning point in the administration's stance, according to senior administration officials. There have been mass expulsions of Russian diplomats, sanctions on oligarchs that have bled billions of dollars from Russia's already weak economy and, for the first time, a presidential tweet that criticized Putin by name for backing Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

    Today the New York Times portraits Gina Haspel's relation with Trump. The writers seem sympathetic to her and the CIA's position. They include an anecdote of the Skripal expulsion decision that is supposed to let her shine in a good light. But it only proves that the CIA manipulated the president for its own purpose:

    Last March, top national security officials gathered inside the White House to discuss with Mr. Trump how to respond to the nerve agent attack in Britain on Sergei V. Skripal, the former Russian intelligence agent.

    London was pushing for the White House to expel dozens of suspected Russian operatives, but Mr. Trump was skeptical.
    ...
    During the discussion, Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director, turned toward Mr. Trump. She outlined possible responses in a quiet but firm voice, then leaned forward and told the president that the "strong option" was to expel 60 diplomats.

    To persuade Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the conversation, officials including Ms. Haspel also tried to show him that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were not the only victims of Russia's attack.

    Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives.

    Ms Haspel was not the first to use emotional images to appeal to the president, but pairing it with her hard-nosed realism proved effective: Mr. Trump fixated on the pictures of the sickened children and the dead ducks. At the end of the briefing, he embraced the strong option.

    The Skripal case was widely covered and we followed it diligently (scroll down). There were no reports of any children affected by 'Novichok' nor were their any reports of dead ducks. In the official storyline the Skripals, before visiting a restaurant, fed bread to ducks at a pond in the Queen Elizabeth Gardens in Salisbury.

    They also gave duck-bread to three children to do the same. The children were examined and their blood was tested. No poison was found and none of them fell ill . No duck died. (The duck feeding episode also disproves the claim that the Skripals were poisoned by touching a door handle.)

    If the NYT piece is correct, the CIA director, in cooperation with the British government, lied to Trump about the incident. Their aim was to sabotage Trump's announced policy of better relations with Russia. The ruse worked.

    The NYT piece does not mention that the pictures Gina Haspel showed Trump were fake. It pretends that her lies were "new information" and that she was not out to manipulate him:

    The outcome was an example, officials said, of how Ms. Haspel is one of the few people who can get Mr. Trump to shift position based on new information.

    Co-workers and friends of Ms. Haspel push back on any notion that she is manipulating the president. She is instead trying to get him to listen and to protect the agency, according to former intelligence officials who know her.

    The job of the CIA director is to serve the president, not to protect the agencies own policies. Hopefully Trump will hear about the anecdote, recognize how he was had, and fire Haspel. He should not stop there but also get rid of her protector who likely had a role in the game:

    Ms. Haspel won the trust of Mr. Pompeo, however, and has stayed loyal to him. As a result, Mr. Trump sees Ms. Haspel as an extension of Mr. Pompeo, a view that has helped protect her, current and former intelligence officials said.

    Posted by b on April 16, 2019 at 08:37 AM | Permalink

    Russ , Apr 16, 2019 9:02:41 AM | link

    I don't see how it's possible to manipulate someone (and especially the US president) into doing something they don't want to do with lies like the ones described here. On the contrary presidents, CEOs etc. favor the staffers who tell them the kind of lies they want to hear in order to reinforce what they wanted to do in the first place.

    I've never seen any reason to alter my first position on Trump, that like any other president he does what he wants to do.

    Jerry , Apr 16, 2019 9:14:30 AM | link
    The 1970s movie 3 Days of The Condor is about the evils of the See Eye A. Also they create trial balloon in the movie about taking middle east oil. This later happens in real life with NeoCon See Eye A stooges - Poppy Bush then later GW Bush-Cheney, Clintons and Oboma all agency owned men.

    The joke 7in the final scene Robert Redford tells See Eye A man Cliff Robertson that he gave all the evidence to the NY Times. What a joke. The NY Times and the Wash Post are the mouthpieces for the SEE Eye A. The AP news sources most of their stories from those two papers and other lackey See Eye A newspapers.

    One final criticism in moon's story. The head of the See Eye A is to serve the elites-Central banksters not the President. They did not serve JFK. Any President who crosses the central bankers aka roth-schilds ends up dead.

    manny , Apr 16, 2019 9:15:16 AM | link
    Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director

    After this, she got the top job, so what is the real lesson here? Sociopathic liars get promoted....or you can tell the truth, try to be honorable and fade into obscurity.. In a nest of psychos, you have to really be depraved to become the top psycho...

    Nuke it for orbit, it's the only way to be sure...

    Sally Snyder , Apr 16, 2019 9:35:40 AM | link
    Here is an article that looks at whether nations around the world regard the United States or Russia as the greater threat to their nation:

    https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/03/which-is-greater-threat-russia-or.html

    It is interesting to see that nations that have traditionally been pro-American feel that the threat posed by American power is growing.

    donkeytale , Apr 16, 2019 9:40:06 AM | link
    b

    Backing up Russ's point, when will you realise the "buck stops" on Trump's desk for any and all departments he oversees, which are run by his appointees? Trump is dedicated to creating a neoconservative foreign policy melded to a neoliberal economic policy favouring his corporate fascist sponsors. Recently, you've been all over the Assange indictment, Trump's relationship with Nuttyahoo and the related rollback of JCPOA. Is this what you want to see continued into a second term?

    There is much evidence to show Trump and the GOP working steadily towards a "democracy" where Congress is castrated (one might say the system castrates Congress anyway), opposing candidates are jailed, opposition votes are suppressed and the media is weakened to the point where no one can tell the difference.

    They haven't got there quite yet but once the judiciary is controlled by GOP ideologues it's game over. And McConnell is dedicating his life to make that the reality ASAP.

    Meanwhile back at the ranch we are dedicated to knocking down any and all potential opposition to this GOP hostile takeover for some reason I've yet to fathom.

    BM , Apr 16, 2019 9:42:46 AM | link
    Hopefully Trump will hear about the anecdote, recognize how he was had, and fire Haspel. He should not stop there but also get rid of her protector who likely had a role in the game[Pompeo]

    Hopefully yes to all four propositions. Why am I sceptical though (except conceivably the first)?

    Mataman , Apr 16, 2019 9:45:30 AM | link
    The story veers into complete fiction when it claims that pictures of dead ducks had any effect on Trump. He doesn't like, nor care about animals. He's the first POTUS in decades I believe to not even pretend to like dogs by having an official White House dog and every policy his Administration can take against animals, they have taken. I'm not even sure I buy the spin that he cared about dead kids either. And NYT readers know this about him, so I don't understand what the point of peddling this fiction is other than to paint Torture Queen in some kind of good light (and we KNOW that she certainly doesn't care about dead anything).
    the pair , Apr 16, 2019 10:08:18 AM | link
    another example of trump's stupidity and pathological inability to think for himself. he gets his views from fox and his policy from bolton. his equally vapid daughter and kushner whine to him about sooper sad syria pictures they saw in a sponsored link while googling for new tmz gossip.

    even worse that this is the twat in charge of one of russiagate's main instigating "deep state" agencies. he spent the entirety of his presidency railing against their various lies then takes this wankery at face value. it's just like the "chinese soldiers in venezuela"; if those pictures were legit they'd have been splattered over every front page and permanently attached to screeching cnn and msnbc segments demanding trump "finally get tough" on "putin's russia".

    my only surprise is that she didn't tell him about british babies ripped from incubators and dipped in anthrax powder.
    the nyt shilling for a soCIopAth? not that surprising.

    Twiki , Apr 16, 2019 10:43:11 AM | link

    The consultant in emergency medicine at Salisbury hospital wrote to The Times, shortly after the Skripal incident. His choice of words was odd, and some have said they indicate no novichok poisoning occurred. Leaving that to one side, his letter certainly puts paid to the idea that more than three people (the Skripals and the policeman, DCI Bailey) were poisoned. https://www.onaquietday.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/DocSaysNoNerveAgentInSalisbury.jpg
    bjd , Apr 16, 2019 10:43:51 AM | link
    " the nerve agent attack in Britain on Sergei V. Skripal, "

    There was no attack on the Skripals. or on anyone else. The Russophobia in whose context it falls, is of a higher order, in which a fabricated narrative of a Skripal-like attack had an important function. The Skripals were perfectly happy to lend their name to the fabrication, and are living happily, probably in New Zealand.

    Jackrabbit , Apr 16, 2019 10:59:48 AM | link
    The Daily Beast article that b linked to describes how many serious, well-informed people felt that Haspel was unsuitable to lead the CIA. Even more strange and troubling was that Haspel was supported by Trump's nemesis, John Brennan.

    Despite all that, MAGA Trump still nominated her. Any notion that Trump is at odds with, or "manipulated" by, Haspel, Bolton, or Pompeo is just propaganda. We've seen such reporting before (esp. wrt Bolton) and Trump has taken no action.

    Babyl-on , Apr 16, 2019 11:04:28 AM | link
    I see that Trump derangement is alive and well here at MoA. Commenters talk as if Trump is the first president stupid enough to be manipulated by the security agencies and shadow government sometimes referred to as a "deep state". People don't have to be historians or look back to Rome, just read the books about how the great general who "won WWII" was used by the oligarchy which had full control of US foreign policy throughout Eisenhower's term in office.

    Works produced after WWII, C. Wright Mills, The Power elite was written in 1956,The Brothers and The Divil's Chessboard each about the Dulles Brothers and how they operated US foreign policy for the interests of the oligarchy, and the work Peter Phillips, GIANTS: The Global Power Elite and the work of David Rothkopf which thoroughly describes the feudal system under which the Western cultures are ruled.
    The US government is a pantomime it is a show it has no power.

    How many here can honestly say they understand that the US dollar itself and the ENTIRE GLOBAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM is privately owned. Why do you think the "banks were bailed out"? because the banks were in power not the government. The US is 22 trillion in debt - the oligarchy is the creditor - take over the US gov. and you have a powerless pile of debt.

    Around 6,000 people control 85% of global assets until that changes nothing will change. The oligarchy won virtually all the mines and control the price of all basic commodities necessary for modern life, the internet, oil of course and more.

    What is failing and what has failed over and over for 500 years is Western Civilization and its three "great religions" which preach obedience, oppression, domination by a one god suffocating mythology.

    But the oligarchy doesn't own just the basic commodities, it owns the religions and it owns the drugs and all illegal trade as well.

    Western "civilization" is really nothing more than one vast feudal kingdom, with royal courts in DC, Tel Aviv and Ryiadh. Wheather there is a god or not, religion is made of flesh and blood not miracles. No Rabbi or Priest or Imam claims visitations by god to instruct them on doctrine - they are flesh and blood and they want power so they behave like sycophants to the money they need to expand their power...all for the good souls under their care.

    Jackrabbit , Apr 16, 2019 11:16:08 AM | link
    Correction @13 Trump's supposed nemesis. Trump has brought several friends and associates of his enemies into his Administration:
    • VP Pence: John McCain's buddy
    • Bolton: a neocon (neocons were "Never Trump", remember?)
    • Wm Barr: close with Mueller
    • Haspel: Brennan's gal at CIA
    And Trump himself was close to the Clintons.
    lysias , Apr 16, 2019 12:00:59 PM | link
    Haspel was CIA station chief in London in 2016, when U.S. and Brit intel agencies conspired to stop Trump's candidacy. In her position, Haspel had to know about the plotting, more likely she participated in it. That Brennan supported her argues for the latter.
    Jose Garcia , Apr 16, 2019 12:08:01 PM | link
    What can we expect from a tv personality who became a US president? A man who ran with an advertisement worthy of a business man like him, "Make America Great Again." How does he go about doing it? Giving more money to the military industrial-Congressional complex, even though we are really flat broke. Using aggressive tactics used by Wall Street in hostile company takeovers to really intimidate other nations. And hire and place those he really agrees with in important positions who really reflect his true feelings. I'm sure when he spoke with Haspel before offering her the job, he brought up the topic of torture and agreed with her on its use on terrorists.
    Jackrabbit , Apr 16, 2019 12:24:11 PM | link
    lysias @18: conspired to stop Trump's candidacy

    I think there's a reasonable case to be made that they conspired not to stop Trump but to further speculation of Trump's "collusion" with Russia (what would later be known as Russiagate). The "collusion" and "Russia meddled" accusations are what fueled the new McCarthyism.

    juliania , Apr 16, 2019 12:28:54 PM | link
    I'll just add to Jerry's comment at #3 that the final line in the movie "Day of the Condor" is something like "But will they print it?" which really spoke to the message of the film in its entirety. The condor being an endangered bird for whom the hero is named, and the beginning outrage being the brutal murder of book lovers researching useable plot details for the 'company'makes this message current and applicable to what we see in the Skripal case. And instead of librarians, we now have online commenters, a doughty breed, and we have Assange.

    Instead of 'Will they print it?' I am wondering 'Will they make another movie about it?'

    "Day of the Condor: Part Two." Some Day.

    Ross , Apr 16, 2019 12:41:17 PM | link
    Remind me, where is Yulia Skripal these days? Well and truly 'disappeared' it seems. The mask is off. the snarling face of the beast is there for all to see.
    Kiza , Apr 16, 2019 12:49:37 PM | link
    What a total waste of an article discussing a story published in NYT or WaPo.

    b, the World has divided itself into those who consume alternative media such as this and stupidos who consume MSM. There is nothing in-between that you are attempting to discuss and dissect here. NYT = cognitive value zero.

    Fake News not worth one millisecond of our time, not even to decode what the regime wants us to know, we know all that already. Personally, I am only interested in the new methods of domestic repression, what is next after the warning of Assange arrest, future rendition and torture. The Deep Stare appears to be coming out into open, will it soon get rid of the whole faux democracy construct and just use iron fist to rule? It already impose its will as the rule of law. All of the Western block is heading in this direction.

    jayc , Apr 16, 2019 1:00:38 PM | link
    Photos of fake dead ducks and fake sickened children confirm the Skripal story is, in turn, completely fake. It says a lot that the NY Times either does not know this or that its contempt for its readership matches the contempt by which the intelligence agencies hold for their putative boss.
    Piotr Berman , Apr 16, 2019 1:11:24 PM | link
    The story veers into complete fiction when it claims that pictures of dead ducks had any effect on Trump. He doesn't like, nor care about animals. Mataman | Apr 16, 2019 9:45:30 AM

    This assumes that Trump would primarily care about the ducks (and children) when he approved a massive expulsion, rather that his image and "ah, in that case it would look bad if we do not do something really decisive".

    In any case, I was thinking why NYT would disclose something like that. The point is that readers of Craig Murray (not so few, but mostly Scottish nationalists who are also leftist and have scant possibilities and/or inclination to vote in USA) and MoonOfAlabama would quickly catch a dead fish here, but 99.9% of the public is blissfully unaware of any incongruences in the "established" Skripal narrative.

    Piotr Berman , Apr 16, 2019 1:22:03 PM | link
    BTW, it is possible that the journalist who scribbled fresh yarn obtained from CIA did it earnestly. Journalists do not necessarily follow stories that they cover -- scribbling from given notes does not require overtaxing the precious attention span that can be devoted to more vital cognitive challenges. I am lazy to find the link, but while checking for news on Venezuela, I stumbled on a piece from Express, a British tabloid, where Guaido was named a "figurehead of the oposition" supported by "450 Western countries". My interpretation was that more literate journalists were moved for to more compelling stories as Venezuela went to the back burner.
    JOHN CHUCKMAN , Apr 16, 2019 1:28:11 PM | link
    Yes, indeed, the Skripal Affair is one of the obviously contrived stunts we've seen. Just outrageous in its execution. On a par with the US having a man who didn't even run for president of Venezuela swear himself in and then pressure everyone to accept him as president.

    Interesting, I had no idea Gina Haspel - aka, The Queen of Blood - played a role. I thought it was all original dirty work by Britain's Theresa May. Boy, I hope people are through with the false notion that if women just get into leadership, the world will become a better gentler place.

    Here's some interesting background:

    Noirette , Apr 16, 2019 1:28:44 PM | link
    Macron was (afaik?) the only EU 'leader' who was quoted in the MSM as bruiting re. the Skripal affair a message like:

    .. no culpability in the part of Russia has been evidenced .. for now...

    I suppose he was enjoined to shut his gob right quick (have been reading about brexit so brit eng) as nothing more in that line was heard.

    Hooo, the EU expelled a lot of Russ. diplomats, obeying the USuk, which certainly created some major upsets on the ground.

    Some were expelled, went into other jobs, other places, but then others arrived, etc. The MSM has not made any counts - lists - of names numbers - etc. of R diplos on the job - anywhere. As some left and then others arrived.

    Once more, this was mostly a symbolic move, if extremely nasty, insulting, and disruptive.

    Theresa May's speech re. Novichok, Independent 14 March 2018:

    .. on Monday I set out that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a Novichok: a military grade nerve agent developed by Russia. Based on this capability, combined with their record of conducting state sponsored assassinations – including against former intelligence officers whom they regard as legitimate targets – the UK Government concluded it was highly likely that Russia was responsible for this reckless and despicable act. ..

    https://ind.pn/2XcAIk4

    Cost her a consequent amount of political capital. - Everyone knows the Skripal story is BS.

    semiconscious , Apr 16, 2019 1:31:34 PM | link
    @25 & @26:

    imo, the media has, once again, simply taken its lead from trump himself, & started making things up completely. & you're absolutely correct in pointing out that, much like trump's true believers, the msm's targeted audience never even notices...

    karlof1 , Apr 16, 2019 1:53:44 PM | link
    Thanks for bringing this Skripal segment to light, b, as most of us don't read the NY Times in any form. Haspel likely had a hand in the planning of the overall scheme of which the Skripal saga and Russiagate are interconnected episodes. Clearly, the Money Power sees the challenge raised by Russia/China/Eurasia as existential and is trying to counter hybridly as it knows its wealth won't save it from Nuclear War.
    james , Apr 16, 2019 2:03:20 PM | link
    after integrity initiative, we know the uk is full of shite on most everything... thus, the msm will not be talking about integrity initiative..

    what i didn't know is what @18 lysias pointed out.."Haspel was CIA station chief in London in 2016, when U.S. and Brit intel agencies conspired to stop Trump's candidacy. In her position, Haspel had to know about the plotting, more likely she participated in it. That Brennan supported her argues for the latter." ditto jr's speculation @20 too...

    so gaspel shows trump some cheap propaganda that she got from who??

    my main problem with b's post - i tend to see it like kiza @23) is maintaining the idea trump isn't in on all of this.. the thought trump is being duped by his underlings.. if he was and it mattered, he would get rid of them.. the fact he doesn't says to me, he is in on it - get russia, being the 24/7 game plan of the west here still..

    c1ue , Apr 16, 2019 2:03:56 PM | link
    Please stop listening to idiot libertarians and their "US is flat broke" meme. The reality is that: so long as Americans transact in dollars, the United States government can tax anytime it feels like by issuing new dollars via the Fed.

    Equally, so long as 60% of the world's trade is conducted in dollars, this is tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of additional taxation surface area. The MMT people - I don't agree 100% with everything they say, but they do understand the actual operation of fiat currency.

    The people who want a hard currency are either wealthy (and understand that conversion to hard currency cements their wealth) or are useful idiots who don't understand that currency devaluation is the single easiest way to tax in a democracy.

    Michael Droy , Apr 16, 2019 2:12:37 PM | link
    Well this could be Syria, not Salisbury!

    I doubt Haspel knew the ducks were fake - she was probably just given stuff to pass up the chain. It is a lot like John Kerry who was shown convincing satellite data of the BUK launch that hit MH17 - but no one could be bothered to pass on even the launch site coordinates to the JIT. I'm sure this stuff goes on all the time, and of course, once Teresa May has spoken in Parliament, and Trump committed to expelling embassy staff, there is no way any alternative version of the truth is possible.

    Skripal of course was a colleague of Steele, and possibly the only person he asked to get info for the dossier beyond what Nellie Ohr had already given him. His evidence might have been crucial. The CIA and others have a strong motive to kill Skripal and a stronger one to blame the Russians.

    bjd , Apr 16, 2019 2:25:23 PM | link
    The fact that the 'Dirty Dossier' and the 'Skripal "story"' both originate in one and the same small town in the UK, tells you all you need to know about both.
    fastfreddy , Apr 16, 2019 2:48:31 PM | link
    Haspel will not be fired.
    Russ , Apr 16, 2019 3:02:51 PM | link
    @c1ue | Apr 16, 2019 2:03:56 PM | 32

    "The people who want a hard currency are either wealthy (and understand that conversion to hard currency cements their wealth) or are useful idiots who don't understand that currency devaluation is the single easiest way to tax in a democracy."

    The useful idiocy is most surprising among US farmers. In the 19th century they broadly understood that fiat money was good for chronic low-wealth debtors like themselves, while hard money was bad and a gold standard lethal. This was the basis of the Populist movement. Nothing has changed financially, but today's farmers, and the low-wealth debtor class in general, seem more likely to be goldbuggers than to have any knowledge of economics or of their own political history.

    karlof1 36

    Once a faction becomes submerged in the Mammon theocracy and becomes nothing but mercenary nihilists, thinking is no longer necessary or desirable, except to come up with attractive, pseudo-plausible lies.

    This certainly characterizes "the right" (including liberals), but they have no monopoly on it. By now "the left" is nearly as thoughtless and instrumental on behalf of Mammon, except to the extent that a few people are starting to really grapple with what it means to have an intrinsically ecocidal and therefore suicidal civilization. That's really the only thought frontier left, all else has been engulfed in Mammon, productionism, scientism and technocracy.

    snake , Apr 16, 2019 3:29:24 PM | link
    @7 ..Trump and the GOP working steadily towards a "democracy" where Congress is castrated (one might say the system castrates Congress anyway), opposing candidates are jailed, opposition votes are suppressed and the media is weakened to the point where no one can tell the difference. https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/04/15/593529/Ecuadoran-president-sold-off-Assangeto-America-Ron-Paul

    I remind that Mussolini wasted his legislature.. 1 balmy after noon @ a roadside spot. it made his government stronger.?

    It is clear the USA, France, Israel and UK are fasting approaching ungovernable .. no one in government can keep the lies of the other hidden, and none of the governed believes anyone in government, the MSM, the MIC or the AIG (ATT, Intel and Google). ..

    The actors in government, their lawyers, playmates and corporations have become the laughing stock of the rest of the world. Everyone in the government is covering for the behaviors of someone else in government, the MSM has raised the price of a pencil to just under a million, stock markets are bags of hot thin air, and everyone in side and outside of the centers of power at all levels of government have lied thru their teeth so much that their teeth are melting from the continuous flow of hot deceitful air.

    Corrupt is now the only qualification for political office, trigger happy screwball the only qualification for the police and the military and . making progress is like trying to conduct a panty raid at a female nudist camp.

    John Anthony La Pietra , Apr 16, 2019 3:47:03 PM | link
    https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0073802/quotes?ref_=m_tt_trv_qu

    Higgins: Hey, Turner! How do you know they'll print it? You can take a walk, but how far if they don't print it?

    Joe Turner: They'll print it.

    Higgins: How do you know?

    [Apr 16, 2019] Reps Cummings, Waters, And Schiff Sign Secret MOUs To Target Trump

    Notable quotes:
    "... Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Elijah Cummings and Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters executed a secret Memorandum of Understanding to "target" President Trump and subpoena all his financial and banking records, according to a letter sent to Cummings from ranking committee member Rep. Jim Jordan. ..."
    "... Jordan emphatically objected to the secret MOUs and excoriated Democrats who "did not consult with Republican Members of the Committee or allow Members to consider and debate the terms of your MOU before executing the MOU with Chairwoman Waters. You did not disclose the MOU's existence to Members or the American people until after I raised the matter." ..."
    "... Schiff, along with Brennan and Clapper are some of the people I expect will be seeing prison time soon ..."
    Apr 16, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
    Via SaraCarter.com,

    Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Elijah Cummings and Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters executed a secret Memorandum of Understanding to "target" President Trump and subpoena all his financial and banking records, according to a letter sent to Cummings from ranking committee member Rep. Jim Jordan.

    Further, Jordan's letter indicates that other MOUs have apparently been signed and agreed to with House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Ca, who has promised to continue investigations into the president despite findings by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office that there was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Attorney General William Barr released a summary of Mueller's 400 page report several weeks ago and the redacted version of the report is expected to be released by the DOJ this Thursday.

    On Monday, Jordan sent a memorandum explaining his objections to the partisan behavior of Cummings and "unprecedented subpoena to Mazars USA LLP," as reported by SaraACarter.com.

    "We'd describe (the MOUs) as an agreement to conspire and coordinate their efforts to attack and investigate POTUS," said a congressional official with knowledge of the MOUs.

    "This is not how committee's normally operate. Dems aren't interested in legislating. Only attacking POTUS."

    Jordan emphatically objected to the secret MOUs and excoriated Democrats who "did not consult with Republican Members of the Committee or allow Members to consider and debate the terms of your MOU before executing the MOU with Chairwoman Waters. You did not disclose the MOU's existence to Members or the American people until after I raised the matter."

    In the letter Jordan asks Cummings to "provide greater transparency around your secretive conduct."

    Jordan also requested that Cummings answer specific questions about the MOUs.

    "If you intend to continue to use the Committee's limited resources to attack President Trump for political gain, I hope that you will at least be transparent about your actions," said Jordan at the end of his letter.

    "Your ability to function as a fair and unbiased finder of fact is now at grave risk. The Members of the Committee - and, more importantly, the American citizens we represent - deserve to know exactly how you are leading this Committee. I look forward to your detailed answers to these questions."

    Questions for Cummings
    1. How many MOUs with committee chairpersons have you signed as Chairman since the beginning of the 116th Congress?
    2. Would you provide the Committee with a detailed list of the other MOUs you have signed, including their dates, signatories, and topics?
    3. Why did you not publicly disclose that you had signed MOUs with committee chairpersons?
    4. Will you publicly disclose all the MOUs you have signed as Chairman since the beginning of the 116th Congress?
    5. Why did you choose not to consult with any Republican Members before signing these MOUs?
    6. Have you signed any MOUs as Chairman with any entities outside of the House Representatives relating to the Committee's oversight or legislative work?
    7. To the extent your MOUs create duties for the Committee that conflict with the Rules of the House of Representatives or the Rules of the Committee, which duties prevail?
    8. The Rules of the Committee for the 116th Congress do not authorize the Chairman to bind the Committee through an MOU. Could you explain the specific authority that allows you to bind the Committee through an MOU without first obtaining approval through a vote of the Committee?
    9. As I understand your MOU with Chairwoman Waters, you have committed to sharing Committee information with the Financial Services Committee. This provision of your MOU may conflict with Rules of the House of Representatives and the Committee's whistleblower protocol, which requires the Committee to keep some Committee information confidential. Will you still protect the confidentiality of whistleblower information notwithstanding your apparent obligation to share it with the Financial Services Committee?
    10. As I understand your MOU with Chairwoman Waters, you have agreed to consult with her before issuing a subpoena. Do you intend to consult with Chairwoman Waters before or after you consult with me, as required by Committee Rules? If I object to your proposed subpoena, do you intend to consult with Chairwoman Waters before or after the Committee votes, as you promised in the Committee's organizing meeting?
    11. As I understand your MOU with Chairwoman Waters, you have declined to include any provision protecting the Minority's rights to documentary or testimonial information. Can you guarantee that Minority Members will have the same access to documentary or testimonial information under this MOU as we do in every other Committee inquiry?

    sixsigma cygnusatratus , 5 minutes ago link

    Schiff, along with Brennan and Clapper are some of the people I expect will be seeing prison time soon. Hopefully Guantanamo.

    NurseRatched , 5 minutes ago link

    Schiff-for-brains and his other toady friends are only trying to overthrow the US government. Is this a big deal for democrat supporters? They seem to have unlimited funds.

    ted41776 , 9 minutes ago link

    good for them, treason in this country is punishable by a full pension and some schools and parks named after you

    [Apr 16, 2019] Reps Cummings, Waters, And Schiff Sign Secret MOUs To Target Trump

    Notable quotes:
    "... Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Elijah Cummings and Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters executed a secret Memorandum of Understanding to "target" President Trump and subpoena all his financial and banking records, according to a letter sent to Cummings from ranking committee member Rep. Jim Jordan. ..."
    "... Jordan emphatically objected to the secret MOUs and excoriated Democrats who "did not consult with Republican Members of the Committee or allow Members to consider and debate the terms of your MOU before executing the MOU with Chairwoman Waters. You did not disclose the MOU's existence to Members or the American people until after I raised the matter." ..."
    "... Schiff, along with Brennan and Clapper are some of the people I expect will be seeing prison time soon ..."
    Apr 16, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
    Via SaraCarter.com,

    Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Elijah Cummings and Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters executed a secret Memorandum of Understanding to "target" President Trump and subpoena all his financial and banking records, according to a letter sent to Cummings from ranking committee member Rep. Jim Jordan.

    Further, Jordan's letter indicates that other MOUs have apparently been signed and agreed to with House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Ca, who has promised to continue investigations into the president despite findings by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office that there was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Attorney General William Barr released a summary of Mueller's 400 page report several weeks ago and the redacted version of the report is expected to be released by the DOJ this Thursday.

    On Monday, Jordan sent a memorandum explaining his objections to the partisan behavior of Cummings and "unprecedented subpoena to Mazars USA LLP," as reported by SaraACarter.com.

    "We'd describe (the MOUs) as an agreement to conspire and coordinate their efforts to attack and investigate POTUS," said a congressional official with knowledge of the MOUs.

    "This is not how committee's normally operate. Dems aren't interested in legislating. Only attacking POTUS."

    Jordan emphatically objected to the secret MOUs and excoriated Democrats who "did not consult with Republican Members of the Committee or allow Members to consider and debate the terms of your MOU before executing the MOU with Chairwoman Waters. You did not disclose the MOU's existence to Members or the American people until after I raised the matter."

    In the letter Jordan asks Cummings to "provide greater transparency around your secretive conduct."

    Jordan also requested that Cummings answer specific questions about the MOUs.

    "If you intend to continue to use the Committee's limited resources to attack President Trump for political gain, I hope that you will at least be transparent about your actions," said Jordan at the end of his letter.

    "Your ability to function as a fair and unbiased finder of fact is now at grave risk. The Members of the Committee - and, more importantly, the American citizens we represent - deserve to know exactly how you are leading this Committee. I look forward to your detailed answers to these questions."

    Questions for Cummings
    1. How many MOUs with committee chairpersons have you signed as Chairman since the beginning of the 116th Congress?
    2. Would you provide the Committee with a detailed list of the other MOUs you have signed, including their dates, signatories, and topics?
    3. Why did you not publicly disclose that you had signed MOUs with committee chairpersons?
    4. Will you publicly disclose all the MOUs you have signed as Chairman since the beginning of the 116th Congress?
    5. Why did you choose not to consult with any Republican Members before signing these MOUs?
    6. Have you signed any MOUs as Chairman with any entities outside of the House Representatives relating to the Committee's oversight or legislative work?
    7. To the extent your MOUs create duties for the Committee that conflict with the Rules of the House of Representatives or the Rules of the Committee, which duties prevail?
    8. The Rules of the Committee for the 116th Congress do not authorize the Chairman to bind the Committee through an MOU. Could you explain the specific authority that allows you to bind the Committee through an MOU without first obtaining approval through a vote of the Committee?
    9. As I understand your MOU with Chairwoman Waters, you have committed to sharing Committee information with the Financial Services Committee. This provision of your MOU may conflict with Rules of the House of Representatives and the Committee's whistleblower protocol, which requires the Committee to keep some Committee information confidential. Will you still protect the confidentiality of whistleblower information notwithstanding your apparent obligation to share it with the Financial Services Committee?
    10. As I understand your MOU with Chairwoman Waters, you have agreed to consult with her before issuing a subpoena. Do you intend to consult with Chairwoman Waters before or after you consult with me, as required by Committee Rules? If I object to your proposed subpoena, do you intend to consult with Chairwoman Waters before or after the Committee votes, as you promised in the Committee's organizing meeting?
    11. As I understand your MOU with Chairwoman Waters, you have declined to include any provision protecting the Minority's rights to documentary or testimonial information. Can you guarantee that Minority Members will have the same access to documentary or testimonial information under this MOU as we do in every other Committee inquiry?

    sixsigma cygnusatratus , 5 minutes ago link

    Schiff, along with Brennan and Clapper are some of the people I expect will be seeing prison time soon. Hopefully Guantanamo.

    NurseRatched , 5 minutes ago link

    Schiff-for-brains and his other toady friends are only trying to overthrow the US government. Is this a big deal for democrat supporters? They seem to have unlimited funds.

    ted41776 , 9 minutes ago link

    good for them, treason in this country is punishable by a full pension and some schools and parks named after you

    [Apr 16, 2019] Was Manafort a sacrificial lamb for CIA?

    Apr 16, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

    Wow! Thanks for this history lesson. I had read Mueller past resume before but Manafort's connections throughout are also very interesting.

    @Leveymg would enjoy your post very much and might even have a few things to add.

    So why then I must ask, did they turn on Manafort?

    Too splashy for their tastes?
    A sacrificial lamb albeit CIA? up 9 users have voted.

    span y Bob In Portland on Mon, 04/15/2019 - 8:21pm

    Lee Harvey Manafort?

    @Sirena From here it looks like he'll get a pardon from Trump, but the Agency has allowed many an agent to take the fall. There was the most famous, Lee Harvey Oswald. There was an agent named Edwin Wilson years ago who set up an arms company. He was busted for selling C4 to the Khaddafy regime back in the 1970s. Wilson went to jail but pleaded that he was working for US intelligence to try to get close the the Khadaffy regime. Wilson's group were also alleged to have trained members of the PFLP-GC to build bombs. A cell of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command were suspects in the Pan Am 103 bombing. By the way, Wilson's conviction was eventually overturned.

    So there's that.

    I had read Mueller past resume before but Manafort's connections throughout are also very interesting.

    @Leveymg would enjoy your post very much and might even have a few things to add.

    So why then I must ask, did they turn on Manafort?

    Too splashy for their tastes?
    A sacrificial lamb albeit CIA?

    span y Linda Wood on Mon, 04/15/2019 - 10:46pm
    Yes,

    @Sirena

    I agree with Bob in Portland that any or all of the indicted and convicted in the current Spygate affair, except Gen. Flynn, will likely be pardoned or just serve light sentences. Papadopoulos' sentence was 14 days. He's on to the next thing. I think Flynn is a whistleblower and an enemy of the CIA, so I think they wanted him out of government even more than they want Trump out. But Manafort, Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Craig, et al, are all players, assets, "consultants," and informants. Even Deripaska has worked with Mueller in the past.

    I had read Mueller past resume before but Manafort's connections throughout are also very interesting.

    @Leveymg would enjoy your post very much and might even have a few things to add.

    So why then I must ask, did they turn on Manafort?

    Too splashy for their tastes?
    A sacrificial lamb albeit CIA?

    span y Sirena on Tue, 04/16/2019 - 12:52am
    I agree w you

    @Bob In Portland @Linda Wood
    If one reads Seymour Hersh, the Obama Admin had an axe to grind w Gen Flynn in that he didn't go along w their narrative in Syria.

    If anyone, he is the most sympathetic character to me of all and deserving of a pardon.
    His crime...lying to the corrupt FBI.

    #4

    I agree with Bob in Portland that any or all of the indicted and convicted in the current Spygate affair, except Gen. Flynn, will likely be pardoned or just serve light sentences. Papadopoulos' sentence was 14 days. He's on to the next thing. I think Flynn is a whistleblower and an enemy of the CIA, so I think they wanted him out of government even more than they want Trump out. But Manafort, Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Craig, et al, are all players, assets, "consultants," and informants. Even Deripaska has worked with Mueller in the past.

    #4 From here it looks like he'll get a pardon from Trump, but the Agency has allowed many an agent to take the fall. There was the most famous, Lee Harvey Oswald. There was an agent named Edwin Wilson years ago who set up an arms company. He was busted for selling C4 to the Khaddafy regime back in the 1970s. Wilson went to jail but pleaded that he was working for US intelligence to try to get close the the Khadaffy regime. Wilson's group were also alleged to have trained members of the PFLP-GC to build bombs. A cell of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command were suspects in the Pan Am 103 bombing. By the way, Wilson's conviction was eventually overturned.

    So there's that.

    span y gulfgal98 on Tue, 04/16/2019 - 5:38am
    History

    I find your tracking of the history of these characters fascinating. The more we know and find out about them, the more we will realize that this country is actually being run by a small and very interconnected group of people, all of whom have CIA or deep state connections.

    While many here probably have already known this, I am just learning how connected they all are as a result of great essays such as yours, Bob. I hope you will continue to connect the dots for us in future essays.

    span y The Voice In th... on Tue, 04/16/2019 - 10:05am
    A Nomenklatura?

    @gulfgal98
    Sometimes I think this is true for all countries at all times.

    I find your tracking of the history of these characters fascinating. The more we know and find out about them, the more we will realize that this country is actually being run by a small and very interconnected group of people, all of whom have CIA or deep state connections.

    While many here probably have already known this, I am just learning how connected they all are as a result of great essays such as yours, Bob. I hope you will continue to connect the dots for us in future essays.

    span y studentofearth on Tue, 04/16/2019 - 11:19am
    Illusion of Democracy protects the ruling group from

    @gulfgal98 accountability of their actions. A circular firing squad is created to keep the mass population in an unsettled state of finger pointing and self recrimination of who voted for who.

    The first election I participated in was 1980. My whole adult life has been politically and economically rigged. It doesn't mean I wasn't able to fit through a few cracks, but those opportunities are only open for short periods of time. Then sealed and those that make it through are cajoled into believing they are special or more responsible than the "losers" or "undeserving".

    Our danger and opportunity is when the ruling group passes the torch to family members rather than individuals who rose through the ranks due to competence.

    1) A brighter light needs to be shown on those that have been identified on the "Group".

    2) A full mapping of individuals, non-government agencies (non-profits) and corporations needs to be worked on, distributed and publicized. Basically identify all "legal persons" according to the current interpretation of the constitution.

    3) A full mapping of international hiding spots for money, surveillance, directed violence and food control.

    American's tendency to finger point needs to be deflected to the source of power. It would also help if we would stop focusing on identifying a messiah worthy of caring the torch to our salvation. Instead look at them as individuals doing their part in removing treads from the tapestry of illusion surrounding us. Those weak spots need to be expanded into holes to shine light a little deeper and walk/run/sit/fight/spend our way to better community.

    I find your tracking of the history of these characters fascinating. The more we know and find out about them, the more we will realize that this country is actually being run by a small and very interconnected group of people, all of whom have CIA or deep state connections.

    While many here probably have already known this, I am just learning how connected they all are as a result of great essays such as yours, Bob. I hope you will continue to connect the dots for us in future essays.

    span y Bob In Portland on Tue, 04/16/2019 - 11:50am
    Daniel Brandt

    @studentofearth At one point Daniel Brandt made a graph connecting various people in the dark government. It wasn't very useful for me but was a great idea.

    When I write these connect-the-dot pieces, it's to hint at how things are really done at the highest levels. I've used this simile before but these public performers are like a Shakespearean troupe. This month this guy plays MacBeth, that guy plays Polonius. When they get into Henry IV Polonius becomes Falstaff.

    That Robert Mueller could be a good guy to liberals is a laugh, but he's wearing a new costume this time around.

    Manafort is a miserable character and he generates little sympathy from me, but he's not the evildoer that Mueller makes him out to be. He's merely a diversion.

    And the current play being performed is written by the Agency, not Shakespeare.

    And the concept of fake news versus real news is impossible for most to plumb because there is so little truth shared with the public.

    #5 accountability of their actions. A circular firing squad is created to keep the mass population in an unsettled state of finger pointing and self recrimination of who voted for who.

    The first election I participated in was 1980. My whole adult life has been politically and economically rigged. It doesn't mean I wasn't able to fit through a few cracks, but those opportunities are only open for short periods of time. Then sealed and those that make it through are cajoled into believing they are special or more responsible than the "losers" or "undeserving".

    Our danger and opportunity is when the ruling group passes the torch to family members rather than individuals who rose through the ranks due to competence.

    1) A brighter light needs to be shown on those that have been identified on the "Group".

    2) A full mapping of individuals, non-government agencies (non-profits) and corporations needs to be worked on, distributed and publicized. Basically identify all "legal persons" according to the current interpretation of the constitution.

    3) A full mapping of international hiding spots for money, surveillance, directed violence and food control.

    American's tendency to finger point needs to be deflected to the source of power. It would also help if we would stop focusing on identifying a messiah worthy of caring the torch to our salvation. Instead look at them as individuals doing their part in removing treads from the tapestry of illusion surrounding us. Those weak spots need to be expanded into holes to shine light a little deeper and walk/run/sit/fight/spend our way to better community.

    [Apr 16, 2019] The Six Degrees of Paul Manafort caucus99percent

    Apr 16, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

    The Six Degrees of Paul Manafort

    span y Bob In Portland on Mon, 04/15/2019 - 3:59pm Under the general rubric of conspiracy theory is the subset called "coincidence theory", which dismisses connections between people as mere happenstance in order to dismiss any thought of networks that exist beyond public scrutiny. But these networks do exist. Sometimes history takes decades to find them, but they exist. Let's take a peek at networks in Paul Manafort's life.

    Manafort was an advisor for four Republican presidential candidates: Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, and Bob Dole. Three of these men were connected to the CIA. Gerald Ford was on the Warren Commission and helped its conclusions of a single assassin by moving the bullet hole several inches up from JFK's back to the back of JFK's neck. It was an obvious fraud, and he should have been prosecuted as an accessory after the fact. There are other indications that he was involved with the CIA's mind control program prior to his political career. Ronald Reagan while governor of California blocked extradition requests from New Orleans DA Jim Garrison in the investigation into President Kennedy's murder. Reagan was governor at the time of JFK's brother's assassination in Los Angeles. I'll refer readers to Lisa Pease's A LIE TOO BIG TO FAIL about Reagan during that time. Reagan was also the spokesman for the Crusade For Freedom, a CIA psyop started in the 1950s which in conjunction with Radio Free Europe promoted former Nazis and fascists allied with Hitler during WWII and which imported many of these Nazis into the US. George HW Bush was the CIA Director under Ford, and investigations put him as a CIA agent or asset since his college days at Yale. I haven't looked at Bob Dole's history. But three out of four of Manafort's presidential employers had roots in the CIA.

    If you look at Paul Manafort's history, he seems to work for sleazy dictators who were either put into power by the CIA, supported while in power by the CIA or taken out of power by the CIA. And sometimes killed by the CIA. I would suggest that Manafort's ultimate employer was the CIA. After the sitting president of the Ukraine Viktor Yanukovich was ousted in a US-backed coup in Ukraine back in 2014 (under Secretary of State John Kerry) Manafort stuck around there and helped the people who ousted Yanukovich. Even though Yanukovich was the duly elected president of Ukraine, he has been dismissed as a Russian agent because he saw that the terms of Russian treaties with Ukraine would be better for the economy than treaties with the European Union. Therefore, the US branded Yanukovich as a Russian agent.

    Just to refresh everyone's memory William Barr worked for the CIA in the seventies until he got his law degree. He was named Attorney General by President GHW Bush (the first Bush president) during congressional and court investigations of Iran-contra, which was a CIA operation to illegally support the contras' attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan government while also illegally arming both Iraq and Iran, allegedly in exchange for releasing hostages in Beruit. The interagency team investigating the kidnappings in Beruit was on Pan Am 103 and perished returning to the US.

    Robert Mueller was the prosecutor in the Pan Am 103 case. He shifted the case to a couple of Libyan jamokes and away from a group of Palestinian terrorists operating in Frankfurt, Germany who allegedly were supplied the bomb used to bring down the airliner by Syrian arms and heroin smuggler Monzer al-Kassar. Al-Kassar was a major arms supplier for the Iran-contra operation. Robert Swan Mueller III has never himself been specifically identified as being a CIA employee. However, his uncle, Richard Bissell, was an officer high in the CIA ranks. Mueller's wife, Ann Cabell Standish, whom he married three years after the John F Kennedy assassination, was the granddaughter of Charles Cabell, Deputy Director of the CIA at the time of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, who was fired by JFK along with the above-mentioned Bissell and Allen Dulles. Ann Mueller's granduncle, Earle Cabell, the mayor of Dallas at the time of President Kennedy's assassination there, was revealed to have been a CIA asset in a recent declassification of JFK papers.

    Curiously, Mueller's career has been marked with prosecuting cases that touch on CIA covert activities. He prosecuted John Gotti, who was on trial for distribution of cocaine which has been identified as having arrived in the US via Mena, Arkansas as part of the Iran-contra drug importation operation. Bill Clinton was the governor of Arkansas at the time.

    Mueller prosecuted Noriega, who was the CIA's point man in Panama, where the CIA laundered money and moved cocaine and weapons for the contras during Iran-contra. The federal prosecutor in the Mena corner of Arkansas at the time of the Mena operations who steered clear of it was Asa Hutchinson, who went on to become George W Bush's first "drug czar". (More curiously, the person leading the failed attempt to uncover Iran-contra in the US Senate was John Kerry, who just happened to be a teammate of Mueller on their prep school lacrosse team many years earlier.)

    Mueller prosecuted BCCI (the international bank which laundered mob and intelligence money) without seeing CIA fingerprints. Mueller became the Director of the FBI a week before 9/11. Look it up.

    Some more: Go read Gregory Craig's Wiki page. Robert Mueller just indicted Craig along the lines of Manafort, a la aiding Russians (actually representing Ukrainians). Craig himself has an interesting past. He was the lawyer defending John Hinckley for the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, which, if succcessful, would have put GHW Bush into the White House; Craig defended CIA Director Richard Helms for his part in the coup of Salvador Allende; he was the State Department's director of policy planning under Madeleine Albright; Craig worked with Bill Clinton on his impeachment proceedings; he represented the Cuban father in the Elian Gonzalez case. Craig was on the other side of the Noriega case.

    Mueller prosecuted Noriega and Craig defended him. Craig helped Obama flipflop his position over the FISA court and the big communications corporations who cooperated with them. Craig represented John Edwards. And, of course, he did work in UKRAINE.

    I realize that some people in the left-right political universe will rejoice that a "Democrat" is being indicted, but Craig's history suggests that like Manafort, Mueller, Barr and others he represents a party across the river in Langley, Virginia. Very interesting, he and Mueller going toe to toe as Noriega was put behind bars without a hint of Noriega's Iran-contra work for Bush and the CIA. If you've got both the prosecutor and the defense attorney you're going to win the trial.

    It's a small world after all, but you won't hear Rachel Maddow repeat long-winded linkages among these characters in her stories.

    such a web we weave in order to deceive.

    CIA psyops where ever you look. Curious or should I say Q reous? Cause Q sure seems CIA to me....or so says Seth Rich...no he said DNC=CIA. up 8 users have voted. —

    “Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

    span y Bob In Portland on Mon, 04/15/2019 - 8:33pm

    DLC = DNC

    @Lookout At some point the Democratic Party was rolled. Bill Clinton got the big speech at the 1988 convention. He certainly wasn't the speaker he became. That speech went on and on. Then next time around he won the presidency in a three-way race with a funny Texas billionaire and George Bush.

    When Bill went to Oxford his classmates presumed he was CIA.

    Our election of 1992 may have been to promote Clinton while taking the heat away from GHW Bush.

    [Apr 16, 2019] Fake Russiagate vs real Ziogate

    Apr 16, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Anonymous [391] Disclaimer , says: April 16, 2019 at 1:25 pm GMT

    We had been inflicted with "Russogate" ad nauseam for the better part of two years and nothing, absolutely nothing, came of it. But no mention of the Zio-gate where the dog and its tail reciprocally meddle in each others' election(s) overwhelmingly in favor of Zio-tail interests. The silence of this issue in the MSM is deafening.

    [Apr 14, 2019] You could not get a more sinister confluence of political fraudsters by Michael Tracey

    Notable quotes:
    "... Assange accomplished more in 2010 alone than any of his preening media antagonists will in their entire lifetime, combined. Your feelings about him as a person do not matter. He could be the scummiest human on the face of Earth, and it would not detract from the fact that he has brought revelatory information to public that would otherwise have been concealed. He has shone light on some of the most powerful political factions not just in the US, but around the world. This will remain true regardless of whether Trump capitulates to the 'Deep State' and goes along with this utterly chilling, free speech-undermining prosecution. ..."
    "... My support was based on the fact that Assange had devised a novel way to hold powerful figures to account, whose nefarious conduct would otherwise go unexamined but for the methods he pioneered. ..."
    Apr 12, 2019 | spectator.us

    The nine-year gap – long after Manning had been charged, found guilty, and released from prison – suggests that there is something ulterior going on here. The offenses outlined in the indictment are on extraordinarily weak legal footing. Part of the criminal 'conspiracy,' prosecutors allege, is that Assange sought to protect Manning as a source and encouraged her to provide government records in the public interest.

    This is standard journalistic practice.

    And it is now being criminalized by the Trump DoJ, while liberals celebrate from the sidelines – eager to join hands with the likes of Mike Pompeo and Lindsey Graham. You could not get a more sinister confluence of political fraudsters.

    They – meaning most Democrats – will never get over their grudge against Assange for having dared to expose the corruption of America's ruling party in 2016, which they believed help deprive their beloved Hillary of her rightful ascension to the presidential throne. Once again, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is among the few exceptions.

    The DNC and Podesta email releases, now distilled reductively into the term 'Russian interference,' contained multitudinous newsworthy revelations, as evidenced by the fact that virtually the entire US media reported on them. (Here, feel free to refresh your memory on this as well.) But for no reason other than pure partisan score-settling, elite liberals are willing to toss aside any consideration for the dire First Amendment implications of Assange's arrest and cry out with joy that this man they regard as innately evil has finally been ensnared by the punitive might of the American carceral state.

    Trump supporters and Trump himself also look downright foolish. It takes about two seconds to Google all the instances in which Trump glowingly touted WikiLeaks on the 2016 campaign trail. 'I love WikiLeaks!' he famously proclaimed on October 10, 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, Penn.

    Presumably this expression of 'love' was indication that Trump viewed WikiLeaks as providing a public service. If not, perhaps some intrepid reporter can ask precisely what his 'love' entailed. He can pretend all he wants now that he's totally oblivious to WikiLeaks, but it was Trump himself who relayed that he was contemporaneously reading the Podesta emails in October 2016, and reveling in all their newsworthiness. If he wanted, he could obviously intercede and prevent any unjust prosecution of Assange. Trump has certainly seen fit to complain publicly about all matter of other inconvenient Justice Department activity, especially as it pertained to him or his family members and associates. But now he's acting as though he's never heard of WikiLeaks, which is just pitiful: not a soul believes it, even his most ardent supporters.

    Sean Hannity became one of Assange's biggest fans in 2016 and 2017, effusively lavishing him with praise and even visiting him in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for an exclusive interview. One wonders whether Hannity, who reportedly speaks to his best buddy Trump every night before bedtime, will counsel a different course on this matter. There's also the question of whether Trump's most vehement online advocates, who largely have become stalwart defenders of WikiLeaks, will put their money where their mouth is and condition their continued support on Assange not being depredated by the American prison system.

    Assange accomplished more in 2010 alone than any of his preening media antagonists will in their entire lifetime, combined. Your feelings about him as a person do not matter. He could be the scummiest human on the face of Earth, and it would not detract from the fact that he has brought revelatory information to public that would otherwise have been concealed. He has shone light on some of the most powerful political factions not just in the US, but around the world. This will remain true regardless of whether Trump capitulates to the 'Deep State' and goes along with this utterly chilling, free speech-undermining prosecution.

    I personally have supported Assange since I started in journalism, nine years ago, not because I had any special affinity for the man himself (although the radical transparency philosophy he espoused was definitely compelling). My support was based on the fact that Assange had devised a novel way to hold powerful figures to account, whose nefarious conduct would otherwise go unexamined but for the methods he pioneered. As thanks, he was holed up in a tiny embassy for nearly seven years – until yesterday, when they hauled him out ignominiously to face charges in what will likely turn out to be a political show trial. Donald Trump has the ability to stop this, but almost certainly won't. And that's all you need to know about him.

    [Apr 14, 2019] The Complete Unexpurgated AIPAC Tape from 1993

    Jul 07, 2018 | www.unz.com

    renfro , July 5, 2018 at 7:41 pm GMT

    Why I am all for wire tapping and all other spying by the CIA and FBI ...get all the uber Jews and all the politicians and make it public. Would be delighted if all the news channels did nothing but play the tapes on the daily news.

    The Complete Unexpurgated AIPAC Tape

    https://www.wrmea.org/1992-december/january-1993/the-complete-unexpurgated-aipac-tape.html

    Following is a transcript of the Oct. 22, 1992 conversation with President David Steiner of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) recorded without his knowledge by New York businessman Haim (Harry) Katz. Its existence was first revealed to the Washington Times and its release triggered Steiner's resignation.

    (sample)

    HK: Let me tell you, I was planning, I was planning to, to . . . Inouye, by the way, is in real trouble? He's been there forever. . .

    DS: Yeah! Well, we might lose him. There's been such a sea change, such trouble this year, I can't believe all our friends that are in trouble. Because there's an anti-incumbency mood, and foreign aid has not been popular. You know what I got for, I met with [U.S. Secretary of State] Jim Baker and I cut a deal with him. I got, besides the $3 billion, you know they're looking for the Jewish votes, and I'll tell him whatever he wants to hear . . .

    HK: Right.

    DS: Besides the $10 billion in loan guarantees which was a fabulous thing, $3 billion in foreign, in military aid, and I got almost a billion dollars in other goodies that people don't even know about .

    HK: Such as?

    DS: $700 million in military draw-down, from equipment that the United States Army's going to give to Israel; $200 million the U.S. government is going to preposition materials in Israel, which Israel can draw upon; put them in the global warning protection system; so when if there's a missile fired, they'll get the same advanced notification that the U.S., is notified, joint military exercises -- I've got a whole shopping list of things .

    HK: So this is from Baker?

    DS: From Baker and from the Pentagon.

    [Apr 14, 2019] 'Boom!' an autopsy of the media after the Mueller bombshell by Michael Tracey

    That was Neo-McCarthyim hysteria plain and simple; and it still is continuing as "FullOfSchiff" fqrse.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Can you think of a more vulgar and disgraceful manifestation of Trump-Russia media malfeasance than Rachel Maddow? Her deluded nightly conspiratorial rants may have been lucrative for MSNBC, but she fed viewers a complete fraud for three years. Now her show is undergoing a genuine existential crisis after Robert Mueller's exoneration of Trump . ..."
    "... The harm Maddow inflicted is unforgivable and she should obviously resign, go into exile, and take up some other line of work: perhaps gardening. That said, she has also become something of a scapegoat. ..."
    "... As contemptible as Rachel undoubtedly is, dwelling on her absolves the rest of the industry from acknowledging what really happened: a structural calamity of epic proportions, implicating almost all of them, which has utterly destroyed the reputation of the media writ large. And for good reason. ..."
    "... (Brennan infamously declared Trump guilty of treason on Twitter following the Helsinki summit). ..."
    "... Last week, Wheeler finally admitted her suspicion that the FBI may have just decided she is 'crazy.' Yes, sounds plausible. ..."
    "... Sadly, all the media figures who might have been assigned to legitimate evidence-based inquiries were wrapped up in the never-ending Russia melodrama, based on the hunch that it would result in the revelation of treasonous collusion, followed by the arrest of Trump's family and his swift impeachment. None of this happened. So what was the point? ..."
    "... Most disturbing of all is how otherwise-smart journalists and commentators lost their minds and integrity throughout the debacle. It was all a joke, a scam, and I've barely even scratched the surface here. It will take years to fully sift through the wreckage ..."
    Apr 04, 2019 | spectator.us
    'Boom!': an autopsy of the media after the Mueller bombshell Dunking on Rachel Maddow may be fun, but she's far from the sole perpetrator Michael Tracey Rachel Maddow

    Can you think of a more vulgar and disgraceful manifestation of Trump-Russia media malfeasance than Rachel Maddow? Her deluded nightly conspiratorial rants may have been lucrative for MSNBC, but she fed viewers a complete fraud for three years. Now her show is undergoing a genuine existential crisis after Robert Mueller's exoneration of Trump .

    The harm Maddow inflicted is unforgivable and she should obviously resign, go into exile, and take up some other line of work: perhaps gardening. That said, she has also become something of a scapegoat. It's convenient to disavow Maddow's excesses if you're a journalist who wants to pretend that the media failures which gave rise to Trump-Russia weren't a full-scale indictment of their entire profession. To act as though the misconduct was somehow confined to one unhinged cable news personality would be a gross distortion.

    As contemptible as Rachel undoubtedly is, dwelling on her absolves the rest of the industry from acknowledging what really happened: a structural calamity of epic proportions, implicating almost all of them, which has utterly destroyed the reputation of the media writ large. And for good reason.

    Easy as it might be to pooh-pooh Maddow as some zany outlier, the undeniable reality is that the sick conspiratorial mindset she embodied was thoroughly mainstream: it infected virtually every sector of elite American culture, from journalism, to entertainment, to the professional political class. Rachel is just the tip of the rotten iceberg.

    Take, for instance, Keith Olbermann. Keith was the most influential host on MSNBC during the George W. Bush years, when audiences ate up his furious denunciations of the Iraq War, which scratched a genuine itch because of the prevailing pro-war media conformity of the time. Olbermann gave voice to frustrated liberals who felt that their well-founded grievances were not being represented in the popular media, and his style came to be emulated across the industry (including by the host he recruited for a top spot on the network, Rachel Maddow.)

    Then came the Trump era, when Olbermann's brain appeared to explode. He began recording short video rants for GQ magazine, which rank among the most mind-bendingly deranged content produced throughout the entire Russiagate ordeal. Please, just watch this unbelievable screed from December 2016:

    'We are at war with Russia,' Olbermann gravely proclaims. The inauguration of Donald Trump, he prophesies, will mark 'the end of the United States as an independent country.' Anyone who rejects this analysis is a 'traitor' says Olbermann, and in league with 'Russian scum.' His recommendation is to thwart Trump via some harebrained Electoral College scheme where electors are intimidated into violating their duty to vote according to the election outcome in their respective states and districts. I covered this attempted coup at the time, which failed, but was supported by leading Democrats ranging from Hillary Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri to Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe; as well as Michael Moore, Lawrence Lessig, Peter Beinart, DeRay McKesson, Paul Krugman, and Neera Tanden. Prominent liberals had been melodramatically whinging for months about how appalled they were by Trump's alleged propensity to violate 'norms,' but the next minute they turned around and demanded that all norms governing the centuries-old Electoral College process be thrown out the window. The wild propaganda promoted by Olbermann had become the standard, mainstream view among American liberals: fundamentally corrupting their capacity to view subsequent political events with any semblance of rationality.

    Despite their truly insane offerings, focusing solely on demented opinionators like Olbermann and Maddow still lets ostensibly 'neutral' journalists off the hook. The amount of journalistic resources squandered on the Trump-Russia boondoggle, for instance by the New York Times and the Washington Post , will never be fully quantified. Both newspapers were lavished with Pulitzer Prizes and every other pointless accolade for their supposedly intrepid journalism. Their constant 'bombshell scoops' routinely ricocheted across Twitter before they were injected into the rest of the turbocharged media ecosystem, each one breathlessly touted on cable news for hours at a time. The harsh truth is that most all of these 'scoops' were predicated on a fiction. There was supposed to be a core conspiracy, which was meant to explain why Trump associates kept getting caught in lies – why their communications were extrajudicially intercepted, why they were surveilled on dubious pretenses. But no underlying conspiracy was ever revealed. The whole thing was based on a fairytale. Shouldn't the Times and WaPo therefore apologize and give back their Pulitzers? Or at very least toss them in the dumpster.

    Benjamin Wittes, the LawFare website guru and arguably the most lauded Twitter authority on the Trump-Russia scam, became well-known for his fun slogan, 'BOOM!,' which he would gleefully tweet every time a supposed bombshell article burst on the scene. Here's a Washington Post story from October 21 last year headlined 'Special counsel examines conflicting accounts as scrutiny of Roger Stone and WikiLeaks deepens,' which got the Wittes 'boom' treatment. Wow, very dramatic! Sounds a lot like Mueller and his squad were closing in on Stone as the evil mastermind behind some grand Trump-Russia conspiracy plot, given his suspicious ties to WikiLeaks, right? The only problem is, when Stone was indicted three months later, Mueller not only brought zero charges alleging Stone as party to any conspiracy, he dispelled such notions.

    All the correspondence cited in Mueller's indictment showed that Stone had no advanced knowledge of WikiLeaks releases or any privileged access to its operations. Roger Stone was just doing what Roger Stone does best: bullshitting.

    Stone was eventually charged by Mueller for making false statements, but again: none of those statements pertained to a conspiracy cover-up. They pertained to the dirty trickster being who he's been for decades: a fabulist who frequently misrepresents himself and gets in stupid feuds with fellow political hucksters. The October 2018 story about which Wittes tweeted 'boom' ultimately had no real significance. Like so many other stories touted at the time as an incredible BOMBSHELL, everyone got amped up over a total fantasy. The story had no serious value, other than to temporarily scintillate now-discredited obsessives like Wittes.

    Special scorn should be reserved for those in prominent media positions who ought to have known better, but indulged day after day in conspiratorial nonsense anyway. Take Chris Hayes, the popular 8pm MSNBC host, who unlike Maddow has a journalistic background (he was formerly the Washington Editor of The Nation magazine). Theoretically, Hayes should have been imbued with a greater sense of ingrained skepticism regarding CIA and FBI claims, which are what drove the entire Trump-Russia investigation to begin with. He is also a genuinely intelligent person, having (ironically) written the excellent Twilight of the Elites (2012), a book which examined the propensity for upper-crust society to engage in self-defeating groupthink.

    But Hayes too ended up witlessly amplifying the most obscene Russiagate antics – no doubt influenced by the pressure of having to turn in big ratings every night. His shows were always brimming with security state spooks like John Brennan , the former CIA Director and proven fantasist . Brennan was eventually hired by NBC, becoming one of Hayes's colleagues despite having played a central role in instigating the original Trump-Russia investigation in 2016 and inflaming its most incendiary elements (Brennan infamously declared Trump guilty of treason on Twitter following the Helsinki summit).

    For further insight on the subject, Hayes generally turned to pseudo-journalistic figures like Natasha Bertrand of The Atlantic , whose frenetically conspiratorial Russia coverage has also proven to have been total bunk – as well as former prosecutors and FBI officials like Chuck Rosenberg, disreputable security state apparatchiks like former NSA lawyer Susan Hennessey, and outright charlatans like purported 'intelligence expert' Malcolm Nance. (Here's an example from 2016 of the esteemed Nance getting tricked by a Twitter troll.)

    Hayes even went so far as to promote the theory that Trump had been colluding with Russia since 1987, a story somehow featured on the cover of New York magazine despite drawing on source material that literally originated with the recently deceased, notorious madman Lyndon LaRouche. Hayes's descent into fact-free mania culminated with his declaration to Stephen Colbert on March 8 last year that Trump and his associates were 'super guilty' of collusion. Whoops!

    While many once-respectable media figures like Hayes have seen their reputations inserted directly into the toilet, maybe the most bizarre case of all is Marcy Wheeler, the independent journalist known as @emptywheel . Wheeler appeared on Hayes's first show after Mueller decisively cleared Trump of collusion – you know, the central tenet of the Special Counsel's mandate. The fact that Hayes would have Wheeler on at that moment – after the entire Trump-Russia drama was definitively exposed as a ludicrous fantasy – showed that Hayes was committed to perpetuating the deceit even in the face of all countervailing evidence, whether unconsciously or consciously. That's because Marcy Wheeler is almost certainly a deluded basket case.

    The most obvious evidence for this is Wheeler's sensational admission in July 2018 that she burned a source to the FBI, voluntarily and proactively, thereby committing one of journalism's mortal sins. Wheeler justified her demented action on numerous fronts. First, she claimed that she possessed bombshell, smoking gun info that proved a Trump-Russia conspiracy, and felt a patriotic duty to hand this over to the FBI – in retribution for what she called Russia's 'attack' on the United States. Let's remember, shall we, that said attack at most amounted to some Twitter bots, goofy Facebook memes, and spear-phished Gmail accounts: John Podesta famously clicked on a phony link, which led to his emails being swiped. Hardly 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, wouldn't you say? However, those comparisons have been seriously made by various prominent elected officials, including Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, who would have presided over impeachment proceedings had things panned out differently.

    When pressed – even after the Mueller clearly asserted that no such Trump-Russia conspiracy ever existed – Wheeler still refuses to divulge any details about the extraordinary dispositive evidence she mysteriously claims to possess. Second, Wheeler further justified her insane conduct by insisting she could literally be killed by some unknown sinister alliance of Russians and Trump-backed mafia figures, or something ( I'm not making this up .). Shamefully, Wheeler's outlandish assertions were treated as gospel by members of the media who failed to apply even a modicum of critical scrutiny; Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post heralded Wheeler as following her conscience and wrote this about the supposed Russian hit squad out to get her: 'Overly dramatic? Not really. The Russians do have a penchant for disposing of people they find threatening.' Utter lunacy. Since the Mueller finding, Wheeler has strangely not revealed any additional information about the nature of these would-be assassins.

    Think about it. For months, Wheeler dangled cryptic hints about the explosive info that she alone supposedly knew about, enthralling blog readers and Twitter followers – and earning her major platforms not just on MSNBC but even the New York Times , where she contributed columns that contained blatant falsehoods. In the pages of the world's most influential newspaper, she claimed that Mueller had been 'hiding' evidence showing Trump's participation in a Russia conspiracy, and it would all come out once Mueller issued his final verdict. No dice.

    Last week, Wheeler finally admitted her suspicion that the FBI may have just decided she is 'crazy.' Yes, sounds plausible.

    So much journalistic energy was wasted chronicling the ins-and-outs of the Russiagate non-story. Imagine if instead that time was devoted to reporting in the public interest: like, say, I don't know – investigating the militaristic think tanks which attempted to undermine Trump's key diplomatic initiatives (such as North Korea), or how Trump was co-opted by the Republican donor class, or his various actual corruptions that didn't happen to involve any international espionage conspiracy.

    Sadly, all the media figures who might have been assigned to legitimate evidence-based inquiries were wrapped up in the never-ending Russia melodrama, based on the hunch that it would result in the revelation of treasonous collusion, followed by the arrest of Trump's family and his swift impeachment. None of this happened. So what was the point?

    Most disturbing of all is how otherwise-smart journalists and commentators lost their minds and integrity throughout the debacle. It was all a joke, a scam, and I've barely even scratched the surface here. It will take years to fully sift through the wreckage.

    See other Michael Tracy articles Michael Tracey, Author at Spectator USA

    [Apr 14, 2019] Assange rendition might backfire for Trump administration

    Vindictiveness not always play in the vindictive party favour.
    You may love Assange you may hate Assange for his WikiLeaks revelation (And Vault 7 was a real bombshell), but it is clear that it will cost Trump some reputation out of tini share that still left, especially in view of Trump declaration "I love Wikileaks"
    Apr 13, 2019 | www.unz.com

    For seven years, we have had to listen to a chorus of journalists, politicians and "experts" telling us that Assange was nothing more than a fugitive from justice, and that the British and Swedish legal systems could be relied on to handle his case in full accordance with the law. Barely a "mainstream" voice was raised in his defence in all that time.

    ... ... ...

    The political and media establishment ignored the mounting evidence of a secret grand jury in Virginia formulating charges against Assange, and ridiculed Wikileaks' concerns that the Swedish case might be cover for a more sinister attempt by the US to extradite Assange and lock him away in a high-security prison, as had happened to whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

    ... ... ...

    Equally, they ignored the fact that Assange had been given diplomatic status by Ecuador, as well as Ecuadorean citizenship. Britain was obligated to allow him to leave the embassy, using his diplomatic immunity, to travel unhindered to Ecuador. No "mainstream" journalist or politician thought this significant either.

    ... ... ...

    They turned a blind eye to the news that, after refusing to question Assange in the UK, Swedish prosecutors had decided to quietly drop the case against him in 2015. Sweden had kept the decision under wraps for more than two years.

    ... ... ...

    Most of the other documents relating to these conversations were unavailable. They had been destroyed by the UK's Crown Prosecution Service in violation of protocol. But no one in the political and media establishment cared, of course.

    Similarly, they ignored the fact that Assange was forced to hole up for years in the embassy, under the most intense form of house arrest, even though he no longer had a case to answer in Sweden. They told us -- apparently in all seriousness -- that he had to be arrested for his bail infraction, something that would normally be dealt with by a fine.

    ... ... ...

    This was never about Sweden or bail violations, or even about the discredited Russiagate narrative, as anyone who was paying the vaguest attention should have been able to work out. It was about the US Deep State doing everything in its power to crush Wikileaks and make an example of its founder.

    It was about making sure there would never again be a leak like that of Collateral Murder, the military video released by Wikileaks in 2007 that showed US soldiers celebrating as they murdered Iraqi civilians. It was about making sure there would never again be a dump of US diplomatic cables, like those released in 2010 that revealed the secret machinations of the US empire to dominate the planet whatever the cost in human rights violations.

    Now the pretence is over. The British police invaded the diplomatic territory of Ecuador -- invited in by Ecuador after it tore up Assange's asylum status -- to smuggle him off to jail. Two vassal states cooperating to do the bidding of the US empire. The arrest was not to help two women in Sweden or to enforce a minor bail infraction.

    No, the British authorities were acting on an extradition warrant from the US. And the charges the US authorities have concocted relate to Wikileaks' earliest work exposing the US military's war crimes in Iraq -- the stuff that we all once agreed was in the public interest, that British and US media clamoured to publish themselves.

    Still the media and political class is turning a blind eye. Where is the outrage at the lies we have been served up for these past seven years? Where is the contrition at having been gulled for so long? Where is the fury at the most basic press freedom -- the right to publish -- being trashed to silence Assange? Where is the willingness finally to speak up in Assange's defence?

    It's not there. There will be no indignation at the BBC, or the Guardian, or CNN. Just curious, impassive -- even gently mocking -- reporting of Assange's fate.

    And that is because these journalists, politicians and experts never really believed anything they said. They knew all along that the US wanted to silence Assange and to crush Wikileaks. They knew that all along and they didn't care. In fact, they happily conspired in paving the way for today's kidnapping of Assange.

    They did so because they are not there to represent the truth, or to stand up for ordinary people, or to protect a free press, or even to enforce the rule of law. They don't care about any of that. They are there to protect their careers, and the system that rewards them with money and influence. They don't want an upstart like Assange kicking over their applecart.

    Now they will spin us a whole new set of deceptions and distractions about Assange to keep us anaesthetised, to keep us from being incensed as our rights are whittled away, and to prevent us from realising that Assange's rights and our own are indivisible. We stand or fall together.

    Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .

    anonymous [340] • Disclaimer , says: April 12, 2019 at 10:41 am GMT

    Thank you.

    This should be an uncomfortable time for the “journalists” of the Establishment. Very few will speak up as does Mr. Cook. Watch how little is said about the recent Manning re-imprisonment to sweat out grand jury testimony. Things may have grown so craven that we’ll even see efforts to revoke Mr. Assange’s awards.

    This is also a good column for us to share with those people who just might want not to play along with the lies that define Exceptionalia.

    Digital Samizdat , says: April 12, 2019 at 5:11 pm GMT

    … from the moment Julian Assange first sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, they have been telling us we were wrong, that we were paranoid conspiracy theorists. We were told there was no real threat of Assange’s extradition to the United States, that it was all in our fevered imaginations.

    It all reminds me of Rod Dreher’s Law of Merited Impossibility: “That’ll never happen. And when it does , boy won’t you deserve it!”

    Equally, they ignored the fact that Assange had been given diplomatic status by Ecuador, as well as Ecuadorean citizenship. Britain was obligated to allow him to leave the embassy, using his diplomatic immunity, to travel unhindered to Ecuador. No “mainstream” journalist or politician thought this significant either.

    Why would they? They don’t even recognize diplomatic status for heads of state who get in their way! Remember what they did to President Evo Morales of Bolivia back when he was threatening to grant asylum to Ed Snowden? Here’s a refresher:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

    Any way you slice, this is a sad for liberty.

    Carlton Meyer , says: • Website April 13, 2019 at 4:32 am GMT
    From my blog:

    Apr 13, 2019 – Julian Assange

    People who just watch corporate media think Julian Assange is a bad guy who deserves life in prison, except those who watch the great Tucker Carlson. Watch his recent show where he explains why our corporate media and political class hate Assange.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZE7OfU71Sbk?feature=oembed

    He is charged with encouraging Army Private Chelsea Manning to send him embarrassing information, specifically this video of a US Army Apache helicopter gunning down civilians in broad daylight in Baghdad.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/25EWUUBjPMo?feature=oembed

    But there is no proof of this, and Manning has repeatedly said he never communicated to Assange about anything. Manning got eight years in prison for this crime; the Apache pilots were never charged. and now they want to hang Assange for exposing a war crime. I have recommend this great 2016 interview twice, where Assange calmly explains the massive corruption that patriotic FBI agents refer to as the “Clinton Crime Family.”

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/_sbT3_9dJY4?feature=oembed

    This gang is so powerful that it ordered federal agents to spy on the Trump political campaign, and indicted and imprisoned some participants in an attempt to pressure President Trump to step down. It seems Trump still fears this gang, otherwise he would order his attorney general to drop this bogus charge against Assange, then pardon him forever and invite him to speak at White House press conferences.

    The Alarmist , says: April 13, 2019 at 5:01 am GMT

    “… they ignored the fact that Assange was forced to hole up for years in the embassy, under the most intense form of house arrest, even though he no longer had a case to answer in Sweden.”

    Meh! Assange should have walked out the door of the embassy years ago. He might have ended up in the same place, but he could have seized the moral high ground by seeking asylum in Britain for fear of the death penalty in the US, which was a credible fear given public comments by various US officials. By rotting away in the Ecuadorian embassy, be greatly diminished any credibility he might have had to turn the UK judicial system inside out to his favour. Now he’s just a creepy looking bail jumper who flung faeces against the wall, rather than being a persecuted journalist.

    Endgame Napoleon , says: April 13, 2019 at 6:14 am GMT
    @Johnny Rottenborough Millionaire politicians on both sides of the political fence get very emotional about anything that impacts their own privacy & safety and the privacy & safety of their kin, while ignoring the issues that jeopardize the privacy & safety of ordinary voters. While corporate-owned politicians get a lot out of this game, ordinary voters who have never had less in the way of Fourth Amendment privacy rights, and whose First Amendment rights are quickly shrinking to the size of Assange’s, do not get the consolation of riches without risk granted to bought-off politicians in this era’s pay-to-play version of democracy. It’s a lose / lose for average voters.
    Tom Welsh , says: April 13, 2019 at 9:31 am GMT
    Mr Cook’s criticism of the mainstream media (MSM) is absolutely justified.

    It seems to me that their hatred of Mr Assange reflects the unfortunate fact that, while he is a real journalist, they actually aren’t. Instead, they are stenographers for power: what Paul Craig Roberts calls “presstitutes” (a very happy coinage which exactly hits the bull’s eye).

    The difference is that real journalists, like Mr Assange, Mr Roberts and Mr Cook, are mainly motivated by the search for objective truth – which they then publish, as far as they are able.

    Whereas those people who go by the spurious names of “journalist”, “reporter”, “editor”, etc. are motivated by the desire to go on earning their salaries, and to gain promotion and “distinction” in society. (Sad but true: social distinction is often gained by performing acts of dishonesty and downright wickedness).

    Here are some interesting quotations that cast some light on this disheartening state of affairs. If you look carefully at their dates you may be surprised to find that nothing has changed very much since the mid-19th century.

    ‘Marr: “How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are…”

    ‘Chomsky: “I’m not saying you’re self censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting”’.

    – Transcript of interview between Noam Chomsky and Andrew Marr (Feb. 14, 1996) https://scratchindog.blogspot.com/2015/07/transcript-of-interview-between-noam.html

    ‘If something goes wrong with the government, a free press will ferret it out and it will get fixed. But if something goes wrong with our free press, the country will go straight to hell’.

    – I. F. Stone (as reported by his son Dr Jeremy J Stone) http://russia-insider.com/en/media-criticism/hey-corporate-media-glenn-greenwald-video-can-teach-you-what-real-journalism/ri6669

    ‘There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an “Independent Press”! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes’.

    – John Swinton (1829–1901), Scottish-American journalist, newspaper publisher, and orator. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Swinton http://www.rense.com/general20/yes.htm

    ‘The press today is an army with carefully organized arms and branches, with journalists as officers, and readers as soldiers. But here, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and war-aims and operation-plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the role that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined. Formerly a man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares, but cannot; his will to think is only a willingness to think to order, and this is what he feels as his liberty’.

    – Oswald Spengler, “The Decline of the West” Vol. II, trans. C.F. Atkinson (1928), p. 462

    ‘How do wars start? Wars start when politicians lie to journalists, then believe what they read in the press’.

    – Karl Kraus, “Through Western Eyes – Russia Misconstrued” http://www.hellevig.net/ebook/Putin’s%20new%20Russia.pdf

    And finally, two quotations from classic novels which go to the heart of the matter.

    ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it’.

    – Upton Sinclair

    ‘Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids’.

    – John Steinbeck (“East of Eden”)

    UncommonGround , says: April 13, 2019 at 10:13 am GMT
    Very good article. There is one point that I would like to make: Assange asked for asyl before he went to the embassy of Ecuador and Ecuador gave him asylum. This meant that they had an obligation to protect him. It’s really unbeliavable that a country gives asylum to someone and half way tells that they have changed their mind and will let the person be arrested. ” We told you you would be safe with us, but now we just changed our mind”. Assange also became a citizen of Ecuador and this possibly means that Ecuador couldn’t have let him been arrested in their embassy by the police of another country without a process against him in Ecuador and without him having the right to defend himself in a court. Many countries don’t extradit their citizens to other countries.

    Another remark. For years there were uncountable articles about Assange in The Guardian. Those articles were read by many people and got really many comments. There were very fierce discussions about him with thousends of comments. With time The Guardian turned decisively against him and published articles againt him. There were people there who seemed to hate him. In the last days there were again many articles about him. They pronounce themselves discretely against his extradition to the US even if showing themselves to be critical of him as if trying to justify their years of attacks against him. But one detail: I didn’t find even one article in The Guardian where you can comment the case. Today for instance you can comment an article by Gaby Hinsliff about Kim Kardashian. Marina Hyde talks in an article about washing her hair (whatever else she wants to say, with 2831 comments at this moment). But you don’t find any article about Assange that you can comment. 10 or 8 or 5 years ago there were hundreds of articles about him that you could comment.

    EliteCommInc. , says: April 13, 2019 at 10:59 am GMT
    The game afoot here is obvious.

    https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2017/04/03/ecuador-next-venezuela/

    Pressure relief

    Tsar Nicholas , says: April 13, 2019 at 11:38 am GMT
    @Art

    UK PM May said about Assange – “no one is above the law” – proving she is a weak sister without a clue.

    No one is above the law except the British government, which ignored the provisions of the EU Withdrawal Act requiring us to leave on March 29th.

    No one is above the law except for the US and the UK which have illegally deployed forces to Syria against the wishes of the government in Damascus.

    And Tony Blair, a million dead thanks to his corruption. He should be doing time in a Gulag for his evil crimes.

    And of course, the black MP for Peterborough – Fiona Onasanya – served a mere three weeks in jail for perverting the course of justice, normally regarded as a very serious offence. But she was out in time – electronic tag and curfew notwithstanding – to vote in the House of Commons against leaving the EU.

    [Apr 13, 2019] Russophobia, A WMD (Weapon Of Mass Deception) by Jean Ranc

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... My search for the roots of this particularly vicious and extremely dangerous hate campaign began in a Dartmouth College Russian Foreign Policy course, which led me to the book, "Russophobia: Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy" by San Francisco State University Professor Andrei P. Tsygankov (2009). ..."
    "... Then in Italy the following winter, I discovered the work of the Swiss journalist, Guy Mettan, in the Italian geopolitical journal, LiMes: an excerpt from his book, "Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria" (2017). ..."
    "... "More than merely dominate, the American superpower now seeks to control history. Such cosmic ambition is accompanied by an equally vast sense of entitlement, of special dispensation to pursue its aims." (p.3) ..."
    "... Never-the-less, Mearsheimer is backed up by Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent. In Sakwa's book, "Russia Against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order", 2017, we turn to the section on "Reality Wars and American Power" on p. 217 to read: "It does indeed seem that Russia and Western elites live in totally different worlds, divided by different epistemological understandings of the nature of contemporary reality. The Ukraine crisis crystallized the profound differences between Russian and Atlanticist understandings of the breakdown and its causes." And he continues on p. 218: "Elite and policy-maker perceptions and attitudes forged in the Cold War years sustain these legacies and frame the discussions of such crucial issues as NATO enlargement, democracy promotion in the post-Soviet area, and strategic arms talks." Adding that these "are no longer so much legacies as self-regenerating narratives and modes of discourse that preclude a more open-ended understanding of the dynamics and concerns of Russia today." ..."
    "... From another perspective: Mettan's chapter on "German Russophobia" set me thinking that this "Western Supremacy" political-cultural pathology known as Russophobia is like the racism which I knew growing up in totally segregated Oklahoma. ..."
    "... So, here's a Swiss journalist punching a hole in this wall of Russophobic Western Supremacy and through that gaping hole, we are reminded that the Russians are Europe's neighbors who sacrificed more than 26 million of their own lives to save Europe, America and Russia from the Nazis. ..."
    "... And the week following the August 7, 2018 Trump-Putin Helsinki summit, will surely go down in psychiatric circles as another case of mass media-political delusions led by cheer-leader-in-chief, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. ..."
    "... Never-the-less, after a very long run of American "regime change" abroad leaving a bloody trail of destruction, dictatorships and chaos from Iran in 1953, when we joined with the British to overthrow the democratically-elected President Mohammad Mossadegh to maintain the Brit-US control of its oil on through Guatemala, Vietnam and Chile to name a few of our interventions we were back for a second round with "coalitions of the willing" or not? ..."
    "... So how is it that we now have contemporary Inquisitors persecuting so many truth tellers ..."
    Apr 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Jean Ranc via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Russophobia, as psycho-social-political pathology, is diagnosed as a disorder in The West since before the 1000-year-old Roman-Orthodox religious schism and most recently manifested with a vengeance in the course of the 2013-14 with Edward Snowden's revelations of mass surveillance by the US and its covert activities leading to the Ukraine coup with Russophobia used thereafter as a weapon of mass deception to inflame this latent pathology in the public.

    After more than a year since we first heard the BBC "breaking news" about the "Russians Poisoning the Skipals", all we have are allegations, but there is still no real evidence to present before a judge and jury for a just trial, only media propaganda which has provoked even more fear and hysteria meant to distract people from the government's bungling and high level of anxiety over Brexit by once again blaming Russia . Never-the-less, it prompted politicians to administer instant sanctions against Russia as punishment. That first day, the "evidence", presented in the usual clipped, "authoritative" British accents, included interviews with a conservative British MP, then the former US Ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow (2001-05), now with the notoriously hawkish US-based think tank, the Atlantic Council. Thus, the three of them: the BBC "journalist" and the two "experts", colluded to transform false allegations into "facts"... fueled, as always, by their perpetual prejudice, RUSSOPHOBIA, in the course of their propaganda war to force Russia to surrender to American-led Western Domination or else: have their economy destroyed & their people suffer. Indeed, it is a threat to the whole world played to the discord of rattling nuclear swords with a chorus of vindictive Russian oligarchs, whom Putin expelled for robbing the Russian people. So, now living in London as expats, they would seem to be the more likely culprits. All the while elsewhere in London, thanks to our "special US-UK relationship", Julian Assange has been excommunicated and imprisoned in a tiny "cell" at the Ecuador embassy for revealing embarrassing American secrets via Wikileaks.

    There we have it: the poisoning of our minds by the media and politicians which are owned and controlled by the US-UK-EU 1%, who benefit from Western Hegemony. So, these deluded few are now desperately defending it from the rising powers led by Russia and China with India not far behind demanding a multi-polar, democratic world order.

    My search for the roots of this particularly vicious and extremely dangerous hate campaign began in a Dartmouth College Russian Foreign Policy course, which led me to the book, "Russophobia: Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy" by San Francisco State University Professor Andrei P. Tsygankov (2009). And there, the detoxification of my mind began as I studied his deft, well-documented deconstruction of the political propaganda disseminated "by various think tanks, congressional testimonials, activities of NGOs and the media" (preface p. XIII)

    Then in Italy the following winter, I discovered the work of the Swiss journalist, Guy Mettan, in the Italian geopolitical journal, LiMes: an excerpt from his book, "Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria" (2017).

    There, Mettan informs us that this psycho-social pathology in Western Civilization" goes back more than 1000 years: to the division of Christendom between the Orthodox and Roman churches. Indeed, his research into the depths of history confirms the diagnosis by our renowned American psychiatrist, Robert Jay Lifton, in his 2003 book, "Superpower Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World".

    Therein, Lifton states: "More than merely dominate, the American superpower now seeks to control history. Such cosmic ambition is accompanied by an equally vast sense of entitlement, of special dispensation to pursue its aims." (p.3) And Mettan's analysis of Russophobia also underscores the work of University of Chicago Professor John J. Mearsheimer, our leading international relations "realist" in his three Henry L. Stimson lectures at Yale University November 2017: "The Roots of Liberal Hegemony", "The False Promises of Liberal Hegemony" and "The Case for Restraint": with his book , "The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams, International Realities" published in 2018.

    But what about "Russian Aggression" in Ukraine & Crimea?

    In the first place, it was the astute Mearsheimer, who, in the Sept-Oct 2014 Foreign Affairs, informed us "Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin" (pp 77-89), but the American foreign policy establishment, together with ambitious politicians and the me-too media, paid no heed and continues to repeat its fabricated "facts".

    Never-the-less, Mearsheimer is backed up by Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent. In Sakwa's book, "Russia Against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order", 2017, we turn to the section on "Reality Wars and American Power" on p. 217 to read: "It does indeed seem that Russia and Western elites live in totally different worlds, divided by different epistemological understandings of the nature of contemporary reality. The Ukraine crisis crystallized the profound differences between Russian and Atlanticist understandings of the breakdown and its causes." And he continues on p. 218: "Elite and policy-maker perceptions and attitudes forged in the Cold War years sustain these legacies and frame the discussions of such crucial issues as NATO enlargement, democracy promotion in the post-Soviet area, and strategic arms talks." Adding that these "are no longer so much legacies as self-regenerating narratives and modes of discourse that preclude a more open-ended understanding of the dynamics and concerns of Russia today."

    Karl Rove: "We're an empire now; we create our own reality."

    [In 2004, journalist Ron Suskind wrote in The New York Times magazine that a top White House strategist for President George W. Bush -- identified later as Karl Rove, Bush's Deputy White House Chief of Staff -- told him, "We're an empire now, we create our own reality."]

    Thus, we've become trapped in a contrived "reality" promulgated by neo-conservative warriors under cover of neo-liberal "democracy-spreading-humanitarian-interventionists" to justify an American Empire promoting itself as the indispensable "Liberal World Order". However, under that global order, as Sakwa points out on p. 219: "If a foreign power is considered to have violated 'international order', then it can be overthrown" as a rationale for American "regime change" anywhere around the world: whether to control the supply of copper in Chile or oil in Iran. And, with its eye on Russia's vast oil, gas and other natural resources, America claims the right to threaten Russia by ringing it with weapons which we would not abide were the Russians to place missiles in Mexico as the Soviets did in Cuba to defend it after our "Bay of Pigs" invasion that brought humanity to the brink of nuclear war. Thus, Russia was defending itself in Ukraine against further NATO expansion while Crimean citizens, by majority vote in a democratic referendum, chose to rejoin Russia as they had been one country ever since Catherine the Great except for an interval in the '50s when Crimea was" gifted" to Ukraine while they were all members of the Soviet Union.

    "Ditching Solzhenitsyn, Defender of Russia"

    And not to forget that in 1974, after being expelled from the Soviet Union, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and his family fled first to Zurich then to Vermont in 1976 and lived on a farm near Cavendish, where he continued to write and publish his work. Meanwhile, Mettan, as a journalist covering events related to Russia, became quite distressed over "the widespread prejudices, cartloads of clichés and systematic anti-Russian biases of most western media." And he went on to say that "the more I traveled, discussed and read, the wider I perceived, the more the gap of incomprehension and ignorance between Western Europe and Russia became evident.

    "That was why, during the 1990s, I was shocked by the way the West treated Solzhenitsyn. For decades, we had published, celebrated, and acclaimed the great writer as bearing the torch of anti-Soviet dissidence. We had praised Solzhenitsyn to the skies as long as he criticized his native country, communist Russia. But as soon as he emigrated, realizing that he preferred to isolate himself in his Vermont retreat to work rather than attending anticommunist conferences, western media and academics began to distance themselves from the great writer.

    "The idol no longer matched the image they had built and was becoming a hindrance to their academic and journalistic career plans. And once Solzhenitsyn had left the United States to go back to Russia and defend his humiliated, demoralized motherland that was being sold at auction, raising his voice against the Russian 'Westernizers' and pluralist liberals who denied the interests of Russia to better revel in the troughs of capitalism, he became a marked man, an outdated, senile writer, even though he himself had not changed in the least, denouncing with the same vigor the defects of market totalitarianism as those of communist totalitarianism.

    "He was booed, despised, his name was dragged through the mud for his choices, often by the very people who had praised his first fights. Despite that, against all odds, against the most powerful powers that were trying to dissuade him, Solzhenitsyn defended his one and only cause, that of Russia. He was not forgiven for having turned his pen against that West that had welcomed him and felt it was owed eternal gratitude. A dissident today, a dissident wherever truth compelled, such was his motto. This deserves to be remembered." Mettan, pp. 15-16 in "Creating Russophobia".

    Russophobia: akin to Racism

    From another perspective: Mettan's chapter on "German Russophobia" set me thinking that this "Western Supremacy" political-cultural pathology known as Russophobia is like the racism which I knew growing up in totally segregated Oklahoma.

    Until in high school, I became so perplexed and appalled by the curtain of hate and "justifications" in which we were smothered: the Negro schools on the other side of town? and why were there separate waiting rooms, drinking fountains & restrooms in bus and train stations?...that I began poking holes in the curtain to see what was outside...and found a book in the library: "South of Freedom" by Carl Rowan, an African-American Minneapolis Star Tribune journalist, describing his journey from South to North. So, thanks to what I learned from Rowan, I began to tear the whole damned curtain down...at least in my mind.

    Whom the Gods would destroy, they first drive mad?

    So, here's a Swiss journalist punching a hole in this wall of Russophobic Western Supremacy and through that gaping hole, we are reminded that the Russians are Europe's neighbors who sacrificed more than 26 million of their own lives to save Europe, America and Russia from the Nazis.

    These are not poor "niggers" from the Eurasian ghetto we've been trying to club into submission as second-class citizens of "The Liberal World Order" dominated by US; they're nuclear-armed and no longer willing to sit at a separate, inferior table with no vote and no voice over who makes the rules...nor are China, India and Brazil. And last year, while the wave of Russophobic hysteria over alleged "Russian poisoning" was rolling out of the UK and engulfing the Western world in the latest siege of mass madness with only Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labor party, having the courage to stand up in Parliament on the Ides of March and demand Evidence! only to be pilloried by the mindless politicians and media led by the once esteemed BBC.

    And the week following the August 7, 2018 Trump-Putin Helsinki summit, will surely go down in psychiatric circles as another case of mass media-political delusions led by cheer-leader-in-chief, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC.

    Meanwhile, not to forget that it was Hearst newspaper propaganda that whipped the American public into a war frenzy to support our first step in empire-building: our 1898 intervention in Cuba's war for independence from the Spanish Empire which had dominated all of Latin America for 500 years. As the former NYTimes journalist/bureau chief in Istanbul, Berlin & Central America, Stephen Kinzer reminds us in his latest book "The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire", Twain, Booker T. Washington and even Andrew Carnegie leading a handful of other anti-imperialists...were not able to prevail against Roosevelt with his Rough Riders and the Hearst newspapers' war propaganda.

    Regime Change Comes Home

    Never-the-less, after a very long run of American "regime change" abroad leaving a bloody trail of destruction, dictatorships and chaos from Iran in 1953, when we joined with the British to overthrow the democratically-elected President Mohammad Mossadegh to maintain the Brit-US control of its oil on through Guatemala, Vietnam and Chile to name a few of our interventions we were back for a second round with "coalitions of the willing" or not?

    In the Middle East where our regime-change machine managed to plow its way through Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya before breaking down in Syria. Until now it's been brought home again, renovated and renamed "RussiaGate" for another attempt at removing a President for trying to mend US relations with Russia. Though even after more than a year of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigations accompanied by such cinematic support as the movie, "Felt", another "Watergate" re-run. Did anyone else notice the resemblance between "Felt" and Mueller? And despite the media's commemoration of its 44-year-old "moment of courage" with the movie "The Post" to promote Trump's ouster, our democratically-elected President, as of this writing, remains in power. However, in this rush to "regime change", didn't the our "ruling elite" read Jane Mayer's "The Danger of President Pence" in the 10/23/17 New Yorker? At least the 70s' "ruling class" was smart enough to remove an unqualified Vice President Spiro (who?) Agnew before "regime changing" Nixon and replacing him with the more or less benign Gerald Ford.

    A Florentine Epiphany

    But back to last January in Florence, Italy, when I was hiking in the hills beyond the Piazzale Michelangelo, with its spectacular view of that Renaissance city and its centerpiece, the Duomo, I came across the Villa Galileo, which had been his last home after his trial as a "heretic", during which to save himself from torture and execution, he was forced to deny his helio-centric vision and henceforth lived under "villa arrest", from 1631 until his natural death in 1642. While pondering his fate, I continued walking along the gently rising, ever-narrowing road between ancient stone walls overlooking villas and olive groves until I reached the peak, where I felt as if I were standing on top of the world as I contemplated both the Arno and Ema river valleys far below and where I swear I heard Galileo declare: "The world does not turn on an American axis!"

    The 21st Century Inquisition

    So how is it that we now have contemporary Inquisitors persecuting so many truth tellers such as Edward Snowden, our electronic age "Solzhenitsyn?" in Russian exile; Chelsea Manning, imprisoned some 7 years for revealing US brutality in Iraq; Julian Assange confined to his Ecuadorian Embassy exile in London since August 2012; Katharine Gun, a whistleblower attempting to stop the Iraq invasion, who faced 2 years of British imprisonment before her case was dropped; James Risen, former New York Times journalist who was persecuted by our "justice" system for revealing our government's surveillance of US!

    Any Good Sense Left?

    So, do we the people have enough good sense & independent thinking left to follow the advice of Henry David Thoreau?

    "Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality."

    "Walden" 1854

    If not, the Doctor prescribes Shock Therapy:

    For a week, a month, or however long it takes to cleanse and open the mind, one must adhere to strict abstinence from Mainstream Media propaganda, junk news, pseudo analysis, fake photos, TV & videos including absolutely NO phony "for, by & of the people" NPR, PBS, BBC or other Government-funded Neo or LibCon Imperial tranquilizer.

    [Apr 13, 2019] Attorney General William Barr said on Wednesday he would look into whether US agencies illegally spied on President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign

    Notable quotes:
    "... "IDF's chief rabbi-to-be permits raping women in wartime." Just how does that differ from Daesh's behavior? Or was it the IDF that told Deash such behavior was okay? I'm pretty certain that rabbi is afoul of fundamental Mosaic Law and thus shouldn't be a rabbi. ..."
    Apr 13, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    librul , Apr 10, 2019 11:47:32 PM | link

    When did Reuters ever call the Trump/Russia Collusion nonsense a "conspiracy theory" as they should have?

    Never (big surprise)

    But Reuters is quick to call the investigation into the FBI election manipulation a conspiracy theory.

    U.S. attorney general's 'spying' remarks anger Democrats

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General William Barr said on Wednesday he would look into whether U.S. agencies illegally spied on President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, sparking criticism from Democrats who accused him of promoting a conspiracy theory.

    Barr, who was appointed by Trump, is already facing criticism by congressional Democrats for how he has handled the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and his comments about surveillance brought more derision from Democratic senators.

    His testimony echoed longstanding allegations by Trump and Republican allies that seeks to cast doubt on the early days of the federal investigation in an apparent attempt to discredit Mueller, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

    Zachary Smith , Apr 10, 2019 11:49:22 PM | link

    @ Jackrabbit #67
    IMO the notion that a few senior Intelligence officials (mostly FBI) tried to overthrow Trump is silly to the point of being laughable.

    Not to all of us, it isn't. The part I don't understand is the Why of their effort. Did they have some scheme to get rid of Pence too? Or was it all mindless blind hatred because he took down their Goddess Hillary?

    ben , Apr 10, 2019 11:56:00 PM | link
    ZS @ 68 said in part;"assuming the Corporate Democrats don't force one of their candidates Big Corporations want on the ballot. Which is, of course, most of them."

    I assume what you speculated on above, will happen.

    Jackrabbit , Apr 11, 2019 12:02:16 AM | link
    Zachary Smith @68: ... Corporate Democrats ... domestic policies ...

    The democratic party is irredeemable as it operates as one arm of the duopoly. I don't see any meaningful distinction between "Corporate Democrats" and progressive Democrats except this: progressive Democrats give the Democratic Party cover to support the establishment.

    IMO domestic policy can no longer be considered separately from Empire. "Progressive Democrats" are forced encouraged by their Party to support the military and ignore foreign policy.

    <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

    IMO the only grouping that is currently viable/strong alternative is the libertarians. If they could bring conservatives and (real) progressives together, then we could see a real challenge to the "radical center" (which actually rules as center-right).

    But conservatives, (real) progressives, and libertarians are underfunded and constantly get played.

    librul , Apr 11, 2019 12:06:23 AM | link
    @ Zachary Smith | Apr 10, 2019 11:49:22 PM | 71

    RussiaGate: 'Why Did This Ever Start In The First Place?'

    Jackrabbit , Apr 11, 2019 12:08:56 AM | link
    Zachary Smith @71:
    Not to all of us, it isn't. The part I don't understand is the Why of their effort.

    Well of course the WHY baffles you, because the only WHY that makes sense is what I described and that will never be allowed to come out publicly because then people will see that their democracy is a sham.

    The "managed democracy" that we have in USA subverts the will of the people to the Empire.

    ben , Apr 11, 2019 12:34:51 AM | link
    @ 74: Why did Russiagate start in the first place? The short answer is IMO, diversion.

    Another answer could be, that DJT stood on a stage, and asked another country to find his opponents e-mails.

    Zachary Smith , Apr 11, 2019 12:52:57 AM | link
    @ librul #74

    Though I hadn't seen that before, the general theme is in agreement with what I believe is the truth. Even ignorant and thuggish goons like Trump can be victims of a crime, and I believe that's what happened here.

    Grieved , Apr 11, 2019 12:53:10 AM | link
    I find it piquant that the vice president of the US attacks a Venezuelan ambassador at the UN and then ramps up his aggression...by retreating.

    Pence is so certain that the other guy doesn't belong, that he himself walks away. Every schoolyard would see this behavior for exactly what it is. Animals would understand it clearly also, in terms of pecking order.

    How perfect this action is in matching precisely what we've been watching the US do in several military theaters for some time now. The louder and the ruder the bluster, the more certain we can be that it covers pure emptiness. And that the US is tangibly retreating under cover of the smoke.

    The cowardice is becoming palpable.

    Jackrabbit , Apr 11, 2019 1:01:14 AM | link
    ben

    Well, why did "America First" Trump ask Russia to do that? (And later ask Wikileaks to release the DNC emails!)

    And why did "America First" Trump hire Manafort who had extensive Russian contacts and pro-Russian activities that drew the ire of US officials?

    These (and more) played into Russiagate hysteria that followed the election and were not in keeping with Trump's "America First" rhetoric.

    Now, long after the election, we see additional strangeness like Roger Stone's claims of a contact at Wikileaks.

    John Smith , Apr 11, 2019 1:02:54 AM | link
    Posted by: karlof1 | Apr 10, 2019 6:42:57 PM | 38

    "IDF's chief rabbi-to-be permits raping women in wartime." Just how does that differ from Daesh's behavior? Or was it the IDF that told Deash such behavior was okay? I'm pretty certain that rabbi is afoul of fundamental Mosaic Law and thus shouldn't be a rabbi.
    ----------------------

    "The Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition," Ketubot 11b, vol. 7 (NY: Random House, 1991), p. 145:

    "If a grown man has intercourse with a little girl less than three years old, all agree that it is not a significant sexual act "

    "Koren Talmud Bavli," Sanhedrin 54b, vol. 30 (Jerusalem, 2017), p. 41:

    "If a man engages in homosexual intercourse with a minor who is under the age of nine, whether actively or passively, he is exempt as with regard to ritual law..."
    Zachary Smith , Apr 11, 2019 1:08:09 AM | link
    @ Jackrabbit #75

    I"m not sure we disagree very much, for I also believe our "democracy" is thoroughly managed, and "sham" is quite a good word for it. The part I don't understand is why you seem to object to pointing out efforts by the 'managers' to correct the error of a slam dunk election going bad. Hillary was supposed to be in the White House. More than one nation had been making advance payments to the Clinton Foundation to purchase her goodwill. She was the dream for Big Banking, the apartheid Jewish state, and probably a lot more folks. That didn't happen, and some people became unhinged.

    Jackrabbit , Apr 11, 2019 1:21:14 AM | link
    Zachary Smith @78:
    Though I hadn't seen that before, the general theme is in agreement with what I believe is the truth.
    I think that you're not thinking this through.

    You're question of WHY, is still unanswered.

    > WHY did the hold back on Russian-influence allegations during the election?
    Hillary was suppose to win, sure. But why not ENSURE that win?

    > WHY did they continue with Russiagate after the election?
    They engaged in Treasonous behavior because Hillary was butthurt?
    She supposedly got 3 million more votes than Trump; how badly could her ego be bruised?

    > WHY did the establishment hate Trump so much?
    He's delivered all they could want and more.

    > Why did Russiagate force Trump to bend to Deep State wishes?
    Ha! It didn't! Trump has always maintained that there was no Russia collusion. And now the Mueller Report confirms this. Trump's Cold War policy continues the Deep State's same policy - because Trump is part of the team.

    This is not meant to be exhaustive. There are many other questions that you could ask because there's a lot that doesn't add up - unless Russiagate was a Deep State psyop with bi-partisan support (as I've described).
    Jackrabbit , Apr 11, 2019 1:29:31 AM | link
    Zachary Smith @85: efforts by the 'managers' to correct the error

    Because it makes no sense. If they got their wish and "corrected" the error by overthrowing Trump, there would be a civil war. Which is counter-productive in the extreme.

    But they don't need to take such drastic action 'cause Trump does that the Deep States wants anyway! So what are they trying to "correct"?!?

    Jackrabbit , Apr 11, 2019 1:30:30 AM | link
    correction: ... what the Deep State wants ...
    EtTuBrute , Apr 11, 2019 5:08:30 AM | link
    Alleged ongoing Military Coup in Sudan today, another just happened in Algeria... Haftar making moves in Libya, could all just be a coincidence, then again, maybe not? Anyone got anything? Wondering what Mr B. thinks..
    jared , Apr 11, 2019 8:28:18 AM | link
    Is Russia a failed state -
    https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/424511-managing-russias-dissolution

    Or is U.S. (actually the entire Globalist empire) maxing out it's credit card?

    And speaking of failed states -
    https://southfront.org/us-southcom-head-says-venezuela-military-intervention-might-be-necessary-by-end-of-2019/

    [Apr 13, 2019] Trump Puts America Last by Daniel Larison

    Money quote (from comments): This GOP/Israel connection stinks to high heaven. Anyone who studied or remembers our problem with Communist spies back in the '50s has got to be hearing alarm bells ringing in their ears. Worries about Soviet spying and Russian meddling pale in comparison to what's now going on in plain sight with Israel.
    Notable quotes:
    "... As usual, Trump made the announcement of recognizing Israel's claim to the Golan Heights without any consultation with any of the relevant administration officials: ..."
    "... After more than two years of watching Trump's impulsive and reckless "governing" style, it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone that he makes these decisions without advance warning. There is no evidence that Trump ever thinks anything through, and so he probably sees no reason to tell anyone in advance what he is going to do. ..."
    "... Trump almost never bothers consulting with the people who will be responsible for carrying out his policies ..."
    "... There is absolutely no upside for the United States in endorsing illegal Israeli claims to the Golan Heights. It is a cynical political stunt intended to boost Netanyahu and Likud's fortunes in the upcoming election, and it is also a cynical stunt aimed at shoring up Trump's support from Republican "pro-Israel" voters and donors. ..."
    "... Once again, Trump has put narrow political ambitions and the interests of a foreign government ahead of the interests of the United States. That seems to be the inevitable result of electing a narcissist who conducts foreign policy based on which leaders flatter and praise him. ..."
    "... Bolton is usually the culprit responsible any destructive and foolish policy decision over the last year, and his baleful influence continues to grow. We can also see the harmful effects of the administration's Iran obsession at work. In the end, the Syria "withdrawal" hasn't happened and apparently isn't going to, but Trump nonetheless gives Israel whatever it wants in exchange for nothing so that they will be "reassured" of our unthinking support. ..."
    "... I wonder what Mr. Kagan has to say now about "authoritarian" regimes?! ..."
    "... Trump is making one hell of a mess for the next president to clean up. ..."
    "... The decision to leave the INF treaty was taken in a similar way and with a total disregard for the consequences. The leaders of the European NATO countries have shown utter spinelessness in going along with it. ..."
    "... I am shocked and horrified by what I've seen under Trump. I am deeply disappointed that so few Republicans (or Democrats, for that matter) have stood up to him on foreign policy, and I will never vote Republican again. This GOP/Israel connection stinks to high heaven. Anyone who studied or remembers our problem with Communist spies back in the '50s has got to be hearing alarm bells ringing in their ears. Worries about Soviet spying and Russian meddling pale in comparison to what's now going on in plain sight with Israel. ..."
    "... To be fair, it ain't just Team R that has the sloppy crush on Israel. Team D is just as bad, even if they don't gush quite so publicly. In fact, episodes such as this one are useful in a way, as they make it hard to pretend that this is just a one-off, a misguided decision that we have to go along with to appease a powerful friend. ..."
    "... Nevertheless, Israel should be very concerned about Northern Syria. If war breaks out and the US is forced to go to war with its own NATO ally as a result, Israel should prepare to kiss its alliance with the US goodbye. ..."
    "... Many (rightfully or not) will blame Israel due to its connections to neoconservatism and Saudi jingoism, and consequently we may end up seeing BOTH parties becoming unfriendly to Israel over the subsequent generation. ..."
    "... All of this could be prevented if President Trump would just tell Saudi Arabia to STOP the nonsense. But no. He's too focused on MIC profits. He's not America First. And quite frankly, I'm starting to think Benjamin Netanyahu is not Israel-first either, because if he were he'd be warning Trump about the mess he's going to end up getting America, Israel, and much of Europe and the Middle East into. ..."
    Mar 20, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    As usual, Trump made the announcement of recognizing Israel's claim to the Golan Heights without any consultation with any of the relevant administration officials:

    President Donald Trump's tweet on Thursday recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory surprised members of his own Middle East peace team, the State Department, and Israeli officials.

    U.S. diplomats and White House aides had believed the Golan Heights issue would be front and center at next week's meetings between Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. But they were unprepared for any presidential announcement this week.

    No formal U.S. process or executive committees were initiated to review the policy before Trump's decision, and the diplomats responsible for implementing the policy were left in the dark.

    Even the Israelis, who have advocated for this move for years, were stunned at the timing of Trump's message.

    After more than two years of watching Trump's impulsive and reckless "governing" style, it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone that he makes these decisions without advance warning. There is no evidence that Trump ever thinks anything through, and so he probably sees no reason to tell anyone in advance what he is going to do.

    Trump almost never bothers consulting with the people who will be responsible for carrying out his policies and dealing with the international fallout, and that is probably why so many of his policy decisions end up being exceptionally poor ones. The substance of most of Trump's foreign policy decisions was never likely to be good, but the lack of an organized policy process on major decisions makes those decisions even more haphazard and chaotic than they would otherwise be.

    There is absolutely no upside for the United States in endorsing illegal Israeli claims to the Golan Heights. It is a cynical political stunt intended to boost Netanyahu and Likud's fortunes in the upcoming election, and it is also a cynical stunt aimed at shoring up Trump's support from Republican "pro-Israel" voters and donors.

    Whatever short-term benefit Israel gains from it, the U.S. gains nothing and stands to lose quite a bit in terms of our international standing.

    There has been no consideration of the costs and problems this will create for the U.S. in its relations with other regional states and beyond because Trump couldn't care less about the long-term effects that his decisions have on the country.

    Once again, Trump has put narrow political ambitions and the interests of a foreign government ahead of the interests of the United States. That seems to be the inevitable result of electing a narcissist who conducts foreign policy based on which leaders flatter and praise him.

    Trump's bad decision can be traced back to Bolton's visit to Israel earlier this year:

    Administration officials said that National Security Advisor John Bolton was instrumental to the decision, after visiting Israel in January to assure officials there that the United States would not abandon them in Syria despite Trump's sudden withdrawal of troops from the battlefield.

    Nervous Israeli officials saw an opportunity. "It was an ask," one Israeli source said, "because of the timing -- it suddenly became a relevant issue about Iran."

    Bolton is usually the culprit responsible any destructive and foolish policy decision over the last year, and his baleful influence continues to grow. We can also see the harmful effects of the administration's Iran obsession at work. In the end, the Syria "withdrawal" hasn't happened and apparently isn't going to, but Trump nonetheless gives Israel whatever it wants in exchange for nothing so that they will be "reassured" of our unthinking support.

    SF Bay March 21, 2019 at 10:28 pm

    Well, of course Trump puts America last. There is one and only one person he is interested in -- himself. As you say this is his narcissistic personality at work.

    My never ending question is always, "Why does any Republican with a conscience remain silent? Are they really all this shallow and self absorbed? Is there nothing Trump does that will finally force them to put country before party and their own ambition?"

    It's a really sad state of events that has put this country on the road to ruin.

    Kouros , , March 21, 2019 at 11:39 pm
    I wonder what Mr. Kagan has to say now about "authoritarian" regimes?!
    Trump 2016 , , March 22, 2019 at 1:45 am
    Trump is making one hell of a mess for the next president to clean up. Straightening out all this stupidity will take years. Here's hoping that Trump gets to watch his foreign policy decisions tossed out and reversed from federal prison.
    Grumpy Old Man , , March 22, 2019 at 3:29 am
    He ought to recognize Russia's seizure of Crimea. Why not? Кто кого?
    Tony , , March 22, 2019 at 8:50 am
    The decision to leave the INF treaty was taken in a similar way and with a total disregard for the consequences. The leaders of the European NATO countries have shown utter spinelessness in going along with it.

    The administration says that a Russian missile violates the treaty but it will not tell us what the range of the missile is. Nor will it allow its weapons inspectors to go and look at it.

    The reason is clear: Fear that the weapons inspectors' findings would contradict the administration's claims.

    Some Perspective , , March 22, 2019 at 9:08 am
    I voted Republican ever since I started voting. I voted for Bush I, Dole, Dubya, and McCain. I couldn't vote for either Obama or Romney, but I voted for Trump because of Hillary Clinton.

    I am shocked and horrified by what I've seen under Trump. I am deeply disappointed that so few Republicans (or Democrats, for that matter) have stood up to him on foreign policy, and I will never vote Republican again. This GOP/Israel connection stinks to high heaven. Anyone who studied or remembers our problem with Communist spies back in the '50s has got to be hearing alarm bells ringing in their ears. Worries about Soviet spying and Russian meddling pale in comparison to what's now going on in plain sight with Israel.

    We're losing our country. We're losing America.

    Sid Finster , , March 22, 2019 at 10:22 am
    To be fair, it ain't just Team R that has the sloppy crush on Israel. Team D is just as bad, even if they don't gush quite so publicly. In fact, episodes such as this one are useful in a way, as they make it hard to pretend that this is just a one-off, a misguided decision that we have to go along with to appease a powerful friend.

    Europoliticians tell that last one a lot. "We really don't want to but the Americans twisted our arms ZOMG Special Relationship so sorry ZOMG!" Only with a lot more Eurobureaucratese.

    G-Pol , , March 22, 2019 at 11:15 am
    I agree with the article's premise, but not because of this move regarding Israel.

    Personally, I believe this move will have little impact on the outcome of the crisis in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and the other Arab monarchies are too focused on containing Iran and Turkey to give a crap about what Israel does. The only Arab states that I can see objecting to this move are Syria (obviously) and the others who were already allied with Iran and/or Turkey to begin with.

    Right now, the REAL center of attention in the region should be Northern Syria. THAT's where the next major war likely will begin. In that area, Saudi Arabia and to a lesser extent Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are the ones doing the major escalations, while Israel has virtually no role at all aside from sideline cheer-leading. And of course, Trump is doing nothing to stop what could become the next July Crisis. What's "America First" about that?

    Nevertheless, Israel should be very concerned about Northern Syria. If war breaks out and the US is forced to go to war with its own NATO ally as a result, Israel should prepare to kiss its alliance with the US goodbye.

    There is no way our international reputation will come out of this war unscathed, and odds are we'll be in a far worse position diplomatically than we were at any point in our history, even during the Iraq war. When that happens, the American people will be out to assign blame. Many (rightfully or not) will blame Israel due to its connections to neoconservatism and Saudi jingoism, and consequently we may end up seeing BOTH parties becoming unfriendly to Israel over the subsequent generation.

    All of this could be prevented if President Trump would just tell Saudi Arabia to STOP the nonsense. But no. He's too focused on MIC profits. He's not America First. And quite frankly, I'm starting to think Benjamin Netanyahu is not Israel-first either, because if he were he'd be warning Trump about the mess he's going to end up getting America, Israel, and much of Europe and the Middle East into.

    [Apr 12, 2019] Putin was KGB agent crowd forgets that Bush Sr was long time senior CIA operative and the director of CIA

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Michael Ledeen has been an influential activist of the US politics. Ledeen is known as a "key player" in the operation Gladio (the holy Graal of holo-biz). ..."
    "... It is true that Putin is different from the silver-spooned Trump and the rabid war-mongers Pompeo and Bolton. ..."
    Apr 12, 2019 | www.unz.com

    annamaria , says: April 12, 2019 at 5:32 pm GMT

    @Anonymous

    What planet are you from? https://www.rt.com/news/456363-victory-trump-icc-atrocities/

    annamaria , says: April 12, 2019 at 5:47 pm GMT
    @Dmitry " because Putin was a KGB officer during the Cold War."

    How interesting And what was the position of the pres. Bush Sr.? You have never knew? Here is a surprise for "Dmitri:" https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2016-featured-story-archive/bush-as-director-of-central-intelligence.html

    Michael Ledeen has been an influential activist of the US politics. Ledeen is known as a "key player" in the operation Gladio (the holy Graal of holo-biz).

    Ledeen is "a former consultant to the United States National Security Council, the United States Department of State, and the United States Department of Defense. He held the Freedom Scholar chair at the American Enterprise Institute where he was a scholar for twenty years and now holds the similarly named chair at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

    Ledeen is considered an "agent of influence" for a foreign government: Israel.

    http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=michael_ledeen

    https://off-guardian.org/2019/04/06/operation-gladio-the-unholy-alliance/

    It is true that Putin is different from the silver-spooned Trump and the rabid war-mongers Pompeo and Bolton.

    [Apr 12, 2019] The main goal of those who started Russia probe was to unleash neo-McCarthyism compaign, not so much to attack Trump who provided to the Deep State everything they wanted: he expanded the military budget, cut taxes, reduced regulations

    Notable quotes:
    "... Those who started Russia probe were attempting a 'coup', AG must start investigation – Trump ..."
    "... The coup happened in earnest on 9/11 and the people who started the Russia probe were just doing what they do: sow division and strife within the domestic population to allow them to continue operating in an unfettered manner in service to their master, Zionism. ..."
    "... "When the Mueller report is released, it would be wonderful if he explained why neither he, the senate, nor any one of the federal law or intelligence agencies who have all given opinions on the matter, has ever taken the simple first step of examining the DNC servers. He won't." ..."
    "... Friends and associates of all of these 'ringleaders' (in single-quotes because my suppositions are based on indirect evidence) have gotten key positions in the Trump Administration. ..."
    Apr 12, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    james , Apr 10, 2019 12:14:58 PM | link

    thoughts on how far this will go?

    Those who started Russia probe were attempting a 'coup', AG must start investigation – Trump

    SlapHappy , Apr 10, 2019 12:29:20 PM | link

    The coup happened in earnest on 9/11 and the people who started the Russia probe were just doing what they do: sow division and strife within the domestic population to allow them to continue operating in an unfettered manner in service to their master, Zionism.
    PJB , Apr 10, 2019 4:04:00 PM | link
    The absurdity of two official mainstream conspiracy theories.

    Nice satire: https://consentfactory.org/2019/04/02/a-russiagate-requiem/

    karlof1 , Apr 10, 2019 7:25:22 PM | link
    Good thread discussion:

    "When the Mueller report is released, it would be wonderful if he explained why neither he, the senate, nor any one of the federal law or intelligence agencies who have all given opinions on the matter, has ever taken the simple first step of examining the DNC servers.
    He won't."

    Nor will there be any answer to the unasked questions that after Murray's open statement about he knowing the leaker and the revelation of the metadata why none of the people involved were questioned.

    karlof1 , Apr 10, 2019 8:13:38 PM | link
    Excellent thread by Aaron Mate! "With Trump, Barr now on offense..."

    "Dems face an awkward choice: continue to defend those who gave them a discredited (& self-defeating) conspiracy theory, or acknowledge that those people, including intel officials, acted improperly."

    I'm sure we'll be discussing what Ray McGovern has dubbed Deep State Gate now that Russiagate's ended. I linked to Ray's essay earlier, which focused on BigLie media's roll.

    Jackrabbit , Apr 10, 2019 11:30:41 PM | link
    karlof1 @49

    IMO the notion that a few senior Intelligence officials (mostly FBI) tried to overthrow Trump is silly to the point of being laughable. But that is the fall-back position that is being ... ur, Trumped up. The fact is, Trump has done everything that the Deep State and establishment could have wanted: expanded the military budget, cut taxes, reduced regulations, etc.

    While some will complain loudly (for now), the whole affair will slowly fade away because, as I've previously noted, the best explanation for Russiagate is that the Deep State selected Trump and ran an anti-Russia psyop to spur neo-McCarthyism. As part of that effort, it seems highly likely that they attempted to settle scores with Wikileaks/Assange and Michael Flynn.

    FBI failures - to follow investigative procedures; to include important information to the FISA court, etc. - are best explained as part of the bi-partisan Deep State consensus to pursue an anti-Russia agenda.

    Anyone that thinks that senior people would participate in such activities without the cover of higher-ups is smoking something. Brennan, Mueller, Hillary, McCain, and Kissinger have the collective power to form and initiate a strategy to meet the challenge from Russia and China.

    It all goes back to the 2014 surprise realization that Russia had grown a backbone and that the Russia-China Alliance was a serious threat to AZ Empire's NWO. That point of view was described by Kissinger in August 2014, in which Kissinger ALSO called for MAGA.

    Trump entered the race for President 10 months later as the only MAGA candidate.

    Jackrabbit | Apr 10, 2019 11:46:30 PM | 69

    @67

    Friends and associates of all of these 'ringleaders' (in single-quotes because my suppositions are based on indirect evidence) have gotten key positions in the Trump Administration.

    • Trump himself is close to the Clintons.
    • VP Pence was close to McCain.
    • Gina Haspel is Brennan's gal at CIA.
    • AG Wm Barr is close to Robert Mueller.
    • Neocon Bolton - close to Kissinger or Kissinger acolytes.

    [Apr 12, 2019] Skripal, the Russkies and Bellingcat

    The fact that Glenn Greenwald proved to be a despicable pressitute cast a long shadow of Snowden and Assange.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Not mentioned by any of the major news media is the fact that Bellingcat is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (sic), renowned for its interference in foreign elections, funding terrorists and overthrowing governments the US doesn't approve of. ..."
    Sep 27, 2018 | investigatingimperialism.wordpress.com
    September 27, 2018 September 27, 2018 27 September 2018 -- Investigating Imperialism

    I smell a rat!

    A quick comment about the two Russian alleged assassins, exposed, we are told by the 'investigative' Website, Bellingcat. Not mentioned by any of the major news media is the fact that Bellingcat is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (sic), renowned for its interference in foreign elections, funding terrorists and overthrowing governments the US doesn't approve of.

    Media Lens picked up on this awhile back in reference to another Western financed outfit, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), funded by the UK Foreign Office. I've also expanded this by quoting from Media Lens' other article that deals with Western-funded disinfo, ' Douma: Part 1 – Deception In Plain Sight':

    Liberal corporate journalists and politicians have been impressed by the fact that SOHR and White Helmets claims have been supported by ostensibly forensic analysis supplied by the Bellingcat website, which publishes 'citizen journalist' investigations. As we noted in a recent alert, Bellingcat is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is funded by the US government and is 'a notorious vehicle for US soft power'. – ' The Syrian Observatory – Funded By The Foreign Office ', Media Lens, June 4 2018

    It's worth quoting more of the Media Lens article as it exposes the nature of Western so-called lefties and their attachment to Western (funded) propaganda outfits:

    In the New Statesman, Paul Mason offered a typically nonsensical argument, linking to the anti-Assad website, Bellingcat:

    'Despite the availability of public sources showing it is likely that a regime Mi-8 helicopter dropped a gas container onto a specific building, there are well-meaning people prepared to share the opinion that this was a "false flag", staged by jihadis, to pull the West into the war. The fact that so many people are prepared to clutch at false flag theories is, for Western democracies, a sign of how effective Vladimir Putin's global strategy has been.'

    Thus, echoing Freedland's reference to 'denialists and conspiracists', sceptics can only be idiot victims of Putin's propaganda. US media analyst Adam Johnson of FAIR accurately described Mason's piece as a 'mess', adding :

    'I love this thing where nominal leftists run the propaganda ball for bombing a country 99 yards then stop at the one yard and insist they don't support scoring goals, that they in fact oppose war.'

    Surprisingly, the Bellingcat website, which publishes the findings of 'citizen journalist' investigations, appears to be taken seriously by some very high-profile progressives.

    In the Independent, Green Party leader Caroline Lucas also mentioned the Syrian army 'Mi-8' helicopters. Why? Because she had read the same Bellingcat blog as Mason, to which she linked:

    'From the evidence we've seen so far it appears that the latest chemical attack was likely by Mi-8 helicopters, probably from the forces of Syria's murderous President Assad.'

    On Democracy Now!, journalist Glenn Greenwald said of Douma:

    'I think that it's -- the evidence is quite overwhelming that the perpetrators of this chemical weapons attack, as well as previous ones, is the Assad government '

    This was an astonishing comment. After receiving fierce challenges (not from us), Greenwald partially retracted, tweeting :

    'It's live TV. Something [sic – sometimes] you say things less than ideally. I think the most likely perpetrator of this attack is Syrian Govt.'

    We wrote to Greenwald asking what had persuaded him of Assad's 'likely' responsibility for Douma. (Twitter, April 10, direct message)

    The first piece of evidence he sent us (April 12) was the Bellingcat blog mentioning Syrian government helicopters cited by Mason and Lucas. Greenwald also sent us a report from Reuters, as well as a piece from 2017, obviously prior to the alleged Douma event.

    This was thin evidence indeed for the claim made. In our discussion with him, Greenwald then completely retracted his claim (Twitter, April 12, direct message) that there was evidence of Syrian government involvement in the alleged attack. [My emph. WB] – ' Douma: Part 1 – Deception In Plain Sight'

    [Apr 12, 2019] The "non-diplomatic" scandal characteristic for our times of lawless deciders

    Apr 12, 2019 | www.unz.com

    annamaria , says: April 12, 2019 at 5:53 pm GMT

    @Dmitry The "non-diplomatic" scandal characteristic for our times of lawless deciders, with the UK leading the charge: https://www.hannenabintuherland.com/news/update-on-the-sergei-skripal-poisoning-and-the-conspicuously-many-unanswered-questions-dr-tim-hayward-herland-report/
    "The Sergej Skripal case never reached beyond allegations. The media now dead silent," Dr. Tim Hayward – Herland Report

    [Apr 12, 2019] Briefing Note: Update on the Salisbury poisonings

    Notable quotes:
    "... Then on 29 March, Salisbury District Hospital unexpectedly said that "Yulia Skripal is improving rapidly and is no longer in a critical condition." She was even "conscious and talking" at that stage, according to the BBC. ..."
    "... A few days later, she was able to phone Viktoria, who said she sounded perfectedly normal, and a few days after that, Yulia was discharged from hospital. Around that time too, the hospital announced that Sergei's condition also improved rapidly. ..."
    "... The whole thing was staged, and the script written months beforehand. ..."
    "... Bizarrely, however, one day before Yulia's rapid recovery was announced, the British police presented a new version of events which begins with skin contact. This is the door handle story, where the Skripals first made contact with Novichok at the front door of Sergei's house. ..."
    "... This breifing proceeds on the premise that the Skripal's were exposed to A-234. I can not see that this has been established beyond reasonable doubt. ..."
    "... And hasn't it been suggested in many places, including the article above, that Skripal's apparent connection with the Steele Dossier could be a motive for some western spooks to want to silence him? ..."
    "... So the revelation of Sergei Skripal's trips to Prague and Estonia actually supports the evidence for his connection with the dossier. However, they have been presented in the media as the opposite – as a motive for the Kremlin to try to kill him. ..."
    "... These latest media reports smell a lot like damage limitation. What do you do if you cannot stop an embarrassing fact from being revealed? The best action is to spin it to completely change its significance, so that it shifts the blame onto your enemy ..."
    Apr 12, 2019 | timhayward.wordpress.com

    timhayward The following briefing note is developed by academics researching the use of chemical and biological weapons during the 2011-present war in Syria. The note reflects work in progress. However, the substantive questions raised need answering, especially given the seriousness of the political situation in the Middle East and UK-Russian relations. The authors welcome comments and corrections.

    Authors: Professor Paul McKeigue (University of Edinburgh), Professor David Miller (University of Bath) and Professor Piers Robinson (University of Sheffield)

    For correspondence: [email protected] /+447764763350 ; Working Group on Syria, Media and Propaganda ( syriapropagandamedia.org ).

    Key points
    • The Skripals were exposed to a phosphoroamidofluoridate compound named A-234, of high purity indicating that it was most likely prepared for research purposes.
    • A-234 or similar compounds have been synthesized at bench scale by national chemical defence labs in Russia and the US in the 1990s, and more recently in Iran and Czechia. A small quantity of A-234 from a Russian state lab was used in the murder of Ivan Kivelidi and Zara Ismailova in 1995.
    • No data on the toxicity of A-234 are available in the public domain. The police statement that the Skripals were exposed through contact with their front door is implausible as there are no known nerve agents that cause onset of symptoms delayed by several hours, and it is improbable that absorption through the skin would cause both individuals to collapse later at exactly the same time.
    • Although Russia is one of several countries that have synthesized A-234 or similar compounds, there is no evidence other than Vil Mirzayanov's story that these compounds were ever developed (implying industrial-scale production and testing of munitions) for military use. Mirzayanov's credibility as an independent whistleblower is undermined by his role in a Tatar separatist movement during 2008-2009, backed by the US State Department.
    • There are multiple indications that the UK is hiding information:-
      • the withholding of the identity of the compound as A-234. For example, the UK statement to the OSCE 12 April 2018 states only that ' the name and structure of that identified toxic chemical is contained in the fall classified report to States Parties'. See also this briefing. The Chief Executive of Porton Down, in his statement 3 April, referred to the compound only as 'Novichok'.
      • the withholding of information about its toxicity
      • the issue of a Defence Media Security Advisory notice on the identity of Skripal's MI6 handler and the attempt to conceal or deny his role in Orbis Business Intelligence.
      • the sequestration of Yulia Skripal.
    • The UK government's case against Russia, stated in a letter to NATO, is based on asserting that "only Russia has the technical means, operational experience and motive for the attack on the Skripals". Each of these points is open to question:-
      • Technical means : it is not seriously disputed that compounds such as A-234 can be produced at bench scale in any modern chemistry lab.
      • Operational experience : it is alleged that Russia has a track record of state-sponsored assassination, but this is not enough to support the assertion that "only Russia" could have enough experience to attempt unsuccessfully to assassinate two unprotected individuals.
      • Motive : No other attempted assassinations of defectors from Russian intelligence services have been recorded. Even if such an assassination campaign had been ordered, the Russian state would have good reasons not to initiate it in the first half of 2018. In contrast there are obvious possible motives (outlined below) for other actors to have taken steps to silence Sergei Skripal at this time.
    What was the agent used?

    An early report that the hospital was dealing with poisoning caused by an opiate such as fentanyl was most likely based on the initial working diagnosis. Signs of organophosphate poisoning – constricted pupils, vomiting, reduced consciousness and reduced breathing – could easily be mistaken for opiate overdose, usually a more likely diagnosis. OPCW has stated that the BZ detected by the Swiss Federal Institute for Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection in one of the samples sent by OPCW was not from Salisbury but was in a control sample .

    The Russian ambassador reported that on 12 March the Foreign Secretary had told him that the nerve agent used against Mr and Ms Skripal had been identified as A-234. The OPCW report issued on 12 April did not identify the agent but stated that they had confirmed the identification made by the UK and that this identification had been included in the confidential report provided to "States parties". On 14 April the Russian Foreign Minister stated that A-234 had been reported by the Swiss Federal Institute for Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection that was one of the four accredited labs used by OPCW to analyse the Salisbury samples.

    Based on public reports, a ChemSpider record for A-234 has been created which assigns it the IUPAC name ethyl [(1E)-1-(diethylamino)ethylidene] phosphoramidofluoridate. Its predicted vapour pressure is very low indicating that it is predicted to be non-volatile. No information on its stability is available. The OPCW director Uzumcu stated in a newspaper interview that the agent "seems to be very persistent," and "not affected by weather conditions". This was confirmed the next day by an OPCW press statement that: "the chemical substance found was of high purity, persistent and resistant to weather conditions". Ian Boyd, the chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, was reported to have stated: "The chemical does not degrade quickly. You can assume it is not much different now from the day it was distributed". No experimental studies of the stability of A-234 have been reported.

    Who could have produced A-234 in bench-scale quantities?

    It is no longer seriously disputed that, as noted in our earlier briefing , any well equipped university lab can synthesize and purify such chemicals at bench scale. OPCW r eported that the agent (presumably A-234) was of high purity with "almost complete absence of impurities". This suggests that it was from a batch that had been synthesized for research, rather than for assassination purposes where it would be unnecessary to purify the agent.

    Uzumcu stated in an interview with the New York Times that he had been told by UK officials that 50-100 grams of the agent was used.

    "For research activities or protection you would need, for instance, five to 10 grams or so, but even in Salisbury it looks like they may have used more than that. Without knowing the exact quantity, I am told it may be 50, 100 grams or so, which goes beyond research activities for protection"

    OPCW quickly contradicted this in a statement that "OPCW would not be able to estimate or determine the amount of the nerve agent that was used in Salisbury on 4 March 2018. The quantity should probably be characterized in milligrams".

    Who has studied A-234 or similar compounds?

    Bench-scale research on the toxicity of agents that might be used in chemical warfare is entirely legitimate under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and does not have to be declared to OPCW.

    Russia

    Since our last briefing note , more material from the investigation of the Kivelidi poisoning has been published by Novaya Gazeta, updating the earlier article published on 22 March . The second article includes an image of the mass spectrometry profile of the sample recovered from the telephone handset, which matches that submitted by Edgewood to the NIST98 mass spectrometry database. The Russian experts who commented on the original result appear not to have had access to the mass spectrometry profile of A-234, and to have incorrectly reconstructed the structure from a best guess, based on the mass-charge ratios of the fragments, as something like the GV agent (both agents have molecular mass 224 daltons, and a 58-dalton fragment). This establishes that Russia had synthesized this compound at bench scale by the mid 1990s, but does not confirm that it was ever developed for military use as alleged by Mirzayanov.

    US

    A 1997 newspaper article refers to a secret US army intelligence report referring to Russian development of A-232 and its "ethyl analog" A-234, indicating that the designation of these compounds and their structures was known to the US by this time. As noted in our last briefing note, the Edgewood lab submitted a mass spectrometry profile for A-234 to the public database NIST98, which was current from 1998 to 2001.

    A patent application submitted by a US government lab in 2008 mentions "Novichoks", but examination shows that the structures given for these compounds were the dihaloformaldoxime structures previously published as supposed "Novichoks", not the phosphoramidofluoridates published by Mirzayanov later in 2008. This does not indicate that the applicants were studying these compounds – most likely they included them to make their patent as broad as possible.

    Iran and Czechia

    A study from Iran published in 2016 reported synthesis for research purposes of a compound similar to A-234, differing from it only by the presence of methyl instead of ethyl groups. In an interview with Czech television , President Zeman stated that in November 2017 the related compound designated A-230 was studied at the Brno Military Research Institute.

    Other labs

    The director of Porton Down has declined to comment on whether Porton Down has stocks of A-234 for research purposes. The OPCW labs that identified A-234 in the specimens from Salisbury were most likely matching it against a mass spectrometry profile in OPCW's Central Analytical Database.

    What is known of the toxicity of A-234?

    No data on the toxicity of A-234 are available in the public domain. The printout of the entry in the NIST 98 database appears to cross-reference an entry in the database RTECS ( Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances) but no entry for this compound now exists in RTECS.

    Why was the structure of A-234 revealed?

    The structure of A-234 was revealed in a book by Vil S Mirzayanov in 2008, some 13 years after he had emigrated to the US with the story of a secret programme to develop chemical weapons of a class named "Novichoks". During 2008-2009 the US government, with an active part for the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was encouraging the development of a separatist movement in Tatarstan. As part of this, Mirzayanov was declared head of a Tatar government-in-exile in December 2008. The publication of his book may thus have been part of an effort to build up Mirzayanov's status as a dissident. His role in this operation may explain why subsequent discussion of his book by OPCW delegates was closely monitored (and discouraged) by the US State Department . Mirzayanov's involvement in this operation undermines his credibility as an independent whistleblower.

    When and where were the Skripals exposed to A-234?

    A summary of the different versions on which journalists were apparently briefed by security sources was given by the Russian embassy:-

    – The Skripals could be sprayed with poison by attackers in the street (Daily Mail, 6 March, source: "Anti-terror police").

    – The nerve agent could be planted in one of the personal items in Yulia Skripal's suitcase before she left Moscow for London. According to this theory the toxin was impregnated in an item of clothing or cosmetics or else in a gift that was opened in the house of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, meaning Yulia Skripal was deliberately targeted to get at her father (The Telegraph, 15 March, source: "Senior sources in the intelligence agencies").

    – The nerve agent could be planted in the air conditioner of the car of Skripals (Daily Mail, 19 March, source: "Security expert Philip Ingram").

    – The Skripals could be poisoned through buckwheat that Yulia Skripal had asked her friend to buy and bring for her father, because she had forgotten to pick up the grocery gifts herself (The Sun, 1 April, source: "British investigators").

    On 28 March the police announced that "at this point in our investigation, we believe the Skripals first came into contact with the nerve agent from their front door".

    Although it is possible that a nerve agent could be prepared in a formulation that would be absorbed only slowly through the skin, it is implausible that two individuals exposed through contact with the front door would have received doses that caused them to collapse suddenly and so nearly simultaneously that neither had time to call for help, at least three hours later. It is more likely that they were attacked shortly before they were found collapsed on the park bench.

    Sergei Skripal's link with Orbis: possible motive for murder

    In the first few days after the poisoning there were media reports that Sergei Skripal had been in regular contact with his MI6 handler, whose Linked-In profile had stated that he was a consultant for Orbis Business Intelligence. On 7 March this profile was deleted and a Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice was issued to caution journalists against disclosing the identity of this consultant. However at Skripal's trial in 2007 his MI6 handler had been identified as Pablo Miller , and the link between Skripal and Miller had been described in detail by Russian opposition media on 6 March.

    This link between Skripal and Orbis may be relevant to the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, the founder of Orbis, containing derogatory information on Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia. This dossier had been used by the FBI to apply for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court order authorizing surveillance of Trump's campaign. By early 2018 the unravelling of this story was creating serious difficulties for Steele and for those he had worked with. These difficulties included a referral for criminal investigation by two US Senators , a libel case in the US against the publisher of the dossier which had led to a court ruling that Steele should be questioned in an English court, and a libel case in England against Orbis and Steele. It is not difficult to postulate a situation in which the potential for damage to US-UK relations could have provided a motive for actors on both sides of the Atlantic to ensure that Sergei Skripal would not be available to give evidence.

    The UK government's position

    This was summarized in a letter from the National Security Adviser , Sir Mark Sedwill to the NATO Secretary-General on 13 April 2018. Sedwill's letter made several assertions that were substantiated only by "intelligence":

    • By 1993, when Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, it is likely that some Novichoks had passed acceptance testing, allowing their use by the Russian military
    • Russia further developed some Novichoks after ratifying the convention
    • During the 2000s, Russia commenced a programme to test means of delivering chemical warfare agents and to train personnel from special units in the use of these weapons. This programme subsequently included investigation of ways of delivering nerve agents, including by application to door handles.
    • In the mid-2000s, President Putin was closely involved in the Russian chemical weapons programme
    • Within the last decade Russia has produced and stockpiled small quantities of Novichoks

    Appearing before the House of Commons Defence Committee on 1 May, Sedwill (11:39) extolled the government's reaction to the Salisbury incident as "an example of the Fusion Doctrine in practice". The Fusion Doctrine brings other government departments under the National Security Council with "the introduction of senior officials as senior responsible owners to deliver each of the NSC's priorities".

    Sedwill's involvement in the preparation of the now widely discredited dossier 'Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction' , released in September 2002, calls into question his credibility in making these uncorroborated assertions. The UK government's case as set out by Sedwill is based on asserting that "only Russia has the technical means, operational experience and motive for the attack on the Skripals". Each of these points is open to serious criticism:-

    • Technical means: it is not seriously disputed that A-234 can be produced at bench scale in any organic chemistry lab.
    • Operational experience: it is alleged that Russia has a track record of state-sponsored assassination, but this does not support the assertion that only Russia has the operational experience for such an assassination. On the contrary, the failure of the assassination attempt, against two unprotected individuals, suggests that the perpetrators lacked the operational experience and competence that one would expect of state-directed assassins.
    • Motive: no other attempted assassinations of defectors from Russian intelligence services have been recorded. If the Russian state had decided to begin assassinating these defectors, it is unlikely that they would have chosen to start in March 2018, just before the presidential election and three months before the FIFA World Cup. However, as noted above, it is possible to identify motives for other actors to silence Sergei Skripal at this time.
    Acknowledgements

    We thank Professor Rudy Richardson of the University of Michigan for advice on the toxicology of nerve agents.

    LittleOldMe says: January 22, 2019 at 12:29 pm
    Awesome journalism. The kind we sourly lack in the msm. But I guess they are all "bought and paid for" This whole story has looked like a farce from the start, especially in the msm. Like they were making it up while they were going along Sounded like: ( https://www.crisis-solutions.com/ ) Who do exactly that sort of thing.

    My question is: Is it even likely that two people will touch the same door handle, either on their way in or out of the house? Two people and two door handles (inside and outside).

    When you leave together, only ONE person will touch the outside door handle, when closing the door, usually the last one to leave, right?

    Just my 2 cents

    ;Brendan says: May 11, 2018 at 9:05 pm
    The authors say " there are no known nerve agents that cause onset of symptoms delayed by several hours, "

    A publication from 2009 contradicts this, but it seems to suggest that the onset is gradual rather than sudden:

    "Even a lethal drop may require 30 minutes, rather than seconds, to manifest clinically, and a small, nonlethal drop may develop symptoms over 18 hours."

    "Nerve Agents", Jonathan Newmark, in Clinical Neurotoxicology https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/organophosphate-insecticides

    This delayed reaction still does not explain the unbelievable timeline of the symptoms in the official British version of the Skripal case. As the authors point out, that version is unlikely to be true, as it would mean that the two victims collapsed suddenly and almost simultaneously after a long delay.

    It is all the more unlikely, as Yulia should have collapsed later than Sergei, due to the difference in the skin layers in men and women. Because the subcutaneous layer is thicker in women, the nerve agent's transit time is longer, according to Newmark's piece.

    Brendan says: May 11, 2018 at 9:06 pm
    Those comments by Newmark refer to absorption of nerve agent through the skin. This is in contrast to what he says about inhalation of a large amount of vapour:

    "In a vapor challenge of sufficient magnitude, perhaps 0.5 LCt50 or higher, the sequence of symptoms can be so fast as to seem clinically simultaneous. Many patients have been described who, after a large vapor challenge, lost consciousness, seized, and developed all of the other symptoms essentially within seconds of exposure."

    This sudden attack due to vapour appears very consistent with the Skripals' inability to call for help when they collapsed.

    Furthermore, for more than three weeks after the incident, the only methods of poisoning that were taken seriously involved the inhalation of nerve agent. First, it was supposed to have been sprayed on the Skripals in the park. Later, it was believed that Novichok in powder form had been placed in the ventilation system of Sergei's car.

    Brendan says: May 11, 2018 at 9:08 pm
    As well as the rapid onset of symptoms of vapour inhalation, Newmark also describes its possible long term effects, which he contrasts with those resulting from skin contact:

    "Vapor nerve casualties, if removed from the source of contamination, or masked, and treated aggressively, either die or improve rapidly. Humans metabolize a circulating nerve agent quickly if it does not kill them. No depot effect is observed with vapor casualties. The situation is quite different with the patient who gets a drop of liquid nerve agent on the skin."

    The most important part of that section is "Vapor nerve casualties either die or improve rapidly." This is consistent with the prognosis for the Skripals both before and after their recovery.

    For three weeks, Sergei and Yulia were given little chance of recovery. On Monday 26 March, Prime Minister Theresa May told Parliament "Sadly, late last week doctors indicated that their condition is unlikely to change in the near future and that they may never recover fully."

    In the two days after that, others – who were close to the Skripals – put it more bluntly.
    Viktoria Skripal, who is Sergei's niece and Yulia's cousin, told the BBC that there was "maybe 1 percent of hope" and that they had "a very small chance of survival".

    Ross Cassidy, a close friend and former neighbour of Sergei, told Sky News: "We've already been told they will be severely mentally impaired and I don't think they would want that. I think death would probably be merciful."

    Then on 29 March, Salisbury District Hospital unexpectedly said that "Yulia Skripal is improving rapidly and is no longer in a critical condition." She was even "conscious and talking" at that stage, according to the BBC.

    A few days later, she was able to phone Viktoria, who said she sounded perfectedly normal, and a few days after that, Yulia was discharged from hospital. Around that time too, the hospital announced that Sergei's condition also improved rapidly.

    All of this indicates a much greater likelihood that Yulia and Sergei were poisoned by means of inhalation than skin contact. Not only that, but the doctors treating them, and the UK authorities, must have believed that too.

    Allan Howard says: May 12, 2018 at 10:37 pm

    The whole thing was staged, and the script written months beforehand.
    Brendan says: May 11, 2018 at 9:09 pm
    Bizarrely, however, one day before Yulia's rapid recovery was announced, the British police presented a new version of events which begins with skin contact. This is the door handle story, where the Skripals first made contact with Novichok at the front door of Sergei's house.

    This version gives the impression that the investigators had not noticed the Novichok on the front door during the weeks of intensive investigation by hundreds of officers! This is in spite of the fact that it was known that their colleague, Detective Nick Bailey, had been to the house before he suffered from the effects of the nerve agent.

    The unexpected announcements of both the door handle story and Yulia's rapid recovery within a day of one another, three weeks after the incident, appears to be a remarkable coincidence in timing.

    It reminds us of another such example that was already mentioned – the Skripals' collapse at almost the same time, hours after touching the Novichok. That's part of the same unbelievable door handle theory.

    This is just speculation, but the timing of the shift in narrative indicates that the UK authorities were afraid of what Yulia might reveal. Now that she was "conscious and talking", she might even be able to help to identify the attackers.

    Because of this, they may have wanted to discredit what she might say about what she noticed in the centre of Salisbury on the day of the poisoning. By moving the crime scene to Sergei's house, the police could dismiss any such statements by Yulia as irrelevant, or maybe as the result of hallucination caused by the nerve agent.

    Brendan says: May 13, 2018 at 7:02 pm

    Just a summary of some facts about the Skripal case that might point to the means of poisoning. These all indicate that it was not by skin contact, but much more likely by inhalation, or possibly ingestion. The first two facts match what the literature says about nerve agent vapour:
    • – Rapid (instead of gradual) onset of the poison's effects in both victims at the same time.
    • – Grim prognosis, followed by rapid improvement ("Vapor nerve casualties either die or improve rapidly").
    • – The investigators' belief for weeks that the poison was either in aerosol or powder form or was added to food. (we can see these scenarios both in the leaks to the media and in the focus of investigation in Salisbury town centre).
    • – In contrast, the apparent complete lack of belief for weeks in the door handle theory, which involves skin contact.
    • – The strange timing of the first mention of this version. It was presented – almost as a fact – after three and a half weeks of intensive investigation, approximately on the day of Yulia's unexpected recovery.

    Neil says: May 11, 2018 at 9:25 pm

    This breifing proceeds on the premise that the Skripal's were exposed to A-234. I can not see that this has been established beyond reasonable doubt.

    If the information referred to by Segei Lavrov is reliable, it must pertain to environmental samples and not biomedical samples. Presumably A-234 is a fast acting nerve paralyzing agent, it would therefore seem incongruous that the Skripals could have had any significant exposure to it but be recovering fully (apparently).

    Not least if they were exposed to it and then initially assessed and treated for fentanyl exposure.

    Neil says: May 13, 2018 at 1:07 pm

    Swiss express their incomprehension at the purported lab report obtained by Russian foreign ministry: https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/EC/M-58/en/58th_Meeting_of_the_Executive_Council_Statement_delivered_by_Ms._Nadine_Olivieri_Lozano_Deputy_Permanent_Representative_of_Switzerland_to_the_OPCW.pdf
    Neil says: May 13, 2018 at 8:36 pm

    Presumably they did identify A-234, but finding it in environmental samples need not imply the Skripals were exposed to it.

    Pingback:

    The Salisbury Poisonings. What Was the Agent Used? Who Could Have Produced It? When and Where were the Skripals Exposed? | williambowles.info

    democritus460 says: May 14, 2018 at 5:36 pm

    And how prescient of the MD of UK CBRN respirator-maker, Avon Protection, to write a piece on the BBC pretty much predicting a chemical attack on a NATO member, possibly involving 'new super chemicals many times more potent than nerve agents like Sarin and VX', just days before the Salisbury incident

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-43074956

    Allan Howard says: May 15, 2018 at 6:08 pm
    And several weeks before the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria the Russians were warning that a false flag attack was being planned:

    https://www.rt.com/news/421589-us-preparing-syria-provocations-airstrikes/

    Brendan says: May 16, 2018 at 10:37 am
    The latest story is that the Kremlin targeted Sergei Skripal because he travelled to Prague and Estonia in order to provide security officers with information on Russian espionage.

    But wait isn't Estonia the place where another Salisbury resident, Skripal's alleged handler, Pablo Miller was based for years as an MI6 agent?

    And wasn't Prague the location of a meeting between Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen and Russian officials, as alleged in the Steele Dossier?

    And wasn't that meeting – just a couple of months after Skripal's trip to Estonia in 2016 – monitored by the Estonian secret service, according to Newsweek?

    And hasn't it been suggested in many places, including the article above, that Skripal's apparent connection with the Steele Dossier could be a motive for some western spooks to want to silence him?

    So the revelation of Sergei Skripal's trips to Prague and Estonia actually supports the evidence for his connection with the dossier. However, they have been presented in the media as the opposite – as a motive for the Kremlin to try to kill him.

    These latest media reports smell a lot like damage limitation. What do you do if you cannot stop an embarrassing fact from being revealed? The best action is to spin it to completely change its significance, so that it shifts the blame onto your enemy.

    Adrian Kent. says: July 11, 2018 at 3:52 pm
    HI Tim,

    Full marks for your work here – are there any updates coming in the light of recent events?

    The way you've gone about this is particularly impressive and useful – posing questions and answering them as and when you can.

    This stands in rather stark contrast to a few of the more prominent 'company-liners' on twitter.

    I've had a diverting, but not entirely fruitful, few exchanges with @dankaszeta on the subject of Novichok persistence and the delayed, simultaneous, rapid onset story (to my mind the most obvious flaw in the Governments yarn). In April he was happy enough to state that all OP chemicals degrade in the presence of water as it suited him in his, ahem, Myth Busting piece for politics.co.uk.

    Now, however, it's all actually rather persistent and down to viscosity and all that. I fully understand how it might be were it enclosed in a vial or syringe or something, but it all looked a bit like he was having his cake and eating it when he'd used the hydrolysis argument to explain why the Skripals weren't killed (or why, I assume PC Bailey wasn't either).

    Philip Ingrm (@PhilipIngMBE) chimed in on a recent thread – informing me that the persistence was why they (I'm assuming he meant the Russians) decided to use Novichoks.

    When it came to the delayed collapse story he told me that this was answered in his, Kaszeta's or Hamish DBG's threads. It's a tactic that certainly Kaszeta has deployed more than once – feign weariness when questions get tricky and then refer people to tweets they're too busy or tired to dig out themselves.

    I told Ingram that I thought this was a little lame and pointed him to this site by way of example of good practice.

    The upshot?

    Dan Kaszeta blocked me.

    [Apr 12, 2019] Edward Snowden and Julian Assange Betrayed

    Feb 24, 2014 | homment.com
    Correspondence with Edward Snowden, and the key to freedom for Julian Assange

    A member of our Belgian Jewish community is in touch with Edward Snowden in Russia, both sharing the role of being significant global dissidents who used to live in the USA.

    We are publishing here a copy of some of that correspondence between those two figures, as it discusses the likelihood of how both Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are being betrayed and actively harmed by the American lawyers and US-UK media companies claiming to 'represent' them, including America's ACLU (America's Civil Liberties Union), the UK Guardian and New York Times newspapers, and Glenn Greenwald.

    All these groups and journalists, are apparently hiding thousands of pages of legal files, about the corruption and bribery of US federal (national) judges who are the same judges who would put Julian Assange or Edward Snowden on trial ... even though these lawyers and journalists all know that exposing the crimes of the bribed US judges, is the quick key to releasing Julian Assange from threats that confine him to his refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, and key to more safety and freedom for Snowden as well.

    US Attorney General Eric Holder is accused of sponsoring criminal acts of deception against the UK, Sweden, Russia and other countries, hiding 'smoking gun' evidence of US judge bribery, in order to harm and destroy both Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Google Inc has agreed to censor and hoax the internet and hide dozens of web pages about this.

    This bribery is said to be funded by Britain's Pearson plc, with the Guardian and New York Times accused of accepting Pearson-funded bribes to print fake 'news' to obstruct and pervert justice so that the UK will not prosecute Pearson's bribery of US high judges and government.

    Mr Snowden is also facing the terrifying possibility that his name is being abused by these parties, New York Times, Guardian and Greenwald, for the sake of entrapping other dissidents and whistleblowers into 'trusting' these journalists, who might then convey dissident names to the US regime in order to silence and murder them. It seems possible the Guardian and New York Times have already given Snowden files back to the US regime.

    The correspondence with Edward Snowden makes reference to the police file with several EU countries, who are beginning investigations and prosecutions, starting in Finland, of the CIA-tied Wikipedia website, for fundraising fraud ... that police file significantly discusses the evidence of bribery of US federal judges who are the same judges who would put Edward Snowden and Julian Assange on trial in America, and how Wikipedia, actually an American CIA-controlled 'Trojan horse' for inserting lies on targeted topics, has been used to plant lies about that judicial bribery - the police dossier text is here:

    'CIA Wikipedia fraud Finland police report'
    http://homment.com/FB3PjBQ2DF

    Here is a screenshot of a Google Inc 'search results' page, with tiny text at the bottom admitting that Google is censoring a large number of search results, about Edward Snowden's correspondent, a major witness to the crimes involving the same US judges who would put Edward Snowden or Julian Assange on trial:

    'Live Photo: Google Inc. Caught Censoring EU Search Results on US corruption'
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/22325431@N05/6100668211/in/photostream

    - Jewish Community of Flanders

    [Apr 12, 2019] Is Mueller another of Putin's puppets? I ask because it simply isn't credible that he couldn't find any evidence of collusion, as Adam Schiff has seen it and he has said so repeatedly.

    Apr 12, 2019 | consentfactory.org

    Eric McCow April 2, 2019 at 13:40 Reply

    'So the Mueller report is finally in, and it appears that hundreds of millions of Americans have, once again, been woefully bamboozled. Weird, how this just keeps on happening. At this point, Americans have to be the most frequently woefully bamboozled people in the entire history of woeful bamboozlement. If you didn't know better, you'd think we were all a bunch of hopelessly credulous imbeciles that you could con into believing almost anything, or that our brains had been bombarded with so much propaganda from the time we were born that we couldn't really even think anymore.'

    Brilliant. That really is the central message of '1984'. A lot of the brainwashing, particularly to liberals is ego massaging.They are led to believe they have superior education, intelligence and information.Even in the slipstream of this insanity, it's unlikely you will find a liberal whose confidence in his cultural superiority is even slightly dented.

    'If there is hope,' wrote Winston, 'it lies in the proles.' .

    'The great majority of proles did not even have telescreens in their homes'.

    Nineteen Eighty-four, by George Orwell

    https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79n/chapter1.7.html

    Robert Laine April 2, 2019 at 22:05

    Thanks so much CJ for putting my mind at ease. I feel much better now knowing it was all just a big mistake. Actually, in corporate management courses they don't use the term "mistake". They prefer "learning experience". I have certainly learned a lot during this McCarthy rerun episode.

    Lorie April 3, 2019 at 21:12

    Whew. Now we can all turn our attention to Saddam Maduro who is most surely some kind of a Hitler, or Stapn, or, SOMETHING. Even Trump haters can agree with him on that one, lead by the Bezos Post and the New York peTimes.

    steve Hayes April 9, 2019 at 10:54

    Is Mueller another of Putin's puppets? I ask because it simply isn't credible that he couldn't find any evidence of collusion, as Adam Schiff has seen it and he has said so repeatedly. So all Mueller had to do was ask Schiff – hey, even Tucker Carlson asked.

    [Apr 12, 2019] U.S. attorney general's 'spying' remarks anger Democrats

    Apr 12, 2019 | www.reuters.com


    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General William Barr said on Wednesday he would look into whether U.S. agencies illegally spied on President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, sparking criticism from Democrats who accused him of promoting a conspiracy theory.

    Barr, who was appointed by Trump, is already facing criticism by congressional Democrats for how he has handled the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and his comments about surveillance brought more derision from Democratic senators.

    His testimony echoed longstanding allegations by Trump and Republican allies that seeks to cast doubt on the early days of the federal investigation in an apparent attempt to discredit Mueller, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

    Posted by: librul | Apr 10, 2019 11:47:32 PM | 70 @ Jackrabbit #67

    IMO the notion that a few senior Intelligence officials (mostly FBI) tried to overthrow Trump is silly to the point of being laughable.

    Not to all of us, it isn't. The part I don't understand is the Why of their effort. Did they have some scheme to get rid of Pence too? Or was it all mindless blind hatred because he took down their Goddess Hillary?

    Posted by: Zachary Smith | Apr 10, 2019 11:49:22 PM | 71 ZS @ 68 said in part;"assuming the Corporate Democrats don't force one of their candidates Big Corporations want on the ballot. Which is, of course, most of them."

    I assume what you speculated on above, will happen.

    Posted by: ben | Apr 10, 2019 11:56:00 PM | 72 Zachary Smith @68: ... Corporate Democrats ... domestic policies ...

    The democratic party is irredeemable as it operates as one arm of the duopoly. I don't see any meaningful distinction between "Corporate Democrats" and progressive Democrats except this: progressive Democrats give the Democratic Party cover to support the establishment.

    IMO domestic policy can no longer be considered separately from Empire. "Progressive Democrats" are forced encouraged by their Party to support the military and ignore foreign policy.

    <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

    IMO the only grouping that is currently viable/strong alternative is the libertarians. If they could bring conservatives and (real) progressives together, then we could see a real challenge to the "radical center" (which actually rules as center-right).

    But conservatives, (real) progressives, and libertarians are underfunded and constantly get played.

    Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 11, 2019 12:02:16 AM | 73 @ Zachary Smith | Apr 10, 2019 11:49:22 PM | 71


    RussiaGate: 'Why Did This Ever Start In The First Place?'

    Posted by: librul | Apr 11, 2019 12:06:23 AM | 74 Zachary Smith @71:

    Not to all of us, it isn't. The part I don't understand is the Why of their effort.

    Well of course the WHY baffles you, because the only WHY that makes sense is what I described and that will never be allowed to come out publicly because then people will see that their democracy is a sham.

    The "managed democracy" that we have in USA subverts the will of the people to the Empire.

    Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 11, 2019 12:08:56 AM | 75 "Germany still owes Israel $19 billion for the Holocaust. The new estimate was calculated by independent American economist Sidney Zabludoff, a former CIA, White House and U.S. Treasury official."

    https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-netanyahu-could-have-prevented-the-submarine-affair-by-collecting-germany-s-debt-1.7086232

    https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/East-Germanys-reparation-debt-must-be-demanded-584941
    ---------------

    Chutzpah...

    Posted by: John Smith | Apr 11, 2019 12:13:27 AM | 76 @ 74: Why did Russiagate start in the first place? The short answer is IMO, diversion.

    Another answer could be, that DJT stood on a stage, and asked another country to find his opponents e-mails.

    Posted by: ben | Apr 11, 2019 12:34:51 AM | 77 @ librul #74

    Though I hadn't seen that before, the general theme is in agreement with what I believe is the truth. Even ignorant and thuggish goons like Trump can be victims of a crime, and I believe that's what happened here.

    Posted by: Zachary Smith | Apr 11, 2019 12:52:57 AM | 78 I find it piquant that the vice president of the US attacks a Venezuelan ambassador at the UN and then ramps up his aggression...by retreating.

    Pence is so certain that the other guy doesn't belong, that he himself walks away. Every schoolyard would see this behavior for exactly what it is. Animals would understand it clearly also, in terms of pecking order.

    How perfect this action is in matching precisely what we've been watching the US do in several military theaters for some time now. The louder and the ruder the bluster, the more certain we can be that it covers pure emptiness. And that the US is tangibly retreating under cover of the smoke.

    The cowardice is becoming palpable.

    Posted by: Grieved | Apr 11, 2019 12:53:10 AM | 79 ben

    Well, why did "America First" Trump ask Russia to do that? (And later ask Wikileaks to release the DNC emails!)

    And why did "America First" Trump hire Manafort who had extensive Russian contacts and pro-Russian activities that drew the ire of US officials?

    These (and more) played into Russiagate hysteria that followed the election and were not in keeping with Trump's "America First" rhetoric.

    Now, long after the election, we see additional strangeness like Roger Stone's claims of a contact at Wikileaks.

    Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 11, 2019 1:01:14 AM | 80 Posted by: karlof1 | Apr 10, 2019 6:42:57 PM | 38

    "IDF's chief rabbi-to-be permits raping women in wartime."

    Just how does that differ from Daesh's behavior? Or was it the IDF that told Deash such behavior was okay? I'm pretty certain that rabbi is afoul of fundamental Mosaic Law and thus shouldn't be a rabbi.
    ----------------------

    "The Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition," Ketubot 11b, vol. 7 (NY: Random House, 1991), p. 145:

    "If a grown man has intercourse with a little girl less than three years old, all agree that it is not a significant sexual act "

    "Koren Talmud Bavli," Sanhedrin 54b, vol. 30 (Jerusalem, 2017), p. 41:

    "If a man engages in homosexual intercourse with a minor who is under the age of nine, whether actively or passively, he is exempt as with regard to ritual law..."

    .

    Posted by: John Smith | Apr 11, 2019 1:02:54 AM | 81 @ Grieved with the UN/Pence story....here is China's take on the situation
    "
    UNITED NATIONS, April 10 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations on Wednesday rejected U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's accusation against China over Venezuela.

    "China categorically rejects the accusation," Ma Zhaoxu, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, told a Security Council meeting on the situation in Venezuela.

    "Earlier in his intervention, the U.S. representative leveled an unfounded accusation on China's position on Venezuela in the Security Council," he said, referring to Pence's remarks that Russia and China obstructed Council action on Venezuela with their veto power.

    China has all along maintained friendly and cooperative relations with other countries around the world, including Venezuela, on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, he said.

    "We support peoples of all countries in independently choosing their development paths that cater to their national conditions. We never interfere in other countries' internal affairs, nor do we impose anything on other countries," Ma added.

    Members of the Security Council should faithfully abide by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and the universally recognized norms of international relations, genuinely respect the choices of peoples of other countries, and do more positive and practical things for the people of Venezuela rather than the opposite, said the Chinese envoy.
    "

    Posted by: psychohistorian | Apr 11, 2019 1:02:58 AM | 82 WJ @51 ... FWIW, as of this writing I'm having no trouble accessing the naked capitalism site.

    Posted by: John Anthony La Pietra | Apr 11, 2019 1:05:26 AM | 83 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Instagram March 10, 2019:

    "Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the Nation-State Law that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People -- and them alone."

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D1T_F00VsAAb25V.jpg

    Posted by: John Smith | Apr 11, 2019 1:07:35 AM | 84 @ Jackrabbit #75

    I"m not sure we disagree very much, for I also believe our "democracy" is thoroughly managed, and "sham" is quite a good word for it. The part I don't understand is why you seem to object to pointing out efforts by the 'managers' to correct the error of a slam dunk election going bad. Hillary was supposed to be in the White House. More than one nation had been making advance payments to the Clinton Foundation to purchase her goodwill. She was the dream for Big Banking, the apartheid Jewish state, and probably a lot more folks. That didn't happen, and some people became unhinged.

    Posted by: Zachary Smith | Apr 11, 2019 1:08:09 AM | 85 Zionism & Wahhabism: Twin Cancers of the Middle East (And Their Veiled Origins)

    It is a fascinating, though rather grim, story, spanning the First World War, the creation of the states of Israel, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia, and taking in Lawrence of Arabia, all the way to the fall of Gadaffi in Libya, the Syria Civil War and Rise of the so-called Islamic State, among other things. It's a story of long-term manipulation, insidious indoctrination, and secret, almost 'mythical' works of literature.

    These two ideologies – Wahhabism in Islam and Zionism which is linked primarily to the Jewish religion – may seem like unrelated entities on the surface of it

    https://theburningbloggerofbedlam.wordpress.com/2014/11/07/zionism-and-wahhabism-the-twin-cancers-destroying-the-middle-east-and-their-dark-origins/

    Posted by: John Smith | Apr 11, 2019 1:16:39 AM | 86 @ Zachary Smith who wrote about Clinton II
    "
    She was the dream for Big Banking, the apartheid Jewish state, and probably a lot more folks.
    "
    So that makes Trump a nightmare for Big Banking, the apartheid Jewish state, etc., right?

    I encourage you to understand how much you are being played. If Big Banking has both of them, whom is being played?

    Posted by: psychohistorian | Apr 11, 2019 1:17:13 AM | 87 Zachary Smith @78:

    Though I hadn't seen that before, the general theme is in agreement with what I believe is the truth.

    I think that you're not thinking this through.

    You're question of WHY, is still unanswered.

    > WHY did the hold back on Russian-influence allegations during the election?
    Hillary was suppose to win, sure. But why not ENSURE that win?

    > WHY did they continue with Russiagate after the election?
    They engaged in Treasonous behavior because Hillary was butthurt?
    She supposedly got 3 million more votes than Trump; how badly could her ego be bruised?

    > WHY did the establishment hate Trump so much?
    He's delivered all they could want and more.

    > Why did Russiagate force Trump to bend to Deep State wishes?
    Ha! It didn't! Trump has always maintained that there was no Russia collusion. And now the Mueller Report confirms this. Trump's Cold War policy continues the Deep State's same policy - because Trump is part of the team.


    This is not meant to be exhaustive. There are many other questions that you could ask because there's a lot that doesn't add up - unless Russiagate was a Deep State psyop with bi-partisan support (as I've described).

    Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 11, 2019 1:21:14 AM | 88 Zachary Smith @85: efforts by the 'managers' to correct the error

    Because it makes no sense.

    If they got their wish and "corrected" the error by overthrowing Trump, there would be a civil war. Which is counter-productive in the extreme.

    But they don't need to take such drastic action 'cause Trump does that the Deep States wants anyway! So what are they trying to "correct"?!?

    Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 11, 2019 1:29:31 AM | 89 correction: ... what the Deep State wants ...

    Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 11, 2019 1:30:30 AM | 90 Alleged ongoing Military Coup in Sudan today, another just happened in Algeria... Haftar making moves in Libya, could all just be a coincidence, then again, maybe not? Anyone got anything? Wondering what Mr B. thinks..

    Posted by: EtTuBrute | Apr 11, 2019 5:08:30 AM | 91 Assange has just been expelled from the embassy and arrested

    Posted by: Kadath | Apr 11, 2019 5:53:11 AM | 92 @ 92 * time for everyone to stand up for human rights promoter Assange?

    The end of capitalism, in disguise. US pol structure does not allow for such, as the US (and other West, the US is just a stellar ex.) are ruled by rapacious coproratist (typo) oligarchs. Won't happen.
    Posted by: Noirette @ 7

    I don't think the issue is to end capitalism, but economic Zionism (all known as capitalism changed into monopoism) is on its way out. Revolutionaries, all over the world, are in place to revert monopolism back to capitalism and democracy back to human rights.**

    She [Hillary] was the dream for Big Banking, the apartheid Jewish state, and probably a lot more folks. That didn't happen, and some people became unhinged. by Zachary Smith @85 As things have turned out.. we might have all been better off with Hillary than Trump.. Next time around I am going to vote for the most obvious liar, and the candidate with the most stinking capaign promises. looking back over the elections since Abe Lincolm was assassinated by the city of London.. because Lincoln was moving to make USA its own bank and to issue its own currency.. **

    At http://representativepress.org/IsraelViolatesResolution.html c/b found the pre conditions, all of which Israel agreed to,
    for admission of Israel into the UN..
    1. he status of jerusalem w/n/b altered
    2. Palestinans w/b permitted to return
    3. The partition agreement w/become the final borders.

    Text of General Assembly Resolution 273 of May 11, 1949 admitting Israel into the UN, notes Israel agreed to comply with Resolution 194 : UNITED NATIONS General Assembly A/RES/273 (III) 11 May 1949

    what is really interesting is to take a look at the low life supporting this UN action at the press, in the white house and at the MIC. Many supporters there played at hugmongous part in the rest of the rise of Economic Zionism which depends on leg breaker USA to get its way..

    Posted by: snake | Apr 11, 2019 6:18:53 AM | 93
    Julian Assange has been arrested and dragged out of the embassy. he does not look well.

    http://news.trust.org/item/20190411092809-cxs4c

    Posted by: michaelj72 | Apr 11, 2019 6:22:16 AM | 94 Posted by: Zachary Smith | Apr 10, 2019 7:43:14 PM | 45

    "I went to the Black Agenda link and saw nothing more than "sheepdog" being used as an insult and as a reason not to consider that candidate. Do you have any specifics for Gabbard not being sincere in wanting to stop endless wars?"

    She's a Democrat, a leading cadre of an indelibly war-mongering political party (in addition to being the oldest, longest-running pro-capitalist party on Earth; by definition a socialist also could never be a Democrat).

    Therefore by definition she has to be pro-war, just as anyone who's anti-war could never be a Democrat. (That's just one of many, many reasons I could never possibly even consider the Democrats; it's a non-starter.)

    "Sheepdog" is not an insult. (Well, not just an insult.) It's a technical term for a pro-system politician who pretends to be "progressive", "socialist", "radical" etc. but is really no such thing where it comes to any real action. The purpose is to keep people from straying outside the fold of the Democrat Party (Sanders is the most notorious example, a con artist his entire career), or of electoralism as such (the "Green Party" version).

    "I'm aware the woman is totally in bed with the apartheid Jewish State, but then, who isn't?"

    And still you ask if it's possible even in principle for her to be anti-war?

    Posted by: Russ | Apr 11, 2019 6:32:23 AM | 95 On Assange -
    So where are the NGO/MSM/liberals human rights supporters now defending Assange?! What a joke.
    Extradition to the US is a no brainer, apparently Assange was right about residing in the embassy.

    Is this a Trump or rather what I believe - a deep state/CIA/FBI operation? Trump have after all been quite positive on Assange as far as the clinton email leak.

    Posted by: Zanon | Apr 11, 2019 6:33:55 AM | 96 whatever happened to that old "insurance" file WikiLeaks put out way back in 2011 when this whole thing started which they threaten to release the encryption keys for if Assange was arrested/harmed. Did they already release the contents through WikiLeaks. I recall that one of Assange's old partners turned traitor after he was bribed by the US and stole thousands of documents and passwords in an effort to sabotage WikiLeaks. If Wikileaks does have anything they've been holding back, now is the time to release it. Wikileaks may have western legal tradition on it's side, but in the Outlaw empire the law means nothing, only force and bribery hold sway.

    In a larger sense, while the US empire may have won this round, they may end up rueing this day, as I am certain there are dozens of closet Wikileaks supporters within the US/British governments who will be outraged by these actions and they will strike back in their own ways. At the very least I suspect that Moreno will suffer severe consequences from this action. We already know that some of his own diplomats leaked this expulsion in advance in hopes of sabotaging it and the former President Correa has just declared Moreno the 'Greatest traitor in Ecuadorian history', so I gleefully expect some daggers to find their way into his backside in the near future (most probably leaking documents to WikiLeaks showing Moreno's involvement in massive corruption - not that there's anything unique about corruption in South American governments)

    Posted by: Kadath | Apr 11, 2019 7:38:34 AM | 97 @45 Zachary Smith

    I would like to see Tulsi (or any other anti-war candidate) take the mantle of the democratic party on an anti-war platform.

    I posted the link to bring attention to the efforts being made (and coincidentally mentioned by wendy davis @42) of efforts to create a true anti-war 3d party. I think it would be easier at this point in time to create a new 3d party focused on reducing military spending than to urge the democrat or republican party to adopt a half hearted effort at limiting us military misadventures. Both parties are fragile and susceptible to splintering in the current environment and this does improve the chances for a viable 3d party to emerge.

    I don't think the author was insulting to Gabbard. It read to me like he was explaining the role any anti-war candidate would play in a party controlled by the established democratic party. You can already see the obstacles being put in her way by the way she is being down-played in the press.

    b4real

    Posted by: b4real | Apr 11, 2019 8:22:00 AM | 98 @43 Dadda: " A true Zen saying!"

    Posted by: Chevrus | Apr 11, 2019 8:26:34 AM | 99 Is Russia a failed state -
    https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/424511-managing-russias-dissolution

    Or is U.S. (actually the entire Globalist empire) maxing out it's credit card?

    And speaking of failed states -
    https://southfront.org/us-southcom-head-says-venezuela-military-intervention-might-be-necessary-by-end-of-2019/

    Posted by: jared | Apr 11, 2019 8:28:18 AM | 100

    [Apr 12, 2019] A Dummies Guide To What Dems Will Say When Mueller Report Is Released

    Notable quotes:
    "... The Dems, of course, will cherry-pick passages from the report that can most effectively be spun together into a fantastic web of collusion. And like most conspiracy theorists, they will allege things that can never be proven or disproven. That basic fact alone will allow them to keep expressing outrage and carry on with their accusations about collusion and obstruction for as long as they choose. ..."
    "... Different Democrats will parrot one or more of these, depending on whether they are in a safe or vulnerable district. For example, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), in the heart of an overwhelmingly Democratic region, will likely employ all four points, while a newly elected Democrat in a district won by Trump might focus only on the first. ..."
    "... Oh, one last thing. Here is what the Democrats will not say: We appreciate all the work that went into this report. This counterintelligence investigation was very thorough, there is no evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice, so we look forward to going back to the job we were elected to do: legislating for the benefit of the American people. ..."
    Apr 11, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Tom Donner via Liberty Nation,

    Now that Attorney General William Barr has promised to release the Mueller report in all its glory within the next few days, we thought it considerate to save you time you'll never get back watching the establishment media's reaction by informing you in advance of just how the Democrats are going to respond.

    But, you say, the report has not even been released, so how could you know what the Democrats will say? Well, they have been at this collusion delusion for more than two years now, we have witnessed the lengths to which they are willing to go in an effort to take down President Trump, and they have only a few bullets left in their chamber. We can state with overwhelming confidence that they will fire all of them.

    But let's start by reaffirming something as certain as the sun rising in the east: The Democrats will not accept the validity of the report in whatever form they receive it. That would, after all, require them to stop spinning their conspiracy theories, and we can't have that.

    From there, we move seamlessly to a preview of the four prefabricated talking points that will launch the Democrats' spin cycle. We call them the Mueller final four, because this is the last chance to demagogue the issue of Trump-Russia collusion. You need only to fill in the blanks using yet-to-be-determined passages from the report.

    So without further ado, we present the talking points Democrats will provide for the elite media to dutifully repeat and amplify:

    Talking Point 1 (mildest of the four): While we thank and commend Mr. Mueller for his work, the scope of his investigation was necessarily limited by his specific mandate and the special counsel law itself. There are just so many areas Mueller was not able to probe, thus at least six, and perhaps as many as nine, of our congressional committees must take the baton and continue running down the track. It is undoubtedly the highest and best use of our time, because as legislators we are elected to investigate (LINOs – legislators in name only?). After all, even though the financial disclosure forms Trump filed during the presidential campaign are far more revealing than any tax return, we must do everything possible to force the release of Trump's tax returns anyway. He is the first presidential candidate in 40 years not to release his tax returns, so he must be hiding something. And, of course, we need to dig into the entire history of the Trump organization, because we have deep suspicions all manner of crookedness is hidden in there.

    Talking Point 2 : While the conduct outlined does not quite rise to the level of criminality, the report details events and conversations that are deeply disturbing, primarily (fill in most easy-to-spin passages of report). Remember that not all improper, shameful, and traitorous conduct is felonious. Though the special counsel falls just short of uncovering collusion, he also refused to issue a recommendation on obstruction of justice . We all know that the attorney general is little more than a bootlicking hack taking orders from Trump, ipso facto his finding of no obstruction is likely some sort of coverup. And even though we lauded Rod Rosenstein for his stewardship of the special counsel investigation, even Rosenstein, in concurring with Barr's judgment on obstruction, has evidently fallen under the spell of the president and, like Barr, cannot be trusted.

    Talking Point 3 : Yes, the report contains no direct evidence of anything other than process and financial crimes that occurred either during the special counsel investigation itself or before Trump ran for president, and those have already been litigated. But there is ample circumstantial evidence of conspiracy between Trump operatives and the Russians to interfere in the election. For example, (fill in name of alleged conspirator) and (fill in name of another alleged conspirator) spoke to (fill in name of alleged Russian conspirator) less than two weeks apart. Mueller is by nature conservative in his judgments, no matter that an overwhelming majority of the lawyers he hired are politically active, anti-Trump Democrats who contributed to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or both. And regardless of whether he felt it appropriate to launch military-style raids on Michael Flynn and Roger Stone. So we must investigate this circumstantial evidence and connect the dots ourselves.

    Talking Point 4 : The redactions in this report are clear evidence that someone is trying to hide the parts that likely reveal actual collusion. The crooked attorney general and deplorable president used the cover of (choose one: grand jury testimony/classified information/interviews with completely innocent subjects) to redact the truth. Yes, all of that testimony and information must be redacted by law or by long-standing department regulations and precedent, but we nevertheless repeat our demand that the entire report, unredacted, be released, or we will launch yet more investigations on the cover-up by Barr and, of course, Trump. What are you hiding with these redactions, Mr. Barr?

    The Dems, of course, will cherry-pick passages from the report that can most effectively be spun together into a fantastic web of collusion. And like most conspiracy theorists, they will allege things that can never be proven or disproven. That basic fact alone will allow them to keep expressing outrage and carry on with their accusations about collusion and obstruction for as long as they choose.

    Different Democrats will parrot one or more of these, depending on whether they are in a safe or vulnerable district. For example, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), in the heart of an overwhelmingly Democratic region, will likely employ all four points, while a newly elected Democrat in a district won by Trump might focus only on the first.

    Oh, one last thing. Here is what the Democrats will not say: We appreciate all the work that went into this report. This counterintelligence investigation was very thorough, there is no evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice, so we look forward to going back to the job we were elected to do: legislating for the benefit of the American people.

    So there you go. Everything you need to know about the Democrats' response to the Mueller report before it is even released.

    You're welcome.

    [Apr 11, 2019] Putin Derangement Syndrome After Mueller

    Notable quotes:
    "... In 2016 Hillary Clinton lost a sure-fire election to Donald Trump and, looking for an excuse, jumped on the Russia claim. Putin Derangement Syndrome was ramped up to a much more dangerous level. War-level dangerous. ..."
    Apr 11, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org

    Putin Derangement Syndrome After Mueller

    The West – its governments and its governments' scribes – are obsessed with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Obsessed" is probably too weak a word to describe the years of impassioned coverage, airy speculation and downright nonsense. He is the world's leading cover boy : military hats, Lenin poses, imperial crowns, scary red eyes, strait-jackets, clown hats; anything and everything. He's the avatar of Stalin , he's the avatar of the Tsars , he's the Joker , he's Cthulhu , he's Voldemort , he's Satan . He's the palimpsest for the New World Order's nightmares. Putin is always messing with our minds. He weaponises information, misinformation and sexual assault accusations . Childrens' cartoons , fishsticks , Pokemon and Yellow Vests , "Putin's warships" are lurking when they aren't stalking ; "Putin's warplanes" penetrate European airspace ; "Putin's tanks", massing in 2016 , massing in 2018 , still massing . His empire of rogue states grows . All Putin, all the time .

    In an especially imbecile display in 2015, Western reporters (unable to find his website) thinking he hadn't been seen for several days started a contest of speculation about coups, death, wars, plastic surgery, secret births and other nonsense; when he "re-appeared", the story went down the Memory Hole.

    For some reason, Americans personalise everything. In meetings with US intelligence agencies I was always fascinated how they would reduce every complicated reality to a single individual. But it isn't Saddam, or Assad, or Qaddafi, or Osama, or Aidid, or Milosevic, or Maduro, or Castro or any of the other villains-of-the-day, it's a whole country : these people got to the top for good reasons. Removing the boss makes some difference but never all the difference. They go but they never leave a Washington-friendly country behind and Washington does it all over again somewhere else. This peculiar blindness drives Putin Derangement Syndrome and has infected everybody else.

    But Putin is much worse than the others. The other enemies had relatively weak countries but Russia could obliterate the USA. But worse, Putin's team has steadily become more powerful and more influential. And worst of all, he's still there: huffing and puffing has not blown him down, sanctions strengthen the economy and there is nothing to suggest he won't be succeeded by someone who carries on the same policies. It's a whole country, not just one man.

    Vladimir Putin is the biggest man on earth.

    Except that he's short and can't hide it . He's a megalomaniac because he's short ; he's trying to prove his bigness ; napoleon complex says some shrink . Just another in a long list of crackpot "expert" opinions. From a list I complied in 2015: Asperger's Syndrome , cancer of the spinal cord , personality disorders , gayness , Parkinson's Disease , psychopath , people don't like him so animals have to , sinister, lonely life , fears his own people , envious of Obama . Remember the " gunslinger walk "? Oh, in case you hadn't heard, he was in the KGB and that explains everything: "Once a KGB man, always a KGB man". Nothing is too absurd.

    But laughing has passed – Putin Derangement Syndrome has become dangerous.

    In 2016 Hillary Clinton lost a sure-fire election to Donald Trump and, looking for an excuse, jumped on the Russia claim. Putin Derangement Syndrome was ramped up to a much more dangerous level. War-level dangerous.

    Former Attorney General Eric Holder said President Donald Trump's administration is doing nothing to stop Russians from interfering in the 2018 election cycle, comparing the lack of action on the part of the president to the 9/11 and Pearl Harbor attacks that killed thousands of Americans.

    A popular actor made a video to tell us we were at war . "Warfare" says Haley , "act of war" said John McCain , could be says Cheney , 911 says Clinton , disappointed CIA guy agrees , Pearl Harbor says Nadler . Diplomatic expulsions and sanctions and more sanctions . These are much more serious than gassy op-eds about Putin's gait or fish weights , these are actions: actions have consequences. Moscow doesn't find war talk very funny.

    Clinton's victory was 99% certain until it wasn't and excuses were needed. Clinton went through a lot of them but "Russian interference" was always the big one.

    That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. [9 November 2016] Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument. (From Shattered , quoted here .)

    In What Happened, Clinton also says Russian President Vladimir Putin's support for Trump was driven by his own anti-women sentiment, stacking the deck against her: "What Putin wanted to do was...influence our election, and he's not exactly fond of strong women, so you add that together and that's pretty much what it means." At press events for her memoir, Clinton continues to warn Americans against Russia's power over Trump and the country. "The Russians aren't done. This is an ongoing threat, and that is one of the reasons why I wrote the book and one of the reasons I'm talking about it," she said on Sunday at Southbank Centre's London Literature Festival. ( Newsweek )

    Her claim is, to put it mildly, unproven; the so-called " all 17 agencies" report notwithstanding . (The first premise that it was hacked is here disproved: downloaded by someone in the building ). Her accusation moved Putin Derangement Syndrome away from the realm of mere craziness into war talk. Taking the hint, Western politicians, under attack for their lacklustre performances, were happy to push the blame onto Putin. He's attacking democracy ! Western media weighed in until it became completely accepted by some people that anything that spoiled the happy complacency of the Western world must be a result of Putin's interference: gilets jaunes , " assistance provided to far-right and anti-establishment parties ", he's the poster boy of the dreaded populism , his populist tentacles reach Hungary and Italy . And the next thing we knew, Putin was mucking around in everybody's votes: Brexit ; Catalonia ; Netherlands ; Germany ; Sweden ; Italy ; EU in particular and Europe in general ; Mexico ; Canada . Newsweek gives a helpful list . Sometimes he loses elections: Germany , Ukraine but he goes on, unstopping . But his greatest triumph was said to have been in the US election : he " won " because Donald Trump was his willing puppet .

    (None of these "experts" ever seem to wonder why Putin's influence, so decisive far away, is so ineffective in Ukraine or Georgia. But then, it's not actually a rational, fact-based belief, is it?)

    The entire ramshackle construction is collapsing: if Mueller says there was no collusion then even the last ditch believers will have to accept it: Robert Mueller Prayer Candles are out of stock, time to toss the other tchotchkes , it wasn't a Mueller Christmas after all . Clinton's fabrication had two parts to it: 1) Putin interfered/determined the election 2) in collusion with Trump. When the second part is blown up, so must the first be. And then what will happen to all the loyal little allies crying "ours were interfered with too"!? The two halves of the story had the same authors and the same purpose: if one dies, so must the other. Now that Trump is secured from the obstruction charges that hung there as long as Mueller was in session , he is free to declassify the background documents that will show the origin, mechanics, authors and extent of the conspiracy. And he has said he will . In the process, both halves of the story will be destroyed: they're both lies.

    (For those who now realise there is something they have to catch up on: Conrad Black has a good exposition of the overall conspiracy and here is a quick round-up of the mechanics of the conspiracy . This may show its very beginning, three years ago ).

    Will the exposure of the plot and the plotters end the war-talk stage of Putin Derangement Syndrome? In a rational world, it would (but can its believers be embarrassed by the exposure of their credulity? Can they be made to think it all over again from the beginning?). It is true that Russia stands in the way of the neocons and liberal interventionists who have been guiding Washington this century, but that hardly means that Putin is the enemy of the American people. Because, properly considered, it's the neocons/liberal interventionists and their endless wars burning up lives, money and good will that are the enemies of Americans; in that respect Putin (unintentionally) stands with the true best interests of the American people. But the propaganda is so strong and the hysteria so unrestrained, that anyone who suggests that blocking the war party is in the best interests of Americans would be run out of town on a rail. ( As the attacks on Tulsi Gabbard show .) The USA is far down the rabbit hole. (Although I should say US elites: a Rasmussen poll shows that slightly more Americans think Clinton colluded with a foreign power than think Trump did . Considering the news coverage of the last two and a half years, that's a very interesting finding.)

    So, the sad conclusion is that Putin Derangement Syndrome will probably endure and the best we can hope for is that it is dialled down a bit and the "act of war" nonsense is quietly forgotten. Derangement was strong before the interference/collusion lie and it will exist as long as Putin does: the war party is too invested in personalities ever to realise that it's Russia, not its president, that's the obstacle. Let alone ever understand that much of what Moscow does is a pushback against Washington's aggression.

    Let The Onion have the last laugh at this dismal matter :

    "What the hell? I worked so hard on this -- if I wasn't colluding with the Trump campaign, who the hell was I colluding with?" said the dumbfounded Russian president, growing increasingly angry as he scrolled through his email inbox and recounted his numerous efforts at covert communication with individuals who he had thought were high-ranking Trump officials, but now he suspected were bots or anonymous internet trolls."

    [Apr 10, 2019] Habakkuk on cockroaches and the New York Times

    Highly recommended!
    Money quote: "The Russian collusion investigation was based solely on the dodgy Steele Dossier that was discredited here from the get-go. This was a product of British Intelligence Community. The intent was to keep and then to get Donald Trump out of the White House. It failed but they did succeed in turning him into a neo-lib-con fellow traveler. There are clear parallels between the end stages of the Soviet Union and the American Empire. My take since the Iraq Invasion is that they are insane. The ruling elite is detached from reality, incompetent and arrogant. Sooner or later someone with their facilities still intact will lead a middle-class revolt against the global plutocracy to restore democracy and reverse the rising inequality. We were lucky that the fall of the Soviet Union did not lead to a nuclear war. The next time a nuclear armed Empire crashes we may not be so fortunate."
    Notable quotes:
    "... Among interesting dates, it appears that Stefan Halper was already trying to reach out to Lokhova in January-February 2016 – a lot earlier than his approaches to Papadopoulo s and Page. This was done through Professor Christopher Andrew, co-convenor with Halper and the former MI6 had Sir Richard Dearlove of the ‘Cambridge Intelligence Seminar.’ ..."
    "... Meanwhile, Lokhova has set up a blog on which she has posted a some interesting relevant material, with perhaps more to come. It is very well worth a look.(See https://www.russiagate.co.uk .) ..."
    "... Of particular interest, to my mind, is the full text of her – unpublished – May 2017 interview with the ‘New York Times.’ This points us back to is the fact – of which Lokhova shows no signs of awareness – that the idea that the Western powers and the Russians might have a common interest in fighting jihadist terrorism has been absolute anathema to many key figures on both sides of the Atlantic, with Dearlove certainly among them. ..."
    "... ‘AN APOLOGY: Yesterday, I compared @nytimes journalists, who smeared @GenFlynn and accused me of being a Russian spy, to cockroaches. In good conscience, I must apologize to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes #Russiagate hoaxers. Sorry!’ ..."
    "... The centerpiece of this is a proposal submitted to the FCO in August last year by what seems to be essentially the same consortium whose existence as a government contractor has now been made public. The ‘Institute for Statecraft’ has vanished, and one consortium member, ‘Aktis Strategy’, has gone into liquidation. But other key members are the same. ..."
    "... A central underlying premise is that if anyone has any doubts as to whether the ‘White Helmets’ are a benevolent humanitarian organisation, or the Russians were responsible for the poisoning of the Skripals or the shooting down of MH17, the only possible explanation is that their minds have been poisoned by disinformation. ..."
    "... In fact, what is at issue an ambitious project to co-ordinate and strengthen a very large number of organisations in different countries which are committed to a relentlessly Russophobic line on everything. (The possibility that it might not be very bright to push Russia into the arms of China, the obviously rising power, does not seem to have occurred to these people – perhaps they need less ons from Sir Halford Mackinder, or indeed Niccolò Machiavelli, on ‘statecraft.’) ..."
    "... The clear close integration of other cyber people from the ‘Atlantic Council’ into Orwellian ‘information operations’ sponsored by the British Government simply puts these facts into sharp relief. ..."
    "... There has to be a strong possible ‘prima facie’ case that anyone in authority prepared to accept the ‘digital forensics’ from ‘CrowdStrike’ is complicit in the conspiracy against the constitution, and/or the conspiracy to cover-up that conspiracy. This certainly goes for Comey, and I think it also goes for Mueller." ..."
    "... I'd recommend for reading Alexei Yurchak's "Everything Was Forever, Until It was No More: The Last Soviet Generation." Its about a class of apparatchiks and bureaucrats and hangers on who spoke this arcane, abstract dogmatic language that anyone normal had long since given up trying to understand. It had long ceased to have any relevance or attachment to the lives lived by ordinary, increasingly suffering people, who started talking to each other in practical and direct language. ..."
    "... The Russian collusion investigation was based solely on the dodgy Steele Dossier that was discredited here from the get-go. This was a product of British Intelligence Community. The intent was to keep and then to get Donald Trump out of the White House. It failed but they did succeed in turning him into a neo-lib-con fellow traveler. ..."
    "... There are clear parallels between the end stages of the Soviet Union and the American Empire. My take since the Iraq Invasion is that they are insane. The ruling elite is detached from reality, incompetent and arrogant. Sooner or later someone with their facilities still intact will lead a middle-class revolt against the global plutocracy to restore democracy and reverse the rising inequality. We were lucky that the fall of the Soviet Union did not lead to a nuclear war. The next time a nuclear armed Empire crashes we may not be so fortunate. ..."
    Apr 08, 2019 | www.wsws.org

    Habakkuk on cockroaches and the New York Times

    "Dan, Thanks for the reference, which I will follow up. Unfortunately, although Bongino has produced a lot of extremely valuable material, a lot of it is buried in the 'postcasts', searching through which is harder than with printed materials. It would greatly help if there were transcripts, but of course those cost money.

    I am still trying to fit the exploding mass of information which has been coming out into a coherent timeline. Part of the problem is that there is so much appearing in so many different places. In addition to trying to think through the implications of the information in this post and the subsequent exchanges of comments, I have been trying to make sense of evidence coming out about the British end of the conspiracy.

    An important development here has been rather well covered by Chuck Ross, in a recent ‘Daily Caller’ piece headlined ‘Cambridge Academic Reflects On Interactions With 'Spygate’ Figure’ and one on ‘Fox’ by Catherine Herridge and Cyd Upson, entitled ‘Russian academic linked to Flynn denies being spy, says her past contact was “used” to smear him.’ However, the evidence involved has ramifications which they cannot be expected to understand, as yet at least.

    (See https://dailycaller.com/201... ; https://www.foxnews.com/pol... .)

    At issue is the attempt to use the – apparently casual – encounter between Lieutenant-General Flynn and Svetlana Lokhova at a dinner in Cambridge (U.K.) in February 2016 to smear him by, among other things, portraying her as some kind of ‘Mata Hari’ figure.

    Among interesting dates, it appears that Stefan Halper was already trying to reach out to Lokhova in January-February 2016 – a lot earlier than his approaches to Papadopoulo s and Page. This was done through Professor Christopher Andrew, co-convenor with Halper and the former MI6 had Sir Richard Dearlove of the ‘Cambridge Intelligence Seminar.’

    This suggests that this was not simply a case Halper acting on his own. It also I think brings us back to the central importance of Flynn’s visit to Moscow in December 2015.

    Meanwhile, Lokhova has set up a blog on which she has posted a some interesting relevant material, with perhaps more to come. It is very well worth a look.(See https://www.russiagate.co.uk .)

    Of particular interest, to my mind, is the full text of her – unpublished – May 2017 interview with the ‘New York Times.’ This points us back to is the fact – of which Lokhova shows no signs of awareness – that the idea that the Western powers and the Russians might have a common interest in fighting jihadist terrorism has been absolute anathema to many key figures on both sides of the Atlantic, with Dearlove certainly among them.

    Some of Lokhova’s comments on ‘twitter’ are extremely entertaining. An example, with which I have much sympathy:

    ‘AN APOLOGY: Yesterday, I compared @nytimes journalists, who smeared @GenFlynn and accused me of being a Russian spy, to cockroaches. In good conscience, I must apologize to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes #Russiagate hoaxers. Sorry!’

    (See https://twitter.com/RealSLo... .)

    Meanwhile, another interesting recent ‘tweet’ comes from Eliot Higgins, of ‘Bellingcat’ fame. He is known to some skeptics as ‘the couch potato’ – perhaps he should be rechristened ‘king cockroach.’ It reads:

    ‘Looking forward to gettin g things rolling with the Open Information Partnership, with @bellingcat, @MDI_UK, @DFRLab, and @This_Is_Zinc https://www.openinformation...’

    (See https://twitter.com/EliotHi... )

    There is an interesting ‘backstory’ to this. The announcement of an FCO-supported ‘Open Information Partnership of European Non-Governmental Organisations, charities, academics, think-tanks and journalists’, supposedly to counter ‘disinformation’ from Russia, came in a written answer from the Minister of State, Sir Alan Duncan, on 3 April.

    (See https://www.theyworkforyou.... )

    In turn this followed the latest in a series of releases of material either leaked or hacked from the organisations calling themselves ‘Institute for Statecraft’ and ‘Integrity Initiative’ by the group calling themselves ‘Anonymous’ on 25 March.

    (See https://www.cyberguerrilla .... )

    The centerpiece of this is a proposal submitted to the FCO in August last year by what seems to be essentially the same consortium whose existence as a government contractor has now been made public. The ‘Institute for Statecraft’ has vanished, and one consortium member, ‘Aktis Strategy’, has gone into liquidation. But other key members are the same.

    A central underlying premise is that if anyone has any doubts as to whether the ‘White Helmets’ are a benevolent humanitarian organisation, or the Russians were responsible for the poisoning of the Skripals or the shooting down of MH17, the only possible explanation is that their minds have been poisoned by disinformation.

    An interesting paragraph reads as follows:

    ‘An expanded research component could generate better understanding of the drivers (psychological, sociopolitical, cultural and environmental) of those who are susceptible to disinformation. This will allow us to map vulnerable audiences, and build scenario planning models to test the efficiency of different activities to build resilience of those populations over time.’

    They have not yet got to the point of recommending psychiatic treatment for ‘dissidents’, but these are still early days. The ‘Sovietisation’ of Western life proceeds apace.

    In fact, what is at issue an ambitious project to co-ordinate and strengthen a very large number of organisations in different countries which are committed to a relentlessly Russophobic line on everything. (The possibility that it might not be very bright to push Russia into the arms of China, the obviously rising power, does not seem to have occurred to these people – perhaps they need less ons from Sir Halford Mackinder, or indeed Niccolò Machiavelli, on ‘statecraft.’)

    Study of the proposal hacked/leaked by ‘Anonymous’ bring out both the ‘boondoggle’ element – there is a lot of state funding available for people happy to play these games – and also the strong transatlantic links.

    A particularly significant presence, here, is the ‘DFRLab’. This is the ‘Digital Forensic Research Lab’ at the ‘Atlantic Council’, where Eliot Higgins is a ‘nonresident senior fellow.’ The same organisation has a ‘Cyber Statecraft Initiative’ where Dmitri Alperovitch is a ‘nonresident senior fellow.’

    It cannot be repeated often enough that it is difficult to see any conceivable excuse for the FBI to fail to secure access to the DNC servers. One would normally moreover expect that, on an issue of this sensitivity, they would have the ‘digital forensics’ done by their own people.

    There can be no conceivable excuse for relying on a contractor selected by the organisation which is claiming that there has been a hack, when an alternative possibility is a leak: and the implications of the alternative possibility could be devastating for that organisation.

    To rely on a contractor linked to the notoriously Russophobic ‘Atlantic Council’ is even more preposterous.

    The clear close integration of other cyber people from the ‘Atlantic Council’ into Orwellian ‘information operations’ sponsored by the British Government simply puts these facts into sharp relief.

    There has to be a strong possible ‘prima facie’ case that anyone in authority prepared to accept the ‘digital forensics’ from ‘CrowdStrike’ is complicit in the conspiracy against the constitution, and/or the conspiracy to cover-up that conspiracy. This certainly goes for Comey, and I think it also goes for Mueller."

    chris chuba , a day ago

    OT but related, just watched a former naval Intelligence officer, now working for the Hoover Institute interviewed on FOX about the Rooshins in Venezuela. Said, the 100 Russians are there to protect Maduro because he cannot trust his own army. Maduro's days are numbered because he is toxically unpopular.

    Got me thinking, our Intelligence services are good at psy-ops and keeping our gullible MSM in line but God help us if we ever actually needed real Intelligence about a country. I remember about a month ago how all of these 'Think Tank Guys' were predicting how the only people loyal to Maduro were a few of his crony Generals, that the rank and file military hated him and there were going to be mass defections.

    It didn't happen and we are all just supposed to forget that.
    [not a socialist, don't have any love for Maduro, I just know that I will never learn anything of about Venezuela from these think tank dudes, we are just getting groomed]

    Karl Kolchak -> chris chuba , a day ago
    Venezuela isn't about "socialism," or even Maduro--it's about the oil. They have the largest proven reserves in the world, though much of it is non-conventional and would need a ton of investment to exploit. But it's their oil, not ours, and we have no right to meddle in their internal affairs.
    Jack -> Karl Kolchak , 15 hours ago
    Venezuela is neither about socialism nor oil in my opinion. It is everything to do with the neocons. And Trump buying into their hegemonic dreams. Notice the resurrection of Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame as the man spearheading this in a triumvirate with Bolton & Pompeo. IMO, a perfect foil for Putin & Xi to embroil the US in another regime change quagmire that further weakens the US.
    Mad_Max22 , 17 hours ago
    "There can be no conceivable excuse for relying on a contractor selected by the organisation which is claiming that there has been a hack, when an alternative possibility is a leak: and the implications of the alternative possibility could be devastating for that organisation.
    To rely on a contractor linked to the notoriously Russophobic 'Atlantic Council' is even more preposterous."

    True; and true. It is also true that the Clinton e-mail investigation was faux, a limp caricature of what an investigation would look like when it is designed to uncover the truth. Allowing a subject's law firm to review the subject's e-mails from when she was in government for relevancy is beyond preposterous. An investigation conducted in the normal way by apolitical Agents in a field office would not walk away from a trove of evidence empty handed.
    The inter-relatedness and overlapping of DoJ, CIA, and FBI personnel assigned to the Clinton e-mail case, the Russophobic nightmare of a 'case' targeting Carter Page, and by extension, the Trump presidential campaign, and yes, the Mueller political op, all reek of political bias and ineptitude followed by more political bias; and then culmination in a scorched earth investigation more characteristic of something the STASI might have undertaken than American justice.
    Early morning raids, gag orders, solitary confinements, show indictments that will never see adjudication in a court room - truly unbelievable.

    Jack , 15 hours ago
    David

    In your opinion was this surveillance, criminal & counter-intelligence investigation as well as information operations against Trump centrally orchestrated or was it more reactive & decentralized?

    There are so many facets. Fusion GPS & Nellie Ohr with her previous CIA connection. Her husband Bruce at the DOJ stovepiping the dossier to the FBI. Brennan and his EC. Clapper and his intelligence assessment. Halper, Mifsud, Steele along with Hannigan and the MI6 + GCHQ connection. Downer and the Aussies. FISA warrants on Page & Papadopolous. The whole Strzok & Page texting. Comey, Lynch & the Hillary exoneration. McCabe. Then all the Russians. And the media leaks to generate hysteria.

    john fletcher , a day ago

    I'd recommend for reading Alexei Yurchak's "Everything Was Forever, Until It was No More: The Last Soviet Generation." Its about a class of apparatchiks and bureaucrats and hangers on who spoke this arcane, abstract dogmatic language that anyone normal had long since given up trying to understand. It had long ceased to have any relevance or attachment to the lives lived by ordinary, increasingly suffering people, who started talking to each other in practical and direct language.

    And yet the chatterati continued to chatter and invent ludicrously unreal worlds and analyses of the actual world they lived in until... bang... it was no more.

    I'd skip the first few chapters which are full of impenetrable marxist jargon.

    VietnamVet , 12 hours ago
    The Russian collusion investigation was based solely on the dodgy Steele Dossier that was discredited here from the get-go. This was a product of British Intelligence Community. The intent was to keep and then to get Donald Trump out of the White House. It failed but they did succeed in turning him into a neo-lib-con fellow traveler.

    There are clear parallels between the end stages of the Soviet Union and the American Empire. My take since the Iraq Invasion is that they are insane. The ruling elite is detached from reality, incompetent and arrogant. Sooner or later someone with their facilities still intact will lead a middle-class revolt against the global plutocracy to restore democracy and reverse the rising inequality. We were lucky that the fall of the Soviet Union did not lead to a nuclear war. The next time a nuclear armed Empire crashes we may not be so fortunate.

    [Apr 10, 2019] I must apologize to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes

    Apr 10, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    Some of Lokhova’s comments on ‘twitter’ are extremely entertaining. An example, with which I have much sympathy:

    ‘AN APOLOGY: Yesterday, I compared @nytimes journalists, who smeared @GenFlynn and accused me of being a Russian spy, to cockroaches. In good conscience, I must apologize to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes #Russiagate hoaxers. Sorry!’

    [Apr 10, 2019] I must apologize to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes

    Apr 10, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    Some of Lokhova’s comments on ‘twitter’ are extremely entertaining. An example, with which I have much sympathy:

    ‘AN APOLOGY: Yesterday, I compared @nytimes journalists, who smeared @GenFlynn and accused me of being a Russian spy, to cockroaches. In good conscience, I must apologize to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes #Russiagate hoaxers. Sorry!’

    [Apr 09, 2019] Russiagate The Great Tragic Comedy of Modern Journalism by Matt Bivens,

    Mar 25, 2019 | blog.usejournal.com

    In its Russiagate coverage, The New York Times has repeatedly offered a graphic accusing the President's retinue of "more than 100 contacts with Russian nationals." This decision to question the loyalty of people who have had contact with a Russian national  --  so, for just knowing or meeting a Russian  --  has been a staple of New York Times coverage.

    "More than 100 contacts with Russian nationals." It's incredible that this can even be an allegation  --  in our paper of record  --  there in explainer graphics almost every day, for more than two years now.

    It smacks of the famous Senator Joseph McCarthy speeches in the 1950s: "I have in my hand a list of 205 [or 57, or 81] "

    And yet no one ever seemed to mind.

    After all, as former intelligence chief (and liar to Congress ) James Clapper has asserted on television, "Russians are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor." Worse, I may have already been co-opted and penetrated without even knowing it! As Clapper said recently on CNN when asked if Trump could be "a Russian asset," it is "a possibility, and I would add to that a caveat, whether witting or unwitting."

    Unwitting!

    So you can be an unwitting traitor?

    Infected with Russian mind-control, like a zombie?

    Yes. As mainstream media have argued repeatedly and quite explicitly.

    Consider the stunning set of short films on The New York Times op-ed webpages titled " Operation Infektion: How Russia Perfected the Art of War ".

    Over a sinister animation of black and white human cells being penetrated by bright red virus particles, the narration begins: "The thing about a virus is it doesn't destroy you head-on. Instead, it brings you down  --  from the inside. Turning your own cells into enemies."

    This incredible film is well worth watching to see how ill our body politic has become. As the red virus invades cell after cell, the narration goes on: "This story is about a virus  --  a virus created five decades ago by a government, to slowly and methodically poison its enemies. But it's not a biological virus, it's more like a political one. And chances are, you've already been infected."

    Animation cuts abruptly to Donald Trump.

    The evil genius behind this virus? The Leonid Brezhnev-era KGB. (Really! I'm not making this up!)

    "If you feel like you don't know who to trust anymore, this might be the thing that's making you feel that way," the narrator says, as the animation shows more and more black and white cells hopelessly succumbing to the red virus  --  reds spreading everywhere, bringing us down from within, as it were. "If you feel exhausted by the news, this could be why. And if you're sick of it all and you just want to stop caring, then we really need to talk."

    Animation cuts to a human eye, now filled like a zombie's with infected red sclera.

    Amazing. I thought I was exhausted by the news and sick of it all because the journalists have all become exhausting and sickening; because whenever I turn on NPR or open up The New York Times , I feel like Jennifer Connelly in "A Beautiful Mind"when she walks into the garage and discovers it's a shrine to paranoid schizophrenia, and realizes with horror that Russell Crowe's back home with the baby about to give it a bath.

    But no. "Chances are," I'm already infected by a KGB virus. Cut to face of Donald Trump.

    Makes sense. After all, I have personally had "more than 100 contacts with Russian nationals." I guess I better turn myself in. (For anti-viral treatments? Re-education? A struggle session?)

    [Apr 09, 2019] Russians halt search for intelligent life in Washington by Bryan Hemming

    Apr 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org

    Russian research team which claimed to have detected signs of intelligent life in Washington has now discovered the life there not to be quite so intelligent after all.

    A Russian spokesman, who wishes to remain anonymous, told our Moscow science correspondent -- who also wishes to remain anonymous -- that the Washington atmosphere has been poisoned by huge clouds of putrid hot air belching from the corporate media. He explained that such a hostile environment makes it almost impossible for intelligent life to survive, let alone evolve a sustainable culture. The Russian team believes there may still be small pockets of intelligent life elsewhere on the North American continent but without the necessary conditions they need to thrive they are destined to disappear without trace.

    Speaking off the record, the Russian spokesman, who asked us not to disclose his identity, added that hopes of finding intelligent life in London, Paris, Berlin and other Western European locations, where it might be expected to flourish, are fading fast. Though it is believed intelligent life once existed in Occiental Europe, an atmosphere suitable for the maintenance of such life has all but evaporated.

    [Apr 09, 2019] Ukrainian Prosecutors Why Doesn t the U.S. Dept. of Justice Want Our Evidence on Democrats naked capitalism

    Apr 09, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Wheels within wheels. This is from longtime investigative reporter John Solomon, writing in The Hill (emphasis mine throughout):

    Ukrainian to US prosecutors: Why don't you want our evidence on Democrats?

    Ukrainian law enforcement officials believe they have evidence of wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from 2016 election interference to obstructing criminal probes . But, they say, they've been thwarted in trying to get the Trump Justice Department to act.

    Here is some of what Ukrainian investigators have found. Solomon again:

    Ukraine is infamous for corruption and disinformation operations; its police agencies fight over what is considered evidence of wrongdoing. Kulyk and his bosses even have political fights over who should and shouldn't be prosecuted. Consequently, allegations emanating from Kiev usually are taken with a grain a salt.

    But many of the allegations shared with me by more than a half-dozen senior Ukrainian officials are supported by evidence that emerged in recent U.S. court filings and intelligence reports. The Ukrainians told me their evidence includes:

    Sworn statements from two Ukrainian officials admitting that their agency tried to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton . The effort included leaking an alleged ledger showing payments to then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort ; Contacts between Democratic figures in Washington and Ukrainian officials that involved passing along dirt on Donald Trump; Financial records showing a Ukrainian natural gas company routed more than $3 million to American accounts tied to Hunter Biden, younger son of then-Vice President Joe Biden , who managed U.S.-Ukrainian relations for the Obama administration. Biden's son served on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma Holdings; Records that Vice President Biden pressured Ukrainian officials in March 2016 to fire the prosecutor who oversaw an investigation of Burisma Holdings and who planned to interview Hunter Biden about the financial transfers; Correspondence showing members of the State Department and U.S. embassy in Kiev interfered or applied pressure in criminal cases on Ukrainian soil; Disbursements of as much as $7 billion in Ukrainian funds that prosecutors believe may have been misappropriated or taken out of the country, including to the United States.

    [Apr 09, 2019] Russiagate The Great Tragic Comedy of Modern Journalism by Matt Bivens,

    Mar 25, 2019 | blog.usejournal.com

    In its Russiagate coverage, The New York Times has repeatedly offered a graphic accusing the President's retinue of "more than 100 contacts with Russian nationals." This decision to question the loyalty of people who have had contact with a Russian national  --  so, for just knowing or meeting a Russian  --  has been a staple of New York Times coverage.

    "More than 100 contacts with Russian nationals." It's incredible that this can even be an allegation  --  in our paper of record  --  there in explainer graphics almost every day, for more than two years now.

    It smacks of the famous Senator Joseph McCarthy speeches in the 1950s: "I have in my hand a list of 205 [or 57, or 81] "

    And yet no one ever seemed to mind.

    After all, as former intelligence chief (and liar to Congress ) James Clapper has asserted on television, "Russians are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor." Worse, I may have already been co-opted and penetrated without even knowing it! As Clapper said recently on CNN when asked if Trump could be "a Russian asset," it is "a possibility, and I would add to that a caveat, whether witting or unwitting."

    Unwitting!

    So you can be an unwitting traitor?

    Infected with Russian mind-control, like a zombie?

    Yes. As mainstream media have argued repeatedly and quite explicitly.

    Consider the stunning set of short films on The New York Times op-ed webpages titled " Operation Infektion: How Russia Perfected the Art of War ".

    Over a sinister animation of black and white human cells being penetrated by bright red virus particles, the narration begins: "The thing about a virus is it doesn't destroy you head-on. Instead, it brings you down  --  from the inside. Turning your own cells into enemies."

    This incredible film is well worth watching to see how ill our body politic has become. As the red virus invades cell after cell, the narration goes on: "This story is about a virus  --  a virus created five decades ago by a government, to slowly and methodically poison its enemies. But it's not a biological virus, it's more like a political one. And chances are, you've already been infected."

    Animation cuts abruptly to Donald Trump.

    The evil genius behind this virus? The Leonid Brezhnev-era KGB. (Really! I'm not making this up!)

    "If you feel like you don't know who to trust anymore, this might be the thing that's making you feel that way," the narrator says, as the animation shows more and more black and white cells hopelessly succumbing to the red virus  --  reds spreading everywhere, bringing us down from within, as it were. "If you feel exhausted by the news, this could be why. And if you're sick of it all and you just want to stop caring, then we really need to talk."

    Animation cuts to a human eye, now filled like a zombie's with infected red sclera.

    Amazing. I thought I was exhausted by the news and sick of it all because the journalists have all become exhausting and sickening; because whenever I turn on NPR or open up The New York Times , I feel like Jennifer Connelly in "A Beautiful Mind"when she walks into the garage and discovers it's a shrine to paranoid schizophrenia, and realizes with horror that Russell Crowe's back home with the baby about to give it a bath.

    But no. "Chances are," I'm already infected by a KGB virus. Cut to face of Donald Trump.

    Makes sense. After all, I have personally had "more than 100 contacts with Russian nationals." I guess I better turn myself in. (For anti-viral treatments? Re-education? A struggle session?)

    [Apr 09, 2019] Russians halt search for intelligent life in Washington by Bryan Hemming

    Apr 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org

    Russian research team which claimed to have detected signs of intelligent life in Washington has now discovered the life there not to be quite so intelligent after all.

    A Russian spokesman, who wishes to remain anonymous, told our Moscow science correspondent -- who also wishes to remain anonymous -- that the Washington atmosphere has been poisoned by huge clouds of putrid hot air belching from the corporate media. He explained that such a hostile environment makes it almost impossible for intelligent life to survive, let alone evolve a sustainable culture. The Russian team believes there may still be small pockets of intelligent life elsewhere on the North American continent but without the necessary conditions they need to thrive they are destined to disappear without trace.

    Speaking off the record, the Russian spokesman, who asked us not to disclose his identity, added that hopes of finding intelligent life in London, Paris, Berlin and other Western European locations, where it might be expected to flourish, are fading fast. Though it is believed intelligent life once existed in Occiental Europe, an atmosphere suitable for the maintenance of such life has all but evaporated.

    [Apr 09, 2019] Zakharia is not only a former wine taster. Her has something more interesting in his biography

    Notable quotes:
    "... "Fareed Zakaria '86 (center) former President of the Yale Political Union argued that Yale should not divest from its holdings in South Africa " ..."
    Apr 09, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

    yalensis April 2, 2019 at 3:33 pm

    Read the tweets. Vast majority are skewering the fascist Zakaria.
    Best tweet of all: Angel Schatz tweeted some skeletons in Fareed's closet, like how this tosser supported South African apartheid when he was at Yale University (class of '86).

    "Fareed Zakaria '86 (center) former President of the Yale Political Union argued that Yale should not divest from its holdings in South Africa "

    In other words, Zakharia has ALWAYS been a racist pig! And now earns his bread slandering Russia.

    [Apr 09, 2019] Advancing of the society requires a commitment to the truth. Americans owe much of their economic success to availability of truth-discovering, and truth-verifying institutions. In the past they even have somewhat independent media

    With independent media gone, society can easy lose the right direction band became hostage of greedy and incompetent neoliberal elite.
    Apr 09, 2019 | www.project-syndicate.org

    Trump's Most Worrisome Legacy by Joseph E. Stiglitz - Project Syndicate

    A close study of past experience could, however, be informative. One had to rely on reasoning and discourse – recognizing that no individual had a monopoly on our understandings of social organization. Out of this process emerged an appreciation that governance institutions based on the rule of law, due process, and checks and balances, and supported by foundational values like individual liberty and justice for all, are more likely to produce good and fair decisions. These institutions may not be perfect, but they have been designed so that it is more likely that flaws will be uncovered and eventually corrected.

    That process of experimentation, learning, and adaptation, however, requires a commitment to ascertaining the truth. Americans owe much of their economic success to a rich set of truth-telling, truth-discovering, and truth-verifying institutions. Central among them are freedom of expression and independent media. Like all people, journalists are fallible; but, as part of a robust system of checks and balances on those in positions of power, they have traditionally provided an essential public good.

    Since Smith's day, it has been shown that a nation's wealth depends on the creativity and productivity of its people, which can be advanced only by embracing the spirit of scientific discovery and technological innovation. And it depends on steady improvements in social, political, and economic organization, discovered through reasoned public discourse.

    The attack by Trump and his administration on every one of the pillars of American society – and his especially aggressive vilification of the country's truth-seeking institutions – jeopardizes its continued prosperity and very ability to function as a democracy. Nor do there appear to be checks on corporate giants' efforts to capture the institutions – the courts, legislatures, regulatory agencies, and major media outlets – that are supposed to prevent them from exploiting workers and consumers. A dystopia previously imagined only by science fiction writers is emerging before our eyes. It should give us chills to think of who "wins" in this world, and who or what we might become, just in the struggle to survive.

    [Apr 08, 2019] Aaron Maté Was Also Right About Russiagate

    Highly recommended!
    Mar 31, 2019 | scotthorton.org

    by Scott | Interviews Aaron Maté discusses the aftermath of the Russia investigation and what it's revealed about mainstream American journalists. In addition to seriously undermining media credibility, the obsession with possible Russian influence over the president has made it next to impossible for Trump to do anything that might be seen as helpful for Putin, like pulling troops out of Syria or pushing for nuclear detente.

    Discussed on the show:

    Aaron Maté is a former host and producer at The Real News and writes regularly at The Nation . Follow him on Twitter @AaronJMate .

    This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs , by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT , by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State , by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com ; Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc. ; Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom ; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott ; and LibertyStickers.com .

    Donate to the show through Patreon , PayPal , or Bitcoin: 1Ct2FmcGrAGX56RnDtN9HncYghXfvF2GAh.

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

    [Apr 08, 2019] Tape recorded evidence of Clinton-Ukraine meddling in US election surfaces (Video)

    Notable quotes:
    "... T]he main spokesman for these accusations was Serhiy Leshchenko , a Ukrainian politician and journalist who works closely with both top Hillary Clinton donors George Soros and Victor Pinchuk, as well as to the US Embassy in Kyiv. ..."
    "... The New York Times should also explain why they didn't mention that Leshchenko had direct connections to two of Hillary Clinton biggest financial backers. Victor Pinchuk, the largest donor to the Clinton Foundation at a staggering $8.6 million also happened to have paid for Leshchenko's expenses to go to international conferences. George Soros, whose also founded the International Renaissance Foundationthat worked closely with Hillary Clinton's State Department in Ukraine, also contributed at least $8 million to Hillary affiliated super PACs in the 2016 campaign cycle . – Lee Stranahan via Medium ..."
    "... Meanwhile, according to former Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr, Leshchenko was a source for opposition research firm Fusion GPS , which commissioned the infamous Trump-Russia dossier. ..."
    "... Nellie Ohr, a former contractor for the Washington, D.C.-based Fusion GPS, testified on Oct. 19 that Serhiy Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist turned Ukrainian lawmaker, was a source for Fusion GPS during the 2016 campaign. ..."
    Apr 08, 2019 | theduran.com

    RT CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle and The Duran's Alex Christoforou take a look at new evidence to surface from Ukraine that exposes a plot by the US Embassy in Kiev and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) to leak Paul Manafort's corrupt dealings in the country, all for the benefit of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Via Zerohedge

    Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has launched an investigation into the head of the Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Bureau for allegedly attempting to help Hillary Clinton defeat Donald Trump during the 2016 US election by releasing damaging information about a " black ledger " of illegal business dealings by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

    "Today we will launch a criminal investigation about this and we will give legal assessment of this information," Lutsenko said last week, according to The Hill .

    Lutsenko is probing a claim from a member of the Ukrainian parliament that the director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Artem Sytnyk, attempted to the benefit of the 2016 U.S. presidential election on behalf of Hillary Clinton .

    A State Department spokesman told Hill.TV that officials aware of news reports regarding Sytnyk. – The Hill

    "According to the member of parliament of Ukraine, he got the court decision that the NABU official conducted an illegal intrusion into the American election campaign," said Lutsenko, speaking with The Hill's John Solomon about the anti-corruption bureau chief, Artem Sytnyk.

    "It means that we think Mr. Sytnyk, the NABU director, officially talked about criminal investigation with Mr. [Paul] Manafort, and at the same time, Mr. Sytnyk stressed that in such a way, he wanted to assist the campaign of Ms. Clinton ," Lutsenko continued.

    Solomon asked Lutsenko about reports that a member of Ukraine's parliament obtained a tape of the current head of the NABU saying that he was attempting to help Clinton win the 2016 presidential election, as well as connections that helped release the black-ledger files that exposed Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort 's wrongdoing in Ukraine .

    "This member of parliament even attached the audio tape where several men, one of which had a voice similar to the voice of Mr. Sytnyk, discussed the matter." – The Hill

    What The Hill doesn't mention is that Sytnyk released Manafort's Black Book with Ukrainian lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko – discussed in great length by former Breitbart investigator Lee Stranahan , who has been closely monitoring this case.

    Serhiy Leshchenko

    T]he main spokesman for these accusations was Serhiy Leshchenko , a Ukrainian politician and journalist who works closely with both top Hillary Clinton donors George Soros and Victor Pinchuk, as well as to the US Embassy in Kyiv.

    James Comey should be asked about this source that Leshchenko would not identify. Was the source someone connected to US government, either the State Department or the Department of Justice?

    The New York Times should also explain why they didn't mention that Leshchenko had direct connections to two of Hillary Clinton biggest financial backers. Victor Pinchuk, the largest donor to the Clinton Foundation at a staggering $8.6 million also happened to have paid for Leshchenko's expenses to go to international conferences. George Soros, whose also founded the International Renaissance Foundationthat worked closely with Hillary Clinton's State Department in Ukraine, also contributed at least $8 million to Hillary affiliated super PACs in the 2016 campaign cycle . – Lee Stranahan via Medium

    Meanwhile, according to former Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr, Leshchenko was a source for opposition research firm Fusion GPS , which commissioned the infamous Trump-Russia dossier.

    Nellie Ohr, a former contractor for the Washington, D.C.-based Fusion GPS, testified on Oct. 19 that Serhiy Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist turned Ukrainian lawmaker, was a source for Fusion GPS during the 2016 campaign.

    "I recall they were mentioning someone named Serhiy Leshchenko, a Ukrainian," Ohr said when asked who Fusion GPS's sources were, according to portions of Ohr's testimony confirmed by The Daily Caller News Foundation. – Daily Caller

    Also absent from The Hill report is the fact that Leshchenko was convicted in December by a Kiev court of interfering in the 2016 US election .

    A Kyiv court said that a Ukrainian lawmaker and a top anticorruption official's decision in 2016 to publish documents linked to President Donald Trump's then-campaign chairman amounted to interference in the U.S. presidential election .

    The December 11 finding came in response to a complaint filed by another Ukrainian lawmaker, who alleged that Serhiy Leshchenko and Artem Sytnyk illegally released the documents in August 2016, showing payments by a Ukrainian political party to Trump's then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.

    The documents, excerpts from a secret ledger of payments by the Party of Regions, led to Manafort being fired by Trump's election campaign.

    The Kyiv court said that the documents published by Leshchenko and Sytnyk were part of an ongoing pretrial investigation in Ukraine into the operations of the pro-Russian Party of Regions . The party's head had been President Viktor Yanukovych until he fled the country amid mass protests two years earlier.

    -RadioFreeEurope/Radio Liberty (funded by the US govt.).

    So while Lutsenko – Solomon's guest and Ukrainian Prosecutor is currently going after Artem Sytnyk, it should be noted that Leshchenko was already found to have meddled in the 2016 US election.

    [Apr 08, 2019] New Russia Penalties Face `Sanctions Fatigue' in U.S. Congress - Bloomberg

    Apr 08, 2019 | www.bloomberg.com

    Tough talk about the need to punish Russia for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election is running into the reality that Congress's enthusiasm for additional sanctions is waning.

    "We face a little bit of sanctions fatigue around here these days," said Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the sponsor of one of the bills aimed at Russia. "Hopefully we'll get more people on board."

    Two main proposals are circulating aimed at increasing pressure on Russian individuals and companies by restricting their access to U.S. markets and capital. Both Senate bills received significant attention in 2018 after President Donald Trump failed to condemn Russia for its election meddling, but they lost steam after November's midterm elections and aren't moving any faster in this year's Congress.

    Many lawmakers still want Russia to face stronger consequences for its actions in the U.S. and elsewhere, but there's no clear consensus on how to send the right message to the Kremlin. Two other factors add to the hesitation: concern about unintended economic consequences, and the difficulty of passing legislation in a divided Congress when the measures don't have the president's support.

    "Sanctions can often be a double-edged sword," said Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. "So we really should take a little bit of a step back and assess where we are and what we can really do."

    Sovereign Debt

    Markets are closely watching the next U.S. moves on sanctions, since any action may affect Russia's sovereign debt. The ruble has depreciated against the dollar since 2014, when the U.S. imposed sanctions on during the Obama administration.

    Read more: All About the U.S. Sanctions Aimed at Putin's Russia

    Senators Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, in February reintroduced their DASKA Act , which would impose sanctions on Russian individuals, cyber operations and liquid natural gas export facilities. The legislation calls for the president to " prescribe regulations " for sanctions on sovereign debt issued 90 days after the law is enacted. The bill would also reinforce support for NATO, and would create a new office in the State Department to respond to cyber threats.

    The other Senate bill, the DETER Act , was reintroduced last week by Rubio and Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. It would require the Director of National Intelligence to tell Congress on any foreign interference within 60 days of a federal election. If a Russian violation is found, sanctions would target that country's political figures and its energy and defense sectors. Sanctions could also extend to government and state-owned company bonds issued after the bill is signed into law.

    Van Hollen said the current version of his bill includes an option for the president to waive sanctions in the interest of "national security." Senators considered adding this provision in 2018 as an escape valve that would improve its chances of getting a floor vote, after the Treasury Department warned of potential economic spillover.

    Previous versions of both bills failed to advance at the end of 2018 as Congress turned its focus to government spending measures, judicial nominations and a farm bill.

    Van Hollen said the new version would deter Russian misbehavior because it would punish future action.

    "We're not talking about adding new sanctions now, we're sending a clear signal that if you screw around in our elections again, there's going to be swift and severe punishment," he said. "It makes much more sense to tie a sanction to future conduct to deter the conduct."

    The U.S. has sanctioned roughly 700 Russian entities since 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and fostered unrest in eastern Ukraine. Other sanctions were imposed following the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the poisoning of a former Russian agent and his daughter in the U.K. in March 2018.

    Lawmakers last year stepped up the push for legislation compelling new sanctions after Trump sparked bipartisan outcry when he stood beside Russian President Vladimir Putin following a one-on-one summit in Helsinki and said he believed Putin's denial of Russia interference in U.S. elections.

    Mueller Momentum

    While senior lawmakers now express mixed feelings about what to do next, the upcoming release of portions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of the 2016 election and the Trump campaign could bring renewed attention to the sanctions bills.

    "You'll see more interest in this from other members who may not have been as involved when they can see the full Mueller report," said Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia and vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

    Some key lawmakers are taking their time, though, as they try to decide the best next steps. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican, said he isn't backing any particular proposal at this time.

    'It's Getting Worse'

    "The purpose is to persuade people to adjust their conduct, and it's not happening," Risch said. "In fact, if anything it's getting worse. That's what is causing the discussion."

    Risch said he couldn't "really judge what the appetite is" in the Senate for more sanctions, but he'd like to see a strong stance from the U.S. "I'm interested in seeing Russia change their conduct," he said. "And the Russian administration, they're not nice people. They do bad things."

    Jim Risch Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

    Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, a Democrat on Risch's committee, said Congress's willingness to further punish Russia will also hinge on that country's participation in other conflicts around the world.

    "We're seeing their activities in Venezuela," Shaheen said of Russia's support for the faltering Nicolas Maduro regime that the U.S. has sought to transition out of power. "If we see those kinds of activities continue, that there will be a growing appetite for additional sanctions."

    Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat also on the Foreign Relations Committee, said Congress should be thinking "a little more creatively about how to make Russia pay a price." Murphy said the focus should be on how to address underlying geopolitical problems, rather than focusing on isolated punitive measures.

    "We could spend our time talking about actual long-term strategies to try to combat Russia's influence, or we could spend all our time slapping sanctions on Russian individuals and banks," Murphy said. "The former is probably more important than the latter."

    [Apr 08, 2019] Opinion Russians Always Knew There Was No Collusion

    Russiagate is about keeping Russian down via additional sections. As simple as that. Epidemics of Neo-McCarthyism also helps to cement cracks in the US neoliberal facade and, as such, is very helpful for the US elite.
    It also absolves Neoliberal Democrats of the political fiasco of the century -- rejection of establishment candidate by the majoring of working Americans which happened when Hillary Clinton was defeated by a person with zero political experience and no political patty behind him.
    Notable quotes:
    "... "The results of Mueller's investigations are a disgrace to the U.S. and their political elite. It's now confirmed that all their allegations have been plucked out of thin air. The media have played a shameful role of lie-mongers in a campaign built on lies. The adherents of this conspiracy theory are discredited. Only an idiot can believe them now." ..."
    "... We've seen anti-Russian xenophobia spread into the American mainstream. Etched in our minds are comments like the one James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, made in an interview when he said that Russians are "almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever." ..."
    "... To those of us who paid attention to American media and politics over the past two years, it quickly became clear that too many in the United States know nothing about our country. ..."
    Apr 08, 2019 | www.nytimes.com
    ... ... ...

    Alexey Pushkov, a former diplomat and a political analyst, tweeted to his 360,000 followers on Tuesday , following the release of Attorney General William Barr's summary of the report:

    "The results of Mueller's investigations are a disgrace to the U.S. and their political elite. It's now confirmed that all their allegations have been plucked out of thin air. The media have played a shameful role of lie-mongers in a campaign built on lies. The adherents of this conspiracy theory are discredited. Only an idiot can believe them now."

    To the Kremlin and its supporters, Russia is the aggrieved party here, and the government's consistent denials of interfering in America's internal affairs have been fully vindicated. Appearing on the Russian talk show "60 Minutes," Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry, said the ministry was preparing a report to name and shame the "brigade of propagandists" -- pointing at, among others, Fareed Zakaria -- who tried to tie Mr. Trump to Russia. She added that "apologies are expected."

    ... ... ...

    ...it becomes clear that whatever the outcome of the Mueller investigation, our relationship with America has changed.

    We've seen anti-Russian xenophobia spread into the American mainstream. Etched in our minds are comments like the one James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, made in an interview when he said that Russians are "almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever."

    ... ... ...

    In the atmosphere where "contacts with Russians" has become cause for suspicion, every bank transaction and visa application faces extra scrutiny. I've heard from people I know about how exchange programs, conferences and businesses are suffering.

    To those of us who paid attention to American media and politics over the past two years, it quickly became clear that too many in the United States know nothing about our country. Ominous images of onion-shaped domes taking over the White House baffled us; St. Basil's Cathedral is not part of the Kremlin complex and has no political connotation. The ubiquity of hammers and sickles in visuals accompanying Trump-Russia reports seemed likewise absurd. Our country hasn't been Communist for about 30 years.

    [Apr 08, 2019] "FullOf Schiff" Russiagater behave like typical members of doomsday cult, when the prophecy was not fulfilled. They just became more fanatical

    Apr 08, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

    kurt -> Christopher H.... , March 26, 2019 at 03:28 PM

    Barr says Mueller didn't find an "Direct" coordination with "Russian Government officials." That leaves all sorts of room for indirect (through wiki, through Kislyck, through the NRA... etc.). This is wildly different than what you claim here - and your claim is not something you know. I suppose it could be true, but you are believing the guy that covered up the Iran Contra affair and got Oliver North off for his numerous, admitted crimes.

    IF what you say is true, please explain -
    1. Why did Trump, his family and his closest associates lie 100's of times about over 100 contacts with known assets of the GRU?
    2. If Mueller "completely and totally exonerated" Trump, why are Trump's lawyers and McConnell keeping the report from the public.
    3. How is it possible that Barr thoroughly read and absorbed the report and it's evidence in reportedly only 9 hours including the time it took him to draft his heavily hedged 4 page memo?
    4. Why did Mueller go out of his way to nail Manafort for lying about Russian contacts if it was immaterial - he was going to jail for the rest of his life regardless?
    5. Why do you discount the publicly available evidence that Trump obstructed justice? Is it okay with you that Trump did it just because it was in the open?
    6. Do you care that Russia clearly attempted to influence (and likely did) the 2016 election?

    JohnH -> kurt... , March 26, 2019 at 05:06 PM
    kurt is grasping at straws...
    JohnH -> JohnH... , March 26, 2019 at 05:44 PM
    If there was a 'there' there, it would have been leaked weeks or months ago. Democrats are desperate...
    kurt -> JohnH... , March 27, 2019 at 10:06 AM
    Leaked by whom? And when when the report is only a few days off.
    JohnH -> kurt... , March 27, 2019 at 12:14 PM
    Leaked by someone with inside knowledge and thinks that justice has not been served...happens all the time.

    Exactly what is kurt think Trump is guilty of?

    Books have written about Trump criminality, but for some strange reason, Democrats have not been interested in pursuing those crimes. They were only interested in Hillary's preposterous allegation that Trump colluded with Putin.

    Perhaps because Trump's other crimes are similar to Democratic corruption...and he may have the goods on folks like Schumer? Mutual assured destruction to pursue crimes that committed over the past 50 years?

    kurt -> JohnH... , March 27, 2019 at 10:09 AM
    can't answer a single question. par for the course.
    Christopher H. said in reply to kurt... , March 27, 2019 at 08:25 AM
    "but you are believing the guy that covered up the Iran Contra affair and got Oliver North off for his numerous, admitted crimes."

    I'm believing Mueller who worked on this for 20 months with his team after Comey worked on in from 2016 until he was fired.

    Thought you placed your faith in Mueller? Sorry for your loss.

    Of course it won't stop you from accusing everyone with being Russian bots.

    kurt -> Christopher H.... , March 27, 2019 at 10:07 AM
    You have no idea what Mueller said. Only Barr's summary. Which is full of hedge language - which indicates cover up. If it exonerates Trump, why is McConnell blocking the release and back to "but her emails" and Steele Dossier?
    JohnH -> kurt... , March 27, 2019 at 05:51 PM
    Among kurt's questions, he carefully avoids the central question: Did Trump conspire with the Russian government to subvert and American election and help Trump win? Hillary thought so. kurt assured us repeatedly that Trump's guilt was a proven fact, a slam dunk prosecution. Democrats and their media talked about it incessantly for three years, crowding out interest in domestic corruption and other avenues of prosecution...and allowing Democrats flog that issue and avoid developing a coherent message and a popular program to address major problems.

    They were all wrong about the central charge that Trump conspired with Putin to subvert the election. Mueller did not find enough evidence to indict or prosecute. That was...repeat, that was Mueller's charge. And he answered that central question, embarrassing and humiliating Democrats and the media that flogged that fake news for three years.

    Sure, Trump has not been exonerated on everything. Sure, investigations should continue, focusing on those that have a high probability of finding corruption and criminality...something that Democrats have avoided for years, despite books being written on the subject.

    The key question is: why have Democrats avoided investigating Trump on all those areas that could yield prosecution for domestic corruption and criminality and instead focus almost exclusively on a wild goose chase?

    Julio -> JohnH... , March 28, 2019 at 07:24 PM
    Not quite: Democrats have not "avoided" investigating Trump. They had no power to subpoena until now.

    But they definitely talked a lot about Muller, when in fact they should have been talking about corruption and nepotism.

    JohnH -> Julio ... , March 29, 2019 at 07:47 AM
    It's true. Democrats had had no subpoena power, but there is always the court of public opinion. Books have been written about Trump's corruption, his sleazy and likely criminal business behavior. Hillary refused to raise the issue much if at all. Pelosi and Schumer avoided anything but Putin...probably because Trump has the goods on them. They needed to fabricate a preposterous charge that wouldn't blow back against them.
    kurt -> JohnH... , April 03, 2019 at 10:05 AM
    Read the one and only footnote on Barr's "report." Then get back to me. It is doing all the work and it is obviously a coverup. If you define collusion as only tacit agreement between only government actors, then every spy that has ever been jailed or executed is not guilty.
    Plp -> kurt... , March 27, 2019 at 07:17 AM
    Some one ought subvert uncle's global hegemonic power

    If not the patriotic but humanitarian majority domestic electorate

    It will have to be who or what ?

    foreign strategic rivals

    [Apr 08, 2019] Is there no end to the perversity of "FullOf Schiff" people?

    Russiagate is dead. Long live the Russiagate !
    Apr 08, 2019 | consortiumnews.com
    Russia-gate's Successor Gambit – Consortiumnews By James Howard Kunstler
    Clusterfuck Nation

    Having disgraced themselves with full immersion in the barren Russia-gate "narrative," the Resistance is now tripling down on Russia-gate's successor gambit: obstruction of justice where there was no crime in the first place. What exactly was that bit of mischief Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller inserted in his final report, saying that " while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him?"

    It's this simple: prosecutors are charged with finding crimes. If there is insufficient evidence to bring a case, then that is the end of the matter. Prosecutors, special or otherwise, are not authorized to offer hypothetical accounts where they can't bring a criminal case. But Mueller produced a brief of arguments pro-and-con about obstruction for others to decide upon. In doing that, he was out of order, and maliciously so.

    Trump and Barr on Feb. 14, 2019. (Wikimedia Commons)

    Of course, Attorney General William Barr took up the offer and declared the case closed, as he properly should where the prosecutor could not conclude that a crime was committed. One hopes that the AG also instructed Mueller and his staff to shut the f up vis-à-vis further ex post facto "anonymous source" speculation in the news media. But, of course, the Mueller staff -- which inexplicably included lawyers who worked for the Clinton Foundation and the Democratic National Committee -- at once started insinuating to New York Times reporters that the full report would contain an arsenal of bombshells reigniting enough suspicion to fuel several congressional committee investigations.

    The objective apparently is to keep President Donald Trump burdened, hobbled, and disabled for the remainder of his term, and especially in preparation for the 2020 election against whomever emerges from the crowd of lightweights and geriatric cases now roistering through the primary states. It also leaves the door open for the Resistance to prosecute an impeachment case, since that is a political matter, not a law enforcement action.

    Setting up the AG

    This blog is not associated with any court other than public opinion, and I am free to hypothesize on the meaning of Mueller's curious gambit, so here goes: Barr, long before being considered for his current job, published his opinion that there was no case for obstruction of justice in the Russia-gate affair. By punting the decision to Barr, Mueller sets up the AG for being accused of prejudice in the matter -- and, more to the point, has managed to generate a new brushfire in the press.

    Barr could see this coming from a thousand miles away. I suspect he's pissed off about being set up like this. I suspect further that he knows this brushfire is intended to produce a smokescreen to obscure the rash of grand jury referrals coming down in the weeks and months ahead against the many government employees who concocted the Russia-gate scandal. Personally, I think Mueller himself deserves to be in that roundup for destroying evidence (the Strzok / Page cell phones) and for malicious prosecution against General Michael Flynn , among other things.

    The reason Mueller did not bring an obstruction-of-justice charge against Trump is that the evidence didn't support it. He didn't have a case. In a trial -- say, after Trump was impeached or left office -- the discovery process could bring to light evidence that might embarrass and even incriminate Mueller and his staff, and cast further opprobrium on the federal justice agencies. For instance: why did Mueller drag out his inquiry for two years when he must have known by at least the summer of 2017 that the Steele dossier was a fraud perpetrated by the Clinton campaign?

    Now the propaganda crusade has been initiated to defame Barr. The idiots running the budding new congressional inquiries are going to pile on him, with the help of the news media. Though he is said to be an "old friend" of Robert Mueller's, I believe they have become adversaries, perhaps even enemies. Mueller is not in a position of strength in this battle. He has now officially exited the stage as his mandate expires, so he has no standing to oppose further consequences in the aftermath of Russia-gate. What remains is a dastardly and seditious hoax as yet un-adjudicated and an evidence trail a mile wide, and no amount of jumping up and down crying "woo woo woo" by Democratic lawmakers Jerrold Nadler, Maxine Waters, and Adam Schiff is going to derail that choo-choo train a'chuggin' down the tracks.

    James Howard Kunstler is author of "The Geography of Nowhere," which he says he wrote "Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work." He has written several other works of nonfiction and fiction. Read more about him here . This article first appeared on his blog, ClusterfuckNation .

    .

    KiwiAntz , April 8, 2019 at 18:00

    If at first you don't succeed, "try, try, try again? The Resistance, unlike Neo in the Matrix, fails to take the red pill to wake up too real life, in the present & continues to swallow the blue pill to stay in the dreamworld of fake realities & Hoax conspiracies? So the Kabuki theatre must continue, the too big to fail lie of Russiagate can't be allowed to die? The damage this fake conspiracy, collusion delusion is having on the US can't be quantified? The fools who continue to promote this narrative are now tripling down in a state of denial that defies belief! The Mainstream Media is now totally dead & buried, no one believes their lies anymore & people are heading to alt media in droves! Politicians & Politics, especially left wing, are objects of derision & contempt, & although Trump may be innocent, the fact remains that he is a terrible President & a dangerous idiot?? You only need to look at his staff with warmongering imbeciles like Pompeo, Bolton & their kind who are leading America to War, in which their win ratio is zero? The lunatic Russiagate narrative has served & achieved part of its goals & purposes? To hamstrung Trump & paralyse his administration & get him impeached via a coup d'état then to destroy & poison Russian detente,civility & relations? It failed on one level to obtain Trumps removal but succeeded in destroying Russian relations, the most dangerous gambit ever, to taut & ridicule a Nuclear Superpower? But that's the actions of a dying US Empire in decline, arrogance, ignorance, hubris & self delusion, all aptly supported by a corrupt propagandist fourth estate, the American Fakestream Media?

    JonnyJames , April 8, 2019 at 17:06

    Once again, we see this is all a rather ridiculous charade to distract the public. As Bill Binney & the VIPS pointed out on this website & others: if there was any evidence of "Russian collusion" the NSA would have had it immediately. After two wasted years of distractions & nonsense, of course there is NO evidence.

    The irrational reactions of partisan hypocrites are truly bizarre, we need to have a social psychologist explain the madness of crowd mentality here. What's more, so many people STILL fail to acknowledge (or are paid not to) that there is NO evidence. They say wait and see (We're still waiting for Saddam's WMD etc) Tragically humorous

    You want REAL collusion and high crimes?: The Trump regime virtually takes orders verbatim on foreign policy from Benjamin Nuttyahoo. However, Israeli diktats enjoy the overwhelming support of both "parties" in Congress and the servile media cartel. Pointing out these extremely obvious & highly problematic facts is not allowed. One cannot talk about Israeli lobby groups not having to register as foreign agents. One cannot talk about indisputable facts with a mountain of evidence in plain sight.

    In the words of Rod Serling: "You have entered the Twilight Zone"

    Jeff Harrison , April 8, 2019 at 13:20

    I believe that the term prosecutor should officially be retired and the more accurate term persecutor should be substituted in its place. The frequency of persecutorial misconduct at all levels of the judicial system makes a mockery of the concept of justice.

    JonnyJames , April 8, 2019 at 17:17

    Yes indeed.

    Justice and "the rule of law" is made a mockery of every day: Dick Cheney/Bush Jr.. Tony Blair & other war criminals walk free. Instead of being in prison for life, they are lavished with praise from media personalities & make big money.
    After committing "the largest financial crimes in history, by orders of magnitude", (prof. William K. Black) NOT ONE senior banker has been indicted, let alone prosecuted. Jamie Dimon, for example, is in the media regularly and depicted as a brilliant & great man.

    Congress & the Exec. routinely ignore & violate the law, including the US constitution & Bill of Rights. At this point when any politician says the words "democracy" & "the rule of law" I sneer & laugh with contempt

    Skip Scott , April 8, 2019 at 12:55

    It will be interesting to see if the DoJ really does follow up on the RussiaGate scam and attempt to indict the people who created it. Would they really dare to prosecute members of our so-called "intelligence" community? What about Schumer's "six ways from Sunday"?

    mike k , April 8, 2019 at 15:26

    Schumer is just a little Mafia toady.

    JDC , April 8, 2019 at 12:38

    The discovery process in any trial of Trump would have also perhaps brought to light that Mueller's conclusion, as relayed by Barr's summary, that Russia hacked the DNC and delivered the documents to Wikileaks has no basis in fact, given what Bill Binney and the other VIPS have shown.

    hetro , April 8, 2019 at 12:31

    I think what needs clarifying here is the difference between "does not conclude the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" and the more specific "obstruction of justice" accusation. For me, at least, this is confusing. Trump may well have committed a crime by ordering Cohen to pay off Stormy Daniels, or in other ways similar to the financial sleaze revealed with his associates–but is this not separate from "obstruction of justice"? Further, it would seem to most ordinary mortals Mueller would be embarrassed after more than two years to come up with . . . nothing? So he gives us not guilty of "collusion" and hints at something else, taking the heat off himself (or attempting to)?

    Blessthebeasts , April 8, 2019 at 12:23

    Is there no end to the perversity of these people?

    [Apr 08, 2019] Comey FBI etc is complicit in DNC leak/hack case. Crowdstrike probably invented the story to protect thier franchise

    Notable quotes:
    "... Crowdstrike can continue in business defending their clients from dreadful hackers. Admitting a leak opens the question as to why have crowdstrike at their current contract and go for cheaper. ..."
    Apr 08, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    uncle tungsten , Apr 7, 2019 5:17:11 PM | link

    @Jackrabbit | Apr 7, 2019 11:25:38 AM | 7

    Crowdstrike can continue in business defending their clients from dreadful hackers. Admitting a leak opens the question as to why have crowdstrike at their current contract and go for cheaper.

    I do like the logic that suggests Comey FBI etc are complicit. They are the crime here and they are the crime in the killing of Seth Rich and they are the crime in the Awan family spy ring.

    On your 'hows that working out for ya.... I do heaps and many others here do likewise. Stay strong.

    [Apr 08, 2019] Journalist Media's Mueller leaks are a sign of desperation

    Tucker interviews Glenn Greenwald
    But we need to understand the Mueller expedition was witch hunt form the beginning to the end, and the fact that Mueller backed off means that some pressure was exerted on him to stay within civilized discourse, or...
    I doubt that Mueller of his anthrax investigation fame would have any problems to implicate Trump in non-existent crimes. That would means the false assumption that he has some integrity, which his 9/11 behavioud fully contradict of.
    In this sense lawyers from Mueller team complain about Mueller betrayal: he carefully selected the most Trump hating lawyers and brought them for a witch hunt, but at the end he backed off. Ma be under pressure from Israel lobby.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The legal system isn't supposed to "damage" people, it is supposed to find them innocent or guilty. Shame on Mueller for appointing such disgraceful and unprofessional people. ..."
    Apr 08, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    monkeygraborange , 2 days ago

    JOURNALISM NO LONGER EXISTS... NOW IT'S ONLY THE MINISTRY OF PROPAGANDA!

    BlissfulXerces , 2 days ago

    They are willing to damage our entire country for power. When do we end this?

    Flying Gabriel , 2 days ago

    Anonymous sources don't cut it anymore. You might as well say "we're making this up." Either put up or shut up.

    Shelly Kennedy , 2 days ago

    Greenwald is a consistent voice of sanity from the political left. Need more such sane voices to restart cultural debate. Because as we all know, politics is downstream from culture.

    Chad Elmer , 2 days ago

    "Continual attempt to remove independent thought and reasoning by big tech !"

    kim wiser , 2 days ago

    He is right tribalism is wrong. What Covington and all the fake stories should teach us it to make sure that we look at the facts. The hard part is finding the good journalists so you can support them.

    Sergio Sotelo , 2 days ago

    Why isn't anyone being prosecuted for these leaks?

    West Kagle , 2 days ago

    . Gee.....I wonder why the big media firms are having to layoff huge numbers of their workforce? Could it be that they have destroyed their own credibility and the revenue is no longer there to support the bloated staffs they once had, because people are going elsewhere for their information?

    Will to Power , 2 days ago

    The legal system isn't supposed to "damage" people, it is supposed to find them innocent or guilty. Shame on Mueller for appointing such disgraceful and unprofessional people.

    [Apr 07, 2019] Nunes The Russian Collusion Hoax Meets An Unbelievbable End

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Nice group shot of the three stooges. The most dishonest, disloyal, dipshitted psychopaths a country should never have to endure. ..."
    "... The likelihood of anyone being convicted let alone indicted is rather slim. Why? These people know where too many dead bodies are buried. ..."
    "... There is an understanding in their circles that certain individuals on both sides of the spectrum are bulletproof. You can't run such a large criminal enterprise without it being this way. Why else would Mueller not talk to Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Steele, the heads of Fusion GPS, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., the promoter who set that up, etc., etc. ..."
    "... This whole ordeal was meant to die an uneventful death. It's unlikely Barr will act on any recommendations from Nunes becuase it would start a partisan war that would snare GOP never Trumpers too. It's how Washington works. Like Carlin says - it's a great big club and you ain't in it. They are, and they don't do time. ..."
    Apr 07, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Rep. Devin Nunes, op-ed via The Washington Examiner,

    As the Russia collusion hoax hurtles toward its demise, it's important to consider how this destructive information operation rampaged through vital American institutions for more than two years , and what can be done to stop such a damaging episode from recurring.

    While the hoax was fueled by a wide array of false accusations, misleading leaks of ostensibly classified information, and bad-faith investigative actions by government officials, one vital element was indispensable to the overall operation: the Steele dossier.

    <

    Funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee, which hid their payments from disclosure by funneling them through the law firm Perkins Coie, the dossier was a collection of false and often absurd accusations of collusion between Trump associates and Russian officials. These allegations, which relied heavily on Russian sources cultivated by Christopher Steele, were spoon-fed to Trump opponents in the U.S. government, including officials in law enforcement and intelligence.

    The efforts to feed the dossier's allegations into top levels of the U.S. government, particularly intelligence agencies, were championed by Steele, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, and various intermediaries. These allegations were given directly to the FBI and Justice Department, while similar allegations were fed into the State Department by long-time Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal.

    Their efforts were remarkably effective. Officials within the FBI and DOJ, whether knowingly or unintentionally, provided essential support to the hoax conspirators, bypassing normal procedures and steering the information away from those who would view it critically. The dossier soon metastasized within the government, was cloaked in secrecy, and evaded serious scrutiny.

    High-ranking officials such as then-FBI general counsel James Baker and then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr were among those whose actions advanced the hoax. Ohr, one of the most senior officials within the DOJ, took the unprecedented step of providing to Steele a back door into the FBI investigation. This enabled the former British spy to continue to feed information to investigators, even though he had been terminated by the FBI for leaking to the press and was no longer a valid source. Even worse, Ohr directly briefed Andrew Weissmann and Zainab Ahmad, two DOJ officials who were later assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. In short, the investigation was marked by glaring irregularities that would normally be deemed intolerable.

    According to Ohr's congressional testimony, he told top-level FBI officials as early as August or September 2016 that Steele was biased against Trump, that Steele's work was connected to the Clinton campaign, and that Steele's material was of questionable reliability. Steele himself confirmed that last point in a British court case in which he acknowledged his allegations included unverified information. Yet even after this revelation, intelligence leaders continued to cite the Steele dossier in applications to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

    It is astonishing that intelligence leaders did not immediately recognize they were being manipulated in an information operation or understand the danger that the dossier could contain deliberate disinformation from Steele's Russian sources . In fact, it is impossible to believe in light of everything we now know about the FBI's conduct of this investigation, including the astounding level of anti-Trump animus shown by high-level FBI figures like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, as well as the inspector general's discovery of a shocking number of leaks by FBI officials.

    It's now clear that top intelligence officials were perfectly well aware of the dubiousness of the dossier, but they embraced it anyway because it justified actions they wanted to take - turning the full force of our intelligence agencies first against a political candidate and then against a sitting president.

    The hoax itself was a gift to our nation's adversaries, most notably Russia. The abuse of intelligence for political purposes is insidious in any democracy. It undermines trust in democratic institutions, and it damages the reputation of the brave men and women who are working to keep us safe. This unethical conduct has had major repercussions on America's body politic, creating a yearslong political crisis whose full effects remain to be seen.

    Having extensively investigated this abuse, House Intelligence Committee Republicans will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous individuals involved in these matters.

    These people must be held to account to prevent similar abuses from occurring in the future. The men and women of our intelligence community perform an essential service defending American national security, and their ability to carry out their mission cannot be compromised by biased actors who seek to transform the intelligence agencies into weapons of political warfare.

    -320 for Money , 2 hours ago link

    Nice group shot of the three stooges. The most dishonest, disloyal, dipshitted psychopaths a country should never have to endure.

    I certainly do not know the cure for all the nations ills, but these 3 ***** could do more by dying than they ever did by living.

    Fall on your swords swine, save a smidgen of face, you are a disgrace.

    Real Estate Guru , 2 hours ago link

    All 3 of them have been confirmed to by lying through their teeth by their own people. They are all going down. We just need the Mueller report to come out to get the ball rolling. Can't do it before the report comes out as they would call it obstruction. So we wait another 9 days, or less, according to AG Barr.

    Jackprong , 4 hours ago link

    Could be, PapaGeorge. Maybe this time it's different because it could be argued that the TPTB don't want Trump pulling the same thing on the DNC--and get away with it like the Usual Suspects just did. In legal terms, a bar has been set. BARR? Get it? Buwhahahahahahahahahha!!!

    The likelihood of anyone being convicted let alone indicted is rather slim. Why? These people know where too many dead bodies are buried. There is an understanding in their circles that certain individuals on both sides of the spectrum are bulletproof. You can't run such a large criminal enterprise without it being this way. Why else would Mueller not talk to Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Steele, the heads of Fusion GPS, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., the promoter who set that up, etc., etc.

    This whole ordeal was meant to die an uneventful death. It's unlikely Barr will act on any recommendations from Nunes becuase it would start a partisan war that would snare GOP never Trumpers too. It's how Washington works. Like Carlin says - it's a great big club and you ain't in it. They are, and they don't do time

    papageorgeo , 5 hours ago link

    The likelihood of anyone being convicted let alone indicted is rather slim. Why? These people know where too many dead bodies are buried.

    There is an understanding in their circles that certain individuals on both sides of the spectrum are bulletproof. You can't run such a large criminal enterprise without it being this way. Why else would Mueller not talk to Comey, Clapper, Brennan, Steele, the heads of Fusion GPS, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., the promoter who set that up, etc., etc.

    This whole ordeal was meant to die an uneventful death. It's unlikely Barr will act on any recommendations from Nunes becuase it would start a partisan war that would snare GOP never Trumpers too. It's how Washington works. Like Carlin says - it's a great big club and you ain't in it. They are, and they don't do time.

    Fred box , 5 hours ago link

    <<<House Intelligence Committee Republicans will soon be submitting criminal referrals on numerous individuals involved in these matters<<< We shall see now, won't we? I won't believe this, till I see It!

    [Apr 07, 2019] The chain of events that led to the publication of the DNC emails is highly suspect

    Selection of Crowdstrike is highly suspect; the behaviour of FBI is highly suspect (why they allowed the contractor to handle the evidence), the behaviour of MSM is highly suspect (they came with the predefined notion -- Russia), the murder of Seth Rich and subsequent investigation (or the lack of thereof ) are highly suspect. Add to this mix incredible Awan brothers story and Debbie Wasserman behaviour after Imran Awan arrest
    This all points in the direction of the false flag.
    Notable quotes:
    "... There can be no conceivable excuse for relying on a contractor selected by the organisation which is claiming that there has been a hack, when an alternative possibility is a leak: and the implications of the alternative possibility could be devastating for that organisation . ..."
    "... The chain of events that led to the publication of the DNC emails is highly suspect. IMO it's likely to be a CIA/Mossad op to portray Wikileaks as an agent of Russia (AFAIK, Seth Rich was Jewish; and his family has acted strangely about the whole affair). And this 'op' fits well with use of the 2016 Presidential campaign to prepare for McCarthyist 'Russiagate' - for which CIA seems to have joined with MI6. ..."
    "... If the publication of the DNC emails was in fact a false flag then to support Assange that fact needs to be proven, and the persons responsible exposed for staging a false "framing of Assange" event.. ..."
    "... The Zionist "take the oil from the Ottoman" project involved weaponizing Jewish immigration and and redirecting European Jewish immigration from locating in Argentina ..."
    Apr 07, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Jackrabbit , Apr 7, 2019 11:25:38 AM | link

    Habakkuk on cockroaches and the New York Times

    It cannot be repeated often enough that it is difficult to see any conceivable excuse for the FBI to fail to secure access to the DNC servers. One would normally moreover expect that, on an issue of this sensitivity, they would have the 'digital forensics' done by their own people.

    There can be no conceivable excuse for relying on a contractor selected by the organisation which is claiming that there has been a hack, when an alternative possibility is a leak: and the implications of the alternative possibility could be devastating for that organisation .

    To rely on a contractor linked to the notoriously Russophobic 'Atlantic Council' is even more preposterous.

    The clear close integration of other cyber people from the 'Atlantic Council' into Orwellian 'information operations' sponsored by the British Government simply puts these facts into sharp relief.

    There has to be a strong possible 'prima facie' case that anyone in authority prepared to accept the 'digital forensics' from 'CrowdStrike' is complicit in the conspiracy against the constitution, and/or the conspiracy to cover-up that conspiracy. This certainly goes for Comey, and I think it also goes for Mueller."

    IMO The suggestion that Crowdstrike called it a hack instead of a leak to absolve themselves [as per the bolded phrase] is specious. But Habbuk (thankfully) rightly puts the onus on the FBI for not doing their job.

    The chain of events that led to the publication of the DNC emails is highly suspect. IMO it's likely to be a CIA/Mossad op to portray Wikileaks as an agent of Russia (AFAIK, Seth Rich was Jewish; and his family has acted strangely about the whole affair). And this 'op' fits well with use of the 2016 Presidential campaign to prepare for McCarthyist 'Russiagate' - for which CIA seems to have joined with MI6.

    snake , Apr 7, 2019 1:39:35 PM | link

    The chain of events that led to the publication of the DNC emails is highly suspect. IMO it's likely to be a CIA/Mossad op to portray Wikileaks as an agent of Russia (AFAIK, Seth Rich was Jewish; and his family has acted strangely about the whole affair). And this 'op' fits well with use of the 2016 Presidential campaign to prepare for McCarthyist 'Russiagate' - for which CIA seems to have joined with MI6.

    by: Jackrabbit @7

    Seems to me this could be that place to start donkeytale @ 3 asks is there a way to save Julian Assange..

    If the publication of the DNC emails was in fact a false flag then to support Assange that fact needs to be proven, and the persons responsible exposed for staging a false "framing of Assange" event..

    The Jews immigrated to NYC from Salonika (the other half went to Russia) after the failure to use a corrupted CUP to over throw the Ottomans ( Ottomans discovered, and burned the Jews out) in 1908-1912 the dominate political majority in NYC became Jewish, dwarfing the previous majority, who were the Irish.

    So when the POTUS needed stronger support to force governed Americans into WWI, Those in charge of the banker backed "take the oil and land from the Ottomans" project in banker controlled Europe directed the new NYC immigrants to send letters to the POTUS urging USA entry into the war in Europe.. within a week over a million letters arrived, which were designed to strengthen POTUS efforts to force Americans and the congress critters into WWI (abuse of American human rights by sending soldiers, creating a tax law, that had been rule unconstitutional every year since 1865 to (1912-13) diverting the domestic budget to a foreign war budget, and organizing and directing the industrial might of America to assist in the WWI Zionist movement in Europe to take the oil from the Ottoman.

    WWI was planned before 1896, (Read: Roland Green Usher Pan-Germanism 1913-14 and My Memoirs 1878-1918 by Ex-Kaiser William, II< https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_II,_German_Emperor) and organized at Zionist Congress (1897) in Europe (Russia signed a contain Germany Agreement with France in 1896 to deny Germany) and in 1897 the USA secretly agreed to support France and England against Germany agreement (why? Germany relations with Ottomans gave Germans access to the Ottoman oil, which the British, French and USA bankers and the corporations they sponsored would not stand for.

    The Zionist "take the oil from the Ottoman" project involved weaponizing Jewish immigration and and redirecting European Jewish immigration from locating in Argentina [ http://www.billgladstone.ca/?p=3197] to locating in Ottoman-Palestine-Israel locations <=object to: occupy and eventually displace the Ottomans (WWI divided the Ottoman empire into British Palestine, and French Syria) from their land and their oil.

    So letters (in answer to donkeytale @ 3) with return receipt, sent directly to the POTUS might be a means to support Julian Assange?

    I can imagine what it might be like to see 10 million return receipts posted somewhere!

    [Apr 07, 2019] The story of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and an indicted IT staffer that's lighting up the right, explained by Amber Phillips

    Notable quotes:
    "... Six months later, the FBI arrests him as he's boarding a flight to Pakistan and charges him with bank fraud. ..."
    "... The congresswoman says conservatives are making a big deal of this to distract from the much more real Russia investigation. "Undoubtedly, the easier path would have been to terminate Mr. Awan, despite the fact that I had not received any evidence of his alleged wrongdoing," she said in a statement issued last week, "but that is not the woman my constituents elected, and that is not the mother my children know me to be." ..."
    "... February: Capitol Police accuse five IT staffers of trying to steal House equipment and violating House security policies, report BuzzFeed and Politico . They are shared employees who work for 30 or so members of Congress. Capitol Police ban the five from access to the House of Representatives network while it investigates. Investigators tell lawmakers that it's up to them to decide whether to fire the accused staffers. ..."
    "... Awan is one of those staffers accused. Most of the others are related to him, including his wife, Hina Alvi. ..."
    "... Wasserman Schultz remains quiet, other than to say Awan had been moved to an advisory role since he was no longer able to directly interact with the House network. She remains dubious about the accusations against Awan and does not see cause to fire him. She becomes increasingly concerned he was being singled out because of his religion. ..."
    "... "When their investigation was reviewed with me, I was presented with no evidence of anything that they were being investigated for. And so that, in me, gave me great concern that his due process rights were being violated. That there were racial and ethnic profiling concerns that I had," she said. ..."
    "... She later told the Sun-Sentinel she was asking about Awan's laptop: "He accidentally left it somewhere." ..."
    "... Week of July 24: Awan's legal troubles deepen. The FBI arrests him at a D.C.-area airport on his way to Pakistan. Fox News's Chad Pergram first reports it, and conservative Daily Caller fleshes out the story . ..."
    "... Awan was arrested while attempting to board a flight after wiring $283,00 to the country. His wife and their three children are already in Pakistan. An affidavit obtained by the Daily Caller alleges they tried to trick their bank, the Congressional Federal Credit Union, into giving them a second mortgage for a rental property by claiming it was their primary residency. ..."
    "... Aug. 3 : Wasserman Schultz gives her first interview to the media. She tells the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel that she had initially only commented on the arrest via a spokesman since she had been on vacation. And she stands by her decision not to fire Awan after he was accused of stealing House equipment: "I believe that I did the right thing, and I would do it again," she says. ..."
    "... Aug. 7: Wasserman Schultz's Democratic primary challenger, Tim Canova , accuses her of making "a lot of self-serving excuses for Awan." ..."
    Aug 08, 2017 | www.washingtonpost.com

    Here's one version of a story making headlines in conservative media over the past couple of weeks: A powerful Democratic congresswoman refuses to fire an information technology aide after he's accused of stealing House computer equipment and potentially breaching security protocols. Six months later, the FBI arrests him as he's boarding a flight to Pakistan and charges him with bank fraud.

    Here's another version of the same topic, coming from Democratic lawmakers: Powerful Democratic congresswoman protects Muslim IT staffer from what she suspects is religious discrimination. She fires him after he is charged with a seemingly unrelated crime.

    The case involving now-fired House Democratic information technology staffer Imran Awan and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) underscores how easy it is to manipulate facts to suit one's political leaning.

    The story has blown up on the right, with conservative website Daily Caller writing more than two dozen stories about it and Fox News hosts linking it, without any evidence, to the Russian WikiLeaks hack of DNC emails, which happened under Wasserman Schultz's tenure as chairwoman.

    President Trump poured gasoline on the story when he retweeted a conservative site describing the "scandal engulfing" Wasserman Schultz and accusing the media of ignoring it.

    Mainstream media outlets have covered the story, but not extensively. The Washington Post has published two articles: One reporting Awan's arrest and the other about a watchdog group seeking an investigation .

    Left-leaning sites have either stayed away from it or defended Wasserman Schultz's account of it.

    The congresswoman says conservatives are making a big deal of this to distract from the much more real Russia investigation. "Undoubtedly, the easier path would have been to terminate Mr. Awan, despite the fact that I had not received any evidence of his alleged wrongdoing," she said in a statement issued last week, "but that is not the woman my constituents elected, and that is not the mother my children know me to be."

    Clearly, there are a lot of political accusations tied up in this nuanced story. Here's what we know about the timeline of accusations against Arwan, his arrest and his dismissal by Wasserman Schultz.

    February: Capitol Police accuse five IT staffers of trying to steal House equipment and violating House security policies, report BuzzFeed and Politico . They are shared employees who work for 30 or so members of Congress. Capitol Police ban the five from access to the House of Representatives network while it investigates. Investigators tell lawmakers that it's up to them to decide whether to fire the accused staffers.

    Awan is one of those staffers accused. Most of the others are related to him, including his wife, Hina Alvi.

    February–March: Politico follows up on the fate of the staffers and finds some Democratic lawmakers have kept them on the payroll, Wasserman Schultz included. While Capitol Police claim there may have been potentially serious IT violations, these lawmakers see it differently.

    The IT staffers have worked for many of the offices for more than a decade, and some Democratic lawmakers said they were concerned these staffers may have been targeted by Capitol investigators because they are Muslim and from Pakistan.

    "As of right now, I don't see a smoking gun," Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (N.Y.) tells Politico , even as he confirms he has dismissed Alvi. "I wanted to be sure individuals are not being singled out because of their nationalities or their religion. We want to make sure everybody is entitled to due process."

    Wasserman Schultz remains quiet, other than to say Awan had been moved to an advisory role since he was no longer able to directly interact with the House network. She remains dubious about the accusations against Awan and does not see cause to fire him. She becomes increasingly concerned he was being singled out because of his religion.

    In an interview on Aug. 3 with the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, she said she felt Awan had been nabbed on a technicality: He had been accused of using innocuous programs like Dropbox to transfer information, which doesn't clear House security protocols.

    "When their investigation was reviewed with me, I was presented with no evidence of anything that they were being investigated for. And so that, in me, gave me great concern that his due process rights were being violated. That there were racial and ethnic profiling concerns that I had," she said.

    A spokeswoman for Capitol Police declined to comment on the accusations, saying they do not comment on ongoing investigations. The police force is overseen by the congressionally appointed sergeant at arms, Congress itself and an inspector general.

    May: In a budget hearing for Capitol Police, Wasserman Schultz starts asking Capitol Police Chief Matthew R. Verderosa why they confiscated a laptop related to the case and how she can get it back. "If the equipment belongs to the member, it has been lost, they say it's been lost and it's been identified as that member's, then the Capitol Police are supposed to return it." When the police chief says she can't have it back because there's an ongoing investigation related to it, she appears genuinely frustrated and says: "I think you're violating the rules when you conduct your business that way and you should expect that there will be consequences."

    She later told the Sun-Sentinel she was asking about Awan's laptop: "He accidentally left it somewhere."

    Week of July 24: Awan's legal troubles deepen. The FBI arrests him at a D.C.-area airport on his way to Pakistan. Fox News's Chad Pergram first reports it, and conservative Daily Caller fleshes out the story .

    Awan was arrested while attempting to board a flight after wiring $283,00 to the country. His wife and their three children are already in Pakistan. An affidavit obtained by the Daily Caller alleges they tried to trick their bank, the Congressional Federal Credit Union, into giving them a second mortgage for a rental property by claiming it was their primary residency.

    The FBI accuses Awan of trying to flee the country, but his lawyer later tells The Washington Post he had no intention of fleeing; he had bought a round-trip ticket and applied for unpaid leave from work. Awan pleads not guilty.

    Same week: Immediately following the charges, Wasserman Schultz's office says Awan is fired.

    Same week : The chairwoman of the Republican National Committee starts going on TV to question why Wasserman Schultz hadn't fired Awan earlier, when he was accused of stealing House equipment.

    "Debbie Wasserman Schultz has obstructed at every level on something that affects potentially our national security," Ronna McDaniel says on Fox Business. She and other conservative groups call for Congress to hold hearings and Wasserman Schultz to testify.

    The RNC sends emails to local media of the 30 Democratic lawmakers who had hired Awan or the other staffers, explaining the case and urging them to ask their lawmakers questions when they're back home for the August break.

    Same week : Trump retweets this.

    A week after Awan's arrest : A conservative group files a complaint with the House's independent ethics committee alleging Wasserman Schultz broke House rules by allowing Awan to stay on after he was banned from the House system.

    Wasserman Schultz's office issues a statement calling the complaint "baseless" because they worked with House officials to make sure they were following the rules to keep him on to do things like help troubleshoot printers.

    " It's no surprise that they would nonetheless file it, against one of Donald Trump's fiercest critics, at a time when the administration is trying to distract from its internal turmoil and destructive health care efforts," says Wasserman Schultz spokesman David Damron.

    The Washington Post broke the story of the ethics complaint.

    Aug. 3: Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel calls attention to the drama by pointing out how much money Awan and his relatives were making. "The government, under the inattentive care of Democrats, may have been bilked for ages by a man the FBI has alleged to be a fraudster." Awan, his wife and their relatives were each making roughly $150,000 in annual salary working for more than two dozen House Democrats. Politico calculated Awan had earned more than $2 million since he started working for House Democrats in 2004.

    Aug. 3 : Wasserman Schultz gives her first interview to the media. She tells the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel that she had initially only commented on the arrest via a spokesman since she had been on vacation. And she stands by her decision not to fire Awan after he was accused of stealing House equipment: "I believe that I did the right thing, and I would do it again," she says.

    Meanwhile, Awan must stay within 50 miles of his Lorton home while he faces the bank fraud charges.

    Aug. 7: Wasserman Schultz's Democratic primary challenger, Tim Canova , accuses her of making "a lot of self-serving excuses for Awan."

    We will update this post as news develops.

    [Apr 07, 2019] Muellergate The Discreet Lies Of The Bourgeoisie

    Apr 07, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Muellergate & The Discreet Lies Of The Bourgeoisie

    by Tyler Durden Sat, 04/06/2019 - 19:00 152 SHARES Via CraigMurray.co.uk,

    This cartoon seems to me very apposite...

    The capacity of the mainstream media repeatedly to promote the myth that Russia caused Clinton's defeat, while never mentioning what the information was that had been so damaging to Hillary, should be alarming to anybody under the illusion that we have a working "free media".

    There are literally hundreds of thousands of mainstream media articles and broadcasts, from every single one of the very biggest names in the Western media, which were predicated on the complete nonsense that Russia had conspired to install Donald Trump as President of the United States.

    I genuinely have never quite understood whether the journalists who wrote this guff believed it, whether they were cynically pumping out propaganda and taking their pay cheque, or whether they just did their "job" and chose to avoid asking themselves whether they were producing truth or lies.

    I suspect the answer varies from journalist to journalist. At the Guardian, for example, I get the impression that Carole Cadwalladr is sufficiently divorced from reality to believe all that she writes. Having done a very good job in investigating the nasty right wing British Establishment tool that was Cambridge Analytica, Cadwalladr became deluded by her own fame and self-importance and decided that her discovery was the key to understanding all of world politics. In her head it explained all the disappointments of Clintonites and Blairites everywhere. She is not so high-minded however as to have refused the blandishments of the Integrity Initiative.

    Luke Harding is in a different category. Harding has become so malleable a tool of the security services it is impossible to believe he is not willingly being used. It would be embarrassing to have written a bestseller called "Collusion", the entire premiss for which has now been disproven, had Harding not made so much money out of it.

    Harding's interview with Aaron Mate of The Real News was a truly enlightening moment. The august elite of the mainstream media virtually never meet anybody who subjects their narrative to critical intellectual scrutiny. Harding's utter inability to deal with unanticipated scepticism descends from hilarious to toe-curlingly embarrassing.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/zvwcPOn5Iws

    In general, since the Mueller report confirmed that $50 million worth of investigation had been unable to uncover any evidence of Russiagate collusion, the media has been astonishingly unrepentant about the absolute rubbish they have been churning out for years.

    Harding and the Guardian's story about Manafort repeatedly calling on Assange in the Ecuador Embassy is one of the most blatant and malicious fabrications in modern media history. It has been widely ridiculed, no evidence of any kind has ever been produced to substantiate it, and the story has been repeatedly edited on the Guardian website to introduce further qualifications and acknowledgements of dubious attribution, not present as originally published. But still neither Editor Katherine Viner nor author Luke Harding has either retracted or apologised, something which calls the fundamental honesty of both into question.

    Manafort is now in prison, because as with many others interviewed, the Mueller investigation found he had been involved in several incidences of wrongdoing. Right up until Mueller finalised his report, media articles and broadcasts repeatedly, again and again and again every single day, presented these convictions as proving that there had been collusion with Russia. The media very seldom pointed out that none of the convictions related to collusion. In fact for the most part they related to totally extraneous events, like unrelated tax frauds or Trump's hush-money to (very All-American) prostitutes. The "Russians" that Manafort was convicted of lobbying for without declaration, were Ukrainian and the offences occurred ten years ago and had no connection to Trump of any kind. Rather similarly the lies of which Roger Stone stands accused relate to his invention, for personal gain, of a non-existent relationship with Wikileaks.

    The truth is that, if proper and detailed investigation were done into any group of wealthy politicos in Washington, numerous crimes would be uncovered, especially in the fields of tax and lobbying. Rich political operatives are very sleazy. This is hardly news, and if those around Clinton had been investigated there would be just as many convictions and of similar kinds. it is a pity there is not more of this type of work, all the time. But the Russophobic motive behind the Mueller Inquiry was not forwarded by any of the evidence obtained.

    My analysis of the Steele dossier, written before I was aware that Sergei Skripal probably had a hand in it, has stood the test of time very well. It is a confection of fantasy concocted for money by a charlatan.

    We should not forget at this stage to mention the unfortunate political prisoner Maria Butina, whose offence is to be Russian and very marginally involved in American politics at the moment when there was a massive witchhunt for Russian spies in progress, that makes The Crucible look like a study in calm rationality. Ms Butina was attempting to make her way in the US political world, no doubt, and she had at least one patron in Moscow who was assisting her with a view to increasing their own political influence. But nothing Butina did was covert or sinister. Her efforts to win favour within the NRA were notable chiefly because of the irony that the NRA has been historically responsible for many more American deaths than Russia.

    Any narrative of which the Establishment does not approve is decried as conspiracy theory. Yet the "Russiagate" conspiracy theory – which truly is Fake News – has been promoted massively by the entire weight of western corporate and state media. "Russiagate", a breathtaking plot in which Russia and a high profile US TV personality collude together to take control of the most militarily powerful country in the world, knocks "The Manchurian Candidate" into a cocked hat. A Google "news search" restricts results to mainstream media outlets. Such a search for the term "Russiagate" brings 230,000 results. That is almost a quarter of a million incidents of the mainstream media not only reporting the fake "Russiagate" story, but specifically using that term to describe it.

    Compare that with a story which is not an outlandish fake conspiracy theory, but a very real conspiracy.

    If, by contrast, you do a Google "news search" for the term "Integrity Initiative", the UK government's covert multi million pound programme to pay senior mainstream media journalists to pump out anti-Russian propaganda worldwide, you only get one eighth of the results you get for "Russiagate". Because the mainstream media have been enthusiastically promoting the fake conspiracy story, and deliberately suppressing the very real conspiracy in which many of their own luminaries are personally implicated.

    [Apr 07, 2019] MadCow is a complete prostitute for the neoliberal establishment

    But her time as an Anchor ain't long. She spent two years promoting a hoax. Maybe she came to believe it herself.
    Notable quotes:
    "... This whole phenomena seems to b a result of the intersection between political propaganda and the deep psychological wounds of those liberals who were abandoned by their father, particularly female ones. ..."
    "... Because those conspiracy theories pale in comparison and importance to claiming the President is a Russian agent and/or asset, which was endorsed by a former CIA head, a former DNI, high level officials in the FBI, who also spied on the opposition campaign using a now totally discredited opposition research dossier, as well as every Democratic candidate for President except maybe Tulsi. ..."
    "... "Delusion. Denial. Psychosis. Obsession. Paranoia." ..."
    "... Especially ignominious was her much-hyped Trump tax return show. Not sure how she skated on that doozy, despite violating the New York State civil code in the process. ..."
    "... I'd love for someone to leak her medical and psychiatric records for public consumption. See how she feels when the shoe's on the other foot. ..."
    Apr 07, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    MM April 5, 2019 at 6:23 pm

    Even the New Republic has torched Maddow and her network for misleading the public so ignominiously:

    https://newrepublic.com/article/153435/msnbcs-wild-ride

    Archrevenant , says: April 5, 2019 at 6:54 pm
    After watching their increasingly deranged behavior, I have come to believe that "Trump-Putin" represents a type of compound bad father figure in the psychology of liberals.

    This whole phenomena seems to b a result of the intersection between political propaganda and the deep psychological wounds of those liberals who were abandoned by their father, particularly female ones.

    If you listen to the ones farthest down the rabbit hole, the constant use of therapy language "betrayed" "hurt" "violated" etc is very telling.

    Maddow and crew have now created a Frankenstein monster that they cannot control. It is going to get much worse.

    Jay , says: April 5, 2019 at 8:35 pm
    What an idiotic article, Maddow is a complete prostitute for the establishment. She does not have anything to do with Infowars, nor is she like them in any way.
    MM , says: April 5, 2019 at 7:45 pm
    Gene: "I think Rachel has a long way to go before she gets to 911 Trutherism, Sandy Hook and Pizzagate."

    Right, of course. Because those conspiracy theories pale in comparison and importance to claiming the President is a Russian agent and/or asset, which was endorsed by a former CIA head, a former DNI, high level officials in the FBI, who also spied on the opposition campaign using a now totally discredited opposition research dossier, as well as every Democratic candidate for President except maybe Tulsi.

    That sort of thinking is well-grounded, happens every day in America, and has mainstream respectability, right?

    Sheer brilliance

    Bruce , says: April 4, 2019 at 11:14 pm
    The Infowars headline gave me a chuckle, but her trajectory has more in common with that of Walter Winchell.
    MM , says: April 4, 2019 at 11:36 pm
    "Delusion. Denial. Psychosis. Obsession. Paranoia."

    After the Mueller report comes out, maybe she will play the psychosis card, like Alex Jones?

    Especially ignominious was her much-hyped Trump tax return show. Not sure how she skated on that doozy, despite violating the New York State civil code in the process.

    I'd love for someone to leak her medical and psychiatric records for public consumption. See how she feels when the shoe's on the other foot.

    Dan Stewart , says: April 5, 2019 at 2:40 am
    Peter Van Buren nails it. He captures the essence of what happened to Maddow, what she did, what she became. Lots of memorable lines. Great piece. Thanks.
    spite , says: April 5, 2019 at 7:31 am
    Unlike Infowars I don't see the SPLC (basically in charge of American censorship) instructing the tech giants to censor her.
    Sally Snyder , says: April 5, 2019 at 8:15 am
    Here is an article that looks at one of the key players in the neoliberal world order:

    https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/01/george-soros-and-neoliberalism-taking.html

    Once one figures out the cast of highly influential characters that have created this movement, one can gain a better understanding of the anti-Russia movement and why it exists.

    Donald , says: April 5, 2019 at 8:23 am
    I agree with most of this. The press and mainstream liberals have attacked Trump from a McCarthyist paranoid Russiaphobic perspective. As a lefty I would be happy to see MSNBC go out of business. I don't think it helps the left or the country to balance a highly dishonest conservative cable network with a dishonest liberal one.

    But it is likely that Barr spun the report summary in a favorable direction for Trump. I don't mean there was collusion, but there might well be obstruction. I don't think he wanted any sort of investigation into himself or his colleagues because of the more mundane forms of corruption that exist in his circles. Barr was careful to say the report didn't take a stand on this, so there was probably some material in there that makes Trump look bad.

    Connecticut Farmer , says: April 5, 2019 at 9:01 am
    "The second, Maddow's offense, is called propaganda."

    And not just Maddow's either. CNN, MSNBC, NY Times, WAPO, HuffPo etc.– all constitute the p.r. arm of the Democrat Party.

    SteveK9 , says: April 5, 2019 at 9:09 am
    Early on, someone dubbed her Rachel MadCow. It's only become truer as time goes on. When someone goes in that deep on a false conspiracy theory, it's hard to believe they can ever climb back out.
    Sid Finster , says: April 5, 2019 at 9:58 am
    The entire russiagate conspiracy theory is preposterous on its face. Without repeating the numerous other debunkings, a person with half the intelligence routinely ascribed to V.V. Putin would have enough sense to pick a less erratic and more effective patsy, one who could be blackmailed, one who might actually get something done.

    However, on this page we will see cultists frantically condemn this story with a treasure trove of spin, shifting goalposts, shifting burdens of proof, slandering the messenger, arguments from ignorance, arguments from authority, assuming facts not in evidence, "six degrees of separation" type arguments, speculation, jumping to wild conclusions, outrageous bigotry, gross misunderstanding of law and generally showing the world why prosecution is something best left to professionals.

    This is a valuable lesson in cognitive dissonance. Those who want to believe will find reasons to continue to do so.

    The comet came and went, the cultists are still here.

    Allen , says: April 5, 2019 at 11:44 am
    I believe the MSM is much like Washington DC. You can enter with the best of motives and intentions, wanting only to do good, but soon you are so covered in slime and muck that you end up just as corrupt as the worst offender. Plus, you have become utterly incapable of introspection. You never, ever doubt yourself or your opinion. It's a psychopath academy.
    MM , says: April 5, 2019 at 12:03 pm
    JeffK: "I prefer to wait for the complete Mueller report to say she was wrong."

    That's whitewashing what she, and you, have been peddling for 2+ years.

    From the Intercept:

    https://theintercept.com/2017/04/12/msnbcs-rachel-maddow-sees-a-russia-connection-lurking-around-every-corner/

    "Maddow's foremost concern has been alleged Trump-Moscow collusion, which she has repeatedly suggested has continued beyond the election. Here she is on March 9:

    Maddow: What's getting to be, I think, particularly unsettling, is that simultaneously, we are number one, nailing down more direct connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government at the time the Russian government was influencing our election. Number two, at the same time, we are also starting to see what may be signs of continuing influence in our country. Not just during the campaign but during the administration. Basically, signs of what could be a continuing operation."

    Barr quoting Mueller: "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

    Was she wrong about that, and were you wrong about that?

    That's a yes or no question

    Peter Van Buren , says: April 5, 2019 at 12:11 pm
    Instead of Mueller Truthers I'm thinking of renaming folks Mueller Waiters. Wait for the investigation to end, wait for the summary, wait for the redacted report, wait for the full report, wait for the underlying documents, wait for the hearings, wait for the tax documents, wait for wait for something we like.

    Well, tick tock, 2020 is coming. Wait for that.

    Dan Green , says: April 5, 2019 at 12:14 pm
    When it is all said and done, main street will have to make up their own minds about the media. I as an example cancelled my digital subscriptions to the NYT and the Washington Post, when Barr made his announcement. I had quit ever watching either CNN or MSNBC a long timer ago. All that we were subjected to was media bias supporting the deep state. That is not journalism.

    [Apr 06, 2019] The Magnitsky Act-Behind the Scenes ASEEES

    Highly recommended!
    Money quote: "Instead of protecting people, the Magnitsky case helps the "bad guys" to demonstrate to their Russian compatriots that the West is rotten to the core, its policies are created by compliant stooges (lying thieves and useful idiots), and more rockets should be built to confront America's injustice towards Russia and others. A lie can never really protect anyone, in my humble opinion. But the problem is worse. It turns human rights into a hypocritical ideology to protect the interests of the powers that be, a bit like the slogans about brotherhood and justice in the Soviet Union. "
    Notable quotes:
    "... Taught in tandem with William Browder's book Red Notice , this film can provide students with a real-life experience in the practice of critical thinking. The film also allows us to revive a discussion of Hayden White's penetrating analysis of the ways in which the structure of the form necessarily influences the content of any artistic or historical narrative. The vehicle of the docudrama that Nekrasov uses in his film, and the competing narratives about the circumstances leading to Magnitsky's death, merit literary and intellectual analysis, along with geopolitical commentary. ..."
    "... The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes is about the ways in which the notion of human rights is sometimes used as a fake alibi for white-collar crimes. Though I explore just one case, I think that I have managed to show that those ways are exceptionally sophisticated and efficient, and enlist all the major media, civil society, NGOs, governments, parliaments, and major international organizations. ..."
    "... The Magnitsky Act, in my view, is not a weapon that can protect people. The Magnitsky Act was designed to punish those deemed murderers and torturers of Magnitsky. Well, if my film demonstrates that Magnitsky was not murdered (by the people Browder claims he was murdered by), nor was he tortured, the Magnitsky Act is nonsensical. You cannot punish someone for something that did not happen. Can you then say, never mind, human rights violations happen, and it's good to have a mechanism to punish violators even if there's no evidence that people named as violators are guilty? I don't think one can say "never mind". Neither legally, nor, morally. ..."
    "... There is no evidence whatsoever that the government of the United States conducted independent investigations of the policemen and the judges who were supposedly involved in the death of Magnitsky. And no one seems to be concerned of course about the rights of those on the Magnitsky list, who can't even reply to the accusations, let alone have the accusations verified by an independent investigator or judge. ..."
    Apr 06, 2019 | www.aseees.org

    In 2016, Andrei Lvovich Nekrasov, a well-known Russian film-maker, playwright, theater director, and actor, released a docudrama entitled, The Magnitsky Act -- Behind the Scenes . Although the film won many artistic accolades, including a special commendation from the Prix Europa Award for a Television Documentary, public screenings were abruptly canceled in both Europe and the United States. Political pressure from various constituents and the threat of lawsuits from William Browder, the American-British billionaire and human-rights activist, ensured the limitation of the film to a single website. To the knowledge of this author, there has been only one public screening of The Magnitsky Act -- Behind the Scenes in the United States. In June 2016, Seymour Hersch, a renowned investigative journalist, presided over a showing of the film at the Newseum in Washington, DC, that generated much controversy. The American press has not been kind to either the film or the director, Andrei Nekrasov. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Daily Beast all seem to agree that the film is an overt work of Russian propaganda that aims to introduce confusion about the circumstances leading to the death of tax accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, in the minds of the viewers. The Putin administration, which has been the prime target of both the 2012 Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Accountability Act and the 2016 Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, has good reason to promote a film that questions the circumstances surrounding Magnitsky's untimely death in Moscow's Butyrka Prison in 2009.

    Despite a flood of persuasive articles and editorials by well-known journalists suggesting that this inconvenient film deserves no more than a quick burial, I was drawn to reconsider both the film and the political controversy that it continues to create for two main reasons. First, as the collapse of the Soviet Union and our own recent presidential campaigns show, we can never entirely prohibit the intrusion of propaganda or politically slanted content into the public sphere. Instead, as a historian and faculty member who serves at a public university, I believe that it is my job to teach our students how to diagnose an issue, and how to consider the many sides that a story necessarily involves. As an intellectual process this has immense value both in and of itself. Source criticism is a time tested and reliable means through which we can make sense of an event or a phenomenon. Our students need to learn both the mechanics and the intellectual value of analyzing a source and should be able to evaluate the nature of political content whether it is embedded in a Facebook post, a scholarly article, or a documentary.

    The Magnitsky Act -- Behind the Scenes can serve as an important vehicle to introduce the contested nature of historical truth, and as a prism, it allows us to view the multiple modes through which various versions of the truth are disseminated in the twenty-first century. Taught in tandem with William Browder's book Red Notice , this film can provide students with a real-life experience in the practice of critical thinking. The film also allows us to revive a discussion of Hayden White's penetrating analysis of the ways in which the structure of the form necessarily influences the content of any artistic or historical narrative. The vehicle of the docudrama that Nekrasov uses in his film, and the competing narratives about the circumstances leading to Magnitsky's death, merit literary and intellectual analysis, along with geopolitical commentary.

    Second, I am concerned by the fact that both critics and supporters have turned the debate about the film into a referendum on William Browder, his business dealings as well as his global human rights activism, and the Putin administration. In this interview with Andrei Nekrasov, I turn the spotlight back on the film-maker, his motivations for making the film, and on his political experiences since the release of the film. It is important to remember that in the past Nekrasov has made several politically charged films including Disbelief (2004), and Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File (2007) -- films that are extremely critical of the Putin administration. Nekrasov, a student of philosophy and literature, is in the unique position of having experienced censorship in the Soviet Union, Putin's Russia, and in the democratic countries of Western Europe and the United States.

    1) Why did you want to make a film about the Magnitsky Act? What drew you to this project?

    Andrei Nekrasov : I felt that the story of Magnitsky, in its accepted version, was very powerful and important. I thought that Sergei Magnitsky was a hero, and I wanted to tell the story of the modern hero, my compatriot. His case seemed very special because Magnitsky, a tax lawyer (in reality, an accountant) had come from the world of capitalism, to symbolize all that is good and moral in modern Russia. I believed that Magnitsky did not surrender under torture and sacrificed his life fighting corruption.

    2) Who has funded the making of this film and what motivated them to invest in this production?

    AN : The film was produced by Piraya Film, a Norwegian company. There is a long list of funders, and none are from Russia. (Please visit www.magnitskyact.com for further information). And they are all very "mainstream." I believe in the United States and Russia it is easier to construe the specific reasons that motivate funders, who are mostly private, to support a project. In Europe, where more public money is available for the arts, the state is more or less obliged to fund the cultural process. So I submit an idea to a producer, and if they like it, they introduce it into a complex system of funding that is supposed to be politically neutral. Only quality matters, in theory. In practice "quality" has political aspects, and its interpretation is open to prejudices.

    But it would be a simplification to say the film was funded because I had set out to tell Browder's version of the Magnitsky case. Those funders who were (through their commissioning editors) monitoring the editing process, ZDF/ARTE, for example, became aware of the inconsistencies in Browder's version and supported my investigation into the truth. What they did not realize was who, and what, we were all dealing with. They did not realize that Browder was supported by the entire political system of North America and Western Europe. They realized that only when they were told by politicians to stop the film. And they obeyed, contrary to what I thought was their principles.

    3) How has the role of censorship, both in Russia and the West, affected your artistic career?

    AN : Censorship has had a very strong and damaging impact on my career. But while censorship in Russia had never been something surprising to me, the way that the film T he Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes was treated by western politicians was totally unanticipated and shocking. Yet, intellectually, the experience was very illuminating. The pro-Western intelligentsia of Russia, a class to which I have belonged, idolizes the West and believes that the freedom of expression is an essential and even intrinsic part of Western culture. The notion that the interests of economically powerful groups can set a geopolitical agenda and that easily overrides democratic freedom of expression is considered to be a remnant of Soviet era thinking. So I had to have a direct and personal experience of Western censorship to realize that that notion is rooted in reality.

    The issue of censorship in Russia is, on the other hand, often misunderstood in the West. There is no direct political censorship of the kind that existed in the Soviet Union, and that possibly exists in countries like China today. Many popular Russian news outlets are critical of the government, and of Putin personally as evidenced by the content in media outlets such as Ekho Moskvy, Novaya Gazeta, Dozhd TV, New Times, Vedomosti, Colta. ru, and others. The internet is full of mockery of Putin, his ministers and of his party's representatives. There is neither a system nor the kind of wellresourced deep state structures that control the flow of information. Many Russian media outlets, for example, repeat Browder's story of Magnitsky killed by the corrupt police with the state covering it up. All that is perfectly "allowed" while Putin angrily condemns Browder as a criminal and Browder calls himself Putin's number one enemy. In reality, it is not allowed but simply happens because of the lack of consistent political censorship.

    However, you will hardly ever hear a proper analysis and criticism in the Russian media of the big corporations, and of the oligarchs that make up the state. It is also true that such acute crises as military operations, such as Russian-Georgian war of 2008 produce intolerance to the voices of the opposition. My film Russian Lessons (2008) about the suffering of the Georgians during that short war and its aftermath wasbanned in Russia. But nationalism is not only a government policy. It's the prevailing mood. The supposedly democratic leader of the opposition, that the West seems to praise and support, Alexei Navalny, was on the record insulting Georgians in jingo-nationalistic posts during the war. The film industry is, of course, easier to steer in the "right direction" as films, unlike articles and essays, are very expensive to produce. But Russia is a complex society, deeply troubled, but also misunderstood by the West. If my films, such as Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File , and Russian Lessons (2010) were attacked by pro-government media, then some of my articles were censored by the independent, "opposition" outlets, such as Ekho Moskvy .

    4) Did you actually begin filming the movie with an outcome of supporting Browder's story in mind, as you represent in the film, or did you plan from the start of the filming process to end the film as it now stands?

    AN : I started filming the story. I totally believed in the story that Browder had told me, and all the mainstream media repeated after him.

    5) You know that there are many more "disappeared" journalists and others listed in the formal US Congress Magnitsky Act who have suffered from the effects of corrupt power in Russia. Why did you not address the fates of some of those others as well in your film?

    AN : I may be misunderstanding this question, but I do not see how addressing the fates of "disappeared" journalists and others' would be relevant to the topic of my film in its final version. I obviously condemn the "disappearance" of journalists and others. In Russia journalists disappear usually by being "simply" shot (not in "sophisticated" Saudi ways), and as far as I remember only one is referred to in The Magnitsky Act , Paul Khlebnikov. He was the editor of Forbes, Russia , and was shot in 2004 when Bill Browder was a great fan of Vladimir Putin and continued to be for some time. I have not seen any evidence or even claim, that Putin may have been behind that murder. I was a friend of Anna Politkovskaya, perhaps the most famous of all Russian journalists who was assassinated in the recent past. She is featured in my film, Poisoned by Polonium .

    The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes is about the ways in which the notion of human rights is sometimes used as a fake alibi for white-collar crimes. Though I explore just one case, I think that I have managed to show that those ways are exceptionally sophisticated and efficient, and enlist all the major media, civil society, NGOs, governments, parliaments, and major international organizations.

    6) Does William Browder's role in the formulation of the Magnitsky Act invalidate its value and that of the Global Magnitsky Act, in seeking to provide protection for those suffering from the effects of deadly and corrupt power such as the recently deceased Saudi Arabian journalist, Jamal Khashoggi?

    AN : Let me, for the argument's sake, pose myself what would seem like a version of your question: "Would Browder's role in creating a weapon that could protect someone like Khashoggi from deadly and corrupt power invalidate that weapon?" My answer would be, no, it would not invalidate that weapon. However, we are dealing with a fallacy here, in my humble opinion. The Magnitsky Act, in my view, is not a weapon that can protect people. The Magnitsky Act was designed to punish those deemed murderers and torturers of Magnitsky. Well, if my film demonstrates that Magnitsky was not murdered (by the people Browder claims he was murdered by), nor was he tortured, the Magnitsky Act is nonsensical. You cannot punish someone for something that did not happen. Can you then say, never mind, human rights violations happen, and it's good to have a mechanism to punish violators even if there's no evidence that people named as violators are guilty? I don't think one can say "never mind". Neither legally, nor, morally.

    There is no evidence whatsoever that the government of the United States conducted independent investigations of the policemen and the judges who were supposedly involved in the death of Magnitsky. And no one seems to be concerned of course about the rights of those on the Magnitsky list, who can't even reply to the accusations, let alone have the accusations verified by an independent investigator or judge.

    Instead of protecting people, the Magnitsky case helps the "bad guys" to demonstrate to their Russian compatriots that the West is rotten to the core, its policies are created by compliant stooges (lying thieves and useful idiots), and more rockets should be built to confront America's injustice towards Russia and others. A lie can never really protect anyone, in my humble opinion. But the problem is worse. It turns human rights into a hypocritical ideology to protect the interests of the powers that be, a bit like the slogans about brotherhood and justice in the Soviet Union.

    Choi Chatterjee is a Professor of History at California State University, Los Angeles. Chatterjee, along with Steven Marks, Mary Neuberger, and Steve Sabol, edited The Wider Arc of Revolution in three volumes (Slavica Publishers).

    [Apr 06, 2019] Relationship with Russia is the main casualty of Russiagate

    Apr 06, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    Brendan April 5, 2019 at 12:40 pm

    Relationship with the only nation on Earth besides US is the main casualty of Russiagate. Ever since the religious schism of 1054, the West has failed to understand Russia. In the 19th Century only Harvard even offered a Russian language course. Our main ally, Britian, has been irrationally Russophobic since Benjamin Disraeli. There is no evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Internet Research Institute was a commercial click bait business, staffed by underpaid grad students, not KGB spies. The DNC files were not hacked, they were downloaded by disgruntled Bernie Bros and given to Wikileaks.

    Trump gave Putin the respect he deserves at Helsinki. Putin has done much for his country, and the world, by checking Western Imperialism in the Ukraine, Syria, and now Venezuela. History will recognize Putin as the preeminent statesman of the early 21 Century, and will honor Trump to the extent Trump recognizes that.

    [Apr 06, 2019] How MSNBC converted itself into "MSDNC"

    Apr 06, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    George Hoffman April 5, 2019 at 12:25 am

    "The great progressive hope – America was run by a Russian stooge – was over and done." Peter, have you been hiding out with the Taliban in Tora Bora? Progressives vehemently detest Raddow Maddow. She represents to them the faux millionaire liberals at MSNBC ( pejoratively nicknamed as "MSDNC" by them ) and at CNN.

    Just go online and surf over to The Jimmy Dore Show on YouTube. He has only utter contempt for Rachael Maddow.

    His anger over the corrupt liberal elites around Hilary Clinton who stole the primary season from Senator Bernie Sander borders on a psychotic break with reality.

    And he had a moment of spritual schedenfruede when the Mueller report came out and showed her to the obvious fraud that she is?

    If you are unable to distinguish between the liberal wing and the progressive wing within the Democratic Party, who are waging a bitter civil war against each other, how can I take you as a serious commentator on politics?

    [Apr 06, 2019] MadCow illustrates a problem when neoliberal propagandists are masquerading as journalists

    Apr 06, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    MM April 5, 2019 at 12:56 pm

    Ian: "It's a problem when conservatives cannot tell the difference between legitimate inquiries into a president's conduct."

    More whitewashing of Maddow's multi-year campaign of journalistic malpractice and public disinformation.

    Lovely it's a problem when conspiracy theorists masquerading as "broadcasters" speculate about the President being a Russian agent and/or asset, engaging in espionage and treason, all without evidence, call such claims legitimate inquiries, and then refuse to apologize when such claims are thoroughly debunked by the Special Counsel.

    Again, Barr quoting Mueller: "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

    [Apr 06, 2019] Nolte Russia Hoax Queen Rachel Maddow's Ratings Take 20% Dive

    Apr 06, 2019 | www.breitbart.com

    MSNBC's Rachel Maddow lost a whopping 20 percent of her audience after the release of the Mueller Report proved she shamelessly deceived her audience for more than two years.

    The release of this report -- you know, the one that exonerates President Trump of any and all allegations of Russia collusion, is, arguably, the biggest news of the last two years -- and in the heat of this massive news cycle that lands directly in Maddow's sweet spot, a huge chunk of her audience just up and disappeared.

    For two years a cloud of illegitimacy hung over the Trump presidency and for two years the establishment media, most especially MSNBC and CNN, maniacally fire hosed the American people with fake news to smear the president as a Russian spy. But of all those guilty of spreading this dishonest hysteria, no one came close to Rachel Maddow.

    Night after relentless night, over two-plus years, Maddow kept her suckers on the hook by weaving from whole cloth a conspiracy tale about Trump being owned by Putin. And with this tale came the promise that Trump's removal from office was always right around the corner, and that Robert Mueller would be the deliverer -- the angel who would end the nightmare of a terrible national mistake known as the Trump presidency.

    Because this hysteria was everywhere (except in the conservative media that got everything right), there was no way to warn Maddow's suckers that they were in fact suckers, that like a cult leader promising the end of the world, she was hustling them, lying to them, and enriching herself in the process to the tune of about $10 million a year.

    Maybe now, though, the Cult of Maddow is cracking. I doubt it, but there is some hope in the latest numbers

    On Monday March 18, four days before the Mueller Report proved her a liar, 2.977 million people tuned in to Maddow's carnival bark.

    This past Monday, the 25th, three days after the Mueller Report proved her a liar, only 2.513 million tuned in, a loss of nearly 500,000 viewers.

    Lawrence O'Donnell -- whose show immediately follows Maddow and who is almost as obsessed with deceiving his audience about those damn, dirty Reds -- took a similar hit: a drop from 2.2 million to 1.845 million.

    In my decade or so of media coverage, MSNBC has rarely pinged my radar. Who cares about an openly left-wing outlet being openly left-wing? If CNN would stop its laughable pose as objective, that fake news network would probably never hear from me again.

    This thing with Maddow, though, is bigger because she's a snake oil saleswoman, a bunco artist, a grifter selling vials of hope filled with lies. For years, and only as a means to stay in the ratings fight with Sean Hannity, Maddow deliberately played millions and millions of people for suckers, for rubes She hustled them, lied to them, deceived and hoaxed them in the most cynical way imaginable.

    Mueller's got the goods, she promised, and Trump will be marched in cuffs out of the Oval Office, and you must tune in every single night or you will miss The Most Important Development Yet .

    And it was all bullshit, a con, a fever swamp of desperate dot-connecting backed by maniacal talking heads and unhinged "experts" screaming about treason! and indictments! and bombshells! and walls closing in!

    So is it possible, dare we dream The Truth has set as much as 20 percent of Maddow's gullible viewers free?

    Or is this just more denial and avoidance by the Cult of Rachel. The Daily Beast (that first reported Maddow's ratings dive) describes it this way : "[I]t's also possible that the Mueller disappointment drove loyal viewers away in much the same way that people avoid looking at their 401(k)s when the stock market is down."

    My guess is that the suckers will be back. Maddow will pivot with a wrist flick and a never-mind right into the next fever dream.

    There's a market among neurotic leftists for the drug of delusional denial and the Hoax Queen's got an endless supply.

    Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC . Follow his Facebook Page here .

    [Apr 06, 2019] MadCow is going down (at least in ratings)

    Apr 06, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    MM April 5, 2019 at 6:23 pm

    Even the New Republic has torched Maddow and her network for misleading the public so ignominiously:

    https://newrepublic.com/article/153435/msnbcs-wild-ride

    Archrevenant , says: April 5, 2019 at 6:54 pm
    After watching their increasingly deranged behavior, I have come to believe that "Trump-Putin" represents a type of compound bad father figure in the psychology of liberals.

    This whole phenomena seems to b a result of the intersection between political propaganda and the deep psychological wounds of liberals who were abandoned by their father, particularly female ones.

    If you listen to the ones farthest down the rabbit hole, the constant use of therapy language "betrayed" "hurt" "violated" etc is very telling.

    Maddow and crew have now created a Frankenstein monster that they cannot control. It is going to get much worse.

    Jay , says: April 5, 2019 at 8:35 pm
    What an idiotic article, Maddow is a complete prostitute for the establishment. She does not have anything to do with Infowars, nor is she like them in any way.
    MM , says: April 5, 2019 at 7:45 pm
    Gene: "I think Rachel has a long way to go before she gets to 911 Trutherism, Sandy Hook and Pizzagate."

    Right, of course. Because those conspiracy theories pale in comparison and importance to claiming the President is a Russian agent and/or asset, which was endorsed by a former CIA head, a former DNI, high level officials in the FBI, who also spied on the opposition campaign using a now totally discredited opposition research dossier, as well as every Democratic candidate for President except maybe Tulsi.

    That sort of thinking is well-grounded, happens every day in America, and has mainstream respectability, right?

    Sheer brilliance

    [Apr 06, 2019] How Rachel Maddow Turned Into Infowars

    Apr 06, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    How Rachel Maddow Turned Into Infowars She's still spinning Russiagate conspiracy tales, even as her ratings come crashing down. By Peter Van Buren • April 5, 2019

    Rachel Maddow (MSNBC screenshot) Though she doesn't often bring it up these days, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow remembers how the media abetted the Bush administration's lies justifying the 2003 Iraq invasion. That was when elite (in many cases handpicked) journalists spent months serving as stenographers for the push to war, parroting every carefully crafted leak without question. They dismissed skeptics as disloyal and spiked stories that would have raised questions about the narrative. When they got caught, they declared "never again."

    Yet with Rachel Maddow as their poster child (along with David Corn, Luke Harding, Chris Hayes, the entire staff at CNN, and hundreds more), journalists over the last two years repeated every mistake their predecessors had made in 2003.

    They treated gossip as fact because it came from a "source" and told us to just trust them. They blurred the lines between first-hand knowledge, second- and third-hand hearsay, and "people familiar with the matter" to build breaking news out of manure. They marginalized skeptics as "useful idiots." (Glenn Greenwald, who called bull on Russiagate from the beginning, says MSNBC banned him after he criticized Maddow. He'd been a regular during the Bush and Obama years.)

    They accepted negative information at face value and discarded information that did not fit their pre-written narrative of collusion. The Washington Post never even ran a story about how its reporters came up empty after working for months to prove that Michael Cohen met with Russian agents in Prague.

    Advertisement

    They went all in with salacious headlines, every story a sugar high. They purposefully muddled the impact of an indictment versus an actual conviction. They conflated anyone from Russia with the Russian government. They never paused to ask why there weren't "Sources: Trump is Innocent" stories that later needed to be walked back; the errors were somehow all on one side. They became a machine as trustworthy as the politicians they relied on.

    Though the wars across the Middle East the media helped midwife are beyond sin, the damage done to journalism itself is far worse this time around. With Maddow in the lead, journalists went a step further than just shoddy reporting, proudly declaring their partisanship (once the cardinal sin of journalism) and placing themselves at the center of the story. In one critic's words , "In purely journalistic terms, this is an epic disaster."

    So there was Maddow, night after night in front of her serial killer burlap board, Trump and Putin surrounded by blurry images of Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, she running twine between pins so her viewers could keep up with her racing intellect. Anyone with a Russian-y surname "had ties to Putin," "connections to Russian intelligence," or was at least an oligarch. She nurtured an unashamed crush on deep state clowns that the Rachel Maddow of a few years back would have smirked at -- Brennan, Clapper, Comey.

    She ignored or downplayed other news, devoting over 50 percent of her airtime to Russiagate alone (Trump's Muslim visa ban got less than 6 percent). She worked to convince Americans that the cornerstone of justice was not "innocent until proven guilty" but "if there's smoke there's fire." She joined journalists in knowingly publishing material whose veracity they doubted, centering on the Steele dossier .

    Maddow became Infowars. She moved beyond the simpleton advocacy journalism of Bush lie peddling journo tools. She was going to save the country. So she created a story out of whole cloth that reinforced her political beliefs and convinced people it was true. And it was all justified because the fate of the republic itself hung in the balance. Any day now, Trump would peel off a rubber mask Scooby Doo-style to reveal that he was Putin all along.

    And then, after years of being held together by the incantation "just wait for Mueller Time," one day it all fell apart. The Mueller report summary was short, but it answered the most important question ever asked about a president: Trump was not a Russian asset. There was no Russiagate, no conspiracy, collusion, cooperation, or indictments, none to come and none sealed we didn't know about, and no treason or perjury charges over the Moscow hotel or the Trump Tower meeting or anything else. The accusations were as explicit as was the conclusion. It. Did. Not. Happen.

    The great progressive hope -- America was run by a Russian stooge -- was over and done. Maddow's response? Break another cardinal rule of journalism and bury the lede. Okay, sure, Bill Barr says Mueller didn't find collusion if you wanna believe that, but what matters now is that, even after Robert Mueller did not find evidence of obstruction he could charge, and the FBI before him did not find any, and Bill Barr confirmed he did not find it, Maddow still knows obstruction took place. And if only she could see the full Mueller report, she would explain it all to you. (Maddow is promoting a "day of action" for Americans to take to the streets and demand the report.) It wasn't the Russians; it was old man Barr in the drawing room with the candlestick! Trump is guilty of failing to obstruct an investigation that cleared him!

    Meanwhile, after waiting two years for Mueller, waiting two weeks for Barr to release the report was unconscionable. But two days for Barr to write the summary was too fast, proof the fix was in. Trump threatens the rule of law, but when the system works according to the law and the attorney general makes a lawful decision, it's all an inside-job-cover-up-crisis.

    A big focus for Maddow this week was a foreign government-owned company resisting an old Mueller subpoena. The case is in front of a grand jury, so the public does not know what company it is, what government is involved, what the case itself concerns, or whether it has any connection to Trump, Russia, or the Spiders from Mars. But listening to Maddow spin it all out, it sounds VERY BIG.

    Over the course of a recent evening, she tied what she dubbed The Mystery Case into Watergate (the same court being used as in 1974 is about the only connection), and because the Watergate judge released some grand jury testimony to help drive Nixon from office, this bodes ill for Trump keeping the dirt Rachel just knows is there secret. It could break this wide open!

    The whole oral manifesto was delivered Howard Beale-like in what seemed like one long breath, with the certainty of someone who sees ghosts and is frustrated you can't see them too. It got so bad that recently Maddow was corrected by her own producers in real time.

    It took the New York Times over a year after the Iraq war started to issue a mild "mistakes were made" kind of self-rebuke . At some point with Russiagate, many people will come to understand that there aren't more questions than answers. They'll abandon the straw man of waiting for prosecutors to issue a magic Certificate of Exoneration because they'll understand that prosecutors end things by deciding not to prosecute.

    But it's hard to see Maddow returning to earth orbit. Instead of a reflective pause, she is spinning ever-more complex and nonsensical conspiracy tales, talking faster and faster to cover the gaps in logic. It is sad, but there are psychiatric terms for people who refuse to accept facts and insist they alone understand a world you can't even see. Delusion. Denial. Psychosis. Obsession. Paranoia.

    Maddow is a sad story. Others playing the cable news game never had her intellect (looking at you, Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo). They were weekend Vichy, showbiz grifters. But Maddow believed. Her goal was to end the Trump presidency on her own. And to do so, she devolved from what Glenn Greenwald called "this really smart, independent thinker into this utterly scripted, intellectually dishonest, partisan hack."

    There's a difference between being wrong once in a while (and issuing corrections) and being wrong for two years on both the core point as well as the evidence. There is even more wrong with purposefully manipulating information to drive a specific narrative, believing that the ends justify the means.

    In journalism school, the first is called making a mistake. The second, Maddow's offense, is called propaganda.

    Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People , Hooper's War : A Novel of WWII Japan , and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99% .

    [Apr 06, 2019] MadCow is sliding in ratings. May be only temprorary as he "bae" will remain like the dommsday cult after failed date of Armagetton

    Apr 06, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    MM April 5, 2019 at 12:48 pm

    Radio: "Maddow's ratings still exceed Hannity's."

    From the AP:

    "Maddow's audience has dipped on her two days back on the air since Attorney General William P. Barr reported that special counsel Robert Mueller had found no collusion between Trump and Russia's efforts. Her audience of 2.5 million on Monday was 19% below her average this year, and it went down further to 2.3 million on Tuesday, the Nielsen company said.

    Meanwhile, her head-to-head competitor on Fox News Channel, Sean Hannity, saw his audience soar on Monday to 4 million viewers, a 32% increase from his average. It slipped to 3.57 million on Tuesday. One of Trump's most prominent media fans, Hannity was to interview the president on Wednesday's show."

    Ouch.

    Given the facts, sir, what are you full of?

    [Apr 06, 2019] USA is neo-McCarthyism hysteria resemble some obsure religious cult, not a civilized country

    "Were these gun rights folks potentially a conduit for Russian money alongside other forms of Russian government influence on our 2016 campaign?" -- Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, July 25, 2018
    Apr 06, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    Steve April 5, 2019 at 12:50 pm

    Let me add my two cents. If you accuse someone of wrong-doing, and the accusation is serious, then two points:

    1. A basic moral principle undergirding what we call "civilization" is the notion that the burden of proof is on the accuser. It is the accuser that must prove the accusation. The accused, or any of the accused defenders, DO NOT HAVE TO "PROVE" ANYTHING, PERIOD.

    2. The more serious the accusation, the stiffer the burden of proof. Period.

    Because of their flagrant disregard for these basic principles, what we call the "mainstream media" in the U.S. has shown itself to be utterly worthless and untrustworthy. And the MORE serious the issue, the LESS trustworthy it is!

    [Apr 05, 2019] Vladislav Surkov's Hugely Important New Article About What Putinism Is - Full Translation

    Apr 05, 2019 | russia-insider.com

    Editor's note : Vladislav Surkov has been called the "Kremlin's Ideologist" and partly due to his formidable intellectual firepower, as this article demonstrates, wields power in Russia regardless of what office he currently holds.

    A former Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Chief of Staff to Putin, Surkov excels the white arts of PR, Propaganda, electoral chicanery (which he denounces in this article, he of all people should know what a fraud modern democracy is). This article appeared on Monday in Russian in Moscow, and there were immediate and predictable howls from the Russia-hating media. ' Russia is 'playing with the West's minds' says Putin advisor ' quips London's Independent. Surkov is something of an obsession for Russia's tiny liberal opposition and for their fellow-traveler, Russia-hating Academia and Punditry, and he has been written about endlessly, films have been made about him, etc. etc. Here is a good recent example by Whitney Malam on Medium . He is always painted as some kind of Dark Prince of Deception, which is their way of saying he is smarter than they are.

    Surkov is no longer in the limelight, but he occasionally hurls down these rhetorical thunderbolts. What he says is always interesting and sometimes profound, and we think this essay is very much the latter. It argues that the system which has evolved in Russia over the last 18 years is extremely durable, and could well last for centuries, and that it is more honest and works far better than the clown show in the West.

    Well, judge for yourself. The translation here is brilliant, because it was done by regular contributor Dmitry Orlov , who if you haven't read, you should. One doesn't often see translations of this calibre, because the people capable of doing them don't tend to be translators. - Charles Bausman, Editor, RI Putin's Lasting State

    Russian title and link : Долгое государство Путина

    By Vladislav Surkov ,

    "It only seems that we have a choice." These words are amazing in their depth of meaning and audacity. They were uttered a decade and a half ago, and today they have been forgotten and are not quoted. But according to the laws of psychology that which is forgotten affects us much more than what we remember. And these words, taken far outside the context in which they were first uttered, have as a result become the first axiom of the new Russian statehood upon which have been built all theories and practices of contemporary politics.

    Vladislav Surkov

    The illusion of choice is the most important of all illusions, the main trick of the Western way of life in general and Western democracy in particular, which has for a long time now adhered more closely to the ideas of P.T. Barnum than to those of Cleisthenes. The rejection of this illusion in favor of the realism of predestination has led our society first to reflect upon its own special, sovereign version of democratic development, and then to completely lose interest in any discussions on the subject of what democracy should be like and whether it should exist even in principle.

    This opened up paths toward the free development of the state, directed not by imported chimeras but by the logic of historical processes, by that very "art of the possible." The impossible, unnatural and counter-historical disintegration of Russia was, albeit belatedly, definitively arrested. Having collapsed from the level of the USSR to the level of the Russian Federation, Russia stopped collapsing, started to recover and returned to its natural and its only possible condition: that of a great and growing community of nations that gathers lands. It is not a humble role that world history has assigned to our country, and it does not allow us to exit the world stage or to remain silent among the community of nations; it does not promise us rest and it predetermines the difficult character of our governance.

    And so the Russian state continues, now as a new type of state that has never existed here before. It took form mostly in the middle of the 2000s, and so far it has been little studied, but its uniqueness and its viability are now apparent. The stress tests which it has passed and is now passing have shown that this specific, organically arrived at model of political functioning provides an effective means of survival and ascension of the Russian nation not just for the coming years, but for decades and, most likely, for the entire next century.

    In this way, Russian history has by now known four main models of governance, which can provisionally be named after their creators: the government of Ivan the Third (the Great Principality/the Kindom of Moscow and of All Rus, XV-XVII century); the government of Peter the Great (Russian Empire, XVIII-XIX century); the government of Lenin (USSR, XX century); and the government of Putin (Russian Federation, XXI century). Created by people who were, to use Lev Gumilev's term, possessed of "long-term willpower," one after another these large-scale political machines repaired themselves, adapted to circumstances along the way and provided for the relentless ascent of the Russian World.

    Putin's large-scale political machine is only now revving up and getting ready for long, difficult and interesting work. Its engagement at full power is still far ahead, and many years from now Russia will still be the government of Putin, just as contemporary France still calls itself the Fifth Republic of de Gaulle, Turkey (although now ruled by anti-Kemalists) still relies on the ideology of Atatürk's "Six Arrows," and the United States still appeals to the images and values of its half-legendary "founding fathers."

    What is needed is a comprehension and a description of Putin's system of governance and the entire complex of ideas and dimensions of Putinism as the ideology of the future -- specifically of the future, because present-day Putin can hardly be considered a Putinist, just as, for example, Karl Marx was not a Marxist and we can't be sure that he would have agreed to be one had he found out what that's like. But we need this explanation for the sake of everyone who isn't Putin but would like to be like him -- and to have the possibility of applying his methods and approaches in the coming times.

    This description must not be in the form of dueling propagandas -- ours vs. theirs -- but in a language that would be perceived as moderately heretical by both Russian and anti-Russian officialdoms. Such language can be made acceptable to a sufficiently large audience, which is exactly what is needed, because the political system that has been made in Russia is fit to serve not just future domestic needs but obviously has significant export potential. Demand for it and for certain specific components of it already exists, its experience is being studied and partially adopted, and it is being imitated by both ruling and opposition groups in many countries.

    Foreign politicians accuse Russia of interfering in elections and referenda throughout the planet. But in reality the situation is even more serious: Russia interferes with their brains, and they don't know what to do with their own transformed consciousness. After the disastrous 1990s, once Russia turned away from all borrowed ideologies, it started generating its own ideas and began to counterattack the West. Since then European and American experts have been erring in their predictions more and more frequently. They are surprised and vexed by the paranormal preferences of the electorates. In confusion, they have sounded the alarm about an outbreak of populism. They can call it that, if they happen to be at a loss for words.

    Meanwhile, the interest of foreigners in the Russian political algorithm is easy to understand: there are no prophets in their lands, but everything that is happening to them today has been prophesied from Russia a long time ago.

    When everyone was still in love with globalization and made noise about a flat world without borders, Moscow pointedly reminded them that sovereignty and national interests are important. Back then many people accused us of "naïve" attachment to these old things, which had supposedly fallen out of fashion long ago. They taught us that it's futile to hold on to XIX-century values, but that we should bravely step into the XXI century, where there supposedly won't be any sovereign nations or nation-states. However, the XXI century is turning out the way we said it would. British Brexit, American #GreatAgain, anti-immigrant enclosure of Europe -- these are but the first few items in a long list of commonplace manifestations of deglobalization, re-sovereignization and nationalism.

    When on every corner someone lauded the Internet as an inviolable space of unlimited freedom, where everyone is allowed to be anyone and all are equal, it was specifically from Russia that came a sobering question for Internet-addled humanity: "Who we are on the World Wide Web, spiders or flies?" And now everyone, including the most freedom-loving of bureaucracies, is busy trying to untangle the Web and accusing Facebook of accommodating foreign interlopers. The once free virtual space, which had been advertised as a prototype of the coming heaven on Earth, has been seized and cordoned off by cyber-police and cyber-criminals, cyber-armies and cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-moralists.

    When the hegemony of the "hegemon" was not contested by anyone, the great American dream of world domination was close to being fulfilled, and many people hallucinated the end of history with the final comment of "the people are silent," in that silence there came Putin's Munich speech. At the time it sounded as dissenting, but today everything in it seems self-evident: nobody is happy with America, including the Americans themselves.

    The previously little-known Turkish political term derin devlet has been popularized by American media. Translated into English as "deep state" it was then picked up by the Russian media. The term indicates a harsh, absolutely nondemocratic networked organization of real authoritarian structures hidden behind showy democratic institutions. This mechanism, which in practice exerts its authority through acts of violence, bribery and manipulation, and remains hidden deep beneath the surface of a hypocritical and simple-minded civil society which it manipulates while bribing or repressing all who accuse it.

    Having discovered in their midst an unpleasant "deep state," Americans were not particularly surprised, since they have long suspected that it exists. If there is a "deep net" and a "dark net," then why not a "deep state" or even a "dark state"? From the depths and darkness of this un-exhibited and unadvertised power there float up shining mirages of democracy special-made for mass consumption that feature the illusion of choice, the feeling of freedom, delusions of superiority and so on.

    Mistrust and envy, which democracy uses as prioritized sources of social energy, inevitably lead to a sharpening of criticism and an increased level of anxiety. Haters, trolls and the angry bots that have joined them have formed a screechy majority that has forced out the once dominant, respectable middle class which once upon a time set quite a different tone.

    Nobody believes any more in the good intentions of public politicians. They are envied and are therefore considered corrupt, shrewd, or simply scoundrels. Popular political serials, such as "The Boss" and "The House of Cards," paint correspondingly murky scenes of the establishment's day-to-day.

    A scoundrel must not be allowed to go too far for the simple reason that he is a scoundrel. But when all around you (we surmise) there are only scoundrels, one is forced to use scoundrels to restrain other scoundrels. As one pounds out a wedge using another wedge, one dislodges a scoundrel using another scoundrel There is a wide choice of scoundrels and obfuscated rules designed to make their battles result in something like a tie. This is how a beneficial system of checks and balances comes about -- a dynamic equilibrium of villainy, a balance of avarice, a harmony of swindles. But if someone forgets that this is just a game and starts to behave disharmoniously, the ever-vigilant deep state hurries to the rescue and an invisible hand drags the apostate down into the murky depths.

    There is nothing particularly frightening in this proposed image of Western democracy. All you have to do is change your perspective a little, and it would no longer seem scary. But it leaves a sour feeling, and a Western citizen starts to spin his head around in search of other models and other ways of being. And sees Russia.

    Our system, as in general everything else that's ours, is no more graceful, but it is more honest. And although the phrase "more honest" is not a synonym of "better" for everyone, honesty does have its charms.

    Our state is not split up into deep and external; it is built as a whole, with all of its parts and its manifestations facing out. The most brutal constructions of its authoritarian frame are displayed as part of the façade, undisguised by any architectural embellishments. The bureaucracy, even when it tries to do something on the sly, doesn't try too hard to cover its tracks, as if assuming that "everyone understands everything anyway."

    The great internal tension caused by the need to control huge, heterogeneous geographic areas, and by the constant participation in the thick of geopolitical struggle make the military and policing functions of the government the most important and decisive. In keeping with tradition, they are not hidden but, quite the opposite, demonstrated. Businessmen, who consider military pursuits to be of lesser status than commercial ones, have never ruled Russia (almost never; the exceptions were a few months in 1917 and a few years in the 1990s). Neither have liberals (fellow-travelers of businessmen) whose teachings are based on the negation of anything the least bit police-like. Thus, there was nobody in charge who would curtain off the truth with illusions, bashfully shoving into the background and obscuring as much as possible the main prerogative of any government -- to be a weapon of defense and attack.

    There is no deep state in Russia -- all of it is on display -- but there is a deep nation.

    On its shiny surface sparkles the elite which, century after century (let's give it its due) has involved the people in its various undertakings -- party conferences, wars, elections, economic experiments. The deep nation takes part in these undertakings, but remains somewhat aloof, and doesn't appear at the surface but leads it own, completely different life down in its own depths. Two lives of the nation, one on the surface and one in the depths, sometimes run in opposite directions, sometimes in the same direction, but they never merge.

    The deep nation is always as cagey as can be, unreachable for sociological surveys, agitation, threats or any other form of direct influence. The understanding of what it is, what it thinks and what it wants often comes suddenly and too late, and not to those who can do anything about it.

    Rare is the sociologist who would venture to define whether the deep nation is equivalent to its population or is a part of it, and if a part of it, then which one. At different times it was taken to be the peasants, the proletariat, the non-party-members, the hipsters, the government employees. People searched for it and tried to engage it. They called it the executor of God's will, or just the opposite. Sometimes they decided that it is fictional and doesn't exist in reality, and launched galloping reforms without looking back upon it, but quickly bashed their foreheads against it and were forced to concede that "something really does exist." More than once it retreated under the press of domestic or foreign conquerors, but it always came back.

    With its gigantic mass the deep nation creates an insurmountable force of cultural gravitation which unites the nation and drags and pins down to earth (to the native land) the elite when it periodically attempts to soar above it in a cosmopolitan fashion.

    Nationhood, whatever that is taken to mean, is a precursor of the state. It predetermines its form, restricts the fantasies of theoreticians and forces practitioners to carry out certain acts. It is a powerful attractor, and all political trajectories without exception lead back to it. In Russia, one can set out from any position -- conservatism, socialism, liberalism -- but you will always end up with approximately the same thing. That is, with the thing that actually exists.

    The ability to hear and to understand the nation, to see all the way through it, through its entire depth, and to act accordingly -- that is the unique and most important virtue of Putin's government. It is adequate for the needs of the people, it follows the same course with it, and this means that it is not subject to destructive overloads from history's countercurrents. This makes it effective and long-lasting.

    In this new system all institutions are subordinated to the main task: trust-based communication and interaction between the head of state and the citizens. The various branches of government come together at the person of the leader and are considered valuable not in and of themselves but only to the extent to which they provide a connection with him. Aside from them, and acting around formal structures and elite groups, operate informal methods of communication. When stupidity, backwardness or corruption create interference in the lines of communication with the people, energetic measures are taken to restore audibility.

    The multilayered political institutions which Russia had adopted from the West are sometimes seen as partly ritualistic and established for the sake of looking "like everyone else," so that the peculiarities of our political culture wouldn't draw too much attention from our neighbors, didn't irritate or frighten them. They are like a Sunday suit, put on when visiting others, while at home we dress as we do at home.

    In essence, society only trusts the head of state. Whether this has something to do with the pride of an unconquered people, or the desire to directly access the truth, or anything else, is hard to say, but it is a fact, and it is not a new fact. What's new is that the government does not ignore this fact but takes it into account and uses it as a point of departure in its undertakings.

    It would be an oversimplification to reduce this theme to the oft-cited "faith in the good czar." The deep nation is not the least bit naïve and definitely does not consider soft-heartedness as a positive trait in a czar. Closer to the truth is that it thinks of a good leader the same way as Einstein thought of God: ingenious but not malicious.

    The contemporary model of the Russian state starts with trust and relies on trust. This is its main distinction from the Western model, which cultivates mistrust and criticism. And this is the source of its power.

    Our new state will have a long and glorious history in this new century. It will not break. It will act on its own, winning and retaining prize-winning spots in the highest league of geopolitical struggle. Sooner or later everyone will be forced to come to terms with this -- including all those who currently demand that Russia "change its behavior." Because it only seems as if they have a choice.

    Translated from Russian by Dmitry Orlov, ClubOrlov.com

    [Apr 05, 2019] The neoliberal MSM could expose fraud during the DNC primary; but being CIA lapdogs they went all in with the fake charge that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election

    Apr 05, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

    Just like the Muslim freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's courageous stand against the fascist duopoly's attempt to crush her for daring to not back down from calling AIPAC a foreign lobby was a watershed moment in confronting the uncritical support of a RW Israeli government, Greenwald's blistering takedown of fellow journalist David Cay Johnston, and by extension the entire American MSM, is another watershed moment in the growing divide between media corporatists (Neoliberals & Neocons), who are straining themselves to keep afloat a Duopoly system that could arguably be called fascism which has been in place since at least the turn of the century (if not longer), and the surging dissidents who see this as the fundamental problem above all else.

    The Red Herring Russia Hysteria Meltdown turned out to be a proxy battle between the few dissenters who believe that the capitalist Duopoly is the real problem (with Money In Politics being the cement that keeps it together) and have never bought into this farce; and the many mainstream media lapdogs, $hillary zombies and Democratic Party loyalists who concocted and desperately wanted needed to believe it. They completely melted down to lose all sense of reason and rationale in their hyperventilation to keep propped up the rotting edifice of a party and system within which those players have been able to continue getting rich from and to go merrily believing that dutifully voting for the Lesser of Two Evils is the full enshrinement of the Greatest Democracy Money Can Buy In The World .

    The idea that electioneering, which is what placing ads is (even a minuscule amount), could be conflated with collusion by a foreign government to steal an election, was so laughably outrageous. Furthermore, to imply that our elections were so pure and that we didn't do such things around the world ourselves (despite that the CIA had brutally intervened in over 50 elections globally ), just put the icing on our incredulity. As for Trump's criminality, there was plenty of that to go around. But where was the media to thoroughly vet him during the campaign? Nowhere in sight, or rather televising gawking at his non-stop, car crash porn of a campaign which was driving advertising dollars into their pockets. But we were supposed to believe they suddenly got into gear once he was elected and became these super sleuths? What a fucking joke.

    There were only a relative handful of us who never believed this infuriating garbage. Virtually the entire MSM engaged in one of the worst, most embarrassing examples of propaganda the country has ever seen, as Taibbi writes here and here. It confoundingly gripped even some of the smarter people we all knew. Lost to propaganda. But then they ultimately lost, big-time.

    What was at risk? Only nuclear war with Russia. And, just as consequential, this farce took up all the air in the room, spreading false hope to demented $hillary losers who could be found whimpering on their couches curled up in the fetal position in front of MSNBC every night, a bottle of white wine atop the magazines on the coffee table. One could gather up a trove of issues that weren't talked about at all by the MSM, including the massive teacher's strikes happening all over the country, continued health insurance nightmares, the existential threat of climate change, rampant poverty, widespread depressed wages and overworking, Yemen, Trump's outrageously corrupt cabinet and their massive power grabs, etc., etc., etc.

    It is right now that this country, and especially its journalists, have to have a completely honest existential dialogue about what has been going on, how we got here, who is responsible and what is driving it (which we know will probably never come, though there are some signs of admission, which I've started to compile for another essay).

    For this reason, the interview really has to be seen to be experienced. The anger at all this just wells up in Greenwald and he really doesn't hold back. As we know he's long been one of the very quickest-minded, most cogent and incisive journalists of this era. Under normal circumstances few can withstand his sheer power of his lightning intellect. This poor shlub, who has written some really good things about income inequality and Wall St criminality but carried on the lie, was so justifiably exposed for his dumb stance and continued obstinacy about it.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/0fNheSHUpBk

    But if you're short for time here's some of the best segments (though you really should see Greenwald's disgust).

    He lit into Rachel Maddow, the MSM and the Democratic Party. He slammed the highest rated liberal show host who "every single night misled millions of liberals into believing something that was totally false," calling that decision "extremely grave and serious," and saying that "there will be no reckoning and consequences for this story that the media got radically, fundamentally and deliberately wrong for almost three years now in a very dangerous way."

    (all emphasis mine)

    This is the saddest media spectacle I've ever seen, since I began practicing journalism in 2005. And what makes it even sadder is to watch all of the people who vested their journalistic credibility into what proved to be a complete and total fraud and scam continue to try and cling to some vestige of credibility by continuing to spin conspiracy theories that are even more reckless and more unhinged than the ones to which we've been subjected for three years .

    ... I believe that Donald Trump is one of the most corrupt people ever to occupy the White House. I am certain that he's guilty of all kinds of crimes -- war crimes as president, financial crimes as a business person. One of the reasons why those of us who were so angry about this obsession on Russia and collusion, aside from the fact that it was so dangerous to ratchet up tensions between two nuclear-armed powers this way instead of trying to forge a peace between these two countries, is precisely because it took the oxygen away from all of the things that the Trump administration is doing that is so damaging, in lieu of this idiotic, moronic, Tom Clancy-type espionage thriller, where we were talking about Putin blackmailing Donald Trump with pee-pee tapes and Donald Trump being a Russian agent since 1987, which was a cover story that was on New York magazine, that Chris Hayes put on MSNBC. Just all kinds of moronic conspiracies, that we love to mock other countries' medias for circulating and disseminating, drowned out our airwaves and our discourse for three years, preventing us from focusing on the real, substantive damage that the Trump administration is doing and that Donald Trump's corruption entails.

    He eviscerated Johnston's mealy-mouthed walk backs and continued spinning of this through the course of the interview, and the proxy MSM:

    But the reality is, the media chose to focus on this. Everybody knows this. David Cay Johnston was on your show, Amy, a week ago, and he said, "Donald Trump, I believe, is a Russian agent." We now have a full-scale, 20-month investigation by somebody that everybody agreed was a man of great integrity who would get to the bottom of all of this, who had full subpoena power. And David keeps trying to imply, which is totally false, that all that Mueller said was, "Oh, it just doesn't rise to the level of criminality." That is not what he said. He said, after 20 months of a full-scale investigation -- which, by the way, included hours of interrogating Donald Trump Jr. before Congress, all of the transcripts of which were made available to Mueller, which he could have prosecuted Trump Jr. on for perjury and obstruction had Donald Trump Jr. lied about anything, but he chose not to. He said, "After reviewing all of this evidence, I am concluding that this did not happen," not that it doesn't rise to the level where I can criminally prosecute. He's saying there was no collusion.

    The game is over, and it's time to be honest about it. And the more we try to cling to this and invent new -- you know what it reminds me of? In 2003, when the neocons finally had to face the truth that there were no WMDs, that they had fabricated that, that the media had misled millions of people around the world for years, and they started saying, "Um, maybe Saddam hid them in Syria. Maybe they're buried in places we just haven't looked yet." It's time to face the truth. The media got this story wrong. They obsessed on this for three years, and all this time there was no evidence for it. It was just a conspiracy theory. Rachel Maddow, the most influential liberal TV host in the country, every single night misled millions of liberals into believing something that was totally false, and there will be no media consequences for it. And that is extremely grave and serious, no matter how much is true about how corrupt Donald Trump is in his financial dealings or any of the other stuff that people are now trying to deflect our attention onto.

    Then he turned to the fundamental questions of the actual election, never discussed in the MSM:

    Why did millions of people vote for a complete joke of a game show host? And how did the Democrats lose the presidency to one of the most embarrassing spectacles of a candidate in U.S. history? What is the prevailing ideology of the ruling class that has turned millions and millions of people, and to this country, into such angry citizens that they either refuse to vote or vote for the person who promises to burn down the entire system? Why are they so angry? What has happened to their economic security? What ideology and what group of people are responsible for that? What has Donald Trump been doing in realigning the United States away from the Western Europe and to Saudi despots, and the collusion that actually happened, which was from the Israeli government during the election in order to undermine Obama's policies? All those kinds of questions could have been asked and should have been asked, but it all got drowned out because we were all so much more fascinated by this superficial, kind of very appealing and melodramatic espionage thriller, that has completely destroyed the credibility of the U.S. media and so tragically vindicated Donald Trump in a way that probably is the greatest gift that has been given to him throughout his entire presidency.

    When reminded that last year Chomsky said the rest of the world was looking at our media's obsession that Russia's meddling in the election helped Trump was a "joke", he said this:

    Well, that's been the other critical point this entire time, is this kind of melodrama over the outrage that any country would dare to interfere in our sacred and glorious democracy, when, as Noam Chomsky just pointed out and has spent the last 40 years pointing out, the United States has done very little since the end of World War II but going around the world and interfering in every single democracy that they can find , literally, including the country in which I'm currently living, which is Brazil, where they overthrew a democratically elected government in 1964 and then proceeded to impose a military regime for 21 years, and also Russia, where they openly boasted about helping to elect Boris Yeltsin because he would privatize everything and that would be good for U.S. industry, or even agitating anti-Putin resistance in parliamentary elections under Hillary Clinton's reign as secretary of state .

    This doesn't make it right for Russia to do it, but we've never kept in perspective the fact that interfering or meddling in other countries' elections or governance is not some grave, aberrational, never-before-heard drama that the entire world has to stop and lament and put an end to. It's normal business. We're currently, right now, in the process of trying to change the government of Venezuela openly, and have done so over and over around the world. And that's why Noam Chomsky says that all of this moral outrage of Americans at the idea that somebody would interfere in or meddle in our democracy has made the U.S. a laughingstock to the hundreds of millions of people -- billions, in fact -- who live in countries where the U.S. has done this and far, far worse for decade after decade after decade .

    Intercepted with Jeremy Scahill "The Day After Mueller" (with Naomi Klein and Matt Taibbi)

    "Three Lessons for the Left from the Mueller Inquiry" by Jonathan Cook

    Painting the pig's face
    1. The left never had a dog in this race. This was always an in-house squabble between different wings of the establishment. Late-stage capitalism is in terminal crisis, and the biggest problem facing our corporate elites is how to emerge from this crisis with their power intact. One wing wants to make sure the pig's face remains painted, the other is happy simply getting its snout deeper into the trough while the food lasts...

    The leaders of the Democratic party are less terrified of Trump and what he represents than they are of us and what we might do if we understood how they have rigged the political and economic system to their permanent advantage.

    It may look like Russiagate was a failure, but it was actually a success. It deflected the left's attention from endemic corruption within the leadership of the Democratic party, which supposedly represents the left. It rechannelled the left's political energies instead towards the convenient bogeymen targets of Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

    Mired in corruption

    What Mueller found -- all he was ever going to find -- was marginal corruption in the Trump camp. And that was inevitable because Washington is mired in corruption. In fact, what Mueller revealed was the most exceptional forms of corruption among Trump's team while obscuring the run-of-the-mill stuff that would have served as a reminder of the endemic corruption infecting the Democratic leadership too.

    An anti-corruption investigation would have run much deeper and exposed far more. It would have highlighted the Clinton Foundation, and the role of mega-donors like James Simons, George Soros and Haim Saban who funded Hillary's campaign with one aim in mind: to get their issues into a paid-for national "consensus".

    Further, in focusing on the Trump camp -- and relative minnows like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone -- the Russiagate inquiry actually served to shield the Democratic leadership from an investigation into the much worse corruption revealed in the content of the DNC emails.

    Trump empowered

    2. But it's far worse than that. It is not just that the left wasted two years of political energy on Russiagate. At the same time, they empowered Trump, breathing life into his phoney arguments that he is the anti-establishment president, a people's president the elites are determined to destroy...

    The other wing of the neoliberal establishment, the one represented by the Democratic party leadership, fears that exposing capitalism in this way -- making explicit its inherently brutal, wrist-slitting tendencies -- will awaken the masses, that over time it will risk turning them into revolutionaries. Democratic party leaders fear Trump chiefly because of the threat he poses to the image of the political and economic system they have so lovingly crafted so that they can continue enriching themselves and their children.

    The whole thing is excellent. You should read it.

    There is a serious reckoning going on right now. Call 'em what you will, Neoliberals/Corporatists/Beltway/Necons, are being exposed for all-time. The curtain is off the hooks on its way down.

    The whole Red Herring RussiaGate Hysteria Meltdown strikes me as this:

    1. It was concocted first and foremost as a distraction from the shock suffered by Hillary fans and the MSM that HRC was such a horrible, highly disliked and untrustworthy candidate, and that she pathetically lost to a candidate with the same characteristics in a contest of who was absolutely just a little less detested than the other. The scorned $hillary sycophants, who willfully refused to step outside the bubble of It's Her Turn - All Things Hillary world, had their hubris so shaken, rattled and rolled that for their sanity, and by extension the rest of the country who also believed that ours wasn't such a rotting system that could upchuck a demented clown like Trump, they had to insist blame lie elsewhere (racism, Russia, etc) than their laughably horrible campaign and a roiling disgust with politics as usual.

      "Taibbi: On Russiagate and Our Refusal to Face Why Trump Won": Faulty coverage of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign later made foreign espionage a more plausible explanation for his ascent to power

    2. The mass hysteria of Trump/Russia shooting out like a fire hydrant every night on cable tv and social media was also designed as the perfect foil for covering up the flagrant and brazen collusion to cheat Bernie out of the nomination. "Who cares about that, when we have a president illegally occupying the White House as a puppet of Putin?" All of the legitimate evidence of electoral fraud, voter roll purges, caucus cheating, insider collusion, paid media hatchet jobs, etc (in other words, everything the Repubs are charged with but that the DNC did to Bernie) got buried under this avalanche. This is probably the thing that'll remain most enraging to me: all of that massive, genuine support for a movement candidate viciously torn to pieces, having the effect of a whole next generation of folks crippled in their belief about electoral politics.
    3. Secondarily, this also served as the perfect cover, taking up all the air in the room, to having the discussion about our entire election process. Beginning with the elephant in the room: "how did it come this - first of all, that the two most hated candidates were our only choices (most people never consider a third party, which is a whole other subject)? The 2016 election process should have ripped the mask off of the false pride we have in our decrepitly corrupt elections, in which the whole process has been nothing more than an Auction House to the Highest Bidder, at every level. Then there's the "electoral college," the private national committees running the parties' elections, the debate limitations, "superdelegates," gerrymandering, no active and real membership in either party (only an expectation usually driven by fear and threat, that you blindly keep showing up to vote for your party).
    4. It was also a huge, wildly lame gambit to inure the Democrats from having to address the real issues that are effecting people, hoping instead to be able to run again only as "We're Not Trump." Poll after poll showed most Americans could care less about Russia , with almost every issue polling higher.

      The Mueller deification was also a natural reaction by a soft and pampered American people who have been conditioned to look for heroes to swoop in and make everything ok again, as can be found in a child's fable. Nobody wants to do the hard work anymore of being civilly engaged, informed and asking questions. Consumerism, social media self-aggrandizement and 24/7 entertainment have replaced it.

      This was the Democrats lazy way out, which was the perfect foil for a lazy citizenry who have come to expect coddling in every aspect of their lives. It was also what they're expected to do on behalf of their donors. Few can be bothered to be involved civically in any way, show up in person to support an oppressed or marginalized faction (not just sign an online petition). A lot of this simply boiled down to a salient truth few wanted to accept: that almost all politicians are paid to do as little as possible for the people, biding their time in office ruffling as few feathers as possible, for the express purpose of then re-entering the political world as lobbyists so that they can enrich their campaign donors exponentially after they've learned the ropes inside.

    5. It's so obvious why most Bernie supporters, but not all - because a good bit fell into the all-consuming MSM trap of Russia propaganda and became afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome, never bought into this ludicrous bullshit. They had endured being firsthand witnesses to the rampant election fraud being pulled by the DNC during the 2106 primary, of which the MSM completely and utterly turned a blind eye. If it was possible that the media could collude in that way, then it was possible that the media could do the same for the opposite.

      The irony of it still stings: the media with its resources could have easily turned up easily verifiable evidence of tampering and kinds of fraud during the DNC primary; but instead they went all in for the most absurd and ridiculous hare-brained scheme that the Orange Buffoon was the one who colluded with Russia to steal the election. If any of these Beltway, cocktail party lapdogs had just once ventured out of their gated communities and conventional thinking to be bothered to visit the heartland they would have seen that the country was in the midst of a populist revolution, most prominently dominated by support for Bernie Sanders but also to a slightly lesser degree for Drumpf.

    There's a major chasm starting to split the land, between those who cling to the myth of American Exceptionalism and fealty to the two political parties of the Duopoly, and a burgeoning movement of people distrustful of the power structure and its propaganda to hide the truth about a dying system.

    [Apr 05, 2019] Looking at the Integrity Initiative it's clear that information warfare at all levels - academia, the media, on down to the little subsidized web sites and right on down to the individuals who are paid to insert comments on social media - is now regarded in England as an integral part of Intelligence work

    Apr 05, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    English Outsider -> Fred , 7 days ago

    Fred - I don't think it's going to go away that easily. This is the BBC web site today, again keeping alive much the same theme as your man of courage. We're moving on from whether Trump was a Russian agent to whether Trump deliberately attempted to stop us finding out whether he was a Russian agent -

    "But Mr Mueller declined to draw a conclusion on whether Mr Trump had obstructed justice, saying only that the president could not be exonerated.

    Attorney General Barr, who was appointed by the president, concluded in his summary of the report that there was not enough evidence to determine if the president had committed the offence."

    So it's too useful a theme to be let go entirely, and fits with the general suspicion of Russian interference.

    It's a difficult one, that. Looking at the Integrity Initiative and 77 Brigade it's clear that information warfare at all levels - academia, the media, on down to the little subsidized web sites and right on down to the individuals who are paid to insert comments on social media - is now regarded in England as an integral part of Intelligence work. Presumably everyone else is doing it too so why not the Russians? But to trace the huge political movements of our time back to Moscow, as if they were due to sinister Russians cleverly playing us via social media and other propaganda outlets, seems to me to be grossly overdone. After all, if it were that easy it would have worked for the West too. Iran would now be another Syria and Syria long since gone.

    No, even the most ardent Russophobes on our side of the Atlantic might have to admit sometimes that the reason we're screwed up in Europe at present is that we've screwed ourselves up. We are not uniformly happy prosperous peoples who would continue to be uniformly happy and prosperous were it not for Moscow. So it must be in the States.

    Even so, the Russians are still the get-out for many. On English web sites "Putin done it" surfaces regularly as the reason for us voting Brexit. There were suggestions that he had stirred up the Yellow Vests in France. The Italians are sometimes viewed with suspicion for the same reason.

    And I got caught up in an unusual traffic hold-up just this morning. I can't prove to you it was the Russians. But can you prove to me it wasn't?

    [Apr 04, 2019] Was John Brennan The Russia Lie Ringleader

    Highly recommended!
    Apr 04, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Was John Brennan The Russia Lie Ringleader?

    by Tyler Durden Thu, 04/04/2019 - 21:25 550 SHARES Authored by Monica Crowley, op-ed via The Washington Times,

    The best defense, the saying goes, is a good offense.

    The key orchestrators of the Big Trump-Russia Collusion Lie seem to have hewed tightly to that tactical advice.

    Over the past two years, one of their biggest "tells" has been their hyper-aggressive and gratuitous attacks on the president. Given that special counsel Robert Mueller 's investigation found no collusion or obstruction of justice, their constant broadsides now look, in retrospect, like calculated pre-emptive strikes to deflect attention and culpability away from themselves.

    By accusing Mr. Trump of what they themselves were guilty of, they created a masterful distraction through projection.

    We now know that former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, are hip-deep in the conspiracy. Both wrote supposed "tell-all" books and carpet-bombed the media with interviews in which they regularly flung criminal accusations against the president. Whenever asked about their own roles, they reverted to denouncing Mr. Trump .

    With Mr. Mueller 's findings, Mr. Comey 's and Mr. McCabe's media benders look increasingly suspicious.

    As do those of their comrades in the Obama national security apparatus, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and his partner in possible crime, former CIA Director John Brennan , who, apart from former President Barack Obama himself, may be the biggest player of them all.

    Any investigation into the origins and execution of the Big Lie must focus on Mr. Brennan , whose job as the nation's chief spook would have prohibited him, by law, from engaging in any domestic political spy games.

    Of course, the law didn't stop him from illegally spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee by hacking into its computers and lying repeatedly about it, prompting Democratic senators to call for his resignation.

    Once out of Langley, Mr. Brennan tore into Mr. Trump, accusing him of "treason" (among other crimes) in countless television appearances and bitter tweets. It got so vicious that Mr. Trump pulled his security clearance.

    Consider a few critical data points.

    The Obama Department of Justice and FBI targeting of two low-level Trump aides, George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, was carried out in the spring of 2016 because they wanted to spy on the Trump campaign but needed a way in. They enlisted an American academic and shadowy FBI informant named Stefan Halper to repeatedly sidle up to both Mr. Papadopoulos and Mr. Page. But complementing his work for the FBI , Mr. Halper had a side gig as an intelligence operative with longstanding ties to the CIA and British intelligence MI6.

    Another foreign professor, Joseph Mifsud, who played an important early part in targeting Papadopoulos, also had abiding ties to the CIA , MI6 and the British foreign secretary.

    A third operative, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, targeted Mr. Papadopoulos in a London bar. It was Mr. Downer's "tip" to the FBI that provided the justification for the start of Russia counterintelligence investigation, complete with fraudulently-obtained FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.

    All of these interactions reek of entrapment. Mr. Papadopoulos now says, "I believe Australian and UK intelligence were involved in an active operation to target Trump and his associates." Like Mr. Halper and Mr. Mifsud, Mr. Downer had ties to the CIA , MI6 and (surprise!) the Clintons.

    Given the deep intelligence backgrounds of these folks, it's difficult to believe that former DOJ/ FBI officials such as Peter Strzok or even James Comey and Andrew McCabe on their own devised the plan to deploy them.

    So: who did? How did the relationships with Messrs. Halper, Mifsud and Downer come about? Who suggested them for these tasks? To whom did they report? How were they compensated?

    Any investigation must follow the money -- and the personnel. There were plenty of DOJ/ FBI officials involved, but what about intelligence officials? Was Mr. Brennan a central player in the hoax, which would help explain the participation of Mr. Halper, Mr. Mifsud and Mr. Downer? Intel officials are likely to draw on other intelligence operatives.

    There is also a glimpse of a paper trail.

    Fox News' Catherine Herridge reported last week that "in a Dec. 12, 2016 text, [ FBI lawyer Lisa] Page wrote to McCabe: "Btw, Clapper told Pete that he was meeting with Brennan and Cohen for dinner tonight. Just FYSA [for your situational awareness ]."

    "Within a minute, McCabe replied, "OK."

    Ms. Herridge notes that those named are likely Peter Strzok and Mr. Brennan 's then-deputy, David Cohen. Ms. Herridge also notes that while we don't yet know what was discussed during the dinner, government sources thought it "irregular" for Mr. Clapper to be in contact with the more junior-level Mr. Strzok. She also points out that the text came "during a critical time for the Russia probe."

    Indeed. It was right before the publication of the ICA, the official Intelligence Community Assessment of Russian 2016 election interference.

    As Paul Sperry has reported, "A source close to the House investigation said Brennan himself selected the CIA and FBI analysts who worked on the ICA, and that they included former FBI counterespionage chief Peter Strzok.

    "Strzok was the intermediary between Brennan and Comey , and he was one of the authors of the ICA," according to the source." Recall that the dossier-based ICA was briefed to Obama , Trump and Congress ahead of Trump's inauguration.

    Post- Mueller report, Mr. Brennan is spinning wildly that perhaps his early condemnations of Mr. Trump were based on "bad information."

    These are just some of the threads suggesting Mr. Brennan may be one of the Masters of the Big Lie, requiring full investigation.

    If the devil is in the details, Mr. Brennan is all over the details.

    No wonder he -- and his fellow caballers -- have been so loud. They doth protest too much.

    Luau , 6 minutes ago link

    Obama was the ringleader. Brennan's just the fall guy.

    Yars Revenge , 7 minutes ago link

    Trying to frame a sitting President is treason.

    Which under the law is punishable by death.

    outofnowhere , 12 minutes ago link

    Yes, yes he was. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Brennan was and is the darkest of evil. He is insane.

    MoreFreedom , 27 minutes ago link

    By accusing Mr. Trump of what they themselves were guilty of, they created a masterful distraction through projection.

    Hillary setup a unsecured server and had confidential government information on it, including 20 emails with Obama suspiciously using an alias. If you're in law enforcement, and get a tip that Papadopolous may get some of those emails from Russians, what crime has been committed by Papadopolous? Isn't Papadopolous doing the US a favor by obtaining those emails from those who hacked her server?

    If you believe Hillary that her server wasn't hacked (and you don't have any evidence because Obama's people allowed practically all the evidence to be destroyed) then there's no reason to investigate Papadopolous. If you think Hillary's server was hacked, shouldn't you be investigating her and examining her server to see who hacked her and what damage was done, such as blackmailing her and Obama into appeasement and flexibility, like selling 20% of the US's uranium reserves to Russians just before an election?

    ... ... ...

    American2 , 1 hour ago link

    John Brennan, James Clapper, Strozk, Ohr, Page were only some of Obama's political pythons operating in the jungle of Washington. Obama orchestrated a symphony of harmful actions that will take the US a generation to recover from. That is if Obama's criminal actions can be undone and then we get to recover.

    [Apr 04, 2019] TEST IT YOURSELF, THE 2-SECOND-ROUNDING FACT PATTERN IN THE DNC EMAILS By William Binney and Larry Johnson

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The random probability that FAT was not used is 1 chance in 2 to the 500th power or approximately 1 chance in 10 to the 150th power - in other words, an infinitely high order. ..."
    Apr 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    TEST IT YOURSELF, THE 2-SECOND-ROUNDING FACT PATTERN IN THE DNC EMAILS By William Binney and Larry Johnson Bill and I published a piece a few weeks back that provides actual evidence that challenges the claim that "Russia hacked the DNC." Yes, we know, the Mueller Report continues to insist that theft of emails from the DNC was done over the internet. But that conclusion rests on the opinion of third parties who offer no actual forensic evidence. We, by contrast, are offering up actual evidence that points to an alternative explanation. We do not ask you to take our word for it. Instead, we want to show you how you can test the data yourself ..

    First, let's review our key findings from the original piece :

    An examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23 and 25 May and 26 August respectively. The fact that they appear in a FAT system format indicates the data was transfered to a storage device, such as a thumb drive.

    How do we know? The truth lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the Wikileaks files. Every single one of these time stamps end in even numbers. If you are not familiar with the FAT file system, you need to understand that when a date is stored under this system the data rounds the time to the nearest even numbered second.

    We have examined 500 DNC email files stored on Wikileaks and all 500 files end in an even number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. If a system other than FAT had been used, there would have been an equal probability of the time stamp ending with an odd number. But that is not the case with the data stored on the Wikileaks site. All end with an even number.

    (For an overview of FAT please see this link-- http://www.ntfs.com/fat-systems.htm )

    Here's what you need to do to replicate what we found.:

    Step One -- Go to the Wikileaks DNC email database. Click here: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/ ) Step Two -- Search the DNC database using the any word. We opted for "Clinton."

    This will produce the following results (see link https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/?q=Clinton&mfrom=&mto=&title=&notitle=&date_from=&date_to=&nofrom=&noto=&count=50&sort=0#searchresult )

    The first message in terms of "relevance" is number 100 (i.e., DOC ID 100)

    Doc ID Date Subject From To
    100 2016-05-23 21:17:55 +0000 POLITICO's 2016 Blast: Bernie's DNC concessions -- Hillary Clinton's fall preparations -- Trump and Clinton get personal again -- 5 Things You Need To Know [email protected] [email protected]

    Step Three -- Go to the websniffer site and direct it to "get/100". https://websniffer.cc/?url=https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails//get/100 ... This is computer speak telling the program to find message 100 (which is titled POLITICO's 2016 Blast: Bernie's DNC concessions -- Hillary Clinton's fall preparations -- Trump and Clinton get personal again -- 5 Things You Need To Know .")

    Step Four--Click on submit. That will take you to the following document:

    DNC Source Example

    Step Five--scroll down to the "HTTP response headers" section where you will find the "Last-Modified" timestamp.

    Message 100 shows a Last Modified Timestamp of 05:22:00 GMT.

    That time equates to 01:22:00 Eastern Daylight Time.

    It ends in 0, an even number. Our search and analysis of all the messages from the DNCin the first Wikileaks release published July 22, 2016" show that all end in an even number.

    If you wish, you can search each of the 500 messages from the DNC that we have examined for yourself. You should get the same result. Just go to https://websniffer.cc/?url=https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails//get/105 (or any other message number you wish).

    We repeat our conclusion from the original article:

    The random probability that FAT was not used is 1 chance in 2 to the 500th power or approximately 1 chance in 10 to the 150th power - in other words, an infinitely high order.

    This data alone does not prove that the emails were copied at the DNC headquarters. But it does show that the data/emails posted by Wikileaks did go through a storage device on the 25 th of May, like a thumbdrive, before Wikileaks posted the emails on the World Wide Web.

    We do not know if a person or persons with access to the DNC server accessed the emails from their home. That is possible. What is certain, however, is that email message 100 demonstrates forensic evidence that indicates the email was physically copied onto a storage device, like a thumb drive or CD-Rom, with a last modified date of 05:22:00 GMT on Wednesday the 25 th of May 2016, before it was published on the Wikileaks site. The fact that these messages are in FAT format is not evidence that supports Mueller's claim a "hack."

    Perhaps Mueller's team of investigators turned up forensic data that proves a Russian hack. There was no such evidence, however, presented in June and July of 2016 when the initial claim was made blaming Russian intelligence operatives.

    We also are confident that there was no solid forensic evidence available in January 2017 to substantiate the Intelligence Community Assessment attributing the "hack" to the Russian Government because NSA analysts only agreed that they had "moderate confidence" in that claim. We know from our prior experience in producting such assessments that if there existed actual forensic evidence, such as tracing the packets back to a server operated by the Russian Government then there would be "strong confidence" in the conclusion.

    Who was the person or persons who had access to the DNC server that were copying these messages to a storage device, like a thumb drive, early in the morning on Wednesday the 25 th of May? We have an opinion, but our focus is not on speculation. Let us first deal with the hard forensic evidence. We are certain of one thing -- the available evidence does not support the claim that the DNC emails were "hacked" via an internet cyber attack.

    Posted at 12:57 PM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink

    Eric Newhill , 5 hours ago

    Larry,

    Since Assange lives in an embassy, would there be any value to looking into who visited him or mailed something to him between Wednesday the 25thof May 2016 and the date Wikileaks published the material (July 22, 2016)? Would the embassy have those records?

    Also, I may be mistaken, but wasn't the same material passed to, and published by, DCleaks around the same time as the Wikileaks release? If that is correct, why does no one talk about or analyze the DCleaks aspect of the case?

    Finally, what do you think about the idea that multiple penetrations of the server could have been occurring simultaneously by different parties? It is a juicy target, after all, and apparently not well protected. Perhaps the Russians were in there, but were not the source of the DCLeaks and/or Wikileaks material.

    [Apr 04, 2019] I hate the Washington doublespeak about "rules-based international order."

    Apr 04, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Mike from Jersey , says: April 4, 2019 at 4:21 pm GMT

    I hate the Washington doublespeak about "rules-based international order."

    When has the Imperial State ever followed any "rules?"

    For instance, didn't the Nuremberg trials establish the principle that wars of aggression constituted international war crimes? Wasn't the invasion of Iraq a violation of "rules-based international order." And what about UN approval for the use of force. Did the US get UN approval when they decided to overturn the Assad regime. Wasn't that a violation of "rules-based international order."

    The same can be said about the wars in Afghanistan, Libya and the coming war against Venezuela.

    What Washington really means when they talk about a "rules-based international order" is "we make up the rules as we go along and those rules don't apply to us."

    [Apr 03, 2019] Jewish Power Rolls Over Washington by Philip Giraldi

    Highly recommended!
    In other words Russiagate was a smoke screen over Isrealgate...
    Notable quotes:
    "... Being a citizen of a country is not just an accident of birth. It requires loyalty to the interests of that country and to one's fellow citizens. ..."
    "... The Lobby works assiduously to compel American government at all levels to adopt positions that are beneficial to Israel and almost invariably harmful to U.S. interests. Asserting that the two nations have nearly identical interests is little more than a fraud. ..."
    "... Second, there is the claim that Israel benefits American security. That is also a lie. Washington's relationship with Israel, which is now more subservient than it ever has been, is a major liability that is and always has been damaging to both American regional and global interests. ..."
    "... Former CIA Deputy Director Admiral Bobby Inman has also rejected the claim that Israel is a security asset by observing that "Israeli spies have done more harm and have damaged the United States more than the intelligence agents of all other countries on earth combined. They are the gravest threat to our national security." ..."
    "... Israel and AIPAC have relentlessly pursued their agenda while also corrupting the Congress of the United States to support the Israeli government with money and political cover. ..."
    Apr 02, 2019 | www.unz.com

    The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has just completed its annual summit in Washington. It claims that 18,000 supporters attended the event, which concluded with a day of lobbying Congress by the attendees. Numerous American politicians addressed the gathering and it is completely reasonable to observe that the meeting constituted the most powerful gathering of people dedicated to promoting the interests of a foreign nation ever witnessed in any country in the history of the world.

    There are a number of things that one should understand about the Jewish state of Israel and its powerful American domestic lobby. First of all, the charge that the actions of The Lobby (referred to with capital letters because of its uniqueness and power) inevitably involves dual or even singular allegiance based on religion or tribe to a country where the lobbyist does not actually reside is completely correct by definition of what AIPAC is and why it exists. It claims to work to "ensure that the Jewish state is safe, strong and secure" through "foreign aid, government partnerships, [and] joint anti-terrorism efforts ," all of which involve the U.S. as the donor and Israel as the recipient.

    Being a citizen of a country is not just an accident of birth. It requires loyalty to the interests of that country and to one's fellow citizens. No two countries have identical interests, something that is particularly true when one is considering Israel, an ethno-religious autocracy, and the United States, where The Lobby works assiduously to compel American government at all levels to adopt positions that are beneficial to Israel and almost invariably harmful to U.S. interests. Asserting that the two nations have nearly identical interests is little more than a fraud.

    Second, there is the claim that Israel benefits American security. That is also a lie. Washington's relationship with Israel, which is now more subservient than it ever has been, is a major liability that is and always has been damaging to both American regional and global interests. The recent decisions to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights were ill-conceived and have been condemned by the world community, including by nearly all of America's genuine close allies.

    The harm done by the Israeli connection to policy formulation in Washington and to U.S. troops based in the Middle East has been noted both by Admiral Thomas Moorer and General David Petraeus, with Moorer decrying how

    "If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes on."

    Petraeus complained to a Senate Committee that U.S. favoritism towards Israel puts American soldiers based in the Middle East at risk. He was quickly forced to recant, however.

    Former CIA Deputy Director Admiral Bobby Inman has also rejected the claim that Israel is a security asset by observing that "Israeli spies have done more harm and have damaged the United States more than the intelligence agents of all other countries on earth combined. They are the gravest threat to our national security." Inman was referring to American Jewish spy Jonathan Pollard, who stole for Israel an entire roomful of the most highly classified defense information. Israeli spies, including current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hollywood movie producer Arnon Milchan, also participated in the systematic theft of weapons grade uranium and nuclear triggers in the 1960s so Israel could secretly create a nuclear weapons arsenal. The FBI, for its part, in its annual counterintelligence report, consistently identifies Israel as the "friendly" country that spies most persistently against the U.S. FBI Agents have testified that there are very few prosecutions of the swarms of Israeli spies due to "political pressure."

    Third, there is the myth that the United States and Israel have "shared values," which is meant to imply that both are liberal democracies where freedom and human rights prevail, beacons of light offering enlightened leadership in a world where tyranny threatens at every turn. This was stressed in the opening remarks last weekend by AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr, who described Israel as "A nation always striving to be better, more just and true to the message of its founders, a nation dedicated to freedom of religion for people of all faiths. We do our work for all to see. What unites our pro-Israel movement is the passion for bringing American and Israel closer for the benefit of both and the benefit of all. We look like America because we are America."

    Kohr is, of course, preaching to an audience that wants desperately to believe what he says in spite of what they have been able to see with their own eyes in the media when it dares to publish a story criticizing Israel. Jewish hypocrisy about one standard for Israel and Jews plus another standard for everyone else operates pretty much out in the open if one knows where to look. Zionist Organization of America's Morton Klein, who once tweeted regarding a "filthy Arab," was interviewed by journalist Nathan Thrall and asked why he believed it was "utterly racist and despicable" to support a "white nationalist" ethnic group but not racist for Israel to do the same. He responded "Israel is a unique situation. This is really a Jewish state given to us by God. God did not create a state for white people or for black people." Senator Charles Schumer, the Democratic minority leader, who calls himself the Senate's "shomer" or guardian for American Jews, had a slightly different take on it: "Of course, we say it's our land, the Torah says it, but they don't believe in the Torah. So that's the reason there is not peace."

    But Kohr, Klein and Schumer all know as well as anyone that Israeli Jews, fortified by their conceit of being a "Chosen people," are not interchangeable with contemporary Americans, or at least not "like" the Americans who still care about their country. There are hundreds of mostly Jewish pro-Israel organizations in America, having a combined endowment of $16 billion, that are actively propagandizing and promoting Israeli interests by ignoring or lying about the downside of the relationship. The University of Michigan affiliate of the Hillel International campus organization alone has a multistory headquarters supported by a budget of $2 million and a staff of 15. It hosts an emissary of the Jewish Agency for Israel, an Israeli government supported promotional enterprise.

    So, what is the meaning of the "American" in AIPAC? Requiring a religious-ethnic litmus test for full citizenship and rights is Israeli, not American. Having local government admissions committees that can bar Israeli-Palestinian citizens based on "social suitability" would not be acceptable to most Americans. Demanding a unique Israeli right to exist while denying it to Israel's neighbors; demolishing homes while poisoning Palestinian livestock and destroying orchards; shooting children for throwing stones; and inflicting death, terror and deprivation upon the imprisoned people of Gaza are all everyday common practice for the Israeli government.

    Israel and AIPAC have relentlessly pursued their agenda while also corrupting the Congress of the United States to support the Israeli government with money and political cover. Israel and friends like Kohr routinely make baseless charges of anti-Semitism against critics while also legislating against free-speech to eliminate any and all criticism. This drive to make Israel uniquely free from any critique has become the norm in the United States, but it is a norm driven by Israeli interests and Israel's friends, most of whom are Jewish billionaires or Jewish organizations that meet regularly and discuss what they might do to benefit the Jewish state.

    And the fourth big lie is that the American people support Israel on religious as well as cultural grounds, not because mostly Jewish money has corrupted our political system and media. Indeed, many Christian fundamentalists have various takes on what Israel means, but their influence is limited. The Israel-thing is Jewish in all ways that matter and its sanitized Exodus -version that has been sold to the public is essentially a complete fraud nurtured by the media, also Jewish controlled, by Hollywood, and by the Establishment.

    Mondoweiss reported recently that

    "This weekend the New York Times breaks one of the biggest taboos , describing the responsibility of Jewish donors for the Democratic Party's slavish support for Israel. Nathan Thrall's groundbreaking piece repeats a lot of data we've reported here and says in essence that it really is about the Benjamins, as Rep. Ilhan Omar said so famously. The donor class of the party is overwhelmingly Jewish, and Jews are still largely wed to Zionism– that's the nut." Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national-security adviser to ex-President Barack Obama recounted in the article how "a more assertive policy toward Israel" never evolved "The Washington view of Israel-Palestine is still shaped by the [Jewish] donor class."

    And the support for Israel goes beyond money. The Times article included an October 2018

    "Survey of 800 American voters who identify as Jewish, conducted by the Mellman Group on behalf of the Jewish Electoral Institute, 92 percent said that they are 'generally pro-Israel.' In the same poll -- conducted after the United States closed the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington, moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, appointed a fund-raiser for the settlements as U.S. ambassador and cut humanitarian aid to Palestinians -- roughly half of American Jews said they approved of President Trump's handling of relations with Israel. On what is considered the most divisive issue in U.S.-Israel relations, the establishment of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a November 2018 post-midterm election poll of more than 1,000 American Jews that was commissioned by J Street, the pro-Israel lobby aligned with Democrats, found that roughly half said the expansion of settlements had no impact on how they felt about Israel. According to a 2013 Pew survey , 44 percent of Americans and 40 percent of American Jews believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God, [a] fact that Jews believe they have rights in historic Palestine that non-Jews do not."

    And one only has to listen to the AIPAC speeches made by leading members of the U.S. government establishment to appreciate the essential hypocrisy over the U.S. wag-the-dog relationship with the Jewish state of Israel. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer led the parade of Democrats on the first evening of AIPAC, thundering "When someone accuses American supporters of Israel of dual loyalty, I say: Accuse me, I am part of a large, bipartisan coalition in Congress supporting Israel -- an overwhelming majority of the United States Congress. I tell Israel's accusers and detractors: Accuse me."

    Well, Steny there is a certain irony in your request and to be sure you should be accused over betrayal of your oath to uphold the constitution against all enemies "domestic and foreign." Hoyer is a product of the heavily Jewish Maryland Democratic Party machine that has also produced Pelosi and Senator Ben Cardin. Pelosi told the AIPAC audience about her father in Baltimore, a so-called Shabbos goy who would perform services for Jews on the sabbath and who would also speak Yiddish while at home with his Italian family. Cardin meanwhile has been the sponsor of legislation to make criticism or boycotting of Israel illegal, up to and including heavy fines and prison time.

    Hoyer, widely regarded as one of the most pro-Israel non-Jewish congressman, also boasted to AIPAC about the 15 official trips to Israel he's made in forty years in Congress, accompanied by more than 150 fellow Democrats. "This August, I will travel with what I expect will be our largest delegation ever -- probably more than 30 Democratic members of Congress, including many freshmen."

    Steny Hoyer will be on an AIPAC affiliate sponsored trip in which any contact with Palestinians will be both incidental and carefully managed. He also clearly has no problem in spending the taxpayer's dime to go to Israel on additional "codels" to get further propagandized. He is flat out wrong about Israel in general, but don't expect him to be convinced otherwise, which may be somehow related to the $317,525 in pro-Israel PAC contributions he has received.

    There was much more at the AIPAC Summit. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denounced "the pernicious myth of dual loyalty and foreign allegiance" while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, fresh from selling out U.S. interests on a visit to Israel, declared that "We live in dangerous times. We have to speak the truth. Anti-Semitism should and must be rejected by all decent people. Anti-Semitism – anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, and any nation that espouses anti-Zionism, like Iran, must be confronted. We must defend the rightful homeland of the Jewish people."

    Vice President Mike Pence, like Pompeo an evangelical Christian, piled on in his Monday prime time speech, declaring that "Anyone who aspires to the highest office of the land should not be afraid to stand with the strongest supporters of Israel in America. It is wrong to boycott Israel. It is wrong to boycott AIPAC. Anti-Semitism has no place in the Congress of the United States of America. Anyone who slanders this historic alliance between the United States and Israel should never have a seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee."

    Clearly, there is considerable evidence to support the theory that one has to be completely ignorant to hold high office in the United States. Rejecting Zionism and/or questioning Israeli policies is not anti-Semitism and the Jewish state is in fact no actual ally of the United States. Nor is there any mandate to defend it in its questionable "rightful homeland." Furthermore, dual-loyalty is what the relationship with Israel is all about and it is Jewish money and political power that makes the whole thing work to Israel's benefit.

    But the good news is that all the lying blather from the likes of Steny Hoyer and Howard Kohr reveals their desperation. They are running scared because "the times they are a changing." Sure, Congressmen will continue to be bought and sold and Jewish money and the access to power that it buys will be able to prevail in the short term in a conspiratorial fashion. But, in the long run, everyone knows deep down that loyalty to Israel is not loyalty to the United States. And what Israel is doing is evil, as is becoming increasingly clear. It is trying to convince Washington to make war on Iran, a country that does not threaten the U.S., while the willingness of the American people to continue to look the other way as Benjamin Netanyahu uses army snipers to shoot down unarmed demonstrators who are starving will not continue indefinitely. It must not continue and we Americans should do whatever it takes to stop it.

    Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected] .

    [Apr 03, 2019] Putin says Trump's opponents have invented 'spymania' to block the U.S. president's agenda

    Notable quotes:
    "... "You know all of this has been invented, made up by people who are in opposition to President Trump with a view to shedding a negative light on what Trump is doing," ..."
    "... Meetings between Russian diplomatic officials and Trump's campaign team before the election were routine and normal, and part of a process to figure out what a potential U.S. candidate will do should he or she come to power, Putin said. But those meetings, particularly those involving the former Russian ambassador to the U.S., were twisted by Trump's opponents. ..."
    "... "For me, it's very bizarre," Putin said. "I don't understand what someone saw there that was out of place in those meetings, and why all this should turn into a kind of 'spymania.'" ..."
    Dec 14, 2017 | www.latimes.com

    Accusations that Donald Trump's team colluded with the Kremlin during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign are an invention of the American president's opposition that has sparked "spymania" in Washington, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

    "You know all of this has been invented, made up by people who are in opposition to President Trump with a view to shedding a negative light on what Trump is doing," Putin said, responding to a U.S. journalist's question during his annual marathon news conference in Moscow.

    Meetings between Russian diplomatic officials and Trump's campaign team before the election were routine and normal, and part of a process to figure out what a potential U.S. candidate will do should he or she come to power, Putin said. But those meetings, particularly those involving the former Russian ambassador to the U.S., were twisted by Trump's opponents.

    "For me, it's very bizarre," Putin said. "I don't understand what someone saw there that was out of place in those meetings, and why all this should turn into a kind of 'spymania.'"

    [Apr 03, 2019] Sic Semper Tyrannis TEST IT YOURSELF, THE 2-SECOND-ROUNDING FACT PATTERN IN THE DNC EMAILS By William Binney and Larry Johnso

    Apr 03, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    TEST IT YOURSELF, THE 2-SECOND-ROUNDING FACT PATTERN IN THE DNC EMAILS By William Binney and Larry Johnson Larry Johnson-5x7

    Larry Johnson

    Bill Binney

    Bill Binney

    Bill and I published a piece a few weeks back that provides actual evidence that challenges the claim that "Russia hacked the DNC." Yes, we know, the Mueller Report continues to insist that theft of emails from the DNC was done over the internet. But that conclusion rests on the opinion of third parties who offer no actual forensic evidence. We, by contrast, are offering up actual evidence that points to an alternative explanation. We do not asky you to take our word for it. Instead, we want to show you how you can test the data yourself ..

    First, let's review our key findings from the original piece :

    An examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23 and 25 May and 26 August respectively. The fact that they appear in a FAT system format indicates the data was transfered to a storage device, such as a thumb drive.

    How do we know? The truth lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the Wikileaks files. Every single one of these time stamps end in even numbers. If you are not familiar with the FAT file system, you need to understand that when a date is stored under this system the data rounds the time to the nearest even numbered second.

    We have examined 500 DNC email files stored on Wikileaks and all 500 files end in an even number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. If a system other than FAT had been used, there would have been an equal probability of the time stamp ending with an odd number. But that is not the case with the data stored on the Wikileaks site. All end with an even number.

    (For an overview of FAT please see this link-- http://www.ntfs.com/fat-systems.htm )

    Here's what you need to do to replicate what we found.:

    Step One -- Go to the Wikileaks DNC email database. Click here: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/ )

    Step Two -- Search the DNC database using the any word. We opted for "Clinton."

    This will produce the following results (see link https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/?q=Clinton&mfrom=&mto=&title=&notitle=&date_from=&date_to=&nofrom=&noto=&count=50&sort=0#searchresult )

    The first message in terms of "relevance" is number 100 (i.e., DOC ID 100)

    Doc ID Date Subject From To
    100 2016-05-23 21:17:55 +0000 POLITICO's 2016 Blast: Bernie's DNC concessions -- Hillary Clinton's fall preparations -- Trump and Clinton get personal again -- 5 Things You Need To Know [email protected] [email protected]

    Step Three -- Go to the websniffer site and direct it to "get/100". https://websniffer.cc/?url=https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails//get/100 ... This is computer speak telling the program to find message 100 (which is titled POLITICO's 2016 Blast: Bernie's DNC concessions -- Hillary Clinton's fall preparations -- Trump and Clinton get personal again -- 5 Things You Need To Know .")

    Step Four--Click on submit. That will take you to the following document:

    DNC Source Example

    Step Five--scroll down to the "HTTP response headers" section where you will find the "Last-Modified" timestamp.

    Message 100 shows a Last Modified Timestamp of 05:22:00 GMT.

    That time equates to 01:22:00 Eastern Daylight Time.

    It ends in 0, an even number. Our search and analysis of all the messages from the DNCin the first Wikileaks release published July 22, 2016" show that all end in an even number.

    If you wish, you can search each of the 500 messages from the DNC that we have examined for yourself. You should get the same result. Just go to https://websniffer.cc/?url=https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails//get/105 (or any other message number you wish).

    We repeat our conclusion from the original article:

    The random probability that FAT was not used is 1 chance in 2 to the 500th power or approximately 1 chance in 10 to the 150th power - in other words, an infinitely high order.

    This data alone does not prove that the emails were copied at the DNC headquarters. But it does show that the data/emails posted by Wikileaks did go through a storage device on the 25 th of May, like a thumbdrive, before Wikileaks posted the emails on the World Wide Web.

    We do not know if a person or persons with access to the DNC server accessed the emails from their home. That is possible. What is certain, however, is that email message 100 demonstrates forensic evidence that indicates the email was physically copied onto a storage device, like a thumb drive or CD-Rom, with a last modified date of 05:22:00 GMT on Wednesday the 25 th of May 2016, before it was published on the Wikileaks site. The fact that these messages are in FAT format is not evidence that supports Mueller's claim a "hack."

    Perhaps Mueller's team of investigators turned up forensic data that proves a Russian hack. There was no such evidence, however, presented in June and July of 2016 when the initial claim was made blaming Russian intelligence operatives.

    We also are confident that there was no solid forensic evidence available in January 2017 to substantiate the Intelligence Community Assessment attributing the "hack" to the Russian Government because NSA analysts only agreed that they had "moderate confidence" in that claim. We know from our prior experience in producting such assessments that if there existed actual forensic evidence, such as tracing the packets back to a server operated by the Russian Government then there would be "strong confidence" in the conclusion.

    Who was the person or persons who had access to the DNC server that were copying these messages to a storage device, like a thumb drive, early in the morning on Wednesday the 25 th of May? We have an opinion, but our focus is not on speculation. Let us first deal with the hard forensic evidence. We are certain of one thing -- the available evidence does not support the claim that the DNC emails were "hacked" via an internet cyber attack.

    Posted at 12:57 PM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink

    Eric Newhill , 5 hours ago

    Larry,

    Since Assange lives in an embassy, would there be any value to looking into who visited him or mailed something to him between Wednesday the 25thof May 2016 and the date Wikileaks published the material (July 22, 2016)? Would the embassy have those records?

    Also, I may be mistaken, but wasn't the same material passed to, and published by, DCleaks around the same time as the Wikileaks release? If that is correct, why does no one talk about or analyze the DCleaks aspect of the case?

    Finally, what do you think about the idea that multiple penetrations of the server could have been occurring simultaneously by different parties? It is a juicy target, after all, and apparently not well protected. Perhaps the Russians were in there, but were not the source of the DCLeaks and/or Wikileaks material.

    [Apr 02, 2019] 'Yats' Is No Longer the Guy by Robert Parry

    Highly recommended!
    This article by late Robert Parry is from 2016 but is still relevant in context of the current Ukrainian elections and the color revolution is Venezuela. The power of neoliberal propaganda is simply tremendous. For foreign events it is able to distort the story to such an extent that the most famous quote of CIA director William Casey "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false" looks like constatation of already accomplished goal.
    Apr 11, 2016 | consortiumnews.com

    Exclusive: Several weeks before Ukraine's 2014 coup, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Nuland had already picked Arseniy Yatsenyuk to be the future leader, but now "Yats" is no longer the guy, writes Robert Parry.

    In reporting on the resignation of Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the major U.S. newspapers either ignored or distorted Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland's infamous intercepted phone call before the 2014 coup in which she declared "Yats is the guy!"

    Though Nuland's phone call introduced many Americans to the previously obscure Yatsenyuk, its timing – a few weeks before the ouster of elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych – was never helpful to Washington's desired narrative of the Ukrainian people rising up on their own to oust a corrupt leader.

    Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.

    Instead, the conversation between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt sounded like two proconsuls picking which Ukrainian politicians would lead the new government. Nuland also disparaged the less aggressive approach of the European Union with the pithy put-down: "Fuck the E.U.!"

    More importantly, the intercepted call, released onto YouTube in early February 2014, represented powerful evidence that these senior U.S. officials were plotting – or at least collaborating in – a coup d'etat against Ukraine's democratically elected president. So, the U.S. government and the mainstream U.S. media have since consigned this revealing discussion to the Great Memory Hole.

    On Monday, in reporting on Yatsenyuk's Sunday speech in which he announced that he is stepping down, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal didn't mention the Nuland-Pyatt conversation at all. The New York Times did mention the call but misled its readers regarding its timing, making it appear as if the call followed rather than preceded the coup. That way the call sounded like two American officials routinely appraising Ukraine's future leaders, not plotting to oust one government and install another.

    The Times article by Andrew E. Kramer said: "Before Mr. Yatsenyuk's appointment as prime minister in 2014, a leaked recording of a telephone conversation between Victoria J. Nuland, a United States assistant secretary of state, and the American ambassador in Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, seemed to underscore the West's support for his candidacy. 'Yats is the guy,' Ms. Nuland had said."

    Notice, however, that if you didn't know that the conversation occurred in late January or early February 2014, you wouldn't know that it preceded the Feb. 22, 2014 coup. You might have thought that it was just a supportive chat before Yatsenyuk got his new job.

    You also wouldn't know that much of the Nuland-Pyatt conversation focused on how they were going to "glue this thing" or "midwife this thing," comments sounding like prima facie evidence that the U.S. government was engaged in "regime change" in Ukraine, on Russia's border.

    The 'No Coup' Conclusion

    But Kramer's lack of specificity about the timing and substance of the call fits with a long pattern of New York Times' bias in its coverage of the Ukraine crisis. On Jan. 4, 2015, nearly a year after the U.S.-backed coup, the Times published an "investigation" article declaring that there never had been a coup. It was just a case of President Yanukovych deciding to leave and not coming back.

    That article reached its conclusion, in part, by ignoring the evidence of a coup, including the Nuland-Pyatt phone call. The story was co-written by Kramer and so it is interesting to know that he was at least aware of the "Yats is the guy" reference although it was ignored in last year's long-form article.

    Instead, Kramer and his co-author Andrew Higgins took pains to mock anyone who actually looked at the evidence and dared reach the disfavored conclusion about a coup. If you did, you were some rube deluded by Russian propaganda.

    "Russia has attributed Mr. Yanukovych's ouster to what it portrays as a violent, 'neo-fascist' coup supported and even choreographed by the West and dressed up as a popular uprising," Higgins and Kramer wrote . "Few outside the Russian propaganda bubble ever seriously entertained the Kremlin's line. But almost a year after the fall of Mr. Yanukovych's government, questions remain about how and why it collapsed so quickly and completely."

    The Times' article concluded that Yanukovych "was not so much overthrown as cast adrift by his own allies, and that Western officials were just as surprised by the meltdown as anyone else. The allies' desertion, fueled in large part by fear, was accelerated by the seizing by protesters of a large stock of weapons in the west of the country. But just as important, the review of the final hours shows, was the panic in government ranks created by Mr. Yanukovych's own efforts to make peace."

    Yet, one might wonder what the Times thinks a coup looks like. Indeed, the Ukrainian coup had many of the same earmarks as such classics as the CIA-engineered regime changes in Iran in 1953 and in Guatemala in 1954.

    The way those coups played out is now historically well known. Secret U.S. government operatives planted nasty propaganda about the targeted leader, stirred up political and economic chaos, conspired with rival political leaders, spread rumors of worse violence to come and then – as political institutions collapsed – watched as the scared but duly elected leader made a hasty departure.

    In Iran, the coup reinstalled the autocratic Shah who then ruled with a heavy hand for the next quarter century; in Guatemala, the coup led to more than three decades of brutal military regimes and the killing of some 200,000 Guatemalans.

    Coups don't have to involve army tanks occupying the public squares, although that is an alternative model which follows many of the same initial steps except that the military is brought in at the end. The military coup was a common approach especially in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s.

    ' Color Revolutions'

    But the preferred method in more recent years has been the "color revolution," which operates behind the façade of a "peaceful" popular uprising and international pressure on the targeted leader to show restraint until it's too late to stop the coup. Despite the restraint, the leader is still accused of gross human rights violations, all the better to justify his removal.

    Later, the ousted leader may get an image makeover; instead of a cruel bully, he is ridiculed for not showing sufficient resolve and letting his base of support melt away, as happened with Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.

    But the reality of what happened in Ukraine was never hard to figure out. Nor did you have to be inside "the Russian propaganda bubble" to recognize it. George Friedman, the founder of the global intelligence firm Stratfor, called Yanukovych's overthrow "the most blatant coup in history."

    Which is what it appears if you consider the evidence. The first step in the process was to create tensions around the issue of pulling Ukraine out of Russia's economic orbit and capturing it in the European Union's gravity, a plan defined by influential American neocons in 2013.

    On Sept. 26, 2013, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, who has been a major neocon paymaster for decades, took to the op-ed page of the neocon Washington Post and called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and an important interim step toward toppling Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    At the time, Gershman, whose NED is funded by the U.S. Congress to the tune of about $100 million a year, was financing scores of projects inside Ukraine training activists, paying for journalists and organizing business groups.

    As for the even bigger prize -- Putin -- Gershman wrote: "Ukraine's choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself."

    At that time, in early fall 2013, Ukraine's President Yanukovych was exploring the idea of reaching out to Europe with an association agreement. But he got cold feet in November 2013 when economic experts in Kiev advised him that the Ukrainian economy would suffer a $160 billion hit if it separated from Russia, its eastern neighbor and major trading partner. There was also the West's demand that Ukraine accept a harsh austerity plan from the International Monetary Fund.

    Yanukovych wanted more time for the E.U. negotiations, but his decision angered many western Ukrainians who saw their future more attached to Europe than Russia. Tens of thousands of protesters began camping out at Maidan Square in Kiev, with Yanukovych ordering the police to show restraint.

    Meanwhile, with Yanukovych shifting back toward Russia, which was offering a more generous $15 billion loan and discounted natural gas, he soon became the target of American neocons and the U.S. media, which portrayed Ukraine's political unrest as a black-and-white case of a brutal and corrupt Yanukovych opposed by a saintly "pro-democracy" movement.

    Cheering an Uprising

    The Maidan uprising was urged on by American neocons, including Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Nuland, who passed out cookies at the Maidan and reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their "European aspirations."

    A screen shot of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland speaking to U.S. and Ukrainian business leaders on Dec. 13, 2013, at an event sponsored by Chevron, with its logo to Nuland's left.

    Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, also showed up, standing on stage with right-wing extremists from the Svoboda Party and telling the crowd that the United States was with them in their challenge to the Ukrainian government.

    As the winter progressed, the protests grew more violent. Neo-Nazi and other extremist elements from Lviv and other western Ukrainian cities began arriving in well-organized brigades or "sotins" of 100 trained street fighters. Police were attacked with firebombs and other weapons as the violent protesters began seizing government buildings and unfurling Nazi banners and even a Confederate flag.

    Though Yanukovych continued to order his police to show restraint, he was still depicted in the major U.S. news media as a brutal thug who was callously murdering his own people. The chaos reached a climax on Feb. 20 when mysterious snipers opened fire, killing both police and protesters. As the police retreated, the militants advanced brandishing firearms and other weapons. The confrontation led to significant loss of life, pushing the death toll to around 80 including more than a dozen police.

    U.S. diplomats and the mainstream U.S. press immediately blamed Yanukovych for the sniper attack, though the circumstances remain murky to this day and some investigations have suggested that the lethal sniper fire came from buildings controlled by Right Sektor extremists.

    To tamp down the worsening violence, a shaken Yanukovych signed a European-brokered deal on Feb. 21, in which he accepted reduced powers and an early election so he could be voted out of office. He also agreed to requests from Vice President Joe Biden to pull back the police.

    The precipitous police withdrawal opened the path for the neo-Nazis and other street fighters to seize presidential offices and force Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives. The new coup regime was immediately declared "legitimate" by the U.S. State Department with Yanukovych sought on murder charges. Nuland's favorite, Yatsenyuk, became the new prime minister.

    Throughout the crisis, the mainstream U.S. press hammered home the theme of white-hatted protesters versus a black-hatted president. The police were portrayed as brutal killers who fired on unarmed supporters of "democracy." The good-guy/bad-guy narrative was all the American people heard from the major media.

    The New York Times went so far as to delete the slain policemen from the narrative and simply report that the police had killed all those who died in the Maidan. A typical Times report on March 5, 2014, summed up the storyline: "More than 80 protesters were shot to death by the police as an uprising spiraled out of control in mid-February."

    The mainstream U.S. media also sought to discredit anyone who observed the obvious fact that an unconstitutional coup had just occurred. A new theme emerged that portrayed Yanukovych as simply deciding to abandon his government because of the moral pressure from the noble and peaceful Maidan protests.

    Any reference to a "coup" was dismissed as "Russian propaganda." There was a parallel determination in the U.S. media to discredit or ignore evidence that neo-Nazi militias had played an important role in ousting Yanukovych and in the subsequent suppression of anti-coup resistance in eastern and southern Ukraine. That opposition among ethnic-Russian Ukrainians simply became "Russian aggression."

    Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine's Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV)

    This refusal to notice what was actually a remarkable story – the willful unleashing of Nazi storm troopers on a European population for the first time since World War II – reached absurd levels as The New York Times and The Washington Post buried references to the neo-Nazis at the end of stories, almost as afterthoughts.

    The Washington Post went to the extreme of rationalizing Swastikas and other Nazi symbols by quoting one militia commander as calling them "romantic" gestures by impressionable young men. [See Consortiumnews.com's " Ukraine's 'Romantic' Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers ."]

    But today – more than two years after what U.S. and Ukrainian officials like to call "the Revolution of Dignity" – the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government is sinking into dysfunction, reliant on handouts from the IMF and Western governments.

    And, in a move perhaps now more symbolic than substantive, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk is stepping down. Yats is no longer the guy.

    Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ).

    Khalid Talaat , April 16, 2016 at 20:39

    Is it too far fetched to think that all these color revolutions are a perfection of the process to unleash another fake color revolution, only this time it is a Red, White and Blue revolution here at home? Those that continue to booze and snooze while watching the tube will not know the difference until it is too late.

    The freedom and tranquility of our country depends on finding and implementing a counterweight to the presstitutes and their propaganda. The alternative is too destructive in its natural development.

    Abe , April 15, 2016 at 18:49

    Yats and Porko are the guys who broke Ukraine. By the end of December 2015, Ukraine's gross domestic product had shrunk around 19 percent in comparison with 2013. Its decimated industrial sector needs less fuel. Yatsie did a heck of a job.

    Abe , April 15, 2016 at 18:35

    Carl Gershman: "Ukraine is the biggest prize" -- Paragraph 6 of https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/former-soviet-states-stand-up-to-russia-will-the-us/2013/09/26/b5ad2be4-246a-11e3-b75d-5b7f66349852_story.html

    David Smith , April 12, 2016 at 13:51

    The timing of "Yats" departure is ominous. Mid-April, six weeks from now would be the first chance to renew the invasion of DPR Donesk/Lugansk."Yats" failed in 2014, and didn't try in 2015. Who is "the new guy"? Will the new Prime Minister begin raving about renewing the holy war to recover the lost oblasts? 2016 is really Ukraine's last chance. Ukraine refuses to implement Minsk2, and they have been receiving lots of new weapons. I believe President Putin put the Syrian operation on " standby" not only to avoid approaching the border, provoking a Turkish intervention, but also so he can give undistracted attention to DPR Donesk/Lugansk.

    Bill Rood , April 12, 2016 at 11:50

    I guess I must be inside the Russian propaganda bubble. It was obvious to me when I looked at the YouTube videos of policemen burning after being hit with Molotov cocktails.

    We played the same game of encouraging government "restraint" in Syria, where we demanded Assad free "political prisoners," but we now accuse him of deliberately encouraging ISIS by freeing those people, so that he can point to ISIS and ask, "Do you want that?" Targeted leaders are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

    Andrei , April 12, 2016 at 10:26

    "the Ukrainian coup had many of the same earmarks as such classics as the CIA-engineered regime changes in Iran in 1953 and in Guatemala in 1954", Romania 1989 Shots were fired by snipers in order to stirr the crowds (sounds familiar?) and also by the army after Ceasescu ran away, which resulted in civilians getting murdered. Could it possibly be that it was said : "Iliescu (next elected president) is the guy!" ?

    Joe L. , April 12, 2016 at 11:00

    Check out the attempted coup against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela 2002, that is very similar with protesters, snipers on rooftops, IMF immediately offering loans to the new coup government, new government positions for the coup plotters, complacency with the media – propaganda, funding by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy etc. John Pilger documents how the coup occurred in his documentary "War on Democracy" – https://vimeo.com/16724719 .

    archaos , April 12, 2016 at 09:45

    It was noted in the minutes of Verkhovna Rada almost 2 years before Maidan 2 , that Geoffrey Pyatt was fomenting and funding destabilisation of Ukraine.
    All of Svoboda Nazis in parliament (and other fascisti) then booed the MP who stated this.

    Mark Thomason , April 12, 2016 at 06:57

    Also, the Dutch voted "no" on the economic agreement the coup was meant to force through instead of the Russian agreement accepted by the President it overthrew. Now both "Yats" and the economic agreement are gone. All that is left is the war. Neocons are still happen. They wanted the war. They really want to overthrow Putin, and Ukraine was just a tool in that.

    Realist , April 12, 2016 at 05:51

    You're right, it doesn't have to be the military that carries out a coup by deploying tanks on the National Mall. In 2000, it was the United States Supreme Court that exceeded its constitutional authority and installed George W. Bush as president, though in reality he had lost that election. I wonder when that move will rightfully be characterized as a coup by the historians.

    Bryan Hemming , April 12, 2016 at 04:00

    "On Sept. 26, 2013, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, who has been a major neocon paymaster for decades, took to the op-ed page of the neocon Washington Post and called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and an important interim step toward toppling Russian President Vladimir Putin."

    It should be remembered that Victoria Nuland took up the post of Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in Washington on September 18, 2013.

    Coincidentally, two other women closely connected to events in Ukraine were also in Washington during September 2013.

    Friend of Nuland and boss of the IMF, which has its own HQ in Washington, Christine Lagarde was swift to respond to a Ukraine request for IMF loans on February 27th 2014, just five days after the removal of Yanukovych on February 22nd. Lagarde is pictured with Baronness Catherine Ashton in Washington in a Facebook entry dated September 30th 2013. Ashton was High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy at the time.

    Though visiting Kiev at the same time as Nuland in February 2014 Catherine Ashton never appeared in public with her, which seems a little odd considering the women were on the same mission, and talking to the same people. Nevertheless, despite appearing shy of being photographed with each other the two women weren't quite so shy of being pictured with leaders of the coup, including the right wing extremist, Oleh Tyahnybok.

    Ashton refused to be drawn into commenting on Nuland's "Fuck the E.U.!" outburst, describing Nuland as "a friend of mine." The two women certainly weren't strangers, they had worked closely together before. September 2012 saw them involved in discussions with Iran negotiator Saeed Jalili over the country's supposed nuclear arms ambitions.

    The question is not so much whether the three women talked about Ukraine's future – it would be ridiculous to think they did not – but how closely they worked together, and exactly how closely they might have been involved in events leading up to the overthrow of the legitimate government in Kiev. More on this here:

    https://bryanhemming.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/double-double-toil-and-trouble-the-cauldron-of-kiev/

    Pablo Diablo , April 11, 2016 at 22:56

    Another failed "regime change". Aren't these guys (Neoconservatives) great. They fail, piss off/kill millions, yet seem to keep making money and retaining power. Time to WAKE UP AMERICA.

    Skip Edwards , April 11, 2016 at 20:06

    Read "The Devil'Chessboard" by David Talbot to understand what has been occurring as a result of America's Dark, Shadow government, an un-elected bunch of vicious psychopaths controlling our destiny; unless stopped. Get a clue and realize that "Yats is our guy" Victoria Nuland was Hillary Clinton's "gal." Hillary Clinton is Robert Kagen's "gal." Time to flush all these rats out of the hold and get on with our lives.

    Joe L. , April 11, 2016 at 18:40

    Mr. Parry thank you for delving into the proven history of coups and the parallels with Ukraine. It amazes me how anyone can outright deny this was a coup especially if they know anything about US coups going back to WW2 (Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, attempt in Venezuela 2002 etc. – and there are a whole slew more). I read before, as you have rightly pointed out, that in 1953 the CIA led a propaganda campaign in Iran against Mossadegh as well as financing opposition protesters and opposition government officials. Another angle, as well, is looking historically back to what papers such as the New York Times were reporting around the time of the coup in Iran – especially when we know that the US/Britain overthrew the democratically elected Mossadegh for their own oil interests (British Petroleum):

    New York Times: "Mossadegh Plays with Fire" (August 15, 1953):

    The world has so many trouble spots these days that one is apt to pass over the odd one here and there to preserve a little peace of mind. It would be well, however, to keep an eye on Iran, where matters are going from bad to worse, thanks to the machinations of Premier Mossadegh.

    Some of us used to ascribe our inability to persuade Dr. Mossadegh of the validity of our ideas to the impossibility of making him understand or see things our way. We thought of him as a sincere, well-meaning, patriotic Iranian, who had a different point of view and made different deductions from the same set of facts. We now know that he is a power-hungry, personally ambitious, ruthless demagogue who is trampling upon the liberties of his own people. We have seen this onetime champion of liberty maintain martial law, curb freedom of the press, radio, speech and assembly, resort to illegal arrests and torture, dismiss the Senate, destroy the power of the Shah, take over control of the army, and now he is about to destroy the Majlis, which is the lower house of Parliament.

    His power would seem to be complete, but he has alienated the traditional ruling classes -the aristocrats, landlords, financiers and tribal leaders. These elements are anti-Communist. So is the Shah and so are the army leaders and the urban middle classes. There is a traditional, historic fear, suspicion and dislike of Russia and the Russians. The peasants, who make up the overwhelming mass of the population, are illiterate and nonpolitical. Finally, there is still no evidence that the Tudeh (Communist) party is strong enough or well enough organized, financed and led to take power.

    All this simply means that there is no immediate danger of a Communist coup or Russian intervention. On the other hand, Dr. Mossadegh is encouraging the Tudeh and is following policies which will make the Communists more and more dangerous. He is a sorcerer's apprentice, calling up forces he will not be able to control.

    Iran is a weak, divided, poverty-stricken country which possesses an immense latent wealth in oil and a crucial strategic position. This is very different from neighboring Turkey, a strong, united, determined and advanced nation, which can afford to deal with the Russians because she has nothing to fear -and therefore the West has nothing to fear. Thanks largely to Dr. Mossadegh, there is much to fear in Iran.

    http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/news/new-york-times/august-15-1953/

    My feeling is that the biggest sin that our society has is forgetting history. If we remembered history I would think that it would be very difficult to pull off coups but most media does not revisit history which proves US coups even against democracies. I actually think that the coup that occurred in Ukraine was similar to the attempted coup in Venezuela in 2002 with snipers on rooftops, immediate blame for the deaths on Hugo Chavez where media manipulated the footage, immediate acceptance of the temporary coup government by the US Government, immediately offering IMF loans for the new coup government, government positions for many of the coup plotters, and let us not leave out the funding for the coup coming from USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy. I also remember seeing the New York Times immediately blaming Chavez and praising the coup but when the coup was overturned and US fingerprints started to become revealed (with many of the coup plotters fleeing to the US) then the New York Times wrote a limited retraction buried in their paper. Shameless.

    SFOMARCO , April 11, 2016 at 15:16

    How was NED able to finance "scores of projects inside Ukraine training activists, paying for journalists and organizing business groups", not to mention to host such dignitaries as Cookie Nuland, Loser McCain and assorted Bidens? Seems like a recipe for a coup "hidden in plain sight".

    Bob Van Noy , April 11, 2016 at 14:36

    Ukraine, one would hope, represents the "Bridge Too Far" moment for the proponents of regime change. Surely Americans must be catching on to what we do for selected nations in the name of "giving them their freedoms". The Kagan Family, empowered by their newly endorsed candidate for President, Hillary Clinton, will feel justified in carrying on a new cold war, this time world wide. Of course they will not be doing the fighting, they, like Dick Cheney are the self appointed intellects of geopolitical chess, much like The Georgetown Set of the Kennedy era, they perceive themselves as the only ones smart enough to plan America's future.

    Helen Marshall , April 11, 2016 at 17:11

    I wish. How many Americans know ANYTHNG about what has happened in Ukraine, about Crimea and its history, and/or could even locate them on a map?

    Pastor Agnostic , April 12, 2016 at 04:11

    Nuland is merely the inhouse, PNAC female version of Sidney Blumenthal. Which raises the scary question. Who would she pick to be SecState?

    [Apr 02, 2019] "Vladimir Putin has made a career of intervening abroad and seeing if the world lets him get away with it

    Apr 02, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Why is that sentence funny?

    Because it also describes every single U.S. president for the last 100 years!

    [Apr 02, 2019] "Vladimir Putin has made a career of intervening abroad and seeing if the world lets him get away with it

    Apr 02, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Why is that sentence funny?

    Because it also describes every single U.S. president for the last 100 years!

    [Apr 02, 2019] The abuse of power of the special counsel is a deadly cancer on American democracy.

    Notable quotes:
    "... Originally from: ..."
    "... Among the scope memo's few unredacted lines are allegations regarding Paul Manafort's "colluding with Russian government officials to interfere with the 2016 elections." The only known source for those allegations is the Steele dossier. What that strongly suggests is that under those redactions are other fabricated allegations that were also drawn from the Clinton-funded smear campaign -- a dirty-tricks operation that was led by Fusion GPS founder and conspiracy theorist Glenn Simpson. ..."
    "... Saturday Night Live ..."
    "... While the length of Mueller's investigative process may have protected the FBI from the president's immediate rage, the release of the report has exposed the deep corruption and personal narcissism of the press and its professional networks of "experts" and "sources." ..."
    "... Russiagate was an information operation from the beginning, in which dozens of individual reporters and institutions actively partnered with paid political operatives like Glenn Simpson and corrupt law enforcement and intelligence officials like former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr to smear Trump and his circle, and then to topple him. None of what went on the last two years would have been possible without the press, an indispensable partner in the biggest political scandal in a generation. ..."
    "... The New York Times ..."
    "... Washington Post ..."
    Mar 27, 2019 | www.tabletmag.com

    Originally from: System Fail – Tablet Magazine by Lee Smith

    It will take weeks for the elite pundit class to unravel all the possible implications and subtexts embedded in Robert Mueller's final report on the charge that Donald Trump and his team colluded with Russia to fix the 2016 election. The right claims that the report exonerates Trump fully, while the left contends there are lots of nuggets in the full text of the final report that may point to obstruction of justice, if not collusion.

    But here's all you need to know about the special counsel probe:

    First, after nearly two years, the special counsel found no credible evidence of collusion. It found no credible evidence of a plot to obstruct justice, to hide evidence of collusion. The entire collusion theory, which has formed the center of elite political discourse for over two years now, has been publicly and definitely proclaimed to be a hoax by the very person on whom news organizations and their chosen "experts" and "high-level sources" had so loudly and insistently pinned their daily, even hourly, hopes of redemption.

    Mueller should have filed his report on May 18, 2017 -- the day after the special counsel started and he learned the FBI had opened an investigation on the sitting president of the United States because senior officials at the world's premier law enforcement agency thought Trump was a Russian spy. Based on what evidence? A dossier compiled by a former British spy, relying on second- and third-hand sources, paid for by the Clinton campaign .

    Instead, the special counsel lasted 674 days, during which millions of people who believed Mueller was going to turn up conclusive evidence of Trump's devious conspiracies with the Kremlin have become wrapped up in a collective hallucination that has destroyed the remaining credibility of the American press and the D.C. expert class whose authority they promote.

    Mueller knew that he wasn't ever going to find "collusion" or anything like it because all the intercepts were right there on his desk. As it turned out, two of his prosecutors, including Mueller's so-called "pit bull," Andrew Weissman, had been briefed on the Steele dossier prior to the 2016 election and were told that it came from the Clintons, and was likely a biased political document.

    Weissman left, or was pushed out of, his employment with the special counsel a few weeks ago, after the arrival of a new attorney general, William Barr, who had deep experience in government, including stints at the Justice Department and the CIA. Knowing what we know now, here's what seems most likely to have just happened: Barr looked at the underlying documents on which Mueller's investigation was based. First, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's May 17, 2017, memo appointing the former FBI director to take supervision of the FBI's investigation of Trump. And more importantly, the Aug. 2, 2017, memo from Rosenstein outlining the scope of the investigation.

    Among the scope memo's few unredacted lines are allegations regarding Paul Manafort's "colluding with Russian government officials to interfere with the 2016 elections." The only known source for those allegations is the Steele dossier. What that strongly suggests is that under those redactions are other fabricated allegations that were also drawn from the Clinton-funded smear campaign -- a dirty-tricks operation that was led by Fusion GPS founder and conspiracy theorist Glenn Simpson.

    And now, after all the Saturday Night Live skits, the obscenity-riddled Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert routines, the half a million news stories and tens of millions of tweets all foretelling the end of Trump, the comedians and the adult authority figures are exposed as hoaxsters, or worse, based on evidence that was always transparently phony.

    The Mueller report is in. But the abuse of power that the special counsel embodied is a deadly cancer on American democracy. Two years of investigations have left families in ruins, stripping them of their savings, their homes, threatening their liberty, and dragging their names through the mud. The investigation of the century was partly based on the possibility that Michael Flynn, a combat veteran who served his country for more than three decades, might be a Russian spy -- because of a dinner he once attended in Moscow, and because as incoming national security adviser he spoke to the Russian ambassador to Washington. What rot.

    While the length of Mueller's investigative process may have protected the FBI from the president's immediate rage, the release of the report has exposed the deep corruption and personal narcissism of the press and its professional networks of "experts" and "sources." Instead of providing medicine, the press chose instead to spread the disease through a body that was already badly weakened by the advent of "free" digital media . Only, it wasn't free .

    * * *

    The media criticism of the media's performance covering Russiagate is misleadingly anodyne -- OK, sure the press did a bad job, but to be fair there really was a lot of suspicious stuff going on and now let's all get back to doing our important work. But two years of false and misleading Russiagate coverage was not a mistake, or a symptom of lax fact-checking.

    Russiagate was an information operation from the beginning, in which dozens of individual reporters and institutions actively partnered with paid political operatives like Glenn Simpson and corrupt law enforcement and intelligence officials like former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr to smear Trump and his circle, and then to topple him. None of what went on the last two years would have been possible without the press, an indispensable partner in the biggest political scandal in a generation.

    The campaign was waged not in hidden corners of the internet, but rather by the country's most prestigious news organizations -- including, but not only, The New York Times , the Washington Post , CNN, and MSNBC. The farce that has passed for public discourse the last two years was fueled by a concerted effort of the media and the pundit class to obscure gaping holes in logic as well as law. And yet, they all appeared to be credible because the institutions sustaining them are credible .

    ... ... ...

    Americans still want and need accurate information on which to base their decisions about their own lives and the path that the country should take. But neither the legacy media nor the expert class it sustains is likely to survive the post-dossier era in any recognizable form . For them, Russiagate is an extinction level event.

    Lee Smith is the author of The Consequences of Syria .

    [Apr 02, 2019] The latest Integrity Initiative dump by Anonymous

    Apr 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Symen Danziger , Mar 31, 2019 4:13:36 PM | link

    The latest Integrity Initiative dump by Anonymous

    https://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/operation-integrity-initiative-british-informational-war-against-all-part-7/?fbclid=IwAR0wCU71fMwwcKhT9jhPUFQWt0UudPsWRxFlQQlCbAosSPkPkSnfPsdcEJ4

    [Apr 02, 2019] Shadowbanning

    See also Shadow banning - Wikipedia
    Shadow banning (also called stealth banning, ghost banning or comment ghosting[1]) is the act of blocking or partially blocking a user or their content from an online community such that it will not be readily apparent to the user that they have been banned.
    By making a user's contributions invisible or less prominent to other members of the service, the hope may be that in the absence of reactions to their comments, the problematic or otherwise out-of-favour user will become bored or frustrated and leave the site.
    Apr 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Lozion , Mar 31, 2019 4:33:21 PM | link

    < More and more "resistance" type Twitteratti get shadowbanned, that is, their posts dont appear in the Twitter feed though they are visible on their profiles. Find out if you are shadowbanned here:>

    https://shadowban.eu/

    Zachary Smith , Mar 31, 2019 5:24:53 PM | link

    @ Lozion #12

    Until recently I didn't know the word "shadowbanning", but that was what happened to me several years ago. The managers of the Indianapolis Star had given their forum to the tender care of a mix of Libertarians, rightwingnuts, and devoted followers of the Holy Cesspool south of Syria. Gradually I realized nobody was responding to my posts, and only by accident did I learn those posts were invisible to everybody else. Only when I was logged in could I see them myself.

    So that's why I have gone cold turkey on the only Indianapolis newspaper. I'd recommend it only for folks whose parakeets need a lining for the bottom of the bird's cage. Their editorial page works best for that application.

    Lozion , Mar 31, 2019 7:55:34 PM | link
    @12 Zachary.

    Yeah I first encountered the phenom during the last days of the 2014 Euromaidan while reposting info on Facebook about sniper fire coming from opp held rooftops. I couldnt understand why interaction on the subject stopped until someone confirmed via the chat that none of my posts with the word "Ukraine" appeared in the feed. They must've triggered FBs early filter algorithm. I have since left the Ministry of Truth..

    [Apr 01, 2019] Amazon.com War with Russia From Putin Ukraine to Trump Russiagate (9781510745810) Stephen F. Cohen Books

    Highly recommended!
    Important book. Kindle sample
    Notable quotes:
    "... Washington has made many policies strongly influenced by' the demonizing of Putin -- a personal vilification far exceeding any ever applied to Soviet Russia's latter-day Communist leaders. ..."
    "... As with all institutions, the demonization of Putin has its own history'. When he first appeared on the world scene as Boris Yeltsin's anointed successor, in 1999-2000, Putin was welcomed by' leading representatives of the US political-media establishment. The New York Times ' chief Moscow correspondent and other verifiers reported that Russia's new leader had an "emotional commitment to building a strong democracy." Two years later, President George W. Bush lauded his summit with Putin and "the beginning of a very' constructive relationship."' ..."
    "... But the Putin-friendly narrative soon gave away to unrelenting Putin-bashing. In 2004, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof inadvertently explained why, at least partially. Kristof complained bitterly' of having been "suckered by' Mr. Putin. He is not a sober version of Boris Yeltsin." By 2006, a Wall Street Journal editor, expressing the establishment's revised opinion, declared it "time we start thinking of Vladimir Putin's Russia as an enemy of the United States." 10 , 11 The rest, as they' say, is history'. ..."
    "... In America and elsewhere in the West, however, only purported "minuses" reckon in the extreme vilifying, or anti-cult, of Putin. Many are substantially uninformed, based on highly selective or unverified sources, and motivated by political grievances, including those of several Yeltsin-era oligarchs and their agents in the West. ..."
    "... Putin is not the man who, after coming to power in 2000, "de-democratized" a Russian democracy established by President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and restored a system akin to Soviet "totalitarianism." ..."
    "... Nor did Putim then make himself a tsar or Soviet-like autocrat, which means a despot with absolute power to turn his will into policy, the last Kremlin leader with that kind of power was Stalin, who died in 1953, and with him his 20-year mass terror. ..."
    "... Putin is not a Kremlin leader who "reveres Stalin" and whose "Russia is a gangster shadow of Stalin's Soviet Union." 13 , 14 These assertions are so far-fetched and uninfoimed about Stalin's terror-ridden regime, Putin, and Russia today, they barely warrant comment. ..."
    "... Nor did Putin create post-Soviet Russia's "kleptocratic economic system," with its oligarchic and other widespread corruption. This too took shape under Yeltsin during the Kremlin's shock-therapy "privatization" schemes of the 1990s, when the "swindlers and thieves" still denounced by today's opposition actually emerged. ..."
    "... Which brings us to the most sinister allegation against him: Putin, trained as "a KGB thug," regularly orders the killing of inconvenient journalists and personal enemies, like a "mafia state boss." ..."
    "... More recently, there is yet another allegation: Putin is a fascist and white supremacist. The accusation is made mostly, it seems, by people wishing to deflect attention from the role being played by neo-Nazis in US-backed Ukraine. ..."
    "... Finally, at least for now. there is the ramifying demonization allegation that, as a foreign-policy leader. Putin has been exceedingly "aggressive" abroad and his behavior has been the sole cause of the new cold war. ..."
    "... Embedded in the "aggressive Putin" axiom are two others. One is that Putin is a neo-Soviet leader who seeks to restore the Soviet Union at the expense of Russia's neighbors. Fie is obsessively misquoted as having said, in 2005, "The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century," apparently ranking it above two World Wars. What he actually said was "a major geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century," as it was for most Russians. ..."
    "... The other fallacious sub-axiom is that Putin has always been "anti-Western," specifically "anti-American," has "always viewed the United States" with "smoldering suspicions." -- so much that eventually he set into motion a "Plot Against America." ..."
    "... Or, until he finally concluded that Russia would never be treated as an equal and that NATO had encroached too close, Putin was a full partner in the US-European clubs of major world leaders? Indeed, as late as May 2018, contrary to Russiagate allegations, he still hoped, as he had from the beginning, to rebuild Russia partly through economic partnerships with the West: "To attract capital from friendly companies and countries, we need good relations with Europe and with the whole world, including the United States." 3 " ..."
    "... A few years earlier, Putin remarkably admitted that initially he had "illusions" about foreign policy, without specifying which. Perhaps he meant this, spoken at the end of 2017: "Our most serious mistake in relations with the West is that we trusted you too much. And your mistake is that you took that trust as weakness and abused it." 34 ..."
    "... <img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amazon-avatars-global/default._CR0,0,1024,1024_SX48_.png"> P. Philips ..."
    "... "In a Time of Universal Deceit -- Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act" ..."
    "... Professor Cohen is indeed a patriot of the highest order. The American and "Globalists" elites, particularly the dysfunctional United Kingdom, are engaging in a war of nerves with Russia. This war, which could turn nuclear for reasons discussed in this important book, is of no benefit to any person or nation. ..."
    "... If you are a viewer of one of the legacy media outlets, be it Cable Television networks, with the exception of Tucker Carlson on Fox who has Professor Cohen as a frequent guest, or newspapers such as The New York Times, you have been exposed to falsehoods by remarkably ignorant individuals; ignorant of history, of the true nature of Russia (which defeated the Nazis in Europe at a loss of millions of lives) and most important, of actual military experience. America is neither an invincible or exceptional nation. And for those familiar with terminology of ancient history, it appears the so-called elites are suffering from hubris. ..."
    Apr 01, 2019 | www.amazon.com

    THE SPECTER OF AN EVIL-DOING VLADIMIR PUTIN HAS loomed over and undermined US thinking about Russia for at least a decade. Inescapably, it is therefore a theme that runs through this book. Henry' Kissinger deserves credit for having warned, perhaps alone among prominent American political figures, against this badly distorted image of Russia's leader since 2000: "The demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy. It is an alibi for not having one." 4

    But Kissinger was also wrong. Washington has made many policies strongly influenced by' the demonizing of Putin -- a personal vilification far exceeding any ever applied to Soviet Russia's latter-day Communist leaders. Those policies spread from growing complaints in the early 2000s to US- Russian proxy wars in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, and eventually even at home, in Russiagate allegations. Indeed, policy-makers adopted an earlier formulation by the late Senator .Tolm McCain as an integral part of a new and more dangerous Cold War: "Putin [is] an unreconstructed Russian imperialist and K.G.B. apparatchik.... His world is a brutish, cynical place.... We must prevent the darkness of Mr. Putin's world from befalling more of humanity'." 3

    Mainstream media outlets have play'ed a major prosecutorial role in the demonization. Far from aty'pically', the Washington Post's editorial page editor wrote, "Putin likes to make the bodies bounce.... The rule-by-fear is Soviet, but this time there is no ideology -- only a noxious mixture of personal aggrandizement, xenophobia, homophobia and primitive anti-Americanism." 6 Esteemed publications and writers now routinely degrade themselves by competing to denigrate "the flabbily muscled form" of the "small gray ghoul named Vladimir Putin." 7 , 8 There are hundreds of such examples, if not more, over many years. Vilifying Russia's leader has become a canon in the orthodox US narrative of the new Cold War.

    As with all institutions, the demonization of Putin has its own history'. When he first appeared on the world scene as Boris Yeltsin's anointed successor, in 1999-2000, Putin was welcomed by' leading representatives of the US political-media establishment. The New York Times ' chief Moscow correspondent and other verifiers reported that Russia's new leader had an "emotional commitment to building a strong democracy." Two years later, President George W. Bush lauded his summit with Putin and "the beginning of a very' constructive relationship."'

    But the Putin-friendly narrative soon gave away to unrelenting Putin-bashing. In 2004, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof inadvertently explained why, at least partially. Kristof complained bitterly' of having been "suckered by' Mr. Putin. He is not a sober version of Boris Yeltsin." By 2006, a Wall Street Journal editor, expressing the establishment's revised opinion, declared it "time we start thinking of Vladimir Putin's Russia as an enemy of the United States." 10 , 11 The rest, as they' say, is history'.

    Who has Putin really been during his many years in power? We may' have to leave this large, complex question to future historians, when materials for full biographical study -- memoirs, archive documents, and others -- are available. Even so, it may surprise readers to know that Russia's own historians, policy intellectuals, and journalists already argue publicly and differ considerably as to the "pluses and minuses" of Putin's leadership. (My own evaluation is somewhere in the middle.)

    In America and elsewhere in the West, however, only purported "minuses" reckon in the extreme vilifying, or anti-cult, of Putin. Many are substantially uninformed, based on highly selective or unverified sources, and motivated by political grievances, including those of several Yeltsin-era oligarchs and their agents in the West.

    By identifying and examining, however briefly, the primary "minuses" that underpin the demonization of Putin, we can understand at least who he is not:

    • Putin is not the man who, after coming to power in 2000, "de-democratized" a Russian democracy established by President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and restored a system akin to Soviet "totalitarianism." Democratization began and developed in Soviet Russia under the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in the years from 1987 to 1991.

      Yeltsin repeatedly dealt that historic Russian experiment grievous, possibly fatal, blows. Among his other acts, by using tanks, in October 1993, to destroy Russia's freely elected parliament and with it the entire constitutional order that had made Yeltsin president. By waging two bloody' wars against the tiny breakaway province of Chechnya. By enabling a small group of Kremlin-connected oligarchs to plunder Russia's richest assets and abet the plunging of some two-thirds of its people into poverty' and misery', including the once-large and professionalized Soviet middle classes. By rigging his own reelection in 1996. And by' enacting a "super-presidential" constitution, at the expense of the legislature and judiciary but to his successor's benefit. Putin may have furthered the de-democratization of the Yeltsin 1990s, but he did not initiate it.

    • Nor did Putim then make himself a tsar or Soviet-like autocrat, which means a despot with absolute power to turn his will into policy, the last Kremlin leader with that kind of power was Stalin, who died in 1953, and with him his 20-year mass terror. Due to the increasing bureaucratic routinization of the political-administrative system, each successive Soviet leader had less personal power than his predecessor. Putin may have more, but if he really is a "cold-blooded, ruthless" autocrat -- "the worst dictator on the planet" 1 " -- tens of thousands of protesters would not have repeatedly appeared in Moscow streets, sometimes officially sanctioned. Or their protests (and selective arrests) been shown on state television.

      Political scientists generally agree that Putin has been a "soft authoritarian" leader governing a system that has authoritarian and democratic components inherited from the past. They disagree as to how to specify, define, and balance these elements, but most would also generally agree with a brief Facebook post, on September 7, 2018, by the eminent diplomat-scholar Jack Matlock: "Putin ... is not the absolute dictator some have pictured him. His power seems to be based on balancing various patronage networks, some of which are still criminal. (In the 1990s, most were, and nobody was controlling them.) Therefore he cannot admit publicly that [criminal acts] happened without his approval since this would indicate that he is not completely in charge."

    • Putin is not a Kremlin leader who "reveres Stalin" and whose "Russia is a gangster shadow of Stalin's Soviet Union." 13 , 14 These assertions are so far-fetched and uninfoimed about Stalin's terror-ridden regime, Putin, and Russia today, they barely warrant comment. Stalin's Russia was often as close to unfreedom as imaginable. In today's Russia, apart from varying political liberties, most citizens are freer to live, study, work, write, speak, and travel than they have ever been. (When vocational demonizers like David Kramer allege an "appalling human rights situation in Putin's Russia," 1 " they should be asked: compared to when in Russian history, or elsewhere in the world today?)

      Putin clearly understands that millions of Russians have and often express pro-Stalin sentiments. Nonetheless, his role in these still-ongoing controversies over the despot's historical reputation has been, in one unprecedented way, that of an anti-Stalinist leader. Briefly illustrated, if Putin reveres the memory of Stalin, why did his personal support finally make possible two memorials (the excellent State Museum of the History of the Gulag and the highly evocative "Wall of Grief') to the tyrant's millions of victims, both in central Moscow? The latter memorial monument was first proposed by then-Kremlin leader Nikita Khrushchev, in 1961. It was not built under any of his successors -- until Putin, in 2017.

    • Nor did Putin create post-Soviet Russia's "kleptocratic economic system," with its oligarchic and other widespread corruption. This too took shape under Yeltsin during the Kremlin's shock-therapy "privatization" schemes of the 1990s, when the "swindlers and thieves" still denounced by today's opposition actually emerged.

      Putin has adopted a number of "anti-corruption" policies over the years. How successful they have been is the subject of legitimate debate. As are how much power he has had to rein in fully both Yeltsin's oligarchs and his own, and how sincere he has been. But branding Putin "a kleptocrat" 16 also lacks context and is little more than barely informed demonizing.

      A recent scholarly book finds, for example, that while they may be "corrupt," Putin "and the liberal technocratic economic team on which he relies have also skillfully managed Russia's economic fortunes." 1 ' A former IMF director goes further, concluding that Putin's current economic team does not "tolerate corruption" and that "Russia now ranks 35th out of 190 in the World Bank's Doing Business ratings. It was at 124 in 2010." 18

      Viewed in human teims, when Putin came to power in 2000, some 75 percent of Russians were living in poverty. Most had lost even modest legacies of the Soviet era -- their life savings; medical and other social benefits: real wages; pensions; occupations; and for men life expectancy, which had fallen well below the age of 60. In only a few years, the "kleptocrat" Putin had mobilized enough wealth to undo and reverse those human catastrophes and put billions of dollars in rainy-day funds that buffered the nation in different hard times ahead. We judge this historic achievement as we might, but it is why many Russians still call Putin "Vladimir the Savior."

    • Which brings us to the most sinister allegation against him: Putin, trained as "a KGB thug," regularly orders the killing of inconvenient journalists and personal enemies, like a "mafia state boss." This should be the easiest demonizing axiom to dismiss because there is no actual evidence, or barely any logic, to support it. And yet, it is ubiquitous. Times editorial writers and columnists -- and far from them alone -- characterize Putin as a "thug" and his policies as "thuggery" so often -- sometimes doubling down on "autocratic thug" 19 -- that the practice may be specified in some internal manual. Little wonder so many politicians also routinely practice it, as did US Senator Ben Sasse: "We should tell the American people and tell the world that we know that Vladimir Putin is a thus. He's a former KGB aaent who's a murderer." 20

      Leaving aside other world leaders with minor or major previous careers in intelligences services. Putin's years as a KGB intelligence officer in then -East Germany were clearly formative. Many years later, at age 67. he still spoke of them with pride. Whatever else that experience contributed, it made Putin a Europeanized Russian, a fluent Geiman speaker, and a political leader with a remarkable, demonstrated capacity for retaining and coolly analyzing a very wide range of information. (Read or watch a few of his long interviews.) Not a bad leadership trait in very fraught times.

      Moreover, no serious biographer would treat only one period in a subject's long public career as definitive, as Putin demonizers do. Why not instead the period after he left the KGB in 1991, when he served as deputy to the mayor of St. Petersburg, then considered one of the two or three most democratic leaders in Russia? Or the years immediately following in Moscow, where he saw first-hand the full extent of Yeltsin-era corruption? Or his subsequent years, while still relatively young, as president?

      As for being a "murderer" of journalists and other ''enemies." the list has grown to scores of Russians who died, at home or abroad, by foul or natural causes -- all reflexively attributed to Putin. Our hallowed tradition puts the burden of proof on the accusers. Putin's accusers have produced none, only assumptions, innuendoes, and mistranslated statements by Putin about the fate of "traitors." The two cases that firmly established this defamatory practice were those of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot to death in Moscow in 2006; and Alexander Litvinenko, a shadowy one-time KGB defector with ties to aggrieved Yeltsin-era oligarchs, who died of radiation poisoning in London, also in 2006.

      Not a shred of actual proof points to Putin in either case. The editor of Politkovskaya's paper, the devoutly independent Novaya Gazeta. still believes her assassination was ordered by Chechen officials, whose human-rights abuses she was investigating. Regarding Litvinenko, despite frenzied media claims and a kangaroo-like "hearing" suggesting that Putin was "probably" responsible, there is still no conclusive proof even as to whether Litvinenko's poisoning was intentional or accidental. The same paucity of evidence applies to many subsequent cases, notably the shooting of the opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, "in [distant] view of the Kremlin," in 2015.

      About Russian journalists, there is, however, a significant overlooked statistic. According to the American Committee to Protect Journalists, as of 2012, 77 had been murdered -- 41 during the Yeltsin years, 36 under Putin. By 2018, the total was 82 -- 41 under Yeltsin, the same under Putin. This strongly suggests that the still -- pairtially corrupt post-Soviet economic system, not Yeltsin or Putin personally, led to the killing of so many journalists after 1991, most of them investigative reporters. The former wife of one journalist thought to have been poisoned concludes as much: "Many Western analysts place the responsibility for these crimes on Putin. But the cause is more likely the system of mutual responsibility and the culture of impunity that began to form before Putin, in the late 1990s.""

    • More recently, there is yet another allegation: Putin is a fascist and white supremacist. The accusation is made mostly, it seems, by people wishing to deflect attention from the role being played by neo-Nazis in US-backed Ukraine. Putin no doubt regards it as a blood slur, and even on the surface it is, to be exceedingly charitable, entirely uninformed. How else to explain Senator Ron Wyden's solemn warnings, at a hearing on November 1, 2017, about "the current fascist leadership of Russia"? A young scholar recently dismantled a senior Yale professor's nearly inexplicable propounding of this thesis.' 3 My own approach is compatible, though different.

      Whatever Putin's failings, the fascist allegation is absurd. Nothing in his statements over nearly 20 years in power are akin to fascism, whose core belief is a cult of blood based on the asserted superiority of one ethnicity over all others. As head of a vast multi-ethnic state -- embracing scores of diverse groups with a broad range of skin colors -- such utterances or related acts by Putin would be inconceivable, if not political suicide. This is why he endlessly appeals for harmony in "our entire multi-ethnic nation" with its "multi-ethnic culture," as he did once again in his re-inauguration speech in 2018. 24

      Russia has, of course, fascist-white supremacist thinkers and activists, though many have been imprisoned. But a mass fascist movement is scarcely feasible in a country where so many millions died in the war against Nazi Geimany, a war that directly affected Putin and clearly left a formative mark on him. Though he was born after the war, his mother and father barely survived near-fatal wounds and disease, his older brother died in the long German siege of Leningrad, and several of his uncles perished. Only people who never endured such an experience, or are unable to imagine it, can conjure up a fascist Putin.

      There is another, easily understood, indicative fact. Not a trace of anti-Semitism is evident in Putin. Little noted here but widely reported both in Russia and in Israel, life for Russian Jews is better under Putin than it has ever been in that country's long history."

    • Finally, at least for now. there is the ramifying demonization allegation that, as a foreign-policy leader. Putin has been exceedingly "aggressive" abroad and his behavior has been the sole cause of the new cold war. 26 At best, this is an "in-the-eve-of-the-beholder" assertion, and half-blind. At worst, it justifies what even a German foreign minister characterized as the West's "war-mongering" against Russia."

      In the three cases widely given as examples of Putin's "aggression," the evidence, long cited by myself and others, points to US-led instigations, primarily in the process of expanding the NATO military alliance since the late 1990s from Germany to Russia's borders today. The proxy US-Russian war in Georgia in 2008 was initiated by the US-backed president of that country, who had been encouraged to aspire to NATO membership. The 2014 crisis and subsequent proxy war in Ukraine resulted from the longstanding effort to bring that country, despite large regions' shared civilization with Russia, into NATO.

      And Putin's 2015 military intervention in Syria was done on a valid premise: either it would be Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus or the terrorist Islamic State -- and on President Barack Obama's refusal to join Russia in an anti-ISIS alliance. As a result of this history, Putin is often seen in Russia as a belatedly reactive leader abroad, as a not sufficiently "aggressive" one.

    Embedded in the "aggressive Putin" axiom are two others. One is that Putin is a neo-Soviet leader who seeks to restore the Soviet Union at the expense of Russia's neighbors. Fie is obsessively misquoted as having said, in 2005, "The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century," apparently ranking it above two World Wars. What he actually said was "a major geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century," as it was for most Russians.

    Though often critical of the Soviet system and its two formative leaders, Lenin and Stalin, Putin, like most of his generation, naturally remains in part a Soviet person. But what he said in 2010 reflects his real perspective and that of very many other Russians: "Anyone who does not regret the break-up of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants its rebirth in its previous form has no head." 28 , 29

    The other fallacious sub-axiom is that Putin has always been "anti-Western," specifically "anti-American," has "always viewed the United States" with "smoldering suspicions." -- so much that eventually he set into motion a "Plot Against America." 30 , 31 A simple reading of his years in power tells us otherwise. A Westernized Russian, Putin came to the presidency in 2000 in the still prevailing tradition of Gorbachev and Yeltsin -- in hope of a "strategic friendship and partnership" with the United States.

    How else to explain Putin's abundant assistant to US forces fighting in Afghanistan after 9/1 1 and continued facilitation of supplying American and NATO troops there? Or his backing of harsh sanctions against Iran's nuclear ambitions and refusal to sell Tehran a highly effective air-defense system? Or the information his intelligence services shared with Washington that if heeded could have prevented the Boston Marathon bombings in April 2012?

    Or, until he finally concluded that Russia would never be treated as an equal and that NATO had encroached too close, Putin was a full partner in the US-European clubs of major world leaders? Indeed, as late as May 2018, contrary to Russiagate allegations, he still hoped, as he had from the beginning, to rebuild Russia partly through economic partnerships with the West: "To attract capital from friendly companies and countries, we need good relations with Europe and with the whole world, including the United States." 3 "

    Given all that has happened during the past nearly two decades -- particularly what Putin and other Russian leaders perceive to have happened -- it would be remarkable if his views of the W^est, especially America, had not changed. As he remarked in 2018, "We all change." 33

    A few years earlier, Putin remarkably admitted that initially he had "illusions" about foreign policy, without specifying which. Perhaps he meant this, spoken at the end of 2017: "Our most serious mistake in relations with the West is that we trusted you too much. And your mistake is that you took that trust as weakness and abused it." 34

    P. Philips , December 6, 2018

    "In a Time of Universal Deceit -- Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act"

    "In a Time of Universal Deceit -- Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act" is a well known quotation (but probably not of George Orwell). And in telling the truth about Russia and that the current "war of nerves" is not in the interests of either the American People or national security, Professor Cohen in this book has in fact done a revolutionary act.

    Like a denizen of Plato's cave, or being in the film the Matrix, most people have no idea what the truth is. And the questions raised by Professor Cohen are a great service in the cause of the truth. As Professor Cohen writes in his introduction To His Readers:

    "My scholarly work -- my biography of Nikolai Bukharin and essays collected in Rethinking the Soviet Experience and Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives, for example -- has always been controversial because it has been what scholars term "revisionist" -- reconsiderations, based on new research and perspectives, of prevailing interpretations of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian history. But the "controversy" surrounding me since 2014, mostly in reaction to the contents of this book, has been different -- inspired by usually vacuous, defamatory assaults on me as "Putin's No. 1 American Apologist," "Best Friend," and the like. I never respond specifically to these slurs because they offer no truly substantive criticism of my arguments, only ad hominem attacks. Instead, I argue, as readers will see in the first section, that I am a patriot of American national security, that the orthodox policies my assailants promote are gravely endangering our security, and that therefore we -- I and others they assail -- are patriotic heretics. Here too readers can judge."

    Cohen, Stephen F.. War with Russia (Kindle Locations 131-139). Hot Books. Kindle Edition.

    Professor Cohen is indeed a patriot of the highest order. The American and "Globalists" elites, particularly the dysfunctional United Kingdom, are engaging in a war of nerves with Russia. This war, which could turn nuclear for reasons discussed in this important book, is of no benefit to any person or nation.

    Indeed, with the hysteria on "climate change" isn't it odd that other than Professor Cohen's voice, there are no prominent figures warning of the devastation that nuclear war would bring?

    If you are a viewer of one of the legacy media outlets, be it Cable Television networks, with the exception of Tucker Carlson on Fox who has Professor Cohen as a frequent guest, or newspapers such as The New York Times, you have been exposed to falsehoods by remarkably ignorant individuals; ignorant of history, of the true nature of Russia (which defeated the Nazis in Europe at a loss of millions of lives) and most important, of actual military experience. America is neither an invincible or exceptional nation. And for those familiar with terminology of ancient history, it appears the so-called elites are suffering from hubris.

    I cannot recommend Professor Cohen's work with sufficient superlatives; his arguments are erudite, clearly stated, supported by the facts and ultimately irrefutable. If enough people find Professor Cohen's work and raise their voices to their oblivious politicians and profiteers from war to stop further confrontation between Russia and America, then this book has served a noble purpose.

    If nothing else, educate yourself by reading this work to discover what the *truth* is. And the truth is something sacred.

    America and the world owe Professor Cohen a great debt. "Blessed are the peace makers..."

    [Apr 01, 2019] Johnstone Leaked '401'-Page Mueller Report Proves Barr Lied, Collusion Theorists Vindicated

    Notable quotes:
    "... "I'm sorry for calling the Russiagaters idiots, morons, drooling imbeciles, stupid, gullible sheep, foam-brained human livestock, tinfoil pussyhat-wearing delusional conspiracy theorists, demented cold war-enabling McCarthyite bootlickers, oafish slug-headed slime creatures, energy-sucking, CIA-coddling wastes of space and oxygen, and an embarrassment to the human species" ..."
    "... " He then put on a pair of sunglasses and rode off on a motorcycle due east into the rising sun, while the smooth notes of a single saxophone resounded through the D.C. cityscape." ..."
    Apr 01, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    An unredacted copy of the Robert Mueller report has been leaked to the Washington Post , who published the full document on its website Monday.

    The report contains many shocking revelations which prove that Attorney General William Barr deceived the world in his summary of its contents, as astute Trump-Russia collusion theorists have been claiming since it emerged .

    For example, while Barr's excerpted quote from the report may read like a seemingly unequivocal assertion, "[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities," it turns out that the full sentence reads very differently:

    " It is totally not the case that the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

    The following sentence is even more damning: "It definitely did establish that that happened."

    The report goes on to list the evidence for numerous acts of direct conspiracy between Trump allies and the Russian government, including a detailed description of the footage from an obtained copy of the notorious "kompromat" video, in which Trump is seen paying Russian prostitutes to urinate on a bed once slept in by Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as other documents fully verifying the entire Christopher Steele dossier which was published by BuzzFeed in January 2017.

    Other evidence listed in the report includes communication transcripts in which Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen ordering President Trump to bomb Syria, stage a coup in Venezuela, arm Ukraine, escalate against Russia in America's Nuclear Posture Review, withdraw from the INF treaty and the Iran deal, undermine Russia's fossil fuel interests in Germany, expand NATO, and maintain a large military presence near Russia's border.

    ... ... ...

    Obviously I owe the world a very big apology. I'm sorry for calling the Russiagaters idiots, morons, drooling imbeciles, stupid, gullible sheep, foam-brained human livestock, tinfoil pussyhat-wearing delusional conspiracy theorists, demented cold war-enabling McCarthyite bootlickers, oafish slug-headed slime creatures, energy-sucking, CIA-coddling wastes of space and oxygen, and an embarrassment to the human species. Clearly, because of their indisputable vindication this April the first 2019, they are definitely none of these things.

    RightLineBacker, (Edited)

    After recovering from a near heart attack...and loading my weapons in preparation of taking to the streets... I noticed it was April 1st. Funny & not funny at the same time.

    Damn! Back to my beer & popcorn.

    desertboy

    "I'm sorry for calling the Russiagaters idiots, morons, drooling imbeciles, stupid, gullible sheep, foam-brained human livestock, tinfoil pussyhat-wearing delusional conspiracy theorists, demented cold war-enabling McCarthyite bootlickers, oafish slug-headed slime creatures, energy-sucking, CIA-coddling wastes of space and oxygen, and an embarrassment to the human species"

    Me too. It's worth repeating.

    noshitsherlock

    " He then put on a pair of sunglasses and rode off on a motorcycle due east into the rising sun, while the smooth notes of a single saxophone resounded through the D.C. cityscape."

    Bwahahahaha


    [Apr 01, 2019] Trey Gowdy Adam Schiff is a 'deeply partisan person'

    Schiff is a typical witch hunter (or Cheka goon, if you wish ;-) , much like Mueller staff was. What is unclear why theywant to unseat Trump with his complete falding to neocons and strong pro-Israel stance?
    Notable quotes:
    "... It was the DNC and Ukraine. They wanted HRC to win. No collusion was on President Trump's side. All the top players in the FBI and DOJ played games and lost. President Trump won and plays the game better than those on the DNC. Their game book has been showed to be stupid. ..."
    "... Brennan thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. He spins lies like a hungry spider. Brennan, Clapper, Schiff, Swalwell, and some others need to go. ..."
    Apr 01, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    Rosemary Storm , 1 day ago

    Trump HATER Brennan - says: "U.S. PERSONS" - meaning Schiff, Comey, Obama, Strozk, His Lover, The OBAMAS, - are all THOSE "U.S. PERSONS" who gave him the so-called "INTELLIGENCE" - at WHAT POINT does "UN-VERIFIED INFO" become a TREASONOUS WEAPONIZED INSTRUMENT of an ATTEMPTED COUP D'eta against the President Of The United States of America.

    Stan Wilson , 1 day ago

    Seditious liar Schifty Adam Schiff was involved in criminal leaking of classified information to Democrat propaganda machines CNN and MSNBC -- Should not just resign but held accountable for his crimes and major role he played in the Coup attempt against the duly elected US president

    halas , 1 day ago

    If Brennan didn't know, he admits to being incompetent. If he did know, he is complicit. He accused someone of treason without evidence. Losing his security clearance is not justice. He needs to pay a bigger price.

    Steven Miller , 1 day ago

    Gowdy is correct. Had there been something there, yes perhaps then people should see it. When there results yield "not even probable cause", it probably shouldn't be released in it's entirety.

    Andrea Visconti , 1 day ago

    It was the DNC and Ukraine. They wanted HRC to win. No collusion was on President Trump's side. All the top players in the FBI and DOJ played games and lost. President Trump won and plays the game better than those on the DNC. Their game book has been showed to be stupid.

    TNA2Me , 1 day ago

    Brennan thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. He spins lies like a hungry spider. Brennan, Clapper, Schiff, Swalwell, and some others need to go.

    Robert Silvermyst , 1 day ago

    Adam Schiff claims there is clear evidence, yet never states what this evidence is. Yet it is so clear that Muller, the FBI, the Senate investigation and the House spent two years and never found it. Must be extremely transparent to the point of not existing period. I think Schiff needs to not only step down, but he needs to see a psychitatrist.

    [Apr 01, 2019] Trey Gowdy Adam Schiff is a 'deeply partisan person'

    Schiff is a typical witch hunter (or Cheka goon, if you wish ;-) , much like Mueller staff was. What is unclear why theywant to unseat Trump with his complete falding to neocons and strong pro-Israel stance?
    Notable quotes:
    "... It was the DNC and Ukraine. They wanted HRC to win. No collusion was on President Trump's side. All the top players in the FBI and DOJ played games and lost. President Trump won and plays the game better than those on the DNC. Their game book has been showed to be stupid. ..."
    "... Brennan thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. He spins lies like a hungry spider. Brennan, Clapper, Schiff, Swalwell, and some others need to go. ..."
    Apr 01, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    Rosemary Storm , 1 day ago

    Trump HATER Brennan - says: "U.S. PERSONS" - meaning Schiff, Comey, Obama, Strozk, His Lover, The OBAMAS, - are all THOSE "U.S. PERSONS" who gave him the so-called "INTELLIGENCE" - at WHAT POINT does "UN-VERIFIED INFO" become a TREASONOUS WEAPONIZED INSTRUMENT of an ATTEMPTED COUP D'eta against the President Of The United States of America.

    Stan Wilson , 1 day ago

    Seditious liar Schifty Adam Schiff was involved in criminal leaking of classified information to Democrat propaganda machines CNN and MSNBC -- Should not just resign but held accountable for his crimes and major role he played in the Coup attempt against the duly elected US president

    halas , 1 day ago

    If Brennan didn't know, he admits to being incompetent. If he did know, he is complicit. He accused someone of treason without evidence. Losing his security clearance is not justice. He needs to pay a bigger price.

    Steven Miller , 1 day ago

    Gowdy is correct. Had there been something there, yes perhaps then people should see it. When there results yield "not even probable cause", it probably shouldn't be released in it's entirety.

    Andrea Visconti , 1 day ago

    It was the DNC and Ukraine. They wanted HRC to win. No collusion was on President Trump's side. All the top players in the FBI and DOJ played games and lost. President Trump won and plays the game better than those on the DNC. Their game book has been showed to be stupid.

    TNA2Me , 1 day ago

    Brennan thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. He spins lies like a hungry spider. Brennan, Clapper, Schiff, Swalwell, and some others need to go.

    Robert Silvermyst , 1 day ago

    Adam Schiff claims there is clear evidence, yet never states what this evidence is. Yet it is so clear that Muller, the FBI, the Senate investigation and the House spent two years and never found it. Must be extremely transparent to the point of not existing period. I think Schiff needs to not only step down, but he needs to see a psychitatrist.

    [Apr 01, 2019] No Reds Under Our Beds After All by Eric Margolis

    Apr 01, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Not since the witchcraft hysteria of the Middle Ages have we seen such a display of human idiocy, credulity and absurdist behavior. I refer, of course, to the two-year witch hunt directed against President Donald Trump which hopefully just concluded last week – provided that the Hillaryites, Democratic dopes and secret staters who fueled this mania don't manage to keep the pot boiling.

    This column has said from Day 1 that claims Trump was somehow a Russian agent were absurd in the extreme. So too charges that Moscow had somehow rigged US elections. Nonsense. We know it's the US that helps rig elections around the globe, not those bumbling Russians who can't afford the big bribes such nefarious activity requires.

    What Muller found after he turned over the big rock was a bevy of slithering, slimy creatures, shyster lawyers, and sleazes that are normally part of New York's land development industry. No surprise at all that they surrounded developer Trump. Son-in-law Jared Kushner hails from this same milieu. The Kushners are pajama-party buddies with Israel's leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.

    Now that the Muller investigation found no collusion between the Trump camp and the Kremlin, we Americans owe a great big apology to Vladimir Putin for all the slander he has suffered. Too bad he can't sue the legions of liars and propagandists who heaped abuse on him and, incidentally, pushed the US and Russia to the edge of war.

    People who swallowed these absurdist claims really should question their own grasp of reality. Those who believed that the evil Kremlin was manipulating votes in Alabama or Missouri would make good candidates for Scientology or the John Birch Society.

    They were the simple fools. Worse, were the propagandists who promoted the disgusting Steele dossier, a farrago of lies concocted by British intelligence and apparently promoted by the late John McCain and Trump-hating TV networks. One senses Hillary Clinton's hand in all this. Hell indeed hath no fury like a woman scorned.

    It's so laughably ironic that while the witch hunt sought a non-existent Kremlin master manipulator, the real foreign string-puller was sitting in the White House Oval office chortling away: Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and, behind him, the moneybags patron of Trump and Netanyahu, American billionaire gambling mogul, Sheldon Adelson, the godfather of Greater Israel.

    The three amigos had just pulled off one of the most outrageous violations of international law by blessing Israel's annexation of the highly strategic Golan Heights that Israel had seized in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. This usurpation was so egregious that all 14 members of the UN Security Council condemned it. Even usually wimpy Canada blasted the US.

    Giving Golan to Israel means it has permanently secured new water sources from the Mount Hermon range, artillery and electronic intelligence positions overlooking Damascus, and the launching pad for new Israeli land expansion into Lebanon and Syria. Israel is said to be preparing for a new war against Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.

    In contrast to this cynical business over Golan, the Trump administration is still hitting Russia with heavy sanctions over Moscow's re-occupation of Crimea, a strategic peninsula that was Russian for over 300 years. So Israel can grab Golan but Russia must vacate Crimea. The logic of sleazy politics.

    We also learned last week that according to State Secretary Mike Pompeo, Trump might have been sent by us by God, like ancient Israel's Queen Esther, to defend Israel from the wicked Persians. Up to a quarter of Americans, and particularly Bible Belt voters, believe such crazy nonsense. For them, Trump is a heroic Crusading Christian warrior.

    This is as nutty as Trump being a Commie Manchurian candidate. We seem to be living in an era of absurdity and medieval superstition. No wonder so many nations around the globe fear us. We too often look like militant Scientologists with nuclear weapons.

    Fortunately, the cool, calm, collected Vladimir Putin remains in charge of the other side in spite of our best efforts to overthrow or provoke him.

    [Apr 01, 2019] Johnstone Leaked '401'-Page Mueller Report Proves Barr Lied, Collusion Theorists Vindicated

    Notable quotes:
    "... "I'm sorry for calling the Russiagaters idiots, morons, drooling imbeciles, stupid, gullible sheep, foam-brained human livestock, tinfoil pussyhat-wearing delusional conspiracy theorists, demented cold war-enabling McCarthyite bootlickers, oafish slug-headed slime creatures, energy-sucking, CIA-coddling wastes of space and oxygen, and an embarrassment to the human species" ..."
    "... " He then put on a pair of sunglasses and rode off on a motorcycle due east into the rising sun, while the smooth notes of a single saxophone resounded through the D.C. cityscape." ..."
    Apr 01, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    An unredacted copy of the Robert Mueller report has been leaked to the Washington Post , who published the full document on its website Monday.

    The report contains many shocking revelations which prove that Attorney General William Barr deceived the world in his summary of its contents, as astute Trump-Russia collusion theorists have been claiming since it emerged .

    For example, while Barr's excerpted quote from the report may read like a seemingly unequivocal assertion, "[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities," it turns out that the full sentence reads very differently:

    " It is totally not the case that the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

    The following sentence is even more damning: "It definitely did establish that that happened."

    The report goes on to list the evidence for numerous acts of direct conspiracy between Trump allies and the Russian government, including a detailed description of the footage from an obtained copy of the notorious "kompromat" video, in which Trump is seen paying Russian prostitutes to urinate on a bed once slept in by Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as other documents fully verifying the entire Christopher Steele dossier which was published by BuzzFeed in January 2017.

    Other evidence listed in the report includes communication transcripts in which Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen ordering President Trump to bomb Syria, stage a coup in Venezuela, arm Ukraine, escalate against Russia in America's Nuclear Posture Review, withdraw from the INF treaty and the Iran deal, undermine Russia's fossil fuel interests in Germany, expand NATO, and maintain a large military presence near Russia's border.

    ... ... ...

    Obviously I owe the world a very big apology. I'm sorry for calling the Russiagaters idiots, morons, drooling imbeciles, stupid, gullible sheep, foam-brained human livestock, tinfoil pussyhat-wearing delusional conspiracy theorists, demented cold war-enabling McCarthyite bootlickers, oafish slug-headed slime creatures, energy-sucking, CIA-coddling wastes of space and oxygen, and an embarrassment to the human species. Clearly, because of their indisputable vindication this April the first 2019, they are definitely none of these things.

    RightLineBacker, (Edited)

    After recovering from a near heart attack...and loading my weapons in preparation of taking to the streets... I noticed it was April 1st. Funny & not funny at the same time.

    Damn! Back to my beer & popcorn.

    desertboy

    "I'm sorry for calling the Russiagaters idiots, morons, drooling imbeciles, stupid, gullible sheep, foam-brained human livestock, tinfoil pussyhat-wearing delusional conspiracy theorists, demented cold war-enabling McCarthyite bootlickers, oafish slug-headed slime creatures, energy-sucking, CIA-coddling wastes of space and oxygen, and an embarrassment to the human species"

    Me too. It's worth repeating.

    noshitsherlock

    " He then put on a pair of sunglasses and rode off on a motorcycle due east into the rising sun, while the smooth notes of a single saxophone resounded through the D.C. cityscape."

    Bwahahahaha


    [Mar 31, 2019] A Reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco by James W Carden

    Highly recommended!
    This was a brilliant article, far ahead of its time...
    Feb 03, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

    A Reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco? February 3, 2017 • 39 Comments

    Exclusive: Official Washington's new "group think" – accepting evidence-free charges that Russia "hacked the U.S. election" – has troubling parallels to the Iraq-WMD certainty, often from the same people, writes James W Carden.

    The controversy over Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election shows no sign of letting up. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators recently introduced legislation that would impose sanctions on Russia in retaliation for its acts of "cyber intrusions."At a press event in Washington on Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, called Election Day 2016 "a day that will live in cyber infamy." Previously, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, called the Russian hacks of the Democratic National Committee "an act of war," while Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, has claimed that there is near unanimity among senators regarding Russia's culpability.

    Despite all this, the question of who exactly is responsible for the providing WikiLeaks with the emails of high Democratic Party officials does not lend itself to easy answers. And yet, for months, despite the lack of publicly disclosed evidence, the media, like these senators, have been as one: Vladimir Putin's Russia is responsible.

    Interestingly, the same neoconservative/center-left alliance which endorsed George W. Bush's case for war with Iraq is pretty much the same neoconservative/center-left alliance that is now, all these years later, braying for confrontation with Russia. It's largely the same cast of characters reading from the Iraq-war era playbook.

    It's worth recalling Tony Judt's observation in September 2006 that "those centrist voices that bayed most insistently for blood in the prelude to the Iraq war are today the most confident when asserting their monopoly of insight into world affairs."

    While that was true then, it is perhaps even more so the case today.

    The prevailing sentiment of the media establishment during the months prior to the disastrous March 2003 invasion of Iraq was that of certainty: George Tenet's now infamous assurance to President Bush, that the case against Iraq was a "slam drunk," was essentially what major newspapers and television news outlets were telling the American people at the time. Iraq posed a threat to "the homeland," therefore Saddam "must go."

    The Bush administration, in a move equal parts cynical and clever, engaged in what we would today call a "disinformation" campaign against its own citizens by planting false stories abroad, safe in the knowledge that these stories would "bleed over" and be picked up by the American press.

    WMD 'Fake News'

    The administration was able to launder what were essentially "fake news" stories, such as the aluminum tubes fabrication , by leaking to Michael R. Gordon and Judith Miller of The New York Times. In September 2002, without an ounce of skepticism, Gordon and Miller regurgitated the claims of unnamed U.S. intelligence officials that Iraq "has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium." Gordon and Miller faithfully relayed "the intelligence agencies' unanimous view that the type of tubes that Iraq has been seeking are used to make centrifuges."

    By 2002, no one had any right to be surprised by what Bush and Cheney were up to; since at least 1898 (when the U.S. declared war on Spain under the pretense of the fabricated Hearst battle cry "Remember the Maine!") American governments have repeatedly lied in order to promote their agenda abroad. And in 2002-3, the media walked in lock step with yet another administration in pushing for an unnecessary and costly war.

    Like The New York Times, The Washington Post also relentlessly pushed the administration's case for war with Iraq. According to the journalist Greg Mitchell , "By the Post 's own admission, in the months before the war, it ran more than 140 stories on its front page promoting the war." All this, while its editorial page assured readers that the evidence Colin Powell presented to the United Nations on Iraq's WMD program was "irrefutable." According to the Post, it would be "hard to imagine" how anyone could doubt the administration's case.

    But the Post was hardly alone in its enthusiasm for Bush's war. Among the most prominent proponents of the Iraq war was The New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg , who, a full year prior to the invasion, set out to link Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Writing for The New Yorker in March 2002, Goldberg retailed former CIA Director James Woolsey's opinion that "It would be a real shame if the C.I.A.'s substantial institutional hostility to Iraqi democratic resistance groups was keeping it from learning about Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda in northern Iraq."

    Indeed, according to Goldberg , "The possibility that Saddam could supply weapons of mass destruction to anti-American terror groups is a powerful argument among advocates of regime change," while Saddam's "record of support for terrorist organizations, and the cruelty of his regime make him a threat that reaches far beyond the citizens of Iraq."

    Writing in Slate in October 2002, Goldberg was of the opinion that "In five years . . . I believe that the coming invasion of Iraq will be remembered as an act of profound morality."

    Likewise, The New Republic's Andrew Sullivan was certain that "we would find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I have no doubt about that." Slate's Jacob Weisberg supported the invasion because he thought Saddam Hussein had WMD and he "thought there was a strong chance he'd use them against the United States."

    Even after it was becoming clear that the war was a debacle, the neoconservative pundit Charles Krauthammer declared that the inability to find WMDs was "troubling" but "only because it means that the weapons remain unaccounted for and might be in the wrong hands. The idea that our inability to thus far find the weapons proves that the threat was phony and hyped is simply false."

    Smearing Skeptics

    Opponents of the war were regularly accused of unpatriotic disloyalty. Writing in National Review, the neoconservative writer David Frum accused anti-intervention conservatives of going "far, far beyond the advocacy of alternative strategies." According to Frum, "They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation's enemies."

    Similarly, The New Republic's Jonathan Chait castigated anti-war liberals for turning against Bush. "Have Bush haters lost their minds?" asked Chait . "Certainly some have. Antipathy to Bush has, for example, led many liberals not only to believe the costs of the Iraq war outweigh the benefits but to refuse to acknowledge any benefits at all."

    Yet of course we now know, thanks, in part, to a new book by former CIA analyst John Nixon, that everything the U.S. government thought it knew about Saddam Hussein was indeed wrong. Nixon, the CIA analyst who interrogated Hussein after his capture in December 2003, asks "Was Saddam worth removing from power?" "The answer," says Nixon, "must be no. Saddam was busy writing novels in 2003. He was no longer running the government."

    It turns out that the skeptics were correct after all. And so the principal lesson the promoters of Bush and Cheney's war of choice should have learned is that blind certainty is the enemy of fair inquiry and nuance. The hubris that many in the mainstream media displayed in marginalizing liberal and conservative anti-war voices was to come back to haunt them. But not, alas, for too long.

    A Dangerous Replay?

    Today something eerily similar to the pre-war debate over Iraq is taking place regarding the allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. Assurances from the intelligence community and from anonymous Obama administration "senior officials" about the existence of evidence is being treated as, well, actual evidence.

    State Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN that he is "100% certain" of the role that Russia played in U.S. election. The administration's expressions of certainty are then uncritically echoed by the mainstream media. Skeptics are likewise written off, slandered as " Kremlin cheerleaders " or worse.

    Unsurprisingly, The Washington Post is reviving its Bush-era role as principal publicist for the government's case. Yet in its haste to do the government's bidding, the Post has published two widely debunked stories relating to Russia (one on the scourge of Russian inspired "fake news", the other on a non-existent Russian hack of a Vermont electric utility) onto which the paper has had to append "editor's notes" to correct the original stories.

    Yet, those misguided stories have not deterred the Post's opinion page from being equally aggressive in its depiction of Russian malfeasance. In late December, the Post published an op-ed by Rep. Adam Schiff and former Rep. Jane Harmon claiming "Russia's theft and strategic leaking of emails and documents from the Democratic Party and other officials present a challenge to the U.S. political system unlike anything we've experienced."

    On Dec. 30, the Post editorial board chastised President-elect Trump for seeming to dismiss "a brazen and unprecedented attempt by a hostile power to covertly sway the outcome of a U.S. presidential election." The Post described Russia's actions as a "cyber-Pearl Harbor."

    On Jan. 1, the neoconservative columnist Josh Rogin told readers that the recent announcement of sanctions against Russia "brought home a shocking realization that Russia is using hybrid warfare in an aggressive attempt to disrupt and undermine our democracy."

    Meanwhile, many of the same voices who were among the loudest cheerleaders for the war in Iraq have also been reprising their Bush-era roles in vouching for the solidity of the government's case.

    Jonathan Chait, now a columnist for New York magazine, is clearly convinced by what the government has thus far provided. "That Russia wanted Trump to win has been obvious for months," writes Chait.

    "Of course it all came from the Russians, I'm sure it's all there in the intel," Charles Krauthammer told Fox News on Jan. 2. Krauthammer is certain.

    And Andrew Sullivan is certain as to the motive. "Trump and Putin's bromance," Sullivan told MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Jan. 2, "has one goal this year: to destroy the European Union and to undermine democracy in Western Europe."

    David Frum, writing in The Atlantic , believes Trump "owes his office in considerable part to illegal clandestine activities in his favor conducted by a hostile, foreign spy service."

    Jacob Weisberg agrees, tweeting: "Russian covert action threw the election to Donald Trump. It's that simple." Back in 2008, Weisberg wrote that "the first thing I hope I've learned from this experience of being wrong about Iraq is to be less trusting of expert opinion and received wisdom." So much for that.

    Foreign Special Interests

    Another, equally remarkable similarity to the period of 2002-3 is the role foreign lobbyists have played in helping to whip up a war fever. As readers will no doubt recall, Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which served, in effect as an Iraqi government-in-exile, worked hand in hand with the Washington lobbying firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey (BKSH) to sell Bush's war on television and on the op-ed pages of major American newspapers.

    Chalabi was also a trusted source of Judy Miller of the Times, which, in an apology to its readers on May 26, 2004, wrote : "The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles." The pro-war lobbying of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has also been exhaustively documented .

    Though we do not know how widespread the practice has been as of yet, something similar is taking place today. Articles calling for confrontation with Russia over its alleged "hybrid war" with the West are appearing with increasing regularity . Perhaps the most egregious example of this newly popular genre appeared on Jan. 1 in Politico magazine. That essay, which claims, among many other things, that "we're in a war" with Russia comes courtesy of one Molly McKew.

    McKew is seemingly qualified to make such a pronouncement because she, according to her bio on the Politico website, served as an "adviser to Georgian President Saakashvili's government from 2009-2013, and to former Moldovan Prime Minister Filat in 2014-2015." Seems reasonable enough. That is until one discovers that McKew is actually registered with the Department of Justice as a lobbyist for two anti-Russian political parties, Georgia's UMN and Moldova's PLDM.

    Records show her work for the consulting firm Fianna Strategies frequently takes her to Capitol Hill to lobby U.S. Senate and Congressional staffers, as well as prominent U.S. journalists at The Washington Post and The New York Times, on behalf of her Georgian and Moldovan clients.

    "The truth," writes McKew, "is that fighting a new Cold War would be in America's interest. Russia teaches us a very important lesson: losing an ideological war without a fight will ruin you as a nation. The fight is the American way." Or, put another way: the truth is that fighting a new Cold War would be in McKew's interest – but perhaps not America's.

    While you wouldn't know it from the media coverage (or from reading deeply disingenuous pieces like McKew's) as things now stand, the case against Russia is far from certain. New developments are emerging almost daily. One of the latest is a report from the cyber-engineering company Wordfence, which concluded that "The IP addresses that DHS [Department of Homeland Security] provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with Russia."

    Indeed, according to Wordfence, "The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website."

    On Jan. 4, BuzzFeed reported that, according to the DNC, the FBI never carried out a forensic examination on the email servers that were allegedly hacked by the Russian government. "The FBI," said DNC spokesman Eric Walker, "never requested access to the DNC's computer servers."

    What the agency did do was rely on the findings of a private-sector, third-party vendor that was brought in by the DNC after the initial hack was discovered. In May, the company, Crowdstrike, determined that the hack was the work of the Russians. As one unnamed intelligence official told BuzzFeed, "CrowdStrike is pretty good. There's no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate."

    Perhaps not. Yet Crowdstrike is hardly a disinterested party when it comes to Russia. Crowdstrike's founder and chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch , is also a senior fellow at the Washington think tank, The Atlantic Council, which has been at the forefront of escalating tensions with Russia.

    As I reported in The Nation in early January , the connection between Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council is highly relevant given that the Atlantic Council is funded in part by the State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk. In recent years, it has emerged as a leading voice calling for a new Cold War with Russia.

    Time to Rethink the 'Group Think'

    And given the rather thin nature of the declassified evidence provided by the Obama administration, might it be time to consider an alternative theory of the case? William Binney, a 36-year veteran of the National Security Agency and the man responsible for creating many of its collection systems, thinks so. Binney believes that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked, writing that "it is puzzling why NSA cannot produce hard evidence implicating the Russian government and WikiLeaks. Unless we are dealing with a leak from an insider, not a hack."

    None of this is to say, of course, that Russia did not and could not have attempted to influence the U.S. presidential election. The intelligence community may have intercepted damning evidence of the Russian government's culpability. The government's hesitation to provide the public with more convincing evidence may stem from an understandable and wholly appropriate desire to protect the intelligence community's sources and methods. But as it now stands the publicly available evidence is open to question.

    But meanwhile the steady drumbeat of "blame Russia" is having an effect. According to a recent you.gov/Economist poll, 58 percent of Americans view Russia as "unfriendly/enemy" while also finding that 52 percent of Democrats believed Russia "tampered with vote tallies."

    With Congress back in session, Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain is set to hold a series of hearings focusing on Russian malfeasance, and the steady drip-drip-drip of allegations regarding Trump and Putin is only serving to box in the new President when it comes to pursuing a much-needed detente with Russia.

    It also does not appear that a congressional inquiry will start from scratch and critically examine the evidence. On Friday, two senators – Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse – announced a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigation into Russian interference in elections in the U.S. and elsewhere. But they already seemed to have made up their minds about the conclusion: "Our goal is simple," the senators said in a joint statement "To the fullest extent possible we want to shine a light on Russian activities to undermine democracy."

    So, before the next round of Cold War posturing commences, now might be the time to stop, take a deep breath and ask: Could the rush into a new Cold War with Russia be as disastrous and consequential – if not more so – as was the rush to war with Iraq nearly 15 years ago? We may, unfortunately, find out.

    James W Carden is a contributing writer for The Nation and editor of The American Committee for East-West Accord's eastwestaccord.com. He previously served as an advisor on Russia to the Special Representative for Global Inter-governmental Affairs at the US State Department.

    [Mar 31, 2019] What is the purpose of Russiagate hysteria?

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The purpose is very simple: to create the perception that the government of Russia still somehow controls or manipulates the US government and thus gains some undeserved improvements in relations with the U.S. Once such perception is created, people will demand that relations with Russia are worsened to return them to a "fair" level. While in reality these relations have been systematically destroyed by the Western establishment (CFR) for many years. ..."
    "... It's a typical inversion to hide the hybrid war of the Western establishment against Russian people. Yes, Russian people. Not Putin, not Russian Army, not Russian intelligence services, but Russian people. Russians are not to be allowed to have any kind of industries, nor should they be allowed to know their true history, nor should they possess so much land. ..."
    "... Russians should work in coal mines for a dollar a day, while their wives work as prostitutes in Europe. That's the maximum level of development that the Western establishment would allow Russians to have (see Ukraine for a demo version). Why? Because Russians are subhumans. ..."
    "... The end goal of the Western establishment is a complete military, economic, psychological, and spiritual destruction of Russia, secession of national republics (even though in some of them up to 50% of population are Russians, but this will be ignored, as it has been in former Soviet republics), then, finally, dismemberment of what remains of Russia into separate states warring with each other. ..."
    "... The very concept of Russian nation should disappear. Siberians will call their language "Siberian", Muscovites will call their language "Moscovian", Pomorians will call their language "Pomorian", etc. The U.S. Department of State will, of course, endorse such terminology, just like they endorse the term "Montenegrian language", even though it's the same Serbo-Croatian language with the same Cyrillic writing system. ..."
    Mar 31, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    S , Mar 30, 2019 8:51:37 PM | link

    @b:
    What is the purpose of making that claim?

    The purpose is very simple: to create the perception that the government of Russia still somehow controls or manipulates the US government and thus gains some undeserved improvements in relations with the U.S. Once such perception is created, people will demand that relations with Russia are worsened to return them to a "fair" level. While in reality these relations have been systematically destroyed by the Western establishment (CFR) for many years.

    It's a typical inversion to hide the hybrid war of the Western establishment against Russian people. Yes, Russian people. Not Putin, not Russian Army, not Russian intelligence services, but Russian people. Russians are not to be allowed to have any kind of industries, nor should they be allowed to know their true history, nor should they possess so much land.

    Russians should work in coal mines for a dollar a day, while their wives work as prostitutes in Europe. That's the maximum level of development that the Western establishment would allow Russians to have (see Ukraine for a demo version). Why? Because Russians are subhumans.

    Whatever they do, it's always wrong, bad, oppressive, etc. Russians are bad because they're bad. They must be "taught a lesson", "put into their place". It would, of course, be beneficial and highly profitable for Europeans to break with Anglo-Saxons and to live in peace and harmony with Russia, but Europeans simply can not overcome their racism towards Russians. The young Europeans are just as racist, with their incessant memes about "squatting Russians in tracksuits", "drunken Russians", etc., as if there's nothing else that is notable about a country of 147 million people.

    The end goal of the Western establishment is a complete military, economic, psychological, and spiritual destruction of Russia, secession of national republics (even though in some of them up to 50% of population are Russians, but this will be ignored, as it has been in former Soviet republics), then, finally, dismemberment of what remains of Russia into separate states warring with each other.

    The very concept of Russian nation should disappear. Siberians will call their language "Siberian", Muscovites will call their language "Moscovian", Pomorians will call their language "Pomorian", etc. The U.S. Department of State will, of course, endorse such terminology, just like they endorse the term "Montenegrian language", even though it's the same Serbo-Croatian language with the same Cyrillic writing system.

    [Mar 31, 2019] Adam Schiff essentially took at a decision to investigate a political rival. Which means this is a witch hunt

    "The end justifies the means" or complete absence of morality. Or "revolutionary morality". Schiff looks more and lore like a Cheka goon preparing Moscow trials.
    Mar 31, 2019 | twitter.com

    Donald J. Trump ‏ 12:39 PM - 31 Mar 2019

    "Outrageous, it's the Adam Schiff problem. People abusing the access to classified data to then go out in public and make allegations that didn't prove to be true. You look at a decision to essentially investigate a political rival. Who made it?" James Freeman, @ WSJ

    Donald J. Trump ‏ 12:21 PM - 31 Mar 2019

    Everybody is asking how the phony and fraudulent investigation of the No Collusion, No Obstruction Trump Campaign began. We need to know for future generations to understand. This Hoax should never be allowed to happen to another President or Administration again!

    [Mar 31, 2019] Now they do not even pretend that Justice exists in the USA: only kangaroo courts

    Why they are sill waving a dead chicken ? Because they are crooks and can't prosecute Trump for his real misdeeds. Or investigate influence of MI6 and Israeli lobby on the USA elections. Crooks. All of them.
    Notable quotes:
    "... So, pilgrims, American tradition is to be reversed. The Democrats will seek for confirmation bias of Trump's "crimes" because of their "progressive" hatred of his perhaps cynical leadership of a popular revolution against them and the idiot college kids. ..."
    Mar 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    Nadler is the kangaroo in chief?

    "House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, who would eventually lead any impeachment proceedings, on Sunday signaled a significant escalation into congressional inquiries into the President.

    The New York Democrat plans on Monday to request documents from 60 people and entities close to Trump, including from the Department of Justice, the White House and the Trump Organization. The document trawl will be used "to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, about corruption and abuse of power, " Nadler said on ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday.

    Nadler stuck to the House Democratic position that impeachment "is a long way down the road," apparently in order to avoid Republican arguments that the decision has already been made to try to oust Trump. The document requests are not taking place under the auspices of an official impeachment investigation."

    Nadler could not be more clear. He and the other kangaroos in the Democrat herd (flock?) will search through every aspect of Trump's life for the purpose of finding something that will cause a revulsion against Trump among the American people.

    If they can find that, their allies among the press and TeeVee agitprop apparatchiks will make judgments evident as to whether or not a bill of impeachment would result in a conviction in the senate. This method is reminiscent of the attempt to impeach President Andrew Johnson. Remember him? The Radical Republicans hated this Southern War Democrat simply because he was Southern without regard for his well demonstrated hatred for the planter class in the greater South as opposed to his east Tennessee anti-slavery home.

    So, pilgrims, American tradition is to be reversed. The Democrats will seek for confirmation bias of Trump's "crimes" because of their "progressive" hatred of his perhaps cynical leadership of a popular revolution against them and the idiot college kids.

    pl

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/04/politics/trump-mueller-report-nadler-investigation-impeachment/index.html

    [Mar 31, 2019] Now they do not even pretend that Justice exists in the USA: only kangaroo courts

    Why they are sill waving a dead chicken ? Because they are crooks and can't prosecute Trump for his real misdeeds. Or investigate influence of MI6 and Israeli lobby on the USA elections. Crooks. All of them.
    Notable quotes:
    "... So, pilgrims, American tradition is to be reversed. The Democrats will seek for confirmation bias of Trump's "crimes" because of their "progressive" hatred of his perhaps cynical leadership of a popular revolution against them and the idiot college kids. ..."
    Mar 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    Nadler is the kangaroo in chief?

    "House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, who would eventually lead any impeachment proceedings, on Sunday signaled a significant escalation into congressional inquiries into the President.

    The New York Democrat plans on Monday to request documents from 60 people and entities close to Trump, including from the Department of Justice, the White House and the Trump Organization. The document trawl will be used "to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, about corruption and abuse of power, " Nadler said on ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday.

    Nadler stuck to the House Democratic position that impeachment "is a long way down the road," apparently in order to avoid Republican arguments that the decision has already been made to try to oust Trump. The document requests are not taking place under the auspices of an official impeachment investigation."

    Nadler could not be more clear. He and the other kangaroos in the Democrat herd (flock?) will search through every aspect of Trump's life for the purpose of finding something that will cause a revulsion against Trump among the American people.

    If they can find that, their allies among the press and TeeVee agitprop apparatchiks will make judgments evident as to whether or not a bill of impeachment would result in a conviction in the senate. This method is reminiscent of the attempt to impeach President Andrew Johnson. Remember him? The Radical Republicans hated this Southern War Democrat simply because he was Southern without regard for his well demonstrated hatred for the planter class in the greater South as opposed to his east Tennessee anti-slavery home.

    So, pilgrims, American tradition is to be reversed. The Democrats will seek for confirmation bias of Trump's "crimes" because of their "progressive" hatred of his perhaps cynical leadership of a popular revolution against them and the idiot college kids.

    pl

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/04/politics/trump-mueller-report-nadler-investigation-impeachment/index.html

    [Mar 31, 2019] Adam Schiff essentially took at a decision to investigate a political rival. Which means this is a witch hunt

    "The end justifies the means" or complete absence of morality. Or "revolutionary morality". Schiff looks more and lore like a Cheka goon preparing Moscow trials.
    Mar 31, 2019 | twitter.com

    Donald J. Trump ‏ 12:39 PM - 31 Mar 2019

    "Outrageous, it's the Adam Schiff problem. People abusing the access to classified data to then go out in public and make allegations that didn't prove to be true. You look at a decision to essentially investigate a political rival. Who made it?" James Freeman, @ WSJ

    Donald J. Trump ‏ 12:21 PM - 31 Mar 2019

    Everybody is asking how the phony and fraudulent investigation of the No Collusion, No Obstruction Trump Campaign began. We need to know for future generations to understand. This Hoax should never be allowed to happen to another President or Administration again!

    [Mar 31, 2019] Taibbi On Russiagate America s Refusal To Face Why Trump Won

    Yes, "Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because he was one of them. " But he turned to be a fake, a marionette who is controlled by neocons like hapless Bush II.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Last weekend, I published a book chapter criticizing the Russiagate narrative, claiming it was a years-long press error on the scale of the WMD affair heading into the Iraq war. ..."
    "... The overwhelming theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system. ..."
    "... The anger wasn't just on the Republican side, where Trump humiliated the Republicans' chosen $150 million contender , Jeb Bush (who got three delegates, or $50 million per delegate ). It was also evident on the Democratic side, where a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist" with little money and close to no institutional support became a surprise contender . ..."
    "... Trump was gunning for votes in both parties. The core story he told on the stump was one of system-wide corruption, in which there was little difference between Republicans and Democrats. ..."
    "... Perhaps just by luck, Trump was tuned in to the fact that the triumvirate of ruling political powers in America – the two parties, the big donors and the press – were so unpopular with large parts of the population that he could win in the long haul by attracting their ire, even if he was losing battles on the way. ..."
    "... The subtext was always: I may be crude, but these people are phonies, pretending to be upset when they're making money off my bullshit . ..."
    "... Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because he was one of them. ..."
    Mar 31, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Taibbi: On Russiagate & America's Refusal To Face Why Trump Won

    by Tyler Durden Sat, 03/30/2019 - 15:30 261 SHARES Authored by Matt Taibbi via RollingStone.com,

    Faulty coverage of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign later made foreign espionage a more plausible explanation for his ascent to power

    Last weekend, I published a book chapter criticizing the Russiagate narrative, claiming it was a years-long press error on the scale of the WMD affair heading into the Iraq war.

    Obviously (and I said this in detail), the WMD fiasco had a far greater real-world impact, with hundreds of thousands of lives lost and trillions in treasure wasted. Still, I thought Russiagate would do more to damage the reputation of the national news media in the end.

    A day after publishing that excerpt, a Attorney General William Barr sent his summary of the report to Congress, containing a quote filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller : "[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

    Suddenly, news articles appeared arguing people like myself and Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept were rushing to judgment , calling us bullies whose writings were intended to leave reporters "cowed" and likely to " back down from aggressive coverage of Trump ."

    This was baffling. One of the most common criticisms of people like Greenwald, Michael Tracey, Aaron Mate, Rania Khalek, Max Blumenthal, Jordan Chariton and many others is that Russiagate "skeptics" - I hate that term, because it implies skepticism isn't normal and healthy in this job - were really secret Trump partisans, part of a "horseshoe" pact between far left and far right to focus attention on the minor foibles of the center instead of Trump's more serious misdeeds. Even I received this label, and I once wrote a book about Trump called Insane Clown President .

    A typical social media complaint:

    @mtaibbi and all his deplorable followers. The truth will come out and your premature celebrations are embarrassing.

    It's irritating that I even have to address this, because my personal political views shouldn't have anything to do with how I cover anything. But just to get it out of the way: I'm no fan of Donald Trump .

    I had a well-developed opinion about him long before the 2016 race started. I once interned for Trump's nemesis-biographer, the late, great muckraker Wayne Barrett . The birther campaign of 2011 was all I ever needed to make a voting decision about the man.

    I started covering the last presidential race in 2015 just as I was finishing up a book about the death of Eric Garner called I Can't Breathe . Noting that a birther campaign started by "peripheral political curiosity and reality TV star Donald Trump" led to 41 percent of respondents in one poll believing Barack Obama was "not even American," I wrote:

    If anyone could communicate the frustration black Americans felt over Stop-and-Frisk and other neo-vagrancy laws that made black people feel like they could be arrested anywhere, it should have been Barack Obama. He'd made it all the way to the White House and was still considered to be literally trespassing by a huge plurality of the population.

    So I had no illusions about Trump. The Russia story bothered me for other reasons, mostly having to do with a general sense of the public being misled, and not even about Russia.

    The problem lay with the precursor tale to Russiagate, i.e. how Trump even got to be president in the first place.

    The 2016 campaign season brought to the surface awesome levels of political discontent. After the election, instead of wondering where that anger came from, most of the press quickly pivoted to a new tale about a Russian plot to attack our Democracy. This conveyed the impression that the election season we'd just lived through had been an aberration, thrown off the rails by an extraordinary espionage conspiracy between Trump and a cabal of evil foreigners.

    This narrative contradicted everything I'd seen traveling across America in my two years of covering the campaign. The overwhelming theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system.

    The anger wasn't just on the Republican side, where Trump humiliated the Republicans' chosen $150 million contender , Jeb Bush (who got three delegates, or $50 million per delegate ). It was also evident on the Democratic side, where a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist" with little money and close to no institutional support became a surprise contender .

    Because of a series of press misdiagnoses before the Russiagate stories even began, much of the American public was unprepared for news of a Trump win. A cloak-and-dagger election-fixing conspiracy therefore seemed more likely than it might have otherwise to large parts of the domestic news audience, because they hadn't been prepared for anything else that would make sense.

    This was particularly true of upscale, urban, blue-leaning news consumers, who were not told to take the possibility of a Trump White House seriously.

    Priority number-one of the political class after a vulgar, out-of-work game-show host conquered the White House should have been a long period of ruthless self-examination. This story delayed that for at least two years.

    It wasn't even clear Trump whether or not wanted to win. Watching him on the trail, Trump at times went beyond seeming disinterested. There were periods where it looked like South Park's " Did I offend you? " thesis was true, and he was actively trying to lose, only the polls just wouldn't let him.

    Forget about the gift the end of Russiagate might give Trump by allowing him to spend 2020 peeing from a great height on the national press corps. The more serious issue has to be the failure to face the reality of why he won last time, because we still haven't done that.

    ... ... ...

    Trump, the billionaire, denounced us as the elitists in the room. He'd call us "bloodsuckers," "dishonest," and in one line that produced laughs considering who was saying it, " highly-paid ."

    He also did something that I immediately recognized as brilliant (or diabolical, depending on how you look at it). He dared cameramen to turn their cameras to show the size of his crowds.

    They usually wouldn't – hey, we don't work for the guy – which thrilled Trump, who would then say something to the effect of, "See! They're very dishonest people ." Audiences would turn toward us, and boo and hiss, and even throw little bits of paper and other things our way. This was unpleasant, but it was hard not to see its effectiveness: he'd re-imagined the lifeless, poll-tested format of the stump speech, turning it into menacing, personal, WWE-style theater.

    Trump was gunning for votes in both parties. The core story he told on the stump was one of system-wide corruption, in which there was little difference between Republicans and Democrats.

    ...

    Perhaps just by luck, Trump was tuned in to the fact that the triumvirate of ruling political powers in America – the two parties, the big donors and the press – were so unpopular with large parts of the population that he could win in the long haul by attracting their ire, even if he was losing battles on the way.

    ...

    The subtext was always: I may be crude, but these people are phonies, pretending to be upset when they're making money off my bullshit .

    I thought this was all nuts and couldn't believe it was happening in a real presidential campaign. But, a job is a job. My first feature on candidate Trump was called " How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable ." The key section read:

    In person, you can't miss it: The same way Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house, Donald on the stump can see his future. The pundits don't want to admit it, but it's sitting there in plain view, 12 moves ahead, like a chess game already won:

    President Donald Trump

    It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go.

    And Trump is no half-bright con man, either. He's way better than average.

    Traditional Democratic audiences appeared thrilled by the piece and shared it widely. I was invited on scads of cable shows to discuss ad nauseum the "con man" line. This made me nervous, because it probably meant these people hadn't read the piece, which among other things posited the failures of America's current ruling class meant Trump's insane tactics could actually work.

    Trump was selling himself as a traitor to a corrupt class, someone who knew how soulless and greedy the ruling elite was because he was one of them.

    ...

    The only reason most blue-state media audiences had been given for Trump's poll numbers all along was racism, which was surely part of the story but not the whole picture. A lack of any other explanation meant Democratic audiences, after the shock of election night, were ready to reach for any other data point that might better explain what just happened.

    Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump."

    Post-election, Russiagate made it all worse. People could turn on their TVs at any hour of the day and see anyone from Rachel Maddow to Chris Cuomo openly reveling in Trump's troubles. This is what Fox looks like to liberal audiences.

    Worse, the "walls are closing in" theme -- two years old now -- was just a continuation of the campaign mistake, reporters confusing what they wanted to happen with what was happening . The story was always more complicated than was being represented.

    [Mar 31, 2019] Issue Brief Distinguishing Disinformation from Propaganda, Misinformation, and "Fake News" NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY

    Mar 31, 2019 | www.ned.org

    This is from culture revolution experts in NED ;-)

    Issue Brief: Distinguishing Disinformation from Propaganda, Misinformation, and "Fake News" Published on October 17, 2017

    TWEET | SHARE | PDF

    In This Brief:
    • What the word 'disinformation' means
    • What sets disinformation apart from other forms of manipulative or persuasive content
    • Why today's information environment amplifies disinformation
    What is Disinformation? Is it Different from Propaganda?

    Disinformation is a relatively new word. Most observers trace it back to the Russian word dezinformatsiya , which Soviet planners in the 1950s defined as "dissemination (in the press, on the radio, etc.) of false reports intended to mislead public opinion." Others suggest that the earliest use of the term originated in 1930s Nazi Germany. In either case, it is much younger (and less commonly used) than ' propaganda, ' which originated in the 1600s and generally connotes the selective use of information for political effect.

    Whether and to what degree these terms overlap is subject to debate. Some define propaganda as the use of non-rational arguments to either advance or undermine a political ideal, and use disinformation as an alternative name for undermining propaganda. Others consider them to be separate concepts altogether. One popular distinction holds that disinformation also describes politically motivated messaging designed explicitly to engender public cynicism, uncertainty, apathy, distrust, and paranoia, all of which disincentivize citizen engagement and mobilization for social or political change. "Misinformation," meanwhile, generally refers to the inadvertent sharing of false information.

    Analysts generally agree that disinformation is always purposeful and not necessarily composed of outright lies or fabrications. It can be composed of mostly true facts, stripped of context or blended with falsehoods to support the intended message, and is always part of a larger plan or agenda. In the Russian context, observers have described its use to pursue Moscow's foreign policy goals through a "4D" offensive: dismiss an opponent's claims or allegations, distort events to serve political purposes, distract from one's own activities, and dismay those who might otherwise oppose one's goals.

    Analysts generally agree that disinformation is always purposeful and not necessarily composed of outright lies or fabrications. It can be composed of mostly true facts, stripped of context or blended with falsehoods to support the intended message, and is always part of a larger plan or agenda."

    Disinformation in the Digital Age

    The reemerging interest in disinformation is not because such techniques are novel. There are similarities between the contemporary 4D model and, for example, Soviet active measures . Rather, a growing consensus asserts that while the use of disinformation is not new, the digital revolution has greatly enhanced public vulnerability to manipulation by information -- a trend which is predicted to continue .

    In part, these changes have been wrought by the advent of new social media platforms and their growing dominance over advertising revenues. This shift in the media funding environment has weakened traditional media gatekeepers, changed incentives for content providers, and promoted the rise of unprofessional and/or unscrupulous outlets capable of drawing large audiences at a low cost. As digital advertising assumes an ever-larger role in shaping news consumption, targeted advertising allows for more sophisticated forms of propaganda: for example, in September of 2017, Facebook disclosed that roughly 3,000 ads related to divisive US political issues were purchased by a network of 470 accounts and pages suspected to be run out of Russia. The company says that at least a quarter of those ads were geographically targeted. Twitter later deleted two hundred accounts linked to those same Facebook accounts and pages and revealed that in 2016, the Russian state-funded broadcaster RT spent $274,100 on advertising targeting users in the United States.

    Research suggests the total scale of "low quality political information" on those platforms during the 2016 US elections was much larger, particularly in swing states. The degree of Russian influence on this market for digital disinformation is unknown; post-election, researchers are launching new efforts to track and analyze it.

    Although there is no universal definition, fake news generally refers to misleading content found on the internet, especially on social media."

    The Rise of 'Fake News'

    The role of disinformation in recent elections has given rise to another distinct, but related, term: ' fake news .'

    Although there is no universal definition, fake news generally refers to misleading content found on the internet, especially on social media. One analysis lays out five types of fake news, including intentionally deceptive content, jokes taken at face value, large-scale hoaxes, slanted reporting of real facts, and coverage where the truth may be uncertain or contentious. These are not new: an example of fake news from 2011 involves websites masquerading as real news organizations to spread false information about the health benefits of acai berries.

    Much of this content is produced by for-profit websites and Facebook pages gaming the platform for advertising revenue. By producing tailored false content targeted at the views, concerns, and preferences of social media users, these pages can generate tens of thousands of interactions and thousands of dollars a month. In 2015, Facebook began taking steps to curtail this content, which it called a form of "news feed spam." By 2016, it became clear the problem was growing out of control. Fabricated and fiercely partisan political content -- much of it produced abroad for profit -- in some instances outpaced engagement with credible mainstream news outlets.

    Facebook initially downplayed the potential influence of fake news, although it also pledged to pursue a response involving expanded partnerships with fact-checkers, increased emphasis on detection and reporting, warning labels for untrustworthy stories, and a crackdown on for-profit fake news pages. Twitter also reacted , developing an experimental prototype feature to allow users to report "fake news" and exploring the use of machine learning to detect automated accounts spreading political content.

    Is Fake News Disinformation?

    More often than not, fake news does not meet the definition of disinformation or propaganda. Its motives are usually financial, not political, and it is usually not tied to a larger agenda. One attempt to classify various types of misleading and manipulative news content separates misinformation (inadvertent sharing of false information) from disinformation, which is deliberate, and arranges examples by motivation and degree of deception. Most of the fake news described above falls somewhere in the middle: not inadvertent, but motivated by profit rather than influence. To the degree that its purpose can be described as political, fake news begins to resemble more insidious content.

    Fake news' political prominence does have lessons for analysts of disinformation. Fake news draws audiences because it validates their political preconceptions and worldviews, capitalizing on media consumers' confirmation bias . Many argue that because social media curates content according to user preferences, it has a polarizing effect that leaves consumers more vulnerable to manipulation in this way. Political actors have been able to use this to their advantage by producing incendiary content that spreads rapidly through grassroots online networks (some call this " political astroturfing ").

    More often than not, fake news does not meet the definition of disinformation or propaganda. Its motives are usually financial, not political, and it is usually not tied to a larger agenda."

    Marketing, Public Affairs, Public Diplomacy, and other "Information Campaigns"

    Some analysts also differentiate between various types of "information campaigns" -- organized attempts to communicate with large groups of individuals -- which may include marketing, public affairs, and public diplomacy. All of these terms are worth disentangling from each other and from propaganda and disinformation writ large.

    Marketing and public relations rely on a mix of facts, opinions, and emotional cues to persuade audiences and build affinity between individuals and brands or organizations. As promotional activities meant to augment or protect the reputation of the messenger, their goals may be commercial or political, or they may simply aim to generate publicity. Similarly promotional is public diplomacy, which states utilize to represent their viewpoints to foreign audiences and promote positive associations with that country among foreign publics. Done well, public diplomacy distinguishes itself from propaganda by never intentionally spreading false information or relying on non-rational means of persuasion (though marketing and public relations, of course, may rely on such non-rational devices).

    Marketing, public relations, public diplomacy, and similar information campaigns are all related to the field of " strategic communication ," broadly defined as the purposeful use of information and messaging to advance the mission of a given organization, be it a corporate, government, non-profit, or military actor. In the military context, a 2007 paper from the U.S. Army War College emphasizes that strategic communication in a military context aims to influence adversaries, reassure allies, and persuade publics. Because it may be impossible to deceive one of these audiences without deceiving others, some advocate that "deception should be rigorously forbidden in strategic communication" and that the use of disinformation should never fall under the rubric of strategic communication.

    Done well, public diplomacy distinguishes itself from propaganda by never intentionally spreading false information or relying on non-rational means of persuasion."

    Intent as a Distinguishing Feature

    Some argue the intent of the messenger is crucial to distinguishing between different types of messages. This makes it difficult to draw a bright, clear line between marketing, public relations, and public diplomacy, on one side, and propaganda and disinformation on the other. This is especially true when the content in question includes both objective fact and subjective interpretation but no clear falsehood, because it may be unclear whether the message reflects a genuine perspective or an intent to mislead. When content does include falsehoods, it may be unclear whether they are accidental or purposeful.

    If an information campaign uses falsehoods and emotional appeals not to persuade or attract but to disrupt, divide, confuse, or otherwise damage target audiences' understanding or political cohesion, it more closely aligns with disinformation and its undermining function. This is not solely the realm of the state: many activities undertaken by non-state actors may also fit this description.

    If an information campaign uses falsehoods and emotional appeals not to persuade or attract but to disrupt, divide, confuse, or otherwise damage target audiences' understanding or political cohesion, it more closely aligns with disinformation and its undermining function."

    Information Operations as a Tool of Political Influence

    Information campaigns with these goals in mind are now sometimes referred to as "information operations," a term until recently used primarily by defense officials in referring broadly to the use of communications in military operations. In April 2017, Facebook described "information (or influence) operations" on the platform, which aim "to achieve a strategic and/or geopolitical outcome" using "a combination of methods, such as false news, disinformation, or networks of fake accounts (false amplifiers) aimed at manipulating public opinion." In the run-up to the 2017 French presidential election, Facebook deleted 30,000 fake French accounts from the platform, providing a sense of the scale these operations can reach.

    In that election, an information operation ( likely of Russian origin ) released hacked documents just before the beginning of a legally mandated election news blackout in order to damage the campaign of Emmanuel Macron, the eventual winner. The manipulation of information has been a feature of Syria's civil war since the conflict's beginning. Research from a diverse set of country case studies suggests that a wide array of political, military, and private actors now routinely use social media to manipulate public opinion. Italy's populist Five Star Movement, for instance, is tied to a large constellation of online disinformation outlets. Taiwanese democracy must grapple with both domestic and cross-strait sources of disinformation. Information operations, including those involving the use of disinformation during elections, are likely to remain a tool of political influence well into the foreseeable future.

    Brief prepared by Dean Jackson, International Forum for Democratic Studies.

    Image Credit: kaboompics/Pixabay (Creative Commons)

    [Mar 31, 2019] Disinfo Maginot Line Protecting EU From Russian Influence By Manufacturing History

    Mar 31, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Disinfo Maginot Line: Protecting EU From "Russian Influence" By Manufacturing History

    by Tyler Durden Sun, 03/31/2019 - 07:00 68 SHARES Authored by Nina Cross via 21stCenturyWire.com,

    It is now apparent with the release of the Mueller investigation findings , that the great storm that has embattled the US government and establishment since 2016 over supposed Russia-Trump collusion during the US elections, originates not from a genuine tangible source, but a constant stream of rhetoric driven by partisan corporate media. One certainty though is the Western narrative of Russia as a 'malign influence' will not go away.

    While America's liberal establishment continues to rage at Trump, Europe allies, under the influence of Washington, maintain their aggressive stance towards Russia following the catastrophic US meddling in Ukraine in 2014 and the subsequent reunification of Crimea with Russia .

    The question is how can the narrative of 'malign Russian influence' be kept going? Mainstream media will continue its role in this, but Western governments are also pouring resources into promulgating certain narratives while containing others.

    This week, hackers released more documents from the UK government-funded project known as the Integrity Initiative , revealing British government plans to build an umbrella network of organisations across Europe to counter 'Russian disinformation'.

    The following is a look at one of the EU projects already operating to ensure European populations do not stray from this constructed narrative that at times crosses over into real xenophobic racism, or Russophobia. While researching this phenomenon, it was impossible not to find some of the EU's counter-propaganda material quite funny.

    If we want to know the meaning of disinformation, the American think tank known as the National Endowment for Democracy which funds regime change in the service of US corporate interests, has its own definition , but it's not important – so long as we believe Russia or the Nazis invented the problem. In fact, if we search the word 'disinformation,' a good number of the results tell us it originated in Russia and is the baby of Stalin or the KGB. If we are not careful, we could end up thinking that dishonesty is an inherent characteristic of Russians, a view actually promoted by the former US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper , who, coincidentally was caught ' wilfully ' lying to Congress.

    The view of Russians being hard-wired for corruption was also promoted by the New York Times in an article published in February, The Putin I knew; the Putin I know , written by Franz J Sedelmeyer, exposing deep prejudice behind the corporate media's shallow identity politics.

    me title=

    But this narrative fails to credit the CIA, which has spent decades crafting skills carrying out the most grotesque deceptions in history targeted abroad and at home. To leave out the role of the CIA in disinformation must be the equivalent of writing an omelette recipe and leaving out the eggs. In fact, the CIA doesn't just carry out disinformation campaigns, as Victor Marchetti, former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA described it: the CIA manufactures history . Not to recognise American intelligence services or government in the history of disinformation while painting Russia as its mother is to deprive America of the recognition it deserves for one of its most notable institutions. Somewhat ironically, you can learn all about the history of disinformation from both Google and the National Endowment for Democracy which are two entities which have received financial support from the CIA.

    What about the EU? Does Brussels think that Russia is an inherently dishonest nation? Are they aware that the CIA could be manufacturing Europe's history this very moment? Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) so concerned about disinformation might want to study the documented atrocities of the CIA, some of which were carried out in Europe. Perhaps they are not aware of the US intelligence services' role in the history of subterfuge in Europe:

    memorandum, dated July 26, 1950, gives instructions for a campaign to promote a fully fledged European parliament. It is signed by Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA.

    Paradoxically, given the probability rate of the CIA meddling in the EU, MEPs should consider putting out a public warning:

    The CIA is the most likely source of disinformation in Europe today. It manufactures crises – and we've plenty of those.

    But none of it. Instead, the European Parliament is fixated on ensuring its populations fear Russia and are accepting of the narratives pushed on them. The EU released a new report this month repeating the narratives it has been accumulating to justify increasing actions against Russia, particularly since 2014 following the reunification of Crimea. It has passed a resolution stating that Russia could no longer be considered a strategic partner of the EU:

    While condemning the illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea, as well as Russia's continued violation of the territorial integrity of Georgia and Moldova, Members stressed that the EU cannot envisage a gradual return to business as usual until Russia fully implements the Minsk Agreement and restores the territorial integrity of Ukraine

    Members condemned Russia's involvement in the Skripal case, and in disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks carried out by the Russian intelligence services aimed at destabilising public and private communications infrastructure and at increasing tensions within the EU and its Member States

    They are concerned about the relations between the Russian government and the extreme right-wing and populist nationalist parties and governments in the EU, such as in Hungary. They also recalled that the interference of Russian state actors in the referendum campaign on Brexit is currently under investigation by the UK authorities

    As Russia can no longer be considered a strategic partner in the current circumstances, Members believe that the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement should be reconsidered

    Ministry of Truth?

    me title=

    As well as the coordinated strategic isolation of Russia by the EU, members of the G7 have signed up to a Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) designed to:

    see hostile states publicly 'called out' for their egregious behaviour – with coordinated international attribution of cyber and other attacks.

    The agreement involves sharing intelligence , attribution of hostile activity and forming a common narrative and response, effectively a military-like propaganda coordination between the countries that can be applied for a chosen agenda.

    To protect its version of history the EU has created mechanisms to fight off alternative realities, narratives, or truths – which ever word fits – claiming any fact or opinion contrary to those of the stated EU decree must be condemned as pro-Kremlin, pro-Russian, or 'Putinist', a derogatory depiction presently supported by the corporate media. The EU claims these 'alternative narratives' are the product of a Russian disinformation campaign and has developed resources to 'disprove' that disinformation. These are the EU vanguards of truth set up and funded by the European Council in 2015: the European External Action Service East Stratcom Task Force or unaffectionately known here as Team East Stratcom . A brief study of their work only leads to further concerns about who is manufacturing history, but also to the likely conclusion that Team East Stratcom is made up of media studies students who drink beer and watch RT all day.

    Here's how Team East Stratcom describes itself in a Q&A:

    Does the team engage in counter-propaganda?

    No. It identifies and corrects disinformation

    Counter-propaganda vs correct disinformation (you say tomatto, I say tomayto).

    Julian King, the EU's security commissioner, has described it as a counter-propaganda cell . Come on Brussels, make up your mind.

    What does Team East StratCom do, and what is the role of its website EUVDisinfo ?

    The Task Force reports on and analyses disinformation trends, explains and exposes disinformation narratives, and raises awareness of disinformation coming from Russian State, Russian sources and spread in the Eastern neighbourhood media space

    RUSSIAN MEMES: Official EU conspiracy theory diagram explains how 'Russian disinfo' permeates mainstream western discourse ( EU External Action 2017)

    Firstly, who defines what is disinformation? Is it just assumed that any information emanating from a Russian media outlet is automatically disinformation?

    Narratives and sources. Does this mean that any narrative which matches a Russian one is then classed as Russian in origin? If a Western alternative media outlet publishes a narrative which happens to match that of a Russian media outlet, does this then mean that the said alternative media outlet is 'under Russian influence', or 'in league with the Kremlin'? Could such a politicized method of labelling lead to potential McCarthyite targeting of independent journalists?

    The Task Force does not target opinions and does not seek to "blacklist" anyone. It checks facts and identifies disinformation coming from Russian State, Russian language and Eastern Neighbourhood media. It focuses on the disinformation message, not the messenger.

    Yet, individual journalists are identified in many of these so-called 'disinformation cases' and described as supporters of one leader or other on the EU's list of bogeymen. Team East StratCom – there is no need to be shy about McCarthyism. Certain mainstream media stalwarts of establishment narratives are more upfront about whom they do and do not want in the club, as Oliver Kamm of The Times has demonstrated:

    me title=

    For an agency already struggling with the concept of truth, Team East StratCom is not off to a great start.

    So how does Team East StratCom protect EU narratives? The European Council made it clear in 2015 they wanted to counter narratives about regime change in Ukraine and its consequences. In fact, about half of its 'disinformation cases' are about Ukraine:

    Ukraine tops the EUvsDisinfo database as the most frequent target with 461 references among a total of 1,000 disinformation cases reported in the course of 2018.

    So how does Team East StratCom counter propaganda sorry correct disinformation? The following are a few case samples that help to illuminate their methodologies (although with a budget increase from €1.1 million in 2018 to €3 million in 2019, it may find new and diverse ones):

    Disinformation Example 1: Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe

    Team East StratCom argues that undermining the credibility of Ukraine benefits Russia. It reports that RT Deutsch described Ukraine as the most corrupt country in Europe. It then tries to debunk this using Transparency International 's corruption perception index, a chart which is created and paid for by Western neoliberal governments – the same ones that help to keep corrupt governments in power so long as they provide opportunities to serve Western corporate interests.

    Team East StratCom tries to disprove this case by drawing our attention away from corruption in Europe to corruption worldwide. This puts 60 countries ahead of Ukraine. That is sneaky Team East StratCom because, aside from Russia, which we must believe is the most corrupt country in Europe, Ukraine actually tops the list. So why does the EU want to hide the extent of corruption in Ukraine and is it the only thing being hidden about the country? According to Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova the West wants to stop the world from recognising Crimea as part of Russia's territory. In order to do this it must maintain a manufactured reality; the narrative of Ukraine being a victim of Russian aggression and in no way a liability due, at least in part, to the West's meddling. This approach also entails downplaying any suggestion that the West planned and orchestrated a coup d'etat in Kiev in February 2014.

    Disinformation Example 2: Far-right groups in Ukraine

    This extract by Team East StratCom criticises the reporting of far-right groups in Ukraine:

    Dehumanise, demoralise, make Ukraine the guilty party

    Pro-Kremlin disinformation about Ukraine targets audiences in Russia, in Ukraine and in third countries, including the West. Domestic audiences in Russia are e.g. faced with narratives which dehumanise Ukrainians and show the authorities in Kyiv as a cynical modern heir to 20th century Nazism. Such a strategy can turn Ukraine into an acceptable target of the Kremlin's military aggression.

    The involvement of far right groups in the run-up to and during 2014 Maidan events and since , has already been widely reported across much of the global mainstream media, for example, here , here , here , here and here , as well as in alternate media. To suggest that this narrative is Russian disinformation is ludicrous. What's more, the European Parliament have already recognised in 2012 the threat of the far-right parties like Svoboda and Pravi Sektor in Ukrainian politics:

    Parliament goes on to express concern about the rising nationalistic sentiment in Ukraine, expressed in support for the Svoboda Party, which, as a result, is one of the two new parties to enter the Verkhovna Rada. It recalls that racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the EU's fundamental values and principles and therefore appeals to pro-democratic parties in the Verkhovna Rada not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with this party.

    Team East StratCom, you are implying the EU dehumanised Ukraine! But then the EU did later drop its objection as members of the same racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic party gained positions in Ukraine's government , so perhaps you will be forgiven. Perhaps sowing a little confusion of its own, is Brussels.

    Disinformation Example 3: Russia is depicted as a 'defender' and a 'peacekeeper' and the West – as the villain .

    Team East Stratcom likes using Twitter graphics as evidence when 'disproving pro-Kremlin disinformation.' Never mind history, reason and common sense – just bring out a nice Twitter graphic! According to disinfo mavens, any spike in Twitter activity with the words 'Russia' 'Moscow' or 'Putin' in reference to Venezuela is proof of a 'pro-Kremlin' disinformation campaign, says Team East StratCom. Here is their graphical chart of Twitter traffic:

    But Russia is an ally of Venezuela so why would this not be reflected on Twitter when there is a blatant attempt by a Western aggressor to impose its military and economic will on Venezuela? Such was the situation in February when the US tried to pressure the Venezuelan government into allowing in trucks, supposedly carrying humanitarian aid, into the country. Aid as a Trojan Horse for weapons has historical context, especially with regards to the US and its new special envoy to Venezuela, Elliot Abrams , a convicted war criminal who illicitly supplied weapons to death squads in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala on behalf of the Reagan presidency in the 1980s. Now that he is special envoy to Venezuela, it is common sense to suspect foul play. Can such people really be seen as peacekeepers, Team East Stratcom? And using a Twitter graphic to divert attention from a flagrant coup attempt by an aggressive power is more than a little contemptible. What's more, a few days afterwards, one of those trucks carrying supplies was found to contain nails and other materials useful for making barricades:

    me title=

    And so to sum up the tactics used by Team East StratCom for 'disproving pro-Kremlin disinformation', based on the above cases alone, a list could include for starters:

    • Categorical denial of any wrongdoing by Western powers or NATO members
    • Label any information emanating from a Russia media outlet as 'disinformation' or 'Kremlin propaganda'
    • Discredit alternate media journalists who stray from Official Washington/London/Brussels position
    • Diversion and distraction – dazzle the public with colourful Twitter graphics
    • Remove any key political, geopolitical context
    • Obscure or erase history
    • Use of online tools like the Corruption Index promoted by same Western governments that fund bloody imperialist wars
    • Use emotive, jingoistic themes
    • Associate perceived ideological opponents with leaders on Western bogeyman list
    • Repetition of pejorative terms and ad hominem smears such as 'pro-Kremlin' and' 'Putinist' to create division
    • Infer that any dissenter in the West is a 'traitor.'

    me title=

    But Team East StratCom can't erase history or delete context or bore us half to death with those Twitter graphics and still expect to retain their credibility.

    What's more, given the Russia-Trump collusion narrative has been exposed as a hoax, Team East StratCom really ought to let that one go .

    Anyone for a pint?

    [Mar 31, 2019] Final Mueller Report won't soothe a paranoid frenzy to undo the 2016 election

    Notable quotes:
    "... Paul Krugman. In " Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate ," in July 2016, he suggested that "there's something very strange and disturbing going on here, and it should not be ignored." ..."
    "... With Trump's election, this argument only intensified. The Intercept found that in a six-week period starting in late February of 2017, shortly after Trump's inauguration, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow homed in on "The Russia Connection," as she called it, with Russia-related fare accounting for more than half of her broadcasts. "If the American presidency right now is the product of collusion between the Russian intelligence services and an American campaign, I mean that is so profoundly big," Maddow declared. Time rendered the thought balloon as a cover illustration, showing the red walls of the Kremlin and the candy-striped domes of St. Basil's Cathedral sprouting from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. ..."
    "... The apex of such coverage was attained by Jonathan Chait, in his July 2018 New York opus , on the eve of a meeting between "Prump" and "Tutin" in Helsinki. The headline: "Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart -- Or His Handler? A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion." The mind-boggling part was Chait's hypothesis that Trump possibly became a Kremlin asset back in 1987, when the real-estate mogul had visited Moscow. ..."
    "... After all, contrary evidence, before the Mueller Report was submitted, was not hard to find. In April 2018, Trump met with German chancellor Angela Merkel in the White House, and gave her a difficult time, according to a story that later ran on the front page of the Wall Street Journal , about her backing of a pipeline to ship natural gas from Russia to Germany. "Angela," Trump said, according to the Journal, "you've got to stop buying gas from Putin." Do those sound like the words of a Kremlin agent? ..."
    "... The paranoid style, which can include an inability to live with complexity and ambiguity and an intolerance for adverse outcomes, is characteristic for its resilience. ..."
    "... In any event, Democrats in Congress are apt to pursue ongoing investigations into the "Russia connection" with even more intensity, in hopes of uncovering some nugget that eluded Mueller. The goal, as Hofstadter might have described it, is to repossess the country -- and that can't be achieved until Donald Trump leaves the White House. ..."
    Mar 31, 2019 | www.city-journal.org

    The idea of irascible Donald Trump as a compliant tool of the Kremlin in Moscow -- some sort of clandestine agent or asset, in spy parlance -- has always seemed off-center. Who has ever been able to control him, this volcano of a man? Does Trump seem capable of keeping secrets, following orders, or maintaining the strict discipline required of a double agent? So, to sober minds, it should come as no surprise that the final report of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III supports no such conclusion. The report, as summarized by Attorney General William P. Barr in a letter to congressional leaders on Sunday, found no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to fix the 2016 election in Trump's favor. And that's exactly what Trump has been saying, in his mantra of "no collusion," from the start of this nearly two-year-old investigation.

    Surely, then, it's time for a reckoning -- starting with, say, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. In " Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate ," in July 2016, he suggested that "there's something very strange and disturbing going on here, and it should not be ignored." On Twitter, Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum chimed in that Trump was "the real-life Manchurian candidate." The Krugman-Applebaum references were to Richard Condon's classic Cold War novel, published in 1959, and the subsequent film, The Manchurian Candidate , about an American prisoner of war brainwashed into becoming a Communist sleeper agent. That, America was told, was Donald Trump.

    With Trump's election, this argument only intensified. The Intercept found that in a six-week period starting in late February of 2017, shortly after Trump's inauguration, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow homed in on "The Russia Connection," as she called it, with Russia-related fare accounting for more than half of her broadcasts. "If the American presidency right now is the product of collusion between the Russian intelligence services and an American campaign, I mean that is so profoundly big," Maddow declared. Time rendered the thought balloon as a cover illustration, showing the red walls of the Kremlin and the candy-striped domes of St. Basil's Cathedral sprouting from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue.

    The apex of such coverage was attained by Jonathan Chait, in his July 2018 New York opus , on the eve of a meeting between "Prump" and "Tutin" in Helsinki. The headline: "Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart -- Or His Handler? A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion." The mind-boggling part was Chait's hypothesis that Trump possibly became a Kremlin asset back in 1987, when the real-estate mogul had visited Moscow.

    These are just samples of the Trump-as-Putin's-tool theory, now discredited by Mueller's report. The idea was advanced not only by liberal media types but also by anti-Trump conservatives, and it became a talking point in Democratic Party and U.S. foreign-policy establishment circles. John Brennan, Barack Obama's former CIA director, all but called Trump a traitor to America, for being in Putin's pocket. Of course, not all Trump opponents swallowed this improbable if seductive line -- but many did.

    Partisan politics are one factor at work in efforts to show Trump as being in cahoots with the Russians. But mere partisanship seems insufficient to explain an abiding belief in Trump as Moscow's pawn. After all, contrary evidence, before the Mueller Report was submitted, was not hard to find. In April 2018, Trump met with German chancellor Angela Merkel in the White House, and gave her a difficult time, according to a story that later ran on the front page of the Wall Street Journal , about her backing of a pipeline to ship natural gas from Russia to Germany. "Angela," Trump said, according to the Journal, "you've got to stop buying gas from Putin." Do those sound like the words of a Kremlin agent?

    The root explanation for the belief in a compromised Trump lies elsewhere than partisan politics, and a good place to look is the classic essay by historian Richard Hofstadter, " The Paranoid Style in American Politics ," published in the November 1964 issue of Harper's. Hofstadter was speaking, in the first instance, of the "Radical Right" of his day and its cherished conviction that Communists had infiltrated the highest echelons of the U.S. government. But the main point of his essay was to identify a recurrent pattern in our political life, going back to the republic's early days. "I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing," he wrote in his opening paragraph. "I call it the paranoid style," he explained, "simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind." In using this expression, he took pains to say, he was not speaking in a clinical sense of "men with profoundly disturbed minds." Rather, it was "the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant." Red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s was one example; another was leaders of the Populist Party in the 1890s believing in "secret cabals" of "gold gamblers" to ruin America.

    "Trump as Kremlin man" now can be added to these dubious annals. Hofstadter, who died in 1970, surely would be surprised. Though he did not see the "paranoid style" as the sole province of the Right, he tended to view most exhibitors of this style as figures and movements closer to the margins of American politics than to its center. A New York Times columnist, say, was not the sort of person he had in mind. Yet his insight into the "modern right wing" as feeling "dispossessed," as living in an America that "has been largely taken away from them and their kind," and therefore liable to the paranoid style, also applies in the current instance. For at least some of his critics, Trump's election was so perplexing and disorienting that it was as if they were living in a foreign country. How could this be happening in "their" America?

    They still feel this way. The paranoid style, which can include an inability to live with complexity and ambiguity and an intolerance for adverse outcomes, is characteristic for its resilience. Mueller, the decorated former Marine and former FBI director, is apt to be attacked, in some disbelieving quarters, as a sellout: What isn't he telling us? Even the publication of his full report -- as many Americans, rightly, are demanding -- will not satisfy critics, who will insist that the absence of evidence of collusion is simply an element of the vast conspiracy to cover it up.

    A vindicated Trump, for his part, can be expected only to heighten the conspiratorial mood of our times. An irony of this episode is that he, too, is the sort of person apt to believe in intrigues, only in his view of the matter, the dark plot is a scheme by the "Deep State" to keep him from getting elected and, once elected, to stay in power. He may well be loathed by more than a few Washington bureaucrats, but that idea looks like another rabbit hole.

    In any event, Democrats in Congress are apt to pursue ongoing investigations into the "Russia connection" with even more intensity, in hopes of uncovering some nugget that eluded Mueller. The goal, as Hofstadter might have described it, is to repossess the country -- and that can't be achieved until Donald Trump leaves the White House.

    Paul Starobin , a former Moscow bureau chief of Business Week , is working on a book on the Alaska gold rush of 1900.

    [Mar 31, 2019] With Mueller Done, Now is the Time for Better Relations With Russia

    Notable quotes:
    "... Anyway, Trump is neutered. His appointments and policies are indistinguishable from a meaner, more reckless and more dysfunctional version of Dubya, even down to the Bush-era retreads. ..."
    "... The anti-Russia fear-mongering from the Pentagon's Combatant Commandeers is thick with ominous warnings. (All requiring huge new spends for their War Toys of course.) ..."
    "... New incoming Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mike Milley has already demonstrated his Nut-Job sensibilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLfkJODepcI ..."
    "... Front of the mind or back of the mind, the politics of Russia post-Mueller have already been baked into Washington with the huge bills for the poisonous pathological cake being delivered to the deluded and hapless taxpayers. ..."
    Mar 31, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    Sid Finster March 28, 2019 at 2:27 pm

    You're right, but it never will happen.

    Anyway, Trump is neutered. His appointments and policies are indistinguishable from a meaner, more reckless and more dysfunctional version of Dubya, even down to the Bush-era retreads.

    SteveM , says: March 28, 2019 at 2:35 pm
    I've stated before that the Pentagon now controls foreign policy. Along with the sanctified Generals, Lunatic Bolton, Fat Pompeo, Nitwit Pence and other civilians are completely wired into the Warfare State architecture parasitically dependent on a Russia = Soviet Union 2.0 model.

    The anti-Russia fear-mongering from the Pentagon's Combatant Commandeers is thick with ominous warnings. (All requiring huge new spends for their War Toys of course.)

    New incoming Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mike Milley has already demonstrated his Nut-Job sensibilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLfkJODepcI

    The anti-Russia froth spilling out of a sclerotic Congress suffused with Idiots who want to throw even more Billions at the 5-Sided Pleasure Palace is thick and heavy.

    While Trump has proven himself to be a stupid, impotent fop against that war-mongering menagerie.

    Re: "Politics in Washington can often guide policy. The question post-Mueller is whether policy will now be front of mind."

    Front of the mind or back of the mind, the politics of Russia post-Mueller have already been baked into Washington with the huge bills for the poisonous pathological cake being delivered to the deluded and hapless taxpayers.

    Ken Zaretzke , says: March 28, 2019 at 3:22 pm
    No one gets it like Stephen F. Cohen gets it.

    https://www.thenation.com/article/the-real-costs-of-russiagate/

    [Mar 31, 2019] Russiagate Hoax Is WMD, Times A Million

    Mar 31, 2019 | freerepublic.com

    citizenfreepress.com ^ | 3/25/19 | Matt Taibbi

    Posted on ‎3‎/‎25‎/‎2019‎ ‎6‎:‎01‎:‎13‎ ‎AM by a little elbow grease

    Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.

    As has long been rumored, the former FBI chief's independent probe will result in multiple indictments and convictions, but no "presidency-wrecking" conspiracy charges, or anything that would meet the layman's definition of "collusion" with Russia.

    The New York Times:

    A senior Justice Department official said that Mr. Mueller would not recommend new indictments. The Times tried to soften the emotional blow for the millions of Americans trained in these years to place hopes for the overturn of the Trump presidency in Mueller. Nobody even pretended it was supposed to be a fact-finding mission, instead of an act of faith.

    The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing "All I Want for Christmas is You" to him featuring the rhymey line: "Mueller please come through, because the only option is a coup."

    The Times story today tried to preserve Santa Mueller's reputation, noting Trump's Attorney General William Barr's reaction was an "endorsement" of the fineness of Mueller's work:

    In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a "witch hunt," Mr. Barr said Justice Department officials never had to intervene to keep Mr. Mueller from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step.

    Mueller, in other words, never stepped out of the bounds of his job description. But could the same be said for the news media?

    (Excerpt) Read more at citizenfreepress.com ...

    [Mar 31, 2019] Russiagate and Mutual Assured Derangement – Arc Digital

    Mar 31, 2019 | arcdigital.media

    It's a brutal week for anyone who expected special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election to be the end of Donald Trump. Per Attorney General William Barr's summary of Mueller's report, there is no evidence to prove that Trump or his campaign conspired with Russian agents to influence the election; while Mueller left the door open to obstruction of justice charges, Barr has decided there are no grounds for those, either. Maybe the "Mueller time" merchandise can now be marketed to Trump fans.

    This outcome has left a lot of "Resistance" types distraught and discredited, and it's an entirely self-made disaster. Trump/Russia hype and hysteria on the left have been wildly over the top. It wasn't just fringe conspiracy theorists like British journalist Louise Mensch who claimed Trump was knowingly working for the Kremlin; Jonathan Chait and Max Boot floated the same idea in New York Magazine and The Washington Post , respectively, as did Bill Maher on HBO's Real Time . Pundits, ex-intelligence officials, and some congressional Democrats (notably California's Adam Schiff) repeatedly asserted that the Mueller probe was all but certain to end with major indictments. It seemed like every week, a new " bombshell " signaled "the beginning of the end" for Trump.

    But now, the triumphant pro-Trump Republicans and left-wing Trump/Russia skeptics (two groups currently enjoying a bizarre love-in) are engaging in just as much hype and overreach -- and it may end badly for them, too.

    For the record: From the start, I have been mostly a Trump/Russia agnostic. In my first piece on the subject in July 2016, for the now-defunct AllThink blog, I wrote:

    I don't think anyone is actually claiming that Trump is literally a [Vladimir] Putin agent. It's more that Putin would much prefer to see Trump rather than [Hillary] Clinton in the White House; that Trump is not at all averse to having Putin in his corner; and that top Trump staffers, campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Russia adviser Carter Page, have tangible ties to the Kremlin regime and to Putin's cronies. And that Putin may be using KGB-style dirty tricks to help elect Trump  --  such as putting out what the Russians call kompromat on Clinton.

    (I think this aligns pretty closely with the Mueller report as summarized by Barr.)

    Later, I was highly skeptical of the more extreme Trump/Russia claims, including " pee tape " blackmail. In a December 2017 Newsday column, I warned about the damage from biased and sloppy media coverage of the story. In July 2018 , I condemned Trump's conduct when he stood next to Putin at the Helsinki summit and badmouthed the Mueller probe while endorsing Putin's denial of election meddling; I also stressed that "[c]ollusion with the Kremlin is certainly not the only way to explain Trump's actions."

    In other words, I am not a Russiagate peddler refusing to concede error and bitterly clinging to my discredited position.

    I simply believe that, on the facts, the extreme "Russia Hoax" position (there was never anything to the Trump/Russia story except a conspiracy theory intended to take down Trump) is as untenable as the extreme "Russiagate" position (Trump is Putin's bitch).

    I think it's a bit galling for Trump defenders to crow vindication when, only recently, the same people  --  including Trump himself  --  were viciously attacking Mueller and slamming his investigation as a baseless witch-hunt cooked up by Trump haters and "Deep State" malefactors. And yes, in some cases, it's literally the same people, not just people from the same political camp. For instance, Federalist writer Sean Davis, who has been gleefully flogging the media for their coverage of the scandal, had this to say last October when some Trump zealots attempted to frame Mueller for sexual harassment:

    (Davis apparently deleted the tweet later, but it's definitely real, as demonstrated by an embed appearing on RedState .)

    Indeed, Fox News Opinion was attacking Mueller on the eve of the release of his findings, in an article that now looks deliciously ironic:

    Fast-forward a few days, and anyone who has the temerity to suggest that the Barr summary of Mueller's findings may not be the absolute last word on Trump/Russia is promptly accused of being pathetic and desperate.

    https://arcdigital.media/media/f5e062a16f7cbea36b2ab706b354b1f7?postId=c23ee28d3bda

    We'll know more soon when the full Mueller report is out. But pending its release, here's a quick look at some of the post-Mueller "Russia hoax" myths.

    Myth: The Mueller findings prove there was never anything to Trump/Russia. It's simply an anti-Trump conspiracy theory spawned by the Christopher Steele dossier  --  a discredited piece of Clinton opposition research  --  and fanned by the Trump-hating media.

    This is sheer nonsense.

    First of all: Discussions of Trump's, and his campaign's, Russian connections began before anyone had heard of the dossier and before the FBI opened its investigation into the matter. The Washington Post ran a piece on the Trump-Putin "bromance" and Trump's extensive financial ties to Russia on June 17, 2016, when Steele, a former British intelligence agent, was just starting to compile his Trump-Russia dossier. An article by Franklin Foer titled " Putin's Puppet " appeared in Slate on July 4, still nearly a month before the FBI started its investigation into Russian election interference and some three months before FBI agents first met with Steele.

    Foer discussed Trump's "odes to Putin," the Kremlin-controlled media's vocal support for Trump, the hacking of Democratic National Committee servers by Russian intelligence, Trump's financial connections to Russia, and the fact that "Trump's inner circle is populated with advisers and operatives who have long careers advancing the interests of the Kremlin." At Talking Points Memo in late July , Josh Marshall also highlighted the fact that the one foreign policy issue where Trump's team pushed for change in the Republican Party platform was to tone down language calling for more American assistance to Ukraine in its border conflict with Russia.

    Trump's infamous " Russia, if you're listening " remark on July 27 of that year, responding to questions about the DNC hacking by jocularly inviting Russia to find Clinton's missing emails, raised the story to a new level. Unlike many people, I believe he was making a tacky joke, not actually signaling the Kremlin. Even so, it's not difficult to understand why this conduct would be considered suspicious. At best, a presidential candidate was responding to reports that his opponent had been targeted for cyberattacks by an adversarial foreign power by jokingly cheering for the hackers.

    Russia Didn't Hack the DNC! (Or Did They ?)
    Right- and left-wing conspiracy theories, and why they're wrong arcdigital.media

    There are plenty of others times Trump behaved in ways that fed the story.

    There was his statement to NBC's Lester Holt in May 2017 that he fired James Comey because of the "Russia thing." (Whether we now find Comey an obnoxiously self-important grandstander is totally irrelevant.)

    There was, even more shockingly, the revelation that Trump bragged about the firing in a White House meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, calling Comey "a real nut job" and saying that the pressure he had faced over the Russia story was now "taken off." (Is there any way such behavior by the President of the United States would not raise disturbing questions?)

    There was his behavior at the Helsinki summit, and numerous instances in which he took a remarkably mild attitude toward apparent criminal activity by the Kremlin. Just last October, in a 60 Minutes interview on CBS, Trump conceded that Putin had probably orchestrated the attempted poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in England  --  but brushed it off with "it's not in our country." (This is an incident in which Russian intelligence agents tried to kill two Russians on the soil of one of our top allies, in the process accidentally killing one of that country's nationals and injuring two more. As they say: Let that sink in.) In the same interview, Trump also downplayed 2016 Russian election meddling by claiming, with no evidence, that "China meddled too" and "is a bigger problem."

    Aside from that, there really were extensive interactions between the Trump campaign and Russians with Kremlin or intelligence ties. There really was  --  as the Barr letter on Mueller's findings explicitly states  --  a Russian effort to influence the election and undermine Clinton. (Was the intent to damage the generally expected Clinton presidency, or to help elect Trump? It's likely this was viewed as a win-win scenario.) Mueller indicted 13 Russians over that operation. Remember, Mueller's mandate was to investigate all Russian interference in the 2016 election (including the possible role of people inside the Trump campaign in aiding such interference). So to dismiss the Mueller probe as a "conspiracy theory" and/or a waste of money is to show a rather shocking lack of regard for the integrity of our elections.

    How To Talk (And Not To Talk) About Violence On "Both Sides"
    Neither equivalence nor exculpation will do arcdigital.media

    It's true that not one American citizen has been indicted for "collusion" (or, to be more accurate, conspiracy; there is no such crime as "collusion"). The prosecutions of Trump associates have been over other, only tangentially related things: Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, for financial crimes connected to consulting work for pro-Russian Ukrainians; Roger Stone (who still faces trial in November) for lying to Congress about his contacts with WikiLeaks, the "whistleblower" organization that published the hacked documents; former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and campaign staffer George Papadopoulos, for lying to the FBI about Russian contacts. Mueller has found  --  there's no reason to doubt the accuracy of the Barr letter on this  --  that none of the contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives amounted to conspiracy, defined as an agreement to influence the election.

    But: first of all, this doesn't mean that the issue wasn't worth investigating. There was very real evidence of suspicious and sleazy contacts. It didn't rise to the level of criminal and treasonous conspiracy. So far, so good.

    Secondly, this doesn't mean that anything short of conspiracy is fine. We didn't need Mueller to tell us that Trump welcomed the WikiLeaks disclosures of hacked documents from the DNC and the Clinton campaign; Trump repeatedly said so on the campaign trail in 2016. The Mueller probe did uncover contacts between WikiLeaks and at least two people close to Trump: Stone and Donald Trump Jr. (We don't know whether such contacts at any level would amount to conspiracy under the Mueller report's definition, since WikiLeaks is not definitively classified as a Russian asset.)

    The Stone indictment charges that late in the summer of 2016, after news of the DNC hacking  --  which U.S. and allied intelligence agencies, along with multiple private cybersecurity firms, identified as the work of Russian operatives  --  a senior Trump campaign official asked Stone to find out from WikiLeaks what was in the hacked emails and when they would be made public.

    Bloomberg News columnist Eli Lake argues , in his commentary on the Mueller probe conclusion, that this fact actually undercuts the collusion scenario: "If the [Trump] campaign was coordinating with Russia's influence campaign, why would Stone have needed to go to WikiLeaks?" But surely collusion is not limited to full-time coordination. If the unnamed official knew that WikiLeaks was acting as an intermediary for the Russians and directed Stone to find out more about their plans to disclose illegally obtained material damaging to the Clinton campaign, that sounds pretty damning to me  --  even if doesn't amount to conspiracy with Kremlin agents.

    And that's aside from the Trump Tower meeting. It's a fact that Don Jr. received an email saying that a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer wanted to meet and offer dirt on Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." It's a fact that he responded, "I love it." (As it turned out, the lawyer had no information and used the meeting to talk about ending sanctions against Russia.) The Barr summary notes that there is no evidence any Trump associate was involved in coordination or conspiracy with the Russian government, "despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign." Yet at least in the case of the Trump Tower meeting, it seems clear that the offer was not rejected; it was enthusiastically welcomed but turned out to be bogus. (Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen claims Don Jr. told his father about this meeting, but there is no solid proof of this.)

    Why Is Michael Cohen Doing The Right Thing?
    Mueller has charged several Americans with crimes. But only Michael Cohen wants to be seen as making a principled stand arcdigital.media

    If Trump supporters think this is a vindication, or that this proves the Mueller probe was a pointless conspiracy theory I suppose they're entitled to that view. It seems to me that any reasonable person would conclude that these facts warranted a full investigation to find out whether they amounted to criminal conspiracy.

    Myth: The Trump/Russia story was made up as an excuse for Clinton's defeat so that the Democrats could avoid facing the fact that (a) they ran a terrible candidate and (b) a lot of Americans were sufficiently fed up with the political establishment that they voted for Trump.

    Did the collusion story serve that purpose for some Democrats? Sure. But again, the Trump/Russia issue first became a story several months before the election, when pretty much everyone expected Clinton to win. Indeed, in his " Putin's Puppet " story in July 2016, Foer wrote, "We shouldn't overstate Putin's efforts, which will hardly determine the outcome of the election." (Famous last words!)

    Myth: We know for a fact that Russian interference did not help Trump win.

    For some reason, suggesting that Russian meddling may have affected the outcome of the election is often taken as tantamount to saying that Americans did not really elect Donald Trump. But that doesn't follow at all.

    No credible person suggests that Russia tampered with the voting tallies (though it's a measure of current levels of political derangement that two-thirds of Democrats believe such tampering "definitely" or "probably" happened). However, Trump won several states by extremely small margins; surely some of those results could have been tipped by the WikiLeaks disclosures, falsely spun as "the DNC fixed the primaries to rob Bernie Sanders and hand the nomination to Hillary." Let's not forget that WikiLeaks began it's second dump of compromising material hours after the disclosure of the "Access Hollywood" audio in which Trump was heard bragging that his star status allows him to "do anything" to women, even "grab 'em by the pussy."

    Of course this does not absolve Clinton of running a bad campaign. A good candidate would have been ahead of Trump by a wide enough margin that WikiLeaks would not have made a difference. A good candidate would not have had personal baggage that made it difficult for her to hit Trump on the sexual misconduct allegations. There were numerous factors that contributed to Trump's win. But I don't see how anyone can say with certainty that the Russia/WikiLeaks project wasn't one of them  --  especially since Trump exploited those disclosures to the hilt on the campaign trail.

    Myth: The mainstream media as a group are utterly discredited because they fell for Trump/Russia hype, while once-derided Trump/Russia skeptics have been vindicated.

    This claim is being made not only by conservative Trump supporters like Davis, but by leftists like Michael Tracey, Glenn Greenwald, and Matt Taibbi , whose indictment of the media's Russiagate fail has been widely praised.

    There is a lot to criticize. Rachel Maddow should be embarrassed. So should Chait, who once suggested that Trump might be meeting "his handler" in Helsinki.

    Why Are Internet Radicals Helping Putin's Russia?
    Glenn Greenwald, Caitlin Johnstone, and anti-American myopia arcdigital.media

    But the critics are wrongly (and, I suspect, intentionally) lumping together several extremely different things: outlandish Trump/Russia conspiracy theories a la Mensch; sloppy "bombshell" reporting that ended up being quickly debunked and retracted (such as the ABC News " scoop " that Trump had directed Flynn to contact Russian officials during the campaign, not after the election); opinions that were always presented as opinions; and factual reporting on the Trump/Russia investigation.

    For instance, after I tweeted that Taibbi vastly overstates the media consensus on the "Trump is a Russian asset" narrative, someone tweeted a collage of Washington Post headlines at me in rebuttal.

    https://arcdigital.media/media/76c7ac32d9f6808a3556058d6848b0d5?postId=c23ee28d3bda

    However, none of those headlines refer to Trump being a Russian asset. The closest is one that says, "Why the FBI might've thought Trump could be working for Russia." But the FBI did briefly investigate that possibility in 2017 before Mueller took over the Russia probe! What's more, the article , by Aaron Blake, is the farthest thing from irresponsible hype. It offers a measured assessment of the facts, pointing out that such claims are "highly speculative," that the brief FBI inquiry "may not mean a whole lot," and that there are other explanations for the behavior that made the FBI suspicious.

    And other headlines are simply factual: for instance, "Trump misrepresents judge in Manafort trial as he claims 'no collusion' with Russia." He did .

    Or: "Russia's support for Trump's election is no longer disputable." Yes, the Barr letter confirms that too.

    Some of Taibbi's criticism is fair (for instance, he makes a strong case that Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News vastly overhyped the Steele dossier before backtracking and suggesting that it's mostly inaccurate; he also rightly spanks Chait for the "What if Trump is a longtime Russian agent" New York Magazine cover story). Some is more dubious. Thus, Taibbi writes:

    " Trump Campaign Aides had repeated contacts with Russian Intelligence ," published by the Times on Valentine's Day, 2017, was an important, narrative-driving "bombshell" that looked dicey from the start. The piece didn't say whether the contact was witting or unwitting, whether the discussions were about business or politics, or what the contacts supposedly were at all.

    In fact, the article explicitly acknowledges these unknowns. It states that the law enforcement officials who had provided the information "did not say to what extent the contacts might have been about business" and whether they had anything to do with Trump. It also notes that several Trump associates (including Manafort, the only person named in the article) had done business in Russia and that "it is not unusual for American businessmen to come in contact with foreign intelligence officials, sometimes unwittingly, in countries like Russia and Ukraine, where the spy services are deeply embedded in society." Finally, it states that the officials interviewed "said that, so far, they had seen no evidence" of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to influence the election.

    One can criticize The New York Times for hyping the "bombshell" in the headline only to admit in the body of the text that it may amount to nothing much. (Did it amount to anything? We don't know; the charges against Manafort are partly related to giving U.S. polling data to an intelligence-linked Russian business associate, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, as part of these contacts.) But Taibbi's failure to note that the article does acknowledge facts contrary to the "narrative" also skews his account.

    And here's an even more egregious example:

    After writing, " Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic ," poor Blake Hounsell of Politico took such a beating on social media, he ended up denouncing himself a year later.
    "What I meant to write is, I wasn't skeptical," he said.

    Leaving aside the sloppiness (it's "Hounshell," and the second article was published six months later, not a year later), Taibbi's account here is way off. Yes, Hounshell got a mostly negative reaction to his piece on Twitter, though it was no pitchfork-wielding mob. But there's no indication his reversal had anything to do with social-media sniping: Hounshell's second piece was a reaction to Trump's odd behavior at the Helsinki summit and his attacks on NATO. ("What I meant " was, of course, a joke.)

    Taibbi also makes no mention of instances in which mainstream media did shoot down or push back against false Russiagate narratives. Vox published a piece by Zack Beauchamp in May 2017 cautioning Democrats against falling for Trump/Russia conspiracy theories peddled by the likes of Mensch, attorney Seth Abramson, and national security expert John Schindler. The New York Times ran a piece days before the election headlined, "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia." Foer's October 31, 2016 Slate article claiming that there was a secret electronic communication channel between the Trump campaign and a Russian bank was debunked the next day by The Washington Post .

    Finally, Taibbi's critique rests on a false binary. He writes, "There was never real gray area here. Either Trump is a compromised foreign agent, or he isn't. If he isn't, news outlets once again swallowed a massive disinformation campaign." But in fact, there are plenty of gray areas and many different versions of what "Trump/Russia" means  --  from "Trump is a foreign agent" to "Trump was fine with accepting election help from Putin." Plenty of news outlets gave credence to the second scenario, not the first.

    The Trump-Russia Investigation is Dead! Long Live The Trump-Russia Investigation!
    Mueller's investigation may or may not be about to end, but Trump's Russia woes will continue arcdigital.media

    It would be good to see a fair and comprehensive analysis of media coverage of Russiagate. But it's not going to come from Davis, Taibbi, or Greenwald. Media groupthink and malpractice should be criticized, but this can be done without lumping all of the "mainstream media" together in a mass indictment of "fake news."

    As for the left-wing Russiagate skeptics being vindicated: most of them have staunchly insisted that there is no evidence the Kremlin engaged in an effort to undermine our election. And Glenn Greenwald's position seems to be that even if it did, America was asking for it because we meddle, too. In this scheme of things, then-Secretary of State Clinton expressing sympathy with the Russians who took to the streets in 2011–2012 to protest a rigged election is morally equivalent to Russian agents stealing the private communications of American political organizations.

    Myth: The fact that the Trump administration is tough on Russia disproves the Trump/Russia story.

    For the record: I don't believe Trump is a "Russian tool." It's clear that he has taken a number of positions that are at odds with Russia's interests, including on Venezuela (from which he said the other day that "Russia has to get out"). His administration includes a number of Russia hawks, from National Security Advisor John Bolton to high-level official Fiona Hill .

    On the other hand, it's hard to say how much of Washington's current Russia policy happens in spite of Trump. The White House has repeatedly tried to weaken and spike Russia sanctions, despite a rare bipartisan consensus in Congress for tough policies. He was reportedly highly reluctant to agree to the sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, which he now cites as evidence that he's tougher on Russia than Obama. And he has made some definite Russia-friendly moves  --  such as calling for Russia to be readmitted into the Group of 7 when he attended the G7 summit in Quebec last summer.

    But, once again, the truth of Russiagate can be quite bad for Trump without Trump being a knowing Putin pawn. If Trump knowingly went along with a Kremlin-directed effort to help his campaign  --  even with no quid pro quo  --  that may not be criminal conspiracy, but surely it is a betrayal of the American people. (And no, it's not remotely comparable to using opposition research collected in part from intelligence sources within the Russian establishment; to equate the two , as some Trump partisans have done, is tantamount to suggesting that there's no difference between intelligence-gathering and spying for a foreign power.)

    In the past two years, there has been a lot of wild, and sometimes outright deranged, speculation on Trump/Russia. A lot of Russiagate zealots got carried away, buoyed by the seeming victories of mounting Trump/Russia revelations ("BOOM"!). Now, they're paying the price.

    Right now, the shoe is on the other foot. The anti-Russiagate crowd, dizzy from its apparent triumph, is getting way ahead of the evidence in declaring Russiagate a "hoax" and proclaiming that Trump has been both legally and morally vindicated. It seems a bit foolhardy when, among other things, there are legal proceedings still underway, including Stone trial and a still-active grand jury .

    Am I expecting a new "bombshell" that will finally spell the end for Trump? No  --  and, for the record, I do not want impeachment. But I do think that after the past three years, one lesson we should all have learned is that no one can predict what twists are coming in the crazy plots of The Trumpman Show .

    [Mar 31, 2019] Russiagate The Great Tragic Comedy of Modern Journalism

    Mar 31, 2019 | blog.usejournal.com

    And then Stephen Cohen of The Nation , another voice of reason, sent me a copy of his book, " War With Russia? " It's a collection of his heretical writings about our new, unnecessary Cold War, and the opening essay , adapted from a talk he gave in Washington D.C., made me ashamed of my silence.

    "Some people who privately share our concerns  --  again, in Congress, the media, universities and think tanks  --  do not speak out at all. For whatever reason  --  concern about being stigmatized, about their career, personal disposition  --  they are silent. But in our democracy, where the cost of dissent is relatively low, silence is no longer a patriotic option," Cohen wrote, adding, "We should exempt from this imperative young people, who have more to lose. A few have sought my guidance, and I always advise, 'Even petty penalties for dissent in regard to Russia could adversely affect your career. At this stage of life, your first obligation is to your family and thus to your future prospects. Your time to fight lies ahead'."

    Well, what was my excuse?

    Special Prosecutor Robert S. Mueller has now turned in his findings, and there's not much there. For weeks beforehand, mainstream media warned about this  --  exhorting readers against succumbing to feeling "disappointed".

    Disappointed? I guess, as my friend Taibbi has noted , it would have been an immense relief had the U.S. president been found to be a high-level traitor. We could have all brought picnic lunches to his execution.

    Right before the species-ending war with Russia.

    In their fanatic loyalty to the narrative, what used to be my favorite media have stridently reminded us that, Mueller aside, "it's not over!" The "focus of the investigation" will move now to the New York prosecutors, to House committees. The American intelligentsia will continue to dream up wild theories  --  they'll be Scotch-taped on every vertical surface, connected by bits of yarn and magic marker scribbles and hyperverbal mania.

    The question now is, has the Mueller report finally freed up the rest of us to challenge the more insane flights of fantasy? Or is it instead so close to the 2020 presidential elections  --  and so legally dangerous for some of the intelligence insiders who have tried to bring down the president  --  that skeptical journalists more than ever will be bullied to keep silent?

    Rootless Whataboutism

    As a test case  --  a first step on the road to journalistic recovery  --  can I suggest we at least retire the insane, Orwellian term "whataboutism?"

    Whataboutism really deserves consideration as a "Word of the Year", and not in a good way. There have been multiple non-ironic media reports about this odious concept, on NPR , in the Huffington Post , in The Washington Post , you name it.

    "His campaign may or may not have conspired with Moscow," The Washington Post told us awhile back, "but President Trump has routinely employed a durable old Soviet propaganda tactic 'whataboutism,' the practice of short-circuiting an argument by asserting moral equivalency between two things that aren't necessarily comparable."

    NPR's version also claims that whataboutism is a Soviet-tainted practice. "It's not exactly a complicated tactic  --  any grade-schooler can master the 'yeah-well-you-suck-too-so-there' defense," NPR says. "But it came to be associated with the USSR because of the Soviet Union's heavy reliance upon whataboutism throughout the Cold War and afterward, as Russia."

    Yet in my experience, it's not so much a Soviet tactic as an American one  --  specifically, it's a way of demanding a loyalty oath to the anti-Trump resistance.

    I have occasionally dared express skepticism about the entire overblown story that Russia was involved in our 2016 elections at all. That's right. I don't buy it. I am not entirely convinced that "Russian bots and trolls" infected anyone's mind by, say, taking positions both for and against gun control after the Parkland high school mass shooting, or by setting up anti-masturbation hotlines , or by giving bad reviews to "Star Wars: the Last Jedi."

    I am also not entirely convinced that the Russians, having supposedly decided at the highest levels of their government to try to sink Hilary Clinton's candidacy, couldn't think of anything more clever than to spear-phish campaign manager John Podesta's G-mail.

    Nor do I share the concerns of The Times of London that the Russian animated cartoon "Masha and the Bear" is part of a soft propaganda drive to weaken the minds of Estonian children ahead of their eventual annexation by Red Army tanks.

    Yet before I can even offer any subtler qualification of all this  --  sure, there is Russian-government, let's say, "illicit computer and social media activity" out there, mixed with a lot of other noise signals (click-bait farms, which explains at least some of the infamous Internet Research Agency's activities; ordinary Russians with pro-Kremlin positions and personal Facebook accounts; and yes, people sitting on their beds who weigh 400 pounds), but it has to be weighed against  --  I'll be cut off.

    "That's whataboutism ," I've been told flatly.

    It's actually not   --  that doesn't even meet the absurd quasi-official definitions of this new Kafkaesque term  --  but that's the whole point. Disagreement is by its very nature whataboutist . Every skeptical question, after all, could technically begin, "But what about ?"

    Of course, it's far, far worse if I truly commit a whataboutism and  --   God forbid! God forbid! – I express curiosity about The New York Times reporting about millions flowing to the Clintons and associated with the Russian purchase of American uranium mines.

    Whataboutism! It's so comparable to the old Soviet thought crimes  --  Trotskyite, wrecker, cosmopolitan, rootless cosmopolitanism Every time I hear someone flag a statement as guilty of whataboutism, I mentally add " rootless whataboutism."

    People tell me Mueller missed the point. It's about Russian oligarch and Kremlin money, invested in Trump real estate  --  it's not over! All hail the Southern District prosecutors! OK, let's see it, I'm open to that possibility. But if all Russian money is tainted just because it's "oligarchical"  --  good luck defining that !  --  then is it O.K. for the spouse of then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to take $500,000 for a single hour's work, a speech in Moscow, for one of the most famous "oligarch" banks?

    "That's whataboutism! NPR and The Washington Post say that's a Soviet-favored tactic! Your loyalty is thus suspect two-fold. Have you had contact with any Russian nationals?"

    Communists and Crickets

    "EVIDENCE POINTS TO RUSSIA AS MAIN SUSPECT IN BRAIN INJURY ATTACKS ON DOZENS OF U.S. DIPLOMATS" was the report by MSNBC in September 2017, and they flogged that big scoop for months, and have never really apologized for it.

    Two dozen American diplomats in Cuba suffered headaches, dizziness and other vague symptoms they blamed on strange sounds  --  sounds some of them tape-recorded and supplied to journalists, doctors and the government. "It sounds sort of like a mass of crickets," was the opening line of the Associated Press report about the recordings (which you can listen to yourself here ).

    But no. Not crickets. As MSNBC reported, our intelligence services had intercepted Russian communications (!) revealing the sounds were "some kind of microwave weapon," one so sophisticated that our top government minds were at a loss.

    We might not know how it works, MSNBC reported, but we did know it was a weapon, and "now Russia is the leading suspect."

    "This is not an accident," reported anchorwoman Andrea Mitchell then. "This is not a microwave listening device gone bad. This is an attack  --  against American diplomats and intelligence officers, and this was targeting."

    What an amazing allegation. The Russian government was beaming a mysterious, high-tech weapon at our citizens ; we had intercepted communications that made this clear.

    For more than a year, I and colleagues with Russia-reporting experience would be grilled about this, and would just have to shrug apologetically. We just didn't know what to say. It didn't make a lot of face-value sense  --  why exactly would Russian agents, amid all this rabid anti-Russia hysteria, beam a secret brain-frying weapon at two-dozen random American diplomats and their family members in Cuba, for weeks apparently? What would be the logic behind giving these random-seeming people headaches and making them dizzy and even causing "brain injuries similar to concussions"?

    As a physician, I also shared the s kepticism of colleagues published about this in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Playing odds, I agreed with those critics that I would have assumed either a mass psychogenic illness or a viral infection more likely etiologies than a secret Siberian death ray. I also read "brain injuries similar to concussions" as, "brain injuries that don't show up on objective testing." (Of course, I've not examined any of these patients or reviewed their cases so it's not for me to say.)

    But in our fevered Russophobic environment, no one wanted to entertain alternative scenarios  --  after all, we don't even understand this sophisticated weapon, which our intelligence agencies assure us (anonymously) they have intercepted Russian communications bragging about, so how dare we debate the logic behind its use? (Maybe this is how they control the president!)

    Then three months ago, American scientists published in a peer-review journal their analysis of the dastardly recordings and identified the sounds : Crickets. Caribbean crickets.

    Specifically, the echoing call of the male, short-tailed indies. During mating season.

    But did MSNBC apologize, or retract?

    Crickets.

    Instead, during a historically cold week this winter, MSNBC star Rachel Maddow used the excuse of a government panel about energy security to go on a Jack D. Ripper about Russia someday deciding to freeze middle America to death.

    "It is like negative 50 degrees in the Dakotas right now. What would happen if Russia killed the power in Fargo today? What would happen if all the natural gas lines that service Sioux Falls just 'poofed', on the coldest day in recent memories, and it wasn't in our power whether or not to turn them back on?" Maddow asked . "What would you do if you lost heat indefinitely  --  as the act of a foreign power!  --  on the same day the temperature in your front yard matched the temperature in Antarctica? I mean, what would you and your family do?"

    Gee, I don't know Rachel. What would my family and I do if Russia launched a nuclear weapon at my front yard? I guess we'd all die. I guess I don't know who to trust anymore, I feel exhausted by the news, sick of it all, I just want to stop caring, and you seem to feel the same, and omigosh Rachel, we've been infected by the red virus!

    'They Hate our Freedoms'

    James Comey, the former FBI director, testified before the Senate after his firing that the Russians are "coming after America," because, "They think that this great experiment of ours is a threat to them, and so they're going to try to run it down and dirty it up as much as possible."

    Right. It's because "they hate our freedoms."

    Where have I heard that before?

    People had been waiting breathlessly for Mueller's report, but in reality, everything we needed to know was right there in the first report  --  the January 6, 2017, grand announcement, the big reveal by our Intelligence Community  --  the consensus of CIA, FBI and NSA  --  "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections."

    I remember finishing that report at the time and thinking: Holy Cow, they have nothing.

    Nothing!

    Of the 15 pages with any meat to them in that report, seven were a long, bizarre complaint about the existence and activities of RT (formerly Russia Today ), the Kremlin-sponsored English-language news channel.

    Our intelligence agencies reported that RT has become "the most-watched foreign news channel in the UK," had more YouTube viewers than the BBC or CNN , and was surpassing al-Jazeera in New York and Washington D.C. ( Voice of America , which is the U.S. government version of RT , has no sense of humor or passion and so no viewers anywhere outside of Foggy Bottom.)

    RT's success was, per the intelligence report, thanks to a combination of lavish Kremlin funding and an alluring editorial slant. The intelligence report quoted RT's editor as saying her station got lots of new viewers after offering sympathetic coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The intelligence report continued:

    In an effort to highlight the alleged "lack of democracy" in the United States, RT broadcast, hosted, and advertised third-party candidate debates and ran reporting supportive of the political agenda of these candidates. The RT hosts asserted that the US two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a "sham." RT's reports often characterize the United States as a "surveillance state" and allege widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use RT has also focused on criticism of the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the US national debt. Some of RT's hosts have compared the United States to Imperial Rome and have predicted that government corruption and "corporate greed" will lead to US financial collapse RT runs anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts on public health

    This was hilarious of course  --  a public snit by our intel communities about Russians racking up big numbers among American viewers in Washington and New York , just by offering mildly critical takes on drone killings and fracking and "alleged Wall Street greed" ("alleged"? Really ?). We were promised a major assessment of any improper Russian influences on our 2016 electoral process and we got  --  this? A formal complaint that Russian TV gave Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein too much air time?

    All this bitching and moaning about RT   --  which, remember, is not some secret plot, but just a public TV station you can go watch on YouTube or not watch   --  takes up well more than half of that grand intelligence community assessment. It really speaks volumes about what was on their minds. And again, my conclusion reading it two years ago was: So, they've got nothing.

    The one caveat, though, was that there was a classified appendix. There's always a classified appendix. So, who knew what was in that ? After all, immediately and in the two years since, intelligence officials have occasionally been cited  --  always anonymously!  --   in The Guardian , The New Yorker , and The New York Times   --  as claiming to have intercepted communications between the Trump team and the Russian government.

    Well, by now, we should realize the appendix is a myth.

    First, we now know that at least part of it   --  and, I would guess, probably all of it  --  was nothing more than the Steele report, the infamous document first posted on BuzzFeed , that collection of anti-Trump opposition research paid for by the Hilary Clinton campaign. (You know  --  the pee tape stuff.)

    And we now also know, courtesy of Robert Mueller's report, that there are no "intercepted communications" between Russians and the Trump campaign teams. Just like there are no Russian intercepts about secret Siberian brain-frying rays in Cuba, because that, again, was the mating call of a short-tailed Caribbean cricket.

    I don't know what's funnier about all of this  --  and it is damned funny, really  --  the fact that all of this has actually happened , or the fact that I feel the need to come out of journalistic retirement to help point it out.

    A President With a Traitor's Heart  --  for Six More Years

    And that's the way it is, and has been, all along for these past two years. There have been non-stop media allegations that, one way or another, our narcissistic, loud-mouthed, overtly racist U.S. president has a traitor's heart. Any errors or inaccuracies  --  and there have been a shocking number of retracted "scoops," as well as screwups like the Caribbean crickets that have just been ignored  --  are excused in service of this larger truth: Our president has a traitor's heart.

    But I already knew that! We all did!

    We knew it the moment he said , "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you'll be able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing"  --  referencing some official e-mails of Hilary Clinton's that were improperly handled and got deleted. (Among the onion layers of irony to this political season is that Trump pioneered the 21st century witch hunt. There has never been any evidence that Clinton's deleted emails represent anything at all  --  yet Trump hammered away at this as if it mattered, until one day it did. And he didn't even suggest investigations, he skipped straight to "lock her up!").

    Being racist, or stupid, or sexist, or a bully, or a New York real estate developer  --  all of these are deep character flaws. They are not always crimes. (Sexually assaulting someone is always a crime, however, even if you are a TV star and remember your breath mints.)

    And yet, again, we already knew all of this. Remember this transcript from The New York Times ?

    Trump : I did try and fuck her. She was married and I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, "I'll show you where they have some nice furniture." I took her out furniture  --  I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn't get there.
    Trump : Yeah, that's her [peeking out a trailer window at a different target, an approaching actress] . I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful  --  I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
    Billy Bush [a fawning minor TV personality] : Whatever you want.
    Trump : Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.

    Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.

    I share your pain. And I have no doubt he'd trade his own son for majority ownership of a moderately nice golf course. But I'm also, frankly, no longer very interested in him. I'm much more interested in us  --  the rest of us.

    What happened to us?

    Well, I'll amend that slightly. I am of course quite interested in seeing Donald Trump leave office. I suspect, however, that these two-plus years of journalistic malpractice  --  a politically-motivated Red Scare at a time when we don't even have any Reds anymore, just Russians  --  has locked in his second term. (What's that? Impeachment you say? Oh please. He'd set up a government-in-exile in Mar-a-Lago and then he'd be around for twenty more years instead of six. And he'd have half the nation with him the entire time.) So thank you for that, MSNBC and NPR and New York Times.

    # # #

    [Mar 31, 2019] Wokester's Nightmare The Burning Platform

    Notable quotes:
    "... Mr. Mueller himself should be summoned to a grand jury to answer for his deceitful inquisition, his abuse of FISA warrants, and the malicious prosecutions of General Michael Flynn and Trump campaign supernumerary George Papadopoulos. This story is far from over and it is now moving in the opposite direction. Former CIA Director John Brennan is going down for chaperoning the Steele Dossier through congress, the FBI, and the news media. And many others will follow. It will go very hard on the claque of lunatics like Rep. Adam Schiff and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow as the painful consequences unspool. The Democratic presidential hopefuls will have to run shrieking from this giant hairball, but it will roll over them anyway and possibly even flatten their party. ..."
    Mar 31, 2019 | www.theburningplatform.com

    The tides are shifting. Something's in the wind. And it's not just the fecund vapors of spring. The political soap opera of RussiaGate ended like a fart in a windstorm last weekend, leaving Mr. Mueller's cheerleaders de-witched, bothered, and bewildered. And then a crude attempt was made to cram the Jussie Smollett case down Chicago's memory hole. These two unrelated hoaxes emanating out of Wokester Land may signal something momentous: the end of the era when anything goes and nothing matters .

    Welcome to the new era of consequences! All of a sudden, a whole lot of people who have been punking the public-at-large will have to answer for their behavior. Despite the fog of misdirection blowing out of The New York Times , The WashPo , CNN, and MSNBC, it's become obvious that the RussiaGate hoax was kicked off by Hillary Clinton's campaign and a cabal of Obama appointees in several executive agencies. The evidence is public, fully documented, and overwhelming that the so-called Steele Dossier was the sole animating instrument in both the 2016 pre-election effort to incriminate the Golden Golem of Greatness, and the Mueller Investigation launched post-election to cover-up those same political misdeeds of the Clinton campaign, the FBI, the Department of Justice, the CIA, NSA, and State Department.

    It's also very likely that Robert Mueller learned that the Steele Dossier was a fraud in the summer of 2017, if not shortly after his appointment in May of that year, and yet he dragged out his investigation for almost two years in order to defame and antagonize Mr. Trump -- and deflect attention from the ugly truth of the matter. It is certain Mr. Mueller knew that the Steele Dossier was purchased by Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS political "research" company, which was simultaneously in the paid employ of Mrs. Clinton and the Russian political lobbying agency Prevezon (as reported by Sean Davis in The Federalist ). If the FBI brass did not bring that to Mr. Mueller's attention right away, then either their incompetence is epic or they are criminally liable for concealing the hoax.

    There is your essential collusion , and a lot of participants are going down because of it. Mr. Mueller himself should be summoned to a grand jury to answer for his deceitful inquisition, his abuse of FISA warrants, and the malicious prosecutions of General Michael Flynn and Trump campaign supernumerary George Papadopoulos. This story is far from over and it is now moving in the opposite direction. Former CIA Director John Brennan is going down for chaperoning the Steele Dossier through congress, the FBI, and the news media. And many others will follow. It will go very hard on the claque of lunatics like Rep. Adam Schiff and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow as the painful consequences unspool. The Democratic presidential hopefuls will have to run shrieking from this giant hairball, but it will roll over them anyway and possibly even flatten their party.

    In another instance of justice miscarried, charges in the Jussie Smollett racial attack hoax were dismissed in a hasty, unannounced motion by the assistant to Cook County Prosecutor Kim Foxx, who had pretended to recuse herself from the case, but actually did not follow the proper procedure for doing it. Ms. Foxx has apparently been consorting with members of Jussie Smollett's family and with Michele Obama's former chief of staff, Tina Tchen, a Chicago political operator. It's easy to imagine what they were bargaining about: the fear that Mr. Smollett would have a very hard time serving any sort of prison sentence, given his celebrity status, his sexual orientation, and the laughable idiocy of his crime. It was probably a reasonable fear -- but not a viable excuse for summarily dropping the case. The further excuse that he had already paid the price by hanging out in Jessie Jackson's Operation Push headquarters for two days is also a joke, of course.

    The Chicago police chief and mayor objected loudly, as did the Illinois Prosecutors Bar Association, which declared the move was "abnormal and unfamiliar to those who practice law in criminal courthouses across the State." An understatement for sure. What's next for Jussie? The City of Chicago will tote up the cost of investigating his stupid prank and haul him into civil court to compel him to pay for it.

    Further and greater consequences will emanate from the Smollett hoax. Despite former Vice-president Joe Biden's recent lamentations over the wickedness of "white man's culture," many American's will show a renewed interest in that hoary old system devised by white folks called Anglo-American law, which includes such niceties as due process. The Jussie Smollett scam may be the end of many intersectional culture heroes getting a free pass on their bad behavior. Won't that be refreshing?

    [Mar 31, 2019] Trump and GOP Allies Want Investigation of Mueller Probe s Roots

    Notable quotes:
    "... Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, tweeted: "Time to investigate the Obama officials who concocted and spread the Russian conspiracy hoax!" Representative Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, said "underlying documents" supporting what became Mueller's probe should be released to the public. ..."
    "... A McCain associate, David Kramer, acknowledged in a deposition in a libel case that he spread word of the dossier to several news organizations. ..."
    Mar 25, 2019 | www.bloomberg.com

    President Donald Trump and a key ally, Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, said Monday that after Robert Mueller closed his Russia probe, they want an investigation of the investigators.

    Graham said at a news conference that Attorney General William Barr should appoint a new special counsel to examine why the U.S. government, under President Barack Obama, decided to open an investigation into Russian election interference in 2016, and whether it was an excuse to spy on Trump's campaign.

    "Was it a ruse to get into the Trump campaign?" Graham said at the news conference. "I don't know but I'm going to try to find out."

    Trump told reporters at the White House that unspecified "people" behind the Russia probe would "be looked at."

    The remarks show that Trump and some of his allies have retribution and score-settling on their minds after Mueller found no evidence that the president or his campaign colluded with the Kremlin's election interference. It's unclear whom Trump wants investigated, but possibilities include former FBI Director James Comey, whom he fired in May 2017; Obama's CIA Director John Brennan, whom Trump stripped of his security clearance last year; and other former intelligence and Justice Department officials who have vocally criticized the president.

    The stage is also set for dueling and contradictory congressional investigations. In the House, controlled by Democrats, several committees have opened investigations into the president's financial and business affairs, and Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler said Sunday he wants Barr to testify soon on his finding that Mueller didn't produce sufficient evidence that Trump obstructed justice by interfering in the Russia inquiry.

    The Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, on Monday blocked a vote on a measure by the Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, calling for Mueller's report to be made public. McConnell said Barr should have time to consider which portions of the report can be publicly released given concerns about classified information, ongoing investigations and other information protected by law.

    Republican Allies

    Several other Republicans backed Graham and Trump on Monday. Senate Oversight Committee Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said he'd like to work with Graham "to get those answers for the American public."

    "We need to find out what happened," he said in an interview.

    Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, tweeted: "Time to investigate the Obama officials who concocted and spread the Russian conspiracy hoax!" Representative Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, said "underlying documents" supporting what became Mueller's probe should be released to the public.

    "Let them decide for themselves whether this investigation was warranted -- or whether it was a two-year long episode of political targeting, driven by FBI and DOJ executives who wanted to retaliate against a legitimately elected president," Meadows said in an interview.

    Graham said his committee would also look into the FBI's handling of the inquiry into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, saying that Comey's actions in that investigation "did affect" the 2016 election. Comey held a news conference in July 2016 to announce that Clinton wouldn't be charged with a crime, and then announced less than two weeks before the election that the investigation had been re-opened after additional emails were discovered.

    'Evil Things'

    Trump's indication that unnamed people responsible for the probe would be investigated was vague. He didn't name anyone, and after he made similar remarks on Sunday, White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley told reporters that Barr hadn't been directed to open any investigations of Democrats.

    "People that have done such harm to our country," Trump complained on Monday. "We've gone through a period of really bad things happening. Those people will certainly be looked at. I've been looking at them for a long time and I'm saying, why haven't they been looked at. They lied to Congress. Many of them. You know who they are. They've done so many evil things."

    Trump added that he hasn't considered pardoning anyone convicted in connection to Mueller's probe.

    Graham said he planned to talk with Barr on Monday and hoped to hold a public hearing with the attorney general to explain his findings in the Mueller probe. Barr sent a four-page letter to Congress on Sunday summarizing Mueller's findings, which have not been publicly released.

    "I'm asking him to lay it all out," Graham said.

    Both Trump and Graham said they support Barr publicly releasing as much of Mueller's report as possible. The investigation turned out "100 percent" as it should have, Trump told reporters.

    Dossier Distribution

    Trump has previously singled out individuals over their role in the probe, calling for an investigation into the " other side " of the investigation. He's mentioned Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and Justice Department attorney Bruce Ohr.

    Graham also said he advised his friend and Senate colleague John McCain to give the FBI the so-called Steele dossier on Trump, rebutting the president's accusations that McCain tried to hinder his 2016 election.

    Graham told reporters that McCain, an Arizona Republican who died last year, had shown him the unverified collection of intelligence reports on Trump's links to Russia that was put together by a former British spy, Christopher Steele. Steele was commissioned to compile the information by an opposition research firm hired by Democrats.

    McCain put the dossier in his safe and handed it over to the FBI the next day, Graham said.

    A McCain associate, David Kramer, acknowledged in a deposition in a libel case that he spread word of the dossier to several news organizations.

    -- With assistance by Billy House

    ( Updates with McConnell blocking Schumer measure in seventh paragraph. ) Published on ‎March‎ ‎25‎, ‎2019‎ ‎12‎:‎37‎ ‎PM
    Updated on ‎March‎ ‎25‎, ‎2019‎ ‎5‎:‎58‎ ‎PM

    [Mar 31, 2019] Seems to me what that BigLie's of Us propaganda is this tale: Relations with Russia during the post-USSR age were going along swell until Russia began involved in the Venezuelan Crisis.

    Mar 31, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    karlof1 , Mar 30, 2019 7:15:26 PM | link

    b--

    Seems to me what that BigLie's about is this tale: Relations with Russia during the post-USSR age were going along swell until Russia began involved in the Venezuelan Crisis.

    The attempt is to try a new narrative using a different angle to blame Russia which is the goal of the BigLie. Signal a new line of approach in dealing with the attitude toward Russia to the trusty echoers of His Master's Voice.

    That's what it seems, b.

    [Mar 30, 2019] The US desperately needs Venezuelan oil

    Highly recommended!
    Mar 30, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    dh-mtl , Mar 30, 2019 5:00:04 PM | link

    The U.S. desperately needs Venezuelan oil.

    They lost control of Saudi Arabia, after trying to take down MBS and then betraying him by unexpectedly allowing waivers on Iranian oil in November.

    The U.S. cannot take down Iran without Venezuelan oil. What is worse, right now they don't have access to enough heavy oil to meet their own needs.

    Controlling the world oil trade is central to Trump's strategy for the U.S. to continue its empire. Without Venezuelan oil, the U.S. is a bit player in the energy markets, and will remain so.

    Having Russia block the U.S. in Venezuela adds insult to injury. After Crimea and Syria, now Venezuela, Russia exposes the U.S. as a loud mouthed-bully without the capacity to back up its threats, a 'toothless tiger', an 'emperor without clothes'.

    If the U.S. cannot dislodge Russia from Venezuela, its days as 'global hegemon' are finished. For this reason the U.S. will continue escalating the situation with ever-riskier actions, until it succeeds or breaks.

    In the same manor, if Russia backs off, its resistance to the U.S. is finished. And the U.S. will eventually move to destroy Russia, like it has been actively trying to do for the past 30 years. Russia cannot and will not back off.

    Venezuela thus becomes the stage where the final act in the clash of empires plays out. Will the world become a multi-polar world, in which the U.S. becomes a relatively isolated and insignificant pole? Or will the world become more fully dominated by a brutal, erratic hegemon?

    All options are on the table. For both sides!

    [Mar 30, 2019] The Real Costs of Russiagate

    Highly recommended!
    So Russiagate smoothly transferred in Neo-McCarthyism and it will poison the US political atmosphere for a decade or two.
    Notable quotes:
    "... But as I foresaw well before the summary of Mueller's "Russia investigation" appeared, there is unlikely to be much, if any. Too many personal and organizational interests are too deeply invested in Russiagate. Not surprisingly, leading perpetrators instead immediately met the summary with a torrent of denials, goal-post shifts, obfuscations, and calls for more Russiagate "investigations." ..."
    "... Clamorous allegations that the Kremlin "attacked our elections" and thereby put Trump in the White House, despite the lack of any evidence, cast doubt on the legitimacy of American elections ..."
    "... Persistent demands to "secure our elections from hostile powers" -- a politically and financially profitable mania, it seems -- can only further abet and perpetuate declining confidence in the entire electoral process ..."
    "... Still more, if some crude Russian social-media outputs could so dupe voters, what does this tell us about what US elites, which originated these allegations, really think of those voters, of the American people? ..."
    "... Mainstream media are, of course, a foundational institution of American democracy, especially national ones, newspapers and television, with immense influence inside the Beltway and, in ramifying synergic ways, throughout the country. Their Russiagate media malpractice, as I have termed it, may have been the worst such episode in modern American history. ..."
    "... Almost equally remarkable and lamentable, we learn that even now, after Mueller's finding is known, top executives of the Times and other leading Russiagate media outlets, including The Washington Post and CNN, " have no regrets ." ..."
    "... Leading members of the party initiated, inflated, and prolonged it. They did nothing to prevent inquisitors like Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from becoming the cable-news face of the party. Or to rein in or disassociate the party from the outlandish excesses of "The Resistance." With very few exceptions, elected and other leading Democrats did nothing to stop -- and therefore further abetted -- the institutional damage being done by Russiagate allegations. ..."
    "... Rachel Maddow continues to hype "the underlying reality that Russia did in fact attack us." By any reasonable definition of "attack," no, it did not, and scarcely any allegation could be more recklessly warmongering, a perception the Democratic Party will for this and other Russiagate commissions have to endure, or not. (When Mueller's full report is published, we will see if he too indulged in this dangerous absurdity. A few passages in the summary suggest he might have done so.) ..."
    "... Finally, but potentially not least, the new Cold War with Russia has itself become an institution pervading American political, economic, media, and cultural life. Russiagate has made it more dangerous, more fraught with actual war, than the Cold War we survived, as I explain in War with Russia? Recall only that Russiagate allegations further demonized "Putin's Russia," thwarted Trump's necessary attempts to "cooperate with Russia" as somehow "treasonous," criminalized détente thinking and "inappropriate contacts with Russia" -- in short, policies and practices that previously helped to avert nuclear war. Meanwhile, the Russiagate spectacle has caused many ordinary Russians who once admired America to now be " derisive and scornful " toward our political life. ..."
    Mar 30, 2019 | www.thenation.com

    But as I foresaw well before the summary of Mueller's "Russia investigation" appeared, there is unlikely to be much, if any. Too many personal and organizational interests are too deeply invested in Russiagate. Not surprisingly, leading perpetrators instead immediately met the summary with a torrent of denials, goal-post shifts, obfuscations, and calls for more Russiagate "investigations." Joy Reid of MSNBC, which has been a citadel of Russiagate allegations along with CNN, even suggested that Mueller and Attorney General William Barr were themselves engaged in " a cover-up ."

    Contrary to a number of major media outlets, from Bloomberg News to The Wall Street Journal , nor does Mueller's exculpatory finding actually mean that " Russiagate is dead " and indeed that " it expired in an instant ." Such conclusions reveal a lack of historical and political understanding. Nearly three years of Russiagate's toxic allegations have entered the American political-media elite bloodstream, and they almost certainly will reappear again and again in one form or another.

    This is an exceedingly grave danger, because the real costs of Russiagate are not the estimated $25–40 million spent on the Mueller investigation but the corrosive damage it has already done to the institutions of American democracy -- damage done not by an alleged "Trump-Putin axis" but by Russsigate's perpetrators themselves. Having examined this collateral damage in my recently published book War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate , I will only note them here.

    § Clamorous allegations that the Kremlin "attacked our elections" and thereby put Trump in the White House, despite the lack of any evidence, cast doubt on the legitimacy of American elections everywhere -- national, state, and local. If true, or even suspected, how can voters have confidence in the electoral foundations of American democracy? Persistent demands to "secure our elections from hostile powers" -- a politically and financially profitable mania, it seems -- can only further abet and perpetuate declining confidence in the entire electoral process.

    Still more, if some crude Russian social-media outputs could so dupe voters, what does this tell us about what US elites, which originated these allegations, really think of those voters, of the American people?

    § Defamatory Russsiagate allegations that Trump was a "Kremlin puppet" and thus "illegitimate" were aimed at the president but hit the presidency itself, degrading the institution, bringing it under suspicion, casting doubt on its legitimacy. And if an "agent of a hostile foreign power" could occupy the White House once, a "Manchurian candidate," why not again? Will Republicans be able to resist making such allegations against a future Democratic president? In any event, Hillary Clinton's failed campaign manager, Robby Mook, has already told us that there will be a " next time ."

    § Mainstream media are, of course, a foundational institution of American democracy, especially national ones, newspapers and television, with immense influence inside the Beltway and, in ramifying synergic ways, throughout the country. Their Russiagate media malpractice, as I have termed it, may have been the worst such episode in modern American history. No mainstream media did anything to expose, for example, two crucial and fraudulent Russiagate documents -- the so-called Steele Dossier and the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment -- but instead relied heavily on them for their own narratives. Little more need be said here about this institutional self-degradation. Glenn Greenwald and a few others followed and exposed it throughout, and now Matt Taibbi has given us a meticulously documented account of that systematic malpractice , concluding that Mueller's failure to confirm the media's Russiagate allegations "is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media."

    Nor, it must be added, was this entirely inadvertent or accidental. On August 8, 2016, the trend-setting New York Times published on its front page an astonishing editorial manifesto by its media critic. Asking whether "normal standards" should apply to candidate Trump, he explained that they should not: "You have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century." Let others decide whether this Times proclamation unleashed the highly selective, unbalanced, questionably factual "journalism" that has so degraded Russiagate media or instead the publication sought to justify what was already underway. In either case, this remarkable -- and ramifying -- Times rejection of its own professed standards should not be forgotten. Almost equally remarkable and lamentable, we learn that even now, after Mueller's finding is known, top executives of the Times and other leading Russiagate media outlets, including The Washington Post and CNN, " have no regrets ."

    § For better or worse, America has a two-party political system, which means that the Democratic Party is also a foundational institution. Little more also need be pointed out regarding its self-degrading role in the Russiagate fraud. Leading members of the party initiated, inflated, and prolonged it. They did nothing to prevent inquisitors like Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from becoming the cable-news face of the party. Or to rein in or disassociate the party from the outlandish excesses of "The Resistance." With very few exceptions, elected and other leading Democrats did nothing to stop -- and therefore further abetted -- the institutional damage being done by Russiagate allegations.

    As for Mueller's finding, the party's virtual network, MSNBC, remains undeterred.

    Rachel Maddow continues to hype "the underlying reality that Russia did in fact attack us." By any reasonable definition of "attack," no, it did not, and scarcely any allegation could be more recklessly warmongering, a perception the Democratic Party will for this and other Russiagate commissions have to endure, or not. (When Mueller's full report is published, we will see if he too indulged in this dangerous absurdity. A few passages in the summary suggest he might have done so.)

    § Finally, but potentially not least, the new Cold War with Russia has itself become an institution pervading American political, economic, media, and cultural life. Russiagate has made it more dangerous, more fraught with actual war, than the Cold War we survived, as I explain in War with Russia? Recall only that Russiagate allegations further demonized "Putin's Russia," thwarted Trump's necessary attempts to "cooperate with Russia" as somehow "treasonous," criminalized détente thinking and "inappropriate contacts with Russia" -- in short, policies and practices that previously helped to avert nuclear war. Meanwhile, the Russiagate spectacle has caused many ordinary Russians who once admired America to now be " derisive and scornful " toward our political life.

    [Mar 30, 2019] You don't like Trump? Bolton? Clinton? All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership positions in America are entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may imagine they are faking cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes, but the cluelessness is quite real and extends to the entire population.

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership positions in America are entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may imagine they are faking cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes, but the cluelessness is quite real and extends to the entire population. ..."
    "... Decades ago while in a leftist organization debate was raised as to how to find valid information to inform ourselves with. It was well understood that the vast majority of the western corporate mass media was a brainwashing operation to keep the masses clueless and supporting imperialist war but, we reasoned, the ruling class itself would need to be kept informed with quality information in order to feel confident that they were making good decisions. ..."
    "... But things change. Note how the Russiagate skeptics in the US were attacked by the desperately faithful: If you focused attention on flaws in the Russiagate conspiracy theory then the general consensus was that you were defending Trump. ..."
    "... This condition has arisen from literally generations of propaganda instilling as reality in American media consumers the myth of "American Exceptionalism" . The current crop of American adults have been raised by parents who themselves have been thoroughly indoctrinated in this alter reality. The disease is literally universal across the nation, from lowliest and most oppressed Black transvestites to the CEOs of the biggest corporations. ..."
    "... The Washington Post used to be one of the journals that the elites looked to in order to help inform their decisions, but now in the post-truth, or relative truth, world these information sources have increasingly sought to align their information products with the "proper" relative truths that reinforce the myth of "American Exceptionalism" , even if that is in conflict with objective and empirical reality. ..."
    "... In short, Washington Bezos Post writers are not moronic or drunk. They are delusional . They are in the grips of a delusion that afflicts the entire United States, and portions of the rest of the world as well ..."
    Mar 30, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    William Gruff , Mar 30, 2019 5:18:08 PM | link

    "... Washington Bezos Post writers are moronic or drunk."

    What ails them is far more complicated and vastly more sinister.

    One often hears people say of other countries "It isn't the people of Elbonia whom I hate, it is their government." It may be difficult for some in Europe, where there remains a vestige of an imperative to foster a worldview based upon objective reality, to come to grips with the fact that the problem with America has metastasized and spread to the level of the individual citizens... all of them, to one degree or another. You don't like Trump? Bolton? Clinton?

    All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership positions in America are entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may imagine they are faking cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes, but the cluelessness is quite real and extends to the entire population.

    How did this happen to America?

    Decades ago while in a leftist organization debate was raised as to how to find valid information to inform ourselves with. It was well understood that the vast majority of the western corporate mass media was a brainwashing operation to keep the masses clueless and supporting imperialist war but, we reasoned, the ruling class itself would need to be kept informed with quality information in order to feel confident that they were making good decisions.

    With this in mind we identified journals and sources that the capitalist elites themselves relied upon to inform their decisions.

    Things like the CIA World Factbook, for instance, even though created by an organization devoted to disinformation, could be trusted back then to be relatively dependable.

    But things change. Note how the Russiagate skeptics in the US were attacked by the desperately faithful: If you focused attention on flaws in the Russiagate conspiracy theory then the general consensus was that you were defending Trump. The possibility that you could be defending reason and truth is still dismissed out of hand. Why is that? Because in America (it's a mind disease spreading to Europe, apparently) truth is relative and reason has become just whatever justifies what you wish to be the truth; therefore, those who propose a "truth" that conflicts with what people want to believe are agents of some enemy.

    This condition has arisen from literally generations of propaganda instilling as reality in American media consumers the myth of "American Exceptionalism" . The current crop of American adults have been raised by parents who themselves have been thoroughly indoctrinated in this alter reality. The disease is literally universal across the nation, from lowliest and most oppressed Black transvestites to the CEOs of the biggest corporations.

    As prior generations of the ruling elites from the post WWII era who still retained some sense for the importance of objective reality have died off they have been replaced by the newer generation for whom reality is entirely subjective. If they want to believe their gender is mountain panda then that's their right as Americans! Likewise if they want to believe that America's bombing is humanitarian and god's gift to the species, then anyone who suggests otherwise is obviously a KGB troll.

    The Washington Post used to be one of the journals that the elites looked to in order to help inform their decisions, but now in the post-truth, or relative truth, world these information sources have increasingly sought to align their information products with the "proper" relative truths that reinforce the myth of "American Exceptionalism" , even if that is in conflict with objective and empirical reality.

    To do otherwise would be to aid and give comfort to America's "enemies" (do keep in mind that America is a nation at war - has been for decades - and that workers in the corporate mass media are very much conscious of their roles in that ongoing war effort, to the point that they see themselves as information warriors fighting shadowy enemies that only exist in their own relative reality bubbles).

    In short, Washington Bezos Post writers are not moronic or drunk. They are delusional . They are in the grips of a delusion that afflicts the entire United States, and portions of the rest of the world as well.

    Some Americans have broken free from this Matrix-like delusion, but the numbers remain somewhat small... certainly less than one or two percent of the population, and those who have broken free of the delusion will never be given a soapbox to speak to the rest of the population from by the corporate elites.

    mourning dove , Mar 30, 2019 6:36:14 PM | link
    William Gruff @33

    I think you have wildly underestimated the number of Americans who are very aware of what is going on with our country and the world. More than 40% of eligible voters elect not to participate in elections realizing the futility of it, and withholding their consent to this regime. It's a feature of propaganda to engender feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and feelings of isolation by falsely portraying a consensus among the population for the policies of the regime. Resist!

    [Mar 30, 2019] Why Is The Washington Post Inventing Warming Ties Between Trump And Moscow

    Notable quotes:
    "... Woodward was Naval intelligence. Watergate was the coup that established the Bush cabal. ..."
    "... "What, then, is the US doing in Syria, Iraq, Poland, Lithuania, South Korea, Japan, etc ad nauseam?" Full Spectrum Dominance is ubiquitous like an atmosphere i.e. you're not supposed to notice. Are you this persnickety with oxygen too? ..."
    "... Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ..."
    Mar 30, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Why Is The Washington Post Inventing "Warming Ties" Between Trump And Moscow? Red Ryder , Mar 30, 2019 1:28:38 PM | link

    Sometimes it is impossible to discern whether Washington Post writers are moronic or drunk.

    In a front page piece today about Russia's engagement in Venezuela the three authors include this line:

    In an era of generally warming ties between the Trump administration and Moscow , Russia's deepening involvement in Venezuela is creating a flash point by challenging the U.S. effort to force Maduro from office.

    What please are the signs that we are in an "in an era of generally warming ties between the Trump administration and Moscow" ?

    The piece includes nothing that supports that claim.

    The U.S. is occupying parts of Syria against Russia's will. It is threatening Russia by positioning ever more NATO forces at its borders. Trump left the INF treaty with Russia. He opposed Russia wherever he could . Nothing of that has changed.

    In fact yesterday Bloomberg reported that the U.S. is reading new sanctions against Russia for the MI6 stunt of vanishing Sergej Skripal:

    The White House has received a long-awaited package of new sanctions on Russia, intended to punish the Kremlin for a 2018 nerve-agent attack on a former Russian spy in the U.K.

    Last week Russia deployed some 100 military technicians and cyber-defense specialists to Venezuela. They will test and probably upgrade Venezuela's S-300 air defense systems. They will also help to check the control systems of Venezuela's Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant and the Guri Dam that trice led to large scale electricity outages during the last month. Venzuela suspects that U.S. cyber attacks led to those failures.

    Also yesterday Trump's special envoy for Venezuela Elliot Abrams and National Security Advisor John Bolton threatened even more sanctions against Russia for its hardly existing footprint in Venezuela:

    U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been given a list of options to respond to Russia's growing presence in Venezuela in support of Maduro, including new sanctions, said Elliott Abrams, the U.S. special representative for Venezuela.

    "We have options and it would be a mistake for the Russians to think they have a free hand here. They don't," Abrams told reporters at the State Department.

    U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this week said "Russia has to get out" of Venezuela and said "all options" were open to force Russia to do so after two Russian air force planes carrying nearly 100 military personnel landed outside Caracas.

    Trump's national security adviser John Bolton issued a second warning on Friday in a strongly worded formal statement.

    "We strongly caution actors external to the Western Hemisphere against deploying military assets to Venezuela, or elsewhere in the Hemisphere, with the intent of establishing or expanding military operations," Bolton said.

    "We will consider such provocative actions as a direct threat to international peace and security in the region. We will continue to defend and protect the interests of the United States, and those of our partners in the Western Hemisphere," he said.

    Again we ask: What please are the signs that we are "in an era of generally warming ties between the Trump administration and Moscow"?

    What is the purpose of making that claim?

    Posted by b on March 30, 2019 at 01:17 PM | Permalink

    Comments Anything less than a war against Russia, somewhere, anywhere, is "warming relations" to the psycho-Russophobes.

    Never Mind the Bollocks , Mar 30, 2019 1:29:10 PM | link

    Russiagate collapse shows CIA black propaganda loops are obsolete and ineffective
    John Anthony La Pietra , Mar 30, 2019 1:46:52 PM | link
    My first thought is that they still haven't caught on to (or caught up with) the sarcasm in b's list of things the Common Orange-Crested Dotard and his flock have "done for" Russia, and are continuing to try to link Trump and Putin even in the absence of help from Mueller.
    Jackrabbit , Mar 30, 2019 1:58:23 PM | link
    b: What please are the signs that we are "in an era of generally warming ties ..."

    Russia and USA didn't go to war in Syria, and now Trump says he wants to leave Syria.

    He wouldn't say it if he didn't mean it, would he?/sarc

    james , Mar 30, 2019 2:05:35 PM | link
    it is stretching it to say because the mueller investigation can up ziltch, that the ties are warming with russia.. more warm milk with arsenic in it as i see it... it's not like the wapo has never offered arsenic before is it??
    Jackrabbit , Mar 30, 2019 2:20:52 PM | link
    A set up?

    "Generally warning ties" will soon give way to OUTRAGE that "Trump's Syrian appeasement encouraged Putin to meddle in Venezeula!!!"

    dh , Mar 30, 2019 2:24:58 PM | link
    Warming ties? It is an extraordinary way to describe things. I can only see the choice of words as yet another attempt to blame Russia for the deterioration in relations. i.e. Trump is trying to mend fences and look what they do!
    b real , Mar 30, 2019 2:25:43 PM | link
    it's a smug way of saying things are heating up between the two powers and this can become a flash point
    BM , Mar 30, 2019 2:26:15 PM | link
    "We strongly caution actors external to the Western Hemisphere against deploying military assets to Venezuela, or elsewhere in the Hemisphere, with the intent of establishing or expanding military operations," Bolton said.

    "We will consider such provocative actions as a direct threat to international peace and security in the region.

    What, then, is the US doing in Syria, Iraq, Poland, Lithuania, South Korea, Japan, etc ad nauseam? Are all of these countries also in the US backyard? When the US is creating provocations on the Russian and Chinese borders many thousands of miles from the US, are Russia and China to blame for "threatening" the US's backyard in Lithuania and South Korea etc?

    The US have not noticed that the virtual world they have created for themselves conflicts with the reality on the ground. Instead of correcting their erroneous world-view they try to imagine changes in the world into conformation with their erroneous world-view, thereby making the error even greater. They are descending into ever increasing madness.

    mourning dove , Mar 30, 2019 2:32:40 PM | link
    They went all-in on a bluff, now that it's been called, they just can't walk away from the table.
    Harry Law , Mar 30, 2019 2:42:49 PM | link
    The Russians don't realize that the US are the unassailable Masters of the Universe, if more countries like Germany and Russia ignore their sanctions they will look like a paper tiger and lose their credibility, I look forward to that day.
    GeorgeV , Mar 30, 2019 2:43:57 PM | link
    OMG! How far the mighty MSM doyen The Washington Post has fallen. Those halcyon days of Woodward and Bernstein are now but a distant memory. The shinning victory of driving the hated President Richard Nixon from high office has dimmed to the level of a fading myth. Sic transit gloria! That vaunted stable of journalists that once terrified and bedeviled those at the acme of political power, has sunk to the nadir of the profession, to wit: supermarket tabloids! We will miss you Walter Cronkite! Farewell Edward R. Murrow! Good bye H.L. Mencken. The Fourth Estate is in the hands of morons and drunks. We the people have lost.
    hopehely , Mar 30, 2019 2:48:37 PM | link
    For the globalist hawk, Bolton's grasp on geography is quite limited.
    The far eastern part of Russia is actually in the western hemisphere. So, Russia is technically part of western hemisphere too.
    BTW, only 3 European countries are completely in western hemisphere: Iceland, Ireland and Portugal.
    UK, France and Spain are partly in both. The rest of Europe is in the eastern hemisphere, and no part of the US is in it.
    AntiSpin , Mar 30, 2019 2:51:19 PM | link
    @ BM | Mar 30, 2019 2:26:15 PM | 9
    " The US have not noticed that the virtual world they have created for themselves conflicts with the reality on the ground. Instead of correcting their erroneous world-view they try to imagine changes in the world into conformation with their erroneous world-view . . . "

    And it's not just the so-called "leadership." There is, for example, a once-pretty-good left-wing site that has become a groveling pseudo-left site, with a significant number of members who think of something that they wish were true, and then just post comments stating that it is true, and absolutely refuse to acknowledge any evidence to the contrary.

    I do not remember who posted this link here recently, but it presents a good explanation of why some people behave that way:
    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/03/26/the-illusory-truth-effect-how-millions-were-duped-by-russiagate/

    hopehely , Mar 30, 2019 2:52:40 PM | link
    Posted by: mourning dove | Mar 30, 2019 2:32:40 PM | 10

    They went all-in on a bluff, now that it's been called, they just can't walk away from the table.

    Yes they can! They can do everything!

    mourning dove , Mar 30, 2019 3:02:17 PM | link
    @15
    I should have said that they WON'T walk away from the table. They sit there begging for credit to play another hand, and too many Americans will be only to happy to extend that credit.
    Harry , Mar 30, 2019 3:03:29 PM | link
    The Americans believe they have full spectrum dominance. They believe they can dictate terms to Russia. They are probably right. I worry about them being wrong.
    Brendan , Mar 30, 2019 3:26:39 PM | link
    The answer is that WaPo wants to cast doubt on Mueller's reluctant finding of no collusion. If WaPo did not hint at friendly relations between the Trump White House and the Kremlin, it would be admitting that its Russiagate reporting has been fake news for years. As WaPo reports it, it's just the same old Trump-Putin bromance.
    Pnyx , Mar 30, 2019 3:28:30 PM | link
    I can't stand that much quoted bullshit, especially when this comes from the world inflamer in chief Schnauzer Bolton.
    snake , Mar 30, 2019 3:32:52 PM | link

    They won't walk away from the table.. by: mourning dove @ 16; <= it more like they will continue to hide under the table.. i have yet to see a competent accurate list of events and concerns that justify.. invasion.... if anyone knows of one, please post it.


    A set up? <= "Generally warning ties" will soon give way to OUTRAGE
    that "Trump's Syrian appeasement encouraged Putin to meddle in Venezeula!!!"by: Jackrabbit | @ 6

    Syrian appeasement qualifies as "Trojan propaganda" see => https://southfront.org/dozens-of-terrorists-killed-in-new-us-led-coalition-airstrikes-on-isis-hideouts-in-euphrates-valley-video/

    17yr old Murdered by Israeli Snipers Todayhttp://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51352.htm
    https://southfront.org/french-belgian-intelligence-officers-are-planning-chemical-provocation-in-syrias-idlib-russian-mod/

    Maracatu , Mar 30, 2019 3:35:52 PM | link
    The fact that the current US administration is reviving the nearly two century old Monroe Doctrine speaks volumes. I'm curious as to how much success they are going to have with 'whipping' the dissenters back in line?
    Jen , Mar 30, 2019 3:38:10 PM | link
    When Hollywood no longer produces anything remotely resembling genuine comedy and all that the US film industry is useful for is generating live-action cartoon propaganda trash like "Captain Marvel" to recruit more cannon fodder for US wars around the planet, the world is in serious need of true stand-up comedy and outlets like Jeff Bozo's The Washington Post bravely step in to fill the breach.

    Maybe if WaPo wants to report any real news its readers can take seriously, it should advertise for another Saudi journalist to write op-eds for it and then send that journalist to the Saudi embassy in Istanbul.

    (Sarc alert)

    psychohistorian , Mar 30, 2019 4:08:44 PM | link

    B asked why the purpose of the claim
    "
    In an era of generally warming ties between the Trump administration and Moscow,
    "
    Era is a term usually associated with geologic time but can be abused to mean any time frame as it is here to say that black is white in State Dept. speak but to answer the why look at the rest of the sentence
    "
    Russia's deepening involvement in Venezuela is creating a flash point by challenging the U.S. effort to force Maduro from office.
    "
    To me the US is saying the we have done regime change before and got away with it ( within the era) but are being opposed now and bullying is our modus operendi if we can't use force so get out of our way.

    Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 30, 2019 4:08:44 PM | link

    mourning dove , Mar 30, 2019 4:11:40 PM | link
    Snake
    If you've ever played poker, you know that you can't play from under the table. It's the game that they won't walk away from.
    mourning dove , Mar 30, 2019 4:13:02 PM | link
    More clearly put, the game is the thing that they won't walk away from.
    bevin , Mar 30, 2019 4:20:23 PM | link
    So far as the Monroe Doctrine is concerned, the US is breaching it while Russia appears to be upholding it. Monroe was protecting Latin American countries, and none more than Venezuela, from imperialism; asserting their right to independence and self rule. Trump is denying them those rights by insisting on its power to determine what form their government should take and who should compose it.

    While it seems unlikely that the US will actually invade Venezuela it seems extremely probable that the US will employ, train, arm and direct mercenary terrorists to make life in Venezuela as difficult as it can. In this enterprise it will have the support of most of Venezuela's corrupt neighbours, who fear the spirit of the Bolivarian experiment much more than Washington does. This means that, with idiots like Bolsonaro and Duque in nominal command, anything might happen and that blood will flow.
    Today there is news that Trump has cut off aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. What is to be made of that?

    Realist , Mar 30, 2019 4:31:08 PM | link
    OMG! How far the mighty MSM doyen The Washington Post has fallen. Those halcyon days of Woodward and Bernstein are now but a distant memory. The shinning victory of driving the hated President Richard Nixon from high office ... a ... myth ... morons ... We the people ...

    Posted by: GeorgeV | Mar 30, 2019 2:43:57 PM | 12

    Woodward was Naval intelligence. Watergate was the coup that established the Bush cabal.

    [aside for b: thank you for forcing us to beacon to Google our presence and comments on your site. The "secret team" says danke.]

    worldblee , Mar 30, 2019 4:50:41 PM | link
    Why is the Post saying something so ridiculous? Because it fits into their fact-free narrative of Russian collusion
    dh-mtl , Mar 30, 2019 5:00:04 PM | link
    The U.S. desperately needs Venezuelan oil.

    They lost control of Saudi Arabia, after trying to take down MBS and then betraying him by unexpectedly allowing waivers on Iranian oil in November.

    The U.S. cannot take down Iran without Venezuelan oil. What is worse, right now they don't have access to enough heavy oil to meet their own needs.

    Controlling the world oil trade is central to Trump's strategy for the U.S. to continue its empire. Without Venezuelan oil, the U.S. is a bit player in the energy markets, and will remain so.

    Having Russia block the U.S. in Venezuela adds insult to injury. After Crimea and Syria, now Venezuela, Russia exposes the U.S. as a loud mouthed-bully without the capacity to back up its threats, a 'toothless tiger', an 'emperor without clothes'.

    If the U.S. cannot dislodge Russia from Venezuela, its days as 'global hegemon' are finished. For this reason the U.S. will continue escalating the situation with ever-riskier actions, until it succeeds or breaks.

    In the same manor, if Russia backs off, its resistance to the U.S. is finished. And the U.S. will eventually move to destroy Russia, like it has been actively trying to do for the past 30 years. Russia cannot and will not back off.

    Venezuela thus becomes the stage where the final act in the clash of empires plays out. Will the world become a multi-polar world, in which the U.S. becomes a relatively isolated and insignificant pole? Or will the world become more fully dominated by a brutal, erratic hegemon?

    All options are on the table. For both sides!

    CDWaller , Mar 30, 2019 5:06:12 PM | link
    Trump campaigned on detente with Russia. Trump has made an effort to stand by his promises, no matter how ill conceived or misguided. Looks like a shot across his bow, warning him not keep the one campaign promise that could actually lead away from the abyss?

    As for the WaPo, Bezos dependence on military contracts is an obvious motivation plus whatever the NSA has collected on him. As for his editors, journalists and many of the most irrational in government, something in the amphetamine family. Euphoria trumps conscience and gives the false impression that you are the smartest guy in the room. Makes logic and reasoning by cooler heads impossible.

    The next day let down invites repeat ingestion. Most unfortunate of all is the willingness of readers to swallow this sort of fear mongering and fairy stories without question, even to the point of defending them. I wonder what the eventual outcome will be when enough of us realize that the social contract between ourselves, our government and those institutions that are meant to support us are well and truly broken.

    uncle tungsten , Mar 30, 2019 5:07:46 PM | link
    Thaks b, now that is a delightful question to pose on the eve of April fool's day.

    My suggestion is that Cambridge Analytica and others backing Trump and the yankee imperial machine have been taking measurements of USA citizens opinions and are staggered by the results. They are panicked!

    I suspect that the cool aid is not working effectively these days and that far too many people see through the charades and lies. An interesting story lurks behind this and the entire 'hate russia' and 'monkey mueller' episode.

    The attitudes of the masses are spinning out of the manipulative hands of the deep state and the oligarchs. Do any of our comrades have a handle on this type of research and the implication for voter attitudes?

    William Gruff , Mar 30, 2019 5:18:08 PM | link
    "... Washington Bezos Post writers are moronic or drunk."

    What ails them is far more complicated and vastly more sinister.

    One often hears people say of other countries "It isn't the people of Elbonia whom I hate, it is their government." It may be difficult for some in Europe, where there remains a vestige of an imperative to foster a worldview based upon objective reality, to come to grips with the fact that the problem with America has metastasized and spread to the level of the individual citizens... all of them, to one degree or another. You don't like Trump? Bolton? Clinton? All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership positions in America are entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may imagine they are faking cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes, but the cluelessness is quite real and extends to the entire population.

    How did this happen to America?

    Decades ago while in a leftist organization debate was raised as to how to find valid information to inform ourselves with. It was well understood that the vast majority of the western corporate mass media was a brainwashing operation to keep the masses clueless and supporting imperialist war but, we reasoned, the ruling class itself would need to be kept informed with quality information in order to feel confident that they were making good decisions. With this in mind we identified journals and sources that the capitalist elites themselves relied upon to inform their decisions. Things like the CIA World Factbook, for instance, even though created by an organization devoted to disinformation, could be trusted back then to be relatively dependable.

    But things change. Note how the Russiagate skeptics in the US were attacked by the desperately faithful: If you focused attention on flaws in the Russiagate conspiracy theory then the general consensus was that you were defending Trump. The possibility that you could be defending reason and truth is still dismissed out of hand. Why is that? Because in America (it's a mind disease spreading to Europe, apparently) truth is relative and reason has become just whatever justifies what you wish to be the truth; therefore, those who propose a "truth" that conflicts with what people want to believe are agents of some enemy.

    This condition has arisen from literally generations of propaganda instilling as reality in American media consumers the myth of "American Exceptionalism" . The current crop of American adults have been raised by parents who themselves have been thoroughly indoctrinated in this alter reality. The disease is literally universal across the nation, from lowliest and most oppressed Black transvestites to the CEOs of the biggest corporations. As prior generations of the ruling elites from the post WWII era who still retained some sense for the importance of objective reality have died off they have been replaced by the newer generation for whom reality is entirely subjective. If they want to believe their gender is mountain panda then that's their right as Americans! Likewise if they want to believe that America's bombing is humanitarian and god's gift to the species, then anyone who suggests otherwise is obviously a KGB troll.

    The Washington Post used to be one of the journals that the elites looked to in order to help inform their decisions, but now in the post-truth, or relative truth, world these information sources have increasingly sought to align their information products with the "proper" relative truths that reinforce the myth of "American Exceptionalism" , even if that is in conflict with objective and empirical reality. To do otherwise would be to aid and give comfort to America's "enemies" (do keep in mind that America is a nation at war - has been for decades - and that workers in the corporate mass media are very much conscious of their roles in that ongoing war effort, to the point that they see themselves as information warriors fighting shadowy enemies that only exist in their own relative reality bubbles).

    In short, Washington Bezos Post writers are not moronic or drunk. They are delusional . They are in the grips of a delusion that afflicts the entire United States, and portions of the rest of the world as well. Some Americans have broken free from this Matrix-like delusion, but the numbers remain somewhat small... certainly less than one or two percent of the population, and those who have broken free of the delusion will never be given a soapbox to speak to the rest of the population from by the corporate elites.

    Maracatu , Mar 30, 2019 5:36:10 PM | link
    Engdhal doesn't think it is only about oil.

    To bevin@27, I suggest you review your history of the 1902 and 1903 blockade of Venezuela, particularly with regards to the enactment of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

    psychohistorian , Mar 30, 2019 5:47:01 PM | link
    @ Maracatu with the Engdhal link saying the real threat to the US is China

    The real threat to the Western empire (which owns the US) is the concept of socialistic finance which China is evolving. The West wants China to evolve to be the next host for private finance empire.....

    And its not working so we get this show we see as the bully of private finance is allowed to die of its own cancer....total erosion of public trust.

    Assuming the West will not go nuclear over Venezuela, when that loss of Venezuela becomes apparent to the rest of the world, the knives will come out and empire will eviscerate itself as former colonies cut themselves loose.

    Maximus , Mar 30, 2019 6:24:34 PM | link
    Did the smarties in the Whitehouse realize that Russia itself straddles both Hemispheres? ... idiots
    Full Spectrum Domino , Mar 30, 2019 6:33:52 PM | link
    @9

    "What, then, is the US doing in Syria, Iraq, Poland, Lithuania, South Korea, Japan, etc ad nauseam?" Full Spectrum Dominance is ubiquitous like an atmosphere i.e. you're not supposed to notice. Are you this persnickety with oxygen too?

    mourning dove , Mar 30, 2019 6:36:14 PM | link
    William Gruff @33

    I think you have wildly underestimated the number of Americans who are very aware of what is going on with our country and the world. More than 40% of eligible voters elect not to participate in elections realizing the futility of it, and withholding their consent to this regime. It's a feature of propaganda to engender feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and feelings of isolation by falsely portraying a consensus among the population for the policies of the regime. Resist!

    uncle tungsten , Mar 30, 2019 6:43:10 PM | link
    psychohistorian #35

    YES. I totally support that and would add that the response to the lucid campaign of the Sanders run for presidency and the current rising wave from that has the oligarchy spooked.

    In addition the 'one belt one road' infrastructure scheme has the Yankees totally out foxed. That is why the USA continue to meddle in Afghanistan and the western Islamic province of China plus threaten Iran etc etc. There is likely to be no future if oil and coal are pursued and even if there were no global warming from those sources they are soon (within a century) to be eclipsed by solar/hydro energy systems.

    The oligarchy has lost its grip, its credibility and soon its masses: see Gillet Jaunes.

    mourning dove , Mar 30, 2019 6:44:51 PM | link
    Adding to my comment @38

    By regime, I'm not referring to whoever sits in the Oval Office, but rather this system of domination. MSM does not accurately depict the attitudes and opinions of Americans, or anyone else. It only represents what they want us to think.

    uncle tungsten , Mar 30, 2019 6:51:29 PM | link
    One though I should add is that the future for rapid retrofit of energy and hydro Computer Numerically Controlled machine networks. After Stuxnet attack in Iran and now the same in Venezuela there will be few nation states that will be satisfied with the older systems.

    New technology will oust the old and likely from China or Russia.

    karlof1 , Mar 30, 2019 7:15:26 PM | link
    b--

    Seems to me what that BigLie's about is this tale: Relations with Russia during the post-USSR age were going along swell until Russia began involved in the Venezuelan Crisis. The attempt is to try a new narrative using a different angle to blame Russia which is the goal of the BigLie. Signal a new line of approach in dealing with the attitude toward Russia to the trusty echoers of His Master's Voice. That's what it seems, b.

    psychohistorian , Mar 30, 2019 7:51:28 PM | link
    Here is an insightful read on Trump's (s)election and Russiagate that I think is not OT

    Taibbi: On Russiagate and Our Refusal to Face Why Trump Won

    The take away quote

    "Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump."

    As a peedupon all I can see is that the elite seem to be fighting amongst themselves or (IMO) providing cover for ongoing elite power/control efforts. It might not be about private/public finance in a bigger picture but I can't see anything else that makes sense

    bevin , Mar 30, 2019 8:51:21 PM | link
    Maracatu@34

    Thanks for the tip. Coincidentally I have just been reading Mark Twain's autobiography on that matter.

    But I was talking not of the Roosevelt corollary nor of the post Spanish War era but Monroe and 1823. It is instructive that Monroe's Secretary of State at the time was John Q Adams who, it is generally held, was largely responsible for its wording. It was undoubtedly aimed in the first instance at Spain and intended to deter it from attempting to re-establish its influence, militarily.

    Of course the Doctrine depended upon the co-operation of the British who, through the Royal Navy, supplied the force needed to prevent Spain, or possibly France acting as its proxy, from foing then what the US is doing now.

    Zachary Smith , Mar 30, 2019 10:07:37 PM | link
    @ psychohistorian #43

    Thanks for the Taibbi link. I hadn't seen it, and found him to be in good form. I do think he ought to have spoken more about how bad Trump's Primary opponents were.

    Most of those reporters were going to slant their stories the way their bosses wanted. Their jobs are just too nice to do otherwise. Getting Trump as Hillary's opponent had to have been a goal for the majority of them. He was the patsy who would become squished roadkill in the treads of The Most Experienced Presidential Candidate In History. More on that for people with strong stomachs:

    What Hillary Clinton's Fans Love About Her 11/03/2016

    Sample:

    Hillary Clinton is a knowledgeable, well-prepared, reasonable, experienced, even-tempered, hardworking candidate, while her opponent is a stubbornly uninformed demagogue who has been proven again and again to be a liar on matters big and small. There is no objective basis on which to equate Hillary Clinton to her opponent.
    The author had it half right. Turns out the voters knew quite a bit about Trump, and still preferred him to the Butcher of Libya.

    [Mar 30, 2019] China's Ambassador to Canada Exposes the White Supremacist Five Eyes Surveillance State

    Mar 30, 2019 | theduran.com

    In an article entitled Why the double standard on justice for Canadians, Chinese? Ambassador Lu cut through the noise being created by the media and western political class by exposing the over bloated western surveillance state known as the Five Eyes which he properly identified as the outgrowth of the unconstitutional Patriot Act, the Prism surveillance system which has annihilated all semblance of privacy among trans-Atlantic nations.

    After describing the double standard applied by Canadian elites who have constructed a narrative that always paints China as the villain of the world while portraying the west as "free and democratic" Ambassador Lu stated :

    "these same people have conveniently ignored the PRISM Program, Equation Group, and Echelon -- global spying networks operated by some countries that have been engaging in large-scale and organized cyber stealing, and spying and surveillance activities on foreign governments, enterprises, and individuals. These people also took a laissez-faire attitude toward a country that infringes on its citizens' privacy rights through the Patriot Act. They shouted for a ban by the Five Eyes alliance countries . on the use of Huawei equipment by these countries' own enterprises"

    For those who may not be aware, the Five Eyes is the name given to the British GCHQ-controlled surveillance structure that involves the four primary Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth countries (Britain, Canada, Australian and New Zealand) along with the United States. This is the deep state that has been dedicated to overthrowing American President Donald Trump since MI6 and their junior partners in America began organising Russia-gate in 2015-when it became apparent that Trump had a serious chance of defeating the Deep State candidate Hillary Clinton.

    As many patriotic whistle blowers such as Bill Binney, Ray McGovern, and Edward Snowden have exposed throughout recent years , the Five Eyes system that the Ambassador referenced was formed in the "post-911 world order" as a means of overriding each nations' constitutional protection of its own citizens' by capitalising on a major legal loop hole (viz: Since it is technically illegal for American intelligence agencies to spy on Americans without warrant, and for CSIS to do the same to Canadians, it is claimed that it is okay for British/Canadian intelligence agencies to spy on Americas and visa versa).

    The Chinese Ambassador didn't stop there however, but went one step further, ending his op-ed with a controversial claim which has earned him much criticism in the days since its publication. It was in his closing paragraph that Ambassador Lu made the uncomfortable point that the double standards employed against China and the west's willingness to ignore the Five Eyes "is due to Western egotism and white supremacy" . Is this the "belligerent and unfounded name calling" that his detractors are labelling it, or is there something more to it?

    When we look to the origins of the Five Eyes, which goes back MUCH further than September 11, 2001 , we can clearly see that Lu Shaye is touching a very deep and truthful nerve.

    Cecil Rhodes and the Racist Roots of the Deep State

    19 th Century spokesman for the British Empire, Cecil Rhodes wrote his infamous "Seventh Will" in 1877 where, speaking on behalf of an empire dying in the midst of the global spread of republican institutions, called for the formation of a new plan to re-organise the Empire, and re-conquer all colonial possessions that had been contaminated by republican ideas of freedom, progress, equality and self-determination [1] . Rhodes stated:

    "I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings what an alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, look again at the extra employment a new country added to our dominions gives. I contend that every acre added to our territory means in the future birth to some more of the English race who otherwise would not be brought into existence . Why should we not form a secret society with but one object the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule for the recovery of the United States for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire " [2]

    Race Patriot" Cecil Rhodes from Punch Magazine lording over Africa

    The Rhodes Trust was set up at his death in 1902 to administer the vast riches accrued during Rhodes' exploitation of diamond mines in Africa. Steered by Lord Alfred Milner, it was this Trust which gave birth to the Round Table Movement and Rhodes Scholarship Fund which themselves have been behind the creation of a century's worth of indoctrinated technocrats who have permeated all branches of government, finance, military, media, corporate and academia- both in America and internationally [3] .

    The Round Table Movement, (working in tandem with London's Fabian Society) didn't replace the old British Empire's power structures, so much as re-define their behaviour based upon the re-absorption of America back into the Anglo-Saxon hive. This involved centralising control of the education of their "managerial elite" with special scholarship's in Oxford and the London School of Economics- then sending the indoctrinated victims in droves back into their respective nations in order to be absorbed into the British Empire's governance structures in all domains of private and public influence. In Fabian Society terms, this concept is known as "permeation theory" [4] .

    Although it sometimes took the early removal of nationalist political leaders from power, via intrigue, coups or assassination, the 20 th century was shaped in large measure by the cancerous growth of this British-directed network that sought to undo the republican concept that progress and cooperation were the basis for both sovereignty and international law as laid out in the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 [5] .

    This is the deep state that President Roosevelt warned of when he said in 1936 "The economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain about is that we seek to take away their power." This is the deep state that outgoing President Eisenhower warned of when he spoke of the "acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex" in 1961 and that John Kennedy fought against when he fired Allen Dulles and threatened to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter into the winds" . It is what Ronald Reagan contended with when he attempted to break the world out of the Cold War by working with Russia and other nations on Beam defense in 1983. It is this structure that owned Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's entire career , from his 1980s railroading of Lyndon LaRouche into prison to his cover up of the Anglo-Saudi role in 911 as CIA director to his efforts to impeach President Donald Trump today [6] .

    It is this same complex which is the direct outgrowth of the racist British-run drug wars on China and suppression of India and Africa throughout the 19 th and 20 th centuries.

    In Canada, this was the network that destroyed the plans of nationalist Prime Minister John Diefenbaker after he fired the Rhodes Scholar Governor of the Bank of Canada in 1959 during a desperate struggle to take control of the national bank in order to fund his Northern Vision [7] . Earlier, it was this group that Lincoln-admirer Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier warned of after his defeat in 1911 when he said "Canada is now governed by a junta sitting at London, known as "The Round Table", with ramifications in Toronto, in Winnipeg, in Victoria, with Tories and Grits receiving their ideas from London and insidiously forcing them on their respective parties." [8]

    The lesson to be learned is that the Deep State is not "American" as many commentators have assumed. It is the same old British Empire from which America brilliantly broke free in 1776 and which Cecil Rhodes and Milner led in re-organising on behalf of the monarchy at the beginning of the 20 th century. It was racist when Lords Palmerston and Russell ran it in the 19 th century and it continues to be racist today.

    So when Ambassador Lu says "the reason why some people are used to arrogantly adopting double standards is due to Western egotism and white supremacy – in such a context, the rule of law is nothing but a tool for their political ends and a fig leaf for their practising hegemony in the international arena" he is not being "belligerent or provocative", but is rather hitting on a fact which must be better understood if the deep state will finally be defeated and nations liberated to work with the new spirit of progress and cooperation exemplified by China's Belt and Road Initiative which is quickly spreading across the earth.

    Footnotes

    [1] By 1876, the American Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia showcased to a world audience the success of the "American System of Political Economy" which asserted that the value and behaviour of money was contingent upon the physical productive growth of the nation rather than "British-system free markets". Lincoln's system was being adopted across South American nations, Japan, China, India and many European powers as well (including Russia) which had grown tired of being manipulated by British imperial intrigues.

    [2] Cecil Rhodes, 1877 Confessions of Faith, University of Oregon

    [3] See American System or British Dictatorship part 1 by the author, Canadian Patriot #7, June 2013

    [4] For anyone in Canada wishing to learn about this in greater depth, they may wish to ask Canadian technocratic Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland how her experience as a Rhodes Scholar shaped her career.

    [5] The Peace of Westphalia: France's Defense of the Sovereign Nation by Pierre Beaudry, EIR Nov. 29, 2002

    [6] Robert Mueller Is an Amoral Legal Assassin: He Will Do His Job If You Let Him by Barbara Boyd , October 1, 2017 larouchepac.com. A common denominator among all of the mentioned American leaders is not only that they waged war on the deep state structures but made constant attempts to work constructively with Russia, China, India and other nations for industrial and scientific development. This policy of "win-win cooperation" is antagonistic to all systems of empire and is the reason why the Empire hates China and the potential created with Trump's intention to work with both China and Russia.

    [7] See John Diefenbaker and the Sabotage of the Northern Vision by the author, Canadian Patriot #4, January 2013

    [8] O.D. Skelton, The Life of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, p. 510

    BIO: Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review. His works have been published in Executive Intelligence Review, Global Resesarch, Global Times, Nexus Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Veterans Today and Sott.net. Matthew has also published the book "The Time has Come for Canada to Join the New Silk Road " and three volumes of the Untold History of Canada (available on untoldhistory.canadianpatriot.org). He has been associated with the Schiller Institute since 2006.

    Liked it? Take a second to support The Duran on Patreon!

    [Mar 30, 2019] Why There'll Be No US-Russia Reset Post-Mueller

    Mar 30, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Why There'll Be No US-Russia Reset Post-Mueller

    by Tyler Durden Fri, 03/29/2019 - 23:25 15 SHARES Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    President Donald Trump and his White House team have been cleared of collusion with the Kremlin in the 2016 presidential election. That startling conclusion by Special Counsel Robert Mueller after nearly two years of investigation, might be viewed by some as giving Trump freedom to now get on with normalizing relations with Moscow. Don't bet on it.

    Mueller's report, and US attorney general William Barr's appraisal of it, only partially vindicate Trump's long-held claims that the whole so-called "Russiagate" story is a "hoax".

    Yes, Mueller and Barr conclude that neither Trump nor his campaign team "conspired" with Russia to win the presidential race. But Democrat opponents are now dredging up the possibility that Trump "unwittingly" facilitated Kremlin cyber operations to damage his 2016 rival for the White House, Hillary Clinton.

    In his summary of Mueller's report, Barr unquestioningly accepts as fact the otherwise contentious claim that Russia interfered in the US election. Democrats and the anti-Trump US news media have not been deterred from pursuing their fantasy that the Kremlin allegedly meddled in US democracy. Trump has been cleared, but Russia has certainly not. It very much continues to have the smear of interference slapped all over its image.

    At the heart of this narrative – bolstered by Mueller and Barr – is the false claim that Russian cyber agents hacked into the Democrat party computer system during 2016 and released emails compromising Clinton to the whistleblower website Wikileaks. That whole claim has been reliably debunked by former NSA technical expert William Binney and other former US intelligence officials who have shown indisputably that the information was not hacked from outside, but rather was released by an insider in the Democrat party, presumably based on indignation over the party's corruption concerning the stitch-up against Clinton's rival nomination for the presidential ticket, Bernie Sanders.

    That is real scandal crying out to be investigated, as well as the Obama administration's decision to unleash FBI illegal wiretapping and dirty tricks against Trump as being a "Russian stooge". The Russian collusion charade was always a distraction from the really big serious crimes carried out by the Obama White House, the FBI and the Democrat party.

    In any case, the notion that Russia interfered in the US elections – even without Trump's collusion – has become an article of faith among the American political and media establishment.

    That lie will continue to poison US-Russia relations and be used to justify more economic sanctions being imposed against Moscow. Trump may be cleared of being a "Kremlin stooge". But he will find no political freedom to pursue a normalization in bilateral relations because of the predictable mantra about Russia interfering in American democracy.

    But there is a deeper reason why there will be no reset in US-Russia relations. And it has nothing to do with whether Trump is in the White House. The problem is a strategic one, meaning it relates to underlying geopolitical confrontation between America's desired global hegemony and Russia's rightful aspiration to be an independent foreign power not beholden to Washington's dictate.

    [Mar 29, 2019] Adam Schiff should resign Jason Chaffetz - YouTube

    Notable quotes:
    "... Congressman Adam Schiff, who spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking, should be forced to resign from Congress! ..."
    Mar 28, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    Former House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on how Republicans are calling for Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to resign as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

    Trump tweet:

    Donald J. Т rump > 28 Mar 2019 ^0

    @realDonaldTrump

    Congressman Adam Schiff, who spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking, should be forced to resign from Congress!

    [Mar 29, 2019] News about #FullofSchiff on Twitter

    Schiff is really FullOfSchiff...
    Notable quotes:
    "... You are a law maker, not a prosecutor nor the attorney general. It's not up to you. In fact, we the people want you to resign! You do nothing productive for our Country. You are # FullOfSchiff ..."
    "... If # fullofSchiff has additional evidence and did not provide it to SC, doesn't that constitute obstruction? ..."
    Mar 29, 2019 | twitter.com

    Schiff apparently pranked by Russian radio hosts who promised 'naked Trump' photos The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee reportedly held an eight-minute phone conversation last year with Russian radio hosts posing as a Ukrainian politician

    Fox News Mar 28, 2019 Search results

    Donald Trump Jr. ‏ 2:45 PM - 24 Mar 2019

    Has anyone heard from slimy Adam # fullofschiff Schiff today? I mean it must be embarrassing to have have spent the last 2 years as the leader of the tinfoil hat brigade and have it all come crashing down so quick. I'm legitimately concerned for his mental state.

    (((IsraelMatzav))) ‏ 3:57 PM - 24 Mar 2019

    OMG - he actually wrote this today! # FullOfSchiff https:// twitter.com/tribelaw/statu s/1109911036793159688

    Kevin™ 5:32 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    Gotta get # fullofSchiff in front of congress https:// twitter.com/dbongino/statu s/1109244352801525767

    Scott Farkus' Toadie ‏ 3:56 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    # fullofschiff has been wrong about everything so far. I'm sure this statement will keep him perfect.

    5:41 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    What a loser # FullofSchiff

    D.A. ‏ 7:12 PM - 25 Mar 2019

    You are a law maker, not a prosecutor nor the attorney general. It's not up to you. In fact, we the people want you to resign! You do nothing productive for our Country. You are # FullOfSchiff

    KHaase ‏ 8:40 AM - 27 Mar 2019

    If # fullofSchiff has additional evidence and did not provide it to SC, doesn't that constitute obstruction?

    [Mar 29, 2019] Jason Chaffetz Says Republicans Should Target Adam Schiff's Security Clearance

    Mar 29, 2019 | dailycaller.com

    Former GOP Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz said Republicans should target Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff's security clearance, following the release of the Mueller report.

    "I think the one that has been the most discredited through this entire process is Adam Schiff," Chaffetz said Thursday on "Varney & Company." (RELATED: Trump Should Open A Private Investigation Into Adam Schiff, Says Brian Kilmeade)

    He then pushed for Congressional Republicans to unite and bring their demands directly to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi .

    "I think he should lose his security clearance and I don't think he should be on the House intelligence committee," Chaffetz continued. "I wish the Republicans would gather in force and demand that change. Nancy Pelosi knows better. It is a privilege to sit on this committee but he's used the guise of 'hey, I see classified information and nobody else does and I'm telling you I've seen it first-hand.' He's the only person on the planet because he's making it up and he shouldn't have a security clearance if you're going to act like that."

    ... ... ...

    He also claimed President Donald Trump fully cooperated with the Russia probe and cleared himself, but insisted on a new investigation to find out how the allegations began.

    "[Trump's] had to sit back for the last two years, and think about it. All the Democrats tried to do is say 'oh, he was going to take out Mueller. He was going to do this, he was going to do that.' He didn't do anything. He waived privilege, he gave them tons of documents, access to all the emails," Chaffetz said earlier in the interview.

    "Donald Trump Jr. was in there for hours and hours testifying. I don't know that the president could have done any more for openness and transparency through this investigation. And it turned out exactly the way he said. He's in the clear. But now there has to be a review of how this whole fiasco started."

    [Mar 29, 2019] Jason Chaffetz Says Republicans Should Target Adam Schiff's Security Clearance

    Mar 29, 2019 | dailycaller.com

    Former GOP Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz said Republicans should target Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff's security clearance, following the release of the Mueller report.

    "I think the one that has been the most discredited through this entire process is Adam Schiff," Chaffetz said Thursday on "Varney & Company." (RELATED: Trump Should Open A Private Investigation Into Adam Schiff, Says Brian Kilmeade)

    He then pushed for Congressional Republicans to unite and bring their demands directly to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi .

    "I think he should lose his security clearance and I don't think he should be on the House intelligence committee," Chaffetz continued. "I wish the Republicans would gather in force and demand that change. Nancy Pelosi knows better. It is a privilege to sit on this committee but he's used the guise of 'hey, I see classified information and nobody else does and I'm telling you I've seen it first-hand.' He's the only person on the planet because he's making it up and he shouldn't have a security clearance if you're going to act like that."

    ... ... ...

    He also claimed President Donald Trump fully cooperated with the Russia probe and cleared himself, but insisted on a new investigation to find out how the allegations began.

    "[Trump's] had to sit back for the last two years, and think about it. All the Democrats tried to do is say 'oh, he was going to take out Mueller. He was going to do this, he was going to do that.' He didn't do anything. He waived privilege, he gave them tons of documents, access to all the emails," Chaffetz said earlier in the interview.

    "Donald Trump Jr. was in there for hours and hours testifying. I don't know that the president could have done any more for openness and transparency through this investigation. And it turned out exactly the way he said. He's in the clear. But now there has to be a review of how this whole fiasco started."

    [Mar 29, 2019] Adam Schiff should resign Jason Chaffetz - YouTube

    Notable quotes:
    "... Congressman Adam Schiff, who spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking, should be forced to resign from Congress! ..."
    Mar 28, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    Former House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on how Republicans are calling for Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to resign as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

    Trump tweet:

    Donald J. Т rump > 28 Mar 2019 ^0

    @realDonaldTrump

    Congressman Adam Schiff, who spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking, should be forced to resign from Congress!

    [Mar 29, 2019] News about #FullofSchiff on Twitter

    Schiff is really FullOfSchiff...
    Notable quotes:
    "... You are a law maker, not a prosecutor nor the attorney general. It's not up to you. In fact, we the people want you to resign! You do nothing productive for our Country. You are # FullOfSchiff ..."
    "... If # fullofSchiff has additional evidence and did not provide it to SC, doesn't that constitute obstruction? ..."
    Mar 29, 2019 | twitter.com

    Schiff apparently pranked by Russian radio hosts who promised 'naked Trump' photos The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee reportedly held an eight-minute phone conversation last year with Russian radio hosts posing as a Ukrainian politician

    Fox News Mar 28, 2019 Search results

    Donald Trump Jr. ‏ 2:45 PM - 24 Mar 2019

    Has anyone heard from slimy Adam # fullofschiff Schiff today? I mean it must be embarrassing to have have spent the last 2 years as the leader of the tinfoil hat brigade and have it all come crashing down so quick. I'm legitimately concerned for his mental state.

    (((IsraelMatzav))) ‏ 3:57 PM - 24 Mar 2019

    OMG - he actually wrote this today! # FullOfSchiff https:// twitter.com/tribelaw/statu s/1109911036793159688

    Kevin™ 5:32 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    Gotta get # fullofSchiff in front of congress https:// twitter.com/dbongino/statu s/1109244352801525767

    Scott Farkus' Toadie ‏ 3:56 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    # fullofschiff has been wrong about everything so far. I'm sure this statement will keep him perfect.

    5:41 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    What a loser # FullofSchiff

    D.A. ‏ 7:12 PM - 25 Mar 2019

    You are a law maker, not a prosecutor nor the attorney general. It's not up to you. In fact, we the people want you to resign! You do nothing productive for our Country. You are # FullOfSchiff

    KHaase ‏ 8:40 AM - 27 Mar 2019

    If # fullofSchiff has additional evidence and did not provide it to SC, doesn't that constitute obstruction?

    [Mar 29, 2019] That has always been the main goal of Russiagatevent: brainwashing the US public to convice her of Russian enmity and aggression

    Notable quotes:
    "... Nowhere in any corporate media coverage will you see the collapse of the collusion narrative used as an opportunity to re-examine the Russian attack narrative, based as it is unassailably (they would have us believe) on the twin pillars of the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment and Mueller's never-to-be-tried indictments of a raft of obscure Russians. ..."
    "... Yes. The Dismal Faking MSM are NOT going to let go of their Russophobic Orwellian propaganda – it clearly serves purposes (the MIC's being one, surely). ..."
    "... Trump the Siberian Candidate was a useful part of the hate campaign against Russia, but ultimately expendable, like one stage in a multi-stage rocket booster ..."
    "... The important work goes on, regardless of what happens to one individual like Donald, or one species like Homo sapiens. ..."
    "... This Russia-Trump collusion thing is and has been a criminal conspiracy to undermine and possibly remove from office an elected President, and it has taken Russian-American relations down to a plainly dangerous level. ..."
    "... I think there's evidence that this conspiracy was a product of Hillary Clinton, her staff, the DNC, elements of the FBI, FBI director Comey, CIA director Brennan, other elements of the CIA, elements of British intelligence, possibly elements of the Ukrainian govt., and possibly persons tied into the corrupt Clinton "charity" foundation and its networks. ..."
    "... The US govt. is deeply corrupt – murderously corrupt – that's been plain at least since the Kennedy assassination in 1963, followed by the murders of a number of other prominent American political figures. ..."
    Mar 29, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    David G , March 25, 2019 at 20:41

    "As the clamoring din of Russia-gate falls into the memory hole, a large empty space will open up. So why not use this space to push forward some new exciting ideas. Space means possibilities."

    It's sad, but in a very important way, I don't think that's true.

    One of the neat tricks of Russia-gate all along has been that while such prolonged and sententious effort has been devoted to the question of "collusion" – i.e. TrumpWorld's alleged disloyal canoodling with Russia – which was always destined to come up dry in the end, the underlying allegation of the Russian "attack on our democracy" – i.e. the thing Trump was supposedly colluding *in* – has been allowed to solidify into an undisputed fact, despite being likewise unproven, and in reality just as false, or at best wildly overblown.

    Nowhere in any corporate media coverage will you see the collapse of the collusion narrative used as an opportunity to re-examine the Russian attack narrative, based as it is unassailably (they would have us believe) on the twin pillars of the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment and Mueller's never-to-be-tried indictments of a raft of obscure Russians.

    Rather, the Russian attack story is getting all the more play now in corporate media as they try to salvage the Russia-gate debacle from the Mueller disappointment.

    (This has been playing out on MSNBC as I have been composing this comment: Chris Hayes just had on a congressman who used the very phrase "attack on our democracy" referring to what he considers an undisputed fact, and now David Corn and Michael Isikoff are on, energetically moving the goalposts away from the collapsing collusion fairy tale. For what it's worth, Isikoff and Hayes are showing a little more discomfort than Corn, who is full-steam-ahead on perfidious Muscovy.)

    That has always been the main event: convincing the U.S. public of Russian enmity and aggression – the Threat – to ensure the diametrically opposed reality remains outside the mainstream.

    There will be some dead-enders who will try to keep the Trump side of Russia-gate alive (obstruction of justice!), but most of that energy will eventually be diverted to the vast cesspool of Trump's financial dealings, which has always been the more promising and legitimate route for exposing the Orange Schmegegge's corruption.

    Meanwhile the campaign to keep the U.S. public squarely behind the drive to Make Earth Great Again (for the subterranean archaea prokaryotes that will survive the nuclear exchange unscathed, that is) continues, and has even been strengthened by Russia-gate's sinister propagandistic sleight-of-hand.

    Zhu , March 26, 2019 at 02:02

    Soon it'll be "China, China, China!"

    AnneR , March 26, 2019 at 09:32

    Yes. The Dismal Faking MSM are NOT going to let go of their Russophobic Orwellian propaganda – it clearly serves purposes (the MIC's being one, surely).

    This morning on NPR (don't recall the Beeb World Service, but all too likely there as well) while the presenters, facilitators – whatever they're called – were presenting the non-existence of *collusion* they continued with their assertions, at some length, that Russia *had meddled* in the 2016 election, had hacked the DNC server etc., etc.

    No if, ands or buts, evidence lacking or not. And they proceeded to 'warn' about the 'strong likelihood' of both Russia (read the Kremlin, read Putin) and China doing the same for the 2020 election: so be warned, folks if the Strumpet gets re-elected it won't be because of anything the Demrats have done or not done, won't be because the Demrats' candidate is HRC in drag, attractively turned out. No. It will be Putin's and Xi's doing.

    Meanwhile, the country that really does interfere in our elections and policies – via oodles of money contributed by its lobbying group supporters (and I gather there will be another such "legal" lobbying entity established in DC for smaller donors to continue to, see Alison Weir's article at Mint Press News) – neither has to register as a foreign agent nor cease and desist its influence over our politicians (who are all too clearly buyable). Nor is the UK getting hauled over the coals, or threatened with war, being beleaguered by sanctions for its real interference in our politics.

    Thank you Caitlin for your usual good work.

    David G , March 26, 2019 at 11:02

    Trump the Siberian Candidate was a useful part of the hate campaign against Russia, but ultimately expendable, like one stage in a multi-stage rocket booster .

    The important work goes on, regardless of what happens to one individual like Donald, or one species like Homo sapiens.

    Pft , March 25, 2019 at 20:04

    So you have obstruction preventing the finding of evidence. Mueller proclaims no evidence found, punts on obstruction charges, presenting only the facts indicating obstruction. New AJ Barr, a relic from Iran Gate and close to Mueller, concludes there is not sufficient evidence of obstruction.

    Mueller and Barr cover it up as they have been doing for 30-40 years. Why is anyone surprised? I never was big on Russia gate but collusion with Russian Mafia and Israel and certainly conflict of interest over the proposed Trump Tower in Moscow certainly should have been exposed, as should a DNC insiders complicity in releasing the emails

    Tom Kath , March 25, 2019 at 19:30

    Caitlin, I get the overwhelming message that you consider Trump the worst possible POTUS and that Hilary, Sanders, or any other POSSIBLE alternatives would be even worse.

    When it comes to the realistically POSSIBLE, we do have to settle for the lesser of two evils. I believe the Yanks have actually done just that, and it seems pointless to argue so vehemently against all possibilities.

    Could you be making a case for Tulsi by omission?

    mauisurfer , March 25, 2019 at 18:54

    I have never worked as a prosecutor, but I have taught criminal law at an accredited state university law school.

    Mueller's report states: "While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." This is the first time I ever heard such a statement. I have never heard of a criminal investigation that concluded that the defendant was "not exonerated".

    The prosecutor is not empowered to make statements intended to influence public opinion. It seems to be a 100% political statement, 100% extralegal comment. The purpose of a criminal investigation is to find crime and prosecute it. It is NOT to exonerate or "not exonerate". If insufficient evidence is found to proceed with criminal prosecution, then the job is done, the prosecutor is not empowered to comment about ifs, buts, or maybes, or about exoneration.

    Such comments are contrary to our system of criminal justice, which supposedly assumes innocence until guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt. Reply

    Maxwell Quest , March 25, 2019 at 22:27

    Yes, Mueller's statement: "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" appears to be a sop thrown to the media and the DNC, in short, those that hired him to prosecute Trump er, I mean investigate Trump's supposed crime of collusion.

    It certainly muddies the waters, and is a wishy-washy, cowardly declaration. It's outside his mandate as Special Counsel and borders on slander. In his blog today Howard Kunstler referred to Mueller's parting aspersion as a "nice red poison cherry" on top of the report.

    I've always felt that Mueller knew from the very beginning that this was a witch hunt, and the sloppy commentary added to his report only confirms it in my mind.

    Mike Lamb , March 26, 2019 at 12:16

    Could it be that this is Mueller's "Comey moment"?

    Charles Barnes , March 25, 2019 at 18:14

    A lot of voters are fed up with the continuous barrage of hate coming from the Left towards President Trump. If the Left keeps on coming up with more and more investigations after the Mueller report found no collusion on the president's part voters are going to get fed up with the whole debacle this could well backfire on Democrats and conservative Republicans might just take back the House.

    Eric32 , March 25, 2019 at 17:41

    >people will be left to their own devices for a few precious moments. They won't know what to think. <

    Well, here's what I think

    This Russia-Trump collusion thing is and has been a criminal conspiracy to undermine and possibly remove from office an elected President, and it has taken Russian-American relations down to a plainly dangerous level.

    Why not get something positive out of it?

    I think there's evidence that this conspiracy was a product of Hillary Clinton, her staff, the DNC, elements of the FBI, FBI director Comey, CIA director Brennan, other elements of the CIA, elements of British intelligence, possibly elements of the Ukrainian govt., and possibly persons tied into the corrupt Clinton "charity" foundation and its networks.

    The US govt. is deeply corrupt – murderously corrupt – that's been plain at least since the Kennedy assassination in 1963, followed by the murders of a number of other prominent American political figures.

    Why not use this recent obvious conspiracy to start a real investigation using a newly created, large well funded investigative organization independent of the above mentioned corrupted organizations, to investigate what has going on?

    If this most recent deep state operation is allowed to pass un-investigated, without punishment and a long overdue rooting out of what's been making this country's government sick and corrupt, it's going to be taken as a sign of encouragement by certain actors, with future actions that will make past ones look mild.

    Deniz , March 25, 2019 at 17:41

    You are putting far too much faith in the American people's attention span. Omar's comments on AIPAC were erased in a matter of days by a conveniently timed terror attack. We are in the middle of March Madness, currently the single most important event in the majority of American's lives. This is why Assange was so brilliant in waiting until weeks before the election to release the Clinton emails.

    Have hope!

    [Mar 29, 2019] Angry Bear Maybe No Conspiracy Or Coordination, But Lots And Lots Of Collusion

    Notable quotes:
    "... This was artificially created Saddam WDM II hysteria and many people became hooked. MSM honchos with some integrity should publicly commit hara-kiri, but that's too much to ask as they are mostly chickenhawks that have no honor. They never spent time in rat infested foxholes under bombardment. ..."
    Mar 29, 2019 | angrybearblog.com

    likbez, March 27, 2019 2:34 am

    Barkley,

    It is very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, if there is none 😉

    Despite being a Professor of Economics, and having a Russian speaking wife you are utterly incompetent in this area and are completely brainwashed by the neoliberal/neocon MSM. You tend to subconsciously equate Russia and the USSR. For your information, Russia is a neoliberal state; much like the USA and Putin is promoter of neoliberal capitalism, although in less man-eating mutation than in the USA.

    For your information Mueller investigation was a part of color revolution against Trump launched by intelligence services in the same way they launch color revolution in other countries. It is unclear to me why they did that, but that fact if provable

    See for example https://www.theepochtimes.com/spygate-the-true-story-of-collusion_2684629.html

    And the sequence of event, especially questioning the legitimacy of election, and Mueller appointment gambit with Comey as a sacrificing pawn, corresponds to what you can learn from the books of CIA-connected writer Gene Sharp - the reference source on color revolution mechanics. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Sharp

    It is not clear to me why the Deep State in the USA (as well as in GB) has such an allergic reaction and viewed Trump as a threat to the US governed world neoliberal empire, because Trump, as corrupt as he is, he is a part of NYC neoliberal elite and in no way a revolutionary. And it was clear that he will execute the same "bait and switch" maneuver as Obama betraying his election promises.

    Which actually happened three months after inauguration when he bombed Syria targets without any investigation of a chemical attack - which most probably was stages by jihadists (supposedly he was influenced by Ivanka; actually Javanka is another problem of this corrupt administration and suggest completely different course of the investigation; hopefully by the Southern District of NY - I would like Jared Kushner going to jail with or without Trump)

    But it was a color revolution. Which so far failed.

    So you better stop writing such detached from reality statements as "But on the matter of collusion we have piles of evidence that this has occurred, and the evidence is the large pile of indictments that Mueller has brought forward against a lot of people, with many of those charged with having unreported meetings and dealings with Russians," This is such a low level of IQ that it hurts. Naivety unacceptable for a Professor pretending to be a political analyst.

    In reality this was a false flag operation to present Russia as the culprit. Highly successful operation I would say. Russia serves as a very convenient scapegoat for such things.

    And having an external scapegoat and projecting into it all the ills helped to cement cracks in the neoliberal façade, when the US population rejected neoliberal's elite candidate. In addition, it allowed to launch NeoMcCartyism campaign in MSM for the suppressing the internal dissent, when anybody who question the US foreign wars or the rule of financial oligarchy can be framed as Putin's agent.

    So this is another classic method of suppressing the dissident voices including whose who argue for the return of the New Deal Capitalism and/or are against foreign wars. Looks at how MSMs treat Tulsi Gabbard visit to Syria. Does not it remind you something ?

    So most of your writings on this particular topic are just an implicit repetition of State Department taking points infused into your brain via MSMs you read. You have no first hand sources about Russia. That's why I would strongly recommend you to stop writing on this topic. You just disgrace yourself.

    ilsm , March 28, 2019 6:35 pm

    merde,

    Let the Russiagate foul ball fly out of bounds in to the stands!

    Oening day is soon and US don't need any more conspiracy theories over Russia and Putin beating Clinton.

    Mueller brought no indictments against Trump or any US citizen for conspiracy with Russians. The reason the Mueller report is "confidential" has nothing to do with national security. It has to do with federal grand jury legal process. No indictments means the grand juries that prosecutors have plead to with under cooked nothing burgers returned no indictments!

    Not getting an indictment may not be an exoneration for media propagandists who have pounded conspiracy theories for 28 months, but it is pretty close for anyone tired of the moral equivalent of seeing Saddam doing 9/11 perpetrated over and over again.

    All those indictments associated with Russiagate are 'procedural' like misspeaking to inquisitors.

    Get over it Clinton lost to Trump!

    likbez , March 28, 2019 10:35 pm

    ilsm.

    "Not getting an indictment may not be exoneration for media propagandists who have pounded conspiracy theories for 28 months, but it is pretty close for anyone tired of the moral equivalent of seeing Saddam doing 9/11 perpetrated over and over again."

    This is a very apt observation. This was artificially created Saddam WDM II hysteria and many people became hooked. MSM honchos with some integrity should publicly commit hara-kiri, but that's too much to ask as they are mostly chickenhawks that have no honor. They never spent time in rat infested foxholes under bombardment.

    How idiotic it would be if the Earth were destroyed because this crazy neocon warmonger Hillary Clinton lost, couldn't accept it, and invented a story for lying liars to lie about, while the Deep State launched a color revolution to depose Trump because he did not fully conform to Washington neocons foreign policy script

    In retrospect he changed nothing; Trump foreign policy is just a continuation of "Full spectrum dominance" madness ( Bolton and Pompeo would be perfect for Hillary Administration after routine sex change operation )

    Academic stooges of this new Iraq WDM II hysteria should at least repent, but as Barkley demonstrated in his response this is way too difficult for them.

    He is still, as Trump Jr put it, "FullOfSchiff"

    Immense damage has been done to Russo-Us relations. Will it be repaired? Can it be repaired?

    [Mar 29, 2019] Jimmy Dore -- a lonely fighter with NeoMcCartyism

    Notable quotes:
    "... When the mainstream news is a joke, the court jesters are the only ones allowed to tell the truth. But Jimmy is exceptionally well informed. ..."
    "... So, now the nation is in the midst of a New Cold War and a renewed arms race between two world powers -- all because this woman and her criminally liable hordes in the Democratic Party and the idiotic corporate media pedalled this insanity. I only hope there is a special place in the ninth circle of Hell for Mdm. Clinton and her lickspittles. ..."
    "... This is right on point. There were two main reasons for this (perhaps fatal) error on the Democrats' part. First, they made common cause with neo-cons, retired intelligence chiefs, Congressional hawks, Pentagon officials, and other advocates of a revived American Empire. ..."
    "... Second, they let Donald Trump dictate the mode of political discourse (ultra-personal, characterological, conspiracy-minded, etc.) and thought that they could beat him at his own game. The first error was criminal and the second stupid. We may have to support some Democrat in 2020 to get rid of Mr. Trump, but we clearly need a new political party to represent the interests of working people in social justice and peace. ..."
    Mar 29, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    Dwight Spencer , March 26, 2019 at 11:10

    You neglected to mention American comedian Jimmy Dore who practically single-handedly spent the past two and a half years ferociously combating the Russiagate conspiracy myth with some of the best amateur investigative journalism in the world essentially alone while building up his base of a half-million subscribers.

    He has been praised by the likes of Aaron Maté, Tulsi Gabbard, and Glen Greenwald for his incredible work.

    He has been such a force for truth that even Bernie Sanders has timidly ignored and avoided his show.

    The Jimmy Dore Show on YouTube ranks up there with The Intercept in journalistic integrity and diligence. In a sane world, Jimmy Dore would be deserving of a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

    JRGJRG , March 26, 2019 at 11:19

    When the mainstream news is a joke, the court jesters are the only ones allowed to tell the truth. But Jimmy is exceptionally well informed.

    Eddie , March 26, 2019 at 13:59

    Indeed, Jimmy Dore the self-styled "jag-off" comedian working out of his garage informed growing numbers of us of us who were willing to peel our eyeballs away from the cavalcade of celebrity ravings on MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, et al. Hillary Clinton, in her vainglorious attempt to find a scapegoat for her political ineptitude blamed her loss on her invented Trump-Putin "collusion."

    So, now the nation is in the midst of a New Cold War and a renewed arms race between two world powers -- all because this woman and her criminally liable hordes in the Democratic Party and the idiotic corporate media pedalled this insanity. I only hope there is a special place in the ninth circle of Hell for Mdm. Clinton and her lickspittles.

    Rich Rubenstein , March 26, 2019 at 11:09

    This is right on point. There were two main reasons for this (perhaps fatal) error on the Democrats' part. First, they made common cause with neo-cons, retired intelligence chiefs, Congressional hawks, Pentagon officials, and other advocates of a revived American Empire.

    Second, they let Donald Trump dictate the mode of political discourse (ultra-personal, characterological, conspiracy-minded, etc.) and thought that they could beat him at his own game. The first error was criminal and the second stupid. We may have to support some Democrat in 2020 to get rid of Mr. Trump, but we clearly need a new political party to represent the interests of working people in social justice and peace.

    [Mar 29, 2019] Taibbi: As the Mueller Probe Ends, New Russiagate Myths Begin by Matt Taibbi

    Powerful, artificially created hysteria.
    Mar 29, 2019 | www.rollingstone.com

    Donald Trump couldn't have asked for a juicier 2020 campaign issue

    Matt Taibbi

    @mtaibbi Follow Matt Taibbi's Most Recent Stories

    ... ... ...

    Mueller knows became the cornerstone belief of nearly all reporters who covered the Russia investigation. Journalists reveled in the idea of being kept out of the loop, thrilled to defer to the impenetrable steward of national secrets, the interview-proof Man of State. He was no blabbermouth Donald Trump, this Mueller! He won't tell us a thing!

    [Mar 28, 2019] Adam Schiff Furious After GOP Calls For His Immediate Resignation In Explosive Hearing

    Notable quotes:
    "... "Your actions, both past, and present are incompatible with your duty of the chairman of this committee -- which alone, in the House of Representatives -- has the obligation and authority to provide effective oversight of the U.S. Intelligence community," ..."
    "... And while Schiff, or as Donald Trump Jr calls him "FullOfSchiff" may plan to keep kicking a dead horse for a long time, the social media response was quick and was largely split along party lines: ..."
    Mar 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who made Donald Trump's now debunked Russiagate "witch hunt" his one mission in life, furiously pushed back as all nine Committee Republicans demanded his resignation, defending his past comments by lighting into the president and his family and campaign over its contacts with Russia.

    Calls from Republicans and president Trump for the Russiagate-obsessed Schiff to resign as head of the House Intelligence Committee have been loud in the days following the release of the four-page Mueller report summary. And on Thursday, the call was made right to the Congressman's face in what Mediate described was an "explosive" clash, and The Hill dubbed a "striking display."

    At the start of the House intel hearing on Thursday morning, Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) called for Schiff to step down -- a call which he said was supported by all nine Republican members of the committee.

    "Your actions, both past, and present are incompatible with your duty of the chairman of this committee -- which alone, in the House of Representatives -- has the obligation and authority to provide effective oversight of the U.S. Intelligence community," Conaway said. "As such we have no faith in your ability to discharge your duties in a manner consistent with your Constitutional responsibility and urge your immediate resignation as chairman of the committee. Mr. Chairman, this letter is signed by all nine members of the Republican side of the committee, and I ask unanimous consent that it be entered into the record at today's hearing." A visibly angry Schiff responded immediately after, at which point the "clash exploded" as the Russiagate-obsessed Democrat aggressively pushed back defending his past comments by lighting into the president and his family and campaign over its contacts with Russia.

    "My colleagues may think it is OK the president's son was offered dirt as part of an effort to help Trump," Schiff said in his statement.

    "You might think it is OK. I don't," Schiff added, his voice rising as he went on. In their letter, Republicans implied that Schiff was involved in or aware of leaks of committee information that fueled speculation about collusion as the Daily Caller reported.

    "Your repeated public statements, which implied knowledge of classified facts supporting the collusion allegations, occurred at the same time anonymous leaks of alleged intelligence and law enforcement information were appearing in the media," the letter reads.

    "These leaks, often sources to current or former Administration or intelligence officials, appeared to support the collusion allegations and were purported to be related to ongoing investigations of President Trump and his associates."

    The letter also notes that committee Republicans also found no evidence of collusion involving the campaign. They released a report April 27, 2018, that laid out the results of the investigation, however, Schiff has vowed to resume the investigation, with a focus on Trump's financial dealings and whether Trump associates have worked under the influence of Russia.

    "Despite these findings, you continue to proclaim in the media that there is 'significant evidence of collusion,'" reads the letter.

    And while Schiff, or as Donald Trump Jr calls him "FullOfSchiff" may plan to keep kicking a dead horse for a long time, the social media response was quick and was largely split along party lines:

    Got The Wrong No , 7 minutes ago link

    • I don't think it's Ok that you are a flaming *** hole
    • I don't think it's Ok that you lie to the American People
    • I don't think it's Ok that you are a Pedo
    • I din't think it's Ok what you did at the Standard Hotel
    • I don't think it's Ok that you breath the same are as I do
    • I don't think it's Ok that you think you will get away with your crimes
    • I don't think it's Ok you represent me in Congress
    • I don't think it's Ok that you are not hung by you balls on Pay for View

    Tic Tock Dumb ***

    NutzYahooo , 12 minutes ago link

    Another nail in the coffin for the Neo Bolshevik Movement..

    H. L. Munchkin , 1 hour ago link

    Who's Your GG Daddie?
    Schiff family
    Jacob Schiff, the most famous family member.

    Schiff family is a Jewish financial dynasty in the United States, who came to prominence with the rise of Jacob Schiff. Their ancestors were bankers and rabbinical ideologues in Frankfurt, tracing back to the 14th century. From his base in Wall Street, Schiff became the leader of Kuhn, Loeb & Co, a Jewish investment bank and rivals of J.P. Morgan & Co which primarily funded the railways and growth companies, such as Western Union and Westinghouse. Jacob Schiff, a Zionist, was ultra-ethnocentric in worldview and worked tirelessly to destroy Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Empire. During the Russo-Japanese War he loaned the Japanese, $200 million through Kuhn, Loeb & Co. He also funded the Russian Revolution (1917) to the amount of $20 million.[1]

    tavistock 2.0 , 1 hour ago link

    The meeting in Trump Tower with the Russian lawyer?

    Laughing out loud!

    Doesn't Schiff for brains realize it was the Obongo administration that granted the special visa to allow the Russian lawyer into the US?

    And we can't forget the time this jerkoff thought he was getting dirt on POTUS when he got punked by those Russian pranksters.

    Pepperidge Farms remembered:

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/02/06/russian_comedians_prank_call_rep_adam_schiff_promise_him_naked_photos_of_trump_from_fsb.html# !

    Wild Bill Steamcock , 2 hours ago link

    Why care anymore? I got real things to keep my mind occupied; not this government clown car act. **** 'em all, they're worthless, useless parasites of the lowest order

    Anunnaki , 1 hour ago link

    I am loving every minute of this. Now the Mewling Reatards think the proof is in the Mueller Report. Doubling down is just stupid. Whining about it is just lame.

    And that war pig Rachel Maddow lost 500k viewers

    Grumpy Old Objectivist , 1 hour ago link

    they're worthless, useless parasites of the lowest order

    [Who write the laws that determine your taxes, property rights, the rule of law]... which is why you should still care.

    [Mar 28, 2019] Adam Schiff Furious After GOP Calls For His Immediate Resignation In Explosive Hearing

    Notable quotes:
    "... "Your actions, both past, and present are incompatible with your duty of the chairman of this committee -- which alone, in the House of Representatives -- has the obligation and authority to provide effective oversight of the U.S. Intelligence community," ..."
    "... And while Schiff, or as Donald Trump Jr calls him "FullOfSchiff" may plan to keep kicking a dead horse for a long time, the social media response was quick and was largely split along party lines: ..."
    Mar 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who made Donald Trump's now debunked Russiagate "witch hunt" his one mission in life, furiously pushed back as all nine Committee Republicans demanded his resignation, defending his past comments by lighting into the president and his family and campaign over its contacts with Russia.

    Calls from Republicans and president Trump for the Russiagate-obsessed Schiff to resign as head of the House Intelligence Committee have been loud in the days following the release of the four-page Mueller report summary. And on Thursday, the call was made right to the Congressman's face in what Mediate described was an "explosive" clash, and The Hill dubbed a "striking display."

    At the start of the House intel hearing on Thursday morning, Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) called for Schiff to step down -- a call which he said was supported by all nine Republican members of the committee.

    "Your actions, both past, and present are incompatible with your duty of the chairman of this committee -- which alone, in the House of Representatives -- has the obligation and authority to provide effective oversight of the U.S. Intelligence community," Conaway said. "As such we have no faith in your ability to discharge your duties in a manner consistent with your Constitutional responsibility and urge your immediate resignation as chairman of the committee. Mr. Chairman, this letter is signed by all nine members of the Republican side of the committee, and I ask unanimous consent that it be entered into the record at today's hearing." A visibly angry Schiff responded immediately after, at which point the "clash exploded" as the Russiagate-obsessed Democrat aggressively pushed back defending his past comments by lighting into the president and his family and campaign over its contacts with Russia.

    "My colleagues may think it is OK the president's son was offered dirt as part of an effort to help Trump," Schiff said in his statement.

    "You might think it is OK. I don't," Schiff added, his voice rising as he went on. In their letter, Republicans implied that Schiff was involved in or aware of leaks of committee information that fueled speculation about collusion as the Daily Caller reported.

    "Your repeated public statements, which implied knowledge of classified facts supporting the collusion allegations, occurred at the same time anonymous leaks of alleged intelligence and law enforcement information were appearing in the media," the letter reads.

    "These leaks, often sources to current or former Administration or intelligence officials, appeared to support the collusion allegations and were purported to be related to ongoing investigations of President Trump and his associates."

    The letter also notes that committee Republicans also found no evidence of collusion involving the campaign. They released a report April 27, 2018, that laid out the results of the investigation, however, Schiff has vowed to resume the investigation, with a focus on Trump's financial dealings and whether Trump associates have worked under the influence of Russia.

    "Despite these findings, you continue to proclaim in the media that there is 'significant evidence of collusion,'" reads the letter.

    And while Schiff, or as Donald Trump Jr calls him "FullOfSchiff" may plan to keep kicking a dead horse for a long time, the social media response was quick and was largely split along party lines:

    Got The Wrong No , 7 minutes ago link

    • I don't think it's Ok that you are a flaming *** hole
    • I don't think it's Ok that you lie to the American People
    • I don't think it's Ok that you are a Pedo
    • I din't think it's Ok what you did at the Standard Hotel
    • I don't think it's Ok that you breath the same are as I do
    • I don't think it's Ok that you think you will get away with your crimes
    • I don't think it's Ok you represent me in Congress
    • I don't think it's Ok that you are not hung by you balls on Pay for View

    Tic Tock Dumb ***

    NutzYahooo , 12 minutes ago link

    Another nail in the coffin for the Neo Bolshevik Movement..

    H. L. Munchkin , 1 hour ago link

    Who's Your GG Daddie?
    Schiff family
    Jacob Schiff, the most famous family member.

    Schiff family is a Jewish financial dynasty in the United States, who came to prominence with the rise of Jacob Schiff. Their ancestors were bankers and rabbinical ideologues in Frankfurt, tracing back to the 14th century. From his base in Wall Street, Schiff became the leader of Kuhn, Loeb & Co, a Jewish investment bank and rivals of J.P. Morgan & Co which primarily funded the railways and growth companies, such as Western Union and Westinghouse. Jacob Schiff, a Zionist, was ultra-ethnocentric in worldview and worked tirelessly to destroy Tsar Nicholas II and the Russian Empire. During the Russo-Japanese War he loaned the Japanese, $200 million through Kuhn, Loeb & Co. He also funded the Russian Revolution (1917) to the amount of $20 million.[1]

    tavistock 2.0 , 1 hour ago link

    The meeting in Trump Tower with the Russian lawyer?

    Laughing out loud!

    Doesn't Schiff for brains realize it was the Obongo administration that granted the special visa to allow the Russian lawyer into the US?

    And we can't forget the time this jerkoff thought he was getting dirt on POTUS when he got punked by those Russian pranksters.

    Pepperidge Farms remembered:

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/02/06/russian_comedians_prank_call_rep_adam_schiff_promise_him_naked_photos_of_trump_from_fsb.html# !

    Wild Bill Steamcock , 2 hours ago link

    Why care anymore? I got real things to keep my mind occupied; not this government clown car act. **** 'em all, they're worthless, useless parasites of the lowest order

    Anunnaki , 1 hour ago link

    I am loving every minute of this. Now the Mewling Reatards think the proof is in the Mueller Report. Doubling down is just stupid. Whining about it is just lame.

    And that war pig Rachel Maddow lost 500k viewers

    Grumpy Old Objectivist , 1 hour ago link

    they're worthless, useless parasites of the lowest order

    [Who write the laws that determine your taxes, property rights, the rule of law]... which is why you should still care.

    [Mar 28, 2019] NeoMcCartyism campaign will continue despite another blow for the reputation of the American MSM

    Notable quotes:
    "... "How idiotic it would be if the Earth were destroyed because Hillary Clinton lost, couldn't accept it and invented a story for lying liars to lie about." ..."
    Mar 28, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    MEDIA. "[Did you] receive bad information throughout this process like so many of us did? " asks whathishair – remember that moment: a "Big Journalist" admits that they're just typists . Followed by the admission from the boss of CNN that they're not investigators . NYT blubbers not just we, but you too.

    Taibbi is correct: " death-blow for the reputation of the American news media. " Last week I wrote "A poll shows that "hardly any confidence at all in the press" is the winning answer."

    What's next week's answer going to be? A free, skeptical and challenging media is important; what happens when it's just a big typing pool waiting for Big Brother's Dictaphone?

    Time to learn from the Soviets .

    Harlan Easley , 6 hours ago

    "How idiotic it would be if the Earth were destroyed because Hillary Clinton lost, couldn't accept it and invented a story for lying liars to lie about."

    That sums it up for me. "Do not go gentle delusionally into that good night"

    [Mar 28, 2019] NeoMcCartyism has done immense damage to Russo-US relations. Will it be repaired? Can it be repaired?

    Mar 28, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    RUSSIA RELATIONS. Immense damage has been done. Will it be repaired? Can it be repaired? Russia is not a joke country in Disneyland and we're not characters in a Marvel comic.

    How idiotic it would be if the Earth were destroyed because Hillary Clinton lost, couldn't accept it and invented a story for lying liars to lie about. Much will depend on whether Trump starts a real investigation so that the falsity is exposed.

    ( Conrad Black has the best exposition of the conspiracy for people who are just tuning in .)

    MUELLER. One half of the lie has been exploded with the finding that no one connected with Trump colluded with any Russians. The other half of the lie – created by the same people for the same reasons – lives on. Again I tell you: Russia did not/not interfere in the US election , Mueller's indictment of a Russian clickbait farm notwithstanding . (Again: read MoA and learn today what the NYT will discover (admit to) tomorrow .) Neither official Russia nor unofficial Russia. Why not? Simple deduction: if Moscow had wanted to damage Clinton, it would have used its most powerful weapon ; it didn't; QED.

    AMERICA-HYSTERICA. Will continue – somewhat diminished by the hard kick of reality to be sure – but they've too much invested in it and some will double down while others try to slither away . We see the goalposts being moved .

    The winner so far: Mueller Report Has Moscow in Ecstasy, Opening the Way for More Putin Plots... expect Vladimir Putin to be more aggressive than ever . Schiff ( Mr Pillow Man ) digs his hole deeper ; Swalwell and Peters dive into it .

    [Mar 28, 2019] BREAKING Tulsi Gabbard Puts Morning Joe Host In Her Place! - YouTube

    Amazing level of polemic and diplomatic skills. That's really high class my fiends. Rare for any US politician: most are suckers that can answer only prepared questions. MSNBC presstitutes should be ashamed, but they have not shame. amasing !!!
    See also Smug MSNBC Hosts Treat Tulsi Like Trash For Bucking Pro-War Narrative - YouTube and NBC's Bizarre Attack on Tulsi Gabbard - YouTube
    RT has a dog in this game and they really provide detailed analysis: NBC's Bizarre Attack on Tulsi Gabbard - YouTube
    Feb 06, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    In this segment, we look at Tulsi's savvy and brutally honest rebuttal when the Morning Show hosts allege that "Russia" is looking to help Tulsi when the 2020 Democratic Primary election

    [Mar 28, 2019] How Millions Were Duped By Russiagate The Illusory Truth Effect

    Mar 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    "Mueller Finds No Trump-Russia Conspiracy", read the front page headline of Sunday's New York Times. Bit by bit, mainstream American consciousness is slowly coming to terms with the death of the thrilling conspiracy theory that the highest levels of the US government had been infiltrated by the Kremlin, and with the stark reality that the mass media and the Democratic Party spent the last two and-a-half years monopolizing public attention with a narrative which never had any underlying truth to it.

    There are still holdouts, of course. Many people invested a tremendous amount of hope, credibility, and egoic currency in the belief that Robert Mueller was going to arrest high-ranking Trump administration officials and members of Trump's own family, leading seedy characters to "flip" on the president in their own self-interest and thereby providing evidence that will lead to impeachment. Some insist that Attorney General William Barr is holding back key elements of the Mueller report, a claim which is premised on the absurd belief that Mueller would allow Barr to lie about the results of the investigation without speaking up publicly. Others are still holding out hope that other investigations by other legal authorities will turn up some Russian shenanigans that Mueller could not, ignoring Mueller's sweeping subpoena powers and unrivaled investigative authority. But they're coming around.

    The question still remains, though: what the hell happened? How did a fact-free conspiracy theory come to gain so much traction among mainstream Americans? How were millions of people persuaded to invest hope in a narrative that anyone objectively analyzing the facts knew to be completely false?

    The answer is that they were told that the Russiagate narrative was legitimate over and over again by politicians and mass media pundits, and, because of a peculiar phenomenon in the nature of human cognition, this repetition made it seem true.

    The rather uncreatively-named illusory truth effect describes the way people are more likely to believe something is true after hearing it said many times. This is due to the fact that the familiar feeling we experience when hearing something we've heard before feels very similar to our experience of knowing that something is true. When we hear a familiar idea, its familiarity provides us with something called cognitive ease , which is the relaxed, unlabored state we experience when our minds aren't working hard at something. We also experience cognitive ease when we are presented with a statement that we know to be true.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/cebFWOlx848

    We have a tendency to select for cognitive ease, which is why confirmation bias is a thing; believing ideas which don't cause cognitive strain or dissonance gives us more cognitive ease than doing otherwise. Our evolutionary ancestors adapted to seek out cognitive ease so that they could put their attention into making quick decisions essential for survival, rather than painstakingly mulling over whether everything we believe is as true as we think it is. This was great for not getting eaten by saber-toothed tigers in prehistoric times, but it's not very helpful when navigating the twists and turns of a cognitively complex modern world. It's also not helpful when you're trying to cultivate truthful beliefs while surrounded by screens that are repeating the same bogus talking points over and over again.

    I'm dealing with a perfect example of the perils of cognitive ease right now. Writing this essay has required me to move outside my familiar comfort zone of political commentary and read a bunch of studies and essays, think hard about new ideas, and then figure out how to convey them as clearly and concisely as possible without boring my audience. This movement away from cognitive ease has resulted in my checking Twitter a lot more often than I usually do, and seeking so much distraction that this essay will probably end up getting published about twelve hours later than I had intended. Having to read a bunch of scholars explaining the precise reasons why I'm acting like such an airhead hasn't exactly helped my sense of cognitive ease any, either.

    me title=

    Science has been aware of the illusory truth effect since 1977, when a study found that subjects were more likely to evaluate a statement as true when it's been repeatedly presented to them over the course of a couple of weeks, even if they didn't consciously remember having encountered that statement before. These findings have been replicated in numerous studies since, and new research in recent years has shown that the phenomenon is even more drastic than initially believed. A 2015 paper titled " Knowledge Does Not Protect Against Illusory Truth " found that the illusory truth effect is so strong that sheer repetition can change the answers that test subjects give, even when they had been in possession of knowledge contradicting that answer beforehand . This study was done to test the assumption which had gone unchallenged up until then that the illusory truth effect only comes into play when there is no stored knowledge of the subject at hand.

    "Surprisingly, repetition increased statements' perceived truth, regardless of whether stored knowledge could have been used to detect a contradiction," the paper reads.

    "Reading a statement like 'A sari is the name of the short pleated skirt worn by Scots' increased participants' later belief that it was true, even if they could correctly answer the question 'What is the name of the short pleated skirt worn by Scots?'"

    Stored knowledge tells pretty much everybody that the "short, pleated skirt worn by Scots" is a kilt, not a sari, but simply repeating the contrary statement can convince them otherwise.

    This explains why we all know people who are extraordinarily intelligent, but still bought into the Russiagate narrative just as much as our less mentally apt friends and acquaintances. Their intelligence didn't save them from this debunked conspiracy theory, it just made them more clever in finding ways of defending it. This is because the illusory truth effect largely bypasses the intellect, and even one's own stored knowledge, because of the way we all reflexively select for cognitive ease.

    Another study titled " Incrimination through innuendo: Can media questions become public answers? " found that subjects can be manipulated into believing an allegation simply by exposure to innuendo or incriminating questions in news media headlines. Questions like, for example, " What If Trump Has Been a Russian Asset Since 1987 ?", printed by New York Magazine in July of last year.

    me title=

    You can understand, then, how a populace who is consuming repetitive assertions, innuendo, and incriminating questions on a daily basis through the screens that they look at many times a day could be manipulated into believing that Robert Mueller would one day reveal evidence which will lead to the destruction of the Trump administration. The repetition leads to belief, the belief leads to trust, and before you know it people who are scared of the president are reading the Palmer Report every day and parking themselves in front of Rachel Maddow every night and letting everything they say slide right past their skepticism filters, marinating comfortably in a sedative of cognitive ease.

    And that repetition has been no accident. CNN producer John Bonifield was caught on video nearly two years ago admitting that CNN's CEO Jeff Zucker was personally instructing his staff to stay focused on Russia even in the midst of far more important breaking news stories.

    "My boss, I shouldn't say this, my boss yesterday we were having a discussion about this dental shoot and he goes and he was just like I want you to know what we are up against here," Bonifield told an undercover associate of James O'Keefe's Project Veritas .

    "And he goes, just to give you some context, President Trump pulled out of the climate accords and for a day and a half we covered the climate accords. And the CEO of CNN said in our internal meeting, he said good job everybody covering the climate accords, but we're done with it, let's get back to Russia. "

    (And before you get on me about O'Keefe's shady record, CNN said in a statement that the video was legitimate and disputed none of its content, saying only that it stands by Bonifield and that "Diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong, we welcome it and embrace it.")

    Zucker, for his part, told the New York Times in an article published yesterday that he was "entirely comfortable" with CNN's role in promoting the Russiagate conspiracy theory the way that it did.

    "We are not investigators. We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did," Zucker said.

    "A sitting president's own Justice Department investigated his campaign for collusion with a hostile nation. That's not enormous because the media says so. That's enormous because it's unprecedented."

    me title=

    "We are not investigators"? What the fuck kind of dumbass shit is that? So it's not your job to investigate whether what you're reporting is true or false? It's not your job to investigate whether the anonymous sources you're basing your reports on might be lying or not? It's not your job to investigate whether or not you'd be committing journalistic malpractice with the multiple completely bullshit stories your outlet has been humiliated by in the last two years? It's not your job to weigh the consequences of deliberately monopolizing public attention on a narrative which consists of nothing but confident-sounding assertions and innuendo?

    "We are not investigators." So? You're not dentists or firefighters either, what's your point? That has nothing to do with the mountains of journalistic malpractice you've been perpetrating by advancing this conspiracy theory, nor with the inexcusable brutalization you've been inflicting upon the American psyche with your deliberate nonstop repetition of bogus assertions, innuendo, and incriminating questions.

    The science of modern propaganda has been in research and development for over a century . If you think about how many advances have been made in other military fields over the last hundred years, that gives you a clear example of how sophisticated an understanding the social engineers must now have of the methods of mass manipulation of human psychology. We may be absolutely certain that there are people who've been working to drive the public narratives about western rivals like Russia, and that they are doing so with a far greater understanding of the concepts we've touched on in this essay than we have at our disposal.

    The manipulators understand our psyches better than we understand them ourselves, and they're getting more clever, not less. The only thing we can do to keep our heads while immersed in a society that is saturated with propaganda is be as relentlessly honest as possible, with ourselves and with the world. We'll never be able to out-manipulate the master manipulators, but we can be real with ourselves about whether or not we're selecting for cognitive ease rather than thinking rigorously and clearly. We can be truthful with our friends, family, coworkers and social media followers wherever untruth seems to be taking hold. We can do our very best to shine the light of truth on the puppeteers wherever we spot them and ruin the whole goddamn show for everyone.

    It may not seem like a lot, but truth is the one thing they can't manipulate, whether it's truth about them, truth about the world, or truthfulness with yourself. The lying manipulators got us into this mess, so only truth can get us out.

    * * *

    Thanks for reading! My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , purchasing some of my sweet merchandise , buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone , or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    [Mar 27, 2019] Saudi Arabia has rejected US President Donald Trump's recognition of Syria's Golan Heights as Israeli territory

    Mar 27, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    arby , Mar 26, 2019 9:55:59 AM | link

    AFP news agency
    ‏Verified account @AFP
    2h2 hours ago

    #UPDATE Saudi Arabia has rejected US President Donald Trump's recognition of Syria's Golan Heights as Israeli territory, condemning it as a violation of international law http://u.afp.com/JqPV #GolanHeights

    karlof1 , Mar 26, 2019 1:02:24 PM | link

    Was Reagan the last anti-Zionist POTUS? :

    "US President Ronald Reagan on Israel's decision to annex the 🇸🇾 Syrian Golan Heights 🇸🇾 in 1981:

    "'We do deplore this unilateral action by Israel, which has increased the difficulty of seeking peace in the Middle East under the terms of the U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338.'"

    His attitude made UNSCR 497 possible. Trump's move shows he's anti-Reagan, which is a point his opponents could use if they weren't pro-Zionist like Trump.

    [Mar 27, 2019] Russia is perforce the enemy that Washington needs in order to stay in the business of Empire by David Stockman

    Notable quotes:
    "... Namely, that America is suffering Regime Failure. Thus, wrong-headed Washington policies have brought prosperity to Wall Street but not main street, which is what actually explains why Trump won the left-behind precincts of Flyover America. ..."
    "... Regime Failure has also fostered confrontation with Russia when it is no threat to homeland security at all, but so doing has vilified Putin and Russia to the point that random dots of RussiaGate got woven into a preposterous theory of collusion. ..."
    "... The foundation document which turned these random developments into the Russia Collusion story, of course, was the January 6, 2017 report entitled, "Assessing Russian Activities And Intentions in Recent US Elections". The report was nothing of the kind, of course, and is now well-understood to have been written by outgoing CIA director John Brennan and a hand-picked posse of politicized analysts from the CIA, FBI and NSA. It was essentially a political screed thinly disguised as the product of the professional intelligence community and was designed to discredit and sabotage the Trump presidency. ..."
    "... William Binney, who is the father of modern NSA internet spying technologies, says that the DNC emails were leaked on a thumb-drive and couldn't have been hacked as a technical matter; and equally competent analysts have shown that Guccifer 2.0 is almost surely a NSA contrived fiction based on the oldest trick in the police precinct station house – planting evidence, in this case telltale Cyrillic letters and the name of a notorious head of the Soviet secret police. ..."
    "... So what we are left with is the fact that Binney, a NSA veteran and actually the father of much of today's NSA internet spying capability, says that the recorded download speed of the DNC emails could only have been done by plugging a thumb-drive into the machines on site. That is, nothing downloads across 5,000 miles of digital expanse at the recorded 22.7 megabytes per second. ..."
    "... The pure grandstanding nature of this blow against the purported election meddling of the nefarious Russians is more than evident in the 3,000 ads IRA bought on Facebook for about $100,000 – more than half of which were posted after the election. ..."
    "... Yet here's a typical example of how the Russians stormed into America's sacred election space – even if according to Facebook this particular ad got less than 10,000 "impressions" and the mighty sum of 160 "shares" . For crying out loud, it didn't take any nefarious Russian intelligence agent to post this kind of cartoonish Islamophobia. There are millions of American xenophobes more than happy to do it with their own dime, time and bile. ..."
    Mar 27, 2019 | original.antiwar.com

    Originally from: Not Mueller Time: Hey, MSM, This Dud's For You! ,

    Now that the giant Mueller Nothingburger (with a side of crow-flavored fries, per Jim Kunstler) has been officially delivered unto the mainstream media's wailing and gnashing of teeth, the essence of the matter should be obvious: To wit, the RussiaGate Collusion story was always way above the pay grade of the legal sleuths and gunslingers who wasted $25 million on it – and notwithstanding 2,800 subpoenas, 500 witnesses, 40 FBI agents and 21 lawyers.

    This prosecutorial blitzkrieg had no chance of discovering the nefarious facts of conspiracy, however, because there never were any worthy of adult consideration. To the contrary, from day #1 the whole cock-and-bull story was based on a syllogism which held that Trump's very election victory and support for rapprochement with Russia were in themselves proof of a conspiracy with the Kremlin to steal the election.

    That is to say, by the lights of the Dems, official Washington and their mainstream media echo chamber, Hillary Clinton could not have lost the 2016 election to the worst GOP candidate in history including Barry Goldwater and Alf Landon (true) without the sinister intervention of a foreign power hostile to Hillary.

    Therefore, Putin and the Russians elected Trump. Q.E.D.

    Likewise, Russia is perforce the enemy that Washington needs in order to stay in the business of Empire. So advocacy of rapprochement with Moscow was per se evidence that the Kremlin had blackmail (kompromat for the RussiaGate cognoscenti) on Trump and his campaign.

    Once these predicates were established, of course, any old dog-eared "facts" could be hung on the frame in order to establishment an air of verisimilitude.

    But now we know. Strip away the false predicates and the flotsam and jetsam of the case fall flat on their face. Even 22 months of Mueller Time couldn't stich together a Humpty-Dumpty that never was.

    As it happens, however, there has been all along a perfectly plausible alternative explanation for why Trump won and why repairing relations with Russia made eminent good sense.

    Namely, that America is suffering Regime Failure. Thus, wrong-headed Washington policies have brought prosperity to Wall Street but not main street, which is what actually explains why Trump won the left-behind precincts of Flyover America.

    Regime Failure has also fostered confrontation with Russia when it is no threat to homeland security at all, but so doing has vilified Putin and Russia to the point that random dots of RussiaGate got woven into a preposterous theory of collusion.

    What is left without the syllogistic predicates, of course, are the ludicrous threadbare facts of the case.

    After all, can there be anything more pitiful after 22 months of prosecutorial scorched earth on the Russian collusion file than Mueller's list of indictments. These include:

    • 13 Russian college kids for essentially practicing English as a third language at a St. Petersburg troll farm for $4 per hour;
    • 12 Russian intelligence operatives who might as well have been picked from the GRU phonebook;
    • Baby George Papadopoulos for mis-recalling an irrelevant date by two weeks;
    • Paul Manafort for standard Washington lobbyist crimes committed long before he met Trump;
    • Michael Cohen for shirking taxes and running Trump's bimbo silencing operation;
    • Michael Flynn for doing his job talking to the Russian Ambassador and confusing the confusable Mike Pence on what he said and didn't say about Obama's idiotic 11th hour Russian sanctions;
    • Rick Gates for helping Manafort shakedown the Ukrainian government and other oily Washington supplicants.;
    • Sam Patten, another Manafort operative who forgot to register correctly as a foreign agent;
    • Richard Pinedo, a grifter who never met Trump and got caught selling forged bank accounts on-line to Russians for a couple bucks each;
    • Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyers who wrote a report for Manafort in 2012 and misreported to the FBI what he told Gates about it.

    That's all she wrote and it's about as pathetic as it gets. Mueller should have been guffawed out of town on account of this tommyrot long before belatedly delivering a report that proved exactly that.

    So it is perhaps a measure of the degree to which the Imperial City has fallen prey to the Trump Derangement Syndrome that the five core events of the case survived as long as they did. In fact, it has long been evident from public information that there was nothing nefarious about any of these ragged building blocks of the case:

    • Baby George Papadopoulos's drunken conversation with a London professor who has long since disappeared and was likely a CIA asset;
    • Carter Page's self-promotion into a bogus FISA warrant;
    • the completely innocent June 2016 Trump Tower meeting;
    • the disputed case regarding whether the DNC was the victim of a hack or a leak; and
    • the ludicrous efforts of the Russian troll farm in St. Petersburg.

    The foundation document which turned these random developments into the Russia Collusion story, of course, was the January 6, 2017 report entitled, "Assessing Russian Activities And Intentions in Recent US Elections". The report was nothing of the kind, of course, and is now well-understood to have been written by outgoing CIA director John Brennan and a hand-picked posse of politicized analysts from the CIA, FBI and NSA. It was essentially a political screed thinly disguised as the product of the professional intelligence community and was designed to discredit and sabotage the Trump presidency.

    And it was lied about over and over by the MSM who called it an assessment of the 17 US intelligence agencies when it was nothing of the kind, and said so right on the cover page.

    In fact, when we first read this ballyhooed report our thought was that someone at the Onion had pilfered the CIA logo and published a sidesplitting satire.

    The 9-pager on RT America, which is presented as evidence of "Kremlin messaging", is so sophomoric and hackneyed that it could have been written by a summer intern at the CIA. It consists entirely of a sloppy catalogue of leftist and libertarian based dissent from mainstream policy that has been aired on RT America on such subversive topics as Occupy Wall Street, anti-fracking, police brutality, foreign interventionism and civil liberties.

    Actually, your editor has appeared dozens of times on RT America and advocated nearly every position cited by the CIA as evidence of nefarious Russian propaganda.

    And we thought it up all by ourselves!

    So, yes, we do think US intervention in Syria was wrong; that Georgia was the aggressor when it invaded South Ossetia; that the American people have been disenfranchised and need to "take this government back"; that Washington runs a "surveillance state" where civil liberties are being ridden roughshod upon; that Wall Street is riven with "greed" and the "US national debt" is out of control; that the two-party system is a "sham "and that it doesn't represent the views of "one-third of the population" (at least!); and that most especially after killing millions in unnecessary wars Washington has "no moral right to teach the rest of the world".

    So there you have it: Policy views on various topics that are embraced in some instances by both your libertarian editor and the left-wing Nation magazine were held to be examples of Russian messaging, and alarming evidence of nefarious meddling in our electoral process at that.

    In fact, the single proposition in the entire ten-pages of political opinionating that relates to an actual Russian intrusion (other than the hideous St. Petersburg troll farm which we debunk below) in the American electoral process is the completely discredited notion that the Russian GRU hacked the DNC emails and handed them off to WikiLeaks

    No, not at all.

    William Binney, who is the father of modern NSA internet spying technologies, says that the DNC emails were leaked on a thumb-drive and couldn't have been hacked as a technical matter; and equally competent analysts have shown that Guccifer 2.0 is almost surely a NSA contrived fiction based on the oldest trick in the police precinct station house – planting evidence, in this case telltale Cyrillic letters and the name of a notorious head of the Soviet secret police.

    Indeed, if the Russians did it – from a troll farm in St. Petersburg or the Kremlin itself – the fingerprints from any remote hacking operation would be all over the computers involved. Moreover, the National Security Agency (NSA) would have a record of the breach stored at one of its server farms because it does capture and store everything that comes into the US over the internet.

    Said record, of course, would amount to the Smoking Intercept. So the only thing Mueller really needed to do was to call the head of NSA and request the NSA intercept – something he obviously didn't do or it would have leaked long ago.

    In the alternative, if NSA has no such record, he could have confiscated the DNC computers – which had never even been inspected by the FBI, let alone taken into custody – to determine whether William Binney is right.

    That didn't happen, either, or it too would have leaked in a heartbeat.

    So what we are left with is the fact that Binney, a NSA veteran and actually the father of much of today's NSA internet spying capability, says that the recorded download speed of the DNC emails could only have been done by plugging a thumb-drive into the machines on site. That is, nothing downloads across 5,000 miles of digital expanse at the recorded 22.7 megabytes per second.

    In short, if the Russians hacked them, the evidence is all there in the hard drives; and if they didn't, the entire RussiaGate hoax should have been shutdown long ago.

    That's because the only thing that remotely smacks of untoward meddling by the Kremlin is the DNC emails – and even then, they only concerned intra-party squabbles between the Clinton and the Sandernista factions of the Dem party that were already well advertised and known to the American electorate.

    Cyber Garbage From the St. Petersburg Troll Farm

    By contrast, another prime exhibit in the meddling narrative is the pitiful efforts of the Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency (IRA). This is was cited over and over by the RussiaGaters as evidence of Putin's nefarious hand at work, but did they ever investigate the matter?

    The fact is, the IRA was such a belly-splitting joke that they only thing it proved is that prosecutor Mueller did actually indict 13 Russian-speaking ham sandwiches.

    Indeed, the joker in the whole deck is that the nefarious"troll farm" in St. Petersburg was not even a Russian intelligence agency operation at all.

    It was just "Russian" even by the careful terminology of Barr's summary. As it happened, the RussiaGate hysteria had reached such a point that any contact with any of Russia's 144 million citizens became inherently suspect, as if that beleaguered nation had become a race of evildoers.

    Actually, the IRA was the relatively harmless Hobby Farm of a fanatical Russian oligarch and ultra-nationalist, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has a great big beef against Imperial Washington's demonization of Russia and Vlad Putin. Apparently, the farm was (it's apparently being disbanded) the vehicle through which he gave Washington the middle finger and buttered up his patron.

    Prigozhin is otherwise known as "Putin's Cook" because he made his fortune in St. Petersburg restaurants that Putin favored and via state funded food service operations at Russian schools and military installations.

    Like most Russian oligarchs not in jail, he apparently tithes in gratitude to the Kremlin: In this case, by bankrolling the rinky-dink operation at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg that was the object of Mueller's pretentious foray into the flotsam and jetsam of social media low life.

    Prigozhin's trolling farm was grandly called the Internet Research Agency (IRA), but what it actually did was hire (apparently) unemployed 20-somethings at $4-8 per hour to pound out ham-handed political messaging on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc. They banged away twelve hours at a shift on a quota-driven paint-by-the-internet-numbers basis where their output was rated for engagements, likes, retweets etc.

    Whatever these keyboard drones might have been, they were not professional Russian intel operators. And the collection of broken English postings strewn throughout Mueller's indictment were not one bit scary.

    The pure grandstanding nature of this blow against the purported election meddling of the nefarious Russians is more than evident in the 3,000 ads IRA bought on Facebook for about $100,000 – more than half of which were posted after the election.

    Yet here's a typical example of how the Russians stormed into America's sacred election space – even if according to Facebook this particular ad got less than 10,000 "impressions" and the mighty sum of 160 "shares" . For crying out loud, it didn't take any nefarious Russian intelligence agent to post this kind of cartoonish Islamophobia. There are millions of American xenophobes more than happy to do it with their own dime, time and bile.

    [Mar 27, 2019] EconoSpeak Maybe No Conspiracy Or Coordination, But Lots And Lots Of Collusion

    Mar 26, 2019 | econospeak.blogspot.com

    So how do these things differ? Conspiracy and cooedination both imply some amount of planning and direction, with for conspiracy some sort of communication and agreement on the plan with the other conspiring party, namely the Russians. What apparently the Mueller report finds is none of that: no central plan or direction or the making of such a plan with the Russians. This indeed looks like it is true, although some of what went on around the Trump Tower meeting gets pretty borderline, even as that seems to have been sort of a mutually botched meeting.

    But on the matter of collusion we have piles of evidence that this has occurred, and the evidence is the large pile of indictments that Mueller has brought forward against a lot of people, with many of those charged with having unreported meetings and dealings with Russians, including passing of information back and forth, with many of these then lying about all this, and with some of these people pleading guilty of what they were charrged with. These actions have involved very clearly in many cases collusion with the Russians rhese people were dealing with. The crucial diffeeence is that it appears that all this collusion was unplanned and undirected. It was disorganized and spontaneous collusion, although serious enough to bring about efforts to cover up what was going on by many, including apparently Trump himself, even if AG Barr has decided he did not commit obstruction of justice.

    Anonymous Anonymous said...

    Editing:

    Nothing will cure the writer of Russian-itis.

    Barkley Rosser said...
    Me or somebody else, Anonymous?

    Six of Trump's closest associates have been indicted in connection with this. I only note that Dana Milbank of WaPo agrees with me: lots of collusion, which is different from conspiracy, which Trump is too stupid to actually engage in.

    As it is, Anonymous, I happen to be very well informed about Russia and pay close attention to it, probably more than you on both counts. So spouting about "Russian-itis" just makes you poorly informed and stupid.

    As it is, I am increasingly disgusted that most of the media has simply rolled over and bought the Trump/Hannity line that "no collusion" is what has been shown. It has not. Again, the word does not appear in the Bar letter.

    https://acdn.adnxs.com/ib/static/usersync/v3/async_usersync.html

    https://c.deployads.com/sync?f=html&s=2297&u=https%3A%2F%2Fangrybearblog.com%2F2019%2F03%2Fmaybe-no-conspiracy-or-coordination-but-lots-and-lots-of-collusion.html%23comment-3089310

    https://eus.rubiconproject.com/usync.html

    1. likbez March 27, 2019 2:34 am

      Barkley,

      It is very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, if there is none 😉

      Despite being a Professor of Economics, and having a Russian speaking wife you are utterly incompetent in this area and are completely brainwashed by the neoliberal/neocon MSM. You tend to subconsciously equate Russia and the USSR. For your information, Russia is a neoliberal state; much like the USA and Putin is promoter of neoliberal capitalism, although in less man-eating mutation than in the USA.

      For your information Mueller investigation was a part of color revolution against Trump launched by intelligence services in the same way they launch color revolution in other countries. It is unclear to me why they did that, but that fact is provable

      See for example https://www.theepochtimes.com/spygate-the-true-story-of-collusion_2684629.html

      And the sequence of event, especially questioning the legitimacy of election, and Mueller appointment gambit with Comey as a sacrificing pawn, corresponds to what you can learn from the books of CIA-connected writer Gene Sharp -- the reference source on color revolution mechanics. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Sharp

      It is not clear to me why the Deep State in the USA (as well as in GB) has such an allergic reaction and viewed Trump as a threat to the US governed world neoliberal empire, because Trump, as corrupt as he is, is a part of NYC neoliberal elite and in no way a revolutionary. And it was clear that he will execute the same "bait and switch" maneuver as Obama betraying his election promises.

      Which actually happened three months after inauguration when he bombed Syria targets without any investigation of a chemical attack -- which most probably was staged by jihadists (supposedly he was influenced by Ivanka; actually Javanka is another problem of this corrupt administration and suggest completely different course of the investigation; hopefully by the Southern District of NY -- I would like Jared Kushner going to jail with or without Trump)

      But it was a color revolution. Which so far failed.

      So you better stop writing such detached from reality statements as "But on the matter of collusion we have piles of evidence that this has occurred, and the evidence is the large pile of indictments that Mueller has brought forward against a lot of people, with many of those charged with having unreported meetings and dealings with Russians," This is such a low level of IQ that it hurts. Naivety unacceptable for a Professor pretending to be a political analyst.

      In reality this was a false flag operation to present Russia as the culprit. Highly successful operation I would say. Russia serves as a very convenient scapegoat for such things.

      And having an external scapegoat and projecting into it all the ills helped to cement cracks in the neoliberal façade, when the US population rejected neoliberal's elite candidate. In addition, it allowed to launch NeoMcCartyism campaign in MSM for the suppressing the internal dissent, when anybody who question the US foreign wars or the rule of financial oligarchy can be framed as Putin's agent.

      So this is another classic method of suppressing the dissident voices including whose who argue for the return of the New Deal Capitalism and/or are against foreign wars. Looks at how MSMs treat Tulsi Gabbard visit to Syria. Does not it remind you something ?

      So most of your writings on this particular topic are just an implicit repetition of State Department taking points infused into your brain via MSMs you read. You have no first hand sources about Russia. That's why I would strongly recommend you to stop writing on this topic. You just disgrace yourself.

    [Mar 27, 2019] Russia and the Democrats by Rob Urie

    Notable quotes:
    "... What this implies is that the received wisdom amongst bourgeois Democrats -- the bosses, bank managers, academics, realtors and administrative class, looks to be what it is: a combination of class loathing that their 'lessors' didn't perceive the munificent blessing of their electoral choice; mass delusion on the part of self-styled 'high-information voters' about who really controls American 'democracy;' and studied ignorance of the consequences of the last half-century of bi-partisan neoliberal governance. ..."
    "... Most damaging to the burgeoning left in the U.S. is the deeply ugly character assassination of poor and working-class voters carried out by the urban bourgeois, many from the self-described radical left. People I know and like, but with whom I disagree politically but am working hard to convert, have spent the last three years being derided as traitorous, marginally literate hicks too stupid to know they are pawns of the Kremlin. The irony, if you care to call it that, is that they knew the Russian interference story was cynical bullshit all along while the graduate degree crowd was following every twist and turn as if it were true knowledge. ..."
    "... The New York Times and Washington Post have been publishing politically motivated 'fake news' in support of establishment interests since their inceptions. Their service to powerful interests is why they are still around. The FBI, CIA and NSA have been putting out politically motivated bullshit since their respective inceptions. They exist to serve the rich and powerful against all comers. To claim these as bastions of integrity was always a tough sell. To continue to claim it is the stuff from which revolutions are made. In this case, right-wing revolutions. ..."
    "... While the urban bourgeois have long been dismissive of the 'burn it down' contingent of Trump voters, they seem incapable of seeing their own roles as defenders of the establishment as corrupt and ultimately, politically suicidal. ..."
    "... . Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election because she is a corrupt, neoliberal, militaristic piece of shit ..."
    "... Lying sacks of shit like James Clapper and John Brennan will tie their lots to whomever will fund their adventures in mal-governance as the world burns and species become extinct. The tragedy here is that there are real issues in need of resolution. ..."
    Mar 27, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org
    Two years ago authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes wrote in their book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign that within 24 hours of her 2016 electoral loss, Hillary Clinton's senior campaign staff decided to blame the loss on Russian interference. Given the apparent source of the charge in opposition research funded by the Clinton campaign , the move seemed both desperate and pathetic -- a thread for Clinton's true believers to hang onto, an effort to keep campaign contributions rolling in and a ploy to cleave liberals from the left through red-baiting.

    For perspective, from the time leading up to the 2016 election through today, I chose to live amongst poor and working-class people of color, with occasional forays into the rural working and middle classes and the urban bourgeois. What became apparent early on is that the audience for the Russian interference story was the urban and suburban bourgeois who had seen their lots by-and-large restored by Barack Obama's bank bailouts and who had no knowledge of, or interaction with, the 90% of the country that is living, by degree, hand-to-mouth.

    What this implies is that the received wisdom amongst bourgeois Democrats -- the bosses, bank managers, academics, realtors and administrative class, looks to be what it is: a combination of class loathing that their 'lessors' didn't perceive the munificent blessing of their electoral choice; mass delusion on the part of self-styled 'high-information voters' about who really controls American 'democracy;' and studied ignorance of the consequences of the last half-century of bi-partisan neoliberal governance.

    As I wrote in early 2018:

    "Prior to the 2016 presidential election, if one were to ask what single act could seal a new Cold War with Russia, align liberals and progressives with the operational core of the American military-industrial-surveillance complex, expose the preponderance of left-activism as an offshoot of Democratic Party operations and consign most of what remained to personal invective against an empirically dangerous leader, consensus would likely have it that doing so wouldn't be easy."

    The Clinton campaign's decision to blame her electoral loss on Russian interference demonstrates why she was, and still is, unqualified to hold elected office. In the first, the U.S. – Russian rivalry is backed-up by hair-trigger nuclear arsenals that could end the world in a matter of minutes. Inciting tensions based on self-serving lies is stunningly reckless. In the second, the claim demonstrates utter contempt for her most loyal followers by feeding them purposely misleading explanations of the loss. And most damagingly for political opponents of Donald Trump, these actions give credence to the insurgent status of his retro-Republicanism against liberal and left defenders of the political establishment.

    Most damaging to the burgeoning left in the U.S. is the deeply ugly character assassination of poor and working-class voters carried out by the urban bourgeois, many from the self-described radical left. People I know and like, but with whom I disagree politically but am working hard to convert, have spent the last three years being derided as traitorous, marginally literate hicks too stupid to know they are pawns of the Kremlin. The irony, if you care to call it that, is that they knew the Russian interference story was cynical bullshit all along while the graduate degree crowd was following every twist and turn as if it were true knowledge.

    The Democratic Party 'leadership' that pursued this story is as stupid as it is corrupt. The purpose of Russia-gate was apparently to keep the Party faithful, faithful. But as was demonstrated in 2016, the faithful alone can't win an election. This leadership turned what could have been an effective 'give 'em enough rope' strategy against arrogant jackass Trump back on itself. The establishment-left had been in the process of giving self-described socialists someone to vote for in 2020. Too-clever-by-half liberal twaddle about 'post-truth' now has liberals -- universally conflated with the left, perceived as both idiots and liars. And rightly so.

    Democrats who spent the last three years making less than plausible (and politically retrograde) accusations against Mr. Trump likely still don't understand their current position. Their call for an exhaustive investigation carried out by people they trust was honored. While the investigation was underway, the mainstream press put one ludicrous fantasy after another forward as news. This while a host of real issues affecting real people's lives were studiously ignored. As incredulous as I am that it could be done, liberal Democrats have made corrupt oligarch Trump appear to be righteously aggrieved. Who says these people have no talent?

    The New York Times and Washington Post have been publishing politically motivated 'fake news' in support of establishment interests since their inceptions. Their service to powerful interests is why they are still around. The FBI, CIA and NSA have been putting out politically motivated bullshit since their respective inceptions. They exist to serve the rich and powerful against all comers. To claim these as bastions of integrity was always a tough sell. To continue to claim it is the stuff from which revolutions are made. In this case, right-wing revolutions.

    While the urban bourgeois have long been dismissive of the 'burn it down' contingent of Trump voters, they seem incapable of seeing their own roles as defenders of the establishment as corrupt and ultimately, politically suicidal. I voted for a woman for president and a black man for vice president in 2016. But they weren't Democrats. Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election because she is a corrupt, neoliberal, militaristic piece of shit. Ironically, or not, most of Trump voters I've spoken with know more about the Democrats' actual record than the highly educated urban bourgeois pontificating on NPR or in the New York Times.

    A quick bet is that the 2020 presidential election is now Donald Trump's to lose. Lying sacks of shit like James Clapper and John Brennan will tie their lots to whomever will fund their adventures in mal-governance as the world burns and species become extinct. The tragedy here is that there are real issues in need of resolution. The Democrats' three-year adventure in red-baiting served to legitimate a financial-military-industrial complex that apparently intends to end the planet as it makes as many people miserable in the process as is possible. Congratulations assholes. Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Rob Urie

    Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book Zen Economics is published by CounterPunch Books.

    [Mar 26, 2019] We Are Not Investigators CNN's Jeff Zucker Unapologetic For Perpetual Russia-Hoax Coverage

    Notable quotes:
    "... a CNN producer on hidden camera admitted that the Russia story was all for ratings , and the narrative is "mostly bullshit." ..."
    Mar 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    "We Are Not Investigators": CNN's Jeff Zucker Unapologetic For Perpetual Russia-Hoax Coverage

    by Tyler Durden Tue, 03/26/2019 - 18:25 1.0K SHARES

    CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker has all but admitted that the network is truly the "opposition party" to President Trump - telling the New York Times he is "entirely comfortable" with CNN's Trump-Russia coverage , while brushing off the fact that they were completely wrong about collusion.

    " We are not investigators. We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them , which is exactly what we did," the unapologetic Zucker wrote in an email . "A sitting president's own Justice Department investigated his campaign for collusion with a hostile nation. That's not enormous because the media says so. That's enormous because it's unprecedented."

    Except that a CNN producer on hidden camera admitted that the Russia story was all for ratings , and the narrative is "mostly bullshit."

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/jdP8TiKY8dE

    Then there was CNN's Van Jones calling it a "nothing burger."

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/l2G360HrSAs?start=87

    And in addition to CNN's hyperpartisan reporting against Trump, they've gotten it wrong several times . As Breitbart 's Josh Caplan notes:

    Last December, CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju reported that Wikileaks emailed Donald Trump Jr. access to information nearly two weeks prior to their public release. However, the network failed to verify the email's date -- September 14th, 2016 -- by which time the emails had already been released. In June, CNN reported former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was being investigated for meeting with a Russian banker ahead of President Trump's inauguration. Scaramucci denied the claim and CNN eventually apologized for its inaccurate report. CNN Executive editor Lex Haris, editor Eric Lichtblau, and journalist Thomas Frank resigned in shame over the story.

    Further, CNN claimed in July that Michael Cohen, President Trump's personal lawyer, was prepared to tell special counsel investigators that the president possesses advanced knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting between his son, Donald Trump Jr. and a Russia lawyer, and others. Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis, later told CNN had "mixed up" its facts and denied claims that Cohen had any such knowledge about the meeting. - Breitbart

    After more than two years of the FBI and DOJ probing every cavity they could, President Trump and his campaign were found to have not colluded with Russia -- according to a four-page summary of Mueller's findings written by Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw most of the special counsel's investigation.

    [Mar 26, 2019] I am impressed by the sheer silliness of Russiagate and the tenacious ignorance of those who still believe the corporate media.

    Mar 26, 2019 | www.unz.com

    WorkingClass , says: March 27, 2019 at 12:13 am GMT

    Russiagate is a story about greed and lust for power manifesting as treachery and corruption. As a hoax it is notable for it's size and duration and damage done. But it is nothing at all compared to 9/11. I am impressed by the sheer silliness of Russiagate and the tenacious ignorance of those who still believe the corporate media.

    But lessons for the left? None that I can see.

    [Mar 25, 2019] Russiagate was never about substance, it was about who gets to image-manage the decline of a turbo-charged, self-harming neoliberal capitalism by Jonathan Cook

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... It may look like Russiagate was a failure, but it was actually a success. It deflected the left's attention from endemic corruption within the leadership of the Democratic party, which supposedly represents the left. It rechannelled the left's political energies instead towards the convenient bogeymen targets of Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin. ..."
    "... What Mueller found – all he was ever going to find – was marginal corruption in the Trump camp. And that was inevitable because Washington is mired in corruption. In fact, what Mueller revealed was the most exceptional forms of corruption among Trump's team while obscuring the run-of-the-mill stuff that would have served as a reminder of the endemic corruption infecting the Democratic leadership too. ..."
    "... Further, in focusing on the Trump camp – and relative minnows like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone – the Russiagate inquiry actually served to shield the Democratic leadership from an investigation into the much worse corruption revealed in the content of the DNC emails. ..."
    "... What should have been at the front and centre of any inquiry was how the Democratic party sought to rig its primaries to prevent party members selecting anyone but Hillary as their presidential candidate. ..."
    "... Trump faces opposition from within the establishment not because he is "anti-establishment" but because he refuses to decorate the pig's snout with lipstick. He is tearing the mask off late-stage capitalism's greed and self-destructiveness ..."
    "... The corporate media, and the journalists they employ, are propagandists – for a system that keeps them wealthy. When Trump was a Republican primary candidate, the entire corporate media loved him because he was TV's equivalent of clickbait, just as he had been since reality TV began to usurp the place of current affairs programmes and meaningful political debate. ..."
    "... The "[neo]liberal" corporate media shares the values of the Democratic party leadership. In other words, it is heavily invested in making sure the pig doesn't lose its lipstick. By contrast, Fox News and the shock-jocks, like Trump, prioritise making money in the short term over the long-term credibility of a system that gives them licence to make money. They care much less whether the pig's face remains painted. ..."
    "... Just as too many on the left sleep-walked through the past two years waiting for Mueller – a former head of the FBI, the US secret police, for chrissakes! – to save them from Trump, they have been manipulated by liberal elites into the political cul-de-sac of identity politics. ..."
    "... The "[neo]liberal" elites exploited identity politics to keep us divided by pacifying the most maginalised with the offer of a few additional crumbs. Trump has exploited identity politics to keep us divided by inflaming tensions as he reorders the hierarchy of "privilege" in which those crumbs are offered. In the process, both wings of the elite have averted the danger that class consciousness and real solidarity might develop and start to challenge their privileges. ..."
    "... Were the US to get its own Corbyn as president, he or she would undoubtedly face a Mueller-style inquiry, and one far more effective at securing the president's impeachment than this one was ever going to be. ..."
    Mar 25, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org
    Here are three important lessons for the progressive left to consider now that it is clear the inquiry by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russiagate is never going to uncover collusion between Donald Trump's camp and the Kremlin in the 2016 presidential election.

    Painting the pig's face

    The left never had a dog in this race. This was always an in-house squabble between different wings of the establishment. Late-stage capitalism is in terminal crisis, and the biggest problem facing our corporate elites is how to emerge from this crisis with their power intact. One wing wants to make sure the pig's face remains painted, the other is happy simply getting its snout deeper into the trough while the food lasts.

    Russiagate was never about substance, it was about who gets to image-manage the decline of a turbo-charged, self-harming neoliberal capitalism.

    The leaders of the Democratic party are less terrified of Trump and what he represents than they are of us and what we might do if we understood how they have rigged the political and economic system to their permanent advantage.

    It may look like Russiagate was a failure, but it was actually a success. It deflected the left's attention from endemic corruption within the leadership of the Democratic party, which supposedly represents the left. It rechannelled the left's political energies instead towards the convenient bogeymen targets of Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

    Mired in corruption

    What Mueller found – all he was ever going to find – was marginal corruption in the Trump camp. And that was inevitable because Washington is mired in corruption. In fact, what Mueller revealed was the most exceptional forms of corruption among Trump's team while obscuring the run-of-the-mill stuff that would have served as a reminder of the endemic corruption infecting the Democratic leadership too.

    An anti-corruption investigation would have run much deeper and exposed far more. It would have highlighted the Clinton Foundation, and the role of mega-donors like James Simons, George Soros and Haim Saban who funded Hillary's campaign with one aim in mind: to get their issues into a paid-for national "consensus".

    Further, in focusing on the Trump camp – and relative minnows like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone – the Russiagate inquiry actually served to shield the Democratic leadership from an investigation into the much worse corruption revealed in the content of the DNC emails. It was the leaking / hacking of those emails that provided the rationale for Mueller's investigations. What should have been at the front and centre of any inquiry was how the Democratic party sought to rig its primaries to prevent party members selecting anyone but Hillary as their presidential candidate.

    So, in short, Russiagate has been two years of wasted energy by the left, energy that could have been spent both targeting Trump for what he is really doing rather than what it is imagined he has done, and targeting the Democratic leadership for its own, equally corrupt practices.

    Trump empowered

    But it's far worse than that. It is not just that the left wasted two years of political energy on Russiagate. At the same time, they empowered Trump, breathing life into his phony arguments that he is the anti-establishment president, a people's president the elites are determined to destroy.

    Trump faces opposition from within the establishment not because he is "anti-establishment" but because he refuses to decorate the pig's snout with lipstick. He is tearing the mask off late-stage capitalism's greed and self-destructiveness. And he is doing so not because he wants to reform or overthrow turbo-charged capitalism but because he wants to remove the last, largely cosmetic constraints on the system so that he and his friends can plunder with greater abandon – and destroy the planet more quickly.

    The other wing of the neoliberal establishment, the one represented by the Democratic party leadership, fears that exposing capitalism in this way – making explicit its inherently brutal, wrist-slitting tendencies – will awaken the masses, that over time it will risk turning them into revolutionaries. Democratic party leaders fear Trump chiefly because of the threat he poses to the image of the political and economic system they have so lovingly crafted so that they can continue enriching themselves and their children.

    Trump's genius – his only genius – is to have appropriated, and misappropriated, some of the language of the left to advance the interests of the 1 per cent. When he attacks the corporate "liberal" media for having a harmful agenda, for serving as propagandists, he is not wrong. When he rails against the identity politics cultivated by "liberal" elites over the past two decades – suggesting that it has weakened the US – he is not wrong. But he is right for the wrong reasons.

    TV's version of clickbait

    The corporate media, and the journalists they employ, are propagandists – for a system that keeps them wealthy. When Trump was a Republican primary candidate, the entire corporate media loved him because he was TV's equivalent of clickbait, just as he had been since reality TV began to usurp the place of current affairs programmes and meaningful political debate.

    The handful of corporations that own the US media – and much of corporate America besides – are there both to make ever-more money by expanding profits and to maintain the credibility of a political and economic system that lets them make ever more money.

    The "[neo]liberal" corporate media shares the values of the Democratic party leadership. In other words, it is heavily invested in making sure the pig doesn't lose its lipstick. By contrast, Fox News and the shock-jocks, like Trump, prioritise making money in the short term over the long-term credibility of a system that gives them licence to make money. They care much less whether the pig's face remains painted.

    So Trump is right that the "liberal" media is undemocratic and that it is now propagandising against him. But he is wrong about why. In fact, all corporate media – whether "liberal" or not, whether against Trump or for him – is undemocratic. All of the media propagandises for a rotten system that keeps the vast majority of Americans impoverished. All of the media cares more for Trump and the elites he belongs to than it cares for the 99 per cent.

    Gorging on the main course

    Similarly, with identity politics. Trump says he wants to make (a white) America great again, and uses the left's obsession with identity as a way to energize a backlash from his own supporters.

    Just as too many on the left sleep-walked through the past two years waiting for Mueller – a former head of the FBI, the US secret police, for chrissakes! – to save them from Trump, they have been manipulated by liberal elites into the political cul-de-sac of identity politics.

    Just as Mueller put the left on standby, into waiting-for-the-Messiah mode, so simple-minded, pussy-hat-wearing identity politics has been cultivated in the supposedly liberal bastions of the corporate media and Ivy League universities – the same universities that have turned out generations of Muellers and Clintons – to deplete the left's political energies. While we argue over who is most entitled and most victimised, the establishment has carried on raping and pillaging Third World countries, destroying the planet and siphoning off the wealth produced by the rest of us.

    These liberal elites long ago worked out that if we could be made to squabble among ourselves about who was most entitled to scraps from the table, they could keep gorging on the main course.

    The "[neo]liberal" elites exploited identity politics to keep us divided by pacifying the most maginalised with the offer of a few additional crumbs. Trump has exploited identity politics to keep us divided by inflaming tensions as he reorders the hierarchy of "privilege" in which those crumbs are offered. In the process, both wings of the elite have averted the danger that class consciousness and real solidarity might develop and start to challenge their privileges.

    The Corbyn experience

    3. But the most important lesson of all for the left is that support among its ranks for the Mueller inquiry against Trump was foolhardy in the extreme.

    Not only was the inquiry doomed to failure – in fact, not only was it designed to fail – but it has set a precedent for future politicised investigations that will be used against the progressive left should it make any significant political gains. And an inquiry against the real left will be far more aggressive and far more "productive" than Mueller was.

    If there is any doubt about that look to the UK. Britain now has within reach of power the first truly progressive politician in living memory, someone seeking to represent the 99 per cent, not the 1 per cent. But Jeremy Corbyn's experience as the leader of the Labour party – massively swelling the membership's ranks to make it the largest political party in Europe – has been eye-popping.

    I have documented Corbyn's travails regularly in this blog over the past four years at the hands of the British political and media establishment. You can find many examples here.

    Corbyn, even more so than the small, new wave of insurgency politicians in the US Congress, has faced a relentless barrage of criticism from across the UK's similarly narrow political spectrum. He has been attacked by both the rightwing media and the supposedly "liberal" media. He has been savaged by the ruling Conservative party, as was to be expected, and by his own parliamentary Labour party. The UK's two-party system has been exposed as just as hollow as the US one.

    The ferocity of the attacks has been necessary because, unlike the Democratic party's success in keeping a progressive leftwinger away from the presidential campaign, the UK system accidentally allowed a socialist to slip past the gatekeepers. All hell has broken out ever since.

    Simple-minded identity politics

    What is so noticeable is that Corbyn is rarely attacked over his policies – mainly because they have wide popular appeal. Instead he has been hounded over fanciful claims that, despite being a life-long and very visible anti-racism campaigner, he suddenly morphed into an outright anti-semite the moment party members elected him leader.

    I will not rehearse again how implausible these claims are. Simply look through these previous blog posts should you be in any doubt.

    But what is amazing is that, just as with the Mueller inquiry, much of the British left – including prominent figures like Owen Jones and the supposedly countercultural Novara Media – have sapped their political energies in trying to placate or support those leading the preposterous claims that Labour under Corbyn has become "institutionally anti-semitic". Again, the promotion of a simple-minded identity politics – which pits the rights of Palestinians against the sensitivities of Zionist Jews about Israel – was exploited to divide the left.

    The more the left has conceded to this campaign, the angrier, the more implacable, the more self-righteous Corbyn's opponents have become – to the point that the Labour party is now in serious danger of imploding.

    A clarifying moment

    Were the US to get its own Corbyn as president, he or she would undoubtedly face a Mueller-style inquiry, and one far more effective at securing the president's impeachment than this one was ever going to be.

    That is not because a leftwing US president would be more corrupt or more likely to have colluded with a foreign power. As the UK example shows, it would be because the entire media system – from the New York Times to Fox News – would be against such a president. And as the UK example also shows, it would be because the leaderships of both the Republican and Democratic parties would work as one to finish off such a president.

    In the combined success-failure of the Mueller inquiry, the left has an opportunity to understand in a much more sophisticated way how real power works and in whose favour it is exercised. It is moment that should be clarifying – if we are willing to open our eyes to Mueller's real lessons.

    Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are " Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and " Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair " (Zed Books). His website is http://www.jonathan-cook.net/

    [Mar 25, 2019] Meet The Kushners First Couple In-Waiting by Ilana Mercer

    Highly recommended!
    More entertaining writing then Wolff's
    Dec 21, 2018 | www.unz.com

    In itself, criminal justice reform for non-violent offenders is not anathema to Trump's libertarian supporters (check).

    For what it symbolizes in the broader political context, however, the passing of the First Step Act -- as the criminal justice reform bill is called -- is a bit of an abomination.

    Good or bad, the First Step Act is Jared Kushner's baby. And Kushner, Trump's liberal son-in-law, should not be having legislative coups!

    Yes, Jared and Ivanka are on a tear. The midterm congressional elections of President Trump's first-term have culminated in a legislative victory for an anemic man, who provides a perfect peg on which to hang the forceful first daughter's ambition.

    In no time at all have Jared and Ivanka Trump moved to consolidate power. This, as intellects like the Steven Bannon and Stephen Miller were either fired, or confined to the basement, so to speak.

    Today, Bannon is just a flinty glint in Ivanka's eyes. But by January, 2017, the president's former White House chief strategist had already "assembled a list of more than 200 executive orders to issue in the first 100 days. The very first EO, in his view, had to be a crackdown on immigration. After all, it was one of Trump's core campaign promises." So said Bannon to Michael Wolff, author of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House .

    Many a pundit has suggested that Trump give a kick-ass rah-rah address to explain immigration to the nation.

    Nonsense on stilts. The Make America Great Again (S.O.S.) agenda needed to be explained daily and repetitively by someone with a brain. It should have been MAGA every morning with Steve Miller, or Gen. John Kelly or Kirstjen Nielsen. Instead, we got stumblebum Sarah Huckabee issuing a meek, meandering daily apologia.

    About that promise to put in place only "the best of people": Ice princess Kirstjen Nielsen is super smart with a cool temperament and looks to match. Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen had been brought into the Trump Administration by retired United States Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, formerly White House chief of staff. Nielsen might not be optimal in her current position. But she would've made a great MAGA mouthpiece.

    It's quite clear that President Trump's promise to hire only "the best" ought to have begun with firing The Family. Instead, Mr. Kushner's national security portfolio has expanded in a manner incommensurate with his skills. It now includes, I believe, China, Mexico, Iraq, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

    The same can be said of Ivanka, who was soon briefing the South Korean president on sanctions against North Korea. That Ivanka lacked a permanent security clearance was the least of the country's worries, given Steve Bannon's assessment of her cerebral acuity: "as dumb as a brick" .

    Alas, political connections ensured that two branding experts beat Braveheart Bannon of the mighty Breitbart.com! "'The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over," he lamented, in August of 2017.

    If Breitbart.com is to be believed -- and it should -- Ivanka was the one to give Bannon the boot (or, rather, the Choo ): "Trump's daughter Ivanka pushed Bannon out because of his 'far-right views' clashing with her [recently acquired] Jewish faith." (Funny that, because my own rightist views clash not at all with my Jewish faith.)

    "Jarvanka" (the Jared-Ivanka organism) were also said to have orchestrated the ousting of the last of the old MAGA Guard, John Kelly, aforementioned, a most excellent man. Kelly took his role as chief of staff seriously. He was a hardliner who limited Ivanka's access to Pater.

    One of Trump's superb personnel choices, Kelly's fate, however, was sealed when he stated how sick-and-tired he was of the first daughter "playing government." The Goldman-Sachs wing of the White House, commandeered by the Kushners, had always wished him away. So, Kelly got the Choo , too.
    Of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, archconservative Heather Mac Donald observed the following: Sessions was "the only member of the Trump administration who was absolutely staunch in speaking up for the right of Americans to determine what the character of their country should be."

    It takes a strong woman (Mac Donald) to recognize a scheming one. Mac Donald has recently expressed "'no confidence' that the president will stop being advised by his daughter, Ivanka Trump, on the issue of immigration."

    Following the midterms, the not-so-sleepy sleeper cell of leftist social climbers in the Trump administration moved to pack the court. It was out with the old (Kelly and Sessions), and in with the Nauert, the reference being to the "nomination [to the UN] of former Fox anchor and State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert."

    Again, the reason for selecting Ms. Nauert, a former "Fox & Friends" host, was that she is "telegenic." The order came from " Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner [ who declared Nauert] 'a favorite and pushed for her selection.'"

    Telegenic, too, is 36-year-old Nick Ayers. He was slated to replace Gen. Kelly. Why? Because he " had the endorsements of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump ."

    It so happened that Ayers chose not to play. A trial balloon was quickly floated, but was punctured just as fast. The idea that Jared would be chief of staff was just too preposterous. But oh, the audacity of that fleeting experiment!

    So, here we are. The promised land (America) is without the promised Wall. But, liberal legislation in hand, the "Honorable" Kushners ( so listed ) are off to hobnob at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in January of 2019 .

    First Lady Melania has been shoved aside, or ceremonially shivved, to use prison parlance. The first couple in-waiting will get to press flesh with local and global elites, while flashing their liberal credentials: criminal justice reform.

    Oh how fun it is to schmooze the gilded globalists, rather than to woo Trump voters.

    Ilana Mercer has been writing a weekly, paleolibertarian column since 1999. She is the author of " Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa " (2011) & " The Trump Revolution: The Donald's Creative Destruction Deconstructed " (June, 2016). She's on Twitter , Facebook , Gab & YouTube

    [Mar 25, 2019] Spygate The True Story of Collusion (plus Infographic) by Jeff Carlson

    Highly recommended!
    This is probably the most comprehensive outline of the color revolution against Trump. Bravo, simply bravo !!!
    Reads like Agatha Christi Murder on the Orient Express ;-) Rosenstein role is completely revised from a popular narrative. Brennan role clarifies and detailed. Obama personal role hinted. Victoria Nuland role and the role of the State Department in Russiagate is documented for the first time, I think.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The "insurance policy" appears to have been the effort to legitimize the Trump–Russia collusion narrative so that an FBI investigation, led by McCabe, could continue unhindered. ..."
    "... Ohr, one of the highest-ranking officials in the DOJ, was communicating on an ongoing basis with Steele, whom he had known since at least 2006 , well into mid-2017. He is also married to Nellie Ohr, an expert on Russia and Eurasia who began working for Fusion GPS sometime in late 2015 . Nellie Ohr likely played a significant role in the construction of the dossier. ..."
    "... The Obama administration provided a simultaneous layer of protection and facilitation for the entire effort. One example is provided by Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333 , also known as Obama's data-sharing order . With the passage of the order, agencies and individuals were able to ask the NSA for access to specific surveillance simply by claiming the intercepts contained relevant information that was useful to a particular mission. ..."
    "... Leaking, including felony leaking of classified information, has been widespread. The Carter Page FISA warrant -- likely the unredacted version -- has been in the possession of The Washington Post and The New York Times since March 2017. Traditionally, the intelligence community leaked to The Washington Post while the DOJ leaked to sources within The New York Times. This was a historical pattern that stood until this election. The leaking became so widespread, even this tradition was broken. ..."
    "... The information contained within both articles likely came via felony leaks from James Wolfe, former director of security for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who was arrested on June 7, 2018, and charged with one count of lying to the FBI. Wolfe's indictment alleges that he was leaking classified information to multiple reporters over an extended period of time. ..."
    "... The Steele dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several different sources. One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the former British ambassador to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood later relayed information regarding the dossier to Sen. John McCain, who dispatched David Kramer, a fellow at the McCain Institute, to London to meet with Steele in November 2016. McCain would later admit in a Jan. 11, 2017, statement that he had personally passed on the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey. ..."
    "... Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations -- including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application -- received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, "Please, can we talk." Those "allies" were almost certainly the UK and Australia. ..."
    "... Questions to be asked are why is it that two of our allies would find themselves so opposed to the release of these classified documents that a coordinated plea would be made directly to the president? And why would these same allies have even the slightest idea of what was contained in these classified U.S. documents? ..."
    Oct 12, 2018 | www.theepochtimes.com
    Spygate: The True Story of Collusion [Infographic] How America's most powerful agencies were weaponized against President Donald Trump

    Although the details remain complex, the structure underlying Spygate -- the creation of the false narrative that candidate Donald Trump colluded with Russia, and the spying on his presidential campaign -- remains surprisingly simple:

    1. CIA Director John Brennan, with some assistance from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, gathered foreign intelligence and fed it throughout our domestic Intelligence Community.
    2. The FBI became the handler of Brennan's intelligence and engaged in the more practical elements of surveillance.
    3. The Department of Justice facilitated investigations by the FBI and legal maneuverings, while providing a crucial shield of nondisclosure.
    4. The Department of State became a mechanism of information dissemination and leaks.
    5. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee provided funding, support, and media collusion.
    6. Obama administration officials were complicit, and engaged in unmasking and intelligence gathering and dissemination.
    7. The media was the most corrosive element in many respects. None of these events could have transpired without their willing participation. Stories were pushed, facts were ignored, and narratives were promoted.

    Let's start with a simple premise: The candidacy of Trump presented both an opportunity and a threat.

    Initially not viewed with any real seriousness, Trump's campaign was seen as an opportunistic wedge in the election process. At the same time, and particularly as the viability of his candidacy increased, Trump was seen as an existential threat to the established political system.

    The sudden legitimacy of Trump's candidacy was not welcomed by the U.S. political establishment. Here was a true political outsider who held no traditional allegiances. He was brash and boastful, he ignored political correctness, he couldn't be bought, and he didn't care what others thought of him -- he trusted himself.

    Governing bodies in Britain and the European Union were also worried. Candidate Trump was openly challenging monetary policy, regulations, and the power of special interests. He challenged Congress. He challenged the United Nations and the European Union. He questioned everything.

    Brennan played a crucial role in the creation of the Russia-collusion narrative and the spying on the Trump campaign. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)

    Brennan became the point man in the operation to stop a potential Trump presidency. It remains unclear whether his role was self-appointed or came from above. To embark on such a mission without direct presidential authority seems both a stretch of the imagination and particularly foolhardy.

    Brennan took unofficial foreign intelligence compiled by contacts, colleagues, and associates -- primarily from the UK , but also from other Five Eyes members, such as Australia.

    Individuals in official positions in UK intelligence, such as Robert Hannigan -- head of the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, Britain's equivalent of the National Security Agency) -- partnered with former UK foreign intelligence members. Former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove , former Ambassador Sir Andrew Wood, and private UK intelligence firm Hakluyt all played a role.

    In the summer of 2016, Hannigan traveled to Washington to meet with Brennan regarding alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. On Jan. 23, 2017 -- three days after Trump's inauguration -- Hannigan abruptly announced his retirement. The Guardian openly speculated that Hannigan's resignation was directly related to the sharing of UK intelligence.

    One method used to help establish evidence of collusion was the employment of "spy traps." Prominent among these were ones set for Trump campaign advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. The intent was to provide or establish connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. The content and context mattered little as long as a connection could be established that could then be publicized. The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting was another such attempt.

    Western intelligence assets were used to initiate and establish these connections, particularly in the cases of Papadopoulos and Page.

    Ultimately, Brennan formed an inter-agency task force comprising an estimated six agencies and/or government departments. The FBI, Treasury, and DOJ handled the domestic inquiry into Trump and possible Russia connections. The CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Security Agency (NSA) handled foreign and intelligence aspects.

    Brennan's inter-agency task force is not to be confused with the July 2016 FBI counterintelligence investigation, which was formed later at Brennan's urging.

    During this time, Brennan also employed the use of reverse targeting , which relates to the targeting of a foreign individual with the intent of capturing data on a U.S. citizen. This effort was uncovered and made public by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) in a March 2017 press conference :

    "I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the president-elect and his team were monitored and disseminated out in intelligence-reporting channels. Details about persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent foreign-intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.

    "From what I know right now, it looks like incidental collection. We don't know exactly how that was picked up but we're trying to get to the bottom of it."

    As this foreign intelligence -- unofficial in nature and outside of any traditional channels -- was gathered, Brennan began a process of feeding his gathered intelligence to the FBI. Repeated transfers of foreign intelligence from the CIA director pushed the FBI toward the establishment of a formal counterintelligence investigation. Brennan repeatedly noted this during a May 23, 2017, congressional testimony :

    "I made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump campaign, was shared with the [FBI]."

    Brennan also admitted that his intelligence helped establish the FBI investigation:

    "I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred."

    This admission is important, as no official intelligence was used to open the FBI's investigation.

    Once the FBI began its counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, Brennan shifted his focus. Through a series of meetings in August and September 2016, Brennan informed the congressional Gang of Eight regarding intelligence and information he had gathered. Notably, each Gang of Eight member was briefed separately, calling into question whether each of the members received the same information. Efforts to block the release of the transcripts from each meeting remain ongoing.

    The last major segment of Brennan's efforts involved a series of three reports and greater participation from Clapper. The first report, the "Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security ," was released on Oct. 7, 2016. The second report, "GRIZZLY STEPPE -- Russian Malicious Cyber Activity ," was released on Dec. 29, 2016. The third report, "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections " -- also known as the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) -- was released on Jan. 6, 2017.

    This final report was used to continue pushing the Russia-collusion narrative following the election of President Donald Trump. Notably, Admiral Mike Rogers of the NSA publicly dissented from the findings of the ICA, assigning only a moderate confidence level.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/bMcNbum93cU?wmode=transparent&wmode=opaque

    Federal Bureau of Investigation

    Although the FBI is technically part of the DOJ, it is best for the purposes of this article that the FBI and DOJ be viewed as separate entities, each with its own related ties.

    The FBI itself was comprised of various factions, with a particularly active element that has come to be known as the "insurance policy group." It appears that this faction was led by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and comprised other notable names such as FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and FBI general counsel James Baker.

    The FBI established the counterintelligence investigation into alleged Russia collusion with the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016. Comey initially refused to say whether the FBI was investigating possible connections between members of the Trump campaign and Russia. He would continue to refuse to provide answers until March 20, 2017, when he disclosed the existence of the FBI investigation during congressional testimony.

    Comey also testified that he did not provide notification to the Gang of Eight until early March 2017 -- less than one month earlier. This admission was in stark contrast to actions taken by Brennan, who had notified members of the Gang of Eight individually during August and September 2016. It's likely that Brennan never informed Comey that he had briefed the Gang of Eight in 2016. Comey did note that the DOJ "had been aware" of the investigation all along.

    Comey opened the counterintelligence investigation into Trump on the urging of CIA Director John Brennan.
    Following Comey's firing on May 9, 2017, the FBI's investigation was transferred to special counsel Robert Mueller. The Mueller investigation remains ongoing.

    The FBI's formal involvement with the Steele dossier began on July 5, 2016, when Mike Gaeta, an FBI agent and assistant legal attaché at the US Embassy in Rome, was dispatched to visit former MI6 spy Christopher Steele in London. Gaeta would return from this meeting with a copy of Steele's first memo. This memo was given to Victoria Nuland at the State Department, who passed it along to the FBI.

    Gaeta, who also headed the FBI's Eurasian Organized Crime unit, had known Steele since at least 2010, when Steele had provided assistance to the FBI's investigation into the FIFA corruption scandal .

    Prior to the London meeting, Gaeta may also have met on a less formal basis with Steele several weeks earlier. "In June, Steele flew to Rome to brief the FBI contact with whom he had cooperated over FIFA," The Guardian reported. "His information started to reach the bureau in Washington."

    It's worth noting that there was no "dossier" until it was fully compiled in December 2016. There was only a sequence of documents from Steele -- documents that were passed on individually -- as they were created. Therefore, from the FBI's legal perspective, they didn't use the dossier. They used individual documents.

    For the next month and a half, there appeared to be little contact between Steele and the FBI. However, the FBI's interest in the dossier suddenly accelerated in late August 2016, when the bureau asked Steele "for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources."

    In September 2016, Steele traveled back to Rome to meet with the FBI's Eurasian squad once again. It's likely that the meeting included several other FBI officials as well. According to a House Intelligence Committee minority memo , Steele's reporting reached the FBI counterintelligence team in mid-September 2016 -- the same time as Steele's September trip to Rome.

    The reason for the FBI's renewed interest had to do with an adviser to the Trump campaign -- Carter Page -- who had been in contact with Stefan Halper, a CIA and FBI source, since July 2016. Halper arranged to meet with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page took a trip to Moscow. Speakers at the symposium included Madeleine Albright, Vin Webber, and Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6.

    Page was now the FBI's chosen target for a FISA warrant that would be obtained on Oct. 21, 2016. The Steele dossier would be the primary evidence used in obtaining the FISA warrant, which would be renewed three separate times, including after Trump took office, finally expiring in September 2017.

    Former volunteer Trump campaign adviser Carter Page on Nov. 2, 2017. The FBI obtained a retroactive FISA spy warrant on Page.

    After being in contact with Page for 14 months, Halper stopped contact exactly as the final FISA warrant on Page expired. Page, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, was never charged with any crime by the FBI. Efforts for the declassification of the Page FISA application are currently ongoing through the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General.

    Peter Strzok and Lisa Page

    Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were two prominent members of the FBI's "insurance policy" group. Strzok, a senior FBI agent, was the deputy assistant director of FBI's Counterintelligence Division. Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer, served as special counsel to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

    Strzok was in charge of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for government business. He helped FBI Director James Comey draft the statement exonerating Clinton and was personally responsible for changing specific wording within that statement that reduced Clinton's legal liability. Specifically, Strzok changed the words "grossly negligent," which could be a criminal offense, to "extremely careless."

    Strzok also personally led the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the alleged Trump–Russia collusion and signed the documents that opened the investigation on July 31, 2016. He was one of the FBI agents who interviewed Trump's national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn. Strzok met multiple times with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and received information from Steele at those meetings.

    Following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Strzok would join the team of special counsel Robert Mueller. Two months later, he was removed from that team after the DOJ inspector general discovered a lengthy series of texts between Strzok and Page that contained politically charged messages. Strzok would be fired from the FBI in August 2018.

    Both Strzok and Page engaged in strategic leaking to the press. Page did so at the direction of McCabe, who directly authorized Page to share information with Wall Street Journal reporter Devlin Barrett. That information was used in an Oct. 30, 2016, article headlined "FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe ." Page leaked to Barrett thinking she had been granted legal and official authorization to do so.

    McCabe would later initially deny providing such authorization to the Office of Inspector General. Page, when confronted with McCabe's denials, produced texts refuting his statement. It was these texts that led to the inspector general uncovering the texts between Strzok and Page.

    The two exchanged thousands of texts, some of them indicating surveillance activities, over a two-year period. Texts sent between Aug. 21, 2015, and June 25, 2017, have been made public . The series comes to an end with a final text by Page telling Strzok, "Don't ever text me again."

    On Aug. 8, 2016, Stzrok wrote that they would prevent candidate Trump from becoming president:

    Page: "[Trump is] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!"

    Strzok: "No. No he won't. We'll stop it."

    On Aug. 15, 2016, Strzok sent a text referring to an "insurance policy":

    "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way [Trump] gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40."

    The "insurance policy" appears to have been the effort to legitimize the Trump–Russia collusion narrative so that an FBI investigation, led by McCabe, could continue unhindered.

    Department of Justice

    The Department of Justice, which comprises 60 agencies , was transformed during the Obama years. The department is forbidden by federal law from hiring employees based on political affiliation.

    However, a series of investigative articles by PJ Media published during Eric Holder's tenure as attorney general revealed an unsettling pattern of ideological conformity among new hires at the DOJ: Only lawyers from the progressive left were hired. Not one single moderate or conservative lawyer made the cut. This is significant as the DOJ enjoys significant latitude in determining who will be subject to prosecution.

    The DOJ's job in Spygate was to facilitate the legal side of surveillance while providing a protective layer of cover for all those involved. The department became a repository of information and provided a protective wall between the investigative efforts of the FBI and the legislative branch. Importantly, it also served as the firewall within the executive branch, serving as the insulating barrier between the FBI and Obama officials. The department had become legendary for its stonewalling tactics with Congress.

    DOJ Official Bruce Ohr on Aug. 28, 2018. Ohr passed on information from Christopher Steele to the FBI.

    The DOJ, which was fully aware of the actions being taken by James Comey and the FBI, also became an active element acting against members of the Trump campaign. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, along with Mary McCord, the head of the DOJ's National Security Division, was actively involved in efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn from his position as national security adviser to President Trump.

    To this day, it remains unknown which individual was responsible for making public Flynn's call with the Russian ambassador. Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to a process crime: lying to the FBI. There have been questions raised in Congress regarding the possible alteration of FD-302s, the written notes of Flynn's FBI interviews. Special counsel Robert Mueller has repeatedly deferred Flynn's sentencing hearing.

    David Laufman, deputy assistant attorney general in charge of counterintelligence at the DOJ's National Security Division, played a key role in both the Clinton email server and Russia hacking investigations. Laufman is currently the attorney for Monica McLean, the long-time friend of Christine Blasey Ford, who recently accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her while in high school. McLean was also employed by the FBI for 24 years.

    Bruce Ohr was a significant DOJ official who played a key role in Spygate. Ohr held two important positions at the DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. As associate deputy attorney general, Ohr was just four offices away from then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and he reported directly to her. As director of the task force, he was in charge of a program described as "the centerpiece of the attorney general's drug strategy."

    Ohr, one of the highest-ranking officials in the DOJ, was communicating on an ongoing basis with Steele, whom he had known since at least 2006 , well into mid-2017. He is also married to Nellie Ohr, an expert on Russia and Eurasia who began working for Fusion GPS sometime in late 2015 . Nellie Ohr likely played a significant role in the construction of the dossier.

    According to testimony from FBI agent Peter Strzok, he and Ohr met at least five times during 2016 and 2017. Strzok was working directly with then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

    Additionally, Ohr met with the FBI at least 12 times between late November 2016 and May 2017 for a series of interviews. These meetings could have been used to transmit information from Steele to the FBI. This came after the FBI had formally severed contact with Steele in late October or early November 2016.

    John Carlin is another notable figure with the DOJ. Carlin was an assistant attorney general and the head of the DOJ's National Security Division until October 2016. His role will be discussed below in the section on FISA abuse.

    The Battle Between Rosenstein and McCabe

    Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe held a pivotal role in what has become known as "Spygate." He directed the activities of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and was involved in all aspects of the Russia investigation. He was also mentioned in the infamous "insurance policy" text message.

    McCabe was a major component of the insurance policy.

    On April 26, 2017, Rosenstein found himself appointed as the new deputy attorney general. He was placed into a somewhat chaotic situation, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from the ongoing Russia investigation a little less than two months earlier, on March 2, 2017. This effectively meant that no one in the Trump administration had any oversight of the ongoing investigation being conducted by the FBI and the DOJ.

    Additionally, the leadership of then-FBI Director James Comey was coming under increased scrutiny as the result of actions taken leading up to and following the election, particularly Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation.

    On May 9, 2017, Rosenstein wrote a memorandum recommending that Comey be fired. The subject of the memo was "Restoring Public Confidence in the FBI." Comey was fired that day. McCabe was now the acting director of the FBI and was immediately under consideration for the permanent position.

    On the same day Comey was fired, McCabe would lie during an interview with agents from the FBI's Inspection Division (INSD) regarding apparent leaks that were used in an Oct. 30, 2016, Wall Street Journal article, "FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe" by Devlin Barrett. This would later be disclosed in the inspector general report, "A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe."

    At the time, nobody, including the INSD agents, knew that McCabe had lied, nor were the darker aspects of McCabe's role in Spygate fully known.

    In late April or early May 2016, McCabe opened a federal criminal investigation on Sessions, regarding potential lack of candor before Congress in relation to Sessions's contacts with Russians. Sessions was unaware of the investigation.

    Sessions would later be cleared of any wrongdoing by special counsel Robert Mueller.

    On the morning of May 16, 2017, Rosenstein reportedly suggested to McCabe that he secretly record President Trump. This remark was reported in a New York Times article that was sourced from memos from the now-fired McCabe, along with testimony taken from former FBI general counsel James Baker, who relayed a conversation he had with McCabe about the occurrence. Rosenstein issued a statement denying the accusations.

    The alleged comments by Rosenstein occurred at a meeting where McCabe was "pushing for the Justice Department to open an investigation into the president." An unnamed participant at the meeting, in comments to The Washington Post, framed the conversation somewhat differently, noting Rosenstein responded sarcastically to McCabe, saying, "What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?"

    Later, on the same day that Rosenstein had his meetings with McCabe, President Trump met with Mueller, reportedly as an interview for the FBI director job. On May 17, 2017, the day after President Trump's meeting with Mueller -- and the day after Rosenstein's encounters with McCabe -- Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel.

    The May 17 appointment of Mueller in effect shifted control of the Russia investigation from the FBI and McCabe to Mueller. Rosenstein would retain ultimate authority for the probe and any expansion of Mueller's investigation required authorization from Rosenstein.

    Interestingly, without Comey's memo leaks, a special counsel might not have been appointed -- the FBI, and possibly McCabe, would have remained in charge of the Russia investigation. McCabe was probably not going to become the permanent FBI director, but he was reportedly under consideration. Regardless, without Comey's leak, McCabe would have retained direct involvement and the FBI would have retained control.

    On July 28, 2017, McCabe lied to Inspector General Michael Horowitz while under oath regarding authorization of the leaking to The Wall Street Journal. At this point, Horowitz knew McCabe was lying, but did not yet know of the May 9 INSD interview with McCabe.

    On Aug. 2, 2017, Rosenstein secretly issued Mueller a revised memo on "the scope of investigation and definition of authority" that remains heavily redacted. The full purpose of this memo remains unknown. On this same day, Christopher Wray was named as the new FBI director.

    Two days later, on Aug. 4, 2017, Sessions announced that the FBI had created a new leaks investigation unit. Rosenstein and Wray were tasked with overseeing all leak investigations.

    That Aug. 2 memo from Rosenstein to Mueller may have been specifically designed to remove any residual FBI influence -- specifically that of McCabe -- from the Russia investigation. The appointment of Wray as FBI director helped cement this. McCabe was finally completely neutralized.

    On March 16, 2018, McCabe was fired for lying under oath at least three different times and is currently the subject of a grand jury investigation.

    State Department

    The State Department, with its many contacts within foreign governments, became a conduit for the flow of information. The transfer of Christopher Steele's first dossier memo was personally facilitated by Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Nuland gave approval for FBI agent Michael Gaeta to travel to London to obtain the memo from Steele. The memo may have passed directly from her to FBI leadership. Secretary of State John Kerry was also given a copy.

    Steele was already well-known within the State Department. Following Steele's involvement in the FIFA scandal investigation, he began to provide reports informally to the State Department. The reports were written for a "private client" but were "shared widely within the U.S. State Department, and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of the U.S. response to Putin's annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine," the Guardian reported.

    Nuland passed on parts of the Steele dossier to the FBI. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

    In July 2016, when the FBI wanted to send Gaeta to visit Steele in London, the bureau sought permission from the office of Nuland, who provided this version of events during a Feb. 4, 2018, appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation":

    "In the middle of July, when [Steele] was doing this other work and became concerned, he passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding and our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That's something for the FBI to investigate."

    Steele also met with Jonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement and former special envoy for Libya. Steele and Winer had known each other since at least 2010. In an opinion article in The Washington Post, Winer wrote the following:

    "In September 2016, Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the 'dossier.' Steele's sources suggested that the Kremlin not only had been behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign but also had compromised Trump and developed ties with his associates and campaign."

    In a strange turn of events, Winer also received a separate dossier , very similar to Steele's, from long-time Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. This "second dossier" had been compiled by another longtime Clinton operative, former journalist Cody Shearer, and echoed claims made in the Steele dossier. Winer then met with Steele in late September 2016 and gave Steele a copy of the "second dossier." Steele went on to share this second dossier with the FBI, which may have used it to corroborate his dossier.

    Winer passed on memos from Christopher Steele to Victoria Nuland. (State Department)

    Other foreign officials also used conduits into the State Department. Alexander Downer, Australia's high commissioner to the UK, reportedly funneled his conversation with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos -- later used as a reason to open the FBI's counterintelligence investigation -- directly to the U.S. Embassy in London.

    "The Downer details landed with the embassy's then-chargé d'affaires, Elizabeth Dibble, who previously served as a principal deputy assistant secretary in Mrs. Clinton's State Department," The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel wrote in a May 31, 2018, article .

    If true, this would mean that neither Australian intelligence nor the Australian government alerted the FBI to the Papadopoulos information. What happened with the Downer details, and to whom they were ultimately relayed, remains unknown.

    Curiously, details surprisingly similar to the Papadopoulos–Downer conversation show up in the first memo written by Steele on June 20, 2016:

    "A dossier of compromising information on Hillary Clinton has been collated by the Russian Intelligence Services over many years and mainly comprises bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls. It has not yet been distributed abroad, including to Trump."

    Clinton Campaign and the DNC

    The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee both occupied a unique position. They had the most to gain but they also had the most to lose. And they stood willing and ready to do whatever was necessary to win. Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, is credited with being the first to raise the specter of candidate Donald Trump's alleged collusion with Russia.

    The entire Clinton campaign willfully promoted the narrative of Russia–Trump collusion despite the uncomfortable fact that they were the ones who had engaged the services of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele through their law firm Perkins Coie. Information flowed from the campaign -- sometimes through Perkins Coie, other times through affiliates -- ultimately making its way into the media and sometimes to the FBI. Information from the Clinton campaign may also have ended up in the Steele dossier.

    Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for the Clinton campaign, in tandem with Jake Sullivan, the senior policy adviser to the campaign, took the lead in briefing the press on the Trump–Russia collusion story.

    Another example of this behavior can be seen from an instance when Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann leaked information from Steele and Fusion GPS to Franklin Foer of Slate magazine. This event is described in the House Intelligence Committee's final report on Russian active measures , in footnote 43 on page 57. Foer then published the article "Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia? " on Oct. 31, 2016. The article concerns allegations regarding a server in the Trump Tower.

    The Slate article managed to attract the immediate attention of Clinton, who posted a tweet on the same day the article was published:

    "Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank."

    Attached to her tweet was a statement from Sullivan:

    "This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.

    "This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organization felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal the link when it was discovered by journalists."

    These statements, which were later proven to be incorrect, are all the more disturbing with the hindsight knowledge that it was a senior Clinton/DNC lawyer who helped plant the story. And given the prepared statement by Sullivan, the Clinton campaign knew this.

    This type of behavior would be engaged in repeatedly -- damning leaks leading to media stories, followed by ready attacks from the Clinton campaign.

    Alexandra Chalupa is a Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee. Chalupa met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, Paul Manafort, and Russia. Chalupa began investigating Manafort in 2014. In late 2015, Chalupa expanded her opposition research on Manafort to include Trump's ties to Russia. In January 2016, Chalupa shared her information with a senior DNC official.

    Chalupa's meetings with DNC and Ukrainian officials would continue. On April 26, 2016, investigative reporter Michael Isikoff published a story on Yahoo News about Manafort's business dealings with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. It was later learned from a DNC email leaked by Wikileaks that Chalupa had been working with Isikoff -- the same journalist Christopher Steele leaked to in September 2016. Manafort would later be indicted for Foreign Agents Registration Act violations that occurred during the Obama administration.

    Perkins Coie

    International law firm Perkins Coie served as the legal arm for both the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Ties to Perkins Coie extended beyond the DNC into the Obama White House.

    Bob Bauer, a partner at the law firm and founder of its political law practice, served as White House counsel to President Barack Obama throughout 2010 and 2011. Bauer was also general counsel to Obama's campaign organization, Obama for America, in 2008 and 2012.

    Perkins Coie partners Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann each played critical roles and were the ones who hired Fusion GPS and Steele. Sussmann personally handled the alleged hack of the DNC server. He also transmitted information, likely from Steele and Fusion GPS, to James Baker, then-chief counsel at the FBI, and to several members of the press.

    Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann. Sussmann transmitted information to FBI chief counsel James Baker and several journalists. (Courtesy Perkins Coie)

    According to a letter dated Oct. 24, 2017, written by Matthew Gehringer, general counsel at Perkins Coie, the firm was approached by Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson in early March 2016 regarding the possibility of hiring Fusion GPS to continue opposition research into the Trump campaign. Simpson's overtures were successful, and in April 2016, Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC.

    Sometime in April or May 2016, Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele. During this same period, Fusion also reportedly hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Steele would complete his first memo on June 20, 2016, and send it to Fusion via enciphered mail.

    Perkins Coie appears to have also been acting as a conduit between the DNC and the FBI. Documents suggest that Sussmann was feeding information to FBI general counsel James Baker and at least one journalist ahead of the FBI's application for a FISA warrant on the Trump campaign.

    The information provided by Sussmann may have been used by the FBI as "corroborating information."

    Obama Administration

    The Obama administration provided a simultaneous layer of protection and facilitation for the entire effort. One example is provided by Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333 , also known as Obama's data-sharing order . With the passage of the order, agencies and individuals were able to ask the NSA for access to specific surveillance simply by claiming the intercepts contained relevant information that was useful to a particular mission.

    Section 2.3 had been expected to be finalized by early to mid-2016. Instead, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn't sign off on Section 2.3 until Dec. 15, 2016. The order was finalized when Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed it on Jan. 3, 2017.

    The reason for the delay could relate to the fact that while the executive order made it easier to share intelligence between agencies, it also limited certain types of information from going to the White House.

    An example of this was provided by Evelyn Farkas during a March 2, 2017, MSNBC interview , where she detailed how the Obama administration gathered and disseminated intelligence on the Trump team:

    "I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill 'Get as much information as you can. Get as much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.'

    "The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff's dealing with Russians, [they] would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. That's why you have the leaking."

    Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia Evelyn Farkas on May 6, 2014. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    Many of the Obama administration's efforts appear to have been structural in nature, such as establishing new procedures or creating impediments to oversight that enabled much of the surveillance abuse to occur.

    DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz was appointed by Obama in 2011. From the very start, he found his duties throttled by the attorney general's office. According to congressional testimony by Horowitz:

    "We got access to information up to 2010 in all of these categories. No law changed in 2010. No policy changed. It was simply a decision by the General Counsel's Office in 2010 that they viewed, now, the law differently. And as a result, they weren't going to give us that information."

    These new restrictions were put in place by Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

    On Aug. 5, 2014, Horowitz and other inspectors general sent a letter to Congress asking for unimpeded access to all records. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates responded on July 20, 2015, with a 58-page memorandum . The memo specifically denied the inspector general access to any information collected under Title III -- including intercepted communications and national security letters.

    The New York Times recently disclosed that national security letters were used in the surveillance of the Trump campaign.

    At other times, the Obama administration's efforts were more direct. The Intelligence Community assessment was released internally on Jan. 5, 2017. On this same day, Obama held an undisclosed White House meeting to discuss the dossier with national security adviser Susan Rice, FBI Director James Comey, and Yates. Rice would later send herself an email documenting the meeting.

    The following day, Brennan, Clapper, and Comey attached a written summary of the Steele dossier to the classified briefing they gave Obama. Comey then met with President-elect Trump to inform him of the dossier. This meeting took place just hours after Comey, Brennan, and Clapper formally briefed Obama on both the Intelligence Community assessment and the Steele dossier.

    Comey would only inform Trump of the "salacious" details contained within the dossier. He later explained on CNN in an April 2018 interview why:

    "Because that was the part that the leaders of the Intelligence Community agreed he needed to be told about."

    Shortly after Comey's meeting with Trump, both the Trump–Comey meeting and the existence of the dossier were leaked to CNN. The significance of the meeting was material, as Comey noted in a Jan. 7 memo he wrote:

    "Media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material."

    Clapper leaked information to CNN, after which he publicly condemned the leaks. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    The media had widely dismissed the dossier as unsubstantiated and, therefore, unreportable. It was only after learning that Comey briefed Trump that CNN reported on the dossier. It was later revealed that DNI James Clapper personally leaked Comey's meeting with Trump to CNN.

    The Obama administration also directly participated in a series of intelligence unmaskings , the process whereby a U.S. citizen's identity is revealed from collected surveillance. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power reportedly engaged in hundreds of unmasking requests. Rice has admitted to doing the same.

    The Obama administration engaged in the ultimately successful effort to oust Trump's newly appointed national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn. Yates, along with Mary McCord, head of the DOJ's National Security Division, led that effort .

    Executive Order 13762

    President Barack Obama issued a last-minute executive order on Jan. 13, 2017, that altered the line of succession within the DOJ. The action was not done in consultation with the incoming Trump administration.

    Acting Attorney General Sally Yates was fired on Jan. 30, 2017, by a newly inaugurated President Trump for refusing to uphold the president's executive order limiting travel from certain terror-prone countries. Yates was initially supposed to serve in her position until Jeff Sessions was confirmed as attorney general.

    Obama's executive order placed the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia next in line behind the department's senior leadership. The attorney at the time was Channing Phillips.

    Phillips was first hired by former Attorney General Eric Holder in 1994 for a position in the D.C. U.S. attorney's office. Phillips, after serving as a senior adviser to Holder, stayed on after he was replaced by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

    It appears the Obama administration was hoping the Russia investigation would default to Channing in the event Sessions was forced to recuse himself from the investigation. Sessions, whose confirmation hearings began three days before the order, was already coming under intense scrutiny.

    The implementation of the order may also tie into Yates's efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn over his call with the Russian ambassador.

    Trump ignored the succession order, as he is legally allowed to do, and instead appointed Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, as acting attorney general on Jan. 30, 2017, the same day Yates was fired.

    Trump issued a new executive order on Feb. 9, 2017, the same day Sessions was sworn in, reversing Obama's prior order.

    On March 10, 2017, Trump fired 46 Obama-era U.S. attorneys, including Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. These firings appear to have been unexpected.

    Media

    In some respects, the media has played the most disingenuous of roles. Areas of investigation that historically would have proven irresistible to reporters of the past have been steadfastly ignored. False narratives have been all-too-willingly promoted and facts ignored. Fusion GPS personally made a series of payments to several as-of-yet- unnamed reporters .

    The majority of the mainstream media has represented positions of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

    Steele met with members of certain media with relative frequency. In September 2016 , he met with a number of U.S. journalists for "The New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, the New Yorker and CNN," according to The Guardian. It was during this period that Steele met with Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News.

    In mid-October 2016, Steele returned to New York and met with reporters again. Toward the end of October, Steele spoke via Skype with Mother Jones reporter David Corn.

    Leaking, including felony leaking of classified information, has been widespread. The Carter Page FISA warrant -- likely the unredacted version -- has been in the possession of The Washington Post and The New York Times since March 2017. Traditionally, the intelligence community leaked to The Washington Post while the DOJ leaked to sources within The New York Times. This was a historical pattern that stood until this election. The leaking became so widespread, even this tradition was broken.

    On April 3, 2017, BuzzFeed reporter Ali Watkins wrote the article " A Former Trump Adviser Met With a Russian Spy ." In the article, she identified "Male-1," referred to in court documents relating to the case of Russian spy Evgeny Buryakov, as Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who had provided the FBI with assistance in the case. Just over a week later, on April 11, 2017, a Washington Post article, " FBI Obtained FISA Warrant to Monitor Former Trump Adviser Carter Page ," confirmed the existence of the October 2016 Page FISA warrant.

    The information contained within both articles likely came via felony leaks from James Wolfe, former director of security for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who was arrested on June 7, 2018, and charged with one count of lying to the FBI. Wolfe's indictment alleges that he was leaking classified information to multiple reporters over an extended period of time.

    Reporter Ali Watkins likely received the undredacted FISA application on Carter Page from James Wolfe.
    It appears probable that Wolfe leaked unredacted copies of the Page FISA application. According to the indictment , Wolfe exchanged 82 text messages with Watkins on March 17, 2017. That same evening they engaged in a 28-minute phone call. The original Page FISA application is 83 pages long, including one final signatory page.

    In the public version of the application, there are 37 fully redacted pages. In addition to that, several other pages have redactions for all but the header. There are only two pages in the entire document that contain no redactions.

    Why would Wolfe bother to send 37 pages of complete redactions? It seems more than plausible that Wolfe took pictures of the original unredacted FISA application and sent them by text to Watkins.

    House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has repeatedly stated that evidence within the FISA application shows the counterintelligence agencies were abused by the Obama administration. Most of the mainstream media has known this.

    Despite this, most major news organizations for over two years have promoted the Russia-collusion narrative. Despite ample evidence having come out to the contrary, they have not admitted they were wrong, likely because doing so would mean they would have to admit their complicity.

    Foreign Intelligence

    UK and Australian intelligence agencies also played meaningful roles during the 2016 presidential election.

    Britain's GCHQ was involved in collecting information regarding then-candidate Trump and transmitting it to the United States. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, the head of GCHQ, flew from London to meet personally with then-CIA Director John Brennan, The Guardian reported.

    Former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan in this file photo. Hannigan transmitted information regarding Donald Trump to John Brennan in the summer of 2016. (Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images)

    Hannigan's meeting was noteworthy because Brennan wasn't Hannigan's counterpart. That position belonged to NSA Director Mike Rogers. In the following year, Hannigan abruptly announced his retirement on Jan. 23, 2017 -- three days after Trump's inauguration.

    As GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been targeted after a series of highly coincidental meetings. Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, FBI informant Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos -- some repeatedly so.

    Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier on Trump, was an MI6 agent while the agency was headed by Sir Richard Dearlove. Steele retains close ties with Dearlove.

    Dearlove has ties to most of the parties mentioned. It was he who advised Steele and his business partner, Chris Burrows, to work with a top British government official to pass along information to the FBI in the fall of 2016. He also was a speaker at the July 2016 Cambridge symposium that Halper invited Carter Page to attend.

    Dearlove knows Halper through their mutual association at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Dearlove also knows Sir Iain Lobban, a former head of GCHQ, who is an advisory board member at British strategic intelligence and advisory firm Hakluyt , which was founded by former MI6 members and retains close ties to UK intelligence services.

    Halper has historical connections to Hakluyt through Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has co-authored two books.

    Downer, who met Papadopoulos in a May 2016 meeting established through a chain of two intermediaries, served on the advisory board of Hakluyt from 2008 to 2014. He reportedly still maintains contact with Hakluyt officials. Information from his meeting with Papadopoulos was later used by the FBI to establish the bureau's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. Downer has changed his version of events multiple times.

    The Steele dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several different sources. One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the former British ambassador to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood later relayed information regarding the dossier to Sen. John McCain, who dispatched David Kramer, a fellow at the McCain Institute, to London to meet with Steele in November 2016. McCain would later admit in a Jan. 11, 2017, statement that he had personally passed on the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey.

    Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations -- including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application -- received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, "Please, can we talk." Those "allies" were almost certainly the UK and Australia.

    In a Twitter post , Trump wrote that the "key Allies called to ask not to release" the documents.

    Questions to be asked are why is it that two of our allies would find themselves so opposed to the release of these classified documents that a coordinated plea would be made directly to the president? And why would these same allies have even the slightest idea of what was contained in these classified U.S. documents?

    Britain and Australia appear to know full well what those documents contain, and their attempt to prevent their public release appears to be because they don't want their role in events surrounding the 2016 presidential election to be made public.

    Fusion GPS/Orbis/Christopher Steele

    Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is co-founder of Fusion GPS, along with Peter Fritsch and Tom Catan. Fusion was hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign through law firm Perkins Coie to produce and disseminate the Steele dossier used against Trump. The dossier would later be the primary evidence used to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page on Oct. 21, 2016.

    The company was hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC–through law firm Perkins Coie–to produce the dossier on Trump.

    Christopher Steele, who retains close ties to UK intelligence, worked for MI6 from 1987 until his retirement in 2009, when he and his partner, Chris Burrows, founded Orbis Intelligence. Steele maintains contact with British intelligence, Sir Richard Dearlove , and UK intelligence firm Hakluyt.

    Steele appears to have been represented by lawyer Adam Waldman, who also represented Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. We know this from texts sent by Waldman. On April 10, 2017, Waldman sent this to Sen. Mark Warner:

    "Hi. Steele: would like to get a bi partisan letter from the committee; Assange: I convinced him to make serious and important concessions and am discussing those w DOJ; Deripaska: willing to testify to congress but interested in state of play w Manafort. I will be with him next tuesday for a week."

    Steele also appears to have lobbied on behalf of Deripaska, who was discussed in emails between Bruce Ohr and Steele that were recently disclosed by the Washington Examiner:

    "Steele said he was 'circulating some recent sensitive Orbis reporting' on Deripaska that suggested Deripaska was not a 'tool' of the Kremlin. Steele said he would send the reporting to a name that is redacted in the email."

    Fusion GPS was also employed by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in a previous case. Veselnitskaya was involved in litigation pitting Russian firm Prevezon Holdings against British-American financier William Browder. Veselnitskaya hired U.S. law firm BakerHostetler, who, in turn, hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Browder. Veselnitskaya was one of the participants at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, at which she discussed the Magnitsky Act .

    Fox News reported on Nov. 9, 2017, that Simpson met with Veselnitskaya immediately before and after the Trump Tower meeting.

    A declassified top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court report released on April 26, 2017, revealed that government agencies, including the FBI, CIA, and NSA, had improperly accessed Americans' communications. The FBI specifically provided outside contractors with access to raw surveillance data on American citizens without proper oversight.

    Communications and other data of members of the Trump campaign may have been accessed in this way.


    Nellie Ohr, the wife of high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr, was hired by Fusion GPS to work on the dossier on Trump.

    Bruce and Nellie Ohr have known Simpson since at least 2010 and have known Steele since at least 2006. The Ohrs and Simpson worked together on a DOJ report in 2010 . In that report, Nellie Ohr's biography lists her as working for Open Source Works, which is part of the CIA. Simpson met with Bruce Ohr before and after the 2016 election.

    Bruce Ohr had been in contact repeatedly with Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign -- while Steele was constructing his dossier. Ohr later actively shared information he received from Steele with the FBI, after the agency had terminated Steele as a source. Interactions between Ohr and Steele stretched for months into the first year of Trump's presidency and were documented in a number of FD-302s -- memos that summarize interviews with him by the FBI.

    Spy Traps

    In an effort to put forth evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, it appears that several different spy traps were set, with varying degrees of success. Many of these efforts appear to center around Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and involve London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, who has ties to Western intelligence, particularly in the UK.

    Papadopoulos and Mifsud both worked at the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP). Mifsud appears to have joined LCILP around November 2015 . Papadopoulos reportedly joined LCILP sometime in late February 2016 after leaving Ben Carson's presidential campaign. However, some reports indicate Papadopoulos joined LCILP in November or December of 2015. Mifsud and Papadopoulos reportedly never crossed paths until March 14, 2016, in Italy.

    Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to several Russians, including Olga Polonskaya, whom Mifsud introduced as "Putin's niece," and Ivan Timofeev, an official at a state-sponsored think tank called the Russian International Affairs Council. Both Papadopoulos and Mifsud were interviewed by the FBI. Papadopoulos was ultimately charged with a process crime and was recently sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI. Mifsud was never charged by the FBI.

    Throughout this period, Papadopoulos continuously pushed for meetings between Trump campaign officials and Russian contacts but was ultimately unsuccessful in establishing any meetings.

    Papadopoulos met with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer on May 10, 2016. The Papadopoulos–Downer meeting has been portrayed as a chance encounter in a bar. That does not appear to be the case.

    Papadopoulos was introduced to Downer through a chain of two intermediaries who said Downer wanted to meet with Papadopoulos. Another individual happened to be in London at exactly the same time: the FBI's head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap. The purpose of Priestap's visit remains unknown.

    The Papadopoulos–Downer meeting was later used to establish the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. It was repeatedly reported that Papadopoulos told Downer that Russia had Hillary Clinton's emails. This is incorrect.

    Foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign was approached by several individuals with ties to UK and U.S. intelligence agencies. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

    According to Downer, Papadopoulos at some point mentioned the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

    "During that conversation, he [Papadopoulos] mentioned the Russians might use material that they have on Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the election, which may be damaging,'' Downer told The Australian about the Papadopoulos meeting in an April 2018 article. "He didn't say dirt, he said material that could be damaging to her. No, he said it would be damaging. He didn't say what it was."

    Downer, while serving as Australia's foreign minister, was responsible for one of the largest foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation: $25 million from the Australian government.

    Unconfirmed media reports, including a Jan. 12, 2017, BBC article , have suggested that the FBI attempted to obtain two FISA warrants in June and July 2016 that were denied by the FISA court. It's likely that Papadopoulos was an intended target of these failed FISAs.

    Interestingly, there is no mention of Papadopoulos in the Steele dossier. Paul Manafort, Carter Page, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, Gen. Michael Flynn, and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski are all listed in the Steele dossier.

    Papadopoulos may have started out assisting the FBI or CIA and later discovered that he was being set up for surveillance himself.

    After failing to obtain a spy warrant on the Trump campaign using Papadopoulos, the FBI set its sights on campaign volunteer Carter Page. By this time, the counterintelligence investigation was in the process of being established, and we know now that it was formalized with no official intelligence. The FBI needed some sort of legal cover. They needed a retroactive warrant. And they got one on Oct. 21, 2016. The Page FISA warrant would be renewed three times and remain in force until September 2017.

    Stefan Halper met with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page's July 2016 Moscow trip. As noted previously, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove was a speaker at the symposium. Halper and Dearlove have known each other for years and maintain several mutual associations.

    Page was already known to the FBI. The Page FISA warrant application references the Buryakov spy case and an FBI interview with Page. Current information suggests there was only one meeting between Page and the FBI in 2016. It happened on March 2, 2016. It was in relation to Victor Podobnyy, who was named in the Buryakov case.

    Page, who cooperated with the FBI on the case, almost certainly was providing testimony or details against Podobnyy. Page had been contacted by Podobnyy in 2013 and had previously provided information to the FBI. Buryakov pleaded guilty on March 11, 2016 -- nine days after Page met with the FBI on the case -- and was sentenced to 30 months in prison on May 25, 2016. On April 5, 2017, Buryakov was granted early release and was deported to Russia.

    FBI informant Stefan Halper approached Trump campaign advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.

    House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said in August that exculpatory evidence on Page exists that wasn't included by the DOJ and the FBI in the FISA application and subsequent renewals. The exculpatory evidence likely relates specifically to Page's role in the Buryakov case.

    If the FBI failed to disclose Page's cooperation with the bureau or materially misrepresented his involvement in its application to the FISA Court, it means that the FBI's Woods procedures, which govern FISA applications, were violated.

    Page has not been arrested or charged with any crime related to the investigation.

    FISA Abuse

    Admiral Mike Rogers, while director of the NSA, was personally responsible for uncovering an unprecedented level of FISA abuse that would later be documented in a 99-page unsealed FISA court ruling . As the FISA court noted in the April 26, 2017, ruling, the abuses had been occurring since at least November 2015:

    "The FBI had disclosed raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information, to private contractors.

    "Private contractors had access to raw FISA information on FBI storage systems.

    "Contractors had access to raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to the FBI's requests."

    The FISA Court report is particularly focused on the FBI:

    "The Court is concerned about the FBI's apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in similar disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported."

    The FISA Court disclosed that illegal NSA database searches were endemic. Private contractors, employed by the FBI, were given full access to the NSA database. Once in the contractors' possession, the data couldn't be traced.

    In April 2016, after Rogers became aware of improper contractor access to raw FISA data on March 9, 2016, he directed the NSA's Office of Compliance to conduct a "fundamental baseline review of compliance associated with 702."

    On April 18, 2016, Rogers shut down all outside contractor access to raw FISA information -- specifically outside contractors working for the FBI.

    Then-NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers on May 23, 2017. Rogers uncovered widespread abuse of FISA data by the FBI. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

    DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin filed the government's proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016, report by the Office of the Inspector General and associated FISA abuse to the FISA Court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose Rogers's ongoing Section 702 compliance review.

    The following day, on Sept. 27, 2016, Carlin announced his resignation, effective Oct. 15, 2016.

    After receiving a briefing by the NSA compliance officer on Oct. 20, 2016, detailing numerous "about query" violations from the 702 NSA compliance audit, Rogers shut down all "about query" activity the next day and reported his findings to the DOJ. "About queries" are searches based on communications containing a reference "about" a surveillance target but that are not "to" or "from" the target.

    On Oct. 21, 2016, the DOJ and the FBI sought and received a Title I FISA probable-cause order authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISA Court.

    At this point, the FISA Court was still unaware of the Section 702 violations.

    On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally informed the FISA Court of his findings. On Oct. 26, 2016, Rogers appeared formally before the FISA Court and presented the written findings of his audit.

    The FISA Court had been unaware of the query violations until they were presented to the court by Rogers.

    Carlin didn't disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications in order to avoid raising suspicions at the FISA Court ahead of receiving the Page FISA warrant.

    The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers's investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page.

    While all this was transpiring, DNI James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ash Carter submitted a recommendation that Rogers be removed from his post as NSA director.

    The move to fire Rogers, which ultimately failed, originated sometime in mid-October 2016 -- exactly when Rogers was preparing to present his findings to the FISA Court.

    The Insurance Policy

    Ever since the release of FBI text messages revealing the existence of an "insurance policy," the term has been the subject of wide speculation.

    Some observers have suggested that the insurance policy was the FISA spy warrant used to monitor Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and, by extension, other members of the Trump campaign. This interpretation is too narrow and fails to capture the underlying meaning of the text.

    The insurance policy was the actual process of establishing the Trump–Russia collusion narrative.

    It encompassed actions undertaken in late 2016 and early 2017, including the leaking of the Steele dossier and James Clapper's leaks of James Comey's briefing to President Trump. The intent behind these actions was simple. The legitimization of the investigation into the Trump campaign.

    The strategy involved the recusal of Trump officials with the intent that Andrew McCabe would end up running the investigation.

    The Steele dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, served as the foundation for the Russia narrative.

    The intelligence community, led by CIA Director John Brennan and DNI James Clapper, used the dossier as a launching pad for creating their Intelligence Community assessment.

    This report, which was presented to Obama in December 2016, despite NSA Director Mike Rogers having only moderate confidence in its assessment, became one of the core pieces of the narrative that Russia interfered with the 2016 elections.

    Through intelligence community leaks, and in collusion with willing media outlets, the narrative that Russia helped Trump win the elections was aggressively pushed throughout 2017.

    Spygate

    Spygate represents the biggest political scandal in our nation's history. A sitting administration actively colluded with a political campaign to affect the outcome of a U.S. presidential election. Government agencies were weaponized and a complicit media spread intelligence community leaks as facts.

    But a larger question remains: How long has the United States been subject to interference from the intelligence community and our political agencies? Was the 2016 presidential election a one-time aberration, or is this episode symptomatic of a larger pattern extending back decades?

    The intensity, scale, and coordination suggest something greater than overzealous actions taken during a single election. They represent a unified reaction of the establishment to a threat posed by a true outsider -- a reaction that has come to be known as Spygate.

    Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed on Twitter @themarketswork.

    [Mar 25, 2019] Nuland role in Russiagate

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The transfer of Christopher Steele's first dossier memo was personally facilitated by Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Nuland gave approval for FBI agent Michael Gaeta to travel to London to obtain the memo from Steele. The memo may have passed directly from her to FBI leadership. Secretary of State John Kerry was also given a copy. ..."
    "... Steele was already well-known within the State Department. Following Steele's involvement in the FIFA scandal investigation, he began to provide reports informally to the State Department. The reports were written for a "private client" but were "shared widely within the U.S. State Department, and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of the U.S. response to Putin's annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine," the Guardian reported. ..."
    Mar 25, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

    Originally from: Spygate The True Story of Collusion [Infographic]

    The State Department, with its many contacts within foreign governments, became a conduit for the flow of information. The transfer of Christopher Steele's first dossier memo was personally facilitated by Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Nuland gave approval for FBI agent Michael Gaeta to travel to London to obtain the memo from Steele. The memo may have passed directly from her to FBI leadership. Secretary of State John Kerry was also given a copy.

    Steele was already well-known within the State Department. Following Steele's involvement in the FIFA scandal investigation, he began to provide reports informally to the State Department. The reports were written for a "private client" but were "shared widely within the U.S. State Department, and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of the U.S. response to Putin's annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine," the Guardian reported.

    Nuland passed on parts of the Steele dossier to the FBI. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

    In July 2016, when the FBI wanted to send Gaeta to visit Steele in London, the bureau sought permission from the office of Nuland, who provided this version of events during a Feb. 4, 2018, appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation":

    "In the middle of July, when [Steele] was doing this other work and became concerned, he passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding and our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That's something for the FBI to investigate."

    Steele also met with Jonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement and former special envoy for Libya. Steele and Winer had known each other since at least 2010. In an opinion article in The Washington Post, Winer wrote the following:

    "In September 2016, Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the 'dossier.' Steele's sources suggested that the Kremlin not only had been behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign but also had compromised Trump and developed ties with his associates and campaign."

    In a strange turn of events, Winer also received a separate dossier , very similar to Steele's, from long-time Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. This "second dossier" had been compiled by another longtime Clinton operative, former journalist Cody Shearer, and echoed claims made in the Steele dossier. Winer then met with Steele in late September 2016 and gave Steele a copy of the "second dossier." Steele went on to share this second dossier with the FBI, which may have used it to corroborate his dossier.

    Winer passed on memos from Christopher Steele to Victoria Nuland. (State Department)

    Other foreign officials also used conduits into the State Department. Alexander Downer, Australia's high commissioner to the UK, reportedly funneled his conversation with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos -- later used as a reason to open the FBI's counterintelligence investigation -- directly to the U.S. Embassy in London.

    "The Downer details landed with the embassy's then-chargé d'affaires, Elizabeth Dibble, who previously served as a principal deputy assistant secretary in Mrs. Clinton's State Department," The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel wrote in a May 31, 2018, article .

    If true, this would mean that neither Australian intelligence nor the Australian government alerted the FBI to the Papadopoulos information. What happened with the Downer details, and to whom they were ultimately relayed, remains unknown.

    Curiously, details surprisingly similar to the Papadopoulos–Downer conversation show up in the first memo written by Steele on June 20, 2016:

    "A dossier of compromising information on Hillary Clinton has been collated by the Russian Intelligence Services over many years and mainly comprises bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls. It has not yet been distributed abroad, including to Trump."

    [Mar 25, 2019] Another SIGINT compromise ...

    Highly recommended!
    In Ber 2018 Kusher security clearance wasdongraded.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said. ..."
    "... Kushner's interim security clearance was downgraded last week from the top-secret to the secret level, which should restrict the regular access he has had to highly classified information, according to administration officials. Washpost ..."
    Feb 28, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    " Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.

    Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.

    It is unclear if any of those countries acted on the discussions, but Kushner's contacts with certain foreign government officials have raised concerns inside the White House and are a reason he has been unable to obtain a permanent security clearance, the officials said.

    Kushner's interim security clearance was downgraded last week from the top-secret to the secret level, which should restrict the regular access he has had to highly classified information, according to administration officials. Washpost

    ------------------

    Most people will probably be struck by the fall from grace of Kushner and other WH staff dilettantes. I am not terribly interested in that. What strikes me is that this is the third major compromise of US SIGINT products in the last year. The first was the felonious disclosure to the press of US intelligence penetration of Russian diplomatic communications. the second was the disclosure to the press of penetration of GRU communications. In this one the oral or written discussions among the officials of several foreign countries are revealed. These conversations were probably encrypted.

    Is Jeff Sessions still alive? Why are there no prosecutions for these felonies? pl

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kushners-overseas-contacts-raise-concerns-as-foreign-officials-seek-leverage/2018/02/27/16bbc052-18c3-11e8-942d-16a950029788_story.html?utm_term=.e3639623e918

    [Mar 25, 2019] Crocodile tears: M>adCow crying for indictments after setting up public hostility to Russia for a decade or more.

    Doubling down is just stupid. And that war pig Rachel Maddow lost 500k viewers. That's why she cries. she sries about lst money.
    She does not cry about deceived and brainwashed public, which was subjected to unprecedented Neo-McCarthyism complagn for more then a year.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The MSNBC host, who has devoted countless hours of airtime to gossiping about the alleged ties between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin, struggled to keep her composure while discussing the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, which wrapped up on Friday without issuing any further indictments ..."
    "... Maddow didn't succumb to this unexpected and shocking injustice, however, and reassured her viewers that Mueller's decision not to issue a single collusion-related indictment is the "start of something apparently, not the end of something." ..."
    "... "Very rough night at MSNBC. Rachel Maddow looks like she's going to cry. Chris Hayes glasses are all fogged up," noted radio host Mark Simone. ..."
    "... "This is what it looks like when you've deliberately misled your audience for two years, and then the music stops, and the bill comes due. @maddow," tweeted OANN White House Correspondent Emerald Robinson. ..."
    "... "#Maddow either choking on kitty litter chunks or facing the hard cold reality she's the worst journalist in television history," quipped actor and conservative commentator James Woods. ..."
    "... "So can those of us on the left criticize Trump on the actual issues now, and FINALLY give up on #Russiagate? For 2 years, @maddow has lead @MSNBC in selling us the narrative that Trump colluded w/ Russia What will @maddow do now? Double down or actually do journalism?" asked author and activist Dennis Trainor Jr. ..."
    "... Later on Saturday, Maddow mocked the suggestion that she was watery-eyed and might have held back tears. ..."
    Mar 25, 2019 | www.rt.com

    Crying for indictments? Maddow 'holds backs tears' as she discusses end of Mueller probe (VIDEO)

    The MSNBC host, who has devoted countless hours of airtime to gossiping about the alleged ties between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin, struggled to keep her composure while discussing the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, which wrapped up on Friday without issuing any further indictments.

    Rachel Maddow ( @maddow ) is literally crying 😂😂😂 #LiberalismIsAMentalDisease #MuellerReport pic.twitter.com/hNZThQlREv

    -- Conservative Millennial (@deeg25) March 23, 2019

    According to the Daily Caller, Maddow came close to crying as she commented on the Russiagate-deflating development. Many on Twitter insisted that she actually shed tears. A clip of the broadcast shows a watery-eyed Maddow seemingly grappling with the reality that Donald Trump and his family will not be frog-marched out of the White House.

    Maddow didn't succumb to this unexpected and shocking injustice, however, and reassured her viewers that Mueller's decision not to issue a single collusion-related indictment is the "start of something apparently, not the end of something."

    The internet laughed and laughed.

    "Very rough night at MSNBC. Rachel Maddow looks like she's going to cry. Chris Hayes glasses are all fogged up," noted radio host Mark Simone.

    Very rough night at MSNBC. Rachel Maddow looks like she's going to cry. Chris Hayes glasses are all fogged up.

    -- MARK SIMONE (@MarkSimoneNY) March 23, 2019

    "This is what it looks like when you've deliberately misled your audience for two years, and then the music stops, and the bill comes due. @maddow," tweeted OANN White House Correspondent Emerald Robinson.

    This is what it looks like when you've deliberately misled your audience for two years, and then the music stops, and the bill comes due. @maddow https://t.co/4bkBUEwx8y

    -- Emerald Robinson (@EmeraldRobinson) March 23, 2019

    "#Maddow either choking on kitty litter chunks or facing the hard cold reality she's the worst journalist in television history," quipped actor and conservative commentator James Woods.

    "What's going on with Maddow? Has she been hospitalized? Sedated?" inquired journalist Michael Tracey.

    Others expressed exasperation at Maddow's refusal to face the music, accusing the MSNBC host of ignoring real, pressing issues as she leads her Russiagate crusade.

    "So can those of us on the left criticize Trump on the actual issues now, and FINALLY give up on #Russiagate? For 2 years, @maddow has lead @MSNBC in selling us the narrative that Trump colluded w/ Russia What will @maddow do now? Double down or actually do journalism?" asked author and activist Dennis Trainor Jr.

    So can those of us on the left criticize Trump on the actual issues now, and FINALLY give up on #Russiagate ?
    For 2 years, @maddow has lead @MSNBC in selling us the narrative that Trump colluded w/ Russia
    What will @maddow do now? Double down or actually do journalism?

    -- Dennis Trainor Jr (@dennistrainorjr) March 23, 2019

    Later on Saturday, Maddow mocked the suggestion that she was watery-eyed and might have held back tears.

    LOL -- the Russia Today and conservative media news this morning that I **wept** -- I cried and cried -- through the show last night. LOLololol.

    -- Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) March 23, 2019

    [Mar 25, 2019] Crocodile tears: M>adCow crying for indictments after setting up public hostility to Russia for a decade or more.

    Doubling down is just stupid. And that war pig Rachel Maddow lost 500k viewers. That's why she cries. she sries about lst money.
    She does not cry about deceived and brainwashed public, which was subjected to unprecedented Neo-McCarthyism complagn for more then a year.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The MSNBC host, who has devoted countless hours of airtime to gossiping about the alleged ties between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin, struggled to keep her composure while discussing the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, which wrapped up on Friday without issuing any further indictments ..."
    "... Maddow didn't succumb to this unexpected and shocking injustice, however, and reassured her viewers that Mueller's decision not to issue a single collusion-related indictment is the "start of something apparently, not the end of something." ..."
    "... "Very rough night at MSNBC. Rachel Maddow looks like she's going to cry. Chris Hayes glasses are all fogged up," noted radio host Mark Simone. ..."
    "... "This is what it looks like when you've deliberately misled your audience for two years, and then the music stops, and the bill comes due. @maddow," tweeted OANN White House Correspondent Emerald Robinson. ..."
    "... "#Maddow either choking on kitty litter chunks or facing the hard cold reality she's the worst journalist in television history," quipped actor and conservative commentator James Woods. ..."
    "... "So can those of us on the left criticize Trump on the actual issues now, and FINALLY give up on #Russiagate? For 2 years, @maddow has lead @MSNBC in selling us the narrative that Trump colluded w/ Russia What will @maddow do now? Double down or actually do journalism?" asked author and activist Dennis Trainor Jr. ..."
    "... Later on Saturday, Maddow mocked the suggestion that she was watery-eyed and might have held back tears. ..."
    Mar 25, 2019 | www.rt.com

    Crying for indictments? Maddow 'holds backs tears' as she discusses end of Mueller probe (VIDEO)

    The MSNBC host, who has devoted countless hours of airtime to gossiping about the alleged ties between President Donald Trump and the Kremlin, struggled to keep her composure while discussing the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, which wrapped up on Friday without issuing any further indictments.

    Rachel Maddow ( @maddow ) is literally crying 😂😂😂 #LiberalismIsAMentalDisease #MuellerReport pic.twitter.com/hNZThQlREv

    -- Conservative Millennial (@deeg25) March 23, 2019

    According to the Daily Caller, Maddow came close to crying as she commented on the Russiagate-deflating development. Many on Twitter insisted that she actually shed tears. A clip of the broadcast shows a watery-eyed Maddow seemingly grappling with the reality that Donald Trump and his family will not be frog-marched out of the White House.

    Maddow didn't succumb to this unexpected and shocking injustice, however, and reassured her viewers that Mueller's decision not to issue a single collusion-related indictment is the "start of something apparently, not the end of something."

    The internet laughed and laughed.

    "Very rough night at MSNBC. Rachel Maddow looks like she's going to cry. Chris Hayes glasses are all fogged up," noted radio host Mark Simone.

    Very rough night at MSNBC. Rachel Maddow looks like she's going to cry. Chris Hayes glasses are all fogged up.

    -- MARK SIMONE (@MarkSimoneNY) March 23, 2019

    "This is what it looks like when you've deliberately misled your audience for two years, and then the music stops, and the bill comes due. @maddow," tweeted OANN White House Correspondent Emerald Robinson.

    This is what it looks like when you've deliberately misled your audience for two years, and then the music stops, and the bill comes due. @maddow https://t.co/4bkBUEwx8y

    -- Emerald Robinson (@EmeraldRobinson) March 23, 2019

    "#Maddow either choking on kitty litter chunks or facing the hard cold reality she's the worst journalist in television history," quipped actor and conservative commentator James Woods.

    "What's going on with Maddow? Has she been hospitalized? Sedated?" inquired journalist Michael Tracey.

    Others expressed exasperation at Maddow's refusal to face the music, accusing the MSNBC host of ignoring real, pressing issues as she leads her Russiagate crusade.

    "So can those of us on the left criticize Trump on the actual issues now, and FINALLY give up on #Russiagate? For 2 years, @maddow has lead @MSNBC in selling us the narrative that Trump colluded w/ Russia What will @maddow do now? Double down or actually do journalism?" asked author and activist Dennis Trainor Jr.

    So can those of us on the left criticize Trump on the actual issues now, and FINALLY give up on #Russiagate ?
    For 2 years, @maddow has lead @MSNBC in selling us the narrative that Trump colluded w/ Russia
    What will @maddow do now? Double down or actually do journalism?

    -- Dennis Trainor Jr (@dennistrainorjr) March 23, 2019

    Later on Saturday, Maddow mocked the suggestion that she was watery-eyed and might have held back tears.

    LOL -- the Russia Today and conservative media news this morning that I **wept** -- I cried and cried -- through the show last night. LOLololol.

    -- Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) March 23, 2019

    [Mar 25, 2019] The Narrative Is Dead! Long Live The Narrative!

    Mar 25, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    What actually happened with RussiaGate? A cabal of government officials colluded with the Hillary Clinton campaign to interfere in the 2016 election and, failing to achieve their desired outcome, engineered a two-years-plus formal inquisition to deflect attention from their own misconduct and attempt to overthrow the election result.

    The Cable News characters, quite a few of them lawyers, were litigating the living shit out of the story on Sunday night in their usual spirit of obdurate rank dishonesty. For instance, Jeffrey Toobin, who plays Attorney General on CNN, went off on the infamous 2016 Trump Tower Meeting in which the president's son, Donald, Jr., met with Russian lawyer Natalia V. Veselnitskaya. Toobin omitted to mention that Ms. Veselnitskaya was, at that very time, on the payroll of Fusion GPS, Hillary Clinton's "oppo" research contractor. In other words, Trump Junior was set up.

    That was characteristic of the collusion that actually occurred between the Hillary campaign, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the NSA, the UK's MI6 intel agency, and the Obama White House, striving to prevent the election of a TV reality show star, and to disable him afterwards -- also of the news media's role in the whole interminable scam of RussiaGate. Their fury and despair were as vivid the night of March 24, 2019, as on November 8, 2016. And now they will attempt to spark off a sequel.

    Rachel Maddow, for instance, struggling to maintain her dignity after two years playing Madame DeFarge on MSNBC, tried to console her fans with the prospect of Mr. Trump getting raked over the coals by the DOJ's Southern District of NY prosecutors for crimes as yet unpredicted -- really, whatever they might find if they turn over enough rocks in Manhattan. Perhaps she doesn't know how the justice system actually works in this country: we prosecute crimes not persons. In places like Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany, you first choose a person to eliminate and then fit them to a crime. If no crime can be found, one is easily manufactured. In the USA, a predicate crime is required before you can launch a prosecution. Perhaps the actual Attorney General, Mr. Barr, will advise the avid staff of the Southern District of NY how this works.

    There remains also, the rather sweeping panorama of misconduct and probable crime among the government (and former government) players in the agencies mentioned above. Does the full Mueller Report mention, for instance, that the animating document claiming that Trump colluded with Russia was manufactured by Mrs. Clinton's employees? And that this document was used time and again improperly and illegally to prolong the inquisition? How could Mr. Mueller not acknowledge that? And if not, what sort of investigation was this?

    You are forced to ask: did Mr. Mueller play an honorable role in this epic, multilayered scandal? And is Mr. Mueller himself an honorable character, or something less than that? I believe we'll find out. The other team is coming to bat now -- and just in time for MLB's opening day, too. The Mueller report has been a shocking disappointment to the so-called "resistance," but what about the as-yet-unreleased DOJ Inspector General's report on these very matters ? Or the parallel investigation of federal prosecutor John Huber, who is charged specifically with looking into the malfeasance of the RussiaGate investigators? Or whatever action the Attorney General himself launches in the wake of all this? Or whether Mr. Trump finally declassifies the mountains of documents behind the simple failure to find him guilty of any crime? My favorite college professor and mentor, David Hamilton, once put a curious question to us when we were vexing him for some reason now forgotten: "Why," he asked, "Did Achilles drag Hector around the city of Troy three times?"

    We twiddled our cigarettes and pulled our chins.

    "Because he was just that pissed," he said.

    Groundround , 1 minute ago link

    So, If they would trample Trump's constitutional rights by abusing this bogus fisa warrant system, shouldn't we assume they are 10 times as likely to abuse it to spy on average americans, who have no chance of protecting themselves from the police state they have built since 9-11? Revoke the patriot act. It is unconstitutional anyway, though Trump rewarded the man who helped write it with the Supreme court position. We have a small window to claw back the rights they stripped from us. If we don't do it now, when these programs are called into question, these deep state turds will do whatever they can to consolidate their hold on the US. I'm not too hopeful, myself. Seeing the blatant piracy they are attempting in Venezuela, even after the failures in Iraq and Syria, doesn't do much to console me as to America's future. My relatives came here from England and Germany with little more than the clothes on their backs. It may be time to look for greener pastures if we are going to be a proxy of Israel, and a deep state, stripped of our inherent rights bit by bit until we aren't allowed to leave.

    ComeAndTakeIt , 55 minutes ago link

    These shitbags attempted a coup and failed.

    Now they're either in complete denial that the coup failed, or are arrogantly attempting to continue it by other means.

    I don't think there's a historical precedent anywhere in the world for this level of ridiculous.

    VonSteever , 1 hour ago link

    The real scandal here is two fold.

    First is the multipart crime committed by Hillary Clinton and her cabal of deep state co-conspirators to rig a primary, which they did against Bernie Sanders, then attempt to steal an election by using various intelligence connections in the FBI and CIA to dig up dirt on candidate Trump in the form of a fake Russia dossier, then petition the DOJ with only parts of it, to get a warrant to spy on him and ultimately discredit him. Then in the event he won, use that dossier to concoct a fake Trump/Russia collusion scandal in order to delegitimize and hopefully reverse the Trump Presidential victory. This was treasonous and seditious to its core and those conspirators should be investigated as thoroughly as Mueller investigated Trump and all of his acquaintances.

    The second was the Mainstream media's part in all of this mess. They so eagerly bought into the false narrative and went out of their way, like good little bolsheviks, and disseminated unproven and unsubstantiated "fake news" that was fed to them each morning by democrat operatives and consultants, 24/7/365 . Every mainstream media reporter (and I use that term loosely), and every late night talk host on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, NY Times, Washington Post, and others, as well as every guest pundit opined without proof, and pounded the table to every lemming who would listen, that Trump had to be guilty and was in fact guilty because, well, they didn't like him. These reporters and pundits spread rumors, called him names such as racist and nazi, etc, etc, with no basis in fact, which was an historically new low, even for state based propaganda. (FOX news, to their credit, did not). This agenda driven media overstepped the boundaries of good reporting and journalistic ethical standards and set the news business back 250 years. What American journalists, reporters and pundits did in the name of the first amendment "free press" was a national and global disgrace.

    elctro static , 48 minutes ago link

    Well said. You forget to mention, as did the article, Mueller's seditious criminal past. Worst of all - Madcow and the rest of the MSM did a serious smear job on the Russian government, at a time of already heightened propaganda against a country that could reduce the USA to ashes. Also - there is the collusion of the UK government and the equally ridiculous Skripal affair.

    It is profoundly sad none of the ringleaders and real provocateurs will be prosecuted, and things will continue to deteriorate until there is a nuclear war. Because the entire system is rotten to the core and the citizens don't care about truth or justice.

    VonSteever , 35 minutes ago link

    Thanks for your additional comments. While I'm hopeful Hillary and her co-conspirators will be investigated, indicted, tried and found guilty of sedition and treason in breaking laws of at least 6 different acts, I don't believe Republicans have the spine or intestinal fortitude to make their case, even if they have proof beyond any reasonable doubt to the extent a first year law student could argue and win the case open and shut.

    Also, I do not believe, even for one Milli-second, that public verbal sparring of political leaders or their hyperbole in the midst of tough negotiations, will ever lead civilized nations of the world to a nuclear war. it is done purely for effect and political strategy in their home nations.

    That said, you are correct that the media's continuously negative anti-Trump, anti-America tone for two straight years, did not help trade negotiations or international relations, and in fact, put the US at a distinct disadvantage. It's a small wonder President Trump has achieved all the successes he has in spite of this. He deserves great credit.

    Fuster-cluck , 10 minutes ago link

    Since this will be military tribunals, there does not need to be much political spine. Just one order from, say, CINC...

    artistant , 1 hour ago link

    That's the ONLY THING Trump has to show for.

    Meanwhile,

    as America 's economy crumbles,

    Trump is busy giving Israhell stolen land

    and carte blanche to go on with CRIMES vs Humanity .

    M.A.G.A. is out

    K.A.K.A. is in (Keep America Kabalah Again)

    http://cufpa.wordpress.com/2018/01/07/trumps-jewish-agenda/

    duo , 1 hour ago link

    Mueller knew this was all lies and BS within weeks of taking the job and put on this charade for 2 YEARS and ruined the lives of innocent people. Mueller is not the good guy here at all.

    buzzsaw99 , 1 hour ago link

    That was characteristic of the collusion that actually occurred between the Hillary campaign, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the NSA, the UK's MI6 intel agency, and the Obama White House...

    awesome!

    fanbeav , 1 hour ago link

    After the IG report is released in April, we need to start real investigations. Congressional and Senate hearings are kabuki! President Trump needs to hire outside lawyers as a special counsel to get to the bottom of this treason! I don't trust anyone in DOJ to do that!

    Ribeye , 1 hour ago link

    It's on..Trump just made an extremely strong statement about "this must NEVER happen to ANY President EVER again" in response to a question from a journo..

    It's go time...the counterattack is live..

    Q just confirmed it..

    It's Hammer Time...

    fuglysheepleco , 1 hour ago link

    This implies they have any concept of decency or shame to begin with.

    They've been planning the SpecialCounsel-Russiagate to Congressional-Obstruction pivot since 2017... as continued albatross around Trump & MAGA's neck.

    Trump better get voter fraud under control to win 2020.

    [Mar 25, 2019] Sic Semper Tyrannis Thoughts on the Mueller-Barr report.

    Mar 25, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    3. IMO a great opportunity has been lost for improving relations with the Russian thermonuclear power. Only hyper-nationalist madmen like Brennan and Clapper and ignorant Jingos like Bolton and Pompeo can imagine that an improvement in relations with a country which can destroy you was not a good idea. Trump hoped for that and the Russiagate hoax blocked any possibility for improvement. The Russian government unsuccessfully sought to tinker with our election? Yes, and they will again. That is part of the Game of Nations. Grow up, Americans! It is our responsibility to foil such attempts. We have done similar things since we first emerged on the world stage. We can make a list of those events if you like.

    ... ... ...

    5. Nadler, Schiff and Elijah Cummings wish to continue the farcical pursuit of Trump on all sides of earth until he "spouts black blood and roll fin out." As has been said, the House committees headed by these people lack the funds, personnel and authorities to dig up the masses of data which Mueller's office possessed. It is for this reason that they want all the Mueller data. They hope to sift through it to find things that they can claim constitute grounds for a plausible bill of impeachment. Well pilgrims, Barr would be wise to remember that the Mueller report AND all its supporting documents are Executive Branch assets, not assets of the Congress. There is no reason to give the Congress anything that is classified (secret), Grand Jury testimony or information that should be concealed to allow for the functioning of the presidency (Executive Privilege). So, don't give it to them! Let them sue you. Let the Supreme Court decide.

    [Mar 25, 2019] Bread and Circuses - No Meaningful Financial or Political Reform

    Notable quotes:
    "... The criminal investigations will be conducted by the Southern District of New York. And those are underway. Anyone who has followed Donald's career knows how deep into the seamier side of NYC real estate development he has been, with all that this implies. ..."
    Mar 25, 2019 | jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com

    "Some time ago I suggested that this implausible and histrionic Russia-gate investigation fomented by the Clintonistas appears to be a thinly-veiled fishing expedition. The target is not any significant 'collusion' to throw the election, but much more likely [to be] obstruction of justice, coming off dodgy private real estate deals and assorted financial arrangements involving money laundering..."

    Jesse, 11 January 2018

    Russiagate was a diversion and a distraction from the real work to be done, that of reforming the political and financial systems and putting an end to this predatory economy and its damaging bubbles. No one in the public was a winner in this.

    The criminal investigations will be conducted by the Southern District of New York. And those are underway. Anyone who has followed Donald's career knows how deep into the seamier side of NYC real estate development he has been, with all that this implies.

    The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery.

    [Mar 25, 2019] Russiagate is looking like this generation s WMD – a catastrophe for the reputation of the news media:

    Notable quotes:
    "... Is it even possible to have any sense of NUANCE to debating investigations of Trump & his "Russian connections"? It's actually possible to OPPOSE Cold War II with Russia and yet, still be suspicious of Trump's dealings with foreign powers–including Russia (how about all the MONEY LAUNDERING for Russian OLIGARCHS Trump's done by selling them real estate?) ..."
    "... But, REGARDLESS if "Russian interference" had ANY role in the 2016 Election, Donald Trump is being revealed as a CORRUPT LIAR who raises the WORST elements in American life: to quote a famous witness: he's a racist, a con man and a cheat. ..."
    "... The USA has become a theater state. Concrete achievements, concrete evidenve, do no matter. All that matters is theatrical statements, dramatic actions. ..."
    "... Of course, the US Empire is waning, its capacity to dominate gone, it will behave rather badly. However, if sufficient fervor may be stirred, the populace may yet embrace an end-times crusade and rally round the flag, once more, to deal with foul and evil Russia, with China thrown in, just for good measure. ..."
    Mar 25, 2019 | www.politifact.com

    There are two certainties we can rely upon as we await Mueller's final word, none a cause for relief.

    • The special counsel's office did not undertake a credible investigation of the two core charges related to the 2016 elections -- that Russian intelligence hacked Democratic National Committee email servers while colluding with Donald Trump as he sought the presidency. Mueller failed to call numerous key witnesses, and failed to pursue alternative theories, a duty of any investigator in Mueller's position. These omissions are more or less fatal to the legitimacy of Mueller's work.
    • Among the mainstream Democrats who have incessantly hyped the "Russia-wrecked-our-elections" story, there is no remorse for the damage it has done to our governing institutions, our foreign policy, and our national security. Russia-gate has consolidated Cold War II. The chance to rebuild mutually beneficial relations with Moscow has been damaged.

    Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author, and lecturer. His most recent book is "Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century" (Yale). Follow him @thefloutist. His web site is www.patricklawrence.us. Support his work via www.patreon.com/thefloutist .

    1. Jim Coyle March 24, 2019 at 20:59

      " The chance to rebuild mutually beneficial relations with Moscow has been damaged. "

      Why else was this narrative initiated by the Corporate Democrats? Expecting the person who lead the cover up of the crimes of 9/11 was great comedy, indeed.

    1. Tom March 24, 2019 at 16:39 Matt Taibbi

      Russiagate is looking like this generation's WMD – a catastrophe for the reputation of the news media:

      https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-million

    1. Lydia Howell March 23, 2019 at 09:27

      Is it even possible to have any sense of NUANCE to debating investigations of Trump & his "Russian connections"? It's actually possible to OPPOSE Cold War II with Russia and yet, still be suspicious of Trump's dealings with foreign powers–including Russia (how about all the MONEY LAUNDERING for Russian OLIGARCHS Trump's done by selling them real estate?)

      How do any of the nay-sayers of investigating them feel about Trump's (seemly obvious) CORRUPTION of campaign & post-election trolling for Putin's permission to build his decades long dream of a TRUMP TOWER MOSCOW? or Son-In-Law-In-Charge-of-Middle-East-Peace Jared Kushner's attempts at "back channel" (NON-transparent) communications with Russian government? or Trump himself making sure there's NO RECORD of any of his one-0on-one conversations with Putin?

      At the very least, it appears thta Donald Trump has more interests in HIS MONEY than in U.S. foreign policy.

      That any progresisve/leftist could see Trump as a "peace activist" is a joke! He's had TWO YEARS to bring the troops home from Iraq & Afghanistan & the other 5 countries that President Obama started wars on & he hasn't done it. Trump has RAISED Pentagon budget & put people with ECONOMIC CONFLICTS OF INTEREST into his Cabinet–like the BOEING executive now as Sec. of Defense.

      I DISLIKE Hillary Clinton & did NOT vote for her–or Trump. I think there are MANY reasons she lost the election -- not the least of which is her long terrible record when it comes to EVERYONE–except the 1%.

      The rooted-in-PRESERVING-SLAVERY/Antiquated Electoral College was another reason. James Comey's announcements in both JULY & OCT. 106 didn't help -- nor did, what looks like Russian targeting of specific white working class Midwest voters.

      But, REGARDLESS if "Russian interference" had ANY role in the 2016 Election, Donald Trump is being revealed as a CORRUPT LIAR who raises the WORST elements in American life: to quote a famous witness: he's a racist, a con man and a cheat.

    2. nomad March 24, 2019 at 09:57 Lydia,

      If you had disconnected yourself from the 2 party system, what do you see?
      You will see one party, not two, that associates itself with the elites, not the regular voters.
      The regular voters are just pawn pieces on the political chess board that is played with or removed.
      I see a corrupt system that both parties belong to, and its members serve it for their own interests.
      If both parties were good, where are the business, military, educational, political, financial, legal, and medical reforms that apply to everyone?
      Why are most government politicians above the law?
      Why do executive-level government get executive healthcare while the majority of its citizens get
      less than this?
      Why is the U.S hated by some countries?
      Why is the U.S. government so corrupt? If you look at the corruption index, the U.S. is negatively trending downwards over time.
      https://www.transparency.org/cpi2018?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlvH8gvOa4QIVZBh9Ch0usQonEAAYASAAEgIfj_D_BwE
      Why does the U.S. still have so much debt from the past, the present, and going towards the future?
      http://www.usdebtclock.org/

      For our government system, it does not make a difference who is in charge after this president and its congress.

      If you had watched the movie Matrix, don't be a battery.

    3. William March 22, 2019 at 17:47

      Mueller's failure to interview the absolutely vital witnesses is obvious to those who have kept up with related events and information since the beginning. This, however, amounts to such an extremely small number that it is fairly obvious that the truth about "Russia Gate" will be as quickly forgotten as the Bush administrations lying us into war with Iraq.

    4. Bob In Portland March 22, 2019 at 15:15 This: https://caucus99percent.com/content/what-mueller-wont-find

      5. Dave churbuck March 22, 2019 at 13:10 The corrup people that are and will continue to do the never ending investigations make a lot of money.
      By do the investigations they protect the guilty which are the investigators themselves.
      They also insure that the Clinton Cartel will never get caught . Think about that. Reply

    5. O Society March 22, 2019 at 11:51 Did you see James Comey let the public down gently and try to quell the riots ahead of time with the seal of his authenticity?

      http://opensociet.org/2019/03/22/james-comey-what-i-want-from-the-mueller-report/

    6. Zhu March 22, 2019 at 01:02

      The USA has become a theater state. Concrete achievements, concrete evidenve, do no matter. All that matters is theatrical statements, dramatic actions.

      O Society March 21, 2019 at 13:07 Truth is Donald Trump is a tool. Like a weedeater or a vacuum, except in reverse. His job is to make a mess like a chaos snowmachine. Crap all over the Oval Office, the military, and any coherent notion of policy and government as being for good of the people.

      With Russia (and all other simmering wars), Trump does whatever the neoconservatives tell him to do because he has no foreign policy or ideology of his own. Don't overthink it. There's no 4D chess going on here, just pissing on things, marking his territory.

      In fact, Trump has no economic, domestic, or foreign ideology other than "Me." Therefore, any benefit to anyone not named "Me" which may come from anything he does is coincidental. Collateral damage, so to speak. Inadvertent to the hoisting of the Great Leader's social status.

      Trump is against blacks because he is white. He is against women because he's a man. He's against the regular people because he's an oligarch. Simple.

      http://opensociet.org/2019/03/21/the-american-emperor-has-no-clothes

        • DH Fabian March 22, 2019 at 01:01 Agree, and take a look at what Trump did. He reinforced economic sanctions against Russia, increased US "meddling" in Ukraine, increased US/NATO troops near the Russian border, and we've been subjected to two years of anti-Russian propaganda. And yes, Trump is about Trump. Period. Reply
        • Eddie March 24, 2019 at 12:05 Yes O'S, as I've noted a number of times before, the 'Occam's razor' POV here (which I and some others subscribed to) is that Trump basically ran for office as a PR event, to help his always shady/chronically financially troubled scam empire by getting name recognition to help fool potential investors. His stated political views were by and large entirely opportunistic and irrelevant -- - for instance, he supposedly used to be a liberal Democratic supporter who reportedly supported abortion rights and advocated for Hillary Clinton. Trump was more stunned than elated when he won on election night (you could almost see him thinking 'Oh crap, NOW I might actually have to do some WORK, and it'll be in the public eye, where I can't con people as easily as I do investors'), and his wife reportedly cried, but not tears of joy. To impute any serious political policies to the man is to vastly exaggerate his interest in politics. He never previously held any elected office, which tells us a lot. Reply
      2. Gary March 21, 2019 at 08:11 It is clear the author & responders do not understand geo-politics. As US imperialism continues its hegemonic actions, like the expansion of NATO, it is clear the Russians need to foil this aggression. How do they do it short of nuclear war? They need to disrupt bourgeois democracy in order to maintain & spread real democracy, i.e., socialist democracy. It doesn't matter that the October Revolution was destroyed which Putin said recently is the worst thing that happened in the 20th century. There is still a desire to reestablish socialism. In addition the US doesn't want that nor will it tolerate a powerful capitalist Russia. Writers at Consortium don't seem to understand this facet of geo-politics. Why? Because writers & readers here are of the bourgeoisie & are not Marxists even though they seem to be defending Russia & speak about preventing a Cold War II.
    1. O Society March 20, 2019 at 14:42 There's a clear pattern in Donald Trump's life, as well as the life of his father, and his father before that.

      They'll steal and lie and scam and defraud the public, and get away with it.

      We all know that's how the American Fairytale ends: He shat all over the place and someone else cleaned it up. Again.

      https://opensociet.org/2018/09/18/the-donald-in-wonderland-down-the-financial-rabbit-hole-with-trump/

      • Eddie March 24, 2019 at 15:22 As per your link to the article by Nomi Prins, and other similar articles going back to the 80's, Trump is easily the most financially corrupt POTUS we've seen in our generation (I was born in '49), possibly the worst ever, at least on a personal-business basis (things like the Teapot Dome scandal were more 'political-financial' corrupt, a somewhat different category, though in the end it's obviously all CORRUPTION*). It's sad that the US has gotten to this point politically -- - to have someone so ill-suited and corrupt as our POTUS -- - but maybe as some critics have said Trump IS an appropriate symbol of the crass country we've become..? If that's true or not, maybe he'll serve as a 'bottoming-out' signal to enough of the US electorate to examine our overall culture and start a correction to more humanistic policies.

        * Side note: Zephyr Teachout (quoted in the link) wrote an excellent book "Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United", which is a very readable, informative book on that timely subject.

    1. O Society March 19, 2019 at 23:55 You can't believe the president. You can't believe anything anyone says about the president either.

      Whomever had the bright idea to make sure no one believes anything coming out of Washington DC for the foreseeable future

      Ding! Ding! WINNER WINNER chicken dinner!

      https://opensociet.org/2019/03/19/usatoday/ Reply

      • Tom March 20, 2019 at 04:02 "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false"

        CIA Director William Casey

    1. Tom March 19, 2019 at 16:18 The very fact that the servers were never inspected by the FBI but a private company that has a history of being anti Russia completely ruined the investigation and chain of evidence that breached their own laws and never sought any interview with Ambassador Craig Murray who said he knows who leaked the evidence says it all.

      Craig Murray is banned from the USA.

      Why?

    1. Anarcissie March 19, 2019 at 15:00 I was quite interested in the early reports of supposed foreign influences and hacks of the 2016 election, because to some extent computer security has been part of my métier. I soon realized that very little actual evidence was being presented in comparison with the wild stories being circulated. So I don't think it's surprising that Mueller appears to be coming up with nothing substantial (unless there's a big surprise awaiting us all). Mueller did not call a number of the obvious witnesses (as noted above) because he knew they could not offer anything.

      The House investigation is motivated by two things: (1) Democrats promised that if they got control of the House they would investigate and maybe impeach Trump; (2) CYA procedures. The main effort of the Democratic Party leadership is keeping the Left down; Russiagate was supposed to distract people from concerns like climate change, health care, education costs, and so on; the Democratic leadership's donor class wants this sort of thing to be stopped or diverted. Hence the constant focus on Trump and the conspiracy fables associated by them with him. They have now made a number of gaffes, not just Russiagate, which have to be covered up and put out of mind if possible.

      Those who went along with all this, especially those who indulged in McCarthyism, should be reminded of it frequently.

    1. Lisa March 19, 2019 at 14:13 Concerning the first charge, Russian intelligence hacking the DNC computers, there is one more witness whom Mueller never contacted, although he sent a message to Mueller and volunteered to be interviewed:

      Kim Dotcom / Twitter 8. Aug. 2018
      "I certainly know that Wikileaks didn't get it from Russia. I know who was the Wikileaks DNC source. I was involved. The Mueller indictment of 12 Russians will never be tested in Court, it's a scam, initiated by Hillary Clinton. Mueller is a political hitman tasked to end Trump."

      It seems that both sides are steering the discussion to another dimension, being frustrated in advance of the coming Mueller report. The Democrats are starting new investigations on other issues on Trump, not pushing the impeachment project further, the other side is worried that the Mueller report will leave the question open, undecided, so that everyone can stick to their original suspicions, and the country is left in turmoil. Reply

      • DH Fabian March 19, 2019 at 21:56 It was reported some time ago that the DNC servers hadn't been hacked at all. It was determined that someone who had direct access to the computers had simply downloaded a huge number of files onto ordinary thumb drives, and these were passed along, ultimately to Wikileaks. Reply
      • Norumbega March 20, 2019 at 18:21 I hadn't been aware of Kim Dotcom's 2018 Tweet, but he is one of several potential witnesses to the matter in whom Mueller has shown zero interest in interviewing.

        I discuss this matter in a long post under last week's VIPS memo. In combination this witness evidence further underscores that what Mueller is doing cannot by any stretch be considered an honest investigation:

        https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/13/vips-muellers-forensics-free-findings/ Reply

    2. Gregory Kruse March 19, 2019 at 13:34 Paranoiac hyperbole, is it? Reply
    3. Jeff Harrison March 19, 2019 at 13:32 Yes, it's pretty clear that the Democrats want to do to the Republicans what the Republicans did to the Democrats under Clinton and Obama. Hobble the president that they don't want to consider legitimate. The Democrats have a couple of problems. One is that when there was no there there in Clinton's case special persecutor Starr was able to get salacious bits on Clinton and essentially trap him into a formal form of perjury because Clinton didn't want to admit that he had had sex with "that woman". Trump doesn't give a sh*t. God and the gang know who he's been sleeping with and he doesn't care so the prudish, hypocritical sanctimony of the evangelicals won't get him. The other problem is essentially that impeachment isn't really the vehicle to remove presidents you don't like. That's what elections are for. You can't impeach him for something he did five years ago.

      It really is too bad that he didn't depose Christopher Steele. Christopher Steele gives new meaning to the line out of the Charlie Daniels hit where Uneasy Rider says, "he may look dumb, but that's just a disguise. He's a mastermind in the ways of espionage". So, not only aren't today's Democrats very competent, they can't hire competent help, either.

      It's not clear to me what the country does when neither political party is competent.

    1. O Society March 19, 2019 at 13:19 Donald Trump is nothing more than an aristocrat. He got his family millions from his dad, Fred, whose own mother, Elizabeth, started him in real estate. It's a family of rich grifters.

      Yet the Democratic party doesn't go after all the Trump's financial fraud and scams. It's all Spy vs. Spy Russia baloney instead. Why?

      https://opensociet.org/2019/03/07/exposing-trumps-tax-returns-is-way-more-important-than-his-impeachment/

      • O Society March 19, 2019 at 17:21 Oh, I think we all know Trump is as crooked as a stick in water. There's mountains of corruption in his family, at least a century's worth of fraud and scams to hold up in the sunlight.

        The so called "meritocracy" – aka aristocracy, oligarchy, elite, plutocrats, etc – don't want to turn over rocks looking for Trumps financial corruption because they're all hiding fraud and scams of their own.

        Meritocracy itself is a fraud. These aren't our best and brightest and most worthy running things, they're celebrities and vampires, just like Trump is.

        Are you ready to expose how the selfish bastards rig the game to keep the rest of us from getting any of their so called "merit?"

        The first rule of Rich Club is you don't talk about Rich Club!

        https://opensociet.org/2019/03/14/meritocracy-is-a-myth-invented-by-rich-people/

    1. Eric32 March 19, 2019 at 13:18 The US is a bizarrely corrupt dysfunctional country.

      The two countries that (past and present) interfere the most in US politics and elections are Israel and Britain. The corrupt FBI didn't include them in its politicized "investigation".

      Due to Hillary's incompetent attempts to hide her emails from examination via FOIA requests by using her own insecure servers, Russia and all other countries with competent computer intelligence capabilities likely have all her emails dealing with State Dept. classified and unclassified info. They also likely have her emails dealing with the corrupt Clinton "charity" foundation dealings.

      Despite the above, the evidence indicates Wikileaks got the DNC emails showing corrupt activities, not from Russia or any other country, but from a DNC onsite data transfer to a USB thumb drive, which was later physically transferred to wiki (involving Craig Murray) . Seth Rich, a DNC employee whose subsequent murder remains unsolved, has been all but named by Assange as the DNC source.

      Big Russian money flowed to Bill Clinton for speeches. Big Russian money flowed to the obviously corrupt Clinton foundation as "donations".

      Bill Clinton said: "I left the White House [2001] $16 million in debt". A Forbes magazine analysis of Clinton tax returns had them pulling in $240 million over the ensuing 15 years.

      What do the Clintons have to offer in books and speeches that would pull in that kind of money?

      And yet, all the legal and press attention goes to supposed Trump corruption.

      So far at least, nobody has been able to point to any any dirt on Trump that could have been used as blackmail leverage, which is somewhat amazing for an operator who was involved in New York real estate, casinos and hotels.

      • Glennn March 19, 2019 at 14:14 Russiagate has been a smashing success. It has turned the bulk of the liberal Democratic voting bloc into Russiaphobic cold warriors who don't seem overly concerned with the almost certain dire consequences of such insanity. They seem eager to see their freedoms set aside so the rebranded Democratic Neocons can protect them from boogeymen. It's never been easier in all of human history to inform oneself, yet we find ourselves surrounded by astonishing ignorance as sites like this see their traffic from search reduced by tricks done by the corporate providers of the search engines. I foolishly thought that Trump would cause a leftward movement in the population, and to a limited degree it has. I'm just shocked at how many of my friends and family are totally sucked in by Russiagate and surrounding manipulations. I see no sign that they learned anything from the 2016 debacle.
      • Skip Scott March 20, 2019 at 08:58 Yes, there would be at least as much "meat" examining the Clintons' finances as there is in examining Trump's.

        By your wording I'm not sure if you realize that you are talking about two different sets of emails. Hillary's emails for while she was SoS have no doubt been obtained by the Russians and the Chinese, and any country with an interest in monitoring US foreign policy that has hacking capability. That she got away with that without being prosecuted is astounding. The DNC emails could also have been hacked, but all evidence supports a leak being the source for Wikileaks. As Putin said, why would they bother to try to influence the election, when US foreign policy never changes no matter who is president. If the DNC and Podesta were hacked by foreign powers, it was likely just done for information.

        (I just re-read your comment more carefully and see that you are likely aware that we're talking about separate sets of emails.)

    1. hetro March 19, 2019 at 12:48 Also not investigated is the role of the Clinton forces, including Obama, in perpetuating the myth of collusion as cover action for a) a failed election b) problems with The Clinton Foundation. Further on the not emphasized includes the ICA of January 2017 relying on Crowdstrike, a dubious intelligence service to begin with in the employ of Hillary Clinton. The earmarks of a fantastic propaganda scheme, involving supposedly reliable agencies of the US government, are clear and demonstrable under the noses of those who still clamor there must be something legitimate about Mueller and his investigation fiasco. If we needed further indications of corruption in high places, following the Democratic Party's lead in fixing the 2016 presidential nomination for Clinton, it came speedily along thereafter, with an apparent, "Oh, gee, those nasty Russians are responsible!" response from a heavily brainwashed public. It would seem we need an official investigation of the investigation to join the enquiries of Mr. Lawrence, William Binney, et al.

      As to Robert Reich, he was "paranoiacally hyperbolic" back in 2016 and has only added to the TDS hysteria.

    1. DW Bartoo March 19, 2019 at 12:25 Of course, the Mueller investigation was never intended to definitively answer any serious questions, including why the FBI never insisted upon taking charge of the DNC computers allowing, instead, the allegations of a private firm to stand as "evidence".

      As you say, the harm done by the "Russia did it!" claim is immense and will have increasingly dire consequences as time goes on.

      The point and purpose of the Mueller spectacle is to allow evidence-free speculation to entrance the political system, not just to excuse Hillary and the financial class Democrats of any responsibility for their loss in the election of 2016, but also to shift attention away from the dismal failure of perpetual warfare and neoliberal austerity, in the service of military empire and global capitalist extraction, even as the capacity of the planet to support human existence is daily diminished.

      As long as the many can be kept distracted, the existential issues of nuclear war and environmental collapse may be avoided by the political class.

      Even such ideas as genuine health care or a more sane, humane, and sustainable economic system can be kept from ever becoming something that people ought think and talk about.

      If all problems may be attributed to Trump and Russia, then getting back to the Clinton-Bush-Obama daze of "business as usual" will drone on most happily and a new Cold War may be heated up as the next thrilling adventure.

      Of course, the US Empire is waning, its capacity to dominate gone, it will behave rather badly. However, if sufficient fervor may be stirred, the populace may yet embrace an end-times crusade and rally round the flag, once more, to deal with foul and evil Russia, with China thrown in, just for good measure.

      There is lots of great mileage in Russuagate.

      It might yet be all to end all.

      Pathetic?

      Yes.

      But what else have the desperate elite got? Reply

    2. exiled off mainstreet March 19, 2019 at 11:53
      This is certainly an accurate view of the problem. He mentions Robert Reich, who along with the rest of the 'mainstream" Democrats jumped the shark long ago on this issue, which has destroyed the legitimacy of the democratic party. Reich lost any claim on rationality by following the conventional wisdom. Meanwhile, Trump's defense against the false charges bolstered the neocon element in the Republican party. I don't see how this ends well.

    [Mar 25, 2019] Bush lied, people died, Obama lied people died, Trump lied people died. What changed?

    Bush II campaigned on "no nation building" mantra. He lied. Crump campaigned no foreign wars manta. He lied.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The 16th anniversary of the Iraq war last week was marked by a shortage of people defending the costliest foreign policy blunder of this young century, even in circles where support for that misadventure was once sacrosanct. ..."
    "... Yet even as the folly and injustice of Iraq congeals into conventional wisdom inside the Beltway, famously resistant to rethinking bipartisan military interventions no matter how ill-advised, it is an open question whether anything has changed. Dick Cheney's protestations notwithstanding , the presidential wars largely continue unimpeded by the "America First" commander-in-chief. ..."
    "... John Bolton seems to have more say about when American troops will leave Syria or Afghanistan than the president of the United States. Trump's second veto will almost certainly be of a bipartisan resolution rebuking -- and terminating -- U.S. support for the war in Yemen. We appear to be escalating in Somalia. Tensions are rising with Iran and Venezuela, with the administration trending toward a functionally neoconservative position on both despite major newspapers publishing pleas to retire that label . ..."
    Mar 25, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    The 16th anniversary of the Iraq war last week was marked by a shortage of people defending the costliest foreign policy blunder of this young century, even in circles where support for that misadventure was once sacrosanct.

    Former George W. Bush mouthpiece Ari Fleischer supplied a promptly ratioed tweetstorm that quibbled with the "Bush lied, people died" mantra concerning his old boss's handling of the intelligence on Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Never Trumper David French gamely argued that Saddam Hussein was a greater source of instability than the chaos brought about by the invasion, followed by Barack Obama's withdrawal. In so doing, French reminded us that, however off-putting some conservatives find Donald Trump, the president's criticism of the war matters more to many of those who devote their time to denouncing his every utterance.

    Yet even as the folly and injustice of Iraq congeals into conventional wisdom inside the Beltway, famously resistant to rethinking bipartisan military interventions no matter how ill-advised, it is an open question whether anything has changed. Dick Cheney's protestations notwithstanding , the presidential wars largely continue unimpeded by the "America First" commander-in-chief.

    John Bolton seems to have more say about when American troops will leave Syria or Afghanistan than the president of the United States. Trump's second veto will almost certainly be of a bipartisan resolution rebuking -- and terminating -- U.S. support for the war in Yemen. We appear to be escalating in Somalia. Tensions are rising with Iran and Venezuela, with the administration trending toward a functionally neoconservative position on both despite major newspapers publishing pleas to retire that label .

    [Mar 25, 2019] It Was All a Lie

    this is much worse that WDM case. It poisoned relations with Russia at least for a generation. People who planned and executed Russiagate color revolution, of which Mueller witch hunt was an integral part are criminals. All of them.
    But Russiagate told us a lot about British and Israeli influence on the Us presidential elections, as well as CIA and FBI machinations.
    Mar 25, 2019 | theamericanconservative.com

    Robert Mueller has come up empty handed, exposing two years of relentless Russiagate propaganda and the media that sold it.

    The short version? Mueller is done. His report unambiguously states there was no collusion or obstruction. He was allowed to follow every lead unfettered in an investigation of breathtaking depth.

    It cannot be clearer. The report summary states, "The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 US Presidential Election the report does not recommend any further indictments, nor did the Special Counsel obtain any sealed indictments that have yet to be made public."

    Robert Mueller did not charge any Americans with collusion, coordination, or criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. The special counsel also considered whether members of the Trump campaign "coordinated," a much lower standard defined as an "agreement, tacit or express," with Russian election interference activities. They did not.

    Everything -- everything -- else we have been told since the summer of 2016 falls, depending on your conscience and view of humanity, into the realm of lies, falsehoods, propaganda, exaggerations, political manipulation, stupid reporting, fake news, bad judgment, simple bull, or, in the best light, hasty conclusions.

    As with Dorothy's ruby slippers, the proof of no collusion has always been with us. There was a guilty plea from Michael Flynn, Trump's national security advisor, on one count of perjury unrelated to Russiagate. Flynn lied about a legal meeting with the Russian ambassador. Rick Gates, deputy campaign manager, pled guilty to conspiracy and false statements unrelated to Russiagate. George Papadopoulos, a ZZZ-level adviser, pled guilty to making false statements about legal contact with the Russians. Michael Cohen , Trump's lawyer, pled guilty to lying to Congress about a legal Moscow real estate project. Paul Manafort , very briefly Trump's campaign chair, pled guilty to conspiracy charges unrelated to Russiagate and that for the most part occurred before he even joined the campaign. Roger Stone, who never officially worked for Trump, awaits a trial that will happen long after Mueller turns off the last lights in his office.

    Mueller did indict some Russian citizens for hacking, indictments that in no way tied them to anything Trump and which will never see trial. Joseph Mifsud, the Russian professor who supposedly told Papadopoulos Moscow had "thousands of Hillary's emails," was never charged .

    Carter Page, subject of FISA surveillance and a key actor in the Steele dossier, was also never charged. After hours of testimony about that infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting to discuss Hillary's email and other meeting around the Moscow hotel, no one was indicted for perjury.

    The short version of Russiagate? There was no Russiagate.

    What Will Happen Next is already happening. Democrats are throwing up smoke demanding that the full Mueller report be made public. Even before AG Barr released the summary, Speaker Pelosi announced that whatever he decided to release wouldn't be enough. One Dem on CNN warned they would need the FBI agents' actual handwritten field notes.

    Paul Manafort: Eulogy for a Straw Man Mueller's Investigation is Missing One Thing: A Crime

    Adam Schiff said , "Congress is going to need the underlying evidence because some of that evidence may go to the compromise of the president or people around him that poses a real threat to our national security." Schiff believes his committee is likely to discover things missed by Mueller, whose report indicates his team interviewed about 500 witnesses, obtained more than 2,800 subpoenas and warrants, executed 500 search warrants, obtained 230 orders for communications records, and made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence.

    Mueller may still be called to testify in front of Congress, as nothing will ever be enough for the #Resistance cosplayers now in charge. Overnight, the findings, made by Mueller the folk hero , the dogged Javert, the Marine on his last patrol, suddenly weren't worth puppy poo unless we could all look over his shoulder and line-by-line second guess him. MSNBC host Joy Reid, for her part, has already accused Mueller of covering up the crime of the century .

    The New York Times headline "As Mueller Report Lands, Prosecutorial Focus Moves to New York" says the rest -- we're movin' on! Whatever impeachment/indictment fantasies diehard Dems have left are being transferred from Mueller to the Southern District of New York. The SDNY's powers, we are reminded with the tenacity of a bored child in the back seat, are outside of Trump's control, the Wakanda of justice.

    The new holy land is called Obstruction of Justice, though pressing a case against Trump in a process that ultimately exonerated him will be a tough sell. In a sentence likely to fuel discussion for months, the attorney general quotes Mueller, "While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

    It sounds dramatic, but in fact it means that, while taking no position on whether obstruction took place, Mueller concluded that he did not find enough evidence to prosecute. In the report, he specifically turns over to the attorney general any decision to pursue obstruction further. Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, meanwhile, have already determined that the evidence does not support prosecution of the president for obstruction of justice.

    Mueller also specifically noted that obstruction of justice requires proof of intent, and since he found that Trump, et al, did not conspire with Russia, there can be no intent to obstruct an investigation Trump knew could not lead to anything. The case is thus closed judicially (Mueller having essentially telegraphed the defense strategy), though Democrats are likely to quixotically keep pursuing it.

    What's left is corruption. Politico has already published a list of 25 "new" things to investigate about Trump, trying to restock the warehouse of broken impeachment dreams (secret: it's filled with sealed indictments no one will ever see). The pivot will be from treason to corruption: see the Cohen hearings as Exhibit A. Campaign finance minutiae , real estate assessment questions, tax cheating from the 1980s, a failed Buffalo Bills purchase years ago how much credibility will any of that have now with a public realizing it has been bamboozled on Russia?

    At some point, even the congresswoman with the most Twitter followers is going to have to admit there is no there there. By digging the hole they are standing in even deeper, Dems will only make it more obvious to everyone except Samantha Bee's interns that they have nothing. Expect to hear "this is not the end, it's only the end of the beginning" more often, even if it sounds more needy than encouraging, like a desperate ex checking in to see if you want to meet for coffee.

    Someone at the DNC might also ask how this unabashed desire to see blood drawn from someone surnamed Trump will play out with potential 2020 purple voters. It is entirely possible that the electorate is weary and would like to see somebody actually address immigration, health care, and economic inequality now that we've settled the Russian question.

    That is what is and likely will happen. What should happen is a reckoning.

    Even as the story fell apart over time, a large number of Americans and nearly all of the mainstream media still believed that the president of the United States was a Russian intelligence asset -- in Clinton's own words, " Putin's puppet ." How did that happen?

    A mass media that bought lies about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and then promised "never again!" did it again. The New York Times , WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, et al, reported falsehoods to drive a partisan narrative. They gleefully created a serial killer's emptywheel -like bulletin board covered in blurry photos connected by strands of yarn.

    Another generation of journalists soiled themselves. They elevated mongerers like Seth Abramson, Malcolm Nance, and Lawrence Tribe, who vomited nonsense all over Twitter every afternoon before appearing before millions on CNN. They institutionalized unsourced gossip as their ledes -- how often were we told that the walls were closing in? That it was Mueller time? How often was the public put on red alert that Trump/Sessions/Rosenstein/Whitaker/Barr was going to fire the special prosecutor? The mass media featured only stories that furthered the collusion tall tale and silenced those skeptical of the prevailing narrative, the same way they failed before the Iraq war.

    The short version: there were no WMDs in Iraq. That was a lie and the media promoted it shamelessly while silencing skeptical voices. Now Mueller has indicted zero Americans for working with Russia to influence the election. Russiagate was a lie and the media promoted it shamelessly while silencing skeptical voices.

    The same goes for the politicians , alongside Hayden , Brennan , Clapper, and Comey , who told Americans that the president they elected was a spy working against the United States. None of that was accidental. It was a narrative they desperately wanted to be true so they could profit politically regardless of what it did to the nation. And today the whitewashing is already ongoing (watch out for tweets containing the word "regardless").

    Someone should contact the ghost of Consortium News's Robert Parry , one of the earliest and most consistent skeptics of Russiagate, and tell him he was right all along. That might be the most justice we see out of all this.

    Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, wrote We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99% .

    [Mar 25, 2019] Russiagate Revisited by Jackson Lears

    This article is over a year old, but it really explains what this with hunt was about -- to deflect real interference in the US election as well as exonerate Hillary fiasco. The way Russian were selected is a typical "projected" Anti-Semitism -- persecution on the base on national origin without any solid fact, but with plenty of prejudices due to Russia Soviet past. What a gang of scamsters the US neoliberal elite became !
    Feb 22, 2018 | lrb.co.uk
    Russiagate Revisited 35 The anti-Russian hysteria in Washington has slipped beyond self-parody. We now have front-row seats in a theatre of the absurd, watching the media furor explode after Robert Mueller's 'indictments' of 13 Russians and three Russian companies for interfering in the 2016 presidential elections.

    Mueller's actions deserve the scare quotes because they are not really indictments at all. The accused parties will never be extradited or brought to trial. Nor is it clear that their actions rise to the level of crimes. The supposed indictments are merely dramatic accusations, a giant publicity stunt.

    Even if they were real indictments, they would not be convictions. American journalists seem to have forgotten that distinction. In contemporary American jurisprudence, prosecutors routinely get rubber stamps from grand juries. A grand jury, the adage goes, will indict a ham sandwich. For a g-man on a white horse like Mueller, universally lionised in the mainstream media, a grand jury would probably indict a peanut butter sandwich.

    One of the most bizarre aspects of Russiagate is the magical transformation of intelligence agency heads into paragons of truth-telling – a trick performed not by reactionary apologists for domestic spying, as one would expect, but by people who consider themselves liberals. There is something genuinely absurd about a former director of the FBI – which along with the CIA and NSA has long been one of the gravest threats to democracy in America – solemnly warning of the threat to democracy posed by Russian meddling in the election.

    And what was the nature of that alleged meddling? The pseudo-indictments are clear: the meddlers had nothing to do with the Russian government and nothing to do with the Trump campaign – except that they sometimes 'communicated with unwitting individuals' associated with it. And the Russians' activities had no impact on the outcome of the election. Mueller's assignment was to investigate whether the Russian government colluded with the Trump campaign to promote his victory over Hillary Clinton. None of the current charges has anything to do with this. (Nor does Mueller's recent indictment of Alex van der Zwaan, an attorney and associate of Trump's crony Paul Manafort.) The pseudo-indictments merely add to the billowing clouds of innuendo that have characterised the Russiagate narrative from the beginning.

    According to Mueller's accusations, the meddlers began their operations long before the campaign began and certainly before anyone thought Trump had a snowball's chance in hell; they posed as Muslims, black activists, white Southerners, among other social types, all posting slogans and invective on social media. After the election, they staged pro-Trump and anti-Trump rallies. Somehow the media have made this mishmash fit the Russiagate narrative, assuming it reveals a coherent Kremlin plan to elect Trump.

    So what is the point of these sham indictments? It is fair to speculate that there is more going on here than a simple search for truth. Early on in the 37-page document that was released to such fanfare, the FBI makes a revealing assertion, claiming that the Russians aimed 'to sow discord in the US political system' – as if vigorous debate were not an appropriate state of affairs for a democratic polity; as if the normal expression of democracy is bland conformity to policies fashioned by elites. By explicitly linking the Russians with support for the Sanders and Trump campaigns, Mueller's pseudo-indictments identify dissent from the Washington consensus with foreign subversion. They reinforce the reigning orthodoxy and tighten the boundaries of permissible public discourse.

    The consequences are potentially catastrophic. By focusing on the manufactured menace of Russiagate, the Democratic Party leadership can continue to ignore its own failures as well as the actual menace posed by Trump. And by fostering the fantasy of a vast Russian plot against America, the mainstream media can shut down reasonable foreign policy debate and promote a dangerous, unnecessary confrontation with a rival power. The final act in Washington's theatre of the absurd has yet to be written, but the denouement looks dark.

    [Mar 25, 2019] Full text of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu s UN speech The Times of Israel

    A lot of demagogy but Israel technical prowess is undisputable. They do have some innovative products, although they mostly rely on the USA for commercializing them.
    From Netanyahu presentation it looks like both Trump and Haley are Israel clients, hell bent of defending Iseral policies at all cost, without any consideration of the USA interests in the region. Which might be different in some area at some times that the state of Israel, as attack of Israeli jets Liberty and Jonathan Pollard case has shown ...
    And what is interesting is that theocratic state Israel has the right to have nuclear weapon but non of its neibours, including theocratic state of Iran, has not. Isreal also has the right to bomb Syria at will. Just the right of the strong. Such a truly exceptional nation.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Thanks to President Trump's unequivocal support for Israel in this body, that positive change is gathering force. So, thank you, President Trump. Thank you for supporting Israel at the UN. And thank you for your support, Ambassador Nikki Haley. Thank you for speaking the truth about Israel. ..."
    timesofisrael.com

    ... ... ...

    Mr. Secretary General, I very much appreciate your statement that denying Israel's right to exist is anti-Semitism, pure and simple. Now, that's important, because for too long the epicenter of global anti-Semitism has been right here at the UN. And while it may take many years, I am absolutely confident that the revolution in Israel's ties with individual nations will ultimately be reflected in this hall of nations. I say that because there is also a marked change in the position of some of our key friends.

    Thanks to President Trump's unequivocal support for Israel in this body, that positive change is gathering force. So, thank you, President Trump. Thank you for supporting Israel at the UN. And thank you for your support, Ambassador Nikki Haley. Thank you for speaking the truth about Israel.

    But, ladies and gentlemen, here at the UN, we must also speak the truth about Iran, as President Trump did so powerfully this morning. Now, you know I've been ambassador to the UN and I'm a long-serving Israeli prime minister, so I've listened to countless speeches in this hall, but I can say this: none were bolder, none more courageous and forthright than the one delivered by President Trump today.

    President Trump rightly called the nuclear deal with Iran, he called it an embarrassment. Well, I couldn't agree with him more. And here's why: Iran vows to destroy my country every day, including by its chief of staff the other day. Iran is conducting a campaign of conquest across the Middle East and Iran is developing ballistic missiles to threaten the entire world.

    Two years ago, I stood here and explained why the Iranian nuclear deal not only doesn't block Iran's path to the bomb, Iran's nuclear program has what's called a sunset clause. Let me explain what that term means: It means that in a few years, those restrictions will be automatically removed - not by a change in Iran's behavior, not by a lessening of its terror or its aggression. They'll just be removed by a mere change in the calendar. And I warned that when that sunset comes, a dark shadow will be cast over the entire Middle East and the world, because Iran will then be free to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, placing it on the threshold of a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons.

    That's why I said two years ago that the greater danger is not that Iran will rush to a single bomb by breaking the deal, but that Iran will be able to build many bombs by keeping the deal.

    Now, in the last few months, we've all seen how dangerous even a few nuclear weapons can be in the hands of a small rogue regime.

    Now imagine the danger of hundreds of nuclear weapons in the hands of a vast Iranian Islamist empire, with the missiles to deliver them anywhere on earth.

    I know there are those who still defend the dangerous deal with Iran, arguing that it will block Iran's path to the bomb.

    Ladies and gentlemen, That's exactly what they said about the nuclear deal with North Korea, and we all know how that turned out. Unfortunately, if nothing changes, this deal will turn out exactly the same way.

    That's why Israel's policy regarding the nuclear deal with Iran is very simple: Change it or cancel it, fix it or nix it. Nixing the deal means restoring massive pressure on Iran, including crippling sanctions, until Iran fully dismantles its nuclear weapons capability. Fixing the deal requires many things, among them inspecting military and any other site that is suspect, and penalizing Iran for every violation. But above all, fixing the deal means getting rid of the sunset clause.

    And beyond fixing this bad deal, we must also stop Iran's development of ballistic missiles and roll back its growing aggression in the region. I remember we had these debates. As you know, I took a fairly active role in them. And many supporters of the nuclear deal naively believed that it would moderate Iran. It would make it a responsible member, so they said, of the international community.

    Well as you know, I strongly disagreed. I warned that when the sanctions on Iran would be removed, Iran would behave like a hungry tiger unleashed, not joining the community of nations, but devouring nations, one after the other. And that's precisely what Iran is doing today.

    From the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean, from Tehran to Tartus, an Iranian curtain is descending across the Middle East. Iran spreads this curtain of tyranny and terror over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere, and it pledges to extinguish the light of Israel.

    Today, I have a simple message for Ayatollah Khamenei, the dictator of Iran: The light of Israel will never be extinguished.

    Those who threaten us with annihilation put themselves in mortal peril. Israel will defend itself with the full force of our arms and the full power of our convictions. We will act to prevent Iran from establishing permanent military bases in Syria for its air, sea and ground forces. We will act to prevent Iran from producing deadly weapons in Syria or in Lebanon for use against us.

    And we will act to prevent Iran from opening new terror fronts against Israel along our northern border.

    As long as Iran's regime seeks the destruction of Israel, Iran will face no fiercer enemy than Israel.

    But I also have a message today for the people of Iran: You are not our enemy; you are our friends. Shomaah doosteh mah hasteed [You are our friends]. One day, my Iranian friends, you will be free from the evil regime that terrorizes you, hangs gays, jails journalists, tortures political prisoners, and shoots innocent women like Neda Sultan, leaving her choking on her own blood on the streets of Tehran. I have not forgotten Neda. I am sure you haven't too.

    And when that day of liberation finally comes, the friendship between our two ancient peoples will surely flourish once again.

    Ladies and gentlemen, Israel knows that in confronting the Iranian regime, we are not alone. We stand shoulder to shoulder with those in the Arab world who share our hopes for a brighter future.

    We've made peace with Jordan and Egypt, whose courageous President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi I met here last night. I appreciate President el-Sissi's support for peace, and I hope to work closely with him and other leaders in the region to advance peace.

    Israel is committed to achieving peace with all our Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians. Yesterday, President Trump and I discussed this, all of this, at great length. I appreciate President Trump's leadership, his commitment to stand by Israel's side, his commitment to advance a peaceful future for all. Together, we can seize the opportunities for peace and together we can confront the great dangers of Iran.

    The remarkable alliance between the United States and Israel has never been stronger, never been deeper. Israel is deeply grateful for the support of the Trump administration, the American Congress and the American people.

    [Mar 25, 2019] R.I.P. Russiagate. Here's What We Learned by Leonid Bershidsky

    Leonid Bershidsky is very superficial and decided to put rose glasses. In reality color revolution against Trump was a very dangerous event. It is the next stop after Patriot Act in sliding toward totalitarism in the USA. It really demonstrates that existence of super-powerful and well financed intelligence agencies is incompatible with the democracy even in limited form that existed int he USA. They necessarily emerged as kingmakers, the new Praetorian Guard. The level of control by intelligence agencies of major MSM proved to be stggeringly effective. They all sing in unison that same song: Russia, Russia, Russia.
    Another sad fact is the level of influence British government and British intelligence agencies exhibited in the USA. Steele dossier was an unpresended level of interference in the US elections. Yet another the power of pro-Israel lobby.
    Russiagate might be dead but neo-McCarthyism is alive and flourishing... It proves very easy to poison relations between two countries for at least a generation using the power of neoliberal MSM and intelligence agencies who control them.
    Another intere4sting observation is that FBI in this story played the role of Gestapo or STASI -- political police. That's totalitarism. May be this inverted totalistism, but still totolistrism. Empires can's allow to be democratic.
    Mar 25, 2015 | www.bloomberg.com
    One doesn't need the full text of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference into the 2016 U.S. presidential election to know that Russiagate, perhaps the most powerful anti-Donald Trump narrative of the last three years, is dead. But it wasn't completely pointless: We can learn important things about both Russia and the U.S. from it.

    People who pushed the conspiracy theory are already busy telling their audiences that Trump still isn't out of legal trouble. None of the legalistic niggling, however, will change the basic fact: A thorough, hard-hitting two-year investigation by a team that can't be accused of being Trump sympathizers has found no proof of a conspiracy that has dominated U.S. airwaves since before Trump got elected. After this, any further political use of Russiagate can, and will, be deflected with an eye-roll.

    The millions of words written about the conspiracy that wasn't will interfere with a meaningful post-mortem. I find it unnecessary to recall, as my one-time Moscow Times colleague Matt Taibbi did , the lurid details of the dot-connecting orgy; I haven't kept links to the hundreds of tweets in which I was accused of being a shill for Russian President Vladimir Putin when I consistently doubted the narrative. It's important now to be clear-eyed, no matter if you bought the conspiracy theory or not.

    One thing that's important to realize is that regional expertise matters. For example, it was obvious to people with some understanding of Moscow's inner workings that looking into the famous Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, wasn't going to yield evidence of Trump-Putin collusion because, at the Russian end, the people involved weren't credible as Kremlin emissaries.

    That these signs were largely ignored is evidence that the level of Russia expertise in the U.S. media and intelligence community is lower than it should be. Investing in raising it, both through educational programs and through making more knowledgeable voices heard, should prevent embarrassing mistakes in the future.

    ... ... ...

    On the other hand, it distracted many Americans from the real causes of Hillary Clinton's defeat and Trump's victory. Those causes, at the forefront of media attention for a short while after the election, were about the Democrats' failure to engage certain poor and middle class voters. Russiagate, however, made Putin's evil trickery the issue. It worked in the short term, but failed in the longer-run – also in both countries.

    ... ... ...

    And in the U.S., the Democrats have clearly shot themselves in the foot. Instead of wasting their time on Russiagate...

    ... ... ...

    [Mar 24, 2019] The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian.

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... "After reading several articles, it seemed clear that key difficulties for Russians communicating in English include: definite and indefinite articles, the use of presuppositions and correct usage of say/tell and said/told. Throughout 2017, I constructed a corpus of Guccifer 2.0's communications and analyzed the frequency of different types of mistakes. The results of this work corroborate Professor Connolly's assessment. ..."
    "... Overall, it appears Guccifer 2.0 could communicate in English quite well but chose to use inconsistently broken English at times in order to give the impression that it wasn't his primary language. The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian. ..."
    "... Access and motive . . .here are two who had both: Seth Rich and Imran Awan. That our fake news organizations have no interest in either, that should tell you something. ..."
    Mar 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Tunga , 2 hours ago link

    "I didn't really address the case that Russia hacked the DNC, content to stipulate it for now." - exce

    The State Department paused its investigation of the Secretary's emails so as not to interfere with the Mueller investigation. Here we see Taibbi writes an exhaustive condemnation of the Western press while leaving out the very crux of the story, the very source of the stolen DNC emails was Clapper and Brennan pretending to be Guccifer 2.0.

    Pitiful attempt at redemption there Matt. Seriously, go **** your self.

    "After reading several articles, it seemed clear that key difficulties for Russians communicating in English include: definite and indefinite articles, the use of presuppositions and correct usage of say/tell and said/told. Throughout 2017, I constructed a corpus of Guccifer 2.0's communications and analyzed the frequency of different types of mistakes. The results of this work corroborate Professor Connolly's assessment.

    Overall, it appears Guccifer 2.0 could communicate in English quite well but chose to use inconsistently broken English at times in order to give the impression that it wasn't his primary language. The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian.

    To date, Connolly's language study has not drawn any significant objections or criticism."

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-25/guccifer-20-game-over-year-end-review-0

    Any G Dala,

    DNC emails were downloaded at 22.3Mbs, a speed which is not possible to achieve remotely, or even local. It is the exact download speed of a thumb drive.

    All russian "fingerprints" were embedded in error codes, which had to be affirmatively copied. They were not an accident.

    And please remind me, who exactly was it that examined the DNC servers and pointed at Russia?

    Access and motive . . .here are two who had both: Seth Rich and Imran Awan. That our fake news organizations have no interest in either, that should tell you something.

    [Mar 24, 2019] The accountability that must follow Mueller's report

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The bent cops at the FBI and the madmen like Brennan, Clapper and Comey, who treacherously used the government's forces against the Constitution, must be punished so severely as to make an example that will dissuade other midgets on horseback from making similar attempts to overturn the results of elections. ..."
    "... At the bottom of the cauldron overflowing with political misdeeds shines the face of Hillary Clinton and the army of clever people who ran her 2016 campaign. They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever idea of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British intelligence channels by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. There must be retribution for this. ..."
    "... I would be most interested if one of the legally competent members of this Committee – Robert Willman perhaps? – could give us us an idea of what charges could be leveled against Christopher Steele under U.S. law in relation to his clearly central role in this conspiracy. ..."
    "... It also seems reasonably clear that he was not acting in isolation, and that there is a strong 'prima facie' case that senior figures in the British 'intelligence community' – notably Robert Hannigan and probably Sir Richard Dearlove – were involved, in which case the complicity is likely to have gone very much further. ..."
    "... They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British intelligence channels, by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. ..."
    "... Both sides were furiously engaged in throwing mud at each other. Situation normal. Then an odd thing happens. A particularly foolish piece of mud comes along. All that Golden Showers nonsense. Regard that as normal if we please. I expect worse comes along sometimes. Then it turns out that that piece of mud comes from an Intelligence source. Situation no longer normal. ..."
    "... The coup may be over, but the witch hunt will continue; ..."
    "... Col. Lang is absolutely correct that those involved in attempting to reverse the results of the 2016 election, de-legitimize an elected president, and remove him should be thoroughly pursued through all avenues and procedures of the civil and criminal law. ..."
    "... It's a dirty business. If half this stuff is true, and not just layers of increasingly unbelievable cover stories (I mean, a tangential example, is the whole Skripal thing a weirdly, too obviously fake cover show for what was in reality a "witness protection" operation? A witness who could and would reveal much? On this matter even, perhaps. Such obvious deceptions are harmful to respect for authority and the law.) ..."
    Mar 24, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
    1. President Trump was not indicted, nor did Mueller recommend an indictment against him for collusion or obstruction.
    2. There were no major disagreements between Mueller and his managers at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
    3. The Russians who tried to interfere in the 2016 election were exposed and charged -- but no American was charged with any effort to conspire with Moscow and hijack the election.
    4. While nearly three dozen people were charged , including a few close to the president or who worked for his campaign, no one in proximity to the president was formally charged with colluding with Russia. Most, such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn or campaign adviser George Papadopoulos , were charged with process crimes or felonies unrelated to the main case, as in Paul Manafort 's secretive, multimillion-dollar foreign lobbying spree through Ukraine.

    *********

    • the "Steele dossier" that was the main FISA evidence was paid for with funds from Hillary Clinton 's campaign and the Democratic Party;
    • Christopher Steele, the dossier's author, had told a senior DOJ official he was desperate to defeat Trump;
    • most of the dossier was not verified before it was used as evidence of alleged Trump-Russia collusion; and
    • agents collected statements from key defendants such as Papadopoulos and Carter Page during interactions with an FBI informant that strongly suggested their innocence.

    Such omissions are so glaring as to constitute defrauding a federal court. And each and every participant to those omissions needs to be brought to justice.

    An upcoming DOJ inspector general's report should trigger the beginning of that accountability in a court of law, and President Trump can assist the effort by declassifying all evidence of wrongdoing by FBI, CIA and DOJ officials. " The Hill

    ------------

    Pilgrims, the seditious conspiracy to depose the elected president of the United States for conspiracy to commit treason with the Government of the Russian Federation has been defeated.

    The bent cops at the FBI and the madmen like Brennan, Clapper and Comey, who treacherously used the government's forces against the Constitution, must be punished so severely as to make an example that will dissuade other midgets on horseback from making similar attempts to overturn the results of elections.

    At the bottom of the cauldron overflowing with political misdeeds shines the face of Hillary Clinton and the army of clever people who ran her 2016 campaign. They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever idea of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British intelligence channels by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. There must be retribution for this.

    The leftist press is already discounting the results of Mueller's investigation while gloating over how long the Democratic held House of Representatives can continue to search through Trump's life trying to find criminality.

    AG Barr should stand Mueller up next to him at a press conference to make clear the results of his report and to answer questions about it. After that the prosecutions should begin. pl

    https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/435394-the-wisdom-of-trumps-lawyers-and-the-accountability-that-must-follow

    Posted at 09:00 AM in government , Justice , Politics | Permalink | 20 Comments

    David Habakkuk , 14 hours ago

    I would be most interested if one of the legally competent members of this Committee – Robert Willman perhaps? – could give us us an idea of what charges could be leveled against Christopher Steele under U.S. law in relation to his clearly central role in this conspiracy.

    It also seems reasonably clear that he was not acting in isolation, and that there is a strong 'prima facie' case that senior figures in the British 'intelligence community' – notably Robert Hannigan and probably Sir Richard Dearlove – were involved, in which case the complicity is likely to have gone very much further.

    The argument that declassification of relevant documentation would harm the intelligence relationship between the U.S. and U.K. has clearly been made with great emphasis from this side.

    In fact, it is pure bollocks. A serious investigation on your side, which could lead to the kind of clean-out which should have happened when the scale of the corruption of intelligence in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq became clear, might pave the way for us to reconstruct reasonably functional intelligence services.

    Doing this on both sides of the Atlantic might pave the way for a reconstruction of an intelligence relationship which was actually beneficial to both countries, as in recent years it patently has not been.

    Whether there is a realistic prospect of people on your side opening the cans of worms on ours, as well as your own, of course remains a moot point.

    English Outsider -> David Habakkuk , 12 hours ago
    Mr Habakkuk,

    I'm glad the Steele affair has been examined at the American end -

    "They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British intelligence channels, by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. "

    What about the UK end? We're fussing over some little local difficulties in the UK at the moment and at our end the questions still remain - Who in the UK authorised it and how high did it go?

    Mark Logan -> David Habakkuk , 9 hours ago

    The problem with criminal prosecution is one must cite a Brit or US law which was violated. The only ones in US law that I am aware of stipulate that the plotting must be by means of violence, "by force". All this appears to me to be only the propagation of rumors.
    English Outsider -> Mark Logan , 6 hours ago
    I think it might be more the investigation of the propagation of rumours. Think back to that election campaign, and to the period before the inauguration.

    Both sides were furiously engaged in throwing mud at each other. Situation normal. Then an odd thing happens. A particularly foolish piece of mud comes along. All that Golden Showers nonsense. Regard that as normal if we please. I expect worse comes along sometimes. Then it turns out that that piece of mud comes from an Intelligence source. Situation no longer normal.

    With respect it is not propagating rumours to ask how that happened. As for my own interest in the affair, it is not propagating rumours to ask how a senior UK ex-Intelligence Officer comes to be mixed up in it all. I suppose I started to look on it as rather more than a prank or a few cogs slipping when that senior UK ex-Intelligence Officer got whisked away to a safe house. We're a penny pinching lot over here and we don't run to that sort of thing for nothing.

    Pat Lang Mod -> English Outsider , 6 hours ago
    Ex?
    Mad_Max22 , 11 hours ago
    An investigation could certainly be predicated on the reasonable suspicion that Steele, et al, conspired to defraud the United States, in this case a purposeful and knowing smear of a candidate for office; also, another potential violation could be lying to the FBI, T 18 USC 1001.

    The problem, as I see it, is sorting out the malignant from the merely incompetent. As I've argued many times, the dossier should have been dismissed from the outset as a pile of garbage, empty of actionable content, because the ultimate sources could not be vetted: the information could not be said to be either credible or reliable. The information was acted on by screening it behind the reliabilty and credibility, so called, of Steele. So it would be necessary to show that Steele knew that the information, point by point, was false. This could be difficult. Steele's first line of defense would be that he threw everything that he heard from anyone at all into the mix in the expectation that the "professionals" would figure it out.

    Yes, they were all partisan, Steele, his sources, his bosses, the so called professionals, and their partisanship would be easy to prove; and yes, almost assuredly their partisanship contributed, perhaps even explained, their defective judgement as to how to handle the scurrilous information, especially on the part of the so called professionals, but proving they actually knew the materials to be false would be difficult.

    They couldn't know that it was false because they had no ability to run down the sources. The professionals would defend themselves by saying they had no ability to vet the sources but the information represented such a serious security threat that they had no alternative but to try to vet the information by launching the investigation against the targets. This puts the cart before the horse, represents an astonishing lack of judgement, especially considering the "exalted" positions in the Intel Community the people exercising the bad judgement occupied, but there it is - "we thought we were doing the right thing."

    Perhaps this defense could be overcome by demonstrating that people at such high and important heights of government could not possible be so stupid... maybe.

    And of course we have the orchestrated leaks to various media, the orchestrated unmaskings, all of which kept the media frenzy fired up. All in all, it was the greatest political dirty trick ever attempted in American Politics, and did devastating damage to both domestic tranquility and national security. Trump survived, but the damage done is incalculable.

    So It pains me greatly to think that the reckoning will likely have to be political rather than criminal because the malice that can be demonstrated is so admixed and even overshadowed by incompetence and judgement flaws; and even a political reckoning given the state of the country is so uncertain.

    I hope that I am wrong and that some kind of prosecution can be fashioned because of the sheer enormity of violence that was done to our electoral system, surpassing by far the chickenshit case Mueller brought against the Russian troll farm; but I fear that I am right. It hurts to think that so much damage can be caused by scheming little political weasels and that they all may well walk away scot free; and even be lionized by their political confreres as having tried to do the right thing. This is the state of American politics today!!!

    Eric Newhill , 12 hours ago
    I see that some of the midgets on horseback are saying that they will bring Mueller before congress to explain himself. Their knight in shining armor has failed to return with the holy grail. A couple even suggested that perhaps Mueller has been influenced by the Russians or somehow intimated by Trump.

    The coup may be over, but the witch hunt will continue;

    and that + all the crazy Marxism (social and economic), bad immigration policy and Green New Deal is going to doom the Democrats in 2020. They look like they are jumping off a final sake fueled banzai charge. Maybe they think the best defense is a good offense re; the prosecutions that should happen. What is the chance that Mueller will pass *all* he has learned to help get the criminal cases under way?

    robt willmann , 3 hours ago
    seesee2468,

    On 13 July 2018, when announcing the indictment of 12 Russian military officers by the Mueller group for "conspiring to interfere" in the 2016 presidential election, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein admitted that no "interference" actually happened. In this video of his announcement, starting at 5 minutes, 52 seconds into it and ending at the 6 minute, 5 second mark, he says--

    "There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime. There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result."

    https://www.c-span.org/vide...

    Col. Lang is absolutely correct that those involved in attempting to reverse the results of the 2016 election, de-legitimize an elected president, and remove him should be thoroughly pursued through all avenues and procedures of the civil and criminal law.

    However, I am concerned that the new attorney general, William Barr, will not do so based on his past associations and work. I hope I am wrong about that, but I am not optimistic.

    Divadab Newton , 10 hours ago
    It's a dirty business. If half this stuff is true, and not just layers of increasingly unbelievable cover stories (I mean, a tangential example, is the whole Skripal thing a weirdly, too obviously fake cover show for what was in reality a "witness protection" operation? A witness who could and would reveal much? On this matter even, perhaps. Such obvious deceptions are harmful to respect for authority and the law.)

    I'm wrestling with the idea that 'twas ever thus and now with the internet its workings are revealed to a "lay" audience with no connection to the dark arts of the spy business. But I am curious, with the good Colonel's indulgence, if the new tools of the trade have made things which should be secret not possible to be kept secret?

    Walrus , 13 hours ago
    Amen to the prosecutions. If there is seen to be no accountability for this fraud then we are seriously damaging what's left of democracy. Who, in their right mind, is going to publicly support and assist a political candidate who is not "Swamp approved" if they face the threat of thereby triggering their own, and their family's destruction by the judicial system?

    I suggest that even a pardon is not enough for those entrapped in this mess. There needs to be restitution.

    To put that another way, in my opinion, "birther" allegations could be passed off as political tactics. Nobody got hurt. It is just good luck that Russiagate hasn't resulted in suicide or worse - so far.

    ugluk2 , 3 hours ago
    Matt Taibbi on how the press has destroyed its credibility.

    https://taibbi.substack.com...

    Taras77 , 8 hours ago
    I certainly agree that consequences must be brought to bear: lying politicians without a shred of evidence, nor did they offer any for their lies; press for their utter and complete malfeasance and corruption without a shred of evidence, the doj/fbi corrupted and coup plotting officials,and finally the shame to all who shrieked about "evil" putin, russia the aggressor, etc. It has set our discourse back decades, forced any critics of this insanity into the shadows, and completely killed any attempt at normal diplomacy between nations.

    I noted one astute writer as equating this russiagate insanity to the lies surrounding wmd and the destruction of iraq. Close. The damage from this criminality is incalculable!

    Will the shrillest of all in the press lose their jobs? Nah, not a chance. Prob get raise or promotion.Will the brennans, clintons, clappers, et al do the perp walk. Nah, not a chance. High paid lawyers will tie the courts up for years if not decades.

    And america has the institutional memory of a gnat. And of course, the question is as to high up did this criminality go? I personally do not believe it is a question-it is obvious to me. The major question for me is how high up the prosecution, if any, will go.

    MP98 , 12 hours ago
    Problem is...who's going to do the prosecuting? The DOJ - protector of the swamp - has become thoroughly corrupted as an arm of the Democrat-media party. Should (can) Trump appoint a special prosecutor as far as possible from the DOJ?
    Greco , 12 hours ago
    The president might use this and any Republican-led prosecutions as leverage to work out deals that will allow him to achieve his agenda. I think he'll need to given how the Democrats intend to use their house majority to launch investigations and hearings to find something, anything to howl about and impede his agenda.
    Fred W , 12 hours ago
    Still need to see the full report. I hope it is releasable. Otherwise the conspiracy theories or leaks will never let up. The article cited is a partisan opinion piece, not a news report. It accepts the fallback stance that yes, crimes were committed but collusion by Trump was not among them. This actually seems possible if only in light of the chaotic condition of the campaign.

    That said, I would not be surprised to find collusion discounted. Not that the Russians didn't interfere. That would be entirely in character. But I don't know any reason for supposing that they would have a better understanding of American political dynamics than the Americans who make good livings being the best in that arena. The Russians seem to have been doing the same things as numerous other players. They shouldn't have been in that game, but there is no strong reason for according them Superman status. Their strongest feature seems to have been sheer quantity. Outrage over their actions often seems to flow from a poor grasp of the real nature of normal political process.

    Fred -> Fred W , 4 hours ago
    "The Russians seem to have been doing the same things..."

    Multiple members of the FBI and DOJ seem to have been interfering in the 2016 Presidential election. How many other federal and state elections did they interfere with?

    seesee2468 -> Fred W , 6 hours ago
    Can you cite a single piece of hard evidence, not simply allegation, that proves the Russians interfered in the 2016 election? If so, please cite it, since I know of none. Thank you.
    Pat Lang Mod -> seesee2468 , 6 hours ago
    I cannot.
    peter hodges , 12 hours ago
    Nothing will happen. In fact, the way things have been going, Trump will make Mueller the next AG.

    [Mar 24, 2019] "Russia Gate" investigation was a color revolution agaist Trump. But a strnge side effect was that Clintons have managed to raise a vicious, loud mouthed thug to the status of some kind of martyr.

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Back in November of 2016, the American people were so fed up with the neoliberal oligarchy that everyone knows really runs the country that they actually elected Donald Trump president ..."
    "... The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people's decision by inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives, getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote this story on a daily basis for nearly three years, and appointing a special prosecutor to conduct an official investigation in order to lend it the appearance of legitimacy. Every component of the ruling establishment (i.e., the government, the media, the intelligence agencies, the liberal intelligentsia, et al.) collaborated in an unprecedented effort to remove an American president from office based on a bunch of made-up horseshit which kind of amounts to an attempted soft coup. ..."
    "... It now appears that the world will see that the so-called "Russia Gate" investigation was nothing more than the pro-Clintonista BS that Trump always claimed it was. ..."
    "... As for the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary, they should be treated like the creeps they are: corrupt, opportunistic and power hungry. Like Typhoid Mary, they infect everything they touch ..."
    "... I'm also convinced that Trump and Clinton colluded, but that they did so in order to get her elected. I don't think he really wanted the job. But still, Hillary can do nationalist, and the designs of the Empire would have proceeded either way. ..."
    "... Trump is a crook who takes money wherever he can get it, from subcontractors foolish enough to work for him to bankers dumb enough to believe his financial statements. No doubt he has helped Russian crooks sanitize their booty, but that is apparently too difficult for Mueller to prove. ..."
    "... It is not good news that this troglodyte was not indicted, but it is good news that Russia was not found guilty of electing him. Russiagate is an existential issue for the "national security" establishment and just another propaganda offensive designed to justify the largely useless & destructive activities of the Pentagon. ..."
    "... It is time to build cooperation not continue the stupidity of US unilateralism and pursuit of global hegemony. Trump and his team have to be removed from office. Democrats don't need Russiagate to do it. The truth will work better. ..."
    Mar 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Ken , Mar 23, 2019 2:09:31 PM | link

    Back in November of 2016, the American people were so fed up with the neoliberal oligarchy that everyone knows really runs the country that they actually elected Donald Trump president. They did this fully aware that Trump was a repulsive, narcissistic ass clown who bragged about "grabbing women by the pussy" and jabbered about building "a big, beautiful wall" and making the Mexican government pay for it. They did this fully aware of the fact that Donald Trump had zero experience in any political office whatsoever, was a loudmouth bigot, and was possibly out of his gourd on amphetamines half the time. The American people did not care. They were so disgusted with being conned by arrogant, two-faced, establishment stooges like the Clintons, the Bushes, and Barack Obama that they chose to put Donald Trump in office, because, fuck it, what did they have to lose?

    The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people's decision by inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives, getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote this story on a daily basis for nearly three years, and appointing a special prosecutor to conduct an official investigation in order to lend it the appearance of legitimacy. Every component of the ruling establishment (i.e., the government, the media, the intelligence agencies, the liberal intelligentsia, et al.) collaborated in an unprecedented effort to remove an American president from office based on a bunch of made-up horseshit which kind of amounts to an attempted soft coup.

    This is the story Donald Trump is going to tell the American people.
    https://consentfactory.org/2019/03/21/mueller-dammerung/

    GeorgeV , Mar 23, 2019 2:13:42 PM | link

    It now appears that the world will see that the so-called "Russia Gate" investigation was nothing more than the pro-Clintonista BS that Trump always claimed it was. The Clintons once again, both Bill and Hillary, have managed to raise a vicious, loud mouthed thug in the White House to the status of some kind of martyr. What a country America it is. One thing should be clear however. Any politician or media pundit that towed the pro-Clintonista line should be barred from public office or the media forever.

    As for the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary, they should be treated like the creeps they are: corrupt, opportunistic and power hungry. Like Typhoid Mary, they infect everything they touch. There is one difference between Typhoid Mary, and Bill and Hillary: Typhoid Mary didn't realize what she was doing, the Clintons did!

    the pair , Mar 23, 2019 2:14:43 PM | link
    sorry to double post, but it just occurred to me that they pulled a classic DC move: if you have something humiliating or horrible to admit, do it on a friday night.

    i have to wonder if the entire western media is cynically praying for a (coincidentally distracting) school shooting or terrorist attack within the next two days.

    ger , Mar 23, 2019 2:16:08 PM | link
    I have close friends that have been on the MSNBC/Maddow Kool-Ade for years. Constantly declaring Mueller was on the verge of closing in on Trump and associates for treason with the Russians. On Friday night after dinner at our home, the TV was tuned to MSNBC so they could watch their spiritual leader Rachel Maddow....what a pitiful sight (both Maddow and friends). No one was going to jail or be impeached for conspiring with Putin.....how on how could that be true. Putin personally stole the election from Clinton and THEY are just going to let him walk was the declaration a few feet from my chair. Normally, I would recommend grieve counseling, but they are still my friends ... now they can go back to blaming Bernie for Clinton's loss. Maybe I will recommend grieve counseling!
    DontBelieveEitherPropaganda , Mar 23, 2019 2:27:18 PM | link
    @dltravers: Apart from the "goyim" you may be right.. But if you want to claim with that Trumps opponents where under the pressure of the Zionists, you got it all wrong man.. ;) No presidents been more under the Zionist thumb than DJT.
    That ofc doesnt make Hillarys Saudi and Muslim brotherhood connections better.. ;)

    Anyway, cheers to the end of this BS! And lets hope that Trump has now payed off his debts with Adelson now that he secured Bibis reelection. But dont hold your breath.. ;)

    Nathan Mulcahy , Mar 23, 2019 2:31:06 PM | link
    "very politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit and everyone who swallowed this moronic load of bull spunk has officially discredited themselves for life".

    I wish so, but that's not how the exceptional nation of US of A works, as demonstrated by the Iraq WMD fiasco case. In fact, very politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit (about Saddam's WMD" BS) is alive and well, spreading more BS. What is even more depressing is that the huge chunk of this exceptional nation cannot have enough of the BS and is chanting "give me more, give me more...".

    Disgusting! sorry for the pessimistic rant.

    renfro , Mar 23, 2019 2:56:18 PM | link
    The Dems were stupid to gin up the Russian collusion.

    However some good things have come out of the investigation. It cost taxpayers 2 million but recouped over 25 million from those convicted of fraud and tax evasion.
    And its not over, Mueller has sent 5 to 7 referrals or evidence/witnesses to SDNY, EDNY, DC, EDVA, plus the National Security and Criminal Divisions. These from information turned up crimes unrelated to his Russia probe and allegedly concerning Trump or his family business, a cadre of his advisers and associates. They are being conducted by officials from Los Angeles to Brooklyn.

    The bad news is it exposed how wide spread and corrupt the US has become...in private and political circles.

    The other bad news is most of the Trump lovers and Trump haters are too stupid to drop their partisan and personal blinders and recognize that ....ITS THE CORRUPTION STUPID.

    BraveNewWorld , Mar 23, 2019 3:00:34 PM | link
    b you have repeatedly made the case that this whole thing was kicked off by the Steele dossier. That is factually incorrect. The first investigation was already running before the dossier ever materialized. That investigation spawned the special prosecutors investigation when Trump fired Comey and then went on TV and said it was because of the Russia investigation. The Russia investigation was originally kicked off by Papadopoulos drinking with the the Australian ambassador and bragging about what the campaign was doing with Russia. Remember the original evidence was presented to the leadership of both the House and the Senate when they were both controlled by the Republican party and every one that was briefed came out on camera and said the Justice dept was doing the right thing in pursuing this.

    I think the Democrats should lose Hillary down a deep hole and not let her near any of the coming campaign events. But this came about because of the actions of the people around Trump. Not because Hillary controls the US government from some secret bunker some where.

    Lozion , Mar 23, 2019 3:09:29 PM | link
    One could argue Russiagate was on the contrary quite a success. The Elites behind the scheme never believed it would end up with Trump's impeachment. What they did accomplish though is a deflection via "Fake News" from the Dem's election failures & shenanigans and refocus the attention towards the DNC's emerging pedophilia scandals (Weiner, the Podesta's, Alefantis, etc) & suspicious deaths (Seth Rich, etc) towards a dead-end with the added corollary of preventing US/Ru rapprochement for more then half an administration..
    Blooming Barricade , Mar 23, 2019 3:10:02 PM | link
    The deeply tragic thing about this for the media, the neocons, and the liberals is that they brought it upon themselves by moving the goalposts continuously. If, after Hillary lost, they had stuck to the "Russia hacked WikiLeaks" lie, then they probably have sufficient proof from their perspective and the perspective of most of the public that Russia helped Trump win. In this case it would be remembered by the Democrats like the stolen election of 2000 (albeit the fact that it was a lie this time). They had multiple opportunities to jump off this train. Even the ridiculous DNI report could have been their final play: "Russia helped Trump." Instead of going with 2000 they went with 2001, aka 9-11, with the same neocon fearmongers playing the pipe organ of lies. As soon as they accepted the Steele Dossier, moving the focus to "collusion" they discredited themselves forever. Many of the lead proponents were discredited Iraq war hawks. Except this time it was actually worse because the whole media bought into it. This leaves an interesting conundrum: there were at least some pro-Afghanistan anti-Iraq warmongers who rejected the Bush premise in the media, so they took over the airwaves for about two years before the real swamp creatures returned. This time, it will be harder to issue a mea culpa. They made this appear like 9-11, well, this time the truthers have won, and they are doomed.
    dh-mtl , Mar 23, 2019 3:11:13 PM | link
    Societies collapse when their systems (institutions) become compromised. When they are no longer capable of meeting the needs of the population, or of adapting to a changing world.

    Societal systems become compromised when their decision making structures, which are designed to ensure that decisions are taken in the best interest of the society as a whole, are captured by people who have no legitimacy to make the decisions, and who make decisions for the benefit of themselves, at the expense of society as a whole.

    Russia-gate is a flagrant example of how the law enforcement and intelligence institutions have been captured. Their top officials, no longer loyal to their country or their institution, but rather to an international elite (including the likes of Soros, the Clintons, and far beyond) have used these institutions in an attempt to delegitimize a constitutionally elected president and to over turn an election. This is no less than treason of the highest order.

    Indeed, the actions much of the Washington establishment, as well as a number international actors, since Trump was elected seems suspiciously like one of the 'Color Revolutions' that are visited upon any country who's citizens did not 'vote right' the first time. Over-throw the vote, one way or another, until the result that is wanted is achieved. None of these 'Color Revolutions' has resulted in anything good for the country involved. Rather they have resulted in the destruction of each country's institutions, and eventually societal collapse.

    In the U.S. the capturing of systems' decision making structures is not limited to Russia-Gate and the overturning of the electoral system. Their are other prime examples:

    - The capture of the Air Transport Safety System by Boeing that has resulted in the recent 737 Max crashes, and likely the destruction of the reputation of the U.S. aviation industry, in an industry where reputation is everything.

    - The capture of the Financial Regulatory System, by Wall Street, who in 1998 rewrote the rules in their own favor, against the best interests of the population as a whole. The result was the 2008 financial crisis and the inability of the U.S. economy to effectively recover from that crisis.

    - This capture is also seen in international diplomatic systems, where the U.S. is systematically by-passing or subverting international law and international institutions, (the U.N. I.C.J., I.N.F. treaty) etc., and in doing so is destroying these institutions and the ability to maintain peace.

    The result of system (institution) capture is difficult to see at first. But, in time, the damage adds up, the ability of the systems to meet the needs of the population disappears, and societal decline sets in.

    It looks today like the the societal decline is acellerating. Russia-gate is just one of many indicators.

    English Outsider , Mar 23, 2019 3:27:38 PM | link
    The pair @ 3.

    Your comment on the BBC is on the mild side. I listen to it when I drive in in the morning and also get annoyed sometimes. When it is reporting on the Westminster bubble it is factually accurate as far as I can judge. Apart from that, and particularly in the case of the BBC news, we're in information control territory.

    But accept that and the BBC turns into quite a valuable resource. It's well staffed, has good contacts, and picks up what the politicians want us to think with great accuracy.

    In that respect it's better than the newspapers and better also than the American media. Those news outlets have several masters of which the political elite is only one. The BBC has just the one master, the political elite, and is as sensitive as a stethoscope to the shifting currents within that political elite.

    So I wouldn't despise the BBC entirely. It tells us how the politicians want us to think. In telling us that it sometimes gives us a bearing on what the politicians et al are doing and what they intend to do.

    worldblee , Mar 23, 2019 3:28:20 PM | link
    The never-Trumpers will never let their dreams die. Of course, they never oppose Trump on substantive issues like attempting a coup in Venezuela, withdrawing from the INF treaty, supporting the nazis in Ukraine, supporting Al Qaeda forces in Syria, etc. But somehow they're totally against him and ready to haul out the latest stupid thing he said as their daily fodder for conversation...
    ben , Mar 23, 2019 3:32:48 PM | link
    renfro @ 10 said;"The Dems were stupid to gin up the Russian collusion."

    Uh no, just doing their job of distracting the public, while ignoring the real issues the
    American workers care about. You know, the things DJT promised the workers, but has never delivered.(better health care for all, ending the useless wars overseas, an infrastructure
    plan to increase good paying jobs), to name just a few.

    The corporate Dems( which is the lions share of them), are bought and paid for to distract, and they've done it well.

    The Bushes, the Clintons, the Obamas, and most who have come before, are of the same ilk.

    Bend over workers and lube up, for more of the same in 2020...

    Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 3:48:10 PM | link
    I profoundly disagree with the notion that Russiagate had anything to do with Hillary's collusion with the DNC. Gosh, that is naive at best.
    1) Hillary didn't need to collude against Sanders - the additional money that she got from doing so was small change compared the to overall amount she raised for her campaign.

    2) Sanders was a long-time friend of the Clintons. He boasted that he's known Hillary for over 25 years.

    3) Sanders was a sheepdog meant to keep progressives in the Democratic Party. He was never a real candidate. He refused to attack Hillary on character issues and remained loyal even after Hillary-DNC collusion was revealed.

    When Sanders had a chance to total disgrace Hillary, he refused to do so. Hillary repeatedly said that she had NEVER changed for vote for money but Warren had proven that she had: Hillary changed her vote on the Bankruptcy Bill for money from the credit card industry.

    4) Hillary didn't try to bury her collusion with the DNC (as might be expected), instead she used it to alienate progressive voters by bring Debra Wasserman-Shultz into her campaign.

    5) Hillary also alienated or ignored other important constituencies: she wouldn't support an increase in the minimum wage but accepted $750,000 from Goldman Sachs for a speech; she took the black vote for granted and all-but berated a Black Lives Matters activist; and she called whites "deplorables".

    Hillary threw the race to her OTHER long-time friend in the race: Trump. The Deep-State wanted a nationalist and that's just what they got.

    6) Hillary and the DNC has shown NO REMORSE whatsoever about colluding with Sanders and Sanders has shown no desire whatsoever to hold them accountable.

    IMO Russiagate (Russian influence on Trump) and accusations of "Russian meddling" in the election are part of the same McCarthyist psyop to direct hate at Russia and stamp out any dissent. Trump probably knowingly, played into the Deep State's psyop by:

    > hiring Manafort;

    > calling on Russia to release Hillary's emails;

    > talking about Putin in a admiring way.

    And it accomplished much more than hating on Russia:

    > served as excuse for Trump to do Deep State bidding;

    > distracted from the real meddling in the 2016 election;

    > served as a device for settling scores:

    - Assange isolated
    (Wikileaks was termed an "agent of a foreign power");

    - Michael Flynn forced to resign
    (because he spoke to the Russian ambassador).

    hopehely , Mar 23, 2019 3:49:15 PM | link The US owes Russia an official apology. And also Russia should get its stolen buildings and the consulate back. And maybe to get paid some compensation for the injustice and for damages suffered. Without that, the Russiagate is not really over.
    Jen , Mar 23, 2019 4:01:43 PM | link
    BraveNewWorld @ 11:

    If memory serves me correctly, the initial accusations of collusion between DJT's presidential campaign and the Kremlin came from Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company hired by the Democratic National Committee to oversee the security of its computers and databases. This was done to deflect attention away from Hillary Clinton's illegal use of a personal server at home to conduct government business during her time as US State Secretary (2009 - 2013), business which among other things included plotting with the US embassy in Libya (and the then US ambassador Chris Stevens) to overthrow Muammar Gaddhafi's government in 2011, and conspiring also to overthrow the elected government in Honduras in 2010.

    The business of Christopher Steele's dossier (part or even most of which could have been written by Sergei Skripal, depending on who you read) and George Papadopoulos' conversation with the half-wit Australian "diplomat" Alexander Downer in London were brought in to bolster the Russiagate claims and make them look genuine.

    As B says, Crowdstrike does indeed have a Ukrainian nationalist agenda: its founder and head Dmitri Alperovich is a Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council (the folks who fund Bellingcat's crapaganda) and which itself receives donations from Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk. Crowdstrike has some association with one of the Chalupa sisters (Alexandra or Andrea - I can't be bothered dredging through DuckDuckGo to check which - but one of them was employed by the DNC) who donated money to the Maidan campaign that overthrew Viktor Yanukovych's government in Kiev in February 2014.

    james , Mar 23, 2019 4:16:03 PM | link
    thanks b... i would like russiagate to be finished, but i tend to see it much like kadath @2.. the link @2 is worth the read as a reminder of how far the usa has sunk in being a nation of passive neocons... emptywheel can't say no to this as witnessed by her article from today.. ) as a consequence, i agree with @14 dh-mtl's conclusion - "It looks today like the the societal decline is acellerating. Russia-gate is just one of many indicators."

    the irony for those of us who don't live in the usa, is we are going to have watch this sad state of affairs continue to unravel, as the usa and the west continue to unravel in tandem.. the msm as corporate mouthpiece is not going to be tell us anything of relevance.. instead it will be continued madcow, or maddow bullshit 24-7... amd as kadath notes @2 - if any of them are to step up as a truth teller - they will be marginalized or silenced... so long as the mainstream swallow what they are fed in the msm, the direction of the titanic is still on track...

    @19 hopehely... you can forget about anything like that happening..

    WDDiM , Mar 23, 2019 4:36:17 PM | link
    What Difference Does it Make?
    They don't really need Russia-gate anymore. It bought them time. As we speak nuclear bombers make runs near Russian borders every day and Russian consulates get attacked with heavy weaponry in the EU and no Russian outlet is even making a reference,while Israel is ready to move heavy artillery in to Golan targeting Russia bases in Syria and China raking all their deals for civilian projects in the Med.
    Russia got stuffed in the corner getting all the punches.
    Zanon , Mar 23, 2019 4:37:43 PM | link
    What a horrible witch hunt, but the msm will keep on denying and keep creating new hoaxes about Trump, Russia.
    Heck the media even deny there was no collussion, they keep spinning it in different ways!

    But remember folks, we here was always right...
    The Mueller Report Is In. They Were Wrong. We Were Right.
    https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-mueller-report-is-in-they-were-wrong-we-were-right-a915d23a6d82

    iv> also, there is a big risk that the media, deep state will create new accusations coming days.

    Posted by: Zanon , Mar 23, 2019 4:39:30 PM | link

    also, there is a big risk that the media, deep state will create new accusations coming days.

    Posted by: Zanon | Mar 23, 2019 4:39:30 PM | link

    Russ , Mar 23, 2019 4:41:30 PM | link
    People are forgetting to call Dembot agent Wheeler "FBI rat Wheeler", or just Rat Wheeler. Or EmptySqueal.
    karlof1 , Mar 23, 2019 4:47:23 PM | link
    Thanks for citing Caitlin Johnstone's wonderful epitaph, b--Russiavape indeed!

    During the fiasco, the Outlaw US Empire provided excellent proof to the world that it does everything it accused Russia of doing and more, while Russia's cred has greatly risen. Meanwhile, there're numerous other crimes Trump, his associates, Clinton, her associates--like Pelosi--ought to be impeached, removed from office, arrested, then tried in court, which is diametrically opposed to the current--false--narrative.

    Scotch Bingeington , Mar 23, 2019 4:47:39 PM | link
    The people who steered us into two years of Russiavape insanity are the very last people anyone should ever listen to ever again when determining the future direction of our world.

    Yes, absolutely. And not just regarding the world's future, but even if you happen to be in the same building with one of them and he/she bursts into your already smoke-filled room yelling that the house is on fire.

    Btw, whatever authority has ever ruled that "ex-MI6 dude" Steele (who doesn't remind me of steel at all, but rather of a certain nondescript entity named Anthony Blair) is in fact merely 'EX'? He himself? The organisation? The Queen perhaps?

    Zanon , Mar 23, 2019 4:52:41 PM | link
    Scotch Bingeington

    Expose them at every opportunity, they should not get away with this like nothing happend:

    If you think a single Russiagate conspiracist is going to be held accountable for media malpractice, you clearly haven't been awake the past 2 decades. No one will pay for being wrong. This profession is as corrupt & rotten as the kleptocracy it serves

    defeatism isn't the answer -- should remind & mock these hacks every opportunity. Just need to be aware of the beast we're up against.


    https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/1109235461430657026
    Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 5:00:23 PM | link
    Who will say that the King has no clothes?

    The establishment plays on peoples fears and so we all sink together as we all cling to our "lesser evils", tribal allegiances, and try to avoid the embarrassment of being wrong.

    Although everyone is aware of the corruption and insider dealing, no one seems to want to acknowledge the extent, or to think critically so as to reveal any more than we already know.

    It's almost as though corruption (the King's nudity) is a national treasure and revealing it would be a national security breach in the exceptional nation.

    And so to the Deep State cabal continues to rule unimpeded.

    WDDiM , Mar 23, 2019 5:08:16 PM | link
    The oligarchy that runs the country responded to the American people's decision by inventing a completely cock-and-bull story about Donald Trump being a Russian agent who the American people were tricked into voting for by nefarious Russian mind-control operatives, getting every organ of the liberal corporate media to disseminate and relentlessly promote this story on a daily basis for nearly three years

    Posted by: Ken | Mar 23, 2019 2:09:31 PM | 4

    You people don't get it do you?
    'The Plan' was to get rid of Turkey-Russia-Israel (and a few others) with one fell swoop....

    steve , Mar 23, 2019 5:11:08 PM | link
    Deep state makes the warren commish seem authoritative
    john , Mar 23, 2019 5:13:37 PM | link
    the rot in DC is palpable. this whole russiagate fiasco's been like some kind of really bad audition for deeper state kabuki...what's next?

    keeping brand Trump alive.

    Blooming Barricade , Mar 23, 2019 5:22:08 PM | link
    Matt Taibbi:

    It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD
    The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it

    https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-million

    Pft , Mar 23, 2019 5:38:41 PM | link
    Russia gate was both a diversion from the real collusions (Russian Mafia , China and Israel) and a clever ruse to allow Trump to back off from his campaign promise to improve relations with Russia. US policy toward Russia is no different under Trump than it was during Obamas administration. Exactly what the Russia Gaters wanted and Trump delivered.

    That Mueller could find nothing more than some tax/money laundering/perjury charges in which the culprits in the end get pardoned is hardly surprising given his history. Want something covered up? Put Mueller on it.

    To show how afraid Trump was of Mueller he appointed his long term friend Barr as AJ and pretended he didn't know how close they were when it came out. There is no lie people wont believe. Lol

    Meanwhile Trumps Russian Mafia connections stay under the radar in MSM, Trump continues as Bibi's sock puppet, the fake trade war with China continues as Ivanka is rolling in China trademarks .

    The Rothschild puppet that bailed out Trumps casinos as Commerce Secretary overseeing negotiations that will open the doors for more US and EU (they willy piggy back on the deal like hyenas) jobs to go to China (this time in financial/services) and stronger IPR protections that will facilitate this transfer, and will provide companies more profits in which to buyback stocks but wont bring manufacturing jobs back.

    tuyzentfloot , Mar 23, 2019 5:46:31 PM | link
    The collusion story has been hit badly and it will likely lose its momentum, but I wonder how far reaching this loss of momentum is. There are many variants. The 'unwitting accomplice' is an oxymoron which isn't finished yet. The Russians hacking the election: not over. The Russians sowing discord and division. Not over. Credibility of the Russiagate champions overall? Not clear. Some could take a serious hit. Brennan and other insiders who made it onto cable tv?
    It is possible that the whole groupthink about Russiagate changes drastically
    and that 'the other claims' also lose their credibility but it's far from certain. After years of building up tension Russia's policies are also changing. I think they have shown restraint but their paranoia and aggressiveness is also increasing and some claims will become true after all.
    JOHN CHUCKMAN , Mar 23, 2019 5:48:55 PM | link

    "Russiagate" has always been a meaningless political fraud.

    When folks like Hillary Clinton sign on to something and give it a great deal of weight, you really do know you are talking about an empty bag of tricks. She is a psychopathic liar, one with a great deal of blood on her hands.

    My problem with this official result is that it may tend to give Trump a boost, new credibility.

    The trouble with Trump has never been Russia - something only blind ideologues and people with the minds of children believe - it is that he is genuinely ignorant and genuinely arrogant and loud-mouthed - an extremely dangerous combination.

    And in trying to defend himself, this genuine coward has completely surrendered American foreign policy to its most dangerous enemies, the Neocons.


    https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/04/20/john-chuckman-comment-americas-democrats-launch-lawsuit-against-trump-and-russia-and-wiki-leaks-over-election-hilarious-this-is-a-country-fit-to-dominate-the-earth-they-cant-manage-their-own/

    https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2017/03/03/john-chuckman-comment-yet-more-ignorant-gossip-and-innuendo-about-trump-and-russia-this-all-reminds-me-of-insane-past-american-campaigns-against-procter-gamble-or-harry-potter-charging-devil/

    https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/12/08/john-chuckman-comment-what-americas-neocons-represent-for-arms-control-agreements-such-as-the-inf-with-russia-and-heres-the-deadly-weakness-in-trumps-psychology-that-has-allowed-neocons-to-ta/

    https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/john-chuckman-comment-a-comment-rightly-asks-with-trump-doing-everything-the-establishment-wants-why-do-they-still-want-to-get-rid-of-him-i-think-these-are-the-essential-reasons/

    https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/john-chuckman-comment-some-very-dark-thoughts-of-where-america-is-going-in-its-relations-with-russia-and-iran-i-do-think-we-live-in-dangerous-times-and-they-are-deliberately-manufactured/

    https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2017/04/08/john-chuckman-comment-complete-degradation-of-a-self-styled-great-nation-which-allows-paid-thugs-to-use-poison-gas-to-give-it-an-excuse-for-still-more-killing-the-dark-place-we-are-brought-to-by-tr/

    https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/12/06/john-chuckman-comment-more-on-the-strange-phenomenon-of-trump-and-americas-neocons-a-man-who-imagines-himself-a-great-leader-leading-nothing-and-he-still-has-pathetic-followers-who-think-hes-fi/

    https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2017/12/14/john-chuckman-comment-new-phony-book-on-trump-and-russia-whats-really-going-on-with-all-the-mumbo-jumbo-insanity-in-america-the-real-target-aint-trump-neocons-and-russia/


    Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 5:59:03 PM | link
    Blaming Russiagate on Hillary is very easy for those who hate her or hope that Trump will deliver on his faux populist fake-agenda.

    No one wants to contemplate the possibility that Hillary and Trump, and the duopoly they lead, fixed the election and planned Russiagate in advance.

    It seems a bridge too far, even for the smart skeptics at MoA.

    So funny.

    Trump has proven himself to be a neocon. He broke his campaign promise to investigate Hillary within DAYS of being elected. He has brought allies of his supposed enemies into his Administration.

    Yet every one turns from the possibility that the election was fixed. LOL.

    The horrible possibility that our "democracy" is managed is too horrible to contemplate. Lets just blame it all on Hillary.

    Welcome to the rabbithole.

    Copeland , Mar 23, 2019 6:23:41 PM | link
    Those who have been holding their breath for two years can finally exhale. I guess the fever of hysteria will have to be attended a while longer. A malady of this kind does not easily die out overnight. Those who have been taken in, and duped for so long, can not so easily recover. The weight of so much cognitive dissonance presses down on them like a boulder. The dust of the stampeded herd behind Russiagate is enough paralyze the will of those who have succumbed.

    As Joseph Conrad once wrote, "The ways of human progress are inscrutable."

    Jonathan , Mar 23, 2019 7:02:54 PM | link
    @37 Jackrabbit,

    Of course it was fixed. That's what the Electoral College is for .

    Arioch , Mar 23, 2019 7:06:26 PM | link
    Russiagate is a pendulum, it reached the dead point, it would hange in the air for a moment, then it would start swinging right backwards at full speed crashign everything in the way!

    It would be revealed, it was Russia who paid Muller to start that hysteria and stole money from American tax-payers and make America an international laughing stock. "Putin benefited from it", highly likely!

    Muller's investigation is paid for with Manafort's seized cash and property and Manafort has made Yanukovich king of Ukraine, so Manafort is Putin's agent, so Muller is working of Putin's money, so it was Putin's collusion everything that Muller is doing! Highly likely.

    fast freddy , Mar 23, 2019 7:12:20 PM | link
    There is no "Liberal Media". Those whom claim to be Liberal and yet support the Warmonger Democratic Party (Republican lite) are frauds. Liberalism does not condone war and it most certainly does not support wars of aggression - especially those wars waged against defenseless nations. Neither can liberalism support trade sanctions or the subjugation of Palestinians in the Apartheid State of ISreal.
    Peter , Mar 23, 2019 7:16:00 PM | link
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHo6cW0HVkQ DISGRACEFUL WILL WE EVER SAY NO?
    vk , Mar 23, 2019 7:24:32 PM | link
    @ Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 23, 2019 3:48:10 PM | 18

    We must be very careful with the words we choose, in order to paint the correct conjuncture and not to throw the bathtub with the baby inside.

    It's one thing to say Bernie Sanders is not a revolutionary; it's another completely different thing to say he was in cahoots with the Clintons.

    If Bernie Sanders really was a "friend" of the Clintons, then he wouldn't even have disputed the primaries against Hillary. Not only he chose to do so, but he only didn't win because the DNC threw all its weight against him.

    Now, I agree he's not a revolutionary socialist. He's an imperialist who believes the spoils of the empire should be also used to build a Scandinavian-style Welfare State for the American people only. A cynic would tell you this would make him a Nazi without the race theme, but you have to keep in mind societies move in a dialectical patern, not a linear one: if you preach for "democratic socialism", you're bringing the whole package, not only the bits you want.

    I believe the rise of Bernie Sanders had an overall positive impact in the world as it exists. Americans are more aware of their own contradictions (more enlightened) now than before he disputed those faithful primaries of 2016. And the most important ingredient for that, in my opinion, was the fact he was crushed by both parties; that the "establishment" acted in unison not to let him get near the WH. That was a didactic moment for the American people (or a signficant part of it).

    But I agree Russiagate went well beyond just covering the Clintons' dirt in the DNC.

    It may have be born like that, but, if that was the case, the elites quickly realized it had other, ampler practical uses. The main one, in my opinion, was to drive a wedge between Trump's Clash of Civilizations's doctrine -- which perceives China as the main long term enemy, and Russia as a natural ally of the West -- and the public opinon. The thing is most of the American elite is far too dependent on China's productive chain; Russia is not, and can be balkanized.

    Sandwichman , Mar 23, 2019 7:30:58 PM | link
    counterpoint: If the Mueller report does not EXPLICITLY exonerate Trump, it does NOT exonerate Trump.
    wagelaborer , Mar 23, 2019 7:43:06 PM | link
    There is a funny video compilation of the TV talking heads predicting the end of Trump, new bombshells, impeachment, etc., over the last two years.
    Unfortunately, the same sort of compilation could be made of sane people predicting "this new information means the end of Russiagate" over the same time period.
    The truth is that the truth doesn't matter, only the propaganda, and it has not stopped, only spun onto new hysteria.
    Rob , Mar 23, 2019 7:58:15 PM | link
    As others have said, hard core Russiagaters will likely not be convinced that they have been wrong all along. They have too much emotional investment in the grand conspiracy theory to simply let it go. Rather, they will forever point to what they believe are genuine bits of evidence and curse Mueller for not following the leads. And the Dems in the House of Representatives will waste more time and resources on pointless investigations in an effort to keep the public sufficiently distracted from more important matters, such as the endless wars and coups that they support. A pox on all their houses, both Democrats and Republicans.
    Sandwichman , Mar 23, 2019 8:08:59 PM | link
    "...hard core Russiagaters will likely not be convinced that they have been wrong all along."

    Wrong about what? There seems to be "narrative" operative here that there are only two positions on this matter: the "right" one and the "wrong" one and nothing else.

    Sunny Runny Burger , Mar 23, 2019 8:10:36 PM | link
    Ben nails it in "Mar 23, 2019 3:32:48 PM | 17".

    Ben's and other comments might make this a little bit superfluous but it's short.

    A case of divide and conquer against the population

    This time it was a fabricated scandal.

    Continued control over "facts" and narratives, the opportunity for efficient misdirection and distraction, stealing and wasting other people's time and effort, spurious disagreements, wearing down relations.

    The illusion of choice, (false) opposition, blinded "oversight", and mythical claims concerning a civilian government (in the case of the US: "of, for, and by" or something like that).

    Who knew or knows is irrelevant as long as the show goes on. There's nothing to prove anything significant about who if anyone may or may not be behind the curtain and thus on towards the next big or small scandal we go because people will be dissatisfied and hungry and ready to bite as hard as possible on some other bait for or against something.

    Maybe "Russiagate" was impeccably engineered or maybe it organically outcompeted other distractions on offer that would ultimately also waste enormous amounts of time and effort.

    Management by crisis

    The scandals, crises, "Science says" games and rubbish, outrage narratives, and any other manipulations attempt and perhaps succeed at controlling the US and the world through spam.

    Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 8:11:22 PM | link
    Jonathan @39: Of course it was fixed. That's what the Electoral College is for.

    Well, you can say the same think about money-as-speech , gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc. Despite all these, Americans believe that their democracy works.

    I contend that what we witnessed in 2016 was a SHOW. Like American wrestling. It was (mostly) fake. The proper term for this is kayfabe .

    <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

    And we have seen other 'shows' also, like:

    > White Helmets;

    >> Skripal;

    >> the Kavanaugh hearings;

    >> pulling troops out of Syria.

    aspnaz , Mar 23, 2019 8:19:24 PM | link
    My advice to the yanks mourning Russiagate: move to the UK. The sick Brits will keep the Russia hating cult alive even after they spend a decade puking over Brexit.
    mourning dove , Mar 23, 2019 8:50:48 PM | link
    Jackrabbit @18
    So, you don't think HRC qualifies as a nationalist? She can't fake populist, but she can do nationalist.
    I also think she is much too ambitious to have intentionally thrown the election. It was her turn dammit! Take a look at her behavior as First Lady if you think she's the kind of personality that is content to wield power from behind the scenes.
    Cortes , Mar 23, 2019 8:51:27 PM | link
    As usual, a fine essay. Thank you.

    A couple of suggestions?

    The headline would be better worded "Russiagate really is finished."

    And the reaction at Colonel Lang's site makes interesting reading.

    Les , Mar 23, 2019 8:55:52 PM | link
    They didn't fall for the Steele dossier. I recall that emptywheel had discredited the dossier during the election as it was known to have been rejected by major media outlets leading up to the election. I think they merely fell behind the others as the outgoing administration, the Democrats, the CIA, and the media chose to use the dossier to 'blackmail' Trump.
    paul , Mar 23, 2019 8:56:02 PM | link
    The most important fruit of russiagate, from the view of the establishment of the hegemon, is that America has now taken a giant step towards full bore censorship.
    Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 9:00:35 PM | link
    vk @43

    We must be very careful ... and not to throw the bathtub with the baby inside.
    Don't we already have plenty of evidence that there is no precious democratic baby in the bath? What do you think the Yellow Vests are doing every weekend?

    If Bernie Sanders really was a "friend" of the Clintons, then he wouldn't even have disputed the primaries against Hillary.
    Why not? Do you know him personally? Can you vouch for him?

    Have you read this: Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheepdogging for Hillary and the Democrats in 2016 ?

    Bernie referred to Hillary as "my friend" many times on the campaign trail. He told Politico that he's known her for 25 years but they are not "best friends". That's Sander's typical word judo. Like when he was asked about Zionism, his response: what's that?

    The fact is, Bernie is friendly with all the top Democrats: Obama campaigned for him and Schumer wouldn't allow funding for democratic candidates that opposed him.

    Then there's other strangeness. Like Bernie's refusal to release his 2014 tax returns. Bernie said his returns were "boring" but when his 2015 tax return was delayed the press asked him to release his 2014 return (Hillary boasted that she had released 10 years of returns). Bernie refused.

    Now, I agree he's not a revolutionary socialist.... I believe the rise of Bernie Sanders had an overall positive impact in the world as it exists.
    Really? LOL. Sanders REFUSED to lead a Movement for real change. That might've changed things for the better Mi>- like the Yellow Vests are changing things for the better.

    What have we seen from the Democratics since 2016? Bullshit like Russiagate, meaningless astroturf activism around bathrooms and statues, and outlandish policies like open borders. These things just irritate most Americans and will lead to more failure for the Democrats and another 4 years for Trump.

    Lastly, you said nothing about Bernie's refusal to attack Hillary on character issues and to counter her assertion that she NEVER changed her vote for money. Other examples: Bernie refused to discuss Hillary's home email server, never mentioned Hillary's well known work to squash investigations of Bill Clinton for abusing women (Jennifer Flowers), and didn't talk about other scandals like Benghazi ("What difference does it make") and her glee at the overthrow of Quadaffi ("we came, we saw, we kicked his ass").

    And what of Trump? He was the ONLY republican populist in a field of 19. Do you find that even a little bit strange?

    Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 9:02:11 PM | link
    Sorry, here's a more readable version:

    We must be very careful ... and not to throw the bathtub with the baby inside.
    Don't we already have plenty of evidence that there is no precious democratic baby in the bath? What do you think the Yellow Vests are doing every weekend?

    If Bernie Sanders really was a "friend" of the Clintons, then he wouldn't even have disputed the primaries against Hillary.
    Why not? Do you know him personally? Can you vouch for him?

    Have you read this: Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheepdogging for Hillary and the Democrats in 2016 ?

    Bernie referred to Hillary as "my friend" many times on the campaign trail. He told Politico that he's known her for 25 years but they are not "best friends". That's Sander's typical word judo. Like when he was asked about Zionism, his response: what's that?

    The fact is, Bernie is friendly with all the top Democrats: Obama campaigned for him and Schumer wouldn't allow funding for democratic candidates that opposed him.

    Then there's other strangeness. Like Bernie's refusal to release his 2014 tax returns. Bernie said his returns were "boring" but when his 2015 tax return was delayed the press asked him to release his 2014 return (Hillary boasted that she had released 10 years of returns) . Bernie refused.

    Now, I agree he's not a revolutionary socialist.... I believe the rise of Bernie Sanders had an overall positive impact in the world as it exists.
    Really? LOL. Sanders REFUSED to lead a Movement for real change. That might've changed things for the better Mi>- like the Yellow Vests are changing things for the better.

    What have we seen from the Democratics since 2016? Bullshit like Russiagate, meaningless astroturf activism around bathrooms and statues, and outlandish policies like open borders. These things just irritate most Americans and will lead to more failure for the Democrats and another 4 years for Trump.

    Lastly, you said nothing about Bernie's refusal to attack Hillary on character issues and to counter her assertion that she NEVER changed her vote for money. Other examples: Bernie refused to discuss Hillary's home email server, never mentioned Hillary's well known work to squash investigations of Bill Clinton for abusing women (Jennifer Flowers), and didn't talk about other scandals like Benghazi ("What difference does it make") and her glee at the overthrow of Quadaffi ("we came, we saw, we kicked his ass").

    And what of Trump? He was the ONLY republican populist in a field of 19. Do you find that even a little bit strange?

    mourning dove , Mar 23, 2019 9:06:00 PM | link
    Jonathan @39
    Exactly! It's the Electoral College that decides elections, not voters.
    Jackrabbit , Mar 23, 2019 9:13:59 PM | link
    mourning dove @57: Exactly! It's the Electoral College that decides elections, not voters.

    Do you think Hillary didn't know that? She refused to campaign in the three mid-western states that would've won her the electoral college. Each of the states were won by Trump by a thin margin.

    Hoarsewhisperer , Mar 23, 2019 9:14:04 PM | link
    Gosh and Blimey!
    Comment #56 in a thread about an utterly corrupt political system and no-one has mentioned the pro-"Israel" Lobby?
    Words fail me. So I'll use someone else's...

    From Xymphora March 21, 2019.

    "Truth or Trope?" (Sailer):

    "Of the top 50 political donors to either party at the federal level in 2018, 52 percent were Jewish and 48 percent were gentile. Individuals who identify as Jewish are usually estimated to make up perhaps 2.2 percent of the population.
    Of the $675 million given by the top 50 donors, 66 percent of the money came from Jews and 34 percent from gentiles.
    Of the $297 million that GOP candidates and conservative causes received from the top 50 donors, 56 percent was from Jewish individuals.
    Of the $361 million Democratic politicians and liberal causes received, 76 percent came from Jewish givers.
    So it turns out that Rep. Omar and Gov. LePage appear to have been correct, at least about the biggest 2018 donors. But you can also see why Pelosi wanted Omar to just shut up about it: 76 percent is a lot."

    Erelis , Mar 23, 2019 9:35:12 PM | link
    Next up another false flag operation. The thing is, it would have be non-trivial and involving the harming of people to jolt the narrative back to that favoring the deep state. And taking off the proverbial media table, that Mueller found no collusion. Yes, election in 2016 no collusion, but Putin was behind the latest horrific false flag, "oh look, Trump is not confronting Putin"...
    daffyDuct , Mar 23, 2019 9:40:02 PM | link

    Not even getting into the "treason", "putin's c*ckholster", "what's the time on Moscow, troll!" crap we've been subjected to for 3 years, please enjoy this mashup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjUvfZj-Fm0.

    mourning dove , Mar 23, 2019 9:54:13 PM | link
    Jackrabbit,

    I've said before that she's a terrible strategist and she ran a terrible campaign and she's terribly out of touch. I think she expected a cake walk and was relying on Trump being so distasteful to voters that they'd have no other option.

    I think Trump legitimately won the election and I don't believe for a second that she won the popular vote. There were so many problems with the election but since they were on the losing side, nobody cares. In 2012 I didn't know anyone else who was voting for Jill Stein, way too many people were still in love with Obama. She got .4% of the vote. In 2016 most of the people I knew were voting for Jill Stein, she drew a large crowd from DemExit, but they say she got .4% of the vote. Total bullshit. There was also ballot stuffing and lots of other problems, but it still wasn't enough.

    I'm also convinced that Trump and Clinton colluded, but that they did so in order to get her elected. I don't think he really wanted the job. But still, Hillary can do nationalist, and the designs of the Empire would have proceeded either way.

    jadan , Mar 23, 2019 9:56:37 PM | link

    Trump is a crook who takes money wherever he can get it, from subcontractors foolish enough to work for him to bankers dumb enough to believe his financial statements. No doubt he has helped Russian crooks sanitize their booty, but that is apparently too difficult for Mueller to prove.

    It is not good news that this troglodyte was not indicted, but it is good news that Russia was not found guilty of electing him. Russiagate is an existential issue for the "national security" establishment and just another propaganda offensive designed to justify the largely useless & destructive activities of the Pentagon.

    It is time to build cooperation not continue the stupidity of US unilateralism and pursuit of global hegemony. Trump and his team have to be removed from office. Democrats don't need Russiagate to do it. The truth will work better.

    [Mar 24, 2019] With RussiaGate Over Where's Hillary

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... RussiaGate was never a sustainable narrative. It was ludicrous from the beginning. And now that it has ended with a whimper there are a lot of angry, confused and scared people out there. ..."
    "... And now his report is in. There are no new indictments. And by doing so he is saving his reputation for the future. And that is your biggest tell that Hillary's blackmail is now worthless. ..."
    "... They don't fear her anymore because RussiaGate outed her as the architect. Anything else she has is irrelevant in the face of trying to oust a sitting president from power. ..."
    "... The Deep State and The Davos Crowd stand revealed and reviled. If they don't do something dramatic then the anger from the rest of the country will also be palpable come election time. Justice is not done simply by saying, "No evidence of collusion." ..."
    "... It's clear that RussiaGate is a failure of monumental proportions. Heads will have to roll. But who will be willing to fall on their sword at this point? Comey? No. McCabe? No. ..."
    "... If there is no collusion, if RussiaGate is a scam, then all roads lead back to Hillary as the sacrificial lamb. ..."
    "... If there is any hope of salvaging the center of this country for the Democrats, the ones that voted against Hillary in 2016, then there is no reason anymore not to indict Hillary as the architect of RussiaGate. ..."
    "... And hope that is enough bread and circuses to distract from the real storm ahead of us. ..."
    "... Hillary is the epitome of evil. ..."
    "... I don't think Hillary is enough. I want McCabe, Comey, Mueller, Rosenstein, Loretta Lynch, Obama, Lois Lerner, Blasey Ford, Brennan, Clapper, Abedin, Weiner, Cheryl Mills, Susan Rice, Strzok, Page, Sally Yates, all of the phony FISA cohort brought to justice. ..."
    "... Her DNC cabal cooked in less than 24 hours from the election defeat a conspiracy of Russian meddling and now, when more information became available, HCR is involved in two separate cases of foreign collusion, The Steele dossier, with Russo-Anglo meddling and another a Ukrainian one, which is now under investigation and the purpose was getting their help for becoming elected. ..."
    "... Without a doubt the Russian collusion is the most serious one, because it deliberately sabotaged diplomatic relations with Russia and lead into to a new cold war era. This also raised substantially risks for a direct confrontation with catastrophic consequences. The damage from these treacherous acts is huge and the felony bears pretty much all hallmarks of treason. Se deliberately undermined her own nation´s interests and rather risked even a war simply, because she is a psychopath, who refused to concede the defeat in due elections and instead wanted to hide real reasons for her loss to any cost for everybody else, "because it was her turn to get elected". ..."
    "... HIS NAME WAS SETH RICH ..."
    "... It is clear that from the beginning, fraudulent FISA warrants, that it was a case of Obama's administration digging dirt on Trump believing that when Hillary wins there will be nobody to hold them responsible ..."
    "... When Hillary lost there was only one way out for them to justify that kind of abuse, to find something, anything on Trump so they can say that they were right. Worse than Watergate by orders of magnitude, involving FBI, DOJ and WH itself. ..."
    Mar 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Tom Luongo,

    During most of the RussiaGate investigation against Donald Trump I kept saying that all roads lead to Hillary Clinton.

    Anyone with three working brain cells knew this, including 'Miss' Maddow, whose tears of disappointment are particularly delicious.

    Robert Mueller's investigation was designed from the beginning to create something out of nothing. It did this admirably.

    It was so effective it paralyzed the country for more than two years, just like Europe has been held hostage by Brexit. And all of this because, in the end, the elites I call The Davos Crowd refused to accept that the people no longer believed their lies about the benefits of their neoliberal, globalist agenda.

    Hillary Clinton's ascension to the Presidency was to be their apotheosis along with the Brexit vote. These were meant to lay to rest, once and for all time, the vaguely libertarian notion that people should rule themselves and not be ruled by philosopher kings in some distant land.

    Hillary's failure was enormous. And the RussiaGate gambit to destroy Trump served a laundry list of purposes to cover it:

    1. Undermine his legitimacy before he even takes office.
    2. Accuse him of what Hillary actually did: collude with Russians and Ukrainians to effect the outcome of the election
    3. Paralyze Trump on his foreign policy desires to scale back the Empire
    4. Give aid and comfort to hurting progressives and radicalize them further undermining our political system
    5. Polarize the electorate over the false choice of Trump's guilt.
    6. Paralyze the Dept. of Justice and Congress so that they would not uncover the massive corruption in the intelligence agencies in the U.S. and the U.K.
    7. Isolate Trump and take away every ally or potential ally he could have by turning them against him through prosecutor overreach.

    Hillary should have been thrown to the wolves after she failed. When you fail the people she failed and cost them the money she cost them, you lose more than just your funding. What this tells you is that Hillary has so much dirt on everyone involved, once this thing started everyone went along with it lest she burn them down as well.

    Burnin' Down da House

    Hillary is the epitome of envy. Envy is the destructive sin of coveting someone else's life so much they are obsessed with destroying it. It's the sin of Cain. She envies what Trump has, the Presidency. And she was willing to tear it down to keep him from having it no matter how much damage it would do. She's worse than the Joker from The Dark Knight.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/efHCdKb5UWc

    Because while the Joker is unfathomable to someone with a conscience there's little stopping us from excising him from the community completely., even though Batman refuses.

    Hillary hates us for who we are and what we won't give her. And that animus drove her to blackmail the world while putting on the face of its savior.

    And that's what makes what comes next so obvious to me. RussiaGate was never a sustainable narrative. It was ludicrous from the beginning. And now that it has ended with a whimper there are a lot of angry, confused and scared people out there.

    Mueller thought all he had to do was lean on corrupt people and threaten them with everything. They would turn on Trump. He would resign in disgrace from the public outcry. It didn't work. In the end Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and Roger Stone all held their ground or perjured themselves into the whole thing falling apart.

    Andrew Weissman's resignation last month was your tell there was nothing. Mueller would pursue this to the limit of his personal reputation and no further. Just like so many other politicians.

    Vote Your Pocketbook

    With respect to Brexit I've been convinced that it would come down to reputations. Would the British MP's vote against their own personal best interests to do the bidding of the EU? Would Theresa May eventually realize her historical reputation would be destroyed if she caves to Brussels and betrays Brexit in the end? Always bet on the fecklessness of politicians. They will always act selfishly when put to the test. While leading RussiaGate, Mueller was always headed here if he couldn't get someone to betray Trump.

    And now his report is in. There are no new indictments. And by doing so he is saving his reputation for the future. And that is your biggest tell that Hillary's blackmail is now worthless.

    They don't fear her anymore because RussiaGate outed her as the architect. Anything else she has is irrelevant in the face of trying to oust a sitting president from power. The progressives that were convinced of Trump's treason are bereft; their false hope stripped away like standing in front of a sandblaster. They will be raw, angry and looking for blood after they get over their denial.

    Everyone else who was blackmailed into going along with this lunacy will begin cutting deals to save their skins. The outrage over this will not end. Trump will be President when he stands for re-election.

    The Wolves Beckon

    The Democrats do not have a chance against him as of right now. When he was caving on everything back in December it looked like he was done. That there was enough meat on the RussiaGate bones to make Nancy Pelosi brave. Then she backed off on impeachment talk. Oops....

    ... ... ...

    The Deep State and The Davos Crowd stand revealed and reviled. If they don't do something dramatic then the anger from the rest of the country will also be palpable come election time. Justice is not done simply by saying, "No evidence of collusion."

    It's clear that RussiaGate is a failure of monumental proportions. Heads will have to roll. But who will be willing to fall on their sword at this point? Comey? No. McCabe? No. There is only one answer. And Obama's people are still in place to protect him. I said last fall that " Hillary would indict herself. " And I meant it. Eventually her blackmail and drive to burn it all down led to this moment.

    The circumstances are different than I expected back then, Trump didn't win the mid-terms. But the end result was always the same. If there is no collusion, if RussiaGate is a scam, then all roads lead back to Hillary as the sacrificial lamb.

    Because the bigger project, the erection of a transnational superstate, is bigger than any one person. Hillary is expendable. Lies are expensive to maintain. The truth is cheap to defend. Think of the billions in opportunity costs associated with this. Once the costs rise above the benefits, change happens fast. If there is any hope of salvaging the center of this country for the Democrats, the ones that voted against Hillary in 2016, then there is no reason anymore not to indict Hillary as the architect of RussiaGate.

    We all know it's the truth. So, the cheapest way out of this mess for them is to give the MAGApedes what they want, Hillary.

    And hope that is enough bread and circuses to distract from the real storm ahead of us.

    Jdhank , 27 minutes ago link

    Hillary ain't enough!

    We demand Comey, Brennan, Bill, the Podesta's, and the prancing little effiminate pony himself.

    consider me gone , 29 minutes ago link

    I'm surprised Donna Brazier and Pedo Podesta are still breathing. Maybe Hillary got God. Or gin.

    Koba the Dread , 32 minutes ago link

    Hillary is the epitome of envy.

    Your spelling is atrocious. Let me correct it.

    Hillary is the epitome of evil.

    There, that does it.

    KnitDame , 1 hour ago link

    I don't think Hillary is enough. I want McCabe, Comey, Mueller, Rosenstein, Loretta Lynch, Obama, Lois Lerner, Blasey Ford, Brennan, Clapper, Abedin, Weiner, Cheryl Mills, Susan Rice, Strzok, Page, Sally Yates, all of the phony FISA cohort brought to justice. Think of the taxpayer money wasted on this ridiculous Mueller investigation! The Roger Stone arrest was an outrage. Who tipped off CNN? Who ordered it? What was with the attack dogs and machine guns?

    And now we have Nadler trying to destroy anyone and everyone who ever did business with Trump. All those 80 people who got letters from him asking for documents will now be bankrupted by legal fees.

    According to Scott Adams, one recipient is refusing to cooperate -- he's saying "I can't afford for me and family to be destroyed." He put the request for documents in a drawer. He has no money for lawyers.

    This insanity and abuse of power has got to stop. Meanwhile, nothing gets done in Congress. We're all looking at censorship, tilted search engines, de-monetization, being beat up on campus for trying to express an opinion, being accosted in a restaurant (or, VP Pence, from the stage ("Hamilton"), getting sucker-punched for wearing a MAGA hat, having elections stolen through myriad Dem cheating methods, and NOTHING is being done.

    2willies , 1 hour ago link

    You forgot Rachel

    TeraByte , 1 hour ago link

    "all roads lead to Hillary Clinton"

    Her DNC cabal cooked in less than 24 hours from the election defeat a conspiracy of Russian meddling and now, when more information became available, HCR is involved in two separate cases of foreign collusion, The Steele dossier, with Russo-Anglo meddling and another a Ukrainian one, which is now under investigation and the purpose was getting their help for becoming elected.

    Without a doubt the Russian collusion is the most serious one, because it deliberately sabotaged diplomatic relations with Russia and lead into to a new cold war era. This also raised substantially risks for a direct confrontation with catastrophic consequences. The damage from these treacherous acts is huge and the felony bears pretty much all hallmarks of treason. Se deliberately undermined her own nation´s interests and rather risked even a war simply, because she is a psychopath, who refused to concede the defeat in due elections and instead wanted to hide real reasons for her loss to any cost for everybody else, "because it was her turn to get elected".

    Dragon HAwk , 1 hour ago link

    Hillary is expendable.

    God I Love Feel Good Stories.

    East Indian , 1 hour ago link

    And, oh, I almost forgot.

    HIS NAME WAS SETH RICH

    Neochrome , 1 hour ago link

    It is clear that from the beginning, fraudulent FISA warrants, that it was a case of Obama's administration digging dirt on Trump believing that when Hillary wins there will be nobody to hold them responsible.

    When Hillary lost there was only one way out for them to justify that kind of abuse, to find something, anything on Trump so they can say that they were right. Worse than Watergate by orders of magnitude, involving FBI, DOJ and WH itself.

    [Mar 24, 2019] One could wish that DOJ IG Horowitz could investigate and sanction British Intelligence for its use of official and non-official officials in starting this debacle.

    Highly recommended!
    Mar 24, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    "The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: `[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.' |"

    From page one of the Barr letter to the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. https://www.scribd.com/document/402973432/AG-March-24-2019-Letter-to-House-and-Senate-Judiciary-Committees#from_embed Some call this merely the "end of the beginning." Further revelations will be emerging, including from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz. " J ustice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed Thursday his office is still investigating possible abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the DOJ and FBI in their investigation into President Trump and associates of his 2016 campaign," reported the Washington Examiner this week.

    Decameron , 32 minutes ago

    However, AG Barr's letter retells the tale of Russian Interference in our elections, according to Mr. Mueller and his team's investigation and indictments. So, the anti-Trump camp will undoubtedly continue to question the 2016 election results, and blame the defeat of HRC on the "Reds." One could wish that DOJ IG Horowitz could investigate and sanction British Intelligence for its use of official and non-official officials in starting this debacle.

    [Mar 24, 2019] One thing left out is the ability of readers to call BS on a story i.e. a robust comment section for debates.

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Sites that use Disqus that allow shadow banning or steal and sell your information are just plain evil. ..."
    "... The marketing of Russiagate™ was no act of "stupidity". News outlets didn't erroneously "swallow" anything. They acted as agents of the Globalist American Establishment/Deep State which was attempting to shake an interloper (Trump) off its back or, at the very least, to completely tie his hands in policy-making terms. Too bad that same Deep State has created a "Cadillac of (P)residential prerogative over the years which Trump has been driving right over their little blood-stained hands....as an added benefit, this new brand of hyper-partisan "Yellow Journalism" sold papers...to some ..."
    "... How many fake headlines were created? How many panels of propaganda spreading "experts" were assembled? How many drooling sycophant hosts made this their everyday routine to stir the 'divide the nation' pot as they swore to God and the American People that the President was an asset of a foreign provocateur subverting the Republic? ..."
    Mar 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Smiley, 4 hours ago (Edited)

    One thing left out is the ability of readers to call BS on a story i.e. a robust comment section for debates. In other words, the Media's ability to simply ignore criticism enabled them to go off into their own Russiagate universe. Places that still allow competing narratives and diverse opinions, like ZeroHedge, are the main places I read anymore. If a link leads to WaPo or NYT, I bail instantly.

    Sites that use Disqus that allow shadow banning or steal and sell your information are just plain evil.

    Won't even go there.

    Bananaamerican , 4 hours ago (Edited)

    One thing I massively disagree with Taibbi on: "news outlets once again 'swallowed' a massive disinformation campaign, only this error is many orders of magnitude more stupid than any in the recent past, WMD included"

    The marketing of Russiagate™ was no act of "stupidity". News outlets didn't erroneously "swallow" anything. They acted as agents of the Globalist American Establishment/Deep State which was attempting to shake an interloper (Trump) off its back or, at the very least, to completely tie his hands in policy-making terms. Too bad that same Deep State has created a "Cadillac of (P)residential prerogative over the years which Trump has been driving right over their little blood-stained hands....as an added benefit, this new brand of hyper-partisan "Yellow Journalism" sold papers...to some

    4 hours ago
    (Edited)

    Spot on. There was no misunderstanding. Everyone in The Swamp and MSM knew and accepted their assigned roles. That's why their was nary a retraction. Retractions played no part in their goals.

    Nael, 1 hour ago
    Agreed. They were totally complicit. How many fake headlines were created? How many panels of propaganda spreading "experts" were assembled? How many drooling sycophant hosts made this their everyday routine to stir the 'divide the nation' pot as they swore to God and the American People that the President was an asset of a foreign provocateur subverting the Republic?

    Too many to count.

    [Mar 24, 2019] No matter the result, what is found or is not, to the neocons/neolib Establishment, Trump will always be waiting for his next check written in Cyrillic and denominated in rubles.

    Notable quotes:
    "... It's not Rubles.. Those be Sheckels. ..."
    Mar 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Perry Colace

    All of this reminds me of the first combat scene in 'Full Metal Jacket'. Joker is being helicoptered into the battle at Hue, and the door gunner is just firing his M-60 nonstop, yelling 'Get some! Come on! Get some!', as people below are running and getting shot. Joker says, 'Aren't you afraid that you might be killing innocent women......or children?'. The door gunner says,

    If they run, they're VC.

    If they stand still, they're WELL TRAINED VC!'.

    No matter the result, what is found or is not, to the left, Trump will always be waiting for his next check written in Cyrillic and denominated in rubles.

    Macher1, 3 hours ago

    It's not Rubles.. Those be Sheckels.

    [Mar 24, 2019] Poor Travolta. With Mueller finished, US media turns to John Travolta for collusion gossip

    Mar 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Zanon , Mar 24, 2019 3:35:09 PM | link

    Poor Travolta..
    With Mueller finished, US media turns to John Travolta for collusion gossip
    https://on.rt.com/9qss

    [Mar 24, 2019] The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate by Dennis J Bernstein

    Notable quotes:
    "... At Netanyahu's behest, Flynn and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly took the lead in the lobbying to derail the U.N. resolution, which Flynn discussed in a phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (in which the Russian diplomat rebuffed Flynn's appeal to block the resolution). ..."
    "... In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on the resolution and it passed 14-0. ..."
    "... But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role. ..."
    "... While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated, probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value. ..."
    "... In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968. ..."
    "... Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US. ..."
    "... It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm. ..."
    "... "Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing their best to provoke Russia into one. ..."
    "... The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak). ..."
    "... So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel. ..."
    "... So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first. ..."
    "... Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will simply ignore the Israeli connection. ..."
    "... Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference. ..."
    "... I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy. "Nothing to see here folks, move along." ..."
    "... The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy. ..."
    "... FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy (against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End of story. ..."
    "... God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact. ..."
    "... I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy. If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote, arguably, perpetual war. ..."
    "... Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's influence. ..."
    Dec 25, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

    The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate December 23, 2017

    While unproven claims of Russian meddling in U.S. politics have whipped Official Washington into a frenzy, much less attention has been paid to real evidence of Israeli interference in U.S. politics, as Dennis J Bernstein describes.

    In investigating Russia's alleged meddling in U.S. politics, special prosecutor Robert Mueller uncovered evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressured the Trump transition team to undermine President Obama's plans to permit the United Nations to censure Israel over its illegal settlement building on the Palestinian West Bank, a discovery referenced in the plea deal with President Trump's first National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

    At Netanyahu's behest, Flynn and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly took the lead in the lobbying to derail the U.N. resolution, which Flynn discussed in a phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (in which the Russian diplomat rebuffed Flynn's appeal to block the resolution).

    I spoke on Dec, 18 with independent journalist and blogger Richard Silverstein, who writes on national security and other issues for a number of blogs at Tikun Olam .

    Dennis Bernstein: A part of Michael Flynn's plea had to do with some actions he took before coming to power regarding Israel and the United Nations. Please explain.

    Richard Silverstein:

    The Obama administration was negotiating in the [UN] Security Council just before he left office about a resolution that would condemn Israeli settlements. Obviously, the Israeli government did not want this resolution to be passed. Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead. They approached Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner became involved in this. While they were in the transition and before having any official capacity, they negotiated with various members of the Security Council to try to quash the settlement resolution.

    One of the issues here which is little known is the Logan Act, which was passed at the foundation of our republic and was designed to prevent private citizens from usurping the foreign policy prerogatives of the executive. It criminalized any private citizen who attempted to negotiate with an enemy country over any foreign policy issue.

    In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on the resolution and it passed 14-0.

    But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role.

    This speaks to the power of the Israel lobby and of Israel itself to disrupt our foreign policy. Very few people have ever been charged with committing an illegal act by advocating on behalf of Israel. That is one of the reasons why this is such an important development. Until now, the lobby has really ruled supreme on the issue of Israel and Palestine in US foreign policy. Now it is possible that a private citizen will actually be made to pay a price for that.

    This is an important development because the lobby till now has run roughshod over our foreign policy in this area and this may act as a restraining order against blatant disruption of US foreign policy by people like this.

    Bernstein: So this information is a part of Michael Flynn's plea. Anyone studying this would learn something about Michael Flynn and it would be part of the prosecution's investigation.

    Silverstein:

    That's absolutely right. One thing to note here is that it is reporters who have raised the issue of the Logan Act, not Mueller or Flynn's people or anyone in the Trump administration. But I do think that Logan is a very important part of this plea deal, even if it is not mentioned explicitly.

    Bernstein: If the special prosecutor had smoking-gun information that the Trump administration colluded with Russia, in the way they colluded with Israel before coming to power, this would be a huge revelation. But it is definitely collusion when it comes to Israel.

    Silverstein: Absolutely. If this were Russia, it would be on the front page of every major newspaper in the United States and the leading story on the TV news. Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby and they have so much influence on US policy concerning Israel, it has managed to stay on the back burner. Only two or three media outlets besides mine have raised this issue of Logan and collusion. Kushner and Flynn may be the first American citizens charged under the Logan Act for interfering on behalf of Israel in our foreign policy. This is a huge issue and it has hardly been raised at all.

    Bernstein: As you know, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has made a career out of investigating the Russia-gate charges. She says that she has read all this material carefully, so she must have read about Flynn and Israel, but I haven't heard her on this issue at all.

    Silverstein:

    Even progressive journalists, who you'd think would be going after this with a vengeance, are frightened off by the fact the lobby really bites back. So, aside from outlets like the Intercept and the Electronic Intifada, there is a lot of hesitation about going after the Israel lobby. People are afraid because they know that there is a high price to be paid. It goes from being purely journalism to being a personal and political vendetta when they get you in their sights. In fact, one of the reasons I feel my blog is so important is that what I do is challenge Israeli policy and Israeli intervention in places where it doesn't belong.

    Bernstein: Jared Kushner is the point man for the Trump administration on Israel. He has talked about having a "vision for peace." Do you think it is a problem that this is someone with a long, close relationship with the prime minister of Israel and, in fact, runs a foundation that invests in the building of illegal Israeli settlements? Might this be problematic?

    Silverstein:

    It is quite nefarious, actually. When Jared Kushner was a teenager, Netanyahu used to stay at the Kushner family home when he visited the United States. This relationship with one of the most extreme right political figures in Israel goes back decades. And it is not just Kushner himself, but all the administration personnel dealing with these so-called peace negotiations, including Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, the ambassador. These are all orthodox Jews who tend to have very nationalist views when it comes to Israel. They all support settlements financially through foundations. These are not honest brokers.

    We could talk at length about the history of US personnel who have been negotiators for Middle East peace. All of them have been favorable to Israel and answerable to the Israel lobby, including Dennis Ross and Makovsky, who served in the last administration. These people are dyed-in-the-wool ultra-nationalist supporters of [Israeli] settlements. They have no business playing any role in negotiating a peace deal.

    My prediction all along has been that these peace negotiations will come to naught, even though they seem to have bought the cooperation of Saudi Arabia, which is something new in the process. The Palestinians can never accept a deal that has been negotiated by Kushner and company because it will be far too favorable to Israel and it will totally neglect the interests of the Palestinians.

    Bernstein: It has been revealed that Kushner supports the building of settlements in the West Bank. Most people don't understand the politics of what is going on there, but it appears to be part of an ethnic cleansing.

    Silverstein:

    The settlements have always been a violation of international law, ever since Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967. The Geneva Conventions direct an occupying power to withdraw from territory that was not its own. In 1967 Israel invaded Arab states and conquered the West Bank and Gaza but this has never been recognized or accepted by any nation until now.

    The fact that Kushner and his family are intimately involved in supporting settlements–as are David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt–is completely outrageous. No member of any previous US administration would have been allowed to participate with these kinds of financial investments in support of settlements. Of course, Trump doesn't understand the concept of conflict of interest because he is heavily involved in such conflicts himself. But no party in the Middle East except Israel is going to consider the US an honest broker and acceptable as a mediator.

    When they announce this deal next January, no one in the Arab World is going to accept it, with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia because they have other fish to fry in terms of Iran. The next three years are going to be interesting, supposing Trump lasts out his term. My prediction is that the peace plan will fail and that it will lead to greater violence in the Middle East. It will not simply lead to a vacuum, it will lead to a deterioration in conditions there.

    Bernstein: The Trump transition team was actually approached directly by the Israeli government to try to intercede at the United Nations.

    Silverstein:

    I'm assuming it was Netanyahu who went directly to Kushner and Trump. Now, we haven't yet found out that Trump directly knew about this but it is very hard to believe that Trump didn't endorse this. Now that we know that Mueller has access to all of the emails of the transition team, there is little doubt that they have been able to find their smoking gun. Flynn's plea meant that they basically had him dead to rights. It remains to be seen what will happen with Kushner but I would think that this would play some role in either the prosecution of Kushner or some plea deal.

    Bernstein: The other big story, of course, is the decision by the Trump administration to move the US embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. Was there any pre-election collusion in that regard and what are the implications?

    Silverstein:

    Well, it's a terrible decision which goes against forty to fifty years of US foreign policy. It also breaches all international understanding. All of our allies in the European Union and elsewhere are aghast at this development. There is now a campaign in the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the announcement, which we will veto, but the next step will be to go to the General Assembly, where such a resolution will pass easily.

    The question is how much anger, violence and disruption this is going to cause around the world, especially in the Arab and Muslim world. This is a slow-burning fuse. It is not going to explode right now. The issue of Jerusalem is so vital that this is not something that is simply going to go away. This is going to be a festering sore in the Muslim world and among Palestinians. We have already seen attacks on Israeli soldiers and citizens and there will be many more.

    As to collusion in all of this, since Trump always said during the campaign that this was what he was going to do, it might be difficult to treat this in the same way as the UN resolution. The UN resolution was never on anybody's radar and nobody knew the role that Trump was playing behind the scenes with that–as opposed to Trump saying right from the get-go that Jerusalem was going to be recognized as the capital of Jerusalem.

    By doing that, they have completely abrogated any Palestinian interest in Jerusalem. This is a catastrophic decision that really excludes the United States from being an honest broker here and shows our true colors in terms of how pro-Israel we are.

    Dennis J Bernstein is a host of "Flashpoints" on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom . You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net .

    Drew Hunkins , December 23, 2017 at 5:37 pm

    As most regular readers of CN already know, some dynamite books on the inordinate amount of influence pro-Israel zealots have on Washington:

    1.) 'The Host and the Parasite' by Greg Felton
    2.) 'Power of Israel in the United States' by James Petras
    3.) 'They Dare to Speak Out' by Paul Findley
    4.) 'The Israel Lobby' by Mearsheimer and Walt
    5.) 'Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of U.S. Power' by James Petras

    I suggest that anyone relatively knew to this neglected topic peruse a few of the aforementioned titles. An inevitable backlash by the citizens of the United States is eventually forthcoming against the Zionist Power Configuration. It's crucial that this impending backlash remain democratic, non-violent, eschews anti-Semitism, and travels in a progressive in direction.

    Annie , December 23, 2017 at 5:47 pm

    Which one would you suggest? I already read "The Israel Lobby."

    Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:38 pm

    Findley and Mearsheimer are certainly worthwhile. I will look for Petras.

    Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:38 pm

    If you haven't already read them, the end/footnotes in "The Israel Lobby" are more illuminating.

    SocraticGadfly , December 23, 2017 at 6:10 pm

    That influence is also shown, of course, by the fact that Obama waited until the midnight hours of his tenure and after the 2016 election to even start working on this resolution.

    SocraticGadfly , December 23, 2017 at 6:05 pm

    While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated, probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value.

    In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968.

    Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:41 pm

    Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US.

    JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:32 am

    It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm.

    The leaked emails showed the corruption plainly, and based on the ACTUAL evidence (recorded download time), most likely came from a highly disgruntled insider. The picture was starting to spill into public view. I'd estimate the real huge worry was that if this stuff came out, it could bring out other Israeli secrets, like their involvement in 9/11. That would mean actual jail time. Might be hard to buy your way out of that no matter how much money you have.

    Annie , December 23, 2017 at 10:48 pm

    The Logan act states that anyone who negotiates with an enemy of the US, and Israel is not defined as an enemy.

    Annie , December 23, 2017 at 6:59 pm

    The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would. I don't think anyone has been convicted based on this act, and they were part of a transition team not to mention the Logan act clearly states a private citizen who attempts to negotiate with an enemy state, and that certainly doesn't apply to Israel. In this administration their bias is so blatant that they can install Kushner as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestine peace process while his family has a close relationship with Netanyahu, and he runs a foundation that invests in the building of illegal settlements which goes against the Geneva conventions. Hopefully Trump's blatant siding with Israel will receive a lot of backlash as did his plan to make Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

    I also found that so called progressive internet sites don't cover this the way they should.

    Al Pinto , December 24, 2017 at 9:16 am

    @Annie

    "The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would."

    You and me both .

    From the point of starting to read this article, it has been in my mind that the Logan act would not apply here. After reading most of the comments, it became clear that not many people viewed this as such. Yes, Joe Tedesky did as well

    The UN is the "clearing house" for international politics, where countries freely contact each other's for getting support for their cause behind the scene. The support sought after could be voting for or against the resolution on hand. At times, as Israel did, countries reach out to perceived enemies as well, if they could not secure sufficient support for their cause. This is the normal activity of the UN diplomacy.

    Knowing that the outgoing administration would not support its cause, Israel reached out to the incoming administration to delay the vote on the UN resolution. I fail to see anything wrong with Israel's action even in this case; Israel is not an enemy state to the US. As such, there has been no violation of any acts by the incoming administration, even if they tried to secure veto vote for Israel. I do not like it, but no action by Mueller in this case is correct.

    People, just like the article in itself, implying that the Logan Act applies in this case are just plain wrong. Not just wrong, but their anti-Israel bias is in plain view.

    Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state. Even then, Russia contacting the incoming administration is not a violation of the Logan Act. That is just normal diplomacy in the background between countries. What would be a violation is that the contacted official acted on the behalf of Russia and tried to influence the outgoing administration's decision. That is what the Mueller investigation tries to prove hopelessly

    Herman , December 24, 2017 at 10:54 am

    "Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing their best to provoke Russia into one.

    Annie , December 24, 2017 at 1:55 pm

    Thanks for your reply. When I read the article and it referenced the Logan Act, which I am familiar with in that I've read about it before, I was surprised that Bernstein and Silverstein even brought it up because it so obviously does not apply in this case, since Israel is not considered an enemy state. Many have even referenced it as flimsy when it comes to convictions against those in Trump's transition team who had contacts with Russia. No one has ever been convicted under the Logan Act.

    Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:41 pm

    The Logan Act either should apply equally, or not apply at all. This "Russia-gate" hype seems to apply it selectively.

    mrtmbrnmn , December 23, 2017 at 7:36 pm

    You guys are blinded by the light. The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak).

    There is no doubt that Trump is Bibi's and the Saudi's ventriloquist dummy and Jared has been an Israel agent of influence since he was 12.

    But half the Dementedcrat Sore Loser Brigade will withdraw from the field of battle (not to mention most of the GOP living dead too) if publically and noisily tying Israel to Trump's tail becomes the only route to his removal. Which it would have to be, as there is no there there regarding the yearlong trumped-up PutinPutinPutin waterboarding of Trump.

    Immediately (if not sooner) the mighty (pro-Israel) Donor Bank of Singer (Paul), Saban (Haim), Sachs (Goldman) & Adelson (Sheldon), would change their passwords and leave these politicians/beggars with empty begging bowls. End of $ordid $tory.

    alley cat , December 23, 2017 at 7:45 pm

    So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel.

    Mueller can use that evidence of sabotage and/or obstruction of justice to try to coerce false confessions from Kushner and Flynn. But what are the chances of that, barring short stayovers for them at some CIA black site?

    So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first.

    Leslie F. , December 23, 2017 at 8:28 pm

    He used it, along with other info, to turn flip Flynn and possibly can use it the same way again Kusher. Not all evidence has end up in court to be useful.

    JWalters , December 23, 2017 at 8:40 pm

    This is an extremely important story, excellently reported. All the main "facts" Americans think they know about Israel are, amazingly, flat-out lies.

    1. Israel was NOT victimized by powerful Arab armies. Israel overpowered and victimized a defenseless, civilian Arab population. Military analysts knew the Arab armies were in poor shape and would not be able to resist the zionist army.

    2. Muslim "citizens" of Israel do NOT have all the same rights as Jews.

    3. Israelis are NOT under threat from the indigineous Palestinians, but Palestinians are under constant threats of theft and death from the Israelis.

    4. Israel does NOT share America's most fundamental values, which rest on the principle of equal human rights for all.

    Maintaining such a blanket of major lies for decades requires immense power. And this power would have to be exercised "under the radar" to be effective. That requires even more power. Both Congress and the press have to be controlled. How much power does it take to turn "Progressive Rachel" into "Tel Aviv Rachel"? To turn "It Takes a Village" Hillary into "Slaughter a Village" Hillary? It takes immense power AND ruthlessness.

    War profiteers have exactly this combination of immense war profits and the ruthlessness to victimize millions of people.
    "War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror"
    http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com

    Vast war profits easily afford to buy the mainstream media. And controlling campaign contributions for members of Congress is amazingly cheap in the big picture. Such a squalid sale of souls.

    And when simple bribery is not enough, they ruin a person's life through blackmail or false character assassination. And if those don't work they use death threats, including to family members, and finally murder. Their ruthlessness is unrestrained. John Perkins has described these tactics in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man".

    For readers who haven't seen it, here is an excellent riff on the absurdly overwhelming evidence for Israel's influence compared to that of Russia, at a highly professional news and analysis website run by Jewish anti-Zionists.
    "Let's talk about Russian influence"
    http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/about-russian-influence/

    mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:44 pm

    Hitler and Mussolini, Trump and Netanyahoo – matches made in Hell. These characters are so obviously, blatantly evil that it is deeply disturbing that people fail to see that, and instead go to great lengths to find some complicated flaws in these monsters.

    mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:49 pm

    Keep it simple folks. No need for complex analyses. Just remember that these characters as simply as evil as it gets, and proceed from there. These asinine shows that portray mobsters as complex human beings are dangerously deluding. If you want to be victimized by these types, this kind of overthinking is just the way to go.

    Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 9:00 pm

    There is a modern theory of fiction that insists upon the portrayal of inconsistency in characters, both among the good guys and the bad guys. It is useful to show how those who do wrongs have made specific kinds of errors that make them abnormal, and that those who do right are not perfect but nonetheless did the right thing. Instead it is used by commercial writers to argue that the good are really bad, and the bad are really good, which is of course the philosophy of oligarchy-controlled mass publishers.

    Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:54 pm

    A very important article by Dennis Bernstein, and it is very appropriate that non-zionist Jews are active against the extreme zionist corruption of our federal government. I am sure that they are reviled by the zionists for interfering with the false denunciations of racism against the opponents of zionism. Indeed critics face a very nearly totalitarian power of zionism, which in league with MIC/WallSt opportunism has displaced democracy altogether in the US.

    backwardsevolution , December 23, 2017 at 9:18 pm

    A nice little set-up by the Obama administration. Perhaps it was entrapment? Who set it up? Flynn and Kushner should have known better to fall for it. So at the end of his Presidency, Obama suddenly gets balls and wants to slap down Israel? Yeah, right.

    Nice to have leverage over people, though, isn't it? If you're lucky and play your cards right, you might even be lucky enough to land an impeachment.

    Of course, I'm just being cynical. No one would want to overturn democracy, would they?

    Certainly people like Comey, Brenner, Clinton, Clapper, Mueller, Rosenstein wouldn't want that, would they?

    Joe Tedesky , December 23, 2017 at 10:33 pm

    I just can't see any special prosecutor investigating Israel-Gate. Between what the Zionist donors donate to these creepy politicians, too what goods they have on these same mischievous politicians, I just can't see any investigation into Israel's collusion with the Trump Administration going anywhere. Netanyahu isn't Putin, and Russia isn't Israel. Plus, Israel is considered a U.S. ally, while Russia is being marked as a Washington rival. Sorry, this news regarding Israel isn't going to be ranted on about for the next 18 months, like the MSM has done with Russia, because our dear old Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, or so they tell us. So, don't get your hopes up.

    JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:33 am

    It's true the Israelis have America's politicians by the ears and the balls. But as this story gets better known, politicians will start getting questions at their town meetings. Increasingly the politicians will gag on what Israel is force-feeding them, until finally they reach a critical mass of vomit in Congress.

    Joe Tedesky , December 24, 2017 at 11:12 am

    I hope you are right JWalters. Although relying on a Zionist controlled MSM doesn't give hope for the news getting out properly. Again I hope you are right JWalters. Joe

    Jeff Blankfort , December 24, 2017 at 12:18 am

    Actually, Netanyahu was so desperate to have the resolution pulled and not voted on that he reached out to any country that might help him after the foreign minister of New Zealand, one of its co-sponsors refused to pull the plug after a testy phone exchange with the Israeli PM ending up threatening an Israeli boycott oturnef the KIwis.

    He then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin, who owed him a favor for having Israel's UN delegate absent himself for the UNGA vote on sanctioning Russia after its annexation of Crimea.

    Putin then called Russia's UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, since deceased, and asked him to get the other UNSC ambassadors to postpone the vote until Trump took over the White House but the other ambassadors weren't buying it. Given Russia's historic public position regarding the settlements, Churkin had no choice to vote Yes with the others.

    This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the US which, due to Zionist influence on the media, does not want the American public to know about the close ties between Putin and Netanyahu which has led to the Israeli PM making five state visits there in the last year and a half.

    Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US veto. That Netanyahu apparently knew in advance that the US planned to veto the resolution was, I suspect, leaked to the Israelis by US delegate Samantha Power, who was clearly unhappy at having to abstain.

    Abe , December 24, 2017 at 12:39 am

    The Israeli Prime Minister made five state visits to Russia in the last year and a half to make sure the Russians don't accidentally on purpose blast Israeli warplanes from the sky over Syria (like they oughtta). Putin tries not to snicker when Netanyahu bloviates ad nauseum about the purported "threat" posed by Iran.

    argos , December 24, 2017 at 7:00 am

    He thinks Putin is a RATS ASS like the yankee government

    JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:34 am

    "This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the US"

    We've just had a whole cluster of big stories involving Israel that have all been essentially blacked out in the US press. e.g.
    "Dionne and Shields ignore the Adelson in the room"
    http://mondoweiss.net/2017/12/jerusalem-israels-capital

    This is not due to chance. There is no doubt that the US mainstream media is wholly controlled by the Israelis.

    alley cat , December 24, 2017 at 4:49 am

    "He [Netanyahu] then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin "

    Jeff, that characterization of Putin and Netanyahu's relationship makes no sense, since the Russians have consistently opposed Zionism and Putin has been no exception, having spoiled Zionist plans for the destruction of Syria.

    "Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US veto."

    Not sure where you're going with that, since the US vote was up to Obama, who wanted to get some payback for all of Bibi's efforts to sabotage Obama's treaty with Iran.

    For the record, Zionism has had no more rabid supporter than the Dragon Lady. If we're going to make assumptions, we could start by assuming that if she had won the White House we'd all be dead by now, thanks to her obsession (at the instigation of her Zionist/neocon sponsors) with declaring no-fly zones in Syria.

    Brendan , December 24, 2017 at 6:18 am

    Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will simply ignore the Israeli connection.

    Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference.

    Skip Scott , December 24, 2017 at 7:59 am

    I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy. "Nothing to see here folks, move along."

    argos , December 24, 2017 at 6:57 am

    The zionist will stop at nothing to control the middle east with American taxpayers money/military equiptment its a win win for the zionist they control America lock stock and barrel a pity though it is a great country to be led by a jewish entity.

    Herman , December 24, 2017 at 10:47 am

    What will Israel-Palestine look like twenty years from now? Will it remain an apartheid regime, a regime without any Palestinians, or something different. The Trump decision, which the world rejects, brings the issue of "final" settlement to the fore. In a way we can go back to the thirties and the British Mandate. Jewish were fleeing Europe, many coming to Palestine. The British, on behalf of the Zionists, were delaying declaring Palestine a state with control of its own affairs. Seeing the mass immigration and chafing at British foot dragging, the Arabs rebelled, What happened then was that the British, responding to numerous pressures notably war with Germany, acted by granting independence and granting Palestine control of its borders.

    With American pressure and the mass exodus of Jews from Europe, Jews defied the British resulting in Jewish resistance. What followed then was a UN plan to divide the land with a Jerusalem an international city administered by the UN. The Arabs rebelled and lost much of what the UN plan provided and Jerusalem as an international city was scrapped.

    Will there be a second serious attempt to settle the issue of the land and the status of Jerusalem? Will there be a serious move toward a single state? How will the matter of Jerusalem be resolved. The two state solution has always been a fantasy and acquiescence of Palestinians to engage in this charade exposes their leaders to charges of posturing for perks. Imagined options could go on and on but will there be serious options placed before the world community or will the boots on the ground Israeli policies continue?

    As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.

    Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 1:34 pm

    As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.

    The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy.

    Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:56 pm

    Truly mind-boggling. Ahistorical, and as you say, fantasy.

    Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:48 pm

    FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy (against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End of story.

    $50K of Facebook ads about puppies pales in comparison to that blatant, prima facia, public manipulation. God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact.

    Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:11 pm

    Just for the record, Richard Silverstein blocked me on Twitter because I pointed out that he slammed someone who was suggesting that the Assad government was fighting for its (Syria's) life by fighting terrorists. Actually, more specifically, because of that he read my "Free Palestine" bio on Twitter and called me a Hamas supporter (no Hamas mentioned) and a "moron" for some seeming contradiction.

    I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy. If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote, arguably, perpetual war.

    Silverstein is probably not a good (ie. consistent) arbiter of Israeli impact on US politics. Just sayin'.

    I wish it were otherwise.

    Taras 77 , December 24, 2017 at 6:35 pm

    https://www.therussophile.org/virus-found-inside-dnc-server-is-linked-to-a-company-based-in-pakistan.html/

    This may be a tad ot but it relates to the alleged hacking of the DNC, the role debbie wasserman schultz plays in the spy ring (awan bros) in house of rep servers: I have long suspected that mossad has their fingers in this entire mess. FWIW

    Good site, BTW.

    Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 7:35 pm

    I can't recall why I removed the Tikun Olam site from my bookmarks – it happened quite a while back. Generally I do that when I feel the blogger crossed some kind of personal red line. Something Mr. Silverstein wrote put him over that line with me.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/us/06leak.html?hp

    In the course of a search I found that at the neocon NYT. Mr. Silverstein claims several things I find unbelievable, and from that alone I wonder about his ultimate motives. I may be excessively touchy about this, but that's how it is.

    Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 8:51 pm

    Yeah Zachary, "wondering about ultimate motives" is probably a good way to put it/his views. He's obviously conflicted, if not deferential in some aspects of Israeli policy. He really was a hero of mine, but now I just don't get whether what he says is masking something or a true belief. He says some good stuff, but, but, but .

    P. Michael Garber , December 24, 2017 at 11:54 pm

    Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's influence.

    [Mar 24, 2019] The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate by Dennis J Bernstein

    Notable quotes:
    "... At Netanyahu's behest, Flynn and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly took the lead in the lobbying to derail the U.N. resolution, which Flynn discussed in a phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (in which the Russian diplomat rebuffed Flynn's appeal to block the resolution). ..."
    "... In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on the resolution and it passed 14-0. ..."
    "... But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role. ..."
    "... While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated, probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value. ..."
    "... In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968. ..."
    "... Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US. ..."
    "... It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm. ..."
    "... "Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing their best to provoke Russia into one. ..."
    "... The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak). ..."
    "... So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel. ..."
    "... So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first. ..."
    "... Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will simply ignore the Israeli connection. ..."
    "... Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference. ..."
    "... I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy. "Nothing to see here folks, move along." ..."
    "... The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy. ..."
    "... FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy (against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End of story. ..."
    "... God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact. ..."
    "... I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy. If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote, arguably, perpetual war. ..."
    "... Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's influence. ..."
    Dec 25, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

    The Israel-gate Side of Russia-gate December 23, 2017

    While unproven claims of Russian meddling in U.S. politics have whipped Official Washington into a frenzy, much less attention has been paid to real evidence of Israeli interference in U.S. politics, as Dennis J Bernstein describes.

    In investigating Russia's alleged meddling in U.S. politics, special prosecutor Robert Mueller uncovered evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressured the Trump transition team to undermine President Obama's plans to permit the United Nations to censure Israel over its illegal settlement building on the Palestinian West Bank, a discovery referenced in the plea deal with President Trump's first National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

    At Netanyahu's behest, Flynn and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly took the lead in the lobbying to derail the U.N. resolution, which Flynn discussed in a phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (in which the Russian diplomat rebuffed Flynn's appeal to block the resolution).

    I spoke on Dec, 18 with independent journalist and blogger Richard Silverstein, who writes on national security and other issues for a number of blogs at Tikun Olam .

    Dennis Bernstein: A part of Michael Flynn's plea had to do with some actions he took before coming to power regarding Israel and the United Nations. Please explain.

    Richard Silverstein:

    The Obama administration was negotiating in the [UN] Security Council just before he left office about a resolution that would condemn Israeli settlements. Obviously, the Israeli government did not want this resolution to be passed. Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead. They approached Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner became involved in this. While they were in the transition and before having any official capacity, they negotiated with various members of the Security Council to try to quash the settlement resolution.

    One of the issues here which is little known is the Logan Act, which was passed at the foundation of our republic and was designed to prevent private citizens from usurping the foreign policy prerogatives of the executive. It criminalized any private citizen who attempted to negotiate with an enemy country over any foreign policy issue.

    In this case, what Flynn and Kushner were doing was going directly against US foreign policy, because Obama wanted the resolution to pass; He just didn't want to vote for it because that would cross the Israel lobby in the United States. The US finally ended up abstaining on the resolution and it passed 14-0.

    But before that happened, Flynn went to the Russians and to Egypt, both members of the Security Council, and tried to get the resolution delayed. But all of Israel's machinations to derail this resolution failed and that is what Mueller was investigating, the intervention and disruption of American foreign policy by private citizens who had no official role.

    This speaks to the power of the Israel lobby and of Israel itself to disrupt our foreign policy. Very few people have ever been charged with committing an illegal act by advocating on behalf of Israel. That is one of the reasons why this is such an important development. Until now, the lobby has really ruled supreme on the issue of Israel and Palestine in US foreign policy. Now it is possible that a private citizen will actually be made to pay a price for that.

    This is an important development because the lobby till now has run roughshod over our foreign policy in this area and this may act as a restraining order against blatant disruption of US foreign policy by people like this.

    Bernstein: So this information is a part of Michael Flynn's plea. Anyone studying this would learn something about Michael Flynn and it would be part of the prosecution's investigation.

    Silverstein:

    That's absolutely right. One thing to note here is that it is reporters who have raised the issue of the Logan Act, not Mueller or Flynn's people or anyone in the Trump administration. But I do think that Logan is a very important part of this plea deal, even if it is not mentioned explicitly.

    Bernstein: If the special prosecutor had smoking-gun information that the Trump administration colluded with Russia, in the way they colluded with Israel before coming to power, this would be a huge revelation. But it is definitely collusion when it comes to Israel.

    Silverstein: Absolutely. If this were Russia, it would be on the front page of every major newspaper in the United States and the leading story on the TV news. Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby and they have so much influence on US policy concerning Israel, it has managed to stay on the back burner. Only two or three media outlets besides mine have raised this issue of Logan and collusion. Kushner and Flynn may be the first American citizens charged under the Logan Act for interfering on behalf of Israel in our foreign policy. This is a huge issue and it has hardly been raised at all.

    Bernstein: As you know, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has made a career out of investigating the Russia-gate charges. She says that she has read all this material carefully, so she must have read about Flynn and Israel, but I haven't heard her on this issue at all.

    Silverstein:

    Even progressive journalists, who you'd think would be going after this with a vengeance, are frightened off by the fact the lobby really bites back. So, aside from outlets like the Intercept and the Electronic Intifada, there is a lot of hesitation about going after the Israel lobby. People are afraid because they know that there is a high price to be paid. It goes from being purely journalism to being a personal and political vendetta when they get you in their sights. In fact, one of the reasons I feel my blog is so important is that what I do is challenge Israeli policy and Israeli intervention in places where it doesn't belong.

    Bernstein: Jared Kushner is the point man for the Trump administration on Israel. He has talked about having a "vision for peace." Do you think it is a problem that this is someone with a long, close relationship with the prime minister of Israel and, in fact, runs a foundation that invests in the building of illegal Israeli settlements? Might this be problematic?

    Silverstein:

    It is quite nefarious, actually. When Jared Kushner was a teenager, Netanyahu used to stay at the Kushner family home when he visited the United States. This relationship with one of the most extreme right political figures in Israel goes back decades. And it is not just Kushner himself, but all the administration personnel dealing with these so-called peace negotiations, including Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, the ambassador. These are all orthodox Jews who tend to have very nationalist views when it comes to Israel. They all support settlements financially through foundations. These are not honest brokers.

    We could talk at length about the history of US personnel who have been negotiators for Middle East peace. All of them have been favorable to Israel and answerable to the Israel lobby, including Dennis Ross and Makovsky, who served in the last administration. These people are dyed-in-the-wool ultra-nationalist supporters of [Israeli] settlements. They have no business playing any role in negotiating a peace deal.

    My prediction all along has been that these peace negotiations will come to naught, even though they seem to have bought the cooperation of Saudi Arabia, which is something new in the process. The Palestinians can never accept a deal that has been negotiated by Kushner and company because it will be far too favorable to Israel and it will totally neglect the interests of the Palestinians.

    Bernstein: It has been revealed that Kushner supports the building of settlements in the West Bank. Most people don't understand the politics of what is going on there, but it appears to be part of an ethnic cleansing.

    Silverstein:

    The settlements have always been a violation of international law, ever since Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967. The Geneva Conventions direct an occupying power to withdraw from territory that was not its own. In 1967 Israel invaded Arab states and conquered the West Bank and Gaza but this has never been recognized or accepted by any nation until now.

    The fact that Kushner and his family are intimately involved in supporting settlements–as are David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt–is completely outrageous. No member of any previous US administration would have been allowed to participate with these kinds of financial investments in support of settlements. Of course, Trump doesn't understand the concept of conflict of interest because he is heavily involved in such conflicts himself. But no party in the Middle East except Israel is going to consider the US an honest broker and acceptable as a mediator.

    When they announce this deal next January, no one in the Arab World is going to accept it, with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia because they have other fish to fry in terms of Iran. The next three years are going to be interesting, supposing Trump lasts out his term. My prediction is that the peace plan will fail and that it will lead to greater violence in the Middle East. It will not simply lead to a vacuum, it will lead to a deterioration in conditions there.

    Bernstein: The Trump transition team was actually approached directly by the Israeli government to try to intercede at the United Nations.

    Silverstein:

    I'm assuming it was Netanyahu who went directly to Kushner and Trump. Now, we haven't yet found out that Trump directly knew about this but it is very hard to believe that Trump didn't endorse this. Now that we know that Mueller has access to all of the emails of the transition team, there is little doubt that they have been able to find their smoking gun. Flynn's plea meant that they basically had him dead to rights. It remains to be seen what will happen with Kushner but I would think that this would play some role in either the prosecution of Kushner or some plea deal.

    Bernstein: The other big story, of course, is the decision by the Trump administration to move the US embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. Was there any pre-election collusion in that regard and what are the implications?

    Silverstein:

    Well, it's a terrible decision which goes against forty to fifty years of US foreign policy. It also breaches all international understanding. All of our allies in the European Union and elsewhere are aghast at this development. There is now a campaign in the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the announcement, which we will veto, but the next step will be to go to the General Assembly, where such a resolution will pass easily.

    The question is how much anger, violence and disruption this is going to cause around the world, especially in the Arab and Muslim world. This is a slow-burning fuse. It is not going to explode right now. The issue of Jerusalem is so vital that this is not something that is simply going to go away. This is going to be a festering sore in the Muslim world and among Palestinians. We have already seen attacks on Israeli soldiers and citizens and there will be many more.

    As to collusion in all of this, since Trump always said during the campaign that this was what he was going to do, it might be difficult to treat this in the same way as the UN resolution. The UN resolution was never on anybody's radar and nobody knew the role that Trump was playing behind the scenes with that–as opposed to Trump saying right from the get-go that Jerusalem was going to be recognized as the capital of Jerusalem.

    By doing that, they have completely abrogated any Palestinian interest in Jerusalem. This is a catastrophic decision that really excludes the United States from being an honest broker here and shows our true colors in terms of how pro-Israel we are.

    Dennis J Bernstein is a host of "Flashpoints" on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom . You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net .

    Drew Hunkins , December 23, 2017 at 5:37 pm

    As most regular readers of CN already know, some dynamite books on the inordinate amount of influence pro-Israel zealots have on Washington:

    1.) 'The Host and the Parasite' by Greg Felton
    2.) 'Power of Israel in the United States' by James Petras
    3.) 'They Dare to Speak Out' by Paul Findley
    4.) 'The Israel Lobby' by Mearsheimer and Walt
    5.) 'Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of U.S. Power' by James Petras

    I suggest that anyone relatively knew to this neglected topic peruse a few of the aforementioned titles. An inevitable backlash by the citizens of the United States is eventually forthcoming against the Zionist Power Configuration. It's crucial that this impending backlash remain democratic, non-violent, eschews anti-Semitism, and travels in a progressive in direction.

    Annie , December 23, 2017 at 5:47 pm

    Which one would you suggest? I already read "The Israel Lobby."

    Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:38 pm

    Findley and Mearsheimer are certainly worthwhile. I will look for Petras.

    Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:38 pm

    If you haven't already read them, the end/footnotes in "The Israel Lobby" are more illuminating.

    SocraticGadfly , December 23, 2017 at 6:10 pm

    That influence is also shown, of course, by the fact that Obama waited until the midnight hours of his tenure and after the 2016 election to even start working on this resolution.

    SocraticGadfly , December 23, 2017 at 6:05 pm

    While I think Bibi is an idiot, I also think the Logan Act is overinvoked, overstated, probably of dubious legal value and also of dubious constitutional value.

    In short, especially because Trump had been elected, though not yet inaugurated, I think he is not at all guilty of a Logan Act violation. This is nothing close to Spiro Agnew calling Anna Chenault from the airplane in August 1968.

    Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:41 pm

    Probably true, although evidence of extreme collusion with Israel eliminates any case against Russia, with whom we have far more reasons for amity. Bringing out the Israel collusion greatly improves public understanding of political corruption. Perhaps it will awaken some to the Agnew-Chennault betrayal of the people of the US.

    JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:32 am

    It's ironic that Russia-gate is turning out to be Israel's effort to distract attention from its complete control over the Democratic party in 2016. From Israeli billionaires behind the scenes to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the helm.

    The leaked emails showed the corruption plainly, and based on the ACTUAL evidence (recorded download time), most likely came from a highly disgruntled insider. The picture was starting to spill into public view. I'd estimate the real huge worry was that if this stuff came out, it could bring out other Israeli secrets, like their involvement in 9/11. That would mean actual jail time. Might be hard to buy your way out of that no matter how much money you have.

    Annie , December 23, 2017 at 10:48 pm

    The Logan act states that anyone who negotiates with an enemy of the US, and Israel is not defined as an enemy.

    Annie , December 23, 2017 at 6:59 pm

    The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would. I don't think anyone has been convicted based on this act, and they were part of a transition team not to mention the Logan act clearly states a private citizen who attempts to negotiate with an enemy state, and that certainly doesn't apply to Israel. In this administration their bias is so blatant that they can install Kushner as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestine peace process while his family has a close relationship with Netanyahu, and he runs a foundation that invests in the building of illegal settlements which goes against the Geneva conventions. Hopefully Trump's blatant siding with Israel will receive a lot of backlash as did his plan to make Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

    I also found that so called progressive internet sites don't cover this the way they should.

    Al Pinto , December 24, 2017 at 9:16 am

    @Annie

    "The Logan act would not apply here, although I wish it would."

    You and me both .

    From the point of starting to read this article, it has been in my mind that the Logan act would not apply here. After reading most of the comments, it became clear that not many people viewed this as such. Yes, Joe Tedesky did as well

    The UN is the "clearing house" for international politics, where countries freely contact each other's for getting support for their cause behind the scene. The support sought after could be voting for or against the resolution on hand. At times, as Israel did, countries reach out to perceived enemies as well, if they could not secure sufficient support for their cause. This is the normal activity of the UN diplomacy.

    Knowing that the outgoing administration would not support its cause, Israel reached out to the incoming administration to delay the vote on the UN resolution. I fail to see anything wrong with Israel's action even in this case; Israel is not an enemy state to the US. As such, there has been no violation of any acts by the incoming administration, even if they tried to secure veto vote for Israel. I do not like it, but no action by Mueller in this case is correct.

    People, just like the article in itself, implying that the Logan Act applies in this case are just plain wrong. Not just wrong, but their anti-Israel bias is in plain view.

    Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state. Even then, Russia contacting the incoming administration is not a violation of the Logan Act. That is just normal diplomacy in the background between countries. What would be a violation is that the contacted official acted on the behalf of Russia and tried to influence the outgoing administration's decision. That is what the Mueller investigation tries to prove hopelessly

    Herman , December 24, 2017 at 10:54 am

    "Whether we like it or not, the former and current administration view Russia is as an enemy state." So that is how it works, the White House says it is an enemy state and therefore it is. The so called declaration is the hammer used for trying to make contact with Russia a criminal offense. We are not at war with Russia although we see our leaders doing their best to provoke Russia into one.

    Annie , December 24, 2017 at 1:55 pm

    Thanks for your reply. When I read the article and it referenced the Logan Act, which I am familiar with in that I've read about it before, I was surprised that Bernstein and Silverstein even brought it up because it so obviously does not apply in this case, since Israel is not considered an enemy state. Many have even referenced it as flimsy when it comes to convictions against those in Trump's transition team who had contacts with Russia. No one has ever been convicted under the Logan Act.

    Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:41 pm

    The Logan Act either should apply equally, or not apply at all. This "Russia-gate" hype seems to apply it selectively.

    mrtmbrnmn , December 23, 2017 at 7:36 pm

    You guys are blinded by the light. The Israel connection disclosed by the malpracticer hack Mueller in the recent Flynn-flam just made Trump bullet-proof (so to speak).

    There is no doubt that Trump is Bibi's and the Saudi's ventriloquist dummy and Jared has been an Israel agent of influence since he was 12.

    But half the Dementedcrat Sore Loser Brigade will withdraw from the field of battle (not to mention most of the GOP living dead too) if publically and noisily tying Israel to Trump's tail becomes the only route to his removal. Which it would have to be, as there is no there there regarding the yearlong trumped-up PutinPutinPutin waterboarding of Trump.

    Immediately (if not sooner) the mighty (pro-Israel) Donor Bank of Singer (Paul), Saban (Haim), Sachs (Goldman) & Adelson (Sheldon), would change their passwords and leave these politicians/beggars with empty begging bowls. End of $ordid $tory.

    alley cat , December 23, 2017 at 7:45 pm

    So Mueller caught Kushner and Flynn red-handed, sabotaging the Obama administration? What of it? He can't use that evidence, because it would inculpate the Zionist neocons that are orchestrating his farcical, Stalinist witchhunt. And Mueller, being an efficient terminator bot, knows that his target is Russia, not Israel.

    Mueller can use that evidence of sabotage and/or obstruction of justice to try to coerce false confessions from Kushner and Flynn. But what are the chances of that, barring short stayovers for them at some CIA black site?

    So Mueller will just have to continue swamp-fishing for potential perjurers ahem witnesses, for the upcoming show trials (to further inflame public opinion against Russia and Russia sympathizers). And continue he will, because (as we all know from Schwarzenegger's flicks), the only way to stop the terminator is to terminate him/it first.

    Leslie F. , December 23, 2017 at 8:28 pm

    He used it, along with other info, to turn flip Flynn and possibly can use it the same way again Kusher. Not all evidence has end up in court to be useful.

    JWalters , December 23, 2017 at 8:40 pm

    This is an extremely important story, excellently reported. All the main "facts" Americans think they know about Israel are, amazingly, flat-out lies.

    1. Israel was NOT victimized by powerful Arab armies. Israel overpowered and victimized a defenseless, civilian Arab population. Military analysts knew the Arab armies were in poor shape and would not be able to resist the zionist army.

    2. Muslim "citizens" of Israel do NOT have all the same rights as Jews.

    3. Israelis are NOT under threat from the indigineous Palestinians, but Palestinians are under constant threats of theft and death from the Israelis.

    4. Israel does NOT share America's most fundamental values, which rest on the principle of equal human rights for all.

    Maintaining such a blanket of major lies for decades requires immense power. And this power would have to be exercised "under the radar" to be effective. That requires even more power. Both Congress and the press have to be controlled. How much power does it take to turn "Progressive Rachel" into "Tel Aviv Rachel"? To turn "It Takes a Village" Hillary into "Slaughter a Village" Hillary? It takes immense power AND ruthlessness.

    War profiteers have exactly this combination of immense war profits and the ruthlessness to victimize millions of people.
    "War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror"
    http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com

    Vast war profits easily afford to buy the mainstream media. And controlling campaign contributions for members of Congress is amazingly cheap in the big picture. Such a squalid sale of souls.

    And when simple bribery is not enough, they ruin a person's life through blackmail or false character assassination. And if those don't work they use death threats, including to family members, and finally murder. Their ruthlessness is unrestrained. John Perkins has described these tactics in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man".

    For readers who haven't seen it, here is an excellent riff on the absurdly overwhelming evidence for Israel's influence compared to that of Russia, at a highly professional news and analysis website run by Jewish anti-Zionists.
    "Let's talk about Russian influence"
    http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/about-russian-influence/

    mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:44 pm

    Hitler and Mussolini, Trump and Netanyahoo – matches made in Hell. These characters are so obviously, blatantly evil that it is deeply disturbing that people fail to see that, and instead go to great lengths to find some complicated flaws in these monsters.

    mike k , December 23, 2017 at 8:49 pm

    Keep it simple folks. No need for complex analyses. Just remember that these characters as simply as evil as it gets, and proceed from there. These asinine shows that portray mobsters as complex human beings are dangerously deluding. If you want to be victimized by these types, this kind of overthinking is just the way to go.

    Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 9:00 pm

    There is a modern theory of fiction that insists upon the portrayal of inconsistency in characters, both among the good guys and the bad guys. It is useful to show how those who do wrongs have made specific kinds of errors that make them abnormal, and that those who do right are not perfect but nonetheless did the right thing. Instead it is used by commercial writers to argue that the good are really bad, and the bad are really good, which is of course the philosophy of oligarchy-controlled mass publishers.

    Sam F , December 23, 2017 at 8:54 pm

    A very important article by Dennis Bernstein, and it is very appropriate that non-zionist Jews are active against the extreme zionist corruption of our federal government. I am sure that they are reviled by the zionists for interfering with the false denunciations of racism against the opponents of zionism. Indeed critics face a very nearly totalitarian power of zionism, which in league with MIC/WallSt opportunism has displaced democracy altogether in the US.

    backwardsevolution , December 23, 2017 at 9:18 pm

    A nice little set-up by the Obama administration. Perhaps it was entrapment? Who set it up? Flynn and Kushner should have known better to fall for it. So at the end of his Presidency, Obama suddenly gets balls and wants to slap down Israel? Yeah, right.

    Nice to have leverage over people, though, isn't it? If you're lucky and play your cards right, you might even be lucky enough to land an impeachment.

    Of course, I'm just being cynical. No one would want to overturn democracy, would they?

    Certainly people like Comey, Brenner, Clinton, Clapper, Mueller, Rosenstein wouldn't want that, would they?

    Joe Tedesky , December 23, 2017 at 10:33 pm

    I just can't see any special prosecutor investigating Israel-Gate. Between what the Zionist donors donate to these creepy politicians, too what goods they have on these same mischievous politicians, I just can't see any investigation into Israel's collusion with the Trump Administration going anywhere. Netanyahu isn't Putin, and Russia isn't Israel. Plus, Israel is considered a U.S. ally, while Russia is being marked as a Washington rival. Sorry, this news regarding Israel isn't going to be ranted on about for the next 18 months, like the MSM has done with Russia, because our dear old Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, or so they tell us. So, don't get your hopes up.

    JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:33 am

    It's true the Israelis have America's politicians by the ears and the balls. But as this story gets better known, politicians will start getting questions at their town meetings. Increasingly the politicians will gag on what Israel is force-feeding them, until finally they reach a critical mass of vomit in Congress.

    Joe Tedesky , December 24, 2017 at 11:12 am

    I hope you are right JWalters. Although relying on a Zionist controlled MSM doesn't give hope for the news getting out properly. Again I hope you are right JWalters. Joe

    Jeff Blankfort , December 24, 2017 at 12:18 am

    Actually, Netanyahu was so desperate to have the resolution pulled and not voted on that he reached out to any country that might help him after the foreign minister of New Zealand, one of its co-sponsors refused to pull the plug after a testy phone exchange with the Israeli PM ending up threatening an Israeli boycott oturnef the KIwis.

    He then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin, who owed him a favor for having Israel's UN delegate absent himself for the UNGA vote on sanctioning Russia after its annexation of Crimea.

    Putin then called Russia's UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, since deceased, and asked him to get the other UNSC ambassadors to postpone the vote until Trump took over the White House but the other ambassadors weren't buying it. Given Russia's historic public position regarding the settlements, Churkin had no choice to vote Yes with the others.

    This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the US which, due to Zionist influence on the media, does not want the American public to know about the close ties between Putin and Netanyahu which has led to the Israeli PM making five state visits there in the last year and a half.

    Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US veto. That Netanyahu apparently knew in advance that the US planned to veto the resolution was, I suspect, leaked to the Israelis by US delegate Samantha Power, who was clearly unhappy at having to abstain.

    Abe , December 24, 2017 at 12:39 am

    The Israeli Prime Minister made five state visits to Russia in the last year and a half to make sure the Russians don't accidentally on purpose blast Israeli warplanes from the sky over Syria (like they oughtta). Putin tries not to snicker when Netanyahu bloviates ad nauseum about the purported "threat" posed by Iran.

    argos , December 24, 2017 at 7:00 am

    He thinks Putin is a RATS ASS like the yankee government

    JWalters , December 24, 2017 at 3:34 am

    "This story was reported in detail in the Israeli press but blacked out in the US"

    We've just had a whole cluster of big stories involving Israel that have all been essentially blacked out in the US press. e.g.
    "Dionne and Shields ignore the Adelson in the room"
    http://mondoweiss.net/2017/12/jerusalem-israels-capital

    This is not due to chance. There is no doubt that the US mainstream media is wholly controlled by the Israelis.

    alley cat , December 24, 2017 at 4:49 am

    "He [Netanyahu] then turned to his buddy, Vladimir Putin "

    Jeff, that characterization of Putin and Netanyahu's relationship makes no sense, since the Russians have consistently opposed Zionism and Putin has been no exception, having spoiled Zionist plans for the destruction of Syria.

    "Had Clinton won the White House we can assume that there would have been no US veto."

    Not sure where you're going with that, since the US vote was up to Obama, who wanted to get some payback for all of Bibi's efforts to sabotage Obama's treaty with Iran.

    For the record, Zionism has had no more rabid supporter than the Dragon Lady. If we're going to make assumptions, we could start by assuming that if she had won the White House we'd all be dead by now, thanks to her obsession (at the instigation of her Zionist/neocon sponsors) with declaring no-fly zones in Syria.

    Brendan , December 24, 2017 at 6:18 am

    Trump and Kushner have nothing to worry about, even if a smoking gun is found that proves their collusion with Israel. That's because the entire political and media establishment will simply ignore the Israeli connection.

    Journalists and politicians will even continue to present Mike Flynn's contacts as evidence of collusion with Russia. They'll keep on repeating that "Flynn lied about his phone call to the Russian ambassador". But there will be no mention of the fact that the purpose of this contact was to support Israel and not any alleged Russian interference.

    Skip Scott , December 24, 2017 at 7:59 am

    I think you have it right Brendan. The MSM, Intelligence Community, and Mueller would never go down any path that popularized undue Israeli influence on US foreign policy. "Nothing to see here folks, move along."

    argos , December 24, 2017 at 6:57 am

    The zionist will stop at nothing to control the middle east with American taxpayers money/military equiptment its a win win for the zionist they control America lock stock and barrel a pity though it is a great country to be led by a jewish entity.

    Herman , December 24, 2017 at 10:47 am

    What will Israel-Palestine look like twenty years from now? Will it remain an apartheid regime, a regime without any Palestinians, or something different. The Trump decision, which the world rejects, brings the issue of "final" settlement to the fore. In a way we can go back to the thirties and the British Mandate. Jewish were fleeing Europe, many coming to Palestine. The British, on behalf of the Zionists, were delaying declaring Palestine a state with control of its own affairs. Seeing the mass immigration and chafing at British foot dragging, the Arabs rebelled, What happened then was that the British, responding to numerous pressures notably war with Germany, acted by granting independence and granting Palestine control of its borders.

    With American pressure and the mass exodus of Jews from Europe, Jews defied the British resulting in Jewish resistance. What followed then was a UN plan to divide the land with a Jerusalem an international city administered by the UN. The Arabs rebelled and lost much of what the UN plan provided and Jerusalem as an international city was scrapped.

    Will there be a second serious attempt to settle the issue of the land and the status of Jerusalem? Will there be a serious move toward a single state? How will the matter of Jerusalem be resolved. The two state solution has always been a fantasy and acquiescence of Palestinians to engage in this charade exposes their leaders to charges of posturing for perks. Imagined options could go on and on but will there be serious options placed before the world community or will the boots on the ground Israeli policies continue?

    As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.

    Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 1:34 pm

    As I have commented before, it will most probably be the Jewish community in Israel and the world that shapes the future and if the matter is to be resolved that is fair to both parties, it will be they that starts the ball rolling.

    The Nice Zionists responsible for the thefts and murders for the past 69 years along with the "Jewish Community" in the rest of the world will resolve the matter so as to be fair to both parties. This is mind-boggling fantasy.

    Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:56 pm

    Truly mind-boggling. Ahistorical, and as you say, fantasy.

    Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 5:48 pm

    FFS, Netanyahu aired a political commercial in Florida for Romney saying vote for this guy (against Obama)! I mean, it doesn't get any more overtly manipulative than that. Period. End of story.

    $50K of Facebook ads about puppies pales in comparison to that blatant, prima facia, public manipulation. God, I hate to go all "Israel controls the media" but there it is. Not even a discussion. Just a fact.

    Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 6:11 pm

    Just for the record, Richard Silverstein blocked me on Twitter because I pointed out that he slammed someone who was suggesting that the Assad government was fighting for its (Syria's) life by fighting terrorists. Actually, more specifically, because of that he read my "Free Palestine" bio on Twitter and called me a Hamas supporter (no Hamas mentioned) and a "moron" for some seeming contradiction.

    I also have to point out that he "fist pumped" Hillary Clinton at Mohammed Ali's eulogy. If he's as astute as he purports to be, he has to know that Hillary would have invaded Syria and killed a few hundred thousand more Syrians for the simple act of defiantly preserving their country. By almost any read of Ali's history, he would have been adamantly ("killing brown people") against that. But there was Silverstein using the platform to promote, arguably, perpetual war.

    Silverstein is probably not a good (ie. consistent) arbiter of Israeli impact on US politics. Just sayin'.

    I wish it were otherwise.

    Taras 77 , December 24, 2017 at 6:35 pm

    https://www.therussophile.org/virus-found-inside-dnc-server-is-linked-to-a-company-based-in-pakistan.html/

    This may be a tad ot but it relates to the alleged hacking of the DNC, the role debbie wasserman schultz plays in the spy ring (awan bros) in house of rep servers: I have long suspected that mossad has their fingers in this entire mess. FWIW

    Good site, BTW.

    Zachary Smith , December 24, 2017 at 7:35 pm

    I can't recall why I removed the Tikun Olam site from my bookmarks – it happened quite a while back. Generally I do that when I feel the blogger crossed some kind of personal red line. Something Mr. Silverstein wrote put him over that line with me.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/us/06leak.html?hp

    In the course of a search I found that at the neocon NYT. Mr. Silverstein claims several things I find unbelievable, and from that alone I wonder about his ultimate motives. I may be excessively touchy about this, but that's how it is.

    Larry Larsen , December 24, 2017 at 8:51 pm

    Yeah Zachary, "wondering about ultimate motives" is probably a good way to put it/his views. He's obviously conflicted, if not deferential in some aspects of Israeli policy. He really was a hero of mine, but now I just don't get whether what he says is masking something or a true belief. He says some good stuff, but, but, but .

    P. Michael Garber , December 24, 2017 at 11:54 pm

    Yeah I found a couple of Silverstein's statements to be closer to neocon propaganda than reality: "Because this is Israel and because we have a conflicted relationship with the Israel lobby . . ." "Instead of going directly to the Obama administration, with which they had terrible relations, they went to Trump instead." My impression was that the whole "terrible relationship between Obama and Netanyahu" was manufactured by the Israel lobby to bully Obama. However these are small blips within an otherwise solid critique of the Israel lobby's influence.

    [Mar 24, 2019] No matter the result, what is found or is not, to the neocons/neolib Establishment, Trump will always be waiting for his next check written in Cyrillic and denominated in rubles.

    Notable quotes:
    "... It's not Rubles.. Those be Sheckels. ..."
    Mar 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Perry Colace

    All of this reminds me of the first combat scene in 'Full Metal Jacket'. Joker is being helicoptered into the battle at Hue, and the door gunner is just firing his M-60 nonstop, yelling 'Get some! Come on! Get some!', as people below are running and getting shot. Joker says, 'Aren't you afraid that you might be killing innocent women......or children?'. The door gunner says,

    If they run, they're VC.

    If they stand still, they're WELL TRAINED VC!'.

    No matter the result, what is found or is not, to the left, Trump will always be waiting for his next check written in Cyrillic and denominated in rubles.

    Macher1, 3 hours ago

    It's not Rubles.. Those be Sheckels.

    [Mar 24, 2019] Taibbi It s Official - Russiagate Is This Generation s WMD

    This is the most grandiose False flag propaganda operation known to the mankind. McCarthyism while more vicious was just a blip of the screen in comparison this this tide of disinformation and insinuations. Iraq WDM resulted in more casualties but was much more short term. Damage for the USA from this false flag operation might even exceed the damage for Iraq WDM fiasco.
    British government and intelligence serves were active participants and in this sense "Skripals poisoning" looks like a perverted form of "witness protection:" program. A false flag operation on the top of a false flag operation ("Russiagate").
    What is amazing is how unapt were the major players.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media. ..."
    "... A few weeks after that hearing, Steele gave testimony in a British lawsuit filed by one of the Russian companies mentioned in his reports. In a written submission , Steele said his information was "raw" and "needed to be analyzed and further investigated/verified." He also wrote that (at least as pertained to the memo in that case) he had not written his report "with the intention that it be republished to the world at large." ..."
    "... That itself was a curious statement, given that Steele reportedly spoke with multiple reporters in the fall of 2016, but this was his legal position. This story about Steele's British court statements did not make it into the news much in the United States, apart from a few bits in conservative outlets like The Washington Times. ..."
    "... The Steele report was the Magna Carta of #Russiagate. It provided the implied context for thousands of news stories to come, yet no journalist was ever able to confirm its most salacious allegations: the five year cultivation plan, the blackmail, the bribe from Sechin, the Prague trip, the pee romp, etc. In metaphorical terms, we were unable to independently produce Steele's results in the lab. Failure to reckon with this corrupted the narrative from the start. ..."
    "... "Just called," Page said to McCabe. "Apparently the DAG [Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates] now wants to be there, and WH wants DOJ to host. So we are setting that up now. ... We will very much need to get Cohen's view before we meet with her. Better, have him weigh in with her before the meeting. We need to speak with one voice, if that is in fact the case." ..."
    "... Someday I hope that Hillary has to be rolled up to testify about the Benghazi business. Grab the guns and the gold (and the oil). Ukraine gold: check. Libyan gold and weapons: check. ..."
    Mar 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Matt Taibbi, excerpted from his serial book Hate Inc.,

    The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it...

    Note to readers: in light of news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation is complete, I'm releasing this chapter of Hate Inc. early, with a few new details added up top. Nobody wants to hear this, but news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is headed home without issuing new charges is a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media.

    As has long been rumored , the former FBI chief's independent probe will result in multiple indictments and convictions, but no " presidency-wrecking " conspiracy charges, or anything that would meet the layman's definition of "collusion" with Russia.

    With the caveat that even this news might somehow turn out to be botched, the key detail in the many stories about the end of the Mueller investigation was best expressed by the New York Times :

    A senior Justice Department official said that Mr. Mueller would not recommend new indictments.

    The Times tried to soften the emotional blow for the millions of Americans trained in these years to place hopes for the overturn of the Trump presidency in Mueller. Nobody even pretended it was supposed to be a fact-finding mission, instead of an act of faith.

    The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing " All I Want for Christmas is You " to him featuring the rhymey line: "Mueller please come through, because the only option is a coup."

    The Times story today tried to preserve Santa Mueller's reputation, noting Trump's Attorney General William Barr's reaction was an "endorsement" of the fineness of Mueller's work:

    In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a "witch hunt," Mr. Barr said Justice Department officials never had to intervene to keep Mr. Mueller from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step.

    Mueller, in other words, never stepped out of the bounds of his job description. But could the same be said for the news media?

    For those anxious to keep the dream alive, the Times published its usual graphic of Trump-Russia "contacts," inviting readers to keep making connections. But in a separate piece by Peter Baker , the paper noted the Mueller news had dire consequences for the press:

    It will be a reckoning for President Trump, to be sure, but also for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for Congress, for Democrats, for Republicans, for the news media and, yes, for the system as a whole

    This is a damning page one admission by the Times. Despite the connect-the-dots graphic in its other story, and despite the astonishing, emotion-laden editorial the paper also ran suggesting " We don't need to read the Mueller report " because we know Trump is guilty, Baker at least began the work of preparing Times readers for a hard question: "Have journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?"

    The paper was signaling it understood there would now be questions about whether or not news outlets like themselves made a galactic error by betting heavily on a new, politicized approach , trying to be true to "history's judgment" on top of the hard-enough job of just being true. Worse, in a brutal irony everyone should have seen coming , the press has now handed Trump the mother of campaign issues heading into 2020.

    Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population, a group that (perhaps thanks to this story) is now larger than his original base. As Baker notes, a full 50.3% of respondents in a poll conducted this month said they agree with Trump the Mueller probe is a "witch hunt."

    Stories have been coming out for some time now hinting Mueller's final report might leave audiences " disappointed ," as if a President not being a foreign spy could somehow be bad news.

    Openly using such language has, all along, been an indictment. Imagine how tone-deaf you'd have to be to not realize it makes you look bad, when news does not match audience expectations you raised. To be unaware of this is mind-boggling, the journalistic equivalent of walking outside without pants.

    There will be people protesting: the Mueller report doesn't prove anything! What about the 37 indictments? The convictions? The Trump tower revelations? The lies! The meeting with Don, Jr.? The financial matters ! There's an ongoing grand jury investigation, and possible sealed indictments, and the House will still investigate, and

    Stop. Just stop. Any journalist who goes there is making it worse.

    For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in. Now, even Nancy Pelosi has said impeachment is out, unless something "so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan" against Trump is uncovered it would be worth their political trouble to prosecute.

    The biggest thing this affair has uncovered so far is Donald Trump paying off a porn star. That's a hell of a long way from what this business was supposedly about at the beginning, and shame on any reporter who tries to pretend this isn't so.

    The story hyped from the start was espionage: a secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who'd helped him win the election.

    The betrayal narrative was not reported at first as metaphor. It was not "Trump likes the Russians so much, he might as well be a spy for them." It was literal spying, treason, and election-fixing – crimes so severe, former NSA employee John Schindler told reporters, Trump " will die in jail ."

    In the early months of this scandal, the New York Times said Trump's campaign had "repeated contacts" with Russian intelligence; the Wall Street Journal told us our spy agencies were withholding intelligence from the new President out of fear he was compromised; news leaked out our spy chiefs had even told other countries like Israel not to share their intel with us, because the Russians might have "leverages of pressure" on Trump.

    CNN told us Trump officials had been in "constant contact" with "Russians known to U.S. intelligence," and the former director of the CIA, who'd helped kick-start the investigation that led to Mueller's probe, said the President was guilty of "high crimes and misdemeanors," committing acts " nothing short of treasonous ."

    Hillary Clinton insisted Russians "could not have known how to weaponize" political ads unless they'd been "guided" by Americans. Asked if she meant Trump, she said, " It's pretty hard not to ." Harry Reid similarly said he had "no doubt" that the Trump campaign was " in on the deal " to help Russians with the leak.

    None of this has been walked back. To be clear, if Trump were being blackmailed by Russian agencies like the FSB or the GRU, if he had any kind of relationship with Russian intelligence, that would soar over the "overwhelming and bipartisan" standard, and Nancy Pelosi would be damning torpedoes for impeachment right now.

    There was never real gray area here. Either Trump is a compromised foreign agent, or he isn't. If he isn't, news outlets once again swallowed a massive disinformation campaign, only this error is many orders of magnitude more stupid than any in the recent past, WMD included. Honest reporters like ABC's Terry Moran understand: Mueller coming back empty-handed on collusion means a " reckoning for the media ."

    Of course, there won't be such a reckoning. (There never is). But there should be. We broke every written and unwritten rule in pursuit of this story, starting with the prohibition on reporting things we can't confirm.

    #Russiagate debuted as a media phenomenon in mid-summer, 2016. The roots of the actual story, i.e. when the multi-national investigation began, go back much further, to the previous year at least. Oddly, that origin tale has not been nailed down yet, and blue-state audiences don't seem terribly interested in it, either.

    By June and July of 2016, bits of the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, which had been funded by the Democratic National Committee through the law firm Perkins Coie (which in turn hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS), were already in the ether.

    The Steele report occupies the same role in #Russiagate the tales spun by Ahmed Chalabi occupied in the WMD screwup. Once again, a narrative became turbo-charged when Officials With Motives pulled the press corps by its nose to a swamp of unconfirmable private assertions.

    Some early stories, like a July 4, 2016 piece by Franklin Foer in Slate called " Putin's Puppet ," outlined future Steele themes in "circumstantial" form. But the actual dossier, while it influenced a number of pre-election Trump-Russia news stories (notably one by Michael Isiskoff of Yahoo! that would be used in a FISA warrant application ), didn't make it into print for a while.

    Though it was shopped to at least nine news organizations during the summer and fall of 2016, no one bit, for the good reason that news organizations couldn't verify its "revelations."

    The Steele claims were explosive if true. The ex-spy reported Trump aide Carter Page had been offered fees on a big new slice of the oil giant Rosneft if he could help get sanctions against Russia lifted. He also said Trump lawyer Michael Cohen went to Prague for "secret discussions with Kremlin representatives and associated operators/hackers."

    Most famously, he wrote the Kremlin had kompromat of Trump "deriling" [sic] a bed once used by Barack and Michelle Obama by "employing a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show."

    This was too good of a story not to do. By hook or crook, it had to come out. The first salvo was by David Corn of Mother Jones on October 31, 2016: " A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump ."

    The piece didn't have pee, Prague, or Page in it, but it did say Russian intelligence had material that could "blackmail" Trump. It was technically kosher to print because Corn wasn't publishing the allegations themselves, merely that the FBI had taken possession of them.

    A bigger pretext was needed to get the other details out. This took place just after the election, when four intelligence officials presented copies of the dossier to both President-Elect Trump and outgoing President Obama.

    From his own memos , we know FBI Director James Comey, ostensibly evincing concern for Trump's welfare, told the new President he was just warning him about what was out there, as possible blackmail material:

    I wasn't saying [the Steele report] was true, only that I wanted him to know both that it had been reported and that the reports were in many hands. I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material or [redacted] and that we were keeping it very close-hold [sic].

    Comey's generous warning to Trump about not providing a "news hook," along with a promise to keep it all "close-held," took place on January 6, 2017. Within four days, basically the entire Washington news media somehow knew all about this top-secret meeting and had the very hook they needed to go public. Nobody in the mainstream press thought this was weird or warranted comment.

    Even Donald Trump was probably smart enough to catch the hint when, of all outlets, it was CNN that first broke the story of "Classified documents presented last week to Trump" on January 10 .

    At the same time, Buzzfeed made the historic decision to publish the entire Steele dossier, bringing years of pee into our lives. This move birthed the Russiagate phenomenon as a never-ending, minute-to-minute factor in American news coverage.

    Comey was right. We couldn't have reported this story without a "hook." Therefore the reports surrounding Steele technically weren't about the allegations themselves, but rather the journey of those allegations, from one set of official hands to another. Handing the report to Trump created a perfect pretext.

    This trick has been used before, both in Washington and on Wall Street, to publicize unconfirmed private research. A short seller might hire a consulting firm to prepare a report on a company he or she has bet against. When the report is completed, the investor then tries to get the SEC or the FBI to take possession. If they do, news leaks the company is "under investigation," the stock dives, and everyone wins.

    This same trick is found in politics. A similar trajectory drove negative headlines in the scandal surrounding New Jersey's Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who was said to be under investigation by the FBI for underage sex crimes (although some were skeptical ). The initial story didn't hold up, but led to other investigations.

    Same with the so-called " Arkansas project ," in which millions of Republican-friendly private research dollars produced enough noise about the Whitewater scandal to create years of headlines about the Clintons. Swiftboating was another example. Private oppo isn't inherently bad. In fact it has led to some incredible scoops, including Enron. But reporters usually know to be skeptical of private info, and figure the motives of its patrons into the story.

    The sequence of events in that second week of January, 2017 will now need to be heavily re-examined. We now know, from his own testimony , that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had some kind of role in helping CNN do its report, presumably by confirming part of the story, perhaps through an intermediary or two (there is some controversy over whom exactly was contacted, and when).

    Why would real security officials help litigate this grave matter through the media? Why were the world's most powerful investigative agencies acting like they were trying to move a stock, pushing an private, unverified report that even Buzzfeed could see had factual issues? It made no sense at the time , and makes less now.

    In January of 2017, Steele's pile of allegations became public, read by millions. "It is not just unconfirmed," Buzzfeed admitted . "It includes some clear errors."

    Buzzfeed's decision exploded traditional journalistic standards against knowingly publishing material whose veracity you doubt. Although a few media ethicists wondered at it , this seemed not to bother the rank-and-file in the business. Buzzfeed chief Ben Smith is still proud of his decision today. I think this was because many reporters believed the report was true.

    When I read the report, I was in shock. I thought it read like fourth-rate suspense fiction (I should know: I write fourth-rate suspense fiction). Moreover it seemed edited both for public consumption and to please Steele's DNC patrons.

    Steele wrote of Russians having a file of "compromising information" on Hillary Clinton, only this file supposedly lacked "details/evidence of unorthodox or embarrassing behavior" or "embarrassing conduct."

    We were meant to believe the Russians, across decades of dirt-digging, had an empty kompromat file on Hillary Clinton, to say nothing of human tabloid headline Bill Clinton? This point was made more than once in the reports, as if being emphasized for the reading public.

    There were other curious lines, including the bit about Russians having "moles" in the DNC, plus some linguistic details that made me wonder at the nationality of the report author.

    Still, who knew? It could be true. But even the most cursory review showed the report had issues and would need a lot of confirming. This made it more amazing that the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, held hearings on March 20, 2017 that blithely read out Steele report details as if they were fact. From Schiff's opening statement:

    According to Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who is reportedly held in high regard by U.S. Intelligence, Russian sources tell him that Page has also had a secret meeting with Igor Sechin (SEH-CHIN), CEO of Russian gas giant Rosneft Page is offered brokerage fees by Sechin on a deal involving a 19 percent share of the company.

    I was stunned watching this. It's generally understood that members of congress, like reporters, make an effort to vet at least their prepared remarks before making them public.

    But here was Schiff, telling the world Trump aide Carter Page had been offered huge fees on a 19% stake in Rosneft – a company with a $63 billion market capitalization – in a secret meeting with a Russian oligarch who was also said to be "a KGB agent and close friend of Putin's."

    (Schiff meant "FSB agent." The inability of #Russiagaters to remember Russia is not the Soviet Union became increasingly maddening over time. Donna Brazile still hasn't deleted her tweet about how " The Communists are now dictating the terms of the debate ." )

    Schiff's speech raised questions. Do we no longer have to worry about getting accusations right if the subject is tied to Russiagate? What if Page hadn't done any of these things? To date, he hasn't been charged with anything. Shouldn't a member of Congress worry about this?

    A few weeks after that hearing, Steele gave testimony in a British lawsuit filed by one of the Russian companies mentioned in his reports. In a written submission , Steele said his information was "raw" and "needed to be analyzed and further investigated/verified." He also wrote that (at least as pertained to the memo in that case) he had not written his report "with the intention that it be republished to the world at large."

    That itself was a curious statement, given that Steele reportedly spoke with multiple reporters in the fall of 2016, but this was his legal position. This story about Steele's British court statements did not make it into the news much in the United States, apart from a few bits in conservative outlets like The Washington Times.

    I contacted Schiff's office to ask if the congressman if he knew about Steele's admission that his report needed verifying, and if that changed his view of it at all. The response (emphasis mine):

    The dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and which was leaked publicly several months ago contains information that may be pertinent to our investigation. This is true regardless of whether it was ever intended for public dissemination. Accordingly, the Committee hopes to speak with Mr. Steele in order to help substantiate or refute each of the allegations contained in the dossier.

    Schiff had not spoken to Steele before the hearing, and read out the allegations knowing they were unsubstantiated.

    The Steele report was the Magna Carta of #Russiagate. It provided the implied context for thousands of news stories to come, yet no journalist was ever able to confirm its most salacious allegations: the five year cultivation plan, the blackmail, the bribe from Sechin, the Prague trip, the pee romp, etc. In metaphorical terms, we were unable to independently produce Steele's results in the lab. Failure to reckon with this corrupted the narrative from the start.

    For years, every hint the dossier might be true became a banner headline, while every time doubt was cast on Steele's revelations, the press was quiet. Washington Post reporter Greg Miller went to Prague and led a team looking for evidence Cohen had been there. Post reporters, Miller said, "literally spent weeks and months trying to run down" the Cohen story.

    "We sent reporters through every hotel in Prague, through all over the place, just to try to figure out if he was ever there," he said, "and came away empty."

    This was heads-I-win, tails-you-lose reporting. One assumes if Miller found Cohen's name in a hotel ledger, it would have been on page 1 of the Post. The converse didn't get a mention in Miller's own paper. He only told the story during a discussion aired by C-SPAN about a new book he'd published. Only The Daily Caller and a few conservative blogs picked it up.

    It was the same when Bob Woodward said, "I did not find [espionage or collusion] Of course I looked for it, looked for it hard."

    The celebrated Watergate muckraker – who once said he'd succumbed to "groupthink" in the WMD episode and added, "I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder" – didn't push very hard here, either. News that he'd tried and failed to find collusion didn't get into his own paper. It only came out when Woodward was promoting his book Fear in a discussion with conservative host Hugh Hewitt.

    When Michael Cohen testified before congress and denied under oath ever being in Prague, it was the same. Few commercial news outlets bothered to take note of the implications this had for their previous reports. Would a man clinging to a plea deal lie to congress on national television about this issue?

    There was a CNN story , but the rest of the coverage was all in conservative outlets – the National Review , Fox , The Daily Caller . The Washington Post's response was to run an editorial sneering at " How conservative media downplayed Michael Cohen's testimony ."

    Perhaps worst of all was the episode involving Yahoo! reporter Michael Isikoff. He had already been part of one strange tale: the FBI double-dipping when it sought a FISA warrant to conduct secret surveillance of Carter Page, the would-be mastermind who was supposed to have brokered a deal with oligarch Sechin.

    In its FISA application, the FBI included both the unconfirmed Steele report and Isikoff's September 23, 2016 Yahoo! story, " U.S. Intel Officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin ." The Isikoff story, which claimed Page had met with "high ranking sanctioned officials" in Russia, had relied upon Steele as an unnamed source.

    This was similar to a laundering technique used in the WMD episode called "stove-piping," i.e. officials using the press to "confirm" information the officials themselves fed the reporter.

    But there was virtually no non-conservative press about this problem apart from a Washington Post story pooh-poohing the issue. (Every news story that casts any doubt on the collusion issue seems to meet with an instantaneous "fact check" in the Post .) The Post insisted the FISA issue wasn't serious among other things because Steele was not the "foundation" of Isikoff's piece.

    Isikoff was perhaps the reporter most familiar with Steele. He and Corn of Mother Jones , who also dealt with the ex-spy, wrote a bestselling book that relied upon theories from Steele, Russian Roulette , including a rumination on the "pee" episode. Yet Isikoff in late 2018 suddenly said he believed the Steele report would turn out to be " mostly false ."

    Once again, this only came out via a podcast, John Ziegler's "Free Speech Broadcasting" show. Here's a transcript of the relevant section:

    Isikoff: When you actually get into the details of the Steele dossier, the specific allegations, you know, we have not seen the evidence to support them. And in fact there is good grounds to think some of the more sensational allegations will never be proven, and are likely false.

    Ziegler: That's...

    Isikoff: I think it's a mixed record at best at this point, things could change, Mueller may yet produce evidence that changes this calculation. But based on the public record at this point I have to say that most of the specific allegations have not been borne out.

    Ziegler: That's interesting to hear you say that, Michael because as I'm sure you know, your book was kind of used to validate the pee tape, for lack of a better term.

    Isikoff: Yeah. I think we had some evidence in there of an event that may have inspired the pee tape and that was the visit that Trump made with a number of characters who later showed up in Moscow, specifically Emin Agalarov and Rob Goldstone to this raunchy Las Vegas nightclub where one of the regular acts was a skit called "Hot For Teacher" in which dancers posing as college Co-Ed's urinated – or simulated urinating on their professor. Which struck me as an odd coincidence at best. I think, you know, it is not implausible that event may have inspired...

    Ziegler: An urban legend?

    Isikoff: ...allegations that appeared in the Steele dossier.

    Isikoff delivered this story with a laughing tone. He seamlessly transitioned to what he then called the "real" point, i.e. "the irony is Steele may be right, but it wasn't the Kremlin that had sexual kompromat on Donald Trump, it was the National Enquirer. "

    Recapping: the reporter who introduced Steele to the world (his September 23, 2016 story was the first to reference him as a source), who wrote a book that even he concedes was seen as "validating" the pee tape story, suddenly backtracks and says the whole thing may have been based on a Las Vegas strip act, but it doesn't matter because Stormy Daniels, etc.

    Another story of this type involved a court case in which Webzilla and parent company XBT sued Steele and Buzzfeed over the mention their firm in one of the memos. It came out in court testimony that Steele had culled information about XBT/Webzilla from a 2009 post on CNN's "iReports" page .

    Asked if he understood these posts came from random users and not CNN journalists who'd been fact-checked, Steele replied, " I do not ."

    This comical detail was similar to news that the second British Mi6 dossier released just before the Iraq invasion had been plagiarized in part from a thirteen year-old student thesis from California State University, not even by intelligence people, but by mid-level functionaries in Tony Blair's press office.

    There were so many profiles of Steele as an " astoundingly diligent " spymaster straight out of LeCarre : he was routinely described like a LeCarre-ian grinder like the legendary George Smiley, a man in the shadows whose bookish intensity was belied by his "average," "neutral," "quiet," demeanor, being "more low-key than Smiley." One would think it might have rated a mention that our "Smiley" was cutting and pasting text like a community college freshman. But the story barely made news.

    This has been a consistent pattern throughout #Russiagate. Step one: salacious headline. Step two, days or weeks later: news emerges the story is shakier than first believed. Step three (in the best case) involves the story being walked back or retracted by the same publication.

    That's been rare. More often, when explosive #Russiagate headlines go sideways, the original outlets simply ignore the new development, leaving the "retraction" process to conservative outlets that don't reach the original audiences.

    This is a major structural flaw of the new fully-divided media landscape in which Republican media covers Democratic corruption and Democratic media covers Republican corruption. If neither "side" feels the need to disclose its own errors and inconsistencies, mistakes accumulate quickly.

    This has been the main difference between Russiagate and the WMD affair. Despite David Remnick's post-invasion protestations that "nobody got [WMD] completely right," the Iraq war was launched against the objections of the 6 million or more people who did get it right, and protested on the streets . There was open skepticism of Bush claims dotting the press landscape from the start, with people like Jack Shafer tearing apart every Judith Miller story in print. Most reporters are Democrats and the people hawking the WMD story were mostly Republicans, so there was political space for protest.

    Russiagate happened in an opposite context. If the story fell apart it would benefit Donald Trump politically, a fact that made a number of reporters queasy about coming forward. #Russiagate became synonymous with #Resistance, which made public skepticism a complicated proposition.

    Early in the scandal, I appeared on To The Point, a California-based public radio show hosted by Warren Olney, with Corn of Mother Jones. I knew David a little and had been friendly with him. He once hosted a book event for me in Washington. In the program, however, the subject of getting facts right came up and Corn said this was not a time for reporters to be picking nits:

    So Democrats getting overeager, overenthusiastic, stating things that may not be [unintelligible] true ? Well, tell me a political issue where that doesn't happen. I think that's looking at the wrong end of the telescope.

    I wrote him later and suggested that since we're in the press, and not really about anything except avoiding "things that may not be true," maybe we had different responsibilities than "Democrats"? He wrote back:

    Feel free to police the Trump opposition. But on the list of shit that needs to be covered these days, that's just not high on my personal list.

    Other reporters spoke of an internal struggle. When the Mueller indictment of the Internet Research Agency was met with exultation in the media, New Yorker writer Adrian Chen, who broke the original IRA story, was hesitant to come forward with some mild qualms about the way the story was being reported:

    "Either I could stay silent and allow the conversation to be dominated by those pumping up the Russian threat," he said, "or I could risk giving fodder to Trump and his allies."

    After writing, " Confessions of a Russiagate Skeptic ," poor Blake Hounsell of Politico took such a beating on social media, he ended up denouncing himself a year later.

    "What I meant to write is, I wasn't skeptical," he said.

    Years ago, in the midst of the WMD affair, Times public editor Daniel Okrent noted the paper's standard had moved from "Don't get it first, get it right" to "Get it first and get it right." From there, Okrent wrote , "the next devolution was an obvious one."

    We're at that next devolution: first and wrong. The Russiagate era has so degraded journalism that even once "reputable" outlets are now only about as right as politicians, which is to say barely ever, and then only by accident.

    Early on, I was so amazed by the sheer quantity of Russia "bombshells" being walked back, I started to keep a list. It's well above 50 stories now. As has been noted by Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept and others, if the mistakes were random, you'd expect them in both directions , but Russiagate errors uniformly go the same way.

    In some cases the stories are only partly wrong, as in the case of the famed " 17 intelligence agencies said Russia was behind the hacking " story (it was actually four: the Director of National Intelligence "hand-picking" a team from the FBI, CIA, and NSA).

    In other cases the stories were blunt false starts, resulting in ugly sets of matching headlines:

    " Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility "

    Washington Post, December 31, 2016.

    " Russian government hackers do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility "

    Washington Post, Jan. 2, 2017.

    " Trump Campaign Aides had repeated contacts with Russian Intelligence ," published by the Times on Valentine's Day, 2017, was an important, narrative-driving "bombshell" that looked dicey from the start. The piece didn't say whether the contact was witting or unwitting, whether the discussions were about business or politics, or what the contacts supposedly were at all.

    Normally a reporter would want to know what the deal is before he or she runs a story accusing people of having dealings with foreign spies. "Witting" or "Unwitting" ought to be a huge distinction, for instance. It soon after came out that people like former CIA chief John Brennan don't think this is the case. "Frequently, people who are on a treasonous path do not know they're on a treasonous path," he said, speaking of Trump's circle.

    This seemed a dangerous argument, the kind of thing that led to trouble in the McCarthy years. But let's say the contacts were serious. From a reporting point of view, you'd still need to know exactly what the nature of such contacts were before you run that story, because the headline implication is grave. Moreover you'd need to know it well enough to report it, i.e. it's not enough to be told a convincing story off-the-record, you need to be able to share with readers enough so that they can characterize the news themselves.

    Not to the Times, which ran the article without the specifics. Months later, Comey blew up this "contacts" story in public, saying, " in the main, it was not true ."

    As was the case with the "17 agencies" error, which only got fixed when Clapper testified in congress and was forced to make the correction under oath, the "repeated contacts" story was only disputed when Comey testified in congress, this time before the Senate Intelligence Committee . How many other errors of this type are waiting to be disclosed?

    Even the mistakes caught were astounding. On December 1, 2017, ABC reporter Brian Ross claimed Trump "as a candidate" instructed Michael Flynn to contact Russia. The news caused the Dow to plummet 350 points. The story was retracted almost immediately and Ross was suspended .

    Bloomberg reported Mueller subpoenaed Trump's Deutsche Bank accounts; the subpoenas turned out to be of other individuals' records. Fortune said C-SPAN was hacked after Russia Today programming briefly interrupted coverage of a Maxine Waters floor address. The New York Times also ran the story, and it's still up, despite C-SPAN insisting its own "internal routing error" likely caused the feed to appear in place of its own broadcast.

    CNN has its own separate sub-list of wrecks. Three of the network's journalists resigned after a story purporting to tie Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci to a Russian investment fund was retracted. Four more CNN reporters (Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper and Brian Rokus) were bylined in a story that claimed Comey was expected to refute Trump's claims he was told he wasn't the target of an investigation. Comey blew that one up, too.

    In another CNN scoop gone awry, " Email pointed Trump campaign to WikiLeaks documents ," the network's reporters were off by ten days in a "bombshell" that supposedly proved the Trump campaign had foreknowledge of Wikileaks dumps. "It's, uh, perhaps not as significant as what we know now," offered CNN's Manu Raju in a painful on-air retraction .

    The worst stories were the ones never corrected. A particularly bad example is " After Florida School Shooting, Russian 'Bot' Army Pounced ," from the New York Times on Feb 18, 2018. The piece claimed Russians were trying to divide Americans on social media after a mass shooting using Twitter hashtags like #guncontrolnow, #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting.

    The Times ran this quote high up:

    "This is pretty typical for them, to hop on breaking news like this," said Jonathon Morgan, chief executive of New Knowledge, a company that tracks online disinformation campaigns. "The bots focus on anything that is divisive for Americans. Almost systematically."

    About a year after this story came out, Times reporters Scott Shane and Ann Blinder reported that the same outfit, New Knowledge , and in particular that same Jonathon Morgan, had participated in a cockamamie scheme to fake Russian troll activity in an Alabama Senate race. The idea was to try to convince voters Russia preferred the Republican.

    The Times quoted a New Knowledge internal report about the idiotic Alabama scheme:

    We orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet

    The Parkland story was iffy enough when it came out, as Twitter disputed it, and another of the main sources for the initial report, former intelligence official Clint Watts, subsequently said he was "not convinced" on the whole "bot thing."

    But when one of your top sources turns out to have faked exactly the kind of activity described in your article, you should at least take the quote out, or put an update online. No luck: the story remains up on the Times site, without disclaimers.

    Russiagate institutionalized one of the worst ethical loopholes in journalism, which used to be limited mainly to local crime reporting. It's always been a problem that we publish mugshots and names of people merely arrested but not yet found guilty. Those stories live forever online and even the acquitted end up permanently unable to get jobs, smeared as thieves, wife-beaters, drunk drivers, etc.

    With Russiagate the national press abandoned any pretense that there's a difference between indictment and conviction. The most disturbing story involved Maria Butina. Here authorities and the press shared responsibility. Thanks to an indictment that initially said the Russian traded sex for favors, the Times and other outlets flooded the news cycle with breathless stories about a redheaded slut-temptress come to undermine democracy, a "real-life Red Sparrow," as ABC put it.

    But a judge threw out the sex charge after "five minutes" when it turned out to be based on a single joke text to a friend who had taken Butina's car for inspection.

    It's pretty hard to undo public perception you're a prostitute once it's been in a headline, and, worse, the headlines are still out there. You can still find stories like " Maria Butina, Suspected Secret Agent, Used Sex in Covert Plan " online in the New York Times.

    Here a reporter might protest: how would I know? Prosecutors said she traded sex for money. Why shouldn't I believe them?

    How about because, authorities have been lying their faces off to reporters since before electricity! It doesn't take much investigation to realize the main institutional sources in the Russiagate mess – the security services, mainly – have extensive records of deceiving the media.

    As noted before, from World War I-era tales of striking union workers being German agents to the "missile gap" that wasn't (the "gap" was leaked to the press before the Soviets had even one operational ICBM) to the Gulf of Tonkin mess to all the smears of people like Martin Luther King, it's a wonder newspapers listen to whispers from government sources at all.

    In the Reagan years National Security Adviser John Poindexter spread false stories about Libyan terrorist plots to The Wall Street Journal and other papers. In the Bush years, Dick Cheney et al were selling manure by the truckload about various connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda, infamously including a story that bomber Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague.

    The New York Times ran a story that Atta was in Prague in late October of 2001, even giving a date of the meeting with Iraqis, April 8, or "just five months before the terrorist attacks." The Prague story was another example of a tale that seemed shaky because American officials were putting the sourcing first on foreign intelligence, then on reporters themselves. Cheney cited the Prague report in subsequent TV appearances, one of many instances of feeding reporters tidbits and then selling reports as independent confirmation.

    It wasn't until three years later, in 2004, that Times reporter James Risen definitively killed the Atta-in-Prague canard (why is it always Prague?) in a story entitled " No evidence of meeting with Iraqi ." By then, of course, it was too late. The Times also held a major dissenting piece by Risen about the WMD case, "C.I.A. Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports," until days after war started. This is what happens when you start thumbing the scale.

    This failure to demand specifics has been epidemic in Russiagate, even when good reporters have been involved. One of the biggest "revelations" of this era involved a story that was broken first by a terrible reporter (the Guardian's Luke Harding) and followed up by a good one (Jane Mayer of the New Yorker ). The key detail involved the elusive origin story of Russiagate.

    Mayer's piece, the March 12, 2018 " Christopher Steele, the Man Behind The Trump Dossier " in the New Yorker , impacted the public mainly by seeming to bolster the credentials of the dossier author. But it contained an explosive nugget far down. Mayer reported Robert Hannigan, then-head of the GCHQ (the British analog to the NSA) intercepted a "stream of illicit communications" between "Trump's team and Moscow" at some point prior to August 2016. Hannigan flew to the U.S. and briefed CIA director John Brennan about these communications. Brennan later testified this inspired the original FBI investigation.

    When I read that, a million questions came to mind, but first: what did "illicit" mean?

    If something "illicit" had been captured by GCHQ, and this led to the FBI investigation (one of several conflicting public explanations for the start of the FBI probe, incidentally), this would go a long way toward clearing up the nature of the collusion charge. If they had something, why couldn't they tell us what it was? Why didn't we deserve to know?

    I asked the Guardian: "Was any attempt made to find out what those communications were? How was the existence of these communications confirmed? Did anyone from the Guardian see or hear these intercepts, or transcripts?"

    Their one-sentence reply:

    The Guardian has strict and rigorous procedures when dealing with source material.

    That's the kind of answer you'd expect from a transnational bank, or the army, not a newspaper.

    I asked Mayer the same questions. She was more forthright, noting that, of course, the story had originally been broken by Harding , whose own report said "the precise nature of these exchanges has not been made public."

    She added that "afterwards I independently confirmed aspects of [Harding's piece] with several well-informed sources," and "spent months on the Steele story [and] traveled to the UK twice for it." But, she wrote, "the Russiagate story, like all reporting on sensitive national security issues, is difficult."

    I can only infer she couldn't find out what "illicit" meant despite proper effort. The detail was published anyway. It may not have seemed like a big deal, but I think it was.

    To be clear, I don't necessarily disbelieve the idea that there were "illicit" contacts between Trump and Russians in early 2015 or before. But if there were such contacts, I can't think of any legitimate reason why their nature should be withheld from the public.

    If authorities can share reasons for concern with foreign countries like Israel, why should American voters not be so entitled? Moreover the idea that we need to keep things secret to protect sources and methods and "tradecraft" (half the press corps became expert in goofy spy language over the last few years, using terms like "SIGINT" like they've known them their whole lives), why are we leaking news of our ability to hear Russian officials cheerin g Trump's win?

    Failure to ask follow-up questions happened constantly with this story. One of the first reports that went sideways involved a similar dynamic: the contention that some leaked DNC emails were forgeries.

    MSNBC's "Intelligence commentator" Malcolm Nance, perhaps the most enthusiastic source of questionable #Russiagate news this side of Twitter conspiracist Louise Mensch, tweeted on October 11, 2016: " #PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done."

    As noted in The Intercept and elsewhere, this was re-reported by the likes of David Frum (a key member of the club that has now contributed to both the WMD and Russiagate panics) and MSNBC host Joy Reid . The reports didn't stop until roughly October of 2016, among other things because the Clinton campaign kept suggesting to reporters the emails were fake. This could have been stopped sooner if examples of a forgery had been demanded from the Clinton campaign earlier.

    Another painful practice that became common was failing to confront your own sources when news dispositive to what they've told you pops up. The omnipresent Clapper told Chuck Todd on March 5, 2017, without equivocation, that there had been no FISA application involving Trump or his campaign. " I can deny it ," he said.

    It soon after came out this wasn't true. The FBI had a FISA warrant on Carter Page. This was not a small misstatement by Clapper, because his appearance came a day after Trump claimed in a tweet he'd had his " wires tapped ." Trump was widely ridiculed for this claim, perhaps appropriately so, but in addition to the Page news, it later came out there had been a FISA warrant of Paul Manafort as well, during which time Trump may have been the subject of " incidental " surveillance.

    Whether or not this was meaningful, or whether these warrants were justified, are separate questions. The important thing is, Clapper either lied to Todd, or else he somehow didn't know the FBI had obtained these warrants. The latter seems absurd and unlikely. Either way, Todd ought to been peeved and demanded an explanation. Instead, he had Clapper back on again within months and gave him the usual softball routine, never confronting him about the issue.

    Reporters repeatedly got burned and didn't squawk about it. Where are the outraged stories about all the scads of anonymous "people familiar with the matter" who put reporters in awkward spots in the last years? Why isn't McClatchy demanding the heads of whatever "four people with knowledge" convinced them to double down on the Cohen-in-Prague story ?

    Why isn't every reporter who used "New Knowledge" as a source about salacious Russian troll stories out for their heads (or the heads of the congressional sources who passed this stuff on), after reports they faked Russian trolling? How is it possible NBC and other outlets continued to use New Knowledge as a source in stories identifying antiwar Democrat Tulsi Gabbard as a Russian-backed candidate?

    How do the Guardian's editors not already have Harding's head in a vice for hanging them out to dry on the most dubious un-retracted story in modern history – the tale that the most watched human on earth, Julian Assange, had somehow been visited in the Ecuadorian embassy by Paul Manafort without leaving any record? I'd be dragging Harding's "well placed source" into the office and beating him with a hose until he handed them something that would pass for corroborating evidence.

    The lack of blowback over episodes in which reporters were put in public compromised situations speaks to the overly cozy relationships outlets had with official sources. Too often, it felt like a team effort, where reporters seemed to think it was their duty to take the weight if sources pushed them to overreach. They had absolutely no sense of institutional self-esteem about this.

    Being on any team is a bad look for the press, but the press being on team FBI/CIA is an atrocity, Trump or no Trump. Why bother having a press corps at all if you're going to go that route?

    This posture all been couched as anti-Trump solidarity, but really, did former CIA chief John Brennan – the same Brennan who should himself have faced charges for lying to congress about hacking the computers of Senate staff – need the press to whine on his behalf when Trump yanked his security clearance? Did we need the press to hum Aretha Franklin tunes, as ABC did, and chide Trump for lacking R-E-S-P-E-C-T for the CIA? We don't have better things to do than that "work"?

    This catalogue of factual errors and slavish stenography will stand out when future analysts look back at why the "MSM" became a joke during this period, but they were only a symptom of a larger problem. The bigger issue was a radical change in approach.

    A lot of #Russiagate coverage became straight-up conspiracy theory, what Baker politely called "connecting the dots ." This was allowed because the press committed to a collusion narrative from the start, giving everyone cover to indulge in behaviors that would never be permitted in normal times.

    Such was the case with Jonathan Chait's #Russiagate opus , "PRUMP TUTIN: Will Trump be Meeting With his Counterpart – or his Handler?" The story was also pitched as "What if Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987," which recalls the joke from The Wire: " Yo, Herc, what if your mother and father never met ?" What if isn't a good place to be in this business.

    This cover story (!) in New York magazine was released in advance of a planned "face-to-face" summit between Trump and Putin, and posited Trump had been under Russian control for decades. Chait noted Trump visited the Soviet Union in 1987 and came back "fired up with political ambition." He offered the possibility that this was a coincidence, but added:

    Indeed, it seems slightly insane to contemplate the possibility that a secret relationship between Trump and Russia dates back this far. But it can't be dismissed completely.

    I searched the Chait article up and down for reporting that would justify the suggestion Trump had been a Russian agent dating back to the late eighties, when, not that it matters, Russia was a different country called the Soviet Union.

    Only two facts in the piece could conceivably have been used to support the thesis: Trump met with a visiting Soviet official in 1986, and visited the Soviet Union in 1987. That's it. That's your cover story.

    Worse, Chait's theory was first espoused in Lyndon Larouche's " Elephants and Donkeys " newsletter in 1987, under a headline, "Do Russians have a Trump card?" This is barrel-scraping writ large.

    It's a mania. Putin is literally in our underpants. Maybe, if we're lucky, New York might someday admit its report claiming Russians set up an anti-masturbation hotline to trap and blackmail random Americans is suspicious, not just because it seems absurd on its face, but because its source is the same "New Knowledge" group that admitted to faking Russian influence operations in Alabama.

    But what retraction is possible for the Washington Post headline, " How will Democrats cope if Putin starts playing dirty tricks for Bernie Sanders (again )?" How to reverse Rachel Maddow's spiel about Russia perhaps shutting down heat across America during a cold wave? There's no correction for McCarthyism and fearmongering.

    This ultimately will be the endgame of the Russia charade. They will almost certainly never find anything like the wild charges and Manchurian Candidate theories elucidated in the Steele report. But the years of panic over the events of 2016 will lead to radical changes in everything from press regulation to foreign policy, just as the WMD canard led to torture, warrantless surveillance, rendition, drone assassination, secret budgets and open-ended, undeclared wars from Somalia to Niger to Syria. The screw-ups will be forgotten, but accelerated vigilance will remain.

    It's hard to know what policy changes are appropriate because the reporting on everything involving the Russian threat in the last two to three years has been so unreliable.

    I didn't really address the case that Russia hacked the DNC, content to stipulate it for now. I was told early on that this piece of the story seemed "solid," but even that assertion has remained un-bolstered since then, still based on an " assessment " by the intelligence services that always had issues, including the use of things like RT's "anti-American" coverage of fracking as part of its case. The government didn't even examine the DNC's server, the kind of detail that used to make reporters nervous.

    We won't know how much of any of this to take seriously until the press gets out of bed with the security services and looks at this whole series of events all over again with fresh eyes, as journalists, not political actors. That means being open to asking what went wrong with this story, in addition to focusing so much energy on Trump and Russia.

    The WMD mess had massive real-world negative impact, leading to over a hundred thousand deaths and trillions in lost taxpayer dollars. Unless Russiagate leads to a nuclear conflict, we're unlikely to ever see that level of consequence.

    Still, Russiagate has led to unprecedented cooperation between the government and Internet platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, all of which are censoring pages on the left, right, and in between in the name of preventing the "sowing of discord." The story also had a profound impact on the situation in places like Syria, where Russian and American troops have sat across the Euphrates River from one another, two amped-up nuclear powers at a crossroads.

    As a purely journalistic failure, however, WMD was a pimple compared to Russiagate. The sheer scale of the errors and exaggerations this time around dwarfs the last mess. Worse, it's led to most journalists accepting a radical change in mission. We've become sides-choosers, obliterating the concept of the press as an independent institution whose primary role is sorting fact and fiction.

    We had the sense to eventually look inward a little in the WMD affair, which is the only reason we escaped that episode with any audience left. Is the press even capable of that kind of self-awareness now? WMD damaged our reputation. If we don't turn things around, this story will destroy it

    motherjones , 31 minutes ago link

    Taibbi is spot on, and in depth with this writing. The main stream media sold Americans on the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Almost 2 decades later, we have spent 6 trillion dollars, 8 millions lives have been lost, and millions of refugees have flooded out of those countries, causing instability in Europe and beyond. For the past 2 years, 24/7, we have not been able to escape the claims of Russiagate. He does not mention how the very same media gave Trump 24/7 coverage long before he was elected, and in fact this free publicity, is probably why Trump is in the White House today. Without the constant press coverage of his campaign, coverage that was not provided to other candidates, he would most likely not have found his way to the White House. Taibbi does not go on to tell us what the motivation of the press is, or what he thinks can be done. News shows in the US have become little more than entertainment. Many of us no longer rely on main stream press for any real news. The mass media has become irrelevant at it's best, and dangerous, at it's worst. The driving force behind the so called news today, is the advertising dollars, and the politics of the owners of the networks. How can we have a "free press" when just a few individuals own all the major news outlets? We are not going to get the real news on tv of from the big newspapers, as long as the power is in the hands of a few rich and powerful individuals, who decide what is news.

    southpaw47 , 50 minutes ago link

    "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread" - Alexander Pope

    The rash or inexperienced will attempt things that wiser people are more cautious of.

    Finally the libs will agree that guns do have their place in society. These crazy zealots may just blow their own brains out or just find the nearest cliff. Ace Hardware is loading up on rope.

    hooligan2009 , 1 hour ago link

    hmmm....just imagine if - sleyers money contribution fo impeach trump was turned into a movie where a "sponsor" drew up a hit list of batshit crazy MSM "personalities" to include late night "comfuckedupedians"

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-25/billionaire-tom-steyer-s-quest-to-impeach-trump

    PerilouseTimes , 1 hour ago link

    Even if you were stupid enough to believe Trump was getting dirt on Hillary from the Russians, what is wrong with that? Is there a law against that? Why is it OK for Obama and the FBI to get away with wiretapping Trump during the election? Why is it OK for NSA to wiretap All Americans and store all their conversations and internet traffic on hard drives?

    foxenburg , 1 hour ago link

    Steele, Orbis, Pablo Miller, Salisbury, Porton Down, golden-shower dossier supposedly written by a native Russian speaker with an intelligence background....it all makes me wonder what happened to Skripal.

    hooligan2009 , 1 hour ago link

    "Skripalgate" is suppressed by UK law. All russians are evil in the UK. The fact that (as with tony Bliar and yellowcake Iraq) any sitting government can prosecute another country without a trial, witnesses or evidence - as in the Skripals and within the FUKUS cabal that bombed syria because of - "chlorine barrel bomb attacks on civilians" who later showed up unscathed in Den Haag.

    UK governments cannot be held to account for their actions domestically or overseas.

    motherjones , 1 hour ago link

    Both parties have been playing up the threat from Russia for decades. The Military Industrial Complex was built on creating fear about the possibility of war with Russian. The military industrial complex owns Congress, so of course Congress is going to play up this threat. " The reason why media is working so hard to create the impression that Russia is actively conspiring against is because conflict with the former Soviet Union is good for business." We can expect this to continue in one form or another. If Americans were not afraid of Russia, we would not support a defense budget that is equal to all other countries in the world combined.

    https://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/08/30/defense-contractors-tell-investors-world-war-iii-great-for-business/?fbclid=IwAR0rSFD3EPOgCd_dohnRg_4W1VUMcu-u33PBi9LW8Pdcv4F4pL4_MTXU31c

    devnickle , 1 hour ago link

    Put a sock in it. You should be embarrassed to even comment.

    motherjones , 1 hour ago link

    Right. The depth of your analysis is impressive. You seem to have an unlimited knowledge of world and national affairs too. Other than some stalking tendencies, why do you post on ZH? You don't really seem to have any interest in the content, or the discussion.

    Bricker , 2 hours ago link

    The head of the pin starts with OBAMA

    I dont want to type up everything that led me to believe this. But the racism, his empathy towards certain muslims groups and how he treated the war, the prisoner release, the sailors broadcasted on tv about drifting into territorial waters, I mean it was so obvious how he felt about America.

    Pile on his efforts to interfere in the election and eavesdrop, unmasking with Hillary getting and receiving emails from her home brew server not to mention her foundation pulling in 145 million from Russia.

    The CIA is sickening to what has developed over the last 20 years

    blind_understanding , 2 hours ago link

    Taibbi: 'Russiagate' Is This Generation's WMD

    Blind: If so, it just means it will not be reported on in the MainStream Media(MSM) and soon forgotten.

    The same people who own the private central bank and currency, also own the MSM, and they control the narrative on ALL TOPICS. And control of narrative mean control of what people think.

    Control of money and mind means TOTAL control of a country.

    Nothing will change until control of minds is returned to the people, then issuance of currency can be returned to the government.

    Alex Jones' of Infowars got it right when he said "There's a war on for your mind!" ... even though he became a turncoat himself, soon after.

    SnottyBubbles , 2 hours ago link

    Hillary lost a freaking election. After almost 3 freaking years of coup d'état the left deserves mocking humiliation. Mock them ruthlessly. Never, ever let them forget the horrible thing that they did.

    Never stop making fun of them and reminding them how stupid and crazy they acted during this humiliating period of US history. Never let them forget what they did to the nation or what they cost us all. Never let Democrats forget how much time and energy they wasted, how very, very wrong they were.

    Every politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit and everyone who swallowed this moronic load of Russia! Russia! Russia! has utterly discredited themselves for life. They executed and failed to accomplish a coup d'état. These are the very last people anyone should ever listen to ever again when determining the future direction of our world or an ice cream truck.

    Refuse them, laugh at them, ignore them. They earned it and deserve nothing but the greatest disdain.

    devnickle , 1 hour ago link

    Revenge is best served cold. I am dishing out in buckets to the retards.

    artistant , 2 hours ago link

    Russia is an IMPEDIMENT to APARTHEID Israhell's design for the region .

    Without Russia, ASSAD would be long gone and IRAN would have been bombed to oblivion, and Greater Israhell would have been fulfilled and ruling over the MidEast.

    In other words, Russiagate is simply PAYBACK .

    youshallnotkill , 2 hours ago link

    There was never real gray area here. Either Trump is a compromised foreign agent, or he isn't.

    Of course there isn't. But this doesn't mean that a prosecutor like Mueller can prove this beyond any reasonable doubt. In fact it is quite likely that he cannot. The only charge that should be fairly easy to establish is obstruction of justice.

    Without knowing what is in the report, Taibbi really jumps the gun here. Especially given the comparison to WMDs.

    I knew there were no WMDs in Iraq before the invasion because I followed, and chose to believe, a credible diplomat like Hans Blix over the dog and pony show that Colin Powell put on. But WMDs are very tangible you either find the hardware or you do not. Yet, what Putin and Trump discuss without a single other American in the room nobody knows but the Kremlin and Trump.

    Amy G. Dala , 2 hours ago link

    Um, they talked about grandchildren and golf. MSM bought that about Bill and Loretta.

    youshallnotkill , 2 hours ago link

    At least Loretta probably did not aspire to bring the US to its knees.

    Amy G. Dala , 2 hours ago link

    Then I guess you didn't catch her "blood in the streets" speech.

    youshallnotkill , 2 hours ago link

    Original quote:

    "It has been people, individuals who have banded together, ordinary people who simply saw what needed to be done and came together and supported those ideals who have made the difference.

    They've marched, they've bled and yes, some of them died. This is hard. Every good thing is. We have done this before. We can do this again ."

    Hardly the call for violent civil war at which it has been portrayed.

    hanekhw , 2 hours ago link

    The most coiffed, manicured, made up sacks of **** ever to glorify the airwaves tell US what THEY think and get paid handsome salaries for their effort to overthrow the American system. Freedom of Speech? That'll be gone in a heartbeat if THEY get power. We have an obligation to not just protect it but a greater one to preserve it.

    Tunga , 2 hours ago link

    "I didn't really address the case that Russia hacked the DNC, content to stipulate it for now." - exce

    The State Department paused its investigation of the Secretary's emails so as not to interfere with the Mueller investigation. Here we see Taibbi writes an exhaustive condemnation of the Western press while leaving out the very crux of the story, the very source of the stolen DNC emails was Clapper and Brennan pretending to be Guccifer 2.0.

    Pitiful attempt at redemption there Matt. Seriously, go **** your self.

    "After reading several articles, it seemed clear that key difficulties for Russians communicating in English include: definite and indefinite articles, the use of presuppositions and correct usage of say/tell and said/told. Throughout 2017, I constructed a corpus of Guccifer 2.0's communications and analyzed the frequency of different types of mistakes. The results of this work corroborate Professor Connolly's assessment.

    Overall, it appears Guccifer 2.0 could communicate in English quite well but chose to use inconsistently broken English at times in order to give the impression that it wasn't his primary language. The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian.

    To date, Connolly's language study has not drawn any significant objections or criticism."

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-25/guccifer-20-game-over-year-end-review-0

    Amy G. Dala , 2 hours ago link

    Here's the goddam thing IMO. There is this thing called freedom of the press, it's constitutionally protected, no different than the right to bear arms.

    But just because I have the right to carry an M+A 9mm around, that doesn't mean I can point it at the guy who cut me off in traffic. In that case, I go to jail.

    For almost three years now, I've been hearing "bombshell" after unsourced "bombshell" from CNN/MSNBC/WaPo/NPR/NYT et. al. Here's how it usually goes:

    • "NPR has been unable to independently confirm, but other major news organizations are reporting that . . ."
    • "CNN is working to confirm a bombshell report from the Washington Post . . ."
    • "The New York Times, echoing other major news outlets, is reporting that . . ."

    And now let's turn to our panel of experts to "unpack" this latest revelation . . .

    These people have criminally abused their rights, and those rights need to be taken away.

    Otschelnik,

    If Rachel Maddow, Chris Mathews, Judy Woodruff, Chuck Todd, Anderson Cooper, Brian Stelter, Chris Hayes, Mika Brzezinski, Don Lemon, Alysin Camerota, Lawrence O'Donnell had the slightest inkling of professional integrity, and human conscience - they'd commit seppuku on national live TeeVee to restore their honor.

    A rope leash, 3 hours ago

    In his effort to cleanse himself of the slimy residue of his profession, Tiabbi has written a fine piece here, a nice little documentation of press collusion with government spooks and political operatives.

    If a little honest reporting will offer some redemption to damned journalists, his name was Seth Rich.

    hooligan2009, 3 hours ago

    don't forget that Obama was PERSONALLY and DIRECTLY involved in all aspects of Russiagate.

    read between these lines

    On Oct. 14, 2016, Page again wrote to McCabe, this time concerning a meeting with the White House.

    "Just called," Page said to McCabe. "Apparently the DAG [Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates] now wants to be there, and WH wants DOJ to host. So we are setting that up now. ... We will very much need to get Cohen's view before we meet with her. Better, have him weigh in with her before the meeting. We need to speak with one voice, if that is in fact the case."

    newworldorder, 3 hours ago

    The simple truth here is that most Americans no longer have any critical thinking skills, - all media realized this a long time ago, and catered to their audience.

    The Benjamin Franklin famous quote in answer to the question of "what kind of government have you given us?" rings very hollow after 240+ years. The "Republic" exists in name only, because its people have not protected it, after the passing of the WW2 generation.

    Unrestricted, open borders invasion disguised as alleged migration, and the legalization of an eventual 100+ million new "migrant" voters will be the final nail on the coffin of the US Republic by 2030.

    Mob rule will finally destroy the greatest Republic ever conceived by the mind of men.

    Mike Rotsch, 3 hours ago (Edited)

    If "open borders" is your measuring stick on Americans' critical-thinking skills, then where does that place Europeans? They actually have them officially.

    Paracelsus, 3 hours ago

    Someday I hope that Hillary has to be rolled up to testify about the Benghazi business. Grab the guns and the gold (and the oil). Ukraine gold: check. Libyan gold and weapons: check.

    Ghaddafi actually warned the west that after him would come a deluge of illegals (okay refugees: young males, black, often Islamic, with little respect for women or experience with western society).

    While I have reservations about Trump and his policies, the MSM owe him a huge mea culpa.

    [Mar 24, 2019] The accountability that must follow Mueller's report

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The bent cops at the FBI and the madmen like Brennan, Clapper and Comey, who treacherously used the government's forces against the Constitution, must be punished so severely as to make an example that will dissuade other midgets on horseback from making similar attempts to overturn the results of elections. ..."
    "... At the bottom of the cauldron overflowing with political misdeeds shines the face of Hillary Clinton and the army of clever people who ran her 2016 campaign. They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever idea of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British intelligence channels by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. There must be retribution for this. ..."
    "... I would be most interested if one of the legally competent members of this Committee – Robert Willman perhaps? – could give us us an idea of what charges could be leveled against Christopher Steele under U.S. law in relation to his clearly central role in this conspiracy. ..."
    "... It also seems reasonably clear that he was not acting in isolation, and that there is a strong 'prima facie' case that senior figures in the British 'intelligence community' – notably Robert Hannigan and probably Sir Richard Dearlove – were involved, in which case the complicity is likely to have gone very much further. ..."
    "... They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British intelligence channels, by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. ..."
    "... Both sides were furiously engaged in throwing mud at each other. Situation normal. Then an odd thing happens. A particularly foolish piece of mud comes along. All that Golden Showers nonsense. Regard that as normal if we please. I expect worse comes along sometimes. Then it turns out that that piece of mud comes from an Intelligence source. Situation no longer normal. ..."
    "... The coup may be over, but the witch hunt will continue; ..."
    "... Col. Lang is absolutely correct that those involved in attempting to reverse the results of the 2016 election, de-legitimize an elected president, and remove him should be thoroughly pursued through all avenues and procedures of the civil and criminal law. ..."
    "... It's a dirty business. If half this stuff is true, and not just layers of increasingly unbelievable cover stories (I mean, a tangential example, is the whole Skripal thing a weirdly, too obviously fake cover show for what was in reality a "witness protection" operation? A witness who could and would reveal much? On this matter even, perhaps. Such obvious deceptions are harmful to respect for authority and the law.) ..."
    Mar 24, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com
    1. President Trump was not indicted, nor did Mueller recommend an indictment against him for collusion or obstruction.
    2. There were no major disagreements between Mueller and his managers at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
    3. The Russians who tried to interfere in the 2016 election were exposed and charged -- but no American was charged with any effort to conspire with Moscow and hijack the election.
    4. While nearly three dozen people were charged , including a few close to the president or who worked for his campaign, no one in proximity to the president was formally charged with colluding with Russia. Most, such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn or campaign adviser George Papadopoulos , were charged with process crimes or felonies unrelated to the main case, as in Paul Manafort 's secretive, multimillion-dollar foreign lobbying spree through Ukraine.

    *********

    • the "Steele dossier" that was the main FISA evidence was paid for with funds from Hillary Clinton 's campaign and the Democratic Party;
    • Christopher Steele, the dossier's author, had told a senior DOJ official he was desperate to defeat Trump;
    • most of the dossier was not verified before it was used as evidence of alleged Trump-Russia collusion; and
    • agents collected statements from key defendants such as Papadopoulos and Carter Page during interactions with an FBI informant that strongly suggested their innocence.

    Such omissions are so glaring as to constitute defrauding a federal court. And each and every participant to those omissions needs to be brought to justice.

    An upcoming DOJ inspector general's report should trigger the beginning of that accountability in a court of law, and President Trump can assist the effort by declassifying all evidence of wrongdoing by FBI, CIA and DOJ officials. " The Hill

    ------------

    Pilgrims, the seditious conspiracy to depose the elected president of the United States for conspiracy to commit treason with the Government of the Russian Federation has been defeated.

    The bent cops at the FBI and the madmen like Brennan, Clapper and Comey, who treacherously used the government's forces against the Constitution, must be punished so severely as to make an example that will dissuade other midgets on horseback from making similar attempts to overturn the results of elections.

    At the bottom of the cauldron overflowing with political misdeeds shines the face of Hillary Clinton and the army of clever people who ran her 2016 campaign. They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever idea of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British intelligence channels by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. There must be retribution for this.

    The leftist press is already discounting the results of Mueller's investigation while gloating over how long the Democratic held House of Representatives can continue to search through Trump's life trying to find criminality.

    AG Barr should stand Mueller up next to him at a press conference to make clear the results of his report and to answer questions about it. After that the prosecutions should begin. pl

    https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/435394-the-wisdom-of-trumps-lawyers-and-the-accountability-that-must-follow

    Posted at 09:00 AM in government , Justice , Politics | Permalink | 20 Comments

    David Habakkuk , 14 hours ago

    I would be most interested if one of the legally competent members of this Committee – Robert Willman perhaps? – could give us us an idea of what charges could be leveled against Christopher Steele under U.S. law in relation to his clearly central role in this conspiracy.

    It also seems reasonably clear that he was not acting in isolation, and that there is a strong 'prima facie' case that senior figures in the British 'intelligence community' – notably Robert Hannigan and probably Sir Richard Dearlove – were involved, in which case the complicity is likely to have gone very much further.

    The argument that declassification of relevant documentation would harm the intelligence relationship between the U.S. and U.K. has clearly been made with great emphasis from this side.

    In fact, it is pure bollocks. A serious investigation on your side, which could lead to the kind of clean-out which should have happened when the scale of the corruption of intelligence in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq became clear, might pave the way for us to reconstruct reasonably functional intelligence services.

    Doing this on both sides of the Atlantic might pave the way for a reconstruction of an intelligence relationship which was actually beneficial to both countries, as in recent years it patently has not been.

    Whether there is a realistic prospect of people on your side opening the cans of worms on ours, as well as your own, of course remains a moot point.

    English Outsider -> David Habakkuk , 12 hours ago
    Mr Habakkuk,

    I'm glad the Steele affair has been examined at the American end -

    "They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British intelligence channels, by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. "

    What about the UK end? We're fussing over some little local difficulties in the UK at the moment and at our end the questions still remain - Who in the UK authorised it and how high did it go?

    Mark Logan -> David Habakkuk , 9 hours ago

    The problem with criminal prosecution is one must cite a Brit or US law which was violated. The only ones in US law that I am aware of stipulate that the plotting must be by means of violence, "by force". All this appears to me to be only the propagation of rumors.
    English Outsider -> Mark Logan , 6 hours ago
    I think it might be more the investigation of the propagation of rumours. Think back to that election campaign, and to the period before the inauguration.

    Both sides were furiously engaged in throwing mud at each other. Situation normal. Then an odd thing happens. A particularly foolish piece of mud comes along. All that Golden Showers nonsense. Regard that as normal if we please. I expect worse comes along sometimes. Then it turns out that that piece of mud comes from an Intelligence source. Situation no longer normal.

    With respect it is not propagating rumours to ask how that happened. As for my own interest in the affair, it is not propagating rumours to ask how a senior UK ex-Intelligence Officer comes to be mixed up in it all. I suppose I started to look on it as rather more than a prank or a few cogs slipping when that senior UK ex-Intelligence Officer got whisked away to a safe house. We're a penny pinching lot over here and we don't run to that sort of thing for nothing.

    Pat Lang Mod -> English Outsider , 6 hours ago
    Ex?
    Mad_Max22 , 11 hours ago
    An investigation could certainly be predicated on the reasonable suspicion that Steele, et al, conspired to defraud the United States, in this case a purposeful and knowing smear of a candidate for office; also, another potential violation could be lying to the FBI, T 18 USC 1001.

    The problem, as I see it, is sorting out the malignant from the merely incompetent. As I've argued many times, the dossier should have been dismissed from the outset as a pile of garbage, empty of actionable content, because the ultimate sources could not be vetted: the information could not be said to be either credible or reliable. The information was acted on by screening it behind the reliabilty and credibility, so called, of Steele. So it would be necessary to show that Steele knew that the information, point by point, was false. This could be difficult. Steele's first line of defense would be that he threw everything that he heard from anyone at all into the mix in the expectation that the "professionals" would figure it out.

    Yes, they were all partisan, Steele, his sources, his bosses, the so called professionals, and their partisanship would be easy to prove; and yes, almost assuredly their partisanship contributed, perhaps even explained, their defective judgement as to how to handle the scurrilous information, especially on the part of the so called professionals, but proving they actually knew the materials to be false would be difficult.

    They couldn't know that it was false because they had no ability to run down the sources. The professionals would defend themselves by saying they had no ability to vet the sources but the information represented such a serious security threat that they had no alternative but to try to vet the information by launching the investigation against the targets. This puts the cart before the horse, represents an astonishing lack of judgement, especially considering the "exalted" positions in the Intel Community the people exercising the bad judgement occupied, but there it is - "we thought we were doing the right thing."

    Perhaps this defense could be overcome by demonstrating that people at such high and important heights of government could not possible be so stupid... maybe.

    And of course we have the orchestrated leaks to various media, the orchestrated unmaskings, all of which kept the media frenzy fired up. All in all, it was the greatest political dirty trick ever attempted in American Politics, and did devastating damage to both domestic tranquility and national security. Trump survived, but the damage done is incalculable.

    So It pains me greatly to think that the reckoning will likely have to be political rather than criminal because the malice that can be demonstrated is so admixed and even overshadowed by incompetence and judgement flaws; and even a political reckoning given the state of the country is so uncertain.

    I hope that I am wrong and that some kind of prosecution can be fashioned because of the sheer enormity of violence that was done to our electoral system, surpassing by far the chickenshit case Mueller brought against the Russian troll farm; but I fear that I am right. It hurts to think that so much damage can be caused by scheming little political weasels and that they all may well walk away scot free; and even be lionized by their political confreres as having tried to do the right thing. This is the state of American politics today!!!

    Eric Newhill , 12 hours ago
    I see that some of the midgets on horseback are saying that they will bring Mueller before congress to explain himself. Their knight in shining armor has failed to return with the holy grail. A couple even suggested that perhaps Mueller has been influenced by the Russians or somehow intimated by Trump.

    The coup may be over, but the witch hunt will continue;

    and that + all the crazy Marxism (social and economic), bad immigration policy and Green New Deal is going to doom the Democrats in 2020. They look like they are jumping off a final sake fueled banzai charge. Maybe they think the best defense is a good offense re; the prosecutions that should happen. What is the chance that Mueller will pass *all* he has learned to help get the criminal cases under way?

    robt willmann , 3 hours ago
    seesee2468,

    On 13 July 2018, when announcing the indictment of 12 Russian military officers by the Mueller group for "conspiring to interfere" in the 2016 presidential election, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein admitted that no "interference" actually happened. In this video of his announcement, starting at 5 minutes, 52 seconds into it and ending at the 6 minute, 5 second mark, he says--

    "There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime. There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result."

    https://www.c-span.org/vide...

    Col. Lang is absolutely correct that those involved in attempting to reverse the results of the 2016 election, de-legitimize an elected president, and remove him should be thoroughly pursued through all avenues and procedures of the civil and criminal law.

    However, I am concerned that the new attorney general, William Barr, will not do so based on his past associations and work. I hope I am wrong about that, but I am not optimistic.

    Divadab Newton , 10 hours ago
    It's a dirty business. If half this stuff is true, and not just layers of increasingly unbelievable cover stories (I mean, a tangential example, is the whole Skripal thing a weirdly, too obviously fake cover show for what was in reality a "witness protection" operation? A witness who could and would reveal much? On this matter even, perhaps. Such obvious deceptions are harmful to respect for authority and the law.)

    I'm wrestling with the idea that 'twas ever thus and now with the internet its workings are revealed to a "lay" audience with no connection to the dark arts of the spy business. But I am curious, with the good Colonel's indulgence, if the new tools of the trade have made things which should be secret not possible to be kept secret?

    Walrus , 13 hours ago
    Amen to the prosecutions. If there is seen to be no accountability for this fraud then we are seriously damaging what's left of democracy. Who, in their right mind, is going to publicly support and assist a political candidate who is not "Swamp approved" if they face the threat of thereby triggering their own, and their family's destruction by the judicial system?

    I suggest that even a pardon is not enough for those entrapped in this mess. There needs to be restitution.

    To put that another way, in my opinion, "birther" allegations could be passed off as political tactics. Nobody got hurt. It is just good luck that Russiagate hasn't resulted in suicide or worse - so far.

    ugluk2 , 3 hours ago
    Matt Taibbi on how the press has destroyed its credibility.

    https://taibbi.substack.com...

    Taras77 , 8 hours ago
    I certainly agree that consequences must be brought to bear: lying politicians without a shred of evidence, nor did they offer any for their lies; press for their utter and complete malfeasance and corruption without a shred of evidence, the doj/fbi corrupted and coup plotting officials,and finally the shame to all who shrieked about "evil" putin, russia the aggressor, etc. It has set our discourse back decades, forced any critics of this insanity into the shadows, and completely killed any attempt at normal diplomacy between nations.

    I noted one astute writer as equating this russiagate insanity to the lies surrounding wmd and the destruction of iraq. Close. The damage from this criminality is incalculable!

    Will the shrillest of all in the press lose their jobs? Nah, not a chance. Prob get raise or promotion.Will the brennans, clintons, clappers, et al do the perp walk. Nah, not a chance. High paid lawyers will tie the courts up for years if not decades.

    And america has the institutional memory of a gnat. And of course, the question is as to high up did this criminality go? I personally do not believe it is a question-it is obvious to me. The major question for me is how high up the prosecution, if any, will go.

    MP98 , 12 hours ago
    Problem is...who's going to do the prosecuting? The DOJ - protector of the swamp - has become thoroughly corrupted as an arm of the Democrat-media party. Should (can) Trump appoint a special prosecutor as far as possible from the DOJ?
    Greco , 12 hours ago
    The president might use this and any Republican-led prosecutions as leverage to work out deals that will allow him to achieve his agenda. I think he'll need to given how the Democrats intend to use their house majority to launch investigations and hearings to find something, anything to howl about and impede his agenda.
    Fred W , 12 hours ago
    Still need to see the full report. I hope it is releasable. Otherwise the conspiracy theories or leaks will never let up. The article cited is a partisan opinion piece, not a news report. It accepts the fallback stance that yes, crimes were committed but collusion by Trump was not among them. This actually seems possible if only in light of the chaotic condition of the campaign.

    That said, I would not be surprised to find collusion discounted. Not that the Russians didn't interfere. That would be entirely in character. But I don't know any reason for supposing that they would have a better understanding of American political dynamics than the Americans who make good livings being the best in that arena. The Russians seem to have been doing the same things as numerous other players. They shouldn't have been in that game, but there is no strong reason for according them Superman status. Their strongest feature seems to have been sheer quantity. Outrage over their actions often seems to flow from a poor grasp of the real nature of normal political process.

    Fred -> Fred W , 4 hours ago
    "The Russians seem to have been doing the same things..."

    Multiple members of the FBI and DOJ seem to have been interfering in the 2016 Presidential election. How many other federal and state elections did they interfere with?

    seesee2468 -> Fred W , 6 hours ago
    Can you cite a single piece of hard evidence, not simply allegation, that proves the Russians interfered in the 2016 election? If so, please cite it, since I know of none. Thank you.
    Pat Lang Mod -> seesee2468 , 6 hours ago
    I cannot.
    peter hodges , 12 hours ago
    Nothing will happen. In fact, the way things have been going, Trump will make Mueller the next AG.

    [Mar 24, 2019] The main reason Mueller has served up his nothing burger is because to produce enough "evidence" to impeach Trump would require publicly exposing the full extent of the Deep State illegal spying, hit squads (his name was Seth Rich) and electoral manipulations so common in the US today

    Mar 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    A P , Mar 24, 2019 3:14:34 PM | link

    The main reason Mueller has served up his nothing burger is because to produce enough "evidence" to impeach Trump would require publicly exposing the full extent of the Deep State illegal spying, hit squads (his name was Seth Rich) and electoral manipulations so common in the US today. Expect a lot of "national security concerns" being tossed out to "explain" why Mueller can't lay charges against Trump or any of his few real supporters in the US administration. The various Swamp Creatures that have slimed through the Trump administration for 2 years won't be touched by Mueller.

    A P , Mar 24, 2019 3:17:28 PM | link

    Forgot to add: I am no Trump supporter, other than the fact he was less odious than Clinton. But as the last 2 years shows, not less odious by much. At least the world is not in WW3 yet.
    Zachary Smith , Mar 24, 2019 3:22:08 PM | link
    @ A P #6

    I thing a lot of people were satisfied with this "investigation". The Hillary bots had a long period of dreaming of Trump being smashed into pieces small enough to be ground underfoot.

    And the folks who have finally put Trump firmly under their thumbs must have found it useful in gaining control of the man. For example, even if my "blackmail" theory is overblown, Trump would be at least as terrified of becoming an impoverished felon as he would of having pictures of him in an illegal or compromising position with ..... you name it.

    [Mar 24, 2019] The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian.

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... "After reading several articles, it seemed clear that key difficulties for Russians communicating in English include: definite and indefinite articles, the use of presuppositions and correct usage of say/tell and said/told. Throughout 2017, I constructed a corpus of Guccifer 2.0's communications and analyzed the frequency of different types of mistakes. The results of this work corroborate Professor Connolly's assessment. ..."
    "... Overall, it appears Guccifer 2.0 could communicate in English quite well but chose to use inconsistently broken English at times in order to give the impression that it wasn't his primary language. The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian. ..."
    "... Access and motive . . .here are two who had both: Seth Rich and Imran Awan. That our fake news organizations have no interest in either, that should tell you something. ..."
    Mar 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Tunga , 2 hours ago link

    "I didn't really address the case that Russia hacked the DNC, content to stipulate it for now." - exce

    The State Department paused its investigation of the Secretary's emails so as not to interfere with the Mueller investigation. Here we see Taibbi writes an exhaustive condemnation of the Western press while leaving out the very crux of the story, the very source of the stolen DNC emails was Clapper and Brennan pretending to be Guccifer 2.0.

    Pitiful attempt at redemption there Matt. Seriously, go **** your self.

    "After reading several articles, it seemed clear that key difficulties for Russians communicating in English include: definite and indefinite articles, the use of presuppositions and correct usage of say/tell and said/told. Throughout 2017, I constructed a corpus of Guccifer 2.0's communications and analyzed the frequency of different types of mistakes. The results of this work corroborate Professor Connolly's assessment.

    Overall, it appears Guccifer 2.0 could communicate in English quite well but chose to use inconsistently broken English at times in order to give the impression that it wasn't his primary language. The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian.

    To date, Connolly's language study has not drawn any significant objections or criticism."

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-25/guccifer-20-game-over-year-end-review-0

    Any G Dala,

    DNC emails were downloaded at 22.3Mbs, a speed which is not possible to achieve remotely, or even local. It is the exact download speed of a thumb drive.

    All russian "fingerprints" were embedded in error codes, which had to be affirmatively copied. They were not an accident.

    And please remind me, who exactly was it that examined the DNC servers and pointed at Russia?

    Access and motive . . .here are two who had both: Seth Rich and Imran Awan. That our fake news organizations have no interest in either, that should tell you something.

    [Mar 24, 2019] Poor Travolta. With Mueller finished, US media turns to John Travolta for collusion gossip

    Mar 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Zanon , Mar 24, 2019 3:35:09 PM | link

    Poor Travolta..
    With Mueller finished, US media turns to John Travolta for collusion gossip
    https://on.rt.com/9qss

    [Mar 23, 2019] Brennan pipe dream obliterated. The color revolution against Trump failed

    Highly recommended!
    So Brennan conspired with MI6 and Clinton wing of Dems to bring down Trump. Trump was falsely accused of colliding with Russia while he openly collided with Israel. Of course colliding with Israel is not a crime in the USA as political establishment assumes that the interests of both countries are identical. This is pretty far from being true. Israel plays its own and sometime harmful for the USA game in the Middle East. And Israel agents of influence like Kushner, Pompeo, Haley and Bolton really infiltrated the Trump administration, unlike mythical Russian.
    Now the question is: was Brennan acted in the interests of MI6 only, or only of Mossad?
    Mar 23, 2019 | dailycaller.com

    Brennan's pipe dream was all but obliterated on Friday when Mueller submitted his report to the Justice Department. Officials at the agency said that no more indictments will be submitted in the 22-month old investigation. There are also no indictments that have been issued under seal. The last indictment in the investigation was handed down on Jan. 24 against Trump confidant Roger Stone .

    Of the three dozen indictments or guilty pleas obtained in the investigation, none have involved charges of conspiracy between Trump associates and Russian government officials.

    It does remain unclear whether Mueller recommended Trump for impeachment proceedings, or whether he found non-criminal evidence of links between Trumpworld and the Kremlin. Attorney General William Barr said in a letter Friday afternoon that he will likely provide a summary of the investigation to the Houe and Senate Judiciary Committees as soon as this weekend.

    [Mar 23, 2019] Mueller stopped following the money the moment he realized it was all leading back to Israel.

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Once the fingerprints and bread crumbs led away from Russia to Israel, and Netanyahoo and his oligarch friends, Mueller stopped looking further as the writing on the wall became clear. Mueller stopped following the money the moment he realized it was all leading back to Israel. ..."
    "... Manafort was the fall guy for Trump. ..."
    "... This investgation was a convenient sham to cover for the real collusion and Trump was the Zionist one percenters choice and nothing was going to foil that and many of you here fell for the entire charade hook, line and sinker believing Trump was a poor victim all along. ..."
    Mar 23, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Circe , Mar 22, 2019 7:48:23 PM | link

    @48 arby

    Max Blumenthal has it right on, but the proxy war in Syria was also about stopping a gas pipeline from Iran through Syria as a shortcut to EU market to compete with the Levant Israeli gas route.

    I disagree with any analogy drawn between the Golan Heights and Crimea for various reasons. It's wrong and counterproductive to draw such analogy. If anything sanctions should have been imposed on Israel for usurping and settling that land which is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

    Crimea went back and forth changing hands throughout history. Finally when Catherine the Great defeated the Ottoman Empire, Crimea was traded in a treaty to Russia. So technically, legally it was always Russian territory and merely went back to its lawful owner with the present inhabitants of Crimea totally in agreement.

    The Golan Heights were throughout history mostly under Arab control and later also part of the Ottoman Empire until it was under French control and then became part of Syria, so Israel has no legitimate claim whatsoever and sanctions should have been imposed on Israel for its illegal occupation of the Golan Heights and not on Russia for taking back what was legitimately Russian territory for centuries minus the brief blunder by the Soviet Presidium of 1954 which transfer decree violated the Russian Constitution of 1937. So in essence it was an illegal transfer and now that error has been rectified, therefore sanctions on Russia are illegal.

    ◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇

    The nothing-burger Mueller Report is done and arrived at the Justice Dept. What will be missing from the report is how Trump colluded with Zionists to become President. Zionist oligarchs funded Trump at various stages of his campaign and were involved in influencing American public perception funding Cambridge Analytica and other cyber outfits.

    Facebook's Zionist owner also helped in the operation to get Trump elected.

    Once the fingerprints and bread crumbs led away from Russia to Israel, and Netanyahoo and his oligarch friends, Mueller stopped looking further as the writing on the wall became clear. Mueller stopped following the money the moment he realized it was all leading back to Israel.

    Manafort was the fall guy for Trump. Originally, I thought Flynn was the fall guy and in a way he was because he quit and lied for him (I don't believe he was fired) to save Trump's neck at the time. Trump was never in jeopardy because his Zionist masters ensured there were others around him they knew were compromised and would end up having to take the fall for their Chosen one.

    This investgation was a convenient sham to cover for the real collusion and Trump was the Zionist one percenters choice and nothing was going to foil that and many of you here fell for the entire charade hook, line and sinker believing Trump was a poor victim all along.

    [Mar 23, 2019] UN Rights Council Accuses Israel of War Crimes in Gaza by Jason Ditz

    Mar 23, 2019 | news.antiwar.com

    March 22, 2019 In a 23-8 vote, the UN Human Rights Council voted Friday to endorse a report on Israel's treatment protests along the Gaza Strip, which determined that the government's actions amounted to war crimes against civilians in Gaza.

    The report itself was published in late February , and found that Israel intentionally shot both children and journalists in the Gaza Strip during those protests. They noted that 154 out of 183 people killed at the time had been unarmed.

    Israeli officials insisted at the time the report came out that the killings amounted to the "right of self-defense and the obligation to defend its citizens and borders." Israeli officials now say the only supporters of the resolution are dictatorships and "hypocrites."

    Other UNHRC resolutions, also opposed as "absurd" by Israel, included an endorsement of the right of Palestinian self-determination, and criticism of Israeli abuses in the occupied territories, and one on the illegality of Israeli settlements.

    [Mar 23, 2019] Former CIA Director John Brennan Bashed on Twitter for Inaccurate Prediction of Coming Mueller Indictments by Chris Morran

    Mar 23, 2019 | www.newsweek.com

    Now that Robert Mueller has closed his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election without bringing any new indictments, some Twitter users have lashed out at former at political analyst and former CIA director for his recent prediction that Mueller would be bringing additional charges before finishing his probe.

    Brennan appeared on MSNBC earlier this month, where he predicted that the special counsel's office would soon be bringing indictments to add to the list of 34 individuals already charged by Mueller's team.

    In that interview, Brennan also opined that he expected that any indictment of anyone close to President Trump, including his family or extended family, would be named at the conclusion of the investigation.

    "Bob Mueller and his team knows if he were to do something -- indicting a Trump family member or if he were to go forward with indictment on criminal conspiracy involving U.S. persons -- that would basically be the death of the special counsel's office, because I don't believe Donald Trump would allow Bob Mueller to continue in the aftermath of those types of actions," Brennan explained at the time.

    Yet Mueller closed his investigation without bringing any further indictments and without any charges being brought against anyone within Trump's closest circle. The president's supporters and others took this opportunity to pounce on Brennan via Twitter.

    Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been openly critical of the Russia investigation, was among the first to call out Brennan's indictment prediction.

    "You can't blame MSNBC viewers for being confused," tweeted Greenwald in the wake of news that Mueller had submitted his report. "They largely kept dissenters from their Trump/Russia spy tale off the air for 2 years. As recently as 2 weeks ago, they had @JohnBrennan strongly suggesting Mueller would indict Trump family members on collusion as his last act"

    He later added, "The worst part of this video is how Brennan said Mueller would indict Trump Family members for conspiring with Russia before March 15 or after, because he was too noble to do it on the Ides of March. Will MSNBC or Brennan apologize? Will there be consequences for any of this? LOL"

    Conservative political pundit Charlie Kirk listed Brenna on a list of other frequent targets -- Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, among others -- of people who should be investigated, though it was not clear which laws Kirk believes any of these individuals might have broken.

    Actor Dean Cain likened Brennan's indictment prediction to Vermont Governor Howard Dean's infamous "Dean Scream" that helped to tank Dean's 2004 presidential campaign.

    Conservative political consultant Frank Luntz used the incorrect Brennan prediction to criticize media outlets for what he saw as a failure to acknowledge errors on their part.

    ... ... ...

    [Mar 23, 2019] Note on palace-coup attempts of Rod Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe

    Mar 23, 2019 | news.yahoo.com

    W e are still trying to fathom the apparent but transient palace-coup attempts of Rod Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe. No one has gotten to the bottom of the serial lying by McCabe and James Comey, much less their systematic and illegal leaking to pet reporters.

    We do not know all the ways in which James Clapper and John Brennan seeded the dossier and its related gossip among the press and liberal politicians -- only that both were prior admitted fabricators who respectively while under oath misled congressional representatives on a host of issues.

    The central role of Hillary Clinton in funding the anti-Trump, Russian-"collusion," Fusion/GPS/Christopher Steele dossier is still not fully disclosed. Did the deluded FISA court know it was being used by Obama-administration DOJ and FBI officials, who withheld from it evidence to ensure permission to spy on American citizens? Could any justice knowingly be so naïve?

    Do we remember at all that Devin Nunes came to national prominence when he uncovered information that members of the Obama administration's national-security team, along with others, had systematically unmasked surveilled Americans, whose names then were leaked illegally to the press?

    One day historians will have the full story of how Robert Mueller stocked his legal team inordinately with partisans. He certainly did not promptly disclose the chronology of, or the interconnected reasons for, the firings of Lisa Page and Peter Strozk. And his team has largely used process-crime allegations to leverage mostly minor figures to divulge some sort of incriminating evidence about the president -- none of it pertaining to the original mandated rationale of collusion.

    These are the central issues and key players of this entire sordid attempt to remove a sitting president.

    But we should remember there were dozens of other minor players who did their own parts in acting unethically, and in some cases illegally, to destroy a presidency. We have mostly forgotten them. But they reflect what can happen when Washington becomes unhinged, the media go berserk, and a reign of terror ensues in which any means necessary is redefined as what James Comey recently monetized as a "Higher Loyalty" to destroy an elected president.

    Here are just a few of the foot soldiers we have forgotten.

    Anonymous

    On September 5, 2018 (a date seemingly picked roughly to coincide with the publication of Bob Woodward's sensational tell-all book about the inside of the Trump White House), the New York Times printed a credo from a supposed anonymous Republican official deep within the Trump administration. In a supposed fit of ethical conviction, he (or she) warned the nation of the dangers it faced under his boss, President Trump, and admitted to a systematic effort to subvert his presidency:

    The dilemma -- which he does not fully grasp -- is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.

    Anonymous elaborated:

    Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until -- one way or another -- it's over.

    We do not know whether Anonymous was describing the coup attempt as described by Andrew McCabe that apparently entailed Rod Rosenstein at the Justice Department informally polling cabinet officials, or marked a wider effort among Never Trump Republicans and deep-state functionaries to ensure that Trump failed -- whether marked by earlier efforts to leak confidential calls with foreign officials or to serve up unsubstantiated rumors to muckrakers or simply slow-walk or ignore presidential directives.

    In any case, Anonymous's efforts largely explain why almost daily we hear yet another mostly unsubstantiated account that a paranoid, deranged, and dangerous Trump is holed up in his bedroom with his Big Macs as he plans unconstitutional measures to wreck the United States -- and then, by accident, achieves near-record-low peacetime unemployment, near-record-low minority unemployment, annualized 3 percent GDP growth, record natural-gas and oil production, record deregulation, comprehensive tax reform and reduction, and foreign-policy breakthroughs from the destruction of ISIS to cancellation of the flawed Iran deal.

    James Baker

    In the course of congressional testimony, it was learned that the FBI general counsel, James Baker, for a time had been under investigation for leaking classified information to the press. Among the leaks were rumored scraps from the Steele dossier passed to Mother Jones reporter David Corn (who has denied any such connection) that may have fueled his sensational pre-election accusation of Trump–Russian collusion.

    Nonetheless, about a week before the 2016 election, Corn of Mother Jones was writing lurid exposés, such as the following, to spread gossip likely inspired from the Christopher Steele dossier (italics inserted):

    Does this mean the FBI is investigating whether Russian intelligence has attempted to develop a secret relationship with Trump or cultivate him as an asset? Was the former intelligence officer and his material deemed credible or not?

    An FBI spokeswoman says, "Normally, we don't talk about whether we are investigating anything." But a senior US government official not involved in this case but familiar with the former spy tells Mother Jones that he has been a credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive, and important information to the US government. In June, the former Western intelligence officer -- who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients -- was assigned the task of researching Trump's dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm.

    What does "assigned" mean, and by whom? That Fusion/GPS (which, in fact, is a generic opposition-research firm with no particular expertise in Russia) hired with disguised Clinton campaign funds a has-been foreign-national spy to buy dirt from Russian sources to subvert a presidential campaign?

    Those leaks of Christopher Steele's dirt also did their small part in planting doubt in voters' minds right that electing Trump was tantamount to implanting a Russian asset in the White House. Baker has been the alleged center of a number of reported leaks, even though the FBI's general counsel should have been the last person to disclose any government communication to the press during a heated presidential campaign. And there is still no accurate information concerning what role, if any, Baker played in Andrew McCabe's efforts to discuss removing the president following the Comey firing.

    Evelyn Farkas

    On March 1, 2017, just weeks after Trump took office, the New York Times revealed that. in a last-minute order, outgoing president Obama had vastly expanded the number of government officials with access to top-secret intelligence data. The Obama administration apparently sought to ensure a narrative spread that Trump may have colluded with the Russians. The day following the disclosure, a former Pentagon official, Evelyn Farkas (who might have been a source for the strange disclosure of a day earlier), explained Obama's desperate eleventh-hour effort in an MSNBC interview:

    I was urging my former colleagues, and, and frankly speaking the people on the Hill . . . it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.

    Because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior people who left so it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy, um, that the [stutters] Trump folks -- if they found out how we knew what we knew about their [the] Trump staff, dealing with Russians -- that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence.

    So I became very worried because not enough was coming out into the open and I knew that there was more. We have very good intelligence on Russia, so then I had talked to some of my former colleagues and I knew that they were also trying to help get information to the Hill.

    Despite media efforts to spin Farkas's disclosure, she was essentially contextualizing how outgoing Obama officials were worried that the incoming administration would discover their own past efforts ("sources and methods") to monitor and surveil Trump-campaign officials, and would seek an accounting. Her worry was not just that the dossier-inspired dirt would not spread after Trump took office, but that the Obama administration's methods used to thwart Trump might be disclosed (e.g., " if they found out how we knew what we knew about their [the] Trump staff, dealing with Russians -- that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence" ).

    So Farkas et al. desperately sought to change the law so that their rumors and narratives would be so deeply seeded within the administrative state that the collusion narrative would inevitably lead to Congress and the press, and thereby overshadow any shock at the improper or illegal methods the Obama-administration officials had authorized to monitor the Trump campaign.

    And Farkas was correct. Even today, urination in a Russian hotel room has overshadowed perjury traps, warping the FISA courts, illegal leaking, inserting a spy into the Trump campaign, and Russian collusion with Clinton hireling and foreign agent Christopher Steele.

    Samantha Power
    We now forget that for some reason, in her last year in office, but especially during and after the 2016 election, Power, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, reportedly asked to unmask the names of over 260 Americans picked up in government surveillance. She offered no real explanations of such requests.

    Even stranger than a U.N. ambassador suddenly playing the role of a counterintelligence officer, Power continued her requests literally until the moments before Trump took office in January 2017. And, strangest of all, after Power testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Representative Trey Gowdy reported that "her testimony is 'they [the unmasking requests] may be under my name, but I did not make those requests.'"

    Who, in the world, then, did make those requests and why and, if true, did she know she was so being used?

    And were some of those unmasking requests leaked, thus helping to fuel media rumors in late 2016 and early 2017 that Trump officials were veritable traitors in league with Russia? And why were John Brennan, James Clapper, Susan Rice, and Sally Yates reportedly in the last days (or, in some cases, the last hours) requesting that the names of Americans swept up in surveillance of others be unmasked? What was the point of it all?

    In sum, did a U.N. ambassador let her name be used by aides or associates to spread rumors throughout the administrative state, and thereby brand them with classified government authenticity, and then all but ensure they were leaked to the press?

    We the public most certainly wondered why the moment Trump was elected, the very name Carter Page became synonymous with collusion, and soon Michael Flynn went from a respected high-ranking military official to a near traitor, as both were announced as emblematic of their erstwhile complicit boss.

    Ali Watkins and James Wolf

    Watkins was the young reporter for Buzzfeed (which initially leaked the largely fake Steele dossier and erroneously reported that Michael Cohen would implicate Trump in suborning perjury) who conducted an affair with James Wolf, a staffer, 30 years her senior, on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

    Wolf, remember, systematically and illegally began leaking information to her that found its way into sensationalized stories about collusion. But as Margot Cleveland of the Federalist pointed out, Watkins was also identified by Buzzfeed "in court filings as one of the individuals who 'conducted newsgathering in connection with the Dossier before Buzzfeed published the Article' on the dossier. This fact raises the question of whether Watkins received information from Wolfe concerning the dossier and, if so, what he leaked."

    In other words, the dossier was probably planted among U.S. senators and deliberately leaked through a senior Senate aide, who made sure that the unverified dirt was published by the press to damage Donald Trump.

    And it did all that and more.

    The list of these bit players could be easily expanded. These satellites were not coordinated in some tight-knit vast conspiracy, but rather took their cue from their superiors and the media to freelance with assumed impunity, as their part in either preventing or ending a Trump presidency. And no doubt the Left would argue that the sheer number of federal bureaucrats and political appointees, in a variety of cabinets and agencies, throughout the legislative and the executive branches, all proves that Trump is culpable of something.

    Perhaps. But the most likely explanation is that a progressive administrative state, a liberal media, and an increasingly radicalized liberal order were terrified by the thought of an outsider Trump presidency. Therefore, they did what they could, often both unethically and illegally, to stop his election, and then to subvert his presidency.

    In their arrogance, they assumed that their noble professions of higher loyalties and duties gave them exemption to do what they deemed necessary and patriotic. And others like them will continue to do so, thereby setting the precedent that unelected federal officials can break the law or violate any ethical protocols they please -- if they disagree with the ideology of the commander in chief. We ridicule Trump for going ballistic at each one of these periodically leaked and planted new stories that raised some new charge about his stupidity, insanity, incompetence, etc. But no one has before witnessed any president subjected to such a comprehensive effort of the media, the deep state, political opponents, and his own party establishment to destroy him.

    Subversion is the new political opposition. The nation -- and the Left especially -- will come to regret the legacy of the foot soldiers of the Resistance in the decades to come.

    [Mar 23, 2019] Mock The Russiagaters. Mock Them Ruthlessly by Caitlin Johnstone

    Mar 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    The Robert Mueller investigation which monopolized political discourse for two years has finally concluded , and his anxiously awaited report has been submitted to Attorney General William Barr. The results are in and the debate is over: those advancing the conspiracy theory that the Kremlin has infiltrated the highest levels of the US government were wrong, and those of us voicing skepticism of this were right.

    The contents of the report are still secret, but CNN's Justice Department reporter Laura Jarrett has told us all we need to know, tweeting , "Special Counsel Mueller is not recommending ANY further indictments am told." On top of that, William Barr said in a letter to congressional leaders that there has been no obstruction of Mueller's investigation by Justice Department officials.

    So that's it, then. A completely unhindered investigation has failed to convict a single American of any kind of conspiracy with the Russian government, and no further indictments are coming. The political/media class which sold rank-and-file Americans on the lie that the Mueller investigation was going to bring down this presidency were liars and frauds, and none of the goalpost-moving that I am sure is already beginning to happen will change that.

    It has been obvious from the very beginning that the Maddow Muppets were being sold a lie. In 2017 I wrote an article titled " How We Can Be Certain That Mueller Won't Prove Trump-Russia Collusion ", saying that Mueller would continue finding evidence of corruption "since corruption is to DC insiders as water is to fish", but he will not find evidence of collusion. If you care to take a scroll through the angry comments on that article, just on Medium alone, you will see a frozen snapshot of what the expectations were from mainstream liberals at the time. They had swallowed the Russiagate narrative hook, line and sinker, and they believed that the Mueller investigation was going to vindicate them. It did not.

    I've been saying Russiagate is bullshit from the beginning, and I've been called a Trump shill, a Kremlin propagandist, a Nazi and a troll every day for saying so by credulous mass media-consuming dupes who drank the Kool Aid . And I've only taken a fraction of the flack more high profile Russiagate skeptics like Glenn Greenwald and Michael Tracey have been getting for expressing doubt in the Gospel According to Maddow. The insane, maniacal McCarthyite feeding frenzy that these people were plunged into by nonstop mass media propaganda drowned out the important voices who tried to argue that public energy was being sucked into Russia hysteria and used to manufacture support for dangerous cold war escalations with a nuclear superpower.

    Just think what we could have done with that energy over the last two years. Think how much public support could have been poured into the sweeping progressive reforms called for by the Sanders movement, for example, instead of constant demands for more sanctions and nuclear posturing against Russia. Think how much more attention could have been drawn to Trump's actual horrific policies like his facilitation of Saudi butchery in Yemen or his regime change agendas in Iran and Venezuela, his support for ecocide and military expansionism and the barbarism of Jair Bolsonaro and Benjamin Netanyahu. Think how much more energy could have gone into beating back the Republicans in the midterms, reclaiming far more House seats and taking the Senate as well, gathering momentum for a presidential candidacy that truly threatens Trump instead of 9,000 primary candidates who will probably be selected by superdelegates after the first ballot when there's too many of them to establish a clear majority under the new rules.

    me title=

    We must never let them forget what they did or what they cost us all. We must never let mainstream Democrats forget how crazy they got, how much time and energy they wasted, how very, very wrong they were and how very, very right we were.

    Never stop reminding them of this. Never stop mocking them for it. Never stop mocking their idiotic Rachel Maddow worship. Never stop mocking the Robert Mueller prayer candles. Never stop making fun of the way they blamed all their problems on Susan Sarandon. Never stop reminding them of those stupid pink vagina hats. Never stop mocking them for elevating Louise Mensch and Eric Garland. Never stop mocking them for creating the fucking Krassenstein brothers.

    Every politician, every media figure, every Twitter pundit and everyone who swallowed this moronic load of bull spunk has officially discredited themselves for life. Going forward, authority and credibility rests solely with those who kept clear eyes and clear heads during the mass media propaganda blitzkrieg, not with those who were stupid enough to believe what they were told about the behaviors of a noncompliant government in a post-Iraq invasion world. The people who steered us into two years of Russiavape insanity are the very last people anyone should ever listen to ever again when determining the future direction of our world.

    * * *

    Thanks for reading! My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , purchasing some of my sweet merchandise , buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone , or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    messystateofaffairs , 56 minutes ago link

    I think Russiagate is a deliberate Jewish ploy to distract Trump supporters, and others, from the fact that Trump is very deeply involved in Israelgate. It's a sophisticated strategy designed to demonize Russia and favor Israel at the same time. The fact that America will bear the burden is lost on the Dumbfuck, if the narcissict is capable of caring in the first place. Obama was a brilliant *** handler compared to this man.

    chestergimli , 59 minutes ago link

    I believe that Trump and all the neocons along with Sheldon Adelson and Netenyahu pulled this BIG costly Shenanigan off to divert attention away from what Trump was doing for Israel.

    keep the bastards honest , 58 minutes ago link

    Moonlighting on https://youtu.be/pbYvRTGylyw shows the next insanity. Swearing it's Muellars findings are not true. That muellar was got at..whatever.

    See revealing light tarot on YouTube to get the insanity and hate.

    Hatred of Trump hatred of Putin. Jealousy of Melania. It's delusional.

    No interest in Bolton or pompeo nor international affairs. blind hatred of Russia.

    Brazen Heist II , 1 hour ago link

    And lets be clear.....both Democrats and Republicans are failing America.

    The fringe lunatics on both sides have hijacked the umbrella party. The Zionist cretins/MIC whores on the Right and SJW Snowflakes/ War Party on the Left are both owned by the bankster/corporate ruling classes. They are the same turd on foreign policy.

    Its time to balkanize and butcher both parties.

    The Deep State needs contrived divisions and dichotomies to split Americans. People should see past these pathetic attempts to divide the population.

    johnnycanuck , 1 hour ago link

    Even Caitlin misses what's going on here. I'm kinda disappointed, but hey no one gets everything right and she does have to earn a buck wherever she can. I get that

    The new McCarthyism has been embraced far and wide in Murika, by both parties, all the MSM. But that's just a ruse for the home team, to recreate the USSR bogeyman for political purposes and to feed the MIC. It's worked, polls show Murikan sheep are more a feared of the Russian bogeyman than they have been since the cold war

    Russia isn't encroaching on America's borders, PNAC is encroaching on theirs.

    That said, the Mueller effort is more than what you think, it's like a bird dog and it flushed many a bird of prey for shotgun totin' prosecutors, if they be inclined to fire. And that is how the game works in the world of dirty sum bitches and misc psychopaths.

    Like the big ***** guy in the movie Platoon said, 'the rich always **** over the poor, that's the way it's always been.'

    Brazen Heist II , 1 hour ago link

    Recent events can be explained rather accurately if one knows history. Which most people don't apparently.

    This is just a re-run of cold war psyops. Except this time, the USSA will meet the fate of the USSR in its own way.

    The Jewish Marxists that ran away from Russia and infested America, are now drowning in their lies, and gotta vent somewhere! They are behind the MSM, and cozy dalliance between the Deep State and useful idiot Leftards.

    Brazen Heist II , 1 hour ago link

    Glancing at various Twatter feeds over the years...and I couldn't help but notice that the number of ****-for-brains Americans who fell for the Russiagate psyop was simply staggering.

    I guess its these gullible morons that the powers-that-be relied on in the vaunted dumbassocracy, to get away with distracting away from their own crimes. But alas, the day of judgement always arrives, and the ******** implodes. It depends on how many of them awaken in the process, to render this reckoning as either a bang or a whimper.

    [Mar 23, 2019] " ... the accountability that must follow Mueller's report." The Hill

    Mar 23, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    6129lady_of_justice

    " 1. President Trump was not indicted, nor did Mueller recommend an indictment against him for collusion or obstruction.

    three dozen people were charged , including a few close to the president or who worked for his campaign, no one in proximity to the president was formally charged with colluding with Russia. Most, such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn or campaign adviser George Papadopoulos , were charged with process crimes or felonies unrelated to the main case, as in Paul Manafort 's secretive, multimillion-dollar foreign lobbying spree through Ukraine.

    *********

    the "Steele dossier" that was the main FISA evidence was paid for with funds from Hillary Clinton 's campaign and the Democratic Party;

    Christopher Steele, the dossier's author, had told a senior DOJ official he was desperate to defeat Trump;

    most of the dossier was not verified before it was used as evidence of alleged Trump-Russia collusion; and

    agents collected statements from key defendants such as Papadopoulos and Carter Page during interactions with an FBI informant that strongly suggested their innocence.

    Such omissions are so glaring as to constitute defrauding a federal cour t. And each and every participant to those omissions needs to be brought to justice.

    An upcoming DOJ inspector general's report should trigger the beginning of that accountability in a court of law, and President Trump can assist the effort by declassifying all evidence of wrongdoing by FBI, CIA and DOJ officials. " The Hill

    ------------

    Pilgrims, the seditious conspiracy to depose the elected president of the United States for conspiracy to commit treason with the Government of the Russian Federation has been defeated.

    The bent cops at the FBI and the madmen like Brennan, Clapper and Comey, who treacherously used the government's forces against the Constitution, must be punished so severely as to make an example that will dissuade other midgets on horseback from making similar attempts to overturn the results of elections.

    At the bottom of the mountain of political misdeeds shines the face of Hillary Clinton and the army of clever people who ran her 2016 campaign. They devised the clever, clever idea of creating the Steele Dossier in cahoots with Washington co-conspirators and the even more clever of marketing it back into the US political bloodstream through British intelligence channels, by feeding it to the erratic and spiteful senator from Arizona whose staff peddled it all over Washington and New York. There must be retribution for this.

    The leftist press is already discounting the results of Mueller's investigation while gloating over how long the Democratic held House of Representatives can continue to search through Trump's life trying to find criminality.

    AG Barr should stand Mueller up next to him at a press conference to make clear the results of his report and to answer questions about it. After that the prosecutions should begin. pl

    https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/435394-the-wisdom-of-trumps-lawyers-and-the-accountability-that-must-follow

    [Mar 22, 2019] Glenn Greenwald on Twitter The Mueller investigation is complete and this is a simple fact that will never go away

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... No one says Trump is a saint. But the deep state wanted to cover its tracks. Dems and deep state hated that their preferred candidate didn't win. They ended up achieving their goal of delegitimizing 2016 and distracting the country for 2 years. ..."
    "... They tried to delegitimize the 2016 Election but failed to do so. ..."
    Mar 22, 2019 | twitter.com

    Glenn Greenwald 3h 3 hours ago

    The Mueller investigation is complete and this is a simple fact that will never go away: not one single American was charged, indicted or convicted for conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 election - not even a low-level volunteer. The number is zero.

    Compare what cable hosts (let's leave them unnamed) & Democratic operatives spent two years claiming this would lead to - the imprisonment of Don, Jr., Jared, even Trump on conspiracy-with-Russia charges - to what it actually produced. A huge media reckoning is owed.

    Don't even try to pretend the point of the Mueller investigation from the start wasn't to obtain prosecutions of Americans guilty of conspiring with Russia to influence the outcome of the election or that Putin controlled Trump through blackmail. Nobody will believe your denials.

    Are we now ready to rid ourselves of the thrilling espionage fantasy that Trump is controlled by Putin and the Kremlin using blackmail? There's no way Robert Mueller would have gone 18 months without telling anyone about this if it were true, right? How could that be justified?

    Perhaps now we can focus on the actually consequential actions the Trump administration is taking and finally move past the deranged conspiracy theories that have drowned US discourse for 2+ years. A side benefit will be not ratcheting up tension between 2 nuclear-armed powers.

    Giving up these exciting conspiracy theories about international blackmail & convening panels to decipher all the genius hidden maneuvers of Mueller will be bad for cable ratings, book sales & the Patreon accounts of online charlatans. But it'll be very healthy in all other ways.

    CNN's Justice Department reporter https:// twitter.com/LauraAJarrett/ status/1109210442864439299

    The desperate attempts to salvage something from this debacle by the Mueller dead-enders are just sad. Yes, the public hasn't read the Mueller report. But we *know* he ended his investigation without indicting a single American for conspiring with Russia to influence the election

    Trump, Jr. testified for hours and hours before Congress, including about the Trump Tower meeting. If he lied there, or to Mueller, why didn't Mueller indict him for perjury, lying to Congress or obstruction? Same questions for Kushner. Stop embarrassing yourselves.

    If Mueller found evidence that Putin controls Trump & forces him to act against US interests & in favor of Russia - not just with a pee-pee tape but with financial blackmail - what could possibly justify keeping that a secret through the end of the investigation? It's ludicrous.

    US discourse has been drowned for 2+ years with conspiratorial, unhinged, but highly inflammatory and unhinged idiocy - playing games with two nuclear-armed powers because of anger over the 2016 election. It's time to stop. Mueller ended his work. We see the public indictments.

    And to be clear: I've urged a full investigation into these Trump/Russia claims from the start, from before Mueller was appointed, with full disclosure. I still favor that - precisely to end the reckless speculation to which we've been endlessly subjected https:// medium.com/@ggreenwald/st atements-about-possibility-russia-meddling-hacking-need-for-investigations-2016-present-f5794c1496d6

    So many in the media devoted endless airtime & print & pixels misleading people to believe Mueller was coming to arrest & prosecute Trump, Jr, Kushner & so many others for conspiring with Russia over the election & obstruction. None of that happened. You can't pretend it away.

    hard to make jokes 59m 59 minutes ago

    the Supreme Court of the Southern District of New York can also do that. And please, wait until the report comes out and read it, then we'll see.

    Bala R 32m 32 minutes ago

    They was never the point. No one says Trump is a saint. But the deep state wanted to cover its tracks. Dems and deep state hated that their preferred candidate didn't win. They ended up achieving their goal of delegitimizing 2016 and distracting the country for 2 years.

    Mary Batson 17m 17 minutes ago

    They tried to delegitimize the 2016 Election but failed to do so.

    [Mar 22, 2019] Tulsi will probably pick-up some additional independents voters with her condemnation of Trump impulsive decision about Golan heights

    Mar 22, 2019 | twitter.com

    Tulsi Gabbard ‏ 1:09 PM - 21 Mar 2019

    Another example of Trump and Netanyahu putting their own political interests ahead of the interests of our respective countries. Will escalate tensions and likelihood of war between Israel/US/Syria/Iran/Russia. Shortsighted. https:// twitter.com/nytimes/status /1108783266075684865

    Omani ‏ 1:12 PM - 21 Mar 2019

    How long will this continue to go on? They must be stopped. # Tulsi2020

    Dana Moretti Fairbanks, MD 1:28 PM - 21 Mar 2019

    LET'S BE CLEAR – Israel's Long-Running Settlement Policy Constitutes A # WarCrime : "ALL Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are illegal" https://www. amnestyusa.org/lets-be-clear- israels-long-running-settlement-policy-constitutes-a-war-crime/ @ Amnesty # OccupiedTerritoriesNOTSettlements @ DonnaLynnNH

    Dana Moretti Fairbanks, MD 1:32 PM - 21 Mar 2019

    @ Netanyahu Accidentally Tells the Truth: Are the U.S., Israel and its Arab allies meeting in Warsaw "to advance the common interest of war with Iran"? Not officially, says @ elilake , but the @ IsraeliPM 's tweet was a classic # KinsleyGaffe https://www. bloomberg.com/opinion

    [Mar 22, 2019] Robert Mueller Submits Report on Trump Russia Probe

    It is evident that President Trump is acting in the interests of a foreign power and contrary to American interests. But this power is not Russia
    Mar 22, 2019 | www.bloomberg.com

    Attorney General William Barr said in a letter to Congress Friday that he may be able to provide lawmakers with the special counsel's principal conclusions "as soon as this weekend."

    There were no instances in which Mueller was told not to take a specific action in his wide-ranging probe, Barr said.

    [Mar 22, 2019] Muller investigation is actually a farce, huge waste of money and their narrative is dead

    NKVD investigations were tragedy, Mueller investigation is a farce.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Next narrative: There is no evidence because it was suppressed! ;-) ..."
    "... "Trust Mueller" remember? # MuellerIsComingForYou ... remember? Well # MuellerIsHere so deal with reality. FANTASY TIME IS OVER There was NO TrumpRussia collusion! ..."
    "... Unconvinced that Mueller's report ends anything Mueller report may disavow of actual collusion, but the door still open to "ATTEMPTED" Russian influencing of US elections, a fact that will be used by Russiagate cold war demagogues to justify Mueller & RG investigation ..."
    Mar 22, 2019 | twitter.com

    Becky 4:55 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    It's actually a farce, huge waste of money and their narrative is dead. What now? PTSD for the dems

    David Ian ‏ 3:55 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    Wanted to reach out to thank you for all your coverage during the investigation Glenn, must have been hard to go against the grain in this sea of propaganda. Kudos for sticking to the truth!

    Jon ‏ 3:55 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    By the way, CNN is sitting on TV complaining how trump will spin it. Yet CNN is already spinning it.

    Steve Culy ‏ 3:55 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    Next narrative: There is no evidence because it was suppressed! ;-)

    Phyllis Moore ‏ 5:25 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    "Trust Mueller" remember? # MuellerIsComingForYou ... remember? Well # MuellerIsHere so deal with reality. FANTASY TIME IS OVER There was NO TrumpRussia collusion!

    Mama Bear 5:05 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    https://twitter.com/Yo_RightGirl/status/1109215991974682624?s=20

    fishnski ‏ 4:54 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    Love seeing the uncomfort level on the left now as they Squirm to fight back with this and that and the big fat nothing Burger they are trying to Choke down..

    Rob van Cappellen 3:57 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    But.. what about John Huber and his investigations in DOJ/FBI ? Why don't we hear a thing, is he still alive ?

    scott stocker ‏ 4:50 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    Yes he is. Now it is their turn

    Shamelessly Libertarian ‏ 3:54 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    No matter what the report says it won't change the fact that the evidence to indict him just isn't there

    Toxic Mask ‏ 3:56 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    Triggered pic.twitter.com/LxVYF7e8jN

    https:// twitter.com/kt_so_it_goes/ status/1109226660325453824?s=21

    Grant Jarvis ‏ 4:35 PM - 22 Mar 2019

    Unconvinced that Mueller's report ends anything Mueller report may disavow of actual collusion, but the door still open to "ATTEMPTED" Russian influencing of US elections, a fact that will be used by Russiagate cold war demagogues to justify Mueller & RG investigation

    [Mar 21, 2019] Jared Kushner WhatsApp, Private Email Democrats Demand Records - Bloomberg

    Notable quotes:
    "... The White House didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. But in another stand-off with House Democrats, Cipollone on Thursday rejected a request renewed last week from Cummings and two other committee chairmen for information on Trump's communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin. ..."
    "... Cummings said the committee obtained a document that "appears" to show that McFarland conducted official business on her personal email account. He said the document was related to efforts by McFarland and other White House officials to transfer sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia "in coordination with Tom Barrack, a personal friend of President Trump and the chairman of President Trump's inaugural committee." ..."
    "... Regarding Trump's communications with Putin, Cummings, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff and Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel say they are examining the substance of in-person meetings and phone calls, the effects on foreign policy, and whether anyone has sought to conceal those communications. ..."
    "... The Constitution gives the executive branch exclusive power to conduct foreign relations, Cipollone said. "Congress cannot require the president to disclose confidential communications with foreign leaders." ..."
    Mar 21, 2019 | www.bloomberg.com

    A key House Democrat is renewing demands that the White House turn over documents about the use of private texts or emails by Jared Kushner, saying Kushner's lawyer acknowledged that the senior aide used the non-secure WhatsApp application to communicate with foreign leaders.

    House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said in a letter sent Thursday to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone that the administration has failed to produce documents tied to Kushner and other officials despite requests from the committee since 2017. Cummings also sought a briefing on how the official messages are being preserved.

    ... ... ...

    The White House didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. But in another stand-off with House Democrats, Cipollone on Thursday rejected a request renewed last week from Cummings and two other committee chairmen for information on Trump's communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    WhatsApp

    Cummings, to underscore his concern about whether unsecured White House communications have included classified information, said in his letter that Lowell acknowledged during the December meeting that Kushner had used WhatsApp to communicate with foreign leaders.

    Kushner is a senior White House adviser and the son-in-law of President Donald Trump , overseeing the administration's Middle East policies among other issues. Cummings said he and then-Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy , a Republican who has since retired from Congress, met with Lowell in December.

    Cummings's letter said Lowell said that Kushner has been in compliance with the law, and that he takes "screenshots" of communications on his private WhatsApp account and forwards them to his official White House email account or to the National Security Council.

    Cummings wrote that when asked whether Kushner ever used WhatsApp to discuss classified information, Lowell replied, "That's above my pay grade."

    The focus on Kushner and others follows the earlier investigations by the Justice Department and Republican-controlled congressional committees of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server when she served as secretary of state during the Obama administration.

    'Alternative Means'

    In Thursday's letter, Cummings said the White House's refusal to turn over documents is "obstructing the committee's investigation into allegations of violations of federal records laws" and potential breaches of national security. He demanded that the White House say by March 28 whether it intends to comply voluntarily with the renewed requests.

    "If you continue to withhold these documents from the committee, we will be forced to consider alternative means to obtain compliance," Cummings said.

    ... ... ....

    K.T. McFarland

    Cummings also wrote that his committee has obtained new information about other White House officials that raises additional security and federal records concerns about the use of private email and messaging applications.

    His letter said others may have been involved in the practice while they worked at the White House, including former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland and former chief strategist Steve Bannon.

    Cummings said the committee obtained a document that "appears" to show that McFarland conducted official business on her personal email account. He said the document was related to efforts by McFarland and other White House officials to transfer sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia "in coordination with Tom Barrack, a personal friend of President Trump and the chairman of President Trump's inaugural committee."

    The chairman said another document appeared to show that Bannon received documents "pitching the plan from Mr. Barrack through his personal email account," at a time Bannon was at the White House and working on broader Middle East policy.

    Regarding Trump's communications with Putin, Cummings, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff and Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel say they are examining the substance of in-person meetings and phone calls, the effects on foreign policy, and whether anyone has sought to conceal those communications.

    In a written response Thursday, Cipollone wrote, "While we respectfully seek to accommodate appropriate oversight requests, we are unaware of any precedent supporting such sweeping requests."

    The Constitution gives the executive branch exclusive power to conduct foreign relations, Cipollone said. "Congress cannot require the president to disclose confidential communications with foreign leaders."

    In a joint statement on Thursday night, Cummings, Engel and Schiff said that the Obama administration had "produced records describing the president and secretary of state's calls with foreign leaders." The congressmen added that "President Trump's decision to break with this precedent raises the question of what he has to hide."

    ( Updates with statement from Cummings, Schiff and Engel, in final paragraph.

    [Mar 20, 2019] In a remarkable report by British Channel 4, former CIA officials and a Reuters correspondent spoke candidly about the systematic dissemination of propaganda and misinformation in reporting on geopolitical conflicts

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... A study of the Syria war coverage by nine leading European newspapers clearly illustrates these issues: 78% of all articles are based in whole or in part on agency reports, yet 0% on investigative research. Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and interviews are in favor of the US and NATO intervention, while propaganda is attributed exclusively to the opposite side... ..."
    Mar 07, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    ex-SA , Mar 5, 2019 3:55:53 PM | 13

    Thank you! This may well be the most important link I've encountered in my years of lurking here @ MoA and elsewhere.

    There is a video linked in the article which may be more important than the article itself. Easily overlooked, so here: https://swprs.org/video-the-cia-and-the-media/

    It appears in the article here:

    "In a remarkable report by British Channel 4, former CIA officials and a Reuters correspondent spoke candidly about the systematic dissemination of propaganda and misinformation in reporting on geopolitical conflicts:"

    Many thanks, and much respect to you Sir for bringing this important piece to my attention.

    May I humbly offer in return, https://archive.org/details/publicenemyno1 (don't neglect the 2nd reel)

    Desolation Row , Mar 5, 2019 6:41:25 PM | link
    I apologize for another somewhat off topic posting, but I have not seen it posted here earlier, and I think that this should be seen by as many eyes as possible.

    The Propaganda Multiplier:How Global News Agencies and Western Media Report on Geopolitics

    By Swiss Propaganda Research

    It is one of the most important aspects of our media system -- and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.

    The key role played by these agencies means that Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world.

    A study of the Syria war coverage by nine leading European newspapers clearly illustrates these issues: 78% of all articles are based in whole or in part on agency reports, yet 0% on investigative research. Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and interviews are in favor of the US and NATO intervention, while propaganda is attributed exclusively to the opposite side...

    [Mar 20, 2019] John McCain Associate Provided Dossier to Obama National Security Council Breitbart

    Mar 20, 2019 | www.breitbart.com

    David Kramer, a long-time advisor to late Senator John McCain, revealed that he met with two Obama administration officials to inquire about whether the anti-Trump dossier authored by former British spy Christopher Steele was being taken seriously.

    In one case, Kramer said that he personally provided a copy of the dossier to Obama National Security Council official Celeste Wallander.

    In a deposition on Dec. 13, 2017 that was recently posted online, Kramer said that McCain specifically asked him in early December 2016 to meet about the dossier with Wallander and Victoria Nuland, a senior official in John Kerry's State Department. Senator McCain asked me to meet with both of them to see if this was being taken seriously in the government," Kramer said.

    "And Senator McCain asked you to meet with them?" Kramer was asked to clarify.

    "Yes, just to see if this was being taken seriously. I think he wanted to do -- this was his kind of due diligence before he went to Director Comey."

    Kramer testified that in his conversations with Nuland and Wallander he was told by both of them that each were aware of the dossier and that Nuland "thought Steele was a serious person."

    Kramer revealed that he gave a copy of the dossier to Wallander, who was familiar with the contents but did not have a copy.

    "I had a subsequent conversation with Ms. Wallander in which I gave her a copy of the document. That was probably around New Year's," he said.

    "She had not seen it herself until I had shown it to her," Kramer added. "She had heard about it. And she didn't know the status of it."

    In the same testimony, the McCain associate revealed that he held a meeting about the dossier with a reporter from BuzzFeed News who he says snapped photos of the controversial document without Kramer's permission when he left the room to go to the bathroom. That meeting was held at the McCain Institute office in Washington, Kramer stated.

    BuzzFeed infamously published Steele's full dossier on January 10, 2017 setting off a firestorm of news media coverage about the document.

    Prior to his death, McCain admitted to personally handing the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey but he refused repeated requests for comment about whether he had a role in providing the dossier to BuzzFeed, including numerous inquiries sent to his office by this reporter.

    In his book published last year, McCain maintained he had an "obligation" to pass the dossier charges against Trump to Comey and he would even do it again. "Anyone who doesn't like it can go to hell," McCain exclaimed.

    Kramer, meanwhile, also said that he briefed others reporters on the dossier contents, including CNN's Carl Bernstein, in an effort to have the anti-Trump charges verified.

    The same day BuzzFeed released the full dossier, CNN first reported the leaked information that the controversial contents of the dossier were presented during classified briefings inside classified documents presented one week earlier to then-President Obama and President-elect Trump.

    Kramer said that he believed McCain was sought out in order to provide credibility to the dossier claims.

    "I think they felt a senior Republican was better to be the recipient of this rather than a Democrat because if it were a Democrat, I think that the view was that it would have been dismissed as a political attack," Kramer stated.

    The controversial Fusion GPS firm hired Steele to do the anti-Trump work that resulted in the compilation of the dossier. Fusion GPS was paid for its anti-Trump work by Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee via the Perkins Coie law firm.

    Kramer's testimony sheds a new light on the role of the Obama administration in disseminating the largely-discredited dossier that was reportedly involved in the FBI's initial investigation into the Trump campaign and unsubstantiated claims of Russian collusion. Also Comey cited the dossier as evidence in a successful FISA application to obtain a warrant to conduct surveillance on Carter Page, a former adviser to President Trump's 2016 campaign. The testimony also revealed how McCain was utilized to give the wild dossier charges a credibility boost.

    Nuland and dossier

    Nuland's specific role in the dossier episode has been the subject of some controversy for her.

    In their book , "Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump," authors and reporters by Michael Isikoff and David Corn write that Nuland gave the green light for the FBI to first meet with Steele regarding his dossier's claims. It was at that meeting that Steele initially reported his dossier charges to the FBI, the book relates.

    Steele sought out Rome-based FBI Special Agent Michael Gaeta, with whom he had worked on a previous case. Before Gaeta met with Steele on July 5, 2016, the book relates that the FBI first secured the support of Nuland, who at the time was assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs specializing in Russia.

    Regarding the arrangements for Steele's initial meeting with the FBI about the dossier claims, Isikoff and Corn report:

    There were a few hoops Gaeta had to jump through. He was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Rome. The FBI checked with Victoria Nuland's office at the State Department : Do you support this meeting ? Nuland, having found Steele's reports on Ukraine to have been generally credible, gave the green light.

    Within a few days, on July 5, Gaeta arrived and headed to Steele's office near Victoria station . Steele handed him a copy of the report. Gaeta, a seasoned FBI agent, started to read . He turned white. For a while, Gaeta said nothing . Then he remarked, "I have to report this to headquarters."

    The book documents that Nuland previously received Steele's reports on the Ukrainian crisis and had been familiar with Steele's general work.

    Nuland faced confirmation questions prior to her appointment as assistant secretary of state over her reported role in revising controversial Obama administration talking points about the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attacks. Her reported changes sought to protect Clinton's State Department from accusations that it failed to adequately secure the woefully unprotected U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi.

    Nuland's name surfaced in a flurry of news media reports last year about the dossier and Kerry's State Department.

    Sidney Blumenthal

    An extensive New Yorker profile of Steele named another former official from Kerry's State Department for alleged involvement in circulating the dossier. The magazine reported that Kerry's chief of staff at the State Department, John Finer, obtained the contents of a two-page summary of the dossier and eventually decided to share the questionable document with Kerry.

    Finer received the dossier summary from Jonathan M. Winer, the Obama State Department official who acknowledged regularly interfacing and exchanging information with Steele, according to the report. Winer previously conceded that he shared the dossier summary with Nuland.

    After his name surfaced in news media reports related to probes by House Republicans into the dossier, Winer authored a Washington Post oped in which he conceded that while he was working at the State Department he exchanged documents and information with Steele.

    Winer further acknowledged that while at the State Department, he shared anti-Trump material with Steele passed to him by longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, whom Winer described as an "old friend." Winer wrote that the material from Blumenthal – which Winer in turn gave to Steele – originated with Cody Shearer, who is a controversial figure long tied to various Clinton scandals.

    Nuland, Winer Give Conflicting Accounts

    There are seeming discrepancies between Winer and Nuland about actions taken involving the dossier.

    Nuland described in a Politico podcast interview what she claimed was her reaction when she was presented with Steele's dossier information at the State Department.

    She said that she offered advice to "those who were interfacing with" Steele, immediately telling the intermediary or intermediaries that Steele "should get this information to the FBI." She further explained that a career employee at the State Department could not get involved with the dossier charges since such actions could violate the Hatch Act, which prevents employees in the executive branch of the federal government from engaging in certain kinds of political activities.

    In a second interview, this one with CBS's Face The Nation, Nuland also stated that her "immediate" reaction was to refer Steele to the FBI.

    Here is a transcript of the relevant section of her February 5 interview with Susan B. Glasser, who described Nuland as "my friend" and referred to her by her nickname "Toria":

    Glasser: When did you first hear about his dossier?

    Nuland: I first heard -- and I didn't know who his client was until much later, until 2017, I think, when it came out. I first heard that he had done work for a client asserting these linkages -- I think it was late July, something like that.

    Glasser: That's very interesting. And you would have taken him seriously just because you knew that he knew what he was talking about on Russia?

    Nuland: What I did was say that this is about U.S. politics, and not the work of -- not the business of the State Department, and certainly not the business of a career employee who is subject to the Hatch Act, which requires that you stay out of politics. So, my advice to those who were interfacing with him was that he should get this information to the FBI, and that they could evaluate whether they thought it was credible.

    Glasser: Did you ever talk about it with anyone else higher up at the department? With Secretary Kerry or anybody else?

    Nuland: Secretary Kerry was also aware. I think he's on the record and he had the same advice.

    Nuland stated that Kerry "was also aware" of the dossier, but she did not describe how he was made aware. She made clear that she told "those who were interfacing" with Steele to go to the FBI since any State Department involvement could violate the Hatch Act.

    Her Politico podcast interview was not the only time she claimed that her reaction was to refer Steele to the FBI.

    On Face The Nation on February 4, Nuland engaged in the following exchange in which she stated her "immediate" reaction was to refer Steele to the FBI (emphasis added):

    MARGARET BRENNAN: The dossier.

    VICTORIA NULAND: The dossier, he passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding, and our immediate reaction to that was, "This is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI, if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian federation. That's something for the FBI to investigate."

    And that was our reaction when we saw this. It's not our -- we can't evaluate this. And frankly, if every member of the campaign who the Russians tried to approach and tried to influence had gone to the FBI as well in real time, we might not be in the mess we're in today.

    Nuland gave the two interviews after her name started surfacing in news media reports involving Kerry's State Department and the dossier. Her name also came up in relation to a criminal referral of Steele to the Justice Department in the form of a letter authored last year by Sen. Chuck Grassley, who at the time chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

    The Grassley-Graham criminal referral contains redacted information that Steele received information from someone in the State Department, who in turn had been in contact with a "foreign sub-source" who was in touch with a redacted name described as a "friend of the Clintons."

    Numerous media reports have since stated that the source of information provided to the State Department that was in turn passed on to Steele was Cody Shearer, a controversial figure tied to the Clintons who is also an associate of longtime Clinton friend Sidney Blumenthal. According to sources who spoke to CNN, Shearer's information was passed from Blumenthal to Winer, who at the time was a special State Department envoy for Libya working under Kerry. Winer says that Kerry personally recruited him to work at the State Department.

    It is Winer's version of events that seems to conflict with Nuland's.

    In an oped published in the Washington Post, Winer identified Nuland as the State Department official with whom he shared Steele's information. Winer writes that Nuland's reaction was that "she felt that the secretary of state needed to be made aware of this material." He does not relate any further reaction from Nuland.

    Winer wrote in the Washington Post (emphasis added):

    In the summer of 2016, Steele told me that he had learned of disturbing information regarding possible ties between Donald Trump, his campaign and senior Russian officials. He did not provide details but made clear the information involved "active measures," a Soviet intelligence term for propaganda and related activities to influence events in other countries.

    In September 2016, Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the "dossier." Steele's sources suggested that the Kremlin not only had been behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign but also had compromised Trump and developed ties with his associates and campaign.

    I was allowed to review, but not to keep, a copy of these reports to enable me to alert the State Department. I prepared a two-page summary and shared it with Nuland, who indicated that, like me, she felt that the secretary of state needed to be made aware of this material.

    That was the extent of Winer's description of Nuland's reaction upon being presented with Steele's dossier claims. Nuland's public claim that her "immediate" response was to refer Steele to the FBI since State involvement could violate the Hatch Act seems to conflict with the only reaction that Winer relates from Nuland – that she felt Kerry should be made aware of the dossier information.

    In Winer's Washington Post oped, he writes that Steele had a larger relationship with the State Department, passing over 100 reports relating to Russia to the U.S. government agency through Winer. Winer wrote that Nuland found Steele's reports to be "useful" and asked Winer to "continue to send them."

    He wrote:

    In 2013, I returned to the State Department at the request of Secretary of State John F. Kerry, whom I had previously served as Senate counsel. Over the years, Steele and I had discussed many matters relating to Russia. He asked me whether the State Department would like copies of new information as he developed it. I contacted Victoria Nuland, a career diplomat who was then assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and shared with her several of Steele's reports. She told me they were useful and asked me to continue to send them. Over the next two years, I shared more than 100 of Steele's reports with the Russia experts at the State Department, who continued to find them useful. None of the reports related to U.S. politics or domestic U.S. matters, and the reports constituted a very small portion of the data set reviewed by State Department experts trying to make sense of events in Russia.

    Kramer and the dossier

    In his book, "The Restless Wave," McCain provided an inside account of how he says he came across the dossier.

    He wrote that he was told about the claims in the document at a security conference in Canada in November 2016, where he was approached by Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow and friend of ex-British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier.

    McCain wrote that Wood told him Steele "had been commissioned to investigate connections between the Trump campaign and Russian agents as well as potentially compromising information about the President-elect that Putin allegedly possessed."

    McCain, however, did not address the obvious question of whether he was told exactly who "commissioned" Steele to "investigate" the alleged Russian ties. The dossier was paid for by Clinton's campaign and the DNC.

    McCain goes on to describe Wood as telling him Steele's work "was mostly raw, unverified intelligence, but that the author strongly believed merited a thorough examination by counterintelligence experts."

    The politician says the dossier claims described to him were "too strange a scenario to believe, something out of a le Carré novel, not the kind of thing anyone has ever actually had to worry about with a new President, no matter what other concerns."

    Still, McCain says he reasoned that "even a remote risk that the President of the United States might be vulnerable to Russian extortion had to be investigated."

    McCain concedes Wood told him he had not actually read the dossier himself, and writes that he wasn't sure if he ever met Wood before and couldn't recall previously having a conversation with Wood. Still, McCain took Wood's word for it when Wood vouched for Steele's credibility. "Steele was a respected professional, Wood assured us, who had good Russian contacts and long experience collecting and analyzing intelligence on the Kremlin," McCain wrote.

    Present at the meeting with Wood and McCain was Kramer, who McCain writes agreed to "go to London to meet Steele, confirm his credibility and report back to me."

    McCain doesn't detail Kramer's visit to London beyond simply writing, "When David returned, and shared his impression that the former spy was, as Sir Andrew had vouched, a respected professional, and not to outward appearances given to hyperbole or hysteria, I agreed to receive a copy of what is now referred to as 'the dossier.'''

    McCain leaves out exactly where Kramer obtained his dossier copy.

    The Washington Post reported last February that Kramer received the dossier directly from Fusion GPS after McCain expressed interest in it. Those details marked the clearest indication that McCain may have known that the dossier originated with Fusion GPS, meaning that he may have knowingly passed on political material to the FBI.

    Also, in a New York Times oped in January, GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritch wrote that they helped McCain share their anti-Trump dossier with the Obama-era intelligence community via an unnamed "emissary."

    In his own testimony, Kramer relates conversations with Simpson about the dossier.

    Aaron Klein is Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, " Aaron Klein Investigative Radio ." Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

    [Mar 20, 2019] Vladimir Putin celebrates birthday on ice in celebrity hockey match

    This article was written 4 years ago, but the problem with Putin successor remains. Putin is a unique politician and his replacement might be much weaker, causing troubles for Russia. This is not new problem for Russia, but this time it will be especially acute. BTW this comment thread looks like "who is who" list for NATObots.
    Notable quotes:
    "... We could all use a real leader like Putin who takes no b.s. from anybody and is quick to adapt to any situation in a calm assertive way. He earns our admiration every day, the way he steers across an ever changing minefield and not because of his mucho image. We do not need leaders who deceit people by spewing relentless propaganda and no clarity. They fail as individuals and as a group because they are spineless. If multiple people repeat the same lie it does not make it true. It must be a club membership requirement to play the politics game and keep quiet about wrong things you see. ..."
    "... Action man outwitting the Neocons in the international chess game. More surprises to come ..."
    "... Karl Rove said "Empire creates its own reality". No wonder the mantra "Assad must go" is now enshrined in international politics by the Neocon alliance. They didnt figure on Putin obviously. ..."
    "... It happens regardless, take the example in Volgograd (Vauxhall) two years ago. I am afraid that KSA and the Gulf States will be funding the usual mix of 'moderately terroristic shenanigans" in reprisal, but they did this before anyways. ..."
    "... He making the US looked like whiny bitches. Good job; you alienate Russia and manage to strengthen the China-Russo relationrelationship. Sanctions that don't work, secret economic wars and multiple failed coup d'etat in Georgia and Ukraine [also do not work] ..."
    "... Like US - Hospital - Afganistain. anyway ISIS are paid money by the CIA and don't care who they work for it's money that they are motivated by not ideology, that ideology stuff is made-up. Google it and dig, get yourself informed. ..."
    "... Not quite sure why Mr Putin playing ice-hockey on his birthday is worthy of a story to open up for comments unless the Guardian is ' trawling ' to encourage some new anti-Putin Cold War rhetoric in the comments section. ..."
    "... PS / Don't forget that nice Israeli Prime Minister Mr Netanyahu's birthday and how he celebrates it. Ensure you open it up for comment as I'm sure also that many will wish to voice an opinion. Will this now be a standard ' Birthday Feature ' for all world leaders in the Guardian, or has this newspaper just granted an exception for Mr Putin's birthday ? ..."
    Oct 07, 2015 | The Guardian

    goatrider 7 Oct 2015 17:12

    I wonder if everyone on the Guardian staff has the same "man crush" on Putin? Could explain all these obsessive articles. I also wonder if he spent any time in the penalty box?

    laticsfanfromeurope -> Extracrispy 7 Oct 2015 17:06

    You prefer ISIS and Al-Nusra then the legitimate Syrian gov. and the legitimate help of Russia...not a surprise from stupid western supporters!


    pfox33 7 Oct 2015 17:05

    There isn't one of our western politicians that wouldn't sell his fucking mother to be getting the attention that Putin's getting. I thought he was supposed to be isolated.

    So to keep the hockey thing going, Putin's stolen the puck in the neutral zone, split the Nato defensemen who were too far forward and is on a breakaway.

    I feel sorry for Obama because I think he's a good leader but when it comes to trying to maneuver in a geopolitical situation like Syria he's fucked before he leaves the house. Putin can just act without trying to herd cats like Obama has to do with his Nato minions. He doesn't have a bunch of recalcitrant GOP senators calling him everything but a white man and running their mouths about what they would do.

    ... ... ...


    filin led -> Braminski 7 Oct 2015 16:55

    It's you who are a troll, sir. By what you say, anything can be dismissed as paid propaganda. That means, you are as likely to be a paid agent yourself. So, if you can't come up with a constructive argument, stop commenting please.


    Mordantdude -> Poppy757 7 Oct 2015 16:40

    As Russians say: "Envy silently".

    giacinto101 7 Oct 2015 15:59

    We could all use a real leader like Putin who takes no b.s. from anybody and is quick to adapt to any situation in a calm assertive way. He earns our admiration every day, the way he steers across an ever changing minefield and not because of his mucho image. We do not need leaders who deceit people by spewing relentless propaganda and no clarity. They fail as individuals and as a group because they are spineless. If multiple people repeat the same lie it does not make it true. It must be a club membership requirement to play the politics game and keep quiet about wrong things you see.


    SilkverBlogger 7 Oct 2015 15:54

    Action man outwitting the Neocons in the international chess game. More surprises to come


    CIAbot007 -> Poppy757 7 Oct 2015 15:39

    Most of Aussies have a bit of common sense which says that you can't blame anyone before it is prooved. With Western MSM propaganda machine blaming Russia and Putin even before anything happens you bet there's no such thing as balanced and unskewed reporting and even will for any kind of such thing. Don't get fooled, use your brain or your brain will be used by someone else.


    SilkverBlogger 7 Oct 2015 14:48

    Karl Rove said "Empire creates its own reality". No wonder the mantra "Assad must go" is now enshrined in international politics by the Neocon alliance. They didnt figure on Putin obviously.


    PekkaRoivanen MTavernier 7 Oct 2015 14:30

    In the West, we don't have a sycophantic press kissing the leader's backside:

    Guardian: Barack Obama scores just 2 out of 22 basketball hoops - video

    You wrote that Obama plays basketball and you prove it with this video where Obama wears dress shirt (tie removed :-D) and scores badly.

    Are you sure Obama plays basketball? Or is it just press kissing his backside?

    Kev Kev Hektor Uranga 7 Oct 2015 14:28

    the USA persecutes and kills people who speak out against it. Only difference is the USA does it in ways that nobody sees.. In other words the USA is the same as Russia only they do their work in the dark. When nobody is looking.

    Abiesalba MTavernier 7 Oct 2015 14:26

    That's the guy who is wishing Putin a happy birthday.

    The US/UK duo have caused with their insane illegal wars more than a million deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and counting.

    I recommend you look up a little the complex history and present situation in Chechnya and the North Caucasus region.

    ISIS (which the insanely aggressive US/UK duo have in effect created) is already spreading its influence INSIDE the Russian Federation. So Putin has direct interests to defeat ISIS and stabilise Syria (and Iraq). In addition, the south of the Russian Federation is on the map of territories which ISIS plans to conquer.

    See for example:
    -
    8 ISIS supporters killed in N. Caucasus special op

    (2 August 2015)

    Russian security forces have foiled a terrorist group that recently pledged allegiance to ISIS in Ingushetia, in the Northern Caucasus, according to the National Anti-Terror Committee (NAC). Security forces seized explosives, weapons and over 2,000 rounds of ammunition.
    -
    How Russian Militants Declared A New ISIS 'State' In Russia's North Caucasus

    (26 June 2015)

    The Islamic State group announced the creation of its northernmost province this week, after accepting a formal pledge of allegiance from former al Qaeda militants in the North Caucasus region of Russia.
    -
    -
    It is true that at present, the Chechens are begging Putin to let them strike in Syria (and this is also closely linked to the complicated history of North Caucasus), but Putin has not unleashed them. See for example here:
    -
    -
    Kadyrov asks Putin to allow Chechen infantry to fight in Syria (RT, 2 October 2015)
    -
    The head of the Chechen Republic has asked the Russian president to send Chechen units to fight Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria, adding that his fighters have sworn to fight terrorists till the end.

    "Being a Muslim, a Chechen and a Russian patriot I want to say that in 1999 when our republic was overrun with these devils we swore on the Koran that we would fight them wherever they are," the Chechen leader said. "But we need the Commander-in-Chief's decision to do this," he emphasized. According to the Russian Constitution, the president [Putin] is also the commander-in-chief of the military forces.


    BMWAlbert clanview46 7 Oct 2015 14:26

    It happens regardless, take the example in Volgograd (Vauxhall) two years ago. I am afraid that KSA and the Gulf States will be funding the usual mix of 'moderately terroristic shenanigans" in reprisal, but they did this before anyways.


    Julian1972 MTavernier 7 Oct 2015 14:21

    That was last year...also it was authored by a combination of the CIA and their right-wing 'Operation Stay Behind' cohorts...though, if you don't know that by now you doubtless never will.


    Abiesalba MTavernier 7 Oct 2015 14:16

    Murderers, thieves and embezzlers stroking each other's egos.

    Putin has a long way to go to match the US/UK.
    -
    -
    Here is a recent report about 'collateral damage' compiled by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival and the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War:
    -
    Body Count: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the 'War on Terror' (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan)

    (March 2015)
    -
    This investigation comes to the conclusion that the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, i.e. a total of around 1.3 million.

    NOT included in this figure are further war zones such as Yemen.

    The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major NGOs.

    And this is only a conservative estimate. The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely.
    -
    -
    For more about civilian casualties due to the US-led coalition strikes in Syria and Iraq, see the Airwars website:

    584 – 1,720 civilians killed:

    To date, the international coalition has only conceded two "likely" deaths, from an event in early November 2014. It is also presently investigating seven further incidents of concern; is carrying out credibility assessments on a further 13; and has concluded three more investigations – having found no 'preponderance of evidence' to support civilian casualty claims.

    More Power -> MTavernier 7 Oct 2015 14:13

    He making the US looked like whiny bitches. Good job; you alienate Russia and manage to strengthen the China-Russo relationrelationship. Sanctions that don't work, secret economic wars and multiple failed coup d'etat in Georgia and Ukraine [also do not work]. Just look at the World Bank, BRICS is on the door step. Happy birth day Putin. A badass mofo

    blueskis -> MTavernier 7 Oct 2015 14:06

    The vats majority of the 5500 killed have been civilians in East Ukraine killed by airstrikes ordered by kiev/washington, fully justifying Russian intervention.


    ooTToo -> MTavernier 7 Oct 2015 13:40

    Like US - Hospital - Afganistain. anyway ISIS are paid money by the CIA and don't care who they work for it's money that they are motivated by not ideology, that ideology stuff is made-up. Google it and dig, get yourself informed.


    geedeesee -> MTavernier 7 Oct 2015 13:19

    Russia is attacking what they said they'd attack, Tavernier. ISIS, al-Nusrah, and other terrorist organisations.

    inconvenienttruth13 -> MTavernier 7 Oct 2015 13:18

    No he isn't. Anybody with a functioning brain knows he had nothing to do with that. Unlike the US genocide in the Middle East - over 2 million dead and counting - not to mention the deliberate and sustained attack on a hospital. Maybe you don' get to see the news in your ward?

    inconvenienttruth13 -> MTavernier 7 Oct 2015 13:13

    The US created, funds, trains and arms ISIS - they are only supporting terrorists in their campaign to effect regime change. Russia is responding to a request fro the Syrian government, so its actions are entirely legal. The faces that the USA and the KSA are the biggest sponsors of terrorism in the world.

    monteverdi1610 7 Oct 2015 12:22

    Not quite sure why Mr Putin playing ice-hockey on his birthday is worthy of a story to open up for comments unless the Guardian is ' trawling ' to encourage some new anti-Putin Cold War rhetoric in the comments section.

    PS / Don't forget that nice Israeli Prime Minister Mr Netanyahu's birthday and how he celebrates it. Ensure you open it up for comment as I'm sure also that many will wish to voice an opinion. Will this now be a standard ' Birthday Feature ' for all world leaders in the Guardian, or has this newspaper just granted an exception for Mr Putin's birthday ?

    [Mar 20, 2019] Bruce Ohr, Liar or Moron by Larry C Johnson

    Credibility of the US government and Justice system was greatly undermined, if not destroyed by the Russiagate. Inability to investigate more plausible election interference by British an, Saudi and Israeli actors by Mueller paints him as a despicable political operative working for Clintons, not an independent Prosecutor, who diligently investigate the foreign interference in elections.
    The role of Rosenstein is the role of co-conspirator in a plot to deprive Trump of the Presidency or, at least, for force him to pursue the Deep State foreign policy, which is totally bankrupt policy. And they succeeded in this. Trump wet kiss with neocons was probably the part of the deal.
    Notable quotes:
    "... When even Trump who was the victim of the machinations cares only to tweet witch hunt, why would anyone expect that any of those involved in the attempted "coup" would be held to account? ..."
    "... I wondered about that myself. When I was doing clan work in Europe, recruiting UK citizens was absolutely forbidden. I needed special dispensation from Bonn Station to not declare my Russian assets to the Brits when they merely traveled to the UK. I think Steele's relationship with the FBI was not as a standard recruited asset or informer. It was a business contract. An article from a year ago sheds some light on that relationship. The first instance concerns his assistance in the FIFA investigation. ..."
    Mar 20, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    blue peacock , a day ago

    When even Trump who was the victim of the machinations cares only to tweet witch hunt, why would anyone expect that any of those involved in the attempted "coup" would be held to account?
    MP98 , 2 days ago
    No one is going to face any consequences - legal or other. Hell, most of them will make money from writing books about their "dedicated service." When was the last time the swamp applied the laws to one of it's own. Answer: never.

    The laws are enforced on us - the "deplorables out there," not the swamp creature "elite." We are not governed, we are ruled.

    And sadly that situation is as much the result of an indifferent and ignorant populace as the behavior of the ruling class.

    Nobby Stiles , 2 days ago
    In case you had not seen. I think it does connect well with the piece above.

    https://www.americanthinker...

    English Outsider -> Nobby Stiles , 2 days ago
    "One other important sidetone--there has been a longstanding agreement among the 5 Eyes (i.e., US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) to NOT recruit as assets each other's spies. Christopher Steele's employ with the FBI violates this policy."

    I see Steele's surfacing again. Might I put in a minor query. Does this longstanding agreement cover retired personnel?

    Bill Gaydon -> English Outsider , 8 hours ago
    Same question....^
    TTG -> English Outsider , a day ago
    I wondered about that myself. When I was doing clan work in Europe, recruiting UK citizens was absolutely forbidden. I needed special dispensation from Bonn Station to not declare my Russian assets to the Brits when they merely traveled to the UK. I think Steele's relationship with the FBI was not as a standard recruited asset or informer. It was a business contract. An article from a year ago sheds some light on that relationship. The first instance concerns his assistance in the FIFA investigation.

    "Steele might have been expected to move on once his investigation of the bidding was concluded. But he had discovered that the corruption at FIFA was global, and he felt that it should be addressed. The only organization that could handle an investigation of such scope, he felt, was the F.B.I. In 2011, Steele contacted an American agent he'd met who headed the Bureau's division for serious crimes in Eurasia. Steele introduced him to his sources, who proved essential to the ensuing investigation. In 2015, the Justice Department indicted fourteen people in connection with a hundred and fifty million dollars in bribes and kickbacks."

    The second instance of Steele's cooperation with the FBI even had a peripheral relationship with Trump. "Several years ago, the FBI hired Steele to help crack an international gambling and money-laundering ring purportedly run by a suspected Russian organized-crime figure named Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. The syndicate was based in an apartment in Trump Tower. Eventually, federal officials indicted more than thirty co-conspirators for financial crimes. Tokhtakhounov, though, eluded arrest, becoming a fugitive. Interpol issued a "red notice" calling for his arrest. But, in the fall of 2013, he showed up at the Miss Universe contest in Moscow -- and sat near the pageant's owner, Donald Trump."

    According to the New Yorker magazine article, it was standard Orbis procedure to warn authorities about national security threats. Steele warned German authorities about IS militants using the refugee flow to infiltrate Europe. "When Steele took his suspicions about Trump to the FBI in the summer of 2016, it was in keeping with Orbis protocol, rather than a politically driven aberration."

    Within the FBI, I'm sure Steele was coded as a source in some way as a standard procedure to use his information. We did the same with our non-asset sources in DOD. Hell, I was even coded as an intelligence asset when I was a SMU operative/case officer. This was different from the reporter number all case officers are given.

    https://www.newyorker.com/m...

    Tidewater -> TTG , 11 hours ago
    Philip Giraldi, on March 13, 2018, has an essay about this New Yorker article: 'Christopher Steele as seen by the New Yorker. Liberal fantasies beatify the messenger.' This is in the Unz Review. www.unz.com/pgiraldi/christ... .

    Mayer doesn't mention that Steele was almost certainly identified as MI6 during the years (possibly 1990-1993) that he was stationed in Moscow under diplomatic cover. Russian counterintelligence agents broke into his apartment, used the toilet, left it unflushed; they stole his wife's best shoes. He was definitely identified by 1999 when he was in Paris. There was a DSMA notice. Too late. Then, in 2006, when Steele is said to have had the Russia desk, there was the highly embarrassing electronic spy rock in a Moscow park. Surely he held some responsibility for that? And if Steele was a Russian expert why were his talents being wasted in Afghanistan?

    John Helmer quotes some old intelligence hands who deny that he was a particularly impressive agent or was deeply knowledgeable about Russia. Steele never went back to Russia after 1992 or 1993. Mayer, in the New Yorker article, makes no mention of what surely were setbacks for British intelligence regarding Russia in which Steele likely was playing a large part.

    We've been here before in this discussion. The question remains-- was Steele an unwitting puppet of a Russian master counterstrike, an aikido throw which has badly shaken and distracted America? DH, we await your comments. Has TTG gone wobbly?

    TTG -> Tidewater , an hour ago
    I'm also fairly certain RIS was aware of Steele's status as an MI6 officer when he was stationed in Moscow. I would think anyone working out of a diplomatic embassy is first assumed to be an intelligence officer by the host nation. I stayed away from embassies and other government facilities just to avoid that taint. The one time I was summoned to an embassy, I conducted extensive surveillance detection measures both before and after the visit and I wore a disguise.

    It was a normal matter for intelligence officers to be cycled through Afghanistan and Iraq post 9-11, no matter what their former expertise. I did my turn. CIA's "Russia House" was bitter about their fall from the pinnacle to be replaced by all things CT during that time.

    Was some of the raw information in Steele's dossier planted by RIS? That's very possible. Several experienced former US intelligence officers have voiced that possibility, especially about the more salacious bits of the dossier.

    Fred -> TTG , 15 hours ago
    That's a nice piece in the New Yorker. They mention the golden shower episode in Moscow, however, left out Loretta Lynch. "In was in her role as district attorney that her involvement in the Fifa investigation began. Over the course of five years in Brooklyn..." See the BBC article on FIFA from 2015: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32912118

    So did Loretta Lynch talk to Christopher Steele during this case or did Steele just talk to the FBI agent who was years later in London? When did then US attorney for New York's Eastern District Lorretta Lynch get informed and by which FBI agent? Who did that agent tell about the Steele dossier, when did it get to the AG's ears, and when did she tell Obama?

    "On January 5, 2017, it became clear that at least two Washingtonians remained in the dark about the dossier: the President and the Vice-President. " Oh, apparently AG Lynch never told Obama, because????????

    Another New Yorker Enigma: "Robert Hannigan, then the head of the U.K.'s intelligence service the G.C.H.Q., had recently flown to Washington and briefed the C.I.A.'s director, John Brennan, on a stream of illicit communications between Trump's team and Moscow that had been intercepted. (The content of these intercepts has not become public.) "

    So the UK has been spying on US Presidential candidates? Oh, they said they were "illicit" communications. What does that mean? Who was communicating with Whom? And how did G.C.H.Q. decide these communications were "illicit" but others, well they'd have to have them all to make a comparison, wouldn't they? Put a ribbon on top of that one. DId they also intercept any of Hilary's communications?

    TTG -> Fred , 13 hours ago
    Given that Steele played an important role in at least two major FBI investigations leading to multiple indictments, I would assume Lynch knew about Steele. Whether they ever conversed, I don't know.

    Comey was not at all sure about Lynch's impartiality. It would not surprise me if he kept details of the Russian investigation, including the dossier, from her. She probably learned about it shortly before Obama and Trump were briefed on the dossier. Obama knew enough about the Russian investigation, without the dossier, to warn Putin to knock it off in September 2016.

    I don't know if the Brits spied on our Presidential candidates. I wouldn't doubt it. We bugged Merkel's phone. What I am sure of is that the Brits spy on every Russian of importance within their capabilities. If Trump's campaign was in contact with those Russians, the Brits would know about it. They obviously thought those conversations were illicit enough to inform their US counterparts and reveal that they did monitor members of the Trump campaign. They wouldn't have done that just for shits and giggles.

    Fred -> TTG , 2 hours ago
    "They obviously thought those conversations were illicit enough to inform their US counterparts and reveal that they did monitor members of the Trump campaign."

    They thought it illicit? Listening is one thing, giving information to aid your country's government's preferred candidate is interference in an election process - ours. How many times has our ally the UK interfered with US elections? They had plenty of help from the FBI and DOJ here in the US in 2016. Who elected GCHQ to be arbiters of US elections? I can't find them in the US Constitution. Using the FBI and DOJ to sabatouge your party's political opponents, that's third world government standards.

    TTG -> Fred , 34 minutes ago
    If the Brits wanted to directly influence the election, they would have publicly released their information about "illicit' contacts. Keeping it within intelligence channels does nothing to influence an election. I would hope the Brits would never hold back on information concerning a possible CI threat.
    English Outsider -> TTG , 4 hours ago
    TTG - thank you for your reply above. The picture one gets of Steele is no longer that of a loose canon who somehow got himself involved in a presidential election campaign. It is that of an experienced and respected professional working in tandem, if perhaps unconventionally, with other professionals.

    And perhaps thinking that he or his contacts back home had stumbled over important information showing that a presidential candidate was compromised. That information possibly being the tip of the iceberg and urgently demanding further investigation.

    But that makes what happened all the more unusual -

    1. Why didn't the further investigation happen? Surely the fact that such an important matter wasn't thoroughly investigated, and that using all possible resources in the States and abroad, shows that it was no serious investigation in the first place?

    And more to the point here -

    2. If those involved were professionals working away soberly at a necessary investigation, what were they doing suddenly branching out into a smear campaign?

    For none, even the originators of the dossier, are claiming that the more discreditable part of the Steele dossier is true. That is not Intelligence material. It is sensationalised smear material.

    This objection has been met in part with the claim that the dossier was all raw unsifted Intelligence and therefore was released as is.

    But surely experienced Intelligence professionals don't suddenly pitch raw unsifted Intelligence into the middle of the political arena while they are supposed to be still assessing that intelligence?

    Irrespective of the question of whether Trump was compromised the question therefore arises - what were American officials doing running a smear campaign against a presidential candidate?

    Which leads back to the original question. What officials this side of the Atlantic were also involved, and how high did the authorisation for their involvement go in England.

    .

    On a matter I'm better informed about, I don't see the Colonel quietly farming away in Kent. I see him striding across the limitless expanse of a Scottish grouse moor. If our lot had known their business they'd have worked that into their offer.

    But if that farm in Kent is still going spare ...

    .

    Pat Lang Mod -> English Outsider , 3 hours ago
    I could have been Glubb's neighbor. I could have been a contender ... I thought the whole thing showed a surprising lack of judgment on their part.
    TTG -> English Outsider , an hour ago
    The counterintelligence investigation was in progress through the lead up to the 2016 election and is still in progress. Through 2016, it was done in a remarkably quiet fashion. That's how these investigations are supposed to work. No one hears about them until there is an arrest or indictment. That's how Mueller is running his investigation. We hear nothing from him except for the indictments already issued. And they are characteristically slow and methodical, usually spanning years before an arrest is made.

    None of this investigation, including Steele's reporting was used in a pre-election smear campaign. In my opinion, the reason the Obama administration did not publicize the idea of Russian interference with the election and possible involvement of Trump campaign officials is that it would surely have been seen as a partisan smear campaign. The public did not hear of the Steele dossier until well after the election was over.

    It was not just British intelligence involved in collecting on Russian interference in the election. The Estonians, the Dutch, the Australians and probably others contributed to the intelligence picture. We may not learn the full extent of that cooperation for many years. Given the changing nature of information warfare and social media manipulation, I sincerely wish the full extent of that intelligence is made public quickly. Sure that would probably also cramp Western media manipulation capabilities, of which we are far from innocent, but the sunlight would help inoculate all of us against this malignant phenomenon.

    Pat Lang Mod -> TTG , a day ago
    MI-6 tried to recruit me. I reported it to the COS at my post. Please don't tell me we and our liaison services love each other.
    TTG -> Pat Lang , a day ago
    Not surprised. What a duplicitous business we rolled around in.
    Pat Lang Mod -> TTG , a day ago
    They offered me a retirement farm in Kent, lifetime membership in one of the best clubs, a big stipend and"career assistance". It was funny.
    TTG -> Pat Lang , a day ago
    The retirement farm and the big stipend sounds pretty good. I could do without the best club and the career assistance. Sounds like they appreciated you a lot more than DIA.
    Pat Lang Mod -> TTG , 18 hours ago
    DIA made me an SES-4 with presidential rank (Distinguished). Looks like the Brits expected me to have a lot of access. They claimed these guys were off the reservation. and that they were not authorized to pitch me.
    TTG -> Pat Lang , 13 hours ago
    Off the reservation my ass. I would say those Brits were a bunch of cheeky blokes who did not do a thorough enough job of assessing your susceptibility to recruitment.
    Pat Lang Mod -> TTG , 3 hours ago
    You seem more upset over this than I was. We accepted their false statements of innocence betrayed by their own and went right on working with them. Why would they try this? Simple. As we do they wanted to know what we were not telling them. everyone does it. A basic principle. Recruit your liaison.
    TTG -> Pat Lang , 29 minutes ago
    You're right. I never worked out of an embassy or in any long term liaison function. If I was the target of such a pitch, it would have meant that I was blown along with any operations I was involved with. For me, it would have been life altering.
    Boris -> English Outsider , a day ago
    Been wondering about that too.
    MarcotheLombard , 2 days ago
    Thanks for this. I am wondering what Larry Johnson and the other members of this Committee of Correspondence make of the possible connection between Christopher Steele, Pablo Miller, and Sergei Skripal?

    Some of Craig Murray's speculations in his latest post on the Skripal incident regarding the coordinated role of Orbis Intelligence, the BBC, and the British state (which issued a DSMA notice prohibiting press mention of Pablo Miller) are quite plausible. Murray is, like the members of this committee, a veteran of the game....

    Was Skripal coerced/encouraged by Miller to serve as one of Steele's unattributed Russian "sources"? Did he later get cold feet? Or did he later attempt to buy his way back into Russia with the claim that he could provide proof that the Dossier was a fraud? Or was he working as a triple agent the whole time? Were the two sightseeing Russians "Borishov" and "Petrov" sent to retrieve something from Skripal?

    https://www.craigmurray.org...

    Patrick Armstrong -> MarcotheLombard , a day ago
    Try this. This theory ties together all the incoherencies of the official explanation better than anything I have seen. And, I'm pleased to see it is getting reprinted here and there.
    https://michaelantonyblog.w...
    Nobby Stiles -> Patrick Armstrong , 20 hours ago
    Yes, it made a lot of sense to me. The only thing it doesn't explain is the roof. Was somebody keeping some WMD in the attic?
    Barbara Ann -> Patrick Armstrong , a day ago
    I concur. This is the most plausible explanation of what really happened in Salisbury that I have read so far.

    Colonel - might this theory be worth a dedicated SST post? It is 5,000 words, so perhaps Patrick, David Habakkuk, or another interested member of the committee would be happy to summarize the salient details (e.g. that Borisov & Petrov intended to return to Russia with Sergei Skripal). The author's contact details are in the comments section re reprint rights.

    [Mar 20, 2019] Sanders was a sheepdog>

    Notable quotes:
    "... There are numerous clues that point to the 2016 US Presidential Election as having been a set-up. Few seem willing to take a close look at these facts. But it is necessary for an understanding of the world we live in today. ..."
    "... Sanders as sheep-dog Black Agenda Report called Sanders a sheep-dog soon after he entered the race . ..."
    "... "Enough with the emails!" ..."
    "... Not pursuing Hillary's 'winning' of 6 coin tosses in Iowa ..."
    "... Virtually conceding the black and female vote to Hillary ..."
    "... Not calling Hillary out about her claim to have NEVER sold her vote ..."
    "... Endorsing Hillary despite learning of Hillary-DNC collusion ..."
    "... Continuing to help the Democratic Party reach out to Bernie supports even after the election ..."
    "... As one keen observer noted: Sanders is a Company Man . ..."
    May 31, 2017 | jackrabbit.blog
    There are numerous clues that point to the 2016 US Presidential Election as having been a set-up. Few seem willing to take a close look at these facts. But it is necessary for an understanding of the world we live in today.

    Trump's first 100 days has come and gone and he has proven to be every bit the faux populist that Obama was (as I explained in a previous post). In hind-sight we can see how a new faux populist was installed.

    Evidence

    1. Sanders as sheep-dog Black Agenda Report called Sanders a sheep-dog soon after he entered the race .

      Sanders made it clear from the start that he ruled out the possibility of running as an independent. That was only the first of many punches that Sanders pulled as he led his 'sheep' into the Democratic fold.

      Others were:

      • ; "Enough with the emails!"

      • ; Not pursuing Hillary's 'winning' of 6 coin tosses in Iowa;

      • ; Virtually conceding the black and female vote to Hillary;

      • ; Not calling Hillary out about her claim to have NEVER sold her vote;

      • ; Endorsing Hillary despite learning of Hillary-DNC collusion;

      • ; Continuing to help the Democratic Party reach out to Bernie supports even after the election.

      As one keen observer noted: Sanders is a Company Man .

    2. Trump as Clinton protege

    [Mar 20, 2019] Anti-semitism became a form of Neo-McCarthyim

    Notable quotes:
    "... George Galloway and Steve Topple of the Canary posted this video on the ongoing transatlantic attack campaign against the left wing, including Ilhan Omar, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Yellow Vests under the canard that they are anti-Semitic. This has now reached the level of the transnational RussiaGate hysteria to the point where it is obviously a coordinated smear by global corporate and political Establishment and ruling class people to muzzle the voice of a rising generation which is anti-capitalist and anti-war. ..."
    Mar 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Anne Jaclard , Mar 10, 2019 11:07:50 PM | link

    George Galloway and Steve Topple of the Canary posted this video on the ongoing transatlantic attack campaign against the left wing, including Ilhan Omar, Jeremy Corbyn, and the Yellow Vests under the canard that they are anti-Semitic. This has now reached the level of the transnational RussiaGate hysteria to the point where it is obviously a coordinated smear by global corporate and political Establishment and ruling class people to muzzle the voice of a rising generation which is anti-capitalist and anti-war.

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=SCpBsC8l5AU&feature=youtu.be


    @4 Adam Curtis is always great, I personally preferred The Trap and his short film on Nixon, but Hypernormalisation is arguably the most powerful and illustrative film of our times. It would be perfect if it weren't for the Russia segment.

    james , Mar 10, 2019 3:25:22 PM | link

    anti-semitism... regarding the 2 links on corbyn - both very good btw and worth checking out if you are interested. i find it disturbing how this topic can be pushed to the forefront 24/7, or ad nauseam... for me, the only purpose it seems to serve is to inadvertently turn people completely off everything to do with israel.. obviously the initial purpose here is to smear corbyn in the hopes that the mud sticks.. either way, the fact it is in the news constantly is a clear heads up the media is not neutral, or unbiased in it's selection of the topics put before people on a regular basis..

    arby , Mar 10, 2019 4:03:27 PM | link
    Galloway on Corbyn and anti semitism

    https://twitter.com/georgegalloway/status/1104094293789155328

    m , Mar 10, 2019 4:24:35 PM | link
    Speaking of anti-semitism, what do Dershowitz, Netanyahoo, Adelson and Trump all have in common? https://journal-neo.org/2019/03/10/the-netanyahu-problem/ Here's the thing (if any of the stated things in the article are true): Bibi's up for re-election on the 9th, and not looking too well, it seems. Elijah Magnier has sounded alarm bells, too: https://ejmagnier.com/2019/03/07/syria-preparing-its-missiles-for-the-next-battle-with-israel/ Things might be getting quite interesting in the next weeks. Oh, we can add Corbyn
    with the anti-semitism accusations against him and the Brexit mess into the mix, too, with the big vote on May's deal on Tuesday. It's small wonder why there is so much talk of anti-semitism these days, given the stellar cast of characters involved.
    bevin , Mar 10, 2019 5:23:38 PM | link
    The anti-semistism charges against Corbyn only seem potentially damaging because they occur in the echo chamber of a media system unanimously organised against him and the anti-imperialism that he supports.

    There are signs-one of which is the desperation of the media in making ever more extreme charges- that the campaign has had very little effect. Labour Party membership is increasing steadily, the largest political party in Europe gets larger every week, making the party financially independent (it relies much less now than it ever has in the past on Union financing) and organisationally stronger, as thousands of energetic, intelligent youthful people volunteer to work for it.

    Part of the antisemitism campaign has consisted of MPs going out on a limb and, with maximum publicity, resigning from the party, thus saving the members the messy job of expelling them or refusing to select them for re-election. At the same time local party organisations, long strongholds of municipal and regional bosses and Blairite politics, are being re-captured by the membership. Both Scotland and Wales, for example, are now led by anti-imperialist socialists. Two years ago they were centres of anti-Corbyn organising.

    These things are important because this is a demonstration of the way that a media system, by consistently promoting the interests of the 'elites' loses its credibility. Most of those who read and contribute to this site were once regular and comnplacent consumers of the MSM. We used if not to accept uncritically then at least to take as probably true the 'news' on public broadcasters and quality broadsheets. Now we realise that they are utterly unreliable retailers of propaganda.

    The good news is that this is becoming a majority attitude- we are on the way to a situation, already achieved in France I suspect, in which nothing from the state is taken on trust. And people are making up their own minds after comparing information, thru places such as this one, with each other.

    To get back to Corbyn, I find it hard to believe that he will not only win the next general election but in doing so lead a new sort of party, backed by a powerful and massive popular movement, full of committed, if often mild reforming, socialists into Parliament.
    If that happens it will only be fair if the Israeli government be asked to take a bow for 'going over the top' to such an extent that it is going to be difficult to convince anyone that Corbyn is other than spotlessly clear, politically and highly principled.

    pantaraxia , Mar 10, 2019 6:41:33 PM | link
    Jeremy Corbyn is a dead man walking. His failure to stand by his allies (from Ken LIvingstone to the more recent Chris Williamson) within the Labour Party as they have been successfully picked off, victims of anti-semetic smear campaigns, has seriously undermined his leadership and increasingly isolated him within his own party. Corbyn's policy of accommodation and appeasement is obviously failing and has only emboldened his attackers. From his failure to geld the Blairites within his party by expelling its most vocal zionist mouthpieces (the odious Margaret Hodge and Joan Ryan being prime examples) to Labour's adoption of IHRA's redefinition of anti-semetism to include anti-zionism, Corbyn's appeasement policy has been an unmitigated disaster, leaving him effectively neutered in the face of this unremitting onslaught as his poll numbers continue to drop. Even George Galloway, a staunch Corbyn supporter, is despairing of this state of affairs.

    Topple Galloway: The Witch-Hunt (approx. 12 min starting at 17:00)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCpBsC8l5AU&t=1741s


    More on this subject. (cannot recommend highly enough):

    Britain's Witchfinders Are Ready to Burn Jeremy Corbyn - Jonathan Cook
    http://www.unz.com/article/britains-witchfinders-are-ready-to-burn-jeremy-corbyn/

    [Mar 20, 2019] Britain s witchfinders are ready to burn Jeremy Corbyn by Jonathan Cook

    We should not idealize nether Israelis not Palestinians. the latter were pushed by Israeli policies to more fundamentalist Islam.
    Changes of anti-Semitism is nor the favorite tool of Israeli lobby to smear critics of Israeli polices.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The flood of exaggerated claims of antisemitism make it harder to deal with any real instances of antisemitism. The credibility of well-founded allegations is undermined by the less credible ones and real perpetrators are more likely not to be held to account. Crying wolf is dangerous when there are real wolves around the corner. This was the reality that Chris Williamson was drawing attention to. ..."
    "... Right now, the establishment -- represented by Richard Dearlove, a former head of the MI6 -- is maliciously trying to frame Corbyn's main adviser, Seumas Milne, as a Kremlin asset. ..."
    "... Jewish is about race, religion and place of origin, Zionism is about economics and unabashed wealth: the two concepts are polar opposites. Very few non wealthy Jews are zionist. ..."
    "... The gods of finance don't really care about a few dead self-identifying Jews. Once it happens there will be no more pretence of niceness or democratic nonsense and the Orwellian police-state crackdown can proceed in earnest but now with almost everyone's blessing. Expect the very same thing everywhere across Europe and the Anglosphere. ..."
    "... Anti-Semitism has re-established itself on the left partly by way of an ideology of anti-colonialism. Believing Western colonial power to be the worst evil in history – a progressive orthodoxy that has been inculcated in Western education systems for decades – sections of the left relativise the Holocaust, treating it as only one among many crimes against humanity. At the same time, they see Israel as the worst embodiment of colonialism – hence the demand that, alone among the world's states, it must demonstrate its "right to exist". ..."
    "... Antisemitism in the UK used to mean hostility to the pushiness, greed and mad manners of successful Jews like Philip Green, but it has now been redefined to mean someone who thinks the Palestinians should not be used as target practice. ..."
    "... Antisemitism here is a middle and upper class thing. There are so few Jews in some parts of the UK that many people have never met a Jew. I was over 30 before I ever knew anyone who was Jewish. ..."
    "... Where is the sanctimonious Catholic Church to anathemize the major war criminal Tony Blair the Pious? ..."
    "... British Labor MP Tam Dalyell has charged that Prime Minister Tony Blair was "being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers" ..."
    "... The comment echoed remarks by U.S. Republican Patrick Buchanan, who was accused of anti-Semitism when in an article last March, he described a predominantely Jewish group of advisers to President Bush as "a cabal of polemicists and public officials [who] seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests." ..."
    "... You're confusing the issue. The issue is this: it's not anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist. All the rest is squid ink. ..."
    "... McCarthyism is the extension of the European dark age inquisition. Nowadays the American glosses over McCarthyism with the terms democracy, neo-liberal order, and human rights. Any idealism other than the American's must be denied, even in the accused own defence. The American presents the accused as an enemy so dangerous, their ideas so corrupting, that they must be silenced from the outset. Their only chance of rehabilitation is prostration before their accusers and utter repentance. ..."
    "... Antisemitism in the UK used to mean hostility to the pushiness, greed and mad manners but it has now been redefined to mean someone who thinks the Palestinians should not be used as target practice. ..."
    "... On Twitter, Corbyn wrote: "The UN says Israel's killings of demonstrators in Gaza – including children, paramedics and journalists – may constitute 'war crimes or crimes against humanity'". ..."
    "... The UN report, published earlier this week, said: "The Israeli security forces killed and maimed Palestinian demonstrators who did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to others when they were shot, nor were they directly participating in hostilities," adding that the protests had been "civilian in nature". ..."
    "... "A quite incredible story out of England has not received much media coverage in the United States. It concerns how the Israeli Embassy in London connived with government officials to "take down" parliamentarians and government ministers who were considered to be critical of the Jewish State. It was also learned that the Israeli Embassy was secretly subsidizing and advising private groups promoting Israeli interests, including associations of Members of Parliament (MPs)." ..."
    Mar 01, 2019 | www.unz.com
    Jonathan Cook March 1, 2019 2,400 Words 107 Comments Reply Email This Page to Someone

    "McCarthyism" is a word thrown around a lot nowadays, and in the process its true meaning -- and horror -- has been increasingly obscured.

    McCarthyism is not just the hounding of someone because their views are unpopular. It is the creation by the powerful of a perfect, self-rationalising system of incrimination -- denying the victim a voice, even in their own defence. It presents the accused as an enemy so dangerous, their ideas so corrupting, that they must be silenced from the outset. Their only chance of rehabilitation is prostration before their accusers and utter repentance.

    McCarthyism, in other words, is the modern political parallel of the witch hunt.

    In an earlier era, the guilt of women accused of witchcraft was tested through the ducking stool. If a woman drowned, she was innocent; if she survived, she was guilty and burnt at the stake. A foolproof system that created an endless supply of the wicked, justifying the status and salaries of the men charged with hunting down ever more of these diabolical women.

    And that is the Medieval equivalent of where the British Labour party has arrived, with the suspension of MP Chris Williamson for anti-semitism.

    Revenge of the Blairites

    Williamson, it should be noted, is widely seen as a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn, a democratic socialist who was propelled unexpectedly into the Labour leadership nearly four years ago by its members. His elevation infuriated most of the party's MPs, who hanker for the return of the New Labour era under Tony Blair, when the party firmly occupied the political centre.

    Corbyn's success has also outraged vocal supporters of Israel both in the Labour party -- some 80 MPs are stalwart members of Labour Friends of Israel -- and in the UK media. Corbyn is the first British party leader in sight of power to prefer the Palestinians' right to justice over Israel's continuing oppression of the Palestinians.

    For these reasons, the Blairite MPs have been trying to oust Corbyn any way they can. First through a failed re-run of the leadership contest and then by assisting the corporate media -- which is equally opposed to Corbyn -- in smearing him variously as a shambles, a misogynist, a sympathiser with terrorists, a Russian asset, and finally as an "enabler" of anti-semitism.

    This last accusation has proved the most fruitful after the Israel lobby began to expand the definition of anti-semitism to include not just hatred of Jews but also criticism of Israel. Labour was eventually forced to accept a redefinition, formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, that conflates anti-Zionism -- opposition to Israel's violent creation on the Palestinians' homeland -- with anti-semitism.

    Guilt by association

    Once the mud stuck through repetition, a vocal group of Labour MPs began denouncing the party for being "institutionally anti-semitic", "endemically anti-semitic" and a "cesspit of anti-semitism". The slurs continued relentlessly, even as statistics proved the accusation to be groundless. The figures show that anti-semitism exists only in the margins of the party, as racism does in all walks of life.

    Meanwhile, the smears overshadowed the very provable fact that anti-semitism and other forms of racism are rearing their head dangerously on the political right.

    But the witchfinders were never interested in the political reality. They wanted a never-ending war -- a policy of "zero tolerance" -- to root out an evil in their midst, a supposed "hard left" given succour by Corbyn and his acolytes.

    This is the context for understanding Williamson's "crime".

    Despite the best efforts of our modern witchfinder generals to prove otherwise, Williamson has not been shown to have expressed hatred towards Jews, or even to have made a comment that could be interpreted as anti-semitic.

    One of the most experienced of the witchfinders, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, indulged familiar McCarthyite tactics this week in trying to prove Williamson's anti-semitism by association. The MP was what Freedland termed a "Jew baiter" because he has associated with people whom the witchfinders decree to be anti-semites.

    'Too apologetic'

    Shortly before he found himself formally shunned by media commentators and his own parliamentary party, Williamson twice confirmed his guilt to the inquisitors.

    First, he dared to challenge the authority of the witchfinders. He suggested that some of those being hounded out of Labour may not in fact be witches. Or more specifically, in the context of constant claims of a Labour "anti-semitism crisis", he argued that the party had been "too apologetic" in dealing with the bad-faith efforts of those seeking to damage a Corbyn-led party.

    In other words, Williamson suggested that Labour ought to be more proactively promoting the abundant evidence that it was indeed dealing with what he called the "scourge of anti-semitism", and thereby demonstrate to the British public that Labour wasn't "institutionally anti-semitic". Labour members, he was pointing out, ought not to have to keep quiet as they were being endlessly slandered as anti-semites.

    As Jewish Voice for Labour, a Jewish group supportive of Corbyn, noted :

    The flood of exaggerated claims of antisemitism make it harder to deal with any real instances of antisemitism. The credibility of well-founded allegations is undermined by the less credible ones and real perpetrators are more likely not to be held to account. Crying wolf is dangerous when there are real wolves around the corner. This was the reality that Chris Williamson was drawing attention to.

    As with all inquisitions, however, the witchfinders were not interested in what Williamson actually said, but in the threat he posed to the narrative they have created to destroy their enemy, Corbynism, and reassert their own power.

    So his words were ripped from their context and presented as proof that he did indeed support witches.

    He was denounced for saying what he had not: that Labour should not apologise for its anti-semitism. In this dishonest reformulation of Williamson's statement, the witchfinders claimed to show that he had supported anti-semitism, that he consorted with witches.

    No screening for documentary

    Second, Williamson compounded his crime by publicly helping just such a readymade witch: a black Jewish woman named Jackie Walker.

    He had booked a room in the British parliament building -- the seat of our supposed democracy -- so that audiences could see a new documentary on an earlier Labour witch hunt. More than two years ago the party suspended Walker over anti-semitism claims.

    The screening was to inform Labour party members of the facts of her case in the run-up to a hearing in which, given the current atmosphere, it is likely she will be expelled. The screening was sponsored by Jewish Voice for Labour, which has also warned repeatedly that anti-semitism is being used malevolently to silence criticism of Israel and weaken Corbyn.

    Walker was seen as a pivotal figure by those opposed to Corbyn. She was a co-founder of Momentum, the grassroots organisation established to support Corbyn after his election to the leadership and deal with the inevitable fallout from the Blairite wing of MPs.

    Momentum expected a rough ride from this dominant faction, and they were not disappointed. The Blairites still held on to the party machinery and they had an ally in Tom Watson, who became Corbyn's deputy.

    Walker was one of the early victims of the confected claims of an Labour "anti-semitism crisis". But she was not ready to roll over and accept her status as witch. She fought back.

    From lynching to witch hunt

    First, she produced a one-woman show about her treatment at the hands of the Labour party bureaucracy -- framed in the context of decades of racist treatment of black people in the west -- called The Lynching .

    And then her story was turned into a documentary film, fittingly called Witch Hunt . It sets out very clearly the machinations of the Blairite wing of MPs, and Labour's closely allied Israel lobby, in defaming Walker as part of their efforts to regain power over the party.

    For people so ostensibly concerned about racism towards Jews, these witchfinders show little self-awareness about how obvious their own racism is in relation to some of the "witches" they have hunted down.

    But that racism can only be understood if people have the chance to hear from Walker and other victims of the anti-semitism smears. Which is precisely why Williamson, who was trying to organise the screening of Witch Hunt, had to be dealt with too.

    Party in disrepute

    Walker is not the only prominent black anti-racism activist targeted. Marc Wadsworth, another longtime ally of Corbyn's, and founder of the Anti-Racist Alliance, was "outed" last year in another confected anti-semitism scandal. The allegations of anti-semitism were impossible to stand up publicly, so finally he was booted out on a catch-all claim that he had brought the party "into disrepute".

    Jews who criticise Israel and support Corbyn's solidarity with Palestinians have been picked off by the witchfinders too, cheered on by media commentators who claim this is being done in the service of a "zero tolerance" policy towards racism. As well as Walker, the targets have included Tony Greenstein, Moshe Machover, Martin Odoni, Glyn Secker and Cyril Chilson.

    But as the battle in Labour has intensified to redefine anti-Zionism as anti-semitism, the deeper issues at stake have come to the fore. Jon Lansman, another founder of Momentum, recently stated : "I don't want any Jewish member in the party to be leaving. We are absolutely committed to making Labour a safe space."

    But there are a set of very obvious problems with that position, and they have gone entirely unexamined by those promoting the "institutional anti-semitism" and "zero tolerance" narratives.

    Lobby's covert actions exposed

    First, it is impossible to be a home to all Jews in Labour, when the party's Jewish members are themselves deeply split over key issues like whether Corbyn is a force for good and whether meaningful criticism of Israel should be allowed.

    A fanatically pro-Israel organisation like the Jewish Labour Movement will never tolerate a Corbyn-led Labour party reaching power and supporting the Palestinian cause. To pretend otherwise is simple naivety or deception.

    That fact was demonstrably proven two years ago in the Al Jazeera undercover documentary The Lobby into covert efforts by Israel and its UK lobbyists to undermine Corbyn from within his own party through groups like the JLM and MPs in Labour Friends of Israel. It was telling that the party machine, along with the corporate media, did its best to keep the documentary out of public view.

    The MPs loudest about "institutional anti-semitism" in Labour were among those abandoning the party to join the Independent Group this month, preferring to ally with renegade Conservative MPs in an apparent attempt to frustrate a Corbyn-led party winning power.

    Institutional racism on Palestinians

    Further, if a proportion of Jewish Labour party members have such a heavy personal investment in Israel that they refuse to countenance any meaningful curbs on Israel's abuses of Palestinians -- and that has been underscored repeatedly by public comments from the JLM and Labour Friends of Israel -- then keeping them inside the party will require cracking down on all but the flimsiest criticism of Israel. It will tie the party's hands on supporting Palestinian rights.

    In the name of protecting the "Israel right or wrong" crowd from what they consider to be anti-semitic abuse, Labour will have to provide institutional support for Israel's racism towards Palestinians.

    In doing so, it will in fact simply be returning to the status quo in the party before Corbyn, when Labour turned a blind eye over many decades to the Palestinians' dispossession by European Zionists who created an ugly anachronistic state where rights accrue based on one's ethnicity and religion rather than citizenship.

    Those in Labour who reject Britain's continuing complicity in such crimes -- ones the UK set in motion with the Balfour Declaration -- will find, as a result, that it is they who have no home in Labour. That includes significant numbers of anti-Zionist Jews, Palestinians, Muslims and Palestinian solidarity activists.

    Safe space for whom?

    If the creation of a "safe space" for Jews in the Labour party is code, as it appears to be, for a safe space for hardline Zionist Jews, it will inevitably require that the party become a hostile environment for those engaged in other anti-racism battles.

    Stripped bare, what Lansman and the witchfinders are saying is that Zionist Jewish sensitivities in the party are the only ones that count, that anything and everything must be done to indulge them, even if it means abusing non-Zionist Jewish members, black members, Palestinian and Muslim members, and those expressing solidarity with Palestinians.

    This is precisely the political black hole into which simplistic, kneejerk identity politics inevitably gets sucked.

    Right now, the establishment -- represented by Richard Dearlove, a former head of the MI6 -- is maliciously trying to frame Corbyn's main adviser, Seumas Milne, as a Kremlin asset.

    While the witchfinders claim to have unearthed a "pattern of behaviour" in Williamson's efforts to expose their smears, in fact the real pattern of behaviour is there for all to see: a concerted McCarthyite campaign to destroy Corbyn before he can reach No 10.

    Corbyn's allies are being picked off one by one, from grassroots activists like Walker and Wadsworth to higher-placed supporters like Williamson and Milne. Soon Corbyn will stand alone, exposed before the inquisition that has been prepared for him.

    Then Labour can be restored to the Blairites, the members silenced until they leave and any hope of offering a political alternative to the establishment safely shelved. Ordinary people will again be made passive spectators as the rich carry on playing with their lives and their futures as though Britain was simply a rigged game of Monopoly.

    If parliamentary politics returns to business as usual for the wealthy, taking to the streets looks increasingly like the only option. Maybe it's time to dust off a Yellow Vest.

    Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .

    Sean , says: March 1, 2019 at 5:08 pm GMT

    https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3413292,00.html

    LONDON – Many of the key players in the escalating British campaign to boycott Israel are Jewish or Israeli, the Jewish Chronicle revealed in an investigation published Thursday.

    According to the investigation, the Jewish academics justify their stance as part of the struggle for Palestinian rights and ending Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.

    The report stated that a high proportion of the academics were deeply involved in UCU, the University and College Union, which last month sparked an international outcry by voting to facilitate a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

    Anti-boycott figures suggest that the campaign has been fuelled by a well-organized mix of far-left activists and Islamic organizations, the JC reported. In reality, the main proponents are a loosely knit collection of academics and trade unionists linked to groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews for the Boycotting of Israeli Goods, and Bricup, the British Committee for Universities of Palestine

    Working class British do not have their own intellectuals. The Jewish intelligentsia's humanist and realist wings are at war. Gilad Atzmon is being described without qualification as an Anti Semite in popular British newspapers, which never mention that he is Jewish.

    It used to be that Atzmon being a Jew would protect him from accusations of antisemitism, and he would have be described as "self hating". Unfortunately the main intellectuals of the pro Palestinian movement are are humanist Jewish intellectuals, often of Israeli origin and the simple minded white gentiles of the Labour Party foolishly think that they are protected. The brilliant public relations and political experts working for the realist Israel-supporting Jews always lead with their Sunday punch and go nuclear with a moralising onslaught on white gentiles to get them to altruistically punish anyone Israel does not like. And it always works. Yet humanist Jews bleating about the Palestinians can always convince the more intellectual humanitarian white gentiles into supporting the Palestinians. So it will be never ending.

    niteranger , says: March 2, 2019 at 6:42 am GMT
    Britain is done. The laws passed show any idea or statement that criticizes Jews and Israel is antisemitic. Atzmon was foolish to believe that he had some protection from attacks because he was Jewish. They made an example out of him for the rest of those who do not fall in line with the belief that all true knowledge comes from the Jews and Israel.

    The only chance that Britain has is the fact that the crazy Muslim hoards may actually turn on the Magic Jews and start to murder them. The Jews may have overplayed their hand with immigration just like in France. The Brits have been pummel into cuckolds as their world is being destroyed by both the Jews and the Muslims.

    Tsigantes , says: March 2, 2019 at 9:02 am GMT
    It works because the majority Israeli-bought politicians let it work. It works because we the public let the politicians get away with it.

    I'm beginning to think that the only way to expose and end this false equivalency [criticism of Israel = anti-semitism) is for the 80% [yes!] of Europeans who support Palestine against Israel to show up in droves to their respective parliaments and insist on being imprisoned according to the law.

    Anonymous [341] Disclaimer , says: March 2, 2019 at 9:11 am GMT
    It's curious that the Labour Party – in both its Blair and Corbyn manifestations – actively encourages the ethnic displacement of white Britons from their ancient motherland, with their policy of massive uncontrolled immigration, but weeps great big sobs and tears about the ethnic displacement of one group of foreigners by another group of foreigners.
    Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 10:00 am GMT
    Corbyn promised, in the party's manifesto, to back the Brexit referendum result. Now, at the worst possible time, he has reneged on that promise. He had one thing going for him – his reputation as "principled". There is no move more fatal to that reputation than what he has just done.

    Thankfully, Theresa May has a sense of duty and, I think, will outmanoeuvre him in the end. But as innumerable denizens of this board will ask themselves: so what if Corbyn stands against British democracy, national sovereignty, any form of border control? So what if he promotes avowed anti-British racists to his shadow cabinet? At least he probably dislikes Jews

    Ah, yes but it is "unfair to conclude the last bit" – even while the rest is straightforward matter of record "he has Jewish supporters". Great, but those Jews, who remain Jeremy Corbyn supporters, after his great stab in the back over Brexit, are his collaborators in his attempt to fatally wound Britain as a nation. That tells me all I need to know about their politics. May they reflect on their grim dishonesty.

    Miro23 , says: March 2, 2019 at 10:18 am GMT

    If parliamentary politics returns to business as usual for the wealthy, taking to the streets looks increasingly like the only option. Maybe it's time to dust off a Yellow Vest.

    I've been thinking the same. The political systems in the UK and the US are so putrid that street demonstrations seem the only way forward.

    Issue by issue they can be Brexit or Anti-War, and the minority elites are obliged to use their security forces (with all the risks that that involves).

    smokey , says: March 2, 2019 at 11:10 am GMT
    One should not merge or confuse, by any means rationally imaginable, -- "Economic Zionism (EZ)", a system of economics that claims it enjoys exclusive right to establish and enforce its monopoly rule over all persons and things, -- -with --

    -- "racial bias", a system that claims it enjoys exclusive right to establish and enforce its Jews-Only rule over all persons and things.

    Jewish is about race, religion and place of origin, Zionism is about economics and unabashed wealth: the two concepts are polar opposites. Very few non wealthy Jews are zionist.

    Zionism has long exploited the myth that wealth established by EZ only comes to a Jewish tribal member who is faithful to the needs and wants of Zionism. This propaganda has a long history being the key that has opened the door to make many Zionist projects successful.

    EZ explains why the wealth of 26 Zionist equates to the wealth of the rest of the world. See also the picture at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

    Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 11:52 am GMT
    @Sean Paul Embery is a smart younger bloke. https://unherd.com/2019/02/the-trade-union-club-for-liberal-cosmopolitans/

    As is Jonathan Rutherford and Maurice Glasman. Meanwhile, working class Englishman John Gray is one of the finest thinkers of the last few decades.

    NoseytheDuke , says: March 2, 2019 at 12:38 pm GMT
    @niteranger

    the fact that the crazy Muslim hoards may actually turn on the Magic Jews and start to murder them

    Of course, it is what is desired and very likely the real reason that they are there in the first place. The gods of finance don't really care about a few dead self-identifying Jews. Once it happens there will be no more pretence of niceness or democratic nonsense and the Orwellian police-state crackdown can proceed in earnest but now with almost everyone's blessing. Expect the very same thing everywhere across Europe and the Anglosphere.

    Jake , says: March 2, 2019 at 1:05 pm GMT
    When you fail, or refuse, to understand the root source of the growth of a poisonous thing, you aint ever got no hope better than a soothing fart in Hell to make a correction.

    Anglo-Saxon Puritanism was a Judaizing heresy rising from the specifics of Anglophone rebellion against Christendom, which 'reformation' itself began from Saxon Martin Luther's theorizing how to feel as 'saved' just by being who he was as Jews felt by being Jews – salvation by faith ONLY became Luther's Christian version of salvation by Jewish blood ONLY. Then Luther cemented even more the Judaizing of the movement by declaring that the Pharisaic definition of Scripture was the defintion of the Old Testament.

    A Judaizing heresy will always produce culture that is pro-Jewish and anti-Christendom and anti-peoples most closely seen as still reflecting Christendom.

    Anglo-Saxon Puritanism was the Protestant precursor of the French Revolution. It swept away all that had been in place before, so thoroughly that it was the final piece of remaking, at points inverting, the national character that had existed before the 16th century.

    The best moniker for that new English culture is WASP, though that initial letter seems to make no sense until the US was on the scene. However, UK WASP Elites were quite busy during the 18th century explaining how the Irish were subhuman, and by the dawn of the 19th century political cartoons of the Irish as simian were common – before such images were ever used for blacks in the USA. That WASP culture then began a rather systematic war to exterminate all cultures native to the British Isles that were not in step with WASP culture.

    All cultures produced by, shaped by, finalized by Judiaizing heresy will not merely evolve so that they become staunchly pro-Jewish, but that necessarily occurs as they also wage at least culture war to exterminate non-Judaizing white Christian cultures . WASP culture is defined by WASPs using whatever force required (including forcing huge populations into indentured servitude and rather large segments into chattel slavery) to batter all non-WASP whites into accepting the overlordship of all thins WASP.

    WASP culture immediately signaled that it favored Jews over all non-WASP peoples native to the British Isles – Oliver Cromwell, a truly quintessential WASP invited Jews back into England legally and granted special rights and privileges that the vast majority of British Isles natives did not have.

    The above pattern was far from a one time thing. It is a major factor even throughout the 19th century: the world's all time largest and richest empire saw Jewish wealth explode and Jews able to flex their political and cultural power openly, while perhaps a slim majority of the white natives of the British Isles languished barely on or below the poverty line. It was a world in which even Charles Dickens had to bow to Jewish demands to rewrite Oliver Twist so that Fagin not only was not identified as a Jews, open preying on the poorest whites, but that he remove all markers that Fagin was indeed almost certainly a Jew.

    The Jewish problem cannot be separated from the WASP problem. You cannot have WASP culture that is not philoSemitic. And WASP Elites always act to ally with Jews (and by the Victorian era, the
    other' Semites: Arabs and Mohammedans) while acting to harm the best interests of the vast majority of white Gentiles.

    Anglo-Zionist Empore.

    Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 1:19 pm GMT
    John Gray on Corbyn's anti-Semitism as a strange subset of his anti-Britishness:

    Anti-Semitism has re-established itself on the left partly by way of an ideology of anti-colonialism. Believing Western colonial power to be the worst evil in history – a progressive orthodoxy that has been inculcated in Western education systems for decades – sections of the left relativise the Holocaust, treating it as only one among many crimes against humanity. At the same time, they see Israel as the worst embodiment of colonialism – hence the demand that, alone among the world's states, it must demonstrate its "right to exist".

    Claims that anti-Semitism is being "weaponised" in an attempt to undermine Corbyn are the opposite of the truth. More than a personal failure, Corbyn's complicity in anti-Semitism is a symptom of the morbid politics he embodies.

    https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/05/how-we-entered-age-strongman

    Ned Ludlam , says: March 2, 2019 at 1:20 pm GMT
    Corbyn needs to unleash the huge Labour Party membership on the Blairite traitors in its ranks, especially the MPs. Driven out into the wilderness they will die off and Labour can consolidate itself against its non-external critics.
    A British Reader , says: March 2, 2019 at 1:38 pm GMT
    Antisemitism in the UK used to mean hostility to the pushiness, greed and mad manners of successful Jews like Philip Green, but it has now been redefined to mean someone who thinks the Palestinians should not be used as target practice.

    Antisemitism here is a middle and upper class thing. There are so few Jews in some parts of the UK that many people have never met a Jew. I was over 30 before I ever knew anyone who was Jewish.

    The middle class and upper class British antisemites see Jews as unpleasant and underhand rivals, but for a working class man like Chris Williamson, who would probably not have known any Jews when he was growing up in Derby, Jews would have been just another religious group. I've known many people who have met him. He has no interest in religion. His main concerns are veganism and animal welfare. His holidays are cycling tours around the nearby national park. He is really just a 1970s hippy in a suit. To tar someone like that with the old antisemitism canard will backfire. The intelligent British person knows Williamson is not the antisemite type.

    annamaria , says: March 2, 2019 at 1:43 pm GMT
    The Blair's bloody legacy: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-01/uks-unreported-bombing-iraq-syria

    Interestingly, Sir John Chilcot believed as late as 2016 that about 150,000 Iraqis were killed during the invasion and subsequent instability. The figure was in fact well over one million. This much was known years earlier. Chilcott, covering for his friend Tony Blair did not read the mounting evidence – or more likely, just ignored it.

    The 2006 Lancet survey calculated fatalities at well over 650,000 just three years into the conflict and the 2007 ORB survey that actually surveyed fifteen of the eighteen governorates within Iraq found that number was somewhere between 1,033,000 and a staggering 1,220,588 . Since then, the violence created by the vacuum has continued and many more civilians have died. The numbers above do not include deaths after 13 years of sanctions imposed by the UN.

    Many members of the general public in Britain might mistakenly think that the bombing has stopped in Iraq and Syria – but they would be wrong. In fact, in the last four years, Britain has spent over £300 million on weapons fired from its air forces, including drones. The cost does not include personnel, wages, equipment, maintenance, fuel, air bases, etc.

    Analysis of data conducted by human rights group Reprieve in 2014 concluded that of 41 men targeted by coalition drone strikes a further 1,147 innocent civilians were killed simply for being in the way.

    Where is the sanctimonious Catholic Church to anathemize the major war criminal Tony Blair the Pious?

    A portrait of the Devil's pupil: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11670425/Revealed-Tony-Blair-worth-a-staggering-60m.html

    Tony Blair's fortune now stands at three times the amount he has previously claimed, at some £60 million – which includes 10 homes

    annamaria , says: March 2, 2019 at 1:52 pm GMT
    @annamaria "Tony Blair receives $1,000,000 reward from a Jewish/Zionist organisation in Israel" http://theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=2736

    Mr Blair made a career out of attacking the enemies of Israel, sending his country into more wars than any prime minister ever before in history as the UK joined the US in fighting the perceived enemies of Israel both militarily and politically, advantaging the Zionist cause.

    The award is presented by the Dan David Foundation, based at Tel Aviv University

    https://www.haaretz.com/1.4804388

    British Labor MP Tam Dalyell has charged that Prime Minister Tony Blair was "being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers"

    The comment echoed remarks by U.S. Republican Patrick Buchanan, who was accused of anti-Semitism when in an article last March, he described a predominantely Jewish group of advisers to President Bush as "a cabal of polemicists and public officials [who] seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests."

    UrbaneFrancoOntarian , says: March 2, 2019 at 2:30 pm GMT
    Who cares about Israel in this case? He supports another Brexit referendum, supports open borders with the 3rd world, and is probably a full fledged communist (a Jewish, anti white ideology).

    The Jews and the muslims can squabble over petty details, I'm more worried about what will benefit European nations.

    His election would be disastrous for the white, European race. Of course, I do fully expect for a hard shift against Israel as Muslims grow their populations in Europe.

    Anon [424] Disclaimer , says: March 2, 2019 at 2:37 pm GMT
    Go Brexit , brits , go ,
    Antiwar7 , says: March 2, 2019 at 3:05 pm GMT
    @Tyrion 2 You're confusing the issue. The issue is this: it's not anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist. All the rest is squid ink.
    smokey , says: March 2, 2019 at 3:18 pm GMT
    @anon declare immigration <=fraudulent unwind/ deportation
    declare <feminism<= unworkable restore/ patriarchy
    Why should the Jews be permitted to declare anything; no one appointed them king?

    Instead, what is needed is for the people to hold a referendum that declares race homogenizing immigration to be a technique capable of use by proponents of Economic Zionism(EZ) to impose divide and conquer strategies on race resolved populations in order to generate racial unrest and conflict . When divided; the people cannot organize, to throw the rascals out!

    EZ monitors and destroys cooperative working together because sooner or later such groups organize with common objects which involve finding ways to resist nasty outcomes fostered by economic zionism).

    I believe the civil rights movement in America was fostered in great measure by privately instituted racial unrest and conflict objectives.

    Z-man , says: March 2, 2019 at 3:49 pm GMT
    I've been 'watching' Britain the last few years thru the BBC and other outlets and am slightly amazed at how much they are controlled by the Jooz and American NEOCONS. Their foreign policy is almost completely Neo coon . They've kept to the Iran deal, but under the slightest pressure from big Joo they will fold. The charade of the poising last year of two Russian expats, just as Russia was hosting the World Cup was disgustingly transparent. MI6 is a joo run intelligence service. It's amazing how Britain has turned into a multi cult whore and slut of the KIKE! It started with Disraeli! They should have been 'pogromed' out back then!
    Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:03 pm GMT
    @Antiwar7

    Israel is not a global outlier for humanitarian issues, so people assume Corbyn's obsession with it has something to do with it being lived in by Jews.

    They're only sort of right. In fact, it is because it is a well-organised country of more Western people than those they're in conflict with. In other words, Corbyn dislikes Israel, and Jews to some degree, as an extension of his oikophobia.

    His oikophobia is best show in his grim betrayal over Brexit. This last part is unforgivable.

    Joe Wong , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:10 pm GMT
    McCarthyism is the extension of the European dark age inquisition. Nowadays the American glosses over McCarthyism with the terms democracy, neo-liberal order, and human rights. Any idealism other than the American's must be denied, even in the accused own defence. The American presents the accused as an enemy so dangerous, their ideas so corrupting, that they must be silenced from the outset. Their only chance of rehabilitation is prostration before their accusers and utter repentance.
    Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:11 pm GMT
    @Ned Ludlam Huge membership of aging Trots LARPing as the youth and only being less than half of what the Green party got in votes at the last election

    The Conservatives ran their last campaign with a clear Brexit position and honesty over no tax cuts and no big government spending increases because we're bankrupt. I don't think there's ever been such a truthful but unexciting campaign by a political party. I don't think any party will make that mistake again. Corbyn instead ran on a lie over Brexit and infinite gibs for everyone. It is sad that the latter softened his loss considerably.

    Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:17 pm GMT Anonymous [219] Disclaimer , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:32 pm GMT
    @UrbaneFrancoOntarian

    Couldn't agree more. The "Left's" core value in the US and UK is white genocide. It really doesn't matter what Corbyn thinks about the Jew-occupied territories in Palestine as long as he's assisting the Jewish occupation in the UK.

    WorkingClass , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:35 pm GMT
    Yeah, Too bad about Corbin. He's a good bloke. Trump should give him a green card and make him Secretary Of Labor. Do we still have a Secretary Of Labor?
    Colin Wright , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:57 pm GMT
    Here's some data on the last Labour MP -- an Ian Austin -- who quit because of 'anti-semitism.' His recorded foreign trips over the last three years make fascinating reading.

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=11553

    'Kurdistan', AIPAC conference in Washington DC, Jerusalem, Israel, Israel, 'Kurdistan', AIPAC conference in Washington DC, Israel, Israel

    Sponsors: Nokan Group, Labour Friends of Israel, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Australia Israel Cultural Exchange Ltd -- all multiple times.

    anonymous [204] Disclaimer , says: March 2, 2019 at 5:05 pm GMT
    SHAME ON AMERICA, A JEWISH STATE

    Will the Supreme Court Finally Protect the Right Not to Work on the Sabbath?

    The Supreme Court may be on the verge of correcting a constitutional injustice that has affected the lives and careers of thousands of religiously observant employees for almost half a century. It can do so in a case that the justices have obviously been taking very seriously during their recent private conferences.

    The case involves an Orlando, Florida, training instructor, Darrell Patterson, who sued his former employer, Walgreen Co., for religious discrimination. Patterson is a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which prohibits work on the Sabbath. Walgreen scheduled Patterson for a Saturday shift, and fired him when he refused the assignment. The case made it to the Eleventh Circuit federal appeals court, which ruled for Walgreen. The court held that forcing Walgreen to guarantee that Patterson would never have to work on Saturdays posed an undue hardship on the corporation. Patterson and his church, backed by several other religious groups, have asked the Supreme Court to hear his case, and the court will soon decide whether to do so.

    https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/281122/the-right-not-to-work-on-the-sabbath

    will the sabbath of other minorities who build america, be recognized???

    Miro23 , says: March 2, 2019 at 6:03 pm GMT
    @Stephen Paul Foster

    The second sentences is completely perverse. "McCarthyism" was created by "the powerful," but it was the communists and their fellow travelers in high places seeking to avoid detection and accountability by incriminating McCarthy, a self-rationalizing smear that worked out very well for them.

    True enough, it was the communists (or rather Jewish activists) and their fellow travelers in high places who created the "McCarthyism" meme.

    It was constructed as a psychological shield against future interference in their subversion – the same as the "Anti-Semitism" and "Conspiracy Theory" memes.

    For example, the MSM have trained the US public to regard anyone who questions the government account of 9/11 as a sort of far out nutcase looking for UFOs. If you don't believe it, read the factual impossibilities of the government 9/11 account in the literature of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth https://www.ae911truth.org/ and try presenting some of the evidence in a friendly way (e.g. that the towers didn't collapse due to fire) in a middle class social setting – and see what happens.

    james charles , says: March 2, 2019 at 6:14 pm GMT
    @Hawker

    Who was 'really' supporting the Soviet Union?

    "Taken together, these four volumes constitute an extraordinary commentary on a basic weakness in the Soviet system. The Soviets are heavily dependent on Western technology and innovation not only in their civilian industries, but also in their military programs.

    An inevitable conclusion from the evidence in this book is that we have totally ignored a policy that would enable us to neutralize Soviet global ambitions while simultaneously reducing the defense budget and the tax load on American citizens." . . .

    " His book tells at least part of the story of the Soviet Union's reliance on Western technology, including the infamous Kama River truck plant, which was built by the Pullman-Swindell company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a subsidiary of M. W. Kellogg Co. Prof. Pipes remarks that the bulk of the Soviet merchant marine, the largest in the world, was built in foreign shipyards.

    He even tells the story (related in greater detail in this book) of the Bryant Chucking Grinder Company of Springfield, Vermont, which sold the Soviet Union the ball-bearing machines that alone made possible the targeting mechanism of Soviet MIRV'ed ballistic missiles. "

    http://www.crowhealingnetwork.net/pdf/Antony%20Sutton%20-%20The%20Best%20Enemy%20Money%20Can%20Buy.pdf

    james charles , says: March 2, 2019 at 6:40 pm GMT
    @Stephen Paul Foster

    "The communists (high-ups in the FDR and Truman administrations who were, secretly working for Stalin, e.g. Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Bernard Currie) . . . "

    It wasn't just the US government 'supporting' the S.U.?

    See comment 45.

    Benjy , says: March 2, 2019 at 6:41 pm GMT
    @anarchyst But McCarthy's lawyer was Ray Cohen, the queer jew. Ray Cohen was also Trump's mentor. And Ray Cohen was also a close friend of Roger Stone, who is also a fairy of some flavor or another. Stone was recently crudely raided by the FBI, for lying about Trump's non-connections to jewish mafia in Russia, which Trump clearly has.

    I have no idea what this all means, except that satanists like Crowley were also into weird forms of bisexuality.

    annamaria , says: March 2, 2019 at 6:43 pm GMT
    @Tyrion 2 Please ponder on the following before accusing others in the lack of humanness.

    Antisemitism in the UK used to mean hostility to the pushiness, greed and mad manners but it has now been redefined to mean someone who thinks the Palestinians should not be used as target practice.

    Sean , says: March 2, 2019 at 7:38 pm GMT
    @Tyrion 2 John Gray is a genuine intellectual and, as far as I know, of solid working class origins. However he was associated with the Conservative party rather than Labour and very greatly influenced by his friendship with Isaiah Berlin. Gray is good example of how white gentile intellectuals not of the left attack the hapless Labour white gentiles by drawing a bien pensant parallel between racial anti Semitism, the Holocaust and antiZionism.

    https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/05/how-we-entered-age-strongman

    Racist attitudes have existed in sections of the British left throughout much of its history. What is unprecedented is that anti-Semitism is now an integral part of a new style of politics promoted by the leader of the Labour Party. [ ]

    Claims that anti-Semitism is being "weaponised" in an attempt to undermine Corbyn are the opposite of the truth. More than a personal failure, Corbyn's complicity in anti-Semitism is a symptom of the morbid politics he embodies. But is the British conscience now so lax and coarse that voters are ready to propel into power a party led, and in its current form largely created, by a shifty figure whose most genuine quality is a deep-seated affinity with the politics of conspiracy and hate?

    A few years ago the contest for the Labour party came down to a choice e between the Milibrands: two sons of a Trotskyite theoretician and his wife that had hastened to Britain during WW2, because they were Jewish people.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/13/miliband-days-over-brothers-david-ed

    The Miliband days are over. So was the brothers' epic battle worth it? Despite their flaws, David and Ed Miliband are two of the most talented Labour politicians of their generation. Theirs is both a political and a personal tragedy

    'The relationship between these two siblings irrevocably changed the day Ed decided he wanted to be leader of the Labour party, too.' Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

    The leaders of disinvestment and antiZionism are the humanist wing of the Jewish intelligentsia. The Israel Lobby essay of Mearshiemer and Walt that latter became best selling screed was was commissioned by London Review of Books's Mary-Kay Wilmers. "I'm unambiguously hostile to Israel because it's a mendacious state". Wilmers is Jewish, and has used 25 million of family trust money for the LRB. The intellectual, financial and organisational resources behind antZionism are are almost completely supplied by humanistic Jewish intellectuals.

    Not convinced? How about brilliant biologist Steven Rose (once Britain's youngest full professor and chair of department. )

    a founder member of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science in the 1960s, and more recently they have been instrumental in calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions for as long as Israel continues its occupation of the Palestinian Territories, on the grounds of Israeli academics' close relationship with the IDF. An open letter[6] initiated by Steven and Hilary Rose, and also signed by 123 other academics was published in The Guardian on 6 April 2002.[7] In 2004 Hilary Rose and he were the founding members of the British Committee for Universities of Palestine.[5][8]

    Gray is not alone in failing to mention anything about the identity of the most formidable antiZionists.

    Che Guava , says: March 2, 2019 at 7:49 pm GMT
    Jonathon Cook, just another example of his people trying to monopolize all political positions (hint: he has been a dual citizen, Israeli and Brit for some years, so that means ).

    I found this site, according to the search engine's blurb, it was his. Not now.

    I do not think that he is now connected to it, but the contents are very strange. Worth looking, esp. if interested in the pathologies of 'the religion of peace'.

    http://www.jkcook.net

    He is surely the least worth reading of commentators here, I can see that Mr. Unz prints 'Cook' articles for the commenary on Brit politics, but surely there must be an actual British person who is actually living there writing good commentary, instead of a former crypto-Jew now living in Israel (but still making big efforts to stay as crypto as possible)?

    jim jones , says: March 2, 2019 at 8:14 pm GMT
    Lord Ahmed of Rotherham charged with sexual abuse of children:

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/03/01/rotherham-peer-lord-ahmed-charged-historic-child-sex-offences/

    annamaria , says: March 2, 2019 at 8:53 pm GMT
    @Sean "The leaders of disinvestment and antiZionism are the humanist wing of the Jewish intelligentsia."
    -- Thank you for the summary.
    Art , says: March 2, 2019 at 9:02 pm GMT
    Corbyn shaming and humiliating the Brit sellout elite that genuflects to the Jews.

    Corbyn calls for UK to condemn Israel's targeting of Palestinians

    March 2, 2019 at 1:37 pm | Published in: Europe & Russia, Israel, Middle East, News, Palestine, UK

    Head of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn has called for the UK government to condemn Israel's killing of Palestinians as well as to freeze arms sales to the occupation state.

    His remarks came in the wake of a UN report which found that Israel might have committed war crimes against Palestinians.

    On Twitter, Corbyn wrote: "The UN says Israel's killings of demonstrators in Gaza – including children, paramedics and journalists – may constitute 'war crimes or crimes against humanity'".

    "The UK government must unequivocally condemn the killings and freeze arms sales to Israel."

    The UN report, published earlier this week, said: "The Israeli security forces killed and maimed Palestinian demonstrators who did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to others when they were shot, nor were they directly participating in hostilities," adding that the protests had been "civilian in nature".

    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190302-corbyn-calls-for-uk-to-condemn-israels-targeting-of-palestinians/

    Think Peace -- Art

    nmb , says: March 2, 2019 at 9:16 pm GMT
    Neoliberal fascists attempt to regain control over the European continent to prevent a Leftist revival
    Anon [257] Disclaimer , says: March 2, 2019 at 9:59 pm GMT
    @Jake Fagin was based on Ikey Solomon, a notorious organized crime figure.
    Iris , says: March 2, 2019 at 10:06 pm GMT
    @Tyrion 2 " Israel is not a global outlier for humanitarian issues "

    This has to be the joke of the month: I never suspected you had such great hidden comic talents, Tyrion.

    Anonymous [219] Disclaimer , says: March 2, 2019 at 10:33 pm GMT
    @Anon Jonathan Cook is a Jew living in Israel. Shocking, I know.
    Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 10:42 pm GMT
    @Sean "Humanist" is a funny name for people who worship the primitive.
    Curmudgeon , says: March 2, 2019 at 11:14 pm GMT
    @Anon It's more than that. Claiming Blair

    firmly occupied the political centre.

    is pure fantasy. His crowd attacked the public service and privatized things Margaret Thatcher wouldn't go near.

    Nonny , says: March 2, 2019 at 11:22 pm GMT
    @Monotonous Languor Disgusting genocidal comment.

    Every dual citizen should be kicked out of every legislature.

    Everyone genitally mutilating a baby should be imprisoned for 10 years.

    Every illegal settler should be ordered to go back where he came from.

    Sean , says: March 2, 2019 at 11:54 pm GMT
    @Tyrion 2 The member of the House of Lords (Baron) Glasman is the 100% Jewish son of a businessman who had his own manufacturing company. Though he talks a lot of sense, I really don't see Maurice Glasman being the mastermind of the the Labour Party's "Blue" school of strategic thought (see here ) is an indication that the indigenous British working class are producing their own thinkers. Did it really need a Jewish academic to say that Labour were in a 'weird space where we thought that a real assault on the wage levels of English workers was a positive good'?

    Even if they thought it, white gentiles in the Labour Party did not dare articulate the obvious truth that mass immigration under Labour was 'an unofficial wages policy'. There is a lack of confidence in their own thought processes among everyone but Jews, and not just in the Labour Party.

    John Gray's book Black Mass had the thesis of a link between the Bible's 1,000-year reign of the saints, Christian millenarianism , Nazism's a 1000-year Reich Auschwitz and the Enlightenment which Gray sees as explaining the invasion of Iraq but when he actual identified the people responsible for influencing Bush, he was, as Damian Thompson noted in a review, too nervous to mention that they, and others (pre 9/11 Wolfowitz had been like 'a parrot' about toppling Saddam ), wanting an invasion of Iraq were mostly Jewish. Some people say Rumsfeld (a gentile with what Jews think is a very Jewish sounding name) was the prime mover in that perhaps forgetting his support of Saddam's Iraq complete with its open nuclear construction project during the Reagan Presidency. Rumsfeld was greatly influenced by the Albert Wohlsetter , who became the guru of Richard Perle who dated Wohlsetter's daughter when they met at Hollywood High School (Ron Unz was born in Hollywood).

    Holliwood is exceptionally Jewish, because it is basically Jews who make films that people will pay to see,. They understand human nature and how to work with it, and thus Jews have a greater power to influence or force of moral suasion than other people. As a result the great debates in the West come down to arguments between Jews as with the vendetta between Bernard Brodie and Wohlsetter (who without any official position, invented the Missile Gap for JFK and the Window Of Opportunity for Reagan).

    Art , says: March 3, 2019 at 12:10 am GMT
    @Tyrion 2 Israel is not a global outlier for humanitarian issues.

    You lie so effortlessly, so carefree, with such nonchalance, such blithe. How do you do it?

    The Jew "humanitarian" obsession with getting Iran has let to this.

    Over 80,000 kids under the age of five have died of starvation in Yemen, UN chief says

    "Children did not start the war in Yemen, but they are paying the highest price. Some 360,000 children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, fighting for their lives every day. And one credible report put the number of children under 5 who have died of starvation at more than 80,000," Guterres told a donor conference in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday.

    https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/02/26/589651/Over-80000-kids-under-the-age-of-five-have-died-of-starvation-in-Yemen-UN-chief-says

    Think Peace -- Do No harm -- Art

    annamaria , says: March 3, 2019 at 12:48 am GMT
    Ziocons' Ukrainian baby: https://www.voltairenet.org/article205172.html

    Ukraine: NATO in the Constitution.

    The merit for having introduced into the Ukrainian Constitution the engagement to enter officially into NATO goes to Parliamentary President Andriy Parubiy. Co-founder in 1991 of the Ukrainian National-Socialist Party, on the model of Adolf Hitler's National-Socialist Party; head of the neo-Nazi paramilitary formations which were used in 2014 during the putsch of Place Maïdan under US/NATO command, and in the massacre of Odessa ; head of the Ukraine National Security and Defense Council, which, with the Azov Battalion and other neo-Nazi units, attacked Ukrainian civilians of Russian nationality in the Eastern part of the country and used his squadrons for acts of ferocious abuse, the plunder of political headquarters and other auto-da-fés in a truly Nazi style.

    Ukraine is already linked to NATO, of which it is a partner: for example, the Azov Battalion, whose Nazi character is represented by the emblem copied from that of the SS unit Das Reich, has been transformed into a special operations regiment, equipped with armoured vehicles and trained by US instructors from the 173rd Airborne Division, transferred to Ukraine from Vicence, and seconded by other NATO members.

    Not a peep from Britsh purists of holo-biz persuasion. LFI chair Joan Ryan, in particular, is not "disturbed' at all by the NATO cooperation with Ukrainian neo-Nazi. The Friends of Israel in the UK accept cordially the "good" neo-Nazis that have been accepted by the Jewish State itself:

    Altai , says: March 3, 2019 at 1:11 am GMT
    @Sean On the other hand, why do the pro-Palestinian intellectuals in the diaspora always lose out? Why are they incapable of ever showing influence in any serious way in the Jewish community? Why is it not a widely known reality that most diaspora have views on Israel similar to the broad opinion in their host countries or even more radical inline with their socio-political stance elsewhere? Perhaps they don't get much support from the others because they don't want to give it. If even the likes of Rachel Riley and Stephen Fry are on the anti-Corbyn witchhunt, what is the attitude of the average Jew?

    For god's sake, Riley is barely Jewish, (to the point that practically nobody knew she considered herself Jewish until now) never lived a second in Israel and yet is so emotionally attached to it that she waged a full spectrum media campaign (complete with the typical selfie of her looking sad after online 'assault') in service of silencing any dissent on Israel.

    As Atzmon himself has noted, the entry of large numbers of Jews in the pro-Palestinian movement shifted it's agenda to one less and less accommodating to Palestinian interests and less demanding of Israel. See MondoWeiss.

    Miggle , says: March 3, 2019 at 1:17 am GMT
    @Byrresheim

    Please explain, brainwashed American. Childhood brainwashing is remarkably effective.

    These people are right and they know it. If you can't afford to got to hospital and get deeper in debt because you can't afford the interest payments, just borrow for a flight to Cuba and stay there. You will get the hospital care and not sink deeper into debt.

    Or are you about to start screaming about the most vicious, evil Communist of all time, Jesus of Nazareth, who said, "Sell all you have and give to the poor"?

    Or do you know some objective specifics that the rest of us should know about?

    annamaria , says: March 3, 2019 at 1:18 am GMT
    "Why Is The British Government Banning Hizbullah?" https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/03/why-is-britains-government-banning-hizbullah.html#comments
    Comment section:

    Sometimes soon the FUK, the Former United Kingdom, will have to get used to the fact, that they are not an Empire anymore.

    The Lobby has helped the Tories in Britain a lot recently in painting Corbyn as an anti-Semite. Making sure that Corbyn never becomes prime minister is a big issue for them.

    The payback for the Israeli help given is, of course, banning Hizbullah.

    -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
    the UK has really gone insane! did they ban bds and anyone opposed to zionism too? only a matter of time

    -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
    The UK's been in gross violation of International Law for decades on end, the latest determination by the WCJ on the Chomoro Islanders is its latest defeat and proof of its terrorizing policies. Then we have the subject of support for terrorists in Syria and terrorism in Venezuela. Some brave, enterprising folk ought to plant a passel of Hezbollah flags on the grounds of the minister's house, then report him for his crime of being in possession of banned material. And yet another reason for Scots to vote for independence and the end of Union, as I'm certain Scots don't want to be associated with a terror state like Britain.

    The UK government has been supporting the terrorists of all stripes including White Helmets and Al Qaeda -- as was ordered by their masters in Tel Aviv and the Friends of Israel in the UK. The traitorous fools still believe in the chosenites' omnipotence.

    Anon [253] Disclaimer , says: March 3, 2019 at 1:35 am GMT
    But what happens when this anti-Semitic nonsense creates the White Christian Radicals who want to avenge the murder of the Christ that was done by the Hebrews. Are they ready for that?
    Miggle , says: March 3, 2019 at 2:15 am GMT
    @smokey

    Jewish is about race, religion and place of origin,

    Modern Jews are not a religion, not a race, and have no place of origin. They are a gang forever imprisoned in an inherited totalitarian culture by childhood brainwashing to hate all non-Jews. The first thing they are taught is that the non-Jews have always hated the Jews and wanted to kill them, when the reverse is true.

    Most Jews are atheists. It is on record that David Ben-Gurion was an atheist, but still he was a Jew. So Judaism is not a religion.

    As for place of origin, it is about how far the proselytizing rabbis reached in the cosmopolitan world of the Macedonian and Roman empires, where travel was safe and the whole world shared Greek as its lingua franca.

    Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass land and sea to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. [Matt. 23:15, original in Greek!]

    The mark of modern Jews is that hypocrisy, pretending they are the victims, that everyone wants to kill them. It goes back at least as far as the Book of Esther, a fictitious story about how the Persians wanted to kill all the Jews for a trivial reason.

    Jew-hating is an incurable disease. Under certain democratic conditions it may not flourish well. Under certain conditions the germ may even appear to die, but it never does die even in most ideal climate. [Leon Uris, Exodus ]

    Culloden , says: March 3, 2019 at 2:27 am GMT
    The Anglo-American Establishment, from Rhodes to Cliveden: {Balfour, Palestine, Ireland, Zionism, and Anti-Semitism}

    http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/the_anglo-american_establishment.pdf

    renfro , says: March 3, 2019 at 2:51 am GMT
    Is it worse in the US ..I would say so

    GOP's anti-Muslim display likening Rep. Omar to a terrorist rocks W. Virginia capitol

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/gop-s-anti-muslim-display-likening-rep-omar-terrorist-rocks-n978371

    "Angry arguments broke out in the West Virginia statehouse on Friday after the state Republican Party allegedly set up an anti-Muslim display in the rotunda linking the 9/11 terror attacks to a freshman congresswoman from Minnesota.

    The display featured a picture of the World Trade Center in New York City as a fireball exploded from the one of the Twin Towers, set above a picture of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who is Muslim. "'Never forget' – you said. . ." read a caption on the first picture. "I am the proof – you have forgotten," read the caption under the picture of Omar, who is wearing a hijab.

    One staff member was physically injured during the morning's confrontations, and another official resigned after being accused of making anti-Muslim comments. Several Democrats objected to the display, and reportedly got into an argument with the House's sergeant at arms, Anne Lieberman, after she allegedly made an anti-Muslim remark.

    Del. Mike Angelucci, D-Marion, charged Lieberman had said "all Muslims are terrorists." "I am furious, and I don't want to see her representing the people of this great state in the House again," Angelucci said of Lieberman, who became the state's first female sergeant at arms last year. Speaking to West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Lieberman denied she'd made the comment. By the end of the day she had submitted her resignation "effective immediately," officials said

    Miggle , says: March 3, 2019 at 2:57 am GMT
    @Z-man

    It's amazing how Britain has turned into a multi cult whore and slut of the KIKE! It started with Disraeli!

    I haven't read his books. I might be a little pedantic here. But I have read his biography by a French Jew, André Maurois, a famous author. Disraeli was a Christian. Jewish childhood. But never knew that till he went to school and found that he and another pupil were treated differently when the time came for the class on religion. Great puzzle for him and Sarah to work out. And instead of bar-mitzvah, which he had probably never heard of, he went to baptism.

    Beefcake the Mighty , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:03 am GMT
    @Tyrion 2 LOL. Israel lives parasitically off of stolen land and it's fifth column in the West preventing even remotely balanced policy towards it. It really is amazing how you fail to see how transparent your bullshit is.
    Culloden , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:03 am GMT

    Soon Corbyn will stand alone, exposed before the inquisition that has been prepared for him.

    No. He will have support from Ireland and Scotland. The Brits, artificial famines, and exporting cheap labour and slaves abroad:

    An artificial famine

    "A Celtic cross stands high above the waters at the western end of Canada's Grosse Isle. The Cross bears inscription in Gaelic, French and English, carved on ebony panels."

    " Children of the Gael died in their thousands on this island having fled from the laws of the foreign tyrants and an artificial famine in the years 1847-48.

    God's loyal blessing upon them. Let this monument be a token to their name and honour from the Gaels of America. God save Ireland."

    "That is the translation from the Gaelic inscription. The bitterness of the accusatory Gaelic inscription is absent from the English dedication. [ ] The French dedication is similarly lacking in bitterness."

    Edward Laxton, The Famine Ships, The Irish Exodus to America . An Owl Book, Henry Holt and Company, New York.

    Beefcake the Mighty , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:08 am GMT
    @Anonymous These are very valid points, but the fact is, the powers that be are terrified of his election for a reason. The sad fact is, political hope these days lies with the Left, since the cuck right is beyond useless, and there is currently little hope for a legitimate opposition Right movement. It would be thoroughly demonized in the US and subject to arrest in toilets like Britain or France. AOC is a very stupid girl, but people like her and Corbyn deserve some consideration, unfortunately.
    Saoirse , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:12 am GMT
    "Taking Down" British Officials

    Israel conspires against the Mother of Parliaments

    "A quite incredible story out of England has not received much media coverage in the United States. It concerns how the Israeli Embassy in London connived with government officials to "take down" parliamentarians and government ministers who were considered to be critical of the Jewish State. It was also learned that the Israeli Embassy was secretly subsidizing and advising private groups promoting Israeli interests, including associations of Members of Parliament (MPs)."

    Philip Giraldi • January 31, 2017

    http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/taking-down-british-officials/

    Beefcake the Mighty , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:15 am GMT
    @niteranger Britain deserves it fate for instigating two world wars that destroyed European civilization.
    Monotonous Languor , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:32 am GMT
    It's absolutely amazing how even the very concept of Jewry (let alone their actual existence) can sow such enormous discord all up and down the political spectrum, with such myriad permutations and combinations thereof.

    At the end of the day, there has to be a kind of benign neglect towards the Jews, BUT ONLY after each and every last single one of them has moved to Israel, by force if necessary. None of them should be allowed to live ever again in any other nation-state, nor have any controlling interests in anything outside of Israel. Otherwise the rest of us will be back at each other's throats again in no time.

    If they're all in one spot, attending to their own interests, then fine, so be it. They can do whatever they want to and with their immediate moslem neighbors, as long as the rest of the world doesn't feel obliged to assist, resist, or even care very much. At that point it should all be left up to them. Truly, a pox on all their houses.

    Sean , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:41 am GMT
    @Altai

    https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/So-farewell-then-Tony-Judt

    In a much-cited October 2003 essay in The New York Review of Books, Judt called to dismantle the state and to replace it with "a single, integrated, bi-national state" between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – a recipe for national suicide for the sovereign Jewish entity. This categorical rejection of Zionism put him in a class with other contemporary Jewish intellectuals of the Diaspora such as Jacqueline Rose, Michael Neumann and Joel Kovel,

    I suppose they are not taken seriously by people with their hands on the levers of power and governments, because they are asking too much. Diaspora intellectuals represent the intelligentsia's view, which is that ethnic domination of a nations-state as with the Jewish state of Israel is incompatible with humanist principles.

    Lots of politicians get elected by sounding as if they are humanists, but then they are responsible for a state and they start to obey the dictates of realism. Withdrawing from the occupied territories is now quite clearly something Israel has no intention of ever doing, although it would not require the evacuation of more than 48,000 people (9000 families) according to this

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-how-many-settlers-need-to-be-evacuated-to-make-way-for-a-palestinian-state-1.6386939

    The information in the above link was quite surprising to me, and it seems that expulsion of the West Bank Arabs is, for the foreseeable future, a long way from of being the best solution for Israel.

    Nevertheless as Ehud Barak said "Every attempt [by the State of Israel] to keep hold of this area [the West Bank and Gaza] as one political entity leads, necessarily, to either a nondemocratic or a non-Jewish state. Because if the Palestinians vote, then it is a binational state, and if they don't vote it is an apartheid state." I think the Palestinians position is stronger than Israel and its Lobby want anyone to know, so they are making maximum efforts to stifle debate. But the Palestinians are holding out for much more that just a state, partly because of Western internationalists.

    Asagirian , says: Website March 3, 2019 at 4:53 am GMT
    McCarthyism is ancient history. We now have Soros-Bezos Complex.
    Tyrion 2 , says: March 3, 2019 at 8:34 am GMT
    @Sean Your post reminds me of my Great Aunt, who was prone to saying things like "your birthday is the 2nd of July and mine is in September, that's amazing, because 2 + 7 (July) = 9 (September)" as if this was meaningful.

    The reductio ad adsurdum of this where you try to include Rumsfeld in a special peri-Jew category on account of the sound of his name

    james charles , says: March 3, 2019 at 10:09 am GMT
    @Saoirse "Sir Alan Duncan, the senior Foreign Office minister revealed as the target of an Israeli embassy official's desire to "take down" British MPs, is responsible on paper for Europe and the Americas, worrying primarily about the Falklands and Cyprus."
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/08/why-might-an-israeli-diplomat-believe-alan-duncan-needs-taking-down
    james charles , says: March 3, 2019 at 10:42 am GMT
    @Beefcake the Mighty You may like this?

    Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich
    By Guido Giacomo Preparata

    https://www.solargeneral.org/wp-content/uploads/library/conjuring-hitler.pdf

    annamaria , says: March 3, 2019 at 12:28 pm GMT
    @Tyrion 2 The Jewish State is indeed an outlier considering its hypocrisy, including holo-biz profiteering schema based on the alleged "superior morality" and "eternal victimhood" and other Anne Frank specialties:
    Tyrion 2 , says: March 3, 2019 at 12:28 pm GMT
    @Sean The progressives are Janus-faced. In that on one they believe in the perfect, but on the other hand they let it be the enemy of the good, thus they end up rejecting realistic achievement and instead exult in bringing it low. They, and their allies, seem to be mostly riffs on Year Zero cults. No wonder they get all loved up for Islamist fanaticism.

    Idolators, perfectionists and slavish decandents, all at once. Naturally, they're strongest among the coddled and well-to-do.

    Let's all sit around and worship the golden calf to absolute excess, while we fade away or starve. There can be no middle ground between perfection or complete embrace of the other.

    Wizard of Oz , says: March 3, 2019 at 1:12 pm GMT
    @Che Guava Why do you call Cook a crypto-Jew? His claim to Israeli citizenship is based only on his marriage to an Israeli citizen and she is a Christian Palestinian.
    Tyrion 2 , says: March 3, 2019 at 1:45 pm GMT
    @james charles Another individual whom, like Corbyn, claimed to be for British sovereignty all of his political career in order to signal his patriotism but then, when push came to shove, he campaigned for Remain.

    Worse, when given a second chance and the backing of a public vote to go for Brexit, again like Corbyn, Duncan doubled down and ended up dismissing the vote as a mere "working class tantrum".

    With his "soak the poor", "open borders", "let them eat cultural enrichment" attitude, he is the Marie Antoinette of British politics.

    [Mar 20, 2019] Wasserman Schultz Proves She's A Sociopath - Lies About Venezuela

    Mar 20, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Tina Smith 3 days ago Only reason she's not already in prison is because she's a useful Military Industrial Complex tool.

    Cant_Touch_This 3 days ago DWS rigged in order to win her district just like she rigged against Bernie Sanders on behalf of Hilary Clinton.

    Daniel Clint 3 days ago Remove the sanctions you psychopaths. DWS belongs in jail.

    [Mar 18, 2019] Journalists who are spies

    Highly recommended!
    Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services?
    Notable quotes:
    "... Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services? ..."
    "... "Most tabloid newspapers - or even newspapers in general - are playthings of MI5." ..."
    "... Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of "one of Britain's most distinguished journals" as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll. ..."
    "... The heart of the secret state they identified as the security services, the cabinet office and upper echelons of the Home and Commonwealth Offices, the armed forces and Ministry of Defence, the nuclear power industry and its satellite ministries together a network of senior civil servants. ..."
    "... As "satellites" of the secret state, their list included "agents of influence in the media, ranging from actual agents of the security services, conduits of official leaks, to senior journalists merely lusting after official praise and, perhaps, a knighthood at the end of their career". ..."
    "... Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of MI6, reports that Orwell attended a meeting in Paris of resistance fighters on behalf of David Astor, his editor at the Observer and leader of the intelligence service's unit liasing with the French resistance. ..."
    Mar 03, 2006 | www.nytimes.com

    Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services? The following extracts are from an article at the excellent Medialens

    http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060303_hacks_and_spooks.php

    HACKS AND SPOOKS

    By Professor Richard Keeble

    And so to Nottingham University (on Sunday 26 February) for a well-attended conference...

    I focus in my talk on the links between journalists and the intelligence services: While it might be difficult to identify precisely the impact of the spooks (variously represented in the press as "intelligence", "security", "Whitehall" or "Home Office" sources) on mainstream politics and media, from the limited evidence it looks to be enormous.

    As Roy Greenslade, media specialist at the Telegraph (formerly the Guardian), commented:

    "Most tabloid newspapers - or even newspapers in general - are playthings of MI5."

    Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of "one of Britain's most distinguished journals" as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll.

    And in 1991, Richard Norton-Taylor revealed in the Guardian that 500 prominent Britons paid by the CIA and the now defunct Bank of Commerce and Credit International, included 90 journalists.

    In their analysis of the contemporary secret state, Dorril and Ramsay gave the media a crucial role. The heart of the secret state they identified as the security services, the cabinet office and upper echelons of the Home and Commonwealth Offices, the armed forces and Ministry of Defence, the nuclear power industry and its satellite ministries together a network of senior civil servants.

    As "satellites" of the secret state, their list included "agents of influence in the media, ranging from actual agents of the security services, conduits of official leaks, to senior journalists merely lusting after official praise and, perhaps, a knighthood at the end of their career".

    Phillip Knightley, author of a seminal history of the intelligence services, has even claimed that at least one intelligence agent is working on every Fleet Street newspaper.

    A brief history

    Going as far back as 1945, George Orwell no less became a war correspondent for the Observer - probably as a cover for intelligence work. Significantly most of the men he met in Paris on his assignment, Freddie Ayer, Malcolm Muggeridge, Ernest Hemingway were either working for the intelligence services or had close links to them.

    Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of MI6, reports that Orwell attended a meeting in Paris of resistance fighters on behalf of David Astor, his editor at the Observer and leader of the intelligence service's unit liasing with the French resistance.

    The release of Public Record Office documents in 1995 about some of the operations of the MI6-financed propaganda unit, the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office, threw light on this secret body - which even Orwell aided by sending them a list of "crypto-communists". Set up by the Labour government in 1948, it "ran" dozens of Fleet Street journalists and a vast array of news agencies across the globe until it was closed down by Foreign Secretary David Owen in 1977.

    According to John Pilger in the anti-colonial struggles in Kenya, Malaya and Cyprus, IRD was so successful that the journalism served up as a record of those episodes was a cocktail of the distorted and false in which the real aims and often atrocious behaviour of the British intelligence agencies was hidden.

    And spy novelist John le Carré, who worked for MI6 between 1960 and 1964, has made the amazing statement that the British secret service then controlled large parts of the press – just as they may do today.

    In 1975, following Senate hearings on the CIA, the reports of the Senate's Church Committee and the House of Representatives' Pike Committee highlighted the extent of agency recruitment of both British and US journalists.

    And sources revealed that half the foreign staff of a British daily were on the MI6 payroll.

    David Leigh, in The Wilson Plot, his seminal study of the way in which the secret service smeared through the mainstream media and destabilised the Government of Harold Wilson before his sudden resignation in 1976, quotes an MI5 officer: "We have somebody in every office in Fleet Street"

    Leaker King

    And the most famous whistleblower of all, Peter (Spycatcher) Wright, revealed that MI5 had agents in newspapers and publishing companies whose main role was to warn them of any forthcoming "embarrassing publications".

    Wright also disclosed that the Daily Mirror tycoon, Cecil King, "was a longstanding agent of ours" who "made it clear he would publish anything MI5 might care to leak in his direction".

    Selective details about Wilson and his secretary, Marcia Falkender, were leaked by the intelligence services to sympathetic Fleet Street journalists. Wright comments: "No wonder Wilson was later to claim that he was the victim of a plot". King was also closely involved in a scheme in 1968 to oust Prime Minister Harold Wilson and replace him with a coalition headed by Lord Mountbatten.

    Hugh Cudlipp, editorial director of the Mirror from 1952 to 1974, was also closely linked to intelligence, according to Chris Horrie, in his recently published history of the newspaper.

    David Walker, the Mirror's foreign correspondent in the 1950s, was named as an MI6 agent following a security scandal while another Mirror journalist, Stanley Bonnet, admitted working for MI5 in the 1980s investigating the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

    Maxwell and Mossad

    According to Stephen Dorril, intelligence gathering during the miners' strike of 1984-85 was helped by the fact that during the 1970s MI5's F Branch had made a special effort to recruit industrial correspondents – with great success.

    In 1991, just before his mysterious death, Mirror proprietor Robert Maxwell was accused by the US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh of acting for Mossad, the Israeli secret service, though Dorril suggests his links with MI6 were equally as strong.

    Following the resignation from the Guardian of Richard Gott, its literary editor in December 1994 in the wake of allegations that he was a paid agent of the KGB, the role of journalists as spies suddenly came under the media spotlight – and many of the leaks were fascinating.

    For instance, according to The Times editorial of 16 December 1994: "Many British journalists benefited from CIA or MI6 largesse during the Cold War."

    The intimate links between journalists and the secret services were highlighted in the autobiography of the eminent newscaster Sandy Gall. He reports without any qualms how, after returning from one of his reporting assignments to Afghanistan, he was asked to lunch by the head of MI6. "It was very informal, the cook was off so we had cold meat and salad with plenty of wine. He wanted to hear what I had to say about the war in Afghanistan. I was flattered, of course, and anxious to pass on what I could in terms of first-hand knowledge."

    And in January 2001, the renegade MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson, claimed Dominic Lawson, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph and son of the former Tory chancellor, Nigel Lawson, provided journalistic cover for an MI6 officer on a mission to the Baltic to handle and debrief a young Russian diplomat who was spying for Britain.

    Lawson strongly denied the allegations.

    Similarly in the reporting of Northern Ireland, there have been longstanding concerns over security service disinformation. Susan McKay, Northern editor of the Dublin-based Sunday Tribune, has criticised the reckless reporting of material from "dodgy security services". She told a conference in Belfast in January 2003 organised by the National Union of Journalists and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission: "We need to be suspicious when people are so ready to provide information and that we are, in fact, not being used." (www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=635)

    Growing power of secret state

    Thus from this evidence alone it is clear there has been a long history of links between hacks and spooks in both the UK and US.

    But as the secret state grows in power, through massive resourcing, through a whole raft of legislation – such as the Official Secrets Act, the anti-terrorism legislation, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and so on – and as intelligence moves into the heart of Blair's ruling clique so these links are even more significant.

    Since September 11 all of Fleet Street has been awash in warnings by anonymous intelligence sources of terrorist threats.

    According to former Labour minister Michael Meacher, much of this disinformation was spread via sympathetic journalists by the Rockingham cell within the MoD.

    A parallel exercise, through the office of Special Plans, was set up by Donald Rumsfeld in the US. Thus there have been constant attempts to scare people – and justify still greater powers for the national security apparatus.

    Similarly the disinformation about Iraq's WMD was spread by dodgy intelligence sources via gullible journalists.

    Thus, to take just one example, Michael Evans, The Times defence correspondent, reported on 29 November 2002: "Saddam Hussein has ordered hundred of his officials to conceal weapons of mass destruction components in their homes to evade the prying eyes of the United Nations inspectors." The source of these "revelations" was said to be "intelligence picked up from within Iraq". Early in 2004, as the battle for control of Iraq continued with mounting casualties on both sides, it was revealed that many of the lies about Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD had been fed to sympathetic journalists in the US, Britain and Australia by the exile group, the Iraqi National Congress.

    Sexed up – and missed out

    During the controversy that erupted following the end of the "war" and the death of the arms inspector Dr David Kelly (and the ensuing Hutton inquiry) the spotlight fell on BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan and the claim by one of his sources that the government (in collusion with the intelligence services) had "sexed up" a dossier justifying an attack on Iraq.

    The Hutton inquiry, its every twist and turn massively covered in the mainstream media, was the archetypal media spectacle that drew attention from the real issue: why did the Bush and Blair governments invade Iraq in the face of massive global opposition? But those facts will be forever secret.

    Significantly, too, the broader and more significant issue of mainstream journalists' links with the intelligence services was ignored by the inquiry.

    Significantly, on 26 May 2004, the New York Times carried a 1,200-word editorial admitting it had been duped in its coverage of WMD in the lead-up to the invasion by dubious Iraqi defectors, informants and exiles (though it failed to lay any blame on the US President: see Greenslade 2004). Chief among The Times' dodgy informants was Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress and Pentagon favourite before his Baghdad house was raided by US forces on 20 May.

    Then, in the Observer of 30 May 2004, David Rose admitted he had been the victim of a "calculated set-up" devised to foster the propaganda case for war. "In the 18 months before the invasion of March 2003, I dealt regularly with Chalabi and the INC and published stories based on interviews with men they said were defectors from Saddam's regime." And he concluded: "The information fog is thicker than in any previous war, as I know now from bitter personal experience. To any journalist being offered apparently sensational disclosures, especially from an anonymous intelligence source, I offer two words of advice: caveat emptor."

    Let's not forget no British newspaper has followed the example of the NYT and apologised for being so easily duped by the intelligence services in the run up to the illegal invasion of Iraq.

    ~

    Richard Keeble's publications include Secret State, Silent Press: New Militarism, the Gulf and the Modern Image of Warfare (John Libbey 1997) and The Newspapers Handbook (Routledge, fourth edition, 2005). He is also the editor of Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. Richard is also a member of the War and Media Network.

    [Mar 18, 2019] The Why are the media playing lapdog and not watchdog – again – on war in Iraq?

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... General Electric, the world's largest military contractor, still controls the message over at the so-called "liberal" MSNBC. MSNBC's other owner is Comcast, the right wing media conglomerate that controls the radio waves in every major American Market. Over at CNN, Mossad Asset Wolf Blitzer, who rose from being an obscure little correspondent for an Israeli Newspaper to being CNN's Chief "Pentagon Correspondent" and then was elevated to supreme anchorman nearly as quickly, ensures that the pro-Israeli Message is always in the forefront, even as the Israeli's commit one murderous act after another upon helpless Palestinian Women and Children. ..."
    "... Every single "terrorism expert", General or former Government Official that is brought out to discuss the next great war is connected to a military contractor that stands to benefit from that war. Not surprisingly, the military option is the only option discussed and we are assured that, if only we do this or bomb that, then it will all be over and we can bring our kids home to a big victory parade. I'm 63 and it has never happened in my lifetime--with the exception of the phony parade that Bush Senior put on after his murderous little "First Gulf War". ..."
    "... The Generals in the Pentagon always want war. It is how they make rank. All of those young kids that just graduated from our various academies know that war experience is the only thing that will get them the advancement that they seek in the career that they have chosen. They are champing at the bit for more war. ..."
    "... the same PR campaign that started with Bush and Cheney continues-the exact same campaign. Obviously, they have to come back at the apple with variations, but any notion that the "media will get it someday" is willfully ignorant of the obvious fact that there is an agenda, and that agenda just won't stop until it's achieved-or revolution supplants the influence of these dark forces. ..."
    "... The US media are indeed working overtime to get this war happening ..."
    "... In media universe there is no alternative to endless war and an endless stream of hyped reasons for new killing. ..."
    "... The media machine is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States of Corporations. ..."
    "... Oh, the greatest propaganda arm the US government has right now, bar none, is the American media. It's disgraceful. we no longer have journalists speaking truth to power in my country, we have people practicing stenography, straight from the State Department to your favorite media outlet. ..."
    "... But all that research from MIT, from the UN, and others, has been buried by the American media, and every single story on Syria and Assad that is written still refers to "Assad gassing his own people". It's true, it's despicable, and it's just one example of how our media lies and distorts and misrepresents the news every day. ..."
    Oct 10, 2014 | The Guardian
    BradBenson, 10 October 2014 6:14pm
    The American Public has gotten exactly what it deserved. They have been dumbed-down in our poor-by-intention school systems. The moronic nonsense that passes for news in this country gets more sensational with each passing day. Over on Fox, they are making the claim that ISIS fighters are bringing Ebola over the Mexican Border, which prompted a reply by the Mexican Embassy that won't be reported on Fox.

    We continue to hear and it was even reported in this very fine article by Ms. Benjamin that the American People now support this new war. Really? I'm sorry, but I haven't seen that support anywhere but on the news and I just don't believe it any more.

    There is also the little problem of infiltration into key media slots by paid CIA Assets (Scarborough and brainless Mika are two of these double dippers). Others are intermarried. Right-wing Neocon War Criminal Dan Senor is married to "respected" newsperson Campbell Brown who is now involved in privatizing our school system. Victoria Nuland, the slimey State Department Official who was overheard appointing the members of the future Ukrainian Government prior to the Maidan Coup is married to another Neo-Con--Larry Kagan. Even sweet little Andrea Mitchell is actually Mrs. Alan Greenspan.

    General Electric, the world's largest military contractor, still controls the message over at the so-called "liberal" MSNBC. MSNBC's other owner is Comcast, the right wing media conglomerate that controls the radio waves in every major American Market. Over at CNN, Mossad Asset Wolf Blitzer, who rose from being an obscure little correspondent for an Israeli Newspaper to being CNN's Chief "Pentagon Correspondent" and then was elevated to supreme anchorman nearly as quickly, ensures that the pro-Israeli Message is always in the forefront, even as the Israeli's commit one murderous act after another upon helpless Palestinian Women and Children.

    Every single "terrorism expert", General or former Government Official that is brought out to discuss the next great war is connected to a military contractor that stands to benefit from that war. Not surprisingly, the military option is the only option discussed and we are assured that, if only we do this or bomb that, then it will all be over and we can bring our kids home to a big victory parade. I'm 63 and it has never happened in my lifetime--with the exception of the phony parade that Bush Senior put on after his murderous little "First Gulf War".

    Yesterday there was a coordinated action by all of the networks, which was clearly designed to support the idea that the generals want Obama to act and he just won't. The not-so-subtle message was that the generals were right and that the President's "inaction" was somehow out of line-since, after all, the generals have recommended more war. It was as if these people don't remember that the President, sleazy War Criminal that he is, is still the Commander in Chief.

    The Generals in the Pentagon always want war. It is how they make rank. All of those young kids that just graduated from our various academies know that war experience is the only thing that will get them the advancement that they seek in the career that they have chosen. They are champing at the bit for more war.

    Finally, this Sunday every NFL Game will begin with some Patriotic "Honor America" Display, which will include a missing man flyover, flags and fireworks, plenty of uniforms, wounded Vets and soon-to-be-wounded Vets. A giant American Flag will, once again, cover the fields and hundreds of stupid young kids will rush down to their "Military Career Center" right after the game. These are the ones that I pity most.

    BaronVonAmericano , 10 October 2014 6:26pm
    Let's be frank: powerful interests want war and subsequent puppet regimes in the half dozen nations that the neo-cons have been eyeing (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan). These interests surely include industries like banking, arms and oil-all of whom make a killing on any war, and would stand to do well with friendly governments who could finance more arms purchases and will never nationalize the oil.

    So, the same PR campaign that started with Bush and Cheney continues-the exact same campaign. Obviously, they have to come back at the apple with variations, but any notion that the "media will get it someday" is willfully ignorant of the obvious fact that there is an agenda, and that agenda just won't stop until it's achieved-or revolution supplants the influence of these dark forces.

    IanB52, 10 October 2014 6:57pm

    The US media are indeed working overtime to get this war happening. When I'm down at the gym they always have CNN on (I can only imagine what FOX is like) which is a pretty much dyed in the wool yellow jingoist station at this point. With all the segments they dedicate to ISIS, a new war, the "imminent" terrorist threat, they seem to favor talking heads who support a full ground war and I have never, not once, heard anyone even speak about the mere possibility of peace. Not ever.

    In media universe there is no alternative to endless war and an endless stream of hyped reasons for new killing.

    I'd imagine that these media companies have a lot stock in and a cozy relationship with the defense contractors.

    Damiano Iocovozzi, 10 October 2014 7:04pm

    The media machine is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States of Corporations. The media doesn't report on anything but relies on repeating manufactured crises, creating manufactured consent & discussing manufactured solutions. Follow the oil, the pipelines & the money. Both R's & D's are left & right cheeks of the same buttock. Thanks to Citizens United & even Hobby Lobby, a compliant Supreme Court, also owned by United States of Corporations, it's a done deal.

    ID5868758 , 10 October 2014 10:20pm
    Oh, the greatest propaganda arm the US government has right now, bar none, is the American media. It's disgraceful. we no longer have journalists speaking truth to power in my country, we have people practicing stenography, straight from the State Department to your favorite media outlet.

    Let me give you one clear example. A year ago Barack Obama came very close to bombing Syria to kingdom come, the justification used was "Assad gassed his own people", referring to a sarin gas attack near Damascus. Well, it turns out that Assad did not initiate that attack, discovered by research from many sources including the prestigious MIT, it was a false flag attack planned by Turkey and carried out by some of Obama's own "moderate rebels".

    But all that research from MIT, from the UN, and others, has been buried by the American media, and every single story on Syria and Assad that is written still refers to "Assad gassing his own people". It's true, it's despicable, and it's just one example of how our media lies and distorts and misrepresents the news every day.

    [Mar 18, 2019] Newly released Bruce Ohr testimony exposes more Deep State lies targeting Trump (Video) by Alex Christoforou

    Notable quotes:
    "... Ohr stated in his testimony: "What I had said, I think, to Mr. Rosenstein in October of 2017 was that my wife was working for Fusion GPS The dossier, as I understand it, is the collection of reports that Chris Steele has prepared for Fusion. ..."
    "... Ohr added: "My wife had separately done research on certain Russian people and companies or whatever that she had provided to Fusion GPS But I don't believe her information is reflected in the Chris Steele reports. They were two different chunks of information heading into Fusion GPS." ..."
    "... Rep. Mark Meadows asked Ohr during testimony "Did Chris Steele get paid by the Department of Justice? Ohr's response: "My understanding is that for a time he was a source for the FBI, a paid source. ..."
    Mar 15, 2019 | theduran.com

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/UfIy3iaN39s

    Department of Justice senior official Bruce Ohr's testimony contradicts testimony given by other senior government officials and key witnesses who testified before Congress regarding the FBI's investigation into President Trump's 2016 campaign and alleged collusion with the Russian government, according to the full transcripts released Friday.

    Ohr's 268-page testimony, released by Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, reveals inconsistency and contradiction in testimony given by Glenn Simpson, founder of embattled research firm Fusion GPS and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is set to leave his post sometime this month.

    It also reveals that many questions are still left unanswered.

    The Contradictions and The Revelations

    1. Glenn Simpson suggests in his testimony to the Senate that he never spoke to anyone at the FBI about Christopher Steele, the former British spy he hired to investigate the Trump campaign during the election. However, Ohr suggest otherwise telling former Rep.Trey Gowdy under questioning "As I recall, and this is after checking with my notes, Mr. Simpson and I spoke in August of 2016. I met with him, and he provided some information on possible intermediaries between the Russian government and the Trump campaign."

    2. In another instance, Simpson's testimony also contradicts notes taken by Ohr after a meeting they had in December, 2016. Unverified allegations were decimated among the media that the Trump campaign had a computer server that was linked to a Russian bank in Moscow: Alpha Bank. Simpson suggested to the Senate that he knew very little about the Trump -Alpha Bank server story and couldn't provide information. But Bruce Ohr's own handwritten notes state that when he met with Simpson in December 2016, Simpson was concerned over the Alpha Bank story in the New York Times. "The New York Times story on Oct. 31 downplaying the connection between Alfa servers and the Trump campaign was incorrect. There was communication and it wasn't spam," stated Ohr's notes. This suggests that Simpson was well aware of the story, which was believed by congressional investigators to have started from his research firm.

    3. Ohr testified to lawmakers that Simpson provided information to federal officials that was false regarding Cleta Mitchell, a well-known Republican campaign finance lawyer, and information regarding the National Rifle Association. Sean Davis, with the Federalist pointed this out in a tweet today. Read one of those stories here.

    Bruce Ohr testified that Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS provided to federal officials information we know to be false regarding Cleta Mitchell, a Republican campaign finance attorney, and the NRA. Giving false statements to federal officials is a crime under 18 U.S.C. 1001. pic.twitter.com/vm0tc4ft5R

    - Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 8, 2019

    4. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would not answer questions to lawmakers during testimony about when he learned that Ohr's wife, Nellie Ohr, was working for Fusion GPS. Just check this out from Rep. Matt Gaetz's interview with Judge Jeanine on Fox News.

    "Rod Rosenstein won't tell us when he first learned that Nellie Ohr was working for Fusion GPS," said Gaetz, in August, 2018. "So I want to know from Bruce Ohr, when did he tell his colleagues at the Department of Justice that in violation of law that required him to disclose his wife's occupation his sources of income. He did not do that. So when did all of the other people at the Department of Justice find this out because Rod Rosenstein, I've asked him twice in open hearing and he will not give an answer. I think there's a real smoking gun there."

    However, in Ohr's testimony he says he told the FBI about his wife's role at Fusion GPS but only divulged his role to one person at the DOJ: Rosenstein. At the time, Rosenstein was overseeing the Trump-Russia probe, and had taken the information from Ohr and gave it to the FBI. Just read The Hill's John Solomon full story here for the full background on Ohr's testimony. I highlighted an important date below: remember Rosenstein wouldn't answer lawmakers questions as to when he knew about Nellie Ohr. It also appears he failed to tell lawmakers about the information he delivered to the FBI.

    Ohr stated in his testimony: "What I had said, I think, to Mr. Rosenstein in October of 2017 was that my wife was working for Fusion GPS The dossier, as I understand it, is the collection of reports that Chris Steele has prepared for Fusion.

    Ohr added: "My wife had separately done research on certain Russian people and companies or whatever that she had provided to Fusion GPS But I don't believe her information is reflected in the Chris Steele reports. They were two different chunks of information heading into Fusion GPS."

    5. Ohr also told lawmakers in his testimony that the former British spy, Christopher Steele was being paid by the FBI at the same time he was getting paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC. However, there was another player paying Steele and it was a Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska, a tycoon connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin, had well known animus toward his former friend Paul Manafort.

    Rep. Mark Meadows asked Ohr during testimony "Did Chris Steele get paid by the Department of Justice? Ohr's response: "My understanding is that for a time he was a source for the FBI, a paid source.

    In the testimony Ohr also revealed that Steele had told him details about his work with Deripaska saying Deripaska's attorney Paul Hauser "had information about Paul Manafort, that Paul Manafort had entered into some kind of business deal with" Deripaska. Ohr said Manafort "had stolen a large amount of money from" the Russian Oligarch and that Hauser was "trying to gather information that would show that."

    [Mar 17, 2019] Mueller uses the same old false flag scams, just different packaging of his forensics-free findings

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... It appears the FBI, CIA, and NSA have great difficulty in differentiating between Russians and Democrats posing as Russians. ..."
    "... Maybe the VIPS should look into the murder of Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who had the security clearance required to access the DNC servers, and who was murdered in the same week as the emails were taken. In particular, they should ask why the police were told to stand down and close the murder case without further investigation. ..."
    "... What a brilliant article, so logical, methodical & a forensic, scientific breakdown of the phony Russiagate project? And there's no doubt, this was a co-ordinated, determined Intelligence project to reverse the results of the 2016 Election by initiating a soft coup or Regime change op on a elected Leader, a very American Coup, something the American Intelligence Agencies specialise in, everywhere else, on a Global scale, too get Trump impeached & removed from the Whitehouse? ..."
    "... Right. Since its purpose is to destroy Trump politically, the investigation should go on as long as Trump is in office. Alternatively, if at this point Trump has completely sold out, that would be another reason to stop the investigation. ..."
    "... Nancy Pelosi's announcement two days ago that the Democrats will not seek impeachment for Trump suggests the emptiness of the Mueller investigation on the specific "collusion" issue. ..."
    "... We know and Assange has confirmed Seth Rich, assassinated in D.C. for his deed, downloaded the emails and most likely passed them on to former British ambassador Craig Murray in a D.C. park for transport to Wikileaks. ..."
    "... This so-called "Russiagate" narrative is an illustration of our "freedom of the press" failure in the US due to groupthink and self censorship. He who pays the piper is apt to call the tune. ..."
    "... Barr, Sessions, every congressmen all the corporate MSM war profiteer mouth pieces. They all know that "Russia hacked the DNC" and "Russia meddled" is fabricated garbage. They don't care, because their chosen war beast corporate candidate couldn't beat Donald goofball Trump. So it has to be shown that the war beast only lost because of nefarious reasons. Because they're gonna run another war beast cut from the same cloth as Hillary in 2020. ..."
    "... Mar 4, 2019 Tom Fitton: President Trump a 'Crime Victim' by Illegal Deep State DOJ & FBI Abuses: https://youtu.be/ixWMorWAC7c ..."
    "... Trump is a willing player in this game. The anti-Russian Crusade was, quite simply, a stunningly reckless, short-sighted effort to overturn the 2016 election, removing Trump to install Hillary Clinton in office. ..."
    "... Much ado about nothing. All the talk and chatter and media airplay about "Russian meddling" in the 2016 election only tells me that these liars think the American public is that stupid. ..."
    "... Andrew Thomas I'm afraid that huge amounts of our History post 1947 is organized and propagandized disinformation. There is an incredible page that John Simpkin has organized over the years that specifically addresses individuals, click on a name and read about them. https://spartacus-educational.com/USAdisinformation.htm ..."
    "... It's pretty astonishing that Mueller was more interested in Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi as credible sources about Wikileaks and the DNC release than Craig Murray! ..."
    "... Yes, he has done his job. And his job was to bring his royal Orangeness to heel, and to make sure that detente and co-operation with Russia remained impossible. The forever war continues. Mission Accomplished. ..."
    Mar 17, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    O Society , March 16, 2019 at 7:55 am

    The Truth is Out There. I Want to Believe!

    Same old scams, different packaging. That's New & Improved for you.

    http://opensociet.org/2019/03/16/the-return-of-the-hidden-persuaders

    Raymond Comeau , March 15, 2019 at 12:35 pm

    I could not suffer through reading the whole article. This is mainly because I have watched the news daily about Mueller's Investigation and I sincerely believe that Mueller is Champion of the Democrats who are trying to depose President Donald Trump at any cost.

    For what Mueller found any decent lawyer with a Degree and a few years of experience could have found what Mueller found for far far less money. Mueller only found common crimes AND NO COLLUSION BETWEEN PRESIDENT TRUMP AND PUTIN!

    The Mueller Investigation should be given to an honest broker to review, and Mueller should be paid only what it would cost to produce the commonplace crimes Mueller, The Democrats, and CNN has tried to convince the people that indeed Trump COLLUDED with RUSSIA. Mueller is, a BIG NOTHING BURGER and THE DEMOCRATS AND CNN ARE MUELLER'S SINGING CANARYS! Mueller should be jailed.

    Bogdan Miller , March 15, 2019 at 11:04 am

    This article explains why the Mueller Report is already highly suspect. For another thing, we know that since before 2016, Democrats have been studying Russian Internet and hacking tactics, and posing as Russian Bots/Trolls on Facebook and other media outlets, all in an effort to harm President Trump.

    It appears the FBI, CIA, and NSA have great difficulty in differentiating between Russians and Democrats posing as Russians.

    B.J.M. Former Intelligence Analyst and Humint Collector

    vinnieoh , March 15, 2019 at 8:17 am

    Moving on: the US House yesterday voted UNANIMOUSLY (remember that word, so foreign these days to US governance?) to "urge" the new AG to release the complete Mueller report.

    A non-binding resolution, but you would think that the Democrats can't see the diesel locomotive bearing down on their clown car, about to smash it to pieces. The new AG in turn says he will summarize the report and that is what we will see, not the entire report. And taxation without representation takes a new twist.

    ... ... ...

    Raymond Comeau , March 15, 2019 at 12:38 pm

    What else would you expect from two Political Parties who are really branches of the ONE Party which Represents DEEP STATE".

    DWS , March 15, 2019 at 5:58 am

    Maybe the VIPS should look into the murder of Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who had the security clearance required to access the DNC servers, and who was murdered in the same week as the emails were taken. In particular, they should ask why the police were told to stand down and close the murder case without further investigation.

    Raymond Comeau , March 15, 2019 at 12:47 pm

    EXACTLY! But, Deep State will not allow that. And, it would ruin the USA' plan to continue to invade more sovereign countries and steal their resources such as oil and Minerals. The people of the USA must be Ostriches or are so terrified that they accept anything their Criminal Governments tell them.

    Eventually, the chickens will come home to roost and perhaps the USA voters will ROAST when the crimes of the USA sink the whole country. It is time for a few Brave Men and Women to find their backbones and throw out the warmongers and their leading Oligarchs!

    KiwiAntz , March 14, 2019 at 6:44 pm

    What a brilliant article, so logical, methodical & a forensic, scientific breakdown of the phony Russiagate project? And there's no doubt, this was a co-ordinated, determined Intelligence project to reverse the results of the 2016 Election by initiating a soft coup or Regime change op on a elected Leader, a very American Coup, something the American Intelligence Agencies specialise in, everywhere else, on a Global scale, too get Trump impeached & removed from the Whitehouse?

    If you can't get him out via a Election, try & try again, like Maduro in Venezuela, to forcibly remove the targeted person by setting him up with fake, false accusations & fabricated evidence? How very predictable & how very American of Mueller & the Democratic Party. Absolute American Corruption, corrupts absolutely?

    Brian Murphy , March 15, 2019 at 10:33 am

    Right. Since its purpose is to destroy Trump politically, the investigation should go on as long as Trump is in office. Alternatively, if at this point Trump has completely sold out, that would be another reason to stop the investigation.

    If the investigation wraps up and finds nothing, that means Trump has already completely sold out. If the investigation continues, it means someone important still thinks Trump retains some vestige of his balls.

    DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:19 pm

    By last June or July the Mueller investigation has resulted in roughly 150 indictments for perjury/financial crimes, and there was a handful of convictions to date. The report did not support the Clinton wing's anti-Russian allegations about the 2016 election, and was largely brushed aside by media. Mueller was then reportedly sent back in to "find something." presumably to support the anti-Russian claims.

    mike k , March 14, 2019 at 12:57 pm

    From the beginning of the Russia did it story, right after Trump's electoral victory, it was apparent that this was a fraud. The democratic party however has locked onto this preposterous story, and they will go to their graves denying this was a scam to deny their presidential defeat, and somehow reverse the result of Trump's election. My sincere hope is that this blatant lie will be an albatross around the party's neck, that will carry them down into oblivion. They have betrayed those of us who supported them for so many years. They are in many ways now worse than the republican scum they seek to replace.

    DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:26 pm

    Trump is almost certain to be re-elected in 2020, and we'll go through this all over again.

    Tom , March 14, 2019 at 12:00 pm

    The very fact that the FBI never had access to the servers and took the word of a private company that had a history of being anti-Russian is enough to throw the entire ruse out.

    LJ , March 14, 2019 at 2:39 pm

    Agreed!!!! and don't forget the FBI/Comey gave Hillary and her Campaign a head's up before they moved to seize the evidence. . So too, Comey said he stopped the Investigation , thereby rendering judgement of innocence, even though by his own words 'gross negligence' had a occurred (which is normally considered grounds for prosecution). In doing so he exceeded the FBI's investigative mandate. He rationalized that decision was appropriate because of the appearance of impropriety that resulted from Attorney General Lynch having a private meeting on a plane on a runway with Bill and Hillary . Where was the logic in that. Who called the meeting? All were Lawyers who had served as President, Senator, Attorney General and knew that the meeting was absolutely inappropriate. . Comey should be prosecuted if they want to prosecute anyone else because of this CRAP. PS Trump is an idiot. Uhinfortunately he is just a symptom of the disease at this point. Look at the cover of Rolling Stone magazine , carry a barf bag.

    Jane Christ , March 14, 2019 at 6:51 pm

    Exactly. This throws doubt on the ability of the FBI to work independently. They are working for those who want to cover -up the Hillary mess . She evidently has sufficient funds to pay them off. I am disgusted with the level of corruption.

    hetro , March 14, 2019 at 10:50 am

    Nancy Pelosi's announcement two days ago that the Democrats will not seek impeachment for Trump suggests the emptiness of the Mueller investigation on the specific "collusion" issue. If there were something hot and lingering and about to emerge, this decision is highly unlikely, especially with the reasoning she gave at "so as not to divide the American people." Dividing the people hasn't been of much concern throughout this bogus witch hunt on Trump, which has added to his incompetence in leavening a growing hysteria and confusion in this country. If there is something, anything at all, in the Mueller report to support the collusion theory, Pelosi would I'm sure gleefully trot it out to get a lesser candidate like Pence as opposition for 2020.

    James Clooney , March 14, 2019 at 11:17 am

    We know and Assange has confirmed Seth Rich, assassinated in D.C. for his deed, downloaded the emails and most likely passed them on to former British ambassador Craig Murray in a D.C. park for transport to Wikileaks.

    We must also honor Shawn Lucas assassinated for serving DNC with a litigation notice exposing the DNC conspiracy against Sanders.

    hetro , March 14, 2019 at 3:18 pm

    Where has Assange confirmed this? Assange's long-standing position is NOT to reveal his sources. I believe he has continued to honor this position.

    Skip Scott , March 15, 2019 at 7:15 am

    It has merely been insinuated by the offering of a reward for info on Seth's murder. In one breath he says wikileaks will never divulge a source, and in the next he offers a $20k reward saying that sources take tremendous risk. Doesn't take much of a logical leap to connect A to B.

    DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:30 pm

    Are you aware that Democrats split apart their 0wn voting base in the 1990s, middle class vs. poor? The Obama years merely confirmed that this split is permanent. This is particularly relevant for Democrats, as their voting base had long consisted of the poor and middle class, for the common good. Ignoring this deep split hasn't made it go away.

    hetro , March 14, 2019 at 3:24 pm

    Even more important is how the Democrats have sold out to an Establishment view favoring neocon theory, since at least Bill Clinton. Pelosi's recent behavior with Ilhan Omar confirms this and the split you're talking about. My point is it is distinctly odd that Pelosi is discouraging impeachment on "dividing the Party" (already divided, of course, as you say), whereas the Russia-gate fantasy was so hot not that long ago. Again it points to a cynical opportunism and manipulation of the electorate. Both parties are a sad excuse to represent ordinary people's interests.

    Skip Scott , March 15, 2019 at 7:21 am

    She said "dividing the country", not the party. I think she may have concerns over Trump's heavily armed base. That said, the statement may have been a ruse. There are plenty of Republicans that would cross the line in favor of impeachment with the right "conclusions" by Mueller. Pelosi may be setting up for a "bombshell" conclusion by Mueller. One must never forget that we are watching theater, and that Trump was a "mistake" to be controlled or eliminated.

    Cindy Haddix , March 14, 2019 at 8:04 am

    Mueller should be ashamed that he has made President Trump his main concern!! If all this investigation would stop he could save America millions!!! He needs to quit this witch-hunt and worry about things that really need to be handled!!! If the democrats and Trump haters would stop pushing senseless lies hopefully this would stop ? It's so disgusting that his democrat friend was never really investigated ? stop the witch-hunt and move forward!!!!

    torture this , March 14, 2019 at 7:29 am

    According to this letter, mistakes might have been made on Rachel Maddow's show. I can't wait to read how she responds. I'd watch her show, myself except that it has the same effect on me as ipecac.

    Zhu , March 14, 2019 at 3:37 am

    People will cling to "Putin made Trump President!!!" much as many cling "Obama's a Kenyan Muslim! Not a real American!!!". Both nut theories are emotionally satisfying, no matter what the historical facts are. Many Americans just can't admit their mistakes and blaming a scapegoat is a way out.

    O Society , March 14, 2019 at 2:03 am

    Thank you VIPS for organizing this legit dissent consisting of experts in the field of intelligence and computer forensics.

    This so-called "Russiagate" narrative is an illustration of our "freedom of the press" failure in the US due to groupthink and self censorship. He who pays the piper is apt to call the tune.

    It is astounding how little skepticism and scientifically-informed reasoning goes on in our media. These folks show themselves to be native advertising rather than authentic journalists at every turn.

    DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:33 pm

    But it has been Democrats and the media that market to middle class Dems, who persist in trying to sell the Russian Tale. They excel at ignoring the evidence that utterly contradicts their claims.

    O Society , March 15, 2019 at 3:50 pm

    Oh, we're well beyond your "Blame the middle class Dems" stage.

    The WINNING!!! team sports bullshit drowns the entire country now the latrine's sprung a leak. People pretend to live in bubbles made of blue or red quite like the Three Little Pigs, isn't it? Except instead of a house made of bricks saving the day for the littlepiggies, what we've got here is a purple puddle of piss.

    Everyone's more than glad to project all our problems on "THEM" though, aren't we?

    Meanwhile, the White House smells like a urinal not washed since the 1950s and simpletons still get their rocks off arguing about whether Mickey Mouse can beat up Ronald McDonald.

    T'would be comic except what's so tragic is the desperate need Americans have to believe, oh just believe! in something. Never mind the sound of the jackhammer on your skull dear, there's an app for that or is it a pill?

    I don't know, don't ask me, I'm busy watching TV. Have a cheeto.

    https://opensociet.org/2018/12/18/the-disneyfication-of-america/

    Sam F , March 13, 2019 at 6:45 pm

    Very good analysis clearly stated, especially adding the FAT timestamps to the transmission speeds.

    Minor corrections: "The emails were copied from the network" should be "from the much faster local network" because this is to Contradict the notion that they were copied over the internet network, which most readers will equate with "network." Also "reportedin" should be "reported in."

    Michael , March 13, 2019 at 6:25 pm

    It is likely that New Knowledge was actually "the Russians", possibly working in concert with Crowdstrike. Once an intelligence agency gets away with something like pretending to be Russian hackers and bots, they tend to re-use their model; it is too tempting to discard an effective model after a one-off accomplishment. New Knowledge was caught interfering/ determining the outcome in the Alabama Senate race on the side of Democrat Doug Jones, and claimed they were merely trying to mimic Russian methods to see if they worked (they did; not sure of their punishment?). Occam's razor would suggest that New Knowledge would be competent to mimic/ pretend to be "Russians" after the fact of wikileaks' publication of emails. New Knowledge has employees from the NSA and State department sympathetic to/ working with(?) Hillary, and were the "outside" agency hired to evaluate and report on the "Russian" hacking of the DNC emails/ servers.

    DH Fabian , March 13, 2019 at 5:48 pm

    Mueller released report last summer, which resulted in (the last I checked) roughly 150 indictments, a handful of convictions to date, all for perjury/financial (not political) crimes. This wasn't kept secret. It simply wasn't what Democrats wanted to hear, so although it was mentioned in some lib media (which overwhelmingly supported neoliberal Hillary Clinton), it was essentially swept under the carpet.

    Billy , March 13, 2019 at 11:11 pm

    Barr, Sessions, every congressmen all the corporate MSM war profiteer mouth pieces. They all know that "Russia hacked the DNC" and "Russia meddled" is fabricated garbage. They don't care, because their chosen war beast corporate candidate couldn't beat Donald goofball Trump. So it has to be shown that the war beast only lost because of nefarious reasons. Because they're gonna run another war beast cut from the same cloth as Hillary in 2020.

    Realist , March 14, 2019 at 3:22 am

    You betcha. Moreover, who but the Russians do these idiots have left to blame? Everybody else is now off limits due to political correctness. Sigh Those Catholics, Jews, "ethnics" and sundry "deviants" used to be such reliable scapegoats, to say nothing of the "undeveloped" world. As Clapper "authoritatively" says, only this vile lineage still carries the genes for the most extremes of human perfidy. Squirrels in your attic? It must be the damned Russkies! The bastards impudently tried to copy our democracy, economic system and free press and only besmirched those institutions, ruining all of Hillary's glorious plans for a worldwide benevolent dictatorship. All this might be humorous if it weren't so funny.

    And those Chinese better not get to thinking they are somehow our equals just because all their trillions invested in U.S. Treasury bonds have paid for all our wars of choice and MIC boondoggles since before the turn of the century. Unless they start delivering Trump some "free stuff" the big man is gonna cut off their water. No more affordable manufactured goods for the American public! So there!

    As to the article: impeccable research and analysis by the VIPS crew yet again. They've proven to me that, to a near certainty, the Easter Bunny is not likely to exist. Mueller won't read it. Clapper will still prance around a free man, as will Brennan. The Democrats won't care, that is until November of 2020. And Hillary will continue to skate, unhindered in larding up the Clinton Foundation to purposes one can only imagine.

    Joe Tedesky , March 14, 2019 at 10:02 pm

    Realist,

    I have posted this article 'the Russia they Lost' before and from time to time but once again it seems appropriate to add this link to expound upon for what you've been saying. It's an article written by a Russian who in they're youth growing up in the USSR dreamed of living the American lifestyle if Russia were to ever ditch communism. But . Starting with Kosovo this Russian's youthful dream turned nightmarishly ugly and, as time went by with more and yet even more USA aggression this Russian author loss his admiration and desire for all things American to be proudly envied. This is a story where USA hard power destroyed any hope of American soft power for world unity. But hey that unity business was never part of the plan anyway.

    https://slavyangrad.org/2014/09/24/the-russia-they-lost/

    Realist , March 15, 2019 at 10:38 pm

    right you are, joe. if america was smart rather than arrogant, it would have cooperated with china and russia to see the belt and road initiative succeed by perhaps building a bridge or tunnel from siberia to alaska, and by building its own fleet of icebreakers to open up its part of the northwest passage. but no, it only wants to sabotage what others propose. that's not being a leader, it's being a dick.

    i'm gonna have to go on the disabled list here until the sudden neurological problem with my right hand clears up–it's like paralysed. too difficult to do this one-handed using hunt and peck. at least the problem was not in the old bean, according to the scans. carry on, sir.

    Brian James , March 13, 2019 at 5:04 pm

    Mar 4, 2019 Tom Fitton: President Trump a 'Crime Victim' by Illegal Deep State DOJ & FBI Abuses: https://youtu.be/ixWMorWAC7c

    DH Fabian , March 13, 2019 at 5:55 pm

    Trump is a willing player in this game. The anti-Russian Crusade was, quite simply, a stunningly reckless, short-sighted effort to overturn the 2016 election, removing Trump to install Hillary Clinton in office. Trump and the Republicans continue to win by default, as Democrats only drive more voters away.

    Howard , March 13, 2019 at 4:36 pm

    Thank you Ray McGovern and the Other 17 VIPS C0-Signers of your National Security Essay for Truth. Along with Craig Murray and Seymour Hirsch, former Sam Adams Award winners for "shining light into dark places", you are national resources for objectivity in critical survival information matters for our country. It is more than a pity that our mainstream media are so beholden to their corporate task masters that they cannot depart from the company line for fear of losing their livelihoods, and in the process we risk losing life on the planet because of unconstrained nuclear war on the part of the two main adversaries facing off in an atmosphere of fear and mistrust. Let me speak plainly. THEY SHOULD BE TALKING TO YOU AND NOT THE VESTED INTERESTS' MOUTHPIECES. Thank you for your continued leadership!

    James Clooney , March 14, 2019 at 11:28 am

    Roger Ailes founder of FOX news died, "falling down stairs" within a week of FOX news exposing to the world that the assassinated Seth Rich downloaded the DNC emails.

    DH Fabian , March 13, 2019 at 6:03 pm

    Google the Mueller investigation report from last June or July. When it was released, the public response was like a deflated balloon. It did not support the "Russian collusion" allegations -- the only thing Democrats still had left to sell. The report resulted in roughly 150 indictments for perjury/financial crimes (not political), and a handful of convictions to date -- none of which had anything to do with the election results.

    Hank , March 13, 2019 at 6:19 pm

    Much ado about nothing. All the talk and chatter and media airplay about "Russian meddling" in the 2016 election only tells me that these liars think the American public is that stupid. They are probably right, but the REAL reason that Hillary lost is because there ARE enough informed people now in this nation who are quite aware of the Clinton's sordid history where scandals seem to follow every where they go, but indictments and/or investigations don't. There IS an internet nowadays with lots of FACTUAL DOCUMENTED information. That's a lot more than I can say about the mainstream corporate-controlled media!

    I know this won't ever happen, but an HONEST investigation into the Democratic Party and their actions during the 2016 election would make ANY collusion with ANY nation look like a mole hill next to a mountain! One of the problems with living in this nation is if you are truly informed and make an effort 24/7 to be that way by doing your own research, you more-than-likely can be considered an "island in a sea of ignorance".

    Tom , March 14, 2019 at 12:13 pm

    We know that the FBI never had access to the servers and a private company was allowed to handle the evidence. Wasnt it a crime scene? The evidence was tampered with And we will never know what was on the servers.

    Mark McCarty , March 13, 2019 at 4:10 pm

    As a complement to this excellent analysis, I would like to make 2 further points:

    The Mueller indictment of Russian Intelligence for hacking the DNC and transferring their booty to Wikileaks is absurd on its face for this reason: Assange announced on June 12th the impending release of Hillary-related emails. Yet the indictment claims that Guccifer 2.0 did not succeed in transferring the DNC emails to Wikileaks until the time period of July 14-18th – after which they were released online on July 22nd. Are we to suppose that Assange, a publisher of impeccable integrity, publicly announced the publication of emails he had not yet seen, and which he was obtaining from a source of murky provenance? And are we further to suppose that Wikileaks could have processed 20K emails and 20K attachments to insure their genuineness in a period of only several days? As you will recall, Wikileaks subsequently took a number of weeks to process the Podesta emails they released in October.

    And another peculiarity merits attention. Assange did not state on June 12th that he was releasing DNC emails – and yet Crowdstrike and the Guccifer 2.0 personna evidently knew that this was in store. A likely resolution of this conundrum is that US intelligence had been monitoring all communications to Wikileaks, and had informed the DNC that their hacked emails had been offered to Wikileaks. A further reasonable prospect is that US intelligence subsequently unmasked the leaker to the DNC; as Assange has strongly hinted, this likely was Seth Rich. This could explain Rich's subsequent murder, as Rich would have been in a position to unmask the Guccifer 2.0 hoax and the entire Russian hacking narrative.

    https://medium.com/@markfmccarty/muellers-new-indictment-do-the-feds-take-us-for-idiots-5406ef955406

    https://medium.com/@markfmccarty/how-did-crowdstrike-guccifer-2-0-know-that-wikileaks-was-planning-to-release-dnc-emails-42e6db334053

    Sam F , March 13, 2019 at 7:06 pm

    Curious that Assange has Not explicitly stated that the leaker was Seth Rich, if it was, as this would take pressure from himself and incriminate the DNC in the murder of Rich. Perhaps he doesn't know, and has the honor not to take the opportunity, or perhaps he knows that it was not Rich.

    James Clooney , March 14, 2019 at 11:40 am

    View the Dutch TV interview with Asssange and there is another interview available on youtube in which Assange DOES subtly confirmed it was Seth Rich.

    Assange posted a $10,000 reward for Seth Rich's murders capture.

    Abby , March 13, 2019 at 10:11 pm

    Another mistaken issue with the "Russia hacked the DNC computers on Trump's command" is that he never asked Russia to do that. His words were, "Russia if you 'find' Hillary's missing emails let us know." He said that after she advised congress that she wouldn't be turning in all of the emails they asked for because she deleted 30,000 of them and said that they were personal.

    But if Mueller or the FBI wants to look at all of them they can find them at the NYC FBI office because they are on Weiner's laptop. Why? Because Hillary's aid Huma Abedin, Weiner's wife sent them to it. Just another security risk that Hillary had because of her private email server. This is why Comey had to tell congress that more of them had been found 11 days before the election. If Comey hadn't done that then the FBI would have.

    But did Comey or McCabe look at her emails there to see if any of them were classified? No they did not do that. And today we find out that Lisa Page told congress that it was Obama's decision not to charge Hillary for being grossly negligent on using her private email server. This has been known by congress for many months and now we know that the fix was always in for her to get off.

    robert e williamson jr , March 13, 2019 at 3:26 pm

    I want to thank you folks at VIPS. Like I have been saying for years now the relationship between CIA, NSA and DOJ is an incestuous one at best. A perverse corrupted bond to control the masses. A large group of religious fanatics who want things "ONE WAY". They are the facilitators for the rogue government known as the "DEEP STATE"!

    Just ask billy barr.

    More truth is a very good thing. I believe DOJ is supporting the intelligence community because of blackmail. They can't come clean because they all risk doing lots of time if a new judicial mechanism replaces them. We are in big trouble here.

    Apparently the rule of law is not!

    You folks that keep claiming we live in the post truth era! Get off me. Demand the truth and nothing else. Best be getting ready for the fight of your lives. The truth is you have to look yourself in the mirror every morning, deny that truth. The claim you are living in the post truth era is an admission your life is a lie. Now grab a hold of yourself pick a dogdamned side and stand for something,.

    Thank You VIPS!

    Joe Tedesky , March 13, 2019 at 2:58 pm

    Hats off to the VIP's who have investigated this Russian hacking that wasn't a hacking for without them what would we news junkies have otherwise to lift open the hood of Mueller's never ending Russia-gate investigation. Although the one thing this Russia-gate nonsense has accomplished is it has destroyed with our freedom of speech when it comes to how we citizens gather our news. Much like everything else that has been done during these post 9/11 years of continual wars our civil rights have been marginalized down to zero or, a bit above if that's even still an argument to be made for the sake of numbers.

    Watching the Manafort sentencing is quite interesting for the fact that Manafort didn't conclude in as much as he played fast and loose with his income. In fact maybe Manafort's case should have been prosecuted by the State Department or, how about the IRS? Also wouldn't it be worth investigating other Geopolitical Rain Makers like Manafort for similar crimes of financial wrongdoing? I mean is it possible Manafort is or was the only one of his type to do such dishonest things? In any case Manafort wasn't charged with concluding with any Russians in regard to the 2016 presidential election and, with that we all fall down.

    I guess the best thing (not) that came out of this Russia-gate silliness is Rachel Maddow's tv ratings zoomed upwards. But I hate to tell you that the only ones buying what Ms Maddow is selling are the died in the wool Hillary supporters along with the chicken-hawks who rally to the MIC lobby for more war. It's all a game and yet there are many of us who just don't wish to play it but still we must because no one will listen to the sanity that gets ignored keep up the good work VIP's some of us are listening.

    Andrew Thomas , March 13, 2019 at 12:42 pm

    The article did not mention something called to my attention for the first time by one of the outstanding members of your commentariat just a couple of days ago- that Ambassador Murray stayed publicly, over two years ago, that he had been given the thumb drive by a go-between in D.C. and had somehow gotten it to Wikileaks. And, that he has NEVER BEEN INTERVIEWED by Mueller &Company. I was blown away by this, and found the original articles just by googling Murray. The excuse given is that Murray "lacks credibility ", or some such, because of his prior relationship with Assange and/or Wikileaks. This is so ludicrous I can't even get my head around it. And now, you have given me a new detail-the meeting with Pompeo, and the complete lack of follow-up thereafter. Here all this time I thought I was the most cynical SOB who existed, and now I feel as naive as when I was 13 and believed what Dean Rusk was saying like it was holy writ. I am in your debt.

    Bob Van Noy , March 13, 2019 at 2:33 pm

    Andrew Thomas I'm afraid that huge amounts of our History post 1947 is organized and propagandized disinformation. There is an incredible page that John Simpkin has organized over the years that specifically addresses individuals, click on a name and read about them. https://spartacus-educational.com/USAdisinformation.htm

    Mark McCarty , March 13, 2019 at 4:18 pm

    A small correction: the Daily Mail article regarding Murray claimed that Murray was given a thumbdrive which he subsequently carried back to Wikileaks. On his blog, Murray subsequently disputed this part of the story, indicating that, while he had met with a leaker or confederate of a leaker in Washington DC, the Podesta emails were already in possession of Wikileaks at the time. Murray refused to clarify the reason for his meeting with this source, but he is adamant in maintaining that the DNC and Podesta emails were leaked, not hacked.

    And it is indeed ludicrous that Mueller, given the mandate to investigate the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC and Podesta, has never attempted to question either Assange or Murray. That in itself is enough for us to conclude that the Mueller investigation is a complete sham.

    Ian Brown , March 13, 2019 at 4:43 pm

    It's pretty astonishing that Mueller was more interested in Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi as credible sources about Wikileaks and the DNC release than Craig Murray!

    LJ , March 13, 2019 at 12:29 pm

    A guy comes in with a pedigree like that, """ former FBI head """ to examine and validate if possible an FBI sting manufactured off a phony FISA indictment based on the Steele Report, It immediately reminded me of the 9-11 Commission with Thomas Kean, former Board member of the National Endowment for Democracy, being appointed by GW Bush the Simple to head an investigation that he had previously said he did not want to authorize( and of course bi partisan yes man Lee Hamilton as #2, lest we forget) . Really this should be seen as another low point in our Democracy. Uncle Sam is the Limbo Man, How low can you go?

    After Bill and Hillary and Monica and Paula Jones and Blue Dresses well, Golden Showers in a Moscow luxury hotel, I guess that make it just salacious enough.

    Mueller looks just like what he is. He has that same phony self important air as Comey . In 2 years this will be forgotten.. I do not think this hurts Trumps chances at re-election as much as the Democrats are hurting themselves. This has already gone on way too long.

    Drew Hunkins , March 13, 2019 at 11:59 am

    Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and Russians.

    Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the mass media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump, which was the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein, Brennan, Podesta and Mueller's crusade on behalf of the deplorable DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. It will be fascinating to witness how Mueller and his crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent edifice of deceit. Will they even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face?

    So sickening to see the manner in which many DNC sycophants obsequiously genuflect to their godlike Mueller. A damn prosecutor who was likely in bed with the Winter Hill Gang.

    Jack , March 13, 2019 at 12:21 pm

    You have failed. An investigation is just that, a finding of the facts. What would Mueller have to extricate himself from? If nothing is found, he has still done his job. You are a divisive idiot.

    Skip Scott , March 13, 2019 at 1:13 pm

    Yes, he has done his job. And his job was to bring his royal Orangeness to heel, and to make sure that detente and co-operation with Russia remained impossible. The forever war continues. Mission Accomplished.

    Drew Hunkins , March 13, 2019 at 2:12 pm

    @Jack,
    Keep running cover for an out of control prosecutor, who, if he had any integrity, would have hit the bully pulpit mos ago declaring there's nothing of substance to one of the most potentially dangerous accusations in world history: the Kremlin hacking the election. Last I checked it puts two nuclear nation-states on the brink of potential war. And you call me divisive? Mueller's now a willing accomplice to this entire McCarthyite smear and disinformation campaign. It's all so pathetic that folks such as yourself try and mislead and feed half-truths to the people.

    You're failing Jack, in more ways than you know.

    Gregory Herr , March 13, 2019 at 9:13 pm

    https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/scheer-intelligence/liberals-are-digging-their-own-grave-with-russiagate-2019-03-08

    Drew, you might enjoy this discussion Robert Scheer has with Stephen Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel.

    Realist , March 15, 2019 at 3:38 am

    Moreover, as the Saker pointed out in his most recent column in the Unz Review, the entire Deep State conspiracy, in an ad hoc alliance with the embarrassed and embarrassing Democrats, have made an absolute sham of due process in their blatant witch hunt to bag the president. This reached an apex when his personal lawyer, Mr. Cohen, was trotted out before congress to violate Trump's confidentiality in every mortifying way he could even vaguely reconstruct. The man was expected to say anything to mitigate the anticipated tortures to come in the course of this modern day inquisition by our latter day Torquemada. To his credit though, even with his ass in a sling, he could simply not confabulate the smoking gun evidence for the alleged Russian collusion that this whole farce was built around.

    Tom , March 14, 2019 at 12:30 pm

    Mueller stood with Bush as he lied the world into war based on lies and illegally spied on America and tortured some folks.

    George Collins , March 13, 2019 at 2:02 pm

    QED: as to the nexus with the Winter Hill gang wasn't there litigation involving the Boston FBI, condonation of murder by the FBI and damages awarded to or on behalf of convicted parties that the FBI had reason to know were innocent? The malfeasance reportedly occurred during Mueller time. Further on the sanctified diligence of Mr. Mueller can be gleaned from the reports of Coleen Rowley, former FBI attorney stationed in Milwaukee??? when the DC FBI office was ignoring warnings sent about 9/11. See also Sibel Edmonds who knew to much and was court order muzzled about FBI mis/malfeasance in the aftermath of 9/11.

    I'd say it's game, set, match VIPS and a pox on Clapper and the complicit intelligence folk complicit in the nuclear loaded Russia-gate fibs.

    Kiers , March 13, 2019 at 11:47 am

    How can we expect the DNC to "hand it " to Trumpf, when, behind the scenes, THEY ARE ONE PARTY. They are throwing faux-scary pillow bombs at each other because they are both complicit in a long chain of corruptions. Business as usual for the "principled" two party system! Democracy! Through the gauze of corporate media! You must be joking!

    Skip Scott , March 13, 2019 at 11:28 am

    "We believe that there are enough people of integrity in the Department of Justice to prevent the outright manufacture or distortion of "evidence," particularly if they become aware that experienced scientists have completed independent forensic study that yield very different conclusions."

    I wish I shared this belief. However, as with Nancy Pelosi's recent statement regarding pursuing impeachment, I smell a rat. I believe with the help of what the late Robert Parry called "the Mighty Wurlitzer", Mueller is going to use coerced false testimony and fabricated forensics to drop a bombshell the size of 911. I think Nancy's statement was just a feint before throwing the knockout punch.

    If reason ruled the day, we should have nothing to worry about. But considering all the perfidy that the so-called "Intelligence" Agencies and their MSM lackeys get away with daily, I think we are in for more theater; and I think VIPS will receive a cold shoulder outside of venues like CN.

    I pray to God I'm wrong.

    Sam F , March 13, 2019 at 7:32 pm

    My extensive experience with DOJ and the federal judiciary establishes that at least 98% of them are dedicated career liars, engaged in organized crime to serve political gangs, and make only a fanatical pretense of patriotism or legality. They are loyal to money alone, deeply cynical and opposed to the US Constitution and laws, with no credibility at all beyond any real evidence.

    Eric32 , March 14, 2019 at 4:24 pm

    As near I can see, Federal Govt. careers at the higher levels depend on having dirt on other players, and helping, not hurting, the money/power schemes of the players above you.

    The Clintons (through their foundation) apparently have a lot of corruption dirt on CIA, FBI etc. top players, some of whom somehow became multi-millionaires during their civil service careers.

    Trump, who was only running for President as a name brand marketing ploy with little desire to actually win, apparently came into the Presidency with no dirt arsenal and little idea of where to go from there.

    Bob Van Noy , March 13, 2019 at 11:09 am

    I remember reading with dismay how Russians were propagandized by the Soviet Press Management only to find out later the depth of disbelief within the Russian population itself. We now know what that feels like. The good part of this disastrous scenario for America is that for careful readers, disinformation becomes revelatory. For instance, if one reads an editorial that refers to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or continually refers to Russian interference in the last Presidential election, then one can immediately dismiss the article and question the motivation for the presentation. Of course the problem is how to establish truth in reporting

    Jeff Harrison , March 13, 2019 at 10:41 am

    Thank you, VIPs. Hopefully, you don't expect this to make a difference. The US has moved into a post truth, post reality existence best characterized by Karl Rove's declaration: "we're an empire now, when we act, we create our own reality." What Mr. Rove in his arrogance fails to appreciate is that it is his reality but not anyone else's. Thus Pompous can claim that Guaido is the democratic leader in Venezuela even though he's never been elected .

    Gary Weglarz , March 13, 2019 at 10:21 am

    Thank you. The next time one of my friends or family give me that glazed over stare and utters anymore of the "but, RUSSIA" nonsense I will refer them directly to this article. Your collective work and ethical stand on this matter is deeply appreciated by anyone who values the truth.

    Russiagate stands with past government propaganda operations that were simply made up out of thin air: i.e. Kuwaiti incubator babies, WMD's, Gaddafi's viagra fueled rape camps, Assad can't sleep at night unless he's gassing his own people, to the latest, "Maduro can't sleep at night unless he's starving his own people."

    The complete and utter amorality of the deep state remains on display for all to see with "Russiagate," which is as fact-free a propaganda campaign as any of those just mentioned.

    Marc , March 13, 2019 at 10:13 am

    I am a computer naif, so I am prepared to accept the VIPS analysis about FAT and transfer rates. However, the presentation here leaves me with several questions. First, do I understand correctly that the FAT rounding to even numbers is introduced by the thumb drive? And if so, does the FAT analysis show only that the DNC data passed through a thumb drive? That is, does the analysis distinguish whether the DNC data were directly transferred to a thumb drive, or whether the data were hacked and then transferred to a thumb drive, eg, to give a copy to Wikileaks? Second, although the transatlantic transfer rate is too slow to fit some time stamps, is it possible that the data were hacked onto a local computer that was under the control of some faraway agent?

    Jeff Harrison , March 13, 2019 at 11:12 am

    Not quite. FAT is the crappy storage system developed by Microsoft (and not used by UNIX). The metadata associated with any file gets rewritten when it gets moved. If that movement is to a storage device that uses FAT, the timestamp on the file will end in an even number. If it were moved to a unix server (and most of the major servers run Unix) it would be in the UFS (unix file system) and it would be the actual time from the system clock. Every storage device has a utility that tells it where to write the data and what to write. Since it's writing to a storage device using FAT, it'll round the numbers. To get to your real question, yes, you could hack and then transfer the data to a thumb drive but if you did that the dates wouldn't line up.

    Skip Scott , March 14, 2019 at 8:05 am

    Jeff-

    Which dates wouldn't line up? Is there a history of metadata available, or just metadata for the most recent move?

    David G , March 13, 2019 at 12:22 pm

    Marc asks: "[D]oes the analysis distinguish whether the DNC data were directly transferred to a thumb drive, or whether the data were hacked and then transferred to a thumb drive, eg, to give a copy to Wikileaks?"

    I asked that question in comments under a previous CN piece; other people have asked that question elsewhere.

    To my knowledge, it hasn't been addressed directly by the VIPS, and I think they should do so. (If they already have, someone please enlighten me.)

    Skip Scott , March 13, 2019 at 1:07 pm

    I am no computer wiz, but Binney has repeatedly made the point that the NSA scoops up everything. If there had been a hack, they'd know it, and they wouldn't only have had "moderate" confidence in the Jan. assessment. I believe that although farfetched, an argument could be made that a Russian spy got into the DNC, loaded a thumb drive, and gave it to Craig Murray.

    David G , March 13, 2019 at 3:31 pm

    Respectfully, that's a separate point, which may or may not raise issues of its own.

    But I think the question Marc posed stands.

    Skip Scott , March 14, 2019 at 7:59 am

    Hi David-

    I don't see how it's separate. If the NSA scoops up everything, they'd have solid evidence of the hack, and wouldn't have only had "moderate" confidence, which Bill Binney says is equivalent to them saying "we don't have squat". They wouldn't even have needed Mueller at all, except to possibly build a "parallel case" due to classification issues. Also, the FBI not demanding direct access to the DNC server tells you something is fishy. They could easily have gotten a warrant to examine the server, but chose not to. They also purposely refuse to get testimony from Craig Murray and Julian Assange, which rings alarm bells on its own.

    As for the technical aspect of Marc's question, I agree that I'd like to see Bill Binney directly answer it.

    [Mar 17, 2019] VIPS- Mueller's Forensics-Free Findings

    Highly recommended!
    Mar 13, 2019 | Consortiumnews

    The final Mueller report should be graded "incomplete," says VIPS, whose forensic work proves the speciousness of the story that DNC emails published by WikiLeaks came from Russian hacking.

    MEMORANDUM FOR: The Attorney General

    FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

    SUBJECT: Mueller's Forensics-Free Findings

    Executive Summary

    Media reports are predicting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is about to give you the findings of his probe into any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump. If Mueller gives you his "completed" report anytime soon, it should be graded "incomplete."

    Major deficiencies include depending on a DNC-hired cybersecurity company for forensics and failure to consult with those who have done original forensic work, including us and the independent forensic investigators with whom we have examined the data. We stand ready to help.

    We veteran intelligence professionals (VIPS) have done enough detailed forensic work to prove the speciousness of the prevailing story that the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks came from Russian hacking. Given the paucity of evidence to support that story, we believe Mueller may choose to finesse this key issue and leave everyone hanging. That would help sustain the widespread belief that Trump owes his victory to President Vladimir Putin, and strengthen the hand of those who pay little heed to the unpredictable consequences of an increase in tensions with nuclear-armed Russia.

    There is an overabundance of "assessments" but a lack of hard evidence to support that prevailing narrative. We believe that there are enough people of integrity in the Department of Justice to prevent the outright manufacture or distortion of "evidence," particularly if they become aware that experienced scientists have completed independent forensic study that yield very different conclusions. We know only too well -- and did our best to expose -- how our former colleagues in the intelligence community manufactured fraudulent "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

    We have scrutinized publicly available physical data -- the "trail" that every cyber operation leaves behind. And we have had support from highly experienced independent forensic investigators who, like us, have no axes to grind. We can prove that the conventional-wisdom story about Russian-hacking-DNC-emails-for-WikiLeaks is false. Drawing largely on the unique expertise of two VIPS scientists who worked for a combined total of 70 years at the National Security Agency and became Technical Directors there, we have regularly published our findings. But we have been deprived of a hearing in mainstream media -- an experience painfully reminiscent of what we had to endure when we exposed the corruption of intelligence before the attack on Iraq 16 years ago.

    This time, with the principles of physics and forensic science to rely on, we are able to adduce solid evidence exposing mistakes and distortions in the dominant story. We offer you below -- as a kind of aide-memoire -- a discussion of some of the key factors related to what has become known as "Russia-gate." And we include our most recent findings drawn from forensic work on data associated with WikiLeaks' publication of the DNC emails.

    We do not claim our conclusions are "irrefutable and undeniable," a la Colin Powell at the UN before the Iraq war. Our judgments, however, are based on the scientific method -- not "assessments." We decided to put this memorandum together in hopes of ensuring that you hear that directly from us.

    If the Mueller team remains reluctant to review our work -- or even to interview willing witnesses with direct knowledge, like WikiLeaks' Julian Assange and former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, we fear that many of those yearning earnestly for the truth on Russia-gate will come to the corrosive conclusion that the Mueller investigation was a sham.

    In sum, we are concerned that, at this point, an incomplete Mueller report will fall far short of the commitment made by then Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein "to ensure a full and thorough investigation," when he appointed Mueller in May 2017. Again, we are at your disposal.

    Discussion

    The centerpiece accusation of Kremlin "interference" in the 2016 presidential election was the charge that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee emails and gave them to WikiLeaks to embarrass Secretary Hillary Clinton and help Mr. Trump win. The weeks following the election witnessed multiple leak-based media allegations to that effect. These culminated on January 6, 2017 in an evidence-light, rump report misleadingly labeled "Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA)." Prepared by "handpicked analysts" from only three of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI, and NSA), the assessment expressed "high confidence" in the Russia-hacking-to-WikiLeaks story, but lacked so much as a hint that the authors had sought access to independent forensics to support their "assessment."

    The media immediately awarded the ICA the status of Holy Writ, choosing to overlook an assortment of banal, full-disclosure-type caveats included in the assessment itself -- such as:

    " When Intelligence Community analysts use words such as 'we assess' or 'we judge,' they are conveying an analytic assessment or judgment. Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong."

    To their credit, however, the authors of the ICA did make a highly germane point in introductory remarks on "cyber incident attribution." They noted: "The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber operation -- malicious or not -- leaves a trail." [Emphasis added.]

    Forensics

    The imperative is to get on that "trail" -- and quickly, before red herrings can be swept across it. The best way to establish attribution is to apply the methodology and processes of forensic science. Intrusions into computers leave behind discernible physical data that can be examined scientifically by forensic experts. Risk to "sources and methods" is normally not a problem.

    Direct access to the actual computers is the first requirement -- the more so when an intrusion is termed "an act of war" and blamed on a nuclear-armed foreign government (the words used by the late Sen. John McCain and other senior officials). In testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in March 2017, former FBI Director James Comey admitted that he did not insist on physical access to the DNC computers even though, as he conceded, "best practices" dictate direct access.

    In June 2017, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr asked Comey whether he ever had "access to the actual hardware that was hacked." Comey answered, "In the case of the DNC we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. " Sen. Burr followed up: "But no content? Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?" Comey: "It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016."

    The "private party/high-class entity" to which Comey refers is CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm of checkered reputation and multiple conflicts of interest, including very close ties to a number of key anti-Russian organizations. Comey indicated that the DNC hired CrowdStrike in the spring of 2016.

    Given the stakes involved in the Russia-gate investigation – including a possible impeachment battle and greatly increased tension between Russia and the U.S. -- it is difficult to understand why Comey did not move quickly to seize the computer hardware so the FBI could perform an independent examination of what quickly became the major predicate for investigating election interference by Russia. Fortunately, enough data remain on the forensic "trail" to arrive at evidence-anchored conclusions. The work we have done shows the prevailing narrative to be false. We have been suggesting this for over two years. Recent forensic work significantly strengthens that conclusion.

    We Do Forensics

    Recent forensic examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23, 25 and 26 May 2016. (On June 12, Julian Assange announced he had them; WikiLeaks published them on July 22.) We recently discovered that the files reveal a FAT (File Allocation Table) system property. This shows that the data had been transferred to an external storage device, such as a thumb drive, before WikiLeaks posted them.

    FAT is a simple file system named for its method of organization, the File Allocation Table. It is used for storage only and is not related to internet transfers like hacking. Were WikiLeaks to have received the DNC files via a hack, the last modified times on the files would be a random mixture of odd-and even-ending numbers.

    Why is that important? The evidence lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the Wikileaks files. When a file is stored under the FAT file system the software rounds the time to the nearest even-numbered second. Every single one of the time stamps in the DNC files on WikiLeaks' site ends in an even number.

    We have examined 500 DNC email files stored on the Wikileaks site. All 500 files end in an even number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. If those files had been hacked over the Internet, there would be an equal probability of the time stamp ending in an odd number. The random probability that FAT was not used is 1 chance in 2 to the 500th power. Thus, these data show that the DNC emails posted by WikiLeaks went through a storage device, like a thumb drive, and were physically moved before Wikileaks posted the emails on the World Wide Web.

    This finding alone is enough to raise reasonable doubts, for example, about Mueller's indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking the DNC emails given to WikiLeaks. A defense attorney could easily use the forensics to argue that someone copied the DNC files to a storage device like a USB thumb drive and got them physically to WikiLeaks -- not electronically via a hack.

    Role of NSA

    For more than two years, we strongly suspected that the DNC emails were copied/leaked in that way, not hacked. And we said so. We remain intrigued by the apparent failure of NSA's dragnet, collect-it-all approach -- including "cast-iron" coverage of WikiLeaks -- to provide forensic evidence (as opposed to "assessments") as to how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks and who sent them. Well before the telling evidence drawn from the use of FAT, other technical evidence led us to conclude that the DNC emails were not hacked over the network, but rather physically moved over, say, the Atlantic Ocean.

    Is it possible that NSA has not yet been asked to produce the collected packets of DNC email data claimed to have been hacked by Russia? Surely, this should be done before Mueller competes his investigation. NSA has taps on all the transoceanic cables leaving the U.S. and would almost certainly have such packets if they exist. (The detailed slides released by Edward Snowden actually show the routes that trace the packets.)

    The forensics we examined shed no direct light on who may have been behind the leak. The only thing we know for sure is that the person had to have direct access to the DNC computers or servers in order to copy the emails. The apparent lack of evidence from the most likely source, NSA, regarding a hack may help explain the FBI's curious preference for forensic data from CrowdStrike. No less puzzling is why Comey would choose to call CrowdStrike a "high-class entity."

    Comey was one of the intelligence chiefs briefing President Obama on January 5, 2017 on the "Intelligence Community Assessment," which was then briefed to President-elect Trump and published the following day. That Obama found a key part of the ICA narrative less than persuasive became clear at his last press conference (January 18), when he told the media, "The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to how 'the DNC emails that were leaked' got to WikiLeaks.

    Is Guccifer 2.0 a Fraud?

    There is further compelling technical evidence that undermines the claim that the DNC emails were downloaded over the internet as a result of a spearphishing attack. William Binney, one of VIPS' two former Technical Directors at NSA, along with other former intelligence community experts, examined files posted by Guccifer 2.0 and discovered that those files could not have been downloaded over the internet. It is a simple matter of mathematics and physics.

    There was a flurry of activity after Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016: "We have emails relating to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication." On June 14, DNC contractor CrowdStrike announced that malware was found on the DNC server and claimed there was evidence it was injected by Russians. On June 15, the Guccifer 2.0 persona emerged on the public stage, affirmed the DNC statement, claimed to be responsible for hacking the DNC, claimed to be a WikiLeaks source, and posted a document that forensics show was synthetically tainted with "Russian fingerprints."

    Our suspicions about the Guccifer 2.0 persona grew when G-2 claimed responsibility for a "hack" of the DNC on July 5, 2016, which released DNC data that was rather bland compared to what WikiLeaks published 17 days later (showing how the DNC had tipped the primary scales against Sen. Bernie Sanders). As VIPS reported in a wrap-up Memorandum for the President on July 24, 2017 (titled "Intel Vets Challenge 'Russia Hack' Evidence)," forensic examination of the July 5, 2016 cyber intrusion into the DNC showed it NOT to be a hack by the Russians or by anyone else, but rather a copy onto an external storage device. It seemed a good guess that the July 5 intrusion was a contrivance to preemptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish from the DNC, by "showing" it came from a "Russian hack." WikiLeaks published the DNC emails on July 22, three days before the Democratic convention.

    As we prepared our July 24 memo for the President, we chose to begin by taking Guccifer 2.0 at face value; i. e., that the documents he posted on July 5, 2016 were obtained via a hack over the Internet. Binney conducted a forensic examination of the metadata contained in the posted documents and compared that metadata with the known capacity of Internet connection speeds at the time in the U.S. This analysis showed a transfer rate as high as 49.1 megabytes per second, which is much faster than was possible from a remote online Internet connection. The 49.1 megabytes speed coincided, though, with the rate that copying onto a thumb drive could accommodate.

    Binney, assisted by colleagues with relevant technical expertise, then extended the examination and ran various forensic tests from the U.S. to the Netherlands, Albania, Belgrade and the UK. The fastest Internet rate obtained -- from a data center in New Jersey to a data center in the UK -- was 12 megabytes per second, which is less than a fourth of the capacity typical of a copy onto a thumb drive.

    The findings from the examination of the Guccifer 2.0 data and the WikiLeaks data does not indicate who copied the information to an external storage device (probably a thumb drive). But our examination does disprove that G.2 hacked into the DNC on July 5, 2016. Forensic evidence for the Guccifer 2.0 data adds to other evidence that the DNC emails were not taken by an internet spearphishing attack. The data breach was local. The emails were copied from the network.

    Presidential Interest

    After VIPS' July 24, 2017 Memorandum for the President, Binney, one of its principal authors, was invited to share his insights with Mike Pompeo, CIA Director at the time. When Binney arrived in Pompeo's office at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017 for an hour-long discussion, the director made no secret of the reason for the invitation: "You are here because the President told me that if I really wanted to know about Russian hacking I needed to talk with you."

    Binney warned Pompeo -- to stares of incredulity -- that his people should stop lying about the Russian hacking. Binney then started to explain the VIPS findings that had caught President Trump's attention. Pompeo asked Binney if he would talk to the FBI and NSA. Binney agreed, but has not been contacted by those agencies. With that, Pompeo had done what the President asked. There was no follow-up.

    Confronting James Clapper on Forensics

    We, the hoi polloi, do not often get a chance to talk to people like Pompeo -- and still less to the former intelligence chiefs who are the leading purveyors of the prevailing Russia-gate narrative. An exception came on November 13, when former National Intelligence Director James Clapper came to the Carnegie Endowment in Washington to hawk his memoir. Answering a question during the Q&A about Russian "hacking" and NSA, Clapper said:

    " Well, I have talked with NSA a lot And in my mind, I spent a lot of time in the SIGINT business, the forensic evidence was overwhelming about what the Russians had done. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever." [Emphasis added]

    Clapper added: " as a private citizen, understanding the magnitude of what the Russians did and the number of citizens in our country they reached and the different mechanisms that, by which they reached them, to me it stretches credulity to think they didn't have a profound impact on election on the outcome of the election."

    (A transcript of the interesting Q&A can be found here and a commentary on Clapper's performance at Carnegie, as well as on his longstanding lack of credibility, is here .)

    Normally soft-spoken Ron Wyden, Democratic senator from Oregon, lost his patience with Clapper last week when he learned that Clapper is still denying that he lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee about the extent of NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens. In an unusual outburst, Wyden said: "James Clapper needs to stop making excuses for lying to the American people about mass surveillance. To be clear: I sent him the question in advance. I asked him to correct the record afterward. He chose to let the lie stand."

    The materials brought out by Edward Snowden in June 2013 showed Clapper to have lied under oath to the committee on March 12, 2013; he was, nevertheless, allowed to stay on as Director of National Intelligence for three and half more years. Clapper fancies himself an expert on Russia, telling Meet the Press on May 28, 2017 that Russia's history shows that Russians are "typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever."

    Clapper ought to be asked about the "forensics" he said were "overwhelming about what the Russians had done." And that, too, before Mueller completes his investigation.

    For the steering group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity:

    • William Binney , former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA's Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center (ret.)
    • Richard H. Black , Senator of Virginia, 13th District; Colonel US Army (ret.); Former Chief, Criminal Law Division, Office of the Judge Advocate General, the Pentagon (associate VIPS)
    • Bogdan Dzakovic , former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security (ret.) (associate VIPS)
    • Philip Girald i, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
    • Mike Gravel , former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator
    • James George Jatras , former U.S. diplomat and former foreign policy adviser to Senate leadership (Associate VIPS)
    • Larry C. Johnson , former CIA and State Department Counter Terrorism officer
    • John Kiriakou , former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
    • Karen Kwiatkowski , former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003
    • Edward Loomis , Cryptologic Computer Scientist, former Technical Director at NSA (ret.)
    • David MacMichael , Ph.D., former senior estimates officer, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
    • Ray McGovern , former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst; CIA Presidential briefer (ret.)
    • Elizabeth Murray , former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council & CIA political analyst (ret.)
    • Todd E. Pierce , MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)
    • Peter Van Buren , US Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)
    • Sarah G. Wilton , CDR, USNR, (ret.); Defense Intelligence Agency (ret.)
    • Kirk Wiebe , former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA
    • Ann Wright , retired U.S. Army reserve colonel and former U.S. diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War

    Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is made up of former intelligence officers, diplomats, military officers and congressional staffers. The organization, founded in 2002, was among the first critics of Washington's justifications for launching a war against Iraq. VIPS advocates a US foreign and national security policy based on genuine national interests rather than contrived threats promoted for largely political reasons. An archive of VIPS memoranda is available at Consortiumnews.com.

    image_pdf image_print 9280

    Tags: Bill Binney Donald Trump Hillary Clinton James Clapper James Comey Mike Pompeo Robert Mueller Veteran Intelligence Professional for Sanity VIPS WikiLeaks


    [Mar 17, 2019] CIA Director Gina Haspel is Complicit with the Coup

    Notable quotes:
    "... Bill Preistap was the supervisor for Strzok and Lisa Page who also worked for John Carlin in the Department of Justice National Security Division under Sally Yates. Then Strozk and Page continued their CIA operation as they were appointed to Mueller's Special Council Investigation. ..."
    "... Gina Haspel worked directly for the instigator of the Crossfire Hurricane operation – John Brennan. It would have been impossible for Haspel not to have known about the British spying from London since it was reported in UK newspaper on a weekly basis. She certainly was controlling Stefan Halper , Josef Mifsud , Stephan Roh , Alexander Downer, Andrew Wood, John McCain, Mark Warner, Adam Schiff and the other conspirators. ..."
    "... Keep in mind Haspel was Michael Gaeta's handler. Gaeta handled the frame-up of George Papadopoulos. ..."
    Mar 13, 2019 | patriots4truth.org

    When we saw these tweets from George Papadopoulos, we thought we could help him out with some answers. If you can get them to George, please do.

    Has congress figured out why Peter Strzok's former boss, Bill Priestap, was in London (of all places) the days before Alexander Downer was sent to spy on me and lie about our meeting? If not, time to get a move on it.

    -- George Papadopoulos (@GeorgePapa19) March 12, 2019

    Britain is in a political crisis. To push Brexit hard, declassifying the spy role of the David Cameron government on Trump and his team is paramount. Congress can not overlook the vital importance of London as the center of the coup attempt.

    -- George Papadopoulos (@GeorgePapa19) March 12, 2019

    What was I REALLY under surveillance for then? Explosive https://t.co/AVGlfwi5ld

    -- George Papadopoulos (@GeorgePapa19) March 13, 2019

    Our reply to George:

    Bill Priestap was the Director of the FBI national security division and would have gone to the London CIA "office" for a meeting. There he would have met with Stefan Halper and Gina Haspel who was, at the time, head of the London CIA office and would have been in charge of the connections with Robert Hannigan (British GCHQ) and John Brennan who planned and executed the wiretapping of Trump Team at Trump Towers. Haspel's communications, when released, will reveal the full scope of the CIA led international attack on the 2016 presidential election.

    Gina Haspel would have known about the coup. If she has not reported all of this to the President Trump, she is complicit in the coup attempt and is guilty of HIGH TREASON.

    Keep in mind, Peter Strzok was a CIA Regional Director who John Brennan appointed as the head of Crossfire Hurricane, the CIA counter-intelligence operation to "take out" candidate Trump – later it became the Mueller Witch Hunt after 13 different iterations spanning:

    1. the CIA (John Brennan),
    2. FBI (James Comey, Andrew McCabe, James Baker, etc.),
    3. DoJ (Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, Andrew Weisseman),
    4. State Department (Victoria Nuland, Jonathon Winer, Hilary Clinton, John Kerry),
    5. ODNS (James Clapper),
    6. NSA (Admiral Mike Rogers)
    7. and the White House senior staff (directly to Obama, Biden, Jarret, Rice, Powers, etc.).

    Bill Preistap was the supervisor for Strzok and Lisa Page who also worked for John Carlin in the Department of Justice National Security Division under Sally Yates. Then Strozk and Page continued their CIA operation as they were appointed to Mueller's Special Council Investigation.

    Gina Haspel worked directly for the instigator of the Crossfire Hurricane operation – John Brennan. It would have been impossible for Haspel not to have known about the British spying from London since it was reported in UK newspaper on a weekly basis. She certainly was controlling Stefan Halper , Josef Mifsud , Stephan Roh , Alexander Downer, Andrew Wood, John McCain, Mark Warner, Adam Schiff and the other conspirators.

    All of these facts are well known and reported in open source documents. As the 53 testimonies of the House Intelligence Committee are released, we will see the house of cards all fall down and Gina Haspel will go with it.

    Keep in mind Haspel was Michael Gaeta's handler. Gaeta handled the frame-up of George Papadopoulos.

    [Mar 16, 2019] Pure Ten Points I Just Can't Believe About the Official Skripal Narrative - Craig Murray

    Mar 16, 2019 | craigmurray.org.uk

    Pure: Ten Points I Just Can't Believe About the Official Skripal Narrative 884 7 Mar, 2019 in Uncategorized by craig

    [Mar 15, 2019] Book review of Kushner, Inc. Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump by Vicky Ward by Michael Kranish

    Notable quotes:
    "... Ward delves into questions about whether Kushner misused his role as a way to find financing to rescue a Fifth Avenue property in Manhattan and suggests that Kushner dimwittedly nearly dragged the United States into a war in the region. It is a dark and mostly one-sided portrait, one with which the Kushner and Trump families no doubt will disagree. ..."
    "... The greatest challenge of the book, and one that is likely to raise questions, is fulfilling the third element of Ward's subtitle: "Greed. Ambition. Corruption." The latter word connotes criminality; while Kushner's father served time in prison, neither Jared nor Ivanka has been accused of crimes by a prosecutor. ..."
    "... To be sure, President Trump and his family have thrown around such concepts loosely, and without hedging. During the 2016 campaign, he called Hillary Clinton the " Most Corrupt Candidate Ever! ," retweeting an image that encased the words in a Jewish star against a backdrop of U.S. currency, a tweet widely criticized as anti-Semitic. (Trump said he thought it was a sheriff's star.) Clinton, like Jared and Ivanka, has not been charged by prosecutors with corruption. ..."
    "... To rehabilitate the family image, Ward writes, the elder Kushner adopted a plan that called for transitioning from owning garden apartments in New Jersey to acquiring a Fifth Avenue office tower, a "trophy" that would dazzle the doubters. In addition, Jared would buy the New York Observer to get friendly media treatment, and he would "date someone prominent." While the father pulled the strings, the son got the credit -- and later the blame -- for buying the nation's most expensive office property just before the Great Recession, leaving him with a staggering debt. As for the prominent woman, Kushner dated Ivanka Trump. ..."
    "... In the rather cynical portrait Ward draws, Ivanka, too, was strategic. Ward quotes her as saying in her own book, " The Trump Card ": "If someone perceives something to be true, it is more important than if it is in fact true." ..."
    "... She writes that only after a thorough investigation by Congress and other authorities might they "finally face a reckoning." ..."
    Mar 15, 2019 | www.washingtonpost.com
    Kushner, Inc. Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump By Vicky Ward St. Martin's. 286 pp. $28.99

    ... ... ...

    There are no blockbuster revelations here regarding Kushner's meeting with a Russian banker or his involvement in a meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower, two issues that have drawn the interest of investigators. Ward is, however, particularly critical of Trump's decision to hand over Middle East policy to Kushner, which led to clashes with then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and others.

    Ward delves into questions about whether Kushner misused his role as a way to find financing to rescue a Fifth Avenue property in Manhattan and suggests that Kushner dimwittedly nearly dragged the United States into a war in the region. It is a dark and mostly one-sided portrait, one with which the Kushner and Trump families no doubt will disagree.

    For much of the book, as is often the case with volumes seeking to tell an inside story of the White House, the sources are anonymous and highly critical. If Ward secured on-the-record interviews with her two main subjects, she does not say so; their voices are mostly filtered through the mouths of others, most of whom may have a vested interest in spinning conversations a certain way. It is, to be sure, a particularly challenging task that Ward has undertaken, given Kushner's rare public comments and the couple's obsession with maintaining their image and protecting the president.

    The greatest challenge of the book, and one that is likely to raise questions, is fulfilling the third element of Ward's subtitle: "Greed. Ambition. Corruption." The latter word connotes criminality; while Kushner's father served time in prison, neither Jared nor Ivanka has been accused of crimes by a prosecutor.

    In the text, while Ward hammers the couple on page after page, she doesn't explicitly accuse them of corruption as defined by legal statutes. Perhaps the closest she comes is when she writes that "it's been reported" that Ivanka Trump oversaw her family's project in Azerbaijan in which a partner's brother had been described in a U.S. diplomatic cable as corrupt.

    "As a result, it's possible that the Trump Organization violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act," Ward writes, providing a notable hedge.

    To be sure, President Trump and his family have thrown around such concepts loosely, and without hedging. During the 2016 campaign, he called Hillary Clinton the " Most Corrupt Candidate Ever! ," retweeting an image that encased the words in a Jewish star against a backdrop of U.S. currency, a tweet widely criticized as anti-Semitic. (Trump said he thought it was a sheriff's star.) Clinton, like Jared and Ivanka, has not been charged by prosecutors with corruption.

    Ward, who relies heavily on the reporting of others (noted in endnotes), as well as her own sources, has a tendency, particularly in the first half of the book, to make sweeping statements and repeat rumors, some of which she then bats down. She writes that one man "was rumored to sleep with men and hired prostitutes," and says another was "not one to be troubled by ethics."

    Ward paints a sordid portrait of Kushner's coming-of-age, retelling tales of how his father's contributions to Harvard may have greased his way into the college. A war within the Kushner family led his father, Charles Kushner, to arrange for a prostitute to entrap a relative with whom he had feuded. Charles Kushner went to prison for his part in the scheme and other matters. Jared later told New York magazine that his father's viewpoint was: " You're trying to make my life miserable? Well, I'm doing the same. "

    To rehabilitate the family image, Ward writes, the elder Kushner adopted a plan that called for transitioning from owning garden apartments in New Jersey to acquiring a Fifth Avenue office tower, a "trophy" that would dazzle the doubters. In addition, Jared would buy the New York Observer to get friendly media treatment, and he would "date someone prominent." While the father pulled the strings, the son got the credit -- and later the blame -- for buying the nation's most expensive office property just before the Great Recession, leaving him with a staggering debt. As for the prominent woman, Kushner dated Ivanka Trump.

    Donald Trump was not pleased at first, according to Ward. "Why couldn't she have married Tom Brady?" he said, referring to the New England Patriots quarterback, Ward writes. "Have you seen how he throws a football?"

    In the rather cynical portrait Ward draws, Ivanka, too, was strategic. Ward quotes her as saying in her own book, " The Trump Card ": "If someone perceives something to be true, it is more important than if it is in fact true."

    When President Trump said there were " very fine people, on both sides " of a Charlottesville clash during which white supremacists shouted "Jews will not replace us," Trump's economic adviser Gary Cohn threatened to resign, noting that some of his family members had been killed in the Holocaust. Ivanka urged him to stay, telling him: "My dad's not a racist. He didn't mean any of it; he's not anti-Semitic," according to Ward. Cohn remained in his post.

    At first, Jared and Ivanka didn't plan to work in the White House, but after Trump brought them in as advisers, they frequently clashed with chief strategist Stephen Bannon and others. An "epic" and profane fight took place between Bannon and Ivanka over who was leaking stories, Ward writes.

    "Everybody knows you leak," Bannon is reported to have told Ivanka.

    "You're a f---ing liar," she is said to have responded. "Everything that comes out of your mouth is a f---ing lie."

    "Go f--- yourself. . . . You are nothing," Bannon reportedly said.

    The president, according to Ward, eventually wanted to send Jared and Ivanka back to New York, but after so many firings and resignations in the White House, he needed them more than ever.

    Some of their activities have remained largely opaque. And Ward can take speculation about corruption only so far. She writes that only after a thorough investigation by Congress and other authorities might they "finally face a reckoning."

    Michael Kranish is an investigative political reporter with The Washington Post and a co-author of "Trump Revealed." He is the author of "The World's Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero," to be published in May.

    [Mar 15, 2019] Orlov's breakdown of Putin's State of the Nation Speech

    Mar 15, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    JOHN CHUCKMAN @21--

    John provides a very sparse recap of the Brexit Affair but neglects mention of why it was passed: The vote was seen and acted upon as a referendum on Tory policies that were and are destroying the UK's economy and social networks--Neoliberal "austerity" weaponizing Blair's Third Way PPPs--which is part of the Creative Destruction discussed in the link I provided @20. What's ongoing in UK is very much akin to the policy of Enclosure that makes war on the commonfolk to enrich the fat few. The difference between then and now is the political power held by commonfolk--power they could only dream of then.

    Orlov's breakdown of Putin's State of the Nation Speech inadvertently tells us what/where the Great Divide is between the Socioeconomic goals of the East versus those of the West:

    "The government has amassed vast amounts of capital which it will now spend on domestic programs designed to benefit the people, to help Russians live longer, healthier lives and have more children. 'More children -- lower taxes' was one of the catchier slogans No opposition to these proposals worth mentioning was voiced in any of the commentary that followed on news programs and talk shows; after all, who could possibly be against spending amassed capital on projects that help the population? " [My Emphasis]

    The Neoliberal economic model run by the Outlaw US Empire, aped by EU and forced upon as many nations as possible to feed the fat pigs is the who/what answer. China is busily lifting its remaining millions out of poverty and that accomplishment's admired and beginning to be emulated by ASEAN through BRI, which is why it's being targeted by the Empire. Yes, it's Zero-sum versus Win-Win that lies at the bottom of Brexit and Corbynism.

    ">link
    Orlov's breakdown of Putin's State of the Nation Speech

    JOHN CHUCKMAN @21--

    John provides a very sparse recap of the Brexit Affair but neglects mention of why it was passed: The vote was seen and acted upon as a referendum on Tory policies that were and are destroying the UK's economy and social networks--Neoliberal "austerity" weaponizing Blair's Third Way PPPs--which is part of the Creative Destruction discussed in the link I provided @20. What's ongoing in UK is very much akin to the policy of Enclosure that makes war on the commonfolk to enrich the fat few. The difference between then and now is the political power held by commonfolk--power they could only dream of then.

    Orlov's breakdown of Putin's State of the Nation Speech inadvertently tells us what/where the Great Divide is between the Socioeconomic goals of the East versus those of the West:

    "The government has amassed vast amounts of capital which it will now spend on domestic programs designed to benefit the people, to help Russians live longer, healthier lives and have more children. 'More children -- lower taxes' was one of the catchier slogans No opposition to these proposals worth mentioning was voiced in any of the commentary that followed on news programs and talk shows; after all, who could possibly be against spending amassed capital on projects that help the population? " [My Emphasis]

    The Neoliberal economic model run by the Outlaw US Empire, aped by EU and forced upon as many nations as possible to feed the fat pigs is the who/what answer. China is busily lifting its remaining millions out of poverty and that accomplishment's admired and beginning to be emulated by ASEAN through BRI, which is why it's being targeted by the Empire. Yes, it's Zero-sum versus Win-Win that lies at the bottom of Brexit and Corbynism.

    ">link

    [Mar 15, 2019] Trump Administration, Canada And EU Hit Russia With Fresh Sanctions

    Hate of Russia national runs deep with the infected bowels of the State Department. Sounds like Neo-cons saber rattling and wanting to start WWIII over a bunch of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis installed thanks to Victoria Nuland.
    So much for detente with Russia. Trump proved to be just a marionette of MIC...
    Sentiments about Trump at Zerohedge noticeably deteriorates since 2016
    Mar 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
    The US State Department announced on Friday that it would be joining the European Union and Canada to impose new sanctions against Russia in response to the Kremlin's "continued aggression in Ukraine."

    Sanctions will apply to six "individuals who orchestrated the unjustified November 25 attack on three Ukrainian naval vessels near the Kerch Strait."

    Also sanctioned by the United States are eight companies, including six Russian defense firms, "including shipbuilding companies; two individuals involved in the NOvember sham "elections" in Russia-controlled eastern Ukraine; and two Russian energy and construction companies operating in Crimea."

    Read the State Department announcement below:

    Washington – Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated six Russian individuals and eight entities in response to Russia's continued and ongoing aggression in Ukraine. Today's action targets individuals and entities playing a role in Russia's unjustified attacks on Ukrainian naval vessels in the Kerch Strait, the purported annexation of Crimea, and backing of illegitimate separatist government elections in eastern Ukraine. These actions complement sanctions also taken today by the European Union and Canada, and underscore the strength and commitment of the transatlantic partnership to counter Russia's continued destabilizing behavior and malign activities.

    "The United States and our transatlantic partners will not allow Russia's continued aggression against Ukraine to go unchecked. This joint initiative with our partners in the European Union and Canada reinforces our shared commitment to impose targeted and meaningful sanctions in response to the Kremlin's attempts to disregard international norms and undermine Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity," said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. "The international community is strongly aligned against Russia's naval attacks in the Kerch Straight, purported annexation of Crimea, and support for the illegitimate separatist-conducted elections in eastern Ukraine."

    OVERVIEW

    Five years after its invasion of Ukraine and its attempted annexation of Crimea, Russia continues to undermine Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity while failing to implement its obligations under the Minsk agreements. On November 25, 2018, Russian authorities opened fire on and rammed three Ukrainian ships off the coast of Crimea, seizing the ships and capturing 24 Ukrainian crew members, who remain illegally detained in Russia. Russia also continues its occupation of Crimea, and the Kremlin has also backed illegitimate elections held by Ukrainian separatists in the so-called Donetsk People's Republic on November 11, 2018.

    As a result of today's designations, all property and interests in property of the designated individuals and entities are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from transacting with them. Moreover, any entities owned 50 percent or more by these designated persons are also blocked by operation of law.

    Designations Related to Russia's Attack in the Kerch Strait

    OFAC today sanctioned four Russian officials who were involved in the Kerch Strait attack. OFAC designated Gennadiy Medvedev, the Deputy Director of the Border Guard Service of Russia's Federal Security Service; Sergey Stankevich, the Head of the Border Directorate of Russia's Federal Security Service; and Andrey Shein, the Deputy Head of the Border Directorate and Head of the Coast Guard Unit of Russia's Federal Security Service. Medvedev and Stankevich directly controlled and organized the attack against the Ukrainian ships and their crew, while Shein participated in the operation against the seized Ukrainian ships and crew.

    OFAC also designated Ruslan Romashkin, the Head of the Service Command Point of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation for the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol.

    Medvedev, Stankevich, Shein, and Romashkin are being designated pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13661 for being officials of the Government of the Russian Federation.

    DESIGNATIONS RELATED TO RUSSIA'S PURPORTED ANNEXATION OF CRIMEA

    Today's action also targets six Russian defense firms with operations in Crimea, several of which misappropriated Ukrainian state assets to provide services to the Russian military. Four of these entities are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13662 for operating in the defense and related materiel sector of the Russian Federation economy, and two entities are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13685 for operating in the Crimea region of Ukraine.

    Yaroslavsky Shipbuilding Plant is a Russian state-owned shipbuilding plant that has built vessels for Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Russian Ministry of Defense. Yaroslavsky Shipbuilding Plant is also the project developer for a naval vessel that was completed at the Federal SUE Shipyard "Morye" in Crimea. Yaroslavsky Shipbuilding Plant is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13662 for operating in the defense or related materiel sector of the Russian Federation economy.

    Zelenodolsk Shipyard Plant, named after A.M. Gorky, is one of the largest ship manufacturers in Russia and has produced missile frigates and corvettes for the Russian Navy. The Zelenodolsk Shipyard Plant has collaborated with Crimea-based enterprise Skloplastic, which was unlawfully nationalized by the Russian government following its illegal invasion of Crimea in 2014. The Zelenodolsk Shipyard Plant is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13662 for operating in the defense and related materiel sector of the Russian Federation economy.

    AO Kontsern Okeanpribor (Okeanpribor) is a producer of hydroacoustic equipment and has supplied components to the Russian Navy. Okeanpribor has also collaborated on a naval project at the Federal SUE Shipyard "Morye" in Crimea. Federal SUE Shipyard "Morye" was designated by OFAC on September 1, 2016. Okeanpribor is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13662 for operating in the defense and related materiel sector of the Russian Federation economy.

    PAO Zvezda (Zvezda) is a supplier of diesel engines to the Russian Navy. Zvezda has also supplied components for Russian naval vessels that were being built at the Federal SUE Shipyard "Morye" in Crimea. Zvezda is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13662 for operating in the defense and related materiel sector of the Russian Federation economy.

    AO Zavod Fiolent (Fiolent) is a Crimea-based electronics manufacturer that has supplied parts for use in Russian military equipment. Fiolent was unlawfully seized by the Russian Federation following its annexation of Crimea in 2014. Fiolent is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13685 for operating in the Crimea region of Ukraine.

    GUP RK KTB Sudokompozit (Sudokompozit) is a Crimea-based producer of defense components that are supplied for Russian military use. Sudokompozit was unlawfully seized by the Russian Federation following its annexation of Crimea in 2014. Sudokompozit is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13685 for operating in the Crimea region of Ukraine.

    OFAC also designated the following two entities pursuant to E.O. 13685, due to their activities in Crimea.

    LLC SK Consol-Stroi LTD is being designated for operating in the Crimea region of Ukraine. LLC SK Consol-Stroi LTD, a limited liability company registered in the city of Simferopol, Crimea, is one of Crimea's largest construction companies. LLC SK Consol-Stroi LTD is engaged in the construction of residential and commercial real estate in cities throughout the Crimea region including, among others, Feodosia, Kerch, Yalta, Simferopol, Sevastopol, and Yepatoria.

    LLC Novye Proekty is being designated for operating in the Crimea region of Ukraine. In 2016, Russian authorities awarded the private company Novye Proekty an oil and gas exploration license for the Crimean Black Sea shelf. The Crimean shelf is believed to be rich in hydrocarbons and authorities in Ukraine have reported that Ukraine lost about 80 percent of its oil and gas deposits in the Black Sea due to Russia's purported annexation of Crimea. Novye Proekty's license permits geological studies, prospecting, and the extraction of raw hydrocarbon materials from the Black Sea's Glubokaya block. Prior to Russia's purported annexation of Crimea the Glubokaya block was estimated to hold reserves of 8.3 million tons of crude and 1.4 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

    DESIGNATIONS RELATED TO ILLEGITIMATE SEPARATIST GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS IN UKRAINE

    Today's action also targets two Ukrainian separatists who were involved in the organization of the November 2018 illegitimate elections in the so-called Donetsk People's Republic. These illegitimate elections clearly contradict Russia's commitments under the Minsk agreements, and were strongly opposed by the United States and EU.

    Aleksey Alekseevich Naydenko is the Deputy Chair of the Central Election Commission of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic. Naydenko is being designated for being responsible for or complicit in, or having engaged in, directly or indirectly, actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine.

    Vladimir Yurievich Vysotsky is the Secretary of Central Election Commission of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic. Vysotsky is being designated for being responsible for or complicit in, or having engaged in, directly or indirectly, actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine.

    View identifying information on the individuals designated today.

    Insufferably Insouciant , 10 minutes ago link

    Bizazze choice of wording in the official text:

    " DESIGNATIONS RELATED TO RUSSIA'S PURPORTED ANNEXATION OF CRIMEA"

    purported

    /pərˈpôrdəd/

    adjective

    1. appearing or stated to be true, though not necessarily so; alleged.

    There is nothing "purported" about it, it was true and as legitimate as it could possibly be.

    Then under "DESIGNATIONS RELATED TO ILLEGITIMATE SEPARATIST GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS IN UKRAINE" they claim that Russia violated its committments under Minsk 2, which the US never officially recognized. Minsk 2 intended increased sovereignty for the Oblasts under a new Ukraine Federal constitutional arrangement. That constitutional amendment has never been initiated by Kiev, with the blessing of Uncle Sam. It is the Ukraine puppet government who is in violation of Minsk 2.

    If the US wrote this, assume the opposite to be true.

    smacker , 47 minutes ago link

    [Article]: " Sanctions will apply to six "individuals who orchestrated the unjustified November 25 attack on three Ukrainian naval vessels near the Kerch Strait." "

    Translation: "The propaganda lunacy will continue". "We will keep telling the same old same old lies until people believe them".

    My understanding of that incident is that the Ukrainian boats had some unexplained special forces people on board and they refused to pull over when ordered to. From Russia's view, there was a real risk of these people planning to plant explosives to blow up the Kerch bridge.

    OpTwoMistic , 42 minutes ago link

    Can you imagine Russia building missile batteries in Mexico or Cuba? That is what US has done in Ukraine.

    nope-1004 , 33 minutes ago link

    Now it appears that no matter which government is in power they go along with the aggressive agenda of the US.

    Been like that since the '50's, just that you believed that the economy and world was good.

    Voting matters ZERO. The lie you are made to believe is that there is a choice when voting, when in fact the ruling party is the financial engineers and bankers behind all governments.

    Voting is a waste of time. The heart of the beast is the USD reserve and the Rothschild empire. Once we abolish that pig, all western governments implode under their own weight of cheap talk and empty "policy".

    dirty dogs , 50 minutes ago link

    Don't forget the paint company that Russia used on their assault boats to scratch those Ukie ships.

    No Justice No Peace!

    666D Chess , 1 hour ago link

    The evidence that the orange swine is a Rothschild Trojan Horse is overwhelming at this point. Only a scumbag or an absolute imbecile would fail to see it. Fvck you orange roach.

    2handband , 1 hour ago link

    You might recall that I said as much right from the beginning of the campaign...

    666D Chess , 1 hour ago link

    I didn't read your comments at that time but I tip my hat to you. I realised that everything he said during the campaign was bullsh!t after he started appointing Goldman Sachs bankers to his cabinet...

    marcel tjoeng , 1 hour ago link

    The USA government is quite the set of loathsome filth,

    [Mar 15, 2019] Omidyar's Democracy Fund has also helped to finance the "News Integrity Initiative," a name that evokes the U.K.'s notorious Integrity Initiative.

    Mar 15, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Blooming Barricade , Mar 14, 2019 5:36:22 PM | link

    Pierre Omidyar opens up new Integrity Initiative

    Omidyar's Democracy Fund has also helped to finance the "News Integrity Initiative," a name that evokes the U.K.'s notorious Integrity Initiative. The latter group claimed to be an independent charity battling foreign disinformation until it was exposed by hackers as a propaganda mill run by military officers and covertly funded by the British Foreign Office to cultivate public opinion in support of heightened conflict with Russia. Leaked communications revealed how the Integrity Initiative mobilized clusters of journalists, self-styled disinformation experts, academics and political figures throughout the West to advocate for a long-term war footing against the Russian menace.

    For its part, the News Integrity Initiative is a murky $14 million operation intended to "combat media manipulation" through a network of "journalists, technologists, academic institutions, non-profits, and other organizations." The set-up is eerily evocative of the influence clusters developed by the British Integrity Initiative. Few specifics are provided, however, on what the group actually does.

    A hint about the agenda of the News Integrity Initiative lies in a grant of $1 million it made to an outlet called Internews in 2017. The bulk of Internews' money -- some 80 percent of it -- comes from the U.S. government. It has also received backing from liberal financier George Soros and USAID, which provided the group with seed money for a Russian-language television network, helped drive the pro-NATO color revolution in the Republic of Georgia, and published footage of Russian casualties in Chechnya to erode Russian public support for the war.

    In countries that are considered official and semi-official enemies of the United States, Internews has organized de facto boot camps for opposition journalists. "In the Middle East," says Internews founder David Hoffman, "training sessions often begin with discussion of whether Internews is really U.S. propaganda or the CIA." However Hoffman answers the question, it is abundantly clear that his outlet has advanced Washington's priorities abroad behind the guise of independent journalism.

    In November 2017, the News Integrity Initiative hosted a workshop alongside Internews and the Omidyar-backed First Draft News in Kiev, Ukraine, according to the initiative's managing director, Molly de Aguiar. Kiev is today a nexus for intelligence-connected media crusaders and a launch pad for projects ostensibly aimed at countering Russia's "information warfare." But, what exactly the News Integrity Initiative was doing there was left unsaid.

    While Omidyar ploughs his fortune into organizations that claim to be countering "disinformation," especially of the Russian variety, he has established a culture factory to publicize the supposed feats of the journalists often hyped up by the cartel of media transparency groups and fact-checking sites he funds.

    http://failedevolution.blogspot.com/2019/03/how-one-of-americas-premier-data_5.html

    [Mar 14, 2019] Manafort's Ukrainians were actually pro-West? - Habakkuk

    Highly recommended!
    Mar 14, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    Habakkuk

    Unfortunately, I have been taken up with the doings of another Christopher – surnamed Donnelly – whose antics with the 'Institute for Statecraft' and 'Integrity Initiative' seem just as ludicrous as those of Steele, and equally destructive.

    I hope to come back to the implications of what has been coming out on your side about the dossier attributed to Steele in more depth in the none-too-distant future, particular if in fact the depositions made by him and David Kramer are unsealed reasonably promptly, but some background remarks may be worth throwing into the discussion.

    It cannot be repeated often enough that an enormous amount of damage has been done as a result of people forming their impressions of MI6 from David Cornwell, aka John Le Carré, rather than Graham Greene.

    A critical point is that, while if 'humint' is pursued by competent people, it can be invaluable, if pursued by incompetents, like so many of those Greene had known in his time in the wartime MI6, and portrayed so marvellously in 'Our Man in Havana', it is common for an 'echo chamber' to be set up, where people are told what they want to hear.

    Those providing the 'echo' may genuinely share the delusions involved – or they may cynically exploit these, as part of a deliberate strategy of making the incompetents instruments of their own agendas (as MI5 and the Naval Intelligence Division did with the Abwehr during the war. MI6, largely incompetent apart from the section Philby ran, was marginal.)

    That precisely this kind of 'echo chamber' had been set up by the Berezovsky group with people like Steele was the thrust of a pointed remark made by Andrei Lugovoi in the press conference on 31 May 2007 where he responded to the Crown Prosecution Service request for his extradition.

    [Mar 14, 2019] Top Mueller Prosecutor Weissmann Steps Down In Latest Sign Probe Ending

    Mar 14, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Andrew Weissmann, perhaps the ' angriest ' Democrat on special counsel Robert Mueller's probe, is leaving the investigation and will return to the private sector, according to NPR , citing two sources.

    Considered the "architect" of the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort - who was sentenced to a combined 7.5 years in prison for financial crimes related to his private business dealings, Weissmann will now study and teach at New York University. He will also embark on several public service projects, such as how to prevent wrongful convictions by improving forensic science standards.

    As NPR notes, " The departure is the strongest sign yet that Mueller and his team have all but concluded their work. "

    Weissmann - who wasn't able to link Manafort to collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, has come under fire from conservatives for his extreme liberalism. He attended Hillary Clinton's election night party in 2016, and was one of several officials told by then-DOJ #4 Bruce Ohr prior to the DOJ obtaining a FISA surveillance warrant that the 'Steele Dossier' was opposition research connected to Clinton and might be biased . Weissmann was the head of the DOJ's fraud section at the time.

    Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon also issued a warning about Weissmann and other senior members of the special counsel team when they were named in 2017.

    Other departures signaling the end of Mueller's probe

    While Weissmann's departure is the largest indication to date that the Mueller probe is near its end, several other investigators have already left the special counsel's office - including the senior-most FBI agent working the case; David Archey. Archey will head up the FBI's Richmond, VA office.

    Another prosecutor, Brandon Van Grack, is now leading a DOJ effort to enforce compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) - a law requiring that people disclose if they are representing foreign powers in the United States. Created in 1938, the law remained virtually unenforced until the DOJ was able to nab Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, who failed to register as foreign agents while representing the government of Ukraine. Notably, lobbyist Tony Podesta - who worked alongside Manafort, had the uncanny foresight to retroactively file as a foreign agent months before Manafort was charged.

    aelfheld , 1 minute ago link

    "Throughout his career, Andrew has had unparalleled success in building case after case against the most sophisticated criminals in the world," said former colleague Leslie Caldwell. "He took on New York's most feared organized crime families, unraveled the incredibly ornate frauds at Enron, and has tracked international criminals, exposing their carefully concealed financial dealings in many dark corners of the world."

    And has, because of his aggressively unethical & corrupt methods has ended up having most of those cases thrown out of court.

    Weissmann should have been disbarred decades ago.

    Bastiat , 11 minutes ago link

    So who speaks his praises? Kathy Ruemmler, Obama fixer.

    Moe Hamhead , 27 minutes ago link

    Well that didn't take so long for Mueller. The last time he took a wrong turn he spent five years and many millions of dollars chasing the wrong man. ... in the anthrax case. No conviction there!

    This was only three years, and who knows how many tens of millions!

    Ban KKiller , 29 minutes ago link

    Will Andrew investigate Mueller and Clinton uranium one? Nope, but you knew that.

    VonSteever , 30 minutes ago link

    Weissman should never have been hired in the first place because of his obvious bias and conflicts of interest. The fact that he was, just makes the partisan "witch hunt" label more accurate.

    Moving and Grooving , 20 minutes ago link

    He's described as a fearless and effective money-laundering prosecutor. Wasn't money laundering supposed to be the charge that would sink Trump? What happened? Couldn't find any proof? Couldn't coerce some low-level flunky to rat Trump out? Ooh, so sad. I'm taking my ball and going to lick my wounds privately for a little while, but I'll be back!

    overmedicatedundersexed , 43 minutes ago link

    " including the senior-most FBI agent working the case; David Archey. Archey will head up the FBI's Richmond, VA office."

    soon the richmond office will be called the:" FBI HQ in exile .

    Catullus , 44 minutes ago link

    Weissman's prosecutions of several Enron executives were thrown out by a several judge for gross prosecutorial overreach. Including having several people plea out in crimes that didn't exist. This person should never be near government ever again.

    https://m.chron.com/business/enron/article/Supreme-Court-overturns-Arthur-Andersen-s-Enron-1940557.php

    Defendants in other Enron cases want this government defeat to spill over and help their cases too. Jeff Skilling 's lawyer, Dan Petrocelli , said all the remaining Enron cases boil down to improper criminalization of business judgements just like the Arthur Andersen case.

    "This is a denunciation of the Enron Task Force by the highest court in the land,'' said Petrocelli. "The message is loud and clear -- you can't criminalize innocent conduct.''

    DeepThoughts , 53 minutes ago link

    Remember, Rep. Devin Nunes sent a letter to new AG William Barr that he has until March 15 "to report out on 'conflicted' Mueller hacks Weissmann and Ahmad". And voila', Weissman departs on March 14. I'm not getting my hopes up about Barr, because one data point doesn't make a trend, but I'm thinking about going long Barr and short Mueller.

    DeepThoughts , 50 minutes ago link

    Link to an article for those not familiar with topic:
    https://thenationalsentinel.com/2019/03/04/nunes-ag-barr-has-until-march-15-to-report-out-on-conflicted-mueller-hacks-weissmann-and-ahmad/

    Obamaroid Ointment , 55 minutes ago link

    Special Agent Oberführer Müeller's FBI colluded with Whitey Bulger and his Irish Winter Hill Gang vs the Italian Patriarca Mafia family when he was stationed in Boston. Some of the Fibbies under his command even went to prison for being hit men on the side. To keep Whitey from singing in the slammer is why Müeller had him whacked.

    [Mar 13, 2019] Sic Semper Tyrannis The Paul Manafort sentence and the notorious and diabolical federal sentencing guidelines

    Mar 13, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    The Paul Manafort sentence and the notorious and diabolical federal sentencing guidelines Ussc_logo
    By Robert Willmann

    Crime is a legal definition. This means that to commit big crime you make it legal. Or, you can try to enhance your commercial business or money making organization by getting conduct made into a crime that is competition to your activity, like is found in copyright law, and is done by state governments that make gambling illegal but have state-run lotteries in which the odds of winning are so remote they make the negative percentage in Las Vegas casino games look like a paragon of virtue. This also means that the concept of a crime is created by a government, even though it is commonly thought to be bad behavior (or a failure to act), as described by social relations, culture, religion, and human biology (with murder opposed by the instinctive act of self defense). Conduct that is said to be bad enough is defined as a crime and involves the government using force directly against the actor at least in the form initially of an arrest, possible imprisonment, or later if an order from a criminal court case is not followed.

    The ongoing jabbering in the mass media -- starting in November 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president -- declared that all sorts of conduct was illegal, as a civil or criminal case, or should be the subject of charges for impeachment. A lot of that talk can be described as horse manure, but it has had a real effect on the public, which effect has been and is the intent. It reached a fever pitch last week when Judge T.S. Ellis III, an American hero, in a federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, sentenced Paul Manafort in one of his two criminal cases to 47 months in prison, which was noticeably below the "sentencing guidelines range" of 235 to 293 months--

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/manafort_court_sentencing_minutes.pdf

    Television talkers expressed shock and dismay that Manafort received such a "low" sentence below the guidelines and they look forward with glee to his second sentencing on 13 March, beginning at 9:30 a.m., eastern time, in federal court in Washington DC, with Judge Amy Berman Jackson presiding. Her rulings can be described as statistically matching to a degree those requested by government prosecutors in cases brought by "special counsel" Robert Mueller, who was tasked to investigate "interference" in the 2016 presidential election by the Russian government, with attention to "collusion" by the Trump campaign, but mysteriously not involving possible collusion with Russia by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

    Just as important as the definition of a crime are the rules of procedure and evidence that govern a criminal justice system from start to finish, such as: detaining and arresting a person, questioning a suspect, confinement or release before a trial (if any), pretrial court hearings, a trial itself by a jury or otherwise, any appeal of a trial's verdict, ordering a sentence of punishment or a consequence to the finding of guilt, suspending a sentence through probation, operating a prison, the power of a president or governor to pardon a person's conviction or commute the sentence, and so forth.

    This brings us to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, a deceptive name if there ever was one. They are part of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 (CCCA), disguised inside House Joint Resolution 648, "A joint resolution making continuing appropriations for the fiscal year 1985, and for other purposes", which became Public Law 98-473 and which president Ronald Reagan signed on 12 October 1984. That legislation shifted the existing federal criminal law so extensively that it can accurately be described as a radical change. Whether becoming a law in 1984 was a coincidence or an arrogant expression by implementing some of the meaning in George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-four" (published in 1949) is not known.

    The so-called guidelines came from the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, introduced by Senator Edward Kennedy (Dem. Massachusetts), and they became part of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, which in turn was Title 2 of the continuing appropriations bill, Public Law 98-473. In the legislation, Congress created the United States Sentencing Commission, and it would write the new sentencing rules, and federal judges would have to sentence someone within the "guideline range" set by the commission. This smaller "guideline range" was within the regular "range of punishment" set by Congress as a possible minimum to maximum sentence for each particular crime Congress defined. Before the CCCA, if a defendant was found guilty, the federal judge had the power and discretion to sentence the person to anything within the regular range of punishment established by Congress, and order probation if allowed in that instance. But the sentencing guidelines took that discretion away from the federal judge, and required the sentence to be within the guideline range. The self-righteous language that supposedly allowed a judge to "depart" from the guideline range in a certain way was laughable as a practical matter.

    When the sentencing guidelines became law, the sentencing commission magically was said to become part of the judicial branch of government, where it resides today [1].

    When the sentencing guidelines kicked in and became operational, a court challenge followed. The case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, as United States v. Mistretta, 488 U.S. 361 (1989), and even though at that time "liberals" such as Judges William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, and John Paul Stevens were on the court, the decision was 8 to 1 that the guidelines were constitutional, with the lone dissenter being none other than Antonin Scalia [2]. Sometimes Judge Scalia would pull back covering language about an issue and shine a light on what was really going on. He did so at the start of his dissent--

    "While the products of the Sentencing Commission's labors have been given the modest name 'Guidelines,' see 28 U.S.C. 994(a)(1) (1982 ed., Supp. IV); United States Sentencing Commission Guidelines Manual (June 15, 1988), they have the force and effect of laws, prescribing the sentences criminal defendants are to receive. A judge who disregards them will be reversed, 18 U.S.C. 3742 (1982 ed., Supp. IV). I dissent from today's decision because I can find no place within our constitutional system for an agency created by Congress to exercise no governmental power other than the making of laws."

    As some sort of smiling rationale is always given for a new law or governmental action, the sentencing guidelines were promoted as providing certainty and fairness in sentencing and avoiding unwarranted disparities among defendants with similar records found guilty of similar offenses. Never mind that the differences between individual human beings, their backgrounds, and behavior are basically unlimited and disparate in reality. The existence of reality was not part of the new game, and "disparity" was claimed to be a bad thing. Asserted to be just as bad was the difference between federal judges and the sentences they imposed. Surprisingly, one of the original members of the sentencing commission, Paul Robinson, objected to what was created as a final product, and Judge Scalia quoted him--

    " ' Under the guidelines, the judge could give the same sentence for abusive sexual contact that puts the child in fear as for unlawfully entering or remaining in the United States. Similarly, the guidelines permit equivalent sentences for the following pairs of offenses: drug trafficking and a violation of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act; arson with a destructive device and failure to surrender a cancelled naturalization certificate; operation of a common carrier under the influence of drugs that causes injury and alteration of one motor vehicle identification number; illegal trafficking in explosives and trespass; interference with a flight attendant and unlawful conduct relating to contraband cigarettes; aggravated assault and smuggling $11,000 worth of fish.' Dissenting View of Commissioner Paul H. Robinson on the Promulgation of the Sentencing Guidelines by the United States Sentencing Commission 6-7 (May 1, 1987) (citations omitted)".

    The point was and is that laws are to be made by Congress, and not from scratch by delegating the power to a type of commission, which Judge Scalia called "a sort of junior-varsity Congress". This context also raises thoughts about the separation of powers in the structure of the federal government.

    Sentencing in federal court became a process of assigning a certain number of points to certain factors, and adding them up and subtracting some to reach a numerical score, and after that looking at a grid and finding the pigeon hole telling you, and the handcuffed judge, what the sentence within the new, smaller range of punishment could be. If you think that such a process is surreal, it is. The sentencing scheme with its new commission became a sprawling monster, not only in its text and procedures, but also in its expenditure of time and money and court litigation, which continues to this day. Here is the current version of the sentencing guidelines manual, in excess of 500 pages, which you can read if your stomach can stand it--

    https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/guidelines-manual/2018/GLMFull.pdf

    After the guidelines became effective in 1987 and the Mistretta opinion was handed down in 1989, the problems generated by the new system became more and more obvious and acute. Despite dissatisfaction expressed in the legal community, Congress did nothing, and it took 15 years until 2004 for another case with some substance to be accepted by the Supreme Court for review, called United States vs. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005). It produced an unusual decision consisting of two separate majority opinions, with each one made up of a different group of five judges, and several dissenting opinions [3].

    One opinion ruled that two sections of the Sentencing Reform Act that made the guidelines mandatory had to be severed and excised from that law because a conflict existed between facts that might be found by a jury through a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, and what could be done under the mandatory aspects of the sentencing guidelines. Invalidating the two sections made the guidelines effectively advisory , but the "[federal] district courts, while not bound to apply the Guidelines, must consult those Guidelines and take them into account when sentencing", and the "courts of appeals review sentencing decisions for unreasonableness" (see pages 246-267, pdf pages 448-469). The supreme court did not have the intestinal fortitude to strike down the entire sentencing guidelines regime, and instead wrote around the problems, split hairs, and kept the system mostly in place, requiring the trial judge to still consider the "numerous factors that guide sentencing", and a court of appeals can review the judge's sentence and decide whether it is "unreasonable".

    Judge Stephen Breyer is the author of that particular majority opinion in the Booker case that kept the guidelines mostly in place; Supreme Court Judge John Paul Stevens wrote the other majority opinion. One of the original members of the U.S. Sentencing Commission from 1985-1989 was a judge on the federal First Circuit Court of Appeals named Stephen Breyer, who was on that court from 1980-1994. He was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by president Bill Clinton and took his seat on 3 August 1994.

    The world is indeed small, for in the Booker case before the supreme court in 2004, two lawyers involved in writing the brief (the written argument) for the Justice Department to support the guidelines were Christopher Wray, now the FBI Director, and Michael Drebeen, who has been in the Solicitor General's office in the Justice Department and who has been working at least part time since 2017 for -- you guessed it -- special counsel Robert Mueller [4]. In this New York Times newspaper story from 6 June 2017 about Christopher Wray being nominated to be FBI Director, at the beginning of the story is a photograph from February 2004 of three men standing together -- James Comey (the Deputy Attorney General), Robert Mueller (FBI Director), and Christopher Wray (Chief of the Criminal Division in the Justice Department) [5]. To slightly modify the immortal words of comedian George Carlin, "It's a small club, and you're not in it".

    The growing mutation of the sentencing system continues, with endless quibbling among lawyers in court, judges, and the sentencing commission through litigation over detailed bureaucratic parts of the guidelines attempting to identify and pull under control every conceivable variation of a person, the person's conduct, and different factors that might be considered in a sentence, and assign a number to it, ultimately producing your guideline and criminal history levels. The sentencing commission has published a selected annotation of 85 supreme court cases from the Mistretta decision in 1989 to one from 2018, with a brief discussion of each opinion [6].

    You can now see and understand the real reason for the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the carefully crafted system of assigning numbers to points and designing strict categories to include and control every possible factor about ordering a sentence for a crime.

    This system removes the sentencing power and discretion from the courts and judges in the judicial branch and gives them to the prosecuting attorneys in the executive branch, through the Department of Justice and the offices of U.S. Attorneys. It has been and is a clever and diabolical transfer to the prosecuting authority of one of the most important functions in a criminal justice system: the sentencing punishment or consequence given to a defendant.

    I, the federal prosecutor, will decide what your sentence will be by the offenses I decide to charge you with. All I have to do is get a guilty verdict from a jury trial or from a trial to the judge if you agree to have a judge alone hear and decide the trial. Or obtain a guilty plea from you to a charge and on terms that I agree to, whether that guilty plea results from your objective decision about your conduct, or whether you are coerced into pleading guilty by the sheer number of charges with possible sentences I have filed against you, or you plead guilty because you have run out of money and cannot afford a trial, or I threaten to charge your wife or family members also if you do not plead guilty to what I agree you can plead to. The judge is so constrained and limited by the sentencing guideline scheme that I am not worried at all about the sentence you will get; I have no downside risk there.

    The presentence investigation report (PSI) about Paul Manafort from the federal probation office was filed on 6 March and is not publicly available, as is standard practice. Manafort's sentencing hearing on 13 March is taking on the aura of a spectacle, boosted by the government's allegation that he violated the terms of his plea agreement, and after the courageous departure downward from the sentencing guidelines by Judge T.S. Ellis III last week. Whether Judge Ellis's sentence may be the subject of review by appeal is another dense issue.

    Meanwhile, in the pending case of Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.), a status report by the lawyers was filed on 12 March. It requested that his sentencing hearing be rescheduled--

    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/michaelflynn_status_report_20190312.pdf

    Politicians, the press, and candidates announcing a year before the presidential primaries begin are blathering on clownlike about who has verbally offended whom, which newly invented group should have new "rights", whether someone is cis-gender, whether the president had sexual contact with a floozy pornographic movie performer and whether a legal payment to her to keep it confidential violated campaign finance laws (it did not), and on and on.

    All the while, they are blithely unaware that playing out right in front of their faces is a radical transformation of federal criminal law, consolidating the ultimate governmental power in the branch that executes the police power, while federal judges with a lifetime appointment and all office facilities and perks paid for by taxpayers, dither and refuse to honestly describe and resist what has been happening. All federal judges except for two. One, Antonin Scalia, left this world in 2016, but was the only one on the supreme court standing against the slick usurpation of the democratic process and sentencing discretion. The other one, T.S. Ellis III, is still with us, and he not only understands what the sentencing guidelines really are, but he also assessed a sentence as it used to be done, without the double meaning of 1984.

    [1] The United States Sentencing Commission--

    http://www.ussc.gov

    [2] The official version of a Supreme Court opinion is in a book called the United States Reports. The Supreme Court has a digital version of its opinions in the pdf computer format going back only to volume 509, and the Mistretta opinion is in volume 488. Other internet websites have reproduced the opinion.

    https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/488/361.html

    [3] The supreme court opinion is in a bound volume on the court's website, but I do not have the software at hand to pull it out as a separate document. The full volume of 1,259 pages in the pdf computer format is 3.9 megabytes in size and can be viewed or downloaded. The Booker opinion is on pdf pages 422 to 536, and on book pages 220 to 334.

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/boundvolumes/543bv.pdf

    [4] Justice Department lawyers for the government in the Booker appeal--

    https://www.justice.gov/osg/brief/united-states-v-booker-brief-merits

    Michael Drebeen in the Booker appeal is hired by Mueller in the Russia investigation--

    https://jonathanturley.org/2017/06/12/mueller-hires-justice-official-with-history-of-arguing-for-expansive-interpretation-of-obstruction-of-justice/

    [5] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/us/politics/christopher-wray-bio.html

    [6] https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/training/case-law-documents/2018-supreme-court-cases.pdf

    blue peacock , 9 hours ago

    Thank you Robert for the education. Most people, even educated ones don't grasp the scale, scope and intricacies of our governmental apparatus. I know the more I learn, the more I become convinced we have a leviathan that is manipulated, twisted, overly complex and one that is working only for the ruling elites. We have to cut this behemoth down to size. And follow Taleb's maxims of "Skin in the Game" and "Anti-fragile" meaning simplicity.
    Bill H , 10 hours ago
    "The point was and is that laws are to be made by Congress, and not from
    scratch by delegating the power to a type of commission, which Judge
    Scalia called 'a sort of junior-varsity Congress' ".     Such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

    [Mar 12, 2019] On the possible connection between Christopher Steele, Pablo Miller, and Sergei Skripal

    Mar 12, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    MarcotheLombard , 14 hours ago

    Thanks for this.
    MarcotheLombard , 14 hours ago
    Thanks for this. I am wondering what Larry Johnson and the other members of this Committee of Correspondence make of the possible connection between Christopher Steele, Pablo Miller, and Sergei Skripal?

    Some of Craig Murray's speculations in his latest post on the Skripal incident regarding the coordinated role of Orbis Intelligence, the BBC, and the British state (which issued a DSMA notice prohibiting press mention of Pablo Miller) are quite plausible. Murray is, like the members of this committee, a veteran of the game....

    Was Skripal coerced/encouraged by Miller to serve as one of Steele's unattributed Russian "sources"? Did he later get cold feet? Or did he later attempt to buy his way back into Russia with the claim that he could provide proof that the Dossier was a fraud? Or was he working as a triple agent the whole time? Were the two sightseeing Russians "Borishov" and "Petrov" sent to retrieve something from Skripal?

    https://www.craigmurray.org...

    [Mar 11, 2019] Paul Manafort Eulogy for a Straw Man

    Mar 11, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    No one weeps for Paul Manafort. The irony is that his sad but relatively uneventful life as a parasite of a corrupt political system would not have mattered a jot if special counsel Robert Mueller hadn't thought that he could bring down the president. That Trump is still standing means we need to prepare for Act II, what happens post-Mueller.

    But first the eulogy. Manafort became the subject of an FBI investigation in 2014 , centered on the sleazy consulting work he did for Ukraine's former ruling party. The surveillance was discontinued that same year and the FBI dropped the matter for lack of evidence. Then Manafort's less-than-three-month tenure as Trump's campaign chairman provided the good-enough-for-government-work hook when the FBI went fishing for ties between Trump campaign associates and suspected Russian operatives.

    In the end, Mueller was only able to convict Manafort on eight counts (he failed on 10 others) involving false income taxes, failing to report foreign bank accounts, and bank fraud, all revolving around Manafort's lobbying and all largely prior to his work for Trump. The goal of repurposing the old surveillance data, the stuff that was literally not worth pursuing in 2014, was to pressure Manafort into somehow tying Trump into the collusion narrative. If Manafort hadn't joined the Trump campaign, he would almost certainly be a free man today.

    No matter. The Mueller ploy came up dry. Oh there was all sorts of noise -- Manafort showed campaign polling data to someone foreign (not a crime) and some people he knew knew some of the people who knew Putin (also not a crime). It was all as sordid as you want it to be, just not very useful if you have to go to court and actually prove stuff to someone other than Rachel Maddow. In sentencing Manafort, the judge noted specifically that there was nothing "to do with colluding with the Russian government."

    To drive home the non-point, Manafort was sentenced to only 47 months , with credit for nine months already served, which means with parole, maybe two years and change. It was well below even the minimum sentencing recommendations (about half of all federal sentences are) and a far cry from the "rest of his life" the media had been braying for. The Daily Beast took it personally, saying the light sentence "felt like a slap in the face for many watching the Russia probe." Rick Wilson tried to save face for his fellow liberals, expressing joy at seeing Manafort's physical deterioration while in custody. Summing up America 2019, a common theme across Twitter was to hope that Manafort, now age 69, dies in prison.

    Though you would be forgiven for thinking that this was blood sport, Manafort's crimes were just white-collar tax stuff that at worst forms the basis of one of those lurid back page "how the mighty have fallen" stories. There is still another round of sentencing to go on Wednesday, this time with a supposedly vindictive judge (Google "concurrent sentences" before popping the champagne). CNN tells us that the superheroes of the Southern District of New York will some day prosecute Manafort separately (Google "double jeopardy" and put the bubbly back on the shelf) so he can't be pardoned by Trump.

    Of course, any pardon will come either at the very end of Trump's only term or during his second term. Down the road, no newly elected Democratic president is going to start their administration off seeking revenge on the previous guys; it'll be all about healing and coming together. Obama excused torture, never mind tax crimes. Trump could also just leave Manafort to rot; he isn't very important.

    Bottom line, history books 10 years from now will read: "Paul Manafort's lavish lifestyle, funded by corruption, came to an end in prison. He had nothing to do with Russiagate. He was just standing too close to Trump when he got caught." So think of him (and maybe Papadopoulos, Flynn, and Gates) as the weak curtain closer to Act I. Up next is Michael Cohen, the hoped for peppy tune that brings the audience back for Act II.

    Michael Cohen's Flip Was a Flop Do You Believe in the Deep State Now?

    It is increasingly clear that Mueller is unlikely to unveil a bombshell, even as his long overdue freshman term paper is now dragging into junior year (no hurry; a nation is only waiting to learn whether its president is a Russian agent or not). Russiagate, in reality always more a hashtag than a caper, has devolved into a placeholder, a way to prep the public for the new plan, two years of Benghazi-like hearings looking for a crime.

    Scratch that -- the Benghazi hearings will look even-handed and dull compared to what's to come. This is going to be two years of bread and circuses, with Elijah Cummings playing the calm but angry Morgan Freeman role (one kept waiting to hear him say "Now easy, young blood" to one of his freshman representatives at the Cohen hearing) while AOC and her posse own, scold, hot-take, slay, tear down, slam, and crush for the cameras. Insurance fraud! Real estate devaluation! A Trump golf course she has to drive past every day! Taxes! It's all a lot of capitalism and AOC knows from college that's bad, right? At least until it comes up empty in the harsh light of sobriety. A signed check with no tie to any crime but a convict's word is the smoking gun of impeachment? The gold standard on these things is a blue dress, kids.

    Ever watch Law & Order ? Most episodes begin with a body on the ground. Watergate started with a break-in at Democratic national headquarters by people revealed to have direct ties to the Republicans. All things Trump began with the Left's collective disbelief that he won the election fairly. Everything since then -- everything -- has been a search for a crime to reverse November 2016.

    The media is chock-a-block with articles, which, while they take for granted that the House will soon begin impeachment proceedings, offer no clear info on exactly what the grounds for that impeachment might be. Corruption is popular though the specifics are vague. Or maybe obstruction, a process crime like Mueller's well-worn perjury traps created out of the ashes of an investigation of no substance.

    It really doesn't matter. Impeachment is the goal: someone will just have to find a reason because Trump must be guilty. The problem is that this is all an investigation in search of a crime. That sounded better three years ago when it began but today it's getting thin. Watching the pivot from Russiagate to generic corruption as the main driver just exposes how empty the process is. What was supposed to be the endgame, Mueller's work, is now being characterized as only the end of the beginning.

    NBC is more straightforward in outlining the " reasons " for impeachment than most: "The lines of investigation run from Trump's campaign and White House operations all the way to his tax records and business dealings, and some Democrats are convinced they will ultimately be able to use their findings to tell the story of a president who has committed offenses for which he should be removed from office."

    That seems to be the game plan for the next two years. What remains are two big questions. Will it work? And will it end?

    Assuming something is cobbled together worth opening impeachment hearings over, the Republican majority in the Senate is still unlikely to convict. Trump will run for reelection in 2020. Will public opinion, empathy, following impeachment proceedings, help him as it did Bill Clinton? How many voters will see through this politicization of the constitutional process? How many Democrats who wanted real progress on health care and immigration will see this all as just a waste of time, their midterm votes squandered on a circus?

    Then the last question: will this all end in 2020? Because if the endless investigation tactic seems to work this time around, you can bet that when the next Democrat takes the White House, she will wake up the day after her inauguration to find a special prosecutor and congressional hearings waiting. Ten years of taxes? How about we start with 20 and see where that goes? Now, Madam President, about this handwritten note in your junior high school yearbook

    Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well : How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People and Hooper's War : A Novel of WWII Japan . He is permanently banned from federal employment and Twitter.

    [Mar 11, 2019] Not one critical word about people throwing Molotov cocktails

    Mar 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Rufus , Mar 10, 2019 1:06:59 PM | link

    On the NYT story, you have to love how transparent the propaganda is, and yet they (Bolton, Pompeo, Rubio) don't care whatsoever. Oh, and not one critical word about people throwing Molotov cocktails. Like that's a perfectly normal, non-violent means of protest.

    Glenn Greenwald also has a good one on this.

    https://theintercept.com/2019/03/10/nyts-expose-on-the-lies-about-burning-humanitarian-trucks-in-venezuela-shows-how-us-govt-and-media-spread-fake-news/

    [Mar 09, 2019] Journalist Confronts CNN Over Smear Piece

    A very interesting interview. A really brave woman...
    Mar 09, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    Koi Mies Profeetta , 1 day ago

    I am neither a Millienal nor am I Russian but I am a critical thinker who doesn't fall for the CIA narrative of MSM. Keep doing what your doing Jimmy.

    Juvanaly , 1 day ago

    I'm 72 and I don't watch any main stream news. All they do is "spin" the whatever the "party line" of the so called "right" or "left". Oh yes, US Government, keep your bloody hands off of South America.

    Matt Chew , 1 day ago

    CNN stands for "Consistently Not News". They are just the establishment mouthpiece...smh

    RageAgainstTheMachine RageAgainstTheMachine , 1 day ago

    Jimmy Dore You Rock! 😃😃👍👍👌👌💯💯

    Alondra Hernandez , 1 day ago

    I❤You Jimmy. You tell us the truth. And the truth is so hard to come by. So on behalf of the rest of us...THANK YOU! Hugs and many many kisses on your cheeck. I send you my love and respect.

    Mr Magoo , 1 day ago

    The manufacturing consent industry is undergoing an expansion.

    Mr Magoo , 1 day ago

    CNN, MSNBC and FOX are places were brains go to rot and die, and these stenographers of the criminal class wants to keep it that way.

    Pat Hacker , 1 day ago (edited)

    No accident I spend most of my time on YouTube, at least I know where they are coming from at the moment. I got pushed out of Common Dreams, Truth Out and Truth Dig by Hillary bots during the 2016 primary. You couldn't have a conversation there anymore. It was all Bernie hate all the time and everyday. I sought news and conversation here on YouTube then.

    paxe1 , 1 day ago

    God she's beautiful and smart.

    Uncle Torino , 1 day ago

    Ahh CNN the bastion of fake news and propaganda 📺

    Doc BBC , 1 day ago (edited)

    These MSM smears against real independent journalism must stop! Thanks JD for not being afraid to report this!

    Koi Mies Profeetta , 1 day ago

    I am neither a Millienal nor am I Russian but I am a critical thinker who doesn't fall for the CIA narrative of MSM. Keep doing what your doing Jimmy.

    Vincenzo , 1 day ago

    If CNN ever happens to report any actual news, it's most often entirely accidental

    Juvanaly , 1 day ago

    I'm 72 and I don't watch any main stream news. All they do is "spin" the whatever the "party line" of the so called "right" or "left". Oh yes, US Government, keep your bloody hands off of South America.

    rcaugh , 1 day ago (edited)

    We are sunk unless we can take back the media from the 6 corporations propagandizing our country into war, division, and mayhem.

    Hellkite1999 , 1 day ago

    I look forward to the day that Jimmy gets one million subscribers. He will soon get half a million.

    Furry Beaver , 1 day ago

    Jimmy Dore never a bore! The true teller of truth!

    Jack Klugman , 1 day ago

    CNN might has well just move their HQ to Langley, where they get their "news" anyway.

    knowledge share , 1 day ago

    Let her talk Jimmy, she is the guest !

    Matt Chew , 1 day ago

    CNN stands for "Consistently Not News". They are just the establishment mouthpiece...smh

    RageAgainstTheMachine RageAgainstTheMachine , 1 day ago

    Jimmy Dore You Rock! 😃😃👍👍👌👌💯💯

    Alondra Hernandez , 1 day ago

    I❤You Jimmy. You tell us the truth. And the truth is so hard to come by. So on behalf of the rest of us...THANK YOU! Hugs and many many kisses on your cheeck. I send you my love and respect.

    Mr Magoo , 1 day ago

    The manufacturing consent industry is undergoing an expansion.

    Ponte Vedra , 1 day ago

    Merci, I thank you from my heart, ana maria

    Zever BlackBull , 1 day ago

    Mr Jimmy is the real deal!!

    Mr Magoo , 1 day ago

    CNN, MSNBC and FOX are places were brains go to rot and die, and these stenographers of the criminal class wants to keep it that way.

    David Clawson , 1 day ago

    Doesn't CNN's failure to report on New Knowledge's scam actually make them part of the grift? Talk about collusion.

    Sean O. Gamalson , 1 day ago

    Why won't Twitter and Facebook ban Liars like Jake Tapper for telling lies about Healthcare and other issues in the United States? He is nothing more than a propagandist.

    RD Patterson , 1 day ago

    New Knowledge aren't grifters...they are govt. funded deep state operatives.

    MrGivememyoldaccount , 1 day ago

    Big Brother does not approve of your page.

    Uncle Torino , 1 day ago

    Jimmy, Stef and, Ron, I hope the three of you all have a most groovy and pleasant weekend 🏖🍹

    K B , 1 day ago

    CNN is total 🗑

    Pat Hacker , 1 day ago (edited)

    No accident I spend most of my time on YouTube, at least I know where they are coming from at the moment. I got pushed out of Common Dreams, Truth Out and Truth Dig by Hillary bots during the 2016 primary. You couldn't have a conversation there anymore. It was all Bernie hate all the time and everyday. I sought news and conversation here on YouTube then. Plus when I need to recharge I can find kitten and puppy videos.

    Robert Simon , 1 day ago

    CNN.....Channel No longer Needed

    Shawn Carroll , 1 day ago

    Rania is so hot.

    French Frys , 1 day ago

    Jimmy Dore is the most important independent news show right now in America. He needs 10 M subs and no less right now!!

    ENOCH MATHUSAEL , 1 day ago (edited)

    CNN Sounds like a quasi McCarthyism/facist big media, yellow journalism company for the zombie masses! Truth is what the people want.

    starlight122012 , 1 day ago

    WOW Rania Khalek is so beautiful, and so smart

    Tony Mathis , 1 day ago

    When Alex Jones did it he was banned from facebook and twitter. What will be the punish this time?

    J Salameh. , 1 day ago

    Rania Khalek is the epitome of a strong, intelligent and most definitely beautiful Arab woman.

    Matt Chew , 1 day ago

    Rachel Maddow looks like Harry Potter went on a meth+frappachino bender...

    Giovanna Liviana , 1 day ago

    Wasn't it beautiful hearing Berners chanting "CNN Sucks!" back in 2016?

    FreedomFox1 , 1 day ago (edited)

    Facebook, Twitter and YouTube may be privately owned, but they are the public square. So this stuff is a violation of the first amendment. We need the ACLU to take this to the Supreme Court (I can't stand him, but Alex Jones is an ideal test case). With respect to funding, we should always expect the worst (even progressive media like TYT, just look at how they have treated Tulsi - TYT is obviously compromised by some pro-establishment funding source).

    [Mar 09, 2019] Debbie Wasserman Schultz has threatened to have Sanders kicked out of the party unless he calls out Madura as a dictator

    Jimmy Dore show is pretty educational... Why hasn't Schultz been charged for election fraud yet (she rigged the 2016 primary and then rigged her own race in Florida against Tim Canova.)? Just when you thought crooked Hillary and corrupt Debbie Wasserman-Schultz were finally silent and out of the picture, they keep coming back again and again and again...like a case of herpes.
    Mar 09, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    The Rev Kev, March 6, 2019 at 6:36 pm

    Nothing that Bernie will do can satisfy the Democrats. Said the other day he was wishy-washy over Venezuela but it was still not enough. Seems that Debbie Wasserman Schultz has threatened to have him kicked out of the party unless he calls out Madura as a dictator.

    Film clip at-

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnlEVf7oaVQ

    Some language used.

    polecat , March 6, 2019 at 7:23 pm

    Well then, Sanders better be carrying a polished shield at all times never know when Debbie the medusa will lurch forward throwing that gazy DNC stink-eye in his direction !

    [Mar 09, 2019] Jake Tapper's Former Boss Reveals His Emptiness w-Greg Palast - YouTube

    Mar 09, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    Bif Webster , 10 hours ago

    When Al Franken said to Greg Palast, "If it happened then why didn't I see it in the New York Times," Greg should have responded with, "You answered your own question Mr. Franken."

    Lady Hawke , 10 hours ago

    "Jake Tapper...you sure that's not a p0rn name?" - Jimmy Dore

    George Johnson , 10 hours ago

    Corporate journos with a conscience have to go through pathological contortions to live with themselves. That's why so many are narcissistic sociopaths.

    J-Man , 9 hours ago

    Was watching Bill Maher last night and his panel was asked " who do you think can take on Trump in 2020 " ... they all said with one voice.....Biden !!!! Can't you just tell that Bill is trying to sellThe Corporate Dems . Disgusting Bernie and Tulsi ALL THE WAY !! 😊

    Robgoren , 9 hours ago

    Attention Bari Weiss: Dave Weigel is what you call "a toadie."

    Martin Abaurrea , 9 hours ago

    Franken and Maher are almost stupid enough to be funny these days. Establishment hacks, both of them.

    Poseidon Cichlidon , 10 hours ago

    So Hillary's lawyers knew Russia wasn't to blame for her loss in Michigan but she pushed phony Russiagate anyway and her minions have been smearing Jimmy and every other progressive that tells the truth as conspiracy theorists, just when you thought you knew every evil thing crooked Hillary and the Clinton machine did, a brand new crime pops up!

    Drew Dionne , 9 hours ago

    Washington Post: Democracy Dies in Darkness

    Manu Rowe , 10 hours ago (edited)

    Jimmy and friends love you guys mahalo nui for all you do.

    Michael Murray , 10 hours ago

    When the truth about Tapper and his vile wife becomes public they will try to hide but will never escape being held accountable for their crimes. Pure evil.

    PlainJane , 10 hours ago

    WAPO is garbage. Thank you for saying it.

    MrWebster , 10 hours ago

    While the democrats are at the front door looking for Russians, the gopers sneak in through the back and cheat in elections. Having worked elections, thee only people who can cheat and defraud elections are the people inside the system. Not some Russian sitting at a cheap computer in St. Petersburg.

    Alex Beau , 10 hours ago

    This is the country that wants to teach Russia how to live. Russia had women's voting rights in 1917 and a functioning social state in the 60s while US bus passengers were still segregated by skin color. This is only 50-60 years ago. And hearing all this, seems like pure racism is still alive and well in many places there.

    Carl Anderson , 10 hours ago

    We have to change our system - before it's too late. We destroy the environment and we might even start some stupid war(?). Thankfully, many educated people are trying their best to educate people what is going on. Those below are, some, of those I really trust - to do a really great job! * Peter Joseph * Chris Hedges * Jacque Fresco (unfortunately died, 101 years old two years ago) * Noam Chomsky * Rickard Wolff (Democracy at work) * Jimmy Dore * Kyle Kulinski * Abby Martin * Lee Camp (Redacted tonight) * And: "Jonathan Pie" (fictional reporter who delivers many "beautiful" thoughts). :) * Edward Snowden * Julian Assange * Yanis Varoufakis * Alex O'Connor (CosmicSkeptic) * Roland Paulsen (from Sweden) And here is a great video from Roland Paulsen "commenting" Hans Rosling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoIcsj9ysvs

    nash984954 , 8 hours ago

    Jimmy, please allow Greg to talk, you keep interrupting him to tell what they do to you, we know what they do to you,please let us hear Greg, please. I don't mean to be rude, I'm your loyal fan, but let Greg speak, he's trying to point out how he's not allowed to talk....but you sometimes talk over him. Jordan at Status Coup is a great interviewer he lets his guests speak for awhile without interrupting at all. Please don't see this as anything but positive feedback. You're the best, Jimmy.

    [Mar 08, 2019] The Orientalism of Western Russophobia by Max Parry

    Mar 08, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the publication of Edward W. Said's pioneering book, Orientalism , as well as fifteen years since the Palestinian-American intellectual's passing. To bid farewell to such an important scholar shortly after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Said fiercely criticized until his dying breath before succumbing to leukemia, made an already tremendous loss that much more impactful. His seminal text forever reoriented political discourse by painstakingly examining the overlooked cultural imperialism of colonial history in the West's construction of the so-called Orient. Said meticulously interrogated the Other-ing of the non-Western world in the humanities, arts, and anthropology down to its minutiae. As a result, the West was forced to confront not just its economic and political plunder but the long-established cultural biases filtering the lens through which it viewed the East which shaped its dominion over it.

    His writings proved to be so influential that they laid the foundations for what is now known as post-colonial theory. This became an ironic category as the author himself would strongly reject any implication that the subjugation of developing countries is a thing of the past. How apropos that the Mandatory Palestine-born writer's death came in the midst of the early stages of the 'War on Terror' that made clear Western imperialism is very much alive. Despite its history of ethnic cleansing, slavery, and war, the United States had distinguished itself from Britain and France in that it had never established its own major colonies within the Middle East, Asia or North Africa in the heart of the Orient. According to Said, it was now undergoing this venture as the world's sole remaining superpower following the end of the Cold War with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Today's political atmosphere makes the Bush era seem like eons ago. Thanks to the shameful rehabilitation of neoconservatism by centrist extremists, Americans fail to understand how Trumpism emerged from the pandora's box of destructiveness of Bush policies that destabilized the Middle East and only increased international terrorism. Since then, another American enemy has been manufactured in the form of the Russian Federation and its President, Vladimir Putin, who drew the ire of the West after a resurgent Moscow under his leadership began to contain U.S. hegemony. This reached a crescendo during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election with the dubious accusations of election interference made by the same intelligence agencies that sold the pack of lies that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. The establishment has even likened the alleged intrusion by Moscow to 9/11.

    If a comparison between the 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans and the still unproven allegations of Russian meddling seems outrageous, it is precisely such an analogy that has been made by Russiagate's own biggest proponents, from neoconservative columnist Max Boot to Hillary Clinton herself . Truthfully, it is the climate of hysteria and dumbing down of discourse to such rigid dichotomies following both events where a real similarity can be drawn. The 'with us or against us' chasm that followed 9/11 has reemerged in the 'either/or' post-election polarity of the Trump era whereby all debate within the Overton window is pigeonholed into a 'pro vs. anti-Trump' or 'pro vs. anti-Russia' false dilemma. It is even perpetrated by some on the far left , e.g. if one critiques corporate media or Russiagate, they are grouped as 'pro-Trump' or 'pro-Putin' no matter their political orientation. This dangerous atmosphere is feeding an unprecedented wave of censorship of dissenting voices across the spectrum.

    In his final years, not only did Edward Said condemn the Bush administration but highlighted how corporate media was using bigoted tropes in its representations of Arabs and Muslims to justify U.S. foreign policy. Even though it has gone mostly undetected, the neo-McCarthyist frenzy following the election has produced a similar travesty of caricatures depicting Russia and Vladimir Putin. One such egregious example was a July 2018 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Russia's Turn to Its Asian Past" featuring an illustration portraying Vladimir Putin as Genghis Khan. The racist image and headline suggested that Russia is somehow inherently autocratic because of its past occupation under the Mongol Empire during its conquest of Eastern Europe and the Kievan Rus state in the 13th century. In a conceptual revival of the Eurocentric trope of Asiatic or Oriental despotism, the hint is that past race-mixing is where Russia inherited this tyrannical trait. When the cover story appeared, there was virtually no outcry due to the post-election delirium and everyday fear-mongering about Russia that is now commonplace in the media.

    The overlooked casual racism used to demonize Russia in the new Cold War's propaganda doesn't stop there. One of the main architects of Russiagate, former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, in an interview with NBC's Meet the Press on the reported meddling stated :

    "And just the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, which is a typical Russian technique. So we were concerned."

    Clapper, whose Office of the DNI published the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections", has been widely praised and cited by corporate media as a trustworthy source despite his previous history of making intentionally false statements at a public hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee denying that the National Security Agency (NSA) was unconstitutionally spying on U.S. citizens.

    The disclosures of NSA activities by whistleblower Edward Snowden that shocked the world should have discredited Clapper's status as a reliable figure, but not for mainstream media which has continuously colluded with the deep state during the entire Russia investigation. In fact, the scandal has been an opportunity to rehabilitate figures like the ex-spymaster complicit in past U.S. crimes from surveillance to torture. Shortly after the interview with NBC, Clapper repeated his prejudiced sentiments against Russians in a speech at the National Press Club in Australia:

    "But as far as our being intimate allies, trusting buds with the Russians that is just not going to happen. It is in their genes to be opposed, diametrically opposed, to the United States and to Western democracies."

    The post-election mass Trump derangement has not only enabled wild accusations of treason to be made without sufficient evidence to support them, but such uninhibited xenophobic remarks to go without notice or disapproval.

    In fact, liberals have seemingly abandoned their supposed progressive credence across the board while suffering from their anti-Russia neurological disorder. In an exemplar of yellow journalism, outlets like NBC News published sensational articles alleging that because of the perceived ingratiation between Trump and Putin, there was an increase in Russian 'birth tourism' in the United States. More commonly known by the pejorative 'anchor babies', birth tourism is the false claim that many immigrants travel to countries for the purpose of having children in order to obtain citizenship. While there may be individual cases, the idea that it is an epidemic is a complete myth  --  the vast majority of immigration is motivated by labor demands and changes in political or socio-economic factors in their native countries, whether it is from the global south or Eastern Europe. Trump has been rightfully criticized for promoting this falsehood regarding undocumented immigrants and his executive orders targeting birthright citizenship, but it appears liberals are willing to unfairly apply this same fallacy toward Russians for political reasons.

    ... ... ...

    Yee , says: March 7, 2019 at 3:26 am GMT

    This connected continents of Europe and Asia have 70% of the world population, so it is the center of the world. But the United States is not a local power, it's thousands of miles away from it. Therefore, the US NEEDS conflicts in Europe and Asia to maintain its influence in the world stage and its status of "safe haven for capita", as it found out in WW2 that can be very profitable.

    Peace and integration in Europe and Asia is the last thing the US wants. This is why it'd try its hardest to stir up tension in Europe, Asia and MiddleEast. The Russians were naive to believe it was about Communism.

    World dominance has been very profitable for the capital class, whether the cost for world dominance worth it for the working class, is open for debate, as citizens of the dominate nation enjoy nice benefits too.

    [Mar 07, 2019] Wooing the Russians: how Spain and Italy are trying to lure back lost tourists by Stephen Burgen & Stephanie Kirchgaessner & Alec Luhn

    This is from 2015. Not much changes since the introduction of sanctions.
    Sep 04, 2015 | The Guardian

    MaoChengJi -> andy4248 4 Sep 2015 22:10

    "Russians are brainwashed daily that the West is an awful place and we are going to invade them at any moment. " Oh rather you're brainwashed daily that Russia is an awful place where Russians are brainwashed daily that the West is an awful place and we are going to invade them at any moment.

    I'm pretty sure not a single Russian believes that the west is going to invade. For reasons that are obvious, or should be obvious.

    runner911 -> notoriousANDinfamous 5 Sep 2015 04:23

    You must be joking ! 70 per cent of Americans do not know what the Constitution is, and six per cent don't even know when Independence Day falls. In a recent survey just over a half of Americans didn't know what the Taliban are , despite the fact they led the charge in Afghanistan.

    When looking at a map of the world, young Americans had a difficult time correctly identifying Iraq (1 in 7) and Afghanistan (17%). This isn't that surprising, but only a slim majority (51%) knew where New York was. According to Forbes and National Geographic, an alarming 29% couldn't point to the Pacific Ocean.

    Many didn't know where Europe is let alone Spain.

    Americans cultural ? What a hoot !

    runner911 -> jezzam 5 Sep 2015 04:09

    Be assured Russia is more than capable of defending itself against Western ( USA ) aggression, plus they hold the biggest nuclear arsenal on the planet , so lets be clear no-one is going to attack Russia and risk nuclear annihilation in return. As regards being surrounded by NATO, how do you think the yanks would react if the same were to apply to the USA and that sad corrupt country was surrounded by Russian Forces ? The last time it happened in 1962, as I recall the yanks were whining like whipped dogs, but eventually agreed to dismantle their missiles in Turkey provided the Russians did the same in Cuba.

    Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 5 Sep 2015 11:59

    You lost the argument, so you are trying to change the subject. Now we can see why Western media doesn't allow an open discussion - you don't have much to say.

    East-central Europe was invaded by Germans, Russians, Ottomans, French, even the Swedes. Germans murdered about 15 million people here. Ottomans (Turks) about 10 million. Russians liberated us from a murderous German occupation after WWII and stayed way too long...

    Russian victims are in tens of thousands. Given that Russians lost about 1.5 million soldiers liberating us from Germans and saved us from planned extermination by Nazis over time, we keep some perspective about it. But I am not sure your ideological and slogan-driven thinking would understand any of it...

    EugeneGur -> zenithmaster 5 Sep 2015 11:43

    This has zero to do with Russia's poor relations with the EU and everything to do the Russians' smaller spending power.

    This is not quite true. You underestimate the power of the sentiment. One example: Russian tourism to Estonia dropped 60% after the scandal with the Bronze soldier in 2007, long before any decrease in the buying power, and it never recovered.

    You are right, of course, that the decreased value of the ruble affected mass tourism, but the effect was multiplied by the anger towards Europe, believe me, it was. Going through the visa process was always annoying and humiliating but under the present circumstances it became unbearable. This one thing that affects all European countries whether its Bulgaria or Italy.

    MaoChengJi -> jezzam 5 Sep 2015 09:56

    Yeah, something like what thecorporateclass said above.

    I'll add this: deep down even people like you don't believe in any Russian 'invasion' in Ukraine. They know: if Russia did invade, it would've been over long time ago. The question, rather, is about Kiev regime's control of the border, which would amount to a blockade of Donetsk-Lugansk republics; blocking all the supplies, attacking from all directions, and exterminating people who feel ethnically Russian.

    This can not happen: it would've brought the Russian government down, and therefore no Russian government could participate in it; be it led by Putin, Dugin, or Navalny, or anyone at all. It's just a physical impossibility. IMO.

    TheCorporateClass -> jezzam 5 Sep 2015 06:37

    The West agrees to drop this missile shield, Putin agrees to stop his military interference in Ukraine.

    This needs correcting IF it is to work as a solution.

    The West agrees to drop this missile shield, agrees to stop it's interventions into Ukrainian government and it's politics, agrees to stop FUNDING and GUIDING far right neo-nazi militias and their political wings, agrees to stop making intentionally false/unproven/fictional accusations against Russia & Putin's Government, stops providing military intelligence to Ukraine (a non-Nato country), and admits to the direct connection between the externally caused "political and social" instability in Ukraine begun by EU/NATA and the externally caused "political and social" instability and then Civil War in Syria with oil/gas supplies from Russia and Qatar ... then that would be a great first step towards the truth of matters bullshit.

    Then all of Russia and Putin at their ELECTED President would no doubt agree to stop his humane military interference in Ukraine on behalf of those people having their human rights and lives taken by ideologically driven psychopaths and their corrupt crazies from Washington, Berlin, Riyadh, Doha, and Tel Aiv.

    Simple really.

    HollyOldDog -> raffine 5 Sep 2015 04:59

    Whereas there are convoys of Russian trucks that are stopping the East Ukrainians of starving to death. The only 'gifts' that West Ukraine gives to their East compatriates is constant shelling, grad missile fire, mine fields and snipers that shoot any East Ukrainians on sight whether they are men ,women or children.

    MaoChengJi -> jezzam 4 Sep 2015 23:48

    I believe the western anti-missile installations along the Russian borders give the impression that the US is trying to break the MAD balance and create, at some point in the future, a defense against retaliatory nuclear strike. That seems like the only rational explanation for those installations. For do you think they are for?

    MaoChengJi -> andy4248 4 Sep 2015 22:10

    "Russians are brainwashed daily that the West is an awful place and we are going to invade them at any moment. "

    Oh rather you're brainwashed daily that Russia is an awful pleace where Russians are brainwashed daily that the West is an awful place and we are going to invade them at any moment.

    I'm pretty sure not a signle Russian believes that the west is going to invade. For reasons that are obvious, or should be obvious.

    crackling -> MaoChengJi 4 Sep 2015 22:03

    fingerprints is copying GWBush's data collection on citizens and visitors to the US - last night I just had my photo and fingerprints taken on customs entry to Taiwan - I expect it's becoming the norm these days.

    Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 4 Sep 2015 21:22

    Address Obama's admission that "US assisted in the transition of power", why do you skip over it? $15 billion was a loan and it was used for the Ukrainian budget. If someone stole some of it, prove it and charge them.

    I never said that Russians didn't try to influence Kiev, but so did US - listen to the recording, it assigns roles for different protest leaders. Ashton was an EU official and she was standing with the protestors - so were many others, incl. Nuland, ambassador, etc... - that goes way beyond "trade agreement".

    I am a Slovak and I comment on anything I feel like. If you have a problem with that, maybe you don't understand democracy and freedom of speech. By the way, most people in my part of Europe (from Budapest to Vienna to Prague) roughly share my view of the situation. We know Russians, we know Ukrainians, and we can judge for ourselves.

    Popeyes -> andy4248 4 Sep 2015 19:45

    It's very sad but Russians are for more aware of what's going on politically than their Western counterparts. The fact that they have a low opinion of Westerners is hardly surprising and they certainly don't have to be " brainwashed ' by the Kremlin to know what's going on. They only have to look at Iraq, Libya, and Syria, Ukraine the list is endless to figure it out. You could blame GM food for the fact that Americans seem to be pretty dim and clueless on Europeans affairs, but as for the rest of Europeans I guess they are the ones that are really "brainwashed".

    Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 4 Sep 2015 19:32

    Thou protest too much.

    The "baroness" was an EU foreign secretary, that's pretty high up. In addition: US ambassador, assistant sec for Europe (Nuland), and a number of other officials were at the Maidan protests - videos and all.

    The recording was very specific about who (Yats) should be Prime Minister and how it should be done. If US also does that in Spain, that's even a bigger problem.

    $5bn is a lot of "civil organizations" - most of it in the last 5-10 years. Russia gave a loan - that is very different.

    Finally, Obama literally said "we assisted with the transition of power in Ukraine"
    what other proof can one possible have than an admission by the chief?

    By the way I used the term "assist in an overthrow". To "orchestrate" is more pro-active. Given what has been made public there definitely was "assistance" (see Obama's statement above), whether that amounts to "orchestrate" like in 1953 Iran, I would leave to the historians.

    Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 4 Sep 2015 18:52

    There are videos of dozens of Western leaders standing on the podium with the demonstrators on Maidan (just imagine Lavrov joinig an Occupy protest in New York or London).

    There are recordings of Nuland deciding on who will run Ukraine ("f...k Europe").

    US spent 5 billion in 20 years on "civil groups" in Ukraine.

    If you prefer an infantile denial, I can't help you. Just don't be surprised if you become irrelevant.

    Beckow -> dmitryfrommoscow 4 Sep 2015 18:34

    Yes it was always mostly about the visa-free access to EU. Ukrainians want to move to Europe for jobs, benefits, school, etc... That was what drove Maidan energy (and US took advantage of it).

    But your numbers are off. There are about 1 million Ukrainians now in EU, mostly in UK, Czech, Hungary and Poland. E.g. Poland has about 400,000 new Ukrainian migrants. The real large numbers are yet to come. I think they will - they are watching the Syrians and getting jealous, worried that all the empathy will be used up. Slovakia (my country) has camps ready on the border. We also suddenly have a lot of Ukrainians who have discovered the Slovak (or Czech) heritage. The same thing is going on in Poland, Romania and Hungary.

    Millions are coming. And they won't be tourists or have money for Italian hotels. But I am sure the Western media will find a way to blame it on Russia. Such are the pleasures of dead-end ideologies, everything is very simple: "Putin did it!."

    Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 4 Sep 2015 18:26

    "US didn't orchestrate a coup in Ukraine and hasn't offered Kiev a military alliance"

    I suppose that would depend on your definition of "orchestrate" and a "coup". Most rational observers would agree that US at a minimum assisted with the Maidan revolution (or a coup). There are videos, recordings, financial transfers. Until the whole Maidan thing went bad, the US State Department was very open about the assistance that they had provided on Maidan, Obama said "we assisted with the transition of power in Ukraine" (actual quote).

    US has said since 2008 that Ukraine will join Nato. They reiterated it last year and Ukraine has an official policy of joining Nato. There are joint exercises and training with Nato. It is rather conclusive that US and Ukraine are having a "military alliance".

    Given those two facts how can you deny it? Or do you also deny the nose between your eyes?

    magicmirror1 4 Sep 2015 18:11

    Fingerprints to get a visa.

    Welcome to democratic EU. This is the future European leaders are building and I cannot understand why.

    dmitryfrommoscow -> Ola Smith 4 Sep 2015 16:46

    Ola, the problem is there are no 45 million people in Ukraine these days. As many as 2.8 million people with Ukrainian passports work and live in Russia alone. And I think twice as many live and work in the EU. And about five to seven million are in a crouch start position to rush elsewhere at the first opportunity that avails itself. After all the Maidan hullabaloo was about getting free access to European -- and probably North American -- job markets and disappearing there for good. Let's throw aside all that talk about 'democracy and values' and be honest about it.

    [Mar 07, 2019] Guardian adopted nazy propaganda cartoons to demonize Russia

    Mar 07, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Steve Bell cartoon of Putin in The Guardian (left) contrasted with Nazi propaganda (right).

    [Mar 07, 2019] Will Russiagate witch hunt be replaced with Chinagate

    Mar 07, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Shee Meng , Mar 6, 2019 2:32:42 AM | 90

    National Defence Strategy, FBI etc, are targeting everything Chinese. Building case against Chinese hackers without evidence.

    I'm inclined to agree with that.
    At this point; I try to listen to everything; and believe nothing...

    Shee Meng , Mar 6, 2019 2:32:42 AM | link John Smith , Mar 6, 2019 4:14:30 AM | link

    Now US government and media, think tanks, researchers, etc are creating Chinagate.
    ---------------------------

    You bet! Who wants to become an outsider, being a leader now!

    This is China's plan to eclipse Silicon Valley

    China's Pearl River delta is the site of the most dramatic urbanization in human history. The area is home to nearly 70 million people. It contributes an eighth of China's GDP, with an economy worth $1.5 trillion - roughly the same as Australia and Spain, and nearly as big as Russia and South Korea.

    Now the Chinese government has outlined its plans to unite what it calls the Greater Bay Area into a giant megalopolis, and transform it into a high-tech centre that could rival California's Silicon Valley and Japan's Tokyo Bay.

    John Smith , Mar 6, 2019 4:18:02 AM | link
    This is China's plan to eclipse Silicon Valley

    China's Pearl River delta is the site of the most dramatic urbanization in human history. The area is home to nearly 70 million people. It contributes an eighth of China's GDP, with an economy worth $1.5 trillion - roughly the same as Australia and Spain, and nearly as big as Russia and South Korea.

    Now the Chinese government has outlined its plans to unite what it calls the Greater Bay Area into a giant megalopolis, and transform it into a high-tech centre that could rival California's Silicon Valley and Japan's Tokyo Bay.

    John Smith , Mar 6, 2019 4:20:48 AM | link
    Trump is right that the US risks losing the 5G race, Huawei chairman says

    President Trump is right that the U.S. risks being left behind on 5G, Huawei's rotating chairman said on Sunday in Barcelona.

    ">link

    Shee Meng , Mar 6, 2019 2:32:42 AM | link


    Russiagate is no more. Now US government and media, think tanks, researchers, etc are creating Chinagate.

    National Defence Strategy, FBI etc, are targeting everything Chinese. Building case against Chinese hackers without

    evidence.

    V , Mar 6, 2019 3:58:50 AM | link

    [Mar 06, 2019] Disinformation destroys reality

    Highly recommended!
    Yes, in a slightly modified form this is a very true statement: "Disinformation destroys reality. The USA is master of this -- they have built a parallel reality."
    But the real issues here is the neoliberalism is in decline, and to compensate for loss of power of neoliberal propaganda Western MSM now use neo-McCarthyism. That is a very sad but pretty understandable story.
    Mar 02, 2018 | www.nytimes.com

    Just as disturbing is an analysis of Russia's worldwide fake news campaign , which spreads contradictory reports and Kremlin-friendly propaganda.

    "The Russians understand Western media far better than the Western media understands itself," one interviewee says. "And they play to the Western media's short attention span."

    Another says: "Disinformation destroys reality. The Russians are masters of this -- they have built a parallel reality."

    [Mar 06, 2019] Disinformation destroys reality

    Yes, in a slightly modified form this is a very true statement: "Disinformation destroys reality. The USA is master of this -- they have built a parallel reality."
    Mar 02, 2018 | www.nytimes.com

    Just as disturbing is an analysis of Russia's worldwide fake news campaign , which spreads contradictory reports and Kremlin-friendly propaganda.

    "The Russians understand Western media far better than the Western media understands itself," one interviewee says. "And they play to the Western media's short attention span."

    Another says: "Disinformation destroys reality. The Russians are masters of this -- they have built a parallel reality."

    [Mar 05, 2019] The political purpose behind Nadler investigation can best be summed up in this quote concerning the Benghazi hearings. In September 2015, Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy famously said Clinton s numbers are dropping because we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee.

    Now they do not even pretend that Justice exists in the USA: only kangaroo courts
    Why they are sill waving a dead chicken ? Because they are crooks and can't prosecute Trump for his real misdeeds. Or investigate influence of MI6 and Israeli lobby on the USA elections. Crooks. all of them.
    Notable quotes:
    "... This is not a standard beltway tit for tat investigation. Even before Trump took office, the tools of government were used against him. What is more interesting is that the inquisitors have unchecked authority. There is no limit imposed on the inquisitors either in scope or frankly legality. ..."
    "... The Republican Party has consistently undermined him. It is the American electorate that will not turn on him. Do you blame them!.? They are slowly realizing that a war has been waging against them. Their way of life, the American way of life, is being dismantled. Years and years of compromise and lofty adherence to reasonable principles by the American electorate have done not a damn thing to abate the onslaught against them. ..."
    "... Your timing as well as details are off. Iran-Contra was in the 80s. Laundering money from arms sales to Iran to fund the Contras in violation of the Boland amendement is far different than the Affaire de coeur Russia, which is now turning into an investigation of every financial deal Trump ever did. ..."
    "... "The tradition" is using investigative powers to politicaly attack ones opponents when you are in power. ..."
    Mar 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    Nadler is the kangaroo in chief?

    "House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, who would eventually lead any impeachment proceedings, on Sunday signaled a significant escalation into congressional inquiries into the President.

    The New York Democrat plans on Monday to request documents from 60 people and entities close to Trump, including from the Department of Justice, the White House and the Trump Organization. The document trawl will be used "to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, about corruption and abuse of power, " Nadler said on ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday.

    Nadler stuck to the House Democratic position that impeachment "is a long way down the road," apparently in order to avoid Republican arguments that the decision has already been made to try to oust Trump. The document requests are not taking place under the auspices of an official impeachment investigation."

    Nadler could not be more clear. He and the other kangaroos in the Democrat herd (flock?) will search through every aspect of Trump's life for the purpose of finding something that will cause a revulsion against Trump among the American people. If they can find that, their allies among the press and TeeVee agitprop apparatchiks will make judgments evident as to whether or not a bill of impeachment would result in a conviction in the senate. This method is reminiscent of the attempt to impeach President Andrew Johnson. Remember him? The Radical Republicans hated this Southern War Democrat simply because he was Southern without regard for his well demonstrated hatred for the planter class in the greater South as opposed to his east Tennessee anti-slavery home. So, pilgrims, American tradition is to be reversed. The Democrats will seek for confirmation bias of Trump's "crimes" because of their "progressive" hatred of his perhaps cynical leadership of a popular revolution against them and the idiot college kids. pl

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/04/politics/trump-mueller-report-nadler-investigation-impeachment/index.html

    blue peacock -> Eric Newhill , 2 hours ago

    IMO, Trump could blow the kangaroos off the range by declassifying it all and allowing the American people to see the details of the attempted coup. And the collusion among the kangaroos. But he chooses to not do that. Very puzzling.

    Clearly it can't be because of Mueller and the potential charge of obstruction of justice, as the kangaroos are running hard towards getting him and his family in any case. So what's behind his strategy of just tweeting witch hunt, which he's been doing for 2 years, and not doing what could blow this all up which is his prerogative as POTUS?

    jnewman , 4 hours ago

    This is the politics necessary to continue to govern a largely unified country as if it were deeply divided: https://www.nytimes.com/201...

    The minorities that both of our parties represent have had their way for forty years, the majority is fed up by not being represented and increasingly absurd distractions are required to maintain this status quo.

    Fred , 19 hours ago

    What can any Trump supporter expect once a Democrat is again elected president, besides a similar witch hunt into thier life past and present?

    TTG -> Fred , 19 hours ago

    This has been standard beltway politics since at least the Iran-Contra and Whitewater investigations. It hit hot and heavy once the Republicans regained control of the Congress in 2014 and hit Obama/Clinton with the Benghazi hearings. I think the political purpose behind all these investigations, including the current crop of investigations into Trump can best be summed up in this quote concerning the Benghazi hearings. "In September 2015, Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy famously said Clinton's "numbers are dropping" because "we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee." I doubt Nadler will ever pursue an impeachment. His goal is to tear at Trump until the 2020 elections. Anyways, I can't think of anything Trump could have done or will do that would persuade the Republican party to turn on him. Nothing. You're right. Whoever wins that election will be subject to the same scrutiny.

    aint.no.robot -> TTG , 14 hours ago

    True, their motives were suspect, but Benghazi was a thing.

    Stueeeeee -> TTG , 2 hours ago

    This is not a standard beltway tit for tat investigation. Even before Trump took office, the tools of government were used against him. What is more interesting is that the inquisitors have unchecked authority. There is no limit imposed on the inquisitors either in scope or frankly legality.

    The Republican Party has consistently undermined him. It is the American electorate that will not turn on him. Do you blame them!.? They are slowly realizing that a war has been waging against them. Their way of life, the American way of life, is being dismantled. Years and years of compromise and lofty adherence to reasonable principles by the American electorate have done not a damn thing to abate the onslaught against them.

    2020 elections will be won by a Democrat. Trump won by razor thin margins, and those margins will be erased as a malignant crop of woke young voters will come of age. Frankly I am curious if his health can hold up for another campaign.

    Fred -> TTG , 6 hours ago

    Your timing as well as details are off. Iran-Contra was in the 80s. Laundering money from arms sales to Iran to fund the Contras in violation of the Boland amendement is far different than the Affaire de coeur Russia, which is now turning into an investigation of every financial deal Trump ever did.

    The Republicans didn't control the House until the mid-90s and lost it in 2007. The invasion and occupation of Iraq played a big part in losing the House then.

    TTG -> Fred , 5 hours ago

    The Congressional investigation of Iran-Contra was also referred to as a witch hunt by Republicans. So that usage of the term was around since the 80s. Reagan's Tower Commission was a different animal altogether. We'll probably never see something as introspective as that again.

    I mentioned both Iran-Contra and Whitewater to point out the longstanding tradition of politically tinged Congressional investigations. The Whitewater Congressional investigations went into overdrive up after the Republicans won the House in 1994. The Republican controlled both the House and Senate in 2014. That's when the Benghazi hearings really ramped up. The ramp up of Congressional investigations with the Democratic winning of the House last year is just following in that tradition.

    Fred -> TTG , 5 hours ago

    Selling weapons to Iran was a crime. "The tradition" is using investigative powers to politicaly attack ones opponents when you are in power. Kind of like using the executive branch of government to hinder opponents activities, such as preventing IRS non-profit status, or spying on them like the NSA has been doing. All done by the Obama administration. Then there is the conduct of the FBI. I haven't seen Trump do any of those things with executive branch powers.

    Stuart Wood -> TTG , 8 hours ago

    TTG hit the nail on the head. Since Clinton and Whitewater, investigations have been the method to hit back at the Presidency you don't support. The only thing I would add is the Iran-Contra investigation was much more relevant than Whitewater, the Clinton's Christmas card list, or Benghazi; officials were actually convicted from the Iran-Contra investigation. The sad fact is that some investigations that are BS successfully work to rile up the investigator's supporters, example Benghazi. I would only add that Trump's past history provides a lot of fuel for the investigatory fire.

    [Mar 05, 2019] The Neoliberal MSM is the enemy. They are minor birds, repeaters of what the establishment wants parroted. They can no longer be considered American citizen friendly. They are indeed part of the Swamp to be drained.

    The "neoliberal establishment" (aka Washington Swamp) is deeply unpopular with American people. Trump is not that popular, but he definitely less unpopular. Such statements s of "the national media is the enemy" would be unthinkable a decade or two ago.
    Feb 19, 2017 | www.youtube.com
    Barbara waters 2 days ago (edited)

    The National Media is the enemy. They are minor birds, repeaters of what the establishment wants parroted. They can no longer be considered American citizen friendly. They are indeed part of the Swamp to be drained.

    Like former, despise current president matters not. We are still a nation of laws. The people have spoken. We want the laws followed period. CNN, MSNBC, and others who continue to go after our president will be met with an unbridled wave of conservative determination to restore law and order.

    [Mar 04, 2019] US Congress wants to know about Putin's income and assets

    www.unz.com

    Moscow Exile February 27, 2019 at 8:14 pm

    В Конгрессе США захотели узнать о доходах и имуществе Путина

    U.S. Congress wants to know about Putin's income and assets
    It is assumed that information about Putin's income will help protect democracy in the United States

    WASHINGTON, February 28, 2019, 02:27 -- REGNUM members of the house of representatives of the U.S. Congress, Val Demings and Elise Stefanik, have introduced a bill demanding that the intelligence services provide information on the income and property of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, reports the ABC channel .

    According to ABC, the bill called "The Vladimir Putin Transparency Act" has been proposed by these members of the Intelligence Committee. The bill is related to the alleged ambitions of Russia to undermine American democracy. It is assumed that information about Putin's income will help defend democracy in the United States.

    Also in January, the U.S. Senate introduced a bill on protection against "Kremlin aggression". The bill also contained a request that the intelligence community provide data on the assets and income of the Russian leader.


    Demings


    Stefanic

    Mark Chapman February 27, 2019 at 10:47 pm
    What a breathtaking example of stupidity. They can't even get reliable data on their own current president's income, and a significant element of the American electorate will never be satisfied with the proof provided that the previous president was not born in Kenya. America's obsession with Putin is getting creepy, in a distinctly disturbing, mentally-unstable way. Especially considering you can tell them anything, so long as you say their own intelligence services have a 'high confidence' that it is true, and they will believe it – witches flying around the rotunda on brooms, no problem. How did it turn out that such a nation of crackpots is also the custodian of a huge nuclear arsenal?

    I imagine both Putin and Russia will refrain from reacting, except to chuckle with amusement at such foolishness. But it will be interesting to see what they come up with; remember, Gennady Timchenko threatened to sue The Economist for saying in print that Putin was a ghost owner of Gunvor Energy, which Timchenko in fact co-owned with Swedish billionaire Torbjörn Törnqvist, and The Economist backed down and issued an apology. Presumably the American intelligence services will find eager sources in 'Kremlin insider' fatboy blabbermouths Stas Belkovsky and Gleb Pavlovsky, both of whom can yarn on all day long about the oozing evil of Putin and the unimaginable billions he has salted away. But they will have no proof whatsoever, as except for a few luxurious perks like fancy wristwatches and a mohair workout suit, Putin lives what is to all appearances a somewhat austere and totally non-indulgent lifestyle, and gives no sign of being stinking rich. The 'palaces' attributed to him all belong to the state, although he has the use of them owing to his office as president. So what will Russia do if the US intelligence services report some fantastic sum, but decline to offer any proof which might be quickly refuted? Sue them for defamation?

    Let's get it on the record – never before has such a self-important busybody republic existed, so full of itself and absorbed with its omnipotent airs. The less a truly democratic global presence and trusted world citizen it becomes, the louder it screeches about its own greatness and exceptionalism. Wow. Embarrassing. And I didn't think that was still possible. Shows how much I know.

    yalensis February 28, 2019 at 4:52 am
    Russia should respond tit for tat: for everything the Americans publish (be it true or lies), the Russian press should publish major dirt on American politicians and lawmakers.
    Pavlo Svolochenko February 28, 2019 at 5:48 am
    American culture is devoid of shame or decency – what 'dirt' could you possibly throw at them? Being caught with a dead girl is survivable, as Edward Kennedy demonstrated, and being caught with a live boy is now a bonus. Joe Biden stole a speech from Neil Kinnock and can't appear in public without groping somebody, and he's frequently floated as a presidential candidate.

    About the only thing that does rouse indignation anymore is having met a Russian once, and even that's excusable as long as you profess to hate them like the plague now. Beyond posting old yearbook photos of American politicians in blackface I don't know what you could possibly hope to shame these creatures with.

    [Mar 04, 2019] Unsubstanttiated allegations taken as gospel. Wonder who put Evan up to writing to "Pyutin"?

    Mar 04, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

    Moscow Exile March 3, 2019 at 2:59 am

    Keeping the kettle boiling .

    The son of Dawn Sturges, who died in 2018 as a result of poisoning in Amesbury, has written to Russian President Vladimir Putin an open letter in which he asks him to help in the investigation.

    "I'm desperate. Putin is the only person that can make it so that justice will prevail. I need his help to pay tribute to my mum. I'm counting on it", Evan Hope told the British tabloid "The Mirror". The publication presents the full text of the message:

    "It's been almost a year since my mother, Dawn, was killed by Novichok in Salisbury, and my pain, like the pain of my family members, does not pass. The British police believe that at least two Russian citizens are responsible for her death, but it seems that they are under the protection of your state. I'm asking you as a person, to allow our officers to question these people about the murder of my mother. She at least deserves somejustice."

    Mr. Hope told the publication that the UK government has not provided any support for his family. "I feel betrayed by the government", he said. He stated that it endorsed the support of Sergei and Yulia Sripal, who was poisoned by the same substance. "But my family has had no such support, and we are the ones who have lost our mother. She was an innocent victim, but we have never heard from Theresa May nor the government -- no phone call, no letter, nor anything else", he said.

    Unsubstanttiated allegations taken as gospel. Wonder who put Evan up to writing to "Pyutin"?

    See: Сын погибшей от "Новичка" британки написал письмо Владимиру Путину

    [Mar 04, 2019] Zakharova is already girding her loins for the 1st anniversary (tomorrow) of the diabolical nerve agent attack by Pyutin's agents that took place in Salisbury on March 4, 2018.

    Mar 04, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

    Moscow Exile March 3, 2019 at 4:43 am

    Zakharova is already girding her loins for the 1st anniversary (tomorrow) of the diabolical nerve agent attack by Pyutin's agents that took place in Salisbury on March 4, 2018.

    If only I could help gird her loins!

    yalensis March 3, 2019 at 2:58 pm
    "Caroline's friend told "The Sun" that Dawn had switched from being a popular pupil at Durrington school in Wiltshire to a homeless alcoholic due to post-natal depression when her son Aidan was born. Her personality changed. She became like a zombie."

    So it's really all Aidan's fault .

    Fern March 3, 2019 at 4:43 pm
    It's clearly very wrong for members of the British establishment to exploit members of Dawn Sturges's family in this way. What they should get help in pressing for is a proper non-politicised investigation into what exactly happened to her.
    Moscow Exile March 3, 2019 at 11:05 am
    The relative clause " who died in 2018 as a result of poisoning in Amesbury " should not have had commas separating it from the main clause " The son of Dawn Sturges has written to Russian President Vladimir Putin an open letter in which he asks him to help in the investigation ", in that it is a defining relative clause whose antecedent is "Dawn Sturges" and not the subject of the main clause, "Ewan Hope".

    As a result of mistakenly placing commas before and after the relative clause in question, that clause is a non-defining relative clause, adding, in parentheses as it were, additional information about the subject of the main clause.

    Ewan Hope is alive: his mother, who was Dawn Sturges, is the woman who died of unnatural causes in Amesbury last year. (Two relative clauses in the preceding sentence, each having "who" as its relative pronoun, the first relative clause being non-defining and having "mother" as its antecedent, the second being defining, having "woman" as its antecedent.)

    Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

    Perhaps I have lived too long here: all relative clauses, be they defining or non-defining, are separated by commas in Russian.

    It is ironic that almost every week I have to point out to Russians the very different English punctiation rules as regards relative clauses, an English grammar topic that Russians often find hard to grasp.

    Wrong usage of commas in contracts drawn up in English can sometimes have unforeseen and very costly results.

    See: The Comma That Costs 1 Million Dollars (Canadian)

    And the NYT got the offending comma wrong in one republished version of the original article, which had to be corrected!

    See also: How 1 Missing Comma Just Cost This Company $5 Million (but Did Make Its Employees $5 Million Richer)

    I often ask Russians what information is given about the subject (the passengers) in the following two sentences, which are, apart from their punctuation, identical:

    The passengers who could speak Russian had few problems at immigration control.

    The passengers, who could speak Russian, had few problems at immigration control.

    In each instance, how many passengers had few problems?

    Some of them or all of them?

    Patient Observer March 3, 2019 at 12:30 pm
    Are your impressive grammatical skills typical of English folks of your generation? Us Americans (see what I did?) can hardly put two words together without screwing up a grammatical rule.
    yalensis March 3, 2019 at 2:53 pm
    My favorite example of a comma making all the difference:

    "What's this thing called Love?"
    vs
    "What's this thing called, Love?"

    Fern March 3, 2019 at 4:35 pm
    "Have you eaten Grandma?" (insert comma as appropriate).
    Moscow Exile March 3, 2019 at 5:54 am
    В Лондоне поставили пьесу Шендеровича "Увидеть Солсбери". Герои – два гея, спасающие мир

    In London staged a Shenderovich play "To See Salisbury". The heroes are two gay men who want to save the world

    The theatrical production company StageRC has announced the premiere of a play by the writer Viktor Shenderovich "To see Salisbury", which will be held in late March in London.

    The comedy is built on the fact that Boshirov and Petrov are really two gays who went to England to see the cathedral. At the end of the play, an apocalypse takes place.

    Shenderovich himself also spoke about his new work. "The play 'To See Salisbury' began with my bold assumption that these people (Petrov and Boshirov) were telling the truth. This is a couple who love each other, and, keeping it secret from their families, just went off to London. One of them, in addition to loving his partner, also loves Gothic architecture. And I have assumed that this is true. And this assumption seemed to me so touching", said the writer.

    The company website informs that the premiere performances in Russian and English will be held on March 30 and 31.

    The play, balancing between the Theatre of the Absurd and farce, ends on the verge of apocalypse -- the insane Dementia Petrovna being ready to start a nuclear war.

    Jen March 3, 2019 at 4:57 pm
    The drunk feller she defended shakes her hand in gratitude. Notice that two other guys come from around the corner and take the bully's place in the queue.

    Darren Till who posted that video is a mixed martial arts practitioner. Wonder if he'll offer the woman a place in his training camp?

    A few of his followers have fallen in love with her.

    [Mar 02, 2019] I gather our President lectured our President Elect on the necessity to stand up to Russia

    Looks like Obama really persuasive...
    Notable quotes:
    "... I gather our President lectured our President Elect on the necessity to stand up to Russia. (My first thought is that like that stupid charitable campaign to Stand Up to Cancer!, another place where the phrase was either meaningless or foolhardy.) ..."
    "... IF Russia ever started actually interfering in our relations with our neighbors or attempted to get us thrown out of our legal bases in foreign nations, I would say that Barack Obama might have a point. Since we are the party guilty of such actions, he would do better to clean up his own administration's relations with Russia, apologize to Russia, and then STFU. ..."
    "... 'Obama Urges Trump to Maintain Pointless, Hyper-Aggresive Encirclement of Russia Strategy, Acknowledge Nuclear Apocalypse "Inevitable"' ..."
    "... In the best of circumstances, Obama in his post-presidency will be akin to Jimmy Carter and stay out of politics, less or less. (I think he has exhausted all trust and value.) If he goes the Jimmy Carter route; he is bound to do worse and will fade away. I don't think he'll go the Clinton route unless Michelle tries to run for office. ..."
    "... The good people of the US are awaiting DHS' final report on Russia's attempts to hack our elections. We deserve as much. ..."
    "... If there's any basis to the allegations it's about time someone provided it. Up till now it's been unfounded assertions. Highly suspect at that. ..."
    "... My guess is the whole Russian boogeyman was a ploy to attract those "moderate Republicans" who liked Romney. ..."
    "... "My hope is that the president-elect coming in takes a similarly constructive approach, finding areas where we can cooperate with Russia where our values and interests align, but that the president-elect also is willing to stand up to Russia when they are deviating from our values and international norms," Obama said. "But I don't expect that the president-elect will follow exactly our approach." ..."
    "... Yes, because "U.S. values" as defined by the actions of the last 16 years have been so enlightened and successful and because the U.S. is a sterling example of adhering to international norms ..."
    "... Just how deluded, ignorant or sociopathic does a person need to be that they can say things like that without vomiting? ..."
    Nov 18, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Pat November 17, 2016 at 2:38 pm

    I gather our President lectured our President Elect on the necessity to stand up to Russia. (My first thought is that like that stupid charitable campaign to Stand Up to Cancer!, another place where the phrase was either meaningless or foolhardy.)

    IF Russia ever started actually interfering in our relations with our neighbors or attempted to get us thrown out of our legal bases in foreign nations, I would say that Barack Obama might have a point. Since we are the party guilty of such actions, he would do better to clean up his own administration's relations with Russia, apologize to Russia, and then STFU.

    Which I am sure he will do once everyone recognizes that that is the appropriate thing to do. But as we well know everyone else will have to do the heavy lifting of figuring that out before he will even acknowledge the possibility.

    Katharine November 17, 2016 at 3:26 pm

    The Guardian headline struck me as hilarious:

    Obama urges Trump against realpolitik in relations with Russia
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/17/obama-urges-trump-against-realpolitik-in-relations-with-russia

    I mean, we can't have people actually taking our real interests into consideration in foreign relations, can we? That would be so–unexceptional.

    JSM November 17, 2016 at 10:15 pm

    Why not make it affirmative?

    'Obama Urges Trump to Maintain Pointless, Hyper-Aggresive Encirclement of Russia Strategy, Acknowledge Nuclear Apocalypse "Inevitable"'

    Knot Galt November 17, 2016 at 3:46 pm

    In the best of circumstances, Obama in his post-presidency will be akin to Jimmy Carter and stay out of politics, less or less. (I think he has exhausted all trust and value.) If he goes the Jimmy Carter route; he is bound to do worse and will fade away. I don't think he'll go the Clinton route unless Michelle tries to run for office.

    In this case, Obama is probably too vain and Michelle being the saner of the two might rein him in? Best of any world would, as you say, STFU. (As the Ex Prez. Obamamometer, that is probably not in the cards.)

    OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL November 18, 2016 at 12:28 am

    Maybe he will end up like Geo Bush, sitting in the bathtub drooling while he paints childish self-portraits
    Or maybe he will end up like OJ, where he tries to go hang out with all his cool friends and they tell him to get lost

    Adamski November 18, 2016 at 5:18 am

    Ppl still mention him as a master orator, etc. Lots of post presidency speaking engagements I suppose. I'd prefer him not to but then again if he makes enough annually from it to beat the Clintons we might get the satisfaction of annoying them

    JTMcPhee November 17, 2016 at 3:53 pm

    "legal bases in foreign nations " Another reason why "we" are Fokked, thinking like that.

    JSM November 17, 2016 at 4:48 pm

    The good people of the US are awaiting DHS' final report on Russia's attempts to hack our elections. We deserve as much.

    Steve C November 17, 2016 at 5:08 pm

    If there's any basis to the allegations it's about time someone provided it. Up till now it's been unfounded assertions. Highly suspect at that.

    NotTimothyGeithner November 17, 2016 at 6:11 pm

    My guess is the whole Russian boogeyman was a ploy to attract those "moderate Republicans" who liked Romney.

    timbers November 17, 2016 at 5:43 pm

    "My hope is that the president-elect coming in takes a similarly constructive approach, finding areas where we can cooperate with Russia where our values and interests align, but that the president-elect also is willing to stand up to Russia when they are deviating from our values and international norms," Obama said. "But I don't expect that the president-elect will follow exactly our approach." What Obama is saying is he wants Russia to join America in bombing hospitals, schools, children, doctors, public facilities like water treatment plants, bridges, weddings, homes, and civilians to list just few – while arming and supporting terrorists for regime change. And if anyone points this out, Russia like the US is supposed to say "I know you are but what am I?"

    RMO November 17, 2016 at 6:28 pm

    Yes, because "U.S. values" as defined by the actions of the last 16 years have been so enlightened and successful and because the U.S. is a sterling example of adhering to international norms

    Just how deluded, ignorant or sociopathic does a person need to be that they can say things like that without vomiting?

    Lemmy November 17, 2016 at 2:42 pm

    Is this the same Russia that just hacked our election and subverted our fine democracy? Why, President Obama, I believe it behooves you to stand up to Russia yourself. Show President-Elect Trump how it is done sir!

    [Mar 02, 2019] Any nation which still trust any promise coming from the USA and its European, Australian and Canadian poodles deserves to be colonized and destroyed

    Mar 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    b , Feb 28, 2019 1:23:41 PM | 38

    It'll eventually dawn on the Yanks that it was NK's Nukes which brought AmeriKKKa to the negotiating table; NOT US sanctions which brought NK to the table.

    The ability to "Manhattan" Manhattan is too strong a negotiating position to swap for some insulting threats and vague non-binding promises. The biggest problem for the US now will be the impossibility of "proving" that it can be trusted.

    Deschutes , Mar 1, 2019 2:55:06 AM | link
    Just more grist for the bullshit mill that is US foreign policy, i.e. the US government can never be trusted at the negotiating table. Ridiculous to demand N. Korea dismantle their nuclear reactor before sanctions are lifted. Fucking ridiculous demand, why in the hell would N. Korea do that? They need it to produce energy, and to make plutonium to defend themselves from total asshole country USA which, as everybody knows has been on a 25 year sanctioning/bombing/country destroying rampage, leaving entire countries laid to waste. Rest assured, that if N. Korea gets rid of all its nukes as USA wants -- before the drop of a hat USA will totally, completely wipe N. Korea off the map with its own nukes and massive military buildup surrounding N. Korea. As usual, the USA is the biggest problem for the entire world's progress towards peace and prosperity :-(((

    Steve , Mar 1, 2019 6:03:28 AM | link

    Any nation which still trust any promise coming from the USA and its European, Australian and Canadian poddles deserves to be colonized and destroyed.
    ">link

    Sally Snyder , Feb 28, 2019 8:35:08 AM | link

    Here is an article that explains why the North Koreans believe that the United States is not trustworthy:

    https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/06/war-crimes-in-korea-guilty-as-charged.html

    The Korean people have paid a very heavy price simply because of their unfortunate geographic location immediately adjacent to the world's largest Communist state.

    Hoarsewhisperer , Feb 28, 2019 2:20:17 PM | link
    The North Korean Foreign Minister gave a press conference in Hanoi. I updated the piece above at its end with the reports of what he said.

    [Mar 02, 2019] Cohen Testimony is the Beginning of the End of Russiagate

    Mar 02, 2019 | nationalinterest.org

    The National Interest

    Cohen tried to describe his former boss to those gathered and watching in terms befitting the unique political phenomenon that has captured American politics for almost four years. "Mr. Trump is an enigma," said Cohen. "He is complicated, as am I. He has both good and bad, as do we all. But the bad far outweighs the good, and since taking office, he has become the worst version of himself."

    • Ronnery Amon • 2 days ago ,

      Cohen had said to start that if they expected him to dish out bombshell evidence of 'Russian collusion', he had none to give, and just like that, he let all the air out of the room. Disappointed Democrats grasping for air used their last breaths as to not let today's hearing go to waste, tried to put some value on Cohen's testimony against the President. Cohen used the usual scripted buzzwords Hillary had used then repeated by the mainstream media since the Presidential debates. What followed is hearing turned spectacle and circus.

    [Feb 28, 2019] What Putin's state of the nation address really tells us about where his premiership is heading

    The West is still hell-best on subduing Russia. We will see what they can achieve...
    Feb 28, 2019 | independent.co.uk

    "They call Russia pretty much the biggest threat to the US," he said. " that is not true. Russia wants a fulfilling, equal and friendly relationship with the United States. Russia is not threatening anyone. All our actions in the security sphere are responsive and defensive in nature."

    ... ... ...

    That post-Soviet Russia feels unequal in many ways to the United States should be a given: its military capability, for a start, is many, many times less.

    But it is also apparent from the way in which it has co-opted almost wholesale some of the forms, if not the content, of US institutional life: the inauguration ceremony, for one; and the State of the Union address , for another, which becomes year by year more of a clone of the real thing.

    If Trump's advisers were listening, they might draw the following conclusions. In the absence of a sensible negotiating partner in the US, Russia is looking elsewhere to mitigate its isolation. It would like to normalise relations with the EU; it is interested in closer ties with India, and Putin is still hoping to conclude a peace treaty with Japan.

    The geographical logic of all that is unimpeachable, while the absence of China from the list might be telling. Most of all, though, Russia wants a new-generation security arrangement with the United States in which it is treated as an equal.

    As of now, that looks a distant prospect, which may be why, in his 2019 state of the nation address and without the pressure of an imminent election, Russia's president seemed reconciled to a long wait.

    [Feb 27, 2019] The Anonymous Sources of Washington Post and CNN Fake News by Daniel Greenfield

    May 18, 2017 | www.frontpagemag.com

    Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, writes about radical Islam and the left

    Media fake news is everywhere.

    No, the new health care bill does not treat rape as a pre-existing condition and Republicans did not celebrate its passage with beer.

    The latest media outrage is driven by a Washington Post story about intelligence disclosures based on claims by anonymous sources. The Post 's big hit pieces are mainly based on anonymous sources.

    Its latest hit piece runs a quote from, "a former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials." That's an anonymous source quoting hearsay from other anonymous sources.

    This isn't journalism. It's a joke.

    Last week, the Washington Post unveiled a story based on "the private accounts of more than 30 officials at the White House." The fake news story falsely claimed that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein threatened to resign.

    Rod had a simple answer when asked about that piece of fake news. "No."

    So much for 30 anonymous sources and for the Washington Post's credibility. But the media keeps shoveling out pieces based on anonymous sources and confirmed by anonymous sources while ignoring the disavowals by those public officials who are willing to go on the record.

    The Comey memo story is based on, according to the New York Times , "two people who read the memo." And then "one of Mr. Comey's associates read parts of it to a Times reporter."

    And his dog.

    The supposed memo contradicts Comey's own testimony to Congress under oath.

    The Times hasn't seen the memo. No one has seen the memo except the anonymous sources that may or may not exist. The media's fake news infrastructure relies heavily on anonymous sources. And anonymous sources are the media's way of saying, "Just trust us."

    The question is why would anyone trust the media?

    Comey fake news is popular on the left because it is convinced that he is the key to reversing their election defeat. Recently CNN got its fake news fingers burned with a story claiming that the former FBI Director had asked for more resources for the Russia investigation before he was fired.

    Where did CNN get its story from? Anonymous sources. Or, as the story put it, "two sources familiar with the discussion."

    Sources "familiar with the discussion" is up there with "a former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials." And their neighbor's dog who barks exclusively to CNN.

    Rod Rosenstein and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe both shot down CNN's fake news. CNN's headline was, "New Acting FBI Director Contradicts White House on Comey." Its fake news was referenced only as, "Amid reports that Comey had asked for more resources for the Russia investigation, McCabe testified that he believed the bureau had adequate resources to complete the job."

    CNN did not acknowledge that the fake reports had come from it. It phrased it in passive and vague language. And it left out a crucial part of McCabe's response. "When we need resources, we make those requests here. So I'm not aware of that request and it's not consistent with my understanding of how we request additional resources. That said, we don't typically request resources for an individual case. And as I mentioned, I strongly believe that the Russian investigation is adequately resourced."

    CNN didn't just push fake news. It covered up its crime. And it's the cover-up that proves the crime.

    Media outlets like CNN and the Washington Post often knows that they're pushing lies. WaPo's fact checkers shot down the claim that rape is a pre-existing condition. But the paper ran a piece titled, "I Was Raped. Thanks to Republicans, I Could Be Denied Insurance." The editors know quite well which of these pieces will have more of an impact.

    But the Post has a dozen stories mentioning the Comey resources fake news.

    The Washington Post isn't in the news business. After its takeover by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, it's in the business of manufacturing viral Trump hit pieces. It got a viral fake news hit with its lie that Press Secretary Sean Spicer was hiding in the bushes to avoid them. There was an equally snarky correction issued that was largely irrelevant. Having manufactured a piece of fake news fit for a Saturday Night Live skit, the Post then dutifully reported on the Saturday Night Live skit featuring its fake news item.

    In the past there would have been a world of difference between the Washington Post and Saturday Night Live. Today they are part of the same lefty echo chamber. The media, all the various parts of it, is now one big influence operation. The machine works by developing and taking fake news attacks viral. WaPo and SNL are in the same business. There isn't even much of a stylistic difference.

    The Washington Post's "Trump fired Comey because he's taller" could easily have come from Saturday Night Live, The Onion or the Daily Show.

    The truly damning epitaph of American journalism is that there isn't much of a difference. Saturday Night Live isn't doing comedy and the Washington Post isn't doing journalism. They're both manufacturing viral Trump attacks.

    Getting your news from the Washington Post is as worthless as getting it from Saturday Night Live.

    While more respectable papers like the Post and the Times occupy the top rung of the fake news ladder, CNN has become the National Enquirer of Trump bashing. No story is too petty or fake to get airtime or site space. Recent examples that have gone viral include , "Is the President Afraid of Stairs" and "President Gets 2 Scoops of Ice Cream, Everyone Else 1."

    CNN's fake news is constantly being shot down by the facts. But it just doubles down on its lies.

    "We will not insult your intelligence by pretending it's legitimate. Nor will we aid and abet the people trying to misinform you," CNN's Don Lemon had blustered when trying to suppress the Rice spying story.

    CNN insults the intelligence of its viewers every minute that they watch it. It offers up a stream of misinformation while trying to suppress legitimate news. Much of this misinformation takes the form of spreading lefty fake news memes whether it's rape as a preexisting condition or Republican beer.

    And even when corrections appear, they exist only for the purpose of plausible deniability. The original fake news gets rolled into multiple news stories, blog posts and editorials that never get updated or corrected.

    And even if they were to be, the damage would be done. That's the way fake news works.

    CNN and the Washington Post are throwing mud and assuming that some of it will stick. And even when it's officially corrected, it still sticks around. Months later, the Post site still carries an uncorrected reference to the AP fake news story which claimed that Trump had threatened to invade Mexico even after it had been denied by both governments and had been pulled for being unverifiable.

    It's a safe bet that rape as a preexisting condition and Comey's Russian resources will also stick around.

    "Applying the fake news label is an attack on the truth. It's reckless and corrosive to democracy, and elected officials attempt to deliberately and systematically erode the credibility of news organizations because they object to factually accurate reporting," the CEO of the Washington Post insisted last month.

    But it's the media that is reckless and corrosive to democracy. It has eroded its credibility with fake news. Factually accurate reporting has become too difficult and unrewarding. The idea of waiting months or years for an investigation to pay off is alien to the nanosecond news cycle. That's why every fake Trump scandal is the new Watergate. And fake news is constantly being manufactured.

    News organizations are throwing away their credibility to reverse the results of a democratic election. And it's not only their own credibility that they are throwing away. The marketplace of ideas was based on reason and objectivity. Without them, there was no longer a public square we could all live in.

    Media bias began to corrupt the marketplace. But bias meant the selective reporting of facts. Falsehoods could creep in. But generally the media would not just casually run stories that were completely false. It would happen from time to time. But it wouldn't be a constant practice.

    And then a tipping point was reached.

    Historians of journalism will argue over when the dam broke. Was it the age of Obama or of Trump? But the day arrived. The sun rose over the CNN Center in Atlanta, the K Street digs of the Washington Post and the offices of other media organizations. And it was no longer a question of selective reporting. We were no longer arguing about the injection of opinion into news stories or journalistic double standards.

    The age of fake news had arrived. We no longer have a free press. All we have is a fake press.

    Share About Daniel Greenfield

    Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

    [Feb 27, 2019] 'Fake News' And How The Washington Post Rewrote Its Story On Russian Hacking Of The Power Grid by Kalev Leetaru

    Feb 27, 2019 | www.forbes.com

    On Friday the Washington Post sparked a wave of fear when it ran the breathless headline "Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, U.S. officials say." The lead sentence offered "A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials" and continued "While the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a security matter, the penetration of the nation's electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability."

    Yet, it turns out this narrative was false and as the chronology below will show, illustrates how effectively false and misleading news can ricochet through the global news echo chamber through the pages of top tier newspapers that fail to properly verify their facts.

    The original article was posted online on the Washington Post's website at 7:55PM EST. Using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine , we can see that sometime between 9:24PM and 10:06PM the Post updated the article to indicate that multiple computer systems at the utility had been breached ("computers" plural), but that further data was still being collected: "Officials said that it is unclear when the code entered the Vermont utility's computers, and that an investigation will attempt to determine the timing and nature of the intrusion." Several paragraphs of additional material were added between 8PM and 10PM, claiming and contextualizing the breach as part of a broader campaign of Russian hacking against the US, including the DNC and Podesta email breaches.

    Despite the article ballooning from 8 to 18 paragraphs, the publication date of the article remained unchanged and no editorial note was appended, meaning that a reader being forwarded a link to the article would have no way of knowing the article they were seeing was in any way changed from the original version published 2 hours prior.

    Yet, as the Post's story ricocheted through the politically charged environment, other media outlets and technology experts began questioning the Post's claims and the utility company itself finally issued a formal statement at 9:37PM EST, just an hour and a half after the Post's publication, pushing back on the Post's claims: "We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop not connected to our organization's grid systems. We took immediate action to isolate the laptop and alerted federal officials of this finding."

    From Russian hackers burrowed deep within the US electrical grid, ready to plunge the nation into darkness at the flip of a switch, an hour and a half later the story suddenly became that a single non-grid laptop had a piece of malware on it and that the laptop was not connected to the utility grid in any way.

    However, it was not until almost a full hour after the utility's official press release (at around 10:30PM EST) that the Post finally updated its article, changing the headline to the more muted "Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say" and changed the body of the article to note "Burlington Electric said in a statement that the company detected a malware code used in the Grizzly Steppe operation in a laptop that was not connected to the organization's grid systems. The firm said it took immediate action to isolate the laptop and alert federal authorities." Yet, other parts of the article, including a later sentence claiming that multiple computers at the utility had been breached, remained intact.

    The following morning, nearly 11 hours after changing the headline and rewriting the article to indicate that the grid itself was never breached and the "hack" was only an isolated laptop with malware, the Post still had not appended any kind of editorial note to indicate that it had significantly changed the focus of the article.

    This is significant, as one driving force of fake news is that as much of 60% of the links shared on social media are shared based on the title alone, with the sharer not actually reading the article itself. Thus, the title assigned to an article becomes the story itself and the Post's incorrect title meant that the story that spread virally through the national echo chamber was that the Russians had hacked into the US power grid.

    Only after numerous outlets called out the Post's changes did the newspaper finally append an editorial note at the very bottom of the article more than half a day later saying "An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid."

    Yet, even this correction is not a true reflection of public facts as known. The utility indicated only that a laptop was found to contain malware that has previously been associated with Russian hackers. As many pointed out , the malware in question is actually available for purchase online, meaning anyone could have used it and its mere presence is not a guarantee of Russian government involvement. Moreover, a malware infection can come from many sources, including visiting malicious websites and thus the mere presence of malware on a laptop computer does not necessarily indicate that Russian government hackers launched a coordinated hacking campaign to penetrate that machine - the infection could have come from something as simple as an employee visiting an infected website on a work computer.

    Moreover, just as with the Santa Claus and the dying child story , the Post story went viral and was widely reshared, leading to embarrassing situations like CNBC tweeting out the story and then having to go back and retract the story.

    Particularly fascinating that the original Post story mentioned that there were only two major power utilities in Vermont and that Burlington Electric was one of them, meaning it would have been easy to call both companies for comment. However, while the article mentions contacting DHS for comment, there is no mention of any kind that the Post reached out to either of the two utilities for comment. Given that Burlington issued its formal statement denying the Post's claims just an hour and a half later, this would suggest that had the Post reached out to the company it likely could have corrected its story prior to publication.

    When I reached out to Kris Coratti, Vice President of Communications and Events for the Washington Post for comment, she responded that regarding the headline change, "Headlines aren't written by story authors. When editors realized it overreached, as happens from time to time with headlines, it was corrected." She also indicated that posting the editor's note at the bottom of the article instead of the top was a mistake and indeed this was corrected shortly after my email to her inquiring about it.

    Ms. Coratti's response regarding the article headline is a fascinating reminder of just how many different people and processes combine to produce a single article in a newspaper – that contrary to popular belief, a reporter doesn't sit down and write a story, choose a headline and then hit "Publish" and have the story go live on the newspaper website. Most newspapers, like the Washington Post, either employ dedicated headline writers or have their editors write the headlines for each piece and articles typically go through an elaborate review process designed to catch these sorts of issues prior to publication.

    It is also interesting to note that the Post said it was an error for the editorial note to be buried at the very bottom of the page instead of at the top of the article, as was done for the Santa Claus story . This reflects the chaotic nature of newsrooms in which an editorial note is frequently added by an editor simply logging into a CMS portal and updating a live page, rather than a templated system which automatically places all editorial notes in the same place with the same style and formatting to ensure consistency.

    Equally fascinating, neither Ms. Coratti nor Post Public Relations responded to any of my remaining queries regarding the article's fact checking process. In particular, the Post did not respond when I asked how headlines are fact checked and if headline writers conduct any form of fact checking to ensure their summarized version is consistent with known facts. The Post also did not respond to a request for comment on why it took nearly half a day from the time the article was rewritten until an editorial note was finally appended acknowledging that the conclusions of the original article were false and that the article had been substantively rewritten to support a different conclusion, nor did the Post comment on why the editor's note was originally placed at the bottom of the article and only moved after I inquired about its location.

    Yet, perhaps most intriguing is that, as with the Santa Claus story, the Post did not respond to repeated requests for comment regarding how it conducts fact checking for its stories. This marks twice in a row that the Post has chosen not to respond in any fashion to my requests for more detail on its fact checking processes. Given the present atmosphere in which trust in media is in freefall and mainstream outlets like the Post are positioning themselves as the answer to "fake news" it certainly does not advance trust in the media when a newspaper will not even provide the most cursory of insight into how it checks its facts.

    As with the Santa Claus story, the Post appears to have run this story without even attempting to perform the most basic of fact checks before publication. The original story noted that there were only two utilities in Vermont and yet the article states that the Post only attempted to contact DHS and does not mention any attempt to contact either of the utilities. Standard journalistic practice would have required that the Post mention that it attempted to reach either utility even if neither responded. The Post did not respond to a request for comment when I asked if it had attempted to reach either utility for comment prior to publication.

    Putting this all together, what can we learn from this? The first is that, as with the Santa Claus and PropOrNot stories, the journalism world tends to rely far more on trust than fact checking. When one news outlet runs a story, the rest of the journalism world tends to follow suit, each writing their own version of the story without ever going back to the original sources for verification. In short – once a story enters the journalism world it spreads without further restraint as each outlet assumes that the one before performed the necessary fact checking.

    The second is that the news media is overly dependent on government sources. Glenn Greenwald raises the fantastic point that journalists must be more cautious in treating the word of governments as absolute truth. Indeed, a certain fraction of the world's false and misleading news actually comes from the mouths of government spokespeople. Yet, in the Post's case, it appears that a government source tipped off the post about a sensational story of Russians hacking the US power grid and instead of reaching out to the utilities themselves or gathering further detail, the Post simply published the story as fed to them by the government officials.

    The third is that breaking news is a source of a tremendous amount of false and misleading news as rumors and falsehoods spread like wildfire in the absence of additional information. Top tier newspapers like the Washington Post are supposed to be a bulwark against these falsehoods, by not publishing anything until it has been thoroughly fact checked against multiple sources. Yet, it appears this is not the case – in the rush to be the first to break a story and not be scooped, reporters even at the nation's most prestigious news outlets will take shortcuts and rush a story out the door. What would have happened in the Post had waited another day or two to collect responses from all involved, including Burlington Electric? It would have avoided publishing false information, but it also likely would have been scooped by another newspaper who wanted to be the first to break the story.

    Indeed, "breaking news" is a tremendous problem for mainstream outlets in which they frequently end up propagating "fake news" in their rush to be the first to break a story. In a world beset by false and misleading news, do top tier news outlets have a professional responsibility to step back from breaking stories and only report on them after all details are known and they have had an opportunity to speak with all parties involved and understand more definitively what has happened? Financially this would likely be devastating in a share-first click-first world in which to the victor go the advertising dollars, but it would seem the only way to truly stop "fake news" from spreading.

    [Feb 27, 2019] Mueller investigation was clearly was part of the leverage used to get control of Trump

    Feb 27, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Zachary Smith , Feb 26, 2019 1:37:24 AM | link

    @Circe @100

    Tump can go back and keep his job pleasing the Zionist elite that installed him.

    So far as I'm concerned Hillary was the dream candidate for the apartheid Jewish state. That the Zionists have made a terrific rebound in capturing Trump seems to me to be another story entirely. At a guess, I'd say the job was done with a combination of flattery, bribery, and naked force.

    I've tuned out the Mueller thing, but suspect it was part of the leverage used to get control of Trump. Again a guess, but I'd say Trump was totally in bed with the Russians - and everybody else with whom he thought he might run a scam. But this was "business", as in making promises and squeezing money out of them. Things like Trump University. With proper handling the cost of the failures would fall mostly on the "investors". And in the worst case, there was always the fifth or sixth bankruptcy.

    Trump didn't expect to be president - that was a humongous publicity campaign financed by the Corporate Media. I don't think Pence was expecting anything besides getting some national exposure which might lead him becoming Senator from Indiana in 2018.

    I'm very glad Hillary isn't perched in the White House, but the price of avoiding that has been higher than I expected. Speaking of the devil, I read some ugly stuff at the 2:00 news part of Naked Capitalism.

    Clinton (2): "EX-CLINTON POLLSTER: Hillary will run if Biden doesn't -- or field is 'too far left'" [The American Mirror]. "After defending Clinton's credentials as 'one of the most experienced politicians around,' [Mark] Penn went on to say of the reported recent confabs between Hillary and declared candidates, "Those meetings are going to be somewhat awkward because she hasn't declared that she's not definitely running, and she, in fact, at the same time is looking over the field and I think will make a decision later in the year whether or not to run herself. Penn said the chances of Hillary running depends on how the field shapes up. 'If the party looks too far to the left and there's no front runner, she'll get in,' he said. 'I think if Joe Biden gets in, that probably means she won't run if he gets in. If he doesn't get in, I think the field will be open for her,' Penn said." • She's tanned, rested, and ready!

    That fits right in with my belief that the corporate Dems would prefer Trump's second term or Pence's first term to any decent Democrat being elected. I'll be saying this over and over - while Sander's foreign policy credentials stink to high heaven, the prospect of him being "decent" in domestic matters isn't too awfully bad.

    Jackrabbit , Feb 26, 2019 2:26:48 AM | link

    Zachary Smith | Feb 26, 2019 1:37:24 AM | 102

    Mueller [investigation]... suspect it was part of the leverage used to get control of Trump.
    Well, the "Russia meddled" scare-mongering has worked well as a means of reviving anti-Russian McCarthyism. It even ensnared Wikileaks and Michael Flynn (both of whom were CIA/Deep State targets).

    And, why would the Deep State allow an unvetted person to assume control of the Presidency? They are too careful for that. In fact, all recent President's have some connection to CIA: Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama. Felix Slater, an FBI informant worked for Trump for over a decade while informing on the Russian mob, and most of Trump dubious Russian oligarch connections are actually more loyal to Israel than Russia.

    Trump didn't expect to be president
    That's funny, given the fact that he bragged that he would win and that he was the ONLY populist running for the Republican nomination (out of 19 contenders!). And none of the other candidates (many of whom are seasoned campaigners) sought to alter their strategy when the saw Trump pulling ahead?!?!

    Oh, and Hillary helped her friend Trump win when she alienated key constituencies (Sanders progressives, Blacks) and energized Trump's base by calling them "deploreables".

    <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

    Oh, sorry, these things are supposed to be memory-holed. Hope you and MoA readers don't suffer from too much cognitive dissonance from such facts.

    [Feb 27, 2019] I first thought the Skripals were food poisoned, or were somehow accidentally 'contaminated.' I changed my mind when Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley were 'poisoned'

    Feb 27, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Noirette , Feb 25, 2019 10:10:04 AM | link

    It may be possible to partly unravel the Skripal affair, after all.

    I first thought the Skripals were food poisoned, or were somehow accidentally 'contaminated.' I changed my mind when Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley were 'poisoned' - I will explain why much later on.

    Two assumptions are taken on board for now.

    -- The photo of the perfume package published by the Met on the internet is of an object found in the Rowley home, or said to be so, by the Met. / Scotland Yard / anti-terror force / PTB.

    -- The photo of the bottle + dispenser is that of objects truly or allegedly found in the Rowley home, or a fair facsimile. (The original bottle and dispenser, if they exist, are evidence, might be contaminated, etc.)

    Imho the box package counterfeit is quite, even startlingly, convincing. The surface, color, sheen, graphics, organization, text, font, closely resemble the box of Eau de Parfum *Premier Jour* by Nina Ricci, 50ml. With one glaring difference.

    The quantity on the true box (boxes, these vary some with year, country..) is

    50ml - 1.7 FL OZ

    or

    e50ml - 1.7 FL. OZ. (e is a certification)

    The Rowley box sports

    5.5 ml - 17FL OZ

    The forger is telling us that there is about a teaspoon of XXX in the package. Conversion to fluid ounces isn't made - the creator can't be bothered, so just removed the decimal point, making nonsense of that. The introduction of the decimal point, a different number, an extra space, to conventionally signal that quantity, cannot be ignorant, careless copy errors such as LFOZ or 500 mL might be. Particularly in view of the great care taken with the rest.

    Premier Jour bottles of 50ml or more are of special style and shape and never come with a separate dispenser / vaporiser / nozzle to attach so as to be able to spray. No high-end perfumes or fragrances do, as the containers and spray mechanisms (if any) are an integral part of the object, certifying the brand, its 'look', etc. as well as its working order. (Fakes often have non-functioning sprays.)

    Smaller quantities of Premier Jour such as 33ml exist, the box is completely different. The bottles are longish thin vials with a spray mechanism attached to the top, always such for small quantities of designer fragrances - made to be carried in handbags.

    Great care was taken to produce a convincing or in-your-face box, sealed correctly with cellophane. Inside it a bottle that might pass for genuine via cursory inspection, as it is inscribed *Premier Jour - Nina Ricci* in the same (correct) fonts as on the box. Plus a dispenser, ensuring that its first use would be a deliberate act, and possibly to ensure a tight seal.

    No scammer hawking fake perfumes would ever produce this.

    links in sep post

    In Part II we examine its alleged handling by Dawn and Charlie and trace it back in time.

    Noirette , Feb 25, 2019 10:12:29 AM | link

    fake package

    https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2744512/novichok-could-have-caused-mass-casualties-in-salisbury/

    fake bottle w dispenser

    http://www.basenotes.net/threads/457235-Your-Premier-Jour-by-Nina-Ricci-is-safe

    50 ml real ex., click on for big

    https://www.arukereso.hu/parfum-c3262/nina-ricci/premier-jour-edp-50ml-p42197160/

    33 ml real

    https://www.cdiscount.com/Product/Zoom/auc2009510812293/0.html

    Noirette , Feb 25, 2019 10:17:39 AM | link
    Addition: Imho the Rowley box is smaller than the real one(s). The text / letters etc. are too large, take up too much space, I can't measure it at present, don't have a real box to hand.
    Noirette , Feb 26, 2019 11:55:37 AM | link
    Frances at 65 -- yes the perfume bottle could be a plant as you suggest (not photoshop) by MI5 (or whomever), sure . i did write 'allegedly', 'assumed' or clear words to that effect.... the trick is to figure out if so, or not. anyway never mind. these details aren't on their own of much interest with grand debates on the menu --:

    One way the PTB fool and trick ppl is to get them all riled up about side issues. Like vaccines. This gets the public, particularly parents, mothers, loving their littles, into crazy hyper mode, absorbing their energy to 'contest' in any way, question other matters, such as crap schools, heath care, corrupt pols, etc.

    They get involved in groups, stick to their principled guns, argue to the death (sic), watch pols for attention to 'their issue', and on and on. They have been deprived of even the most basic rights in a just society (ex. basic health care) and are shunted to the corridors of the losers, they don't realise it, yes they are viewed with cynical, and calculated, disdain.

    .... ... ...

    [Feb 26, 2019] Besos Blog credibility and Brandon's concert

    Feb 26, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    m , Feb 25, 2019 1:28:27 AM | link

    Here's a nice little tribute, b.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-24/wapo-secretly-deletes-bransons-venezuela-concert-article-after-fake-attendance

    Grieved , Feb 25, 2019 9:57:53 AM | link

    MoA is famous yet again, cited by RT in a story this morning about how the Washington Post has quietly edited its number of attendees at the Branson concert, without of course informing its readers. The original Wurlitzer lies of course still exist in caches and screenshots.

    200,000 or 10,000? WaPo deletes inflated Venezuela Aid Live attendance figure from its website

    "Using the few available aerial shots taken throughout the day, and some standard crowd calculations for the occasion, alternative news site Moon of Alabama estimated an attendance of about 18,000."

    [Feb 26, 2019] I first thought the Skripals were food poisoned, or were somehow accidentally 'contaminated.' I changed my mind when Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley were 'poisoned'

    Feb 26, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Noirette , Feb 25, 2019 10:10:04 AM | link

    It may be possible to partly unravel the Skripal affair, after all.

    I first thought the Skripals were food poisoned, or were somehow accidentally 'contaminated.' I changed my mind when Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley were 'poisoned' - I will explain why much later on.

    Two assumptions are taken on board for now.

    -- The photo of the perfume package published by the Met on the internet is of an object found in the Rowley home, or said to be so, by the Met. / Scotland Yard / anti-terror force / PTB.

    -- The photo of the bottle + dispenser is that of objects truly or allegedly found in the Rowley home, or a fair facsimile. (The original bottle and dispenser, if they exist, are evidence, might be contaminated, etc.)

    Imho the box package counterfeit is quite, even startlingly, convincing. The surface, color, sheen, graphics, organization, text, font, closely resemble the box of Eau de Parfum *Premier Jour* by Nina Ricci, 50ml. With one glaring difference.

    The quantity on the true box (boxes, these vary some with year, country..) is

    50ml - 1.7 FL OZ

    or

    e50ml - 1.7 FL. OZ. (e is a certification)

    The Rowley box sports

    5.5 ml - 17FL OZ

    The forger is telling us that there is about a teaspoon of XXX in the package. Conversion to fluid ounces isn't made - the creator can't be bothered, so just removed the decimal point, making nonsense of that. The introduction of the decimal point, a different number, an extra space, to conventionally signal that quantity, cannot be ignorant, careless copy errors such as LFOZ or 500 mL might be. Particularly in view of the great care taken with the rest.

    Premier Jour bottles of 50ml or more are of special style and shape and never come with a separate dispenser / vaporiser / nozzle to attach so as to be able to spray. No high-end perfumes or fragrances do, as the containers and spray mechanisms (if any) are an integral part of the object, certifying the brand, its 'look', etc. as well as its working order. (Fakes often have non-functioning sprays.)

    Smaller quantities of Premier Jour such as 33ml exist, the box is completely different. The bottles are longish thin vials with a spray mechanism attached to the top, always such for small quantities of designer fragrances - made to be carried in handbags.

    Great care was taken to produce a convincing or in-your-face box, sealed correctly with cellophane. Inside it a bottle that might pass for genuine via cursory inspection, as it is inscribed *Premier Jour - Nina Ricci* in the same (correct) fonts as on the box. Plus a dispenser, ensuring that its first use would be a deliberate act, and possibly to ensure a tight seal.

    No scammer hawking fake perfumes would ever produce this.

    links in sep post

    In Part II we examine its alleged handling by Dawn and Charlie and trace it back in time.

    Noirette , Feb 25, 2019 10:12:29 AM | link

    fake package

    https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2744512/novichok-could-have-caused-mass-casualties-in-salisbury/

    fake bottle w dispenser

    http://www.basenotes.net/threads/457235-Your-Premier-Jour-by-Nina-Ricci-is-safe

    50 ml real ex., click on for big

    https://www.arukereso.hu/parfum-c3262/nina-ricci/premier-jour-edp-50ml-p42197160/

    33 ml real

    https://www.cdiscount.com/Product/Zoom/auc2009510812293/0.html

    [Feb 26, 2019] As for fake news, France, for example, adopted a law that filters the media space the way it wants. The Russian media Russia Today and Sputnik are political outcasts.

    Notable quotes:
    "... When we suggest turning to universally approved OSCE documents that reject as unacceptable any obstacles standing in the way of the public or journalists getting access to information, we are told that this was the case in 1990 and should remain there. ..."
    "... It wasn't us that bombed Libya and turned it into a "black hole." It still remains such and through it bandits, terrorists and arms traffickers travel to the Sahara-Sahel zone whereas migrants are heading to the north. Therefore, we leave it up to them to deal with those who are responsible for this. ..."
    "... Apparently, the international legal space is being fragmented – the US is doing this all along the way while the EU is isolating itself when it comes to a number of issues. The processes that are taking place in Eurasia may also be interpreted as isolation at some point but in reality we want to launch something that will become all-embracing. ..."
    "... Maybe, there is a rational idea in everything that is taking place. As Vladimir Lenin used to say, "before uniting it is necessary resolutely to draw lines of demarcation." Maybe, we should be fragmented to understand who the main global players are. ..."
    Feb 26, 2019 | www.mid.ru

    Question:

    We are now saying that the world is changing and the interdependence of states is growing. Do you think international regulation, for instance, in communications, can be radically improved in perspective? Because of fake news navigation in the sea of information leaves much to be desired. Is it possible to regulate a host of other things related to migration flows and capital management? Is it possible to raise international regulation to a new level or is this altogether impossible? Will countries continue to strike unstable alliances for shorter or longer periods of time or are there grounds to hope for an improvement of this situation?

    Sergey Lavrov:

    This question is fairly controversial. In brief, currently this regulation that should be ideally based on universal principles of international law is being replaced with narrowly interpreted rules elaborated in a narrow circle of states.

    As for fake news, France, for example, adopted a law that filters the media space the way it wants. The Russian media Russia Today and Sputnik are political outcasts. They are not allowed to visit the Elysee Palace or attend any special events. When we address French officials in this context, they tell us that everything is correct because in their view these are propaganda instruments rather than news agencies. This is what regulation is all about.

    When we suggest turning to universally approved OSCE documents that reject as unacceptable any obstacles standing in the way of the public or journalists getting access to information, we are told that this was the case in 1990 and should remain there.

    There are other examples as well. When France failed to use the OPCW exclusively for passing remotely a verdict on who is guilty and who is not in violation of all conceivable norms of the Chemical Weapons Convention, it took the initiative to establish an International Partnership against Impunity for the Use of Chemical Weapons that was not linked with any international structures. A few months later the EU made a decision to the effect that if the new structure reveals violators, Brussels will impose sanctions on them. This is, of course, regulation but this regulation is based on the narrow interpretation of broad interests by an individual group of countries.

    As for the internet, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has been talking for years, if not decades, about the way the internet should function so as to not offend anyone. No results have been produced and there will not be any in the foreseeable future for obvious-to-all reasons. I have practically no doubts about this. Likewise, for the same reason virtually not a single Western country supported our proposals that were endorsed by the UN General Assembly at the onset of work on the rules of responsible conduct in cyberspace.

    You mentioned migration. There is the Global Compact for Migration that was adopted last year. The West was fighting for it to include a provision on the equal and divided responsibility for the migration crisis. Russia and other countries objected. It wasn't us that bombed Libya and turned it into a "black hole." It still remains such and through it bandits, terrorists and arms traffickers travel to the Sahara-Sahel zone whereas migrants are heading to the north. Therefore, we leave it up to them to deal with those who are responsible for this.

    We are now talking about the formation of the multipolar international order. Its development was preceded by a whole historical era.

    Apparently, the international legal space is being fragmented – the US is doing this all along the way while the EU is isolating itself when it comes to a number of issues. The processes that are taking place in Eurasia may also be interpreted as isolation at some point but in reality we want to launch something that will become all-embracing.

    Maybe, there is a rational idea in everything that is taking place. As Vladimir Lenin used to say, "before uniting it is necessary resolutely to draw lines of demarcation." Maybe, we should be fragmented to understand who the main global players are.

    Not those that established the UN in 1945 but those that are playing today, in the middle of the 21 st century. Only after this we should think what to do next, for instance, with the UN. It is absolutely clear that the UN Security Council requires a reform because the world's developing regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America are not properly represented in it. Today, up to one third of the UN Security Council is represented by EU countries. I don't think that if more countries from the historical West are added to this structure, it will gain the diversity we want to see in it.

    [Feb 23, 2019] Guardian neoliberal presstitutes: Trump's bid to upend Russia inquiry unprecedented, experts say

    Feb 23, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    pretzelattack , Feb 22, 2019 9:58:52 AM | link

    for the first time in weeks (months?) i don't see anything about mueller or russia on the featured articles at the guardian. are they implicitly going to admit it was all bullshit, without ever acknowledging it? (by "they" i mean the msm).
    Ghost Ship , Feb 22, 2019 1:06:41 PM | link
    >>>>: pretzelattack | Feb 22, 2019 9:58:52 AM | 3
    for the first time in weeks (months?) i don't see anything about mueller or russia on the featured articles at the guardian

    You spoke too soon :

    'Even Nixon wasn't like him': Trump's bid to upend Russia inquiry unprecedented, experts say

    And now they've gone "live" about Manafort .

    One last hurrah, one Hail Mary before Mueller says there was no provable collusion.

    [Feb 22, 2019] Neo-McCarthyism is used to defend the US imperial policies. Branding dissidents as Russian stooges is a loophole that allow to suppress dissident opinions

    Highly recommended!
    Unfortunately the article does not mention the term McCarthyism, which is fully applicable. Also the role of CNN of the voice of Clinton wing of Democratic Party presuppose the attitudes the Caitlin is complaining about. This is a party MSM masquerading as impendent new outlet. This are neoliberal presstitutes and warmongers, for the lack of stronger worlds.
    Also correlation with RT policies does undermine the US foreign policy. We need only decide whether this is a good or bad thing and whether the US imperial policies are good for American people, or only for large transnational corporations. I think Tucker Carlson also undermines the US foreign policy and as such you can find a correlation between his positions and RT position. Now what ?
    Money quote: "the possibility of an American opposing US warmongering and the political establishment which drives it without being ordered to by a rubles-dispensing FSB officer was a completely alien idea to them."
    Yes, they actually care only in the "politically correct" reason for suppression. So the only new moment is blatant hypocrisy. But that's how all societies work and in this sense there is nothing special in the fact that dissident voices are suppressed. In middle ages heretics were burned at the stake.
    The situation is interesting because neoliberalism is definitely on the decline and as such represent now (unlike say 10 year ago) and rich target of attack and as the USA support it neoliberal empire such attacks usually attack the US foreign policy. The real question is what alternative the particular outlet proposes -- the return to the New Deal Capitalism in some form or shape, or new socialist experiment is some form of shape.
    Notable quotes:
    "... CNN knew that Facebook was going to be suspending the pages of her company Maffick Media before she did, suggesting a creepy degree of coordination between the two massive outlets to silence an alternative media platform. ..."
    "... the US government has found a legal loophole to suppress speech, in this case speech that is critical of destructive US government policies around the world. ..."
    "... Thirdly, and in my opinion weirdest of all, the article goes to great lengths to make the fact that a dissident media outlet supports the same foreign policy positions as Russia look like something strange and nefarious, instead of the normal and obvious thing that it is. ..."
    "... the possibility of an American opposing US warmongering and the political establishment which drives it without being ordered to by a rubles-dispensing FSB officer was a completely alien idea to them. ..."
    "... Nimmo said the tone of Maffick's pages is 'broadly anti-US and anti-corporate. That's strikingly similar to RT's output. Maffick may technically be independent, but their tone certainly matches the broader Kremlin family.' ..."
    "... This is a truly obnoxious mind virus we're seeing the imperial narrative controllers pushing more and more aggressively into mainstream consciousness today : that anyone who opposes the beltway consensus on western interventionism is not simply an individual with a conscience who is thinking critically for themselves, but is actually "boosting the Kremlin narrative" ..."
    "... Don't even subscribe to an anti-establishment subreddit. Those things are all Russian. Listen to Big Brother instead. Big Brother will protect you from their filthy Russian lies. ..."
    "... "If CNN would like to hire me to present facts against destructive US wars and corporate ownership of our political system, I'll gladly accept," Khalek told me when asked for comment ..."
    "... Russian media influence is not their actual target. Their actual target is leftist, antiwar and anti-establishment voices. That's what they're really trying to eliminate. ..."
    "... It doesn't take any amount of sympathy for Russia to see that the unipolar empire is toxic for humanity, and most westerners who oppose that toxicity have no particular feelings about Russia any more than they have about Turkey or the Philippines ..."
    Feb 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Originally from: Caitlin Johnstone Exposes "The Truly Obnoxious Mind Virus" Of Imperial Narrative Controllers

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    In an extremely weird article titled " Russia is backing a viral video company aimed at American millennials ", CNN reports that Facebook has suspended popular dissident media outlet "In The Now" and its allied pages for failing to publicly "disclose" its financial ties to a subsidiary of RT.

    According to CNN, such disclosures are not and have never been an actual part of Facebook's official policy, but Facebook has made the exceptional precondition of public disclosure of financial ties in order for In The Now to return to its platform.

    I say the article is extremely weird for a number of reasons.

    Firstly , according to In The Now CEO Anissa Naouai, CNN knew that Facebook was going to be suspending the pages of her company Maffick Media before she did, suggesting a creepy degree of coordination between the two massive outlets to silence an alternative media platform.

    Secondly, the article reports that CNN found out about Maffick's financial ties thanks to a tip-off from the German Marshall Fund, a narrative control firm which receives funding from the US government. In The Now 's Rania Khalek has described this tactic as "a case where the US government has found a legal loophole to suppress speech, in this case speech that is critical of destructive US government policies around the world."

    Thirdly, and in my opinion weirdest of all, the article goes to great lengths to make the fact that a dissident media outlet supports the same foreign policy positions as Russia look like something strange and nefarious, instead of the normal and obvious thing that it is.

    The article repeatedly mentions the fact that all the people working for In The Now "claim" to be editorially independent as opposed to being told what to report by Kremlin officials, a notion which Khalek says was met with extreme skepticism when she was interviewed for the piece by CNN. As though the possibility of an American opposing US warmongering and the political establishment which drives it without being ordered to by a rubles-dispensing FSB officer was a completely alien idea to them.

    Check out the following excerpt, for example of this bizarre attitude:

    "Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow for information defense at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, told CNN that while Russian state-backed outlets claim to be editorially independent, 'they routinely boost Kremlin narratives, especially those which portray the West negatively.'

    "Nimmo said the tone of Maffick's pages is 'broadly anti-US and anti-corporate. That's strikingly similar to RT's output. Maffick may technically be independent, but their tone certainly matches the broader Kremlin family.' "

    This is a truly obnoxious mind virus we're seeing the imperial narrative controllers pushing more and more aggressively into mainstream consciousness today : that anyone who opposes the beltway consensus on western interventionism is not simply an individual with a conscience who is thinking critically for themselves, but is actually "boosting the Kremlin narrative". If you say it in an assertive and authoritative tone like Mr Nimmo does, it can sound like a perfectly reasonable position if you don't think about it too hard. If you really look at it directly, though, what these manipulators are actually saying is "Russia opposes western interventionism, therefore anyone who opposes western interventionism is basically Russian."

    Which is of course a total non-argument. You don't get to just say "Russia bad" for two years to get everyone riled up into a state of xenophobic hysteria and then say "That's Russian!" at anything you don't like. That's not a thing. More to the point, though, there is no causal relationship between the fact that Russia opposes western interventionism and the fact that many westerners do.

    As we discussed recently , there will necessarily be inadvertent agreement between Russia and westerners who oppose western interventionism, because Russia, like so many other sovereign nations, opposes western interventionism. If you discover that an American who opposes US warmongering and establishment politics is saying the same things as RT, that doesn't mean you've discovered a shocking conspiracy between western dissidents and the Russian government, it means people who oppose the same things oppose the same things.

    We're seeing this absurd gibberish spouted over and over again by the mainstream media now. The other day the delightful pro-Sanders subreddit WayOfTheBern was smeared as a Russian operation by the Washington Times, not because the Washington Times had any evidence anywhere supporting that claim, but because the subreddit's members are hostile to Democratic presidential hopefuls other than Sanders, and because its posts "consistently support positions that would be amenable to the Kremlin." All this means is that the subreddit is full of people who support Bernie Sanders and oppose US government malfeasance, yet an entire article was published in a mainstream outlet treating this as something dangerous and suspicious.

    If you really listen to what the CNNs and Ben Nimmos and Washington Timeses are actually trying to tell you, what they're saying is that it's not okay for anyone to oppose any part of the unipolar world order or the establishment which runs it . Never ever, under any circumstances. Don't work for a media outlet that's funded by the Russian government even though no mainstream outlets will ever platform you. Don't even subscribe to an anti-establishment subreddit. Those things are all Russian. Listen to Big Brother instead. Big Brother will protect you from their filthy Russian lies.

    "If CNN would like to hire me to present facts against destructive US wars and corporate ownership of our political system, I'll gladly accept," Khalek told me when asked for comment.

    "But the corporate media doesn't allow antiwar voices a platform. In The Now does. I've worked for dozens of different outlets, from Vice to Al Jazeera to RT, and my message has always been the same: leftist, antiwar and pro justice and equality. People should be asking why US mainstream media outlets that claim to be free and independent refuse to air critical and adversarial voices like mine."

    Why indeed? Actually, if CNN is so worried about Russian media influence in America, all they'd have to do is put on a few shows featuring leftist, antiwar and pro-justice voices and that would be the end of it. They could easily out-spend RT by a massive margin, buy up all the talent like Khalek, Lee Camp and Chris Hedges, put on a sleek, high-budget show and steal RT America's audience, killing it dead and drawing all anti-establishment energy to their material.

    But they don't. They don't, and they never will. Because Russian media influence is not their actual target. Their actual target is leftist, antiwar and anti-establishment voices. That's what they're really trying to eliminate.

    So yes, Moscow will of course elevate some western voices who oppose the power establishment that is trying to undermine and subvert Russia. Those voices will not require any instruction to speak out against that establishment, since that's what they'd be doing anyway and they're just grateful to finally have a platform upon which to speak. And it is good that they're getting a platform to speak. If western power structures have a problem with it, they should stop universally refusing to platform anyone who opposes the status quo that is destroying nations abroad and squeezing the life out of citizens at home.

    It doesn't take any amount of sympathy for Russia to see that the unipolar empire is toxic for humanity, and most westerners who oppose that toxicity have no particular feelings about Russia any more than they have about Turkey or the Philippines. Sometimes Russia will come in and give them a platform in the void that has been left by the mainstream outlets which are doing everything they can to silence them. So what? The alternative is all dissident voices being silenced. The fact that Russia prevents a few of them from being silenced is not the problem. The problem is that they are being silenced at all.

    * * *

    Thanks for reading! My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , purchasing some of my sweet merchandise , buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone , or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    [Feb 22, 2019] Adam Schiff met with Glen Simpson in Aspen and should really recluse himself

    Notable quotes:
    "... Adam Schiff should really recuse himself from any further investigations from the House. He met with Glen Simpson in Aspen and needs to answer for that. But let's talk about Paul Manafort, longtime friend and partner of Podesta, knew Stefan Halper for years, was he the sacrificial lamb. ..."
    Feb 22, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    TWTRShadowBanned , 15 minutes ago link

    Adam Schiff should really recuse himself from any further investigations from the House. He met with Glen Simpson in Aspen and needs to answer for that. But let's talk about Paul Manafort, longtime friend and partner of Podesta, knew Stefan Halper for years, was he the sacrificial lamb.

    Co-hen. Officers raided by the Mueller team (illegal), his tax record leaked to Stormy Daniel's attorney Michael Avenetti, now being charged with the leak, and pleads guilty to Campaign Fraud, even though he could NOT be charged with campaign fraud.

    Andrew McCabe. Either this guy is the dumbest smart person in history or there's some method behind his recent confessions for sedition, leaking classified information about his Gang of Eight meetings, and believing that the 25th amendment coup would even work out constitutionally...? He's going down in flames and this guy started the whole investigation into trump for obstruction, even though firing Comey was Rosenstein's idea. More to come.

    DECLASSIFICATION of all the FISA docs, emails and text for an illegal and politically driven investigation, coup attempt, is coming before the wind from the Mueller probe hits the edge of Barr's desk.

    In conclusion, the House can start all the investigations they want, but it too late. Everything we know about all these illicit uses of government powers to bring down a sitting president is KNOWN by the investigators, who are now Trump allies. Everything they try at this point moving forward is just more annoying to the public that wants the truth to come out, and the releases about to happen will turn the table on the media once it becomes clear they've been complicit in a modern day coup d'tat. In other words, shits about to hit the fan for the deep state of nonsense the American public has been asked to buy with their attention. AND, there one more surprise coming that will give it sand.

    Traitors Justice.

    joego1

    Adam **** is protecting all of his A list Hollywood pedo buddies from what he knows is coming next. Adam is going to Satan's parties I'm sure. Must be lots of videos used as blackmail available.

    DaBard51

    Election interference? There's the case of Seth Rich...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich

    Francis Marx

    Amazing how so many people can give blessing to such immorality. They really have to realize it is a symptom of a damned soul. Change please. I'm sure your children don't want you to go to hell.


    [Feb 22, 2019] Adam Schiff met with Glen Simpson in Aspen and should really recluse himself

    Notable quotes:
    "... Adam Schiff should really recuse himself from any further investigations from the House. He met with Glen Simpson in Aspen and needs to answer for that. But let's talk about Paul Manafort, longtime friend and partner of Podesta, knew Stefan Halper for years, was he the sacrificial lamb. ..."
    Feb 22, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    TWTRShadowBanned , 15 minutes ago link

    Adam Schiff should really recuse himself from any further investigations from the House. He met with Glen Simpson in Aspen and needs to answer for that. But let's talk about Paul Manafort, longtime friend and partner of Podesta, knew Stefan Halper for years, was he the sacrificial lamb.

    Co-hen. Officers raided by the Mueller team (illegal), his tax record leaked to Stormy Daniel's attorney Michael Avenetti, now being charged with the leak, and pleads guilty to Campaign Fraud, even though he could NOT be charged with campaign fraud.

    Andrew McCabe. Either this guy is the dumbest smart person in history or there's some method behind his recent confessions for sedition, leaking classified information about his Gang of Eight meetings, and believing that the 25th amendment coup would even work out constitutionally...? He's going down in flames and this guy started the whole investigation into trump for obstruction, even though firing Comey was Rosenstein's idea. More to come.

    DECLASSIFICATION of all the FISA docs, emails and text for an illegal and politically driven investigation, coup attempt, is coming before the wind from the Mueller probe hits the edge of Barr's desk.

    In conclusion, the House can start all the investigations they want, but it too late. Everything we know about all these illicit uses of government powers to bring down a sitting president is KNOWN by the investigators, who are now Trump allies. Everything they try at this point moving forward is just more annoying to the public that wants the truth to come out, and the releases about to happen will turn the table on the media once it becomes clear they've been complicit in a modern day coup d'tat. In other words, shits about to hit the fan for the deep state of nonsense the American public has been asked to buy with their attention. AND, there one more surprise coming that will give it sand.

    Traitors Justice.

    joego1

    Adam **** is protecting all of his A list Hollywood pedo buddies from what he knows is coming next. Adam is going to Satan's parties I'm sure. Must be lots of videos used as blackmail available.

    DaBard51

    Election interference? There's the case of Seth Rich...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich

    Francis Marx

    Amazing how so many people can give blessing to such immorality. They really have to realize it is a symptom of a damned soul. Change please. I'm sure your children don't want you to go to hell.


    [Feb 22, 2019] FBI Official Admits To Infiltrating Trump Campaign - Just Don't Call It Spying

    Notable quotes:
    "... Halper is reportedly a longtime CIA and FBI informant, and has been involved in US politics at the highest levels for decades, becoming George H.W. Bush's National Director for Policy Development during his presidential campaign. After Bush lost to Reagan, Halper worked as Reagan's Deputy Assistant Secretary of State - where he served under three different Secretaries . ..."
    "... He then became a senior advisor to the Department of Defense and DOJ between 1984 and 2001. Halper's former father-in-law was Ray Cline, former Deputy Director of the CIA . He also allegedly spied on the Carter administration - collecting information on foreign policy (an account disputed by Ray Cline). ..."
    Feb 22, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
    A top FBI official admitted to Congressional investigators last year that the agency had contacts within the Trump campaign as part of operation "Crossfire Hurricane," which sounds a lot like FBI "informant" Stefan Halper - a former Oxford University professor who was paid over $1 million by the Obama Department of Defense between 2012 and 2018, with nearly half of it surrounding the 2016 US election.

    According to portions of transcripts published on Tuesday by the Epoch Times of a Aug. 31, 2018 deposition by Trisha Anderson, the FBI relied on sources who "already had campaign contacts" in order to surveil the Trump team.

    "To my knowledge, the FBI did not place anybody within a campaign but, rather, relied upon its network of sources, some of whom already had campaign contacts, including the source that has been discussed in the media at some length beyond Christopher Steele ," said Anderson - who was the #2 attorney at the FBI's Office of General Counsel, and had extensive involvement with the Trump counterintelligence investigation.

    Halper is reportedly a longtime CIA and FBI informant, and has been involved in US politics at the highest levels for decades, becoming George H.W. Bush's National Director for Policy Development during his presidential campaign. After Bush lost to Reagan, Halper worked as Reagan's Deputy Assistant Secretary of State - where he served under three different Secretaries .

    He then became a senior advisor to the Department of Defense and DOJ between 1984 and 2001. Halper's former father-in-law was Ray Cline, former Deputy Director of the CIA . He also allegedly spied on the Carter administration - collecting information on foreign policy (an account disputed by Ray Cline).

    Halper's involvement in surveilling the Trump campaign was exposed by the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross, who reported that the 74-year-old spook was enlisted by the FBI to befriend and spy on three members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 US election .

    Halper received a DoD contract from the Obama administration for $411,575 - made in two payments, and had a start date of September 26, 2016 - three days after a September 23 Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff about Trump aide Carter Page, which used information fed to Isikoff by "pissgate" dossier creator Christopher Steele . The FBI would use the Yahoo! article along with the unverified "pissgate" dossier as supporting evidence in an FISA warrant application for Page. Halper approached Page during an election-themed conference at Cambridge on July 11, 2016, six weeks after the September 26 DoD award start date. The two would stay in contact for the next 14 months, frequently meeting and exchanging emails .

    He said that he first encountered the informant during a conference in mid-July of 2016 and that they stayed in touch. The two later met several times in the Washington area. Mr. Page said their interactions were benign. - New York Times

    And as the Daily Caller reports, Halper used a decades-old association with Paul Manafort to break the ice with Page.

    In September 2016, the FBI would send Halper to further probe Trump aide George Papadopoulos on an allegation he made that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. According to Papadopoulos in an interview with Dan Bongino, Halper angrily accused him of working with Russia before storming out of a meeting.

    Halper essentially began interrogating Papadopoulos, saying that it's "obviously in your interest to be working with the Russians" and to "hack emails." " You're complicit with Russia in this, isn't that right George " Halper told him. Halper also inquired about Hillary's hacked emails, insinuating that Papadopoulos possessed them. Papadopoulos denied knowing anything about this and asked to be left alone. - Bongino.com

    https://youtu.be/45m5DP1xfRg

    Just don't call Halper a spy...

    hugin-o-munin , 1 hour ago link

    All of these blatant crimes done by the Democrat cheerleading swamp creatures NEVER get investigated and I am starting to wonder what the hell Trump is doing. Is he stupid or is all of this just a charade and they are all on the same team. How could this creep Rod Rosenstein have been left at his position until this time? It makes no sense to me. Sure all of these rodents have control files on each other but come on how scared are they? It's ridiculous. If Trump soon gets impeached I'll hold him responsible himself for not doing anything.

    schroedingersrat , 59 minutes ago link

    They are all on the same team. Trump was never your saviour. He was designed to be a distraction so the 0.01% that own both parties can rape you some more.

    hugin-o-munin , 57 minutes ago link

    Correct. It's all a big lie and show for the uninformed masses. God help these liars when all the Qanon followers wake up to this truth. All this 'tremendous winning' bs will boomerang back big time.

    donkey_shot , 5 hours ago link

    The above Halper story has been circulating for about a year now, so this isn`t actually big news. As for the FBI and the CIA subverting just about every political campaign or social movement in existence: Well, duh. The deep state and its satanic minions will remain in control as long as such "intelligence" and State Security agencies (the FBI is essentially nothing but a US version of the SS) are allowed to exist.

    youshallnotkill , 5 hours ago link

    Not a word on here on the breaking news in the Epstein case.

    https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5745926-Epstein-Order.html

    Typical.

    punchasocialist , 1 hour ago link

    Alex Acosta works out an illegal deal for Epstein = Trump gives Acosta a cabinet position = Trump is a protector of Pedo protectors = Trump doesn't give 2 shits about Pedos

    [Feb 22, 2019] Sic Semper Tyrannis Analytic piece on staged chemical attacks

    Feb 22, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    Analytic piece on staged chemical attacks " ... weaponized disinformation campaigns, staged videos and fake news are common approaches used by the US military and special services to promote their own agenda around the world. The US was actively using these tools during its intervention in Iraq and after it.

    According to the later revelations, the employed programs were varying from placing Pentagon-provided articles in Iraqi newspapers as "unbiased news" to producing footage, which were made to look as if they had been "created by Arabic TV," and CDs with fake al-Qaeda videos, which then distributed through various channels.

    The employed propaganda approaches are constantly evolving. Therefore, propaganda coverage of the conflict in Syria has some differences with those which were observed in Iraq. Now, mainstream media, the Pentagon, the intelligence services and diplomats are actively using Hollywood-style approaches. This style of the coverage is based on providing catchy, even if horrible, pictures and videos influencing the emotions of the audience rather than convincing it with logical conclusions.

    Just like with Hollywood movies, the mainstream news has increasingly been turning away from the logical narration of stories with realistic motivations to emotional judgements based on anonymous sources, non-verified images, pocket citizen journalists and even open speculation. The content developed within the framework of this approach is usually based on the results of social and psychological research. This allows results to be maximised by the targetted development of content and appropriate segmentation of the audience. An interesting and successful example of this audience reaction modelling can be seen in the mainstream media coverage of the Salisbury incident, which gave rise to large-scale hysteria in Western countries about Russian spies." SF

    -------------

    Well, pilgrims, you heard it first here and often over the last years. This piece speaks for itself. pl

    https://southfront.org/staged-chemical-attack-videos-and-other-trends-in-modern-propaganda/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog

    Fred , 5 hours ago

    "mainstream news... to emotional judgements based on anonymous sources, non-verified images, pocket citizen journalists and even open speculation. " That fits the latest news events from the Right to Life March or the Jussie Smollett hate hoax.

    "weaponized disinformation campaigns" I was thinking of writing something along the lines of "Where have all the good communists gone". It sure seems their agitprop tactics are alive and well.

    [Feb 21, 2019] Russiagate In Flames No Evidence Of Collusion, New Findings Challenge DNC Hack Narrative

    Feb 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Russiagate In Flames: No Evidence Of Collusion, New Findings Challenge DNC Hack Narrative

    by Tyler Durden Wed, 02/20/2019 - 18:50 791 SHARES

    Authored by Elizabeth Lea Vos via Disobedient Media ,

    In the last few weeks, we have witnessed two pillars of the Russiagate narrative continue to disintegrate and erode. First, we heard that a bipartisan inquiry by the Senate Intelligence Committee admitted that they have yet to find evidence indicating that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia in the run-up to the 2016 US Presidential election. Secondly, new light was shed on the process by which the DNC Emails published by WikiLeaks may have been sourced, thanks to two reports: one authored by former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney and former CIA analyst Larry Johnson, with the other work penned by Disobedient Media's Adam Carter.

    Of course, this does not entail that the establishment-backed media will stop promoting the neo-McCarthyist insanity that has held legacy press audiences captive for the last two and a half years.

    No Evidence For Trump-Russia Collusion

    A recent report from NBC related an admission from both Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, indicating that they have discovered no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion to date. NBC's report reads in part:

    "The Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into the 2016 election has uncovered no direct evidence of the Trump campaign conspiring with Russia, Democrats and Republicans on the committee told NBC News. But different parties' investigators in the probe, which is winding down, disagree over the implications of a pattern of contacts between Trump associates and Russians."

    Let's review that again: the only thing the Democrats and Republicans disagree on is the significance of an alleged "Pattern of contacts between Trump associates and Russians."

    Note: the "pattern" here does not specify that the "Russians" in question were associated in any sense with the Russian government. One should not have to stress the significance of differentiating between a nationality versus affiliation with the Kremlin. Meanwhile, the characterization of "Trump associates" is entirely vague.

    To conclude from such sentiments that anyone who so much as has "contacts" with "Russians" (again, not the same thing as contacts with proxies or employees of the Russian state) must be working at the behest of Putin would represent an intense strain of xenophobia, if not outright racism.

    Independent journalist and comedian Jimmy Dore also commented on NBC's report, saying: "For two and a half years, [Rachel Maddow] has been an out-of-her-mind conspiracy theorist. She said that Russia is going to freeze you when it gets cold... These people are the biggest conspiracy liars in the world."

    One does not have to rely on the statements of the Senate Intelligence Committee to understand that no shred of evidence of Trump-Russia collusion has yet been shown to the public. Last month, The Nation's Aaron Mate wrote:

    "Not a single Trump official has been accused of colluding with the Russian government or even of committing any crimes during the 2016 campaign. As The New York Times recently noted, "no public evidence has emerged showing that [Trump's] campaign conspired with Russia."

    In the wake of the latest news regarding such lack of evidence, Mate wrote via Twitter :

    The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald also chimed in on NBC's report, writing via Twitter: "When even NBC, [Ken Dilanian] and Democrats (excuse the redundancy) are admitting this so clearly in the first paragraph of their article, it's time for people to start facing some facts about what they've been telling people."

    Of course, many have long pointed to evidence countering the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, expecting such contrary evidence to become the " death of Russiagate. " Unfortunately for the sake of truth and sanity, it seems that this writer's opinion on the immortality of Russiagate is going to continue to prove true, as long as the saga serves the establishment's need for deflection from real election interference and other pressing domestic issues.

    As this author opined last year :

    "Standing on the shoulders of this methodical evidence, it seems at this point that no amount of contrary evidence, exposure or implosion will ultimately kill the undead Russiagate monster. If that were possible, the Thing would have been put irrevocably into the ground over a year ago. Or six months ago. Or a few weeks ago."

    Russian Hacking Narrative Implodes

    The Russian hacking aspect of the scandal was also severely discredited in recent days, in the wake of two new reports . One article was authored by Disobedient Media's Adam Carter, with a separate piece published by Bill Binney and Larry Johnson . Binney is a former NSA Technical Director; Johnson an ex-CIA analyst. Both are active members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

    The two articles discussed revelations arising from studies of the DNC Emails released by WikiLeaks in 2016. We remind our readers that, while Adam Carter, Disobedient Media, The Forensicator, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Stephen McIntyre, and others have regularly reported regarding documents published by the Guccifer 2.0 persona, the latest pieces focus instead on the DNC Emails as published days before the DNC convention.

    Though this writer will not attempt to present every aspect or technical detail contained in the articles, we will endeavor to make our readers aware of the essential points which Carter , Binney, and Johnson have raised.

    Carter's work suggests that the DNC Emails were originally accessed via a USB thumb drive or similar device, concluding: "The evidence strongly suggests that the first three batches of DNC emails were transferred via a USB storage device at some stage between acquisition and then subsequently being published by WikiLeaks."

    As noted by Carter, such a scenario aligns with allegations made by former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, who claimed that he was the recipient of the files via an intermediary rather than the original source. Carter adds: "However, transfer speeds observed for the batches with last-modified dates matching the dates of acquisition indicate that they were transferred at approximately 3 megabits/second, a lot slower than we would expect if it were a local or LAN transfer, so the transfer we're looking at likely involved a remote transfer at some point between acquisition and delivery ."

    Carter continued: "... It seems likely that the original emails were copied soon after acquisition... The (hypothetical) existence of an intermediary doesn't tell us anything about the individual (or individuals) who originally acquired the emails. Thus, this scenario does not necessarily rule out the possibility of an insider acquiring the emails. If we contemplate the intermediate use of cloud storage, this could have been used as a method to decouple the acquisition of the emails from delivery to another party that subsequently delivered them to Wikileaks."

    The article by Binney and Johnson also discusses the relevance of indications that the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks were likely accessed via a storage device, rather than leaked. They state in part:

    "An examination of the Wikileaks DNC files do not support the claim that the emails were obtained via spearphishing. Instead, the evidence clearly shows that the emails posted on the Wikileaks site were copied onto an electronic media, such as a CD-ROM or thumb-drive before they were posted at Wikileaks... We believe that Special Counsel Robert Mueller faces major embarrassment if he decides to pursue the indictment he filed--which accuses 12 Russian GRU military personnel and an entity identified as, Guccifer 2.0, for the DNC hack -- because the available forensic evidence indicates the emails were copied onto a storage device."

    Binney and Johnson conclude: "Taken together, these disparate data points combine to paint a picture that exonerates alleged Russian hackers and implicates persons within our law enforcement and IC taking part in a campaign of misinformation, deceit and incompetence. It is not a pretty picture."

    The Real Cost Of Russiagate

    Though Russiagate may be summed up as a never-ending theatrical performance designed to hold attention rather than prove itself, that ineffability does not mean that the saga has had no tangible effects in the real world. Regardless of what one makes of the legitimacy of Russiagate or any one of its sub-narratives, we can all agree that it has wreaked havoc directly and indirectly on many fronts.

    Journalist and award-winning author Patrick Lawrence wrote a ground-breaking article with The Nation in August of 2017, covering a Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) memorandum to President Trump. The memo, and Lawrence's article, indicated that the Guccifer 2.0 persona had published documents that were likely accessed locally, rather than hacked remotely.

    The repercussions for Lawrence - professional, financial, personal - continued for many months. In an interview, Lawrence told Disobedient Media: "My working principle from the first is that disagreements and other such matters internal to a publication - any publication - shouldn't be aired outside the newsroom door. When I was trained, you'd be summarily fired if you went public with such a stunt. I thought this at the time my article came out, and on that same principle, I won't comment now." Lawrence concluded: "I should add I have no reason to retract a single syllable of what I wrote."

    A hit-piece authored last year by Duncan Campbell saw the doxxing of Disobedient Media's Adam Carter, putting his livelihood in jeopardy and conflating anonymity with wrongdoing, among other things. Campbell's text received much criticism from this outlet and others for its disastrously inaccurate depiction of the opinion of Bill Binney and other VIPS members.

    NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake was also quoted in the piece , comparing CIA veteran and VIPS co-founder Ray McGovern with George W. Bush's politicization of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq War.

    Most readers do not require the reminder that McGovern and other members of VIPS were strongly opposed to the faulty intelligence used by the Bush administration as a pretext for the 2003 war in Iraq. This history makes Drake's comparison particularly odious and is additionally damaging because like McGovern, Drake is a respected member of VIPS. Disobedient Media reached out to Drake for comment on this point and others, to which we received no reply by the time of publication.

    McGovern spoke with Disobedient Media, saying:

    " I knew Tom Drake to be a straight shooter, an impression strengthened by our teamwork in Moscow presenting Ed Snowden with the Sam Adams integrity award that Tom himself had won two years before. I normally cut Tom some slack, in view of all he has been through. But when he belatedly took issue with the key VIPS memo of July 24, 2017 on "Russian hacking," and made claims unsupported by evidence (claims strongly challenged by his fellow NSA "alumni" in VIPS), I, as chair of that memo, had to call him out of order. He reacted poorly and seems now to be in for further embarrassment."

    Disobedient Media also spoke with Bill Binney, who told this author:

    "Tom has been a friend of mine for about 20 years. During that time he has demonstrated sound analytic judgment on technical issues with the exception of one. That is the issue of Russiagate and association with the Trump campaign and administration. In this case, I believe he has allowed himself to be diverted by the rather large hoard of emotionally motivated who are intent on associating the Russians with Trump to form the basis for impeachment. They have and continue to convict Trump based on statements made by large numbers of people - as if that were proof of anything. So, on this issue, a good chunk of the US population have lost their objectivity and instead of demanding proof based on observable facts (available to be inspected) they accept assertions generated by emotion. The true test will be in a court of law where all these assertions would be treated as hearsay and inadmissible as none are first-hand observers."

    Disobedient Media has been separately smeared by entities like Media Bias Fact Check , whose report appraising this outlet laughably alleged that we have been a "defender" of the Guccifer 2.0 persona. While such an absurd statement would carry no weight with even the most cursory of Disobedient Media's readers, it is nonetheless noteworthy in that it specifically uses a false neo-McCarthyist narrative to attempt to assassinate the credibility of this outlet.

    When asked about the real-world implications of Russiagate thus far, Ray McGovern - who, as we remind our readers, is a former CIA analyst with decades of experience during the cold war period - expressed deep concern, saying:

    "I worry about what conclusions President Putin may draw from attempts to demonize him and to make Russia a pariah. Inflammatory rhetoric can be prelude to war. Worse still, the temperament and hubris of President Trump's advisers are a far cry from the sage, sober advice Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson, for example, gave President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Shattered, at this point, is any residual hope Putin may have harbored that Trump would be able to improve ties with Russia. Trump is not his own man. Putin, thus, must prepare for the worst. This is the most serious damage from the Russia-gate narrative so far."

    Patrick Lawrence also appraised the damage done by Russiagate in a piece published via Consortium News, writing: "Numerous sets of sanctions against Russia, individual Russians, and Russian entities have been imposed on the basis of this great conjuring of assumption and presumption."

    As described by McGovern and Lawrence, the tensions raised between two major nuclear powers is perhaps the most important real-world result of over two years of neo-McCarthyist fervor in the US. However, the smearing of members of the independent press and the worsening division amongst VIPS members comprise additional serious damage stemming from a scandal-that-never-was.

    In terms of the larger political picture, Russiagate has been endlessly hyped to deflect from public outrage that rightfully erupted in response to overt election interference by the Democratic Party in the 2016 primary season. It has been used in an attempt to mask the failure of the Democrats and specifically Hillary Clinton as a Presidential candidate.

    As long as the legacy press continues to use Russiagate to gaslight the public from focusing on ongoing domestic election interference, it remains imperative to point out that Russiagate, to date, has no basis whatsoever in fact. For that reason, Disobedient Media will continue to report on the subject as it develops.

    youshallnotkill , 1 hour ago link

    Really have to admire what Burr did there.

    ... they have yet to find evidence indicating that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia in the run-up to the 2016 US Presidential election.

    He was very careful in saying that they did not find direct evidence. Knowing very well that it would be reported like this as the public does not know what this legal technical term means.

    And that is exactly what is needed right now to give Mueller the space he needs. Beautifully played.

    Schroedingers Cat , 2 hours ago link

    Don't you find it suspicious that Russiagate is abruptly winding down. Mueller waits until a week later to issue his non-report when nobody is paying attention. Russiagate is disappearing and the only reason big enough for that is WAR. They want "unity" between the parties so we can all be good patriots and start Iraq V2.0 or WWIII. The last time the parties buried the hatchet like this was before invading Iraq after 911 attacks.

    youshallnotkill , 1 hour ago link

    Don't you find it suspicious that Russiagate is abruptly winding down

    It isn't. It just looks that way.

    youshallnotkill , 2 hours ago link

    ongoing domestic election interference

    Like the election fraud in NC?

    https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article226492265.html

    brane pilot , 3 hours ago link

    The only collusion was between the FBI and a foreign national to create a phony dossier of bald faced lies in an attempt to take down the POTUS and invalidate a free and fair election.

    Somehow, the Leftist media does not think that is newsworthy.

    lowkeyjc , 3 hours ago link

    Seth Rich

    CatInTheHat , 3 hours ago link

    These narratives, like the build up to the Iraq war, have a foreign policy context to them, for which unsuspecting Americans know nothing about

    This war on Russia accelerated under Obama's watch.

    How many RUSSIAGATERS know about Obama/Nuland/McCain regime change in Ukraine that put neonazis on RUSSIAS border?

    How many Russiagaters know that Obama ordered the Ukies to blow up flight MH-17 with 298 people onboard in a false flag attack to justify FRAUDULENT sanctions on Russia?

    How many Russiagaters know that it is dual Israeli Democrats pushing this narrative most? Schumer, SCHIFF, CARDIN, who was responsible for the fraudulent Magnistsky Act, along with fraud Bill Browder, a CIA asset who owes hundreds of millions to the Russian government in back taxes ? There are more dual Israelis involved from Congress too.

    Lastly, how many Russiagaters know anything about foreign policy?

    What a convenient narrative to throw out in blaming Russia for Clinton's loss, but which serves the deep state well that has Russia on it's target list for regime change and balkanizing by a bunch of dual Israeli psychopaths & two whack Christian Zionist extremists (Pompeo, Pence)

    It always comes down to ISRAEL, doesn't it? Russia did the unthinkable in interfering in Greater Israhell! Stopping the US, Saudi Israhelli war on Syria.

    Most Russiagaters can't find Russia on a map

    I do wonder how many Americans really buy this ********

    100 million did not vote in 2016 and my guess is that most Americans don't give one hoot about Russia at all. Busy just trying to survive.

    A couple of years ago, CNN did a poll asking Americans how they see Russia, and most DID NOT care nor think about Russia. The reporter who helped with the poll laughed when asked why CNN continued to go on and on about Russia knowing people didn't care.

    Just laughed. Coming from the same crowd at CNN that called viewers dumbshits and were laughing about that too .I can't recall verbatim what they said but maybe someone here can recall better than I.

    Russiagate is a neocunt war narrative. Russiagate is a smokescreen for Israhelli influence in our government

    Russiagate is a cover-up for many crimes committed by Democrats and the DNC, including but not limited to primary rigging and election fraud and URANIUM ONE in which Mueller himself was involved .

    francis scott falseflag , 1 hour ago link

    foreign policy context

    more important than having a foreign policy context, is their

    "Totalitarianism for Dummies" aspect

    How many RUSSIAGATERS know about Obama/Nuland/McCain regime change

    how many russiagaters don't think there's anything hypocritical about Obama not returning the Peace Prize to the Nobels.

    it is dual Israeli Democrats pushing this narrative most? Schumer, SCHIFF, CARDIN,

    won't they be surprised when a new Israeli Government expects their support for some pro-Russian, anti-US controversy about foreign policy, trade, military, etc. legislation or action?

    can't find Russia on a map

    hyperbole

    I seem to agree with you on most of the important things, except for your ending.

    a smokescreen for Israhelli influence in our government

    I think God named the Jews His Chosen People, but He never mentions what they were chosen for or chosen to do. The point being that if you believe in God, then Jews' self-promoting, self-aggrandizing chosenness is irrefutable evidence of the Existence Of God.

    Not the God of Forgiveness like Christ. But the God of the Cities of the Plain.

    I wonder if Christians can ever accept the fact that the God that Christ became was first God the Creator, who gave mankind its choice between good and evil?

    Good and Evil. The two parts of <ONE GOD>

    Moving and Grooving , 3 hours ago link

    I'm going to see what's being reported in Moscow about this.

    iSage , 4 hours ago link

    More learning for ya

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

    StheNine , 4 hours ago link

    Send the bill for this clown show to the Clintons and Soros.

    East Indian , 4 hours ago link

    This world has indeed come to a fork in the road. If what is common knowledge to one set of people is "discovery" to another set, then they are not even living in the same universe. There are two roads here onwards. Either we eliminate the purveyors of false narratives or we are turning the population into ignorant masses again.

    lurker since 2012 , 4 hours ago link

    Rosenstein Mueller are unconstitutional Brief from Miller in regards to Mueller being duly appointed..........

    "

    1

    STATEMENT OF JURISDICTION

    The district court had subject-matter jurisdiction to enforce a subpoenaissued by the Special Counsel to Appellant to appear before the grand jury on June29, 2018. After denying the motion to quash the subpoena on July 31, 2018, thecourt issued a contempt order on August 10, 2018, but stayed the order pendingappeal. Appellant filed his notice of appeal on August 13, 2018. This Court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1291 to review the final order.

    STATEMENT OF THE ISSUES

    1. Whether Congress, under the Appointments Clause of Article II, § 2, of

    the U.S. Constitution, "established by law" the appointment of a private attorney toserve as a special counsel as an "Officer of the United States."

    2. Whether Special Counse

    l Robert S. Mueller III (the "Special Counsel")was unconstitutionally appointed because he is a "principal officer" under the

    Appointments Clause of Article II, and thus was required to be

    --

    but was not

    --

    appointed by the President with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.

    3. Whether Congress "by Law vest[ed] the Appointment" of the SpecialCounsel as an "inferior Officer []" in "Head of the [Justice] Department[ ]," andthus, under the "Excepting Clause," was unconstitutionally appointed because he

    2

    was required to be

    --

    but was not

    --

    appointed by Attorney General Jeff Sessionsrather than by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.""

    http://nlpc.org/2018/09/12/brief-makes-compelling-case-that-mueller-appointment-is-unconstitutional/

    bh2 , 4 hours ago link

    The War Party (AKA Democrats) do not regard inflaming tensions with a nuclear power abroad if the result is to deliver political power into their own hands at home.

    They are defective psychopaths, dangerous people who should be tried for treason and incarcerated for life as a merciful alternative to hanging in the gallows which they so richly deserve.

    William Dorritt , 4 hours ago link

    Who murdered Seth Rich ?

    The FBI never investigated the server break in, they took the DNCs word for it.

    Moving and Grooving , 3 hours ago link

    That has to be a piece of this. The entire affair had 'Clinton' all over it.

    iSage , 4 hours ago link

    Watch and learn folks

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7Y1g6amvPQ

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OECaqtQWqw

    pparalegal , 4 hours ago link

    Funny that we have not heard a peep from the usual klacking bullhorns Hillary and Obama.

    Yars Revenge , 4 hours ago link

    All the people responsible for Russiagate, politicians, rogue intelligence and the media, should be sent to Gitmo.

    Theyve brought the world to the edge of disaster through nuclear war and deserve to be punished accordingly.

    Lie_Detector , 4 hours ago link

    Long overdue. Get Mueller off the federal payroll!

    smacker , 4 hours ago link

    Yes, put him on the prison workgang payroll ;-)

    commiebastid , 4 hours ago link

    another will take its place

    Dickweed Wang , 4 hours ago link

    With the majority of the left and quite a few Republicans (who for all intents and purposes are Democrats with an "R" next to their name) Russiagate has become just like the man-made global warming scam. They continue to believe it like a religion, regardless of mounting facts to the contrary, because it serves a purpose for them.

    Cheap Chinese Crap , 4 hours ago link

    They don't believe it. You get to be a politician by being lazy, evil, and calculating-- not happily naive and trusting.

    The narrative is custom tailored to suit their purposes and veracity is not part of the calculation at all.

    fersur , 2 hours ago link

    Most all of them start out in Law school, their Lawyers by default, lesson number one, truths assided !

    DIGrif , 4 hours ago link

    WE THE PEOPLE, want our millions back that was spent on this ********. Deduct it from the Democrats paychecks.

    flatearther , 4 hours ago link

    Money? Hell! there will not even be an apology OR any admission it was a witch hunt. Such is the nature of our MASTERS.

    commiebastid , 4 hours ago link

    pocket change compared to the overall hoovering

    Herdee , 4 hours ago link

    Former CIA Officer explains:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOu4TpvydUI

    Occams_Razor_Trader_Part_Deux , 4 hours ago link

    Isn't about time for a "Stormy" sighting- or an allegation from the admitted liar Michael Cohen?

    south40_dreams , 4 hours ago link

    Democrat are ******* liars. The End.

    commiebastid , 4 hours ago link

    it is a bi partisan pastime

    2willies , 5 hours ago link

    Is that Richard Branson a psycho or what? he gives me the English willies

    Schroedingers Cat , 5 hours ago link

    Suddenly, the Democrats want to support Trump, the man they insisted was a dangerous foreign agent, in leading us to war with Venezuela. Demotards are truly insane fucked up little moppets with **** for brains!!!

    fersur , 5 hours ago link

    Haters Shoo' Shoo Fly Shoo, been bugging me, arms tired of giving a Whiping !

    aloha_snakbar , 5 hours ago link

    Uncle Scam needs to be put down like the rabid dog he has become...

    2willies , 5 hours ago link

    rabid dog is to nice

    Francis Marx , 5 hours ago link

    The Russian sanctions are a farce. I think they are using them so that Russia will hand over Snowden, nothing else. Its just kept quiet.

    [Feb 19, 2019] THE NEW YORK TIMES IS A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION

    That's too harsh, but the commenter has a point: NYT times is mostly a propaganda outlet. That does not exclude publishing rare objective articles.
    Feb 19, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Rational says: February 18, 2019 at 6:29 am GMT 100 Words

    Thanks for the article, Sir. Welcome to unz.com.

    The media in most countries report the news in a neutral manner. Since the Judaists bought the media, they turned media into weapons of terror, by:

    a. Fake news -- outright lies (eg. calling alien invaders "migrants").
    b. Manufacturing scandals that THEY make up eg. blackface.
    c. Harassing and abusing patriots and others and calling them racists, getting them fired from jobs, etc.

    None of these are legitimate jobs of the media. The New York Times and most Zionists controlled media in this country are therefore criminal enterprises and terrorist organizations and these criminals belong in prison.

    [Feb 18, 2019] "After Putin" anxiety in Russia

    Feb 18, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Grieved , Feb 16, 2019 8:16:54 PM | link

    Grieved , Feb 16, 2019 8:52:46 PM | link

    @33 Fiona Jenkins and others

    I've read the article by Dugin now, and gone back to read Surkov. I probably need to read them both again, perhaps forever, because I think they illustrate the nation of Russia trying to find its way forward into "life beyond Putin", and both articles are of extreme importance as two sides of a dialog.

    I think Dugin is correct when he says that Putin has fallen short of creating a new system of state that can itself endure. And that the oligarchs will naturally attempt, after Putin, to rule the state as in the old way. He is correct in saying that no alternative to Putin has come forth in all this time, and that this is a failing of the situation. He is also correct, as many friends of Russia here would agree, that the day of reckoning for the fifth column and the corrupt vested interests has not come under Putin, and that it remains yet to happen - if at all - after Putin.

    And this is the crux. Will that day of reckoning come, or will evil gain in strength again when Putin is gone?

    Dugin says that the Russian people have to have this fight and overthrow that privileged, non-patriotic, class of people. I personally would call it a class revolution of sorts that establishes a formal strain of socialism into the system - creating a hard-wired system that Dugin himself would trust to endure, regardless of leaders.

    Surkov meanwhile is saying that the people are the source of all power, and that Putin's genius is that he is naturally plugged into that source. And that any successive leaders must follow the Putin model and be plugged into the people. Surkov seems to think that this will happen because it must, by force of the dynamic itself, and its imperative itself. Maybe this is so. And maybe it happens because of advocates like Surkov in attendance to its birth.

    What I take from both these sides of the one argument - which is simply and purely how to envision a world beyond Putin - is that Putin has not left a changed system but he has left a spiritual benchmark for the goodness of the state, and it is intimately bound up with the well being of the people. This benchmark will endure, for a time, after Putin, but how the people rise to fill the void and create a more perfect system, I think remains to be seen, remains to happen. In this regard, I see no reason for despair or complacency.

    karlof1 , Feb 16, 2019 9:06:26 PM | link
    I humbly thank those thanking me. It's very gratifying!

    Jose Garcia @59 distilled much into his short appraisal, to which I only endorse. I see the following caught b's eye and those of others:

    "Russia ... returned to its natural and its only possible condition: that of a great and growing community of nations that gathers lands. It is not a humble role that world history has assigned to our country, and it does not allow us to exit the world stage or to remain silent among the community of nations; it does not promise us rest and it predetermines the difficult character of our governance."

    Any open-minded, closely watching, student of Russian history would easily understand what's meant by the bolded text; although presently, the lands being gathered are those of its allies. And in those words, the author admits Russia remains an Empire, although diminished somewhat from its greatest extent. However, it's a Communal Empire, embracing over 100 different ethnic groups, numerous tongues, and every major religion. Yet, the "Nationality Question" that so intrigued Sovietologists as a possible way to implode the USSR provides the inner core of Russia's "deep nation," and on almost every public occasion I've seen Putin attend he shows a pride in Russia's diversity Trump and ilk are completely incapable of.

    And what would be the state of the world today if not for Russia? What coalition would have been capable of stopping Napoleon if Russia hadn't sacrificed first? The Kaiser's racial war for dominance between Teutons and Slavs, which would've likely been a slam-dun repeat of 1870 if not for the need for two fronts. The 25+ Million Soviets and other nationalities that allied on the Eastern Front to defeat Hitler's Armies. And perhaps I'll go outside the box and allege that if not for the USSR, post-war USA would have colonized the planet as it still desires.

    But what of "Putinism." We should return to Jose's sharp analysis and add: Putin insists on the dedicated involvement of his fellow citizens; that they work just as hard and diligently as he; and that they also play and enjoy life just as much. In return, he will be as honest and open with his fellows as possible--which is really rather amazing to observe and is of another universe from what we get "treated" to in the West. He wants feedback--positive and negative--he wants to hear about the problems he never gets to hear about--his humanism is startling, again, as it's so diametrically different. And he's almost always positive--even when he's being negative. If he errs, he owns up. Then there's the courage of his convictions and constancy of being morally, ethically, and legally correct--which in Russia means he's also politically correct. Does it really require someone special to have those traits? I don't think so, although there're personality types that would never be capable of performing as does Putin. I think it's all related to the basics: Parenting, schooling, mentoring, but also the overall context of growing up in what is truly a cosmopolitan nation that's accepting of Others--again, to be Russian means to embrace Russianness, which is unique amongst national cultures as noted above. In short, only a Russian is capable of emulating Putin.

    But, the question's begged: Would Putin fit as head-of-state for a Western nation, or would that be impossible due to the vastly differing contexts?

    veritas semper vincit , Feb 16, 2019 9:38:37 PM | link
    This was one of your best articles, and there's no short supply here. Thank you, Mr. B.
    Russia is fulfilling old prophecies.
    The country is an enormous mass land, between East and West, and because of this and its history, I believe it is the world 's balancer.
    Russia has been to Hell and back and in the process managed to learn from past mistakes( and we have to remember that some of those mistakes, like the Bolshevik revolution, were financed by the west: Trotsky( Bronshtein) and his 2 Bil in today's money from Kuhn and Loeb Bank, Jacob Schiff, Lenin with millions in gold from Germany).
    What did not kill Russia, made her stronger. Russia witnessed the "superior" US system, liberalism, during Yeltsin's era, not only communism. And Russia chose neither.
    She chose Mr. Putin, a real patriot, who took Russia from her knees and elevated her to the role she has today: a superpower.
    I don't think the Russians wanted this role, but they didn't have a choice. Somebody has to fight the psychopaths.
    As for US, the coup d'erat was incremental: the cornerstone was in 1913, with the creation of the private Federal Reserve, with its 9 big banks shareholders,the root of all evil .Money created as debt( credit) and loaned to people with interest. Fractional reserve banking later. Everything else is bribes and blackmails.
    Then 1963, the removal of the only semi independent president, who would have put a stop to their NWO.
    1970's with replacement of Bretton Woods with the petro-dollar deal and the subsequent wars .
    And 2001 as the grand finale: total control.
    Now US has to protect the petro-dollar, the only think giving it relevance; This explains our wars, enemies, allies( like KSA).
    Some say that US was a FreeMason construct from the very beginning. And looking at all Masonic signs: dollar bill, Statue of Liberty, apotheosis of Washington , Washington DC plans, most founding fathers, etc. they may be right.

    [Feb 18, 2019] The problem of unrealistic expectations and its role in the collapse of the USSR

    Feb 18, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    wagelaborer , Feb 16, 2019 1:03:08 PM | link

    I was listening to a podcast and one speaker asserted that Venezuelans would be grateful for their improved living conditions and remain loyal to Maduro, and the other speaker said that people tend to take their improvements for granted and demand more. https://cprnews.podbean.com/e/cpr-news-february-11-2019/
    As I understand it, that is what happened in the USSR. The recovery of housing and food after the destruction of WW2 was completed by the 80s, and then people wanted more. The leaders started increasing meat production, leading to buying grain from the US, and then the US bribed top KGB officials and bureaucrats, and then Yeltsin and the bribed leaders of Ukraine and Belarus signed away the USSR, against the wishes of the vast majority of the population.

    Only brainwashed westerners would announce that that the destruction of the Soviet Union was "bloodless". That ignores the bombing of the White House, the murders of opposition leaders and the mass die off of millions of people, referred to in the West as "life expectancy dropped dramatically" (because the west is the undisputed king of spin and propaganda).

    The population of Russia is only now recovering to their 1990 level, but let us blather on and on about how wonderful the destruction of the USSR was.

    It wasn't so great for the rest of the world, either. Our gloating leader, George H. W. Bush, flush with delight and greed, as Russia lay prostrate and ready for plundering, in 1991, announced "There is now a New World Order", meaning that the USA would rule the world. We can all see what that means for the rest of the world, and for the population of the US, now also stripped and looted, increasingly in the last 26 years. The US went on a worldwide killing spree, while at home, with no USSR as a good example, or to support rational left politics, we have lost our unions, our jobs, our houses and our damn common sense. Now they are telling us that men can be women and vice versa, in the final Big Brother control of reality and perception. War is Peace, check. Ignorance is Strength, check. It is possible to change your biological body with the power of your mind, check.
    They have turned us into blithering idiots, fit only to bicker as the final looting commences.


    [Feb 18, 2019] Who will lead Russia after Putin

    Feb 18, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    The Scalpel , Feb 16, 2019 9:00:22 AM | link

    This is a "big picture" article short on detail. Putin will go down as one of the great leaders of Russian (and world) history. Fine. What comes after him? What is the plan to transfer power to a subsequent COMPETENT leader? It is fine to trust Putin, power flowing from Putin outward, but what if after Putin Russia gets another Gorbachov? What then?

    vk , Feb 16, 2019 9:16:13 AM | link

    @ Mister Roboto | Feb 16, 2019 7:50:25 AM | 3

    On the contrary: evidence shows us the military was the last resistance against the desintegration of the USSR. The thing here is that it didn't need to desintegrate to reform.

    The main problem with the USSR is that it created a system where any reform could only be radical. It wasn't a question of "ideological rigidity": the Soviets knew their problems since at least the 1950s (and, even before that, when Lenin was still alive, after the Kronstadt tragedy, an event that triggered the NEP - the reforms which would, 58 years later, inspire the new Chinese socialist model).

    DontBelieveEitherPropaganda , Feb 16, 2019 9:30:03 AM | link
    One thing to add:
    While Surkov writes that people in the west are losing faith in their politicians and now would be looking at Russia as a positive example of a political system:
    The problem for the majority of people in the western country i live in (Germany) and IMHO for the most other so called western countrys is NOT that the demoocratic system itself would be the problem, but that this system has been corrupted by politicians, neoliberals, neocons, and anti democratic cancers like deep state elites and the like.
    Here most people HATE e.g. the social democrats NOT because they are social democrats, but because the are now only social democrats by NAME ONLY.
    The democratic system may be flawed, but it still is without any real alternative for the majority of non extremist people.
    Scrapping that for toothless pseudo opposition like in Russia would not be in the interest for the majority of people.

    This is IMHO a different story for every country. Russia IMHO needs to go its own way, and like Putin said himself, is not ready for a full democracy. It would lead directly back into the 90s, and the huge majority of Russians know that, and therefore vote for the much lesser "evil".
    This may be hard to understand for a western person, but IMHO it is a sane and consious decision for the russians.

    But again, every country is different. This is why the right for every people and country to develop in its own pace and values is to important, and why globalism is creating faliure for each and everyone exepct some rich SOBs.

    Michael Droy , Feb 16, 2019 10:51:50 AM | link
    The 'western' view of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the "long-lost meaningless war", is that it was the catastrophic for the Soviet Union and led to its demise (pdf). That view is wrong. The war was neither meaningless, nor lost.

    I think that is the "western" view that justifies throwing money at Nazis or terrorists in order to create problems for US enemies.
    John Dowser , Feb 16, 2019 11:27:46 AM | link
    @Ellis "I get stuck understanding what gathering lands might mean in this context"

    It would seem to refer to the traditional move to expand the sphere to what is believed by some in Russia to be their "natural" dimensions: to add by various means including annexation all the Russian territories, East Slavic lands, Belarus and the Ukrainian regions

    See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_III_of_Russia#Gathering_of_Rus%27_lands

    In that light the Russian view of the conflict in Ukraine has to be understood: not just as reaction towards to expansion of EU and NATO but more as reaction against the EU/NATO's interference with Ukraine's direction of moving closer to the Russian sphere over time, seen as something inevitable unless countered with lots of effort, promises and energizing of radical movements or other nationalistic or young, pro-West groups.

    In other words, some claims that the Kremlin desires to expand are not wholly unjustified. But as explained in the article some Russian leaders might see expansion as unavoidable and therefore deep down rational to pursue. One can counter this view with the remark that it's almost like some echo of the Soviet (and pseudo-Marxist) view of historical materialism. Ending at the time with transporting intellectuals who differed, to re-education camps as one concluded that something wrong "had to be wrong" with them, opposing the inevitable and rational! Search for the term "psycho-pathological mechanisms of dissent" to see how it might reflect some of the elite thinking in Russia still today!

    Jackrabbit , Feb 16, 2019 11:47:39 AM | link
    Surkov supports the 'Deep State' in Russia and elsewhere to the extent that he derides/undermines democratic process.

    Surkov's viewpoint is aligned with that of the neocons. Neocons argue that democratic processes can not properly weigh matters that concern the 'Deep State'. Those that benefit from Deep State largess (MIC, intel agencies, oligarchs, and large corporations) naturally support that view.

    The "Deep State" is ultimately class warfare. IMO the best that we can hope for (for now) is that 'Deep States' of the major powers will try to improve the lives of the ordinary people they govern as part of the State-to-State competition. A unilateral world order would have no such virtue. In such a world we would quickly feel the truth of: "We are all black, we are all Palestinian, we are all ... a plaything or a nuisance of the oligarchic in-group.

    Hoarsewhisperer , Feb 16, 2019 12:14:10 PM | link Red Ryder , Feb 16, 2019 12:26:14 PM | link
    There are a number of commenters here who, living up to their former ignorance on many topics, expose their lack of knowledge and understanding of things Russian.

    Russia is a civilization. It's psyche is neither East nor West. It's vocabulary and syntax are not Western, either.

    Surkov's work, even by ideologues of vast disparate differences is recognized as a political-literary work whose translation requires deft handling.
    Think of de Tocqueville or some of Tom Paine.

    And all Russian commenters at the highest level perceive exactly what his words and his construction means.

    You might try reading Dmitri Orlov's translation. http://thesaker.is/putins-lasting-state-translated-by-dmitri-orlov/

    You also, those of you who think you are more intelligent than Surkov, should want to read his article of last year. In that, he describes Russia's unique path forward. Use Yandex for a translation.

    https://globalaffairs.ru/global-processes/Odinochestvo-polukrovki-14-19477

    You will see the linkage from last year's article and this year's work. Surkov is a gifted "grey cardinal" whose intellect is valued by Putin.
    When he speaks, and especially, when he writes, Sukov has the top echelon of Russia paying "deep attention".

    If you fall for the word usage of Deep in this present work and equate it with our Western Deep State, you do not comprehend the Russian context.

    Trailer Trash , Feb 16, 2019 12:38:36 PM | link
    >The Deep State wants no competition, just obedience.
    > Posted by: stonebird | Feb 16, 2019 8:33:39 AM | 10

    This. This is the central organizing principle of Uncle Sam Land. Every interaction with the police and other state actors says: "Obey or Die". And they mean it, a thousand dead civilians a year. Every year.

    Its not only black and brown people. I live in the whitest part of the whitest US state. It is rural, remote, and sparsely populated. White skin did not save my neighbor's brother who was gunned down in his own home. What really happened? Only the cops know, and they ain't sayin.

    My conclusion is that the US police state is the inevitable result of imposing a top-down hierarchy on society. This is why skin color, clothes, education, religion, sex, income, etc. are so important: these characteristics and others are used to put everyone in their proper slot in the hierarchy, and to make sure everyone knows their place, and stays there.

    Uncle Sam Land is a downwardly-mobile society. The fear of downward mobility keeps people passive, afraid, and easier to control. The lack of labor strife is a good example. After decades of failure, workers understand that most strikes and other job actions will end with less pay and worse working conditions.

    The psychopathic scum at the top like it there and intend to stay, regardless of the cost to the peons, who only exist to serve the state. Therefore everyone is disposable. None of this is new, of course, but Bull-in-the-China-Shop Trump has done an excellent job of unintentionally shredding the facade of "freedom". It is now getting difficult even for establishment elites to ignore the nature of the machine they are dedicated to sustaining.

    The Dear Leaders will not take a hint and step down, or work to create a more humane society where just being alive is good enough reason to get access to the Earth's bounty. Instead they will use even more violence to impose obedience. A near-monopoly on violence is what makes a nation-state, so violence is the only tactic it knows.

    Can Russian really be a nation-state that is not based on hierarchy, violence and coercion? I'd like to think it could be possible, but I remain very, very skeptical.

    Fiona Jenkins , Feb 16, 2019 1:01:10 PM | link
    This is one of the few times I strongly disagree with (the brilliant political commentator) Moon of Alabama. A better perspective can be found here:

    https://www.fort-russ.com/2019/02/its-time-for-super-putin-dugin-on-surkovs-putin-analysis/

    And here is an excerpt:

    I find that in the article of Surkov the main message is sincere and reflects the will of the current elites to self-preservation and to preserve the regime in an unchanged state and in the post-Putin period. So that Putin himself does not decide to change something by chance, he is reassured: everything is perfect. But sincerity does not mean truth. The solipsism of the ruling elite still cannot replace history and political logic. Therefore, Surkov's analysis of the state of the political regime in modern Russia is entirely and completely false in its very foundations.

    Lohmann , Feb 16, 2019 1:10:09 PM | link Noirette , Feb 16, 2019 1:28:28 PM | link
    Re. Surkov piece. http://thesaker.is/putins-lasting-state-translated-by-dmitri-orlov/

    Any message that praises Russia and goes against demonising + slandering it is welcome to me. If it can prod some to re-think, I'm all for it.

    The text is superficial, a straightforward 'bash others' and Laud the True Nation essay, close to school-boy-ish, grade 12.

    The ability to hear and to understand the nation, to see all the way through it, through its entire depth, and to act accordingly -- that is the unique and most important virtue of Putin's government.

    Is v. similar to the USA's mealy mouthed enshrining of demo-crassy, freee-dom and equality, etc. Putin may be doing a good job, is imho, but seeing into the entire depth etc. is hyperbole, .. OK, cultural standards differ.

    It is adequate for the needs of the people, it follows the same course with it, and this means that it is not subject to destructive overloads from history's countercurrents. This makes it effective and long-lasting.

    Many Kings Queens Despots Tyrants touted the same. Meaningless.

    The various branches of government come together at the person of the leader and are considered valuable not in and of themselves but only to the extent to which they provide a connection with him. Aside from them, and acting around formal structures and elite groups, operate informal methods of communication.

    Translation may be poor, styles of writing vary greatly in diff. cultures, etc. But what does it mean? Note the 'person of the leader'

    Our state is not split up into deep and external; it is built as a whole, with all of its parts and its manifestations facing out.

    Should be queried.

    Missing is anything of substance, ex. method of Gvmt. of a large Federation (geographical, climate, cultural, variations..), which would be interesting to know about, put forward, for praise. E.g. health care, housing, transport, education - Relations with China, for ex.

    Yes! I get it, that was not the point.

    Puff Pieces don't address such practical matters.

    Why is this article praised on MoA? One might write something very similar about Trump, Macron, Erdogan or Italy, etc.


    vk , Feb 16, 2019 2:50:19 PM | link
    I disagree with Surkov in the sense that, albeit it may have a political purpose for the specific historical time it was written, it doesn't have scientific value.

    Modern Russia is a full-fledged capitalist country, therefore equally subject to the inner contradictions of the system. No, I don't think Russia is some kind of "third system". No, I don't think it is a stable society: it is full of inner contradictions. Yes, it has a different culture from the West. Yes, it is good Russia still exist. But let not kiss the cross: this Russia is not the future for humanity; unless it suddenly becomes socialist again, there's nothing there.

    Jen , Feb 16, 2019 3:57:22 PM | link
    The underlying message of Vladislav Surkov's essay is that the relationship between a leader and the nation he leads must be based on mutual trust, and that trust must be based on a system of governance that is transparent to all, and on foundations and values that a would-be leader must respect and with which s/he must align her/his own values and beliefs.

    The foundations and values on which government relies and which the leader must always bear in mind (and heart as well) arise from the history or histories and the beliefs of the nation the leader governs.

    The Chinese have a similar concept known as the Mandate of Heaven.

    If the West ever had something similar to what Surkov is suggesting, it was embodied in the Social Contract.

    The significant difference is that the West with its Roman Catholic / Protestant view of humans as having been born in sin and needing to be saved by belief in Jesus as their saviour (and the corollary that human nature essentially is incapable of moral and spiritual improvement, and can only be made perfect by being forced into the right spiritual path), has long been governed by a set of values that based on suspicion and mistrust of others. In a sense, much of European history (with its history of small states at constant war or rivalry against one another, which they later took beyond European bounds during the 15th century and after) and why it was so, compared to other parts of the world, might be explained as a result of societies based around a particular set of beliefs, values and view of the human condition.

    The US Constitution with its checks and balances on the executive, legislative and judiciary functions of government reflects something of the view of humans as untrustworthy and essentially moral and spiritual infants, obsessed with their own immediate self-gratification and short-term interests. Much classical economics (with the belief in the free market and the idea that competing interests eventually reach a balance or equilibrium point) is based on this despairing view of humans; the neoliberal incarnation of classical economics exalts this view and portrays it as the ideal.

    veritas semper vincit , Feb 16, 2019 9:38:37 PM | link
    This was one of your best articles, and there's no short supply here. Thank you, Mr. B.
    Russia is fulfilling old prophecies.
    The country is an enormous mass land, between East and West, and because of this and its history, I believe it is the world 's balancer.
    Russia has been to Hell and back and in the process managed to learn from past mistakes( and we have to remember that some of those mistakes, like the Bolshevik revolution, were financed by the west: Trotsky( Bronshtein) and his 2 Bil in today's money from Kuhn and Loeb Bank, Jacob Schiff, Lenin with millions in gold from Germany).
    What did not kill Russia, made her stronger. Russia witnessed the "superior" US system, liberalism, during Yeltsin's era, not only communism. And Russia chose neither.
    She chose Mr. Putin, a real patriot, who took Russia from her knees and elevated her to the role she has today: a superpower.
    I don't think the Russians wanted this role, but they didn't have a choice. Somebody has to fight the psychopaths.
    As for US, the coup d'erat was incremental: the cornerstone was in 1913, with the creation of the private Federal Reserve, with its 9 big banks shareholders,the root of all evil .Money created as debt( credit) and loaned to people with interest. Fractional reserve banking later. Everything else is bribes and blackmails.
    Then 1963, the removal of the only semi independent president, who would have put a stop to their NWO.
    1970's with replacement of Bretton Woods with the petro-dollar deal and the subsequent wars .
    And 2001 as the grand finale: total control.
    Now US has to protect the petro-dollar, the only think giving it relevance; This explains our wars, enemies, allies( like KSA).
    Some say that US was a FreeMason construct from the very beginning. And looking at all Masonic signs: dollar bill, Statue of Liberty, apotheosis of Washington , Washington DC plans, most founding fathers, etc. they may be right.
    Peter AU 1 , Feb 16, 2019 11:00:21 PM | link
    psychohistorian "My thought is that Putin knows that the only way to limit the control of his internal oligarchs is to insure the fall of the private finance led Western system that they need to execute their perfidy."

    I have watched a youtube video of Putin talking about the CIA victory parade in Moscow in the early nineties. I looked for this when I read Grieved's comment but could not find it. There was lot of anger - savagery perhaps a better word - in his voice.
    When the US pulled out of the ABM treaty in, I think 2002, he initiated the research and development of deterrent that would bypass and make obsolete any US ABM system.
    I think Putin will see out the US empire. Like the next gen weapons that were unveiled last year with the publication of Trump's Nuclear Posture Review, I believe Putin would have been working on the downfall of the US empire since the day he took office as president of the Russian federation.

    Jackrabbit , Feb 16, 2019 11:30:35 PM | link
    Jen, Grieved

    The Mandate of Heaven is similar but IMO there are important differences.

    1) Putinism is grounded in the people, not a heavenly authority.

    2) It appears that Putinism has, or will have, specific mechanisms that are meant to keep the leader in tune with the people.

    I wonder if the Orthodox church is part of that mechanism, given reporting by John Helmer:

    PUTIN PROMOTES PATRIARCH'S PUTSCH


    THE RUSSIAN COMMUNIST PARTY AND THE REVIVAL OF THE TSAR'S IDEOLOGY – ORTHODOXY, AUTOCRACY, NATIONALITY

    3) Putinism is (by design?) transferable 0 it's being offered as a practical model that other countries can adopt / are adopting.

    4) My sense is that Putinism transcends politics. There is a cultural aspect that rejects Western philosophy and theology.

    The Western church has failed its moral mission. It was always compromised but now that "God is dead", Western political elites pay little heed to moral principle. Heartless neolibs and neocons meet with virtually no resistance as they comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted.

    Coinciding with the moral decay, "checks and balances" have also failed. Western government debt has soared. Western political elites circumvent Constitutional rights and government oversight (by using cut-outs and foreign funding). Wealthy Westerners (the "people that matter") do not speak up - instead they keep tens of trillions "off-shore". And Western corporate presstitutes serve as a propaganda mouthpiece.

    <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

    As many details are yet unknown, it's difficult to access how robust the "Deep Putin" model of politics and governance may be.

    Russia's delineating their own independent path is somewhat good news for the West. It means that they will not be subservient to China. But Western neocon asshats might muck that up by probing every possible way of undermining Russia.

    Repeating what I've said before: countries don't have friend's, the have interests -BUT- if a country hopes to rule the world, those interests must include some sort of morality. The West is reaping what it sowed. Will they take that to heart, or succumb to neocon asshats that always seek to double-down?

    Peter AU 1 , Feb 16, 2019 11:58:59 PM | link
    The American reality of today is the the polar opposite of what is known as the American Dream.

    Putinism and the American Dream.
    https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2018/06/20/yes-putin-once-dreamed-the-american-dream/

    Putin began laying a solid foundation for a fair democracy in Russia shortly after coming to office.

    Kalen , Feb 17, 2019 12:42:34 AM | link
    Deep state exists in any state officially under any political system democracy and autocracy. As for Tsar letters from 1917 who confirmed that his was abandoned and power was taken over by security apparatus, the same was in 2014 in Ukraine that his personal security unit mutined while he, his family and two security guard we saved due to Russian help as they were evacuated from Donbass where rhetoric fled. Electoral theater makes no difference to deep state that continues until real and bloody revolution occurs, to create new deep state protecting ruling elite interests same in Russia, same in the US as Mills noticed over a century ago.

    As they posited, when men want to rule without seeming to do so, .. because they cannot [openly] lay claim to the required legitimacy, they will rule invisibly and "benignly," shielding themselves behind the rhetoric of popular rule.

    Although "authority [in the US supposedly] formally resides 'in the people,' . . . the power of initiation is in fact held by small circles of men."[In hands of behind the scenes ruling oligarchic elite]. This is not to be known. There is the risk that power becomes identified by its true colors. "That is why the standard strategy of manipulation is to make it appear that the people . . . 'really made the decision'" (ibid., 317).

    This is the idea behind allowing people or as Lippmann described them "meddlesome spectators" to go through in fact meaningless voting ritual.

    [In the US we have,] .. to use Sheldon Wolin's terminology, .. a "managed democracy," political form in which governments are legitimated by elections that they have learned to control," form of government that attempts to keep alive appearance of democracy while simultaneously defeating democracy's primary purpose, self-government.

    As quoted above both, Tocqueville and Mills, identified hidden menacing power structure of fused state and private tyranny [also called Deep State] and its rules of control that are hidden, subtle unutterable, unspoken about, power that denies itself as power under guise of false free choice and propaganda of democratic participation.

    The mere existence or if necessary exertion of this hidden power is the key ingredient in fragmenting population, producing masses of "sheeple" who lack capacity of self-understanding or even recognizing that they are being directly controlled both individually and collectively, that acquire their irrational/self-defeating behavior within a political realm.

    Peter AU 1 , Feb 17, 2019 1:22:43 AM | link
    Deep Russia.

    Yeltsin had a lot of faults. He also appointed and sacked many prime ministers. He appointed Putin prime minister, then appointed Putin president to serve out the remainder of his own term. For all Yeltsin's faults, in appointing and sacking pm's, he was looking for somebody who could lead Russia.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVitEiKkRZ8

    I have watched this speech several times. Now I would have to term it Deep Russia.

    Steve D Keith , Feb 17, 2019 2:41:26 AM | link
    Back to the Future
    George Orwell was born in Bihar, India. The name Bihar comes from the root word, Vihar, which means temple. An auspicious place. A place where we can understand the idea of time; the past, present and future as one. Mr Orwell certainly achieved this feat; perhaps destined to by virtue of the circumstances of his birth. He was, or at least his writings were, prophetic. He could see the reality of how the world was, because of how the people were and consequently he could see how the future would unravel, logically. He was not wrong then and he is not wrong in these darkened days in which we are dying.

    In his masterpiece, 1984, he introduces us to a dystopian reality that has encompassed the globe; three fascistic power blocs of the northern hemisphere, Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia fighting each other for the resources of the southern hemisphere. London was the capital of Airstrip One, an offshore island and part of the superstate of Oceania (North America and the British Isles). She was at endless war with her neighbours, rivals and enemies in the battle for global domination, Eurasia (Europe and Russia) and East Asia (China and the states that border her today).

    The debacle which has enveloped the United Kingdom and the European Union over the former's decision to withdraw from the latter's club, has created the opportunity for two thirds of this fiction to become real facts, eventually and inevitably forcing the hand of the Peoples Republic to realise a historical belief and vision, espoused many years before on the BBC's Dateline London programme by a Chinese TV journalist (London correspondent, probably), that if it looks Chinese, then it is Chinese. Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos would return to the bosom of the motherland, as Austria, the Sudatenland etc was annexed to the German fatherland.

    All this because Russia and the Europeans would have come together, probably quite naturally, in response to Great Britain and Ireland having joined as the fifty first, second, third and fifty fourth states, of the United States. These four ancient nations will find no other way to resolve the #Brexit conundrum and they will see this as the only logical option - an English speaking block, based on common free trade ideals, that guarantees their sovereignty. It would appeal to each of the four nations, the English, Scots, Welsh and Irish, perhaps for different reasons but they would be accepting because their national ego's will be satisfied with this international recognition of each of their sovereign rights.

    There is a certain historical inevitability about the whole thing. As a man who spent the formative years of his life in India, he will be aware of the darkness of the age in which we live, an age that the Hindus know as the age of Kali, Kal Yug. An age of darkness and destruction, of deviance and distrust. It is an age that has come before and that will come again, just as the golden ages have come and in time must pass again, back into history. Each has their time and their place. The creatures born in such an age must accept it and refuse to capitulate to it's mesmerising illusions. Of course they won't - it is all too mesmeric, the illusion too beautiful. The illusion of self, of nation, of country, of power, of right and of wrong. It is the illusion of the physical, of the material, of the possibilities of each, that will drive nations together into the power structures from which there will be no escape until the Armageddon, that is theoretically believed in by many of the participants, will arrive and the age will turn, again.

    Montreal , Feb 17, 2019 4:03:32 AM | link
    "Glubina" also means the Russian countryside (an analogy would be "la France profonde") - everywhere outside the cities is the "glubina" for which the people have a mystical attachment.

    Western sanctions have been a great boon to Russian agriculture, as well cementing national solidarity. The new sanctions being contemplated in Washington will, if they are confirmed, act as a spur for Russia to quarantine itself against the next western financial collapse. My impression has always been that VVP greatly values stability and a reacts to attacks from the outside only reluctantly and after great thought as to where Russia's fundamental interests lie.

    QuietRebel , Feb 17, 2019 4:18:22 AM | link
    @james 37

    Do you also agree with donkeytale's glibe comparison of the Putin go ernment to the Nazi Hitler regime and the Trump administration?

    mourning dove , Feb 17, 2019 4:32:08 AM | link
    I think that imperialism has invaded the Western psyche to such an extent that many people, particularly in the 5Eyes countries, seem to believe that their first impressions are of such weight and credibility that thoughtful consideration of a subject is unnecessary. This is apparent in so many of the comments here which come off as edicts or proclamations from on high and which treat alternative viewpoints with derision and contempt.

    Conversely, many of the comments are thoughtful and well reasoned, open to other's views, but these are often drowned out. I can't be the only one who's noticed that someone here is using numerous identities in order to dominate the discussion, create consensus, and to "gang up" on people. It creates a microcosm of imperialism which, to me, speaks louder than any position or ethic that this keyboard emperor(ess) professes.

    somebody , Feb 17, 2019 4:37:44 AM | link
    Posted by: Pft | Feb 16, 2019 5:01:40 PM | 60

    Yep. It is a joke.

    somebody , Feb 17, 2019 4:54:50 AM | link
    Add: This is John Helmers unsentimental summary on the recent attempt to find an "official" justification for power.

    The issue is not political. It is the economic success of the Chinese model (which is very different from the Russian one, but Russia might get closer to it, than it is to Western neoliberalism).

    And China is the present technological leader.

    Jen , Feb 17, 2019 5:51:29 AM | link
    Jack Rabbit @ 76:

    In the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven, the concept of Heaven encompasses the order of the natural world where the ruler governs the people, and is not merely concerned with humanity's relations with the spiritual world. If the natural world is beset by drought, famine or other natural disasters, that is a sign that the ruler is not caring for the people and the people have the right to overthrow that ruler.

    The effects of drought, famine, flooding and some other natural disasters can be prevented, minimised or alleviated, sometimes to the extent that life can even carry on as if the disaster had not happened, so in the past emperors did have reason to fear prolonged or repeated disasters from one year to the next - because those disasters could very well be consequences of past inaction or past actions that were wrong or corrupt.

    The concept doesn't advise or tell leaders how to stay in touch with the people; they presumably must figure this out for themselves to be effective leaders.

    Spike , Feb 17, 2019 9:08:07 AM | link
    "Globalization" would be the diminishing of the strength of the nation-states with the corresponding increase in the strength of the trading entities, the corporations. That's easy to reject!

    But when the nation-states fade away because the traders have faded away and there's no longer any need to control and regulate them, then you have the dreamed about condition.

    One can formulate any philosophy of government one wants, but it is certainly better that one not see trade as being natural and eternal.

    Piotr Berman , Feb 17, 2019 9:14:50 AM | link
    Understanding of Russia perplexed Westerners of centuries (Chinese did not seem to care too much). Genuine curiosity can be detected in news sections not related to politics, as it can be witnessed by an article in Forbes, Food and Drink section. Title and a quote:

    Want To Find A Rich Person In Russia? Look For The Lemons
    Lizzy Saxe Contributor, "I write about the future of food, business, and culture." Food & Drink

    Quote: Harold noticed that "Russians consume a lot more lemons per capita than many other parts of the world. I was wondering, is that because they drink a lot of vodka? Is it because they're big tea drinkers? Why are they using so many lemons?" He started to investigate. He discovered that the answer wasn't quite that universal.

    Unsurprisingly, lemons don't grow in Russia. It's too cold to produce them, so you have to buy them from far, far away. That makes the sour yellow citrus expensive. So expensive, in fact, that, "wealthy Russians really like to incorporate lemons into their lifestyle. It communicates to people that they have the means to be able to afford them. They call it the bling of produce."

    ====

    Someone sold simple-minded Lizzy a tall story, and Russians and Russophiles have a hilarious stream of twits today. For a journalist in a business publication that should know a thing or two about marketing, the fact that a product has high per capita consumption should suggest that it is not restricted to the rich, unless the country in question has reversed income pyramid, enormous percentage of status seeking rich folks. In fact, since long time, tea drinking was popular in Russia, perhaps because their Siberian holdings required them to sell furs, Chinese mandarins like to have fur hats and fur trimmed robes, and China had to offer products to pay for those furs, and that was tea. Russians got hooked on tea -- as were the Mongols, Tibetans, all nations of Central Asia, iran etc. Tea that trades well at long distances was black and bitter. However, even a relatively small amount of vitamin C reduces bitterness a lot as it reacts with tea tannins (the same holds for another bitter drink, mate, but coffee bitterness is not caused by tannins, so adding lemon to coffee was never popular). The result was that even peasant families would possess samovars for making hot water for tea and brew tea in a hot spot at the samovar top, and would add thin slices of lemons to tea.

    As a product needed for the welfare of the working class, lemon supplies were one of Communist priorities, I kid you not. In my youth in Communist Poland, a kilo of bananas and oranges would cost 40, while a kilo of lemons mere 30. The communist blocks produced some lemons, and was getting the rest from barter agreements with India, Brazil etc. In the stores, bananas and oranges could appear and disappear, but lemons were always there.

    Of course, a household where lemons are always present would find some other uses. For example, borsch is an ubiquitous dish and it is based on beets that should be fermented for several days to create a sour taste, but in an urban household, beets were sliced, a lemon was squeezed and a borsch would be cooked right away. Fish would always be garnished with lemon etc. In other words, every urban household would use lemons every day, and those slices could add up (I am not sure about villages, there are also forest berries with vitamin C and sour taste, and villagers would collect a lot of them).

    As posted on Twitter, the current store price of lemons in Russia is 1 dollar per kilogram, apparently the authorities keep lemon prices low, a tradition inherited from the Communist predecessors. Allegedly, this is the same as average lemon price in the international trade, but (a) Russia has long standing import tradition with low cost producers like India (b) the markup on lemons is low.

    That said, it is quite possible that the Russian rich display lemons on their table, but the reasons are not as Harold surmised. In eastern and central Europe there is a strong conviction that the traditional food is healthy, good for soul and body. When my family visited Poland (we lived in USA), it was striking that tourist dominated town sections would have lots of foreign cousines, while the business section would have predominantly traditional food, stuff that "every" household would cook at home.

    Noirette , Feb 17, 2019 9:17:57 AM | link
    Sasha posted, 50:

    ..for Surkov unveiling all the Russian policy, internal and external, and that is too much asking

    Yes, but I couldn't read beyond it (= between the lines, underneath, etc.), as you say:

    Being his personal style of writing most of the time kind of confusing and always sounding like including hided and double meanings/senses

    Maybe some stuff went over my head. I failed to grasp a deeper / more intruiging, vital, novel meaning or message.

    Jen 54 points out that Good-Gvmt. is based on Trust, sure, like satisfactory business dealings, happy families and solid marriages .. not flash news.

    The Saker is potty about Putin and will post anything that idolises the Great Leader (say.)

    I'm a 'fan', of Putin and Lavrov myself, and have nothing against Surkov, but going overboard on personalia vs. pol / economic systems, resources, geography etc. is a distraction.

    If framed properly it is OK: Who is the nicer person, Ocasio-Cortez or Gabbard? Would Megan M. be a better Queen than Kate M.? Etc.

    donkeytale , Feb 17, 2019 10:03:38 AM | link
    @james 37

    Do you also agree with donkeytale's glibe comparison of the Putin go ernment to the Nazi Hitler regime and the Trump administration?

    Posted by: QuietRebel | Feb 17, 2019 4:18:22 AM | 83

    Of course he doesn't agree with that "glib comparison."

    Neither do I.

    What I introduced was a simile to illustrate my implication that Surkov is hardly an objective observer of the Russian political system and thus not creditable in this instance.

    But nice bit of of setting a trap for James to keep him captured within community standards of subjectivity. Lol

    Also, y'know, if you have any issues with my comment you could, y'know, raise them with me directly.

    I will state that Trump would of course enjoy the comparison with Putin, since he is on record as an admirer, would also love to jail his political opponents at election time (as Putin does), clearly enjoys using his political power to enrich himself (as Putin also does), and surely would love to find a way to circumvent term limits to remain President for life (as Putin does). This last may be necessary to keep himself, his family and flunkies out of prison.

    In other notes, LMAO at all the high falutin rhetorical flights of fancy in this thread extolling the Godlike virtues of the Russian people and Putin, the Chinese "Mandate of Heaven" etc.

    This is doubtlessly inspired by Surkov's own flight of fancy in his essay. Yes, the Russian people are to be commended for their centuries of struggle to overcome their historically sad socioeconomic plight and of course for defeating the Nazis (don't know how much credit I can give the Russian people for defeating Napoleon---that one seemed much more like a win for the czarist forces of oppression as opposed to liberation of the masses).

    Putin is a great leader and statesman, easily the most accomplished on the world scene today. The problem lies not with him necessarily. The problem is with Surkov's fantasy as it infects the usual suspects in this thread, who should know well but will never admit (because their goal is to rhetorically reinforce a prevailing blog narrative rather than strive to attain the synthesis of truth--that is, the honest intellectual pursuit of knowledge through debate, point and counterpoint) that one man can never successfully embody the political system and the political system cannot adequately reflect the greatness of one man --- for more than the life of that one man --- because that one man is not a god and will eventually wither away and die.

    Thus the system he embodies and animates with his greatness cannot be replicated indefinitely after he goes, if it can be sustained even with his immediate successor.

    This is a lesson obtained from history, religious texts, legends, mythology. Man is weak, evil, greedy, all the seven sins. Someone mentioned the US Constitution was formulated as a defense mechanism against agains the perfidy of man and of course it was! Lol. Imperfect as it is look we can fight off Trump much better than the Russians will be able to fight off a future Trumpkov.

    The Chinese could not reach their present level of capitalist/imperialist success until Mao was long gone, his cult of personality repudiated and replaced by a "communist" party from which succession is dependent more on bureaucrats than charismatic leaders.

    Hatred of the Evil Empire doesn't automatically confer righteousness to its opponents no matter how flowery the oratory supporting such contention.

    Especially when the so-called opponents aren't even truly ideological opponents but in fact erely represent differing spheres of influence and trading blocs, at worst.

    Mike , Feb 17, 2019 11:33:10 AM | link
    donkeytale | Feb 17, 2019 10:03:38 AM | 91

    That's an awfully long way of just saying that Russia after Putin is very unlikely to be an improvement along commonly accepted metrics over Russia with Putin, or that whatever Putin has changed will guarantee a modicum of continuity past the next, say, two Russian leaders. Same type of thing for China, but for both you seem to amplify the effects of the few pro-Russia/pro-China posts into more than they are, including a narrative that you attribute to the owner of the blog (b)? And I don't see anyone making the argument that "hatred" of the "Evil Empire" automatically confers righteousness to the adversary(ies) other than perhaps that, given the history, it's nice to see there might actually be some adversaries who may not simply fold and fall in line. They still may, but unlikely.

    I kinda wish someone would have talked about - or at least explicitly - the fact that all the praise being heaped on Putin is still just praise for a man and his accomplishments, which to my knowledge don't involve concrete changes to the Russian constitution (or equivalent - not much of a Russia scholar myself) that might serve to "guarantee" (insofar as it's ever possible) that future leaders in his position are constrained or empowered in such a fashion that they are most likely to govern in Putin-esque terms.

    I dunno, maybe I should read the essay linked by b, but I can't muster much interest in reading propaganda no matter where it's coming from. To me it's sufficient to know that even if they're just different spheres of influence or competing trading blocs, it's nice that the world isn't necessarily doomed to unipolar US/UK dominance - again, given their sordid history, including the very recent. AND I think it's good that the other side is being presented in such a manner as to reach at least a small western audience given the way the corporate MSM has openly censored any such prose and banned any such thought.

    I also happen to think that presenting the other side humanizes the Russians and even Putin and provides a bit of understanding into how they view themselves, all of which and all of the above being helpful in synthesizing a worldview on those matters as well as choosing an appropriate lens through which to view the one-sided, hysterical, often evidence-free, accusations of election tampering, utility grid hacking, and the supposed desire to see "western democracy" toppled, as you might expect to see from someone on NBC or from craigsummers.

    QuietRebel , Feb 17, 2019 11:55:52 AM | link
    @donkeytale
    You blame me for misinterpting you comment, but you are the one who added the Nazi and Trump tropes. If you just wanted to make a point about propaganda you you have just posted the first part of your comment,but you went on. Putin is often seriously compared to Hitler,and you expect me to be able to read your mind when you make a comparison of Putin to Hitler. I stand by my original comment.
    donkeytale , Feb 17, 2019 12:02:48 PM | link
    Mike, I'm nothing if not longwinded....lol.

    I also tend to add layers of digressions which lengthen my statements but don't help me necessarily because it gives more ammo to attack me on one of those instead of my main point.

    I don't disagree with anything you say here. Also, as often happens after I post I notice Noirette has also posted a more concise, better made point right above mine.

    Noirette rocks.

    The Surkov essay is well worth reading, IMHO and shouldn't be dismissed because it's propaganda. It reads more liek self-justification to me but it has blatant logical/historical issues as Noirette points out.

    As for the comments by others who drive in automatic extoll the virtues mode all the time, perhaps it is just a figment of my overheated imagination.

    Montreal , Feb 17, 2019 12:09:23 PM | link
    @93. "Putin enjoys using his political power to enrich himself." Now, you may be right, or you may be wrong, but I am damned if I know how you know. Over the years, the number of times I have been told that Putin secretly owns MTS, Surgutneft, etc etc, that his money is looked after in Zurich (and someone knows his fund managers!). The point being of course is to brand him as a greedy self-serving bandit like all the rest.

    I would very much doubt that he keeps wealth outside Russia. Given the theme of this discussion, this is an important distinction. The Panama Papers showed, for example, that Poroshenko has stashed obscene sums of money, presumably looted from Ukraine, in the Caribbean (as have thousands of Russians), so when the time for looting is over, they can go and live the life of rich men in the West.

    Putin lives and dies with Russia - there will be no comfortable retirement for him in Switzerland, assuming that he wanted it, which I am sure he doesn't. The Russians know this.

    Constantine , Feb 17, 2019 12:15:26 PM | link
    I would heartily recommend Dugin's respond to Surkov's essay. Whatever views one holds for Dugin's various works, this is a very somber analysis.

    https://www.fort-russ.com/2019/02/its-time-for-super-putin-dugin-on-surkovs-putin-analysis/

    donkeytale , Feb 17, 2019 12:16:41 PM | link
    QR,

    No worries, I'm not blaming you at all, and I'm not asking you to retract or anything. I disagree with you that I was making a glib comparison. In quickly searching for similes I came up with those 2, mainly because I thought they were funny.

    Of course, Russia today doesn't compare with Nazi Germany. I apologise if I offended you even though a comparison was not my intent. In my way of seeing the blogosphere, it is always on the writer when the reader miscomprehends. I sought to clarify not blame you.

    Quite frankly, the US, China and Russian systems all have much more in common than any of them do with Nazi Germany.

    David , Feb 17, 2019 12:18:14 PM | link
    It's important to note that the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was not an invasion. The legitimate Afghan government requested Soviet military intervention, and the Soviets actually hesitated to send military assistance.

    From this phone conversation between Taraki (President of Afghanistan) and Kosygin (Soviet Premier), Taraki says:

    We ask you that you extend practical and technical assistance, involving people and arms.

    In the phone conversation, Taraki begs for military aid from the Soviet Union, but is greeted with hesitation since "It is a very complex matter", as Kosygin put it.

    Russia's cause in Afghanistan and Syria are the same -- fighting terrorism -- but only the former is dubbed an "invasion" when it was a perfectly legal police action (unlike the Yankee aggression against Vietnam) under international law.

    juliania , Feb 17, 2019 12:28:47 PM | link
    Grieved @67 and 68

    I agree with your understandings but would take them further:

    1)"...that inherent genius of Putin to identify with the ordinary people..."

    Here I would expand the term to include all the people, the elites as well as the ordinary (supposing that to mean less well-off). It is important to remember that Putin did offer the wealthy a choice - either to leave or be prosecuted, or to use their wealth in service to the nation. Surov doesn't just mean 'deep nation' to be the earthy folk - he wants every stratum included, and that is what makes it such an all-encompassing enigmatic force. It would include Putin's political opposition as well as the old vestiges of the communist state. All of these are being given the opportunity to contribute, just as all ethnic communities do. And each will be at one point or another asked to sacrifice - as for instance seniors with respect to their pensions - when the need arises. The difference here is that they are not being 'told' this is what is going to happen, like it or lump it - they are given detailed explanations and apologies that this needs to happen for the short term to enable the long term to happen - how different this from what goes on in the US when it comes to state policy![to be continued]

    Jackrabbit , Feb 17, 2019 12:29:38 PM | link
    Jen

    In MoH doctrine the people are an agent of Heaven. Surkov's Deep Putin(tm)/Putinism is an agent of the People. That's why I write @ "Les gens, c'est moi").

    MoH Dynastic change includes war/foreign intrigue. That is dangerous in today's world. Under MoH, for example, a Color Revolution stoked by foreign interests becomes a divine manifestation.

    Immediate context: It seems to me that there is still much resistance to the turn away from the West, despite it's being forced upon Russia. Many Russian elites could benefit greatly by a reversal. These elites form a competing 'Deep State'.

    Piotr Berman , Feb 17, 2019 1:10:20 PM | link
    "This unique Russian system makes it superior:

    The contemporary model of the Russian state starts with trust and relies on trust. This is its main distinction from the Western model, which cultivates mistrust and criticism. And this is the source of its power."

    This is propagandist picture, the reality is less bright for sure, but not THAT bleak. As we are all to well aware, trust is something that can be earn or inculcated by other means. However, it a government wants to be trusted, it helps to focus on what people want.

    For example, after the oil prices declined from 90-100 range to 40-ties with subsequent oscillation -- now ca. 55 (Brent and Urals ca. 65), Putin responded with almost terrifying decisiveness. Rubble depreciated by factor 2 or more, in line with oil. Imports were slashed correspondingly. Positive balance of trade was maintained. A huge chunk of foreign reserves was pulled back and Russian debt was sharply reduced. Real incomes were allowed to drop, to meagerly rise afterwards. HOWEVER, as a commentator noted very briefly, the employment did not drop, and thus the number of people severely affected was small. There was a drop in construction, but a rise in agriculture and to lesser extend, manufacturing. Russia engaged in "import substitution". Russian lost growth of incomes but preserved stability, and the majority preferred it that way: oil crisis in an oil country must foster an economic crisis, so the choice was for some minority to loose a lot or everybody loosing a little.

    These choices perplexed observers in Western media. Just because it is popular, Russia decreased free trade, competition and "mobility of labour" that The Economist tirelessly advocates. And forget about "free financial markets". But what about "necessary painful reforms"?

    Actually, being a budget freak, Putin does have painful stuff on the agenda. Russia amassed reserves during "fat years", but with oil contributing much less to the budget, some taxes have to go up and some benefits have to go down. Road tolls were introduced and truckers rebelled. Retirement age was increased and the popularity of Putin dropped. However, in each case the government modulated the "reforms" with concessions, and of course, it keeps making the case why the reforms are needed, so truckers are still trucking, and the retirement reforms were not entirely abandoned. The popularity is still quite healthy, if not in the stratosphere.

    In other words, Putin's government is very cautious and strategic about "necessary painful" stuff that Western politicians dish quite freely. What insanity overtook them to keep pushing for "ever more free trade"? Or foreign interventions -- where are the crowds of Britons of France being jubilant that a few countries got destroyed and refugees are flooding in, documenting the superiority of the economic/political system, voting with their legs?

    But what about Putin's own interventions? Again, we can see strategic and careful approach. In the case of Crimea, ca. 80% are glad that it was absorbed by Russia, and in Crimea itself the percentage may be higher. In the case of Syria, Russia made a huge effort to keep costs down, both in treasure and blood, and effects up, Syrians being trained to do the bulk of heavy lifting, and ACTUALLY doing that -- unlike hapless Afghan army etc.

    Lastly, the deep state. In Russian there is a newish word "siloviki" = "people of strength/power", and they are definitely a material phenomenon rather than a myth. The main difference is that in the West, the smart people work for financial services, or big pharma etc., and intellectually, the "deep state" is very, very mediocre, the casting of The Ministry of Silly Walks.

    Jackrabbit , Feb 17, 2019 1:27:24 PM | link
    Putinism sounds a lot like Erdogan's MB-infused nationalism. Erdogan propagandists/apologists conflate the people's interests and Erdogan's policies/actions to the point that they are essentially the same. Erdogan thus embodies the people and critics are perceived as traitors.

    Kurov hints at an institutional mechanism(s) that:

    1) ensures Putinism remains connected to the people/people's interests, and

    2) is able to be adoptable by other countries.


    Looking forward to details of this mechanism that might elevate Kurov's Deep Putin(tm) from propaganda to political model.
    Piotr Berman , Feb 17, 2019 3:29:35 PM | link
    Piotr Berman @107

    So you're saying that Putinism is a philosophical approach to governance that doesn't have (or has no need for) institutional mechanism(s) for correctness and longevity? Jackrabbit | Feb 17, 2019 1:42:39 PM

    I am not a great believer in "philosophical approaches". More precisely, you can design a mechanism that will surely work badly, but you cannot assure good outcomes with a "mechanism". US constitution is pretty good, but if the Congress members, President etc. choose to be beholden to special interests and the population tolerates it, then hard to see how it could be improved with, say, proportional representation, ban on moving from key political and administrative position to lucrative posts in private sector etc.

    =============

    Someone compared Putin to Erdogan. One big difference is that Putin is very careful, plans long term and gets approval from a decisive majority, using "dirty tricks" like actually paying attention to what people want. Erdogan gets 50% of popular support and when in doubt, increases repressions, censorship etc. If you compare with Turkey, China, etc., the hand of the state in Russia is pretty light, opposition minded people may have newspapers, websites, if demonstrations are "illegal" the demonstrators are released quickly etc. If you are a policeman or a prison guard in Russia who killed a person, the chances of getting seriously sentenced are much higher than in USA where those professions enjoy considerable impunity -- which is used.

    brian , Feb 17, 2019 3:46:11 PM | link
    'Why Russia no longer regrets its invasion of Afghanistan'

    FYI russia nver 'invaded' afghanistan! it was asked to help by the legit govt in Kabul

    james , Feb 17, 2019 4:24:34 PM | link Blooming Barricade , Feb 17, 2019 4:26:54 PM | link
    It's a shame that they "apologised" to begin with. They were wrong to have ever done so. The recent dialogue over this war by the US media laughing at Trump and telling him off for calling the Mujahideen terrorists (which they were) as opposed to "freedom fighters" has amazingly been phrased as "Trump's comments aren't in line with what the US believed at the time," as opposed to citing actual opinion, ie the US's opinion is "reality" on every given event regardless of the facts. By far the worst part of this is that I don't even think that the individual journos are purposefully propagandising the public, they actually believe that the US tells the truth. Similarly, the New York Times intelligence editors wrote that they learn the most from the official DNI presentation meetings. Aren't reporters supposed to go beyond what the government tells them? Sad, so sad....
    Grieved , Feb 17, 2019 5:51:12 PM | link
    Not only were the Russians invited - even beseeched - into Afghanistan, the locals still remember them with great fondness and respect. Andre Vltchek took a drive through that country in 2017 and reported that very fact:

    Andre Vltchek: On the road in Afghanistan - Lies, legends and myths

    karlof1 , Feb 17, 2019 7:03:33 PM | link
    Grieved @126--

    Yes, the last chapter in the Anti-Communist Crusade consists of the massive Big Lie about the USSR and Afghanistan--many within the Outlaw US Empire think Rambo-3 was based on fact, particularly the Soviet Sadism. The Truth is almost the exact opposite of the West's propaganda as was even clear at the time for those of us who relied on different print sources and already knew not to believe the false narrative generated by the Crusade.

    hopehely , Feb 17, 2019 8:31:02 PM | link
    Posted by: vk | Feb 17, 2019 5:34:14 PM | 124
    Even Russian banks still bow the Americans:
    Russia's Gazprombank freezes accounts of Venezuela's PDVSA: source

    PDVSA denies it.

    donkeytale , Feb 17, 2019 9:10:39 PM | link
    vk, james, pft, et al

    One would have to be incredibly naive on the order of say a 3 year old or maybe Forrest Gump to believe Putin isn't a very wealthy man who will never want for anything as long as he has billionaire cronies indebted to him politically in one way or the other.

    Of course, some people must cling to their illusions, er I mean their idealism, of others no matter what. Dog knows why.

    Thomas Piketty :

    More generally, the Soviet disaster led to the abandon of any ambition of redistribution. Since 2001, income tax is 13%, whether your income be 1,000 roubles or 100 billion roubles. Even Reagan and Trump have not gone as far in the destruction of progressive taxation. There is no tax on inheritance in Russia, nor in the People's Republic of China. If you want to pass on your fortune in peace in Asia, it is better to die in the ex-Communist countries and definitely not in the capitalist countries such as Taiwan, South Korea or Japan where the tax rate on inheritance on the highest estates has just risen from 50% to 55%.

    But while China has succeeded in conserving a degree of control on capital outflows and private accumulation, the characteristic of Putin's Russia is an unbounded drift into kleptocracy. Between 1993 and 2018, Russia had massive trade surpluses: approximately 10% of GDP per annum on average for 25 years, or a total in the rage of 250% of GDP (two and a half years of national production). In principle that should have enabled the accumulation of the equivalent in financial reserves. This is almost the size of the sovereign public fund accumulated by Norway under the watchful gaze of the voters. The official Russian reserves are ten times lower – barely 25% of GDP.

    Where has the money gone? According to our estimates, the offshore assets alone held by wealthy Russians exceed one year of GDP, or the equivalent of the entirety of the official financial assets held by Russian households. In other words, the natural wealth of the country, (which, let it be said in passing, would have done better to remain in the ground to limit global warming) has been massively exported abroad to sustain opaque structures enabling a minority to hold huge Russian and international financial assets. These rich Russians live between London, Monaco and Moscow: some have never left Russia and control their country via offshore entities. Numerous intermediaries and Western firms have also recouped large crumbs on the way and continue to do so today in sport and the media (sometimes this is referred to as philanthropy). The extent of the misappropriation of funds has no equal in history.


    evilempire , Feb 17, 2019 10:03:14 PM | link
    It might be that russia has invested its surplus into massive internal
    investment, like the military with projects such as the technopolis and
    rebuilding its industrial base and technical expertise. I've read that
    russia was acutely consciousness of the demonic game empire was playing
    and maybe that accounts for the concentration on the military. Russia is again
    a military superpower and that requires enormous expenditure and investment. For
    the well-nigh impossible task of simultaneously being a servant of the people
    and a servant of the supreme being, putin seems to be doing as admirable a job
    as any human being is capable. He is certainly supremely intelligent, maybe a
    political genius, and a decent person, but as the article points out he is
    just the tip of the iceberg of the deep russian culture and spirit, honed by
    centuries of suffering. Didn't dostoevsky say that suffering was the beginning of
    consciousness? This is where russia has the decadent west beaten, because obscene
    wealth corrupts obscenely. Italy also seems to have found decent leadership.
    Grieved , Feb 17, 2019 10:16:17 PM | link
    There's a great clip at Vesti News right now, with Karen Shakhnazarov on Vladimir Soloviev's show. It's 12 minutes but I highly recommend it. He talks around the 6 minute mark about how Russia has not developed an economic model, and needs to get one. The US has one, China has one, Russia needs one.

    This evolves into the concept that a nation has to have an IDEA of what it's doing and where it's going, something that it believes in. Soloviev joins in at the end with some excellent commentary too.

    Russia is looking for its way forward, and the debate is open and intense throughout the country.

    The clip also has the usual matter-of-fact, clear-eyed perspective on the US - hence the title of the clip by the headline-lovin' gang at Vesti - but in the end it's about the crucial survival value of meaning in a nation's life, with lives being lived meaningfully, from the soul.

    Top Russian Expert: American Elites Too Busy Swindling Their Own People to Fight Russo-Sino Alliance

    evilempire , Feb 18, 2019 12:41:36 AM | link
    There is an article over at russia insider that debunks the picketty report;
    https://russia-insider.com/en/business/west-attacks-russia-pickettys-
    overblown-claims-abour-oligarch-wealth/ri24927
    pogohere , Feb 18, 2019 1:34:24 AM | link
    somebody @86

    A very useful interview of John Helmer, an Australian journalist who began reporting from Russia in 1989.

    2-14-19

    John Helmer and a special, Gorilla Radio double-yolker, getting to know too much about Russia.

    ~52 min

    As the first cracks of the Soviet Empire's eroding iron facade opened, Australian-born author, political essayist, professor of political science, and policy advisor to presidents and prime ministers, John Helmer headed for Moscow, determined to establish what was to become the longest continuously operating foreign press bureau in the capital.

    From his position as an independent of single-national, or commercial sponsorship reporter, he ventured into the country's unpredictable, and often precarious economic transition period; a time that would see coup attempts, the undoing of international political superstar, Mikhail Gorbachev, and fall of Russia's communist system itself. It would too usher in the tempestuous Age of the Oligarchs.

    Some of John Helmer's book titles include: 'The Deadly Simple Mechanics of Society', 'Drugs and Minority Oppression', (with Claudia Wright) 'The Jackal's Wedding – American Power, Arab Revolt', 'Grand Strategy for Small Countries, Case Studies in Transforming Weakness into Power,' (and with Ajay Goyal) 'Uncovering Russia'. His latest book is the newly out political and personal memoir, 'The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia'.


    pogohere , Feb 18, 2019 1:34:24 AM | link pogohere , Feb 18, 2019 2:04:52 AM | link
    evilempire @ 141

    Awara link to RI article

    THE CASE AGAINST THOMAS PIKETTY. LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND STATISTICS. THE TRUE LEVEL OF INCOME AND WEALTH INEQUALITY IN RUSSIA.

    evilempire , Feb 18, 2019 4:06:20 AM | link
    For the real scoop on russia read Andrei Martyanov
    at his Reminiscence of the Future blog:

    https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com

    Peter AU 1 , Feb 18, 2019 5:02:41 AM | link
    The "Deep Nation of Russia". An apt title.
    Earlier in the thread I put up a link to Yeltsin's speech. Putin when asked in interviews about some of the things that happened in the 90's is exceptionally angry, yet when asked of his views on Gorbachev and Yeltsin, he says that everybody knew Russia, or the Soviet Union at that time, had to change, but nobody knew how.
    Russia like China cannot be looked at in the same perspective as so called western nations, who's politics and outlook derives from westminster.
    China is east. Russia is where east meets west.
    vk , Feb 18, 2019 7:28:37 AM | link
    PDVSA has just denied the Reuters story:

    Pdvsa desmiente falsa noticia sobre bloqueo de banco ruso

    But I think my point in general stands: Russia is still vulnerable to American sanctions in the financial sector. Otherwise, it wouldn't be working on another system and buying gold.

    [Feb 18, 2019] See the real connection between the fake Steele Dossier and the Skipal hoax

    Feb 18, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    war is coming , February 17, 2019 at 9:37 pm

    See the real connection between the fake Steele Dossier and the Skipal hoax.

    The UK MI6 is behind everything with Australia and Nato. War with Russia is coming to avoid the Brexit. It has been planned 5 years ago. The Brexit is just a good excuse.

    The continued NATO harassment, sanctions and campaigns of lies and false accusations against Russia, including the blatant war rhetoric of the British Defence Secretary, do not bode well for the future. For the US to tear up nuclear arms treaties and then blame Russia is beyond shameful: it is destroying all possibility of negotiations to avert war. The Kerch Strait incident staged by the puppet regime in Kiev, sending gunboats into the Kerch Strait without observing the 2003 Protocol requiring them to notify in advance the Port of Kerch (a protocol observed by the dozens of ships that go through the Strait peacefully every day) was clearly part of a NATO plan to set up a major naval clash in the Black Sea.

    That clash (followed by an attempt to recapture Crimea or at least blow up its magnificent bridge, a reproach to a man who cannot even build a wall) may be expected in coming months, perhaps as a distraction from Brexit or a way of derailing it. NATO, in short, is on a clear trajectory towards war with Russia, which their deluded worldview convinces them they can win.

    Their initial use of Russia as a scapegoat and bogeyman to unite the NATO vassals against a common threat, keeping Europe in subjection to America, has got out of hand, and is heading, under the impetus of hysterical rhetoric, towards actual war. Unless decent people unite to stop this escalation then the nuclear catastrophe will occur.

    Exposing the barefaced lie of the Skripal false flag attack may be a step towards averting that global cataclysm.

    http://thesaker.is/the-alternative-skripal-narrative/

    [Feb 18, 2019] Spreading The Fake Smollett MAGA Country Hate Crime A Mainstream Media Montage

    Feb 18, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Yes CNN, the walls are closing in ... on the mainstream media.

    Meanwhile perhaps it's time for CNN's "media janitor", Brian Stelter, who is oh so quick to point out the bias in every other network except his own, tackle the most difficult and embarrassing question : why were the mainstream - and fringe - journalists who were skeptical of Smollett's claims, attacked and forced to self-censor when the case was unfolding, and will continue to self-censor knowing that if they criticize Smollett directly they would be accused of homophobia and racism?

    hooligan2009 , 28 minutes ago link

    congress passed the "magnitsky act" that allows the seizure of assets of anyone deemed to be a political enemy of libtard socialist welfare statists (despite the fact that Magnitsky did the books for Browder who evaded Russian taxes in the hundreds of millions of dollars as part of a western conspiracy to strip mine the Russian economy - even Magnitsky mother said that he was not murdered by the Russian police).

    there needs to be a "smollett act" that penalizes anyone that publicly demonizes a race, color, creed or religion by inciting malice/hatred/discrimination against another race/color/religion/creed without proof.

    blacks/whites/yellows/browns can be racist, sexist, agist, mithandristic, mysogynistic or any other form of discrimination. 95% of all people are not that way. positive discrimination is just as evil as negative discrimination.

    time to enforce and strengthen race hate laws.

    the penalties should start with a BAN on using social media or the MSM to further their views that "guilty by gossip, conjecture and fomentation of societal discord (aka. disturbing the peace) " overturns the basic legal tenet of "innocent until proven guilty".

    NiggaPleeze , 2 hours ago link

    Instead we once again see CNN and virtually all other left-leaning mainstream outlets spreading legitimately fake news like wild-fire

    Right, and when Booker and Fairfax were accused of sexual assault/rape, all of the right-leaning mainstream outlets were very skeptical. https://video.foxnews.com/v/6000182150001/#sp=show-clips

    Fact is partisanship is a mental disease that affects the Left and Right - ends justify the means. Obvious example: if Obama were to use a National Emergency to take action Congress expressly rejected and Obama signed into law, people on the right would call for impeachment and make all kinds of nasty accusations; when Trump does it, they cheer. There is no principle there, it's pure partisanship.

    Perfect example also is the Fox news clip linked above. The Fox pundit asks increduously "why would these women smear him? what do they have to gain?", but I can guarantee you he wasn't asking those same questions when Kavanaugh was being accused.

    Partisanship - an evil consuming little minds.

    Ophiuchus , 3 hours ago link

    When you own the medium, you own the message.

    We are completely fucked with no way out until the grid goes down.

    Quit gaslighting the country. Give the worthy a break, Trump; please shut the grid down and leave it down for a year.

    Drop-Hammer , 3 hours ago link

    This is a classic Christ-killing *** tactic straight from Saul Alinsky (Hillary's mentor). Since the kikes control all U.S. media from print media to broadcast media to Internet social media, they will never be called to account. They simply either make up the lie or they spread/broadcast/'retweet' the lie until it is a meme. If they are caught in the act, they merely let it drop or issue some half-assed mea culpa, but the damage is done/the innocent are tarred until the next lie is fabricated or spread. Of course, the lies/mendacity are against only white Christian Heritage Americans. Kikery at its most demonic. Someone once said that 'A lie has made its way around the world, before the truth has gotten out of bed.'

    Oh, off topic but important to note that the *** press also spikes/stifles relevant facts in stories such as the fact that yesterday's Aurora, Illinois shooter (who killed five white people and shot and injured five police officers) was a ******. If he had been white, the guy's face would be plastered over every page and screen in America with the *** media screaming for gun control.

    [Feb 17, 2019] Trump is Russian asset memo is really neocon propaganda overkill

    Highly recommended!
    The ability of those in power to manipulate the ways ordinary people think, act and vote has allowed for an inverted totalitarianism which turns the citizenry into their own prison wardens, allowing those with real power to continue doing as they please unhindered by the interests of the common man.
    In neoliberal MSM there is positive feedback loop for "Trump is a Russian agent" stories. So the meme feeds on itself.
    Notable quotes:
    "... And yet the trending, most high-profile stories about Trump today all involve painting him as a Putin puppet who is working to destroy America by taking a weak stance against an alarming geopolitical threat. This has had the effect of manufacturing demand for even more dangerous escalations against a nuclear superpower that just so happens to be a longtime target of U.S. intelligence agencies. ..."
    "... the mass media is not in the business of reporting facts, it's in the business of selling narratives. Even if those narratives are so shrill and stress-inducing that they imperil the health of their audience. ..."
    "... Trump is clearly not a Russian asset, he's a facilitator of America's permanent unelected government just like his predecessors, and indeed as far as actual policies and administration behavior goes he's not that much different from Barack Obama and George W Bush. Hell, for all his demagogic anti-immigrant speech Trump hasn't even caught up to Obama's peak ICE deportation years ..."
    "... Used to be that the U.S. mass media only killed people indirectly, by facilitating establishment war agendas in repeating government agency propaganda as objective fact and promulgating narratives that manufacture support for a status quo which won't even give Americans health insurance or safe drinking water ..."
    "... Now they're skipping the middle man and killing them directly by psychologically brutalizing them so aggressively that it ruins their health, all to ensure that Democrats support war and adore the U.S. intelligence community . ..."
    "... The social engineers responsible for controlling the populace of the greatest military power on the planet are watching France closely, and understand deeply what is at stake should they fail to control the narrative and herd ordinary Americans into supporting U.S. government institutions. ..."
    "... The ability of those in power to manipulate the ways ordinary people think, act and vote has allowed for an inverted totalitarianism which turns the citizenry into their own prison wardens, allowing those with real power to continue doing as they please unhindered by the interests of the common man. ..."
    Jan 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    The always excellent Moon of Alabama blog has just published a sarcasm-laden piece documenting the many, many aggressive maneuvers that this administration has made against the interests of Russia, from pushing for more NATO funding to undermining Russia's natural gas interests to bombing Syria to sanctioning Russian oligarchs to dangerous military posturing.

    <picture deleted>

    And yet the trending, most high-profile stories about Trump today all involve painting him as a Putin puppet who is working to destroy America by taking a weak stance against an alarming geopolitical threat. This has had the effect of manufacturing demand for even more dangerous escalations against a nuclear superpower that just so happens to be a longtime target of U.S. intelligence agencies.

    If the mass media were in the business of reporting facts, there would be a lot less "Putin's puppet" talk and a lot more "Hey, maybe we should avoid senseless escalations which could end all life on earth" talk among news media consumers. But there isn't, because the mass media is not in the business of reporting facts, it's in the business of selling narratives. Even if those narratives are so shrill and stress-inducing that they imperil the health of their audience.

    Like His Predecessors

    Trump is clearly not a Russian asset, he's a facilitator of America's permanent unelected government just like his predecessors, and indeed as far as actual policies and administration behavior goes he's not that much different from Barack Obama and George W Bush. Hell, for all his demagogic anti-immigrant speech Trump hasn't even caught up to Obama's peak ICE deportation years.

    If the mass media were in the business of reporting facts, people would be no more worried about this administration than they were about the previous ones, because when it comes to his administration's actual behavior, he's just as reliable an upholder of the establishment-friendly status quo as his predecessors.

    Used to be that the U.S. mass media only killed people indirectly, by facilitating establishment war agendas in repeating government agency propaganda as objective fact and promulgating narratives that manufacture support for a status quo which won't even give Americans health insurance or safe drinking water.

    Now they're skipping the middle man and killing them directly by psychologically brutalizing them so aggressively that it ruins their health, all to ensure that Democrats support war and adore the U.S. intelligence community .

    They do this for a reason, of course. The Yellow Vests protests in France have continued unabated for their ninth consecutive week , a decentralized populist uprising resulting from ordinary French citizens losing trust in their institutions and the official narratives which uphold them.

    The social engineers responsible for controlling the populace of the greatest military power on the planet are watching France closely, and understand deeply what is at stake should they fail to control the narrative and herd ordinary Americans into supporting U.S. government institutions. Right now they've got Republicans cheering on the White House and Democrats cheering on the U.S. intelligence community, but that could all change should something happen which causes them to lose control over the thoughts that Americans think about their rulers.

    Propaganda is the single most-overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of human society. The ability of those in power to manipulate the ways ordinary people think, act and vote has allowed for an inverted totalitarianism which turns the citizenry into their own prison wardens, allowing those with real power to continue doing as they please unhindered by the interests of the common man.

    The only thing that will lead to real change is the people losing trust in corrupt institutions and rising like lions against them. That gets increasingly likely as those institutions lose control of the narrative, and with trust in the mass media at an all-time low, populist uprisings restoring power to the people in France, and media corporations acting increasingly weird and insecure , that looks more and more likely by the day.

    [Feb 17, 2019] Kremlin Spokesman Says U.S. Sanctions Bill Borders on Racketeering

    Feb 17, 2019 | larouchepub.com

    Feb. 14, 2019 (EIRNS) -- Responding to the U.S. Senators' efforts to impose new sanctions on Russia by proposing a bill on Feb. 13 called the "Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act (DASKA)" of 2019, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said behind such proposals

    "there is an absolutely concrete, pragmatic and aggressive trading approach, having nothing to do with international trade rules.... This policy sometimes borders on racketeering. I mean various provisions of the draft law aimed at disrupting various energy projects of Russian companies, undermining the activities of Russian banks with state participation,"

    Peskov said, reported TASS.

    The proposed legislation, an updated version of an earlier bill that did not muster enough support, seeks to increase economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Russia "in response to Russia's interference in democratic processes abroad, malign influence in Syria, and aggression against Ukraine, including in the Kerch Strait," said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who proposed the bill with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), among other members of the Foreign Relations Committee.

    [Feb 16, 2019] MSM Begs For Trust After Buzzfeed Debacle by Caitlin Johnstone

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... This is the behavior of a media class that is interested in selling narratives, not reporting truth. And yet the mass media talking heads are all telling us today that we must continue to trust them. ..."
    "... More accountability in media than in politics, Chuck? Really? Accountability to whom? Your advertisers? Your plutocratic owners? Certainly not to the people whose minds you are paid exorbitant sums to influence; there are no public elections for the leadership of the mass media. ..."
    "... CNN, for the record, has been guilty of an arguably even more embarrassing Russiagate flub than Buzzfeed 's when they wrongly reported that Donald Trump Jr had had access to WikiLeaks' DNC email archives prior to their 2016 publication, an error that was hilariously due to to the simple misreading of an email date by multiple people ..."
    "... The mass media, including pro-Trump mass media like Fox News, absolutely deserves to be distrusted. It has earned that distrust. It had earned that distrust already with its constant promotion of imperialist wars and an oligarch-friendly status quo, and it has earned it even more with its frenzied promotion of a narrative engineered to manufacture consent for a preexisting agenda to shove Russia off the world stage. ..."
    "... The mainstream media absolutely is the enemy of the people; just because Trump says it doesn't mean it's not true. The only reason people don't rise up and use the power of their numbers to force the much-needed changes that need to happen in our world is because they are being propagandized to accept the status quo day in and day out by the mass media's endless cultural engineering project . ..."
    "... They are the reason why wars go unopposed, why third parties never gain traction, why people consent to money hemorrhaging upward to the wealthiest of the wealthy while everyone else struggles to survive. The sooner people wake up from the perverse narrative matrix of the plutocratic media, the better. ..."
    Jan 20, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    Following what the Washington Post has described as "the highest-profile misstep yet for a news organization during a period of heightened and intense scrutiny of the press," mass media representatives are now flailing desperately for an argument as to why people should continue to place their trust in mainstream news outlets.

    On Thursday Buzzfeed News delivered the latest "bombshell" Russiagate report to fizzle within 24 hours of its publication, a pattern that is now so consistent that I've personally made a practice of declining to comment on such stories until a day or two after their release. "BOOM!" tweets were issued by #Resistance pundits on Twitter, "If true this means X, Y and Z" bloviations were made on mass media punditry panels, and for about 20 hours Russiagaters everywhere were riding the high of their lives, giddy with the news that President Trump had committed an impeachable felony by ordering Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a proposed Trump office tower in Moscow, a proposal which died within weeks and the Kremlin never touched .

    There was reason enough already for any reasonable person to refrain from frenzied celebration, including the fact that the story's two authors, Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier, were giving the press two very different accounts of the information they'd based it on, with Cormier telling CNN that he had not personally seen the evidence underlying his report and Leopold telling MSNBC that he had. Both Leopold and Cormier, for the record, have already previously suffered a Russiagate faceplant with the clickbait viral story that Russia had financed the 2016 election, burying the fact that it was a Russian election .

    Then the entire story came crashing down when Mueller's office took the extremely rare step of issuing an unequivocal statement that the Buzzfeed story was wrong , writing simply, "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the special counsel's office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's congressional testimony are not accurate."

    According to journalist and economic analyst Doug Henwood, the print New York Times covered the Buzzfeed report on its front page when the story broke, but the report on Mueller's correction the next day was shoved back to page 11 . This appalling journalistic malpractice makes it very funny that NYT's Wajahat Ali had the gall to tweet , "Unlike the Trump administration, journalists are fact checking and willing to correct the record if the Buzzfeed story is found inaccurate. Not really the actions of a deep state and enemy of the people, right?"

    This is the behavior of a media class that is interested in selling narratives, not reporting truth. And yet the mass media talking heads are all telling us today that we must continue to trust them.

    "Those trying to tar all media today aren't interested in improving journalism but protecting themselves," tweeted NBC's Chuck Todd.

    "There's a lot more accountability in media these days than in our politics. We know we live in a glass house, we hope the folks we cover are as self aware."

    More accountability in media than in politics, Chuck? Really? Accountability to whom? Your advertisers? Your plutocratic owners? Certainly not to the people whose minds you are paid exorbitant sums to influence; there are no public elections for the leadership of the mass media.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/rMY-zTxPCuY

    "Mueller didn't do the media any favors tonight, and he did do the president one," griped the odious Chris Cuomo on CNN. "Because as you saw with Rudy Giuliani and as I'm sure you'll see with the president himself, this allows them to say 'You can't believe it! You can't believe what you read, you can't believe what you hear! You can only believe us. Even the Special Counsel says that the media doesn't get it right.'"

    "The larger message that a lot of people are going to take from this story is that the news media are a bunch of leftist liars who are dying to get the president, and they're willing to lie to do it, and I don't think that's true" said Jeffrey Toobin on a CNN panel , adding "I just think this is a bad day for us."

    "It does reinforce bad stereotypes about the news media," said Brian Stelter on the same CNN panel.

    "I am desperate as a media reporter to always say to the audience, judge folks individually and judge brands individually. Don't fall for what these politicians out there want you to do. They want you to think we're all crooked. We're not. But Buzzfeed now, now the onus is on Buzzfeed. "

    CNN, for the record, has been guilty of an arguably even more embarrassing Russiagate flub than Buzzfeed 's when they wrongly reported that Donald Trump Jr had had access to WikiLeaks' DNC email archives prior to their 2016 publication, an error that was hilariously due to to the simple misreading of an email date by multiple people.

    The mass media, including pro-Trump mass media like Fox News, absolutely deserves to be distrusted. It has earned that distrust. It had earned that distrust already with its constant promotion of imperialist wars and an oligarch-friendly status quo, and it has earned it even more with its frenzied promotion of a narrative engineered to manufacture consent for a preexisting agenda to shove Russia off the world stage.

    The mainstream media absolutely is the enemy of the people; just because Trump says it doesn't mean it's not true. The only reason people don't rise up and use the power of their numbers to force the much-needed changes that need to happen in our world is because they are being propagandized to accept the status quo day in and day out by the mass media's endless cultural engineering project .

    They are the reason why wars go unopposed, why third parties never gain traction, why people consent to money hemorrhaging upward to the wealthiest of the wealthy while everyone else struggles to survive. The sooner people wake up from the perverse narrative matrix of the plutocratic media, the better.

    * * *

    The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , purchasing some of my sweet new merchandise , buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone , or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    [Feb 16, 2019] Death Of Russiagate: Mueller Team Tied To Mifsud s Network

    Highly recommended!
    Looks like all of them were Brennan men. CIA used FBI counterintelligence and counter-terrorism personnel to kick start the investigation/scandal.
    Notable quotes:
    "... We return, now, to this issue and specifically the research of Chris Blackburn, to place the final nail in the coffin of the Trump-Russia collusion charade. Blackburn's insights are incredible not only because they return us to the earliest reporting on the role of British intelligence figures in manufacturing the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, but because they also implicate members of Mueller's investigation. ..."
    "... If you factor in the dreadful reporting to discredit Joseph Mifsud and leaks, it is pretty clear something rather strange happened to George Papadopoulos during the campaign while he was shuttling around Europe and the Middle East. He was working with people who have intelligence links at the London Centre of International Law Practice ..."
    "... A recent article in The Telegraph also alludes to MI5, MI6, and CIA using counter-terrorism assets which would tie into the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP), and its sister organizations, doing counter-terrorism work for the Australian, UK and US governments. They quote anonymous officials who believe that their intelligence agencies used counter-terrorism personnel to kick start the investigation/scandal." ..."
    "... Continuing, Blackburn pinpointed the significance of defining counter-terrorism as the starting point of the investigation, saying: "It shows that there is a high probability that intelligence was deliberately abused to make Papadopoulos' activities look like they were something else. ..."
    "... It's more likely that the CIA played the FBI with the help of close allies who were suspicious and frightened of a Trump presidency." ..."
    "... Zainab Ahmad , a member of Mueller's legal team, is the former Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of New York. As pointed out by Blackburn , Ahmad attended a Global Center on Cooperative Security event in 2017 ..."
    "... "Zainab Ahmad was one of the first DOJ prosecutors to have seen the Steele dossier. In May 2017, she attended a counter-terrorism conference in New York with the Global Center on Cooperative Security (GCCS), an organization which Joseph Mifsud, the alleged Russian spy, had been working within London and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia ..."
    "... I don't think it's a coincidence that Global Center on Cooperative Security is connected to various elements that popped up in the Papadopoulos case. The fact that a prosecutor on Mueller's team was at Global Center before Mueller was appointed as special counsel is also troubling ..."
    "... Days ago, The Hill reported on Congressional testimony by Bruce Ohr, revealing that when served as a DOJ official, he warned FBI and DOJ figures that the Steele dossier was problematic and linked to the Clintons ..."
    "... Last year, Blackburn noted the connection between Mifsud and Arvinder Sambei , writing: "LCILP director and FBI counsel, works with Mike Smith at the Global Center. They ran joint counter-terrorism conferences and training with Mifsud's London Academy. Sambei then brought Mifsud over to the [London Centre of International Law Practice]. [Global Center works with Aussies, UK and US State too." ..."
    "... Disobedient Media previously reported that Robert Hannigan, then head of British spy agency GCHQ, flew to Washington DC to share 'director-to-director' level intelligence with then-CIA Chief John Brennan in the summer of 2016. This writer noted that " The Guardian reported Hannigan's announcement that he would step down from his leadership position with the agency just three days after the inauguration of President Trump, on 23 January 2017. ..."
    "... Jane Mayer, in her profile of Christopher Steele published in the New Yorker, also noted that Hannigan had flown to Washington D.C. to personally brief the then-CIA Director John Brennan on alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. What is so curious about this briefing "deemed so sensitive it was handled at director-level" is why Hannigan was talking director-to-director to the CIA and not Mike Rogers at the NSA, GCHQ's Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partner." ..."
    "... There are more and more articles saying that the FBI, CIA, M14 15,16 yada yada, were overly concerned about Trump. Their sin...caring too much for the USA. They attempted a coup de'etat for "our" own good...we... being "we the people". To quote Abe Lincoln "You will find that all the arguments in favour of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, -- not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden." Lincoln did not mince words ..."
    Jan 22, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Via Disobedient Media

    In April last year, Disobedient Media broke coverage of the British involvement in the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, asking why All Russiagate Roads Lead To London , via the quasi-scholar Joseph Mifsud and others.

    The issue was also raised by WikiLeaks's Julian Assange , just days before the Ecuadorian government silenced him last March. Assange's Twitter thread cited research by Chris Blackburn , who spoke with Disobedient Media on multiple occasions covering Joseph Mifsud's ties to British intelligence figures and organizations, as well as his links to Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign, the FBI, CIA and the private cyber-security firm Crowdstrike.

    We return, now, to this issue and specifically the research of Chris Blackburn, to place the final nail in the coffin of the Trump-Russia collusion charade. Blackburn's insights are incredible not only because they return us to the earliest reporting on the role of British intelligence figures in manufacturing the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, but because they also implicate members of Mueller's investigation. What we are left with is an indication of collusion between factions of the US and UK intelligence community in fabricating evidence of Trump-Russia collusion: a scandal that would have rocked the legacy press to its core, if Western establishment-backed media had a spine.

    In Disobedient Media's previous coverage of Blackburn's work, he described his experience in intelligence:

    "I've been involved in numerous investigations that involve counter-intelligence techniques in the past. I used to work for the 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism , one of the biggest tort actions in American history. I helped build a profile of Osama bin Laden's financial and political network, which was slightly different to the one that had been built by the CIA's Alec Station , a dedicated task force which was focused on Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Alec Station designed its profile to hunt Osama bin Laden and disrupt his network. I thought it was flawed. It had failed to take into account Osama's historical links to Pakistan's main political parties or that he was the figurehead for a couple of organizations, not just Al-Qaeda."

    "I also ran a few conferences for US intelligence leaders during the Bush administration. After the 9/11 Commission published its report into the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon it created a public outreach program. The US National Intelligence Conference and Exposition ( Intelcon ) was one of the avenues it used. I was responsible for creating the 'View from Abroad' track. We had guidance from former Senator Slade Gorton and Jamie Gorelick, who both sat on the 9/11 Commission. We got leaders such as Sir John Chilcot and Baroness Pauline Neville Jones to come and help share their experiences on how the US would be able to heal the rifts after 9/11."

    "The US intelligence community was suffering from severe turf wars and firewalls, which were hampering counter-terrorism efforts. They were concentrating on undermining each other rather than tackling terrorism. I had mainly concentrated on the Middle East, but in 2003 I switched my focus to terrorism in South Asia."

    Counter Terrorism, Not Counter Intelligence, Sparked Probe

    In an article published by The Telegraph last November, the paper acknowledged the following:

    "It forces the spotlight on whether the UK played a role in the FBI's investigation launched before the 2016 presidential election into Trump campaign ties to the Kremlin... Mr. Trump's allies and former advisers are raising questions about the UK's role in the start of the probe, given many of the key figures and meetings were located in Britain... One former top White House adviser to Mr. Trump made similar insinuations, telling this newspaper: "You know the Brits are up to their neck." The source added on the Page wiretap application: "I think that stuff is going to implicate MI5 and MI6 in a bunch of activities they don't want to be implicated in, along with FBI, counter-terrorism and the CIA. " [Emphasis Added]

    The article cites George Papadopoulos, who asked why the "British intelligence apparatus was weaponized against Trump and his advisers." Papadopoulos has also addressed the issue at length via Twitter. In response to the Telegraph's coverage of the issue, Chris Blackburn wrote via Twitter :

    "The Telegraph story on Trump Russia acknowledges that activities involving counter-terrorism are at the heart of the scandal...not counter-intelligence. If the [London Centre for International Law Practice] was British state, not private, some Commonwealth countries are going to be seriously pissed off."

    Blackburn spoke with Disobedient Media, saying:

    " If you factor in the dreadful reporting to discredit Joseph Mifsud and leaks, it is pretty clear something rather strange happened to George Papadopoulos during the campaign while he was shuttling around Europe and the Middle East. He was working with people who have intelligence links at the London Centre of International Law Practice.

    A recent article in The Telegraph also alludes to MI5, MI6, and CIA using counter-terrorism assets which would tie into the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP), and its sister organizations, doing counter-terrorism work for the Australian, UK and US governments. They quote anonymous officials who believe that their intelligence agencies used counter-terrorism personnel to kick start the investigation/scandal." [Emphasis Added]

    Blackburn discussed this differentiation with Disobedient Media:

    "Counter-terrorism is obviously involved in more kinetic, violent political actions-concerning mass casualty events, bombings, assassinations, poisonings, and hacking. But, the lines are blurring between them. Counter-intelligence cases have been known to stretch for decades- often relying on nothing more than paranoia and suspicion to fuel investigations. Counter-terrorism is also a broader discipline as it involves tactical elements like hostage rescue, crime scene investigations, and explosive specialists. Counter-Terrorism is a collaborative effort with counter-terrorism officers working closely with local and regional police forces and civic organizations. There is also a wider academic field around countering violent, and radical ideology which promotes terrorism and insurgencies. Cybersecurity has become the third major discipline in intelligence. The London Center of International Law Practice, the mysterious intelligence company that employed both Papadopoulos and Mifsud , had also been working in that area."

    Continuing, Blackburn pinpointed the significance of defining counter-terrorism as the starting point of the investigation, saying: "It shows that there is a high probability that intelligence was deliberately abused to make Papadopoulos' activities look like they were something else.

    As counter-terrorism and counterintelligence are close in tactics and methods, it would seem that they were used because they share the same skill sets - covert evidence gathering and deception. It's basically sleight of hand. A piece of theatre would be more precise. However, we don't know if the FBI knew it was real or make-believe. It's more likely that the CIA played the FBI with the help of close allies who were suspicious and frightened of a Trump presidency."

    Mueller's Team And Joseph Mifsud

    Zainab Ahmad , a member of Mueller's legal team, is the former Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of New York. As pointed out by Blackburn , Ahmad attended a Global Center on Cooperative Security event in 2017. In recent days, Blackburn wrote via Twitter :

    "Zainab Ahmad is a major player in the Russiagate scandal at the DOJ. Does she work for SC Mueller? She was at a GCCS event in May 2017. Arvinder Sambei, a co-director of the [London Centre of International Law Practice], worked with Joseph Mifsud, [George Papadopoulos] and [Simona Mangiante]. She's a GCCS consultant."

    Blackburn told this author:

    "Zainab Ahmad was one of the first DOJ prosecutors to have seen the Steele dossier. In May 2017, she attended a counter-terrorism conference in New York with the Global Center on Cooperative Security (GCCS), an organization which Joseph Mifsud, the alleged Russian spy, had been working within London and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia."

    Zainab Ahmad (AHMAD). Image via the Combatting Terrorism Center, West Point

    "Richard Barrett, the Former Chief of Counter-Terrorism at MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence department traveled with Mifsud to Saudi Arabia to give a talk on terrorism in 2017. Ex-CIA officers, US Defense, and US Treasury officials were also there. The London Centre of International Law Practice's relationship to the Global Center had been established in 2014. The Global Center on Cooperative Security made Martin Polaine and Arvinder Sambei consultants, they then became directors at the London Centre of International Law Practice."

    "The Global Center on Cooperative Security's first major UK conference was at Joseph Mifsud's London Academy of Diplomacy (LAD). Mifsud then followed Arvinder Sambei and Nagi Idris over to the London Centre of International Law Practice. Sources have told me that Mifsud was moonlighting as a specialist on counter-terrorism and Islamism while working at LAD which explains why he went to work in counter-terrorism after LAD folded."

    "I don't think it's a coincidence that Global Center on Cooperative Security is connected to various elements that popped up in the Papadopoulos case. The fact that a prosecutor on Mueller's team was at Global Center before Mueller was appointed as special counsel is also troubling."

    Days ago, The Hill reported on Congressional testimony by Bruce Ohr, revealing that when served as a DOJ official, he warned FBI and DOJ figures that the Steele dossier was problematic and linked to the Clintons. Critically, The Hill writes:

    "Those he briefed included Andrew Weissmann, then the head of DOJ's fraud section; Bruce Swartz, longtime head of DOJ's international operations, and Zainab Ahmad , an accomplished terrorism prosecutor who, at the time, was assigned to work with Lynch as a senior counselor. Ahmad and Weissmann would go on to work for Mueller, the special prosecutor overseeing the Russia probe." [Emphasis Added]

    This point is essential, as it not only describes Ahmad's role in Mueller's team but places her at a crucial pre-investigation meeting.

    Last year, Blackburn noted the connection between Mifsud and Arvinder Sambei , writing: "LCILP director and FBI counsel, works with Mike Smith at the Global Center. They ran joint counter-terrorism conferences and training with Mifsud's London Academy. Sambei then brought Mifsud over to the [London Centre of International Law Practice]. [Global Center works with Aussies, UK and US State too."

    Sambei has been described elsewhere as a "Former practising barrister, Senior Crown Prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service of England & Wales, and Legal Adviser at the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ), Ministry of Defence." [British spelling has been retained]

    Arvinder Sambei. Image via the Public International Law Advisory Group

    That Sambei has been so thoroughly linked to organizations where Mifsud was a central figure is yet another cause of suspicion regarding allegations that Joseph Mifsud was a shadowy, unknown Russian agent until the summer of 2016 . She is also a direct link between Robert Mueller and Mifsud.

    Blackburn wrote via Twitter : "Arvinder Sambei helped to organize LCILP's counter-terrorism and corruption events. She used her contacts in the US to bring in Middle Eastern government officials that were seen to be vulnerable to graft. Lisa Osofsky, former FBI Deputy General Counsel, was working with her." Below, Arvinder is pictured at a London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP) event.

    Arvinder Sambei, pictured at an LCILP event. Image via Chris Blackburn, Twitter

    As Chris Blackburn told this author:

    " Mifsud and Papadopoulos's co-director Arvinder Sambei was also the former FBI British counsel working 9/11 cases for Robert Mueller. She also runs a consultancy which deals with Special Investigative Measure (SIMs) which is just a posh description for covert espionage and evidence gathering. She has worked for major intelligence and national law agencies in the past. She wore two hats as a director of London Centre and a consultant for the Global Center on Cooperative Security (GCCS), a counter-terrorism think tank which is sponsored by the Australia, Canada, UK and US governments. Alexander Downer's former Chief of Staff while at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade now works for the Global Center. Mifsud was also due to meet with Australian private intelligence figures in Adelaide in March 2016. So. Australia is certainly a major focus for the investigation." [Emphasis Added]

    Below, former FBI Deputy General Counsel Lisa Osofsky is pictured at a London Centre for International Law Practice event . Osofsky also served as the Money Laundering Reporting Officer with Goldman Sachs International. Since 2018, she has served as the Director of the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

    Lisa Osofsky, pictured at an LCILP event. Image via Chris Blackburn, Twitter

    An Embarrassment For John Brennan?

    Disobedient Media previously reported that Robert Hannigan, then head of British spy agency GCHQ, flew to Washington DC to share 'director-to-director' level intelligence with then-CIA Chief John Brennan in the summer of 2016. This writer noted that " The Guardian reported Hannigan's announcement that he would step down from his leadership position with the agency just three days after the inauguration of President Trump, on 23 January 2017.

    Jane Mayer, in her profile of Christopher Steele published in the New Yorker, also noted that Hannigan had flown to Washington D.C. to personally brief the then-CIA Director John Brennan on alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. What is so curious about this briefing "deemed so sensitive it was handled at director-level" is why Hannigan was talking director-to-director to the CIA and not Mike Rogers at the NSA, GCHQ's Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partner."

    Blackburn told Disobedient Media:

    "Former Congressman Trey Gowdy, who has seen most of the information gathered by Congress from the intelligence community concerning the Russia investigation, said that if President Trump were to declassify files and present the truth to the American public, it would " embarrass John Brennan ." I think that is pretty concrete for me, but it's not definitive. I know the polarization and spin in Washington has become perverse, but that statement is pretty specific for me. If Brennan is involved, it is most probably through Papadopoulos who sparked off the 'official' investigation at the FBI. He also made sure the Steele dossier was spread through the US government."

    Blackburn added: "Chris Steele was also working on FIFA projects, and a source has told me that he was working to investigate the Russian and Qatari World Cup bids. The London Centre of International Law Practice has been working with Majed Garoub, the former Saudi legal representative of FIFA, the world governing body for soccer. He's also been working against the Qatari bid. Steele likes to get paid twice for his investigations."

    "Mifsud has also been associated with Prince Turki the former Saudi intelligence chief, Mifsud and the London Academy of Diplomacy used to train Saudi diplomats and intelligence figures while Turki was the Saudi Ambassador to London. Turki is a close friend of Bill Clinton and John Brennan. Nawaf Obaid was also courting Mifsud and tried to get him a cushy job working with CNN's Freedom Project at Link Campus in Rome. He also knows John Brennan. Intelligence agencies like to give out professional gifts like this plum academic position for completing missions. In the US, it is widely known that intelligence agencies gift the children of assets to get them into prestigious Ivy League schools."

    At minimum, we can surmise that Mifsud was not a Russian agent, but was an asset of Western intelligence agencies. We are left with the impression that the Mifsud saga served as a ploy, whether he participated knowingly or not. It seems reasonable to conclude that the gambit was initially developed with participation of John Brennan and UK intelligence. Following this, Mueller inherited and developed the Mifsud narrative thread into the collusion soap opera we know today.

    Ultimately, we are faced with the reality that British and US interests worked together to fabricate a collusion scandal to subvert a US Presidency, and in doing so, intentionally raised tensions between the West and a nuclear-armed power.

    snodgrass , 2 hours ago link

    What ********. Britain was part of the group pulling of 911 along with the American and Jewish establishment. Blackburn was the inside guy, posing as an outsider, to deflect attention from the real perpetrators. These people always have agents on both sides of every issue in the same way they fund two "opposing" political parties and fund two "opposing" sides in the media.

    freedommusic , 3 hours ago link

    Ultimately, we are faced with the reality that British and US interests worked together to fabricate a collusion scandal to subvert a US Presidency , and in doing so, intentionally raised tensions between the West and a nuclear-armed power .

    It's called TREASON .

    Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies , giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere , is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years

    Jung , 3 hours ago link

    SteeleGate---his mate Skripal, boss Pablo Miller----novichok---Porton Down---anything to blame Russia in the end. After 30 dys of shutdown personnel of CIA, FBI and DOJ can be changed legally: draining of the swamp and DECLAS can begin with proper Military Tribunals in place. This according to Q who shared all of this, so it was not a conspiracy theory that the Q team exposed, but just MSM and Deep State in their last panic mode. Justice will now be able to follow: maybe rel end of endless wars too!

    boooyaaaah , 3 hours ago link

    There are more and more articles saying that the FBI, CIA, M14 15,16 yada yada, were overly concerned about Trump. Their sin...caring too much for the USA. They attempted a coup de'etat for "our" own good...we... being "we the people". To quote Abe Lincoln "You will find that all the arguments in favour of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, -- not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden." Lincoln did not mince words

    So now we have an international conspiracy of care. Not one power grubber in the group. A syndicate of misunderstood do gooders.

    But not having the consent of the people, but rather trying to undo, and foil the consent of the people.

    This part of the Declaration applies

    That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

    Last of the Middle Class , 4 hours ago link

    Ultimately, we are faced with the reality that British and US interests worked together to fabricate a collusion scandal to subvert a US Presidency, and in doing so, intentionally raised tensions between the West and a nuclear-armed power..."

    Why do you not call it a coup d'etat? That is what it is, nothing less. If it were about something Trump did you would use the harshest possible language. Why not tell the truth here. Let the American people know what happened.

    [Feb 16, 2019] Guccifer 2.0's American Fingerprints Reveal An Operation Made In The USA

    Feb 16, 2019 | disobedientmedia.com

    Paul E. Merrell, J.D. , May 31, 2018 at 4:53 am

    Guccifer 2.0's American Fingerprints Reveal An Operation Made In The USA: https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/05/guccifer-2-0s-american-fingerprints-reveal-an-operation-made-in-the-usa/

    [Feb 16, 2019] All roads lead to Obama

    Feb 16, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    05/27/2018

    macholatte -> Richard Chesler Sun, 05/27/2018 - 10:30 Permalink

    All roads lead to Obama.

    Trump's BIGGEST single mistake was making Sessions AG and then failing to fire Sessions after Sessions recused himself. We now know Sessions is Trump's Judas Iscariot.

    How about the very well documented and obvious Crimes & Felonies:
    1. On Rosenstein's advice, Sessions recused himself from getting involved with any Trump campaign related investigations - here come the Trump campaign related investigations.
    2. Sessions appoints Rosenstein assistant AG.
    3. Rosenstein recommends that Comey be fired.
    4. Trump fires Comey.
    5. Rosenstein recommends Wray, good buddy of Comey & Mueller, to be new FBI director.
    6. Comey testifies that he leaked a memo (stuff he made up) because he knew it would trigger a special council to investigate the Trump campaign for Russia collusion (how did Comey know that? Was it part of the plan with Rosenstein?)
    7. Rosenstein appoints Mueller (good friend of Rosenstein & Comey) as the special council with open authority to investigate "collusion", a suspected activity that is not a crime if it did exist. We now know Mueller's appointment & authority might be illegal.
    8. Rosenstein & Wray stonewall congressional investigations into DOJ & FBI criminality.
    9. Sessions refuses to appoint special council to investigate obvious Hitlary, DOJ & FBI criminality.
    10. Sessions appoints John Huber, Obama appointee & swamp rat, to assist Inspector General without any power to subpoena or seat a Grand Jury.
    11. Stormy Daniels is used to demoralize Trump and is assisted by FBI. Since when does the FBI get involved in the kind of civil actions raised by a prostitute?
    12. Michael Cohen is raided by FBI regarding an issue that should be reserved for state court. Attorney client privilege is violated. This alone is a criminal act but nobody to prosecute it.
    13. Months before the Cohen raid, Rosenstein-Mueller used the Cohen-Stormy situation to launch investigation into Cohen and thereby spy on Trump conversations with his attorney.
    14. Judge appointed to hear the Cohen case is Prog Hack & Soros-Clinton crony Kimba Wood.

    Conclusion: Sessions, Rosenstein, Comey, Wray and Mueller conspired to assist the "Soros-Clinton-Obama Resistance" to thwart all efforts to indict Clintons and Obama and expose the corruption at the FBI, DOJ and State Dept.

    [Feb 16, 2019] Guccifer 2.0's American Fingerprints Reveal An Operation Made In The USA

    Feb 16, 2019 | disobedientmedia.com

    Paul E. Merrell, J.D. , May 31, 2018 at 4:53 am

    Guccifer 2.0's American Fingerprints Reveal An Operation Made In The USA: https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/05/guccifer-2-0s-american-fingerprints-reveal-an-operation-made-in-the-usa/

    [Feb 13, 2019] MoA - Russiagate Is Finished

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... You can take this to the bank. Hardcore Russiagaters will never give up their belief in collusion and Russian influence in the 2016 campaign -- never. Congress and Mueller will be accused of engaging in a coverup. ..."
    "... Thus, even if the Mueller report is underwhelming, I think that the Democrats and TDS-saturated Trump opponents will attempt to rehabilitate it by pretending that it contains important loose ends that need to be pursued. In other words, to perpetuate the Mueller-driven political Russophobia by all other available means. ..."
    "... Russiagate has exposed the great degree of corruption within the Justice Department bureaucracy, particularly within FBI, and within the entire Democrat Party. ..."
    "... Since this is obviously not going to be allowed to happen, and since these people get away with everything, expect this to never end, despite all evidence to the contrary. It doesn't matter if they've been exposed as CIA propagandists or Integrity Initiative stooges, the game goes on...and on.... the job security of these disgraced columnists is the greatest in the Western world. ..."
    "... Stephen Cohen discusses how rational viewpoints are banned from the mainstream media, and how several features of US life today resemble some of the worst features of the Soviet system. https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/12/stephen-cohen-on-war-with-russia-and-soviet-style-censorship-in-the-us/ ..."
    "... The US needs an enemy, how else can they ask NATO members to cough up 2% of GDP [just for one example Germany's GDP is nearly 4 Trillion dollars [2017] for defence spending, what a crazy sum all NATO members must fork out to please the US, but then most of that money must be spent on the US MIC 'interoperability' of course. ..."
    "... Another great damage of Russiagate was the instigating of a nuclear arms race directed primarily at Russia, and ideologically justified by its diabolical policies. ..."
    "... Russiagate was very successful. You just have to understand the objectives. It was a great distraction. Diverting peoples attention from the continued fleecing of the "real people" which are the bottom 90% by the "Corporate People" and their Government Lackeys. ..."
    "... It provided an excuse for the acting CEO (a figurehead) of the Corporate Empire to go back on many of the promises made that got him elected, and to fill the swamp with Neocon and Koch Brother creatures with the excuse the Deep State made him do it. More proof that there is no deception that is too ridiculous to be believed so long as you have enough pundits claiming it to be so ..."
    "... If you've done just a cursory look into Seth Rich, you'd be very suspicious about the story of his life and death. IMO Assange/Wikilleaks were set up. And Flynn was set up too. What they are doing is Orwellian: White Helmets, election manipulation, propaganda, McCarthism, etc. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention. ..."
    "... See also this primer on Mueller's MO. ..."
    "... The button pushers behind the Trump collusion and Russia election hacking false narratives got what they wanted: to walk the democrats and republicans straight into Cold War v2; to start their campaign to suppress alternative voices on the internet; to increase military spending; and more, more, more war. ..."
    "... Russiagate was very successful <=pls read, re-read Pft @ 46.. he listed many things. divide and conquer accomplished. a nation state is defined as an armed rule making structure, designed by those who control a territory, and constructed by the lawyers, military, and wealthy and run by the persons the designers appoint, for the appointed are called politicians. ..."
    "... At the beginnng of Russiagate, I wrote on Robert Parry's Consirtium News that Russiagate is Idiocracy piggy-backing on decades and literally billions of dollars of anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda. How hard would it be to brainwash an already brainwashed population? ..."
    "... The purveyors of Russiagate will re-compose themselves, brush off all reports and continue on. One just cannot get away from one's nature, even when that nature is pure idiocy. ..."
    "... Russiagate will not go away unfortunately because it has evolved in the "Russiagate Industry". As mentioned by others, the Russiagate Industry has been very profitable for many industries and people. Russiagate has generated an entire cottage industry of companies around censorship and "find us a Russian". Dow Jones should have an index on the Russiagate Industry. ..."
    Feb 12, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    For more than two years U.S. politicians, the media and some bloggers hyped a conspiracy theory. They claimed that Russia had somehow colluded with the Trump campaign to get him elected.

    An obviously fake 'Dirty Dossier' about Trump, commissioned by the Clinton campaign, was presented as evidence. Regular business contacts between Trump flunkies and people in Ukraine or Russia were claimed to be proof for nefarious deals. A Russian click-bait company was accused of manipulating the U.S. electorate by posting puppy pictures and crazy memes on social media. Huge investigations were launched. Every rumor or irrelevant detail coming from them was declared to be - finally - the evidence that would put Trump into the slammer. Every month the walls were closing in on Trump.

    https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/qjUvfZj-Fm0

    At the same time the very real Trump actions that hurt Russia were ignored.

    Finally the conspiracy theory has run out of steam. Russiagate is finished :

    After two years and 200 interviews, the Senate Intelligence Committee is approaching the end of its investigation into the 2016 election, having uncovered no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to both Democrats and Republicans on the committee.
    ...
    Democrats and other Trump opponents have long believed that special counsel Robert Mueller and Congressional investigators would unearth new and more explosive evidence of Trump campaign coordination with Russians. Mueller may yet do so, although Justice Department and Congressional sources say they believe that he, too, is close to wrapping up his investigation.

    Nothing, zero, nada was found to support the conspiracy theory. The Trump campaign did not collude with Russia. A few flunkies were indicted for unrelated tax issues and for lying to the investigators about some minor details. But nothing at all supports the dramatic claims of collusion made since the beginning of the affair.

    In a recent statement House leader Nancy Pelosi was reduced to accuse Trump campaign officials of doing their job:

    "The indictment of Roger Stone makes clear that there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to influence the 2016 election and subvert the will of the American people. ...

    No one called her out for spouting such nonsense.

    Russiagate created a lot of damage.

    The alleged Russian influence campaign that never happened was used to install censorship on social media. It was used to undermine the election of progressive Democrats. The weapon salesmen used it to push for more NATO aggression against Russia. Maria Butina, an innocent Russian woman interested in good relation with the United States, was held in solitary confinement (recommended) until she signed a paper which claims that she was involved in a conspiracy.

    In a just world the people who for more then two years hyped the conspiracy theory and caused so much damage would be pushed out of their public positions. Unfortunately that is not going to happen. They will jump onto the next conspiracy train continue from there.

    Posted by b on February 12, 2019 at 01:38 PM | Permalink

    Comments next page " Legally, Maria Butina was suborned into signing a false declaration. If there were the rule of law, such party or parties that suborned her would be in gaol. Considering Mueller's involvement with Lockerbie, I am not holding my breath. FWIW the Swiss company that made the timers allegedly involved in Lockerbie have some comments of its own .

    james , Feb 12, 2019 2:00:14 PM | link

    thanks b..

    I will be really glad when this 'get Russia' craziness is over, but I suspect even if the Mueller investigation has nothing, all the same creeps will be pulling out the stops to generate something... Skripal, Integrity Initiative, and etc. etc. stuff like this just doesn't go away overnight or with the end of this 'investigation'... folks are looking for red meat i tell ya!

    as for Maria Butina - i look forward to reading the article.. that was a travesty of justice but the machine moves on, mowing down anyone in it's way... she was on the receiving end of all the paranoia that i have come to associate with the western msm at this point...

    Zanon , Feb 12, 2019 2:03:26 PM | link
    Considering Mueller hasn't produced its report nor the House dito, its way to early to say Russia gate is "finished".
    Jackrabbit , Feb 12, 2019 2:11:44 PM | link
    And Russiagate was used ...
    ... by Hillary to justify her loss to Trump

    Hillary's loss is actually best explained as her throwing the election to Trump . The Deep State wanted a nationalist to win as that would best help meet the challenge from Russia and China - a challenge that they had been slow to recognize.

    =
    ... to smear Wikileaks as a Russian agent

    The DNC leak is best explained as a CIA false flag.

    =
    ... to remove and smear Michael Flynn

    Trump said that he fired Flynn for lying to VP Pence but Flynn's conversations with the Russian Ambassador after Obama threw them out for "meddling" in the US election was an embarrassment to the Administration as Putin's Putin's decision not to respond was portrayed as favoritism toward the Trump Administration.

    Rob , Feb 12, 2019 2:28:50 PM | link
    You can take this to the bank. Hardcore Russiagaters will never give up their belief in collusion and Russian influence in the 2016 campaign -- never. Congress and Mueller will be accused of engaging in a coverup. This is typical behavior for conspiracy theorists.
    bj , Feb 12, 2019 2:30:41 PM | link
    Jimmy Dore on same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgBxfHdb4OU Enjoy!
    Ort , Feb 12, 2019 2:34:14 PM | link
    I hope that Russiagate is indeed "finished", but I think it needs to be draped with garlic-clove necklaces, shot up with silver bullets, sprinkled with holy water, and a wooden stake driven through its black heart just to make sure.

    I don't dispute the logical argument B. presents, but it may be too dispassionately rational. I know that the Russiagate proponents and enthralled supporters of the concept are too invested psychologically in this surrealistic fantasy to let go, even if the official outcome reluctantly admits that there's no "there" there.

    The Democratic Party, one of the major partners mounting the Russophobic psy-op, has already resolved to turn Democratic committee chairmen loose to dog the Trump administration with hearings aggressively flogging any and all matters that discredit and undermine Trump-- his business connections, social liaisons, etc.

    They may hope to find the Holy Grail: the elusive "bombshell" that "demands" impeachment, i.e., some crime or illicit conduct so heinous that the public will stand for another farcical impeachment proceeding. But I reckon that the Dems prefer the "soft" impeachment of harassing Trump with hostile hearings in hopes of destroying his 2020 electability with the death of a thousand innuendoes and guilt-by-association.

    Thus, even if the Mueller report is underwhelming, I think that the Democrats and TDS-saturated Trump opponents will attempt to rehabilitate it by pretending that it contains important loose ends that need to be pursued. In other words, to perpetuate the Mueller-driven political Russophobia by all other available means.

    Put more succinctly, I fear that Russiagate won't be finished until Rachel Maddow says it's finished. ;)

    worldblee , Feb 12, 2019 2:38:17 PM | link
    Once a hypothesis is fixed in people's minds, whether true or not, it's hard to get them to let go of it. And let's not forget how many times the narrative changed (and this is true in the Skripal case as well), with all past facts vanishing to accommodate a new narrative.

    So I, like others, expect the fake scandal to continue while many, many other real crimes (the US attempted coup in Venezuela and the genocidal war in Yemen, for instance) continue unabated.

    karlof1 , Feb 12, 2019 2:43:34 PM | link
    Putin solicits public input for essential national policy goals . If ever there was a template to follow for an actual MAGAgenda, Putin's Russia provides one. While US politicos argue over what is essentially Bantha Pudu, Russians are hard at work improving their nation which includes restructuring their economy.

    Russiagate has exposed the great degree of corruption within the Justice Department bureaucracy, particularly within FBI, and within the entire Democrat Party.

    BlunderOn , Feb 12, 2019 2:48:51 PM | link
    mmm...

    I very much doubt it it is over. Trump is corrupt and has links to corrupt Russians. Collusion, maybe not, but several stinking individuals are in the frame for, guess what - ...bring it on... The fact that Hilary was arguably even worse (a point made ad-nauseum on here) is frankly irrelevant. The vilification of Trump will not affect the warmongers efforts. He is a useful idiot

    james , Feb 12, 2019 2:52:33 PM | link
    for a take on the alternative reality some are living in emptywheel has an article up on the nbc link b provides and the article on butina is discussed in the comments section... as i said - they are looking for red meat and will not be happy until they get some... they are completely zonkers...
    Blooming Barricade , Feb 12, 2019 2:55:18 PM | link
    Now that this racket has been admitted as such, I expect all of the media outlets that devoted banner headlines, hundreds of thousands of hours of cable TV time, thousands of trees, and free speech online to immediately fire all of their journalists and appoint Glenn Greenwald as the publisher of the New York Times, Michael Tracey at the Post, Aaron Matte at the Guardian, and Max Blumenthal at the Daily Beast.

    Since this is obviously not going to be allowed to happen, and since these people get away with everything, expect this to never end, despite all evidence to the contrary. It doesn't matter if they've been exposed as CIA propagandists or Integrity Initiative stooges, the game goes on...and on.... the job security of these disgraced columnists is the greatest in the Western world.

    jayc , Feb 12, 2019 3:03:51 PM | link
    Stephen Cohen discusses how rational viewpoints are banned from the mainstream media, and how several features of US life today resemble some of the worst features of the Soviet system. https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/12/stephen-cohen-on-war-with-russia-and-soviet-style-censorship-in-the-us/
    Heath , Feb 12, 2019 3:18:29 PM | link
    It turned out getting rid of the Clintons has been a long term project.
    Harry Law , Feb 12, 2019 3:21:58 PM | link
    The US needs an enemy, how else can they ask NATO members to cough up 2% of GDP [just for one example Germany's GDP is nearly 4 Trillion dollars [2017] for defence spending, what a crazy sum all NATO members must fork out to please the US, but then most of that money must be spent on the US MIC 'interoperability' of course.

    Then of course Russia has to be surrounded by NATO should they try and take over Europe by surging through the Fulda gap./s

    Then of course there are the professional pundits who have built careers on anti Russian propaganda, Rachel Maddow for instance who earns 30,000$ per day to spew anti Russian nonsense.

    folktruther , Feb 12, 2019 3:27:32 PM | link
    Another great damage of Russiagate was the instigating of a nuclear arms race directed primarily at Russia, and ideologically justified by its diabolical policies.

    I'm sorry b is so down on Conspiracy Theories, since they reveal quite real staged homicidal false flag operations of US power. Feeding into the stigmatizing of the truth about reality is not in the interests of the earth's people.

    frances , Feb 12, 2019 3:31:11 PM | link
    somehow I see this "revelation: tied to Barr's approaching tenure. I think they (FBI/DOJ) didn't want his involvement in their noodle soup of an investigation and the best way to accomplish that was to end it themselves. I also suspect that a deal has been made with Trump, possibly in exchange for leaving his family alone.

    So we will see no investigation of Hillary, her 650,000 emails or the many crimes they detailed (according to NYPD investigation of Weiner's laptop) and the US will continue to be at war all day, every day. Team Swamp rules.

    Ash , Feb 12, 2019 3:35:06 PM | link
    Meanwhile, MSM is prepping its readers for the possibility that the Mueller report will never be released to us proles. If that's the case, I'm sure nobody will try to use innuendo to suggest it actually contains explosive revelations after all...
    Heath , Feb 12, 2019 3:38:37 PM | link
    @16

    Harry, its vitally important as the US desperately wants to keep Europe under its thumb and to stop this European army which means Europe lead by Paris and Berlin becomes a world power. Trump's attempts to make nice with Russia is to keep it out of the EU bloc.

    Anne Jaclard , Feb 12, 2019 3:54:47 PM | link
    Well, the liberal conspiracy car crash ensured downmarket Mussolini a second term, it appears...Hard Brexit Tories also look likely to win thanks to centrist sabatoge of the left. You reap what you sow, corporate presstitutes!
    wagelaborer , Feb 12, 2019 4:05:25 PM | link
    Sane people have predicted the end of Russiagate almost as many times as insane people have predicted that the "smoking gun that will get rid of Trump" has been found. And yet the Mighty Wurlitzer grinds on, while social media is more and more censored.

    I expect it all to continue until the 2020 election circus winds up into full-throated mode, and no one talks about anything but the next puppet to be appointed. Oops, I mean "elected".

    Jen , Feb 12, 2019 4:15:57 PM | link
    Ort @ 7:

    You also need to behead the corpse, stuff the mouth with a lemon and then place the head down in the coffin with the body in supine (facing up) position. Weight the coffin with stones and wild roses and toss it into a fast-flowing river.

    Russiagate won't be finished until a wall is built around Capitol Hill and all its inhabitants and worker bees declared insane by a properly functioning court of law.

    Jackrabbit , Feb 12, 2019 4:16:59 PM | link
    frances @18:
    I also suspect that a deal has been made with Trump, possibly in exchange for leaving his family alone. So we will see no investigation of Hillary ...
    Underlying your perspective is the assumption that USA is a democracy where a populist "outsider" could be elected President, Yet you also believe that Hillary and the Deep State have the power to manipulate government and the intelligence agencies and propose a "conspiracy theory" based on that power.

    Isn't it more likely that Trump made it clear (behind closed doors, of course) that he was amenable to the goals of the Deep State and that the bogus investigation was merely done to: 1) cover their own election meddling; 2) eliminate threats like Flynn and Assange/Wikileaks; 3) anti-Russian propaganda?

    Jackrabbit , Feb 12, 2019 4:33:16 PM | link
    Jen

    Steven Cohen once lamented that there were no "wise men" left in foreign policy. All the independent realists were shut out.

    Michael McNulty , Feb 12, 2019 4:49:32 PM | link
    US anti-Russian hysteria is moving into that grey area beyond McCarthyism approaching Nazism.
    Circe , Feb 12, 2019 4:58:40 PM | link
    Dowd, Trump's former lawyer on Russiagate stated there may not even be a report. If this is the case then the Zionist rulers have gotten to Mueller who no doubt figured out that the election collusion breadcrumbs don't lead to Putin, they lead to Netanyahu and Zionist billionaire friends! So Mueller may have to come up with a nothing burger to hide the truth.
    Danny , Feb 12, 2019 5:02:34 PM | link
    B is the only alternative media blogger I've followed for a significant amount of time without becoming disenfranchised. Not because he has no blind spot - his is just one I can deal with... optimism.

    hopehely , Feb 12, 2019 5:14:49 PM | link

    I will believe Russiagate is finished when expelled Russian staff gets back, when the US returns the seized Russian properties, when the consulate is Seattle reopens and when USA issues formal apology to Russia.

    Posted by: hopehely | Feb 12, 2019 5:14:49 PM | link

    bevin , Feb 12, 2019 5:16:18 PM | link
    Nobody has ever advanced the tiniest shred of credible evidence that 'Russia' or its government at any level was in any way implicated either in Wikileaks' acquisition of the DNC and Podesta emails or in any form of interference with the Presidential election.

    This has been going on for three years and not once has anything like evidence surfaced.

    On the other hand there has been an abundance of evidence that those alleging Russian involvement consistently refused to listen to explore the facts.

    Incredibly, the DNC computers were never examined by the FBI or any other agency resembling an official police agency. Instead the notorious Crowdstrike professionally russophobic and caught red handed faking data for the Ukrainians against Russia were commissioned to produce a 'report.'

    Nobody with any sense would have credited anything about Russiagate after that happened.

    Thgen there was the proof, from VIPS and Bill Binney (?) that the computers were not hacked at all but that the information was taken by thumbdrive. A theory which not only Wikileaks but several witnesses have offered to prove.

    Not one of them has been contacted by the FBI, Mueller or anyone else "investigating."

    In reality the charges from the first were ludicrous on their face. There is, as b has proved and every new day's news attests, not the slightest reason why anyone in the Russian government should have preferred Trump over Clinton. And that is saying something because they are pretty well indistinguishable. And neither has the morals or brains of an adolescent groundhog.

    Russiagate is over, alright, The Nothingburger is empty. But that means nothing in this 'civilisation': it will be recorded in the history books, still to be written, by historians still in diapers, that "The 2016 Presidential election, which ended in the controversial defeat of Hillary Clinton, was heavily influenced by Russian agents who hacked ..etc etc"

    What will not be remembered is that every single email released was authentic. And that within those troves of correspondence there was enough evidence of criminality by Clinton and her campaign to fill a prison camp.

    Another thing that will not be recalled is that there was once a young enthusiastic man, working for the DNC, who was mugged one evening after work and killed.

    Baron , Feb 12, 2019 5:16:49 PM | link
    The 'no collusion' result will only spur the 'beginning of the end' baboons to shout even more, they'll never stop until they die in their beds or the plebs of the Republic made them adore the street lamp posts, you'll see. The former is by far more likely, the unwashed of American have never had a penchant for foreign affairs except for the few spasms like Vietnam.
    Circe , Feb 12, 2019 5:20:11 PM | link
    There was collusion alright but the only Russians who helped Trump get elected and were in on the collusion are citizens of ISRAEL FIRST, likewise for the American billionaires who put Trump in the power perch. ISRAEL FIRST.

    That's why Trump is on giant billboards in Israel shaking hands with the Yahoo. Trump is higher in the polls in Israel than in the U.S. If it weren't that the Zionist upper crust need Trump doing their dirty work in America, like trying today get rid of Rep. Omar Ilhan, then Trump would win the elections in Ziolandia or Ziostan by a landslide cause he's been better for the Joowish state than all preceding Presidents put together. Mazel tov to them bullshet for the rest of us servile mass in the vassal West and Palestinians the most shafted class ever. Down with Venezuela and Iran, up with oil and gas. The billionare shysters' and Trump's payola is getting closer. Onward AZ Empire!

    Les , Feb 12, 2019 5:24:36 PM | link
    He proved himself so easy to troll during the election. It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all along was to get him elected and have a candidate they could manipulate.
    Zachary Smith , Feb 12, 2019 5:38:03 PM | link
    @ Harry Law #16

    At least Germany has the good sense not to throw taxpayer money at the F-35. German F-35 decision sacrifices NATO capability for Franco-German industrial cooperation I don't know what they have in mind with a proposed airplane purchase. If they need fighters, buy or lease Sweden's Gripen. If attack airplanes are what they're after, go to Boeing and get some brand new F-15X models. If the prickly French are agreeable to build a 6th generation aircraft, that would be worth a try.

    Regarding Rachel Maddow, I recently had an encounter with a relative who told me 1) I visited too many oddball sites and 2) he considered Rachel M. to be the most reliable news person in existence. I think we're talking "true believer" here. :)

    Zachary Smith , Feb 12, 2019 5:43:19 PM | link
    @ Les @42
    It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all along was to get him elected and have a candidate they could manipulate.

    Considering how those "intelligence agencies" are hard pressed to find their own tails, even if you allow them to use both hands, it would surprise me.

    That Trump would turn out to be a tub of jello in more than just a physical way has been a surprise to an awful lot of us.

    Pft , Feb 12, 2019 5:44:54 PM | link

    Russiagate was very successful. You just have to understand the objectives. It was a great distraction. Diverting peoples attention from the continued fleecing of the "real people" which are the bottom 90% by the "Corporate People" and their Government Lackeys.

    It provided an excuse for the acting CEO (a figurehead) of the Corporate Empire to go back on many of the promises made that got him elected, and to fill the swamp with Neocon and Koch Brother creatures with the excuse the Deep State made him do it. More proof that there is no deception that is too ridiculous to be believed so long as you have enough pundits claiming it to be so

    Allowed the bipartisan support for the clamp down on alt media with censorship by social media (Deep State Tools) and funded by the Ministry of Truth set up by Obama in his last days in office to under the false pretense of protecting us from foreign governments interference in elections (except Israel of course) . Similar agencies have been set up or planned to be in other countries followig the US example such as UK, France, Russia, etc.

    Did anyone really expect Mr "Cover It Up " Mueller to find anything? Mueller is Deep State all the way and Trump is as well, not withstanding the "Fake Wrestling " drama that they are bitter enemies. All the surveillance done over the past 2-3 decades would have so much dirt on the Trumpet they could silence him forever . Trump knew that going in and I sometimes wonder if he was pressured to run as a condition to avoid prosecution. Pretty sure every President since Carter has been "Kompromat"

    Jackrabbit , Feb 12, 2019 6:29:51 PM | link
    james, bevin

    If you've done just a cursory look into Seth Rich, you'd be very suspicious about the story of his life and death. IMO Assange/Wikilleaks were set up. And Flynn was set up too. What they are doing is Orwellian: White Helmets, election manipulation, propaganda, McCarthism, etc. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.

    stevelaudig , Feb 12, 2019 6:34:12 PM | link
    Russians and likely at the behest of the Russian state interfered and it was fair payback for Yeltsin's election. It is time to move on but not in feigned ignorance of what was done. Was it "outcome" affecting, possibly, but not clearly and if the US electoral college and electoral system generally is so decrepit that a second level power in the world can influence then its the US's fault.

    It's not like the 2000 election wasn't a warning shot about the rottenness of system and a system that doesn't understand a warning shot deserves pretty much what it gets. But there's enough non-hype evidence of acts and intent to say yes, the Russians tried and may have succeeded. They certainly are acting guilty enough. but still close the book move and move on to Trump's 'real' crimes which were done without a Russian assist.

    spudski , Feb 12, 2019 6:52:50 PM | link
    @38 bevin @47 james

    I seem to recall former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray saying that it was not a hack and that he had been handed a thumb drive in a field near American University by a disgruntled Democrat whistleblower. Further, I seem to recall William Binney, former NSA Technical Leader for intelligence, conducting an experiment to show that internet speeds at the time would not allow the information to be hacked - they knew the size of the files and the period over which they were downloaded. Plus, Seth Rich. So why does anyone even believe it was a hack, @32 THN?

    Johan Meyer , Feb 12, 2019 6:55:54 PM | link
    Just another comment re Mueller. There is a great documentary by (Dutch, not Israeli---different person) Gideon Levy, Lockerbie Revisited. The narration is in Dutch, but the interviews are in English, and there is a small segment of a German broadcast. The documentary ends abruptly where one set of FBI personnel contradict statements by another set of FBI personnel. See also this primer on Mueller's MO.
    frances , Feb 12, 2019 7:11:07 PM | link
    reply to Les 42
    "It wouldn't surprise me if aim of the domestic intelligence agencies all along was to get him elected and have a candidate they could manipulate."

    Not the intelligence agencies, the Military IMO. They knew HC for what she was; horrifically corrupt and,again IMO,they know she is insane.

    They saw and I think still see Trump as someone they could work with, remember Rogers (Navy) of the NSA going to him immediately once he was elected? That was the Military protecting him as best they could.

    They IMO have kept him alive and as long as he doesn't send any troops into "real" wars, they will keep on keeping him alive.
    This doesn't mean Trump hasn't gone over to the Dark Side, just that no military action will take place that the military command doesn't fully support.

    Again, I could be wrong, he could be backed by fiends from Patagonia for all I really know:)

    AriusArmenian , Feb 12, 2019 8:44:27 PM | link
    The button pushers behind the Trump collusion and Russia election hacking false narratives got what they wanted: to walk the democrats and republicans straight into Cold War v2; to start their campaign to suppress alternative voices on the internet; to increase military spending; and more, more, more war.
    james , Feb 12, 2019 9:34:59 PM | link
    ot - further to @65 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK5YFos56ZU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK5YFos56ZU

    as jr says - welcome to the rabbit hole..

    ben , Feb 12, 2019 10:11:05 PM | link
    Hope you're right b. Maybe now we can get on with some real truths.
    1. That there is really only one party with real influence, the party of $.
    2. That most of the Dems belong to that club, and virtually all the Repubs.
    3. That the U$A is not a real democracy, but an Oligarchy.
    4. That the corporate empire is the greatest purveyor of evil the world has ever known.

    And these are just a few truths. Thanks for the therapy b, hope you feel better...

    Circe , Feb 12, 2019 10:52:22 PM | link
    Boy, I hope Jackrabbit sees this. Everyone knows I believe Trump is the anointed chosen of the Zionist 1%. There was no Russia collusion; it was Zionist collusion with a Russian twist...
    Circe , Feb 12, 2019 11:11:17 PM | link
    Oh yeah! Forgot to mention the latest. Trump is asking Kim to provide a list of his nuclear scientists! Before Kim acts on this request, he should call up the Iranian government for advise 'cause they have lots of experience and can warn Kim of what will happen to each of those scientists. They'll be put on a kill-list and will be extrajudicially wacked as in executed. Can you believe the chutzpah? Trump must think Kim is really stupid to fall for that one!

    Aye! The thought of six more years of Zionist pandering Trump. Barf-inducing prospect is too tame.

    PHC , Feb 13, 2019 2:25:44 AM | link

    Russiagate is finished. So, now is the time to create Chinagate. But how ??

    V , Feb 13, 2019 2:25:48 AM | link
    The view from the hermitage is, we are in the age of distractions. Russiagate will be replaced with one of a litany of distractions, purely designed to keep us off target. The target being, corruption, vote rigging, illegal wars, war crimes, overthrowing sovereign governments, and political assasinations, both at home and abroad. Those so distracted, will focus on sillyness; not the genuine danger afoot around the planet. Get used to it; it's become the new normal.
    Circe , Feb 13, 2019 3:53:19 AM | link
    @76Hw
    I have yet to read anything more delusional, nay, utterly preposterous. Methinks you over-project too much. Even Trump would have a belly-ache laugh reading that sheeple spiel. You're the type that sees the giant billboard of Zionist Trump and Yahoo shaking hands and drones on and on that our lying eyes deceive us and it's really Trump playing 4-D chess. I suppose when he tried to pressure Omar Ilhan into resigning her seat in Congress yesterday, that too was reverse psychology?

    Trump instagramed the billboard pic, he tweeted it, he probably pasted it on his wall; maybe with your kind of wacky, Trump infatuation, you should too!

    Starring role

    Circe , Feb 13, 2019 4:15:37 AM | link
    Russiagate is finished because Mueller discovered an embarrassing fact: The collusion was and always will be with Israel. Here's Trump professing his endless love for Zionism: Trump Resign
    snake , Feb 13, 2019 5:13:14 AM | link

    Russiagate was very successful <=pls read, re-read Pft @ 46.. he listed many things. divide and conquer accomplished.
    a nation state is defined as an armed rule making structure, designed by those who control a territory, and constructed by the lawyers, military, and wealthy and run by the persons the designers appoint, for the appointed are called politicians.

    Most designs of armed nation states provide the designers with information feedback and the designers use that information to appoint more obedient politicians and generals to run things, and to improve the design to better serve the designers. The armed rule making structure is designed to give the designers complete control over those targeted to be the governed. Why so stupid the governed? ; always they allow themselves to be manipulated like sheep.

    When 10 angry folks approach you with two pieces of ropes: one to throw over the tree branch under which your horse will be supporting you while they tie the noose around your neck and the other shorter piece of rope to tie your hands behind ..your back you need at that point to make your words count , if five of the people are black and five are white. all you need do is say how smart the blacks are, and how stupid the whites are, as the two groups fight each other you manage your escape. democrat vs republican= divide to conquer. gun, no gun = divide to conquer, HRC vs DJT = divide to conquer, abortion, no abortion = divide to conquer, Trump is a Russian planted in a high level USA position of power = divide to conquer, They were all in on it together,, Muller was in the white house to keep the media supplied with XXX, to keep the law enforcement agencies in the loop, and to advise trump so things would not get out of hand ( its called Manipulation and the adherents to the economic system called Zionism
    For the record, Zionism is not related to race, religion or intelligence. Zionism is a system of economics that take's no captives, its adherents must own everything, must destroy and decimate all actual or imaginary competition, for Zionist are the owners and masters of everything? Zionism is about power, absolute power, monopoly ownership and using governments everywhere to abuse the governed. Zionism has many adherents, whites, blacks, browns, Christians, Jews, Islamist, Indians, you name it among each class of person and walk of life can be found persons who subscribe to the idea that they, and only they, should own everything, and when those of us, that are content to be the governed let them, before the kill and murder us, they usually end up owning everything.

    snake , Feb 13, 2019 6:08:16 AM | link
    Here might the subject matter that Russia Gate sought to camouflage https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/02/13/588433/US-Saudi-Arabia-nuclear-deal-nuclear-weapons 'This comes as US Energy Secretary Rick Perry has been holding secret talks with Saudi officials on sharing US nuclear technology.'

    Finally, a hypothesis to explain

    1. why the Joint non nuclear agreement with Iran and the other nuclear power nations, that prevented Iran from developing nuclear weapons, was trashed? Someone needs to be able to say Iran is developing ..., at the right time.

    2. Why Netanyohu made public a video that claimed Iran was developing nuclear stuff in violation of the Iran non nuclear agreement, and everybody laughed,

    3. Why the nuclear non proliferation agreement with Russia, that terminated the costly useless arms race a decade ago, has been recently terminated, to reestablish the nuclear arms race, no apparent reason was given the implication might be Russia could be a target, but

    4. why it might make sense to give nukes to Saudi Arabia or some other rogue nation, and

    5. why no one is allowed to have nuclear weapons except the Zionist owned and controlled nation states.

    Statement: Zionism is an economic system that requires the elimination of all competition of whatever kind. It is a winner get's all, takes no prisoners, targets all who would threaten or be a challenge or a threat; does not matter if the threat is in in oil and gas, technology or weapons as soon as a possibility exist, the principles of Zionism would require that it be taken out, decimated, and destroyed and made where never again it could even remotely be a threat to the Empire, that Zionism demands..

    Hypothesis: A claim that another is developing nuclear weapon capabilities is sufficient to take that other out?

    Kiza , Feb 13, 2019 8:26:29 AM | link
    I am glad that most commenters understand that Russiagate will not go away. But the majority appear to miss the real reason. Russiagate is not an accusation, it is the state of mind.

    At the beginnng of Russiagate, I wrote on Robert Parry's Consirtium News that Russiagate is Idiocracy piggy-backing on decades and literally billions of dollars of anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda. How hard would it be to brainwash an already brainwashed population?

    The purveyors of Russiagate will re-compose themselves, brush off all reports and continue on. One just cannot get away from one's nature, even when that nature is pure idiocy. Of course, the most ironic in the affair is that it is the so called US "intellectuals", academics and other assorted cretins who are the most fervent proponents. If you were wondering how Russia can make such amazing defensive weapons that US can only deny exist and wet dream of having, there is your answer. It is the state of mind. The whole of US establishment are legends in their on lunch time and totally delusional about the reality surrounding them - both Russiagate and MAGA cretins, no report can help the Russiagate nation.

    Finally, I am thinking of that crazy and ugly professor bitch from the British Cambridge University who gives her lectures naked to protest something or other. I am so lucky that I do not have to go to a Western university ever again. What a catastrophic decline! No Brexit can help the Skripal nation.

    NemesisCalling , Feb 13, 2019 8:46:48 AM | link
    Russiagate is finished, but is DJT also among the rubble?

    Hardly any money for the border wall and still lingering in the ME?

    If Hoarsewhisperer proves to be correct above re: DJT, he will really have to knock our socks off before election 2020. To do this he will have to unequivocally and unceremoniously withdraw from the MENA and Afghanistan and possibly declare a National Emergency for more money for the wall.

    The problem is, when he does this, he will look impulsively dangerous and this may harm his mystique to the lemmings who need a president to be more "presidential."

    My money is on status quo all the way to 2020 and the rethugz hoping the Dems will eat their own in an orgy of warring identities.

    I would love to be proven wrong.

    morongobill , Feb 13, 2019 9:52:25 AM | link
    Rush Limbaugh has been on a roll with his analysis of Russiagate, in fact, his analysis is in line with the writer/editor here at MOA.
    Bart Hansen , Feb 13, 2019 10:52:12 AM | link
    The collusion story may be faltering, but the blame for Russia poisoning the Skripals lives on. The other night on The News Hour, "Judy" led off the program with this: "It has been almost a year since Kremlin intelligence officers attempted to kill a Russian defector in the British city of Salisbury by poisoning him with a nerve agent. That attack, and the subsequent death of a British woman, scared away tourists and shoppers, but authorities and residents are working to get the town's economy back on track. Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports."
    Erelis , Feb 13, 2019 12:15:48 PM | link

    Russiagate will not go away unfortunately because it has evolved in the "Russiagate Industry". As mentioned by others, the Russiagate Industry has been very profitable for many industries and people. Russiagate has generated an entire cottage industry of companies around censorship and "find us a Russian". Dow Jones should have an index on the Russiagate Industry.

    Here is one recent example. You know the measles outbreak in the US Pacific Northwest. Yup, the Russians. How do we know. A government funded research grant. The study found that 899 tweets caused people to doubt vaccines. Looks like money is to be had even by academics for the right results.

    Measles outbreak: Anti-vaccination misinformation fueled by Russian propagandists, study finds
    https://www.oregonlive.com/clark-county/2019/02/measles-outbreak-anti-vaccination-misinformation-fueled-by-russian-propagandists-study-finds.html

    [Feb 13, 2019] Stephen Cohen on War with Russia and Soviet-style Censorship in the US by Russell Mokhiber

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... War with Russia. ..."
    "... Cohen said the censorship that he has faced in recent years is similar to the censorship imposed on dissidents in the Soviet Union. ..."
    "... Washington Post ..."
    "... "Katrina and I had a joint signed op-ed piece in the New York Times ..."
    "... Washington Post ..."
    "... "The alternatives have been excluded from both. I would welcome an opportunity to debate these issues in the mainstream media, where you can reach more people. And remember, being in these pages, for better or for worse, makes you Kosher. This is the way it works. If you have been on these pages, you are cited approvingly. You are legitimate. You are within the parameters of the debate." ..."
    "... "When I lived off and on in the Soviet Union, I saw how Soviet media treated dissident voices. And they didn't have to arrest them. They just wouldn't ever mention them. Sometimes they did that (arrest them). But they just wouldn't ever mention them in the media." ..."
    "... "And something like that has descended here. And it's really alarming, along with some other Soviet-style practices in this country that nobody seems to care about – like keeping people in prison until they break, that is plea, without right to bail, even though they haven't been convicted of anything." ..."
    "... "That's what they did in the Soviet Union. They kept people in prison until people said – I want to go home. Tell me what to say – and I'll go home. That's what we are doing here. And we shouldn't be doing that." ..."
    "... Russell Mokhiber is the editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter.. ..."
    Feb 12, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

    On stage at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C. this past week was Princeton University Professor Emeritus Stephen Cohen, author of the new book, War with Russia: From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate.

    Cohen has largely been banished from mainstream media.

    "I had been arguing for years -- very much against the American political media grain -- that a new US/Russian Cold War was unfolding -- driven primarily by politics in Washington, not Moscow," Cohen writes in War with Russia. "For this perspective, I had been largely excluded from influential print, broadcast and cable outlets where I had been previously welcomed."

    On the stage at Busboys and Poets with Cohen was Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor of The Nation magazine, and Robert Borosage, co-founder of the Campaign for America's Future.

    During question time, Cohen was asked about the extent of the censorship in the context of other Americans who had been banished from mainstream American media, including Ralph Nader, whom the liberal Democratic establishment, including Borosage and Vanden Heuvel, stiff armed when he crashed the corporate political parties in the electoral arena in 2004 and 2008.

    Cohen said the censorship that he has faced in recent years is similar to the censorship imposed on dissidents in the Soviet Union.

    "Until some period of time before Trump, on the question of what America's policy toward Putin's Kremlin should be, there was a reasonable facsimile of a debate on those venues that had these discussions," Cohen said. "Are we allowed to mention the former Charlie Rose for example? On the long interview form, Charlie would have on a person who would argue for a very hard policy toward Putin. And then somebody like myself who thought it wasn't a good idea."

    "Occasionally that got on CNN too. MSNBC not so much. And you could get an op-ed piece published, with effort, in the New York Times or Washington Post ."

    "Katrina and I had a joint signed op-ed piece in the New York Times six or seven years ago. But then it stopped. And to me, that's the fundamental difference between this Cold War and the preceding Cold War."

    "I will tell you off the record – no, I'm not going to do it," Cohen said. "Two exceedingly imminent Americans, who most op-ed pages would die to get a piece by, just to say they were on the page, submitted such articles to the New York Times , and they were rejected the same day. They didn't even debate it. They didn't even come back and say – could you tone it down? They just didn't want it."

    "Now is that censorship? In Italy, where each political party has its own newspaper, you would say – okay fair enough. I will go to a newspaper that wants me. But here, we are used to these newspapers."

    "Remember how it works. I was in TV for 18 years being paid by CBS. So, I know how these things work. TV doesn't generate its own news anymore. Their actual reporting has been de-budgeted. They do video versions of what is in the newspapers."

    "Look at the cable talk shows. You see it in the New York Times and Washington Post in the morning, you turn on the TV at night and there is the video version. That's just the way the news business works now."

    "The alternatives have been excluded from both. I would welcome an opportunity to debate these issues in the mainstream media, where you can reach more people. And remember, being in these pages, for better or for worse, makes you Kosher. This is the way it works. If you have been on these pages, you are cited approvingly. You are legitimate. You are within the parameters of the debate."

    "If you are not, then you struggle to create your own alternative media. It's new in my lifetime. I know these imminent Americans I mentioned were shocked when they were just told no. It's a lockdown. And it is a form of censorship."

    "When I lived off and on in the Soviet Union, I saw how Soviet media treated dissident voices. And they didn't have to arrest them. They just wouldn't ever mention them. Sometimes they did that (arrest them). But they just wouldn't ever mention them in the media."

    "Dissidents created what is known as samizdat – that's typescript that you circulate by hand. Gorbachev, before he came to power, did read some samizdat. But it's no match for newspapers published with five, six, seven million copies a day. Or the three television networks which were the only television networks Soviet citizens had access to."

    "And something like that has descended here. And it's really alarming, along with some other Soviet-style practices in this country that nobody seems to care about – like keeping people in prison until they break, that is plea, without right to bail, even though they haven't been convicted of anything."

    "That's what they did in the Soviet Union. They kept people in prison until people said – I want to go home. Tell me what to say – and I'll go home. That's what we are doing here. And we shouldn't be doing that."

    Cohen appears periodically on Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News. And that rankled one person in the audience at Busboys and Poets, who said he worried that Cohen's perspective on Russia can be "appropriated by the right."

    "Trump can take that and run on a nationalistic platform – to hell with NATO, to hell with fighting these endless wars, to do what he did in 2016 and get the votes of people who are very concerned about the deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Russia," the man said.

    Cohen says that on a personal level, he likes Tucker Carlson "and I don't find him to be a racist or a nationalist."

    "Nationalism is on the rise around the world everywhere," Cohen said. "There are different kinds of nationalism. We always called it patriotism in this country, but we have always been a nationalistic country."

    "Fox has about three to four million viewers at that hour," Cohen said. "If I am not permitted to give my take on American/Russian relations on any other mass media, and by the way, possibly talk directly to Trump, who seems to like his show, and say – Trump is making a mistake, he should do this or do that instead -- I don't get many opportunities – and I can't see why I shouldn't do it."

    "I get three and a half to four minutes," Cohen said. "I don't see it as consistent with my mission, if that's the right word, to say no. These articles I write for The Nation , which ended up in my book, are posted on some of the most God awful websites in the world. I had to look them up to find out how bad they really are. But what can I do about it?"

    Join the debate on Facebook More articles by: Russell Mokhiber

    Russell Mokhiber is the editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter..

    [Feb 13, 2019] After Collusion Case Collapses, House Dems Set To Launch Vast Russia Probe 2.0

    The focus now will be on money laundering -- that will include multiple committees and dramatic public hearings, and could last into 2020.
    Notable quotes:
    "... At least three committees are already involved: The House Intelligence Committee is taking the lead, coordinating with House Financial Services on money-laundering questions and with House Foreign Affairs on Russia. ..."
    "... Adam Schitt, a real slimy, corrupt politician. Maxine Waters, another financial and political criminal. If you could get them to spill their guts you'd be amazed at all the transgressions they have committed during their careers (they'd go to prison for certain). These two should be shot off into space or something. Shouldn't be allowed to continue harrassing the POTUS. ..."
    "... Since the Mueller probe is ending and no longer serves as a shield from having to answer questions concerning his own corruption, Adam Schiff had to get a new probe going so he'd have an excuse to conveniently remain silent on questions he'd rather not address. Schiff is the very one who should be investigated. ..."
    "... I think the Dems have switched tactics; forget about impeaching Donnie's while he's in office when he could theoretically pardon himself, and instead focus on dragging out the investigation(s) until he has left office. ..."
    "... When Donnie realizes this, he'll be EVEN MORE compliant with serving the neocons, the Deep State and The Swamp. ..."
    Feb 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Barely a day has passed since Richard Burr signaled that the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia had turned up nothing substantive - and certainly not a "contract signed in blood" declaring "hey Vlad, we're going to collude".

    And already, more details are leaking out about the Democrats' plans to launch a wide ranging investigation that not only will re-litigate the collusion narrative, but will also reportedly focus on allegations of money laundering and other financial improprieties.

    Mueller is just the beginning. House Democrats plan a vast probe of President Trump and Russia -- with a heavy focus on money laundering -- that will include multiple committees and dramatic public hearings, and could last into 2020.

    Here's more from Axios:

    The state of play: The aggressive plans were outlined yesterday by a Democratic member of Congress at a roundtable for Washington reporters. The member said Congress plans interviews with new witnesses, and may go back to earlier witnesses who "stonewalled" under the Republican majority.

    Why it matters: The reporters, many of them steeped in the special counsel's investigation, came away realizing that House Dems don't plan to depend on Robert Mueller for the last word on interference in the 2016 election.

    Instead, Dems will use their new subpoena power to produce a voluminous exposé of their own.

    The investigation will involve multiple committees, and by all accounts be far more critical than the House probe that ended last year.

    At least three committees are already involved: The House Intelligence Committee is taking the lead, coordinating with House Financial Services on money-laundering questions and with House Foreign Affairs on Russia.

    Democrats are considering ways to uncover what was said in a Trump private meeting with Putin, "whether that's subpoenaing the notes or subpoenaing the interpreter or other steps."

    On the issue of Trump family finances, the president said he's "not in a position to draw red lines."

    "I am concerned that he may have drawn a red line that the Department of Justice may be observing."

    "If we didn't look at his business...we wouldn't know what we know now about his efforts to pursue what may have been the most lucrative deal of his life, the Trump Tower in Moscow - something the special counsel's office has said stood to earn the family hundreds of millions of dollars."

    "Now, most of his stuff isn't building anymore: It's licensing , and it doesn't make that kind of money. So, this would have been huge."

    "[T]he fact that the president says now: 'Well, it's not illegal and I might have lost the election. Why should I miss out, basically, on all that money?' He may very well take the same position now: 'I might not be re-elected, and so why shouldn't I...still pursue it?'"

    Of course, none of this should come as a surprise: Maxine Waters and Adam Schiff (who are two prime candidates for the source of the latest round of leaks) have made no secret of their plans to subpoena Deutsche Bank to learn more about its lending relationship with the president. And as Dems prepare to let the subpoeanas fly, we imagine we'll be learning more in the near future.

    alfbell , 52 minutes ago link

    Adam Schitt, a real slimy, corrupt politician. Maxine Waters, another financial and political criminal. If you could get them to spill their guts you'd be amazed at all the transgressions they have committed during their careers (they'd go to prison for certain). These two should be shot off into space or something. Shouldn't be allowed to continue harrassing the POTUS.

    Lynn Trainor , 1 hour ago link

    Since the Mueller probe is ending and no longer serves as a shield from having to answer questions concerning his own corruption, Adam Schiff had to get a new probe going so he'd have an excuse to conveniently remain silent on questions he'd rather not address. Schiff is the very one who should be investigated.

    Bokkenrijder , 2 hours ago link

    I think the Dems have switched tactics; forget about impeaching Donnie's while he's in office when he could theoretically pardon himself, and instead focus on dragging out the investigation(s) until he has left office.

    When Donnie realizes this, he'll be EVEN MORE compliant with serving the neocons, the Deep State and The Swamp.

    I always doubted that Donnie ever intended to "drain the swamp," but I fear that he'll become an even bigger neocon warmonger now that the Dems have him checkmate.

    The results of the investigation don't matter, the Dems will simply pull more ******** out of their collective Go-Green asses and start new investigations, all financed by the taxpayers of course.

    The real collusion of course is between Trump and Israel/AIPAC, but ssshhhhhhh, you're not allowed to talk about that. That's a big """""secret.""""

    [Feb 13, 2019] After Collusion Case Collapses, House Dems Set To Launch Vast Russia Probe 2.0

    The focus now will be on money laundering -- that will include multiple committees and dramatic public hearings, and could last into 2020.
    Notable quotes:
    "... At least three committees are already involved: The House Intelligence Committee is taking the lead, coordinating with House Financial Services on money-laundering questions and with House Foreign Affairs on Russia. ..."
    "... Adam Schitt, a real slimy, corrupt politician. Maxine Waters, another financial and political criminal. If you could get them to spill their guts you'd be amazed at all the transgressions they have committed during their careers (they'd go to prison for certain). These two should be shot off into space or something. Shouldn't be allowed to continue harrassing the POTUS. ..."
    "... Since the Mueller probe is ending and no longer serves as a shield from having to answer questions concerning his own corruption, Adam Schiff had to get a new probe going so he'd have an excuse to conveniently remain silent on questions he'd rather not address. Schiff is the very one who should be investigated. ..."
    "... I think the Dems have switched tactics; forget about impeaching Donnie's while he's in office when he could theoretically pardon himself, and instead focus on dragging out the investigation(s) until he has left office. ..."
    "... When Donnie realizes this, he'll be EVEN MORE compliant with serving the neocons, the Deep State and The Swamp. ..."
    Feb 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Barely a day has passed since Richard Burr signaled that the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia had turned up nothing substantive - and certainly not a "contract signed in blood" declaring "hey Vlad, we're going to collude".

    And already, more details are leaking out about the Democrats' plans to launch a wide ranging investigation that not only will re-litigate the collusion narrative, but will also reportedly focus on allegations of money laundering and other financial improprieties.

    Mueller is just the beginning. House Democrats plan a vast probe of President Trump and Russia -- with a heavy focus on money laundering -- that will include multiple committees and dramatic public hearings, and could last into 2020.

    Here's more from Axios:

    The state of play: The aggressive plans were outlined yesterday by a Democratic member of Congress at a roundtable for Washington reporters. The member said Congress plans interviews with new witnesses, and may go back to earlier witnesses who "stonewalled" under the Republican majority.

    Why it matters: The reporters, many of them steeped in the special counsel's investigation, came away realizing that House Dems don't plan to depend on Robert Mueller for the last word on interference in the 2016 election.

    Instead, Dems will use their new subpoena power to produce a voluminous exposé of their own.

    The investigation will involve multiple committees, and by all accounts be far more critical than the House probe that ended last year.

    At least three committees are already involved: The House Intelligence Committee is taking the lead, coordinating with House Financial Services on money-laundering questions and with House Foreign Affairs on Russia.

    Democrats are considering ways to uncover what was said in a Trump private meeting with Putin, "whether that's subpoenaing the notes or subpoenaing the interpreter or other steps."

    On the issue of Trump family finances, the president said he's "not in a position to draw red lines."

    "I am concerned that he may have drawn a red line that the Department of Justice may be observing."

    "If we didn't look at his business...we wouldn't know what we know now about his efforts to pursue what may have been the most lucrative deal of his life, the Trump Tower in Moscow - something the special counsel's office has said stood to earn the family hundreds of millions of dollars."

    "Now, most of his stuff isn't building anymore: It's licensing , and it doesn't make that kind of money. So, this would have been huge."

    "[T]he fact that the president says now: 'Well, it's not illegal and I might have lost the election. Why should I miss out, basically, on all that money?' He may very well take the same position now: 'I might not be re-elected, and so why shouldn't I...still pursue it?'"

    Of course, none of this should come as a surprise: Maxine Waters and Adam Schiff (who are two prime candidates for the source of the latest round of leaks) have made no secret of their plans to subpoena Deutsche Bank to learn more about its lending relationship with the president. And as Dems prepare to let the subpoeanas fly, we imagine we'll be learning more in the near future.

    alfbell , 52 minutes ago link

    Adam Schitt, a real slimy, corrupt politician. Maxine Waters, another financial and political criminal. If you could get them to spill their guts you'd be amazed at all the transgressions they have committed during their careers (they'd go to prison for certain). These two should be shot off into space or something. Shouldn't be allowed to continue harrassing the POTUS.

    Lynn Trainor , 1 hour ago link

    Since the Mueller probe is ending and no longer serves as a shield from having to answer questions concerning his own corruption, Adam Schiff had to get a new probe going so he'd have an excuse to conveniently remain silent on questions he'd rather not address. Schiff is the very one who should be investigated.

    Bokkenrijder , 2 hours ago link

    I think the Dems have switched tactics; forget about impeaching Donnie's while he's in office when he could theoretically pardon himself, and instead focus on dragging out the investigation(s) until he has left office.

    When Donnie realizes this, he'll be EVEN MORE compliant with serving the neocons, the Deep State and The Swamp.

    I always doubted that Donnie ever intended to "drain the swamp," but I fear that he'll become an even bigger neocon warmonger now that the Dems have him checkmate.

    The results of the investigation don't matter, the Dems will simply pull more ******** out of their collective Go-Green asses and start new investigations, all financed by the taxpayers of course.

    The real collusion of course is between Trump and Israel/AIPAC, but ssshhhhhhh, you're not allowed to talk about that. That's a big """""secret.""""

    [Feb 13, 2019] Sic Semper Tyrannis WHY THE DNC WAS NOT HACKED BY THE RUSSIANS by Binney and Johnson

    Looks like Gussifer 2.0 person is a fake created to cover tracks and ofload the blame to Russians.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The phrase, "moderate confidence" is intelligence speak for "we have no hard evidence." ..."
    "... Instead, the NSA only claimed to have moderate confidence in the judgement regarding Russian meddling. If the NSA had hard intelligence to support the judgement the conclusion would have been stated as "full confidence." ..."
    "... Why does a cyber security company wait 45 days after allegedly uncovering a massive Russian attack on the DNC server to take concrete steps to safeguard the integrity of the information held on the server? This makes no sense. ..."
    "... We know one thing for certain -- CrowdStrike did not take steps to shutdown and repair the DNC network until 18 days after the last email was copied from the server. ..."
    "... Taken together, these disparate data points combine to paint a picture that exonerates alleged Russian hackers and implicates persons within our law enforcement and intelligence community taking part in a campaign of misinformation, deceit and incompetence. ..."
    Feb 13, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    By William Binney, former Technical Director NSA & Larry Johnson, former State CT and CIA

    The FBI, CIA and NSA claim that the DNC emails published by WIKILEAKS on July 26, 2016 were obtained via a Russian hack, but more than three years after the alleged "hack" no forensic evidence has been produced to support that claim. In fact, the available forensic evidence contradicts the official account that blames the leak of the DNC emails on a Russian internet "intrusion". The existing evidence supports an alternative explanation--the files taken from the DNC on between 23 and 25May 2016 and were copied onto a file storage device, such as a thumb drive.

    If the Russians actually had conducted an internet based hack of the DNC computer network then the evidence of such an attack would have been collected and stored by the National Security Agency. The technical systems to accomplish this task have been in place since 2002. The NSA had an opportunity to make it clear that there was irrefutable proof of Russian meddling, particularly with regard to the DNC hack, when it signed on to the January 2017 "Intelligence Community Assessment," regarding Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election :

    We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence.

    The phrase, "moderate confidence" is intelligence speak for "we have no hard evidence." Thanks to the leaks by Edward Snowden, we know with certainty that the NSA had the capability to examine and analyze the DNC emails. NSA routinely "vacuumed up" email traffic transiting the U.S. using robust collection systems (whether or not anyone in the NSA chose to look for this data is another question). If those emails had been hijacked over the internet then NSA also would have been able to track the electronic path they traveled over the internet. This kind of data would allow the NSA to declare without reservation or caveat that the Russians were guilty. The NSA could admit to such a fact in an unclassified assessment without compromising sources and methods. Instead, the NSA only claimed to have moderate confidence in the judgement regarding Russian meddling. If the NSA had hard intelligence to support the judgement the conclusion would have been stated as "full confidence."

    We believe that Special Counsel Robert Mueller faces major embarrassment if he decides to pursue the indictment he filed -- which accuses 12 Russian GRU military personnel and an entity identified as, Guccifer 2.0, for the DNC hack -- because the available forensic evidence indicates the emails were copied onto a storage device.

    According to a DOJ press release on the indictment of the Russians, Mueller declares that the emails were obtained via a "spearphising" attack:

    In 2016, officials in Unit 26165 began spearphishing volunteers and employees of the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, including the campaign's chairman. Through that process, officials in this unit were able to steal the usernames and passwords for numerous individuals and use those credentials to steal email content and hack into other computers. They also were able to hack into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) through these spearphishing techniques to steal emails and documents, covertly monitor the computer activity of dozens of employees, and implant hundreds of files of malicious computer code to steal passwords and maintain access to these networks.

    The officials in Unit 26165 coordinated with officials in Unit 74455 to plan the release of the stolen documents for the purpose of interfering with the 2016 presidential election. Defendants registered the domain DCLeaks.com and later staged the release of thousands of stolen emails and documents through that website. On the website, defendants claimed to be "American hacktivists" and used Facebook accounts with fictitious names and Twitter accounts to promote the website. After public accusations that the Russian government was behind the hacking of DNC and DCCC computers, defendants created the fictitious persona Guccifer 2.0. On the evening of June 15, 2016 between 4:19PM and 4:56PM, defendants used their Moscow-based server to search for a series of English words and phrases that later appeared in Guccifer 2.0's first blog post falsely claiming to be a lone Romanian hacker responsible for the hacks in the hopes of undermining the allegations of Russian involvement.( https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/grand-jury-indicts-12-russian-intelligence-officers-hacking-offenses-related-2016-election )

    Notwithstanding the DOJ press release, an examination of the Wikileaks DNC files do not support the claim that the emails were obtained via spearphising. Instead, the evidence clearly shows that the emails posted on the Wikileaks site were copied onto an electronic media, such as a CD-ROM or thumbdrive before they were posted at Wikileaks. The emails posted on Wikileaks were saved using the File Allocation Table (aka FAT) computer file system architecture.

    An examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23, 25 and 26 May respectively. The fact that they appear in a FAT system format indicates the data was transfered to a storage device, such as a thumb drive.

    How do we know? The truth lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the Wikileaks files. Every single one of these time stamps end in even numbers. If you are not familiar with the FAT file system, you need to understand that when a date is stored under this system the data rounds the time to the nearest even numbered second.

    We have examined 500 DNC email files stored on Wikileaks and all 500 files end in an even number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. If a system other than FAT had been used, there would have been an equal probability of the time stamp ending with an odd number. But that is not the case with the data stored on the Wikileaks site. All end with an even number.

    The DNC emails are in 3 batches (times are GMT).

    Date       Count Min Time Max Time FAT Min Id Max Id
2016-05-23 10520 02:12:38 02:45:42 x    3800  14319
2016-05-25 11936 05:21:30 06:04:36 x       1  22456
2016-08-26 13357 14:11:36 20:06:04 x   22457  44053

    The random probability that FAT was not used is 1 chance in 2 to the 500th power or approximately 1 chance in 10 to the 150th power - in other words, an infinitely high order. This data alone does not prove that the emails were copied at the DNC headquarters. But it does show that the data/emails posted by Wikileaks did go through a storage device, like a thumbdrive, before Wikileaks posted the emails on the World Wide Web.

    This fact alone is enough to raise reasonable doubts about Mueller's indictment accusing 12 Russian soldiers as the culprits for the leak of the DNC emails to Wikileaks. A savvy defense attorney will argue, and rightly so, that someone copied the DNC files to a storage device (Eg., USB thumb drive) and transferred that to Wikileaks.

    We also tested the hypothesis that Wikileaks could have manipulated the files to produce the FAT result by comparing the DNC email files with the Podesta emails (aka Larter file) that was released on 21 September 2016. The FAT file format is NOT present in the Podesta files. If Wikileaks employed a standard protocol for handling data/emails received from unknown sources we should expect the File structure of the DNC emails to match the file structure of the Podesta emails. The evidence shows otherwise.

    There is further compelling technical evidence that undermines the claim that the DNC emails were downloaded over the internet as a result of a spearphising attack. Bill Binney, a former Technical Director of the National Security Agency, along with other former intelligence community experts, examined emails posted by Guccifer 2.0 and discovered that those emails could not have been downloaded over the internet as a result of a spearphising attack. It is a simple matter of mathematics and physics.

    Shortly after Wikileaks announced it had the DNC emails, Guccifer 2.0 emerged on the public stage, claiming that "he" hacked the DNC and that he had the DNC emails. Guccifer 2.0 began in late June 2016 to publish documents as proof that "he" had hacked from the DNC.

    Taking Guccifer 2.0 at face value -- i.e., that his documents were obtained via an internet attack -- Bill Binney conducted a forensic examination of the metadata contained in the posted documents based on internet connection speeds in the United States. This analysis showed that the highest transfer rate was 49.1 megabytes per second, which is much faster than possible from a remote online connection. The 49.1 megabytes speed coincides with the download rate for a thumb drive .

    Binney, assisted by other colleagues with technical expertise, extended the examination and ran various tests forensic from the Netherlands, Albania, Belgrade and the UK. The fastest rate obtained -- from a data center in New Jersey to a data center in the UK--was 12 megabytes per second, which is less than a fourth of the rate necessary to transfer the data, as it was listed from Guccifer 2.

    The findings from the examination of the Guccifer 2.0 data and the Wikileaks data does not prove who copied the information to a thumbdrive, but it does provide and empirical alternative explanation that undermines the Special Counsel's claim that the DNC was hacked. According to the forensic evidence for the Guccifer 2.0 data, the DNC emails were not taken by an internet spearphising attack. The data breach was local. It was copied from the network.

    There is other circumstantial evidence that buttresses the conclusion that the data breach was a local effort that copied data.

    First there is the Top Secret information leaked by Edward Snowden. If the DNC emails had been hacked via spearphising (as alleged by Mueller) then the data would have been captured by the NSA by means of the Upstream program (Fairview, Stormbrew, Blarney, Oakstar) and the forensic evidence would not modify times - the data would be presented as sent.

    Second, we have the public reporting on the DNC and Crowdstrike, which provide a bizarre timeline for the alleged Russian hacking.

    It was 29 April 2016, when the DNC claims it became aware its servers had been penetrated (see https://medium.com/homefront-rising/dumbstruck-how-crowdstrike-conned-america-on-the-hack-of-the-dnc-ecfa522ff44f ). No claim yet about who was responsible.

    According to CrowdStrike founder, Dimitri Alperovitch, his company first detected the Russians mucking around inside the DNC server on 6 May 2016. A CrowdStrike intelligence analyst reportedly told Alperovitch that :

    Falcon had identified not one but two Russian intruders: Cozy Bear, a group CrowdStrike's experts believed was affiliated with the FSB, Russia's answer to the CIA; and Fancy Bear, which they had linked to the GRU, Russian military intelligence.

    ( https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a49902/the-russian-emigre-leading-the-fight-to-protect-america/ )

    And what did CrowdStrike do about this? Nothing. According to Michael Isikoff, CrowdStrike claimed their inactivity was a deliberate plan to avoid alerting the Russians that they had been "discovered." This is nonsense. If a security company detected a thief breaking into a house and stealing its contents, what sane company would counsel the client to do nothing in order to avoid alerting the thief?

    We know from examining the Wikileaks data that the last message copied from the DNC network is dated Wed, 25 May 2016 08:48:35. No DNC emails were taken and released to Wikileaks after that date.

    CrowdStrike waited until 10 June 2016 to take concrete steps to clean up the DNC network. Alperovitch told Esquire's Vicky Ward that :

    Ultimately, the teams decided it was necessary to replace the software on every computer at the DNC. Until the network was clean, secrecy was vital. On the afternoon of Friday, June 10, all DNC employees were instructed to leave their laptops in the office.

    https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a49902/the-russian-emigre-leading-the-fight-to-protect-america/

    Why does a cyber security company wait 45 days after allegedly uncovering a massive Russian attack on the DNC server to take concrete steps to safeguard the integrity of the information held on the server? This makes no sense.

    A more plausible explanation is that it was discovered that emails had been downloaded from the server and copied onto a device like a thumdrive. But the culprit had not yet been identified. We know one thing for certain -- CrowdStrike did not take steps to shutdown and repair the DNC network until 18 days after the last email was copied from the server.

    The final curiosity is that the DNC never provided the FBI access to its servers in order for qualified FBI technicians to conduct a thorough forensic examination. If this had been a genuine internet hack, it would be very easy for the NSA to identify when the information was taken and the route it moved after being hacked from the server. The NSA had the technical collection systems in place to enable analysts to know the date and time of the messages. But that has not been done.

    Taken together, these disparate data points combine to paint a picture that exonerates alleged Russian hackers and implicates persons within our law enforcement and intelligence community taking part in a campaign of misinformation, deceit and incompetence. It is not a pretty picture.

    [Feb 13, 2019] My understanding is that the Democratic Party person who passed the USB stick to Craig Murray was not Seth Rich

    Feb 13, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Jen , Feb 12, 2019 10:54:05 PM | link

    James @ 65, Spudski @ 54, Bevin @ 38:

    My understanding is that the Democratic Party person who passed the USB stick to Craig Murray was not Seth Rich. Seth Rich died on 10 July 2016 and Murray received the USB stick in September of the same year. So there were quite a few disgruntled Democratic Party whistleblowers at the time.

    spudski , Feb 12, 2019 11:48:22 PM | link
    @Jen 70

    You're right - Seth Rich was not alive in September 2016. Craig Murray says he received a package in a wooded area near the American University in Washington DC in September 2016 from "the source" and that the leak source was the deed of a disgruntled Democrat employee.

    james , Feb 13, 2019 1:12:42 AM | link
    @71 jen / 73 spudski... i went and checked craigs site, but was unable to find him mentioning this.. i did re-read his post from july 3rd 2017 that came up in a search of seth rich.. The Stink Without a Secret

    to quote from it.. "That is it. To this day, that is the sum total of actual "evidence" of Russian hacking. I won't say hang on to it as a fact, because it contains no relevant fact. But at least it is some form of definable allegation of something happening, rather than "Russian hacking" being a simple article of faith like the Holy Trinity.

    But there are a number of problems that prevent this being fact at all. Nobody has ever been able to refute the evidence of Bill Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA who designed its current surveillance systems. Bill has stated that the capability of the NSA is such, that if the DNC computers had been hacked, the NSA would be able to trace the actual packets of that information as those emails travelled over the internet, and give a precise time, to the second, for the hack. The NSA simply do not have the event – because there wasn't one. I know Bill personally and am quite certain of his integrity.

    As we have been repeatedly told, "17 intelligence agencies" sign up to the "Russian hacking", yet all these king's horses and all these king's men have been unable to produce any evidence whatsoever of the purported "hack". Largely because they are not in fact trying. Here is another actual fact I wish you to hang on to: The Democrats have refused the intelligence agencies access to their servers to discover what actually happened. I am going to say that again.

    The Democrats have refused the intelligence agencies access to their servers to discover what actually happened." - why is that???

    Jackrabbit , Feb 13, 2019 7:21:34 AM | link
    james, jen, spudski, bevin

    Look at the interviews of Seth Rich's family on Youtube. The interviews are just weird. And the Seth Rich family has acted in a weird way too.

    pantaraxia , Feb 13, 2019 8:07:59 AM | link
    Seymour Hersh, surreptitiously taped while discussing Seth Rich's murder.

    Seymour Hersh discussing Wikileaks DNC leaks Seth Rich & FBI report (6:30 min)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJpQPGeUeQY

    Jackrabbit , Feb 13, 2019 8:39:31 AM | link
    As you consider the weirdness of the Rich family, also keep in mind the substantial efforts made to discredit and disable Assange/Wikileaks and Trump's call, in summer 2016) for Putin to release Hillary's lost emails.

    The timeline is as follows:

    January 2016
    FBI report says Hillary emails contained highly classified info
    By this time, Trump has all but locked up the GOP nomination - Michael Bloomberg makes urgent public announcement that may enter the race to prevent Sanders and Trump from winning.

    February 2016
    Never Trump Movement is born

    March/April 2016
    Trump hires Manafort

    May 2016
    DNC is hacked

    June 2016
    Trump Jr. meets with Russians that say they have info about Hillary

    July 2016
    Wikileaks publishes DNC emails (July 22)
    Trump">https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/donald-trump-russia-clinton-emails.html">Trump calls on Putin to release Hillary's lost emails (July 28)

    July 2016
    Manafort resigns/is fired

    September 2016
    Flynn signs agreement with Turk company Inovo BV: $500k "sweatheart deal"

    October 2016
    Assange's Internet access is terminated for the first time due to "election interference" by publishing DNC emails

    November 2016
    Flynn's agreement with Turk company ends on election day (Nov 8)
    Flynn accepts position as National Security Advisor (Nov 18)

    January 2017
    Flynn is under investigation due to his work for Inovo BV
    Chuck Schumer says Intel agencies "have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you"

    February 2017
    Trump fires Flynn after he is evasive/untruthful about his conversation with Russian Ambassador

    >> Trump's positioning as pro-Russia was bolstered by his hiring pro-Russia Manafort who has links to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. This is a strange choice for the "America First" Trump campaign.

    >> Assange/Wikileaks and Flynn are all ultimately snared by anti-Russia hysteria. Wikileaks would later be described as a "hostile intelligence agency" and Assange as a "Russian agent".

    spudski , Feb 13, 2019 10:38:17 AM | link
    james @75

    CM does say this in a December 2016 post:

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-conviction/
    [The overall extract is between the lines below.]
    _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result "was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype:

    "The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was "directing" the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government.
    Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims "bullshit", adding: "They are absolutely making it up."
    "I know who leaked them," Murray said. "I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.
    "If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA's statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States.
    "America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it's not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever."

    But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion.
    _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    jackrabbit

    Thanks for the info. The Seth Rich story always bothered me. I also recall that in one article CM was quoted as saying that who he got the leaked materials was not "the source." Was the original source SR?

    james , Feb 13, 2019 12:18:47 PM | link
    @84/87 jr / @91 spudski... thanks for all that..

    i tend to believe julian assange when he says the stakes are very high when one is involved in sharing information that could be detrimental others - a large organization in particular, and etc..

    I suppose the 2 choices here are one believes either Seth Rich was murdered in a bad part of Washington dc - conceivable, or that someone knew he had passed the emails and wanted to kill him for it..

    If you believe 2 - then you have to come up with a reason for why they had to kill him.. The reason jr appears to offer is it makes Russia and WikiLeaks the 2 main suspects, as opposed to seth rich.. and on and on it goes..

    I lean towards the later view which jr articulates, but i don't expect to ever find out..

    [Feb 13, 2019] The US neoliberal MSM are engaged in a "privilege protection racket"

    Notable quotes:
    "... Maté explains why he thinks this narrative ultimately aligns with the longstanding interests of U.S. establishment power. He calls it a "privilege protection racket" that thrives on distraction and misdirection, turning the public away from a real critique of the rise of Trumpism that would otherwise implicate the neoliberal policies of democrats and conservatives alike, foreign policy think tanks, and the media. ..."
    Feb 13, 2019 | teamhuman.fm

    Aaron is gong to break down "Russiagate," taking a sober look at the media frenzy of "bombshell" stories asserting a Russian conspiracy behind the 2016 election.

    Maté explains why he thinks this narrative ultimately aligns with the longstanding interests of U.S. establishment power. He calls it a "privilege protection racket" that thrives on distraction and misdirection, turning the public away from a real critique of the rise of Trumpism that would otherwise implicate the neoliberal policies of democrats and conservatives alike, foreign policy think tanks, and the media.

    [Feb 12, 2019] Watch MSNBC Host Squirm During Live Update On No Collusion Intel Committee News

    Feb 12, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    And in a prior NBC News article Tuesday morning, Dilanian spelled out :

    After two years and 200 interviews , the Senate Intelligence Committee is approaching the end of its investigation into the 2016 election, having uncovered no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia , according to both Democrats and Republicans on the committee.

    MSNBC anchor Hallie Jackson and her guest panelists' faces looked visibly confused and uncomfortable as they learned the Senate report is going in the opposite direction of everything MSNBC and other mainstream outlets have been breathlessly reporting on a near 24/7 basis.

    More importantly, if this is a precursor of what the Mueller report concludes in a few weeks/months, the TV station that built its current reputation on the premise of Russian collusion, may have no option but to go on indefinite hiatus.

    Watch the segment below, with host Hallie Jackson appearing to grow exasperated by the 2:20 mark : "If and when the president, as he may inevitably do, points to these conclusions and says look, the Senate intelligence committee found I am not guilty of conspiracy... he would be correct in saying that? "

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/a4DKItxvKfU

    Dilanian noted that while the Republican chair of the committee made what he characterized as "partisan" comments the week prior, it turned out be unanimous fact. "What I found," he said, "is that Democrats don't dispute that characterization ."

    But perhaps sensing how "contrary" to the network's own hysterical 'Russiagate' coverage his reporting was, he tried to soften the blow, saying, "But, again, no direct proof of a conspiracy. As one democratic aide said to me, 'we never thought we were going to find a Democrat between Trump and Vladimir Putin saying let's collude, but the question is how do we interpret all these various contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.'"

    Hallie Jackson followed with further probing: "Not to put too fine a point on it, but I want to make sure I'm understanding this..." and asked "If and when the president, as he may inevitably do, points to these conclusions and says look, the Senate intelligence committee found I'm not guilty of conspiracy... he would be correct in saying that? "

    Her face looking rather incredulous at this point, Dilanian responded by invoking the Mueller investigation, reassuring her his inquiry is not complete and likely could uncover more information. But then the bottom line: "That said, Trump will claim vindication through this, and he'll be partially right," he said. But Dilanian also noted the Senate intel committee has access to classified material, which means "if there was an intercept between officers suggesting they were conspiring with the Trump campaign, [the committee] would see that. And that has not emerged."

    "So that evidence does not exist, and Trump will claim vindication," he repeated.

    Yet after all this, during the full segment Vice News guest panelist Shawna Thomas actually invoked impeachment in what appeared a desperate attempt to grasp for anything . "There's two things I question about [the report]," she began.

    "Number one, if and when the report finally comes out from the Senate intelligence committee, is there anything in there that will cause, especially some of these new House Dems, to start to clamor, even if there isn't 'conspiracy' or 'collusion', for impeachment?" said Thomas.

    But then she tried to deflate the whole thing, upsetting as it was for purveyors of the collusion narrative: "The other thing is, based on what Ken is saying, it's all stuff we knew already," she said.

    Right... cause in MSNBC's Russiagate-land "the walls are closing in" on Trump, constantly. Except the network just woke up to the reality that it's not the case.

    We only wonder what Rachel Maddow will be left with after this.

    [Feb 09, 2019] Did The Department Of Justice Protect Brenda Snipes From Prosecution For Ballot Destruction by Elizabeth Lea Vos

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... it is important to remember that Wasserman-Schultz and Snipes are merely the public faces of an extensive, deeply problematic system of corruption. It is then also essential to understand who, and what mechanisms, have allowed figures like Wasserman-Schultz, Snipes, the Awan brothers, and others to go unprosecuted. ..."
    "... As readers may recall , Snipes illegally destroyed ballots from the 2016 primary race between Wasserman-Schultz and Tim Canova. The Sun Sentinel explained Snipes's direct involvement in the destruction of ballots, writing: ..."
    "... Canova's contention that US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may have been responsible for preventing legal consequences for Brenda Snipes is profoundly concerning. Last year, Rosenstein faced heavy criticism in the wake of the publication of the infamous FISA Memo. Last year, The Daily Beast described the memo's account of surveillance abuse, saying: "[The memo] specifically names FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein along with former FBI Director James Comey." ..."
    "... Needless to say, the fact that Rosenstein was directly involved with the strongly partisan activities documented by the FISA memo makes it unsurprising that he would interfere on behalf of associates of Hillary Clinton. ..."
    "... Setting the possibility that Wasserman-Schultz's brother may also have been involved in protecting Snipes from prosecution aside for the moment, Canova's allegations raise a myriad of new questions, including: who benefits from protecting Snipes? ..."
    "... "In stories like this, the image painted of the Department of Justice is one of a federal agency that functions in a manner far more akin to organized crime than to a governmental body." ..."
    Feb 07, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
    Via Disobedient Media.

    A vast caldera of public rage has rightfully been aimed at Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Brenda Snipes over the last few years. However, it is important to remember that Wasserman-Schultz and Snipes are merely the public faces of an extensive, deeply problematic system of corruption. It is then also essential to understand who, and what mechanisms, have allowed figures like Wasserman-Schultz, Snipes, the Awan brothers, and others to go unprosecuted.

    This issue became clearer earlier this week when former congressional candidate Tim Canova Tweeted:

    As readers may recall , Snipes illegally destroyed ballots from the 2016 primary race between Wasserman-Schultz and Tim Canova. The Sun Sentinel explained Snipes's direct involvement in the destruction of ballots, writing:

    "Canova, who was checking for voting irregularities in the race, sought to look at the paper ballots in March 2017 and took Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes to court three months later when her office hadn't fulfilled his request. Snipes approved the destruction of the ballots in September, signing a certification that said no court cases involving the ballots were pending. Snipes called the action a "mistake" during testimony she gave in the case, saying the boxes were mislabeled and there was "nothing on my part that was intentional" about destroying the contested ballots."

    Big League Politics also reported: "On May 11, 2018, the Florida Circuit Court granted Plaintiff Canova summary judgment, and found that Snipes had violated numerous state and federal statutes, including laws punishable as felonies with up to five years in prison. The Court's ruling made clear that Snipes' destruction of ballots was illegal on several separate counts."

    Disobedient Media spoke with Tim Canova, who told us:

    "I was recently informed by election officials in Florida that it's the Deputy AG, Rod Rosenstein, who would have been the DOJ official making the decision not to move forward with a criminal investigation in our ballot destruction case. I also believe that Steve Wasserman, an Assistant US Attorney at the DOJ headquarters in Washington, DC, may well have been involved in the decision, particularly since Wasserman spoke out publicly against prosecuting Awan in the days before Awan's sentencing."

    A Floridian official set to prosecute Snipes was also said to have backed down after a trip to Washington DC, which involved meetings with the DOJ. Canova stated:

    "Last May, the acting US Attorney for South Florida, Ben Greenberg, was about to open a criminal investigation into Snipes's destruction of our ballots when he flew to DC for a week of meetings at DOJ. When he returned, the investigation was off."

    Canova's contention that US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may have been responsible for preventing legal consequences for Brenda Snipes is profoundly concerning. Last year, Rosenstein faced heavy criticism in the wake of the publication of the infamous FISA Memo. Last year, The Daily Beast described the memo's account of surveillance abuse, saying: "[The memo] specifically names FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein along with former FBI Director James Comey."

    The Washington Times reported: "The memo from Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee shows that at least one questionable surveillance warrant application was signed by Mr. Rosenstein, who already had a difficult relationship with President Trump. The memo said information supporting the application was obtained from a partisan anti-Trump dossier funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic Party."

    Needless to say, the fact that Rosenstein was directly involved with the strongly partisan activities documented by the FISA memo makes it unsurprising that he would interfere on behalf of associates of Hillary Clinton.

    Setting the possibility that Wasserman-Schultz's brother may also have been involved in protecting Snipes from prosecution aside for the moment, Canova's allegations raise a myriad of new questions, including: who benefits from protecting Snipes?

    Undeniably, the most obvious answer is Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the alleged beneficiary of Snipes's illegal ballot destruction. Similarly, one wonders what connection such a decision may have with the DOJ's refusal to prosecute the Awan scandal, a move from which Debbie Wasserman-Schultz also directly benefited.

    In light of this, we are led to ask: Who benefits from shielding Debbie Wasserman-Schultz from the blowback of multiple national scandals? What would induce the DOJ to prop up such an embarrassment?

    Farts and Leaves,

    "In stories like this, the image painted of the Department of Justice is one of a federal agency that functions in a manner far more akin to organized crime than to a governmental body."

    If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

    Taras Bulba

    Dis ob Media-good report-thanks.

    This abolute outrageous info about snipes, the wassermanschultzes, awans, dimocrats in congress shouts loudly that we really have no system of justice in this country, at least for the powerful and connected. This is outrageous-where in the hell is the DOJ, oh, that is the problem with ,rosenstein, prob the clintons, et al

    My guess is wasserman schultz is mossad-to my mind, there can be no other explanation.

    It appears that George Webb has been shut down, he was bird dogging this info, now daily caller luke has cut him off.

    The vomit factor on this one is off the scale!

    Ajax-1

    At the very least, why hasn't Trump or his new AG fired Rosenstein?

    space junk

    Probably because the stay behind networks from the Sessions/Obama/Holder and even Bush eras, have so much entanglement into the system, that change cannot be made in quick order. One only can hope that T-man will chop off the head of the snake and not just the tail.

    hooligan2009

    the two key extracts from the article are these:

    "... the Department of Justice is one of a federal agency that functions in a manner far more akin to organized crime than to a governmental body. The DOJ's refusal prosecute the Awans, and Rosenstein's alleged decision to prevent legal consequences for Brenda Snipes shows us that corruption allowed to stagnate in Broward County affected the whole country. "

    and

    "... the Department of Justice refuses to prosecute such crimes as detailed in the Awan scandal and as committed by Snipes, how can the public hope to hold their government accountable for election interference and other forms of corruption? "

    the case is clear. the DoJ has, again, acted against the national interest and the staff involved are guilty of electoral fraud, sedition and treason. the awan brothers sold congressional secrets to Pakistan (and mossad probably).

    cui bono? from not prosecuting these blatant, obvious AND DISCLOSED crimes? there is a fetid swamp of criminality here and a flagrant, in your face, contempt for the american people and their security.

    Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? where is the oversight of this criminality? the inspector general? internal affairs? where are the lawyers that leap to defend civil rights abuses against covington schoolkids, but not issues such as this?

    hooligan2009, 7 hours ago

    h/t anthony aaron's link below

    http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/the-tale-of-the-brothers-awan/

    " Congress paid the Awans more than $4 million between 2004 and 2016 at their $165,000 salary level, a sum that some sources suggest to be three or four times higher than the norm for government contractor IT specialists performing similar work at the same level of alleged competence. "

    -ALIEN-

    The US Dept of INjustice is a criminal organization, of course it is protecting those who subvert elections at the direction of the Oligarchs.

    Our whole system of voting has been carefully crafted and tuned to ensure the USA Citizen has almost no effect on the functioning of government.

    boattrash

    One thing not mentioned in the article, was the dead body of federal prosecutor Beranton J. Whisenant Jr. found on the beach in Debbie's District...Dead from a suicide gunshot to the head...he used a "magic gun" I suppose, because local police think in "floated off in the surf" FFS

    https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article167403992.html

    GotGalt

    It is pretty amazing how the story of the Awan brothers is *already* swallowed into the black hole of media silence.

    They are winning... :-(

    [Feb 09, 2019] Mueller Annoyed By Chipper, Overeager Adam Schiff Constantly Sending Him Evidence He's Already Uncovered

    Feb 09, 2019 | politics.theonion.com

    WASHINGTON -- Expressing frustration at the obnoxious, nonstop attempts to aid his investigation, special counsel Robert Mueller was reportedly annoyed Friday that a chipper, overeager Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) keeps constantly sending him evidence he's already uncovered. "Christ, he just emailed me ...

    [Feb 09, 2019] Putin General Wesley Clark on destruction of the Middle East - YouTube

    Feb 09, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    4TruthBeTrue 9 months ago Putin is the most articulate leader I have seen. He demonstrates clear understanding of the issues and causes at the core of the situation. Very intelligent. The world needs more leaders of this calibre. The USA have stuck there beak in and stirred up a hornets nest, and now there is unrest and instability in the land that has caused scores of people to perish or be dislocated. And the repercussions a still being felt today. Obscure Shadow 2 years ago Putin speaks with the common sense & diplomacy of a true statesman. Compared to him, US speak like a bunch of immature imbeciles. Many blessings & protection to him. 100+% support to him & Russia from this American. I wish we could clone him here...

    [Feb 09, 2019] Mueller Annoyed By Chipper, Overeager Adam Schiff Constantly Sending Him Evidence He's Already Uncovered

    Feb 09, 2019 | politics.theonion.com

    WASHINGTON -- Expressing frustration at the obnoxious, nonstop attempts to aid his investigation, special counsel Robert Mueller was reportedly annoyed Friday that a chipper, overeager Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) keeps constantly sending him evidence he's already uncovered. "Christ, he just emailed me ...

    [Feb 08, 2019] Is Putin a Russian Nationalist ?

    Feb 08, 2019 | angrybearblog.com

    1. Barkley Rosser , February 8, 2019 2:15 am

      While China is clearly a concern, the main beneficiaries of the INF treaty were neither US nor USSR/Russia. It was European nations, especially the western ones on the continent. So iit should be no surprise that they opposed ending the treaty, even as Russia was violating it, and Trump withdrew from it unilaterally with Russia immediately following.

      Putin is not already a "hard core nationalist"? Compared to Putin, Trump looks very much like a soft core one. Has he pulled anything remotely as hard core nationslist as annexing Crimea?

    likbez , February 8, 2019 3:14 pm

    Barkley,

    You should probably read more Professor Stephen F. Cohen on Russia, not NYT or WaPo.

    Of course, as you do not know the language, it is difficult for you to access the situation on the ground. And in this sense reading Stephen F. Cohen might be very helpful as he operates with Russian language sources, nor NYT or WaPo propaganda. Also traveling to Moscow on vacations might help to access the situation in a more rational style ;-)

    > Putin is not already a "hardcore nationalist"? Compared to Putin, Trump looks very much like a softcore one.

    FYI Putin a "soft neoliberal," and as such he can't be the hardcore nationalist. For those, you need to look at Ukraine's political scene. At best he can be "cultural nationalist," but I doubt even that. He is a Philo-German politician, I think.

    I think the main countervailing force that prevents Russians from jailing Yeltsin close circle of neoliberal reformers (like Chubais, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Chubais , aka the most hated man in Russia) is Putin.

    The only guy who IMHO might qualify as a hardcore nationalist I think is Zhirinovsky ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Zhirinovsky ). But I do not know much about Russia anyway, so there might be more. In any case, it looks like nationalism is on the upswing in Russia like in most European countries. Especially after Euromaidan, when pro-Western neoliberals in Russia were decimated and lost all political influence.

    Putin also keeps Medvedev as the Prime minister and recently appointed Kudrin to an important office. Both are neoliberals, proponents of "free markets" and privatization. Both might well be jailed without Putin.

    Trump also is a neoliberal politician (his tax cuts were clearly a neoliberal act), but his main and defining features are incompetence and impulsivity.

    He betrayed all his key promises to the electorate and thus can be called Republican Obama.

    To qualify for a far-right politician, you need to adhere to key points of NSDAP program of 1920:

    7. We demand that the state is charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the total population of the State, then the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.

    8. Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich.

    9.All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.

    10.The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all. Consequently, we demand:

    11.Abolition of unearned (work and labor) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.

    12.In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore, we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

    13.We demand the nationalization of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).

    14.We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.

    15.We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.

    16.We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.

    17.We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.

    18.We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.

    21.The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.

    22. We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.

    [Feb 08, 2019] Venezuela Guardian sparing neocon blushes

    Notable quotes:
    "... The Guardian's Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, an inveterate liar-by-omission , could easily have included this information. He chose not to, if paid propagandists can ever be said to have a choice in what they print. ..."
    Feb 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org

    This website started as a way to air opinions that The Guardian would not allow in their comments section. Over time it evolved into fact-checking. Rarely has it been so simple. This is The Guardian's latest story on the unfolding crisis in Venezuela, it is headlined:

    Venezuela: Maduro accuses US of trying to 'get hands on our oil'

    That headline is technically true. Nicolas Maduro – the beseiged Venezuelan President and the MSM's current "monster of the week" – did accuse the USA of wanting to control Venezuela's vast crude oil deposits. He cited Iraq and Libya as recent examples of similar behaviour.

    What The Guardian did NOT mention is that John Bolton, Donald Trump's neocon National Security Advisor, admitted that Maduro was right. He told Fox Business that Venezuela's oil was a big motivation for Trump's admin:

    We're in conversation with major american companies now I think we're trying to get to the same end result here it will make a BIG difference to the American economy if we could have American oil companies invest in, and produce, Venezuela's oil capabilities."

    There you have it – straight from the Walrus' mouth. The US is interested in Venezuela's oil. He also refered to it as a "big business opportunity" . (Here is a second link to it , just in case Fox News decided to take the (embarrassing) admission off their website.)

    This fact clashes with the false narrative The Guardian , and their co-conspirators in the media, are trying to push on their public. The state-sponsored narrative is that Maduro is lying or crazy. A paranoid dictator desperately clinging to power, and spinning fairy tales to defend himself. John Bolton's admission smashes that lie to pieces. So, of course, it is not mentioned.

    The Guardian's Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, an inveterate liar-by-omission , could easily have included this information. He chose not to, if paid propagandists can ever be said to have a choice in what they print.

    USAma Bin Laden says Feb, 5, 2019

    The Guardian: Mouthpiece for the liberal wing of British imperialism.

    Of course, the USA wants to gain control of Venezuelan oil–note control does not mean merely accessto but more importantly control over the currency that this oil is sold in so as to maintain the American Empire's Holiest of Holies: the American PetroDollar.

    But then again, the Guardian would also have you believe that America and its (snicker) Free World allies are really fighting a War on Terrorism–even though they have been arming and sponsoring jihadist terrorism like the Libyan Islamic Fight Group (against Libya) and similar groups like Al-Nusra Front (the Al-Queda affiliate in Syria) for years.

    So it's not surprising that the Guardian would regurgitate American and Western regime war propaganda.

    Gezzah Potts says Feb, 6, 2019
    USAma Bin Laden: and that's exactly what the Guardian is for: disseminators of pro war, pro imperialist, pro humanitarian intervention . To save the targeted countries from themselves. And install an Empire friendly puppet who will bend over for his/her master's. Sheer coincidence that nearly every country that needs 'saved' also has large amounts of oil and gas.
    Brupo says Feb, 1, 2019
    The Guardian is a shame!
    DunGroanin says Feb, 2, 2019
    Tom Phillips in Caracas.

    The banality of the Obssesive Grauniad reaches new depths.

    Reporting mass protests that haven't yet happened!

    Fake 'news' and they don't care who knows. Blatant and bare faced pretenders.

    Loftwork says Jan, 31, 2019

    Quite right. I also find it depressingly unsurprising that the Graun is not concerned about the appointment of Elliot Abrams as Trump's lead man in Venezuela. Once upon a time the Graun cared about things like Iran Contra. Now, who knows where it hides its principles, if it hasn't simply sold them all.
    lundiel says Jan, 31, 2019
    I think it kept what was left of its principals in a hard drive along with the Snowden files.

    [Feb 08, 2019] So don't miss James Corbett's "FAKE NEWS AWARD"

    Feb 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org

    Joerg says Feb, 7, 2019

    "Everything (to the contrary) is propaganda"
    Yes, they will never stop. Just think of this brand-new propaganda lie of Maduro allegedly preventing aid shipment to come into Venezuela. See BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47143492 : " Venezuelan soldiers have blocked the crossing ahead of a delivery arranged by opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who has declared himself interim president ".

    Notice the word " ahead " in this sentence. This word appears because there was never a " delivery " (truck) with aid shipment at the bridge!
    The Venezuelan government ("Maduro") blocked the bridge only because of war-threatening Columbia and USA.

    If you want to send aid shipment to Venezuela you can send as much as you want anytime. Of course you have to respect the regulations of the custom (like in every other country!). But that's all!

    Whets foul with this story?

    Well, this aid " delivery " cannot have been collected in Colombia – and thus being taken away from the people of Colombia, who are much poorer than the people of Venezuela. So it would have to come from other country (USA, Europe, China, Japan). And then you would not land this aid shipment in Columbia (a harbour, an airport), drive it, in hot-humid air, through half of Colombia to the border crossing bridge of Cúcuta. Then cross the bridge and then drive it through half of Venezuela!

    Instead aid shipments for Venezuela would be landed directly in Venezuela – in an Venezuelan harbour or airport.

    "Everything (to the contrary) is propaganda". Or "Fake News"! So don't miss James Corbett's "FAKE NEWS AWARD" – https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-351-the-2nd-annual-real-fake-news-awards/

    [Feb 07, 2019] The British government has made very little of the evidence behind its stupid claims public, and what they have made public doesn't add up.

    Feb 07, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Ghost Ship , Feb 7, 2019 4:06:14 PM | link

    >>>>: james | Feb 7, 2019 2:51:13 PM | 4

    ... ... ..

    Finally for all you Skripal conspiracy theorists out there, that other source of "fake news" run by the Kremlin, Sputnik News, has an article by Kit Klarenberg about that Bellingcat, The Guardian and MI6 favourite Dan Kaszeta who was the first person apparently to suggest that it was Novichok wot did it.

    I ran into Dan Kazeta a number of times at Bellingcat because of his dodgy claims about Khan Sheikhoun and chemical weapons (Why has the green tube involved in delivering the alleged chemical weapon never appeared in the west? Because it ain't what the jihadists claimed it was and forensic tests would prove that?)

    BTW, with Skripal, there can only be conspiracy theorists out in the wild because the British government has made very little of the evidence behind its stupid claims public, and what they have made public doesn't add up.

    [Feb 06, 2019] Bari Weiss Has the Stupidest Take on Tulsi Gabbard Yet

    Notable quotes:
    "... "Am I crazy?" -Bari Weiis Well Bari Weiis you're either crazy or you're a yet another worthless establishment shill whose job is spread deliberate misinformation about the most genuine anti-war candidate running at a time when the entire MSM, MIC, and the neoliberal rightwing establishment (including AIPAC) is deliberately smearing her to immediately kill her campaign. And you didn't come across as crazy so... ..."
    Feb 06, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    the op kingdom , 1 week ago (edited)

    This woman had NO CLUE what she was talking about. She thought she was on a show that would just tow the party line and let her get away with wrong statements. She's just repeating what critics say with no idea of the truth. What a fool. As a woman, THIS IS WHY I WON'T JUST VOTE FOR ANY WOMAN. We are just as capable of being stupid as anyone else.

    FrozenWolf150 , 1 week ago

    Bari: "I think Tulsi Gabbard is an Assad toadie." Joe: "What do you mean by toadie?" Bari: "Oh, I don't know what that means." Joe: "Okay, I looked it up, and it's like a sycophant." Bari: "Then Tulsi is like an Assad sycophant." Joe: "So what do you mean by that?" Bari: "I'm not sure what sycophant means either." Joe: "I looked up the definition, it's like a suck-up." Bari: "All right, Tulsi is an Assad suck-up." Joe: "Could you explain that further?" Bari: "I don't know what suck means." Joe: "It's what you're doing right now."

    Jeff Oloff , 1 week ago

    Bari Weiss is a tool of Zionist war mongers that promote perpetual war. She has no thoughts of her own.

    Joe Smith , 1 week ago

    I hate Bari Weiss....I just don't why.

    Nicholas Pniewski , 1 week ago

    Tulsi also recently clarified her position of Assad and Syria on CNN, where she said she would have diplomacy rather than war

    Captain Obvious , 1 week ago

    "Am I crazy?" -Bari Weiis Well Bari Weiis you're either crazy or you're a yet another worthless establishment shill whose job is spread deliberate misinformation about the most genuine anti-war candidate running at a time when the entire MSM, MIC, and the neoliberal rightwing establishment (including AIPAC) is deliberately smearing her to immediately kill her campaign. And you didn't come across as crazy so...

    [Feb 06, 2019] NYT Columnist Calls Tulsi Gabbard 'Assad Toady,' Can't Define or Spell Term

    I will be very surprised if neocons would not frame her Putin toady as well. This is how this system works. It eliminates undesirable to the neoliberals candidates with 100% efficiency.
    They serve as local STASI and some former STASI official might well envy neocons efficiency of silencing opponents (with much less blood and overt repression, by pure magic of neocon propaganda ).
    Notable quotes:
    "... She has "monstrous ideas, she's an Assad toady," Weiss tells Rogan. ..."
    "... Rogan then reads the definition: "Toadies. The definition of toadies: A person who flatters or defers to others for self-serving reasons." "A sycophant. So I did use it right!" Weiss exclaims. "So she's an Assad sycophant? Is that what you're saying?" "Yeah, that's, proven -- known -- about her." ..."
    "... When Rogan asks what Gabbard has said that qualifies her as a sycophant, Weiss replies: "I don't remember the details." ..."
    "... Gabbard, who announced her presidential campaign on January 11, has drawn incredible amounts of ire from mainstream Democrats tripping over themselves for war with Syria because in January 2017, Gabbard met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and denounced the opposition rebels in the country's civil war as "terrorists." ..."
    "... She has also expressed skepticism about accusations that Assad's government has used chemical weapons during the conflict and spoken out against cruise missile attacks by the US and its allies against the country. ..."
    Feb 06, 2019 | sputniknews.com
    Monday to discuss current events, but things got embarrassing when she went in on Gabbard, a progressive Democrat whose foreign policy positions have turned more than a few heads.

    Neocon NY Times columnist Bari Weiss smeared Tulsi Gabbard (who bravely opposed regime change and US support for Salafi-jihadist contras) as an "Assad toady," then couldn't spell/define toady or offer any evidence to prove her smear. Embarrassingly funny pic.twitter.com/m0MLaHFPiX

    -- Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 22, 2019

    ​She has "monstrous ideas, she's an Assad toady," Weiss tells Rogan.

    US Representative Tulsi Gabbard speaks during Day 2 of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 26, 2016 © AFP 2018 / Timothy A. CLARY Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard Speaks the Truth on Syria, Gets Smeared by the Mainstream Media

    When Rogan asks for clarification, she says, "I think that I used that word correctly." She then asks someone off camera to look up what toady means. "Like toeing the line," Rogan says, "is that what it means?" "No, I think it's like, uh " and Weiss drones off without an answer. She then attempts to spell it, and can't even do that. "T-O-A-D-I-E. I think it means what I think it means "

    Rogan then reads the definition: "Toadies. The definition of toadies: A person who flatters or defers to others for self-serving reasons." "A sycophant. So I did use it right!" Weiss exclaims. "So she's an Assad sycophant? Is that what you're saying?" "Yeah, that's, proven -- known -- about her."

    When Rogan asks what Gabbard has said that qualifies her as a sycophant, Weiss replies: "I don't remember the details."

    In this Nov. 6, 2018, file photo, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, greets supporters in Honolulu. Gabbard has announced she's running for president in 2020 © AP Photo / Marco Garcia 'Assad's Mouthpiece in Washington': Controversial Dem. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard Announces 2020 Run

    "We probably should say that before we say that about her -- we should probably read it, rather, right now, just so we know what she said," Rogan notes. "I think she's, like, the motherlode of bad ideas," Weiss then says. "I'm pretty positive about that, especially on Assad. But maybe I'm wrong. I don't think I'm wrong." It seems to us here at Sputnik that such claims should be made with a bit more confidence than this. So let's set the record straight.

    Gabbard, who announced her presidential campaign on January 11, has drawn incredible amounts of ire from mainstream Democrats tripping over themselves for war with Syria because in January 2017, Gabbard met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and denounced the opposition rebels in the country's civil war as "terrorists."

    She has also expressed skepticism about accusations that Assad's government has used chemical weapons during the conflict and spoken out against cruise missile attacks by the US and its allies against the country.

    A general view shows damaged buildings at al-Kalasa district of Aleppo, Syria in Aleppo, Syria, February 2, 2017 © REUTERS / Omar Sanadiki US Lawmakers Call for Syria Strategy Where Assad Leaving Post, Russian Military Pulls Out

    "Initially I hadn't planned on meeting him," Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, told CNN's Jake Tapper following the meeting. "When the opportunity arose to meet with him, I did so, because I felt it's important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we've got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we could achieve peace. And that's exactly what we talked about."

    "I have seen this cost of war firsthand, which is why I fight so hard for peace," Gabbard said. "And that's the reality of the situation that we're facing here. It's why I have urged and continue to urge [US President Donald] Trump to meet with people like Kim Jong Un in North Korea, because we understand what's at stake here. The only alternative to having these kinds of conversations is more war."

    Moreover, in a March 2016 speech before Congress, Gabbard called Assad "a brutal dictator," noting that her opposition to what she called a "war bill" was over the legal ramifications that she feared would lead to the overthrow of Assad, which she opposes on anti-interventionist grounds.

    "[T]oppling ruthless dictators in the Middle East creates even more human suffering and strengthens our enemy, groups like ISIS and other terrorist organizations, in those countries," Gabbard said at the time.

    House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York speak to reporters about the Congressional Budget Office projection that 14 million people would lose health coverage under the House Republican bill dismantling former President Barack Obama's health care law, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, March, 13, 2017. © AP Photo/ J. Scott Applewhite House Democrats Will Expand Russiagate in 2019 to Push Trump Toward War

    Gabbard has been thoroughly demonized for her pro-peace views by global liberal media, as Trump has been for his moves to end the war in Syria and avoid another on the Korean Peninsula. For example, The Daily Beast's article announcing her candidacy called Gabbard "Assad's Favorite Democrat" in its headline; a Haaretz headline from last week say she had "Tea With Assad," and the Washington Post has called her "Assad's Mouthpiece in Washington." The UK Independent called her a "defender of dictators."

    It's not clear what Weiss had in mind when she called Gabbard a "sycophant" and a "toady," since the congresswoman's rhetoric about Assad has consisted of skepticism and opposition to intervention, and she hasn't hesitated to call the Syrian president a "brutal dictator." What Gabbard's treatment has demonstrated is that a Democrat who steps out of line from the party's pro-regime change agenda in Syria and who condemns Muslim extremists associated with Daesh and al-Qaeda should be prepared to suffer for it in the mainstream media.

    [Feb 06, 2019] Tulsi Gabbard Rips Interventionism In First Campaign Ad

    Feb 06, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    Tacet the Terror , 1 week ago

    Sanders/Gabbard 2020 is the only non-"lesser of two evils" choice.

    kamran5461 , 1 week ago

    Now you see why the establishment really hates her.

    Zero Divisor , 1 week ago

    Tulsi Gabbard went to Standing Rock. She has my support.

    it's show buiness kiddo , 1 week ago

    I wwant tulsi to defeat Kamala in the primaries. Kamala is a fake progressive and the establishment already coronated her. I can't trust her.

    Voitan , 1 week ago

    I'm voting Tulsi Gabbard. Uncompromising commitment to no more interventions and wars.

    malena garcia , 1 week ago

    I love Tulsi; her ad was great. She's the only dem I would vote for at this point. Kamala is an evil hypocrite. And Tulsi's right, love is the most powerful force in the planet.

    Jurgen K , 1 week ago

    Tulsi is hated by the establishment the most not Bernie , this is the reason I say Tulsi2020

    Jay Smathers , 1 week ago (edited)

    Wake up folks -Tulsi would not have run if Bernie was going run. Bernie will endorse her early on and she will have a much tougher fight than he did, because while Sanders caught the corporate establishment sleeping in 2016, they are now frightened and see Gabbard coming. They will use every dirty trick at their disposal to keep her from catching fire -and that begins with dividing progressives like us. Tulsi is not perfect because no one is perfect. But she is young, bright and fucking fearless compared to other politicians about putting the long term good of the American people above the moneyed interests who think they own our media and our government. This is why the establishment despises her more than even Sanders. 2020 will reveal weather or not we can retake ownership of our media and our government. That fight will require all of us - so Kyle get on the bus!

    FujiFire , 1 week ago

    Tulsi is an amazing candidate in her own right, but IMO she would be a perfect VP pick for Bernie. She has the amazing foreign policy cred and would really shore up Bernie's weakest areas.

    D. Martin , 1 week ago (edited)

    I remember Obama ripping interventionism too. And Trump.

    rolled oats , 1 week ago

    Tulsa Gabbard's ad doesn't mention the people who die in the countries we invade. That's 600k people in Iraq for example. A significant omission me thinks.

    Wayne Chapman , 1 week ago

    The Aloha Spirit Law is a big deal in Hawaii. Government officials are required to approach dignitaries from other countries or states with the spirit of aloha. "Aloha" means mutual regard and affection and extends warmth in caring with no obligation in return. Aloha is the essence of relationships in which each person is important to every other person for collective existence. I think that's what we want in a President or a diplomat.

    madara uchiha , 1 week ago

    She's great and unique as she doesnt fall back to identity politics and sjwism as much as the standard left politicians. I hope she doesnt bend her ethics when the sjws come for her. I'm putting my trust in her. I hope she wins. And if she isn't in the race, i wont be voting.

    David , 1 week ago (edited)

    The question I would love her to address specifically is will her campaign focus on decreasing military spending like Bernie Sanders? She has a military background and the US loves war. This ad is good but it is tip toing around the MIC ( military industrial complex) She can be non interventionist but not decrease military spending is what worries me

    GoLookAtJohn PodestasEmails , 1 week ago

    This is why we need Gabbard on the debate stage. She will push the Overton window on revealing to the public what our military is actually doing overseas. She's also a staunch progressive. Bernie/Tulsi 2020. Their weakness match well with each other, and Tulsi was one of the first to jump ship on the sinking DNC ship when Hillary got caught cheating being the DNC. Keep small donations going into your favorite progressive candidates to hear their voice. It doesn't work any other way folks.

    Geoff Daly , 1 week ago

    Intervention isn't only an issue about morality. As Dwight Eisenhower put it (even though he himself was far from an anti imperialist), you can't have an endless stream of money dedicated to military endeavors AND a sufficient investment in domestic public priorities. This easily explains why we have increasingly decrepit infrastructure, increasingly worse performing education, increasingly worse performing health care, absurdly insufficient regulation between government and business (although the pay to play system certainly is the top reason) and a generally decaying public atmosphere. Beyond the fact that getting involved everywhere creates humanitarian crises, countless dead people, hopelessly destroyed countries, and so much more, even if other countries haven't in return bombed our shores from sea to sea, even if generally speaking those who consider not only the US but Americans the "enemies" haven't overwhelmed with non stop attacks, this non stop and ever growing appetite for more money for more war priorities has created the very decline we see in our country today. Until there is a change in priorities in general, these problems in the US will only continue to get worse.

    Tom Pashkov , 1 week ago

    Gabbard for Sec. of Defense in the Sanders/Warren administration.

    Jacob Serrano , 1 week ago

    Man, Tulsi made me tear up. She's my girl. This message reminds me more of the message of Jesus than many of the fundamentalists. She's not even Christian, yet represents Christ very well. I love this woman.

    Ny3 43 , 1 week ago

    Prepare for BAE, Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and other weapons corporations and their bum lickers to launch a viscous smear campaign against her suggesting she's somehow a Neo Nazi communist anti Semitic islamophobic islamist.

    Gem Girlla , 1 day ago (edited)

    Tulsi 2020 she's saying some of the same things Trump said in his 2016 campaign. Unfortunately, he didn't deliver. Per the corporate Democrates, making America better is a bad thing.

    GiantOctopus0101 , 1 day ago

    Tulsi can actually beat Trump...if she gets the nomination. The wars are the elephant in the room, and whoever is willing to take that on full force, can win.

    [Feb 05, 2019] NYTimes Journo Melts Down On Joe Rogan s Show

    Feb 05, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    nywvblue , 1 day ago

    Bari Weiss is the monstrous motherlode of ineptitude, it would appear.

    tom burton , 15 hours ago

    Bari Weiss's next column: Joe Rogan is a toady of Tulsi Gabbard.

    Robert Harper , 17 hours ago

    Now it is easy to understand why I stopped my nyt subscription.

    Mike Honcho , 17 hours ago

    Unbelievable! It's like Joe is interviewing an airhead middle school mean girl.

    [Feb 05, 2019] NYTimes Journo Melts Down On Joe Rogan s Show

    Feb 05, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    nywvblue , 1 day ago

    Bari Weiss is the monstrous motherlode of ineptitude, it would appear.

    tom burton , 15 hours ago

    Bari Weiss's next column: Joe Rogan is a toady of Tulsi Gabbard.

    Robert Harper , 17 hours ago

    Now it is easy to understand why I stopped my nyt subscription.

    Mike Honcho , 17 hours ago

    Unbelievable! It's like Joe is interviewing an airhead middle school mean girl.

    [Feb 05, 2019] When Conspiracy Is The Only Explanation For Failed Neo-Liberal Dreams by William S. Smith

    Muller investigation is at least 50% about the masking cracks in neoliberal facade with Russia interference smoke screen (and, especially Hillary fiasco as War Party candidate) , as it is about deposing of Trump. It also puts pressure of Trump to behave as War Party expect him, or...
    Looks like the "United War Party" (which encompass most Republicans and Democrats) felt the threat to the money flows and acted accordingly. Add to this interest of Deep State (especially CIA) are completely opposite to the end of foreign wars that Trump professed.
    Notable quotes:
    "... What causes otherwise intelligent people to put their faith in conspiracy theories? A common explanation on the Right is that these conspiracies are cynically concocted to overthrow the Trump presidency. Another explanation points to declining standards of journalism, i.e., reporters being too incompetent to refute groundless claims. Both reasons have merit yet both fail to explain the peculiar estrangement from reality that a belief in baseless conspiracies represents. ..."
    "... When the luminescence of France began to fade and the revolutionary army began to falter, the Jacobins felt there could only be one explanation: conspiracy. Only a deep-seated plot could be preventing France the Savior from vanquishing retrograde monarchs. From the beginning, the virtuous Jacobins saw themselves as fighting a conspiracy against the rights of humanity. Hence the Reign of Terror, with the guillotine deployed against priests and nobles who were seen as forming the core opposition to a better world. ..."
    "... Idealism and conspiracy theories are, it seems, opposite sides of the same coin. When the dream fails to materialize, its validity is not questioned; instead the search to find those who connived against it begins. ..."
    "... Fukuyama's Hegelianism was both warmed over and unmoored from reality. And yet the foreign policy establishment swooned over him. The Bush 43 administration fell so hard for him that they tried to give history a little push by invading Iraq. ..."
    "... Or consider the globalist dreaming of the elites that Samuel P. Huntington labeled "Davos men." In the Davos dream, culture, history, and religion are archaic relics of a world fading away. National borders are disappearing, and a new global order is emerging, led by secular multilateral institutions staffed by an all-knowing "cosmopolitan" elite ..."
    "... With cultures clashing, nationalism on the march, and religious wars raging, the Davos men continue to worship their dream from the safety of their Gulfstream jets. ..."
    "... And to the Davos men, only a conspiracy can explain the election of Donald Trump. How else could such a regressive development have occurred when history is cascading toward open borders, democracy, and international institutions? How could an American president question the value of NATO and other alliances whose glorious mission is to midwife the end of history by democratizing everything from Lisbon to the Urals? ..."
    "... But Trump and Putin will not be permitted to conspire against the dream. Their conspiracy must be destroyed, even at the risk of nuclear war. Special counsels must be created, eavesdropping must be expanded, foreign spies must be employed, and jackbooted agents must break down every door linked to this insidious conspiracy. The ruling elites are prepared to tear up the Constitution itself to save humanity from this diabolical cabal. ..."
    "... The resilience of the Russia conspiracy in the minds of our establishment should remind us that the primary obstacle to a sensible foreign policy is our ideologized culture, in which the Western outlook of common sense has been eroded by a Romantic utopian idealism. When people within reach of massive military power are this estranged from reality, the situation can only be described as frightening. ..."
    "... With you on "Davos Man" (Love that expression!) and the Trump conspiracy idiocy, though! Two thumbs up! ..."
    "... You are making this much too complicated. The cultural stuff had some importance, but much more fundamentally Trump threatened the money/power game of the War Party. They have just about won anyway, because Trump is stupid. So, maybe they will just let Russia-gate fade out. ..."
    "... Neolibs and neocons are . Dreamers. GIGO. Whoever wrote the headline and lede made sense, the author might want to match that. The text as is is a useful exhibit for: "to see the world how they wish it to be rather than how it is." Jacobins at Davos? Idealists with lots of loot? ..."
    "... At one time, any occurrence that the establishment of the day didn't like was automatically blamed on Jews. No evidence necessary. Because Jews. If you questioned the conspiracy theory, you were instantly accused of being in league with "them". Today's establishment does the same, except they substitute "Russia" for "Jews". Anything they don't like is automatically blamed on Russia. No evidence necessary. Because Russia. Question the conspiracy theory and get accused of being a "Russian troll". ..."
    "... If only HRC and her friends were in the White House all these current conspiracies and Mueller investigation wouldn't be an issue. Be the eighth wonder of the world, if Trump survives the deep state. ..."
    "... Unfortunately, this article overreaches. I agree that Russiagate is an excuse that liberals embrace to excuse the disastrous failures of Clinton and the Democratic Party, but you don't need to connect this with some grand theorizing about the history of conspiracy theories. People simply don't want to admit their side did anything wrong. ..."
    "... And as SteveK9 points out, it's really about how the mainstream War Party wants to keep Trump in line. Trump is a loose cannon. They want a steady reliable warmonger. ..."
    "... Call me a child, then, but wisdom often comes from the mouth of babes. There is no evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Read The phoney indictment of the Internet Research Institute. It admits it was a commercial enterprise. It was nothing but a commercial click bait operation. Similarly, the DNC was not hacked, the data was downloaded to a USB, probably by a disaffected Sanders supporter, possibly Seth Rich. Also, Germany, Macedonia, the Netherlands have investigated alleged Russian interference in their elections, and found none. ..."
    Feb 05, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    The Intercept 's Glenn Greenwald recently compiled a list of the top 10 "most embarrassing media failures on the Trump-Russia story." All of them exhibit a common theme: Russian conspiracies are undermining American interests everywhere. Greenwald's piece was followed by a bizarre New York Times story from January 16 with the headline: "Trump and Putin: Five Meetings Infused With Mystery." The story implied something sinister in undisclosed conversations between the two leaders while offering no evidence whatsoever.

    What causes otherwise intelligent people to put their faith in conspiracy theories? A common explanation on the Right is that these conspiracies are cynically concocted to overthrow the Trump presidency. Another explanation points to declining standards of journalism, i.e., reporters being too incompetent to refute groundless claims. Both reasons have merit yet both fail to explain the peculiar estrangement from reality that a belief in baseless conspiracies represents.

    In the early stages of the French Revolution, the Jacobins imagined that the beacon of a democratic France would shine across the world and tyrannical kings would topple before its luminescence. The Jacobin imagination was polluted by utopian idealism, the ideology that causes people to see the world how they wish it to be rather than how it is.

    When the luminescence of France began to fade and the revolutionary army began to falter, the Jacobins felt there could only be one explanation: conspiracy. Only a deep-seated plot could be preventing France the Savior from vanquishing retrograde monarchs. From the beginning, the virtuous Jacobins saw themselves as fighting a conspiracy against the rights of humanity. Hence the Reign of Terror, with the guillotine deployed against priests and nobles who were seen as forming the core opposition to a better world.

    Idealism and conspiracy theories are, it seems, opposite sides of the same coin. When the dream fails to materialize, its validity is not questioned; instead the search to find those who connived against it begins.

    Like the Jacobins, the foreign policy establishment in the United States has for decades hitched its wagons to idealistic dreaming. The Romantic ideas of Hegel and Rousseau permeate their thinking. Consider the establishment's obsequious reaction to Francis Fukuyama's " end of history " thesis. Fukuyama presented himself as the all-seeing gnostic who had divined the direction of all human history. One does not need the acumen of an Aristotle to know that this was far from an original thesis. Fukuyama's Hegelianism was both warmed over and unmoored from reality. And yet the foreign policy establishment swooned over him. The Bush 43 administration fell so hard for him that they tried to give history a little push by invading Iraq.

    Or consider the globalist dreaming of the elites that Samuel P. Huntington labeled "Davos men." In the Davos dream, culture, history, and religion are archaic relics of a world fading away. National borders are disappearing, and a new global order is emerging, led by secular multilateral institutions staffed by an all-knowing "cosmopolitan" elite .

    The reality of a borderless world is global migration that threatens to extinguish much of Western civilization in a generation or two. With cultures clashing, nationalism on the march, and religious wars raging, the Davos men continue to worship their dream from the safety of their Gulfstream jets.

    Venezuela Presents an Opportunity for Peace With Russia Russia Sure Behaves Strangely for a Country Bent on Conquest

    And to the Davos men, only a conspiracy can explain the election of Donald Trump. How else could such a regressive development have occurred when history is cascading toward open borders, democracy, and international institutions? How could an American president question the value of NATO and other alliances whose glorious mission is to midwife the end of history by democratizing everything from Lisbon to the Urals?

    For those in a dream world, the only possible explanation for Trump is a conspiracy. His presidency was hatched by Vladimir Putin, the world leader with the strongest reasons for slowing the progressive march of history. Trump won the election because Putin has the powers of a Rasputin. He can thwart history by crossing his eyes, pulling secret levers, and deploying hackers.

    But Trump and Putin will not be permitted to conspire against the dream. Their conspiracy must be destroyed, even at the risk of nuclear war. Special counsels must be created, eavesdropping must be expanded, foreign spies must be employed, and jackbooted agents must break down every door linked to this insidious conspiracy. The ruling elites are prepared to tear up the Constitution itself to save humanity from this diabolical cabal.

    The resilience of the Russia conspiracy in the minds of our establishment should remind us that the primary obstacle to a sensible foreign policy is our ideologized culture, in which the Western outlook of common sense has been eroded by a Romantic utopian idealism. When people within reach of massive military power are this estranged from reality, the situation can only be described as frightening.

    William S. Smith is research fellow at and managing director of the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at The Catholic University of America.

    cka2nd February 3, 2019 at 9:43 pm

    "In the early stages of the French Revolution, the Jacobins imagined that the beacon of a democratic France would shine across the world and tyrannical kings would topple before its luminescence. The Jacobin imagination was polluted by utopian idealism, the ideology that causes people to see the world how they wish it to be rather than how it is."

    And yet, idealism or not, republican ideals DID spread around the world and WERE taken up to oppose, undercut, reign in or overthrow monarchies from Latin America through the Middle East, and from Europe (e.g., the bourgeois members of the Duma singing "La Marseillaise" after the abdication of the Tsar) to Asia and Africa.

    "When the luminescence of France began to fade and the revolutionary army began to falter, the Jacobins felt there could only be one explanation: conspiracy. Only a deep-seated plot could be preventing France the Savior from vanquishing retrograde monarchs. From the beginning, the virtuous Jacobins saw themselves as fighting a conspiracy against the rights of humanity. Hence the Reign of Terror, with the guillotine deployed against priests and nobles who were seen as forming the core opposition to a better world."

    I don't doubt the pernicious influence of conspiracy theories, I really don't – I'm a Trotskyist, for Heaven's sake! – but the author might also acknowledge the reality of the threats that the Jacobins faced. The armies of the united crowned heads of Europe that had been sent against France, for instance. That the church and aristocracy WERE parts of the old order (official estates, remember?), some of whose members WERE actually fighting to restore the old regime and then drown, as they always drowned past peasant and popular rebellions, in blood.

    With you on "Davos Man" (Love that expression!) and the Trump conspiracy idiocy, though! Two thumbs up!

    SteveK9 , says: February 3, 2019 at 10:48 pm
    You are making this much too complicated. The cultural stuff had some importance, but much more fundamentally Trump threatened the money/power game of the War Party. They have just about won anyway, because Trump is stupid. So, maybe they will just let Russia-gate fade out.
    b. .. . ... ... . , says: February 4, 2019 at 9:51 am
    Neolibs and neocons are . Dreamers. GIGO. Whoever wrote the headline and lede made sense, the author might want to match that. The text as is is a useful exhibit for: "to see the world how they wish it to be rather than how it is." Jacobins at Davos? Idealists with lots of loot?
    Sid Finster , says: February 4, 2019 at 10:10 am
    At one time, any occurrence that the establishment of the day didn't like was automatically blamed on Jews. No evidence necessary. Because Jews. If you questioned the conspiracy theory, you were instantly accused of being in league with "them". Today's establishment does the same, except they substitute "Russia" for "Jews". Anything they don't like is automatically blamed on Russia. No evidence necessary. Because Russia. Question the conspiracy theory and get accused of being a "Russian troll".
    CLW , says: February 4, 2019 at 1:43 pm
    Are we supposed to take this seriously? Your entire "argument" against the so-called Russia Conspiracy is itself nothing more than a conspiracy theory: an overwrought, paranoid, absurd conspiracy theory involving The Establishment, Davos Elites, Neo Liberals, et al.

    There isn't enough publicly-disclosed evidence to support the claim that Russian interference tilted the 2016 election decisively in Trump's favor or that Trump has conspired with or been compromised by Russia. But only a child would believe that Russia didn't actively interfere in the election, or that various Trump associates didn't have inappropriate contacts and dealings with Russian entities, which they then lied about and continue to lie about.

    You can do better than this, TAC.

    fabian , says: February 4, 2019 at 2:20 pm
    SteveK, the military won but not because he is stupid. He just doesn't want to end up like JFK. Nor did Barrack by the way.
    , the , says: February 4, 2019 at 3:22 pm
    If only HRC and her friends were in the White House all these current conspiracies and Mueller investigation wouldn't be an issue. Be the eighth wonder of the world, if Trump survives the deep state.
    Sid Finster , says: February 4, 2019 at 4:13 pm
    CLW produces an argument from ignorance. "Just because we have no publicly available evidence to prove that Trump is in fact Mickey Mouse just means we need to look harder! In the meantime, we can safely assume that Trump has round black ears and a tail.".

    In the meantime, I suggest you learn about the burden of proof – the burden of proof is on those asserting the existence of a conspiracy (and you in particular are mighty short on details!) and not on those debunking it.

    Donald , says: February 4, 2019 at 6:49 pm
    Unfortunately, this article overreaches. I agree that Russiagate is an excuse that liberals embrace to excuse the disastrous failures of Clinton and the Democratic Party, but you don't need to connect this with some grand theorizing about the history of conspiracy theories. People simply don't want to admit their side did anything wrong.

    And as SteveK9 points out, it's really about how the mainstream War Party wants to keep Trump in line. Trump is a loose cannon. They want a steady reliable warmonger.

    S , says: February 5, 2019 at 4:43 am
    CLW says "But only a child would believe that Russia didn't actively interfere in the election, or that various Trump associates didn't have inappropriate contacts and dealings with Russian entities, which they then lied about and continue to lie about." It took a child to point out that the emperor had no clothes on, while the adults pretended that a falsehood was tru. Perhaps more children are needed today to point out the truth and ignore blatant propaganda.
    Brendan , says: February 5, 2019 at 1:42 pm
    Call me a child, then, but wisdom often comes from the mouth of babes. There is no evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Read The phoney indictment of the Internet Research Institute. It admits it was a commercial enterprise. It was nothing but a commercial click bait operation. Similarly, the DNC was not hacked, the data was downloaded to a USB, probably by a disaffected Sanders supporter, possibly Seth Rich. Also, Germany, Macedonia, the Netherlands have investigated alleged Russian interference in their elections, and found none.

    [Feb 04, 2019] Trump s Revised and Rereleased Foreign Policy: The World Policeman is Back

    Highly recommended!
    This article from 2017 looks like it was written yesterday. Trump betrayal of his elctorate on multiple levels, essentially on all key poin of his election program mkes him "Republican Obama".
    What is interesting about Trump foreign policy is his version of neoliberal "gangster capitalism" on foreign arena: might is right principle applied like universal opener. Previous administrations tried to put a lipstick on the pig. Trump does not even bother.
    In terms of foreign policy, and even during the transition before Trump's inauguration, there were other, more disturbing signs of where Trump would be heading soon. When Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016, Trump seemed jubilant as if he had somehow been vindicated, and took the opportunity to slander Castro as a "brutal dictator" who "oppressed his own people" and turned Cuba into a "totalitarian island".
    Notable quotes:
    "... However, when he delivered his inaugural address on January 20, 2017, Trump appeared to reaffirm his campaign themes of anti-interventionism. In particular he seemed to turn the government's back on a long-standing policy of cultural imperialism , stating: "We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone". In addition he said his government would "seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world," and he understood the importance of national sovereignty when he added, "it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first". ..."
    "... Yet when it came to Russia, Trump could have instantly removed sanctions that were imposed by Obama in his last weeks in office -- an irresponsible and dangerous act by Obama, where foreign policy was used as a partisan tool in the service of shoring up a crummy conspiracy theory about "Russian hacking" in order to deny the Democrats any culpability in their much deserved defeat. ..."
    "... The entire conflict with Russia that has developed in recent years, on the US side, was totally unnecessary, illogical, and quite preventable. ..."
    "... Just two weeks after violating his promise to end the US role as the world's policeman and his vow to extricate the US from wars for regime change, Trump sold out again. "I love WikiLeaks -- " -- this is what Trump exclaimed in a speech on October 10, 2016. Trump's about-face on WikiLeaks is thus truly astounding. ..."
    "... AP: If I could fit a couple of more topics. Jeff Sessions, your attorney general, is taking a tougher line suddenly on Julian Assange, saying that arresting him is a priority. You were supportive of what WikiLeaks was doing during the campaign with the release of the Clinton emails. Do you think that arresting Assange is a priority for the United States? ..."
    "... AP: But that didn't mean that you supported what Assange is doing? ..."
    "... AP: Can I just ask you, though -- do you believe it is a priority for the United States, or it should be a priority, to arrest Julian Assange? ..."
    "... While there is no denying the extensive data about the severe impacts of NAFTA on select states and industries in the US, witnessed by the closure of tens of thousands of factories and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, there is little support for the claim that Canada and Mexico, as wholes, have instead fared well and that the US as a whole has been the loser thanks to them. ..."
    "... Since NAFTA was implemented, migration from Mexico to the US skyrocketed dramatically. US agricultural industries sent millions of Mexican farmers into food poverty, and ultimately drove them away from agriculture ..."
    "... As for per capita GDP, so treasured by economists, NAFTA had no positive impact on Mexico -- in fact, per capita GDP is nearly a flat line for the entire period since 1994. Finally, Trump does not mention that in terms of the number of actual protectionist measures that have been implemented, the US leads the world . ..."
    "... To put Trump's position on NAFTA in bold relief, it is not that he is decidedly against free trade. In fact, he often claims he supports free trade, as long as it is "fair". However, his notion of fairness is very lopsided -- a trade agreement is fair only when the US reaps the greater share of benefits. ..."
    "... As argued in the previous section, if Trump is to be the newfound champion of this imperialism -- empire's prodigal son -- then what an abysmally poor choice he is ..."
    "... On the one hand, he helped to unleash US anti-interventionism (usually called "isolationism" not to call it anti-imperialism, which would then admit to imperialism which is still denied by most of the dominant elites). On the other hand, in trying to now contain such popular sentiment, he loses credibility -- after having lost credibility with the groups his campaign displaced. ..."
    "... As for Trump's domestic opposition, what should be most pertinent are issues of conflict of interest and nepotism . Here members of Trump's base are more on target yet again, when they reject the presence of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the White House ("we didn't elect Ivanka or Jared"), than are those distracted by identity politics. ..."
    "... As Trump leverages the presidency to upgrade the Trump family to the transnational capitalist class, and reinforces the power of US imperialism which that class has purchased, conflict of interest and nepotism will be the main political signposts of the transformation of the Trump presidency, but they could also be the targets for a refined strategy of opposition. ..."
    Aug 09, 2017 | zeroanthropology.net

    Trump could have kept quiet, and lost nothing. Instead what he was attacking -- and the irony was missed on his fervently right wing supporters -- was someone who was a leader in the anti-globalist movement, from long before it was ever called that. Fidel Castro was a radical pioneer of independence, self-reliance, and self-determination.

    Castro turned Cuba from an American-owned sugar plantation and brothel, a lurid backwater in the Caribbean, into a serious international actor opposed to globalizing capitalism. There was no sign of any acknowledgment of this by Trump, who instead chose to parrot the same people who would vilify him using similar terms (evil, authoritarian, etc.). Of course, Trump respects only corporate executives and billionaires, not what he would see as some rag-tag Third World revolutionary. Here Trump's supporters generally failed, using Castro's death as an opportunity for tribal partisanship, another opportunity to attack "weak liberals" like Obama who made minor overtures to Cuba (too little, too late).

    Their distrust of "the establishment" was nowhere to be found this time: their ignorance of Cuba and their resort to stock clichés and slogans had all been furnished to them by the same establishment they otherwise claimed to oppose.

    Just to be clear, the above is not meant to indicate any reversal on Trump's part regarding Cuba. He has been consistently anti-communist, and fairly consistent in his denunciations of Fidel Castro. What is significant is that -- far from overcoming the left-right divide -- Trump shores up the barriers, even at the cost of denouncing others who have a proven track record of fighting against neoliberal globalization and US interventionism. In these regards, Trump has no track record. Even among his rivals in the Republican primaries, senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul had more of an anti-interventionist track record.

    However, when he delivered his inaugural address on January 20, 2017, Trump appeared to reaffirm his campaign themes of anti-interventionism. In particular he seemed to turn the government's back on a long-standing policy of cultural imperialism , stating: "We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone". In addition he said his government would "seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world," and he understood the importance of national sovereignty when he added, "it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first".

    Russia

    Yet when it came to Russia, Trump could have instantly removed sanctions that were imposed by Obama in his last weeks in office -- an irresponsible and dangerous act by Obama, where foreign policy was used as a partisan tool in the service of shoring up a crummy conspiracy theory about "Russian hacking" in order to deny the Democrats any culpability in their much deserved defeat.

    Instead, Trump continued the sanctions, as if out of meek deference to Obama's policy, one founded on lies and antagonism toward Trump himself. Rather than repair the foul attempt to sabotage the US-Russian relationship in preparation for his presidency, Trump simply abided and thus became an accomplice. To be clear, Trump has done precisely nothing to dampen the near mass hysteria that has been manufactured in the US about alleged -- indeed imaginary -- "Russian intervention".

    His comments, both during the electoral campaign and even early into his presidency, about wanting good relations with Russia, have been replaced by Trump's admissions that US relations with Russia are at a low point (Putin agreed: "I would say the level of trust [between Russia and the US] is at a workable level, especially in the military dimension, but it hasn't improved. On the contrary, it has degraded " and his spokesman called the relations " deplorable ".)

    Rather than use the power of his office to calm fears, to build better ties with Russia, and to make meeting with Vladimir Putin a top priority, Trump has again done nothing , except escalating tensions. The entire conflict with Russia that has developed in recent years, on the US side, was totally unnecessary, illogical, and quite preventable. Russia had actively facilitated the US' war in Afghanistan for over a decade, and was a consistent collaborator on numerous levels. It is up to thinking American officials to honestly explain what motivated them to tilt relations with Russia, because it is certainly not Russia's doing. The only explanation that makes any sense is that the US leadership grew concerned that Russia was no longer teetering on the edge of total socio-economic breakdown, as it was under the neoliberal Boris Yeltsin, but has instead resurfaced as a major actor in international affairs, and one that champions anti-neoliberal objectives of enhanced state sovereignty and self-determination.

    WikiLeaks

    Just two weeks after violating his promise to end the US role as the world's policeman and his vow to extricate the US from wars for regime change, Trump sold out again. "I love WikiLeaks -- " -- this is what Trump exclaimed in a speech on October 10, 2016. Trump's about-face on WikiLeaks is thus truly astounding.

    After finding so much use for WikiLeaks' publication of the Podesta emails, which became incorporated into his campaign speeches, and which fuelled the writing and speaking of journalists and bloggers sympathetic to Trump -- he was now effectively declaring WikiLeaks to be both an enemy and a likely target of US government action, in even more blunt terms than we heard during the past eight years under Obama. This is not mere continuity with the past, but a dramatic escalation. Rather than praise Julian Assange for his work, call for an end to the illegal impediments to his seeking asylum, swear off any US calls for extraditing and prosecuting Assange, and perhaps meeting with him in person, Trump has done all of the opposite. Instead we learn that Trump's administration may file arrest charges against Assange . Mike Pompeo , chosen by Trump to head the CIA, who had himself cited WikiLeaks as a reliable source of proof about how the Democratic National Committee had rigged its campaign, now declared WikiLeaks to be a " non-state hostile intelligence service ," along with vicious personal slander against Assange.

    Trump's about-face on WikiLeaks was one that he defended in terms that were not just a deceptive rewriting of history, but one that was also fearful -- "I don't support or unsupport" WikiLeaks, was what Trump was now saying in his dash for the nearest exit. The backtracking is so obvious in this interview Trump gave to the AP , that his shoes must have left skid marks on the floor:

    AP: If I could fit a couple of more topics. Jeff Sessions, your attorney general, is taking a tougher line suddenly on Julian Assange, saying that arresting him is a priority. You were supportive of what WikiLeaks was doing during the campaign with the release of the Clinton emails. Do you think that arresting Assange is a priority for the United States?

    TRUMP: When Wikileaks came out never heard of Wikileaks, never heard of it. When Wikileaks came out, all I was just saying is, "Well, look at all this information here, this is pretty good stuff." You know, they tried to hack the Republican, the RNC, but we had good defenses. They didn't have defenses, which is pretty bad management. But we had good defenses, they tried to hack both of them. They weren't able to get through to Republicans. No, I found it very interesting when I read this stuff and I said, "Wow." It was just a figure of speech. I said, "Well, look at this. It's good reading."

    AP: But that didn't mean that you supported what Assange is doing?

    TRUMP: No, I don't support or unsupport. It was just information .

    AP: Can I just ask you, though -- do you believe it is a priority for the United States, or it should be a priority, to arrest Julian Assange?

    TRUMP: I am not involved in that decision, but if Jeff Sessions wants to do it, it's OK with me. I didn't know about that decision, but if they want to do it, it's OK with me.

    First, Trump invents the fictitious claim that WikiLeaks was responsible for hacking the DNC, and that WikiLeaks also tried to hack the Republicans. Second, he pretends to be an innocent bystander, a spectator, in his own administration -- whatever others decide, is "OK" with him, not that he knows about their decisions, but it's all up to others. He has no power, all of a sudden.

    Again, what Trump is displaying in this episode is his ultimate attachment to his class, with all of its anxieties and its contempt for rebellious, marginal upstarts. Trump shuns any sort of "loyalty" to WikiLeaks (not that they ever had a working relationship) or any form of gratitude, because then that would imply a debt and therefore a transfer of value -- whereas Trump's core ethics are those of expedience and greed (he admits that much). This move has come with a cost , with members of Trump's support base openly denouncing the betrayal. 6

    NAFTA

    On NAFTA , Trump claims he has not changed his position -- yet, from openly denouncing the free trade agreement and promising to terminate it, he now vows only to seek modifications and amendments, which means supporting NAFTA. He appeared to be awfully quick to obey the diplomatic pressure of Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and Mexico's President, Enrique Peña Nieto. Trump's entire position on NAFTA now comes into question.

    While there is no denying the extensive data about the severe impacts of NAFTA on select states and industries in the US, witnessed by the closure of tens of thousands of factories and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, there is little support for the claim that Canada and Mexico, as wholes, have instead fared well and that the US as a whole has been the loser thanks to them.

    This really deserves to be treated at length, separately from this article. However, for now, let's keep in mind that when Trump complains about Canadian softwood lumber and dairy exports to the US, his argument about NAFTA is without merit. Neither commodity is part of the NAFTA agreement.

    Moreover, where dairy is concerned, the problem is US overproduction. Wisconsin alone has more dairy cows than all of Canada . There is a net surplus , in the US' favour, with respect to US dairy exports to Canada. Overall, the US has a net surplus in the trade in goods and services with Canada. Regarding Mexico, the irony of Trump's denunciations of imaginary Mexican victories is that he weakens his own criticisms of immigration.

    Since NAFTA was implemented, migration from Mexico to the US skyrocketed dramatically. US agricultural industries sent millions of Mexican farmers into food poverty, and ultimately drove them away from agriculture.

    As for per capita GDP, so treasured by economists, NAFTA had no positive impact on Mexico -- in fact, per capita GDP is nearly a flat line for the entire period since 1994. Finally, Trump does not mention that in terms of the number of actual protectionist measures that have been implemented, the US leads the world .

    To put Trump's position on NAFTA in bold relief, it is not that he is decidedly against free trade. In fact, he often claims he supports free trade, as long as it is "fair". However, his notion of fairness is very lopsided -- a trade agreement is fair only when the US reaps the greater share of benefits.

    His arguments with respect to Canada are akin to those of a looter or raider. He wants to block lumber imports from Canada, at the same time as he wants to break the Canadian dairy market wide open to absorb US excess production. That approach is at the core of what defined the US as a "new empire" in the 1800s. In addition, while Trump was quick to tear up the TPP, he has said nothing about TISA and TTIP.

    Mexico

    Trump's argument with Mexico is also disturbing for what it implies. It would seem that any evidence of production in Mexico causes Trump concern. Mexico should not only keep its people -- however many are displaced by US imports -- but it should also be as dependent as possible on the US for everything except oil. Since Trump has consistently declared his antagonism to OPEC, ideally Mexico's oil would be sold for a few dollars per barrel.

    China

    Trump's turn on China almost provoked laughter from his many domestic critics. Absurdly, what figures prominently in most renditions of the story of Trump's change on China (including his own), is a big piece of chocolate cake. The missile strike on Syria was, according to Wilbur Ross, the " after-dinner entertainment ". Here, Trump's loud condemnations of China on trade issues were suddenly quelled -- and it is not because chocolate has magical properties. Instead it seems Trump has been willing to settle on selling out citizens' interests , and particularly those who voted for him, in return for China's assistance on North Korea. Let's be clear: countering and dominating North Korea is an established favourite among neoconservatives. Trump's priority here is fully "neocon," and the submergence of trade issues in favour of militaristic preferences is the one case where neoconservatives might be distinguished from the otherwise identical neoliberals.

    North Korea

    Where North Korea is concerned, Trump chose to manufacture a " crisis ". North Korea has actually done nothing to warrant a sudden outbreak of panic over it being supposedly aggressive and threatening. North Korea is no more aggressive than any person defending their survival can be called belligerent. The constant series of US military exercises in South Korea, or near North Korean waters, is instead a deliberate provocation to a state whose existence the US nearly extinguished. Even last year the US Air Force publicly boasted of having "nearly destroyed" North Korea -- language one would have expected from the Luftwaffe in WWII. The US continues to maintain roughly 60,000 troops on the border between North and South Korea, and continues to refuse to formally declare an end to the Korean War and sign a peace treaty . Trump then announced he was sending an "armada" to the Korean peninsula, and boasted of how "very powerful" it was. This was in addition to the US deploying the THAAD missile system in South Korea. Several of his messages in Twitter were written using highly provocative and threatening language. When asked if he would start a war, Trump glibly replied: " I don't know. I mean, we'll see ". On another occasion Trump stated, "There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely". When the world's leading military superpower declares its intention to destroy you, then there is nothing you can do in your defense which anyone could justly label as "over the top". Otherwise, once again Trump posed as a parental figure, the world's chief babysitter -- picture Trump, surrounded by children taking part in the "Easter egg roll" at the White House, being asked about North Korea and responding "they gotta behave". Trump would presume to teach manners to North Korea, using the only tools of instruction that seem to be the first and last resort of US foreign policy (and the "defense" industry): bombs.

    Syria

    Attacking Syria , on purportedly humanitarian grounds, is for many (including vocal supporters) one of the most glaring contradictions of Trump's campaign statements about not embroiling the US in failed wars of regime change and world policing. During the campaign, he was in favour of Russia's collaboration with Syria in the fight against ISIS. For years he had condemned Obama for involving the US in Syria, and consistently opposed military intervention there. All that was consigned to the archive of positions Trump declared to now be worthless. That there had been a change in Trump's position is not a matter of dispute -- Trump made the point himself :

    "I like to think of myself as a very flexible person. I don't have to have one specific way, and if the world changes, I go the same way, I don't change. Well, I do change and I am flexible, and I'm proud of that flexibility. And I will tell you, that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me -- big impact. That was a horrible, horrible thing. And I've been watching it and seeing it, and it doesn't get any worse than that. And I have that flexibility, and it's very, very possible -- and I will tell you, it's already happened that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much. And if you look back over the last few weeks, there were other attacks using gas. You're now talking about a whole different level".

    Bending to the will of the prevailing Cold War and neo-McCarthyist atmosphere in the US, rife with anti-Russian conspiracy theories, Trump found an easy opportunity to score points with the hostile media, ever so mindful as he is about approval ratings, polls, and media coverage. Some explain Trump's reversals as arising from his pursuit of public adulation -- and while the media play the key role in purveying celebrity status, they are also a stiff bastion of imperialist culture. Given his many years as a the host of a popular TV show, and as the owner of the Miss Universe Pageant, there is some logical merit to the argument. But I think even more is at work, as explained in paragraphs above. According to Eric Trump it was at the urging of Ivanka that Donald Trump decided to strike a humanitarian-militarist pose. He would play the part of the Victorian parent, only he would use missiles to teach unruly children lessons about violence. Using language typically used against him by the mainstream media, Trump now felt entitled to pontificate that Assad is "evil," an " animal ," who would have to go . When did he supposedly come to this realization? Did Assad become evil at the same time Trump was inaugurated? Why would Trump have kept so silent about "evil" on the campaign trail? Trump of course is wrong: it's not that the world changed and he changed with it; rather, he invented a new fiction to suit his masked intentions. Trump's supposed opponents and critics, like the Soros-funded organizer of the women's march Linda Sarsour, showed her approval of even more drastic action by endorsing messages by what sounded like a stern school mistress who thought that 59 cruise missiles were just a mere "slap on the wrist". Virtually every neocon who is publicly active applauded Trump, as did most senior Democrats. The loudest opposition , however, came from Trump's own base , with a number of articles featuring criticism from Trump's supporters , and one conservative publication calling him outright a " weakling and a political ingrate ".

    Members of the Trump administration have played various word games with the public on intervention in Syria. From unnamed officials saying the missile strike was a "one off," to named officials promising more if there were any other suspected chemical attacks (or use of barrel bombs -- and this while the US dropped the biggest non-nuclear bomb in existence on Afghanistan); some said that regime change was not the goal, and then others made it clear that was the ultimate goal ; and then Trump saying, "Our policy is the same, it hasn't changed. We're not going into Syria " -- even though Trump himself greatly increased the number of US troops he deployed to Syria , illegally, in an escalation of the least protested invasion in recent history. Now we should know enough not to count this as mere ambiguity, but as deliberate obfuscation that offers momentary (thinly veiled) cover for a renewal of neocon policy .

    We can draw an outline of Trump's liberal imperialism when it comes to Syria, which is likely to be applied elsewhere. First, Trump's interventionist policy regarding Syria is one that continues to treat that country as if it were terra nullius , a mere playground for superpower politics. Second, Trump is clearly continuing with the neoconservative agenda and its hit list of states to be terminated by US military action, as famously confirmed by Gen. Wesley Clark. Even Trump's strategy for justifying the attack on Syria echoed the two prior Bush presidential administrations -- selling war with the infamous "incubator babies" myth and the myth of "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs). In many ways, Trump's presidency is thus shaping up to be either the seventh term of the George H.W. Bush regime, or the fifth straight term of the George W. Bush regime. Third, Trump is taking ownership of an extremely dangerous conflict, with costs that could surpass anything witnessed by the war on Iraq (which also continues). Fourth, by highlighting the importance of photographs in allegedly changing his mind, Trump has placed a high market value on propaganda featuring dead babies. His actions in Syria will now create an effective demand for the pornographic trade in pictures of atrocities. These are matters of great importance to the transnational capitalist class, which demands full global penetrability, diminished state power (unless in the service of this class' goals), a uniformity of expectations and conformity in behaviour, and an emphasis on individual civil liberties which are the basis for defending private property and consumerism.

    Venezuela

    It is very disturbing to see how Venezuela is being framed as ripe for US intervention, in ways that distinctly echo the lead up to the US war on Libya. Just as disturbing is that Trump's Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has a clear conflict of interest regarding Venezuela, from his recent role as CEO of Exxon and its conflict with the government of Venezuela over its nationalization of oil. Tillerson is, by any definition, a clear-cut member of the transnational capitalist class. The Twitter account of the State Department has a battery of messages sternly lecturing Venezuela about the treatment of protesters, while also pontificating on the Venezuelan Constitution as if the US State Department had become a global supreme court. What is impressive is the seamless continuity in the nature of the messages on Venezuela from that account, as if no change of government happened between Obama's time and Trump's. Nikki Haley, Trump's neocon ambassador to the UN, issued a statement that read like it had been written by her predecessors, Samantha Power and Susan Rice, a statement which in itself is an unacceptable intervention in Venezuelan internal affairs. For Trump's part, from just days before the election, to a couple of weeks after his inauguration, he has sent explicit messages of support for anti-government forces in Venezuela. In February, Trump imposed sanctions on Venezuela's Vice President. After Syria and North Korea, Venezuela is seeming the likely focus of US interventionism under Trump.

    NATO

    Rounding out the picture, at least for now (this was just the first hundred days of Trump's presidency), was Trump's outstanding reversal on NATO -- in fact, once again he stated the reversal himself, and without explanation either: " I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete ". This came just days after the US missile strike against Syria, and just as Ivanka Trump was about to represent his government at a meeting of globalist women, the W20 . NATO has served as the transnational military alliance at the service of the transnational capitalist class, and particularly the military and political members of the TCC. 7

    Saving Neoliberalism?

    Has Trump saved neoliberal capitalism from its ongoing demise? Has he sustained popular faith in liberal political ideals? Are we still in the dying days of liberalism ? If there had been a centrally coordinated plan to plant an operative among the ranks of populist conservatives and independents, to channel their support for nationalism into support for the persona of the plant, and to then have that plant steer a course straight back to shoring up neoliberal globalism -- then we might have had a wonderful story of a masterful conspiracy, the biggest heist in the history of elections anywhere. A truly "rigged system" could be expected to behave that way. Was Trump designated to take the fall in a rigged game, only his huge ego got in the way when he realized he could realistically win the election and he decided to really tilt hard against his partner, Hillary Clinton? It could be the basis for a novel, or a Hollywood political comedy. I have no way of knowing if it could be true.

    Framed within the terms of what we do know, there was relief by the ousted group of political elites and the liberal globalist media at the sight of Trump's reversals, and a sense that their vision had been vindicated. However, if they are hoping that the likes of Trump will serve as a reliable flag bearer, then theirs is a misguided wishful thinking. If someone so demonized and ridiculed, tarnished as an evil thug and racist fascist, the subject of mass demonstrations in the US and abroad, is the latest champion of (neo)liberalism, then we are certainly witnessing its dying days.

    Is Trump Beneficial for Anti-Imperialism?

    Once one is informed enough and thus prepared to understand that anti-imperialism is not the exclusive preserve of the left (a left which anyway has mostly shunned it over the last two decades), that it did not originate with the left , and that it has a long and distinguished history in the US itself , then we can move toward some interesting realizations. The facts, borne out by surveys and my own online immersion among pro-Trump social media users, is that one of the significant reasons why Trump won is due to the growth in popularity of basic anti-imperialist principles (even if not recognized under that name): for example, no more world policing, no transnational militarization, no more interventions abroad, no more regime change, no war, and no globalism. Nationalists in Europe, as in Russia, have also pushed forward a basic anti-imperialist vision. Whereas in Latin America anti-imperialism is largely still leftist, in Europe and North America the left-right divide has become blurred, but the crucial thing is that at least now we can speak of anti-imperialism gaining strength in these three major continents. Resistance against globalization has been the primary objective, along with strengthening national sovereignty, protecting local cultural identity, and opposing free trade and transnational capital. Unfortunately, some anti-imperialist writers (on the left in fact) have tended to restrict their field of vision to military matters primarily, while almost completely neglecting the economic and cultural, and especially domestic dimensions of imperialism. (I am grossly generalizing of course, but I think it is largely accurate.) Where structures such as NAFTA are concerned, many of these same leftist anti-imperialists, few as they are, have had virtually nothing to say. It could be that they have yet to fully recognize that the transnational capitalist class has, gradually over the last seven decades, essentially purchased the power of US imperialism. Therefore the TCC's imperialism includes NAFTA, just as it includes open borders, neoliberal identity politics, and drone strikes. They are all different parts of the same whole.

    As argued in the previous section, if Trump is to be the newfound champion of this imperialism -- empire's prodigal son -- then what an abysmally poor choice he is. 8

    On the one hand, he helped to unleash US anti-interventionism (usually called "isolationism" not to call it anti-imperialism, which would then admit to imperialism which is still denied by most of the dominant elites). On the other hand, in trying to now contain such popular sentiment, he loses credibility -- after having lost credibility with the groups his campaign displaced. In addition to that, given that his candidacy aggravated internal divisions in the US, which have not subsided with his assumption of office, these domestic social and cultural conflicts cause a serious deficit of legitimacy, a loss of political capital. A declining economy will also deprive him of capital in the strict sense. Moreover, given the kind of persona the media have crafted, the daily caricaturing of Trump will significantly spur anti-Americanism around the world. If suddenly even Canadian academics are talking about boycotting the US, then the worm has truly turned. Trump can only rely on "hard power" (military violence), because "soft power" is almost out of the question now that Trump has been constructed as a barbarian. Incompetent and/or undermined governance will also render Trump a deficient upholder of the status quo. The fact that nationalist movements around the world are not centrally coordinated, and their fortunes are not pinned to those of Trump, establishes a well-defined limit to his influence. Trump's antagonism toward various countries -- as wholes -- has already helped to stir up a deep sediment of anti-Americanism. If Americanism is at the heart of Trump's nationalist globalism, then it is doing all the things that are needed to induce a major heart attack.

    As for Trump's domestic opposition, what should be most pertinent are issues of conflict of interest and nepotism . Here members of Trump's base are more on target yet again, when they reject the presence of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the White House ("we didn't elect Ivanka or Jared"), than are those distracted by identity politics.

    As Trump leverages the presidency to upgrade the Trump family to the transnational capitalist class, and reinforces the power of US imperialism which that class has purchased, conflict of interest and nepotism will be the main political signposts of the transformation of the Trump presidency, but they could also be the targets for a refined strategy of opposition.

    [Feb 04, 2019] The US aggression against Venezuela as a diagnostic tool by The Saker

    Feb 04, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Remember the almost universal reaction of horror when Bolton was appointed as National Security Advisor? Well, apparently, either the Neocons completely missed that, which I doubt, or they did what they always do and decided to double-down by retrieving Elliott Abrams from storage and appointing him US Special Envoy to Venezuela. I mean, yes, of course, the Neocons are stupid and sociopathic enough not to ever care about others

    But in this case I think that we are dealing with a "Skripal tactic": do something so ridiculously stupid and offensive that it places all your vassals before a stark choice: either submit and pretend like you did not notice or, alternatively, dare to say something and face with wrath of Uncle Shmuel (the Neocon's version of Uncle Sam).

    And it worked, in the name of "solidarity" or whatever else, the most faithful lackeys of the Empire immediate fell in line behind the latest US aggression against a sovereign nation in spite of the self-evident fact that this aggression violates every letter of the most sacred principles of international law.

    This is exactly the same tactic as when they make you clean toilets with a toothbrush or do push-ups in the mud during basic training: not only to condition you to total obedience, but to make you publicly give up any semblance of dignity.

    [Feb 03, 2019] Mocking Mueller's Collusion-Free Collusion Indictment Of Roger Stone

    Feb 03, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Mocking Mueller's Collusion-Free Collusion Indictment Of Roger Stone

    by Tyler Durden Sun, 02/03/2019 - 17:30 19 SHARES Authored by Andrew McCarthy via National Review,

    There was no crime until the investigations started...

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of Roger Stone may be the most peculiar document to emerge from the Trump–Russia "collusion" saga. It is an instant classic in the Mueller genre: lots of heavy breathing, then sputtering anti-climax.

    After a 20-page narrative about Russian cyber-ops, WikiLeaks' role as a witting anti-American accomplice, and Trump supporters enthralled by thousands of hacked Democratic emails and visions of the Clinton campaign's implosion, Stone, a comically inept hanger-on, ends up charged with seven process crimes. No espionage, no conspiracy, no commission of any crime until the investigations started.

    This is not to say that obstruction of congressional investigations is trifling. Nor is it to say the accused has a good chance of beating the case. Some of Stone's alleged lies were mind-bogglingly stupid. Why deny written communications with people you've texted a zillion times? Why deny conversations with interlocutors (such as Trump-campaign CEO Steve Bannon) who have no reason to risk a perjury charge to protect you? And don't even get me started on the witness-tampering count, which, if I were Mueller, I'd have hesitated to include for fear of suggesting an insanity defense. ( Do it for Nixon? Pull a "Frank Pentangeli"? )

    That said, the case is overcharged. The tampering count carries a 20-year penalty. Adding an obstruction or false-statements count (five years each) would have given Stone (who is 66 years old) prison exposure of up to 25 years. The most central "colluder" in the Mueller firmament to be bagged so far, George Papadopoulos, was sentenced to a grand total of two weeks' imprisonment. Surely a quarter-century of "potential" incarceration would have sufficed to give prosecutors the "this is serious stuff" headline they crave while allowing for the more representative sentence Stone will eventually receive -- who knows, maybe three weeks? But true to form, Mueller instead included six of these five-year counts -- so the press can report that Stone faces up to 50 years in the slammer.

    This inflated portrait of Stone as a major criminal was further bloated by the scene of his arrest : a well-armed battalion of FBI agents sent to apprehend him as the media, conveniently on hand at 6 a.m., took it all in. But Stone is just a cameo. The big picture is the overarching Trump–Russia investigation. It's still being inflated, too.

    Prosecutors ordinarily do not write an elaborate narrative about crimes they cannot prove. Here, though, Mueller uses Stone as the pretext to spell out the Big Collusion Scheme: Candidate Donald Trump instructs Stone to coordinate with WikiLeaks on the dissemination of Clinton dirt stolen by Russia; Stone directs his associate, Jerome Corsi, to have Corsi's man in London, Ted Malloch, make contact with WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, who is holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Malloch must have succeeded, because next thing you know, Corsi is reporting back to Stone: Our friends the Russian hackers have given WikiLeaks all this damaging information on Hillary, including the Podesta emails; it will all be rolled out in October, right before the election.

    It's a sensational story. Only . . . it's just a story.

    Mueller doesn't even pretend he can prove it. No shame in that: During a long investigation, prosecutors always develop a theory of the case. Often, the hypothesis doesn't pan out. No problem. You narrow your indictment down to what you can prove and call it a day. In Stone's case, that would dictate omitting the ambitious collusion narrative and stripping down to a two-page obstruction-of-Congress indictment. Instead, Mueller gives us the fever dream: Stone as a key cog in the collusion wheel. Where reality intrudes, the prosecutors float suggestions they cannot prove or leave out key details that blow up the narrative.

    The special counsel could have contented himself with easy-to-prove false-statements charges against Stone: lying about whether his WikiLeaks communications were documented in writing; lying about whether he asked his friend Randy Credico to pass a request for specific Hillary Clinton information to Assange; lying about whether he ever told the Trump campaign about his WikiLeaks conversations with Credico.

    But no, Mueller strains to accuse Stone of falsely denying that he had a second WikiLeaks "intermediary" -- whom the indictment indicates was Jerome Corsi , Stone's Infowars associate. Depending on how charitable you want to be, this claim is either risibly weak, flatly wrong, or dependent on a distortion of the word "intermediary." To repeat, the "intermediary" thread adds nothing to the case against Stone. It is a pretext for weaving the collusion narrative without having to prove it.

    To amplify the indictment a bit with reporting by the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross , Credico -- a left-wing comedian and radio host -- got access to Assange through a radical lawyer, Margaret Ratner Kunstler , who has done work for WikiLeaks. That apparently did not happen until shortly before August 25, 2016, when Assange appeared as a guest on Credico's radio show. According to the indictment, Credico first texted Stone about Assange's imminent appearance on August 19.

    Prosecutors, however, suggest that Stone had a line into Assange and WikiLeaks starting at least two months earlier. "By in or around June and July 2016," goes the slippery allegation, Stone was telling Trump officials he had information that WikiLeaks possessed damaging Hillary Clinton documents. In Mueller's telling, this makes Stone seem like a potentially valuable WikiLeaks insider when, on July 22, WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of DNC emails. Immediately, a "senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information [WikiLeaks] had regarding the Clinton campaign."

    If not from Credico, from whom, pray tell, did Stone learn what WikiLeaks was up to? Who is the other intermediary?

    In truth, he didn't need one. He had two sources of information about WikiLeaks -- neither of them Corsi, neither of them sensibly thought of as an "intermediary." These sources go unmentioned in the indictment. Worse, while the prosecutors finger Corsi as Stone's hidden "intermediary," their evidence does not support this claim -- and they know it, so they fudge it.

    Let's start with the two sources Mueller omits.

    Turns out it is not just Stone who was alerted long before the Democratic convention that WikiLeaks might have damaging information on Clinton. Everyone on the planet who cared to be informed about such things knew. On June 12, 2016, in an interview that was widely reported , Assange said that WikiLeaks planned to expose documents relating to Hillary Clinton that could affect the 2016 election. Was Stone, the self-styled dark-politics devotee, pressing sources for an entrée into WikiLeaks? Sure he was. But that doesn't mean he had one. And he didn't need one in order to direct the Trump campaign's attention to WikiLeaks; Assange was calling the world's attention to himself.

    The second omitted source? It was James Rosen, then a top reporter at Fox News -- though Rosen seems to have had no idea he was playing that role. To understand what happened, we need to consider the July 25 Stone–Corsi email that the indictment treats like a smoking gun -- but consider it in the context of an earlier July 25 email that the indictment fails to include.

    As noted above, on July 22, someone very high up in the Trump campaign -- perhaps the candidate himself, though we are not told -- ordered a top campaign official to reach out to Stone. Just three days later, Stone sent Corsi an email with the subject line "Get to [Assange]." Stone exhorted Corsi to try to reach the WikiLeaks leader "at Ecuadorian Embassy in London and get the pending emails . . . they deal with the [Clinton] Foundation allegedly " (emphasis added).

    So why did Stone believe WikiLeaks had Clinton Foundation documents? Well, Stone is acquainted with Charles Ortel , an investor who dabbles in investigative journalism and has focused intently on the Clinton Foundation. Ortel has occasional correspondence with James Rosen. In an email exchange on July 25, Rosen told Ortel, "Am told WikiLeaks will be doing a massive dump of HRC emails related to the CF [i.e., the Clinton Foundation] in September." Ortel proceeded to forward this email to Stone. Only after seeing Rosen's email did Stone contact Corsi to say that Assange "allegedly" had Clinton Foundation emails that Corsi should try to acquire.

    Obviously, Stone did not need a WikiLeaks intermediary to give him a heads-up about a possible Clinton Foundation dump. He happened upon that information indirectly from a member of the press (Rosen), through an acquaintance (Ortel). And he did not need Corsi as an intermediary -- Stone is the one who alerted Corsi, not the other way around.

    The indictment says that, shortly after receiving Stone's July 25 email imploring him to make contact with Assange, Corsi forwarded it to a "supporter of the Trump campaign" in the United Kingdom -- reported by Chuck Ross to be Ted Malloch, a London-based American who used to be a business professor at Oxford and has ties to British populists. Subsequently, on Sunday July 31, Stone emailed Corsi to "call me MON," stressing that Corsi's associate should "see [Assange]."

    Well, did that happen? Did Corsi's man Malloch make contact with WikiLeaks?

    If you read nothing but Mueller's indictment, you assume he must have. After all, the next thing we are told about is Corsi's email report to Stone on Tuesday, August 2. Corsi (then vacationing in Italy) wrote: "Word is friend in embassy [i.e., Assange] plans 2 more dumps, one shortly after I'm back [which was to be in mid August]. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging." Corsi added:

    Time to let more than [Podesta] to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC [Clinton]. That appears to be game hackers are now about. Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke -- neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus, setting stage for foundation debacle.

    The implication is clear: Malloch must have reached Assange, gotten the critical information, and passed it along to Corsi so it could be communicated to Stone and the Trump campaign. Corsi is the intermediary! Coordination! Collusion!

    But Mueller is hiding the ball again. The indictment makes no mention of the facts that Malloch denies knowing anything about WikiLeaks , that Corsi denies having any sources with inside knowledge about WikiLeaks, and that prosecutors appear to accept these denials.

    So how did Corsi get the "2 more dumps" of information (or gossip) that he dished to Stone? He made it up -- or, more benignly, he claims to have figured it out on his own. Reportedly , Mueller's prosecutors were as frustrated as they were incredulous over Corsi's unlikely claim. But they don't have a better explanation. In the negotiations over a plea offer (on a charge of lying to investigators), which Corsi has resisted, Mueller's prosecutors drafted an agreed-upon " Statement of the Offense ." In it, Corsi was to admit that "his representations to [Stone], beginning in August 2016, that he had a way of obtaining confidential information from [WikiLeaks] were false."

    Corsi is another strange character in this drama. He is a notorious bomb-thrower, and his memory is spotty. But one can understand why the special counsel seems to accept his story about not having a WikiLeaks source: His information was spectacularly wrong. He surmised that Assange would release information that Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, had serious medical problems; this would be a prelude to devastating disclosures about the Clinton Foundation. Corsi's fever dream never came true, either.

    But how can Corsi have been Stone's intermediary to WikiLeaks if he had no way of obtaining confidential information from WikiLeaks?

    Stone, meantime, points out that neither he nor Corsi made reference to Podesta's emails. He denies any awareness that Assange had them, and plausibly contends that the reference to Podesta in his conversation with Corsi (and in his later tweet on August 21 that "the Podesta's [ sic ] in the barrel" was coming) related to a lobbying company started by John Podesta and his brother Tony. That company had done work for the same Kremlin-backed Ukrainian political party served by Paul Manafort -- Trump's campaign manager, and Stone's former business partner. It was at the very time when Stone and Corsi were discussing WikiLeaks and Podesta that a July 31 New York Times exposé appeared, outlining Manafort's lobbying entanglements with these Ukrainians. Tellingly, Mueller does not contend that Stone's denial of foreknowledge about WikiLeaks' Podesta dump is false.

    Again, understand: It is not just that Mueller can't prove Corsi was Stone's intermediary. Mueller has no need to try to prove it. He has an overwhelming obstruction and witness-tampering case against Stone without it. The indictment's "intermediary" plot line is just a device for prosecutors to spin the Trump–Russia–WikiLeaks collusion yarn. They are careful not to plead it in a conspiracy count; just an "introductory" narrative -- no formal charge, no burden to prove it, and no need to reveal stubborn facts that undermine it. Since it is superfluous to the process charges against Stone, he may not even challenge it. Maybe he will plead guilty, and the narrative will stand as the government's unrebutted version of events.

    And this is just the indictment of a bit player. Makes you look forward to the special counsel's final report, no?

    NeverDemRino , 2 minutes ago link

    Rep.Matt Gaetz gets it, when he Twittered this video: Tucker says it all, about the duplicitous hypocrisy, here:

    https://twitter.com/RepMattGaetz/status/1088895788946804736/video/1

    sidfalco , 5 minutes ago link

    Gestapo Mueller disgraces America.

    Greendawg , 6 minutes ago link

    Mueller doesn't want to know the truth!!! It doesn't get any more black and white!!! https://twitter.com/kimdotcom/status/1015318349188759553?lang=en

    Stan Smith , 9 minutes ago link

    The left loves it's narratives, but leaves something to be desired on substance.

    847328_3527 , 10 minutes ago link

    You have to love this guy, Stone. I hope he continues making a mockery of the farce Meuller witch hunt that has cost taxpayers over $100 million:

    Roger Stone Explains How to Dress for Court

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

    truthalwayswinsout , 10 minutes ago link

    Mueller is famous for charging crimes that do not exist. The plurality of this cases are overturned on appeal. For those of you who wonder that is 75% plus.

    That alone begs the question of why he has not been disbarred.

    navy62802 , 15 minutes ago link

    Just accept it. The legal/justice system in the US is done. Time to bury it.

    [Feb 03, 2019] In short, prevalence of disinformation in Western MSm it's not a bug, it's a feature. It's not to express dismay about but to know and understand and proceed accordingly.

    Feb 03, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Jared , Feb 2, 2019 9:50:51 AM | link

    On subject of Venezuela and propaganda - Excellent article about pattern of propaganda from NYT. Article at TruthDig

    But the above article is limited in background - WIKI article on Yellow Journalism Pulitzer himself was know for/sort of invented "Yellow Journalism".

    Individuals (as in author of the 1st article) may speak contrary to the status quo, but no organization can for long and no individual within an organization. I've tried speaking against my boss on occasions - did not pan out well career-wise.

    In short, it's not a bug, it's a feature. It's not to express dismay about but to know and understand and proceed accordingly.

    The alt media does well to educate the public on this issue but also needs to present a positive alternative.

    [Feb 02, 2019] Brazil, Fascism and the Left Wing of Neoliberalism

    Huge external debt plus high unemployment represents two vital preconditions of rise far right nationalism and fascism in all its multiple incarnations. In this sence Ulrain, Argentina and Brasil are different links of the common chain of events.
    In a way fascism is a way of reaction of nation deeply in crisis. In essence this is introduction of war time restrictions on political speech and freedoms of the population. The Catch 22 is that often this is done not so much to fight external threat, but top preserve the power of existing financial oligarchy. Which fascist after coming to power quickly include in government and and desire of which are disproportionally obeyed by fascist state.
    What in new in XXI century is the huge growth of power on intelligence agencies which is way represent crippling fascism or neofascism. In a way, then intelligence agencies became political kingmakers (as was the case with the assassination of JFK, impeachment of Nixon, elections of Clinton, Bush II, and Obama, as well as establishing Mueller commission after Trump victory), we can speak about sliding the county of the county toward fascism.
    Notable quotes:
    "... In Italy in the 1920s, repayment of war debts from WWI led to austerity and recession that preceded the rise of fascist leader Benito Mussolini. In Germany, payment of war reparations and repayment of industrial loans limited the ability of the Weimar government to respond to the Great Depression. Liberal governments that facilitated the financialization of industrial economies in the 1920s were left to serve as debt collectors in the capitalist crisis that followed. ..."
    "... The practical problem with doing this is the power of creditors. Debtors that repudiate their debts are closed out of capital markets. The power to create money that is accepted in payment is a privilege of the center countries that also happen to be creditors. Capitalist expansion creates interdependencies that produce immediate, deep shortages if debts aren't serviced. Debt is a weapon whose proceeds can be delivered to one group and the obligation to repay it to another. The U.S. position was expressed when the IMF knowingly made unpayable loans to Ukraine to support a U.S. sponsored coup there in 2015 ..."
    "... Propaganda was developed and refined by Edward Bernays in the 1910s to help the Wilson administration sell WWI to a skeptical public. It has been used by the American government and in capitalist advertising since that time. The idea was to integrate psychology with words and images to get people to act according to the desires and wishes of those putting it forward. ..."
    "... The operational frame of propaganda is instrumental: to use people to achieve ends they had no part in conceiving. The political perspective is dictatorial, benevolent or otherwise. Propaganda has been used by the American government ever since. Similar methods were used by the Italian and German fascists in their to rise to power. ..."
    "... Following WWII, the U.S. brought 1,600 Nazi scientists and engineers (and their families) to the U.S. to work for the Department of Defense and American industry through a program called Operation Paperclip . Many were dedicated and enthusiastic Nazis. Some were reported to have been bona fide war criminals. In contrast to liberal / neoliberal assertions that Nazism was irrational politics, the Nazi scientists fit seamlessly into American military production. There was no apparent contradiction between being a Nazi and being a scientist. ..."
    "... A dimensional tension of Nazism lay between romantic myths of an ancient and glorious past and the bourgeois task of moving industrialization and modernity forward. The focus of liberal and neoliberal analysis has been on this mythology as an irrational mode of reason. Missing is that Nazism wouldn't have moved past the German borders if it hadn't had bourgeois basis in the science and technology needed for industrial might. This keeps the broad project within the ontological and administrative premises of liberalism. ..."
    "... The way to fight fascists is to end the threat of fascism. This means taking on Wall Street and the major institutions of Western capitalism ..."
    Feb 02, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

    Missing from explanations of the rise of Mr. Bolsonaro is that for the last decade Brazil has experienced the worst economic recession in the country's history (graph below). Fourteen million formerly employed, working age Brazilians are now unemployed. As was true in the U.S. and peripheral Europe from 2008 forward, the liberal response has been austerity as the Brazilian ruling class was made richer and more politically powerful.

    Since 2014, Brazil's public debt/GDP ratio has climbed from 20% to 75% proclaims a worried IMF. That some fair portion of that climb came from falling GDP due to economic austerity mandated by the IMF and Wall Street is left unmentioned. A decade of austerity got liberal President Dilma Rousseff removed from office in 2016 in what can only be called a Wall Street putsch. Perhaps Bolsonaro will tell Wall Street where to stick its loans (not).

    Back in the U.S., everyone knows that the liberalization of finance and trade in the 1990s was the result of political calculations. That this liberalization was/is bipartisan suggests that maybe the political calculations served certain economic interests. Never mind that these interests were given what they asked for and crashed the economy with it. If economic problems result from political calculations, the solution is political -- elect better leaders. If they are driven by economic interests, the solution is to change the way that economic relationships are organized.

    Between 1928 and 1932 German industrial production fell by 58%. By 1933, six million formerly employed German workers were begging in the streets and digging through garbage looking for items to sell. The liberal (Socialist Party) response was half-measures and austerity. Within the liberal frame, the Depression was a political problem to be addressed in the realm of the political. Centrist accommodation defined the existing realm. Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the pit of the Great Depression.

    In Brazil in the early-mid 2000s, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula, implemented a Left program that pulled twenty million Brazilians out of poverty. The Brazilian economy briefly recovered after Wall Street crashed it in 2008 before Brazilian public debt was used to force the implementation of austerity. Dilma Rousseff capitulated and Brazil re-entered recession. Rousseff was removed from power in 2016. Hemmed in by Wall Street and IMF mandated austerity , any liberal government that might be elected would meet the same fate as Rousseff.

    In Italy in the 1920s, repayment of war debts from WWI led to austerity and recession that preceded the rise of fascist leader Benito Mussolini. In Germany, payment of war reparations and repayment of industrial loans limited the ability of the Weimar government to respond to the Great Depression. Liberal governments that facilitated the financialization of industrial economies in the 1920s were left to serve as debt collectors in the capitalist crisis that followed.

    Since 2008, the fiscal structure of the EU (European Union) combined with wildly unbalanced trade relationships led to a decade of austerity, recession and depression for the European periphery. In the U.S., by 2009 Wall Street was pushing austerity and cuts to Social Security and Medicare as necessary to fiscal stability. The consequences of four decades of financialized neoliberal trade policies were by no means equally shared. Internal and external class relations were made evident through narrowly distributed booms followed by widely distributed busts.

    With the presumed shared goal of ending the threat of fascism:

    The ideological premises behind the logic that claims fascists as the explanation of fascism emerge from liberalism. The term here is meant as description. Liberalism proceeds from specific ontological assumptions. Within this temporal frame, a bit of social logic: If fascists already existed, why didn't fascism? The question of whether to fight fascists or fascism depends on the answer. The essentialist view is that characteristics intrinsic to fascists make them fascists. This is the basis of scientific racism. And it underlies fascist race theory.

    The theory of a strongman who exploits people who have a predisposition towards fascism is essentialist as well if receptivity is intrinsic, e.g. due to psychology, genetics, etc. Liberal-Left commentary in recent years has tended toward the essentialist view -- that fascists are born or otherwise predisposed toward fascism. Unconsidered is that non-fascists are equally determined in this frame. If 'deplorables' were born that way, four decades of neoliberalism is absolved.

    The problem of analogy, the question of what fascism is and how European fascism of the twentieth century bears relation to the present, can't be answered in the liberal frame. The rise and fall of a global radical right have been episodic. It has tied in history to the development of global capitalism in a center-and-periphery model of asymmetrical economic power. Finance from the center facilitates economic expansion until financial crisis interrupts the process. Peripheral governments are left to manage debt repayment with collapsed economies.

    Globally, debt has forced policy convergence between political parties of differing ideologies. European center-left parties have pushed austerity even when ideology would suggest the opposite. In 2015, self-identified Marxists in Greece's SYRIZA party capitulated to the austerity and privatization demands from EU creditors led by Germany. Even Lenin negotiated with Wall Street creditors (on behalf of Russia) in the months after the October Revolution. In a political frame, the solution from below is to elect leaders and parties who will act on their rhetoric.

    The practical problem with doing this is the power of creditors. Debtors that repudiate their debts are closed out of capital markets. The power to create money that is accepted in payment is a privilege of the center countries that also happen to be creditors. Capitalist expansion creates interdependencies that produce immediate, deep shortages if debts aren't serviced. Debt is a weapon whose proceeds can be delivered to one group and the obligation to repay it to another. The U.S. position was expressed when the IMF knowingly made unpayable loans to Ukraine to support a U.S. sponsored coup there in 2015.

    Fascist racialization has analog in existing capitalist class relations. Immigration status, race and gender define a social taxonomy of economic exploitation. Race was invented decades into the Anglo-American manifestation of slavery to naturalize exploitation of Blacks. Gender difference represents the evolution of unpaid to paid labor for women in the capitalist West. Claiming these as causing exploitation gets the temporal sequence wrong. These were / are exploitable classes before explanations of their special status were created.

    This isn't to suggest that capitalist class relations form a complete explanation of fascist racialization. But the ontological premise that 'freezes,' and thereby reifies racialization, is fundamental to capitalism. This relates to the point argued below that the educated German bourgeois, in the form of the Nazi scientists and engineers brought to the U.S. following WWII, found Nazi racialization plausible through what has long been put forward as an antithetical mode of understanding. Put differently, it wasn't just the rabble that found grotesque racial caricatures plausible. The question is why?

    Propaganda was developed and refined by Edward Bernays in the 1910s to help the Wilson administration sell WWI to a skeptical public. It has been used by the American government and in capitalist advertising since that time. The idea was to integrate psychology with words and images to get people to act according to the desires and wishes of those putting it forward.

    The operational frame of propaganda is instrumental: to use people to achieve ends they had no part in conceiving. The political perspective is dictatorial, benevolent or otherwise. Propaganda has been used by the American government ever since. Similar methods were used by the Italian and German fascists in their to rise to power.

    Since WWI, commercial propaganda has become ubiquitous in the U.S. Advertising firms hire psychologists to craft advertising campaigns with no regard for the concern that psychological coercion removes free choice from capitalism. The distinction between political and commercial propaganda is based on intent, not method. Its use by Woodrow Wilson (above) is instructive: a large and vocal anti-war movement had legitimate reasons for opposing the U.S. entry into WWI. The goal of Bernays and Wilson was to stifle political opposition.

    Following WWII, the U.S. brought 1,600 Nazi scientists and engineers (and their families) to the U.S. to work for the Department of Defense and American industry through a program called Operation Paperclip . Many were dedicated and enthusiastic Nazis. Some were reported to have been bona fide war criminals. In contrast to liberal / neoliberal assertions that Nazism was irrational politics, the Nazi scientists fit seamlessly into American military production. There was no apparent contradiction between being a Nazi and being a scientist.

    The problem isn't just that many committed Nazis were scientists. Science and technology created the Nazi war machine. Science and technology were fully integrated into the creation and running of the Nazi concentration camps. American race 'science,' eugenics, formed the basis of Nazi race theory. Science and technology formed the functional core of Nazism. And the Nazi scientists and engineers of Operation Paperclip were major contributors to American post-war military dominance.

    A dimensional tension of Nazism lay between romantic myths of an ancient and glorious past and the bourgeois task of moving industrialization and modernity forward. The focus of liberal and neoliberal analysis has been on this mythology as an irrational mode of reason. Missing is that Nazism wouldn't have moved past the German borders if it hadn't had bourgeois basis in the science and technology needed for industrial might. This keeps the broad project within the ontological and administrative premises of liberalism.

    This is no doubt disconcerting to theorists of great difference. If Bolsonaro can impose austerity while maintaining an unjust peace, Wall Street and the IMF will smile and ask for more. American business interests are already circling Brazil, knowing that captive consumers combined with enforceable property rights and a pliable workforce means profits. Where were liberals when the Wall Street that Barack Obama saved was squeezing the people of Brazil, Spain, Greece and Portugal to repay debts incurred by the oligarchs? Liberalism is the link between capitalism and fascism, not its antithesis.

    Having long ago abandoned Marx, the American Left is lost in the temporal logic of liberalism. The way to fight fascists is to end the threat of fascism. This means taking on Wall Street and the major institutions of Western capitalism

    Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book Zen Economics is published by CounterPunch Books.

    [Feb 02, 2019] The End Of Russia's Democratic Illusions About America

    Feb 02, 2019 | theduran.com

    The End Of Russia's "Democratic Illusions" About America

    How Russiagate has impacted a vital struggle in Russia.

    Published

    6 days ago

    on

    January 27, 2019 By

    Stephen Cohen 3,139 Views ,

    [Jan 29, 2019] Guardian became Deep State Guardian

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The Guardian has lost all sense of proportion – mention Tommy Robinson and the entire staff through themselves to floor and roll round like dying flies – yet for when it comes to US neocons they go all misty eyed, redolent of a broody couple when they come across a particularly adorable baby. ..."
    "... I would wager a medium sum that Tisdall is on a payroll other than the Grauniad's, or he's an actual asset per Ulfkötte's books and media appearances. ..."
    "... George Bush spent his adult life organizing operations and wars that killed a few million people. Anyone who has spiritual beliefs must wonder how it is to die with so much killing on your record or conscience (if you have one). ..."
    "... That's something I've wondered about many times. If you review John McCain's actions and comments before he died, it seems these people don't have a conscience. ..."
    "... Reagan was primarily a mantle piece for the banking, oil and defense sectors to run wild. Is it really so hard to believe GHW Bush was running the National Security Council? It was a CIA wet dream come true (especially after the alligator-armed "investigations" of the 70's. ..."
    "... The Deep State Guardian. Why don't they just change their name to 'The Daily Thatcherite' and have done with it. ..."
    "... They should just show it's full title: The Guardian Of The Establishment ..."
    "... well, yeah. but for us mad people it goes deeper even than that: https://geopolitics.co/2018/12/02/in-memoriam-george-h-scherff-jr-aka-george-hw-bush-sr/ ..."
    Dec 22, 2018 | off-guardian.org

    Oslo - Norway, Dec 4, 2018

    Let's never forget George H W Bush's love for incubator babies. He loved fake incubator babies.

    The incubator baby actress wasn't just any 15 year old, she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Canada –

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/cqiq8P8dRtY?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

    Philpot, Dec 4, 2018
    British and most western media are either in the direct or indirect pay of their governments. What journalist can expose this for us? Any of you willing to make the biggest scoop of the 21st century? Tom Bradbury at ITN must be on the spook payroll, for starters? MI6 had foreign correspondents for years, but domestic mouthpieces must now be on the take too? All paid to demonise Russia and Putin.
    harry stotle, Dec 4, 2018

    The Guardian has lost all sense of proportion – mention Tommy Robinson and the entire staff through themselves to floor and roll round like dying flies – yet for when it comes to US neocons they go all misty eyed, redolent of a broody couple when they come across a particularly adorable baby.

    Simon 'white helmets' Tisdall is especially egregious – one can imagine him throwing darts at a picture of Putin while producing his latest homily to the murderous actions of gangsters like Bush and his crime family.

    Its hard not to despair now this has become the official face of Britains so-called liberal media.

    Yarkob, Dec 4, 2018
    I would wager a medium sum that Tisdall is on a payroll other than the Grauniad's, or he's an actual asset per Ulfkötte's books and media appearances. As with Michael White, with whom I had a very illuminating argument via email a few years back. He *is* an asset, not a journalist (and a massive dick, to boot)
    George cornell, Dec 4, 2018
    I thought the attitude of the Bush family to their fellow Americans was best illustrated by Barbara's response to the plight of the homeless victims of Katrina who had been transported to the Houston domed stadium. They spent their nights there sleeping on hard benches and when good ole Babs heard of it, she opined that they probably had never had it so good so why were they complaining. Could Mother Theresa have had greater generosity of spirit?
    Gekaufte Journalisten (bought journalism), Dec 4, 2018
    Not just one article, the awful Guardian is full of contents eulogising [yet another] mongrel of a president.

    But look at conservative media. The crazy Infowars.com described this Bush as an Anti-American Globalist and Traitor!! .. and zerohedge.com is celebrating: "The Evil Has Died" and "In 2016 he voted for Hillary Clinton, because the Deep State Swamp sticks together". https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-02/exploring-dark-side-bush-41

    Just tell me, who is the rabid neo-con right-wing rag that is glorifying wars and mass murderers?

    Norcal, Dec 4, 2018
    Speaking of neighbors you might appreciate this excellent Journalism by Robert Parry: https://consortiumnews.com/2018/12/03/bush-41s-october-surprise-denials-2/
    DunGroanin, Dec 4, 2018
    The late Robert Parry, sad to say. Maybe that now both the 'MacBeths' are stains on the tarmac – Parry's notes of the bloodstained legacy of that dynasty can finally be displayed? That Barbara was one cold blooded mother! Would have happily pulled a trigger on JFK, MLK herself (some think).

    Just about the whole century from the setup of the Fed, the two world wars, the depression, Hitler, Korea, Cuba all of it, had a a Bush hand in it. He was the self crowned Caesar having publicly executed the whole of Camelot and left us with a poison toad, reminds us how low the Bush's took the USA.

    David Eire, Dec 3, 2018
    George Bush spent his adult life organizing operations and wars that killed a few million people. Anyone who has spiritual beliefs must wonder how it is to die with so much killing on your record or conscience (if you have one).
    Loverat, Dec 4, 2018
    That's something I've wondered about many times. If you review John McCain's actions and comments before he died, it seems these people don't have a conscience. If you surround yourself with people of similar mindset and in a climate where war is considered obligatory for US Presidents, you go into self denial. Wars are probably like an addiction for these people and once you get to that stage you no longer have a conscience.

    During John McCain's funeral where all living ex-presidents were in attendance, someone remarked on Twitter, 'Quick, lock the church doors and hold the war crimes trial in the church!'. This was a far more realistic observation than the sickening McCain apologist BBC coverage we were subjected to.

    At the weekend I went to the place where Oliver Cromwell lived. There was an American tourist who told us she was shocked about Oliver Cromwell being dug up from his grave and his head stuck on a pike. She said it was gruesome. I was tempted to say that at least that was 350 years ago, and similar things are happening today in Iraq, Syria and Libya – all places where the US has instigated the chaos and supports the perpretators. I resisted the temptation.

    I note that Cromwell thought he was chosen by God to do what he did. But again that was in different times and there were some redeeming factors in what he did, Probably on par with Obama – who wreaked havoc on the Middle East but reached agreements on Iran and Cuba. Plus Obama looked cool while killing and droning.

    But what goes around comes around. I sense the pure evil involved in the current regime change wars, government, media etc will pay a heavy price – whether in this life or the next.

    mark, Dec 4, 2018
    The state controlled BBC has just done another puff piece on McCain saying what a splendid chap and great statesman and all round good egg he was.

    The MSM likes to slag off Vlad The Bad by droning on about how he was in the KGB. But Bush wasn't just IN the CIA, he was the BOSS of the CIA, at a time when hundreds of thousands of Central American peasant farmers and Indians were being killed by CIA trained and orchestrated death squads.

    Gezzah Potts, Dec 4, 2018
    Mark: jayzus Mark, don't you just want to projectile vomit when you see all this absolute bullshit, just straight out revising of history, just the lies, on and on . I was involved in a Central American solidarity group in the 1980s – early 90s here in Aussie, found out then all about U.S style 'democracatic values' and 'human rights concerns' and death squads and various fascists fully supported by the United States, and places like Guatemala and Nicaragua. Its all an illusion for 'polite society' and the gullible to believe in. Sigh
    mark, Dec 5, 2018
    I can't remember the exact figures but I think it was over 200,000 murdered in Guatemala out of a population of 4 million. It was the same story in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Colombia. And of course the CIA satrap Noriega was hauled off in chains when that country was invaded. But Uncle Sam is finally paying a price for his antics south of the border. Those societies were wrecked and brutalised beyond repair. There is now an unbelievably high murder rate of women in Guatemala. Millions of those people have sought some kind of refuge in the belly of the beast, causing an immigration crisis, with an illegal immigrant population that may be as high as 30 million. Hence all the uproar over Trump's wall. The immigration crisis was a factor in Trump's election, just as the tidal wave of migrants from the destroyed countries of the Middle East was a factor in Brexit. Cameron, Sarko and Clinton thought it was a spiffing idea and quite a wizard wheeze to bomb Libya back to the Stone Age. So we now have a Mad Max failed state complete with warlords and slave markets just across the Med. What goes around, comes around. You can't expect to export violence and mayhem abroad and remain immune to it at home.
    Gezzah Potts, Dec 5, 2018
    Mark: after Efrain Rios Montt seized power in a coup in Guatemala in 1982, US Ambassador Frederick Chapin declared that thanks to the coup of Rios Montt "the Guatemalan Govt has come out of the darkness into the light". That sums it up in one sentence, and you're probably aware of the mass killing and disappearances under his genocidal tyranny. Reagan kindly submitted that Rios Montt was 'getting a bum rap on human rights, the same Reagan who declared the Contra's were 'The moral equal of our founding fathers'. In El Salvador, the same mass slaughter, the same mass upheaval, and even murdering Archbishop Romero. You only need to look at what happened in Central & South America to understand what the United States really represents.
    Jen, Dec 4, 2018
    I would have bypassed the war crimes trial, locked the church and then built a moat stocked with crocodiles and piranhas around it.
    mark, Dec 4, 2018
    That's entirely right. People understandably despise and revile people like Brady and Hindley, Sutcliffe, Dahmer, Bundy and the like. But they killed a handful of people and were often very damaged individuals to begin with. And at least they did their own dirty work. Subhuman scum sucking filth like Bush, Bush 2, Obama, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Blair, Straw and Campbell are a thousand times worse. They kill millions without getting their hands dirty, and preen and posture as great statesmen and public servants, expecting deference and state funerals and puff piece obituaries from nauseating, loathsome, lickspittle media hacks like Tisdall.
    Caitlin Ni Chonaill, Dec 6, 2018
    You left out Kissinger and Albright.
    Gezzah Potts, Dec 3, 2018
    Nailed it Kit. The attempt at revionism and rewriting history by these craven creatures, these sycophantic slimebag shills for Imperialism and War and the Anglo Zionist Empire. They don't speak truth to power, they protect and grovel to the powerful. The eulogising and fawning of Bush was stomach churning, as it was for the arch Imperialist McCain when he croaked. Thank God for alternative news sites, and yeah Caitlin Johnston @ medium nailed it as well, as Fair Dinkum mentioned. Where's John Pilger when you need him?
    Badger Down, Dec 3, 2018
    GBH Bush's Highway of Death deserves mention. I'll spare you the pictures.
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=highway+of+death+desert+storm&t=h_&atb=v92-2_f&ia=web
    systemicfraud, Dec 3, 2018
    What no one seems to realize is that the VP often takes charge of the US National Security Council when POTUS is not able to attend meetings, which are held weekly. Under Eisenhower it was Richard Nixon who often took charge of the meetings -- Tim Weiner's book "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" gives some details on this. Reagan was primarily a mantle piece for the banking, oil and defense sectors to run wild. Is it really so hard to believe GHW Bush was running the National Security Council? It was a CIA wet dream come true (especially after the alligator-armed "investigations" of the 70's.
    Fair dinkum, Dec 3, 2018
    Caitlin sums it up: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/12/01/if-you-murdered-a-bunch-of-people-mass-murder-is-your-single-defining-legacy/
    Simon Hodges, Dec 3, 2018
    The Deep State Guardian. Why don't they just change their name to 'The Daily Thatcherite' and have done with it.
    Frankly Speaking, Dec 4, 2018
    They should just show it's full title: The Guardian Of The Establishment
    kevin morris, Dec 3, 2018
    'Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years' by Russ Baker -- a fascinating account of the Bush family's involvement in a great deal of nefarious activity. Bush senior is one of the few people who didn't remember where he was when Kennedy was shot. Baker puts him in Dallas.
    lysias, Dec 4, 2018
    Now that G.H.W. Bush hss died, is there anybody suspected of involvement in the JFK assassination still alive?
    kevin morris, Dec 4, 2018
    I don't know but as a fairly apolitical individual, I never much bothered with the Kennedy Assasination. All that changed when during the fiftieth anniversary, BBC Radio Four ran a program which included an interview with the Dallas police officer who was handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when he was shot by Jack Ruby. The consensus of that program was that the case was open shut and Oswald did it. Around that time, several newspapers in the UK featured articles claiming that Oswald acted alone.

    Whether or not anyone actively involved still lives, their descendants still do and the probable organising body too. There still appears to be determination in some quarters to spread disinformation about the case. Given that as long ago as the late seventies the House of Representatives Assassination Committee concluded that JFK's death was probably the consequence of a conspiracy, determination amongst the mainstream media to lay Kennedy's death at the hands of Oswald alone suggests that there is still determination that the truth never becomes public.

    Frankly Speaking, Dec 3, 2018
    Exactly what i was thinking!

    I'm sickened by the Guardian's and BBC's obedience to the US neocon project to seek, or create, and destroy "enemies" and whilst ignoring all the disgusting atrocities that arise as a consequence.

    The Guardian is not even worth the paper it's printed on. It's become The Guardian Of The Establishment rather than of the Truth which it used to proclaim.

    George cornell, Dec 4, 2018
    It is in danger of losing its budgie-cage-liner status. If budgies can talk they may refuse to evacuate on it. What kind of person maintains ties to such a a poor excuse for cage toiletry. The moral crunch time for their journalists (actually their opinionists) came and went a long time ago.
    Brutally Remastered, Dec 3, 2018
    What a great piece. My parents knew them in New York and they came over once and left behind an embossed packet of White House cigs. I asked my father (before he died) what he thought of them and all he ever said was he thought that Barbara was the intellect in the family.
    Bloody annoying, thanks Pater.
    Marianne Birkby, Dec 3, 2018
    From 2004

    "The induction of DU weapons in 1991 in Iraq broke a 46-year taboo. This Trojan Horse of nuclear war continues to be used more and more. DU remains radioactive longer than the age of the earth (estimated at 4.5 billion years). The long-term effects from over a decade of DU exposures are devastating. The increased quantities of radioactive material used in Afghanistan are 3 to 5 times greater than Iraq, 1991. In Iraq, 2003, they are already estimated to be 6 to 10 times 1991, and will travel through a larger area and affect many more people, babies and unborn. Countries within a 1000-mile radius of Baghdad and Kabul are being affected by radiation poisoning

    Badger Down, Dec 3, 2018
    "DU remains radioactive longer than [ ] 4.5 billion years." It's worse than that. It loses half of its radioactivity in that time. The good news is that that slow release means "D"U doesn't zap you much. The bad news is it's chemically toxic, like a heavy metal (which it is).
    nwwoods, Dec 3, 2018
    Also no mention of the body of circumstantial evidence linking Bush to JFK's murder, though Bush repeatedly insisted that he couldn't recall his whereabouts that day (I can precisely recall where I was, and I was 9 years old in 1963), in spite of the fact that solid documentary evidence exists that puts him in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963.
    Norcal, Dec 4, 2018
    The very first Google Search I did was this, (George H.W. Bush+November 22, 1963) and it yielded a page like the following link, which began my research into the JFK Assassination.

    http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=5420

    nomad, Dec 3, 2018

    well, yeah. but for us mad people it goes deeper even than that: https://geopolitics.co/2018/12/02/in-memoriam-george-h-scherff-jr-aka-george-hw-bush-sr/

    Bush Sr. : Crypto-Nazi patriarch and his disciples
    https://eclinik.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/barbara-bush-funeral-four-presidents-four-first-ladies.jpg?w=672&h=372&crop=1

    [Jan 29, 2019] Overall, the country is controlled by Putin, military intelligence (siloviki). Neoliberals still have strong influence over economy/finance/education/culture, but are increasingly contested by industrialist economists as well as historians who are fighting neoliberal myths about Russian/Soviet history

    Notable quotes:
    "... Yet another group of billionaires are the heads of large state companies, also loyal to Putin. Putin-era billionaires build roads, bridges, stadiums in Russia, invest in Russian defense, aerospace, car industries, while Yeltsin-era billionaires move profits out of the country and buy English Premier League clubs. ..."
    "... ....The oligarchs have been destroyed in the early 00s ..."
    "... I'm inclined to agree. And this is why there is so much anger against Putin, in particular, in the 'west': the Russian oligarchs wield enormous power through the media which is at the service of anyone with money. Bill Browder being a prime example. ..."
    "... The oligarchs were the tools that the City of London and Wall St employed to plunder Russia's socialised wealth and resources. ..."
    "... I don't understand the people here who write that VVPutin is in thrall to the Zionists, the Oligarchs, or that he's lining his own pocket etc etc. IMHO his strategy has always been clear and direct, since the beginning. He values first of all stability - time for Russia to rebuild herself. Secondly, he performs a clever balancing act between the competing centres of power in Russia. ..."
    "... His mistake, however, when he became president, was to believe quite sincerely that the West - and particularly Washington (the important one) - shared a desire for peaceful partnership with Russia. Doubts emerged in 2011 - he realised that he was being played - and the doubts became certainties in 2014, since when some fairly radical reorganisations has been taking place. Russia is - again, IMHO - now ready to take its real place in the international order. ..."
    Dec 27, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

    S , Dec 26, 2018 7:47:01 PM | link

    Putin is not "controlled by oligarchs". The oligarchs have been destroyed in the early 00s: Gusinsky (the media oligarch), Berezovsky (the political broker oligarch), Khodorkovsky (the oil oligarch). These people were real oligarchs, i.e. they were using their wealth to control political processes through black media propaganda, having their own MPs/Ministers/Governors, etc.

    After the destruction of Gusinsky and Berezovsky, the oligarchs were invited to a meeting with Putin and told to drop any meddling in politics (including media) and focus on purely economic activities. They were also told to assume more social responsibility. In return, they were given a guarantee that the results of the privatization won't be rolled back.

    Khodorkovsky was the only one who rebelled against the deal and hence was also destroyed. As a result of this deal, the oligarchs stopped being oligarchs, now they're simply billionaires.

    They are allowed some influence over the economic policies of the government, but no influence over ideology, budget, military, foreign affairs, etc. In other words, the word "oligarch" as applied to Yeltsin-era billionaires is another lie about modern Russia.

    Putin-era billionaires (Timchenko, Rothenberg brothers, Kovalchuk) were created by Putin to provide counter-balance to Yeltsin-era billionaires; their whole legitimacy is based on loyalty to Putin, who is himself dedicated to strengthening Russia.

    Yet another group of billionaires are the heads of large state companies, also loyal to Putin. Putin-era billionaires build roads, bridges, stadiums in Russia, invest in Russian defense, aerospace, car industries, while Yeltsin-era billionaires move profits out of the country and buy English Premier League clubs.

    It is only recently that some of the Yeltsin-era billionaires have "seen the light" (as a result of the sanctions) and started to bring some of their capital back to Russia.

    Overall, the country is controlled by Putin, military & intelligence (siloviki). Neoliberals still have strong influence over economy/finance/education/culture, but are increasingly contested by industrialist economists as well as historians who are fighting neoliberal myths about Russian/Soviet history.

    S , Dec 26, 2018 10:28:24 PM | link
    @Pft #89

    Israel does not control Russia.

    The Chief Rabbi of Russia is of the Chabad sect simply because most of Russian orthodox Jewish communities are of the Chabad sect. He is actually from Milan; he moved to New Jersey in his teenage years, then to Brooklyn, New York, then to Moscow.

    The "Putin's Rabbi" is a stupid moniker invented by Western "journalists"; he is neither Putin's creation, nor Putin's puppet.

    It is true that Putin has good relationship with the Chief Rabbi, just as he has good relationships with the Patriarch, the Old Believer Patriarch, the Chief Mufti, the Chief Lama, and lesser religious figures.

    Sometimes he meets all of them together (google some photos, it's quite a sight), sometimes he has one-on-one meetings. The strongest relationship is with the Patriarch. There is also an "alternative Chief Rabbi of Russia" who represents orthodox Jewish communities that refuse to be governed by a Chabad rabbi.

    Russian billionaires with Israeli passports are all Yeltsin-era billionaires (ex-oligarchs) and are not "Putin's supporters". In fact, Friedman and his gang who own Russia's largest private bank, Alfa-bank, were caught several times trying to sponsor pro-US opposition.

    Most recently, they tried to do it through a high-ranked Alfa-bank employee, Vladimir Ashurkov, who was funneling money to Alexey Navalny.

    After the Presidential Administration called them out on that, they immediately fired and disavowed Ashurkov, who is now living in London and is a member of Integrity Initiative's UK cluster.

    Alfa-bank is also the only Russian bank that does not have any problems with its Ukrainian branch. These people are not Putin's supporters, they are Putin's enemies. Putin tolerates them because he keeps his end of the bargain (see my post #85).

    S , Dec 27, 2018 8:27:42 AM | link
    @Pft #111

    1. I still insist we use the word "billionaire" to refer to Russian ultra-rich. Some of them may turn into oligarchs in the future, but currently they are not oligarchs, as they are not making decisions regarding the strategy of the country. The strategy is chosen by Putin based on data provided by the intelligence services, the military, and the government/the central bank.

    I'll give you one example. The billionaires were not consulted on the return of Crimea. When they learned about the decision from the news, almost all of them were against it. Timchenko, one of "Putin's billionaires", straight up refused to build the Crimean bridge. (In the end, after much deliberation, Rothenberg brothers agreed to take up the job.) If Russian billionaires really did control Putin, Crimea would not have returned to Russia.

    Compare this to Ukraine, where the oligarchs do exist. Most of them decided it would be better for Ukraine to join the EU. Economic calculations showed the opposite, but it did not matter. The oligarchs owned all TV channels, radio stations, news websites, as well as politicians, and they pushed pro-Maidan propaganda 24/7. You know the result.

    2. Putin did not "boot out one faction of oligarchs", he booted out all of them. First, he demanded that all large media companies are transferred to state ownership (hence the war on Gusinsky and Berezovsky who initially refused to do that). Then, a few years later, he demanded that the billionaires abstain from any political activity, including sponsorship of political parties (hence the war on Khodorkovsky who not only refused to do that, but planned to sell Yukos to Americans and use the money to buy all MPs and become President himself). You say "money buys influence". Well, it's not easy to do that when all large media companies are owned by the state and you can't sponsor political parties (unless asked to do so by the Presidential Administration).

    Putin was not "supported by a competing faction who benefit from less competition". The "competing faction" did not exist when he came to power. Timchenko, Kovalchuk, and others were nobodies in the 90s. Putin made them billionaires through various schemes. They did not create Putin; Putin created them.

    3. Russia does have large income/wealth inequality and it's toxic to society. There seems to be a threshold in income above which rich people start losing empathy for ordinary people. The economic inequality isn't just an ethical problem, but also an economic one: ordinary people simply do not have enough money to buy goods and services. Personally, I believe it's the biggest impediment to Russia's economic growth. Of course, it's connected to corruption/nepotism.

    4. I did not say "most Russian Jews are Chabad", I said most Russian orthodox Jewish communities ("parishes") are Chabad. At least according to the figures I saw. Please note that 28 years have passed since 1990. Also note that Chabad is extremely active in engaging non-religious Jews. So it's plausible that they have grown their numbers to become the biggest orthodox Jewish sect in Russia.

    vk , Dec 27, 2018 8:38:35 AM | link
    @ Posted by: S | Dec 27, 2018 8:27:42 AM | 123

    That's why nostalgia for the USSR has grown to the highest levels in 20 years, even among the young:

    Back to USSR: Record number of Russians regret collapse of Soviet Union

    According to this article, what triggered this upswing was the pension reforms Putin and co. did during the FIFA World Cup (june-july 2018).

    William Bowles , Dec 27, 2018 8:57:39 AM | link
    vk | Dec 27, 2018 8:38:35 AM | 125

    I read somewhere that 70% of the population regret the collapse of the USSR and given the chaos that followed, it's not surprising. But the Russian Communist Party seems as clueless as all the other communist parties, none can offer a viable alternative to the present madness.

    bevin , Dec 27, 2018 10:21:32 AM | link
    " ....The oligarchs have been destroyed in the early 00s: Gusinsky (the media oligarch), Berezovsky (the political broker oligarch), Khodorkovsky (the oil oligarch). These people were real oligarchs, i.e. they were using their wealth to control political processes through black media propaganda, having their own MPs/Ministers/Governors, etc..." @85

    I'm inclined to agree. And this is why there is so much anger against Putin, in particular, in the 'west': the Russian oligarchs wield enormous power through the media which is at the service of anyone with money. Bill Browder being a prime example.

    The oligarchs were the tools that the City of London and Wall St employed to plunder Russia's socialised wealth and resources.

    The hate campaign against Putin, who is in many ways a very conservative economist pursuing the sort of neo-liberal policies that capitalist financiers approve of, is inexplicable unless we understand that the end game is a return to the looting that took place under the Empire's anointed, Boris Yeltsin.

    Circe , Dec 27, 2018 12:47:12 PM | link
    In my post @112 I'm addressing @35 not 34.

    For the others who don't believe Putin is compromised especially 's' who makes some strong points.

    Okay, so let's say Putin is not compromised by the Oligarchy and he created the Russian oligarchy instead of the other way around, i.e. that they are the kingmakers. The oligarchy he created that are in his debt because they get to keep their wealth and corporate power will never be completely loyal to someone, Putin, who keeps them in check, under his thumb and expects them to finance big projects when the state needs funds.

    They are like hostages who will always lie in wait of the opportunity to escape control dethrone him and seize power. They may be stockholmed for now, but they're always lying in wait.

    Therefore Putin who understands this, is compromised by the fact that he must give on the Zionist issue which reprsents the biggest threat to his power because Zionists wield power globally, and could present those oligarchs with just that opportunity.

    Zionist Russians with dual citizenship will never be as loyal to Russia and Putin as sovereignists are, as Zionists have one loyalty above all others, and in turn Putin can never be completely loyal to sovereignists and their anti-Western vision of strength for Russia because he knows that the authority he exerts over the Oligarchy he created is dependent on how he deals with Zionism abroad. In a sense, by trying to please both sides he thinks he can have his cake and eat it too, but by caving or even placating the demands of Zionists he Putin is walking a fine line and I think he'll get to a point where he has to throw one side under the bus.

    Sovereignists tolerate Putin for as long as he keeps Zionist power in check, and in turn Zionists don't mount a campaign to dethrone Putin for as long as he doesn't check their power outside Russia, and Russia will never achieve the power and greatness it needs to check the Empire's domination and stop its expansion by caving to Zionist power. Putin is in a catch-22, he is compromised, no matter how you look at it.

    Maybe he's trying to buy time, but if he allows the Empire to take down Iran by any means and contain China then he will make Russia a vassal of the Empire, because even Russia cannot compete alone against the Empire without alliances strategically in opposition to the Empire's domination. This time is a crossroads for Putin and he's going to have to make a choice soon and stop straddling both sides or he'll lose the gains Russia has achieved.

    I don't trust Putin when he pals around with the Empire's proxy, the Saudis, or placates the lunatic Zionist state.

    arby , Dec 27, 2018 12:49:09 PM | link
    Little video of Putin dealing with some oligarchs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjrlTMvirVo
    Montreal , Dec 27, 2018 2:01:23 PM | link
    I don't understand the people here who write that VVPutin is in thrall to the Zionists, the Oligarchs, or that he's lining his own pocket etc etc. IMHO his strategy has always been clear and direct, since the beginning. He values first of all stability - time for Russia to rebuild herself. Secondly, he performs a clever balancing act between the competing centres of power in Russia.

    His mistake, however, when he became president, was to believe quite sincerely that the West - and particularly Washington (the important one) - shared a desire for peaceful partnership with Russia. Doubts emerged in 2011 - he realised that he was being played - and the doubts became certainties in 2014, since when some fairly radical reorganisations has been taking place. Russia is - again, IMHO - now ready to take its real place in the international order.

    I take great pleasure in reading and listening to his - and Sergei Lavrov's - words, at the same time regretting the low standard of our own representatives.

    Many thanks to b and all of you who continue always to inform me and sometimes enchant me.

    [Jan 29, 2019] Once Barr is installed in office, stand by. The Department of Justice and the FBI will received the equivalent of a high powered enema. Both are sick institutions and need to have the feces flushed out

    Notable quotes:
    "... Then a funny thing happened. Robert Mueller's press guy issued an unprecedented statement calling the Buzzfeed story pure, unadulterated bullshit. Whoops!! ..."
    "... How many of of the FBI and DOJ's top leadership from the Obama administration have gotten fired and are being investigated for criminal conduct? ..."
    "... Enema works for me but reading reports on the analysis of Ohr's transcript, I'm not even sure an enema is going to be enough for the fbi. I think the only solution is liquidation. ..."
    "... Bill Barr clean out the DOJ? I wouldn't count on it. He is a member in good standing of the swamp ..."
    Jan 19, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    Remember when Dan Rather self-immolated his credibility in a desperate attempt to take out George W. Bush? The Killian documents controversy (also referred to as Memogate or Rathergate) involved six purported documents critical of U.S. President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard in 1972–73.

    Four of these documents[1] were presented as authentic in a 60 Minutes II broadcast aired by CBS on September 8, 2004, less than two months before the 2004 presidential election, but it was later found that CBS had failed to authenticate the documents.[2][3][4] Subsequently, several typewriter and typography experts concluded the documents were forgeries.[5][6]

    Well, looks like Buzzfeed did not learn from history. Buzzfeed set the media world on fire on Friday with a story that appeared well sourced that claimed Donald Trump had directed his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal that never came to fruition. The mainstream media went into hyper impeachment drive.

    This was the nail in the Trump coffin as far as they were concerned. Trump was as good as dead.

    Then a funny thing happened. Robert Mueller's press guy issued an unprecedented statement calling the Buzzfeed story pure, unadulterated bullshit. Whoops!!

    The Trump is dead meme quickly evaporated. Why did Mueller do this? The answer is simple. Bill Barr.

    The soon to be new Attorney General is known as a man of impeccable integrity with a minimal tolerance for bullshit. Mueller, as an old friend of Barr, knew that he had to do something dramatic to distance himself and his staff from this toxic story.

    Once Barr is installed in office, stand by. The Department of Justice and the FBI will received the equivalent of a high powered enema. Both are sick institutions and need to have the feces flushed out.

    Jack , 19 hours ago

    "...Bill Barr. The soon to be new Attorney General is known as a man of impeccable integrity with a minimal tolerance for bullshit."

    Mr. Barr seems as swampy as they get. He played a key role in the mass surveillance of all Americans and is the classic beltway sophist who has done much to reinterpret the constitution eviscerating the Bill of Rights. His past actions don't make him a man of integrity unless of course being in service to the national security state is considered virtuous.

    I believe Mr. Johnson's optimism of Barr's nomination leading to a "high powered enema" at the DOJ & FBI is unfounded. IMO, none of the seditionists will be held to account. In any case POTUS Trump seems quite content with tweeting witch hunt rather than declassifying and ordering a prosecutor convene a grand jury and have Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and all the other putschists testify.

    Fred -> Jack , 12 hours ago
    "He played a key role in the mass surveillance of all Americans"

    He served under H.W. Bush who lost to Clinton. Obama did just what, beside get great protection from Brennan, Clapper, Comey and a list of others you haven't named yet. How many of of the FBI and DOJ's top leadership from the Obama administration have gotten fired and are being investigated for criminal conduct? What kind of support do you think the Trump administration was getting from those outstanding civil servants for the past two years?

    blue peacock -> Fred , 9 hours ago
    "What kind of support do you think the Trump administration was getting from those outstanding civil servants for the past two years?"

    Well, it is the Trump administration that nominated Sessions, Rosenstein and Wray and now Barr. How many of those fired have testified to a grand jury? They're nicely ensconced with their lucrative sinecures until the next Borg administration. Mueller has spent tens of millions in going after Trump campaign minions. Where is the witch hunt against Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Lynch, et al? Of course its not that POTUS has no agency here. He can order declassification and the appointment of a prosecutor with a stroke of pen. Tweeting however is more like his pace.

    Pat Lang Mod , a day ago
    Rather interviewed me in the library of the Army and Navy Club in DC at the height of the excitement over the obviously approaching US invasion of Iraq in 2002. At one point he asked me if the Bushies were going to invade Iraq. I told himthat should not even be a question. He did not believe me.
    Bill H , 10 hours ago
    The only difference is that Rather had some small degree of credibility before the incident in question. I don't believe that Buzzfeed has ever had a shred of credibility to anyone with the slightest ability to think.
    Taras77 , a day ago
    Enema works for me but reading reports on the analysis of Ohr's transcript, I'm not even sure an enema is going to be enough for the fbi. I think the only solution is liquidation.

    This is a tragedy for past good /honest fbi agents but the fbi currently is a pestilence on this country which claims to be a nation of laws.

    MP98 , a day ago
    Bill Barr clean out the DOJ? I wouldn't count on it. He is a member in good standing of the swamp

    [Jan 29, 2019] Guardian became Deep State Guardian

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The Guardian has lost all sense of proportion – mention Tommy Robinson and the entire staff through themselves to floor and roll round like dying flies – yet for when it comes to US neocons they go all misty eyed, redolent of a broody couple when they come across a particularly adorable baby. ..."
    "... I would wager a medium sum that Tisdall is on a payroll other than the Grauniad's, or he's an actual asset per Ulfkötte's books and media appearances. ..."
    "... George Bush spent his adult life organizing operations and wars that killed a few million people. Anyone who has spiritual beliefs must wonder how it is to die with so much killing on your record or conscience (if you have one). ..."
    "... That's something I've wondered about many times. If you review John McCain's actions and comments before he died, it seems these people don't have a conscience. ..."
    "... Reagan was primarily a mantle piece for the banking, oil and defense sectors to run wild. Is it really so hard to believe GHW Bush was running the National Security Council? It was a CIA wet dream come true (especially after the alligator-armed "investigations" of the 70's. ..."
    "... The Deep State Guardian. Why don't they just change their name to 'The Daily Thatcherite' and have done with it. ..."
    "... They should just show it's full title: The Guardian Of The Establishment ..."
    "... well, yeah. but for us mad people it goes deeper even than that: https://geopolitics.co/2018/12/02/in-memoriam-george-h-scherff-jr-aka-george-hw-bush-sr/ ..."
    Dec 22, 2018 | off-guardian.org

    Oslo - Norway, Dec 4, 2018

    Let's never forget George H W Bush's love for incubator babies. He loved fake incubator babies.

    The incubator baby actress wasn't just any 15 year old, she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Canada –

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/cqiq8P8dRtY?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

    Philpot, Dec 4, 2018
    British and most western media are either in the direct or indirect pay of their governments. What journalist can expose this for us? Any of you willing to make the biggest scoop of the 21st century? Tom Bradbury at ITN must be on the spook payroll, for starters? MI6 had foreign correspondents for years, but domestic mouthpieces must now be on the take too? All paid to demonise Russia and Putin.
    harry stotle, Dec 4, 2018

    The Guardian has lost all sense of proportion – mention Tommy Robinson and the entire staff through themselves to floor and roll round like dying flies – yet for when it comes to US neocons they go all misty eyed, redolent of a broody couple when they come across a particularly adorable baby.

    Simon 'white helmets' Tisdall is especially egregious – one can imagine him throwing darts at a picture of Putin while producing his latest homily to the murderous actions of gangsters like Bush and his crime family.

    Its hard not to despair now this has become the official face of Britains so-called liberal media.

    Yarkob, Dec 4, 2018
    I would wager a medium sum that Tisdall is on a payroll other than the Grauniad's, or he's an actual asset per Ulfkötte's books and media appearances. As with Michael White, with whom I had a very illuminating argument via email a few years back. He *is* an asset, not a journalist (and a massive dick, to boot)
    George cornell, Dec 4, 2018
    I thought the attitude of the Bush family to their fellow Americans was best illustrated by Barbara's response to the plight of the homeless victims of Katrina who had been transported to the Houston domed stadium. They spent their nights there sleeping on hard benches and when good ole Babs heard of it, she opined that they probably had never had it so good so why were they complaining. Could Mother Theresa have had greater generosity of spirit?
    Gekaufte Journalisten (bought journalism), Dec 4, 2018
    Not just one article, the awful Guardian is full of contents eulogising [yet another] mongrel of a president.

    But look at conservative media. The crazy Infowars.com described this Bush as an Anti-American Globalist and Traitor!! .. and zerohedge.com is celebrating: "The Evil Has Died" and "In 2016 he voted for Hillary Clinton, because the Deep State Swamp sticks together". https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-02/exploring-dark-side-bush-41

    Just tell me, who is the rabid neo-con right-wing rag that is glorifying wars and mass murderers?

    Norcal, Dec 4, 2018
    Speaking of neighbors you might appreciate this excellent Journalism by Robert Parry: https://consortiumnews.com/2018/12/03/bush-41s-october-surprise-denials-2/
    DunGroanin, Dec 4, 2018
    The late Robert Parry, sad to say. Maybe that now both the 'MacBeths' are stains on the tarmac – Parry's notes of the bloodstained legacy of that dynasty can finally be displayed? That Barbara was one cold blooded mother! Would have happily pulled a trigger on JFK, MLK herself (some think).

    Just about the whole century from the setup of the Fed, the two world wars, the depression, Hitler, Korea, Cuba all of it, had a a Bush hand in it. He was the self crowned Caesar having publicly executed the whole of Camelot and left us with a poison toad, reminds us how low the Bush's took the USA.

    David Eire, Dec 3, 2018
    George Bush spent his adult life organizing operations and wars that killed a few million people. Anyone who has spiritual beliefs must wonder how it is to die with so much killing on your record or conscience (if you have one).
    Loverat, Dec 4, 2018
    That's something I've wondered about many times. If you review John McCain's actions and comments before he died, it seems these people don't have a conscience. If you surround yourself with people of similar mindset and in a climate where war is considered obligatory for US Presidents, you go into self denial. Wars are probably like an addiction for these people and once you get to that stage you no longer have a conscience.

    During John McCain's funeral where all living ex-presidents were in attendance, someone remarked on Twitter, 'Quick, lock the church doors and hold the war crimes trial in the church!'. This was a far more realistic observation than the sickening McCain apologist BBC coverage we were subjected to.

    At the weekend I went to the place where Oliver Cromwell lived. There was an American tourist who told us she was shocked about Oliver Cromwell being dug up from his grave and his head stuck on a pike. She said it was gruesome. I was tempted to say that at least that was 350 years ago, and similar things are happening today in Iraq, Syria and Libya – all places where the US has instigated the chaos and supports the perpretators. I resisted the temptation.

    I note that Cromwell thought he was chosen by God to do what he did. But again that was in different times and there were some redeeming factors in what he did, Probably on par with Obama – who wreaked havoc on the Middle East but reached agreements on Iran and Cuba. Plus Obama looked cool while killing and droning.

    But what goes around comes around. I sense the pure evil involved in the current regime change wars, government, media etc will pay a heavy price – whether in this life or the next.

    mark, Dec 4, 2018
    The state controlled BBC has just done another puff piece on McCain saying what a splendid chap and great statesman and all round good egg he was.

    The MSM likes to slag off Vlad The Bad by droning on about how he was in the KGB. But Bush wasn't just IN the CIA, he was the BOSS of the CIA, at a time when hundreds of thousands of Central American peasant farmers and Indians were being killed by CIA trained and orchestrated death squads.

    Gezzah Potts, Dec 4, 2018
    Mark: jayzus Mark, don't you just want to projectile vomit when you see all this absolute bullshit, just straight out revising of history, just the lies, on and on . I was involved in a Central American solidarity group in the 1980s – early 90s here in Aussie, found out then all about U.S style 'democracatic values' and 'human rights concerns' and death squads and various fascists fully supported by the United States, and places like Guatemala and Nicaragua. Its all an illusion for 'polite society' and the gullible to believe in. Sigh
    mark, Dec 5, 2018
    I can't remember the exact figures but I think it was over 200,000 murdered in Guatemala out of a population of 4 million. It was the same story in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Colombia. And of course the CIA satrap Noriega was hauled off in chains when that country was invaded. But Uncle Sam is finally paying a price for his antics south of the border. Those societies were wrecked and brutalised beyond repair. There is now an unbelievably high murder rate of women in Guatemala. Millions of those people have sought some kind of refuge in the belly of the beast, causing an immigration crisis, with an illegal immigrant population that may be as high as 30 million. Hence all the uproar over Trump's wall. The immigration crisis was a factor in Trump's election, just as the tidal wave of migrants from the destroyed countries of the Middle East was a factor in Brexit. Cameron, Sarko and Clinton thought it was a spiffing idea and quite a wizard wheeze to bomb Libya back to the Stone Age. So we now have a Mad Max failed state complete with warlords and slave markets just across the Med. What goes around, comes around. You can't expect to export violence and mayhem abroad and remain immune to it at home.
    Gezzah Potts, Dec 5, 2018
    Mark: after Efrain Rios Montt seized power in a coup in Guatemala in 1982, US Ambassador Frederick Chapin declared that thanks to the coup of Rios Montt "the Guatemalan Govt has come out of the darkness into the light". That sums it up in one sentence, and you're probably aware of the mass killing and disappearances under his genocidal tyranny. Reagan kindly submitted that Rios Montt was 'getting a bum rap on human rights, the same Reagan who declared the Contra's were 'The moral equal of our founding fathers'. In El Salvador, the same mass slaughter, the same mass upheaval, and even murdering Archbishop Romero. You only need to look at what happened in Central & South America to understand what the United States really represents.
    Jen, Dec 4, 2018
    I would have bypassed the war crimes trial, locked the church and then built a moat stocked with crocodiles and piranhas around it.
    mark, Dec 4, 2018
    That's entirely right. People understandably despise and revile people like Brady and Hindley, Sutcliffe, Dahmer, Bundy and the like. But they killed a handful of people and were often very damaged individuals to begin with. And at least they did their own dirty work. Subhuman scum sucking filth like Bush, Bush 2, Obama, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Blair, Straw and Campbell are a thousand times worse. They kill millions without getting their hands dirty, and preen and posture as great statesmen and public servants, expecting deference and state funerals and puff piece obituaries from nauseating, loathsome, lickspittle media hacks like Tisdall.
    Caitlin Ni Chonaill, Dec 6, 2018
    You left out Kissinger and Albright.
    Gezzah Potts, Dec 3, 2018
    Nailed it Kit. The attempt at revionism and rewriting history by these craven creatures, these sycophantic slimebag shills for Imperialism and War and the Anglo Zionist Empire. They don't speak truth to power, they protect and grovel to the powerful. The eulogising and fawning of Bush was stomach churning, as it was for the arch Imperialist McCain when he croaked. Thank God for alternative news sites, and yeah Caitlin Johnston @ medium nailed it as well, as Fair Dinkum mentioned. Where's John Pilger when you need him?
    Badger Down, Dec 3, 2018
    GBH Bush's Highway of Death deserves mention. I'll spare you the pictures.
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=highway+of+death+desert+storm&t=h_&atb=v92-2_f&ia=web
    systemicfraud, Dec 3, 2018
    What no one seems to realize is that the VP often takes charge of the US National Security Council when POTUS is not able to attend meetings, which are held weekly. Under Eisenhower it was Richard Nixon who often took charge of the meetings -- Tim Weiner's book "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" gives some details on this. Reagan was primarily a mantle piece for the banking, oil and defense sectors to run wild. Is it really so hard to believe GHW Bush was running the National Security Council? It was a CIA wet dream come true (especially after the alligator-armed "investigations" of the 70's.
    Fair dinkum, Dec 3, 2018
    Caitlin sums it up: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/12/01/if-you-murdered-a-bunch-of-people-mass-murder-is-your-single-defining-legacy/
    Simon Hodges, Dec 3, 2018
    The Deep State Guardian. Why don't they just change their name to 'The Daily Thatcherite' and have done with it.
    Frankly Speaking, Dec 4, 2018
    They should just show it's full title: The Guardian Of The Establishment
    kevin morris, Dec 3, 2018
    'Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years' by Russ Baker -- a fascinating account of the Bush family's involvement in a great deal of nefarious activity. Bush senior is one of the few people who didn't remember where he was when Kennedy was shot. Baker puts him in Dallas.
    lysias, Dec 4, 2018
    Now that G.H.W. Bush hss died, is there anybody suspected of involvement in the JFK assassination still alive?
    kevin morris, Dec 4, 2018
    I don't know but as a fairly apolitical individual, I never much bothered with the Kennedy Assasination. All that changed when during the fiftieth anniversary, BBC Radio Four ran a program which included an interview with the Dallas police officer who was handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when he was shot by Jack Ruby. The consensus of that program was that the case was open shut and Oswald did it. Around that time, several newspapers in the UK featured articles claiming that Oswald acted alone.

    Whether or not anyone actively involved still lives, their descendants still do and the probable organising body too. There still appears to be determination in some quarters to spread disinformation about the case. Given that as long ago as the late seventies the House of Representatives Assassination Committee concluded that JFK's death was probably the consequence of a conspiracy, determination amongst the mainstream media to lay Kennedy's death at the hands of Oswald alone suggests that there is still determination that the truth never becomes public.

    Frankly Speaking, Dec 3, 2018
    Exactly what i was thinking!

    I'm sickened by the Guardian's and BBC's obedience to the US neocon project to seek, or create, and destroy "enemies" and whilst ignoring all the disgusting atrocities that arise as a consequence.

    The Guardian is not even worth the paper it's printed on. It's become The Guardian Of The Establishment rather than of the Truth which it used to proclaim.

    George cornell, Dec 4, 2018
    It is in danger of losing its budgie-cage-liner status. If budgies can talk they may refuse to evacuate on it. What kind of person maintains ties to such a a poor excuse for cage toiletry. The moral crunch time for their journalists (actually their opinionists) came and went a long time ago.
    Brutally Remastered, Dec 3, 2018
    What a great piece. My parents knew them in New York and they came over once and left behind an embossed packet of White House cigs. I asked my father (before he died) what he thought of them and all he ever said was he thought that Barbara was the intellect in the family.
    Bloody annoying, thanks Pater.
    Marianne Birkby, Dec 3, 2018
    From 2004

    "The induction of DU weapons in 1991 in Iraq broke a 46-year taboo. This Trojan Horse of nuclear war continues to be used more and more. DU remains radioactive longer than the age of the earth (estimated at 4.5 billion years). The long-term effects from over a decade of DU exposures are devastating. The increased quantities of radioactive material used in Afghanistan are 3 to 5 times greater than Iraq, 1991. In Iraq, 2003, they are already estimated to be 6 to 10 times 1991, and will travel through a larger area and affect many more people, babies and unborn. Countries within a 1000-mile radius of Baghdad and Kabul are being affected by radiation poisoning

    Badger Down, Dec 3, 2018
    "DU remains radioactive longer than [ ] 4.5 billion years." It's worse than that. It loses half of its radioactivity in that time. The good news is that that slow release means "D"U doesn't zap you much. The bad news is it's chemically toxic, like a heavy metal (which it is).
    nwwoods, Dec 3, 2018
    Also no mention of the body of circumstantial evidence linking Bush to JFK's murder, though Bush repeatedly insisted that he couldn't recall his whereabouts that day (I can precisely recall where I was, and I was 9 years old in 1963), in spite of the fact that solid documentary evidence exists that puts him in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963.
    Norcal, Dec 4, 2018
    The very first Google Search I did was this, (George H.W. Bush+November 22, 1963) and it yielded a page like the following link, which began my research into the JFK Assassination.

    http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=5420

    nomad, Dec 3, 2018

    well, yeah. but for us mad people it goes deeper even than that: https://geopolitics.co/2018/12/02/in-memoriam-george-h-scherff-jr-aka-george-hw-bush-sr/

    Bush Sr. : Crypto-Nazi patriarch and his disciples
    https://eclinik.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/barbara-bush-funeral-four-presidents-four-first-ladies.jpg?w=672&h=372&crop=1

    [Jan 29, 2019] FBI, CIA [supposedly] Told WaPo They Doubted Key Allegation In Steele Dossier but Wapo still run their own anti-Trump campaign popularizing Steele dossier.

    Hand of Brennan? Hand of MI6?
    From comments: "Miller also admits that the dossier's broad claims are more closely aligned with reality, but that the document breaks down once you focus on individual claims. " What?!?
    Notable quotes:
    "... FBI and CIA sources told a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter that they didn't believe a key claim contained in the "Steele Dossier ..."
    "... The Post 's Greg Miller told an audience at an October event that the FBI and CIA did not believe that former longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen visited Prague during the 2016 election to pay off Russia-linked hackers who stole emails from key Democrats, reports the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross. ..."
    "... Miller also admits that the dossier's broad claims are more closely aligned with reality, but that the document breaks down once you focus on individual claims. ..."
    "... Steele, using Kremlin sources, claimed in his dossier that Cohen and three associates went to Prague in August 2016 to meet with Kremlin officials for the purpose of discussing "deniable cash payments" made in secret so as to cover up "Moscow's secret liaison with the TRUMP team." ..."
    Dec 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    FBI and CIA sources told a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter that they didn't believe a key claim contained in the "Steele Dossier," the document the Obama FBI relied on to obtain a surveillance warrant on a member of the Trump campaign.

    The Post 's Greg Miller told an audience at an October event that the FBI and CIA did not believe that former longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen visited Prague during the 2016 election to pay off Russia-linked hackers who stole emails from key Democrats, reports the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross.

    "We've talked to sources at the FBI and the CIA and elsewhere -- they don't believe that ever happened," said Miller during the October event which aired Saturday on C-SPAN.

    We literally spent weeks and months trying to run down... there's an assertion in there that Michael Cohen went to Prague to settle payments that were needed at the end of the campaign. We sent reporters to every hotel in Prague, to all over the place trying to - just to try to figure out if he was ever there, and came away empty . -Greg Miller

    Ross notes that WaPo somehow failed to report this information, nor did Miller include this tidbit of narrative-killing information in his recent book, "The Apprentice: Trump, Russia, and the Subversion of American Democracy."

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/7GvXI61p21k

    Miller also admits that the dossier's broad claims are more closely aligned with reality, but that the document breaks down once you focus on individual claims.

    Steele, using Kremlin sources, claimed in his dossier that Cohen and three associates went to Prague in August 2016 to meet with Kremlin officials for the purpose of discussing "deniable cash payments" made in secret so as to cover up "Moscow's secret liaison with the TRUMP team."

    Cohen's alleged Prague visit captured attention largely because the former Trump fixer has vehemently denied it, and also because it would seem to be one of the easier claims in Steele's 35-page report to validate or invalidate.

    Debate over the salacious document was reignited when McClatchy reported April 15 that special counsel Robert Mueller had evidence Cohen visited Prague. No other news outlets have verified the reporting, and Cohen denied it at the time.

    Cohen last denied the dossier's allegations in late June, a period of time when he was gearing up to cooperate with prosecutors against President Donald Trump . Cohen served as a cooperating witness for prosecutors in both New York and the special counsel's office. - Daily Caller

    Cohen's attorney and longtime Clinton pal Lanny Davis vehemently denied on August 22, one day after Cohen pleaded guilty in his New York case - that Cohen had never been to Prague, telling Bloomberg " Thirteen references to Mr. Cohen are false in the dossier, but he has never been to Prague in his life ."

    youshallnotkill , 19 minutes ago link

    Trump never ceases to crack me up. While his (terrible) current lawyer, declares on TV that there was collusion but it just didn't last long, Trump calls his former lawyer/fixer at "Rat".

    This is just too funny, I mean this is the President of the United States calling his former personal lawyer a "Rat" which of course is a common mob term for a witness testifying against you.

    monkeyshine

    Of course it never happened, just like Manafort didn't make 3 trips to London to meet Julian Assange. These fictions were just used as a pretext for diving into the backgrounds of Trump's political supporters and find crimes to charge them with.

    The Cohen raid was particularly egregious, a likely violation of attorney-client privilege. Not suprisingly the American Bar Association is silent.

    brewing_it

    So here is a WaPo reporter saying they sent reporters to every hotel in Prague to find out if Cohen had been there, they spent weeks and weeks researching, interviewing, and nothing. What they are not saying is that they also spent shitloads of Bezo's money exploring all the other fake dossier claims.

    And nothing.....all you hillarytards have been completely scammed by, your pulses sent aflutter with clickbait and page views and thats it. So sorry you losers.

    Demologos

    Yeah, like rubles are worth anything outside of Russia. Gold on the other hand ...

    But seriously, you two should get a room. If you can't see the conspiracy in the Strzok/Page texts, the setup of Papadapoulous by the Brits, the phony FISA warrant using the FBI informant, the setup of General Flynn, and the seedy cast of characters in the DOJ breaking laws right and left, you should be checked for brain wave activity. You probably think the Russians paid for all of the above too. Go suck a bag of Russian dicks.

    [Jan 29, 2019] The disinformation campaign behind the allegations of Russian disinformation by Andre Damon

    Images removed
    Notable quotes:
    "... Throughout the day, the New York Times, the Washington Post and Google News all led with breathless stories about Russian efforts to "sway American opinion and divide the country" (in the words of the Times). The propaganda barrage was based on a set of reports submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee by organizations with close ties to the US state and intelligence apparatus. ..."
    "... Like countless other stories about alleged Russian "disinformation," Monday's media blast followed a script. ..."
    "... Washington Post ..."
    "... The first of two reports submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee, "The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency," was published by an organization known as New Knowledge, which purports to be a cybersecurity company, but whose primary public presence consists in advocacy for internet censorship. ..."
    "... Ryan Fox, the co-founder of New Knowledge and a co-author of the report, worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) for 15 years. New Knowledge's website notes that "prior to his civilian roles as a Counter Terrorism Fellow and NSA Representative European SIGINT partners, he served under US Joint Special Operation Command (JSOC) as a CNO Analyst for the US Army." His partner, the company's CEO, is Jonathon Morgan, who has published for the state-connected Brookings Institution and worked as a special advisor to the State Department. ..."
    "... The second report, "The IRA and Political Polarization in the United States," published under the imprimatur of Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project, in collaboration with the social media analysis firm Graphika, was likewise authored by figures with deep connections to the state and the military. Graphika staffer Camille Francois, a co-author, served as chief technical officer to the French prime minister and worked at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). ..."
    "... Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, like Warner a member of the Intelligence Committee, appeared on the Public Broadcasting evening news program to chastise Facebook and demand that it be more "aggressive" in shutting down "disinformation." ..."
    "... Commenting on the New Knowledge report, the New York Times ..."
    "... The orchestrated hysteria over "disinformation" is itself a gigantic disinformation campaign, and the narrative about the sinister spread of "fake news" is an example of real "fake news." ..."
    "... First all the anti Russian hysteria is concentrated in MSM media, completely absent from grassroots political discourse across kitchen table as it is dominated by economy-stupid daily struggle reality ( as Dems internal pols showed) , and is methodically debunked by most of alternative media except for blatant political hacks who fuel the nonsense on internet. ..."
    "... The major reason for all they prefapaos and war mongering is as WSWS numerous times documented is because oligarchic policies of mass pauperization of population resulted in skyrocketing of class struggle and they just pull old worn down card of nationalism and war, Luxemburg warned over hundred years ago. ..."
    "... "The new "proof" of Russian subversion is then used to demand even more sweeping measures to censor the internet, in the name of securing "our democracy." With each successive wave of stories, foreign "disinformation" is more directly identified with opposition to social inequality, police brutality and the capitalist system." ..."
    "... It's the "War on Terrorism" brought to a whole new level . But it's the same class (in the service of the same class interests) bringing it. ..."
    "... "It is highly significant that the posts cited by the reports as responsible for manipulating public opinion and undermining American democracy are predominantly left-wing in character." Against the same material interests of the working class. "These left-wing pages expressed "antiwar opposition" and "objections to US involvement in another country's affairs." ..."
    "... The more things change, the more they stay the same: "The Black Panther party, without question, remains the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." -- J. Edgar Hoover, 1969 ..."
    "... All Russia is doing ( if it even is Russia) is holding up a big mirror to the US, and big military industrial recipients like Mark Warner hate it. The criteria should be truth itself not the source of the truth. ..."
    "... I simply call it NeoMcCarthyism propaganda. What they as me being disinformed, lol, then they would have had to start on me when I was in grammar school in the early to mid 1960s, and I don't recall there being a social media way back then. I formed own opinion way back then when, on my own I decided what I was getting the 6o'clock news was B.S. ..."
    "... The USA is a hopeless war mongering terrorist state. It should, and must be, coming to an end. And, there are signs that the USA with all its weapons and lies is creeping toward that situation. ..."
    "... The fact that Russia and China are starting to get rid of the worthless USA dollar is a major blow to the USA. The latest appointments of the neocon Bolton, and the CIA blowhard Pompous Pompeo is an indication that the only thing USA has to offer to the world is threats of war by these, and all their filthy war dogs! ..."
    "... America survival is dependent upon its lies and misinformation it delivers each day through cable news and sports which also fetishsize militarism. The only situation that lies on the horizon is more of the same. ..."
    "... America doesn't have "defense" spending. We have offense spending. ..."
    Dec 18, 2018 | www.unz.com

    Amid new exposures of Wall Street criminality, the White House's mass imprisonment of immigrant children, and growing demands by US workers for decent wages, the US media was preoccupied Monday with the supposed efforts of Russian President Vladimir Putin to make people believe that life in America is not a paradise.

    Throughout the day, the New York Times, the Washington Post and Google News all led with breathless stories about Russian efforts to "sway American opinion and divide the country" (in the words of the Times). The propaganda barrage was based on a set of reports submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee by organizations with close ties to the US state and intelligence apparatus.

    Like countless other stories about alleged Russian "disinformation," Monday's media blast followed a script. Reports and testimony from nominally independent organizations, which are, in reality, mouthpieces for the intelligence agencies, are commissioned by Congress. They are "leaked" to the New York Times, which publishes a front-page article promoting them as "independent," scientific and authoritative, without, however, presenting any serious analysis of the actual evidence or the social and political forces behind the studies. The reports in the Times (or the Washington Post) are then cited by countless media outlets and politicians as new and irrefutable "evidence" of Russian "meddling" and "fake news."

    The new "proof" of Russian subversion is then used to demand even more sweeping measures to censor the internet, in the name of securing "our democracy." With each successive wave of stories, foreign "disinformation" is more directly identified with opposition to social inequality, police brutality and the capitalist system.

    The first of two reports submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee, "The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency," was published by an organization known as New Knowledge, which purports to be a cybersecurity company, but whose primary public presence consists in advocacy for internet censorship.

    Ryan Fox, the co-founder of New Knowledge and a co-author of the report, worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) for 15 years. New Knowledge's website notes that "prior to his civilian roles as a Counter Terrorism Fellow and NSA Representative European SIGINT partners, he served under US Joint Special Operation Command (JSOC) as a CNO Analyst for the US Army." His partner, the company's CEO, is Jonathon Morgan, who has published for the state-connected Brookings Institution and worked as a special advisor to the State Department.

    New Knowledge was established with a $1.9 million grant from Moonshots Capital. Moonshots' founders are Kelly Perdew, who, according to the biography on the company's website, "served in the US Army as a military intelligence officer," and Craig Cummings, who "spent 17 years in the Army, most of that time as an intelligence officer serving in support of the National Security Agency."

    The second report, "The IRA and Political Polarization in the United States," published under the imprimatur of Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project, in collaboration with the social media analysis firm Graphika, was likewise authored by figures with deep connections to the state and the military. Graphika staffer Camille Francois, a co-author, served as chief technical officer to the French prime minister and worked at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

    In line with the by now well-established playbook, Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the leading advocate of internet censorship in the US Senate, took to the airwaves to proclaim that these "independent" reports were a "wake up call." He continued: "These attacks against our country were much more comprehensive, calculating and widespread than previously revealed." He added that "addressing this challenge" was "going to require some much-needed and long-overdue guardrails when it comes to social media."

    Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, like Warner a member of the Intelligence Committee, appeared on the Public Broadcasting evening news program to chastise Facebook and demand that it be more "aggressive" in shutting down "disinformation."

    In regard to their content, both reports are highly dubious and clearly politically motivated. The raw data is based on information turned over to the Senate Intelligence Committee last year by Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter. After initially rejecting as "crazy" claims that "Russian meddling" helped swing the election to Trump, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, together with the leaders of other major technology companies, provided a list of accounts that they asserted-without providing any details on how this conclusion was reached-were controlled by Russian operatives.

    Even if one were to assume that this data and the content of the reports were accurate, whatever Russia may or may not have done pales in comparison to the operations of US intelligence agencies all over the world, including within the United States itself, not to mention the billions of dollars spent by the corporate and financial elite to manipulate US elections and determine their outcome.

    The claim, moreover, that Russian Twitter and Facebook posts are responsible for social discontent in the United States-the most unequal country in the world-is beyond ludicrous.

    It is highly significant that the posts cited by the reports as responsible for manipulating public opinion and undermining American democracy are predominantly left-wing in character.

    The New Knowledge report attempts to muddle this reality by categorizing content opposing police brutality as neither left-wing or right-wing, but "Black." It states that of 62 Facebook pages allegedly tied to Russia, "Overall, 30 targeted Black audiences and amassed 1,187,810 followers; 25 targeted the Right and amassed 1,446,588 followers, and 7 targeted the Left and amassed 689,045 followers."

    The content of the accounts labeled by New Knowledge as targeting "Black audiences" is made clear in a subsequent section dealing with the video streaming service YouTube. Of 1,063 videos turned over to the committee, the majority "related to the police and focused on police abuses."

    Commenting on the New Knowledge report, the New York Times declared that the Russian government's "tactics echo Soviet propaganda efforts from decades ago that often highlighted racism and racial conflict in the United States."

    Here, the Timesdemonstrates the utterly reactionary pedigree of the campaign against "Russian meddling." During the American civil rights movement, Southern segregationists claimed that African American workers were being stirred up by "communists" and "outside agitators." The strivings of African Americans for equal rights were denounced as a Soviet plot.

    Now, too, the deeply-felt hatred by American workers and youth of all races for police brutality and the epidemic of police murders is presented as a "Russian" plot to "sow division" among "Black audiences."

    "Left-leaning [Russian-inspired] pages," the report states, "criticized mainstream, established Democratic leaders as corporatists or too close to neo-cons, and promoted Green Party and Democratic Socialist themes." These left-wing pages expressed "antiwar opposition" and "objections to US involvement in another country's affairs."

    The clear intent of the campaign by Warner and his co-thinkers is to de-legitimize such views as the product of "foreign meddling," and to effectively criminalize them. Their concern is not with Russia, but with the American working class.

    As the year 2018 concludes, the intensification of the global economic crisis and heightening of war preparations are accompanied by a renewed upsurge of the class struggle throughout the world.

    The American ruling elite has made clear its intention to respond to this growing movement of the working class with censorship and repression. Writing about the recent "yellow vest" protests in France, the New York Timeswarned that "the power of social media to quickly mobilize mass anger, without any mechanism for dialogue or restraint, is a danger to which a liberal democracy cannot succumb." The implication of such statements is clear: the campaign to censor the internet must be intensified.

    The orchestrated hysteria over "disinformation" is itself a gigantic disinformation campaign, and the narrative about the sinister spread of "fake news" is an example of real "fake news."

    The ruling class and the corporate media are frustrated that their claims have had little impact on popular consciousness, and very few people really believe that Russia is responsible for social discontent in the United States. But this only intensifies their efforts to uphold and strengthen the grip of the "guardians" of information-that is, themselves.

    The growth of working class opposition provides the means to counter these efforts to censor the internet. As workers enter into struggle, they must take up the fight to defend freedom of expression on the internet as inseparable from the fight for social equality.

    Vivek Jain • 2 days ago

    see the brilliant Margaret Kimberley's article (and give some love to the BAR by subscribing and supporting the BAR): US and UK Psy-op collusion https://blackagendareport.c...
    Kalen • 3 days ago
    Another great report but I would like to push back on myth not necessarily proliferated in this report but widely present in the media including alternative media about the McCarthyite anti Russian propaganda.

    One of myths is that still too many Americans believe the MSM blatant lies even without any shred of evidence.

    First all the anti Russian hysteria is concentrated in MSM media, completely absent from grassroots political discourse across kitchen table as it is dominated by economy-stupid daily struggle reality ( as Dems internal pols showed) , and is methodically debunked by most of alternative media except for blatant political hacks who fuel the nonsense on internet.

    It is the very independent media which in some part like WSWS became in fact media of record diligently analyzing not as much lies themselves, although they do, easily debunking them but to analyzing context of that public mostly black propaganda campaign and what all those tabloid like productions including #metoo aim to obfuscate which is mostly preprogrammed economic collapse of working class as well as peddling and funding fascism under guise of all used up trick of threat of foreign enemy and unity under flag of nationalism.

    In fact this lack of true conviction one way or another among Americans is simply due to, already observed by Mills, Tocqueville referenced by Marx and in last three decades formulated by Chomsky, deep despotic totalitarian culture that underlies seemingly open society of US as many Americans are conditioned to believe what they are told to believe without any intellectual curiosity of what it is they must believe in today as they truly believe in money and power only, associated with whatever political or religious mumbo jumbo like Russia Gate they do not bother to remember as long as their service to rulers paychecks arrive regularity.

    Many understand it as simple confession of state religion of Americanism and (similarly to exceptionalism of Orthodox Jews or Hegel or Hitler) exceptionalism of American Nation, itself nothing but state religion nonentity used to stir up internal divisions between those called by rulers Americans and others called by rullers un-American.

    Such a curious division not existing in any other country founded on inclusive nationalism, is simply because there is no reality or premise of American nation beyond those fantasies described in lying school textbooks.

    And hence it is that totalitarian culture that MSM peddles as a primary counterrevolutionary measure of $billion a day propaganda aimed at suppression of class struggle that itself repudiated that culture of submission to ruling elites for culture of unity among all working class in US and elsewhere rejecting nationalism and exceptionalism and embracing internationalism devoid of foreign enemies instead.

    By the same token another myth that such belligerent anti Russia and anti Chinese propaganda by the West in any way weakens grip of local rulers of global oligarchy (what ISO peddles) is also repudiated as their very political legitimacy is founded on nationalism as a tool against class struggle and socialist revolution that would dispose of their power and political base of saviors of nations via its inherent creed of internationalism.

    In fact in spite of normal family infighting none of members of global oligarchy seems to be even slightly hurt so far and even they appreciate such US belligerence as incentive to consolidate their local powers around nationalist fervent of suppose siege while for example exports of China, Russia and even Iran to US increased since 2014 and oligarchy of those countries while inconvenied are well compensated by loss of their visible roles in western corporates while they maintain control by

    The major reason for all they prefapaos and war mongering is as WSWS numerous times documented is because oligarchic policies of mass pauperization of population resulted in skyrocketing of class struggle and they just pull old worn down card of nationalism and war, Luxemburg warned over hundred years ago.

    Let's no fall for that bogus foreign boogeyman threats as this is all about vicious and brutal class war waged over working class by global oligarchy. And for real boogyman mask we should check Buffet, Soros, Gates, Bezos, Brin, Cook Ellison or Musk or Trump lower drawer of their executive desks, not abroad as other bogeymen in Russia China and EU will be taken care of by our working class brothers and sisters when socialist revolution comes, very shortly.

    Greg • 3 days ago
    "The new "proof" of Russian subversion is then used to demand even more sweeping measures to censor the internet, in the name of securing "our democracy." With each successive wave of stories, foreign "disinformation" is more directly identified with opposition to social inequality, police brutality and the capitalist system."

    It's the "War on Terrorism" brought to a whole new level . But it's the same class (in the service of the same class interests) bringing it.

    "It is highly significant that the posts cited by the reports as responsible for manipulating public opinion and undermining American democracy are predominantly left-wing in character." Against the same material interests of the working class. "These left-wing pages expressed "antiwar opposition" and "objections to US involvement in another country's affairs."

    jet1685 • 3 days ago
    "The content of the accounts labeled by New Knowledge as targeting 'Black audiences' is made clear in a subsequent section dealing with the video streaming service YouTube. Of 1,063 videos turned over to the committee, the majority 'related to the police and focused on police abuses.'

    Commenting on the New Knowledge report, the New York Times declared that the Russian government's 'tactics echo Soviet propaganda efforts from decades ago that often highlighted racism and racial conflict in the United States.' "

    The more things change, the more they stay the same: "The Black Panther party, without question, remains the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." -- J. Edgar Hoover, 1969

    Elliott Vernon jet1685 • 3 days ago
    and of course the NAACP drinks the Kool-Aid: https://www.buzzfeednews.co...
    Jim Bergren • 3 days ago
    The American Public's reaction to the lying disinformation campaign of the capitalist "press" should be as "The Dude's" reaction to Sam Elliot's. Question in the great American classic film, "The Big Lebowski": Sam: "Tell me Dude; do you really have to use that bad language?" The Dude: " WTF are you talking about?"
    Me at home • 3 days ago
    Who even believes their nonsense?

    Let's just picket the HQ of this New Knowledge and demand that they shut down or retract their lies. Those who can't attend, spam their FB or corporate contact page with a Photoshop of their logo and have it read something like "Old Lies, paid for by the CIA". Or, register similar domain names and create a similar looking websites to theirs, but with the modified logos exposing their leaders as cronies, containing links to the news they try to censor and then link the copycat sites to all your friends. Best bet is if we can hack them and replace everything with our stuff every now and then. Force Google's algorithm to ban their own ally or admit that our copycat sites have more popularity.

    Zalamander • 3 days ago
    All Russia is doing ( if it even is Russia) is holding up a big mirror to the US, and big military industrial recipients like Mark Warner hate it. The criteria should be truth itself not the source of the truth.
    Ort • 3 days ago
    To add to Vivek Jain's welcome recommendations of "Moon of Alabama"'s ongoing incisive analysis of the massive Western anti-Russian propaganda campaign, here's still another MOA post:

    "How Putin's Russia Weaponizes X"

    MOA commendably complements WSWS's continuing coverage of this calculated, rabid capitalist-government Russophobia-inducing Big Lie orgy.

    Sebouh80 • 3 days ago
    The rising social discontent in America is against both Capitalism and to the oligarchical class that controls and funds both parties.
    Kathy Gray • 4 days ago
    I simply call it NeoMcCarthyism propaganda. What they as me being disinformed, lol, then they would have had to start on me when I was in grammar school in the early to mid 1960s, and I don't recall there being a social media way back then. I formed own opinion way back then when, on my own I decided what I was getting the 6o'clock news was B.S.
    Trevor • 4 days ago
    Here's a list of the top things I would absolutely love if not for those evil Russians whispering in my ear:
    1. Stagnant wages. I have been working for the same crap pay for over 10 years.
    2. Ever-increasing rent. Unlike my wages, my rent increases every single year.
    3. Health care with a $6500 deductible.

    4) The constant warning threats from the spokespeople of the ruling-class that Social Security will soon run out of money. Funny how they never issue warning threats that the military will soon run out of money.

    5) Never-ending war. Oh man, I love death and destruction so much! We all do!

    6) $1.5 trillion tax cuts for the super-rich. They are so deserving.

    7) Our lord and savior Hillary Clinton and her love for the super-rich, imperialist wars, savage killing, and our military killing machine.

    8) Doing absolutely nothing about climate change as utter catastrophe draws ever closer. I don't want to save humanity. I just want our richest capitalists to keep raking in huge yearly incomes.

    9) The fact that in our beloved democracy, every major policy passed is always a boon for the super-rich 1% and a total screwing up the backside for the 99%. Now THAT'S true democracy. We don't want those evil Russians getting in the way of that.

    10) The prison industrial complex and the fact that capitalists have found brilliant ways to get rich off of war, killing people, and putting millions of people in prison for decades. In fact, I read an article yesterday that points out that capitalists are already busy investigating genius ways to get rich off of climate change and the potential deaths of billions of people.

    11) The fact that I have no pension; that even as I've worked a labor job for the same company for 20 years, I'm classified as an "independent contractor", which basically means that when they don't need me, I sit home and don't get paid while receiving no benefits. Hey, who wants to survive retirement anyway? What lazy, greedy worker wants vacation pay? I sure don't. I just want to leave this world knowing that rich people got a lot richer from my having been here.

    Indeed, if not for evil Russians, I would be totally oblivious to all of the screwing up the ass I get from our universally-beloved American capitalist daddies. That's right! None of that would have ever occurred to me. Nope. Damn you Russia! Damn you all to hell!

    jb • 4 days ago
    Oh yes and the Yellow Vest protests are now being attributed to Russian control/influence. So yes the left is being targeted, to be blamed overall, down the line. Because we all know Russia is still run by the Bolsheviks!
    Elliott Vernon • 4 days ago
    You'll notice that New Knowledge -- about as Orwellian a name as can be -- brags about its connections to the military-intelligence apparatus as though it were a good thing. We're supposed to think that makes them credible. Scary.
    lee le brigand Elliott Vernon • 19 hours ago
    it's a good thing for them, isn't it ? but for us continue the horrors of war and lack of rent money : a psychological projection from the obtuse neo-fascist elites, but also the propaganda they're trained in, the elites all believe in, and it will be effective with us because we are stupid, we are the vietnam peasant again ,reveling in the primitve of past centuries, and so we will believe ! we must believe for we are not them --
    and good comment : the word 'Scary' at the end resonates
    Charlotte Ruse Elliott Vernon • 3 days ago
    The other Orwellian aspect is that the intelligence agencies are the Democratic Party's new best friend. Back in the 70's the Church Committee investigated the unlawful infiltration of the CIA in the mainstream media. Now it's welcomed with open arms. We've come along way baby into a reactionary right-wing political system which is no longer even a duopoly. It's a a one party system controlled by the military/ security/ surveillance state.
    Eve Elliott Vernon • 4 days ago
    As is the theme of the upper middle class liberal TDS, a sudden, unthinking, blind loyalty to and worship of the intelligence agencies and characters with blood soaked hands from the depths of the swamp like Muller and Hayden and Bush. Anything, anyone to desperately cling to, to protect them from owning up to true nature of their beloved status quo, and the shadowy sources of their class privilege. Such are the lengths one goes to to justify the unjustifiable and defend the indefensible when the other choice is self reflection and responsibility.
    Charles • 4 days ago
    So important that WSWS is doing the work of exposing this propaganda attempt to create a moral panic about Russian meddling, as a means to justify the censorship of the internet. One thing I'm sure of: academics will be buying the New York Times' and Democratic Party's claims lock, stock, and barrel and will be further amplifying them. And any attempt to argue with this within the universities will lead to one being oneself labeled as a peddler of Russian influence. It's a total closed loop.
    anation61 Charles • 3 days ago
    Yes...but consider this: the fact that ruling class front people (like Mark Warner) are reduced to making such transparently unsound arguments-based on such completely relativist notions of truth-betrays just how afraid and weak they are becoming.
    Yes, they keep running the same circular scam -- running the same weak data from the intelligence community through this or that shiny new think-tank, thence to the media, culminating in proposed legislation by some co-opted politicians -- it's a strategy of diminishing returns.
    At this point, they merely reflect ever-greater light back upon their own intellectual and political bankruptcy.
    And, meanwhile, revolutionary social forces continue to grow.
    Viva la revolucion!
    lee le brigand anation61 • 3 days ago
    yeah ! and Mark Warner ? what is he, some kind of nano-robot, a creature whipped up in nano-technology labs, some AI fabricated to be a moron, whose only purpose is devotion to the intelligence agencies and to Capital ? if he had to, can he tie his own shoelaces in the mornings ? on his athletic shoes ? i look at him and think : major trauma there -- and he murders us and all those caught in our Imperialist wars !
    Peter L. • 4 days ago
    Excellent antidote to mainstream corporate propaganda. Would suggest supplement with : "Racist 'Russians' Targeted African-Americans; in 2016 election ploy, report claims" @https:// www.rt.com (Also, just as an editing note, WSWS might want to clarify the notation "CNO"; according to the rt article it stands for "Computer Network Officer".)
    Skip • 4 days ago
    The only people that they are fooling is themselves.... and most likely not even that....

    They haven't come and said the posts are not true...they just say that you should not believe them because they are propaganda. That's really a bad strategy.

    You know what would help the capitalist cause? Making life in America more equal. But that's not on your plate .

    Charlotte Ruse • 4 days ago
    'Reports and testimony from nominally independent organizations, which are, in reality, mouthpieces for the intelligence agencies, are commissioned by Congress. They are "leaked" to the New York Times, which publishes a front-page article promoting them as "independent," scientific and authoritative, without, however, presenting any serious analysis of the actual evidence or the social and political forces behind the studies. The reports in the Times (or the Washington Post) are then cited by countless media outlets and politicians as new and irrefutable "evidence" of Russian "meddling" and "fake news."

    This is the method that's always used to demonize political figures or a leader of a sovereign country which the intelligence agencies have targeted for elimination. It's an insidious but clever way to influence public opinion. All mainstream media news proliferates the same nonstop propaganda using each other as sources to substantiate a CIA fable.

    All these efforts will intensify prior to the Dems taking control of the House in January. It's like watching the last phase of a fireworks display as the pyrotechnic crescendo reaches it apex. Trump's impeachment might be imminent, but internet censorship will have a greater and longer lasting impact on the remaining vestiges of our democracy.

    Who D. Who • 4 days ago
    Thank you, Mr. Damon, for showing us what proper journalism looks like. Unfortunately not enough people will read this excellent exposé, and will simply assume that all the fuss has some basis in reality, while our right to the truth suffers further erosion.

    I am endlessly amazed at how many of my friends and colleagues are blinded by their Dem partisanship and unwilling to see how dangerous this conscious and blatant manipulation of the facts is to our chances of preserving a relatively open society.

    I will post this piece everywhere I can and hope for the best.

    lee le brigand Who D. Who • 3 days ago
    For me, this theme, this Russian propaganda theme, is infantile, and nothing of this is of interest to those who work for a living, as opposed to the elites: in all my life riding close to politics in Washington DC, never has the elite class presented to our country such an immature and juvenile thesis, such an outrageous and laughable spectacle of projection, such a certitude of vision in which the vision is absurd, irrelevant, with the seeming simple logic of a child in her belief that some bear speaks to her, but these are adults ! do we laugh ? do we scorn ? do we hate ? yes, all 3, but do these elite politicians and editors at the Times, do they really believe in talking bears ? fascists wallow in their propaganda --
    blessthebeasts lee le brigand • 2 days ago
    I don't think they actually believe this BS but they believe that the public will believe it! As you said, it is ridiculous and infantile but they obviously think the power of propaganda will prevail. They don't realize they are becoming more irrelevant and ludicrous with each new "bombshell." People have more important things on their minds. Like survival.
    Ed Hightower • 4 days ago
    Very interesting and important analysis. This perspective really unravels the rationales behind this aggressive censorship drive.
    Jack413 • 4 days ago
    Thanks for this important anaylisis of what the ruling class is thinking though what amazes me is that "Russian Interference" is the only argument these highly educated people can come up with. With the fall of the Soviet Union the Capitalists were in a position to further advance their cause which they did brutally and without mercy. They were like kids taking over a candy store repeatedly gorging themselves and sharing none of it. In fact the Oligarchs began an assault on the working class all over the world and the crisis of inequality is seething and bubbling over to open revolt.

    That they used the fight against fascism by Captain America as an example of Russian interference shows the true nature of these Rulers,corrupt,incompetent and total reactionaries.

    I can't stand to read any of those papers but I'm glad someone does. The reporters for WSWS who read the NYT are like that guy Mike on the show "Dirty Jobs" where he takes on the nastiest jobs in America. To immerse yourself in their caldron of lies is truly a Dirty Job and you folks should get a Purple Heart for the wounds you've incurred.

    After reading about the attack on the tune"Baby it's cold outside" and similar articles may I suggest the WSWS start a new section "Socialist News of the Weird" as the maneuvers of the bourgeois though dangerous empty and delusional are truly weird.

    Charlotte Ruse Jack413 • 3 days ago
    A special holiday gift just for you. https://www.youtube.com/wat...
    Ron Ruggieri Jack413 • 4 days ago
    An excerpt from a World Socialist Web Site 2010 obituary tribute to Howard Zinn, author of " A People's History of the United States " ( by Tom Eley ) :

    " People's History grew out of, and in turn contributed to, a growing skepticism of the democratic pretensions of the American ruling class -- particularly among the youth. These characteristics of Zinn's work earned him the hatred of those who wish to see college and high school curriculum more tightly controlled; after Zinn's death, right-wing ex-radicals David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh penned columns attacking him for exposing truths about the US government to a mass audience ".

    I read that presently David Horowitz is glorifying President Donald Trump in his latest " kick-liberal-ass " book. The Tom Eley article on Howard Zinn was fair minded and excellent.

    Ron Ruggieri Jack413 • 4 days ago
    "With the fall of the Soviet Union the Capitalists were in a position to further advance their cause which they did brutally and without mercy "
    And they got moral support from not a few ( I guess ) ex-Stalinists. I recall reading one David Horowitz's book :" The Destructive Generation " - a bitter denunciation of his own past. Never being devoted to Stalinism, I thought that Horowitz and hundreds like him were spitting in public on the very IDEA and IDEAL of socialism. To be sure , the Trotskyists do not have the blood of the Stalinist counter-revolution on their hands.

    The last time I checked David Horowitz had evolved into a far right belligerent Zionist interviewed on many radio and TV programs. At last he found found true freedom in Apartheid Israel == not quite a " workers' paradise ".

    In order to survive what else can the world plutocracy do but play divide and conquer games ? Today the sentencing of the " treasonous " American general, Michael Flynn, will tell us how much Imperial America needs an " evil " enemy. In a universe where everything changes only the military and the police are forever ?

    denis ross • 4 days ago
    Welcome to "Nineteen Eighty Four".
    Carolyn Zaremba denis ross • 3 days ago
    It's deja vu all over again.
    Raycomeau • 4 days ago
    The USA is a hopeless war mongering terrorist state. It should, and must be, coming to an end. And, there are signs that the USA with all its weapons and lies is creeping toward that situation.

    The fact that Russia and China are starting to get rid of the worthless USA dollar is a major blow to the USA. The latest appointments of the neocon Bolton, and the CIA blowhard Pompous Pompeo is an indication that the only thing USA has to offer to the world is threats of war by these, and all their filthy war dogs!

    The Democratic Party has lost its way, and sanity, by living with the burned out one trick pony diatribe that Russia interfered and meddled into the USA election. CNN should be censured and fined millions for promoting this deceit every hour of every day. It is amazing to watch the stunned budgies (would be newscasters) on CNN trying to outdo each other in front of their masters Wolf Blitzer et al as they revel in babbling the lies about Russia and China while praising the lies of the USA in its march to WW111.

    Marla Raycomeau • 4 days ago
    "The USA is a hopeless war mongering terrorist state. It should, and must be, coming to an end. And, there are signs that the USA with all its weapons and lies is creeping toward that situation."

    Nice platitude but what signs are those? Appears to me this current administration and the Democrats have given more money to defense wasting er, I mean spending than ever before and both parties are itching for a war with Iran. So what signs?

    America survival is dependent upon its lies and misinformation it delivers each day through cable news and sports which also fetishsize militarism. The only situation that lies on the horizon is more of the same.

    Trevor Marla • 3 days ago
    America doesn't have "defense" spending. We have offense spending.
    Vivek Jain • 4 days ago
    see also: Newly Released 'Integrity Initiative' Papers Include Proposal For Large Disinformation Campaigns https://www.moonofalabama.o...

    [Jan 25, 2019] MSM Begs For Trust After BuzzFeedNews Debacle by Caitlin Johnstone

    Notable quotes:
    "... CaitlinJohnstone.com ..."
    "... Washington Post ..."
    "... a Russian election ..."
    "... The mainstream media absolutely is the enemy of the people; just because Trump says it doesn't mean it's not true. ..."
    "... Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers ..."
    Jan 20, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    On Thursday BuzzFeedNews delivered the latest "bombshell" Russia-gate report to fizzle within 24 hours of its publication, one in a long series of wrong Russia-gate stories that have the media begging for forgiveness, says Caitlin Johnstone.

    By Caitlin Johnstone CaitlinJohnstone.com

    Following what The Washington Post has described as "the highest-profile misstep yet for a news organization during a period of heightened and intense scrutiny of the press," mass media representatives are now flailing desperately for an argument as to why people should continue to place their trust in mainstream news outlets.

    On Thursday BuzzFeedNews delivered the latest "bombshell" Russiagate report to fizzle within 24 hours of its publication, a pattern that is now so consistent that I've personally made a practice of declining to comment on such stories until a day or two after their release. "BOOM!" tweets were issued by #Resistance pundits on Twitter, "If true this means X, Y and Z" bloviations were made on mass media punditry panels, and for about 20 hours Russiagaters everywhere were riding the high of their lives, giddy with the news that President Trump had committed an impeachable felony by ordering Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a proposed Trump office tower in Moscow, a proposal which died within weeks and the Kremlin never touched .

    There was reason enough already for any reasonable person to refrain from frenzied celebration, including the fact that the story's two authors, Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier, were giving the press two very different accounts of the information they'd based it on, with Cormier telling CNN that he had not personally seen the evidence underlying his report and Leopold telling MSNBC that he had. Both Leopold and Cormier, for the record, have already previously suffered a Russiagate faceplant with the clickbait viral story that Russia had financed the 2016 election, burying the fact that it was a Russian election .

    Then the entire story came crashing down when Mueller's office took the extremely rare step of issuing an unequivocal statement that the Buzzfeed story was wrong, writing simply, "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the special counsel's office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's congressional testimony are not accurate."

    According to journalist and economic analyst Doug Henwood, the print New York Times covered the BuzzFeedNews report on its front page when the story broke, but the report on Mueller's correction the next day was shoved back to page 11 . This appalling journalistic malpractice makes it very funny that the NYT's Wajahat Ali had the gall to tweet , "Unlike the Trump administration, journalists are fact checking and willing to correct the record if the Buzzfeed story is found inaccurate. Not really the actions of a deep state and enemy of the people, right?"

    This is the behavior of a media class that is interested in selling narratives, not reporting truth. And yet the mass media talking heads are all telling us today that we must continue to trust them.

    "Those trying to tar all media today aren't interested in improving journalism but protecting themselves," tweeted NBC's Chuck Todd. "There's a lot more accountability in media these days than in our politics. We know we live in a glass house, we hope the folks we cover are as self aware."

    More accountability in media than in politics, Chuck? Really? Accountability to whom? Your advertisers? Your plutocratic owners? Certainly not to the people whose minds you are paid exorbitant sums to influence; there are no public elections for the leadership of the mass media.

    "Mueller didn't do the media any favors tonight, and he did do the president one," griped the odious Chris Cuomo on CNN. "Because as you saw with Rudy Giuliani and as I'm sure you'll see with the president himself, this allows them to say 'You can't believe it! You can't believe what you read, you can't believe what you hear! You can only believe us. Even the Special Counsel says that the media doesn't get it right.'"

    "The larger message that a lot of people are going to take from this story is that the news media are a bunch of leftist liars who are dying to get the president, and they're willing to lie to do it, and I don't think that's true" said Jeffrey Toobin on a CNN panel , adding "I just think this is a bad day for us."

    "It does reinforce bad stereotypes about the news media," said Brian Stelter on the same CNN panel. "I am desperate as a media reporter to always say to the audience, judge folks individually and judge brands individually. Don't fall for what these politicians out there want you to do. They want you to think we're all crooked. We're not. But Buzzfeed now, now the onus is on Buzzfeed."

    CNN, for the record, has been guilty of an arguably even more embarrassing Russiagate flub than BuzzFeedNews 's when they wrongly reported that Donald Trump Jr had had access to WikiLeaks' DNC email archives prior to their 2016 publication, an error that was hilariously due to to the simple misreading of an email date by multiple people.

    The mass media, including pro-Trump mass media like Fox News, absolutely deserves to be distrusted. It has earned that distrust. It had earned that distrust already with its constant promotion of imperialist wars and an oligarch-friendly status quo, and it has earned it even more with its frenzied promotion of a narrative engineered to manufacture consent for a preexisting agenda to shove Russia off the world stage.

    The mainstream media absolutely is the enemy of the people; just because Trump says it doesn't mean it's not true. The only reason people don't rise up and use the power of their numbers to force the much-needed changes that need to happen in our world is because they are being propagandized to accept the status quo day in and day out by the mass media's endless cultural engineering project. They are the reason why wars go unopposed, why third parties never gain traction, why people consent to money hemorrhaging upward to the wealthiest of the wealthy while everyone else struggles to survive. The sooner people wake up from the perverse narrative matrix of the plutocratic media, the better.

    Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium . Follow her work on Facebook , Twitter , or her website . She has a podcast and a new book " Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers ." This article was re-published with permission.

    Michael , January 22, 2019 at 12:41 pm

    The Russiagate stories from MSM and the hilarious entertainment of Warner and Schiff's excited proclaimations in response have destroyed what little credibility these "journalists" have. Now they've crossed a line, manufacturing malicious lies about high school kids (possibly for wearing MAGA hats?) While the US allows a lot of leeway in slandering politicians and public figures, making up fake news stories about kids (and everyone today has cell phones for validating stories) should come back to bite them in a big way:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVvpVRJ-NH4&fbclid=IwAR28LjuvnE7iZog76GSAZUoF4PU2WZagstazlYWsgqyQ5XBSMAg7c8_Dk10

    https://pjmedia.com/trending/lawyer-for-covington-catholic-hs-families-threatens-lawsuits-against-media-unless-they-retract-false-stories/

    Brian James , January 21, 2019 at 10:39 pm

    March 19, 2017 The CIA's 60-Year History of Fake News How the Deep State Corrupted Many American Writers

    Whitney's new book, "Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World's Best Writers," explores how the CIA influenced acclaimed writers and publications during the Cold War to produce subtly anti-communist material. During the interview, Scheer and Whitney discuss these manipulations and how the CIA controlled major news agencies and respected literary publications (such as the Paris Review).

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46688.htm

    KiwiAntz , January 21, 2019 at 8:06 pm

    The MSM doesn't deserve respect or any sort of public trust which they have destroyed, due to their own Poltical bias & massive credibility issues? They are like the boy who cried Wolf when there was no Wolf? The MSM has cried Wolf, time & time again & people are now, tone deaf to their protestations, lies & retractions, hence their plummeting ratings & viewership? Its always a Bombshell announcement that's not backed by any factual evidence inly unnamed anonymous sources which we are expected to believe, then they make a retraction that's hidden, then they try to dispose of the original ridiculous News video or walkback the print article so no one can see the original Broadcast or newsprint lies? And Buzzfeed is a well known, fake fabrication of a website that can't be taken at face value, they are a joke! I never watch or read MSM media anymore, its just propagandist nonsense, & you'll be amazed at the meditative peace of mind & clarity you obtain by not reading or viewing their garbage!

    Pft , January 21, 2019 at 6:53 pm

    Maybe Mueller, aka Mr Cover up, is on Trumps side. After all Trump just appointed his best buddy Barr as AG

    Its all about fake wrestling IMO. Just distraction and entertainment to take peoples eyes off the real issues

    O Society , January 21, 2019 at 4:28 pm

    Here's attorney Sharyl Attkisson with her list of 67 media manufactured stories:

    https://opensociet.org/2019/01/21/67-media-mistakes-in-the-trump-era-the-definitive-list-3/

    O Society , January 21, 2019 at 3:42 pm

    Here's a list of 50 RussiaGate manufactured dramas from Doug Hatlem:

    https://opensociet.org/2019/01/21/russiagates-top-50-greatest-hits-stories-retracted-corrected-and-just-plain-wronged-2/

    AnneR , January 21, 2019 at 9:52 am

    Thank you Ms Johnstone for another excellent piece.

    The MSM – both here and in the UK is totally Orwellian Newspeak. And while most of it is privately owned by a small handful of the multi-rich, on each side of the ocean there is state-supported media. In the UK the BBC (its World Service too) is wholly state-supported, via licence fees. Here NPR-PBS runs on a mixture of funding, including federal (tax-payer monies) and corporate dollars. Without alternative media (one of the few things about which to be thankful for the internet) one's thinking, one's worldview would be completely captive to the never-ending propaganda.

    "Leftist," "the Left wing," "socialist" – these words are bandied about freely as descriptors of the (so-called) Dem party by both the Demrats and Reptiles demonstrating clearly that most Americans (the overwhelming majority by seems of things) haven't a bloody clue what these terms used to mean, to instantiate.

    From this vantage these terms have been reduced to all but utter meaningless (likely deliberately so). Nowadays they appear to designate (wink, wink) those who (Demrat supporters largely speaking) from their merit-worthy, bourgeois eyries (sorry, Brit spelling) diverting the attention of the "unwashed" from the serious soci-economic matters afflicting them, the lower half of the population, toward those "progressive" talking points of "intersectionality." This is what now apparently constitutes the "left" in the mainstream, truly right-wing, neo-liberal, neo-con Demrat party. The mild "New Deal-ish" stuff emanating from Bernie and AOC (in order to once again save capitalism from the "ignorant herd"?) is socialism lite and MIC supporting on the quiet.

    As someone whose late husband used to call "the Last Leninist," I strongly object to the (deliberate) misuse of the terms "left" in all its forms and "socialist" to describe ANY Demrat politician or their supporters. Only when they renounce capitalism, especially imperialist-corporate-capitalism, and work toward an economy-polity that is based on worker cooperatives, that has as its foundational and integral reality, "From each according to [their] ability, to each according to [their] need," will they be worthy of the the descriptor "left/socialist."

    Taras 77 , January 21, 2019 at 1:05 am

    This article is spot on and is among several "out there" with the list just keeps increasing almost exponentially.

    This article has at least 40 instances with his twitter feed substantially more than that. And still the press says trust us-the melt down should continue until they have some sense of shame and embarassment. The screen grabs of the over paid clowns from CNN and MSNBC still giggling all the way to the bank does not indicate that is going to happen any time soon.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-20/definitive-list-usuk-media-russiagate-fake-stories

    David G , January 21, 2019 at 12:07 am

    Not disputing anything Caitlin Johnstone says here, or in any way gainsaying the malignant intent and effect of the Russia-gate hoax being spewed all over us nonstop by the Dems and the media, HOWEVER:

    There is poetic justice that Donald Trump – who built his fortune* and succeeded* in business* and TV entertainment/politics wholly by lying and betraying the confidence others had placed in him and repeatedly wriggling away from the consequences – may finally be laid low by a slander worthy of his own authorship, and has been reduced to proclaiming the simple truth ("no collusion!") like any sucker, to the disbelief and mockery of the "classy" people whose acceptance he has always craved.

    His bafflement that this is what they're getting him on, and now is when they've decided to stop buying his bullshit, is very enjoyable to bad-hearted people like me.

    * Obviously all these terms require massive qualification in Trump's case, but by his own standards he's had a pretty good 40-year run.

    michael , January 21, 2019 at 7:28 am

    Actually it's more libel than slander, there is a legal distinction. And political figures rightly do not protection from libel laws (except maybe in the UK). The difference between a politician lying, which has always been the norm, and "journalists" making up stories (or advancing those of our Intelligence Agencies, now legal with the gutting of Smith Mundt) should be obvious. Making it worse, the MSM wants to censor any real information. As Glenn Greenwald noted, if these stories were mistakes (which happen), there would be roughly the same number in favor of Trump. Overturning the results of elections by the #resistance just pushes America deeper into Banana Republic land. No one can trust the top government bureaucrats who have become partisan Establishment supporters or their cheerleader MSM where "investigative journalism" is a bad phrase (unless it is lies made up to bring down an Elected President).

    KiwiAntz , January 21, 2019 at 7:51 pm

    Michael you comment regarding America as a"deeper in Banana Republic"? IT IS a Banana Republic hence its rating of #25 on the Worlds Democracy rating scale as a Flawed Democracy? More like a failed Democracy & I doubt whether its a Democracy at all? It's a Banana Republic with monkeys running the show!

    bardamu , January 20, 2019 at 11:06 pm

    O Society , January 20, 2019 at 11:00 pm

    For Donald Trump, the truth is irrelevant. He says whatever he believes will get him what he wants in any given moment. Words are a tool whose utility resides in whether or not they work on their audience, not whether or not they correspond in any meaningful way to reality.

    However, Trump rubs Americans' noses in one indisputable fact over and over: our media tell the lies which sell the clicks and shares and likes and retweets. Much of the narrative we are sold in America is nonsense. The criterion for success is advertising dollars. Thus, we grow stoopider by the minute.

    https://opensociet.org/2019/01/20/buzzfeeds-big-scoop-and-the-medias-giant-factual-loophole/

    Tom Kath , January 20, 2019 at 7:55 pm

    I suppose propaganda very successfully relies on the old truth that "People are most assured and certain about that of which they are most ignorant".

    Maxwell Quest , January 20, 2019 at 11:30 pm

    Tom, we had an interesting discussion about this topic last year. It's called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It's also known as the "Confident Idiot" and "Climbing Mt. Stupid":

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123855220000056

    I'm sure it plays a role in the success of propaganda, but in my opinion the Dunning-Kruger Effect is just one of the many symptoms of the limitations of emotional-based thinking – a limited form of thinking that is easily overruled by either positive or negative emotions. In this case, Trump lovers and Trump haters are the least able to think clearly and objectively about the Russiagate controversy.

    Another contributing factor is a lack of life experience. Almost everyone is easily hoodwinked right out of the gate, but for those that are able to learn from their mistakes it gets progressively harder to fool them after they've been around the block a few times. Sadly, these learners only accounts for a small percentage, the majority refuse to take any ownership for their mistakes, and therefore remain victims.

    Anarcissie , January 21, 2019 at 3:12 pm

    Actually, I read not too long ago that the better informed people, those with the most facts, are the most assured that their opinions are correct, and the least likely to change their minds. This is because they choose to believe and think about those facts which accord with their existing opinions. The syndrome seems to occur regardless of ideology.

    polistra , January 20, 2019 at 4:59 pm

    Caitlin is underestimating the people. It's not that they CONSENT to all of this crap; they're just realistic. They know that nothing they can do will change the crap. Revolution always makes things even worse.

    Tom Ratliff , January 21, 2019 at 10:44 am

    "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." – Karl Rove

    Substitute "lie" for "act" in the above quote and it becomes clear why the liars aren't apologizing. Control of the narrative ensures victory in the court of public opinion (mass media), which in provides pretexts for an array of plundering activities. If the liars aren't busy lying, then it gives someone else the opportunity to control the narrative. For these sociopaths, lying is a valuable means to an end -- part of a winning strategy –, not a personal faux pas that might bring one shame.

    [Jan 24, 2019] The New Gray Lady is a Comfort Woman for the War Party

    Jan 15, 2019 | original.antiwar.com

    ... ... ...

    Why, it is apparently the following, which is surely a red hot smoking gun. That is, one that condemns the FBI, not Trump; and shows that the NYT , which once courageously published the Pentagon Papers and had earned the above sobriquet for its journalistic stateliness, sense of responsibility and possession of high virtue, has degenerated into a War Party shill – not to say the journalistic equivalent of a comfort woman:

    Mr. Trump had caught the attention of FBI counterintelligence agents when he called on Russia during a campaign news conference in July 2016 to hack into the emails of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump had refused to criticize Russia on the campaign trail, praising President Vladimir V. Putin. And investigators had watched with alarm as the Republican Party softened its convention platform on the Ukraine crisis in a way that seemed to benefit Russia.

    Well, for crying out loud!

    Any journalist worth his salt would know that Trump's July 2016 shout-out to the Russians was a campaign joke. At best, it was merely an attempt to cleverly state in one more way the running GOP theme about Hillary's missing 30,000 emails. How many times before that had Sean Hannity delivered his riff about Hillary's alleged hammer-smashing of 13 devices and acid-washing with BleachBit of the missing emails?

    [Jan 24, 2019] Putin is routinely described as a murderer and a thug in the western MSM. With no evidence is provided to support this. Ditto the claims he has billions syphoned away in some offshore haven.

    Jan 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org

    grandstand says Jan, 16, 2019

    Whatever the truth, and I become daily more distrustful of the media that regularly attack Putin in this way, I doubt very much if his crimes in this regard come anywhere near those of Bush, Cheney, Blair, Cameron, Obama, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.
    mark says Jan, 16, 2019
    This is just routinely parroted by the MSM and equally routinely expanded upon by them. Organs like the Guardian/ BBC casually announce that Putin has stolen £40 billion (sometimes this is casually raised to £200 billion, which would make him the richest man on the planet and people like Gates/ Buffett poor as church mice by comparison.)Occasionally someone does ask for details, like bank transfers, property holdings or whatever.

    Nothing is ever forthcoming. All they come up with is that he has some nice Italian suits and a nice gold watch that cost him $1,200.

    Apart from that, these allegations must be true because some financial fraudster mate of Khordokovsky who sought refuge in the US said so. Sounds pretty convincing to us here in the MSM – what more evidence do you need? Of course Putin is just a kleptocratic thug and James Bond cartoon villain who has people murdered purely for the fun of it.

    George cornel l says Jan, 16, 2019
    Very late in the game I finally saw the documentary Icarus recently. I had passed it up because I thought I could predict that it would be rampantly dishonest, and an exercise in propaganda. It having received an Academy award seemed to be an independent confirmation of my prejudice.

    Well, I was right for once. It was disgraceful, and the most common image in it was of Putin, accompanied by feeble ad hominem claims, without any counterpoints of any kind. So the core issue, cheating at the Olympics, turned out to be presented with no context at all, for the anti-Russian smear job. No mention of Balco, Carl Lewis, Marion Jones, and just a few seconds of an unidentified Lance Armstrong.

    So now we see awards for propaganda. The Americans don't do fairness or integrity, but now they don't even pretend.

    mark says Jan, 17, 2019
    They gave an Integrity in Journalism award to the Ukraine journalist who faked his own death.
    Fair dinkum says Jan, 16, 2019
    Tolkien also comes to mind here.
    Us 'hobbits' are treated as inferior beings by the 'Saurons', 'Nazguls' and 'Gollums' of this world.
    Gandalf ?
    We're waiting
    Francis Lee says Jan, 16, 2019
    Comments were true and apposite enough, but it's all been said really. But given that this is largely an information war the truth needs continuously asserting.

    Our opponents – the Guardian (minitru on thames) the New York Post (Pravda on the Hudson) the Washington Post (Izvestia on the Potomac) – sole tactic is constant repetition, this should be our tactic also but with evidence to back it up.

    We need to constantly expand our readership and challenge the lunatic narrative of the PTB. We are now in a pivotal historical moment. If we fail it will be Hunger Games.

    Loverat says Jan, 16, 2019
    Francis Lee

    I agree about the repetition but do you want to know what I think? I think you need to play MSM and others a little bit at their own game. They don't back anything up with evidence. They write short pieces of fiction as statements of fact. Yet they are believed.

    The thing is all 'our' evidence is already out there just by taking a look. (e.g White Helmets will take you 15 minutes to doubt that narrative) You have an army of researchers/journalists (e.g Kit Klarenberg, Vanessa Beeley etc) posting detailed evidence out there. A lot of the independent/academic articles I read are well backed up with evidence but the problem is to someone not up to speed, is less inclined to read a long article backed up by detailed reasoning and evidence within it.

    I think this article is clear and credible and prompts those new to independent thought to look at different sources of information.

    So perhaps more independent writing, which is creative setting out the facts in an intelligent way as above and invite (through links) the reader to look at the evidence which is plentiful, at their leisure.

    Humour is another good way of spreading the message. The CJ Hopkins piece a few days ago very effective.

    [Jan 24, 2019] The Skripal case is a classic illustration of Coleridge's willing suspension of disbelief, Roh's magical realism and Orwell's doublethink (the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct) all rolled into one

    Skripals case reminds us that the Red Brigades in Italy and Baader-Meinhof in Germany were entirely bogus and controlled intelligence operations. It's the same story with the "Symbionese Liberation Army" in the US. Then there's Gladio and Northwoods.
    Realpolitik has become surrealpolitik. In Skripals case Russia was immediately blamed, despite the fact an investigation had barely begun That instantly suggests british intelligence services participation in Skripals poisoning.
    Were are currently the father and daughter who were allegedly poisoned is unknown. Why they are in hiding is also unknown. But such quetions are never raised by MSM.
    In the Middle Ages, everybody knew that witches, fairies, pixies and elves existed and were responsible for everything that went wrong in life, like the cows or the pigs falling sick or the hens stopping laying. But round about the early 1600s, judges and juries started demanding evidence and acquitting defendants in witch trials. They accepted their existence, but still wanted to see some evidence. The folk in the 1600s were probably more sceptical and less credulous than our friends like Harding at the Guardian today.
    The public can be persuaded to accept almost anything providing the story chimes with deep seated fears or prejudices, such as Russians threatening 'our way of life' (fears and prejudices continually stoked by the media of course)
    Jan 16, 2019 | off-guardian.org

    Skripal. The final illustration is the alleged of poisoning with "Novichok" of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in March 2018. This was immediately blamed on Russia, again before an investigation had been concluded, followed by sanctions, the expulsion of Russian diplomats (including by Australia) and a general tirade of abuse against Russia in general and President Putin in particular.

    The Skripal case is a classic illustration of Coleridge's willing suspension of disbelief, Roh's magical realism and Orwell's doublethink (the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct) all rolled into one.

    Rob Slane ( www.theblogmire.com 9 January 2019) has brilliantly deconstructed the many logical, scientific and political absurdities in the official story. One will wait in vain for the merest hint of this demolition in the mainstream media.

    One possible reason for this non-coverage of the actual evidence and instead a non-stop barrage of disinformation, suppression of evidence and manipulation of the public can be found in the activities of a shadowy organisation known as the Institute for Statecraft, and one of its projects known as the Integrity Initiative (sic).

    Fresh revelations are emerging about this project on a daily basis and a proper analysis must await developments. Suffice to note at this point that the Integrity Initiative is known to be funded by the United Kingdom government, ostensibly to counter 'Russian disinformation.' It is rather a major project to spread falsehoods about Russia through "clusters" of journalists working in mainstream media outlets.

    The latter have gone beyond the willing suspension of disbelief and instead actively promote disinformation they know to be untrue. It is not only potential embarrassment that prevents this story getting the attention it deserves. It is a strong suspicion, no more than that at the time of writing, that a D Notice has been issued in the United Kingdom and Australia.

    The effect has been to prevent discussion of what is an extraordinary campaign to mislead the public, attack opposition politicians and the alternative media, and generally undermine what used to be regarded as a free press.

    That some of the same personnel involved in the Integrity Initiative are also involved in the Skripal matter (itself subject to a D Notice) reinforces the belief that this project has wider tentacles than originally thought .

    Paul Carline says Jan, 18, 2019
    Major credit due to U.K. Column News who originally researched and broke the story about the Integrity Initiative. Loading...
    vexarb says Jan, 17, 2019
    The Integrity Initiative

    http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-on-the-integrity-initiative

    Syrian Observatory For Human Wrongs says Jan, 17, 2019
    "If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't." Lewis Carroll.

    "Integrity Initiative"
    "United Nations"
    "Free Press"
    "Liberal"
    "American Intelligence"

    Syrian Observatory For Human Wrongs says Jan, 17, 2019
    All you need to know ; )

    https://syrianobservatoryforhumanwrongs.wordpress.com/2018/07/09/an-idiots-guide-to-the-skripal-affair/

    [Jan 24, 2019] The Integrity Initiative web site has been scrubbed and their twitter acct is now by invitation only

    Jan 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Bart Hansen , Jan 23, 2019 12:03:08 PM | link

    RT is reporting that the Integrity Initiative web site has been scrubbed and their twitter acct is now by invitation only.

    [Jan 22, 2019] War with Russia From Putin Ukraine to Trump Russiagate

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Professor Cohen is indeed a patriot of the highest order. The American and "Globalists" elites, particularly the dysfunctional United Kingdom, are engaging in a war of nerves with Russia. This war, which could turn nuclear for reasons discussed in this important book, is of no benefit to any person or nation. ..."
    Jan 22, 2019 | www.amazon.com

    P. Philips 5.0 out of 5 stars December 6, 2018

    "In a Time of Universal Deceit -- Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act"

    "In a Time of Universal Deceit -- Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act" is a well known quotation (but probably not of George Orwell). And in telling the truth about Russia and that the current "war of nerves" is not in the interests of either the American People or national security, Professor Cohen in this book has in fact done a revolutionary act.

    Like a denizen of Plato's cave, or being in the film the Matrix, most people have no idea what the truth is. And the questions raised by Professor Cohen are a great service in the cause of the truth. As Professor Cohen writes in his introduction To His Readers:

    "My scholarly work -- my biography of Nikolai Bukharin and essays collected in Rethinking the Soviet Experience and Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives, for example -- has always been controversial because it has been what scholars term "revisionist" -- reconsiderations, based on new research and perspectives, of prevailing interpretations of Soviet and post-Soviet Russian history. But the "controversy" surrounding me since 2014, mostly in reaction to the contents of this book, has been different -- inspired by usually vacuous, defamatory assaults on me as "Putin's No. 1 American Apologist," "Best Friend," and the like. I never respond specifically to these slurs because they offer no truly substantive criticism of my arguments, only ad hominem attacks. Instead, I argue, as readers will see in the first section, that I am a patriot of American national security, that the orthodox policies my assailants promote are gravely endangering our security, and that therefore we -- I and others they assail -- are patriotic heretics. Here too readers can judge."

    Cohen, Stephen F.. War with Russia (Kindle Locations 131-139). Hot Books. Kindle Edition.

    Professor Cohen is indeed a patriot of the highest order. The American and "Globalists" elites, particularly the dysfunctional United Kingdom, are engaging in a war of nerves with Russia. This war, which could turn nuclear for reasons discussed in this important book, is of no benefit to any person or nation.

    Indeed, with the hysteria on "climate change" isn't it odd that other than Professor Cohen's voice, there are no prominent figures warning of the devastation that nuclear war would bring?

    If you are a viewer of one of the legacy media outlets, be it Cable Television networks, with the exception of Tucker Carlson on Fox who has Professor Cohen as a frequent guest, or newspapers such as The New York Times, you have been exposed to falsehoods by remarkably ignorant individuals; ignorant of history, of the true nature of Russia (which defeated the Nazis in Europe at a loss of millions of lives) and most important, of actual military experience. America is neither an invincible or exceptional nation. And for those familiar with terminology of ancient history, it appears the so-called elites are suffering from hubris.

    I cannot recommend Professor Cohen's work with sufficient superlatives; his arguments are erudite, clearly stated, supported by the facts and ultimately irrefutable. If enough people find Professor Cohen's work and raise their voices to their oblivious politicians and profiteers from war to stop further confrontation between Russia and America, then this book has served a noble purpose.

    If nothing else, educate yourself by reading this work to discover what the *truth* is. And the truth is something sacred.

    America and the world owe Professor Cohen a great debt. "Blessed are the peace makers..."

    jn 5.0 out of 5 stars January 18, 2019

    This book examines the senseless and dangerous demonizing of Russia and Putin

    This is a compelling book that documents and examines the senseless and dangerous demonizing of Russia and Putin. Unfortunately, the elites in Washington and mass media are not likely to read this book. Their minds are closed. I read this book because I was hoping for an explanation about the cause of the new cold war with Russia. Although the root cause of the new cold war is beyond the scope of this book, the book documents baseless accusations that grew in frequency and intensity until all opposition was silenced. The book documents the dangerous triumph of group think.

    skeptic

    "On my planet, the evidence linking Putin to the assassination of Litvinecko, Nemtsov, and Politkovskaya and the attempt on the Skripals is strong and consistent with spending his formative years in the KGB. The naive view from Cohen's planet is presented on p 6 and 170."

    Ukrainian history. That's evident to any attentive reader. I just want to state that Ukrainian EuroMaydan was a color revolution which exploited the anger of population against the corrupt neoliberal government of Yanukovich (with Biden as the best friend, and Paul Manafort as the election advisor) to install even more neoliberal and more corrupt government of Poroshenko and cut Ukraine from Russia. The process that was probably inevitable in the long run (so called Baltic path), but that was forcefully accelerated. Everything was taken from the Gene Sharp textbook. And Ukrainians suffered greatly as a result, with the standard of living dropping to around $2 a day level -- essentially Central Africa level.

    The fact is that the EU acted as a predator trying to get into Ukraine markets and displace Russia. While the USA neocons (Nuland and Co) staged the coup using Ukrainian nationalists as a ram, ignoring the fact that Yanukovich would be voted out in six months anyway (his popularity was in single digits, like popularity of Poroshenko those days ;-). The fact that Obama administration desperately wanted to weaken Russia at the expense of Ukrainians eludes you. I would blame Nuland for the loss of Crimea and the civil war in Donbass.

    Poor Ukrainians again became the victim of geopolitical games by big powers. No that they are completely blameless, but still...

    It looks like you inhabit a very cold populated exclusively with neocons planet called "Russiagate." So Professor Cohen really lives on another planet. And probably you should drink less American exceptionalism Kool-Aid.

    [Jan 22, 2019] At this point the Collusion Narrative is like the Pee Tape

    And Mueller probably called called Pee Taper.
    Jan 22, 2019 | www.theglobeandmail.com

    DW1 , 1 week ago

    while we are waiting for the final FINAL report of the endless interminable Mueller investigation, perhaps best to review the Mueller report of Feb. 16 2018, and the conclusions it drew: it identified 13 Russian nationals who were part of an organized effort based in the Internet Research Agency. Those 13 Russians were named and indicted; if they step foot in any Western space, they will be arrested and charged.

    Oh, and the Americans? none named, none charged, none involved, concludes the Mueller team. This likely presages the wet firecracker of the Mueller final report, and its look into the media echo chamber's bottomless rumour mill.

    just as good as you , 1 week ago

    You seem to have forgotten the 33 indictments of 'Americans'. You seem to have forgotten the 4 guilty pleas, and the 7 jail terms.

    Yada yada yada.

    Moseby1 , 1 week ago

    Who do you think you're kidding?

    Paul Manafort
    Rick Gates
    George Papadopoulos
    Michael Flynn
    Michael Cohen
    Richard Pinedo
    Alex Van Der Zwaan
    Konstantin Killmnik

    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/20/17031772/mueller-indictments-grand-jury

    just as good as you , 1 week ago

    Kudos. I was just getting tired of typing the list, hence the "Yada yada yada".

    Thanks.

    Andy_Waxman1 , 1 week ago

    Some of it happened pre-campaign, some of it is seriously dumb (Manafort not reporting that he had a contract with the Ukraine), but much is Crimes of the Investigation - that is, a crime caused by investigation. 'You told us you met with him Tuesday, but you met with him Friday, you lied to the FBI, federal crime!' Like John Kelly. The actual meeting wasn't a crime, though. Someone else tried to dangle a poll, "most of which was public," said the NYT. Double dumb.

    At this point the Collusion Narrative is like the Pee Tape, waaaaay more Liberal Wishful Fantasy than proof. So far, there's no there there. Just endless breathless NYT CNN and Globe headlines. 'Nuclear war this weekend with NK!' Remember that one? Right wing Birthers were fringe. Left wing Haters are MSM. Big hat, no cattle. Waiting for Bob M.

    [Jan 22, 2019] At the end of the day, Trump Tower Moscow has never happened - and Trump himself has turned out to be the worst Putin Puppet ever after slapping heavy sanctions on Moscow and selling Ukraine weapons that the Obama administration wouldn t.

    Jan 22, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    BuzzFeed Throws Hail Mary: Publishes New Trump Tower Moscow Docs

    After last week's embarrassing debacle in which special counsel Robert Mueller issued a rare statement calling bullshit on BuzzFeed over their Trump Tower Moscow report that Trump ordered his attorney Michael Cohen to lie about the timeline, the beleaguered news outlet has taken a second bite at the apple with a new report (oddly written by a completely different journalist) refuting comments by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani that "no plans were ever made" for the project.

    Not so fast Rudy ...

    In their new report, BuzzFeed claims that the Trump Tower Moscow idea was "led by Trump's then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his associate Felix Sater" despite writing in November that Sater both thought of and spearheaded the idea , turning to Cohen to "get it off the ground" while overpromising that he could seal the deal through his Russian connections that never panned out.

    Sater, a brash real estate promoter who pleaded guilty to racketeering in 1998 and became a longtime asset to US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, had worked with the Trump Organization on deals in the past and said he came up with the idea. Cohen, Sater recalled, said, "Great idea." - BuzzFeed

    Today's "gotcha," however is that the project had progressed much further than Giuliani claimed on Monday when he told the New Yorker "no plans were ever made. There were no drafts. Nothing in the file."

    Not true , writes BuzzFeed' s Azeen Ghorayshi.

    The president and his representatives have dismissed the project as little more than a notion -- a rough plan led by Trump's then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his associate Felix Sater, of which Trump and his family said they were only loosely aware as the election campaign gathered pace.

    On Monday, his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani , said "the proposal was in the earliest stage," and he went on to tell the New Yorker that "no plans were ever made. There were no drafts. Nothing in the file."

    However, hundreds of pages of business documents, emails, text messages, and architectural plans, obtained by BuzzFeed News over a year of reporting, tell a very different story. Trump Tower Moscow was a richly imagined vision of upscale splendor on the banks of the Moscow River. - BuzzFeed

    Trump Tower Moscow hasn't exactly been a secret, admits BuzzFeed , noting that Donald Trump tweeted about it following the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, and writing in his book The Art of the Deal that he had been trying to expand his business empire into Russia for over 30 years.

    me title=

    Over the last week, Giuliani admitted to the New York Times that the Trump Tower Moscow discussions were "going on from the day I announced to the day I won," Giuliani quoted Trump as saying. He then walked back those comments , claiming in a statement: "My recent statements about discussions during the 2016 campaign between Michael Cohen and then-candidate Donald Trump about a potential Trump Moscow 'project' were hypothetical and not based on conversations I had with the President."

    In other words, Giuliani is a walking gaffe machine - which we already knew.

    That said, the Trump Tower moscow project appears to have been much more developed than anyone in the Trump camp has acknowledged.

    According to a finalized letter of intent signed by Donald Trump on Oct. 28, 2015, the tower would have "approximately 250 first class, luxury residential condominiums."

    It would be located in Moscow City, a former industrial complex outside of the city center that has since been converted into an ambitious commercial district clustered with several of the tallest skyscrapers in Europe.

    Its hotel portion would feature "approximately 15 floors" and contain "not fewer than 150 hotel rooms," the letter of intent stated. The building would feature a luxury spa and fitness center, a commercial component "consistent with the overall luxury level of the Property," and an office space "consistent with Class A luxury office properties," as well as "luxury" parking. - BuzzFeed

    Also in the plan was "The Spa By Ivanka Trump," as well as a $50 million penthouse suite that they would give to Russian President Vladimir Putin. "My idea was to give a $50 million penthouse to Putin and charge $250 million more for the rest of the units," Sater told BuzzFeed in November. "All the oligarchs would line up to live in the same building as Putin."

    Show Trump the money

    The Trump Organization stood to make $4 million on an up-front payment for the deal; 25% of which would be paid upon execution of the licensing agreement, another quarter when they finalized a location, and the other half a week before the project's groundbreaking - or two years after the execution of the licensing agreement, whichever came first.

    From there on out, Trump's company would also get a cut of all the condominium sales at the tower, the agreement stated. From the total selling price of each unit, his company would get 5% for sales up to $100 million, 4% for the next bracket up to $250 million, 3% for anything between that and $500 million, 2% for anything up to $1 billion, and thereafter, a solid cut of 1%. For commercial and office spaces, it would get a 3% cut of all the rent. It'd get another 3% of sales on food and beverages, spa and fitness center use, and conference fees.

    The deal also stipulated how much Trump's management company would get paid for running operations at Trump Tower Moscow over 25 years. For the first five years, it would get 3% of all revenue generated by operating the hotel per month. Over the next two decades, it'd receive a flat 4%. In addition, the management company would also receive a monthly "incentive fee" -- an additional 20% of the gross operating profit for the hotel -- subject to annual negotiations. - BuzzFeed

    At the end of the day, Trump Tower Moscow has never happened - and Trump himself has turned out to be the worst "Putin Puppet" ever after slapping heavy sanctions on Moscow and selling Ukraine weapons that the Obama administration wouldn't.

    "Let's make this happen and build a Trump Moscow," wrote Sater to Cohen in October of 2015. "And possibly fix relations between the countries by showing everyone that commerce & business are much better and more practical than politics. Help world peace and make a lot of money, I would say that's a great lifetime goal for us to go after."

    Teeter , 6 minutes ago link

    Talk about trying to make something out of nothing... what's the crime? So lame.

    Oboneterm , 9 minutes ago link

    STOP THE ******* PRESSES..........BOMB SHELL......BOMB SHELL REPORT...THE WALLS ARE CLOSING IN....ORANGE HAIR PRESIDENT SOON TO BE WARING ORANGE JUMPSUIT....

    Dateline Moscow 2013........

    The crime:

    American Developer explores possibilities of building a hotel in Moscow.

    StarGate , 10 minutes ago link

    There is NO Moscow Trump Tower.

    No mountain.

    Not even a molehill.

    Buzzfeed is frantically trying to gain relevance on this fantasy non-existent tower story. It's a big "So What?"

    glenlloyd , 13 minutes ago link

    Big deal. Rudy needs to be more careful about what he says but WTF does it matter that Trump's people tried to get the tower project done there?

    How does any of this mean anything? So what if he did try and build it? This was ages before he ever thought about running for President.

    All these leftists are hanging their hat (and hopes and dreams) on something that just didn't happen.

    Sorry all you leftist loonies, there's nothing in that Mueller report to get excited about. I just hope that a lot of you crazies can handle that.

    hanekhw , 17 minutes ago link

    The media won't understand talking to Russians to build in Russia and not talking to George Soros first is NOT a crime. Just because that's what THEY do concerning everything doesn't mean Trump has to also.

    inosent , 17 minutes ago link

    zzzzzzzzzz, but the ****-0-craps will be all rage and fury over some sort of fantasy land egotistical it'll never happen building in Moscow. Pretty pictures, though.

    And to the idiot poster who keeps claiming this is 'bribery', that means 1) there would have to be something to be given in return that was unlawful on some level, and 2) there was intent, and 3) a discussion about the nature and quality of the bribe actually took place between the bribor and bribee.

    I get the uniparty thing, but some of the leftie dickheads that post here are really stupid. Colossally dumb.

    Somebody said below we get nothing but bolshevik-speak from these marxists. They open the mouth and voila! a 'fact' is born. And on that basis a conviction. Matters not if the 'fact' disappears someday, so long as today the 'fact' gives them the pretense to destroy someone that gets in their way.

    The 60's hippies 'left' was all down on the 'man'. 'I just want to be freeeeeeee man' they would say.

    ha, such bulls-. The truth is they are all lining up at the govt trough to get their piece of the action. It doesn't matter that they f- people over, destroy lives, and freedom for all, so long as they get a juicy title, paycheck and pension.

    Pure, 100% commie bulls-.

    These people need to put on a red shirt and a bulls' eye, have a war against them declared, and then they can be mowed down one at a time until they run away from govt and never return, or they are all gone.

    We are no doubt headed for all out neo-USSA communism. Better make sure you keep your guns!

    And when (not if) the ****-0-craps have total power, the first thing they'll do is make it impossible to get a gun, and then find a means to confiscate them. Before any tyranny we always see the new tyrant go after the guns. Then when the ppl are unarmed, they move in for the kill - literally.

    The commie jackass 'leaders' always talk about this it's for the children, safety, etc. But we all know that is a farce. The real purpose is to disarm. Culturally, they have made us all capitulate to deviancy, where nobody dares question the immoral homosexual behavioral choice. That is the kind of world we live in. Next stop, pedoland. "Don't judge me bro'".

    Given that we now know (if we did not know already) that at LEAST 65% of the population is completely dependent on the government, we live in a land where there are ultimate sheep, demented immoral sheep, government dependent and not productive sheep. We are surrounded by people who are totally brainwashed, are easily swept up with the latest new world order dogma, and won't fight back against anything, but accept everything, and do as they are told - for a morsel of bread.

    Not sure what the solution is, but if you are a person with a moral compass in fairly good working order, and don't want your pocket picked, and your business totally compromised by some bureaucrat. best be looking for one.

    hanekhw , 17 minutes ago link

    The media won't understand talking to Russians to build in Russia and not talking to George Soros first is NOT a crime. Just because that's what THEY do concerning everything doesn't mean Trump has to also.

    inosent , 17 minutes ago link

    zzzzzzzzzz, but the ****-0-craps will be all rage and fury over some sort of fantasy land egotistical it'll never happen building in Moscow. Pretty pictures, though.

    And to the idiot poster who keeps claiming this is 'bribery', that means 1) there would have to be something to be given in return that was unlawful on some level, and 2) there was intent, and 3) a discussion about the nature and quality of the bribe actually took place between the bribor and bribee.

    I get the uniparty thing, but some of the leftie dickheads that post here are really stupid. Colossally dumb.

    Somebody said below we get nothing but bolshevik-speak from these marxists. They open the mouth and voila! a 'fact' is born. And on that basis a conviction. Matters not if the 'fact' disappears someday, so long as today the 'fact' gives them the pretense to destroy someone that gets in their way.

    The 60's hippies 'left' was all down on the 'man'. 'I just want to be freeeeeeee man' they would say.

    ha, such bulls-. The truth is they are all lining up at the govt trough to get their piece of the action. It doesn't matter that they f- people over, destroy lives, and freedom for all, so long as they get a juicy title, paycheck and pension.

    Pure, 100% commie bulls-.

    These people need to put on a red shirt and a bulls' eye, have a war against them declared, and then they can be mowed down one at a time until they run away from govt and never return, or they are all gone.

    We are no doubt headed for all out neo-USSA communism. Better make sure you keep your guns!

    And when (not if) the ****-0-craps have total power, the first thing they'll do is make it impossible to get a gun, and then find a means to confiscate them. Before any tyranny we always see the new tyrant go after the guns. Then when the ppl are unarmed, they move in for the kill - literally.

    The commie jackass 'leaders' always talk about this it's for the children, safety, etc. But we all know that is a farce. The real purpose is to disarm. Culturally, they have made us all capitulate to deviancy, where nobody dares question the immoral homosexual behavioral choice. That is the kind of world we live in. Next stop, pedoland. "Don't judge me bro'".

    Given that we now know (if we did not know already) that at LEAST 65% of the population is completely dependent on the government, we live in a land where there are ultimate sheep, demented immoral sheep, government dependent and not productive sheep. We are surrounded by people who are totally brainwashed, are easily swept up with the latest new world order dogma, and won't fight back against anything, but accept everything, and do as they are told - for a morsel of bread.

    Not sure what the solution is, but if you are a person with a moral compass in fairly good working order, and don't want your pocket picked, and your business totally compromised by some bureaucrat. best be looking for one.

    hanekhw , 17 minutes ago link

    The media won't understand talking to Russians to build in Russia and not talking to George Soros first is NOT a crime. Just because that's what THEY do concerning everything doesn't mean Trump has to also.

    inosent , 17 minutes ago link

    zzzzzzzzzz, but the ****-0-craps will be all rage and fury over some sort of fantasy land egotistical it'll never happen building in Moscow. Pretty pictures, though.

    And to the idiot poster who keeps claiming this is 'bribery', that means 1) there would have to be something to be given in return that was unlawful on some level, and 2) there was intent, and 3) a discussion about the nature and quality of the bribe actually took place between the bribor and bribee.

    I get the uniparty thing, but some of the leftie dickheads that post here are really stupid. Colossally dumb.

    Somebody said below we get nothing but bolshevik-speak from these marxists. They open the mouth and voila! a 'fact' is born. And on that basis a conviction. Matters not if the 'fact' disappears someday, so long as today the 'fact' gives them the pretense to destroy someone that gets in their way.

    The 60's hippies 'left' was all down on the 'man'. 'I just want to be freeeeeeee man' they would say.

    ha, such bulls-. The truth is they are all lining up at the govt trough to get their piece of the action. It doesn't matter that they f- people over, destroy lives, and freedom for all, so long as they get a juicy title, paycheck and pension.

    Pure, 100% commie bulls-.

    These people need to put on a red shirt and a bulls' eye, have a war against them declared, and then they can be mowed down one at a time until they run away from govt and never return, or they are all gone.

    We are no doubt headed for all out neo-USSA communism. Better make sure you keep your guns!

    And when (not if) the ****-0-craps have total power, the first thing they'll do is make it impossible to get a gun, and then find a means to confiscate them. Before any tyranny we always see the new tyrant go after the guns. Then when the ppl are unarmed, they move in for the kill - literally.

    The commie jackass 'leaders' always talk about this it's for the children, safety, etc. But we all know that is a farce. The real purpose is to disarm. Culturally, they have made us all capitulate to deviancy, where nobody dares question the immoral homosexual behavioral choice. That is the kind of world we live in. Next stop, pedoland. "Don't judge me bro'".

    Given that we now know (if we did not know already) that at LEAST 65% of the population is completely dependent on the government, we live in a land where there are ultimate sheep, demented immoral sheep, government dependent and not productive sheep. We are surrounded by people who are totally brainwashed, are easily swept up with the latest new world order dogma, and won't fight back against anything, but accept everything, and do as they are told - for a morsel of bread.

    Not sure what the solution is, but if you are a person with a moral compass in fairly good working order, and don't want your pocket picked, and your business totally compromised by some bureaucrat. best be looking for one.

    hanekhw , 17 minutes ago link

    The media won't understand talking to Russians to build in Russia and not talking to George Soros first is NOT a crime. Just because that's what THEY do concerning everything doesn't mean Trump has to also.

    inosent , 17 minutes ago link

    zzzzzzzzzz, but the ****-0-craps will be all rage and fury over some sort of fantasy land egotistical it'll never happen building in Moscow. Pretty pictures, though.

    And to the idiot poster who keeps claiming this is 'bribery', that means 1) there would have to be something to be given in return that was unlawful on some level, and 2) there was intent, and 3) a discussion about the nature and quality of the bribe actually took place between the bribor and bribee.

    I get the uniparty thing, but some of the leftie dickheads that post here are really stupid. Colossally dumb.

    Somebody said below we get nothing but bolshevik-speak from these marxists. They open the mouth and voila! a 'fact' is born. And on that basis a conviction. Matters not if the 'fact' disappears someday, so long as today the 'fact' gives them the pretense to destroy someone that gets in their way.

    The 60's hippies 'left' was all down on the 'man'. 'I just want to be freeeeeeee man' they would say.

    ha, such bulls-. The truth is they are all lining up at the govt trough to get their piece of the action. It doesn't matter that they f- people over, destroy lives, and freedom for all, so long as they get a juicy title, paycheck and pension.

    Pure, 100% commie bulls-.

    These people need to put on a red shirt and a bulls' eye, have a war against them declared, and then they can be mowed down one at a time until they run away from govt and never return, or they are all gone.

    We are no doubt headed for all out neo-USSA communism. Better make sure you keep your guns!

    And when (not if) the ****-0-craps have total power, the first thing they'll do is make it impossible to get a gun, and then find a means to confiscate them. Before any tyranny we always see the new tyrant go after the guns. Then when the ppl are unarmed, they move in for the kill - literally.

    The commie jackass 'leaders' always talk about this it's for the children, safety, etc. But we all know that is a farce. The real purpose is to disarm. Culturally, they have made us all capitulate to deviancy, where nobody dares question the immoral homosexual behavioral choice. That is the kind of world we live in. Next stop, pedoland. "Don't judge me bro'".

    Given that we now know (if we did not know already) that at LEAST 65% of the population is completely dependent on the government, we live in a land where there are ultimate sheep, demented immoral sheep, government dependent and not productive sheep. We are surrounded by people who are totally brainwashed, are easily swept up with the latest new world order dogma, and won't fight back against anything, but accept everything, and do as they are told - for a morsel of bread.

    Not sure what the solution is, but if you are a person with a moral compass in fairly good working order, and don't want your pocket picked, and your business totally compromised by some bureaucrat. best be looking for one.

    Justin Case

    Keep shoveling that Russia this, that, manure narrative for general consumption. What sanctions? Umm, I'll get back to you after we extradite the Huawei CEO and extort billions from the corporation for doing business with our (Israel's) adversary.

    You voted for this? He talks out of both sides of his mouth. Why do people vote to have someone rule over them?

    [Jan 22, 2019] The Fetishization of the Corporate Media by C.J. Hopkins

    Among few good things that Trump have done to the USA is that he destoryed credibility of neoliberal MSM. They all are now firmly belong to the "fake news" catagory.
    Notable quotes:
    "... C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org . ..."
    Jan 22, 2019 | www.unz.com

    So the corporate media have gone and done it again. As they have, repeatedly, for the last two and half years, they shook the earth with a "bombshell" story proving beyond any reasonable doubt that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton, or at least committed an impeachable felony in connection with something to do with the Russians, or Ukrainians, or other Slavic persons which story turned out to be inaccurate, or not entirely accurate, or a bunch of horseshit.

    This time it was BuzzFeed's Jason Leopold, " a reporter with a checkered past " (i.e., a history of inventing his sources ) who broke the "bombshell" Russiagate story that turned out to be a bunch of horseshit. Leopold, and his colleague Anthony Cormier, reported that Trump had directed his attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about plans to construct a Trump Tower in Moscow, thus suborning perjury and obstructing justice. Their sources for this "bombshell" story were allegedly "two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter."

    Approximately twenty-four hours later, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office (i.e., the office "involved in an investigation of the matter") stated that the BuzzFeed story was "not accurate," which is a legal term meaning "a bunch of horseshit." BuzzFeed is standing by its story , and is working to determine what, exactly, Mueller's office meant by "not accurate." Ben Smith, BuzzFeed's Editor-in-Chief, has called on Mueller "to make clear what he's disputing."

    Liberals and other Trump-obsessives have joined in the effort to interpret the Special Counsel's office's cryptic utterance. French hermeneuticists have been reportedly called in to deconstruct the meaning of "accurate." Professional Twitter semioticians are explaining that "not accurate" doesn't mean "wrong," but, rather, refers to something that is "accurate," but which the user of the word doesn't want to disclose publicly, or that legal terms don't mean what they mean or something more or less along those lines.

    Glenn Greenwald, in August 2018, reporting on another "bombshell" story that turned out to be a bunch of horseshit , compiled a partial list of Russiagate stories that the corporate media had published and promoted over the course of the previous eighteen months which turned out to be a bunch of horseshit (i.e., the stories did, not Greenwald's list). In the wake of this latest horseshit story, Greenwald revised and renamed this list " The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump/Russia Story. "

    But Greenwald's list is just a small sample of the Russiagate stories that have turned out to be horseshit. For the record, here are several more:

    "Seventeen intelligence agencies" confirm Russia interfered in the U.S. elections ( New York Times ) Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum ( The Guardian ) Russia interfered in the German elections ( Reuters ) Russia hacked the French elections ( Politico and numerous other outlets ) Michael Cohen conspired with the Russians in Prague ( BuzzFeed )

    My personal favorite remains the one about how Hillary Clinton may have been poisoned by Putinist operatives back in 2016. And then there's the pot-smoking, prostitute-banging, incompetent Novichok perfume assassins , the African American-brainwashing memes , the Putin-orchestrated Yellow Vest rebellion , the brain-eating Russian-Cubano crickets , and various other bunches of horseshit.

    I am using the terms "horseshit" and "a bunch of horseshit" (as opposed to terms like "failures" and "errors"), not just to be gratuitously vulgar, but, also, to try to make a point. One is not supposed to use these terms in connection with "serious," "respected" news outlets. Which is why journalists like Greenwald and Aaron Maté (who have extensively reported on the corporate media's ongoing production and dissemination of horseshit) do not use such terms in the course of their reporting, and instead use less inflammatory terms like "false," "inaccurate," "mistake," and "error." Principled journalists like Greenwald and Maté are constrained by (a) their journalistic ethics, (b) their integrity, and (c) their belief in the idea of a "free and independent press," which is one of the pillars of Western democracy.

    Being neither a respected journalist nor a believer in the existence of an "independent press," I am under no such constraints. Because I'm not trying to get or keep a job, or maintain a "respectable" reputation, I'm free to call a spade a spade and a bunch of horseshit a bunch of horseshit. I am also free to describe "journalists" like Leopold, Luke Harding , Craig Timberg , Franklin Foer , and many of their corporate media colleagues (not to mention TV clowns like Rachel Maddow ) as the liars and rank propagandists they are. I don't need to pretend their fabricated stories are simply the result of "shoddy journalism," or "over-reliance on official sources," or any other type of "error" or "failure." These people know exactly what they are doing, and are being extremely well paid to do it. They went to school to learn how to do it. Then they butt-sucked and back-stabbed their way up the ladder of establishment power to be able to do it.

    Yes, of course, there are still principled journalists working for the corporate media, but they are doing so by walking a very fine line. No one has to tell them where it is. Every professional journalist knows precisely where it is, and what it is there for. Though they are permitted to walk right up to it, occasionally (to keep them from feeling like abject whores), one step over it and they will be cast into the Outer Darkness of the Blogosphere and excommunicated from the Church of Respectable Journalism. If you don't believe me, just ask Seymour Hersh, or John Pilger, or any other journalistic heretic.

    If Russiagate serves no other useful purpose, it is at least exposing the corporate media as the propaganda factories that they are. Given the amount of obviously fabricated horseshit they have disseminated during the last two years, you'd have to be a total moron or a diehard neoliberal cultist not to recognize the function they perform within the global capitalist ruling establishment (which is essentially no different than the function the establishment media perform in any other society, namely, to disseminate, maintain, and reify the official narrative of its ruling classes).

    Sadly, there's no shortage of morons and cultists. I don't blame the morons, because well, they're morons. The cultists are another species entirely. These are people who, no matter how often the corporate media feed them another "explosive," "bombshell" Russiagate story that turns out to be a bunch of horseshit, will defend the concept of the "independent media" like head-shaven, bug-eyed Manson followers. Confront them with facts contradicting their beliefs and they close their eyes and start chanting and humming and repetitiously babbling banishing spells. The notion that the Western corporate media may serve the interests of the ruling establishment (just like the media in every other society serve that society's ruling classes) is unimaginable and tantamount to heresy.

    This fetishization of "the independent press" is a phenomenon unique to Western capitalism. Basically, it's a childish fairy tale, like believing that Santa Claus is an actual person or that voting in elections in a corporate oligarchy has anything to do with actual democracy. Think about it dispassionately for a minute. Why would any ruling establishment permit a genuinely "independent" press to disseminate ideas and information willy-nilly throughout society? If it did, it wouldn't last very long.

    Most people understand this intuitively, which is why the corporate media relentlessly repeat the mantra-like phrase, "free and independent press," over, and over, and over again. Seriously, switch on NPR, or have a look at The Guardian or the Washington Post, or any of the other corporate media repeatedly reminding you how "independent," "free" and "democratic" they are. It's essentially Neuro-linguistic programming.

    So let's not be shocked when the corporate media continue to bombard us with "bombshell" stories about Trump and Russia that turn out to be horseshit. Personally, I welcome these stories. The more corporate media horseshit the better! Who knows, if they dish out enough blatant horseshit, more people might lose their "trust in the media," and begin to investigate matters themselves. I know, that makes me a Nazi, right? Or at least a Russian propagandist? I mean, encouraging folks to distrust the corporate media? Isn't there some kind of law against that? Or have they not quite gotten around to that yet?

    C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .

    Godfree Roberts , says: January 22, 2019 at 1:32 am GMT

    The Associated Press (AP) reports the latest bad news for the press: " Just 6 Percent of People Say They Trust the Media ."

    Carole Feldman and Emily Swanson began: Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans' skepticism about what they read on social media. Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public's view of other institutions.

    Biff , says: January 22, 2019 at 1:41 am GMT

    Most people understand this intuitively, which is why the corporate media relentlessly repeat the mantra-like phrase, "free and independent press,"

    People inversely brag about their short comings.
    Militarized police states brag about their freedom.
    A well heeled synchophant brags about his independence.
    Dudes with small dicks -- big belt buckle and big hat.

    Fidelios Automata , says: January 22, 2019 at 3:14 am GMT
    I used to listen to the BBC and NPR until the corporo-globalist bias became unbearable. I laughed at incidents such as Marketplace mocking the public's concern about GMO's. But it went off the rails in 2016. They may have backed off from Trump Derangement Syndrome a bit since then, but I've noticed that they have to call themselves "credible." Maybe if they say that enough times we'll believe it, eh?
    Bragadocious , says: January 22, 2019 at 4:32 am GMT
    The Greenwald link is pretty important and I bookmarked it. These fake news outlets do everything in their power to scrub these mistakes from the Google machine once they happen. They remove stories, videos -- everything, in the hopes of shoving it all down the memory hole. And since other fake news outlets don't hold them accountable, they get away with it. This is why it's important to take screen shots of fake news and download videos if possible, to create a record that's permanent and useful when you need it.
    Richard Wicks , says: January 22, 2019 at 5:48 am GMT
    @Godfree Roberts 6%? I rather doubt that.

    More than 6% of the population are technically, and this is the technical term, retarded -- they are mentally disabled.

    I know it's obvious our media is propaganda, but I don't think it's quite so obvious such that adults watching Sesame Street who fully enjoy it (nothing wrong with that!) are aware of it.

    I would like to think it's true, but I think the Associated Press article is not true, after all, can you identify their funding sources?

    utu , says: January 22, 2019 at 7:22 am GMT

    This fetishization of "the independent press" is a phenomenon unique to Western capitalism. Basically, it's a childish fairy tale, like believing that Santa Claus is an actual person or that voting in elections in a corporate oligarchy has anything to do with actual democracy.

    Great article. Articles on this theme should be published daily. The fetish must be destroyed.

    jeff stryker , says: January 22, 2019 at 10:55 am GMT
    I don't think the MSM has the power and influence it had in the Big Three Networks Era before the internet.

    In those days, the minds of the public were more controlled and underground newspapers were barely read.

    These days, more people read websites like this than watch any particular channel.

    Print journalism had a massive hold on the world up to 1997 when the internet came into the mainstream.

    Not no more.

    jacques sheete , says: January 22, 2019 at 12:06 pm GMT
    Ah, elegant!

    What a pleasure to read this article!

    There is at least one other person who calls corporate media what it is, and it ain't "mainstream."

    "Sparkie" ain't gonna be happy about it either."Sparky" chewed me out good for correcting the incomparable and always superb Linh Dinh for using the disgusting and inaccurate term, "mainstream" when referring to coprophilic media. Oh, and speaking of "horseshit" one wag suggested we call it main steam media, for accuracy as well as for giggles and that's fine by me.

    the corporate media relentlessly repeat the mantra-like phrase, "free and independent press," over, and over, and over again. Seriously, switch on NPR, or have a look at The Guardian or the Washington Post, or any of the other corporate media repeatedly reminding you how "independent," "free" and "democratic" they are. It's essentially Neuro-linguistic programming.

    It's blatantly obvious that the same can be said about the self-legitimizing term, "mainstream," too, so bless you sir, and to (bleep) with the Sparkies of the world.

    Digital Samizdat , says: January 22, 2019 at 12:36 pm GMT

    Confront them with facts contradicting their beliefs and they close their eyes and start chanting and humming and repetitiously babbling banishing spells.

    Orange Man bad! Mueller saves! -NPC

    Jake , says: January 22, 2019 at 12:46 pm GMT
    Not only is Hopkins correct, but what he says about corporate media is not new. The Civil Rights movement presented by the media was false. The media promotion of the US re-engaging in Europe in the post WW1 period so we could defend dear ole England and sacred democracy. The media preparing us for our need to fight WW1 so we could end all wars was false. The media stirring us to go into Cuba and end the awfully evil Spanish Empire so we could start the process of ending all empires

    Large numbers of newspapers located within the non January 22, 2019 at 3:13 pm GMT

    @jacques sheete

    Ah, elegant!

    What a pleasure to read this article!

    N o doubt it is a pleasure for you because C.J. Hopkins managed to scribble 1500 words about fake news without even once mentioning the CIA.

    "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."

    -- CIA Director, William Casey

    Of course, our resident Bumpkin of Unz would have you believe that the CIA is a corporation.

    "The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media."

    -- former CIA Director William Colby

    So you see Sheete, the term "corporate media" is entirely inaccurate -- a red herring, a misleading label, a pig in a poke -- because it entirely excludes, avoids, overlooks, and completely dismisses the role of our intelligence agencies in creating fake news , a.k.a. disinformation and propaganda.

    Hail , says: Website January 22, 2019 at 3:38 pm GMT

    The notion that the Western corporate media may serve the interests of the ruling establishment (just like the media in every other society serve that society's ruling classes) is unimaginable and tantamount to heresy.

    This comes close to the term "regime media," which I like as a replacement for the clunky-but-common terms "Mainstream Media" or MSM. "

    Hopkins uses "corporate media," which appears fifteen times here including in the title.

    Several commenters have noted the problems with the term "mainstream media":

    the self-legitimizing term, "mainstream,"

    While better than "mainstream media," I'm not sure "corporate media" is sufficient.

    "Corporate media," as a term, may wrongly convey the notion that the 'media' in question complaisantly both [1] broadcasts the ruling ideology (interventionist capitalist liberal democracy and multicultacracy) and [2] 'megaphones' (Steve Sailer's useful term) against enemies thereto, coordinating our regular Two-Minute Hates.

    That characterization misses an important point, to wit:

    The 'media' (in the sense of the "MSM") as we know it today, is itself consciously part of the ruling apparatus . Not complaisantly, but actively; not lackeys on the side, but right at the regime's core. A useful distinction. Hence "regime media."

    Agent76 , says: January 22, 2019 at 3:41 pm GMT
    Jun. 14, 2012 These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America

    That's consolidated from *50* companies back in 1983. But the fact that a few companies own everything demonstrates "the illusion of choice," Frugal Dad says.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6

    Church Committee Testimony

    Tom Charles Huston testified before the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, commonly known as the Church Committee, on the 43-page plan he presented to the President Nixon and others on ways to collect information about anti-war and "radical" groups, including burglary, electronic surveillance, and opening of mail.

    https://www.c-span.org/video/?408953-1/tom-charles-huston-testimony-church-committee

    Sean , says: January 22, 2019 at 4:13 pm GMT
    The Basic Problem of Democracy
    by Walter Lippmann
    The Atlantic Monthly, November 1919, pp. 616-627

    http://sonicacts.com/portal/anthropocene-objects-art-and-politics-1

    Lippmann-Dewey debate, which is known to academics but not the general public in the United States, the home country of both authors. Obviously, John Dewey is famous as one of the most important American philosophers, and for his international influence in the field of education. By contrast, Walter Lippmann has been somewhat forgotten, though he was a major journalist in the 1920s and 1930s. He was a widely familiar author at the time, and wrote some cynical things about American democracy. The story America tells itself politically is that since we're a democracy in which the citizens rule themselves, there is a paramount need for an excellent public education so that the citizens can vote wisely. We ourselves are the leaders. But of course it doesn't work that way in practice. We actually have a surplus of ignorant and uninformed people who pay no attention to the nuances of policy, and who vote based on the workings of demagoguery and short-sighted self-interest. Any number of foolish decisions have been made by the American public. This leads Lippmann to take the somewhat cynical line that America is destined to be ruled by technocrats. We need experts to run things; the people are too clueless to rule themselves. We'll pretend we have a democracy, but we actually don't. Now, Dewey reads this, and he is temperamentally more optimistic, and he thinks: 'This is a really stimulating book, but Lippmann is wrong. He is setting the bar too high for the people. People were never supposed to be educated in depth about every issue, which is an impossible demand. Even Lippmann doesn't have the time to master every issue, and he covers politics for a living. Instead, Dewey says, political issues generate their own publics in each case. I might care deeply about seven political issues. I might care about national health insurance, but I don't care about gay marriage, or vice versa. So I get involved in one debate and not the other. I take the trouble of becoming informed about issues that interest me.

    onebornfree , says: Website January 22, 2019 at 4:14 pm GMT
    @Hail Hail says: "The 'media' (in the sense of the "MSM") as we know it today, is itself consciously part of the ruling apparatus. Not complaisantly, but actively; not lackeys on the side, but right at the regime's core ":

    Exactly. The MSM is the government [CIA/NSA/ etc. etc.] grinning right at you as it continually lies , albeit behind a very thin veil of supposed integrity/respectability that the general public still refuses to see through.

    By way of illustration of this "outrageous" assertion of mine, here is part of a video analysis of the original 5 channel US MSM "live" coverage of the morning of Sept. 11 2001, which clearly demonstrates that on that morning, all 5 US networks broadcast entirely fake "live" footage [ i.e. C.G.I. prefabricated imagery] for about 102 minutes :

    Regards, onebornfree

    jacques sheete , says: January 22, 2019 at 4:23 pm GMT
    @Sparkon

    So you see Sheete, the term "corporate media" is entirely inaccurate

    I never claimed it was perfect. I do claim that the term, "mainstream," in this context is entirely inaccurate and misleading. And you should be nice, as you admonished me, regarding the author of this article. As for your complaint that he didn't mention the CIA, may I remind you that he wrote, as you noticed, an article, not an encyclopedia.

    Anyway, you have yet to establish that the CIA and our corporate masters are entirely separate entities. Even a Dumb Sheete such as myself would find it somewhat, if not entirely, incredible if they were.

    But of course too everyone knows by now that Jews, Israel and Mossad did 9/11 all by their lonesomes, and the CIA and the Air Force had nothing to do with it.

    Ahem, you forgot to mention big, coprophilic, media. Please try to practice the inclusiveness that you preach.

    Nancy Pelosi's Latina Maid , says: January 22, 2019 at 4:30 pm GMT

    one step over [the line] and they will be cast into the Outer Darkness of the Blogosphere and excommunicated from the Church of Respectable Journalism. If you don't believe me, just ask Seymour Hersh, or John Pilger, or any other journalistic heretic.

    To this list I might also add CBS' Sharyl Attkisson, and Larry Conners of KMOV-TV, who had the big brass balls to question the $85 million the Obamas spent on vacations.

    NR kicked Derb to the curb, but that gutter's littered with Internet flotsam who presumed integrity.

    onebornfree , says: Website January 22, 2019 at 4:35 pm GMT
    @Sean Sean says: "Lippmann-Dewey debate, which is known to academics but not the general public in the United States, the home country of both authors. "

    Debate summary: 2 know-it-alls debating about how "best" to run everybody else's lives [and with straight faces, I've no doubt].

    Two sides of the same [pro-statist] coin, in other words. Oh, and one minor issue one "thinks" that a ruling technocracy is "the answer".

    Sean says: "Obviously, John Dewey is famous as one of the most important American philosophers, and for his international influence in the field of education."

    You mean: Dewey was important in the field of "public education" , otherwise known as brainwashing.

    " important American philosopher" my a$$.

    Gawd help us all.

    And so it goes

    [Jan 22, 2019] There is not a single newspaper in the US that supports the views of the US President

    Notable quotes:
    "... Only the minor Russian RT channel provides, up-to-a-point, some alternative views, defending the American, British and French people's sovereignty, but they can't do much. Paradoxically, RT does not broadcast in Russian and its English-language broadcasts can't be seen in Russia. The rest of the Russian media doesn't differ much from the Western variety. ..."
    "... And not only for politics. They want to draw and implement their agenda on all topics disregarding our views. ..."
    Jan 22, 2019 | www.unz.com

    There is not a single newspaper in the US that supports the views of the US President. Nobody defended him when he was accused , brazenly, in-your-face, of being a Russian agent. Nobody supported him when he called to bring the troops home from Syria. Nobody came to his aid when he mulled parting with NATO. There are tens of millions of men and women who voted for him, but he has only his Twitter account at his disposal.

    The media accuses Trump of paying too little attention to Israel's needs. Israel needs US troops in Syria and in Germany, US jets in Spain and Qatar, US ships in Italy and the Gulf. Israel needs the US to lead NATO to contain Russia. If Israel needs it, the US should provide, says Daniel Shapiro, the ex-ambassador. Not a single American newspaper, not a single US statesman cared to reply that President Trump had been elected by the American people to do what is needed for them, not for Israel.

    The US is not an exception. Millions of French people support the GJ, but not a single newspaper, not a single TV channel gives them a platform. They are called anti-Semites for they are revolted by Danny Cohn-Bendit and Bernard-Henri Levi, who are Jewish. They are also called homophobes because they want to ban same-sex "marriage". They are being attacked by the bankers' storm-troopers, the Antifa, and no media defends them.

    Millions of Brits support Jeremy Corbyn, but all the mainstream media is against him, even the state-supported BBC, even the Labour Guardian. Corbyn is accused of anti-Semitism, for Corbyn speaks for the workers and against the bankers. Nobody defends him and there is no mainstream media to speak for him.

    Only the minor Russian RT channel provides, up-to-a-point, some alternative views, defending the American, British and French people's sovereignty, but they can't do much. Paradoxically, RT does not broadcast in Russian and its English-language broadcasts can't be seen in Russia. The rest of the Russian media doesn't differ much from the Western variety.

    The mainstream media from Tokyo to Paris to Los Angeles speaks in one voice. All other opinions had been pushed out of mainstream discussion. It is good that we have the internet and sites like Unz Review that allow us to express our views. The problem is with delivery. How can we deliver to the public? The real mainstream media has so many more views and viewers! For them, hundreds of thousands or even millions of views are not unusual.

    We need our social networks to deliver the ideas and exchange opinions, to inform readers of our publications, to convince and rally. In over-populated, nuclearized world, with family and neighbourhood ties torn, there is no substitute for these networks. And Facebook and Twitter could help us. Google could help us.

    Alas, they betrayed us, too. The social networks

    And not only for politics. They want to draw and implement their agenda on all topics disregarding our views.

    [Jan 22, 2019] Unscrupulous reporting BuzzFeed's 'Russiagate' stories were constant source of controversy

    Jan 22, 2019 | www.rt.com

    BuzzFeed's credibility has been seemingly dented by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's recent dismissal of one of its 'Russiagate' stories. However, it is not the first time its stories on Russia raised flags or were proven false. The New York-based news outlet has been holding nothing back over the recent years as it diligently pressed the so-called 'Russiagate' narrative about a supposed collusion between the US President Donald Trump and Moscow. Its recent exploits, which claimed Trump told his ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress to cover up some of his dealings with Russia, however, apparently led it a bit too far, as it earned a rebuke from the office of Robert Muller – the man in charge of the investigation into the very same alleged collusion, among other aspects of perceived Russia's meddling into the 2016 elections.

    'After this I don't even know if I can trust Buzzfeed's cat listicles anymore' https://t.co/b4vyIKJAUL

    -- RT (@RT_com) 19 января 2019 г.

    The news sparked a wave of criticism on the social media, with many people saying that the news outlet's credibility is now discredited.

    But was it that flawless before?

    Buzzfeed was the first to publish the infamous Steele dossier – a report by an MI6 spy-turned-private investigator – which contained unverified allegations that Russia held information on Trump which it was using to blackmail the US president. It also alleged sustained and close working contacts between Trump aides and Kremlin representatives.

    None of these allegations, which were used by the FBI as a reason for obtaining a spy warrant against Trump adviser Carter Page, have been proven as of now. Instead, it was revealed that the report was based on information fed through people close to Hillary Clinton – Trump's rival at the 2016 presidential elections.

    Also on rt.com What evidence? BuzzFeed fuels 'Russiagate' with bombshell report on Trump and Cohen

    Meanwhile, some of the reporters, who worked with the dossier, admitted that the document's claims are "likely false." Christopher Steele himself also revealed that one of his goals in compiling the report was to provide Clinton with a legal basis to challenge the 2016 election results.

    The publication of the dossier has brought a string of defamation lawsuits not only against Steele but against BuzzFeed as well. The news media outlet was sued by the owners of a Russian Alfa Bank and a Russian tech expert Aleksey Gubarev who were all mentioned in the infamous dossier. At the same time, Trump's personal lawyer also filed a defamation lawsuit against the company for pushing the Steele report.

    However, Buzzfeed apparently does hope to get away with it. In case of Gubarev, a US court already ruled in favor of the news outlet in December 2018, citing a "fair report privilege." The businessman earlier scolded the publication as "one of the most reckless and irresponsible moments in modern journalism."

    Judge throws out defamation lawsuit against #BuzzFeed by Russian businessman #Steele dossier portrays as hacking mastermind https://t.co/ewWHub1C5p

    -- RT (@RT_com) 20 декабря 2018 г.

    Steele was the source of another controversial episode in the history of BuzzFeed's attempts to propagate the 'Russiagate' narrative. In March 2018, it claimed that the FBI was covering the true causes of the death of a Russian media tycoon in Washington in 2015.

    Citing a "secret report " by Steele, it claimed the man was allegedly killed by associates of a Russian oligarch, who happens to be close to the Kremlin, the news outlet said. A sheer coincidence, apparently. It also did not bother to give any plausible explanation as to why the FBI, which did not hesitate to point a finger at Moscow in the past, would hide such information at all.

    Anyway, the whole story was debunked just days later when the Metropolitan Police said the death of the tycoon was an accident. This fact did not get much attention in the West, though. Neither did it cool BuzzFeed's ardor in stirring up anti-Russian hysteria.

    Like this story? Share it with a friend!

    [Jan 21, 2019] Beyond BuzzFeed The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing US Media Failures On The Trump-Russia Story by Glenn Greenwald

    Highly recommended!
    Jan 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Glenn Greenwald via The Intercept,

    Buzzfeed was once notorious for traffic-generating "listicles" , but has since become an impressive outlet for deep investigative journalism under editor-in-chief Ben Smith. That outlet was prominently in the news this week thanks to its "bombshell" story about President Trump and Michael Cohen: a story that, like so many others of its kind, blew up in its face , this time when the typically mute Robert Mueller's office took the extremely rare step to label its key claims "inaccurate."

    But in homage to BuzzFeed's past viral glory, following are the top ten worst media failures in two-plus-years of Trump/Russia reporting. They are listed in reverse order, as measured by the magnitude of the embarrassment, the hysteria they generated on social media and cable news, the level of journalistic recklessness that produced them, and the amount of damage and danger they caused. This list was extremely difficult to compile in part because news outlets (particularly CNN and MSNBC) often delete from the internet the video segments of their most embarrassing moments. Even more challenging was the fact that the number of worthy nominees is so large that highly meritorious entrees had to be excluded, but are acknowledged at the end with (dis)honorable mention status.

    Note that all of these "errors" go only in one direction: namely, exaggerating the grave threat posed by Moscow and the Trump circle's connection to it. It's inevitable that media outlets will make mistakes on complex stories. If that's being done in good faith, one would expect the errors would be roughly 50/50 in terms of the agenda served by the false stories. That is most definitely not the case here. Just as was true in 2002 and 2003, when the media clearly wanted to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and thus all of its "errors" went in that direction, virtually all of its major "errors" in this story are devoted to the same agenda and script:

    10. RT Hacked Into and Took Over C-SPAN (Fortune)

    On June 12, 2017, Fortune claimed that RT had hacked into and taken over C-SPAN and that C-SPAN "confirmed" it had been hacked. The whole story was false :

    9. Russian Hackers Invaded the U.S. Electricity Grid to Deny Vermonters Heat During the Winter (WashPost)

    On December 30, 2016, the Washington Post reported that "Russian hackers penetrated the U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont," causing predictable outrage and panic, along with threats from U.S. political leaders. But then they kept diluting the story with editor's notes – to admit that the malware was found on a laptop not connected to the U.S. electric grid at all – until finally acknowledging, days later, that the whole story was false, since the malware had nothing to do with Russia or with the U.S. electric grid:

    8. A New, Deranged, Anonymous Group Declares Mainstream Political Sites on the Left and Right to be Russian Propaganda Outlets and WashPost Touts its Report to Claim Massive Kremlin Infiltration of the Internet (WashPost)

    On November 24, 2016, the Washington Post published one of the most inflammatory, sensationalistic stories to date about Russian infiltration into U.S. politics using social media, accusing "more than 200 websites" of being "routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans." It added: "stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign [on Facebook] were viewed more than 213 million times."

    Unfortunately for the paper, those statistics were provided by a new, anonymous group that reached these conclusions by classifying long-time, well-known sites – from the Drudge Report to Clinton-critical left-wing websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig, and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute. – as "Russian propaganda outlets," producing one of the longest Editor's Note in memory appended to the top of the article (but not until two weeks later , long after the story was mindlessly spread all throughout the media ecosystem):

    7. Trump Aide Anthony Scaramucci is Involved in a Russian Hedge Fund Under Senate Investigation (CNN)

    On June 22, 2017, CNN reported that Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci was involved with the Russian Direct Investment Fund, under Senate investigation. He was not. CNN retracted the story and forced the three reporters who published it to leave the network.

    6. Russia Attacked U.S. "Diplomats" (i.e. Spies) at the Cuban Embassy Using a Super-Sophisticated Sonic Microwave Weapon (NBC/MSNBC/CIA)

    On September 11, 2017, NBC News and MSNBC spread all over its airwaves a claim from its notorious CIA puppet Ken Dilanian that Russia was behind a series of dastardly attacks on U.S. personnel at the Embassy in Cuba using a sonic or microwave weapon so sophisticated and cunning that Pentagon and CIA scientists had no idea what to make of it.

    But then teams of neurologists began calling into doubt that these personnel had suffered any brain injuries at all – that instead they appear to have experienced collective psychosomatic symptoms – and then biologists published findings that the "strange sounds" the U.S. "diplomats" reported hearing were identical to those emitted by a common Caribbean male cricket during mating season.

    5. Trump Created a Secret Internet Server to Covertly Communicate with a Russian Bank (Slate)

    4. Paul Manafort Visited Julian Assange Three Times in the Ecuadorian Embassy and Nobody Noticed (Guardian/Luke Harding)

    On November 27, 2018, the Guardian published a major "bombshell" that Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had somehow managed to sneak inside one of the world's most surveilled buildings, the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and visit Julian Assange on three different occasions. Cable and online commentators exploded.

    Seven weeks later, no other media outlet has confirmed this ; no video or photographic evidence has emerged; the Guardian refuses to answer any questions; its leading editors have virtually gone into hiding; other media outlets have expressed serious doubts about its veracity; and an Ecuadorian official who worked at the embassy has called the story a complete fake:

    3. CNN Explicitly Lied About Lanny Davis Being Its Source – For a Story Whose Substance Was Also False: Cohen Would Testify that Trump Knew in Advance About the Trump Tower Meeting (CNN)

    On July 27, 2018, CNN published a blockbuster story : that Michael Cohen was prepared to tell Robert Mueller that President Trump knew in advanced about the Trump Tower meeting. There were, however, two problems with this story: first, CNN got caught blatantly lying when its reporters claimed that "contacted by CNN, one of Cohen's attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment" (in fact, Davis was one of CNN's key sources, if not its only source, for this story), and second, numerous other outlets retracted the story after the source, Davis, admitted it was a lie. CNN, however, to this date has refused to do either:

    2. Robert Mueller Possesses Internal Emails and Witness Interviews Proving Trump Directed Cohen to Lie to Congress (BuzzFeed)

    1. Donald Trump Jr. Was Offered Advanced Access to the WikiLeaks Email Archive (CNN/MSNBC)

    The morning of December 9, 2017, launched one of the most humiliating spectacles in the history of the U.S. media. With a tone so grave and bombastic that it is impossible to overstate, CNN went on the air and announced a major exclusive: Donald Trump, Jr. was offered by email advanced access to the trove of DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks – meaning before those emails were made public. Within an hour, MSNBC's Ken Dilanian, using a tone somehow even more unhinged, purported to have "independently confirmed" this mammoth, blockbuster scoop, which, they said, would have been the smoking gun showing collusion between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks over the hacked emails (while the YouTube clips have been removed, you can still watch one of the amazing MSNBC videos here ).

    There was, alas, just one small problem with this massive, blockbuster story: it was totally and completely false. The email which Trump, Jr. received that directed him to the WikiLeaks archive was sent after WikiLeaks published it online for the whole world to see, not before. Rather than some super secretive operative giving Trump, Jr. advanced access, as both CNN and MSNBC told the public for hours they had confirmed, it was instead just some totally pedestrian message from a random member of the public suggesting Trump, Jr. review documents the whole world was already talking about. All of the anonymous sources CNN and MSNBC cited somehow all got the date of the email wrong.

    To date, when asked how they both could have gotten such a massive story so completely wrong in the same way, both CNN and MSNBC have adopted the posture of the CIA by maintaining complete silence and refusing to explain how it could possibly be that all of their "multiple, independent sources" got the date wrong on the email in the same way, to be as incriminating – and false – as possible. Nor, needless to say, will they identify their sources who, in concert, fed them such inflammatory and utterly false information.

    Sadly, CNN and MSNBC have deleted most traces of the most humiliating videos from the internet, including demanding that YouTube remove copies. But enough survives to document just what a monumental, horrifying, and utterly inexcusable debacle this was. Particularly amazing is the clip of the CNN reporter (see below) having to admit the error for the first time, as he awkwardly struggles to pretend that it's not the massive, horrific debacle that it so obviously is:

    Dishonorable Mention:

    • ABC News' Brian Ross is fired for reporting Trump told Flynn to make contact with Russians when he was still a candidate; in fact, Trump did that after he won.
    • The New York Times c laimed Manafort provided polling data to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a person "close to the Kremlin"; in fact, he provided them to Ukrainians, not Russians.
    • Crowdstrike, the firm hired by the DNC, claimed they had evidence that Russia hacked Ukrainian artillery apps; they then retracted it .
    • Bloomberg and the WSJ reported Mueller subpoenaed Deustche Bank for Trump's financial records; the NYT said that never happened .
    • Rachel Maddow devoted 20 minutes at the start of her show to very melodramatically claiming a highly sophisticated party tried to trick her by sending her a fake Top Secret document modeled after the one published by the Intercept, and said it could only have come from the U.S. Government (or the Intercept) since the person obtained the document before it was published by us and thus must have had special access to it; in fact, Maddow and NBC completely misread the metadata on the document ; the fake sent to Maddow was created after we published the document, and was sent to her by a random member of the public who took the document from the Intercept's site and doctored it to see if she'd fall for an obvious scam. Maddow's entire timeline, on which her whole melodramatic conspiracy theory rested, was fictitious.
    • The U.S. media and Democrats spent six months claiming that all "17 intelligence agencies" agreed Russia was behind the hacks; the NYT finally retracted that in June, 2017: "The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies -- the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community."
    • AP claimed on February 2, 2018, that the Free Beacon commissioned the Steele Dossier; they thereafter acknowledged that was false and noted, instead: "Though the former spy, Christopher Steele, was hired by a firm that was initially funded by the Washington Free Beacon, he did not begin work on the project until after Democratic groups had begun funding it."
    • The national media have offered multiple, conflicting accounts of how and why the FBI investigation into Trump/Russia began.
    • Widespread government and media claims that accused Russian agent Maria Butina offered "sex for favors" were totally false (and scurrilous).
    • After a Russian regional jet crashed on February 11, 2018, shortly after it took off from Moscow, killing all 71 people aboard, Harvard Law Professor and frequent MSNBC contributor Laurence Tribe strongly implied Putin purposely caused the plane to go down in order to murder Sergei Millian, a person vaguely linked to George Papadopoulos and Jared Kushner; in fact, Millian was not on the plane nor, to date, has anyone claimed they had any evidence that Putin ordered his own country's civilian passenger jet brought down.
    Special mention:

    As I've said many times, the U.S. media has become quite adept at expressing extreme indignation when people criticize them; when politicians conclude that it is advantageous to turn the U.S. media into their main adversary; and when people turn to "fake news" sites.

    If, however, they were willing to devote just a small fraction of that energy to examining their own conduct, perhaps they would develop the tools necessary to combat those problems instead of just denouncing their critics and angrily demanding that politicians and news consumers accord them the respect to which they believe they are entitled.

    [Jan 21, 2019] Anti-Trump Frenzy Threatens to End Superpower Diplomacy by Stephen F. Cohen

    The problem is not Russia; the problem is the crisis of neoliberalism in the USA. And related legitimization of neoliberal elite, which now Deep State is trying ot patch with anti-Russian hysteria
    Notable quotes:
    "... That is, in the modern history of US-Russian summits, we are told by a former American ambassador who knows, the "secrecy of presidential private meetings has been the rule, not the exception." He continues, "There's nothing unusual about withholding information from the bureaucracy about the president's private meetings with foreign leaders . Sometimes they would dictate a memo afterward, sometimes not." Indeed, President Richard Nixon, distrustful of the US "bureaucracy," sometimes met privately with Kremlin leader Leonid Brezhnev while only Brezhnev's translator was present. ..."
    Jan 16, 2019 | www.thenation.com

    Baseless Russiagate allegations continue to risk war with Russia. Anti-Trump Frenzy Threatens to End Superpower Diplomacy | The Nation The New Year has brought a torrent of ever-more-frenzied allegations that President Donald Trump has long had a conspiratorial relationship -- why mince words and call it "collusion"? -- with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin.

    Why the frenzy now? Perhaps because Russiagate promoters in high places are concerned that special counsel Robert Mueller will not produce the hoped-for "bombshell" to end Trump's presidency. Certainly, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt seems worried, demanding, "The president must go," his drop line exhorting, "What are we waiting for?" (In some countries, articles like his, and there are very many, would be read as calling for a coup.) Perhaps to incite Democrats who have now taken control of House investigative committees. Perhaps simply because Russiagate has become a political-media cult that no facts, or any lack of evidence, can dissuade or diminish.

    And there is no new credible evidence, preposterous claims notwithstanding. One of The New York Times ' own recent "bombshells," published on January 12, reported, for example, that in spring 2017, FBI officials "began investigating whether [President Trump] had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests." None of the three reporters bothered to point out that those "agents and officials" almost certainly included ones later reprimanded and retired by the FBI itself for their political biases. (As usual, the Times buried its self-protective disclaimer deep in the story: "No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials.")

    Whatever the explanation, the heightened frenzy is unmistakable, leading the "news" almost daily in the synergistic print and cable media outlets that have zealously promoted Russiagate for more than two years, in particular the Times , The Washington Post , MSNBC, CNN, and their kindred outlets. They have plenty of eager enablers, including the once-distinguished Strobe Talbott, President Bill Clinton's top adviser on Russia and until recently president of the Brookings Institution. According to Talbott , "We already know that the Kremlin helped put Trump into the White House and played him for a sucker . Trump has been colluding with a hostile Russia throughout his presidency." In fact, we do not "know" any of this. These remain merely widely disseminated suspicions and allegations.

    In this cult-like commentary, the "threat" of "a hostile Russia" must be inflated along with charges against Trump. (In truth, Russia represents no threat to the United States that Washington itself did not provoke since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.) For its own threat inflation, the Times featured not an expert with any plausible credentials but Lisa Page, the former FBI lawyer with no known Russia expertise, and who was one of those reprimanded by the agency for anti-Trump political bias. Nonetheless, the Times quotes Page at length : "In the Russian Federation and in President Putin himself you have an individual whose aim is to disrupt the Western alliance and whose aim is to make Western democracy more fractious in order to weaken our ability to spread our democratic ideals." Perhaps we should have guessed that the democracy-promotion genes of J. Edgar Hoover were still alive and breeding in the FBI, though for the Times , in its exploitation of the hapless and legally endangered Page, it seems not to matter.

    Which brings us, or rather Russiagate zealots, to the heightened "threat" represented by "Putin's Russia." If true, we would expect the US president to negotiate with the Kremlin leader, including at summit meetings, as every president since Dwight Eisenhower has done. But, we are told, we cannot trust Trump to do so, because, according to The Washington Post , he has repeatedly met with Putin alone, with only translators present, and concealed the records of their private talks, sure signs of "treasonous" behavior, as the Russiagate media first insisted following the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki in July 2018.

    It's hard to know whether this is historical ignorance or Russiagate malice, though it is probably both. In any event, the truth is very different. In preparing US-Russian (Soviet and post-Soviet) summits since the 1950s, aides on both sides have arranged "private time" for their bosses for two essential reasons: so they can develop sufficient personal rapport to sustain any policy partnership they decide on; and so they can alert one another to constraints on their policy powers at home, to foes of such détente policies often centered in their respective intelligence agencies. (The KGB ran operations against Nikita Khrushchev's détente policies with Eisenhower, and, as is well established, US intelligence agencies have run operations against Trump's proclaimed goal of "cooperation with Russia.")

    That is, in the modern history of US-Russian summits, we are told by a former American ambassador who knows, the "secrecy of presidential private meetings has been the rule, not the exception." He continues, "There's nothing unusual about withholding information from the bureaucracy about the president's private meetings with foreign leaders . Sometimes they would dictate a memo afterward, sometimes not." Indeed, President Richard Nixon, distrustful of the US "bureaucracy," sometimes met privately with Kremlin leader Leonid Brezhnev while only Brezhnev's translator was present.

    Nor should we forget the national-security benefits that have come from private meetings between US and Kremlin leaders. In October 1986, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met alone with their translators and an American official who took notes -- the two leaders, despite their disagreements, agreed in principle that nuclear weapons should be abolished. The result, in 1987, was the first and still only treaty abolishing an entire category of such weapons, the exceedingly dangerous intermediate-range ones. (This is the historic treaty Trump has said he may abrogate.)

    And yet, congressional zealots are now threatening to subpoena the American translator who was present during Trump's meetings with Putin. If this recklessness prevails, it will be the end of the nuclear-superpower summit diplomacy that has helped to keep America and the world safe from catastrophic war for nearly 70 years -- and as a new, more perilous nuclear arms race between the two countries is unfolding. It will amply confirm a thesis set out in my book War with Russia? -- that anti-Trump Russiagate allegations have become the gravest threat to our security.

    The following correction and clarification were made to the original version of this article on January 17: Reagan and Gorbachev met privately with translators during their summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986, not February, and Reagan was also accompanied by an American official who took notes. And it would be more precise to say that the two leaders, despite their disagreements, agreed in principle that nuclear weapons should be abolished.

    Stephen F. Cohen is professor emeritus of politics and Russian studies at Princeton and NYU and author of the new book War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate . This commentary is based on the most recent of his weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War with the host of the John Batchelor radio show. (The podcast is here . Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com . )

    [Jan 21, 2019] Skripal Story Just Got Weirder; First Responder Revealed As Chief Army Nurse; Steele Link Blamed On Russia

    Notable quotes:
    "... The whole affair is psyop, we know that already ..."
    "... Stranger and stranger British press is saying that they did CPR on both victims at the scene of their collapse; being a trained nurse one of the first things they would have done is to have taken their pulse and other vitals and miraculously managed to do this and not become contaminated. Methinks something doth stink! ..."
    "... Before any free-trade agreement can be reached with the United States, the Queen must issue a written apology to President Trump for attempting to overthrow his government. ..."
    Jan 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    The case of poisoned double-agent Sergei Skripal just got weirder after it was revealed that the first responder to the scene was the Chief Nursing Officer for the British Army after he daughter spotted Skripal and his daughter collapsed on a bench at the Maltings shopping center in Salisbury on March 5 of last year.

    According to Spire FM , 16-year-old Abigail McCourt spotted the poisoned Russians while "out celebrating her brother's birthday," and then quickly alerted her mother - Alison McCourt. The two McCourts gave first aid to the Skripals until paramedics arrived.

    Colonel McCourt - who was decorated for her efforts to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone, proposed her daughter as a candidate for the Lifesaver Award at Spire FM's Local Hero Awards.

    "As a qualified nurse it was a fairly routine situation for me but my daughter was amazing. Her prompt actions, spotting them in difficulty, and the way she assisted me to put Yulia Skripal in the recovery position had a significant impact on the outcome of the two victims , " said Alison of her daughter.

    The coincidence - kept under wraps for nearly a year , is sure to give skeptics plenty of new ammunition to refute the official narrative that Russia attempted to kill Skripal 10 years after the voluntarily gave him up in a spy exchange with the UK.

    ... ... ...

    Christopher Steele connection walked back

    In an embarrassing walkback of a story from March 2018, The Telegraph now says that the Kremlin laid a "false trail" linking Sergei Skripal to Christopher Steele - the former MI6 spy who crafted the infamous anti-Trump "Steele Dossier" paid for by Hillary Clinton's campaign.

    In March, The Telegraph wrote:

    The Telegraph understands that Col Skripal moved to Salisbury in 2010 in a spy swap and became close to a security consultant employed by Christopher Steele, who compiled the Trump dossier.

    The British security consultant, according to a LinkedIn social network account that was removed from the internet in the past few days, is also based in Salisbury.

    On the same LinkedIn account, the man listed consultancy work with Orbis Business Intelligence, according to reports. - Telegraph

    On Sunday that entire connection - which implied that Skripal was somehow involved with the Steele Dossier, was blamed on Russia .

    Russian intelligence created a false trail linking the double agent Sergei Skripal to the former MI6 officer behind the Trump dossier before carrying out the Salisbury nerve agent attack, the Telegraph has been told.

    Well-placed sources now believe that the plot to kill Col Skripal may have included a 'black ops' attempt to sow doubt on the veracity of the explosive dossier that claims Donald Trump received Kremlin backing.

    The year before the attempted assassination of Col Skripal, a mysterious post on LinkedIn suggested his MI6 handler, who is not being named, worked as a "senior analyst" at Orbis Business Intelligence, the firm that produced the Trump dossier.

    ...

    But a number of sources have told The Telegraph that the LinkedIn profile is false - if it ever properly existed at all - and that Skripal's MI6 handler never worked for Orbis.

    It is now suspected that the LinkedIn profile was created by the GRU, the Russian military intelligence unit which tried to kill Col Skripal with novichok nerve agent. - Telegraph

    "By creating this link, they are suggesting that MI6 are involved with the dossier or Skripal or both. It adds to the confusion and acts as a wedge between the White House and Downing Street. It is exactly the kind of operation the Russians would order to sow confusion," said the Telegraph 's "well placed source."

    "An internet hyperlink to the LinkedIn page appeared in an obscure blog posting in January 2017 - more than a year before the Salisbury attack - but the actual LinkedIn page itself has never been visible ," the Telegraph writes.

    In other words, The Telegraph wrote an entire story in March of last year based on nothing more than "an internet hyperlink to the LinkedIn page" without actually having viewed the profile now blamed on a Russian black op.

    But there was another possibility - one that is utterly ludicrous and now disproved - that was none the less championed by conspiracy theorists. Namely, that the death of Col Skripal was not ordered by the Kremlin at all - but carried out by British agents to silence the former Russian intelligence officer.

    The reason was simple. Col Skripal - so the theory went - had helped provide information to Christopher Steele, a former senior MI6 officer, who authored an extraordinary dossier on Donald Trump, alleging that the soon-to-be president was effectively a puppet of Putin. The dossier claimed that the Kremlin had been "cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least five years".

    Oddly, however, a British spy named Pablo Miller was claimed by Russian media in 2007 as the MI6 agent who recruited Skripal in 1995. Miller apparently works (or worked) for Orbis - though it is unclear whether he is the same person noted in the original Telegraph report.

    So - the British Army's head nurse was the first one to provide assistance to the dying Russians, while Skripal's link to Christopher Steele is now thought to be part of a Russian plot to discredit the Steele Dossier. Fascinating.

    Leguran , 1 minute ago link

    Fascinating??? Too much fantasy in this piece of fiction. The author seems uninterested in going beyond trying to make it look like a fantasy James Bond. Surely someone can give the 'patient in difficulty' symptoms. Good grief, to categorize this fantasy story cooked up by British Intel and hard-sell journalists, as NEWS. Is this the drivel we have to expect from journalism schools?

    The_God_Particle , 22 minutes ago link

    M eye 6 is complicit in the Steele Dossier on Fake Russian collusion, Trying to cover a big black eye from a so called British ally to USA that tried to run a coup on a sitting president...

    keep the bastards honest , 12 minutes ago link

    We always knew Pablo Miller worked for Orbis, Steele's consultancy, and was skripals handler,

    the article brings out the the nurses daughter sad Yulia Skripal was not breathing, was dead, neither suffered any contact problems, unlike the policeman who was first on the scene on the old story.

    FurgetStHEkatZ , 26 minutes ago link

    The 'actor based reality,' which has always been a tool for TPTB to use the fair and balanced press to divide the public at large, utilizes much more than vast corps of characters, writers, producers and directors as the psyops event coordinators executing preplanned large scale operations to steer our perception with proven mind control tactics. But, they're tactics have become so simple to spot by researchers as the templates are basically similar and the plots of they're fake large scale events have become mind numbingly ridiculous for any body paying attention to even the smallest amount of detail exposed in these hoaxed

    hxc , 32 minutes ago link

    Wow, (((THEY))) sure LOVE gaslighting us. This mess of an attempt at an article shows how ******* stupid they really think we are. Even their warped version of one alternate theory fits their ******** narrative. ******* absurd.

    rogermorris , 33 minutes ago link

    Could be. but.

    Porton Down is 8 miles...10 miles away? .. staff live in Salisbury...numbers of medical staff deployed at PD and area will be large...Interesting is all.

    The whole affair is psyop, we know that already

    Wrascaly Wabbit , 37 minutes ago link

    Stranger and stranger British press is saying that they did CPR on both victims at the scene of their collapse; being a trained nurse one of the first things they would have done is to have taken their pulse and other vitals and miraculously managed to do this and not become contaminated. Methinks something doth stink!

    Norfry , 43 minutes ago link

    British authorities have refined to a whole new level offering bald faced lies and patent absurdities with a dignified stiff upper lip. I have it from a highly placed source that envious American and Israeli official and unofficial liars have been practicing posturing as dignified and putting glue on their upper lips.

    indaknow , 44 minutes ago link

    Chief nursing officer of the british army/first responder. I'm not supposed to question that right?

    AutoLode , 45 minutes ago link

    Remember novichok was believed to have never been achieved by the Soviets but the lab and all contents in Uzbekistan was captured by western forces

    hxc , 31 minutes ago link

    Invented in the USA but named in Russian.

    CRITICAL THINKING

    Pussy Biscuit , 46 minutes ago link

    The brits are the deep statists of the deep state scum.

    indaknow , 49 minutes ago link

    It's all a coincidence. In fact the word coincidence is an exaggeration. Because the coincidences are happening more and more. Which makes them no longer a coincidence.

    See how that works.

    dunroamin , 54 minutes ago link

    The previous alleged first responder was a policeman who became dangerously ill because the novichok was so potent but strangely, this woman and her daughter suffered no ill effects. I can only guess that due to her work with the British Army, she and her daughter had fortunately and coincidentally been innoculated with a novichok antidote.

    hxc , 28 minutes ago link

    Yeah somehow an old fat **** survived being dosed with enough nerve gas to kill a herd of elephants. Give me a ******* break.

    AutoLode , 59 minutes ago link

    And the only plane authorized to land on 9-12 2001 carried MI5 and MI6 chiefs

    mog , 1 hour ago link

    From John Helmer

    Further points and questions.

    http://johnhelmer.net/british-government-demolishes-skripal-house-because-sergei-skripal-poisoned-himself-roof-falls-in-on-theresa-may/

    Helena Bonham-Carter , 1 hour ago link

    "after he daughter spotted Skripal and his daughter"

    What?

    BT , 1 hour ago link

    Not weirder, just the lies keep getting more obsene.

    Zappalives , 1 hour ago link

    Assume anything out of london is a bald face lie.

    Karl Malden's Nose , 1 hour ago link

    While a Mossad Agent and CIA station chief were flying kites they too noticed the Skripals and called the ambulance....

    DEDA CVETKO , 1 hour ago link

    And the MI-6 ambulance just happened to be passing by...

    hannah , 1 hour ago link

    what exactly did these 2 women do that 'saved the lives' except call 911 for help. they somehow cured a biological weapon on a park bench....?!....LOL

    pablozz , 1 hour ago link

    Did they use baby wipes to protect themselves?

    insanelysane , 43 minutes ago link

    +Infinity

    The house was on lockdown forever. Even if you are a trained nurse, doctor, emt, you are out in a park with your family. What equipment are you carrying to defeat the effects of a biological weapon??? And they weren't affected. Simply amazing.

    DEDA CVETKO , 1 hour ago link

    Like a poorly-scripted Benny Hill show.

    hooligan2009 , 1 hour ago link

    a tangled web indeed. Smacks of editing completed by mr smith at the "Ministry of Truth"

    let's just call it "manufactured, retrospective, plausible deniability" just so we can fit in with what other people might simply call "********".

    Herodotus , 1 hour ago link

    Before any free-trade agreement can be reached with the United States, the Queen must issue a written apology to President Trump for attempting to overthrow his government.

    [Jan 21, 2019] It is clear that something else happened, and much of what we have seen since then has been theatre and an attempt to cover up what actually took place

    Notable quotes:
    "... Even as I was finishing this piece off, yet another round of nonsense was unleashed; this time, the news that the roof of 47 Christie Miller Road (including the roof of the study) is to be taken off and replaced. Remember, we're talking about a substance that can be cleansed with baby wipes. Remember, we're talking about a substance that apparently breaks down after 80 minutes of exposure to the air. But 11 months later, it is again so deadly, that a whole roof needs replacing! Of course the media is not bothering to ask the obvious questions about this action, such as: How exactly could the roof timbers have become contaminated? Who could have contaminated them? D.S. Bailey? But why would he have been in the attic? Why is the ceiling / roof in Zizzis [restaurant] not being replaced? Why has the roof in The Mill [pub] not been dismantled? What was really in the attic? Obvious questions, yet none of them will be asked. ..."
    Jan 21, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Lozion , Jan 20, 2019 4:37:20 PM | link

    Jen , Jan 20, 2019 4:37:39 PM | link

    Next twist in the ongoing Skripal poisoning soap opera saga - it seems to be turning out that way - must surely be an autobiography publishing deal for Abby McCourt, with the book having a working title of "I Was A Teenage Frontline Emergency Responder in the Fight against Putin, Novichok and Russia".

    Could the title be any better?

    My favourite "I Was A Teenage ..." http://renandstimpy.wikia.com/wiki/I_Was_a_Teenage_Stimpy

    Likklemore , Jan 20, 2019 6:01:00 PM | link
    @ Paveway IV Post 1
    Curiouser and curiouser goes the tale; apparently it was not just the door handle -

    John Helmer's post, January 17th, 2019 on
    "The British state broadcaster BBC and other media have disclosed that the Salisbury house (lead image) owned by Sergei Skripal is to be partially demolished and rebuilt over the next four months."

    a very long piece and a worthy read. the last three paragraphs tells all -

    BRITISH GOVERNMENT DEMOLISHES SKRIPAL HOUSE, ROOF FALLS IN ON THERESA MAY AS EVIDENCE GROWS THAT SERGEI SKRIPAL POISONED HIMSELF BY ACCIDENT

    The second conclusion is that it was Skripal who exposed himself to a poison he was handling inside the house. That he did so by accident is likely; the accident theory was first reported here, on March 25, 2018.

    The only independent British investigator of the affair, Rob Slane, has announced that he is retiring from the case. Here is his last word.

    " Even as I was finishing this piece off, yet another round of nonsense was unleashed; this time, the news that the roof of 47 Christie Miller Road (including the roof of the study) is to be taken off and replaced. Remember, we're talking about a substance that can be cleansed with baby wipes. Remember, we're talking about a substance that apparently breaks down after 80 minutes of exposure to the air. But 11 months later, it is again so deadly, that a whole roof needs replacing! Of course the media is not bothering to ask the obvious questions about this action, such as: How exactly could the roof timbers have become contaminated? Who could have contaminated them? D.S. Bailey? But why would he have been in the attic? Why is the ceiling / roof in Zizzis [restaurant] not being replaced? Why has the roof in The Mill [pub] not been dismantled? What was really in the attic? Obvious questions, yet none of them will be asked.

    In conclusion, I think it abundantly clear that what we have been told about what took place on 4th March in the beautiful city of Salisbury is not, in fact, true. It is clear that something else happened, and much of what we have seen since then has been theatre and an attempt to cover up what actually took place."

    [Jan 20, 2019] Doctor, nurse, Chief Nursing Officer of the Army, whatever.

    Highly recommended!
    Now it looks like all this scene was staged by British government and is connected to the Integrity initiative... Poor cat and guinea pigs ...
    See also The desperate efforts of the Western neoliberal establishment to build a new propaganda machine by globinfo freexchange
    Jan 20, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
    PavewayIV , Jan 20, 2019 11:15:51 AM | 1 ">link

    And, one last bit from the BBC report on March 8, 2018:

    "...Meanwhile, a doctor who was one of the first people at the scene has described how she found Ms Skripal slumped unconscious on a bench, vomiting and fitting. She had also lost control of her bodily functions.

    The woman, who asked not to be named, told the BBC she moved Ms Skripal into the recovery position and opened her airway, as others tended to her father.

    She said she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying there was no sign of any chemical agent on Ms Skripal's face or body.

    The doctor said she had been worried she would be affected by the nerve agent, but added that she "feels fine"

    Doctor, nurse, Chief Nursing Officer of the Army, whatever...

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43326734

    [Jan 20, 2019] How to restore BuzzFeed reputation after "Cohen testimony" debacle

    Notable quotes:
    "... Buzzfeed's CEO should do the honorable thing and commit hari kari like the Japanese do when losing face, then the company should close up shop. ..."
    Jan 20, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    skunzie , 39 minutes ago link

    Buzzfeed's CEO should do the honorable thing and commit hari kari like the Japanese do when losing face, then the company should close up shop.

    [Jan 20, 2019] This organisation and all of those part of it should be treated as enemies of the people, as they have attacked, disingenuously and using smears

    Notable quotes:
    "... Sedition is a crime and it is clear that the multiple seditious acts of II and IfS toward many countries and with their band of controlled journalists was a deliberate and planned activity. ..."
    "... I don't expect any prosecutions but there is a chance of promotional impediments applying to some of those named. At least for the next month. Every named employee of II and IfS is an enemy of democracy and its people ..."
    Jan 20, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Anne Jaclard , Jan 20, 2019 6:02:29 PM | link

    On Integrity Initiative Endgame:

    From Consortium News

    It should be pointed out that the Integrity Initiative recently claimed on Twitter that some of the documents leaked in batch #4 were not theirs and had been misrepresented as part of the organisation.

    It doesn't really matter, though: all that we know, anti-socialist shills writing propaganda on behalf of II (Nimmo, Cohen, Reid-Ross) have confirmed their own roles, and the Twitter account was proven to have pushed out slanderous material on Jeremy Corbyn.

    Note that "misrepresented" could have referred to the inclusion of the Corbyn slide show document which was presented at but created by the II.

    This organisation and all of those part of it should be treated as enemies of the people, as they have attacked, disingenuously and using smears,

    -Yellow Vests
    – Jill Stein
    -Jeremy Corbyn
    -George Galloway
    -Seuams Milne
    -German Left Party
    -French Left Party
    -French Communist Party
    -Greek Communist Party
    -Podemos
    -Norwegian Red Party
    -Norwegian Socialist Left Party
    -Swedish Left Party
    -Swedish Greens
    -International Anti-NATO Groups
    -Greyzone Project
    -Julian Assange
    -MintPressNews

    Via

    -Infiltrating Corbyn and Sanders campaigns
    -Inserting propaganda anonymously into local media including the Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, The Times, the Guardian, and more
    -Using social media to orchestrate hate and dismissal campaigns against those mentioned above
    -Hosting events for collaboration between members
    -Building online "clusters" to deploy and shape discourse in the media and elsewhere

    By repeating or openly collaborating with:

    -Ben Nimmo
    -Oz Katergi
    -Anne Applebaum
    -Peter Pomerantsev
    -Bellingcat
    -Atlantic Council
    -Carole Cadwalladr
    -David Aaronovitch
    -Center For A Stateless Society
    -PropOrNot
    -Alexander Reid-Ross
    -Nick Cohen
    -Michael Weiss
    -Jamie Fly
    -Jamie Kirchick

    Directed by:

    -Tory Government
    -NATO
    -Facebook
    -German Multinationals

    uncle tungsten | Jan 20, 2019 6:18:59 PM | 16

    Thank you Anne Jaclard @ | 14

    Sedition is a crime and it is clear that the multiple seditious acts of II and IfS toward many countries and with their band of controlled journalists was a deliberate and planned activity.

    I don't expect any prosecutions but there is a chance of promotional impediments applying to some of those named. At least for the next month. Every named employee of II and IfS is an enemy of democracy and its people.

    [Jan 20, 2019] How to restore BuzzFeed reputation after "Cohen testimony" debacle

    Notable quotes:
    "... Buzzfeed's CEO should do the honorable thing and commit hari kari like the Japanese do when losing face, then the company should close up shop. ..."
    Jan 20, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    skunzie , 39 minutes ago link

    Buzzfeed's CEO should do the honorable thing and commit hari kari like the Japanese do when losing face, then the company should close up shop.

    [Jan 20, 2019] In fact, we don't have a real democracy anymore. We have a Potemkin Village democracy.

    Notable quotes:
    "... In addition, Trump is a pretend President. He doesn't control his own government. Hell, a single judge anywhere in the hinterlands evidently has the power to veto pretty much whatever the Trumpster does. It's clear that the real power resides in the hands of the Ruling Class, most of whom are unelected and unaccountable. Judges. Bureaucrats. Regulators. The Deep State. They now run the show. ..."
    Jan 20, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    Gerard January 17, 2019 at 3:12 pm

    Great article and right on target. In fact, we don't have a real democracy anymore. We have a Potemkin Village democracy. Our national legislature is paralyzed and impotent. And honestly, that's the way its membership likes it. Pretend to govern. Hold tight to the seats of privilege and status.

    In addition, Trump is a pretend President. He doesn't control his own government. Hell, a single judge anywhere in the hinterlands evidently has the power to veto pretty much whatever the Trumpster does. It's clear that the real power resides in the hands of the Ruling Class, most of whom are unelected and unaccountable. Judges. Bureaucrats. Regulators. The Deep State. They now run the show.

    Meanwhile, the mainstream media plays the role of Orwell's Squealer the Pig from Animal Farm. Propagandists. Purveyors of fake news and fake truth. This is not going to end well. The only question is how and when the ending comes.

    [Jan 20, 2019] The desperate efforts of the Western neoliberal establishment to build a new propaganda machine by globinfo freexchange

    Notable quotes:
    "... Recall that, leaked documents passed to the Sunday Mail reveal Integrity Initiative is funded with £2million of Foreign Office cash and run by military intelligence specialists. Politicians and academics have reacted with fury to news a covert Government-funded unit had been attacking the official opposition in Parliament. ..."
    Dec 25, 2018 | failedevolution.blogspot.com

    propaganda machine

    The UK government and other Western governments and the US in recent years have had increasing difficulties persuading enough of their populations as to the legitimacy of the foreign policies that they have been pursuing. And at the same time, Western countries have been going through a period of political crisis and economic crisis.

    Piers Robinson, Chair in Politics, Society and Political Journalism at the University of Sheffield, further explains:

    I think a lot of this drive is as much about trying to shore up shaky official narratives and trying to shore up political systems in a situation of political crisis, as it is actually about countering Russian propaganda. I would suspect that that's a little bit of an excuse here to really what's going on of problems much closer to home.
    This is not just to do to UK, this is Europe-wide. And there are also indications from the documents that they are intending to start to have some kind of impact within the United States. So, it's a very wide-ranging network that seems to be established. The reason why it needs to be covert, of course, is that if a media organization, or if a journalist is to let on that he, or she, is involved in a program, which quite clearly is pushing a particular agenda, then the credibility of that journalist will be damaged.

    And this is really what is very deceptive about the Integrity Initiative . It's about co-opting journalists and academics into, essentially, a campaign, which appears to be a propaganda campaign, in order to manipulate opinions. And the only way that can really work effectively, is if readers and viewers don't know that what they're reading is something which has emerged from a particular political agenda.

    Integrity Initiative 'Army of propagandists disguised as anti-propagandists' - YouTube

    Recall that, leaked documents passed to the Sunday Mail reveal Integrity Initiative is funded with £2million of Foreign Office cash and run by military intelligence specialists. Politicians and academics have reacted with fury to news a covert Government-funded unit had been attacking the official opposition in Parliament.

    So, it's not accidental that the organized and systematic propaganda campaign against labour party has actually started under Corbyn's leadership. And that the campaign contains a lot of personal attacks against the leader of the Labour party. That's because, of course, Jeremy Corbyn is driving the party out of the neoliberal machine that has been dominating the UK politics for decades.

    But it seems that the agents of the neoliberal establishment are really desperate as they see that the new narratives are not particularly successful.
    It would not be exaggerating to suggest that the attacks against Leftist leaders like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders essentially bring the opposite effect. That's because especially the younger generations have turned their back to the mainstream media.

    And they understand that the more the media attack Corbyn and Sanders, the stronger the indication that these leaders are not part of the neoliberal establishment that ruined their lives becomes.

    [Jan 20, 2019] I want to tell all those who have fueled the arms race over the last 15 years, sought to win unilateral advantages over Russia, introduced unlawful sanctions aimed to contain our country's development: You have failed to contain Russia," Putin said during a national address in March.

    Jan 20, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

    Friday, January 18, 2019 at 04:23 PM

    Russia's PL-19 Nudol, a system U.S. military intelligence assesses will be focused primarily on anti-satellite missions, was successfully tested twice in 2018. The weapon, which was fired from a mobile launcher, was last tested on Dec. 23 and marked the seventh overall test of the system, according to one of the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

    The Russian anti-satellite weapon is expected to target communication and imagery satellites in low Earth orbit, according to the other person, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. For reference, the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope travel in low Earth orbit.

    While anti-satellite missiles are by no means new, the latest revelation comes less than a year after Putin touted his nation's growing military arsenal.

    "I want to tell all those who have fueled the arms race over the last 15 years, sought to win unilateral advantages over Russia, introduced unlawful sanctions aimed to contain our country's development: You have failed to contain Russia," Putin said during a national address in March.

    A recently unclassified report from the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, or NASIC, explained how the U.S. advantage above the Earth's atmosphere is eroding to "an emergent China and a resurgent Russia."

    The NASIC report said there number of foreign intelligence and imaging satellites "has tripled" to 300 in orbit in the last two decades. The U.S. itself has 353 of its own space assets in orbit for those purposes. In response, military superpowers have poured funding into researching and developing anti-satellite weapons.

    Missiles are the most high-profile, physical manifestation of anti-satellite weapons. Frank Slazer, the vice president of space systems at the Aerospace Industries Association, told CNBC about how those missiles may be physically effective, but are likely not the "first line of approach on this."

    "You'd much rather jam the satellite, blind it [with a laser], or take over its control systems with a cyberattack," Slazer said. "Kinetic impacts could cause problems for other nations, besides the one you are attacking, and possibly for your own system's for many years afterwards."

    Both Slazer and the NASIC report pointed to the example of China's anti-satellite test in 2007. China fired an anti-satellite missile at one of its own, discarded weather satellites. The test was successful, but the satellite shattered into thousands of pieces, which continue to zip around in an orbital cloud of deadly debris.

    "A huge percentage of the debris in low earth orbit is still attributable to that one test," Slazer said.

    As far as the U.S. military's ability to defend against anti-satellite weapons, the assets and capabilities in orbit "are the same as they have been for awhile," Tommy Sanford, director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, told CNBC.

    Sanford contends that there has not been much in the way of progress when it comes to defending U.S. space-based assets. Sanford gave the example of using networks of smaller and cheaper satellites, like cubesats and nanosats, to offer "effective platforms to augment and support missions carried out by the DoD's larger exquisite satellites."

    "The idea behind a distributed architecture for space support is – instead of having one exquisite target – you'd have a system which could presumably survive some loss of its elements and still be able to provide function," Slazer said.

    [Jan 19, 2019] Coincidence - Chief Nurse Of British Army Was First Person To Arrive At Novichoked Skripal Scene

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... But Abby's mum now feels the time is right for her daughter to be recognised for the "incredible" way she dealt with the scenario. Alison nominated her for the Lifesaver Award at Spire FM's Local Hero Awards, and the judges were unanimous in their decision that Abigail was a very worthy winner. ..."
    "... Colonel McCourt was appointed Chief Nursing Officer on February 1 2018, just one month before the Skripal incident happened. Colonel McCourt lives in Larkhill, a garrison town some 11 miles from Salisbury. She is known to visit elsewhere. ..."
    "... That is such a great article b. I have had a great wry chuckle at the folly of human hubris. Fancy setting up your own daughter for an award. Certainly looks less and less like novichok and more like novifraud with every passing day. ..."
    "... Not only is the military mother Britain's most senior soldier on the virulent battlefield against ebola , she is also the last line of defence for the Army medics and other healthcare workers fighting the deadly disease ..."
    "... what a stroke of luck Britain's most senior soldier on the virulent battlefield against ebola was there, arguably the most qualified person in all of Britain to attend to the Skripals. ..."
    "... The story of the heroic Abigail McCourt in helping to save the Skripals must be too good for the likes of The Fraudian and other so-called "progressive" MSM outlets to resist. Strange that such a narrative was not brought up until now, coming close to the anniversary of the poisoning and the deadline for Britain's exit from the EU. ..."
    "... Curious that Abigail McCourt received basic first aid training at school (in which she would have been taught CPR) yet when Spire FM hosts spoke to her, she says that her training was not needed. In almost the same sentence, she says Julia Skripal was not breathing. ..."
    "... Off-Guardian on Twitter wonders if Alison McCourt had been involved in Exercise Toxic Dagger (chemical weapons training exercise) staged by The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the Royal Marines in February 2018: ..."
    "... The main area for shoppers to park in Salisbury is just north of the Maltings (site of the alleged attack) so it's not surprising that someone shopping in Salisbury would pass the bench the Skripals were found on. What is surprising it that none of the family seems to have suffered any effects from the Novichok. ..."
    "... The Skirpal case, the Maidan coup and the related MH17 downing, the various gas attacks in Syria, the most recent bombing incident also in Syria, the Mueller investigation in its entirety - the sheer incompetence shown by the US and British deep states is simply staggering, and in sharp contrast to the investigative ability of this and other sites. ..."
    "... It all adds up to stasi state bullshit. They are so arrogant and cocksure of the controlled media that they can even draw attention to the provocation by seeking an award for a family member despite the prominence of the mother and her role in the power structure. Knowledge, of course, will remain limited to those who are canny enough not to believe the received propaganda wisdom of the five eyes spy state. ..."
    "... So in all the police press briefings and all of the political posturing it was not deemed to be important to mention that the Skripals-on-the-park-bench were attended to by the Chief Nurse Of the British Army? ..."
    "... Even though this could have gone a long, long way to explaining the biggest discrepancy in the government narrative (i.e. Novicock is way, way deadly only, err, umm, they didn't die). How odd. How very, very odd. You'd almost think that the government considered that acknowledging that fact would open up more questions than it would answer. Hard to see why..... ..."
    "... Recall that it was recently established and published that the Steele Dossier was compiled to act as an Insurance Policy in the event Trump won the election. See here . I posted this news as a comment and b picked up on it too, but that aspect of the Dossier is omitted from his essay above. We can see that the Dossier--like Blair's Dodgy Dossier to sell the illegal war on Iraq--has had a massive impact on Trump's presidency, which, whether you like Trump or not, is a matter of grave concern for the institutions of governance of the USA, and IMO is very close to treason. ..."
    "... Sure, the nurse revelation is curious to say the least, but I'm far more interested in the entire disinformation network built by the British along with previous and current versions operated by CIA here in USA. Think back to what Bill Casey said, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false," then Rove's boast: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." ..."
    "... Add those to all the 100% evidence free accusations made against Russia, China, Venezuela, Syria, other nations and private individuals--the "universal sports doping" by Russian athletes was a massive smear proven to be 100% false--and you can understand why I call it BigLie Media. Clearly, the Skripal story's utter fantasy. But the Brits will kill their own to insure the story isn't compromised--Dr. David Kelly, Dawn Sturgess, and quite likely Sergei Skripal, and likely others from incidents in the further past. ..."
    "... The Integrity Initiative was also heavily involved in promoting an anti-Russian agenda such as the Skripal affair. ..."
    "... reminds me of the kuwaiti ambassador's daughter in the runup to the first gulf war. ..."
    "... 'So in all the police press briefings and all of the political posturing it was not deemed to be important to mention that the Skripals-on-the-park-bench were attended to by the Chief Nurse Of the British Army?' And how embarrassing for our 'fearless' journalists and tabloid truth seekers! Let the crowd cry out 'shame'! ..."
    Jan 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    On March 4 2018 the British/Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found incapacitated on a bench in Salisbury. The British government asserts that they were affected by a chemical poison of the so called Novichok group. The case led to a diplomatic conflict as Britain accused Russia of an attempt to kill the Skripals. No evidence was provided by the British government to support those accusations. The Skripals have since been vanished.

    Today an intriguing new detail of the case came to light. Spire FM , a local radio station in Salisbury, reports of a young woman, Abigail McCourt, who was given a 'Lifesaver Award' for her involvement in the Skripal case:

    The 16 year old, from Larkhill, was the first to spot two people collapsed on a bench in the Maltings on March 4th and didn't hesitate to help. Abigail quickly alerted her mum, a qualified nurse, who was nearby and together they gave first aid to the victims until paramedics arrived.

    It soon became clear this was no ordinary medical incident, but the poisoning of a former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, with Novichok.

    ...

    Immediately following the incident and with the world's media focused on Salisbury, the pair didn't want any want press attention and kept their involvement quiet.

    But Abby's mum now feels the time is right for her daughter to be recognised for the "incredible" way she dealt with the scenario. Alison nominated her for the Lifesaver Award at Spire FM's Local Hero Awards, and the judges were unanimous in their decision that Abigail was a very worthy winner.

    Earlier reports mentioned that a 'military nurse' had attended to the Skripals. Following the above report Elena Evdokimova checked the name of the young women's mothers and found a curiosity:

    Elena Evdokimova @elenaevdokimov7 - 10:50 utc - 19 Jan 2019

    We were right, it was Alison McCourt who was that"unknown military nurse" who, absolutely randomly, happened to be near the bench where #Skripals collapsed . Spire FM alleges that it was her daughter Abigail alerted her, but no one mentioned her before ...

    Here is the thing. Alison McCourt is not just one random 'military nurse'. She is the Chief Nursing Officer for the British Army in the rank of Colonel:

    Colonel A L McCourt OBE ARRC QHN - Assistant Head Health Strategy / Chief Nursing Officer (Army) - Senior Health Advisor (Army) Department.

    Colonel McCourt was appointed Chief Nursing Officer on February 1 2018, just one month before the Skripal incident happened. Colonel McCourt lives in Larkhill, a garrison town some 11 miles from Salisbury. She is known to visit elsewhere.

    Petri Krohn , Jan 19, 2019 3:12:45 PM | link

    Dig deep enough and you will find that Alison McCourt is married to Pablo Miller

    c1ue , Jan 19, 2019 3:16:12 PM | link

    Lark Hill - as in "V for Vendetta" Lark Hill? Hrmph.
    Zachary Smith , Jan 19, 2019 3:17:00 PM | link
    As I read this I had two thoughts. The first one is that the Brits have lost the competence they once had with this stuff. "Operation Mincemeat" was, according to all accounts, a marvel in planning, execution, and getting the desired reactions from the German High Command. The "Double-Cross System" turned the extremely risky invasion at Normandy into a success. The recent stuff is a comedy by comparison.

    ... ... ...

    Jetpack , Jan 19, 2019 3:39:34 PM | link
    Here's one way she could have made it on time:
    https://mobile.twitter.com/RoyalNavy/status/1086623282831523840?s=09
    snake , Jan 19, 2019 3:39:49 PM | link
    excellent reporting.. still we have little written collaborative evidence.. just as in 9/11 just top dogs saying improbable things.

    What seems to me important now is to develop as you have done a set of hypotheses. and to hack at them until we hit the ones which all evidence cannot dispute. Using your summary I rewrite in hypothesis form,

    • hypothesis 1: Steele's dirty dossier is not related to the Skripal case.
    • hypothesis 2: Steele's dossier is not the result of an integrity initiative.
    • hypothesis 3: Downing street personnel were not involved in integrity initiative
    • hypothesis 4: media reported only supportable facts.
    • hypothesis 5: Neither the USA or any of its agencies were involved
    • hypothesis 6: Neither Israel or any of its agencies were involved
    • hypothesis 7: Neither Saudi Arabia or any of its Arab partners were involved
    • hypothesis 6: Neither Republicans or Democrats in America were involved.
    • hypothesis 8: the FBI had no part in this.
    • hypothesis 9: Developing sufficient misinformation to justify attacking Nord 2 pipeline was not one of the objectives of the integrity initiative.
    • hypothesis 10: No private interest supported organizing a false flag op against Russia
    uncle tungsten , Jan 19, 2019 3:44:37 PM | link
    Too good. That is such a great article b. I have had a great wry chuckle at the folly of human hubris. Fancy setting up your own daughter for an award. Certainly looks less and less like novichok and more like novifraud with every passing day.
    annie , Jan 19, 2019 4:06:54 PM | link
    from the Daily Mail:
    Not only is the military mother Britain's most senior soldier on the virulent battlefield against ebola , she is also the last line of defence for the Army medics and other healthcare workers fighting the deadly disease.

    what a stroke of luck Britain's most senior soldier on the virulent battlefield against ebola was there, arguably the most qualified person in all of Britain to attend to the Skripals.

    brook trout , Jan 19, 2019 4:10:57 PM | link
    Coincidence? Probably like most here, I think not. But isn't this something of an own goal? If indeed things are as we suspect, why would you put the daughter up for an award? Wouldn't you want the can of worms this presents to remain unopened? Can they be this incompetent? Well, looking at the Brexit process, I guess we know the answer to that last by now rhetorical question.
    Jen , Jan 19, 2019 4:22:07 PM | link
    The story of the heroic Abigail McCourt in helping to save the Skripals must be too good for the likes of The Fraudian and other so-called "progressive" MSM outlets to resist. Strange that such a narrative was not brought up until now, coming close to the anniversary of the poisoning and the deadline for Britain's exit from the EU.

    Curious that Abigail McCourt received basic first aid training at school (in which she would have been taught CPR) yet when Spire FM hosts spoke to her, she says that her training was not needed. In almost the same sentence, she says Julia Skripal was not breathing.
    https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2782928/exclusive-teenage-girl-describes-moment-she-found-collapsed-skripals/

    Off-Guardian on Twitter wonders if Alison McCourt had been involved in Exercise Toxic Dagger (chemical weapons training exercise) staged by The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the Royal Marines in February 2018:
    https://twitter.com/OffGuardian0
    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/exercise-toxic-dagger-the-sharp-end-of-chemical-warfare

    Bobby Peru , Jan 19, 2019 4:29:53 PM | link
    Say cheese https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MGsqbRXuRc
    Bobby Peru , Jan 19, 2019 4:40:30 PM | link
    My dog barks some https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9SrbPkpQHA
    Robert Snefjella , Jan 19, 2019 5:10:41 PM | link
    b, you are too suspicious. Nothing to see here. Clearly way beyond a serious matter, this dastardly attack on Skripals by the Soviets, er, the Russians, er, Putin.

    In Canada our eloquent foreign Minister, in a barrage of outraged talking the talk that was accompanied by making four Russian diplomats walk the walk home, said in words that will surely take their high place in the history of inspired speeches, along with Churchill's 'Never have so many done so much for so few', and MLK's 'I have a nightmare':

    Robert Snefjella , Jan 19, 2019 5:11:39 PM | link
    And her words re the March 4 nerve agent attack on a close ally and partner of Canada "a despicable, heinous and reckless act" that potentially endangered the lives of hundreds"
    Ghost Ship , Jan 19, 2019 5:26:11 PM | link
    Strange - no military hospital in Salisbury but then there aren't military hospitals in Britain anymore. Instead the military use civilian hospitals with a Ministry of Defence Hospital Unit attached but none near Salisbury. The Ministry of Defence Hospital Units do not treat operational casualties who are treated at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine at Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in Birmingham. You'd think the Chief Nursing Officer for the British Army, Colonel McCourt would work out off the most important site for defence medicine in the UK (QEH in Birmingham) but instead she's based at Larkhill which from memory is where the Royal Artillery is located.

    Not so strange - The area inhabited by the British Army north of Salisbury (more specifically north of the A303 road was classified as deprived because of the lack of shopping facilities, so most residents of this area do their shopping in Salisbury which has the best shopping in the area. There are now a Tesco superstore and a branch of Lidl in Tidworth so perhaps it's not so deprived anymore.

    The main area for shoppers to park in Salisbury is just north of the Maltings (site of the alleged attack) so it's not surprising that someone shopping in Salisbury would pass the bench the Skripals were found on. What is surprising it that none of the family seems to have suffered any effects from the Novichok.

    Hal Duell , Jan 19, 2019 5:39:14 PM | link
    The Skirpal case, the Maidan coup and the related MH17 downing, the various gas attacks in Syria, the most recent bombing incident also in Syria, the Mueller investigation in its entirety - the sheer incompetence shown by the US and British deep states is simply staggering, and in sharp contrast to the investigative ability of this and other sites.

    The US is fracturing, the EU is fracturing, and therein lies the greatest danger. With the overplayed sanctions only making the sanctioned effect work arounds to the point that the primacy of the US dollar is threatened, with the contain China train having left the station and recently pulling into a station purpose built on the dark side of the moon, their only options look to be to either go nuclear or go away.

    2019 looks to be a most interesting year!

    exiled off mainstreet , Jan 19, 2019 6:05:32 PM | link
    It all adds up to stasi state bullshit. They are so arrogant and cocksure of the controlled media that they can even draw attention to the provocation by seeking an award for a family member despite the prominence of the mother and her role in the power structure. Knowledge, of course, will remain limited to those who are canny enough not to believe the received propaganda wisdom of the five eyes spy state.
    Yeah, Right , Jan 19, 2019 6:12:12 PM | link
    So in all the police press briefings and all of the political posturing it was not deemed to be important to mention that the Skripals-on-the-park-bench were attended to by the Chief Nurse Of the British Army?

    Even though this could have gone a long, long way to explaining the biggest discrepancy in the government narrative (i.e. Novicock is way, way deadly only, err, umm, they didn't die). How odd. How very, very odd. You'd almost think that the government considered that acknowledging that fact would open up more questions than it would answer. Hard to see why.....

    somebody , Jan 19, 2019 6:17:21 PM | link
    Posted by: Ghost Ship | Jan 19, 2019 5:26:11 PM | 20

    She lives in Aldershot like Sergeant Bailey. There is a field hospital based there, she is the chief officer

    somebody , Jan 19, 2019 6:37:39 PM | link
    Posted by: somebody | Jan 19, 2019 6:17:21 PM | 26

    Bailey lives in Alderholt. Aldershot is an hour by car from Salisbury.

    Tom Welsh , Jan 19, 2019 6:38:44 PM | link
    I am beginning to wonder if Sir Humphrey Appleby and some of his colleagues are conducting a deliberate hoax, piling impossibility upon impossibility and contradiction upon contradiction, just to see how long it takes the unbelievably gullible British public to get the joke and start throwing cabbages and rotten fruit. Not so funny for the poor woman who died - but then, as Sir Humphrey has often been heard to remark, one cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.
    karlof1 , Jan 19, 2019 6:57:19 PM | link
    Recall that it was recently established and published that the Steele Dossier was compiled to act as an Insurance Policy in the event Trump won the election. See here . I posted this news as a comment and b picked up on it too, but that aspect of the Dossier is omitted from his essay above. We can see that the Dossier--like Blair's Dodgy Dossier to sell the illegal war on Iraq--has had a massive impact on Trump's presidency, which, whether you like Trump or not, is a matter of grave concern for the institutions of governance of the USA, and IMO is very close to treason.

    Sure, the nurse revelation is curious to say the least, but I'm far more interested in the entire disinformation network built by the British along with previous and current versions operated by CIA here in USA. Think back to what Bill Casey said, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false," then Rove's boast: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

    Add those to all the 100% evidence free accusations made against Russia, China, Venezuela, Syria, other nations and private individuals--the "universal sports doping" by Russian athletes was a massive smear proven to be 100% false--and you can understand why I call it BigLie Media. Clearly, the Skripal story's utter fantasy. But the Brits will kill their own to insure the story isn't compromised--Dr. David Kelly, Dawn Sturgess, and quite likely Sergei Skripal, and likely others from incidents in the further past.

    So, while it seems comical, this is all deadly serious.

    Krollchem , Jan 19, 2019 7:03:58 PM | link
    The Integrity Initiative was also heavily involved in promoting an anti-Russian agenda such as the Skripal affair.

    Either Chris Donnelly of the Institute for Statecraft (IoS), (formally of the British Army's Soviet Studies Research Centre at Sandhurst), or UK General Sir Richard Barrons reportedly stated that "if no catastrophe happens to wake people up and demand a response, then we need to find a way to get the core of government to realise the problem and take it out of the political space."

    UK: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/01/07/inte-j07.html

    james , Jan 19, 2019 7:51:44 PM | link
    great coverage b.. thank you... it's either a coincidence theory, or a conspiracy theory... no other choices, until the uk gets down to doing an open investigation on integrity initiative...the investigators investigating the investigators.. ain't going to happen... similar deal in the usa now.. basically this will be when hell freezes over - a very long time if ever.. meanwhile the skripals are persona non grata... it would be very interesting to find out where they are kept... it looks like their is no chance for any type of normal life for them here on out... even if the novihoax didn't kill them, the uk has done the equivalent.. it is hard not to tie operation toxic dagger into all of this... the coincidences are just too great..

    @ petri.. thanks for the that.. how did you manage to figure that one out? does that mean that allison mccourt is the daughter of pablo miller, or was allison from another relationship/marriage? of course m16 and some folks know the answer to this amazing coincidences and probably are unable to openly say..

    psychohistorian , Jan 19, 2019 7:58:50 PM | link
    @ Glen Brown and bevin with their correction to my comment.....thanks

    I was not in my best of mind and along with misspelling his name I projected my desire for more movement by the UK opposition in light of having the government paying folks to work against them.....my bad idealism........

    If it is true that Alison McCourt is married to Pablo Miller as Petri Kohn asserts in comment #1 then it looks like the daughter is being groomed for big things in the UK government.....16 years old and already an award for criminal complicity.

    pretzelattack , Jan 19, 2019 8:02:08 PM | link
    reminds me of the kuwaiti ambassador's daughter in the runup to the first gulf war.
    PavewayIV , Jan 19, 2019 8:10:51 PM | link
    Petri Krohn@1 - ? Only thing I could find is a reference to her husband Hugh - a prison officer - and her two kids, Abagail (now 16) and Cameron (now 14). That was from a DailyMail article (I know...) from Dec. 20, 2014. She was spending time away from them during Christmas when she was sent to Sierra Leone for the Ebola outbreak. The article also mentions time away from Hugh and Abagail in 2003 when she was deployed to Iraq. Couldn't find anything about Pablo Miller being married or having kids, but many mentions of his home in Salisbury.
    karlof1 , Jan 19, 2019 8:11:20 PM | link
    bevin @32--

    Nice conjecture, except that those who devised the Dossier specifically said it was to be used as insurance in case Trump won. Please see article I linked to in my comment.

    Bart Hansen , Jan 19, 2019 8:30:25 PM | link
    The daughter is what's know as a "cutout". You can't have the "nurse of all nurses" be the first on the scene. But, they didn't even bother with the daughter having to call mama at home. She was luckily "nearby", presumably lurking behind a tree.
    Ghost Ship , Jan 19, 2019 8:43:51 PM | link
    >>>>: somebody | Jan 19, 2019 6:17:21 PM | 26

    She might have been the commanding officer of 22 Field Hospital but now she's moved on.

    From the QARANC website:

    Following promotion to Lieutenant Colonel in 2011, Alison attended the Advanced Command and Staff Course. Her initial SO1 appointment was as Chief of Staff, Headquarters 2nd Medical Brigade in York in Aug 2012. Alison assumed Command of 22 Field Hospital in July 2013 and deployed the Unit to Sierra Leone on Op GRITROCK in Oct 14. She was awarded an OBE for her leadership of 22 Field during Op GRITROCK.

    On promotion to Colonel in Dec 2015 she assumed an appointment in the newly established Senior Health Advisors department and has been the lead for Assurance and now Health Strategy in that area.

    Alison assumed the appointment of Chief Nursing Officer for the Army on 1 Feb 18.

    james , Jan 19, 2019 8:57:41 PM | link
    @1 petri... unless they hooked up after 2014, your theory doesn't look very likely...

    further to @36 paveways comment from the daily mail dec 20 2014 article - Even though Lieut Col McCourt is a veteran of campaigns in Iraq and the Balkans, she admits this tour of duty has taken a toll, and that she has depended on the support of her husband Hugh, a prison officer, to help her through it. While this is her first Christmas apart from her children, she is accustomed to leaving them and her husband behind. In 2003, she left Abigail, then aged just eight months, in Hugh's arms while she went to Iraq to treat British soldiers wounded in the Gulf War. She returned there in 2008 for a second tour of duty.

    Lieut Col McCourt said: 'I have a very supportive husband. On both occasions I went to Iraq he took sabbaticals from his job to ensure that our family life was maintained. Yes, it was hard to say goodbye so soon after having my first child but you immerse yourself in your work, and on an operational tour everyone is missing someone. This Christmas he'll be with the children and my mum will join them at the family home in Aldershot. Of course I miss them all but our focus has to be saving lives here.'

    ADKC , Jan 19, 2019 8:58:24 PM | link
    brook trout @11

    Suppose you were Russian and believed that the west would not attack because of the checks and controls that exist in western democracy. Suppose a deadly incident occurred and Russia was blamed and an attack became more likely. Suppose that (as a Russian) you knew Russia wasn't involved and that the evidence was very sketchy and didn't make sense. Suppose this was was all in the public domain but instead of the incident being questioned it was just accepted and Russia was sanctioned and other western and allied countries (despite knowing it was nonsense) joined in.

    You might as a Russian come to believe that evidence didn't matter, that the west could manipulate their populations at will and the idea that there was some "restraint" on western attacks would be shown to be fanciful. You might, as a Russian, become very concerned that you might be attacked and there was a lack of restraint on the west.

    The west are blaming Russia for something they didn't do but, also, showing that they know that Russia didn't do it and, more, letting Russia know they framed them, and showing Russia that the evidence doesn't matter. Perhaps, not UK incompetence, maybe, it's all psyops.

    ...

    Ric G , Jan 19, 2019 9:23:12 PM | link
    Mr Moon, you have excelled yourself! A brilliant article, worthy of a standing ovation!

    'So in all the police press briefings and all of the political posturing it was not deemed to be important to mention that the Skripals-on-the-park-bench were attended to by the Chief Nurse Of the British Army?' And how embarrassing for our 'fearless' journalists and tabloid truth seekers! Let the crowd cry out 'shame'!

    Tom , Jan 19, 2019 9:50:14 PM | link
    John Helmer raises an important question, why does the roof of Sergei's house need to be removed? Tongue firmly planted in cheek. The air leakage through the front door of Sergei's house must be through the roof! How else does the fumes from novichok get from the front door handle to the roof? Sure hope they do a proper energy efficient rebuild. Can't go wasting that soon to be arriving at Perfidious Albion's shores horror of horrors, Russian gas. North Sea gas wont last much longer.

    http://johnhelmer.net/british-government-demolishes-skripal-house-because-sergei-skripal-poisoned-himself-roof-falls-in-on-theresa-may/

    Roy G , Jan 19, 2019 10:53:35 PM | link
    So, where are the Skirpals these days? Inquiring minds want to know!

    [Jan 19, 2019] Putin Asks And Trump Delivers - A List Of All The Good Things Trump Did For Russia

    Way too any pleasured for Putin from Trump administration... Just look at this perma-pleasing face of Pompeo.
    Jan 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Putin Asks And Trump Delivers - A List Of All The Good Things Trump Did For Russia

    Slate's Fred Kaplan writes :

    The Washington Post's Greg Miller reported Sunday that President Donald Trump's confiscation of the translator's notes from a one-on-one conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2017 was "unusual." This is incorrect. It was unprecedented. There is nothing like it in the annals of presidential history.

    Not really. Other U.S. leaders held long private meetings with their counterparts without notes being taken.

    When Richard Nixon met Leonid Brezhnev he did not even bring his own interpreter:

    George Szamuely @GeorgeSzamuely - 20:57 utc - 14 Jan 2019

    Nixon would meet Brezhnev alone, the only other person in attendance being Viktor Sukhodrev, the Soviet interpreter. "Our first meeting in the Oval Office was private, except for Viktor Sukhodrev, who, as in 1972, acted as translator." Nixon on Brezhnev's 1973 visit. RN, p.878 . Therefore, the only "notes" that would exist would be those of the Soviet interpreter. Not sure he would have time to make notes and translate and, even if he did so, whether those notes would be housed in any US archive.

    Nixon's White House office was bugged. There are probably tape recordings of the talks. There might also be recordings of the Trump-Putin talks.

    At their 1986 Reykjavik summit Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev talked without their notetakers :

    Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev began their second day of talks with a private meeting that had been scheduled to last 15 minutes but ran for nearly 70 minutes, with only interpreters present . They met in a small room in the Soviet Mission , with the Soviet leader seated in a small armchair and Mr. Reagan on a sofa.

    In the afternoon, they meet alone for a little over 20 minutes and then again for 90 minutes. All told, the two leaders have spent 4 hours and 51 minutes alone , except for interpreters, over the two days here.

    The archives of the Reykjavik talks do not include any notes of those private talks.

    But, who knows, maybe Nixon and Reagan where also on the Russian payroll, just like Donald Trump is today.


    bigger

    Only that Trump is controlled by Putin can explain why the FBI opened a counter-intelligence investigation against Trump (see section three).

    That the FBI agents involved in the decision were avid haters of Russia and of Trump has surely nothing to do with it. That the opening of a counter-intelligence investigation gave them the legal ability under Obama's EO12333 to use NSA signal intelligence against Trump is surely irrelevant.

    What the FBI people really were concerned about is Trump's public record of favoring Russia at each and every corner.

    Trump obviously wants better diplomatic relations with Russia. He is reluctant to counter its military might. He is doing his best to make it richer. Just consider the headlines below. With all those good things Trump did for Putin, intense suspicions of Russian influence over him is surely justified.

    Trump obviously wants better diplomatic relations with Russia. He is reluctant to counter its military might. He is doing his best to make it richer. Just consider the headlines below. With all those good things Trump did for Putin, intense suspicions of Russian influence over him is surely justified.

    When one adds up all those actions one can only find that Trump cares more about Russia, than about the U.S. and its NATO allies. Only with Trump being under Putin's influence, knowingly or unwittingly, could he end up doing Russia so many favors.

    Not.

    Posted by b at 02:12 PM | Comments (121)

    [Jan 19, 2019] Putin and Skripals: Neither Putin personally nor the Russian government in general have ever shown themselves to be so petty as to kill a triator, who was elready exchanged for another spy. On the contrary, one of the notable qualities of Putin's is that he believes, as we Russians put it, "the crown would not fall off his head if he bows"

    Jan 19, 2019 | www.unz.com

    EugeneGur , says: April 10, 2018 at 2:55 pm GMT

    @Zogby

    It's also untrue that he "shot himself in the foot", as the event, if anything, strengthened his image for the election.

    What strengthened his image was an insane hysterics by the UK and the West in general. The Russians do tend to consolidate when perceive themselves under external threat.

    the pettiness of going after apparent pipsqueaks

    Neither Putin personally nor the Russian government in general have ever shown themselves to be petty. On the contrary, one of the notable qualities of Putin's is that he believes, as we Russians put it, "the crown would not fall off his head if he bows". Apparently, he feels strong, so he is not afraid to be magnanimous and make concessions. This quality is much appreciated by some but drives other people crazy.

    None of that however proves Putin did it. It's just a possibility.

    Theoretically, it's a possibility that the Martians did it. However, given the behavior of the UK authorities, there is no reason to believe anything even remotely like the picture described happened in reality. There is a scientific impossibility to identify the agent, first, as fast as it was supposedly done, and, second, unless they had a sample and/or detailed information in their possession. It's scientifically impossible to establish provenance unless the UK had samples of both the agent used and a comparison sample. Multiple comparison samples, I should say, since there are many such compounds. But if they did, the whole premise "only Russia could have done it" goes out of the window.

    Add here the inconsistency of the symptoms and the outcome with the "military grade" nerve agent poisoning – and here you have a complete a story of a very clumsy false flag operation.

    anonymous [397] Disclaimer , says: April 10, 2018 at 3:13 pm GMT
    Like a gullible person I at first accepted that there was indeed some event that involved the Skripals. Now I wonder if the entire thing was a scripted hoax, that nothing had hit them, that it's all fake. It wouldn't be surprising. We seem to be in an age of rule by sociopaths whose only compass is that of power and riches. The populations of our countries are being hustled along for the benefit of the few. This can't have a happy ending for the majority of people. The much vaunted democracy of the west looks like just a fixed shell game.

    [Jan 19, 2019] Russia has to thank the British for sending a great message to her traitors and gangsters

    Jan 19, 2019 | www.unz.com

    Vojkan , says: April 10, 2018 at 1:48 pm GMT

    Actually, I think that in the end Russia has to thank the British for sending a great message to her traitors and gangsters. Apart from the Skripal case, the UK seems up to confiscate the wealth Russian expats in the UK looted back home. On the one hand, it's ~ $10bn worth that will be definitely lost for Russia, on the other if the UK's treatment of Skripal and runaway oligarchs won't heal Russian traitors and gangsters from their blissful enamourment with England's climate, I don't know what will.
    anonymous [107] Disclaimer , says: April 10, 2018 at 1:50 pm GMT
    @Mike P I can't find the comment because the comment archive is down -- I think it was annamaria who reported that the British were holding assets of Russian oligarchs and that Russia wanted the funds back. The speculation was that Teresa May would take possession of the assets.

    As these two articles state, most of the Russian billionaire oligarchs are Jewish

    So at least (conspiracy theory) part of the Skripal scheme is for Teresa May to be an angel and return their assets to the Jewish billionaires who stole Russian wealth fair and square.

    [Jan 19, 2019] Putin Asks And Trump Delivers - A List Of All The Good Things Trump Did For Russia

    Way too any pleasured for Putin from Trump administration... Just look at this perma-pleasing face of Pompeo.
    Jan 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Putin Asks And Trump Delivers - A List Of All The Good Things Trump Did For Russia

    Slate's Fred Kaplan writes :

    The Washington Post's Greg Miller reported Sunday that President Donald Trump's confiscation of the translator's notes from a one-on-one conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2017 was "unusual." This is incorrect. It was unprecedented. There is nothing like it in the annals of presidential history.

    Not really. Other U.S. leaders held long private meetings with their counterparts without notes being taken.

    When Richard Nixon met Leonid Brezhnev he did not even bring his own interpreter:

    George Szamuely @GeorgeSzamuely - 20:57 utc - 14 Jan 2019

    Nixon would meet Brezhnev alone, the only other person in attendance being Viktor Sukhodrev, the Soviet interpreter. "Our first meeting in the Oval Office was private, except for Viktor Sukhodrev, who, as in 1972, acted as translator." Nixon on Brezhnev's 1973 visit. RN, p.878 . Therefore, the only "notes" that would exist would be those of the Soviet interpreter. Not sure he would have time to make notes and translate and, even if he did so, whether those notes would be housed in any US archive.

    Nixon's White House office was bugged. There are probably tape recordings of the talks. There might also be recordings of the Trump-Putin talks.

    At their 1986 Reykjavik summit Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev talked without their notetakers :

    Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev began their second day of talks with a private meeting that had been scheduled to last 15 minutes but ran for nearly 70 minutes, with only interpreters present . They met in a small room in the Soviet Mission , with the Soviet leader seated in a small armchair and Mr. Reagan on a sofa.

    In the afternoon, they meet alone for a little over 20 minutes and then again for 90 minutes. All told, the two leaders have spent 4 hours and 51 minutes alone , except for interpreters, over the two days here.

    The archives of the Reykjavik talks do not include any notes of those private talks.

    But, who knows, maybe Nixon and Reagan where also on the Russian payroll, just like Donald Trump is today.


    bigger

    Only that Trump is controlled by Putin can explain why the FBI opened a counter-intelligence investigation against Trump (see section three).

    That the FBI agents involved in the decision were avid haters of Russia and of Trump has surely nothing to do with it. That the opening of a counter-intelligence investigation gave them the legal ability under Obama's EO12333 to use NSA signal intelligence against Trump is surely irrelevant.

    What the FBI people really were concerned about is Trump's public record of favoring Russia at each and every corner.

    Trump obviously wants better diplomatic relations with Russia. He is reluctant to counter its military might. He is doing his best to make it richer. Just consider the headlines below. With all those good things Trump did for Putin, intense suspicions of Russian influence over him is surely justified.

    Trump obviously wants better diplomatic relations with Russia. He is reluctant to counter its military might. He is doing his best to make it richer. Just consider the headlines below. With all those good things Trump did for Putin, intense suspicions of Russian influence over him is surely justified.

    When one adds up all those actions one can only find that Trump cares more about Russia, than about the U.S. and its NATO allies. Only with Trump being under Putin's influence, knowingly or unwittingly, could he end up doing Russia so many favors.

    Not.

    Posted by b at 02:12 PM | Comments (121)

    [Jan 19, 2019] Integrity Initiative was formed soon after Kissinger's Op-Ed in August 2014 and before Trump began his run for President.

    Jan 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Jackrabbit , Jan 19, 2019 8:32:00 PM | link

    bevin: Suppose that ...

    Suppose that ... CIA-MI6 were trying to ensure the election of Trump, not Hillary. As I described in previous comments , Trump's election followed a logical progression that, in sum, indicate manipulation on his behalf. Hal Duell @21 mentions some of the psyop reality-making: White Helmets, MH-17, Skripal, etc. Karlof1 @30 notes the absolute hubris of the Empire's "we make our own reality".

    Lets say Integrity Initiative, working with CIA and MI6, wanted to use the 2016 election to cast aspersion on the Russians. A populist running against Hillary was the logical choice. The narrative: only with Russian help could a challenger hope to win against Hillary. "Russian meddling" and Wikileaks as Russian agent are major "wins" for the establishment. Integrity Initiative was formed soon after Kissinger's Op-Ed in August 2014 and before Trump began his run for President.

    [Jan 19, 2019] Treatment of Russians in the US MSM echoes the German Nazis their treatment of Slavs in thisr media (slaves, unter menchen)

    Notable quotes:
    "... The current round of bullshit is not about justifying the investigation, it is about concealing MI6 taking a leading role in the attempted coup. ..."
    Jan 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Sally Snyder , Jan 15, 2019 2:59:27 PM | link

    As shown in this article, a recent Senate bill shows clearly how Washington has a two-faced approach when it comes to dealing with Russia and Syria:

    https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-united-states-senate-saving-syria.html

    Congress, with or without Donald Trump's influence, has proven that it simply doesn't care about the geopolitical repercussions of its actions.

    Erelis , Jan 15, 2019 3:42:28 PM | link

    A few more just for kicks.
    AshenLight , Jan 15, 2019 3:52:13 PM | link
    @ NoOneYouKnow | Jan 15, 2019 2:20:33 PM | 2

    In my experience, just about everyone here, including hordes of supposedly educated people who really should know better, believe it. They really do. However, most of them don't care--it's merely something to snark about or score points in a political conversation with, not anything they perceive as an actual threat to their way of life.

    William Bowles , Jan 15, 2019 4:01:45 PM | link
    It's nothing more than the undying legacy of anti-communism and racism thrown in for good measure. It echoes the German Nazis and their treatment of Slavs (slaves, unter menchen). We need only look at how the US viewed the Japanese (and the Germans) during WWII, with Roosevelt calling for their extermination (I'll find the source).

    And of course, there's US slavery and extermination of the original inhabitants that also feeds into the psychosis.

    Peter VE , Jan 15, 2019 4:12:40 PM | link
    But, Rachel Maddow told me that Trump is Putin's puppet. It was on TV, so it must be true.
    ashley albanese , Jan 15, 2019 4:19:37 PM | link
    William Bowles 8

    London was said to be very subdued the day news came through that Sweden's Charles the twelfth had been crushed at Poltava in 1709 . North Western European economic interests have clashed with Russian across many centuries. Had Charles been successful in the Ukraine a new level of English and Swedish alliance was in the offing .

    James sullivan , Jan 15, 2019 4:22:27 PM | link
    I just read about Trump's AG candidate, commenting on the 'Russian interference' in US elections ....and i'm struck that these are not stupid people....they are either totally IGNORANT of the facts and analysis .....or they are good ol boys, ready to tow the deep state lie, so they too can feed at the trough. It saddens me in either case ....what hope can one entertain when such cretins and low lifes are the supposed LEADERS of the democratic west. I hold no hopes.
    Jackrabbit , Jan 15, 2019 4:48:13 PM | link
    Proof by absurdity. Trump and Deep State work together. MAGA is a policy choice as much as it is a campaign slogan. Everyone wants to rail against the anti-Trump forces. Oh it feels so good. That Trump has proven to be a faux populist like Obama is ignored. WTF? Welcome to the rabbit hole.
    karlof1 , Jan 15, 2019 4:54:00 PM | link
    I didn't live through the entire Anti-Communist Crusade, but was certainly cognitively aware of it from JFK's inauguration in 1961 until the USSR's dissolution. I very closely studied the events that led to an emergent Russian Federation and the device meant to corral the "Near-Abroad"--The Commonwealth of Independent States. Admittedly, I was somewhat horrified by Yeltsin's attack on Russia's Duma's White House in 1993 and eagerly read Kargalitsky's account as it was the only one written by a Parliamentarian in English and published in 1994. It was possible to discern the outright looting of Russia and former Soviet nations, but the depth of evil involved wasn't made clear until some publications in the late 1990s documenting the Rape of Russia; all of which made clear what the underlying intent of the Anti-Communist Crusade entailed, and that that Crusade wouldn't end until Russia was absolutely broken and enslaved by NATO/Outlaw US Empire. As many have opined, the Cold War/Anti-Communist Crusade never ended; rather, it just entered a new phase/chapter, and that's what we're living through today. But as b portrays, the level of hysterics paraded via BigLie Media go far beyond anything from the previous chapter and probably outweigh those employed during Red Scares I and II combined.

    It seems fairly plain to see that delusional madness and anger have combined as the motivating factors, but why/what sparked them and when? IMO, when was during Carter's presidency with the why/what being several seemingly disparate but connected happenings: Church Committee Hearings; Stagflation; Iranian Islamic Revolution; OPEC actions; losing grip on Latin America; informal end to War on Poverty, and institution of Neoliberalism and Zerosumism; changing of Coldwarrior Guard to Israel First Coldwarrior Guard. The culmination was CIA gaining control of Executive with DCI GHW Bush becoming Veep to senile, dementia addled POTUS Reagan.

    Interconnected with the above is the prepping of the World Trade Center buildings for demolition during Clinton's 2nd term, the operative question being: Would the False Flag be perpetrated by Gore/Liberman, or was Bush/Cheney deemed to do the deed by Deep State actors; or does this aspect even matter--Liberman was as much of a Neocon as Cheney, all 4 are Israel Firsters, and Gore was already a War Criminal due to his participation in Clinton's numerous illegalities. Sure, the Bush/Cheney cabal was more radical; but given what we observed during Clinton/Gore, Deep State support was quite abundant. The dismemberment of Yugoslavia was finished and Kosovo created, Afghanistan was already targeted and Joint Vision 2010 --the blueprint for the Outlaw US Empire's Full Spectrum Dominance Policy--was published in 1996. Interestingly, at no time known to me has the Policy articulated by the authors of Joint Vision 2010 or its update Joint Vision 2020 been announced by any POTUS or senior member of the Duopoly as THE #1 policy goal of the Outlaw US Empire despite both papers being available to the public. (If he were still alive, IF Stone would have written about both umpteen numbers of times; while true to form, BigLie media remains 100% mute.) Despite all the preparations and Trillions of dollars spent and looted, The failure to implement the Yinon Plan seems to be directed at Russia, although it was indigenous Iraqis who are responsible for the plan's defeat.

    So, is the lying vitriol we're subjected to the result of Russian actions or the inability to attain the #1 policy goal due to mistakes made at all levels--Deep State and Federal Government? Recall that Russia/Putin didn't start to actively parry Outlaw Empire moves until 2008, well after the Yinon Plan's defeat by Iraqis.

    Blooming Barricade , Jan 15, 2019 5:02:35 PM | link
    This inane narrative has gone too far. It's actually threatening chances for human survival with its nationalism, poor focus, and banality:

    --

    "The key focus of the so-called "left" in the world's most polluting country, run by an ecocidal vandal who deserves to be in the running for most destructive rulers of all time, is whether or not that vandal is taking orders from the Russian Federation.

    Let me repeat that: in the most wasteful society in human history, the forces designated to oppose the rape of the planet and corporate slavery are concerned with treason and betrayal of the "nation."

    MSNBC: "The worst case scenario that we`ve all been talking about, which is the possibility that the president had somehow been co-opted and was in the pocket of the Russians."

    THIS is the "worst case scenario" according to the "social justice" network of the American "left?"

    If we were to step back and look at this terrible situation honestly, we could only conclude that American liberals, and the Democratic Party, are right-wing nationalist forces concerned with geopolitical gambits and preservation of military alliances.

    This isn't the politics of 2019, or 1999. It's the politics of 1819 - but even then, it's the right wing politics of 1819, as there was already a left dedicated to popular solidarity and social ownership existing, clandestinely, in the shadows of European cities.

    It's worth analyzing how a "Seattle" would play out if it were to occur in the context of today's US political discourse: the protestors would be seen as nationalist anti-Semites doing the bidding of Putin, and perhaps Xi Jinping. The leaking of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment would be condemned instantly as "information warfare." A focus on environmental issues would be viewed in the context of "energy geopolitics." Indymedia would be shut down by the authorities as a vehicle for "sowing discord" in Europe against NATO and liberalism."

    Anon , Jan 15, 2019 5:08:17 PM | link
    The current round of bullshit is not about justifying the investigation, it is about concealing MI6 taking a leading role in the attempted coup.
    james , Jan 15, 2019 5:09:32 PM | link
    @14 karlof1... good post.. i don't know the answer to your questions, but it seems like a bit of both but mostly the later... i am unaware of this joint vision 2010 paper..
    bevin , Jan 15, 2019 5:15:14 PM | link
    As b points out, and Erelis @6, among others confirms, Kaplan's article in Slate is worthless. Discredited by everything that has happened over the past two years.

    The question is whether it matters. Who reads Slate? Are those who follow Kaplan anything more than partisans, far beyond the reach of logical argument, committed to the Zionist project and US hegemony, who read him for comfort and laughs rather than critically.

    Kaplan, after twenty odd years of consistently being wrong and consistently impelling the United States into foreign disasters, costly in lives and treasure, is a busted flush politically. The only people his ravings effect are the true believers who are simply looking for someone to articulate their idiotic prejudices.

    This, after all is a man whose wife, an Obama/ Clinton favourite, parodying Marie Antionette, midwifed the Bandera Reich in Kiev.

    There is little point in arguing with him, just feed him ever more rope and he will hang himself, his spouse, his country(s) and the Ukraine and its allies too.

    Jared , Jan 15, 2019 8:06:04 PM | link
    Given the part we know about how self serving, corrupt and incompetent our IC is I fear it is the tip of the iceberg. So many decades they have learned they can do as they will with impunity. If I am not mistaken they are partly self financing through likely illegal and unethical activities. They have gone rogue. Currently the dems think it's fitting however they will also feel the bite. How will we ever gain control of our country.
    karlof1 , Jan 15, 2019 8:29:05 PM | link
    Which are more salient--domestically: The attacks on Russia or those against Trump? Lots of Trumpian, GOP and Corporate Democrat policy ploys go against the majority of the polity and the National Interest. Unfortunately, the bloc known as the Resistance includes a 5th Column consisting of most Corporate Democrats, who are essentially Republicans wearing donkey heads. BigLie Media wants to promote the GOP & Corporate Democrat policy ploys, so the anti-Russian news assault serves to cover-up popular domestic issues, like this one regarding taxation and related income disparity . (Amazing that 60 Minutes provided Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez airtime to outline her proposals--airtime that was meant to cut her down to size but backfired.)

    As I outlined earlier, what I see as the struggle is for control of the Federal Government--CIA/Deep State vs the American People--with the Anti-Communist Crusade used as cover to diminish rights while enriching actors controlling government, which is exactly what we see now. Yes, Trump's a player, but with few friends and little coaching. Arguably, his only asset is the position he occupies.

    slit , Jan 15, 2019 11:16:29 PM | link
    Peter Ve @9

    Heres another cartoon meme that was doing the rounds in 2016:

    https://pics.onsizzle.com/donald-trump-is-putins-puppet-the-puppeteer-red-panels-com-5254201.png

    [Jan 15, 2019] State Department was employing a de facto foreign agent

    Notable quotes:
    "... Integrity Initiative documents reveal that Leventhal has been paid $76,608 dollars (60,000 British pounds) for a 50% contract. ..."
    "... While those same documents claim he has retired from the State Department, Leventhal's own Linkedin page lists him as a current "Senior Disinformation Advisor" to the State Department. If that were true, it would mean that the State Department was employing a de facto foreign agent. ..."
    Jan 15, 2019 | grayzoneproject.com

    Of all the State Department officials named in Integrity Initiative documents, the one who appeared most frequently was Todd Leventhal. Leventhal has been a staffer at the State Department's Global Engagement Center, boasting of "20 years of countering disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and urban legends." In an April 2018 Integrity Initiative memo, he is listed as a current team member:

    Funded to the tune of $160 million this year to beat back Russian disinformation with "counter-propaganda," the State Department's Global Engagement Center has refused to deny targeting American citizens with information warfare of its own. "My old job at the State Department was as chief propagandist," confessed former Global Engagement Center Director Richard Stengel. "I'm not against propaganda. Every country does it and they have to do it to their own population and I don't necessarily think it's that awful."

    Like so many of the media and political figures involved in the Integrity Initiative's international network, the Global Engagement Center's Leventhal has a penchant for deploying smear tactics against prominent voices that defy the foreign policy consensus. Leventhal appeared in an outtake of a recent NBC documentary on Russian disinformation smugly explaining how he would take down a 15-year-old book critical of American imperialism in the developing world. Rather than challenge the book's substance and allegations, Leventhal boasted how he would marshall his resources to wage an ad hominem smear campaign to destroy the author's reputation. His strategic vision was clear: when confronting a critic, ignore the message and destroy the messenger.

    Like so many of the media and political figures involved in the Integrity Initiative's international network, the Global Engagement Center's Leventhal has a penchant for deploying smear tactics against prominent voices that defy the foreign policy consensus. Leventhal appeared in an outtake of a recent NBC documentary on Russian disinformation smugly explaining how he would take down a 15-year-old book critical of American imperialism in the developing world. Rather than challenge the book's substance and allegations, Leventhal boasted how he would marshall his resources to wage an ad hominem smear campaign to destroy the author's reputation. His strategic vision was clear: when confronting a critic, ignore the message and destroy the messenger.

    Integrity Initiative documents reveal that Leventhal has been paid $76,608 dollars (60,000 British pounds) for a 50% contract.

    While those same documents claim he has retired from the State Department, Leventhal's own Linkedin page lists him as a current "Senior Disinformation Advisor" to the State Department. If that were true, it would mean that the State Department was employing a de facto foreign agent.

    [Jan 15, 2019] UK authorities try to destroy all the available evidence

    Jan 15, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Jen , Jan 9, 2019 6:12:15 PM | link

    Posted this over at Mark Chapman's The New Kremlin Stooge blog:

    The latest news from Salisbury: first, the park bench and the dining table walked the Path of Fire, then the guinea pigs and a cat followed, a house may soon do so as well, and the latest perhaps to join the queue

    "Amesbury ambulance station may never reopen after nerve agent attack": https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/17343540.amesbury-ambulance-station-may-never-reopen-after-nerve-agent-attack/

    and then at some point in the future: "Revised plan to redevelop Salisbury's Maltings unveiled"
    https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2707454/revised-plan-to-redevelop-salisburys-maltings-unveiled/

    "Salisbury's shopping centre to be given £69million makeover and major rebrand after infamous Novichok poisonings": https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6275651/Salisburys-shopping-centre-given-69million-makeover-infamous-Novichok-poisonings.html

    Several comments attached to that post are of "wish we had Novichok in our shopping centre" or "they planned this all along" type. It seems that Salisbury shopping centre as it is has not been doing well because of high rents previously imposed by Wiltshire Council and it desperately needs a makeover. Call me cynical but maybe Wiltshire Council is using the poisoning incident to bring forward its redevelopment plans for the Salisbury shopping centre that will all but kill off local businesses.

    [Jan 14, 2019] Ship of Fools How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution by Tucker Carlson

    Jan 14, 2019 | www.amazon.com

    Amazon Customer 5.0 out of 5 stars October 2, 2018

    Don't drink and read

    Don't drink wine and read this book, you'll get angry and make posts on social media that are completely accurate and your friends will hate you.

    [Jan 14, 2019] Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump

    Notable quotes:
    "... Elections are just for show like many trials in the old USSR. The in power Party is the power NOT the individual voting citizens. In the end this book is about exposing the pernicious activities of those who would place themselves above the voting citizens of America. ..."
    Jan 14, 2019 | www.amazon.com

    Johnny G 5.0 out of 5 stars The Complex Made Easy! October 9, 2018 Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

    Regardless of your politics this is a must read book. The authors do a wonderful job of peeling back the layered onion that is being referred to as "Spy Gate." The book reads like an imaginative spy thriller. Except it is as real a fist in the stomach or the death of your best friend. In this case it is our Constitution that is victimized by individuals entrusted with "protecting and defending it from all enemies DOMESTIC and foreign."

    Tis is in many ways a sad tail of ambition, weak men, political operatives & hubris ridden bureaucrats. The end result IF this type of activity is not punished and roundly condemned by ALL Americans could be a descent into Solzhenitsyn's GULAG type of Deep State government run by unaccountable political appointees and bureaucrats.

    Elections are just for show like many trials in the old USSR. The in power Party is the power NOT the individual voting citizens. In the end this book is about exposing the pernicious activities of those who would place themselves above the voting citizens of America. ALL Americans should be aware of those forces seen and unseen that seek to injure our Constitutional Republic. This book is footnoted extensively lest anyone believes it is a polemic political offering.

    JAK 5.0 out of 5 stars The truth hurts and that's the truth October 11, 2018 Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

    This book has content that you will not see or find anywhere else. while the topic itself is covered elsewhere in large mainstream media Outlets the truth of what is actually happening is rarely ever exposed.

    If there was a six-star recommendation or anything higher because the truth is all that matters, he would receive it.

    This book is put together with so many far-left (CNN, BLOOMBERG, DLSTE, YAHOO ECT) leading news stories as being able to support the fact of what happened, it's possible to say oh well that just didn't happen but it was reported by the left and when you put all of the pieces of the puzzle together it is painfully obvious to see what happened......

    If these people involved don't go to jail the death of our Republic has already happened

    [Jan 14, 2019] Russia Sure Behaves Strangely for a Country Bent on Conquest

    Even elementary things are difficult for the US congress to understand. Being hell--bent of building global neoliberal empire rules from Washington does not help and reuqres demonization of Russia and its Leaders. Despite recent setbacks Washington policies represent a real danger for the mankind...
    Notable quotes:
    "... Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at ..."
    "... is the author of 12 books and more than 750 articles on international affairs. His latest book is ..."
    Jan 14, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    ...there is no evidence that Moscow harbors expansionist ambitions remotely comparable to those of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Indeed, the Kremlin's actions suggest a much more limited, perhaps even defensive, agenda. As professors Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman observed in Foreign Affairs , "To many in the West, Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia seemed to prove the Kremlin's land hunger." But such a conclusion reflects poor logic: "Kremlin leaders bent on expansion would surely have ordered troops all the way to Tbilisi to depose [Georgia President Mikheil] Saakashvili. At the least, Russian forces would have taken control of the oil and gas pipelines that cross Georgia. Instead, the Russians left those pipelines alone and quickly withdrew to the mountains."

    Shleifer and Treisman raise a very important point. If Putin is a rogue leader with massive expansionist objectives, why would he relinquish territory that Russian forces had occupied? Indeed, with very little additional effort, Russia could have captured Tbilisi and the rest of Georgia. Yet it did not attempt to do so. Hitler never willingly gave up any of his conquests, and until the collapse of the Eastern European satellite empire in 1989-1991, the USSR disgorged only one occupied area: the portion of Austria it controlled at the end of World War II. Even that modest retreat took place only after laborious negotiations for a treaty guaranteeing Austria's strict neutrality. If Putin truly harbors malignantly expansionist ambitions comparable to those of Hitler and Stalin, declining to conquer and absorb all of Georgia when that achievement was easily within reach showed curious restraint. His decision merely to perpetuate and consolidate Moscow's treatment of Georgia's two secessionist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as Russian protectorates suggests much more limited ambitions.

    Another aspect of Russia's behavior is decidedly inconsistent with a rogue expansionist power: its military spending is modest and declining, not robust and surging. True, Putin has sought to rebuild and modernize Russia's military, and he has achieved some success in doing so. Russia's navy once again deploys modern vessels, and its air force is now flying modern, even cutting-edge aircraft. Putin's regime has also focused on developing and deploying long-range, precision-guided weapons, and is pursuing military research and development efforts with respect to hypersonic aircraft and missiles.

    NATO Partisans Started a New Cold War With Russia Russia Gives Up on Trump and the West

    Even those developments must be put into perspective, however. The restoration and modernization follows a decade of military decline and decay during the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin. Moscow's military budget is still a very modest $66.3 billion. Not only does the gargantuan U.S. budget of $716 billion dwarf that amount, it is far less than China's $174.5 billion and only slightly more than the budgets of countries such as France and India . Moreover, in contrast to the sizable annual increases in U.S. spending levels, Russia's military spending is declining, not rising . The 2017 budget was $69.2 billion, some $2.9 billion greater than the current budget. That is an odd trend for a government that supposedly harbors vast offensive ambitions.

    The only undiminished source of Russian clout is Moscow's large nuclear arsenal. But as various scholars have shown, while nuclear weapons may be the ultimate deterrent, they are not very useful for power projection or war fighting , except in the highly improbable event that a country's political leadership is eager to risk national and personal suicide. And there is no evidence whatsoever that Putin and his oligarch backers are suicidal. Quite the contrary, they seem wedded to accumulating ever greater wealth and perks.

    Too many Americans act as though we are still confronting the Soviet Union at the height of its power and ambitions. It will be the ultimate tragic irony if, having avoided war with a messianic, totalitarian global adversary, we now stumble into war because of an out-of-date image of, and policy toward, a conventional, regional power. Yet unless U.S. leaders change both their mindsets and their policies toward Russia, that outcome is a real danger.

    Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at , is the author of 12 books and more than 750 articles on international affairs. His latest book is Gullible Superpower: U.S. Support for Bogus Foreign Democratic Movements (2019).

    [Jan 14, 2019] Liars, Leakers, and Liberals The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy by Jeanine Pirro

    Jan 14, 2019 | www.amazon.com

    Kenneth LeBeau 5.0 out of 5 stars Mueller Russia Probe is a witch hunt! September 2, 2018 Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

    Very accurate review of the agenda aimed at overturning the results of the Election of 2016. The Deep State is exposed. Corruption, deceit, bias at the upper levels of the FBI, CIA, Department of Justice, Clinton Foundation & how they attempted to undermine the President of the U.S.

    [Jan 14, 2019] The Deep State How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and Is Working to Destroy the Trump Agenda

    OK, now Russiagate reached the level when books are written about it ;-). It is clear to any non-biased observer that a color revolution was launched against Trump by the Deep State using their stooges in Depart of Justice and FBI (Rosenstein and FBI cabal). Probably coordinated by Brennan, to who essentially McCabe and Strzok reported.
    All pretention of democracy and due legal procedure were thrown into the garbage can with amazing ease. And Witch hunt was unleashed on such a scale that it would make Staling propagandists during Show Trials to blush.
    It would be interesting to read a book detailing Great Britain interference and MI6 story about Steele dossier, though. See The British Role In Initiating Russiagate Shift Frequency
    Jan 14, 2019 | www.amazon.com

    Serenity... TOP 100 REVIEWER 4.0 out of 5 stars ~~ September 18, 2018 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

    Transparency/Checks and Balances/Civil Service Reform

    First of all, I am neither a Republican or a Democrat. I have voted on the qualifications of the candidates since I was first eligible. Many years ago many. I have voted in every single election except for this last Presidential one. And, many by absentee ballot as I served 20 years in the United States Navy and am now a proud retired USN Chief Petty Officer. Notice I said except for this last election .I absolutely could not vote for either candidate.

    Why? My main objection to voting for Clinton was her handling of the emails. My career in the US Navy involved handling classified material on a daily basis. And, a Top Secret clearance for the last 6 of my 20 years. And, these clearances were not given out freely. From receipt of the message to the destruction, every single step every one was recorded and upon destruction, two witnesses were required. I had more reservations about voting for her but the mishandling of the emails was the major one.

    As for voting for Trump, I just could not force myself to vote for him.. Enough said.

    I ordered this book to see what Jason Chaffetz , Former Congressman and Chairman of the House Oversight Committee had to say about the state of affairs in the US. To paraphrase the author the Deep State exists to control information available to the American public. They don't like exposure, accountability or responsibility in their tactics.

    The Transportation Security Agency, the Secret Service, Whistle Blowers, the Veterans Administration problems including Phoenix, AZ, Fast and Furious scandal, illegal immigration (including catch and release), the Benghazi attack and many more topics are covered.

    The Freedom of Information Act (1966) was detailed in depth including the 9 exceptions to this act. Requests doubled during the O'Bama Presidency and many requests were denied. It also appears that this is one area that needs to be reformed. And, along with that comes much more transparency in our government.

    One thing I have never understood is the reason that it is so difficult to fire government employees. I did work for 3 agencies after I retired from the US Navy and found it mind boggling that it was nearly impossible. If one was fired, the Merit Protection Board stepped in to assist. The entire system of Federal Employees should be overhauled, in my opinion. And, the number of Federal employees not paying their taxes continues to increase...

    Bottom line is that despite the checks and balances in the Congress, they are not being utilized. Our faith in government is gone and without faith, our nation is suffering.

    After reading this, my eyes have been opened in many areas. Do I believe a Deep State exists in the US? Yes, I do. The author provides many, many examples which are backed up with statistics. Time to do major overhaul and put more transparency back in our government.

    Wanted to edit by adding a few sentences...My AHA moment was when the author went with LCOL Wood (Utah National Guard) on 12 SEP 2012 to visit Benghazi. Jeremy Freeman was present and representing FOIA. He was denied access to a meeting due to his security clearance not being high enough. Who did he call to try and gain access in the middle of the night? Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton's assistant. . Didn't work as access was still denied. What was this about? It was explained in 'The Deep State'.

    Highly recommended.

    Note:

    Nearly the last 20 % on my Kindle were acknowledgements and an Index. It was stated that the 'index does not match the edition from which it was created'. So, use the search tools for your E book instead.

    Hawkeye 5.0 out of 5 stars September 27, 2018 Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

    Feckless Congressional oversight!

    This very well written, easy to read for all, book is a composition of several stories of what should be routine successful United States Congressional oversight over the last 10 years that has allow an administration to defaecate on the rule of law. In my six years in "The Swamp" I did not meet with Mr. Chaffetz but I appreciated his speaking, now writing style, and the wit that comes across in this publication.

    I ordered this book last month to hear Jason Chaffetz's, Former Congressman and Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, story regarding the state of affairs of congress during the Obama Regime. To paraphrase the author the Deep State exists to control information available to the American public. They dislike "Sunshine which is the best disinfectant", accountability or responsibility in their tactics which we are seeing exposed every night for the last 2 years!

    The book confirms my impressions and experience of the existence of the deep state and the governmental groups that continue to take advantage of the American taxpayer. Chaffetz provides examples where the Deep State continues to impede progress and efficiency within the US Government. He presents congress as a "Paper Tiger" with impotent and absent oversight due to a growing government. The Obama Administration had its way with congress for eight long years probably due to the poor leadership at the top, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, which allowed and undermined the authority of congress to provide oversight (US Code 192).

    Chapter eight regarding Benghazi Terrorist Attack which the president, secretary of state, and the UN ambassador outright lied is very disturbing. It is a prime example of how government agencies block and distort the truth from the American peoples' representatives. If today with almost 350 million inhabitants in the country and a government three times the size of the 1960's The Deep State can successfully manipulate the events of the last ten years and the present resist movement on the Trump agenda; with a smaller government The Deep State could have conspired to assassinate our 35th president.

    In several places in the book I noticed the author's animus with government employees earning more that the legislators which was my experience and exposed to during my times in and out of government. The guide in the last chapter on how to fight the Deep State is laid out with sound logic and common sense. If congress is too small as the author states to deal with this government expansion, then allow an outside agent as Judicial Watch (who seems to be more effective) perform the oversight under contract! Thank God for Jason Chaffetz for writing this must read for every taxpayer.

    Aletheuo 5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Fantastic October 3, 2018 Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

    This is a GREAT book for our times. Chaffetz did this country a GREAT service by writing about his first hand knowledge on how the Deep State is destroying the United States. The book is super easy to read and very interesting, so practically anyone can understand it and "enjoy" it. Some of the things that he shares/exposes follow (it's all in the book):
    1. The unaccountable Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created by Elizabeth Warren and her minions was "purposely designed to bypass Congress, checks, and balances, and oversight. It is funded by the Federal Reserve," which means Congress can't cut its purse strings. What does the CFPB spend its money on? No one knows, because they aren't accountable to anyone and yet the CFPB is one of the larger government agencies. This agency needs to be shut down.
    2. David Nieland (DHS inspector general's office) admitted that he and his staff were directed to delay the report of the investigation of the Secret Services trysts with prostitutes in foreign countries until after the 2012 election.
    3. The DOJ refuses to accept cases of contempt of Congress unless they happen to agree with the case. Furthermore, they refuse to investigate and charge Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Lois Lerner and other corrupt individuals. These people got off scot-free with pensions and no punishments for crimes committed.
    4. John Koskinen misled and lied to Congress and got off scot-free (page 90).
    5. The State Department sent a "spy" to watch over and listen to former Congressman Chaffetz' overseas investigation into the Benghazi incident. This man, Jeremy Freeman, did not have the security clearance to sit in on some of the briefings, which ultimately led to a confrontation. Freeman was apparently reporting back to Clinton and her staff so that they could be aware of what information might be made public which would counter their spin (remember Rice's false claim that the Benghazi incident was entirely cause by a You Tube video).
    6. The State Dept. abandoned the American heroes from Benghazi and left them overseas (page 125) and would not pay to fly them home. They had to find their own way and pay their own way. Furthermore, these men had the security clearances revoked immediately after the incident.
    7. The Deep State prints thousands of pages of irrelevant material when a demand is made to turn over documents on some subject to Congress. This is a normal operational procedure for them. They only hold back the important documents that incriminate the person in question or the issue at hand. They publicly claim having turned over tens of thousands of pages of documents to Congress, but most of them are copies of websites, copies of magazine articles and other irrelevant material that has very little (or nothing) to do with the original demand.
    8. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is just as reluctant to charge Hillary Clinton as was his predecessor. He has something to hide just like the rest of them (page 154). What happened to putting criminals in prison???
    9. Chaffetz wrote "It's undeniable that the campaign to discredit Flynn was well underway before Inauguration Day." (p. 158)
    10. "The Deep State benefits from illegal immigration." (page 179) This is because it requires a larger government (allowing for more Deep State cronies) to "figure" out the immigration problem and they are very good at persuading illegals to vote for socialists (Democrats).
    11. G--gle, A--z-n, and the big tech firms "rent" workers from other countries and pay them very, very low salaries. These are people on H1B visas. This is all while the tech leaders are calling for higher minimum wages etc... (page 180)
    12. The number one H1B visa employer in Brooklyn in 2018 is JP Morgan Chase.

    This is just the tip of the iceberg. The stories are compelling. The facts are there from a U.S. Congressman who served 8.5 years. It's time for all patriotic American's to make a stand and fight back against the socialist Deep State. It's time to fight their guile, their mischief, their malicious lies, and their goal of tearing down the sovereignty of the United States. I highly recommend this book. Get it. Read it. Take action now.

    [Jan 14, 2019] Ship of Fools How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution by Tucker Carlson

    Jan 14, 2019 | www.amazon.com

    Amazon Customer 5.0 out of 5 stars October 2, 2018

    Don't drink and read

    Don't drink wine and read this book, you'll get angry and make posts on social media that are completely accurate and your friends will hate you.

    [Jan 13, 2019] As FBI Ramped Up Witch Hunt When Trump Fired Comey, Strzok Admitted Collusion Investigation A Joke

    Highly recommended!
    All links are going to Brennan and CIA. Rosenstein was just a tool, necessary to appoint the Special Prosecutor. And launching the prove was the meaning of "insurance" that Strock mentioned to his mistress. Both Strzok and McCabe have their liasons (read bosses) at CIA, so in essence they were "CIA infiltration group" within the FBI. And it is also important to understand that Obama was just a CIA snowperson.
    There is Stalin's NKVD chief Beria shadow over CIA and FBI now. He famously said "Show me the man and I'll find you the crime."
    Notable quotes:
    "... The Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross has made a brilliant observation, noting Peter Strzok - then the FBI's deputy chief of counterintelligence, admitted to his FBI lawyer mistress, Lisa Page, that there was no merit to the investigation. ..."
    "... Interestingly, another series of Strzok-Page texts refers to "coordinating investigation" after Strzok apparently met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who both recommended Comey's firing, then authorized the special counsel probe ..."
    "... As Ross notes in The Daily Caller , there were other text messages that between Strzok and Page which raise suspicion over whether the FBI was working on a "gotcha" against Trump. ..."
    Jan 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    As FBI Ramped Up "Witch Hunt" When Trump Fired Comey, Strzok Admitted Collusion Investigation A Joke

    A Friday report in the New York Times revealing that the FBI supercharged its Trump-Russia collusion investigation after President Trump fired FBI director James Comey appears to have backfired - especially when one reviews internal FBI communications from the time period in question.

    The Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross has made a brilliant observation, noting Peter Strzok - then the FBI's deputy chief of counterintelligence, admitted to his FBI lawyer mistress, Lisa Page, that there was no merit to the investigation.

    Nine days after Comey was fired and the DOJ "sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia," Strzok texted Page on May 18, 2017: "You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely I'd be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there's no big there there. "

    It is unclear from The Times report what information was used as a predicate to open the investigation. The article suggests that the FBI had long considered the move and that Comey's firing and Trump's subsequent comments marked a tipping point.

    ...

    A source close to Strzok told The Daily Caller News Foundation on Jan. 26, 2018, shortly after the text was released, that the message reflected Strzok's concern that the FBI would not find evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia . - Daily Caller

    The Times' explanation for the FBI's rationale that Trump may have been a Russian asset consists of Trump's call for Moscow to release Hillary Clinton's emails an election debate, and allegations contained within the unverified Steele Dossier. The Times was also quick to note that Trump may have "unwittingly fallen under Moscow's influence," to temper the accusation that he was an agent of a foreign power. In short, weak sauce.

    It's no wonder Strzok was hesitant to join Mueller's team.

    Interestingly, another series of Strzok-Page texts refers to "coordinating investigation" after Strzok apparently met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who both recommended Comey's firing, then authorized the special counsel probe.

    As Ross notes in The Daily Caller , there were other text messages that between Strzok and Page which raise suspicion over whether the FBI was working on a "gotcha" against Trump.

    " And we need to open the case we've been waiting on now while Andy is acting ," Strzok texted Page the day Comey was fired, referring to then-deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe.

    Meanwhile, Page - who served as McCabe's deputy, provided some additional color on the text messages during her July 2018 congressional testimony, suggesting that the "case we've been waiting on" text referred to an investigation separate of the obstruction probe we already knew about.

    "Well, other than obstruction, what could it have been?" one lawmaker asked Page in her interview, details of which were published by The Epoch Times on Friday.

    " I can't answer that, sir. I'm sorry ," she replied.

    "If I was able to explain in more depth why the Director firing precipitated this text, I would," she continued while declining to say if the text message referred to an obstruction of justice investigation or something more. - Daily Caller

    That said, Page admitted that Comey's firing prompted the text exchange.

    "So the firing of Jim Comey was the precipitating event as opposed to the occupant of the Director's office?" asked one lawmaker.

    "Yes, that's correct," replied Page.

    Meanwhile, The Times went to great lengths to imply that the FBI was justified in their ratcheted-up collusion investigation - failing to mention who started the probe, who led it, and more importantly - waiting until the 9th paragraph to mention the fact that it turned up nothing .

    "No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials. An F.B.I. spokeswoman and a spokesman for the special counsel's office both declined to comment."

    VideoEng_NC

    "It is unclear from The Times report what information was used as a predicate to open the investigation."

    Should be pretty simple with one question. "Was it Hillary who was the responsible party to open an investigation on Trump?". About as direct as it gets & we already know the answer.

    adampeart

    TDS sufferers hate Trump so bad that they have become (at 70%) pro-warmonger. Pathetic. I guess that I shouldn't be surprised. They were fine with Black Jesus starting wars, overthrowing governments and bombing brown people for 8 years.

    Teeter

    McCabe initiated the investigation. Nobody likes McCabe, so he is likely to be the one guy that gets thrown under the bus. Of course what he knows may protect him to some extent... they won't want a trial.

    Duc888

    Sedition? Treason?

    Yippie21

    7 Days in May.... except for current version we use the DOJ and FBI! Interesting times.

    [Jan 13, 2019] Deep State neutered Trump: I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President

    He essentially became a Republican Obama, save Nobel Peace Price. If Obama was/is a CIA-democrat, this guy is a Deep State controlled republican. In any case he betrayed his voters in a way that resembles Obama betrayal. One has a fake slogan "change we can believe in" that other equally fake "Make [middle] America Great Again" (which means restoration of well-being of middle class and working class in my book, not the continuation of Obama foreign wars, and tax cuts for for corporations and super rich.
    And that means that he lost a considerable part of his electorate: the anti-war republicans and former Sanders supporters. He might do good and not to try to run in 2020. He definitely is no economic nationalist. Compare his policies with Tucker Carlson Jan 2, 2019 speech to see the difference. He is "national neoliberal" which rejects parts of neoliberal globalization based on treaties and prefer to bully nations to compliance that favor the US interests instead of treaties.
    And his "fight" with the Deep State resemble so closely to complete and unconditional surrender, that you might have difficulties to distinguish between the two.
    Most of his appointees would make Hillary proud. That that extends beyond rabid neocons like Haley, Mattis, Bolton and Pompeo.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The Washington Post is without a doubt the most pro-establishment among all large mainstream publications, not only do they defend the narratives of the Deep State but actively attacks anyone who challenges them. ..."
    "... Jeff Bezos owner of the Washington Post is also a contractor with the CIA and sits on a Pentagon advisory board all part of doing everything he can to cozy up and ingratiate himself to the establishment on which his empire is built. ..."
    "... It's really sad that people in the public believe this stuff. It's insane and ridiculous. We're living in an Insane Asylum and the ones who should be there for the safety of themselves and others are walking around giving orders to Media and USG, fomenting war and making a mockery of laws and "normal behaviors. ..."
    "... They flooded the news with the old Helsinki/Putin stuff to hide the real news. Lisa Page's testimony revealed that John Carlin, Mueller's former chief of staff was running the Russia investigation from the DOJ end, showing another conflict of Mueller's. Now Mueller is covering for two best friends, Comey and Carlin and he has to frame Trump to save them. ..."
    "... The testimony also showed FBI David Bowditch was heavily involved, and Bowditch is now 2nd in command at the FBI and blocking the public release of witness testimony, and one reason for it is it reveals his involvement. ..."
    "... It is also now revealed that John Brennan CIA had the dossier before the FBI, and the dossier was likely written by Nellie Ohr, who belonged to a CIA group, and then the dossier was laundered by Steele to look like foreign intelligence to get the Crossfire Hurricane investigation started on Trump. You would think it would be big news that Russians may have had nothing to do with the dossier but the media doesn't see it that way ..."
    Jan 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
    Washington Post stating that he "has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details" of his discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin - telling Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in a phone interview that he would be willing to release the details of a private conversation in Helsinki last summer.

    "I would. I don't care," Trump told Pirro, adding: "I'm not keeping anything under wraps. I couldn't care less."

    "I mean, it's so ridiculous, these people making up," Trump said of the WaPo report.

    The president referred to his roughly two-hour dialogue with Putin in Helsinki -- at which only the leaders and their translators were present -- as "a great conversation" that included discussions about "securing Israel and lots of other things."

    "I had a conversation like every president does," Trump said Saturday. "You sit with the president of various countries. I do it with all countries." - Politico

    In July an attempt by House Democrats to subpoena Trump's Helsinki interpreter was quashed by Republicans.

    "The Washington Post is almost as bad, or probably as bad, as the New York Times," Trump said.

    When Pirro asked Trump about a Friday night New York Times report that the FBI had opened an inquiry into whether he was working for Putin, Pirro asked Trump "Are you now or have you ever worked for Russia, Mr. President?"

    "I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked," Trump responded. "I think it's the most insulting article I've ever had written."

    Trump went on an epic tweetstorm Saturday following the Times article, defending his 2017 firing of former FBI Director James Comey, and tweeting that he has been "FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations with Russia again!"

    rumcho

    Jeff Bezos paid $250 million for Washington Post, five years later he gets a government contract with the CIA for $600 million. Are you connecting the dots? You do the numbers. This is how fascism works. Bezos is a crony capitalist joker.

    Anunnaki

    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/01/the-trump-russia-scam-how-obama-enabled-the-fbi-to-spy-on-trump.html#more

    is Trump waiting for Mueller to lay down his cards? Head him off at the pass and arrest Obama, Rice, Jarrett, Lynch, Comey, Rosenstein and McCabe all on day 1

    best defense is a good offense. Make the narrative about Dem sedition not impending House impeachment hearings.

    You are President, start acting like it. Make them fear you.

    your re-election depends on Mike Obama not being your opponent.

    Let it Go

    WaPo, again?

    The Washington Post is without a doubt the most pro-establishment among all large mainstream publications, not only do they defend the narratives of the Deep State but actively attacks anyone who challenges them.

    Jeff Bezos owner of the Washington Post is also a contractor with the CIA and sits on a Pentagon advisory board all part of doing everything he can to cozy up and ingratiate himself to the establishment on which his empire is built. The article below delves into how WaPo is behind many of the big stories that manipulate America and moves the needle of public opinion in huge ways.

    http://Washington-post-influence-and-power.html

    MoralsAreEssential

    It's really sad that people in the public believe this stuff. It's insane and ridiculous. We're living in an Insane Asylum and the ones who should be there for the safety of themselves and others are walking around giving orders to Media and USG, fomenting war and making a mockery of laws and "normal behaviors.

    shadow54

    They flooded the news with the old Helsinki/Putin stuff to hide the real news. Lisa Page's testimony revealed that John Carlin, Mueller's former chief of staff was running the Russia investigation from the DOJ end, showing another conflict of Mueller's. Now Mueller is covering for two best friends, Comey and Carlin and he has to frame Trump to save them.

    The testimony also showed FBI David Bowditch was heavily involved, and Bowditch is now 2nd in command at the FBI and blocking the public release of witness testimony, and one reason for it is it reveals his involvement.

    It is also now revealed that John Brennan CIA had the dossier before the FBI, and the dossier was likely written by Nellie Ohr, who belonged to a CIA group, and then the dossier was laundered by Steele to look like foreign intelligence to get the Crossfire Hurricane investigation started on Trump. You would think it would be big news that Russians may have had nothing to do with the dossier but the media doesn't see it that way.

    Then there is the news that Fusion GPS worked with the Democracy Integrity Project and Knew Knowledge to run a fake Russian bots campaign against Roy Moore. The Democracy Integrity Project was started by Feinstein's aide and with New Knowledge wrote a report on Russian bots for the Senate Intelligence Committee. So the Senate Intelligence Committee hired creators of fake Russian bots to write a report on Russian bots.

    [Jan 13, 2019] a former CIA guy to float the notion in public that there is a good enough case, whatever that means, to think the President of the US was an Russian Agent of Influence based on "bits and pieces of circumstantial evidence."

    Jan 13, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    On Smerconish's show today, Bob Baer, spy extraordinaire, (read his books) asserted that the various bits and pieces of circumstantial "evidence" about Trump's contacts with and attitude toward Russia, as well as those of his flunkies and relatives amount to a "good enough" case for Trump being a Russian agent of influence.

    That is how a HUMINT spook judges such things. It is a matter of probabilities, not hard evidence.

    Assets of an alien government are not always witting (understanding) of their status from the POV of the foreign government, but that does not necessarily make other than agents. Sometimes they think they are merely cooperating in a good and normal way when, in fact, the relationship is much deeper. Jane Fonda in North Vietnam would be an example.

    Mad_Max22 , a day ago

    It seems injudicious, to say the least, for a former CIA guy to float the notion in public that there is a good enough case, whatever that means, to think the President of the US was an Russian Agent of Influence based on "bits and pieces of circumstantial evidence." I would say probably intemperate as well. Using it in the current climate, it ammounts to a slur.
    And what exactly are we to make of the spook expression "Agent of Influence?" I would say that unless one knows a good deal about the proclivites of the very person who is using the expression and what is going on in his mind, one shouldn't want to make very much of it at all. The expression comprehends pretty much of everything and anything, for good, for bad, for indifferent; for behavior that nobody in the whole wide world would find worrisome except someone in the CIA or the CI Branches of today's FBI. Such concerns come when Agencies have been politicized.
    It's dangerous enough that these people find an internal use for the term. I would speculate that some such cover set them off on Carter Page and ensuing FISA debacle.
    Patrick Armstrong -> Bill Herschel , 11 hours ago
    If Moscow had wanted to nobble the US election and get control of POTUS, it would have used its best weapon. It had already bought Clinton once.
    ISL -> Patrick Armstrong , 4 hours ago
    Bought and owned. One can guess that there is much compromising financial and probably other information on the Clinton Foundation in the missing emails that Russia (and likely every other intelligence agency on the planet), and from elsewhere, has, given her lack of comprehension of the basics of security or that classification is not only for the little people.
    John Hisler , a day ago
    In Bob Baer's 1st book He said that he was able to confirm that it was Israel that attacked the USS Liberty. As a CIA officer he was trying, without success ,to recruit a local government radio operator.(probably Egyptian) He said that soon after the attack the prospective recruit came to him and volunteered to cooperate.Surprised at this sudden change of heart Baer asked what had happened?.He said that he had listened to the entire attack of the USS Liberty and the communication between the Israeli planes and their command station. .The recruit said that he now believed that the US and Israel could not be allies because the US would never permit an ally to get away with attacking a US vessel and murdering American sailors.
    Pat Lang Mod -> John Hisler , a day ago
    As a student officer at Ft. Holabird I read the transcripts generated by NSA of the chatter between the Israeli planes and their command. There is not doubt whatever that the attack was deliberate and sustained for hours. I have written aout this many times. Look in the archive. https://turcopolier.typepad...

    [Jan 13, 2019] So even if the IRA didn't manage to make a profit, the net cost for them must have been much lower than $100,000

    Notable quotes:
    "... Does anyone know how much revenue it made from that operation? Facebook must know but they've kept quiet about it. Same with Mueller. ..."
    Jan 13, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Brendan , Jan 13, 2019 5:12:30 PM | link

    The Internet Research Agency (IRA) paid $100,000 for Facebook ads and then charged its customers for the clickbait service (between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per post for promotional content). So even if the IRA didn't manage to make a profit, the net cost for them must have been much lower than $100,000.

    Does anyone know how much revenue it made from that operation? Facebook must know but they've kept quiet about it. Same with Mueller.

    [Jan 12, 2019] Some were even more laconic, summarizing the "scoop" as "anybody who fires corrupt Comey must be a Russian spy

    This is the typical level of repression that exist in Police State: any politician who deviates from the "Inner Party" (aka Deep State) course is branded as Russian spy and "counterintelligence" dogs are send to sniff any dirty clothing that might exist to and this politician career.
    Notable quotes:
    "... counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president's own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow's influence. ..."
    "... "anybody who fires corrupt Comey must be a Russian spy." ..."
    "... Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin' James Comey, a total sleaze! ..."
    Jan 12, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    President Trump on Saturday lashed out after a Friday evening report in the New York Times that US law enforcement officials " became so concerned by the president's behavior " in the days after Trump fired James Comey as FBI director, that "t hey began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests. "

    According to the NYT, agents and senior F.B.I. officials " had grown suspicious of Mr. Trump's ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign " but held off on opening an investigation into him, the people said, in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude.

    What happened next? Well, a collusion narrative was born and carefully crafted as the paper explains:

    The president's activities before and after Mr. Comey's firing in May 2017, particularly two instances in which Mr. Trump tied the Comey dismissal to the Russia investigation, helped prompt the counterintelligence aspect of the inquiry, the people said.

    The odd inquiry carried "explosive implications" as counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president's own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow's influence.

    The criminal and counterintelligence elements were coupled together into one investigation, former law enforcement officials said in interviews in recent weeks, because if Mr. Trump had ousted the head of the F.B.I. to impede or even end the Russia investigation, that was both a possible crime and a national security concern. The F.B.I.'s counterintelligence division handles national security matters.

    Even so, "...some former law enforcement officials outside the investigation have questioned whether agents overstepped in opening it ."

    Then, in paragraph nine we read " No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials. " Or, as The Washington Examiner 's Byron York sums it up:

    Some were even more laconic, summarizing the "scoop" as "anybody who fires corrupt Comey must be a Russian spy."

    Put another way:

    Responding to the "bombshell" NYT report - which curiously resurrects the "Russian collusion" narrative right as Trump is set to test his Presidential authority over the border wall, the president lashed out over Twitter .

    Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin' James Comey, a total sleaze!"

    Funny thing about James Comey. Everybody wanted him fired, Republican and Democrat alike. After the rigged & botched Crooked Hillary investigation, where she was interviewed on July 4th Weekend, not recorded or sworn in, and where she said she didn't know anything (a lie), the FBI was in complete turmoil (see N.Y. Post) because of Comey's poor leadership and the way he handled the Clinton mess (not to mention his usurpation of powers from the Justice Department).

    My firing of James Comey was a great day for America. He was a Crooked Cop who is being totally protected by his best friend, Bob Mueller, & the 13 Angry Democrats - leaking machines who have NO interest in going after the Real Collusion (and much more) by Crooked Hillary Clinton, her Campaign, and the Democratic National Committee. Just Watch!

    I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations with Russia again!

    Lyin' James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter S and his lover, agent Lisa Page, & more, all disgraced and/or fired and caught in the act. These are just some of the losers that tried to do a number on your President. Part of the Witch Hunt. Remember the "insurance policy?" This is it! -Donald Trump

    Update: Comey has responded over Twitter with a pithy FDR quote:

    Although we seem to recall that Democrats were Comey's enemy when he reopened Hillary Clinton's email investigation during the election.

    While there is nothing new here confirming Trump was colluding with Russia, as Byron York asks following the article, was the New York Times story about Trump, or about FBI malfeasance?

    [Jan 12, 2019] New definition of fake news: anything told by two anonimous former administration officials and reported by NYT

    Jan 12, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

    19 minutes ago

    "According to two former administration officials."

    NYT.

    Fake News

    57 minutes ago

    The "exit interview" said nothing about "Not Up To Role Of President." That was a quote at the start of the article attributed to "people."

    People say.

    Yes, they do. 1 hour ago

    Ummm. That would be Senator Dianne DEEP STATE Feinstein, former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and, therefore, Democrat doppelganger for DEEP STATE kingpin John O. Brennan.

    "It's a loss, there's no question," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).


    1 hour ago

    Kidbuck has served under enough Marine officers to know that most of them lie to cover their own *** as if it's second nature. 1 hour ago

    That's probably true in all US military branches.

    This is probably one major reason why US have lost all wars, since WWII. 1 hour ago

    I think you get the US and Deep State confused, The US military goes in and wipes out countries military and Deep state comes in with al queda and isis after their military is gone, For ex...Iraq had the 4th largest army in world at time and didnt last 3 weeks. A lot of people know now these wars were based on lies... 48 minutes ago

    In the Army, few rise above the rank of Captain unless they proven themselves to be *** kissers. To reach full bird Colonel, they have proven themselves to be totally loyal to the military machine. To wear the stars and breath the rarified air of the Generals, you have become among the best boot lickers on earth, and looking forward to retirement and some lucrative figurehead job with one of the defense contractors you have been sucking up to. Always remember, gaining rank in peacetime is slow & difficult, but war offers lots of opportunities to climb the ladder much faster. 1 hour ago

    "everyone has been picked by Trump. "

    Technically, but not exactly true.

    It's more closer to the truth that everyone was recommended by the Dark State's Gatekeeper, Kelly.

    Once, Chump hired Kelly as his Chief of Staff, a long time MIC, pentagon swamp creature, Chump got boxed in. 34 minutes ago (Edited)

    Priebus was hardly better. And what kind of leader is Trump if he lets himself be manipulated like this?

    It's just excuse after excuse with that guy. 2 hours ago

    "Military people," said Kelly "don't walk away."

    Which is why such people agitate for war.... Self-justificating war monger like Matthis. Just another Deep-State tool.

    Thank you for your service and don't let the door hit your desk-jockey arse on the way out.

    The real "adults" actively pursue peace, they don't look to keep the monthly drone body-count ticking over. 1 hour ago

    Generals by definition are "war mongers". 1 hour ago

    "Which is why such people agitate for war.... Self-justificating war monger like Matthis. Just another Deep-State tool."

    That's right. They are willing Dark State war tools. In fact, they are the DARK STATE.

    [Jan 11, 2019] New Documents Reveal a Covert British Military-Intelligence Smear Machine Meddling In American Politics by Mark Ames

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... By Mark Ames, co-host of the Radio War Nerd podcast , author of Going Posta l and publisher of The eXile, and Max Blumenthal, an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling Republican Gomorrah , Goliath , The Fifty One Day War , and The Management of Savagery , which will be published in March 2019 by Verso. He has also produced numerous print articles for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including Killing Gaza and Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie . Originally published at the Greyzone Project ..."
    "... The Integrity Initiative has mobilized an international disinformation campaign across Europe. Now, with government and right-wing foundation money, this massive "political smear unit" is infiltrating the US. ..."
    Jan 11, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    By Mark Ames, co-host of the Radio War Nerd podcast , author of Going Posta l and publisher of The eXile, and Max Blumenthal, an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling Republican Gomorrah , Goliath , The Fifty One Day War , and The Management of Savagery , which will be published in March 2019 by Verso. He has also produced numerous print articles for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including Killing Gaza and Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie . Originally published at the Greyzone Project

    The Integrity Initiative has mobilized an international disinformation campaign across Europe. Now, with government and right-wing foundation money, this massive "political smear unit" is infiltrating the US.

    A bombshell domestic spy scandal has been unfolding in Britain, after hacked internal communications exposed a covert UK state military-intelligence psychological warfare operation targeting its own citizens and political figures in allied NATO countries under the cover of fighting "Russian disinformation."

    The leaked documents revealed a secret network of spies, prominent journalists and think-tanks colluding under the umbrella of a group called "Integrity Initiative" to shape domestic opinion -- and to smear political opponents of the right-wing Tory government, including the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.

    Until now, this Integrity Initiative domestic spy scandal has been ignored in the American media, perhaps because it has mostly involved British names. But it is clear that the influence operation has already been activated in the US. Hacked documents reveal that the Integrity Initiative is cultivating powerful allies inside the State Department, top DC think tanks, the FBI and the DHS, where it has gained access to Katharine Gorka and her husband, the fascist-linked cable news pundit Sebastian Gorka .

    The Integrity Initiative has spelled out plans to expand its network across the US, meddling in American politics and recruiting "a new generation of Russia watchers" behind the false guise of a non-partisan charity. Moreover, the group has hired one of the most notorious American "perception management" specialists, John Rendon, to train its clusters of pundits and cultivate relationships with the media.

    Back in the UK, Member of Parliament Chris Williamson has clamored for an investigation into the Integrity Initiative's abuse of public money.

    In a recent editorial , Williamson drew a direct parallel between the group's collaboration with journalists and surreptitious payments the CIA made to reporters during the Cold War.

    "These tactics resemble those deployed by the CIA in Operation Mockingbird that was launched at the height of the cold war in the early 1950s. Its aims included using the mainstream news media as a propaganda tool," Williamson wrote.

    "They manipulated the news agenda by recruiting leading journalists to write stories with the express purpose of influencing public opinion in a particular way," the Labour parliamentarian continued. "Now it seems the British Establishment have dusted off the CIA's old playbook and is intent on giving it another outing on this side of the Atlantic."

    Unmasking a British Military-Intelligence Smear Machine

    The existence of the Integrity Initiative was virtually unknown until this November, when the email servers of a previously obscure British think tank called the Institute for Statecraft were hacked, prompting allegations of Russian intrusion. When the group's internal documents appeared at a website hosted by Anonymous Europe, the public learned of a covert propaganda network seed-funded to the tune of over $2 million dollars by the Tory-controlled UK Foreign Office, and run largely by military-intelligence officers.

    Through a series of cash inducements, off the record briefings and all-day conferences, the Integrity Initiative has sought to organize journalists across the West into an international echo chamber hyping up the supposed threat of Russian disinformation -- and to defame politicians and journalists critical of this new Cold War campaign.

    A bid for funding submitted by the Integrity Initiative in 2017 to the British Ministry of Defense promised to deliver a "tougher stance on Russia" by arranging for "more information published in the media on the threat of Russian active measures."

    The Integrity Initiative has also worked through its fronts in the media to smear political figures perceived as a threat to its militaristic agenda. Its targets have included a Spanish Department of Homeland Security appointee, Pedro Banos, whose nomination was scuttled thanks a media blitz it secretly orchestrated; Jeremy Corbyn, whom the outfit and its media cutouts painted as a useful idiot of Russia; and a Scottish member of parliament, Neil Findlay, whom one of its closest media allies accused of adopting "Kremlin messaging" for daring to protest the official visit of the far-right Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy -- the founder of two neo-Nazi parties and author of a white nationalist memoir, "View From The Right."

    These smear campaigns and many more surreptitiously orchestrated by the Integrity Initiative offer a disturbing preview of the reactionary politics it plans to inject into an already toxic American political environment.

    Lessons from "The Man Who Sold the War"

    A newly released Integrity Initiative document reveals that the outfit plans an aggressive expansion across the US.

    The Integrity Initiative claims to have already established a "simple office" in Washington DC, though it does not say where. It also boasts of partnerships with top DC think tanks like the Atlantic Council, the Center for European Policy Analysis, CNA, and close relationships with US officials.

    A major hub of Integrity Initiative influence is the State Department's Global Engagement Center, a de facto US government propaganda operation that was established by President Barack Obama to battle online ISIS recruitment, but which was rapidly repurposed to counter Russian disinformation following the election of Trump.

    The Integrity Initiative has also recruited one of the most infamous American PR men to organize its clusters of journalists and political figures.

    He is John Rendon, best known as "The Man Who Sold The War" -- several wars, in fact, but most notoriously the Iraq invasion. Rendon was the self-described "information warrior" who planted fake news in the major US-UK media about non-existent WMD threats. With deep ties to the CIA and other military-intelligence agencies, his PR firm was paid $100 million to organize and sell Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. In 2002, the New York Times exposed a Pentagon program using Rendon to plant "disinformation" -- including "false stories" and "the blackest of black PR" -- in media outlets around the world, in order to shape public opinion and sell the Iraq invasion.

    John Rendon (left) with Maj. Gen. Michael Snodgrass, US Africa Command Chief of Staff (photo by US Africom Public Affairs)

    Journalist James Bamford outlined a catalogue of disinformation feats Rendon performed for the Pentagon, such as identifying "the biases of specific journalists and potentially obtain an understanding of their allegiances, including the possibility of specific relationships and sponsorships." Bamford also found proposals and programs Rendon was involved in that aimed to "'coerce' foreign journalists and plant false information overseas [and] find ways to 'punish' those who convey the 'wrong message.'"

    These tactics seem particularly relevant to his work with the Integrity Initiative, especially considering the internal documents that reveal further Rendon-style plans to produce reports and studies to be "fed anonymously into local media." (Among the outlets listed as friendly hosts in Integrity Initiative internal memos are Buzzfeed and El Pais, the center-left Spanish daily.)

    Keeping Up with the Gorkas

    Internal documents also refer to interactions between Integrity Initiative Director Chris Donnelly and top Trump officials like Katharine Gorka , a vehemently anti-Muslim Department of Homeland Security official, as well as her husband, Sebastian, who earned right-wing fame during his brief tenure in Trump's White House.

    The latter Gorka is an open supporter of the Hungarian Vitezi Rend, a proto-fascist order that collaborated with Nazi Germany during its occupation of Hungary. Following Trump's election victory in 2016, Gorka appeared for televised interviews in a black Vitezi Rend uniform.

    Sebastian Gorka, in Vitezi Rend garb, with his wife, Katharine, on Election Night

    Gorka was among the first figures listed on an itinerary for Donnelly to Washington this September 18 to 22. The itinerary indicates that the two had breakfast before Donnelly delivered a presentation on "Mapping Russian Influence Activities" at the federally funded military research center, CNA .

    According to the itinerary, Donnelly was granted access to Pentagon officials like Mara Karlin , an up-and-coming neoconservative cadre , and John McCain Institute executive director Kurt Volker , another neoconservative operative who also serves as the US Special Representative for Ukraine. Numerous meetings with staffers inside the State Department's Office of Global Engagement were also detailed.

    A Foreign Agent in the State Department?

    Of all the State Department officials named in Integrity Initiative documents, the one who appeared most frequently was Todd Leventhal. Leventhal has been a staffer at the State Department's Global Engagement Center, boasting of "20 years of countering disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and urban legends." In an April 2018 Integrity Initiative memo, he is listed as a current team member:

    Funded to the tune of $160 million this year to beat back Russian disinformation with "counter-propaganda," the State Department's Global Engagement Center has refused to deny targeting American citizens with information warfare of its own. "My old job at the State Department was as chief propagandist," confessed former Global Engagement Center Director Richard Stengel. "I'm not against propaganda. Every country does it and they have to do it to their own population and I don't necessarily think it's that awful."

    Like so many of the media and political figures involved in the Integrity Initiative's international network, the Global Engagement Center's Leventhal has a penchant for deploying smear tactics against prominent voices that defy the foreign policy consensus. Leventhal appeared in an outtake of a recent NBC documentary on Russian disinformation smugly explaining how he would take down a 15-year-old book critical of American imperialism in the developing world. Rather than challenge the book's substance and allegations, Leventhal boasted how he would marshall his resources to wage an ad hominem smear campaign to destroy the author's reputation. His strategic vision was clear: when confronting a critic, ignore the message and destroy the messenger.

    Integrity Initiative documents reveal that Leventhal has been paid $76,608 dollars (60,000 British pounds) for a 50% contract.

    While those same documents claim he has retired from the State Department, Leventhal's own Linkedin page lists him as a current "Senior Disinformation Advisor" to the State Department. If that were true, it would mean that the State Department was employing a de facto foreign agent.

    As a cut-out of the British Foreign Office and Defense Ministry, the Integrity Initiative's work with current and former US officials and members of the media raises certain legal questions. For one, there is no indication that the group has registered under the Justice Department's Foreign Agent Registration Act, as most foreign agents of influence are required to do.

    Grants from the Neocons' Favorite Foundation

    An Integrity Initiative memo states that the right-wing Smith Richardson Foundation has also committed to ponying up funding for its US network as soon as the group receives 501 c-3 non-profit status. The foundation has already provided it with about $56,000 for covert propaganda activities across Europe.

    The Smith Richardson Foundation has old ties to the US intelligence community and controversial cold war influence operations. According to reporter Russ Bellant , the foundation was secretly bankrolling radical right-wing "indoctrination campaigns for the American public on cold war and foreign policy issues" -- programs that got the attention of Senator William Fulbright, who warned then-President Kennedy of their dangers. At one of these indoctrination seminars, a Smith Richardson Foundation director "told attendees that 'it is within the capacity of the people in this room to literally turn the State of Georgia into a civil war college,' in order to overcome their opponents."

    Smith Richardson has funded a who's who of the neoconservative movement, from hyper-militaristic think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War. "To say the [Smith Richardson] foundation was involved at every level in the lobbying for and crafting of the so-called global war on terror after 9/11 would be an understatement," wrote journalist Kelley Vlahos.

    Besides Smith Richardson, the Integrity Initiative has stated its intention to apply for grants from the State Department "to expand the Integrity Initiative activities both within and outside of the USA." This is yet another indicator that the US government is paying for propaganda targeting its own citizens.

    The "Main Event" in Seattle

    An Integrity Initiative internal document argues that because "DC is well served by existing US institutions, such as those with which the Institute [for Statecraft] already collaborates," the organization should "concentrate on extending the work of the Integrity Initiative into major cities and key State capitals [sic] across the USA."

    This December 10, the Integrity Initiative organized what it called its "main event" in the US. It was a conference on disinformation held in Seattle, Washington under the auspices of a data firm called Adventium Labs. Together with the Technical Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota, the Integrity Initiative listed Adventium Labs as one of its "first partners outside DC."

    Adventium is Minneapolis-based research and development firm that has reaped contracts from the US military, including a recent $5.4 million cyber-security grant from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

    Inside a modest-sized hotel conference room, the Adventium/Integrity event began with a speech by the Integrity Initiative's Simon Bracey-Lane. Two years prior, Bracey-Lane appeared on the American political scene as a field worker for Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential primary run, earning media write-ups as the "Brit for Bernie." Now, the young operator was back in the US as the advance man for a military-intelligence cut-out that specialized in smearing left-wing political figures like Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader widely regarded as the British version of Sanders.

    Bracey-Lane opened his address by explaining that Integrity Initiative director Chris Donnelly had been unable to appear at the event, possibly because he was bogged down in the scandal back home. He proceeded to read remarks prepared by Donnelly that offered a window into the frighteningly militaristic mindset the Integrity Initiative aims to impose on the public through their media and political allies.

    According to Donnelly's comments, the West was no longer in a "peace time, rules based environment." From the halls of government to corporate boardrooms to even the UK's National Health System, "the conclusion is that we have to look for people who suit a wartime environment rather than peacetime."

    During Q&A, Bracey-Lane remarked that "we have to change the definition of war to encompass everything that war now encompasses," referring vaguely to various forms of "hybrid warfare."

    "There is a great deal to be done in communicating that to young people," he continued. "When we mean being at war we don't mean sending our boys off to fight. It's right here in our homes."

    The emphasis on restructuring society along martial lines mirrored the disturbing thinking also on display in notes of a private meeting between Donnelly and Gen. Richard Barrons in 2016. During that chat, the two officers decided that the British military should be removed from democratic supervision and be able to operate as "an independent body outside politics."

    While Bracey-Lane's presentation perfectly captured the military mindset of the Integrity Initiative, the speakers that followed him offered a diverse array of perspectives on the concept of disinformation, some more nuanced than others. But one talk stood out from the rest -- not because of its quality, but because of its complete lack thereof.

    Reanimating the "Red-Brown" Grifter

    Alexander Reid Ross (left) and Emmi Bevensee at the Integrity Initiative's "main event" in Seattle

    The presentation was delivered by Alexander Reid Ross, a half-baked political researcher who peddles computer-generated spiderweb relationship charts to prove the existence of a vast hidden network of "red-brown" alliances and "syncretic media" conspiracies controlled by puppeteers in Moscow.

    Ross is a lecturer on geography at Portland State University with no scholarly or journalistic credentials on Russia. His students have given him dismal marks at Rate My Professors, complaining about his "terrible monotone lectures" and his penchant for "insert[ing] his own ideologies into our class." But with a book, "Against the Fascist Creep," distributed by the well-known anarchist publishing house, AK Press, the middling academic has tried to make his name as a maverick analyst.

    Before the Integrity Initiative was exposed as a military-intelligence front operation, Ross was among a small coterie of pundits and self-styled disinformation experts that followed the group's Twitter account. The Integrity Initiative even retweeted his smear of War Nerd podcast co-host John Dolan.

    In a series of articles for the Southern Poverty Law Center last year, Ross attempted to bring his warmed-over Cold War theories to the broader public. He wound up trashing everyone from the co-author of this piece, Max Blumenthal, to Nation magazine publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel to Harvard University professor of international relations Stephen Walt as hidden shadow-fascists secretly controlled by the Kremlin.

    The articles ultimately generated an embarrassing scandal and a series of public retractions by the editor-in-chief of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Richard Cohen. And then, like some Dr. Frankenstein for discredited and buried journalism careers, the British Ministry of Defense-backed Integrity Initiative moved in to reanimate Ross as a sought-after public intellectual.

    Before the Integrity Initiative-organized crowd, Ross offered a rambling recitation of his theory of a syncretic fascist alliance puppeteered by Russians: "The alt right takes from both this 'red-brown,' it's called, or like left-right syncretic highly international national of nationalisms, and from the United States' own paleoconservative movement, and it's sort of percolated down through college organizing, um, and anti-interventionism meets anti-imperialism. Right?"

    In a strange twist, Ross appeared on stage at the Integrity Initiative's Seattle event alongside Emmi Bevensee , a contributor to the left-libertarian Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) think tank, whose tagline, "a left market anarchist think-tank" expresses its core aim of uniting far-left anarchists with free-market right-libertarians.

    Bevensee , a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona and self-described "Borderlands anarcho into tech and crypto," concluded her presentation by asserting a linkage between the alternative news site, Zero Hedge, and the "physical militarized presence in the borderlands" of anti-immigrant vigilantes. Like Bevensee, Ross has written for C4SS in the past.

    The irony of contributors to an anarchist group called the "Center for a Stateless Society" auditioning before The State – the most jackbooted element of it, in fact – for more opportunities to attack anti-war politicians and journalists, can hardly be overstated.

    But closer examination of the history of C4SS veers from irony into something much darker and more unsettling.

    Pedophile Co-Founder, White Nationalist Associates

    C4SS was co-founded in 2006 by a confessed child rapist and libertarian activist, Brad Spangler, who set the group up to promote "Market anarchism" to "replace Marxism on the left."

    When Spangler's child rape confessions emerged in 2015, the Center for Stateless Society founder was finally drummed out by his colleagues.

    There's more: Spangler's understudy and deputy in the C4SS, Kevin Carson -- currently listed as the group's "Karl Hess Chair in Social Theory" -- turned out to be a longtime friend and defender of white nationalist Keith Preston. Preston's name is prominently plastered on the back of Kevin Carson's book, hailing the C4SS man as "the Proudhon of our time" -- a loaded compliment, given Proudhon's unhinged anti-Semitism . Carson only disowned Preston in 2009, shortly before Preston helped white nationalist leader Richard Spencer launch his alt-right webzine, Alternative Right.

    The C4SS group currently participates in the annual Koch-backed International Students For Liberty conference in Washington DC, LibertyCon, a who's who of libertarian think-tank hacks and Republican Party semi-celebrities like Steve Forbes, FCC chairman Ajit Pai, and Alan Dershowitz.

    In 2013, C4SS's Kevin Carson tweeted out his dream fantasy that four Jewish leftists -- Mark Ames, Yasha Levine, Corey Robin, and Mark Potok -- would die in a plane crash while struggling over a single parachute. Potok was an executive editor at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which last year retracted every one of the crank articles that Alexander Reid Ross published with them and formally apologized for having run them.

    For some reason, the super-sleuth Ross conveniently failed to investigate the libertarian group, C4SS, that he has chosen to partner with and publish in. That ability to shamelessly smear and denounce leftists over the most crudely manufactured links to the far-right -- while cozying up to groups as sleazy as C4SS and authoritarian as the Integrity Initiative -- is the sort of adaptive trait that MI6 spies and the Rendon Group would find useful in a covert domestic influence operation.

    Ross did not respond to our request for comment on his involvement with the Integrity Initiative and C4SS.

    Disinformation for Democracy

    As it spans out across the US, the Integrity Initiative has stated its desire to "build a younger generation of Russia watchers." Toward this goal, it is supplementing its coterie of elite journalists, think tank hacks, spooks and State Department info-warriors with certifiable cranks like Ross.

    Less than 24 hours after Ross's appearance at the Integrity Initiative event in Seattle, he sent a menacing email to the co-author of this article, Ames, announcing his intention to recycle an old and discredited smear against him and publish it in the Daily Beast -- a publication that appears to enjoy a special relationship with Integrity Initiative personnel.

    Despite the threat of investigation in the UK, the Integrity Initiative's "network of networks" appears to be escalating its covert, government-funded influence operation, trashing the political left and assailing anyone that gets in its way -- all in the name of fighting foreign disinformation.

    "We have to win this one," Integrity Initiative founder Col. Chris Donnelly said , "because if we don't, democracy will be undermined."

    Disturbed Voter , January 10, 2019 at 4:26 am

    This is why you don't put spooks in charge. They are paid to be paranoid.

    pretzelattack , January 10, 2019 at 5:18 am

    making up lies to get paid. james angleton was paranoid (not that it seemed to make him more effective in counterintelligence)–these people are just con artists, paid to be con artists.
    i'm just waiting for "we have to undermine democracy in order to save it".

    Pym of Nantucket , January 10, 2019 at 5:46 pm

    Agreed. Not only are they paid to make things up, but they have an ingenious scheme for paying themselves from narcotics and arms dealing.

    The most amazing feat of confidence artistry (apart from maybe the TARP bailout (c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program ) is their remarkable ability to convince the population they are needed and working on our behalf instead of being in jail where they belong.

    nobody , January 10, 2019 at 6:06 am

    I first heard about this enterprise/outfit from 21st Century Wire .

    Peter , January 10, 2019 at 6:40 am

    hat story has been around since at least December 17. https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/12/17/inside-the-temple-of-covert-propaganda-the-integrity-initiative-and-the-uks-scandalous-information-war/
    maybe you should change your sources

    Richard H Caldwell , January 10, 2019 at 6:52 am

    Gotta love Mark Ames

    jsn , January 10, 2019 at 6:55 am

    b at Moon of Alabama posted on this on the 4th.

    David , January 10, 2019 at 7:01 am

    I submitted a long comment on this about an hour ago, which seems to have been eaten by the system. I won't repost it now, but I'll do so later if it doesn't surface.

    PlutoniumKun , January 10, 2019 at 7:58 am

    This is something that has repeatedly happened to me too recently – it often takes 2 or more hours for most of my recent posting to surface on the site. It rarely disappears altogether, so I would assume your post will eventually arrive.

    hemeantwell , January 10, 2019 at 9:25 am

    Same here on the delays. Keep a copy.
    But anyway, very glad you posted this piece. Whatever we make of Patreon, it's one way to support Mark Ames' work.

    flora , January 10, 2019 at 9:13 pm

    Me, too. Though not on this post. Me thinks much sp@m and tr0llery happening behind the scenes that the mods have to wade through comment by comment.

    jCandlish , January 10, 2019 at 7:50 am

    Sir Alan Duncan, responding on behalf of the Government to Emily Thornberry's urgent question (Dec 12) on recent allegations that the Foreign Office funded a company which carried out a smear campaign against the official Opposition.

    Chilling indeed.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBOwO-MAPKI

    RBHoughton , January 10, 2019 at 10:06 pm

    What a frightful fellow that Alan Duncan is eh? Talks like a Mafia lawyer and he's supposed to be a national leader. He reminds that other MP, the POS who interrogated David Kelly on TV, they both use the same style. Is it a qualification for legislator?

    The Rev Kev , January 10, 2019 at 8:23 am

    Just a minor note to start off. That image of "Sebastian Gorka, in Vitezi Rend garb". I think that Vitezi Rend actually refers to the medal he wears on the left. The jacket itself more resembles the patrol jacket that British officers wore in the 19th century. Moving on! Notice how the same players keep on coming up again and again in all these stories of skulduggery? John Rendon, the Atlantic Council, Ajit Pai and Alan Dershowitz – the same scum-bags with a few new wannabe players. As an example.
    The penchant that Brad Spangler, C4SS co-founder, has for under-age girls is disgusting of course but you have to put it into the context of the people that you are talking about. If Spengler was more rich or more powerful, you might see his name on a manifest for the "Lolita Express" but his activities would not be splashed about in an article like this one. That sort of activity is given a level of protection if you are in the right group. And it is a good thing that that British General Richard Barrons is retired as his comments are deserving of being cashiered.
    Funny how a group that claims to be about protecting democracy wants to push it aside and install propaganda on a "1984" level in the pursuit of their aims. I cannot decide if their target of Russia is a means or an end. If it is a means, that means using the boogy-man of Russia to radically restructure western society to their tastes. If it is an end, well, it is true that Russia has about $75 trillion in resources, mostly in Siberia and the east, so if it was broken up eventually, that would be a bonanza of wealth appropriation.
    I was thinking about the activities of this group and how they go about their activities, especially the smearing of anybody that talks truth to power. I wonder if anybody here made the connection with this story and the PropOrNot website that came out of nowhere about two years ago and that had the stamp of approval of the Washington Post. I would not be surprised if it turns out to be that PropOrNot was a trial balloon in the United States for the Integrity Initiative to establish what it was capable of. Just a thought.

    Martin Finnucane , January 10, 2019 at 9:39 am

    Vitezi Rend garb

    He looks like an extra from Star Wars – one of those nazi guys working the bridge of the Death Star. The "look and feel" of a lot of pre-war fascism strikes us as silly in retrospect, though it really wasn't at the time.

    EoH , January 10, 2019 at 10:35 am

    That tailored black jacket Sebastian wears looks like something Winston Churchill would have changed out of before that last cavalry charge at Omdurman. It seems intentionally designed to mimic 19th century great power imperial army officer garb. Nostalgia for the good times, apparently. Goes with his fascist priorities.

    bob , January 10, 2019 at 11:36 am

    " my father was Moonraker and that is part of my origin story "

    NSFW

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbQx0NTV4TU

    Tomonthebeach , January 10, 2019 at 9:25 pm

    Let us not get carried away with the exuberance of discovering skulduggery among fascist elements of the media and politics. This does not mean that the conspiracy means Russia is thereby a Goodie Twoshoes. It also does not mean that Russia is any less a pain in the ass than it has heretorfore be characterized.

    It does mean that there is less reason (any?) than ever to put much faith in FoxNews (already a mere propaganda machine) or other orgs. I am uncomfortable hearing CNA is caught up in this as they are a pseudo government thinktank with some Pentagon influence.

    If true, the story should be used to clear out some journalists and analyst riffraff. However, this story is surely not going to restore, much less create, any integrity among the Beltway Punditry.

    Off The Street , January 10, 2019 at 8:56 am

    The article and related matters may also shed more light on the abrupt resignation of Robert Hannigan from the leadership of GCHQ in January 2017 a few days after Trump's inauguration. Given previous revelations about GCHQ and NSA spying on each other's citizens, what else is next in the UK and in the US and elsewhere?

    After reading about that Carson character and others I am ready for a shower to try to wash off the disgust.

    DJG , January 10, 2019 at 9:01 am

    Yves Smith: Thanks for this. I am wondering about two stories that have been flapping around here for a few days: That odd New Knowledge company that produced the report about Russian influence on the elections as well as the story about the case before the Supreme Court of the US in which a company is invoking claims of sovereign immunity.

    I have a feeling that New Knowledge definitely fits into the framework outlined by Ames above. A contractor that appears out of nowhere with a "distinguished" board of concerned semi-liberals (at the trough)?

    But what do I know? Some guy named Volodya showed up at my house and bought my vote in 2016 for two bottles of pickled mushrooms

    diptherio , January 10, 2019 at 9:32 am

    Kevin Carson is always showing up in my twitter feed. I knew there was something I didn't like about that guy, anarchist or no.

    jfleni , January 10, 2019 at 9:38 am

    Perfideus Albion is not just a neat saying, but a truth that the Irish, French and
    Germans (etc.) have known forever, the people don't deserve it, but the
    jumped up Tories do in spades.

    pjay , January 10, 2019 at 9:48 am

    Thank you for highlighting this article! It names names and connects some dots, including some connections reaching into the U.S. It also describes propaganda mechanisms that have been around forever but have become pervasive today. A few protruding tips of a massive iceberg, in my view. I'm sure *this* "bombshell" story will get the massive coverage it deserves in the MSM -- not!

    diptherio , January 10, 2019 at 10:43 am

    Here's the response from C4SS, if anyone is interested:
    https://c4ss.org/content/51563

    jsn , January 10, 2019 at 1:11 pm

    That was interesting. Well argued all the way through I thought, but they could take a closer look at the unwinding of Yugoslavia; what Serbia and Syria have in common is having been targeted by outside state powers for dissolution, responses did vary.

    pjay , January 10, 2019 at 2:27 pm

    Thank you diptherio for posting the C4SS response. Such responses are helpful in evaluating issues like this, and we should always be open to the other side when they take the time to reply. However, I can't agree that the response was "well argued." The author does make some valid points, but mainly she resorts to ad hominem attacks on Ames (based on some juvenile antics at eXile that are often used to smear him), or on both authors because they may have agreed with "Assadists" like Ambassador Peter Ford or "9/11 Truthers" like Piers Robinson, whose claims about Syria or the White Helmets are, of course, Kremlin propaganda. Which brings up why Blumenthal would have changed his position on Syria; it was not because of his gradual understanding of what was really happening there. Rather, while he had once grasp the truth of the "revolution," he made the mistake of going to a Kremlin gala and the Rooskies (and RT) got to him. Now he is just another propagandist. Nowhere that I can see does the author discuss the major claims made in Ames and Blumenthal's article, or the evidence cited (except to say that if it was in RT or Sputnik, we can ignore it anyway as propaganda). Nor does she address the actual defamation made by Alexander Ross-Reid through the SPLC that pissed off Blumenthal in the first place. There are other problems (don't get me started on the "red-brown" smear), but that's enough.

    Having said all that, I do think that in their criticism of C4SS, Ames and Blumenthal perhaps did some unnecessary punching down. They could have made clearer the distinction between organizations like the Integrity Initiative, that are pretty clearly intelligence operatives or cut-outs, versus groups like C4SS that function more like "useful idiots" because of their ideological position (e.g. equating U.S. and Russian imperialism in this case in their "anarchist" appeal). The latter are in no way as evil as the former, in my mind.

    jsn , January 10, 2019 at 3:18 pm

    You are clearly much more engaged with the related debates than I. I read the piece as a response to the punching down you mention in your last paragraph and felt like I got a respectable read on someone still developing their arguments. I'm not informed enough to argue with much of it, but having read Diana Johnstone's "Fools Crusade", the Syria/Serbia bit stuck in my craw.

    I had thought about commenting on the ad hominems directed at Ames, but didn't want to get into the whole identity argument embedded in much of the language of the post. While I disagree with many of her positions and attitudes on the state actions she criticizes without, in my opinion, adequate grounding, I judged it a mostly good faith effort trying to find solid footing in a world increasingly thick with distorted narratives.

    It's hard to argue now, from anywhere with out power, without being someone's "useful idiot": trust has decayed to the point where language impedes communication in the political sphere.

    pjay , January 10, 2019 at 5:01 pm

    It's funny you should mention Johnstone's book. I normally would not use the derogatory term "useful idiot" for the very reason you imply; most such people are acting in good faith. I admit that her comments on Syria irritated me. But the reason I sometimes overreact to that sort of narrative is because of my own experiences as a useful idiot, starting with Yugoslavia. I fell for the liberal "humanitarian" argument hook, line, and sinker in the 1990s, even though I considered myself a knowledgeable progressive at the time. It wouldn't be the last time I was duped, but I'd like to think I'm a little wiser today.

    I appreciate your comment. We definitely need to distinguish empire propagandists from the beliefs of people honestly trying to find their way.

    rojo , January 10, 2019 at 6:41 pm

    I thought the later part of Ames' piece was unnecessary. It's kind of the same sort of guilt-by-attending-same-conference thing that I find annoying about the Russophobes.

    Keep focused on government malfeasance, not basement brown-shirts.

    Ignacio , January 10, 2019 at 11:00 am

    Oh well, there would be a lot to argue here. In one side it is nice to see that the "Initiative" is being exposed although it doesn't appear yet to trigger any significant response from supposedly democratic institutions like, let's say the english parliament (at ransom by brexit).

    Just to demonstrate how this article is well focused and pointed I wanted to comment on this bit:

    (Among the outlets listed as friendly hosts in Integrity Initiative internal memos are Buzzfeed and El Pais, the center-left Spanish daily .)

    YES! iIt is so true that the former "center-left" –if you wish– daily that years ago was a must read but has been degraded to levels that I wouldn't have imagined, in a case that makes the Guardian as the "guardian of reporting-as-it should-be". One has to bear in mind that the current most important shareholder of Grupo Prisa (owner of El Pais) is an english hedge fund Amber Capital whose CEO, Joseph Oughorlian is chairman at Grupo Prisa and probably responsible for the Russia!Russia!Russia! campaign observed in this medium that surprised me so much. You don't find nothing similar in Spain even in rigth and rigth of the rigth news outlets.

    I believe this UK-based shareholder is clearly associated with the peculiar Russia!Russia!Russia! stance of the supposedly centre-left daily.

    juliania , January 10, 2019 at 12:24 pm

    For those of us from way back way back, these kooks relate to offshoots of the Watergate scandal, the original one, where people working on those burglaries of psychiatrist's offices and Democratic headquarters got their start organizing small gangs of crooks to infiltrate what was then a porous but trustable system of government – on they went to propose surveillance and collection of data that was at first publicly laughed about but on they went. On they went. Technology with all its pluses has these minuses we at first were able to counter (Church hearings) but the rats have scurried into all the back alleys and secretive pathways that need a thorough cleanup. It can be done, but it needs to be done periodically. Hopefully this is finally the year when that will happen.

    Thank you, Yves. I believe these folk don't end up in a good place, but meanwhile they are wreaking havoc. The place to start, after the brooms and mops, is to get money OUT of politics and restore a verifiable voting system that happens methodically and is trustworthy. The citizenry will be behind this. We the people don't care how long it takes to vote or to find out who won. We don't! Haste makes waste in more ways than we know.

    Let's do this. And please, judges, do your duty or go to jail yourselves.

    Andrew Watts , January 10, 2019 at 1:37 pm

    It's obvious that neither Ames or Blumenthal read the actual documents they're quoting from. Which is a shame considering the relevant one involving the CIA's Operation Mockingbird comparison was only seven pages long. The CIA were merely imitating British intelligence during the war and it is clearly stated as such when one of the replies involving General Sir Richard Barrons states that they've done this before during the 1930s. The US didn't possess a foreign intelligence agency at the time and I'd fervently argue that we still don't to this day.

    but I've already commented about British Security Coordination in the aftermath of PropOrNot though and I'm reluctant to beat a dead horse.

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/links-12312016.html#comment-2736471
    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/100755.html#comment-2737564
    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/links-11217.html#comment-2742827
    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/05/links-5-21-18.html#comment-2971759

    It's hard to be modest when you're this good.

    Roady , January 10, 2019 at 4:02 pm

    I wish I could be like Andrew Watts

    Chauncey Gardiner , January 10, 2019 at 3:27 pm

    Ah, the smell (or should we say stench) of domestic propaganda in the morning, ironically by some of the same individuals who brought us Iraq WMDs. While First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and other civil rights must be protected, it seems to me that a careful balance can be drawn under new legislation that insulates us from such government-sponsored propaganda. We should be able to rely on our government's representations. Instead, as with a former president who openly acknowledged, "My job is to catapult the propaganda," the reverse, together with a related loss of trust, unfortunately seems to be increasingly the case. Stop lying! What part of "of the People, by the People, for the People," is difficult to understand?

    [Jan 11, 2019] Facts does not matter in the current propoganda environment, the narrative is everything

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Look at Russiagate. An excellent recent article by Ray McGovern for Consortium News titled "A Look Back at Clapper's Jan. 2017 'Assessment' on Russia-gate" reminds us on the two-year anniversary of the infamous ODNI assessment that the entire establishment Russia narrative is built upon nothing but the say-so of a couple dozen intelligence analysts hand-picked and guided by a man who helped deceive the world into Iraq, a man who is so virulently Russophobic that he's said on more than one occasion that Russians are genetically predisposed to subversive behavior. ..."
    "... That January 2017 intelligence assessment has formed the foundation underlying every breathless, conspiratorial Russia story you see in western news media to this very day, and it's completely empty. The idea that Russia interfered in the US election in any meaningful way is based on an assessment crafted by a known liar , from which countless relevant analysts were excluded, which makes no claims of certainty, and contains no publicly available evidence. It's pure narrative from top to bottom, and therefore the "collusion" story is as well since Trump could only have colluded with an actual thing that actually happened, and there's no evidence that it did. ..."
    "... So now you've got Trump being painted as a Putin lackey based on a completely fabricated election interference story, despite the fact that Trump has actually been far more hawkish towards Russia than any administration since the fall of the Soviet Union. ..."
    "... The narrative matrix of America's political/media landscape is a confusing labyrinth of smoke and funhouse mirrors distorting and manipulating the public consciousness at every turn. It's psychologically torturous, which is largely why people who are deeply immersed in politics are so on-edge all the time regardless of where they're at on the political spectrum. The only potentially good thing I can see about this forceful brutalization of the public psyche is that it might push people over the edge and shatter the illusion altogether. ..."
    "... Trust in the mass media is already at an all-time low while our ability to network and share information that casts doubt on official narratives is at an all-time high, which is why the establishment propaganda machine is acting so weird as it scrambles to control the narrative, and why efforts to censor the internet are getting more and more severe. ..."
    Jan 11, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    Earlier this week, President Donald Trump tweeted the following:

    "Endless Wars, especially those which are fought out of judgement mistakes that were made many years ago, & those where we are getting little financial or military help from the rich countries that so greatly benefit from what we are doing, will eventually come to a glorious end!"

    The tweet was warmly received and celebrated by Trump's supporters, despite the fact that it says essentially nothing since "eventually" could mean anything.

    Indeed, it's looking increasingly possible that nothing will come of the president's stated agenda to withdraw troops from Syria other than a bunch of words which allow his anti-interventionist base to feel nice feelings inside. Yet everyone laps it up, on both ends of the political aisle, just like they always do:

    • Trump supporters are acting like he's a swamp-draining, war-ending peacenik...
    • ...his enemies are acting like he's feeding a bunch of Kurds on conveyor belts into Turkish meat grinders to be made into sausages for Vladimir Putin's breakfast, when in reality nothing has changed and may not change at all.

    How are such wildly different pictures being painted about the same non-event? By the fact that both sides of the Trump-Syria debate have thus far been reacting solely to narrative.

    This has consistently been the story throughout Trump's presidency: a heavy emphasis on words and narratives and a disinterest in facts and actions. A rude tweet can dominate headlines for days, while the actual behaviors of this administration can go almost completely ignored. Trump continues to more or less advance the same warmongering Orwellian globalist policies and agendas as his predecessors along more or less the same trajectory, but frantic mass media narratives are churned out every day painting him as some unprecedented deviation from the norm. Trump himself, seemingly aware that he's interacting entirely with perceptions and narratives instead of facts and reality, routinely makes things up whole cloth and often claims he's "never said" things he most certainly has said. And why not? Facts don't matter in this media environment, only narrative does.

    Look at Russiagate. An excellent recent article by Ray McGovern for Consortium News titled "A Look Back at Clapper's Jan. 2017 'Assessment' on Russia-gate" reminds us on the two-year anniversary of the infamous ODNI assessment that the entire establishment Russia narrative is built upon nothing but the say-so of a couple dozen intelligence analysts hand-picked and guided by a man who helped deceive the world into Iraq, a man who is so virulently Russophobic that he's said on more than one occasion that Russians are genetically predisposed to subversive behavior.

    That January 2017 intelligence assessment has formed the foundation underlying every breathless, conspiratorial Russia story you see in western news media to this very day, and it's completely empty. The idea that Russia interfered in the US election in any meaningful way is based on an assessment crafted by a known liar , from which countless relevant analysts were excluded, which makes no claims of certainty, and contains no publicly available evidence. It's pure narrative from top to bottom, and therefore the "collusion" story is as well since Trump could only have colluded with an actual thing that actually happened, and there's no evidence that it did.

    So now you've got Trump being painted as a Putin lackey based on a completely fabricated election interference story, despite the fact that Trump has actually been far more hawkish towards Russia than any administration since the fall of the Soviet Union. With the nuclear brinkmanship this administration has been playing with its only nuclear rival on the planet, it would be so incredibly easy for Trump's opposition to attack him on his insanely hawkish escalation of a conflict which could easily end all life on earth if any little thing goes wrong, but they don't. Because this is all about narrative and not facts, Democrats have been paced into supporting even more sanctioning, proxy conflicts and nuclear posturing while loudly objecting to any sign of communication between the two nuclear superpowers, while Republicans are happy to see Trump increase tensions with Moscow because it combats the collusion narrative. Now both parties are supporting an anti-Russia agenda which existed in secretive US government agencies long before the 2016 election .

    And this to me is the most significant thing about Trump's presidency. Not any of the things people tell me I'm supposed to care about, but the fact that the age of Trump has been highlighting in a very clear way how we're all being manipulated by manufactured narratives all the time.

    Humanity lives in a world of mental narrative . We have a deeply conditioned societal habit of heaping a massive overlay of mental labels and stories on top of the raw data we take in through our senses, and those labels and stories tend to consume far more interest and attention than the actual data itself. We use labels and stories for a reason: without them it would be impossible to share abstract ideas and information with each other about what's going on in our world. But those labels and stories get imbued with an intense amount of belief and identification; we form tight, rigid belief structures about our world, our society, and our very selves that can generate a lot of fear, hatred and suffering. Which is why it feels so nice to go out into nature and relax in an environment that isn't shaped by human mental narrative.

    This problem is exponentially exacerbated by the fact that these stories and labels are wildly subjective and very easily manipulated. Powerful people have learned that they can control the way everyone else thinks, acts and votes by controlling the stories they tell themselves about what's going on in the world using mass media control and financial political influence, allowing ostensible democracies to be conducted in a way which serves power far more efficiently than any dictatorship.

    So now America has a president who is escalating a dangerous cold war against Russia , who is working to prosecute Julian Assange and shut down WikiLeaks , who is expanding the same war on whistleblowers and Orwellian surveillance network that was expanded by Bush and Obama before him, who has expanded existing wars and made no tangible move as yet to scale them back, who is advancing the longstanding neocon agenda of regime change in Iran with starvation sanctions and CIA covert ops , and yet the two prevailing narratives about him are that he's either (A) a swamp-draining, establishment-fighting hero of peace or that he's (B) a treasonous Putin lackey who isn't nearly hawkish enough toward Russia.

    See how both A and B herd the public away from opposing the dangerous pro-establishment agendas being advanced by this administration? The dominant narratives could not possibly be more different from what's actually going on, and the only reason they're the dominant narratives is because an alliance of plutocrats and secretive government agencies exerts an immense amount of influence over the stories that are told by the political/media class.

    The narrative matrix of America's political/media landscape is a confusing labyrinth of smoke and funhouse mirrors distorting and manipulating the public consciousness at every turn. It's psychologically torturous, which is largely why people who are deeply immersed in politics are so on-edge all the time regardless of where they're at on the political spectrum. The only potentially good thing I can see about this forceful brutalization of the public psyche is that it might push people over the edge and shatter the illusion altogether.

    Trust in the mass media is already at an all-time low while our ability to network and share information that casts doubt on official narratives is at an all-time high, which is why the establishment propaganda machine is acting so weird as it scrambles to control the narrative, and why efforts to censor the internet are getting more and more severe. It is possible that this is what it looks like when a thinking species evolves into a sane and healthy relationship with thought. Perhaps the cracks that are appearing all over official narratives today are like the first cracks appearing in an eggshell as a bird begins to hatch into the world.

    * * *

    The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook , following my antics on Twitter , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , purchasing some of my sweet new merchandise , buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone , or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .

    [Jan 10, 2019] Stuff To Read Integrity Initiative, Skripal, Kaspersky ...

    Notable quotes:
    "... Neither Rob nor I have a sound theory of what really happened in Salisbury. There are many possible explanations, but none for which there is sufficient evidence. What we do know is that the British government lied and lies about the case from A to Z. ..."
    "... This wasn't an accident blamed on Putin but a planned semi-assassination in which at least one of the victims was unaware of the plan designed from the beginning to be used in the rolling anti-Putin regime change operation. ..."
    Jan 10, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Stuff To Read: Integrity Initiative, Skripal, Kaspersky ...

    The is no original piece ready to post today, but here are some interesting links:

    • The Russian anti-virus company Kaspersky was contacted by someone who it found to be related to the U.S. National Security Agency. Kaspersky immediately told the NSA about the contact. Following that tip the FBI arrested Harold T. Martin, a NSA contractor who had collected the NSA entire arsenal of digital weapon at is home. Despite that very helpful tip by Kaspersky the U.S. government continues to harass the company and to claim that it was working as an agent of the Russian government.
      Exclusive: How a Russian firm helped catch an alleged NSA data thief , Kim Zettler, Politico

    There are several new stories about the Integrity Initiative though still none in any mainstream media.

    Apropos Skripal

    • Over several months Rob Slane at The Blogmire did a detailed analysis of the Skripal case and the often contradictory information that officials and media have published. Rob has the advantage of living in Salisbury, where the Skripals were allegedly poisoned. Today he published the summation of his series about the case:

      Summing up the Official Claims in the Salisbury Poisonings: Weighed in the Balances and Found Wanting
      Neither Rob nor I have a sound theory of what really happened in Salisbury. There are many possible explanations, but none for which there is sufficient evidence. What we do know is that the British government lied and lies about the case from A to Z.

    • Last but not least a 20 minute video by Prolekult about the (geo-)politics of Brexit and the Skripal mess in Britain. Interestingly Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn seems to be pushing the 'blame Russia' racket just as much as the Conservatives. (Disclaimer - I do not endorse the views of the authors.): History is Marching | Part five: The Fall of the British Empire (vid)

    Use as open thread ...

    Posted by b at 12:58 PM | Comments (55)

    bevin | Jan 9, 2019 1:19:20 PM | 1

    Comments I posted this comment at Off Guardian. There are a couple of points that may be of interest:

    The essential feature of this "Integrity Initiative" is that it is purportedly a charity or an NGO. Like Atlantic Council, or Bellingcat, it is funded by government(s) but it has, as this video demonstrates, the capacity to distance itself from government, Deniability.

    Deniability is the central feature of all British regime change operations since 1945. The UK takes (took?) the UN Charter and Nuremberg seriously. Not in the sense that it follows the rules but in so far as it tries not to get caught waging aggressive wars and interfering in sovereign states by carrying out regime change operations.

    Britain has become very good not just at keeping its secret operations secret and deniable. But, through its controls over the media, stopping leaks by ensuring that whistle blowers are not heard.

    What this case indicates is that people like Donnelly, contemptible careerists playing games with humanity's very existence, have prevailed over the more cautious and sensible Civil Servants in the Foreign Office, who used to keep a lid on the irrepressible folly of psychopaths like Christopher Nigel, and have been given license not only to kill but to do so without reference to 'M' and Whitehall.

    In this case, thanks to the weakness and demoralised state of the current government what has happened is that Donnelly has improved on the rolling regime change operation against Russia, (consisting of taking advantage of opportunities to castigate the Kremlin and blaming Putin for everything that goes wrong, every Russian expatriate's death, every botched poison gas gambit by the White Helmets (another one of these NGOs run by 'retired MI types),).. improved on it to the extent that, now, rather than waiting to comment on, and build frames around such events as Litvinenko's death, they are constructing them out of whole cloth.
    The key word here is bricolage, as used by Levi Strauss to describe one of the characteristic reactions of traditional societies to the irruption of western imperialism.

    Donnelly, his acolytes and his dupes in the media are taking whatever they find lying around in the world and twisting it together to form apparent events. The White Helmets, for example, attempt a chlorine gas attack on Syrian forces. It fails but rather than deny that it ever happened British Intelligence convinces the media that, in fact the attack was not by the Jihadists but upon them. The media dutifully takes its cues, from the clusters and, almost before you know it, the US is bombing Damascus on the ground that Assad is carrying out poison gas attacks.

    The MH17 affair is another instance: an airliner gets shot down, whether deliberately or not doesn't matter, and Russia is blamed. All manner of phony 'evidence' is publicised. The real evidence such as Air Traffic Control records is suppressed. Sanctions are imposed. Russia further isolated etc. Then we had the DNC emails, again, a leak probably by a decent person disgruntled by the utter cynicism and criminality of the DNC's tactics in the primary elections. Twisted into something resembling a Russian conspiracy against Clinton. Not one that anyone with enough brain to tie his shoelaces would credit but just enough to set the media lynch mobs, led by their clusters, into operation.

    All of which leads inexorably to Salisbury and the Skripals.

    And here perhaps there is more than bricolage: rather than picking up what providence has delivered and making a passably plausible story of it, here, one suspects, the matter was put together in advance. This wasn't an accident blamed on Putin but a planned semi-assassination in which at least one of the victims was unaware of the plan designed from the beginning to be used in the rolling anti-Putin regime change operation..

    Which, and this is something that the old FO mandarins knew would happen if policy were left in the hands of Donnelly and Co, (straight out of schoolboy comics like Magnet or Hotspur), has proved to be exactly what Russia needed: a series of kicks at the Kremlin which drove it into the arms of Beijing and forced it to form an iron alliance which will lead not to regime change in Moscow but to the destruction of the Atlantic empire.

    George Lane , Jan 9, 2019 1:30:15 PM | link
    Just would like to point out a small, interesting parallel between these Integrity Initiative documents and some of the mainstream academic literature in the US about democracy, namely the use of the phrase "malign influence" to describe the influence of Russia (and China). If one reads the latest issue of the Journal of Democracy (which names the NED as a partner or some such) or the latest Freedom House report, one will find the academic version of the language used by mainstream journalism, warning of the threat that Russia and China pose to the Western liberal democratic way of life.
    Hausmeister , Jan 9, 2019 4:38:00 PM | link
    james | Jan 9, 2019 4:12:38 PM | 14

    Sorry for that.

    I would call them a country run fully by intel agencies. I made a game today. Google research results are personalized. I asked several friends to search Google for „Integrity Iniative". All the screenshots showed the same. One sputnik-Link, one to Nachdenkseiten, the rest international. Not one single main stream medium was mentioned. Since November! There has been even a debate in the British parliament. If this is no top-down organized consulting machine what is such a machine then?

    james , Jan 9, 2019 4:49:08 PM | link
    @19 russ.. thanks.. here is a link to their site.. http://www.medialens.org/

    ... ... ...

    somebody , Jan 9, 2019 5:16:32 PM | link
    The Guardian now has an obituary on the Integrity Initiative . They seem to have decided that they cannot silence the case.
    Tony_0pmoc , Jan 9, 2019 5:48:51 PM | link
    @26 Ross Stanford. I had been posting on Craig Murray's website for nearly 10 years since I read his book Murder in Samarkand, and very nearly turned up at the House of Commons as a witness - but he asked can anyone record this - which I did. I have never actually met him. bevin posted for maybe a couple of years a couple of years ago. bevin wrote about The French political situation, before it kicked off.

    He is a very clever man, and to delete someone so intelligent who was almost literally predicting what was likely to happen with yellow vests etc, seems a little bit both arrogant and immature in my my view. However all of us regardless of our political views accept the Craig Murray is a Man of Great Integrity and Courage, even though on a lot of political issues I disagree with him. Surely thats O.K. disagreeing about politics?

    "Craig Murray - Torture 1 of 7" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9spgagSHI

    Tony

    dh , Jan 9, 2019 5:59:56 PM | link
    @30 The basic line seems to be that the West is vulnerable to Russian attacks because we have a free press. So why did it take the free press such a long time to come up with a response? James Ball does admit that a secretive organization using government funding to slander Jeremy Corbyn might not have been a great idea.
    Jen , Jan 9, 2019 6:12:15 PM | link
    Posted this over at Mark Chapman's The New Kremlin Stooge blog:

    The latest news from Salisbury: first, the park bench and the dining table walked the Path of Fire, then the guinea pigs and a cat followed, a house may soon do so as well, and the latest perhaps to join the queue

    "Amesbury ambulance station may never reopen after nerve agent attack": https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/17343540.amesbury-ambulance-station-may-never-reopen-after-nerve-agent-attack/

    and then at some point in the future: "Revised plan to redevelop Salisbury's Maltings unveiled"
    https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2707454/revised-plan-to-redevelop-salisburys-maltings-unveiled/

    "Salisbury's shopping centre to be given £69million makeover and major rebrand after infamous Novichok poisonings": https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6275651/Salisburys-shopping-centre-given-69million-makeover-infamous-Novichok-poisonings.html

    Several comments attached to that post are of "wish we had Novichok in our shopping centre" or "they planned this all along" type. It seems that Salisbury shopping centre as it is has not been doing well because of high rents previously imposed by Wiltshire Council and it desperately needs a makeover. Call me cynical but maybe Wiltshire Council is using the poisoning incident to bring forward its redevelopment plans for the Salisbury shopping centre that will all but kill off local businesses.

    Blooming Barricade , Jan 9, 2019 6:17:08 PM | link
    @3
    The irony is that, with a genuinely free press, RT would cease to have any appeal. The corporate media is hopelessly biased against Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, as well as pro-war, opposed to anarchism, openly pro-capitalism, and fails to report on issues like fracking, oligarchic trade deals Palestinian struggles, police state brutality against left, and almost every other topic the public would want to know about.

    Projects like PropOrNot and the Intgerity Initiative exist solely to prevent the public from knowing about those things by locking down the information sphere against independent media (today they claimed that "neoliberalism" and "neoconservatism" aren't real concepts but Russian-invented insults against the rules-based liberal world order.

    karlof1 , Jan 9, 2019 6:35:16 PM | link
    George Galloway weighs in on the chaos engulfing the Empire in Washington, London and Paris. The Neoliberal ship is foundering while the uplifting of people-based policies of Russia and China keep them on track to reach their aims. Soon, if Trump keeps the government shutdown, those idled federal workers just might be seen in the streets. George has a penchant for connecting things, and had this to say about Macron:

    "The very conditions Macron strove so very hard to bring about in Damascus and that France DID help bring about in Kiev are now rocking the very foundations of the French Republic."

    The false flag of Austerity--Neoliberalism preying on its own as was predicted at its beginnings is what we're witnessing, while the actors that created the situation cling with bloody hands to the ship of state unwilling to surrender the wheel to those who might salvage the situation. Metaphorically, Rome burns while Nero and his Senators fiddle.

    Peter Schmidt , Jan 9, 2019 6:50:14 PM | link
    The Guardian has produced an article about Integrity Initiative. It was so poorly written that they had to close the comment section after 138 comments. People do know a lot more than the Guardian thinks.
    pretzelattack , Jan 9, 2019 6:57:42 PM | link
    the guardian never keeps comment sections open long if too many posters start disagreeing with their preferred line. their other tactic is simply never to open comments on posts where they think this is likely to happen. and of course they haven't even acknowledged the luke harding travesty, as they continue to beg for donations to support their fearless independent journalism.
    dh , Jan 9, 2019 7:15:58 PM | link
    I thought James Ball made a gallant effort to exonerate Western media considering he probably had a team of editors breathing down his neck. It's the lack of transparency that seems to upset him most. Perhaps his next article will be an in depth look at how Integrity Initiative got government funding.

    [Jan 09, 2019] Back To The USSR How To Read Western News

    Jan 09, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
    Gamma is King – watch the JPY by inezfrans - Jan 9, 2019 10:12 am (Γγ) Gamma Time Big Picture... What Has Changed in the Last Week? by Phoenix Capita - Jan 9, 2019 11:34 am This market rig is running out of steam. Back To The USSR: How To Read Western News

    by Tyler Durden Wed, 01/09/2019 - 22:35 2 SHARES Authored by Patrick Armstrong via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The heroes of Dickens' Pickwick Papers visit the fictional borough of Eatanswill to observe an election between the candidates of the Blue Party and the Buff Party. The town is passionately divided, on all possible issues, between the two parties. Each party has its own newspaper : the Eatanswill Gazette is Blue and entirely devoted to praising the noble Blues and excoriating the perfidious and wicked Buffs; the Eatanswill Independent is equally passionate on the opposite side of every question. No Buff would dream of reading the "that vile and slanderous calumniator, the Gazette", nor Blue the ''that false and scurrilous print, the Independent".

    As usual with Dickens it is both exaggerated and accurate. Newspapers used to be screamingly partisan before "journalism" was invented. Soon followed journalism schools, journalism ethics and journalism objectivity: "real journalism" as they like to call it ( RT isn't of course ). "Journalism" became a profession gilded with academical folderol; no longer the refuge of dropouts, boozers, failures, budding novelists and magnates like Lord Copper who know what they want and pay for it. But, despite the pretence of objectivity and standards, there were still Lord Coppers and a lot of Eatanswill. Nonetheless, there were more or less serious efforts to get the facts and balance the story. And Lord Coppers came and went: great newspaper empires rose and fell and there was actually quite a variety of ownership and news outlets. There was sufficient variance that a reader, who was neither Blue nor Buff, could triangulate and form a sense of what was going on.

    In the Soviet Union news was controlled; there was no "free press"; there was one owner and the flavours were only slightly varied: the army paper, the party paper, the government paper, papers for people interested in literature or sports. But they all said the same thing about the big subjects. The two principal newspapers were Pravda ("truth") and Izvestiya ("news"). This swiftly led to the joke that there was no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestiya. It was all pretty heavy handed stuff: lots of fat capitalists in top hats and money bags; Uncle Sam's clothing dripping with bombs; no problems over here, nothing but problems over there. And it wasn't very successful propaganda: most of their audience came to believe that the Soviet media was lying both about the USSR and about the West.

    But time moves on and while thirty years ago 50 corporations controlled 90% of the US news media, today it's a not very diverse six . As a result, on many subjects there is a monoview: has any Western news outlet reported, say, these ten true statements?

    1. People in Crimea are pretty happy to be in Russia.
    2. The US and its minions have given an enormous amount of weapons to jihadists.
    3. Elections in Russia reflect popular opinion polling.
    4. There really are a frightening number of well-armed nazis in Ukraine.
    5. Assad is pretty popular in Syria.
    6. The US and its minions smashed Raqqa to bits.
    7. The official Skripal story makes very little sense.
    8. Ukraine is much worse off, by any measurement, now than before Maidan.
    9. Russia actually had several thousand troops in Crimea before Maidan.
    10. There's a documentary that exposes Browder that he keeps people from seeing.

    I typed these out as they occurred to me. I could come up with another ten pretty easily. There's some tiny coverage, far in the back pages, so that objectivity can be pretended, but most Western media consumers would answer they aren't; didn't; don't; aren't; isn't; where?; does; not; what?; never heard of it.

    Many subjects are covered in Western media outlets with a single voice. Every now and again there's a scandal that reveals that "journalists" are richly rewarded for writing stories that fit . But after revelations , admissions of bias , pretending it never happened , the media ship calmly sails on ( shedding passengers as it goes, though ). Coverage of certain subjects are almost 100% false: Putin, Russia, Syria and Ukraine stand out. But much of the coverage of China and Iran also. Many things about Israel are not permitted. The Russia collusion story is (privately) admitted to be fake by an outlet that covers it non stop. Anything Trump is so heavily flavoured that it's inedible . And it's not getting any better: PC is shutting doors everywhere and the Russian-centred "fake news" meme is shutting more. Science is settled but genders are not and we must be vigilant against the " Russian disinformation war ". Every day brings us a step closer to a mono media of the One Correct Opinion. All for the Best Possible Motives, of course.

    It's all rather Soviet in fact.

    So, in a world where the Integrity Initiative is spending our tax dollars (pounds actually) to make sure that we never have a doubleplusungood thought or are tempted into crimethink, ( and maybe they created the entire Skripal story – more revelations by the minute), what are we to make of our Free Media™? Well, that all depends on what you're interested in. If it's sports (not Russian athletes – druggies every one unlike brave Western asthmatics ) or "beach-ready bodies" (not Russian drug takers of course, only wholesome Americans ) – the reporting is pretty reasonable. Weather reports, for example ( Siberian blasts excepted) or movie reviews (but all those Russian villains ). But the rest is some weird merger of the Eatonswill Gazette and Independent: Blues/Buffs good! others, especially Russians, bad!

    So, as they say in Russia, что делать? What to do? Well, I suggest we learn from the Soviet experience. After all, most Soviet citizens were much more sceptical about their home media outlets than any of my neighbours, friends or relatives are about theirs.

    My suggestions are three:

    1. Read between the lines. A difficult art this and it needs to be learned and practised. Dissidents may be sending us hints from the bowels of Minitrue . For example, it's impossible to imagine anyone seriously saying " How Putin's Russia turned humour into a weapon "; it must have been written to subversively mock the official Russia panic. I have speculated elsewhere that the writers may have inserted clues that the "intelligence reports" on Russian interference were nonsense .
    2. Notice what they're not telling you. For example: remember when Aleppo was a huge story two years ago? But there's nothing about it now. One should wonder why there isn't; a quick search will find videos like this (oops! Russian! not real journalism!) here's one from Euronews . Clearly none of this fits the " last hospitals destroyed " and brutal Assad memes of two years ago; that's why the subject has disappeared from Western media outlets. It is always a good rule to wonder why the Biggest Story Ever suddenly disappears: that's a strong clue it was a lie or nonsense.
    3. Most of the time, you'd be correct to believe the opposite . Especially, when all the outlets are telling you the same thing. It's always good to ask yourself cui bono: who's getting what benefit out of making you believe something? It's quite depressing how successful the big uniform lie is: even though the much-demonised Milosevic was eventually found innocent, even though Qaddafi was not "bombing his own people", similar lies are believed about Assad and other Western enemies-of-the-moment. Believe the opposite unless there's very good reason not to.

    In the Cold War there was a notion going around that the Soviet and Western systems were converging and that they would meet in the middle, so to speak. Well, perhaps they did meet but kept on moving past each other. And so, the once reasonably free and varied Western media comes to resemble the controlled and uniform Soviet media and we in the West must start using Soviet methods to understand.

    Always remember that the Soviet rulers claimed their media was free too; free from "fake news" that is.

    [Jan 08, 2019] Shock Files- What Role Did Integrity Initiative Play in Sergei Skripal Affair- - Sputnik International

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... How could Novichok have poisoned people four months after the Skripal attack? -- ..."
    "... The Skripal Files ..."
    Jan 08, 2019 | sputniknews.com

    Hacking syndicate Anonymous has just released its fourth tranche of documents hacked from the internal servers of the Institute for Statecraft and its subsidiary, the Integrity Initiative. Several explosive files raise serious questions about the shadowy British state and NATO-funded 'think tank' and its connections with the Skripal affair.

    The files were released just after 2:30pm GMT on January 4 -- I've barely scratched the surface of the content, but what I've seen so far contains a panoply of bombshell revelations -- to say the least, the organization(s) now have serious questions to answer about what role they played in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in March, and its aftermath both nationally and internationally.

    Sinister Timeline

    One file apparently dating to "early 2015" -- "Russian Federation Sanctions" -- written by the Institute's Victor Madeira outlines "potential levers" to achieve Russian "behaviour change", "peace with Ukraine", "return [of] Crimea", "regime change" or "other?". The suggested "levers" span almost every conceivable area, including "civil society", "sports", "finance" and "technology".

    In the section marked "intelligence", Madeira suggests simultaneously expelling "every RF [Russian Federation] intelligence officer and air/defense/naval attache from as many countries as possible". In parentheses, it references 'Operation Foot' , the expulsion of over 1000 Soviet officials from the UK in September 1971, the largest expulsion of intelligence officials by any government in history.

    The section on sports also suggests "advocating the view [Russia] is unworthy of hosting [sporting] events" -- and the section marked "information" recommends the sanctioning of 'Russian' media "in West for not complying with regulators' standards".

    2015 File Written By Victor Madeira on Possible Anti-Russian Actions 2015 File Written By Victor Madeira on Possible Anti-Russian Actions

    In April that year, Institute for Statecraft chief Chris Donnelly was promoted to Honorary Colonel of SGMI (Specialist Group Military Intelligence), and in October he met with General Sir Richard Barrons. Notes from the meeting don't make clear who said what, but one despaired that "if no catastrophe happens to wake people up and demand a response, then we need to find a way to get the core of government to realise the problem and take it out of the political space."

    "We will need to impose changes over the heads of vested interests. We did this in the 1930s. My conclusion is it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. We must generate an independent debate outside government. We need to ask when and how do we start to put all this right? Do we have the national capabilities [and/or] capacities to fix it? If so, how do we improve our harnessing of resources to do it? We need this debate now. There is not a moment to be lost," they said.

    Operation IRIS Begins

    On 4 March 2018, former Russian military officer and double agent for MI6 Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury, England.

    Within days, the Institute had submitted a proposal to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, "to study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread and evaluate how the incident is being perceived" in a number of countries.

    The bid was accepted, and the Initiative's 'Operation Iris' was launched. Under its auspices, the Institute employed 'global investigative solutions' firm Harod Associates to analyze social media activity related to Skripal the world over.

    It also conducted media monitoring of its own, with Institute 'research fellow' Simon Bracey-Lane producing regular 'roundups' of media coverage overseas, based on insights submitted by individuals connected to the Initiative living in several countries. One submission, from an unnamed source in Moldova, says they "cannot firmly say" whether the country's media had its "own point of view" on the issue, or whether news organizations had taken "an obvious pro-Russian or pro-Western position", strongly suggesting these were key questions for the Initiative.

    Integrity Initiative Seeks Intelligence On How Overseas Media Reported Skripal Incident Integrity Initiative Seeks Intelligence On How Overseas Media Reported Skripal Incident

    Moreover though, there are clear indications the Institute sought to shape the news narrative on the attack -- and indeed the UK government's response. One file dated March 11 appears to be a briefing document on the affair to date, with key messages bolded throughout.

    It opens by setting out "The Narrative" of the incident -- namely "Russia has carried out yet another brutal attack, this time with a deadly nerve agent, on someone living in Britain".

    "Use of the nerve agent posed a threat to innocent British subjects, affecting 21 people and seriously affecting a police officer. This is not the first time such an attack has been carried out in the UK 14 deaths are believed to be attributable to the Kremlin Russia has poisoned its enemies abroad on other occasions, most notably then-candidate for the Presidency of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, in 2004. Russian political activist Vladimir Kara-Murza has been poisoned twice; and the journalist Anna Politkovskaya was also poisoned and later shot dead. Since Putin has been running Russia, the Kremlin has a history of poisoning its opponents in a gruesome way," the "narrative" reads.

    The file goes on to declare the British response has been "far too weak it's essential the government makes a much stronger response this time" -- and then lists "possible, realistic, first actions", including banning RT and Sputnik from operating in the UK, boycotting the 2018 World Cup, withdrawing the UK ambassador from Moscow and expelling the Russian ambassador to the UK, and refusing/revoking visas to leading Russians within Vladimir Putin's "circle", and their families.

    Post-Skripal Incident Anti-Russian Actions Recommended by Integrity Initiative Post-Skripal Incident Anti-Russian Actions Recommended by Integrity Initiative

    It's not clear who the document was distributed to -- but it may have been given to journalists within the Initiative's UK 'cluster', if not others. This may explain why the Institute's "narrative", and its various recommended "responses" utterly dominated mainstream media reporting of the affair for months afterwards, despite the glaring lack of evidence of Russian state involvement in the attack.

    It's extremely curious so many of the briefing document's recommendations almost exactly -- if not exactly -- echo several of the suggested "levers" outlined in the 2015 document. It's also somewhat troubling the "Global Operation Foot" spoken of in that file duly came to pass on March 28 2018, with over 20 countries expelling over 100 Russian diplomats.

    Likewise, it's striking Victor Madeira, the Institute staffer who made the recommendations in 2015, made many media appearances discussing the poisoning following the incident routinely documented by the Institute. Security consultant Dan Kaszeta also wrote a number of articles for the Integrity Initiative website about chemical weapons following the attack -- including a July 14 article, How could Novichok have poisoned people four months after the Skripal attack? -- receiving 40 pence per word .

    Invoice submitted to Integrity Initiative by Dan Kaszeta Invoice submitted to Integrity Initiative by Dan Kaszeta Strange Connections

    The Institute's bizarrely intimate connections with the incident don't end there. Another document apparently dating to July 2018 contains the contact details of Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6 recruiter, handler and -- unbelievably -- neighbor in Salisbury. Anonymous claims the document is an invitee list for a meeting the Institute convened between a number of individuals and Syria's highly controversial White Helmets group, but this is yet to be verified.

    Whatever the truth of the matter, the latest document dump raises yet further questions about how and why it was BBC Diplomatic and Defense Editor Mark Urban -- who was in the same tank regiment as Miller after leaving University -- came to meet with Skripal in the year before his poisoning. When I attended the launch of his book on the affair in October -- The Skripal Files -- he was evasive on whether he played a role in connecting him with Skripal, and denied Miller was Skripal's recruiter.

    The latest trove also raises yet further questions about the activities of the Institute for Statecraft and Integrity Initiative. In light of these revelations, reading the record of Donnelly's meeting with General Barrons takes on an acutely chilling quality. It may be that purely serendipitously the pair got their "catastrophe", their "something dreadful", which "[woke] people up" and made the government "realise the problem" posed by Russia -- or it could be they one way or another played a facilitative role of some kind.

    After months of refusing to answer the vast number of questions I and thousands of others have submitted to the paired organizations, it's high time for them to break cover, and be honest with the public.

    [Jan 08, 2019] Skripal spin doctors- Documents link UK govt-funded Integrity Initiative to anti-Russia narrative

    Highly recommended!
    Images removed. Please brose the original to view them.
    Notable quotes:
    "... "Russian disinformation." ..."
    "... "network of networks" ..."
    "... It's notable that many of the draconian anti-Russia measures that the group advocated as far back as 2015 were swiftly implemented following the Skripal affair – even as London refused to back up its finger-pointing with evidence. ..."
    "... "study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread, and evaluate how the incident is being perceived" ..."
    "... "global investigative solutions" ..."
    "... What role did # IntegrityInitiative play in the # Skripal affair? I looked for answers from a brief look at the newly released files. More very much to follow.... ..."
    "... "pro-Russia troll accounts" ..."
    "... "bombarding the audience with pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation relevant to the Skripal case." ..."
    "... Another document , dated March 11, 2018 – and titled "Sergei Skripal Affair: What if Russia is Responsible?" – contains a "narrative" ..."
    "... These included boycotting the 2018 World Cup, starting campaigns to boycott the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, blocking Russian access to the SWIFT international banking system, and banning "RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK." ..."
    "... "to publicize what has been happening with their Muslim brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion [sic]" ..."
    "... "threat Russia poses." ..."
    "... This would certainly explain the evidence-deficient echo chamber that emerged in the aftermath of Skripal's poisoning ..."
    "... One of the more intriguing revelations from the fresh leaks is a document from 2015, in which Victor Madeira of the Institute for Statecraft proposes a series of measures targeting Russia, including mass expulsion of diplomats along the lines of 1971's Operation Foot. ..."
    "... "the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history." ..."
    "... "Makes you think " ..."
    "... The new trove of hacked documents also revealed an unexplained link between the II and Skripal himself – a connection made all the more noteworthy by the group's central role in coordinating an evidence-free campaign to blame and punish Moscow for the alleged nerve-agent attack. A document from July 2018 contains contact details for Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6 recruiter, handler and (conveniently) neighbor in Salisbury. Miller, it seems, had been invited to a function hosted by the Institute. ..."
    "... It was already known that Pablo Miller, the MI6 handler of Sergej Skripal, attended # IntegrityInitiative meetings. There is now more material to draw a connection. It is indeed possible that IfS/II initiated the affair. ..."
    "... £2,276.80 in July 2018 during the # Skripal # Novichok affair for writing articles on the subjects of poison gas; nerve agents; treatment; nerve agent persistency & # PortonDown @ RTUKproducer 160 1:24 PM - Jan 4, 2019 ..."
    "... It's not clear to what degree Miller is or was involved with the group, but his appearance on an Integrity Initiative guest list adds another layer of mystery to a coordinated campaign which sought to impose punishments on Moscow that were drawn up years in advance. ..."
    Jan 05, 2019 | www.defenddemocracy.press

    The Integrity Initiative, a UK-funded group exposed in leaked files as psyop network, played a key role in monitoring and molding media narratives after the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal, newly-dumped documents reveal. Created by the NATO-affiliated, UK-funded Institute for Statecraft in 2015, the Integrity Initiative was unmasked in November after hackers released documents detailing a web of politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics involved in purportedly fighting "Russian disinformation."

    The secretive, government-bankrolled "network of networks" has found itself under scrutiny for smearing UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a Kremlin stooge – ostensibly as part of its noble crusade against anti-Russian disinformation. Now, new leaks show that the organization played a central role in shaping media narratives after Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were mysteriously poisoned in Salisbury last March.

    It's notable that many of the draconian anti-Russia measures that the group advocated as far back as 2015 were swiftly implemented following the Skripal affair – even as London refused to back up its finger-pointing with evidence.

    Operation Iris

    Days after the Skripals were poisoned, the Institute solicited its services to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, offering to "study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread, and evaluate how the incident is being perceived" in a number of countries.

    After receiving the government's blessing, the Integrity Initiative (II) launched 'Operation Iris,' enlisting "global investigative solutions" firm Harod Associates to analyze social media activity related to Skripal.

    Kit Klarenberg @KitKlarenberg

    What role did # IntegrityInitiative play in the # Skripal affair? I looked for answers from a brief look at the newly released files. More very much to follow....

    264 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

    However, Harod's confidential report did more than just parse social media reactions to the Skripal affair: It compiled a list of alleged "pro-Russia troll accounts" accused of "bombarding the audience with pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation relevant to the Skripal case."

    Among those who found themselves listed as nefarious thought-criminals were Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa, and a gentleman from Kent who goes by Ian56 on Twitter.

    Ian56 @Ian56789 · Jan 4, 2019 # IntegrityInitiative "

    Top Kremlin Trolls" aka Truth Tellers. Congratulations if you made the list.

    https://www. pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/app endix-o---russian-propaganda-troll-sites-for-monitoring/appendix-o---russian-propaganda-troll-sites-for-monitoring.pdf

    Neocon Fascist, al-Qaeda Supporting Treasonous Scumbag @ Benimmo is having a laugh with £2m of Taxpayers money. Nimmo should be IN JAIL for Fraud & Treason

    Ian56 @Ian56789 # IntegrityInitiative

    examples of Logical, Critical Thinking & Objective Analysis by yours truly Ian56.

    https://www. pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/app endix-r---ian56789-example-tweets/appendix-r---ian56789-example-tweets.pdf

    They didn't even include my best ones and they didn't show the pic that went with each tweet. I wonder why?

    # Skripal # Novichok # FalseFlag pic.twitter.com/Zq8W9iJshk 41 1:39 PM - Jan 4, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy

    34 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy
    Moon of Alabama @MoonofA · Jan 4, 2019 @ Ian56789 @ MarkSleboda1 @ Malinka1102 @ ValLisitsa @ NinaByzantina

    Folks, you are all noted as "trolls" in some of the files of the new # IntegrityInitiative release

    https://www. cyberguerrilla.org/blog/operation -integrity-initiative-british-informational-war-against-all-part-4/ https://www. pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/app endix-o---russian-propaganda-troll-sites-for-monitoring/appendix-o---russian-propaganda-troll-sites-for-monitoring.pdf https://www. pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/app endix-p---troll-accounts-mutual-connections-graph/appendix-p---troll-accounts-mutual-connections-graph.pdf https://www. pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/app endix-q---troll-geolocation-graph/appendix-q---troll-geolocation-graph.pdf

    Operation 'Integrity Initiative': British informational war against all. Part 4

    Greetings! We are Anonymous.We have warned the UK government that it must conduct an honest and transparent investigation into the activity of the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statec cyberguerrilla.org

    Ruslana Boshirova @ValLisitsa

    Wanna see something funny?

    "The Insider" - the same "Insider", that was credited by Bellingcat with "outing Boshirov and Petrovas GRU agents" - has investigated and found me guilty of passing Putin orders to French yellow jackets. I kid you not.

    https:// twitter.com/Antifake_Russi a/status/1073112488072437760?s=19 Antifake @Antifake_Russia СМИ выдали за манифест "желтых жилетов" твиты украинской пианистки с ником "Руслана Боширова" https:// theins.ru/antifake/131804 116 3:21 PM - Jan 4, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy

    94 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

    Pushing a narrative

    Another document , dated March 11, 2018 – and titled "Sergei Skripal Affair: What if Russia is Responsible?" – contains a "narrative" of the Skripal incident, which blames Russia and President Vladimir Putin personally, as well as containing a number of recommended actions.

    These included boycotting the 2018 World Cup, starting campaigns to boycott the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, blocking Russian access to the SWIFT international banking system, and banning "RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK."

    Other suggestions included propaganda directed at British Muslims "to publicize what has been happening with their Muslim brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion [sic]" and getting members of parliament to publicize the "threat Russia poses." It's not clear who the document was drawn up for, but it may have been provided to II-affiliated journalists in the UK and other countries.

    This would certainly explain the evidence-deficient echo chamber that emerged in the aftermath of Skripal's poisoning – which the UK and its allies unanimously blamed on Moscow.

    Ahead of its time?

    One of the more intriguing revelations from the fresh leaks is a document from 2015, in which Victor Madeira of the Institute for Statecraft proposes a series of measures targeting Russia, including mass expulsion of diplomats along the lines of 1971's Operation Foot.

    Coincidentally, more than 100 Russian diplomats were expelled from 20 Western countries in an apparently show of solidarity with the UK following the Skripal attack. At the time, UK Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed what she said was "the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history."

    Former MP George Galloway noted that the documents, written long before the Salisbury events, also call for the arrest of RT and Sputnik contributors (such as himself), adding: "Makes you think "

    George Galloway ✔ @georgegalloway

    So: # IntegrityInitiative funded by the British Govt called for the arrest of people like me like @ afshinrattansi @ JohnWight1 @ NeilClark66 et al in the event of an "incident" like the # Skripal affair.

    Written incidentally before the # Salisbury events. Makes you think...

    @ RT_com 688 12:53 PM - Jan 4, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy

    606 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

    A curious connection

    The new trove of hacked documents also revealed an unexplained link between the II and Skripal himself – a connection made all the more noteworthy by the group's central role in coordinating an evidence-free campaign to blame and punish Moscow for the alleged nerve-agent attack. A document from July 2018 contains contact details for Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6 recruiter, handler and (conveniently) neighbor in Salisbury. Miller, it seems, had been invited to a function hosted by the Institute.

    Moon of Alabama @MoonofA

    It was already known that Pablo Miller, the MI6 handler of Sergej Skripal, attended # IntegrityInitiative meetings. There is now more material to draw a connection. It is indeed possible that IfS/II initiated the affair.

    # SergeiSkripal # Disinformation # Propaganda # InformationWar 283 2:38 PM - Jan 4, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy

    241 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy
    Fvnk @WhatTheFvnk

    EXPLOSIVE: @ DanKaszeta of @ Strongpoint_UK invoiced @ InitIntegrity # IntegrityInitiative

    £2,276.80 in July 2018 during the # Skripal # Novichok affair for writing articles on the subjects of poison gas; nerve agents; treatment; nerve agent persistency & # PortonDown @ RTUKproducer 160 1:24 PM - Jan 4, 2019

    188 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

    It's not clear to what degree Miller is or was involved with the group, but his appearance on an Integrity Initiative guest list adds another layer of mystery to a coordinated campaign which sought to impose punishments on Moscow that were drawn up years in advance.

    Read also:

    [Jan 06, 2019] British elite fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies.

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... If I had the talent and energy, I might write a sequel to the 'Quiet American', to be entitled 'The Noisy Englishmen.' It would feature a series of inept conspiracies, involving ludicrous means used in support of preposterous ends, necessitating one ham-fisted cover-up after another. ..."
    "... The central characters might be loosely based on Christopher Steele, Matt Tait, Eliot Higgins, and our former UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, author of the July 2002 Downing Street memorandum, in which Sir Richard Dearlove was quoted explaining how, in Washington, 'the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.' ..."
    "... There is a 1990's British historian (whose name I've been trying to rediscover without success) who wrote a sunny book saying Britain should return to its imperialist ways to bring light to the dark and repressive world we live in. It was a great hit with Blair and his henchmen. Blair used its arguments in his notorious 1999 Chicago neo-conservative/liberal interventionist speech. ..."
    "... I'd draw attention to "The Brideshead Revisited" generation especially at Oxford in the early 80's. Unashamedly celebrating their wealth and upper middle class privately-educated backgrounds, they viewed themselves as a gilded, golden generation, preened in narcissism, adept at networking and self-promotion. They are the generation now in power - politically, financially, in the deep state. Their fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies. ..."
    "... Our economic power - the base of any imperial power - is shrinking daily. All the Oxfordites (chief amongst them Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove) are still playing Oxford Union/PPE games and stabbing each other joyously in the back as though there's no tomorrow. It most ressembles the halluciogenic decadence of the court of late Imperial Rome. ..."
    Jan 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    Pat Lang Mod -> David Habakkuk , 2 months ago

    After contemplating the likely intelligence and propaganda efforts of HMG over the last 15 years or so I am puzzled as to motivation. Why? Why? The UK is now a regional power for which events in places like Syria would seem to have little to do with the welfare of Britain. Why? I suppose that the same question can be asked for the US and I have.

    In re "Our man in Havana" I think there are many issues raised in the work that apply directly to the trade of espionage.

    David Habakkuk -> Pat Lang , 2 months ago
    Colonel Lang,

    The question why? is a very interesting but also very dispiriting one, but also one which it is quite hard to get one's head round. I hope to have something more coherent to say about it.

    Among many reasons, however, there has been a kind of intellectual disintegration.

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

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

    Subsequently, of course, he set about colluding in the process. And, sixteen years later, Dearlove is still at it, with 'Russiagate' -- and the product being actually accepted much more uncritically by the MSM than it was then.

    And that is one of the problems -- nobody any longer pays any penalty for failure, or indeed feels any sense of shame about it..

    johnf -> David Habakkuk , 2 months ago
    DH

    I agree with this.

    There is a 1990's British historian (whose name I've been trying to rediscover without success) who wrote a sunny book saying Britain should return to its imperialist ways to bring light to the dark and repressive world we live in. It was a great hit with Blair and his henchmen. Blair used its arguments in his notorious 1999 Chicago neo-conservative/liberal interventionist speech.

    As the Colonel eloquently asks:

    "I am puzzled as to motivation. Why? Why? The UK is now a regional power for which events in places like Syria would seem to have little todo with the welfare of Britain. Why?"

    I'd draw attention to "The Brideshead Revisited" generation especially at Oxford in the early 80's. Unashamedly celebrating their wealth and upper middle class privately-educated backgrounds, they viewed themselves as a gilded, golden generation, preened in narcissism, adept at networking and self-promotion. They are the generation now in power - politically, financially, in the deep state. Their fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies.

    Our economic power - the base of any imperial power - is shrinking daily. All the Oxfordites (chief amongst them Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove) are still playing Oxford Union/PPE games and stabbing each other joyously in the back as though there's no tomorrow. It most ressembles the halluciogenic decadence of the court of late Imperial Rome.

    (I don't include the Maurice Cowling-ites in this fandango because they strike me as more Little Englanders. Though Peterhouse is of course, shamefully, the HQ of the Henry Jackson Society).

    [Jan 06, 2019] Integrity Initiative - New Documents From Shady NGO Released

    Notable quotes:
    "... The British Private Eye finds a relation between the Integrity Initiative and the Rendon Group which drove the propaganda for the Iraq invasion. ..."
    Jan 04, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Forgot to link this: The Briefing note on the Integrity Initiative by Paul McKeigue, David Miller, Jake Mason and Piers Robinson is the most complete analysis of the Integrity Initiative papers.

    The British Private Eye finds a relation between the Integrity Initiative and the Rendon Group which drove the propaganda for the Iraq invasion.

    I'll have to say more on the issue. For some fun, check the attachment to this tweet. (Klarenberg writes for Sputnik.)

    Kit Klarenberg @KitKlarenberg - 19:51 utc - 5 Jan 2019

    Head of @InitIntegrity's German cluster says he's going to bring criminal charges against me for accessing II internal files.

    In the process helpfully confirming many of the people I contacted in the cluster for comment ARE collaborating with the organization!!

    Cheers pal!

    [Jan 06, 2019] Intelligence stooges dominate Western MSM or How Putin s Russia Weaponizes Everything

    "Jornos for hire" are now mainstream. Much like escort services.
    Again, it's pure projection. These vermin are literally incapable of looking at anything except in terms of how it can be used as a weapon (or how it can be destroyed), so they automatically attribute that fundamentalist way of looking at things to everyone else, and especially to the "enemy". So by definition anything Putin and the Russians do is some kind of "weaponization".
    Notable quotes:
    "... Yes! All true! But I weaponised Vladimir Putin to make media profits, newspapers (Guardian!), radio (BBC), internet (Bellingcat). Evidently only the Brits understand me. The US does the same in a different style. ..."
    "... Here is what Americans really think about the anti-Russia hysteria coming from Washington: https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/08/americans-on-russia-will-of-people.html Washington has completely lost touch with what Main Street America really believes. ..."
    "... And besides humor I am sure Putin is also weaponizing calendars, at least in Japan. Maybe in exchange for keeping the Kuril islands: Putin calendar sales surpassing those of Japanese stars in Japan What I am wondering is, if the socalled "Western Elite" maybe actually believe what they are saying and are not aware that it is a self-created illusion they are chaught in. Otherwise I can not understand why they are again and again surprised if Russia is not behaving they way they expected. ..."
    "... Yes, these are projections, and they tell us the final world war, a war of aggression by the US against China and Russia, will be a total war beyond our imaginations. (Unless real leftists and real lovers of peace can stop it.) ..."
    "... I think this insane epidemic illustrates the degree to which the Western propaganda system has completely decoupled the population from reality. ..."
    "... The underlying problem: Russia has weaponized telling the truth. ..."
    "... Yes, I'd agree that's part of its purpose -- to prevent the unification of Eurasia, which as I wrote last week's proceeding apace. They're trying to wall off Japan too, so I wonder if Japanese media's as flush with the same garbage as BigLie Media. ..."
    "... Although likely covered by weaponizing incompetence and stupidity, Putin has certainly weaponized the Outlaw US Empire's appalling lack of a professional diplomatic corp--just look at who he gets Trump to nominate to key diplomatic positions. ..."
    "... Hey guys, guys, you are not getting the point man. There is something really creepy about this Russia place, like Midas. Everything they touch turns to weapons. ..."
    "... But since the fall of Communism in Russia, I have lost all belief in anything like a new Cold War. After all, when I was in parochial school, we prayed for the conversion of Russia. Now, that has been accomplished. Russia's government is more Christian than Western governments ..."
    "... Truth weaponized. Five eyes pulling out all stops in its propaganda campaign to defeat it. ..."
    Dec 17, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
    Russ , Dec 17, 2018 9:26:23 AM | link

    Q: What do humor, health information, giant squids, robotic cockroaches, tedium and postmodernism have in common?

    A: Russia weaponized them.

    Back in March 2016 we created a list of news items that accused Russia and its bear riding president Vladimir Putin of weaponizing things.

    Others have since copied the idea .

    Several of the pieces listed in it are products of the recently uncovered British government financed disinformation campaign , or of similar efforts by other governments. But these are only a part of the general anti-Russian reflex that is ingrained in our 'western' culture. Nothing else can explain the craziness of these 'weaponizing' claims.

    The updated list with some 65 issues, ideas and things that Russia allegedly 'weaponizes' will hopefully help to convince people that most of what is said or written about Russia is likewise blatant nonsense.

    Posted by b on December 17, 2018 at 09:20 AM | Permalink

    Comments next page "

    Quentin , Dec 17, 2018 9:40:02 AM | link

    Yes! All true! But I weaponised Vladimir Putin to make media profits, newspapers (Guardian!), radio (BBC), internet (Bellingcat). Evidently only the Brits understand me. The US does the same in a different style.
    Sally Snyder , Dec 17, 2018 9:44:29 AM | link
    Here is what Americans really think about the anti-Russia hysteria coming from Washington: https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/08/americans-on-russia-will-of-people.html Washington has completely lost touch with what Main Street America really believes.
    old Bill , Dec 17, 2018 9:47:49 AM | link
    until the US actually incorporates term limits the same corruption will continue unabated
    TJ , Dec 17, 2018 10:01:04 AM | link
    The BBC has become Monty Python I await the BBC report on Putins weaponizzation of silly walks.
    Fran , Dec 17, 2018 10:20:44 AM | link

    And besides humor I am sure Putin is also weaponizing calendars, at least in Japan. Maybe in exchange for keeping the Kuril islands: Putin calendar sales surpassing those of Japanese stars in Japan What I am wondering is, if the socalled "Western Elite" maybe actually believe what they are saying and are not aware that it is a self-created illusion they are chaught in. Otherwise I can not understand why they are again and again surprised if Russia is not behaving they way they expected.

    fairleft , Dec 17, 2018 10:28:53 AM | link

    Yes, these are projections, and they tell us the final world war, a war of aggression by the US against China and Russia, will be a total war beyond our imaginations. (Unless real leftists and real lovers of peace can stop it.)

    William Bowles , Dec 17, 2018 10:48:39 AM | link

    I think this insane epidemic illustrates the degree to which the Western propaganda system has completely decoupled the population from reality. Now whether it's believed or not is neither here nor there as it's built upon decades of anti-communism and the inherent racism of the Anglo-Saxon Empire that has demonized the Russians as essentially backward peasants who cannot be trusted. Worse still, the Russkies have ginormous weapons!

    It would be ludicrous if it wasn't so dangerous.

    Peter VE , Dec 17, 2018 10:59:02 AM | link
    The underlying problem: Russia has weaponized telling the truth.
    BRF , Dec 17, 2018 11:04:59 AM | link
    I agree that both 'sides' in a phony cold war 2.0 weaponize just about anything of a controversial nature or event in civilization. Both sides are advancing agenda that are leading humanity in the same direction even as they create a false adversarial paradigm.

    This has been termed non linear psychological warfare under which such a confusing array of created realities leaves the greater public unable to define what is real or a fabrication. It takes at least two or more to create the illusions and the 'other' can simply be created/funded as controlled opposition and then even this can be published to further create more confusion within the confusion. Carl Rove told us this. He just didn't tell us that the 'Empire' also includes Russia, China and any number of other corporate national jurisdictions.

    vk , Dec 17, 2018 11:19:06 AM | link
    It seems Russia has weaponized the African-Americans too: Russian Effort to Influence 2016 Election Targeted African-Americans
    Putin , Dec 17, 2018 11:23:05 AM | link
    More seriously, this is not "stupidity" of the political class, as some pundits would have you believe. It is a well thought-out retrenchment plan of attempting to institute a new "iron curtain" to separate Europe from Asia after the demise of unipolarity.
    Jackrabbit , Dec 17, 2018 11:58:37 AM | link
    Putin | Dec 17, 2018 11:23:05 AM | 23: new "iron curtain"
    • Iron Curtain ==> Psyop Cage
    • Secret police and snitches ==> Channel thought via media echo-chamber
    • McCarthyist smear: "Russian agent" ==> McCarthyist smear: "Putinbot" / "useful idiot"
    • Capitalism vs Communism ==> Unipolar (NWO) vs Multi-polar (United Nations)
    • Containment ==> Attack via Color revolution / Proxy Armies / Propaganda / Sanctions
    karlof1 , Dec 17, 2018 12:16:12 PM | link
    Putin @23--

    Yes, I'd agree that's part of its purpose -- to prevent the unification of Eurasia, which as I wrote last week's proceeding apace. They're trying to wall off Japan too, so I wonder if Japanese media's as flush with the same garbage as BigLie Media.

    Russia's weaponized Arctic Ocean or perhaps Russia's weaponized the lack of proper marine maintenance. Russia's also weaponized the Outlaw US Empire's lack of naval or other Arctic Ocean land-based infrastructure -- there's zip to support any off-shore drilling from Alaska's coastline. IOW, Russia's weaponizing a plethora of Outlaw US Empire weaknesses.

    jrkrideau , Dec 17, 2018 12:56:26 PM | link
    @ 27 karlof1

    And what the Sputnik article refers to as the heavy US icebreaker Polar Star is more roughly one half the size of the nuclear powered Russian icebreaker 50 Years of Victory, 50 лет Победы . I suspect the Russians would call the Polar Star a light icebreaker. Sputnik probably probably being polite.

    GeorgeV , Dec 17, 2018 1:00:57 PM | link
    Way back in the 1950s the Pentagon (specifically the Air Force) was all atwitter over unsubstantiated reports (again leaked by the Air Force) that the Soviets (read: the Russians) were building a nuclear powered strategic bomber that would have unlimited range and flight time. Well now. You know what that means? We gotta have one too! So guess what. The Air Force dutifully volunteered to save the US and Western civilization from being bombed back to the stone age and godless communism all at the same time by building a nuclear powered bomber of our own. To make a long story short the effort failed miserably. The project managed to last into the Kennedy administration but was cancelled in favor of developing submarine launched ICBMs. While the nuclear bomber program died it's spirit lived on. During the Carter administration the then chief of Air Force intelligence (yes I know there's no such thing) became convinced that the russkies were building ground-based and orbiting death ray machines to use against US satellites and ICBMs. Thus was born "Star Wars." Of course this fit in perfectly with the Reagan administration's defense views even though the engineering and science simply didn't exist then of now. Well as the french say the "more things change the more they remain the same"
    snake , Dec 17, 2018 1:15:43 PM | link
    Some people get weaponized on business trips to Moscow. This video shows how they do it... https://youtu.be/8cs4tKdiiI4 Posted by: dh | Dec 17, 2018 10:36:48 AM | 15

    Move over Russia make room for the Chinese weapon program.. its much more dangerous than the Russian disinformation program, unlike Russia, the Chinese circumvent the USA Senate, the President, and the SCOUS and go directly to the poor, innocent governed humans, lending them money, creating for them jobs and developing infra structure to make life easier; such will be the end of us all. WE MUST REMEMBER Aake news and made up fictions are produced by the six entities that own 92 of the media. Without the Internet and other public infra structure, the media could not smear you with its dirty tricks. Someone please pass the soap.

    the pair , Dec 17, 2018 1:17:03 PM | link
    "weaponizing terrorism "? because until Putin all "terrorists" sat around talking and sipping tea like the goddamn mclaughlin group? then again, given the outsize influence of objectively insane think tanks in DC, maybe they were onto something.

    funny how this can also be seen as what psychology types call "projection". in a culture like the west's (especially the states) where the economies are built on warfare and financial voodoo, everything is either "weaponized" or collateralized. look at anything on that list and it's something from which someone "atlantic" has tried or will try to make money. of course, many things start out weaponized and are then collateralized . weaponized taxes? weaponized corporate welfare?

    the pair , Dec 17, 2018 1:28:55 PM | link
    @#33 see also : https://www.voanews.com/a/putin-rap-must-be-controlled-not-banned/4702678.html

    hey, if a bunch of white/israeli suburbanite music executives in LA can control rap, it should be pretty easy. side note: rap is officially banned in iran. some say it's been deemed "satanic". Years ago when i was grooving to das efx or public enemy i'd have disagreed but now that the big names are drake, minaj and meek mill...only malevolent supernatural evil can explain that.

    Glenn Brown , Dec 17, 2018 2:08:07 PM | link
    I'm shocked to learn that "Russia is weaponizing its Coast Guard", https://warisboring.com/russia-is-weaponizing-its-coast-guard/ The author seems quite angry the Russians are using their "Coast Guard" of all things, to defend their coast. He thinks they should have used their Navy instead!

    "The use of the Russian Federation Navy to close the strait would have been more likely to escalate because it would have been a military-on-military clash. In contrast, using the Russian coast guard made it a law enforcement issue rather than a military-sanctioned act of war. Russia is adept at using legal channels to pursue violations of justice. It now appears willing to use its coast guard for this purpose.

    Onshore, the situation in eastern Ukraine has been stuck in a rut. Perhaps the escalation in the Sea of Azov was seen by the Russians as a means to break the impasse, using the flimsy legal cover provided by the coast guard. No similar terrestrial options exist, as the Russians have exhausted their plausible deniability for operations by police, volunteers and undercover "little green men."

    While Russian seizure of the Azov coast was anticipated, it was not expected to use its coast guard. Utilizing the Russian coast guard in this way opens a new range of options for Moscow, in the Sea of Azov and beyond."

    lysias , Dec 17, 2018 2:34:37 PM | link
    Easy way for an author to get an article published.
    karlof1 , Dec 17, 2018 2:38:03 PM | link
    Although likely covered by weaponizing incompetence and stupidity, Putin has certainly weaponized the Outlaw US Empire's appalling lack of a professional diplomatic corp--just look at who he gets Trump to nominate to key diplomatic positions. Indeed, perhaps this ought to be enlarged to include weaponizing mediocrity as portrayed by Trump's entire Cabinet. We can also see the great strides Putin's made in making the Outlaw US Empire appear as the Ogre it is by weaponizing Anglo-American Exceptionalism. It seems, given the above list and its additions via comments, that the Outlaw US Empire is most exceptional at being incapable of weaponizing anything aside from its #1 go-to--The BigLie.
    dh , Dec 17, 2018 3:00:26 PM | link
    @45 They look like happy smiley people untroubled by any ethical issues... https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/
    Strategic Message Code One , Dec 17, 2018 3:04:33 PM | link
    Hey guys, guys, you are not getting the point man. There is something really creepy about this Russia place, like Midas. Everything they touch turns to weapons. I seen it here as well, every Russia thing is trouble of some kind, like there is nothing else that comes from there. I seen Russian people and they ok, but now I'm frightened to get close to them in case I turn into a weapon. Aan here too guys, Russia touches the west an the west as consequence are all buying weapons an using them everywhere, they cant do nothing cause Russia makes them weaponators too. Oh my, we are doomed man and waponized press freakin me out aaaaaaahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    bjd , Dec 17, 2018 3:48:24 PM | link
    A quote from the report mentioned in (50): "Although the NDS generally reflects the right priorities and objectives, it is not supported by adequate investments. It is beyond the scope of this Commission's work to identify the exact dollar amount required to fully fund the military's needs, but the available means are clearly insufficient to fulfill the strategy's ends. This is true despite the two-year funding increase for FY2018 and FY2019 provided by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018."
    john , Dec 17, 2018 4:14:53 PM | link
    weaponize this .
    Zanon , Dec 17, 2018 4:19:22 PM | link
    The Russia "did it" is part of The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49060.htm
    Zanon , Dec 17, 2018 4:24:15 PM | link

    Seems like the renewed anti Russian psyops is a cover for the possible Ukrainian false flag/war coming weeks:

    "Russia deploys ten fighter jets to Crimea amid rising tensions with Ukraine "
    https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/12/17/583233/Russia-fighter-jets-Crimea-armed-provocation

    Josh , Dec 17, 2018 4:26:27 PM | link
    What would be particularly interesting is also to see how the money flow is helping the (we all know it) struggling news organizations. I believe many of these quasi-journalists are going hat in hand to various agencies that have some of that propaganda money. Most of them would need to work for weeks getting paid a measly amount, but doing a couple of these anti-Russia pieces gets them paid well. I certainly think the Guardian has such an arrangement with MI5/6.

    The recipe is using the wonderwords like Putin, Russia, 'weaponizing', hackers, cyber, fake news...

    jrkrideau , Dec 17, 2018 4:31:02 PM | link
    40 Glenn Brown

    I'm shocked to learn that "Russia is weaponizing its Coast Guard", https://warisboring.com/russia-is-weaponizing-its-coast-guard/

    I believe the Saker was pointing out a few days ago that the Border Guards were often more like spetsnaz than what we in the west think of as a border patrol. The Russian Coast Guard has probably maintained the tradition.

    karlof1 , Dec 17, 2018 4:47:55 PM | link
    I see culture's already been deemed weaponized, but here's Putin's actual plan he laid out in his speech to a meeting of the Presidential Council for Culture and Art in St Petersburg two days ago. Introductory remarks:

    "... global competition in creating best conditions for self-fulfilment and revealing the potential of each individual is growing, and the world's leading powers including Russia, rightly see it as a key to the future. Of course, a significant role here will belong to establishing a vibrant, rich cultural space, which will be interesting and attractive not only for the citizens of our country but also for the whole world."

    Meanwhile within the Outlaw US Empire, Boy Scouts of America is about to file for bankruptcy thanks to the many sexual abuse lawsuits it now faces. This leads me to declare yet another Russian accomplishment: Putin has weaponized Machiavellian divide and rule by enticing the Outlaw US Empire's Deep State -- years prior to his birth! -- to promote and escalate what's known as the Culture Wars used to ensure a continuing inability to achieve solidarity by the USA's polity.

    William Bowles , Dec 17, 2018 5:04:28 PM | link
    Posted by: Anaya | Dec 17, 2018 2:52:00 PM | 45

    Anaya, I take it you took a look-see at its staff and there's a lot of them! Yeah, that's what prompted my own feelings about it. The report has apparently been published but I've not yet seen it.

    The '150 million' influenced by those scheming Russkies, has been floating for awhie. I first saw it used in a Euro-based setup, funded by NATO I think. I'll try and dig it out as I remember writing something about.

    Babyl-on , Dec 17, 2018 5:12:15 PM | link
    This kind of "Weaponization" is far less expensive than say an F35 or a 13bn Ford class Aircraft carrier, but the more of them you build the safer you will be from the "Weaponization" of coloring books. Nuke crayons now! The state of the US and its military in my view is that they can't win a war against anyone, all they can do is blow up the world with nukes - the only question is will they deny the world to everyone if they can't own it.
    karlof1 , Dec 17, 2018 5:15:00 PM | link
    It's a shame we can't massively disseminate our weaponization of ridicule contained in b's article and our commentary. I wonder how many comedians are making good money ridiculing the entire weaponization meme, and not just in English.

    What I'd like to see at all US government pressers is for uncontrollable laughter to break out amongst the press when the spokesperson begins speaking and continue until it leaves the podium, followed by the press exiting the room.

    Jen , Dec 17, 2018 6:05:03 PM | link
    Karlof1 @ 69:

    In case you haven't yet heard, Heather Nauert replaces Nutty Nikki as US ambassador to the UN so 'tis there that Matt Lee and his fellow journos must trek (it's gonna be a long way to NYC) to get their regular dose of laughter.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-d-day-america-germany-strong-relationship-state-department-spokeswoman-heather-nauert-a8387221.html

    Bart Hansen , Dec 17, 2018 6:12:43 PM | link
    Here in my exceptional country it is customary at the end of each year to declare a "word of the year", some from past years were truthiness, Y2K and hashtag.

    For 2018 will it be "weaponize"?

    Curtis , Dec 17, 2018 6:28:52 PM | link
    and then today I hit ZH and this headline: Soviet Dissidents, America's Academia, & The Weaponization Of Psychiatry https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-16/soviet-dissidents-americas-academia-weaponization-psychiatry

    but it didn't go after the current Russian govt. It pointed out how the US imitates the Soviets in weaponizing psychiatry by declaring dissidents crazy. You have to be insane to disagree with TPTB.

    Curtis , Dec 17, 2018 6:30:11 PM | link
    It looks like our media has weaponized their obsession with all things Putin and Russia.
    Curtis , Dec 17, 2018 6:33:53 PM | link
    and last but not least, Russia is blamed for inflaming the protests in France: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-14/france-turmoil-blame-russia

    It reminds me of the meme taken from The Brady Bunch instead of "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" it's "Russia, Russia, Russia."

    Zanon , Dec 17, 2018 6:55:47 PM | link
    France: No signs of russian involvement found. https://sptnkne.ws/kq53
    karlof1 , Dec 17, 2018 6:57:54 PM | link
    Jen @71--

    I'm sure the comedian replacing Nauert will be just as distracting and of similar character.

    Did you happen to read Caitlin Johnstone's Twenty-One Thoughts On The Persecution Of Julian Assange , particularly #s 8-10 as they relate to her essay about narratives? All our rather witty ridicule is almost totally wasted on us--we don't need to hear it; it's those people Caitlin refers to in her 8-10 that require the deep pin-prick of ridicule to snap them from their torpor and return them to reality and to rational thinking.

    Lozion , Dec 17, 2018 7:08:38 PM | link
    @18 Best comment so far! Truth as the Weapon of Choice..
    Cyril , Dec 17, 2018 7:10:06 PM | link
    @Peter VE | Dec 17, 2018 10:59:02 AM | 18

    The underlying problem: Russia has weaponized telling the truth.

    That's the truth!

    time2wakeup , Dec 17, 2018 7:43:08 PM | link
    Next thing you know, the media will be weaponizing all their available weapons of mass distraction

    Oh wait.....bit late for that.

    psychohistorian , Dec 17, 2018 8:41:27 PM | link
    The biggest weapon in the West arsenal is private finance. Private finance is the jackboot that keep nations/governments/individuals in line. Private finance has been the primary weapon of control for centuries. China/Russia are trying to weaponize alternative finance......and succeeding......which is why the world is all in a tither.
    lysias , Dec 17, 2018 10:36:33 PM | link
    @ Jen 82

    I think it has to do with what one has studied. I have four university degrees: B.A. in Classics from Princeton, A.B. in Classics from Oxford, Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Harvard, and a J.D. from Yale. I spent a lot of time in the U.S. military: four years in the active duty U.S. Air Force, plus something like 15 years in the reserves, largely of the U.S. Navy. For as long as the original Cold War lasted and Communism ruled Russia, I was a true believer in the Cold War. It now looks to me as if I was misguided at the time, but that is what I believed, whether despite or because of my education, I don't know which.

    But since the fall of Communism in Russia, I have lost all belief in anything like a new Cold War. After all, when I was in parochial school, we prayed for the conversion of Russia. Now, that has been accomplished. Russia's government is more Christian than Western governments. I think someone with a classical education like the one I got is more capable of thinking for himself. I don't think my education disabled me from thinking critically and independently.

    Peter AU 1 , Dec 18, 2018 3:11:59 AM | link

    BB 93 Truth weaponized. Five eyes pulling out all stops in its propaganda campaign to defeat it.

    Hoarsewhisperer 95 He may well be, but with the passing of several years and his actions in that time appear to be ardent zionist. The swamp to him are those that frittered away US unilateral power and those that did not sufficiently support Israel. What Trump views as the swamp is not what most of us view as the swamp. Kissinger was not forced upon Trump, rather his thinking is in line with that of Kissinger.

    [Jan 06, 2019] Integrity initiative is Gladio 2.0 in disguise

    Notable quotes:
    "... To get an idea of how Gladio 2.0 is now investing each corner of our lives, including art and education, I saw recently on the flyer of a sculpture exhibition in a 5-eyes country that two artists, one born in 1901 and one in 1914 were "famous Cold War artists". Of course, there was nothing political in their work, the first died in 1966 and the other in 2003... ..."
    Jan 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Mina , Dec 17, 2018 1:19:30 PM | link

    To get an idea of how Gladio 2.0 is now investing each corner of our lives, including art and education, I saw recently on the flyer of a sculpture exhibition in a 5-eyes country that two artists, one born in 1901 and one in 1914 were "famous Cold War artists". Of course, there was nothing political in their work, the first died in 1966 and the other in 2003...

    In EU universities you now see all sorts of "labs" popping out, with EU funding from the "digital" budget. They are trying to recruit people with a very odd profile: ambitious, ONG oriented, IT familiar. The reason why these labs insist on the ONG type activities is dubious. An example of US/EU sponsored project involving refugees in Greece, neurosciences and mobile phones (check Harvard/Data&Society: Refugee Connectivity)

    Jackrabbit , Dec 17, 2018 11:58:37 AM | link
    Putin | Dec 17, 2018 11:23:05 AM | 23: new "iron curtain"
    • Iron Curtain ==> Psyop Cage
    • Secret police and snitches ==> Channel thought via media echo-chamber
    • McCarthyist smear: "Russian agent" ==> McCarthyist smear: "Putinbot" / "useful idiot"
    • Capitalism vs Communism ==> Unipolar (NWO) vs Multi-polar (United Nations)
    • Containment ==> Attack via Color revolution / Proxy Armies / Propaganda / Sanctions

    [Jan 06, 2019] Anything that hurts neoliberal elites, after all, is swiftly identified as part of Putin's dastardly arsenal. Funny but this is how propaganda works...

    Jan 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Blooming Barricade , Dec 18, 2018 12:24:14 AM | link

    There are several logical questions to be asked from all this "weapon" talk. Namely, when is information, culture, the economy, infrastructure, sex or what have you not "weaponised?" It seems to me that Putin's alleged weapons - anti-fracking, anti-TTIP, no to NATO, socialist parties, radical activism, left wing pages - turn out to be double edged swords that always for some strange reason always seem to upset the elites. Anything that hurts them, after all, is swiftly identified as part of his dastardly arsenal. Funny how that works...
    Hoarsewhisperer , Dec 18, 2018 2:27:31 AM | link
    It's hard to believe that the West's movers and shakers genuinely crave a hot with Russia and/or China. So there's got to be a logical-ish explanation for all the infantile drivel.

    Greedy people don't care how 'colourful' they may seem if there's a Pot Of Gold at the End of the Rainbow. And the greediest and most mendacious of the Greedy & Mendacious are probably over-represented among the Owners/Shareholders in the Military-Security Gravy Train (M-S GT).

    AmeriKKKa's doofus Military has 'eliminated' most of the pissant Imaginary Threats to 'security' and those adventures cost taxpayers at least 3 times more than they cost the M-S GT to accomplish. So, having decided that it's time to tackle some big Imaginary Threats it almost goes without saying that the M-S GT's budget will need to be increased to 'unpredictable' levels.

    Because North Korea can "Manhattan" Manhattan anytime the Yanks get uppity, it's no longer a pissant threat. China & Russia on the other hand are only interested in Peace, Development & Prosperity for All, making them the Perfect (safe) New Boogeymen.
    ......
    In his first TV interview after the election Trump said on 60 Minutes "I think politicians for a long period of time have let people down. They've let them down on the job front... they've even let 'em down in terms of the War front. You know, we've been fighting this war in the ME for 15 years .. we've spent 6 Trillion dollars in the ME... 6 Trillion. We could have rebuilt this country twice. It's unfair what's happened to the people in this country and we're gonna put a stop to it."

    In my not so humble opinion he's smart enough to pull it off.

    [Jan 06, 2019] Putin's take on rap, drugs, sex protest: Don't ban rappers, it's the drugs we should worry about

    Notable quotes:
    "... While this Russia weaponizes everything stuff is good for a laugh for some of us, it is also as Putin has indicated above, a serious business. The repeated and repeated and repeated connection of the word 'weaponized' to Russia and Putin is intended to cultivate/encourage western hatred and fear and suspicion. ..."
    "... And for some element of the population, it works. ..."
    Jan 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Peter AU 1 , Dec 17, 2018 1:11:25 PM | link

    "So what's the big problem with rap music in Russia, and how does Mr Putin plan to control it? Here's what we know." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-17/vladimir-putin-wants-the-kremlin-to-take-control-of-rap-music/10625876
    dh , Dec 17, 2018 1:27:59 PM | link
    @33 Probably the best way to handle rappers is to shower them with flashy cars and bling. Timati for instance is very friendly with Putin.

    https://russiainyourface.com/2015/12/08/russian-rapper-timati-releases-new-hit-single-about-putin/comment-page-1/

    Grieved , Dec 17, 2018 7:29:00 PM | link
    @33 Peter AU 1

    I know you know how inadequate that ABC report was about Putin and rap. A much more nuanced report comes from RT:
    Putin's take on rap, drugs, sex & protest: Don't ban rappers, it's the drugs we should worry about

    The Russian president on Saturday warned against attempts to ban and prosecute rappers, describing such measures as "the least effective, the worst ones anyone could come up with."

    "The effect of them would be opposite to the desired one," Putin said.

    Putin correctly focused on the drugs as the true harm to a society:

    "If they like that stuff abroad – God help them, they can do anything they want. We here should reflect on how to organize our work to prevent this."

    As we have seen in countless theaters from China to the US - and now writ large in the motivations of terrorists, who are very much fueled by drugs - drugs have been weaponized for a long time.

    Robert Snefjella , Dec 17, 2018 10:50:34 PM | link
    While this Russia weaponizes everything stuff is good for a laugh for some of us, it is also as Putin has indicated above, a serious business. The repeated and repeated and repeated connection of the word 'weaponized' to Russia and Putin is intended to cultivate/encourage western hatred and fear and suspicion.

    And for some element of the population, it works.

    • It makes easier, facilitates, the work of Russia-bashing western public perception management professionals - propagandists.
    • It strengthens and expands an already widespread public subliminal hostile-to-Russia attitudinal 'matrix'.
    • It greases the skids for economic warfare - sanctions etc, and towards actual war, and for war preparation.
    • It provides a roadblock to the normalization of relations and reasonable discourse with Russia.
    • Here are a couple of examples from Canada.

    A fellow connected to the federal bureaucracy - lowly position but rubbing shoulders with more influential people - offered that "You have to admit that Putin's kind of weird." Didn't say it with any passion. My answer, Why do you say that? Turned out he knew nothing substantial about Putin. Maybe he saw a picture of him riding a bear or something. But he had been injected by a knee jerk casual negative impression.

    Another person of my acquaintance - school teacher - had so imbibed casual propaganda re Putin and Russia that it was a traumatic, startling experience to hear good things said about Russia and Putin. This person had no great political interest, but regularly watched conventional 'news' programming.

    [Jan 06, 2019] The NSA's FOIA response that they have traffic involving Rich and Assange reinforces both Assange's assertion and Binney's analysis that the DNC was not hacked, the data was downloaded

    Notable quotes:
    "... A possible scenario then would be that, some time in late April or early May, the kind of surveillance on Assange and figures known to be associated with him which we can be reasonably confident was being carried out both by GCHQ and MI6 alerted people to the fact that there had been a leak of material from the DNC. ..."
    "... The accident of Cameron's – characteristically foolish – statement and the Papadopoulos interview could then have led on to his meeting with Downer being set up, at almost exactly the time when 'CrowdStrike' was beginning to work on the DNC servers. ..."
    "... Having gone down that route, the possibility of Seth Rich talking obviously became acutely dangerous to all kinds of people. ..."
    "... If Seth had made no attempt to contact Wikileaks - and if the FBI didn't look at his laptop because "we don't investigate murders", then why does the NSA have 32 pages of secret/top secret memos on him? ..."
    "... If Seth was the real leaker, he was in a position to blow apart the Guccifer 2.0 scam which was the centerpiece of the "Russia interfered" hoax. ..."
    "... Also, I suspect that Shawn Lucas may have been one of the friends of Seth who - according to Sy Hersh's account - had access to Seth's dropbox. So that might explain his very mysterious death - a drug overdose involving multiple drugs in someone never known to use drugs. ..."
    "... What is clear is that, both from a cybersecurity and other perspectives – the Awan family saga being an obvious instance, and the networks in which Huma Abedin is involved perhaps another – the whole Democratic apparatus in which Hillary was a central figure was as leaky as an old sieve. ..."
    "... When the ex-GCHQ 'twerp' Matt Tait, then supposedly running a consultancy, 'Capital Alpha Security', which only ever filed 'accounts for a dormant company', and has now been compulsorily wound up, immediately produced evidence backing up the incoherent claims by Dmitri Alperovitch of 'CrowdStrike', it was clear that we were dealing with an amateurish cover-up. ..."
    "... The notion that the name and patronymic 'Felix Dzerzhinsky' is likely to have been used by the Main Directorate, previously known as the GRU, could only have been dreamed up by people who are totally ignorant of the history of the relations between the General Staff and the 'Cheka' in the early Soviet period, or, at least, are relying on the ignorance of others. ..."
    "... The next memorandum in the sequence, which is undated, introduces Paul Manafort and Carter Page into the 'rogues' gallery', and contains some very interesting observations about the cyber side. So 'Source E' – described as an 'ethnic Russian close associate' of Trump – supposedly explains that the 'intelligence network' being used against Hillary Clinton comprises three elements ..."
    "... All this stinks of a hastily-organised cover-up operation, set in motion after it became clear that highly compromising material was going to appear on 'WikiLeaks' – but which moved into higher gear after the murder of Rich. ..."
    "... As was very evident at the time from, for example, comments on the 'MailOnline' site, very many people who disliked Hillary immediately took for granted that Rich had been 'Arkancided', so his death then became further evidence of her innate villainy, and also confirmation that he was, in fact, the source of the 'WikiLeaks' material. ..."
    "... How's this for a motive? Imran Awan ran the DNC servers. When it was discovered in May/June that the emails had been downloaded, a search was launched and suspicion fell on Seth. Worried that the Pakistani penetration of the DNC and the Congress might be uncovered, Seth was silenced. I offer this as one possible theory. ..."
    "... I think it is very much a possible theory. And indeed, reading what Mark McCarty and Eric Newhill wrote, I think I may have greatly underestimated the extent to which people on Hillary's side could have thought Seth Rich too dangerous to be left alive ..."
    "... One point raised by Eric's comments. It seems to me quite likely that the alarm was in fact raised by monitoring what came in to WikiLeaks, rather than what went out of the DNC. If this was so, however, it would be less likely that the monitoring was done directly by the CIA/NSA. It would be much more likely that this was in the first instance primarily an MI6/GCHQ function. ..."
    "... If I had the talent and energy, I might write a sequel to the 'Quiet American', to be entitled 'The Noisy Englishmen.' It would feature a series of inept conspiracies, involving ludicrous means used in support of preposterous ends, necessitating one ham-fisted cover-up after another. ..."
    "... The central characters might be loosely based on Christopher Steele, Matt Tait, Eliot Higgins, and our former UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, author of the July 2002 Downing Street memorandum, in which Sir Richard Dearlove was quoted explaining how, in Washington, 'the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.' ..."
    "... Guccifer 2.0 was nothing but an elaborate joke. ..."
    Jan 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    David Habakkuk , 2 months ago

    All,

    Ty Clevenger has posted the 4 October letter from the NSA on his 'LawFlog' blog.

    See http://lawflog.com/?attachm... .

    The request related to four categories of material. The first had to do with communications between Rich and a variety of people. It is interesting that the names of three figures with whom it is not suggested he communicated are Included, the precise phrasing being 'David Kendall, Cheryl Mills, and Heather Samuelson are the attorneys who represented Hillary Clinton.'

    Apparently Clevenger has been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to get the trio investigated in relation to the deletion of e-mails from the secret server.

    (See https://www.washingtontimes... .)

    The second category relates to material concerning phone calls involving Rich on the day he died and the previous day, the third to possible financial transactions involved him and an interesting range of people.

    The fourth category covers correspondence involving people in or involved with Congress.

    The NSA response refers to an earlier reply dated 7 November 2017 in relation to the first three categories. So far I cannot trace this, but I would assume that this refused access to the material – if it did not there would clearly be rather more than fifteen documents with 32 pages. So these presumably all relate to communications involving Congress.

    Another important thread in all this relates to the 10 May 2016 meeting between George Papadopoulos and Alexander Downer. Information has been trickling out about what the former said in his interview with members of the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees on Thursday. And the episode is dealt with in a book by the 'Washington Post' reporter Greg Miller, released earlier this month.

    The sequence appears to have been that Papodopoulos was quoted in an interview in the 'Times' on 4 May 2016 saying that our then Prime Minister, David Cameron, should apologise for calling Trump 'divisive, stupid and wrong'. Two days later, an Australian embassy official who knew him suggested that Papadopoulos meet Downer.

    According to the version restated by Miller, the FIB 'Crossfire Hurricane' investigation opened on 31 July, following the 'WikiLeaks' publication of the DNC emails on 22 July – with supposedly a belated communication from Downer about the Papadopoulos meeting being an important trigger. If you work for the 'Washington Post', you will of course take all this on trust. Serious journalists would not.

    While the complications of the role of the mysterious Maltese Joseph Mifsud still do not seem adequately ironed out, the suggestion that he told Papadopoulos that he had learned that the Russian government had 'dirt' on Clinton in the form of 'thousands' of her emails may well be true. Moreover, it would not necessarily be part of an entrapment operation.

    It is perfectly possible that Mifsud did actually retail what he had heard in Moscow, and while this could have been inaccurate gossip, it could also have been accurate.

    As I have said before, if there was anything I would find more surprising than the notion that the DNC material came to 'WikiLeaks' from the Russians, it would be that these could not penetrate the obviously appallingly lax security not just of Clinton's server but of the whole Democratic network. (People who could hire the Awan clan are obviously either totally inept at security or totally unconcerned about it.)

    (For updates from the 'Daily Caller' on the Papadopoulos interview and Miller book, see https://dailycaller.com/201... and https://dailycaller.com/201... .)

    At that point, one comes up against the question of how much substance there is in the claims by Yaacov Apelbaum about the central role in 'Russiagate' of the Hakluyt/Holdingham group, with which Downer was certainly involved.

    See https://apelbaum.wordpress....

    A possible scenario then would be that, some time in late April or early May, the kind of surveillance on Assange and figures known to be associated with him which we can be reasonably confident was being carried out both by GCHQ and MI6 alerted people to the fact that there had been a leak of material from the DNC.

    The accident of Cameron's – characteristically foolish – statement and the Papadopoulos interview could then have led on to his meeting with Downer being set up, at almost exactly the time when 'CrowdStrike' was beginning to work on the DNC servers.

    What could have been a piece of accurate gossip out of Russia – although of course it could have been inaccurate gossip or indeed planted disinformation – then encouraged the notion that the leak could be treated as a hack.

    Having gone down that route, the possibility of Seth Rich talking obviously became acutely dangerous to all kinds of people.

    An accurate account of what was happened was finally passed to 'Fox News', sourced in substantial measure from figures involved with Assange, but the company 'chickened out' in the face of pressure. The Malia Zimmerman story, incidentally, can be viewed at http://www.raidersmerciless... .

    Dan Feidt~hongpong , 2 months ago
    If the FOIA request is authentic then it would be in the FOIA logs of the agency which are themselves FOIA-able (in general anyway).

    I would speculate that the material might show that they rooted around for stuff like this, due to the media attention, and thus, some records exist about the idea.

    Also re the metadata timing, while the idea of fast copies is reasonable, it is also possible to write a small script which would calculate a fresh set of datetime values at a different rate than the original, wouldn't this be less than 30 lines? (like they could have simply overwritten the metadata date values, from slower copying to an illusion of faster copying.)

    Publius Tacitus -> Dan Feidt~hongpong , 2 months ago
    On the metadata, NO. I checked with Bill Binney.
    Mark McCarty , 2 months ago
    Excellent summary. How did the author get the info on NSA's response to the FOIA request? - cant find it otherwise online.

    If Seth had made no attempt to contact Wikileaks - and if the FBI didn't look at his laptop because "we don't investigate murders", then why does the NSA have 32 pages of secret/top secret memos on him?

    This article should have cited the Sy Hersh phone tape - Sy, via Butowsky, is the evident source of the Fox report:

    Play Hide
    Publius Tacitus -> Mark McCarty , 2 months ago
    No, Sy was not the source for the Fox report. Two of the sources are closely tied to Julian's lawyer.
    Adam Carter , 2 months ago
    With the leaks already out, if they wanted to make an example, they could have made his life hell and heaped blame on him for them losing the election, they could have made an example out of him without taking needless risks and without leaving anything to ambiguity (so that it would unquestionably deter others from doing the same).

    So, even if his death wasn't just him accidentally getting shot twice in the torso during a struggle following a bungled robbery attempt in which nothing was stolen... revenge still would have been a questionable motive.

    I'd say more but it's probably best for the sake of self-preservation and to prevent opponents from strawman attacks if I don't. Good luck figuring out who could have had a motive.

    Mark McCarty -> Adam Carter , 2 months ago
    I don't think that revenge had anything to do with it. If Seth was the real leaker, he was in a position to blow apart the Guccifer 2.0 scam which was the centerpiece of the "Russia interfered" hoax. The conspirators would be much more secure with him out of the way. Also, I suspect that Shawn Lucas may have been one of the friends of Seth who - according to Sy Hersh's account - had access to Seth's dropbox. So that might explain his very mysterious death - a drug overdose involving multiple drugs in someone never known to use drugs.
    David Habakkuk -> Adam Carter , 2 months ago
    Adam Carter,

    On the question of who might have had a motive to kill Seth Rich, some aspects of the background are worth bearing in mind.

    It is very clear that Hillary Clinton divides opinion, very sharply – actually, in Britain almost as much as in the United States. On the one hand, I have found even people whose judgement I would once have trusted quite extraordinarily reluctant to accept that there was anything reprehensible about her glaring security breaches, let alone about anything else she has done.

    On the other, there are many people who loathe her and her husband so much that they will believe any mud that is slung at the pair.

    What is clear is that, both from a cybersecurity and other perspectives – the Awan family saga being an obvious instance, and the networks in which Huma Abedin is involved perhaps another – the whole Democratic apparatus in which Hillary was a central figure was as leaky as an old sieve.

    In such a situation, if I was for example Vladimir Putin, and none of my intelligence services had been able to supply me with something close to a complete set of Hillary Clinton's emails, I would have wanted to know why.

    But that, of course, emphatically does not mean that the Russians are a likely conduit for material to have reached Assange. And it also means that, if by any chance Putin and General Gerasimov, who has overall responsibility for the Main Directorate of the General Staff, had decided they wanted the material made public, they could have been expected to look for 'plausible deniability.'

    When the ex-GCHQ 'twerp' Matt Tait, then supposedly running a consultancy, 'Capital Alpha Security', which only ever filed 'accounts for a dormant company', and has now been compulsorily wound up, immediately produced evidence backing up the incoherent claims by Dmitri Alperovitch of 'CrowdStrike', it was clear that we were dealing with an amateurish cover-up.

    The notion that the name and patronymic 'Felix Dzerzhinsky' is likely to have been used by the Main Directorate, previously known as the GRU, could only have been dreamed up by people who are totally ignorant of the history of the relations between the General Staff and the 'Cheka' in the early Soviet period, or, at least, are relying on the ignorance of others.

    In addition to this, we have the fact that the initial memoranda in the dossier published by 'BuzzFeed' and – supposedly – authored by Christopher Steele, are both a mess, and contradict the version put out by Alperovitch and Tait. The Ellen Nakashima piece was on 14 June, the first memorandum, which contained the 'golden showers' claim, is dated 20 June – which of course may not be accurate.

    There is then a pause, until the first treatment of Russian cyber operations, in a memorandum dated '26 July 2015.' This is clearly a mistype for 2016, so that the date, if correct, is more than a fortnight after the murder of Rich, which was on 10 July. This memorandum makes no mention of the GRU, claims that 'FSB leads on cyber', and also that there had been 'limited success in attacking top foreign targets'.

    The next memorandum in the sequence, which is undated, introduces Paul Manafort and Carter Page into the 'rogues' gallery', and contains some very interesting observations about the cyber side. So 'Source E' – described as an 'ethnic Russian close associate' of Trump – supposedly explains that the 'intelligence network' being used against Hillary Clinton comprises three elements:

    'Firstly there were agents/facilitators within the Democratic Party structure itself; secondly Russian emigre and associated offensive cyber operators based in the US; and thirdly, state-sponsored cyber operatives working in Russia.'

    The fourth memorandum, dated 19 July, which if accurate means it would have had to have been written before the second, then makes the accusations about the secret meetings between Page and Sechin.

    All this stinks of a hastily-organised cover-up operation, set in motion after it became clear that highly compromising material was going to appear on 'WikiLeaks' – but which moved into higher gear after the murder of Rich.

    The reference to 'agents/facilitators within the Democratic Party itself' reads as though it might well have been intended to provide a basis for a 'fall-back' position, if either the problems of the 'hacking' story became too glaring, or it became impossible to prevent more information coming out about the role of Rich in supplying material to WikiLeaks.

    Also perhaps relevant is the fact that the initial meeting between Carter Page and Stefan Halper occurred at a symposium in Cambridge, UK, entitled '2016's Race to Change the World', which opened on 11 July, the day after Rich's death – and was also attended by Sir Richard Dearlove.

    All this adds to the strong impression that panic which may well have been materially increased by Rich's murder could have been one of the reasons why the 'cover-up' took off into a kind of stratosphere of absurdity in the period that followed it.

    Reverting to the question you raise of possible motives for the murder, precisely what the panic suggests is indeed that it is not obvious that anyone in the Democratic Party apparatus had any incentive to assassinate Rich.

    As was very evident at the time from, for example, comments on the 'MailOnline' site, very many people who disliked Hillary immediately took for granted that Rich had been 'Arkancided', so his death then became further evidence of her innate villainy, and also confirmation that he was, in fact, the source of the 'WikiLeaks' material.

    However, precisely because of the sieve-like nature of the Democratic Party apparatus, a situation had been created where there were actually a wide variety of people, in a wide variety of places, who could have been taking an intense interest in the kind of material which appeared on 'WikiLeaks.'

    Such people might have been able, through all kinds of routes, to find out a good deal both about what had been leaked, how and why, and what might be leaked in the future.

    While I agree that revenge is not the most obvious motive, there are two qualifications. As we have seen with MBS, people can badly misjudge the impact of their actions, which becomes more relevant if one starts casting the net wider in looking for possible suspects. Also, preventing further disclosures could conceivably have been a motive.

    Equally, however, it is not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility that someone who was well aware of the conclusions people would draw could have seen having Rich murdered as a way of striking at Hillary.

    A regrettable consequence of the way in which it has been possible to use atrocity to shape 'narratives', which has been facilitated by the increasingly patent disinterest of the mainstream media in trying to get at the truth, is that there are very many players who, for diverse reasons, could have seen their interests furthered by an assassination of this kind.

    Publius Tacitus -> David Habakkuk , 2 months ago
    How's this for a motive? Imran Awan ran the DNC servers. When it was discovered in May/June that the emails had been downloaded, a search was launched and suspicion fell on Seth. Worried that the Pakistani penetration of the DNC and the Congress might be uncovered, Seth was silenced. I offer this as one possible theory.
    David Habakkuk -> Publius Tacitus , 2 months ago
    PT,

    I think it is very much a possible theory. And indeed, reading what Mark McCarty and Eric Newhill wrote, I think I may have greatly underestimated the extent to which people on Hillary's side could have thought Seth Rich too dangerous to be left alive.

    And I also may not have have given adequate weight to the possibility that a not particularly unnatural fear could have overridden the patent dangers involved in following what I should perhaps have seen as an obvious logic.

    One point raised by Eric's comments. It seems to me quite likely that the alarm was in fact raised by monitoring what came in to WikiLeaks, rather than what went out of the DNC. If this was so, however, it would be less likely that the monitoring was done directly by the CIA/NSA. It would be much more likely that this was in the first instance primarily an MI6/GCHQ function.

    It may or may not be relevant here that Craig Murray has given a lot of people a lot of grief – not least, in exposing the way that 'loops of lies' about 'SIGINT' were used in the attempt to use the 'false flag' at Ghouta to inveige you and us into another disastrous intervention in the Middle East.

    (See https://www.craigmurray.org... .)

    Be that as it may, it seems to me a reasonable hypothesis that an enormous amount of effort – including both 'HUMINT' and 'SIGINT' – has been deployed by British intelligence agencies to ensure that all channels by which information could pass to and from Assange are monitored.

    Of particular interest could have been the kind of covert means of organising payments which may have been used to transfer money to Seth Rich and his brother.

    One might then be some way towards a better explanation of some of the absurd incoherencies in the stories told by and about 'CrowdStrike', which struck a lot of us quite early.

    It is perfectly possible that 7 May is the actual date on which the company was called in. However, this would not have been because a problem with the DNC computer systems had been identified by that organisation – but because a receipt of information by 'WikiLeaks' had been identified, and probably by the British.

    At that point, it is perfectly possible that Alperovitch et al identified many 'hacks' into the servers, some of which could indeed have been by organisations and individuals which could perfectly possibly be linked to the Russians (but with the fact not being palpable, because these would have looked for 'plausible deniability.')

    Quite rapidly, the 'real' investigation, of which that by 'CrowdStrike' could have been a part, but only part, would have identified Rich. But this would only have happened in time for him to stop sending material originating later than 25 May. The search for a 'cover story' would have begun at some time during this period.

    The first stage in this would have involved the instruction to leave all laptops in the office on 10 June. Thereafter, the attempts to create a 'cover story' developed rather rapidly.

    It would then becomes unsurprising that a former GCHQ person – Matt Tait – should have played an important role, but also that the integration of the different parts of the story was, to put it mildly, imperfect.

    Part of this, however, is also likely to have had to do with the fact that both Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele are, quite patently, incompetent.

    Unfortunately, I was 'away from base', celebrating a birthday with old friends, with limited internet access, when the Colonel informed us that he had used 'Our Man in Havana' as a teaching aid.

    But it has become clear to me that an enormous amount of damage has resulted from the fact that MSM journalists have read too much of the productions of David John Moore Cornwell (aka John Le Carré), and not enough Graham Greene.

    I am still trying to think this through, but another Graham Greene novel – 'The Quiet American', of which the films are unfortunately awful, by contrast with that of 'Our Man in Havana' – comes into the picture.

    A key point about this is that 'tails wag dogs.'

    So, having been persuaded that I had underestimated the likelihood of people in the Hillary camp deciding that they had no realistic option but to remove Seth Rich from the picture, it also occurs to me that a corollary of your suggestion is that a lot of other people – among them, people involved with the Awans not in the United States – might have thought that they had an overriding interest in so doing.

    Moreover, they could realistically have calculated that – as with Alden Pyle when General Thé escalates his 'false flags' – those who had thought they were in control would then have had no realistic option but to cover up.

    To digress, it seems to me likely that this is the premise on which MBS has operated – and also, that a lot of people have given him every reason to think his confidence was justified.

    However, sometimes, when the 'tails' have been able to wag the 'dogs' for a very long time, it goes to their head.

    Pat Lang Mod -> David Habakkuk , 2 months ago
    After contemplating the likely intelligence and propaganda efforts of HMG over the last 15 years or so I am puzzled as to motivation. Why? Why? The UK is now a regional power for which events in places like Syria would seem to have little to do with the welfare of Britain. Why? I suppose that the same question can be asked for the US and I have. In re "Our man in Havana" I think there are many issues raised in the work that apply directly to the trade of espionage.
    David Habakkuk -> Pat Lang , 2 months ago
    Colonel Lang,

    The question why? is a very interesting but also very dispiriting one, but also one which it is quite hard to get one's head round. I hope to have something more coherent to say about it.

    Among many reasons, however, there has been a kind of intellectual disintegration.

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

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

    Subsequently, of course, he set about colluding in the process. And, sixteen years later, Dearlove is still at it, with 'Russiagate' – and the product being actually accepted much more uncritically by the MSM than it was then.

    And that is one of the problems – nobody any longer pays any penalty for failure, or indeed feels any sense of shame about it..

    johnf -> David Habakkuk , 2 months ago
    DH

    I agree with this.

    There is a 1990's British historian (whose name I've been trying to rediscover without success) who wrote a sunny book saying Britain should return to its imperialist ways to bring light to the dark and repressive world we live in. It was a great hit with Blair and his henchmen. Blair used its arguments in his notorious 1999 Chicago neo-conservative/liberal interventionist speech.

    As the Colonel eloquently asks:

    "I am puzzled as to motivation. Why? Why? The UK is now a regional power for which events in places like Syria would seem to have little todo with the welfare of Britain. Why?"

    I'd draw attention to "The Brideshead Revisited" generation especially at Oxford in the early 80's. Unashamedly celebrating their wealth and upper middle class privately-educated backgrounds, they viewed themselves as a gilded, golden generation, preened in narcissism, adept at networking and self-promotion.

    They are the generation now in power - politically, financially, in the deep state. Their fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies. Our economic power - the base of any imperial power - is shrinking daily. All the Oxfordites (chief amongst them Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove) are still playing Oxford Union/PPE games and stabbing each other joyously in the back as though there's no tomorrow. It most ressembles the halluciogenic decadence of the court of late Imperial Rome.

    (I don't include the Maurice Cowling-ites in this fandango because they strike me as more Little Englanders. Though Peterhouse is of course, shamefully, the HQ of the Henry Jackson Society).

    Eric Newhill -> Publius Tacitus , 2 months ago
    How did the DNC determine that Seth Rich did the download? They killed him on mere suspicion that he could have been the insider stealing data? That seems like an extreme response carried out on mere suspicion. The Awan/Pakistan connection was eventually revealed and it went nowhere; basically fizzled out in the media. On the other hand, if one of our agencies actually knew it was Rich passing info to Wikileaks via a spying program, and that Rich, as a Sanders supporter, was doing so because he harbored deep animosity toward the Clinton campaign and the DNC, then Rich would have to be silenced. This theory would implicate members of the deep state. Perhaps, that is too far fetched or disturbing to consider?
    Fred S -> Adam Carter , 2 months ago
    "Accidentally shot" in the back in a city with strict gun control laws at 4 am is rather humorous. How many people are robbed in D.C @ 4am?
    PBlacque , 2 months ago
    Can you please clarify one point. You say Guccifer 2.0's DNC emails released in mid June, 2016 contain "meta data" and then that Binney analyzed "data" from an intrusion on July 5, 2016. Clearly Binney couldn't have analyzed Guccifer 2.0's emails meta data (inconsistent timing) ... and could it be that Guccifer's hack was performed at the slower rate expected over the internet? Thanks
    Publius Tacitus -> PBlacque , 2 months ago
    But he went back and analyzed the docs released on 15 June as well. Please focus on the central point--the FBI claims that Guccifer 2.0 is a GRU front but the meta data on the documents don't support the claim that they were obtained via an internet hack.
    Snow Flake -> Lefty , 2 months ago
    Ellipsis, linguistically? Don't you automatically add what is omitted? ... Russia had (n't) anything ...

    Guccifer 2.0 was nothing but an elaborate joke.

    Lefty -> Snow Flake , 2 months ago
    When I turn something I am writing into a non sequitur, or worse reverse its meaning, I call it a f*ck up (linguistically), correct it and thank anyone who cared enough to take the time to read me in the first place and to lend me a hand. What I try not to do is to hide behind a misapplied grammatical device. Know what I mean buttercup... ?

    The NSA's FOIA response that they have traffic involving Rich and Assange reinforces both Assange's assertion and Binney's analysis that the DNC was not hacked, the data was downloaded. Assange's uncategorical denial that the Ruskies did it is important. It deserves to remain unambiguous and not to be subject to uncontrolled ellipsisical seizure.

    Guccifer 2.0 seemed pretty earnest. As yet we don't have much of a clue who he was working for.

    Pat Lang Mod -> Lefty , 2 months ago
    PT's info is not from a FOIA request.
    Snow Flake -> Lefty , 2 months ago
    When I turn something .... Know what I mean buttercup... ?

    No, I am afraid, you are way too sophisticated for me.

    [Jan 06, 2019] DNC Emails--A Seth Attack Not a Russian Hack by Publius Tacitus

    CIApedia story is a complete fabrication. And there might be connection between Seth murder and Avan brothers.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Now there is new information, courtesy of the National Security Agency aka NSA, that confirms that the NSA has Top Secret and Secret documents that are responsive to a FOIA request for material on Seth Rich and his contacts with Julian Assange ..."
    "... While the content of these documents remain classified for now, they may provide documentary proof that Seth Rich "dropped boxed" the emails to Julian. If these documents are declassified, a big hole could be blown in the claim that Russia hacked the DNC. ..."
    "... Is it really plausible that the perps would kill one person, fail to get anything of value from the homicide, then say "Oh shucks, that didn't work, won't do that again."? ..."
    "... Yet there is no discussion of this of which I am aware, and the Wikipedia editors controlling the Wikipedia page for the murder of Seth Rich absolutely prohibit discussion, even on their "Talk Page" of such questions. E.g., their deletion of the question I asked here, under the heading "Why the "conspiracy theory" pejorative?" (which resulted in not only being deleted but a "Sanction" against me for daring to ask the question). ..."
    "... CIA/NSA is already watching wikileaks due to Manning, etc) and "sees' that Rich has passed files. ..."
    "... Intel filters up to Obama, Brennan, NSA people, Clinton and others that Rich has passed info to Wikileaks and then wikileaks announces and publishes the material. ..."
    "... The DNC + Obama and other leftist deep staters concoct the Russian hacking meme to distract from the content of the material as well as to begin discredit Trump (and perhaps even develop a means of deposing him should he actually be elected). ..."
    "... There is a connection between Seth and the Pakistani guy who had free rein with a lot of dem congresspeople's computers!!! His protector, Lil Debbie WS!!! There is a Podesta email where he states something to the effect that the person be taught a lesson as an example, guilty or not! ..."
    Oct 23, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    If Russia had actually "hacked" the DNC emails then the National Security Agency would have had proof of such activity. In fact, the NSA could have tracked such activity. But they did not do that. That lack of evidence did not prevent a coordinated media campaign from spinning up to pin the blame on Russia for the "theft" and to portray Donald Trump as Putin's lackey and beneficiary.

    Any effort to tell an alternative story has met with stout opposition. Fox News, for example, came under withering fire after it published an article in May 2017 claiming that Seth Rich, a young Democrat operative, had leaked DNC emails to Julian Assange at Wikileaks. The family of Seth Rich reacted with fury and sued Fox, Malia Zimmerman and Ed Butowsky, but that suit subsequently was dismissed.

    Now there is new information, courtesy of the National Security Agency aka NSA, that confirms that the NSA has Top Secret and Secret documents that are responsive to a FOIA request for material on Seth Rich and his contacts with Julian Assange.

    While the content of these documents remain classified for now, they may provide documentary proof that Seth Rich "dropped boxed" the emails to Julian. If these documents are declassified, a big hole could be blown in the claim that Russia hacked the DNC.

    Keith Harbaugh , 2 months ago

    There is a local angle to the Seth Rich murder story I have not seen discussed. Consider:
    But the circumstances and facts surrounding the murder were strange. Seth was shot in the back. Nothing was taken from his body -- not his watch, not his wallet and not his credit cards.

    The story promulgated by the MSM and Wikipedia is that the Washington DC MPD believe the crime was a botched robbery.

    But attempted robberies are not normally a unique event. If it was a botched robbery, it seems almost certain that the perpetrator(s) would, having failed in this attempt, try again to execute a robbery.

    And use the same MO (modus operandi). But I have seen no reports of other such homicide/robbery combinations. If this was truly a unique event, how would that be possible? Is it really plausible that the perps would kill one person, fail to get anything of value from the homicide, then say "Oh shucks, that didn't work, won't do that again."? There certainly are reports of serial robberies in Washington. Very hard to believe this is an exception.

    Yet there is no discussion of this of which I am aware, and the Wikipedia editors controlling the Wikipedia page for the murder of Seth Rich absolutely prohibit discussion, even on their "Talk Page" of such questions. E.g., their deletion of the question I asked here, under the heading "Why the "conspiracy theory" pejorative?" (which resulted in not only being deleted but a "Sanction" against me for daring to ask the question).

    Eric Newhill , 2 months ago
    PT,

    So is the theory, more or less, that

    1. As a Sanders supporter, Rich was appalled by how the DNC screwed Sanders (and maybe some other things he learned also contributed to his decision to engage in espionage against the DNC)
    2. Rich decides to expose DNC corruption.
    3. Rich downloads the files locally and then passes them to wikileaks.
    4. CIA/NSA is already watching wikileaks due to Manning, etc) and "sees' that Rich has passed files.
    5. Intel filters up to Obama, Brennan, NSA people, Clinton and others that Rich has passed info to Wikileaks and then wikileaks announces and publishes the material.
    6. The DNC + Obama and other leftist deep staters concoct the Russian hacking meme to distract from the content of the material as well as to begin discredit Trump (and perhaps even develop a means of deposing him should he actually be elected).
    7. Rich is the wild card. He could confess that he did it all by himself - and he could create a spectacle by explaining why.
    8. 8. They kill Rich to remove the only serious threat to their nefarious plot....?
    Larry McDonald , 2 months ago
    "Now there is new information, courtesy of the National Security Agency aka NSA, that confirms that the NSA has Top Secret and Secret documents that are responsive to a FOIA request for material on Seth Rich and his contacts with Julian Assange."

    What's your source?

    Publius Tacitus -> Larry McDonald , 2 months ago
    The source is the letter that the lawyer, Ty Clevenger, received from the NSA. I have seen the letter.
    Pat Lang Mod -> Larry McDonald , 2 months ago
    You don't really expect him to tell you, do you?
    KatieWeddington -> Larry McDonald , 2 months ago
    Letter has been released. http://lawflog.com/?attachm...
    Walrus , 2 months ago
    Another case of "Arkancide"?
    jnewman -> Walrus , 2 months ago
    Vince Foster?
    Pat Lang Mod -> Walrus , 2 months ago
    The Serb?
    amuncat -> Walrus , 2 months ago
    There is a connection between Seth and the Pakistani guy who had free rein with a lot of dem congresspeople's computers!!! His protector, Lil Debbie WS!!! There is a Podesta email where he states something to the effect that the person be taught a lesson as an example, guilty or not!

    [Jan 06, 2019] Is Integrity Initiative controls the USA media as well ?

    Jan 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    alaff , Dec 17, 2018 8:20:19 PM | link

    Check it out & add to your nice collection, if you want.

    Russia is:

    * Weaponizing 'technology':
    https://www.axios.com/russia-misinformation-campaigns-us-elections-83428979-b184-4ed6-b153-25ed72d2f993.html

    * Weaponizing 'the continent / Venezuela':
    https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/2018/12/11/russia-places-nuclear-capable-bombers-venezuela/
    https://www.krediblepolitics.com/cs/article/breitbart-russia-places-nuclear-capable-bombers-in-venezuela
    (December 11, 2018)

    * Weaponizing 'Interpol red notices':
    https://www.newsweek.com/russian-interpol-president-putting-fox-charge-hen-house-experts-say-1224160
    (November 20, 2018)

    * Weaponizing 'Heather Nauert':
    https://qz.com/1468983/russian-hackers-are-weaponizing-heather-nauert-a-trump-pick-for-un-ambassador/
    (November 18, 2018)

    * Weaponizing 'Social media hate':
    https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/10/02/the-last-jedi-study-blames-russian-trolls-for-weaponizing-social-media-hate
    (October 2, 2018)

    * Weaponizing 'Debt':
    https://sputniknews.com/us/201806191065559610-us-debt-dollar/
    (June 19, 2018)
    https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/30/investing/russia-us-debt-treasury/index.html
    (July 30, 2018)

    * Weaponizing 'leaks':
    https://www.wired.com/2017/05/russian-hackers-using-tainted-leaks-sow-disinformation/
    (May 25, 2017)

    * Weaponizing 'History':
    https://codastory.com/disinformation-crisis/information-war/weaponizing-history-world-war-ii-memorial-attackers-aim-to-divide-poland-and-ukraine
    (February 27, 2017)

    [Jan 06, 2019] Is BBC a part of Integrity Initiative ?

    Jan 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Jen , Dec 17, 2018 5:57:48 PM | link

    News that the BBC is trying to tie the Gilets Jaunes movement to the Kremlin reaches the Russian Foreign Ministry. Betting that Lavrov, Zakharova and company are all having a laugh as well.

    "Russia to turn to OSCE over reports on BBC's trying to prove Moscow behind 'Yellow Vests'"
    http://tass.com/politics/1036309

    "BBC Seeks To Link 'Yellow Vests' To Kremlin"
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YknwBSjJZWc

    Just when you think British news media couldn't fall any deeper into their rabbit hole ... down, down farther they go into the abyss ... aaarrgghhh ...

    [Jan 06, 2019] "Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project" might well be tied to "Integrity Initiative".

    Notable quotes:
    "... Some of the people at the Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project and the Integrity Initiative Project are banal presstitutes ready to oblige the top clients (management) for a modest pay, whereas others are real criminals whose ideas and orders have been endangering the western civilization -- and humankind at large. ..."
    "... People are building their careers on this garbage! ..."
    Jan 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
    Anaya , Dec 17, 2018 2:52:00 PM | link
    The Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project and the Integrity Initiative Project are run by people.

    These people display a stunning level of immorality by lying and war-mongering.

    Some of the people at the Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project and the Integrity Initiative Project are banal presstitutes ready to oblige the top clients (management) for a modest pay, whereas others are real criminals whose ideas and orders have been endangering the western civilization -- and humankind at large.

    It would be proper to publish a roster of the presstitutes and their idiotic managers working at the Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project and the Integrity Initiative Project

    bjd , Dec 17, 2018 3:43:06 PM | link
    Bipartisan panel: US must prepare for "horrendous," "devastating" war with Russia and China:
    https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/17/bipartisan-panel-us-must-prepare-for-horrendous-devastating-war-with-russia-and-china/

    librul , Dec 17, 2018 11:12:26 AM | link

    About half an hour ago I opened News.Google.Com these are some of their major headlines:
    • Russians sought to recruit 'assets' through social media, Senate told - CNN . one hour ago
    • Russua favored Trump, targeted African-Americans with election meddling, reports say - NBC News . one hour ago
    • New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation's scale and sweep - The Washington Post . today
    • Senate report finds millions of social media posts by Russians aimed at helping Trump, GOP - USA TODAY . 2 hours ago
    • Silicon Valley may have done 'bare minimum' to help Russia investigation, Senate Intel Committee told - CNN . one hour ago

    I opened the one from the Washington Post:

    • Headline: "New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation's scale and sweep"
    • Subtext: "The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to analyze the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee."

    The headline is meant to give the impression that the report was prepared at *The Behest* of the Senate. If you read the article it would have you believe that it *was* written at the behest of the Senate but does not say that specifically.

    Well? Was it? I have tried to track it down and could use some assistance.

    Buried in a CBS NEWS version of the article is this sentence: "The Committee welcomed the research effort without endorsing either report's findings."

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-reports-detail-sophistication-of-russian-influence-efforts-in-u-s/

    USA TODAY says it *was* "Senate Reports". The lead paragraph is this: "WASHINGTON – The Senate released Monday a pair of reports that found Russia engaged in an all-out social media campaign on Donald Trump's behalf during the 2016 election and continued to support him after he took office."

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/12/17/russia-social-media-senate-report/2334382002/

    All these articles reference some of the authors as: "Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project"

    My question is whether "Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project" is tied to "Integrity Initiative".

    William Bowles , Dec 17, 2018 11:35:31 AM | link
    And the BBC, had this to say today:
    • Russia 'meddled in all big social media' in US election, says report
    • Russia allegedly used every major social media platform to influence the 2016 US election, a report claims .
    • Research is expected to say https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46590890 (my emph. WB)
    • The report was put together by University of Oxford's Computational Propaganda Project and the social network analysis firm Graphika.

    https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/

    https://www.graphika.com/solutions/

    People are building their careers on this garbage!

    Zanon , Dec 17, 2018 3:49:51 PM | link
    "Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project" is funded by European union!

    See last block of text here: http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-11-03-top-democracy-award-fake-news-research-project.

    Zanon , Dec 17, 2018 5:03:20 PM | link
    This is what it is all about: Money :

    William Bowles said at #16

    "People are building their careers on this garbage!"

    Josh said at #60

    "What would be particularly interesting is also to see how the money flow is helping the (we all know it) struggling news organizations. I believe many of these quasi-journalists are going hat in hand to various agencies that have some of that propaganda money. Most of them would need to work for weeks getting paid a measly amount, but doing a couple of these anti-Russia pieces gets them paid well. I certainly think the Guardian has such an arrangement with MI5/6.
    The recipe is using the wonderwords like Putin, Russia, 'weaponizing', hackers, cyber, fake news..."

    [Jan 05, 2019] 'Operation Iris' more New documents tie Integrity Initiative to spin of Skripal affair

    Notable quotes:
    "... "Institute for Statecraft," ..."
    "... "mainstream & social media analysis" ..."
    "... "Operation Iris." ..."
    "... "Russian trolls" ..."
    "... "ban RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK." ..."
    "... "threat Russia poses." ..."
    "... "good sources of further information" ..."
    "... "Makes you think " ..."
    "... Like this story? Share it with a friend! ..."
    Jan 05, 2019 | www.rt.com

    Hackers who leaked documents from the Integrity Initiative, a shadowy outfit funded by the UK government, claim they show its connections to the March 2018 alleged poisoning attack in Salisbury and proposed actions against Russia. The Integrity Initiative (II) was set up in 2015 by the equally shadowy "Institute for Statecraft," according to the documents published online in November by hackers calling themselves a part of the Anonymous collective. While Anonymous has denied the group was behind the leak, the Institute confirmed the authenticity of the first batch of documents.

    The hackers posted a fresh batch of documents purportedly from the Initiative and the Institute on Friday, hinting that both outfits had connections with Western media coverage of the March 2018 alleged poisoning of former Russian spy Sergey Skripal, and the actions against Russia taken subsequently by the UK government and its allies.

    What role did #IntegrityInitiative play in the #Skripal affair? I looked for answers from a brief look at the newly released files. More very much to follow.... https://t.co/cH2gXItRy7 #SergeiSkripal #Disinformation #Propaganda #InformationWar

    -- Kit Klarenberg (@KitKlarenberg) January 4, 2019

    One of the documents is the confidential report by Harod Associates, a company hired by the Initiative to conduct "mainstream & social media analysis" of the Skripal scandal coverage. The entire undertaking was dubbed "Operation Iris."

    Among those who found themselves named "Russian trolls" and Kremlin agents in the report were Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa and a gentleman from Kent who goes by Ian56 on Twitter.

    #IntegrityInitiative examples of Logical, Critical Thinking & Objective Analysis by yours truly Ian56. https://t.co/mwGEOUBjaX

    They didn't even include my best ones and they didn't show the pic that went with each tweet.
    I wonder why? #Skripal #Novichok #FalseFlag pic.twitter.com/Zq8W9iJshk

    -- Ian56 (@Ian56789) January 4, 2019

    Wanna see something funny? 🤣
    "The Insider" - the same "Insider", that was credited by Bellingcat with "outing Boshirov and Petrovas GRU agents" - has investigated and found me guilty of passing Putin orders to French yellow jackets. I kid you not. https://t.co/I3X4ypylAP

    -- Ruslana Boshirova (@ValLisitsa) January 4, 2019

    Another document , dated March 11, 2018, contains a "Narrative" of the Skripal incident, blaming Russia and President Vladimir Putin personally and containing a number of recommended actions, such as boycotting the 2018 World Cup, starting campaigns to boycott the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany and block Russian access to SWIFT international banking system, but also to "ban RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK."

    Other suggestions include propaganda directed at British Muslims "to publicise what has been happening with their Muslim brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion" (sic) and getting members of Parliament to publicize the "threat Russia poses."

    Also on rt.com Was 'Institute for Statecraft' behind Ofcom's targeting of RT? Sleuths point to yes

    The document dump also contains the April 14, 2018 email from Andy Pryce, whom the hackers describe as "chief propaganda man" at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, containing the official government narrative of the Skripal affair and the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria. Pryce ends the email by recommending "good sources of further information" on alleged Russian propaganda, including the Atlantic Council's DFR Lab, Bellingcat and Stopfake.

    Documents obtained and published by the hackers also show connections between Skripal's recruiter and neighbor Pablo Miller, the Institute for Statecraft, and the so-called rescue group White Helmets, created in militant-held areas of Syria by a former British official in 2013.

    It was already known that Pablo Miller, the MI6 handler of Sergej Skripal, attended #IntegrityInitiative meetings. There is now more material to draw a connection. It is indeed possible that IfS/II initiated the affair. https://t.co/Xv29Uk9z3e

    -- Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) January 4, 2019

    There are also several invoices from Dan Kaszeta of the Institute for Statecraft, for articles he wrote as supposedly a chemical weapons expert advancing the Institute's narrative on both the Skripals and Syria.

    EXPLOSIVE: @DanKaszeta of @Strongpoint_UK invoiced @InitIntegrity #IntegrityInitiative £2,276.80 in July 2018 during the #Skripal #Novichok affair for writing articles on the subjects of poison gas; nerve agents; treatment; nerve agent persistency & #PortonDown @RTUKproducer pic.twitter.com/V35PemrN9E

    -- Fvnk (@WhatTheFvnk) January 4, 2019

    The most intriguing, however, is a document from 2015 , in which Victor Madeira of the Institute for Statecraft proposes a series of measures targeting Russia, including mass expulsion of diplomats along the lines of 1971's Operation Foot. One of the actions by the UK, US and several other NATO countries in the wake of claims that Russia used a nerve agent against Skripal was a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats.

    Former MP George Galloway noted that the documents written long before the Salisbury events call for arrests of RT and Sputnik contributors (such as himself), adding, "Makes you think "

    So: #IntegrityInitiative funded by the British Govt called for the arrest of people like me like @afshinrattansi @JohnWight1 @NeilClark66 et al in the event of an "incident" like the #Skripal affair. Written incidentally before the #Salisbury events. Makes you think... @RT_com

    -- George Galloway (@georgegalloway) January 4, 2019

    Previously published documents have revealed the Initiative and the Institute as being involved in widespread propaganda operations targeting not only foreign countries and media outlets – as one might expect from someone doing the bidding of the Foreign Office – but also domestic political figures , such as Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

    Like this story? Share it with a friend!

    [Jan 04, 2019] Eric Dubelier emerges as Robert Mueller's top courtroom adversary by Rowan Scarborough

    Notable quotes:
    "... Mr. Dubelier has depicted Mr. Mueller as a rogue prosecutor willfully ignoring Justice Department guidelines. ..."
    "... He has accused Mr. Mueller of creating a "make-believe crime" against his Russian client, Concord Management and Consulting, which is accused of funding a troll farm that interfered in the 2016 election. ..."
    "... " Mr. Dubelier is exactly right on Mr. Mueller 's motives and tactics," said Sidney Powell, whose book "License to Lie" exposes years of Justice Department scandals. "His lieutenant Weissmann is the poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct and has no regard for the facts or the law. He will make up whatever he wants to win, and the entire like-minded team views as an accomplishment everyone whose life they destroy in pursuit of their objective." ..."
    "... The Washington defense attorney seemed to catch the Mueller team off guard by immediately demanding disclosure of evidence. Disclosure, Mr. Dubelier argues, is a sacred legal right in America, even for the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, Concord 's chief with close ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin. ..."
    "... Mr. Dubelier argues that people are free to create fake accounts. It's done all the time, he says. "When it comes to political speech, one is free to pretend to be whomever he or she wants to be and to say whatever he or she wants to say," he said at an Oct. 15 hearing. ..."
    "... "That's why in this case this special counsel made up a crime to fit the facts that they have," Mr. Dubelier said. "And that's the fundamental danger with the entire special counsel concept: that they operate outside the parameters of the Department of Justice in a way that is absolutely inconsistent with the consistent behavior of the Department of Justice in these cases for the past 30 years." ..."
    "... But he wasn't done. There is an ongoing battle over Concord 's access to "sensitive" evidence that Mr. Mueller won't let its officers see because they are Russians with ties to Mr. Putin. Mr. Dubelier has expressed exasperation. "This equates to the burden of preparing for trial without any ability to discuss the evidence with the client who is to be put on trial," he said. "This has never happened before in reported case law because the notion is too ludicrous to contemplate." ..."
    "... On another matter, Mr. Dubelier is accusing the Mueller team of skullduggery. Judge Friedrich last summer approved the prosecutor's request for a "firewall counsel" to review evidence for its national security implications. ..."
    "... In another pre-trial argument, Mr. Dubelier is the first defense attorney to ask this question: Why isn't British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who was paid by Democrats to obtain anti- Trump information from the Kremlin to influence 2016 voting, being investigated by the Justice Department for election interference just like the Russians? ..."
    "... Mr. Steele didn't register under the Justice Department 's Foreign Agent Registration Act, under which Mr. Mueller has brought charges against a number of defendants, including the Concord team. Judge Friedrich rejected Mr. Dubelier 's argument of "selective prosecution." ..."
    Jan 01, 2019 | www.washingtontimes.com

    A former federal prosecutor has emerged as special counsel Robert Mueller 's most persistent courtroom critic. It's not Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney and now President Trump 's ubiquitous defender, or any of cable TV's prosecutors-turned-pundits. He is Eric A. Dubelier , a litigator for the Reed Smith law firm who knows international law and the D.C. playing field. He served eight years prosecuting cases as a Justice Department assistant U.S. attorney in Washington. He refers to his former employer as "the real Justice Department ," implying that Mr. Mueller 's team is something less. His biting remarks have come in months of court filings and oral arguments. Mr. Dubelier has depicted Mr. Mueller as a rogue prosecutor willfully ignoring Justice Department guidelines.

    He has accused Mr. Mueller of creating a "make-believe crime" against his Russian client, Concord Management and Consulting, which is accused of funding a troll farm that interfered in the 2016 election.

    So far, the federal judge presiding over the case has sided with Mr. Mueller .

    Mr. Dubelier charges that the Mueller team violated the confidentially of Concord 's counter evidence while hiding documents Concord needs for its defense. The prosecutor wants to "whisper secrets to the judge," Mr. Dubelier says, as Mr. Mueller is calculating the "short-term political value of a conviction" and not worrying about an appeals court defeat years later. An example: In a Dec. 20 motion, Mr. Dubelier resurrected a botched case spearheaded by Mr. Mueller 's top prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann.

    Mr. Weissmann headed the Justice Department 's Enron task force nearly two decades ago. He won a conviction against the accounting firm Arthur Andersen for shredding the defunct energy firm's financial documents. Years later, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction. The 2005 decision effectively said that Andersen, by then out of business and its 28,000 employees gone, hadn't committed a crime.

    "Mr. Dubelier is exactly right on Mr. Mueller 's motives and tactics," said Sidney Powell, whose book "License to Lie" exposes years of Justice Department scandals. "His lieutenant Weissmann is the poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct and has no regard for the facts or the law. He will make up whatever he wants to win, and the entire like-minded team views as an accomplishment everyone whose life they destroy in pursuit of their objective."

    'Made up a crime to fit the facts'

    Concord Management and Consulting is an unlikely client. Legal observers opined that when Mr. Mueller brought charges against various Russians who hacked computers and trolled the 2016 election, no defendant would travel the nearly 5,000 miles to show up for trial.

    No defendant has personally arrived. But Concord did appear quickly after the February indictment. Of 28 Russian individuals and firms charged with election interference by Mr. Mueller , only Concord has appeared in U.S. District Court, in this instance in the person of the aggressive Mr. Dubelier .

    The Washington defense attorney seemed to catch the Mueller team off guard by immediately demanding disclosure of evidence. Disclosure, Mr. Dubelier argues, is a sacred legal right in America, even for the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, Concord 's chief with close ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

    Concord is accused of an elaborate conspiracy with another Russian operation, the Internet Research Agency. The indictment accuses Concord of providing the troll farm $1.2 million monthly to defraud the U.S. The two firms set up fake personas and false Twitter accounts, Facebook ads and other social media posts mostly to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump .

    In a separate case, Mr. Mueller brought charges in July against 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking Democratic computers, stealing emails and funneling them to three websites for distribution.

    Mr. Dubelier argues that people are free to create fake accounts. It's done all the time, he says. "When it comes to political speech, one is free to pretend to be whomever he or she wants to be and to say whatever he or she wants to say," he said at an Oct. 15 hearing.

    "That's why in this case this special counsel made up a crime to fit the facts that they have," Mr. Dubelier said. "And that's the fundamental danger with the entire special counsel concept: that they operate outside the parameters of the Department of Justice in a way that is absolutely inconsistent with the consistent behavior of the Department of Justice in these cases for the past 30 years."

    Mr. Dubelier lost that argument with U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, who rejected his bid to dismiss the case.

    But he wasn't done. There is an ongoing battle over Concord 's access to "sensitive" evidence that Mr. Mueller won't let its officers see because they are Russians with ties to Mr. Putin. Mr. Dubelier has expressed exasperation. "This equates to the burden of preparing for trial without any ability to discuss the evidence with the client who is to be put on trial," he said. "This has never happened before in reported case law because the notion is too ludicrous to contemplate."

    What Mr. Mueller has turned over is often irrelevant to mounting a defense, such as promotion emails for airlines and personal naked selfie photographs, Mr. Dubelier said in a December filing. The special counsel is keeping most relevant information between himself and Judge Friedrich, excluding Mr. Dubelier .

    Why no probe of dossier writer?

    Mr. Mueller won the argument over "sensitive" material. He now wants to hold closed sessions with the judge over classified information -- again, without Mr. Dubelier .

    Mr. Dubelier responded in a Dec. 27 filing: "The Special Counsel has made up a crime that has never been prosecuted before in the history of the United States, and now seeks to make up secret procedures for communicating ex parte [meaning no defense counsel present] to the court which have never been employed in any reported criminal case not involving classified discovery."

    The defense attorney admitted his motion is "likely fruitless" because Judge Friedrich previously has ruled against Concord . Many documents are in Russian, a culturally different language than English. One Russian word, Mr. Dubelier says, "can be translated into the English words 'chief,' 'boss' or 'chef' -- a distinction that is critically important since international media often refers to Mr. Prigozhin as 'Putin's chef.'"

    On another matter, Mr. Dubelier is accusing the Mueller team of skullduggery. Judge Friedrich last summer approved the prosecutor's request for a "firewall counsel" to review evidence for its national security implications.

    Mr. Dubelier said he submitted evidence to the firewall lawyer only to see it fall into the hands of Mr. Mueller 's team, who began using it to further investigate Concord . "Surely a remarkable coincidence," Mr. Dubelier said.

    In another pre-trial argument, Mr. Dubelier is the first defense attorney to ask this question: Why isn't British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who was paid by Democrats to obtain anti- Trump information from the Kremlin to influence 2016 voting, being investigated by the Justice Department for election interference just like the Russians?

    Mr. Steele didn't register under the Justice Department 's Foreign Agent Registration Act, under which Mr. Mueller has brought charges against a number of defendants, including the Concord team. Judge Friedrich rejected Mr. Dubelier 's argument of "selective prosecution."

    Mr. Mueller 's counter-motion boils down to this: Mr. Prigozhin is a criminal fugitive who blatantly interfered in the U.S. election and is not entitled to sensitive national security information he would share with the Kremlin intelligence. In a new battleground, the Mueller team wants to show the judge top secret material to persuade her to keep it from the defense. "Disclosure of such information could cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security," the Mueller filing stated. Judge Friedrich ruled in June that Mr. Prigozhin is prohibited from viewing non-classified sensitive information that details how the government obtained evidence.

    The Mueller team argued: "Discovery in this case contains sensitive information about investigative techniques and cooperating witnesses that goes well beyond the information that will be disclosed at trial Information within this case's discovery identifies sources, methods, and techniques used to identify the foreign actors behind these interference operations the government has particularized concerns about discovery in this case being disclosed to Russian intelligence services."

    Mr. Mueller says that as long as Mr. Prigozhin, whom the U.S. sanctioned and then indicted for election interference, remains in Russia, he isn't entitled to see sensitive evidence.

    Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC.

    [Jan 03, 2019] Marcy Wheeler- On -Fake News- -

    Notable quotes:
    "... By Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including the Guardian, Salon, and the Progressive, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial. Originally published at emptywheel ..."
    "... The Count of Monte-Cristo ..."
    "... . Especially Postman's succinct page and a half referential FOREWARD. Now there is a formative scripture or holy writ pre-sage-ing the DATA\CONTENT SWAMP. ..."
    "... Mitch Ritter\Non-Aligned Paradigm Shifters Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa Media Discussion List ..."
    Jan 03, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Marcy Wheeler: On "Fake News" Posted on January 16, 2017 by Yves Smith

    Yves here. Marcy points out how what is considered to be "news" has changed greatly over time, and that the requirement that news be objective is recent and marketing-driven.

    This essay covers a great deal of important ground. I'd like to add one topic, which is the role of propaganda. Even though organizations have done all sorts of evangelizing, the use of the media and social networks of the day for that purpose is relatively recent. Alex Carey in his book Taking the Risk Out of Democracy dates it to the early 1900s. One early, successful campaign led by the National Association of Manufacturers, already a leader in campaigning against organized labor, was to counter the backlash against immigration, which was then seen as a threat to American values and communities. One of their initiatives was institutionalizing "Americanization Day," later rebranded as "Independence Day."

    As we've discussed before, the first full-bore government-sponsored propaganda campaign took place in World War I. The Creel Committee, an agency of the Federal government officially called the Committee on Public Information used all the communication vehicles of its day, not just newspapers. An overview from Wikipedia:

    The committee used newsprint, posters, radio, telegraph, cable and movies to broadcast its message. It recruited about 75,000 "Four Minute Men," volunteers who spoke about the war at social events for an ideal length of four minutes, considering that the average human attention span was judged at the time to be four minutes. They covered the draft, rationing, war bond drives, victory gardens and why America was fighting. It was estimated that by the end of the war, they had made more than 7.5 million speeches to 314 million people in 5,200 communities. They were advised to keep their message positive, always use their own words and avoid "hymns of hate." For ten days in May 1917, the Four Minute Men were expected to promote "Universal Service by Selective Draft" in advance of national draft registration on June 5, 1917.

    The CPI staged events designed for specific ethnic groups. For instance, Irish-American tenor John McCormack sang at Mount Vernon before an audience representing Irish-American organizations. The Committee also targeted the American worker and, endorsed by Samuel Gompers, filled factories and offices with posters designed to promote the critical role of American labor in the success of the war effort.

    The CPI's activities were so thorough that historians later stated, using the example of a typical midwestern American farm family, that

    Every item of war news they saw -- in the country weekly, in magazines, or in the city daily picked up occasionally in the general store -- was not merely officially approved information but precisely the same kind that millions of their fellow citizens were getting at the same moment. Every war story had been censored somewhere along the line -- at the source, in transit, or in the newspaper offices in accordance with 'voluntary' rules established by the CPI.

    The Creel Committee was able to turn America from being firmly pacifist to being eager to fight the evil Germans in a mere 18 months. In Serbia, a concerted propaganda campaign was able to turn public polls radically in a mere six weeks.

    In other words, the hysteria about fake news appears to be members of the officialdom realizing that their traditional propaganda channels don't work because too many people get information on the Internet, and they can no longer orchestrate a Mighty Wurlitzer of unified opinion. This may seem obvious but surprisingly few people are willing to say that in simple terms. The reflex of government opinion managers and their media allies is to shut down or delegitimate offending outlets. But there are too many, not just in the US but overseas, for them to do that other than by severely curtailing Internet publication. Are they prepared to go the route of the Chinese government in terms of restricting foreign access and censoring domestic writers? That's the end game if they are serious about stopping what TPTB deems to be "fake news".

    By Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including the Guardian, Salon, and the Progressive, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial. Originally published at emptywheel

    I've been getting into multiple Twitter fights about the term "fake news" of late, a topic about which I feel strongly but which I don't have time to reargue over and over. So here are the reasons I find the term "fake news" to be counterproductive, even aside from the way Washington Post magnified it with the PropOrNot campaign amidst a series of badly reported articles on Russia that failed WaPo's own standards of "fake news."

    Most people who use the term "fake news" seem to be fetishizing something they call "news." By that, they usually mean the pursuit of "the truth" within an editor-and-reporter system of "professional" news reporting. Even in 2017, they treat that term "news" as if it escapes all biases, with some still endorsing the idea that "objectivity" is the best route to "truth," even in spite of the way "objectivity" has increasingly imposed a kind of both-sides false equivalence that the right has used to move the Overton window in recent years.

    I've got news (heh) for you America. What we call "news" is one temporally and geographically contingent genre of what gets packaged as "news." Much of the world doesn't produce the kind of news we do, and for good parts of our own history, we didn't either. Objectivity was invented as a marketing ploy. It is true that during a period of elite consensus, news that we treated as objective succeeded in creating a unifying national narrative of what most white people believed to be true, and that narrative was tremendously valuable to ensure the working of our democracy. But even there, "objectivity" had a way of enforcing centrism. It excluded most women and people of color and often excluded working class people. It excluded the "truth" of what the US did overseas. It thrived in a world of limited broadcast news outlets. In that sense, the golden age of objective news depended on a great deal of limits to the marketplace of ideas, largely chosen by the gatekeeping function of white male elitism.

    And, probably starting at the moment Walter Cronkite figured out the Vietnam War was a big myth, that elite narrative started developing cracks.

    But several things have disrupted what we fetishize as news since them. Importantly, news outlets started demanding major profits, which changed both the emphasis on reporting and the measure of success. Cable news, starting especially with Fox but definitely extending to MSNBC, aspired to achieve buzz, and even explicitly political outcomes, bringing US news much closer to what a lot of advanced democracies have -- politicized news.

    And all that's before 2002, what I regard as a key year in this history. Not only was traditional news struggling in the face of heightened profit expectations even as the Internet undercut the press' traditional revenue model. But at a time of crisis in the financial model of the "news," the press catastrophically blew the Iraq War, and did so at a time when people like me were able to write "news" outside of the strictures of the reporter-and-editor arrangement.

    I actually think, in an earlier era, the government would have been able to get away with its Iraq War lies, because there wouldn't be outlets documenting the errors, and there wouldn't have been ready alternatives to a model that proved susceptible to manipulation. There might eventually have been a Cronkite moment in the Iraq War, too, but it would have been about the conduct of the war, not also about the gaming of the "news" process to create the war. But because there was competition, we saw the Iraq War as a journalistic failure when we didn't see earlier journalistic complicity in American foreign policy as such.

    Since then, of course, the underlying market has continued to change. Optimistically, new outlets have arisen. Some of them -- perhaps most notably HuffPo and BuzzFeed and Gawker before Peter Thiel killed it -- have catered to the financial opportunities of the Internet, paying for real journalism in part with clickbait stories that draw traffic (which is just a different kind of subsidy than the family-owned project that traditional newspapers often relied on, and these outlets also rely on other subsidies). I'm pretty excited by some of the journalism BuzzFeed is doing right now, but it's worth reflecting their very name nods to clickbait.

    More importantly, the "center" of our national -- indeed, global -- discourse shifted from elite reporter-and-editor newspapers to social media, and various companies -- almost entirely American -- came to occupy dominant positions in that economy. That comes with the good and the bad. It permits the formulation of broader networks; it permits crisis on the other side of the globe to become news over here, in some but not all spaces, it permits women and people of color to engage on an equal footing with people previously deemed the elite (though very urgent digital divide issues still leave billions outside this discussion). It allows our spooks to access information that Russia needs to hack to get with a few clicks of a button. It also means the former elite narrative has to compete with other bubbles, most of which are not healthy and many of which are downright destructive. It fosters abuse.

    But the really important thing is that the elite reporter-and-editor oligopoly was replaced with a marketplace driven by a perverse marriage of our human psychology and data manipulation (and often, secret algorithms). Even assuming net neutrality, most existing discourse exists in that marketplace. That reality has negative effects on everything, from financially strapped reporter-and-editor outlets increasingly chasing clicks to Macedonian teenagers inventing stories to make money to attention spans that no longer get trained for long reads and critical thinking.

    The other thing to remember about this historical narrative is that there have always been stories pretending to present the real world that were not in fact the real world. Always. Always always always. Indeed, there are academic arguments that our concept of "fiction" actually arises out of a necessary legal classification for what gets published in the newspaper. "Facts" were insults of the king you could go to prison for. "Fiction" was stories about kings that weren't true and therefore wouldn't get you prison time (obviously, really authoritarian regimes don't honor this distinction, which is an important lesson in their contingency). I have been told that fact/fiction moment didn't happen in all countries, and it happened at different times in different countries (roughly tied, in my opinion, to the moment when the government had to sustain legitimacy via the press).

    But even after that fact/fiction moment, you would always see factual stories intermingling with stuff so sensational that we would never regard it as true. But such sensational not-true stories definitely helped to sell newspapers. Most people don't know this because we generally learn a story via which our fetishized objective news is the end result of a process of earlier news, but news outlets -- at least in the absence of heavy state censorship -- have always been very heterogeneous.

    As many of you know, a big part of my dissertation covered actual fiction in newspapers. The Count of Monte-Cristo , for example, was published in France's then equivalent of the WSJ. It wasn't the only story about an all powerful figure with ties to Napoleon Bonaparte that delivered justice that appeared in newspapers of the day. Every newspaper offered competing versions, and those sold newspapers at a moment of increasing industrialization of the press in France. But even at a time when the "news" section of the newspaper presented largely curations of parliamentary debates, everything else ran the gamut from "fiction," to sensational stuff (often reporting on technology or colonies), to columns to advertisements pretending to be news.

    After 1848 and 1851, the literary establishment put out alarmed calls to discipline the literary sphere, which led to changes that made such narratives less accessible to the kind of people who might overthrow a king. That was the "fictional narrative" panic of the time, one justified by events of 1848.

    Anyway, if you don't believe me that there has always been fake news, just go to a checkout line and read the National Enquirer, which sometimes does cover people like Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel. "But people know that's fake news!" people say. Not all, and not all care. It turns out, some people like to consume fictional narratives (I have actually yet to see analysis of how many people don't realize or care that today's Internet fake news is not true). In fact, everyone likes to consume fictional narratives -- it's a fundamental part of what makes us human -- but some of us believe there are norms about whether fictional narratives should be allowed to influence how we engage in politics.

    Not that that has ever stopped people from letting religion -- a largely fictional narrative -- dictate political decisions.

    So to sum up this part of my argument: First, the history of journalism is about the history of certain market conditions, conditions which always get at least influenced by the state, but which in so-called capitalist countries also tend to produce bottle necks of power. In the 50s, it was the elite. Now it's Silicon Valley. And that's true not just here! The bottle-neck of power for much of the world is Silicon Valley. To understand what dictates the kinds of stories you get from a particular media environment, you need to understand where the bottle-necks are. Today's bottle-neck has created both what people like to call "fake news" and a whole bunch of other toxins.

    But also, there has never been a time in media where not-true stories didn't comingle with true stories, and at many times in history the lines between them were not clear to many consumers. Plus, not-true stories, of a variety of types, can often have a more powerful influence than true ones (think about how much our national security state likes series like 24). Humans are wired for narrative, not for true or false narrative.

    Which brings us to what some people are calling "fake news" -- as if both "fake" and "news" aren't just contingent terms across the span of media -- and insisting it has never existed before. These people suggest the advent of deliberately false narratives, produced both by partisans, entrepreneurs gaming ad networks, as well as state actors trying to influence our politics, narratives that feed on human proclivity for sensationalism (though stories from this year showed Trump supporters had more of this than Hillary supporters) served via the Internet, are a new and unique threat, and possibly the biggest threat in our media environment right now.

    Let me make clear: I do think it's a threat, especially in an era where local trusted news is largely defunct. I think it is especially concerning because powers of the far right are using it to great effect. But I think pretending this is a unique moment in history -- aside from the characteristics of the marketplace -- obscures the areas (aside from funding basic education and otherwise fostering critical thinking) that can most effectively combat it. I especially encourage doing what we can to disrupt the bottle-neck -- one that happens to be in Silicon Valley -- that plays on human nature. Google, Facebook, and Germany have all taken initial steps which may limit the toxins that get spread via a very American bottle-neck.

    I'm actually more worried about the manipulation of which stories get fed by big data. Trump claims to have used it to drive down turnout; and the first he worked with is part of a larger information management company. The far right is probably achieving more with these tailored messages than Vladimir Putin is with his paid trolls.

    The thing is: the antidote to both of these problems are to fix the bottle-neck.

    But I also think that the most damaging non-true news story of the year was Bret Baier's claim that Hillary was going to be indicted, as even after it was retracted it magnified the damage of Jim Comey's interventions. I always raise that in Twitter debates, and people tell me oh that's just bad journalism not fake news. It was a deliberate manipulation of the news delivery system (presumably by FBI Agents) in the same way the manipulation of Facebooks algorithms feeds so-called fake news. But it had more impact because more people saw it and people may retain news delivered as news more. It remains a cinch to manipulate the reporter-and-editor news process (particularly in an era driven by clicks and sensationalism and scoops), and that is at least as major a threat to democracy as non-elites consuming made up stories about the Pope.

    I'll add that there are special categories of non-factual news that deserve notice. Much stock reporting, especially in the age of financialization, is just made up hocus pocus designed to keep the schlubs whom the elite profit off of in the market. And much reporting on our secret foreign policy deliberately reports stuff the reporter knows not to be true. David Sanger's recent amnesia of his own reporting on StuxNet is a hilarious example of this, as is all the Syria reporting that pretends we haven't intervened there. Frankly, even aside from the more famous failures, a lot of Russian coverage obscures reality, which discredits reports on what is a serious issue. I raise these special categories because they are the kind of non-true news that elites endorse, and as such don't raise the alarm that Macedonian teenagers making a buck do.

    The latest panic about "fake news" -- Trump's labeling of CNN and Buzzfeed as such for disseminating the dossier that media outlets chose not to disseminate during the election -- suffers from some of the same characteristics, largely because parts of it remain shrouded in clandestine networks (and because the provenance remains unclear). If American power relies (as it increasingly does) on secrets and even outright lies, who's to blame the proles for inventing their own narratives, just like the elite do?

    Two final points.

    First, underlying most of this argument is an argument about what happens when you subject the telling of true stories to certain conditions of capitalism. There is often a tension in this process, as capitalism may make "news" (and therefore full participation in democracy) available to more people, but to popularize that news, businesses do things that taint the elite's idealized notion of what true story telling in a democracy should be. Furthermore, at no moment in history I'm aware of has there been a true "open" market for news. It is always limited by the scarcity of outlets and bandwidth, by laws, by media ownership patterns, and by the historically contingent bottle-necks that dictate what kind of news may be delivered most profitably. One reason I loathe the term "fake news" is because its users think the answer lies in non-elite consumers or in producers and not in the marketplace itself, a marketplace created in and largely still benefitting the US. If "fake news" is a problem, then it's a condemnation of the marketplace of ideas largely created by the US and elites in the US need to attend to that.

    Finally, one reason there is such a panic about "fake news" is because the western ideology of neoliberalism has failed. It has led to increased authoritarianism, decreased qualify of life in developed countries (but not parts of Africa and other developing nations), and it has led to serial destabilizing wars along with the refugee crises that further destabilize Europe. It has failed in the same way that communism failed before it, but the elites backing it haven't figured this out yet. I'll write more on this (Ian Welsh has been doing good work here ). All details of the media environment aside, this has disrupted the value-laden system in which "truth" exists, creating a great deal of panic and confusion among the elite that expects itself to lead the way out of this morass. Part of what we're seeing in "fake news" panic stems from that, as well as a continued disinterest in accountability for the underlying policies -- the Iraq War and the Wall Street crash and aftermath especially -- enabled by failures in our elite media environment. But our media environment is likely to be contested until such time as a viable ideology forms to replace failed neoliberalism. Sadly, that ideology will be Trumpism unless the elite starts making the world a better place for average folks. Instead, the elite is policing discourse-making by claiming other things -- the bad true and false narratives it, itself, doesn't propagate -- as illegitimate.

    "Fake news" is a problem. But it is a minor problem compared to our other discursive problems.

    epynonymous , January 16, 2017 at 7:06 am

    Just because I'm really on a tear, has anyone seen the Late Show where Colbert spends 12 minutes on Trump 'Golden Shower' rumors?

    The piece even runs mainstream TV headlines about a "rift" between Trump and the intelligence agencies while never explaining a thing.

    The inside angle on such 'rumors' (Russian rumors, I presume looking at you DNC ) is fit to be reported as fact in this case.

    clarky90 , January 16, 2017 at 4:40 pm

    I view the Main Stream Media as merely, Shopping Channels . They will sell you anything that their advertisers pay for. A FOREIGN WAR, a new pillow, a powerful vacuum cleaner, a CIVIL WAR, six-pack abdominals, or miracle pimple cream. If someone pays them, they will push it.

    It is a form of prostitution.

    NYT and Washington Post are what is called "junk mail" . Innocent trees died .to bring you these Great (never to be repeated) Post Christmas War Specials!!!!

    jabawocky , January 16, 2017 at 7:49 am

    'In other words, the hysteria about fake news appears to be members of the officialdom realizing that their traditional propaganda channels don't work because too many people get information on the Internet, and they can no longer orchestrate a Mighty Wurlitzer of unified opinion.'

    Bang on Yves. And I would add that if you run a propaganda machine, and are a little paranoid, any 'unauthorised' story on the web looks like someone else's propaganda.

    Its wrong to put all this down to internet news however. Adam Curtis' 'Bitter Lake' is a must-see on this topic. Just like in 1980s Soviet Union where the stories of Russian greatness were so obviously contradicted by the experience of ordinary Russians of a failing state, the fakery of the war on terror propaganda has worn away our trust in the Mighty Wurlitzer. Curtis linked the cultural collapse of the Soviet Union intrinsically to the failure of the war in Afghanistan and the mirror it held up to the supposed values of Soviet Society, as trumpeted by their version of the Mighty Wurlitzer. And maybe he's right.

    1933 Germany, 1989 Sovient Union, 2016 USA. All three stemmed from failures of the Mighty Wurlitzer. The big question is whether we will long for it back.

    Clive , January 16, 2017 at 8:44 am

    One for Curtis hardcore fans only (he really stretched his already tenuous hold on the conventions of documentary making in this one) but his latest, HyperNormalisation , takes the themes you refer to in your comment above and expands on them to explain how we got to Fake News.

    Well worth a watch, if you can access it.

    Robert Hahl , January 16, 2017 at 2:01 pm

    Full documentary: HyperNormalisation 2016

    lyman alpha blob , January 16, 2017 at 8:23 am

    Same as it ever was.

    To go a little farther back, this book Infamous Scribblers about what passed as journalism back in the 18th century is a good read.

    equote , January 16, 2017 at 8:38 am

    http://www.dallasnews.com/business/stock-market/2017/01/16/will-public-company-go-way-dodo-bird

    This doesn't read like fake news, but I would like to read nakedcapitalism's views on the trend, if it exists, and the implications for society etc.

    NotTimothyGeithner , January 16, 2017 at 9:14 am

    The last CEO of the company, a publicly traded company, where my dad worked before the sale to GE told my dad that in the future companies can't go public if they don't want to work for Wall Street wolves. This was around '95. Dad still goes to company reunions. Those weirdos liked their jobs.

    Of course, the longer trend is business formation related. The Internet and social media booms are over, and those were the new IPOs of the last 20 years. The ends of growth are the real issues.

    JTMcPhee , January 16, 2017 at 11:50 am

    I had an epiphany of sorts, at a gathering of my father's friends at a celebration of dad's 80th birthday. These were guys he worked with (and secretaries too) for 46 years, peddling Wrigley's various brands to the public. He was sales promotion chief, coming up from selling boxes of Spearmint and Doublemint and Juicyfruit and "P.K.s" to little drug stores and gas stations and general stores all over New England and New Jersey from his junky Model A. I once said a lot of very unkind "Teenagers know everything" insults to my old man about his lifetime investment in his company, the job-with GOOD-benefits-and-a GREAT-defined-benefit-pension that kept mom and 3 kids fed and clothed and educated and roofed over and all that -- though he also did a gig job, doing advertising for a bunch of local businesses, to pay for "extras," and he and mom did pretty good with a small stake in an investment club when the 'market" was less a rigged casino racket. Illuminating to see things with new eyes

    These people held each other in a family kind of affection, complete, of course, with jealousies and power plays and all the usual human stuff, but with an underlying sense that they were "A COMPANY OF MEN," and that the legal business entity was THEIR creature, not the other way around. Even if they were busily "manufacturing demand" and making dentists happy with all the dental damage from sugar. And they were proud of their products, which back then were made from chicle, a natural, sort of sustainable base gum, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicle , now supplanted by a petroeum-based "meta-product.". Wrigley was a family, privately held, then publicly traded, regular-dividend-paying "company of men," and is now just a brand swallowed by that post-supra-national-unnatural entity, "Mars, Inc." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrigley_Company (My mommy told me I should never swallow my gum )

    I keep hoping that somewhere in all of this, the stuff that gets discussed and nattered about here every day, there is a clue to finding a particular butterfly wing that might be beaten in just the right way to catalyze something in the way of "Golden Rule For All," trumping our ape-person predilections and heritage

    readerOfTeaLeaves , January 16, 2017 at 12:56 pm

    This is such a lovely comment, and says so much about a time when business was a way to develop prosperous, solid, long term relationships, rather than being used as a social cudgel [see also: bailouts, foreclosures, strained municipal budgets, ad infinitum].

    Corporate business structures and ownership need a lot more attention – I'm really glad that Lambert is often including 'cooperatives' as one of his link categories these days, because it's a Butterfly Wing.

    Norb , January 17, 2017 at 2:53 am

    I think often along the same lines. I even have spent most of my working career working with Wrigley and Radio Flyer in prototype and marketing capacity, and the executives and owners I have personally met are good dedicated people. Everyone is diligently working away propagating existing products and trying to engage their creative minds to expand the business into new markets. They are concerned about their Brand and making their business a success. For me, it has been a successful, 30 year relationship.

    But this is really the insidious dilemma we are all facing. The best intentions leading to negative outcomes. Capitalism's evolution from small businesses providing wanted services and commerce, to global corporations dominating the world and dictating all human activity.

    I have an inkling that the butterfly wing force you allude too centers around humility. With humility comes the ability to express unselfish love. The real important work is to tame human ambition- to know when to say enough is enough.

    Lambert Strether , January 17, 2017 at 3:19 am

    I rather like Corbyn's idea of a maximum wage. Maybe even the perks of being the CEO of a ginormous global corporation wouldn't be worth it if the salary were limited to, say, six figures (and no stock options). Institutions that nobody wants to run don't survive

    aab , January 17, 2017 at 3:44 am

    You'd need to define it as total compensation, very carefully, to include all the perks, like the free housing, staff, etc.

    I personally think we should put a "death clock" on corporate life. One of the things that makes corporations so insidious is that they live forever. What if they couldn't? What if they were required to dissolve completely after 50 or 100 years?

    I have never read a real policy expert mention this, but it seems like it could work.

    Personally, I think corporations should be banned. But I'm getting more hardcore these days.

    David , January 16, 2017 at 8:54 am

    I don't think anybody is "fetishizing news," but whilst its true that there's a far greater variety of information sources today, and many of them are not subject to the pressures of conventional media, the implication that somehow the overall level of "truth" has gone up is not sustainable. If anything it's probably gone down. Those of us of a certain age remember a time when there were far more newspapers than today, when ownership was spread much more widely, and where newspapers had a lot more staff and were under a lot less commercial pressure than is the case now. You could, and did, allow for political bias, and it was possible, though not common, for blatant untruths to be published. But that was more difficult than it is today, because the barriers to entry were much higher, and the total media space was much smaller.
    I also think its unfair to blame the problem solely on the effects of neoliberalism, damaging as those have been. Journalists themselves have to bear some of the blame. In the 1990s, it became fashionable to deride objectivity (mere "objectivity, a white, patriarchal western concept) as an objective of journalism. Because total objectivity was impossible, it was said, you shouldn't even try. And as a number of journalists at the time argued "you can't be objective between good and evil." The same people who lied about WMD in Iraq in 2002 had already lied about Bosnia a decade before, were to lie about Darfur a few years later and are busy lying about Syria, the Ukraine and "free trade" today. In each case, the argument is the same: the service of a higher moral principle. I've even heard it argued that Trump is such a terrible human being that journalists have not only a right but an actual duty to print anything that might cause him harm. To the extent that you abandon the demand that journalists should do their professional best to be as accurate as possible, and you see "news" itself as a contested, contingent term, it's hard to rationally criticise the actors in any of these episodes.

    Vatch , January 16, 2017 at 9:37 am

    What were the lies about Bosnia and Darfur?

    JTMcPhee , January 16, 2017 at 11:54 am

    You mean you don't know? Or is this just drive-by impeachment? Or an honest question?

    Seeing the difficulty -- nothing can be trusted to be honest or even to be what it seems, motives are hidden, and we all know in our hearts that SOMEBODY is benefiting from all the manipulation and manufacturing of consent and demand, and yet we mopes don't want to line up and insist that what we vaguely and vacuously imagine to be the "general welfare" must be served, above all, first and foremost, save the planet and all that.

    Vatch , January 16, 2017 at 12:15 pm

    It's a honest question. I suspect he has confused Kosovo with Bosnia. As for Darfur, well, I don't know what he is saying.

    David , January 16, 2017 at 12:54 pm

    Very briefly, 75% of the media coverage of Bosnia (and about 90% of that concerning Kosovo) was either inexcusably incompetent or simply untrue. This continued until at least the late 90s, and I was one of those who had to deal with the practical consequences. There are any number of representative stories, but as one TV reporter told the then UN Commander in Bosnia "my job isn't to report the truth, it's to get the West into the war." For Darfur, well, read Mahmood Mamdani's book on the subject. But the point is less the technical failings, important though they are, than the kind of attitude typified by the BBC's Martin Bell, when he spoke of the "journalism of attachment" – i.e. propaganda in favour of the side you support. Nice as it would be to blame everything on the rich and powerful (and heaven knows they bear enough of the blame) journalists, and those who put quotes round "objectivity" have done a lot to prepare the ground for them. And governments, not being stupid, have realised that they can manipulate journalists and NGOs with human rights rhetoric into supporting almost any initiative no matter how cynical. Kosovo was perhaps the first example where the media allowed itself to be shamelessly manipulated in this fashion, and I suppose Libya is the currently topical one. I do wish people would stop giving presents to the Right.

    JTMcPhee , January 16, 2017 at 3:47 pm

    and manipulate "journalists" by "embedding" them (getting them in bed with, "Good Embed: How the White House and Pentagon improved favorability of coverage through embedding journalists," http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1307&context=apme ?), and for a "more objective" well-massaged discussion, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_journalism , with the Troops who are sent to foreign formerly sovereign lands to attack and demolish and intimidate and control the assets, asses, and resources "our" rulers have an eye for. All "in the national interest," of course. And all cynically "embedded" to ensure that "the story' that the command structure wants to tell (like Pat Tillman, "Heroically Bravely killed by hostile fire," instead of by "friendly fire" in just another futile "patrol" into the Graveyard of Empires terrain )

    So "we" go to Iraq or Notagainistan or Syria or Libya with the clear plan to send troops out on patrol to drive or walk over IEDs and "draw fire" and play Sitting Duck at variously and idiotically sited Forward Bases and Outposts, to take casualties, which then creates the momentum for "getting our own back" because how dare those Wogs and Hajjis resist the irresistible might and honor of the fokking Greatest Military Machine On The Planet? and "we" were just protecting women and children, or "invited in" by the central government that has zero nationwide authority or control and no guiding principle but graft and greed but plenty of corruption, or "democratizing," or some such sh!t

    Carolinian , January 16, 2017 at 11:25 am

    I think you have put your finger on it. The issue is not that there has always been fake news but that certain segments of the current news media pretend to be neutral arbiters of "the facts" and therefore of a higher status. Since these "respectable" outlets now have so little competition in their markets they can print what they like with little fear of contradiction from competitors. There is pushback from the internet but the vast majority of the public get their news from cable or network television which enjoys similar "barriers to entry" that help keep away competitors.

    Perhaps Walter Cronkite–"the most trusted man in America"–is to blame on some level since he was a leading exponent of the cult of objectivity. He said that the only thing journalists have to sell is their credibility. However it subsequently turned out that they had plenty of other things to sell such as infotainment. At the tail end of the Cronkite era the movie Network predicted this quite well.

    Still whatever his failings I believe we can look back with some nostalgia at Cronkite and his notions of integrity. Lots of people still read the news because they want the truth rather than escapism. It's why some of us are reading this very website. The current MSM has plenty of self-importance–integrity not so much.

    JTMcPhee , January 16, 2017 at 11:58 am

    And now we got Roland Hedley, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Hedley , pete and re-pete-ed ad nauseam. (I think Trudeau has too much of his old man in him, and has lost his voice and wisdom in a flare of Hillaritis Maybe some steroids would suppress the inflammation )

    readerOfTeaLeaves , January 16, 2017 at 1:02 pm

    Cronkite was a man of his times.
    Back in the 50s and 60s, in terms of science and general worldview, people believed in the idea of 'objectivity', which was IIRC originally rooted in the physics of the early 20th c.

    I think the more important point is that he did value his integrity. However, he operated in an environment when CBS was making truckloads of money, and people were generally home by 6:30 to turn on the news.

    lyle , January 16, 2017 at 5:51 pm

    Perhaps 50 years ago it was easier to identify fake news or as it was called back then propaganda. And back then the issue was that unless you lived near the Canadian border you got only the big three version of the news, Near the border you could get Canadian news. (It appeared that there were two wars in Vietnam at the time one reported by US news and one by the Canadian news. Of course unless one had a shortwave radio one could not get the BBC, while Radio Moscow was easy to receive on shortwave. In Mi at least Radio Peking was hard to receive however. But back then we had the grocery store news rags and one learned quickly to consider the source when getting news.

    MItch Ritter , January 16, 2017 at 4:02 pm

    Hey David, you may be overstating the mainstreaming of the fetishization of "objectivity" in U.S. corporate-captured journalism. Or, at least in the better Media Studies and J-School programs.

    Going way back to early pioneers of investigative journalism like George Seldes up to today's Seldes-influenced mass mediated news and views deconstructionists like Norman Solomon and the late lamented popularizer in Boston, Danny "The Media Dissector" Schechter there has been a struggle to distinguish between "objective" reportage and "fair" reportage. "Balanced" is really pushing this noble if utopian pursuit of best practices guiding hacks and their editors and the payroll-concerned bean-counters higher up.

    With the advent of High Tech and the deluge of competing content streams, I've found it therapeutic to return regularly to an early oracle of the shifting paradigm of gate-keepers regulating a well-informed body politic and electorate, namely Neil Postman's 1984 book AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH . Especially Postman's succinct page and a half referential FOREWARD. Now there is a formative scripture or holy writ pre-sage-ing the DATA\CONTENT SWAMP.

    Mitch Ritter\Non-Aligned Paradigm Shifters
    Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa
    Media Discussion List

    dontknowitall , January 16, 2017 at 9:41 am

    Interesting essay I am not mollified by reading that Google, Facebook and Germany are uniting to defeat 'fake news' and then remembering the recent rumors (fake news?) that Mark Zuckerberg, of Facebook, is considering running for President so what happens when the bottle-neck king also runs the nation, or is even just thinking of it (Zuckerberg finding God recently comes to mind), when most voters are getting their news from their Facebook news feeds ? Would something mildly critical of Mark Zuckerberg survive 'fake' news review ?

    Also, just because China has a walled garden doesn't save them from a torrent of local fake news. In the US the current business model of the internet news is actually a greater danger to democracy and that is the automated binning of consumers into narrow categories (right, left, techie etc) from which they find it hard to stray, if they even think of it, and so it makes it hard for a reader to see in his newsfeed countervailing news or analysis, people thus get polarized. The effort to find different/opposing opinions is not painless and quite by design. This trap has to be broken.

    Quality education of the population and freer access to information are greater defenses of democracy and freedom the any Facebook designed filter.

    susan the other , January 16, 2017 at 9:42 am

    great essay. Makes me think there is some bedrock reality beneath all the noise that keeps us rational enough to survive. All forms of life display good judgment; practicality. So do we. So I'm not very concerned that we might be pants-less without an ideology to shroud all the embarrassing craziness. I'm encouraged by that prospect.

    Disturbed Voter , January 16, 2017 at 9:54 am

    Sheep get slaughtered I choose not to be a sheep. I had no choice in the 60s, when I had three oligopoly networks to choose from. With the Internet, I am my own reporter. This is more like how the printing press destroyed the Catholic Church. I make my own narrative, I don't let anyone else do it for me. Facts are few and far between, but they are just signposts on my own superhighway which I build myself. Are my beliefs factual? Are they for anyone? That was a rhetorical question. People who think their beliefs are The Truth are maniacs.

    lyle , January 16, 2017 at 5:53 pm

    As I pointed out even in the 1960s one could buy a shortwave radio and get the BBC and Radio Canada International, for a different slant on news than the US media. It might have cost 50 to 60 to get such a radio back then but if you wanted a different view you could get it. It was just harder to get non us sources of news back then.

    Altandmain , January 16, 2017 at 10:11 am

    This whole "fake news" business is all about suppressing dissent, as others have noted.

    The media tried to coronate Clinton. With falling advertising revenues in some cases, and decreasing trust in the mainstream media, they have begun to panic. They know that the people realize that they are the Pravda of plutocracy.

    At the same time, the alternative media has grown with the Internet. It has reached growing members and allowed people to see the truth.

    Counterpunch had a good article on this one:
    http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/13/why-ridiculous-official-propaganda-still-works/

    The reason why propaganda like "fake news" exists is to create a false narrative that can be repeated that people can believe in. The other of course is to force people to comply or face professional and financial consequences.

    The thing is, I think that we've reached the limits of propaganda. Inequality has reached an extent that the myth that America is a meritocracy has failed, while efforts to force the American people to accept war have been faced with opposition.

    Altandmain , January 16, 2017 at 10:56 am

    One more point I should repeat. Perhaps a blatant example: Fox News has been making fake news for years and yet nobody called it out.

    That's because it served the interests of the very rich. That's what this is all about.

    Art Eclectic , January 16, 2017 at 11:21 am

    Exactly. Fox News has been the leader in opinion disguised as news. Sadly, it doesn't even matter to most people. Fox rightly concluded that people do not want the truth, they want their biases confirmed and if you can confirm biases in a way that makes someone feel superior, you can sell a lot of advertising.

    You cannot fix stupid, nor can you fix people wanting their biases confirmed by any means possible (true or not).

    lyle , January 16, 2017 at 5:59 pm

    But if you go back to the early 19th century fake news was all that was to be had. Newspapers were owned by political parties and reported as they desired. This changed when the cost to enter the newspaper business went up with the steam powered press. Then you had a restricted set of tv stations. The newspapers established the UPI and AP to share their view of the news also. With the rise of cable and the internet the barriers to entry in the news business have been lowered to the level of the early 19th century at least.
    To give a concrete example a bit later in the 19th century in towns in Indiana at least there were papers that were known as republican or democrat. Back then you took the paper that confirmed your political biases.

    John Wright , January 16, 2017 at 10:12 am

    What is unsurprising is that the media does signal what the insiders want/plan to do.

    I was in a library that had some old bound Life Magazines and decided to see what the Life covered just prior to the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

    There was an article about a Midwest congressmen who was visiting his district, who knew his constituents did not want to go to war, but seemed to see the US entry into war likely.

    Even Hollywood got into the act, as the Sergeant York (American WWI hero) 1941 movie was released on July 2, 1941, well before Pearl Harbor.

    There seems to be little penalty for journalists getting it wrong, for example Tom Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, and Michael Gordon of the Times still have jobs after their "let's promote the Iraq War effort".

    Judith Miller was the lone sacrificial lamb.

    Some of them even re-write history, as sanctimonious Nicholas Kristof, while recently pimping for the USA's involvement in Syria (on humanitarian grounds, of course), pushed a "trust me on Syria" story by asserting his prior wisdom in his alleged strong opposition to the Iraq war.

    Yet I archived an August 27, 2002 column in which he wrote:

    "Iraq may well be different. President Bush has convinced me that there is no philosophical reason we should not overthrow the Iraqi government, given that Iraqis themselves would be better off, along with the rest of the world. But Mr. Bush has not overcome some practical concerns about an invasion."

    What about ethical concerns, Kristof?

    I believe it was Chomsky who said that the print media has content and filler, the content is the advertising and the filler is everything else.

    As advertising revenues have gone down, the print media may be looking for a new operating funds, maybe from wealthy owners (Bezos, Carlos Slim) paying for their views to be featured, maybe from US government hidden funding to "counter fake news" that is contrary to the story the elite wants told.

    If there is a feedback loop in the mainstream media, it is very slow and does not correct errors to result in lasting reform.

    The Times promoted the Iraq war and then had the Bill Keller retrospective "we got it wrong" years later.

    Then the Times moved onto promoting military action in Libya, the Ukraine and Syria.

    The Times recently had an "Obama regrets Libya" retrospective, what other "we got it wrong" retrospectives will occur in the future?

    JTMcPhee , January 16, 2017 at 12:10 pm

    As far as "the government" funding fake news and fake culture and the generation of memes and such, there's Operation Mockingbird, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird . And of course the whole long arm and perversion under this grand program, "The CIA and the Cultural Cold War," http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/CIAcultCW.pdf , that went for a song compared to the current efforts to enforce "US" imperial hegemony (especially when all the externalities, beyond coups and military adventures and the MIC and environmental destruction and all those deaths and demolished landscapes, are toted up. But then externalities get counted toward the WDP (World Domestic Product), right? Isn't that inherent in the Grand Notion of Creative Destruction?

    RWood , January 16, 2017 at 2:29 pm

    As Ralph Nader advises, David Cay Johnston's new website will be useful antidote to titters and trumpets:
    http://www.dcreport.org

    Jamie , January 16, 2017 at 10:20 am

    In the third paragraph Marcy begins talking about objectivity and then shifts to denigrating "objectivity" without a word about what the scare quotes mean to her. Now I understand that the language used by an oppressive system can itself be oppressive. But if "objectivity" omitted women and people of color, well, clearly that's bad, but what does that have to do with objectivity?

    Maybe I'm just too old and out of touch to get the post modern project to dismantle objectivity and replace it with self-centered wishful thinking. But without objectivity, we would never have seen the civil rights movement or the rise of feminism in the sixties.

    I was still very young during the civil rights movement so I won't talk about what I don't really know first hand, but the rise of feminism took place in the prime of my passionate youth. What many middle class women were experiencing in the '50s was a complete isolation in the suburbs and a feeling (due largely to rampant blaming the victim) that all the problems of their lives were their own personal problems. It was not until politically active women began to share their experiences in consciousness raising groups that they discovered that they were not alone in their experiences i.e. that many of their so-called personal problems were objectively imposed upon the entire group of women by the oppressive society. That is, these were not personal problems at all, they were socially constructed problems that effected all women to some degree. Without objectivity there could be no oppression theory, consciousness raising groups are transformed into support groups, oppression theory becomes psychology, and the oppression of women is dissolved into nothing more than the personal problems of individual women. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water.

    JTMcPhee , January 16, 2017 at 12:20 pm

    Yah, women should be proud of where the rise of feminism has taken them -- to supporting Hillary (or going to a special place in hell,) to the "right" to join the Marines as they kick in doors in Kandahar and turn tribespeople into pink mist and body parts who would not pose a threat to THEIR sacred female bodies, or our Imperial trooopers of the Y-chromosome defect either, if said tribespeople (including women and children) were just left to their own devices. Victoria Nuland. Etc.

    And for all that, women still face vast health cruelties in over half the states in this great land, and the ladies of high credentials go to the workout spas and get their toenails trimmed and painted, and in the room they come and go, talking of Michelangelo and the best new restaurants While their sisters are screwed out of medical services. For jeebus sake, women are what, 52% of the voting population? Why not all get together on the big issues? Wait wait don't tell me

    Gaylord , January 16, 2017 at 11:06 am

    Propaganda, as Yves points out, is the point to be stressed. The MSM are being used by powerful elites to support their agenda which remains hidden but is motivated by the insatiable desire for more wealth and/or power and/or attention. That is the same motivation of many media owners and journalists, ethics be damned, and it inevitably leads to conflict.

    Robert Hahl , January 16, 2017 at 12:30 pm

    This is my take-away: "If American power relies (as it increasingly does) on secrets and even outright lies, who's to blame the proles for inventing their own narratives, just like the elite do?"

    If feudalism ended with the invention of firearms, which greatly equalized the distribution of power between proles and the elite, then the internet/printing press situation seems analogous and points to big changes coming.

    readerOfTeaLeaves , January 16, 2017 at 1:10 pm

    Agree that we are in a process of changes larger than any of us can really grasp. The dustup over 'fake news' is one symptom of profound social distress as the failures of neoliberalism continue to unfold.

    JMM , January 16, 2017 at 1:52 pm

    considering that the average human attention span was judged at the time to be four minutes.

    They surely didn't have Twitter back then.

    Andrew Watts , January 16, 2017 at 1:52 pm

    The Creel Committee was able to turn America from being firmly pacifist to being eager to fight the evil Germans in a mere 18 months.

    I doubt propaganda convinced many Americans of Irish or German descent to support the war. Similarly the pacifists and anti-imperialists wouldn't be moved by hysterical propaganda. Consider how much domestic repression followed America's entry into the war. This included the mass jailing of the anti-war crowd, over 2000 Espionage/Sedition Act convictions, persecution of German-American individuals and the banning of their organizations, and finally the scourge of "liberty cabbage".

    Merely a prelude to the Red Scare and the repression that would follow. But hey, the war-profiteering and politically connected DuPont family was owed over a billion dollars in 1917 money and if the Allies lost they wouldn't get it back which is so unfair!

    RWood , January 16, 2017 at 3:45 pm

    Look for American Protective League. Wikipedia refers to vigilantees.
    "Unsafe for Democracy" has a chapter on vigilantism.
    In "Living My Life" Emma Goldman relates the effects of vigilantism.

    Andrew Watts , January 16, 2017 at 4:15 pm

    Thanks, I vaguely recall some of those details about the proto-fascists from Goldman's memoirs. It's definitely worth looking into.

    lyle , January 16, 2017 at 6:01 pm

    Note that the hysteria in the us was worse in 1917. This lead to the first red scare in 1919

    Katharine , January 16, 2017 at 2:26 pm

    Ouch! Please, please write English! Even good commentary can be harmed by bad writing. You want people to think about the content of what you say, not how you said it.

    The thing is: the antidote to both of these problems are to fix the bottle-neck.

    Is not are! The antidote, singular, is, singular, to fix The adjectival prepositional phrase is irrelevant to the number of the verb.

    I will now go back and try to pick up the thread of what I was reading.

    H. Alexander Ivey , January 17, 2017 at 7:48 pm

    Well, in a fuller explanation

    One of the quirks of the English language is the requirement that English verbs must show a number (either one or more than one, known in grammarian circles as singular or plural). Now this number refers to the number associated with the word that is directly linked to the verb. (Remember, students, the verb has other word(s) linked to it, the purpose of which is to show who or what does the action of the verb. This / these words are known in grammarian circles as the subject of the sentence or clause. Clause ?? Don't ask.).

    So, for the example cited:

    the antidote to both of these problems are to fix the bottle-neck

    the verb 'are' suggests a 'more than one person or thing' number for the words linked to the verb.

    Ok, so what are those words? 'the antidote to both of these problems' are those words.

    Got it. But which word here is the true subject: 'antidote' (singular) or problems (plural)? Grammarians argue that 'antidote' is the true subject. And they are right. (It's always best not to argue with grammarians – they are touchy since their patron saint, William Safire, passed away). So, due to the quirks of English verbs and nouns, literate English speaking people consider it proper to say:

    'the antidote to both of these problems is to fix the bottle-neck'.

    There will be a quiz later, students. Thank you for your attention.

    George Dawson , January 16, 2017 at 2:57 pm

    So fake news has always been with us and the truth is always hard to know.

    Nothing really new there.

    I think that the real story behind fake news is that it is an equalizer between people who may actually know something and people who don't. That plays out every day in financial markets and algorithms for stock trading based on news and fake news – but the real casualty is science.

    People with no knowledge of science (or medicine for that matter) can flood the available news with so much nonsense that scientific consensus becomes public debate based on whatever feels good and matches ideology.

    This is a threat to both literacy and civilization.

    Steve H. , January 16, 2017 at 3:00 pm

    : In other words, the hysteria about fake news appears to be members of the officialdom realizing that their traditional propaganda channels don't work because too many people get information on the Internet, and they can no longer orchestrate a Mighty Wurlitzer of unified opinion.

    Let me quote Jalen here (conversation starts at 29:27):

    : Wanna trust the media, can't trust the media Now the media just want hot takes. Now the media just wants it first. I Must Break A Story.

    The game has changed. The idea was that content drove the story, people followed the news which followed the event. But now the technique of the story driving the content has been institutionalized at a systemic level. Not only is the top-down approach cracking, the open source nature of content creation can pop up anywhere, like an information version of a gunman in a nightclub.

    So O'Keefe was allegedly trying to hire people to riot, the logical extension of the Rent-a-Mob tactic exposed this election cycle. Well, it does help to be on the spot to film the riot if you know where it's going down. Spiderman did it and no one complains about that.

    The logical action of Wurlizter Maintenance could be to jump on board with more noise to try to swamp the signal, since they can't stop the signal. That's not inconsistent with Adam Curtis' hypotheses. And the smart people will know who to read, the new words from the innovative sources to construct the social narrative necessary to maintain credibility beyond credentials.

    Mitch Ritter , January 16, 2017 at 3:27 pm

    It is clear from the delightfully well-informed reader comments above mine that there is little need for me to point out that any summary of official and gray-area state propaganda in the U.S., focusing specifically on mass media usage within the rubric of "FREE MARKET" fundamentalism and as studied by scholars from various academic disciplines in other national systems begins as Yves notes in the early 20th Century. Generally U.S. systems of indoctrination via media market tools starts with the birth of the PR industry and Freud's American nephew and Advertising Industry pioneer Edward Bernays.

    I took an interest in the nexus between government contracts and the creation of entire academic disciplines such as Area Studies and Communication Studies , pursuing independently and often in collaboration with others writing and producing works that dovetail nicely with what another reader comment brilliantly links to the BBC archive narrative docs and film collages of Adam Curtis .

    I tended to work with community radio stations after my own Mass Communications\Journalism studies at U.C.-Berkeley in the early 1980's and thereafter as a contributor to what was perhaps overly optimistically referred to as the Alternative Press. We produced recorded and re-broadcast Town Hall meetings, panel discussions and various public forums studying and attempting to popularize inter-disciplinary ongoing analysis and discussion of state and market systems of indoctrination and propaganda. (Usually for pledge break fundraising purposes offered as premiums on listener-supported radio like the Pacifica Radio network and KBOO in Portland, Ore along with some more adventurous college broadcasters).

    Two very important streams of this research and popularization spring from the work of early French media critic Jacques Ellul (PROPAGANDA) and American U. Communications Professor Christoper Simpson (SCIENCE OF COERCION, UNIVERSITY & EMPIRE) whose editions of books tracking government contracting of academics and use of universities is seminal. Like Noam Chomsky's work i.e. NECESSARY ILLUSIONS, MANUFACTURING CONSENT and the MIT Linguistic Prof's collaborations with UPenn's Wharton School of Econ Prof Edward Herman like AMERICAN POWER AND THE NEW MANDARINS is intended to be easily accessible to non-academics with no specialized education encouraging wider participation and furthering of independent study.
    https://www.amazon.com/review/R34RBX6UFL8W17

    Robert McChesney and his partner in the study of early U.S. attempts to insulate from Market Forces and the Tyranny of Popularity (advertiser-driven lowest common denominator programming) slim broadcast spectrum for educational purposes and the discussion and dissemination of news and public affairs programming should also be forced into any curriculum that in my own mind should include mandatory primary and high school courses in a new discipline we could call MEDIA SAVVY. Like a mandatory primary and high school course in COMPARATIVE RELIGION the pay-off in reviving a healthier body politic would be immediate if humiliating to the titans of advertiser-driven broadcasting and narrow-casting.

    One additional and largely overlooked contribution to what we know about government contracting on university campuses pursuing objectives that could now in international law qualify as crimes against humanity is the first-person narrative of former Canadian diplomat and U.C.-Berkeley Comp Lit Professor Emeritus Peter Dale Scott's book-length poem COMING TO JAKARTA which serves as an academic's confession of conscience and testimony into what was observed of colleagues who took entrepreneurial approaches to government-funded research.

    Such historical context renders Steve Bannon a piker in guiding the direction of BREITBART MEDIA and now the TRUMP TEAM SWAMP's CroNeo-Lib\Con Cabinet that so resembles a CORPORATE CALIPHATE like nothing since the Nixon era LEWIS POWELL MEMO with its attendant elevation of LEWIS POWELL to the U.S. Supreme Court despite his lack of judicial experience.

    As Scott's COMING TO JAKARTA artfully illustrates and as the work of Ellul, Chomsky-Herman, Simpson and McChesney-Nichols more conventionally essays, some very low profile and tweedy (often socially liberal) Area Studies scholars pioneered what we now refer to as Neo-Liberal Privatization of Public Policy and Geo-Political entanglements. Often acting in concert with and parallel to government's role as global market-maker. Entrepreneurial educators laboring on academic contracts for the U.S. National Security State and its various agencies dating back decades to the Dulles Brothers own Regime Change On Demand administrations and Daddy Warbucks-style geo-politicking. An opaque nexus between the pursuit of privatized profit-maximizing\liability limiting Corporate Interests and tax-payer funded academic research designed to serve the PUBLIC INTEREST flips most of the conventional wisdom that frames our mass mediated view of the daily if not hourly shredding of the SOCIAL CONTRACT and the progress of other nation\states who have made efforts to insulate Public Education and MASS MEDIA from MARKET FORCES and PRESSURES.

    Peter Dale Scott's glimpse of Washington and the contracted 'Berkeley Economic Mafia' on-the-ground role in subverting the main message of the MIGHTY WURLITZER during the Cold War (namely Centrally planned command economies are commie and evil, while FREE MARKET demand-driven economies are virtuous) is germane to understanding how we got here. 'Here' being a place where every day in every way the built-in contradictions of our government's widely disseminated core values (that are used to vet our Public Servants a la the ultimate litmus test) like increasing competition, access to quality education, facilitating upward social mobility and stabilizing while expanding the key middle\working class all flock home to roost.

    Keep on doing,
    Mitch Ritter
    Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa
    Media Discussion List

    Jay , January 16, 2017 at 5:01 pm

    I have long long long respected Marcy Wheeler.

    Obviously I did not live in the era of yellow journalism, but I tend to think that we were better off with cities that had four or five yellow journalistic rags than a city with one objective newspaper or a nation or world with dozens of objective media sites all putting out the same, safe audience tested, investor tested nonsense.

    With an "objective" newspaper, given the human processes that create it, who knows what the truth is?

    With three or four yellow papers, where I know that's a right wing paper, and that's a left wing, that's a communist, that's an investor's. Well, knowing their biases, I can correct for them to a much greater extent.

    If Mick Lasalle reviews a movie and dislikes it, if Gene Siskel reviewed a movie and disliked it, I knew I would like that movie. I can trust their reviews. The two have integrity, and are precise, and are precisely wrong, and I know how and in which ways and how to adjust their statements to make them accurate and reflect reality.

    When I read a story at the nytimes, and at wapo and at huffpo and see how it's really the same journalists echoing each other, out of laziness, incompetence, and a search of clicks and karma, well, I have no idea what to believe. But it's probably not what they said!

    But Marcy, come on, Salon? They became the problem. Your writing there makes you complicit.

    ewmayer , January 16, 2017 at 6:41 pm

    Does anyone else find it more than a little curious that Marcy's piece – not to be confused with Yves' introduction thereof – does not use the word 'propaganda' even once?

    Also, amid the "there has always been 'fake news'" theme it would have been nice to see a discussion of the level of MSM propaganda and going all-in-for-one-candidate-who-does-not-threaten-to-break-their-rice-bowls to previous election cycles. Because I (a 50something) found the blatancy of the MSM lying and propagandizing this time around to be quite unprecedented. First they alternately ignored and smeared Bernie in order to help the corrupt Dem establishment rig the primary process, then they turned their full-time smear machine on Trump. And it was only through a remarkable, historic combination of a brash billionaire outsider who managed to tap into widespread discontent in normally-ignored rust belt and flyover country states and convince large numbers of folks there that he actually gave a rat's ass about their immiseration at the hands of the 'Davos Man' global looter elite that the MSM campaign to manufacture consensus failed this time around. Nonetheless, they and their narrative providers in the Deep State are still busily at it, trying very hard to deligitimize and bully the incoming administration. Again, none of these are phenomena without precedent, but I find the unabashedness of the effort, and the zeal of the MSM and the defeated Dem partisans to abet what is nothing short of an attempt at a soft coup, without precedent.

    In that light I find Marcy's bit about "It is true that during a period of elite consensus, news that we treated as objective succeeded in creating a unifying national narrative of what most white people believed to be true, and that narrative was tremendously valuable to ensure the working of our democracy" to be more than a little ironic. Because the narrative the insiders are trying to foist on us this time around has motives that could not be more undemocratic.

    Dwight , January 16, 2017 at 8:28 pm

    Thank you, very interesting. A correction – it's Ian Welsh, not Ian Walsh. Another great writer – glad to see him linked here.

    Hen Kai Pan , January 17, 2017 at 1:01 am

    I read Marcy's coverage of the Libby trial years ago. I considered her reporting 'objective news', in a sea of distortions by MSM. Her reporting helped to open my eyes to how the MSM operates.
    I am confused by her above article, and what she means by "objective".

    [Jan 03, 2019] Russia-mania takes over the world

    Russophobia is the standard deflection trick, designed to cement cracks in neoliberal society facade. And deep distrust of common people toward neoliberal elite. With neoliberal elite completely immersed in its own groupthink, which reaches the level "Let them eat cakes".
    Notable quotes:
    "... We have seen this play out in the US in the continuing obsession, fronted by Troll-Finder General Robert Mueller, over alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. And the same obsession has emerged in the UK, too, with politicians and pundits claiming that a shadowy network of Russian influence tipped the EU referendum in favour of Leave. ..."
    "... It is never quite clear how the 'Russians' or 'Putin' did all this, beyond Facebook ads and decidedly dubious talk of so-called dark money. But then clarity is not the point for this stripe of Russia-maniac. He or she simply wants to believe that Trump or Brexit were not what they were. Not expressions of popular will. Not manifestations of popular discontent. Not democratic exercises. ..."
    Jan 03, 2019 | theduran.com

    While Russia-mania is widespread among today's political and cultural elites, it is not uniform.

    For an older, right-wing section of the Western political and media class, otherwise known as the Cold War Re-Enactment Society, Russia looms large principally as a military, quasi-imperial threat. Jim Mattis, the former US marine and general, and now US defence secretary, said Russia was responsible for 'the biggest attack [on the world order] since World War Two'. Whether this is true or not is beside the point. What matters is that Russia appears as a military aggressor. What matters is that Russia's actions in Ukraine – which were arguably a defensive reaction to NATO and the EU's expansion into Russia's traditional ally – are grasped as an act of territorial aggrandisement. What matters is that Russia's military operations in Syria – which, again, were arguably a pragmatic intervention to stabilise the West-stoked chaos – are rendered as an expression of imperial aggression. What matters is that Russian state involvement in the poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury – which, given its failure, proved Russian incompetence – is presented as 'part of a pattern of Russian aggression against Europe and its near neighbours, from the western Balkans to the Middle East', to quote Theresa May.

    And it matters because, if Russia is dressed up as the West's old Cold War adversary, just with a new McMafia logo, then the crumbling, illegitimate and increasingly pointless postwar institutions through which Western elites have long ordered the world, suddenly look just that little bit more solid, legitimate and purposeful. And none more so than NATO.

    This is why NATO has this year been accompanying its statements warning Russia to 'stop its reckless pattern of behaviour' with some of the largest military exercises since the fall of the Berlin Wall nearly three decades ago. Including one in November in Norway, involving 50,000 troops, 10,000 vehicles, 250 aircraft and 60 warships.

    Then there is the newer form of Russia-mania. This has emerged from within the political and cultural elite that came to power after the Cold War, ploughing an uninspiring third way between the seeming extremes of the 20th century's great ideologies. Broadly social democratic in sentiment, and elitist and aloof in practice, this band of merry technocrats and their middle-class supporters have found in 'Russia' a way to avoid having to face up to what the populist revolt reveals – that the majority of Western citizens share neither their worldview nor their wealth. Instead, they use 'Russia' to displace the people as the source of discontent and political revolt.

    We have seen this play out in the US in the continuing obsession, fronted by Troll-Finder General Robert Mueller, over alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. And the same obsession has emerged in the UK, too, with politicians and pundits claiming that a shadowy network of Russian influence tipped the EU referendum in favour of Leave.

    It is never quite clear how the 'Russians' or 'Putin' did all this, beyond Facebook ads and decidedly dubious talk of so-called dark money. But then clarity is not the point for this stripe of Russia-maniac. He or she simply wants to believe that Trump or Brexit were not what they were. Not expressions of popular will. Not manifestations of popular discontent. Not democratic exercises.

    No, they were the result, as one Tory MP put it , of 'the covert and overt forms of malign influence used by Moscow'.

    Or, in the words of an Observer columnist, 'a campaign that purported to be for the "left behind" was organised and funded by men with links across the global network of far-right American demagogues and kleptomaniac dictators such as Putin'.

    Such has been the determination to blame 'Russia' or 'Putin' for the political class's struggles, that in August Tom Watson, Labour's conspiracy-theory-peddling deputy leader, called for a public inquiry into an alleged Russian Brexit plot. '[Voters] need to know whether that referendum was stolen or not', he said.

    Such a call ought to be mocked. After all, it is absurd to think 'Russia', 'Putin' and the trolls are the power behind every populist throne. But the claims aren't mocked – they're taken as calls to action. Think of anything viewed as a threat to our quaking political and cultural elites in the West, and you can bet your bottom ruble that some state agency or columnist is busy identifying Putin or one of his legion of bots and trolls as the source. The gilet jaunes protests in France? Check . Climate change? Check . Italy's Five Star Movement? Check .

    And all this from a nation with a GDP equivalent to Spain, an ageing, declining population, and a failing infrastructure. The reality of Russia is not that of a global threat, but of a struggling state. Russia is weak. Yet in the minds of those clinging desperately to the status quo, 'Russia' has never been more powerful.

    [Jan 03, 2019] John Helmer- Lunatic Russia-Hating in Washington Is 70 Years Old. It Started with Joseph Alsop, George Kennan and the Washington Post

    The USA is treating Russia the same way it treated the USSR and run all kind of subversive operations against it.
    Notable quotes:
    "... This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1440 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page , which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why we're doing this fundraiser, what we've accomplished in the last year and our current goal, more original reporting . ..."
    "... By John Helmer , the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears ..."
    "... In June 1933, he bought the Washington Post at a bankruptcy auction, for $825,000 ..."
    "... It [USA] has always been fighting on foreign soil since it was formed by violence against a lawful sovereign. ..."
    "... This Vast Southern Empire ..."
    "... A mentor in shamelessness: the man who taught Trump the power of publicity Roy Cohn, the lawyer who embraced infamy during the McCarthy hearings and Rosenberg trial, influenced Donald Trump to turn the tabloids into a soapbox ..."
    "... Angels in America ..."
    "... For the life of me, I still cannot figure out why people are in an absolute panic over Russian "agents" buying $100,000.00, or whatever, worth of advertising promoting either or both sides of the election when U.S.citizens and Political Parties spent over $1.6 billion. ..."
    "... Are American citizens really so stupid as to fall for the amazingly, brilliantly conceived and placed $100K worth of Russian advertising, so clever that it superseded $1.6 billion worth of U.S. citizen ads? ..."
    "... Or (to misquote Shakespeare/Macbeth) is it a tale told by propagandists, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? ..."
    "... Don't confuses them with the facts. ..."
    Jan 03, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    John Helmer: Lunatic Russia-Hating in Washington Is 70 Years Old. It Started with Joseph Alsop, George Kennan and the Washington Post Posted on October 12, 2017 by Yves Smith

    This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 1440 donors have already invested in our efforts to combat corruption and predatory conduct, particularly in the financial realm. Please join us and participate via our donation page , which shows how to give via check, credit card, debit card, or PayPal. Read about why we're doing this fundraiser, what we've accomplished in the last year and our current goal, more original reporting .

    Yves here. An important bit of history that can't be repeated too often: when the Clinton Administration decided to move NATO into former Warsaw Pact countries, violating a understanding made as part of the peaceful dissolution, George Kennan said it would prove to be the worst geopolitical mistake the US ever made.

    By John Helmer , the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

    Joseph Alsop and George Kennan started the kind of Russia-hating in Washington which, today, President Vladimir Putin, like the businessmen around him, think of as a novelty that cannot last for long.

    Alsop was a fake news fabricator, and such a narcissist as to give the bow-ties he wore a bad name. Kennan was a psychopath who alternated bouts of aggression to prove himself with bouts of depression over his cowardice. For them, Russia was a suitable target. The Washington Post was the newspaper which gave their lunacy public asylum. This, according to a fresh history by a university professor from California, started in 1947, long before the arrival in Washington of the anti-communist phobia known after the name of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

    Russia-hating was an American upper-class phenomenon, cultivated in the offices, cocktail parties, clubs, and mansions of the deep state, as it emerged out of World War II. It needed a new enemy to thrive; it fastened on Russia (aka the Soviet Union) as the enemy.

    McCarthyism was an American lower-class phenomenon. It focused on the loyalty or disloyalty of the upper-class deep-staters. That wasn't the same thing as Russia-hating; Wall Street bankers, Boston lawyers, homosexuals, Jews, communists, were all the enemy. As the Senator from Wisconsin characterized it himself in 1952, "McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled." He implied – without a middle-class tie; certainly not an upper-class bow-tie.

    Russia was not an enemy which united the two American lunacies, for they hated each other much more than they hated the Russians. The Soviet Politburo understood this better then than the Kremlin does now.

    Gregg Herken's The Georgetown Set , is so named because it records the activities of Alsop, Kennan and several other State Department, Central Intelligence Agency and White House officials who lived as neighbours in the Georgetown district of the capital city, together with Katharine (Kay) and Philip Graham, proprietor managers of the Washington Post. The district – once a chartered city of Maryland and river port, which was absorbed into the federal District of Columbia in 1871 -- was expensive, relatively speaking then; more so now. The richest of the set, including Alsop, had town houses in Georgetown, and rural retreats in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.

    They were a set because because, as Herken said succinctly to an interviewer , "they got together every Sunday for supper and, basically, they ran the country from those meetings." As the book elaborates, they thought they were running the world. With a longer time lapse in which to view the evidence, they were also losing it.

    Newspapers exposed in the book for collaborating in all the deceits, failures and war crimes of the history have reacted by calling Herken's effort a "provincial corner". The New Yorker opined that the Russia-hating and Russia war-making which Herken retells are dead and gone. "The guests at the Sunday soirées no doubt felt that they were in the cockpit of history. But the United States is a democracy, not a Wasp Ascendancy There was once an atmosphere of willingness that made a system of bribes and information exchanges seem, to the people involved, simply a way of working together for a common cause in a climate of public opinion that, unfortunately, required secrecy. No one got rich from the arrangement. People just lost track of what was inside their bubble and what was outside, as people tend to do. Vietnam was the reality check. 'I've Seen the Best of It' was the title Alsop gave to his memoirs. Things hadn't been the same since, he felt. He was right about that, and we should be thankful." In the New York media business these days it's possible to publish a selfie of pulling your own leg.

    The Washington Post has deflected the indictment against itself by describing Herken's work as "a very strange book (A) a rehash of the history of the Cold War as experienced in certain Washington circles and (B) an almost obsessive recapitulation of the life and journalism of Joseph Alsop." Alsop is dismissed as unworthy of a history at all because he was "utterly repellent: arrogant, patronizing, imperious, uninterested in anyone except himself."

    That's the truth about Alsop. The truth about the Washington Post is buried in this line by the Post's books editor about the hand that fed him: "it must be very hard for people who did not live through the '50s and '60s to understand how obsessed the American people were with the threat from Moscow." That line appeared in print on November 7, 2014. It was already history, that's to say, a misjudgement. How monumentally mistaken is obvious now.

    In covering the period from 1946 to 1975, Herken's research does repeat much of the history of the Cold War which has been told elsewhere. It starts on February 22, 1946, the date of the "Long Telegram", No. 511 -- Kennan's despatch from the US Embassy in Moscow to the State Department, setting out his strategy of so-called containment and much more besides. Read it in the declassified original . Most of the war-fighting and other war crimes which the telegram set in motion under Kennan's 1948 rubrics, "organized political warfare" and "preventive direct action", are reported in Herken's book; so too are Kennan's frequent funks, failures of conviction, reversals of judgement, and pleas for help.

    The book ends on December 30, 1974, the date of Alsop's last column. Alsop concluded with the line: "I have never known the American people to be really badly wrong, if only they were correctly and fully informed."

    Herken shows how self-deluded and professionally delusional that was -- not because of Alsop's character but because of his sources. Herken documents that they ran upwards from foot-soldiers (also lubricious sailors) to presidents and cabinet secretaries. Herken doesn't think the same of Kennan, who gets to walk off stage, aged 101, sounding more sceptical of overthrowing Saddam Hussein than he ever was in his prime and in power to direct schemes of what we call state terrorism today.


    Left to right: Kennan died in 2005, aged 101; Alsop died in 1989 aged 78; Frank Wisner died in 1965 aged 56. The deeper Herken gets into the private papers, the more he refers to his subjects by their diminutives and nicknames – Joe, Oppie, Beetle, Dickie, the Crocodile, Wig, Jack, Wiz, Soozle, Vangie, et al.

    What is fresh about the sources is that Herken has had access to the private notes, letters and diaries of the Alsop family; the Kennan diaries and letters; and the private papers of Frank Wisner, the first director of covert operations against Russia. Wisner went mad and killed himself, as did Graham. There's no doubt about the suicide outcome of their madness.

    In the case of the mad ex-Defence Secretary James Forrestal his fatal jump from the window of the Navy hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, in May 1949 might have been a homicidal push. Herken concludes that Forrestal's death was "the first senior-ranking American casualty of the Cold War." Herken thinks of their madness as anomalies. The history shows they were normalities.

    Missing from this history is any reference to official documents, now declassified; press reporting of the time; or interviews with veterans of the same events but on other sides – Russian and Soviet; British; German; French; Polish; Vietnamese; Chinese. This isn't so much a fatal flaw in Herken's (right) book as the reason why his history is repeating itself today. Call this a variation on Karl's Marx's apothegm that history starts as tragedy and repeats itself as farce. Herken's blindness to this is as revealing as the Washington Post's madness, not yet as suicidal as its former proprietor's, today.

    So mesmerized is Herken by the moneyed backgrounds of his subjects and sources, and by the amount of black cash from the US Government they spent on operations, he forgets to report what they did to fill their own pockets. The claim by the New Yorker that "no one got rich from the arrangement" – Alsop's fake news fabrications – is false, but Herken touches only in passing on how they made (or kept) their money. Alsop's column, for example, was sold to 200 newspapers, and at one time claimed a readership of 25 million. His family inheritance is recorded, but not its annual revenue value. Alsop's payola included silk shirts from Alfred Kohlberg, a textile importer from China who backed Chiang Kai-shek against Mao Tse-tung, as did Alsop. Alsop's patrons included Convair (General Dynamics), the company building the US Air Force Atlas missile for procurement of which Alsop reported fictions about Soviet missile strength.

    In the US power which Alsop, Kennan and Wisner believed without hesitation, Herken is not less a believer. "Anything could be achieved", Herken quotes a New York Times reporter quoting Wisner. When the US force multiple changed, however, and US allies or agents were outgunned, outspent, outnumbered, or outwitted, they were unable to acknowledge miscalculation, attributing defeat instead to the superior force or guile of their adversaries, especially the Russians.

    This is madness, and there is good reason for recognizing the symptoms again. In 1958, when Herken says Wisner's paranoid manias were becoming obvious to his friends and colleagues, "Frank put forward a theory that the careless comment which had gotten George Kennan kicked out of the Soviet Union was evidence the Soviets had succeeded in an area where the CIA's own scientists had failed: mind control. Some agency hands alleged that Wisner attributed his own increasingly bizarre behaviour to the Kremlin's sly manipulation."


    A cell from the comic "Is This Tomorrow? America Under Communism"(1947). Test your mind, read more: https://archive.org/details/IsThisTomorrowAmericaUnderCommunismCatecheticalGuild

    From Washington in 1958, fast forward to Washington in 2017; for mind control and sly manipulation, read Russian hacking and cyber warfare. From Wisner's and Kennan's balloon drops of leaflets and broadcasts by Radio Free Europe, fast forward to Russia Today Television and Russian infiltrations of Twitter, Google, the Democratic National Committee, and the Trump organization.

    It stands to reason (ahem!) that if you think what the US Government and its journalists were doing then was mad, you are might conclude that what they is doing now is just as mad – and not very different. When the incumbent president and his Secretary of State publicly call for IQ tests on each other, all reason has failed. "The nation," as Alsop had written, "had simply taken leave of all sense of proportion." That was in March 1954.

    If you fast forward to now, there's one difference. Today the lunatic Russia warfighters don't retire. They also don't fade away. Today's sleek successors to mad Wisner and mad Graham sleep easily in their beds a-nights. For what they've done and do, they wouldn't dream of taking shotguns to their heads.

    Herken retells the story of the campaign Alsop waged against McCarthyism at the State Department, against McCarthy himself, and the vulnerability Alsop himself presented until the Boston lawyer Joseph Welch put an end to McCarthy on June 9, 1954 : "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" Welch famously said. "Have you left no sense of decency?" The recurring history reveals why, even if there are plenty of people to say the same thing today to the Washington Post, New York Times, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the madness will continue repeating itself.

    Colonel Smithers , October 12, 2017 at 10:42 am

    Thank you, Yves.

    A couple of tidbits:

    Wisner's son married the stepmother of Nicolas Sarkozy. This facilitated the Sarkozy family's links with Wall Street (Guillaume at Credit Suisse and Carlyle and Nicolas' stepdaughter Judith Martin (daughter of France's Bruce Forsyth and Cecilia Albeniz) at Morgan Stanley, the latter at Canary Wharf).

    A year ago, before his elimination in the Republicain primary, Sarko met executives from Goldman Sachs to discuss a move from London to Paris due to Brexit. Sarko promised bespoke personal and corporate tax arrangements in return for a relocation and fanfare. Sarko was keen on the fanfare and planned to exploit that, thinking it would be a PR coup soon between his election and the August shut down.

    Kay Graham was the daughter of a former partner at Lazard Freres. Her father bought the WaPo after his retirement. The family and its plaything rag formed part of Operation Mockingbird.

    djrichard , October 12, 2017 at 12:51 pm

    Also worth mentioning that he purchased the WaPo in 1933. Per wikipedia, " In June 1933, he bought the Washington Post at a bankruptcy auction, for $825,000 ".

    Pre-sages Bezos buying the WaPo on the cheap too. Can't say I would have thought of Bezos as being a Russia scare-monger. I guess it's the flip-side of regime change. If you're in the regime preservation business, perhaps that means regime changing your enemies. In which case, never let a good crisis go to waste. And if a crisis isn't available well if a newspaper can't figure out how to manufacture a crisis out of the available pool of evil-doers, then really why even have a newspaper?

    Bezos to Russia, "It's nothing personal, it's just business". Bezos to Trump, "It's personal."

    funemployed , October 13, 2017 at 7:00 am

    The CIA did give jeff 600 million dollars shortly after his acquisition of wapo

    Scott , October 13, 2017 at 12:39 pm

    Seems like that is the under the radar amount of supposed funding for Fronts.

    Slowly it dawned on me, or I simply put two and two together realizing I was working for a CIA/MI6 Front. Explained why mediocrities, liars & thieves had secure jobs.

    American Airlines is most probably the inheritor of Air America's freight operations, station agents, & to pilots a great system for overt & covert operations gets 685 million a year.

    IN-Q-TEL the CIA retirement benefits fund for agents gets 685 million as well.

    I don't remember where I read the figures. See what you find out?
    When I worked the independent movie scene in NYC all the budgets were 100 thousand dollars.

    Now how you know, or the commentators know what they are saying here, I don't know. We are aware that the US power structure found it convenient to blame, or imply the blame for all that was stupid and violent in politics in the US on the Russians who as a secretive organization by habit made the picture plausible.

    If oligarchs money fleeing Russia came to America and was a source of Industrial Service Banking it would be a victory. As it is the working classes in the US and Russia end up with the same leaders only different.

    As it is the game is the same with it being real estate and art.
    If there is one thing about Russians, they lust to possess beauty.
    Otherwise from my experience they are difficult to do business with and you get more respect when you up front don't trust them so they can act like Russians.

    I pitched to the Atlantic "Statehood for Russia" when the Cold War supposedly ended.
    With the propaganda going into what Americans look at and voter system hacking it is evident they want to be a state.

    sgt_doom , October 12, 2017 at 1:42 pm

    Outstanding article and excellent commentary points and to elaborate just on several facts stated: ("Wisner went mad and killed himself, as did Graham.") -- this might have been the case, but most curiously, both Wisner and Graham were first treated at Chestnut Lodge Sanitarium in Rockville, MD at the CIA's MK ULTRA wing, then they both would return home and commit suicide?! This was also the facility where the CIA would send a research nutritionist (do not know whether they connived her, or it was against her will, etc., but she did not work for the Agency) who was researching an Amazonian plant with unique properties, and after her treatment, she never mentioned said plant or research ever again?!.

    Also, this is where Richard Helms, then CIA director, had his famous auto accident right before giving testimony before the Church Committee (when he perjured himself and later was officially censured by Congress). Helms claimed he was seeing a psychoanalyst (basis for a simpleton movie from Hollywood called "The President's Analyst" -- probably involved Harry Weinstein) -- but it was because Helms was shredding all the MK ULTRA files kept there prior to appearing before the Church Committee.

    And Joe Alsop was cousin to several CIA dudes, Kermit Roosevelt and Archibald Roosevelt, whereupon he received his "tips" or misinformation.

    And the Colonel explains Sarkozy's familial background quite nicely, but to further add it was Wisner and John Negroponte, working through the Franco-American Foundation, who were supposed to be behind the concocted false scandals against Sarkozy's presidential opponent which allowed Sarkozy to win the election the first time. (The second time, Sarkozy was behind that NYC airport "incident" which blow up in his face, resulting in a Hollande victory.)

    Vatch , October 12, 2017 at 1:55 pm

    "The President's Analyst" is an outstanding satire from 1967. The Church committee hearings were in 1975.

    Enquiring Mind , October 12, 2017 at 3:12 pm

    There are further Wall Street links in the Sarkozy family. Olivier, half-brother of Nicolas, was at CS First Boston and worked briefly with our company on an engagement some years ago. His colleagues remarked on his pedigree and ability to open doors where others couldn't.

    Patrick Donnelly , October 12, 2017 at 10:53 am

    So the USA had no hand in arming Japan and encouraging them to attack Russia, successfully in 1904? Who stirred up Japan, forcing them with battleships to trade, actually firing on Japan. USA has always had war plans for the invasion of every country on Earth, since the Civil War, if not before.

    It has always been fighting on foreign soil since it was formed by violence against a lawful sovereign. Except for 20 years!!!

    WWII was a result of rearmament of Germany, by USA and its banker allies. They wanted USSR in ashes. In the end they had to rescue Germany, failing in that and losing half of Europe. That must be smart!

    Vatch , October 12, 2017 at 12:05 pm

    It [USA] has always been fighting on foreign soil since it was formed by violence against a lawful sovereign.

    The monarchy of George III? Lawful sovereign? Who elected George III? Nobody. Who elected the members of Parliament? Nobody in America, and only adult males who could meet stringent properly requirements in Britain. Britain in 1775/1776 was definitely not a lawful sovereign over any territory in the North American continent.

    Carolinian , October 12, 2017 at 12:57 pm

    Don't forget Woody Wilson sending the troops to Vladivostok after WW1. Communism was always regarded as an existential threat by the then WASPy, now not so WASPy elites.

    And re Kennan, the recent Ken Burns Vietnam documentary shows him casting doubts on the Vietnam intervention at a Congressional hearing. Kennan said the policy was like the elephant being terrified of the mouse. So his Russia obsession does seem to have been more about power rivalry than ideological apostasy.

    David , October 12, 2017 at 1:40 pm

    They wanted USSR in ashes.

    If this is true, why did the US send 17.5 M tons of material to the USSR, through Lend Lease , during WW2?

    Roughly 17.5 million tons of military equipment, vehicles, industrial supplies, and food were shipped from the Western Hemisphere to the USSR, 94% coming from the US. For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945.

    One item typical of many was a tire plant that was lifted bodily from the Ford Company's River Rouge Plant and transferred to the USSR. The 1947 money value of the supplies and services amounted to about eleven billion dollars.

    Wasn't Henry Ford supposed to be a Na*i?

    While repayment of the interest-free loans was required after the end of the war under the act, in practice the U.S. did not expect to be repaid by the USSR after the war. The U.S. received $2M in reverse Lend-Lease from the USSR. This was mostly in the form of landing, servicing, and refueling of transport aircraft; some industrial machinery and rare minerals were sent to the U.S. The U.S. asked for $1.3B at the cessation of hostilities to settle the debt, but was only offered $170M by the USSR. The dispute remained unresolved until 1972, when the U.S. accepted an offer from the USSR to repay $722M linked to grain shipments from the U.S., with the remainder being written off.

    So $722M in 1972 dollars for $11B in 1947 dollars?

    hemeantwell , October 12, 2017 at 4:09 pm

    They wanted USSR in ashes.

    If this is true, why did the US send 17.5 M tons of material to the USSR, through Lend Lease, during WW2?

    They suspended their death wish because without the USSR they could very well have lost to the Nazis. Short of a successful invasion of Britain, the availability to the Nazis of a small portion of the tank and aerial forces that were getting chewed up in the Soviet Union would have led to the easy conquest of North Africa and the loss of the Suez canal. That would have been hard for the Allies to recover from. Once the war was won it was time to shift back into playing the innocent party responding to Soviet aggression.

    Vatch , October 12, 2017 at 4:27 pm

    The U.S. also sent $20 million in food aid to the Soviets during the famine of 1921-1922. The U.S. attitude towards Russia / Soviet Union is complex and contradictory. Members of the U.S. establishment mostly opposed the Soviets, but future President Herbert Hoover's role in the famine relief project shows that there were exceptions.

    By the 1930s, the behavior of Stalin justified opposition to the Soviets, although I think that for a long time, many (perhaps most) of the Americans who opposed them did so for the wrong reasons.

    Bigfoot , October 13, 2017 at 10:59 am

    Did he send food aid to the Soviets?

    Hoover's role in famine relief was about more than food distribution. By 1911-1912 or so he was director of the Russo-Asiatic Corporation and had extensive oil, mining, and timber interests in Russia, all of which made him very, very wealthy. These interests were relinquished prior to the Revolution, which Hoover vehemently opposed. According to Sayers and Kahn in The Great Conspiracy Against Russia, "He was to remain one of the world's bitterest foes of the Soviet Government for the rest of his life. It is a fact, whatever his personal motive may have been, that American food sustained the White Russians and fed the storm troops of the most reactionary regimes in Europe which were engaged in suppressing the upsurge of democracy after the First World War. Thus American relief became a weapon against the peoples' movements in Europe."

    This is Disaster Capitalism 100 years ago.

    The quote is footnoted. The footnote reads: "Herbert Hoover's activities as Food Relief Administrator were directed toward giving aid to the White Russians and withholding all supplies to the Soviets. Hundreds of thousands starved in Soviet territory. When, finally, Hoover bowed to public pressure and sent some food to the Soviets he continued according to a statement by a Near East Relief official in the New York World in April, 1922 -- to 'interfere with the collection of funds for famine-stricken Russia.' In February, 1992, when Hoover was Secretary of Commerce, the New York Globe made this editorial comment: 'Bureaucrats centered throughout the Department of Justice, the Department of State and the Department of Commerce for purposes of publicity are carrying on a private war with the Bolshevist Government Washington propaganda has grown to menacing proportions Messrs. Hughes and Hoover and Dougherty will do well to clean their houses before public irritation reaches too high a point. The American people will not long endure a presumptuous bureaucracy which for its own wretched purposes is willing to let millions of innocent people die."

    Pages 36-37 of Sayers and Kahn:

    https://www.scribd.com/document/239748857/Herbert-Hoovers-Billion-Dollars-in-Russia?ad_group=725X175Xd393bbb985be6bbdd9f1080622142345&campaign=Skimbit%2C+Ltd.&content=10079&irgwc=1&keyword=ft750noi&medium=affiliate&source=impactradius

    Vatch , October 13, 2017 at 12:54 pm

    In 1919, when the American Relief Administration first offered to help Russia, it's very plausible that they only wanted to help the regions under White control. But the Soviets refused foreign assistance at that time. In 1921, when the famine was worse, the Whites didn't control much outside of portions of Siberia. I think the worst areas of famine were in eastern Ukraine and the nearby parts of Russia. I don't think the Whites controlled any of that territory any longer, but I could be wrong. I think that Hoover's aid helped a lot of people in Soviet areas. And yes, he was anti-communist.

    ex-PFC Chuck , October 12, 2017 at 7:18 pm

    Also there was considerable sympathy towards Germany among the Latin American elites. Several countries, such as Paraguay and Argentina, would likely have jumped aboard the Axis bandwagon if it began to look like they'd come out on top.

    ex-PFC Chuck , October 12, 2017 at 7:40 pm

    The percentage of battle deaths incurred by the Germans on the Eastern front was at a minimum 70%, and by some counts over 90%. If Operation Barbarosa had not been launched in 1941 and a truce had held on that front it is unlikely that the Anglo-American alliance could have sustained a a landing on continental Europe in the west. This would have especially been the case if the Germans, instead of putting their chips on Barbarosa, had been able to successfully shut off British use of the Suez Canal, and thus deprive them of ready access to the resources from India and especially the oil from Iran. Given British naval dominance of the Mediterranean, however, this would have been difficult unless they were able to negotiate passage to the Levant by land through Turkey and the Balkans.

    Bigfoot , October 13, 2017 at 11:07 am

    Jacob Schiff was instrumental in this as he helped raise hundreds of millions for Japan. http://jewishcurrents.org/august-10-jacob-schiff-russo-japanese-war/

    Lambert Strether , October 13, 2017 at 2:38 pm

    > every country on Earth, since the Civil War, if not before

    Every country? Surely not. See This Vast Southern Empire , pre-Civil War. We had designs on "our own" hemisphere, but every country? No.

    Vatch , October 12, 2017 at 11:54 am

    "Kennan was a psychopath who alternated bouts of aggression to prove himself with bouts of depression over his cowardice."

    A little evidence would be nice. This appears to be one of those violations of Naked Capitalism policy: making stuff up.

    hemeantwell , October 12, 2017 at 4:20 pm

    Agreed. Instead of peddling diagnoses he would do well to stick with the attacking the crudity of Kennan's view of world affairs. Kennan saw the Soviets as akin to "windup toys" that were somehow driven to expand. In this he completely failed to account for the fact that the Soviets were potentially autarchic, while the capitalist West was governed by accumulation imperatives that pushed for market expansion. He doesn't bother himself with the problem but jumps right into rationalizing base construction and an arms race. That Kennan is seen as a kind of geostrategic genius speaks volumes regarding the self-deluded mindlessness of US foreign policy.

    Andrew Watts , October 12, 2017 at 4:52 pm

    This article sounds more like an angry emotional outburst from Helmer. It wouldn't surprise me if he's one of the people taking a lot of crap in all this Russian propaganda hysteria.

    Lambert Strether , October 13, 2017 at 2:43 pm

    Kennan certainly suffered from bouts of depression . I have never read a Kennan biography, so I can't vouch for the rest. Perhaps some other reader has.

    Vatch , October 14, 2017 at 12:41 pm

    Yes, I know about his depression. But the claim that he was a psychopath? That stretches believability. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy were examples of psychopaths. I don't think that George Kennan was like them.

    EmilianoZ , October 12, 2017 at 12:14 pm

    Russia-phobia is actually 100 years old. Strangely, I haven't seen any commemoration of the centenary of 1917 Revolution. Nobody can deny that it was a world-changing event.

    Disturbed Voter , October 12, 2017 at 12:25 pm

    The Bolshevik Revolution, that overtook the Kerensky Revolution shocked the world to the core, particularly the Church. It quickly alienated even syndicalists and anarchists, because it developed into a strong centralized state, not the bottom up movement that Lenin found when he entered Petrograd.

    The last 4 years of Nato intervention in the Baltics, Poland and the Ukraine have shown that the world has never recovered from that shock. British opposition to Russia goes even deeper, back to the Great Game and the Crimean War. Without Churchill vehemently opposing Russia in general and Stalin in particular would there even be a Nato? History is more about continuity than discontinuity.

    justanotherprogressive , October 12, 2017 at 1:33 pm

    I'm glad you mentioned Churchill. Since the first Directors of the OSS and the CIA were complete Anglophiles and modeled their collection techniques on Britian's SIS (MI-6) (until, of course, those famous British spies were uncovered), it is not surprising that our first after the war "enemies" were the same as Churchill's enemies

    Norb , October 12, 2017 at 2:06 pm

    I have a sneaking suspicion that the troubles of the world have such a basic foundation that if they are ever solved, people will look back, marveling at the simplicity of the answers.

    Humans have always faced the dilemma of how to organize society. The main sticking points being how to control personal ambition in ones own group and how to get the work done that needs doing- including protecting oneself form ones neighbors who are dealing with the same issues.

    Capitalism, and the west in general, seem to turn personal ambition loose. It takes a persons personal confrontation and experience with the universe and makes that the primary motivator for organization. It serves to reward the aggressive while insulating failure as a personal shortcoming, not a flaw in the system. The Catholic religion, which underpins such a system by giving it a spiritual legitimacy. The individual can have a personal relationship with the creator of the universe- with the moderating teaching of caring for the poor to curb excessive personal ambition or too close a connection. That hasn't worked out so well as the poor are with us still and the argument is given that the poor will be with us forever. The Divine right of Kings and all that.

    Godless Communists challenged all that and the results still haven't worked themselves out.

    Endless wars seem to be an excuse to justify recurring cycles of hate. Love your God, and spite your enemies.

    The promise of Socialism is that the tools of science and reason can be used to relieve human suffering and provide for a meaningful life. That vision remains unborn because those sentiments are always snuffed out as quickly as they take hold.

    Jeff W , October 12, 2017 at 5:53 pm

    I have a sneaking suspicion that the troubles of the world have such a basic foundation that if they are ever solved, people will look back, marveling at the simplicity of the answers.

    I have the exact same suspicion. We might, in fact, understand the basic foundation and already have the solutions but, to use your words, they are always snuffed out as quickly as they take hold -- which is itself its own intractable problem.

    JTMcPhee , October 12, 2017 at 12:35 pm

    Interesting observation about McCarthyism as a feature of the lower classes. Particularly about what the hate and fear was directed against: bankers, lawyers, Jews, homosexuals, communists One of the big actors in that great national drama was a fella named Roy Cohn, who kind of fell into almost all of those categories (except maybe "communist", though with Cohn, who was also a mob lawyer and buddy of J. Edgar Hoover, who knows?).

    And for Trump haters, or those who are trying to "understand" the guy, there's even a great big Cohn Connection, which is fun to read about here: " A mentor in shamelessness: the man who taught Trump the power of publicity
    Roy Cohn, the lawyer who embraced infamy during the McCarthy hearings and Rosenberg trial, influenced Donald Trump to turn the tabloids into a soapbox     " , https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/20/roy-cohn-donald-trump-joseph-mccarthy-rosenberg-trial

    H.Alexander Ivey , October 12, 2017 at 7:01 pm

    Interesting observation about McCarthyism as a feature of the lower classes.

    I noted that too. It gives credence to Matt Stoller's observation that the elites / 1%ers are not monolithic but are fractions that can and do fight each other.

    Lambert Strether , October 13, 2017 at 2:50 pm

    Tangentially, I saw the Angels in America in London, which includes a vivid portrait of Roy Cohn. On his deathbed, watched over by Ethel Rosenberg, Cohn dekes Rosenberg into singing him off to his last sleep out of pity A touching moment until Cohn sits up and yells "Fooled ya!" (paraphrasing).

    Norb , October 12, 2017 at 1:12 pm

    America was born of conquest. The North American continent is/was vast in scale and resources. The vision was never to live in such a place as more to conquer it and extract its resources. That mentality is still prominent as the resource base has not been depleted yet and energies are directed to further exploitation- fracking and the opening of the arctic regions. Even now, an argument can be made that American corporations are more concerned about exploiting their customers for profit, than the health of the citizenry. That is the motivational force behind our governing elite, not some attachment to the land and its people and the desire to make the world a better place.

    American Exceptionalism is based on conquest and the right for individuals to exploit those resources to their own end. By that standard it continues to be a success. Communism, in principle, was an ideology opposed to that vision. Under no circumstances can such an ideology be allowed to exist, so was set for extermination by force and disinformation. Once that process takes hold, you live in a world devoid of reality. It is fantasy.

    Naked greed cannot be justified for long without some form of damage taking place in the human psyche. Reflection is not prevalent in the American creed. The rise of American Corporations to the detriment of the nations citizens is a confirmation of that fact. For how can a nation be "Great" if its citizens are driven into poverty?

    You become a Nation of crazy people.

    Greed and misuse of Power lead to crazy. Instead of trying to talk sense to crazy people, sanity lies in the opposite direction. Less greed and an articulation of the proper use of power. Implementation is another matter.

    Chris , October 12, 2017 at 4:50 pm

    Yes, well said, Norb.

    The fact that our corporations' only social responsibility is to make money says heaps

    Juliania , October 12, 2017 at 2:49 pm

    Many thanks,Yves and especially to you, sgt_doom.

    Truth has a clarity no conspiracy theory can emulate

    ex-PFC Chuck , October 12, 2017 at 8:36 pm

    Thanks for the reading suggestions, and I especially second the the mention of Douglass's JFK and the Unspeakable. TTBOMK although it's nearly ten years old it's the best analysis out there of the John Kennedy assassination.

    clarky90 , October 12, 2017 at 4:56 pm

    Saying "Russia (aka the Soviet Union)" (as Helmer does) is akin to saying "California (aka The United States". It is a false statement.

    The Soviet Union (1917-1991) was a materialist anti-christian, anti religious totalitarian State. Godlessness was the ruling precept of Soviet society.

    In 1923, Lenin created the first Soviet Concentration Camp, at the "re-purposed", Russian Orthodox Solovetsky Monastery. Solovetsky was used as the prototype for the Gulag network of camps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solovki_prison_camp

    Ultimately the Gulag would grow to 30,000 concentration camps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Gulag_camps

    IMO, today, the USA is the World Epicenter of materialism, internationalism, greed and godlessness.

    Conversely, Russia (2017) is a Nationalist, Orthodox Christian Democracy. No wonder our materialistic rulers are so "hysterically", (The APA says, "conversion disorder". Casual psychiatric diagnosis of opponents is a breeze now!), fearful of Russia, and the Biblical, little David, with his sling and stone (Putin).

    Yves Smith , October 12, 2017 at 6:36 pm

    I agree Helmer should have been clearer. Helmer is saying that the US is treating Russia in the same way it treated the USSR, at least messaging-wise.

    MarkE , October 12, 2017 at 7:27 pm

    There is a vast body of scholarly work on the origins of the Cold War from many different perspectives, into which context this analysis is trivial and downright loopy. The Georgetown Set got us into it? It was "mad" to oppose the Soviet Union and now Russia? Oh, please.

    Western opposition to Russian communism pre-dates Joe Alsop and his bowties by decades. The revolutionary regime that weakened the WWI alliance and prolonged that bloody war by making a separate peace with Germany wasn't going to be well-liked by its former allies in the first place. The same regime preached the violent overthrow of democratically-elected western governments, who reacted as one might expect, including the (poorly-considered) intervention of 1918-1920.

    Stalin then gave the world many, many reasons not to trust Russia – brutal repression on a hitherto unheard of scale, mass murder, disastrous economic policies leading to mass famine, show trials and active promotion of Soviet-style take-overs elsewhere. Even before WWII and the start of the Cold War there was plenty not to like. During the war, Western governments bowed to geopolitical reality and allied with the USSR, despite Stalin's cynical deal with Hitler to divide Poland just before, but Poland provides one of the best samplings of why opposing the USSR/Russia after geopolitical realities changed at the end of the war was not only understandable but a very good idea. Shortly after Russia took over in eastern Poland the NKVD rounded up and brutally murdered 22,000 military officers, police officers, public officials and assorted intellectuals, i.e. anyone who could think independently and oppose Russian rule, and threw the bodies into pits dug in the Katyn Forest. The Soviets denied this for decades, blaming it on the Nazi's, but finally fessed up in 1990 during perestroika, now best understood as a brief twinkling of light in Russia's dark history. Reports had leaked out of the massacre and other Soviet atrocities during the war, which played a large role in mobilizing another major force in U.S. politics that was deeply skeptical of the USSR after the war – ethnic Eastern Europeans.

    The West and Russia did do deals at Yalta and Tehran on spheres of influence, but there was ambiguity as to what that meant and words were thrown in about national self-determination and free elections. After the war the West (mostly) promoted democratic government, at least in Europe, while the Soviets laughed at the joke and imposed their brutal regimes anywhere they could. Stalin's last living legacy is the horror show in North Korea, where he installed a Soviet agent as head of the regime, now a dynasty. Kennan's Long Cable/Article X, which is still well worth reading, dealt with the causes of Soviet expansionism as part of Russia's long, troubled history and urged containment as an alternative to more active opposition ("roll-back"), which largely worked in Europe. As the counterpoint to containment, when Sec State Dean Acheson omitted Korea from the U.S. "defensive perimeter" in his January 1950 speech, the North invaded the South with Soviet support five months later. It was after that experience that containment went global.

    With the exception of Kennan, the people mentioned may have had influence but were not the real policy makers. Truman, George Marshall and Dean Acheson were the primary architects of U.S postwar policy. Only Acheson lived in Georgetown, and he thought Alsop was a "pest." Acheson took on Kennan as his staff chief because he had deep expertise on Russia and largely made sense. The off-hand comments in the article about Kennan being a psychopath and coward were made with no support and are at odds with his reputation as a pragmatist and traditionalist in foreign policy. He was recently most well known for his quaint view that the U.S. should declare wars as required by the Constitution before getting into them. Alsop was a commentator not a policy maker and was regarded as somewhat of a fringe character, not least because he was gay in the 1950s. As for the rest of the U.S. elite at the time, far more of them had been sympathetic to Russia in their youths than rabid anti-communists. The typical Cold Warrior was made that way not by bowtie-wearing but by sober, mature observation of what the Soviet regime was all about.

    So let's do fast-forward to the present day. No one with an objective understanding of Russian history is at all surprised that a regime headed by one of their former secret policemen is tampering with elections, fomenting political divisions and trying to disrupt the western alliance. All the evidence supports those conclusions and more comes out every day. Facebook, Google, the scope is astounding. In Helmer's piece we see the birth of a new phenomenon, on the same intellectual level as climate-change denial. It's electing-tampering denial.

    olga , October 13, 2017 at 9:18 pm

    I think if NC-ers wanted to read official propaganda, they could just subscribe to NYT. The only thing that your comment demonstrates is that you've no idea what "objective understanding of Russian history" could possibly be.

    MarkE , October 14, 2017 at 9:56 am

    Was that an argument? The problem Russian apologists have is that periodically, after years or decades of denial, the truth finally comes out from a Russian source, usually when it's convenient to blame their predecessor. Khrushchev finally admitted Stalin's "mistakes", like anyone really needed confirmation that his regime had murdered millions. Gorbachev finally had the guts to admit the NKVD liquidated the Polish elite, which everyone else (except the "useful idiots") had known for a long time, etc. That was the context of the Cold War and the original posting. U.S. containment policy responded to real actions and constant lying by the USSR as it imposed totalitarian regimes throughout Eastern Europe and elsewhere, not some goofy chatter at Georgetown cocktail parties. Every one of those countries, as soon as they had freedom to choose, bolted for the West and NATO.

    As for election-tampering denial, sure looks like it's real. This was a new twist – deny something simply because it's been reported in the NYT (Russian sources, and Donald Trump, being so much more credible). But some other historical truth-telling pertains here. If you want to understand what Vladimir Putin and his fellow secret policemen did in East Germany, despite decades of denial, you can now go to the Stasi archives. It's a museum that documents 44 years of soul-crushing repression, cynical manipulation of neighbor against neighbor and systematic subversion of anyone or any group that might speak up against the state. It's not hard at all to believe that someone who came of age with that background would take advantage of such an easy way to undermine their U.S. adversaries. In fact, it's hard to believe they wouldn't.

    Adams , October 12, 2017 at 9:22 pm

    Well said. Thank you. My comment was much shorter, but said many of the same things. It was censored. Much shorter version: Asserting that George Kennan was a lunatic is lunacy.

    JCC , October 13, 2017 at 9:35 am

    For the life of me, I still cannot figure out why people are in an absolute panic over Russian "agents" buying $100,000.00, or whatever, worth of advertising promoting either or both sides of the election when U.S.citizens and Political Parties spent over $1.6 billion.

    Are American citizens really so stupid as to fall for the amazingly, brilliantly conceived and placed $100K worth of Russian advertising, so clever that it superseded $1.6 billion worth of U.S. citizen ads?

    Or (to misquote Shakespeare/Macbeth) is it a tale told by propagandists, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

    Donald , October 12, 2017 at 11:37 pm

    "After the war the West (mostly) promoted democratic government, at least in Europe, "

    Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

    I am surprised no one else responded to this screed. I agree that the Soviet Union had a horrific human rights record, but that little snippet I quote above is like a relic from the silliest days of Cold War propaganda. As for Russian meddling, the evidence is that probably something happened, in my opinion, but if people were serious they would keep some sense of proportion. I read the NYT articles and melodramatic language is doing an awful lot of work with regards to the Facebook claims.

    If I accepted everything I have read at face value our democracy was so fragile literally anyone willing to hire some hackers and spend a minuscule amount of money could have destroyed it. Heck, if I and a few friends were willing to mortgage our homes and cash in our retirement funds we could fund its destruction ourselves.

    Bigfoot , October 13, 2017 at 11:52 am

    Richard Spence, professor of history at the University of Idaho, has just published "Wall Street and the Russian Revolution: 1905 – 1925." This is a fascinating book that I would think at least some of the above commenters would be interested in. Spence has updated Anthony Sutton's earlier work with new/more archival research and access to new/more recently declassified documents.

    I haven't finished it as it came in the mail yesterday, but it does have a few interesting comments about George Kennan not the above George Kennan but his distant cousin who in 1891 published a book entitled "Siberia and the Exile System." So it seems that Russia-hating ran in the family. The cousin Kennan claimed to have assisted in the distribution of a ton and a half of literature to Russian POWs in Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. This, according to Kennan, was financed by Jacob Schiff and caused many of the POWs to become liberals and revolutionaries opposed to the Tsar.

    Fleshing out the role of capitalist/financial interests in the Revolution is certainly important. These were the deep state actors of 100 years ago. The names of the people and the interests they represent may have changed, but the chicanery hasn't.

    Jamie , October 13, 2017 at 1:09 pm

    "It's important that Americans understand that Putin wants to bring us down. He was an old KGB agent."

    – Crooked Hillary

    Olaf Lukk , October 13, 2017 at 5:37 pm

    " the Clinton administration decided to move NATO into former Warsaw Pact nations, violating a understanding made as part of the peaceful dissolution". The "peaceful dissolution" of the Soviet "union", I presume?

    NATO was formed in 1948 in response to the Soviet refusal to withdraw from the Eastern European nations it continued to control with puppet governments and Soviet troops after WWll. The Soviets responded by forming the Warsaw Pact -- consisting of those very same nations: (East) Germany, Poland, Czechoslavakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. The only time Warsaw Pact troops were used militarily was against its own members -- Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslavakia in 1968.

    The collapse of the USSR started in 1989, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and culminated in 1991 with the failed coup by hardliners against Gorbachev in August of 1991, though the official end did not come until the formal dissolution on December 26, 1991.

    In the following years, all of the Warsaw Pact nations, plus the illegally annexed and occupied Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, having regained their sovereignty, all made a point of joining NATO -- to make sure that the Russian bear did not return to do even more damage.

    What "understanding" was violated? It is a popular myth that the Russians were "promised" that NATO would not expand to the east. Who made this promise to who, and under what authority? Did the nations of Eastern Europe, after half a century of Russian control, voluntarily cede the power to determine their future alliances to the Clinton Administration? The premise is absurd on its face. In any case, how do you keep a "promise" to a political entity- the USSR- which no longer exists?

    Russian interference in Ukraine, and the forced annexation of Crimea (reminiscent of Stalin's annexation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1940), has validated the pragmatism of its former vassal states in joining NATO. Russia is not being threatened by its neighbor's membership in NATO; to them, Russia is the threat.

    olga , October 13, 2017 at 9:28 pm

    You should ask Jim Baker, who had confirmed that an agreement regarding NATO was made. In addition to many other people present at the time Why try at revisionist history now ?

    And FIY, Estonia, Latvia, and Litva were a part of the czarist Russia for more than 300 yrs. Soviet Union gave up the territories in the terrible peace it had to sign with Germany before the end of WWI. After the next war, which it won, it simply took back the areas – kinda like the French took back Alsace-Lorraine, after victory over German in WWI. Knowing history is really a good thing

    BoycottAmazon , October 13, 2017 at 10:50 pm

    +1

    Don't confuses them with the facts.

    More Russians troops are buried in the soil of the Crimea than the US lost in Europe during WWI &WWII as well. The West or it's proxies have been after it for nearly as long as The Great Game has been in play. But that's what Russia gets for helping Lincoln by keeping France and Britain from actively coming in on the side of the Confederates. Never help an ingrate.

    MarkE , October 14, 2017 at 10:00 am

    That's two misreadings of history. There was no agreement not to expand NATO, which is confirmed by both Jim Baker and Mikhail Gorbachev, the other guy there at the table. The only agreement made was that NATO would not put nuclear weapons or non-German troops in the former GDR. That agreement has been kept.

    The Baltic states had all declared their independence from Russia before the Russian peace with Germany, so they weren't anyone's to give. If they were ever "transferred" to Germany they didn't stay German for long – in fact a couple of them defeated German armies in battle towards the end of WWI. They were all independent by 1920, part of the wave of national self-determination after WWI that saw the liberation of lots of smaller countries that had been dominated by one of the defunct empires. Lithuania, of course, hadn't always been so small – at one point it was the largest country in Europe and included parts of what became Russia. Comparisons with Alsace are absurd on several levels.

    [Jan 03, 2019] Five Political Predictions for 2019 by Daniel R. DePetris

    Jan 01, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
    4. Matt Whitaker will block public release of the Mueller report.

    Special counsel Robert Mueller will finalize his investigation and send his report to Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, who has never been supportive of the inquiry. Using his powers as attorney general, Whitaker will block public disclosure of Mueller's conclusions and release a sanitized summary detailing no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Democrats will be outraged -- as will be Bob Mueller, who will proceed to give his first on-air, primetime interview detailing what he did and did not find. The next week, the House Judiciary Committee will debate opening an impeachment inquiry based solely on Mueller's interview.

    [Jan 02, 2019] Russian bots - How An Anti-Russian Lobby Creates Fake News

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Atlantic Council ..."
    "... Alliance for Securing Democracy. ..."
    "... Alliance for Securing Democracy ..."
    "... That's pretty rich, coming from a country and from people who actually genuinely, and in proven ways, have subverted democracy in Europe since the late 1940s - Italy being one of the clearest cases. ..."
    "... For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia. I can't believe it has to do with the economy. There's got to be a far better nefarious reason. Even during the real cold war we tried to avoid conflict. Absolute insanity. ..."
    "... American media has graduated from simply repeating the lies of "unnamed government sources" to repeating the lies of any organization unofficially blessed by the powers that be. ..."
    "... In that The Narrative is tightly controlled in the corporate media, not matter how strong the proofs or arguments about the falsity of these propaganda campaigns are, little or no circulation of those proofs or arguments wlll reach the general public. ..."
    "... The thing that bothers me, is the fact that the MIC Globalists don't care what we think or how poor their deceptions are. ..."
    "... The cleverest trick used in propaganda against a specific country is to accuse it of what the accuser itself is doing. ..."
    "... I've always put it down to the Washington Establishment having a severe case of psychological projection. ..."
    "... The warmongering is not intended to make any sense - not many people are trained in critical thinking and logic, and even when they are, they can be swamped by their own emotions or other people's emotions. ..."
    "... Propaganda is intended to appeal to people's emotions and fears. You can try reading works by Edward Bernays - "Crystallizing Public Opinion" (1923) and "Propaganda" (1928) - to see how he uses his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories of the mind to create strategies for manipulating public opinion. ..."
    "... The American Security State needs enemies to exist, otherwise there's no need for the "security" which translates into big bucks for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Media Complex. They can't agree on the ranking of the enemies: North Korea is a threat to the world! Iran is....! Russia is...! China is....! But the threats are there, and they are pure evil (TPTB contend). ..."
    "... Sad but definitely correct. The first casualty of war is the truth. It's dead in the USA and allies. Therefore, they're at war with Russia and China. If Russia is down, China will be dealt with. ..."
    "... Some years ago, I noticed the American media and politicians were sort of going soft (actually mushy) in the brain department, but I was told not to be so judgemental. As the months went by, I saw more and more people saying "they have gone nuts". So, it turns out I am not alone after all. ..."
    "... That madness comes from having no behavioural limits, no references outside of your own opinion but groupthink, and manipulating the language to suit your ambitions (the Orwellism of the US media has been repeatedly pointed at). Simply put, you don't know anymore what's what outside of the narrative your group pushes, you go nuts. The manipulators ends up caught in their lies. All the more when they makes money out of it, which would be the case of all those think tanks and media. ..."
    "... Honestly, the story of democracy (by capitalist/liberal class) is a grand BS, to be modest. The only thing what was truthful, paradoxically, is who is "lesser evil" of two. Or the Bigger one in unrestrained capitalism, savage and monopoly, predatory and a fascists one. ..."
    "... War or the threat of war is needed to distract attention from rapidly devolving societal bonds and immense economic inequality. ..."
    "... The US is progressing toward a fascist police state; therefore, Russia is said to be a horrible dictatorship run by Putin. The US traditionally meddles in elections around the world, including Russia; therefore, the Russians are said to meddle in US elections. The US is the most aggressive country on the planet, occupying and bombing dozens of countries; therefore, the Russians are accused of "aggression." And so on ..."
    "... The US actually spends $75 billion per year---more than Russia's entire $69 billion defense budget---spying on and meddling in the politics of virtually every nation on earth. An outfit within NSA called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) has a multi-billion annual budget and does nothing put troll the global internet and does so with highly educated, highly paid professionals, not $4 per hour keyboard jockeys." ..."
    "... Zbignew Brzezenski explained in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard" why global hegemony required taking control over Russia (and how to do it, which boils down to taking the other chess pieces off the board (Iraq/Ukraine/etc. and then pulling off a "color revolution," coup or military conquest). ..."
    "... Msm, bellingcat and other think tanks - they push their anti Russian racism too far making a large section of westerners just tired of their hysteria. Exposing their own racism and paranoia. ..."
    "... Globalization . . . is a program to create private corporate rights to trade, invest, lend or borrow money and buy and own property anywhere in the world without much hindrance by national governments. It would bar governments from most of the common methods of helping or protecting their national industries and employment. It is a winners' program promoted chiefly by some business interests, governments and neoclassical economists in Europe and the United States. ..."
    "... One of its purposes is to intensify international competition for jobs. Together with other Right policies it is likely to maintain some unemployment in the rich countries and reduce the wage rates of their lower-paid workers, and reduce the proportion of secure employment. Hugh Stretton, Economics: A New Introduction ..."
    "... The anti-russian think tanks, msm, bellingcat etc push this too much, making them look stupid. ..."
    "... Assange: "Regardless of whether IRA's activities were audience building through pandering to communities or whether a hare-brained Russian government plan to "heighten the differences" existed, its activities are clearly strategically insignificant compared to the other forces at play." ..."
    Feb 20, 2018J | www.moonofalabama.org

    The U.S. mainstream media are going nuts. They now make up and report stories based on the uncritical acceptance of an algorithm they do not want to understand and which is known to produce fake results.

    See for example these three stories:

    From the last link:

    SAN FRANCISCO -- One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun control debate.

    The accounts addressed the news with the speed of a cable news network. Some adopted the hashtag #guncontrolnow. Others used #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting. Earlier on Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., many of those accounts had been focused on the investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

    In other words - the "Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia" were following the current news just as cable news networks do. When a new sensational event happened they immediately jumped onto it. But the NYT authors go to length to claim that there is some nefarious Russian scheme behind this that uses automated accounts to spread divisive issues.

    Those claims are based on this propaganda project:

    Last year, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, in conjunction with the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, created a website that tracks hundreds of Twitter accounts of human users and suspected bots that they have linked to a Russian influence campaign.

    The "Alliance for Securing Democracy" is run by military lobbyists, CIA minions and neo-conservative propagandists. Its claimed task is:

    ... to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin's ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe.

    There is no evidence that Vladimir Putin ever made or makes such efforts.

    The ASD "Hamilton 68" website shows graphics with rankings of "top items" and "trending items" allegedly used by Russian bots or influence agents. There is nothing complicate behind it. It simply tracks the tweets of 600 Twitter users and aggregates the hashtags they use. It does not say which Twitter accounts its algorithms follows. It claims that the 600 were selected by one of three criteria: 1. People who often tweet news that also appears on RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik News, two general news sites sponsored by the Russian government; 2. People who "openly profess to be pro-Russian"; 3. accounts that "appear to use automation" to boost the same themes that people in group 1 and 2 tweet about.

    Nowhere does the group say how many of the 600 accounts it claims to track belong to which group. Are their 10 assumed bots or 590 in the surveyed 600 accounts? And how please does one "openly profess" to be pro-Russian? We don't know and the ASD won't say.

    On December 25 2017 the "Russian influence" agents or bots who - according to NYT - want to sow divisiveness and subvert democracy, wished everyone a #MerryChristmas.


    bigger

    The real method the Hamilton 68 group used to select the 600 accounts it tracks is unknown. The group does not say or show how it made it up. Despite that the NYT reporters, Sheera Frenkel and Daisuke Wakabayashi, continue with the false assumptions that most or all of these accounts are automated, have something to do with Russia and are presumably nefarious:

    Russian-linked bots have rallied around other divisive issues, often ones that President Trump has tweeted about. They promoted Twitter hashtags like #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee after some National Football League players started kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.

    The automated Twitter accounts helped popularize the #releasethememo hashtag , ...

    The Daily Beast reported earlier that the last claim is definitely false :

    Twitter's internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo . There are no preliminary indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is either predominantly Russian.

    The same is presumably true for the other hashtags.

    The Dutch IT expert and blogger Marcel van den Berg was wondering how Dutch keywords and hashtags showed up on the Hamilton 68 "Russian bots" dashboard. He found ( Dutch , English auto translation) that the dashboard is a total fraud:

    In recent weeks, I have been keeping a close eye on Hamilton 68. Every time a Dutch hashtag was shown on the website, I made a screenshot. Then I noted what was playing at that moment and I watched the Tweets with this hashtag. Again I could not find any Tweet that seemed to be from a Russian troll.

    In all cases, the hash tags that Hamilton 68 reported were trending topics in the Netherlands . In all cases there was much to do around the subject of the hashtag in the Netherlands. Many people were angry or shared their opinion on the subject on Twitter. And even if there were a few tweets with Russian connections between them, the effect is zero. Because they do not stand out among the many other, authentic Tweets.

    Van den Berg lists a dozen examples he analyzed in depth.

    The anti-Russian Bellingcat group around couch blogger Eliot Higgins is sponsored by the NATO propaganda shop Atlantic Council . It sniffs through open source stuff to blame Russia or Syria wherever possible. Bellingcat was recently a victim of the "Russian bots" - or rather of the ASD website. On February 10 the hashtag #bellingcat trended to rank 2 of the dashboard.


    bigger

    Bellingcat was thus, according to the Hamilton 68 claims, under assault by hordes of nefarious Russian government sponsored bots.

    The Bellingcat folks looked into the issue and found that only six people on Twitter, none of them an automated account , had used the #bellingcat hashtag in the last 48 hours. Some of the six may have opinions that may be "pro-Russian", but as Higgins himself says :

    [I]n my opinion, it's extremely unlikely the people listed are Russian agents

    The pro-NATO propaganda shop Bellingcat thus debunked the pro-NATO propaganda shop Alliance for Securing Democracy.

    The fraudsters who created the Hamilton 68 crap seem to have filled their database with rather normal people from all over the world who's opinions they personally dislike. Those then are the "Russian bots" who spread "Russian influence" and divisiveness.

    Moreover - what is the value of its information when six normal people out of millions of active Twitter users can push a hashtag with a handful of tweets to the top of the dashboard?

    But the U.S. media writes long gushing stories about the dashboard and how it somehow shows automated Russian propaganda. They go to length to explain that this shows "Russian influence" and a "Russian" attempt to sow "divisiveness" into people's minds.

    This is nuts.

    Last August, when the Hamilton 68 project was first released, the Nation was the only site critical of it. It predicted :

    The import of GMF's project is clear: Reporting on anything that might put the US in a bad light is now tantamount to spreading Russian propaganda.

    It is now even worse than that. The top ranking of the #merrychristmas hashtag shows that the algorithm does not even care about good or bad news. The tracked twitter accounts are normal people.

    The whole project is just a means to push fake stories about alleged "Russian influence" into U.S. media. Whenever some issue creeps up on its dashboard that somehow fits its false "Russian bots" and "divisiveness" narrative the Alliance for Securing Democracy contacts the media to spread its poison. The U.S. media, - CNN, Wired, the New York Times - are by now obviously devoid of thinking journalists and fact checkers. They simple re-package the venom and spread it to the public.

    How long will it take until people die from it?

    Posted by b on February 20, 2018 at 03:15 PM | Permalink

    Comments next page " It's all too reminiscent of Duck Soup:

    Clueless Joe , Feb 20, 2018 3:45:14 PM | link

    "to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin's ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe."

    That's pretty rich, coming from a country and from people who actually genuinely, and in proven ways, have subverted democracy in Europe since the late 1940s - Italy being one of the clearest cases.

    ken , Feb 20, 2018 3:46:05 PM | link
    For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia. I can't believe it has to do with the economy. There's got to be a far better nefarious reason. Even during the real cold war we tried to avoid conflict. Absolute insanity.
    xor , Feb 20, 2018 4:11:10 PM | link
    The cleverest trick used in propaganda against a specific country is to accuse it of what the accuser itself is doing.
    karlof1 , Feb 20, 2018 4:30:11 PM | link
    Gee, what could go wrong formulating policy founded upon a series of Big Lies? Kim Dotcom says he has important info the FBI refuses to hear. At the Munich Security Conference , neocon Nicholas Burns, former US Ambassador to NATO, details my assertion's factual basis that current policy is being formed on a series of Big Lies: "Will NATO strengthen itself to contain Russian power in Eastern Europe giving what Russian [sic] has done illegally in Crimea, in the Donbass, and in Georgia ?" [Bolded text are the Big Lies.]

    Clearly, this entire psyop was premeditated and its design was hastily done contemporaneously with Russia's Syria intervention. NSA/CIA/FBI knew of HRC's security breeches and rightly assumed their contents would find their way into the election, so the general plan was ready to go prior to WikiLeaks publications. b has uncovered much, and I hope he's planning to publish a book about the entire affair.

    Jen , Feb 20, 2018 4:54:59 PM | link
    Ken @ 4: There doesn't necessarily need to be One Major Reason for going to war. There may be several reasons all feeding and reinforcing one another and creating a psychological climate in which Going To War is seen as the only solution and is inevitable. The reasons are not just economic and political but cultural and historical.

    In some countries allied with the US, the politicians in power are the ideological descendants of those who collaborated with Nazi Germany - so in a sense they are committed to "correcting" what they see as wrong. In the case of current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, he is the grandson of a former prime minister who once served in General Tojo's World War II cabinet.
    https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/12/26/national/formed-in-childhood-roots-of-abes-conservatism-go-deep/#.WoyZCG9uaUk

    That's why pinning down the reason for wanting a war against Russia is so difficult.

    Partisan , Feb 20, 2018 5:06:58 PM | link
    The whole piece is just hilarious and I laughed out loud all time while reading it.

    https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/16/nyts-really-weird-russiagate-story/

    Since the FBI never inspected the DNC's computers first-hand, the only evidence comes from an Irvine, California, cyber-security firm known as CrowdStrike whose chief technical officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, a well-known Putin-phobe, is a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank that is also vehemently anti-Russian as well as a close Hillary Clinton ally.

    Thus, Putin-basher Clinton hired Putin-basher Alperovitch to investigate an alleged electronic heist, and to absolutely no one's surprise, his company concluded that guilty party was Vladimir Putin. Amazing! Since then, a small army of internet critics has chipped away at CrowdStrike for praising the hackers as among the best in the business yet declaring in the same breath that they gave themselves away by uploading a document in the name of "Felix Edmundovich," i.e. Felix E. Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police.

    As noted cyber-security expert Jeffrey Carr observed with regard to Russia's two main intelligence agencies: "Raise your hand if you think that a GRU or FSB officer would add Iron Felix's name to the metadata of a stolen document before he released it to the world while pretending to be a Romanian hacker. Someone clearly had a wicked sense of humor."

    james , Feb 20, 2018 5:17:19 PM | link
    thanks b!

    muddy waters.. paid for propaganda.... look at all the russian bots, lol... cold war 2 / mccarthyism 2 is in effect... the historic parallels are marked. thank you neo cons! it's working... the ordinary person in the usa can't be this stupid can they?

    when does ww3 kick in? is that really what these idiots want? or is it just to prolong the huge defense budget?

    Mike Maloney , Feb 20, 2018 5:24:03 PM | link
    This is about conditioning voters in Europe and the United States for a long war with Russia and China. In other words, a return to the 1950s. It is not working and becoming increasingly hysterical because societies are not nearly as cohesive as they once were, and the mainstream political parties, while better funded and more top-down organized, are basically hollow. The collapse is coming. Four years or ten, take your pick.
    dh , Feb 20, 2018 5:32:10 PM | link
    @4 "For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia."

    Most Americans probably don't. Just the chosen few with the deepest fall-out shelters. The idea is to keep piling the pressure on to countries like Iran and Russia in the hope that their populations will rise up and demand the freedoms that we enjoy in the West....things like uncensored wardrobe malfunctions and transgender washrooms.

    Partisan , Feb 20, 2018 6:02:58 PM | link
    "Most Americans probably don't."

    not true.

    let's imagine that we have the pyramid of evilness, by which we measure bestiality of one regime and its constituency. my firm belief is that us would be on the top of that pyramid. Only dilemma would be between Zionist entity and the US.

    "How could the masses be made to desire their own repression?" was the question Wilhelm Reich famously asked in the wake of the Reichstagsbrandverordnung (Reichstag Fire Decree, February 28, 1933), which suspended the civil rights protections afforded by the Weimar Republic's democratic constitution.

    Hitler had been appointed chancellor on January 30, 1933 and Reich was trying to grapple with the fact that the German people had apparently chosen the authoritarian politics promoted by National Socialism against their own political interests.

    Ever since, the question of fascism, or rather the question of why might people vote for their own oppression, has never ceased to haunt political philosophy.2 With Trump openly campaigning for less democracy in America -- and with the continued electoral success of far-right antiliberal movements across Europe -- this question has again become a pressing one.

    An American people is in perfect harmony with its regime.

    CarlD , Feb 20, 2018 6:06:06 PM | link
    Remember the "USS MAINE"! Media have long agitated for War in US History. Nothing sells newspapers like a good ole war! Demonizing is a way to achieve it. What is sure is that this is a one way street. Once over the cliff, there is no turning back.

    How do you tell people that, at the flick of your magic switch, Putin is in fact a swell guy and wonderful human being? Once love is gone who goes back to the filthy, abhorrent and estranged spouse?

    Surely the US establishment is playing with fire thinking they will successfully ride out any conflict and come out on top secure in their newly reestablished hegemony on the smoldering ruins of Humanity.

    Make no mistake, we are all on the road to hell. Better enjoy todays peace as tomorrow word will be filled with the sweet music of cemeteries.

    "Freedom of speech"...

    dh , Feb 20, 2018 6:14:14 PM | link
    @15 "An American people is in perfect harmony with its regime."

    I'm not so sure. I think there are many Americans who deeply distrust their government. But of course they don't want to appear unpatriotic. There are also many who are apathetic and many simply don't know how to change things.

    SteveK9 , Feb 20, 2018 6:35:58 PM | link
    It's horrible I know to quote a Nazi, but Goring had this right:

    Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

    Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

    Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

    WorldBLee , Feb 20, 2018 6:36:51 PM | link
    American media has graduated from simply repeating the lies of "unnamed government sources" to repeating the lies of any organization unofficially blessed by the powers that be. The skills required to repeat the text verbatim serve them well in both cases. Skepticism is only reserved to anyone who tries to introduce logic or facts into the equation--such as when Jill Stein was interviewed on MSNBC recently. How dare Ms. Stein try to bring FACTS into the discussion!
    chet380 , Feb 20, 2018 6:41:04 PM | link
    In that The Narrative is tightly controlled in the corporate media, not matter how strong the proofs or arguments about the falsity of these propaganda campaigns are, little or no circulation of those proofs or arguments wlll reach the general public.
    Sinc , Feb 20, 2018 6:41:57 PM | link
    See info on US 'Twitter' manipulation campaign
    Sinc , Feb 20, 2018 6:44:16 PM | link
    Sorry, link here
    ken , Feb 20, 2018 6:59:01 PM | link
    Thanks Jen. It still makes no sense. As a veteran of the Vietnam fiasco, I was pretty much government oriented until McNamara outed the whole thing whining about haw sorry he was. 59,000 dead and he's sorry. They were able to hide the Gulf of Tonkin BS until then. After that I researched the reasons for each war/conflict the USA started and could find no logical reasons except hunger for power. But the little sandbox wars won't destroy the world like a major war/conflict with Russia and it goes nuclear. Almost every politician, and major news organizations are pushing for a war/conflict with Russia. This is insanity as no one will win a war like this and I am sure they know that,,, but they keep the war drums beating anyhow. It simply doesn't make sense. But Thanks again.

    Same for dh, #14. Things are soooo stupid, your joking may be closer to the truth than you know. :-)

    Skip , Feb 20, 2018 6:59:35 PM | link
    @SteveK9 #19

    Thank you for the post. I will save it and use it liberally, with proper attributions. When one challenges the tribe on places like Twitter, it is hard to tell who is a real idiot and who is a bot. How do you know? Maybe that the bots go away fairly quickly and the idiots hang around to argue ad infinitum.

    oldenyoung , Feb 20, 2018 7:06:23 PM | link
    The thing that bothers me, is the fact that the MIC Globalists don't care what we think or how poor their deceptions are. The public perception that "russia did it!!" continues to rise. I wonder what the public acceptance level needs to be for them to execute a MAJOR false flag event. They seem to think they are still on target, and its just a short matter or time...

    They are going to do this when the perception management is complete... We really do not need another one of their disasters

    Grieved , Feb 20, 2018 7:37:47 PM | link
    The bully pushes and pushes until stopped by the first serious push back. The dynamic of the west and the neocon/Zionists at the core is essentially that of the bully. Nations like Venezuela and the Philippines have started to push back, and I hope and feel fairly confident that they will both survive the rage of the US. In some part, they have begun to show the actual powerlessness of the bully.

    But the really killer nations - Russia and China - are holding their water as they strengthen their force. I believe that one very serious push back from either of them in the right circumstances will stop the bully. And yet, as they bide their time, we see a curious phenomenon wherein the US is destroying itself from the inside.

    It's as if all of the forces that exist to control the country - the lockstep media, the fully rigged markets, the hysterical military, the bought legislature and the crooked courts - are all acting far more strongly than should be necessary. The entire system is over-reacting, over-reaching, over-boiling. And in the course of this, the US is actually shedding power, and at an amazing rate. But not from the action of Russia but from its non-action, the empty space that that allows the bully's dynamic to over-reach, all the way to complete failure.

    Is it possible that deep in the security states of Russia and China there's even a study and a model for this? Is the collapse of the US actually being gamed by Russia and China - and through the totally counter-intuitive action of non-action?

    Just a thought.

    Ghost Ship , Feb 20, 2018 7:51:03 PM | link
    >>>> xor | Feb 20, 2018 4:11:10 PM | 6
    The cleverest trick used in propaganda against a specific country is to accuse it of what the accuser itself is doing.

    I've always put it down to the Washington Establishment having a severe case of psychological projection.

    WG , Feb 20, 2018 7:52:38 PM | link
    Hey b,
    Just wanted to let you know that Joe Lauria mentioned your blog and the article you wrote on the indictment of the 13 Russians. He was on Loud and Clear (Sputnik Radio, Washington DC) today and brought you up at the start of the program.
    Glad to see you get some recognition for all the great work you've been doing :)
    Mike , Feb 20, 2018 7:53:24 PM | link
    Meanwhile, back in 2010:
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/11/when-campaigns-manipulate-social-media/66351/
    Jen , Feb 20, 2018 7:53:43 PM | link
    Ken @ 24: The warmongering is not intended to make any sense - not many people are trained in critical thinking and logic, and even when they are, they can be swamped by their own emotions or other people's emotions.

    Propaganda is intended to appeal to people's emotions and fears. You can try reading works by Edward Bernays - "Crystallizing Public Opinion" (1923) and "Propaganda" (1928) - to see how he uses his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories of the mind to create strategies for manipulating public opinion. https://archive.org/details/EdwardL.BernaysPropaganda

    Bernays' books influenced Nazi and Soviet propaganda and Bernays himself was hired by the US government to justify in the public mind the 1954 US invasion of Guatemala.

    You may be aware that Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corporation which owns the Wall Street Journal, FOX News and 20th Century Fox studios, is also on the Board of Directors of Genie Energy which owns a subsidiary firm that was granted a licence by an Israeli court to explore and drill for oil and natural gas in Syria's (and Israeli-occupied) Golan Heights.

    simjam , Feb 20, 2018 7:59:21 PM | link
    The national media speaks as one -with one consistent melody day after day. Who is the conductor? When will one representative of the mainstream media sing solo? There must be a Ray McGovern somewhere among the flock.
    V. Arnold , Feb 20, 2018 8:05:33 PM | link
    Grieved | Feb 20, 2018 7:37:47 PM | 27

    Many of my thoughts as well. The U.S.'s greatest fault is its tacit misunderstanding of just what russia is in fact. They utterly fail to understand the Russian character; forged over 800 years culminating with the defeat of Nazi Germany, absorbing horrific losses; the U.S. fails to understand the effect upon the then Soviets, become todays Russians. Even the god's have abandoned the west...

    Debsisdead , Feb 20, 2018 8:53:42 PM | link
    I watched bbc news this am in the hope that I would get to see the most awful creature at the 2018 olympics cry her croc tears (long story - a speed skater who cuts off the opposition but has been found out so now when she swoops in front of the others they either skate over her leading to tearful whines from perp about having been 'pushed', or gets disqualified for barging. Last night she got disqualified so as part of my study on whether types like this believe their own bullshit I thought I'd tune in but didn't get that far into the beebs lies)

    The bulk of the bulletin was devoted to a 'lets hate Russia' session which featured a quisling who works for the russian arm of BBC (prolly just like cold war days staffed exclusively by MI6/SIS types). This chap, using almost unintelligible english, claimed he had proof at least 50 Russian Mercenaries (question - why are amerikan guns for hire called contractors [remember the Fallujah massacre of 100,000 civilians because amerikan contractors were stupid] yet Russian contractors are called mercenaries by the media?) had been killed in Syria last week. The bloke had evidence of one contractor's death not 50 - the proof was a letter from the Russian government to the guy's mother telling her he didn't qualify for any honours because he wasn't in the Russian military.

    The quisling (likely a Ukranian I would say) went on to rabbit about the bloke having also fought in Donbass under contract - to which the 'interviewer (don't ya love it when media 'interview' their own journos - a sure sign that a snippet of toxic nonsense is being delivered) led about how the deceitful Russians had claimed the only Russians fighting in Donbass were contractors - yeah well this bloke was a contractor surely that proves the Russians were telling the truth.

    It's not what these propagandists say; they adopt a tone and the audience is meant to hate based on that even when the facts as stated conflict with the media outlet's point of view. Remember the childhood trick of saying "bad dog" ter yer mutt in loving tones - the dog comes to ya tail wagging & licks yer hand. This is that.

    The next item was more Syria lies - white helmets footage (altho the beeb is now mostly giving them an alternative name to dodge the facts about white helmets) of bandaged children with flour tipped on their heads.

    The evil Syrians and Russians are bombarding Gouta - nary a word about the continuous artillery barrage Gouta has subjected the citizens of Damascus to for the past 4 years, or that the Syrians have repeatedly offered truces and safe passage for civilians. Any injured children need to ask their parents why they weren't allowed to take advantage of the frequent offers of transport out. Maybe the parents are worried 'the resistance' will do its usual and blow up the busloads of children after luring them over with candy.

    Anyway I switched off after that so never did learn if little miss cheat had a cry.

    ben , Feb 20, 2018 9:17:54 PM | link
    Reposting from TRNN: http://therealnews.com/t2/story:21178:Why-is-a-Russian-Troll-Farm-Being-Compared-to-911%3F
    integer , Feb 20, 2018 9:23:42 PM | link
    Thank you for reporting on this. The people behind the so-called Alliance for Securing Democracy need to be exposed for the warmongering frauds that they are. Regardless of what one thinks of him, Trump was correct when he said that NATO is obsolete.
    Don Bacon , Feb 20, 2018 10:12:52 PM | link
    The American Security State needs enemies to exist, otherwise there's no need for the "security" which translates into big bucks for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Media Complex. They can't agree on the ranking of the enemies: North Korea is a threat to the world! Iran is....! Russia is...! China is....! But the threats are there, and they are pure evil (TPTB contend).

    So the whole scenario makes perfect sense from that standpoint.

    Petri Krohn , Feb 20, 2018 10:17:36 PM | link
    The news stories become far easier to understand if you replace the word " Russia " with the word " truth ".
    bevin , Feb 20, 2018 11:45:45 PM | link
    re Felix E. Dzerzhinsky: Ukrainian fascists have a particular hatred of Felix because he was both a Bolshevik and a Pole.

    I hate to do this but I just posted this elsewhere, at Off Guardian, where the Guardian is back into its highest gears promoting war.

    "The wardrums are beating in a way not heard since 1914-there is no reason for war except the best reason of all: an imperial ruling class sees its grip slipping and will chance everything rather than endure the humiliation of adjusting to reality.

    "China is in the position that the US was in 1914-it can prevent the war or wait until the combatants are too exhausted to defend their paltry gains.

    Given the realities of nuclear warfare-which seem not to have sunk in among the Americans, perhaps because they mistake a bubble for a bomb shelter- the wise option is to prevent war by publicly warning against it. In the hope that brought face to face with reality the masses will besiege their governments, as we can easily do, and prevent war.'

    See also http://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/02/20/the-coming-wars-to-end-all-wars/

    V. Arnold , Feb 21, 2018 12:32:43 AM | link
    Debsisdead | Feb 20, 2018 8:53:42 PM | 35

    I have no idea who you are talking about; care to say?

    Jeff Kaye , Feb 21, 2018 12:36:59 AM | link
    Great analysis! Can't imagine how you continue to put out quality work day after day! Your question at the close speaks to stakes involved in this.
    foo , Feb 21, 2018 1:53:45 AM | link
    @ 10 - 4

    Resources boils down to money. Of course. I don't think any power would lose from tapping a source of resource.

    DidierF , Feb 21, 2018 2:03:08 AM | link
    Sad but definitely correct. The first casualty of war is the truth. It's dead in the USA and allies. Therefore, they're at war with Russia and China. If Russia is down, China will be dealt with.

    The horrible thing with the US attitude is that you do a white thing, you're attacking them and if you do a black thing, you're attacking them too. This attitude is building hostility against Russia. It's like programming a pet to be afraid of something. The western people are being programmed into hating Russia, dehumanizing her people, cutting every tie with Russia and transforming any information from Russia into life threatening propaganda. A war for our hearts is running. The US population is being coerced into believing that war against Russia is a vital necessity.

    It will be a war of choice from the US "elites". Clinton announced it and the population had chosen Trump for that reason.

    You're wondering why they're doing it. I suppose that their narrative is losing its grip on the western populations. They're also conscious of it. If they lose it, they'll have to face very angry mobs and face the void of their lives. Everything they did was either useless or poisonous. It means to be in a very bad spot. They're are therefore under an existential threat.

    Russia proved time and again that it's possible to get out of their narrative. Remember their situation when Eltsin was reelected with the western help.

    The Chicago boys were telling the Russian authorities how to run the economy and they made out of the word democrat a synonym of thief. They were in the narrative and the result was a disaster. Then, they woke up and started to clean the house. I remember the "hero" of democracy whose name was "Khodorovsky (?)". In the west he was a freedom fighter and in Russia he stole something like Rosneft. This guy and others of the same sort were described in the west as heroes, pionniers and so on. They were put back into submission to the law. The western silence about their stealings, lies and cheating is still deafening me.

    It was the first Russian crime. The second one was to survive the first batch of sanctions against them (I forgot the reason of the sanctions). They not only survived they thrived. It was against the western leading economic ideology. A third crime was to push back Saakachvili and his troops with success.

    The fourth was to put back into order the Tchechen. Russia was back into the world politics and history. They were not following the script written for them in Washington and Brussels. They were having a political system putting limits to the big companies. And, worst of it, it works.
    Everybody in the west who can read and listen would have noticed that they are making it.

    More, with RT and Sputnik giving info outside the allowed ones or asking annoying questions (western journalists lost that habit with their new formation in the schools of journalism - remember the revolution in their education was criticised and I missed why - very curious to discover why), they were exposing weaknesses of the western narrative. On the other side their narrative became so poor and so limited that any regular reader would feel bored reading the same things time and again and being asked to pay for it at a time his salary was decreased in the name of competitivity. The threat to their narrative was ready. They had to fight it.

    It's becoming a crime to think outside their marks. It's becoming a crime to read outside their marks. I don't even talk about any act outside their marks. Now, it's going to be a crime of treason to them in war time.

    I do feel sadness because many will die from their fear of losing their grip on our minds. I do feel sadness because they have lost and are in denial about it. I do feel sadness because those death aren't necessary. I do feel sadness because those people can't face the consequences of their actions. They don't have the necessary spine. Their lives were useless and even toxic. They could start repairing or mitigating their damages but it would need a very different worldview, a complete conversion to another meaning of life outside the immediate and maximal profit.

    V. Arnold , Feb 21, 2018 2:13:54 AM | link
    DidierF | Feb 21, 2018 2:03:08 AM | 46

    You have aptly described the most dangerous country on this planet. That country must not be appeased, at any cost, because it would surely end us forever...

    Fran , Feb 21, 2018 2:53:24 AM | link
    I wonder if this is true: STUNNING: Mueller Patched Together Much of His Indictment from 2015 Radio Free Europe Article I wouldn't be surprised if it is true. It would give the entire story a whole new touch. I wanted to write a new smell, but it would be rather stink.
    Partisan , Feb 21, 2018 3:38:27 AM | link
    https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/russia-malware-ip-hack/

    Conclusion regarding IP address data: What we're seeing in this IP data is a wide range of countries and hosting providers. 15% of the IP addresses are Tor exit nodes. These exit nodes are used by anyone who wants to be anonymous online, including malicious actors.

    Overall Conclusion: The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes.

    The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website.

    fairleft , Feb 21, 2018 5:28:09 AM | link
    Partisan @15: "With Trump openly campaigning for less democracy in America -- and with the continued electoral success of far-right antiliberal movements across Europe -- this question has again become a pressing one."

    The above is entirely backwards. The bottom 2/3rds is frustrated by the LACK of democracy in the US and that's a major reason many voted against the (in fact anti-democratic) elite's desired candidate, Hillary.

    70% of the voting age public was dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with both candidates, and 40% of Americans didn't vote, so that means whichever of Clinton/Trump won, she/he would win with approval of only 10% of the electorate. That's the best example possible of our anti-democratic reality (it's not a worry or a threat, it's already here).

    In the case of both Europe and the US, many people are generally very dissatisfied with the anti-democratic response by the elite to 'the will of the people' that there be much less immigration into countries with high unemployment and 'race to the bottom' labor conditions. That's nearly the entire basis of what the corporate media calls 'the move right'... When in fact restricting immigration is a pro-labor and therefore 'left' policy ... Except in the confused and deliberately stupid political discourse the elite media pushes so hard.

    Lea , Feb 21, 2018 6:16:53 AM | link
    Some years ago, I noticed the American media and politicians were sort of going soft (actually mushy) in the brain department, but I was told not to be so judgemental. As the months went by, I saw more and more people saying "they have gone nuts". So, it turns out I am not alone after all.

    That madness comes from having no behavioural limits, no references outside of your own opinion but groupthink, and manipulating the language to suit your ambitions (the Orwellism of the US media has been repeatedly pointed at). Simply put, you don't know anymore what's what outside of the narrative your group pushes, you go nuts. The manipulators ends up caught in their lies. All the more when they makes money out of it, which would be the case of all those think tanks and media.

    One could argue that they are not going mad, that they know full well they are lying, but I beg to differ: they don't see anymore how ridiculous or how dumb or smart their arguments are. That would be congruent with a real loss of touch with reality. One wonders what they see when they look at themselves in a mirror, a garden variety propagandist or a fearless anti-Putin crusader?

    Another example of the narrative gone mad: they are sending CNN journos to meet pro-Trump folks who "have been influenced by Russian trolls on social media". https://twitter.com/yashalevine/status/966177091875168256

    Partisan , Feb 21, 2018 6:20:19 AM | link
    "The above is entirely backwards."

    Well, it is not...if you are believer in "democracy". Honestly, the story of democracy (by capitalist/liberal class) is a grand BS, to be modest. The only thing what was truthful, paradoxically, is who is "lesser evil" of two. Or the Bigger one in unrestrained capitalism, savage and monopoly, predatory and a fascists one.

    One way or other result is the same, it is: Barbarism.

    ralphieboy , Feb 21, 2018 6:27:23 AM | link
    When "trending on Twitter" became a news item in and of itself, I began to despair for the future of reporting, political discourse and ultimately, democracy in America. Twitter and FB are at best a source of information for news reporting, but not a source of news in themselves.

    We made ourselves vulnerable to any and every sort of pernicious manipulation and in the end, we just about deserve everything we get.

    WJ , Feb 21, 2018 6:38:11 AM | link
    War or the threat of war is needed to distract attention from rapidly devolving societal bonds and immense economic inequality.
    Partisan , Feb 21, 2018 6:41:09 AM | link
    there is something illogical in your comment.

    but one should never forget:

    The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships.

    Karl Marx

    Ger , Feb 21, 2018 7:52:44 AM | link
    Dan @ 4

    It is partially tied direct to the economy of the warmongers as trillions of dollars of new cold war slop is laying on the ground awaiting the MICC hogs. American hegemony is primarily about stealing the natural resources of helpless countries. Now in control of all the weak ones, it is time to move to the really big prize: The massive resources of Russia. They (US and their European Lackeys) thought this was a slam dunk when Yeltsin, in his drunken stupors, was literally giving Russia to invading capitalist. Enter Putin, stopped the looting .........connect the dots.

    Anon , Feb 21, 2018 8:08:35 AM | link
    Media and its politicians have lost it completely, and if you criticize them, well then of course you are a... "russian bot". Unfortunately 90% of westerners buy this western MSM influence propaganda campaign, WW3 with Russia will come easy.
    Florin , Feb 21, 2018 9:00:03 AM | link
    News "Meet The Cabal That Are Framing Domestic American Activism As "Russian Influence" and "Fake News"
    https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/01/meet-the-cabal-that-are-framing-domestic-american-activism-as-russian-influence-and-fake-news/

    At risk of being censored and/or convicted of Thought Crime - it is *remarkable* how very highly disproportionate the number of Jewish Zionists is who are in the media and in Congress and in ThinkTankistan and shouting about Russian meddling, 'aggression,' and the like.

    It's too bad it is forbidden to examine this phenomena as one part of the matrix of power and lies leading the US into conflict with Russia, no?

    I don't think Bill Kristol and David Frum and Jeff Goldberg are either honest nor primarily concerned with American national security, nor the lives of MENA civilians. I think they care only about using American blood and treasure to facilitate Israeli lebensraum, however bloody and expensive.

    Trump survives only if he dances for the Deep State *and* Likud.

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/12/us-caught-faking-it-in-syria/

    ex-SA , Feb 21, 2018 9:17:53 AM | link
    Chris Hedges has an article on the similar situation in Germany almost 100 years ago. "In 1923 the radical socialist and feminist Clara Zetkin gave a report at the Communist International about the emergence of a political movement called fascism. ...." https://www.truthdig.com/articles/how-we-fight-fascism/
    fairleft , Feb 21, 2018 10:26:45 AM | link
    Partisan @54: The facts contradict the statement in the quote that Trump was "openly campaigning for less democracy." He wasn't. He in fact campaigned in part as a populist who would oust (or at least repeatedly ridicule) an anti-democratic elite. If you've overlooked that and believe more or less the opposite, you can't understand the 2016 election or the elite's virulently anti-democratic reaction to it.
    Oui , Feb 21, 2018 11:18:34 AM | link
    NEW CENSORSHIP - HAMILTON68 DASHBOARD

    From the website of Hamilton68 :: Tracking Russian influence operations on Twitter

    So easy to signal this group as a fraud, I wrote an article recently

    ○ G W F and McCarthyism In A Digital Age - Part 2

    [G W F – German Marshall Fund]

    Earlier I wrote about the following relationship: Khodorkovsky - The Interpreter - Henry Jackson Society (UK) .

    With Bush and the Iraq War, Dutch PM Balkenende and FM de Hoop Scheffer were seen as the poodle of the White House. In recent years PM Mark Rutte [of MH-17 crash fame] can be considered its puppy. Perhaps a parrot would suit better.

    I noticed a former journalist Hubert Smeets hs partnered with some people to found a "knowledge center" Window on Russia [Raam op Rusland]. Laughable, funded by the Dutch Foreign Ministry and a Dutch-Russia cultural exchange Fund. Preposturous in its simplicity and harm for honest reporting.

    Noirette , Feb 21, 2018 11:38:52 AM | link
    US media has gone bonkers. The original claim was Russian meddling and Russian interference in the election. Then, a sort of bridging meme showed up (see also b above), undermining democracy or subverting it. This in turn then morphed into promoting divisive issues which is new (circa 2018, not before?)

    Imho. US pols make it their business to create divisive issues, diviusses (neologism), to the point of inventing rubbish ones. Part of the US public embraces that sh*t as well, > tribalism and religious economics in lieu of policy politics. So such actions should be viewed as gloriously democratic, ;) - ok easy to make fun.

    The emphasis on 'divisive' is curious, it signals that some managers are calling for 'union' - 'cohesion' - 'group soldering' facing the outside enemy, threat.

    Russia has really become the all-purpose épouvantail scarecrow, specter of doom, etc. An awareness of the high costs of divisiveness if uncontrolled -> massive social unrest, at extreme, civil war -- and that these are to be avoided, is evidenced.

    Heh, or the whole storm is just fluff that distracts, occupies the pixels, airwaves, a jamboree of knee-jerk reactions irrelevant to the present World Situation, with practically no important body - faction of the PTB, Trump, the MIC, lame outsiders like the EU, etc. having any clue.

    james , Feb 21, 2018 1:03:45 PM | link
    i got a kick out of cluborlov's post from yesterday.. -
    http://cluborlov.blogspot.ca/2018/02/make-russia-great-again-through.html

    The accusation is a lot like accusing somebody of despoiling an outhouse by crapping in it, along with everyone else, but the outhouse in question had a sign on its door that read "No Russians!" and the 13 Russians just ignored it and crapped in it anyway.

    The reason the Outhouse of American Democracy is posted "No Russians!" is because Russia is the enemy. There aren't any compelling reasons why it should be the enemy, and treating it as such is incredibly foolish and dangerous, but that's beside the point. Painting Russia as the enemy serves a psychological need rather than a rational one: Americans desperately need some entity onto which they can project their own faults.

    The US is progressing toward a fascist police state; therefore, Russia is said to be a horrible dictatorship run by Putin. The US traditionally meddles in elections around the world, including Russia; therefore, the Russians are said to meddle in US elections. The US is the most aggressive country on the planet, occupying and bombing dozens of countries; therefore, the Russians are accused of "aggression." And so on

    Don Bacon , Feb 21, 2018 6:35:10 PM | link
    @Noirette 70
    Yes, claiming that Russians are promoting polical division is silly -- the divisions were already there.
    gizmodo , Jun 12, 2014:
    It's Been 150 Years Since the U.S. Was This Politically Polarized

    Nevertheless, now in WIRED magazine: Their [Agency] goal was to enflame "political intensity through supporting radical groups, users dissatisfied with [the] social and economic situation, and oppositional social movements."

    OJS , Feb 21, 2018 8:27:10 PM | link

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-21/they-had-more-information-us-sanders-blames-clinton-not-exposing-russian-meddling

    "They Had More Information Than Us" - Sanders Blames Clinton For Not Exposing Russian Meddling

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=WRnBPKFcAKo

    Bernie Sanders said he on Wednesday, "felt compelled to address Russian interference during the US election. Sunday.... he was not aware and believes Russian bot promoting him and went as far to said WikiLeaks published Hillary's email stolen by the Russia....."

    Can you really trust that lying basted? I'm probably one of the few MoA refused to believe and trust Bernie Sanders and the fuckup Democrats .

    ben , Feb 21, 2018 9:24:01 PM | link
    Anti-Russia Think Tanks in US: Who Funds Them? By Bryan MacDonald http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48755.htm
    daffyDuct , Feb 21, 2018 9:46:49 PM | link
    Excellent article summarizing much of what B has posted and more.

    "Finally, and as long was we are on the topic, here is what a real troll farm looks like. [Picture of NSA] Yet this vast suite of offices in Fort Meade, Maryland, where 20,000 SIGINT spies and technicians work for the NSA, is only the tip of the iceberg.

    The US actually spends $75 billion per year---more than Russia's entire $69 billion defense budget---spying on and meddling in the politics of virtually every nation on earth. An outfit within NSA called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) has a multi-billion annual budget and does nothing put troll the global internet and does so with highly educated, highly paid professionals, not $4 per hour keyboard jockeys."

    http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/muellers-comic-book-indictment-how-to-prosecute-a-great-big-nothingburger/

    Daniel , Feb 22, 2018 12:47:29 AM | link
    Great article. Great comments. I LOVE MoA! And it's great to see b getting recognition.

    james wrote: "There aren't any compelling reasons why it should be the enemy"

    You know the following; I think you're just too decent a human being to understand how psychopaths operate. Russia is a huge area with enormous natural resources as well as a large, educated populace. Zbignew Brzezenski explained in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard" why global hegemony required taking control over Russia (and how to do it, which boils down to taking the other chess pieces off the board (Iraq/Ukraine/etc. and then pulling off a "color revolution," coup or military conquest).

    Ziggy also noted that once Russia was incorporated, China is the next, and largely last target.

    Jen: NICE JOB putting together a big picture, from Bernays' control of the masses all the way to Genie Energy. Add in Oded Yinon and PNAC and the "foreign policy blunders" that led to the present situation in MENA look like a carefully-constructed, long-game being played "by the book."

    Fairleft. Any leftist/socialist movement which is not global is doomed to failure. This has always been true, but with "offshoring" of manufacturing jobs and the internet untethering many "white collar" jobs from any given geological location(s), workers must see ourselves as a global entity rather than national or regional players - because that is certainly how the 0.01% see us (and themselves).

    "Workers of the world UNITE" is more true today than a century and a half ago.

    Ghost Ship , Feb 22, 2018 5:28:36 AM | link
    Did the Titanic just sink Bild ?
    Partisan , Feb 22, 2018 6:20:18 AM | link
    https://youtu.be/GN-tf3HM9ao New Yorker Reporter Debunks Russia Twitter Panic
    ralphieboy , Feb 22, 2018 7:31:36 AM | link
    @fairleft 85

    nations that do not have to face costs arising from environmental, health or safety legislation will almost always prevail in the world market over those that have some concern for the environment and the workers.

    That is the main issue I have with globalization.

    Competing on wages is one thing; that can be a great impetus to become more efficient and productive, but if we do nothing to force other countries to clean up their act, they will have no impetus to do so and we will continue to lose jobs to the international competition, no matter how efficiently we work.

    test , Feb 22, 2018 7:32:53 AM | link
    Msm, bellingcat and other think tanks - they push their anti Russian racism too far making a large section of westerners just tired of their hysteria. Exposing their own racism and paranoia.
    Partisan , Feb 22, 2018 9:02:22 AM | link
    "....borderless globalization has been a catastrophe for most of the underdeveloped world's businesses and workers."

    it is always annoying when I see the 'globalization" argument is used whether from the right or left. The globalization has started by the moment when us humans begin to roaming on this planet. there are millions of examples yet somehow globalization is of recent phenomenon. Lapis Lazuli mineral used in making blue color and paint is found on clay pottery in Mesopotamia's ancient city of Ur. That city is also place where many legend originated which were taken by major religion and can be found in their holy books. See even the myth are globalizied from very early on.

    Most of the people do not even know what it is, not those who are writing about it.

    Globalization . . . is a program to create private corporate rights to trade, invest, lend or borrow money and buy and own property anywhere in the world without much hindrance by national governments. It would bar governments from most of the common methods of helping or protecting their national industries and employment. It is a winners' program promoted chiefly by some business interests, governments and neoclassical economists in Europe and the United States.

    One of its purposes is to intensify international competition for jobs. Together with other Right policies it is likely to maintain some unemployment in the rich countries and reduce the wage rates of their lower-paid workers, and reduce the proportion of secure employment.

    Hugh Stretton, Economics: A New Introduction

    test , Feb 22, 2018 10:02:35 AM | link
    The anti-russian think tanks, msm, bellingcat etc push this too much, making them look stupid.
    john , Feb 22, 2018 10:30:32 AM | link
    Tannenhouser

    the observable and demonstrable attempts are clearly futile, and have been pretty much reduced to spasms and tantrums, largely devoid of cognizance, not to mention legality, but certainly dangerous nonetheless.

    no sir ree bob, we get our multipolar world or we scavenge a dead landscape of Alamogordo glass .

    Tannenhouser , Feb 22, 2018 11:23:44 AM | link
    John@96. We are on the same page then. I see it more like this. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1991370.The_Cool_War
    karlof1 , Feb 22, 2018 4:18:56 PM | link
    Really enjoyed Julian Assange's explanation of Mueller's nothingburger.

    Assange: "Regardless of whether IRA's activities were audience building through pandering to communities or whether a hare-brained Russian government plan to "heighten the differences" existed, its activities are clearly strategically insignificant compared to the other forces at play."

    [Jan 02, 2019] The Only Meddling "Russian Bots" Were Actually Democrat-Led "Experts" by Mac Slavo

    Highly recommended!
    Jan 02, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    Cybersecurity "experts" in the United States have long alleged that "Russian bots" were used to meddle in the 2016 elections.

    But, as it turns out, the authors of a Senate report on "Russian election meddling" actually ran the false flag meddling operation themselves.

    A week before Christmas, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report accusing Russia of depressing Democrat voter turnout by targeting African-Americans on social media. Its authors , New Knowledge , quickly became a household name. Described by the New York Times as a group of "tech specialists who lean Democratic," New Knowledge has ties to both the U.S. military and the intelligence agencies.

    The CEO and co-founder of New Knowledge, Jonathon Morgan, had previously worked for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) , the U.S. military's advanced research agency known for horrific ideas on how to control humanity . Morgan's partner, Ryan Fox, is a 15-year veteran of the NSA (National Security Agency) who also worked as a computer analyst for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Their unique skill sets have managed to attract the eye of authoritarian investors, who pumped $11 million into the company in 2018 alone, according to a report by RT .

    Morgan and Fox have both struck gold in the " Russiagate " scheme, which sprung into being after Hillary Clinton blamed Moscow for Donald Trump's presidential victory in 2016. Morgan, for example, is one of the developers of the Hamilton 68 Dashboard, the online tool that purports to monitor and expose narratives being pushed by the Kremlin on Twitter. And also worth mentioning, that dashboard is bankrolled by the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy – a collection of Democrats and neoconservatives funded in part by NATO (North AtTreaty Tready Organization) and USAID (United States Agency for International Development).

    It is worth noting that the 600 " Russia-linked " Twitter accounts monitored by the dashboard is not disclosed to the public either, making it impossible to verify these claims. This inconvenience has not stopped Hamilton 68 from becoming a go-to source for hysteria-hungry journalists, however. Yet on December 19, a New York Times story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created the fake army of Russian bots, as well as several fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama's 2017 special election for the U.S. Senate.

    Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake Twitter accounts with Russian names, and had them follow Moore. They also operated several Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded voters to support a write-in candidate instead . In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had " orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet ." – RT

    This scandal is being perpetrated by the United States media and has so far deceived millions, if not more. The botnet claim made a splash on social media and was further amplified by Mother Jones , which based its story on "expert opinion" from Morgan's dubious creation, Hamilton 68.

    Things got even weirder when it turned out that Scott Shane, the author of the Tim es piece, had known about the meddling for months because he spoke at an event where the organizers boasted about it!

    Shane was one of the speakers at a meeting in September, organized by American Engagement Technologies, a group run by Mikey Dickerson, President Barack Obama's former tech czar. Dickerson explained how AET spent $100,000 on New Knowledge's campaign to suppress Republican votes, "enrage " Democrats to boost turnout, and execute a " false flag " to hurt Moore. He dubbed it " Project Birmingham ." -RT

    There really was meddling in American democracy by " Russian bots. " Except those bots weren't run from Moscow or St. Petersburg but from the offices of Democrat operatives chiefly responsible for creating and amplifying the " Russiagate " hysteria over the past two years in a textbook case of psychological projection , brainwashing, and Nazi-style propaganda campaigns.

    [Jan 02, 2019] Did Mueller Patched Together Much of His Indictment from 2015 Radio Free Europe Article ?

    Highly recommended!
    Jan 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Fran , Feb 21, 2018 2:53:24 AM | link

    I wonder if this is true: STUNNING: Mueller Patched Together Much of His Indictment from 2015 Radio Free Europe Article I wouldn't be surprised if it is true.

    It would give the entire story a whole new touch. I wanted to write a new smell, but it would be rather stink.

    [Jan 02, 2019] Meet The Cabal That Are Framing Domestic American Activism As "Russian Influence" and "Fake News"

    Notable quotes:
    "... At risk of being censored and/or convicted of Thought Crime - it is *remarkable* how very highly disproportionate the number of Jewish Zionists is who are in the media and in Congress and in ThinkTankistan and shouting about Russian meddling, 'aggression,' and the like. ..."
    "... I don't think Bill Kristol and David Frum and Jeff Goldberg are either honest nor primarily concerned with American national security, nor the lives of MENA civilians. I think they care only about using American blood and treasure to facilitate Israeli lebensraum, however bloody and expensive. ..."
    "... Trump survives only if he dances for the Deep State *and* Likud. ..."
    Jan 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Florin , Feb 21, 2018 9:00:03 AM | link

    News "Meet The Cabal That Are Framing Domestic American Activism As "Russian Influence" and "Fake News"
    https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/01/meet-the-cabal-that-are-framing-domestic-american-activism-as-russian-influence-and-fake-news/

    At risk of being censored and/or convicted of Thought Crime - it is *remarkable* how very highly disproportionate the number of Jewish Zionists is who are in the media and in Congress and in ThinkTankistan and shouting about Russian meddling, 'aggression,' and the like.

    It's too bad it is forbidden to examine this phenomena as one part of the matrix of power and lies leading the US into conflict with Russia, no?

    I don't think Bill Kristol and David Frum and Jeff Goldberg are either honest nor primarily concerned with American national security, nor the lives of MENA civilians. I think they care only about using American blood and treasure to facilitate Israeli lebensraum, however bloody and expensive.

    Trump survives only if he dances for the Deep State *and* Likud.

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/12/us-caught-faking-it-in-syria/

    [Jan 02, 2019] Viable Opposition How the U.S. Senate is Instigating a Hot War With Russia

    Notable quotes:
    "... Senate Resolution on December 19, 2019 which calls for "a prompt multinational freedom of navigation operation in the Black Sea and urging the cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline ..."
    "... Calling for a prompt multinational freedom of navigation operation in the Black Sea and urging the cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. ..."
    Jan 02, 2019 | viableopposition.blogspot.com

    Senator Ron Johnson (R- Wis) and Richard Durban (D-Ill) and 39 of their colleagues introduced a Senate Resolution on December 19, 2019 which calls for "a prompt multinational freedom of navigation operation in the Black Sea and urging the cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline" as shown here :

    Here is a list of co-sponsors of the resolution:

    Sen. James Inhofe (R-Ok.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation; and Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Christopher Coons (D-Del.), James Risch (R-Idaho), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Doug Jones (D-Ala.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), John Thune (R-S.D.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.).
    Here is the resolution (currently unnumbered) in its entirety:

    Calling for a prompt multinational freedom of navigation operation in the Black Sea and urging the cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

    ... ... ...

    • Whereas the United States has important national interests in the Black Sea region, including the security of three NATO littoral states, the promotion of European energy market diversification by ensuring unfettered European access to energy exporters in the Caucuses and central Asia, and combatting use of the region by smugglers as a conduit for trafficking in persons, narcotics, and arms;

    • Whereas the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is a proposed underwater natural gas pipeline project that would provide an additional 55,000,000,000 cubic meters of pipeline capacity from the Russian Federation to the Federal Republic of Germany through the Baltic Sea;

    • Whereas the Russian Federation's state-owned oil and gas company, Gazprom, is the sole shareholder of the Nord Stream 2 project;

    • Whereas, in 2017, there was spare capacity of approximately 55,000,000,000 cubic meters in the Ukrainian gas transit system;

    • Whereas Gazprom cut off natural gas exports to Europe via Ukraine in 2006, and again in 2009, over supply and pricing disputes with Ukraine's state-owned oil and gas company, Naftogaz;

    • Whereas transit of Russian natural gas to Europe via Ukraine declined precipitously after the completion of Nord Stream 1 in 2011, falling from 80 percent to between 40 and 50 percent of Russia's total exports to Europe;

    • Whereas, in 2017, Russian gas accounted for 37 percent of Europe's natural gas imports, an increase of 5 percent over 2016;

    • Whereas, on December 12, 2018, the European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning both the Russian Federation's aggression in the Kerch Strait and the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline; and

    • Whereas, on December 11, 2018, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution calling upon the European
      Union to reject the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and urging the President to use all available means to promote energy policies in Europe that reduce European reliance on Russian energy exports:

    ... ... ...

    (9) applauds and concurs with the European 2 Parliament's December 12, 2018, resolution condemning Russian aggression in the Kerch Strait and
    the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, calling for the pipeline's cancellation due to its threat to European energy security, and calling on the Russian Federation to
    7 guarantee freedom of navigation in the Kerch Strait;

    and

    (10) urges the President to continue working with Congress and our allies to ensure the appropriate policies to deter the Russian Federation from further aggression.

    Anonymous December 26, 2018 at 4:47 PM

    Fortunately, these two neocons can make all the proclamations they want but without President Trump's support it's all just words; neocon virtue signalling. And of course President Trump won't support what they're doing because he campaigned on and governs as an anti-war president.

    Ron Johnson is a Bushie neocon who actively supported the neocon ¡Jebe! (Please Clap) Bush while Durbin is a Hillary Clinton neocon who actively supported that drunken, corrupt, warmongering shrew.

    Thank all that's holy that we have a genuine anti-war POTUS in office and not either of those two neocons, both of whom were utterly in the pockets of defense contractors.

    Unknown January 1, 2019 at 10:02 PM

    Thanks for your research on relevant naval law. The Ukrainian vessel is reported to have violated the ongoing protocol by failing to take on a Russian pilot as it transited the strait and an important bridge could potentially have been attacked by those vessels. This was a provocation by Ukraine that seems to have its desired effect on the U.S. Senate. For essential background on the Ukrainian civil war, I recommend reading Stephen F. Cohen's article in the Nation in 2014, titled "Kiev's atrocities and the Silence of the Hawks." https://www.thenation.com/article/kievs-atrocities-and-silence-hawks/

    [Jan 02, 2019] Britain must surely be in the running for the Wooden Spoon award doe 2018

    Notable quotes:
    "... Britain must surely be in the running for many reasons: among others, the sheer disaster that is Theresa May's government (and the various clowns and thuggish goons that constitute her Cabinet), the Brexit mess, the Skripal poisoning circus, Britain's own collapse in controlling the propaganda narrative on Syria and the revelations about Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, and their ties to the British military establishment. ..."
    Jan 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Jen , Dec 31, 2018 3:36:34 PM | link

    If Syria wins the award for Country of the Year 2018, I'd hate to see who gets the Wooden Spoon for 2018. There must be quite a few serious contenders for that prize!

    Britain must surely be in the running for many reasons: among others, the sheer disaster that is Theresa May's government (and the various clowns and thuggish goons that constitute her Cabinet), the Brexit mess, the Skripal poisoning circus, Britain's own collapse in controlling the propaganda narrative on Syria and the revelations about Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, and their ties to the British military establishment.

    [Jan 02, 2019] The demonization of Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela might be connected with oil depletion

    Notable quotes:
    "... Ever since US Crude Oil peaked its production in 1970, the US has known that at some point the oil majors would have their profitability damaged, "assets" downgraded, and borrowing capacity destroyed. At this point their shares would become worthless and they would become bankrupt. The contagion from this would spread to transport businesses, plastics manufacture, herbicides and pesticide production and a total collapse of Industrial Civilisation. ..."
    Jan 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Palloy , Feb 20, 2018 8:52:02 PM | link

    @4 "For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia."

    Ever since US Crude Oil peaked its production in 1970, the US has known that at some point the oil majors would have their profitability damaged, "assets" downgraded, and borrowing capacity destroyed. At this point their shares would become worthless and they would become bankrupt. The contagion from this would spread to transport businesses, plastics manufacture, herbicides and pesticide production and a total collapse of Industrial Civilisation.

    In anticipation of increasing Crude Oil imports, Nixon stopped the convertibility of Dollars into Gold, thus making the Dollar entirely fiat, allowing them to print as much of the currency as they needed.

    They also began a system of obscuring oil production data, involving the DoE's EIA and the OECD's IEA, by inventing an ever-increasing category of Undiscovered Oilfields in their predictions, and combining Crude Oil and Condensate (from gas fields) into one category (C+C) as if they were the same thing. As well the support of the ethanol-from-corn industry began, even though it was uneconomic. The Global Warming problem had to be debunked, despite its sound scientific basis. Energy-intensive manufacturing work was off-shored to cheap labour+energy countries, and Just-in-Time delivery systems were honed.

    In 2004 the price of Crude Oil rose from $28 /barrel up to $143 /b in mid-2008. This demonstrated that there is a limit to how much business can pay for oil (around $100 /b). Fracking became marginally economic at these prices, but the frackers never made a profit as over-production meant prices fell to about $60 /b. The Government encourages this destructive industry despite the fact it doesn't make any money, because the alternative is the end of Industrial Civilisation.

    Eventually though, there must come a time when there is not enough oil to power all the cars and trucks, bulldozers, farm tractors, airplanes and ships, as well as manufacture all the wind turbines and solar panels and electric vehicles, as well as the upgraded transmission grid. At that point, the game will be up, and it will be time for WW3. So we need to line up some really big enemies, and develop lots of reasons to hate them.

    Thus you see the demonisation of Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela for reasons that don't make sense from a normal perspective.

    Ger , Feb 21, 2018 7:52:44 AM | link
    Dan @ 4

    It is partially tied direct to the economy of the warmongers as trillions of dollars of new cold war slop is laying on the ground awaiting the MICC hogs. American hegemony is primarily about stealing the natural resources of helpless countries. Now in control of all the weak ones, it is time to move to the really big prize: The massive resources of Russia. They (US and their European Lackeys) thought this was a slam dunk when Yeltsin, in his drunken stupors, was literally giving Russia to invading capitalist. Enter Putin, stopped the looting .........connect the dots.

    [Jan 02, 2019] Election tampering via false identity by Democratic operatives: The cleverest trick used in propaganda against a specific country is to accuse it of what the accuser itself is doing.

    Notable quotes:
    "... a text book case of "projection" by demorats -their own crimes of sedition and treason projected onto trump via the russians. ..."
    "... The thing that is most difficult for Americans to grasp is that they do not control their own government and have not for many decades. ..."
    Jan 02, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
    Oldguy05 , 31 minutes ago link

    George Carlin on some cultural issues.

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

    vampirekiller , 35 minutes ago link

    "The Only Meddling "Russian Bots" Were Actually Demorats Experts masquerading as progressive Republicans and Democrats"............FIFY

    It's all they have left after being rendered politically irrelevant and statistically insignificant in November 2016 by the deplorables. ROFLMAO.........this civil war needs to die in federal government so we do not waste money in mass deportations to an established island nation surrounded by 1000 nautical miles of water.

    Baron Samedi , 1 hour ago link

    "Election tampering via false identity" sounds like the right kind of language for a federal law -- but I'm betting there is something already out there (at state/fed level), and am not wild about yet more laws (which [[[they]]] get to ignore anyway).

    bh2 , 1 hour ago link

    "tech specialists who lean Democratic," Tech specialists who lean criminal. A distinction without a difference, of course.

    hooligan2009 , 2 hours ago link

    a text book case of "projection" by demorats -their own crimes of sedition and treason projected onto trump via the russians.

    one can only hope that Mueller has found the proof that DemoRats were responsible for attempts to rig the presidential elections - aided and abetted by criminal journalists also guilty of sedition and treason.

    I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 2 hours ago link

    The Moon of A on Hamilton 68: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/russian-bots-how-an-anti-russian-lobby-creates-fake-news.html

    A new and improved version of H68 coming soon! https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-68/

    it's a bunch of Ultra-Zionist Jews, which is the only reason their ******** gets published all over the (((media))) as if at all credible.

    https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/about-us/advisory-council/

    I mean, ******* Chertoff and Kristol's involvement says it all.

    OT : Trump Gives US Troops Four Months to Leave Syria – Report I would not be surprised if US troops in Manbij are attacked/killed soon and immediate blame put on the SAA.

    lincolnsteffens , 1 hour ago link

    Didn't look it up but someone told me that Kristol's parents were passionate Marxists.

    dcmbuffy , 2 hours ago link

    democrats are corrupt- plain and simple- shameful and with no regard to who knows that are corrupt- no shame- "I'm Gettn' mines!!!"

    navy62802 , 2 hours ago link

    As if it ******* matters at this point. Get real. We are watching a display of raw power right now. Well connected individuals are calling the shots right now, well outside of the legal system. If you haven't realized that over the past 2 years, you haven't been paying attention. Furthermore, no amount of factual proof is going to result in the actual criminals being held to account. The thing that is most difficult for Americans to grasp is that they do not control their own government and have not for many decades. They do not have an equal system of justice. Instead, the US is ruled by a secret oligarchy which exists above the US legal code. This is the harsh reality we are watching be revealed right now.

    jughead , 2 hours ago link

    We're watching an attempted display of raw power...that hasn't been going as planned. If it had, Trump would either be gone or automagically transformed into the next iteration of BushBama. We are fly in the ointment...buzz buzz

    loveyajimbo , 2 hours ago link

    No prosecution... our DOJ does not prosecute anything political... no matter how serious the felony. Just ask the ***-maggots Hillary, Brennan, Comey, Clapper and Lynch.

    Lord Raglan , 2 hours ago link

    Wow! What does Sherlock Holmes Mueller think of this? This story makes Mueller out to be the biggest fraud of all time and his attorneys tantamount to the Keystone Cops. Where are they on all this?

    chunga , 2 hours ago link

    It's too bad there isn't any opposition to these "Democrat Operatives".

    SmackDaddy , 2 hours ago link

    There was. We fire bombed the **** out of them in 1945.

    philipat , 2 hours ago link

    Strange that this story has not featured prominently on the front pages of NYT/WaPo or on CNN?

    [Jan 02, 2019] The malware sample claimed to Russian in DNC "hack" is actually appear to be Ukrainian and was possible planted by Crowstrike to implicate Russians

    Notable quotes:
    "... War or the threat of war is needed to distract attention from rapidly devolving societal bonds and immense economic inequality. ..."
    Jan 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Partisan , Feb 21, 2018 3:38:27 AM | link

    https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/russia-malware-ip-hack/

    Conclusion regarding IP address data: What we're seeing in this IP data is a wide range of countries and hosting providers. 15% of the IP addresses are Tor exit nodes. These exit nodes are used by anyone who wants to be anonymous online, including malicious actors.

    Overall Conclusion: The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes.

    The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website.

    WJ , Feb 21, 2018 6:38:11 AM | link
    War or the threat of war is needed to distract attention from rapidly devolving societal bonds and immense economic inequality.
    JC , Feb 21, 2018 9:20:58 AM | link
    Interesting, too, that the Dark State appears to be sending out talking points this week to the effect that the alleged hacking of the DNC is an "act of war." IfI'm not mistaken, the US recently revised war policy to include cyber attacks, whether they actually happened or not, as being the same as a kinetic attack. Looks to me like we are seeing the beginning of a long-term pysop/PR campaign to build support for a "preemptive" strike against Russia and China that would, presumably, include nukes.

    [Jan 02, 2019] Russia has really become the all-purpose pouvantail scarecrow, specter of doom, etc. An awareness of the high costs of divisiveness if uncontrolled - massive social unrest, at extreme, civil war -- and that these are to be avoided, is evidenced.

    Jan 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Noirette , Feb 21, 2018 11:38:52 AM | link

    US media has gone bonkers. The original claim was Russian meddling and Russian interference in the election. Then, a sort of bridging meme showed up (see also b above), undermining democracy or subverting it. This in turn then morphed into promoting divisive issues which is new (circa 2018, not before?)

    Imho. US pols make it their business to create divisive issues, diviusses (neologism), to the point of inventing rubbish ones. Part of the US public embraces that sh*t as well, > tribalism and religious economics in lieu of policy politics. So such actions should be viewed as gloriously democratic, ;) - ok easy to make fun.

    The emphasis on 'divisive' is curious, it signals that some managers are calling for 'union' - 'cohesion' - 'group soldering' facing the outside enemy, threat.

    Russia has really become the all-purpose épouvantail scarecrow, specter of doom, etc. An awareness of the high costs of divisiveness if uncontrolled -> massive social unrest, at extreme, civil war -- and that these are to be avoided, is evidenced.

    Heh, or the whole storm is just fluff that distracts, occupies the pixels, airwaves, a jamboree of knee-jerk reactions irrelevant to the present World Situation, with practically no important body - faction of the PTB, Trump, the MIC, lame outsiders like the EU, etc. having any clue.

    [Dec 30, 2018] RussiaGate In Review with Aaron Mate - Unreasoned Fear is Neoliberalism's Response to the Credibility Gap

    Highly recommended!
    Dec 30, 2018 | jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com

    At the inception of this entire RussiaGate spectacle I suggested that it was a political distraction to take the attention away from the rejection by the people of neoliberalism which has been embraced by the establishments of both political parties.

    And that the result of the investigation would be indictments for perjury in the covering up of illicit business deals and money laundering. But that 'collusion to sway the election' was without substance, if not a joke.

    Everything that has been revealed to date tends to support that.

    One thing that Aaron overlooks is the evidence compiled by William Binney and associates that strongly suggests the DNC hack was no hack at all, but a leak by an insider who was appalled by the lies and double dealing at the DNC.

    In general, RussiaGate is a farcical distraction from other issues as they say in the video. And this highlights the utterly Machiavellian streak in the corporate Democrats and the Liberal establishment under the Clintons and their ilk who care more about money and power than the basic principles that historically sustained their party. I have lost all respect for them.

    But unfortunately this does open the door for those who use this to approve of the Republican establishment, which is 'at least honest' about being substantially corrupt servants to Big Money who care nothing about democracy, the Constitution, or the public. The best of them are leaving or have already left, and their party is ruined beyond repair.

    This all underscores the paucity of the Red v. Blue, monopoly of two parties, 'lesser of two evils' model of political thought which has come to dominate the discussion in the US.

    We are heavily propagandized by the owners of the corporate media and influencers of the narrative, and a professional class that has sold its soul for economic advantage and access to money and power.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/2HBA3Zm3dGM

    And here is a bit more from Nate Silver --

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/SETw5GLF8mU

    [Dec 29, 2018] -Election Meddling- Enters Bizarro World As MSM Ignores Democrat-Linked -Russian Bot- Scheme -

    Highly recommended!
    Is this shadow of Integrity Initiative in the USA ? This false flag open the possibility that other similar events like DNC (with very questionable investigation by Crowdstrike, which was a perfect venue to implement a false flag; cybersecurity area is the perfect environment for planting false flags), MH17 (might be an incident but later it definitely was played as a false flag), Skripals (Was Skripals poisoning a false flag decided to hide the fact that Sergey Skripal was involved in writing Steele dossier?) and Litvinenko (probably connected with lack of safety measures in the process of smuggling of Plutonium by Litvinenko himself, but later played a a false flag). All of those now should be re-assessed from the their potential of being yet another flag flag operation against Russia. While Browder was a MI6 operation from the very beginning (and that explains why he abdicated the US citizenship more convincingly that the desire to avoid taxes) .
    Notable quotes:
    "... Democratic operative Jonathon Morgan - bankrolled by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, pulled a Russian bot "false flag" operation against GOP candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama special election last year - creating thousands of fake social media accounts designed to influence voters . Hoffman has since apologized, while Morgan was suspended by Facebook for "coordinated inauthentic" behavior. ..."
    "... Really the bigger story is here is that these guys convincingly pretended to be Russian Bots in order to influence an election (not with the message being put forth by the bots, but by their sheer existence as apparent supporters of the Moore campaign). ..."
    "... By all appearances, they were Russian bots trying to influence the election. Now we know it was DNC operatives. Yet we are supposed to believe without any proof that the "Russian bots" that supposedly influenced the 2016 Presidential election were, actually, Russian bots, and worthy of a two year long probe about "Russian collusion" and "Russian meddling." ..."
    "... The whole thing is probably a farce, not only in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia had any influence at all on a single voter, but also in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia even tried (just claims and allegations by people who have a vested interest in convincing us its true). ..."
    Dec 29, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    For over two years now, the concepts of "Russian collusion" and "Russian election meddling" have been shoved down our throats by the mainstream media (MSM) under the guise of legitimate concern that the Kremlin may have installed a puppet president in Donald Trump.

    Having no evidence of collusion aside from a largely unverified opposition-research dossier fabricated by a former British spy, the focus shifted from "collusion" to "meddling" and "influence." In other words, maybe Trump didn't actually collude with Putin, but the Kremlin used Russian tricks to influence the election in Trump's favor. To some, this looked like nothing more than an establishment scheme to cast a permanent spectre of doubt over the legitimacy of President Donald J. Trump.

    Election meddling "Russian bots" and "troll farms" became the central focus - as claims were levied of social media operations conducted by Kremlin-linked organizations which sought to influence and divide certain segments of America.

    And while scant evidence of a Russian influence operation exists outside of a handful of indictments connected to a St. Petersburg "Troll farm" (which a liberal journalist cast serious doubt ov er), the MSM - with all of their proselytizing over the "threat to democracy" that election meddling poses, has largely decided to ignore actual evidence of "Russian bots" created by Democrat IT experts, used against a GOP candidate in the Alabama special election, and amplified through the Russian bot-detecting "Hamilton 68" dashboard developed by the same IT experts.

    Jonathon Morgan ✔ @jonathonmorgan

    Russian trolls tracked by # Hamilton68 are taking an interest in the AL Senate race. What a surprise.

    298 4:02 PM - Nov 10, 2017

    Democratic operative Jonathon Morgan - bankrolled by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, pulled a Russian bot "false flag" operation against GOP candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama special election last year - creating thousands of fake social media accounts designed to influence voters . Hoffman has since apologized, while Morgan was suspended by Facebook for "coordinated inauthentic" behavior.

    As Russian state-owned RT puts it - and who could blame them for being a bit pissed over the whole thing, "it turns out there really was meddling in American democracy by "Russian bots." Except they weren't run from Moscow or St. Petersburg, but from the offices of Democrat operatives chiefly responsible for creating and amplifying the "Russiagate" hysteria over the past two years in a textbook case of psychological projection. "

    A week before Christmas, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report accusing Russia of depressing Democrat voter turnout by targeting African-Americans on social media. Its authors, New Knowledge, quickly became a household name.

    Described by the New York Times as a group of "tech specialists who lean Democratic," New Knowledge has ties to both the US military and intelligence agencies. Its CEO and co-founder Jonathon Morgan previously worked for DARPA, the US military's advanced research agenc y. His partner, Ryan Fox, is a 15-year veteran of the National Security Agency who also worked as a computer analyst for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Their unique skill sets have managed to attract the eye of investors, who pumped $11 million into the company in 2018 alone.

    ...

    On December 19, a New York Times story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created a fake army of Russian bots, as well as fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama's 2017 special election for the US Senate.

    Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake Twitter accounts with Russian names, and had them follow Moore. They also operated several Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded voters to support a write-in candidate instead.

    In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had "orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet."

    It worked. The botnet claim made a splash on social media and was further amplified by Mother Jones, which based its story on expert opinion from Morgan's other dubious creation, Hamilton 68. - RT

    Moore ended up losing the Alabama special election by a slim margin of just

    In other words: In November 2017 – when Moore and his Democratic opponent were in a bitter fight to win over voters – Morgan openly promoted the theory that Russian bots were supporting Moore's campaign . A year later – after being caught red-handed orchestrating a self-described "false flag" operation – Morgan now says that his team never thought that the bots were Russian and have no idea what their purpose was . Did he think no one would notice? - RT

    Dan Cohen ✔ @dancohen3000 Replying to @dancohen3000

    Disinformation warrior @ jonathonmorgan attempts to control damage by lying. He now claims the "false flag operation" never took place and the botnet he promoted as Russian-linked (based on phony Hamilton68 Russian troll tracker he developed) wasn't Russian https://www. newknowledge.com/blog/about-ala bama

    89 2:23 AM - Dec 29, 2018

    Even more strange is that Scott Shane - the journalist who wrote the New York Times piece exposing the Alabama "Russian bot" scheme, knew about it for months after speaking at an event where the organizers bragged about the false flag on Moore .

    Shane was one of the speakers at a meeting in September, organized by American Engagement Technologies, a group run by Mikey Dickerson, President Barack Obama's former tech czar. Dickerson explained how AET spent $100,000 on New Knowledge's campaign to suppress Republican votes, " enrage" Democrats to boost turnout, and execute a "false flag" to hrt Moore. He dubbed it "Project Birmingham." - RT

    Dan Cohen ✔ @dancohen3000 · Dec 28, 2018 Replying to @dancohen3000

    This gets even weirder: NYT reporter @ ScottShaneNYT , who broke the Alabama disinfo op story, learned of it in early September when he spoke at an off-the-record event organized by one of the firms that perpetrated the deception https://www. buzzfeednews.com/article/craigs ilverman/alabama-dirty-tricksters-invited-a-new-york-times-reporter

    NY Times Reporter Briefed Alabama Special Election Dirty Tricksters

    New York Times reporter Scott Shane spoke at an event organized by the group who ran a disinformation op aimed at helping defeat Roy Moore in Alabama.

    A lightly-redacted copy of the internal @ NewKnowledgeAI report has been leaked and claims at least partial credit for Doug Jones' victory. Details follow https:// medium.com/@jeffgiesea/br eaking-heres-the-after-action-report-from-the-alabama-senate-disinformation

    10 12:09 PM - Dec 28, 2018 Twitter Ads info and privacy

    Shane told BuzzFeed that he was "shocked" by the revelations, though hid behind a nondisclosure agreement at the request of American Engagement Technologies (AET). He instead chose to spin the New Knowledge "false flag" operation on Moore as "limited Russian tactics" which were part of an "experiment" that had a budget of "only" $100,000 - and which had no effect on the election.

    New Knowledge suggested that the false flag operation was simply a "research project," which Morgan suggested was designed "to better understand and report on the tactics and effects of social media disinformation."

    View image on Twitter
    Jonathon Morgan ✔ @jonathonmorgan

    My statement on this evening's NYT article.

    94 9:17 PM - Dec 19, 2018
    465 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

    While the New York Times seemed satisfied with his explanation, others pointed out that Morgan had used the Hamilton 68 dashboard to give his "false flag" more credibility – misleading the public about a "Russian" influence campaign that he knew was fake.

    New Knowledge's protestations apparently didn't convince Facebook, which announced last week that five accounts linked to New Knowledge – including Morgan's – had been suspended for engaging in "coordinated inauthentic behavior." - RT

    They knew exactly what they were doing

    While Morgan and New Knowledge sought to frame the "Project Birmingham" as a simple research project, a leaked copy of the operation's after-action report reveals that they knew exactly what they were doing .

    "We targeted 650,000 like AL voters, with a combination of persona accounts, astroturfing, automated social media amplification and targeted advertising," reads the report published by entrepreneur and executive coach Jeff Giesea.

    Jeff Giesea ✔ @jeffgiesea

    BREAKING: Here's the after-action report from the AL Senate disinfo campaign.

    **an exclusive release by @ JeffGiesea https:// medium.com/@jeffgiesea/br eaking-heres-the-after-action-report-from-the-alabama-senate-disinformation-campaign-e3edd854f17d

    1,658 8:49 PM - Dec 27, 2018 Twitter Ads info and privacy BREAKING: Here's The After-Action Report From the Alabama Senate Disinformation Campaign

    EXCLUSIVE RELEASE FROM JEFF GIESEA

    medium.com
    1,381 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

    The rhetorical question remains, why did the MSM drop this election meddling story like a hot rock after the initial headlines faded away?

    criminal election meddling, but then who the **** is going to click on some morons tactic and switch votes?

    anyone basing any funding, whether it is number of facebook hits or attempted mind games by egotistical cuck soyboys needs a serious psychological examination. fake news is fake BECAUSE IT ISNT REAL AND DOES NOT MATTER TO ANYONE but those living in the excited misery of their tiny bubble world safe spaces. SOCIAL MEDIA IS A CON AND IS NOT IMPORTANT OR RELEVANT TO ANYONE.

    far more serious is destroying ballots, writing in ballots without consent, bussing voters around to vote multiple times in different districts, registering dead voters and imperosnating the corpses, withholding votes until deadlines pass - making them invalid.

    Herdee , 10 minutes ago

    NATO on behalf of the Washington politicians uses the same bullsh*t propaganda for continual war.

    Mugabe , 20 minutes ago

    Yup "PROJECTION"...

    Yippie21 , 21 minutes ago

    None of this even touches on the 501c3 or whatever that was set up , concerned Alabama voters or somesuch, and was funneled a **** load of money to be found to be in violation of the law AFTER the election and then it all just disappeared. Nothing to see here folks, Democrat won, let's move on. There was a LOT of " tests " for the smart-set in that election and it all worked. We saw a bunch of it used in 2018, especially in Texas with Beto and down-ballot races. Democrats cleaned up like crazy in Texas, especially in Houston.

    2020 is going to be a hot mess. And the press is in on it, and even if illegal or unseemly things are done, as long as Democrats win, all good... let's move on. Crazy.

    LetThemEatRand , 21 minutes ago

    The fact that MSM is not covering this story -- which is so big it truly raises major questions about the entire Russiagate conspiracy including why Mueller was appointed in the first place -- is proof that they have no interest in journalism or the truth and that they are 100% agenda driven liars. Not that we needed more proof, but there it is anyway.

    Oldguy05 , 19 minutes ago

    Dimz corruption is a nogo. Now if it were conservatives.......

    CosineCosineCosine , 23 minutes ago

    I'm not a huge fan, but Jimmy Dore has a cathartic and entertaining 30 minutes on this farce. Well worth the watch:

    h https://youtu.be/hqLIJznUNVw

    LetThemEatRand , 27 minutes ago

    Really the bigger story is here is that these guys convincingly pretended to be Russian Bots in order to influence an election (not with the message being put forth by the bots, but by their sheer existence as apparent supporters of the Moore campaign).

    By all appearances, they were Russian bots trying to influence the election. Now we know it was DNC operatives. Yet we are supposed to believe without any proof that the "Russian bots" that supposedly influenced the 2016 Presidential election were, actually, Russian bots, and worthy of a two year long probe about "Russian collusion" and "Russian meddling."

    The whole thing is probably a farce, not only in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia had any influence at all on a single voter, but also in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia even tried (just claims and allegations by people who have a vested interest in convincing us its true).

    dead hobo , 30 minutes ago

    I've been watching Scandal on Netflix. Still only in season 2. Amazing how nothing changes.They nailed it and memorialized it. The MSM are useful idiots who are happy to make money publicizing what will sell the best.

    chunga , 30 minutes ago

    The media is biased and sucks, yup.

    The reason the reds lost the house is because they went along with this nonsense and did nothing about it, like frightened baby chipmunks.

    JRobby , 33 minutes ago

    Only when "the opposition" does it is it illegal. Total totalitarian state wannabe stuff.

    divingengineer , 22 minutes ago

    Amazing how people can contort reality to justify their own righteous cause, but decry their opposition for the EXACT same thing. See trump visit to troops signing hats as most recent proof. If DJT takes a piss and sprinkles the seat, it's a crime.

    DarkPurpleHaze , 33 minutes ago

    They're afraid to expose themselves...unlike Kevin Spacey. Trump or Whitaker will expose this with one signature. It's coming.

    divingengineer , 20 minutes ago

    Spacey has totally lost it. See his latest video, it will be a powerful piece of evidence for an insanity plea.

    CosineCosineCosine , 10 minutes ago

    Disagree strongly. I think it was excellent - perhaps you misunderstood the point? 6 minutes Diana Davidson look at it clarifies

    https://youtu.be/_il_NBq0Ec8

    [Dec 22, 2018] British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft by Craig Murray

    Highly recommended!
    Craig Murray is right that "As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier." Collapse of neoliberal ideology and rise of tentions in neoliberal sociarties resulted in unprecedented increase of covert and false flag operations by British intelligence services, especially against Russia, which had been chosen as a convenient scapegoat. With Steele dossier and Skripal affair as two most well known.
    New Lady Macbeth (Theresa May) Russophobia is so extreme that her cabinet derailed the election of a Russian to head Interpol.
    Looks like neoliberalism cannot be defeated by and faction of the existing elite. Only when shepp oil end mant people will have a chance. The US , GB and EU are part of the wider hegemonic neoliberal system. In fact rejection of neoliberal globalization probably will lead to "national neoliberals" regime which would be a flavor of neo-fascism, no more no less.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. ..."
    "... I learnt how highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane just happened to be on holiday in the United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign. ..."
    "... It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely unbalanced panel of British military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia. ..."
    "... the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it. ..."
    "... By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building . It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London. ..."
    "... Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence. ..."
    "... I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills. ..."
    "... I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information. ..."
    "... one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media, it would be the biggest story of the day ..."
    "... As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier. ..."
    "... You can bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy". ..."
    Dec 13, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

    in Uncategorized by craig

    The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. Look up Eldred Pottinger, who for 180 years appears in scores of British history books – right up to and including William Dalrymple's Return of the King – as a British officer who chanced to be passing Herat on holiday when it came under siege from a partly Russian-officered Persian army, and helped to organise the defences. In researching Sikunder Burnes, I discovered and published from the British Library incontrovertible and detailed documentary evidence that Pottinger's entire journey was under the direct instructions of, and reporting to, British spymaster Alexander Burnes. The first historian to publish the untrue "holiday" cover story, Sir John Kaye, knew both Burnes and Pottinger and undoubtedly knew he was publishing lying propaganda. Every other British historian of the First Afghan War (except me and latterly Farrukh Husain) has just followed Kaye's official propaganda.

    Some things don't change. I was irresistibly reminded of Eldred Pottinger just passing Herat on holiday, when I learnt how highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane just happened to be on holiday in the United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign.

    Recent university graduate Simon Bracey-Lane took it even further. Originally from Wimbledon in London, he was inspired to rejoin the Labour party in September when Corbyn was elected leader. But by that point, he was already in the US on holiday. So he joined the Sanders campaign, and never left.
    "I had two weeks left and some money left, so I thought, Fuck it, I'll make some calls for Bernie Sanders," he explains. "I just sort of knew Des Moines was the place, so I just turned up at their HQ, started making phone calls, and then became a fully fledged field organiser."

    It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely unbalanced panel of British military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia.

    Nor would it seem likely that Bracey-Lane would be involved with the Integrity Initiative. Even the mainstream media has been forced to give a few paragraphs to the outrageous Integrity Initiative, under which the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it.

    The mainstream media have tracked down the HQ of the "Institute for Statecraft" to a derelict mill near Auchtermuchty. It is owned by one of the company directors, Daniel Lafayeedney, formerly of D Squadron 23rd SAS Regiment and later of Military Intelligence (and incidentally born the rather more prosaic Daniel Edney).

    By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building. It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London.

    Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence.

    Having been told where the Institute for Statecraft skulk, I tipped off journalist Kit Klarenberg of Sputnik Radio to go and physically check it out. Kit did so and was aggressively ejected by that well-known Corbyn and Sanders supporter, Simon Bracey-Lane. It does seem somewhat strange that our left wing hero is deeply embedded in an organisation that launches troll attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.

    I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills.

    I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information.

    But one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media, it would be the biggest story of the day.

    As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier.

    You can bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy".

    As both Scottish Independence and Jeremy Corbyn are viewed as real threats by the British Establishment, you can anticipate every possible kind of dirty trick in the next couple of years, with increasing frequency and audacity

    [Dec 22, 2018] If Truth Cannot Prevail Over Material Agendas We Are Doomed by Paul Craig Roberts

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... In his just published book, War With Russia? ..."
    "... To paraphrase Putin: "You are making Russia a threat by declaring us to be one, by discarding facts and substituting orchestrated opinions that your propagandistic media establish as fact via endless repetition." ..."
    "... Cohen is correct that during the Cold War every US president worked to defuse tensions, especially Republican ones. Since the Clinton regime every US president has worked to create tensions. What explains this dangerous change in approach? The end of the Cold War was disadvantageous to the military/security complex whose budget and power had waxed from decades of cold war. Suddenly the enemy that had bestowed such wealth and prestige on the military/security complex disappeared. ..."
    "... The New Cold War is the result of the military/security complex's resurrection of the enemy. In a democracy with independent media and scholars, this would not have been possible. But the Clinton regime permitted in violation of anti-trust laws 90% of the US media to be concentrated in the hands of six mega-corporations, thus destroying an independence already undermined by the CIA's successful use of the CIA's media assets to control explanations. Many books have been written about the CIA's use of the media, including Udo Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalism," the English edition of which was quickly withdrawn and burned. ..."
    www.theamericanconservative.com
    Dec 22, 2018 |

    Throughout the long Cold War Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University was a voice of reason. He refused to allow his patriotism to blind him to Washington's contribution to the conflict and to criticize only the Soviet contribution. Cohen's interest was not to blame the enemy but to work toward a mutual understanding that would remove the threat of nuclear war. Although a Democrat and left-leaning, Cohen would have been at home in the Reagan administration, as Reagan's first priority was to end the Cold War. I know this because I was part of the effort. Pat Buchanan will tell you the same thing.

    In 1974 a notorious cold warrior, Albert Wohlstetter, absurdly accused the CIA of underestimating the Soviet threat. As the CIA had every incentive for reasons of budget and power to overestimate the Soviet threat, and today the "Russian threat," Wohlstetter's accusation made no sense on its face. However he succeeded in stirring up enough concern that CIA director George H.W. Bush, later Vice President and President, agreed to a Team B to investigate the CIA's assessment, headed by the Russiaphobic Harvard professor Richard Pipes. Team B concluded that the Soviets thought they could win a nuclear war and were building the forces with which to attack the US.

    The report was mainly nonsense, and it must have have troubled Stephen Cohen to experience the setback to negotiations that Team B caused.

    Today Cohen is stressed that it is the United States that thinks it can win a nuclear war. Washington speaks openly of using "low yield" nuclear weapons, and intentionally forecloses any peace negotiations with Russia with a propaganda campaign against Russia of demonization, vilification, and transparent lies, while installing missile bases on Russia's borders and while talking of incorporating former parts of Russia into NATO. In his just published book, War With Russia? , which I highly recommend, Cohen makes a convincing case that Washington is asking for war.

    I agree with Cohen that if Russia is a threat it is only because the US is threatening Russia. The stupidity of the policy toward Russia is creating a Russian threat. Putin keeps emphasizing this. To paraphrase Putin: "You are making Russia a threat by declaring us to be one, by discarding facts and substituting orchestrated opinions that your propagandistic media establish as fact via endless repetition."

    Cohen is correct that during the Cold War every US president worked to defuse tensions, especially Republican ones. Since the Clinton regime every US president has worked to create tensions. What explains this dangerous change in approach? The end of the Cold War was disadvantageous to the military/security complex whose budget and power had waxed from decades of cold war. Suddenly the enemy that had bestowed such wealth and prestige on the military/security complex disappeared.

    The New Cold War is the result of the military/security complex's resurrection of the enemy. In a democracy with independent media and scholars, this would not have been possible. But the Clinton regime permitted in violation of anti-trust laws 90% of the US media to be concentrated in the hands of six mega-corporations, thus destroying an independence already undermined by the CIA's successful use of the CIA's media assets to control explanations. Many books have been written about the CIA's use of the media, including Udo Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalism," the English edition of which was quickly withdrawn and burned.

    The demonization of Russia is also aided and abetted by the Democrats' hatred of Trump and anger from Hillary's loss of the presidential election to the "Trump deplorables." The Democrats purport to believe that Trump was installed by Putin's interference in the presidential election. This false belief is emotionally important to Democrats, and they can't let go of it.

    Although Cohen as a professor at Princeton and NYU never lacked research opportunities, in the US Russian studies, strategic studies, and the like are funded by the military/security complex whose agenda Cohen's scholarship does not serve. At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where I held an independently financed chair for a dozen years, most of my colleagues were dependent on grants from the military/security complex. At the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where I was a Senior Fellow for three decades, the anti-Soviet stance of the Institution reflected the agenda of those who funded the institution.

    I am not saying that my colleagues were whores on a payroll. I am saying that the people who got the appointments were people who were inclined to see the Soviet Union the way the military/security complex thought it should be seen.

    As Stephen Cohen is aware, in the original Cold War there was some balance as all explanations were not controlled. There were independent scholars who could point out that the Soviets, decimated by World War 2, had an interest in peace, and that accommodation could be achieved, thus avoiding the possibility of nuclear war.

    Stephen Cohen must have been in the younger ranks of those sensible people, as he and President Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matloff, seem to be the remaining voices of expert reason on the American scene.

    If you care to understand the dire threat under which you live, a threat that only a few people, such as Stephen Cohen, are trying to lift, read his book.

    If you want to understand the dire threat that a bought-and-paid-for American media poses to your existence, read Cohen's accounts of their despicable lies. America has a media that is synonymous with lies.

    If you want to understand how corrupt American universities are as organizations on the take for money, organizations to whom truth is inconsequential, read Cohen's book.

    If you want to understand why you could be dead before Global Warming can get you, read Cohen's book.

    Enough said.

    [Dec 21, 2018] Virtually no one in neoliberal MSM is paying attention to the fact that a group of Pakistani muslims, working for a Jewish Congresswoman from Florida, had full computer access to a large number of Democrat Representatives. Most of the press is disinterested in pursuing this matter

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... What Are the Democrats Hiding?" http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/07/what-are-the-democrats-hiding-by-publius-tacitus.html "Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) demanded that Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa return equipment belonging to her office that was seized as part of the investigation -- or face "consequences." ..."
    "... "FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's information technology (IT) administrator, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation. Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back." ..."
    "... This is not your phony Russia-gate or McCain-commissioned funny dossier on Trump. This is the documented "serious, potentially illegal, violations of the House IT network," which is a case of a free access to classified information by a group of the proven blackmailers. Would this matter be treated with the same urgency of "patriotism" as the cases of Manning and Assange? ..."
    Jul 25, 2017 | www.unz.com

    annamaria , says: July 25, 2017 at 2:09 pm GMT

    @zzzzzzz

    " but the Deep State knows how to box"

    Let's see: "What Are the Democrats Hiding?" http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/07/what-are-the-democrats-hiding-by-publius-tacitus.html "Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) demanded that Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa return equipment belonging to her office that was seized as part of the investigation -- or face "consequences."

    Virtually no one [from MSM] is paying attention to the fact that a group of Pakistani Muslims, working for a Jewish Congresswoman from Florida, had full computer access to a large number of Democrat Representatives. Most of the press is disinterested in pursuing this matter."

    http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/23/exclusive-fbi-seized-smashed-hard-drives-from-wasserman-schultz-it-aides-home/

    "FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's information technology (IT) administrator, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation. Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back."

    This is not your phony Russia-gate or McCain-commissioned funny dossier on Trump. This is the documented "serious, potentially illegal, violations of the House IT network," which is a case of a free access to classified information by a group of the proven blackmailers. Would this matter be treated with the same urgency of "patriotism" as the cases of Manning and Assange?

    [Dec 16, 2018] The 'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation, Disguised As Charity, To Create The Russian Threat

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Sounds to me like that Integrity initiative dude needs to go on a 'de-radicalisation program !!! ..."
    "... the powerbrokers have always been in London and now its hypercentralized endgame in Brussels. You can say that it is the US through and through, but ask yourself who has more to gain from US FP abroad: average Americans or the global elites? ..."
    "... Those former-Eastern Bloc countries, i.e. Poland and Ukraine, do not count as power brokers. They have and will always be pawns in the game. So what if they still worship Icons of Americanism which is a remnant culture of their F*ed up narrative where they still believe they are fighting the commies. ..."
    "... Integrity Initiative ..."
    "... From his curriculum vitae (pdf) we learn that Donnelly was a long time soldier in the British Army Intelligence Corps where he established and led the Soviet Studies Research Centre at RMA Sandhurst. He later was involved in creating the US Army's Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Ft. Leavenworth. ..."
    "... He worked at the British Ministry of Defence and as an advisor to several Secretaries General of NATO. He is a director of the Statecraft Institute since 2010. Donnelly also advises the Foreign Minister of Lithuania. He is a "Security and Justice Senior Mentor" of the UK's Stabilisation Unit which is tasked with destabilizing various countries. He serves as a Honorary Colonel of the Specialist Group Military Intelligence (SGMI). ..."
    "... This was an order from the core of the British thinking to Donnelly to get even deeper into the inner-British influence business. Hype Russia as a threat so more money can be taken from the 'vested interests' of the people and dumped into the military machine. ..."
    "... That particular advise of General Barrons was accepted. In 2017 the Integrity Initiative bid for funding from the Ministry of Defence (pdf) for various projects to influence the public, the parliament and the government as well as foreign forces. The bid lists "performance indicators" that are supposed to measure the success of its activities. The top indicator for the Initiative's proposed work is a "Tougher stance in government policy towards Russia" ..."
    "... In March 2014, shortly after Crimea split from the Ukraine, Donnelly suggested Military measures (pdf) to be taken by the Ukraine with regards to Crimea: ..."
    "... Think for a moment how Russia would have responded to a mining of Sevastopol harbor, the frying of its satellites or the destruction of its fighter jets in Crimea. Those "guestures" would have been illegal acts of war against the forces of a nuclear power which were legally stationed in Crimea. And how was the west to immediately supply gas to Ukraine and Ukraine's pipeline network is designed to unidirectionally receive gas from Russia? ..."
    "... Yes, Putin really believes his own propaganda ..."
    "... Putin's paranoia is driving his foreign adventures ..."
    "... Russian information warfare - airbrushing reality ..."
    "... Distract, deceive, destroy: Putin at war in Syria ..."
    "... Russian penetration in Germany ..."
    "... Russian conspiracy theory and foreign policy ..."
    "... Mapping Russia's whole influence machine ..."
    "... Military Review ..."
    "... BBC Newsnight ..."
    "... The most recent release of Integrity Initiative documents includes lots of in-depth reports (pdf) about foreign media reactions to the Skripal affair. One wonders why the Initiative commissioned such research (pdf) and paid for it. ..."
    "... Here is an interesting look at how little the Russia-linked entities spent on advertising on Google during the 2016 election: https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/12/google-russia-and-4700-in-advertising.html Slowly but surely, the Russian meddling narrative is falling apart. ..."
    "... McCarthyesque smear campaigns to discredit opponents and squash dissent has become normal practice. Integrity Initiative tweets against Corbyn is a stark example, but there have been MANY other people and groups that have been tarred with claims of being sponsored/led/influenced by Russia, including Catalonian independence activists and Yellow vest protesters. ..."
    "... Dear god, what has gotten into the minds of the military and political "elite" within the UK! Mining Sevastopol would have been an obvious act of war against Russia and Russia would have responded with force. ..."
    "... It looks like one of the decision was to get closer to France (after getting very close friends in Homs and Aleppo?) See the list of people in the French II cluster dumped yesterday by Anonymous: half the names work at the fr Min of F Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster_House_Treaties and http://www.gmfus.org/publications/frances-defense-partnerships-and-dilemmas-brexit ..."
    "... This group may have officially formed in 2015, but its work is no different from the British propaganda that swamped the MSM when MH17 was downed. Tied into the Steel dossier and Russian collusion in the US. This is the anglosphere or five eyes permanent state. ..."
    "... it is apparent that this "Integrity Initiative" was engaged in to ensure that the regime was in the safe hands of the harpy. ..."
    "... It is interesting that Trudeau, the Canadian figurehead, clothes his country's kidnapping of the Chinese business figure as "in defence of the rule of law." All in all, it is now apparent we would be far better off if the Kaiserreich, with all of its militaristic and bombastic flaws, had triumphed in the Great War. No Hitler, no Stalin, no five eyes fascism. ..."
    "... Rules of the game are made up as the game is played to suit the players. There you have it real life imitates art. ..."
    "... Better yet, can anyone name an NGO, any NGO ever, that's not closely if not directly linked to "a secret military intelligence operation." Anyone? Mueller? ..."
    "... Thank you very much for this terrific analysis. Donnelly: "... it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. " Numerous American publications featured very similar language in the years ahead of 9/11, with "Islamic terrorist threat" substituted for the Russians. ..."
    "... Vesti News has published an excellent documentary on how "clusters" work....not only to spread Russophobia...but also on continuous intends to overthrown Russian legitimate government... https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=E8-Stfrl5aM ..."
    "... The last two periods of the US FP could be understood thusly: (1) Pre-Soviet collapse which was marked by a horrifically tragic and misplaced ideal of defending against communism (Good guys v. Bad Guys); and (2) Post-Soviet collapse which has been a period of coup d'etats where our hijacked military has been used for a Globalist Agenda for increasingly opaque (less defensible) reasons and missions. ..."
    "... right after 2016 US elections there was a facade of split between military and intelligence differentiation. Seems that veil has been dispensed with ..."
    "... Yeah, they hijacked a few other countries too, including Russia. Or if not hijacking, setting the mood right for some shenanigans in the near future... I think you're quite right about the cheif host of the globalist neolib parasite. Hijacked near fully. Being bled dry. That unaccounted for 21 Trillion at the pentagon is a bit of a giveaway. All under the guise of free markets and democracy. ..."
    "... 'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation Designed To Create A New Enemy ..."
    Dec 15, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
    uncle tungsten , Dec 15, 2018 6:28:07 PM | 41

    Labour is not "silent". Apart from Thornberry's questioning already mentioned in another post here, the party's newspaper published a news about it:

    Government admits that Institute of Statecraft was funded through CSSF , by Lamiat Sabin, 14th December 2018.

    Mark2 , Dec 15, 2018 7:12:28 PM | link
    Sounds to me like that Integrity initiative dude needs to go on a 'de-radicalisation program !!! How many billions is that guna save us all ! not to mention lives saved.
    NemesisCalling , Dec 15, 2018 7:42:22 PM | link
    @45 jr

    Wrong JR. It seems quite the obvious that the big boy in the west, the US, would seem to be the one spearheading the whole globalist agenda.

    But this is a retarded proposition.

    The US is nothing more than a Golem. It has been reduced to somnambulism and hijacked, utilized for the ends of these Non-National elites. Sure, like many posters here, it feels good to blame the US for everything. But the powerbrokers have always been in London and now its hypercentralized endgame in Brussels. You can say that it is the US through and through, but ask yourself who has more to gain from US FP abroad: average Americans or the global elites?

    Or are we just arguing semantics?

    NemesisCalling , Dec 15, 2018 7:44:57 PM | link
    Those former-Eastern Bloc countries, i.e. Poland and Ukraine, do not count as power brokers. They have and will always be pawns in the game. So what if they still worship Icons of Americanism which is a remnant culture of their F*ed up narrative where they still believe they are fighting the commies.
    Uncle $cam , Dec 15, 2018 8:06:15 PM | link
    Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the decider aka Bush Jr. having had a shoe thrown at him.

    'For the sake of Iraq': Bush shoe-thrower running for parliament refuses to exploit 'hero image'

    Muntadhar al-Zaidi was arrested and tortured for it...

    "They broke my teeth, my nose, my leg, they electrocuted me, lashed me, they would beat me, they even broke a table or a chair over my back. I don't know, they had my eyes covered," al-Zaidi recalled. "This was one thing I never experienced before. Torture by the authorities, by the rule of law."

    I wish it had been a hand grenade.

    The British government financed Integrity Initiative is tasked with spreading anti-Russian propaganda and with influencing the public, military and governments of a number of countries. What follows is an incomplete analysis of the third batch of the Initiative's papers which was dumped yesterday.

    Christopher Nigel Donnelly (CND) is the co-director of The Institute for Statecraft and founder of its offshoot Integrity Initiative . The Initiative claims to "Defend Democracy Against Disinformation".

    The Integrity Initiative does this by planting disinformation about alleged Russian influence through journalists 'clusters' throughout Europe and the United States.

    Both, the Institute as well as the Initiative, claim to be independent Non-Government Organizations. Both are financed by the British government, NATO and other state donors.

    Among the documents lifted by some anonymous person from the servers of the Institute we find several papers about Donnelly as well as some memos written by him. They show a russophobe mind with a lack of realistic strategic thought.

    There is also a file (pdf) with a copy of his passport:


    bigger

    From his curriculum vitae (pdf) we learn that Donnelly was a long time soldier in the British Army Intelligence Corps where he established and led the Soviet Studies Research Centre at RMA Sandhurst. He later was involved in creating the US Army's Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Ft. Leavenworth.

    He worked at the British Ministry of Defence and as an advisor to several Secretaries General of NATO. He is a director of the Statecraft Institute since 2010. Donnelly also advises the Foreign Minister of Lithuania. He is a "Security and Justice Senior Mentor" of the UK's Stabilisation Unit which is tasked with destabilizing various countries. He serves as a Honorary Colonel of the Specialist Group Military Intelligence (SGMI).

    During his time as military intelligence analyst in the 1980s Donnelly wrote several books and papers about the Soviet Union and its military.

    Donnelly seems to be obsessed with the 'Russian threat' and is determined to fight it by all means. His paranoia is obvious in a "private - confidential" report by the Statecraft Institute on The Challenge of Brexit to the UK: Case study – The Foreign and Commonwealth Offices (pdf):

    Our problem is that, for the last 70 years or so, we in the UK and Europe have been living in a safe, secure rules-based system which has allowed us to enjoy a holiday from history.

    ... ... ...

    Unfortunately, this state of affairs is now being challenged. A new paradigm of conflict is replacing the 19th & 20th Century paradigm.

    ... ... ...

    In this new paradigm, the clear distinction which most people have been able to draw between war and peace, their expectation of stability and a degree of predictability in life, are being replaced by a volatile unpredictability, a permanent state of instability in which war and peace become ever more difficult to disentangle . The "classic" understanding of conflict being between two distinct players or groups of players is giving way to a world of Darwinian competition where all the players – nation states, sub-state actors, big corporations, ethnic or religious groups, and so on – are constantly striving with each other in a "war of all against all". The Western rules-based system, which most westerners take for granted and have come to believe is "normal", is under attack from countries and organisations which wish to replace our system with theirs. This is not a crisis which faces us; it is a strategic challenge, and from several directions simultaneously.

    In reality the "Western rules-based system", fully implemented after the demise of the Soviet Union, is a concept under which 'the west' arbitrarily makes up rules and threatens to kill anyone who does not follow them. Witness the wars against Serbia, the war on Iraq, the destruction of Libya, the western led coup in Ukraine and the war by Jihadi proxies against the people of Syria and Iraq. None of these actions were legal under international law. Demanding a return to strict adherence to the rule of international law, as Russia, China and others now do, it is not an attempt to replace "our system with theirs". It is a return to the normal state of global diplomacy. It is certainly not a "Darwinian competition".

    In October 2016 Donnelly had a Private Discussion with Gen Sir Richard Barrons (pdf), marked as personal and confidential. Barrons is a former commander of the British Joint Forces Command. The nonsensical top line is: "The UK defence model is failing. UK is at real risk."

    Some interesting nuggets again reveal a paranoid mindset. The talk also includes some realistic truthiness about the British military posture Barrons and others created:

    There has been a progressive, systemic demobilisation of NATO militarily capability and a run down of all its members' defences
    ...
    We are seeing new / reinvented ways of warfare – hybrid , plus the reassertion of hard power in warfare
    ...
    Aircraft Carriers can be useful for lots of things, but not for war v China or Russia, so we should equip them accordingly. ...
    The West no longer has a military edge on Russia. ...
    Our Nuclear programme drains resources from conventional forces and hollows them out. ...
    The UK Brigade in Germany is no good as a deterrent against Russia. ...
    Our battalion in Estonia are hostages, not a deterrent. ...

    The general laments the lack of influence the military has on the British government and its people. He argues for more government financed think tank research that can be fed back into the government:

    So, if no catastrophe happens to wake people up and demand a response, then we need to find a way to get the core of government to realise the problem and take it out of the political space. We will need to impose changes over the heads of vested interests. NB We did this in the 1930s

    My conclusion is that it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. We must generate an independent debate outside government .

    ...

    We need to ask when and how do we start to put all this right? Do we have the national capabilities / capacities to fix it? If so, how do we improve our harnessing of resources to do it? We need this debate NOW. There is not a moment to be lost.

    This was an order from the core of the British thinking to Donnelly to get even deeper into the inner-British influence business. Hype Russia as a threat so more money can be taken from the 'vested interests' of the people and dumped into the military machine.

    That particular advise of General Barrons was accepted. In 2017 the Integrity Initiative bid for funding from the Ministry of Defence (pdf) for various projects to influence the public, the parliament and the government as well as foreign forces. The bid lists "performance indicators" that are supposed to measure the success of its activities. The top indicator for the Initiative's proposed work is a "Tougher stance in government policy towards Russia" .


    bigger

    Asking for government finance to influence the government to take a "tougher stand towards Russia" seems a bit circular. But this is consistent with the operation of other Anglo-American think tanks and policy initiatives in which one part of the government, usually the hawkish one, secretly uses NGO's and think-tanks to lobby other parts of the government to support their specific hobbyhorse and budget.

    Here is how it is done. The 'experts' of the 'charity' Institute for Statecraft and Integrity Initiative testified in the British parliament. While they were effectively paid by the government they lobbied parliament under the cover of their NGO. This circularity also allows to use international intermediates. Members of the Spanish cluster (pdf) of the Initiative testified in the British Parliament about the Catalan referendum and related allegations against Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange. (It is likely that this testimony led to the change in the position of the Ecuadorian government towards Assange.)


    Unfortunately, or luckily, such lobbying operations are mostly run by people who are incompetent in the specific field they are lobbying for. Chris Donnelly, despite a life long experience in military intelligence, has obviously zero competence as a military strategist or planner.

    In March 2014, shortly after Crimea split from the Ukraine, Donnelly suggested Military measures (pdf) to be taken by the Ukraine with regards to Crimea:

    If I were in charge I would get the following implemented asp
    1. Set up a cordon sanitaire across the Crimean Isthmus and on the coast N. of Crimea with troops and mines
    2. Mine Sevastopol harbour/bay. Can be done easily using a car ferry if they have no minelayers. Doesn't need a lot of mines to be effective. They could easily buy some mines.
    3. Get their air force into the air and activate all their air defences. If they can't fly the Migs on the airfield in Crimea those should be destroyed as a gesture that they are serious. Going "live" electronically will worry the Russians as the Ukrainians have the same electronic kit. If the Russians jam it they jam their own kit as well.
    4. Ukraine used to have some seriously important weapons, such as a big microwave anti-satellite weapon. If they still have this, they should use it.
    5. The government needs a Strategic communication campaign-so far everything is coming from Moscow. They need to articulate a long-term vision that will inspire the people, however hard that is to do. Without it, what have people to fight for?
    6. They should ask the west now to start supplying Oil and gas. There is plenty available due to the mild winter.

    I am trying to get this message across

    Think for a moment how Russia would have responded to a mining of Sevastopol harbor, the frying of its satellites or the destruction of its fighter jets in Crimea. Those "guestures" would have been illegal acts of war against the forces of a nuclear power which were legally stationed in Crimea. And how was the west to immediately supply gas to Ukraine and Ukraine's pipeline network is designed to unidirectionally receive gas from Russia?

    Such half-assed thinking is typical for the Institute and its creation of propaganda. One of its employees/contractors is Hugh Benedict Nimmo who the Initiative paid to produce anti-Russian propaganda that was then disseminated through various western publications.

    According to the (still very incomplete) Initiative files Ben Nimmo received a monthly consultancy fee of £2.500 between December 2015 and March 2016. In August 2016 he sent an invoice (pdf) of £5,000 for his "August work on Integrity Initiative". A Production Timetable (pdf) for March to June 2016 lists the following Nimmo outputs and activities:

    • 17 March Atlantic Council: Yes, Putin really believes his own propaganda , Ben Nimmo
    • 21 March Newsweek: Putin's paranoia is driving his foreign adventures , Ben Nimmo
    • 22 March, UK House of Commons: Russian information warfare - airbrushing reality , Jonathan Eyal and Ben Nimmo
    • Mid May: Atlantic Council: Distract, deceive, destroy: Putin at war in Syria . Ben Nimmo et al (Major study)
    • Early May timeframe: Russian penetration in Germany , Harold Elletson, Ben Nimmo et al - 10,000 words
    • June timeframe: Atlantic Council, major report on Russian conspiracy theory and foreign policy , Ben Nimmo (potential launch events in London and / or Washington)
    • End-June: Mapping Russia's whole influence machine , Ben Nimmo - 10,000 words

    One wonders how often Ben Nimmo double billed his various sponsors for these copy-paste fantasy pamphlets.

    In late 2017 Ben Nimmo and Guardian 'journalist' Carole Cadwalladr disseminated allegations that Russia used Facebook ads to influence the Brexit decision. Cadwalladr even received a price for her work. Unfortunately the price was not revoked when Facebook revealed that "Russia linked" accounts had spend a total of 97 cents on Brexit ads. It is unexplained how that was enough to achieve their alleged aim.

    Cadwalladr is listed as a speaker (pdf) at a "skill sharing" conference the Institute organized for November 1-2 under the headline: "Tackling Tools of Malign Influence - Supporting 21st Century Journalism".

    This year Ben Nimmo became notorious for claiming that several real persons with individual opinions were "Russian trolls". As we noted :

    Nimmo, and several other dimwits quoted in the piece, came to the conclusion that Ian56 is a Kremlin paid troll, not a real person. Next to Ian56 Nimmo 'identified' other 'Russian troll' accounts:

    Ben Nimmo @benimmo - 10:50 UTC - 24 Mar 2018

    One particularly influential retweeter (judging by the number of accounts which then retweeted it) was @ValLisitsa, which posts in English and Russian. Last year, this account joined the troll-factory #StopMorganLie campaign.

    Had Nimmo, a former NATO spokesperson, had some decent education he would have know that @ValLisitsa, aka Valentina Lisitsa , is a famous American- Ukrainian pianist. Yes, she sometimes tweets in Russian language to her many fans in Russia and the Ukraine. Is that now a crime? The videos of her world wide performances on Youtube have more than 170 million views. It is absurd to claim that she is a 'Russian troll' and to insinuate that she is taking Kremlin money to push 'Russian troll' opinions.

    The Institute for Statecraft Expert Team (pdf) list several people with military intelligence backgrounds as well as many 'journalists'. One of them is:

    Mark Galeotti
    Specialist in Russian strategic thinking; the application of Russian disinformation and hybrid warfare; the use of organised crime as a weapon of hybrid warfare. Educational and mentoring skills, including in a US and E European environment, and the corporate world.
    Russian linguist

    Galeotti is the infamous inventor of the 'Gerasimov doctrine' and of the propaganda about Russia's alleged 'hybrid' warfare. In February 2013 the Russian General Valery Gerasimov, then Russia's chief of the General Staff, published a paper that analysed the way the 'west' is waging a new type of war by mixing propaganda, proxy armies and military force into one unified operation.

    Galeotti claimed that Gerasimov's analysis of 'western' operations was a new Russian doctrine of 'hybrid war'. He invented the term 'Gerasimov doctrine' which then took off in the propaganda realm. In February 2016 the U.S. Army Military Review published a longer analysis of Gerasimov's paper that debunked the nonsense (pdf). It concluded:

    Gerasimov's article is not proposing a new Russian way of warfare or a hybrid war, as has been stated in the West.

    But anti-Russian propagandist repeated Galeotti's nonsense over and over. Only in March 2018, five years after Galeotti invented the 'Germasimov doctrine' and two years after he was thoroughly debunked, he finally recanted :

    Everywhere, you'll find scholars, pundits, and policymakers talking about the threat the "Gerasimov doctrine" -- named after Russia's chief of the general staff -- poses to the West. It's a new way of war, "an expanded theory of modern warfare," or even "a vision of total warfare."

    There's one small problem. It doesn't exist. And the longer we pretend it does, the longer we misunderstand the -- real, but different -- challenge Russia poses.

    I feel I can say that because, to my immense chagrin, I created this term, which has since acquired a destructive life of its own, lumbering clumsily into the world to spread fear and loathing in its wake.

    The Institute for Statecraft's "Specialist in Russian strategic thinking", an expert of disinformation and hybrid warfare, created a non-existing Russian doctrine out of hot air and used it to press for anti-Russian measures. Like Ben Nimmo he is an aptly example of the quality of the Institute's experts and work.


    One of the newly released documents headlined CND Gen list 2 (pdf) (CND= Chris Nigel Donnelly) includes the names and email addresses of a number of military, government and think tank people. The anonymous releaser of the documents claims that the list is "of employees who attended a closed-door meeting with the white helmets". (No document has been published yet that confirms this.) One name on the list is of special interest:


    bigger

    Pablo Miller was the handler and friend of Sergej Skripal, the British double agent who was "novichoked" in Salisbury. When Miller's name was mentioned in the press the British government issued a D-Notice to suppress its further publishing,


    bigger

    As we wrote in April:

    Pablo Miller, a British MI6 agent, had recruited Sergej Skripal. The former MI6 agent in Moscow, Christopher Steele, was also involved in the case. Skripal was caught by the Russian security services and went to jail. Pablo Miller, the MI6 recruiter, was also the handler of Sergej Skripal after he was released by Russia in a spy swap. He reportedly also lives in Salisbury. Both Christopher Steele and Pablo Miller work for Orbis Business Intelligence which created the "Dirty Dossier" about Donald Trump.

    In 1979, before becoming a spy, Pablo Miller served at the 4th Royal Tank Regiment . ( BBC Newsnight 'journalist' Mark Urban, who later published a book based on interviews with Skripal , served together with Miller in the same regiment.) The 4th regiment's motto was "Fear Naught". Pablo Miller's email address given in the Chris Donnelly list is [email protected].

    At the very beginning of the Skripal affair, before there was any talk of 'Novichok', we asked if Skripal was involved in creating the now debunked "Dirty Dossier" and if that was a reason for certain British insiders to move him out of the way:

    Here are some question:
    • Did Skripal help Steele to make up the "dossier" about Trump?
    • Were Skripal's old connections used to contact other people in Russia to ask about Trump dirt?
    • Did Skripal threaten to talk about this?
    If there is a connection between the dossier and Skripal, which seems very likely to me, then there are a number of people and organizations with potential motives to kill him. Lots of shady folks and officials on both sides of the Atlantic were involved in creating and running the anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign. There are several investigations and some very dirty laundry might one day come to light. Removing Skripal while putting the blame on Russia looks like a convenient way to get rid of a potential witness.

    The most recent release of Integrity Initiative documents includes lots of in-depth reports (pdf) about foreign media reactions to the Skripal affair. One wonders why the Initiative commissioned such research (pdf) and paid for it.

    After two years the Muller investigation found zero evidence for the 'collusion' between Russia and the Trump campaign that the fake Steele dossier suggested. The whole collusion claim is a creation by 'former' British intelligence operatives who likely acted on request of U.S. intelligence leaders Clapper and Brennan. How deep was the Russia specialist Chris Donnelly and his Institute for Statecraft involved in this endeavor?


    Checking through all the released Initiative papers and lists one gets the impression of a secret military intelligence operation, disguised as a public NGO. Financed by millions of government money the Institute for Statecraft and the Integrity Initiative work under a charity label to create and disseminate disinformation to the global public and back into the government and military itself.

    The paranoia about Russia, which does way less harm than the 'western' "rules based system" constantly creates, is illogical and not based on factual analysis. It creates Russia as an "enemy" when it is none. It hypes a "threat" out of hot air. The only people who profit from this are the propagandists and the companies and people who back them.

    The Initiatives motto "Defend Democracy Against Disinformation" is a truly Orwellian construct. By disseminating propaganda and using it to influence the public, parliament, the military and governments, the Institute actively undermines the democratic process that depends on the free availability of truthful information.

    It should be shut down immediately.

    ---
    Note: There have already been attempts to delete the released files from the Internet. A complete archive of all Integrity Initiative files published so far is here . Should the public links cease to work, you can contact the author of this blog for access to private backups.

    flayer , Dec 15, 2018 11:49:39 AM | link

    Aside from the fact that the government itself funds this organization, the creepiest thing about it is that the "non-governmental individuals" that help fund it are the same people that run the think tanks: a bunch of Rhodesians.

    Russ , Dec 15, 2018 11:59:03 AM | link

    "Such half-assed thinking...Think for a moment how Russia would have responded to a mining of Sevastopol harbor, the frying of its satellites or the destruction of its fighter jets in Crimea. Those "gestures" would have been illegal acts of war against the forces of a nuclear power which were legally stationed in Crimea."

    It sure seems like this half-assed thinking isn't just the domain of a fringe element, but is increasingly mainstream among the elites. Doesn't bode well.

    Roy G , Dec 15, 2018 12:10:11 PM | link
    Thank you B. It is truly amazing to watch the UK elites unravel as they have become truly unhinged by their own connivances. It is a bad joke at the commoner's expense that they propagandize and demonize in the name of the 'Western rules based system' even as they are busy shooting themselves in both feet by committing Brexit. Although there are legitimate grievances with the EU, it is clear that Brexit is a Tory power play that is all politics and zero governance. Alas, Perfidious Albion has succumbed to Mad Cow disease.
    Sally Snyder , Dec 15, 2018 12:10:23 PM | link
    Here is an interesting look at how little the Russia-linked entities spent on advertising on Google during the 2016 election: https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/12/google-russia-and-4700-in-advertising.html Slowly but surely, the Russian meddling narrative is falling apart.
    bjd , Dec 15, 2018 12:46:08 PM | link
    Thanks, b.

    What remains mysterious (not really) is why --if these initiatives are truly meant to save and strengthen democracy-- they aren't proudly proclaimed and advertised, in the open, transparent, for everyone one to see and judge, like an adult democracy that they claim to stand for might want to debate and form an opinion on.

    The fact that it isn't, is testimony to the nefarious anti-democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian streak that runs in between every two lines that they put on paper.

    Jackrabbit , Dec 15, 2018 12:58:35 PM | link
    McCarthyesque smear campaigns to discredit opponents and squash dissent has become normal practice. Integrity Initiative tweets against Corbyn is a stark example, but there have been MANY other people and groups that have been tarred with claims of being sponsored/led/influenced by Russia, including Catalonian independence activists and Yellow vest protesters.

    Every time one scratches the surface of such smears, it seems there is a connection to US/British MIC, Ukraine, or Israel - essentially, those who benefit (financially or otherwise) from greater tensions with Russia.

    At what point does neocon doubling-down on failed foreign policy become more than just picking our pockets and warping our minds? At what point do they start killing our kids in another unnecessary war?

    Clueless Joe , Dec 15, 2018 1:01:40 PM | link
    Cold War has been over for nearly 30 years. It's time enough for Western countries to send into real retirement every single cold-warrior, their time is over, their mindset is quaint and useless, if not downright dangerous and counter-productive.
    Mark2 , Dec 15, 2018 1:11:36 PM | link
    Thank you 'b'
    I'll just say -- - there is safety in numbers ! Already valuable information, important to the public good and democracy has been spread wide enough to be certain, this gene won't go back in the bottle ! D notice or no ! And by doing that, has made the fearless journalists and investigators lives all the safer ! Safety in numbers, spread this wide everyone?

    Are these people above the law ? ...

    psychohistorian , Dec 15, 2018 1:12:59 PM | link
    Thanks for the continued exposition of this story b.....may it go viral

    I want to comment on some of the wording you quote Donnelly as writing

    " .....is giving way to a world of Darwinian competition where all the players – nation states, sub-state actors, big corporations, ethnic or religious groups, and so on – are constantly striving with each other in a "war of all against all". "

    This is Donnelly's characterization of a world in which finance is a public utility instead of the private jackboot that it currently is. This is the delusion these people have been led to believe.

    So instead of his "war of all against all" that some might call human cooperation on the basis of merit we have a mythical God of Mammon religion that continues to instantiate the private finance led world of the West with it parasitic elite and fawning acolytes.

    Kadath , Dec 15, 2018 1:34:30 PM | link
    Dear god, what has gotten into the minds of the military and political "elite" within the UK! Mining Sevastopol would have been an obvious act of war against Russia and Russia would have responded with force.

    Thankfully it wasn't done but the fact this was even discussed by senior figures confirms that there was at least a sizable minority pushing for it. 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Western elite have truly abandoned all sense of reality and embraced a consequence free view of the use of force. After Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya they haven't learned a thing! I'm becoming more and more certain that a peaceful transition to the multipolar world is impossible and that it will only happen after the US or one of its' vassal states blunder into a proxy war and get utterly and comprehensively defeated, forcing a radical world realignment, but with nuts like John Bolton and the neocons in the Whitehouse it could easily lead to a nuclear war

    Mina , Dec 15, 2018 1:45:39 PM | link
    It looks like one of the decision was to get closer to France (after getting very close friends in Homs and Aleppo?) See the list of people in the French II cluster dumped yesterday by Anonymous: half the names work at the fr Min of F Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster_House_Treaties and http://www.gmfus.org/publications/frances-defense-partnerships-and-dilemmas-brexit

    The grumpy general at Turcopolier has skept the II topic entirely.

    TJ , Dec 15, 2018 1:53:44 PM | link
    @13 psychohistorian

    " we have a mythical God of Mammon religion" I hope you're not here in dear old Blighty, as you'll probably get arrested for antisemitism

    Peter AU 1 , Dec 15, 2018 2:13:14 PM | link
    This group may have officially formed in 2015, but its work is no different from the British propaganda that swamped the MSM when MH17 was downed. Tied into the Steel dossier and Russian collusion in the US. This is the anglosphere or five eyes permanent state.
    exiled off mainstreet , Dec 15, 2018 2:22:39 PM | link
    As an aside this happens to be "Bill of Rights Day", the anniversary of the passage of the Bill of Rights as amendments to the yankee constitution. This reveals again how far from the rule of law the yankee imperium, now the key element of the British Empire they supposedly seceded from, has strayed, since it is apparent that this "Integrity Initiative" was engaged in to ensure that the regime was in the safe hands of the harpy.

    It has also ensured that the victorious candidate has been neutered and faithfully follows the world control line put forward by the five eyes spy-masters making up the empire in its present iteration. This also shows what a farce the regime, based on the rule of law, now presents.

    It is interesting that Trudeau, the Canadian figurehead, clothes his country's kidnapping of the Chinese business figure as "in defence of the rule of law." All in all, it is now apparent we would be far better off if the Kaiserreich, with all of its militaristic and bombastic flaws, had triumphed in the Great War. No Hitler, no Stalin, no five eyes fascism.

    GeorgeV , Dec 15, 2018 2:27:49 PM | link
    The "Western-based rules system" described in this article reminds me of a game called "Calvin Ball" which appeared in the former comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes." In the strip Calvin a wildly imaginative adolescent boy who plays a free-form of football with his imaginary pet toy tiger (Hobbes). Rules of the game are made up as the game is played to suit the players. There you have it real life imitates art.
    bjd , Dec 15, 2018 2:38:50 PM | link
    b, I downloaded the zip file, and had also downloaded all the PDF's from pdf-archive yesterday. There are more files in the zip, but the following were on pdf-archive and are NOT in the zip:
    • integrity-france.pdf (this is a dud, looks like html, prob. response from a failed attempt to put a file up on pdf-archive)
    • jmoehring2018.pdf
    • ramping-up-ifs-work-16-03-2018.pdf
    sejomoje , Dec 15, 2018 3:06:48 PM | link
    Better yet, can anyone name an NGO, any NGO ever, that's not closely if not directly linked to "a secret military intelligence operation." Anyone? Mueller?
    jayc , Dec 15, 2018 4:05:08 PM | link
    Thank you very much for this terrific analysis. Donnelly: "... it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. " Numerous American publications featured very similar language in the years ahead of 9/11, with "Islamic terrorist threat" substituted for the Russians.
    Emmanuel Goldstein , Dec 15, 2018 4:21:51 PM | link
    The transcript of his conversation with the general shows very starkly that we would last about two minutes in a nuclear exchange, but about half a day in a conventional one. No reserves, no equipment stockpiles, a navy consisting of two fat targets, neither of which has any aircraft and some destroyers which have propulsion problems, a smallish air force and very small numbers of troops. The tripwire force in Estonia is wholly sacrificial. In fact he lays bare the whole fallacy of biting the bear. With the armed forces in the state he describes, and with the recruitment and retention problems, wouldn't it be better, as one defense minister said, 'to go away and shut up'...
    uncle tungsten , Dec 15, 2018 4:27:59 PM | link
    Thanks b and especially the link to Valentina Lisitsa who I had tinkling in the background as I read your grand expose. These people are seditious morons, parasites infesting the state apparatus. Shut these fools down. Nice touch publishing the passport image. I can just imagine the frenzied aftermath of Kit's visit to the basement. Big thanks to anonymous and Craig Murray too. Their IT personel are probably visiting Devil's Island or Diego Garcia as we read.
    Sasha , Dec 15, 2018 5:00:51 PM | link
    Vesti News has published an excellent documentary on how "clusters" work....not only to spread Russophobia...but also on continuous intends to overthrown Russian legitimate government... https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=E8-Stfrl5aM

    The British and US connections to loot and evade Russian riches and funds are exposed, as well as the origin of sanctions, supposed "alt-media" "truth-seakers" like Meduza...or supposed "pro-Russian" US intelligence operatives married to Russian women....

    Sasha , Dec 15, 2018 5:32:32 PM | link
    @Posted by: Mina | Dec 15, 2018 1:45:39 PM | 18

    Amongst the many issues he usually passes over trying to make himself the fool, while at the same time trying to convince us of the oustanding intellectual capacities, honesty and classy stance of him and his "comittee"...

    https://www.stalkerzone.org/an-american-military-attache-held-a-closed-meeting-with-uaf-commanders-in-mariupol/

    For that travel, to end bluntly and in such public view siding with the nazis of the "Azov Regiment" and other criminals of war, there was no need of so many saddlebags, so as pretending that the people who supported Trump as if there was no tomorrow, were enlightened people who only wanted to rescue "America" for the "Americans", as if there would not be a sign of blatant exceptionalism in appropriating of the term "Americans" for themselves in such a huge continent....

    NemesisCalling , Dec 15, 2018 5:44:31 PM | link
    In my view, the USA's FP has been undermined by EURO elites which is forcing a game of chicken with Russia.

    The FP pre-Soviet collapse consisted of one MO: GET THE COMMIES!

    Since then, Neocons and Neolibs which are frontmen for this Non-National Globalized Elite, have hijacked our country's military and have steered it to a Global agenda where dominance in the ME means either superiority for these EURO elites or Vassal-hood.

    The last two periods of the US FP could be understood thusly: (1) Pre-Soviet collapse which was marked by a horrifically tragic and misplaced ideal of defending against communism (Good guys v. Bad Guys); and (2) Post-Soviet collapse which has been a period of coup d'etats where our hijacked military has been used for a Globalist Agenda for increasingly opaque (less defensible) reasons and missions.

    The average American could care less about the ME and the US would be 1000x better-off reverting to an isolationist stance.

    But this will not happen so long as Nationalism in the US and UK is repeatedly put-down. It seems as though there is going to be another Brexit vote. Does anyone doubt that miraculously the people by then will have second-guessed their will to Brexit and so will vote against it given another crack at a vote?

    Sickening.

    slit , Dec 15, 2018 6:04:29 PM | link
    "Unfortunately, or luckily, such lobbying operations are mostly run by people who are incompetent in the specific field they are lobbying for. "

    Incompetence in general and IT and data analysis, physics 101, etc.:

    • Outsource manufacturing while making existing systems weak (as Snowden predicted) buy building backdoor vulnerabilities "on board"
    • "Lose" ~20 trillion of 5 eyes military budget ( https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qN064Wd542M)
    • Outsource IT
    • Import IT workers and staff science faculties from abroad w dual citizens while kkr buys wafer labs that outsource to mainland for manufacturing

    Cry boo hoo hoo to wake up with indigenous capacity decades behind world players like Russia, China, India, etc who operate on fractional budgets...

    But this drama also exposes ashura/emigods intra necine warfare: right after 2016 US elections there was a facade of split between military and intelligence differentiation. Seems that veil has been dispensed with , but it invites other questions, insofar as UK is Her Majesty's Service, so are we to read this with Prince Harry or Philip's culture, or a "consent by silence") in mind? Defending crown or EU "Saturnus Sattelitus"?

    MadMax2 , Dec 15, 2018 6:28:58 PM | link
    @Nemisis

    Yeah, they hijacked a few other countries too, including Russia. Or if not hijacking, setting the mood right for some shenanigans in the near future... I think you're quite right about the cheif host of the globalist neolib parasite. Hijacked near fully. Being bled dry. That unaccounted for 21 Trillion at the pentagon is a bit of a giveaway. All under the guise of free markets and democracy.

    Good to see Trump finally give it a face... 'you need freedom and security now pay up bitches'

    Jackrabbit , Dec 15, 2018 6:38:00 PM | link
    NemesisCalling | Dec 15, 2018 5:44:31 PM | 37
    In my view, the USA's FP has been undermined by EURO elites which is forcing a game of chicken with Russia.... Globalist Agenda
    I think the opposite is true.

    The US-led Empire and their globalist sycophants seek to weaken Europe so that it can not act independently in its own best interests. They will do what ever they can to ensure that the vassals never join with Russia/China and the SCO.

    Russian scare-mongering and immigration have been effective in furthering this agenda. Also note: what USA has termed "new Europe" - eastern European states like Poland and Ukraine - are solidly pro-American.

    John2o2o , Dec 15, 2018 6:56:17 PM | link
    'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation Designed To Create A New Enemy

    Perfect description.

    Why has this ageing nutjob been allowed to secretly dictate British foreign policy? He's clearly insane.

    vk , Dec 15, 2018 6:58:49 PM | link
    @

    [Dec 14, 2018] Vetting NYT materials by CIA reflects full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the neoliberal MSM

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Having said that, still worrying that the CIA devotes time to finding out what Maureen Dowd might write! ..."
    "... It is true that Mazzetti's emails with the CIA do not shock or surprise in the slightest. But that's the point. With some noble journalistic exceptions (at the NYT and elsewhere), these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as "watchdogs" over them." ..."
    "... A few years ago the New York Times reported that there had been a successful coup in Venezuela - toppling Chavez. The story turned out to be inaccurate. The NY Times finally revealed their source - US State Dept... who were using NYT to give critical mass and support to their dream end to a thorn in their side. ..."
    "... The New York Times-all the news the CIA decided is fit to print. ..."
    Dec 01, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com
    Pouzar99 , 29 Aug 2012 17:36
    Great column. The NYT does do some good things, such as give us Paul Krugman three times a week, some important reporting and articulate editorial opposition to the republican nightmare, but they are much, much too close to the government, as evidenced by their asking for permission to print news the White House disapproves of.

    They are also devoted to denying their readers an accurate picture of American foreign policy. I frequently comment on threads there and my contributions nearly always get posted, except when I use the word empire. I have never succeeded in getting that word onto their website , nor have I seen it make it into anyone else's comment. It is like the famous episode of Fawlty Towers. "Don't mention the empire.'' Stories and commentaries sometimes describe specific aspects of US policy in negative terms, but connecting the dots is obviously forbidden.

    Bill Keller is like a character from The Wire. The perfect example of the kind of authority-revering careerist that butt-kisses his way to the top in institutions.

    Burgsmueller -> Fulton , 29 Aug 2012 17:25
    Shouldn't it be a bigger surprise that the CIA still needs to ask someone connected to find out what somebody else wrote on any electronic device?

    In related news: http://business.financialpost.com/2012/08/29/spyware-can-take-over-iphone-and-blackberry-new-study-reveals/

    Fulton , 29 Aug 2012 17:16

    most of the story seems to come down to the usual kind of thing we see from Judicial Watch - manufactured outrage over almost nothing

    I think part of the outrage here is the extent to which it's almost hard to muster the energy because it's become so much the norm for the NYTimes to be in bed with whoever is in power in Washington at any given time. It's the sort of thing that should be "they did what!!!!?" but instead it's "yeah, well, Judith Miller, Wen Ho Lee, etcetc ... >long drawn-out sigh<." So, perhaps there is some manufacturing of outrage, but not unreasonably so if you take a step back and look at what's going on.

    Having said that, still worrying that the CIA devotes time to finding out what Maureen Dowd might write!

    JoeFromBrooklyn -> worldcurious , 29 Aug 2012 17:10
    Learn to read. From the column:

    "This cynicism – oh, don't be naive: this is done all the time – is precisely what enables such destructive behavior to thrive unchallenged.

    It is true that Mazzetti's emails with the CIA do not shock or surprise in the slightest. But that's the point. With some noble journalistic exceptions (at the NYT and elsewhere), these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as "watchdogs" over them."

    gunnison , 29 Aug 2012 17:05

    Once a corrupt practice is sufficiently perceived as commonplace, then it is transformed in people's minds from something objectionable into something acceptable. Indeed, many people believe it demonstrates their worldly sophistication to express indifference toward bad behavior by powerful actors on the ground that it is so prevalent. This cynicism – oh, don't be naive: this is done all the time – is precisely what enables such destructive behavior to thrive unchallenged.

    This is extremely important, and manifestly true. One runs into such people all the time. I haven't read any comments yet, but it would not surprise me to find some of them already here.

    Even worse, I've done it myself on occasion, most recently just the other day on a Cif thread. Though I will say this; this kind of bullshit is not so much "transformed in people's minds from something objectionable into something acceptable ", as grudgingly transformed into something unstoppable , but still toxic and objectionable.

    That's mighty thin gruel as an alibi, but the reality for a lot of ordinary working people is they get fucking tired of it, and yes, they do get discouraged, then cynical and hardened to it all. That, of course, is part of the plan.

    Keep swinging Glenn. This shit matters.

    Anotherevertonian , 29 Aug 2012 16:42
    The NYT is as stuffed-full of spook urinals, bottom-feeders and intelligence officers as...The Guardian?

    I'm more shocked than I can feign.

    Montecarlo2 -> jaytingle , 29 Aug 2012 16:42

    "The optics aren't what they look like." Is Dean Baquet related to Yogi Berra?

    Yogi Berra anticipated this problem: "You can observe a lot by watching".

    Ahzeld , 29 Aug 2012 16:33
    I'm unaware of a "source" being a person who requests documents from the reporter for doing damage control on behalf of the boss. (Not that I'd worry about Dowd either.) How exactly is this secret national intel? I'm glad this came out. We are being manipulated by the govt. through its minions in the media. The entire incident, from the glorious movie to this revelation is a fraud.

    I found this interesting example of media manipulation at nakedcapitalsim.org: "Pro-marijuana group endorses Obama The Hill. This purported group, which claims 10,000 members, appears to be just one guy with a PO Box and a press list. But don't count on your average reporter digging deeper than the news release.": Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/links-82812.html#717LX1oL7dfPsb7I.99

    The breadth and depth of propagandizing of citizens is astounding. I wonder what it's like to have so little integrity. What kind of person so readily sells out their fellow citizen with lies? It's scary because people read these things and they have no idea they are lies. People are making decisions based on manufactured "facts". It's very difficult to find actual information and I can tell you from personal experience, Obama supporters cling desperately to "authorities" like the NYTimes to maintain their belief in the goodness of dear leader.

    jaytingle , 29 Aug 2012 16:31
    "The optics aren't what they look like."
    Is Dean Baquet related to Yogi Berra?
    paperclipper , 29 Aug 2012 16:15
    This weird big-brother relationship goes both ways. A few years ago the New York Times reported that there had been a successful coup in Venezuela - toppling Chavez. The story turned out to be inaccurate. The NY Times finally revealed their source - US State Dept... who were using NYT to give critical mass and support to their dream end to a thorn in their side.

    Nice investigative journalism. A couple of years ago the NYTmade a big deal of publicly firing a low level writer for making up articles from his NY apt when he was supposed to be in the field. He was hardly the worst of the bunch.

    brianboru1014 , 29 Aug 2012 16:07
    Great article and thankfully I do not trust big newspapers in the USA especially the New York Times since it has being caught lying about Weapons of Mass Destructions in Iraq to justify the Iraq War. Judith Millar was the liar then. Read CounterPunch and smaller publications for the truth. The NYT is all about selling ads on a Sunday. It really is a corrupt rag.
    GlennGreenwald -> MonaHol , 29 Aug 2012 16:04
    MonaHol

    Ooh la-la. Snooty! Can Greenwald survive the devastatingly profound criticisms being lobbed in his new venue?

    Who will be the first commenter to leave the classic devastating critique:

    "The author fails to present a balanced view, showing only one side. The author's argument has no substance and is not really worth anything."

    JinTexas , 29 Aug 2012 16:02
    "The New York Times-all the news the CIA decided is fit to print."
    JinTexas , 29 Aug 2012 16:00
    "the optics aren't what they look like" – is one of the most hilariously incoherent utterances seen in some time."

    Strategery: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOUuKQlGdEs

    AhBrightWings , 29 Aug 2012 15:59

    "this didn't come from me and please delete after you read." -- Mazzetti

    This could serve as the epitaph for our times. This (Shock and Awe, drones, the Apache Massacre, Guantanamo, killing children, etc.) didn't come from US (even though it did) because ...our crimes can be deleted through that magical "we're too big and bad to fail" button.

    See, nothing to worry about.

    (Except future historians who will not be blindfolded and gagged and who will therefore have some choice things to say about the journalists who were fully complicit in the crimes of this lawless era.)

    [Dec 14, 2018] The dirty propaganda games NYT play

    Highly recommended!
    They are not only presstitutes, they are degenerative presstitutes...
    Notable quotes:
    "... I love how the NYT mentions how no public evidence has emerged, to skirt around the fact that if there were internal evidence (from some gov agency or private citizen) it would've leaked by now. There is no such thing as evidence which hasn't been leaked in an alleged scandal of this size. ..."
    "... Further, the corporate news media gave Trump something like $2 billion dollars worth of advertising in free airtime. That's a much larger impact -- around 20 times Clinton's campaign costs IIRC -- than any alleged hacked e-mails (though the e-mails were leaked not hacked, and that played a role. As well as the FBI's investigation into Clinton's illegal email server which was public fact at the time) or social media interference. ..."
    "... Banks, defense contractors and oil companies decide who the President is and what their Cabinet will look like (see Obama's leaked CitiBank memo "recommending" executives to his 2009 Cabinet). Russians and the American people do not. ..."
    "... John Pilger's essay: Hold the Front Page, the Reporters are Missing appropriately describes this BigLie media item b dissected, while also observing, "Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has changed in recent years," prior to providing Why this is so. ..."
    "... but a journalism self-anointed with a false respectability: a liberal journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it. ..."
    "... The amorality of the years of Tony Blair, whom the Guardian has failed to rehabilitate, is its echo. [My emphasis] ..."
    "... on journalism and it being usurped by social media behemoths google, facebook, twitter and etc - i found this cbc radio) interview last night worth recommending.. ..."
    "... That New York Times piece was amazing. Belief anything the US Gov't/anti-Russian lobby and other nut cases tell you, unquestioningly. Investigative journalism at its best! ..."
    "... Accept the most stupid evidence with blinking an eye. Even if one believes the collusion argument, try to be a bit critical. And always believe that a GRU hacker will put Felix Dzerzinnsky's name in their program. For heaven's sake he was Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB, not the GRU which was military intelligence. ..."
    Sep 21, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

    daffyDuct , Sep 20, 2018 8:21:06 PM | link

    Woodward, "Fear" pg 82-85

    "After the security briefing and everyone cleared out, McCabe shut the door to Priebus's office. This is very weird, thought Priebus, who was standing by his desk.

    "You know this story in The New York Times?" Priebus knew it all too well.

    McCabe was referring to a recent Times story of February 14 that stated, "Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the elections, according to four current and former American officials."

    The story was one of the first bombs to go off about alleged Trump-Russian connections after Flynn's resignation.

    "It's total bullshit," McCabe said. "It's not true, and we want you to know that. It's grossly overstated."

    Oh my God, thought Priebus. "Andrew," he said to the FBI deputy, "I'm getting killed." The story about Russia and election meddling seemed to be running 24/7 on cable news, driving Trump bananas and therefore driving Priebus bananas. "This is crazy," Trump had told Priebus. "We've got to stop it. We need to end the story." McCabe had just walked in with a big gift, a Valentine's Day present. I'm going to be the hero of this entire West Wing, Priebus thought.

    "Can you help me?" Priebus asked. "Could this knockdown of the story be made public?"

    "Call me in a couple of hours," McCabe said. "I will ask around and I'll let you know. I'll see what I can do."

    Priebus practically ran to report to Trump the good news that the FBI would soon be shooting down the Times story

    Two hours passed and no call from McCabe. Priebus called him."I'm sorry, I can't," McCabe said. "There's nothing I can do about it. I tried, but if we start issuing comments on individual stories, we'll be doing statements every three days." The FBI could not become a clearinghouse for the accuracy of news stories. If the FBI tried to debunk certain stories, a failure to comment could be seen as a confirmation.

    "Andrew, you're the one that came to my office to tell me this is a BS story, and now you're telling me there's nothing you can do?" McCabe said that was his position.

    "This is insanity," Priebus said. "What am I supposed to do? Just suffer, bleed out?" "Give me a couple more hours." Nothing happened. No call from the FBI. Priebus tried to explain to Trump, who was waiting for a recanting. It was another reason for Trump to distrust and hate the FBI, a pernicious tease that left them dangling.

    About a week later on February 24 CNN reported an exclusive: "FBI Refused White House Request to Knock Down Recent Trump-Russia Story." Priebus was cast as trying to manipulate the FBI for political purposes.

    The White House tried and failed to correct the story and show that McCabe had initiated the matter.

    Four months later on June 8, Comey testified under oath publicly that the original New York Times story on the Trump campaign aides' contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials "in the main was not true."

    BM , Sep 21, 2018 8:38:36 AM | link

    The Mueller Hoax is unraveling.
    Posted by: Sid2 | Sep 20, 2018 3:03:44 PM | 3

    The Mueller Hoax is unraveling, and concommittently the NYT is digging in; ergo , the NYT is also unravelling! The NYT will permanently damage its reputation with its own readers.

    David , Sep 20, 2018 4:37:34 PM | link
    I love how the NYT mentions how no public evidence has emerged, to skirt around the fact that if there were internal evidence (from some gov agency or private citizen) it would've leaked by now. There is no such thing as evidence which hasn't been leaked in an alleged scandal of this size.

    Further, the corporate news media gave Trump something like $2 billion dollars worth of advertising in free airtime. That's a much larger impact -- around 20 times Clinton's campaign costs IIRC -- than any alleged hacked e-mails (though the e-mails were leaked not hacked, and that played a role. As well as the FBI's investigation into Clinton's illegal email server which was public fact at the time) or social media interference.

    Banks, defense contractors and oil companies decide who the President is and what their Cabinet will look like (see Obama's leaked CitiBank memo "recommending" executives to his 2009 Cabinet). Russians and the American people do not.

    karlof1 , Sep 20, 2018 4:40:58 PM | link
    John Pilger's essay: Hold the Front Page, the Reporters are Missing appropriately describes this BigLie media item b dissected, while also observing, "Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has changed in recent years," prior to providing Why this is so.
    karlof1 , Sep 20, 2018 4:59:56 PM | link
    15 Cont'd:

    Want to highlight this additional bit from Pilger:

    "Journalism students should study this [New book from Media Lens Propaganda Blitz ] to understand that the source of "fake news" is not only trollism, or the likes of Fox news, or Donald Trump, but a journalism self-anointed with a false respectability: a liberal journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it.

    The amorality of the years of Tony Blair, whom the Guardian has failed to rehabilitate, is its echo. [My emphasis]

    IMO, the bolded text well describes BigLie Media. I wonder what George Seldes would say differently from Pilger if he were alive. Unfortunately, Pilger failed to include MoA as a source in his short list of sites having journalistic integrity.

    karlof1 , Sep 20, 2018 4:59:56 PM | link james , Sep 20, 2018 5:04:45 PM | link
    on journalism and it being usurped by social media behemoths google, facebook, twitter and etc - i found this cbc radio) interview last night worth recommending..
    jrkrideau , Sep 20, 2018 5:46:02 PM | link
    That New York Times piece was amazing. Belief anything the US Gov't/anti-Russian lobby and other nut cases tell you, unquestioningly. Investigative journalism at its best!

    Accept the most stupid evidence with blinking an eye. Even if one believes the collusion argument, try to be a bit critical. And always believe that a GRU hacker will put Felix Dzerzinnsky's name in their program. For heaven's sake he was Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB, not the GRU which was military intelligence.

    [Dec 05, 2018] Beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May is wailing loudly against a Trump threat to reveal classified documents relating to Russiagate by Philip Giraldi

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Rather, they seem to appear to reveal a plot by the British intelligence and security services working in collusion with then CIA Director John Brennan to subvert the course of the 2016 election in favor of the Deep State and Establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. How did that one work out? ..."
    Dec 05, 2018 | www.unz.com
    121 Comments Reply

    And there are other friends in unlikely places. Beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May is wailing loudly against a Trump threat to reveal classified documents relating to Russiagate. The real problem is that the documents apparently don't expose anything done by the Russians.

    Rather, they seem to appear to reveal a plot by the British intelligence and security services working in collusion with then CIA Director John Brennan to subvert the course of the 2016 election in favor of the Deep State and Establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. How did that one work out?

    So how about it? Teenagers who get in trouble often have to ditch their bad friends to turn their lives around. There is still a chance for the United States if we keep our distance from the bad friends we have been nurturing all around the world, friends who have been convincing us to make poor choices. Get rid of the ties the bind to the Saudis, Israelis, Ukrainians, Poles, and yes, even the British. Deal fairly with all nations and treat everyone the same, but bear in mind that there are only two relationships that really matter – Russia and China. Make a serious effort to avoid a war by learning how to get along with those two nations and America might actually survive to celebrate a tricentennial in 2076.

    The Alarmist , says: December 4, 2018 at 10:39 am GMT
    You don't say; British Collusion to influence the 2016 US Presidential elections. Why, if the beneficiary was anyone other than a Democrat, much less one named Clinton, someone might actually appoint a Special Counsel to look into it, not to mention the misdeeds of the various agencies and departments who aided and abetted it.
    anon [178] Disclaimer , says: December 4, 2018 at 11:43 am GMT
    "You don't say; British Collusion to influence the 2016 US Presidential elections."

    MI6, along with elements of the CIA, was behind the Steele Dossier. Representatives of John Brennan met in London to discus before the go ahead was given. They later put Michael Steele onto the project; he was a guy with credible Russian contacts. Basically, the scam worked like this:

    They funneled an MI6 intelligence file to Michael Steele (governments routinely keep such files on influential foreigners and what they are up to) so he could use his contacts to launder the information and make it appear that it came from sources within Russia; they then funneled the report back to elements of the FBI so they could use it to justify to the FISA court a spying campaign on Trump (the FBI illegally withheld the source of the document); they found nothing proving any Russian connection but they kept the spy program going; they tried justifying the spy program with a fake story involving a reliable asset that once passed information from Jimmy Carter's campaign to George H.W. Bush in an effort to help Reagan win the 1980 election; they later paid the asset nearly a quarter million dollars for his efforts using a fake "India-China" grant despite the grant running to 2018, the asset attempted to get a job in the Trump administration so he could act as a mole ; the Obama regime purposely mishandled information in regards to the spying program (ex: Michael Steele leaked his document to various news sources before the election and later lied to congress about it), ensuring it would leak to the press; the Obama regime illegally unmasked elements of Trump's personal contacts so they could clandestinely leak suggested targets off the record to the right people

    They lost the election anyway, so they then planted dirt and negative press to make the document look legit – lies about Manafort meeting Assange (Guardian is funded by the British government to police the left), WaPo lies claiming a vast Russian conspiracy just as Trump came into office (it was an effort to delegitimize him and create calls for Hillary to take his place), leaking bank records, the special counsel .and leaking information on Trump policies to the media using a secret security clearance credentials program enacted by Obama. They also ran interference through CIA guys like Mark Warner in an effort to cover up the mole they planted; they falsely asserted this was a national security issue when the man's identity was well-known to the press and he was never an undercover spy like Jarret was, at least not in recent history.

    To put this all into perspective, imagine the following scenario:

    The government takes cctv footage of you at a grocery store; in the background there is an attractive woman. The woman then goes missing. The government illegally reads your emails and finds that you like sexual jokes. The government then interviews a friend of yours who claims that you once made a risque rape joke back in college. They also plant a mole in your workplace who befriends you and reports back all of your politically incorrect humor. Then the cops find the woman's body and the government claims that you killed her because you were in the area at the time and you make bad jokes, which has been confirmed by multiple credible people. You look guilty, don't you? The government 1) took information out of context 2) laundered circumstantial evidence through a credible witness when they originally obtained it elsewhere using nefarious sources. That's what they did to Trump, but much much much worse.

    Johnny Walker Read , says: December 4, 2018 at 1:38 pm GMT
    Like a friends divorce lawyer told him: You go to bed with a nasty bitch, you wake up with a nasty bitch.
    Johnny Rottenborough , says: Website December 4, 2018 at 1:46 pm GMT
    a plot by the British intelligence and security services to subvert the course of the 2016 election in favor of the Deep State and Establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. How did that one work out?

    Deep State and Establishment stooge Donald Trump.

    There is still a chance for the United States if we

    declare independence from the Jewish Empire.

    [Dec 02, 2018] Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski Wins 2018 Sam Adams Award by Ray McGovern

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... As for the self-licking ice cream cone that "mainstream media" have become, and how they overlook little peccadilloes like feeding at the government PR trough and helping Cheney and Bush attack Iraq, well – now, now – let's not be nasty. Here's how Jill Abramson, The New York Times Washington Bureau Chief from 2000 to 2003, while the Times acted as drum major for the war, lets Bob Woodward off the hook for his own abysmal investigative performance. ..."
    "... Are we to believe that the Abramsons, Woodwards, et al. of the media elite simply missed the WMD deception? ..."
    Nov 29, 2018 | www.antiwar.com
    Dishonest (not "mistaken") intelligence greased the skids for the widespread killing and maiming in the Middle East that began with the Cheney/Bush "Shock and Awe" attack on Iraq. The media reveled in the unconscionable (but lucrative) buzzword "shock-and-awe" for the initial attack. In retrospect, the real shock lies in the awesome complicity of virtually all "mainstream media" in the leading false predicate for this war of aggression – weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

    Only one major media group, Knight Ridder, avoided the presstitution, so to speak. It faced into the headwinds blowing from the "acceptable" narrative, did the investigative spadework, and found patriotic insiders who told them the truth. Karen Kwiatkowski, who had a front-row seat at the Pentagon, was one key source for the intrepid Knight Ridder journalists. Karen tells us that her actual role is accurately portrayed by the professional actress in the Rob Reiner's film Shock and Awe .

    Other members of the Sam Adams Associates were involved as well, but we will leave it to them to share on Saturday evening how they helped Knight Ridder accurately depict the prewar administration/intelligence/media fraud.

    Intelligence Fraud

    More recently, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper added a coda to pre-Iraq-War intelligence performance. Clapper was put in charge of imagery analysis before the Iraq war and was able to conceal the fact that there were were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In his memoir, Clapper writes that Vice President Cheney "was pushing" for imagery analysis "to find (emphasis in original) the WMD sites."

    For the record, none were found because there were none, although Clapper &#150; "eager to help" – gave it the old college try. Clapper proceeds, in a matter-of-fact way, to blame not only pressure from the Cheney/Bush administration, but also "the intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn't really there."

    Regarding those Clapper-produced "artist renderings" of "mobile production facilities for biological agents"? Those trucks "were in fact used to pasteurize and transport milk," Clapper admits nonchalantly. When challenged on all this while promoting his memoir at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, Clapper gave not the slightest hint that it occurred to him his performance was somewhat lacking.

    Media: Consequential Malfeasance

    As for the self-licking ice cream cone that "mainstream media" have become, and how they overlook little peccadilloes like feeding at the government PR trough and helping Cheney and Bush attack Iraq, well – now, now – let's not be nasty. Here's how Jill Abramson, The New York Times Washington Bureau Chief from 2000 to 2003, while the Times acted as drum major for the war, lets Bob Woodward off the hook for his own abysmal investigative performance.

    Reviewing Woodward's recent book on the Trump White House, Abramson praises his "dogged investigative reporting," noting that he has won two Pulitzer Prizes, and adds: "His work has been factually unassailable." Then she (or perhaps an editor) adds in parenthesis: "(His judgment is certainly not perfect, and he has been self-critical about his belief, based on reporting before the Iraq War, that there were weapons of mass destruction.)"

    Are we to believe that the Abramsons, Woodwards, et al. of the media elite simply missed the WMD deception? (Hundreds of insiders knew of it, and some were willing to share the truth with Knight Ridder and some other reporters.) Or did the media moguls simply hunker down and let themselves be co-opted into helping Cheney/Bush start a major war? The latter seems much more likely: and transparent attempts to cover up for one another, still, is particularly sad – and consequential. Having suffered no consequences (for example, in 2003 Abramson was promoted to Managing Editor of the NYT ), the "mainstream media" appear just as likely to do a redux on Iran.

    This is why there will be a premium on honest insider patriots, like Karen Kwiatkowski, to rise to the occasion and try to prevent the next war. Bring along your insider friends on Saturday; they need to know about Karen and about Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.

    Please do come and join us in congratulating Karen Kwiatkowski and the other SAAII members who also helped Knight Ridder get the story right. (Those others shall remain unnamed until Saturday.) And let insiders know this: they are not likely to hear about all this otherwise.

    Date : Saturday, December 8, 2018

    Time : 6:30 PM Showing of film, "Shock and Awe" – 8:00 PM Presentation 17th annual Sam Adams Award – Ceremony will include remarks by Larry Wilkerson, 7th SAAII awardee (in 2009)

    Place : The Festival Center, 1640 Columbia Road, NW, Washington, DC 20009

    FREE : But RSVP, if you can, to give us an idea of how many to expect; email: [email protected]

    ALL WELCOME : Lots of space in main conference room

    Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President's Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). William Binney worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting; he created many of the collection systems still used by NSA. Reprinted with permission from Consortium News .

    [Dec 02, 2018] Muller investigation has all the appearance of an investigation looking for a crime

    Highly recommended!
    Essentially Mueller witch hunt repeat the trick invented by Bolsheviks leadership during Stalin Great Terror: the accusation of a person of being a foreign agent is a 'slam dank" move that allows all kind to nasty things to be performed to convict the person no matter whether he is guilty of not.
    Consolidation of power using Foreign Counter Intelligence as a tool is a classic and a very dirty trick.
    Notable quotes:
    "... It would be of great value to know what the underlying predicate crime(s) are that are sustaining Mueller's scorched earth approach to what looks to be 'all things Trump,' whether the crimes relate to counter intelligence jurisdiction (treason, espionage), illicit overseas business transactions relating to sanctions violations or something of that sort, or election law violations, the smoke of which got the whole Mueller jihad underway ..."
    "... This would not be unusual in a Foreign Counter Intelligence case which are almost by definition open ended; it would be very unusual, in fact prohibited, in a criminal case where a factual predicate needs to be articulated that constitutes reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed. ..."
    "... It seems Mueller has been riding the FCI horse whither he pleases to round up interviews, compare them, and then take the chicken shit route of charging 1001 violations to leverage his way forward. If that seems to smell bad, it is because it does. ..."
    "... IMO, Trump is not helping himself or the American people get to the objective truth by declassifying all the documents and communications. Unless all the documents are released unredacted, all we have are theories and speculation. And Trump will be on the losing end of that as the news media and their Deep State collaborators have all the means to drive the narrative and attempt to convict in the court of public opinion through constant innuendo. ..."
    "... In the mean time the Mueller investigation itself creates the crimes as pretty much most Trump associates have been indicted for perjury. Even Manafort was prosecuted for money laundering that took place over a decade ago ..."
    "... Trump has stated that he doesn't want to declassify as the American people shouldn't know how corrupt their government is. This seems to contradict his Drain the Swamp rhetoric. ..."
    "... Mueller may have created more crimes than existed before his inquiry. ..."
    Dec 01, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    Mad_Max22 , 12 hours ago

    Very informative post.

    It would be of great value to know what the underlying predicate crime(s) are that are sustaining Mueller's scorched earth approach to what looks to be 'all things Trump,' whether the crimes relate to counter intelligence jurisdiction (treason, espionage), illicit overseas business transactions relating to sanctions violations or something of that sort, or election law violations, the smoke of which got the whole Mueller jihad underway .

    It certainly does give every appearance, at least from the outside perspective, of an investigation looking for a crime.

    This would not be unusual in a Foreign Counter Intelligence case which are almost by definition open ended; it would be very unusual, in fact prohibited, in a criminal case where a factual predicate needs to be articulated that constitutes reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed.

    It seems Mueller has been riding the FCI horse whither he pleases to round up interviews, compare them, and then take the chicken shit route of charging 1001 violations to leverage his way forward. If that seems to smell bad, it is because it does.

    Precisely the same approach could have been taken vis a vis the Uranium mattter or any of the Clinton Foundation speaker forays into foreign lands and almost certainly a boatload of 1001 violations would have come into port.

    kievite -> Mad_Max22
    So Muller reinvented the tactics used by Bolsheviks during the Great Purge period ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... )

    Most Stalin's political enemies were liquidated using the "foreign agent" charge.

    Might be a good time to reread a book on "Moscow show trials" like

    The prosecutor and the prey: Vyshinsky and the 1930s' Moscow show trials Arkadii V̆aksberg.

    https://www.amazon.com/pros...

    The quote "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce" might be applicable here.

    blue peacock , 21 hours ago

    IMO, Trump is not helping himself or the American people get to the objective truth by declassifying all the documents and communications. Unless all the documents are released unredacted, all we have are theories and speculation. And Trump will be on the losing end of that as the news media and their Deep State collaborators have all the means to drive the narrative and attempt to convict in the court of public opinion through constant innuendo.

    In the mean time the Mueller investigation itself creates the crimes as pretty much most Trump associates have been indicted for perjury. Even Manafort was prosecuted for money laundering that took place over a decade ago .

    There have been no claims from Mueller that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

    Trump has stated that he doesn't want to declassify as the American people shouldn't know how corrupt their government is. This seems to contradict his Drain the Swamp rhetoric. With the Democrats gonna run the House come January. I think Trump will come under increased pressure from all sides. I don't believe the Mueller investigation will ever wind down until Trump is defeated either via impeachment or loss of the next presidential election.

    Pat Lang Mod -> blue peacock , 15 hours ago
    I heard Dershowitz (my new hero) say the other day that Mueller may have created more crimes than existed before his inquiry.

    [Nov 27, 2018] 'Highly likely' that Magnitsky was poisoned by toxic chemicals on Bill Browder's orders

    Highly recommended!
    Skripal events probably helped to advance this line of investigation. So in a way UK intelligence services put their own stooge on the line of fire.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Russian prosecutors on Monday claimed that Magnitsky and several other people familiar with Browder's illicit activities in Russia may have been killed on his order. They said a new criminal case has been opened against Browder in Russia, and that Moscow will seek his extradition as an alleged ringleader of an international criminal enterprise involved in money laundering ..."
    "... The prosecutors identified four people who were suspects in the Browder case, all of whom died over the course of less than two years as the investigation against him unfolded. Oktay Gasanov was the first of the four, dying in October 2007; while Magnitsky's death in November 2009 was the last. By the time of his death, Magnitsky had spent almost a year in pre-trial detention. The two others were Valery Kurochkin and Sergey Korobeinikov, who died in April 2008 and September 2008, respectively. ..."
    "... Considering that the three individuals, with the exception of Magnitsky, died within months of each other while being investigated as part of Browder's case, "it is highly likely that they were killed to get rid of accomplices who could give an incriminating testimony against Browder," a senior official with the Russian General Prosecutor's office told journalists. The same may be true for Magnitsky, he said. The prosecutor stressed that Russia didn't conduct detailed studies into how the suspected poison affects living organisms, but several research institutions based in the US, France and Italy did. ..."
    "... The prosecutors claim that Browder was the party who benefited most from the death of Magnitsky. They cited journalist Oleg Lurie, who shared a prison cell with Magnitsky before the latter's death. Speaking under oath during a court hearing in New York, Lurie said that his cellmate had complained to him that Browder's lawyers were pressuring him into signing a false statement. Magnitsky's testimony claimed that he had uncovered a conspiracy to embezzle taxpayers' money involving Russian officials. ..."
    "... The Russian prosecutors said Browder allegedly wanted to silence his employee after obtaining the false claim. The statement itself was used to blame Russian officials for Magnitsky's death and accuse the Russian government of a cover-up. ..."
    "... Described by critics as a 'vulture capitalist,' Browder seemed quite comfortable earning millions of dollars in the financial wild west. In 2005, as fallen oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was standing trial for tax evasion, Browder scolded him on the BBC for using personal wealth to grasp at political power, and for leaving "in his wake aggrieved investors too numerous to count." He was also a staunch public supporter of the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. ..."
    "... The investor then reinvented himself as an anti-Putin figure, using the death of Magnitsky to lobby various countries to impose sanctions on the Russian officials he blamed for his employee's death. The US Magnitsky Act was passed in 2012, allowing people accused by Washington of human rights violations to be targeted. However, it is perceived by the Kremlin as just a tool to restrain Russia for the sake of global political and economic competition. ..."
    "... Among Browder's latest exploits is playing a role in the 'Russiagate' story. A key part of the elusive search for collusion between US President Donald Trump and the Russian government is a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. The meeting was apparently organized with a view to lobbying for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Its architect, Browder, has therefore been eager to lend his expertise on 'Russian machinations' to US lawmakers and media outlets. ..."
    "... If you like this story, share it with a friend! ..."
    Nov 19, 2018 | www.rt.com
    Kremlin critic Bill Browder may have given the order for his employee Sergei Magnitsky to be poisoned with a rare toxin in a Russian prison cell, along with other suspects in a tax-evasion probe against him, prosecutors have said. British financier Browder was once a well-connected investor in post-Soviet Russia, but he became a fugitive from the law in the country after being accused of financial crimes. In the West, however, he is best known as the employer of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant who died in police custody while being investigated in connection to the Browder case. Magnitsky's death became an international scandal, with Browder accusing Russian officials of killing him.

    Russian prosecutors on Monday claimed that Magnitsky and several other people familiar with Browder's illicit activities in Russia may have been killed on his order. They said a new criminal case has been opened against Browder in Russia, and that Moscow will seek his extradition as an alleged ringleader of an international criminal enterprise involved in money laundering.

    The prosecutors identified four people who were suspects in the Browder case, all of whom died over the course of less than two years as the investigation against him unfolded. Oktay Gasanov was the first of the four, dying in October 2007; while Magnitsky's death in November 2009 was the last. By the time of his death, Magnitsky had spent almost a year in pre-trial detention. The two others were Valery Kurochkin and Sergey Korobeinikov, who died in April 2008 and September 2008, respectively.

    Korobeinikov died after falling off a high-rise building, while the others had health complications. The Russian prosecutors believe all four of them may have been killed with a rare water-soluble compound of aluminum. Each of the men showed symptoms consistent with being poisoned by the toxin prior to their deaths, while Korobeinikov had traces of it in his liver, according to a post mortem. An investigation into four possible murders has been opened.

    Read more
    UK 'fraudster' Browder briefly detained in Spain on Russian warrant, tweets from police car

    Considering that the three individuals, with the exception of Magnitsky, died within months of each other while being investigated as part of Browder's case, "it is highly likely that they were killed to get rid of accomplices who could give an incriminating testimony against Browder," a senior official with the Russian General Prosecutor's office told journalists. The same may be true for Magnitsky, he said. The prosecutor stressed that Russia didn't conduct detailed studies into how the suspected poison affects living organisms, but several research institutions based in the US, France and Italy did.

    The prosecutors claim that Browder was the party who benefited most from the death of Magnitsky. They cited journalist Oleg Lurie, who shared a prison cell with Magnitsky before the latter's death. Speaking under oath during a court hearing in New York, Lurie said that his cellmate had complained to him that Browder's lawyers were pressuring him into signing a false statement. Magnitsky's testimony claimed that he had uncovered a conspiracy to embezzle taxpayers' money involving Russian officials.

    The Russian prosecutors said Browder allegedly wanted to silence his employee after obtaining the false claim. The statement itself was used to blame Russian officials for Magnitsky's death and accuse the Russian government of a cover-up.

    Last year, Browder was sentenced by a Russian court to nine years in prison for tax evasion. The trial was held in absentia and Moscow failed to have him extradited to serve the term. The prosecutors said that they will renew attempts to get custody of Browder as part of the new criminal case, using a UN convention on fighting transnational crime to have him arrested.

    Browder is a US-born British financier, whose change of citizenship had the benefit of allowing him to avoid paying tax on foreign earnings. However, he claimed the switch was prompted by his family being persecuted in the US during the McCarthyism witch hunt, while the UK seemed like the land of law and order.

    Read more

    Magnitsky Act mastermind seeks to stop Cyprus from revealing his offshore assets to Russia

    He made a fortune in Russia during the country's chaotic transition to a market economy, having invested before there was a stock exchange in Moscow. His Hermitage Capital Management fund was a leading foreign investment entity in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

    Described by critics as a 'vulture capitalist,' Browder seemed quite comfortable earning millions of dollars in the financial wild west. In 2005, as fallen oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was standing trial for tax evasion, Browder scolded him on the BBC for using personal wealth to grasp at political power, and for leaving "in his wake aggrieved investors too numerous to count." He was also a staunch public supporter of the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    The transformation of his public image from a financial shark into a human rights crusader started when Browder himself entered the spotlight of Russian law enforcement. In 2007, the foundation he ran was targeted by a probe into possible large-scale embezzlement of Russian taxpayers' money. Magnitsky, who worked for Browder and had knowledge of his firms' finances, was arrested and held in pre-trial detention until his death in November 2009. The British businessman insisted that the entire case was fabricated and that Magnitsky had been assassinated for exposing a criminal scheme involving several Russian tax officials.

    The investor then reinvented himself as an anti-Putin figure, using the death of Magnitsky to lobby various countries to impose sanctions on the Russian officials he blamed for his employee's death. The US Magnitsky Act was passed in 2012, allowing people accused by Washington of human rights violations to be targeted. However, it is perceived by the Kremlin as just a tool to restrain Russia for the sake of global political and economic competition.

    Browder's new-found status as a rights advocate and self-proclaimed worst enemy of Putin helps him deflect Russia's attempts to prosecute him. On several occasions, Russia filed international arrest warrants against him with Interpol, which even led to his brief detention in Spain last May.

    Among Browder's latest exploits is playing a role in the 'Russiagate' story. A key part of the elusive search for collusion between US President Donald Trump and the Russian government is a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. The meeting was apparently organized with a view to lobbying for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Its architect, Browder, has therefore been eager to lend his expertise on 'Russian machinations' to US lawmakers and media outlets.

    If you like this story, share it with a friend!

    [Nov 27, 2018] US Foreign Policy Has No Policy by Philip Giraldi

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Trump's memo on the Saudis begins with the headline "The world is a very dangerous place!" Indeed, it is and behavior by the three occupants of the White House since 2000 is largely to blame. ..."
    "... Indeed, a national security policy that sees competitors and adversaries as enemies in a military sense has made nuclear war, unthinkable since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, thinkable once again. ..."
    "... George Washington's dictum in his Farewell Address , counseling his countrymen to "observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all." And Washington might have somehow foreseen the poisonous relationships with Israel and the Saudis when he warned that " a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification." ..."
    "... Cautious optimism may be better than none, but futile nonetheless. Bullying, dispossession, slavery and genocide constitute the very bedrock, the essence and soul of the founding of our country. ..."
    "... Truth be told we simply know of no other kinder, gentler alternatives to perpetual war and destruction as the cornerstone of our foreign policy. Normality? Not in my lifetime. ..."
    "... Your CNI and 'If Americans Knew' informed me about Rand Paul's courageous move. I plan to call his office today to give him encouragement and call my Senators and Representative to urge them to support him (fat chance of that but I have to stick it in their face). ..."
    "... America doesn't have a policy because America is no longer a real nation. It's an empire filled with diverse groups of peoples who all hate each other and want to use the power of the government for the benefit of their overseas co-ethnics. ..."
    Nov 27, 2018 | www.unz.com

    President Donald Trump's recent statement on the Jamal Khashoggi killing by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince might well be considered a metaphor for his foreign policy. Several commentators have suggested that the text appears to be something that Trump wrote himself without any adult supervision, similar to the poorly expressed random arguments presented in his tweeting only longer. That might be the case, but it would not be wise to dismiss the document as merely frivolous or misguided as it does in reality express the kind of thinking that has produced a foreign policy that seems to drift randomly to no real end, a kind of leaderless creative destruction of the United States as a world power.

    Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister of Britain in the mid nineteenth century, famously said that "Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests."The United States currently has neither real friends nor any clearly defined interests. It is, however, infested with parasites that have convinced an at-drift America that their causes are identical to the interests of the United States. Leading the charge to reduce the U.S. to "bitch" status, as Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has artfully put it , are Israel and Saudi Arabia, but there are many other countries, alliances and advocacy groups that have learned how to subvert and direct the "leader of the free world."

    Trump's memo on the Saudis begins with the headline "The world is a very dangerous place!" Indeed, it is and behavior by the three occupants of the White House since 2000 is largely to blame. It is difficult to find a part of the world where an actual American interest is being served by Washington's foreign and global security policies. Indeed, a national security policy that sees competitors and adversaries as enemies in a military sense has made nuclear war, unthinkable since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, thinkable once again. The fact that no one is the media or in political circles is even talking about that terrible danger suggests that war has again become mainstreamed, tacitly benefiting from bipartisan acceptance of it as a viable foreign policy tool by the media, in the U.S. Congress and also in the White House.

    The part of the world where American meddling coupled with ignorance has produced the worst result is inevitably the Middle East...

    ... ... ...

    All of the White House's actions have one thing in common and that is that they do not benefit Americans in any way unless one works for a weapons manufacturer, and that is not even taking into consideration the dead soldiers and civilians and the massive debt that has been incurred to intervene all over the world. One might also add that most of America's interventions are built on deliberate lies by the government and its associated media, intended to increase tension and create a casus belli where none exists.

    So what is to be done as it often seems that the best thing Trump has going for him is that he is not Hillary Clinton? First of all, a comprehensive rethink of what the real interests of the United States are in the world arena is past due. America is less safe now than it was in 2001 as it continues to make enemies with its blundering everywhere it goes. There are now four times as many designated terrorists as there were in 2001, active in 70 countries. One would quite plausibly soon arrive at George Washington's dictum in his Farewell Address , counseling his countrymen to "observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all." And Washington might have somehow foreseen the poisonous relationships with Israel and the Saudis when he warned that " a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification."

    George Washington or any of the other Founders would be appalled to see an America with 800 military bases overseas, allegedly for self-defense. The transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the military industrial complex and related entities like Wall Street has been catastrophic. The United States does not need to protect Israel and Saudi Arabia, two countries that are armed to the teeth and well able to defend themselves. Nor does it have to be in Syria and Afghanistan. And

    If the United States were to withdraw its military from the Middle East and the rest of Asia tomorrow, it would be to nearly everyone's benefit. If the armed forces were to be subsequently reduced to a level sufficient to defend the United States it would put money back in the pockets of Americans and end the continuous fearmongering through surfacing of "threats" by career militarists justifying the bloated budgets.

    ... ... ...

    Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests [email protected] .

    anon [355] Disclaimer , says: November 27, 2018 at 5:38 am GMT

    US foreign policy is controlled by a few key ethnic groups and (to a lesser degree) the military-industrial complex.
    Justsaying , says: November 27, 2018 at 6:04 am GMT

    but even small steps in the right direction could initiate a gradual process of turning the United States into a more normal country in its relationships with the rest of the world rather than a universal predator and bully.

    Cautious optimism may be better than none, but futile nonetheless. Bullying, dispossession, slavery and genocide constitute the very bedrock, the essence and soul of the founding of our country.

    To expect mutations -- no matter how slow or fast in a trait that appears deeply embedded in our DNA is to be naive. Add to that the intractable stranglehold Zionists and organized world Jewry has on our nuts and decision making. A more congruent convergence of histories and DNAs would be hard to come by among other nations. Truth be told we simply know of no other kinder, gentler alternatives to perpetual war and destruction as the cornerstone of our foreign policy. Normality? Not in my lifetime.

    Z-man , says: November 27, 2018 at 9:11 am GMT
    Great article and I will spread it around.

    Your CNI and 'If Americans Knew' informed me about Rand Paul's courageous move. I plan to call his office today to give him encouragement and call my Senators and Representative to urge them to support him (fat chance of that but I have to stick it in their face).

    Hey, how about a Rand Paul-Tulsi Gabbard fusion ticket in 2024, not a bad idea, IMHO.

    Going back to the Administration you can see the slimy Zionist hands of Steven Miller on all of those foreign policy statements. Trump is allowing this because he has to protect his flanks from Zionists, Christian or otherwise. He might be just giving Miller just enough rope to jettison him (wishful thinking on my part). Or he doesn't care or is unaware of the texts, a possibility.

    anon [336] Disclaimer , says: November 27, 2018 at 9:26 am GMT
    1. Because that defies human nature. See all of history if you disagree.

    2. America doesn't have a policy because America is no longer a real nation. It's an empire filled with diverse groups of peoples who all hate each other and want to use the power of the government for the benefit of their overseas co-ethnics.

    jilles dykstra , says: November 27, 2018 at 9:30 am GMT
    The beginning of USA foreign policy for me is the 1820 or 1830 Monroe Declaration: south America is our backyard, keep out. Few people know that at the time European countries considered war on the USA because of this beginning of world domination. When I told this to a USA correspondent the reply was 'but this declaration still is taught here in glowing terms'.

    What we saw then was the case until Obama, USA foreign policy was for internal political reasons. As Hollings stated in 2004 'Bush promising AIPAC the war on Iraq, that is politics'. No empire ever, as far as I know, ever was in the comfortable position to be able to let foreign policy to be decided (almost) completely by internal politics.

    This changed during the Obama reign, the two war standard had to be lowered to one and a half. All of a sudden the USA had to develop a foreign policy, a policy that had to take into consideration the world outside the USA. Not the whole USA understands this, the die hards of Deep State in the lead.

    What a half war accomplishes we see, my opinion, in Syria, a half war does not bring victory on an enemy who wages a whole war.
    Assad is still there, Russia has airforce and naval bases in Syria.

    Normally, as any history book explains, foreign policy of a country is decided on in secret by a few people. British preparations for both WWI and WWII included detailed technical talks with both the USA and France, not even all cabinet members knew about it. One of Trump's difficulties is that Deep State does not at all has the intention of letting the president decide on foreign policy, at the time of FDR he did what he liked, though, if one reads for example Baruch's memoirs, in close cooperation with the Deep State that then existed.

    The question 'why do we not leave the rest of the world alone', hardly ever asked. The USA is nearly autarcic, foreign trade, from memory, some five percent of national income, a very luxurious position. But of course, leaving the rest of the world alone, huge internal consequences, as Hinckley explains with an example, politically impossible to stop the development of a bomber judged to be superfluous.

    Barbara Hinckley Sheldon Goldman, American Politics and Government, Glenview Ill.,1990

    Jim Christian , says: November 27, 2018 at 9:43 am GMT
    Good luck. A fight over resources with the biggest consumer of resources, the People That Kill People and all their little buddies in the Alphabet Soup of Law Enforcement and Intelligence Depravity..

    That could get a fella hurt. Ask Jack and Bob Kennedy.

    Michael Kenny , says: November 27, 2018 at 10:10 am GMT
    "The bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Russia is now worse than it was towards the end of the Cold War". Classic American cold warrior mentality. The present-day Russian Federation is assimilated to the former Soviet Union.
    Johnny Rottenborough , says: Website November 27, 2018 at 11:31 am GMT
    Tragically for America, and the West in general, President Trump is unrecognizable from candidate Trump :

    'This is a crossroads in the history of our civilization that will determine whether or not we the people reclaim control over our government. The political establishment that is trying to stop us is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry Their financial resources are virtually unlimited, their political resources are unlimited, their media resources are unmatched, and most importantly, the depths of their immorality is absolutely unlimited.'

    [Nov 24, 2018] MI6 Scrambling To Stop Trump From Releasing Classified Docs In Russia Probe

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The Telegraph adds that the UK's dispute with the Trump administration is so politically sensitive that staff within the British Embassy in D.C. have been barred from discussing it with journalists. Theresa May has also "been kept at arms-length and is understood to have not raised the issue directly with the US president ." ..."
    "... In September , we reported that the British government "expressed grave concerns" over the material in question after President Trump issued an order to the DOJ to release a wide swath of materials, "immediately" and "without redaction." ..."
    "... Trump walked that order back days later after the UK begged him not to release them. ..."
    "... MI6 agents have a reputation for writing fiction. Ian Fleming comes to mind. Its is interesting to reflect on the similarities of fiction and so called intelligence. ..."
    "... Six U.S. agencies created a stealth task force, spearhead by CIA's Brennan, to run domestic surveillance on Trump associates and possibly Trump himself. ..."
    "... To feign ignorance and to seemingly operate within U.S. laws, the agencies freelanced the wiretapping of Trump associates to the British spy agency GCHQ ..."
    "... The decision to insert GCHQ as a back door to eavesdrop was sparked by the denial of two FISA Court warrant applications filed by the FBI to seek wiretaps of Trump associates. ..."
    "... GCHQ did not work from London or the UK. In fact the spy agency worked from NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, MD with direct NSA supervision and guidance to conduct sweeping surveillance on Trump associates. ..."
    "... The illegal wiretaps were initiated months before the controversial Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. ..."
    "... The Justice Department and FBI set up the meeting at Trump Tower between Trump Jr., Manafort and Kushner with controversial Russian officials to make Trump's associates appear compromised. ..."
    "... Following the Trump Tower sit down, GCHQ began digitally wiretapping Manafort, Trump Jr., and Kushner. ..."
    "... After the concocted meeting by the Deep State, the British spy agency could officially justify wiretapping Trump associates as an intelligence front for NSA because the Russian lawyer at the meeting Natalia Veselnitskaya was considered an international security risk and prior to the June sit down was not even allowed entry into the United States or the UK, federal sources said. ..."
    "... By using GCHQ, the NSA and its intelligence partners had carved out a loophole to wiretap Trump without a warrant. While it is illegal for U.S. agencies to monitor phones and emails of U.S. citizens inside the United States absent a warrant, it is not illegal for British intelligence to do so. Even if the GCHQ was tapping Trump on U.S. soil at Fort Meade. ..."
    "... The wiretaps, secured through illicit scheming, have been used by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election, even though the evidence is considered "poisoned fruit. ..."
    "... Add: GCHQ (UK NSA) was in agreement with HilBarry Inc to block the US 2016 election for U.K. candidate Hillary aka Clinton 'Rhodes scholar' Brit colonial agent. Study who 'Rhodes' was. CIA and MI6 are UK siblings. Note nickname for CIA is "Langley" = 'The English' in French L'Anglai. Trump Tower - Russkie atty Natalia met with Simpson GPS Fusion to debrief before & after meeting. Natalia was granted US entry by Mueller Spec Counsel teamster Preet Baharara (conflict in that Preet is compromised witness and also SC "investigator"). Russkie Ahkmedishin met with Obama WH in prep for meeting (see Jan 2016 WH log). The 'translator' at meeting was Obama WH translator. ..."
    "... The evidence for false Trump Russkie bank connections is a phony server set up by CIA agent McMullen that robo scammed Russian Alfa Bank to robo talk to the phony server the CIA named with miss-spell Trump OrGAINization. See godaddy domain registration. Hillary slandered Trump with this scam on Twitter Oct 31, 2016 - her witchy day. ..."
    "... Obama used the intelligence agencies to spy on all political opponents, not just the Trump campaign and eventually the administration. NSA databases were being queried by Democrat contractors with content feed to Obama's National Security staff where communications were "unmasked" by Rice and others. Rodgers shut down the scheme. So much Marxist criminality and fraud left unpunished. ..."
    "... George Papadopoulos was not the reason the FBI opened their 2016 Counterintelligence Investigation into the Trump Campaign. John Brennan was the reason. ..."
    "... Brennan was the man pushing the entire Russian Narrative that consumed Washington D.C. – and ultimately led to the Mueller Investigation. He did this based on little or no evidence. The Electronic Communication should prove interesting. John Brennan's Role in the FBI's Trump-Russia Investigation ..."
    "... In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with then-CIA Head John Brennan regarding alleged communications between the Trump Campaign and Moscow. ..."
    "... @Chupacabra-322 URL s/b " https://themarketswork.com/2018/04/09/john-brennans-role-in-the-fbis-trump-russia-investigation/ " ..."
    "... The Trump Team was being surveiled the entire time by Breanan via the GCHQ. The CIA are Analysts. That's it. They had to involve the FBI to begin the Surveillance & Criminal Investigation into the Counter Intelligence Operation. Thus, Criminal at Large Breanan's trip up to Capital Hill to meet with Harry Reid to brief him on Steele. Brennan the "Puppet Master" has been quarter backing the entire Deep State Intelligence Psychological Operation & Parallel Construction Surveillance from the very start. ..."
    "... They've been reverse engineering their lies ever since they lost the election to cover their tracks and use the excuse of "Plausible Deniability" as the Pure Evil War Criminal Treasonous Seditious Psychopaths at the CIA always claim. ..."
    "... Why get a FISA warrant for Cater Paige after he left the Trump Team? Because folks, the FISA Warrant is RETROACTIVE. ..."
    Nov 24, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation, according to The Telegraph , stating that any disclosure would "undermine intelligence gathering if he releases pages of an FBI application to wiretap one of his former campaign advisers."

    Trump's allies, however, are fighting back - demanding transparency and suggesting that the UK wouldn't want the documents withheld unless it had something to hide.

    The Telegraph has talked to more than a dozen UK and US officials, including in American intelligence, who have revealed details about the row.

    British spy chiefs have "genuine concern" about sources being exposed if classified parts of the wiretap request were made public, according to figures familiar with discussions.

    " It boils down to the exposure of people ", said one US intelligence official, adding: " We don't want to reveal sources and methods ." US intelligence shares the concerns of the UK.

    Another said Britain feared setting a dangerous "precedent" which could make people less likely to share information, knowing that it could one day become public. - The Telegraph

    The Telegraph adds that the UK's dispute with the Trump administration is so politically sensitive that staff within the British Embassy in D.C. have been barred from discussing it with journalists. Theresa May has also "been kept at arms-length and is understood to have not raised the issue directly with the US president ."

    In September , we reported that the British government "expressed grave concerns" over the material in question after President Trump issued an order to the DOJ to release a wide swath of materials, "immediately" and "without redaction."

    Trump walked that order back days later after the UK begged him not to release them.

    Mr Trump wants to declassify 21 pages from one of the applications. He announced the move in September, then backtracked, then this month said he was "very seriously" considering it again. Both Britain and Australia are understood to be opposing the move.

    Memos detailing alleged ties between Mr Trump and Russia compiled by Christopher Steele, a former MI6 officer , were cited in the application, which could explain some of the British concern. - The Telegraph

    The New York Times reported at the time that the UK's concern was over material which " includes direct references to conversations between American law enforcement officials and Christopher Steele ," the former MI6 agent who compiled the infamous "Steele Dossier." The UK's objection, according to former US and British officials, was over revealing Steele's identity in an official document, "regardless of whether he had been named in press reports."

    We noted in September, however, that Steele's name was contained within the Nunes Memo - the House Intelligence Committee's majority opinion in the Trump-Russia case.

    Steele also had extensive contacts with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie , who - along with Steele - was paid by opposition research firm Fusion GPS in the anti-Trump campaign. Trump called for the declassification of FBI notes of interviews with Ohr, which would ostensibly reveal more about his relationship with Steele. Ohr was demoted twice within the Department of Justice for lying about his contacts with Fusion GPS.

    Perhaps the Brits are also concerned since much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016 . Recall that Trump aid George Papadopoulos was lured to London in March, 2016, where Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was later at a London bar that Papadopoulos would drunkenly pass the rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer (who Strzok flew to London to meet with).

    Also recall that CIA/FBI "informant" (spy) Stefan Halper met with both Carter Page and Papadopoulos in London.

    Halper, a veteran of four Republican administrations, reached out to Trump aide George Papadopoulos in September 2016 with an offer to fly to London to write an academic paper on energy exploration in the Mediterranean Sea.

    Papadopoulos accepted a flight to London and a $3,000 honorarium. He claims that during a meeting in London, Halper asked him whether he knew anything about Russian hacking of Democrats' emails.

    Papadopoulos had other contacts on British soil that he now believes were part of a government-sanctioned surveillance operation. - Daily Caller

    In total, Halper received over $1 million from the Obama Pentagon for "research," over $400,000 of which was granted before and during the 2016 election season.

    Papadopoulos, who was sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying about his conversations with a shadowy Maltese professor and self-professed member of the Clinton Foundation , has publicly claimed he was targeted by UK spies, and told The Telegraph that he demands transparency. Trump's allies in Washington, meanwhile, have suggested that the facts laid out before us mean that the ongoing Russia investigation was invalid from the start .

    In short, it's understandable that the UK would prefer to hide their involvement in the "witch hunt" of Donald Trump since much of the counterintelligence investigation was conducted on UK soil. And if the Brits had knowledge of the operation, it will bolster claims that they meddled in the 2016 US election by assisting what appears to have been a set-up from the start .

    Steele's ham-handed dossier is a mere embarrassment, as virtually none of the claims asserted by the former MI6 agent have been proven true.

    Steele, a former MI6 agent, is the author of the infamous and unverified anti-Trump dossier. He worked as a confidential human source for the FBI for years before the relationship was severed just before the election because of Steele's unauthorized contacts with the press.

    He shared results of his investigation into Trump's links to Russia with the FBI beginning in early July 2016.

    The FBI relied heavily on the unverified Steele dossier to fill out applications for four FISA warrants against Page. Page has denied the dossier's claims, which include that he was the Trump campaign's back channel to the Kremlin. - Daily Caller

    That said, Steele hasn't worked for the British government since 2009, so for their excuse focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK soil, is curious.

    Anunnaki , 3 minutes ago link

    Trump talks the talk but so far no walking of the walk. Not falling for it anymore, Tyler. No Swamp Draining from Pres. Cheeto anymore than we got Hope or Change from Superfly

    Kefeer , 28 minutes ago link

    When fraud is coming to light, the cockroaches scramble. The so-called intelligence agencies have run amuck for way too long and leave a trail of lies, murder and deception.

    custard , 1 hour ago link

    That is the reason Obama and Clinton went to New Zealand and Australia. They have access to the Five Eyes network in New Zealand and Australia without their requests being recorded whereas if they had asked in the US their requests and all documents given to them would have been recorded. . They are both traitors to not only the sitting President and the US people but also to the United States.

    Synoia , 1 hour ago link

    That said, Steele hasn't worked for the British government since 2009, so for their excuse focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK soil, is curious.

    MI6 agents have a reputation for writing fiction. Ian Fleming comes to mind. Its is interesting to reflect on the similarities of fiction and so called intelligence.

    STONEHILLADY , 1 hour ago link

    I think we all know now that the UK not Russia was the dirtbags working for Obama/HRC to trap Trump. Release the declass Trump and let's start cleaning up the swamp. Let the SHTF those Brits have never been friends to freedom.

    fleur de lis , 1 hour ago link

    @European American,

    If they released audio-video evidence of public officials indulging in cannibalistic pedophilia at their state desks, they would still get off the hook.

    Their MSM fiends oops I meant friends would scramble to the rescue and create another AV to counter the actual one, and their idiot Democrat audiences would fall for it.

    No matter what is exposed on 5 December the perps will get off the hook.

    Chupacabra-322 , 2 hours ago link
    • Six U.S. agencies created a stealth task force, spearhead by CIA's Brennan, to run domestic surveillance on Trump associates and possibly Trump himself.
    • To feign ignorance and to seemingly operate within U.S. laws, the agencies freelanced the wiretapping of Trump associates to the British spy agency GCHQ.
    • The decision to insert GCHQ as a back door to eavesdrop was sparked by the denial of two FISA Court warrant applications filed by the FBI to seek wiretaps of Trump associates.
    • GCHQ did not work from London or the UK. In fact the spy agency worked from NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, MD with direct NSA supervision and guidance to conduct sweeping surveillance on Trump associates.
    • The illegal wiretaps were initiated months before the controversial Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.
    • The Justice Department and FBI set up the meeting at Trump Tower between Trump Jr., Manafort and Kushner with controversial Russian officials to make Trump's associates appear compromised.
    • Following the Trump Tower sit down, GCHQ began digitally wiretapping Manafort, Trump Jr., and Kushner.
    • After the concocted meeting by the Deep State, the British spy agency could officially justify wiretapping Trump associates as an intelligence front for NSA because the Russian lawyer at the meeting Natalia Veselnitskaya was considered an international security risk and prior to the June sit down was not even allowed entry into the United States or the UK, federal sources said.
    • By using GCHQ, the NSA and its intelligence partners had carved out a loophole to wiretap Trump without a warrant. While it is illegal for U.S. agencies to monitor phones and emails of U.S. citizens inside the United States absent a warrant, it is not illegal for British intelligence to do so. Even if the GCHQ was tapping Trump on U.S. soil at Fort Meade.
    • The wiretaps, secured through illicit scheming, have been used by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election, even though the evidence is considered "poisoned fruit."
    StarGate , 1 hour ago link

    Add: GCHQ (UK NSA) was in agreement with HilBarry Inc to block the US 2016 election for U.K. candidate Hillary aka Clinton 'Rhodes scholar' Brit colonial agent. Study who 'Rhodes' was. CIA and MI6 are UK siblings. Note nickname for CIA is "Langley" = 'The English' in French L'Anglai. Trump Tower - Russkie atty Natalia met with Simpson GPS Fusion to debrief before & after meeting. Natalia was granted US entry by Mueller Spec Counsel teamster Preet Baharara (conflict in that Preet is compromised witness and also SC "investigator"). Russkie Ahkmedishin met with Obama WH in prep for meeting (see Jan 2016 WH log). The 'translator' at meeting was Obama WH translator.

    GPS Fusion wrote the Dossier with UK spy Steele and was paid by Hillary/DNC.

    The evidence for false Trump Russkie bank connections is a phony server set up by CIA agent McMullen that robo scammed Russian Alfa Bank to robo talk to the phony server the CIA named with miss-spell Trump OrGAINization. See godaddy domain registration. Hillary slandered Trump with this scam on Twitter Oct 31, 2016 - her witchy day.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/hillaryclinton/status/793234169576947712?lang=en

    WorkingFool , 1 hour ago link

    Obama used the intelligence agencies to spy on all political opponents, not just the Trump campaign and eventually the administration. NSA databases were being queried by Democrat contractors with content feed to Obama's National Security staff where communications were "unmasked" by Rice and others. Rodgers shut down the scheme. So much Marxist criminality and fraud left unpunished.

    Chupacabra-322 , 2 hours ago link

    George Papadopoulos was not the reason the FBI opened their 2016 Counterintelligence Investigation into the Trump Campaign. John Brennan was the reason.

    Brennan was the man pushing the entire Russian Narrative that consumed Washington D.C. – and ultimately led to the Mueller Investigation. He did this based on little or no evidence. The Electronic Communication should prove interesting. John Brennan's Role in the FBI's Trump-Russia Investigation

    April 9, 2018 by Jeff Carlson, CFA

    In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with then-CIA Head John Brennan regarding alleged communications between the Trump Campaign and Moscow.

    That summer, GCHQ's then head, Robert Hannigan, flew to the US to personally brief CIA chief John Brennan. The matter was deemed so important that it was handled at "director level", face-to-face between the two agency chiefs. The meeting between Hannigan and Brennan appears somewhat unusual.

    The US and the UK are two of the so-called Five Eyes -- along with Canada, Australia and New Zealand -- that share a broad range of intelligence through a formalized alliance.

    The GCHQ is responsible for Britain's Signals Intelligence. The NSA is responsible for the United States' Signals Intelligence. Hannigan's U.S. counterpart was not CIA Director Brennan. Hannigan's U.S. counterpart was NSA Director Mike Rogers. Luke Harding of the Guardian originally reported the meeting in an April 13, 2017 article on Britain's spy agencies early role in the Trump-Russia investigation:

    GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious "interactions" between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information

    Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump's inner circle and Russians.

    https://www.themarketswork.com/2018/04/09/john-brennans-role-in-the-fbi

    StarGate , 1 hour ago link

    See above about phony robot "suspicious communications" set up by CIA McMullen to smear Trump with Trump Tower falsely named server and data created in robo call response with Russian Alfa bank.

    Russian "communications" was e-data of the Russkie Bank and the non-Trump server named "Trump OrGAINization". It was just two robo-computers pinging back and forth.

    smacker , 1 hour ago link

    @Chupacabra-322 URL s/b " https://themarketswork.com/2018/04/09/john-brennans-role-in-the-fbis-trump-russia-investigation/ "

    Chupacabra-322 , 2 hours ago link

    The Trump Team was being surveiled the entire time by Breanan via the GCHQ. The CIA are Analysts. That's it. They had to involve the FBI to begin the Surveillance & Criminal Investigation into the Counter Intelligence Operation. Thus, Criminal at Large Breanan's trip up to Capital Hill to meet with Harry Reid to brief him on Steele. Brennan the "Puppet Master" has been quarter backing the entire Deep State Intelligence Psychological Operation & Parallel Construction Surveillance from the very start.

    They've been reverse engineering their lies ever since they lost the election to cover their tracks and use the excuse of "Plausible Deniability" as the Pure Evil War Criminal Treasonous Seditious Psychopaths at the CIA always claim.

    Feb 13th, Don Bongino Podcast.

    "I'll include an article from NPR. NPR, not a by any stretch a right Wing outlet. Ok? But it's actually a decent piece. Now, it describes the three hop rule. It's from 2013, but it describes it very shortly & ce scintillating in about 400 words. And it's done well so I'll include it in todays show notes.

    Remember, It's now the "Two Hop Rule" but you just have to know what a "Hop" is to understand how dangerous this is.

    Here's how they explain it.

    It says, "testimony before Congress on Wednesday, remember this is written in 2013 Joe. Showed how easy it is for Americans, with no connection to Terrorism to unwittingly have their calling patterns analyzed by the Government." This is really wacko stuff. It hinges on what is known as a "Hop."

    Or chain analysis. When the NSA identifies a suspect, it can look not just at his phone records Joe, but also the records of everyone he calls, everyone who calls those people and everyone who calls those people." Chain Migration.

    You ain't kidding! Right!? Chain spying!

    It goes on...though....this is good.

    "If the average person Joe, called 40 unique people. "Three Hop Analysts" would allow the Government to mine the records....this is a staggering number...of 2.5 Million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist."

    "Holy Moly!" Holly Moly is right.

    Why get a FISA warrant for Cater Paige after he left the Trump Team? Because folks, the FISA Warrant is RETROACTIVE.

    All the the emails he sent in the past to Trump Team members, combine that with "Two Hops" you basically have everybody in the known universe that could of ever contacted the Trump Team.

    Paige sends an email, whatever to Kushner. I don't know who he sends emails to. He probably didn't. But you get the point. Then you go to another "Hop." Kushner, who'd he send an email to? Now you got the while Trump Team.

    That's the whole point. That's why I constantly say to you that they were trying to put a legal face on this thing after they realized the election was coming up and they could lose.

    They were like. Man, we've been spying on these people the whole time. We already got most of their emails and their communications. How do we legally do it now?

    Oh, we get a FISA Warrant, we use couple of "Hops" and we're Golden."

    [Nov 24, 2018] Anonymous Exposes UK-Led Psyop To Battle Russian Propaganda

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Operating on a budget of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of local politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics. The team is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference in European affairs , while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim. ..."
    "... The Integrity Initiative "clusters" currently operate out of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Norway, Lithuania and the netherlands. According to the leak by Anonymous, the Integrity Initiative is working to aggressively expand its sphere of influence throughout eastern Europe, as well as the US, Canada and the MENA region ..."
    "... The work done by the Initiative - which claims it is not a government body, is done under "absolute secrecy via concealed contacts embedded throughout British embassies," according to the leak. It does, however, admit to working with unnamed British "government agencies." ..."
    Nov 23, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    The hacking collective known as "Anonymous" published a trove of documents on November 5 which it claims exposes a UK-based psyop to create a " large-scale information secret service " in Europe in order to combat "Russian propaganda" - which has been blamed for everything from Brexit to US President Trump winning the 2016 US election.

    The primary objective of the " Integrity Initiative " - established in 2015 by the Institute for Statecraft - is "to provide a coordinated Western response to Russian disinformation and other elements of hybrid warfare."

    And while the notion of Russian disinformation has become the West's favorite new bogeyman to excuse things such as Hillary Clinton's historic loss to Donald Trump, we note that "Anonymous" was called out by WikiLeaks in October 2016 as an FBI cutout, while the report on the Integrity Initiative that Anonymous exposed comes from Russian state-owned network RT - so it's anyone's guess whose 400lb hackers are at work here.

    Operating on a budget of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of local politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics. The team is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference in European affairs , while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim.

    The UK establishment appears to be conducting the very activities of which it and its allies have long-accused the Kremlin, with little or no corroborating evidence. The program also aims to "change attitudes in Russia itself" as well as influencing Russian speakers in the EU and North America, one of the leaked documents states. - RT

    The Integrity Initiative "clusters" currently operate out of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Norway, Lithuania and the netherlands. According to the leak by Anonymous, the Integrity Initiative is working to aggressively expand its sphere of influence throughout eastern Europe, as well as the US, Canada and the MENA region .

    The work done by the Initiative - which claims it is not a government body, is done under "absolute secrecy via concealed contacts embedded throughout British embassies," according to the leak. It does, however, admit to working with unnamed British "government agencies."

    The initiative has received £168,000 in funding from HQ NATO Public Diplomacy and £250,000 from the US State Department , the documents allege.

    Some of its purported members include British MPs and high-profile " independent" journalists with a penchant for anti-Russian sentiment in their collective online oeuvre, as showcased by a brief glance at their Twitter feeds. - RT

    Noted examples of "inedependent" anti-Russia journalists:

    Spanish "Op"

    In one example of the group's activities, a "Moncloa Campaign" was successfully conducted by the group's Spanish cluster to block the appointment of Colonel Pedro Banos as the director of Spain's Department of Homeland Security. It took just seven-and-a-half hours to accomplish, brags the group in the documents .

    "The [Spanish] government is preparing to appoint Colonel Banos, known for his pro-Russian and pro-Putin positions in the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts, as Director of the Department of Homeland Security, a key body located at the Moncloa," begins Nacho Torreblanca in a seven-part tweetstorm describing what happened.

    Others joined in. Among them – according to the leaks – academic Miguel Ángel Quintana Paz, who wrote that "Mr. Banos is to geopolitics as a homeopath is to medicine." Appointing such a figure would be "a shame." - RT

    The operation was reported in Spanish media, while Banos was labeled "pro-Putin" by UK MP Bob Seely.

    In short, expect anything counter to predominant "open-border" narratives to be the Kremlin's fault - and not a natural populist reflex to the destruction of borders, language and culture.

    [Nov 24, 2018] British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as "partner organisations" ..."
    "... "The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016." ..."
    "... "Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier..." ..."
    "... this movement in the west by gov'ts to pay for generating lies, hate and propaganda towards russia is really sick... it is perfect for the military industrial complex corporations though and they seem to be calling the shots in the west, much more so then the voice of the ordinary person who is not interested in war ..."
    "... Seems to me that this shows the primacy of the City of London, with its offshore network of illicit capital accumulation, within Britain. It is a state within a state or even a financial empire within a state, which, for deep historical reasons isn't subject to the same laws as the rest of the UK. ..."
    "... The UK's pathological obsession with Russia only makes sense to me as the city's insistence on continued 90s style appropriation of Russia's wealth ..."
    "... British hypocrisy publicly called out. How this all unravels is one to watch. Extra large popcorn and soda for me ..."
    "... It seems to me that the UK has far more to lose from doxxing than Russia does. The interference in sovereign allied states to 'manage' who the UK thinks they should appoint does not bode well for such relations ..."
    "... A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times and Neil Buckley from the FT." Subcluster. Love it. Just how crap do you have to be to fail to make it to membership of a full cluster of smear merchants? ..."
    "... I doubt very seriously that the British launched this operation without the CIA's implicit and explicit support. This has all the markings of a John Brennan operation that has been launched stealthily to prevent anyone from knowing its real origins. ..."
    "... The Brits don't act alone, and a project of this magnitude did not begin without Langley's explicit approval. ..."
    "... Now check out the wording in the above document: "Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow." Think about that. What would have blocked the flow of USG support for this project?? Why, the allegations of collusion against Trump, of course. Naturally, the Republicans are not going to provide money to an operation that threatens to destroy the head of their own party. So, there has been no bipartisan agreement on funding for anti-Russia propaganda ..."
    "... This mob was created in the autumn of 2015, according to their site. That would have been about the time -- probably just after -- the Russians intervened in Syria. The Brits had plans for an invasion of Syria in 2009, according to their fave Guardian fish wrap. ..."
    "... Pat Lang posted a report that strongly implies that charges of Russian influence on Trump are a deliberate falsification ..."
    "... It seems quite possible that what is alleged as "Russian meddling" is actually CIA-MI6 meddling ..."
    "... As I have said before, MAGA is a POLICY RESPONSE to the challenge from Russia and China. The election of a Republican faux populist was necessary and Trump, despite his many flaws, was the best candidate for the job. ..."
    "... The Integrity Initiative's goal is to defend democracy against the truth about Russia. All this is so Orwellian. When will we get the Ministry of Love? ..."
    "... They shot at an elephant and failed to kill it. So yes, out of the combo of frustration, resentment, and fear they hate the resurgent Russia and prefer Cold War II, and if necessary WWIII, to peaceful co-existence. Of course the usual corporate imperative (in this case weapons profiteering) reinforces the mass psychological pathology among the elites. ..."
    "... The ironic thing is that Putin doesn't prefer to challenge the neoliberal globalist "order" at all, but would happily see Russia take a prominent place within it. It's the US and its UK poodle who are insisting on confrontation. ..."
    "... Great article! It reminded me of what I read in George Orwell's novella "1984." He summed it all up brilliantly in nine words: "War is Peace"; "Freedom is Slavery"; "Ignorance is Strength." The three pillars of political power. ..."
    "... Since UK has always blocked the "European Intelligence" initiative, on the basis of his pertenence to the "Five Eyes", and as UK is leaving the European Union, where it has always been the Troyan Horse of the US, one would think that all these people belonging to the so called "clusters" should register themselves as "foreign agents" working for UK government. ..."
    "... William Browder ..."
    Nov 24, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

    British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns Steveg , Nov 24, 2018 11:43:44 AM | link

    In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia propaganda into the western media stream.

    We have already seen many consequences of this and similar programs which are designed to smear anyone who does not follow the anti-Russian government lines. The 'Russian collusion' smear campaign against Donald Trump based on the Steele dossier was also a largely British operation but seems to be part of a different project.

    The ' Integrity Initiative ' builds 'cluster' or contact groups of trusted journalists, military personal, academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via social media to take action when the British center perceives a need.

    On June 7 it took the the Spanish cluster only a few hours to derail the appointment of Perto Banos as the Director of the National Security Department in Spain. The cluster determined that he had a too positive view of Russia and launched a coordinated social media smear campaign (pdf) against him.


    bigger

    The Initiative and its operations were unveiled when someone liberated some of its documents, including its budget applications to the British Foreign Office, and posted them under the 'Anonymous' label at cyberguerrilla.org .

    The Initiative is nominally run under the (government financed) non-government-organisation The Institute For Statecraft . Its internal handbook (pdf) describes its purpose:

    The Integrity Initiative was set up in autumn 2015 by The Institute for Statecraft in cooperation with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) to bring to the attention of politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North America.

    It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as "partner organisations" and promises that:

    Cluster members will be sent to educational sessions abroad to improve the technical competence of the cluster to deal with disinformation and strengthen bonds in the cluster community. [...] (Events with DFR Digital Sherlocks, Bellingcat, EuVsDisinfo, Buzzfeed, Irex, Detector Media, Stopfake, LT MOD Stratcom – add more names and propose cluster participants as you desire).

    The Initiatives Orwellian slogan is 'Defending Democracy Against Disinformation'. It covers European countries, the UK, the U.S. and Canada and seems to want to expand to the Middle East.

    On its About page it claims: "We are not a government body but we do work with government departments and agencies who share our aims." The now published budget plans show that more than 95% of the Initiative's funding is coming directly from the British government, NATO and the U.S. State Department. All the 'contact persons' for creating 'clusters' in foreign countries are British embassy officers. It amounts to a foreign influence campaign by the British government that hides behind a 'civil society' NGO.

    The organisation is led by one Chris N. Donnelly who receives (pdf) £8,100 per month for creating the smear campaign network.


    Chris Donnelly - Pic via Euromaidanpress

    From its 2017/18 budget application (pdf) we learn how the Initiative works:

    To counter Russian disinformation and malign influence in Europe by: expanding the knowledge base; harnessing existing expertise, and; establishing a network of networks of experts, opinion formers and policy makers, to educate national audiences in the threat and to help build national capacities to counter it .

    The Initiative has a black and white view that is based on a "we are the good ones" illusion. When "we" 'educate the public' it is legitimate work. When others do similar, it its disinformation. That is of course not the reality. The Initiative's existence itself, created to secretly manipulate the public, is proof that such a view is wrong.

    If its work were as legit as it wants to be seen, why would the Foreign Office run it from behind the curtain as an NGO? The Initiative is not the only such operation. It's applications seek funding from a larger "Russian Language Strategic Communication Programme" run by the Foreign Office.

    The 2017/18 budget application sought FCO funding of £480,635. It received £102,000 in co-funding from NATO and the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense. The 2018/19 budget application shows a planned spending (pdf) of £1,961,000.00. The co-sponsors this year are again NATO and the Lithuanian MoD, but also include (pdf) the U.S. State Department with £250,000 and Facebook with £100,000. The budget lays out a strong cooperation with the local military of each country. It notes that NATO is also generous in financing the local clusters.

    One of the liberated papers of the Initiative is a talking points memo labeled Top 3 Deliverable for FCO (pdf):

    • Developing and proving the cluster concept and methodology, setting up clusters in a range of countries with different circumstances
    • Making people (in Government, think tanks, military, journalists) see the big picture, making people acknowledge that we are under concerted, deliberate hybrid attack by Russia
    • Increasing the speed of response, mobilising the network to activism in pursuit of the "golden minute"

    Under top 1, setting up clusters, a subitem reads:

    - Connects media with academia with policy makers with practitioners in a country to impact on policy and society: ( Jelena Milic silencing pro-kremlin voices on Serbian TV )

    Defending Democracy by silencing certain voices on public TV seems to be a self-contradicting concept.

    Another subitem notes how the Initiative secretly influences foreign governments:

    We engage only very discreetly with governments, based entirely on trusted personal contacts, specifically to ensure that they do not come to see our work as a problem, and to try to influence them gently, as befits an independent NGO operation like ours, viz;
    - Germany, via the Zentrum Liberale Moderne to the Chancellor's Office and MOD
    - Netherlands, via the HCSS to the MOD
    - Poland and Romania, at desk level into their MFAs via their NATO Reps
    - Spain, via special advisers, into the MOD and PM's office (NB this may change very soon with the new Government)
    - Norway, via personal contacts into the MOD
    - HQ NATO, via the Policy Planning Unit into the Sec Gen's office.
    We have latent contacts into other governments which we will activate as needs be as the clusters develop.

    A look at the 'clusters' set up in U.S. and UK shows some prominent names.


    bigger

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


    bigger - bigger

    A ' Cluster Roundup ' (pdf) from July 2018 details its activities in at least 35 countries. Another file reveals (pdf) the local partnering institutions and individuals involved in the programs.

    The Initiatives Guide to Countering Russian Information (pdf) is a rather funny read. It lists the downing of flight MH 17 by a Ukranian BUK missile, the fake chemical incident in Khan Sheikhoun and the Skripal Affair as examples for "Russian disinformation". But at least two of these events, Khan Sheikun via the UK run White Helmets and the Skripal affair, are evidently products of British intelligence disinformation operations.

    The probably most interesting papers of the whole stash is the 'Project Plan' laid out at pages 7-40 of the 2018 budget application v2 (pdf). Under 'Sustainability' it notes:

    The programme is proposed to run until at least March 2019, to ensure that the clusters established in each country have sufficient time to take root, find funding, and demonstrate their effectiveness. FCO funding for Phase 2 will enable the activities to be expanded in scale, reach and scope. As clusters have established themselves, they have begun to access local sources of funding. But this is a slow process and harder in some countries than others. HQ NATO PDD [Public Diplomacy Division] has proved a reliable source of funding for national clusters. The ATA [Atlantic Treaty Association] promises to be the same, giving access to other pots of money within NATO and member nations. Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow.

    The programme has begun to create a critical mass of individuals from a cross society (think tanks, academia, politics, the media, government and the military) whose work is proving to be mutually reinforcing . Creating the network of networks has given each national group local coherence, credibility and reach, as well as good international access. Together, these conditions, plus the growing awareness within governments of the need for this work, should guarantee the continuity of the work under various auspices and in various forms.

    The third part of the budget application (pdf) list the various activities, their output and outcome. The budget plan includes a section that describes 'Risks' to the initiative. These include hacking of the Initiatives IT as well as:

    Adverse publicity generated by Russia or by supporters of Russia in target countries, or by political and interest groups affected by the work of the programme, aimed at discrediting the programme or its participants, or to create political embarrassment.

    We hope that this piece contributes to such embarrassment.

    Posted by b on November 24, 2018 at 11:24 AM | Permalink

    Comments Perfidious ALbion!

    When will we learn?

    pretzelattack , Nov 24, 2018 11:44:00 AM | link

    Coincidentally, or not, i just saw this article at the guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/23/robert-mueller-profile-donald-trump-russia-investigation.
    Anya , Nov 24, 2018 11:57:00 AM | link
    The British government has been running a serious meddling into the US affairs:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-23/mi6-scrambling-stop-trump-releasing-classified-docs-russia-probe

    "The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016."

    A Steele & Skrupal's anti-Russian / anti-Trump saga: https://spectator.org/big-dots-do-they-connect/

    "Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier..."

    For M16 to expose this level of stupidity is stunning.

    james , Nov 24, 2018 11:58:02 AM | link
    thanks b....

    this movement in the west by gov'ts to pay for generating lies, hate and propaganda towards russia is really sick... it is perfect for the military industrial complex corporations though and they seem to be calling the shots in the west, much more so then the voice of the ordinary person who is not interested in war.. i guess the idea is to get the ordinary people to think in terms of hating another country based on lies and that this would be a good thing... it is very sad what uk / usa leadership in the past century has come down to here.... i can only hope that info releases like this will hasten it's demise...

    Ingrian , Nov 24, 2018 12:03:55 PM | link
    Seems to me that this shows the primacy of the City of London, with its offshore network of illicit capital accumulation, within Britain. It is a state within a state or even a financial empire within a state, which, for deep historical reasons isn't subject to the same laws as the rest of the UK.

    The UK's pathological obsession with Russia only makes sense to me as the city's insistence on continued 90s style appropriation of Russia's wealth

    james , Nov 24, 2018 12:15:31 PM | link
    @6 ingrian... things didn't go as planned for the expropriation of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.. it seems the west is still hurting from not being able to exploit Russia fully, as they'd intended...
    et Al , Nov 24, 2018 12:20:09 PM | link

    Let the Doxx wars begin! Sure, Anonymous is not Russian but it will surely now be targeted and smeared as such which would show that it has hit a nerve. British hypocrisy publicly called out. How this all unravels is one to watch. Extra large popcorn and soda for me.

    I think we've all noticed the euro-asslantic press (and friends) on behalf of, willingly and in cooperation with the British intelligence et al 'calling out' numerous Russians as G(R)U/spies/whatever for a while now yet providing less than a shred of credible evidence.

    It seems to me that the UK has far more to lose from doxxing than Russia does. The interference in sovereign allied states to 'manage' who the UK thinks they should appoint does not bode well for such relations.

    Meanwhile in Brussels they are having their cake and eating it, i.e. bemoaning Europe's 'weak response' to Russian propaganda:

    https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/experts-lament-underfunding-of-eu-task-force-countering-russian-disinformation/

    BTW, did anyone read Wired UK's current advertorial (nov 14) by Carl Miller for Brigade 77?

    Forthestate , Nov 24, 2018 12:26:09 PM | link
    "A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times and Neil Buckley from the FT." Subcluster. Love it. Just how crap do you have to be to fail to make it to membership of a full cluster of smear merchants?
    worldblee , Nov 24, 2018 12:33:05 PM | link
    Yet another example of the pot calling the kettle black when in fact the kettle may not be black at all; it's just the pot making up things. "These Russian criminals are using propaganda to show (truths) like the fact the DNC and Clinton campaigns colluded to prevent Sanders from being nominated, so we need to establish a clandestine propaganda network to establish that the Russians are running propaganda!"
    psychohistorian , Nov 24, 2018 12:34:32 PM | link

    ....full cluster of smear merchants". May all the clusters of smear merchants be exposed to the public as the acolytes of evil they are.

    plantman , Nov 24, 2018 12:36:48 PM | link
    "In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia propaganda into the western media stream."

    I doubt very seriously that the British launched this operation without the CIA's implicit and explicit support. This has all the markings of a John Brennan operation that has been launched stealthily to prevent anyone from knowing its real origins.

    The Brits don't act alone, and a project of this magnitude did not begin without Langley's explicit approval.

    Now check out the wording in the above document: "Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow." Think about that. What would have blocked the flow of USG support for this project?? Why, the allegations of collusion against Trump, of course. Naturally, the Republicans are not going to provide money to an operation that threatens to destroy the head of their own party. So, there has been no bipartisan agreement on funding for anti-Russia propaganda

    BUT...the author assures us that the "deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow" Huh?? In other words, the fix is in. Mueller will pardon Trump on collusion charges but the propaganda campaign against Russia will continue...with the full support of both parties. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it...

    m , Nov 24, 2018 12:40:07 PM | link
    This mob was created in the autumn of 2015, according to their site. That would have been about the time -- probably just after -- the Russians intervened in Syria. The Brits had plans for an invasion of Syria in 2009, according to their fave Guardian fish wrap.

    A lot of sour grapes with this so-called 'integrity initiative', IMO. BP was behind a lot of this, I would also think. When Assad pulled the plug on the pipeline through the Levant in 2009, the Brits hacked up a fur ball. It's gone downhill for them ever since. Couldn't happen to a nicer lot. If you can't invade or beat them with proxies, you can at least call them names.

    Jackrabbit , Nov 24, 2018 12:40:58 PM | link
    Anya

    Pat Lang posted a report that strongly implies that charges of Russian influence on Trump are a deliberate falsification: THE CHIMERA OF DONALD TRUMP, RUSSIAN MONEY LAUNDERER :

    If Trump was taking dirty money or engaged in criminal activity with Russians then he was doing it with Felix Sater, who was under the control of the FBI... And who was in charge of the FBI during all of the time that Sater was a signed up FBI snitch? You got it -- Robert Mueller (2001 thru 2013) ...

    It seems quite possible that what is alleged as "Russian meddling" is actually CIA-MI6 meddling, including:

    Steele dossier: To create suspicion in government, media, and later the public

    Leaking of DNC emails to Wikileaks (but calling it a "hack"): To help with election of Trump and link Wikileaks (as agent) to Russian election meddling

    Cambridge Analytica: To provide necessary reasoning for Trump's (certain) win of the electoral college.

    Note: We later found that dozens of firms had undue access to Facebook data. Why did the campaign turn to a British firm instead of an American firm? Well, it had to be a British firm if MI6 was running the (supposed) Facebook targeting for CIA.

    As I have said before, MAGA is a POLICY RESPONSE to the challenge from Russia and China. The election of a Republican faux populist was necessary and Trump, despite his many flaws, was the best candidate for the job.
    Cyril , Nov 24, 2018 1:10:13 PM | link
    The Integrity Initiative's goal is to defend democracy against the truth about Russia. All this is so Orwellian. When will we get the Ministry of Love?
    Russ , Nov 24, 2018 1:16:21 PM | link
    Posted by: james | Nov 24, 2018 12:15:31 PM | 7

    "things didn't go as planned for the expropriation of russia after the fall of the soviet union.. it seems the west is still hurting from not being able to exploit russia fully, as they'd intended..."

    They shot at an elephant and failed to kill it. So yes, out of the combo of frustration, resentment, and fear they hate the resurgent Russia and prefer Cold War II, and if necessary WWIII, to peaceful co-existence. Of course the usual corporate imperative (in this case weapons profiteering) reinforces the mass psychological pathology among the elites.

    The ironic thing is that Putin doesn't prefer to challenge the neoliberal globalist "order" at all, but would happily see Russia take a prominent place within it. It's the US and its UK poodle who are insisting on confrontation.

    GeorgeV , Nov 24, 2018 1:34:08 PM | link
    Great article! It reminded me of what I read in George Orwell's novella "1984." He summed it all up brilliantly in nine words: "War is Peace"; "Freedom is Slavery"; "Ignorance is Strength." The three pillars of political power.
    Sasha , Nov 24, 2018 1:38:39 PM | link
    Since UK has always blocked the "European Intelligence" initiative, on the basis of his pertenence to the "Five Eyes", and as UK is leaving the European Union, where it has always been the Troyan Horse of the US, one would think that all these people belonging to the so called "clusters" should register themselves as "foreign agents" working for UK government...and in this context, new empowerished sovereign governemts into the EU should consider the possibility expelling these traitors as spies of the UK....

    http://www.voltairenet.org/article204051.html

    Some of the "clusters" unmasked here....some, like Ignacio Torreblanca in Spain, are related to the CFR....

    https://www.rt.com/news/444737-uk-funded-campaign-russia-leaks/

    Zanon , Nov 24, 2018 2:12:45 PM | link
    Country list of agents of influence according to the leak:
    • Germany: Harold Elletson ,Klaus NaumannWolf-Ruediger Bengs, Ex Amb Killian, Gebhardt v Moltke, Roland Freudenstein, Hubertus Hoffmann, Bertil Wenger, Beate Wedekind, Klaus Wittmann, Florian Schmidt, Norris v Schirach
    • Sweden, Norway, Finland: Martin Kragh , Jardar Ostbo, Chris Prebensen, Kate Hansen Bundt, Tor Bukkvoll, Henning-Andre Sogaard, Kristen Ven Bruusgard, Henrik O Breitenbauch, Niels Poulsen, Jeppe Plenge, Claus Mathiesen, Katri Pynnoniemi, Ian Robertson, Pauli Jarvenpaa, Andras Racz
    • Netherlands: Dr Sijbren de Jong, Ida Eklund-Lindwall, Yevhen Fedchenko, Rianne Siebenga, Jerry Sullivan, Hunter B Treseder, Chris Quick
    Zanon , Nov 24, 2018 2:13:28 PM | link
    • Spain: Nico de Pedro, Ricardo Blanco Tarno, Eduardo Serra Rexach, Dionisio Urteaga Todo, Dimitri Barua, Fernando Valenzuela Marzo, Marta Garcia, Abraham Sanz, Fernando Maura, Jose Ignacio Sanchez Amor, Jesus Ramon-Laca Clausen, Frances Ghiles, Carmen Claudin, Nika Prislan, Luis Simon, Charles Powell, Mira Milosevich, Daniel Iriarte, Anna Bosch, Mira Milosevich-Juaristi, Tito, Frances Ghiles, Borja Lasheras, Jordi Bacaria, Alvaro Imbernon-Sainz, Nacho Samor
    • US, Canada: Mary Ellen Connell, Anders Aslund, Elizabeth Braw, Paul Goble, David Ziegler Evelyn Farkas, Glen Howard, Stephen Blank, Ian Brzezinski, Thomas Mahnken, John Nevado, Robert Nurick, Jeff McCausland Todd Leventhal
    • UK: Chris Donnelly Amalyah Hart William Browder John Ardis Roderick Collins, Patrick Mileham Deborah Haynes Dan Lafayeedney Chris Hernon Mungo Melvin Rob Dover Julian Moore Agnes Josa David Aaronovitch Stephen Dalziel Raheem Shapi Ben Nimmo Robert Hall Alexander Hoare Steve Jermy Dominic Kennedy Victor Madeira Ed Lucas Dr David Ryall Graham Geale Steve Tatham Natalie Nougayrede
      Alan Riley [email protected] Anne Applebaum Neil Logan Brown James Wilson Primavera Quantrill Bruce Jones David Clark Charles Dick Ahmed Dassu Sir Adam Thompson Lorna Fitzsimons Neil Buckley Richard Titley Euan Grant Alastair Aitken Yusuf Desai Bobo Lo Duncan Allen Chris Bell Peter Mason John Lough Catherine Crozier Robin Ashcroft Johanna Moehring Vadim Kleiner David Fields Alistair Wood Ben Robinson Drew Foxall Alex Finnen Orsyia Lutsevych Charlie Hatton Vladimir Ashurkov Giles Harris Ben Bradshaw Chris Scheurweghs James Nixey Charlie Hornick Baiba Braze J Lindley-French Craig Oliphant Paul Kitching Nick Childs Celia Szusterman James Sherr Alan Parfitt Alzbeta Chmelarova Keir Giles Andy Pryce Zach Harkenrider Kadri Liik Arron Rahaman David Nicholas Igor Sutyagin Rob Sandford Maya Parmar Andrew Wood Richard Slack Ellie Scarnell Nick Smith Asta Skaigiryte Ian Bond Joanna Szostek Gintaras Stonys Nina Jancowicz Nick Washer Ian Williams Joe Green Carl Miller Adrian Bradshaw Clement Daudy Jeremy Blackham Gabriel Daudy Andrew Lucy Stafford Diane Allen Alexandros Papaioannou Paddy Nicoll
    cresty , Nov 24, 2018 2:18:30 PM | link
    Thank you very much for going through all the files, b. Will share far and wide

    [Nov 24, 2018] Now we know created MH17 smear campaign, who financial Steele dossier and created Skripal affair ;-)

    Highly recommended!
    Nov 24, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

    Perfidious Albion: or yet another example of the pot calling the kettle black when in fact the kettle may not be black at all; it's just the pot making up things

    In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia propaganda into the western media stream.

    We have already seen many consequences of this and similar programs which are designed to smear anyone who does not follow the anti-Russian government lines. The 'Russian collusion' smear campaign against Donald Trump based on the Steele dossier was also a largely British operation but seems to be part of a different project.

    The ' Integrity Initiative ' builds 'cluster' or contact groups of trusted journalists, military personal, academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via social media to take action when the British center perceives a need.

    [Nov 24, 2018] When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots psyops, you tend to come up with plots for psyops . The word entrapment comes to mind. Probably self-serving also.

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots "psyops", you tend to come up with plots for "psyops". The word "entrapment" comes to mind. Probably "self-serving" also. ..."
    "... Anti-Russian is just a code word for Globalist, Internationalist. ..."
    "... This is such BS. Since when does Russia have the resources to pull all this off? They have such a complex program that they need the coordinated efforts of all the resources of the WEST? This is nuts. ..."
    Nov 24, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    HowdyDoody , 7 hours ago link

    One of the documents lists a series of propaganda weapons to be used against Russia. One is use of the church as a weapon. That has already been started in Ukraine with Poroshenko buying off regligious leader to split Ukraine Orthodoxy from Russian Orthodoxy. It also explicitly states that the Skripal incident is a 'Dirty Trick' against Russia.

    activisor , 10 hours ago link

    The British political system is on the verge of collapse. BREXIT has finally demonstrated that the Government/ Opposition parties are clearly aligned against the interests of the people. The EU is nothing more than an arm of the Globalist agenda of world domination.

    The US has shown its true colours - sanctioning every country that stands for independent sovereignty is not a good foreign policy, and is destined to turn the tide of public opinion firmly against global hegemony, endless wars, and wealth inequity.

    The old Empire is in its death throes. A new paradigm awaits which will exclude all those who have exploited the many, in order to sit at the top of the pyramid. They cannot escape Karma.

    smacker , 11 hours ago link

    The Western world needs to come to terms with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its aftermath. Today, Russia is led by Putin and he obviously has objectives as any national leader has.

    Western "leaders" need to decide whether Putin:

    1. Is trying to create Soviet Union 2.0, to have a 2nd attempt at ruling the world thru communism and to do this by holding the world to ransom over oil/gas supplies. OR
    2. Is wanting Russia to become a member of the family of nations and of a multi-polar world to improve the lives of Russian people, but is being blocked at every twist and turn by manufactured events like Russia-gate and the Skripal affair and now this latest revelation of anti-Russian propaganda campaigns being coordinated and run out of London.

    Both of the above cannot be true because there are too many contradictions. Which is it??

    Lokiban , 13 hours ago link

    Yes because imagine that that we lived in 1940 without any means to inform ourselves and that media was still in control over the information that reaches us. We would already be in a fullblown war with Russia because of it but now with the Internet and information going around freely only a whimpy 10% of we the people stand behind their desperately wanted war. Imagine that, an informed sheople.
    Can't have that, they cannot do their usual stuff anymore.... good riddance.

    LOL123 , 14 hours ago link

    "250,000 from the US State Department , the documents allege."....... Interesting.

    "During the third Democratic debate on Saturday night, Hillary Clinton called for a "Manhattan-like project" to break encrypted terrorist communications. The project would "bring the government and the tech communities together" to find a way to give law enforcement access to encrypted messages, she said. It's something that some politicians and intelligence officials have wanted for awhile,"........

    ***wasn't the Manhatten project a secret venture?????? Hummmmm"

    Hillary Clinton has all of our encryption keys, including the FBI's . "Encryption keys" is a general reference to several encryption functions hijacked by Hillary and her surrogate ENTRUST. They include hash functions (used to indicate whether the contents have been altered in transit), PKI public/private key infrastructure, SSL (secure socket layer), TLS (transport layer security), the Dual_EC_DRBG NSA algorithm and certificate authorities.

    The convoluted structure managed by the "Federal Common Policy" group has ceded to companies like ENTRUST INC the ability to sublicense their authority to third parties who in turn manage entire other networks in a Gordian knot of relationships clearly designed to fool the public to hide their devilish criminality. All roads lead back to Hillary and the Rose Law Firm."- patriots4truth

    artistant , 14 hours ago link

    But, but some people keep getting away with it.

    hooligan2009 , 15 hours ago link

    When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots "psyops", you tend to come up with plots for "psyops". The word "entrapment" comes to mind. Probably "self-serving" also.

    larryriedel , 15 hours ago link

    FBI/Anonymous can use this story to support a narrative that social media bots posting memes is a problem for everybody, and it's not a partisan issue. The idea is that fake news and unrestricted social media are inherently dangerous, and both the West and Russia are exploiting that, so governments need to agree to restrict the ability to use those platforms for political speech, especially without using True Names.

    Baron Samedi , 15 hours ago link

    Oilygawkies in the UK and USSA seem to be letting their spooks have a good-humored (rating here on the absurd transparency of these ops) contest to see who can come up with the most surreal propaganda psy-ops.

    But they probably also serve as LHO distractions from something genuinely sleazy.

    headless blogger , 15 hours ago link

    Anti-Russian is just a code word for Globalist, Internationalist. Anything that is remotely like Nationalism is the true enemy of these Globalist/Internationalists, which is what the Top-Ape Bolshevik promoted: see Vladimir Lenin and his quotes on how he believed fully in "internationalism" for a world without borders. Ironic how they Love the butchers of the Soviet Union but hate Russia. It is ALL ABOUT IDEOLOGY to these people and "the means justify the ends".

    They are frightening people.

    Push , 15 hours ago link

    Basically, if one acquires factual information from an internet source, which leads to overturning the propaganda to which we're all subjected, then it MUST have come from Putin. This is the direction they're headed. Anyone speaking out against the official story is obviously a Russian spy.

    Xena fobe , 15 hours ago link

    "Instutute for Statecraft"? Seriously?

    OverTheHedge , 11 hours ago link

    "Substitute for Statecraft"

    Fify ;-)

    koan , 16 hours ago link

    The UK is waging psyop against their own people using the Russians as an excuse to further oppress the population, especially the white population.

    FIFY.

    East Indian , 16 hours ago link

    Never thought Putin would be the symbol of free speech! The totalitarian EU and Deep State can come out of closet and denounce their predecessors.

    brewing_it , 17 hours ago link

    If you call ******** on the whole Russia cyberscare, you will be labeled a puppet of Putin.

    The establishment is afraid of free thinking men and women that can call ******** when they see and hear it.

    AriusArmenian , 17 hours ago link

    Better to call it the Anti-Integrity Initiative. UK cretins up to their usual dirty tricks - let them choke on their poison. The judgement of history will eventually catch up with them.

    Mike Rotsch , 17 hours ago link

    A good 'ole economic collapse will give western countries a chance to purge their crazy leaders before they involve us all in a thermonuclear war. Short everything with your entire accounts.

    RealistDuJour , 17 hours ago link

    This is such BS. Since when does Russia have the resources to pull all this off? They have such a complex program that they need the coordinated efforts of all the resources of the WEST? This is nuts.

    Isn't it just as likely someone in the WEST planted this cache, intending Anonymous to find it?

    HRClinton , 18 hours ago link

    When two sides fight - especially white v white - the hidden 3rd party (((instigator))) wins.

    How dumb and mallaleable can these goys be? Pretty dumb and mallaleable, it seems.

    J S Bach , 18 hours ago link

    Any propaganda coming from the UK or US is strictly zionist. EVERYTHING they put out is to the benefit of Israel and the "lobby". Russia isn't perfect, but if they're an enemy of the latter, then they should NOT be considered a foe to all thinking and conscientious people.

    OverTheHedge , 11 hours ago link

    Yesterday, the BBC had a thing on Thai workers in Israel, and how they keep dying of accidents, their general level of slavery etc. Very odd to have a negative Israel story, so I wonder who upset whom, and what the ongoing status will be.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-middle-east-46311922/thai-labourers-in-israel-tell-of-harrowing-conditions

    Thai labourers in Israel tell of harrowing conditions

    A year-long BBC investigation has discovered widespread abuse of Thai nationals living and working in Israel - under a scheme organized by the two governments.

    Many are subjected to unsafe working practices and squalid, unsanitary living conditions. Some are overworked, others underpaid and there are dozens of unexplained deaths.

    Herdee , 18 hours ago link

    England and the U.S. don't like their very poor and rotten social conditions put out for the public to see. Both countries have severely deteriorating problems on their streets because of bankrupt governments printing money for foreign wars.

    Quadruple_Rainbow , 18 hours ago link

    More of the same fraudulent duality while alleged so called but not money etc continues to flow (everything is criminal) and the cesspool of a hierarchy pretends it's business as usual.

    This isn't about maintaining balance in a lie this is about disclosing the truth and agendas (Agenda 21 now Agenda 2030 = The New Age Religion is Never Going To Be Saturnism). The layers of the hierarchy are a lie so unless the alleged so called leaders of those layers are publicly providing testimony and confession then everything that is being spoon fed to the pablum puking public through all sources is a lie.

    Herdee , 18 hours ago link

    They're afraid of stories like this: https://www.rt.com/news/444737-uk-funded-campaign-russia-leaks/

    HRClinton , 17 hours ago link

    Operating on a budget of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of (((local politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics))).

    The (((team))) is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference in European affairs, while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim.

    gatorengineer , 18 hours ago link

    Do Neocons get time and half for Overtime, they sure have been putting in a bunch lately.

    [Nov 23, 2018] Sitting on corruption hill

    Highly recommended!
    Mueller is in the cave just below the Clinton foundation" sign. Entrance is behind the bag with the dollars ;-)
    Nov 23, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Nov 12, 2018] Obama s CIA Secretly Intercepted Congressional Communications About Whistleblowers

    Highly recommended!
    So the USA Congress operates under CIA surveillance... Due to CIA access to Saudi money the situation is probably much worse then described as CIA tried to protect both its level of influence and shadow revenue streams.
    Notable quotes:
    "... The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch, is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing. ..."
    "... I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring." -- Intelligence Community Inspector General 2014 ..."
    "... The disclosures from 2014 were released late Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "The fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly," wrote Grassley in a statement. ..."
    "... According to Grassley, he originally began trying to have the letters declassified more than four years ago but was met with "bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper." ..."
    "... Back in 2014, Senators Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) had asked then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the possibility of the CIA monitoring Congressional communications ..."
    "... CIA security compiled a report that include excerpts of whistleblower-related communications and this reports was eventually shared with the Director of the Office of Security and the Chief of the Counterintelligence Center" who "briefed the CIA Deputy Director, Deputy Executive Director, and the Chiefs of Staff for both the CIA Director and the Deputy Director ..."
    "... During Director Clapper's tenure, senior intelligence officials engaged in a deception spree regarding mass surveillance," said Wyden upon Clapper's retirement in 2016. ..."
    Nov 02, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Sharyl Attkisson,

    • CIA intercepted Congressional emails about whistleblowers in 2014
    • The Inspector General expressed concern about "potential compromise to whistleblower confidentiality" and "chilling effect"

    Newly-declassified documents show the CIA intercepted sensitive Congressional communications about intelligence community whistleblowers.

    The intercepts occurred under CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The new disclosures are contained in two letters of "Congressional notification" originally written to key members of Congress in March 2014, but kept secret until now.

    In the letters, then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough tells four key members of Congress that during "routing counterintelligence monitoring of Government computer systems," the CIA collected emails between Congressional staff and the CIA's head of whistleblowing and source protection. McCullough states that he's concerned "about the potential compromise to whistleblower confidentiality and the consequent 'chilling effect' that the present [counterintelligence] monitoring system might have on Intelligence Community whistleblowing."

    The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch, is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing.

    "Most of these emails concerned pending and developing whistleblower complaints," McCullough states in his letters to lead Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees at the time: Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia); and Representatives Michael Rogers (R-Michigan) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland). McCullough adds that the type of monitoring that occurred was "lawful and justified for [counterintelligence] purposes" but

    "I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring." -- Intelligence Community Inspector General 2014

    The disclosures from 2014 were released late Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "The fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly," wrote Grassley in a statement.

    According to Grassley, he originally began trying to have the letters declassified more than four years ago but was met with "bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper."

    Grassley adds that he repeated his request to declassify the letters under the Trump administration, but that Trump intelligence officials failed to respond. The documents were finally declassified this week after Grassley appealed to the new Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.

    History of alleged surveillance abuses

    Back in 2014, Senators Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) had asked then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the possibility of the CIA monitoring Congressional communications. A Congressional staffer involved at the time says Clapper's response seemed to imply that if Congressional communications were "incidentally" collected by the CIA, the material would not be saved or reported up to CIA management.

    "In the event of a protected disclosure by a whistleblower somehow comes to the attention of personnel responsible for monitoring user activity," Clapper wrote to Grassley and Wyden on July 25, 2014, "there is no intention for such disclosure to be reported to agency leadership under an insider threat program."

    However, the newly-declassified letters indicate the opposite happened in reality with the whistleblower-related emails:

    "CIA security compiled a report that include excerpts of whistleblower-related communications and this reports was eventually shared with the Director of the Office of Security and the Chief of the Counterintelligence Center" who "briefed the CIA Deputy Director, Deputy Executive Director, and the Chiefs of Staff for both the CIA Director and the Deputy Director."

    Clapper has previously come under fire for his 2013 testimony to Congress in which he denied that the national Security Agency (NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Weeks later, Clapper's statement was proven false by material leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

    "During Director Clapper's tenure, senior intelligence officials engaged in a deception spree regarding mass surveillance," said Wyden upon Clapper's retirement in 2016.

    "Top officials, officials who reported to Director Clapper, repeatedly misled the American people and even lied to them."

    Clapper has repeatedly denied lying, and said that any incorrect information he provided was due to misunderstandings or mistakes.

    Clapper and Brennan have also acknowledged taking part in the controversial practice of "unmasking" the protected names of U.S. citizens - including people connected to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump - whose communications were "incidentally" captured in US counterintelligence operations. Unmaskings within the US intelligence community are supposed to be extremely rare and only allowed under carefully justified circumstances. This is to protect the privacy rights of American citizens. But it's been revealed that Obama officials requested unmaskings on a near daily basis during the election year of 2016.

    Clapper and Brennan have said their activities were lawful and not politically motivated. Both men have become vocal critics of President Trump.

    * * *

    Order the New York Times bestseller "The Smear" today online or borrow from your library

    Keter , 5 hours ago link

    "ah, ah, ah, em, not intentionally." Clapper - ROFL

    numapepi , 9 hours ago link

    Can you imagine what kind of place the US would have been under Clinton?!!!!!!

    All the illegality, spying, conniving, dirty tricks, arcancides, selling us out to the highest bidder and full on attack against our Constitution would be in full swing!

    Chaotix , 9 hours ago link

    When intel entities can operate unimpeded and un-monitored, it spells disaster for everyone and everything outside that parameter. Their operations go unnoticed until some stray piece of information exposes them. There are many facilities that need to be purged and audited, but since this activity goes on all over the world, there is little to stop it. Even countries that pledge allegiance and cooperation are blindsiding their allies with bugs, taps, blackmails, and other crimes. Nobody trusts nobody, and that's a horrid fact to contend with in an 'advanced' civilization.

    numapepi , 9 hours ago link

    Almost sounds like the Praetorian guard?

    The real power behind the throne.

    Rhys12 , 10 hours ago link

    Forget the political parties. When the intelligence agencies spy on everyone, they know all about politicians of both parties before they ever win office, and make sure they have enough over them to control them. They were asleep at the switch when Trump won, because no one, including them, believed he would ever win. Hillary was their candidate, the State Department is known overseas as "the political arm of the CIA". They were furious when she lost, hence the circus ever since.

    iAmerican10 , 11 hours ago link

    From its founding by the Knights of Malta the JFK&MLK-assassinating, with Mossad 9/11-committing CIA has been the Vatican's US Fifth Column action branch, as are the FBI and NSA: with an institutional hiring preference for Roman Catholic "altared boy" closet-queen psychopaths "because they're practiced at keeping secrets."

    Think perverts Strzok, Brennan, and McCabe "licked it off the wall?"

    Smi1ey , 11 hours ago link

    We need to bring back FOIA.

    Too much secrecy.

    And how is that Pentagon audit doing, btw?

    Chaotix , 9 hours ago link

    I agree with you 100%. Problem is, tons of secret technology and information have been passed out to the private sector. And the private sector is not bound to the FOIA requests, therefore neutralizing the obligation for government to disclose classified material. They sidestepped their own policies to cooperate with corrupt MIC contractors, and recuse themselves from disclosing incriminating evidence.

    archie bird , 12 hours ago link

    Everyone knows that spying runs in the fam. 44th potus Mom and Gma BOTH. An apple doesn't fall from the tree. If ppl only knew the true depth of the evil and corruption we would be in the hospital with a heart attack. Gilded age is here and has been, since our democracy was hijacked (McCain called it an intervention) back in 1963. Unfortunately it started WAY back before then when (((they))) stole everything with the installation of the Fed.

    Dornier27 , 15 hours ago link

    The FBI and CIA have long since slipped the controls of Congress and the Constitution. President Trump should sign an executive order after the mid terms and stand down at least the FBI and subject the CIA to a senate investigation.

    America needs new agencies that are accountable to the peoples elected representatives.

    greasyknees , 16 hours ago link

    Not news. The CIA likely has had access to any and all electronic communication for at least a decade.

    Lord JT , 19 hours ago link

    what? clapper and brennan being dirty hacks behind the scenes while parading around as patriots? say it aint so!

    Racin Rabitt , 20 hours ago link

    A determined care has been used to cultivate in D.C., a system that swiftly decapitates the whistleblowers. Resulting in an increasingly subservient cadre of civil servants who STHU and play ostrich, or drool at what scraps are about to roll off the master's table as the slide themselves into a better position, taking advantage to sell vice, weapons, and slaves.

    Westcoastliberal , 21 hours ago link

    What the hell does the CIA have to do with ANYTHING in the United States? Aren't they limited to OUTSIDE the U.S.? So why would they be involved in domestic communications for anything? These clowns need to be indicted for TREASON!

    5onIt , 22 hours ago link

    Clapper and Brennan, Brennan and Clapper. These two guys are the damn devil.

    It makes me ill.

    MuffDiver69 , 22 hours ago link

    I'll take " Police State" for five hundred Alex

    [Nov 12, 2018] Protecting Americans from foreign influence, smells with COINTELPRO. Structural witch-hunt effect like during the McCarthy era is designed to supress decent to neoliberal oligarcy by Andre Damon and Joseph Kishore

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... There is something very, very COINTELPRO about the idea of "protecting" Americans from "foreign influence", and that should give liberals the heebie-jeebies. There is also an ongoing structural witch-hunt effect, unchanged from the McCarthy era, when internet firm heads are called to testify before congress. ..."
    "... Bottom line - the Russians may have had no more effect on the election than the loose change in your house has on your salary. ..."
    "... "Even more extreme measures are being planned and implemented, motivated by the basic principle that the greater the lie, the more aggressive the methods required to enforce it." ..."
    "... "While the extortionate salaries commanded by the BBC's biggest stars are justified by "market rates," this underlying premise is never challenged by the women who are leading the gender pay fight. They don't oppose the capitalist market; they just want a bigger slice of the pie, with the working class footing the bill via contributions to the £4 billion annual license fee." - BBC gender pay row: Selective outrage of wealthy women ..."
    "... The greater the inequality, the greater the lie to enforce it. ..."
    "... While WSWS was uniquely correct in exposing Bush, Powell, and the ruling-elite structure of the U.S. as using deceit and lies to start an 'aggressive war' (the ultimate war crime), your description of this corrupt system of global power headquartered in the U.S. did not fully diagnose and expose it for what it was; a disguised global capitalist EMPIRE. ..."
    "... Your description could have more effectively warned American citizen/'subjects' and the world that "Rather, it is a war of colonial (Empire) conquest, driven by a series of economic and geo-political aims that center on the seizure of Iraq's oil resources and the assertion of US global (Empire, not merely) hegemony." ..."
    "... In any case, Andre and Joseph, thanks for reminding readers of this dark and deceitful moment of U.S. history in starting another 'aggressive war' almost two decades ago --- which wars will unfortunately continue until Americans themselves expose and ignite an essential Second America "Revolution Against Empire" [Justin duRivage] ..."
    "... The Anglo-American-Israelite Empire is globally entrenched and enjoying expansion since 1945 ..."
    "... I must admit myself I am disturbed by the sheer volume of unchallenged propaganda regarding these claims in the past few months. The media talking heads and various analysts don't ever really say what the implication of what their claims really mean-war. We are in an age of new mccarthyism ..."
    "... What was amazing about Powell's charade was that even if Old Bad Ass as I call Saddam had had some Wombars of Mass Destruction they posed no danger whatsoever! It was obvious 9/11 had put the masses into a tizzy and they would have attacked Mars if told to! ..."
    "... Yes, the "New Pearl Harbour" called for and carried out by the authors of the "Project for a New American Century" worked as planned. ..."
    "... Quite right. My late father was a structural design engineer, specializing in large steel structures like the WTC and he called it as soon as the buildings imploded! ..."
    "... Yes, Michael, the 'media/propaganda-sector' of this seven-sectored Disguised Global Capitalist EMPIRE is currently the most effective sector --- but the other six; corporate, financial, militarist, extra-legal, CFR 'Plot-Tanks', and of course the dual-party Vichy-political facade of the 'rougher-talking' neocon 'R' Vichy Party and the 'smoother-lying' neoliberal-con 'D' Vichy Party are all helping to keep the Empire sound, hidden, and empowered over the only American citizen/'subjects' who could possibly form a "Political Revolution against Empire" ..."
    "... While it is true that D.C. is run by delusional psychotics that does not mean they are irrational as far as their greed is concerned. ..."
    "... As R. Luxemburg pleaded that WWI was not "our" war but war of bunch of aristocrats wanting to divide colonies and bunch of bankers wanted their bad speculative loans repaid, using working class flesh and blood. ..."
    Feb 20, 2018 | www.wsws.org

    Wnt1 • a month ago

    This is one of the most sensible editorials on the Russia issue I've seen, and it is true, insofar as it goes. There is something very, very COINTELPRO about the idea of "protecting" Americans from "foreign influence", and that should give liberals the heebie-jeebies. There is also an ongoing structural witch-hunt effect, unchanged from the McCarthy era, when internet firm heads are called to testify before congress.

    That said, I wouldn't dismiss the effect of the Russian involvement, or the relevance of the charges against Trump and his people. Bear in mind that the Party of McCarthy has been all about spying on its opponents from the days of HUAC. Nixon's break-in at the Watergate Hotel didn't singlehandedly decide the election ... but who would believe that was the only underhanded tactic he used? Republicans believe that if you're not cheating, you're not trying -- holding out for any ethical standard makes you inherently disloyal and unworthy of support. Something like Kavanaugh's involvement in the hacking of Democrats in 2003 ( http://www.foxnews.com/poli... ) should be no surprise; neither should the "Guccifer" hack that put the Democrats' data in the hands of Wikileaks. (Their subsequent attempts to demand Wikileaks not publish such a newsworthy leak, of course, is the sort of thing that undermines their position with me!)

    Bottom line - the Russians may have had no more effect on the election than the loose change in your house has on your salary.

    But if you go back in your house after the Republicans were minding it, don't be surprised if together with the missing couch change you notice some missing silverware, your kitchen tap has been sawed off, and the laptop is short half its RAM. By the time you've catalogued everything missing, the stolen brass part from the gas main downstairs might have blown you to smithereens.

    Greg • 8 months ago
    "Even more extreme measures are being planned and implemented, motivated by the basic principle that the greater the lie, the more aggressive the methods required to enforce it."

    There are many reasons the bourgeoisie is unfit to rule. Each one of them is bound up with the lies required to enforce its rule. The greater its unfitness, "the greater the lie, the more aggressive the methods required to enforce it.

    "While the extortionate salaries commanded by the BBC's biggest stars are justified by "market rates," this underlying premise is never challenged by the women who are leading the gender pay fight. They don't oppose the capitalist market; they just want a bigger slice of the pie, with the working class footing the bill via contributions to the £4 billion annual license fee." - BBC gender pay row: Selective outrage of wealthy women

    The greater the inequality, the greater the lie to enforce it.

    Alan MacDonald • 8 months ago
    While WSWS was uniquely correct in exposing Bush, Powell, and the ruling-elite structure of the U.S. as using deceit and lies to start an 'aggressive war' (the ultimate war crime), your description of this corrupt system of global power headquartered in the U.S. did not fully diagnose and expose it for what it was; a disguised global capitalist EMPIRE.

    Your description could have more effectively warned American citizen/'subjects' and the world that "Rather, it is a war of colonial (Empire) conquest, driven by a series of economic and geo-political aims that center on the seizure of Iraq's oil resources and the assertion of US global (Empire, not merely) hegemony."

    In any case, Andre and Joseph, thanks for reminding readers of this dark and deceitful moment of U.S. history in starting another 'aggressive war' almost two decades ago --- which wars will unfortunately continue until Americans themselves expose and ignite an essential Second America "Revolution Against Empire" [Justin duRivage]

    Ambricourt -> Alan MacDonald • 8 months ago
    The Anglo-American-Israelite Empire is globally entrenched and enjoying expansion since 1945. It is time radical critiques of its values, power and methods should call it by its right name.
    Bob Marley • 8 months ago
    I must admit myself I am disturbed by the sheer volume of unchallenged propaganda regarding these claims in the past few months. The media talking heads and various analysts don't ever really say what the implication of what their claims really mean-war. We are in an age of new mccarthyism
    michaelroloff • 8 months ago
    What was amazing about Powell's charade was that even if Old Bad Ass as I call Saddam had had some Wombars of Mass Destruction they posed no danger whatsoever! It was obvious 9/11 had put the masses into a tizzy and they would have attacked Mars if told to!
    Terry Lawrence -> michaelroloff • 8 months ago
    Yes, the "New Pearl Harbour" called for and carried out by the authors of the "Project for a New American Century" worked as planned.
    michaelroloff -> Terry Lawrence • 8 months ago
    don't tell me that you think that the blow-back that was 9/11 is a conspiracy - if you do, be so kind as to mention specific conspirators!
    Terry Lawrence -> michaelroloff • 8 months ago
    Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, are a few obvious ones, . . . and that famous CIA asset, Bin Laden, to recruit the expendable hijackers.
    michaelroloff -> Terry Lawrence • 8 months ago
    just because it was a convenient act for them to do what they wanted in conquering iraq is not reason that idiots like that are capable of planning and concealing the numerous co-conspirators to arrange something like 9..11. imperialism can always count on blowback to have occasion for further crimes. there is the slim chance that they knew what was being planned and that they let it happen - except that none of those folks is evil enough for that. not even dick cheney. what i love about all conspiracy theories of the american kind is that they never nam or show an actual conspirator conspiring. look at one of the truly great failed conspiracy, that of the 20th july 1944 in germany that was meant to kill hitler and how many people were arrested in no time at all and executed..
    Terry Lawrence michaelroloff • 8 months ago
    A "conspiracy" is just any two or more people getting together to discuss something affecting one or more other people without them being party to the discussion. Like a surprise birthday party, for instance. Obviously the "official" version of the 9/11 events is also a "conspiracy theory" that 19 mostly Saudi Arabians led by a guy hiding in a cave in Afghanistan conspired to carry out co-ordinated attacks that just happened to coincide with most of the USAF being conveniently off in Alaska and northern Canada on an exercise that day, and another "coinciding exercise" simulating a multiple hijacking being carried out in the northeast US thereby confusing the Air Traffic Controllers as to whether the hijackings were "real world or exercise", significantly delaying the response, among other things.

    Do you really believe that WTC 7, a steel frame building which was not adjacent to WTC 1 & 2, and was NOT hit by any airplanes, coincidentally collapsed due to low temperature paper and furniture office fires? Something that has never happened before or since? Or that such low temperature fires would cause the massive heavily reinforced concrete central core/elevator shaft to collapse first, pulling the rest of the building inward onto it in classic controlled demolition technique?

    It is getting more difficult to find the videos showing that now as Google, as with WSWS articles, is pushing them off the front pages of results, while Snopes has put out a some very misleading reports that set up false "straw man" claims and then "disprove" them. Even the "disproofs" are false.

    For instance, a Snopes report on the WTC 7 collapse states: "relied heavily on discredited claims, none of which were new, including:

    Jet fuel cannot melt steel beams (This claim is misleading, as steel beams do to not need to melt completely to be compromised structurally).

    A sprinkler system would have prevented temperatures from rising high enough to cause to cause structural damage. (This claim ignores the fact that a crash from a 767 jet would likely destroy such a system.)

    The structural system would have been protected by fireproofing material (similarly, such a system would have been damaged in a 767 crash). "

    Jet fuel, which is Kerosene, burns at around 575º in open air, which was the case in WTC buildings 1 & 2. Most of it was vaporized by the impact with the buildings and burned of within minutes. At any rate, 575º is far below the point at which structural steel specifically designed to withstand high temperature fires like that used in the World Trade Centre buildings is weakened.

    All of which is irrelevant, as are the other "points" made by Snopes, because Building 7 was not hit by an airplane and there was no jet fuel involved. Something conveniently "overlooked" by Snopes and other similar misleading "disproofs". Not to mention that the Intelligence establishment is busy putting out false trails constantly which use, for instance, obviously faked photos or videos of the three WTC buildings collapsing to discredit the real videos and photos by setting up "straw men" they can then "disprove" and point to as "evidence" that people who don't believe the official version are "creating fake news".

    liz_imp Terry Lawrence • 8 months ago
    Brilliant points!! :)
    Carolyn Zaremba Terry Lawrence • 8 months ago
    Quite right. My late father was a structural design engineer, specializing in large steel structures like the WTC and he called it as soon as the buildings imploded!
    Terry Lawrence michaelroloff • 8 months ago
    "The perpetrators and their conspiracy is not a theory since it has been proved."

    By "proved" I assume you are referring to "proofs" such as the fantastical claim that Mohammed Atta's passport was allegedly and fortuitously "found" when it supposedly survived the 600 mph impact of the 767 he was supposedly piloting with a huge steel and concrete building, survived the huge fireball it was supposedly in the middle of unscorched, and conveniently fluttered to the ground intact to land at the feet of an FBI agent who immediately realized it must have belonged to one of the hijackers!

    Even Hans Christian Andersen couldn't invent Fairy Tales like that.

    Carolyn Zaremba michaelroloff • 8 months ago
    See my comment above. It is the "official" explanation that is a fantasy.
    michaelroloff Carolyn Zaremba • 8 months ago
    the best that conspiracy theorist can do is, invariably, to call proven facts "just another theory " which only proves that they are actually aware that they are full of hot air! zarembas father as a structural engineer unless a fantasy is certainly better off among the dead than among the living and perpetrating his ignorance of steel and weight and fire onto the world!
    clubmarkgirard michaelroloff • 8 months ago
    Just because all the details aren't known as to who conspired and why there's enough holes in the "official conspiracy theory" of 19 hijackers to conclude that this could not have been pulled off without some conspiring on the American side. Certainly the the neocons benefited greatly from these attacks. So motive is there for sure.
    Alan MacDonald michaelroloff • 8 months ago
    Yes, Michael, the 'media/propaganda-sector' of this seven-sectored Disguised Global Capitalist EMPIRE is currently the most effective sector --- but the other six; corporate, financial, militarist, extra-legal, CFR 'Plot-Tanks', and of course the dual-party Vichy-political facade of the 'rougher-talking' neocon 'R' Vichy Party and the 'smoother-lying' neoliberal-con 'D' Vichy Party are all helping to keep the Empire sound, hidden, and empowered over the only American citizen/'subjects' who could possibly form a "Political Revolution against Empire"
    Kalen • 8 months ago
    While it is true that D.C. is run by delusional psychotics that does not mean they are irrational as far as their greed is concerned.

    There is nothing to win in global nuke war, all know it while the outcome would be surely the current global oligarchy loosing grip on population destroying the system that works for them so well giving chance to what they dread socialist revolution they would have been much weaker to counter.

    Regional conflicts are just positioning of oligarchy for management of global oligarchic country club while strict class morality is maintained.

    What I do not we are conditions for war (split of global ruling elites) while what I see is broad propaganda of war as a excuse to clamp down on fake enemy in order to control respective populations while there is factual unity among world oligarchy.

    As R. Luxemburg pleaded that WWI was not "our" war but war of bunch of aristocrats wanting to divide colonies and bunch of bankers wanted their bad speculative loans repaid, using working class flesh and blood.

    She died abandoned by those on the left who embraced the war for their political aspirations, she was murdered for her true internationalism i.e. No war fought between working people of one country and working people of another country.

    Alan MacDonald Kalen • 8 months ago
    Kalen, it's only effective to use the correct and understandable term 'Empire' in exposing, warning, and motivating average Americans --- since very few even know what words like; oligarchy, plutocracy, fascism, authoritarianism, corporate-state, or Wolin's 'inverted totalitarianism' mean --- let alone could ever serve as rallying cries for the coming essential Second American Revolution against EMPIRE.

    As Pat would have shouted if Tom had taken the Paine to edit his call, "Give me Liberty over EMPIRE, or Give me Death!"

    Carolyn Zaremba Alan MacDonald • 8 months ago
    Do you really believe that average Americans are that stupid? Shame on you!
    Alan MacDonald Carolyn Zaremba • 8 months ago
    "Sweet Carolyn" OH OH OH --- Yes, only a very small percentage of Americans understand that our former country, the U.S. of America, is categorically, provably, and absolutely a new form of Empire, and is inexorably the first in world history an; 'effectively-disguised', 'truly-global', 'dual-party Vichy', and 'capitalist-fueled' EMPIRE --- an EMPIRE, really just an EMPIRE!

    Just do an honest survey, "Sweet Carolyn", yourself, and if you're not a "Sweet Liarlyn", you will have to admit that essentially ZERO of the first 1000 people you ask, will say --- "Oh ya, Carolyn, of course I know that this whole effin 'system' that others less informed may still be so stupid that they think they live in a real country, when I (enter their name) do solemnly swear is just an effin EMPIRE, which is so well disguised, that these few idiots who don't understand that they are just citizen/'subjects' of this monsterous EMPIRE."

    Do the survey, "Sweet Carolyn" and if you don't lie to yourself --- which maybe you do, because HELL, your job is to lie to others (so it's quite likely that you'll lie about anything) --- you'll find that exactly zero average Americans have the effin slightest idea in the world that their great 'country' is actually an effin EMPIRE.

    HELL, Carolyn, almost half the Americans repeatedly yell, "We're number ONE", "We're number ONE", that their brains would rather rattle themselves to death than even let logic, history, knowledge, or anything into their addled and propaganda filled heads!

    liz_imp Alan MacDonald • 8 months ago
    Personal attacks are not allowed on this site.
    Alan MacDonald liz_imp • 8 months ago
    Sorry, Liz-imp, are you a friend of "Sweet Carolyn" --- or some other relation? Perhaps working together?
    dmorista • 8 months ago
    Excellent article, and it did a particularly good job of tying together the foreign policy and domestic policy stratagems of a major faction of the U.S. ruling class. I, for one, do not doubt that the Russians conduct some sort of cyber warfare against the U.S.; but that must be understood by considering the fact that every major governmental, political, military, and business organization on the face of the Earth must now operate in this manner. A friend of mine's son, who was in the Army, pointed out that the big players, by a wide margin, in spying on and to some degree interfering in the U.S. domestic scene are China and Israel. Kevin Barrett has written and said on various radio shows that much of what is attributed to the "Russians" are actually the actions of Russian/Israeli dual citizens, many of whom move freely between the U.S., Russia, and Israel. And, of course, the U.S. runs major spy and manipulation operations in more countries than any other nation of Earth, and U.S. based corporations are busy both inside the U.S. and in foreign places in similar activities.

    It is clearly a desire of significant sectors, of the Capitalist rulers of the U.S., to repress dissent and political activities that oppose their agendas. It took them a few years to realize that their old methods using TV, hate radio, magazines, direct mail, and newspapers were losing their effectiveness. They have been increasing their attacks on leftist websites, hacking into websites, closing websites using phonied-up "national security" justifications, employing numerous trolls, and establishing and funding more far right websites, such as Breitbart and Infowars. These efforts are most effective when they are not overpowering and heavy handed.

    The classic book on this was the 1988 book "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" by Noam Chomsky and Edward Hermann. Rob Williams has updated the concept for the internet age in
    <http: www.vermontindependent.org ="" the-post-truth-world-reviving-the-propaganda-model-of-news-for-our-digital-age=""/>.

    The strategy is nothing new, the methods are merely updated and use the latest technologies.

    Maxwell dmorista • 8 months ago
    Superb post.

    I guess the lesson to be learned here is that rigging elections through byzantine electoral laws and billion dollar corporate slush funds is a thing of the past. All you need now is 13 amateur IT goomba's with a marketing scheme and twitter accounts. Well, sure is a fragile "World's Sole Superpower" we got here. Go Team?

    [Oct 25, 2018] Putin jokes with Bolton: Did the eagle eaten all the olives

    Highly recommended!
    John Bolton suffers a crippling shortage of olives.
    Notable quotes:
    "... "As far as I remember, the US coat of arms features a bald eagle that holds 13 arrows in one talon and an olive branch in another, which is a symbol of a peace-loving policy," ..."
    "... "Looks like your eagle has already eaten all the olives; are the arrows all that is left?" ..."
    Oct 25, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    Meeting with US national security adviser John Bolton in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a comment about Washington's hostility that went right over the hawkish diplomat's head. "As far as I remember, the US coat of arms features a bald eagle that holds 13 arrows in one talon and an olive branch in another, which is a symbol of a peace-loving policy," Putin said in a meeting with Bolton in Moscow on Tuesday.

    "I have a question," the Russian president added. "Looks like your eagle has already eaten all the olives; are the arrows all that is left?"

    boz , October 23, 2018 at 3:49 pm

    The Saker has the transcript of Putin's comments at a recent plenary in Sochi, small snippets of which have already appeared in the media.

    http://thesaker.is/president-putin-meeting-of-the-valdai-international-discussion-club-2/

    About 15-20 minutes to get through (the facilitator seems like a bit of a wet blanket), but fascinating to read, if like me, most of what you hear about Putin has been filtered through the MSM.

    A couple of reflections:

    Putin does detail. He is courteous and patient. He is highly pragmatic and appears to be widely (and, for my money, effectively) briefed.

    Olga , October 23, 2018 at 5:33 pm

    For those of us lucky enough to follow VVP in his native language – it is indeed a delight. (And – mind you – it was only after I took the time to follow him in his native language that I was able to appreciate this person and his leadership abilities. If one follows him through NYT – no chance that would give one an accurate picture.)
    He is erudite, informed, and has a wicked sense of humour, as shown in this clip:
    https://www.rt.com/news/442068-putin-olives-eagle-bolton/

    [Oct 25, 2018] DNC Emails--A Seth Attack Not a Russian Hack by Publius Tacitus

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Now there is new information, courtesy of the National Security Agency aka NSA, that confirms that the NSA has Top Secret and Secret documents that are responsive to a FOIA request for material on Seth Rich and his contacts with Julian Assange. While the content of these documents remain classified for now, they may provide documentary proof that Seth Rich "dropped boxed" the emails to Julian. If these documents are declassified, a big hole could be blown in the claim that Russia hacked the DNC. ..."
    "... Another case of "Arkancide"? ..."
    "... I came to this summary today after I had turned my T.V. off since all the news is now about the "bombs" being mailed to the Clintons and Obamas. (I was afraid a story line would soon continue that the bombs were from Russia via the White House. I can no longer feel certain that anything reported in the "news" is true and wonder what part of it is made up from thin air. ..."
    "... And I am sad that such a huge number of American citizens simply no longer care what is true or what is not true. They believe only what they want to believe. Mostly I am sad that Seth Rich lived and died and few seem to want to know the facts surrounding his death. ..."
    "... Guccifer 2.0 was nothing but an elaborate joke. ..."
    Oct 25, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    Tacitus01

    If Russia had actually "hacked" the DNC emails then the National Security Agency would have had proof of such activity. In fact, the NSA could have tracked such activity. But they did not do that. That lack of evidence did not prevent a coordinated media campaign from spinning up to pin the blame on Russia for the "theft" and to portray Donald Trump as Putin's lackey and beneficiary.

    Any effort to tell an alternative story has met with stout opposition. Fox News, for example, came under withering fire after it published an article in May 2017 claiming that Seth Rich, a young Democrat operative, had leaked DNC emails to Julian Assange at Wikileaks. The family of Seth Rich reacted with fury and sued Fox, Malia Zimmerman and Ed Butowsky, but that suit subsequently was dismissed.

    Now there is new information, courtesy of the National Security Agency aka NSA, that confirms that the NSA has Top Secret and Secret documents that are responsive to a FOIA request for material on Seth Rich and his contacts with Julian Assange. While the content of these documents remain classified for now, they may provide documentary proof that Seth Rich "dropped boxed" the emails to Julian. If these documents are declassified, a big hole could be blown in the claim that Russia hacked the DNC.

    Walrus , a day ago

    Another case of "Arkancide"?
    jnewman -> Walrus , 12 hours ago
    Vince Foster?
    DianaLC , 13 hours ago
    PT, thank for the very detailed description of the entire story surrounding the supposed Russian hack of the DNC emails.

    I always find myself screaming at the T.V. whenever a supposed reporter mentions the supposed Russian hack of the DNC computers as if such an event is settled history.

    I came to this summary today after I had turned my T.V. off since all the news is now about the "bombs" being mailed to the Clintons and Obamas. (I was afraid a story line would soon continue that the bombs were from Russia via the White House. I can no longer feel certain that anything reported in the "news" is true and wonder what part of it is made up from thin air.

    And I am sad that such a huge number of American citizens simply no longer care what is true or what is not true. They believe only what they want to believe. Mostly I am sad that Seth Rich lived and died and few seem to want to know the facts surrounding his death.

    Snow Flake -> Lefty , 12 hours ago
    Ellipsis, linguistically? Don't you automatically add what is omitted? ... Russia had (n't) anything ...

    Guccifer 2.0 was nothing but an elaborate joke.

    [Oct 20, 2018] Cloak and Dagger by Israel Shamir

    Highly recommended!
    UK politicians in Skripal story behaved by cheap clowns. Their story with door knob was pathetic. They tried to invent the legend with poisoning on the fly and that shows. There is definitely something else brewing here and Shamir proposed his version with Skripal double dealings or something along those line is quite plausible.
    We will never know, but I think British discredited themselves for the whole world in this story. Trump was not better will using this tory to impose additional sanctions on Russia. This is just another proof that he is another neocon who during election campaign like Obama played the role of isolationalist and then appointed Haley to UN and hired Pompeo as his Secretary of state and Bolton as his security advisor -- a typical "bat and switch" operation in US politics.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Vrublevsky thinks that British intelligence convinced the GRU (probably we should say that GRU is not called GRU anymore but GU, the Chief Directorate of the General Staff, but it hardly matters) that Mr Skripal wanted to return home to Russia. Probably they were told that Mr Skripal intended to bring some valuable dowry with him, including Porton Down data and the secrets of the Golden Rain dossier. It is possible that Skripal had been played, too; perhaps he indeed wanted to go back to Russia, the country he missed badly. ..."
    "... As we had learned from videos and stills published by the Brits, the two men had been carefully followed from the beginning to the end. Meanwhile, British intelligence staged a 'poisoning' of Skripal and his daughter, and the two agents quickly returned home. ..."
    "... There is not a single man close to Russian intelligence who thinks that Skripal had actually been poisoned by the Russians. First, there was absolutely no reason to do it, and second, if the Russians would poison him, he would stay poisoned, like the Ukrainian Quisling Stepan Bandera was. ..."
    "... However, by playing this card, the British secret service convinced the Foreign Office to expel all diplomats who had contacts and connection to the exposed GRU agents. The massive expulsion of 150 diplomats caused serious damage to the Russian secret services. ..."
    "... Such a massive operation against Russian agents and their contacts could signal forthcoming war. In normal circumstances, states do not reveal their full knowledge of enemy agents. ..."
    "... I do not know what is the truth. At this point I no longer care because we will never know but it will be the British version that will be the most popular. I like most people like good stories. Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director and actors. ..."
    Oct 20, 2018 | www.unz.com

    ... ... ...

    Vrublevsky thinks that British intelligence convinced the GRU (probably we should say that GRU is not called GRU anymore but GU, the Chief Directorate of the General Staff, but it hardly matters) that Mr Skripal wanted to return home to Russia. Probably they were told that Mr Skripal intended to bring some valuable dowry with him, including Porton Down data and the secrets of the Golden Rain dossier. It is possible that Skripal had been played, too; perhaps he indeed wanted to go back to Russia, the country he missed badly.

    Two GRU agents, supposedly experts on extraction (they allegedly sneaked the Ukrainian president Yanukovych from Ukraine after the coup and saved him from lynching mob) were sent to Salisbury to test the ground and make preparations for Skripal's return. As we had learned from videos and stills published by the Brits, the two men had been carefully followed from the beginning to the end. Meanwhile, British intelligence staged a 'poisoning' of Skripal and his daughter, and the two agents quickly returned home.

    There is not a single man close to Russian intelligence who thinks that Skripal had actually been poisoned by the Russians. First, there was absolutely no reason to do it, and second, if the Russians would poison him, he would stay poisoned, like the Ukrainian Quisling Stepan Bandera was.

    However, by playing this card, the British secret service convinced the Foreign Office to expel all diplomats who had contacts and connection to the exposed GRU agents. The massive expulsion of 150 diplomats caused serious damage to the Russian secret services.

    Still, the Russians had no clue how the West had learned identities of so many diplomats connected to GRU. They suspected that there was a mole, and a turncoat who delivered the stuff to the enemy.

    That is why Vladimir Putin decided to dare them. As he knew that the two men identified by the British service had no connection to the alleged poisoning, he asked them to appear on the RT in an interview with Ms Simonyan. By acting as village hicks, they were supposed to provoke the enemy to disclose its source. The result was unexpected: instead of revealing the name of a turncoat, the Belling Cat, a site used by the Western Secret Services for intentional leaks, explained how the men were traced by using the stolen databases. Putin's plan misfired.

    The Russian secret service is not dead. Intelligence services do suffer from enemy action from time to time: the Cambridge Five infiltrated the upper reaches of the MI-5 and delivered state secrets to Moscow for a long time, but the Intelligence Service survived. Le Carre's novels were based on such a defeat of the intelligence. However they have a way to recover. Identity of their top agents remain secret, and they are concealed from the enemy's eyes.

    But in order to function properly, the Russians will have to clean their stables, remove their databases from the market place and keep its citizenry reasonably safe. Lax, and not-up-to-date agents do not apparently understand the degree the internet is being watched. Considering it should have been done twenty years ago, and meanwhile a new generation of Russians has came of age, perfectly prepared to sell whatever they can for cash, it is a formidable task.

    There is an additional reason to worry. Such a massive operation against Russian agents and their contacts could signal forthcoming war. In normal circumstances, states do not reveal their full knowledge of enemy agents. It made president Putin worry; and he said this week: we'll go to heaven as martyrs, the attackers will die as sinners. In face of multiple and recent threats, this end of the world is quite possible.

    utu , says: October 20, 2018 at 4:23 am GMT

    Great story. If told many people would believe it. But now it is kind of late. So why it wasn't told within few days or weeks of Skripal affair? Why it is the British media that has initiative and Russian media is reactive and defensive? The story that Skripal wanted to return and that two agents were lured in there should have been told right away and that it turned out be MI5 provocation should have been insinuated. And the two agents should have been interviewed on Russian media. Instead we get defensive inept and indolent Russian reactions.

    I do not know what is the truth. At this point I no longer care because we will never know but it will be the British version that will be the most popular. I like most people like good stories. Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director and actors.

    jilles dykstra , says: October 20, 2018 at 7:25 am GMT
    @utu " Instead we get defensive inept and indolent Russian reactions."
    The reaction 'if we want to kill somebody that somebody does not survive' I cannot see as inept and indolent.
    Malaysian Truther , says: October 20, 2018 at 8:24 am GMT
    Excellent piece by Israel Shamir which I think gives the correct explanation of the Skripal poisoning. This was a classic fishing, 'click bait' operation which produced a very valuable haul for Western Intelligence. The only question is whether Skripal cooperated with it – which I think he did – not knowing that both he and his daughter were meant to die. Hence Putin's rage against Skripal a few weeks ago ( calling him a scumbag traitor etc, etc) after the Russian operatives were identified because retired agents are supposed to stay retired.

    Russia made a very serious mistake with the RT interview with the 2 operatives. Better not to say anything if you can't give the whole story. The GU weren't happy to show their incompetence, but compounded the original mistake with obvious lying. That was a propaganda gift to the Western media and has helped convince original disbelievers of Russian perfidy.

    Russia needs to step up its game especially in the media dept.

    Tom Welsh , says: October 20, 2018 at 9:38 am GMT
    "Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director and actors".

    Maybe, if your taste runs to "Dr Who" or "Carry On Spying". That's about the level of the Skripal nonsense.

    If it was meant for public consumption, the British government's opinion of the British people is much lower than mine.

    jilles dykstra , says: October 20, 2018 at 10:33 am GMT
    @Anatoly Karlin " British or American human capital, but there are certainly consummate professionals relative to what passes for today's Russian intelligence services. "

    On what this 'certainly' is based, I see no argument whatsoever.
    Already a long time ago, I must admit, the CIA director had to admit to senator Moynihan that he had lied about the CIA not laying mines in Havana harbour.
    A professional in espionage does not get caught.
    Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 'Secrecy', New Haven 1998
    Anyone acquinted with Sept 11 understands that the USA's secret army, the CIA, was involved.
    Another blunder.
    As far as I know British secret services never get caught.
    How clever the Russians are, suppose quite clever, I for one do not think that the stupid stories about for example Skripal have any truth in them.
    Until now the asserted Russian meddling in USA elections have not been proved.
    Do not know of anything credible that Russian intelligence people are said to have done.
    But of course Russian intelligence does exist.

    Fatima Manoubia , says: October 20, 2018 at 11:18 am GMT
    @Anatoly Karlin

    "A related problem is that since there is now a free market economy, with many more attractive career options for talented people, the high quality people go to work in other spheres, leaving the intelligence agencies with the dregs;" .

    A direct result of erasing ideology so as to erase personality cult towards highly respected people in former USSR .When you have no ideology ( or worst, share ideology with your opponent, i.e free market .) all what you have, from values to secrets, from scientific human capital to secret service officials, are out there in the global market for possible selling to the best postor .this is the principle of capitalism .. after all, it is said, almost everybody has a price .The challenge is finding out where that little bunch who have not are ..Obviously, in this scenario, the one who has the printing machine has a "little" advantage How to overcome this would be part of "what is to be done" ..

    Ilyana_Rozumova , says: October 20, 2018 at 12:07 pm GMT
    If the Russians wanted to kill them they would be dead. Period. It is all FN hoax.
    The latest English came up with was that poison was smeared on the door handle and that both touched the door handle. Give me a break. Such a idiocy. Just imagine the exit procedure where both are touching the door knob.
    And than both Russians went to garbage dump carrying the little bottle and thru it there.
    What an exemplary citizen neat behavior by Russians,
    All English story is such a stupid idiocy that it turns my stomach.
    All we like sheep , says: October 20, 2018 at 12:14 pm GMT

    However, the presence of Russian spies in Salisbury can be explained by its nearness to Porton Down, the secret British chemical lab and factory for manufacturing chemical weapons applied by the White Helmets in Syria in their false-flag operation in Douma and other places. It is possible that a resident of Salisbury (Mr Skripal?) had delivered samples from Porton Down to the Russian intelligence agents. This makes much more sense than the dubious story of Russians trying to poison an old ex-spy who did his stretch in a Russian jail.

    If Mr. Skripal has been poisoned by the stuff of which he himself took samples in Porton Down, this would run completely parallel to the earlier poisoning of Mr. Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko, who also became ill because of carrying poison (polonium) around.

    Eagle Eye , says: October 20, 2018 at 12:54 pm GMT

    If [Yulia Skripal] had not had the courage to make this call while slipping the observance of British intelligence, she would probably be dead by now.

    Both Skripals are most likely DEAD, murdered by British "intelligence" services.

    The formulaic and curiously uninterested treatment of the matter in the British media seems inconsistent with the Skripals still being alive.

    The article above suggests that the Skripals were unwitting or witting participants in a sting to expose Russian intelligence agents. More importantly, Sergey Skripal appears to have had a role in the creation of the DNC's "dossier" to undermine the Trump presidencey.

    Whatever the background, Sergey Skripal became privy to important secrets that the Brits and their seditious allies in the U.S. Deep State do not want exposed.

    macilrae , says: October 20, 2018 at 2:38 pm GMT
    In the Skripal case the British have not explained why, after claiming to have found the closest approach to a smoking gun in the form of traces of novichok in that hotel room, the hotel was not then immediately quarantined.

    And assuredly, with Putin's name on the line, the Russians have to do a better job if they are to refute the standing accusations – the RT interview was something of a PR disaster.

    The Belloncat data, although superficially convincing, could so easily have been faked by anybody with reasonable knowledge of Russian internet infrastructure and some proficiency in Photoshop.

    CalDre , says: October 20, 2018 at 3:21 pm GMT
    @utu

    But now it is kind of late. So why it wasn't told within few days or weeks of Skripal affair?

    It's still not being told – believe it or not, Israel Shamir is not Sergei Lavrov. I hypothesized to the same state of affairs in early September re: Skripals.

    But I did not know about these massive intelligence security breaches in Russia. Wow, that's huge. Even though it's not clear to me how this indicates Putin's plan misfired. If anything he got exactly what he wanted: confirmation that the "West" had access to the entire passport database. Knowing what your enemy has in intelligence is a huge win, now they can work on correcting it (hard as it may be, it would be impossible without knowing).

    CalDre , says: October 20, 2018 at 3:24 pm GMT
    @macilrae You are right, it could have been faked, anything can be faked today, even a video of Putin speaking (search for "deep fakes" and watch the video at https://www.wsj.com/articles/deepfake-videos-are-ruining-lives-is-democracy-next-1539595787 ).

    But the fact is Russia has not really disputed the results so I am fairly confident that not only was Belling Cat right, but Israel is right, and now we have the situation where Russia knows that Western intelligence has full access to Russia's passport database.

    wayfarer , says: October 20, 2018 at 3:55 pm GMT
    @Tyrion 2 Had some experiences with Chinese and Mossad spies, not to mention Russian Jewish hard-drug dealers.

    Here are a few examples.

    There was an AMES postdoc at UCSD, a Chinese applied-math brain who had a 10-plus female handler. She'd stop by occasionally to check up on him. He always get extremely anxious when she was around. Couldn't figure out if it was fear, sexual excitement, or a combination of both.

    There was an old Chinese man and his foxy young female protege, who enjoyed filming U.S. military maneuvers along the San Diego coast. I observed their operation for days.

    There was a swing-shift cleaning crew in a Southern California high-tech mfg facility that was all Chinese, in an area that typically employed Latin American crews. Its head honcho was a beautiful Chinese lady. They made it their job to sort through trash bins and save papers. The feds busted them.

    As far as the Mossad, I spent two years on a rental property in SD county, which was occupied by them as well. Mostly Israeli kids using the property and a local Israeli-owned vegetarian restaurant as their "scorpion den." Got fairly familiar with some of their espionage work and methods.

    I don't go looking for this stuff. I'm just able to recognize it. As an empath I can read people, quite well. It's a natural gift.

    Can't stomach Israel's insensitive nature. That's why you'll typically find me pointing out their self-serving bullshit.

    source: https://themindunleashed.com/2013/10/30-traits-of-empath.html

    FB , says: October 20, 2018 at 4:13 pm GMT
    This is a pretty good article but also falls on its face at the end

    Mr Shamir's 'inside' information confirms my own take on Petrov and Boshirov which I published a few days after that RT interview with Ms Simonyan I wrote this on Col Lang's blog on Sept 14

    'Yeah those two 'tourists' do look the part don't they I would say they are probably GRU or something similar but nobody 'poisoned' the Skripals that's total kabuki theater another Potemkin village production from the reality masters

    Something is afoot here though perhaps these two were lured to Salisbury as part of a frame up plot, perhaps by Skripal himself or perhaps the Brits caught wind of their plans to visit [on some standard spying mission, certainly not assassination] and put in motion the elaborate hoax

    Everybody there protested loudly including Andrey Martyanov [Smoothie] I also added this

    ' I disagree with everyone here it seems these guys aren't tourists but they also didn't try to kill anyone that's stupid

    It's some sort of spy game

    Here's one scenario double agent Skripal makes convincing noises about flipping back someone at GRU [or some similar outfit] sends these two to Salisbury to check it out a very stupid move which is why Putin is now miffed enough to display these guys publicly and their field career surely over also a slap in the face to the silly Limeys for playing dirty pool even in the cloak and dagger game there are unwritten rules '

    This is now exactly the story that Mr Shamir is presenting here but he is a day late and a dollar short

    I also don't agree with his take that this is all somehow a big loss for Russian intel the Brits are the ones who have painted themselves in a corner their Skripal story is a wet paper bag waiting to fall apart the fact that they lured the Russians to Salisbury, under whatever pretext, be it Skripal or Porton Down/white helmets etc was their only small tactical victory because they could then later expose those two after months of Russian denials in order to show the Russians were in fact somehow involved

    But that exposure came months later all that time the Russians would have known that Boshirov and Petrov had been captured on candid camera and would have had time to work on their countermove

    Mr Shamir writes this like the game is over that is ridiculous the Brits have no way out of the Skripal hoax there was never any poisoning the original diagnosis of the Skripals in the Salisbury hospital was opioid overdose that came out in the first BBC interview with the hospital staff months after the 'poisoning'

    It was not until 48 hours after the Skripals were admitted to hospital and the convenient intervention of Porton Down that the medical diagnosis was 'changed' to nerve agent poisoning

    BUT this is an unsustainable story that WILL FALL APART the simple reason is medical and chemical fact both nerve agents and agricultural pesticides are based on the exact same chemical compound organophosphates

    It just so happens that organophsphate poisoning is 'one of the most common causes of poisoning worldwide '

    'There are nearly 3 million poisonings per year resulting in two hundred thousand deaths.'

    That is the simple reason why emergency doctors EVERYWHERE are trained to recognize and treat this kind of poisoning especially in rural, agricultural areas like Salisbury

    That is why it took months for media to gain access to the medical staff at that hospital the British spooks needed to do a lot of 'persuading' with medical professionals that would have wanted no part in such trickery and fakery

    But this is a ticking time bomb that is bound to blow up in the faces of the very stupid Brits

    So yes they pulled off a minor coup in luring those two to Salisbury but the game is very very far from over

    As for Skripal he is in on it for sure as I speculated in my original comment on the matter..the Russian intel services are perfectly aware of this, yet Mr Shamir's supposedly well connected source has zero knowledge of this which tells me this source is actually a useless clown who 'knows' exactly what an internet commenter [myself] already knew two months ago

    PS the fact that the Brits supposedly have all kinds of database info on the Russian intel apparatus and personnel files etc doesn't mean anything the author is a making a big deal out of this, but his story lacks meat on its bones most 'intel' is open source material anyway

    As for sensitive stuff that may have been 'sold' by 'corrupt' bureaucrats one must ask if such 'info' is actually real or a clever plant providing fake info is the oldest spy trick in the book and this article simply takes for granted that such a trick would not have been employed why not ?

    CalDre , says: October 20, 2018 at 5:30 pm GMT
    @FB How would a fake database leak include the real data on the two GRU agents that just happened to be sent to UK? Maybe it was to make the data leak seem real?

    In spycraft it is always impossible to know how deep the deception goes. That's why the very article to which you are responding started with:

    It is hard to evaluate the exact measure of things in the murky world of spies and counter-spies, but it appears that the Western spies have had extraordinary success in the subterranean battle.

    An acknowledgement you stubbornly ignore.

    M Edward , says: October 20, 2018 at 6:01 pm GMT
    None of this matters.

    All governments are corrupt and have no interest in the welfare of the native populations.

    All this he said she said crap is irrelevant, in the end we all will end up under a totalitarian police state run out of Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem.

    Cyrano , says: October 20, 2018 at 6:06 pm GMT
    I think that a clear strategy by the western "intelligence" services is starting to emerge vis-a-vis the Russians. By accusing any Russian that they can get their hands on, of being a spy, they want to scare the ordinary Russians from visiting the west, so afterwards any Russian actually caught traveling to the west can be safely assumed to be a spy – since by the calculations of the clever western intelligence – only someone who is actually a spy while at the same time being Russian, would dare to travel to the west. How smart is that?

    Joking aside, it really is becoming unsafe for Russian nationals to travel to the west. Even though the west reserves the generosity of calling somebody equal only for those that are from the 3rd world – Russians clearly don't deserve such generosity.

    Despite this, exceptions can be made and some unfortunate Russian soul could be accused of being equal with those highly evolved westerners and against their will can be offered protection from Mother Russia.

    Pretty much like it happened to Yulia Skripal. She was only visiting her gastarbeiter father in GB, who apparently expressed desire to return to Russia, against pretty much everybody's wishes, and all of a sudden Yulia Skripal found herself bestowed with the western generosity of being declared equal, and was disappeared from public eye in order to protect her from those with whom she is clearly not equal – the Russians.

    Thank God at least MI-6 proved equal to the task and discovered her equalness in a nick of time and saved her. The moral of the story: Only democracy has the power to recognize who is equal and who is not. Then, on the other hand, capitalism can keep acquiring new monikers such as "democracy" – all they want, Russia still has better quality of equality, despite ditching socialism.

    FB , says: October 20, 2018 at 6:24 pm GMT
    @CalDre Yes I 'stubbornly' refuse to take at face value this silly statement

    it appears that the Western spies have had extraordinary success in the subterranean battle.'

    Because it's not backed up by anything other than hot air as for that supposed 'data' about Petrov and Boshirov that was put out by Bellingcat

    Ie mickey mouse stuff as with everything these clowns do, it is meant only to bamboozle the most utterly stupid bipeds

    A very nice clue is the fact that a Russian website called 'The Insider' is Bellingcat's acknowledged partner here

    If you read the article in English they claim to have 'dug' up a lot of info from various sources such the central Russian resident database and passenger check in data for their flight to the UK

    Big deal that Shamir is building a mountain out of a molehill is more than clear

    In fact this entire Shamir tale appears to have one subtle purpose to publicize and glorify the Bellingcat outfit

    which irredeemably lost any credibility a few weeks back when illiterate poofter Eliott Higgins refused a debate challenge by the distinguished MIT physicist and former presidential advisor Ted Postol actually calling Postol an 'idiot' a move that astounded even those willing to entertain Higgins on a semi-credible level

    peterAUS , says: October 20, 2018 at 6:39 pm GMT
    @Anatoly Karlin Be that as it may, the "Western side" had (publicly known) Aldrich, Hanssen and Benghazi fiasco.

    Boils down to, from the comment below:

    When you have no ideology ( or worst, share ideology with your opponent, i.e free market .) all what you have, from values to secrets, from scientific human capital to secret service officials, are out there in the global market for possible selling to the best postor .this is the principle of capitalism .. after all, it is said, almost everybody has a price..

    and

    Obviously, in this scenario, the one who has the printing machine has a "little" advantage.

    And, on top of it, in West, since the fall of The Wall, we've been having "Cooking the Intelligence to Fit the Political Agenda".

    Incompetence vs blatant lying?
    What a choice.

    Kubarking , says: October 20, 2018 at 6:43 pm GMT
    This commenter begs to differ with M. Karlin's assessment (8) of the relative competence of Russian sovok and CIA. "consummate professionals relative to what passes for today's Russian intelligence services"? Mais non.

    CIA always gets caught. All they do is step on their crank, again and again. They depend not on professionalism but on what Russ Baker describes as a strange mix of ruthlessness and ineptitude. Both stem from impunity in municipal law.

    For example: CIA torture and coercive interference got comprehensively exposed, worldwide, in the '70s. What happened? Don Gregg gave the Church and Pike committees an ultimatum: Back off or it's martial law. CIA got busted again in the '80s for the criminal enterprises under the Iran/Contra rubric. By then CIA had installed Tom Polgar, Former Saigon Station Chief, as chief investigator for the cognizant Senate Select committee, and Polgar assured Gregg that his hearings would not be a repeat of the abortive Pike and Church flaps.

    So CIA are clowns. They can afford to be clowns because they know they can get away with it. Getting away with it is their only skill, and the only skill they need.

    The persistent category error at this site is failing to realize that CIA is the state. They rule the USA.

    [Oct 09, 2018] The Skripals Are an MI6 Hoax - 'Not Worthy of Ladies' Detective Novels' - Israeli Expert Demolishes UK Case

    Highly recommended!
    Oct 09, 2018 | russia-insider.com

    Very convincing. This Israeli expert blows up the UK's narrative in a few well-chosen one-liners.

    "If the GRU acted, both the killers and the other participants in the operation would come to the UK on the passports of other countries that have visa-free relations with it. Here, two alleged GRU officers go to the embassy, ​​leave their fingerprints there, get a visa, stop at the hotel, pass under all the cells. This you will not find even in ladies' detective novels."

    An Israeli expert on international terrorism, writer Alexander Brass, shared his view on the case of the Skripals poisoning in Salisbury. Brass draws parallels between the work of the special services of Israel and Russia – he believes that if to compare the British version with the practice of the special agents, then the absurdity becomes obvious.

    "Alexander, so what, in your opinion, happened in Salisbury?"

    -There was a rough provocation by the British special services. In my opinion, this is obvious.

    "There's a lot of stupidity on stupidity." The story with Petrov and Boshirov does not hold up any professional peer review. According to the Brits, the Skripals were poisoned by GRU agents (this is what the department is called, although this is now the Main Directorate of the RF General Staff).

    I want to explain how the special services work. If you need someone to eliminate, then this is a very serious operation, which is being prepared for a long time. A very significant material and human resource is allocated. We are talking about dozens of employees. On the territory of this state, an "advanced command post" is being created.

    In the operation, a technical support group, a logistic group, a cover group, an external surveillance group and a group of performers are involved.

    The performers themselves appear at the very last moment. They do not go anywhere, lighting up on cameras, do not use public transport, but move on rented cars, which they do not rent themselves. And the more they will not stop in hotels, but will live on safe houses provided by the logistics group.

    Such groups do not come under the passport of their country, do not go to the embassy for obtaining a visa, leaving fingerprints. This is complete nonsense. Professionals do not work that way.

    If the GRU acted, both the killers and the other participants in the operation would come to the UK on the passports of other countries that have visa-free relations with it. Here, two alleged GRU officers go to the embassy, ​​leave their fingerprints there, get a visa, stop at the hotel, pass under all the cells. This you will not find even in ladies' detective novels.

    [Oct 08, 2018] British intelligence now officially is a by-word for organized crime by John Wight

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... And what about the possibility of MI5's involvement in, dare we use the term, false flag operations? ..."
    "... As someone who abhors the premise of conspiracy theory on principle, the fact that more and more are turning to its warm embrace as an intellectual reflex against what is politely described as the 'official narrative' of events, well this is no surprise when we learn of the egregious machinations of Western intelligence agencies such as Britain's MI5. ..."
    "... If any such investigation is to be taken seriously, however, it must include in its remit the power to investigate all possible links between Britain's intelligence community and organisations such as, let's see, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group ? ..."
    "... The deafening UK mainstream media and political class silence over the trail connecting 2017 Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi and MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence agency, leaves a lingering stench of intrigue that will not out. The work of investigative journalist Mark Curtis on this sordid relationship is unsurpassed. ..."
    "... "The evidence suggests that the barbaric Manchester bombing, which killed 22 innocent people on May 22nd, is a case of blowback on British citizens arising at least partly from the overt and covert actions of British governments." ..."
    "... "The evidence points to the LIFG being seen by the UK as a proxy militia to promote its foreign policy objectives. Whitehall also saw Qatar as a proxy to provide boots on the ground in Libya in 2011, even as it empowered hardline Islamist groups." ..."
    "... "Both David Cameron, then Prime Minister, and Theresa May – who was Home Secretary in 2011 when Libyan radicals were encouraged to fight Qadafi [Muammar Gaddafi] – clearly have serious questions to answer. We believe an independent public enquiry is urgently needed." ..."
    "... In words that echo down to us from ancient Rome, the poet Juvenal taunts our complacency with a question most simple and pertinent: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Who will guard the guards themselves? ..."
    Oct 08, 2018 | www.rt.com

    An intelligence service given free rein to commit 'serious crimes' in its own country is an intelligence service that is the enemy of its people. The quite astounding revelation that Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5, has enjoyed this very freedom for decades has only just been made public at a special tribunal in London, set up to investigate the country's intelligence services at the behest of a coalition of human rights groups, alleging a pattern of illegality up to and including collusion in murder.

    The hitherto MI5 covert policy sanctioning its agents to commit and/or solicit serious crimes, as and when adjudged provident, is known as the Third Direction. This codename has been crafted, it would appear, by someone with a penchant for all things James Bond within an agency whose average operative is more likely to be 5'6" and balding with a paunch and bad teeth than any kind of lantern-jawed 007.

    The Pat Finucane Centre , one of the aforementioned human rights groups involved in bringing about this tribunal investigation (Investigatory Powers Tribunal, to give it its Sunday name) into the nefarious activities of Britain's domestic intelligence agency, issued a damning statement in response to the further revelation that former Prime Minister David Cameron introduced oversight guidelines with regard to the MI5 covert third direction policy back in 2012.

    Cameron's decision to do so, the group claims, was far from nobly taken:

    "It can be no coincidence that Prime Minister David Cameron issued new guidelines, however flawed, on oversight of MI5 just two weeks before publication of the De Silva report into the murder of Pat Finucane. The PM was clearly alive to the alarming evidence which was about to emerge of the involvement of the Security Service in the murder. To date no-one within a state agency has been held accountable. The latest revelations make the case for an independent inquiry all the more compelling."

    Pat Finucane, a Belfast Catholic, plied his trade as a human rights lawyer at a time when the right to be fully human was denied the minority Catholic community of the small and enduring outpost of British colonialism in the north east corner of Ireland, otherwise known as Northern Ireland. He was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in 1989, back when the decades-long conflict euphemistically referred to as the Troubles still raged, claiming victims both innocent and not on all sides.

    Unlike the vast majority of those killed and murdered in the course of this brutal conflict, Finucane's murder sparked a long and hard fought struggle for justice by surviving family members, friends and campaigners. They allege – rather convincingly, it should be said – that it was carried out with the active collusion of MI5.

    Stepping back and casting a wider view over this terrain, the criminal activities of Britain's intelligence services constitute more than enough material for a book of considerable heft. How fortunate then that just such a book has already been written.

    In his 'Dead Men Talking: Collusion, Cover Up and Murder in Northern Ireland's Dirty War', author Nicholas Davies "provides information on a number of the killings [during the Troubles], which were authorized at the highest level of MI5 and the British government."

    But over and above the crimes of MI5 in Ireland, what else have those doughty defenders of the realm been up to over the years? After all, what is the use of having a license to engage in serious criminal activity, including murder and, presumably, torture, if you're not prepared to use (abuse) it? It begs the question of how many high profile deaths attributed to suicide, natural causes, and accident down through the years have been the fruits of MI5 at work?

    And what about the possibility of MI5's involvement in, dare we use the term, false flag operations?

    As someone who abhors the premise of conspiracy theory on principle, the fact that more and more are turning to its warm embrace as an intellectual reflex against what is politely described as the 'official narrative' of events, well this is no surprise when we learn of the egregious machinations of Western intelligence agencies such as Britain's MI5.

    What we are bound to state, doing so without fear of contradiction, is this particular revelation opens up a veritable Pandora's Box of grim possibilities when it comes to the potential crimes committed by Britain's domestic intelligence agency, ensuring that a full and vigorous investigation and public inquiry is now both necessary and urgent.

    If any such investigation is to be taken seriously, however, it must include in its remit the power to investigate all possible links between Britain's intelligence community and organisations such as, let's see, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group ?

    The deafening UK mainstream media and political class silence over the trail connecting 2017 Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi and MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence agency, leaves a lingering stench of intrigue that will not out. The work of investigative journalist Mark Curtis on this sordid relationship is unsurpassed.

    As Curtis writes,

    "The evidence suggests that the barbaric Manchester bombing, which killed 22 innocent people on May 22nd, is a case of blowback on British citizens arising at least partly from the overt and covert actions of British governments."

    In the same report he arrives at a conclusion both damning and chilling:

    "The evidence points to the LIFG being seen by the UK as a proxy militia to promote its foreign policy objectives. Whitehall also saw Qatar as a proxy to provide boots on the ground in Libya in 2011, even as it empowered hardline Islamist groups."

    Finally: "Both David Cameron, then Prime Minister, and Theresa May – who was Home Secretary in 2011 when Libyan radicals were encouraged to fight Qadafi [Muammar Gaddafi] – clearly have serious questions to answer. We believe an independent public enquiry is urgently needed."

    In words that echo down to us from ancient Rome, the poet Juvenal taunts our complacency with a question most simple and pertinent: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Who will guard the guards themselves?

    Edward R Murrow puts it rather more bluntly: "A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."

    Sooner or later, people in Britain are going to have to wake up to who the real enemy is.

    Read more

    John Wight has written for a variety of newspapers and websites, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal.

    [Oct 08, 2018] Hacking and Propaganda by Marcus Ranum

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... There has been an ongoing campaign on the part of the US, to get out the idea that China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran have massive armies of hackers that are constantly looking to steal American secrets. The absurdity of the US' claims is pretty obvious. As I pointed out in my book The Myth of Homeland Security ..."
    "... "The Great US/China Cyberwar of 2010" is one cyberwar that didn't happen, but was presaged with a run-up of lots of claims that the Chinese were hacking all over the place. I'm perfectly willing to accept the possibility that there was Chinese hacking activity, but in the industry there was no indication of an additional level of attack or significance. ..."
    "... One thing that did ..."
    "... US ideology is that "we don't start wars" -- it's always looking for an excuse to go to war under the rubric of self-defense, so I see these sorts of claims as justification in advance for unilateral action. I also see it as a sign of weakness; if the US were truly the superpower it claims it is, it would simply accept its imperial mantle and stop bothering to try to justify anything. I'm afraid we may be getting close to that point. ..."
    "... My assumption has always been that the US is projecting its own actions on other nations. At the time when the US was talking the loudest about Chinese cyberwar, the US and Israel had launched STUXNET against the Iranian enrichment plant at Natanz, and the breeder reactor at Bushehr (which happens to be just outside of a large city; the attack took some of its control systems and backup generators offline). Attacks on nuclear power facilities are a war crime under international humanitarian law, which framework the US is signatory to but has not committed to actually follow. This sort of activity happens at the same time that the US distributes talking-points to the media about the danger of Russian hackers crashing the US power grid. I don't think we can psychoanalyze an entire government and I think psychoanalysis is mostly nonsense -- but it's tempting to accuse the US of "projection." ..."
    "... All of this stuff happens against the backdrop of Klein, Binney, Snowden, and the Vault 7 revelations, as well as solid attribution identifying the NSA as "equation group" and linking the code-tree of NSA-developed malware to STUXNET, FLAME, and DUQU. ..."
    "... the US has even admitted to deploying STUXNET -- Obama bragged about it. When Snowden's revelations outlined how the NSA had eavesdropped on Angela Merkel's cellphone, the Germans expressed shock and Barack Obama remarkably truthfully said "that's how these things are done" and blew the whole thing off by saying that the NSA wasn't eavesdropping on Merkel any more. [ bbc ] ..."
    "... It's hard to keep score because everything is pretty vague, but it sounds like the US has been dramatically out-spending and out-acting the other nations that it accuses of being prepared for cyberwar. ..."
    "... it's hard not to see the US is prepared for cyberwar, when both the NSA and the CIA leak massive collections of advanced tools. ..."
    "... My observation is that the NSA and CIA have been horribly sloppy and have clearly spent a gigantic amount of money preparing to compromise both foreign and domestic systems -- that's bad enough. With friends like the NSA and CIA, who needs Russians and Chinese? ..."
    "... The Russian and Chinese efforts are relatively tiny compared to the massive efforts the US expends tens of billions of dollars on. The US spends about $50bn on its intelligence agencies, while the entire Russian Department of Defense budget is about $90bn (China is around $139bn) -- maybe the Russians and Chinese have such a small footprint because they are much smaller operations? ..."
    "... That brings us to the recent kerfuffle about taps on the Supermicro motherboards. That's not unbelievable at all -- not in a world where we discover that Intel has built a parallel management CPU into every CPU since 2008, and that there is solid indications that other processors have similar backdoors. ..."
    "... There are probably so many backdoors in our systems that it's a miracle it works at all. ..."
    "... So, with respect to "propaganda" I would say that the US intelligence community has been consistently pushing a propaganda agenda against the US government, and the citizens in order to justify its actions and defend its budget. ..."
    "... What little I've been able to find out the new Trump™ cybersecurity plan is that it doesn't involve any defense, just massive retribution against (perceived) foes. ..."
    "... Funny how those obsessed with "false flag" operations work so hard to invite more of same. ..."
    Oct 07, 2018 | freethoughtblogs.com

    Bob Moore asks me to comment on an article about propaganda and security/intelligence. [ article ] This is going to be a mixture of opinion and references to facts; I'll try to be clear which is which.

    Yesterday several NATO countries ran a concerted propaganda campaign against Russia. The context for it was a NATO summit in which the U.S. presses for an intensified cyberwar against NATO's preferred enemy.

    On the same day another coordinated campaign targeted China. It is aimed against China's development of computer chip manufacturing further up the value chain. Related to this is U.S. pressure on Taiwan, a leading chip manufacturer, to cut its ties with its big motherland.

    It is true that the US periodically makes a big push regarding "messaging" about hacking. Whether or not it constitutes a "propaganda campaign" depends on how we choose to interpret things and the labels we attach to them -- "propaganda campaign" has a lot of negative connotations and one person's "outreach effort" is an other's "propaganda." An ultra-nationalist or an authoritarian submissive who takes the government's word for anything would call it "outreach."

    There has been an ongoing campaign on the part of the US, to get out the idea that China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran have massive armies of hackers that are constantly looking to steal American secrets. The absurdity of the US' claims is pretty obvious. As I pointed out in my book The Myth of Homeland Security (2004) [ wc ] claims such as that the Chinese had "40,000 highly trained hackers" are flat-out absurd and ignore the reality of hacking; that's four army corps. Hackers don't engage in "human wave" attacks.

    "The Great US/China Cyberwar of 2010" is one cyberwar that didn't happen, but was presaged with a run-up of lots of claims that the Chinese were hacking all over the place. I'm perfectly willing to accept the possibility that there was Chinese hacking activity, but in the industry there was no indication of an additional level of attack or significance.

    One thing that did happen in 2010 around the same time as the nonexistent cyberwar was China and Russia proposed trilateral talks with the US to attempt to define appropriate limits on state-sponsored hacking. The US flatly rejected the proposal, but there was virtually no coverage of that in the US media at the time. The UN also called for a cyberwar treaty framework, and the effort was killed by the US. [ wired ] What's fascinating and incomprehensible to me is that, whenever the US feels that its ability to claim pre-emptive cyberwar is challenged, it responds with a wave of claims about Chinese (or Russian or North Korean) cyberwar aggression.

    John Negroponte, former director of US intelligence, said intelligence agencies in the major powers would be the first to "express reservations" about such an accord.

    US ideology is that "we don't start wars" -- it's always looking for an excuse to go to war under the rubric of self-defense, so I see these sorts of claims as justification in advance for unilateral action. I also see it as a sign of weakness; if the US were truly the superpower it claims it is, it would simply accept its imperial mantle and stop bothering to try to justify anything. I'm afraid we may be getting close to that point.

    My assumption has always been that the US is projecting its own actions on other nations. At the time when the US was talking the loudest about Chinese cyberwar, the US and Israel had launched STUXNET against the Iranian enrichment plant at Natanz, and the breeder reactor at Bushehr (which happens to be just outside of a large city; the attack took some of its control systems and backup generators offline). Attacks on nuclear power facilities are a war crime under international humanitarian law, which framework the US is signatory to but has not committed to actually follow. This sort of activity happens at the same time that the US distributes talking-points to the media about the danger of Russian hackers crashing the US power grid. I don't think we can psychoanalyze an entire government and I think psychoanalysis is mostly nonsense -- but it's tempting to accuse the US of "projection."

    The anti-Russian campaign is about alleged Russian spying, hacking and influence operations. Britain and the Netherland took the lead. Britain accused Russia's military intelligence service (GRU) of spying attempts against the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague and Switzerland, of spying attempts against the British Foreign Office, of influence campaigns related to European and the U.S. elections, and of hacking the international doping agency WADA. British media willingly helped to exaggerate the claims: [ ]

    The Netherland [sic] for its part released a flurry of information about the alleged spying attempts against the OPCW in The Hague. It claims that four GRU agents traveled to The Hague on official Russian diplomatic passports to sniff out the WiFi network of the OPCW. (WiFi networks are notoriously easy to hack. If the OPCW is indeed using such it should not be trusted with any security relevant issues.) The Russian officials were allegedly very secretive, even cleaning out their own hotel trash, while they, at the same, time carried laptops with private data and even taxi receipts showing their travel from a GRU headquarter in Moscow to the airport. Like in the Skripal/Novichok saga the Russian spies are, at the same time, portrayed as supervillains and hapless amateurs. Real spies are neither.

    The U.S. Justice Department added to the onslaught by issuing new indictments (pdf) against alleged GRU agents dubiously connected to several alleged hacking incidents . As none of those Russians will ever stand in front of a U.S. court the broad allegations will never be tested.

    There's a lot there, and I think the interpretation is a bit over-wrought, but it's mostly accurate. The US and the UK (and other NATO allies, as necessary) clearly coordinate when it comes to talking points. Claims of Chinese cyberwar in the US press will be followed by claims in the UK and Australian press, as well. My suspicion is that this is not the US Government and UK Government coordinating a story -- it's the intelligence agencies doing it. My opinion is that the intelligence services are fairly close to a "deep state" -- the CIA and NSA are completely out of control and the CIA has gone far toward building its own military, while the NSA has implemented completely unrestricted surveillance worldwide.

    All of this stuff happens against the backdrop of Klein, Binney, Snowden, and the Vault 7 revelations, as well as solid attribution identifying the NSA as "equation group" and linking the code-tree of NSA-developed malware to STUXNET, FLAME, and DUQU. While the attribution that "Fancy Bear is the GRU" has been made and is probably fairly solid, the attribution of NSA malware and CIA malware is rock solid; the US has even admitted to deploying STUXNET -- Obama bragged about it. When Snowden's revelations outlined how the NSA had eavesdropped on Angela Merkel's cellphone, the Germans expressed shock and Barack Obama remarkably truthfully said "that's how these things are done" and blew the whole thing off by saying that the NSA wasn't eavesdropping on Merkel any more. [ bbc ]

    It's hard to keep score because everything is pretty vague, but it sounds like the US has been dramatically out-spending and out-acting the other nations that it accuses of being prepared for cyberwar. I tend to be extremely skeptical of US claims because: bomber gap, missile gap, gulf of Tonkin, Iraq WMD, Afghanistan, Libya and every other aggressive attack by the US which was blamed on its target. The reason I assume the US is the most aggressive actor in cyberspace is because the US has done a terrible job of protecting its tool-sets and operational security: it's hard not to see the US is prepared for cyberwar, when both the NSA and the CIA leak massive collections of advanced tools.

    Meanwhile, where are the leaks of Russian and Chinese tools? They have been few and far between, if there have been any at all. Does this mean that the Russians and Chinese have amazingly superior tradecraft, if not tools? I don't know. My observation is that the NSA and CIA have been horribly sloppy and have clearly spent a gigantic amount of money preparing to compromise both foreign and domestic systems -- that's bad enough. With friends like the NSA and CIA, who needs Russians and Chinese?

    The article does not have great depth to its understanding of the situation, I'm afraid. So it comes off as a bit heavy on the recent news while ignoring the long-term trends. For example:

    The allegations of Chinese supply chain attacks are of course just as hypocritical as the allegations against Russia. The very first know case of computer related supply chain manipulation goes back to 1982 :

    A CIA operation to sabotage Soviet industry by duping Moscow into stealing booby-trapped software was spectacularly successful when it triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian gas pipeline, it emerged yesterday.

    I wrote a piece about the "Farewell Dossier" in 2004. [ mjr ] Re-reading it, it comes off as skeptical but waffly. I think that it's self-promotion by the CIA and exaggerates considerably ("look how clever we are!") at a time when the CIA was suffering an attention and credibility deficit after its shitshow performance under George Tenet. But the first known cases of computer related supply chain manipulation go back to the 70s and 80s -- the NSA even compromised Crypto AG's Hagelin M-209 system (a mechanical ciphering machine) in order to read global communications encrypted with that product. You can imagine Crypto AG's surprise when the Iranian secret police arrested one of their sales reps for selling backdoor'd crypto -- the NSA had never told them about the backdoor, naturally. The CIA was also on record for producing Xerox machines destined for the USSR, which had recorders built into them So, while the article is portraying the historical sweep of NSA dirty tricks, they're only looking at the recent ones. Remember: the NSA also weakened the elliptic curve crypto library in RSA's Bsafe implementation, paying RSADSI $13 million to accept their tweaked code.

    Why haven't we been hearing about the Chinese and Russians doing that sort of thing? There are four options:

    1. The Russians and Chinese are doing it, they're just so darned good nobody has caught them until just recently.
    2. The Russians and Chinese simply resort to using existing tools developed by the hacking/cybercrime community and rely on great operational security rather than fancy tools.
    3. The Russian and Chinese efforts are relatively tiny compared to the massive efforts the US expends tens of billions of dollars on. The US spends about $50bn on its intelligence agencies, while the entire Russian Department of Defense budget is about $90bn (China is around $139bn) -- maybe the Russians and Chinese have such a small footprint because they are much smaller operations?
    4. Something else.

    That brings us to the recent kerfuffle about taps on the Supermicro motherboards. That's not unbelievable at all -- not in a world where we discover that Intel has built a parallel management CPU into every CPU since 2008, and that there is solid indications that other processors have similar backdoors.

    Was the Intel IME a "backdoor" or just "a bad idea"? Well, that's tricky. Let me put my tinfoil hat on: making a backdoor look like a sloppily developed product feature would be the competent way to write a backdoor. Making it as sneaky as the backdoor in the Via is unnecessary -- incompetence is eminently believable.

    &

    (kaspersky)

    I believe all of these stories (including the Supermicro) are the tip of a great big, ugly iceberg. The intelligence community has long known that software-only solutions are too mutable, and are easy to decompile and figure out. They have wanted to be in the BIOS of systems -- on the motherboard -- for a long time. If you go back to 2014, we have disclosures about the NSA malware that hides in hard drive BIOS: [ vice ] [ vice ] That appears to have been in progress around 2000/2001.

    Of note, the group recovered two modules belonging to EquationDrug and GrayFish that were used to reprogram hard drives to give the attackers persistent control over a target machine. These modules can target practically every hard drive manufacturer and brand on the market, including Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, Toshiba, Corsair, Hitachi and more. Such attacks have traditionally been difficult to pull off, given the risk in modifying hard drive software, which may explain why Kaspersky could only identify a handful of very specific targets against which the attack was used, where the risk was worth the reward.

    But Equation Group's malware platforms have other tricks, too. GrayFish, for example, also has the ability to install itself into computer's boot record -- software that loads even before the operating system itself -- and stores all of its data inside a portion of the operating system called the registry, where configuration data is normally stored.

    EquationDrug was designed for use on older Windows operating systems, and "some of the plugins were designed originally for use on Windows 95/98/ME" -- versions of Windows so old that they offer a good indication of the Equation Group's age.

    This is not a very good example of how to establish a "malware gap" since it just makes the NSA look like they are incapable of keeping a secret. If you want an idea how bad it is, Kaspersky labs' analysis of the NSA's toolchain is a good example of how to do attribution correctly. Unfortunately for the US agenda, that solid attribution points toward Fort Meade in Maryland. [kaspersky]

    Let me be clear: I think we are fucked every which way from the start. With backdoors in the BIOS, backdoors on the CPU, and wireless cellular-spectrum backdoors, there are probably backdoors in the GPUs and the physical network controllers, as well. Maybe the backdoors in the GPU come from the GRU and maybe the backdoors in the hard drives come from NSA, but who cares? The upshot is that all of our systems are so heinously compromised that they can only be considered marginally reliable. It is, literally, not your computer: it's theirs. They'll let you use it so long as your information is interesting to them.

    Do I believe the Chinese are capable of doing such a thing? Of course. Is the GRU? Probably. Mossad? Sure. NSA? Well-documented attribution points toward NSA. Your computer is a free-fire zone. It has been since the mid 1990s, when the NSA was told "no" on the Clipper chip and decided to come up with its own Plan B, C, D, and E. Then, the CIA came up with theirs. Etc. There are probably so many backdoors in our systems that it's a miracle it works at all.

    From my 2012 RSA conference lecture "Cyberwar, you're doing it wrong."

    The problem is that playing in this space is the purview of governments. Nobody in the cybercrime or hacking world need tools like these. The intelligence operatives have huge budgets, compared to a typical company's security budget, and it's unreasonable to expect any business to invest such a level of effort on defending itself. So what should companies do? They should do exactly what they are doing: expect the government to deal with it; that's what governments are for. The problem with that strategy is that their government isn't on their side, either! It's Hobbes' playground.

    In case you think I am engaging in hyperbole, I assure you I am not. If you want another example of the lengths (and willingness to bypass the law) "they" are willing to go, consider 'stingrays' that are in operation in every major US city and outside of every interesting hotel and high tech park. Those devices are not passive -- they actively inject themselves into the call set-up between your phone and your carrier -- your data goes through the stingray, or it doesn't go at all. If there are multiple stingrays, then your latency goes through the roof. "They" don't care. Are the stingrays NSA, FBI, CIA, Mossad, GRU, or PLA? Probably a bit of all of the above depending on where and when.

    Whenever the US gets caught with its pants down around its ankles, it blames the Chinese or the Russians because they have done a good job of building the idea that the most serious hackers on the planet at the Chinese. I don't believe that we're seeing complex propaganda campaigns that are tied to specific incidents -- I think we see ongoing organic propaganda campaigns that all serve the same end: protect the agencies, protect their budgets, justify their existence, and downplay their incompetence.

    So, with respect to "propaganda" I would say that the US intelligence community has been consistently pushing a propaganda agenda against the US government, and the citizens in order to justify its actions and defend its budget.

    The government also engages in propaganda, and is influenced by the intelligence community's propaganda as well. And the propaganda campaigns work because everyone involved assumes, "well, given what the NSA has been able to do, I should assume the Chinese can do likewise." That's a perfectly reasonable assumption and I think it's probably true that the Chinese have capabilities. The situation is what Chuck Spinney calls "A self-licking ice cream cone" -- it's a justifying structure that makes participation in endless aggression seem like a sensible thing to do. And, when there's inevitably a disaster, it's going to be like a cyber-9/11 and will serve as a justification for even more unrestrained aggression.

    Want to see what it looks like? A thousand thanks to Commentariat member [redacted] for this link. If you don't like video, there's an article here. [ toms ]

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/_eSAF_qT_FY

    Is this an NSA backdoor, or normal incompetence? Is Intel Management Engine an NSA-inspired backdoor, or did some system engineers at Intel think that was a good idea? There are other scary indications of embedded compromise: the CIA's Vault7 archive included code that appeared to be intended to embed in the firmware of "smart" flatscreen TVs. That would make every LG flat panel in every hotel room, a listening device just waiting to be turned on.

    We know the Chinese didn't do that particular bug but why wouldn't they do something similar, in something else? China is the world's oldest mature culture -- they literally wrote the book on strategy -- Americans acting as though it's a great surprise to learn that the Chinese are not stupid, it's just the parochialism of a 250 year-old culture looking at a 3,000 year-old culture and saying "wow, you guys haven't been asleep at the switch after all!"

    WIRED on cyberspace treaties [ wired ]

    Comments

    1. Pierce R. Butler says

      October 6, 2018 at 1:31 pm

      What little I've been able to find out the new Trump™ cybersecurity plan is that it doesn't involve any defense, just massive retribution against (perceived) foes.

      Funny how those obsessed with "false flag" operations work so hard to invite more of same.

    2. Marcus Ranum says

      October 6, 2018 at 2:28 pm

      Pierce R. Butler@#1:
      What little I've been able to find out the new Trump™ cybersecurity plan is that it doesn't involve any defense, just massive retribution against (perceived) foes.

      Yes. Since 2001, as far as most of us can tell, federal cybersecurity spend has been 80% offense, 20% defense. And a lot of the offensive spend has been aimed at We, The People.

    3. Cat Mara says

      October 6, 2018 at 5:20 pm

      Your mention of Operation Sundevil and Kevin Mitnick in a previous post made me think that maybe the reason we haven't seen the kind of leaks from the Russian and Chinese hacking operations that we've seem from the NSA is that they're running a "Kevin Mitnick style" operation; that is, relying less on technical solutions and using instead old-fashioned "social engineering" and other low-tech forms of espionage (like running troll farms on social media). I mean, I've seen interviews with retired US intelligence people since the 90s complain that since the late 1980s, the intelligence agencies have been crippled by management in love with hi-tech "SIGINT" solutions to problems that never deliver and neglecting old-fashioned "HUMINT" intelligence-gathering.

      The thing is, Kevin Mitnick got away with a lot of what he did because people didn't take security seriously then, and still don't. On a similar nostalgia vibe, I remember reading an article by Keith Bostic (one of the researchers who helped in the analysis of the Morris worm that took down a significant chunk of the Internet back in 1988) where he did a follow-up a year or so afterwards and some depressing number of organisations that had been hit by it still hadn't patched the holes that had let the worm infect them in the first place.

    4. Marcus Ranum says

      October 6, 2018 at 9:20 pm

      Cat Mara@#3:
      Your mention of Operation Sundevil and Kevin Mitnick in a previous post made me think that maybe the reason we haven't seen the kind of leaks from the Russian and Chinese hacking operations that we've seem from the NSA is that they're running a "Kevin Mitnick style" operation; that is, relying less on technical solutions and using instead old-fashioned "social engineering" and other low-tech forms of espionage (like running troll farms on social media).

      I think that's right, to a high degree. What if Edward Snowden was an agent provocateur instead of a well-meaning naive kid? A tremendous amount of damage could be done, as well as stealing the US' expensive toys. The Russians have been very good at doing exactly that sort of operation, since WWII. The Chinese are, if anything, more subtle than the Russians.

      The Chinese attitude, as expressed to me by someone who might be a credible source is, "why are you picking a fight with us? We don't care, you're too far away for us to threaten you, we both have loads of our own fish to fry. To them, the US is young, hyperactive, and stupid.

      The FBI is not competent, at all, against old-school humint intelligence-gathering. Compared to the US' cyber-toys, the old ways are probably more efficient and cost effective. China's intelligence community is also much more team-oriented than the CIA/NSA; they're actually a disciplined operation under the strategic control of policy-makers. That, by the way, is why Russians and Chinese stare in amazement when Americans ask things like "Do you think Putin knew about this?" What a stupid question! It's an autocracy; they don't have intelligence operatives just going an deciding "it's a nice day to go to England with some Novichok." The entire American attitude toward espionage lacks maturity.

      On a similar nostalgia vibe, I remember reading an article by Keith Bostic (one of the researchers who helped in the analysis of the Morris worm that took down a significant chunk of the Internet back in 1988) where he did a follow-up a year or so afterwards and some depressing number of organisations that had been hit by it still hadn't patched the holes that had let the worm infect them in the first place.

      That as an exciting time. We were downstream from University of Maryland, which got hit pretty badly. Pete Cottrel and Chris Torek from UMD were also in on Bostic's dissection. We were doing uucp over TCP for our email (that changed pretty soon after the worm) and our uucp queue blew up. I cured the worm with a reboot into single-user mode and a quick 'rm -f' in the uucp queue.

    5. Bob Moore says

      October 7, 2018 at 9:18 am

      Thanks. I appreciate your measured analysis and the making explicit of the bottom line: " agencies, protect their budgets, justify their existence, and downplay their incompetence."

    [Oct 02, 2018] I m puzzled why CIA is so against Kavanaugh?

    Highly recommended!
    An interesting hypothesis. CIA definitly became a powerful political force in the USA -- a rogue political force which starting from JFK assasination tries to control who is elected to important offices. But in truth Cavanaugh is a pro-CIA candidate so to speak. So why CIA would try to derail him.
    Notable quotes:
    "... I think I've figured out why they had to go to couples counseling about an outside door and why she came up with claim that she needed an outside bedroom door because she'd been assaulted 37 years ago. The Palo Alto building codes for single family homes were created to make sure single family homes remained single family and weren't chopped up into apartments. ..."
    "... An outside door into a master bedroom with attached bathroom is a red flag that it's intended for an illegal what's called in law apartment ..."
    "... So she wants the door. Husband says waste of money and trouble. Contractor says call me when you're ready. So they go to counseling Husband explains why the door's unreasonable. Therapist asks wife why she " really deep down" needs the door. Wife makes up the story about attempted rape 35 years ago flashbacks If only there were 2 doors in that imaginary bedroom she could have escaped. ..."
    "... Kacanaugh was nominated. CIA searched for sex problems in his working life. Found nothing Searched law school and college found nothing. In desperation searched high school found nothing. Searched CIA personnel records which go back to grade school and found one of their own employees was about Kavanaugh's age and attended a high school near his and the students socialized. ..."
    "... She's 3rd generation CIA. grandfather assistant director. Father CIA contractor who managed CIA unofficial band accounts. And she runs a CIA recruitment office. ..."
    Oct 02, 2018 | www.unz.com

    Anon [257] Disclaimer says: September 29, 2018 at 8:28 am GMT 400 Words

    I think I've figured out why they had to go to couples counseling about an outside door and why she came up with claim that she needed an outside bedroom door because she'd been assaulted 37 years ago. The Palo Alto building codes for single family homes were created to make sure single family homes remained single family and weren't chopped up into apartments.

    Outside doors enter public areas kitchen sunroom living rooms not bedrooms. An outside door into a master bedroom with attached bathroom is a red flag that it's intended for an illegal what's called in law apartment

    There's a unit It's a stove 2 ft counter space and sink. The stoves electric and plugs into an ordinary household electricity. It's backed against the bathroom wall. Break through the wall, connect the pipes running water for the sink. Add an outside door and it's a small apartment.

    Assume they didn't want to make it an apartment just a master bedroom. Usually the contractor pulls the permits routinely. But an outside bedroom door is complicated. The permits will cost more. It might require an exemption and a hearing They night need a lawyer. And they might not get the permit.

    So she wants the door. Husband says waste of money and trouble. Contractor says call me when you're ready. So they go to counseling Husband explains why the door's unreasonable. Therapist asks wife why she " really deep down" needs the door. Wife makes up the story about attempted rape 35 years ago flashbacks If only there were 2 doors in that imaginary bedroom she could have escaped.

    Kacanaugh was nominated. CIA searched for sex problems in his working life. Found nothing Searched law school and college found nothing. In desperation searched high school found nothing. Searched CIA personnel records which go back to grade school and found one of their own employees was about Kavanaugh's age and attended a high school near his and the students socialized.

    She's 3rd generation CIA. grandfather assistant director. Father CIA contractor who managed CIA unofficial band accounts. And she runs a CIA recruitment office.

    I'm puzzled why CIA is so against Kavanaugh?

    [Sep 23, 2018] UK Begged Trump Not To Declassify Russia Docs; Cited Grave Concerns Over Steele Involvement

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Steele also had extensive contacts with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie, who - along with Steele - was paid by opposition research firm Fusion GPS in the anti-Trump campaign. Trump called for the declassification of FBI notes of interviews with Ohr, which would ostensibly reveal more about his relationship with Steele. Ohr was demoted twice within the Department of Justice for lying about his contacts with Fusion GPS. ..."
    "... Perhaps the Brits are also concerned since much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016 . Recall that Trump aid George Papadopoulos was lured to London in March, 2016, where Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was later at a London bar that Papadopoulos would drunkenly pass the rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer (who Strzok flew to London to meet with). ..."
    "... Papadopoulos accepted a flight to London and a $3,000 honorarium. He claims that during a meeting in London, Halper asked him whether he knew anything about Russian hacking of Democrats' emails. ..."
    "... Papadopoulos had other contacts on British soil that he now believes were part of a government-sanctioned surveillance operation. - Daily Caller ..."
    "... In total, Halper received over $1 million from the Obama Pentagon for "research," over $400,000 of which was granted before and during the 2016 election season. ..."
    "... In short, it's understandable that the UK would prefer to hide their involvement in the "witch hunt" of Donald Trump since much of the counterintelligence investigation was conducted on UK soil. And if the Brits had knowledge of the operation, it will bolster claims that they meddled in the 2016 US election by assisting what appears to have been a set-up from the start . ..."
    "... Steele's ham-handed dossier is a mere embarrassment, as virtually none of the claims asserted by the former MI6 agent have been proven true. ..."
    "... Steele, a former MI6 agent, is the author of the infamous and unverified anti-Trump dossier. He worked as a confidential human source for the FBI for years before the relationship was severed just before the election because of Steele's unauthorized contacts with the press. ..."
    "... That said, Steele hasn't worked for the British government since 2009, so for their excuse focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK soil, is curious. ..."
    "... I find it interesting that the Theresa May Govt in UK has the temerity to interfere with US politics (until they got caught out!), yet can't find the spine to stand up to the EU. ..."
    "... THE UNITED KINGDOM along with ISRAEL & SAUDI ARABIA have always been the ones behind US Politics making, pulling the strings behind the curtains since the Petrodollar Inception, The Greater Israel project & the NWO initiative - only this time around Trump was not the UK's pick... ..."
    "... England dominates the offshore money laundering havens where the super rich hide their money and evade taxes. They need to be brought down. No more African dictators looting their nation's resources and hiding the money first in offshore banks and then in JP Morgan and Brit banks. ..."
    "... It is a test. If Trump doesn't go ahead with declassification, we know for sure he is no better than the globalists and neocons whose goal has always been to destroy and depopulate America. ..."
    "... 'focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK soil, is curious' ..."
    "... Not at all. It's obvious - the problem ISN'T Steele. They're living in fear, as are many in DC and elsewhere, that Trump is going to pry the lid open and reveal at least some of their activities. If killing him would fix the problem, they would. It's too late, considering what Trump is threatening to do. I wonder if he'll back down, at least some? ..."
    "... U.K. does not want the jurisdiction. U.S. spies lure you overseas then...compromise you. ..."
    "... Duh. This Started In London! Britain is the "foreign country" involved in our elections. Wake up everyone. It's LONDONGATE ..."
    "... May gonna owe Vlad an apology when Skripal is revealed to be Steele's source. Steele himself hadn't been to Russian in 15 years. Will he get life in prison for attempted murder? ..."
    "... "t's hard to tell who's telling the truth and who isn't in this whole Russia narrative. Fact is, NOBODY is telling the truth. That is what I've determined after doing my own research.": https://youtu.be/2AA5BIfGj3g ..."
    "... Trump made promises before being elected, then lied and sold America out, just like every other corrupted assklown politician. he is no different than clinton bush obama, just as arrogant, just as corrupt, and just as much a traitor. ..."
    Sep 23, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    UK Begged Trump Not To Declassify Russia Docs; Cited "Grave Concerns" Over Steele Involvement

    by Tyler Durden Sun, 09/23/2018 - 11:15 4.6K SHARES

    The British government "expressed grave concerns" to the US government over the declassification and release of material related to the Trump-Russia investigation, according to the New York Times . President Trump ordered a wide swath of materials "immediately" declassified "without redaction" on Monday, only to change his mind later in the week by allowing the DOJ Inspector General to review the materials first.

    The Times reports that the UK's concern was over material which "includes direct references to conversations between American law enforcement officials and Christopher Steele," the former MI6 agent who compiled the infamous "Steele Dossier." The UK's objection, according to former US and British officials, was over revealing Steele's identity in an official document, "regardless of whether he had been named in press reports."

    We would note, however, that Steele's name was contained within the Nunes Memo - the House Intelligence Committee's majority opinion in the Trump-Russia case.

    Steele also had extensive contacts with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie, who - along with Steele - was paid by opposition research firm Fusion GPS in the anti-Trump campaign. Trump called for the declassification of FBI notes of interviews with Ohr, which would ostensibly reveal more about his relationship with Steele. Ohr was demoted twice within the Department of Justice for lying about his contacts with Fusion GPS.

    Perhaps the Brits are also concerned since much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016 . Recall that Trump aid George Papadopoulos was lured to London in March, 2016, where Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was later at a London bar that Papadopoulos would drunkenly pass the rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer (who Strzok flew to London to meet with).

    Also recall that CIA/FBI "informant" (spy) Stefan Halper met with both Carter Page and Papadopoulos in London.

    Halper, a veteran of four Republican administrations, reached out to Trump aide George Papadopoulos in September 2016 with an offer to fly to London to write an academic paper on energy exploration in the Mediterranean Sea.

    Papadopoulos accepted a flight to London and a $3,000 honorarium. He claims that during a meeting in London, Halper asked him whether he knew anything about Russian hacking of Democrats' emails.

    Papadopoulos had other contacts on British soil that he now believes were part of a government-sanctioned surveillance operation. - Daily Caller

    In total, Halper received over $1 million from the Obama Pentagon for "research," over $400,000 of which was granted before and during the 2016 election season.

    In short, it's understandable that the UK would prefer to hide their involvement in the "witch hunt" of Donald Trump since much of the counterintelligence investigation was conducted on UK soil. And if the Brits had knowledge of the operation, it will bolster claims that they meddled in the 2016 US election by assisting what appears to have been a set-up from the start .

    Steele's ham-handed dossier is a mere embarrassment, as virtually none of the claims asserted by the former MI6 agent have been proven true.

    Steele, a former MI6 agent, is the author of the infamous and unverified anti-Trump dossier. He worked as a confidential human source for the FBI for years before the relationship was severed just before the election because of Steele's unauthorized contacts with the press.

    He shared results of his investigation into Trump's links to Russia with the FBI beginning in early July 2016.

    The FBI relied heavily on the unverified Steele dossier to fill out applications for four FISA warrants against Page. Page has denied the dossier's claims, which include that he was the Trump campaign's back channel to the Kremlin. - Daily Caller

    That said, Steele hasn't worked for the British government since 2009, so for their excuse focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK soil, is curious.

    StychoKiller , 54 minutes ago

    I find it interesting that the Theresa May Govt in UK has the temerity to interfere with US politics (until they got caught out!), yet can't find the spine to stand up to the EU. If I were Trump, not only would the shoe be dropping re: UK Govt involvement in US politics, but said shoe would be making an imprint across her face! (stoopid twat!)

    texantim , 1 hour ago

    I say release the docs and put sanctions on UK.

    BitchesBetterRecognize , 1 hour ago

    So the Motherland ******* up with the ex-colony yet again, huh?

    THE UNITED KINGDOM along with ISRAEL & SAUDI ARABIA have always been the ones behind US Politics making, pulling the strings behind the curtains since the Petrodollar Inception, The Greater Israel project & the NWO initiative - only this time around Trump was not the UK's pick...

    Oh, but those "civilized" Allies backstabbing each other for more power grip on the USA....

    Baron von Bud , 2 hours ago

    England dominates the offshore money laundering havens where the super rich hide their money and evade taxes. They need to be brought down. No more African dictators looting their nation's resources and hiding the money first in offshore banks and then in JP Morgan and Brit banks.

    Many hedge funds are deep into this game. I'd wager on Carlyle Group and the Bush clan. Billions of people can't get ahead because the super rich are ******* crooks running the banks and governments. They don't pay taxes but force a small dry cleaner to pay 45% in fed/state taxes. These criminals include Hillary Clinton and many members of congress. Feinstein, Pelosi, Maxine and many more of both parties need to be investigated. How do they get so rich on a congressman's salary. Deep into tax evasion and payoffs? Release the documents and let MI6 hang.

    Malvern Joe , 3 hours ago

    It is a test. If Trump doesn't go ahead with declassification, we know for sure he is no better than the globalists and neocons whose goal has always been to destroy and depopulate America. It would represent the biggest sellout of this country since the creation of the Fed in 1913, He will go down as the biggest fraud ever and his base will deport his *** to the sums of India where he can defecate in public.

    Bricker , 3 hours ago

    You dont get to supply a rogue agent, that was probably told to do it in the first place, and then tell Trump not to do it out of harm, harm is all you BRIT DEEP STATES deserve

    Moving and Grooving , 3 hours ago

    'focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK soil, is curious'

    Not at all. It's obvious - the problem ISN'T Steele. They're living in fear, as are many in DC and elsewhere, that Trump is going to pry the lid open and reveal at least some of their activities. If killing him would fix the problem, they would. It's too late, considering what Trump is threatening to do. I wonder if he'll back down, at least some?

    The sheer corruption of the Global Government is on display here, revealing itself, if you watch for it. Whether planned or not, the last 6 months or so have been astonishing to watch. The entire media has been shown to be liars, academia is shown to be an expensive provider of unprepared students, the corporate world is furiously rent-seeking and finding new ways to destroy humanity, and government is too busy selling Americans out to write a budget. In all countries around the world, adjusting for national status. Lawsuits in the west, machetes in the third world.

    Ban KKiller , 4 hours ago

    U.K. does not want the jurisdiction. U.S. spies lure you overseas then...compromise you.

    John C Durham , 4 hours ago

    Duh. This Started In London! Britain is the "foreign country" involved in our elections. Wake up everyone. It's LONDONGATE .

    Anunnaki , 4 hours ago

    May gonna owe Vlad an apology when Skripal is revealed to be Steele's source. Steele himself hadn't been to Russian in 15 years. Will he get life in prison for attempted murder?

    PeaceForWorld , 4 hours ago

    "t's hard to tell who's telling the truth and who isn't in this whole Russia narrative. Fact is, NOBODY is telling the truth. That is what I've determined after doing my own research.": https://youtu.be/2AA5BIfGj3g

    I really like this woman "Shut the **** up!". She is a former Bernie supporter just like me. She has turned against Democrats just like me. She doesn't trust any of the Establishment parties.

    Buddha71 , 4 hours ago

    Trump made promises before being elected, then lied and sold America out, just like every other corrupted assklown politician. he is no different than clinton bush obama, just as arrogant, just as corrupt, and just as much a traitor. he has broken the promises upon which he was elected, just like all the other fkn liars before him. no different. just a pos. he has not made america great again, just more of the same, unemployment is a lie, it is closer to 17%.

    [Sep 21, 2018] One party state: Trump's 'Opposition' Supports All His Evil Agendas While Attacking Fake Nonsence by Caitlin Johnstone

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... If the so-called "Resistance" to Trump was ever actually interested in opposing this administration in any meaningful way, this would be the top trending news story in America for days, like how "bombshell" revelations pertaining to the made-up Russiagate narrative trend for days. Spoiler alert: it isn't, and it won't be. ..."
    "... The US Senate has just passed Trump's mammoth military spending increase by a landslide 92–8 vote . The eight senators who voted "nay"? Seven Republicans, and Independent Bernie Sanders. Every single Democrat supported the most bloated war budget since the height of the Iraq war . Rather than doing everything they can to weaken the potential damage that can be done by a president they've been assuring us is a dangerous hybrid of equal parts Benedict Arnold and Adolf Hitler, they've been actively increasing his power as Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen. ..."
    "... They're on the same team, wearing different uniforms. ..."
    "... US politics is pretty much the same; two mainstream parties owned by the same political class, engaged in a staged bidding war for votes to give the illusion of competition. ..."
    "... In reality, the US political system is like the unplugged video game remote that kids give their baby brother so he stops whining that he wants a turn to play. No matter who they vote for they get an Orwellian warmongering government which exists solely to advance the agendas of a plutocratic class which has no loyalties to any nation; the only difference is sometimes that government is pretending to care about women and minorities and sometimes it's pretending to care about white men. In reality, all the jewelers work for the same plutocrat, and that video game remote won't impact the outcome of the game no matter how many buttons you push. ..."
    "... The only way to effect real change is to stop playing along with the rigged system and start waking people up to the lies. As long as Americans believe that the mass media are telling them the truth about their country and their partisan votes are going somewhere useful, the populace whose numbers should give it immense influence is nullified and sedated into a passive ride toward war, ecocide and oppression. ..."
    "... Reprinted with author's permission from Medium.com . ..."
    "... Support Ms. Johnstone's work on Patreon or Paypal ..."
    Sep 21, 2018 | ronpaulinstitute.org

    A new article from the Wall Street Journal reports that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lied to congress about the measures Saudi Arabia is taking to minimize the civilian casualties in its catastrophic war on Yemen, and that he did so in order to secure two billion dollars for war profiteers.

    This is about as depraved as anything you could possibly imagine. US-made bombs have been conclusively tied to civilian deaths in a war which has caused the single worst humanitarian crisis on earth, a crisis which sees scores of Yemeni children dying every single day and has placed five million children at risk of death by starvation in a nation where families are now eating leaves to survive . CIA veteran Bruce Riedel once said that "if the United States of America and the United Kingdom tonight told King Salman that this war has to end, it would end tomorrow, because the Royal Saudi Airforce cannot operate without American and British support." Nobody other than war plutocrats benefits from the US assisting Saudi Arabia in its monstrous crimes against humanity, and yet Pompeo chose to override his own expert advisors on the matter for fear of hurting the income of those very war plutocrats.

    If the so-called "Resistance" to Trump was ever actually interested in opposing this administration in any meaningful way, this would be the top trending news story in America for days, like how "bombshell" revelations pertaining to the made-up Russiagate narrative trend for days. Spoiler alert: it isn't, and it won't be.

    It would be so very, very easy for Democratic party leaders and Democrat-aligned media to hurt this administration at the highest level and cause irreparable political damage based on this story. All they'd have to do is give it the same blanket coverage they've given the stories about Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort which end up leading nowhere remotely near impeachment or proof of collusion with the Russian government. The footage of the starving children is right there, ready to be aired to pluck at the heart strings of rank-and-file Americans day after day until Republicans have lost all hope of victory in the midterms and in 2020; all they'd have to do is use it. But they don't. And they won't.

    The US Senate has just passed Trump's mammoth military spending increase by a landslide 92–8 vote . The eight senators who voted "nay"? Seven Republicans, and Independent Bernie Sanders. Every single Democrat supported the most bloated war budget since the height of the Iraq war . Rather than doing everything they can to weaken the potential damage that can be done by a president they've been assuring us is a dangerous hybrid of equal parts Benedict Arnold and Adolf Hitler, they've been actively increasing his power as Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen.

    The reason for this is very simple: President Trump's ostensible political opposition does not oppose President Trump. They're on the same team, wearing different uniforms. This is the reason they attack him on Russian collusion accusations which the brighter bulbs among them know full well will never be proven and have no basis in reality. They don't stand up to Trump because, as Julian Assange once said , they are Trump.

    In John Steinbeck's The Pearl, there are jewelry buyers set up around a fishing community which are all owned by the same plutocrat, but they all pretend to be in competition with one another. When the story's protagonist discovers an enormous and valuable pearl and goes to sell it, they all gather round and individually bid far less than it is worth in order to trick him into giving it away for almost nothing. US politics is pretty much the same; two mainstream parties owned by the same political class, engaged in a staged bidding war for votes to give the illusion of competition.

    In reality, the US political system is like the unplugged video game remote that kids give their baby brother so he stops whining that he wants a turn to play. No matter who they vote for they get an Orwellian warmongering government which exists solely to advance the agendas of a plutocratic class which has no loyalties to any nation; the only difference is sometimes that government is pretending to care about women and minorities and sometimes it's pretending to care about white men. In reality, all the jewelers work for the same plutocrat, and that video game remote won't impact the outcome of the game no matter how many buttons you push.

    The only way to effect real change is to stop playing along with the rigged system and start waking people up to the lies. As long as Americans believe that the mass media are telling them the truth about their country and their partisan votes are going somewhere useful, the populace whose numbers should give it immense influence is nullified and sedated into a passive ride toward war, ecocide and oppression.

    If enough of us keep throwing sand in the gears of the lie factory, we can wake the masses up from the oligarchic lullaby they're being sung. And then maybe we'll be big enough to have a shot at grabbing one of the real video game controllers.

    Reprinted with author's permission from Medium.com .

    Support Ms. Johnstone's work on Patreon or Paypal

    [Sep 16, 2018] Perils of Ineptitude by Andrew Levin

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... There is less shame in being undone by a "master of deceit." When J. Edgar Hoover coined that description, he had Communists in mind. Back then, though, "Ruskies" and "Commies" – it was all the same. Americans were conditioned to live in fear that the Russians were coming. ..."
    "... That nonsense should have ended when Communism more or less officially expired in 1989, followed two years later by the demise of the Soviet Union itself. For a long time, it seemed that it had. At first, the reaction in Western, especially American, political and media circles was triumphalist. The war was over and our side won. Beneath the surface, however, there was mourning in America. ..."
    "... With the Cold War, the death merchants, the masters of war, the neocons, and a host of others had had a good thing going. Having been born into it, the political class was comfortable with the status quo too; and generations of Americans had grown up imbibing Russophobia in their mother's milk (or infant formula). ..."
    "... Before long, it became clear that our economic and political masters had nothing to worry about, that Cold War anti-Communism was more robust than Communism itself. ..."
    "... That suited Bill Clinton and his First Lady, the former Goldwater Girl. Boris Yeltsin, Russia's leader, was their man. He was a godsend, a Trump-like cartoon character and a drunkard to boot – with an economy in tatters, and no rightwing base egging him on. ..."
    "... The time was therefore right for a return of the repressed -- for full-blooded, fifties-style, anti-Communist (= anti-Russian) hysteria, or, since that still seemed far-fetched, for anti-Communist (= anti-Chinese) hysteria. ..."
    "... Exactly what "Putin," the shorthand name for all that is Russian and nefarious, did, or is still doing, remains unclear. But this does not seem to bother purveyors of the conventional wisdom. Neither is ostensibly informed public opinion fazed by the fact that the evidence supporting the consensus view comes mainly from American intelligence services and from their counterparts in the UK and other allied nations. ..."
    "... How ironic therefore that nowadays it is mainly bamboozled Trump supporters in the Fox News demographic -- people who could care less about peace or, for that matter, about truth -- who are wary of the CIA and skeptical of the FBI's claims! ..."
    "... They do not even seem to notice that what they allege, vague as it is, is trifling compared to the massive and very open meddling of American plutocrats, Republican vote suppressers and gerrymanderers, and the governments of supposedly friendly nations – like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, and Israel ..."
    "... Cold War revivalists can therefore rest easy, confident that their propagandists will have at least a few facts with which they can work to restore the perils of their vanished youth. ..."
    "... Even so, the level of their hypocrisy is appalling. Russia, along with former Soviet republics and former members of the Warsaw Pact, has been bearing the brunt of far worse American meddling for far longer than anything sanctimonious defenders of so-called American "democracy" can plausibly allege. ..."
    "... Hypocrisy reigns here too. It was the Obama administration – run through with neocons, liberal imperialists, and other holdovers from Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State – that did all it could to exacerbate longstanding tensions between that country's Ukrainian and Russian speaking populations, the better to complete NATO's encirclement of the Russian federation. And it was American meddling that led to the empowerment of virulently anti-Russian, fascisant Ukrainian politicians, much to the detriment of Russian speaking Ukrainians in the east. ..."
    "... The Cold War that began after World War II involved a clash of rival political economic systems. The Cold War that reignited a few years ago involves a clash of rival imperialist centers. Its world more nearly resembles the one that existed before World War I than the one that emerged after World War II. ..."
    "... However, the difference may be more superficial than it seems. The ease with which Cold War revivalists have been able to get the Cold War up and running again, even without Communism, suggests what a few observers have long maintained -- that the Cold War, on Russia's part, had little, if anything, to do with spreading Communism around the world, and everything to do with maintaining a cordon sanitaire around Russia's borders in order to protect against a demonstrably aggressive "free world." ..."
    "... That part of Brzezinski's plan was at least a partial success. But inasmuch as Bush's "they" are still there, still spreading murder and mayhem throughout the Greater Middle East, America and the world has been paying a high price for the benefits, such as they were, that ensued. ..."
    "... The never-ending wars set in motion by the "pivot" towards radical Islamism decades ago never quite succeeded in producing an enemy as serviceable as the USSR. But now that Putin's Russia has been pressed into service, that problem is potentially "solved." ..."
    "... Efforts to recycle Bush's "they hate our freedom" nonsense ought to be non-starters. But this is the best Cold War revivalists have come up with so far. The Russians, they say, simply cannot deal with the fact that we Americans are so damned free. ..."
    "... From a geopolitical point of view, Russia does have an interest in doing all it can to ward off Western aggression. It also has an interest in undermining strategic alliances aimed at blocking anything and everything that challenges American supremacy. And, until sanity prevails in Washington and other Western capitals, it arguably also has an interest in aiding and abetting rightwing nationalists in order to exacerbate tensions within Western societies. ..."
    "... Clinton is bad, but Trump is worse -- not just by most measures but by all. Her fondness for war and preparations for war was alarming; she was bellicosity personified. But it was plain even before the election that Trump, a mentally unhinged narcissist, would be even more likely than she to bring on massive devastation. A vote for Trump was and still is a vote for catastrophe. ..."
    "... For now, though, the hard and very relevant fact is that Trump has done nothing to help, and quite a few things to harm, Russia. ..."
    "... It isn't just ordinary Russians who have been made worse off. Trump has been at least as hard on oligarchs close to Putin as Clinton would have been. ..."
    "... If those damned Russians were half as smart as they are made out to be, they would have realized long ago that, for getting anything done that bucks the tide, Trump is too inept to be of any use at all; and that anything he sets out to do is likely to turn out badly not just for America and its allies but for Russia too. ..."
    Aug 03, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org

    There is less shame in being undone by a "master of deceit." When J. Edgar Hoover coined that description, he had Communists in mind. Back then, though, "Ruskies" and "Commies" – it was all the same. Americans were conditioned to live in fear that the Russians were coming.

    That nonsense should have ended when Communism more or less officially expired in 1989, followed two years later by the demise of the Soviet Union itself. For a long time, it seemed that it had. At first, the reaction in Western, especially American, political and media circles was triumphalist. The war was over and our side won. Beneath the surface, however, there was mourning in America.

    With the Cold War, the death merchants, the masters of war, the neocons, and a host of others had had a good thing going. Having been born into it, the political class was comfortable with the status quo too; and generations of Americans had grown up imbibing Russophobia in their mother's milk (or infant formula).

    It turned out, though, that American triumphalism was only a phase. Before long, it became clear that our economic and political masters had nothing to worry about, that Cold War anti-Communism was more robust than Communism itself.

    However, in the final days of Bush 41 and then at the dawn of the Clinton era, nobody knew that. Nobody gave America's propaganda system the credit it deserved.

    Also, nobody quite realized how devastating Russia's regression to capitalism would be, and nobody quite grasped the savagery of the kleptocrats who had taken charge of what remained of the Russian state.

    For more than a decade, the situation in that late great superpower was too dire to sustain the old fears and animosities. Capitalism had made Russia wretched again.

    That suited Bill Clinton and his First Lady, the former Goldwater Girl. Boris Yeltsin, Russia's leader, was their man. He was a godsend, a Trump-like cartoon character and a drunkard to boot – with an economy in tatters, and no rightwing base egging him on.

    But anti-Communism (without Communism) and its close cousin, Russophobia, could not remain in remission forever. The need for them was too great.

    In the Age of Obama, the Global War on Terror, with or without that ludicrous Bush 43-era name, wasn't cutting it anymore. It was, and still is, good for keeping America's perpetual war regime going and for undoing civil liberties, but there had never been much glory in it, only endless misery for all. Also it was getting old and increasingly easy to see through.

    The time was therefore right for a return of the repressed -- for full-blooded, fifties-style, anti-Communist (= anti-Russian) hysteria, or, since that still seemed far-fetched, for anti-Communist (= anti-Chinese) hysteria.

    This was not the only factor behind the Obama administration's "pivot towards Asia," its largely failed attempt to take China down a notch or two, but it was an important part of the story.

    However, by the time Obama and his team decided to pivot, China had become too important to the United States economically to make a good Cold War enemy. Worse still, it had for too long been an object of pity and contempt, not fear.

    When the Soviet Union was an enemy, China was an enemy too, most glaringly during the Korean War. It remained an enemy even after the Sino-Soviet split became too obvious to deny. However, unlike post-1917 Russia, it had never quite become an historical foe.

    Moreover, as Russia began to recover from the Yeltsin era, the Russian political class, and many of the oligarchs behind them, sensing the popular mood, decided that the time was ripe "to make Russia great again." Putin is not so much a cause as he is a symptom – and symbol – of this aspiration.

    And so, there it was: the longed for new Cold War would be much like the one that seemed over a quarter century ago.

    ***

    As everyone who has seen, heard or read anything about the 2016 election "knows," Russian intelligence services (= Putin) meddled. Everyone also "knows" that, with midterm elections looming, they are at it again.

    This, according to the mainstream consensus view, is a bona fide casus belli , a justification for war. To be sure, what they want is a war that remains cold; ending life on earth, as we know it, is not on their agenda.

    But inasmuch as cold wars can easily turn hot, this hardly mitigates the recklessness of their machinations. Humankind was extraordinarily lucky last time; there is no guarantee that all that luck will hold.

    Exactly what "Putin," the shorthand name for all that is Russian and nefarious, did, or is still doing, remains unclear. But this does not seem to bother purveyors of the conventional wisdom. Neither is ostensibly informed public opinion fazed by the fact that the evidence supporting the consensus view comes mainly from American intelligence services and from their counterparts in the UK and other allied nations.

    Time was when anyone with any sense understood that these intelligence services, the American ones especially, are second to none in meddling in the affairs of other nations, and that the American national security state – essentially our political police -- is comprised, by design, of liars and deceivers.

    How ironic therefore that nowadays it is mainly bamboozled Trump supporters in the Fox News demographic -- people who could care less about peace or, for that matter, about truth -- who are wary of the CIA and skeptical of the FBI's claims!

    Try as they might, the manufacturers and guardians of conventional wisdom have so far been unable to concoct a plausible story in which Russian meddling affected the outcome of the 2016 election in any serious way. The idea that the Russians defeated Hillary, not Hillary herself, is, to borrow a phrase from Jeremy Bentham, "nonsense on stilts." Leading Democrats and their media flacks don't seem to mind that either.

    They do not even seem to notice that what they allege, vague as it is, is trifling compared to the massive and very open meddling of American plutocrats, Republican vote suppressers and gerrymanderers, and the governments of supposedly friendly nations – like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, and Israel.

    Nevertheless, it probably is true that the Russians meddled. Cold War revivalists can therefore rest easy, confident that their propagandists will have at least a few facts with which they can work to restore the perils of their vanished youth.

    Even so, the level of their hypocrisy is appalling. Russia, along with former Soviet republics and former members of the Warsaw Pact, has been bearing the brunt of far worse American meddling for far longer than anything sanctimonious defenders of so-called American "democracy" can plausibly allege.

    Moreover, it should go without saying that the democracy they purport to care so much about has almost nothing to do with "the rule of the demos." It doesn't even have much to do with free and fair competitive elections – unless "free and fair" means that anything goes, so long as the principals and perpetrators are homegrown or citizens of favored nations.

    Self-righteous posturing aside, Putin's real sin in the eyes of the American power elite is that, in his own small way, he has been defying America's "right" to run the world as it sees fit.

    When Clinton was president, Serbia did that, and lived to regret it. Cuba has been suffering for nearly six decades for the same reason, and now Venezuela is paying its dues. The empire is merciless towards nations that rebel.

    With Soviet support and then with sheer determination and grit, Cuba has been able to withstand the onslaught to some extent from Day One. Venezuela may not be so lucky – especially now that Republicans and Democrats feel threatened by the growing number of "democratic socialists" in their midst. Already, the propaganda system is targeting Venezuelan "socialism," blaming it for that country's woes, and warning that if our newly minted, homegrown socialists prevail, a similar fate will be in store for us.

    This is ludicrous, of course – American hostility and the vagaries of the global oil market deserve the lion's share of the blame. But the on-going propaganda blitz could nevertheless pave the way for horrors ahead, should Trump decide to start a war America could actually win.

    Inconsequential Russian meddling is a big deal on the "liberal" cable networks, on NPR, and in the "quality" press. Democrats and a few Republicans love to bleat on about it. But it is Ukraine that made Russia our "adversary" and its president Public Enemy Number One.

    Hypocrisy reigns here too. It was the Obama administration – run through with neocons, liberal imperialists, and other holdovers from Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State – that did all it could to exacerbate longstanding tensions between that country's Ukrainian and Russian speaking populations, the better to complete NATO's encirclement of the Russian federation. And it was American meddling that led to the empowerment of virulently anti-Russian, fascisant Ukrainian politicians, much to the detriment of Russian speaking Ukrainians in the east.

    But never mind: Putin – that is, the Russia government – violated international law by sending troops briefly into beleaguered Russian-speaking parts of the country. That they were generally welcomed by the people living there is of no importance.

    Worst of all, Russia annexed Crimea – a territory integral to the Russian empire since the eighteenth century. Since long before the Russian Revolution, Crimea has been home to a huge naval base vital to Russia's strategic defense.

    The story line back in the day was that anything that could be described as Russian aggression outside the Soviet Union's agreed upon sphere of influence had to do with spreading Communism. In fact, the Soviets did everything they could to keep Communist and other insurgencies from upending the status quo. The mainstream narrative was wrong.

    Now Communism is gone and nothing has taken its place. Even so, the idea that Russia has designs on its neighbors for ideological reasons is hard to shake – in part because it is actively promoted by propagandists who have suddenly and uncharacteristically become defenders of international law.

    Meanwhile, of course, the hypocrisies keep piling on. It is practically a tenet of the American civil religion that international law applies to others, not to the United States. This is why, when it suits some perceived purpose, America flaunts its violations shamelessly.

    Thus nothing the Russians did or are ever likely to do comes close to the shenanigans Bill Clinton displayed – successfully, for the most part – in his efforts to tear Kosovo away from Serbia. Clinton even went so far as to bomb Belgrade; Putin never bombed Kiev.

    The Cold War that began after World War II involved a clash of rival political economic systems. The Cold War that reignited a few years ago involves a clash of rival imperialist centers. Its world more nearly resembles the one that existed before World War I than the one that emerged after World War II.

    However, the difference may be more superficial than it seems. The ease with which Cold War revivalists have been able to get the Cold War up and running again, even without Communism, suggests what a few observers have long maintained -- that the Cold War, on Russia's part, had little, if anything, to do with spreading Communism around the world, and everything to do with maintaining a cordon sanitaire around Russia's borders in order to protect against a demonstrably aggressive "free world."

    George W. Bush claimed that 9/11 happened because "they hate our freedom." "They" would be radical Islamists of the kind stirred into action in Afghanistan by Zbigniew Brzezinski and his co-thinkers in the Carter administration. Their objective was to undermine the Soviet Union by getting it bogged down in a quagmire like the one that did so much harm to the United States in Vietnam.

    That part of Brzezinski's plan was at least a partial success. But inasmuch as Bush's "they" are still there, still spreading murder and mayhem throughout the Greater Middle East, America and the world has been paying a high price for the benefits, such as they were, that ensued.

    The never-ending wars set in motion by the "pivot" towards radical Islamism decades ago never quite succeeded in producing an enemy as serviceable as the USSR. But now that Putin's Russia has been pressed into service, that problem is potentially "solved."

    However, the American public is not as naïve as it used to be, and it is impossible to say, at this point, how well this new story line will work.

    Efforts to recycle Bush's "they hate our freedom" nonsense ought to be non-starters. But this is the best Cold War revivalists have come up with so far. The Russians, they say, simply cannot deal with the fact that we Americans are so damned free.

    It is hard to believe, but there are people who are actually buying this but, with a lot of corporate media assistance, there are. No matter how clear it is that they are not worth being taken seriously, Cold War mythologies just won't die.

    However, it is worth pondering why today's Russia would do what it is alleged to have done; and why, as is also alleged, it is still doing it.

    From a geopolitical point of view, Russia does have an interest in doing all it can to ward off Western aggression. It also has an interest in undermining strategic alliances aimed at blocking anything and everything that challenges American supremacy. And, until sanity prevails in Washington and other Western capitals, it arguably also has an interest in aiding and abetting rightwing nationalists in order to exacerbate tensions within Western societies.

    However, in view of prevailing power relations, these are interests it cannot do much to advance. Acting as if this were not the case only puts Russia in a bad light -- not for meddling, but for meddling stupidly.

    No doubt, for reasons both fair and foul, Putin wanted Hillary to lose the election two years ago. So, but for one little problem, would anyone whose head is screwed on right. That problem's name is Donald Trump.

    Clinton is bad, but Trump is worse -- not just by most measures but by all. Her fondness for war and preparations for war was alarming; she was bellicosity personified. But it was plain even before the election that Trump, a mentally unhinged narcissist, would be even more likely than she to bring on massive devastation. A vote for Trump was and still is a vote for catastrophe.

    Putin's enemy was Trump's enemy, and it is axiomatic that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" -- except sometimes it isn't. Sometimes, my enemy's enemy is an enemy far worse.

    For reasons that remain obscure, Putin and Trump seem to have a "thing" going on between them. Some day perhaps we will know what that is all about. For now, though, the hard and very relevant fact is that Trump has done nothing to help, and quite a few things to harm, Russia.

    It isn't just ordinary Russians who have been made worse off. Trump has been at least as hard on oligarchs close to Putin as Clinton would have been.

    If those damned Russians were half as smart as they are made out to be, they would have realized long ago that, for getting anything done that bucks the tide, Trump is too inept to be of any use at all; and that anything he sets out to do is likely to turn out badly not just for America and its allies but for Russia too.

    Therefore, if there really was Russian meddling, as there probably was, Putin should be ashamed – not so much for the DNC reasons laid out 24/7 on MSNBC and CNN, but for overestimating Trump's abilities and for underestimating the extent to which what started out as a maneuver of Hillary Clinton's, concocted to excuse her incompetence, would take a perilously "viral" turn, becoming a major threat to peace in a political culture that never quite got beyond the lunacy of the First Cold War.

    Andrew Levine is the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What's Wrong With the Opium of the People . He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

    [Sep 15, 2018] BBC is skanky state propaganda

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The myth of BBC being some standard for news reporting died with the advent of the availability of international and independent news in Western countries ..."
    "... Ironic when the BBC has been ceaselessly pushing fake news for at least 15 years, with disastrous results. (Iraq; Libya; what caused the deficit and who should be forced to pay it down; Russia/Syria false flags; Corbyn A/S.) ..."
    "... I find it impossible to watch BBC News, primarily because most of the editorial staff and senior correspondents seem to be working for MI5/6 and are more interested in disseminating Geo-political propaganda than upholding their journalistic responsibilities as defined in the BBC charter. ..."
    "... The book is obviously part of a propaganda campaign. It seems hugely fortuitous that Mark Urban should have had "hours" of interviews with Skripal before the poisoning incident. ..."
    "... Isn't it much more likely that the Urban "interviews" would have happened after the event? But Urban can't say that because that would lead to demands from other journalists or news bodies to have access to Skripal. ..."
    "... I'm open to alternative hypotheses but right now I think the most likely explanation for Urban's pre-poisoning contact with Sergei Skripal is that, at the time, it was assumed the Orbis dossier would be a key component of the successful takedown of Trump and Urban was putting together a mutually flattering account by interviewing the main players. ..."
    "... With regard to your tongue-in-cheek point. Urban could have interviewed Skripal anytime after Trump was gone, unless he believed Skripal might be unavailable (for some reason). The fact he interviewed Skripal before does indicate foresight. If Urban really did interview Skripal before the event then he would be wiser to pull the book and burn every copy in existence (as well as all his notes). ..."
    "... Urban pretends to research a book exposing Russia and part of his research is to interview Skripal. His objective is to find dirt on Putin in order to swing the war in Syria in favour of USUKIS bombing Assad to smithereens, bayonets bums etc. ..."
    "... Interestingly Mark Urbans' book on Sergei Skripal was available to purchase on Amazon in July. I added it to my Amazon wishlist on 28/7/18. I've just looked at my wishlist and was rather surprised to find it is no longer available. It has been pulled. ..."
    "... Can't help thinking that the answer to all this lies in Estonia. Sergei went to Estonia in June 2016, Pablo was in Estonia, the Estonians passed on sigint about Trump-Russian collusion in the summer of 2016. A Guardian article of 13 April 2017 said: ..."
    "... No doubt in my mind that the Skripal affair is a planned operation carried out by US/UK intelligence. What has actually taken place is still to be determined, but the propaganda operation itself is clear. ..."
    "... I know about Ireland, and I agree, it was NOT a nerve agent. That said, I don't believe anyone was 'attacked', including the Skripals. ..."
    "... All foreign correspondents of major newspapers too work with MI6. Nobody who is close to them has any kind of doubt about this. ..."
    "... I despise everyone who says that free markets are the solution for the problems of the third world. What they mean is mass starvation and an enormous population cull. There are international "foundations" that pay academics and politicians large amounts of money to spout this obscene line. One of them is called the John Templeton Foundation. They have had their fangs in to British universities for a long time. ..."
    "... When the Tories talk about 'free markets', they are talking about markets free from democracy. ..."
    Aug 30, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

    Dave , August 28, 2018 at 17:41

    BBC is skanky state propaganda. The myth of BBC being some standard for news reporting died with the advent of the availability of international and independent news in Western countries. The main thing that BBC used to have which propped up the illusion of it being a respectable news source is that there was no competition or alternative to compare its narratives against. Since that time is over, so is BBC's masquerading as an impartial or accurate news source.

    Xavi , August 28, 2018 at 18:40

    Agree, Dave. That's what's informing the push to rubbish dissenting sites as fake news and eventually have them removed.

    Ironic when the BBC has been ceaselessly pushing fake news for at least 15 years, with disastrous results. (Iraq; Libya; what caused the deficit and who should be forced to pay it down; Russia/Syria false flags; Corbyn A/S.)

    Ken Kenn , August 28, 2018 at 21:49

    Well I was convinced of fake BBC news during 9/11 and not for the reasons of building 7 coming down too early but the fact that the female journalist was facing a camera standing in front of a glass window and there was no reflection of her or the camera person from the glass. Not even a faint shadow.

    That's when I knew the BBC were employing vampires and have been ever since.

    Green Screen technology I discovered later. All the On the spot reporters are at it apparently. Or repeating Reuters or PA.

    Deb O'Nair , August 28, 2018 at 00:52

    I find it impossible to watch BBC News, primarily because most of the editorial staff and senior correspondents seem to be working for MI5/6 and are more interested in disseminating Geo-political propaganda than upholding their journalistic responsibilities as defined in the BBC charter. People should not only boycott the BBC but refuse to pay the license fee on the grounds that it's a compulsory political subscription.

    frankywiggles , August 28, 2018 at 09:48

    Careful, Craig

    BBC world affairs editor 'fed up' with complaints directed at the corporation's news output

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/aug/28/bbc-news-is-not-biased-in-brexit-reporting-says-john-simpson

    D_Majestic , August 28, 2018 at 14:35

    Of course BBC News is not biased. Most of the time it is not even factual.

    Brendan , August 28, 2018 at 10:34

    Dear Mark,
    In a BBC article on 4 July 2018, you wrote: "I have not felt ready until now to acknowledge explicitly that we had met, but do now that the book is nearing completion."

    Could you please explain that comment? I do not see why your acknowledgement of your meetings with Sergei Skripal should be delayed until your book is nearing completion.

    If you felt that it was right to reveal those meetings in July, then why was it not right to do so in March, soon after the poisoning occurred? What difference would it have made if you had done so four months earlier?

    I cannot think of any negative consequences of an earlier acknowledgement of the meetings. In fact, disclosures of any possible conflict of interest are generally considered to be desirable in journalism, regardless of whether the conflict of interest is real.

    ADHD , August 28, 2018 at 11:00

    The book is obviously part of a propaganda campaign. It seems hugely fortuitous that Mark Urban should have had "hours" of interviews with Skripal before the poisoning incident.

    Isn't it much more likely that the Urban "interviews" would have happened after the event? But Urban can't say that because that would lead to demands from other journalists or news bodies to have access to Skripal.

    And that can't happen because either Skripal would be asked about what happened on the day of the poisoning, or can't be guaranteed to stick to the script, or is no longer alive. And that leads to a suspicion that whatever Skripal is supposed to have said in his interviews with Urban has really just been made up by the British security services.

    Kay , August 28, 2018 at 14:42

    I'm open to alternative hypotheses but right now I think the most likely explanation for Urban's pre-poisoning contact with Sergei Skripal is that, at the time, it was assumed the Orbis dossier would be a key component of the successful takedown of Trump and Urban was putting together a mutually flattering account by interviewing the main players.

    Tongue in cheek, it'd be worth asking Urban if his decision to cover the Skripal poisoning in his new book was made before or after the Skripals were actually poisoned.

    ADHD , August 28, 2018 at 15:59

    The consensus seems to be that it was an anti-Russia book, but that doesn't conflict with what you say (there is overlap, your view is just more specific). But, I just find it hard to believe that Urban and the conspirators would waste their time "counting their chickens ". Not least because such a book would form a handy list of traitors (together with confessions) if Trump were to prevail and it fell into the right hands. This is "101 – How to Organise a Revolution" (secrecy / don't put anything in writing); surely British security services know that?

    With regard to your tongue-in-cheek point. Urban could have interviewed Skripal anytime after Trump was gone, unless he believed Skripal might be unavailable (for some reason). The fact he interviewed Skripal before does indicate foresight. If Urban really did interview Skripal before the event then he would be wiser to pull the book and burn every copy in existence (as well as all his notes).

    Regardless, it looks like the master of the universe are losing their ability to create reality.

    Brendan , August 28, 2018 at 10:37

    Last month, Mark Urban was promoting the reports that the Russian assassins had been identified from CCTV footage:

    "There are now subjects of interest in the police Salisbury investigation. ( ) analytic and cyber techniques are now being exploited against the Salisbury suspects by people with a wealth of experience in complex investigations."
    https://twitter.com/MarkUrban01/status/1020366761848385536

    That story originated with a report by PA, which Security Minister Ben Wallace called "ill informed and wild speculation". https://mobile.twitter.com/BWallaceMP/status/1019906962786484225

    Or as Craig Murray put it, "Unnamed source close to unnamed British police officers tells unnamed Press Association journalist Britain knows the unnamed Russian agents ".
    https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1019854966327005184

    Even Urban's colleagues had to admit that "The BBC has not been able to independently confirm the story."
    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-44883803

    Still, that didn't stop Mark Urban from reporting the story almost as fact.

    Tom , August 28, 2018 at 10:38

    The BBC relies on it's interpretation of the Act because it is held for the purposes of 'journalism, art or literature.' but this relies on a usually unrelated precedent and the opinions of a number of Judges which contradict this view. I'm in the process of challenging this with ICO but don't expect anything will change until another supreme court ruling:

    https://medium.com/@tomcoady/bbc-foi-exemption-for-the-purposes-of-art-journalism-or-literature-c39e4fa3e36

    Ian Fantom , August 28, 2018 at 10:41

    I've put in a Freedom of Information request regarding meetings with Skripal other than any that were for the purpose of BBC news journalism. (https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/mark_urbans_non_journalistic_mee )

    Made By Dom , August 28, 2018 at 11:04

    Can I play Devil's Advocate ?

    I can see the value in asking writers, journalists and artists to pose exactly the same questions as Eccles' original letter but I'm not convinced about Craig's email.

    A quick google shows me that a man named Mark Urban has written a book on the Skripals. Isn't it likely that Urban was keeping the interviews to himself in order to keep his book alive?

    It wouldn't surprise me if Urban cares far more about his writing career than his job at the BBC. I'm sure most journalists would rather be authors. He's written a number of books on war and military intelligence. If his sources have nothing to do with the BBC then why should he answer to an on line mob?

    craig Post author , August 28, 2018 at 11:18

    " Isn't it likely that Urban was keeping the interviews to himself in order to keep his book alive?"
    No, entirely unlikely. a chance to plug his forthcoming book and his Skripal contacts to a massive worldwide televion audience was eschewed.
    The book is now about the Skripal attack. Presumably that was not the original subject he was researching, as it hadn't happened yet. The book will just be a rehash of the "noble defector – Putin revenge" line and none of the questions I asked about the genesis of his involvement will be answered in it.

    SA , August 28, 2018 at 11:29

    "Presumably that was not the original subject he was researching, as it hadn't happened yet." Or it was prescience ie that it was part of the planning for the incident?

    Chris Hemmings , August 28, 2018 at 14:41

    @BBC, Summer 2017, in an executive office:
    "Hey Mark, why don't you go down to have a chat with this guy in Salisbury. I have a hunch that a story might be going to happen involving him, you know, as an ex-Soviet spy. Spend time with him, get to know him, be able to write in depth about him. Say it's for a book ."

    giyane , August 28, 2018 at 11:46

    Urban is never one-sided in his BBC reports on the Middle East. I would rather have him as Foreign Secretary than a bumbling idiot like Hubris Johnson or a Tory racketeer Hunt, because however clunky the formula of BBC balance Urban is at least pretending to be governed by normal rules. After Thatcher went anyone with half a brain left the Conservative party, leaving dolts like Johnson and nasties like May and Cameron to pick up the pieces after Blair and Brown.

    There's money to be made from Russian billionaires and tory shit will follow the money like flies on d**t**d.

    Urban pretends to research a book exposing Russia and part of his research is to interview Skripal. His objective is to find dirt on Putin in order to swing the war in Syria in favour of USUKIS bombing Assad to smithereens, bayonets bums etc.

    Tory shit Hubris Johnson finds this political research floating around the Foreign Office and decides to twist it into Russia murders Skripal by Novichok. Unfortunately Johnson is already known to be a liar and gravy-trainer Tory and nobody believes him at all. Mrs May , realising that Johnson, Fox, Rees-Mogg and Hunt are completely bonkers, does Chequers her own way.

    ZigZag Wanderer , August 28, 2018 at 12:26

    Interestingly Mark Urbans' book on Sergei Skripal was available to purchase on Amazon in July. I added it to my Amazon wishlist on 28/7/18. I've just looked at my wishlist and was rather surprised to find it is no longer available. It has been pulled.

    From memory the books description said that Mark had interviewed Skripal 'extensively' during 2017 and also mentioned the 'new' spying war now happening between Britain and Russia.

    A quick search revealed a new version of the book ( with an altered title ) will be available in early October .. details here. https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/mark-urban/the-skripal-files

    Oh dear . panic stations !

    Sharp Ears , August 28, 2018 at 11:16

    Salisbury poisoning: Skripals 'were under Russian surveillance'
    Mark Urban Diplomatic and defence editor, Newsnight

    4 July 2018

    'My meetings with Sergei Skripal

    I met Sergei on a few occasions last summer and found him to be a private character who did not, even under the circumstances then prevailing, wish to draw attention to himself.

    He agreed to see me as a writer of history books rather than as a news journalist, since I was researching one on the post-Cold War espionage battle between Russia and the West.

    Information gained in these interviews was fed into my Newsnight coverage during the early days after the poisoning. I have not felt ready until now to acknowledge explicitly that we had met, but do now that the book is nearing completion.

    As a man, Sergei is proud of his achievements, both before and after joining his country's intelligence service.

    He has a deadpan wit and is remarkably stoical given the reverses he's suffered in his life; from his imprisonment following conviction in 2006 on charges of spying for Britain, to the loss of his wife Liudmila to cancer in 2012, and the untimely death of his son Alexander (or Sasha) last summer.'

    ...

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44717835

    Agent Green , August 28, 2018 at 12:27

    Laughable given that the whole world and virtually all heads of State were under US surveillance by the NSA – at least until Edward Snowden made all his revelations.

    KEVIN GLENNIE , August 28, 2018 at 11:18

    I have pasted and copied your Email regarding the above with a few slight alterations, it will be interesting to see the response I receive if any being just a concerned citizen of the U.

    Niki Henry , August 28, 2018 at 11:21

    Is this not a matter for the Police? (Even if you're not too sure if they'd do anything about it) These would be files that are to do with an attempted murder case. And definitely not Journalism if the story is fabricated.

    Paul Baker , August 28, 2018 at 11:28

    It feels as if you are moving in the right direction in linking Sergei to Steele. I'm intrigued by the very early media references to Sergei wanting to return home to see his elderly mother for perhaps the last time. He had apparently written to Putin making his request but again according to newspapers hadn't received a reply.

    I would suggest Julia was bringing the answer via her own secret services contacts, her boyfriend and his mother, apparently Senior in the Russian Intelligence Agency. Perhaps a sentimental man Sergei was aware his mother couldn't travel so the plea to Putin was his best bet.

    Such a request must have disturbed MI6 if Sergei had anything at all to do with the Steele dossier because inevitably if he returned to Russia he'd be debriefed by his old colleagues. But how can you rely on a mercenary double agent? If he decided he might want to stay in Russia with his family that might well have been attractive, away from the lonely existence in a Salisbury cul de sac with only spies for company. But the Steele dossier has great potential to turn sour on the British.

    It's author was a Senior spy and Head of the Russian Desk for some years. It is – perhaps you'd agree? – inconceivable that he didn't require permission to prepare it, especially as much of it was based on his experience as a spy in Russia. Yet it's equally inconceivable that the Agency bosses didn't know the identity of the commissioners or the use to which it would be put in the US election – to boost Clinton's bid. If she'd won everything would have been fine but as it is any discussion of foreign interference in that election would have to include MI6 leading the list (they probably didn't tell any politician?) To have Sergei supporting and highlighting that embarrassment would be problematic for US-UK relations. Of course Sergei may have had other nuggets to expose as well as Steele.

    Soon after Julia's arrival the pair fell ill. They both survived but are now locked away, presumably for life and never able to explain their side of the story.

    It was a bodged job with a poor cover story from the start and could only be carried because of D Notices and media complicity. Is his mother still alive? Would he still like to see her before she dies? Would Russia allow it? Would MI6 allow it? I think that's 3 yeses and a resounding No.

    Sharp Ears , August 28, 2018 at 11:39

    Following the deaths of 55 Palestinians on the Gaza 'border' and the wounding of thousands, in this video, Urban asks the questions but the Israeli government spokesman, David Keyes, is allowed to spout all the usual propaganda against Hamas.

    Gaza deaths: Who's to blame? – BBC Newsnight
    Published on 15 May 2018
    Subscribe 256K
    Fresh protests against Israel are expected in the Palestinian territories, a day after Israeli troops killed 58 people in the Gaza Strip.
    David Keyes is the spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mark Urban asked him whether it was appropriate for the US to open their embassy on the 70th anniversary of Israel's creation, a day that is hugely controversial for the Palestinian people.

    Newsnight is the BBC's flagship news and current affairs TV programme – with analysis, debate, exclusives, and robust interviews.
    Website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsnight
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1dec5XO53k

    Mr Keyes' pronounced American accent was heard. The Occupation was not mentioned. A Palestinian voice was not heard.

    This is another of his videos. On the same subject and on the opening of the Israeli Embassy in Jerusalem. This time, Jonathan Conricus spoke for the IDF.

    Israel says. Same old. Same old. BBC. ZBC.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WdqoPKKkD8

    Charles Bostock , August 28, 2018 at 15:58

    "Urban asks the questions but the Israeli government spokesman, David Keyes, is allowed to spout all the usual propaganda against Hamas."

    Yes indeed : Urban asked the questions and allowed the interviewee to answer. Perhaps you would have preferred him to interrupt the interviewee continually 'a la Today programme, or to have shouted at him similarly to the way I understand some people shout at customers inside or outside supermarkets?

    Peter , August 28, 2018 at 11:39

    This may or may not be relevant regarding Russia, chemical weapons and BBC/MSM bovine effluent:

    "US Poised to Hit Syria Harder: The Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement on Aug. 25 stating that the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham militants had brought eight containers of chlorine to Idlib in order to stage a false-flag attack with the help of UK intelligence agencies. A group of Tahrir al-Sham fighters trained to handle chemical warfare agents by the UK private military company Olive arrived in the suburbs of the city of Jisr ash-Shugur, Idlib, 20 km. from the Turkish border."

    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/08/27/us-poised-to-hit-syria-harder.html

    Jeremn , August 28, 2018 at 11:42

    Can't help thinking that the answer to all this lies in Estonia. Sergei went to Estonia in June 2016, Pablo was in Estonia, the Estonians passed on sigint about Trump-Russian collusion in the summer of 2016. A Guardian article of 13 April 2017 said:

    "Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump's inner circle and Russians, sources said. The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as sigint – included Germany, Estonia and Poland."

    Perhaps not the Dossier, as such, but some material on collusion?

    Paul Greenwood , August 28, 2018 at 12:00

    John Paul Jones also fought for the Russians and was a Rear-Admiral. He was buried in Paris 1792 and disinterred 1905 and relocated to USA

    wonky , August 29, 2018 at 10:29

    ..then he met Jimmy Page in the 1960s and the rest is history..

    Agent Green , August 28, 2018 at 12:11

    No doubt in my mind that the Skripal affair is a planned operation carried out by US/UK intelligence. What has actually taken place is still to be determined, but the propaganda operation itself is clear.

    Paul Carrom , August 28, 2018 at 12:12

    Definitely done by the UK.

    Doodlebug , August 28, 2018 at 14:53

    What did the UK have against Dawn and Charlie? (Please don't say you subscribe to all that bottle-finding bullshit).

    mark golding , August 28, 2018 at 17:40

    Catch my last post Doodlebug, sadly MI6 diabolical elements can be traced back to Ireland in the 70's early 80's assassinations theRealTerror (theRealElvis) understands.

    Doodlebug , August 28, 2018 at 18:06

    I know about Ireland, and I agree, it was NOT a nerve agent. That said, I don't believe anyone was 'attacked', including the Skripals.

    Jo , August 29, 2018 at 11:59

    Being used as practice and to establish more "evidence"

    N_ , August 28, 2018 at 12:24

    Often it's been open. There was the BBC monitoring station at Caversham Park. The BBC's Foreign Broadcast Information Service split the world into two parts with the CIA.

    All foreign correspondents of major newspapers too work with MI6. Nobody who is close to them has any kind of doubt about this.

    N_ , August 28, 2018 at 12:20

    Theresa May says a no deal Brexit "wouldn't be the end of the world".

    1. This is not a negotiating strategy. This is not a pantomime where one giant on the stage can wink to his supporters (using the British media) without his opponent (EU27) noticing.
    2. The subconscious doesn't work well with negation. Whatever you do, please DON'T imagine an elephant at this time.
    3. I would love to know what the preparations are at Trinity College, Cambridge, for food shortages. They own the port of Felixstowe, which handles more than 40% of Britain's containerised trade. They also own a 50% stake in a portfolio of Tesco stores. Soon food distribution will be what everyone is talking about. I am never going to stop making the point that the god of the Tory party is Thomas Malthus.
    N_ , August 28, 2018 at 12:38

    Oh dear.. Theresa May in Africa:

    " As a Prime Minister who believes both in free markets and in nations and businesses acting in line with well-established rules and principles of conduct, I want to demonstrate to young Africans that their brightest future lies in a free and thriving private sector. "

    I despise everyone who says that free markets are the solution for the problems of the third world. What they mean is mass starvation and an enormous population cull. There are international "foundations" that pay academics and politicians large amounts of money to spout this obscene line. One of them is called the John Templeton Foundation. They have had their fangs in to British universities for a long time.

    They are keen on Prince Philip, the guy who said he wanted to come back as a virus so he could kill a large part of the population. Never trust anyone who has received a Templeton scholarship or prize or who has anything to do with these people or with the message that free markets and the private sector are the key to "development"

    Nuno Strybes , August 28, 2018 at 12:43

    When the Tories talk about 'free markets', they are talking about markets free from democracy.

    May's rhetoric is laughable .basically all her speeches read : 'the sky is green, the snow is black etc etc' -- totally detached from reality and a spent political force, as their recent membership numbers showed, with more revenues from legacies left in wills than from actual living members.

    Ros Thorpe , August 28, 2018 at 12:30

    I agree with the Skripal relatives that Sergei is dead. He hasn't been seen or heard of and would have called his mother. Mind boggling deception at all levels and I struggle to believe any of it.

    N_ , August 28, 2018 at 12:47

    Sergei Skripal could be in US custody, either in the US itself or in a US facility somewhere.

    If he is dead, then the rehospitalisation of Charlie Rowley may be to assist with the narrative. "Once you've had a drop of Novvy Chockk, you may recover but you can fall down ill at any time, and here's an Expert with a serious voice to confirm it."

    Nuno Strybes , August 28, 2018 at 12:38

    I follow this blog closely, particularly in relation to the Skripal case, but this is my first comment. I just watched Sky News piece on 'super recognisers' and couldn't help but wonder why, in an age of powerful facial recognition technology, the police and security services seem to have drawn such a blank. The surveillance state in the UK is known to be one of the most advanced in the world but when it comes to this highly important geopolitical crisis our technological infrastructure seems to be redundant to the point where 'human eyes' are deemed to be more accurate than the most powerful supercomputers available. Psychologically, all humans have an inherent facial recognition ability from a very young age, but the idea that some police officers have this ability developed to such an extent that they supercede computer recognition is, i feel, laughable. To me this announcement through the ever subservient Sky News reeks of desperation on the part of the ;official story'. Are we about to be shown suspects who, although facial recognition technology fails to identify them, a 'super recogniser' can testify that it actually is person A or person B and we are all supposed to accept that? Seems either a damning indictment of the judicial process, or a damning indictment of the £££££'s of taxpayers money that is spent on places like GCHQ etc whose technology is now apparently no better than a highly perceptive human brain. Give me a break !

    Trowbridge H. Ford , August 28, 2018 at 13:08

    Why no interest in how the Coopers died in Egypt? We will soon be told by HMG that the Russians somehow dd it too., thanks to Urban's research?

    giyane , August 28, 2018 at 13:49

    People do die Trowbridge. I know you haven't, but you have the motivation of outliving your persecutors. With Muckin about with Isis gone and covert operations isn't social work Kissinger looking as though he's on daily blood transfusions, you have rejected Trump for some reason. But Trump has undone much of John McCain's worst mischief in one year. If McCain was an example of a politician, we don't need politicians.

    Trowbridge H. Ford , August 28, 2018 at 14:16

    Give me an example, other than the Coopers. of a healthy couple one day that is found dying the next day like the Skripals.

    And while i tried on another site to be generous about McCain. he got Navy Secretary John Lehman, Jr. to scare the Soviets for prevailing in the Vietnam War so much about what NATO was up to in the fallout from shooting Swedish PM Olof Palme that Moscow gave up the competition for fear that it would blow up the world, helping bring on the crappy one we have.

    McCain was a continuing Cold Warrior who we don't need since we still have Trump who is just trying to do it another way.

    Trowbridge H. Ford , August 28, 2018 at 15:03

    Oh, I forget that couple in Amesbury. Looks like the Porton Down Plague is spread overseas.

    Posting on this site in like playing bridge online – the cards are stacked against you.

    Doodlebug , August 28, 2018 at 15:26

    "Give me an example, other than the Coopers. of a healthy couple one day that is found dying the next day like the Skripals."

    Will a 17 year old and his step-father do?

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6918378/brit-lad-17-in-a-coma-on-family-holiday-in-spain-may-have-been-poisoned-by-cockroach-pesticide/

    They both survived, but one or other (quite possibly both) would have died without medical intervention.

    [Sep 07, 2018] New York Times Undermining Peace Efforts by Sowing Suspicion by Diana Johnstone

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The letter by Mister or Ms Anonymous is very well written. By someone like, say, Thomas Friedman. That is, someone on the NYT staff. It is very cleverly composed to achieve quite obvious calculated aims. It is a masterpiece of treacherous deception. ..."
    "... This anonymous enemy of amorality claims to approve of all the most extreme right-wing measures of the Trump administration as "bright spots": deregulation, tax reform, a more robust military, "and more" – cleverly omitting mention of Trump's immigration policy which could unduly shock the New York Times' liberal readers. The late Senator John McCain, the model of bipartisan bellicosity, is cited as the example to follow. ..."
    "... The "resistance" proclaimed is solely against the facets of Trump's foreign policy which White House insiders are said to be working diligently to undermine: peaceful relations with Russian and North Korea. ..."
    "... Trump's desire to avoid war is transformed into "a preference for autocrats and dictators". (Trump gets no credit for his warlike rhetoric against Iran and close relations with Netanyahu, even though they must please Anonymous.) ..."
    "... The purpose of this is stunningly obvious. The New York Times has already done yeoman service in rounding up liberal Democrats and left-leaning independents in the anti-Trump lynch mob. But now the ploy is to rally conservative Republicans to the same cause of overthrowing the elected President. The letter amounts to an endorsement of future President Pence. ..."
    "... This is the Iago ploy. Shakespeare's villain destroyed Othello by causing him to distrust those closest to him, his wife and closest associates. Like Trump in Washington, Othello, the "Moor" of Venice, was an outsider, that much easier to deceive and betray. ..."
    "... The New York Times is playing Iago, whispering that Putin in the Kremlin is surrounded by secret "informants", and that Trump in the White House is surrounded by people systematically undermining his presidency. Putin is not likely to be impressed, but the trick might work with Trump, who is truly the target of open and covert enemies and whose position is much more insecure. There is certainly some undermining going on. ..."
    "... Was the New York Times oped written by the paper's own writers or by the CIA? It hardly matters since they are so closely entwined. ..."
    "... The military-industrial-congressional-deep state-media complex is holding its breath to breathe that great sigh of relief. The intruder is gone. Hurrah! Now we can go right on teaching the public to hate and fear the Russian enemy, so that arms contracts continue to blossom and NATO builds up its aggressive forces around Russia in hopes that this may frighten the Russians into dumping Putin in favor of a new Boris Yeltsin, ready to let the United States pursue the Clintonian plan of breaking up the Russian Federation into pieces, like the former Yugoslavia, in order to take them over one by one, with all their great natural resources. ..."
    "... When dialogue is impossible, all that is left is force and violence. That is what is being promoted by the most influential media in the United States. ..."
    Sep 07, 2018 | ronpaulinstitute.org

    The New York Times continues to outdo itself in the production of fake news. There is no more reliable source of fake news than the intelligence services, which regularly provide their pet outlets (NYT and WaPo) with sensational stories that are as unverifiable as their sources are anonymous. A prize example was the August 24 report that US intelligence agencies don't know anything about Russia's plans to mess up our November elections because "informants close to Putin and in the Kremlin" aren't saying anything. Not knowing anything about something for which there is no evidence is a rare scoop.

    A story like that is not designed to "inform the public" since there is no information in it. It has other purposes: to keep the "Russia is undermining our democracy" story on front pages, with the extra twist in this case of trying to make Putin distrustful of his entourage. The Russian president is supposed to wonder, who are those informants in my entourage?

    But that was nothing compared to the whopper produced by the "newpaper of record" on September 5. (By the way, the "record" is stuck in the same groove: Trump bad, Putin bad – bad bad bad.) This was the sensational oped headlined "I am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration", signed by nobody.

    The letter by Mister or Ms Anonymous is very well written. By someone like, say, Thomas Friedman. That is, someone on the NYT staff. It is very cleverly composed to achieve quite obvious calculated aims. It is a masterpiece of treacherous deception.

    The fictional author presents itself as a right-wing conservative shocked by Trump's "amorality" – a category that outside the Washington swamp might include betraying the trust of one's superior.

    This anonymous enemy of amorality claims to approve of all the most extreme right-wing measures of the Trump administration as "bright spots": deregulation, tax reform, a more robust military, "and more" – cleverly omitting mention of Trump's immigration policy which could unduly shock the New York Times' liberal readers. The late Senator John McCain, the model of bipartisan bellicosity, is cited as the example to follow.

    The "resistance" proclaimed is solely against the facets of Trump's foreign policy which White House insiders are said to be working diligently to undermine: peaceful relations with Russian and North Korea.

    Trump's desire to avoid war is transformed into "a preference for autocrats and dictators". (Trump gets no credit for his warlike rhetoric against Iran and close relations with Netanyahu, even though they must please Anonymous.)

    The purpose of this is stunningly obvious. The New York Times has already done yeoman service in rounding up liberal Democrats and left-leaning independents in the anti-Trump lynch mob. But now the ploy is to rally conservative Republicans to the same cause of overthrowing the elected President. The letter amounts to an endorsement of future President Pence. Just get rid of Trump and you'll have a nice, neat, ultra-right-wing Republican as President.

    The Democrats may not like Pence, but they are so demented by hatred of Trump that they are visibly ready to accept the Devil himself to get rid of the sinister clown who dared defeat Hillary Clinton. Down with democracy; the votes of deplorables shouldn't count.

    That is treacherous enough, but even more despicable is the insidious design to destabilize the presidency by sowing distrust. Speaking of Trump, Mr and/or Ms Anonymous declare: "The dilemma – which he does not fully grasp – is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations" (meaning peace with Russia).

    This is the Iago ploy. Shakespeare's villain destroyed Othello by causing him to distrust those closest to him, his wife and closest associates. Like Trump in Washington, Othello, the "Moor" of Venice, was an outsider, that much easier to deceive and betray.

    The New York Times is playing Iago, whispering that Putin in the Kremlin is surrounded by secret "informants", and that Trump in the White House is surrounded by people systematically undermining his presidency. Putin is not likely to be impressed, but the trick might work with Trump, who is truly the target of open and covert enemies and whose position is much more insecure. There is certainly some undermining going on.

    Was the New York Times oped written by the paper's own writers or by the CIA? It hardly matters since they are so closely entwined.

    No trick is too low for those who consider Trump an intolerable intruder on THEIR power territory. The New York Times "news" that Trump is surrounded by traitors is taken up by other media who indirectly confirm the story by speculating on "who is it?" The Boston Globe (among others) eagerly rushed in, asking:

    "So who's the author of the op-ed? It's a question that has many people poking through the text, looking for clues. Meanwhile, the denials have come thick and fast. Here's a brief look at some of the highest-level officials in the administration who might have a motive to write the letter."

    Isn't it obvious that all this is designed to make Trump distrust everyone around him? Isn't that a way to drive him toward that "crazy" where they say he already is, and which is fallback grounds for impeachment when the Mueller investigation fails to come up with nothing more serious than the fact that Russian intelligent agents are intelligent agents?

    The White House insider (or insiders, or whatever) use terms like "erratic behavior" and "instability" to contribute to the "Trump is insane" narrative. Insanity is the alternative pretext to the Mueller wild goose chase for divesting Trump of the powers of the presidency. If Trump responds by accusing the traitors of being traitors, that will be final proof of his mental instability. The oped claims to provide evidence that Trump is being betrayed, but if he says so, that will be taken as a sign of mental derangement. To save our exemplary democracy from itself, the elected president must be thrown out.

    The military-industrial-congressional-deep state-media complex is holding its breath to breathe that great sigh of relief. The intruder is gone. Hurrah! Now we can go right on teaching the public to hate and fear the Russian enemy, so that arms contracts continue to blossom and NATO builds up its aggressive forces around Russia in hopes that this may frighten the Russians into dumping Putin in favor of a new Boris Yeltsin, ready to let the United States pursue the Clintonian plan of breaking up the Russian Federation into pieces, like the former Yugoslavia, in order to take them over one by one, with all their great natural resources.

    And when this fails, as it has been failing, and will continue to fail, the United States has all those brand new first strike nuclear weapons being stationed in European NATO countries, aimed at the Kremlin. And the Russian military are not just sitting there with their own nuclear weapons, waiting to be wiped out. When nobody, not even the President of the United States, has the right to meet and talk with Russian leaders, there is only one remaining form of exchange. When dialogue is impossible, all that is left is force and violence. That is what is being promoted by the most influential media in the United States.

    [Sep 07, 2018] Sarah Huckabee Sanders has a legitimate request to neoliberal MSM - Stop Bugging Me About The New York Times' Trump Op-Ed

    Highly recommended!
    Actually the reaction of neoliberal MSM to the op-ed reminds me Wolff's book. They try to amplify the effect to cause the most damage.
    Sep 07, 2018 | www.huffingtonpost.com

    Sara h Huckabee Sanders has a tiny request: Please stop asking her about that pesky little New York Times op-ed written by an anonymous White House official.

    ... ... ...

    On Thursday, Sanders tweeted a message addressed to all the people "asking for the identity of the anonymous coward" (basically, everyone).

    The media's wild obsession with the identity of the anonymous coward is recklessly tarnishing the reputation of thousands of great Americans who
    proudly serve our country and work for President Trump. Stop. If you want to know who this gutless loser is, call the opinion desk of the failing NYT at 212-556-1234, and ask them. They are the only ones complicit in this deceitful act.

    We stand united together and fully support our President Donald J.Trump.

    [Aug 22, 2018] The CIA Owns the US and European Media by Paul Craig Roberts

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... The mind of the mass media: Email exchange between myself and a leading Washington Post foreign policy reporter: ..."
    "... For the record, I think RT is much less biased than the Post on international affairs. And, yes, it's bias, not "fake news" that's the main problem – Cold-War/anti-Communist/anti-Russian bias that Americans have been raised with for a full century. RT defends Russia against the countless mindless attacks from the West. Who else is there to do that? Should not the Western media be held accountable for what they broadcast? Americans are so unaccustomed to hearing the Russian side defended, or hearing it at all, that when they do it can seem rather weird. ..."
    "... Regard these indictments in proper perspective and we find that election interference is only listed as a supposed objective, with charges actually being for unlawful cyber operations, identity theft, and conspiracy to launder money by American individuals unconnected to the Russian government. So we're still waiting for some evidence of actual Russian interference in the election aimed at determining the winner. ..."
    "... However, I have no doubt that the great majority of Americans who follow the news each day believe the official stories about the Russians. They're particularly impressed with the fact that every US intelligence agency supports the official stories. They would not be impressed at all if told that a dozen Russian intelligence agencies all disputed the charges. Group-think is alive and well all over the world. As is Cold War II ..."
    "... And here is Tom Malinowski, former Assistant Secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor (2014-2017) – last year he reported that Putin had "charged that the U.S. government had interfered 'aggressively' in Russia's 2012 presidential vote," claiming that Washington had "gathered opposition forces and financed them." Putin, wrote Malinowski, "apparently got President Trump to agree to a mutual commitment that neither country would interfere in the other's elections." ..."
    "... We also have the case of the US government agency, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has interfered in more elections than the CIA or God. Indeed, the man who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, Allen Weinstein, declared in 1991: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." On April 12, 2018 the presidents of two of NED's wings wrote: "A specious narrative has come back into circulation: that Moscow's campaign of political warfare is no different from U.S.-supported democracy assistance." ..."
    "... "Democracy assistance", you see, is what they call NED's election-interferences and government-overthrows ..."
    Aug 18, 2018 | www.unz.com

    William Blum shares with us his correspondence with Washington Post presstitute Michael Birnbaum. As you can tell from Birnbaum's replies, he comes across as either very stupid or as a CIA asset.

    When I received my briefing as staff associate, House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which required top secret clearance, I was told by senior members of the staff that the Washington Post was a CIA asset. Watching the Washington Post's takedown of President Richard Nixon with the orchestrated Watergate story, that became obvious. President Nixon had made too many overtures to the Soviets and too many arms limitations agreements, and he opened to China. Watching President Nixon's peace initiatives water down the threat level from the Soviet Union and Maoist China, the military/security complex saw a threat to its budget and power and decided that Nixon had to go. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy had resulted in far too much skepticism about the Warren Commission Report, so the CIA decided to use the Washington Post to get rid of Nixon. To keep the clueless American left hating Nixon, the CIA used its assets in the leftwing to keep Nixon blamed for the Vietnam war, a war that Nixon inherited and did not want.

    The CIA knew that Nixon's problem was that he could not exit the war without losing his conservative base, which was convinced of the nonsensical "Domino Theory." I have always wondered if the CIA concocted the "Domino Theory," as it so well served them. Unable to get rid of the war "with honor," Nixon was driven to brutal methods to force the North Vietnamese to accept a situation that he could depart without defeat and soiling America's "honor" and losing his conservative support base. The North Vietnamese wouldn't bend, but the US Congress did, and so the CIA succeeded in discrediting among both the leftwing and righwing Nixon's war management. With no one to defend him, Nixon was an easy target for the CIA.

    Here is Blum's exchange with Birnbaum. It is possible that Birnbaum is neither stupid nor a CIA asset, but just a person wanting to hold on to a job. The last thing he can afford to do is to disabuse readers of the "Russian Threat" when Bezos' Amazon and Washington Post properties are dependent on the CIA's annual subsidy of $600 million disquised as a "contract." https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-20/cia-washington-post-and-russia-what-youre-not-being-told

    The Anti-Empire Report # 159
    Willian Blum

    The mind of the mass media: Email exchange between myself and a leading Washington Post foreign policy reporter:
    July 18, 2018

    Dear Mr. Birnbaum,

    You write Trump "made no mention of Russia's adventures in Ukraine". Well, neither he nor Putin nor you made any mention of America's adventures in the Ukraine, which resulted in the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014, which led to the justified Russian adventure. Therefore ?

    If Russia overthrew the Mexican government would you blame the US for taking some action in Mexico?
    William Blum

    Dear Mr. Blum,

    Thanks for your note. "America's adventures in the Ukraine": what are you talking about? Last time I checked, it was Ukrainians in the streets of Kiev who caused Yanukovych to turn tail and run. Whether or not that was a good thing, we can leave aside, but it wasn't the Americans who did it.

    It is, however, Russian special forces who fanned out across Crimea in February and March 2014, according to Putin, and Russians who came down from Moscow who stoked conflict in eastern Ukraine in the months after, according to their own accounts.
    Best, Michael Birnbaum

    To MB,

    I can scarcely believe your reply. Do you read nothing but the Post? Do you not know of high State Dept official Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador in Ukraine in Maidan Square to encourage the protesters? She spoke of 5 billion (sic) dollars given to aid the protesters who were soon to overthrow the govt. She and the US Amb. spoke openly of who to choose as the next president. And he's the one who became president. This is all on tape. I guess you never watch Russia Today (RT). God forbid! I read the Post every day. You should watch RT once in a while.
    William Blum

    To WB,

    I was the Moscow bureau chief of the newspaper; I reported extensively in Ukraine in the months and years following the protests. My observations are not based on reading. RT is not a credible news outlet, but I certainly do read far beyond our own pages, and of course I talk to the actual actors on the ground myself – that's my job.

    And: yes, of course Nuland was in the Maidan – but encouraging the protests, as she clearly did, is not the same as sparking them or directing them, nor is playing favorites with potential successors, as she clearly did, the same as being directly responsible for overthrowing the government. I'm not saying the United States wasn't involved in trying to shape events. So were Russia and the European Union. But Ukrainians were in the driver's seat the whole way through. I know the guy who posted the first Facebook call to protest Yanukovych in November 2013; he's not an American agent. RT, meanwhile, reports fabrications and terrible falsehoods all the time. By all means consume a healthy and varied media diet – don't stop at the US mainstream media. But ask yourself how often RT reports critically on the Russian government, and consider how that lacuna shapes the rest of their reporting. You will find plenty of reporting in the Washington Post that is critical of the US government and US foreign policy in general, and decisions in Ukraine and the Ukrainian government in specific. Our aim is to be fair, without picking sides.
    Best, Michael Birnbaum

    ======================= end of exchange =======================

    Right, the United States doesn't play indispensable roles in changes of foreign governments; never has, never will; even when they offer billions of dollars; even when they pick the new president, which, apparently, is not the same as picking sides. It should be noticed that Mr Birnbaum offers not a single example to back up his extremist claim that RT "reports fabrications and terrible falsehoods all the time." "All the time", no less! That should make it easy to give some examples.

    For the record, I think RT is much less biased than the Post on international affairs. And, yes, it's bias, not "fake news" that's the main problem – Cold-War/anti-Communist/anti-Russian bias that Americans have been raised with for a full century. RT defends Russia against the countless mindless attacks from the West. Who else is there to do that? Should not the Western media be held accountable for what they broadcast? Americans are so unaccustomed to hearing the Russian side defended, or hearing it at all, that when they do it can seem rather weird.

    To the casual observer, THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA indictments of July 14 of Russian intelligence agents (GRU) reinforced the argument that the Soviet government interfered in the US 2016 presidential election. Regard these indictments in proper perspective and we find that election interference is only listed as a supposed objective, with charges actually being for unlawful cyber operations, identity theft, and conspiracy to launder money by American individuals unconnected to the Russian government. So we're still waiting for some evidence of actual Russian interference in the election aimed at determining the winner.

    The Russians did it (cont.)
    Each day I spend about three hours reading the Washington Post. Amongst other things I'm looking for evidence – real, legal, courtroom-quality evidence, or at least something logical and rational – to pin down those awful Russkis for their many recent crimes, from influencing the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election to use of a nerve agent in the UK. But I do not find such evidence.

    Each day brings headlines like these:

    • "U.S. to add economic sanctions on Russia: Attack with nerve agent on former spy in England forces White House to act"
    • "Is Russia exploiting new Facebook goal?"
    • "Experts: Trump team lacks urgency on Russian threat"

    These are all from the same day, August 9, which led me to thinking of doing this article, but similar stories can be found any day in the Post and in major newspapers anywhere in America. None of the articles begins to explain how Russia did these things, or even WHY. Motivation appears to have become a lost pursuit in the American mass media. The one thing sometimes mentioned, which I think may have some credibility, is Russia's preference of Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016. But this doesn't begin to explain how Russia could pull off any of the electoral magic it's accused of, which would be feasible only if the United States were a backward, Third World, Banana Republic.

    There's the Facebook ads, as well as all the other ads The people who are influenced by this story – have they read many of the actual ads? Many are pro-Clinton or anti-Trump; many are both; many are neither. It's one big mess, the only rational explanation of this which I've read is that they come from money-making websites, "click-bait" sites as they're known, which earn money simply by attracting visitors.

    As to the nerve agents, it makes more sense if the UK or the CIA did it to make the Russians look bad, because the anti-Russian scandal which followed was totally predictable. Why would Russia choose the time of the World Cup in Moscow – of which all of Russia was immensely proud – to bring such notoriety down upon their head? But that would have been an ideal time for their enemies to want to embarrass them.

    However, I have no doubt that the great majority of Americans who follow the news each day believe the official stories about the Russians. They're particularly impressed with the fact that every US intelligence agency supports the official stories. They would not be impressed at all if told that a dozen Russian intelligence agencies all disputed the charges. Group-think is alive and well all over the world. As is Cold War II.

    But we're the Good Guys, ain't we?

    For a defender of US foreign policy there's very little that causes extreme heartburn more than someone implying a "moral equivalence" between American behavior and that of Russia. That was the case during Cold War I and it's the same now in Cold War II. It just drives them up the wall.

    After the United States passed a law last year requiring TV station RT (Russia Today) to register as a "foreign agent", the Russians passed their own law allowing authorities to require foreign media to register as a "foreign agent". Senator John McCain denounced the new Russian law, saying there is "no equivalence" between RT and networks such as Voice of America, CNN and the BBC, whose journalists "seek the truth, debunk lies, and hold governments accountable." By contrast, he said, "RT's propagandists debunk the truth, spread lies, and seek to undermine democratic governments in order to further Vladimir Putin's agenda."

    And here is Tom Malinowski, former Assistant Secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor (2014-2017) – last year he reported that Putin had "charged that the U.S. government had interfered 'aggressively' in Russia's 2012 presidential vote," claiming that Washington had "gathered opposition forces and financed them." Putin, wrote Malinowski, "apparently got President Trump to agree to a mutual commitment that neither country would interfere in the other's elections."

    "Is this moral equivalence fair?" Malinowski asked and answered: "In short, no. Russia's interference in the United States' 2016 election could not have been more different from what the United States does to promote democracy in other countries."

    How do you satirize such officials and such high-school beliefs?

    We also have the case of the US government agency, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has interfered in more elections than the CIA or God. Indeed, the man who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, Allen Weinstein, declared in 1991: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." On April 12, 2018 the presidents of two of NED's wings wrote: "A specious narrative has come back into circulation: that Moscow's campaign of political warfare is no different from U.S.-supported democracy assistance."

    "Democracy assistance", you see, is what they call NED's election-interferences and government-overthrows. The authors continue: "This narrative is churned out by propaganda outlets such as RT and Sputnik [radio station]. it is deployed by isolationists who propound a U.S. retreat from global leadership."

    "Isolationists" is what [neo]conservatives call critics of US foreign policy whose arguments they can't easily dismiss, so they imply that such people just don't want the US to be involved in anything abroad.

    And "global leadership" is what they call being first in election-interferences and government-overthrows.

    https://williamblum.org/aer/read/159

    [Aug 14, 2018] I think one of Mueller s deeply embedded character flaw is that once he decides on burying someone he becomes possessed

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Mueller, WE NEED TO FIND SOMETHING... Or this president might appoint a honest AG that looks into our HSBC and 911 whitewash!! ..."
    "... he can't stop digging and will eventually dig his own grave because this is out in the open, prying eyes like Sheryl Atkinson, internet sleuths and many others. ..."
    "... The Witch Hunt, Learn about the enemy, " Nevermind the CFR has this in hand..." https://www.cfr.org/about ~ Smart Cookies Kan! ..."
    "... Mueller's entire probe is to protect and cover up the crimes/FISA abuse of the Obama administration! ..."
    "... What is the premise for all this investigative crap? Where is the proof that Wikileaks had any contact with Russia to begin with? Why hasn't Mueller asked to talk to Julian Assange himself ??? The supposed agent of Russia??? WTF is going on here? What kind of BS investigation would omit to interview the very person at the nexus of the supposed "Russian interference in the 2016 election"? ..."
    "... Why hasn't muller subpoenaed the DNC's server to see how the information was downloaded or uploaded and to whom or by whom? That's the question. ..."
    "... The investigation is all cover for Obama, Brennan, Klapper, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarret, Comey, McCabe, both Ohrs, Stzrok, Liza Page and Mueller himself, plus all their little footsoldiers. ..."
    "... As the author notes if there was any collusion none of this makes sense....all of this is after the fact and these two are nothing but publicity seeking dogs...what a waste of time and space. ..."
    Aug 10, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    Kan Thu, 08/09/2018 - 22:23 Permalink

    Mueller, WE NEED TO FIND SOMETHING... Or this president might appoint a honest AG that looks into our HSBC and 911 whitewash!!

    Nevermind the CFR has this in hand...

    booboo -> Kan Thu, 08/09/2018 - 22:41 Permalink

    I think one of Mueller's deeply embedded character flaws is that once he decides on burying someone he becomes possessed. Much like the awful dealings with Whitey Bulger, sending men to prison for crimes they did not commit, in federal custody where they could keep them quiet and under the threat of death if they were to talk.

    He did this to protect the corruption surrounding that case, he is Mr. Wolf, sent in to clean up the fucking mess. He has gotten away with this tact of ruthlessness for so long that he can't stop digging and will eventually dig his own grave because this is out in the open, prying eyes like Sheryl Atkinson, internet sleuths and many others.

    This will be his downfall, like Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick the White whale, caught in the harpoon tethers and wrapped around the great whale as he takes him deep into the abyss.

    BankSurfyMan -> Kan Thu, 08/09/2018 - 22:52 Permalink

    The Witch Hunt, Learn about the enemy, " Nevermind the CFR has this in hand..." https://www.cfr.org/about ~ Smart Cookies Kan!

    lester1 Thu, 08/09/2018 - 22:36 Permalink

    Mueller hasn't even interviewed Don Jr yet. If he were going after Trump that would be a big deal. I tell this to my liberal friends this info and they're like wtf is Mueller even doing?

    Mueller's entire probe is to protect and cover up the crimes/FISA abuse of the Obama administration!

    Bernard_2011 Thu, 08/09/2018 - 23:32 Permalink

    What is the premise for all this investigative crap? Where is the proof that Wikileaks had any contact with Russia to begin with? Why hasn't Mueller asked to talk to Julian Assange himself ??? The supposed agent of Russia??? WTF is going on here? What kind of BS investigation would omit to interview the very person at the nexus of the supposed "Russian interference in the 2016 election"?

    Lord Raglan -> Bernard_2011 Fri, 08/10/2018 - 00:08 Permalink

    Why hasn't muller subpoenaed the DNC's server to see how the information was downloaded or uploaded and to whom or by whom? That's the question.

    The investigation is all cover for Obama, Brennan, Klapper, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarret, Comey, McCabe, both Ohrs, Stzrok, Liza Page and Mueller himself, plus all their little footsoldiers.

    Lord Raglan Fri, 08/10/2018 - 00:05 Permalink

    You wonder what Mueller and his team do with "exculpatory evidence" they discover. It must go in that deep, dark recess where Obama's birth cert and college and law school records go.......

    MuffDiver69 Fri, 08/10/2018 - 00:14 Permalink

    As the author notes if there was any collusion none of this makes sense....all of this is after the fact and these two are nothing but publicity seeking dogs...what a waste of time and space.

    [Aug 14, 2018] US Intelligence Community is Tearing the Country Apart from the Inside by Dmitry Orlov

    Highly recommended!
    This is an interesting analysis shedding some light on how the US intelligence services have gone rogue...
    Notable quotes:
    "... Most recently, British "special services," which are a sort of Mini-Me to the to the Dr. Evil that is the US intelligence apparatus, saw it fit to interfere with one of their own spies, Sergei Skripal, a double agent whom they sprung from a Russian jail in a spy swap. They poisoned him using an exotic chemical and then tried to pin the blame on Russia based on no evidence. ..."
    "... the Americans are doing their best to break the unwritten rule against dragging spies through the courts, but their best is nowhere near good enough. ..."
    "... That said, there is no reason to believe that the Russian spies couldn't have hacked into the DNC mail server. It was probably running Microsoft Windows, and that operating system has more holes in it than a building in downtown Raqqa, Syria after the Americans got done bombing that city to rubble, lots of civilians included. When questioned about this alleged hacking by Fox News, Putin (who had worked as a spy in his previous career) had trouble keeping a straight face and clearly enjoyed the moment. ..."
    "... He pointed out that the hacked/leaked emails showed a clear pattern of wrongdoing: DNC officials conspired to steal the electoral victory in the Democratic Primary from Bernie Sanders, and after this information had been leaked they were forced to resign. If the Russian hack did happen, then it was the Russians working to save American democracy from itself. So, where's the gratitude? Where's the love? Oh, and why are the DNC perps not in jail? ..."
    "... The logic of US officials may be hard to follow, but only if we adhere to the traditional definitions of espionage and counterespionage -- "intelligence" in US parlance -- which is to provide validated information for the purpose of making informed decisions on best ways of defending the country. But it all makes perfect sense if we disabuse ourselves of such quaint notions and accept the reality of what we can actually observe: the purpose of US "intelligence" is not to come up with or to work with facts but to simply "make shit up." ..."
    "... The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its allies and pocket as much of it as possible while pretending to defend it from phantom aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on ineffective and overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they are specially organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and so on. ..."
    "... "What sort of idiot are you to ask me such a stupid question? Of course they are lying! They were caught lying more than once, and therefore they can never be trusted again. In order to claim that they are not currently lying, you have to determine when it was that they stopped lying, and that they haven't lied since. And that, based on the information that is available, is an impossible task." ..."
    "... "The US intelligence agencies made an outrageous claim: that I colluded with Russia to rig the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The burden of proof is on them. They are yet to prove their case in a court of law, which is the only place where the matter can legitimately be settled, if it can be settled at all. Until that happens, we must treat their claim as conspiracy theory, not as fact." ..."
    "... But no such reality-based, down-to-earth dialogue seems possible. All that we hear are fake answers to fake questions, and the outcome is a series of faulty decisions. Based on fake intelligence, the US has spent almost all of this century embroiled in very expensive and ultimately futile conflicts. ..."
    "... Thanks to their efforts, Iran, Iraq and Syria have now formed a continuous crescent of religiously and geopolitically aligned states friendly toward Russia while in Afghanistan the Taliban is resurgent and battling ISIS -- an organization that came together thanks to American efforts in Iraq and Syria. ..."
    "... Another hypothesis, and a far more plausible one, is that the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial, economic and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile conflicts -- the largest single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your own country, for any conceivable definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than "a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars. ..."
    Jul 28, 2018 | russia-insider.com
    In today's United States, the term "espionage" doesn't get too much use outside of some specific contexts. There is still sporadic talk of industrial espionage, but with regard to Americans' own efforts to understand the world beyond their borders, they prefer the term "intelligence." This may be an intelligent choice, or not, depending on how you look at things.

    First of all, US "intelligence" is only vaguely related to the game of espionage as it has been traditionally played, and as it is still being played by countries such as Russia and China. Espionage involves collecting and validating strategically vital information and conveying it to just the pertinent decision-makers on your side while keeping the fact that you are collecting and validating it hidden from everyone else.

    In eras past, a spy, if discovered, would try to bite down on a cyanide capsule; these days torture is considered ungentlemanly, and spies that get caught patiently wait to be exchanged in a spy swap. An unwritten, commonsense rule about spy swaps is that they are done quietly and that those released are never interfered with again because doing so would complicate negotiating future spy swaps.

    In recent years, the US intelligence agencies have decided that torturing prisoners is a good idea, but they have mostly been torturing innocent bystanders, not professional spies, sometimes forcing them to invent things, such as "Al Qaeda." There was no such thing before US intelligence popularized it as a brand among Islamic terrorists.

    Most recently, British "special services," which are a sort of Mini-Me to the to the Dr. Evil that is the US intelligence apparatus, saw it fit to interfere with one of their own spies, Sergei Skripal, a double agent whom they sprung from a Russian jail in a spy swap. They poisoned him using an exotic chemical and then tried to pin the blame on Russia based on no evidence.

    There are unlikely to be any more British spy swaps with Russia, and British spies working in Russia should probably be issued good old-fashioned cyanide capsules (since that supposedly super-powerful Novichok stuff the British keep at their "secret" lab in Porton Down doesn't work right and is only fatal 20% of the time).

    There is another unwritten, commonsense rule about spying in general: whatever happens, it needs to be kept out of the courts, because the discovery process of any trial would force the prosecution to divulge sources and methods, making them part of the public record. An alternative is to hold secret tribunals, but since these cannot be independently verified to be following due process and rules of evidence, they don't add much value.

    A different standard applies to traitors; here, sending them through the courts is acceptable and serves a high moral purpose, since here the source is the person on trial and the method -- treason -- can be divulged without harm. But this logic does not apply to proper, professional spies who are simply doing their jobs, even if they turn out to be double agents. In fact, when counterintelligence discovers a spy, the professional thing to do is to try to recruit him as a double agent or, failing that, to try to use the spy as a channel for injecting disinformation.

    Americans have been doing their best to break this rule. Recently, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted a dozen Russian operatives working in Russia for hacking into the DNC mail server and sending the emails to Wikileaks. Meanwhile, said server is nowhere to be found (it's been misplaced) while the time stamps on the files that were published on Wikileaks show that they were obtained by copying to a thumb drive rather than sending them over the internet. Thus, this was a leak, not a hack, and couldn't have been done by anyone working remotely from Russia.

    Furthermore, it is an exercise in futility for a US official to indict Russian citizens in Russia. They will never stand trial in a US court because of the following clause in the Russian Constitution: "61.1 A citizen of the Russian Federation may not be deported out of Russia or extradited to another state."

    Mueller may summon a panel of constitutional scholars to interpret this sentence, or he can just read it and weep. Yes, the Americans are doing their best to break the unwritten rule against dragging spies through the courts, but their best is nowhere near good enough.

    That said, there is no reason to believe that the Russian spies couldn't have hacked into the DNC mail server. It was probably running Microsoft Windows, and that operating system has more holes in it than a building in downtown Raqqa, Syria after the Americans got done bombing that city to rubble, lots of civilians included. When questioned about this alleged hacking by Fox News, Putin (who had worked as a spy in his previous career) had trouble keeping a straight face and clearly enjoyed the moment.

    He pointed out that the hacked/leaked emails showed a clear pattern of wrongdoing: DNC officials conspired to steal the electoral victory in the Democratic Primary from Bernie Sanders, and after this information had been leaked they were forced to resign. If the Russian hack did happen, then it was the Russians working to save American democracy from itself. So, where's the gratitude? Where's the love? Oh, and why are the DNC perps not in jail?

    Since there exists an agreement between the US and Russia to cooperate on criminal investigations, Putin offered to question the spies indicted by Mueller. He even offered to have Mueller sit in on the proceedings. But in return he wanted to question US officials who may have aided and abetted a convicted felon by the name of William Browder, who is due to begin serving a nine-year sentence in Russia any time now and who, by the way, donated copious amounts of his ill-gotten money to the Hillary Clinton election campaign.

    In response, the US Senate passed a resolution to forbid Russians from questioning US officials. And instead of issuing a valid request to have the twelve Russian spies interviewed, at least one US official made the startlingly inane request to have them come to the US instead. Again, which part of 61.1 don't they understand?

    The logic of US officials may be hard to follow, but only if we adhere to the traditional definitions of espionage and counterespionage -- "intelligence" in US parlance -- which is to provide validated information for the purpose of making informed decisions on best ways of defending the country. But it all makes perfect sense if we disabuse ourselves of such quaint notions and accept the reality of what we can actually observe: the purpose of US "intelligence" is not to come up with or to work with facts but to simply "make shit up."

    The "intelligence" the US intelligence agencies provide can be anything but; in fact, the stupider it is the better, because its purpose is allow unintelligent people to make unintelligent decisions. In fact, they consider facts harmful -- be they about Syrian chemical weapons, or conspiring to steal the primary from Bernie Sanders, or Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, or the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden -- because facts require accuracy and rigor while they prefer to dwell in the realm of pure fantasy and whimsy. In this, their actual objective is easily discernible.

    The objective of US intelligence is to suck all remaining wealth out of the US and its allies and pocket as much of it as possible while pretending to defend it from phantom aggressors by squandering nonexistent (borrowed) financial resources on ineffective and overpriced military operations and weapons systems. Where the aggressors are not phantom, they are specially organized for the purpose of having someone to fight: "moderate" terrorists and so on.

    One major advancement in their state of the art has been in moving from real false flag operations, à la 9/11, to fake false flag operations, à la fake East Gouta chemical attack in Syria (since fully discredited). The Russian election meddling story is perhaps the final step in this evolution: no New York skyscrapers or Syrian children were harmed in the process of concocting this fake narrative, and it can be kept alive seemingly forever purely through the furious effort of numerous flapping lips. It is now a pure confidence scam. If you are less then impressed with their invented narratives, then you are a conspiracy theorist or, in the latest revision, a traitor.

    Trump was recently questioned as to whether he trusted US intelligence. He waffled. A light-hearted answer would have been:

    "What sort of idiot are you to ask me such a stupid question? Of course they are lying! They were caught lying more than once, and therefore they can never be trusted again. In order to claim that they are not currently lying, you have to determine when it was that they stopped lying, and that they haven't lied since. And that, based on the information that is available, is an impossible task."

    A more serious, matter-of-fact answer would have been:

    "The US intelligence agencies made an outrageous claim: that I colluded with Russia to rig the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The burden of proof is on them. They are yet to prove their case in a court of law, which is the only place where the matter can legitimately be settled, if it can be settled at all. Until that happens, we must treat their claim as conspiracy theory, not as fact."

    And a hardcore, deadpan answer would have been:

    "The US intelligence services swore an oath to uphold the US Constitution, according to which I am their Commander in Chief. They report to me, not I to them. They must be loyal to me, not I to them. If they are disloyal to me, then that is sufficient reason for their dismissal."

    But no such reality-based, down-to-earth dialogue seems possible. All that we hear are fake answers to fake questions, and the outcome is a series of faulty decisions. Based on fake intelligence, the US has spent almost all of this century embroiled in very expensive and ultimately futile conflicts.

    Thanks to their efforts, Iran, Iraq and Syria have now formed a continuous crescent of religiously and geopolitically aligned states friendly toward Russia while in Afghanistan the Taliban is resurgent and battling ISIS -- an organization that came together thanks to American efforts in Iraq and Syria.

    The total cost of wars so far this century for the US is reported to be $4,575,610,429,593. Divided by the 138,313,155 Americans who file tax returns (whether they actually pay any tax is too subtle a question), it works out to just over $33,000 per taxpayer. If you pay taxes in the US, that's your bill so far for the various US intelligence "oopsies."

    The 16 US intelligence agencies have a combined budget of $66.8 billion, and that seems like a lot until you realize how supremely efficient they are: their "mistakes" have cost the country close to 70 times their budget. At a staffing level of over 200,000 employees, each of them has cost the US taxpayer close to $23 million, on average. That number is totally out of the ballpark! The energy sector has the highest earnings per employee, at around $1.8 million per. Valero Energy stands out at $7.6 million per. At $23 million per, the US intelligence community has been doing three times better than Valero. Hats off! This makes the US intelligence community by far the best, most efficient collapse driver imaginable.

    There are two possible hypotheses for why this is so.

    First, we might venture to guess that these 200,000 people are grossly incompetent and that the fiascos they precipitate are accidental. But it is hard to imagine a situation where grossly incompetent people nevertheless manage to funnel $23 million apiece, on average, toward an assortment of futile undertakings of their choosing. It is even harder to imagine that such incompetents would be allowed to blunder along decade after decade without being called out for their mistakes.

    Another hypothesis, and a far more plausible one, is that the US intelligence community has been doing a wonderful job of bankrupting the country and driving it toward financial, economic and political collapse by forcing it to engage in an endless series of expensive and futile conflicts -- the largest single continuous act of grand larceny the world has ever known. How that can possibly be an intelligent thing to do to your own country, for any conceivable definition of "intelligence," I will leave for you to work out for yourself. While you are at it, you might also want to come up with an improved definition of "treason": something better than "a skeptical attitude toward preposterous, unproven claims made by those known to be perpetual liars."

    [Aug 11, 2018] President Trump the most important achivement

    Highly recommended!
    The FAKE NEWS media (failing @ nytimes , @ NBCNews , @ ABC , @ CBS , @ CNN ) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People! ~ Donald Trump
    On Thursday, Mr. Trump expressed his distaste for journalists in more populist terms, saying, "much of the media in Washington, D.C., along with New York, Los Angeles in particular, speaks not for the people, but for the special interests."
    "The public doesn't believe you people anymore," Mr. Trump added. "Now, maybe I had something to do with that. I don't know. But they don't believe you."
    Notable quotes:
    "... Washington Post ..."
    "... Financial Times, NBC, CNN, ABC ..."
    Aug 11, 2018 | www.unz.com

    President Trump has denounced and exposed the repeated deceits and ongoing fabrications of the mass media. Never before has a President so forcefully identified the lies of the leading print and TV outlets. The NY Times , Washington Post , the Financial Times, NBC, CNN, ABC and CBS have been thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the larger public. They have lost legitimacy and trust. Where progressives have failed, a war monger billionaire has accomplished, speaking a truth to serve many injustices.

    [Aug 08, 2018] Sergei Skripal was linked to a consultant with former UK spy Christopher Steele's Orbis Business Intelligence

    Highly recommended!
    "Door handle" theory is dead on arrival. the main theory now is that UK government gave Skripals different agent BX (similar to LSD and which caused hallucinations) and they voluntarily took it in order to start preplanned Skripal false flag provocation. That's why military nurse accidentally appeared near Skripals soon after poisoning.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Following the attack on the Skripals, European and US allies took Britain's side on the attack, ordering the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War, reports Reuters . In response, Russia retaliated by expelling Western diplomats, while the Kremlin has repeatedly denied involvement in the attacks - while accusing the UK intelligence agencies of staging the attack in order to inflame anti-Russia tensions. ..."
    "... Prior to the investigation's focus on the door handle, for a period of almost three weeks there were at least nine other theories proposed by the authorities as to where the Skripals came into contact with the poison. These included the restaurant, the pub, the bench, the cemetery, the car, the flowers, the luggage, the porridge and even a drone. During that time, police officers and investigators were entering and leaving the house, by the door, since it was not known to be the place where the poison was located. ..."
    "... Once the door handle theory was established, those who had been in and out of the property during the previous three weeks would naturally have been concerned about the possibility that they had been contaminated. ..."
    "... Every officer who entered the house after 4th March, and before the door handle became an object of interest, should have been given a medical examination to check for signs of poisoning. ..."
    "... Initial reports about Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey stated that he was poisoned at the bench, after coming to the aid of Mr Skripal and Yulia. However, on 9th March, Lord Ian Blair stated that D.S. Bailey had actually become poisoned after visiting Mr Skripal's house. Since he was thought to have been poisoned with a military grade nerve agent, and since it was thought that this had occurred at Mr Skripal's house, the immediate next step should have been to seal off the house and set up a mobile decontamination unit outside. However, numerous photographs show officers in normal uniforms standing close to the door long after Lord Blair's claim ..."
    "... Can the authorities explain how these decisions did not put the health and even the lives of those officers in jeopardy? ..."
    "... Before the door handle theory was settled on, the majority of competing theories put out by the authorities tended to assume that Mr Skripal was poisoned long before he went to Zizzis. For example, the flowers, the cemetery, the luggage, the porridge and the car explanations all assume this to be the case. What this means is that according to the assumptions of police at that time, when Mr Skripal fed the ducks near the Avon Playground with a few local boys, at around 1:45pm, he was already contaminated. Yet although this event was caught on CCTV camera, it was more than two weeks before the police contacted the parents of these boys. ..."
    "... Can the authorities comment on why they did not air the CCTV footage on national television, in an effort to appeal to the boys or their parents to come forward, and whether the delay in tracking them down might have put them in danger? ..."
    "... If the door handle was the place of poisoning, it is extremely likely that the bread handed by Mr Skripal to the boys would have been contaminated. Certainly, areas that he visited after this incident were deemed to be so much at risk that they were either closed down (for example, The Mill and Zizzis, which are both still closed), or destroyed (for instance, the restaurant table, the bench and – almost certainly – the red bag near the bench have all been destroyed). ..."
    "... It has been said that one of the reasons the Government is/was so sure that the ultimate culprit behind the poisoning was the Russian state, is the apparent existence of an "FSB handbook" which, amongst other things, allegedly features descriptions of how to apply nerve agent to a door handle. Given that the Prime Minister first made a formal accusation of culpability on 12th March in her speech to the House of Commons, the Government must therefore have been in possession of this manual prior to that day. However, claims about the door handle being the location of the poison did not appear until late March (the first media reports of it were on 28th March). What this means is there was a delay of several weeks between the Government making its accusation, based partly on the apparent existence of the "door handle manual", and the door handle of Mr Skripal's house being a subject of interest to investigators. ..."
    "... "We are learning more about Sergei and Yulia's movements but we need to be clearer around their exact movements on the morning of the incident. We believe that at around 9.15am on Sunday, 4 March, Sergei's car may have been in the areas of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road. Then at around 1.30pm it was seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards the town centre. We need to establish Sergei and Yulia's movements during the morning, before they headed to the town centre. Did you see this car, or what you believe was this car, on the day of the incident? We are particularly keen to hear from you if you saw the car before 1.30pm. If you have information, please call the police on 101." ..."
    "... Now that Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been awake and able to communicate for around four months, these details are presumably now all known to investigators. In the normal course of such a high profile investigation, details such as these would be relayed to the public in the hope of jogging memories to prompt more information. And in fact, many such details have been released to the public in this case. Yet, confirmation of Mr Skripal's and Yulia's movements that day remain conspicuous by their absence. ..."
    "... These questions have nothing to do with any conspiracy theory. On the contrary, they are all based on the assumption that the two central claims made by the authorities regarding the mode and the method used in this incident are correct. They are, however, very serious and perfectly legitimate questions about the way the authorities have dealt with this incident, on their own terms and on the basis of their own claims . ..."
    "... "Reports that the United Kingdom is planning to ask Russia to extradite suspects in a Salisbury poisoning incident are nothing more than a "speculation," a spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office told Sputnik on Monday. ..."
    Aug 06, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    The British government has prepared an extradition request to Moscow for two Russians they claim carried out the Salisbury nerve agent attack, according to The Guardian , citing Whitehall and security sources.

    Former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench in Salisbury in early March - which UK authorities believe was due to a nerve agent called Novichok.

    Months later on June 30, nearby residents Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old mother of three, were subsequently treated for exposure to the nerve agent. Rowley recovered while Sturgess died.

    Authorities are operating on the assumption that the Skripals were poisoned using a novichok-laced perfume bottle or a door handle smeared with the nerve agent, while Rowley may have picked up said bottle and given to Sturgess, who applied it to her wrists.

    Sturgess received a much higher dose than the other three after apparently smearing the substance on her wrists, having sprayed it from the bottle. Rowley's recovery was helped, according to a source, by one of the first responders being familiar with the nerve agent, having been involved in helping the Skripals.

    The Porton Down military defence laboratory near Salisbury has examined the novichok found on the Skripals' doorknob and the perfume bottle, but police have not yet said whether they are from the same batch. - The Guardian

    UK authorities believe they have pieced together the movements of the two Russians, from their entry into the UK to their departure after the alleged assassination attempt.

    Following the attack on the Skripals, European and US allies took Britain's side on the attack, ordering the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War, reports Reuters . In response, Russia retaliated by expelling Western diplomats, while the Kremlin has repeatedly denied involvement in the attacks - while accusing the UK intelligence agencies of staging the attack in order to inflame anti-Russia tensions.

    Oddly, Sergei Skripal was linked by The Telegraph to a consultant with former UK spy Christopher Steele's Orbis Business Intelligence, who he reportedly had repeated contacts with.

    The motive for trying to assassinate the 66-year-old skripal is unknown. Skripal moved to the UK in a Kremlin-approved "spy swap" in 2010, causing many to question why they would suddenly try to take him out a decade later.

    In July, journalist Rob Slane compiled 10 questions for the UK authorities on the ever-confusing Skripal case:

    ***

    The two most basic claims made by the Government and investigators regarding the method and the mode in the Salisbury poisoning are these:

    1. That military grade nerve agent was used to poison Mr Skripal
    2. That it was applied to the door handle of his house

    These claims raise a number of very obvious questions. For example, how did the assassin(s) apply such a powerful chemical without wearing protective clothing? How did the people who are said to have come into contact with the substance not die immediately, or at the very least suffer irreparable damage to their Central Nervous Systems? How did this military grade nerve agent manage not only to have a delayed onset, but also managed to affect a large 66-year-old man and his slim 33-year-old daughter, both of whom would have vastly different metabolic rates, at exactly the same time?

    These are perfectly reasonable questions that deserve reasonable answers. I am aware, however, that no matter how obvious and rational such questions might be, doing so places one – at least in the eyes of the authorities – in the camp of the conspiracy theorist. This is disingenuous. One of the marks of a true conspiracy theorist is that he is someone who refuses to accept an explanation for an event, even after being presented with facts which fit and explain it coherently . But when the "facts" presented in a case do not fit the event they are supposed to explain, and are neither rational nor coherent -- as in the Salisbury case -- then calling the person who raises legitimate questions a "conspiracy theorist" is a bit rich, is it not?

    Nevertheless, for the purposes of this piece, what I'd like to do is work on the assumption that the "Military Grade Nerve Agent on the Door Handle" claim is correct. And working from this assumption, I want to ask some questions about how the authorities have handled the case. The point is this: These questions are not really intended to challenge the official claims; rather the intention is to ask whether the authorities have handled the case correctly on their own terms .

    1. Prior to the investigation's focus on the door handle, for a period of almost three weeks there were at least nine other theories proposed by the authorities as to where the Skripals came into contact with the poison. These included the restaurant, the pub, the bench, the cemetery, the car, the flowers, the luggage, the porridge and even a drone. During that time, police officers and investigators were entering and leaving the house, by the door, since it was not known to be the place where the poison was located.

    Can the authorities explain how these officers and investigators were not poisoned?

    2. Once the door handle theory was established, those who had been in and out of the property during the previous three weeks would naturally have been concerned about the possibility that they had been contaminated.

    Can the authorities tell us what steps were taken to reassure these officers?

    3. Every officer who entered the house after 4th March, and before the door handle became an object of interest, should have been given a medical examination to check for signs of poisoning.

    Can the authorities confirm that this took place for every officer?

    4. Initial reports about Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey stated that he was poisoned at the bench, after coming to the aid of Mr Skripal and Yulia. However, on 9th March, Lord Ian Blair stated that D.S. Bailey had actually become poisoned after visiting Mr Skripal's house. Since he was thought to have been poisoned with a military grade nerve agent, and since it was thought that this had occurred at Mr Skripal's house, the immediate next step should have been to seal off the house and set up a mobile decontamination unit outside. However, numerous photographs show officers in normal uniforms standing close to the door long after Lord Blair's claim.

    Can the authorities confirm why the house was not sealed off and a decontamination unit set up immediately after it became known that D.S. Bailey had been there, and why officers with no protective clothing on were allowed to continue standing guard outside the house for the next few weeks?

    5. Can the authorities explain how these decisions did not put the health and even the lives of those officers in jeopardy?

    6. Before the door handle theory was settled on, the majority of competing theories put out by the authorities tended to assume that Mr Skripal was poisoned long before he went to Zizzis. For example, the flowers, the cemetery, the luggage, the porridge and the car explanations all assume this to be the case. What this means is that according to the assumptions of police at that time, when Mr Skripal fed the ducks near the Avon Playground with a few local boys, at around 1:45pm, he was already contaminated. Yet although this event was caught on CCTV camera, it was more than two weeks before the police contacted the parents of these boys.

    Can the authorities explain why it took more than two weeks to track down the boys, who – as the CCTV apparently shows – were given bread by Mr Skripal?

    7. Can the authorities comment on why they did not air the CCTV footage on national television, in an effort to appeal to the boys or their parents to come forward, and whether the delay in tracking them down might have put them in danger?

    8. If the door handle was the place of poisoning, it is extremely likely that the bread handed by Mr Skripal to the boys would have been contaminated. Certainly, areas that he visited after this incident were deemed to be so much at risk that they were either closed down (for example, The Mill and Zizzis, which are both still closed), or destroyed (for instance, the restaurant table, the bench and – almost certainly – the red bag near the bench have all been destroyed).

    Can the authorities comment on how the boys, who were handed bread by Mr Skripal, managed to avoid contamination?

    9. It has been said that one of the reasons the Government is/was so sure that the ultimate culprit behind the poisoning was the Russian state, is the apparent existence of an "FSB handbook" which, amongst other things, allegedly features descriptions of how to apply nerve agent to a door handle. Given that the Prime Minister first made a formal accusation of culpability on 12th March in her speech to the House of Commons, the Government must therefore have been in possession of this manual prior to that day. However, claims about the door handle being the location of the poison did not appear until late March (the first media reports of it were on 28th March). What this means is there was a delay of several weeks between the Government making its accusation, based partly on the apparent existence of the "door handle manual", and the door handle of Mr Skripal's house being a subject of interest to investigators.

    Can the authorities therefore tell us whether the Government's failure to pass on details of the "door handle manual" put the lives of the officers going in and out of Mr Skripal's house from 5th March to 27th March in jeopardy?

    10. On 17th March, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said:

    "We are learning more about Sergei and Yulia's movements but we need to be clearer around their exact movements on the morning of the incident. We believe that at around 9.15am on Sunday, 4 March, Sergei's car may have been in the areas of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road. Then at around 1.30pm it was seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards the town centre. We need to establish Sergei and Yulia's movements during the morning, before they headed to the town centre. Did you see this car, or what you believe was this car, on the day of the incident? We are particularly keen to hear from you if you saw the car before 1.30pm. If you have information, please call the police on 101."

    Now that Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been awake and able to communicate for around four months, these details are presumably now all known to investigators. In the normal course of such a high profile investigation, details such as these would be relayed to the public in the hope of jogging memories to prompt more information. And in fact, many such details have been released to the public in this case. Yet, confirmation of Mr Skripal's and Yulia's movements that day remain conspicuous by their absence.

    Can the authorities confirm that the movements of the Skripals that day are now understood, and that they will be made known shortly, in order that more information from the public might then be forthcoming?

    These questions have nothing to do with any conspiracy theory. On the contrary, they are all based on the assumption that the two central claims made by the authorities regarding the mode and the method used in this incident are correct. They are, however, very serious and perfectly legitimate questions about the way the authorities have dealt with this incident, on their own terms and on the basis of their own claims .

    We await their explanations.

    besnook Mon, 08/06/2018 - 14:22 Permalink

    the brits want to embarrass themselves.

    EuroPox -> besnook Mon, 08/06/2018 - 14:25 Permalink

    They already have - that was just more lies:

    "Reports that the United Kingdom is planning to ask Russia to extradite suspects in a Salisbury poisoning incident are nothing more than a "speculation," a spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office told Sputnik on Monday.

    "This is just more speculation. The police investigation is ongoing and anything on the record will need to come from the Police," the spokesperson said."

    https://sputniknews.com/europe/201808061067000089-uk-no-request-salisbu

    [Aug 08, 2018] Ten Bombshell Revelations From Seymour Hersh's New Autobiography

    Highly recommended!
    Aug 08, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    Here are ten bombshell revelations and fascinating new details to lately come out of both Sy Hersh's new book, Reporter , as well as interviews he's given since publication...

    1) On a leaked Bush-era intelligence memo outlining the neocon plan to remake the Middle East

    (Note: though previously alluded to only anecdotally by General Wesley Clark in his memoir and in a 2007 speech , the below passage from Seymour Hersh is to our knowledge the first time this highly classified memo has been quoted . Hersh's account appears to corroborate now retired Gen. Clark's assertion that days after 9/11 a classified memo outlining plans to foster regime change in "7 countries in 5 years" was being circulated among intelligence officials.)

    From Reporter: A Memoir pg. 306 -- A few months after the invasion of Iraq, during an interview overseas with a general who was director of a foreign intelligence service, I was provided with a copy of a Republican neocon plan for American dominance in the Middle East. The general was an American ally, but one who was very rattled by the Bush/Cheney aggression. I was told that the document leaked to me initially had been obtained by someone in the local CIA station. There was reason to be rattled: The document declared that the war to reshape the Middle East had to begin "with the assault on Iraq. The fundamental reason for this... is that the war will start making the U.S. the hegemon of the Middle East. The correlative reason is to make the region feel in its bones, as it were, the seriousness of American intent and determination." Victory in Iraq would lead to an ultimatum to Damascus, the "defanging" of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, and other anti-Israeli groups. America's enemies must understand that "they are fighting for their life: Pax Americana is on its way, which implies their annihilation." I and the foreign general agreed that America's neocons were a menace to civilization.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/nUCwCgthp_E

    * * *

    2) On early regime change plans in Syria

    From Reporter: A Memoir pages 306-307 -- Donald Rumsfeld was also infected with neocon fantasy. Turkey had refused to permit America's Fourth Division to join the attack of Iraq from its territory, and the division, with its twenty-five thousand men and women, did not arrive in force inside Iraq until mid-April, when the initial fighting was essentially over. I learned then that Rumsfeld had asked the American military command in Stuttgart, Germany, which had responsibility for monitoring Europe, including Syria and Lebanon, to begin drawing up an operational plan for an invasion of Syria. A young general assigned to the task refused to do so, thereby winning applause from my friends on the inside and risking his career. The plan was seen by those I knew as especially bizarre because Bashar Assad, the ruler of secular Syria, had responded to 9/11 by sharing with the CIA hundreds of his country's most sensitive intelligence files on the Muslim Brotherhood in Hamburg, where much of the planning for 9/11 was carried out... Rumsfeld eventually came to his senses and back down, I was told...

    3) On the Neocon deep state which seized power after 9/11

    From Reporter: A Memoir pages 305-306 -- I began to comprehend that eight or nine neoconservatives who were political outsiders in the Clinton years had essentially overthrown the government of the United States -- with ease . It was stunning to realize how fragile our Constitution was. The intellectual leaders of that group -- Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle -- had not hidden their ideology and their belief in the power of the executive but depicted themselves in public with a great calmness and a self-assurance that masked their radicalism . I had spent many hours after 9/11 in conversations with Perle that, luckily for me, helped me understand what was coming. (Perle and I had been chatting about policy since the early 1980s, but he broke off relations in 1993 over an article I did for The New Yorker linking him, a fervent supporter of Israel, to a series of meetings with Saudi businessmen in an attempt to land a multibillion-dollar contract from Saudi Arabia . Perle responded by publicly threatening to sue me and characterizing me as a newspaper terrorist. He did not sue.

    Meanwhile, Cheney had emerged as a leader of the neocon pack. From 9/11 on he did all he could to undermine congressional oversight. I learned a great deal from the inside about his primacy in the White House , but once again I was limited in what I would write for fear of betraying my sources...

    I came to understand that Cheney's goal was to run his most important military and intelligence operations with as little congressional knowledge, and interference, as possible. I was fascinating and important to learn what I did about Cheney's constant accumulation of power and authority as vice president , but it was impossible to even begin to verify the information without running the risk that Cheney would learn of my questioning and have a good idea from whom I was getting the information.

    4) On Russian meddling in the US election

    From the recent Independent interview based on his autobiography -- Hersh has vociferously strong opinions on the subject and smells a rat. He states that there is "a great deal of animosity towards Russia. All of that stuff about Russia hacking the election appears to be preposterous." He has been researching the subject but is not ready to go public yet.

    Hersh quips that the last time he heard the US defense establishment have high confidence, it was regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He points out that the NSA only has moderate confidence in Russian hacking. It is a point that has been made before; there has been no national intelligence estimate in which all 17 US intelligence agencies would have to sign off. "When the intel community wants to say something they say it High confidence effectively means that they don't know."

    5) On the Novichok poisoning

    From the recent Independent interview -- Hersh is also on the record as stating that the official version of the Skripal poisoning does not stand up to scrutiny. He tells me: "The story of novichok poisoning has not held up very well. He [Skripal] was most likely talking to British intelligence services about Russian organised crime." The unfortunate turn of events with the contamination of other victims is suggestive, according to Hersh, of organised crime elements rather than state-sponsored actions –though this files in the face of the UK government's position.

    Hersh modestly points out that these are just his opinions. Opinions or not, he is scathing on Obama – "a trimmer articulate [but] far from a radical a middleman". During his Goldsmiths talk, he remarks that liberal critics underestimate Trump at their peril.

    He ends the Goldsmiths talk with an anecdote about having lunch with his sources in the wake of 9/11 . He vents his anger at the agencies for not sharing information. One of his CIA sources fires back: "Sy you still don't get it after all these years – the FBI catches bank robbers, the CIA robs banks." It is a delicious, if cryptic aphorism.

    * * *

    6) On the Bush-era 'Redirection' policy of arming Sunni radicals to counter Shia Iran, which in a 2007 New Yorker article Hersh accurately predicted would set off war in Syria

    From the Independent interview : [Hersh] tells me it is "amazing how many times that story has been reprinted" . I ask about his argument that US policy was designed to neutralize the Shia sphere extending from Iran to Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon and hence redraw the Sykes-Picot boundaries for the 21st century.

    He goes on to say that Bush and Cheney "had it in for Iran", although he denies the idea that Iran was heavily involved in Iraq: "They were providing intel, collecting intel The US did many cross-border hunts to kill ops [with] much more aggression than Iran"...

    He believes that the Trump administration has no memory of this approach. I'm sure though that the military-industrial complex has a longer memory...

    I press him on the RAND and Stratfor reports including one authored by Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz in which they envisage deliberate ethno-sectarian partitioning of Iraq . Hersh ruefully states that: "The day after 9/11 we should have gone to Russia. We did the one thing that George Kennan warned us never to do – to expand NATO too far."

    * * *

    7) On the official 9/11 narrative

    From the Independent interview : We end up ruminating about 9/11, perhaps because it is another narrative ripe for deconstruction by sceptics. Polling shows that a significant proportion of the American public believes there is more to the truth. These doubts have been reinforced by the declassification of the suppressed 28 pages of the 9/11 commission report last year undermining the version that a group of terrorists acting independently managed to pull off the attacks. The implication is that they may well have been state-sponsored with the Saudis potentially involved.

    Hersh tells me: "I don't necessarily buy the story that Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11. We really don't have an ending to the story. I've known people in the [intelligence] community. We don't know anything empirical about who did what" . He continues: "The guy was living in a cave. He really didn't know much English. He was pretty bright and he had a lot of hatred for the US. We respond by attacking the Taliban. Eighteen years later How's it going guys?"

    8) On the media and the morality of the powerful

    From a recent The Intercept interview and book review -- If Hersh were a superhero, this would be his origin story. Two hundred and seventy-four pages after the Chicago anecdote, he describes his coverage of a massive slaughter of Iraqi troops and civilians by the U.S. in 1991 after a ceasefire had ended the Persian Gulf War. America's indifference to this massacre was, Hersh writes, "a reminder of the Vietnam War's MGR, for Mere Gook Rule: If it's a murdered or raped gook, there is no crime." It was also, he adds, a reminder of something else: "I had learned a domestic version of that rule decades earlier" in Chicago. "Reporter" demonstrates that Hersh has derived three simple lessons from that rule:

    1. The powerful prey mercilessly upon the powerless, up to and including mass murder.
    2. The powerful lie constantly about their predations.
    3. The natural instinct of the media is to let the powerful get away with it.

    * * *

    ... ... ...

    [Aug 05, 2018] Cooper was equally as unhinged as Boot: Neoliberal MSM is a real 1984 remake.

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... I'm somewhat puzzled why Trump and his people, when referring to the "fake news" and answering questions from hostile journalists, especially about the idea that the media are "enemies of the American people", fail to bring up the fact that the "fake news" and the "enemies of the people" are not the journalists themselves, but rather the management and ownership of the media. ..."
    Aug 05, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
    paul malfara , a day ago
    I posted this one to my facebook page three or four days ago. It's brilliant. I have a few comments. First, I disagree with the analysis given by the fellow from the Duran in the introduction, something along the lines of "even Anderson Cooper was smirking because Cohen was demolishing Boot so badly".

    If you pay attention to the questions and statements, you find that Cooper is equally as unhinged as Boot is, first hammering on the point that nobody knows what was discussed in the meeting, then after Cohen rattles off a list, Cooper shifts to the "you're believing Vladimir Putin on this" tactic, a nail that Cohen wisely smashes with a hammering statement, "I don't want to shock you, but I believe Vladimir Putin on several things."

    Cooper continues to insist that the content of the meeting is unknown and unconfirmed, regardless of what Putin and Trump say. The sheer hubris of journalists today is unprecedented and outrageous.

    I do admit that Cooper shuts up after being schooled by Cohen a second and third time and after Boot makes the mistake of calling Cohen an apologist for Putin and Russia. This leads me to a second point.

    I'm somewhat puzzled why Trump and his people, when referring to the "fake news" and answering questions from hostile journalists, especially about the idea that the media are "enemies of the American people", fail to bring up the fact that the "fake news" and the "enemies of the people" are not the journalists themselves, but rather the management and ownership of the media.

    \This would accomplish two important things, both necessary, in my opinion. First, it would put the front line journalists into their correct place, telling them that they are really nothing but mouthpieces, and we know that the real decisions on content are not made by them.

    What a blow to their narcisstic self-esteem that would be!

    Second, it would give the American people more information on how their consent is engineered, how the media has owners who have an agenda, and that agenda is not related to improving the lives of the American people, or even keeping them informed with accurate information.

    [Jul 31, 2018] Is not the Awan affair a grave insult to the US "Intelligence Community?

    Highly recommended!
    Jul 31, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

    Nik , July 28, 2018 at 9:22 am

    Is not the Awan affair a grave insult to the US "Intelligence Community?" http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/07/what-are-the-democrats-hiding-by-publius-tacitus.html

    For several years, a family of foreign nationals (and not only Wassermannn-Schultz) has been surfing the congressional computers while having no security clearance.

    Then there was a criminal negligence by H. Clinton who made her emails, filled with the highest-level classified information, available to Chinese (not the Russians). http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/07/httpstruepunditcomfbi-lisa-page-dimes-out-top-fbi-officials-during-classified-house-testimony-bureau-bos.html

    Both Debbie and Hillary should be in federal prison already. Clinton used to be fond of droning Assange for divulging the criminal and illegal activities of the state. What Debbie and Hillary did has been much more dangerous to the US national security.

    [Jul 28, 2018] American Society Would Collapse If It Were not For These 8 Myths by Lee Camp

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Well, it comes down to the myths we've been sold. Myths that are ingrained in our social programming from birth, deeply entrenched, like an impacted wisdom tooth. These myths are accepted and basically never questioned. ..."
    "... Our media outlets are funded by weapons contractors, big pharma, big banks, big oil and big, fat hard-on pills. (Sorry to go hard on hard-on pills, but we can't get anything resembling hard news because it's funded by dicks.) The corporate media's jobs are to rally for war, cheer for Wall Street and froth at the mouth for consumerism. It's their mission to actually fortify belief in the myths I'm telling you about right now. Anybody who steps outside that paradigm is treated like they're standing on a playground wearing nothing but a trench coat. ..."
    "... The criminal justice system has become a weapon wielded by the corporate state. This is how bankers can foreclose on millions of homes illegally and see no jail time, but activists often serve jail time for nonviolent civil disobedience. Chris Hedges recently noted , "The most basic constitutional rights have been erased for many. Our judicial system, as Ralph Nader has pointed out, has legalized secret law, secret courts, secret evidence, secret budgets and secret prisons in the name of national security." ..."
    "... This myth (Buying will make you happy) is put forward mainly by the floods of advertising we take in but also by our social engineering. Most of us feel a tenacious emptiness, an alienation deep down behind our surface emotions (for a while I thought it was gas). That uneasiness is because most of us are flushing away our lives at jobs we hate before going home to seclusion boxes called houses or apartments. We then flip on the TV to watch reality shows about people who have it worse than we do (which we all find hilarious). ..."
    "... According to Deloitte's Shift Index survey : "80% of people are dissatisfied with their jobs" and "[t]he average person spends 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime." That's about one-seventh of your life -- and most of it is during your most productive years. ..."
    "... Try maintaining your privacy for a week without a single email, web search or location data set collected by the NSA and the telecoms. ..."
    Jul 27, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    Authored by Lee Camp via TruthDig.com,

    Our society should've collapsed by now. You know that, right?

    No society should function with this level of inequality (with the possible exception of one of those prison planets in a "Star Wars" movie). Sixty-three percent of Americans can't afford a $500 emergency . Yet Amazon head Jeff Bezos is now worth a record $141 billion . He could literally end world hunger for multiple years and still have more money left over than he could ever spend on himself.

    Worldwide, one in 10 people only make $2 a day. Do you know how long it would take one of those people to make the same amount as Jeff Bezos has? 193 million years . (If they only buy single-ply toilet paper.) Put simply, you cannot comprehend the level of inequality in our current world or even just our nation.

    So shouldn't there be riots in the streets every day? Shouldn't it all be collapsing? Look outside. The streets aren't on fire. No one is running naked and screaming (usually). Does it look like everyone's going to work at gunpoint? No. We're all choosing to continue on like this.

    Why?

    Well, it comes down to the myths we've been sold. Myths that are ingrained in our social programming from birth, deeply entrenched, like an impacted wisdom tooth. These myths are accepted and basically never questioned.

    I'm going to cover eight of them. There are more than eight. There are probably hundreds. But I'm going to cover eight because (A) no one reads a column titled "Hundreds of Myths of American Society," (B) these are the most important ones and (C) we all have other shit to do.

    Myth No. 8 -- We have a democracy.

    If you think we still have a democracy or a democratic republic, ask yourself this: When was the last time Congress did something that the people of America supported that did not align with corporate interests? You probably can't do it. It's like trying to think of something that rhymes with "orange." You feel like an answer exists but then slowly realize it doesn't. Even the Carter Center and former President Jimmy Carter believe that America has been transformed into an oligarchy : A small, corrupt elite control the country with almost no input from the people. The rulers need the myth that we're a democracy to give us the illusion of control.

    Myth No. 7 -- We have an accountable and legitimate voting system.

    Gerrymandering, voter purging, data mining, broken exit polling, push polling, superdelegates, electoral votes, black-box machines, voter ID suppression, provisional ballots, super PACs, dark money, third parties banished from the debates and two corporate parties that stand for the same goddamn pile of fetid crap!

    What part of this sounds like a legitimate election system?

    No, we have what a large Harvard study called the worst election system in the Western world . Have you ever seen where a parent has a toddler in a car seat, and the toddler has a tiny, brightly colored toy steering wheel so he can feel like he's driving the car? That's what our election system is -- a toy steering wheel. Not connected to anything. We all sit here like infants, excitedly shouting, "I'm steeeeering !"

    And I know it's counterintuitive, but that's why you have to vote. We have to vote in such numbers that we beat out what's stolen through our ridiculous rigged system.

    Myth No. 6 -- We have an independent media that keeps the rulers accountable.

    Our media outlets are funded by weapons contractors, big pharma, big banks, big oil and big, fat hard-on pills. (Sorry to go hard on hard-on pills, but we can't get anything resembling hard news because it's funded by dicks.) The corporate media's jobs are to rally for war, cheer for Wall Street and froth at the mouth for consumerism. It's their mission to actually fortify belief in the myths I'm telling you about right now. Anybody who steps outside that paradigm is treated like they're standing on a playground wearing nothing but a trench coat.

    Myth No. 5 -- We have an independent judiciary.

    The criminal justice system has become a weapon wielded by the corporate state. This is how bankers can foreclose on millions of homes illegally and see no jail time, but activists often serve jail time for nonviolent civil disobedience. Chris Hedges recently noted , "The most basic constitutional rights have been erased for many. Our judicial system, as Ralph Nader has pointed out, has legalized secret law, secret courts, secret evidence, secret budgets and secret prisons in the name of national security."

    If you're not part of the monied class, you're pressured into releasing what few rights you have left. According to The New York Times , "97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases end in plea bargains, with defendants pleading guilty in exchange for a lesser sentence."

    That's the name of the game. Pressure people of color and poor people to just take the plea deal because they don't have a million dollars to spend on a lawyer. (At least not one who doesn't advertise on beer coasters.)

    Myth No. 4 -- The police are here to protect you. They're your friends .

    That's funny. I don't recall my friend pressuring me into sex to get out of a speeding ticket. (Which is essentially still legal in 32 states .)

    The police in our country are primarily designed to do two things: protect the property of the rich and perpetrate the completely immoral war on drugs -- which by definition is a war on our own people .

    We lock up more people than any other country on earth . Meaning the land of the free is the largest prison state in the world. So all these droopy-faced politicians and rabid-talking heads telling you how awful China is on human rights or Iran or North Korea -- none of them match the numbers of people locked up right here under Lady Liberty's skirt.

    Myth No. 3 -- Buying will make you happy.

    This myth (Buying will make you happy) is put forward mainly by the floods of advertising we take in but also by our social engineering. Most of us feel a tenacious emptiness, an alienation deep down behind our surface emotions (for a while I thought it was gas). That uneasiness is because most of us are flushing away our lives at jobs we hate before going home to seclusion boxes called houses or apartments. We then flip on the TV to watch reality shows about people who have it worse than we do (which we all find hilarious).

    If we're lucky, we'll make enough money during the week to afford enough beer on the weekend to help it all make sense. (I find it takes at least four beers for everything to add up.) But that doesn't truly bring us fulfillment. So what now? Well, the ads say buying will do it. Try to smother the depression and desperation under a blanket of flat-screen TVs, purses and Jet Skis. Now does your life have meaning? No? Well, maybe you have to drive that Jet Ski a little faster! Crank it up until your bathing suit flies off and you'll feel alive !

    The dark truth is that we have to believe the myth that consuming is the answer or else we won't keep running around the wheel. And if we aren't running around the wheel, then we start thinking, start asking questions. Those questions are not good for the ruling elite, who enjoy a society based on the daily exploitation of 99 percent of us.

    Myth No. 2 -- If you work hard, things will get better.

    According to Deloitte's Shift Index survey : "80% of people are dissatisfied with their jobs" and "[t]he average person spends 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime." That's about one-seventh of your life -- and most of it is during your most productive years.

    Ask yourself what we're working for. To make money? For what? Almost none of us are doing jobs for survival anymore. Once upon a time, jobs boiled down to:

    I plant the food -- >I eat the food -- >If I don't plant food = I die.

    But nowadays, if you work at a café -- will someone die if they don't get their super-caf-mocha-frap-almond-piss-latte? I kinda doubt they'll keel over from a blueberry scone deficiency.

    If you work at Macy's, will customers perish if they don't get those boxer briefs with the sweat-absorbent-ass fabric? I doubt it. And if they do die from that, then their problems were far greater than you could've known. So that means we're all working to make other people rich because we have a society in which we have to work. Technological advancements can do most everything that truly must get done.

    So if we wanted to, we could get rid of most work and have tens of thousands of more hours to enjoy our lives. But we're not doing that at all. And no one's allowed to ask these questions -- not on your mainstream airwaves at least. Even a half-step like universal basic income is barely discussed because it doesn't compute with our cultural programming.

    Scientists say it's quite possible artificial intelligence will take away all human jobs in 120 years . I think they know that will happen because bots will take the jobs and then realize that 80 percent of them don't need to be done! The bots will take over and then say, "Stop it. Stop spending a seventh of your life folding shirts at Banana Republic."

    One day, we will build monuments to the bot that told us to enjoy our lives and leave the shirts wrinkly.

    And this leads me to the largest myth of our American society.

    Myth No. 1 -- You are free.

    ... ... ...

    Try sleeping in your car for more than a few hours without being harassed by police.

    Try maintaining your privacy for a week without a single email, web search or location data set collected by the NSA and the telecoms.

    Try signing up for the military because you need college money and then one day just walking off the base, going, "Yeah, I was bored. Thought I would just not do this anymore."

    Try explaining to Kentucky Fried Chicken that while you don't have the green pieces of paper they want in exchange for the mashed potatoes, you do have some pictures you've drawn on a napkin to give them instead.

    Try running for president as a third-party candidate. (Jill Stein was shackled and chained to a chair by police during one of the debates.)

    Try using the restroom at Starbucks without buying something while black.

    We are less free than a dog on a leash. We live in one of the hardest-working, most unequal societies on the planet with more billionaires than ever .

    Meanwhile, Americans supply 94 percent of the paid blood used worldwide. And it's almost exclusively coming from very poor people. This abusive vampire system is literally sucking the blood from the poor. Does that sound like a free decision they made? Or does that sound like something people do after immense economic force crushes down around them? (One could argue that sperm donation takes a little less convincing.)

    Point is, in order to enforce this illogical, immoral system, the corrupt rulers -- most of the time -- don't need guns and tear gas to keep the exploitation mechanisms humming along. All they need are some good, solid bullshit myths for us all to buy into, hook, line and sinker. Some fairy tales for adults.

    It's time to wake up.

    bobcatz -> powow Fri, 07/27/2018 - 16:43 Permalink

    Myth #9: America is not an Israeli colony

    DingleBarryObummer -> bobcatz Fri, 07/27/2018 - 16:49 Permalink

    #10: Muh 6 Gorillion

    #11: Building 7

    bfellow -> DingleBarryObummer Fri, 07/27/2018 - 16:55 Permalink

    815M people chronically malnourished according to the UN. Bezos is worth $141B.

    $141B / 815M people = $173 per person. That would definitely not feed them for "multiple years". And that's only if Bezos could fully liquidate the stock without it dropping a penny.

    Author lost me right there.

    Oldguy05 -> Oldguy05 Fri, 07/27/2018 - 22:25 Permalink

    " Point is, in order to enforce this illogical, immoral system, the corrupt rulers -- most of the time -- don't need guns and tear gas to keep the exploitation mechanisms humming along. All they need are some good, solid bullshit myths for us all to buy into, hook, line and sinker. Some fairy tales for adults. "

    Seems like there's tear gas in the air and guns are going to be used soon. The myths are dying on the tongues of the liars. Molon Labe!....and I'm usually a pacifist.

    BennyBoy -> Nunny Fri, 07/27/2018 - 18:51 Permalink

    "American Society Would Collapse If It Weren't For Invasions Of Foreign Countries, Murdering Their People, Stealing Their Oil Then Blaming Them For Making The US Do It."

    Oldguy05 -> Nunny Fri, 07/27/2018 - 22:43 Permalink

    Eisenhower's speeches were awesome and true. But he was right there doing the same shit. Was he feeling guilty in the end?

    Proofreder -> vato poco Fri, 07/27/2018 - 18:39 Permalink

    Freedom - just another word for nothing left to lose ...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7hk-hI0JKw&list=RDEMoIkwgyb6gDyuA-bFyR

    east of eden -> vato poco Fri, 07/27/2018 - 18:55 Permalink

    Well, in a world driven by oil, it is entirely bogus to suggest that citizens have to work their asses off. That was the whole point of the bill of goods that was sold to us in the late 70's and early 80'. More leisure time, more time for your family and personal interests.

    Except! It never happened. All they fucking did was reduce real wages and force everyone from the upper middle class down, into a shit hole.

    But, they will pay for their folly. Guaran-fucking-teed.

    TheEndIsNear -> HopefulCynical Fri, 07/27/2018 - 18:33 Permalink

    As one who has hoed many rows of cotton in 115F temperatures as well as picking cotton during my childhood and early adolescence during weekends and school holidays, I concur. It was a very powerful inducement to get a good education back when schools actually taught things and did not tolerate backtalk or guff from students instead of babysitting them. It worked, and I ended up writing computer software for spacecraft, which was much fun than working in the fields.

    [Jul 23, 2018] Chickens with Their Heads Cut Off, Coming Home to Roost. The "Treason Narrative" by Helen Buyniski

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... Congress wasted no time jumping on the Treason bandwagon, led by Chuck Schumer conjuring the spectre of the KGB, Marco Rubio as neocon point-man (one imagines Barbara Bush rolling in her grave at his usurpation of Jeb's rightful role) proposing locked-and-loaded sanctions in case of future "meddling," and John McCain , still desperate to take the rest of the world with him before he finally kicks a long-overdue bucket, condemning the "disgraceful" display of two heads of state trying to come to an agreement about matters of mutual interest. The Pentagon has invested a lot of time and money in positioning Russia as Public Enemy #1, and for Trump to put his foot in it by making nice with Putin might diminish the size of their weapons contracts – or the willingness of the American people to tolerate more than half of every tax dollar disappearing down an unaccountable hole . Peace? Eh, who needs it. Cash , motherfucker. ..."
    "... The Intelligence Community believes it is God, and it hath smote Trump good. Smelling blood in the water, the media redoubled their shrieking for several days, and crickets. ..."
    Jul 23, 2018 | www.globalresearch.ca

    ... ... ...

    The Helsinki hysteria shone a spotlight on the utter impotence of the establishment media and their Deep State controllers to make their delusions reality. Never before has there been such a gaping chasm visible between the media's "truth" and the facts on the ground. Pundits compared the summit to Pearl Harbor and 9/11 , with some even reaching for the brass ring of the Holocaust by likening it to Kristallnacht , while polls revealed the American people really didn't care .

    Worse, it laid bare the collusion between the media and their Deep State handlers – the central dissemination point for the headlines, down to the same phrases, that led to every outlet claiming Trump had "thrown the Intelligence Community under the bus" by refusing to embrace the Russia-hacked-our-democracy narrative during his press conference with Putin. Leaving aside the sudden ubiquity of "Intelligence Community" in our national discourse – as if this network of spies and murderous thugs is Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood – no one seriously believes every pundit came up with "throws under the bus" as the proper way of describing that press conference.

    The same central control was apparent in the unanimous condemnations of Putin – that he murders journalists , breaks international agreements , uses banned chemical weapons , kills women and children in Syria , and, of course, meddles in elections . For every single establishment pundit to exhibit such a breathtaking lack of insight into their own government's misdeeds is highly unlikely. Many of these same talking heads remarked in horror on Sinclair Broadcasting's Orwellian "prepared statement" issuing forth from the mouths of hundreds of stations' anchors at once. Et tu, Anderson Cooper?

    Helsinki – Trump and Putin – a Showdown for Summer Doldrums or a Genuine Attempt Towards Peace?

    The media frenzy was geared toward sparking a popular revolt, with tensions already running high from the previous media frenzy about family separation at the border (though only one MSNBC segment seemed to recall that they should still care about that, and belatedly included some footage of kids behind a fence wrapped in Mylar blankets). Rachel Maddow , armed with the crocodile tears that served her so well during the family-separation fracas, exhorted her faithful cultists to do something . Meanwhile, national-security neanderthal John Brennan all but called for a coup, condemning the president for the unspeakable "high crimes and misdemeanors" of seeking to improve relations with the world's second-largest nuclear power. He called on Pompeo and Bolton, the two biggest warmongers in a Trump administration bristling with warmongers, to resign in protest. This would have been a grand slam for world peace, but alas, it was not to be. Even those two realize what a has-been Brennan is.

    Congress wasted no time jumping on the Treason bandwagon, led by Chuck Schumer conjuring the spectre of the KGB, Marco Rubio as neocon point-man (one imagines Barbara Bush rolling in her grave at his usurpation of Jeb's rightful role) proposing locked-and-loaded sanctions in case of future "meddling," and John McCain , still desperate to take the rest of the world with him before he finally kicks a long-overdue bucket, condemning the "disgraceful" display of two heads of state trying to come to an agreement about matters of mutual interest. The Pentagon has invested a lot of time and money in positioning Russia as Public Enemy #1, and for Trump to put his foot in it by making nice with Putin might diminish the size of their weapons contracts – or the willingness of the American people to tolerate more than half of every tax dollar disappearing down an unaccountable hole . Peace? Eh, who needs it. Cash , motherfucker.

    Trump's grip on his long-elusive spine was only temporary, and he held another press conference upon returning home to reiterate his trust in the intelligence agencies that have made no secret of their utter loathing for him since day one. When the lights went out at the climactic moment, it became clear for anyone who still hadn't gotten the message who was running the show here (and Trump, to his credit, actually joked about it). The Intelligence Community believes it is God, and it hath smote Trump good. Smelling blood in the water, the media redoubled their shrieking for several days, and crickets. On to the Playmates .

    Sacha Baron Cohen 's latest series, "Who is America," targeted Ted Koppel for one segment. Koppel cut the interview short after smelling a rat and expressed his high-minded concern that Cohen's antics would hurt Americans' trust in reporters. But after a week of the entire media establishment screaming that the sky is falling while the heavens remain firmly in place, Cohen is clearly the least of their problems. At least he's funny.

    *

    Helen Buyniski is a journalist and photographer based in New York City. She covers politics, sociology, and other anthropological/cultural phenomena. Helen has a BA in Journalism from New School University and also studied at Columbia University and New York University. Find more of her work at http://www.helenofdestroy.com and http://medium.com/@helen.buyniski .

    [Jul 22, 2018] Tucker Carlson SLAMS Intelligence Community On Russia

    Highly recommended!
    Notable quotes:
    "... After the Creation of the "CIA" Unelected, Unconstitutional CIA Intelligence Agency Interfered In Foreign Presidential Elections At Least 81 Times In 54 Years. The US was found to have interfered in foreign elections at least 81 times in 31 countries between 1946 and 2000 – not counting Libya, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, The US-backed military coups or regime change efforts, Proxy-Wars. Just saying ..."
    "... Tucker Carlson has been analyzing policies/ideas on a deeper level this year. He is painting US a big picture for us to see. It's quite refreshing to see Fox News actually allow objective truth be aired on on occasion. ..."
    "... The Intelligence Agencies are the Praetorian Guard in the United States. ..."
    "... Party politics is a means of control. When you come to realize that we all have a tendency to agree that the major issues have no party loyalty, and we're all on the same side, you can look past minor differences and move forward to working for the greater good... ..."
    "... I just saw another Tucker Carlson news clip that Tony Podesta is offered immunity to testify against Paul Manafort? WTF? Why aren't Podestas charged?! ..."
    "... Neocons, military industrial complex and liberal leftists have penetrated deeply into the government intelligence communities, wall street banking, both houses of Us congress, mainstream media as well as Hollywood people, even in an academia. This country is deep sh*t. I am surprised liberal leftists have not crucified Tucker Carlson yet for speaking out. ..."
    "... Russiagate is DemoKKKrat horse cookies. Putin is correct. DemoKKKrats are bad losers. $1.2 billion gone, servers gone! ..."
    Jul 22, 2018 | www.youtube.com

    Jaime Tapia , 5 hours ago (edited)

    Guys Did you know: After the Creation of the "CIA" Unelected, Unconstitutional CIA Intelligence Agency Interfered In Foreign Presidential Elections At Least 81 Times In 54 Years. The US was found to have interfered in foreign elections at least 81 times in 31 countries between 1946 and 2000 – not counting Libya, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, The US-backed military coups or regime change efforts, Proxy-Wars. Just saying. ¯\_(^)_/¯

    Boycott israeli products , 5 hours ago

    Tucker Carlson is a special character. 95% of time i disagree with Tucker but 5% of time he's just exceptionally good. In April his 8 minute monologue was epic. I love Jimmy Dore's passion... specially when he pronounes "they're lying!!!" Jimmy clearly hates liars ;-) We love you Jimmy for your integrity and intelligence.

    Sooner Mac , 5 hours ago

    Weapons of mass destruction, 9/11, Bin Laden, Lybia, Gulf of Tonkin, Opium fields in Afghanistan, Operation Mockingbird, Operation Paperclip..... A few reasons not to trust your CIA and FBI. I am sure you guys can name some more.

    The Alienated TV , 5 hours ago

    I think Tucker Carlson and Jimmy are two of the most responsible journalists on the planet. Keep up the good work.

    Connor Phillip , 5 hours ago

    "Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex" FZappa

    Guillermo Rivas , 5 hours ago

    Tucker Carlson has been analyzing policies/ideas on a deeper level this year. He is painting US a big picture for us to see. It's quite refreshing to see Fox News actually allow objective truth be aired on on occasion.

    Kunal Sharma , 6 hours ago

    The Intelligence Agencies are the Praetorian Guard in the United States.

    Joe Boyko , 5 hours ago

    Pulling off the partisan blinders is the first step toward enlightenment... Party politics is a means of control. When you come to realize that we all have a tendency to agree that the major issues have no party loyalty, and we're all on the same side, you can look past minor differences and move forward to working for the greater good...

    Pisstrooper pan shaker , 5 hours ago

    THE CIA HAS BEEN OVERTHROWING GOVERMENTS FOR DECADES,and you wonder why Trump doesn't trust them? It's because he doesn't want war. He ain't no saint but at least we have an anti war President.

    Poseidon Cichlidon , 5 hours ago (edited)

    Morning Joe's panel said today that the Democrats need to run on this Russia conspiracy theory, and nothing else, in order to win the midterms. If they bring up free college or medicare for all it will "weaken their message and confuse the voters". Once again the corporate neoliberal warmonger Democrats and their rich TV puppets are setting us up for failure, no voter gives a damn about Russia, MSNBC wants our progressive candidates to lose instead of reform their corrupt party!

    SONIX , 7 minutes ago

    I just saw another Tucker Carlson news clip that Tony Podesta is offered immunity to testify against Paul Manafort? WTF? Why aren't Podestas charged?!

    Cynthia Johnson , 5 hours ago (edited)

    Yep, Bernie is pushing the Russiagate story and Tucker Carlson on Fox News nails it. The world isn't upside down, it's doing back flips.

    Vegan4ThePlanet , 4 hours ago (edited)

    "So this is the Hostage Tape" CLASSIC LINE, Great one, LMAO

    DlchMcV , 4 hours ago (edited)

    I think what has happened to the Liberals, is that for decades and decades they were the most progressive, tolerant party. They really did want to do more for the people and tried to introduce things that the right would instantly point to and call "socialist!!" Corporations started to look at these liberals as representatives they could pay off but without suspect, unlike Republicans, who were widely known to accept money from Corporations, Big Pharma and huge construction companies (Haliburton anyone?).

    Over time, Liberals saw the benefits of being chummy with these same big $$ companies and voted on bills, etc in the ways that would make these corps very happy and more profitable. No one wanted to believe that Liberals were doing the same thing as Republicans but now we know they are. It's not a secret anymore. Most politicians aren't in it to make their country, their state or their cities better; they're in it to make their bank accounts unbelievably huge and that's it. They're greedy people with no integrity, pretending to serve the people.

    Louis-Ferdinand Féline , 1 hour ago

    I'm a righty, and I'm so surprised to see a liberal agree with Tucker in all the things I care about! Imagine what we could accomplish if we put aside our differences for a time and work on what we agree on! No more immoral wars for Israel! TRY BUSH, CHENEY, AND ALL NEOCONS THAT LED US TO WAR WITH IRAQ FOR TREASON!!

    Dosh cratonin , 5 hours ago

    You are so right. Thank you for bringout the truth. Neocons, military industrial complex and liberal leftists have penetrated deeply into the government intelligence communities, wall street banking, both houses of Us congress, mainstream media as well as Hollywood people, even in an academia. This country is deep sh*t. I am surprised liberal leftists have not crucified Tucker Carlson yet for speaking out.

    swiSSy Schweizer , 6 hours ago

    Russiagate is DemoKKKrat horse cookies. Putin is correct. DemoKKKrats are bad losers. $1.2 billion gone, servers gone! DmoKKKrats cannot even prove climate change

    [Jul 20, 2018] So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don t question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven t been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax

    Highly recommended!
    So British were involved in fabricating of 'Guccifer 2.0' persona. Nice...
    Notable quotes:
    "... It was Matt Tait who, using the 'Twitter' handle @pwnallthethings, identified the name and patronymic of Dzerzhinsky in the 'metadata' of the 'Guccifer 2.0' material on 15 June 2016, the day after Ellen Nakashima first disseminated the BS from 'CrowdStrike' in the 'WP.' ..."
    "... 'Matt Tait is a senior cybersecurity fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously he was CEO of Capital Alpha Security, a consultancy in the UK, worked at Google Project Zero, was a principal security consultant for iSEC Partners, and NGS Secure, and worked as an information security specialist for GCHQ.' ..."
    "... As I have noted before on SST, a cursory examination of records at 'Companies House' establishes that 'Capital Alpha Security', which was supposed to have provided Tait with an – independent – source of income at the time he unearthed this 'smoking gun' incriminating the GRU, never did any business at all. So, a question arises: how was Tait making ends meet at that time: busking on the London underground, perhaps? ..."
    "... The document, when available, may clarify a few loose ends, but the general picture seems clear. Last November, Tait filed 'dormant company accounts' for the company's first year in existence, up until February 2017. One can only do this if one has absolutely no revenue, and absolutely no expenditure. Not even the smallest contract to sort out malware on someone's computer, or to buy equipment for the office. ..."
    "... He then failed to file the 'Confirmation statement', which every company must is legally obliged to produce annually, if it is not to be struck off. This failure led to a 'First Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off' in May. ..."
    "... However, Tait may well anticipate that there is there will never be any call for him to go back into the big wide world, as the large organisation in which he has now found employment is part of a 'Borgist' network. So much is evident from another entry on the 'Lawfare' site: ..."
    "... Also relevant here is the fact that, rather transparently, this placing of the GRU centre stage is bound up with the attempt to suggest that there is some kind of 'Gerasimov doctrine', designed to undermine the West by 'hybrid warfare.' Unfortunately, the original author of this claptrap, Mark Galeotti, who, I regret to say, is, like Tait, British, has now recanted and confessed. In March, he published a piece on the 'Foreign Policy' site, under the title: 'I'm Sorry for Creating the 'Gerasimov Doctrine'; I was the first to write about Russia's infamous high-tech military strategy. One small problem: it doesn't exist.' ..."
    "... Quite clearly, the 'Guccifer 2.0' persona is a crude fabrication by someone who has absolutely no understanding of, or indeed interest in, the bitter complexities of both of the history of Russia and of the 'borderlands', not only in the Soviet period but before and after. ..."
    "... Jeffrey Carr is one of the latter, and his familiarity with intelligence matters is clear from his organization of the annual "Suits and Spooks" Conference. I believe he was the first to raise questions about the DNC hack which didn't pass his smell test. ..."
    "... One quick way to know their bias is the AC test. Google their name plus "Atlantic Council". Ridd fails badly. ..."
    "... The Comey, Brennan, Mueller claim - indeed a central one upon which the recent indictment rests- that Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian State agent that hacked the DNC- was discredited and put to rest last year by the forensics conducted by Bill Binney and his colleagues. The Guccifer 2.0 metadata was analyzed for its transmission speed, and based on the internet speeds to and from numerous test locations abroad and in the U.S., it was determined to have been impossible for the so-called Guccifer 2.0 to have hacked the DNC computers over the internet. The transmission speed however did correspond to the speed of the transfer to a thumb drive. Additionally, it was found that the data had been manipulated and split into two parts to simulate a July and a September transfer, when in fact the parts merge perfectly as single file, and where, according to Binney, the probability of the split being a coincidence would be 100 to the 50th power. ..."
    "... There is a pattern of abuse of formerly well regarded institutions to achieve the propaganda aims of the Deep State establishment. The depths that were plumbed to push the Iraq WMD falsehoods are well known. Yet no one was held to account nor was there any honest accounting of the abuse. There have been pretenses like the Owen inquiry that you note. ..."
    "... It seems that we are marching towards a credibility crisis similar to what was experienced in the Soviet Union when no one trusted the contents in Pravda. ..."
    "... What is to be gained by the leadership in Britain in promoting these biological weapons cases since Litvinenko? In the US it is quite apparent that the Deep State have become extremely powerful and the likelihood that Trump recognizes that resistance is futile is very high. Schumer may be proven right that they have six ways from Sunday to make you kowtow to their dictats. ..."
    "... I agree that taken by itself, the Dzerzinsky thing would be an anomaly only and could be dismissed as "black humor" of a kind often found in hackers. However, taken with all the other evidence produced by Adam Carter, it becomes much more obviously an attempt to support a false flag "Russian hacker" narrative that otherwise is porous. ..."
    "... You want us to believe that the GRU are so sloppy and so inexperienced that they would launch a hack on the DNC and not take every measure to ensure there was no link whatsoever to anything Russian? Any former intel officer worth a damn knows that an operation to disrupt the election in a country the size of the United States would start with a risk/reward assessment, would require a team of at least 100 persons and would not be writing any code that could in any way be traced to Russia. ..."
    "... Doctrine-mongering and repeating birth of new faux-academic "entities", such as a "hybrid war" (any war is hybrid by definition), is a distinct feature of the Western "political science-military history" establishment. Galeotti, who for some strange reason passes as Russia "expert" is a perfect example of such "expertise" and doctrine-mongering. Military professionals largely met this "hybrid warfare" BS with disdain. ..."
    "... I have to say that the more I look into this whole Russiagate affair, which is mostly in the minds of democrats (and a few republicans) and the MSM, the more it seems that there is indeed a foreign conspiracy to meddle in the internal affairs of the US (and in the presidential elections) but the meddling entity is not Russia. It is the British! ..."
    "... So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don't question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven't been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax. ..."
    Jul 20, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    As some commenters on SST seem still to have difficulty grasping that the presence of 'metadata' alluding to 'Iron Felix' in the 'Guccifer 2.0' material is strong evidence that the GRU were being framed over a leak, rather than that they were responsible for a hack, an update on the British end of the conspiracy seems in order.

    If you look at the 'Lawfare' blog, in which a key figure is James Comey's crony Benjamin Wittes, you will find a long piece published last Friday, entitled 'Russia Indictment 2.0: What to Make of Mueller's Hacking Indictment.'

    Among the authors, in addition to Wittes himself, is the sometime GCHQ employee Matt Tait. It appears that the former head of that organisation, the Blairite 'trusty' Robert Hannigan, who must know where a good few skeletons are buried, is a figure of some moment in the conspiracy.

    (See https://www.lawfareblog.com... .)

    It was Matt Tait who, using the 'Twitter' handle @pwnallthethings, identified the name and patronymic of Dzerzhinsky in the 'metadata' of the 'Guccifer 2.0' material on 15 June 2016, the day after Ellen Nakashima first disseminated the BS from 'CrowdStrike' in the 'WP.'

    The story was picked up the following day in a report on the 'Ars Technica' site, and Tait's own account appeared on the 'Lawfare' site, to which he has been a regular contributor, on 28 July.

    (See https://arstechnica.com/inf... ; https://www.lawfareblog.com... .)

    According to the CV provided in conjunction with the new article:

    'Matt Tait is a senior cybersecurity fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously he was CEO of Capital Alpha Security, a consultancy in the UK, worked at Google Project Zero, was a principal security consultant for iSEC Partners, and NGS Secure, and worked as an information security specialist for GCHQ.'

    As I have noted before on SST, a cursory examination of records at 'Companies House' establishes that 'Capital Alpha Security', which was supposed to have provided Tait with an – independent – source of income at the time he unearthed this 'smoking gun' incriminating the GRU, never did any business at all. So, a question arises: how was Tait making ends meet at that time: busking on the London underground, perhaps?

    (See https://beta.companieshouse... .)

    Actually, there has been a recent update in the records. Somewhat prematurely perhaps, there is an entry dated 24 July 2018, entitled 'Final Gazette dissolved via compulsory strike-off. This document is being processed and will be available in 5 days.'

    The document, when available, may clarify a few loose ends, but the general picture seems clear. Last November, Tait filed 'dormant company accounts' for the company's first year in existence, up until February 2017. One can only do this if one has absolutely no revenue, and absolutely no expenditure. Not even the smallest contract to sort out malware on someone's computer, or to buy equipment for the office.

    He then failed to file the 'Confirmation statement', which every company must is legally obliged to produce annually, if it is not to be struck off. This failure led to a 'First Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off' in May.

    It is, of course, possible that at the time Tait set up the company he was genuinely intending to try to make a go of a consultancy, and simply got sidetracked by other opportunities.

    However – speaking from experience – people who have set up small 'one man band' companies to market skills learnt in large organisations, and then go back into such organisations, commonly think it worth their while to spend the minimal amount of time required to file the documentation required to keep the company alive.

    If one sees any realistic prospect that one may either want to or need to go back into the big wide world again, this is the sensible course of action: particularly now when, with the internet, filing the relevant documentation takes about half an hour a year, and costs a trivial sum.

    However, Tait may well anticipate that there is there will never be any call for him to go back into the big wide world, as the large organisation in which he has now found employment is part of a 'Borgist' network. So much is evident from another entry on the 'Lawfare' site:

    'Bobby Chesney is the Charles I. Francis Professor in Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Texas School of Law. He also serves as the Director of UT-Austin's interdisciplinary research center the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. His scholarship encompasses a wide range of issues relating to national security and the law, including detention, targeting, prosecution, covert action, and the state secrets privilege; most of it is posted here. Along with Ben Wittes and Jack Goldsmith, he is one of the co-founders of the blog.'

    (See https://www.lawfareblog.com... .)

    Also relevant here is the fact that, rather transparently, this placing of the GRU centre stage is bound up with the attempt to suggest that there is some kind of 'Gerasimov doctrine', designed to undermine the West by 'hybrid warfare.' Unfortunately, the original author of this claptrap, Mark Galeotti, who, I regret to say, is, like Tait, British, has now recanted and confessed. In March, he published a piece on the 'Foreign Policy' site, under the title: 'I'm Sorry for Creating the 'Gerasimov Doctrine'; I was the first to write about Russia's infamous high-tech military strategy. One small problem: it doesn't exist.'

    (See https://foreignpolicy.com/2... .)

    If anyone wants to grasp what the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, General Valery Gerasimov, was actually saying in the crucial February 2013 article which Galeotti was discussing, and how his thinking has developed subsequently, the place to look is, as so often, the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth.

    Informed discussions by Charles Bartles and Roger McDermott are at https://www.armyupress.army... ; http://www.worldinwar.eu/wp... ; and https://jamestown.org/progr... .

    In relation to the ongoing attempt to frame the GRU, it is material that, in his 2013 piece, Gerasimov harks back to two pivotal figures in the arguments of the interwar years. Of these, Georgy Isserson, the Jewish doctor's son from Kaunas who became a Civil War 'political commissar' and then a key associate of Mikhail Tukhachevsky, was the great pioneer theorist of 'deep operations.'

    The ideas of the other, Aleksandr Svechin, the former Tsarist 'genstabist', born in Odessa into an ethnically Russian military family, who was the key opponent of Tukhachevky and Isserson in the arguments of the 'Twenties, provided key parts of the intellectual basis of the Gorbachev-era 'new thinking.'

    The 'Ars Technica' article in which Tait's claims were initially disseminated opened:

    'We still don't know who he is or whether he works for the Russian government, but one thing is for sure: Guccifer 2.0 – the nom de guerre of the person claiming he hacked the Democratic National Committee and published hundreds of pages that appeared to prove it – left behind fingerprints implicating a Russian-speaking person with a nostalgia for the country's lost Soviet era.'

    In his 2013 article, Gerasimov harks back to the catastrophe which overcame the Red Army in June 1941. Ironically, this was the product of the Stalinist leadership's disregard of the cautions produced not only by Svechin, but by Isserson. In regard to the latter, the article remarks that:

    'The fate of this "prophet of the Fatherland" unfolded tragically. Our country paid in great quantities of blood for not listening to the conclusions of this professor of the General Staff Academy.'

    As it happens, while both Svechin and Tukhachevsky were shot by the heirs of 'Felix Edmundovich', the sentence of death on Isserson was commuted, and he spent the war in prison and labour camps, while others used his ideas to devastating effect against the Germans.

    Quite clearly, the 'Guccifer 2.0' persona is a crude fabrication by someone who has absolutely no understanding of, or indeed interest in, the bitter complexities of both of the history of Russia and of the 'borderlands', not only in the Soviet period but before and after.

    Using this criterion as a 'filter', the obvious candidates are traditional Anglo-Saxon 'Russophobes', like Sir Richard Dearlove and Christopher Steele, or the 'insulted and injured' of the erstwhile Russian and Soviet empires, so many of them from the 'borderlands', of the type of Victoria Nuland, or the various Poles, Ukrainians and Balts and Jews who have had so much influence on American policy.

    (I should note that other Jews, not only in Russia, but outside, including in Israel, think quite differently, in particular as they are very well aware, as Isserson would have been, of the extent to which 'borderlands' nationalists were enthusiastic collaborators with the Germans in the 'Final Solution'. On this, there is a large and growing academic literature.)

    It is not particularly surprising that many of the victims of the Russian and Soviet empires have enjoyed seeing the tables turned, and getting their own back. But it is rather far from clear that this makes for good intelligence or sound policy. We were unable to load Disqus. If you are a moderator please see our troubleshooting guide .

    blue peacock , 2 days ago
    How does the objective truth get disclosed in an environment of extreme deceit by so many parties?

    How to trust western intelligence when they have such a long and sordid track record of deceit, lies and propaganda? At the same time there is such a long history of Russian and Chinese intelligence and information operations against the west.

    Then there is the nexus among the highest levels of US law enforcement and intelligence as well as political elites in both parties and key individuals in the media complex.

    We are living in a hall of mirrors and it seems the trend is towards confirmation bias in information consumption.

    richardstevenhack , 2 days ago
    Excellent post, especially the debunking of the 'Gerasimov doctrine' which I always thought was more hand-waving and Russian mind-reading.

    It's important to realize that there are a number of people in the infosec community who have biases against Russia, just as there are in the general population. Then there are more cautious people, who recognize the difficulty in attributing a hack to any specific person absent solid, incontrovertible, non-circumstantial and non-spoofable (and preferably offline) evidence.

    Tait doesn't appear to be one of the latter. Thomas Rid would be another. There are others.

    Jeffrey Carr is one of the latter, and his familiarity with intelligence matters is clear from his organization of the annual "Suits and Spooks" Conference. I believe he was the first to raise questions about the DNC hack which didn't pass his smell test.

    There are also a number of companies in infosec who rely on latching onto a particular strain of hacker, the more publicly exploitable for PR purposes the better, as a means of keeping the company name in front of potential high-profile and highly billable clients. CrowdStrike and its Russia obsession isn't the only one that's been tagged with that propensity.

    Mandiant could be referred to as the "Chinese, all the time" company, for example. Richard Bejtlich was at Fireeye and the became Chief Security Officer when they acquired Mandiant. He spent quite a bit of effort on his blog warning about the Chinese military buildup as a huge threat to the US. He's former USAF so perhaps that's not surprising.

    Bottom line: Confirmation bias is a real thing.

    David Blake -> richardstevenhack , 5 hours ago
    One quick way to know their bias is the AC test. Google their name plus "Atlantic Council". Ridd fails badly.
    Barbara Ann , 2 days ago
    Glad David's comment has been reproduced as a post in its own right, this is a critically important topic. IMO Matt Tait plays the role of midwife in this conspiracy. His Twitter thread

    View Hide

    mlnw , 2 days ago
    The Comey, Brennan, Mueller claim - indeed a central one upon which the recent indictment rests- that Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian State agent that hacked the DNC- was discredited and put to rest last year by the forensics conducted by Bill Binney and his colleagues. The Guccifer 2.0 metadata was analyzed for its transmission speed, and based on the internet speeds to and from numerous test locations abroad and in the U.S., it was determined to have been impossible for the so-called Guccifer 2.0 to have hacked the DNC computers over the internet. The transmission speed however did correspond to the speed of the transfer to a thumb drive. Additionally, it was found that the data had been manipulated and split into two parts to simulate a July and a September transfer, when in fact the parts merge perfectly as single file, and where, according to Binney, the probability of the split being a coincidence would be 100 to the 50th power.

    As for the crude trace fingerprints (e.g. the referencing of Dzerzinsky), one of the Wikileaks data dumps (Vault 7 Marble) during a period when Assange was negotiating with the Administration - there were two at the time (Vault 7 Marble and Vault 7 Grasshopper), the release of which apparently enraged Mike Pompeo- was designed to obfuscate, fabricate and frame countries such as Russia, Iran or North Korea by pretending to be the target country, including in the use of target's alphabet and language.

    VIPs has written numerous articles on this in Consortium News. See also the report by Patrick Lawrence Smith in The Nation at: https://www.thenation.com/a... . (It was apparently so hot at the time- and disputed by several other VIPs members- that The Nation sought an independent assessment by third party, though those comments were easily addressed and dismissed in seriatim by Binney in an annex to the article.)

    Binney has explained his forensic analysis and conclusions at numerous forums, and in a sit-down with Secretary Pompeo in October, 2017- though Mueller, the FBI, and mainstream and some of the alternative press seem either deaf, dumb and blind to it all, or interested in discrediting the study. The irony is, I'd venture to guess, that Binney, with his 40 years of experience, including as Technical Director and technical guru at the NSA, is, even in retirement, more sophisticated in these matters than any one at the Agency, or the FBI, or CIA, or certainly, the Congressional Intelligence Committees. So, it is astounding that any or all of them could have, but did not, invite him to testify as an expert.

    Moreover, the NSA has a record of every transmission, and also would have it on backup files. And, the FBI has been sitting on Seth Rich's computer and his communications with Wikileaks, and presumably has a report that it has not released. And of course, as Trump asked in his press conference, where's the DNC server, any or all of which would put this question to rest.

    A recent interview with Binney can be found at:

    Play Hide
    mlnw -> mlnw , 2 hours ago
    The last clause of the first paragraph should have said: "according to Binney, the probability of the split being a coincidence would be one over 100 to the 50th power
    Jack -> David Habakkuk , a day ago
    David

    There is a pattern of abuse of formerly well regarded institutions to achieve the propaganda aims of the Deep State establishment. The depths that were plumbed to push the Iraq WMD falsehoods are well known. Yet no one was held to account nor was there any honest accounting of the abuse. There have been pretenses like the Owen inquiry that you note.

    We see the same situation of sweeping under the rug malfeasance and even outright criminality through obfuscation and obstruction in the case of the meddling in the 2016 election by top officials in intelligence and law enforcement. Clearly less and less people are buying what the Deep State sells despite their overwhelming control of the media channels.

    It seems that we are marching towards a credibility crisis similar to what was experienced in the Soviet Union when no one trusted the contents in Pravda.

    What is to be gained by the leadership in Britain in promoting these biological weapons cases since Litvinenko? In the US it is quite apparent that the Deep State have become extremely powerful and the likelihood that Trump recognizes that resistance is futile is very high. Schumer may be proven right that they have six ways from Sunday to make you kowtow to their dictats.

    Fred -> Jack , a day ago
    Jack,

    "Yet no one was held to account"

    That was one of the changes being hoped for when Obama was first elected. Instead we got little, except for things such as bailed out bankers and the IRS scandal which lasted until the end of his 2nd term. The panic from the left over the 2016 election issues the are still going on is that the expected candidate isn't in office and they are being exposed. Whether they get prosecuted is another story.

    http://taxprof.typepad.com/...

    TTG , a day ago
    I think Matt Tait, David Habakkuk and many others are reading far more into this Dzerzinsky thing than what it warrants. The government dependent ID cards used by my family while I was working as a clandestine case officer overseas were signed by Robert Ludlum. Intelligence officers often have an odd sense of humor.

    On a different note, I fully endorse David Habakkuk's recommendation of the writings of Bartles, McDermott and many others at the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth. They are top notch. I learned a lot from Tim Thomas many years ago.

    richardstevenhack -> TTG , a day ago
    I agree that taken by itself, the Dzerzinsky thing would be an anomaly only and could be dismissed as "black humor" of a kind often found in hackers. However, taken with all the other evidence produced by Adam Carter, it becomes much more obviously an attempt to support a false flag "Russian hacker" narrative that otherwise is porous.

    I believe there is a phrase going something like "an attempt to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."

    Publius Tacitus -> TTG , a day ago
    TTG,

    You want us to believe that the GRU are so sloppy and so inexperienced that they would launch a hack on the DNC and not take every measure to ensure there was no link whatsoever to anything Russian? Any former intel officer worth a damn knows that an operation to disrupt the election in a country the size of the United States would start with a risk/reward assessment, would require a team of at least 100 persons and would not be writing any code that could in any way be traced to Russia.

    smoothieX12 . , a day ago
    Unfortunately, the original author of this claptrap, Mark Galeotti, who, I regret to say, is, like Tait, British, has now recanted and confessed.

    Doctrine-mongering and repeating birth of new faux-academic "entities", such as a "hybrid war" (any war is hybrid by definition), is a distinct feature of the Western "political science-military history" establishment. Galeotti, who for some strange reason passes as Russia "expert" is a perfect example of such "expertise" and doctrine-mongering. Military professionals largely met this "hybrid warfare" BS with disdain.

    ancient archer , a day ago
    I have to say that the more I look into this whole Russiagate affair, which is mostly in the minds of democrats (and a few republicans) and the MSM, the more it seems that there is indeed a foreign conspiracy to meddle in the internal affairs of the US (and in the presidential elections) but the meddling entity is not Russia. It is the British!

    So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don't question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven't been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax.

    This needs to be looked at in more detail by the alternative media and well informed commentators like the host of this site.

    [Jul 20, 2018] Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community by Ilana Mercer

    Highly recommended!
    Intelligence community is a new Praetorian guard which since JFK murder can decide the fate of presidents.
    Notable quotes:
    "... Peter Strzok, the disgraced and disgraceful Federal Bureau of Investigation official, is the very definition of a slimy swamp creature. Strzok twitched, grimaced and ranted his way to infamy during a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, on July 12. ..."
    "... Strzok is the youthful face of the venerated "Intelligence Community," itself part of the sprawling political machine that makes up the D.C. comitatus ..."
    "... Smug, self-satisfied, cheating creature that he is, Strzok can't take responsibility for his own misconduct, and blames Russia for dividing America. In the largely progressive bureau, moreover, Agent Strzok is neither underling nor outlier, for that matter. ..."
    "... A "blind bootlicking faith in spooks" is certainly unwarranted and may even be foolish. What of odious individuals like former FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and his predecessor, James Comey, now openly campaigning for the Democrats? Are these leaders outliers in the "Intelligence Community"? ..."
    "... Similarly, it's hard to think of a more partisan operator than John O. Brennan -- he ran the CIA under President Obama. True to type, he cast a vote for Communist Party USA, back in 1976, when the current Russia monomania would have been justified. Brennan has dubbed President Trump a traitor for having dared to doubt people like himself. ..."
    "... The very embodiment of the Surveillance State at its worst is Michael V. Hayden. Hayden has moved seamlessly from the National Security Agency and the CIA to CNN where he beats up on Trump. The former Bush employee hollered treason: "One of the most disgraceful performances of an American president in front of a Russian leader," Hayden inveighed. Not only had POTUS dared to explore the possibility of a truce with Russia, which is a formidable nuclear power; but the president had the temerity to express a smidgen of skepticism about a community littered with spooks like Mr. Hayden. ..."
    "... Pray tell, since when does the Deep State -- FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, DNI, (Director of National Intelligence), on and on -- represent, or stand for, the American People? The president, conversely, actually got the support of at least 60 million Americans. ..."
    "... Outside the Beltway, ordinary folks -- Deplorables, if you will -- have to sympathize with the president's initial and honest appraisal of the Intelligence Community's collective intelligence. This is the community that has sent us into quite a few recreational, hobby wars. ..."
    Jul 20, 2018 | www.unz.com

    Peter Strzok, the disgraced and disgraceful Federal Bureau of Investigation official, is the very definition of a slimy swamp creature. Strzok twitched, grimaced and ranted his way to infamy during a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, on July 12.

    In no way had he failed to discharge his professional unbiased obligation to the public, asserted Strzok. He had merely expressed the hope that "the American population would not elect somebody demonstrating such horrible, disgusting behavior."

    But we did not elect YOU, Mr. Strzok. We elected Mr. Trump.

    Strzok is the youthful face of the venerated "Intelligence Community," itself part of the sprawling political machine that makes up the D.C. comitatus , now writhing like a fire breathing mythical monster against President Donald Trump.

    Smug, self-satisfied, cheating creature that he is, Strzok can't take responsibility for his own misconduct, and blames Russia for dividing America. In the largely progressive bureau, moreover, Agent Strzok is neither underling nor outlier, for that matter. He's an overlord, having risen "to become the Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division, the second-highest position in that division."

    As Ann Coulter observed, the FBI is not the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover. Neither is the Intelligence Community Philip Haney's IC any longer. Haney was a heroic, soft-spoken, demure employee at the Department of Homeland Security. Agents like him are often fired if they don't get with the program. He didn't. Haney's method and the authentic intelligence he mined and developed might have stopped the likes of the San Bernardino mass murderers and many others. Instead, his higher-ups in the "Intelligence Community" made Haney and his data disappear.

    Post Haney, the FBI failed to adequately screen and stop Syed Farook and blushing bride Tashfeen Malik.

    A "blind bootlicking faith in spooks" is certainly unwarranted and may even be foolish. What of odious individuals like former FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and his predecessor, James Comey, now openly campaigning for the Democrats? Are these leaders outliers in the "Intelligence Community"?

    As Peter Strzok might say to his paramour in a private tweet, "Who ya gonna believe, the Intelligence Community or your own lying eyes?" The Bureau in particular and the IC cabal, in general, appear to be dominated by the likes of the dull-witted Mr. Strzok.

    Similarly, it's hard to think of a more partisan operator than John O. Brennan -- he ran the CIA under President Obama. True to type, he cast a vote for Communist Party USA, back in 1976, when the current Russia monomania would have been justified. Brennan has dubbed President Trump a traitor for having dared to doubt people like himself.

    The very embodiment of the Surveillance State at its worst is Michael V. Hayden. Hayden has moved seamlessly from the National Security Agency and the CIA to CNN where he beats up on Trump. The former Bush employee hollered treason: "One of the most disgraceful performances of an American president in front of a Russian leader," Hayden inveighed. Not only had POTUS dared to explore the possibility of a truce with Russia, which is a formidable nuclear power; but the president had the temerity to express a smidgen of skepticism about a community littered with spooks like Mr. Hayden.

    As one wag noted , not unreasonably, ours is "a highly-politicized intelligence community, infiltrated over decades by cadres of Deep State operatives and sleeper agents, whose goal is to bring down this presidency."

    The latest pillorying heaped upon the president by the permanent establishment has it that, "Trump chose to stand with Vladimir Putin, instead of the American People." Trump, to be precise, had the temerity to "openly question his own intelligence agencies' firm finding that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S."

    Pray tell, since when does the Deep State -- FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, DNI, (Director of National Intelligence), on and on -- represent, or stand for, the American People? The president, conversely, actually got the support of at least 60 million Americans.

    That's a LOT of support. Outside the Beltway, ordinary folks -- Deplorables, if you will -- have to sympathize with the president's initial and honest appraisal of the Intelligence Community's collective intelligence. This is the community that has sent us into quite a few recreational, hobby wars.

    And this is the community that regularly intercepts but fails to surveys and stop the likes of mass murderers Syed Farook and bride Tashfeen Malik. Or, Orlando nightclub killer Omar Mateen, whose father the Bureau saw fit to hire as an informant. The same "community" has invited the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Arab-American Institute to help shape FBI counterterrorism training.

    The FBI might not be very intelligent at all. About the quality of that intelligence, consider: On August 3, 2016, as the mad media were amping up their Russia monomania, a frenzied BuzzFeed -- it calls itself a news org -- reported that "the Russian foreign ministry had wired nearly $30,000 through a Kremlin-backed bank to its embassy in Washington, DC."

    Intercepted by American intelligence, the Russian wire stipulated that the funds were meant "to finance the election campaign of 2016." Was this not "meddling in our election" or what? Did we finally have irrefutable evidence of Kremlin culpability? The FBI certainly thought so. "Worse still, this was only one of 60 transfers that were being scrutinized by the FBI," wrote the Economist, in November of 2017. "Similar transfers were made to other countries." As it transpired, the money was wired from the Kremlin to embassies the world over. Its purpose? Russia was preparing to hold parliamentary elections in 2016 and had sent funds to Russian embassies "to organize the polling for expatriates."

    While it did update its Fake News factoids, Buzzfeed felt no compunction whatsoever to remove the erroneous item or publicly question their sources in the unimpeachable "Intelligence Community."

    Most news media are just not as inquisitive as President Trump.

    Ilana Mercer has been writing a weekly, paleolibertarian column since 1999. She is the author of " Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa " (2011) & " The Trump Revolution: The Donald's Creative Destruction Deconstructed " (June, 2016). She's on Twitter , Facebook , Gab & YouTube

    [Jul 15, 2018] What Mueller won t find by Bob In Portland

    Highly recommended!
    So Mueller was a CIA mole in FBI fromthe very beginning. Interesting...
    Notable quotes:
    "... You could say that Mueller married into the CIA, except that his great uncle was Richard Bissell. So between his family and his wife's family Mueller had two of the three people that Kennedy fired before he was assassinated by a "lone nut", as well as the mayor who hosted the assassination. The third man fired was Allen Dulles, who sat on the Warren Commission and managed to keep the CIA out of the investigation into JFK's murder. Perhaps Dulles was a guest at the wedding. ..."
    "... Mueller would invariably land on cases with Deep State intelligence connections. ..."
    "... Mueller, who had been appointed Assistant U.S. Prosecutor under GHW Bush, became FBI Director under George W. Bush just in time not to see the CIA fingerprints on 9/11, which should not be surprising considering whom he didn't see when he investigated BCCI. ..."
    "... Additionally, Mueller oversaw the anthrax letter case, never investigating Battelle Memorial Corporation, which had a building within a mile of the mailbox where the letters had been mailed. (Battelle Memorial's corporate motto is "It Can Be Done".) Instead, he centered FBI investigations on scientists in government labs in Fort Detrick, Maryland, who had neither the expertise nor the equipment to make the weaponized military grade anthrax found in the letters. One scientist sued and won millions. The other allegedly "committed suicide". Battelle is noteworthy because it handles the US military's anthrax program. Mueller had no interest that two of the targets who received anthrax letters were at the time the most vociferous opponents of the Bush Administration's Patriot Act. ..."
    "... Perhaps his greatest accomplishment aiding the Deep State as FBI Director was his shutting down of Operation Green Quest, the FBI's investigation into the funding behind 9/11 and the terrorist network behind it. Names began popping up like Grover Norquist, the Muslim Brotherhood, old Nazis and the royal family of Luxembourg. Nothing to see here. Move along. ..."
    "... @detroitmechworks ..."
    "... Only thing missing for me was the tie in to Pappy Bush and the rest of the family. Mueller the consigliere of the CIA. Oh man how fucked are we? ..."
    "... Great history of how corrupt Mueller has always been and how he has covered up for so many crimes. I'm just stunned by the number of people who have decided that Mueller's history and the history of the CIA, FBI and the other intelligence agencies wasn't that bad after all just because they are going after Trump. This selective amnesia is simply amazing, isn't it? ..."
    "... Clinton's role in helping the CIA to smuggle drugs into Arkansas is never talked about either. Or if it is it's called "a right wing attempt to bring them down." ..."
    "... that explains why centrist and liberal media have a disturbing tendency to rehabilitate some of the most vile, reactionary forces on the American right simply because they say vaguely negative things about Donald Trump -- a phenomenon we call "Trumpwashing." ..."
    "... Just like Mueller, Brennan is one more war criminal whose actions seem to have been forgotten. ..."
    "... Improper disclosure would tip foreign intelligence services about how the U.S. operates, which would "allow foreign actors to learn of those techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining ongoing and future national security operations," according to the filing. ..."
    "... Mueller also accused Concord of "knowingly and intentionally" conspiring to interfere with the election by using social media to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump. ..."
    "... Improper disclosure would tip foreign intelligence services about how the U.S. operates, which would "allow foreign actors to learn of those techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining ongoing and future national security operations," according to the filing. ..."
    "... Mueller also accused Concord of "knowingly and intentionally" conspiring to interfere with the election by using social media to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump. ..."
    "... The seas were calm and the skies were clear." ..."
    "... "The reason why the ship went down is because of the massive storm that came out of nowhere." ..."
    "... It would appear at first glance this is basically an effort at espionage only ..."
    "... as it appears they don't ..."
    "... I don't think anyone (including Mueller) anticipated that any of the defendants would appear in court to defend against the charges. ..."
    "... Improper disclosure would tip foreign intelligence services about how the U.S. operates, which would "allow foreign actors to learn of those techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining ongoing and future national security operations," according to the filing. ..."
    "... Mueller also accused Concord of "knowingly and intentionally" conspiring to interfere with the election by using social media to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump. ..."
    "... Improper disclosure would tip foreign intelligence services about how the U.S. operates, which would "allow foreign actors to learn of those techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining ongoing and future national security operations," according to the filing. ..."
    "... Mueller also accused Concord of "knowingly and intentionally" conspiring to interfere with the election by using social media to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump. ..."
    Jul 12, 2018 | caucus99percent.com

    In the 1950s, when the science fiction genre started making itself felt in movies, there was always the pivotal scene where the protagonist discovers the dark secret but no one will believe him: a flying saucer hidden under the sand in a field, truckloads of pod people to replace real people, or that the friendly aliens' book "To Serve Man" wasn't a guide to helping humans, but a cookbook. It's that moment of sudden realization that no one will believe the hero because it sounds too crazy to believe.

    Granted, to the uninitiated, coming to a realization so shocking and threatening to your current mental construction of the world can appear like paranoia. It becomes a question of the discoverer's knowledge and senses over what everyone else believes. Everyone else seems to be allowing him or herself to be absorbed into the great growing evil.

    Today many of us, certainly readers here at Caucus99, are finding ourselves in similar positions. Our political structure is a lie, the people who are supposed to represent us and our interests don't, our law enforcement protects the property of the rich, not our lives, and often are in cahoots with the criminals from whom we are supposed to be protected. I am sure that many of our old friends and acquaintances have been alienated from some of us here when we began talking about Hillary's track record during the Presidential campaign, for example. In our current pasteboard world, if you are a Republican or Democrat you must assume that your designated political party, maybe with a couple of exceptions, are there to look after you.

    And there that crazy friend goes, yelling about cookbooks.

    I suppose my introduction to the corruption of those in power, at thirteen, was the assassination of JFK. Not actually the assassination, but the murder of Oswald two days later, in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters. I had slept overnight at a friend's and we came back from shooting basketballs to watch the transfer of Oswald to another facility. That was the moment that I realized all wasn't what it seemed. But, like most kids my age, the Beatles came along in a month or so and I was swept into the world of rock and roll, which kept me occupied until I began noticing girls. Until 1968. I was still noticing girls and rock and roll, but I was also noticing the number of progressives being gunned down by "lone nuts". And I was noticing Vietnam.

    I'm not sharing this to explain to you how I became (that loathsome term) a "conspiracy theorist". I just want to explain to you that the democracy of the United States, and all the characters running across the stage in Washington, D.C., are the cookbook.

    I wrote an essay here back in April of 2017 explaining how the Russiagate scandal had been designed to give Hillary Clinton a casus belli for her future war against Russia, and that what we were seeing since she lost has been a recycling of it to get Trump in line with the goals of the Deep State. So far nothing much has happened that has moved me from that belief. Now that the Deep State seems to have persuaded our Dear Leader that he can go on being himself as long as he understands the actual hierarchy and doesn't get in the way the Deep State, everything seems to be back on track. At least until Donald's next tweet.

    But in order to understand the depth of criminality in our system one has to understand how things are done. After World War II a lot of social awareness began putting pressure on the old system that had driven the world into the Great Depression. FDR had demonstrated that the government could look out for the poor, could give them jobs when there were no other jobs to be had. The GI Bill sent millions of vets to college and helped to create the middle class we used to have. Unions had real power in negotiating wages and terms of service. Government could create a system to help the elderly. The African Americans, coming back home from fighting a war against fascism, refused go to the coloreds only water fountains. In short, the United States were in for some growing pains.

    What happened? As I mentioned above there was a rash of murders of progressive political candidates and leaders in the sixties. But in order for the forces behind a return to the old rules to keep a lid on any revolutions there had to be something better than shooting every progressive who raised his head above the lectern. Thus the wave of recruitment of agents and assets in the late sixties by the CIA, FBI and other agencies. Although I didn't know it directly at the time, arriving on campus in 1968 it was evident that there was a "presence" of people looking over the shoulders of student activists.

    Which brings me to another great revelation. It's not just politicians and political parties that are serving the Deep State. Any agency that can be corrupted by power will be, eventually.

    Which brings us to the courts.

    There are certain things that must be preserved for a ruling class to remain legitimate in the eyes of the public. Some people don't think much beyond the flag. But there are other things. The media is better than ever at keeping uncomfortable truths from the majority of Americans. But what happens where the criminality of the Deep State collides with our judicial system?

    Let me introduce you to the man of the hour in Washington, Robert Swann Mueller III. Robert was born into the upper crust in our American class system. At one point in his education in private schools John Kerry was a classmate. (Kerry was also a fellow Bonesman with the Bushes.) Mueller met his eventual bride, Ann Cabell Standish, at one of the dances they attended. They married in 1966, three years after John Kennedy's assassination. If you have read much about the JFK assassination you would recognize her middle name. Her grandfather, Charles Cabell, had been second in command at the CIA when John Kennedy was elected President. In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy fired three men from leadership positions at the CIA: Director Allen Dulles, Cabell and Richard Bissell. Charles Cabell was Ann's grandfather. Her grand uncle, Earle Cabell, was the mayor of Dallas at the time of Kennedy's murder there. Recently declassified JFK documents revealed that Mayor Cabell was also an asset of the CIA at the time. Small world. You could say that Mueller married into the CIA, except that his great uncle was Richard Bissell. So between his family and his wife's family Mueller had two of the three people that Kennedy fired before he was assassinated by a "lone nut", as well as the mayor who hosted the assassination. The third man fired was Allen Dulles, who sat on the Warren Commission and managed to keep the CIA out of the investigation into JFK's murder. Perhaps Dulles was a guest at the wedding.

    Soon thereafter Mueller decided to go to Vietnam because, he said, a classmate had died there and patriotism and so forth. He became an officer and eventually ended up as an aide-de-camp for the 3rd Marine Division's commanding general, General William K. Jones. Something else was going on in Vietnam. The CIA had installed its Phoenix Program. I cannot do justice to the Phoenix Program and won't considering Doug Valentine's work on it is available for everyone, but the Phoenix Program was the CIA's attempt to totally control the Vietnamese population. Besides massacres of villages, the program assassinated suspected leaders and spies for the Vietcong, coerced others into being their agents, and kept up files on all the relevant Vietnamese down to the village level. Like in later wars, the CIA incorporated torture, murder and psychological techniques in order to control their targets. As an aide-de-camp to a commanding Marine general, there is no way that Mueller didn't know about the Phoenix Program. He probably saw daily briefings.

    When he came back to the US he studied law and quickly became a federal prosecutor.

    One of the things to mark his career was to deny a pardon to Patty Hearst for her part in the whole Symbionese Liberation Army's "terror" campaign. What did the SLA have to do with anything? A short history: Donald DeFreeze, a small-time criminal in Los Angeles agreed to become an informant for the LAPD in order to stay out of jail. After awhile he got tired of ratting out others and asked to get out of the program. Instead, DeFreeze was incarcerated at the Vacaville Medical Facility for criminally insane prisoners in the California penal system. There DeFreeze met Colston Westbrook who gave classes for the "Black Cultural Association", an experimental behavior modification unit inside the prison. Who was Westbrook? He was a CIA agent, trained in psychological warfare and part of the Phoenix Program. DeFreeze was modified by Westbrook and company for two years. Soon thereafter, he was transferred to Soledad Prison, from which he "escaped" and became the infamous "Cinque". Then came the Symbionese Liberation Army, a caricature of a black militant group filled with mostly white people with military backgrounds. The murder of Marcus Foster, a progressive black leader in the San Francisco East Bay, was done by white men in blackface, according to eyewitnesses. The SLA claimed credit for it. The SLA kidnapped Hearst, subjected her to torture, rape, sensory deprivation and mind control tactics, just like the CIA did in the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. Then came the bank robberies.

    I bring up the Patty Hearst case because, in 2000, decades after her prison sentence had been commuted, Mueller still opposed her pardon. Guess what he didn't notice when he rejected her pardon? This has been his pattern throughout his career. We'll return to Patty Hearst shortly.

    Mueller has presided over many cases where it's been important for the prosecutor to overlook the fingerprints of the CIA. He prosecuted what was known in the San Francisco Bay Area as the "drug tug" case which had connections to an island in Panama. It was a drug smuggling case and had tentacles into things like bank frauds in Northern California. He prosecuted Manuel Noriega's drug-smuggling without noticing Oliver North's drug-smuggling, arms running and money laundering through Panama as a part of Iran-contra.

    Mueller would invariably land on cases with Deep State intelligence connections.

    For example, he prosecuted Pan Am 103. Initially, and then later confirmed by an insurance investigator's report, the bomb that brought down the airliner was believed to be placed onboard by baggage handlers working at the Frankfurt Airport. They were given the bomb by a terrorist cell who in turn got it from one Monzer al-Kassar, who was a very large heroin dealer, estimated at supplying twenty percent of the US's heroin at the time. A big operator. And, in fact, one of the passengers on the plane was a drug mule for al-Kassar. Al-Kassar also happened to be a part of the Iran-contra operation, supplying weapons for North's Enterprise. The operation was, according to the early reports, carried out by a cell of Palestinian terrorists based in Frankfurt, the Palestinian Liberation Front-General Command, who got the bomb from al-Kassar and put the bomb on that airline.

    Mueller, put in charge of the case, pursued an entirely different direction, accusing two Libyans of bombing the plane. At the time Libya and Khadafy were getting blamed for a lot of terrorist activity, but the case against the two was so weak as to hardly be circumstantial.

    There were other questions arising from Pan Am 103. A top official in the FBI, Oliver "Buck" Revell, rushed onto the tarmac in London to pull his son and daughter-in-law off of Pan Am 103 before it went on to explode over Lockerbie, Scotland. Also changing flight plans were South African President Pik Botha and his negotiating team. Apparently, someone that Revell and Pik Botha knew gave them the warning.

    There was one group that didn't get warned. That was the McKee Team, an assembled group of US intelligence agents tasked to investigate American hostages in Beruit. They allegedly discovered a link between the hostage takers, drug traffickers and the CIA. They were returning to the US, against orders, presumably to spill the beans. This was essentially a clean-up operation, tying up loose strings of the Iran-contra operation. So was Noriega's prosecution.

    That's why Mueller got the case. He knew where to look and where not to look.

    He also prosecuted ancillary Iran-contra cases. He prosecuted John Gotti for dealing cocaine in the New York City area. The cocaine he sold was part of the the Iran-contra (CIA) plan where Southern Air Transport flew weapons to Latin America for the contras (whom Congress had voted against aiding) and bringing back cocaine from Latin America on its return flights, to include Mena, Arkansas. One of the CIA's pilots, Barry Seal, bragged that he had a "get-out-of-jail" letter written for him by then-Governor Bill Clinton. At the time, Asa Hutchinson was the federal prosecutor for that corner of Arkansas. He also didn't notice all that cocaine. Hutchson later served as George W. Bush's first "drug czar" before going into politics. How coincidental.

    Mueller, who had been appointed Assistant U.S. Prosecutor under GHW Bush, became FBI Director under George W. Bush just in time not to see the CIA fingerprints on 9/11, which should not be surprising considering whom he didn't see when he investigated BCCI. As head of our country's biggest law enforcement agency Mueller did not pursue the House of Saud's part in 9/11 even though fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and a number of them could be traced to Saudi intelligence, and the money chain could be traced to Saudis living in the US, some of whom flew out of the US while all other US flights were grounded. He did not investigate Mohammed Atta's time in Frankfort, Germany, where he was employed by a front company for the BND, West Germany's equivalent to the CIA. Nor did Mueller investigate Huffman Aviation where Mo Atta and another hijacker matriculated in flying planes into buildings. Huffman is interesting because while Mo was studying in Huffman's Venice, Florida aviation school a Huffman plane was busted in Orlando with 43 pounds of heroin. Curiously, the pilot walked away from the DEA without being charged and no one was prosecuted at Huffman.

    Ask Colleen Rowley about Mueller's leadership in the 9/11 investigation.

    Additionally, Mueller oversaw the anthrax letter case, never investigating Battelle Memorial Corporation, which had a building within a mile of the mailbox where the letters had been mailed. (Battelle Memorial's corporate motto is "It Can Be Done".) Instead, he centered FBI investigations on scientists in government labs in Fort Detrick, Maryland, who had neither the expertise nor the equipment to make the weaponized military grade anthrax found in the letters. One scientist sued and won millions. The other allegedly "committed suicide". Battelle is noteworthy because it handles the US military's anthrax program. Mueller had no interest that two of the targets who received anthrax letters were at the time the most vociferous opponents of the Bush Administration's Patriot Act.

    Perhaps his greatest accomplishment aiding the Deep State as FBI Director was his shutting down of Operation Green Quest, the FBI's investigation into the funding behind 9/11 and the terrorist network behind it. Names began popping up like Grover Norquist, the Muslim Brotherhood, old Nazis and the royal family of Luxembourg. Nothing to see here. Move along.

    A closer examination of Robert Mueller would probably find a lot more of these cases and I encourage others to continue the search. For example, it's been alleged that Mueller sent innocent men to jail for crimes committed by Whitey Bulger for the benefit of someone or something within the government and that this allowed Bulger to continue his criminal activities for years.

    ***

    It's been seventy years since the CIA was created, fifty years since JFK was most likely murdered by them. In order to avoid any consequences for their crimes more and more institutions have had to be infiltrated and corrupted by them. Many of the heroes of the Left have turned out to be purveyors of "modified limited hangouts" which served the Deep State. Ramsey Clark, who was given the mantle of "good guy" by the media of the Left, was active as LBJ's Attorney General in blocking Jim Garrison's investigation into the JFK assassination and was named by Doug Valentine in his THE CIA AS ORGANIZED CRIME as a major proponent of the CIA's OPERATION CHAOS and the FBI's COINTELPRO. While the media spent a good deal of time talking about how great they were in releasing the Pentagon Papers to the public, the hero who exposed the military, Daniel Ellsberg, turns out to have been CIA, operating with CIA black ops in Vietnam. And while the Pentagon Papers exposed our military's great errors in Vietnam the CIA was generally spared. Again. Bob Woodward, our hero of Watergate, had been a courier for the Office of Naval Intelligence only a few years earlier. Thus, the CIA and Deep State, which had soured on Nixon, orchestrated that President's departure.

    I raise this because Robert Mueller's current task is the investigation of our sitting President. No matter how much you dislike Trump you can't help but notice that the "evidence" against him conspiring with Putin and Russia is thin gruel. And while Trump, like most politicians who ascend to the big seat, has a lot of questionable, even indictable business connections around him, the great dangers of a Putin-Trump conspiracy trumpeted by the media have been fading because, apparently, there was never a there there. Thus, as Mueller oversees this case, he will find people surrounding Trump who have lied to FBI agents, who have perhaps not registered as foreign agents, and other crimes that routinely happen out of the public spotlight and aren't prosecuted. What was obvious to me from the start, that this was a psyop that involved U.S. intelligence, Ukrainian intelligence, Clinton and the DNC, will not be obvious to Mueller. Thus, as his career has shown, Mueller has been put in place not merely to prosecute those around Trump as a means of pressure on his administration, but to not see the CIA's hand in it.

    When one begins examining high-profile court cases in post-1963 America one sees a cast of people who keep popping up. Prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys, coroners, witnesses, reporters, authors. This ensemble keeps reappearing in these show trials. We may not know what Mueller will find, but we know what he won't find.

    There was a review at Truthdig back in 2016 of Jeffrey Toobin's book on Patty Hearst, AMERICAN HEIRESS (Toobin himself worked as an associate counsel to Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh during the investigation Iran–Contra affair and Oliver North's criminal trial). In part it reads: "Toobin features the characters who populated the edges of Hearst's story. Robert Shapiro, who would later work with [F. Lee] Bailey on the O.J. Simpson case, makes a cameo appearance. Lance Ito, the judge in that case, briefly shared a shooting range with a machine-gun toting SLA member. Reverend Jim Jones offered to help with the food distribution effort; that enterprise also employed Sara Jane Moore, who served 32 years for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford during his 1975 visit to San Francisco. Congressman Leo Ryan, who represented Randy and Catherine Hearst's district, endorsed the commutation of Patty's sentence. "Off to Guyana," he wrote Patty in 1978. "See you when I return. Hang in there." Jim Jones' henchmen shot and killed Ryan before he could board his flight home. Robert Mueller, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco before taking over as FBI director, strenuously opposed Hearst's pardon, claiming that her attitude, born of wealth and social position, "has always been that she is a person above the law.""

    When Mueller wrote that line he must have laughed out loud.

    Wow! Where did you get all those facts about Mueller.

    That isn't connecting the dots. Its painting a bloody Mona Lisa.

    I had no idea how dirty this man was. He is the CIA version of Zelig or Forest Gump. He makes Bill Clinton look like an amateur.

    Beginning with the double CIA family ties and proceeding through whitewashing 911, this man is so central to our rotten government that its a wonder someone hasn't done what you just did a lot sooner.

    My hat is off to you. Someone should post this article on our blog.

    detroitmechworks on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 3:15pm
    It's almost become a parody of a dystopia...

    The one that keeps jumping to mind is the mid 80's game "Paranoia" which was a cartoonish comedy about the drugged citizens of a complex where the state oversaw everything, and the people were obsessed with celebrities and junk food and oh my goooooodd...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_ (role-playing_game)

    Seriously though, so much of this makes absolute sense if you just abandon the concept that democracy has any play whatsoever in our society.

    So with that in mind, a little music from the era, and a little self parody as well.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/LR4XNqrqxrU?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

    arendt on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 6:36pm
    In my hatred of role-playing games, I missed Paranoia

    @detroitmechworks

    Thanks for pointing to it. I got laughs just reading the wikipedia page.

    It sounds like Kafka meets that Russian guy who was simultaneously head of the secret police and leader of the resistance.

    LOL.

    The one that keeps jumping to mind is the mid 80's game "Paranoia" which was a cartoonish comedy about the drugged citizens of a complex where the state oversaw everything, and the people were obsessed with celebrities and junk food and oh my goooooodd...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_ (role-playing_game)

    Seriously though, so much of this makes absolute sense if you just abandon the concept that democracy has any play whatsoever in our society.

    So with that in mind, a little music from the era, and a little self parody as well.

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/LR4XNqrqxrU?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=0

    detroitmechworks on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 6:48pm
    West End Games had a lot of incredible hits...

    @arendt even considering they were working from licenses half the time. They ended up essentially creating the universe bibles for Ghostbusters and the Star Wars EU prior to the reboots.

    Unfortunately, that didn't translate into respect. However, I still to this day am amazed at the complexity of thought that went into many of the rules and the ability they had to match mechanics to maintaining the play feel.

    Paranoia in particular was hilarious. Kafka and Three Stooges, and even a little Joseph Heller. Later editions even managed to work in criticisms of late stage capitalism by having players ALWAYS broke and any unexpected expenses needing to be made up through crime... which was illegal, to avoid budget shortfalls... which was also illegal...

    #3

    Thanks for pointing to it. I got laughs just reading the wikipedia page.

    It sounds like Kafka meets that Russian guy who was simultaneously head of the secret police and leader of the resistance.

    LOL.

    Linda Wood on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 3:19pm
    Brilliant and wonderful essay!

    Bob, thank you. As detailed and extensive as it is, your essay is concise by making it clear exactly what's so wrong with Mueller:

    Mueller has presided over many cases where it's been important for the prosecutor to overlook the fingerprints of the CIA...

    Mueller would invariably land on cases with Deep State intelligence connections...

    Thus, as his career has shown, Mueller has been put in place not merely to prosecute those around Trump as a means of pressure on his administration, but to not see the CIA's hand in it...

    For me, the anthrax case is the most important. Biological weapons are no joke. I believe we learned, from whistle-blowing scientists, not from the FBI investigation, that the CIA had one of the many illegal biological weapons programs being run with our tax dollars leading up to the anthrax attack. So whether Battelle was one of the CIA's contractors or yet another cut out, the investigation by Mueller simply stated those entities, all of them, were eliminated from the investigation.

    arendt on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 4:48pm
    Some relevant quotes from Hannah Arendt

    The chief difference between the despotic and the totalitarian secret police lies in the difference between the "suspect" and the "objective enemy". The latter is defined by the policy of the government and not by his own desire to overthrow it. He is never an individual whose dangerous thoughts must be provoked or whose past justifies suspicion, but a "carrier of tendencies" like a carrier of disease. Practically speaking, the totalitarian ruler behaves like a man who persistently insults another man until everybody knows that the latter is his enemy, so that he can, with some plausibility, go and kill him in self-defense.
    p423-4

    "From a legal point of view, even more interesting than the change from the suspect to the objective enemy is the totalitarian replacement of the suspected offense by the possible crime ...While the suspect is arrested because he is thought to be capable of committing a crime that more or less fits his personality, the totalitarian possible crime is based on the logical anticipation of objective developments.

    The task of the totalitarian police is not to discover crimes, but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.

    "The only rule of which everybody in a totalitarian state may be sure is that the more visible government agencies are, the less power they carry, and the less is known of the existence of an institution, the more powerful it will ultimately turn out to be...Real power begins where secrecy begins. (p403)

    ggersh on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 5:32pm
    And Mr. transparency was O himself

    @arendt

    "The only rule of which everybody in a totalitarian state may be sure is that the more visible government agencies are, the less power they carry, and the less is known of the existence of an institution, the more powerful it will ultimately turn out to be...Real power begins where secrecy begins. (p403)

    The chief difference between the despotic and the totalitarian secret police lies in the difference between the "suspect" and the "objective enemy". The latter is defined by the policy of the government and not by his own desire to overthrow it. He is never an individual whose dangerous thoughts must be provoked or whose past justifies suspicion, but a "carrier of tendencies" like a carrier of disease. Practically speaking, the totalitarian ruler behaves like a man who persistently insults another man until everybody knows that the latter is his enemy, so that he can, with some plausibility, go and kill him in self-defense.
    p423-4

    "From a legal point of view, even more interesting than the change from the suspect to the objective enemy is the totalitarian replacement of the suspected offense by the possible crime ...While the suspect is arrested because he is thought to be capable of committing a crime that more or less fits his personality, the totalitarian possible crime is based on the logical anticipation of objective developments.

    The task of the totalitarian police is not to discover crimes, but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.

    "The only rule of which everybody in a totalitarian state may be sure is that the more visible government agencies are, the less power they carry, and the less is known of the existence of an institution, the more powerful it will ultimately turn out to be...Real power begins where secrecy begins. (p403)

    on the cusp on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 5:13pm
    This is the most interesting essay I have read here.

    Bravo, Bob.

    ggersh on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 5:36pm
    Great story!!!

    Only thing missing for me was the tie in to Pappy Bush and the rest of the family. Mueller the consigliere of the CIA. Oh man how fucked are we?

    snoopydawg on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 5:45pm
    Outstanding

    Great history of how corrupt Mueller has always been and how he has covered up for so many crimes. I'm just stunned by the number of people who have decided that Mueller's history and the history of the CIA, FBI and the other intelligence agencies wasn't that bad after all just because they are going after Trump. This selective amnesia is simply amazing, isn't it?

    Clinton's role in helping the CIA to smuggle drugs into Arkansas is never talked about either. Or if it is it's called "a right wing attempt to bring them down."

    Good to see you writing here again, Bob.

    Snode on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 5:52pm
    Wow!

    This awesome. I knew about Colleen Rowley, but the rest.....2 things, what about Comey? and Bush1 being in Dallas the day of the JFK assassination?

    CS in AZ on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 6:02pm
    Wow, thank you

    I almost skipped reading this one, assumed at first from the headline it was going to be about the Russia "investigation" which I've been steadfast in not paying any attention to.

    But wow, this is so much better than I'd expected, a fascinating tapestry. A lot to absorb. At this point I'm just feeling overwhelmed at how little "we the people" in this country have any say in, or even any knowledge about, what is going on.

    Thank you for this excellent history and synthesis.

    snoopydawg on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 7:04pm
    Here's some history of another creep who has found redemption

    from those who believe the fairy tale of Russia Gate. John Brennan has also become a darling of the left. Greenwald wrote about him after Obama appointed him to his cabinet.

    Joe posted this link that explains why centrist and liberal media have a disturbing tendency to rehabilitate some of the most vile, reactionary forces on the American right simply because they say vaguely negative things about Donald Trump -- a phenomenon we call "Trumpwashing."

    Just like Mueller, Brennan is one more war criminal whose actions seem to have been forgotten.

    Wink on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 9:56pm
    It's relatively safe to

    conclude from this, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the Mueller investigation of "Russiagate" won't get anywhere near the Oval Office.
    Mostly becuz "Deep State" itself is up to its eyebrows in the affair. And also becuz Trump has very little to do with it. I'm sure they'd Love to bury Hillary in this, but it looks like that won't happen either. A shame.

    snoopydawg on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 11:21pm
    Mueller doesn't want to show the Russians his evidence

    I think if you charge someone with a crime then they get to see the evidence against them. Mueller charged 3 Russian companies for their interference with the election, but I guess he didn't think that their lawyers would bother to show up. Oops, they did.

    Mueller Scrambles To Limit Evidence After Indicted Russians Actually Show Up In Court

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller is scrambling to limit pretrial evidence handed over to a Russian company he indicted in February over alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

    Mueller asked a Washington federal Judge for a protective order that would prevent the delivery of copious evidence to lawyers for Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, one of three Russian firms and 13 Russian nationals. The indictment accuses the firm of producing propaganda, pretending to be U.S. activists online and posting political content on social media in order to sow discord among American voters.

    The special counsel's office argues that the risk of the evidence leaking or falling into the hands of foreign intelligence services, especially Russia, would assist the Kremlin's active "interference operations" against the United States.

    Improper disclosure would tip foreign intelligence services about how the U.S. operates, which would "allow foreign actors to learn of those techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining ongoing and future national security operations," according to the filing.

    The evidence includes thousands of documents involving U.S. residents not charged with crimes who prosecutors say were unwittingly recruited by Russian defendants and co-conspirators to engage in political activity in the U.S., prosecutors

    Mueller also accused Concord of "knowingly and intentionally" conspiring to interfere with the election by using social media to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump.

    Yep. Hillary spent $1-2 billion on her campaign, but it was the $100,000 worth of ads that a Russian advertising agency placed on Facebook that cost her the election. More than half of the ads were placed after the election though. But people still believe that the ads were what caused people not to vote for Herheinous!

    Deja on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 11:46pm
    A Red list?

    @snoopydawg @snoopydawg
    What the hell? Do these people even know they're on this list, or part of this evidence? Or, are they not even real people, or are they maybe even govt employees needed to play a role? There's that cookbook again, maybe. Yikes!

    The evidence includes thousands of documents involving U.S. residents not charged with crimes who prosecutors say were unwittingly recruited by Russian defendants and co-conspirators to engage in political activity in the U.S., prosecutors

    I think if you charge someone with a crime then they get to see the evidence against them. Mueller charged 3 Russian companies for their interference with the election, but I guess he didn't think that their lawyers would bother to show up. Oops, they did.

    Mueller Scrambles To Limit Evidence After Indicted Russians Actually Show Up In Court

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller is scrambling to limit pretrial evidence handed over to a Russian company he indicted in February over alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

    Mueller asked a Washington federal Judge for a protective order that would prevent the delivery of copious evidence to lawyers for Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, one of three Russian firms and 13 Russian nationals. The indictment accuses the firm of producing propaganda, pretending to be U.S. activists online and posting political content on social media in order to sow discord among American voters.

    The special counsel's office argues that the risk of the evidence leaking or falling into the hands of foreign intelligence services, especially Russia, would assist the Kremlin's active "interference operations" against the United States.

    Improper disclosure would tip foreign intelligence services about how the U.S. operates, which would "allow foreign actors to learn of those techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining ongoing and future national security operations," according to the filing.

    The evidence includes thousands of documents involving U.S. residents not charged with crimes who prosecutors say were unwittingly recruited by Russian defendants and co-conspirators to engage in political activity in the U.S., prosecutors

    Mueller also accused Concord of "knowingly and intentionally" conspiring to interfere with the election by using social media to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump.

    Yep. Hillary spent $1-2 billion on her campaign, but it was the $100,000 worth of ads that a Russian advertising agency placed on Facebook that cost her the election. More than half of the ads were placed after the election though. But people still believe that the ads were what caused people not to vote for Herheinous!

    snoopydawg on Wed, 06/13/2018 - 12:49am
    Who knows?

    @Deja

    It's obvious that the whole damn Russia Gate conspiracy was just made up. It started when Wikileaks said that they were going to release the emails between Hillary and Podesta that showed how they rigged the primary against Bernie. The reason why they did it was to keep people from talking about the contents of the emails. And it worked. The media didn't focus on their contents, but only on how Wikileaks obtained them.

    Another reason for the Russian propaganda crap is so people will give their permission for the upcoming war against Russia that had already been planned for over two years before the election. And they will. I've seen so many comments that says what Russia (Putin) did and is still doing was an act of war. Today on ToP one person said that "we need to assassinate Putin." Was that person HRd for promoting violence which is against the site rules? Nope. Those that believe Russia actually did interfere with the election also think that the republicans are also Putin's puppets and that is why they won't go against Trump. The front pagers have been pushing lies about Russia's actions it should be obvious to anyone with a working brain. I'll see a definitive statement like " The seas were calm and the skies were clear." But they will rewrite their statement to "The reason why the ship went down is because of the massive storm that came out of nowhere." Hopefully you get my drift on how they're blatantly lying in their statements.

    Hillary's BFF, Nuland and McCain were the ones that worked the hardest on overthrowing the Ukraine government. The USA wanted to put its own puppet government on Russia's border. Plus the USA and NATO have been installing troops into countries that surround Russia's borders.

    The original reason why the Mueller investigation was created was to find evidence that Trump colluded with Putin to win the election. None of the Mueller indictments have anything to do with that charge. This is why he was taken off guard when the Russian lawyers showed up to defend their clients. Hope that you read the entire article.

    #13 #13
    What the hell? Do these people even know they're on this list, or part of this evidence? Or, are they not even real people, or are they maybe even govt employees needed to play a role? There's that cookbook again, maybe. Yikes!

    The evidence includes thousands of documents involving U.S. residents not charged with crimes who prosecutors say were unwittingly recruited by Russian defendants and co-conspirators to engage in political activity in the U.S., prosecutors

    snoopydawg on Wed, 06/13/2018 - 2:40am
    Heh. This is being spun differently over on ToP

    @snoopydawg

    This also proves my point above how information is selectively posted over there. Just certain parts of the articles are posted, but the parts of the articles that show the information in a different light are left out. This is from a comment..

    It would appear at first glance this is basically an effort at espionage only , but I'm not much more sure than you are.

    If they don't have a US presence ( as it appears they don't ), I can't understand why they even care that Mueller has charged them. As you point out, they won't be extradited, so none of this really matters. They could have their lawyers just play a DVD of them confessing followed by giving Mueller the double birds all around and it wouldn't make any difference, so the only logical answer for this is to try and pry state secrets out legally via the courts instead of through hacking and spying.

    Oops. From the article ..

    I don't think anyone (including Mueller) anticipated that any of the defendants would appear in court to defend against the charges.

    I think if you charge someone with a crime then they get to see the evidence against them. Mueller charged 3 Russian companies for their interference with the election, but I guess he didn't think that their lawyers would bother to show up. Oops, they did.

    Mueller Scrambles To Limit Evidence After Indicted Russians Actually Show Up In Court

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller is scrambling to limit pretrial evidence handed over to a Russian company he indicted in February over alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

    Mueller asked a Washington federal Judge for a protective order that would prevent the delivery of copious evidence to lawyers for Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, one of three Russian firms and 13 Russian nationals. The indictment accuses the firm of producing propaganda, pretending to be U.S. activists online and posting political content on social media in order to sow discord among American voters.

    The special counsel's office argues that the risk of the evidence leaking or falling into the hands of foreign intelligence services, especially Russia, would assist the Kremlin's active "interference operations" against the United States.

    Improper disclosure would tip foreign intelligence services about how the U.S. operates, which would "allow foreign actors to learn of those techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining ongoing and future national security operations," according to the filing.

    The evidence includes thousands of documents involving U.S. residents not charged with crimes who prosecutors say were unwittingly recruited by Russian defendants and co-conspirators to engage in political activity in the U.S., prosecutors

    Mueller also accused Concord of "knowingly and intentionally" conspiring to interfere with the election by using social media to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump.

    Yep. Hillary spent $1-2 billion on her campaign, but it was the $100,000 worth of ads that a Russian advertising agency placed on Facebook that cost her the election. More than half of the ads were placed after the election though. But people still believe that the ads were what caused people not to vote for Herheinous!

    Wink on Wed, 06/13/2018 - 6:08pm
    Well, it gets everyone

    off the hook.
    @snoopydawg
    Especially Mueller. Finding the 13 Russians guilty that is. Mueller can then claim, "See! The Russians did it," which gives Hillbots a warm fuzzy and reason to scold BernieBros with a "told ya so!!" AND, no reason to investigate further. Investigation over. Case closed! Everyone gets what they want. Alas... Their lawyer showed up.

    I think if you charge someone with a crime then they get to see the evidence against them. Mueller charged 3 Russian companies for their interference with the election, but I guess he didn't think that their lawyers would bother to show up. Oops, they did.

    Mueller Scrambles To Limit Evidence After Indicted Russians Actually Show Up In Court

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller is scrambling to limit pretrial evidence handed over to a Russian company he indicted in February over alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

    Mueller asked a Washington federal Judge for a protective order that would prevent the delivery of copious evidence to lawyers for Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, one of three Russian firms and 13 Russian nationals. The indictment accuses the firm of producing propaganda, pretending to be U.S. activists online and posting political content on social media in order to sow discord among American voters.

    The special counsel's office argues that the risk of the evidence leaking or falling into the hands of foreign intelligence services, especially Russia, would assist the Kremlin's active "interference operations" against the United States.

    Improper disclosure would tip foreign intelligence services about how the U.S. operates, which would "allow foreign actors to learn of those techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining ongoing and future national security operations," according to the filing.

    The evidence includes thousands of documents involving U.S. residents not charged with crimes who prosecutors say were unwittingly recruited by Russian defendants and co-conspirators to engage in political activity in the U.S., prosecutors

    Mueller also accused Concord of "knowingly and intentionally" conspiring to interfere with the election by using social media to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump.

    Yep. Hillary spent $1-2 billion on her campaign, but it was the $100,000 worth of ads that a Russian advertising agency placed on Facebook that cost her the election. More than half of the ads were placed after the election though. But people still believe that the ads were what caused people not to vote for Herheinous!

    snoopydawg on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 11:30pm
    Well of course it was a PR stunt!
    As Powerline notes, Mueller probably didn't see that coming - and the indictment itself was perhaps nothing more than a PR stunt to bolster the Russian interference narrative.

    I don't think anyone (including Mueller) anticipated that any of the defendants would appear in court to defend against the charges. Rather, the Mueller prosecutors seem to have obtained the indictment to serve a public relations purpose, laying out the case for interference as understood by the government and lending a veneer of respectability to the Mueller Switch Project.

    One of the Russian corporate defendants nevertheless hired counsel to contest the charges. In April two Washington-area attorneys -- Eric Dubelier and Kate Seikaly of the Reed Smith firm -- filed appearances in court on behalf of Concord Management and Consulting. Josh Gerstein covered that turn of events for Politico here. -Powerline Blog

    Deja on Tue, 06/12/2018 - 11:49pm
    Now I want to see it too

    @snoopydawg
    Especially since it's supposed to contain all these names of stooges, duped into participating in US politics by the Kremlin. It's ridiculous.

    As Powerline notes, Mueller probably didn't see that coming - and the indictment itself was perhaps nothing more than a PR stunt to bolster the Russian interference narrative.

    I don't think anyone (including Mueller) anticipated that any of the defendants would appear in court to defend against the charges. Rather, the Mueller prosecutors seem to have obtained the indictment to serve a public relations purpose, laying out the case for interference as understood by the government and lending a veneer of respectability to the Mueller Switch Project.

    One of the Russian corporate defendants nevertheless hired counsel to contest the charges. In April two Washington-area attorneys -- Eric Dubelier and Kate Seikaly of the Reed Smith firm -- filed appearances in court on behalf of Concord Management and Consulting. Josh Gerstein covered that turn of events for Politico here. -Powerline Blog

    mimi on Wed, 06/13/2018 - 1:08am
    I need to print this out and hang it at my bedside

    because I believe it will be gone in its digital format in no time. Thank You for writing this out. You did good. Thank you.

    GreyWolf on Wed, 06/13/2018 - 12:57pm
    Bookmarked (with two separate archives)

    @mimi This page is also at:archive.org archive.is because I believe it will be gone in its digital format in no time.

    Thank You for writing this out. You did good. Thank you.

    gulfgal98 on Wed, 06/13/2018 - 7:16pm
    One of the best and most complete essays

    I have read here in a long time. While I linked ot our Twitter account last night, I did not have time to read it before I posted it. I am going to link this again because I think it is such an important essay for others to read.

    Thank you again for such an outstanding essay!

    [Jul 13, 2018] False flag operation covering DNC leaks now involves Mueller and his team

    Highly recommended!
    Looks like another Steele dossier and it has Brennan fingertips all over. Looks like another exercise in creation of a parallel reality. The content of the document implies that malware was installed in GRU computers and those computers were monitored 24/7 by CIA. The documents describes both GNU officers and DNC employees as unsophisticated idiots. DNC employees who who should undergo some basic security training were easily deceived by fishing emails from a foreign country. And a good practice is to disable hotlinks in emails.
    I always suspected that Guccifer 2.0 was a false flag operation to hide the leak of DNC documents. If this is true this was really sophisticated false flag.
    BTW GRU is military intelligence unit, so to hack into civil computers is kind of out of their main sphere of activities. They also should be aware about NSA capabilities of intercepting the traffic.
    I especially like the following tidbit: "On or about June 1,2016, the Conspirators attempted to delete traces of their presence on the DCCC network using the computer program CCleaner." This is how third rate hackers (wannabes) behave.
    Link to the original document: https://www.scribd.com/document/383793520/Netyksho-Et-Al-Indictment#fullscreen&from_embed
    First of all the investigation of DNC was botched by hiring a private, connected to Democratic Party security company (Crowdstrike), so no data from it are acceptable in court. FBI did not have any access to the data.
    Which means that Mueller is a patsy of more powerful forces
    How about speed of download that proved to be excessive for Internet connection? Nothing is said about Dmitri Alperovitch role is all this investigation, which completely discredit all that results? See for example diuscusstion at Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart- Say Hello to Fancy Bear And, again, the question is: Was Guccifer 2.0 in itself a USA false flag operation ?
    Looks like Mueller is acting as an operative of Democratic Party. Could not dig up enough dirt on Trump, so he now saddled his beloved horse, trying to provoke Russia to respond.
    And this John Le Carre style details about individuals supposedly involved. Probably were provided by CIA ;-)
    Jul 13, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    ... ... ...

    4. By in or around April 2016, the Conspirators also hacked into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ("DCCC") and the Democratic National Committee ("DNC"). The Conspirators covertly monitored the computers of dozens of DCCC and DNC employees, implanted hundreds of files containing malicious computer code ("malware"), and stole emails and other documents from the DCCC and DNC.

    5. By in or around April 2016, the Conspirators began to plan the release of materials stolen from the Clinton Campaign, DCCC, and DNC.

    6. Beginning in or around June 2016, the Conspirators staged and released tens of thousands of the stolen emails and documents. They did so using fictitious online personas, including "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0."

    7. The Conspirators also used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release additional stolen documents through a website maintained by an organization ("Organization Iй), that had previously posted documents stolen from U.S. persons, entities, and the U.S. government The Conspirators continued their U.S. election-interference operations through in or around November 2016.

    8. To hide their connections to Russia and the Russian government, the Conspirators used false identities and made false statements about their identities. To further avoid detection, the Conspirators used a network of computers located across the world, including in the United States, and paid for this infrastructure using cryptocurrency.

    ... ... ...

    13. Defendant ALEKSEY VIKTOROVICH LUKASHEV (Лукашсв Алексей Викторович) was a Senior Lieutenant in the Russian military assigned to ANTONOV's department within Unit 26165. LUKASHEV used various online personas, including "Den Katenberg" and "Yuliana Martynova." In on around 2016, LUKASHEV sent spcarphisliing emails to members of the Clinton Campaign and affiliated individuals, including the chairman of the Clinton Campaign.

    14. Defendant SERGEY ALEKSANDROVICH MORGACHEV (Моргачев Сергей Александрович) was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Russian military assigned to Unit 26165. MORGACHEV oversaw a department within Unit 26165 dedicated to developing and managing malware, including a hacking tool used by the GRU known as "X-Agent." During the hacking of the DCCC and DNC networks, MORGACHEV supervised the co-conspirators who developed and monitored the X-Agent malware implanted on those computers.

    15. Defendant NIKOLAY YURYEVICH KOZACHEK (Козачек Николай Юрьевич) was a Lieutenant Captain in the Russian military assigned to MORGACHEV's department within Unit 26165. KOZACHEK used a variety of monikers, including "kazak" and "blablablal234565 " KOZACHEK developed, customized, and monitored X-Agent malware used to hack the DCCC and DNC networks beginning in or around April 2016.

    16. Defendant PAVEL VYACHESLAVOVICH YERSHOV (Ершов Павел Вячеславович) was a Russian military officer assigned to MORGACHEV's department within Unit 26165. In or around 2016, YERSHOV assisted KOZACHEK and other co-conspirators in testing and customizing X-Agent malware before actual deployment and use.

    17. Defendant ARTEM ANDREYEVICH MALYSHEV (Малышев Арт е м Андреевич) was a Second Lieutenant in the Russian military assigned to MORGACHEV's department within Unit 26165. MALYSIIEV used a variety of monikers, including "djangomagicdev" and "realblatr." In or around 2016, MALYSHEV monitored X-Agent malware implanted on the DCCC and DNC networks.

    18. Defendant ALEKSANDR VLADIMIROVICH OSADCHUK (Осадчук Александр В ладимирович) was a Colonel in the Russian military and the commanding officer of Unit 74455. Unit 74455 was located at 22 Kirova Street, Khimki, Moscow, a building referred to within the GRU as the 'Tower." Unit 74455 assisted in the release of stolen documents through the DC Leaks and Guccifer 2.0 personas, the promotion of those releases, and the publication of anti-Clinton content on social media accounts operated by the GRU.

    19. Defendant ALEKSEY ALEKSANDROVICH POTEMKIN (Потемкин Алексей Александрович) was an officer in the Russian military assigned to Unit 74455. POTEMKIN was a supervisor in a department within Unit 7445f responsible for the administration of computer infrastructure used in cyber operations. Infrastructure and social media accounts administered by POTEMKIN'S department were used, among other things, to assist in the release of stolen documents through the DCLeaks and Guccifer 2 0 personas.

    21, ANTONOV, BADIN, YKRMAKOV, LUKASHEV, and their co-conspiratore targeted victims using a technique known as spearphishing to steal victims' passwords or otherwise gain access to their computers. Beginning by at least March 2016, the Conspirators targeted over 300 individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign, DCCC, and DNC.

    a. For example, on or about March 19, 2016, LUKASHEV and his co-conspirators created and sent a spearphishing email to the chairman of the Clinton Campaign. LUKASHEV used the account "John356gh" at an online service that abbreviated lengthy website addresses (referred to as a "URL-shortcning service"). LIJKASHEV used the account to mask a link contained in the spearphishing email, which directed the recipient to a GRU-created website. LUKASHEV altered the a security notification from Google (a technique known as "spoofing"), instructing the user to change his password by clicking the embedded link. Those instructions wore followed. On or about March 21, 2016, LUKASHEV, YERMAKOV, and their co-conspirators stole the contents of the chairman's email account, which consisted of over 50,000 emails.

    Starting on or about March 19, 2016, LUKASHEV and his co-conspirators sent spearphishing emails to the personal accounts of other individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign, including its campaign manager and a senior foreign policy advisor. On or about March 25, 2016, LUKASHEV used the same john356gh account to mask additional links included in spearphishing emails sent to numerous individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign, including Victims 1 and 2. LUKASliEV sent these emails from the Russia-based email account [email protected] that he spoofed to appear to be from Google. On or about March 28,2016, YERMAKOV researched the names of Victims 1 and 2 and their association with Clinton on various social media sites. Through their spearphishing operations, LUKASHEV, YERMAKOV, and their co-conspirators successfully stole email credentials and thousands of emails from numerous individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign. Many of these stolen emails. Including those from Victims 1 and 2, were later released by the Conspirators through DCLeaks.

    On or about April 6, 2016, the Conspirators created an email account in the name (with a one-letter deviation from the actual spelling) of a known member of the Clinton Campaign. The Conspirators then used that account to send spearphishing emails to the work accounts of more than thirty different Clinton Campaign employees. In the spearphishipg emails, LUKASHEV and his co-conspirators embedded a link purporting to direct the recipient to a document titled "hillary-clinton-favorable-rating.xlsx " In fact, this link directed the recipients' computers to a GRU-crcatcd website.

    22. The Conspirators spearphished individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign throughout the summer of 2016. For example, on or about July 27, 2016, the Conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-
    party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign.

    Hacking into the DCCC Network

    23. Beginning in or around March 2016, the Conspirators, in addition to their spearphishing efforts, researched the DCCC and DNC computer networks to identify technical specifications and vulnerabilities.

    1. For example, beginning on or about March 15,2016, YERMAKOV ran a technical query for the DNC's internet protocol configurations to identify connected devices.
    2. On or about the same day, YERMAKOV searched for opcn-source information about the DNC network, the Democratic Party, and Hillary Clinton.
    3. On or about April 7. 2016. YKRMAKOV ran я technical query for the DNC's internet protocol configurations to identify connected devices.

    24. By in or around April 2016, within days of YERMAKOV's searches regarding the DCCC, the Conspirators hacked into the DCCC computer network. Once they gained access, they installed and managed different types of malware to explore the DCCC network and steal data.

    a. On or about April 12,2016. the Conspirators used the stolen credentials of a I )CCC On or about April 12,2016, the Conspirators used the stolen credentials of a DCCC Employee ('"DCCC Employee 1") to access the DCCC network. DCCC Employee 1 had received a spearphishing email from the Conspirators on or about April 6,2016, and entered her password after clicking on the link.

    b. Between in or around April 2016 and June 2016, the Conspirators installed multiple versions of their X-Agent malware on at least ten DCCC computers, which allowed them to monitor individual employees' computer activity, steal passwords, and maintain access to the DCCC network.

    c. X-Agent malware implanted on the DCCC network transmitted information from the victims' computers to a GRU-leased server located in Arizona. The Conspirators referred to this server as their "AMS" panel. KOZACHEK, MALYSHEV, and their со-conspirators logged into the AMS panel to use X-Agent's keylog and screenshot functions in the course of monitoring and surveilling activity on the DCCC computers. 'Ibe keylog function allowed the Conspirators to capture keystrokes entered by DCCC employees. The screenshot function allowed the Conspirators to take pictures of the DCCC employees' computer screens.

    d. For example, on or about April 14, 2016, the Conspirators repeatedly activated X-Agent's keylog and screensiot functions to surveil DCCC Employee 1's computer activity over the course of eight hours. During that time, the Conspirators captured DCCC Employee 1 's communications with co-workers and the passwords she entered while working on fundraising and voter outreach projects. Similarly, on or about April 22, 2016, the Conspirators activated X-Agcnt's keylog and screenshot functions to capture the discussions of another DCCC Employee ("DCCC Employee 2") about the DCCC's finances, as well as her individual banking information and other personal topics.

    25. On or about April 19, 2016, KOZAC1IEK, YERSIIOV, and their co-conspirators remotely configured an overseas computer to relay communications between X-Agent malware and the AMS panel and then tested X-Agent's ability to connect to this computer. The Conspirators referred to this computer as a "middle server." The middle server acted as a proxy to obscure the connection between malware at the DCCC and the Conspirators' AMS panel. On or about April 20, 2016, the Conspirators directed X-Agent malware on the DCCC computers to connect to this middle server and receive directions from the Conspirators.

    Hacking into the DNC Network

    26. On or about April 18, 2016, the Conspirators hacked into the DNC's computers through their access to the DCCC network. The Conspirators then installed and managed different types of malware (as they did in the DCCC network) to explore the DNC network and steal documents, a. On or about April 18, 2016, the Conspirators activated X-Agent's keylog and screenshot functions to steal credentials of a DCCC employee who was authorized
    to access the DNC network. The Conspirators hacked into the DNC network from the DCCC network using stolen credentials. By in or around June 2016, they gained access to approximately thirty-three DNC computers.

    In or around April 2016, the Conspirators installed X Agent malware on tho DNC network, including the same versions installed on the DCCC network.
    MALYSHEV and his co-conspifators monitored the X-Agent malware from the AMS panel and captured data from the victim computers. The AMS panel collected thousands of keylog and screenshot results from the DCCC and DNC computers, such as a screenshot and keystroke capture of DCCC Employee 2 viewing the DCCC's online banking information.

    Theft of DCCC and DNC Documents

    27. The Conspirators searched for and identified computers within the DCCC and DNC networks that stored information related to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, for example, on or about April 15, 2016, the Conspirators searched one hacked DCCC computer for terms that included "hillary," "cruz," and "trump." The Conspirators also copied select DCCC folders, including "Benghazi Investigations." The Conspirators targeted computers containing information such as opposition research and field operation plans for the 2016 elections.

    28. To enable them to steal a large number of documents at once without detection, the Conspirators used a publicly available tool to gather and compress multiple documents on the DCCC and DNC networks. The Conspirators then used other GRU malware, known as "X-Tunncl," to move the stolen documents cutside the DCCC and DNC networks through encrypted channels.

    a. For example, on or about April 22, 2016, the Conspirators compressed gigabytes of data from DNC computers, including opposition research. The Conspirators later moved the compressed DNC data using X-Tunnel to a GRU-leased computer located in Illinois.

    b. On or about April 28, 2016, the Conspirators connected to and tested the same computer located in Illinois. Later that day, the Conspirators used X-Tunnel to connect to that computer to steal additional documents from the DCCC network.

    29. Between on or about May 25, 2016 and June 1, 2016, the Conspirators hacked the DNC Microsoft Exchange Server and stole thousands of emails from the work accounts of DNC employees. During that time, YERMAKOV researched PowerShell commands related to accessing and managing the Microsoft Exchange Server.

    30. On or about May 30, 2016, MALYSHEV accessed the AMS panel in order to upgrade custom AMS software on die server. That day, the AMS panel received updates from approximately thirteen different X-Agent malware implants on DCCC and DNC computers.

    31. During the hacking of the DCCC and DNC networks, the Conspirators covered their tracks by Intentionally deleting logs and computer flies. For example, on or about May 13, 2016, the Conspirators cleared the event logs from a DNC computer. On or about June 20, 2016, the Conspirators deleted logs from the AMS panel that documented their activities on the panel, including the login history. Efforts to Remain on the X'CC and PNC Networks

    32. Despite the Conspirators' efforts to hide their activity, beginning in or around May 2016, both the DCCC and DNC became aware that they had been hacked and hired a security company ("Company 1") to identify the extent of the intrusions. By in or around June 2016, Company 1 took steps to exclude intruders from the networks. Despite these efforts, a Linux-based version of X-Agent, programmed to communicate with the GRU-registercd domain linuxkml.net, remained on the DNC network until in or around October 2016.

    33. In response to Company Ts efforts, the Conspirators took countermeasures to maintain access to the DCCC and DNC networks.

    a. Oil 01 about May 31, 2016, YERMAKOV searched for opcn-sourcc information about Company 1 and its reporting on X-Agent and X-Tunnel. On or about June 1,2016, the Conspirators attempted to delete traces of their presence on the DCCC network using the computer program CCleaner.
    b. On or about June 14, 2016, the Conspirators registered the domain actblues.com,
    which mimicked the domain of a political fundraising platform that included a
    DCCC donations page. Shortly thereafter, the Conspirators used stolen DCCC
    credentials to modify the DCCC website and redirect visitors to the actblucs.com

    On or about June 14, 2016, the Conspirators registered the domain actblues.com,
    which mimicked the domain of a political fundraising platform that included a
    DCCC donations page. Shortly thereafter, the Conspirators used stolen DCCC
    credentials to modify the DCCC website and redirect visitors to the actblucs.com
    domain.
    On or about June 20, 2016, after Company 1 had disabled X-Agent on the DCCC
    network, the Conspirators spent ever seven hours unsuccessfully trying to connect
    to X-Agent. The Conspirators also tried to access the DCCC network using
    previously stolen credentials.

    34. In or around September 2016, the Conspirators also successfully gained access to DNC
    computers hosted on a third-party cloud-computing service. These computers contained test
    applications related to the DNC's analytics. After conducting reconnaissance, the Conspirators
    gathered data by creating backups, or "snapshots," of the DNC's eloud-based systems using the
    cloud provider's own technology. The Conspirators then moved the snapshots to cloud-based
    accounts they had registered with the same service, thereby stealing the data from the DNC.
    Stolen Documents Released through DCLcaks

    35. More than a month before the release of any documents, the Conspirators constructed the online persona DCLeaks to release and publicize stolen election-related documents. On or about April 19, 2016, after attempting to register the domain clcctionleaks.com, the Conspirators registered the domain dcleaks.com through a service that anonymizcd the registrant. The funds used to pay for the dcleaks.com domain originated from an online cryptocutrrecy service that the Conspirators also used to fund the lease of a virtual private server registered with the operational email account [email protected]. The dirbinsaabol email account was also used to register the john356gh URL-shortening account used by LUKASHEV to spearphish the Clinton Campaign chairman and other campaign-related individuals.

    36. On or about June 8,2016, the Conspirators launched the public website dcleaks.com, which they used to release stolen emails. Before it shut down in or around March 2017, the site received over one million page views. The Conspirators falsely claimed on the site that DCLeaks was started by a group of "American hacktivists," when in fact it was started by the Conspirators.

    37. Starting in or around June 2016 and continuing through the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Conspirators used DCLeaks to release emails stolen from individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign. The Conspirators also released documents they had stolen in other spearphishing operations, including those they had conducted in 2015 that collected emails from individuals affiliated with the Republican Party.

    38. On or about June 8,2016, and at approximately the same time that the dcleaks.com website was launched, the Conspirators created a DCLeaks Facebook page using a preexisting social media account under the fictitious name "Alice Donovan." In addition to the DCLeaks Facebook page, the Conspirators used other social media accounts in the names of fictitious U.S. persons such as "Jason Scott" and "Richard Gingrey" to promote the DCLeaks website. The Conspirators accessed these accounts from computers managed by POTEMKFN and his co-conspirators.

    39. On or about June 8, 2016, the Conspirators created the Twitter account @dcleaks_. The Conspirators operated the @dclcaks_ Twitter account from the same computer used for other efforts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. For example, the Conspirators used the same computer to operate the Twitter account @BaltimorcIsWhr, through which they encouraged U.S. audiences to "[j]oin our flash mob" opposing Clinton and to post images with the hashtag #BlacksAgainstHillary.

    Stolen Documents Released through Guccifer 2.0

    40. On or about June 14, 2016, the DNC -- through Company 1 -- publicly announced that it had been hacked by Russian government actors. In response, the Conspirators created the online persona Guccifer 2.0 and falsely claimed to be a lone Romanian hacker to undermine the allegations of Russian responsibility for the intrusion.
    41. On or about June 15,2016, the Conspirators logged into a Moscow-based server used and managed by Unit 74455 and, between 4:19 PM and 4:56 PM Moscow Standard Time, searched for certain words and phrases, including:

    Search terms

    • "some hundred sheets"
    • "some hundreds of sheets"
    • dcleaks
    • illuminati
    • широко известный перевод [widely known translation]
    • "worldwide known"
    • "think twice about"
    • "company's competence"

    42. Later that day, at 7:02 PM Moscow Standard Time, the online persona Guccifer 2.0 published its first post on a blog site created through WordPress. Titled "DNC's servers hacked by a lone hacker," the post used numerous English words and phrases that the Conspirators had searched for earlier that day (bolded below):

    Worldwide known cyber security company [Company 1] announced that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by
    "sophisticated" hacker groups.

    I'm very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) [...]

    Here are just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking
    into DNC's network. [...]

    Some hundred sheets! This's a serious case, isn't it? [...]

    I guess [Company 1] customers should think twice about company's competence.

    F[***J the Illuminati and their conspiracies! МШШ F[***]

    [Company 1] !!!!!!!!

    43. Between in or around June 2016 and October 2016, the Conspirators used Guccifer 2.0 to release documents through WordPrcss that they had stolen from the DCCC and DNC. The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, also shared stolen documents with certain individuals.

    a. On or about August 15,2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate's opponent. On or about August 22,2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, transferred approximately 2.5 gigabytes of data stolen from the DCCC to a then-registered state lobbyist and online source of political news. The stolen data included donor records and personal identifying information for more than 2,000 Democratic donors.

    On or about August 22, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, sent a reporter stolen documents pertaining to the Black Lives Matter movement. The reporter responded by discussing when to release the documents and offering to write an article about their release.

    44. The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, also communicated with U.S. persons about the release of stolen documents. On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, wrote to a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. TVump, "thank u for writing back... do u find anyt[h]ing interesting in the docs i posted?" On or about August 17, 2016, the Conspirators added, "please tell me if i can help u anyhow ... it would be a great pleasure to me." On or about September 9,2016, the Conspirators, again posing as Guccifer 2.0, referred to a stolen DCCC document posted online and asked the person, "what do u think of the info on the tunout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign." The person responded, "[p]retty standard."

    45. The Conspirators conducted operations as Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks using overlapping computer infrastructure and financing.

    a. For example, between on or about March 14, 2016 and April 28. 2016, the Conspirators used the same pool of bitcoin funds to purchase a virtual private network ("VPN") account and to lease a server in Malaysia. In or around June 2016, the Conspirators used the Malaysian server to host the dcleaks.com website.

    On or about July 6, 2016, the Conspirators used the VPN to log into the @Guccifcr_2 Twitter account. The Conspirators opened that VPN account from
    the same server that was also used to register malicious domains for the hacking of the DCCC and DNC networks.

    On or about June 27, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, contacted a U.S. reporter with an offer to provide stolen emails from "Hillary Clinton's staff." The Conspirators then sent the reporter the password to access a nonpublic, password-protected portion of dc.eaks.com containing emails stolen from Victim 1 bу LUKASHEV, YERMAKOV, and thier co-conspirators in or around March 2016.

    46. On or about January 12,2017, the Conspirators published a statement on the Guccifer 2.0 WordPrcss blog, falsely claiming that the intrusions and release of stolen documents had "totally no relation to the Russian government"

    Use of Organization 1

    47. In order to expand their interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Conspirators transferred many of the documents they stole from the DNC and the chairman of the Clinton Campaign to Organization 1. The Conspirators posing as Guccifer 2.0, discussed the release of the stolen documents and the timing of those releases with Organization 1 to heighten their impact on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

    a. On or about Juno 22, 2016, Organization 1 sent a private message to Guccifer 2.0 to "[s]end any new material [stolen from the DNC] here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing." On or about July 6, 2016, Organization 1 added, "if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after." The Conspirators responded, "ok... i see." Organization I explained, "we think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary ... so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting "

    b After failed attempts to transfer the stolen documents starting in late June 2016, on or about July 14, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, sent Organization 1 an email with an attachment titled "wk dnc linkl.txt.gpg." The Conspirators explained to Organization 1 that the encrypted file contained Instructions on how to access an online archive of stolen DNC documents. On or about July 18, 2016, Organization 1 confirmed it had "the 1Gb or so archive" and would make a release of the stolen documents "this week."

    48. On or about July 22, 2016, Organization 1 released over 20,000 emails and other documents stolen from the DNC network by the Conspirators. This release occurred approximately three days before the start of the Democratic National Convention. Organization 1 did not disclose Guccifer 2.0's role in providing them. The latest-in-time email released through Organization 1 was dated on or about May 25,2016, approximately the same day the Conspirators hacked the DNC Microsoft Exchange Server.

    49. On or about October 7, 2016, Organization 1 released the first set of emails from the chairman of the Clinton Campaign that had been stolen by LUKASHEV and his co-conspirators. Between on or about October 7, 2016 and November 7, 2016, Organization 1 released approximately thirty-three tranches of documents mat had been stolen from the chairman of the Clinton Campaign. In total, over 50,000 stolen documents were released.

    ... ... ...

    Continued

    Recommended Links

    Google matched content

    Softpanorama Recommended

    Top articles

    [Dec 28, 2019] Senior OPCW Official Busted Leaked Email Exposes Orders To Delete All Traces Of Dissent On Douma Published on Dec 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Dec 22, 2019] So US intelligence tipped off the DNC that their emails were about to be leaked to Wikileaks. That's when the stratagem of attributing the impending Wikileaks release to a Russian hack was born -- distracting from the incriminating content of the emails, while vilifying the Deep State's favorite enemies, Assange and Russia, all in one neat scam Published on Dec 22, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Dec 21, 2019] The ruthless neo-colonialists of 21st century Published on Apr 09, 2019 | failedevolution.blogspot.com

    [Dec 20, 2019] Did John Brennan's CIA Create Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks by Larry C Johnson Published on Dec 20, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Dec 20, 2019] NSA Whistleblower: "Mueller Report based on fabricated evidence" Former NSA technical chief, Bill Binney, says it looked like the CIA did this, and made it look like the Russians were doing the hack to implicate Russians by Eric Zuesse Published on Dec 18, 2019 | off-guardian.org

    [Dec 20, 2019] The purpose of manufactured hysteria in the US is to obfuscate the issues important to the Deep State like destroying the first amendment, renewing the 'Patriot' act, extremely increasing the war/hegemony budget, etc Published on Dec 20, 2019 | www.unz.com

    [Dec 19, 2019] MIC lobbyism (which often is presented as patriotism) is the last refuge of scoundrels Published on Dec 19, 2019 | angrybearblog.com

    [Dec 19, 2019] Historically the ability of unelected, unaccountable, secretive bureaucracies (aka the "Deep State") to exercise their own policy without regard for the public or elected officials, often in defiance of these, has always been the hallmark of the destruction of democracy and incipient tyranny. Published on Dec 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Dec 17, 2019] Neocons like car salespeople have a stereotypical reputation for lacking credibility because ther profession is to lie in order to sell weapons to the publin, much like used car saleme lie to sell cars Published on Dec 17, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Dec 17, 2019] History Doesn t Repeat, But It Often Rhymes: Wilson in UK was subjected to the similar attack by rogue elements in MI5 as Trump in the USA Published on Dec 14, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Dec 14, 2019] Full Interview: Barr Criticizes Inspector General Report On The Russia Investigation Published on Dec 14, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    [Dec 14, 2019] A Determined Effort to Undermine Russia Published on Dec 08, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    [Dec 12, 2019] Threat Inflation Poisons Our Foreign Policy by Daniel Larison Published on Dec 11, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    [Dec 12, 2019] The FBI - Pushed By John Brennan - Lied To The Court Seven Times To Spy On The Trump Campaign Published on Dec 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Dec 10, 2019] The level of Neo-McCarthyism and the number of lunitics this NYT forums is just astonishing: When it comes to Donald Trump and Russia, everything is connected. Published on Dec 10, 2019 | www.nytimes.com

    [Dec 07, 2019] Why the foreign policy establishment consensus is neocon by default. Published on Dec 07, 2019 | www.unz.com

    [Dec 07, 2019] Impeachment does not require a crime. Published on Dec 07, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

    [Dec 04, 2019] The central question of Ukrainegate is whether CrowdStrike actions on DNC leak were a false flag operation designed to open Russiagate and what was the level of participation of Poroshenko government and Ukrainian Security services in this false flag operation by Factotum Published on Dec 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Dec 04, 2019] Responding to Lt. Col. Vindman about my Ukraine columns with the facts John Solomon Reports Published on Dec 04, 2019 | johnsolomonreports.com

    [Dec 04, 2019] Ukrainegaters claim that Trump Reduced the USA empire 'Global Commitments' was fraudulent from the very beginning. Trump is yet another imperial president who favours the "Full spectrum Dominance; The problem is that the time when the USA can have it are in the past. Europe finally recovered from WWII losses and that alone dooms the idea Published on Dec 04, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    [Dec 04, 2019] Common Funding Themes Link 'Whistleblower' Complaint and CrowdStrike Firm Certifying DNC Russia 'Hack' by Aaron Klein Published on Sep 28, 2019 | www.breitbart.com

    [Dec 04, 2019] DNC Russian Hackers Found! You Won't Believe Who They Really Work For by the Anonymous Patriots Published on Jan 01, 2017 | themillenniumreport.com

    [Dec 04, 2019] June 4th, 2017 Crowdstrike Was at the DNC Six Weeks by George Webb Published on Nov 27, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    [Dec 04, 2019] Cyberanalyst George Eliason Claims that the "Fancy Bear" Who Hacked the DNC Server is Ukrainian Intelligence – In League with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike Published on Dec 04, 2018 | www.reddit.com

    [Dec 04, 2019] Fancy Bear - Conservapedia Published on Dec 04, 2019 | www.conservapedia.com

    [Dec 04, 2019] June 2nd, 2018 Alperovich's DNC Cover Stories Soon To Match With His Hacking Teams by George Webb Published on Nov 27, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    [Dec 04, 2019] America's War Exceptionalism Is Killing the Planet by William Astore Published on Dec 02, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    [Dec 02, 2019] The cost of militarism cannot be measured only in lost opportunities, lives and money. There will be a long hangover of shame Published on www.theamericanconservative.com

    [Nov 29, 2019] Where s the Collusion Published on Dec 28, 2017 | www.youtube.com

    [Nov 28, 2019] WSJ story reopens the claim Comey had a report there was an email exchange between Loretta Lynch and Clinton claiming Lynch promised her the DOJ would go easy on Clinton. Published on Nov 28, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Nov 26, 2019] John Solomon Everything Changes In The Ukraine Scandal If Trump Releases These Documents Published on Nov 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Nov 23, 2019] Is Fiona Hill a Sleeper Agent Published on Nov 23, 2019 | www.abeldanger.org

    [Nov 07, 2019] Rigged Again Dems, Russia, The Delegitimization Of America s Democratic Process by Elizabeth Vos Published on Nov 07, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Nov 03, 2019] Growing Indicators of Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force by Larry C Johnson - Sic Semper Tyrannis Published on Nov 03, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Nov 02, 2019] WATCH Udo Ulfkotte – Bought Journalists by Terje Maloy Published on Oct 06, 2019 | off-guardian.org

    [Nov 01, 2019] Viable Opposition The Legal Connection Between Washington and Kiev Published on October 15, 2019 | viableopposition.blogspot.com

    [Nov 01, 2019] Color revolution is a method of using a minority to render the country ungovernble, waving a simplistic banner against corruption and for (undefined) democracy, which leaves the masses unorganized and eschews even a platform, in favor of a secret coterie run by intelligence againces Published on Nov 01, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

    [Oct 28, 2019] Expert Panel Finds Gaping Plot-Holes In OPCW Report On Alleged Syrian Chemical Attack by Caitlin Johnstone Published on Oct 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Oct 25, 2019] Trump-Haters, Not Trump, Are The Ones Wrecking America s Institutions, WSJ s Strassel Says Published on Oct 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Oct 20, 2019] Putin sarcastic remark on Western neoliberal multiculturalism Published on Oct 17, 2019 | www.unz.com

    [Oct 19, 2019] Russian agents under every bed Published on Oct 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Oct 19, 2019] Kunstler One Big Reason Why America Is Driving Itself Bat$hit Crazy Published on Oct 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Oct 10, 2019] There is no reason that anyone should treat George Bush with respect: he is a war criminal, who escaped justice Published on Oct 09, 2019 | economistsview.typepad.com

    [Sep 30, 2019] Stephen Miller calls whistleblower a 'partisan hit job' in fiery interview Published on Sep 30, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    [Sep 23, 2019] Apparently now that the notion Russia interfered in the US presidential election to tip the vote to Trump has become an article of faith that much of the world regards as established fact Published on Sep 23, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

    [Sep 17, 2019] The Devolution of US-Russia Relations by Tony Kevin Published on Sep 17, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    [Sep 15, 2019] How the UK Security Services neutralised the country s leading liberal newspaper by Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis Published on Jan 01, 2019 | dailymaverick.co.za

    [Sep 11, 2019] John Brennan's and Jim Clappers' Last Gasp by Larry C Johnson Published on Sep 11, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Sep 10, 2019] Being called a narcissist by Jim Comey is akin to being accused of having sex with underage girls by the late Jeffrey Epstein by Larry C Johnsons Published on Sep 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Sep 03, 2019] Russiagate as crocodile tears of western propaganda Published on Sep 02, 2019 | www.yahoo.com

    [Aug 24, 2019] George Kennan on Russia Insights and Recommendations Published on Aug 24, 2019 | www.russiamatters.org

    [Aug 21, 2019] Solomon If Trump Declassifies These 10 Documents, Democrats Are Doomed Published on Aug 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Aug 17, 2019] Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome (PTDS) Published on Aug 17, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    [Aug 17, 2019] Debunking the Putin Panic by Stephen F. Cohen Published on Aug 17, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    [Aug 16, 2019] Ministry of truth materialized in XXI century in a neoliberal way by Kit Knightly Published on Aug 16, 2019 | off-guardian.org

    [Aug 16, 2019] Lapdogs for the Government and intelligence agencies by Greg Maybury Published on Aug 16, 2019 | off-guardian.org

    [Aug 12, 2019] Russiagate is the idea around which varied interests can be organized Published on Aug 12, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    [Jul 29, 2019] The Real Reason The Propagandists Have Been Promoting Russia Hysteria by Caitlin Johnstone Published on Jul 28, 2019 | ronpaulinstitute.org

    [Jul 28, 2019] Mueller Crumbles Under Questioning by Barbara Boland Published on Jul 28, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    [Jul 28, 2019] Antisemitism prejudices projection on Russians Published on Jul 28, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Jul 27, 2019] Russia interfered on a massive scale ($3,684 was spends on ads on which $1932 on promoting Trump) and is doing it again as we sit here! Just how massive? They spent $100,000 on clickbait ads from a company owned by a man who was in a photo with the evil mastermind! Published on Jul 27, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    [Jul 27, 2019] Understanding the Roots of the Obama Coup Against Trump by Larry C Johnson Published on Jul 27, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Jul 26, 2019] Tucker: Democrats believed Mueller would save America. But he is A daft old man blinking in the sunlight once the curtain has been opened Published on Jul 26, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    [Jul 26, 2019] Tucker What should happen to those who lied about Russian collusion Published on Jul 26, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    [Jul 13, 2019] Mueller Does Not Have Evidence That The IRA Was Part of Russian Government Meddling by Larry C Johnson Published on Jul 13, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Jul 09, 2019] Ex-FBI, CIA Officials Draw Withering Fire on Russiagate by Ray McGovern Published on Jul 08, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    [Jul 06, 2019] Mueller Report Gets the Trump Tower Meeting Wrong; Promotes Browder Hoax by Lucy Komisar Published on Jul 03, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    [Jun 30, 2019] USG's Bizarre Change of Position in the Roger Stone Case by Larry C Johnson Published on Jun 30, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Jun 29, 2019] Latest Weapon Of US Imperialism Liquified Natural Gas Published on Jun 29, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Jun 27, 2019] Western News Agencies Mistranslate Iran's President Speech - It Is Not The First Time Such 'Error' Happens Published on Jun 27, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Jun 26, 2019] Opinion - NY Times admits it sends stories to US government for approval before publication Published on Jun 26, 2019 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

    [Jun 19, 2019] Investigation Nation Mueller, Russiagate, and Fake Politics by Jim Kavanagh Published on Apr 12, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

    [Jun 14, 2019] Comments on Yasha Levin article: With Russiagate, we Soviet immigrants were finally forced to reckon with the bigotry of America's elite Published on Jun 14, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

    [Jun 05, 2019] Do Spies Run the World by Israel Shamir Published on May 22, 2019 | www.unz.com

    [May 29, 2019] With Russiagate, we Soviet immigrants were finally forced to reckon with the bigotry of America's elite by Yasha Levine Published on May 28, 2019 | thegrayzone.com

    [May 28, 2019] Any time you read an article (or a comment) on Russia, substitute the word Jew for Russian and International Jewry for Russia and re-read. Published on May 28, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    [May 22, 2019] NATO has pushed eastward right up to its borders and threatened to incorporate regions that have been part of Russia's sphere of influence -- and its defense perimeter -- for centuries Published on May 21, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

    [May 20, 2019] "Us" Versus "Them" Published on May 20, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [May 19, 2019] How Russiagate replaced Analysis of the 2016 Election by Rick Sterling Published on May 19, 2019 | dissidentvoice.org

    [May 19, 2019] Intel agencies of the UK and US are guilty of fabricating evidence, breaking the laws (certainly of the targeted countries, but also of the UK and US), providing fake analysis and operating as evil actors on the dark side of humanity Published on May 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [May 16, 2019] The Disinformationists by C.J. Hopkins Published on May 16, 2019 | www.unz.com

    [May 15, 2019] Russia-gate s Monstrous Offspring Published on May 14, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    [May 14, 2019] The Propaganda Multiplier How Global News Agencies and Western Media Report on Geopolitics Published on Jun 01, 2016 | www.globalresearch.ca

    [May 13, 2019] Angry Bear Senate Democratic Jackasses and Elmer Fudd Published on May 04, 2019 | angrybearblog.com

    [May 13, 2019] In defense of Maria Butina Spectator USA by Michael Tracey Published on Dec 21, 2018 | spectator.us

    [May 13, 2019] US Foreign Policy as Bellicose as Ever by Serge Halimi Published on May 10, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

    [May 12, 2019] Charting a Progressive Foreign Policy for the Trump Era and Beyond Published on May 10, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    [May 11, 2019] Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia Published on Aug 30, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

    [May 11, 2019] Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they discovered later discovered and attributed to Russians later Published on Mar 03, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [May 11, 2019] Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart -- Say Hello to Fancy Bear Published on Dec 29, 2017 | www.washingtonsblog.com

    [May 11, 2019] Whitney Judgment Day Looms For John Brennan Published on May 11, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [May 11, 2019] Intel and Law Enforcement Tried to Entrap Trump by Larry C Johnson Published on May 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [May 11, 2019] Doug Ross @ Journal A TIMELINE OF TREASON How the DNC and FBI Leadership Tried to Fix a Presidential Election [Updated] Published on Jan 04, 2018 | directorblue.blogspot.com

    [May 11, 2019] Christopher Steele, FBI s Confidential Human Source by Publius Tacitus Published on Aug 08, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [May 11, 2019] Nunes Memo Details Weaponization of FISA Court for Political Advantage by Elizabeth Lea Vos Published on Feb 05, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [May 11, 2019] CIA Paid $100,000 To Shadowy Russian For Dirt on Trump, Including Sex Video by Chuck Ross Published on Feb 10, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [May 10, 2019] Biden is up to neck in Spygate dirt by Jeff Carlson Published on May 02, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

    [May 10, 2019] Obama administration raced to obtain FICA warrant on Carter Page before Rogers investigation closes on them and that was definitely an obstruction of justice and interference with the ongoing investigation Published on May 03, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

    [May 10, 2019] What was the meaning of the term "insurance policy" in Stzok messages to Lisa Page Published on May 03, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

    [May 10, 2019] The Battle Between Rosenstein and McCabe Published on May 03, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

    [May 08, 2019] Obama Spied on Other Republicans and Democrats As Well by Larry C Johnson Published on May 08, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [May 07, 2019] Look! A whale! Published on May 07, 2019 | amp.theguardian.com

    [May 07, 2019] Chris Hedges: The Demonization of Russia is Driven by Defense Contractors Published on Apr 05, 2019 | dandelionsalad.wordpress.com

    [May 05, 2019] Did Mueller substituted Russia for Israel in his report Published on May 05, 2019 | www.unz.com

    [May 03, 2019] The Wheels Of Real Justice Are In Motion Now Kunstler Fears The Desperate Resistance Next Move... Published on May 03, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [May 02, 2019] Neoliberalism and the Globalization of War. America s Hegemonic Project by Prof Michel Chossudovsky Published on Jun 16, 2016 | www.globalresearch.ca

    [May 02, 2019] Checkmate - How President Trump s Legal Team Outfoxed Mueller by Will Chamberlain Published on May 02, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Apr 29, 2019] The Mueller Report Indicts the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theory by Aaron Maté Published on Mar 26, 2019 | outline.com

    [Apr 28, 2019] The British Role in Russiagate Is About to Be Fully Exposed Published on Apr 22, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    [Apr 28, 2019] Breath of fresh air--real journalism again! Have so much respect for Chris Hedges and Aaron Mate, great work! Published on Apr 28, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    [Apr 28, 2019] On Contact Russiagate Mueller Report w- Aaron Mate Published on Apr 28, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    [Apr 26, 2019] Jared Kushner, Not Maria Butina, Is America's Real Foreign Agent by Philip Giraldi Published on Apr 25, 2019 | ronpaulinstitute.org

    [Apr 26, 2019] Intelligence agencies meddling in elections Published on Apr 26, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Apr 22, 2019] FBI top brass have been colluding with top brass of CIA and MI6 to pursue ambitious anti-Russian agenda Published on Mar 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Apr 22, 2019] Current Neo-McCarthyism hysteria as a smoke screen of the UK and the USA intent to dominate European geopolitics and weaken Russia and Germany Published on Jul 24, 2018 | angrybearblog.com

    [Apr 21, 2019] John Brennan's Police State USA Published on Oct 22, 2017 | www.unz.com

    [Apr 21, 2019] Whenever someone inconveniences the neoliberal oligarchy, the entire neoliberal MSM mafia tells us 24 x7 how evil and disgusting that person is. It's true of the leader of every nation which rejects neoliberal globalization as well as for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Published on Apr 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Apr 20, 2019] Trump has certainly made the world safer Published on Apr 20, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    [Apr 20, 2019] Sure, blame those guys over there for Hillary fiasco and hire Mueller to get the goods . That s the ultimate the dog ate my homework excuse. Published on Apr 20, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    [Apr 17, 2019] The media's interest in the well-being of a foreign population is directly proportional to the West's interest in toppling its government, while editorial standards are inversely proportional to its enemy status Published on Apr 17, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Apr 17, 2019] Six US Agencies Conspired ... Published on Apr 17, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Apr 16, 2019] CIA Director Used Fake Skripal Incident Photos To Manipulate Trump Published on Apr 16, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Apr 13, 2019] Russophobia, A WMD (Weapon Of Mass Deception) by Jean Ranc Published on Apr 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Apr 12, 2019] Putin was KGB agent crowd forgets that Bush Sr was long time senior CIA operative and the director of CIA Published on Apr 12, 2019 | www.unz.com

    [Apr 10, 2019] Habakkuk on cockroaches and the New York Times Published on Apr 08, 2019 | www.wsws.org

    [Apr 08, 2019] Aaron Maté Was Also Right About Russiagate Published on Mar 31, 2019 | scotthorton.org

    [Apr 07, 2019] Nunes The Russian Collusion Hoax Meets An Unbelievbable End Published on Apr 07, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Apr 06, 2019] The Magnitsky Act-Behind the Scenes ASEEES Published on Apr 06, 2019 | www.aseees.org

    [Apr 04, 2019] Was John Brennan The Russia Lie Ringleader Published on Apr 04, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Apr 04, 2019] TEST IT YOURSELF, THE 2-SECOND-ROUNDING FACT PATTERN IN THE DNC EMAILS By William Binney and Larry Johnson Published on Apr 04, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Apr 03, 2019] Jewish Power Rolls Over Washington by Philip Giraldi Published on Apr 02, 2019 | www.unz.com

    [Apr 02, 2019] 'Yats' Is No Longer the Guy by Robert Parry Published on Apr 11, 2016 | consortiumnews.com

    [Apr 01, 2019] Amazon.com War with Russia From Putin Ukraine to Trump Russiagate (9781510745810) Stephen F. Cohen Books Published on Apr 01, 2019 | www.amazon.com

    [Mar 31, 2019] A Reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco by James W Carden Published on Feb 03, 2017 | consortiumnews.com

    [Mar 31, 2019] What is the purpose of Russiagate hysteria? Published on Mar 31, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Mar 30, 2019] The US desperately needs Venezuelan oil Published on Mar 30, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Mar 30, 2019] The Real Costs of Russiagate Published on Mar 30, 2019 | www.thenation.com

    [Mar 30, 2019] You don't like Trump? Bolton? Clinton? All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership positions in America are entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may imagine they are faking cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes, but the cluelessness is quite real and extends to the entire population. Published on Mar 30, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Mar 25, 2019] Russiagate was never about substance, it was about who gets to image-manage the decline of a turbo-charged, self-harming neoliberal capitalism by Jonathan Cook Published on Mar 25, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

    [Mar 25, 2019] Meet The Kushners First Couple In-Waiting by Ilana Mercer Published on Dec 21, 2018 | www.unz.com

    [Mar 25, 2019] Spygate The True Story of Collusion (plus Infographic) by Jeff Carlson Published on Oct 12, 2018 | www.theepochtimes.com

    [Mar 25, 2019] Nuland role in Russiagate Published on Mar 25, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

    [Mar 25, 2019] Another SIGINT compromise ... Published on Feb 28, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Mar 24, 2019] The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian. Published on Mar 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Mar 24, 2019] The accountability that must follow Mueller's report Published on Mar 24, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Mar 24, 2019] "Russia Gate" investigation was a color revolution agaist Trump. But a strnge side effect was that Clintons have managed to raise a vicious, loud mouthed thug to the status of some kind of martyr. Published on Mar 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Mar 24, 2019] With RussiaGate Over Where's Hillary Published on Mar 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Mar 24, 2019] One could wish that DOJ IG Horowitz could investigate and sanction British Intelligence for its use of official and non-official officials in starting this debacle. Published on Mar 24, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Mar 24, 2019] One thing left out is the ability of readers to call BS on a story i.e. a robust comment section for debates. Published on Mar 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Mar 23, 2019] Brennan pipe dream obliterated. The color revolution against Trump failed Published on Mar 23, 2019 | dailycaller.com

    [Mar 23, 2019] Mueller stopped following the money the moment he realized it was all leading back to Israel. Published on Mar 23, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Mar 22, 2019] Glenn Greenwald on Twitter The Mueller investigation is complete and this is a simple fact that will never go away Published on Mar 22, 2019 | twitter.com

    [Mar 20, 2019] In a remarkable report by British Channel 4, former CIA officials and a Reuters correspondent spoke candidly about the systematic dissemination of propaganda and misinformation in reporting on geopolitical conflicts Published on Mar 07, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Mar 18, 2019] Journalists who are spies Published on Mar 03, 2006 | www.nytimes.com

    [Mar 18, 2019] The Why are the media playing lapdog and not watchdog – again – on war in Iraq? Published on Oct 10, 2014 | The Guardian

    [Mar 17, 2019] Mueller uses the same old false flag scams, just different packaging of his forensics-free findings Published on Mar 17, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    [Mar 17, 2019] VIPS- Mueller's Forensics-Free Findings Published on Mar 13, 2019 | Consortiumnews

    [Mar 14, 2019] Manafort's Ukrainians were actually pro-West? - Habakkuk Published on Mar 14, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Mar 06, 2019] Disinformation destroys reality Published on Mar 02, 2018 | www.nytimes.com

    [Feb 22, 2019] Neo-McCarthyism is used to defend the US imperial policies. Branding dissidents as Russian stooges is a loophole that allow to suppress dissident opinions Published on Feb 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Feb 17, 2019] Trump is Russian asset memo is really neocon propaganda overkill Published on Jan 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Feb 16, 2019] MSM Begs For Trust After Buzzfeed Debacle by Caitlin Johnstone Published on Jan 20, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Feb 16, 2019] Death Of Russiagate: Mueller Team Tied To Mifsud s Network Published on Jan 22, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Feb 13, 2019] MoA - Russiagate Is Finished Published on Feb 12, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Feb 13, 2019] Stephen Cohen on War with Russia and Soviet-style Censorship in the US by Russell Mokhiber Published on Feb 12, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

    [Feb 09, 2019] Did The Department Of Justice Protect Brenda Snipes From Prosecution For Ballot Destruction by Elizabeth Lea Vos Published on Feb 07, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Feb 04, 2019] Trump s Revised and Rereleased Foreign Policy: The World Policeman is Back Published on Aug 09, 2017 | zeroanthropology.net

    [Jan 29, 2019] Guardian became Deep State Guardian Published on Dec 22, 2018 | off-guardian.org

    [Jan 22, 2019] War with Russia From Putin Ukraine to Trump Russiagate Published on Jan 22, 2019 | www.amazon.com

    [Jan 21, 2019] Beyond BuzzFeed The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing US Media Failures On The Trump-Russia Story by Glenn Greenwald Published on Jan 21, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Jan 20, 2019] Doctor, nurse, Chief Nursing Officer of the Army, whatever. Published on Jan 20, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Jan 19, 2019] Coincidence - Chief Nurse Of British Army Was First Person To Arrive At Novichoked Skripal Scene Published on Jan 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Jan 13, 2019] As FBI Ramped Up Witch Hunt When Trump Fired Comey, Strzok Admitted Collusion Investigation A Joke Published on Jan 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Jan 11, 2019] New Documents Reveal a Covert British Military-Intelligence Smear Machine Meddling In American Politics by Mark Ames Published on Jan 11, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    [Jan 11, 2019] Facts does not matter in the current propoganda environment, the narrative is everything Published on Jan 11, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Jan 08, 2019] Shock Files- What Role Did Integrity Initiative Play in Sergei Skripal Affair- - Sputnik International Published on Jan 08, 2019 | sputniknews.com

    [Jan 08, 2019] Skripal spin doctors- Documents link UK govt-funded Integrity Initiative to anti-Russia narrative Published on Jan 05, 2019 | www.defenddemocracy.press

    [Jan 06, 2019] British elite fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies. Published on Jan 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Jan 02, 2019] Russian bots - How An Anti-Russian Lobby Creates Fake News Published on Feb 20, 2018J | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Jan 02, 2019] The Only Meddling "Russian Bots" Were Actually Democrat-Led "Experts" by Mac Slavo Published on Jan 02, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Jan 02, 2019] Did Mueller Patched Together Much of His Indictment from 2015 Radio Free Europe Article ? Published on Jan 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Dec 30, 2018] RussiaGate In Review with Aaron Mate - Unreasoned Fear is Neoliberalism's Response to the Credibility Gap Published on Dec 30, 2018 | jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com

    [Dec 29, 2018] -Election Meddling- Enters Bizarro World As MSM Ignores Democrat-Linked -Russian Bot- Scheme - Published on Dec 29, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Dec 22, 2018] British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft by Craig Murray Published on Dec 13, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

    [Dec 22, 2018] If Truth Cannot Prevail Over Material Agendas We Are Doomed by Paul Craig Roberts Published on www.theamericanconservative.com

    [Dec 21, 2018] Virtually no one in neoliberal MSM is paying attention to the fact that a group of Pakistani muslims, working for a Jewish Congresswoman from Florida, had full computer access to a large number of Democrat Representatives. Most of the press is disinterested in pursuing this matter Published on Jul 25, 2017 | www.unz.com

    [Dec 16, 2018] The 'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation, Disguised As Charity, To Create The Russian Threat Published on Dec 15, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Dec 14, 2018] Vetting NYT materials by CIA reflects full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the neoliberal MSM Published on Dec 01, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

    [Dec 14, 2018] The dirty propaganda games NYT play Published on Sep 21, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Dec 05, 2018] Beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May is wailing loudly against a Trump threat to reveal classified documents relating to Russiagate by Philip Giraldi Published on Dec 05, 2018 | www.unz.com

    [Dec 02, 2018] Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski Wins 2018 Sam Adams Award by Ray McGovern Published on Nov 29, 2018 | www.antiwar.com

    [Dec 02, 2018] Muller investigation has all the appearance of an investigation looking for a crime Published on Dec 01, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Nov 27, 2018] 'Highly likely' that Magnitsky was poisoned by toxic chemicals on Bill Browder's orders Published on Nov 19, 2018 | www.rt.com

    [Nov 27, 2018] US Foreign Policy Has No Policy by Philip Giraldi Published on Nov 27, 2018 | www.unz.com

    [Nov 24, 2018] MI6 Scrambling To Stop Trump From Releasing Classified Docs In Russia Probe Published on Nov 24, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Nov 24, 2018] Anonymous Exposes UK-Led Psyop To Battle Russian Propaganda Published on Nov 23, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Nov 24, 2018] British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns Published on Nov 24, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Nov 24, 2018] Now we know created MH17 smear campaign, who financial Steele dossier and created Skripal affair ;-) Published on Nov 24, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Nov 24, 2018] When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots psyops, you tend to come up with plots for psyops . The word entrapment comes to mind. Probably self-serving also. Published on Nov 24, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Nov 23, 2018] Sitting on corruption hill Published on Nov 23, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Nov 12, 2018] Obama s CIA Secretly Intercepted Congressional Communications About Whistleblowers Published on Nov 02, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Nov 12, 2018] Protecting Americans from foreign influence, smells with COINTELPRO. Structural witch-hunt effect like during the McCarthy era is designed to supress decent to neoliberal oligarcy by Andre Damon and Joseph Kishore Published on Feb 20, 2018 | www.wsws.org

    [Oct 25, 2018] Putin jokes with Bolton: Did the eagle eaten all the olives Published on Oct 25, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    [Oct 25, 2018] DNC Emails--A Seth Attack Not a Russian Hack by Publius Tacitus Published on Oct 25, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Oct 20, 2018] Cloak and Dagger by Israel Shamir Published on Oct 20, 2018 | www.unz.com

    [Oct 09, 2018] The Skripals Are an MI6 Hoax - 'Not Worthy of Ladies' Detective Novels' - Israeli Expert Demolishes UK Case Published on Oct 09, 2018 | russia-insider.com

    [Oct 08, 2018] British intelligence now officially is a by-word for organized crime by John Wight Published on Oct 08, 2018 | www.rt.com

    [Oct 08, 2018] Hacking and Propaganda by Marcus Ranum Published on Oct 07, 2018 | freethoughtblogs.com

    [Oct 02, 2018] I m puzzled why CIA is so against Kavanaugh? Published on Oct 02, 2018 | www.unz.com

    [Sep 23, 2018] UK Begged Trump Not To Declassify Russia Docs; Cited Grave Concerns Over Steele Involvement Published on Sep 23, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Sep 21, 2018] One party state: Trump's 'Opposition' Supports All His Evil Agendas While Attacking Fake Nonsence by Caitlin Johnstone Published on Sep 21, 2018 | ronpaulinstitute.org

    [Sep 16, 2018] Perils of Ineptitude by Andrew Levin Published on Aug 03, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org

    [Sep 15, 2018] BBC is skanky state propaganda Published on Aug 30, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

    [Sep 07, 2018] New York Times Undermining Peace Efforts by Sowing Suspicion by Diana Johnstone Published on Sep 07, 2018 | ronpaulinstitute.org

    [Sep 07, 2018] Sarah Huckabee Sanders has a legitimate request to neoliberal MSM - Stop Bugging Me About The New York Times' Trump Op-Ed Published on Sep 07, 2018 | www.huffingtonpost.com

    [Aug 22, 2018] The CIA Owns the US and European Media by Paul Craig Roberts Published on Aug 18, 2018 | www.unz.com

    [Aug 14, 2018] I think one of Mueller s deeply embedded character flaw is that once he decides on burying someone he becomes possessed Published on Aug 10, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Aug 14, 2018] US Intelligence Community is Tearing the Country Apart from the Inside by Dmitry Orlov Published on Jul 28, 2018 | russia-insider.com

    [Aug 11, 2018] President Trump the most important achivement Published on Aug 11, 2018 | www.unz.com

    [Oct 20, 2019] Putin sarcastic remark on Western neoliberal multiculturalism Published on Oct 17, 2019 | www.unz.com

    [Oct 19, 2019] Russian agents under every bed Published on Oct 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

    [Aug 08, 2018] Sergei Skripal was linked to a consultant with former UK spy Christopher Steele's Orbis Business Intelligence Published on Aug 06, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Aug 08, 2018] Ten Bombshell Revelations From Seymour Hersh's New Autobiography Published on Aug 08, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Aug 05, 2018] Cooper was equally as unhinged as Boot: Neoliberal MSM is a real 1984 remake. Published on Aug 05, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Jul 31, 2018] Is not the Awan affair a grave insult to the US "Intelligence Community? Published on Jul 31, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

    [Jul 28, 2018] American Society Would Collapse If It Were not For These 8 Myths by Lee Camp Published on Jul 27, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Jul 23, 2018] Chickens with Their Heads Cut Off, Coming Home to Roost. The "Treason Narrative" by Helen Buyniski Published on Jul 23, 2018 | www.globalresearch.ca

    [Jul 22, 2018] Tucker Carlson SLAMS Intelligence Community On Russia Published on Jul 22, 2018 | www.youtube.com

    [Jul 20, 2018] So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don t question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven t been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax Published on Jul 20, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Jul 20, 2018] Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community by Ilana Mercer Published on Jul 20, 2018 | www.unz.com

    [Jul 15, 2018] What Mueller won t find by Bob In Portland Published on Jul 12, 2018 | caucus99percent.com

    [Jul 13, 2018] False flag operation covering DNC leaks now involves Mueller and his team Published on Jul 13, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Sep 15, 2019] Demythologizing the Roots of the New Cold War by Ted Snider Published on Sep 09, 2019 | original.antiwar.com

    [Sep 03, 2019] Russiagate as crocodile tears of western propaganda Published on Sep 02, 2019 | www.yahoo.com

    [Aug 17, 2019] Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome (PTDS) Published on Aug 17, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

    [Jul 27, 2019] Russia interfered on a massive scale ($3,684 was spends on ads on which $1932 on promoting Trump) and is doing it again as we sit here! Just how massive? They spent $100,000 on clickbait ads from a company owned by a man who was in a photo with the evil mastermind! Published on Jul 27, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

    [Jul 26, 2019] Tucker: Democrats believed Mueller would save America. But he is A daft old man blinking in the sunlight once the curtain has been opened Published on Jul 26, 2019 | www.youtube.com

    [Jun 03, 2020] Dems ratpack of reparations freaks, weird sexual curiosities, and race hustlers is actually a fifth column for Trump re-election by Fred Reed Published on Jul 25, 2019 | www.unz.com

    [Jun 03, 2020] Not The Onion: NY Times Urges Trump To Establish Closer Ties With Moscow Published on Jul 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Jun 03, 2020] The difference between old and new schools of jounalism: old-school journalism was like being assigned the task of finding out what "1+1 =?" and the task was to report the answer was "1." Now the task would be to report that "Some say it is 1, some say it is 2, some say it is 3." Published on Jun 20, 2019 | www.counterpunch.org

    [Jun 03, 2020] Rule of law in Murrika is kaput Published on Jun 16, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [May 11, 2019] Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they discovered later discovered and attributed to Russians later Published on Mar 03, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

    [May 11, 2019] Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart -- Say Hello to Fancy Bear Published on Dec 29, 2017 | www.washingtonsblog.com

    [May 11, 2019] Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia Published on Aug 30, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

    [May 07, 2019] Look! A whale! Published on May 07, 2019 | amp.theguardian.com

    [Apr 22, 2019] Current Neo-McCarthyism hysteria as a smoke screen of the UK and the USA intent to dominate European geopolitics and weaken Russia and Germany Published on Jul 24, 2018 | angrybearblog.com

    [Mar 24, 2019] The accountability that must follow Mueller's report Published on Mar 24, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

    [Mar 24, 2019] The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian. Published on Mar 24, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

    [Jan 29, 2019] Guardian became Deep State Guardian Published on Dec 22, 2018 | off-guardian.org

    Oldies But Goodies

  • [Dec 10, 2016] Why the US elite loves so much to demonise Russia
  • [Oct 12, 2016] NSA whistleblower says DNC hack was not done by Russia, but by US intelligence
  • [Jan 09, 2016] Allen Dulles and modern neocons
  • [Dec 28, 2017] How CrowdStrike placed malware in DNC hacked servers by Alex Christoforou
  • [Dec 28, 2017] How CrowdStrike placed malware in DNC hacked servers by Alex Christoforou
  • [Dec 28, 2017] Regime Change Comes Home: The CIA s Overt Threats against Trump by James Petras
  • [Dec 28, 2017] On your surmise that Putin prefers Trump to Hillary and would thus have incentive to influence the election, I beg to differ. Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections.
  • [Dec 27, 2017] Putin is one smart statesman; he knows very well it makes no difference which candidates gets elected in US elections. Any candidate that WOULD make a difference would NEVER see the daylight of nomination, especially at the presidential level. I myself believe all the talk of Russia interfering the 2016 Election is no more than a witch hunt
  • [Dec 23, 2017] Russiagate as bait and switch maneuver
  • [Dec 22, 2017] Beyond Cynicism America Fumbles Towards Kafka s Castle by James Howard Kunstler
  • [Dec 21, 2017] The RussiaGate Witch-Hunt Stockman Names Names In The Deep State's Insurance Policy by David Stockman
  • [Dec 18, 2017] The Scary Void Inside Russia-gate by Stephen F. Cohen
  • [Dec 13, 2017] All the signs in the Russia probe point to Jared Kushner. Who next?
  • [Dec 12, 2017] When a weaker neoliberal state fights the dominant neoliberal state, the center of neoliberal empire, it faces economic sanctions and can t retaliate using principle eye for eye
  • [Dec 11, 2017] How Russia-gate Met the Magnitsky Myth by Robert Parry
  • [Dec 10, 2017] blamePutin continues to be the media s dominant hashtag. Vladimir Putin finally confesses his entire responsibility for everything bad that has ever happened since the beginning of time
  • [Dec 10, 2017] Russia-gate s Reach into Journalism by Dennis J Bernstein
  • [Dec 09, 2017] Hyping the Russian Threat to Undermine Free Speech by Max Blumenthal
  • [Dec 01, 2017] JFK The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy by L. Fletcher Prouty, Oliver Stone, Jesse Ventura
  • [Nov 28, 2017] The Duplicitous Superpower by Ted Galen Carpenter
  • [Nov 08, 2017] The Plot to Scapegoat Russia How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin by Dan Kovalik
  • [Nov 08, 2017] Learning to Love McCarthyism by Robert Parry
  • [Nov 04, 2017] Who's Afraid of Corporate COINTELPRO by C. J. Hopkins
  • [Oct 29, 2017] Whose Bright Idea Was RussiaGate by Paul Craig Roberts
  • [Nov 08, 2017] The Plot to Scapegoat Russia How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin by Dan Kovalik
  • [Oct 28, 2017] Former CIA Officer 'Russiagate' Was Manufactured By The Clinton Campaign by Philip Giraldi
  • [Oct 13, 2017] Sympathy for the Corporatocracy by C. J. Hopkins
  • [Apr 21, 2019] John Brennan's Police State USA
  • [Oct 13, 2017] Sympathy for the Corporatocracy by C. J. Hopkins
  • [Oct 11, 2017] Russia witch hunt is a tactic used by the ruling elite, and in particular the Democratic Party, to avoid facing a very unpleasant reality: that their unpopularity is the outcome of their policies of deindustrialization and the assault against working class
  • [Oct 09, 2017] After Nine Months, Only Stale Crumbs in Russia Inquiry by Scott Ritter
  • [Oct 03, 2017] Russian Ads On Facebook A Click-Bait Campaign
  • [Sep 30, 2017] Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet by Glenn Greenwald
  • [Sep 26, 2017] Is Foreign Propaganda Even Effective by Leon Hadar
  • [Sep 25, 2017] I am presently reading the book JFK and the Unspeakable by James W.Douglass and it is exactly why Kennedy was assassinated by the very same group that desperately wants to see Trump gone and the rapprochement with Russia squashed
  • [Sep 24, 2017] Mark Ames When Mother Jones Was Investigated for Spreading Kremlin Disinformation by Mark Ames
  • [Sep 18, 2017] How The Military Defeated Trumps Insurgency
  • [Sep 18, 2017] The NYT's Yellow Journalism on Russia by Rober Parry
  • [Aug 25, 2017] Some analogies of current events in the USA and Mao cultural revolution: In China when the Mao mythology was threatened the Red Guard raised holy hell and lives were ruined
  • [Aug 08, 2017] The Tale of the Brothers Awan by Philip Giraldi
  • [Jul 30, 2017] the Ukrainingate emerging from the evidence on Hillary campaign sounds like a criminal conspiracy of foreign state against Trump
  • [Jul 29, 2017] Ray McGovern The Deep State Assault on Elected Government Must Be Stopped
  • [Jul 28, 2017] Perhaps Trump asked Sessions to fire Mueller and Sessions refused?
  • [Jul 25, 2017] The Coup against Trump and His Military by James Petras
  • [Jul 25, 2017] Oligarchs Succeed! Only the People Suffer! by James Petras
  • [Jul 17, 2017] Tucker Carlson Goes to War Against the Neocons by Curt Mills
  • [Jul 13, 2017] Progressive Democrats Resist and Submit, Retreat and Surrender by James Petras
  • [Jul 12, 2017] Stephen Cohens Remarks on Tucker Carlson Last Night Were Extraordinary
  • [Jul 01, 2017] MUST SEE video explains the entire 17 Intelligence Agencies Russian hacking lie
  • [Jun 26, 2017] The Soft Coup Under Way In Washington by David Stockman
  • [Jun 15, 2017] Comeys Lies of Omission by Mike Whitney
  • [May 23, 2017] Trumped-up claims against Trump by Ray McGovern
  • [May 20, 2017] Invasion of the Putin-Nazis by C.J. Hopkins
  • [Nov 08, 2017] The Plot to Scapegoat Russia How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin by Dan Kovalik
  • [Dec 29, 2018] -Election Meddling- Enters Bizarro World As MSM Ignores Democrat-Linked -Russian Bot- Scheme -
  • [Dec 22, 2018] British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft by Craig Murray
  • [Dec 22, 2018] If Truth Cannot Prevail Over Material Agendas We Are Doomed by Paul Craig Roberts
  • [Dec 21, 2018] Virtually no one in neoliberal MSM is paying attention to the fact that a group of Pakistani muslims, working for a Jewish Congresswoman from Florida, had full computer access to a large number of Democrat Representatives. Most of the press is disinterested in pursuing this matter
  • [Dec 16, 2018] The 'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation, Disguised As Charity, To Create The Russian Threat
  • [Dec 14, 2018] Vetting NYT materials by CIA reflects full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the neoliberal MSM
  • [Dec 14, 2018] The dirty propaganda games NYT play
  • [Dec 05, 2018] Beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May is wailing loudly against a Trump threat to reveal classified documents relating to Russiagate by Philip Giraldi
  • [Dec 02, 2018] Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski Wins 2018 Sam Adams Award by Ray McGovern
  • [Dec 02, 2018] Muller investigation has all the appearance of an investigation looking for a crime
  • [Nov 27, 2018] 'Highly likely' that Magnitsky was poisoned by toxic chemicals on Bill Browder's orders
  • [Nov 27, 2018] US Foreign Policy Has No Policy by Philip Giraldi
  • [Nov 24, 2018] MI6 Scrambling To Stop Trump From Releasing Classified Docs In Russia Probe
  • [Nov 24, 2018] Anonymous Exposes UK-Led Psyop To Battle Russian Propaganda
  • [Nov 24, 2018] British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns
  • [Nov 24, 2018] Now we know created MH17 smear campaign, who financial Steele dossier and created Skripal affair ;-)
  • [Nov 24, 2018] When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots psyops, you tend to come up with plots for psyops . The word entrapment comes to mind. Probably self-serving also.
  • [Nov 23, 2018] Sitting on corruption hill
  • [Nov 12, 2018] Obama s CIA Secretly Intercepted Congressional Communications About Whistleblowers
  • [Nov 12, 2018] Protecting Americans from foreign influence, smells with COINTELPRO. Structural witch-hunt effect like during the McCarthy era is designed to supress decent to neoliberal oligarcy by Andre Damon and Joseph Kishore
  • [Nov 23, 2018] Sitting on corruption hill
  • [Oct 25, 2018] Putin jokes with Bolton: Did the eagle eaten all the olives
  • [Oct 25, 2018] DNC Emails--A Seth Attack Not a Russian Hack by Publius Tacitus
  • [Oct 20, 2018] Cloak and Dagger by Israel Shamir
  • [Oct 09, 2018] The Skripals Are an MI6 Hoax - 'Not Worthy of Ladies' Detective Novels' - Israeli Expert Demolishes UK Case
  • [Oct 08, 2018] British intelligence now officially is a by-word for organized crime by John Wight
  • [Oct 08, 2018] Hacking and Propaganda by Marcus Ranum
  • [Oct 02, 2018] I m puzzled why CIA is so against Kavanaugh?
  • [Sep 23, 2018] UK Begged Trump Not To Declassify Russia Docs; Cited Grave Concerns Over Steele Involvement
  • [Sep 21, 2018] One party state: Trump's 'Opposition' Supports All His Evil Agendas While Attacking Fake Nonsence by Caitlin Johnstone
  • [Sep 16, 2018] Perils of Ineptitude by Andrew Levin
  • [Nov 12, 2018] Protecting Americans from foreign influence, smells with COINTELPRO. Structural witch-hunt effect like during the McCarthy era is designed to supress decent to neoliberal oligarcy by Andre Damon and Joseph Kishore
  • [Oct 25, 2018] Putin jokes with Bolton: Did the eagle eaten all the olives
  • [Oct 20, 2018] I am most encouraged by the apparent Putin's realisation that the First Strike is possible now if not even likely. If the Russians expect an attack they are much less likely to be totally surprised, as usual. In fact, never in history was such attack by the West more likely than now, for various reasons which would take a while to explain.
  • [Sep 15, 2018] BBC is skanky state propaganda
  • [Sep 07, 2018] New York Times Undermining Peace Efforts by Sowing Suspicion by Diana Johnstone
  • [Sep 07, 2018] Sarah Huckabee Sanders has a legitimate request to neoliberal MSM - Stop Bugging Me About The New York Times' Trump Op-Ed
  • [Aug 22, 2018] The CIA Owns the US and European Media by Paul Craig Roberts
  • [Aug 14, 2018] I think one of Mueller s deeply embedded character flaw is that once he decides on burying someone he becomes possessed
  • [Aug 14, 2018] US Intelligence Community is Tearing the Country Apart from the Inside by Dmitry Orlov
  • [Aug 11, 2018] President Trump the most important achivement
  • [Aug 08, 2018] Sergei Skripal was linked to a consultant with former UK spy Christopher Steele's Orbis Business Intelligence
  • [Aug 08, 2018] Ten Bombshell Revelations From Seymour Hersh's New Autobiography
  • [Aug 05, 2018] Cooper was equally as unhinged as Boot: Neoliberal MSM is a real 1984 remake.
  • [Jul 31, 2018] Is not the Awan affair a grave insult to the US "Intelligence Community?
  • [Jul 28, 2018] American Society Would Collapse If It Were not For These 8 Myths by Lee Camp
  • [Jul 23, 2018] Chickens with Their Heads Cut Off, Coming Home to Roost. The "Treason Narrative" by Helen Buyniski
  • [Jul 22, 2018] Tucker Carlson SLAMS Intelligence Community On Russia
  • [Jul 20, 2018] So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don t question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven t been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax
  • [Jul 20, 2018] Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community by Ilana Mercer
  • [Jul 15, 2018] What Mueller won t find by Bob In Portland
  • [Jul 13, 2018] False flag operation covering DNC leaks now involves Mueller and his team
  • [Jun 09, 2018] Spooks Spooking Themselves by Daniel Lazare
  • [Jun 09, 2018] Still Waiting for Evidence of a Russian Hack by Ray McGovern
  • [May 29, 2018] Guccifer 2.0's American Fingerprints Reveal An Operation Made In The USA by Elizabeth Lea Vos
  • [May 24, 2018] Most probably Veselnitskaya was a false flag operation to entrap Trump campaign played by British intelligence
  • [May 04, 2018] Media Use Disinformation To Accuse Russia Of Spreading Such by b
  • [Apr 24, 2018] The Democratic Party has embraced the agenda of the military-intelligence apparatus and sought to become its main political voice
  • [Apr 21, 2018] It s a tough old world and we are certainly capable of a Salisbury set-up and god knows what else in Syria.
  • [Apr 15, 2018] The Trump Regime Is Insane by Paul Craig Roberts
  • [Mar 27, 2018] The Stormy Daniels scandal Political warfare in Washington hits a new low by Patrick Martin
  • [Mar 17, 2018] How the gas was administred in a place which was under surveillance and why passersby were not affected
  • [Mar 15, 2018] The UK will promptly expel 23 Russian diplomats without waiting for the end of the investigation
  • [Mar 13, 2018] The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party by Patrick Martin
  • [Mar 10, 2018] Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko s death.
  • [Mar 10, 2018] There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this
  • [Mar 08, 2018] Given the CrowdStrike itself is a massively compromised organization due to its founder and CEO, those "certified true images" are themselves tainted evidence
  • [Mar 08, 2018] Mueller determines the US foreign policy toward Russia; The Intel Community Lies About Russian Meddling by Publius Tacitus
  • [Feb 04, 2018] DNC collusion with Ukrainian IT Security company Crowdstrike tied to the Atlantic Council to push false narrative of DNC hack and malware to influence US election
  • [Jan 22, 2018] The Justice Department and FBI set up the meeting at Trump Tower between Trump Jr., Manafort and Kushner with controversial Russian officials to make Trump's associates appear compromised
  • [Dec 31, 2017] What Happens When A Russiagate Skeptic Debates A Professional Russiagater
  • [Dec 28, 2017] How CrowdStrike placed malware in DNC hacked servers by Alex Christoforou
  • [Sep 17, 2017] The So-called Russian Hack of the DNC Does Not Make Sense by Publius Tacitus
  • [Jul 17, 2017] Tucker Carlson Goes to War Against the Neocons by Curt Mills
  • [Jul 12, 2017] Stephen Cohens Remarks on Tucker Carlson Last Night Were Extraordinary
  • [Dec 10, 2016] Why the US elite loves so much to demonise Russia
  • [Jul 20, 2018] So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don t question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven t been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax
  • [Jul 20, 2018] What exactly is fake news caucus99percent
  • [Jul 20, 2018] Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community by Ilana Mercer
  • [Jul 20, 2018] Is President Trump A Traitor Because He Wants Peace With Russia by Paul Craig Roberts
  • [Jul 17, 2018] I think there is much more to the comment made by Putin regarding Bill Browder and his money flows into the DNC and Clinton campaign. That would explain why the DNC didn t hand the servers over to the FBI after being hacked.
  • [Jul 16, 2018] Five Things That Would Make The CIA-CNN Russia Narrative More Believable
  • [Jul 15, 2018] What Mueller won t find by Bob In Portland
  • [Jul 15, 2018] Sic Semper Tyrannis HILLARY CLINTON S COMPROMISED EMAILS WERE GOING TO A FOREIGN ENTITY – NOT RUSSIA! FBI Agent Ignored Evide
  • [Jul 15, 2018] Peter Strzok Ignored Evidence Of Clinton Server Breach
  • [Jul 15, 2018] Something Rotten About the DOJ Indictment of the GRU by Publius Tacitus
  • [Jul 15, 2018] As if the Donald did not sanctioned to death the Russians on every possible level. How is this different from Mueller's and comp witch hunt against the Russians?
  • [Jul 13, 2018] False flag operation covering DNC leaks now involves Mueller and his team
  • [Jul 05, 2018] Britain's Most Censored Stories (Non-Military)
  • [Jul 03, 2018] Russia has a lot of information about Lybia that could dig a political grave for Hillary. They did not release it
  • [Jul 03, 2018] Musings II The "Intelligence Community," "Russian Interference," and Due Diligence
  • [Jun 17, 2018] Mattis Putin Is Trying To Undermine America s Moral Authority by Caitlin Johnstone
  • [Jun 17, 2018] the dominant political forces in EU are anti-Russia
  • [Jun 14, 2018] Problem with US and British MSM control of narrative
  • [Jun 13, 2018] How False Flag Operations Are Carried Out Today by Philip M. GIRALDI
  • [Jun 12, 2018] The real reason for which 'information apocalypse' terrifies the mainstream media
  • [Jun 09, 2018] Still Waiting for Evidence of a Russian Hack by Ray McGovern
  • [Jun 09, 2018] Spooks Spooking Themselves by Daniel Lazare
  • [Jun 06, 2018] Why Foreign Policy Realism Isn't Enough by William S. Smith
  • [May 31, 2018] Journalists and academics expose UK's criminal actions in the Middle East by Julie Hyland
  • [May 27, 2018] Northwestern University roundtable discusses regime change in Russia Defend Democracy Press
  • [May 24, 2018] Most probably Veselnitskaya was a false flag operation to entrap Trump campaign played by British intelligence
  • [May 24, 2018] The diversion of Russia Gate is a continuation of former diversions such as the Tea Party which was invented by the banksters to turn public anger over the big banking collapse and the resulting recession into a movement to gain more deregulation for tax breaks for the wealthy
  • [May 23, 2018] Mueller role as a hatchet man is now firmly established. Rosenstein key role in applointing Mueller without any evidence became also more clear with time. Was he coerced or did it voluntarily is unclear by Lambert Strether
  • [May 23, 2018] If the Trump-Russia set up began in spring 2016 or earlier, presumably it was undertaken on the assumption that HRC would win the election. (I say "presumably" because you never can tell..) If so, then the operation would have been an MI6 / Ukrainian / CIA coordinated op intended to frame Putin, not Trump
  • [May 04, 2018] Media Use Disinformation To Accuse Russia Of Spreading Such by b
  • [May 03, 2018] Mueller's questions to Trump more those of a prosecuting attorney than of an impartial investigator by Alexander Mercouris
  • [May 03, 2018] Skripal case British confirm they have no suspect; Yulia Skripal vanishes, no word of Sergey Skripal by Alexander Mercouris
  • [May 03, 2018] Despite all the propaganda, all the hysterical headlines, all the blatantly biased coverage, the British haven't bought it
  • [Apr 23, 2018] The Tony Blair Rule: The Truth Takes 15 Years to Come Out, Skripal Countdown Starts Now - Simonyan
  • [Apr 21, 2018] It s a tough old world and we are certainly capable of a Salisbury set-up and god knows what else in Syria.
  • [Apr 16, 2018] British Propaganda and Disinformation An Imperial and Colonial Tradition by Wayne MADSEN
  • [Apr 10, 2018] The Ghouta Massacre near Damascus on Aug 21, 2013 was not a sarin rocket attack carried out by Assad or his supporters. It was a false-flag stunt carried out by the insurgents using carbon monoxide or cyanide to murder children and use their corpses as bait to lure the Americans into attacking Assad.
  • [Apr 05, 2018] The Three Most Important Aspects of the Skripal Case so Far and Where They by Rob Slane
  • [Apr 05, 2018] An Interview with Retired Russian General Evgeny Buzhinsky The National Interest
  • [Apr 03, 2018] This Washington Post Headline Is Fake News
  • [Apr 03, 2018] Exercise TOXIC DAGGER - the sharp end of chemical warfare
  • [Apr 02, 2018] Russophobia Anti-Russian Lobby and American Foreign Policy by A. Tsygankov
  • [Apr 02, 2018] Russia 'Novichok' Hysteria Proves Politicians and Media Haven't Learned the Lessons of Iraq by Patrick Henningsen
  • [Apr 02, 2018] The Litvinenko Conspiracy
  • [Apr 01, 2018] Big American Money, Not Russia, Put Trump in the White House: Reflections on a Recent Report by Paul Street
  • [Apr 01, 2018] Does the average user care if s/he is micro-targetted by political advertisements based on what they already believe?
  • [Apr 01, 2018] UK may have staged Skripal poisoning to rally people against Russia, Moscow believes
  • [Mar 31, 2018] FBI Director Mueller testified to Congress that Saddam Hussein was responsible for anthrax attack! That was Mueller's role in selling the "intelligence" to invade Iraq.
  • [Mar 27, 2018] The Stormy Daniels scandal Political warfare in Washington hits a new low by Patrick Martin
  • [Mar 27, 2018] Perfidious Albion The Fatally Wounded British Beast Lashes Out by Barbara Boyd
  • [Mar 25, 2018] Cambridge Analytica Scandal Rockets to Watergate Proportions and Beyond by Adam Garrie
  • [Mar 24, 2018] Why the UK, the EU and the US Gang-Up on Russia by James Petras
  • [Mar 24, 2018] Did Trump cut a deal on the collusion charge by Mike Whitney
  • [Mar 22, 2018] Vladimir Putin: nonsense to think Russia would poison spy in UK
  • [Mar 21, 2018] Former CIA Chief Brennan Running Scared by Ray McGovern
  • [Mar 21, 2018] Arafat and Litvinenko: an Interesting Turn to a Mysterious Story
  • [Mar 21, 2018] Whataboutism Is A Nonsensical Propaganda Term Used To Defend The Failed Status Quo by Mike Krieger
  • [Mar 16, 2018] Corbyn Calls for Evidence in Escalating Poison Row
  • [Mar 16, 2018] NATO to display common front in Skripal case
  • [Mar 15, 2018] The UK will promptly expel 23 Russian diplomats without waiting for the end of the investigation
  • [Mar 14, 2018] Russian UN anvoy> alleged the Salisbury attack was a false-flag attack, possibly by the UK itself, intended to harm Russia s reputation by Julian Borger
  • [Mar 14, 2018] UNSC holds urgent meeting over Salisbury attack
  • [Mar 13, 2018] The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party by Patrick Martin
  • [Mar 12, 2018] New Huge Anti-Russian Provocation ahead of Russian election by Robert Stevens
  • [Mar 12, 2018] State Department's War on Political Dissent
  • [Mar 11, 2018] Washington s Century-long War on Russia by Mike Whitney
  • [Mar 11, 2018] Reality Check: The Guardian Restarts Push for Regime Change in Russia by Kit
  • [Mar 11, 2018] The Elephant In The Room by Craig Murray
  • [Mar 11, 2018] It is highly probably that Steele and Skripal knew each other
  • [Mar 11, 2018] Ramping Russophobia is the most convincing motive for the Skripal attack
  • [Mar 10, 2018] Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in Obama policy and HRC campaign long before any Steele s Dossier. This was a program ofunleashing cold War II
  • [Mar 10, 2018] There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this
  • [Mar 08, 2018] We don t have the evidence yet because Mueller hasn t found it yet! is a classic argument from ignorance, in that is assumes without evidence (there s that pesky word again!) that there is something to be found
  • [Mar 08, 2018] Cue bono question in Scripal case?
  • [Mar 08, 2018] In recent years, there has been ample evidence that US policy-makers and, equally important, mainstream media commentators do not bother to read what Putin says, or at least not more than snatches from click-bait wire-service reports.
  • [Mar 08, 2018] A key piece of evidence pointing to 'Guccifer 2.0' being a fake personality created by the conspirators in their attempt to disguise the fact that the materials from the DNC published by 'WikiLeaks' were obtained by a leak rather than a hack had to do with the involvement of the former GCHQ person Matt Tait.
  • [Mar 08, 2018] Mueller determines the US foreign policy toward Russia; The Intel Community Lies About Russian Meddling by Publius Tacitus
  • [Mar 06, 2018] Is MSNBC Now the Most Dangerous Warmonger Network by Norman Solomon
  • [Mar 06, 2018] The U.S. Returns to 'Great Power Competition,' With a Dangerous New Edge
  • [Mar 06, 2018] The current anti-Russian sentiment in the West as hysterical. But this hysteria is concentrated at the top level of media elite and neocons. Behind it is no deep sense of unity or national resolve. In fact we see the reverse - most Western countries are deeply divided within themselves due to the crisis of neolineralism.
  • [Mar 02, 2018] Contradictions In Seth Rich Murder Continue To Challenge Hacking Narrative
  • [Feb 28, 2018] Perjury traps to manufacture indictments to pressure people to testify against others is a new tool of justice in a surveillance state
  • [Feb 26, 2018] Democrat Memo Lays Egg by Publius Tacitus
  • [Feb 25, 2018] Russia would not do anything nearing the level of self-harm inflicted by the US elites.
  • [Feb 23, 2018] NSA Genius Debunks Russiagate Once For All
  • [Feb 22, 2018] Bill Binney explodes the rile of 17 agances security assessment memo in launching the Russia witch-hunt
  • [Feb 20, 2018] For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia
  • [Feb 20, 2018] Russophobia is a futile bid to conceal US, European demise by Finian Cunningham
  • [Feb 19, 2018] Nunes FBI and DOJ Perps Could Be Put on Trial by Ray McGovern
  • [Feb 19, 2018] The Russiagate Intelligence Wars What We Do and Don't Know
  • [Feb 19, 2018] Russian Meddling Was a Drop in an Ocean of American-made Discord by AMANDA TAUB and MAX FISHER
  • [Feb 18, 2018] This dangerous escalation of tensions with Russia is extremely lucrative for the war profiteers, the retired generals intelligence members who prostitute themselves as media pundits, the members of Congress who get $$$ from the war profiteers, and the corporate media which thrives on links to the war profiteers as well as on war reporting
  • [Feb 14, 2018] Recused Judge in Flynn Prosecution Served on FISA Court
  • [Feb 14, 2018] The Anti-Trump Coup by Michael S. Rozeff
  • [Feb 10, 2018] More on neoliberal newspeak of US propaganda machine
  • [Feb 08, 2018] Control of narrative means that creation of the simplistic picture in which the complexities of the world are elided in favor of 'good guys' vs. 'bad guys' dichotomy
  • [Feb 04, 2018] DNC collusion with Ukrainian IT Security company Crowdstrike tied to the Atlantic Council to push false narrative of DNC hack and malware to influence US election
  • [Jan 30, 2018] Washington Reaches New Heights of Insanity with the "Kremlin Report" by Paul Craig Roberts
  • [Jan 28, 2018] Russiagate Isn t About Trump, And It Isn t Even Ultimately About Russia by Caitlyn Johnstone
  • [Jan 27, 2018] The Rich Also Cry by Israel Shamir
  • [Jan 27, 2018] As of January 2018 Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, is starting to look like something Trump should have done sooner.
  • [Jan 27, 2018] In a Trump Hunt, Beware the Perjury Trap by Pat Buchanan
  • [Jan 26, 2018] Warns The Russiagate Stakes Are Extreme by Paul Craig Roberts
  • [Jan 25, 2018] Russiagate as Kafka 2.0
  • [Jan 24, 2018] Brazen Plot To Exonerate Hillary Clinton And Frame Trump Unraveling, Says Former Fed Prosecutor
  • [Jan 22, 2018] Clapper may have been the one behind using British intelligence to spy on Trump.
  • [Jan 19, 2018] #ReleaseTheMemo Extensive FISA abuse memo could destroy the entire Mueller Russia investigation by Alex Christoforou
  • [Jan 16, 2018] The Russia Explainer
  • [Jan 14, 2018] Sic Semper Tyrannis The Trump Dossier Timeline, A Democrat Disaster Looming by Publius Tacitus
  • [May 11, 2019] Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart -- Say Hello to Fancy Bear
  • [Jan 08, 2018] Someone Spoofed Michael Wolff s Book About Trump And It s Comedy Gold
  • [Jan 06, 2018] Russia-gate Breeds Establishment McCarthyism by Robert Parry
  • [May 11, 2019] Doug Ross @ Journal A TIMELINE OF TREASON How the DNC and FBI Leadership Tried to Fix a Presidential Election [Updated]
  • [Nov 29, 2019] Where s the Collusion
  • [Jan 02, 2018] The Still-Missing Evidence of Russia-gate by Dennis J. Bernstein
  • [Jan 02, 2018] Some investigators ask a sensible question: "It is likely that all the Russians involved in the attempt to influence the 2016 election were lying, scheming, Kremlin-linked, Putin-backed enemies of America except the Russians who talked to Christopher Steele?"
  • [Jan 02, 2018] What We Don t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking by Jackson Lears
  • [Jan 02, 2018] Jill Stein in the Cross-hairs by Mike Whitney
  • [Jul 13, 2019] Mueller Does Not Have Evidence That The IRA Was Part of Russian Government Meddling by Larry C Johnson
  • [Dec 28, 2019] Senior OPCW Official Busted Leaked Email Exposes Orders To Delete All Traces Of Dissent On Douma
  • [Dec 22, 2019] So US intelligence tipped off the DNC that their emails were about to be leaked to Wikileaks. That's when the stratagem of attributing the impending Wikileaks release to a Russian hack was born -- distracting from the incriminating content of the emails, while vilifying the Deep State's favorite enemies, Assange and Russia, all in one neat scam
  • [Dec 21, 2019] The ruthless neo-colonialists of 21st century
  • [Dec 20, 2019] Did John Brennan's CIA Create Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks by Larry C Johnson
  • [Dec 20, 2019] NSA Whistleblower: "Mueller Report based on fabricated evidence" Former NSA technical chief, Bill Binney, says it looked like the CIA did this, and made it look like the Russians were doing the hack to implicate Russians by Eric Zuesse
  • [Dec 20, 2019] The purpose of manufactured hysteria in the US is to obfuscate the issues important to the Deep State like destroying the first amendment, renewing the 'Patriot' act, extremely increasing the war/hegemony budget, etc
  • [Dec 19, 2019] MIC lobbyism (which often is presented as patriotism) is the last refuge of scoundrels
  • [Dec 19, 2019] Historically the ability of unelected, unaccountable, secretive bureaucracies (aka the "Deep State") to exercise their own policy without regard for the public or elected officials, often in defiance of these, has always been the hallmark of the destruction of democracy and incipient tyranny.
  • [Dec 17, 2019] Neocons like car salespeople have a stereotypical reputation for lacking credibility because ther profession is to lie in order to sell weapons to the publin, much like used car saleme lie to sell cars
  • [Dec 17, 2019] History Doesn t Repeat, But It Often Rhymes: Wilson in UK was subjected to the similar attack by rogue elements in MI5 as Trump in the USA
  • [Dec 14, 2019] Full Interview: Barr Criticizes Inspector General Report On The Russia Investigation
  • [Dec 14, 2019] A Determined Effort to Undermine Russia
  • [Dec 12, 2019] Threat Inflation Poisons Our Foreign Policy by Daniel Larison
  • [Dec 12, 2019] The FBI - Pushed By John Brennan - Lied To The Court Seven Times To Spy On The Trump Campaign
  • [Dec 10, 2019] The level of Neo-McCarthyism and the number of lunitics this NYT forums is just astonishing: When it comes to Donald Trump and Russia, everything is connected.
  • [Dec 07, 2019] Why the foreign policy establishment consensus is neocon by default.
  • [Dec 07, 2019] Impeachment does not require a crime.
  • [Dec 04, 2019] The central question of Ukrainegate is whether CrowdStrike actions on DNC leak were a false flag operation designed to open Russiagate and what was the level of participation of Poroshenko government and Ukrainian Security services in this false flag operation by Factotum
  • [Dec 04, 2019] Responding to Lt. Col. Vindman about my Ukraine columns with the facts John Solomon Reports
  • [Dec 04, 2019] Ukrainegaters claim that Trump Reduced the USA empire 'Global Commitments' was fraudulent from the very beginning. Trump is yet another imperial president who favours the "Full spectrum Dominance; The problem is that the time when the USA can have it are in the past. Europe finally recovered from WWII losses and that alone dooms the idea
  • [Dec 04, 2019] Common Funding Themes Link 'Whistleblower' Complaint and CrowdStrike Firm Certifying DNC Russia 'Hack' by Aaron Klein
  • [Dec 04, 2019] DNC Russian Hackers Found! You Won't Believe Who They Really Work For by the Anonymous Patriots
  • [Dec 04, 2019] June 4th, 2017 Crowdstrike Was at the DNC Six Weeks by George Webb
  • [Dec 04, 2019] Cyberanalyst George Eliason Claims that the "Fancy Bear" Who Hacked the DNC Server is Ukrainian Intelligence – In League with the Atlantic Council and Crowdstrike
  • [Dec 04, 2019] Fancy Bear - Conservapedia
  • [Dec 04, 2019] June 2nd, 2018 Alperovich's DNC Cover Stories Soon To Match With His Hacking Teams by George Webb
  • [Dec 04, 2019] America's War Exceptionalism Is Killing the Planet by William Astore
  • [Dec 02, 2019] The cost of militarism cannot be measured only in lost opportunities, lives and money. There will be a long hangover of shame
  • [Nov 29, 2019] Where s the Collusion
  • [Nov 28, 2019] WSJ story reopens the claim Comey had a report there was an email exchange between Loretta Lynch and Clinton claiming Lynch promised her the DOJ would go easy on Clinton.
  • [Nov 26, 2019] John Solomon Everything Changes In The Ukraine Scandal If Trump Releases These Documents
  • [Nov 23, 2019] Is Fiona Hill a Sleeper Agent
  • [Nov 07, 2019] Rigged Again Dems, Russia, The Delegitimization Of America s Democratic Process by Elizabeth Vos
  • [Nov 03, 2019] Growing Indicators of Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force by Larry C Johnson - Sic Semper Tyrannis
  • [Nov 02, 2019] WATCH Udo Ulfkotte – Bought Journalists by Terje Maloy
  • [Nov 01, 2019] Viable Opposition The Legal Connection Between Washington and Kiev
  • [Nov 01, 2019] Color revolution is a method of using a minority to render the country ungovernble, waving a simplistic banner against corruption and for (undefined) democracy, which leaves the masses unorganized and eschews even a platform, in favor of a secret coterie run by intelligence againces
  • [Oct 28, 2019] Expert Panel Finds Gaping Plot-Holes In OPCW Report On Alleged Syrian Chemical Attack by Caitlin Johnstone
  • [Oct 25, 2019] Trump-Haters, Not Trump, Are The Ones Wrecking America s Institutions, WSJ s Strassel Says
  • [Oct 20, 2019] Putin sarcastic remark on Western neoliberal multiculturalism
  • [Oct 19, 2019] Russian agents under every bed
  • [Oct 19, 2019] Kunstler One Big Reason Why America Is Driving Itself Bat$hit Crazy
  • [Oct 10, 2019] There is no reason that anyone should treat George Bush with respect: he is a war criminal, who escaped justice
  • [Sep 30, 2019] Stephen Miller calls whistleblower a 'partisan hit job' in fiery interview
  • [Sep 23, 2019] Apparently now that the notion Russia interfered in the US presidential election to tip the vote to Trump has become an article of faith that much of the world regards as established fact
  • [Sep 17, 2019] The Devolution of US-Russia Relations by Tony Kevin
  • [Sep 15, 2019] How the UK Security Services neutralised the country s leading liberal newspaper by Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis
  • [Sep 11, 2019] John Brennan's and Jim Clappers' Last Gasp by Larry C Johnson
  • [Sep 10, 2019] Being called a narcissist by Jim Comey is akin to being accused of having sex with underage girls by the late Jeffrey Epstein by Larry C Johnsons
  • [Sep 03, 2019] Russiagate as crocodile tears of western propaganda
  • [Aug 24, 2019] George Kennan on Russia Insights and Recommendations
  • [Aug 21, 2019] Solomon If Trump Declassifies These 10 Documents, Democrats Are Doomed
  • [Aug 17, 2019] Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome (PTDS)
  • [Aug 17, 2019] Debunking the Putin Panic by Stephen F. Cohen
  • [Aug 16, 2019] Ministry of truth materialized in XXI century in a neoliberal way by Kit Knightly
  • [Aug 16, 2019] Lapdogs for the Government and intelligence agencies by Greg Maybury
  • [Aug 12, 2019] Russiagate is the idea around which varied interests can be organized
  • [Jul 29, 2019] The Real Reason The Propagandists Have Been Promoting Russia Hysteria by Caitlin Johnstone
  • [Jul 28, 2019] Mueller Crumbles Under Questioning by Barbara Boland
  • [Jul 28, 2019] Antisemitism prejudices projection on Russians
  • [Jul 27, 2019] Russia interfered on a massive scale ($3,684 was spends on ads on which $1932 on promoting Trump) and is doing it again as we sit here! Just how massive? They spent $100,000 on clickbait ads from a company owned by a man who was in a photo with the evil mastermind!
  • [Jul 27, 2019] Understanding the Roots of the Obama Coup Against Trump by Larry C Johnson
  • [Jul 26, 2019] Tucker: Democrats believed Mueller would save America. But he is A daft old man blinking in the sunlight once the curtain has been opened
  • [Jul 26, 2019] Tucker What should happen to those who lied about Russian collusion
  • [Jul 13, 2019] Mueller Does Not Have Evidence That The IRA Was Part of Russian Government Meddling by Larry C Johnson
  • [Jul 09, 2019] Ex-FBI, CIA Officials Draw Withering Fire on Russiagate by Ray McGovern
  • [Jul 06, 2019] Mueller Report Gets the Trump Tower Meeting Wrong; Promotes Browder Hoax by Lucy Komisar
  • [Jun 30, 2019] USG's Bizarre Change of Position in the Roger Stone Case by Larry C Johnson
  • [Jun 29, 2019] Latest Weapon Of US Imperialism Liquified Natural Gas
  • [Jun 27, 2019] Western News Agencies Mistranslate Iran's President Speech - It Is Not The First Time Such 'Error' Happens
  • [Jun 26, 2019] Opinion - NY Times admits it sends stories to US government for approval before publication
  • [Jun 19, 2019] Investigation Nation Mueller, Russiagate, and Fake Politics by Jim Kavanagh
  • [Jun 14, 2019] Comments on Yasha Levin article: With Russiagate, we Soviet immigrants were finally forced to reckon with the bigotry of America's elite
  • [Jun 05, 2019] Do Spies Run the World by Israel Shamir
  • [May 29, 2019] With Russiagate, we Soviet immigrants were finally forced to reckon with the bigotry of America's elite by Yasha Levine
  • [May 28, 2019] Any time you read an article (or a comment) on Russia, substitute the word Jew for Russian and International Jewry for Russia and re-read.
  • [May 22, 2019] NATO has pushed eastward right up to its borders and threatened to incorporate regions that have been part of Russia's sphere of influence -- and its defense perimeter -- for centuries
  • [May 20, 2019] "Us" Versus "Them"
  • [May 19, 2019] How Russiagate replaced Analysis of the 2016 Election by Rick Sterling
  • [May 19, 2019] Intel agencies of the UK and US are guilty of fabricating evidence, breaking the laws (certainly of the targeted countries, but also of the UK and US), providing fake analysis and operating as evil actors on the dark side of humanity
  • [May 16, 2019] The Disinformationists by C.J. Hopkins
  • [May 15, 2019] Russia-gate s Monstrous Offspring
  • [May 14, 2019] The Propaganda Multiplier How Global News Agencies and Western Media Report on Geopolitics
  • [May 13, 2019] Angry Bear Senate Democratic Jackasses and Elmer Fudd
  • [May 13, 2019] In defense of Maria Butina Spectator USA by Michael Tracey
  • [May 13, 2019] US Foreign Policy as Bellicose as Ever by Serge Halimi
  • [May 12, 2019] Charting a Progressive Foreign Policy for the Trump Era and Beyond
  • [May 11, 2019] Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia
  • [May 11, 2019] Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they discovered later discovered and attributed to Russians later
  • [May 11, 2019] Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart -- Say Hello to Fancy Bear
  • [May 11, 2019] Whitney Judgment Day Looms For John Brennan
  • [May 11, 2019] Intel and Law Enforcement Tried to Entrap Trump by Larry C Johnson
  • [May 11, 2019] Doug Ross @ Journal A TIMELINE OF TREASON How the DNC and FBI Leadership Tried to Fix a Presidential Election [Updated]
  • [May 11, 2019] Christopher Steele, FBI s Confidential Human Source by Publius Tacitus
  • [May 11, 2019] Nunes Memo Details Weaponization of FISA Court for Political Advantage by Elizabeth Lea Vos
  • [May 11, 2019] CIA Paid $100,000 To Shadowy Russian For Dirt on Trump, Including Sex Video by Chuck Ross
  • [May 10, 2019] Biden is up to neck in Spygate dirt by Jeff Carlson
  • [May 10, 2019] Obama administration raced to obtain FICA warrant on Carter Page before Rogers investigation closes on them and that was definitely an obstruction of justice and interference with the ongoing investigation
  • [May 10, 2019] What was the meaning of the term "insurance policy" in Stzok messages to Lisa Page
  • [May 10, 2019] The Battle Between Rosenstein and McCabe
  • [May 08, 2019] Obama Spied on Other Republicans and Democrats As Well by Larry C Johnson
  • [May 07, 2019] Look! A whale!
  • [May 07, 2019] Chris Hedges: The Demonization of Russia is Driven by Defense Contractors
  • [May 05, 2019] Did Mueller substituted Russia for Israel in his report
  • [May 03, 2019] The Wheels Of Real Justice Are In Motion Now Kunstler Fears The Desperate Resistance Next Move...
  • [May 02, 2019] Neoliberalism and the Globalization of War. America s Hegemonic Project by Prof Michel Chossudovsky
  • [May 02, 2019] Checkmate - How President Trump s Legal Team Outfoxed Mueller by Will Chamberlain
  • [Apr 29, 2019] The Mueller Report Indicts the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theory by Aaron Maté
  • [Apr 28, 2019] The British Role in Russiagate Is About to Be Fully Exposed
  • [Apr 28, 2019] Breath of fresh air--real journalism again! Have so much respect for Chris Hedges and Aaron Mate, great work!
  • [Apr 28, 2019] On Contact Russiagate Mueller Report w- Aaron Mate
  • [Apr 26, 2019] Jared Kushner, Not Maria Butina, Is America's Real Foreign Agent by Philip Giraldi
  • [Apr 26, 2019] Intelligence agencies meddling in elections
  • [Apr 22, 2019] FBI top brass have been colluding with top brass of CIA and MI6 to pursue ambitious anti-Russian agenda
  • [Apr 22, 2019] Current Neo-McCarthyism hysteria as a smoke screen of the UK and the USA intent to dominate European geopolitics and weaken Russia and Germany
  • [Apr 21, 2019] John Brennan's Police State USA
  • [Apr 21, 2019] Whenever someone inconveniences the neoliberal oligarchy, the entire neoliberal MSM mafia tells us 24 x7 how evil and disgusting that person is. It's true of the leader of every nation which rejects neoliberal globalization as well as for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
  • [Apr 20, 2019] Trump has certainly made the world safer
  • [Apr 20, 2019] Sure, blame those guys over there for Hillary fiasco and hire Mueller to get the goods . That s the ultimate the dog ate my homework excuse.
  • [Apr 17, 2019] The media's interest in the well-being of a foreign population is directly proportional to the West's interest in toppling its government, while editorial standards are inversely proportional to its enemy status
  • [Apr 17, 2019] Six US Agencies Conspired ...
  • [Apr 16, 2019] CIA Director Used Fake Skripal Incident Photos To Manipulate Trump
  • [Apr 13, 2019] Russophobia, A WMD (Weapon Of Mass Deception) by Jean Ranc
  • [Apr 12, 2019] Putin was KGB agent crowd forgets that Bush Sr was long time senior CIA operative and the director of CIA
  • [Apr 10, 2019] Habakkuk on cockroaches and the New York Times
  • [Apr 08, 2019] Aaron Maté Was Also Right About Russiagate
  • [Apr 07, 2019] Nunes The Russian Collusion Hoax Meets An Unbelievbable End
  • [Apr 06, 2019] The Magnitsky Act-Behind the Scenes ASEEES
  • [Apr 04, 2019] Was John Brennan The Russia Lie Ringleader
  • [Apr 04, 2019] TEST IT YOURSELF, THE 2-SECOND-ROUNDING FACT PATTERN IN THE DNC EMAILS By William Binney and Larry Johnson
  • [Apr 03, 2019] Jewish Power Rolls Over Washington by Philip Giraldi
  • [Apr 02, 2019] 'Yats' Is No Longer the Guy by Robert Parry
  • [Apr 01, 2019] Amazon.com War with Russia From Putin Ukraine to Trump Russiagate (9781510745810) Stephen F. Cohen Books
  • [Mar 31, 2019] A Reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco by James W Carden
  • [Mar 31, 2019] What is the purpose of Russiagate hysteria?
  • [Mar 30, 2019] The US desperately needs Venezuelan oil
  • [Mar 30, 2019] The Real Costs of Russiagate
  • [Mar 30, 2019] You don't like Trump? Bolton? Clinton? All of these people who are in or have passed through leadership positions in America are entirely valid representatives of Americans in general. You may imagine they are faking cluelessness to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their crimes, but the cluelessness is quite real and extends to the entire population.
  • [Mar 25, 2019] Russiagate was never about substance, it was about who gets to image-manage the decline of a turbo-charged, self-harming neoliberal capitalism by Jonathan Cook
  • [Mar 25, 2019] Meet The Kushners First Couple In-Waiting by Ilana Mercer
  • [Mar 25, 2019] Spygate The True Story of Collusion (plus Infographic) by Jeff Carlson
  • [Mar 25, 2019] Nuland role in Russiagate
  • [Mar 25, 2019] Another SIGINT compromise ...
  • [Mar 24, 2019] The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian.
  • [Mar 24, 2019] The accountability that must follow Mueller's report
  • [Mar 24, 2019] "Russia Gate" investigation was a color revolution agaist Trump. But a strnge side effect was that Clintons have managed to raise a vicious, loud mouthed thug to the status of some kind of martyr.
  • [Mar 24, 2019] With RussiaGate Over Where's Hillary
  • [Mar 24, 2019] One could wish that DOJ IG Horowitz could investigate and sanction British Intelligence for its use of official and non-official officials in starting this debacle.
  • [Mar 24, 2019] One thing left out is the ability of readers to call BS on a story i.e. a robust comment section for debates.
  • [Mar 23, 2019] Brennan pipe dream obliterated. The color revolution against Trump failed
  • [Mar 23, 2019] Mueller stopped following the money the moment he realized it was all leading back to Israel.
  • [Mar 22, 2019] Glenn Greenwald on Twitter The Mueller investigation is complete and this is a simple fact that will never go away
  • [Mar 20, 2019] In a remarkable report by British Channel 4, former CIA officials and a Reuters correspondent spoke candidly about the systematic dissemination of propaganda and misinformation in reporting on geopolitical conflicts
  • [Mar 18, 2019] Journalists who are spies
  • [Mar 18, 2019] The Why are the media playing lapdog and not watchdog – again – on war in Iraq?
  • [Mar 17, 2019] Mueller uses the same old false flag scams, just different packaging of his forensics-free findings
  • [Mar 17, 2019] VIPS- Mueller's Forensics-Free Findings
  • [Mar 14, 2019] Manafort's Ukrainians were actually pro-West? - Habakkuk
  • [Mar 06, 2019] Disinformation destroys reality
  • [Feb 22, 2019] Neo-McCarthyism is used to defend the US imperial policies. Branding dissidents as Russian stooges is a loophole that allow to suppress dissident opinions
  • [Feb 17, 2019] Trump is Russian asset memo is really neocon propaganda overkill
  • [Feb 16, 2019] MSM Begs For Trust After Buzzfeed Debacle by Caitlin Johnstone
  • [Feb 16, 2019] Death Of Russiagate: Mueller Team Tied To Mifsud s Network
  • [Feb 13, 2019] MoA - Russiagate Is Finished
  • [Feb 13, 2019] Stephen Cohen on War with Russia and Soviet-style Censorship in the US by Russell Mokhiber
  • [Feb 09, 2019] Did The Department Of Justice Protect Brenda Snipes From Prosecution For Ballot Destruction by Elizabeth Lea Vos
  • [Feb 04, 2019] Trump s Revised and Rereleased Foreign Policy: The World Policeman is Back
  • [Jan 29, 2019] Guardian became Deep State Guardian
  • [Jan 22, 2019] War with Russia From Putin Ukraine to Trump Russiagate
  • [Jan 21, 2019] Beyond BuzzFeed The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing US Media Failures On The Trump-Russia Story by Glenn Greenwald
  • [Jan 20, 2019] Doctor, nurse, Chief Nursing Officer of the Army, whatever.
  • [Jan 19, 2019] Coincidence - Chief Nurse Of British Army Was First Person To Arrive At Novichoked Skripal Scene
  • [Jan 13, 2019] As FBI Ramped Up Witch Hunt When Trump Fired Comey, Strzok Admitted Collusion Investigation A Joke
  • [Jan 11, 2019] New Documents Reveal a Covert British Military-Intelligence Smear Machine Meddling In American Politics by Mark Ames
  • [Jan 11, 2019] Facts does not matter in the current propoganda environment, the narrative is everything
  • [Jan 08, 2019] Shock Files- What Role Did Integrity Initiative Play in Sergei Skripal Affair- - Sputnik International
  • [Jan 08, 2019] Skripal spin doctors- Documents link UK govt-funded Integrity Initiative to anti-Russia narrative
  • [Jan 06, 2019] British elite fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies.
  • [Jan 02, 2019] Russian bots - How An Anti-Russian Lobby Creates Fake News
  • [Jan 02, 2019] The Only Meddling "Russian Bots" Were Actually Democrat-Led "Experts" by Mac Slavo
  • [Jan 02, 2019] Did Mueller Patched Together Much of His Indictment from 2015 Radio Free Europe Article ?
  • [Dec 30, 2018] RussiaGate In Review with Aaron Mate - Unreasoned Fear is Neoliberalism's Response to the Credibility Gap
  • [Dec 29, 2018] -Election Meddling- Enters Bizarro World As MSM Ignores Democrat-Linked -Russian Bot- Scheme -
  • [Dec 22, 2018] British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft by Craig Murray
  • [Dec 22, 2018] If Truth Cannot Prevail Over Material Agendas We Are Doomed by Paul Craig Roberts
  • [Dec 21, 2018] Virtually no one in neoliberal MSM is paying attention to the fact that a group of Pakistani muslims, working for a Jewish Congresswoman from Florida, had full computer access to a large number of Democrat Representatives. Most of the press is disinterested in pursuing this matter
  • [Dec 16, 2018] The 'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation, Disguised As Charity, To Create The Russian Threat
  • [Dec 14, 2018] Vetting NYT materials by CIA reflects full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the neoliberal MSM
  • [Dec 14, 2018] The dirty propaganda games NYT play
  • [Dec 05, 2018] Beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May is wailing loudly against a Trump threat to reveal classified documents relating to Russiagate by Philip Giraldi
  • [Dec 02, 2018] Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski Wins 2018 Sam Adams Award by Ray McGovern
  • [Dec 02, 2018] Muller investigation has all the appearance of an investigation looking for a crime
  • [Nov 27, 2018] 'Highly likely' that Magnitsky was poisoned by toxic chemicals on Bill Browder's orders
  • [Nov 27, 2018] US Foreign Policy Has No Policy by Philip Giraldi
  • [Nov 24, 2018] MI6 Scrambling To Stop Trump From Releasing Classified Docs In Russia Probe
  • [Nov 24, 2018] Anonymous Exposes UK-Led Psyop To Battle Russian Propaganda
  • [Nov 24, 2018] British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns
  • [Nov 24, 2018] Now we know created MH17 smear campaign, who financial Steele dossier and created Skripal affair ;-)
  • [Nov 24, 2018] When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots psyops, you tend to come up with plots for psyops . The word entrapment comes to mind. Probably self-serving also.
  • [Nov 23, 2018] Sitting on corruption hill
  • [Nov 12, 2018] Obama s CIA Secretly Intercepted Congressional Communications About Whistleblowers
  • [Nov 12, 2018] Protecting Americans from foreign influence, smells with COINTELPRO. Structural witch-hunt effect like during the McCarthy era is designed to supress decent to neoliberal oligarcy by Andre Damon and Joseph Kishore
  • [Oct 25, 2018] Putin jokes with Bolton: Did the eagle eaten all the olives
  • [Oct 25, 2018] DNC Emails--A Seth Attack Not a Russian Hack by Publius Tacitus
  • [Oct 20, 2018] Cloak and Dagger by Israel Shamir
  • [Oct 09, 2018] The Skripals Are an MI6 Hoax - 'Not Worthy of Ladies' Detective Novels' - Israeli Expert Demolishes UK Case
  • [Oct 08, 2018] British intelligence now officially is a by-word for organized crime by John Wight
  • [Oct 08, 2018] Hacking and Propaganda by Marcus Ranum
  • [Oct 02, 2018] I m puzzled why CIA is so against Kavanaugh?
  • [Sep 23, 2018] UK Begged Trump Not To Declassify Russia Docs; Cited Grave Concerns Over Steele Involvement
  • [Sep 21, 2018] One party state: Trump's 'Opposition' Supports All His Evil Agendas While Attacking Fake Nonsence by Caitlin Johnstone
  • [Sep 16, 2018] Perils of Ineptitude by Andrew Levin
  • [Sep 15, 2018] BBC is skanky state propaganda
  • [Sep 07, 2018] New York Times Undermining Peace Efforts by Sowing Suspicion by Diana Johnstone
  • [Sep 07, 2018] Sarah Huckabee Sanders has a legitimate request to neoliberal MSM - Stop Bugging Me About The New York Times' Trump Op-Ed
  • [Aug 22, 2018] The CIA Owns the US and European Media by Paul Craig Roberts
  • [Aug 14, 2018] I think one of Mueller s deeply embedded character flaw is that once he decides on burying someone he becomes possessed
  • [Aug 14, 2018] US Intelligence Community is Tearing the Country Apart from the Inside by Dmitry Orlov
  • [Aug 11, 2018] President Trump the most important achivement
  • [Oct 20, 2019] Putin sarcastic remark on Western neoliberal multiculturalism
  • [Oct 19, 2019] Russian agents under every bed
  • [Aug 08, 2018] Sergei Skripal was linked to a consultant with former UK spy Christopher Steele's Orbis Business Intelligence
  • [Aug 08, 2018] Ten Bombshell Revelations From Seymour Hersh's New Autobiography
  • [Aug 05, 2018] Cooper was equally as unhinged as Boot: Neoliberal MSM is a real 1984 remake.
  • [Jul 31, 2018] Is not the Awan affair a grave insult to the US "Intelligence Community?
  • [Jul 28, 2018] American Society Would Collapse If It Were not For These 8 Myths by Lee Camp
  • [Jul 23, 2018] Chickens with Their Heads Cut Off, Coming Home to Roost. The "Treason Narrative" by Helen Buyniski
  • [Jul 22, 2018] Tucker Carlson SLAMS Intelligence Community On Russia
  • [Jul 20, 2018] So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don t question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven t been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax
  • [Jul 20, 2018] Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community by Ilana Mercer
  • [Jul 15, 2018] What Mueller won t find by Bob In Portland
  • [Jul 13, 2018] False flag operation covering DNC leaks now involves Mueller and his team
  • [Sep 15, 2019] Demythologizing the Roots of the New Cold War by Ted Snider
  • [Sep 03, 2019] Russiagate as crocodile tears of western propaganda
  • [Aug 17, 2019] Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome (PTDS)
  • [Jul 27, 2019] Russia interfered on a massive scale ($3,684 was spends on ads on which $1932 on promoting Trump) and is doing it again as we sit here! Just how massive? They spent $100,000 on clickbait ads from a company owned by a man who was in a photo with the evil mastermind!
  • [Jul 26, 2019] Tucker: Democrats believed Mueller would save America. But he is A daft old man blinking in the sunlight once the curtain has been opened
  • [Jun 03, 2020] Dems ratpack of reparations freaks, weird sexual curiosities, and race hustlers is actually a fifth column for Trump re-election by Fred Reed
  • [Jun 03, 2020] Not The Onion: NY Times Urges Trump To Establish Closer Ties With Moscow
  • [Jun 03, 2020] The difference between old and new schools of jounalism: old-school journalism was like being assigned the task of finding out what "1+1 =?" and the task was to report the answer was "1." Now the task would be to report that "Some say it is 1, some say it is 2, some say it is 3."
  • [Jun 03, 2020] Rule of law in Murrika is kaput
  • [May 11, 2019] Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they discovered later discovered and attributed to Russians later
  • [May 11, 2019] Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart -- Say Hello to Fancy Bear
  • [May 11, 2019] Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia
  • [May 07, 2019] Look! A whale!
  • [Apr 22, 2019] Current Neo-McCarthyism hysteria as a smoke screen of the UK and the USA intent to dominate European geopolitics and weaken Russia and Germany
  • [Mar 24, 2019] The accountability that must follow Mueller's report
  • [Mar 24, 2019] The manner in which Guccifer 2.0's English was broken, did not follow the typical errors one would expect if Guccifer 2.0's first language was Russian.
  • [Jan 29, 2019] Guardian became Deep State Guardian
  • [Oct 23, 2020] The key difference between China and Russia as for US election influence: Putin apparently "interferes in US elections" but China simply buys up one of the parties and owns the candidate and his family
  • [Oct 21, 2020] This Is Not A Russian Hoax 'Nonpublic Information' Debunks Letter From '50 Former Intel Officials'
  • [Oct 20, 2020] Glenn Greenwald- Media and Intel Community Working Together To Manipulate The American People - Video - RealClearPolitics
  • [Oct 19, 2020] The Emails Are Russian- Will Be The Narrative, Regardless Of Facts Or Evidence by Caitlin Johnstone
  • [Oct 19, 2020] The neocon/NATO aggressive expansionism and anti-Russian hysteria has many purposes, but one is surely domestic repression: to gaslight and cause fear-the-foreign-bogeyman trauma among the American and British people
  • [Oct 11, 2020] Putin on the US Presidential race and the myth that Trump, one of the most hostile to Russia presidents in history, is somehow a "Putin puppet"
  • [Oct 01, 2020] Why say riot when you can be vague and sensitive instead, AP Stylebook urges in newest Orwellian guidelines by Nebojsa Malic
  • [Oct 01, 2020] Steve's insistence on speaking the truth about Ukraine and US-Russia relations cost him -- but he never gave up by Lev Golinkin
  • [Sep 30, 2020] DNI Letter Supports Allegation That Hillary Clinton Created 'Russiagate' by b
  • [Sep 28, 2020] Truth be told: political operatives own and run our MSM. This is why the press is called the 'Fourth Estate'
  • [Sep 26, 2020] Galloway- Lying industry may be the only sector of Western economies still in full production TAXPAYERS pay for it
  • [Sep 25, 2020] US standard "negotiating" techniques
  • [Sep 23, 2020] How fake media actually works: reporter are given the narrative and they should rehash their stories to fit it
  • [Sep 23, 2020] The deviousness of Russians is completly off the charts.
  • [Sep 21, 2020] Stephen F. Cohen- The Ukrainian Crisis - It s not All Putin s Fault
  • [Sep 21, 2020] Stephen Cohen at the AJC 2017 Forum, about Russia and Terrorism
  • [Sep 20, 2020] CJ Hopkins Exposes The Final Act In 'The War On Populism'
  • [Sep 20, 2020] Darren Beattie Tucker Carlson Discuss Color Revolutions The Plot To Oust President Trump
  • [Sep 20, 2020] Norm Eisen And The Colour Revolution Playbook!
  • [Sep 20, 2020] THE TAKE-DOWN OF TRUMP ALA THE "COLOR REVOLUTION"- NORM EISEN'S REVOLUTIONARY PLAYBOOK A Deeply Embedded (Demster) Lawfare Operative; Regime Change Professionals More. What's Going On- Conservative Firing Line
  • [Sep 17, 2020] Military desperados and Mattis "military messiah syndrome" by Scott Ritter
  • [Sep 09, 2020] Proof of collusion at last! - IRRUSSIANALITY
  • [Sep 06, 2020] Polymerase test specificity and NYT articles
  • [Sep 01, 2020] How Democrats and Republicans made deals to pass Magnitsky Act by Lucy Komisar
  • [Aug 27, 2020] The Ceaseless Lies of Eva Bartlett; or, The Partisan Scrubbing of Western Consciousness. The New Kremlin Stooge
  • [Aug 24, 2020] Announcement- Half a Pulitzer Prize to the Wall Street Journal by Ron Unz
  • [Aug 23, 2020] Catapulting Russian-Meddling Propaganda by Ray McGovern
  • [Aug 23, 2020] Bright future lies ahead of NYT it can soon match and even exceed the caliber of jornalism of the "National Inquirer"
  • [Aug 19, 2020] The Republican led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence repeats the lies about Guccifer 2.0
  • [Aug 17, 2020] Who's Afraid of QAnon- by Gregory Hood
  • [Aug 16, 2020] CIA Behind Guccifer Russiagate A Plausible Scenario
  • [Aug 08, 2020] Russia Hoax- Are We All Being Played- Put Up Or Shut Up! - Zero Hedge
  • [Aug 04, 2020] Russia never saw Trump as a potential ally or friend by The Saker
  • [Aug 03, 2020] Natalie Wynn also refers to Jo Freeman's 1976 piece on "Trashing," in which she describes her experience of being ostracized by fellow feminists for alleged ideological deviation. The dynamic of cancellation predates the internet.
  • [Aug 03, 2020] KEEPING YOUR MOUTH SHUT by James L. Gibson & Joseph L. Sutherland
  • [Aug 03, 2020] Trump DID commit obstruction of justice... he refused to force HIS Dept of Justice to indict Hillary, Comey, Brennan and Clapper
  • [Aug 02, 2020] Russiagate, Nazis, and the CIA by ROB URIE
  • [Jul 31, 2020] Tucker Carlson calls Obama 'one of the sleaziest and most dishonest figures' in US political history
  • [Jul 23, 2020] Demorats defeat amedment ot cut Defence by 10%
  • [Jul 21, 2020] This Skripal thing smelled to high heaven from day 1. My opinion is that Sergei Skripal was involved (to what degree is open to speculation) with the Steele dossier.
  • [Jul 20, 2020] The Real 'Russian Playbook' Is Written in English -- Strategic Culture
  • [Jul 19, 2020] What the MSM cliche According to former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter actually means
  • [Jul 18, 2020] Divide We Fall -- America Has Been Blacklisted and McCarthyism Refashioned for a New Age
  • [Jul 13, 2020] George Washington Tried To Warn Americans About Foreign Policy Today by Doug Bandow
  • [Jul 11, 2020] Free Speech Fantasies- the Harper's Letter and the Myth of American Liberalism by ANTHONY DIMAGGIO
  • [Jul 08, 2020] Boomerang returns and hits NYT presstitutes hard (but money do not smell): CENTCOM Chief Is Latest To Deny NY Times Russian Bounties -- Bombshell
  • [Jul 07, 2020] Mutiny on the Bounties by RAY McGOVERN
  • [Jul 06, 2020] US claim of 'Russian Bounty' plot in Afghanistan is dubious and dangerous - The Grayzone
  • [Jul 01, 2020] Putin s economic and social policies have a neoliberal bent but Putin is far from a classic neoliberal
  • [Jul 01, 2020] Russiagate's Last Gasp by Ray McGovern
  • [Jul 01, 2020] Three Glaring Problems with the Russian Taliban Bounty Story by Barbara Boland
  • [Jul 01, 2020] Control freaks that cannot even control their own criminal impulses!
  • [Jun 28, 2020] Evidence Free Press Release Claims 'Russia Did Bad, Trump Did Not Respond' - NYT, WaPo Publish It
  • [Jun 28, 2020] Russian position for Start talks: "We don't believe the US in its current shape is a counterpart that is reliable, so we have no confidence, no trust whatsoever".
  • [Jun 23, 2020] Identity politics is, first and foremost, a dirty and shrewd political strategy developed by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ( soft neoliberals ) to counter the defection of trade union members from the party
  • [Jun 23, 2020] Surely 'legitimacy' goes to the victor. Once you've won you can build a sort of legitimacy that the majority will agree with (whether its real or not)
  • [Jun 23, 2020] Putin Tries To Set Record Straight by
  • [Jun 21, 2020] Paul R. Pillar who pointed out that U.S. sanctions are frequently peddled as a peaceful alternative to war fit the definition of 'crimes against peace'.
  • [Jun 20, 2020] The American Press Is Destroying Itself by Matt Taibbi
  • [Jun 16, 2020] Meet Wikipedia's Ayn Rand-loving founder and Wikimedia Foundation's regime-change operative CEO by Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal
  • [Jun 15, 2020] Full Special Investigation - Donald Trump vs The Deep State
  • [Jun 03, 2020] Mueller investigation was never about Trump colluding with Russia. It was always about Trump obstructing the investigation of the collusion with Russia that the investigation was not about
  • [Jun 03, 2020] Dems ratpack of reparations freaks, weird sexual curiosities, and race hustlers is actually a fifth column for Trump re-election by Fred Reed
  • [Jun 03, 2020] Not The Onion: NY Times Urges Trump To Establish Closer Ties With Moscow
  • [Jun 03, 2020] The difference between old and new schools of jounalism: old-school journalism was like being assigned the task of finding out what "1+1 =?" and the task was to report the answer was "1." Now the task would be to report that "Some say it is 1, some say it is 2, some say it is 3."
  • [Jun 03, 2020] Requiem to Russiagate: this was the largest and the most successful attempt to gaslight the whole US population ever attempted by CIA and Clinton wing of Dems by CJ Hopkins
  • [Jun 03, 2020] RussiaGate for neoliberal Dems and MSM honchos is the way to avoid the necessity to look into the camera and say, I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump
  • [Jun 01, 2020] More Evidence of the Fraud Against General Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson
  • [Jun 01, 2020] More Evidence of the Fraud Against General Michael Flynn by Larry C Johnson
  • [May 24, 2020] Guccifer 2.0 was always John Brennan 1.0
  • [May 24, 2020] Obamagate as the reaction of managerial class neoliberals on the crisis of neoliberalism
  • [May 24, 2020] Guccifer 2.0's Hidden Agenda : looks like Gussifer 2.0 was a false flag operation designed to smear WikiLeaks and distract from the content of the stolen by Seth Rich or some other insider DNC emails
  • [May 22, 2020] Time to Break up the FBI by William S. Smith
  • [May 20, 2020] McGovern Turn Out The Lights, Russiagate Is Over by Ray McGovern
  • [May 19, 2020] Russophobia in the Age of Donald Trump
  • [May 18, 2020] FBI under Comey as an uncontrolled political police operating without any oversight from Justice Department
  • [May 17, 2020] General Flynn investigation 'has tarnished Obama's legacy' - YouTube
  • [May 17, 2020] Apparently, the FBI, and not the CIA, are the real government.
  • [May 16, 2020] A model democrat
  • [May 16, 2020] Bought MSM experts typically are just MIC prostitutes: most are neocons and "Russiagaters"
  • [May 16, 2020] Putin's Call For A New System and the 1944 Battle Of Bretton Woods
  • [May 16, 2020] Tucker Adam Schiff should resign
  • [May 15, 2020] The Complete Collusion Against Trump Timeline
  • [May 13, 2020] From RussiaGate To ObamaGate The End Of Boomerville by Tom Luongo
  • [May 11, 2020] Lee Zeldin Adam Schiff 'should resign today' for role in Russia investigation by Dominick Mastrangelo
  • [May 11, 2020] McCarthy: It would be 'profoundly crazy if Obama wasn't in on Flynn case'
  • [May 11, 2020] Twin Pillars of Russiagate Crumble by Ray McGovern
  • [May 10, 2020] Did the FBI target Michael Flynn to protect Obama's policies, not national security by Kevin R. Brock
  • [May 10, 2020] Does Obama now feels his potential liability for staging coup d' tat and gaslighting the whole nation?
  • [May 08, 2020] Thiefs stole from a Russian fifth column critter: NY Times Accused Of Ripping Off Pulitzer Prize-Winning Stories From Russian Journalists For 2nd Time
  • [May 07, 2020] Media Malpractice Is Criminalizing Better Relations With Russia by Stephen F. Cohen
  • [May 07, 2020] There's No Question It's A Fraud Fmr Trump Attorney Says Mueller Badly Misled White House, Schiff Is Nancy's Liar Zero
  • [May 05, 2020] Newly released FBI documents show Israel intervened in 2016 election to help Trump
  • [May 05, 2020] Is there a "6th column" trying to subvert Russia, by The Saker
  • [May 05, 2020] UK government experince with the White Helmets and the Skripal affair definitly halps in anti-china propaganda.
  • [Apr 22, 2020] Especially as the insane neoliberal economy we live in, we are ruled by a group of kleptocrats and vicious stooges. Which make allegations against Biden deserving a closer look but that does not make them automatically credible
  • [Apr 17, 2020] Declassified Horowitz Footnotes Show Obama Officials Knew Steele Dossier Was Russian Disinfo Designed To Target Trump Zero He
  • [Apr 17, 2020] Barr just said the Russia collusion probe was a travesty, had no basis and was intended to sabotage Trump.
  • [Apr 02, 2020] Bloomberg spent north of $500 millions to become president with zero results, and you want me to believe that Russians spent 1% of that and got better results
  • [Apr 02, 2020] We have two discredited old parties, incapable of dealing with the crises facing them, attempting to revive the only ideas that have ever galvanised the US public in their lifetimes: opposition to communism and the racism which underlay just about every US military adventure since 1945
  • [Mar 28, 2020] Russians again were outsmarted by the US intelligence agencies
  • [Mar 28, 2020] Why You Should Never Watch RT -- Ever!
  • [Mar 28, 2020] NYT bad habit of falling for falling for frauds and making them famous
  • [Mar 24, 2020] This weaponizing of random indignation is a classic tool of the Western propaganda
  • [Mar 21, 2020] When reading any article concerning current events (ie. Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, or Coronavirus) consider how the The Seven Principles of Propaganda may apply
  • [Mar 17, 2020] DOJ drops charges against Russian trolls after they dared demand evidence in US court -- RT USA News
  • [Mar 12, 2020] Did Joe Biden's Former IT Guy Masquerade as Guccifer 2.0 by Larry C Johnson
  • [Mar 05, 2020] Intelligence Officials Sow Discord By Stoking Fear of Russian Election Meddling by Dave DeCamp
  • [Mar 04, 2020] Russiagate should be viewed as classic, textbook case of gaslighting and projecting election interference
  • [Mar 03, 2020] Russia isn't backing Sanders and Trump as much as hoping for chaos
  • [Mar 03, 2020] Whacking Rich is a reminder to Sanders what the party establishmen is capable of
  • [Feb 28, 2020] Media s Deafening Silence On Latest WikiLeaks Drops Is Its Own Scandal by Caitlin Johnstone
  • [Feb 21, 2020] Why Both Republicans And Democrats Want Russia To Become The Enemy Of Choice by Philip Giraldi
  • [Feb 19, 2020] During the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, a "neoliberal revolution from above" was staged in the USA by "managerial elite" which like Soviet nomenklatura (which also staged a neoliberal coup d' tat) changed sides and betrayed the working class
  • [Feb 15, 2020] How does one say Adam Schiff without laughing? by title="View user profile." href="https://caucus99percent.com/users/alligator-ed">Alligator Ed
  • [Feb 03, 2020] White House Warriors: How the National Security Council Transformed the American Way of War
  • [Jan 29, 2020] For the last three years, all the "resistance oxygen" was sucked up by the warmongering against Russia
  • [Jan 24, 2020] Peter Hitchen to Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat: You're not in the ladies' lingerie trade now, sweetie
  • [Jan 24, 2020] Crimes of the century truth, perception and punishment
  • [Jan 21, 2020] WaPo columnist endorses all twelve candidates
  • [Jan 20, 2020] Fake Investigations... Designed To Fool by Bryce Buchanan
  • [Jan 18, 2020] Putin plants to prohibit dual citizens to serve in government
  • [Jan 09, 2020] It looks like UK and the USA intelligences agencies run the contest to see who can come up with the most surreal anti-Russian propaganda psy-ops
  • [Jan 06, 2020] Diplomacy Trump-style. Al Capone probably would be allow himself to fall that low
  • [Dec 28, 2019] Senior OPCW Official Busted Leaked Email Exposes Orders To Delete All Traces Of Dissent On Douma
  • [Dec 22, 2019] So US intelligence tipped off the DNC that their emails were about to be leaked to Wikileaks. That's when the stratagem of attributing the impending Wikileaks release to a Russian hack was born -- distracting from the incriminating content of the emails, while vilifying the Deep State's favorite enemies, Assange and Russia, all in one neat scam
  • [Dec 21, 2019] The ruthless neo-colonialists of 21st century
  • [Dec 20, 2019] Did John Brennan's CIA Create Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks by Larry C Johnson
  • [Dec 20, 2019] NSA Whistleblower: "Mueller Report based on fabricated evidence" Former NSA technical chief, Bill Binney, says it looked like the CIA did this, and made it look like the Russians were doing the hack to implicate Russians by Eric Zuesse
  • [Dec 20, 2019] The purpose of manufactured hysteria in the US is to obfuscate the issues important to the Deep State like destroying the first amendment, renewing the 'Patriot' act, extremely increasing the war/hegemony budget, etc
  • [Jul 01, 2020] Russiagate's Last Gasp by Ray McGovern
  • [Jul 01, 2020] Three Glaring Problems with the Russian Taliban Bounty Story by Barbara Boland
  • [Jul 01, 2020] Control freaks that cannot even control their own criminal impulses!

    • Sites

    Etc

    Society

    Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

    Quotes

    War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

    Bulletin:

    Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

    History:

    Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

    Classic books:

    The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

    Most popular humor pages:

    Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

    The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

    Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.

    FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.

    This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...

    		 You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site

    Disclaimer:

    The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.

    Last modified: January, 20, 2021